Hog Heaven 2: Return of the Alien Elvis

By Jess
 jessica@amazon.com


Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999
DISCLAIMER: Oh ha ha. As IF!
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know.
SPOILER WARNING: None really.
RATING: PG for the mention of a nipple (oops! guess I don't need the
rating anymore)
CONTENT WARNING: Oh, angst, violence, Elvis...
CLASSIFICATION: UST, MSR, a mystery but this ain't no x-file
SUMMARY: Scully has a life-changing experience at the hands of the Elvis
Alien. Read part one (email me if you need it... it's also archived here
under humor: http://welcome.to/X-ploringACreek@Gretensgarde ) if you
want to fully understand the MIND-NUMBING significance of it all.

Email me, I have a pathological need for attention.



Mulder is sliding one warm languid hand up my body as if he were
casually reaching for a glass of water balanced on my right breast.

We have been arriving at this place for several days, and like sliding
into first base, it's a mostly showy gesture. In fact we have already
been here for months, maybe years, but just haven't admitted it to
anyone, including ourselves.

I am pondering, as I try to continue breathing through his ascent,
exactly when I realized that Mulder had the power to do this to me. And
by this, I do not mean make me pant like a dog on a sunny patch of
lawn.  I am wondering when he developed the ability to completely
destroy me with a single look.

I have, of course, been in love before. I loved Jack. Maybe I even loved
people before Jack, I don't know. But none of them, no matter how long
they stayed with me, had this kind of control. Oh, Jack broke my heart,
don't get me wrong. When I realized we were never going to go anywhere
substantial, I cried for days. Then I picked myself up and went on my
merry little career-oriented way. But Mulder? Mulder has the power not
just to break my heart -- he can completely obliterate it. Shatter it
into ten thousand pieces like something dipped into liquid nitrogen.

I know this because he's done it. Or at least, come close. The moment
when he stood with me in the gunmen's office, listening with his arms
crossed and mind closed? when he had the audacity to accuse me? accuse
me, for God's sake, not talk to me, not argue with me, but accuse me of
making it personal. As if that were a bad thing. Ping. My heart
shatters.

So here I am, lying in bed with him, feeling the rough pads of his
fingertips on my sternum, his moist breath on my neck, and I'm
frantically scrambling to pick up a few pieces before he does it again.
Just let me gather a handful of my feelings, Mulder, before you assault
me.

He groans and I'm instantly swimming in moisture. My body, I remind it,
my body. Not his. He thrusts slightly against my rear end and then his
index finger begins to circle my nipple.

Ok, that's it. I can't do it. I thought I could, I wanted to, but oh
Mulder? it is too late and I can't do it.

I gently put his wandering hand back on his own thigh where it belongs.
He lies there, panting and hurt, unable to figure it out.

"Scully?" he whispers. "What's wrong?"

I am silent. How do I explain it to him? I don't trust him enough to
give him this last bit of me. I love him, I want him, but love and need
and trust are all separate tonight and I can't take any one of them
without the others.

"Scully," He rolls away, lying on his back and I know, staring bitterly
at the ceiling. "Why is it that you'll fuck a perfect stranger, but you
won't make love to me?"

********

In the morning, we are distant from one another. I wait by the window,
peering out at the hot Kansas pavement and the bike, crouched on the
dirt, waiting. Mulder pulls his boots on, shirtless. It is his way of
hating me, showing his body to me at a time when he knows I will not
act. Like in the decontamination shower. Here, Scully, look at what you
didn't want.

But I do want it, and he has a lovely body. He is heavier than he used
to be. Not in a bad way, but Mulder used to have a graceful body, like a
dancer. Now he looks more like he used to play a lot of football in
college. I don't know if this is a new workout routine, or if his
approach to forty has slowed him. It really doesn't matter. I love
Mulder's body because it is his, because the changes in it have come
during my watch, so to speak.

He finishes and stands up, sliding a gray t-shirt over his head and
running a hand through his hair. How many of those gray shirts does he
own, I wonder? I think of him in Arcadia, wearing pink. It definitely
didn't suit him, though I think my little twin-sets suited me. Mulder
was born to ride and I was born to? wear embroidered wool, I suppose.

We mount the bike. Motorcycles are so monumentally phallic it's almost
difficult not to laugh. I am not angry at Mulder, though I think he is
with me, so I put my hands on his hips in a completely unfair move. He
cannot rid himself of me as easily as I can disentangle myself from him.
We both know this.

"I need to go to a bank," Mulder says into the microphone in his helmet.
I can't get used to hearing him this way, echoing around my head. I
wonder if this is what it was like for him in the sanitarium, a million
voices beamed straight to his brain.

"Fine," I say.

Boy, we are masters of communication.

Does this mean he is preparing to return to DC? That we will finally
admit we are failures at the romance of the open road? I don't know, but
in my own way, I will be sorry when this journey ends. I have never been
so close to him, despite our mental distance, and the physical
permission to touch and hold is intoxicating.

********

We pull into the next small town, trailing dust like a comet. Kansas is
as hot as a desert, but then that's what the great plains would be if it
weren't for the massive aquifer beneath us. I can't imagine that vast
expanse of water, though I know it doesn't work that way. In my mind I
see a glimmering dark lake, but in reality it exists as moisture in a
sponge, seeping into the cracks and holes of the earth. The road
shimmers as we pull to a stop in front of the only bank in town.

A small line has formed at the ATM, sweaty and peeved. As soon as we
stop moving, the heat is around us like a wool blanket, smothering. I
follow Mulder off the bike, hoping he will go inside. He takes off his
helmet and stands behind the last person in the line. Of course he can't
go inside. It isn't his bank. I grow feverish in my black leather and
denim, frantic for relief.

"Scully," he says softly. "Stop sweating and go stand inside the bank.
It'll be air-conditioned."

I feel like a guilty child stepping into the chilly marble interior as
Mulder sweats outside. First I refuse to make love to him, now I let my
body cool without him. I am no one's partner today. The bank is quiet
and still, with deep green potted palms and aspidistras trailing from
the counters like an Italianate oasis. The lone teller leans out from
behind the counter and smiles.

"Can I help you, Miss?"

I am over thirty and they still call me Miss. Is my complete lack of a
husband written in bright ink across my chest?

"No, no. I'm just waiting while my? friend uses the ATM."

She nods and goes back to counting money. I hunt down the air vent and
stand under it, letting it ruffle my hair. In the corner, a young man
with the sort of face no one ever notices sits fanning himself. I wonder
if he is her boyfriend? My shirt sticks to me, the clerk's hands make a
soft swishing as she works, the palm next to me shivers in the invisible
breeze.

And then the door opens.

*******

I don't know why he terrifies me, but he does. I have immediate
flashbacks to the robbery last fall, and to strange visions of things
that didn't happen: my hand on Mulder's chest as he pumps blood onto the
floor; my own body shot through? a flash of light. I am hyperventilating
and this man is just crossing the tiles to stand between the velvet
ropes and wait for the teller to look up. She does and smiles at him.

He pulls a gun.

My body sinks with the feeling of inevitability, like being told you are
going to die when you can see the tumor on the side of your head.

"This is a robbery," he says, as if people pull guns in banks for any
other reason. I watch the teller's face whiten, her body go stiff. Her
hands are frozen on the money she is counting. She has not pressed an
emergency button, as far as I can tell.

"You," he says to me, pointing the gun at my chest. "Lock the door."

That's when it hits me fully. This is more than a robbery. Something
truly awful is about to happen. I glance at the boy across the room, but
he is motionless, his face a mask. Is he with this man? I don't know.

Walking slowly to the door, I pause at the glass and look for Mulder. He
is one person from the ATM. Glancing up, he smiles at me until he sees
me slide the deadbolt into place and raise my hands in the universal
sign of submission. As I turn from the door, I know he will come for me
and it makes me even more frightened, though I can't say why.

"Ok, back behind the counter. All of you."

The three of us, hostages together, move to stand next to one another.
The boy, the teller and the FBI agent, caught without her gun. I feel as
naked as a showgirl.

The great metal vault rises behind us, it's old-fashioned spinning
handle like a ship's wheel against my back. It is open. The clerk is
sniffling.

"You, put the money in the bag," he says to her and she starts loading
the cash from the counter into a dufflebag he has brought. My head is
pounding.

"You two, into the vault."

And the panic subsides a bit. He is not, I think, going to rape me. He
is probably not going to shoot me. He is going to lock me in the vault
with this kid? I size the boy up? yes, I could take him if I had to.
Mulder will find the combination and we will be let out. It is so simple
and easy, there is no bomb, there is no blood. Just the cool marble
walls of the bank and the metal interior of the vault.

I open the giant door all the way, marveling at the easy slide of its
weight on castors or ball bearings. The boy and I hesitate in the
doorway, waiting. The girl is choking back sobs as she eases the money
into the bag, her shuddering like shouting in the silent room.

********

I don't think he meant to shoot me.  

He was just pointing the gun at us, ordering us into the vault when the
door shattered and about ten people streamed through. The sound of the
breaking glass made us all jump, swathed as we were in the cotton
interior of the old bank. I heard the gun fire just as I saw Mulder run
in, his face red with heat and fear.

The first time you are shot, it feels like someone passed an electrical
wire through your body and you keep looking around for the live line.
But this time I know the sensation, as familiar through memory as a
grandparent's long-dead voice. I find myself looking down at the blood
shooting from my chest like a little garden fountain and then up at
Mulder's stricken eyes. He looks as if he'd shot me himself.

Then the boy grabs for me and the robber shoves the door to the vault
closed in one slow movement. I feel myself falling and see Mulder
running forward across the tiled floor toward my collapsing body.

Then only the cold metal back of the door and the silent darkness of the
vault.

A soft ticking of the locks turning, sealing us in and the boy's hands
on my chest, searching for the wound.

"You can't do anything," I whisper to him. "I'm a doctor, so I know."

I want to tell him to give Mulder a message, but I can't. Brightness
creeps around my eyes and the room seems to light up like a summer day.

I'm dying, I'm sure of it. I close my weary eyes and offer a prayer to
Ahab for Mulder's soul.

********

end part 1 of 2

TITLE: Hog Heaven 2: Return of the Alien Elvis (2/2)
AUTHOR: Jess
EMAIL ADDRESS: jessica@amazon.com

Summary in part one.

Email me, there's a big ol' hole in ma heart that I need to stuff with
paper...

WARNING: SAPPINESS ENSUES!


"Dana," a thick Southern voice is saying. "Open your eyes."

No, I think. I don't want to see heaven. I had it, for a moment, in my
arms and I don't want this version of it.

"Come on, Dana, open 'em up and take a look around. It ain't so bad."

I give in. Why does God have a Southern accent?

I am lying in the vault. Only it is bright here, like day. Ok, that's
because someone has turned on a light overhead, a bare bulb. And where
is the boy?

All I know is that Elvis is leaning gently over me, stroking the hair
back from my forehead.

"I didn't know you were an angel," I manage to croak out, "though I
think Mulder always thought you were."

He smiles, his hand on my chest. I know without looking that the wound
is gone, though I am lying in a massive pool of my own blood.

"Hush, now, sweet thing. You're weak."

How can I hush? I am alive, and soon the door will open and Mulder will
know.

"Who are you?" I ask.

"Ah Dana, ever the septic," he drawls and lifts his bloody hand from my
open shirt. "You know who I am."

I nod. Of course I do. Like I know who winds Big Ben. I mean, someone
does it, but I never think about exactly who it is.

"Why are you here? How did you know?"

"I just know," he says quietly. "I've been waiting for you. You needed
me."

"I needed Elvis?"

That draws a smile. "You sure needed someone."

We both stare at one another for a moment.

"So," I say, conversational as I'm aware of a warmth beneath my body. I
think he is drawing some of my blood back in through my skin. "Why
aren't you a horrible beast, like the others?"

That draws a laugh and he passes one fleshy hand over my clavicle. The
warmth beneath me increases, as if trying to rise through my body to
meet his hand.

"Think of it this way? are you related to the man who shot you?"

"God no," I answer, feeling suddenly warm and chatty.

"But you are, aren't you? In a brotherhood-of-man sort of way. That's
how it is with me and the rest of 'em. We're all cut from the same
cloth, but we ain't brothers, if you know what I mean."

I nod. Sure I know. An alien Elvis is explaining himself to me and I am
listening with perfect acceptance. I am dead, I know it. If I'm not,
Mulder's going to drive me to the brink of suicide with teasing later.
Mulder. I sigh. Outside he is frantic, I can feel it, like a pin lodged
in my chest.

"Dana," the Elvis alien says softly. "In a few moments, he'll open the
door. Before then, I'd like to ask you a question, and I want an honest
answer."

"Ok," I whisper, picturing only Mulder's joy to keep myself from
sobbing.

"How many times do you have to die before you'll decide to live?"

*******

Of course you can imagine how long it takes me to answer that.

I can only come up with a lame: "What do you mean?"

He leans back, powerful and sexy like young Elvis, but with a wisdom the
real thing never completely realized.

"Well, you know how they say love is blind?"

I nod, feeling light-headed.

"Dana, the only thing that blinds you to the truth is your jealousy,
your anger and your fear. Your lack of love. I told you before, back on
that lonely highway, that the answers you both sought were there. You
thought I meant the answers existed at the end of the search, didn't
you?"

"Yes, of course."

He smiles and strokes the sweat- and blood-soaked hair back from my
forehead.

"The answers which you and Fox seek are not on the back of a motorcycle
or in the asphalt of an empty road. They already exist within you, in
the things you've seen, in the places you have gone together, in the
places you have yet to go. When you are ready to let go of the fear and
restriction, when you see that in trusting no one, you have failed to
trust yourselves, it will all become as clear as water."

"Funny," I whisper, "you don't sound like Elvis anymore."

"Elvis had a little drug problem. Sometimes I have to go beyond The King
in order to reach enlightenment, if you know what I mean."

"I do," I say, and then I hear the gentle clicking of the lock, twisting
into place.

Trying to stand, I feel the world sway. I have been overwhelmed, I
think. Elvis smiles at me as he lowers me back down onto the vault
floor.

"Close your eyes, Dana. When you open them, you'll see everything in a
new light."

********

The first thing I see is Mulder.

Tears streaming down his face, he is looking at me as if I am a water
sprite, risen from the deep.

"Hi," I whisper, unable to think of anything more profound and realizing
just how deep we really are.

He is gasping, laughing and crying at the same time, unashamed at his
own outpouring of emotion. I clutch at him, thinking of the psychic
surgeon, only this time I have my own hands wrapped tight around my
heart.

"Jesus, Scully?" he whispers.

"Elvis," I answer. "It was Elvis."

Mulder leans back enough to look at me. "What are you talking about?"

Ever the investigator.

"It was the Elvis alien, Mulder. He healed me. Oh God, he put his hand
on my chest and healed me. It was marvelous. Where did he go?"

Mulder looks around and then back down at my chest, for once not hoping
for an eyeful.

"He's gone," he says softly. "The boy? he? he just walked out."

"Of course he did." I pat Mulder's hand gently. "That's the way it's
supposed to be."

Mulder sighs and strokes my hair. I am suspended in his arms, hovering
above the floor and my own dark blood.

"I thought you were dead," he says and his voice chokes.

"Oh no," I reassure him, giddy and wonderful. "I just had my eyes
closed."

********

The policeman sighs.

"So, let me get this straight? Elvis," and he says the name with a scorn
bordering on homicidal, "put his hand on the bullet wound you received
from a nine millimeter automatic weapon and it just sorta closed right
up?"

I nod. Mulder sits on the guest chair next to me, examining his hands
and peering under his nails. I recognize this as a sign he is trying not
to laugh. My God, I want to say, kid, if you'd seen what we've seen, a
motorcycle-riding, shape-shifting, Elvis hair-do sporting alien wouldn't
even make you blink.

"All right, then, Miss Scully? I guess that about sums it up."

There is a knock on the door and the doctor enters, carrying a chart and
looking about as enthused as the police kid.

Mulder rises to leave, but I catch his hand. "Stay," I say and open the
buttons on my shirt. He stares at the revealed whole skin and I know he
is relieved and grateful.

"I don't understand it," the doctor sighs. "But I can see no evidence
that you were ever shot." His warm hands poke at the spot just above my
left breast where my heart beats steadily.

"It's a miracle," I drawl in a slow Elvis imitation. The doctor glares
and Mulder grins widely. I have never been so flippant, so free of bonds
and fears. I have come back from death before, but never had a visit
from a rock 'n' roll angel to set me back upon my path.

They send me home, or rather, back to the hotel, in a squad car with
Mulder. Like criminals. I lean over and slide his hand into mine.

"Partners in crime," I whisper in his ear and he leans into my voice as
if it could support him. And perhaps it could.

Outside our room, we hesitate, not wanting to open the door and face the
reality of showers and clean clothes and a wide single bed. Mulder
gently jambs one finger through the singed hole in my shirt, touching
the exact spot on my sternum he reached the night before.

"Do you think we'll ever see him again?" he asks.

"Not if I can help it," I reply. He is so large and solid in front of
me, a wall of Mulder. I am suddenly exhausted and aware of my loss of
blood. How easy it would be to end up in his arms tonight, how
comforting and honest.

The road just beyond the parking lot is a busy one, with trucks and the
cars of weary travelers passing by in a steady whoosh of sound.

Someone honks their horn and shouts "get a room!" into the warm night
air.

"We have one," Mulder whispers just as I lean up to kiss him on the
lips.

He is warmer than the night, than the blaze of a campfire. I could toast
myself in him. At last he draws back, hands still supporting my head,
holding me up.

"Scully," he says, looking me in the eye for the first time in what
seems like our entire lives together. "Do you remember what he said that
last time? That life was a long and open road?"

I nod, hands on his waist as if we were still riding and I am steadying
myself against the turns of the highway.

"I think I just found a road map," he says, and opens the door to our
room.

end 

Ah, now, wasn't that just SWEET? Ok, email me before the cavity eats its
way through to a nerve.