Title: The Chiropractor 2 (1/1)
Author: Shirlock
Rating: NC17
Category: Sequel
Summary: Takes a joker and a jokee to make it practical.
Revenge is sweet but payback is sweeter. This is the
sequel to The Chiropractor. You'll need to read that first to make 
any sense of this.
Disclaimer: All recognisable names belong to Chris Carter, Fox 
and 1013 Productions.
Distribution: OK Gossy, OK Spookys. Anyone else please ask.
Timeline: After Millenium but  before season 7.
Feedback is appreciated: shirlock67@home.com

Completed: August 2001 

*****

Tuesday morning
Corner of L and 13th Street.
11:27 am

Something terrifying is in the air. Something horrible is 
awaiting me. I can feel it in my bones, smell it in the air, 
but most of all, I can see it in my appointment book laid open
to today's date- April 1. There, in not-too-subtle but 
tell-tale red, my secretary Jeannie has penned the 
deliverer of my doom. 

12:10pm- Fox Mulder. The entry is made hastily, a last minute 
arrangement. It's April Fools day. More fool me for promising 
my partner Stanley I'd take over his clients this week without 
checking on who's coming. While he's hobnobbing with celebrity 
chiropractors in Allentown, I may get my face totally rearranged 
by someone totally capable of such a feat. 

I could go to San Diego... Oh wait. Bill's on furlough. I don't think 
he's forgiven me for that practical joke I played on him on his 
wedding day. Six years is pretty long to wait for a frosty recep-
tion I don't much care for. But that's Bill for you. I recalled what 
Dana had said to me a week after their fateful visit- Fox Mulder 
is not a man to be doublecrossed. He's an insanely meticulous, if
slightly off-kilter individual, but no less dangerous than your  
garden variety psycho. He'll exact revenge if provoked. He'll want 
'closure'. In order words- payback. The trip to San Diego 
sounds like a walk in the park.

A knock. 

A tall woman enters, wearing one of those scivvy designer 
jackets and a skin tight micro-mini skirt. Very long hair and 
Barbie doll legs. Stilettoes and red, red nails. Her very noticeable 
bustline can't be doing her spine any favours.

"Dr. Howard? Stanley Howard?" A deep, rich, Californian slut...I 
mean slur. She's got a valleygirrrrl slur. 

"Dr. Howard is at a Whiplash and Spinal trauma conference for a week.
I'm standing in for him." I drop my gaze to her name in the 
appointment book and find oddly enough, 'Mildred'. 

She takes my hand, stares into my eyes, licks her lips and 
I've forgotten my name. Her heaving bosom is sparkling pink 
because of powdered blush. 

"I've got a pain in my lower back from too much strenuous 
activity." Her tongue is deliberately sweeping over her upper lip. 

I didn't mean to but my eyebrows have touched my widow's peak. 
I imagine her a carpenter, maybe a tree logger, mover? Anything 
but the kind of strenuous activity I see her type of woman doing 
that involves a bed and a man. She squares her shoulders and 
throws her chest out, wincing in pain as her lower back dips. 

"Did you give birth recently?" My mouth completely bypasses the 
thinking parts of my brain to ask this question. It must think it's a 
doctorly question to ask.

The patient replies with the indulgence of an celebrity to a tabloid 
reporter, "Do I *look* like I just gave birth?" 

No. She looks like she got that from too much sex.

Then for all future ill-intentioned queries and purposes, confirms, 
"I got this from too much sexual activity."

There's forthright and there's frank. And then there's humiliatingly 
transparent. Is it possible she flirting with me?

"Uh." My head nods stupidly. "Too much sex can cause some strain 
in the lower back." I look at the wall to which my certificate hangs 
crookedly. This is what I had gleaned from four years of study?

She climbs up on the examination table and sheds her jacket to 
reveal, heaven-help-me, a lacy bustier and an extraordinary amount 
of skin. 

"Would you prefer a robe?" I morph into James Stewart, gentleman 
extraordinaire.

"*Would* you?"

I laugh nervously, replying with the same lack of conviction, "I'm a 
professional."

She looks me in the eye and gives tit-for-tat. "So am I." A brief pause 
before she says "I'm a neurosurgeon."

My shocked face must have been really comical because she bursts 
out laughing. Oh I geddit. She's quite a joker too.

The next ten minutes was spent examining what was probably the 
most perfect body on this planet. I don't care what they say about 
Cindy Crawford because Cindy Crawford is not prone in my office 
letting me stretch their vertebraes. I look down at her smooth back 
again expecting to find the battery compartment and the 'MADE IN 
CHINA' embossed somewhere. I see the tattooed letter 'A' partially 
hidden by the waistband of her skirt. I press her spinal column, 
inching near the tattoo before stopping at the last lumbar vertebrae. 
Her grunts are savagely sexual, but of course I may be reading too 
much. The towels are placed discreetly over her much too curvacious 
ass. 

"Lower," is all she says.

Obediently, I press further down the sacral vertebrae until the I feel 
a displaced vertebra to where she says "ow". It feels like a 
misalignment of the bones in the spinal column.

"You have a subluxation, Mildred."

"A subluxation." She stares at me as if I've grown a third eye, waiting 
for an answer she feels she needn't have to question.

I'd better give her some safe text-booky reply."A subluxation is a com-
plex of functional and, or, structural or pathological articular changes 
that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system 
function and general health." I'm glad that the four years at 
Northwestern Sciences University yielded a bit more than 'too-
much-sex-can-cause-strain-in-your-lower-back' diagnosis. 
"Here, relax."

I rub and roll along the lower ridges of her spinal column until 
the faint bled-out blue of a tattoed letters 'NA' peek through 
just above the upper left cheek.  Maybe she was made in China 
afterall. Is there a barcode on her neck? Is she inflateable? Can 
I take her home?

"I need to know if I have to abstain from any sexual activity for 
the next few weeks."

My mouth does a Sahara number on me and my lips have gone 
crusty. My bowels feel like they need to be emptied right away 
and my gonads have bunched up. Collecting my thoughts, I tell 
her to "lay low for a while." 

I regret it as soon as the words tumble out. It appears I'm 
suffering from subluxation of the brain since my mouth says 
things that blatantly shows that my neural integrity has been 
compromised. I'm sure my general health will follow suit as a 
result of this foot-in-the-mouth disease.

Instead she surprises me by asking "why is a nice guy like 
you unmarried?"

"I haven't found the right girl." I say offhandedly. At least 
that's what I always tell mom. 

"Maybe it's not a girl you should be looking for."

Well, that is not the usual response. I stop all movements 
because I haven't had this kind of a conversation since my gay 
college roommate made a hit on me. "Oh, I'm not interested 
in men."

She twists around to look me in the eye before smiling. 
"You've got good skin and nice bone structure. I like the 
colour of your hair. Nice nose."

"Aah, the nose is an inheritance. As for curse of this wicked red, 
only my sister and I share this tint." Knead, knead, rub, rub.

"You definitely sound more adventurous than you actually are."

How can anyone pump so much pride into me only to stab me in 
the back? She's certainly got a lot of attitude. And she's not 
afraid to let anyone know exactly what she thinks.

"I'm very, very adventurous. With girls. " My repartee sounds 
like a cheap come on line.

She is contemplative, obviously thinking of sharing some deep 
dark secret with me. "Well, I am too."

I backtrack what we had just said, then it dawns on me what 
she's saying. "You mean you're into girls."

"You look surprised." She's watching me now, getting up slowly 
and letting the towel slide off the table.

"Maybe because I am surprised." I say a little wistfully, 
mourning the loss for all the men on the planet. I am more than 
a touch baffled by her confession. 

"Looks like you've judged who I am by the heels I wear. 
William Occam once said, 'no more things should be presumed to 
exist other than are absolutely necessary.'"

Really. Dana used to say that all the time.

"You assume too much based on what I look like. You have no idea 
what it's like to grow up looking like me."

Uh-huh. What does any man say to that? So, I knit my brows and 
play psychologist to my troubled patient. "Didn't you always look 
this stunning?"

She smiles, her exterior shell cracking from the nice 
compliment she chooses not to hang on, "No, but I'd like people 
to get to know me first. I'm not a self-agglandizing woman with 
a great bod but brain the size of a chicken McNugget."

"I'd like to get to know you." I say, suddenly confident that she's 
as interesting as she is beautiful then remember what she had 
said earlier, "oh, I forget you're not into men."

"No, no. I never said that. I said I was adventurous with girls 
but I've nothing against men. But a good man is hard to find." 
She's still watching me for my reaction, "you don't know what 
you're missing out if you've never tried it at least once. I mean, 
I didn't plan to have sex with a woman. It just happened. Have 
you ever been attracted to someone simply by how they look?"

I nod, thinking of Ursula and Tina. Even Mrs Chisholm, my 
third grade school teacher, fascinated me with her super 
blonde hair and pink lipstick. I retract that thought. Mrs. 
Chisholm in her Triumph bra is turning me off completely now.

"Well, I was attracted to a woman with very intense eyes. I liked 
her immediately." She confesses.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You remind me of her. Same colouring, same nose. Besides, you 
don't know me from Bridget Jones. I feel safe talking to you."

It's true. I've always been told by friends that they feel safe 
putting their confidences in me. It's a natural knack. I nod care-
fully, egging her on."So you went home with her."

"No, we did it in her car."

I stand up straighter, feeling both hot and cold wondering how 
to digest this information. I feel like I'm sweating icicles. That 
explains her back problem. I didn't mean to but somehow this 
exotic creature's tale of requited lust somehow made me very 
curious about the type of car involved here. Ford? Chevrolet? 
Toyota?

"So", I mused, "you got subluxation from the back of-?" 

"Dana."

Wooooah. That does not sound like the make of any car. It dawns 
on me at this precise moment the -NA on her butt is the second 
half of Dana. Somehow, I can feel the wamble of the bagel I had 
this morning sneaking upwards. I was trying to ascertain the 
post factum, not her post coitum. Maybe in this case, a 
coitumless post factum. I raise my brows to ward off those 
strange tingly feelings that tell me coincidences always sound 
contrived. There must be thousands of Danas in DC.

"She's a forensics pathologist at the FBI." 

My jaw goes slack and I'm aware of my lower mandible loosening. 
Alriiiiighty, that narrows it down to an all uncomfortable low one 
digit number. "You're kidding right?"

"Why? You don't think I could bed a girl from the FBI?"

I sure she could've bed lots of girls from the FBI just not *that* 
girl. Dana? How many Danas are there who's a forensics 
pathologist at the FBI? My logical mind tells me 'one' and my skin 
is having the cooties from this unwelcome piece of detail I had no 
business knowing. My small- sized sister whom we nicknamed 
Brainiac is having an affair with a call girl named Mildred? My 
sister- the one who has Fox Mulder wound so tightly around her 
pinkie that he'd rather face embarrassment and awkwardness 
than hearing a rejection? 

Waaaaitaminute. I can smell a bad joke in here somewhere. Is 
that too much of a coincidence Mulder is arriving in ten minutes? 
I think back to the uncomfortable conversation I made Mulder go 
through two months' ago. This sounds awfully like a carefully 
strategized psychological gambit. I smile to myself, suddenly 
confident that this little drama is going to end most differently. 
I look at Mildred again and know for certain that isn't her real 
name.

She gets down from the high horse/ examination table and pulls 
her jacket on. She feigns indignance pretty well.

"Oh I guess you could bed a girl from the FBI especially when 
they're desperate. And I know several FBI clients of mine who 
are desperate." I watch her carefully, " Special Agent Fox 
Mulder ring a bell?" 

Her eyes shift momentarily. The game is up. I can see her 
trying to salvage the plan, find an alternate way out of this 
charade. 

"I don't know any Fox Mulder." 

El lame-o reply. There's nothing more satisfying than finding 
out who the practical joker is. Unless I return the practical 
joke for double. Oh, I'm feeling no pain now.

"How much did he pay you to do this?" I lean into her. She's 
not sure what to say, obviously this plan wasn't meant to fail. 
"And why?"

She sighs and is clever enough to know when continuing a 
botched plan is pointless. She confesses to taking a cool 
$500 to spin this yarn about this bogus relationship with 
Dana to make me feel uncomfortable. And then he would come 
in and sweep her off her feet. His male ego needed to be 
stroked and who better to stroke it than a professional girl 
professing to love girls until a real man like Fox Mulder 
comes along? 

Why that pompous egomaniac! I hatch my own plot for more 
devilry seeing he would be by anytime soon. Surprise is key.

"Will you do something for me if I paid you $500?"

"You'd be surprised what I'd do for $500." She replies, her 
cool facade slipping back into place. I really must hand it to 
her. She's a smooth operator. 

"What do you want me to do?" She asks, batting her 
eyelashes sexily. The plan is hatched before I even laid it.

"Your real name is not Mildred, is it?" I just needed to know 
what was farce and what was fact.

"No. It's Jade Blue Afterglow. And I don't take anything 
but cash."

"Nice name, Miss Afterglow. When my secretary Jeannie 
buzzes to let us know Mulder's here, I'd like him to find us 
in a...oh, let's say, us in a compromising position." I pull out 
the cash from my wallet and hand it to her.

"Aaah. Nothing's sweeter than turning the tables is there? 
I've done that for less." She smirks evilly, pocketing her 
money in her cleavage. "For $500,  I'll even act like your 
fiancee."

I almost laugh out loud. That's rich. I'm in twitter when 
Jeannie's voice filters through the intercom. "Hey Doc, 
Agent Mulder is here."

"Give me five, Jeannie. I'm just setting up." The tie comes 
off, followed by carefully flung shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. 
Jade hasn't got much else so she sheds her jackeet again and 
removes her miniskirt. I didn't know g-strings come in silver. 
If my mom saw me with Jade instead of that nice Catholic 
neighbour friend of hers she introduced me last week, she'd 
probably disown me. It feels wild though, to pull an extreme 
fast one on Fox Mulder. He'll probably know better than to 
trick the trickster. He doesn't know me as well as my sister. 
Never pull an ace when you are playing with a full deck of 
jokers.

I pull Jade in front of me so that her back is facing the door. 
I can't wait to see Mulder's face knowing his plan's backfired. 
I buzz Jeannie to tell him to come in.

Three knocks and he stands in the doorway. The look on his 
face is priceless. His eyes are huge, lips are slightly parted 
then Jade turns around. Then understanding dawns on him. 
"Jade?"

To say that Fox Mulder is surprised is an understatement. 
She's really making my $500 worth it, kissing my face and 
rubbing her lipstick all over my neck. Her perfume is all over 
me and I'm undone because it's simply too hilarious. His 
shock to our near nakedness. 

"Hello Agent Mulder." Jade is extremely polite. "I'm sorry. 
Surprised to find me here?"

"To say the least." His flabbergasted. Hands on his hips. 
"Certainly with him."

My grin has reached my ears. I couldn't resist upping the 
ante, rubbing his nose in it. "I guess you didn't know me at all, 
Agent Mulder. I bet you didn't even know Jade and I have been 
engaged for a year, do you? "

"No, *I* didn't." He blinks several times, opens his mouth 
once then asks, "did you, Scully?"

I waver a moment, not expecting to find Dana behind him. 
Okaaay. This is definitely *not* good. Jade is rubbing herself 
on my thigh and I can feel the blush crawl up my chin.

Dana steps out behind his larger frame, her blue eyes 
twinkling too much for my liking. 

"Hello Dana." Jade says coolly. Uh, now I just know I've 
seconds to be humiliated. They are smiling waaaay too much 
at each other. They look as thick as thieves.

"Hello Jade." Dana usually gets this wicked glint in her 
eyes when she's about to lower the axe. My heart does 
a titanic when she quips, "Of course I knew about *the 
engagement*, didn't you, mom?"

My mother peers from behind her and I know when I've been 
out Scullied. I've got three pairs, no, four pairs of eyes 
including my secretary's, watching my balls shrink to the 
size of peas. 

"Which is why I invited mom to come have lunch with us." 
The axe falls and I can feel my head rolling into a wicker 
basket.

My mom's very threatening "Chuckieee?" is the last thing 
I hear before I pass out. 


*****

End.

Thanks for reading!

Author's notes:
If anyone is wondering how Dana Scully can hatch such an 
elaborate plot, all I have to say is- sisters know best. Charles 
Scully remains one of my favourite non-scene-stealing charactors 
in the X-Files universe. I'm really grateful for every single piece 
of feedback for my 3rd person pov series. Thank you all.