Caffeine, Conspiracies, and the Fortean Nature of Fishes IX: Sleepless in Sammamish
By D. Sidhe: Erika
Category: Slash, WIP
Pairings: Mulder/Frohike, Langly/Byers
Rating: NC-17 for language, smut, and general perversion, and what I'm probably going to get sued for referring to as "Discovery Channel After Dark".
Disclaimers and Apologies: I continue to exploit and offend without permission. Washington Watches is mine. Their surly receptionist and her multicolored forms are mine. Their internal bulletin board, and much of their décor, are borrowed significantly from the SO's place of employment. Kind of scary, really. The chick with the Cube is mine. The actual usage of said item in prognostication is not. (I swear, I have a book that tells how to do it.) If it helps any at all, I made up the Brotherhood of Pragmatic Resistance. On the other hand, given the fact that the various jokes made about them are not exactly original, maybe it doesn't help that much. Rosenberg, Allen, and their cub reporter Pete come to us from "Weekend", in which they represented the entirely fictitious (as far as I know) publication Apple Cart. Pete's area of interest is UFO hoaxes, which will become relevant hopefully at some point. Flap, which is a real name of a real UFO press, has become fictionalized in the person of Steve Helder, editor, from Arkansas. At this point I frankly regret that I used a real name of a publication, but on the other hand there are only about eight discrete organizations called The Smoking Gun, so let's just all pretend this is a different Flap. Scientific facts offered are real, as are the t-shirts, though bakeries and novelty items mentioned are not, as far as I know. The pop-up book will not be explained on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me. Further parts continue to pend, so get your incredulous emails about "I waited months for this?" in early and avoid the rush.
Beta: This segment was written in front of a live studio audience. Who got bored a lot. And whined a lot. "You know," he said at one point, "Your dialogue is usually pretty zippy, but you can't plot to save your life." "I'm plotting right now," I told him. "Does it involve cooking at me?" "As a matter of fact, yes." "That's not plotting, that's scheming." He may have a point. And I'm not just saying that because I liked the "zippy dialogue" thing. He also whined a lot about my abrupt scene changes in this part, but for God's sake, it was fifteen pages without the author's note. Do you want smooth transitions, or do you want Entirely Gratuitous Sex? I thought so.
Archive: If you want it, take it. And get help. Seriously. We're all concerned.
Spoilers: TLGMaD. Oh, wait, no they're not. Never mind. But there's a couple of references to XF: "Unusual Suspects" and XF: "War of the Coprophages".
Author's Note: No live animals were harmed in the making of this segment. (Aside from the steady diet of pizza and cheeseburgers, anyway. Does Spam count? And if so, doesn't it seem like a particularly inhumane thing to do to the pig.) Betty helped me with an experiment to see just how many "roommates" Frohike would eventually end up with. Based on flippant reasoning and loose math, or the other way around, we figure we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand. And no, I'm not going to explain how we figured that out, because then I'd definitely be in the running for a nice canvas blazer with the optional extra long sleeves, and honestly, white is not my best color. I'm not explaining the barnacle thing, either, though anyone who's interested in checking my math to see if we're right, remember it's never too late for rewrites.
I did some checking, and it seems that male clubtail dragonflies, comprised of members of the genera Gomphidae and Stylogomphidae, don't have genitalia larger than that of barnacles. An entomologist consulted suggests that dragonfly and damselfly genitalia are interesting for many reasons, not least that their sperm production organs are not connected to their copulation organs (ligula), and they must actually transfer sperm from the ninth abdominal segment to the twelfth before transferring it to the female. Genitalia identification is aided, he explained, by inflating the penises of dead insects with pressurized alcohol. Once the alcohol dehydrates, the genitalia harden into the inflated shape. "It's like a tiny balloon," he commented with an enthusiasm that may give me nightmares for months.
Bambi, from X-Files "War of the Coprophages", may have been referring to Phyllogomphidae, or snaketails, which have thick penises, based on photos I've unfortunately seen, but not what I would consider especially long ones, compared to photos of barnacles I've also unfortunately seen. (I may never recover.) Clubtails in fact include four species of pygmy dragonflies. If you're interested, you can donate your combine or tractor to IORI, the International Odonata Research Institute, which is a not-for-profit foundation housed within the Florida State Collection of Arthropods facility. Even if your snowmobile or jet-ski isn't working, you can still get a tax write-off from the donation, and you do not pay towing charges. You can also donate Odonata specimens, which, properly presented, will earn you a tax write-off of about five dollars apiece. Uncurated specimens are worth much less, it seems. If it helps, they're also looking for emerged specimens with exuviae, preserved in 95% to 100% ethanol, for DNA studies. Yeah, that was good news to me, too. I'd been wondering what to do with all those exuviae.
And, okay, it's probably time to explain two popular elements of UFOlogy. Frohike's experience in the first part of this segment is more or less an example of "Oz Factor". That is, the weirdness in terms of environment and perception that happens during a UFO encounter. It tends to include visual and auditory hallucinations, (or conversely a total lack of noise), strange lights, smells, and sensations, a feeling that time has stopped, that the world is frozen, and that "something is wrong". (Possibly the big shiny thing with the little gray guys inside, I suppose.) Frohike's response to this, afterwards, is what is generally referred to as Soda Pop Phenomenon. It indicates someone behaving in an unnaturally normal way in the presence of something very surreal. It's named for an incident in which a contactee, being told by the aliens that they were thirsty, allegedly went into a grocery store and bought them some soda pop. I mention this because they're both going to come up again later. Repeatedly, in fact, because I basically can't resist beating running gags to death.
One more thing: Evidently the Nerf line is being retooled, and therefore Nerf Warfare events are few and far between until the end of the year. I include this fact because I've been hearing about it at great length for the last two months, and why should I have to suffer alone?

Summary: Just when you thought it was safe to go back into a UFO cult…

**

After dropping a chunk on the new camera, Byers had insisted the three of them share a room last night. Langly was less than thrilled, until Jimmy announced that he was going to go give the van a thorough going-over after dinner. Byers had barely had time to dump the Bible into the trash can at the end of the hallway before Langly dragged him back into the room and was stripping clothes off both of them with the kind of efficiency and speed he usually reserved for a hack.

"Ri, for God's sake. Can I at least brush my teeth?"

"No time to waste," Langly had muttered into his hair. "You heard the man."

"I heard him say half an hour. I think we've got time to brush our teeth."

"I don't think half an hour's gonna be long enough for what I wanna do to you."

Byers had feigned surprise. "It only took ten minutes last time."

"Smartass."

As it turned out, Jimmy had returned with surprising tact an hour later, by which time Langly was snoring away and Byers was the sole recipient of the knowing smirks and giggles. He'd sighed and rolled over, stealing the blankets and leaving Jimmy to giggle at the little hearts on Langly's boxers. Served him right.

**

Restless in the night, Frohike had awoken at some point, and been drawn to the window by a shimmering pale light between the curtains. He remembered peering out to see—snow. It had seemed to be snowing, in the deserted parking lot, lit by the dim streetlights. It melted as it touched the ground, and he dismissed the thought it might be, ash, maybe, or fallout, or something like that. Nothing moved but what his eyes kept telling his brain was snow, and the whole world seemed silent. There was no sound from the air conditioner he'd left on earlier, no traffic noises.

Alarmed at the eerie scene, he had backed into the table. There was no noise even from that, and he'd turned to see he'd knocked over several of the sample containers. The world had frozen into an icicle around him, and sharp at the point were the two canisters balanced in midfall. He'd reached out with a hand that didn't tremble through sheer force of will, and set them carefully upright.

He'd been realizing it had to be a dream when the varnished surface of the table had shone with the reflected vibrant blue of lights from outside the window. His outstretched arm tingled where it was bathed in the light. He'd turned, not breathing, and seen… something. A roughly triangular shape outlined by the circles of blue light. The lights cast rays through the snow, pooling on the pavement. And then it was gone.

He remembered noticing he had something on his hand from one of the samples, something warm and gooey and he didn't want to know what it was. He'd walked calmly to the bathroom and washed his hands and then, thirsty, drank three glasses of water. He'd glanced into the tub, it seemed, to see the clam pulsing gently, and glowing softly in shades of violet. He'd regarded it without emotion for a moment. Then he'd gone back to bed.

In the morning, everything looked normal. Just a weird dream, he told himself.

Except—Except—Except that there was a burning rash on his arm where the light had been brightest. His brain stuttered at it until something suggested he was allergic to something from the beach yesterday, and this was the reaction.

He heard J. Wayne moving around next door, and knocked on the connecting door. The kid was already up and dressed. He stared in surprise at Frohike, enrobed and probably looking the worse for wear, and focused on the rash.

"What happened?"

Frohike shrugged. "Allergy, I guess. Mind if I use your shower? There's a clam in mine."

J. Wayne stood back, still looking curiously at the rash. "Sure. Allergy to what? Because it looks like a burn, actually."

Frohike shrugged again. "It does kind of burn. I don't know to what. Something on the beach, maybe. After I get dressed, we'll hit a drugstore, get some cream or something."

J. Wayne nodded reluctantly. "Maybe you should see a doctor. Considering what was on that beach. You could have been exposed to anything, really."

Frohike snickered. "You want to go to a doctor and ask if he thinks this is a reaction to an alien slime mold?"

The kid sighed. "I guess not."

Frohike was, truth to tell, a little concerned about it himself. With what he knew about the black oil, it would have been impossible not to be worried. But there wasn't much a doctor could do about it, and he knew better than to let himself pop up on the radar like that. There were still laws about alien contact, after all, and there were people who'd use any excuse to break up Gunman. They'd made a lot of the wrong kind of enemies, and Mulder's protection only went so far.

When the hot water hit his arm with a pain he'd previously only associated with drunken power-tool incidents, he let out a noise that could have come from a horny moose.

J. Wayne was instantly banging on the door, panic in his voice. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Frohike shut off the water and stood dripping, trying to get his breath back. "I'm okay," he eventually managed. "The water was too hot."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about it." He turned the water back on and held his arm well out of the spray while he finished up.

**

After breakfast, Frohike took J. Wayne by the offices of Washington Watches, another UFO research group "Gunman" worked with from time to time.

"They're pretty much the same deal as WETHR Front," he explained. "They publish books, not news. Some articles in science journals. The guy in charge here is Walter Censoni. He's a nice guy, a little… focused. They maintain observation posts, send field investigators to sites. Not everyone does that. They also have radar and listening posts. They're pretty technologically advanced. He might be able to tell us what's been going on on Maury."

"The books must do well," J. Wayne commented.

"Not that well, no. Censoni's new money. Microsoft money."

"Okay." He seemed distracted. "When's Agent Mulder coming in?"

Frohike gave him a fast glance. "Seven, seven-thirty. We'll get dinner after that, that okay?"

"Whatever."

"You're coming with me to the airport, okay?"

J. Wayne looked surprised. "Yeah, sure, okay."

"You don't want to?"

The kid turned bright pink. "No, I just assumed, uh…"

Frohike took pity on him. "Mulder asked."

He looked pretty happy with that, Frohike thought, smothering laughter.

"You, uh, never told me how you met Agent Mulder." The words came out in a rush.

Frohike allowed himself a grin. "Long story. We'll get Mulder drunk at dinner again, he'll tell you." He chuckled. "Most of it, anyhow. He doesn't remember… the best parts."

J. Wayne settled for raised eyebrows and a questioning expression.

Frohike didn't notice, he was remembering that first time they'd met. A lot of it was kind of awful, but Mulder didn't remember those parts either, so nobody'd have to tell the kid, really. But what Frohike would die remembering, was Mulder, stark naked and sweating all over, sprawled on the concrete, yelling at the top of his lungs about aliens.

Even fucked up, Mulder was totally hot, and Frohike'd lived with that image in his head for years before he'd gotten another look. Which had been well worth the wait. Finally, Frohike shook his head and chuckled again. "A very long story. It's how we got our name, too. How we got our start."

"The paper?" J. Wayne asked.

"Yep. Time for that later, okay? Let's go talk to Wacky Wally."

J. Wayne laughed a little, and Frohike grinned at him again. "Don't tell him I called him that, okay? We still need his help here."

**

Washington Watches was located in a three story glass-and-brick edifice with an array of unrecognizable equipment bristling from the roof. Inside, it simply bristled with people. Dozens of them, milling about, all with piles of papers in hand, typing, or talking on phones. All of them loud.

From the high ceiling of the foyer hung a UFO of the type J. Wayne was coming to recognize as a Marfa Diamond. There were other, much smaller, models hanging around the offices, or perched on stands, and J. Wayne was surprised to see how few of them resembled the traditional "flying saucer".

Frohike led him to the busy reception desk, where a harried woman put her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone and snapped at them. "Pink's First Kind, yellow's Second, blue's Third, red's Fourth, orange if you're not sure. Abductions and conversations with entities, fill out a green sheet, too. If you saw Bigfoot, just leave your name in the log and we'll get back to you." She waved at an array of colored papers.

Frohike laughed. "I got an appointment, Censoni. 'Lone Gunman' to see him."

The woman looked annoyed for a moment and then resigned herself, turning back to the phone. "Please hold for just a moment." She spun to her computer terminal and tapped a few words. "Mel Frohike and friend?" she asked suspiciously.

"That's the one."

She sighed faintly. "Please take a seat over there. He'll be a few minutes." Then she went back to the phone. "Sorry about that. When you say trout, you mean…?"

Frohike laughed again and grabbed one of each colored paper, sitting in the arranged chairs already partially occupied with several other people, some of them busily filling out forms. He handed an orange sheet to J. Wayne and started reading over the green.

Twenty minutes later, they'd both read all the questionnaires, and listened to the woman give her curt speech seven more times between phone calls. Three people had taken one form or another, two of them leaving with them in hand, and one sitting down near a window to fill hers out. Another had signed the log and gone away looking disappointed.

Two more had been put off by the welcome and gone away apparently unsatisfied. Of the last two, the woman had been directed to a desk on the second floor, and the man had been instructed to take a seat and wait.

Frohike, displaying no evident impatience, had wandered over to the in-house bulletin board, J. Wayne tagging behind, to read the notices.

"They got an INWO league," Frohike said cheerfully. J. Wayne gave him a blank look, and Frohike sighed, in unconscious echo of the woman at the desk. "Illuminati: New World Order," he said. "It's one of those trading card games. It's how conspiracy geeks unwind. Those of us too old for D&D, anyhow."

"There's a D&D group too," J. Wayne observed. "And a Magic league, it looks like."

Frohike nodded. "Censoni's got money, so most of these people are paid. They don't need a day job, so they have time to play. With Nerf guns, apparently," he grinned, pointing to an invitation to the Annual Non-Lethal Weaponry Armageddon.

Other notices tacked to the board offered "Psychic Housecleaning", "Feng Shui Therapy", and a variety of baby-, pet-, and house-sitters listed by religion. Frohike spent a moment wondering what "Houseplant Analysis" would accomplish. J. Wayne drew his attention to a notice for the monthly "transmitter hunt".

"No clue," Frohike shrugged. "It was all model rockets in my day." The kid gave him a skeptical look, and he snickered. "And dinosaur chariot races," he added.

J. Wayne blinked, and looked ready to say something, when a little man in a "Blame it on the Media" t-shirt tapped Frohike on the arm.

"Come on back, Mel. Walt's hiding out in his office."

"Larch, you sonofabitch," Frohike said happily, pounding the man on the shoulder. "What's Walt hiding from?"

The man rolled his eyes. "Kewaunee, among others."

Frohike laughed. "Him too, huh? WUFORG was dodging his Bigfeet yesterday."

"Bigfoots? Bigfeets?" mused the little man. "He get past Jumie?"

Frohike snorted. "Does anybody?"

The guy grinned, holding the elevator door open. "Did you?"

Frohike laughed again. "Briefly. Sneaked past when she wasn't looking."

That earned him a look of utter disbelief. "Like she's ever not looking. You sweet-talked her, didn't you."

Mel smiled smugly as Larch led them into a private office nearly buried in files. "Not tellin'."

A dark curly head rose out of the stacks of papers scattered around, and Censoni, clad in blue jeans and a t-shirt that read "Microsoft: Assimilate or Die" tried to pick his way out of the mess to greet his visitors. "Not tellin' what, Mel?"

"Socked in again, Walt?" Frohike chuckled. "Your boy here wants to know what I've got on Jumie at WUFORG."

Censoni laughed. "That thing with her daughter, maybe?"

"Old news." Frohike smiled faintly. "These days I have to rely on natural charm, like everybody else."

Larch raised an eyebrow. "Her daughter? You dog, Mel."

J. Wayne could have sworn Frohike was blushing. "Nothing like that, Larch. Jumie'd take out a restraining order if it was like that. I just… helped her out a little. Years ago."

Censoni shook his head. "Sure. So who's the kid? You trade in that Bond guy?"

Frohike shrugged. "Not yet. Byers swore he'd feed and walk Jimmy every day if we let him keep him. This is J. Wayne Arthur. J. Wayne used to be with Powder Keg."

"Assholes," Larch said pleasantly enough.

"Bunch of pricks," Censoni added. "Nice to meet you, Jay. Where'd you run into Mel?"

"J. Wayne," Frohike corrected him, just to see the kid wince again. "We met at a conference," he said, not elaborating. "He's working with us for a while. J. Wayne, this is Walt Censoni, and this is Larch Redlund."

Redlund squinted for a moment and then snapped his fingers. "Wayne Arthur the Third. 'Weaponized Microwave Exposure and Germ Line Repercussions on Humans'?"

Censoni looked surprised, but it was nothing to J. Wayne's blush. "Uh, yeah."

Censoni and Redlund traded a look. "You're working with Gunman now?" Censoni asked carefully.

"For the moment," J. Wayne admitted. "I'm freelancing since I left Powder Keg."

The two men traded another look. "You need a bunk?" Redlund asked.

J. Wayne looked slightly confused. "No, we're fine."

Redlund laughed. "I didn't mean a place to sleep," he explained, "I meant a place to work."

J. Wayne shook his head. "UFOs aren't really my thing…" he started.

Censoni nodded. "That's fine. We prefer people with a grounding in hard sciences and an open mind to True Believers. Get me your résumé before you leave, and maybe we can find a place for you. If not with us, we do know most of the groups in the area."

"Thank you, I'll do that."

Frohike interrupted. "So what's going on, Walt?"

Censoni managed to find a bare piece of desk to perch on. "You tell me, Mel. Gunman doesn't come to Washington for the weather."

Frohike snorted. "Yeah, but that's mostly because Langly whines."

Censoni turned to Redlund with raised eyebrows, and Redlund shrugged. "Where're your boys, Mel?" Censoni wanted to know.

Frohike shrugged again. "Montana."

Redlund spoke up. "We've got cattle mutilation reports, from Montana. You're doing a black helicopters story?"

Frohike shook his head. "Nothing so conventional. They're looking for Bigfoot."

Censoni grimaced. "Bigfoot's a hoax. Everybody knows that, Mel."

"Which is why you're hiding from Kewaunee, right?"

"Okay, everybody but Kewaunee knows Bigfoot's a hoax."

"Actually, so far they've only found a Fishy Man-Goat. Their words," he clarified hastily, "not mine."

Censoni gave that due consideration. "Are they driving drunk?" he said at length.

Redlund snickered.

"Of course not," Frohike said virtuously. "Byers would never allow it."

Censoni shook his head. "So let me guess. You're here because you heard rumors about Men in Black and Maury Island."

Frohike nudged J. Wayne. "He's a smart guy. Exactly." He grinned some more. "You show me yours…"

Censoni laughed. "You've been hanging out with what's-his-name too long, Mel. Okay, what do you already know?"

Frohike ran down most of their information, omitting the more significant details, and highlighting the alleged connections between Fred Lee Crisman and the MIB, MJ12, Bay of Pigs, and JFK.

Censoni listened thoughtfully. "What's John think?" he asked eventually.

J. Wayne looked puzzled, but they could discuss it later, Frohike figured. "He's intrigued. The JFK thing especially, you know him. He and Langly put together a chart…" He rummaged in his pack and came out with a smaller version of the connections Langly had come up with, together with Byers' notes on them. "This doesn't leave your hands, Walt," he said meaningfully.

Censoni nodded. "Usual deal."

Frohike hesitated a moment longer, mostly for effect, and handed the papers over.

Redlund gave him a look. "Did you give this to WUFORG?"

"Not the chart, no. I gave them MJ12 and Bay of Pigs."

"Who else have you talked to?"

"WETHR Front."

"What'd you give them?"

"Not much. They want the MIB angle."

Redlund started to say something, but Censoni waved him into silence. "They can have it. And the Bigfoot reports. I want Maury, Mel."

Frohike shook his head. "They're not gonna go for that."

They were all quiet for a while. Finally Censoni shrugged. "Okay. They can have the history. We want the present. Will Ellis agree to that?"

Frohike glanced at his watch. "Let's give him a call and see. Maybe we can get together and hash it out in person."

Censoni picked up the phone, and paused for a moment. "If we get a book put together out of this, do you think WUFORG would promote it?"

Frohike smiled. "I think we can arrange that."

"Is there a book here, Mel?" Redlund asked.

"More than one, Larch."

Censoni put the phone down again and regarded them intently. "You've got more than you're telling."

Frohike nodded. "A lot more. We've got trace."

Redlund sat up abruptly and knocked over a stack of folders. He and Censoni ignored it. "Recordings?"

"For your ears only," he said firmly.

Censoni and Redlund both nodded. Frohike glanced around suspiciously. "Artifact," he said quietly. J. Wayne shifted slightly, surprised. Frohike gestured him to relax.

"You're serious," Censoni said.

"Look, Walt. Mulder's coming out. That's how serious I am. If this is anything like what I think it is, there'll be books and exclusives for every organization in this state, okay? It's huge. You know that already. We're gonna need all the help we can get. Especially with the MIB wandering around trying to bury it as fast as they can. There's room for everybody on this one."

Censoni gazed at him for a while and then nodded, picking up the phone again.

The door swung open suddenly, and a tall man came in, followed by two others. They all worse suits, and Frohike had a brief MIB moment.

"I hope you're right, Mel," said the first one. "'Cause everybody's going to be here."

J. Wayne stretched out a hand to the youngest of the trio. "Pete, how are you?"

Frohike tried innocence. "Allen, Josh. What brings you here?"

The first man snorted. "Give it a rest, Mel. Who're you callin', Walt?"

Censoni put the phone down again. "Locksmith. Don't you ever knock, Allen?"

Josh Rosenberg smiled. "Usually he lets me do it. Come on, men. There's no need to fight over this. Mel's right, it's huge. Plenty to go around." The smile verged on a grin for a moment. "By the way, you've got Flap in your reception area."

Redlund sighed. "Swell. Let's make it a party."

**

After a loud and contentious, but ultimately mutually beneficial, two hour meeting, they headed back to the hotel to pick up what Frohike referred to as his roommate.

"What's that noise?" J. Wayne asked curiously once the door was open.

Frohike stopped and listened. "Kind of a rustling?"

"Yeah…"

"It's coming from--Oh, no." Frohike dashed into the bathroom and groaned loudly. J. Wayne followed.

"Fuck," commented Frohike. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

The bathtub was alive with tiny purple crabs. They were all over each other, nearly four inches deep. The sound of their shells rattling together was producing a sort of irregular hiss. The tip of the clam shell was just visible under the shifting patterns of the crabs.

Frohike grimaced and reached in to snag it. "Damn!" He yelped and yanked his hand back, shaking off the two crabs that had applied themselves to the skin of his fingers. One landed on the tile and J. Wayne upended the empty ice bucket over it before it could flee.

Frohike was sucking on his finger. "Rotten little bastards," he muttered. He stalked into the other room and returned with a pair of pliers.

Once shaken free of the crabs, the shell was everything Frohike had hoped it wouldn't be: empty, picked clean, almost polished with the action of thousands of tiny claws.

He offered a rhetorical viewpoint that turned J. Wayne's face pink, and left with the clamshell in hand. He was inspecting it closely in the sunlight from the window when J. Wayne, having returned the fugitive crustacean to the tub, rejoined him.

"Nothing," Frohike muttered disgustedly. He dropped the shell heavily onto the table and leaned back against the wall. "I suppose," he said after a while, "we should take some of the crabs with us to see our professor. Not that there's any point."

"You've got a message," J. Wayne commented, gesturing at the phone. "I'll snare a couple of your little friends. Maybe we should take a sample of the purple thing," he suggested.

Frohike shook his head. "Not a good idea. The fewer people know about that right now, the better."

"Okay. Hey," he called from the bathroom, "Why'd you tell those guys about the metal?"

"They've got equipment we're gonna need." He thought about it for a moment. "I should probably make sure the boys are keeping it somewhere safe, now that we know what's in it."

J. Wayne returned, peering into a plastic canister with several crabs scuttling in the bottom of it. "You think it might be dangerous?"

Frohike shrugged. "No. I think we shot enough radiation through it to kill whatever was in it. But I'd rather not take chances." He picked up the phone and got the desk, asking for his messages. He listened for a moment. "Look, it's not like—" he protested, before being cut off. He listened a little longer, and then sighed. "Fine, yeah, okay. We'll do that."

J. Wayne waited for him to hang up, which he did with a certain lack of restraint, and then said, "What's wrong?"

"Apparently," the older man said in leaden tones, "we need to talk to the manager about a pet deposit."

**

The professor wasn't helpful, though not for lack of trying. He declared the crabs to be perfectly common Hemigrapsus nudus. He dissected one and concluded there was nothing abnormal about it. The clam shell had only recently been vacated, and though shore crabs didn't commonly eat geoduck, he supposed with enough of them in a confined area they'd grab at whatever was available.

They weren't pin crabs, he responded with a certain amount of surprise to Frohike's question, but purple, or naked, shore crabs. He went on to explain that as far as he knew, the only possible way for them to have gotten into the bathtub was for someone to have put them there. He lectured at some length about the mating habits of the crabs, and Frohike found himself obliged to put his pack in his lap. Mulder was quite a social liability even when he wasn't around, Frohike reflected.

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to him, and he made their excuses quickly and herded J. Wayne back to the car.

"Mel, what's up?"

"Look, if someone filled the tub with crabs, then maybe they got to the locker, too. We need to go make sure it's safe."

The kid folded himself into the car without another word.

A speeding ticket later, the lock appeared to be unmolested. A check of the closet and its contents showed nothing different from the day before, aside from the smell, which was starting to overwhelm even the climate control in the heat of the summer.

"This is a good place for a Stick-Up," Frohike mused as he closed the cooler chest lid. Definitely starting to feel a bit ill, he dropped the lock into place and snapped it shut. "Well, I guess that's okay. But it doesn't explain the crabs."

"Maybe whoever did it doesn't know about this. Or maybe the lock was too hard to get past."

Frohike sighed. "One thing hanging out with Yves has taught me, no lock is pickproof."

"Who's Yves?"

Frohike wasn't listening. A tall woman with extremely long, blue-black hair was approaching them. She had a limp, huge sunglasses, and a very sharp nose. She was barefoot, and wearing what Frohike could only describe as a collection of gaudy scarves and rags knotted together. It somehow didn't quite cover everything, and he watched with interest as her odd gait caused brief and unexpected revelations of dark skin. Even standing still, she jangled from dozens of pieces of copper jewelry.

"Melvin Frohike," she said, in a high, edgy voice, pulling off her glasses to reveal seriously bloodshot eyes. "And Jay Wayne Arthur, the Third."

"Have, uh, have we met?" Frohike asked, automatically offering his hand.

She took it between both of hers and squeezed. Her hands shook slightly, Frohike noticed, and her left thumb seemed to twitch continuously. "Um, no. Not in this existence. Not until now." She let go of his hand and turned to take J. Wayne's. "I'm Sela Loy," she said. "And I've been looking for you."

Brief suspicion flared for a moment. "How did you know we were here?"

"Well, I followed my guide."

J. Wayne glanced around, seeing no one. "Your guide?" he asked hesitantly.

From somewhere in whatever she was wearing, the woman produced… The two men blinked.

"A Rubik's Cube?" Frohike asked.

"My guide," the woman nodded quickly.

"Oh."

"I know your clam is missing," she told them.

Frohike stared. "Uh, yeah?"

"How do you know about that?" J. Wayne demanded.

She petted the Cube anxiously with the fingertips of her free hand. "My guide told me."

"Uh, yeah." Frohike squinted at it. "Right. Your Rubik's Cube told you about our clam."

"And where to find you."

"And where to find us," he repeated. "Uh, it's telling you anything else?"

"Many things." Shifting her gaze from the men to the Cube and its apparently random patterns, she smiled anxiously at J. Wayne. It seemed to unnerve him. "This won't be everything you hope, but it will be what you want."

"Oh," he said again. "What will?"

"This." She offered a vague wave of her hand that seemed to indicate the closet, the ground, and possibly the entire solar system. Then she turned to Frohike. "And for you, um, barnacles." She looked puzzled.

"Excuse me?"

"Barnacles," she nodded again. She forced the Cube into his hands. "Twist it six times. Don't look at it."

Still baffled, he did as he was told. She took it back and pondered it for a moment, shifting it from side to side and regarding it from various angles. "Ice," she said at last. "Or snow."

"What?" Frohike was startled.

"Or ice cream. I can't be sure. But, yes, barnacles, definitely."

Frohike sighed. "Whatever. Look, Ms. Loy, we're really pretty busy today. We haven't got time for a toy-assisted psychic, okay?"

Her eyelids jumped a bit as she put her sunglasses back. "I understand. I'll be in touch." She pulled a card from—again, somewhere—and handed it to him. Then she turned and walked away, displaying even more glimpses of skin.

Finally, Frohike sighed again and turned to J. Wayne. "I hate this state, you know that? As far as I can tell, there're only about a dozen sane people in the entire goddamned place."

J. Wayne laughed. "I think I'm ready for lunch."

**

Over lunch (not chowder) Frohike pulled out his cell and made a call to Tim Ellis.

"Do you, or does Dottie," he grimaced at J. Wayne across his sandwich, "know someone named Sela Loy?"

J. Wayne stole one of Frohike's french fries as he listened. Evidently, Tim did.

"You can't be serious," Frohike started, only to be interrupted. He listened a while longer, occasionally interjecting exclamations of disbelief, and hung up, sighing. He stared at his fries for several moments without saying anything.

"So what's he say?" J. Wayne asked.

Frohike reached across and grabbed the younger man's dill pickle wedge. J. Wayne grinned and swiped another fry. "Maybe we should order for each other next time," Frohike commented ironically.

J. Wayne laughed. "I'm not getting anywhere near your roast beef. So what's he say?"

"That's a shame. It seems Ms. Loy is a member of a group known in these parts as The Brotherhood of Pragmatic Resistance."

The kid raised an eyebrow. "Resistance to what?"

Frohike closed his eyes. "Alien abduction."

J. Wayne thought about that for a moment. "What's pragmatic resistance?"

Frohike slumped and dropped one hand heavily onto the table. "You don't want to know."

"Why, is it illegal?"

"Who knows? It starts with guns. They seem to be the best-armed bunch of insomniac nutcases in the state."

"That makes me feel safe."

"This'll help, then. It seems the head nutcase is a guy who calls himself Brother Bob the Righteous."

"Brother Bob?"

"Brother Bob the Righteous," Frohike confirmed. "That's not even the worst part. Apparently, pragmatic resistance involves more than just weapons and caffeine addiction. Brother Bob claims to have been targeted for abduction by, I dunno, nocturnal sex-crazed aliens who want his sperm. So to thwart them—"

"He got a vasectomy?"

"Brother Bob is apparently not one for half measures," Frohike told him, eyes closed.

J. Wayne swallowed nervously. "Does that mean—"

"Let's just say he's got an ironclad defense in any paternity suits."

J. Wayne winced and pushed his plate away. "You're right. I didn't want to know." He thought about it for a moment. "And Ms. Loy?"

"Tim says their habit is to name you for the first thing you see when you are 'baptized'. So aside from Brother Bob, there's also Brother Table, Sister Drinking Glass, Brother Window, that sort of thing."

"And Ms. Loy?" J. Wayne persisted.

"Sister Brother Table."

They both contemplated that. Finally J. Wayne said, "Well, I can see why she goes by Sela Loy."

"On the bright side, not all of them have gone as far in the pragmatic resistance thing as Brother Bob. Many of them can still, for example, count to eleven."

J. Wayne snickered.

"Tim says," Frohike commented eventually, "that Ms. Loy is a nutcase, but does seem to be legitimately psychic."

"That's a shame," J. Wayne said mildly.

"What is?"

"He seemed reasonably intelligent."

Frohike just laughed.

**

Idaho was soothingly uneventful on jangled nerves. On the other hand, they were only in the state for three hours. Afternoon in Eastern Washington was turning out to be a blissful monotony of wheat fields, cows, parched grass, and dust, broken only occasionally by the glimpse of a boulder or a tree sitting in the middle of a field or pasture.

Even Langly was learning to live with the cows. He'd appropriated the radio while Byers was driving, declaring the airwaves to be "communal property" and therefore his by right of domestic partnership. His enthusiasm had dimmed upon discovering that the majority of the available stations were broadcasting religious material and farm reports.

He'd skipped lunch and rigged the van's radio to play from his CDs, despite Byers' predictions that Frohike wasn't going to take that well. Langly shot him a look that could've singed gnats, and he shut up and concentrated on driving.

Things went okay until about four, when they found the road blocked by a black stretch limo with darkened windows. Byers pulled the van to a stop and gazed at Langly in puzzlement. "Car troubles?" he mused.

Langly shook his head. "I don't know what the hell a limo would be doing out here in the desert."

Jimmy leaned forward. "Guys, there's somebody in there. Maybe we should go see if they need help or something."

Byers unbuckled himself. "Or at least push it off the road."

As they walked up to the front of the car, it became apparent that there were a lot of somebodies in there, though no one seemed to have noticed the Gunmen. Byers rapped politely on the driver's side window and waited.

"Freaky," Langly muttered. "I can't figure out what they're doin' in there."

"There's enough of them," Jimmy said in confusion, "they should've been able to move the car off the road themselves, right?"

"Unless they were too busy," Langly snickered.

Jimmy's eyes widened. "There's a lot of people in there, Langly. Are you sayin' they're—"

Byers hushed them both before Jimmy could complete his thought. The door opened, and the three of them stood back. A heavy middle aged guy in a rubber Ronald Reagan Halloween mask stepped out of the car, and the Gunmen stepped back even farther. The limo seemed to be packed with guys in Ronald Reagan masks and fuzzy Pikachu bedroom slippers.

The masks added a surreal uniformity to the occupants, but the Gunmen found themselves in a very good position to identify the wearers as male anyway—the masks and the slippers were all they wore.

"Oh, my," Byers said faintly as Jimmy and Langly fought down giggles. "You, uh…"

"Thank God you came," said the man, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.

Byers tried to come up with a logical reply. "Uh, car trouble?" he ventured helplessly. Langly came close to choking, and Jimmy had to pound him on the back.

A second mask leaned out of the car. "UFOs stole our clothes!" he wailed.

"You, uh," Byers smiled painfully. "No kidding," he said finally.

The first man tried to take Byers' hand, a move he prevented by turning away to gaze at the car's skew across the road. "So what, uh, happened out here?"

"Do you have jumper cables?" a third masked man asked Langly.

"Why?" Langly demanded suspiciously. "What are you going to do with them?"

Byers did what he could to suppress the sudden image. "Yes, we do. Let me get them. We'll bring the van closer."

**

As soon as they picked up Mulder, Frohike drove them to the storage locker. Ever obsessive, Mulder had insisted.

"Hold your nose," Frohike advised. "I hate to think what it's going to smell like now."

Mulder and J. Wayne prudently stepped back. Frohike pulled the lock off the hinge and the door exploded outwards as the contents of the closet pressured it open and poured out. Frohike was left standing in the middle of an improbably large pile of multicolored ping pong balls.

Tok… tok... tok… The last few bounced away and finally rolled to a stop.

Frohike stood blinking, too shocked to move, at the inside of the closet, still half-filled with the balls.

"What the fuck…?" Mulder said faintly.

J. Wayne bent over and picked up a yellow ball, regarding it intently.

"Boys?" Mulder said. "Tell me you ran out of Styrofoam peanuts and this is what you went with."

Frohike sighed as they started to dig him out. "We weren't mailing it, Mulder. Someone else did this."

"That's what I was afraid of." Mulder began scrounging hopelessly through the three feet of balls still left in the closet as Frohike and J. Wayne watched in depression.

"Give it up, Mulder, they're not in there."

Mulder thumped into the middle of the pile, the popping noises of balls bursting under his weight. He sniffed. "They didn't leave it here long, either. This whole place smells like… gardenias?"

"Gardenias?" Frohike leaned in and sniffed the air. "Weirdness."

"Well, it certainly doesn't smell like the goo did," J. Wayne commented.

"I assumed not, no," Mulder said, reaching out an arm. J. Wayne helped him up.

Frohike shook his head. "The stuff was here this morning, Mulder. And this place just reeked."

"Wow, those Ionic Breeze things are great, then," Mulder commented, feigning awe. "Let's see if we can…"

"Garbage bags, in the trunk," Frohike told him. "I'll get them." He wandered back, shaking his head.

J. Wayne and Mulder stared helplessly at each other.

"Is it always this weird around these guys?" the kid finally asked.

Mulder shook his head. "Of course not." J. Wayne looked relieved, and Mulder pulled the rug out. "It's usually a lot weirder. Especially if Yves is involved."

"Who's Yves?"

Frohike returned with the box of garbage bags and some latex gloves. "There's no point, Mulder, but what the hell."

They put on the gloves and started scooping the balls into the bags, careful not to miss any. As predicted, the storage closet was devoid of goo, alien or terrestrial.

J. Wayne sighed. "At least we still have the samples and the pictures. What are we saving the balls for, anyway?"

Frohike glanced at Mulder. "You answer this one. You can practice your explanation for Skinner when he starts screaming."

"Who's Skinner?"

"My boss," Mulder sighed. "A man with a very subdued sense of humor. He's not going to like it when I ship thousands of ping pong balls back and ask the lab to fingerprint them."

Frohike snorted. "That's an understatement."

J. Wayne thought about it. "They should be able to fume them with cyanoacrylate. It ought to be faster than printing each one. It's not like you're asking for VMD, after all."

Mulder shrugged. "I just hope I get a chance to explain that before Skinner fires me." He grinned at Frohike. "Gonna need your prints for comparison, J. Wayne."

Frohike snickered. "Ink and powder, Mulder. Kinky."

Mulder kept grinning. "Hey, you brought the prophylactics," he replied, waving a gloved hand at them.

Frohike's own grin grew. "That's not all I brought. Once you get your prints, I've got the UV powder and a black light."

"Always the Boy Scout," Mulder laughed. "Always prepared."

J. Wayne just stared at them.

**

They dropped off Mulder's stuff and the ping pong balls at the hotel. Frohike was relieved to discover the crabs hadn't increased or escaped in the interim, and the look on Mulder's face was priceless. The agent was rendered totally speechless. Frohike wished he'd had a camera ready. He explained briefly.

"Maybe we should fingerprint those, too," Mulder said at last. He blinked and shook his head. "I gather we're showering with the kid? Or is he the one who gave you the crabs in the first place."

Frohike snorted and went to check his messages. He listened briefly to the desk manager and turned around to gaze at Mulder, who was examining the specimen containers. He raised an eyebrow at the agent.

Mulder noticed and made a face. "Stop that. I get enough of that from Scully."

Frohike put the phone down. "Who knows where you're staying?"

Mulder shrugged. "Who'd you tell? I didn't even know where we were staying, exactly. Why?" he added, as an afterthought.

"Somebody left an envelope for you at the desk. And I didn't tell anybody."

Mulder shrugged again. "Maybe J. Wayne did."

Frohike shook his head. "I don't know why he would have. Hey, do you know about something called the Brotherhood of Pragmatic Resistance?"

"No. Should I? Resistance to what?"

"Alien abduction. Where do you want to eat?"

Mulder considered both statements with equal intensity. "I dunno. They tried to feed me on the plane, so anything would probably be a step up from that. How do they resist alien abduction? Become UFOlogy authors?"

"Nothing so conventional. It's actually not the abduction per se that they're resisting. The head nutbar seems convinced that the aliens visit him at night to steal his sperm."

Mulder made a face. "He got a vasectomy?"

"He seems to have gone a little overboard, actually."

Mulder winced. "You're not telling me—"

"That he doesn't play piano standing up anymore?"

Mulder shook his head. "That's disgusting, even from you, Frohike."

Frohike snickered. "Yeah, but you knew what I meant."

"There was this fratboy in my misspent youth…"

"I never pictured you as a fratslut, Mulder," Frohike commented dryly. "But yeah, that's what I'm telling you about Brother Bob the Righteous."

"Brother Bob…"

"The Righteous."

"Okay, but does it work?"

"Apparently not. He's got a group of well-armed nutcases in a compound in Sammamish."

"That's very reassuring. Where's Sammamish?"

"I don't know, exactly, but I understand they have a big fish festival every year."

Mulder sighed. "I think they put something in the coffee."

**

The envelope at the desk was anonymous enough, but questioning of the desk clerk who'd taken it revealed that it probably wasn't Ms. Loy or any of her fellow jittery insomniacs who'd left it. They gathered J. Wayne and piled into the rental again to find dinner. Mulder opened the envelope and took a look through what initially appeared to be a dozen photos of unusual UFOs. Not the standard saucer shapes, and not even the deltas they kept running into reports of out here.

Mulder's initial excitement faded almost instantly. He tilted the photos slightly so Frohike could see them.

Frohike gave them a two-second glance, snorted, and looked back to the stoplight, a cynical smile on his face. "Someone's fond of you, Mulder."

Mulder sighed and handed the photos back to J. Wayne.

The kid looked through them, silent for a moment. "I don't—" he started, and then stopped. "Well, that's weird."

Mulder slumped. "I get this kind of thing all the time," he said to no one in particular.

Frohike just laughed.

**

"Private party, boys?" Allen pulled out a chair and sat down next to Mulder. "What are you doing in town?"

"Starting a grunge band. How are you, Allen," Mulder said without enthusiasm.

J. Wayne gave in to the inevitable and made room for Rosenberg and Dodden.

"It takes a really big deal to get the FBI out," Rosenberg noted. "What aren't you telling us, Mel?"

"Me? Keep things from my pals at Apple Cart?" Frohike feigned surprise.

Allen heaved a sigh. "What's it gonna take to get it out of you?"

A cruel notion hit Frohike abruptly. He caught Mulder's eye for a split second and grinned slyly. "Why would you think we were hiding anything?"

Rosenberg glanced at each of the three men, suddenly thoughtful. "You and Walt have something on the side," he speculated.

Frohike went for offended. "We told you everything we knew."

Allen sat up as if he'd been jabbed. "Everything you knew?" he asked, repeating the subtle emphasis.

Mulder turned away very deliberately, acting disappointed.

Frohike looked crestfallen, and tried to bluff through it. "Yeah. Everything." He didn't—quite—meet Allen's eyes.

J. Wayne started to say something and found Frohike's hand on his leg under the table. He shut his mouth in a hurry.

"You're looking shifty, Mel," Allen commented. "Spill."

Rosenberg gave Mulder a fast look. "Let's not get personal. We're all friends, remember."

Frohike experienced a quick stab of remorse, but it passed. They were press, after all. "Well, if we did find something," he said nastily, "that 'shifty' crack would cost you big, Chuck."

"Ah-hah!" Allen crowed.

Mulder sighed and leaned close to Frohike. "You have to stop letting these guys bait you," he hissed.

Rosenberg looked from one to the other. "What do you want for it, Mel?"

Frohike tried sheepish. "I don't—"

"Okay, Mel. Let's talk trade. What do you want?"

Frohike sighed and let his shoulders slump, to all appearances defeated. "A stiff drink."

Allen grinned. "Deal."

Mulder snorted, and Rosenberg smiled. "We'll just get the check. Now, what is it?"

Frohike and Mulder glared at each other for a moment, evidently oblivious to the rest of the world. Mulder shrugged at him. "You spilled it, you go get it."

Frohike sighed and stood. "J. Wayne, if he gets his parsley anywhere near my plate, I expect you to spit in his drink."

J. Wayne blinked while Mulder and Allen snickered.

Rosenberg smiled gently at the two cubs. "The only people stranger than reporters are the FBI," he explained. "They've been tossing parsley at each other over dinner for years."

Dodden and J. Wayne didn't seem particularly enlightened.

"We can explain it to ya," Allen smirked, "but we can't understand it for ya. Go on, Mel, I'm keeping an eye on him."

**

Twenty minutes later, the three reporters stared at their new prizes.

"Checkers," Dodden said eventually, sighing.

"You what?" Allen yelped.

"Checkers and marbles. You know, the toys?"

Rosenberg looked more carefully at his picture. "I hate to say it, but he's right."

"They've been painted silvery-gray. And photographed from a very controlled angle. Sorry."

"Well," Rosenberg began.

"Don't say it," Allen begged.

"Someone's playing games with us."

Allen smacked his forehead. "I'm putting in for a transfer. Maybe they need another guy in cold fusion."

"They must have known," Rosenberg said thoughtfully.

Allen pitched the envelope into the back seat, narrowly missing Dodden, and started the car. "Mel's gonna pay."

**

"And I guess it's a good thing Ringo packed so many extra clothes, because we ended up giving most of it to them. He's not happy about it, and I owe him a bunch of new shirts." Byers paused. "Fro? Still there?"

Frohike nodded, still speechless, and realized Byers couldn't see it. He cleared his throat. "Twenty-seven naked guys," he said, hoping Byers would correct him. He didn't, and Mulder stopped looking at the sample containers and stared.

"In Ronald Reagan masks," Byers confirmed unhappily.

"In Ronald Reagan masks," Frohike repeated for Mulder's benefit. "And Pokémon slippers."

"Pikachu, I believe. When they drove away, they were all singing that Jigglypuff song."

"Okay, that's it. Jimmy's not watching cartoons anymore. The only thing more pathetic than you knowing the Jigglypuff song, Byers, is me knowing what you're talking about."

Byers almost chuckled. "Believe me, twenty-seven naked men singing it is worse than either of those. We collected several drawings of the alleged craft and occupants. Jimmy and Ringo have spent the better part of the last few hours speculating on why there were twenty-seven guys in slippers and masks in a limo in the middle of nowhere to begin with."

Frohike gave it a moment's horrified thought. "What'd they come up with?"

"I had my earplugs in, but I think they decided it was probably someone testing hallucinogenic substances on the population again."

"Surprise, surprise. Maybe it was a cult. We ran into one of those today."

"A naked Ronald Reagan cult?"

"Something called The Brotherhood of Pragmatic Resistance."

"What are they resisting?"

"UFO abduction."

"I wonder if they know the ones we ran into."

"You'd have known. The Brotherhood is less worried about having its clothes stolen than its sperm."

"There is some mention, in the literature, about missing or disarranged clothing. And, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the ones we ran into were all men."

"It's the pragmatic resistance thing. These aren't your guys. Trust me, you'd have known."

Byers listened to Mulder's hysterical laughter in the background and a terrible suspicion dawned. "You're not saying--"

"That they're not going to be in any good porn movies, no."

"Dear Lord," Byers breathed. "That's…"

"Yeah," Frohike agreed. "Shut up, Mulder," he added as an afterthought.

"What's Mulder think about the samples?"

Frohike sighed. "They're gone, Byers."

"Gone?"

"Yeah. We got back here to pick up the clam, and it'd been eaten by crabs."

"Eaten by crabs," Byers repeated carefully.

"Uh, yeah. Thousands of the little bastards, in my bathtub. They ate the damned thing."

"I don't remember you mentioning crabs."

"Well, yeah. We're thinkin' someone put them in there to get rid of the clam."

"Someone's getting rid of evidence?"

"It might be our friends in the dark suits. Whoever it was also got to the stuff in storage."

"More crabs?" Byers asked incredulously.

"Ping pong balls."

Byers was silent for a while. "I didn't hear that, I don't think."

Frohike sighed and explained it, as vaguely as possible, while Mulder sat and smirked at him from across the room.

"Frohike?"

"Yeah."

"Are you drunk?"

Frohike heaved another sigh. "I wish. Just hang onto your piece, will you? There's something weird going on out here."

Byers was quiet long enough to alarm him. He caught Mulder's eye and jerked his head at the door. Once the agent had left, he sprawled on the bed. "What are you thinking, Byers?"

"Hmm?"

"Look, you've been acting strange since this whole thing started. What're you thinking?"

"Mel?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you still have that bad feeling about this one?"

He thought about it. "I dunno, John. It's not as bad as it was. I mean, what's going on out here is weird, but it's more frustrating than anything else. I don't like the thought of somebody going around stealing trace."

"Well," Byers said reflectively, "The fact that there's so much activity has to mean something is going on."

Frohike nodded. "Yeah, I think so, too. Flap and Apple Cart showed up today, by the way."

"Oh? Who's there?"

"Allen and Rosenberg. Steve Helder came out himself, with a couple of his kids. We banged out some territory agreements."

"I trust you didn't give away too much."

"Do I ever?"

Byers could hear the feral grin, and assumed everybody had gotten a royal screwing at Frohike's hands. "I'm sure J. Wayne is learning a good deal from you."

"Everything I know."

Byers did chuckle this time. "Everything?"

Frohike snorted. "Okay, not quite everything. Are you guys staying put for the night?"

"We'll keep going for another hour or so. Nobody's tired, and we haven't found a decent-looking hotel yet."

"When do you think you'll get here?"

"Um, noon, maybe. Barring any more weirdness."

"Okay. I still want you boys to be careful."

"We will, Mel." Byers came perilously close to smirking. "Sleep well." He chuckled. "Bad influence, I know."

Frohike sighed and disconnected. He got up and wandered over to listen at the wall he shared with J. Wayne, but didn't hear the two of them, so he assumed Mulder had gone elsewhere. Probably raiding the local convenience store for sunflower seeds, knowing Mulder.

Or, and this was a scary thought, he was off checking out one of the many porn shops in the neighborhood.

He wandered into the bathroom and stared at the crabs again. They were going to have to figure out what to do with the damned things. The rattling noise was getting on his nerves. He was still thinking about it when he heard the door open and close, followed by the sounds of a paper bag. There were none of the familiar sunflower-seed-cracking noises, so he assumed the worst.

"Mulder, if you've gotten some kind of pop-up book again…"

Not so much as a laugh from the other room, and Frohike suddenly hoped it was Mulder, pop-up book or no, instead of, oh, any number of people who might have decided to pay him an unannounced visit, say Yves, or the Men in Black.

He went somewhat cautiously back into the bedroom, only to be grabbed from behind and pushed face-first into the wall.

"Hey, Fro," a soft voice chuckled at his ear, "remember last night?"

"Oh, hell yeah," he said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "The kid does this thing with his tongue, you wouldn't believe—"

Mulder manhandled him around, leaning in and down with his mouth right next to Frohike's. "Tell me more."

Frohike relaxed between the agent and the wall. "Why do we always have to talk?"

Mulder's eyes glazed slightly. "You're right. Screw the conversation. You can show me."

Frohike laughed. "Okay, what'd you get me?"

"It depends."

"That doesn't sound good. What's it depend on, Mulder?"

"On what you've got for me."

Frohike sighed. "Lame."

Mulder leaned closer and tugged at Frohike's chin with his thumb. Lips millimeters apart, eyes locked. "Maybe I can make it up to you."

Frohike's smart remark was smothered under Mulder's hungry onslaught. He finally had to push Mulder away just to breathe. "Jesus, Mulder—" he gasped, only to have his mouth claimed again. The urgency was almost shocking. Mel was accustomed to a meandering pursuit, an equality of wit and want. It was only when Mulder shoved him against the wall again, hard, loud, both hands up the front of his shirt, mouth fierce on Mel's own, that he realized what was driving the agent.

Mulder broke the kiss to pull his shirt off, and Frohike put a hand on his chest, holding him slightly away until he could get enough breath to speak.

"Mulder," he panted. "God. You gotta let me breathe now and then."

"Mel—" the plea was raw and real. Frohike dropped his hand and his objections and stretched his head back, exposing his neck to Mulder's fevered advances. He laced his fingers through the younger man's thick hair, and slid his other hand down Mulder's back to cup the firm flesh of his ass.

For once, Mulder's assault was totally wordless, the only sounds their harsh breathing and Frohike's own moans, getting louder by the second. Mulder pinned him to the wall, hands everywhere at once. Mulder undid Frohike's buttons, pulling vest and shirt back and half off, trapping Frohike's arms behind him, leaving him helpless in Mulder's grip. Fingers grazed Mel's hard cock, and he gasped again, head hitting the wall.

There was no way the kid could miss this, and the thought of him listening was pushing Frohike to the edge almost as fast as it seemed to be pushing Mulder. The agent's sudden streak of exhibitionism was beginning to surprise him with its intensity, and he just hoped it wasn't going to turn into one of Mulder's freaky obsessions. Frohike didn't need months of Mulder trying to talk him into, for example, sex at an ATM booth. Mulder could get some weird ideas.

"Umph!" He slammed against the wall again. Mulder was tugging at his pants, sliding down his body. "Fuck!" he yelped. "Mulder!"

The younger man yanked away abruptly, staring up. "Mel? What?"

"Careful—" he gasped, dimly aware of a thump from the other side of the wall. "Jesus."

Mulder held him up while he tried to get himself together enough to explain. He fumbled out of his shirt, revealing a stark white handprint across the red blotch on his forearm.

Mulder pulled him over under the light and scrutinized what at this point couldn't be mistaken for anything but a burn.

"Listen, Mel, the next time you and the kid play together, you should remind him that I want you returned in the original condition."

"Very funny," Frohike said flatly.

"What happened?"

"Allergic reaction to something, I guess."

Mulder shook his head. "That's a burn. What happened?"

"It's just a rash, but I got hot water on it this morning in the shower." He prodded it gently. "Maybe I'm allergic to the burn cream, too. I'll try something else tomorrow. Now do you want to talk about my arm, or do you want to have sex?"

Mulder actually seemed to be thinking it over. Frohike wasn't fooled for a second, though. "Let's have sex." Mulder gave him a sly look. "Maybe you should tie me up so I don't accidentally grab your arm again."

Frohike sighed. "You're lazy enough already, Mulder."

"I was doing okay for a while there."

"That's true. Let's give that a try again. But maybe on the bed this time."

Mulder sighed. "I suppose if you've got your heart set on it." He grinned down at Frohike. "You don't want to see what I got you?"

"Probably not." He pulled Mulder with him to the bed. "Does it rhyme in any way?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"A vital one, after the 'Amarillo' tape."

Mulder snickered. "It doesn't rhyme."

"It's not another pop-up book?"

"Nope."

Frohike sighed as he sprawled onto the bed. "Promise me it's not more novelty baking products."

"Of course not. We're a long way from 'Hot Buns'. I wasn't gone that long."

"True, but if there's another erotic bakery closer, you'd know where it was."

"I've learned not to waste 'Saucy Tarts' on you."

Mel's eyes snapped open. "Uh, Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

"Who do you get them for, then?"

Mulder smirked. "Why, Frohike, are you jealous?"

Mel closed his eyes and shook his head, relaxing again. "I just had this sudden image of Scully with jelly roll filling all over her fingers." The bed started to shake, and he heard a strange series of muffled noises. Against his better judgment, he opened one eye to see Mulder, collapsed next to him, red-faced and helpless with silent laughter.

Frohike sighed. "I can see we're going for an Anoxia Theme Night. You should probably start breathing anytime now."

Mulder finally recovered himself, swiping at tears with long fingers. "If you want to do that," he managed, "there are better ways."

"Keep your belt to yourself, you sicko," Frohike said firmly. "Even I've got some limits."

Mulder looked mildly embarrassed. "That's not what I had in mind, either. Sure you don't want to see what I got you?"

Frohike thought it over. "Is it illegal?"

"Nope. Is this Twenty Questions?"

"With you, Mulder, this is just common sense. Can we rule out small animals again?"

"Never mind. Maybe the kid would be interested."

"Mulder, so help me, if there's a gerbil in that bag—" He was distracted by Mulder's breathy whisper in his ear.

"Nothing like that. You should learn to trust me."

"I could get there from here," Frohike said, starting to relax as Mulder's mouth moved down his neck.

"Sappy," Mulder scolded fondly. "You're getting sappy on me."

"You're getting slobber on me."

Mulder chuckled against his shoulder. He was going to say something when they heard a particularly loud cracking noise from the bathroom.

Frohike winced. "I hate to think what that is."

"Maybe they're escaping down the drain. Why would they fill your bathtub with crabs?"

Frohike shrugged. "Dunno. Why would they fill the storage with ping pong balls? Naked shore crabs seem almost boring at this point."

"Naked shore crabs?"

"That's what the professor said they were."

"That's interesting."

"It's because they don't have bristles."

"No, I know that."

Frohike stared at the top of Mulder's head. "You knew that?"

"Yeah. That's not really what's interesting about them."

"I probably don't want to know."

"They're some of the hungriest crabs around. They're aggressive predators, among the most voracious small crabs on the Pacific coast."

"That's comforting, considering we're sharing a room with several thousand of the bastards."

"They don't fly, they don't jump, and they don't eat people. Relax. I'm just saying, it makes sense that they chose the naked shore crabs instead of mole crabs or something."

"Repeat that sentence, will you? Slowly."

"It's just that if they wanted to feed your clam to a type of crab—" He broke off abruptly. "Okay, I suppose overall it doesn't make any sense."

"Right. Why not just steal the clam? And why leave all the specimens and the other trace?"

"Maybe they just wanted you to think the crabs were an accident. Accelerated breeding, maybe."

"Well, I did think that, initially. I mean, Dak—"

"Dak?"

"The guy who took us to Maury. He was saying that crabs live in the clams. And you and I both know what some of that mutant crap can do to stuff, and I'm not sure the clam was normal to begin with. So when the storage closet was fine, I just assumed it was something like that."

"The ping pong balls were kind of obvious."

"Yeah. We know these people, Mulder. Why not just burn the whole thing down? These are not subtle people."

"I suppose not." Mulder was idly playing with Frohike's chest hair, while the Gunman kept his right arm carefully out of the way. It was stretched over his head, making him look, Mulder thought with a smile, like a pin-up boy. He pulled Frohike's glasses off and slid one hand down to trace the older man's ribs. Frohike practically purred.

Mulder leaned in and gently sucked at the nearest nipple.

"Oh…" Frohike's hand buried itself in Mulder's hair again, fingers playing across his scalp and leaving his whole body tingling. Mulder's own hand pressed briefly into the jut of the older man's hip as he swiped his tongue sharply across the nipple in his teeth. Frohike groaned, long and deep, arching himself against Mulder.

Mulder tried it again, delighted with the noise, and Frohike's other hand was suddenly at his cheek, rubbing teasingly against the stubble. "Mmm…" he sighed into all that chest hair. "Scully's nowhere near this much fun to share a room with."

Frohike's moan twisted into a laugh and a gasp when Mulder slid his hand back along his zipper. He could feel Mulder's grin against him. "Maybe you should show her the pop-up book," he muttered.

"I did. She called me a pervert."

"Ohhh… We have so much in common."

"Scully thinks we're both perverts?"

"No… We both think you're a pervert."

Mulder laughed. "Yeah, but you love me for it."

"Well, that's true." He wriggled a bit and arched a little, and then he was naked with Mulder laying half on top of him, and then Mulder was naked too, hard against his leg. "Okay, so what'd you get," he asked, not as collected as he could have hoped.

Mulder grinned down at him, and raised his hand to display—

"What the fuck is that?"

Mulder held it closer so he could see the picture better. "Therapy."

"Tell me that's not what I think it is."

"Well, let's just say it wouldn't do The Brotherhood any good."

Frohike squeezed his eyes closed tight. "Mulder, we had an agreement. No more novelty condoms."

"It's not a novelty. It's therapy," Mulder insisted. "They didn't have any clams, but I thought a gooseneck barnacle would help you get over your clam issues."

"I can't tell you how much it won't help."

Mulder's free hand was roaming Frohike's body, which was responding despite his best intentions.

"You know," Mulder said smoothly, "the barnacle has the longest penis in relation to body size…"

"Mulder!"

Frohike tried smothering Mulder's mouth against his belly, but the lecture continued. "Some of them have penises up to seven times their body length. A gooseneck barnacle has a penis-to-body ratio of one-and-a-half inches to five inches. That's like me having a twenty-two inch penis."

Frohike blinked and thought about it. "That'd be… something, all right," he said eventually. "Holy cow."

Mulder grinned down at him. "In your case, it'd be a little less…"

"I'm going next door. The kid doesn't make short jokes."

Mulder tried for offended. "It'd still be nineteen inches or so. Nothing to sneeze at."

"Mulder, what the hell would you do with nineteen inches, anyhow?"

The younger man grinned. "Well, barnacles are hermaphroditic. So each of them unfurls its penis, which is prehensile, did I mention that?"

"Mulder," Frohike whimpered. "I don't need to hear this."

"And it reaches around until it can get its penis into a barnacle nearby. So sometimes barnacles will fertilize each other. I've seen the footage—it's amazing."

Frohike covered his eyes and tried not to think about the images Mulder was suggesting. "Mulder?"

"Mmm, yeah. What?"

"If you don't put that fucking thing away, you're gonna be rooming with Jimmy and I'm moving in with J. Wayne."

There was a quiet thump of something hitting the carpet. "Consider it gone." He looked up at Frohike. "And consider me," he said, the laughter just below the surface of his low voice, "sulking."

"God—" Frohike flipped him over fast enough to leave spots in front of Mulder's eyes, and when they cleared Frohike was sucking at his lower lip, muttering harsh encouragements. Mulder was careful of Mel's arm this time, keeping his hands to Frohike's torso. When his fingers trailed between the older man's thighs, Frohike groaned, pushing himself down hard against Mulder.

"Mulder."

"Ummm, yeah. Yeah—Huh?" Mulder blinked, trying to refocus. "What?"

"Tell me you have some normal rubbers, too."

"I told you, I'm always prepared." Mulder shifted slightly, reaching over the side of the bed, and fumbled in his abandoned jeans. Lube and condoms were pressed into Frohike's hand. "Fuck me, Fro."

"All in good time, Mulder." He slipped a slow finger into Mulder's ass, and concentrated for a while on making him moan, which he did a little louder than was perhaps strictly necessary. Frohike himself was acutely aware of J. Wayne on the other side of the wall, and he knew Mulder was too.

Thinking about the kid reminded him of something. He had to repeat the agent's name a couple of times to get his attention.

"Hmm…?"

"What's VMD?"

"Huh?"

"VMD. You and J. Wayne were talking about printing the balls."

"Oh." Mulder shook his head, remembering. "Vacuum metal deposition. It's what tech geeks do with extra time and money. You, uh, you take your evidence, that you think might have latent prints on it, and you seal it in a vacuum chamber. Then you—oh, God, Fro, your hands—you, uh. You evaporate a couple milligrams of gold and zinc in there, and they condense on the evidence, on the prints."

"Sounds expensive."

"Yeah… The whole process is… automated, though, so you can get consistent—consistent—" Mulder panted for a moment as Frohike teased his prostate. "You, uh. God… God, that's good."

Frohike withdrew and waited patiently for Mulder to resume his seminar.

"Where was I?" he said after a while, running his hand across his face. "Oh… The results are consistently better, and it works where other methods don't. You can, uh," he swallowed, watching Frohike roll the condom onto himself. "You can use it if cyanoacrylate ether fuming doesn't work, even."

"Superglue, right," Frohike said absently.

"Yeah…" Mulder took a deep breath as Frohike pushed his legs up and spread him. "Ooohhhhh…" A low moan was torn from him as Frohike thrust slowly in. "Ohh." He whimpered when Frohike reached for his own swollen shaft with a knowing grip. Mulder struggled to get his legs around the older man, to pull him deeper, faster. Mel didn't respond to his urgings, and he threw his head back, trying to buck into Mel's hand instead.

Mel held Mulder still until he was in that tight ass up to his balls, and flicked his thumb across the throbbing vein on Mulder's cock.

Mulder cried out at the sensation, taken by surprise. "Mel…" The pleading note was back in his voice. "Hard, Mel. Fuck me hard."

Frohike wouldn't have been surprised if the people across the hall heard that. He grinned slightly and pulled out, still slow enough to torment Mulder. When he thrust back in, it was hard and fast, and Mulder's shout was even louder.

"Harder—"

Frohike ran his hand along Mulder's leg, demanding he spread wider. "I'm not… nineteen inches, Mulder," he mumbled.

Mulder's laugh was ragged. "You feel like twenty-two. Harder," he insisted.

Frohike did his best. Mulder was rhapsodizing about—something—as he came, pulling Frohike with him.

They stayed like that, still tangled together, gasping for breath. Frohike's brain eventually started working again.

"Mulder?"

"Hmm?" The younger man had that glassy-eyed sated look that was second only to The Pout.

"The Mounties, Mulder?"

"Mounties."

Frohike sighed. "The Mounties. You were talking about—"

"Oh." Mulder stretched languidly, and Frohike had a sudden moment of gratitude for his age. At least these days there was a chance of getting through a couple of conversations with Mulder without pinning him down and fucking him again. Even when he looked like that.

"We used to have to use the RCMP's setup. They were the first ones in North America to get one." He yawned. "It's been used on evidence up to twenty years old, to find latents. It doesn't damage the evidence, which is good, and if you evaporate silver, you can use it to read tooling marks on credit cards. So it's good for fraud cases. Plus it provides superior resolution… Didn't I already explain this?"

"I was distracted," Frohike said, staggering to his feet. "Hey," he said. "You were imagining I was J. Wayne, weren't you."

"Would I do that?" Mulder tried to look innocent.

"Yes."

"Actually, I was imagining I was J. Wayne."

"Oh, good."

"Huh?"

"So was I." He Cheshired into the bathroom, the grin hanging in the air for a bare moment as he closed the door behind him.

**

"Guys?" Jimmy said in awed tones. "What do you make of that?"

The three of them were silent for a very long moment as they stared at the sky.

"Keep driving," Langly eventually instructed. "I'm out of shirts and so are you."

**

*Next Up: Caffeine, Conspiracies, and the Fortean Nature of Fishes X: The Strawberry Ice Cream Show: In which all our boys are reunited just in time to experience bizarre forms of cruelty to produce, while Scully mocks Mulder mercilessly from afar.*

Harpy hdsidhe@gmail.com Handmaiden of the Goddess of Irony

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