Losers By Choice

Author: Greengables82
(Anne Elizabeth)
Scully82 <Dramafiend@aol.com>

Rating: PG
Classification: UST, MSR, angst
Spoilers: post-ep fic for "Small Potatoes";
Season 4; Scully cancer mytharc; additional,
brief line and situation references to "Fire,"
"Triangle," "War of the Coprophages," "Memento
Mori," and "Millenium."
Summary: Scully and Mulder deal with the
aftermath of Eddie Van Blundht, Jr.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
They are the creations, and therefore the
property, of Chris Carter, Fox, Gillian Anderson,
David Duchovny, et al.


***

When Walter Skinner arrived at Agent Dana
Scully's apartment, unnecessary backup in tow, to
take the sheepish Eddie Van Blundht, Jr. into FBI
custody, he wandered right into the middle of an
intriguing, if awkward, scene. Eddie, recently
banished from the couch, sat, Indian-style, on
Scully's kitchen floor, his hands raised in limp
surrender. Mulder stood close to the improbable
felon, his gun drawn, but his attention clearly
focused elsewhere. Scully, meanwhile, occupied a
spot on the far, right side of the living room
couch, her already tiny frame appearing even
smaller in its near-fetal-position configuration
amidst the ample, beige pillows. Her knees were
raised to her chest, her bare feet making contact
with the seat cushion beneath her, and her arms
were wrapped tightly around her shins, her
forehead seemingly glued to the bony platform
created by her kneecaps. Her body was angled
toward the large window to the right of the
couch, her back to Mulder and the shape-shifting
sexual predator.

Skinner's first instinct was to go to her, to
comfort her. He was surprised that Mulder hadn't
already taken on this duty, one that had become
quite familiar to him over the past four years,
and increasingly so since Scully's recent cancer
diagnosis. Skinner moved toward the female agent
protectively and somewhat indignantly, casting a
disapproving glare in Mulder's general direction
(it would be perfectly fine, too, if Van Blundht
thought it was meant for him). After all, Scully
was in dire need of some TLC: as if everything
else that had happened to her recently hadn't
been enough, she had just escaped victimization
by a serial rapist (if a rather rotund, comical
one). Why hadn't Mulder just handcuffed Van
Blundht to the kitchen table and tended to
Scully?

Skinner gently patted Scully's shoulder, inviting
her to look up at him, and, when she did, he was
surprised by what he saw. He had expected tears,
shock, numbness, rage, but what he observed in
her bright red cheeks and averted eyes looked a
whole lot more like. . . embarrassment? Skinner
glanced over his shoulder at Mulder and was
baffled to detect, in the male agent's normally
confident, emotionless countenance, a hint of
something similarly self-conscious and bashful.

Skinner ordered the two agents who had followed
him to Scully's apartment to handcuff the
suspect, and they made their way over to the
kitchen, bumping into a rather stunned-looking
Mulder (the thought of moving out of the way had,
apparently, not occurred to the agent). Van
Blundht went willingly, shuffling out of the
apartment as his rights were read to him and
offering little, apologetic shrugs to Scully and
Mulder, in turn.  Both agents eyed the pudgy,
diminutive man wearily; then, made what appeared,
from the speed at which they broke it, to be
accidental eye contact with each other. After
this strangely charged moment, Mulder raced for
the gaping hole that had formerly been Scully's
front door (said door, having been knocked off
its hinges by Mulder's earlier, bold kick-in of
rescue, now lay mostly on its side on Scully's
living room floor, though it was still attached,
precariously, to the bottom of the door frame by
a couple of newly-warped screws).

"Agent?" Skinner half-asked, half-commanded.

"Sir?" Mulder said, his back to both Skinner and
Scully and his right leg already on the hallway
side of the doorframe.

"Aren't you planning to stay with Agent Scully? I
have to deliver Van Blundht to his temporary
holding cell, and it might be a good idea for
someone to stay here with her until she's asked
to submit a statement. She might need someone to
drive her to. . ."

"I can do your job, Sir," Mulder interrupted,
"While you stay here with Scully, I can follow
the agents to the jail and sign the papers."
Skinner was thoroughly confused and borderline
speechless, as he imagined Scully also was.

"But. . . you. . . Scully. . ."

Before Skinner could finish his thought, Mulder,
having offered no explanation other than an Eddie
Van Blundht-esque shrug, was already halfway down
the stairs. Skinner and Scully could do nothing
but listen, as the loud, fast thump of his
footsteps echoed in the stairwell and continued
out onto the asphalt below.

Throughout this entire, strange series of events,
Scully hadn't said a word, and, even after they
had heard the FBI vehicles drive away, she still
didn't seem particularly interested in talking.

"Agent Scully, are you alright?" Skinner asked,
finally, touching her shoulder.

"I'm fine," she said, brushing past him and
concentrating, intently, on making tea. Skinner
picked up an empty wine bottle from the coffee
table and stared at it, wondering.  

***

Scully was, frankly, terrified to face Mulder. At
least the. . . incident. . . had happened on a
Friday night, which had given her some time to
plan her actions in advance, but, walking into
their basement office a few too many minutes
after eight-o-clock on the following Monday
morning, Dana Scully still felt about as prepared
as she had on that day, four years ago, when,
fresh out of Quantico, she had first been
introduced to the intimidatingly dashing Spooky
Mulder.

GET A GRIP, she commanded herself, silently,
before tugging her suit jacket into alignment,
smoothing the wrinkles in her respectable, below-
knee-length black skirt, and entering the Fox's
lair. Thankfully, his back was to her.

"Good morning, Mulder," she said, in as neutral a
tone as she could muster, before abruptly
occupying herself with the search for an
imaginary file. She half expected (and half hoped
for, she blushed to admit) a comically suggestive
and/or bitterly incriminating retort along the
lines of, "Well, hello there, Dana. I hope you
rested up after Friday night's activities; I'M
still having a little trouble getting my legs
under me," but Mulder was uncharacteristically
professional.

"Morning, Scully." He shoved an actual file
folder in her direction, for which she was
grateful, and mumbled something about Skinner
having warily given his permission for the
investigation of a potential x-file involving
alleged kangaroo/frog hybrid mutants who
purportedly survived on a diet of human corneas.
Scully's usual chorus of, "Mulder, you don't
seriously believes," was uncharacteristically
unforthcoming.

They carried on like this, saying little and
largely avoiding each other, for most of the
week, and Mulder found multiple excuses to be
places other than at the F.B.I., even if this
meant making numerous, solo trips to the new,
federally-supplied residence of the catalyst for
all of the awkwardness: Eddie Van Blundht Jr.,
himself.

Mulder, though he refused to admit it to himself,
had reasons for visiting Eddie that went beyond
just the desire to escape the recent tension with
Scully. There were things that he wanted to ask
Eddie Van Blundht-with-the-silent-"h": things
that weren't quite official F.B.I. business. He
never really succeeded in actually getting them
out and past the well-ingrained, Scully-is-your-
partner-and-friend-and-nothing-more censor,
though. So, on numerous occasions, he found
himself sitting, mute and pathetic, on the
opposite side of the glass from the comparatively
maybe-not-so-pitiful-after-all man in the red,
"superstar" cap.

On Mulder's ninth visit in a week to Eddie's jail
cell, Scully insisted on accompanying him, and
Mulder couldn't find a way to wiggle his way out
of this arrangement (he'd recently been spending
so much time thinking about Eddie Van Blundht and
Scully that he hadn't invested much energy in
investigating any other x-files that he might be
able to tactically assign to his partner). It
was, of course, on this particular visit, with
Scully waiting in the hall and listening to their
conversation on the prisoner-cop-conference
speakers, that Van Blundht HAD to read Mulder's
mind. (Hadn't the whole shape-shifting-into-him-
and-seducing-his-partner-thing been enough)?

"I was born a loser, but you're one by choice,"
said the man in the orange jumpsuit who had quite
possibly ruined Mulder's life. "You should live a
little; treat yourself. God knows I would if I
were you."

Van Blundht grinned ridiculously, and Mulder
grimaced and walked slowly out to Scully, his
hands in his pockets and his eyes glued to the
grainy prison floor.

"I don't imagine you need to be told this,
Mulder" Scully said, "But you're not a loser."

"Yeah," he retorted, "But I'm no Eddie Van
Blundht, either. Am I?"

***

They made the greater part of the drive from Van
Blundht's cell back to the F.B.I. headquarters in
complete silence, save for the occasional, feeble
remark by Mulder about a bloodsucking Chihuahua
or a reported UFO sighting over Madison Square
Garden. At one point, things became so unbearable
that Scully reached over and tuned the radio to
an oldies station, praying that The Beatles or
Pink Floyd would soothe the tension between them.
No such luck. Instead of something innocuous like
"Yellow Submarine," or optimistic, like
"Comfortably Numb," "Ain't It Funny How Time
Slips Away" was the song that filled their cozy,
F.B.I.-issue vehicle. It was the very same song
that Scully had been playing in her apartment,
just a week or so earlier, when the man she
THOUGHT was Mulder had leaned in to kiss her and
she had been ready to kiss him back.

"Oh, brother," Scully said, under her breath,
turning, she was sure, all shades of pink. ("It
was just the wine," she had told herself over and
over again in the past few days, knowing full
well that she was lying, but hoping to convince
herself otherwise: "If it hadn't been for the
wine, I wouldn't have DREAMED of kissing him
back." Right). She moved quickly to change the
station, but Mulder's hand was, all at once, on
top of hers. The sudden contact made her gasp
(inaudibly, she hoped), and she blushed some
more.

"I like this song! Don't change it!" Mulder
pleaded, and Scully managed to nod and move her
hand to her lap, where it was, once again, at a
safe distance from his.

She breathed deeply and reminded herself that, by
the time Mulder (the REAL Mulder) had broken down
her front door, the song that had been playing on
her stereo (one of her favorite songs,
incidentally) had faded out. Mulder had no way of
knowing her associations, either ancient or
recent, with "Ain't It Funny How Time Slips
Away." She mumbled something about a toxicology
report and gazed out the window, trying to
conjure up peaceful, pastoral scenes to replace
the strip malls of Washington, D.C.-vicinity
suburbia that dominated her vision; to wipe out,
ENTIRELY, the image of jeans-and-gray-shirt-clad
Mulder, leaning toward her, his eyes conveying
pure desire, his lips red and full. .  .
 
She shut her eyes tight and imagined sheep.
Dozens and dozens of peaceful, softly baaaaaa-
ing, utterly unsexy sheep. Then, to her absolute
horror, Mulder began singing along with the
radio: with THAT song on the radio. She didn't
think that, in their entire four years together
on the X-Files, she had EVER heard him sing. His
voice wasn't, actually, half bad: a nice, rich
baritone.

She was secretly, guiltily thrilled. She found
herself wondering if Mulder had danced to this
same song at his senior prom; if he'd even
attended his senior prom. She had seen him slow-
dancing, once, in Boston, with that awful British
woman, Phoebe (the one with the grotesquely puffy
lips), and he had looked, well, as hot and steamy
as the fire that the pyromaniac groundskeeper had
set several seconds later: the fire that she was,
truthfully, kind of glad he'd started, because it
had  prevented any further action between Big
Lips and Mulder. . . GET A GRIP, DANA, she
shouted, internally, for the thousandth time that
week.

Finally, the song ended, and, with Mulder's
seductively hypnotic singing no longer assaulting
her ears and her sense of decorum (making sweet
love to every cell of her body. . . DANA! STOP!
NOW!), she sat up very straight in her seat and
attempted to regain her composure. Less than a
minute later, inexplicably and completely without
warning, she began crying. She tried to blink
back the tears, but there was no stopping the
torrent of liquid emotion. To her tremendous
embarrassment, she found herself heaving; sobbing
uncontrollably, right there in the car with
Mulder, after he'd just sung along to that
ridiculous song.

"Scully," Mulder said, sounding gentle, sounding
concerned, "I'm sorry I'm such a lousy singer."

His joke instantly made her sort of manic: she
found herself giggling, then laughing full-out,
at the same time that her mascara was re-forming
itself into unsightly, muddy streams down both of
her flushed cheeks.

"I'm. . . ahahah. . . so. . . gasp!. . . sorry,
Mulder."

They were stopped at a red light, about a block
from the Lincoln Memorial, and Mulder reached
over to the passenger seat and ever-so-gently
wiped one of a cascade of tears from beneath his
partner's left eye.

"Is it your cancer, Scully? Are you upset and
worried about your health?" He asked, quietly,
speaking the word that neither of them, in all
the Van-Blundht-induced strangeness of the past
week, had mentioned for an odd and oddly happy
few days.

"It's. . . it's. . ." Scully stuttered, in
between bouts of tears and laughter, "It's. . . a
little bit of everything, I think."

The car behind them honked and Scully stated,
redundantly, "Green light, Mulder." As he
accelerated, she announced, suddenly and a propos
of nothing, "I went to the senior prom with a guy
named Burwood. BURWOOD!!!!"

She laughed uncontrollably, near-maniacally, and
Mulder started to panic, worrying that maybe the
tumor had pushed into her brain, which would
mean. . . he couldn't think about what that would
mean. He managed to steady his racing heart and
also, he hoped, his voice.

"Burwood?" he said, evenly.

"BURWOOD! His name was BURWOOD!"

"Well, I attended a housewarming party for killer
robot roaches with a girl named Bambi, once,"
Mulder joked, playing along: maybe this was good
for Scully, this emotional release; maybe she
needed it, with her cancer, with the strangeness
of the last week. . .maybe it would be a vehicle
for her to. . . to let him in. . . maybe he could
express his own. .  . feelings.

"Scully?" He said suddenly. Something in his tone
brought her out of her fit of tears and laughter.

"Mulder?"

"It's been a long week. Skinner won't mind if you
leave work a little early today. Nobody pays much
attention to us down in the basement, anyway, and
you should really be taking many more days for
yourself than you are, for health reasons. I'm
going to take you home." He made a sharp right
turn and headed toward Georgetown. Scully shot
him a weak, "Mulder, I'm fine" look, but didn't
verbally object.

When they arrived at Scully's complex, Mulder
walked her inside. She fumbled in her purse for
the keys to her apartment's recently replaced
door, and there was something about the weary,
adorable act that made Mulder's heart catch in
his throat. Suddenly, the thought that he might
lose her: that he WOULD lose her, if he accepted
her diagnosis of terminal cancer, which he
refused to do, made him light-headed and
nauseous. He had to catch himself against the
doorframe before his legs gave out under him, and
this caused Scully to look up from her purse
rummaging and ask him if he was okay. If HE was
okay.

This was too much for Mulder. He saw her, really
SAW Scully: her pale skin; her too-carefully-
groomed red hair; her straight nose; her
glistening, emotionally transparent blue eyes;
her red lips, pursed in concern for him, and he
couldn't stop himself. He acted on instinct, on
desperation, on terror, on. . . love. He leaned
down and kissed her hard, kissed her softly,
kissed her fully, and oh, God, she was beautiful,
and she wasn't breaking away from him, wasn't
stopping the kiss. Her purse fell lazily off her
arm, and she didn't care; didn't stop kissing
him, and he wanted more than anything to die
right now, in her arms, so that she wouldn't die
before him, so that he wouldn't have to live one
moment of his life without her.

"Mulder," Scully gasped, finally coming up for
air, "This is. . . this is completely. . . we
shouldn't be. . . we're desperate. . . we are. .
. we are PROFESSIONAL partners. . . it's been a
strange week. . . it's. . . we're. . ."

"I'm sorry, Scully," Mulder whispered, ecstatic
and deflated, all at the same time: "I just. . .
I just had to know that I'm not a loser."

He didn't know why he'd said this, and, in
retrospect, it seemed flippant and mildly
inappropriate (of course, the inappropriate part
was right in tune with the current
circumstances), but it made her laugh, and he was
glad.

"Mulder," she said, looking him straight in the
eye and taking in the sadness, the hope, the
concern, the brilliance, the beauty, the. . .
yes, the LOVE, in his soulful, hazel eyes,
"Mulder, you are NO Eddie Van Blundht.
You are. . . you are so. . .deliciously. . .
you."

She gasped, shocked at how much she had just
revealed of everything she was constantly trying
to repress. She quickly bent down to pick up her
purse; to open her door; to close him out; to get
things back to normal.

"This can't happen again," she said, trying to
sound stern, attempting to appear sure of what
she was saying.  Mulder looked simultaneously
relieved and devastated.  "We've been through so
much, lately, it's only natural. . . and it
was. . . it was. . . wonderful, but it
can't. . ."

"I know, Scully," Mulder said quietly, "I'm just
so. . . lost. . . right now."

Scully suddenly remembered standing with him in a
stark, white hospital hallway several months
earlier, just after she'd learned of the
existence of her inoperable, nasopharyngeal
tumor; just after she'd written page after page
in a diary she intended for him to read after
she'd died: in a diary that he'd found and read,
anyway, after she'd decided that she was NOT
going to die; that she was going to hold on. For
herself. And for him. She knew that she could get
lost in him; that they could both get lost and
lose everything; lose sight of his quest, and
hers; lose sight of the Truth.

"We're going to fight this," she said, quietly,
and the double meaning of her words was not lost
on him. Mulder embraced her briefly, tenderly,
then turned to leave.

"Wait!" She called after him, impulsively,
wanting and needing to say more: "Mulder! I was
thinking. . ."

"What were you thinkin,' Scully?" He asked, his
voice deep and raw.

"I was thinking. . . we never really talk much,
do we?"

"What do you mean? You mean, like really talk?
No. No, we don't, Scully," he said, and Scully
couldn't help but smile.

"What's stopping us?"

Scully invited Mulder into her apartment, and
they sat down and talked, really talked, for the
next several hours, about her fear of dying; his
fear of her dying; their grief and anger over the
loss of their fathers and their sisters; their
high school prom memories (Mulder had gone,
alone, for about fifteen minutes, before
wandering outside and searching the sky for
UFO's; using his plastic cup of lime sherbet
punch as alien bate); and their mutual fear of
being close to anyone, when everyone could so
easily be lost. They really talked, and then
Mulder left: drove back to Alexandria, where he
would eat three-day-old pizza and sleep on his
hard, leather couch while Scully stayed in her
apartment, studying forensic science journal
articles, then settling into bed with her worn
copy of Moby Dick.

This was how they were. This was how they had to
be, for now, at least. They both, however,
silently thanked Eddie Van Blundht for showing
them a possible, alternate path.  

"Maybe," thought Mulder, as he sprinkled fish
food flakes into his glowing tank of mollies,
"If we both make it to the new Millennium. . ."

He decided to make that a goal.


***
THE END. THANKS FOR READING!