TITLE: S. W. & 7 D’s (aka 7 Steps to Apple Pancakes).

AUTHOR: Triton

Email: triton-x@yahoo.com

or visit my little library at: http://geocities.datacellar.net/triton-x/Fanfic

DATE: 2nd February, 2000

SUMMARY: Scully deals with an important aspect of her character, with a little help from a group of height-challenged, trouble making muses.

DISCLAIMER: X-Files, Mulder, Scully and all related characters belong to that amazing person called Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and the Fox Network. I mean no infringement. I am just borrowing the characters briefly to have a play, to see what I can do with them while CC isn’t watching. He can have them back anytime he likes (as long as I can still borrow them every weekend, maybe? Please?).

CATEGORY: ST and MSR themes.

RATING: (Mild R)

SPOILERS: None whatsoever, I do believe! I think.

ARCHIVE: Sure, Fine, Whatever!

NOTE: I thought this one would be the shortest of the series, but alas, it evolved into much much more. For a timid little bugger, this muse sure has a lot to say!!!

This is Part Six of an expected Seven Part fanfic. Scully POV.

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This time when she awoke, it wasn’t slow or luxurious.

Scully woke quickly and knew exactly where she was and who belonged to the body curled up beside her. This time, a vivid recollection of the events which had occurred during the previous evening were replayed in glorious technicolour through her conscious mind.

With a startled gasp, she rolled out from the bed-covers and, not looking back, tiptoed hastily from the room.

Staring at her disheveled image in the bathroom mirror, she scrutinised the abrasions on her cheek and forehead, grimacing at her reflection as unwanted snippets and images flashed through her mind, a semblance to one of Mulder’s slide shows. This time she did let her head bounce off the mirror a couple of times.

"Damn, damn, damn!" she whispered with irritation.

She stomped into the kitchen, prepared to take revenge on any inanimate object which deemed to challenge her, but found the kitchen spotless and tidy. To her chagrin, the coffee machine was also filled with freshly ground coffee beans, waiting for a click-start.

"Oh, Mulder!" she sighed. She had no right to be angry with him; nothing he had done deserved her wrath. If anything, he had done it all right.

Sitting heavily into one of the kitchen chairs, she rested her elbows on the table and cupped her face into her opened palms. She wished she could cry, but as that wasn’t the emotion she was experiencing, it didn’t feel right. She wasn’t sad or angry, although maybe she was just a bit ashamed of herself.

Scully heard movement from the bedroom and the realisation that she would have to face him shortly induced a moment of dread, as she had no choice but to hurt him yet again with her hard indifferent words. She knew this was the right direction to take, but she also wished there were an easier way.

"Oh, Mulder," she whispered dispiritedly, "how do I convince you that we will be Ok? How do I tell you, that for all my rantings and ravings, I do love you for the concern, the pampering and the faith. How can I share these simple truths about myself without you interpreting the meaning incorrectly. I think a humble ‘I Love You’ would not be a simple statement to you in any sense. You would want to change our current relationship, spoil our precarious balance, demean my intentions someway, or read more into it that was expected. How do I tell you these things?"

"Easy, Scully. Just say the words exactly the way you mumbled them to me just then!" Mulder quipped as he appeared beside her, hair rumpled and clothes wrinkled.

"Mulder!" she glared up at him, "you were not supposed to hear me say that - that was a private conversation I was having with myself!"

Mulder chuckled, leaning over the bench to start the coffee machine. "Good morning to you too, Scully. I am not going to ask how you are feeling, as I know you will respond with an ‘I’m fine, Mulder’!" His voice was deep and smooth, a shade of intimacy tingeing its flow.

"You have to disregard my last statement, Mulder!" she admonished, curling her hands into tight fists.

"Sorry, Scully, I don’t want to disregard anything you have said. Hearing these words of endearment will stay painted in my memory forever. Since the act of throwing you screaming and flailing to the floor demanding a repeat is possibly the only way I’ll ever hear you repeat them, and knowing that is NOT an option, I’ll have to resign myself to knowing that you’ll never say those words to me again."

Scully paused, analysing his vocal expression, surprised that she detected no teasing undertones to his words.

"You want me to say ‘I Love You’? Why?"

"Well, Scully, you had no problems confessing your love of my nose and other parts of my body......." and then he paused mid-musing, and she watched him watching her as the heat of a blush spread across her face.

"You are embarrassed?" he asked incredulously.

"Go home, Mulder!" she snapped, feeling the blush spread across her shoulders.

"Seriously - you are embarrassed because... what... I saw an inkling of your feelings for me, or because you actually enjoyed being pampered......well?"

She could hear the amusement in his voice now and this flustered her more, so she stiffened.

"Embarrassed is not the word, Mulder, that I would use to describe my current situation. I am so sorry and I wish I could erase the previous evening, my behaviour was unacceptable!"

"Unacceptable to whom, Scully?" he murmured softly.

Scully watched his eyes change, a sadness darkening them to an unreadable depth. He appeared to wilt, sliding into the chair opposite her. She bristled, trying to draw strength from within to continue the conversation without faltering.

"I had already told you that I was fine, yet you continued to pamper me. I don’t need pampering, I need support and strength and understanding."

"So, Scully, you believe pampering equals a display of weakness? You can’t even try to understand that my need to make you happy for even one brief moment could be construed as a positive expression of our combined strength?"

Scully bowed her head and whispered "No."

There was a strained silence; she could hear his controlled breathing rhythmically breaking the stillness.

"You ARE weak, Scully."

She looked up at him, torn. "I am not!" she gasped, incredulous.

"Not in relation to your convictions and your beliefs, Scully. In that sense you are still the strongest person I know. But in relation to your trust, you are weak. Do you trust me?" He reached his hand across the wooden expanse separating them. She ignored the gesture.

"Stupid question, Mulder."

"Scully, do you trust me?" he queried again, the insistency colouring his words.

"Yes, Mulder, with my life."

"But do you trust me with your secrets? Do you trust me with your innermost thoughts? No, you don’t, Scully, and that is your weakness."

"Mulder, stop being so damned cryptic. I’m not interested in playing word games..."

"You don’t believe enough in yourself to expose those thoughts to me. That is also a weakness, but I don’t think anything less of you because of this."

"But Mulder, exposing my innermost self to you makes me vulnerable, like being stripped naked - like what happened last night. I already know that the next time I am aggressively debating the scientific principles of some outlandish theory of yours, I will be wondering, in the back of my mind, whether you are reflecting back on my performance last night. My thoughts will be centred around the concept that you are visualising my breasts bouncing ‘unfettered’ in front to your face and I will have my doubts that you are taking me seriously!" Her voice was tightly controlled, but within her body, outrage vibrated through every cell, every pore.

"I will ALWAYS take you seriously." Mulder rose from the seat, his voice gravelly and coarse. "Why can’t you understand this? I’ve worked beside you for many years and I have a lot of images of you in my mind - I’ve seen you scared, I’ve seen you cry, I’ve seen you so hurt that my heart breaks for you. You may have tried to pull up the drawbridge after each of these episodes, but I remember every single one of them, Scully. I’ve also seen you naked before and that has never changed the way I have treated you in the past."

"But this is different Mulder...."

"No, this IS NOT different, Scully, why can’t you trust me on this.......All I wanted was to pamper you a little bit, to return to you the pleasure that you have given to me in similar situations, and....oh, don’t worry anymore, Scully, I promise I’ll never weaken you with kindness ever again!" And he grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the apartment.

Scully was not one to chase after a man in relation to matters of the heart. She remained seated at the table, listening sadly to the quietness now surrounding her, pondering the reasons why she wasn’t enjoying her usual penchant for solitude. Running her fingertips in small circles over the surface of the kitchen table, she thought about her loneliness. Lifting a hand to wipe away an errant tear, the delicate aroma of lavender and mango caused her heart to constrict and she wondered how long it took for a heart to dry up if exposed continually to a loveless life. The kitchen in front of her swam out of focus, the memory of adoration glowing from Mulder’s eyes flaunting its image in its place.

With a sigh, she stood quietly and wandered over to the window above the desk, reaching out the fingers of her left hand to part the blinds. Peering through the gap, she watched Mulder stalk angrily across the road to his car in the dim light.

She watched as he fumbled through all the pockets in the jacket, in his haste he had become clumsy. When he finally discovered the location of his keys, he paused, ears pricked as if he was trying to hear a distant sound. He then reached back into the depths of the jacket and she watched intrigued as he produced a cellphone from within its folds and stabbed at the answer button.

"Mulder," he grunted into her ear.

She smiled to herself. "Mulder," she whispered softly.

"Scully?" he whispered back, turning his head to look up at her through the window, squinting into the pre-dawn semi-darkness.

She rested her palm against the cool glass, her warm forehead following, letting him see her.

"Mulder, come back."

His disembodied sigh echoed heavily through the phone at her ear. "Scully, I don’t want to play games either. If I come back, it means that you have accepted my conditions, my proposal, that I can, and will, pamper you at my discretion. Whenever I deem it necessary."

Still focusing on the dark orbs that represented his eyes, Scully nodded her approval to him across the distance, her fingertips absently caressing the glass where they touched.

His tentative smile travelled along the bond that stretched tightly between them and eased her jittering pulse. She did trust him.

END.