From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 22 Jul 2001 15:42:53 -0000 Subject: The 211 (Part 1 of 2) by Samantha Source: direct Reply To: REdHeAD178@aol.com TITLE: 211 Confession AUTHOR: Samantha CLASSIFICATION: Post-ep, Vignette SPOILERS: none, post-existence DESCRIPTION: Scully's on her way to meet Mulder at D.C.'s airport to fly out to see Bill and Tara, she is none too thrilled. RATING: R for coarse language DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to CC, 1013, and that whole rigamarole, but none of *this* has even happened, and may not, so it belongs to my mind. FEEDBACK: Absolutely enjoy when people care to respond: send to REdHeAd178@aol.com ARCHIVE: Certainly, just tell me where it'll be posted. NOTES: Not much to say but Enjoy! = = = = 211 Confession (1/2) = = = = June 10 2001 3:15 p.m. Interstate 211, Scully's Car This summer has been unusually cruel, not at all what I was expecting. There was a time when it seemed like there was a boundless amount of those hot summer Sundays where no matter how much shade lingers in the air, you're clothes stick to your spine like that of a tick to a dog's back. The stickiness that loitered in every nook of outside space made your sweat sweet and unbearably enjoyable. And then there were those days like when you were kids, willingly burning your little feet on the radiating asphalt of the neighborhood cul-de-sac. Hopping from foot to foot was all you could do to keep yourself from bursting into flames while the ice-cream truck bell rang from what seemed like every direction imaginable. Those were childhood days of summer I cherished; those days are a far cry from the ones I seem to be trudging through on a daily basis lately. The heat I endure now is not by choice; the cool breeze that wafts by in gentle bundles these days is not as cool as it used to be. The steaming streets packed with warm sunny faces are not as bright to me as I glare at them from the sweltering heat of the car who's AC is on the fritz. And all the giggles and squeals of child delight are filled will the wails of desperation that rings in my ears from the heat exhausted baby that rests uneasily in my back seat. He's too small to realize mommy has done all she can with the five baby blinds she plastered to the window of the car. The blinds which now make it impossible to see the passing cars who are tailgating my ass from a mile back. Oh the life of a post-partum mother's future is as uncertain as the beaches tides. Traffic is unusually heavy today, but of course I've not considered the construction that starts daily around three o'clock which inevitably causes brownouts, which then of course leads to the flashing yellow lights I now see staring back at me. If only I could reach up there and tear that thing down, smashing it into hundreds of beautiful pieces; it's not like my day didn't start off on the wrong foot already. I know that if I just look around me, all these people are just as bad off as I, but it feels as though they are mocking me, degrading me for running extremely late. Late? Ha, I laugh. Nobody knows what late is until they've birthed a child born to push the limits of human patience. Will De-Vil, my name for him when he's trying my utmost patience at the moments he knows I've got no extra time for pampering him. God damn if this isn't starting to get on my nerves! Why does it seem that at the instant you don't see the flagman signaling you to go, he immediately slaps his blinding red 'STOP' sign right at you? Doesn't he realize you've got somewhere to be? I mean of course he doesn't, but when you're frustrated and hot, all you want to do is blare on that horn and watch him jump ten feet in the air, hard hat and all. And you know, what the hell do they think could possibly flatten a flagman's head in while he waves his little orange flag? Falling bricks? I'm just so sure. "Get a hold of yourself and just breath already..." I was attempting to assure myself that the drive was nearing an end. And dammit if it isn't like clockwork. As he holds up his annoying sign, I inevitably slam on those beastly Buick breaks, pure jolting torture to my eight pound passenger who's trying his best at cutting Z's in the blazing Sunday sun. I'm calming down, at least I tell myself I am. It's kind of hard to be in a good mood when someone, no names mentioned, decides it's time to take the baby to see *your* brother all the way out to San Diego two days after he's gone and bought non-refundable airplane tickets. A six o'clock flight, straight shot into the heart of California. No doubt it had to be during this lovely Sunday rush hour. That's the man in charge for you; *he's* going to take the luggage, and *he's* going meet me at the airport. Why didn't *he* bother to take the car that is in desperate need of new coolant? * Scully's Apartment Two Days Earlier June 8 2001 "For God's sake Mulder, Bill's not going to keel over and drop dead if he doesn't see William in the first month of his life! Think about it, the child's going to be around for a long time." I was growing impatient with him; four hundred dollars, not on our FBI expense account, had been squandered on non-refundable tickets Mulder bought through the internet. That's how he'd been spending his days here lately, in *my* apartment. If he wasn't out looking to kick-start his new career, he was either looking for the next big bargain online or sleeping late with Will. That, however, was a huge plus in my life. I was still running on fumes, I used to deal with sleep deprivation positively: getting some extra autopsies in, looking over the case files, attempting to regain some faith I'd so long overlooked. Sleep deprivation that is both involuntary but non-compulsory is an entirely different story. Work coupled with William as the main course, side-saladed with the five day excursion Mulder planned over the phone with Tara has me wiped dry as a bone. "Mulder? Since when did you develop this connection with Tara or Bill for that matter? You told me you thought Bill hated you, remember?" I was downing a pint of Ben & Jerry's Wipple Dream; I hadn't realized how good something with substance, er calories, could possibly taste. I had been avoiding it all week, but Mulder had purposely stashed it right in the freezer door knowing my compulsions would get the best of me and my post-pregnancy diet would falter. He was staring back at me from the sofa, lounged back, strappingly handsome as I eyed him cautiously. I awaited an answer, he wasn't going to get off like he always tried to. "Well, who said anything about a connection? We're technically family now right? You yourself just last week were complaining about not getting out to San Diego yet." He was waving that despicable hand at me as though he were scolding a little girl. I dug my spoon so hard into that carton that I thought at any minute it was going to break through, splattering Wipple Dream all over my recently waxed floor. "Pack your bags Scully, We're goin' to Disneyland!" He may have had good intent in going, but all I could do was shoot him a cold stare across that dimly lit den. ...Smartass... * June 10 2001 3:52 p.m. Interstate 211, Scully's Car "This is Z104 and were juicing up this Sunday afternoon with a sizzling summer hit. Get those feet in gear and get up off your rear, 'cause it's time for 'Hot fun in the summer time.'" The radio, it's my only concession this hot tin box has left to offer me. And yet, here I remain, madder and hotter than hell, not at Mulder or his intentions, but at the sinister car gods who were punishing me for forgetting to change my oil which led to the slow departure of my cold air producer. Why me? Why my innocent baby who will probably end up having a nervous twitch or permanent brain damage or something else physically dismembering from baking in the backseat sun for two hours. "I can't wait until I see you Dana, I can't wait until I see my new nephew...Dana." Yeah that's Bill alright; I think the heat's messing with me, toy with my mind just a little bit more. Now all I need to do is break into song and my trip will be just peachy. Damn I'm hot, and if these wavy lines don't stop portraying the airport runway, my salvation, I'm going to climb from behind this wheel of pure hell-fire and throw myself at what seems to be an unveiling mirage. It's a mirage though, nothing more. Shit, a whole twenty yards of bumper to bumper, snail paced tailgating gone and wasted; the four-thirty vulture is now circling the carcass. Fry my soul here, stuck on the 211 freeway in this traffic that seems to be coming from nowhere. Is it raining cars or something? I wonder where Mulder is, what he's doing; I hope wherever he is that he's just as goddamn hot as we are. = = = = The 211 Confession (2/2) = = = = June 10 1:05 p.m. Scully's Apartment Dull, drab, and utterly slow, summer for me has been undoubtedly sullen this year. Very unlike when I was a kid. Those were summers full of warm, muggy days that seemed to never have an ending. You could run up and down the blocks on your street all day without getting tired; You'd eat popcicles for hours on end that ran down your elbows because you were too wrapped up in watching your sister lose her double scoop of ice-cream to the screaming-hot pavement. Those were just the weekdays, weekends were like the icing on the cake. Awaiting to play the ultimate hide-and-seek game, with the chance of a few rounds of tag in the vinyards, actually compelled you to greet the day at sunrise and have your mom throw together her famous PBJ and banana sandwich's so you would have a completely exhausting day. You'd then procede to take the route that led you past everyone of your friends' houses knocking your 'meet me in the vineyard' combination of knocks, while your kid sister was trailing thirty feet back on her tricycle with the biggest smile, just because you let her tag along. No, playing tag now is like trying to play catch up, for me anyways. I'm having to live all that happened in a span of some nine months for everyone around me in about two months of my own time. The whole balance I had in life capsized the day I got abducted by my 'little green aliens' I'd longed to discover. Upon my return I, first off had to accept that I'd been uprooted from six-feet under, my finaly resting place there for a while. That itself was kind of a rough start to my rat race. Along with the realization that my white light was only Scully's flashlight checking my pupil dialation, I had to accept that I was some one to two months away of becoming a father. Surprise, surprise, you're on Candid Camera! Or at least I was hoping so. I succumbed and accepted it, entwining my emotional attachments around my newborn son, William, as I'd done to Scully some eight years prior. "Okay...formula, diapers, caterpillar, thing. You know you're going to forget something and then she's going to give you the silent treatment. Scully's suitcase, mine, camera, film. Damn, it's almost one-thirty, if I forget something now, tough." It figures I would be the one to eagerly volunteer to get the luggage ready to go see Scully's family. Me, the unorganized and unorthodox packer who has probably sent along thirty pairs of underwear between us all, even Will, for a five day vacation. My mind is so muddled right now I feel like I'm tearing myeslf in two, am I coming or am I going? God forbid I don't pack something that I was told five times to pack by her, I'm going to get a firm foot planted up my ass. If I recall, I've already had a partially wedged up there for about two days now in response to this whole 'vacation' plan in the first place... * Scully's Apartment Two Days Earlier June 8 2001 5:38 p.m I knew she had just walked in the door, dog tired since it was her first week back, but I just had to spill the beans. I managed to hold it in until she'd kicked off her shoes, dropped her bag hard, like a sack of potatoes, and meandered to the freezer where I'd stashed some Ben & Jerry's. "Pack your bags Scully, we're goin' to Disneyland!" All she did was give me this look like, what the hell are you talking about Mulder? But I knew that would all subside when I told her that I had managed to get discount tickets on a website I'd found online about two hours before she'd got home. "Hey Scully, great news too, I managed to save about 300 bucks because I found discount airplane tickets that are a straight connection right into downtown San Diego." "San Diego? Mulder? Why are we going to San Diego? This sounds all too familiar and I have the strangest feeling about what you might say." Scully had been "permitting" herself to indulge in a carton of *real* ice-cream while we were talking. I'd gone shopping earlier that week and wasn't buying that tofutti crap she had written down on the list; I bought the stuff I knew she couldn't resist in the end. My train of thought finally caught up with me while I was dozing on the sofa and so I stopped daydreaming and beating around the bush. It was plain as day that she wasn't exactly thrilled with me at the moment, because she was feverously jabbing the ice-cream container like she would one of her autopsy patients with that pointy scalpel. "Well, I called your brother's house and Tara actually answered the phone. She was asking when we planned to come visit, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, and so long story short, I made plans with her and Bill for us to come out. Since you just got back from maternity leave, I figured another week wasn't going to kill Skinner or Kersch for that matter. I don't think a bucking bull could kill Deputy Director asshole." I laughed, she smirked. I looked and she didn't say anything to me, she just gave me a blank stare. So I left it at that, California here we come... * June 10 2:49 p.m. Mulder's Car Perfect--just perfect, half an hour late to the airport, and the damn tickets don't bump. Even better, cell's dead. "Just relax already...we'll make it. For four hundred bucks, we'll *definitely* make it. It hit me, like a ton of stone bricks, the interstate. I knew I had forgot something. Scully's going to kill me for telling her to take the damn 211. On top of that the AC keeps cutting out and I somehow managed to blow that one off on her. "Scully you didn't change the oil did you?" What a total lie, I'd been vegging, downing sunflower seeds like there was no tomorrow, and was too lazy to get my ass off her sofa to take the care and do it myself. It was all I could do to not look in the rearview mirror. "You jackass." I just *knew* I'd forget something. Being pre-occupied with what kinds of clothes Scully would want me to pack for her, I, in my infinite *bonehead* wisdom, must have slipped up about taking the connector through on the 211, not bothering to mention the damn construction. She's going to have an absolute conniption about Will and the heat and the AC and my whole plan. Terrific. Fantastic. Absolutely typical. I know I've started ranting, but the mind is a bit jumbled right now, I wouldn't exactly call myself the trip planning extraordinaire or anything like that. For me it's like making one of my cold cut classics; all you have to do is slap some of this slap some of that and like magic, it turns out beautifully every time. Of course living with a pessimist slash skeptic things are a little more orderly. On Scully's trips you have to make sure you've got all your ducks in a row or you'll end up cutting off your finger in spite of your good intentions. Not a great comparison, but it certainly tastes good. Thank God! Exit 29, D.C. International Airport, what a relief. A few more blocks and here we go, late, but who gives a rat's ass. I'm here, we're here and there's Scully with William, she's not exactly looking to pleased with me right now. I figure it's best to get my hurried self over there before the daggers of her icy stare kill me in the process. "Hey Scully, You made it! And look who's here, it's little Will." Come on Scully, smile, laugh, hit me for Christ's sake, don't just stand there like that. "You know Mulder, when I think about it now, I wasn't exactly happy to be going to San Diego at first; alright, I was royally pissed with you before. But when I consider everything, all confessions forward, my extremely arduous drive over here on the interstate somewhat helped me sort things out. Come on Mulder let's get going before we're any later." After all that; the run around, the panic, the anger, and all the frustration, she still manages to have the perfect ending to one of my worst summer days. All I can think is, Scully, how *do* you do it? She's happy, I'm dog tired but pleased and little William, well he could have really cared. First family crisis averted, and maybe my mistaken 211 shortcut wasn't *such* a bad idea after all. = = = = end of part (2/2) = = = = feedback welcomed and appreciated at: REdHeAD178@aol.com