Title: There's Something…Different About This Case…
Author: Insomnia, a very bored shipper!
Chapter Five *Final Chapter*
Genre: MSR…the only kind there should be
Mulder was lying on Scully's hotel bed, staring at the ceiling, when his cell phone rang. Immediately sitting up and reaching for the phone, he fumbled with it before finding the talk button.
"Hello? Frohike, what did you guys find!?" Mulder held the phone tight to his ear in anticipation. As he listened his face fell. "Ok, thanks guys." Laying the phone back on the bed next to him he sighed. He supposed he should be happy that the Lone Gunmen had found nothing strange about Officer Nick Marsh. He had no police record. The damn guy never even got a speeding ticket. They told him that the man had been born and raised in Washington D.C., then moved to Las Vegas when his aging mother moved there. Probably just to keep her company, Mulder mused. Gee, what a great guy. Hooray for him. Snorting in disgust, Mulder reached for the TV remote and was poised to use it when there was a soft knock on the door. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. Who knew he was here besides Scully? And she wouldn't have to knock on her own door.
Getting up towards the door, the agent looked through the peephole. A short balding man stood there, glancing around nervously. Quickly grabbing his gun off the nightstand he shoved it in his holster and opened the door slowly. The man immediately spoke.
"Oh…I suppose you're Mr. Mulder…I'm Dan Agostino, the owner of this hotel…may I have a word with you in private?" Mulder's face registered confusion as he held the door open wider for the short man to enter. The owner cleared his throat and made sure the door was closed behind him. Glancing around the room, he finally spoke.
"Is Ms. Scully here?" Learning that she was out for the evening, he continued. "Mr. Mulder…I am sure that you are aware of the shortage of hotel rooms in the area, and that I was able to make these few rooms available to you in such short notice due to a favor I owed my cousin, Nick Marsh. But…what you might not know is…and I'm not sure if I should be telling you this, but I had thought it rather strange…" Mulder impatiently gestured for the man to continue. "Well…ah…you see Nick also requested that I get him a room. The one on the other side of Ms. Scully's room, to be exact. He also asked me not to ask him why. So being that I'm one of those people whose curiosity grows with such a statement, I thought I'd find out…why." Mr. Agostino gave a nervous laugh and glanced around the room once more.
Mulder's expression grew serious. "Can you get me in there?" He demanded. He had to check this out right away. The hotel owner gave another nervous laugh.
"Of course. I am the owner of this place." Mulder nodded and they stepped out into the hallway and placed themselves in front of the door to the left of Scully's room. He placed his hand on his holster and stood to the side as the owner slashed a card into the door's key. It opened with a click and the man slowly pushed it open and stood aside. Mulder sidestepped into the room and found the light switch. The lamps illuminated a bedroom identical to Scully's and his own. The only difference was the fact that there was a chair set up against the wall that divided this room and the female FBI agent's. As Mulder stepped farther into the room, confident that it was empty, his eyes fell upon a laptop and some wires running into the wall. It was a police-issued surveillance system. Apparently the small camera was fed through the drywall and was displaying every image in Scully's room right into the laptop. His eyes registering surprise, Mulder exclaimed, "Damn it!" and rushed out of the room. Speeding back into the hotel room next door, he grabbed his cell that he had left on the bed and frantically found the correct buttons to speed dial his partner. He felt rage take over his emotions as he thought about someone spying on Scully. He prayed that she was Ok. He didn't know what was going on, only that this kind of thing warranted Scully's attention immediately, and she should get away from the officer as soon as possible. Why were they under surveillance? Had they done something illegal in Las Vegas so far? Mulder couldn't sort it out. He didn't even want to start trying to guess at other reasons there might be a pin sized camera that ran through Scully's hotel room wall. Kicking the side of the bed in anger, he impatiently waited for his phone to connect and start ringing his partner's number, and barely registered the fact that the hotel owner had disappeared.
Scully was trying not to stare at Nick, who was slowly running his spoon through his bisque and was blatantly looking up at her steadily. She cleared her throat and knew that there was definitely something strange about the way he was acting. It could be no mere coincidence that he had served at the French restaurant. Feeling relatively safe at the crowded restaurant, and thanking God that she had worn her gun tonight, Scully dared to take a chance.
"It was you, wasn't it." The man who sat in front of her only continued to watch her, his face a perfect void of emotion. Gaining courage she continued. "You were the one who put those two campers in the freezer at the restaurant. It had a combination lock, and since you had only left six months ago, I'm sure it hadn't been changed by then." No response. She changed her tactics.
"I'm interested in knowing what your purpose in doing that was, Nick." Suddenly he jumped up, knocking over his bowl of bisque and startling Agent Scully.
"Why did I do that?" the officer laughed, a strange look in his eyes. He grabbed a corner of the tablecloth and squeezed it hard in his fist. "Because I had to. I had to! Don't you see, Dana? It was the only way I could get to meet you!" He breathed hard, his face turning red from the exertion of squeezing the tablecloth. "And I really wanted to meet you! For an entire year I've wanted…nothing else!"
Every single person in the dining area had stopped eating and were all watching this violent outburst. Some customers gathered their belongings and quickly made their way to the outer hallway. Scully remained in her seat, her hand now placed near her waist, her fingers slowly pulling off the snap that held the gun in the holster. Pretending not to be too disturbed by Nick's outburst, she calmly drew a deep breath and began to speak to the man.
"Nick…calm down. We will sort this all out. Everything is going to be Ok." She winced as his face drew into a blood-chilling grimace. He slowly stood up, releasing the crumpled corner of tablecloth he had been squeezing with so much force, as if he had been choking to death his very own emotions.
"Will it be Ok, Dana?" he whispered, leaning forward towards her, his steel gray eyes locked on her blue ones. "You're the only one who can make it Ok. Because I know what your life is like. I know how alone you are, just like me. Well we can fix that for each other, don't you know? I've known this for a very long time. And you will soon know it too." Scully was taken aback with how different Nick had become. He was no longer the flirtatious, charming officer that she had agreed to go out to dinner with. And what did he mean by having wanted to meet her for a year? She hadn't met him before, of this she was certain. Her mind raced, and she no longer felt as safe as she had before. She quickly tore her gaze off of him and checked the dining area. Only a few people remained, pressed up against corners, watching the scene unfold in front of them, aghast at witnessing the depths of this man's insanity.
It was during the one second that Scully was regarding the scene around her that the officer made his move. He pushed the table over on it's side and grabbed her arms. He forced a kiss on her, and it was as if all the sickness and misery that Scully had ever known were carried upon this man's lips. Wrenching her right arm free she kicked into her trained-FBI agent mode. Whipping her gun out of her holster she in turn grabbed his left arm and wrenched him around. Growing strong with anger and adrenaline, she put a knee into his back and forced him to the floor, her gun now pointed at his head.
"Don't move! Don't you dare move!" She screamed. Her eyes threatening to tear with anger and frustration over what she had just heard him say, she dug a thin plastic tie out of her jacket pocket, threaded the one end through the small square plastic piece on the other end and tugged viciously. As she stared at him lying there on the floor, his hands tied behind his back and her gun she still held pointed at his head, she suddenly realized that she must be more FBI agent than woman. What normal woman would go out on a date with a gun and a plastic tie. She even brought those with her when she went jogging, sometimes. Panting hard with the exertion, She continued to keep her knee pressed up against his back, and with her left hand reached for her cell phone that she had kept in her other jacket pocket. As she held it in her hand it began to ring.
Taking a deep breath and not moving her eyes from the silent officer on the ground, she spoke into the phone, knowing it was her partner without even checking the caller ID. "Mulder…I'm Ok. I have him apprehended at a restaurant called The Swan. Get a dispatch over here immediately." And she laid the phone down slowly. She didn't want to hear Mulder's voice yet. She would be more collected once the police came and took Nick away…One of their own men.
Mulder stood very still after she hung up after such a brief statement, as if by his lack of movement she would come back on the line and tell him more. But sensing that she was in need of help, he ran to grab his jacket out of his own hotel room and slammed the door behind him, simultaneously having dialed the number to the local PD and holding the phone to his ear. Barking out instructions to the woman who answered the phone there, he ran down the stairs of the hotel, heading towards the parking deck. He would get directions to the restaurant where Scully was waiting on the way there. Why did he let her go! He should have known that something wasn't quite right about that officer guy. He wished that she was here with him right now and none of this had happened. He was only thankful for the fact that she seemed to have apprehended him at the scene. He wondered if she had gotten hurt at all, and silently vowed to kill the man if he had touched her.
Scully had just finished getting ready for the day and was somberly gazing at her reflection in the mirror. Why. Why did this have to happen to her. All she wanted was a normal life, normal dates, maybe have a nice house and friends and even a little dog. But as these thoughts ran by her mind she realized that if she had a normal life, it would most likely not include Mulder. And that was unacceptable at this point. She thought back to the events of the night before, the look in the clearly mentally-disturbed officer's eyes when he had told her that she was alone, just like him. Refusing to believe that she had anything in common with that man, she frowned at her reflection.
Suddenly the door that adjoined her room with Mulder's opened, and her partner stood there and caught her frowning in the mirror. Whipping around she gave him an annoyed glance. "Don't you ever knock, Mulder? I could have been changing clothes in here." However her frown relaxed into a tired smile.
Usually he would have replied with some innuendo-laden joke, but he was just too mentally exhausted. He had stayed up half the night helping to interrogate Nick Marsh. He had been forced to look into the man's psyche, and it had disturbed him what he had seen. But he had insisted to be the chief interrogator, claiming that he was, after all, a profiler and had received his degree in psychology. He had crawled around in many sick heads, and had been deeply distraught over what he had seen more than once. But this time it had struck too close to home. And now the time had come to share with his partner what he had come to learn. He was not looking forward to this. Damn that bastard for making all this happen. He took a deep breath and strode towards her, leading her towards the bed and motioning for her to sit down. He himself could not sit. He could barely look at her.
"Scully…I think you should know what we found out last night." She nodded, her eyes raised towards him. He continued. "Last night after we brought him to the station we had a team search his apartment. Inside we found some very disturbing things." Glancing at her to see that she was expecting more, he went on. "We…we found evidence…that Nick Marsh had been stalking you periodically within the last year. We confiscated an entire photo album that was full of pictures of you, mostly taken from a distance." He was pained to notice that her eyes had narrowed and a worried, sick expression filled her pretty features.
"Where there…any…" Scully began to ask but her partner continued for her. "deeply personal pictures? No, thank God…he didn't make his way into your apartment it appears." She let out a breath she had been holding. Ever since she had returned to her room last night and learned why the door to her left was covered in yellow Crime Scene Do Not Cross tape, the matter of how long this man had been watching her had plagued her every thought. She motioned for Mulder to continue, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. She watched him as he began to pace a short distance in front of her, only meeting her eyes briefly.
"I interrogated him all night, Scully. I learned that he had pulled off this 'abduction' of Stan Holmes and Harry Bellows by himself. He had lived in Washington D.C. all his life, moving to Las Vegas a year ago to take care of his mother. Apparently he had become…infatuated with you the year before, when he had bumped into you in a bank. He had hired an un-licensed private detective to find out your personal information, and later used his position in the police force to find out even more about your life, and mine as well." Mulder cleared his throat, not looking at his partner yet. "He found out somehow that our boss, Skinner, had a friend in Las Vegas. He also found out about the X-files, and what we do."
Scully interrupted him, forcing Mulder to look at her. Her face broke his heart, she was so helpless looking. But he knew she wasn't. "Mulder, I knew that it must have been he who had taken the two men. He most likely used the all-terrain police vehicle, which comes equipped with a powerful searchlight on the dash. He knew he had to make it look like an alien abduction so he somehow drugged the men, and placed them in the freezer of the restaurant in which he had previously worked. He left them in there long enough to give them hypothermia, and probably intended to drive them back to the campsite, but they must have started to wake up or something. So he dumped them only 15 miles outside of the city limits. Then he must have sat back and waited for us to arrive…" She broke off, her voice breaking at the last word. This was so much to ingest all at once. Someone had been stalking her for the past year, going as far as to set up an elaborate crime that would almost be guaranteed to involve the X-files…she didn't want to think of what would have happened to her if something could have gone wrong. She knew how unstable these types of people were. She might have ended up getting raped or hurt, even killed, and she shuddered to think of what he might have done to her partner. She suffered more at the thought of Mulder getting hurt than of her own self getting hurt by that man.
Mulder looked at her gratefully. "I couldn't have said it better myself, Scully." He sat down on the bed next to her and looked at her carefully. She stared in front of her, her mouth open a little, as if agape over what the officer had done, and had probably intended to do. Mulder was so glad that she was ok, and he hadn't got a chance to hurt her. Although his rage boiled up inside of him once again as he remembered that she had admitted to him that he had forced a kiss on her. Seeing that her eyes continued to be fixed on some imaginary spot in front of her, he hesitantly put his arm around her and drew her head to his chest.
"Scully, I am so sorry that this happened to you. I can't imagine how you must feel right now." His partner pushed herself away from him and her eyes found their way back to that imaginary spot. When she spoke he felt his heart wrench in his chest.
"Mulder…I don't need to be comforted. Yeah, it's a pretty bad experience to go through. But I've been through lots worse. As have you." She gulped and straightened her back. But Mulder had to be sure of her words. Leaving behind his inhibitions and letting himself get lost in pure concern for her, he reached up and took her chin in his hand, tilting her head so her eyes eventually found his own. In them he saw determination and strength, but also sadness and uncertainty. He felt like he was now closer to looking at her soul than he had ever been. Feeling an overwhelming need to let her know that he really did care about her, he looked deeply into her eyes, forcing Scully to become aware that an something even softer was slowly replacing the compassionate side of Fox Mulder. Moving his hand from her chin to the side of her face, he spoke gently in a low tone.
"You are so strong. I know that you don't need anyone else to take care of you. But I hope you know that I would like nothing better than to make sure that you never get hurt again." Her eyes opened wider, and suddenly all she was aware of were his eyes, and the touch of his hand on her cheek. He shifted his weight forward a bit. Time had effectively stopped. She swore that he must be able to hear her heart beat. Not even daring to breathe, she continued to regard him intently as he continued to speak in a gravely low tone. "Scully…Dana…there's nothing I can say to make you see how I feel. Every word I know fails me."
Suddenly his other hand was on the back of her neck and he was tentatively leaning even closer towards her. They were sitting side by side, but it seemed like a distance of a million miles between them. They continued to stare into each other's eyes, hoping to communicate without the use of words. Words were useless. They were mere sounds at this moment in time. Scully closed her eyes when Mulder's became to close to her own, his expression too full of emotion for her to witness. All at once his lips had found her own. She could feel his arm shaking as he pressed his mouth against hers. Knowing that the next move belonged to her, Scully responded. She didn't even think as she wrapped her own arm against his back and pressed her lips harder against his. His lips were so soft and warm and full, and somehow with this simple (simple!) act of kissing she was being told a story. They kissed harder and faster, until their lips parted and her tongue finally tasted his own. Her eyes still closed, she felt dizzy and saw lights flashing behind her eyelids. He was so deliciously near to her, he was holding her so closely. She never wanted him to release her from his embrace. Mulder leaned his weight on her, forcing her head to meet the covers of the hotel bed. They continued to kiss passionately until she broke away from his lips and laughed. He looked at her quizzically, as usually he would be the jovial one. Scully gave him a big grin, suddenly feeling more elated and alive than she had ever been.
"There's something…different about this case, Agent Mulder." She could barely pull her mouth from it's smile as he answered her with, "Case closed, Agent Scully. Case closed." And soon all thoughts of cases and the FBI left their minds.
Hooooray, I finished it! I hope you enjoyed my first piece of fiction, ever. (it's a far cry from essays written in French about French poetry...bleh school sucks) You know, if I hadn't been getting such nice reviews and pleadings for more chapters, I don't know if I would have written this. Thank you! I really hoped you enjoyed it, as I've enjoyed other MSR stories I've read. They tend to go great with insomnia! :D
I would love to hear what you think of the story. So go and make my day. You can review without even having to register…look in the bottom left corner. ;)