From: shinkai@mlode.com (Susan Shinkai)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 00:28:36 -0700
Subject: Story Submission: 
Source: direct

Title: DR. SCULLY DOES THE MATH (or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND
LOVE Y2K) 
Author: Shinkai 
E-mail address: shinkai@mlode.com 
Rating: PG 
Classification:  Vignette, Humorous 
Spoilers: Millennium 
Keywords: MSR, UST, post-episode 
Summary: New Years Eve, 1999.  Mulder kisses Scully.  The world doesn't
end. Damn! What if Scully drew the same conclusion? 
Intro:  All right, all you hard core 'shipper out there.  Are you happy?
 They kissed, really kissed, and what happened - nothing, nada, zip.  Or
did it? 
Here's my contribution of the growing number of post episode pieces
popping up everywhere on the net after last "Millennium" aired.  An
unusual piece from me because I rarely write from Scully POV, however
when it comes to the thought of being kissed by Mulder, I could get into
some role playing. 
The title was inspired in part by the nuclear war comedy-satire classic
"Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." 
Disclaimer: Most of the characters and some situations in this story are
not the legal property of the author or her agents.  Their use is not
intended to be an infringement to the rights of the legal owners.  Use
and distribution of this story is for non-commercial entertainment
purposes only. 
___________________________________________ 
DR. SCULLY DOES THE MATH (or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE
Y2K) 
    13 minutes passed midnight, New Year's Eve. The year 2000 began with
all the celebration and fanfare the American imagination could muster. 
All the doom-sayers and fatalist were sulking in their rooms, along with
all the Y2K disaster prognosticators who were kicking their computers
because they DID work. It wasn't the end of the world. 
     And for Dana Scully, her first real honest-to-God,
I'm-not-about-to-die, he's-not-on-heavy-medication, kiss on the lips
from Fox Mulder didn't signal the fall of civilizations or the end of
life as she knew it. For all the sexual tension that had built up
between them over the years, she half expected her senses to overload or
out right shut down.  Instead, it was just a sweet, loving, heartfelt
kiss, and it just happen to be shared with Mulder.  And he seemed
equally un-affected.  Right at that moment, Scully considered kicking
him just like the computer geeks who were thrashing on their
inexplicably Y2K complacent machine. 
     'All these years!' she thought to herself.  'All these years I've
bottled up my feelings, denied we could ever express ourselves in such a
way without serious consequences.  And tonight of all nights, when the
rest of the world is cheering and celebrating a new beginning, he had
the nerve to kiss me and make it feel so natural and comfortable that it
was absolutely anticlimactic.  As if we kissed every day!' Her brain
screamed, 'Damn it, Mulder! You owe me! For Eddie Van Blundht! For the
bees! For that stupid trip into the Bermuda Triangle.  And especially
for that batting practice tease!' 
     Of course none of her thoughts escaped to the surface.  Instead,
she walked along side her partner, refusing to put her arm around him to
acknowledge any sense of closeness.  They surveyed the streets looking
for a place to get a cup of coffee for the long drive home.  In a her
usual sure-fine-whatever voice, she remarked,  "I don't think we're
going to have much luck tonight.  People seemed to be pre-occupied with
the New Year's festivities. A lot of reasons to celebrate tonight." she
added, dropping hints like bombshells. 
      Mulder nodded nonchalantly. "Yeah.  It's probably not a good night
to try to drive back home anyway.  Too many people who think the world
is coming to an end by morning.   Maybe we should tell them all we saved
their sorry asses this time but next year we want a raise." His good
natured joke was accompanied by a gentle hug.  His good arm was draped
casually over her shoulder, once again so casually that they looked like
an advertisement for diamond jewelry. 
     "Or at least a room for the night." she replied keeping in the
spirit of his jest. At least she hoped she was joking. 'Hmm...spending
the night with Mulder?' she thought to herself. Of course at this point,
she was beginning to wonder if THAT would be as equally anti-climatic as
the kiss? 
     Mulder grinned. "Don't you mean two rooms?" Before she could say
'NO!', he teased, "After all, I wouldn't want to wake you when I started
watching the football games first thing in the morning." 
    As usual, Mulder was rapidly aggravating his partner.  Not with his
usual leaps in logic that almost always landed right on target, but with
his off-hand acceptance of their growing closeness. 'Fine,'  Scully told
herself, 'he wants to play it cool, I'll bring the temperature down.'  
Pushing his arm off her shoulder, she turned to face him squarely
eye-to-eye...as close as she could get to eye-to-eye considering he was
10 inches taller than her.  "Seriously, Mulder, what are we going to do
tonight? I refuse to spend the night in some crummy over-price motel
where we won't get any sleep." 
   "We could go somewhere else to not sleep." he mused mischievously. 
Mulder yawned and stretched his back and arm, making him seem even
taller. 
  'Great! Just what I need - more Mulder.' Scully grumbled to herself.
Then she reminded herself to keep things cool, frigid if at all
possible. "I suppose I could do a follow up autopsy on the bodies of the
Millennium group.  I have a theory about what might have been the
methodology of the apparent re-animation of multiple corpses." 
     Mulder chuckled.  "Scully, you saw it for yourself! It was exactly
like Frank Black and I described. Why can't you accept that this
necromancer had the power to raise the dead through the sheer focus of
his life energy? You saw the level of mania the man was experiencing." 
     Folding her arms defiantly she replied,  "I also saw that while he
may have the power to raise the dead he had no control over them since
they attacked the first moving target they encountered, as if they were
programmed to a single response.  You said yourself that he had to
protect himself while the deputy was attacked. I also saw...and
smelled...that he had no control over the decomposition of morbid flesh
which would lead me to believe that, at the cellular level at least,
these men were not alive even though they were moving." 
       Mulder sat on a park bench that faced a small reflecting pool and
motioned Scully to sit beside him.  Instead she continued to stand and
looked back at him, stubbornly waiting for his response.  At least now
they were eye-to-eye.  Pointing to his injured arm, Mulder smirked, "All
right, if you have a rational, plausible, scientific explanation for why
I was ripped up by three dead guys, I'd love to hear it." 
     Scully pressed her lips together then licked them slightly out of
nervousness.  Suddenly her remembered the soft warm pressure of his lips
upon her and the ease with which her lips curved neatly around his.  His
kiss was the wonderful chaste kiss of fairy tale princes and Disney
movies.  The nervousness faded, replaced by the bubbling resentment of
the let down of the century.  "As we both know, we were able to 'kill'
these men by shooting them in the head. The obvious conclusion I can
draw from that is that electrical impulses from the brain directed the
movement.  Given the simplistic and reflexive behaviors they
demonstrated, it's not unreasonable to assume that some kind of basic
programming was done to the undamaged nervous tissue. Due to the
location and composition of the central nervous system, nerve tissue is
slower to breakdown than flesh and the large muscle masses would retain
their contractility as well, explaining the force with which you and I
were attacked." 
      "Why the salt?" Mulder argued. "Why as I protected by the salt?" 
      "Well...sodium chloride in crystallized form has some unique
electro-static and conductive characteristic. And the human body is
composed primarily of salt water."  Her mind was working in overdrive to
find an answer.  "Maybe the salt acted as a kind of barrier, an
electrical insulator..." 
     Mulder shook his head.  "Scully, the next thing you're going to
tell me is that goat's blood provides a medium for regenerating nerve
cells.  Don't you see what you're doing?  This is not science...it's
anti-science.   You've already eliminated the possibility of the raising
the dead, in the biblical sense, and are grasping at equally fantastic
pseudo-technological explanations."  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her
toward the bench until she finally sat down.  "Aren't you forgetting the
date?  The significance of the Millennium?" 
      Scully pouted. Whatever that kiss meant, this was the core of
their relationship. Challenge and defense.  Push and pull. Knowing each
other in the non-biblical sense. "Aren't you forgetting that the dating
of the calendar is arbitrary and unlikely to be correct in reference to
the actual birth of Christ. Besides which, if you count the years, the
actual new Millennium doesn't start until 2001.  People are focused on
the Y2K problem related to the numeric string used in some computer
chips and carried over the paranoia to distort the significance of a
'landmark' number.  Arthur C. Clarke had it right all along - 2001 is
the mark of the New Age, if there is such a thing.  Only those trying to
sell life-after-death insurance policies and souvenir booklets are
claiming that this is the end." 
    Mulder dropped his head back and moaned.  "Scully if you're
right...which you occasionally are...that means we'll have to go through
this whole thing again next New Year's Eve when the REAL Millennium
group make their move. " 
     "We, Mulder?  There is no 'we'.  What makes you think I'll still be
with you next year?" Scully chided. 
     Suddenly Mulder stopped teasing and sat up.  He gently placed his
hand on her shoulder and gazed honestly into her eyes.   In grave tones,
he asked, "You're not thinking of leaving me, are you?"  He swallowed
nervously as she remained silent.  Softly and sincerely he said, "I
still need you.  Who else is going to tell me that I'm crazy then
proceed to listen to me anyway?  Who else can I count on when no one
else believes me, even myself?" His voice was almost a whisper as he
said, "Besides there's no one else I'd rather be with when the new
Millennium really begins." Without a second thought, he leaned over and
kissed her again. 
     The kiss lasted a fraction of the time the last one did but there
was no hesitation this time.  His lips were as full and luscious and
warm as before.  His hazel eyes gazed deeply into hers, expressing the
un-measurable warmth in his heart that defied words. His unique
expression that was mixture of absolute arrogance and total
vulnerability smiled back at her.  And the overwhelming sense of total
normalcy continued to prevail. Still no shock wave or
consciousness-shattering revelations.  'But why should there be?' 
Scully finally asked herself. 
      She and Mulder had been together for seven years.  They spent more
time together than most married couples and went through more changes
together than many families. They had each lost a father, a sister and
their innocence.  They had saved each other's lives countless time even
as they endangered their own.  They both had lost their faith but found
it again in the courage, conviction, and love of the other.   That which
started as a noble quest for the truth had grown into a partnership so
intimate and so personal that few could comprehend its depth. 
     His warm touch, his thoughtful silence, his gentle gaze all
affected her more intensely than all the physical encounters with all
other men she had known before combined.  Her mere words and moods
seemed to affect him just as profoundly.  Any hint of betrayal enraged
him, an any sign of doubt concerned him and any thought that she might
leave frightened him more than his worst nightmares.  Could any two
people love each other more sincerely and completely? Why should sharing
a single kiss mean more than seven years of sharing a life?  Nothing had
changed except the date on the calendar.  But perhaps now, they had both
matured in their own beliefs to know the world was not about to end in
the blink of an eye or at the touch of the lips. 
    Scully smiled warmly at her partner who waited anxiously for her
reply.  "Mulder, I'm not planning on quitting yet.  We still have a lot
to accomplish, individually and together.  Besides I know the real
reason you want to be with me when the New Age starts." 
    Mulder's tongue brushed across his lips, tasting the hint of Scully
that lingered on them.  He smiled shyly and asked, "What, so we can
start a new age of our own?" 
     Scully answered impishly, "No.  Because I'm a better shot than you
and if any more zombies come after us, someone has to save our asses." 
      Mulder hugged her as he laughed.  "Scully, you're absolutely
right. What would I do without you?" 
     "I don't know, Mulder. Sometimes I wonder what you do WITH me."
Scully teased. 
       Mulder pulled back and looked at her curiously and broke into a
wide grin. "What would you like me to do?" 
      "Never stop surprising me."  Scully replied honestly. 
       So the two partners spent the night patrolling the streets,
watching the rest of the world celebrate the end of 1999 years of
waiting, as they waited for the moment in their life when a celebration
of their own special 'coming-of-age' seemed more fitting.  It could be a
long wait but there was no hurry.  They had each other to keep them
company, and who better to spend the next millennium with than someone
you love? 
END 
________________________________ 
OK flame on!  I can take it.  But if I were Scully, this is what I would
be thinking.  Of course if I were Scully, I'd be younger, prettier,
TALLER, and spending New Year's Eve with Mulder instead of a dozen
computers that need baby-sitting.    Forward your comments to Susan at
shinkai@mlode.com or visit my website at
www.mlode.com/~shinkai/fanfic/xffanfic.htm for more of my insanity. 
BTW Arthur C. Clarke wrote "2001", the breakthrough Sci-Fi novel that
became the movie which changed the image of man-in-space for the next
generation of writers and dreamers like Chris Carter. 
And of course HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all.