From: P. Lacuesta (lacuesta@mnl.sequel.net) Subject: NEW: "Front Porch" Title: "Front Porch" Author: P. Lacuesta Classification: S Rating: G Spoilers: "Pilot" Keywords: Slightly alternate-universe. Summary: What if Scully and Mulder have met before -- a long, long time ago -- and they just don't remember? DISCLAIMER: Here I am again with new fanfic (my second piece so far) with characters that aren't mine. Instead, they belong to Chris Carter, "The X-Files"' executive producer, 20th-Century Fox Television, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and whoever happens to own them that I didn't incude here. No negative intent in using these characters - I just want to have fun with `em. Heck, I'm not so sure they're not enjoying themselves in this, either. I'm not making any money off this, so that means I'm still relatively broke, so that means I don't want anybody to sue me or anything. Long Live Free Speech!!! Anyone with comments, suggestions, or marriage proposals (don't worry, I can't legally accept them until the year 2002 anyway) can e-mail me at lacuesta@mnl.sequel.net. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!!! Everybody here at home is getting lots of juicy e-mail but me (and, well, my mom). I appreciate all sorts of helpful comments, suggestions, and criticism, but no rude messages please! Thanks again to Windows '95, Windows Word Version 7.0, to our computer which has been on for the entire day, to my dad up there for everything, to my brothers who taught me how to use Word and the computer itself, my mom for paying for all of this, Natasha at the Gossamer Archives for posting this for me and for putting up with my pathetic e-mailing attempts, all of you "X-Files" fanfic-writers in the Net who have inspired me, and especially to God and to everybody else up there, thanks a whole lot you amazing bunch of guys!!!! You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate Him, you know. Once again, I am begging you to e-mail me!!!!! Okay, I think that's the last of that, so let's roll!!!.... x x x FRONT PORCH by P. Lacuesta June 5, 1973 Martha's Vineyard Chilmark, Massachusetts 4:15 pm She had never been short of either spirit or courage in her whole short life, but just this one time, as she looked at that perfectly innocent-looking white door on that perfectly innocent-looking front porch, Dana Katherine O'Brien Scully couldn't help feeling a tiny twinge of trepidation deep down inside. Still. She'd rather die than be humiliated in front of these idiot bullies. Oh, normally she wouldn't care about them. With her experience and all the things her brothers had taught her over the years, she could beat up a bully and make him cry "uncle" in a matter of seconds, big and beefy as he might be. But he wasn't alone -- six other boys were grouped around him, and even Dana thought she wouldn't be able to beat these odds. "Well, go on!" shouted the lead bully, grinning. The others sniggered. "Chicken?" "I'll show you!" Her reedy little nine-year-old voice was made a little stronger with all the spirit she could muster. "You all think I'm chicken -- but I'll show you! You're the only chickens around here!" And with that, she lifted her small chin proudly, clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking, marched straight up to that innocent-looking white door and pressed the doorbell button. The intrusive *bzzzzzzzzt* filled the house. Fox William Mulder glanced up in annoyance, letting the basketball bounce away. He shook his head and ran after it, pretending not to have heard the doorbell. Unfortunately, his mother and little sister both had. As Mrs. Mulder came out of the kitchen, enveloped in an apron and looking harried, Samantha Anne bounced up from the living room couch where she had been reading a new book. "Foss!" Thanks to her eight-year-old lisp, she couldn't yet pronounce his name properly -- a name he already detested. It was so absurd, so weird, so unusual. Why not give him a real name, Fox grumbled to himself as he dribbled and passed the ball to an imaginary teammate, like Peter or Matthew or Alex? "Fox" was just too silly. And everybody in the neighborhood sure seemed to have no problem pointing that out every time they met. "Foss!" Samantha yelled again in her thin, shrill voice. "Someone's at the door!" "Fox, I'm busy in the kitchen," added his mother with an exasperated look, "could you get the door, please?" "Call me Mulder, Mom," Fox said tersely. As Mrs. Mulder shook her head, vanished back into the steam-filled kitchen, he bounced the ball angrily against the drive- way cement. Why did he have to open it? he thought grumpily. He was playing such a great game..... While Samantha watched him with big gray eyes full of little- sisterly admiration, he went to the door and, lifting the window curtain, saw a girl with fiery red hair tied back in a long ponytail standing on the porch. She wasn't facing him; she was looking off to the left, hands on her waist, rubber shoes planted defiantly apart as she stood with her back to him. A loud, angry voice, muffled through the door. Frowning, Fox looked further up the road, in the direction where the kid was looking. He should've known. The bullies were at it again. Well, those pesky ten-year-old knowitalls were nuthin' against tall, stone- faced, almost-twelve-year-old Fox Mulder. Tossing a "You expecting any friends, Sam?" over his shoulder at his sister, he yanked open the door. He ignored the girl's startled glance up at him and stepped out onto the porch. Getting ready for battle. The bullies were looking mighty scared all of a sudden. They knew just how frightening the Mulder kid could be when in one of his moods -- they had tangled with him on more than one occasion, much to their regret -- and suddenly they decided they could push the new kid around some other day. They began edging backward. Fox never noticed. The moment he had stepped onto the porch, he stopped dead. The loud, angry, muffled voice he'd heard -- he'd thought it belonged to the bullies. In fact, it apparently belonged to the kid standing behind him. She had some spunk, for someone who was Samantha's friend. Oh, well. He could think about that later; right now, he had more pressing matters to attend to. "Hey, you! What do you think you're doing?" he yelled, starting across the street. The lead bully stepped back nervously. "Nuthin'," he mumbled. "Well then back off! Go away! Go play somewhere else!" The boys took a last, guilty look and bolted. Fox turned back, satisfied, to find himself up against a furious red-haired girl who barely came up to his chest. "I could've handled them fine," she said petulantly, thin arms across her chest, "all by myself." He rolled his eyes. "Are you a friend of Samantha's?" "No." He blinked. "Selling Girl Scout cookies?" She looked up at him, unaffected by his rather hostile tones, with large eyes blue as the sky. "No." "Then why'd you ring the bell?" he demanded in exasperation. For some strange, inexplicable reason he wanted to scare her. To see her back down before him, acknowledge that he was older, bigger, smarter than her. To see her break that calm, fearless, infuriating facade. She did none of that. Instead she met his keen-eyed gaze head on, never blinking, never faltering. "They dared me to." Her young voice was clear and even and it never wavered for an in- stant. "I'm not a chicken. I showed `em." She shrugged, broke his gaze to stare off into the distace and started off, moving around him and down the street. "Sorry if I bothered you." He watched her wordlessly as she began to walk away. He hated to say it, but he admired her. She hadn't wimped out on him or the bullies; she'd stood it out, faced all of them down, calm, defiant, fearless. Although he could see now that she hadn't come away entirely unscathed. "You're hurt," he said suddenly. She stopped, almost in surprise, and glanced down at the cut on her knee, oozing dark blood. "Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about that." She shrugged. "I'll live," she said carelessly, and resumed walk- ing. "Wait!" he blurted out, speaking before he thought. She stopped again, looked back at him, squinting into the summer afternoon sun behind him. "There are Band-Aids in the house," he said. Dana returned from the Mulders' bathroom, her face washed, wound cleaned and bandaged, to find the older boy who'd earlier yelled at the bullies setting a glass of juice and a sandwich on the dinner table. He looked up as she walked in. For a moment she simply stood still, taking in the scene before her. "Thanks," she said finally, shyly. "Um... for the food and the Band-Aid and everything." He shrugged, stepping back and watching her with soft green eyes. "I'm Fox Mulder," he said awkwardly after a moment, "but call me Mulder." She looked up at him curiously. "Don't you like your name?" "I like Mulder better," he answered simply. She shrugged, picked up the sandwich, and took a bite. "I'm Dana Scully," she said with her mouth full, "but call me Dana." She swallowed the bite and offered him a nine-year-old's bright, toothy smile. Without thinking, he smiled back. It was a small, shy, reluctant smile, but it was enough to make her eyes that brilliant blue color again. She took another bite of the sandwich. "Tuna," she said appreciative- ly, still chewing. Her words were garbled through the mouthful of sandwich. "My favorite. Thanks." At that moment, Samantha came bouncing in, long dark braids flapping behind her. "Foss, can I ask you something?" she chirped, then stopped dead on sight of Dana sitting and eating the sandwich. Her eyes widened a little, and she shrank back shyly. "Oh." "Hi," Dana said, smiling. "You must be Mulder's sister. I'm Dana." "I'm Samantha," she said shyly. "Nice to meet you, Samantha." "What is it, Sam?" Fox said abruptly. "What did you want to ask me about?" Her gray eyes flickered back to him, as if she'd forgotten his presence. "Oh. Um. I forgot." She shrugged. "Well, see you later, Dana." "Sorry if she bothered you," Fox muttered to Dana as Samantha disappeared from the room. Dana grinned. "It's okay. I didn't mind. I have a little brother myself. His name is Charlie." "You're new in the neighborhood, aren't you?" Fox asked curiously, sitting down at the table. "I mean, I've never seen you before around here." Dana nodded. "My dad's a Navy seaman," she said proudly. "'Cause of his job, my family and I move around a lot. When he got assigned here a month ago, we rented a house a couple blocks from here. We moved in just yes- terday." She paused. "I haven't thanked you yet for making those boys go away." "It's okay." He shifted awkwardly in his seat. "I don't think you needed much help, anyway." "With them?" He nodded. "You're the only one I know who fought back when they picked on you. Everybody else I know just cries or runs away." She shrugged dismissively, but there was a telltale pink in her cheeks, making her freckles just seem that much more obvious. "My dad always told me never to back down. Always to meet problems head on, solve `em before they get worse. Besides, my brothers taught me a lot so I can lick just about anybody in a minute." She hesitated shyly. "But I don't think I could've handled all seven of them. So, like I said -- thanks." "Like I said." He grinned at her -- a real, broad, friendly grin this time. "It's okay." It was strange. Fox never ever was very good in dealing with people younger than him -- little-sister loyalty aside, Samantha could attest to that -- but for some reason he had no problem talking with Dana Katherine Scully. He'd always disliked younger people -- perhaps an inborn prejudice of some kind, a carryover from being an older brother to someone, being responsible for her; he hated how they were so cutesy and shrill-voiced and bratty. But now Dana was kind of like an equal -- somebody just as smart, just as brave, just as "mature" as he was; somebody he could relate to, who could talk to him like any other twelve- year-old, talk to him about the same stuff he liked: sports, books, school. Maybe even someone who could deck anybody any day like him, if she cared to. That first meeting ended a little too soon for Fox's liking. As they fell to chatting together, Mrs. Mulder walked in, said hi and welcome to Mas- sachusetts and wouldn't you like to have dinner with us? And then Dana was saying sorry, maybe some other time and how she ought to be home before it got too dark outside. And suddenly, to his own astonishment, Fox found himself volunteering to accompany her home. His mother had been proud of her "little gentleman." The two of them walked the entire way to Dana's new house in a silence broken only occasionally by her asking him a question about life in Chil- mark and his answer, or by his asking about all the places she had been to so far, and her answer. But most of the fifteen-minute walk they shared a comfortable, companionable, friendly silence, backgrounded by the chirping of crickets. When Dana finally arrived home and said goodbye and thanks to him, he walked home again alone, wondering about the strange, spunky Dana Scully, hoping they would talk again the next day, and feeling a curious rush of mingled emotions tumble about inside him. The Scullys' stay in Chilmark turned out to be disappointingly short-lived. Around one and a half months after that eventful meeting on the front porch of Martha's Vineyard, Fox visited the Scullys one sunny afternoon -- only one of the daily trips of theirs between the two houses -- and was told by Dana, not without a sad, ominous tone and expression, that William Scully had been reassigned again and that the Scullys were moving to somewhere in California in three weeks. Fox accepted the news calmly, seemed relieved that it would still be some time before Dana moved out of his life, as far as he could see, forever. He even offered to help them move their things out. They sat at the table in the kitchen eating sandwiches and drinking iced tea, and they sat and talked about lots of different, harmless things, like video games and basketball. Irrelevant things. When Fox left and went home, he declined his mother's call to dinner, saying he had already eaten, and that he wasn't very hungry. Then he went up and locked himself in his room, ignoring Samantha's pleas to be let in. He spent the late summer evening lying on his bed in the semidarkness, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about all sorts of stuff, until he drifted slowly off to a fitful sleep. x x x March 6, 1992 J. Edgar Hoover Building FBI Headquarters, X-Files Division Washington, D.C. 4:15 pm She had almost never been short of either spirit or courage in her whole life, but just this time, as she looked at that perfectly innocent-look- ing door with that perfectly innocent-looking nameplate, FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine O'Brien Scully, M.D., couldn't help feeling a tiny twinge of trepidation, deep down inside. The man she was moments away from meeting would be her partner -- her first real work partner since joining the FBI a little over two years ago. She hoped -- for his own sake, if anything else -- that he would be decent, hardworking, respectful, relatively easy to work with, and not a chauvinistic pig like some of the people she had had the misfortune to work with before. And that he would be smart. Not necessarily with an IQ of five hundred, but hey, she hadn't busted her butt all these years to become a famously skilled forensic pathologist, medical doctor and pretty damn good FBI agent just to be assigned to some doofus. Although, if all the rumors and stories she had heard were true, "Spooky" Mulder wasn't an idiot at all. Not a single bit. In his personal file, too, she had learned that he was an Oxford psychology graduate, but still.... Well, she'd like to see for herself. She couldn't help thinking, though, that the name Fox William Mulder seemed oddly familiar. She raised her fist, hesitated, and then knocked on the door. "Sorry!" a dry voice answered. "Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted." She felt suddenly cold. Where the hell had she heard that voice before???? Shrugging, taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open to find a lanky, long-legged man holding a file folder sitting back in his chair amidst an unbelievable mess of files, folders, news- papers, and papers. A bulletin board on the wall was crammed with tacked-on photos, news articles, letters, notes, and memos. Fox William Mulder's glasses, perched on a rather generously sized, straight nose, glinted in the light from his desk lamp as he looked up at her lazily, his eyes a soft green with hazel flecks. Dark hair tousled after the day's work fell into his face. Shit. The man was bleeping beautiful. But.... just where had she seen that face before???