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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; Sclly, 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
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