From: shirlock Date: Fri, 21 May 99 21:33:32 +0800 Subject: New fanfict: Apartment #35: Fact vs Fiction Title: Apartment #35: Fact vs fiction. Author: Shirlock Rating: PG-13 Archive: Name follows wherever the story goeth, lemme know Category: Vignette/ Character Insight/ UST Spoilers: Some unimportant references. Summary: Home is where Mulder finds out more about his partner of near seven years. At least it's easier than getting it from Dana Scully. Microinspection ahead. Disclaimer: All characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox who had a vision. The rest of us are merely projecting. Feedback: I don't want any. Really. Unless of course YOU want to send me some. Then don't let me stop ya. shirlock@pacific.net.sg Dana Scully's apartment Georgetown, Washington DC. 8:12pm < Where you go hereafter depends on what you go after here.> Some wiseass said that this morning. Fox Mulder smiled dazedly at the knob he was holding. There's wiseass, and there's just ass. Right now, he was just feeling a little in between. His key slotted into the lock, he hesitated for nearly a second before turning the knob. She was expecting him in about three quarters of an hour having first explained she had a dinner to attend that evening. But one she wouldn't like to be at long, so she had welcomed his suggestion that they go over the expense reports before submitting them next week. Mulder hadn't expected her to accede to what he had thought was a banal request, but he was pleased that she didn't seem to mind afterwork hours with him. And workhours meant 16 odd hours. Briefly, he wondered about the other 8 afterwork hours. How many of those might be spent unconscious. Hands wrapped around her midrift. He shook his head, warding off very pleasant thoughts. Is there such a thing as too pleasant thoughts? Pushing the door in, he stood there surveying the furniture. His eyes swept over the gist of pictures on the wall, the looming shadows on the dark floorboards and the laptop on the side table, opened but not on. He couldn't remember when was the last time he had stepped in her home. It felt warm inside, inviting from the spring chill that was breezily rustling leaves outside. His eyes adjusted to the sudden amber wash of lights from the table lamp as he focused on the overall impact of her living room. The place was orderly, tidy, homely without the ornamental fuss he associate with women in general. But then again, Scully was not a "woman" in the general sense. She could not be singularly categorised with such a population of females. If there must be a classification, he thought, it'd be under "Scully" which would include the generations of Scully women who came before her. In a category of their own. There was efficiency in the layout of the room, a method to her ways of seeking maximum comfort in a space that smelled of her, that echoed of her likes and dislikes, that literally spoke volumes about her. Aspects of Dana Scully poured out from the walls. Home is who Scully is, and in more ways than one, more revealing than the person herself. He closed the door behind him and scanned the living room again. There were hints of her personality in every corner, evidence of her demeanor even as he imagined her sitting on the sofa reading her medical journals. He quickly sought to distinguish truth from the imagined. He looked down at the coat rack to find a pair of dark blue pumps cast hurriedly so as to stand anonymously apart from the other. Size six. It seemed like his partner was perhaps tardy in keeping the rendezvous of the evening and so had hastily made her way out. A small object no longer than his index finger sat forlonly on the side table. He picked it up and inspected it as a detective might in examining a piece of evidence. It had EA on the bottom. He broke the tubular by pulling it apart and studying the glossy red that slunk out at his insistant twist. Lipstick by Elizabeth Arden. It was a deep magenta red. And it had coloured the edges of her lips, graced the contours of the one place he almost met in emotional tandem. He marvelled at the colour of its burgundy red, an intoxicating flavour he imagined to be the taste and feel of her lips. He wasn't surprised in the least that she opted for such a colour for an evening dinner. Fact: Dana does socialise. Fiction: Scully is moping alone at home, eating ice-cream and reading Robin Cook to pass her days. He strolled over to the kitchen. He found himself thirsty from hiking up the steps. Opening the fridge, a variety of cartons, cups and containers stared back. There was a half-and-half carton of milk, a half dozen pack of plain yoghurt, some white sauce in a small container, a danish with a bite through it, a plastic container of philadelphia cream cheese, a carafe of herbal ice tea and an assortment of cheeses. Below was a big bowl of cherries, strawberries and cranberries. He pulled out a carton of orange juice next to a can of whip cream and began pouring its contents out into a glass. As he replaced it, he caught sight of a neatly wrapped packet of blue satin peeking from the shelf under the bagels. His mind drew an honest blank until he pulled it out and saw the corners of a lapel. Her pyjamas. In the fridge. Oddities that were not part and parcel of the no-nonsense package that came in the primness of his partner startled him. She liked to wear cool pyjamas. The furtive thought brought a smile across his features, crossing an earlier erotic notion that brought him another image of ice and lots of skin. Scully skin. Pale smooth skin confettied with cherries and maybe a generous spray of whip cream. With ice-cream drizzling down secret places. He replaced the nightwear into the fridge and pulled the door to the freezer compartment. Frozen fish fingers. Frozen pot pies. Frozen ground coffee beans. Six bagels. Aaah! Frozen tubs of Ben and Jerry's cherry garcia. Scully can never be the vanilla or cookies and cream type. They seemed too mild. Some sinful liquered cream with oozing buried rum-dipped cherries were somehow more suitable. By all counts, she seemed to relish foods with very complex tastes and a variety of textures. Bee pollen and yoghurt. Goats cheese on a ritz cracker topped with chopped celery. Oh. And let's not forget Healthy. She exudes the epitome of single-minded health-consciousness akin to a Ray Wilson Health Fitness gym instructor. He looked to the right where two long fluted wine glasses stood forlonly in the otherwise clean and empty sink. Two glasses. The demi-bouteille of chianti had a drop left at the punt end, along with whatever dregs of cork that mingled with it. He turned round to face the large bouquet of red roses in the dim and far corner. They were in a vase, the wrappings and ribbons at its base, along with a pair of secateurs and half-cut stems en route to the trashbin just beside the unsightly heap. He walked over to them and siphoned in the scent. There was no card as he tipped the pedal of the trash and looked. An empty half pint of rum raisin were the only other piece of incriminating evidence. So somebody had bought flowers for Scully. Her date for the evening? He counted the red buds and the opened ones. There were 24. Two dozens. His eyebrows knitted together. The last time he bought flowers for somebody was years ago, in a different country, under a different custom. He had bought Phoebe a dozen stalks the next day after they had torrid sex the night before. He hated those misgivings he was having. That she might have spent her last evening in bed with a man and went through the day with him as per their normal selves. Pure conjecture, his Holmes voice rationalised. Fact: Dana receives flowers. Two dozen damned deliciously scented sun-kissed roses. Fiction: Scully hates flowers. Where did that idea come from? He walked back to the living room and perused the photos on the table. Scully was so unlike the women he had known. She was so opposite the others that it suddenly made him feel at sea just what Scully had that seem to possess him? Her dry wit? Her tartness to his sometimes lurid remarks? Her tireless energy? Her singlehearted devotion to truth? Her astuteness to his moodiness? Her ability to accept him for who he was? She was a very good investigator, and a damned good pathologist. What was Scully that made her such an imposing figure in his life? There was a picture of her parents. Her brothers and sister. One of Melissa and someone else. Another of Bill Jr. and Tara. Then one of baby Matthew. One of presumably Charles and his family. There was one of Dana with Ahab when she was probably ten or eleven. And one with him and her in their pre-burnt office in the Hoover Building. Her fresh young face leaning close to his. Startlingly fresh. Provocatively innocent. The one thing that made Dana Scully sexy like hell was the fact that she never looked like she once imagined herself exactly that. Even then, he saw as he pinched the evidence in his hand, he looked kind of smitten. The photo of course had been taken soon after the Tooms case. They had grown closer since then. There was this inextinguishable flame that radiated from her behind her blue eyes. Her depth of empathy and exceptional intuition led her to connect with individuals who has a masked history of hurts and various ailments. He looked at the pictures again. There was another photo. Recently framed too. Of a man. A man he didn't recognise, but immediately felt threatened by. A doctor's face. One who would presumably have crow's feet when he smiled. Worry lines which he probably cultivated from having to tell one family too many about a loved one who was dying. He wore a beard that was trimmed. He looked about forty but had some poise in the manner in which he was photographed. Who would've thought facial hair could turn Scully on? He stared at the photo, willing it to give him more insight as to the makeup of this man. This man whom Scully felt needed to be among her family's photographs. He was secretly thankful that she wasn't in the photo with him. That he would know for certain that she liked them together enough to buy a frame to celebrate their unity. He was glad the bearded man was alone in the photo. He had intense eyes. Blue, like hers. And his hair was wind-swept. He wore a wind-breaker and squinted his eyes to see the sign just behind him. There was a B. And an A. Baltimore? The rest was fuzzy. Fact: There was more than one man in Dana's life. Fiction: Fox Mulder doesn't have competition. The phone rang shrilly until her voice floated into the room in a recorded voice. "Hi, sorry I'm not in at the moment. But leave your name and number and I'll call you back as soon as I can." That's my partner, he thought. No fuss. No long explanations. Get straight to the point. There were some things about her un-fussiness that reminded him of the mannerisms of the male species, but he knew for sure she eclipsed the rest of her kind. Dana Scully was womanly even though she didn't fall under the very general umbrella of the genteel sex. "Hi Dana, it's Adler. Call me when you come in. Brunch is on tomorrow as usual. 11 at J.Paul's on M Street." Click. Fox Mulder fancied himself a good sleuth. An intuitive one as well. But the caller left no hints to his or her sex. Adler? That's a new one. He went through the rollodex in his mind. No, he didn't remember anyone called Adler. So she has friends. Was that such a revelation? What surprised him more? That she actually had other friends, or that she had them but never mentioned them to him? Why would she bring up the subject of her friends to him anyway? There wouldn't have been an opportunity. Fact: Dana has brunches on Saturdays with Adler and gawd-knows-who-else.. Regularly. Fiction: Only I use last names. He looked about the room for more clues. There was a lot he didn't know about her and he knew he couldn't otherwise have since she wouldn't mix business with her personal life. The books on her book shelf were all medical books. The magazine were mostly Science-related.A few space journals made him smile a little. She didn't have a novel on the shelf except one. It looked like one. He dropped his head 45 degrees and read the spine: He picked it out with the thin bony index and flipped to the dedication page of the book. He read the 11 point type three times before the words actually made sense. To Dana- I will never forget you. Or our first. It was signed Michelle R. The "M" was girlish, but the "R" was downright fanciful. He turned back to the cover of the book. Michelle Rochas, editor of an anthology of short stories detailing the coming of age stories about lesbian encounters. His mind did a double take and he flipped back to the dedication. Just how many people dedicate their books to past loves? He cursed silently. Mentally he noted. Fact: Men are not the only ones attracted to his diminuitive partner. Fiction: Ice Queen. Who the hell started this rumour knows nada about Scully. It appears I know not much more, myself. He looked further down the shelves. There was a large album on the last lower shelf. Dustfree but recently poured over from the signs of oily fingerprints on the outer covers. Pictures tell a thousand words. The woman with no past is about to tell him about hers. He flipped one page while draining his cup of the orange juice. A baby picture of an unmistakable Dana Scully. It was a black and white picture of an infant with very light curly blond hair, her chubby fingers grabbing at the toes she was trying to jam into her smiling mouth. It was an endearing picture of a baby that drooled contentment. The next page was a photo of her climbing out of a large flower pot without a stitch of clothing to hide her gender. The first hints of mischief were readable in her eyes as they danced with curiosity and childlike faith that angels hovered by where mothers had not. She wore a frilly hat, her curls peeking from underneath, eyes trained on the camera and the four front teeth baring pleasure of being caught. Fox Mulder smiled in spite of himself. He turned the aged album to reveal a visual narrative that detailed her toddling steps. Two older children flanked her sides, pulling her as she laughingly willed her stubby legs to follow suit. Then there was the mischievious one where she had dressed in Mrs. Scully's clothes, complete with hat and pearls, heels and handbag. Later years still revealed the flippant side of Dana Scully. The tomboy version where she posed with her catapault from the branch of an apple tree. There was one where she was dressed with wings, a crooked silver halo and a white dress next to a bigger boy with a pitchfork, wearing red cape, horns, mask and a star wand around his neck. Bill Junior, no doubt, developed a premature gift of pissing his little sister off at an early age. Then came the ones where her puppy fat melted away and suddenly an elementary student in a covent uniform smiled shyly from a stack of books in the school library. One with glasses on, studiously engrossed in an atlas of the human anatomy. One with Missy laughing in the lake. One with Mrs. Scully in the kitchen. He flipped some more till the one image found its way into his heart. It was the most natural picture of a young girl no more than thirteen hugging an overgrown collie. There was protectiveness in her wide smile. Of giggles that he was almost sure was emanating from the faded, bygone photograph. There was the face which bespoke honour, family, love, promise and hopes. It was evident there and then and it was evident in her words when she last spoke to him in the office tonight. "See you later then." She had said. Four little words. Of honour. She would be there personally to "see" to it, and her word was inviolate. Of Love. When she says "you", the rest of the world disappears. Of promises. They would meet later; not soon enough, but later. There's a time for everything. And of hope. "Then?" When was then? He didn't really want to dissect what his hope were when she said those four little words. He returned the album to its rightful place and reached for the long tapered candles on her mantlepiece. They smelt fragrant. Lavender and cinnamon? What's this? An ash tray? He fingered the steely base of the ash tray, willing his mind to conjure up a smoking Scully. How her fingers will pinch the filter and inhale. He put it back on the mantlepiece and picked up two small pearls. They were earrings. He rolled his eyes upwards flipping mental images he had catalogued of her in various outfits and in various poses. He never remembered her wearing pearl earrings. They were heavy too. Nothing fake here. He acknowledged the time on the clock sandwiched beside the candles. He had another twenty minutes to sketch out the personality of Dana Scully.Funny how she built herself walls to protect herself from the world and here he was, listening to the stories contained within these four walls. He walked into her bathroom and hesitated to open cabinets and laundry baskets. That'd be snooping, his mind rationally cautioned. He didn't want to invade; he just wanted to read what was already left open. So he picked up the jar of bath oils. They were multicoloured and smelt like a recently picked bunch of spring flowers. The toilet seat was down and he searched for various literature that no toilet is ever complete without. But there wasn't a single piece of article anywhere within three feet. Superfluous, he thought she might say if questioned. Fact: She's efficient even in the bathroom. Fiction: Or non-fictions not welcomed in the john. He exited the bathroom and was glad to find the bedroom door ajar. He ventured forth, greedily soaking in the person of Dana Scully even as her habits pointedly reveal facts about her in her most absentminded of home duties. Her fresh laundry was all over her bed. He moved closer not to disrupt the pile but to view the cluster of clothing in as detached a manner as he possible could. The impulse had been to dive right in and do the backstroke. He saw several t-shirts, skirts, plenty of pantyhose and about two weeks worth of undergarments. There ran only the gamut of two colours. Subdued pink and dark royal blue. There was no absence of lace. Without disturbing the mountain of wash, he touched the outer edges of a long gown. It was black. And it was silky. And it was mentally challenging him to close the distance between his nose and the slippery material. Fact: Dana wore lacy stuff. Fiction: Scully only wore long sleeved PJs. He held up a t-shirt and saw the bold letters emblazoned on its back: Don't mess with Scully. He laughed out loud despite himself and the hollow echo made him conscious he was in her room. Alone. Messing with Scully's stuff. He diverted his attention to the small chest of drawers to the left. A vanity mirror showed him perspiring at the temples which he wiped with one quick brush of his hand. There was a bottle of foundation, lipstick, eyeshadow, and rouge. Nothing of real interest to him. Until he caught the glimmer of a ring. A nice ring. Not an overtly large, garish diamond ring. It was a one carat thingiebob that said more like "engagement" ring. He picked it up and studied it. It didn't look new. There were scratches on the sides and the white gold looked somewhat tarnished. < Love always, A.W> So Scully may have been engaged to someone. Fact: Dana has come close to marrying. Fiction: Scully is afraid of getting close. Well, at least close enough to walk the aisle. Thankfully, he sighed. She chose not to tell him about her past, sensing himself, that the past does nothing to change the present let alone their futures. He found out that was rapidly changing. He did want to know about her past. Something in his partnership with her had changed. Something so subtle, so inevitable, so natural that no one took notice. Not Scully. Not even himself. He caught sight of a small framed up photo of Emily. Her Emily. In the privacy of her bedroom. Every morning she would meet with her daughter as she put on her makeup. She would be reminded of her abduction, of the evils that men did and continue to do to her. He closed his eyes in anguish for her. The burden of that thought wholly insuperable and insurmountable in his regard for her fraility. Scully was the strongest of women in his knowledge of the weaker sex. He amended that thought immediately. It was so wrong to put Scully and weaker sex in the same sentence. His regard for women had changed drammatically since their first case. Now, hundreds of cases later, he drew his own conclusion. Scully was difficult to understand, but not difficult to read. The brave front that she put on beneath layers of makeup was for others. But the reasons behind them were now crystal clear in Mulder's mind. Scully knew her weaknesses. She understood them well.Well enough to look at them straight in the face every morning before she replaced her mask. It takes one to know one. And it takes one to understand the other. He suddenly understood Ed Jerse, her rebellion, her needing to break out of the old mold. To recreate herself. Under all the fa=E7ade, all the makeup was a person. And she was a woman. And she has needs. It had nothing to do with Fox Mulder. He went around to the small table by her bed and found some nasal spray. He picked it up and read the label. For allegies, sinusitis and other nasal disorders. There was a tissue box and a pen that was uncapped. Every good detective knows that an uncapped pen is tantamount to a smoking gun. There were three pillows. Scully- One head. Note: Scully likes lots of pillows. Anybody else sharing them? He looked for strands of hair not red in colour and found himself squinting in the bad light. Under one of the pillows lay a non-descript book. Two bookmarks peeked out from the top. Whoever used two bookmarks? He read the words "Verdi and La-something on the upper corner." He groaned. He was now at odds with the sleuth within. Mulder vs. Holmes. Mulder wants to know and Holmes sees no point in learning what were in those pages for Holmes was a mechanic researcher. He had no designs on the person. Mulder knew his research must lead to a better partnership with her. What might be in the book? Scrap book? A journal? Very likely. Personal stuff. He glanced at his watch. It was almost nine and she had never been more than ten minutes late. Instead of reaching for the book as his mind had instructed, his fingers went to the curtains. He drew them across, letting the bluish moonlight filter into the bedroom. The moon was large and round, its luminescence almost blinding in the darkness that seem to blend him with the shadows. He looked at the bait and walked steadily away. He decided to sum up his visit. Fact: He loved sitting in her home, surrounded by things that she had bought. By clothes she had worn. By food she was going to eat. By the books she had read and by the simple fact that this was her home and that she felt safe here. And she had invited him to share that part of her she must have known he has fallen in love with. Fact: No matter what others may have said about her, or noted about her, or remarked in passing about her, Scully is still his most trustworthy friend. Fact: He loves to unravel the mystery that is Scully. The unmistakable measured sound of footsteps and the jangling of keys stirred him out of his thoughts. He smiled up at his partner, the hall lights creating a rim of light around her as his eyes adjusted to the clothes she was wearing. A simple black dress. Was it always so simple on the outside? The inner complexities he had divulged from her apartment were monstrously complicated. "Waited long?" She asked. "Long enough." He replied, and smiled until she returned the same facial gesture. END Author's notes: Who says the agents can't have a life outside of their work? What the series don't show doesn't mean it can't exist. It's mentally challenging to separate fact from fiction after reading through so many wonderful stories at Gossamer. There has to them than what they're NOT showing. I just want to believe that. Thanks for reading. I find it easier to do a Mulder's POV on Scully because I feel the show's writers have given her more mystique. Can anyone tell me where "Ice Queen" comes from?