Subj: New: A Reasonable Proposal (1/1) (MSR)
Date: 8/13/99 3:40:38 AM Central Daylight Time
From: shoshana1013@excite.com
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TITLE: A Reasonable Proposal (1/1)
AUTHOR: Shoshana
EMAIL ADDRESS: shoshana1013@excite.com
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere
SPOILER WARNING: Sixth season
RATING: PG
CONTENT STATEMENT: MSR
CLASSIFICATION: VRA
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully romance
SUMMARY: Scully and Mulder return to work after her convalescence.
DISCLAIMER: These characters do not belong to me.
NOTE: Sequel to "A Counter Proposal."
Many thanks to Char, Diadem, and Meggo, my beta readers, who were so
generous with their time and helpful in their comments.
A Reasonable Proposal
By Shoshana
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Monday morning, summer 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's our first day back to work. It's been a momentous time in my life and
my mind can't help but wander as I scroll through all the E-Mail that has
accumulated on my hard drive this past month. My convalescence was spent
completely divorced from our work here. By necessity and by choice.
Aside from the need to heal comfortably at home, or at least in relatively
stressless locations, like the local park or shopping mall; I was faced with
several weeks of radiation treatments and a dose of chemotherapy to boot.
Although Mulder found the concentration and time to wade through his
correspondence, paper and otherwise, I ignored my laptop, opting for lighter
fare. Or sometimes I just would put on the headphones and listen to a book,
especially on days when I just wanted to fade away on my couch. There's
never anything fun about cancer treatment, even when you welcome the
preventive effects it will provide.
So my mind wanders, back to last weekend, lying in a hotel bed, windows
thrown open, sea smell in the air, muted sounds of sunseekers down by the
pool. We went to Virginia Beach at the height of the season, spending the
majority of the time in our hotel room. Can't blame us for that. We had a
taste of each other almost four weeks ago and we'd been reserving ourselves,
holding back, till I was fit for duty once more.
And what a fine obligation for both of us. Taking responsibility for our
mutual gratification has never been so rewarding. Or taxing. Though I must
say I was up to the task by then. Four weeks convalescence will drive you
batty, four weeks without Mulder's caresses were driving me insane.
And when we finally closed the door to our room behind us and began
undressing one another, he was so considerate of me, so cautious, it left me
thoroughly elated, more in love with him than ever before. This man didn't
care one bit about scars or changes in my feminine profile. He only cared
about putting my mind at ease, making me feel desirable, essential to him.
Any niggling fears I may have harbored at all were erased by his soft touch,
his honeyed voice, murmuring to me, reminding me, that I was his once, and
future love. We survived on sex and room service for the next twenty-four
hours, only venturing out when we ran of good excuses for not doing so.
After all, we could spend all day in bed in my apartment next weekend.
Might as well justify our trip, explore the not so extreme possibilities
outside our cozy hideaway.
The moon was full that evening, illuminating the creamy sands of the beach,
casting long shadows around us. There were others out for midnight strolls,
mostly couples, sometimes teenagers, flocking together like a gaggle of
geese. I was so happy to be alive that night, so relieved that my illness
could fall by the wayside; not forgotten, not denied, but banished from
everyday life.
My incision had healed. I wouldn't give it more than a passing thought when
dressing in the morning, not even that if I didn't have the time to
leisurely scrutinize its rosy, puckering scar. I just wanted to go back to
work, to my usual workaday life with Mulder, the one we had been sharing for
years. The bonus was that we were sharing it as lovers now.
I hesitate to call him my boyfriend. I'm thirty-five, not thirteen. Best
friend sounds good to me, but I can't see introducing him to anyone that
way, either. Best lover? No Dana, I don't think so. I'm just going to
stick with 'my guy.' a simple enough term that everyone can comprehend.
We're not thinking of keeping this a secret. He's told Skinner, who could
care less, as long as it doesn't affect our work. If anyone else in the
bureaucracy of the F.B.I. cares that much, we'll deal with it when that day
comes. We've survived much more severe rebukes from the powers that be, and
expect that we will ignored in this respect.
I have to tell the rest of my family. Naturally, Bill will be upset, but I
think he's mellowed some since the birth of Matthew. Being a Dad has given
him a new perspective, a new appreciation of family ties. I've spoken to
him this year with more affection and good will than I ever thought I'd see.
He's even asked how my crazy partner was a couple of times. I forgave him
the epithet and savored the friendly overture his query represented.
"Hey, Scully. You gonna look at that one message all day or is it the key
to unlock all the secrets of the universe?"
Mulder has stepped behind me and is gently massaging my shoulder muscles as
I clutch at the curves of my mouse. Depend on Mulder to make my
dissociative reverie into a joke, pulling me back into the real world. He
doesn't seem too concerned, he's smiling down at me, amusement in his eyes.
"Oh, alright. So I took a little head trip there." I looked up at him
fondly. "I was just back on the beach, just walking along the beach last
Saturday night, stopping for daiquiris at some little dive, dancing with
someone tall, dark and handsome till it was closing time..."
"Agent Scully, how unprofessional of you to mention this during office
hours!" he said, with mock solemnity. "I think we'll have to report you to
the OPR immediately!"
I laugh, grateful for the levity. He leans down, kisses my forehead
lightly, and goes back to his desk to resume whatever he'd been doing
minutes ago. He was probably curious, maybe even a little concerned about
my trancelike state. But he didn't want it to look like he was checking up
on me, hovering around me. He could get away with that when I lying in my
hospital bed, but he knew I'd resent too much attention at work. It was
something he'd found out the hard way, my stony glare silencing him on more
than one occasion in the past.
The phone rings and it's for me. BSU needs a consult on a difficult
autopsy, would I mind? Not at all, I muse. I'm not getting much done in
the office today and our meeting with Skinner isn't till this afternoon. I
remind Mulder that I'll pick him up for lunch at noon and head over to
Quantico, forty miles outside Washington.
Mulder didn't seem too pleased. Maybe to lose my company, maybe because I
didn't elaborate on the case I was consulting on. As always, he has to be
more tolerant of my need to control my own schedule. We're not joined at
the hip and sometimes his presumptuous attitude gets on my nerves.
He'll pencil me in for autopsies or other important laboratory work without
asking me if it's convenient to other pending investigation. He's pretty
dense sometimes, even with constant retraining by me, his long suffering
partner. I can forgive him these lapses in consideration for one reason
only; the penitent look on his face when he realizes how heavy-handed he's
been. Maybe not immediately, maybe not within minutes or hours, but later
in the day. He'll apologize the only way he knows how, softening his voice
and showing concern for the way *I* feel about his transgression.
The Behavioral Science Unit is in an old nuclear bunker sixty feet beneath
the indoor firing range at the FBI Academy. Mulder worked in that section
for three years before persuading the powers that be to open an X-Files
Division.
I was not helping with or observing any autopsies that day. I was to review
a slew of cases, look for forensic similarities that may have been
overlooked by the profilers' trained eyes. I knew a few of the agents,
having taught at Quantico after graduating from the Academy in 1990, and my
brief assignment there in 1994, when the X-Files were shut down.
They all know who Mulder is of course, legendary profiler that he was. And
I wasn't surprised that the agents there that day knew who I was, even
though most had never met me before. What shocked me was that the four men
and one woman in the office that day all either asked me how I was feeling
or told me I was looking well that day.
So this is what a fishbowl feels like. Was it common knowledge at the
F.B.I. that Dana Scully had been in the hospital for yet another cancer
operation? I couldn't fathom how these people knew, but I had a pretty good
guess that Human Resources had let the cat out of the bag.
I tried not to let this revelation affect my work all morning, responding
politely to the profilers' concerns. I couldn't help but ponder that if
Mulder and I ever did reveal our relationship, it would be the hottest topic
around the BSU water cooler.
The consult took a lot longer than I thought it would and I left Quantico at
11:15, thinking I could still make it back to the office in time. I got
stuck in heavy lunch hour traffic and decide to ring Mulder and tell him I
would be late. Naturally, my cell phone was inoperable. I hadn't noticed
that the battery was low and I had been so distracted all day, I hadn't
missed the squealing of the little bastard.
Around 12:30 p.m., I arrived back at our office, tired and hungry, not
prepared for Mulder's anger. He was on the phone when I walked in, probably
asking BSU where the hell I was. He hung up the phone and stood at me from
the other side of the room, more irate than I'd seen him in months.
"Where have you been?! Your cell number doesn't work, they said you left at
11:15. Couldn't you even stop and tell me if you were going to be
delayed?!"
He was genuinely angry, uncharacteristically so, as it's not the first time
I'd been delayed coming back from Quantico. Well, I guess the honeymoon was
over, before any marriage has even taken place.
"Mulder, I can only account by the way you are speaking to me that you have
had a complete and utter lapse of judgment. If you're going to lose it
every time I'm late and you can't get hold of me, we're never going to make
this partnership work. My cell phone is dead, I was stuck in traffic, end
of story."
I was getting pissed off; he was acting irrationally, even for Mulder. I
wanted to be sympathetic, but a half hour late was nothing to get this irate
about.
He collapsed back into his desk chair, seemingly exasperated with much more
than just my tardiness. He combed his hands through his hair, then settled
his forehead on top of them, elbows on the desk.
Without looking up he said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Scully. I guess this
has been a lot harder on me than I've wanted to admit. You've been so
strong through this whole ordeal, all the treatment, all the time off. I
think I've been depending on you a little too much, not worrying about you
because of your optimism. I'm just all out of emotional reserves... I was
just so scared that I'd lost you..."
I stood in shocked silence for about thirty seconds, until I realized he was
trying to disguise sobs, still cradling his head in unsteady hands. Oh
shit. I hadn't seen this coming. We are so tied to each other now,
emotionally, sexually, professionally, there were bound to be some problems
in our relationship. But I didn't expect it our first day back. And I
thought he'd been dealing with this very well. Obviously not.
I crossed the room and took him in my arms, oblivious to the fact that we
were indeed in our office, and anyone could enter at will. I forced him to
look up at me and kissed his tears away, telling him how much I loved him,
that I would never leave him, that he just needed a little more time to
adjust. He finally got it together enough to articulate words.
"Jeez, Scully. I'm so pathetic. I've tried to rely on you too heavily.
And you've had your own burden to bear. All the times that I urged you to
see a counselor in the past, and I've been too stubborn to see one, to talk
to someone about these fears. I should have taken my own advice for once."
He looked up at me with liquid, imploring eyes. I wanted to soothe his
pain; it was always devastatingly unfair of him to take the blame for every
one of our individual or mutual misfortunes.
I hugged him tight to my chest and said, "Well, at least you recognize that
now. Mulder, don't worry. We'll both go. I've been doing the same thing
in a sense. I've relied on you and Mom a lot more than I should. I think I
had an advantage over you, being able to understand this illness from a
medical perspective. But still, I avoided talking to anyone. Then I would
have to discuss a lot of other issues peripheral to just having cancer. And
I wasn't ready to do that."
"What kind of issues?"
"You. Me. The future. Some other things that go along with all that."
"Scully, if you're thinking that I'd leave you for any reason in the
world... I'd marry you in a second if I knew it would make you feel more
secure..."
"I know, I know. I'm just... today everyone at Quantico knew I'd been in
the hospital. It was so odd to be the center of attention, or at least I
felt vulnerable that way."
"Scully, I'm so sorry. They knew at BSU because I ran into one of my old
friends from there last week. Did you think it was a rumor, that your
privacy was invaded?"
"Yeah, that's it... And I could only imagine what was next... I guess I was
a little taken aback by all the attention..."
"Hey, it's good attention. People care about you. Most of all, *I* care
about you. Why don't we just go ahead, why don't we just get married,
Scully? It will put that old rumor mill to rest. They won't have anything
more to speculate about. Well, other than when I'll get reprimanded by
Skinner next... " He grinned up at me mischievously. "We can make this
work. Just marry me, Scully."
His gentle eyes looked up at me as his recovered strength and composure
seemed to flow between us. I needed this man, more than ever now. We
needed stability in our lives, we had *been* stability in each other's lives
for years now.
I was thirty-five years old. I was being proposed to by Mulder, not the
perfect man I had dreamed about as a child or teenybopper. A real man, with
real faults and foibles, not so different than my own. We had torn down a
barrier between ourselves, become lovers, remained close and true friends.
We just needed a little more honesty, with ourselves and each other, and I
knew all would be right with the world.
He watched my face carefully, anxiously anticipating my reply. His
confidence was back, he was grinning now as I considered his proposal. I
knew he would wear down my resistance every day until I capitulated. And we
might as well get it over with, we had other things to concentrate on. Much
more important than our matrimonial status; though that seemed to be the
only question of the day.
"Can we get engaged first?" I looked down at him, eyes beseeching
understanding.
"Of course. God, yes. Any way you want to do it, Scully. I know the last
month hasn't been easy for either of us. And I think we can fix that. I
know my little performance here today didn't scream stability, but you know
how much I love you. You know I was just frantic about you. And I'll find
someone to talk to, to work this out with. I promise."
"Well, then. I have no choice in the matter," I said, wry smile evolving
across my face.
I gave him a lingering kiss, before stepping out of his arms and leaning
back to get a good, solid look at him.
He took my hand in his and crooned softly, "No choice at all."
fin
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From: shoshana1013@excite.com
To: xff@lists.x-philes.com
Subject: New: A Reasonable Proposal (1/1) (MSR)
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Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 01:28:55 PDT
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