From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Lakticia?= Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 13:40:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: Swimming Upstream by Lakticia Source: direct title: Swimming Upstream author: Lakticia e-mail: lakticia@yahoo.co.uk disclaimer: This stuff not mine archive: Ephemeral, Gossamer and After The Fact; anywhere else just let me know date: 6 Sept 03 rated: PG category: S keywords: Post-Detour; UST spoilers: uh, Detour summary: A chance remark on a case leads to a late night conversation. notes: * Written for August's "It Feels Like The First Time" Haven challenge (any character telling another character about doing something for the first time). * Many thanks to XScribe for the research help, beta and support. Thanks also to Spooky2u2 and Lee for the very helpful beta. feedback: I'm a newbie - all comments, good and bad, are highly appreciated. lakticia@yahoo.co.uk Swimming Upstream by Lakticia -x- "The purpose of the Y-Guide Program is to foster understanding and companionship between father and son." "Making memories to last a lifetime." - Slogans of local YMCA Indian Guides groups (westyguides.org, indianguidesofgateschili.org) -x- 10pm? Already? Mulder groaned to himself as he checked his watch before entering his apartment. Shedding trenchcoat, shoes, jacket and tie as he walked, he fell onto the sofa and reached over to hit play on his answer machine. Beep. Two seconds of silence. Beep. The corners of his mouth quirked up a little. Must be Scully, deliberating a moment too long over whether or not to leave a message, before hanging up. She'd done it before. He debated what to do before a sudden loud growl from his stomach made the decision. Taking up the cordless phone, he sat down and called to order a pizza, simultaneously switching on the TV and muting it. When the order was made, he put his feet up on the coffee table, let his head loll back on the sofa, shut his eyes and exhaled a tired sigh. God, what a boring day. He and Scully had returned from Florida yesterday, after enduring the last two days of the bone-meltingly dull FBI conference. In his sicker moments he wished they hadn't found all the mothmen's victims so soon. Thirteen hours ago in Skinner's office, the AD had instructed Mulder that he was to spend the day writing up the mothmen report. Then he had told Scully to take the day off, go home and rest. Scully, of course, had refused point blank. Skinner insisted she go home; her remission was only recent, the trip to Florida had been much more tiring than anticipated, it would be foolish to push herself too far too soon; and Scully, of course, had continued to refuse. It was only when Skinner leaned forward, looked her straight in the eye and said without a trace of amusement, "Agent Scully, I will have you frogmarched out of here by security guards if that's what it takes," that she had left, shooting them both a glare as she did so. He and Skinner had exchanged a look of understanding. Then Mulder too had left, faced with the prospect of a whole day alone in an empty office, writing a report that could easily be done in a couple of hours. Ugh. But pizza was on the way, and she had called. Taking up the phone again, he dialled her number, absently drumming his fingertips on his thigh. Two rings. Then Scully's voice came through, clear, feminine, familiar. "Hello?" "Hey. You called me earlier." His voice was gruff, flat with tiredness. A pause. "How did you know it was me?" "I'm having your phone tapped. By the way, tell your mother I'm fine, thanks for asking." He imagined her barely-there smile. "So what's up?" "I just thought I'd check that you managed to finish the report today without any problems." He caught the lightness in her voice. She sounded.. maybe a little pleased that he'd called. There had been tiny changes like this, lately. Tiny steps towards... lightness. Conversation. "I'm actually thinking of setting up some sort of database template on the computer," he told her, his voice a dry monotone. "Instead of writing a full report every time we investigate a case, we just fill in who died, what *I* think happened, what *you* think happened, how long it took for me to be attacked, what you had to do to save my ass, what you managed to find a scientific explanation for, what remains unexplained, and how big my medical bill is. We'll never have to write a full report again." Scully paused. "Do I detect a note of cynicism?" He stretched and stifled a yawn. "Don't forget tiredness." "I'm not surprised you're tired, if you were working on the report until now." He grunted. "Didn't start writing it until five, though." "Five? What were you doing the rest of the day, then?" He slumped a little, tilted his head back and stared at the point where wall met ceiling, going through the day's events. "I took my shirt up to Stephen for analysis.." "The shirt you were wearing when you were attacked," she interjected. "Yeah, I wanted to see whether the pattern of bite marks on the shoulder could have been inflicted by the jaw of a human or any animal known to Florida's forests." "And?" "Inconclusive evidence." His voice echoed the disappointment he'd felt earlier. "He said the marks weren't even clear enough to be worth analysing." "He didn't make any kind of guess at all?" "Nope." Scully paused. "So what did you put in the report?" "Mothmen," he answered simply. "Mulder..." "Come on, we both saw it," he protested, the usual passion in his voice muted by tiredness. "A predator perfectly camouflaged in its natural environment, with red piercing eyes." "We fell ten feet down a hole. We could have been suffering from concussion," she rebutted calmly. "We'd had very little sleep, and the hole, the cavern, had extremely low visibility. I don't know what I saw. And you don't have any evidence for what you believe you saw." He rubbed his hand over his face and sighed. "Mothmen. It was mothmen," he murmured in a 'whatever' tone of voice. A pause, and evidently she decided to give up too. "So what did you do after taking your shirt up to Stephen?" "Actually, I, uh.. I spent the morning up in his lab, and had lunch with him." He imagined her raising an eyebrow. "Then in the afternoon I went to visit the Gunmen." "Sounds like a sociable day." The ever-so-faint strain of surprise in her voice was not lost on him. He made some non-committal noise. "Anyway, what did *you* do?" "Me? I cleaned my apartment, and, now I'm reading." She paused as if looking around at her apartment, or looking down at her book. He raised his eyebrows amusedly. "Did it *need* cleaning?" "I don't know," she answered drily. "Which one of us do you think is the better judge of when an apartment needs cleaning?" He waited a beat. "Is this a trick question?" She chuckled lightly and he relaxed, woke up a little. He entertained a sudden image of Scully opening her closet, seeing a slightly scuffed pair of shoes and a creased sweater, her mouth contorting in an O of horror. He tried not to laugh. "I.. didn't know you were such good friends with Stephen," she said suddenly. Well, talking to him beat standing around the water cooler discussing hairstyles. Anything not to be alone in that empty office as the daylight hours ticked slowly by, a too- sharp reminder of his life when she was in hospital. "I'm not. We spent the *whole* morning discussing bite mark analysis techniques." His wisecrack provoked a slight chuckle. "Well, it's a nice, *normal* way to spend a morning," she said teasingly. "Talking shop with coworkers." His lip quirked. "Y'know, I'm actually quite a normal guy. Most people just ignore the normal aspects of my character because they need me to be that weird guy in their lives. I fulfil a role." A pause. "Mulder, do you know what the one thing is that's more annoying than a psychologist?" Ah, the simple joy of Scullybaiting. "A psychologist who's always right?" Another pause. "Do you *want* to be peeing through a catheter?" That made him smile. An allusion to a moment down in Florida. As they left the motel after returning from the night in the forest, Scully had warned him, "Mulder, if you even *think* about getting involved in another case between here and the conference, I promise you, you will be peeing through a catheter." He had turned to her and replied, deadpan, "You think we're gonna come across a monster who will compromise my ability to pee?" He then spent the entire drive to the conference telling her about ancient Saxon curses that were said to inhibit human bodily functions. She had rewarded him halfway through with a pantomime yawn. "Only if you're the one who puts the catheter in," he murmured huskily into the phone. Another pause. "Oh yeah, you're totally normal. I don't know why anyone would ever think you were weird." "Whatever. I fulfil a *role*," he repeated, smiling faintly. They shared a moment of amused silence, then he heard her utter a barely audible, very thoughtful "Hmm." "What?" he asked. "What?" she replied. "You were thinking something just then." "I'm a conscious human being. I'm always thinking *some*thing." Oh, she was going to play it like that, was she? Fine. "OK... so what was it?" A hesitant pause. "It was nothing, really." "Well, as a conscious human being, you're always thinking *some*thing, so logically, it can't be nothing." He could almost feel The Look from here. "Thank you, Dr Spock." He grinned and waited a moment before prompting her. "So?" She sighed the sigh of someone who had learnt the hard way that he never gave up. "I was just thinking about.. something you said when we were in Florida." He stayed silent, listening. "You said you and your father were Indian Guides." Ah-ha. "And," he replied, "you're surprised that we would have done any kind of happy-family, father-and-son activity like that." A pause. He heard her smile. "Yes." "Well..." Mulder shifted on the couch, swung his legs up and lay back. He switched the phone to his right hand and tucked the other behind his head, even though he shouldn't twist his left shoulder like that because it still hurt from the mothman's attack. If Scully were there, she would merely look at his posture, and he would straighten his arm before she'd even opened her mouth. "I didn't tell you how long we were Indian Guides." "How long?" "One trip." "One trip?" No ridicule, just gentleness. "One trip to the forest." A pause. "So it didn't go well?" "You could say that." Another, longer pause. Eventually Mulder sighed. "It's a long story." And not one he felt like telling. He heard vague rustlings of fabric and imagined her shifting around on her sofa. Maybe leaning against the armrest, her legs tucked under her. "Did you have any other plans for the evening?" A rhetorical question, of course, her voice tentative with the uncertainty of unfamiliar territory. "Well, I *did* just order pizza..." "In the four years I've known you, not once have you been reluctant to speak with your mouth full." He smiled briefly, then fell into a long silence. "Look, I- I- it's not much of a story," he mumbled eventually. "It was a long time ago." He wondered if she would persist or give up, didn't know which he wanted her to do. "How old were you?" she asked gently. Psychologist's tactics. Easy questions first. "Eight. Nearly nine, it was September 1970." "And you went camping in the forest?" "Yeah." A pause. "On the Vineyard?" He hesitated. Come on, you moron, it's Scully. Talk to her. But... talk about this? I've never told anyone. Because no-one's ever asked. She's asking. "Mulder?" He shut his eyes and tried to answer. "No. There's nowhere to camp on the Vineyard. We went to Misquamicut State Park, it's in Rhode Island, on the coast. To the west of Quonochontaug." Suddenly he remembered leaving that Friday morning, his mother's placid smile and Samantha's sulking four-year-old pout as they watched their menfolk drive away. And the silence in the car. "Samantha was mad that I was going and she wasn't. I'd spent the whole summer teasing her about it. Dad told me we were gonna join Indian Guides at the beginning of the summer." He remembered the peculiar surprise of it, his father's stiff smile. His best friend Marty, also an Indian Guide, had grinned when he broke the news and Marty told him what the trips were like as they raced their bikes to the end of Vine Street and back. "Did you *want* to join?" Scully asked softly. "Yeah. I did. It came out of the blue, but.. I looked forward to it. And Misquamicut was beautiful." Jesus, such a long time since he'd last thought about this. The memories. They'd arrived as the afternoon sunlight was turning the forest emerald-golden and he'd pulled off his shoes and ran to join Marty and the others. A glance over his shoulder and his Dad was getting out of the car, approaching the other fathers, too-polite smiles all round. Then he was on the beach playing ball and the sun glittered on the crushed crystal ocean and his bare feet thumped on the smarting heat of the velvet sand. "We camped on the edge of the forest, next to the beach. It was.. it was the end of the summer, the weather was just right. We, uh, we went hiking, we learned about following footprints, we had races on the beach... it was fun." The memories of hiking came back to him sharply. The smell of soil and leaves and bark and learning to navigate uneven paths, mud, stones. The hypnotic rhythm of foot after foot, treading wherever the person before him had trod. Crouching over footprints and listening to information and the look on his father's face when he answered a question right. Pleased maybe, proud maybe, but something else, some.. some kind of hesitation, bemusement - and that silence, always that silence. Fuck. I don't... I don't want to think about this. He only realised there'd been a long silence when Scully broke it. "But you.. implied the trip didn't go well," she said gently, curious to understand. Mulder sighed. "It went well.. as long as.. I managed to put out of my mind that I was there with my father." A pause. "You mean he embarrassed you?" she asked doubtfully. "No, no, I mean.. I mean there I was with my father who normally didn't even play ball in the back yard with me, and.... fuck," he mumbled, suddenly feeling stung and angry and sick of this, this swimming upstream. He didn't want to think about this, those stilted pieces of conversation, that look in his father's eyes.. as if- as if his own son was a goddam stranger. "Look, let's just drop it, alright?" Shit. Where had that harshness in his voice come from? "OK. OK," Scully said, her voice calming and cautious. A silence passed. "Look, I..." he stopped, feeling stupid and unbearably lost. "I'm s-" "It's alright," she told him softly. Words said in the hope that speaking them would make them true. "It's alright." Mulder took a breath, trying to get back on track. "Look, it really isn't much of a story. Nothing disastrous happened. We just.. we didn't get *along*," he let out with a humourless chuckle. "It's that simple." A silence passed. "I'm sorry," she said eventually, her voice Scullyishly gentle and direct. "I didn't mean to pry." Of course she didn't - of course not - he knew that. "No, no. I know." "It's just..." she hesitated. "When you mentioned this down in Florida, it made me think... I don't really know anything about.. what it was like before Samantha was taken." Oh, God, Scully, there's so much. There's so much I could tell you but the words don't ever come. Swallowing away the change of subject on the tip of his tongue, he set his resolve and offered what he could. "My favourite thing about the weekend... was, uh.. the evenings." He hesitated, but the even breathing on the other end of the line was encouraging, somehow. "We sat around a bonfire in the clearing where we were camping." Mesmerised, he had stared at the crackling flames until his eyes hurt and he was certain that his mother and Samantha would be able to see it from the Vineyard. "They told us Native American stories, which were fascinating, a lot more interesting than the stories you usually get told when you're a kid. Then we went to bed, and.. everyone fell asleep, and.." he smiled a little at how silly it sounded. "I just lay there listening to the forest." The wind rustling leaves, the rasping chatter of crickets, the waves beating a steady rhythm on the nearby shore. "Sounds peaceful," she murmured after he trailed off. "No, it was.. in a strange way, it was *exciting*. Letting my mind wander and being somewhere totally new. I'd never even camped out before," he tried to explain. A pause and he heard a soft, thoughtful semi-chuckle. "What?" "Oh, I've just.. never seen you as a nature lover." His eyebrows raised and dropped a fraction. "Don't start now. I'm not." "Sounds like you enjoyed it on that trip, though." "Mm," he murmured, staring unseeing at the ceiling. "I was eight. Everything's an adventure when you're that age. There's no baggage." He stopped short, surprised by the heaviness in his voice. "The, uh- the reason we didn't continue is because he was busy with work. That's why we only went once. The next trip in October, he said he was too busy to go, and after that, neither of us mentioned it again." Another silence. "Well.. at least he tried," she said gently, pausing. "His intentions were good. ..Whatever happened." "Mm." He tried as hard as he could not to let the words 'like father, like son' even enter his mind. Was he even my father? Fuck, fuck, fuck. His throat was tight. He felt drained. He had to stop thinking about all this.. all this crap. Evidently sensing his exhaustion, Scully cleared her throat and spoke lightly. "I have to say, I'm pretty impressed... that weekend was, what, almost thirty years ago, yet you remember perfectly what you learned about human footprints." He smiled a little, her lightness releasing tension in his chest. "Maybe I knew subconsciously that I was destined to need that information one day," he responded, and indulged in teasing her. "You believe in destiny, Scully?" She spoke through a smile. "Only if it's you asking." He stopped short. What? "Listen, uh," she continued quickly, "Maybe I should let you go... it's late, your pizza will be there soon." Relief mixed with disappointment and he was wisecracking before thinking. "O-Oh yeah, actually, I can smell it already, the delivery guy's just a couple of blocks away. Did I mention the heightened sense of smell I developed that weekend?" Another smile. "See you tomorrow." "Yeah." "- Mulder?" His attention was drawn by the suddenly tender, serious cadence she'd given his name. A long pause, then she spoke with conviction. "Your father loved you. ...I'm certain of that." His lips fell apart in momentary, total shock. "Uh... yeah," he murmured after God knows how long. Then he disconnected and stared at the phone, stunned, pushing away the ache inside for the thousandth time. -x- Feed a hungry newbie! :) lakticia@yahoo.co.uk