Author's Note: I have to admit that I wrote the very best part of this scene on a scrap of computer paper while my students were taking a mandatory computerized test... but don't worry, I was able to walk around, monitor them AND write. I'm a great multi-tasker. Thanks to IAmLoisLane for her excellent beta advice. Thanks to all of you who continue to read. And, you know, don't be afraid to tell me you're still reading... and if you're still liking what you read. You know, so I don't think you're... not. Like Mulder and Scully. Neither of them ever say anything... so each assumes he/she is the only one who loves the other. You get what I'm saying, right? Next time, should I just go with "please review?" :)


Mulder and Scully sat together on Scully's couch. Mulder propped his feet up on his own overnight bag as he enjoyed the proximity with which Scully currently—and always—sat. He'd previously thought it was he who kept close to her, but when she sat on the couch cushion adjacent to his instead of the next one down, Mulder realized for the first time that maybe it went both ways. He wished more things could. For the moment, though, the feel of her knee pressed into his thigh as she sat facing him with one leg drawn up underneath her was enough.

As for Scully, all she knew was that she had never been more in Mulder's orbit. Since Skinner had left them alone, Mulder had been vaguely explaining the details he'd learned from Meredith, but Scully had been distracted by… all things Mulder. Her mind went uncomfortably to Padgett, the crazy writer who had told Scully he was taken with her… and suddenly she knew the feeling.

Mulder had spent the fifteen minutes since Skinner left filling Scully in on the details of their drugging. He had explained that Ansel Holmes had been the culprit and strategically implicated that Meredith was his only target. He'd been keeping track, though, and, thus far, his only lies had been by omission or under the guise of ambiguous humor. He hoped to keep it that way.

"Really? MDMA?" Scully asked, interested, but not nearly as angry as she knew she'd normally be. She forced herself out of the celestial plane and back down into realm of reality. She absolutely had to focus… and she did. Ecstasy made perfect sense. The pills would be easy to crush and slip into any drink, and her behavior certainly coincided with several on the long list of typical subjective effects of the drug. Mulder's behavior, on the other hand, seemed to vary slightly, but maybe he just tripped on drugs like he did everything else in life—outside the norm.

"Yup." Mulder nodded and tapped his hands on his thighs. "Can you believe some people take that stuff recreationally?"

"It was in the champagne you had at the party?"

Damn her direct questions. "So it would seem," answered Mulder in the least confirmative language he could find.

"And in the coffee I drank at the lab?"

"That's right," Mulder verified.

"Hmm… I might not have made coffee earlier had I known," Scully joked.

"Kinda why I wasn't in the mood," Mulder agreed.

Scully thought of something. "But it wasn't on the original toxicology report?"

"You're asking me?"

"I guess I'm asking myself. I saw the initial report and the negative results for whatever substances the test detects… and they were all negative results."

"Well… was ecstasy on the list?" Mulder asked, already intuiting her answer based on her confused rather than accusatory tone.

"I don't see why it wouldn't have been, but… seeing as how I'm not blessed with photographic memory—"

"Cursed, you mean," interrupted Mulder with a mischievous smile.

"Whatever," Scully said, her annoyance downplayed entirely by a smile of her own. "Either way, I honestly can't recall what was and wasn't included in the report, but I'm sure we can get a copy from—"

Mulder sat up slightly and pulled a printout from his back pocket.

"Your pocket, evidently," Scully finished.

Mulder shrugged and handed over the report along with the analysis of Scully's coffee. Both had been doctored by Meredith, of course, to fit the cover story Mulder was trying to present.

Leave it to Mulder to withhold evidence until the last possible moment. Scully looked over Mulder's toxicology results and saw that MDMA was, indeed, not included on the preliminary testing, but showed up in secondary results. She also found it on the analysis of the coffee she'd consumed.

"Okay, so we know the what, but… why?" Scully questioned. What interest could this Ansel Holmes character have in drugging Meredith? It was very odd. Much more "X-Files" than Mulder was spinning it, which was odd in and of itself.

"Maybe he thought he could get Dr. Foster in the sack."

Scully thought about it for a moment. She supposed love—or lust—was as good of a motive as any. And Meredith and Nathan had alluded to this man's affection for Meredith the day before. "So… the drug was in her champagne… that you ended up drinking? And in her coffee… that I ended up drinking?"

Mulder nodded. "Terrible coincidence, right?"

Scully laughed. "I didn't know you believed in coincidences, Mulder."

Mulder shrugged, "I just want to move past this and get to the real X-File here, Scully. I mean, yeah, this guy is nuts, but Foster can handle him—and, ultimately, other than a little mutual embarrassment, we're okay. No harm, no foul."

Scully was relieved to know that their embarrassment was "mutual," but she couldn't understand why Mulder was willing to give Holmes a free pass on his completely illegal actions. She wasn't sure she was. Ecstasy had some pretty serious side effects, and she knew Mulder was smart enough to realize that. There had to be more to the story.

"Those patients are sick—with no explanation and no apparent hope of getting well," Mulder went on. "And now there are these related, but unexplained, suicides? Who better than us to intervene and maybe save some lives?"

"I understand why you think this is an X-File—"

"You don't agr—"

"And, while I may agree," she gave him a smile, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable exploiting a personal relationship for an FBI investigation," Scully finished.

"Scully, have you ever known me to exploit a personal relationship for the FBI?"

"Mulder, in the six years we've worked together at the FBI, I'm not sure I've ever known you to have a personal relationship to exploit."

"Says my best friend… and self-proclaimed soul mate," Mulder said light-heartedly, though her words stung a little harder than he wanted to admit.

"Hey, I thought we'd established that I was under the influence of psychoactive drugs when I said that," Scully complained, though she knew if there were any scientific proof that a person could have a soul mate, she could think of no one better than Mulder to fill in her cracks, as he'd put it. "And I meant a pertinent personal relationship to exploit."

"Mmm hmm." He wasn't buying it, but he was flattered that she cared enough about his feelings to go with a partial retraction of the not-so-nice comment. In reality, though, he didn't have many personal relationships. He maybe only had just the one… but it was the only one he really cared to have. "Anyway, we're not going to be exploiting your relationship with Dr. Riley, okay? I know you like the guy."

Before Scully even had time to feel guilty—much less figure out what she felt guilty about—Mulder continued, "We're going to tell both doctors about the investigation."

"We are?" questioned Scully with extra emphasis on the "are," as if her inquiry was more of an unbelievable conclusion than a question.

"I don't think they're guilty of anything beyond trying to cure their patients. There's something else at work here, and we're going to find out what," Mulder vowed.

"So you won't exploit a personal relationship for FBI business, but you're perfectly willing to manipulate an official FBI investigation to fit your personal pursuit of the truth about… what is it this week? Soul mates?" Scully asked, glad she was finally slipping back into her skeptical groove.

Mulder smiled and shrugged, chagrinned. What he didn't tell her was that he was already painfully aware of the truth about soul mates… as it related to his own (and only) personal relationship, anyway.