From: hersh@i1.net Date: 11 Oct 1999 19:08:15 -0000 Subject: xfc: REPOST: "The Morning After?" by Bear Source: xfc From: hersh@i1.net TITLE: The Morning After (1/1) AUTHOR: Bear DATE: October 11, 1999 EMAIL ADDRESS: hersh@i1.net FEEDBACK: My e-mail is hungry -- FEED IT!!! Love it, hate it, I'd still love to know. (If it happens to be the latter, though, please be gentle and let me know how to improve for next time; thanks!) DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, just let me know so I know where to find it SPOILER WARNING: "Colony/End Game," "One Breath," "Anasazi," "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," and various others up to Season 3, though those are the most obvious. RATING: Hmmmmm...let's try either PG or PG-13, for mild language and slight suggestiveness CLASSIFICATION: V, H, UST SUMMARY: Fill-in-the-blank for "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." What was going through Scully's mind when she woke up to find Mulder in her motel room? DISCLAIMER: Well, I'd think you'd have these memorized by now, but here goes: our dynamic duo, the men in black and Detective Manners are pretty much the bleeping property of the bleeping folks at 10-13 and Twentieth Century Fox . No infringement is intended; I'm not making any bleeping money off of this, so I can't afford a bleeping lawsuit right now! (Sorry, I had to do it) NOTES: Muchas gracias to Scott for help and encouragement to try my hand at fanfic, and to Debbie for her helpful hints! Okay, back to the wonderful world of humor! While hammering out the sequel to "He'll Never Know" as well as a post-series novel in the background, I thought I'd bop out this little vignette that sort of popped into my head out of the blue in the meantime. As they always say, never say never -- due to my medical illiteracy, I swore I would never write a Scully first-person POV, but since the action in this one is pretty non-medical (for the most part, anyway) and pretty much shows her in one of her great states of confusion, I figured I could get away with it here. So I thought I'd go ahead and crank out my own just for fun, especially since this particular scene felt (at least to me) that some great stuff got cut out, probably to make room for all the great stuff we actually saw (kiss-up, kiss-up...). And of course, I decided to throw in some good old-fashioned UST, just for fun (well, this particular scene was practically SCREAMING UST, IMHO!!!) Oh, and this little repost is to insert a little word I noticed in my original post was DESPERATELY needed, sorry about that! And no, I'm not telling which word, heeheehee. I tried reposting earlier today, but I don't think it went over, so if anyone gets duplicates on this, feel free to toss out the repost of your choice, LOL! Anyway, enjoy! **************************************************************************************************************************************************** The Morning After? by Bear Something doesn't feel quite right. Okay, let's see here...my body feels surprisingly stiff, and I have a funny, empty feeling in my head, almost as though someone has literally barged into my mind and...stolen my memories? Which of course anyone in their right mind -- even, despite his apparent gullibil...sorry, willingness to believe (make that EXTREME willingness to believe), my own partner, Fox Mulder -- could tell you, is medically and scientifically impossible! I mean, perhaps through the use of narcotics and barbituates one could temporarily weaken the mind to a state of the most extreme case of amnesia, but even so... ...but hey, just to be safe, let's run through a few little facts here. Let's see...my name is Dana Katherine Scully...I have a degree in medicine, but I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where I have spent the past...geez, is it THREE years now?...assisting Agent Fox Mulder with the X-Files project. Okay, so far so good! Then again, maybe this isn't the right approach; I mean, to quote Lewis Carroll, " I should never try to remember my name in the middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?" Accident. Maybe I've just had some kind of an accident? It IS pretty quiet, and I AM pretty sure I'm not at my apartment...maybe I'm in a hospital? After all, that's where we found ourselves the LAST time a large period of time just seemed to get swollen up for no apparent reason. Okay, Dana, time to open those baby blues and settle this once and for all... Let's see here: I'm in a bed...fully clothed??? No nightdress, no pajamas, just my trusty black suit? Well, that would account for that odd stiff feeling I have. Well, that doesn't mean much...maybe I'm in a hospital, only not as the patient. I can remember many a morning waking up in a lonely cot in Alaska in the same blue dress in which I had burst into the doors of Eisenhower Air Force Base with what can only be described as my "special medical decorum" (a nice way to say that I pretty much had to scream at the top of my lungs at a fellow doctor who was sure he knew just what he was dealing with and had no time to listen to a fellow doctor...regardless of whether or not she just happened to be right, of course) just in time to hear the less-than-welcome sound of my wayward partner's flatline and shock him back into the land of the living. Then of course, in between nursing him back to health from "an unknown retrovirus," sitting by his still side hoping to awaken him with my sheer presence, only to fall asleep and awaken later, in the same clothes, to find him annoyingly as motionless as ever. Though I must admit, he DID look very peaceful when he was unconscious...once we finally took him off the respirator and that noble face of his was unencumbered by tubes, that is. It's funny to say this about a man over six feet tall, but he looks at least...oh, I'd say twenty years younger when he sleeps. Hmmmmm...maybe we're still in Alaska? No, wait...that doesn't seem right...seems that a lot more has happened since then. Besides, I seem to remember distinctly seeing those boyish hazels fluttering at me and listening with delight to a hoarse voice joking about having a bad case of freezer burn... Okay, quick look around. Nope, definitely no hospital -- ENTIRELY too much color. You'd think a DOCTOR would know something like that, for crying out loud, especially considering how many times my partner seems to wind up in the hospital! But I'm lying down on...a bed? In what appears to be a...motel room?... Finally, things are coming back little by little. I'm on a case with Mulder..."classic alien abduction case," at least according to him, two teenagers...in Klass County, Washington...and I'm lying in the bed in my motel room, under the covers. Admittedly, in one of the better motels Mulder has picked out. FULLY CLOTHED?!? As in, in the same suit I was wearing yesterday. Which I suppose is normal, considering I can't remember undressing to go to bed. And oddly enough, I can't even seem to remember "going to bed." But I DO recall trudging into my motel room after a long day of-- Wait a minute -- what was that? Was that a snore? There's someone in my MOTEL ROOM?!? (...okay, do I at LEAST remember where I left my Sig?..wait...) MULDER?!? What the?!?-- a quick scan of the room has revealed none other than my partner Mulder, slumped in the red plush seat on the other side of my room -- I assume also fully clothed, though it's hard to tell with that black coat blanketing him, but I can see snatches of his white shirt and black slacks, not to mention those nice wing-tips propped up on the other chair in the room, even in the midst of this semi-sleepy haze I'm dragging myself out of -- head cocked to one side, fast asleep. And once again, I have to hand it to him: even in his suit, he looks ever so boyish and innocent. Like the time my own nephew fell asleep in the car as Charlie, Karen and I were driving him home from Disneyland a few months ago. I'd say he seems about ten or eleven at the moment. That is, until THAT noise comes out of him! Gee whiz, does this guy dream of King Kong when he's not having nightmares about his sister, or what? God knows he does a hell of an impression in his sleep! I swear, all the hospital beds I have spent at his vigil -- a shooting here, a deadly retrovirus there -- and I have NEVER ONCE heard this man SNORE!!! (Of course, giving credit where it's due, since snoring is caused by air passing through an overly-large ovula, and the man DOES have a fairly sizable nose, I suppose I wouldn't notice it with a respirator jammed down his throat, since the purpose of such is to aid a patient unable to breathe on his or her own.) But that isn't even counting all the plane rides, beginning with our first case together bound for Oregon, he's spent using either his armrest or my thigh as a makeshift pillow! Not even in a New Mexico motel room, unconscious as the result of a bullet I deliberately put through his shoulder to override the personality-shifting effects of what turned out to be chemically-altered water pipes in his apartment building, did I hear him so much as moan...at least not until he finally awakened from THAT little fiasco. Boy, if Albert Hosteen could hear THIS...well, I couldn't very well use the "It's okay, it's in the water" excuse this time, could I? Demonic possession? maybe... After listening to this for what I assume is five solid minutes, I can't take it anymore. I call his name gently. Quite possibly it's impossible to hear me over the din of his own slumber. Was it my imagination, or did he just get louder? Either he actually DID hear me, or apparently he's finally gotten just a little too loud even for his own good. In the midst of a particularly pronounced roar, he interrupts himself with a few snorting noises and his head bobs down slightly, then immediately jerks up as confused and lazy hazels slowly flutter open and search mine. As he moans softly (a MUCH more pleasant sound than the one I had the displeasure of awakening to), one of those long hands I love to watch rubs the length of his face downward as his makeshift blanket folds down a bit on its own, revealing more of his...crisp white dress-shirt, then, after a minute, those hazels focus a bit more and begin to search the room. Oh, and the feet have not left the chair. A nasty little part of me I have rarely discussed with my partner -- or anyone else for that matter, save Missy -- is suddenly struck by the cruel irony of this situation. Instead of waking up buck-naked wrapped in each other's arms in the same bed in the same room with no memory as to how we got there -- which would admittedly be a bit scary but VERY nice, to say the least -- we're waking up fully clothed on opposite sides of the room. With no memory as to how we got there, of course. And quite frankly, that's not fair! I mean, having three lost months completely stolen from the both of us AND being kept apart from each other was bad enough, for God's sake! If we're going to wake up in the same room with no memory of getting there, at LEAST let it be a halfway decent "non-memory"! At LEAST let us have the pleasure of being in the same place in a decidedly intimate clinch! On second thought, if something like THAT were to happen, I think we'd BOTH want to remember it. (That is, assuming he's had similar thoughts...ahem...) After what I assume is a fruitless search on his part, he gazes at me bewilderedly and, in a rare baritone I have dubbed affectionately as his "morning voice," utters his first articulate words of the morning: "Where are they?" And good morning to you too, my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed partner! "Where are who? Mulder, what are you talking about? what are you doing here?" Oh, brother. My kingdom for a good cup of coffee to jump-start my sorry-sounding voice. While my partner's voice seems to be in a similarly snail-paced, grog-cobwebbed state, his mind seems to be going a mile a minute, as always. Sometimes it's almost disgusting, I must say, how he can do that. Hazels suddenly latch onto me, looking mildly disturbed and extremely confused. Makes two of us. "You mean, you don't remember?" I shake my head helplessly. "The men in black?" WHAT?!? I only THOUGHT he was nuts before; I think I'm about to get my proof here. Evidently my own bewildered pair of baby blues are speaking my thoughts, because he proceeds to...well, ATTEMPT to answer my unasked question. "They were here, Scully. Two of them. When I got back here last night, your door was open and they were..." --those long fingers I love to watch gesture limply yet purposefully around the room as he appears to gather his thoughts-- "...searching the room for something...they told me you went out to get some ice, then you came in..." Well, he goes on and on about I supposedly told him that they had something to tell him...and he DOES make a point of mentioning how I seemed to "prance around the room like a zombie." Unfortunately this is NOT ringing a bell. Once we get past the apparent "black hole" in my memory, he continues to relate how the one "man in black" who, in his words, looks like one of those WWF wrestlers (having never been a big wrestling fan, I'll have to take his word for it there), "explained" to him that some alien hoaxes were intentionally perpetrated to manipulate the public and those seeking the truth, thereby causing them to be discredited. (Sadly I can see the truth to that...sometimes right before my eyes...) Then the last thing he seems to remember is seeing the OTHER man in black, who looked an awful lot like... "Mulder, did you just say ALEX TREBEK? As in 'Jeopardy' Alex Trebek?" Maybe this is just some crazy waking dream, though it STILL doesn't explain how he got into the room. And even if he did, why would he decide to sleep in a chair sitting straight up instead of slumped across a couch like he always does in his apartment? "Are you sure this isn't just some kind of 'waking dream'?" You'd think after three years together, I'd be able to anticipate the classic Mulder reaction. However, seeing I was still in the process of waking myself, I think I can cut myself a bit of slack here. A steely look of defiance and determination in the hazels, along with his classic "Even if it WAS a waking dream, Scully, that doesn't change what happened." And that doesn't change his choice of words, for that matter. "But Mulder..." This hasn't cleared much of anything up for me; if anything, I have more questions. (What else is new?) "...I don't even remember letting you in!" Hmmmm, wonder if I always whine this much in the mornings, or when I'm this perplexed for that matter? "I TOLD you, Scully, you DIDN'T let me in!" Voice still groggy yet stubborn, hazels still a bit droopy...feet still planted on the chair. "They were already here!" Oh, yeah, two men were here, I just opened the door and let them...wait a minute, I DO seem to remember a knocking and then... ..well, so much for THAT watershed moment. I reach for the phone in a state of confusion and defeat. "Scully." Sort of...if I'm all there, which I doubt at the moment. Oh, gee, what a surprise! It's Detective Manners in one of his sweeter, more articulate moods! "Get your"--(bleep)--"down here and bring your"--(bleeping)--"partner! We just found your"--(bleeping)--"UFO!"--(BLEEP!!!) As I inform the ever courteous Detective Manners (do NOT get me started on the irony of the man's name) that we'll be there as soon as we can, I notice Mulder's hazels focus with the same sense of defeat that has just washed over me, then suddenly focus on the bucket of ice. The slender fingers then dip into the bucket...and come up soaking wet. So somebody DID go out for ice after all? But I STILL don't remember getting any... Again quoting Lewis Carroll, "curiouser and curiouser!" And, as I wearily relay the message to my partner, I just know that we're in for quite a day today. And possibly quite a life, if this is the way we are destined to spend it. I only wonder just how long we have to look forward to mornings like this. And I wonder if he wonders too. Meanwhile I'll just be happy he finally got those filthy shoes off my chair! **************************************************************************************************************************************************** END **************************************************************************************************************************************************** Well, there ya have it...short and sweet! Love it? Hate it? Let me know at hersh@i1.net! Thanks!