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JUSTIFICATION: Most of this was written in December,
during an extremely loud party on the other wing of my dorm
floor, which spilled, equally loudly, over into my wing,
making it impossible to go to sleep. But, the party finished
before *I* finished, and it sat around. Then, while pondering
over which direction the "Just Another . . . Night" bunch
should go, I came across it, thought <This has potential>,
fixed it up, and decided to post it.
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are owned but
(fortunately) not hoarded by ten-thirteen and such . . . I feel
required to mention that Ann Rasmussen is my character, and
that this takes place after a piece currently entitled "RX" (like
prescription), which I haven't posted yet, because I haven't
finished it. Relax, it stands alone. (If it stands at all.
But, I digress . . .)
TODAY'S YKYAXPW: Your math professor says, "If you're
the paranoid kind or put all your trust in mathematics . . ." and
you spend the rest of your class period counting up how many
times he says 'trust' or 'truth' to see if he uses them so many
times that he *must* be an X-Phile. Sum total: one 'truth' and
one 'trust'. Guess not.
ROMANCE ALERT, and it's between Mulder and Scully, and
it's somewhere between PG and PG-13, closer to PG.
AND HE DO THE WALK
by sneakers
<jhadden@willamette.edu>
Fox Mulder sat on Dana Scully's kitchen counter,
watching her sing and dance. Needless to say, Fleetwood Mac,
at least that song, was not exactly the best dancing music,
neither did she have the best singing voice, but who was he to
complain? He was getting a free dinner.
"Here, Mulder, make yourself useful." He put out his
arms just in time to catch a package of formerly frozen chicken.
He could see the headlines on the tabloids: Dead Chicken Found
Flying Around Kitchen.
He looked at the chicken. None of it was recognizable
as any chicken part - no extra-crispy, no spicy barbecue. "Do
what with it?" he asked, pulling at the plastic shrink-wrap.
A knife in a cardboard slip came sliding down the
counter. "Cut it up, what else?" The song on the radio had
changed to Dire Straits. Scully was singing again, as she
dumped what seemed like an unusually large amount of pasta in
a kettle of boiling water.
He slid off the counter and turned around, looking for a
cutting board. Out of nowhere, one appeared in Scully's hand.
"Looking for this?" she asked in a teasing voice. Chicken and
knife left on the counter and forgotten, he dove for the cutting
board, only to have her switch it to her other hand. Unable to
stop his forward motion, he crashed head-on into her.
She put the cutting board down on the counter and
pushed him away with both hands. "Hey, I thought we were
cooking, not playing tackle football. Or was I mistaken?" She
stuck out one arm and grabbed the cutting board back a split
second before Mulder's fingers touched it.
His hand slapped the counter painfully. "Oh, definitely
mistaken," he retorted, shaking his hand in a (rather
unsuccessful) effort to deaden the pain. <Damn, that hurt!
Doesn't she know when to stop?> Well, two could play that
game. He s-l-o-w-l-y leaned closer to Dana as she waved the
cutting board around tauntingly. When he was so close he could
hear her breathing, he lunged forward, grabbing her arm,
spinning around her back, and getting a firm grip on the cutting
board.
"Hey!" she cried, unfortunately not letting go as Mulder
had hoped. They faced off over a clear plastic cutting board,
neither of them planning on letting go in the foreseeable future.
The phone rang.
Mulder, much to his disappointment, was closer to the
phone. He took one hand carefully off the board, reaching
backwards towards the phone. Just as he picked up the phone,
Scully leaned backwards. Forced to chose between pulling the
phone off the wall and letting the board go, he freed it from his
other hand. "Damn! . . . Mulder here," he said into the phone.
"Ooops. Yeah, she's here." He took the phone away from his
ear and held it out to Scully. "Dr. Rasmussen," he announced.
"Don't talk too long . . . remember . . ."
"Damn it, I remember." Scully cut him off and took the
phone, walking out of the kitchen, around the corner to the
dining room.
Mulder glanced at the cutting board, sitting unguarded on
the counter next to the Kitchenaid. <Why in the hell are we
fighting over this, anyway? She lost the bet, *she* cooks *me*
dinner. Which includes *her* cutting up the chicken in the first
place!> His handsome face spread into a wide grin as he
remembered the bet. She been so sure he'd never prove his
theory . . .
His eyes narrowed to dark slits in anticipation of what
would be for dessert . . .
"Hey, earth to Mulder!" Scully came back from the
dining room, phone held in hand. "Dr. Rasmussen says 'Hi,
sexy'. Her words, not mine."
Mulder blushed.
"The woman was always stuck on you," Scully
reminded him. "Be glad she's in Chicago. Anyway, she called
to report that nothing else strange has happened there. But, we
already knew that one was over."
Mulder nodded, then, feeling charitable, picked up the
cutting board again. "That's good . . . I don't think I could
handle any more six a.m. flights."
"For the last time, that was *not* my fault, Mulder."
Scully stuck the much-contested chicken back in the refrigerator.
"You know what, I just remembered that I have some pre-cut,
left over from last time I made this."
He just about choked in surprise. "More's the pity," he
agreed.
Scully gave him a strange look and whipped a plastic bag
of tomato halves out of the crisper. "Says who?" she asked,
forcing the bag upon him. "I want these chopped into . . .
medium pieces."
Mulder took the bag, glaring at the slimy tomatoes with
obvious distaste. "Eew . . . who cut these in half?" he asked.
"Says the man who's seen severed heads, mutilated
bodies, Virgil Incanto sliming people to death." Scully gave him
a friendly punch on the shoulder. "I did. I was going to bake
them with cheese on top, but then *you* called, and we had to
go take over for somebody on a stakeout. Seems *you* owed
them one, not me."
"But . . . that was last week," protested Mulder.
Scully refused to rise to the bait. "Remember, medium
pieces."
Mulder opened the bag, picking tomatoes out of the red
ooze. "What else am I going to do with them, juggle them?"
The idea appealed to him, and he extracted three of the most
intact halves and began to do just that.
Scully closed the fridge and began piling through a
cupboard. "Mulder, Mulder, Mulder . . . what am I going to do
with you?"
He looked over his shoulder at her, displaying the hurt
puppy-dog look he did so well. "I require action?"
She squinted her eyes closed. "Um, Mulder . . . "
Mulder, head turned around but still juggling, suddenly
realized the he hadn't caught one of the tomatoes. His head
snapped back in time to see the culprit land messily on the floor,
and the other two rapidly heading there. Instinct, and memories
of a few times playing with a hackey-sack, inspired him to try to
catch the remaining two with his foot. It worked . . . kind of.
One tomato landed, skin side down, exactly in the center of his
high-top basketball sneaker. While he was bending down to
pick that one up, however, the third tomato smacked, messy
side down, near the bottom of his locker-room gray sweatpants.
" . . . be careful," finished Scully belatedly.
Mulder retrieved all three tomatoes and dumped them in
the sink. "Smile, I'm on Candid Camera . . . right?"
"You think of the strangest things . . ." said Scully,
coming up directly in front of him, one hand behind her back.
"The strangest things . . ." She whipped her hand forward, and
Mulder suddenly found himself with a tomato half stuck to the
front of his shirt.
Mulder stared at the tomato, dead-center on his
(fortunately) red t-shirt, unable to come up with a witty reply.
Was this *really* his sedate, skeptical doctor of a partner? "The
strangest things, eh?" he asked.
Scully winked at him.
He had just enough time to decide that this was a bad
sign before he was hit by various flying food pieces. Amazingly
enough, as they were flying towards him, his first reaction was
to notice that they were all trimmings and inedible parts. <Yup.
Definitely Scully. Trust her to start a food fight and not waste
any food at the same time.>
He scrambled over to the sink and grabbed a handful of
celery leaves. They drifted down into Dana's hair like snow
once he threw them.
She reacted by yanking open a drawer and reaching into
a bag of flour.
<So much for only using leftover food>, he thought, as
the white dust settled over everybody and everything in the
kitchen. His unconscious mind began to see some very
interesting, very . . . unpartnerlike possibilities, even as his
conscious mind was throwing open the refrigerator and
whipping the lid off a bowl of chocolate pudding he remembered
seeing. It squished satisfyingly through his fingers and the
dense mass flew through the air quite with an amazingly accurate
aim.
"Eew, yourself," said Scully, pausing to wipe the
pudding off her face. "You and your photographic memory . . .
*I* didn't even remember the pudding was in there."
Suddenly, Mulder was in front of her, taking the last
drop of pudding off her nose with the tip of his left pointer
finger. Pulling her closer to him, he reached down and traced
the outline of her mouth, leaving a vaguely chocolate-flavored
residue. She reached up to run her hand through his hair.
Then used the other one to dump more flour over his
head.
"You . . . creep." said Mulder, taking a hasty step
backwards and trying to shake out the flour. None came out.
The realization came to him that the flour was stuck to the
pudding that she'd wiped in his hair.
She smiled sweetly . . . too damn sweetly. "Truce?" she
asked, holding both hands in front of her so he could see she
wasn't holding anything.
"What have you got up your sleeves, hmmm?" he
murmured, coming closer again. But *he* had a better idea than
simply throwing more food. He slid one arm around her waist,
slowly turning her away from the flour .
She never expected to be hit square on with the sprayer
from the sink.
The icy water dripped over her head, leaving wet trails
down her sweatshirt. She grabbed at the sprayer, sending an arc
of water flying through the kitchen. Mulder was drenched
instantly. He dropped the sprayer and squirmed away. "Oh, no
you don't!" Scully yelled, letting go of the sprayer herself and
chasing after him.
Mulder easily sidestepped her and grabbed the sprayer
again. He shot the floor in front of his partner, causing her to
slide on the slick linoleum. Dropping the sprayer for the second
time, he grabbed her under the armpits and threw her over his
shoulder.
"Mulder! Put me down! Put me down!" Scully
pounded on his back with her fists. "Cut it out!"
"Cut *what* out?" He grinned mischievously and
flipped her over in his arms, so she was no longer bent over his
shoulder. Cradling her in his arms as easily as a baby, he
headed out of the kitchen and down the hall. "We're gonna have
to get the food off somehow, right?"
"DON'T YOU EVEN . . . think about it," she finished,
belatedly realizing that he *was* thinking about it. Her body
went limp in his arms as he covered the last few feet to the
bathroom. Nudging the water on with his elbow, he let her
down inside the tub, then entered himself.
Scully gasped at the water, steaming hot now, instead of
icy-cold. It pasted her loose sweats to her body and sent clumps
of wet red hair falling into her face. She felt Mulder's hands
push the hair back, then clasp behind her neck and pull her
closer to him. She rested her head against his soggy and
tomato-stained t-shirt, enjoying the feel of his muscles through
the thin cloth.
She felt Mulder's small rumble of a laugh clearer than
she heard it. "What's funny?" she asked, tilting her head up and
letting the water run down her face.
"Just thinking of what Skinner'd say if we told him on
Monday that we took a shower together."
She swatted at his arm with a waterlogged washcloth.
"You wouldn't."
"I would."
"Well, I'd tell him that we left our clothes on, then."
A mischievous, sexy smile crossed his face. "You're
sure about that?"
"Yeah . . ." she whispered, entirely unsure.
"For that," he whispered back, "I'll have make sure we
don't."
And he did.
And they didn't tell Skinner.
THE END
Oh . . . you want to know where the title come from and what it
has to do with the story, right?
He got the action, he got the motion.
Yeah, oh yeah, the boy can play.
The dedication, devotion,
To turning all the night time into the day.
And after all the violence and double talk,
There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife.
AND HE DO THE WALK, he do the walk of life.
-Dire Straits, "Walk of Life"
Makes me think of Fox Mulder.
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. . . sneakers . . . "They all have this conspiracy against me . . ."
<jhadden@willamette.edu> -me, amazingly, pre-X-Files
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