SERIES: Flight

TITLE: Gaining Altitude

AUTHOR: Tesla 

RATING: NC-17 

CLASSIFICATION: Mulder/Other

KEYWORDS: None 

ARCHIVE: Okay-dokey 

SPOILERS: Assume that this alternate universe careens off track after "Field Trip". Of course, in a real alternate universe, the Yankees would not have won the Series. Or the pennant.

DISCLAIMERS: If Ten Thirteen is even reading this, HI! I know a copyright lawyer who said he'll defend us!

SUMMARY: Continuation of "Flying Under the Radar"-I think that should be read first. Or not. It's a free country.

THANKS to Emerex for holding my hand, and to Jill and Paula, who point out that real women lawyers don't act like this.

"I want you to sweep my friend's apartment for bugs, " Mulder told Frohike. "Just in case." He gave the other man a bland stare.

It didn't work. Frohike looked almost scandalized. "You spend that much time with her? What about Scully?"

"What about Scully? She told you not to sweep her place, didn't she?" Mulder countered, deliberately misunderstanding the other man.

"You know what I mean, Mulder. Stop yanking me."

"Scully and I are partners, " Mulder said dully. Scully and I are partners. He'd said it, thought it, and lived it for years. Now, he felt like they just went through the motions. After Krycek had given him an address-of an empty house once owned by C. G. B. Spender, years ago-Scully agreed to go to the address, but with an air of one indulging a child. Or an old man. Maybe it was time-

Frohike had been talking all that time. "Snap out of it, wouldja, Mulder? Set it up with your girlfriend. We'll take care of it."

Janet was not as agreeable. "No," she said flatly, not looking up from her transcript. She was sitting with her feet up on the couch, surrounded by files, magazines, the Saturday Times, Post and TV Guide. She had only reluctantly shoved some of this reading material to the floor so he could sit beside her.

Mulder was taken aback. "What?"

"No. I don't want those guys in here. And it isn't as if you ever talked about anything that wasn't public record." She looked up at him then. "You never told me who the hell Krycek was. And 'a bad guy' isn't enough-so I don 't see the need to check for bugs. You don't use my phone line, or my computer, so no one is getting any secret government information from monitoring those."

Mulder cautiously put his hand on her ankle. "Am I in trouble, here?"

Janet rolled her eyes. "No, I'm just pointing out that you self-censor yourself," and she raised her voice to an imaginary microphone in the lamp, "ENOUGH THAT NO ONE WOULD BE INTERESTED IN OUR CONVERSATIONS."

"Ceiling fixtures," Mulder said, smiling in spite of himself. "They usually have the monitors in the ceiling. He traced an invisible design on her ankle. "But I want to tell you-things. Things I'm paranoid about. I like talking to you." He cringed inside. Jeeze, how pathetic did he sound?

"One of those new age guys, who just wants to talk," she agreed, finally putting her papers aside. She turned her ankle within his grasp.

"Well, you're the first woman I've heard about who got turned on watching the Baseball videos. You probably run with the wolves."

"Dancing with lawyers, baby. And it's all that male bonding in the video-sexy."

"That's extraordinary for a Braves fan." He stroked her leg. "The guys won't monitor you, or put anything here. They'll just check. "

"Hah. So if I don't get the place checked, I don't get to hear about some global conspiracy?" she asked sharply. Mulder's grip on her ankle tightened convulsively, although he kept his usual deadpan expression. Her eyes and mouth rounded. After a moment, she swallowed and said, "I meant-and I mean this kindly-don't blackmail me."

"No," he said, barely above a whisper. "I'm still talking to you. Even if you don't-" She pulled her feet under her, out of his cold grasp, and crawled over her magazines into his lap. She wound her arms around him, and he hugged her tightly.

"Okay," she whispered into his ear. "Bring in your buddies. Does this mean we're going steady?" She kissed his jaw, then pressed her face in his shoulder.

"Yeah. Does this mean I get a key?"

"Oh, I've got one for you," she said, sitting up in his arms. "Had one made for weeks, now."

Mulder grunted. "Watch that knee. And you talk about me being self-censoring. I have to deal with that goddamn courtroom face. I never know what you're thinking." One part of his brain said, What's up with this shit?

She laughed, a short bark. "Pot, meet Kettle, to quote Chandler Bing."

"Oh, and it's the great erotic quotes, too. That's a big plus in this relationship." The same voice was saying, Relationship? Get her off the dick, blood flowing out of brain, Danger, Will Robinson.

Her eyes gleamed. "Relationship? 'And though Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know By this these angels from an evil sprite; Those set our hairs on end, but these our flesh upright." She straddled his lap, and ground herself into his groin. " 'License my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.' Don't fuck with an English major, Agent Mulder."

"But that's what I thought you wanted," he said, his voice innocent. "Let's go in the bedroom. Last time I got newsprint on my knees and I thought I was bruised."

His own snore woke him. He raised his face from Janet's shoulder. "John Donne," he said thickly. He pulled a strand of her hair from his lip. "Ptoo. I remember it from Dorothy Sayers."

"Yeah, Lord Peter talks almost as much as you do," Janet said, in an I' m-the-English-major-here tone of voice. "I memorized that poem to piss off my professor in one class. He was trying to embarrass us by having us recite. A friend of mine decided to come out and recited part of Howl. "

"Just tell me the name of the poem," he said. "Humor me." She was giggling. "What now, damn it?"

She rolled over and faced him, putting her fingertips on his face. " 'To His Mistress Going to Bed.' You want some more erotic quotations?" She was still grinning.

"Let me get my strength back," he joked. She stroked his lower lip with her fingertips. Her lips parted, then closed. "What were you going to say?" he asked.

She shook her head, still smiling. "Oh, a bunch of mushy stuff that would make you deeply uncomfortable. About your eyes, and your mouth and your skin-the kind of stuff that real people never say." She was still touching his face.

He hoped he wasn't flushing. "Tell me about my eyes." He kissed her fingertip.

"Very hot eyes. Bedroom eyes. I'm surprised you're not groped in the elevator at work."

"I wish," he mumbled. "And my mouth?"

"Great mouth. Very kissable. Pouty. Your Scully must have great strength of mind to resist you," she said, and waited for his reaction.

"Yes, she has." he said, not offended. "Resist being a good choice of words. And what else is great about me? What about my skin?"

"Well, aside from the actual feel of it, I love the way you smell," she said. "I won't even talk about your dick at this time, since we're not being erotic right now."

Mulder kissed the inside of her wrist. "What about my hair?"

Scully was now starting to wonder about her partner. He was so normal, which for him, meant he was acting peculiar. He filled out forms, went to meetings on time, and went to consult with other department heads with scarcely a murmur. He couldn't be up for his evaluation-and he never cared about that anyway. He seemed-what? He put up an impenetrable front of courtesy and bad puns, and seemed truly more interested in the pennant race than the Cigarette Smoking Man (as she still thought of him). With Mulder, normal was frightening.

He came to work about the same time she did-punctually, but not early; he left on time, instead of hanging out for hours; and he never called her at home for any reason-not since Krycek gave them that dead end clue. He hadn't seemed keen even about Krycek. And his Weekly World News subscription was stacked, mostly unread, on a filing cabinet.

And he was never at home when she called; and his cell phone was usually off. Just as a test, one wonderful September Saturday, she called him on the cell to tell him about religious phenomena occurring in Maryland-religious statues that moved in supernatural fashion. The file had been forwarded, by a field office, to their department. He didn't even want to discuss the file, and when she called back with a further argument, his phone was on voice mail mode. Since she had heard a ballgame in the background, she called the Gunmen.

"Turn off the tape, Frohike," she said. "Hi. It's me. Is Mulder there?"

"He's not at home?" Frohike sounded slightly uneasy.

"I got the machine-I was just talking to him, but his phone's off now."

"Well, he's not here. Is it an emergency? Can I do anything for you?"

No, thanks! She thought. "Naah. You don't know where he might be?"

"Uhh-no. You want me to tell him you want him, if he turns up?" Frohike sounded definitely uneasy.

"No, thanks, anyway." She hung up.

She was only making sure he was okay, she told herself later, as she drove down Hegel Place. Well, there was his car. She'd go up to his apartment for a minute. After all, he didn't need to have this attitude about odd phenomena, just because it was church related. She parked the car, and ran up to the building, and up the elevator. No answer at the apartment; she pulled out her key, and tried the door.

The key didn't work; she took it out, made sure it was the right key. Yes, the one with the (faded) "Mulder" label. She tried it again, wiggling it gently. No. She bent and looked at it; now, she saw that the lock was shiny-new. Well, the damn door had probably been forced so often, maybe he finally changed locks. It was just like him to leave her with the old key. She knocked on the door, just to be sure, then listened. Nothing. Shrugging to herself, she went back downstairs. His car was still there; maybe he was out running? Well, she couldn't wait. She got back in her car and drove home, feeling annoyed. Just like Mulder, she thought again.

That Monday, she didn't know how to ask him about the lock change. She weighed the inconvenience of not having the right key against his smugness at making her come to his place, and had actually lifted her head and opened her mouth to ask for a new key, when he raised one hand to his neck and tugged at his collar.

He had hickeys on his neck. Huge bites, just under the collar line. Just at that moment, his own gaze lifted, and he saw her staring. "What?" he asked.

"I wanted to ask you about those religious statues again," she said coolly.

He shrugged. "Scully, if you really want to go out there, we'll go out there. It just seems like a dozen other phenomena, and there's no crime, or fraud or anything going on. I don't know why the field office sent it in." He picked up another file. "Violent Crimes wants me to consult on some stuff, and Skinner asked me to help out. I suppose it would help him out, so I said okay. But I didn't speak for you, and actually, Skinner seemed just a-quiver with the idea of letting you do some hotshot autopsies. He said for you to go see him." He gave her an apologetic grin. "I just remembered that."

When she left the office, Mulder was whistling. The sound made her shudder.

After two weeks of working 12/7 in Violent Crimes, Mulder was surprised to feel just fine. He supposed that being older, and having a reasonable group of people to work with, made all the difference. His supervisory status in the X-Files helped; maybe, just maybe, he wasn't quite the pariah he thought. No thanks to Kersh-well, in a weird way, thanks to Kersh, after all. Buddy Hill, the department head, had spent a lot of time dealing with Kersh, and seemed to think any agent that survived him was a tough S.O.B. He wouldn't mind working with Hill, again.

And Skinner must have helped, too, Mulder thought, as he pulled into his parking space. Skinner had to have dropped a helpful word here and there. But the big problem was that he didn't want to leave. How was that for weird? He wasn't interested in UFO sightings and parapsychology. Once you've seen one flying saucer, he thought, getting his briefcase, you've seen them all. Once you've realized your best ambition-to find your sister; and your worst fear-to lose her again; what was left? Just staying in the Washington area, since that was the only thing Samantha knew about where he lived. Just staying in the FBI, since that was all he could tell her. Knowing that your worst enemy, that black-lunged cocksucker, raised Samantha as his own (but meanwhile "disappeared" his own son) was just the cherry on the parfait.

But what he really didn't want to do, Mulder realized, as he clipped his ID on his lapel, was have to deal with Dana Scully. The past two weeks had been a vacation from her, and her general straight-faced dutifulness. What was more offensive and hurtful, that she didn't love him or that she wouldn't laugh at his jokes?

If I hate coming in here this much, he started to think, then stopped himself. A bit late for self-awareness, isn't it?

The elevator opened and he went inside, managing to smile at the other D.C. drones, and even offer to take their bets on the Yankees. As the familiar guilt and shame washed over him as familiar as the tide coming in and filling him up to his throat. He swallowed involuntarily. How could he leave her? And, Janet, _he thought. All the sex in the world isn't going to make me feel less guilty. I did this. I did this to Scully. I don't deserve- "The Yanks! I'll take your money!" he said, in response to another joke. Oh, God, Janet, please save me. I can't take this-He felt almost panicked at entering his own office. And he had felt okay all morning long! What was this shit?

When he opened the door, no one was there. God, he was almost hyperventilating. He carefully put down his briefcase of files, booted up the computer, and then sat and stared at it. Finally, reaching a decision, he pulled a business card out of his wallet. He picked up his phone.

When he heard a hello, he said, without preliminaries, "Janet? Do you have any vacation time?" He put a hand on his chest. Breathe.

"Sure," she said, her concern palpable over the telephone, just as he was aware of Scully standing behind him. "I have lots, what do you want to do?"

"Let's go somewhere." He was concentrating on breathing.

"Okay," Janet said. "Let's go somewhere where we can see the stars. We can fix it up tonight, if you want?"

"Can you come in to town today?" he asked.

"Sure-I have to file something in federal court, anyway. Do you want to meet at the Hard Rock at noon?"

"That's good. I'll see you, then." He felt obscurely comforted.

"Mulder?" Janet said.

"Yeah?"

"Can I grope you under the table?" she hung up. Grinning, he replaced the phone, and turned around to meet Scully's stare. "Good morning, Scully!"

Scully blinked. "Who's Janet?" She looked pissed off. Good, thought Mulder. At least everything's back to normal.

Mulder sighed, and placed his hand over his heart. "You've caught me, " he said sadly. "I admit it. I'm dating the Attorney General." He spun back around in his chair and dialed up a number. "Danny!" he yelled. "When the hell am I gonna see those lab results, you little weasel? And the only thing that'll keep me from writing you up is Yankee tickets!" He heard Scully wait a beat, then go sit down.

When Mulder left for lunch, he was aware that Scully was either going to follow him, or hit redial on his phone for clues. He bet on the redial, because Scully had been going through this annoying passive/aggressive phase for the last couple of years. Of course, he didn't realize that his Assistant Director was going to be standing in line at the Hard Rock Caf, but it wasn't too much of a stretch-the restaurant was notorious for the 1:1 ratio of tourists to feds. He saw Janet waving at him from a table, and nodded to his boss as he squeezed past him to her.

It was the perverse side of him that made him plant a big wet kiss on Janet. Of course, she narrowed her eyes at him, but visibly restrained herself. "I suppose the bald guy with glasses is your boss?" she asked, as he sat beside her in the booth.

"Mel Cooley," he agreed. He jumped, as she spread her napkin and put her hand on his thigh in the same gesture. "And the lovely and talented Dr. Scully may not be far behind."

Janet snorted. "Maybe they can console each other. Is everyone in the Bureau eyeing your ass, or am I just being silly?" Her hand ran up his leg, and she pinched him hard, to get his attention. "Are you in trouble?" she whispered, giving him an evil lawyer stare.

He smiled. Janet always meant "legal trouble," when she used that word. "No," he said baldly. "I just had a panic attack."

Janet puffed her breath out. "Sheesh. And here I just saw you this morning. You usually wait until Friday."

"Is that a problem?"

"No, that means I have time to get more food." She picked up, then put down the menu. "I'm trying not to act like a girlfriend here-"

"God forbid," Mulder said, grinning.

She pinched him again. "Stop it. God knows I have no maximum Mulder exposure time. It's just that you can't be too damn careful nowadays-unmarried straight men are so skittish." She gave him a sideways glance. "Of course, you have actually used the R word."

"So I can use the key without being asked?"

"That was the general idea." He moved to kiss her again, when someone cleared his throat.

"Agent Mulder, may I have a minute?" Mulder slowly looked up at A.D. Skinner. He performed the introductions, and noticed that Janet had the kind of smile that he thought she had for district attorneys. Then he saw that Skinner was staring at her cleavage. Mulder felt an urge to start laughing maniacally.

"---Very complimentary about your work these past two weeks, Mulder. Expect a commendation. I appreciate the effort you put into this assignment." Holy jumping Jesus, was the world coming to an end?

"Would you like to join us, Mr. Skinner?" Janet asked.

"No, thank you. I'm with some other people." He held out his hand again. "Think about it, Mulder."

Mulder shook his hand, and watched him walk off. "Think about what?"

Janet rolled her eyes theatrically. "You're going to have to stop listening to the little voices when you're out in public. He was telling you to take the vacation time you asked for."

"I'm sorry-I was watching him watching your breasts."

"Wonderbra," she said, picking up the menu again. " Well, I don't see your partner-can I take her? Without her weapon, I mean?"

"She's short but mean," Mulder said, his attention wandering to catfights.

"I don't do threesomes," Janet told him. "Gosh, take your Ritalin, sweetie. I keep seeing your eyes unfocus."

Janet was pretty sure that she loved Mulder. However, paranoia breeds more paranoia: how could she let him know about her feelings without scaring him off? In fact, now that she considered the matter, she was pretty sure she adored him. Watch ESPN all night, all weekend? No problem. Let him bring his laundry over? No problema. Just as long as he was there. Just as long as he came over every evening he was in town. Just don't let him know how much she doted on his every bizarre utterance, and things would be cool.

And that was another real problem. She was in love with a nut. A federal employee, who ( your tax dollars at work) did quasi-classified investigations of---liver flukes? UFO sightings? Mysterious cow molestations? Russian triple agents? Government conspiracies?

And his friends. Frohike: who came by with two gym bags full of electronic equipment, swept her apartment and car and lobby and mailbox, and found nothing. Then he took an hour to tell Janet about how dangerous Mulder's life was. How dangerous his work was. How his wonderful and beautiful partner was mysteriously infected with cancer and miraculously recovered-both because of Mulder's work. Byers: who came back with Frohike, a second time, and spent the entire time giving Frohike warning looks. As a result, the second time, Frohike had said scarcely a word to her.

Sheesh. You'd think she was sleeping with Prince William of Wales and the Prince of Darkness-or Bill Gates---considering the level of paranoia and worship evident in Frohike's tone of voice. She couldn't wait to meet the mysterious Dr. Scully-that would be a real trip. What then? More dire words of warning? Or something more elemental-like, would Scully actually tell Janet to get away from Mulder, or else?

She felt as though Frohike had been condescending, making her feel that she didn't know anything about Mulder, or anything of his six years of investigations in the X-Files; that she was a fool who couldn't understand or appreciate Mulder.

That only the wonderful Scully was fit to be his mate.

They didn't seem to get the fact that Mulder didn't want Scully any more. "I would have done anything for her," he had said. "I probably still would. But I can't spend my life waiting for her to agree with me. I'm tired of fighting her." And that he was so ridiculously pleased to have someone-even the comparatively unworthy her-to sleep with, and have sex with, and watch television with, and eat dinner with-his friends didn't seem to understand that life was what happened between the dramatic moments. And that she didn' t love the beautiful young man he had been-his ID badge picture was so young-but the thirty-eight year old man he was now. She loved the tired man who just wanted to see his sister again.

".In the end, both profilers made similar mistakes," Mulder said dryly, capping the pen he had been using as a pointer. "We both got too involved. Fortunately, I, as the second profiler, did not feel the need to re-create the crime scenes as vividly as did the._former_ department head. " He looked owlishly over his reading glasses at the classroom of candidates. "Possibly the most extreme case of a civil servant creating work for himself that we' ve discovered." It was the lamest of jokes; but the horrors of viewing the crime scene photographs of John Mostow's (and Bill Patterson's) victims made these rookies positively shout in laughter, and then applaud.

Just outside the double doors, Scully was dumbfounded. She couldn't believe that Mulder was even deigning to lecture at Quantico, in the first place; yet there he was, charcoal gray Armani, cobalt blue shirt, cobalt blue tie, spiky hair and Hugo Boss reading glasses, standing with his beloved slide projector, talking as casually as he talked to her in their basement; leaning on the podium, and not a single mention of the para-normal escaping his lips. Oh, no. He saved all that for his partner. At least, he didn't mention that his own partner had thought Mulder had killed Greg Nemhauser. Even if she had only thought it for a minute there.

She had better get back to Pathology, before Mulder and his no doubt increased ego came out and caught her staring. She hurried away, one hand to her throat. Why did she feel so unsettled?

"How did it go?" Janet asked Mulder that evening. He had walked in, dry-cleaning in one hand, gym bag and lap-top slung over his shoulder, and gripping a six-pack of Coronas, and a bag of hamburgers. He didn't believe in two trips up the stairs, he always said.

He smiled incandescently. "It went really well-they laughed at all my cheesy jokes. Of course, I was showing them really gross pictures. " He dropped everything but the Coronas on her couch. "How was your day, June?" he said, in his best Ward Cleaver smirk. He put the beer in the refrigerator.

"Same old same old-another kid calling in a bomb threat. More live-action videos of crack sales." She rescued the greasy sack of hamburgers from the couch, and Mulder picked up his suits and took them to her bedroom. He re-emerged, pulling his tie off and slinging it around the doorknob. He stopped, held the door, and kicked his loafers into the bedroom. Janet was aware that he was waiting for her reaction; she studiously ignored him, even when he draped his suit coat over the back of one of her kitchen chairs. She figured that his family must have been the control-freak types, and from the little he said, so was his partner Scully; so she let Mulder toss his things around. Not that she cared, anyway; but it seemed like he was constantly testing the waters.

"Your damn team is playing," she told him, and he immediately sat down and pointed the remote at the set. That remote seemed to fly into his hand like Luke Skywalker's light saber, no matter where he was in the apartment.

"Like your Braves aren't on all the time," he said, "Where are the hamburgers?" He stood up and walked into the kitchen, and seemed to focus on her activities for the first time. "Oh. Were you going to cook?" She was scooping salad fixings into a Tupperware bowl.

"Not now," she said. "It'll keep. We'll eat it tomorrow."

He opened the refrigerator and pulled two sweating Coronas out of the cardboard six-pack. "Then come on and watch the game," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "Unless you have to work on anything?"

Tired, Janet fell asleep on the couch, her head on a pillow on Mulder's lap. She woke up, feeling him stroke her hair. She rolled her head back to look up at him. "Yanks are winning," he said smugly, pinching her nose. She sat up, and walked stiffly to the kitchen for a glass of water.

While she was running the water, Mulder came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned back into his chest, turning her face into his neck. He rubbed his cheek against her. "Let's go to bed, " he suggested, as if that was a new idea. Maybe it was, she thought. Seems like he hasn't had anyone to go to bed with for a long time.

Mulder took a shower while she shut off all the lights and washed her face. She was already in bed when he came in the room, turning out the bathroom light. His skin felt cool, like someone who had just been swimming. She ran her hands over his shoulders and back. He yawned suddenly. "I'm more tired than I thought," he said, putting his face into her shoulder. "Long day."

"Let's go to sleep," she said, and felt him relax. And they both slept.

She had driven to Mulder's apartment after not reaching him, again. She hated this. She didn't know why she was doing it. It was hours after he had left Quantico. Yet there was his car, in its usual spot. She pulled into another space, and used her binoculars. No lights, not even the blue of the television, from his windows. She checked out all the other windows, then, randomly, began looking across the street. All the windows were blank, dark, or shaded. There. On the third floor, a blonde woman was doing something-washing dishes? Idly, Scully focused her lenses on the blue-white rectangle of light.

Mulder came into view, in the tiny window, shirtless. She saw him put his bare forearm around the woman, just across her breasts. Then the light went out. Scully drove home and took a Tylenol 3, and crashed. She felt feverish and sick, and dreamed of Mulder all night. Mulder with that woman. Mulder having sex. Mulder. Mulder leaving the X-Files. Mulder leaving her.

When she woke up, she felt nauseated. Thank God it was Saturday, and she didn't have to go to work. She felt dizzy. What was going on with her? Why did she go and spy on Mulder? Why did she care? Didn't all of her family and friends tell her to get away from him, away from him and the X-Files? Hadn't she kept lecturing at Quantico just to keep her contacts up? Hadn't they won?

Why did she feel that she had lost?