F.B.I. Special Agent Fox Mulder kept his breathing
steady as he increased his pace slightly during his
morning jog. Mulder loved running. The only thing
better than an early morning run alone would have been an early morning run with Scully beside him. But now that his wife was nearing the third trimester of her pregnancy, the doctor had forbade her from such
vigorous exercise restricting her, instead, to
walking, swimming and exercise classes especially
designed for pregnant women.

Mulder eventually left the jogging path in the park
and used the three blocks back home as a cooling down
period, slowing gradually to a walk. When he entered
the front door, he veered into the kitchen before
heading upstairs for a shower. Scully's morning
sickness was mostly gone now, but he poured a glass of 7-up anyway and placed a couple of crackers on a
plate. He'd leave them on the nightstand by Dana's
side of the bed, just in case. Depositing the drink
and crackers quietly, he slipped into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

***

Dana Scully awoke to the sound of the shower. Mmm! she thought sleepily. Wet, naked Mulder! Enticing though that mental picture was, it wasn't quite enough to lure her from their warm bed. Instead, she sipped the soda her husband had brought for her and nibbled at the crackers. It wasn't so much that she still needed them as that she wanted to let him know his thoughtful gesture hadn't gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

A minute or two later, Mulder entered the bedroom
wearing one towel slung casually around his hips and
drying his hair with another towel around his neck.
"Good morning, gorgeous," he said when he noticed
Scully's eyes were open.

"C'mere," Scully said, beckoning him to the bedside.
That was another nice side effect of sipping soda
before getting out of bed, she thought: no morning
breath. She pulled Mulder's mouth down to hers for a
long, slow kiss. Then she deliberately ran her fingers through the patch of still damp hair on his chest and slipped them underneath the towel to caress his waist. "Got time for a quickie?"

Scully was almost embarrassed at how sexually
agressive she'd been over the past few weeks. She'd
even asked her doctor about it and had been assurred
that there was a reason the second trimester of
pregnancy was often referred to as the "honeymoon
period"; the increased flow of blood to the genital
area often resulted in increased sexual arousal for
mothers-to-be. So far, Mulder hadn't exactly been
complaining!

Mulder made a regretful mumbling sound in the back of
his throat. "God, I'm sorry, honey, but I really
don't. My task force has to make our report to the
director this morning. But tonight's Friday and I
promise we can play all weekend."

"All right," Scully said with a small pout. "You go
ahead and get dressed. I'll just watch. Mulder dropped the towel that had been around his waist, then bent to retrieve it. That was another thing that had changed since Scully had become pregnant; Mulder had actually started picking up after himself! She grinned at the glimpse she got before he pulled on his boxer briefs. He was at half-mast in his nest of dark brown curls. Good, she thought. She wouldn't have wanted to send a fully-aroused Mulder off to work, but she wouldn't have wanted to think her kisses and suggestions had had no effect at all.

***

Mulder was at the desk in his new office - he still
missed the old basement office he'd shared with Scully when they'd worked the X-Files, even if this one was in an above-ground location - going over his report when his secretary knocked at the door. "A.D. Skinner is here to see you, Agent Mulder," she said.

"Skinner, I've got a meeting with the director in
twenty minutes to go over the reports on serial
killers that my task force has been working on. Can
this wait?"

"No," Skinner said. "I already called the director and told him another member of your team might have to meet with him. We've got a hostage situation in an
Arlington hospital and I need you to come with me; to
negotiate."

Mulder nodded slowly and pulled on his suit jacket. He handed the report to Agent Charles Guilbeau and
instructed the rest of the members of his team to
answer any questions the director might have to the
best of their ability.

"What is it this time?" Mulder asked his boss as the
two of them trotted quickly down the hall toward the
parking garage, "aliens, monsters or mutants?"

"What are you talking about, Mulder?" Skinner asked as they got into the older man's car. "You're a trained psychologist, you're a seasoned agent, we need you to negotiate."

"Come on, Skinner! I'm a psychologist, all right, but
my specialty is profiling; not hostage negotiation.
I've done it exactly twice in all my 15 years with the bureau. Once was that whole damned Duane Barry
incident and the other was in Chicago when I
inadverdently stumbled into a hostage situation while
performing a risk assessment at a company that had
received terroristic threats. You want me to do this,
there has to be a reason. What is it?"

Skinner sighed as he negotiated his car onto the
beltway and speeded up. "We think you might be able to understand this guy's point of view. Between your
formal training and your personal experiences, if
anybody can get inside his head it will be you."

"What kind of personal experiences are we talking
about here, Skinner? Has he been alien-abducted or is
it one of his family members? Or does he talk to dead
people and communicate psychically or by telekenesis?"

"It's nothing like that," Skinner said. "It doesn't
have anything to do with your background on the
X-Files, at least not in the way you seem to think."

"What, then?"

"The man's wife is dying of cancer. The hostages are
two nurses and a doctor who he feels aren't doing
everything they can to save her."

Mulder was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I can
relate," he said softly.

"I know you and Scully weren't married at the time of
her fight with cancer, but I still thought you'd be
able to understand his despair."

Mulder nodded slowly.

***

Once they reached the hospital, Mulder and Skinner
joined the small band of F.B.I. agents and Arlington
police officers who were stationed outside the wing
where the hostages were being held.

"We've evacuated all the other rooms in this wing," an agent said. "The perp has three hostages, a handgun and claims to be strapped with explosives. He's wearing a bulky sweatshirt, despite this heat, so there's no way to be sure if he's telling the truth or bluffing."

"Wire me, and I'll go in and try to talk to him,"
Mulder said. Even as he spoke, he was removing his
shirt and tie so that another technician could attach
an almost inivisible radio transmitter/receiver to the skin of his chest, neck and ear.

"We may just be giving him another hostage," one of
the police officers suggested.

As Mulder walked toward the room where the hostages
were being held, the agent hooked up to his mike
whispered to Skinner, "Is there somebody else he'd
feel more comfortable having on the other end of this? His partner, maybe?"

Skinner nodded and pulled out his cell phone. "Yeah.
Let me call Quantico."

***

Scully had finished the formal part of her lecture to
the students she taught at the F.B.I. Academy. Unlike
the basic classes she had taught earlier in her
career, this was a special seminar for students coming into the bureau who already had scientific
backgrounds. A few, like Scully herself, were medical
doctors. Others had degrees in biology, chemistry,
physics or computer sciences. Now she'd opened the
class to discussion of any and all matters pertaining
to their future careers.

"So most of us will spend our careers here at
Quantico, huh?" a male student asked.

"You'll most likely spend the majority of your time
here, yes," Scully agreed. "The usual scenario for
agents with scientific backgrounds is a couple of
years in the labs, a couple of years as a field agent
to get some real world experience, then back here."

"Is that how it went for you?" a female student
inquired.

"I actually spent a total of six years in the field,"
Scully replied. "The first two years after graduation
I was here, then I had a year of field work, another
year back here, then five more years of field work.
That's relatively unusual for an agent with my
background, but I was part of a special investigative
unit in which I used my medical skills quite
frequently."

"Which do you think is more important, the leg work or the lab work?" a different male student asked. Scully smiled gently at him. With his earnest, slightly bumbling air, the man reminded her of her now-deceased friend Sean Pendrell.

"They're both important," Scully replied. "They're
like two halves of the same coin. That's one of the
reasons its important for agents with scientific
backgrounds to have at least a couple of years of
field experience. Yes, we can do miracles here with
whatever physical clues are brought to us - fiber
analysis, DNA fingerprinting, you name it. But first
somebody has to find the clues and bring them to us.
That can be a long and frustrating search and it's
important those of us here in the labs understand
that."

The door to the classroom opened abruptly and a woman
in her late 50s stepped in. "Dr. Palmer?" Scully asked in surprise. The older woman rarely worked on Fridays.

"Dr. Scully, I'll be taking over the rest of your
classes for today," Palmer said. "They need you to go
assist in a hostage negotiation in Arlington."

"But Dr. Scully's a pathologist!" one of the students
exclaimed. "Why would she do hostage negotiation?
Isn't that a job for one of the bureau's
psychologists?"

Scully sighed and tried to repress a shudder. "My
guess is that a certain Oxford-educated psychologist
is the agent doing the actual negotiating. I'm needed
as the contact agent, right?"

Dr. Palmer nodded.

"What's a contact agent?" a student inquired.

"When an agent goes into any kind of dangerous
situation - a hostage negotiation,  an undercover
operation, a bomb defusement - we always try to allow
him to maintain contact with someone on the outside
through body wires and microphones," Palmer said. "It
works best when the contact agent is someone he
trusts. Usually the Special Agent in Charge - who in
this case is Assistant Director Skinner - asks the
agent at risk who he wants on the other end of his
wire. Apparently, this time, Skinner didn't even
bother to ask, just called Quantico and told them to
send Dr. Scully out to provide support to Agent
Mulder."

"Who's Agent Mulder?" a female student asked.

"My husband," Scully replied as she walked out the
door.

***

The hostage negotiations were going fairly well;
Mulder had been allowed entry into the room and
persuaded the kidnapper to allow one of the hostages,
the younger of the two nurses, to go free. Still, the
man's total number of hostages remained the same, as
he now had Mulder in there with him.

"I don't think I'm doing a very good job," whispered
the young agent on the other end of Mulder's wire.
"Maybe if you took over, sir," he looked up at Skinner pleadingly.

"No need for that," Skinner said with a sigh of
relief. "The cavalry just arrived." He watched as
Scully moved through the crowd as fast as her pregnant form would allow, flashing her badge at anyone who attempted to impede her progress.

Skinner placed his hand gently on Scully's shoulder
and gestured for the other agent to turn over his
headphones and microphone to Scully. Scully knew the
drill. Mulder would be able to hear her and she'd be
able to hear him. However, he wouldn't be able to
respond directly to her for fear of alienating the
kidnapper.

"Mulder, it's me," she said softly into the
microphone.

Mulder let out his breath with a loud whoosh, directly
into her ear.

"You keep saying you know how I feel," screamed the
man with the gun. "But how can you?"

"I told you," Mulder repeated, his voice calm and
unemotional.  "My wife nearly died of cancer. I
thought she was going to. We got a miracle. Her cancer went into remission. I can't promise you a miracle. Maybe your wife will die. But you can't violate your integrity like this. All that will do is give her an extra burden to bear in her last days."

A single tear slid silently down Scully's cheek. She
knew that Mulder was speaking as much to her as to his captor. A situation like this could easily turn deadly and Mulder was unarmed. This might be their only chance to say goodbye.

***

The situation took extremely slow, but undeniably
steady, turns for the better during the tense hours
that followed. Mulder was able to persuade the man to
let first the other nurse go, then the doctor. So now
the man's only hostage was Mulder himself.

"So, what if I shot you, then myself?" the man asked.

"Then we'd both be dead," Mulder said stoically. "Both our wives would be widows. That's the coward's way out. Forcing your wife to bear the pain you refuse to accept. Making her deal with losing you because you can't deal with losing her."

"What would your wife do if you were dead?"

Scully whimpered softly into the microphone. She had
thought, now that they were off the X-Files, that this wasn't a question she'd ever have to ask herself
again.

"She'd be sad, of course," said Mulder quietly. "I
don't think she'd ever love another man. I know she'd
never love another man the way she loves me."

"Right," murmured Scully into the microphone.

"But she's strong," Mulder continued. "She'd survive.
She'd create a stable, loving home for our child. It's hard to be a single parent, it's not something she'd ever choose, but she could do it if she had to."

"Yeah, well maybe I'm not that strong," snarled the
man with the gun.

"Maybe you're stronger than you give yourself credit
for," Mulder suggested.

"You have any regrets?" the man asked suddenly, his
voice not exactly friendly, but curious rather than
threatening. "About your relationship with your wife?"

"A ton," Mulder replied.

"What?" the man demanded.

"You shouldn't, Fox," Scully whispered. "No regrets."

"Main thing is that I waited so long to get things
moving in the right direction between us," Mulder said slowly. "I told you some of that earlier today. She and I were work colleagues and close friends for a long time before we finally got romantically involved. I think we could have married a lot earlier, spared ourselves a lot of lonely nights, if I hadn't been so stupid, so stubborn. I wasted a lot of years dealing with issues from my past - stuff that happened in my childhood, in my relationship with my parents, in past romantic relationships - letting that impede my relationship with her."

"You keep saying "her" and "my wife". Doesn't she have a name?" the man asked.

"Dana," Mulder said softly, his voice turning the
syllables into a caress. "Her name is Dana."

"So everything's been hunky-dory since you two got
married, huh?" asked the man. "No current regrets."

"Nothing major," Mulder said, "A few minor things. I
think there's always going to be events you look back
on and wish you'd reacted differently to them."

"Like what?" snarled the man. "Tell me something
recent."

"She wanted to make love this morning," Mulder said,
his voice barely above a whisper, "I told her I was
too busy, had to get to the office, that we needed to
wait until tonight when I got home from work. As you
might be able to guess, I'm regretting that quite a
bit right at this moment."

"Hey, if you love this woman so much, why do you do
*THIS*? Why take a job where you have to put your life on the line everyday? Why not do something less
dangerous?"

Mulder sighed. "I've asked myself that a time or two.
Bottom line is: I don't know what else I would do or
could do with my life. I joined the bureau the week
after I graduated from college. It's the only career
I've ever known. I'd quit if she asked me to, but
she's never even suggested it. That may be what I love most about her: she's always loved me for who I am. She doesn't see me as some kind of home improvement project to reshape into her version of the perfect man. She knows I'm not perfect, but she loves me anyway."

"Always, Fox, always," Scully whispered on the other
end of the mike.

***

Finally, it was over. The man threw down the gun and
collapsed in tears. Mulder had him cuffed and was
reading him his rights before the other agents could
make it down the corridor.

Scully didn't even attempt to join the tide of
humanity stampeding toward the room where Mulder had
been. She didn't want to risk getting jostled in her
condition. Instead, she sat quietly and waited for her husband to come to her.

"Scully." She experienced a moment of aural confusion
as his voice came from two places at once. Then she
realized he was standing a few feet in front of her,
speaking her name. Because they were both still wired, she heard him in her ear as well.

Scully walked over and took him in her arms. They
stood like that for a long moment, just holding each
other, hands running soothingly over shoulders and
backs. Then Mulder tipped up her head and kissed her
tenderly on the mouth.

After Mulder broke the kiss, he rested his forehead on hers for a moment.

"Agents?" Skinner said, gently placing a hand on each
of their shoulders.

"I'm okay," Mulder said.  "Let's go ahead and get
everything wrapped up so we can get out of here."

"Agent Scully, you're free to go now unless you'd
rather stay," Skinner said. "We're going to go on over to headquarters."

"I'll meet you there in a bit," she said, giving
Mulder's hand one last squeeze.

***

It was early evening when Mulder and Scully finally
pulled away from the Hoover Building. Unusually for
them, Scully was at the wheel.

It was a testimony to Mulder's emotional exhaustion
that it took him the better part of an hour to realize they weren't headed home. "Scully, where are we going?"

"After the day we've had, I figured we both deserved a little R-and-R. We're going to the summer house in
Rhode Island. I went home and packed for us before
joining you at headquarters."

"We *DO* have an unspoken, psychic communication thing going, Scully! I was going to suggest we drive up there tomorrow morning."

"You just relax, Mulder."

"For a bit. Then we're going to stop for dinner and
I'll drive the rest of the way. In your condition, you need good nutrition and plenty of rest."

***

It was almost midnight when they reached the summer
house, having stopped at an all-night supermarket to
buy supplies.

"You tired?" Mulder asked as they put away the
groceries and took their suitcases to the master
bedroom.

"No," Scully said with a shake of her head. "Sleeping
the last two hours of the drive re-energized me."

"Want to take a walk on the beach?"

"Sounds great."

They were soon strolling along the shore,
hand-in-hand. Not talking much, just letting the
rhythm of the ocean soothe their battered spirits. For all their myriad differences, a love of the seashore was something Mulder and Scully had always shared. For him, the affection was for this particular stretch of sand and water, where he had spent much of his childhood. For her, it was a more general feeling, born out of her years as a Navy brat.

Finally, they stopped and he faced her. "How do you
always know what I need? Exactly what I need? You
talked me through that whole hostage negotiation
thing, then you bring me up here to let me unwind."

Scully smiled. "I love you, Fox. I think it's a simple as that."

"I love you, too, Dana."

They kissed for a long time after that, Mulder putting his hands on her bottom and pulling her up on tiptoes to gain better access to her mouth.

"Want to swim?" he murmured.

"Our bathing suits are back at the house."

"It's a warm night. And there's no one around."

"Why Agent Mulder! Are you suggesting we skinny dip?"

"Mmmhmm."

"Okay!" Scully quickly began unbuttoning the loose
fitting sundress she was wearing and let it drop to
her ankles, then stepped out of her bra and panties.
She waded into the water, the moonlight glistening on
her hair, and waited for her husband to join her.

The water was fairly calm, the tide lifting in gentle
swells instead of breaking in foamy waves. They waded
out 'til they were about waist deep, then floated on
their backs, holding hands. A million stars winked
down at them.

When Scully stood up and shook the water out of her
hair Mulder smiled and reached out to touch her face
tenderly.

"What?" Scully asked at the odd expression in his
eyes.

"I don't mean to insult your religious beliefs, Dana,
but you look like some sort of fertility goddess right now. Naked in the ocean with the moonlight streaming down on your breast and belly like that..."

Scully smiled. "Glad you're enjoying the sight, Fox.
C'mon let's go get dried off. I'm beginning to get
sleepy and we've still got to walk back to the house."

Mulder tossed his T-shirt to her for use in drying
off. After they had both used it, he remained bare
chested and draped the now damp shirt around his
shoulders. She slipped her bra and panties into the
pockets of her dress, and put the dress itself back
on.

When they reached the backyard, Mulder asked, "Would
you like to sleep out here in the hammock?"

"Sounds heavenly," Scully agreed.

Mulder spooned up next to her and began to let his
hands wander beneath her dress. "You wanna fool around or are you too sleepy?" he murmured into her ear.

"I'm sleepy, but I still want to. Think I'll just
leave the driving to you, though, so to speak."

Mulder chuckled in her ear. Usually Scully was an
extremely active participant in their lovemaking,
using her mouth and hands to drive him almost to the
brink of insanity before they got to the main event.
However, there had been a few occasions in their
marriage - mostly since she'd become pregnant - where
she preferred to simply relax and let him do all the
touching and kissing. Mulder wouldn't have wanted a
wife who was always so passive, but he enjoyed these
rare interludes as a nice change of pace from their
usual style.

This particular position - both of them lying on their sides, her back to his chest - had always been one of their favorites and it had the added advantage of not putting any pressure on her abdomen. He stroked her breasts gently, but was careful not to squeeze and mold them the way he'd done in her pre-pregnancy days. Then he slipped his hand slowly down her belly. He felt the baby kick and his arousal instantly racheted up a notch. He'd read in some of the brochures Scully had brought home from the doctors offfice that some men lost their erection if they felt the baby move during lovemaking. He wondered if it was just one more indication of his "Spooky" nature that feeling his child inside her womb turned him on even more.

Mulder kissed her neck as he gently began to caress
her sex. "You taste so good, Scully. Like seawater and the essence of womanhood. And you feel so good. So warm, so wet, so open."

"Mmm!" she murmured, her voice a pleasant mixture of
arousal and relaxation.

He lifted one leg up over both of his and slid into
her. The movement caused the hammock to sway and
Mulder grinned. He began thrusting slowly, caressing
her with his hand from the opposite angle. After
several long, pleasurable moments she clenched around
him and sighed with pleasure. He joined her almost
immediately. They fell asleep like that, still joined, lulled by the rhythm of the hammock and the sound of the sea.

Sometime before dawn, Scully was awakened by what had
become a nightly ritual for her in the past few weeks. She slid out of Mulder's embrace and tried not to wake him,  but had to grab onto his broad shoulder for balance as the hammock swayed precariously when she tried to stand up. "Scully? Where you going?" he
asked, instantly awake.

She made a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
"Bathroom, of course. Like I always have to do around
this time of night."

"Why don't I come in, too, and we'll sleep the rest of the night in a bed? I wouldn't want us providing a
free show if any early-risers are strolling along this stretch of beach."

"Sounds good," she agreed.

They slept together for another hour or two, then
Mulder woke up as dawn flooded the room. He felt
restless and decided to go for his usual morning jog
down the beach. When he returned, sweaty and intent on stepping into the shower, he was instead sidetracked by the sight of Scully on the bed.

After using the bathroom several hours earlier, she
had removed her dress and now lay naked on the bed.
Her legs were spread open and a faint smile was on her face, but he could tell from her even breathing that she was still asleep. Mulder pulled off his clothes and lowered his mouth to the juncture of her thighs.

Scully began to awaken slowly. Something was brushing
against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Mulder, she realized instinctively. But she still wasn't quite sure. . .she often woke up with his thigh wedged between hers or his hand stroking her gently but this was different. She moved her leg and figured it out. His face. Rubbing gently against her thighs, his breath coming in soft puffs, teasing but not quite touching her center.

"Mmm!" she said softly, stroking her legs along his
stubble-covered jaw, "you didn't shave yet."

"Want me to?" he asked.

"No, it feels heavenly."

Mulder began to lick and suck at her, keeping at it
'til she climaxed. Then he climbed up her body to her
mouth for a good morning kiss of another kind.

"Come on in, Fox," she whispered when they broke the
kiss.

"This position okay, Dana?" he asked, hovering above
her.

"Just keep it shallow and we should be okay. I'll let
you know if we need to switch."

Mulder penetrated her wet depths just with the tip of
his cock, keeping his weight squarely on his hands and knees to avoid putting to much pressure on her. He stroked in and out with slow, shallow thrusts
eventually coming with a groan of her name.

"Ooh! Twice in barely seven hours. I'm impressed."

Mulder glanced over at the clock. It was exactly the
same time as it had been when he came in from his jog
the previous morning.