From: HC Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 00:26:08 -0000 Subject: -NEW- Chocolate Cake (1/1) MSR, SRH ______________ Chocolate Cake by Heavenly Creature Rated *PG* MSR, SRH, OtherAngst No spoilers, but let's assume that this takes somewhere along the recent timeline where there is no angst and lots of shippiness. Oh can't we just pretend for my sake?! Archive freely. Summary: Well... don't we all have our weaknesses? Disclaimer: Scully and Mulder are not mine. Not even slightly. Julia, Sal, Marla, Robert and Fat Pete are all mine. Praise be. This is dedicated to my fellow Rooster gals, Renee and Olivia, because I know they will appreciate the theme more than anyone. Or maybe not... *snort*... PLEASE send feedback to or and I will love you forever. ____________________ Chocolate Cake by Heavenly Creature Let me tell you something. Dana Scully was chocolate cake. I love chocolate cake, it's my only weakness, I will do anything for it; I have been known to beg for it. Seriously. But I shouldn't have it. I get very easily addicted - it makes my skin break out and unless I push myself to work out, I balloon up and look like a whale. An ugly whale. Don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to a few extra pounds here and there - just as long as it is on *other* people. I would *love* a bit of flesh on my body, but it just doesn't work the way I want it to. I don't end up voluptuous, I end up... lumpy... Dana Scully is just as bad for me. Okay, so she doesn't give me acne, but she does other things... She makes me sweat, she actually gives me sweaty palms, like I'm a lovesick teenager again. So I shouldn't have her, either. It's not as though she'd look twice at me anyway, she's as straight as... as... [Okay, insert the name of something straight here, please. See what she does to me?] And of course, she is in love with *him*. He's not so bad looking himself, I can see that, even behind the cuts and bruises, the necessary wiring and the ugly intubation. He was admitted to the ER under my care just over a week ago. I knew the type - he was a cop, an FBI agent, and he was a good looking one. Sal said he'd been in before for a superficial head lac, and she said he stared blatantly and openly at her breasts while she stitched him up [I refrain from telling her that she does in fact have very nice breasts and she does a wonderful job suturing - ass-licking doesn't work with Sal, more's the pity], and she caught him checking out unconscious female patients, med students, nurses, doctors left and right... He conformed to the stereotype I have learned of good looking men who carry a badge. Sexist fucking pigs. Pardon my generalization. So I wasn't expecting him to come equipped with his very own panic-stricken, teary-eyed, red-headed angel, holding his unresponsive hand and demanding to know whether he was okay or not. "Ma'am," I said, in my doctor-knows-best voice, "We're doing everything we can for him right now. It's best for you to go to the Visitor's Room and I'll have a nurse explain what we're going to do..." "I'm a DOCTOR," she spat, shrugging me away from her and leaning over my patient. "Ma'am... He's going to be fine..." But she wasn't listening. "I'll leave you alone with him," I told her softly, heading for the corridor. I stopped and turned at the door. "Ma'am?" She looked around, looked straight at me for the first time, and my knees turned to buttercream. [There I go again with the cake references... I'd better get to the gym NOW.] I swallowed. "Is he your husband?" I asked. She smiled weakly. "No. He's my partner." I nodded and left. Partner in crime, I thought, the Dynamic Duo, the man of steel, and I laughed insanely, attracting attention from doctors and patients all over the place. Love at first sight can do that to you. Or maybe it's just me. I pop back to check on my patient at the end of the night. She's still there, clutching his hand and still wide awake. "How's he doing?" I ask, nervously wiping my palms on my scrubs. "Uh, I think he's okay." "You're the doctor," I say, hoping that didn't border on bitchy. She took it well. "I'm sorry I was rude," she says, "I was tense..." I nod. "I understand." She holds out a hand to me. "Dana Scully." "Mmm," I squeak, knowing that the hand I am shaking hers with is sweating like a pig in a tent. "Julia Gerald," I say, and we smile. "Um..." I try to remember why I'm there, I know there is a reason. "Is there anyone you need to call?" I ask. "Not right now," she says softly, sadly. I nod. "Well, my shift is ending, so if you need help, call for Doctor Bradley. In fact, in fact..." I scrawl numbers on my notepad. "This is my home number if you need me... for... something..." She looks confused, but grateful. "Call any time," I blurt out, "For anything." *God* just let her think I'm being a good, thorough doctor and not a lunatic. "I will," she says, in a tone that is there to hide the tone that would let me know she thinks I'm a lunatic. So I go to the ladies room and throw up. I loathe myself... I curse myself out loud, over and over until I retch some more. I plop myself down onto the floor by the toilet and wait for the vomiting to stop. In case it isn't obvious, relationships are not exactly my strong point. This is what happens, this is me when I am insanely in lust. I say stupid things and then I throw up all over the place - at least I made it to the bathroom this time. Ugh... I wish I was someone else. Someone else would NOT fall in love with their patient's partner on the spot... And what was with that anyway? Did partner mean lover or colleague? And what difference did it make to me anyway..? Oopsie, more vomit. "Is somebody in there?" "No," I say sarcastically, failing to come up with a dry and witty follow-up remark and so sounding more like a child having a tantrum and less like Chandler Bing with every passing sentence. The stall door opens. It's Dana. "Of all the bathrooms in all the world..." I begin, before realising that the image of me hunched over a vomit-coated public lavatory is not the one I want to remain in her memory. "Are you okay?" Don't answer, I tell myself. You'll only say something stupid. I feel light-headed. Dana reaches out a hand to help me up. I have a vivid image of the sweat lubricating our hands and me landing head first in a toilet bowl full of my own sick. But that doesn't happen. She looks at me with a concerned face that proves she's a doctor, and leads me to the sink. I take a long drink of water, washing away the taste in my mouth and wondering what the fuck I am going to say next. "I was going to go for a coffee," she says softly. "I'm not familiar with the area, do you know somewhere where I can get a good breakfast?" I think fast. "I was going for breakfast myself," I say. "Care to join me?" Sure. I would love to watch you eat breakfast and then wait for you to say or do something dumb so that I can watch you regurgitate it, Julia. I feel the chunks start to rise. But, "Thanks," she says. I take her to the only place I know that is open twenty-four hours, I take her to Fat Pete's Diner. Actually, it's just called 'Pete's', but the Pete in question is fat... well... it seemed funny at the time... We go back a long way. "Jules! You look like death!" he says cheerfully. "You're looking pretty fat and greasy yourself," I tell him. "Pete, this is Dana Scully, Dana, this is Fat Pete." Fat Pete shakes hands with Dana and gives me this disgusting look.. he raises his eyebrows and sort of winks, and I make a mental note to do a bad job of any medical procedure he should ever require me to perform. "What can I get you lovely ladies?" he asks. I look at Dana. "Breakfast?" I suggest. She nods, but Fat Pete shakes his head grimly. "No breakfast until 7am." It is 6:30. "Aw Pete... just an egg?" He holds his hands up in the air. "No breakfast until 7am," he insists. I wish I had a sawn-off shotgun so I could go all Michael Douglas on him, but then I see it, sitting happily behind the glass counter, waiting for me, calling my name. "Chocolate cake?" I suggest to Dana. She smiles sexily and nods, and I think I'm going to faint. Fat Pete frowns. "I thought you said never to serve you chocolate cake again," he says. "Two coffees and two slices of the cake," I order in my no-nonsense voice, glaring at him stonily. "Make mine a decaf." Dana and I sit in a booth, our knees touching slightly, and I have to remind myself to breathe. "Was Fox looking any better after I left?" I ask. "He was just the same," she says. "Sal... the nurse... She said she'd treated him at the hospital before." Dana frowns and smiles at the same time and I want to take her home. "He's always getting himself into trouble like that." "Oh," I say, realising that smalltalk is not as difficult as I had first thought. "What do you do?" "We work for the FBI." "I'm impressed," I say, though I would have been impressed if she'd told me they emptied dumpsters for a living. She shrugs, and Fat Pete delivers our order. Dana stares into her coffee as she stirs in the cream. "Sometimes our work is more trouble than it's worth," she says. I think of Mr. Mulder, all battered and bleeding, and I wish there was something more I could do for him. It occurs to me that I should care because I'm a *doctor*, not because I would give my right arm to make this woman smile, but... well... I'm only a human being. Probably a bad one. "I'm sure he'll be okay," I say, not sure how many times I have told her this already. She nods slowly, and pokes at the cake with her fork. Oh god, I had almost forgotten about the cake in front of me. Fat Pete makes great cake. Actually, 'great' doesn't even begin to describe it, but since it seems to numb my brain so that my whole body can concentrate on the taste, it's the best I can do. There are two layers to it, two layers of the lightest, fluffiest chocolate sponge you have ever tasted in your life. There is a thin layer of hard milk chocolate along the top, and the chocolate buttercream in the middle is positively orgasmic. It isn't too sugary, it tastes like real chocolate and not like cocoa powder. And then comes cherry syrup, which is thick and gooey, and makes me forget the torture I will have to endure at the gym to work all of this off. The first time I tasted his cake, I declared that I wanted to bear Fat Pete's children. Fortunately for everyone he didn't take me up on the offer - between his looks and my tendency to act kinda insane, I'm certain our kids would not have thanked us for bringing them into the world. "Wow, this is nice," Dana says. "Yeah, it is," I say. I watch Dana eating her cake, and I think very dirty thoughts. Bad doctor, I tell myself. Bad, bad doctor. "So, you're a doctor too?" I ask, trying to keep the conversation clean and good. She nods, swallowing a mouthful of cake. "Forensic pathology." For someone who has dedicated half their life to medicine, I seem to have forgotten medical smalltalk mighty quickly. So I let her carry the conversation along, and I try to sound like a real doctor, not some escaped maniac who has stolen a white coat and stethoscope in order to stalk FBI agents... How would I make myself sound like that anyway? Sometimes I wonder why in the hell they let me be a doctor to start with, giving me access to scalpels and drugs and big dangerous defib paddles... I'm a danger to myself and the public when I get like this. It's all *her* fault. Dana talks about Mulder a lot. She doesn't exactly talk *about* him, she just mentions him, refers to him. Sometimes I get the impression she makes an effort *not* to mention him, at the risk of sounding too obsessed. Though maybe I'm just interpreting it that way because that's what *I* would do. But as far as I can tell, they are not involved. Hope springs eternal. No, actually, it doesn't, but the chocolate has made me happily optimistic. I watch her sliding forkfuls of cake between her big round lips, and I wonder if she would turn to me as a shoulder to cry on if Mulder had an 'accident' and didn't pull through... Bad doctor. Bad *bad* *BAD* doctor. "Sorry?" Dana stops and looks at me. "Hmm?" "You were whispering," she tells me, amused. Shit. I am crazy. Talking to myself, plotting to kill my patients in the hope that I will get laid... "Oh, nothing," I say. "I have a tendency to do things and not know that I've done them, and sometimes I say things without thinking and I think now is one of those times." And I'll be operating on your partner and love of your life just as soon as they get me out of that fiddly sweater with the long sleeves... Dana smiles. "You must be tired. I'm sorry to have kept you here." I lick the taste of coffee and chocolate off the back of my teeth. "I'm not so bad, it's no bother." I get the feeling she has opened up to me this morning, and I am glad. And now she's going to leave. "I should go," she says. "See if Mulder is awake yet. How much do I owe you for all this?" She motions at her empty mug and the plate with no crumbs left. "No problem," I say. "I'll take care of it." She smiles wider. "Thank-you." And she leaves a small tip for Fat Pete, who waves to her as she leaves. I watch her go, silently screaming, Wait! Marry me! Fortunately *that* was in my head. "She was cute," Fat Pete observes, giving me that filthy look again. "She's straight," I tell him, and he throws his hands and his washcloth into the air in mock despair. "Why are the good ones always straight?" he complains to the heavens. "WHY? Is there no mercy?!" His one other customer looks up, vaguely aware that someone is speaking. It's such a dive, I can't believe I took Dana there. "Put it on my slate," I call on my way out, without waiting for a reply. I have five hours sleep out of my usual six, and then haul my beluga ass down to the gym. I have fallen in love, I think, as I arrive back at the hospital that evening, utterly exhausted. Shit. This isn't good. Sal bounds over with an stack of charts for me to deal with. "Gee thanks," I say. "You look like hell," she tells me, tossing her hair. "I feel like it. How's Mr. Mulder?" "No change." I'm starting to feel a certain amount of apprehension. I want to see Dana, I don't want to see Dana, it's getting in the way of my job. Actually, I've done more paperwork in the last hour than I have done for about two weeks, so maybe it's not such a bad thing... But it can't be good for Mulder. So eventually I get to the point where I can get within a meter or so of the room where they are. I look through the window and I see that Dana is asleep, her head on Mulder's stomach. My patient is fine, he's stable, he will probably recover soon. I wonder how long Dana will lie there with him, how long she will put everything else on hold. Until he is better? It makes me feel very alone, to see her so devoted to him. Oh if only I wasn't such a shrivelled up career woman, so dedicated, so... Dana wakes up. "What time is it?" she asks. "It's nearly 8pm." She runs her fingers through Mulder's hair, looking tired and sad. "Maybe you should go home for the night," I suggest. I am the voice of all reason. "I'd rather stay." "It's up to you." She yawns and stretches. She has removed her bulky blazer and now she is wearing a green ribbed top with long sleeves. It's kinda... clingy... Don't stare, Julia. Do not stare. Think pure thoughts. I can do that! I can! Just let me have a coffee, and I'll be Miss Sensible Professional Doctor 1999. "Well let me know if you need anything," I say. I try to remember what Sensible!Julia is like but it's not so easy. I conclude that she would probably go save several lives and forget all about Dana. So that's what I do. What a night. What a life... I play Sensible!Julia for several days, and I manage keep a professional eye on Dana. She hardly leaves the hospital at all; though Mulder doesn't get worse, he doesn't really get better either, and I worry about her. Several other people stop by and visit, mostly men, nobody who gave the impression that they were family. I run to the bathroom with the intention of throwing up [after accidentally upsetting a whole load of shelves in the store cupboard], but all the stalls [all two of them. Lousy, crappy hospital] were occupied. I'm sick in the big sink, but just a little vomit, because knocking over shelves isn't grand on the disaster scale. Marla the med student asks me if I'm okay on her way out, and I nod reassuringly, retching and taking another look at my painfully colourful dinner as it hits the ceramics. Whoever said that thing about vomit always looking like carrots was right. Weird. "Julia?" At first I think I have puked my guts out, died, and woken up in some bizarre restroom- -shaped afterlife, but then I realise that it isn't an angel, it's Dana. Yeah, I know, I know... "Are you sure you're all right?" "I'm okay," I reassure her, wiping my chin. "Hey, have you been crying?" I frown. She shakes her head bravely, but then catches sight of herself in the mirror and realises it's useless lying. Her face crumples, and I start to panic. I can't cope when people I care about are crying, and I think I'm going to be sick again. But then - THANKFULLY - Sensible!Julia rears her professional little head and puts her arm around Dana's shoulder. Dana looks shocked for a moment, and then grateful, and then I think [hope] she will stop crying, but she doesn't. "Is everything okay?" I ask, either me or the sensible version of me, I'm not exactly sure who. She sniffs, "It's been a long day," she tells me. I grunt, a little noise of understanding, and I can feel my palms crawling with tiny beads of sweat. "Chocolate cake," I say, almost without thinking about it. If she loved me, I reason, or even liked me, then that would be an indulgence. I don't have that indulgence. I need cake. "Huh?" She looks up, her eyes are all pink. "Fat Pete's chocolate cake," I say. "You want?" A tiny smile grows on her face. "Now?" "Sure," I say, suddenly feeling confident in myself, very Frauline Maria, and I smile back at her. "It's open twenty-four hours." I can taste the buttercream already. "But you were just being sick..." I wrinkle up my nose, "That's nothing," I say cheerfully. [See, I'm cheerful now!] "I have a weak stomach when it comes to social graces but with food I'm fine." I think I amuse her. Not necessarily in a good way, but she smiles a tiny smile in my direction, and nods slightly uncertainly at me. "I'll just brush my teeth," I say. Excellent dialogue, truly excellent, I think to myself. The cake is as good as I remember it, and Fat Pete is as fat and as charmless as ever. It's early morning, and the city is dark. I love to watch the lights from the diner window, and eat the better-than-sex chocolate cake, and listen to Pete's tuneless humming. "You really love Mulder, don't you?" I say, scraping the deep red cherry sauce onto my fork. She frowns at me, poking the cake with her fork and cracking the solid chocolate on top. "We've been through a lot together," she says and I press her further. "And you love him," I say. I'm being annoying now, which is far far worse than vomiting or sweating. She is frantically trying to stab the thin chocolate layer with her fork, but it doesn't work that way. "You have to twist it," I say, demonstrating with my own fork. I slide the chocolate layer between the prongs, and then hold the fork at just the right angle so that the chocolate balances. I eat it. "I would never have thought of that," she says. "Practice," I tell her. "Long lonely nights. Does he love you too?" Her face darkens for a moment, but it's only a moment, and when it's over she licks her lips slowly and says, "I think so, yes." "You think so yes," I muse. "There's a lot of history," she tells me. "There are a *lot* of complications." "What kind of complications?" The chocolate made me ask. I know she didn't want to be asked, I *know* that, do you think I'm *totally* imperceptive and clueless? Because I'm not. I'm very perceptive. Some would say too perceptive. I'm just slightly rebellious with it. It's not my fault. She sighs, and takes a long, long sip of coffee. "Well we work together for a start. That's difficult enough." I nod, just so she knows I'm listening. I could listen to her talking forever. "We have a very intense job," she continues, "and an intense relationship. But it's too... too complicated." "Is there someone else?" I ask quietly, drinking my drink. She grins, which surprises me. "There's no-one else. No-one else would put up with what we put up with." I smile, wishing I knew more. "Go on," I encourage her, I'm very curious, but if anyone asks, I was trying to help *her*, got that? "He'll pull through," she says. "Won't he? He always does." "You should tell him," I tell her, very wisely. I'm not a wise woman, but I know how to talk like I am. "When he wakes up. You could change things." She smiles again. "I don't need to tell him," she says, "I think he knows." "He thinks so yes too?" "Maybe." I laugh. God, this cake is so fucking good. No, wait, that's not the issue, is it? Never mind. "Promise me you'll tell him." She looks slightly startled. "Do you always keep your promises?" I ask. There's a look in her eyes that says, do I?, and then she nods slowly. "I try to." "Then will you promise to tell him?" She looks at me closely, her wonderful, wide, blue eyes staring curiously and unsurely, and I feel myself grinning. "Promise," I say, forgetting to care about whether or not I have chocolate in my teeth. "Maybe," she says enigmatically, hiding her face in her coffee mug as she drinks the last of it. "Pete?" I yell. "Two more coffees over here." "And cake," Dana adds. Oh, I have found my soulmate. Could she be more perfect? I really don't think so. Well, yeah, there's the little sexual orientation matter, but there's not much I can do about that. "This cake will kill me," I say, eating it enthusiastically. She smiles. We talk until the sun rises, about medicine, movies, chocolate... Soulmate, definitely. And just for those few short hours, I think that she could have been mine. She felt like she was mine, I felt like she could love me too. After about six mugs of coffee, I realise that I will never fit in even three hours sleep unless I cut into my going-to-the-gym time, and right now I fear that animal rights activists will try to haul me back into the ocean if I don't do *something*. Oh just be lumpy, I tell myself, and before I can come up with a suitable argument, my beeper is going off. I borrow Dana's celphone, and call the main desk. "I just got beeped." "Yeah," Robert the receptionist says. "I think it's your Mr. Mulder." Dana must have heard the name, she must have a trained ear to hear it, because I saw her expression change. I nod, even though I know deep down that Robert cannot see me nodding. "Okay," I say. "Okay, thanks." "Mulder," Dana says, her face flushed. I nod some more. And that was the last time that I felt Dana was even partly mine. My hands were sweating like a construction worker's buttcrack by the time we reached the hospital. It was difficult to check Mulder's vitals, because Dana was all over him the second she got in there. "Are you okay?" she asked, slight desperation in her voice. She wasn't mine any more, no siree. "How are you feeling, Mr. Mulder?" I ask. "Sore. What did you do to me?" he demands of Dana, who rolls her eyes. "I'll be right outside," I say, catching her eye, telling her to TELL HIM. I think she got the message. I linger outside the door and listen to them talking. "Have you been here the whole time, Scully?" "More or less. The doctor... Julia... she kept me company." Oh good, I think, she can remember my name. Soon I'll just become 'that nice doctor', and eventually she'll tell their grandchildren of 'the lady with the great cake', and nobody will ever know it was me. I could be anybody. There is a pause. "I'm sorry for ditching you. I should have let you come with me." "And end up looking like this?" she says, and I can sense a smile on her lips. Oh, her lips... "You don't think I'll make it as Playgirl centerfold this month, then?" "No," she says softly. "Not this month." They both laugh quietly, and then there is silence, a thick, heavy, ten second silence, and I hear the faint smack of their lips parting at the end of it. "What was that for?" he asks breathlessly. I hear her sigh. "I was keeping a promise," she says. Mulder was kept in the hospital for a couple more days, of course, but I stayed out of their way in any capacity but a professional one. Sensible!Julia is back with a vengeance, and I'm learning to like her again. And of course I didn't get over Dana that quickly. It might not have been real love - though it seemed like it was at the time - but I couldn't forget her right away. I thought about her every day for about a month, every time I threw up, every time I saw someone with red hair, and, of course, every time I went to Fat Pete's diner. "Women," Fat Pete says. "You can't live with them." "I know. Give me more cake." "Say 'please'..." Maybe one day I will see her again. Maybe I won't. Maybe I don't want to. Okay, so I do. "You asked me never to serve you chocolate cake again, Jules. You said no matter how much you begged, I shouldn't give it to you. You said it was bad for you." I lean forward. "Let me tell you something," I say. "Dana Scully was chocolate cake." It's going to be a long night. ___________________________ Okay I'm done, feed me now. Written on a whim, Monday February 22nd, 1999