From: Amy Farley <starlight7685@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 20:31:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: a fic submission
Source: direct

Title: Proof
Author: Kate Farley, starlight7685@yahoo.com--my
handle used to be Katherine Farley, in case you
wondered! That's what all my old 
stories are under. Read them! LOL.
Summary: Mulder discovers proof of something.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nothing that would prevent you from enjoying
the episode. 
You should know about Mulder's 'new' bed though.
Categories: VR
Keywords: MSR
Takes Place: Anytime, really. I wrote it after season
seven, but 
it doesn't fit there, so I guess anytime during season
seven when nothing remotely conspiratorial was going
on.
Disclaimer: Oh, get over it, they're not mine. I don't
particularly WANT them at this point, and as for Chris
Carter? He can keep them. 
But ya know, I think I may just keep Krycek.. He's
pretty hot.
Author's Notes: A couple times in the story I do
something that addresses the audience (in this case,
the readers). Now I don't 
want anybody to be frightened off by those incidences,
or disgusted 
or something. It's just that I watch 'Moonlighting' a
lot, a show
in which they often refer to the show as a tv show,
and talk to the audience. On the show it works really
well, and it really funny. 
I'm hoping maybe the same will go for my fic. Sorry if
I make 
anybody mad who doesn't like that sort of
thing...maybe you 
haven't watched enough 'Moonlighting' in your
lifetime.



Proof
By Kate Farley

   Sometimes I don't even know that Scully is a part
of my life. I mean, we rarely see each other outside
of work., contrary to what 
some might think. And when we do, it's usually
something work-
-related. Oh, sure, there was the time I taught her to
play 
baseball. And the times we go out to dinner after an
especially draining case. But what I'm saying is, it's
not a regular thing.
  
   Sure, you might argue that Scully is a part of
*me*. And yes, 
you would be correct in that assumption. She is. As
much as I am 
a part of her as well. But is that tangible? Maybe I'm
selfish, 
perhaps I'm greedy, but I want something tangible,
something I can 
look at or hold onto. I want proof.
   
   Which is why I decided to do what I'm about to
start doing. I've decided that I will search my
apartment, my car, my desk at the office...everywhere.
I will scour every inch of everything that 
belongs to me, in order to find some proof of Scully
in my life. 
And this isn't just some random, unimportant search,
or quest. This
is life-altering. Because if I don't find anything, if
I can't find 
the tangible proof that I so badly want, than I've
also decided to 
take that as a sign that it's not meant to be. That
we're not meant 
to be. And I know how much all you readers want it to
be, so I 
think I'll start my search now.

   And we're off.

   I decide to start in my living room, mainly because
that's where 
I am now. So I start. I venture over towards my
bookshelf, where I 
keep my books and videos. Not those videos that aren't
mine, mind you...they really aren't mine. 

   Let me take the moment to address that: I don't
understand why 
all of you people who read these things, or write
these things, or 
do only God knows what with these things, insist that
those videos 
are mine! I mean, I've told you repeatedly on the
show, that they 
are NOT mine! Yes, I watch them. But I don't actually
OWN any. I 
rent them, I borrow them, I order them on
Pay-Per-View, but I do 
NOT own a single video of pornographic matter. Thank
you very much.

   With that out of the way, I tilt my head in order
to read the 
titles on my shelf. Several psychology textbooks, my
old high 
school yearbooks, some non-fiction on things our cases
have occasionally pertained to. My extensive
collection of UFO and extra-terrestrial related books.
Several novels, ranging from 
classics such as Catcher In The Rye (the greatest book
ever 
written. I highly suggest you read it.) to Tom Clancy
and John 
Grisham, to Stephen King thrillers. Then some
notebooks and 
folders, filled with field notes or case notes or
something notes. Boring stuff. 

   But mixed in there amongst my books I find these
three 
titles: A Scientific Look At The History Of The United
States Of America, Affirmations For Women Who Do Too
Much,  and a manilla 
folder with a research paper inside marked 'Dana
Scully's Senior Thesis'. Well, as for the first one,
it's a science textbook. I 
don't remember buying a science textbook since...ever.
Discouting college. So I can only assume it belongs to
my partner, who, by coincidence or perhaps not, is a
scientist. The second book? Well, 
I should think that it goes without saying that that
book does NOT belong to me. Scully must have left it
here, or something. And the third, again, it goes
without sayin that it's not mine. It's 
Scully's.

   You might think that now that I have proof, I can
rest easy, 
I'm done. But has that ever worked for me in life? No.
With my 
luck, it'll turn out that that science book IS an old
college textbook...and that the second is a gag gift
from Frohike, and the third? Well, no question, it's
Scully's, but somehow I don't see 
that counting.

   So I move on, down a shelf to my video collection.
I have quite 
a few, I might add. A pretty extensive and ec lectic
collection of tapes and movies, one of the only things
in my apartment that's actually organized. So I look
through those, going video by video. 
I see first my action movies: 'Top Gun', 'Lethal
Weapon' (one 
through five) and such. Then I have my sci-fi films.
'The Matrix', 'Dark City', et cetera. Next are the
classics, including several Hitchcocks and a 'Psycho'.
Moving on to the newer horror I see a 
very few (my collection hasn't really expanded much in
that area), including 'The Blair Witch Project' (I
just can't resist) and 
others. After that, a few of the tapes are
documentaries, 
educational films, stuff on psychology or the occult,
or psychology 
AND the occult. And then there are some dramas and
stupid comedies 
and so on and so forth.

   Again, though, mixed with these tapes, at awkward
places and in unorganized slots, are 'Fried Green
Tomatoes', 'Casablanca', and 
'When Harry Met Sally'. Now, these tapes aren't
Scully's; she 
didn't leave them here or anything. But these are
tapes that we 
rented a couple times when we would have our
occasional Friday 
night together, that she really liked. I figured, hey,
maybe she 
would come over more if there was something to do over
here. So I bought them. 

   Yeah, yeah, so I own a few chick flicks. I figure,
it's just a 
few, it can't really ruin my oh-so-macho reputation,
can it?

  Anyway, so this is more proof I guess. Still not
enough. This 
isn't really something of Scully's...I bought these
movies...I 
could have bought them because I like them. Do I? Not
really. But I still need more.

   I circle over to my computer desk, trying to decide
where to 
start. As I am thinking, I notice my screensaver. It's
a crudely-animated one, with a little man with an
extra large head standing in the middle of a black
screen. Suddenly your classic UFO flies out from the
top left corner and hovers over the man. He is carried
up in a beam of light, and the UFO flies over and off
the screen.

   Scully emailed me the address to get that
screensaver. She said 
she stumbled across it one day and it reminded her of
me. I've had 
it as my screensaver for four and a half years.

   So I finally choose to look in the drawers in my
desk. I open 
the long skinnny one first. Papers, pens, notebooks,
legal pads, 
paper clips, a rather large rubber band ball. Not much
in the way 
of personal items. Let alone Scully items.

   I try drawer number two, the one on the right side
of the desk. 
A few files, some computer disks, and more pencils. A
rather 
fruitless search. I reach over to open the other
drawer, the one on 
the left side of the desk. It's nearly empty, but
there's a 
photograph on the very bottom of it, lying face down
underneath 
office supplies and doodles. I don't remember what
this is a picture of, I think as I reach for it. I
pick it up, though, and suddenly I remember.

   It's a picture of Scully and myself. We're standing
in the middle 
of some hallway in the Hoover building. I remember
having this 
picture taken. One of the newer agents, Liz Charlsely,
also happened 
to be a budding photographer. She proved this by
wandering around 
the halls of the J. Edgar, taking candid shots of
everybody and everything she could find. 

   She took this one of us when we were arguing one
day, early in 
our partnership. It was a few months after she was
returned from 
her abduction, I believe. Yeah, that's it. We were
arguing over 
some case I'm sure, and all of a sudden there was Liz,
standing 
five feet away from us, camera in hand. 

   "Say cheese!" she exclaimed, right before snapping
the picture. 
The flash left us nearly blind, and Liz had the
picture sent down 
to the basement after it was developed. In the photo,
I have my 
mouth wide open in some weird yawn mode, and Scully's
eyes are 
closed and her nose is scrunched up. I really liked
that picture. So 
I kept it.

   But that's not proof. Not really. I can't come up
with a good 
excuse on this one, except maybe that it's just a
photo, and it's 
from so long ago it can't even really count. Besides
the fact that 
it was taken candidly, without our express permission.
So maybe if 
Liz had asked, Scully wouldn't want a picture of the
two of us together. Maybe I wouldn't have, either.

   I would have, though.

   So I end my search through the drawer and move on
to the coffee table. I have a lot of junk on it,
clutter. Magazines (not those 
kinds, you pervs...), a couple of books, a video,
yesterday and 
today's mail, my reading glasses...and Scully's
reading glasses. 
Yes, I remember that.

   We had come to my apartment after work one day to
read through 
files (which is what we almost always do at my
apartment). And 
almost as soon as we walked through the door, Scully
realized that she'd left her reading glasses in the
car--again. Now her vision 
isn't nearly as bad as mine--she *can* see without
correctional 
lenses of some kind. But she does need reading
glasses. So that 
night she went back down to her car (I offered to go
for her, but 
she insisted) and got her glasses. As she was leaving
around one 
am I noticed that she had left them on my coffee
table.

   "Scully--your glasses," I said to her, as I picked
them up.

   "Oh yeah, can I just leave them here? I mean, we
come here all 
the time to go over files, and I always forget
them...I have 
another pair at home," was her response. So of course
I told her 
she could leave them in my apartment. It probably
worked out better that way.

   And that was about two and a half years ago. I
still have a pair 
of her reading glasses on my coffee table. It's weird
though, we haven't done that in a while. A couple of
months I think. We used 
to get together to do work every other weeks, it
seemed.

   Well, I'm about to move on to somewhere else when
my eye catches 
a certain magazine in the pile on the table. It's some
kind of 
medical journal. Now I know for a fact that I don't
read these, so 
I guess it must be Scully's. It does look sort of out
of place, surrounded by Entertainment Weeklys and TV
Guides and Sports Illustrateds. 

   A small smile graces my face before I wonder where
to look next. I've had a fairly successful search so
far, I think to myself. But 
I still have to look, look for something that clenches
it. I can't 
be sure what that will be yet, but maybe I'll know
when I find it.

   I decide that I'm thirsty, and go into my small and
not very well-equipped kitchen for a drink. Opening
the fridge, I reach for 
an iced tea. My hand clasps around a cold glass
bottle, and I pull 
it out without looking at the label. Barq's Root Beer.
I *hate* 
root beer. Vehemently so. Scully can tell you that. So
why...Scully. 
It hits me like a...well, like a proverbial ton of
bricks (maybe 
just one), that I have Scully's favorite caffiene
supplement in my house. I chuckle to myself in
realization that I have 
unintentionally stumbled upon even more proof. 

   I set the bottle back down in the fridge and pull
out an actual 
iced tea. But before I close the door, my gaze settles
upon a 
six-pack of...yogurt. Plain, non-fat yogurt. Now
*that's* amusing. 
I don't particularly care for yogurt, either, but I
know Scully 
does. And even if I *was* to like the unappetizing
goo, I 
definitely wouldn't choose the blandest flavor in
existence. But
that's Scully for you. 

   Not that she's bland. She's not. She's
just...healthy. And I, 
you see, am not. Not at all, I eat all the junk food I
can find. 
Except sometimes when we go out to eat on a case, she
makes me eat vegetables. I complain, but she has
turned me on to some of the weirdest veggies.
Rutabagas, turnips, beets. I don't really like 
the rutabegas...but I like saying the word, it sounds
funny.

   Rutabagas.

   So that's it for the refridgerator. It's just some
food, I tell myself. It doesn't mean anything, just
that she's over a lot. I 
shake my head, and pick a new searching place.

   My next stop is my bedroom. I seriously doubt I'll
find 
anything here--she's only been in my bedroom a couple
of times, 
and I didn't even know about some of those.

   Upon entering, my eyes hit the bed in the center of
the room. 
Those mirrors above it...that's just sick. If that bed
is really a 
gift from Frohike (which I doubt) then he has gotten
more than 
perverse in the time I've known him. He's gotten to
downright 
sleazy. But anyway, I've been meaning to get rid of
those mirrors. 
Not the bedframe, though...I like the bedframe, it's
nice.

   So I make a sharp turn and decide to look over my
dresser. The 
first thing I see is a peice of paper in the center,
torn from a 
yellow legal pad. It's Scully's handwriting, and it's
a note that 
I remember her writing to me in the office one day
last week. 

   I was at a meeting with Skinner about my expenses
(which really aren't as bad as you people make them
out to be), and while I was 
gone Scully had to leave to do an autopsy. She wrote a
little note 
for me, so when I got back I'd know where she was. 

          M--
            I've gone to do the Hascal autopsy at
Quantico. I 
          should be back by two or three, but I'll
call you if 
          it's going to take longer. I hope your
meeting with 
          Skinner went well. See you when I get back.
                   --S

   So I keep her notes to me...so what. It's not a big
deal. 
Actually, I didn't mean to keep this note, I just put
it in the 
pocket of my pants and forgot to take it out and throw
it away. 
Not that I'd want to, really.

   A slight smile graces my face, and I open the
bottom left 
dresser drawer, fully knowing what will be there. A
pair of 
jeans...a black powersuit....a pair of way--too--high
black 
heels....a dark blue t--shirt. All Scully's, all
clothes that 
either got mixed up in my luggage when packing to
leave some random motel in Podunk, USA, or were left
here in the very, very 
few times Scully's stayed at my place. All out of
necessity, no frivolous overnighters, much to my
chagrin.

   I'm finished with my dresser, and I look around my
room. I know 
for a fact there's nothing in the small chest beside
my bed except
a couple books and an unopened box of condoms
(hey--you guys got 
one thing right: my lack of a sex life). So I bypass
that, walk by 
my closet, which is so full of the cardboard boxes
that used to 
fill my bedroom that I'm afraid if I open the door
they'll all come tumbling out in one big avalanche,
and enter my bathroom. 

   A bachelor's bathroom is sacred. Very messy, but
not dirty. Very disorganized, but not...dirty. And
mine fits the bill. Wet towels 
on the floor, toothpaste cap off (and tube squeezed
improperly, according to the impeccable Agent Scully),
shaving paraphenalia scattered over the counter. Hairs
in the sink. You know. 

   I don't immediately see anything in or around the
sink, so I 
look in my medicine cabinet. Every painkiller known to
man...some 
that aren't...sleeping pills...four bottles of
Dimetapp (I can 
never remember if I need some or not). Nothing
remotely Scully 
related. Oh well, there are other places to look.

   One more, at least. The cabinets underneath the
sink. Which, actually, are fairly neat. Maybe the
neatest place in my apartment. 

   So I open the right cabinet door. Extra toilet
paper, a towel, plunger in the way back.. Some shampoo
in the front.
 
   Wait. It's girly shampoo. That herbal stuff. Why do
I have girly shampoo, I ask myself. Answering my own
question, I remember. 

   One of the aforementioned few times Scully has
stayed here overnight. Her place was being fumigated,
and she was over here 
for the whole weekend. That was a really good
weekend...but that's beside the point. So anyway, she
had forgotten to bring her shampoo (she remembered the
conditioner but forgot the shampoo...a paradox which
plagues me no ends, thus reminding me why I use the
2--in--1 kind). So...we bought her shampoo at the
grocery store a block 
away. And I guess she decided to keep it here, because
I had 
nothing to do with it. I keep my shampoo in the
shower.

   Alright, I have one chance left find proof. I know,
I've got 
enough proof to last me three lifetimes. But you know 
me...perpetually in need of more. So I'll make a deal
with myself. 

   I can second--guess every single example of 'proof'
I've found tonight. Even as a whole, I can doubt all
of it. So how about 
this--if, when I look in this last cabinet, I find
something irrefutably Scully...as in not me...then
I'll believe. And...to 
ante up a little...I'll tell her how I feel. Yes. If
there is 
something in that cabinet that can make me believe,
then she has a right to know.

   I take a deep breath, and in a swift movement, open
the left 
cabinet door. In the front there's a couple extra bars
of soap, 
a clean washcloth...a dirty one...and that's it. Until
I spot 
something pushed to the back corner of the cabinet--a
blue box 
of tampons. Something DECIDEDLY feminine. Something I
would have 
no direct need for if...if Scully wasn't as much a
part of my 
life as I am of hers. 
   
   I've found my proof. And she deserves to know.


THE END.

So...didja like it? Did it bore you out of your mind?
Oh, well, it doesn't matter, but feedback does.
Starlight7685@yahoo.com. I 
swear I'll reply. Starlight7685@yahoo.com. Need
something easier 
to remember? Remsleep@bolt.com. Either way works.
Remsleep@bolt.com. I'll read your fics. I'll send you
feedback on them. It works both ways, this crazy world
o' feedback.
Please?