*************************************************************************************** Subject: NEW > Jeans & Fishnets < (3/4) Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 21:04:17 -0500 (CDT) _The X-Files_: all characters copyright Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. They shouldn't have made up something so cool if they didn't want us to write fan fiction about it. However, i don't really want to upset them, so no infringement upon their copyrights is intended. Blue Jeans and Fishnet Stockings (3/4) An X-Files Story by Summer Mulder stopped at the video store on the way back to Scully's; she ran in to rent Rocky Horror and brought it back, expression uncertain as she climbed into the passenger seat. She flipped down the visor to ward off the slanting afternoon sun as Mulder drove, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel at every stoplight. Finally she voiced her doubts with, "I don't know, Mulder. I really love this movie, but it's pretty bad to most people. I'm not sure--" "Scully," he interrupted, "I own and treasure a copy of Plan Nine from Outer Space." She relaxed. "Okay then." "I'm assuming you have a sewing kit?" Scully gave him her sweetest smile. "Why yes, of course I do." "Great," he said, relieved. "I can patch up while you fix lunch, then--" She cut him off. "I didn't say I'd let you borrow it." His mouth opened in wordless protest as he parked the car in front of her place. Mulder turned to face his partner with a wounded expression, but he was met with another of her big smiles. He soaked up the happiness broadcast by that smile and grinned back. "Scully, can I please borrow your sewing kit?" She pretended to think about it. "C'mon, Scully, I'm in a crisis here." "What's it worth to you?" "Uhm... I'll cook. Though you'll have to tell me what to do. And I'll clean up everything afterwards. And I'll finish the budget," he added desperately. "That's okay. We'll stick to the original division of labor. But if I loan you needle and thread, I don't want to hear another word about that videotape." Mulder considered this for a long moment, then shook his head. "Nah." He reached into the backseat to scoop up the grocery bag, got out of the car, and walked with unhurried steps to her door. Scully took her time getting there, and then made a great show of looking for her keys. Finally she dug them out, sloooowly selected the correct one, and opened the door. He waited, but she indicated with a sweep of her arm that he should go in first. Mulder hesitated and then stepped past his partner, fighting the blush creeping up his face again. The more embarrassed he got, the more determined he was to see that damned tape. Scully hung back for a few moments, gauging her partner instinctively. Prodding him was only going to strengthen his resolve; she circled past him and took the paper bag. "I thought you liked Warner Brothers, Mulder." "I do. Warner Brothers cartoons are MUCH better than Disney." "So how did you end up with Mickey Mouse boxers?" "I'll have you know, Scully, that my boxer collection rivals my tie collection. This particular pair happens to have been a gift." A gift, Scully thought with a hint of pique, from someone who didn't know him well enough to realize he preferred Warner Brothers. "Well, I like Disney," she said, setting the groceries on the counter. "I can't wait to see Pocahontas." "Why? The Lion King sucked." "Yeah," she conceded, "I hated The Lion King. But the movies before that, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid-- I loved them. So I'm hoping." Her brows knit as she turned to her partner. "You went to see The Lion King?" "I rented it, along with Forrest Gump and Jurassic Park, and wrote them off as research materials. Just seeing what's on America's mind." "So what's on America's mind?" "Not much," he replied wryly. She chuckled and went back to the groceries, giving him the bag of sunflower seeds. Mulder tore it open with his teeth and began picking at them. "Anything I can do?" She glanced at him, amused. "I don't know- - IS there anything you can do?" "I can't get anything off the bottom shelf," Mulder said, earning a smile from his partner. He surveyed the kitchen laconically. "I guess this isn't really my forte. If you have some extremely simple task you can set me to, go for it, but otherwise I'm pretty useless." "You can't cook at all?" She sounded scandalized. "I can cook-- it's just that my culinary repetoire is limited and it takes about two weeks of intensive instruction to teach me anything new." "Watch and learn, Mulder," she grinned. He levered himself up to sit on the counter on the other side of the stove from the spot where she worked. "So what have you got against Disney?" "Disney's best films are clean-up jobs of classic fairy tales," Mulder mused, "which I've always had a bit of a problem with. I recognize that they revise with an eye to contemporary mores, but I really think the little mermaid should die at the end, or it's not The Little Mermaid." "You wanted Ariel to die? Mulder, I take that personally." "Don't tell me you identified with Ariel. Surely you had more empathy for Belle." "Nope. Belle was a pushover. Give me a headstrong mermaid any day." "I don't get it. Ariel was constantly rebelling against her dad." Scully started to reply, then stopped and got out a pan instead. He blinked, then asked softly, "Scully?" She smiled ruefully, hands gripping the edge of the counter. "Ah... when I went to college, I went kind of nuts," she said. "My father and I were very close... when I was away from my family for the first time, I made a list of all the expectations they had put on me and set out to break every one of them." Mulder bit the inside of his lip to keep a smile from showing. Trust Scully to rebel in an organized manner. "Why?" "I thought the only way to be independent was to defy my family," she said, the regret clear in her voice. "Then Melissa and I got into a big fight at Christmas. She thought I was being childish-- which I was-- and I thought she had no business telling me what to do when SHE was alienating everyone herself. Dad and I had a long talk after the blow-up with Melissa." A bittersweet smile touched her lips. "It straightened a lot of things out for me." "And your sister?" "She was angry. She thought Dad was taking my side when he talked to me. She didn't really say any more about it, but that was when she started to drift away... A few years later, The Little Mermaid came out, and I took my mom and dad to see it. We were all pretty teary at the end." Scully shook her red-gold hair back from her face. "Why don't you put on some music again? I like to have something playing while I'm in the kitchen." Mulder accepted the change of subject by hopping down off the counter. "How about the Smiths?" he asked. "Great." Mulder disappeared into the living room briefly, and returned accompanied by the beginning guitar strains of the music. Scully raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "This is Stranger than Bombs, right?" At his nod, she continued, "This is the ninth track. Did you put it on shuffle play?" "Ah, no, I started it here and put it on repeat. This middle section is my favorite." She nodded comprehension. "You like the Smiths, but you don't have their albums." "I can't have Smiths albums around. I like them, but they bring me down," Mulder said, resuming his spot on the counter. "If I have them, I listen to them all the time and lull myself into a fabulous complacent depression." She pointed at him warningly. "No lulling here, Mulder." "Nah," he shook his head, adding with a winning smile, "How could I get depressed in such charming company?" She didn't even take her eyes off her work as she answered, "You're not getting that tape." "Curses. Foiled again." Scully prepared the chicken with quick efficiency; Mulder watched her hands, nibbled at sunflower seeds, and listened to Morrissey sing over Johnny Marr's guitar. `If you're wondering why all the love that you've longed for eludes you, and people are rude and cruel to you, I'll tell you why... You just haven't earned it yet, baby. You must stay on your own for slightly longer...' Scully plopped the chicken into the pan. "You were telling me that you thought Ariel should die," she reminded him. "Oh, right," he said, spitting another hull into his cupped hand. Scully made a face at him and handed him a paper towel. "Thanks," he said, dumping the little mound of seed hulls out of his palm onto the towel. "Well, fairy tales tell a lot about the culture; they're stories that teach kids, preparing them for adulthood. The originals of some of our modern fairy tales are pretty gruesome-- did you know that Red Riding Hood is actually supposed to stay eaten by the wolf?" "She dies?" Scully frowned as she opened the package of hamburger buns. "Why?" "She strayed off the path," Mulder answered. "It's a moral story. Leave the path and risk getting eaten. She got eaten by the wolf-- no one saved her. Actually, she drank the blood and ate the flesh of her grandmother, THEN got eaten by the wolf." "Mulder, that's terrible!" He nodded pleasantly. "Right. Sleeping Beauty doesn't wake when the prince kisses her. She doesn't even wake up when he makes love to her. She gives birth to his child without ever regaining conciousness. The baby crawls up her body to breast feed, blunders to her hand and sucks out the poison needle." "And what's the moral of THAT story?" "The inevitability of destiny. Predestination. Fate. And entertainment," Mulder added with a grin. "I'd imagine sometimes the moral was sublimated to make the story more fun to tell." "I know in the original Cinderella, the stepsisters cut off bits of their feet to fit into the slipper," Scully said. "Why do you think the stories were so bloody?" "Drama. Fear. They were cleaned up as society was cleaned up-- at least, that's how I always interpreted it. Storytellers reinterpret the old tales for their own times. Disney does the same thing. I suppose it's not that I don't like Disney," he concluded. "It's that I don't always like what Disney's sanitized versions of those stories say about our times." "So what did you think of Aladdin?" "Aladdin, I did enjoy," he admitted. "The deliberate anachronisms and cultural references gave it a whole new subtext." Scully manufactured a confused expression . "I liked the pretty songs." Mulder grinned. "Yeah, all the songs in Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were good. But The Lion King?" "I know. I was very disappointed in Elton John." "You like Elton John?" "Hey, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Honky Tonk Chateau? Sure I like Elton John. At least, I used to." She flipped the chicken with a deft flick of her wrist, humming absently. `If there's something you'd like to try, ask me, I won't say no, how could I? So ask me ask me ask me, ask me ask me ask me, because if it's not love, then it's the bomb... that will bring us together.' "That's starting to smell really good," Mulder commented. "Are you SURE it's healthy?" "It smells good because it IS good. AND healthy. You'll see." "Just as long as the popcorn isn't healthy," Mulder said. "That'd be too much. What kind did you get?" Scully wiped her hands on a dishrag and displayed two boxes smugly. "I got the Movie Theater kind, and since you suffered such indignities to get a look at it, I got the cheese kind too." Mulder fidgeted deliberately. "Is there a draft in here?" "Must be the ventilation," Scully replied serenely. She glided to the refrigerator. "Okay, to drink, I've got cherry Canadian Springs, tea, and pineapple-orange juice. Tea?" "Yeah, thanks." Mulder leaned forward and opened the cabinets above his head, removing two glasses. He slid off the counter to fill the cups with ice from the freezer. Scully set the pitcher down to check the meat; he poured the tea and put the pitcher away. "There. I'm not completely useless." "I'll alert the press." Scully affirmed his usefulness by setting him to the sort of extremely simple tasks he had volunteered for-- chopping lettuce and onion and slicing tomatoes while she cooked and they continued to banter. Scully arranged the various sandwich makings along with plates and napkins on the counter. "From here, it's do it yourself," she said. "All depends on what you want on it." Mulder began to assemble a sandwich of Dagwoodian proportions. "How much mayonaisse do you think I'd have to load on this to negate the nutrition value?" She reached past him to snag the honey mustard sauce. "Moot point. I don't have any mayonaisse." "Miracle Whip?" "Nope." "How do you survive?" "Try some of this stuff." Scully tapped the side of the honey mustard jar with the knife. "Bet it's good for you, too," he grumbled, capturing a drop of it as it oozed down the side of the glass jar. He tasted it, raised his eyebrows, and dolloped a generous amount onto his sandwich. Scully finished putting hers together and put it on a plate, picked up the napkin and her glass of tea, and crossed the hazy boundary from the kitchenette to the dining area. She put her plate on the table and after a moment's thought went back for the tea pitcher, only to find Mulder already balancing it along with his other items. Scully took the pitcher, shaking her head; sometimes it was almost like being married. She put the thought firmly aside and took the seat across from her partner as he took a bite. "This is really good!" he said. "It shouldn't be this good. Only greasy hamburgers should be this good. What is this stuff?" "Lemon pepper." "My compliments to the chef," he grinned. "Or to the chef's mother, as the case may be." She beamed and they ate in companionable silence, the Smiths providing a pleasant backdrop with "Oscillate Wildly", one of Scully's favorite instrumentals. When they finished, she scowled towards the remains of the budget and suggested seconds, which certainly met with her partner's approval. "How did you run into the Smiths?" Mulder asked between bites. She shrugged. "A friend loaned me this album, and I really liked it... by the time I got through med school I'd managed to collect them all." "I didn't see The Queen Is Dead or Strangeways, Here We Come in your CD rack..." "I have them on cassette." Scully found herself wishing, not for the first time, that SHE had a photographic memory-- sometimes Mulder seemed to know everything. Then she thought of some of the things they'd seen while investigating the X-Files and gave silent thanks that she DIDN'T have a photographic memory. Apparently her partner's thoughts had drifted towards their work, as well. "I wish I knew what radio station Cancer Man listens to," Mulder said with a glint of black humor. "I'd dedicate `An Unhappy Birthday' to him every single day, just to make sure I had it covered. `I've come to wish you an unhappy birthday because you're evil'... that song was written for him." "He doesn't listen to the radio," Scully scoffed. "He probably doesn't even own one; he'd be too scared of bugs in the electronics. I bet he lives in a bare little room and does nothing but worry about being spied on. He's too scared of shadows to care about anything or have a real life..." she trailed off, realizing the description came uncomfortably close to fitting her partner. He caught the pause and correctly interpreted her thoughts with a grim smile. "It, ah... it would be easy for me to turn into that, wouldn't it." "Mulder--" He waved that away. "I know it would. I think about it sometimes. If I'd kept going alone..." He shrugged and continued with some difficulty, "I might have lost myself in the work. I'd give up anything for the truth." He lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Except you." She could find nothing to say in reply. Mulder quickly looked down again to the half- finished sandwich on his plate, clearly embarrassed; Scully, lost for words, reached across the table and put her hand on his. As close as they were, he had never let her see so much of how he felt before, and it had been a long time since he had revealed the doubts that plagued him. "Sometimes I think the best revenge would be to walk away," he said quietly. "Their secrets are worthless if no one cares what they're hiding, right? To hell with them and their games; what if no one bothers to play? Sometimes I wish I COULD walk away." That was just frustration talking, Scully knew. "You're doing the right thing, Mulder." "After all that's happened-- you really believe that?" "Of course I do. That's why I'm on your side, why I've stayed with the X-Files. No one else can do what we do." She smiled. "And maybe I need you to keep me on my toes as much as you need me to keep your feet on the ground." Mulder looked at her for a long moment, then turned his hand under hers and clasped her fingers briefly. He opened his hand again with a slow smile; Scully withdrew hers and propped her chin in her palms. "All well and good," he said, deliberately lightening his tone, "but while you're keeping my feet on the ground, my jeans are about to fall down around my ankles." Scully laughed, jumped up and foraged in a drawer for a moment. Mulder crossed his fingers, hoping she was getting a needle and thread. Instead, she put a pair of scissors on the table. "In case you still wanted to make cutoffs out of them," she said blithely. "Then there wouldn't be anything left," he said plaintively, going back to his lunch. Somehow Scully managed to maintain a perfectly innocent expression. "I'd offer to loan you something to wear, but you're just too tall. Unless you want to borrow my long black skirt; it'd probably just about go to your knees." Mulder wiped a trace of sauce off his hands with the napkin. Scully had thrown him for a loop more than once today; it was time to return the favor. "Why not? Wouldn't be the first time." "For what?" "Remember what I said about the FBI's grand tradition?" he asked casually. She stared. "You didn't." He smirked. Scully's mouth dropped open. "You did?" He took another bite. "No way, Mulder, I would have heard about this." Scully waited, frustrated, while he savored the last of his sandwich. "Sociology and gender roles class in college," he answered eventually. "Group project; I was in with a bunch of go-getter feminists who were set on providing the world with their perspective on gender discrimination. One of the ladies got a haircut and went round as a man for a week. I was the only guy who'd agree to go in drag-- I was swamped with final papers and the deal was that if I did the field work I wouldn't have to contribute to the thesis." Scully's wide-eyed doubt was assuaged; she ventured, "Campy drag or convincing drag?" "Convincing. Well, as convincing as you can get at six feet," he said with nonchalant self-deprecation. "A wig and everything?" He nodded. "For a week, every evening I had to pack into heels and hose and skirts and wig and makeup and-- Scully, how do you ever get out of the house in the morning?" "It gets easier with practice," she replied. "You're not kidding?" He held up his hand. "Scout's honor." She shook her head, pressing her hands flat on the table. "What?" he asked. "Mulder," she said, that rare, wonderful smile appearing slow and perfect as a sunrise, "you are going to LOVE this movie." ************************************************************ end of part 3/4