<![CDATA[
Subject: NEW: Indiana (1/1) by Leyla Harrison
From: "the *enigmatic* Dr. Scully" <starbuck72@netaxis.ca>
Indiana
by Leyla Harrison
<starbuck72@netaxis.ca>
Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and the Great Mutato are owned by Chris
Carter, whom I have redeemed in my mind. This man is a GOD. Do you
hear me? A god.
US5 Spoilers: Post-Modern Prometheus
Classification: Vignette/Humor, MSR
Rating: PG
Summary: Scully ponders what has happened while she and Mulder were in
Bloomington, Indiana.
Dedicated to a shipper who's not a romantic but liked this anyhow, and
thanks to a friend who became an online editor while the story was in
progess.
******
Zip. Snap.
Scully yanked on the zipper of her carry-on bag probably just a little
harder than was necessary, she was sure, but she hardly cared. She idly
noticed that the zipper was now being held between her thumb and
forefinger and was no longer attached to her bag, but she hardly cared
about that, either.
She looked down at the metal zipper and shrugged her shoulders. What
the hell. It could be fixed.
She went into the bathroom and checked her hair, glad to see that some
of its usual color had returned. For some reason, it had been looking
kind of on the gray side over the last few days. Gray and overly
rumpled. She hated it when her hair was rumpled.
Scully headed for the closet to check her coat. There were usually a
great many items in her coat pockets and she always liked to make sure
that they were all still there before she finished up a case and headed
back to Washington. Some of the things were actually Bureau property
and would have to be itemized on her expense report if she lost them.
Let's see. Flashlight. Check. Scully wrinkled her nose at the
flashlight. It was a cheaper variety that she was used to working
with. Lately whenever she asked to requisition anything she was given a
slightly sub-standard version of what she was used to. She assumed it
was because of the fact that she and Mulder lost more FBI-subsidized
flashlights and cel phones that any other agents.
Scully was sure that the Requisition Department was somewhere down in
the basement, near their office, she assumed, and that somewhere in the
Requisition Department there was a Bureau employee named Barney, who
filed each requisition slip and lost-item report alphabetically, in
chronological order. And she was sure that ol' Barney had a file just
for her and Mulder, a file that had grown over the years to the point
where it needed its own file cabinet.
And she was absolutely certain that Barney would laugh gleefully
whenever she or Mulder submitted a requisition for a new gun, or a cel
phone, or a flashlight.
She could just see him cackling merrily away as he sent along a cheap
dime store flashlight that ran on D batteries instead of a halogen bulb,
or a cel phone that didn't have redial on it.
Scully was sure that Barney was also responsible for sending up the
cheap pencils instead of the standard #2 ones that she was used to.
Damn Mulder.
If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't have to suffer so much with cheap
pencils and cheap flashlights and functionless cel phones.
It wasn't like she was responsible for losing everything most of the
time.
Anyhow. Back to checking her pockets. She still had the cheapo
flashlight, although she was sure that Mulder had likely lost his
already, *again*, probably before they even got to town.
Mulder. What a looney toon he was. Good Lord.
The Jerry Springer Show?
God, Mulder, when did you stoop so low? When did you go and check out a
monkey baby?
And why the hell didn't I notice that you were gone?
Scully figured that it must have happened either when she was missing,
in a coma, or when she seemed to be dying of cancer in the hospital.
Although she had a hard time believing that Mulder would take off and
leave town to check out a *monkey baby* while she was dying. She knew
that he wasn't that insensitive.
The Jerry Springer Show. Scully groaned just thinking about it as she
emptied the left pocket of her coat. She had her flashlight. She had
two spare lipsticks -- now that was odd. Usually she just had the one
-- the one she always used, the reddish brown one that made her lips
look full and lush. It had taken her years to find the exact right
shade.
Now she seemed to have a second lipstick. She uncapped it and twisted
the base. Oh! It was a hideous shade of gray. Now why the hell would
she have bought that color? There was only one obvious answer to that
question. She hadn't bought it herself. Scully pitched it in the
direction of the garbage can in the hotel room.
A travel-size pack of Kleenex, unopened, from the days when she would
have constant nosebleeds. Scully idly wondered why the tissues had
never been in her pockets when she needed them. Oh well. Wouldn't hurt
to keep those.
On to the right pocket. OK, now this was interesting. Bar napkin.
Scully studied it lovingly. She knew exactly where that came from.
Bloomington, Indiana. She had never been there before, and would likely
never return to the town that she secretly called hell. But she would
never forget it.
Bloomington, you see, was the place where she had felt like a woman
again, where she had felt free to smile and laugh and even dance.
And all of it was because of Mulder.
So.
She could damn him all she wanted to, but when it came down to it, she
really really couldn't hate him, she couldn't. She never could, when it
came down to it.
After all, she loved him, right?
There had been a million moments -- moments when he had touched her hand
or the small of her back or made a suggestive comment that wasn't just
his typical leering or looked at her in a much more serious way.
Moments that she held to hard and fast and if she really was feeling
low, she would convince herself that those moments existed only because
he...
Did she dare think it? Hell, she wouldn't ever even admit it aloud.
Well, OK. Thinking it was safe.
Those were the moments when she was convinced that he really truly loved
her too.
How pathetically sappy that sounded.
Scully sighed as she fingered the napkin.
It had been all Mulder's idea. She knew that he had a soft spot
for...well, *him*. He had no name, and Scully didn't want to call him
an "it," because that was just downright cruel. In her head, she still
called him the Great Mutato, even though she felt that she was being a
bit cruel herself by using that name. But there was nothing else to
call him.
Anyhow, Mulder had a soft spot for him. Hell, so did she.
It was so sad, his life, his very existence, that it seemed unfair to
even dream of making him suffer any more than he already had. Scully
thought that everything that she had gone through seemed like a walk in
the park compared to what he had gone through.
So when he started tapping his foot in the backseat of the rental car,
and when Mulder threw a little glance in her direction, she should have
known that her partner was up to something, even though at the time she
couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.
And who cared that the singer in the bar was just an impersonator? The
Great Mutato sure as hell didn't. And neither did Mulder or Scully when
they saw how he reacted when she came out on stage for the first time.
His entire body spoke louder than any words could about the joy that was
coursing through his veins, how much happiness was flooding his heart.
It was impossible for Scully not to smile. To laugh. To feel like all
of the chains of what had happened over the last year had been thrown
from her back and forgotten in those moments.
Mulder had actually reached for her hand on the table behind the Great
Mutato's back while the Cher impersonator did her thing, belting out
"Walking in Memphis" to a standing-room-only crowd, most of whom had
followed Mulder and Scully from Bloomington on the one-hour drive to the
bar in the middle of God knew where.
He had taken her hand. Now that was real. Much more real than any of
the "moments" that she had thought had really happened.
Mulder brushing against her wasn't anything compared to him holding her
hand.
And when the Great Mutato got up and took Cher's hand, Mulder stood up
as well, and he looked down at the floor as if he were shy, more shy
than any gentleman at a formal dance, asking the girl who stole his
heart to dance. He held out his hand to her, silently asking her to
join him in a dance, and she was frozen in place, not even knowing what
to make of his wordless request.
She had to admit that she was stunned, and she was sure that her face
reflected the shock that went through her. But somehow she overcame her
shock because she realized that more than anything she wanted to dance
with him, that she always had.
It was just that as FBI agents, they didn't often get the opportunity to
dance together. Not to mention that she rarely got a chance to dance at
all.
Well, unless you counted all that dancing that she got to do when she
was out on dates.
Yeah, right. A date? Scully wasn't even sure if she knew what a date
was anymore. She didn't think that she would ever go out on a date ever
again, not because she didn't want to, because God knew that she would
love an evening of wine and dinner and dancing, but because she didn't
think that she would ever have any time off for the rest of her life.
As it was, she never seemed to have any time off anyhow. Her cancer had
gone into remission and a mere two weeks later she was running around in
Florida through the forest, falling down a hole and chasing some
earth-monster, acting (and looking) like she'd never been sick at all.
Wait a minute.
Dinner. Wine. Dancing.
Scully folded the bar napkin carefully and turned the paper square over
in her hands as she thought about it. There *had* been fried mozzarella
sticks at the bar when they had gotten there. There *had* been a bottle
of wine, although it was practically like Kool Aid with a bit of alcohol
and a touch of carbonation thrown in just to make it interesting. And
dancing.
Hmm.
So back to Mulder, back to him extending his hand to her.
Scully had gotten up out of her chair before she had even realized that
she was on her feet and took Mulder's hand. Which was a good thing,
because she didn't have a clue what the hell she was going to do or say
to him next. "Want to lead?" would have been an option, but she was so
tongue-tied as it was that she wasn't sure she could have even spoken
her own name let alone anything else at that point.
As it turned out, it was OK that she didn't say anything. Mulder kind
of half-pulled, half-swept her into his arms. She re-thought that for a
second. Yep, there was no denying it. She was actually in his arms.
He smiled at her and she grinned back, because she didn't know what to
say or what else to do, and she moved with his body and found in a
second or two that he was actually a very good dancer. Not that she was
all that surprised. There wasn't much that Mulder was bad at.
And then the music's tempo slowed and the people that were behind them
waving their arms slowed and everything slowed and the smoke lightened
up a little and both Mulder and Scully's smiles faded, and they looked
at each other very seriously for a split second.
It was in that split second that Scully was absolutely, positively
certain about one thing. She knew that Mulder loved her.
Either that or he had gas.
And Scully didn't think it was the latter -- he hadn't had enough of the
mozzarella sticks for that.
Wow.
Just thinking about it again made her heart beat just a little bit
faster, and she clutched at the paper napkin tightly, a little too
tightly. She quickly realized what she was doing and loosened her hold
on it.
Then she and Mulder had looked up at the Great Mutato on stage, dancing
with Cher, or whoever that woman was, and then...
And then Mulder looked at her again, and he dipped her ever-so-slightly,
and then he leaned over and kissed her very lightly on the lips.
Wait a minute.
No, he didn't. He didn't dip her. And he didn't kiss her.
That was only in her dreams.
Well, hey, she was an imaginative woman. God knew she had tons of time
to sit around and think sometimes, with all the plane rides and rental
cars.
What a shame, though, that he hadn't. Scully thought that she really
would have liked to have kissed him, just once, just that one time, just
for a second.
It would have been nice.
Scully heaved a sigh and put the folded napkin back in her coat pocket.
She would have to be sure to remember to put that in a safe place when
she got home. Didn't want to lose it.
As she slipped the napkin into her right coat pocket, she felt something
round and hard, and somewhat chalky.
Her fingers closed around the object, which felt a little like a hockey
puck, and she began to pull it out of her pocket at the same time that
she realized what it was. Good Lord, how the hell did *that* get in
there?
Scully pulled the agricultural chemical from her pocket and looked at
the smooth white chunk.
Hmm.
It certainly posed interesting possibilities.
Mulder, his apartment, and some mood lighting...
Nah.
Scully went to toss the disc into the trash can, but then stopped and
thought better of it. She decided to hang on to it.
For a rainy day.
END
--
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/1377
***************************************************
"You take me in, no questions asked; you strip
away the ugliness that surrounds me...
Who are you? Are you an angel?" --Sarah McLachlan
]]>