From: SR71allie@aol.com Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 19:26:09 EDT Subject: The Morning After Rating: PG: Will probably not offend any Republican members of Congress. Maybe Pat Buchanan. Category: Mulder/Scully friendship Spoilers: Definite Demons spoilers. Some Quagmire spoilers. Gethsemane maybe. Momento Mori... Is there anyone who hasn't seen that yet? Summary: Scully has a hangover. Maybe a teensy little bit of UST but, despite the title, no one wakes up in anyone else's bed after an inebriated evening. Disclaimers: Oh yippee. I love this. The characters Mulder and Scully are not mine, I just like playing with them, I will give them back to Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen productions, to whom they belong. Do not tell people you or anyone but me wrote this. Do not distribute copies of this for money. I can't without getting sued for copyright infringement and that means you can't either. Author's note: I wrote this a while ago, before the desk controversy, during the long summer between the fourth and fifth season of the x-files. Just dug it up and decided to post it. Hope you enjoy. All constructive criticism and sugar can be sent to SR71allie@juno.com July 20,1997 The morning after by SR-71allie, the blackbird She opened the door and walked into the office ten minutes later than usual. Scully wore small framed black sunglasses and a black sleek skirt that came up about four inches above the knee. She wore a waist-length blazer over a formfitting black shirt. She leaned back against the door and whimpered. "Hangover?" Mulder asked. "When did your voice get so loud?" she responded, sitting down at her desk and burying her head in her arms and then running a hand through her hair. She did not generally drink that many martinis in one year, let alone in one night.Well, she was paying the price now. Mulder smiled a little. She looked like an angel. Her hair was mussed, and her eyes were half closed. He wished he could have woken up next to her that morning to have seen her in the morning light, sleeping... He mentally shook his head. She was his friend. She just reminded him of a better version of all the morning-afters he had ever had. He really did care about her. "Unlike some people I've woken up next to." He winced as the thought came to him. He realized then that he had been unconsciously rubbing her back, willing the pain to go away. He smiled as she looked up, her eyes at half mast; there was still some mascara clinging to her lashes. Leave it to Scully to look good hungover. His smile deepened and he brought her a cup of coffee. She accepted it gratefully. "So, what's our next case?" "I haven't gotten it yet." he said. "Besides, we still have to do the expense reports from out last case." Scully groaned. "Forgot about those." It was unlike her, to forget about that stuff. But after... how many martinis? She guessed she was lucky to remember her name. The expense reports carried over into the night. They had divided up the receipts. Somehow he had ended up having to explain on paper the one with the pink plaster flamingo *and* the green inflatable dinosaur. Mulder glanced at Scully suspiciously, but saw the tired look in her face and decided to let it go. The two agents worked into the night. Scully fell asleep around ten. Mulder glanced in her direction and saw she had finished her paperwork before dozing. His respect for her went up. It was late. Yawning, he turned to his side of the couch and followed Scully's example. Mulder awoke looking at a familiar wall. He instantly knew where he was and what the warm presence on his shoulder was. *Presence on his shoulder?* He turned his head and looked. Dana Scully was resting her head on his shoulder, obviously having moved in her sleep. Mulder shifted his position so her head rested on the sofa. The light from a window hit her hair exactly right, making it look like a halo. She was beautiful in the morning. Mulder smiled. It was better waking up to this than someone he barely knew. "Better than sex?" The thought echoed through his head. He pushed the thought out of his mind as he pushed the hair out of her eyes. "Much better." The thought startled him. He didn't have time to think about it in more depth. His smile widened as Scully's eyelids flickered. "Morning sunshine." Scully made a face and managed to focus her eyes on him. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Remember the expense reports?" "Yeah?" "You fell asleep and then I did." he said, feeling slightly awkward. What had possessed him to let himself fall asleep next to his partner? Scully, however, took it in stride. "You should probably go back to your apartment and get a clean suit." "I'll see you at the office." Gratefully Mulder nodded and took his share of expense reports with him as he headed towards the door. Scully felt a sudden pang of regret as she watched him go. There had been a sort of rapport between them the previous day that had become unusual of late. "Hey, um, Mulder, do you want to join me for breakfast at the bagel place?" "Sure, I'll meet you there at..." "7:30" "OK." Mulder found himself thinking about his relationship with Scully as he got dressed. They had always argued. That was part of what made them a good team. She always challenged his theories, kept him from going off the deep end. Having her challenge his deepest beliefs hurt, though. They had been through so much together, he hated it when she didn't support him completely in his cases. He hated that he was forced to leave her to persue his leads because *she* wouldn't follow. And it wasn't that she didn't support his theories that hurt him. It was that she didn't support *him*. She didn't have the same driving forces that made him search for the truth at all cost. He sighed out loud. The ketamine injections had been stupid. When he thought about what he'd almost done... He shook his head but the thought wouldn't go away. She'd asked him "Is it worth it?", and he had nodded. By doing so, he might as well have told her that the truth was more important than her life. It wasn't. The truth was worth the hallucinations. It was worth the pain. But it was never worth the life of his partner. Never. He hated what the men who had abducted her had done to her. He never wanted to have experiments conducted on her. He didn't need her dead to believe. If he ever got his hands on the men who were responsible for her disease.... He stared down at the tie he had been holding. It was torn it in his grasp. He discarded it in the trash. His optimism about his partner's cancer faltered a moment as he stared at the mangled tie in the trashcan. "*They did it to make you believe*" He went cold all over remembering that night. Scully's words came back to haunt him: "You bring down everyone who is around you" He hoped to god he wasn't the cause. He didn't think he could live with that. Mentally Mulder shook himself. No. He was not the cause. Conspiring bastards had given Scully the disease in the hopes that it would help their illicit agenda in some way. He hoped Scully knew how he felt. He didn't know how to tell her. "How do you tell someone they are the most important thing in your life?" He wished he knew. He grabbed a different tie and headed out the door. ------------------------------------------------------------- Quotes Scully's remembered words are from "quagmire", you know, where they get stranded on the rock. The quote in asterisks is from "Gethsemane" Thanks to Plausible Deniability, Viridian5, and frogdoggie for reading my stuff!