Indiana by Leyla Harrison Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and the Great Mutato are owned by Chris Carter, whom I have redeemed in my mind. This man is a GOD. Do you hear me? A god. US5 Spoilers: Post-Modern Prometheus Classification: Vignette/Humor, MSR Rating: PG Summary: Scully ponders what has happened while she and Mulder were in Bloomington, Indiana. Dedicated to a shipper who's not a romantic but liked this anyhow, and thanks to a friend who became an online editor while the story was in progess. ****** Zip. Snap. Scully yanked on the zipper of her carry-on bag probably just a little harder than was necessary, she was sure, but she hardly cared. She idly noticed that the zipper was now being held between her thumb and forefinger and was no longer attached to her bag, but she hardly cared about that, either. She looked down at the metal zipper and shrugged her shoulders. What the hell. It could be fixed. She went into the bathroom and checked her hair, glad to see that some of its usual color had returned. For some reason, it had been looking kind of on the gray side over the last few days. Gray and overly rumpled. She hated it when her hair was rumpled. Scully headed for the closet to check her coat. There were usually a great many items in her coat pockets and she always liked to make sure that they were all still there before she finished up a case and headed back to Washington. Some of the things were actually Bureau property and would have to be itemized on her expense report if she lost them. Let's see. Flashlight. Check. Scully wrinkled her nose at the flashlight. It was a cheaper variety that she was used to working with. Lately whenever she asked to requisition anything she was given a slightly sub-standard version of what she was used to. She assumed it was because of the fact that she and Mulder lost more FBI-subsidized flashlights and cel phones that any other agents. Scully was sure that the Requisition Department was somewhere down in the basement, near their office, she assumed, and that somewhere in the Requisition Department there was a Bureau employee named Barney, who filed each requisition slip and lost-item report alphabetically, in chronological order. And she was sure that ol' Barney had a file just for her and Mulder, a file that had grown over the years to the point where it needed its own file cabinet. And she was absolutely certain that Barney would laugh gleefully whenever she or Mulder submitted a requisition for a new gun, or a cel phone, or a flashlight. She could just see him cackling merrily away as he sent along a cheap dime store flashlight that ran on D batteries instead of a halogen bulb, or a cel phone that didn't have redial on it. Scully was sure that Barney was also responsible for sending up the cheap pencils instead of the standard #2 ones that she was used to. Damn Mulder. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't have to suffer so much with cheap pencils and cheap flashlights and functionless cel phones. It wasn't like she was responsible for losing everything most of the time. Anyhow. Back to checking her pockets. She still had the cheapo flashlight, although she was sure that Mulder had likely lost his already, *again*, probably before they even got to town. Mulder. What a looney toon he was. Good Lord. The Jerry Springer Show? God, Mulder, when did you stoop so low? When did you go and check out a monkey baby? And why the hell didn't I notice that you were gone? Scully figured that it must have happened either when she was missing, in a coma, or when she seemed to be dying of cancer in the hospital. Although she had a hard time believing that Mulder would take off and leave town to check out a *monkey baby* while she was dying. She knew that he wasn't that insensitive. The Jerry Springer Show. Scully groaned just thinking about it as she emptied the left pocket of her coat. She had her flashlight. She had two spare lipsticks -- now that was odd. Usually she just had the one -- the one she always used, the reddish brown one that made her lips look full and lush. It had taken her years to find the exact right shade. Now she seemed to have a second lipstick. She uncapped it and twisted the base. Oh! It was a hideous shade of gray. Now why the hell would she have bought that color? There was only one obvious answer to that question. She hadn't bought it herself. Scully pitched it in the direction of the garbage can in the hotel room. A travel-size pack of Kleenex, unopened, from the days when she would have constant nosebleeds. Scully idly wondered why the tissues had never been in her pockets when she needed them. Oh well. Wouldn't hurt to keep those. On to the right pocket. OK, now this was interesting. Bar napkin. Scully studied it lovingly. She knew exactly where that came from. Bloomington, Indiana. She had never been there before, and would likely never return to the town that she secretly called hell. But she would never forget it. Bloomington, you see, was the place where she had felt like a woman again, where she had felt free to smile and laugh and even dance. And all of it was because of Mulder. So. She could damn him all she wanted to, but when it came down to it, she really really couldn't hate him, she couldn't. She never could, when it came down to it. After all, she loved him, right? There had been a million moments -- moments when he had touched her hand or the small of her back or made a suggestive comment that wasn't just his typical leering or looked at her in a much more serious way. Moments that she held to hard and fast and if she really was feeling low, she would convince herself that those moments existed only because he... Did she dare think it? Hell, she wouldn't ever even admit it aloud. Well, OK. Thinking it was safe. Those were the moments when she was convinced that he really truly loved her too. How pathetically sappy that sounded. Scully sighed as she fingered the napkin. It had been all Mulder's idea. She knew that he had a soft spot for...well, *him*. He had no name, and Scully didn't want to call him an "it," because that was just downright cruel. In her head, she still called him the Great Mutato, even though she felt that she was being a bit cruel herself by using that name. But there was nothing else to call him. Anyhow, Mulder had a soft spot for him. Hell, so did she. It was so sad, his life, his very existence, that it seemed unfair to even dream of making him suffer any more than he already had. Scully thought that everything that she had gone through seemed like a walk in the park compared to what he had gone through. So when he started tapping his foot in the backseat of the rental car, and when Mulder threw a little glance in her direction, she should have known that her partner was up to something, even though at the time she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. And who cared that the singer in the bar was just an impersonator? The Great Mutato sure as hell didn't. And neither did Mulder or Scully when they saw how he reacted when she came out on stage for the first time. His entire body spoke louder than any words could about the joy that was coursing through his veins, how much happiness was flooding his heart. It was impossible for Scully not to smile. To laugh. To feel like all of the chains of what had happened over the last year had been thrown from her back and forgotten in those moments. Mulder had actually reached for her hand on the table behind the Great Mutato's back while the Cher impersonator did her thing, belting out "Walking in Memphis" to a standing-room-only crowd, most of whom had followed Mulder and Scully from Bloomington on the one-hour drive to the bar in the middle of God knew where. He had taken her hand. Now that was real. Much more real than any of the "moments" that she had thought had really happened. Mulder brushing against her wasn't anything compared to him holding her hand. And when the Great Mutato got up and took Cher's hand, Mulder stood up as well, and he looked down at the floor as if he were shy, more shy than any gentleman at a formal dance, asking the girl who stole his heart to dance. He held out his hand to her, silently asking her to join him in a dance, and she was frozen in place, not even knowing what to make of his wordless request. She had to admit that she was stunned, and she was sure that her face reflected the shock that went through her. But somehow she overcame her shock because she realized that more than anything she wanted to dance with him, that she always had. It was just that as FBI agents, they didn't often get the opportunity to dance together. Not to mention that she rarely got a chance to dance at all. Well, unless you counted all that dancing that she got to do when she was out on dates. Yeah, right. A date? Scully wasn't even sure if she knew what a date was anymore. She didn't think that she would ever go out on a date ever again, not because she didn't want to, because God knew that she would love an evening of wine and dinner and dancing, but because she didn't think that she would ever have any time off for the rest of her life. As it was, she never seemed to have any time off anyhow. Her cancer had gone into remission and a mere two weeks later she was running around in Florida through the forest, falling down a hole and chasing some earth-monster, acting (and looking) like she'd never been sick at all. Wait a minute. Dinner. Wine. Dancing. Scully folded the bar napkin carefully and turned the paper square over in her hands as she thought about it. There *had* been fried mozzarella sticks at the bar when they had gotten there. There *had* been a bottle of wine, although it was practically like Kool Aid with a bit of alcohol and a touch of carbonation thrown in just to make it interesting. And dancing. Hmm. So back to Mulder, back to him extending his hand to her. Scully had gotten up out of her chair before she had even realized that she was on her feet and took Mulder's hand. Which was a good thing, because she didn't have a clue what the hell she was going to do or say to him next. "Want to lead?" would have been an option, but she was so tongue-tied as it was that she wasn't sure she could have even spoken her own name let alone anything else at that point. As it turned out, it was OK that she didn't say anything. Mulder kind of half-pulled, half-swept her into his arms. She re-thought that for a second. Yep, there was no denying it. She was actually in his arms. He smiled at her and she grinned back, because she didn't know what to say or what else to do, and she moved with his body and found in a second or two that he was actually a very good dancer. Not that she was all that surprised. There wasn't much that Mulder was bad at. And then the music's tempo slowed and the people that were behind them waving their arms slowed and everything slowed and the smoke lightened up a little and both Mulder and Scully's smiles faded, and they looked at each other very seriously for a split second. It was in that split second that Scully was absolutely, positively certain about one thing. She knew that Mulder loved her. Either that or he had gas. And Scully didn't think it was the latter -- he hadn't had enough of the mozzarella sticks for that. Wow. Just thinking about it again made her heart beat just a little bit faster, and she clutched at the paper napkin tightly, a little too tightly. She quickly realized what she was doing and loosened her hold on it. Then she and Mulder had looked up at the Great Mutato on stage, dancing with Cher, or whoever that woman was, and then... And then Mulder looked at her again, and he dipped her ever-so-slightly, and then he leaned over and kissed her very lightly on the lips. Wait a minute. No, he didn't. He didn't dip her. And he didn't kiss her. That was only in her dreams. Well, hey, she was an imaginative woman. God knew she had tons of time to sit around and think sometimes, with all the plane rides and rental cars. What a shame, though, that he hadn't. Scully thought that she really would have liked to have kissed him, just once, just that one time, just for a second. It would have been nice. Scully heaved a sigh and put the folded napkin back in her coat pocket. She would have to be sure to remember to put that in a safe place when she got home. Didn't want to lose it. As she slipped the napkin into her right coat pocket, she felt something round and hard, and somewhat chalky. Her fingers closed around the object, which felt a little like a hockey puck, and she began to pull it out of her pocket at the same time that she realized what it was. Good Lord, how the hell did *that* get in there? Scully pulled the agricultural chemical from her pocket and looked at the smooth white chunk. Hmm. It certainly posed interesting possibilities. Mulder, his apartment, and some mood lighting... Nah. Scully went to toss the disc into the trash can, but then stopped and thought better of it. She decided to hang on to it. For a rainy day. END *************************************************** "You take me in, no questions asked; you strip away the ugliness that surrounds me... Who are you? Are you an angel?" --Sarah McLachlan