Title: Secrets in Salem
Author: Singing Violin
Series: The X-Files
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: The X-Files characters and universe are not mine!
Author's Note: This was a birthday present for my dear friend Darken, who introduced me to the wonders of both the X-Files and fanfic. And by that I mean: it's her fault. Except the typos and other errors. Those are mine, as this is entirely un-betaed as a result of being a last-minute impulse gift. Oh yes I did.
Feedback: Let me know what you think, if it so pleases you!
Archiving: Anywhere, but please let me know so I can visit.

Agent Dana Scully shivered slightly and tightened her arms around herself as the icy wind nipped at her face. She yelled towards her partner, annoyance written all over her face. "Why are we here, Mulder?"

He stopped his trek along the rocks briefly and turned towards her. "I told you. Looking for evidence," he explained tersely as he began to move again, jumping lithely from rock to rock.

She rolled her eyes. "And I told you you there are no such things as witches, at least with powers, and certainly not the ghosts of witches past. Those college boys were drunk, Mulder. It's tragic, but it's not an X-File."

"What about the ones who were burned alive?" Mulder asked pointedly.

"Probably some hazing ritual. Again, not an X-File. A matter for Salem State's disciplinary board, perhaps, but...Mulder, this is pointless. And why is it so *cold* all of a sudden?"

"Front's moving in, Scully," he explained, not stopping this time. "It's New England. If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." With that, he turned and grinned at her, then continued along the jetty. He called out as he moved further away, "Standing still makes you colder. Come with me!"

Reluctantly, she began to follow. Just then, she saw him slip off the rocks and into the water. Horrified, she quickened her pace, careful not to slip in herself as she watched him struggle to stay afloat.

"Hold on, Mulder! I'm coming!" she yelled as she stumbled in his direction.

He'd completely submerged by the time she reached the spot where she'd seen him fall, so without a second thought, she shucked her jacket and shoes and jumped into the water to retrieve him. Luckily, while the outside air was quite frigid, the water was almost pleasantly warm by comparison. Nevertheless, she was eager to effect a rescue quickly so as not to give a chance for hypothermia to set in.

She dragged Mulder's limp body onto the rocks and realized immediately that he wasn't breathing. She felt for a pulse and found one: it was weak, but at least she wouldn't have to do chest compressions and risk cracking a rib. She began rescue breathing, holding his nose and almost brutally blowing air into his mouth, and when he didn't immediately respond, she began to feel tears collecting in her eyes.

"Come on, Mulder," she yelled in a pause. "Breathe!"

She lowered her lips to his once more, then finally he stirred. She sat back, allowing him space as he coughed and vomited water onto the rocks before taking in one shuddering breath.

"Thanks," he muttered weakly.

She touched a hand to his cheek. "Don't scare me like that again," she told him, choking back a sob. Then, feeling the increasing cold of evaporation into the dry air and knowing she needed to get them somewhere warm as soon as possible, she asked him, "Mulder, do you think you can walk? I can't carry you, not over the rocks."

He nodded uncertainly, and after quickly putting her shoes back on, she helped him to his feet, then draped her still-dry jacket over his shoulders and allowed him to lean on her as they stumbled back to the beach and then to the car, where she immediately turned on the heat full-blast.

"I should take you to the hospital," she spoke loudly over the din of the air.

He shook his head. "I'll be fine. You saved my life, Scully!" He looked over at her with wide, grateful eyes, and she gave him a hint of a smile in return.

"Yeah. This time." Then, as the rush of adrenaline began to subside, anger grew in its place. "What the hell did you think you were going to find out there, Mulder?"

He shrugged. "Ritualistic markings, clues of some kind. Six kids disappeared from that beach, Scully, and they found two of them washed up later. I think they were drowned, Scully."

"Yes, Mulder, because they were drunk and they fell in the water, much like you did. How hard is that to believe?"

"I felt something, Scully. Just before I slipped," he admitted softly.

She blinked and turned to him, confusion written all over her face. "What?"

He pursed his lips for a moment. "Like a cold hand wrapped around me and pulled me into the water. It was eerie."

"It was the wind, Mulder!" Scully cried, exasperated. "You said it yourself, a front coming through. I felt it too."

He shook his head. "No, Scully. It was definitely a hand...a ghostly hand. Angry, perhaps, because she'd been murdered so long ago in a similar fashion."

"That's it. I'm taking you to the hospital," Scully decided out loud. "I am not equipped to deal with hypothermic hallucinations."

Grumpily, Mulder sat in silence until they arrived at their destination, then watched as Scully whispered to the nurse at the desk in the ER and apparently convinced her that Mulder's situation was life-threatening, because he was ushered in right away, despite a waiting room full of obviously sick and injured people. Each of them was handed a couple of warm blankets, which they took gratefully, despite having mostly dried off in the car.

As Mulder lay on the bed, waiting to be examined, Scully sat by his side, having not bothered to undeceive the admitting doctor who had assumed she was his wife. She studied his face and suddenly determined something.

"This is personal, isn't it?" she asked him directly.

He sighed. "Samantha went on a field trip to the Witch Museum two days before she disappeared."

Scully gulped, knowing Mulder always became irrational where his sister was concerned. "Oh," was all she could manage, and before she could elaborate, the ER doctor came to check on his patient.

Shortly, Scully filled him in on the events of the past hour, starting with Mulder's fall into the ocean.

After a cursory examination, the doctor raised his eyebrows. "You're a very lucky man," he told his patient. "This lovely lady saved your life. I hope you can properly thank her later."

Scully wanted to remind him that she was right there, and that she didn't appreciate the innuendo, and wanted to point out that she was, in fact, a doctor, so her response to his distress was not only unsurprising but expected — but then she recalled the pretense on which she had been allowed to remain with her partner, and bit her tongue.

Mulder, for his part, waggled his eyebrows suggestively, eyed Scully briefly, and answered, "I'm sure I'll figure something out, Doc. It'll help if you could tell her I'm perfectly fine. She worries too much!"

The doctor nodded. "My wife does too. Always thinks I'm going to come home with some deadly disease I caught from one of my patients. You haven't got anything, have you?"

Finally Scully couldn't take it anymore. "Doctor!" she reprimanded, and received a startled glance from both men simultaneously. "Will he be okay?"

"I'd like to monitor him for a couple of hours, make sure his temperature doesn't drop or spike, and that he's got adequate fluids," the doctor responded, snapping back into business mode. "Let me order you an IV, young man, and if all goes well, you'll be free to go in two to three hours."

"Thank you," Scully told him.

Once they were alone again behind the privacy curtain, Scully rolled her eyes at her partner.

"What?" he responded. "It's not like you're not playing along. I'm sure you broke the rules getting me in here so fast."

"Mulder, you stopped breathing!" To her dismay, her breath hitched in her throat. "For a moment, I thought I'd lost you." Hastily, she wiped away a tear that had escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

"Hey," he said tenderly, reaching for her hand. "I'm still here, thanks to you. Okay?"

She smiled at him then as another tear made its way down her cheek. "Yeah."

Just then, the nurse came in to administer the fluids, and Scully quickly slunk back into the corner of the curtained area while Mulder was tended to, hoping the nurse wouldn't notice her apparent distress and start asking questions she didn't want to answer, or worse, offering misguided comfort of some sort.

Then they were alone once more, and although Scully wanted to ask Mulder more questions about his witch theories, she saw his eyes beginning to droop, and began to be more sure than ever that this was just another one of his cockamamie theories that wouldn't pan out, and that he might be more sensible after a nap. So she let him sleep, and all the while watched him, enjoying the chance to observe him while he was completely at peace. When she was sure he was completely unconscious, she snuck a hand to his forehead and brushed his hair away from his face, then let her hand linger, feeling the warmth of his skin while she watched his chest rise and fall with even breaths.

Three hours later, as a groggy Mulder was being released, she'd made a decision. "Now that you're feeling better, let's visit the museum," she told him. "See what we can find out."

At that, Mulder blinked at her. "Am I still dreaming?" he asked. "Are you actually entertaining my theory?"

She smiled slightly at him. "Perhaps. So, what do you say?"

He nodded.

The tour was as expected, a sensationalized version of history, in which the trials and the unfortunate fates of the accused were recounted in stunning detail with the help of artistic visual aids. As Mulder was rapt by the tales of women convicted of witchcraft because they didn't drown when thrown into the ocean, then burned at the stake as punishment, Scully noticed several guides off in the corner, chatting. Surreptitiously, she wandered away from the group and began listening in. Once she'd collected some fascinating tidbits, she rejoined Mulder and the rest of the crowd. Her partner didn't seem to notice that she'd gone missing.

At the end of the tour, she insisted they go back to their hotel, as she hadn't slept, and was beat. Reluctantly, Mulder allowed her to disappear into her room. However, once inside, she did not sleep, but instead began frantically searching for information about a local chemical plant.

In the morning, Scully met Mulder for breakfast and watched as he practically inhaled several croissants. "I see you're feeling better," she remarked.

He grunted in response, his mouth still full.

She waited a moment before continuing. "I know what happened to those frat boys...and to you."

Hastily, Mulder swallowed, then looked up at her questioningly.

Scully sighed, steeling herself to deliver the message she knew that, on some level, would be quite disappointing to her partner. "I did some research last night, after I overheard some of the tour guides at the museum complaining about a local pollution issue. It seems that there's a chemical plant that's been dumping toxic waste that, at high doses, seems to have hallucinogenic properties. They've been dumping into the ocean, right near that beach. The frat boys were probably spending an enormous amount of time there and were exposed to quite a lot of it. It's no wonder some of them drowned themselves in the ocean or burned themselves...or perhaps each other...alive. Nobody could prove it, but it's apparently been sickening many. That's why the beach was abandoned. Nobody wants to hang out there if it's going to give them a headache and nausea. But the frat boys probably had some tradition that forced them to stay. Didn't want to admit weakness or something." She eyed him pointedly as she mentioned that. "And the alcohol likely helped them to endure it, or they may have blamed their symptoms on the alcohol to begin with."

Mulder sighed. "I guess that makes sense. But what about my experience? I wasn't there nearly long enough to experience effects of exposure to the chemical, was I? And why weren't you affected?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure I can answer that, but perhaps you saw what you wanted to see, and even a small amount of the toxin was enough to help you along."

"Hmm," he replied contemplatively, taking a sip of coffee before continuing. "Can we at least get the plant for illegal dumping?"

Scully smiled. "I'm already on it. I've contacted the EPA, and they're going to take over the investigation."

Mulder shook his head. "You're amazing, Scully."

Three days later, Fox Mulder walked into his basement office clad in a trench coat. When his partner looked up to greet him, he opened it to reveal a tight, bright blue speedo and no other clothing.

Scully's eyes grew wide. "Don't you think you're a little underdressed, Mulder?"

He grinned. "Not for what I have planned for us today. And I got you something." With that, he threw her a piece of cloth which she caught directly, and quickly determined was a one-piece bathing suit — in her size! It matched the bright blue of Mulder's suit, though it was emblazoned with the letters "FBI" across the front. She found herself instantly relieved that it wasn't a bikini, but still astonished at his boldness.

While she sat silently, agape with shock, he explained. "I never told you this, Scully, but you've probably figured it out: I can't swim. But I've seen you in the pool, and now in action...well, I would have seen you if I hadn't been unconscious at the time. You're good. You're going to teach me."

"I am?" she questioned disbelievingly. "How the heck did you become an FBI agent without knowing how to swim?"

"I'm color blind too," he admitted. "But I don't expect you to be able to fix that. At least not today. Let's just say that being the best criminal profiler in existence has its advantages, like being able to skirt some of the rules. So, what do you say?"

"Seriously, Mulder?" she asked.

He sat on his desk then, leaning over her but solemn in tone. "Seriously, Scully. You asked me not to scare you like that again, and the only way I know how to do that is to learn how to swim properly. And the best person to teach me is you. I know you won't judge, and you'll be patient with me."

She nodded then, surprising herself with her reply. "All right. But I'm not changing in front of you. And I don't want to know how you know my size. I'll meet you poolside in twenty minutes."

He managed to look both scandalized and disappointed. "I'll take what I can get."

Scully was at the door when he called out to her. She turned around to face him. "And if there's anything more I can do to thank you..." he winked suggestively, "just let me know."

Despite herself, she suppressed a giggle, then responded with mock gravity, "I'll keep that in mind."

Author's Note: It was pointed out that Mulder is seen swimming in a red Speedo in the series. I looked it up and the episode in question is "Duane Barry," Season 2 Episode 5. So, consider that this fic is set before that episode. Scully was the one who taught him to swim so he could show off in "Duane Barry." :)