Title: New Year's Eve
Author: Maria Nicole
E-mail: marianicole29@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Distribution: Anywhere this goes automatically is fine. Anywhere else,
please let me know where it's going. Thanks :)
Category: SR
Spoilers: Ghosts Who Stole Christmas, Triangle, Christmas Carol/Emily
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Summary: Mulder and Scully discuss their New Year's resolutions.
Disclaimer: They're not mine. They belong to Fox and 1013.
Author's notes: Um, yes, this *is* a little late for a Christmas story
(What can I say; it's been sitting on a disk since January. Oops.)
If you can stretch your mind back to your state of mind after seeing
Ghosts Who Stole Christmas, that would be great. Feedback would be
greatly appreciated.
Thanks to L.B., who kept reminding me.
New Year's Eve
Scully didn't sprawl, but she was close to that now. Her head was
leaned back against the back of her sofa, eyes closed and her throat
white against the red of her rumpled hair. One hand was holding the
wine glass, almost empty; the other was lying carelessly beside her.
It was rare that she was this relaxed.
She was beautiful in this dim light. Different from the Scully of
the office, who was steel and strength and, sometimes, the
fragility of glass. This Scully was soft, and warm, and in an odd
way sturdy. If he touched her, she wouldn't shatter and break.
"I think we're getting old," he told her, and saw the corners of
her mouth turn up.
"Frohike's older and he was still going strong," she said without
opening her eyes.
"Great...I can't even keep up with Frohike."
"As long as you stay awake 'till midnight."
He reached for the coffee table and the bottle of wine to refill
his glass. "Want more?"
"Hmm...no. Not right now. What time is it?"
"11:00."
"Hmm."
"You going to stay awake until midnight?"
"Yeah."
He drank his wine and watched her. She was close to sleep, he
thought, and realized with a small shock that he had very rarely
seen her fall asleep. Scully asleep already was a familiar sight--
Scully curled into a chair by his hospital bed, Scully in a hospital
bed herself, Scully scrunched up against an airline pillow when
he woke up from a nap on another long flight. Scully waking up he
knew as well, the way her eyelids fluttered and then opened, and
the haziness of her eyes returning to their customary clarity.
But Scully-falling-asleep, guards dropping, this he
didn't yet know. She doesn't fall asleep if I'm there, he
thought, until I'm already asleep myself. Even with him, cautious.
Tonight, this revelation gave him no pain, no frustration. This
was just how Scully was.
She'd taken off the sweater she'd worn to the party, and the tank
top she wore underneath left her arms bare. It had ridden up a little,
leaving a thin strip of skin above her black jeans. He propped his
elbow on the back of the couch and leaned his head against his arm,
angling his body towards hers, watching the steady rise and fall of
her chest. When he looked up, her eyes were turned towards him, maybe
amused, awake enough although still languid. Except for turning her
head in his direction, she hadn't moved.
He considered making some comment to explain that he hadn't been
leering at her breasts, just watching her breathe, but she had
probably read as much from his expression. They were in sync tonight,
fallen into the communion of long time friends. Earlier, they hadn't
even needed to discuss it. Around 10, he had looked up from a
conversation about government testing that he had been holding with
two anonymous anarchists and a respected microbiologist to see her
across the room. She'd looked back at him and raised her eyebrow
a little, and he had found himself saying his goodbyes.
Frohike had been perhaps crushed when they had gone over to say
goodnight, as Mulder knew he had hoped to steal a midnight kiss
from Scully when he'd invited her to their annual party. Langley
had said, "You should have told him you were gonna leave early,
man, given him some warning."
"I didn't know," Mulder had said, which had been truth. As far as he
had thought, he would spend New Year's Eve having debates on
crop circles with various and sundry paranoids, emphatically not
kissing Scully at midnight because you never knew who might be a
spy assigned to infiltrate the group. But it had felt right, leaving
with Scully. He'd stopped at a liquor store on the way, and she'd
gotten out of her car--they'd driven separately, of course--and looked
across the hood of her car at him.
"Don't tell me you stopped because you just thought of a wild ghost
chase to go on?" she'd said, although not as if she'd be averse to
any investigation of the paranormal that he might propose.
"No, I'm going in there," he'd called back.
"Does it lead to an alternate universe or something?" she'd
teased, face framed by her hair which was being lifted up by the
wind and long, dangly, gold earrings.
"Wine, Scully."
They'd gone back to her apartment and had been sitting on her
couch ever since, talking sporadically, long silences in
between.
"You looked like you were going to fall asleep for a moment
there," he said to her now.
"I haven't missed a New Year since I was eight and old
enough to stay up. I'm not going to miss one now."
"How'd you celebrate it, when you were a kid?" he asked
curiously.
"Oh, we'd spend the day making New Year's resolutions. Twelve of
them, one for each month."
"That's a lot to work on for one year."
"We were an ambitious family."
"Did you make them this year?"
"Yes. What about you?"
"Um...I don't remember celebrating New Year's. When we were young,
maybe. After Samantha, our family celebrations were pretty...
sedate."
"What about resolutions?"
He thought about it. "I don't know, this year. It was always to
find Samantha, but...last year I didn't make any." Except for revenge
for what they had done to Scully, and Emily, but he didn't say that.
It had been less a New Year's resolution than a hatred forged in him
by last year's January, anyway. "This year...get the X-Files back, I
suppose."
She smiled at him. "That's it?"
"That isn't enough?"
"Anything else you want to work on?"
He wondered, looking at her, if he could explain that his own personal
version of New Year's resolutions had come to him several months back,
in the space of a dream in Bermuda. To settle things between him
and Scully, to show her how much he valued her, to let her know how
eternally grateful he was that she was there, not the fresh-faced
woman
on the boat who had been a reminder of the young Scully who had once
challenged him in an Oregon graveyard, but the quieter, more intense,
sadder, smarter woman that she was now. "Finding proof of
extraterrestrial existence?" he said instead, lightly.
"I should've guessed."
"So what'd you resolve to do, hmm?"
She studied him for a moment, seriously, and when she moved off the
sofa it surprised him. But she only walked over to her desk before
returning with a sheet of paper in hand. She handed it to him,
and he put his glass on the coffee table and looked at the sheet
of paper.
Scully's handwriting, neat and precise, the lines straight even on
unruled paper. He looked from the heading, a simple "1999," and back
to her for a moment, sitting back on the sofa, but contained instead
of relaxed. He hadn't expected this, but he read the first neat number
anyway.
1. To find a safe way to remove the implant without going out of
remission.
He met her eyes, without speaking. "It was never meant to be a
lifelong measure, Mulder," she said quietly. "It bought me time. But
I don't want to end up on another bridge this year."
"No, I know that." He coughed. "So we make that first priority this
year, huh?"
"I'd like to try to contact other MUFON women. Study any implants
we can find. This doesn't mean I want you to run off and try to
find me the answer, by the way. No ditches or deals on this one."
"Okay."
"I mean that."
"I wouldn't..." She simply looked at him, and he wavered. "Well, I
won't." Her gaze was even and level; he returned his own to the
paper.
2. To get back the X-Files.
He smiled a little. Goofily, maybe, although he'd never
admit it.
3. To work out at least three times a week.
4. To talk to my mother on the phone at least once a week and meet her
for lunch at least once a month, regardless of work schedules.
5. To use vacation time for actual vacations instead of for running
off after Mulder or as extra sick days.
"So where you gonna go on this vacation?"
"I don't know. But it is going to be a vacation, Mulder. And I'm going
to be really pissed off if I have to use up all my vacation days
going down to Bermuda again."
"Bermuda's a nice place."
"Not if you're performing CPR. You might want to make that your New
Year's resolution, you know. No ditching me."
"I don't ditch you. I just...don't always inform you where I'm going
to be."
"Exactly how would you define ditching me, Mulder?"
"Uh...going somewhere where you've already told me not to go by
myself?"
"Oh, I see. Like off a bridge onto a train. That clears that up."
"I only did that the once."
She smacked the back of his head, lightly. "Once was enough."
She had the powers of right on her side, so he went back to her
resolutions with a muttered, "Yes *ma'am.*"
6. Get my shooting range scores back up to where they were before
the cancer.
7. Bake bread more often.
"Bake *bread*? I didn't even know you did that at all."
She frowned slightly. "I don't. My mother said that it's very
therapeutic." He raised both eyebrows. "Relaxing. I thought I'd give
it a try." She herself sounded unconvinced.
"Annie Oakley tries baking?"
"Just because I carry a gun doesn't mean I can't cook, Mulder.
Unlike you, I have things besides mold in my fridge."
"That's not mold; it's a highly evolved scientific experiment."
"It's evolved, all right."
8. Mulder
He studied his own name for a moment, feeling an odd shock, as if
someone had called out his name on the street when he wasn't
expecting it. "So...what does number eight mean?"
He couldn't read the expression on her face. "I'm not sure yet."
"What?"
He watched her study her own hands, saw her struggle to find words
several times before she finally spoke. "We've been partners for five
years. We're not the same people we were back then. And we don't...
remember Christmas Eve?"
He nodded. "I'm not likely to forget."
"Whatever happened...ghosts or my subconscious...it made me realize
that we..." she faltered.
"Made you realize what?" He held his breath. That he loved her? That
she loved him? That she would be better off without him?
"Made me rethink things, maybe. The...ghost...I saw" (she crossed her
arms, physically resisting the possibility even as her voice allowed
it) "or whatever it was, accused me of being co-dependant." She
sounded irked, possibly because of the accusation, more likely
because she was admitting to believing in ghosts.
He reached out and touched her shoulder, lightly. "If it makes
you feel better, my ghost told me that most people would rather put
their fingers in a wall socket than talk to me. Much worse than being
co-dependant."
He thought that she might have smiled, although her hair
obscured her downturned face. "I don't think we're
co-dependant, actually. But I do think that our relationship...that we
have certain patterns of behavior, of dealing with each other, that
aren't always healthy."
He dropped his hand back to his side. "Meaning what?"
She turned her face back to his. "You're the best friend I have, one
of the only friends I have, and yet we rarely really talk. Or argue."
"I think we argue plenty. When was the last time we agreed about
aliens?"
"About the work. About the paranormal. Not about the things that
really bother us. Those we just...allude to, hint at. Ignore, even
though they come between us."
"I've tried to talk about..." he started defensively.
"Yes, you have," she interrupted sharply, and then sighed and
continued in a softer voice. "You have. I'm not saying this is your
fault. But we've never talked about Ed Jerse...and don't tell me you
weren't pissed off about that, you made these snide comments for
days afterwards, but you didn't really say what bothered you. And I
never told you how incredibly much you pissed me off when you went
and got that *hole* drilled in your head, which by the way was
possibly the *most* stupid thing you've ever done."
"So what are you saying, we should yell at each other more often?"
"Maybe, yes. And...talk. All I'm saying is, we're not always honest
with each other. My resolution is...to try to be more so."
Even though he fully agreed with her, even though he had come to
much the same resolution in Bermuda, his defense mechanisms kept
him quiet and sullen, seeing this as an accusation, another proof
that he was not good at relationships.
He felt more than saw her take a deep breath beside him. "I would like
to be able to talk to you about Emily."
The anger washed out of him with his breath. "Scully..." and he found
himself unable to continue.
She drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them, but her voice was
still steady when she continued. "I never talk about her, Mulder. Not
with my mother, not with you. When I lost my father...I can talk about
that with my mother, we can share good memories and that makes it at
least a little better, but I have no good memories of Emily."
He scooted next to her, put his arms around the whole curled up
bundle of her. "Scully..." and again found himself with nothing to
say. There were no reassurances, no comforting sayings, for what
had happened to her. But she didn't seem to mind, simply leaned
into him.
"It's been a year, and I still think about her every day, but we never
even talk about her."
"I think about her, too."
"I know."
"I wish...I wish I could make it better for you."
"You do...you pull me back out of myself, you know. Like on Christmas
Eve." She pulled herself away from him, but only to look directly
at him. "How much of that was meant to distract me?"
Busted. "You didn't look like you were having any fun, this December.
Like you were forcing yourself to go to your family's, to celebrate
the holidays. And I thought that..."
"Ghosts would distract me?"
"I thought that I'd give you something to distract you, yeah. And...
I really wanted to go there, so..."
"Distraction for me, ghosts for you?"
"Something like that."
He'd wanted them to have fun, wanted Scully to stop being brittle
and distant as she was when he mentioned the holidays, wanted to give
her back something since his quest had helped take Christmas away
from her. He could still remember Scully as she had been the first
year they were partners, buying presents a month in advance on her
lunch hour and addressing Christmas cards when they were waiting
in airports. She had been a kid, enthusiastic and immersed in
the moment. Fully professional, of course; she'd never gone
shopping when she should have been working or given less than
her full attention to the work at hand. And he could still remember
her shy smile when she'd handed over a box of candy and a bag of
sunflower seeds, and how she'd been delighted when he'd presented
her with a bag of specialty coffee beans, the kind she liked, that
he'd gone out and gotten the night before when it had occurred to him
suddenly and in a rare moment of social insight that she might have
gotten him something because she was the sort who would think it
easy to add someone to her list. She'd been a kid, more
pleased at the occasion than the actual gift, and he'd hurt for her
when he had heard her father had died shortly after Christmas, knowing
that now grief would be associated with this time of year.
His sister had been abducted in November; they had never celebrated
Thanksgiving in any way whatsoever after that.
The Christmases after that, Scully had been brave, full of forced
cheer, as she tried to put her abduction, and then Melissa's death,
behind her. Some years they'd exchanged gifts, but not always.
This past year, they'd agreed not to, and she hadn't even made
an attempt at cheerfulness. Except when he'd outright asked her
about her Christmas plans, she had seemed to want to forget that
the holiday, and the first anniversary of Emily's death, were
coming up at all; he knew from the dark, reflective, troubled
expression in her eyes that forgetfulness had not come easily.
So, yes, he'd come up with a distraction. Arrogant of him, he knew, to
assume that he knew what was best for her. Narcissistic, even, to
think that dragging her off to a haunted house to see ghosts in which
she didn't believe, and stealing her keys to keep her there, would
be a good idea. Meant well, but he of all people knew that good
intentions could only carry you so far.
"Did you mind?" he asked now.
"The idea? No, not really. The night itself...next time you want to
distract me, let's go to a paranormal event that doesn't involve
murder-suicides, okay?"
"It's a deal."
She smiled at him, really smiled. "Anyway, you haven't finished
reading my resolutions."
"Oh...right." He picked up the paper that he had dropped in his lap
and returned his attention to it.
9. Thank the Lone Gunmen for all they've done.
10. Spend more money and time on silly things: bubble baths, shoes,
CDs, lingerie, good books, horror movies, plants, chocolate.
"Oooh...lingerie?"
"Oh, don't even start."
"What kind of...ow! Okay, okay. Geez, you should register your elbow
as a lethal...ow."
11. Call/get together with the people on my Christmas card list at
least once this year.
12. Mulder (cont'd).
"Scully?"
"I couldn't think of a twelfth resolution and you are a big part
of my life, so..."
He was flattered and unnerved, both by the resolutions and by the
fact that she had chosen to show them to him...and also incredibly
amused. "I think it's cheating if you have the same resolution
twice."
"Like you would know. You have what, one resolution? At least I
tried."
"I could come up with...hey, it's almost midnight."
"Goody." While he stared at her in disbelief (her face had just lit
up and she'd said...goody? He hadn't realized she'd drunk *that* much
wine already), she leaned over for the bottle and filled her glass
again, and then his. Her face as she handed him his glass and then
picked hers up had the same eager anticipation that it had held in
his apartment on Christmas morning they'd opened their gifts, and he
felt himself tumble even more deeply in love with her ("11:59," she
said) in an almost physical sensation, as if his heart
had actually made some extra movement in his chest.
He supposed that she had filled their glasses so that they could drink
a toast to the New Year, but when the small clock chimed twelve, he
leaned over and kissed her instead, her lips sweeter than wine.
It wasn't a passionate kiss, although there was passion somewhere
in it. Mainly it was a kiss of friendship, and affection, and
acknowledgement of each other. And in some way, he thought hazily
as their lips parted, it was a promise.
"Happy New Year, Scully," he whispered.
"Happy New Year, Mulder," she said, just as softly, and then raised
her wine glass. "May we get the X-Files back."
He raised his glass to clink it against hers. "May it be a good year."
And then drank.
When they had both lowered their glasses and were looking at each
other again, seriously, he wondered if she would say anything about
the kiss, if she had minded, or simply thought that it was a New
Year's kiss. But after a moment she said, "It's already starting out
as a better year than last year." He smiled at her (grinned goofily,
really), and all of a sudden they were laughing together, in what
might have been relief. This hadn't changed anything; it wouldn't
change anything. They were still themselves, after all, and after all
that it had been quite simple.
"You're just glad I wasn't Frohike."
"Was that what he was planning when he invited me to their New
Year's party? I wondered."
"Was this what you were planning when you invited me over?"
"Maybe." She smirked at him, and he laughed again and leaned over to
kiss her forehead.
"Happy New Year, Scully."
"So, seriously, Mulder, what are your New Year's Resolutions?"
"Well, to get the X-Files back, of course."
"Of course."
"And not to let another four months go by before I kiss you again."
He stopped, suddenly a little uncertain again.
"New Year's resolutions are supposed to be a *challenge,* Mulder,
not a given," she said, her eyes both teasing and reassuring. He
lifted his glass in acknowledgment.
"To kick Spender's ass at some point."
"Mmm hmmm."
"You're not going to say something disapproving about violence?"
"That little weasel deserves no mercy. I'll only disapprove if
you don't let me help."
"Ooh, can you dress in skimpy black leather while... anyway, okay, to
get Kersh to compliment us on our work."
"Oh, I didn't put that on my list..."
"And resolution, what is it, four? Five? Scully."
"Yeah?"
"No, that's my resolution. Something related to you. And you can
make that resolutions five through twelve."
"You're just being lazy."
"You can't expect me to make up twelve resolutions in the spur
of the moment."
"Next year I expect better."
"Next year," he agreed, and they toasted to it, understanding that
this was another promise between them, that they would be together
on this night next year.
"Mulder?" she asked, putting her glass on the coffee table again.
"Hmm?"
"Do you think this year will be better than last year?"
He thought of the past year. "It'd be hard to get much worse, all
things considered."
"But we got through it."
"Yeah." With more scars, physical and mental, more damage done to
them and those around them. He was surprised when he felt her lean
against him, but after a moment he put his arm around her, feeling
the peace of the evening settle around him again, despite the reminder
of loss and grief.
After awhile, he asked, "So what're you doing to do today, Scully?
Bake some bread?"
"I don't know. Maybe. What about you?"
"I dunno. Buy some more fish, maybe."
"More fish?"
"Have to start a New Year right." She didn't respond to that, and he
rested his head on top of hers and yawned. "Want to come?"
"Yeah, I'll come," her voice was slurred and sleepy.
"You gonna fall asleep?"
"Hmm."
He thought that meant yes. "Night, Scully," he said quietly.
"Night, Mulder." And after a moment, in little more than
a mumble, "Happy New Year."
"It will be," he promised her. "It will be."
End
Feedback appreciated at marianicole29@yahoo.com
One little note: I apologize for the Spender thing. At the time I first
wrote this, which was pre-Two Fathers/One Son, I thought he was an
unredeemable weasel. Then he had to go and get all human on me.
===
"You've told me to what to turn my back on; what, my darling, can I
face? Tell me why I went away, tell me why I'm coming back. Tell me
if there's an end to my endless journey, why did you put me on this
fast express."
--Tess Slesinger, _The Unpossessed_