Title: Small Sound Black Dreams

Author/pseudonym: Amatia

Fandom: X-Files/The Silence of the Lambs

Paring: Dana Scully/Clarice Starling, implied Mulder/Krycek

Rating: Overall R. Individual parts vary.

Archive: Yep.

Disclaimers: X-Files characters are the property of 1013. Clarice Starling in the creation of Thomas Harris, movie rights are Orion's.

Summary: An old love of Scully's returns.

Warnings: Spoilers for XF - "Fire", "The End", "The Red and the Black".

Spoilers for "The Silence of the Lambs" (movie) and slight ones for "Hannibal" (book).

Notes: This series was started over a year ago, and it's still growing. Thanks go to Hth for planting the seed for this all with her fic, "Thank You For Not Smoking". All parts have now been given a Roman Numeral designation for easy identification and ordering. :-)

Small Sound Black Dreams

by Amatia

She didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, to scream or to weep. She didn't know whether she could trust him anymore. She didn't know if he merited her trust anymore.

Mulder sat on her couch with a hang-dog look on his face, while she paced, occasionally shooting him a deadly glare. The carpeting showed her path as she crossed back and forth before the couch. Her anger at Mulder alternated with what she had learned to be the emotion that came after anger at Mulder - the need for double fudge brownie ice dream. Consequently, she always felt guilty afterwards.

"Scully, stop pacing," he muttered through clenched teeth.

"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped, and continued walking to Hong Kong using only her living room.

There was silence for another five minutes while Scully struggled to compartmentalize the anger she felt. This was the anger toward Mulder, here, and the anger toward Krycek, and the anger toward the men that had influenced their actions. Then there was the anger toward herself, anger for remembering - and wanting to remember - things that had happened a long time ago, six years ago, when she was teaching at Quantico. She reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, then let her fingers slide outward to rub her eyes tiredly.

"Scully..." Mulder made another plea.

"Don't talk, Mulder. Don't speak. Don't try to explain what I saw. It explained itself."

"It's not what you think, Scully!"

She stopped pacing and stared at him. "I came to your apartment, Mulder, wanting to tell you something about someone that meant a great deal to me, and I found you naked on your floor. With your arms wrapped around Krycek."

"I was drugged!"

"Mulder, there was cum all over your floor, goddamnit! You *fucked* Alex Krycek. The man who shot your father! Don't tell me that you didn't have the *slightest* clue as to what was transpiring between you."

Scully began to pace again, her face set in hard, long lines. Mulder buried his face in his hands. "You win," he murmured.

"What?" she said, stopping.

"You win, Scully. You were right - it never would have happened if I hadn't wanted it to. I...I'd wanted him for a long time, in one of those hidden parts of my mind that not even you get to see. I just ignored it, translated it into the need to beat him to a bloody pulp every time I saw him. Alex Krycek. Nice guy. Killed my father. And I want to fuck him. God, I'm fucked up."

Scully was staring at him again. "I never would have thought you were gay, not in a million years."

"Maybe because I'm not gay, Scully. Remember Phoebe?"

"And Diana," she said icily.

"Jesus, Scully, are you trying to kill me here tonight?"

"Damnit Mulder, I don't know what I'm trying to do! This... you... with Krycek...scared me, Mulder. Even if you were drugged, the fact that you wanted to do it remains. You know that he is our enemy, Mulder."

"The fact that someone is your enemy don't mean that you can't be attracted to them. I don't want a relationship with Krycek, Scully. I wouldn't want that in a million years. But it doesn't change the fact that he makes me want him. I would never have acted on it, but when he put that drug into my soda, it made me a little less...inhibited."

Scully tossed him his jacket. "I'd appreciate it if you left, Mulder."

"Scully..." he said, his voice almost a wimper.

She gave him a tight, tiny smile. "I'll call you in the morning, Mulder. I'm not angry with you anymore, okay?"

"Okay," he breathed, a smile crossing his face. "Tomorrow."

He left, and Scully went into the kitchen to find the double fudge brownie ice cream. A frown line creased her forehead as someone knocked on the door. "Mulder, I thought I sent you home," she called as she went to answer it.

"Well, I'm not Mulder, and you didn't send me home," came a woman's alto voice.

Scully stopped dead in the middle of the living room. Dear God, could it be? After all these years, Clarice had come to see her? She shook herself out of the daze and hurried to unlock the door. "Clari?" she asked in amazement. The taller woman smiled, and held up her badge. "Special Agent Clarice Starling, FBI." She stepped though the doorway and wrapped her arms around Scully, holding tightly. Scully hugged back just as hard. When they stepped apart, both women's eyes were wet with tears.

"It's been years," Scully said, squeezing Starling's hand.

"I know," Starling said, "and I'm sorry."

Scully pulled her further inside the apartment, and shut the door. "Please, take your coat off. I was just about to have some guilt-complex ice cream, care to join me?"

Starling laid her trench coat over the back of the couch. looking around the apartment. "It hasn't changed much, Dana."

"No," Scully said, "it hasn't."

They went into the kitchen and sat down. Scully handed Starling a spoon. "So what brought you all the way out here from Utah?"

"I've been transferred back to Washington," Starling said. "They want me back teaching at Quantico. Boss said something about my skills being better suited to teaching. Said I could scare all the recruits with the Buffalo Bill case."

Scully remembered, nodding. "I remember the first time you told me about it. Made me glad I was teaching how to perform the perfect autopsy rather than chasing after serial killers."

Starling licked ice cream off her spoon. "I hear you're working on the X-Files with Spooky Mulder, Dana."

Somehow their free hands had become entwined on top of the table. Starling's thumb was stroking the back of Scully's hand.

"Yeah, for the past five years. After...after you got transferred to Salt Lake City, they moved me out of Quantico. They must have known that I was dying there."

"I'm sorry I left you like that, Dana," Starling said softly. "I tried to persuade them to let me stay at Quantico, but it didn't work. And if I had told them about us, they would have moved me even further than Utah."

"And then it became so hard to keep in touch," Scully whispered. "I couldn't love you the same with all those miles between us."

"Nor I you," Starling admitted. She set down her spoon and wiped a drop of chocolate off of Scully's cheek. Scully parted her lips, and Starling slid her finger in. Scully sucked the chocolate off of Starling's finger, her eyes never leaving the other woman's face. "I still want you, Dana," Starling whispered.

Scully's response was to get up off her chair and kiss her, long and hard. "I feel like you never left, Clari" she murmured against Starling's lips. Starling pulled her down onto her lap. "I feel the same way."

They kissed again, tasting the chocolate in each other's mouths, tongues tangling and stroking against each other. Scully felt as if she were drowning in a sea of red light with flashes of gold. Sparks flew behind her eyelids as Starling explored her mouth, relearning every crevice, memorizing the taste of her again.

They broke apart when the need for oxygen became too great to ignore. Scully slid off of Starling's lap. "Now, Clari."

"Are you sure, Dana?"

"Yes," Scully whispered. "I've never been more sure."

Starling held onto her waist. "Is there anyone else right now?"

"No."

"Not Mulder?"

"No, not Mulder. He has too many demons."

"He has black dreams," Starling said, recalling their old lingo for agents who walked the line between being sane and having a breakdown.

"He's walked the line for years."

"Small steps will get you anywhere."

Scully tugged at Starling's hand. "Please, let's not talk about Mulder. Just make love to me, Clari."

Starling stood, and in one fluid movement, picked Scully up. "Remember the first time I did this?"

"Yes. The first time you came over after I moved in."

"Best orgasm you'd ever had, I bet," Starling said with a grin.

"I think I'm going to have a better one tonight." Scully grinned back.

Starling went down the hallway, carrying Scully carefully, and laid her down on the bed in what had once been their bedroom. "I haven't stopped loving you," she said quietly.

"Nor I you," Scully replied. "I just didn't let it show."

"Let it show now, Dana."

Scully reached up for Starling. "Oh, I will, Clari, I will..."

---end----