Title: "Beach Bogeyman" Author: Angela W. Category: MSR, but there's an actual X-File in here, too. Summary: Mulder and Scully go parking in an effort to catch a killer who preys on teen-agers at a lonely beach Rated: R Timespan/Spoiler: Set sometime during Season Six; Vague mention of events from "Redux", "Bad Blood" and "The X-Files Movie" and maybe a couple of other episodes, but no real spoilers for any of them. Disclaimer: The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully do not belong to me. They are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. Archive: Feel free to archive anywhere! Special Agent Dana Scully stood on the balcony outside her motel room and breathed in the salty air. Having been raised a Navy brat, she always felt most at ease near the ocean. She listened to the screech of seagulls and watched the waves pounding the shore on the beach across the broad boulevard from where their motel was situated. This is certainly better than the last couple of trips we've taken to Texas, she mused. No exploding office buildings, no vampires who hang out in trailer parks, just a couple of disappearances that likely had a very prosaic explanation. It was funny, she'd never thought of Texas in conjunction with the seashore before, although the state actually had a fairly extensive coastline. Somehow, the word "Texas" always conjured up images of deserts, prairies, jack rabbits and cowboys; not anything like this charming, old-fashioned island town of Galveston. Scully sort of wondered what she and her partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder, were doing here. Maybe it was another one of her partner's rare, seemingly star-crossed, attempts to allow them to spend some time together when they weren't bogged down with work. In all honesty, she couldn't say Mulder never made such attempts. There was the time he'd planned for them to go to a professional football game together and the time he'd taken her to a nice restaurant to celebrate her birthday. It was hardly his fault that both occasions had been interupted by events related to the X-Files. "Hey, G-Woman!" Mulder called out. Scully saw his lanky frame emerge from a car in the parking lot below her. He'd been at the local police station, while she'd been out interviewing some of the people involved with the case. "You ready for dinner? I figured we could discuss the case over a couple seafood platters!" "Sounds good to me, Mulder. I'll be down in a minute." After they had been seated and ordered, Scully let her gaze wander. They were at a beachfront restaurant; they'd asked to be seated on the open-air deck, which actually streched out over the water. She watched as a man and woman strolled along the beach, hand-in-hand. It would be nice if she and Mulder could do something like that, she thought, but it wasn't likely. About the only time they let their guard down and did something so unprofessional as hug or hold hands was when one or the other of them had just escaped some sort of near-death experience. "Earth to Scully," Mulder said. "Oops, sorry!" she replied with a smile. The waiter brought their food, along with a longneck beer for Mulder and a glass of white wine for Scully. "So, what's your take on the disappearances, Scully?" "To be honest, Mulder, I'm not even sure why we're here." "Four teen-agers disappearing from one small town in less than a month. In each case, the car they'd last been seen in found on the beach with no signs of forced entry. That doesn't strike you as a little odd?" "Odd, yes. A matter for police investigation, probably. A matter for the F.B.I. to be called in on, possibly. But an X-File? No, I can't see that there's anything even vaguely paranormal or alien-related about this case." "Okay, so what's your take on what happened to those two pairs of high school sweethearts?" Mulder asked. "Well, the most likely scenario is that they drove to the beach voluntarily so they, could, um, well, you know." "Do the horizontal bop?" Mulder suggested with a small smile. "Some heavy petting, at least," Scully amended. "From there, I can think of a number of things that could have happend. Some criminal, some just sad, but none inexplicable." "Such as?" "The obvious presumption is that they drowned. Those beaches have life guards and lots of people on them from mid-March 'til late September, but at this time of year they're practically deserted. Yet the weather's been unseasonably warm. The kids could have decided to go for a midnight swim, got caught in an undertow and drowned." "That was the first assumption of the local police, too. But the Coast Guard has been on the lookout for the bodies. I'll buy that one, two, or even three bodies could be dragged out to sea or washed down to Mexico, or whatever, but all four of them? That's a strectch, Scully," Mulder said. "Okay, maybe the kids ran off voluntarily. Eloped, joined a cult, something like that." "We've talked to all four sets of parents and lots of their friends. There's absolutely no indication that any of the kids were considering anything like that. All four of them were fairly popular, made decent grades, got along well with their parents." Scully sighed. "I'm not ruling out something sinister, Mulder, just something supernatural. It's quite possible that they were kidnapped or killed. Vagrants have been known to haunt these beaches and there have been problems with gangs in this area. The kids could have been killed because they got on somebody's bad side, or just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time." "If so, what happend to the bodies?" "They could have been buried somewhere isolated." Now it was Mulder's turn to sigh. "Okay, Scully. And what about the stories from virtually every teen-ager we talked to? The ones about the bogey man who haunts the beach and supposedly attacks kids while they're parking." "Mulder, that's an urban legend! I went to two different high schools, one in Florida and one in California, and they both had some version of the monster that gets kids while they're parking! It's a way kids have of externalizing the fear of their own emerging sexuality. In a sense, they're right when they worry about a monster being unleashed during those steamy make-out sessions on deserted beaches or back roads. Most teen-agers are too young to handle a sexual relationship, but a lot of them try it anyway. The monster is lust and the consequences can be the very real ones of date rape, sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancies and shattered self-esteem!" "Yeah, well, lust didn't kidnap or kill those kids, Scully!" The two agents finished their dinners in virtual silence. So much for my fantasies of us taking an after dinner stroll hand-in-hand along the beach, Scully mused. Obviously, whatever the truth was, Mulder really believed their was something worthy of investigation down here. When they finished dinner, Mulder dropped Scully back of at their motel and said he'd be with her in an hour or so. He had an idea he wanted to run by the local police. "Aren't you going to tell me what it is?" she asked. "Let me run it by the locals first. If they don't have any objections to my plan, I'll explain it to you." Less than 45 minutes later, Scully heard a tap on the connecting door between their rooms. Mulder walked in before she could even tell him to, and began rummaging through the suitcase that was open on a shelf near the TV. "Mulder, what are you doing? Those are my clothes! You're not going to find anything in your size." "I'm just looking to see if you brought anything appropriate for out stakeout or if I'm going to have to take you shopping. Yeah, here. Put these on," Mulder said, tossing his partner a pair of jeans and a soft turquoise T-shirt. The clothes were much more casual than the tailored pants suit she was currently wearing. "Here, put on your tennis shoes, too," he said, dropping the shoes on the floor near her. "I'm going back to my room to change, as well. Be sure to go to the bathroom before we leave, since we could be out there for hours." "Mulder, where are we going?" she asked for formality's sake. She was pretty sure she already knew the answer. He grinned. "To watch the submarine races, where else?" "I'm not sure this is a good idea," Scully muttered twenty minutes later, as she and her partner pulled out of the motel parking lot and headed toward the sparsely populated west end of the island. God, she thought to herself, he looks great! Fox Mulder in a suit and tie was good-looking, but now he was wearing faded jeans that clung to his long legs like a second skin and a tight T-shirt that accentuated every inch of his lean masculinity. It would be all she could do to keep her mind on the stakeout. "It's a great idea," Mulder replied. "I talked to the police chief about it. He's tried the same idea himself, but didn't have a male-female cop team he could spare to to stakeout the place on a regular basis. I've put my cell phone in the glove compartment and the number three button is programmed to speed dial the local cops. If anything does happen - whether it's supernatural or just super-nasty - we'll have backup in three minutes flat." Mulder slid a glance over at his partner. He wanted to tell her she was looking good, that he was glad to see she'd gained back all the weight she'd lost during her fight with cancer over a year ago. But that might bring up the question of what specific area of her anatomy he'd been staring at when he'd come to the conclusion that all of her curves were back in place, so he didn't mention it. When they reached the deserted stretch of beach where the kids had disappeared, Mulder pulled in and turned off the car. Then he did something that surprised Scully. He opened the door, got out and walked around to her side of the car. "We're getting out?" she asked, confused. "Just for a second," he replied, pulling her out of the car. Then he sat down in the passenger seat and pushed it as far back from the dashboard as it would go, giving him room to stretch his legs, and adjusted the back so that the seat was in a semi-reclining position. "You want me to sit in the driver's seat?" she asked, still confused. "No, I want you to sit on my lap." As she stared at him, open-mouthed, he reached for her arm and pulled her down on top of him. "C'mon, Scully," he said, bending down to lift her legs into the car and shut the door. "We're supposed to appear, at least from a distance, like we're a couple of high school kids making out. If there's a console between us, I somehow doubt we're going to fool anyone." "Yeah, but. . ." she spluttered ineffectively. What he was saying made sense, the rational side of her mind admitted. But the idea of putting her body close enough to his that anyone watching them would assume they were getting intimate was disturbing. It wasn't that she didn't want to. It was more like she wasn't sure how long her professional demeanor would last in this situation. "Lean back against me, Scully. You're supposed to be a teen-ager getting cozy with her boyfriend, not a six-year-old sitting on the lap of a great-uncle with bad breath!" her partner ordered. "Um, okay," she murmured, wiggling slightly on his lap and looping her arms around his neck. "How's this?" she whispered, her mouth against his ear. It was terrific, she thought, that when she sat on his lap their faces were level with each other. She spent most of her time with a crick in her neck from staring up at him all the time. Oh, shit!!! thought Mulder as his partner wiggled around on his lap. Please don't let what's happening be happening. Scully's a doctor, it's not like she's not going to notice. But when she started whispering in his ear, he realized it was too late. It had happened and he didn't ever remember being so uncomfortable. For one thing, the jeans were so tight they were constricting him. For another, if Scully made one of those damn "Mulder, I've got you big time" jokes in this situation. . . "Tell you what," he said, suddenly inspired, "since you're clearly uncomfortable in this situation, let's pretend." "Pretend what?" asked his partner, eyeing him dubiously. "Are there any Navy bases in Massachusetts?" "What?" Scully was used to Mulder jumping from one subject to another, but this time she wasn't following him. "Are there any Navy bases in Massachusetts?" he repeated. "Er, yeah, I think there's one. But Daddy was never stationed at it, if that's what you're asking." "But, theoretically, he could have been, right? "Mulder, theoretically or not, the Navy can send you anywhere they want!" "So, let's pretend that we're really teen-agers and you just transferred in to my school a couple of weeks ago. You would have been, what, a sophomore when I was a senior?" "Yeah, I think that's right," she answered, trying to do the math rapidly in her head. "Okay, so now we're going steady." "Is this supposed to be our first date?" "No, it's let's see, our third. But we just decided to go steady. And this is the first time we've gone parking. Up 'til now we've just held hands, maybe kissed each other real quick at the end of the evening," Mulder said. It pretty much summed up the extent of physical content there had been in their real relationship. "Okay," Scully said slowly. Thank you, God! she thought. She had just been provided with a guilt-free, ramification-free way to deal with some of the feelings her partner aroused in her. She wasn't going to be fool enought to pass it up. "I'm in character. But you have to call me Dana. And remeber, you're not going to get too far. I'm a good Catholic girl, after all." "Okay, Dana," he said softly, putting one hand to her face and settling her even more firmly in his lap with his other arm around her waist. "Do I get to call you Fox?" she asked with a grin. He sighed. Why was it that anytime he got close to a woman they started insisting on calling him by his stupid first name. "You can if you want, but I really prefer Mulder." "That's what I'll call you then. Really, I think it's kind of cool that you just go by your last name all the time. I only wanted to know that I could call you Fox, if I wanted to." Mulder pulled her face closer to his. God, the way she was smiling at him! He hoped his partner hadn't really been this provocative with the guys she'd actually known in high school, he thought with a stab of jealousy. Then he brought his mouth down to hers and began to his her. He was startled when, only seconds after the kiss began, she started nibbling on his still-closed lips. He had planned to go slowly, the way a teen-age boy actually would, but it was pretty obvious what Dana wanted, so he opened his mouth and allowed her access, slipping his own tongue into her mouth as he did so. This felt too good, Dana thought. She was fast losing control of the situation, quickly forgetting that she was supposed to be pretending to be a teen-ager while keeping her senses alert to the posssiblity of a killer - natural or unnatural - lurking outside the car windows. She was drowning in the taste and feel of her partner, thrusting her tongue eagerly in and out of his mouth while wiggling ecstatically on his lap. After a few minutes, Mulder dragged his mouth away from hers. Okay, Dana thought dejectedly. Now he's going to tell me playtime's over and I need to starty looking out for the monster. She was amazed when, instead of speaking, he lowered his mouth to her neck and began to suck gently. "Oooh!" Dana said. She was whimpering and wiggling and providing her partner with enough ammunition to tease her for the next six months, but she couldn't help it. He started sucking harder. Dana lifted one hand to his hair and ruffled through it. With her other hand, she squeezed his biceps. She wiggled some more, rubbing her thigh against his arousal, glad she wasn't the only one getting turned on here. Eventually, when he had worked on her neck so intensely that it was almost reaching the point of being painful, he shifted his attention back to her mouth and started kissing her some more. Mulder kept one hand curved around her waist. With the other, he reached under her shirt and began sliding his hand up her ribcage. When he reached her breasts, he began fondling them, grazing his thumb against the peaks pressing against the lacy cups barely containing her. Mulder desperately wanted to undo her bra and feel her without even that wispy barrier between them, but the one small corner of his mind that was still functioning as an F.B.I. agent rather than a man told him that wouldn't be wise. It was possible something or someone was lurking out there, watching them even now, and the last thing Dana would need if it came to a showdown was to have her arms hampered by bra straps. But, hell! He would have never thought, even in his wildest dreams - and he'd had some pretty wild ones about the two of them - that she'd get this aroused this quickly. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who felt that it was high time for five years of celibacy to come to an end! It probably wouldn't hurt, he told himself, if we just went back to the motel tonight and came back here again tomorrow night. They were adults, after all, and there was no reason for them to be attempting what he had in mind in a car. "Dana?" he said softly, breaking off the kiss. "Mmmm?" she purrred. Mulder looked down at her, unable to speak for a moment. He'd always thought his partner was a pretty woman, but the way she looked now - her mouth slightly swollen from kissing, her eyes dilated with passion - she was so damn beautiful it nearly took his breath away. "What do you say we go back to the motel and," CRASH!!! The sound of shattering glass brought their romantic idyll to an end, interupting what he had been about to say. Thinking quickly, Mulder rolled Scully off his lap and into the driver's seat, reaching for his gun at the same time. "Scully, call the locals for back-up!" he hollered. Someone - or something, it was difficult to tell in the dark - was reaching in through the broken window. "Federal agents! Freeze!" Mulder could hear Scully in the background, requesting urgent assistance and giving their exact location to the locals. He shot at the lurking figure outside as it tried to wrench open the car door. "Maybe we should have loaded up with silver bullets," his partner said from her position crouched on the seat next to his. She was also aiming at the creature - or man - whatever it was. "Can you see it?" Mulder asked. "No." "I'm going to get out," he said, easing the door open. "Cover me." "I'm on your back." Soon the area was awash in light from both the swirling domes atop police cars and the agents high-intensity flashlights. Eventually, they found what they were looking for. It was a man, but he was emitting a strange odor that was noticeable from several feet away. It was nearly dawn when the exhausted agents finished up at the police station. Their attacker turned out to be a vagrant who had lived on the beach off and on for years. Although he was barely coherent, a few medical tests Scully had been able to run seemed to indicate that in addition to producing a body odor much more intense than normal, he could also smell the scents of other people with a greatly-heightened sensitivity. She theorized that he could actually smell - even through the closed doors and rolled-up windows of a car - sexual arousal, and that, for some reason, it drove him into a homicidal frenzy. "I wonder why our stakeout lured him out of hiding when the one by the locals failed," Mulder mused. "I think I know," his partner replied. After several seconds of silence, Mulder asked, "Well, are you going to enlighten me or are we going to play twenty questions?" "I talked with Karen, the policewoman who went on the original couple of stakeouts. I asked her what she and her partner actually DID when they were out there. She said they climbed into the backseat, put their heads close together so it would look like they were fooling around and told each other Aggie jokes!" "So you think he attacked us because were were actually. . ." "Yeah," Scully replied, "that's exactly what I think." "You okay?" Mulder asked, glancing over at his partner as they pulled into the motel's parking lot. "I just need to get to bed," Scully answered with a yawn. "Alone, so don't get any ideas, Romeo." "Dana, about what happened out there. . ." "You mean the attacker? You were right and I was wrong. There was something sinister going on and that guy is just enough of a mutant for it to legitmately qualify as an X-File." "That's not what I mean. And I think you know it." She was quiet for a moment and then said, "Not now, Mulder. We probably need to talk about it, but just. . .not now, okay?" Mulder sighed. He honestly didn't think Scully knew how daunting she could be when her barrier of professionalism and science was up. Now she was vulnerable and sleepy and he was tempted to press his advantage while she was still in this state. All he wanted was to talk to her, damn it! But one look at her pleading gaze was enough to make him cede to her wishes. "Okay," he said softly as they emerged from the car. He stopped just outside her door and brushed his fingertips gently down her face. "Sweet dreams, Dana." Author's e-mail address: tapw63@hotmail.com.