Work Text:
Not Such Small Potatoes, After All
by susieqla@yahoo.com
Cumberland Reformatory
One Month Later
11:05 A.M.
After he signed us out, and the admitting security guard wished him a, "Good day, sir," he cooly handed me a mincing look sideways, as though bartering for time. Time neither of us has ever really had; might not ever have.
"You know I don't have to tell you this. You're *not* a loser." I had never seen him looking so down.
"But, I'm no Eddie Van Blundht either..."
No, you're not, thank God, overshadowed what I was going to say in the reformatory's reverberative hallway shrouded in elongated shadows. Instead, I offered, as the man mopping the floor, watched us tread upon his hard work, "What's that supposed to mean, Mulder?"
"What's *what* supposed to mean, Scully?"
I blinked in growing despair. Could he really be this evasive? This impassive? Although, I did sense something else in his tone; his whole bearing. The idea that the point had to be made pulled on my sensibilities much as a young child tugging on the hem of her mother's skirt. Made now, more so than when I was first thrown into this mismatched mix of half-truths, red herrings and the bizarre these past four years. I sensed a despair of its own genre within him. With my usual degree of determination, not meant to intimidate, but rather to supplicate, meliorate, I brushed his forearm lightly, then held my hand in place on his sleeve, bringing him and his somewhat irresolute gait to a halt.
"Your not being Eddie Van Blundht..." My watchful eyes sued for his explanation as to why he'd say something so loaded. Why now, under these circumstances? But giving me an explanation was incumbent upon his willingness to offer up his shifting eyes to my steadily focused ones. In time, he peered into my eyes. As we stood face to face, now outside the huge, limey grey facility, it was clear his 'windows' to his soul were smudged by so much emotional soot; grimy traces of regret gunking up the vitreous humor sticking to the edges of peripheral vision. I glimpsed listlessness, and something else I couldn't quite identify.
"It means I'm no Eddie Van Blundht. Oh, and the 'h' is silent, according to the man of a thousand faces. The straight dope from his authentic mouth."
A tepid smile tested itself on my facial muscles and decided they'd support its negligible weight. He knew I appreciated the candor then. "Why are you saying that you're not, as though you think you ought to be? Since when have you developed such low self esteem, Mulder?"
Since when...since like forever, Scully. If you really knew all the crap swirling around in this head of mine, you wouldn't ask such an obvious question. "Am I, Scully?" If you really knew the real lame me, how long would you have stuck around then, partner?
He's doing it again, I started thinking, as he continued to scrutinize me with those wide-set, wide-eyed searching eyes of his. It's the cerebral basketball game he plays, using his true feelings as the ball. He fakes, he shoots, but in cases such as these, seldom scores.
"Mulder, wait--"
"I don't want to have this discussion here." He started down the even stone steps. I don't want to have this discussion anywhere; not with you, Scully.
"Where then?"
He abruptly stopped his escape, wheeled, pinning me down with an expository look. "Okay, Scully, how 'bout at your place? Tonight...at..." He started off with the same abruptness, resuming his descent, but then just as abruptly turned sharply again, giving the identical look a second try. "What time did you tell my dashing, devil-may-care alter ego to come over? We'll make it for then, then."
"I never invited him over. He invited himself." Eye rolling doesn't become Mulder, I thought with a pang of guilt tapping my shoulder. But, what did I have to feel guilty about? I'm still fairly new to this paranormal phenomena paradigm. I'd been roped in, big time. Oh, no, not again. He was off, and practically bolting. "Mulder!"
We walked, or rather, he plowed, I scrabbled like that same young child who had grown tired worrying its mother's dress, barely keeping up with a towering, long-legged adult, through the under-parked parking lot. I had parked the car with its bumper leaning heavily against the outer chain link fence, which laid out the facility's southern boundary. Off in the distance, I noticed several reformee hopefuls playing basketball.
I got in on the driver's side, after Mulder, who for some reason wasn't in a driving mood that day. I
jammed the key into the ignition, but before turning it, I took a deep breath, letting it out in a measurable, yet inaudible sigh. "Mul--"
"Not now..."
"Not what now?"
He ran his hand through his wind tousled hair a second time. No Eddie Van Blundht...it felt as though I could hear him belaboring it again, internally.
Got that right, Mulder strained in thought...dee-straight! He fixated on the player who was all set to take his shot. The six footer shot; he scored. Mulder shrugged. Easy shot, he assessed, guy wasn't even 2 feet out.
Then, he seemed to realize I'd asked a question, and was waiting for him to address it, not later; now.
"Why I'm a loser..."
My eyebrows flew up. I thought we'd settled that. "The verdict was unanimous; you're not. I just told you so--"
"Why I'm not, and never will be Eddie Van Blundht, then."
Taking his left hand in both of mine, I separated the pinkie and ring fingers from his middle and index, holding onto the pairs firmly, with a definitive air of possessing what's mine. "Glad to hear it. Since when is aspiring to be a recidivistic sex offender, the criminality enhanced by his biologically-endowed, masquerading abilities, a desirable thing? Maybe you're right to a degree. Maybe what others perceive us to be sometimes shapes how we see ourselves, more or less. But not always." He gave me a look, a true needler, which, I guess, was supposed to convey in no uncertain terms that his being annoyed was a foregone conclusion.
"Melancholy isn't attractive on you, Mulder. Neither is that face you're wearing." Summoning up the best good spirits I had, I gave him another facial nudge. "Come on, since when have you allowed a criminal to influence your good judgment to such an extent?"
He looked away with a sigh. What does look good on me? Mulder pondered. He faced back, deciding that if she wanted to talk about it now, now was as good a time as any. "You were about to kiss him, Scully. You would have if I hadn't barged in when I did..."
I squeezed his hand which had warmed up considerably while it rested in my hands which had warmed in response to holding his. "I was about to kiss *you*. For all I knew, *he* was you. And, you, the you I saw, was someone I'd never seen before. I liked what I saw, Mulder. I saw someone I was getting to know much better; someone I value. Someone I very much wanted to kiss--no, wait, please. Let me finish...
"The you, whom I saw, wasn't just my working associate; merely my partner. I saw instead, I was with a man I found myself wanting to share more of myself with that night. Telling you things about myself I never have before; you listening attentively. He was wearing your face, but I saw what your personal side might be like, and I got hooked. At least that's the way I felt when it was happening; the way I saw it. You. I mean see it." I cracked another smile. "This isn't easy." Mulder nodded, having to agree. "You were different that night, in more ways than the obvious. We both were. You were reaching out. That's what I responded to. I wanted to reach back." Sighing, "It's good you charged in like gangbusters when you did, or I might have given more of myself than just a kiss."
Both of them lowered their heads then, and Mulder shifted nervously, looking uncomfortable in the roomy seat, stricken with a temporary loss for something clinching to say at this awkward moment; this very unusual moment. Something that could just possibly make everything she'd just said really true.
"I'm glad too..."
"Mulder?"
He tried to squeeze her hand back, but the impulse never made it past the synapses. "Still here, Scully..." And the words hung in the air, akin to being a visible entity between them.
Seeing it was evident that that was all I was going to get from him for the time being, maybe for the rest of our being partnered together, I said, "Guess we'd better get going then. It's a fairly long drive back to--"
"Ya know..."
"What do I know?" I turned the key. Mulder stretched in and turned it back, killing the engine.
He cleared his throat, sensing his vocal cords tight and untrustworthy, as though they were calling a strike. He cleared his throat again, and this time it helped. Hesitantly though, "Van Blundht said I was a loser, 'by choice.'"
"Yes, I know. I saw the smugness in his face when he said it. But, Mulder, who are you going to believe? A face-form pilfering misfit, or *me*?"
He gulped, but answered truthfully, "You, always, Scully."
Sniffing with a bolstering smile, I said, "That's more like it."
Mulder inched closer until his thigh was touching hers, ever so imperceptively. Even the slight contact drove a numbing wave of pleasant sensation coursing through his leg. When he'd recovered sufficently enough, he ventured, "He also said that I should, 'Live a little...treat
myself.' He sure would..."
"I heard that too. I caught every self-absorbed word." I shifted into him with my face flirting audaciously with whimsy, and very much to his surprise, I could see it, as clearly as seeing the sun in a cloudless sky, him. "So, are you ready to live a little?" I cajoled, pressing my thigh a little firmer against his. "What's stopping you?"
"Live a little how?"
"Oh, Mulder," I dangled, scant inches from his left cheek. I thought back to the conversation I'd had with the atypical, thoroughly engaging phony Mulder, who had summarily tricked me, on my very own couch no less, into believing that he was my Mulder. My Mulder, I languished in that thought...the only man I wanted to give my lips to then; and right this very moment. "Live a little now..."
As she brushed the corner of his mouth with her lips, he whispered, "Is this a mercy kiss, Scully?"
Smirking, much like Van Blundht had smirked, when he'd urged Mulder to take his advice, but doing so directly into Mulder's slack-jawed mouth, I whispered in kind, "I don't do mercy kisses. I don't do mercy anything..."
"Neither do I, Scully," Mulder breathed at the tail end of his saying so, moments before their lips enveloped one another's.
And when their mutually sumptious offerings had run their courses, reluctantly, they broke away from each other seeing in the other's eyes the wordless, irrefutable validity of those truthful statements.
"Mercy, Scully..." Woman! Where'd you learn to kiss like that, Mulder's brain shouted. "Mercy..."
"None, Mulder. Not ever." I kissed the tip of that beautiful nose, as an equally beautiful smile graced his supple lips. His moist tempters started me thinking how easily I could become a FWM recidivist with a labial bent for their soft sakes. Reflected in the glint in Mulder's eyes, I avowed, "What you've got is far too good...to go to waste. Eddie Van Blundht..." I arched my eyebrow. "Did I say it right this time?"
Mulder nodded, jostling her thigh with his. This time he stayed where he was, not moving a muscle to allow any intervening space between them. "On the nose."
"Eddie Van Blundht, eat your heart out!" I declared, and started the car.
It proved to be a very different ride home from the one they'd had on their way there.
End