From: Melissa Porter Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 22:31:18 -0400 Subject: Submission Source: direct REPOST: CORRECTED VERSION Posted to alt.tv.x-files.creative on 5 December 1999 Corrected version posted to website 6 December 1999 TITLE: She's Waiting AUTHOR: philippa FIRST POSTED: 5 December 1999 EMAIL ADDRESS: philippa@mindspring.com ARCHIVE: Gossamer -- yes please. Anywhere else -- absolutely; just let me know. Spookys -- are you kidding? in my dreams. FEEDBACK: Please please please yes. All email answered. DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Bill Scully, and Diana Fowley belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions, and Fox. No disrespect is intended and no money will change hands. CATEGORY AND RATING: MSR, Angst, Vignette, PG-13 SPOILERS: Everything through Two Fathers/One Son ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: To the Neophytes, who give me courage. It's an honor to be in their ranks. Although this is not songfic in the strict sense of the term, the title comes from the Eric Clapton song. The version referenced can be found on the album "Clapton Chronicles." DEDICATION: For Sabine, who believes. ************ It was another <>, one of those places that makes Motel Six look like an Adam's Mark. Mulder had a talent for sniffing out the absolute cheapest lodgings in any town in America, a talent which undoubtedly enabled Accounting to forgive him for the more unusual expenditures that turned up on his expense accounts from time to time ("What the hell were you doing in Antarctica, and who the hell did you rent a Snowcat from, Avis or Hertz?"). Scully was too tired and too irritable even to complain. That was a bad sign. They were in one of those small Texas hill-country towns where almost everything closed at 9.00 p.m., as they discovered when they went looking for dinner. A gas-station jockey told them about a truck stop ten miles east of town and added helpfully that, if they didn't want to drive that far, the local bar served a fair barbecue sandwich and was open until two a.m. Mulder wasn't surprised when Scully said no. The truck stop was not a member of a national chain but strictly local, unusual in these days when franchises had put most mom and pop operations six feet under. The clientele was mostly local too, at this late hour between dinner and midnight rest stop, thankfully too early for the drunk run (although in another town, their waitress had confided that the 'stop closed at 12.30 to avoid the inevitable fistfights carried over from unresolved barroom altercations). A young hostess in the world's tightest bluejeans and pearl-buttoned Western shirt came to greet them at the door with an armful of laminated menus. Her sharp-toed boots brought her nearly eye-to-eye with Mulder, which must have made her happy, judging from the heavily mascara'd wink she gave him over the baseball-sized pink bubble suspended between her lips. In one of those instantaneous mind-reading flashes, Mulder knew that Scully was hoping the bubble would pop and smear gum from nose to chin, but her wish was not granted. Completely ignored, Scully trailed behind as the hostess led them to a red leatherette booth, staying far enough ahead of Mulder to give him a good view of a lot of gratuitous buttock- flexing. She managed to acknowledge Scully's existence long enough to take the drink orders and hand her a menu, and finally -- with another wink at Mulder -- she departed, leaving the promise of an imminent waitress and a faint miasma of what smelled like white musk. Scully groaned silently, put her elbows on the table, and dropped her head into her hands. Hesitantly, feeling obscurely guilty ("How could I not *look,* for Chrissake?"), Mulder reached across the table and touched her forearm, bared where her jacket sleeve and coat sleeve had pulled back, looking pale and slender and vulnerable under the harsh fluorescents. She raised her head and he was shocked to see a film of tears in her eyes. Before he could speak, she pulled her arm out of his reach and massaged her eye sockets with the heels of her hands, making him wince. When she dropped her hands, the tears were gone. Maybe they were never there at all, maybe it was just a trick of the light. She cut her eyes away from him and opened her menu, studying it as if it were the most fascinating JAMA article she'd ever come across. After a moment, he gave up and opened his own menu. The menu felt slightly greasy in his fingers, as if it was exuding cholesterol, which it might well have been. All of the entrees seemed to be battered and fried or involved intimate relations with members of the pork family. Even the vegetables were fried. And all of the desserts were cream-something. Out of habit, Mulder scanned the menu again, looking for something Scully would eat, and spotted the inevitable chef's salad, which he knew would feature iceberg lettuce, hard-as-rock tomatoes, generous lumps of cubed cheese food, and whatever ham had managed to escape from the entree section. For some reason, the thought of her having to eat something like that infused him with a sudden rush of sadness. Before he could react or even look at her, a shadow fell across the table and the brisk snapping of gum (was it an employment requirement in this place?) announced the arrival of their waitress. Like a card shark, she briskly dealt them coffee, silverware mummified in paper napkins, and a handful of those little plastic coffee-creamer tubs, scattering them across the table like dice. He looked up at a tired blond who could have been Buckaroo Barbie-the- hostess's mother, on whom the same clothes looked almost surreal. "Ya'll ready to order?" No wink this time. Mulder looked questioningly at Scully, who again avoided his gaze and asked the waitress for the salad with oil and vinegar on the side, hold the ham, please. Mulder ordered chicken-fried steak with gravy and home fries, more from a wan hope to win an eye-roll from Scully than from genuine hunger, but her eyes were on her coffee, which she was feeding creamer in a manner almost ritualistic. The waitress moved away and Mulder was unexpectedly seized with a craving for a cigarette that jolted him with its savagery. It had been a long time since his nicotine jones had rattled its rusty chains, a hell of a long time. Extreme stress usually roused it; was this extreme stress? He looked at Scully's bent head and wondered. She'd woken that morning with a migraine, which meant a breakfast of Imitrex and black coffee and a morning of silence in the passenger seat, eyes masked by her darkest sunglasses. Hadn't she been having a lot of migraines lately? He was ashamed that he wasn't sure. He did know that the headache had abated by lunchtime (diet plate in another truck stop, the only way to get fruit on the road unless you wanted to stop at a produce stand, and it was the wrong time of year for that), but she had remained silent and self-absorbed, drawn into herself, sending off unmistakable signals: I don't want to talk, leave me alone. So he had, listening instead to the car radio, fiddling endlessly with the tuner, wishing for the thousandth time - - or was it the ten thousandth? -- that, just once, they could upgrade their rental car to something with a CD player, keeping the volume low to keep from annoying the hell out of her, suspecting that he was annoying the hell out of her anyway just by being in the same space with her. All day he'd wanted to touch her, wanted to ask her what was wrong, and he just couldn't bring himself to do it, because -- he admitted to himself now -- he was afraid he knew. But now it was nighttime and bad food was on the way and after that they would go back to the No-Tell Motel and disappear into their separate rooms for the night -- no connecting doors this time -- and he didn't think he could take one more night of lying awake in the semi-darkness, light from the motel sign filtering through threadbare curtains, listening to the distant surf-sound of interstate traffic and wondering if she was lying awake on the other side of the wall, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she hated him and if not, why not, wondering how he would ever make things right again. The nicotine beast rattled its chains again and he wished for an ice-cold bottle of beer and a pack of anything that would burn and deliver the delightful poison into his bloodstream. Anything but Morleys. Hell, maybe even those. Light a cigarette and the waitress will show up with your food. Think about lighting a cigarette and hey presto! that works, too. How much time had he spent in his own head lately, thinking about how much he needed to talk to Scully and guaranteeing he could put it off for another day because there was no time left? The steak was so heavily breaded and gravied that it had no flavor of meat at all, and from the feel of it in his mouth, it seemed to be composed almost entirely of chopped gristle formed into a steakshape. The home fries were so good they seemed to be embarrassed to be on the same plate with the rest of the meal. He used his coffee saucer to hold catsup and ate the home fries slowly and methodically, trying to make them last as long as possible, chasing them with sips of the spoon-bending coffee. In between bites, he watched Scully picking at her salad, still keeping her head down, acting as if they were two strangers who'd been forced to share a table in an Automat, as if eye contact in that context would be impolite, as much an invasion of privacy as a bold stare on the street or a quick grope in an elevator. In his head he composed whole conversations, not one word of which escaped his lips. The waitress was back, looking at their uneaten food and shrugging away any misbegotten impulse of concern as to the reason. "You folks want dessert?" Mulder thought of ice cream, but when Scully shook her head no, he decided against it. The waitress dropped the bill on the table, picked up their plates, and was gone, without so much as a "Ya'll have a good evening, now." So much for Texas hospitality. As he and Scully slid out of the booth, Mulder dropped a couple of ones on the table and picked up the bill by the one corner that didn't look as if it had been dipped in bacon grease. He followed Scully to the front of the restaurant and watched her seeming fascination with a rotating display of cream pies as he exchanged the greasy paper and more bills for change and an indifferent look from the same blonde who'd brought them their food. Barbie was nowhere in sight, a small blessing. Moving slowly past the racks of postcards and novelty keychains, the regiment of candy and gum and trash-toy machines chained together like prisoners on a road gang, they pushed through the doors and walked out into the parking lot, into the cool night air filled with enough sodium vapor to illuminate a night baseball game, diesel fumes, and the soft rumble of the idling rigs, waiting for their owners like patient dogs from some planet where petroleum was god. And still he could not find it in himself to speak to her. They drove back to the motel in silence, and in silence went to their doors (sixteen for her, seventeen for him), and in silence keyed themselves inside and away from each other for the night. Or so it would seem. Mulder moved restlessly around the tiny room, unwrapped a sanitized- for-your-safety glass and drank tepid water, flicked the tv on and off. He was exhausted but sleep seemed impossible in the face of whatever was building to a head in that dark cool night, whatever was about to explode in his face. He threw his coat on the bed and slung his suitcase on top of it, opening it long enough to pull out jeans, a henley sweater, a pair of well-worn Avias and cotton socks. In a few moments his suit and tie were hanging on those pointless-to-steal headless hangers, his shirt and socks wadded up in the plastic zippered laundry bag he carried in his suitcase, his dress shoes on the floor of the alcove that would have been a closet in a real hotel. Stuffing his wallet and a handful of change into one front pocket and his room key into the other, he let himself out into the night, closing and locking the door behind him with exaggerated care, as if he might wake her if he weren't careful. Knowing it was only wishful thinking that she would notice if he exited through the window, action-hero style, in a shower of glass. He quickly crossed the lighted strip of grass in front of the motel to the road in front of it, stopping to get his bearings. They'd passed the bar on the way to the truck stop, only a few blocks east of the motel. He exhaled heavily, seeing his breath mist in front of his face, and jogged lightly into the darkness, not looking back so he wouldn't have to see that no one was lifting a cheap curtain to see him go. The bar was tiny and, from the inside, seemed to be constructed entirely of plywood, but it must have had some phenomenal soundproofing. The music had been faint out on the road, but walking inside had been like pushing through an almost solid wall of cigarette smoke and stale-beer miasma into the front row of a rock concert. The jukebox was incredibly, painfully loud, and evidently had a bass control; Mulder could feel the floor vibrating under his feet in time with the music. He stood in the tiny vestibule to give his eyes time to adjust to the dimness and his lungs time to adjust to the near-total lack of breathable air, and in a few moments a cigarette machine materialized at his elbow. He dug into his pocket and came up with the handful of coins, which he fed one by one into the machine until it allowed him to pull a knob at random and rewarded his persistence with a pack of Virginia Slims Menthol Lights and a book of matches. Shaking his head, he moved into the periphery of the main room and looked around for a place to sit. Considering the noise level, there were surprisingly few people present, and most of those were congregated at the bar, apparently engaged -- as participants or audience -- in a straight-shot contest. Most of the booths against the back wall were empty. Unwilling to see how long table service would take, Mulder went first to the bar, where he traded money for a bottle of beer, resisting the urge to ask for Anchor Steam or Grolsch. At least he wasn't the only patron who wasn't in cowboy mufti. He took the booth in the back corner, where he could watch the door, marveling that being clear across the room from the jukebox made absolutely no difference. Now that he had his basic needs taken care of, his tuned into the music and was not surprised to recognize Shania Twain. What's a nice girl like you, he thought, taking a long pull from the beer; it wasn't good beer, but it was ice-cold enough that it didn't seem to matter. His diaphragm briefly seized up and then relaxed, and he sighed as the muscle under his left eye stopped twitching for the first time since dinner. Now on to the next vice, he thought. Fox Mulder's road to perdition, for sinners on a budget. He made a small ceremony out of peeling the strip, pulling off the top of the cellophane wrapper, opening the box, gently removing the foil cover, pulling out one impossibly long, anorexic cigarette and running it under his nose like a cigar. It smelled like death; it smelled like heaven. He stuck it in his mouth and struck a match and lit it. The first drag went straight to his cerebral cortex like a cocaine hit, and to his lungs like a faceful of exhaust fumes from the oldest city bus in the universe. He coughed until tears ran down his face, coughed until he could taste catsup and beer in the back of his throat, coughed until his throat ached -- and picked up the cigarette and did it again, chasing the smoke with beer this time. It seemed to help the coughing, but the rush lessened with each drag, an expected but major disappointment. He'd stopped smoking the day he'd finally figured out that what kept him hooked was the hope that the next cigarette would produce that rush that you could really only get if you smoked your cigarettes six months apart. A flash of movement caught his eye; a kid in a red apron materialized out of the murk, holding a tray and gesturing at his beer. Mulder hoisted it and nodded, and the boy turned and swam away, returning a few moments later with two bottles on the tray. Mulder shook his head, then nodded when the kid put his lips against Mulder's ear and yelled that it was the last call two-for-one special. Mulder handed the kid a five and was successful in conveying "keep the change" without spraining his larynx. Lip- reading was probably a job requirement in this place. As Mulder finished his beer, started on the second one, and lit another cigarette, it was as if a little director in his head had told the cameraman to switch to a new point of view. He realized that between the smokes and the beer and the music, he'd managed not to think at all for a good forty-five minutes, but that none of those distractions was working now. The cold unhappy reality of his life had tracked him to this place, spotted him across the smoky room, and dropped into the other side of the booth, as solid and real as another person. Hey Mulder, it seemed to say as it reached for the third beer. Thought you'd get away from me, didn't you? You should know better than that by now... you sorry son of a bitch. He looked up, startled, as if the voice had been real instead of in his head, and for one beat of the bass line on the jukebox, Bill Mulder was sitting across from him. He closed his eyes, hard, and opened them, and of course there was no one there, but the voice in his head kept right on going. Now I know why you worked so hard to save her life, it said. I guess it's more fun to kill her by inches, to watch her move farther and farther inside herself, to tell yourself every day that you're going to talk to her, you're going to fix things, make things right, and another day goes by, and there's a little less of her, she's a little less *there,* and someday she'll just disappear and your decision will be made for you, right? Then you can say she left *you*, and you can go on pretending everything's about you, pretending you're the victim, the misunderstood hero, the man no one can love. Through it all he sat in silence, listening, cigarette in one hand and beer bottle in the other, lifting one, then the other to his mouth, again and again, with no more expression on his face than a man sitting on a cross-country bus with the alien landscape flickering by the big windows in the darkness. He slowly turned his head and looked out of the bus window and the bus window became the glass in the door of a room in a hospital and he was holding Diana's hand and his cellphone rang and Scully said she was on her way back to the office but there was no sound of traffic, was there? And he slowly turned his head and looked out of the bus window and the bus window became a window into the windowless office of the Lone Gunmen and he saw them all frozen in a tableau like a cheap nativity scene from Woolworth's and he heard a tinny soundtrack playing his voice over and over: "You're making this personal, Scully." And he slowly turned his head and looked out of the bus window and the bus window became the window of a car through which someone watched as people were cremated alive on a bridge, the flames illuminating the darkness and filling it with the Auschwitz smell of burning human flesh-- The jukebox stopped. His ears rang in the sudden comparative silence and even the voice in his head was startled mute. He looked up and saw the people at the bar beginning to pull on coats, looked down at the dead filter between his fingers, the empty bottle in his other hand. Time for one more cigarette and one more slug of beer for the sorry son of a bitch. "One more song!" someone shouted, and here it was, with a heavy, driving bass line that he could feel in his body as the booth vibrated under his butt and against his back, as the table vibrated under his elbows, as the wall vibrated against his shoulder. It hurt less than the voice, and it sounded familiar, a chord progression that was so easy (G, C, Dm, C), it fooled the weekend guitar warriors, who could never understand why it sounded so lame when they played it and so incredible when he played it. Well, Clapton *is* god, he thought, smiling a little. Then Clapton began to sing, driving the words into Mulder's head like spikes into wood, using his guitar for the sledgehammer: She's waiting For another love She's waiting For another love She's been waiting for another love Someone that she can show into her heart And when she finally finds a stronger love Your whole world's gonna fall apart Irritably, Mulder drained the last bottle and stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. Oh please, he thought; I am not some adolescent jerk, mooning over his girlfriend and finding meanings and messages in every song on top 40 radio. You've been abusing her for far too long Think you're a king, she's your throne Get ready now 'cause pretty soon She'll be gone and you'll be on your own Well, said the voice, you *are* a jerk. I see the hunger burning in her eyes Any fool could see there's something wrong You keep pretending not to care But I will hear you sing a different song This was the version from Clapton's new album, the one with the weird ending: Clapton and the band fade out, leaving the female backup singing the refrain over and over against what sounded like a fife and drum corps. Marching music, Mulder thought. Time for me to march my ass out of here. But he couldn't seem to move until the song was finished. Waiting for another lover Hoping for a time that she'll find another Waiting for another lover Waiting for another lover Silence. Song over. Game over. Party over. Mulder slid out of the booth, leaving a better tip for the kid and, after a moment's hesitation, picking up the cigarettes and matches. He stood to his feet and waited for a beat to make sure he wasn't going to fall on his face -- three beers and all that lovely nicotine -- but you can never get drunk when you want to. He felt gritty and sticky but relatively sober. He crossed the room as quickly as he could and slipped out into the night. In a tv movie, he thought bitterly as he walked back to the motel, he would have looked up from his drink to find Scully standing before him, or at least standing in the doorway looking for him. Their eyes would meet: understanding in his, forgiveness in hers. Their bodies would meet. Their lips would meet. Yeah, right. He imagined her walking into that bar, holding her nose against the smoke, peering through the sedimentary air, looking for him. Even if she spotted him and came to his table, they wouldn't be able to read each other's eyes in the gloom. And if they'd wanted to talk, they'd have had to scream at each other to be heard over the jukebox. He snickered a little, picturing it, but the laughter tightened in his chest and died. It really wasn't funny, was it? The lighted sign in front of the motel was out, and the nearest street light reached only partway across the grass toward the building. He stopped, unwilling to go back to his room, but not knowing where else to go. The bars were closing, making a drive or a run out of the question for anyone who didn't have a death wish. He sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands and running them through his hair, and walked softly across the grass, orienting himself by the preternatural glow of the white rental Taurus parked in front of number seventeen and wishing he'd brought a flashlight. He pulled out his key and put it in the lock by feel, then pulled it out and turned around again, looking blankly at the car, wondering if he did have a death wish. He didn't want to be alone with that voice-- "I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back." He flinched, giving his elbow a good rap against the wall beside the door, and looked around a little wildly in the dark. "Where the hell are you?" "I'm right here." She raised her arm and the faint light from the street glinted off the aluminum can in her hand. She was sitting on the concrete stoop with her back against the door of number sixteen (waiting for another lover? the voice asked sardonically), and when she tilted her head to look up at him, he could see the long white column of her throat. Moving carefully, he lowered himself to the ground at her feet, his shoulder almost but not quite touching her bent leg. He felt her take a deep breath. Of him. "I don't have to ask where you went, I guess," she said, and he couldn't find any tone in her voice, amused or judgmental. "Did you bring the cigarettes back with you?" Wordlessly, he held up the pack, then pulled out a cigarette and handed it to her, pulled out another and put it between his own lips. The matches were still tucked into the cellophane wrapper; he extracted them and struck one. In the guttering flame she looked like a stranger; she'd washed off her makeup, exposing the eerie near-invisible brows and lashes of the true redhead, and her hair curled wildly around her face like copper smoke. The flame made pinpoint reflections in the deep cool blue of her eyes. Even without lipstick, her mouth was beautifully drawn. He didn't realize he was just sitting there, woodenly holding the match out of reach, until she grasped his wrist and pulled his hand to her face, touching her cigarette to the flame and sucking her cheeks hollow to draw its heat. He forgot to breathe, looking at her. It made his heart hurt, looking at her. Her touch drove shivers into his body. She moved his hand away from her face and blew out the match just before the flame reached his fingers and he pulled his hand back, obscurely ashamed. Turning his back to her, he lit his own cigarette with shaking hands. I am a coward, he told himself. Behind him, she exhaled smoke that drifted over his shoulder and made his eyes sting. Right again, the voice agreed. Fuck you, he thought. He shifted his butt on the cold concrete and said, "Scully--" just as she spoke. "Mulder, do you want--" and her hand came over his shoulder, offering the aluminum can. "Thanks," he mumbled, reprieved, and took it from her hand and put it to his lips without knowing what it was, imagining he could taste her on the metal. He tilted the can and cold iced tea with lemon flooded his mouth --and the Hillside Motel faded away and they were sitting in his car in the dark and Scully was saying I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you and he knew what she was really saying and the moment stretched singing between them like a wire and quickly he reached out with his wirecutter smartass wit and snipped it before it could ensnare his heart If there's an iced tea in that bag, could be love-- and he carefully set the can down beside him, and he stubbed out his cigarette and threw it into the darkness, and he turned back and looked up into her face, only just visible in the glow of her cigarette, and he opened his mouth to speak, having no idea what he was going to say to her, and he took a deep breath that somehow turned into a gasp of pain -- as if the wire around his heart had suddenly tightened -- and he began to cry. END