Alive and Relatively Young
In all honesty, Scully didn’t think there was enough booze to make up for the movie. Nothing could erase the nightmare of it from her mind. She couldn’t decide which was worse, the laughter ringing around her at her and Mulder’s expense, or the mockery of their lives thrown up on the screen. Like some gross caricatures, the story unfolded in some half-realized mess of bits and pieces of their cases, mixed with the sort of B-movie junk that would have entertained Mulder for hours had it been an Ed Wood movie. But it wasn’t. And as she stared at the screen in front of them, her heart broke for the man beside her, whose entire life’s mission had been reduce to a cruel mockery, a cheap joke made to line the pockets of a man who had only heard a tenth of the story.
And where had Wayne Federman gotten the idea that she remotely thought that Walter Skinner was attractive?
Mulder fled shortly after that revelation, and she had left him to it, too overcome with her own horror to really say anything to him. As the movie ended, she sat in her velvet lined seat, in her glamourous dress, watching the elite of this very fake city file their way out without a spare glance for her. Of course, Dana Scully looked like Tea Leoni to them, not some petite, startled red head, staring in horror at the screen.
At least Skinner, perhaps in his glee, or maybe out of mortification for what was presented, silently handed her one of his FBI credit cards, telling her to find Mulder and cheer him up. Scully took it without a word, too embarrassed to say no.
The buzzing from her purse was what caught her attention. She checked her cell phone inside, a phone call from the Washington desk. She waited till the last attendees had already filled up the red carpeting before returning the call. Somehow she found it sadly ironic that Micah Hoffman would end up dead on this night of all nights. And at the hands of Cardinal O’Fallon. She felt sad then, for the man who pushed limits so far, perhaps out of his curiosity, perhaps out of his perversity, perhaps just because he could. She felt sadder still for the priest who had his faith so shattered because of it. And worse, she felt disgusted that this entire story would be nothing more than a footnote, a laughing joke to those who would watch this ridiculous movie and never truly understand the deeper happenings underneath it all.
The after party glittered and swirled outside of the theater, but Scully ignored the studio bigwigs with their pomp and circumstance and meandered past the common area to the studio sets nearby. She had a feeling she’d find Mulder there, in the one they had visited when last they were there, and sure enough, he sat in the fake cemetery from the film, hunched over himself and a Lazarus Bowl full of popcorn. On a whim she flipped the nearby, industrial fan at him, creating a breeze that caught his morose attention.
“Been looking all over for you,” she called, letting go of the fan and wandering to the plastic grass hill where he sat.
He sighed, sadly, as she settled beside him. “They got it so wrong, Scully.”
She reached across to the bowl in his lap, grabbing a handful of popcorn and munching it thoughtfully. “I got a page from the Washington Bureau. Micah Hoffman was murdered tonight. Murdered in his own home by Cardinal O’Fallon, who then hanged himself. A murder-suicide.”
Mulder’s nod was pensive. “It’s Jesus and Judas, Scully.”
Perhaps, in its own weird way, it was. Certainly, it was just as tragic.
“Wow,” she murmured, staring out across the fake graveyard, with it’s plaster stones and fake atmosphere. “It’s all over now.”
“No,” Mulder replied in vague disgust. “No, it’s just beginning. Hoffman and O’Fallon are these complicated, flawed, beautiful people, and now they’ll be remembered as jokes because of this movie. The character based on O’Fallon is listed in the credits as “Cigarette-Smoking Pontiff”. How silly is that?”
“Pretty silly,” Scully agreed.
“Yeah, what about us? How are we going to be remembered ‘cause of this movie?”
A hapless idiot and an oversexed vixen, caught in a love triangle with their dashingly handsome boss, making out in a coffin? Dear Lord, she hoped that wasn’t how they would be remembered.
“Well, hopefully, the movie will tank,” she offered as her one consolation, with the silent prayer that it do so badly it wouldn’t even make it to video.
Beside her Mulder snorted, staring at the fake headstones beyond them. “What about all the dead people who are forever silent and can’t tell their stories? They’re all going to have to rely on Hollywood to show the future how we lived, and it all becomes oversimplified and trivialized and Cigarette-Smoking Pontificized and becomes as plastic and meaningless as this stupid, plastic Lazarus Bowl.”
In distaste he picked up the cheap, movie giveaway, which looked nothing like the bowl she and Mulder found in Washington the year before. And yet it was a gaudy, fabricated, tacky symbol of what the movie was, of what the story of Micah Hoffman and Cardinal O’Fallon had become. At least those two men were not going to be able to complain about it much.
“I think the dead are beyond caring what people think about them.” Scully at least hoped so, because she didn’t want to waste one more thought on it, not tonight, when they were there, the two of them, in Hollywood, a land of fairy dust and golden dreams built on nothing more than cheap plastic sets and celluloid tape. “Hopefully we can adopt the same attitude.”
She grinned at him, giggling softly as he scowled dourly at the graves beyond. “You do know that there aren’t real dead people out there, right? That this is a movie set?”
“The dead are everywhere, Scully” he mournfully intoned.
“Well, we’re alive,” she offered cheerfully. “And we are relatively young. And Skinner was so tickled by the movie…”
“I bet he was,” Mulder cut in dryly, snorting into his popcorn.
Scully continued. “That he has given us a Bureau credit card to use for the evening.”
She held up one shiny, plastic Visa card, grinning madly as she did. Mulder eyed it half in surprise, half in doubt.
“Come on!” She pulled him by the arm, helping him up. They stumbled down the tiny, fake hill, Scully snickering as they reached the bottom. “Mulder, I have something to confess.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m in love with Associate Producer Skinner.”
He snorted, loudly, joining her in childish giggles, at last letting go of his morose mood.
“Ahh….me too,” he sighed, dumping his plastic bowl of popcorn on the nearest gravestone and taking her hand. He pulled her, laughing past the fake backdrop of a glowing, full moon, out into the cool darkness outside of the back lot.
“What do we do with a company credit card,” Mulder wondered, glancing towards the sights and sounds of after party, where Scully was sure champagne and expensive hor-d'oeuvres flowed like milk and honey.
“We could go back to the hotel and order pizza,” she joked. Mulder looked half tempted. “Or, we could steal one of the fancy limousines out front, take it for a joyride somewhere, get something outrageous to eat?”
“I don’t know about outrageous,” Mulder murmured as Scully took his hand, pulling him along to follow behind her. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” she temporized, unsure what in the world would even be open this time of night in Los Angeles and how exotic it actually would be. “I think, after that train wreck, we deserve at least a bottle of champagne...maybe three.”
“Living the high life, then?” Mulder sounded quietly amused as she spun to grin wildly up at him.
“An FBI credit card and Skinner to answer for it? Let’s do what we haven’t done ever, you and I, Mulder. Let’s live a little, and for once not talk about aliens and conspiracies, or eat dinner out of a drive in or take away box! Let’s just be...Dana and Fox for just one night.”
He didn’t seem opposed to the idea as he pulled her close. “And just what would Dana and Fox do on an evening out?”
She considered, glancing at the nearest limo with it’s bored looking driver sitting beside it, smoking. “I don’t know? Let’s ask him!”
As it turned out, Jorge knew a lot about LA and the finer things to be found there. An hour and a half later, after trips to three of the finest restaurants in the area, a side adventure to a Whole Foods market, and after a quick phone call to a friend of Jorge’s, they found themselves sitting on picnic blanket in front of the famous Griffith Observatory in the hills above Los Angeles. Below them spread a sea of stars, glittering on the ground clear to the Pacific Ocean, above them in the darkness only a few were visible in the glare of the city. Behind them the magnificent, Art Deco jewel that was the observatory sat, glowing in the night. The air was sweet with the scent of eucalyptus, and jazz played out of the speakers of Jorge’s limousine.
“You are right,” Mulder murmured from his corner of the blanket, stretched out from one end to the other, sipping at a plastic glass of champagne. “This is way better than the after party.”
Scully hummed, her head pillowed on his stomach as she lay the other way, munching on caviar and toast and contemplating a spread of tiny sandwiches. “Who says we don’t know how to live it up?”
He laughed at that, a soft rumble under Scully’s head. “Certainly good eats.” He took one of the offered toasts she held up to him, crunching it thoughtfully.
“Who knew Jorge would have the connections?” She glanced over towards their limo driver, who was happily gnoshing himself on some of their fair, smoking and chatting amiably on his cell phone in Spanish. She hummed softly to the Cole Porter floating from behind where Jorge sat, her voice slightly out of tune to that of Billie Holiday as she sang coquettishly about the memories of her lover that they couldn’t take away from her.
This was a memory, Scully mused, that she hoped would never get taken away.
“Well,” Mulder sighed contentedly, trailing fingers through her now messy hair. “We have had food, we’ve had wine, we’ve spent exorbitant amounts of money on our corporate credit card. And we have some pretty fine tunes blaring from a very expensive limo service.”
Scully giggled, humming in acknowledgement.
“So,” he continued, sitting up to glance down at her in the darkness in soft speculation. “Care for a dance?”
Was that her heart in her throat? Scully couldn’t tell as she sat up, allowing Mulder to rise from the blanket with a careful, athletic grace. His tuxedo jacket long gone, he stood in the dim glow of the city beyond, shirtsleeves rolled up, his tie undone, a cocky smile on his face as he held out his hand to her, silently asking her to follow along one more time.
Without hesitation she wrapped her cool fingers around his, as he pulled her up against him, holding one hand as his other rested gently on the curve of her hip under the dress. He could carry a tune no better than she, but he attempted to as he pulled her closer, tucking the crown of her head under his chin. She liked this spot, this niche against his body, where she could feel the warmth of him under his cotton shirt and smell of his aftershave mixed with the scent that was just Mulder, spicy and musky and comforting.
She pressed her cheek to his chest, closing her eyes as she allowed him to sway, not really dancing so much as moving in rhythm to the swing of trumpets and clarinets, and the deep, lulling brassiness of Billie Holiday’s voice. They said nothing as they stood there, keeping time, reveling in a rare, quiet moment with no case, no mysteries, no secrets, just the two of them, together like normal people. Just Dana and Fox.
“Can we do this forever,” she sighed, contented for the first time in so many years, she had forgotten what it was like.
“Sure,” he rumbled beneath her cheek, causing her to pull away to look up at wistful smile. “I can’t say I wouldn’t mind.”
Oh, if only she could believe that statement.
Perhaps he too knew that it was a pretty lie, spun out of too much wine and good food and the romance of standing on top of a mountain overlooking a sea of stars. His gaze swept out to the basin of Los Angeles below, a deep sigh pulling up from the depths of him. “The scenery is so gorgeous.”
Scully glanced over her shoulder, nodding. “That it is.” There was no denying the beauty of Los Angeles at night.
“Course, I was talking about you,” he teased, jerking her closer, till she snorted with laughter.
“Thank you,” she acknowledge, grinning as she gave up all pretense of dancing and simply wrapped his long arms around her slight frame. “You aren’t so bad yourself.”
“Well, I do clean up nicely when I bother,” he replied airily, despite the fact Scully knew he secretly took his appearance very seriously and always had. It was how he had always drawn the attention of every interested female across his path, whether she be a Senate junior staffer or a detective in another precinct. And yet all these years, all that time, none of them had turned his attention from his overriding quest. But none of them had stood by his side in the journey either. Perhaps that was what had made the difference with Scully.
“You’re thinking too much,” he murmured, voice low and gravelly against the shell of her ear. She shivered, her pulse picking up an extra beat in its tempo as she snuggled further into him.
“Can’t help it,” she muttered into the muffle of his shirt.
“I can think of a thing or two to run that train of thought off the tracks.”
She chuckled, pulling away enough to look up at his eyes shining in the dark. As much as she’d like to indulge him in distraction, the question swirling darkly through the warm and contented fuzz persisted. She couldn’t help it as her wonder burst out in the space between them. “Why me?”
He paused in their gentle swaying, a frown creasing contentment on his face. “Huh?”
Not one of Mulder’s more eloquent responses. “Why me, Mulder? All these years, all this time together, all these women across your path. Why me?”
She couldn’t tell if she confused him, overwhelmed him, or both. He simply stared at her, emotions playing in the darkness, unclear to her in the dim light, for once unable to read his thoughts. She didn’t want to listen to the panic and the fear whispering in the back of her brain, the one that asked her repeatedly what this new aspect of her and Mulder’s relationship was. Nothing had been said of love or futures, they had simply tumbled into one anothers orbits at last, that long simmering tension finally snapping between them. But no explanation had been given as to why, at least not on his part.
“Dana.” Her name was soft and raspy as it left him, and she thought it would never cease to make her melt, just a little, hearing it. “Because of everyone across my life, you were the only one who believed me. Really believed, didn’t just nod and smile to placate me, or play me for an angle, or use me for their own ends. Because on a night a long time ago in Oregon, you ran half-naked in my room, trusted me enough to strip down in front of me, and then listened to some crazy story about aliens taking my sister. You could have walked away, and God knows, you probably should have. But you didn’t. Why you? Why the hell not you?”
She had never really considered the “why not”. Tears misted her eyes, though she refused to give in to the impulse to cry all over his shirt. “This is so dangerous, Mulder. If the Bureau were to find out?”
“Well, they find out, wouldn’t be the first time partners were caught fraternizing.” He hardly looked concerned. In fact, he looked vaguely amused by the thought of them being found out. “And besides, wouldn’t surprise any of them.”
“They’ve never needed an excuse to shut you down, Mulder, not in the past, and you would be handing them one with me.”
“Who was the one who threw herself at me all those months ago, in my bedroom no less, defenseless and half-naked from the shower?”
Scully flushed, remembering that night all too well. “Yes, but…”
“But what,” he defended, arms tightening around her. “Scully, just as you said earlier, the dead are beyond caring what anyone else thinks. And frankly, so am I.”
His mouth punctuated his words, meeting hers with tender insistence, attempting to reassure her where his words had not. His effort was successful, she found herself melting beneath it, arms wrapping around his neck as she held on for dear life, forgetting whatever silly worries she had as her head became dizzy with desire.
When he pulled away, he looked more than a little pleased with himself. “Do you care what anyone thinks?”
Her eyes fluttered as she tried to wrap her tongue around a cognizant thought. “Well,” she sighed breathlessly. “After that movie tonight, I suppose I’m beyond caring.”
“Good answer,” he chuckled, leaning in again, this time for a quick press of lips, gentle and promising, before straightening again. “As romantic as this is, I’ve eaten enough fish egg to deplete the population of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, and I couldn’t help but notice that you had a rather large and comfy bed in your room.”
“I do,” she grinned coyly. “And so do you, I might add.”
“Yeah, but yours looks...softer.” He was busy running a hand down the bare back of her dress, long fingers running across her spine as she squirmed, tracing patterns only he knew as his warm palm came to rest at the very base. Scully tried to remember how to breath.
“Care to test it out?” Two could play at his game, and she deliberately pressed herself closer against the growing evidence that this was exactly what he wanted to do with the rest of the evening. She tried not to laugh in wicked delight at the way his Adam’s apple bobbed on reflex or at the quick intake of breath.
“Think Jorge will get us there quickly if we pay him extra?”
“I think Jorge will politely close the window in the middle and ignore us for everything we’ve hooked him up with tonight.”
With a low growl, Mulder pulled away and began gathering food, carelessly placing it back in wrappers and boxes, not heeding particularly what went in what. Scully could only laugh at his haste, ignoring her usual need for order, for once, more focused on the greater need for the man busily wondering what to do with a half-empty bottle of champagne, and looking a tad frantic.
“Cork it, lets go,” she insisted, finding the spongy wooden top amongst the folds of the blanket, allowing Mulder to shove it in as she gathered cartons, bags, and blanket. Laughing and tripping in the darkness across the wide expanse of lawn, they wandered to the car, where Jorge waited, opening the door for them.