Rocky Road 1
by PlentyOHok

SPOILERS: "Fight the Future"
STORY: Mulder and Scully encounter a diabolical detour on the way to sorting out their relationship.
CATEGORY: MSR, BadFic, Humor
RATING: Segment, mild R; Story, NC-17

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MULDER'S APARTMENT
11:15 PM


Mulder sprang upright on the sofa.

He knew immediately--from the pounding of his heart deep within his chest, from the slippery feel of his sweaty palms, from the way the ringing sound had interrupted his dream of nuzzling a buxom copper-haired librarian who, for some reason, had looked a lot like his partner Scully--that something was wrong.

It was the phone next to his sofa. There was nothing wrong with the phone, but the fact that it was ringing loudly at this hour--11:15 PM--told him immediately that something was wrong.

He fumbled for the receiver, picking up the TV remote control by accident because, in his mind, his face was still buried deep in the cleavage of the librarian so he couldn't see very well. But on the second try he picked up the receiver.

"Mulder," he said into the receiver in a voice still scratchy from sleep.

"Mulder, it's me," replied Scully on the other end of the phone on which she was talking, wherever she was.

"Scully, where are you?" Mulder asked.

"I'm down here at Akbar's All-Nite Market," she said. "Mulder, we need to talk."

"What's wrong?" he asked, a note of concern in his still-scratchy-from-sleep voice.

"Not on the phone, Mulder," Scully said. "I'm coming over."

Mulder looked around at his messy apartment and his hungry fish and was glad Scully was used to seeing his place like this because if she was just around the corner at Akbar's, he wouldn't have time to clean up anything.

"Okay Scully, if it can't wait until work tomorrow then come on over."

"It can't wait, Mulder," Scully said with an edge of tension in her voice. "It's already waited too long."

"Okay, I'll see you in a few minutes." Mulder said and started to hang up, but then he had another thought. "Hey Scully, are you bringing ice cream?"

"Yes, Mulder," she said tensely. "Just like I always do."

Mulder smiled tenderly at her, despite the tension in her voice and even though she couldn't see him. Maybe, in fact, because she couldn't see him. It was as if they'd known each other for many years instead of just the five years that they'd been partners. *She knows me so well.*

"See you in a few minutes, Scully," he said, and this time he really did hang up.

*Geez she sounds tense.* He racked his brain. *Did I do something to piss her off?* But he couldn't think of a thing. Then he looked down and realized he was wearing only boxer shorts and a plain white t-shirt, which stretched pleasingly over his lean taut chest. Maybe he should put on a pair of jeans. She was used to seeing him practically naked, but not right after the kind of dream he'd been having, and he was pretty sure that the buxom copper-haired librarian would pop right back into his mind as soon as Scully walked through the door.

By the time he took a leak and pulled on a pair of jeans, Scully was knocking on the door.

"Come on in," he called out, working to button the last fly button because he hated jeans with zippers.

Scully turned her key in the lock and stepped inside. Mulder looked up at her. *God she's beautiful.* She was half-turned away from him, pushing the door closed with her hip, purse in one hand and a folded-over brown grocery sack in the other, her windblown hair as lustrous and coppery as a brand new shiny penny. *And she looks exactly like that librarian.* Mulder quickly dropped his eyes back to his fly button. *I've got to stop thinking those thoughts or I'll never get these pants buttoned,* he chided himself. *Besides, we're partners, nothing more.*

************************

Scully turned from closing Mulder's front door to find him standing across the room, fiddling with something at his crotch. Scully tried to see what his hands were doing. *I shouldn't look,* she told herself, *after all, we're just partners, nothing more.* That last thought sent a stabbing pain shooting straight to her heart. This was, after all, what she'd come to talk to him about. Just being partners.

When Mulder looked up after a few seconds, she saw that he hadn't been fiddling with anything more than a button on his jeans. He cracked an embarrassed grin. "That last one's always a bitch."

Scully smiled weakly, unable to think of a clever remark because she was so nervous about the conversation ahead, and about the fact that she and Mulder had just been staring at his crotch together.

"Let me take that, Scully," Mulder said, quickly closing the space between them with one arm outstretched. She handed him the grocery sack and he headed off towards the kitchen with it, calling back, "So, what's so important it can't wait till tomorrow?

Scully didn't answer right away, entranced as always by Mulder walking in jeans, the way the well-worn denim hugged his ass, stretching and folding perfectly to maintain its perfect fit over his flexing gluteus maximi. After a minute, she remembered that Mulder had asked her a question. Why was she there? She walked towards the kitchen, not wanting to start her "just partners" speech off by shouting.

Suddenly, Mulder let out a hoot. "Scully, you shouldn't have!"

"What are you talking about, Mulder?" she hurried her pace, wondering just what the hell he was talking about. "I shouldn't have bought Rocky Road ice cream like I always do?"

"Ohhhh no..." Mulder said, and as Scully rounded the corner into the kitchen she found him staring down into the grocery sack she'd just handed him. "You're not squirming out of this one by playing innocent, Scully."

"What?" she asked, reaching for the bag, but he jerked it out of reach, grinning a wicked grin.

" ‘What?' " You have to ask ‘what'?" he asked. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out two items she'd never seen before in her life, at least not to pick up at Akbar's All-Nite Market when she was shopping for ice cream to bring over to Mulder's. "A box of HoHo's...and a three-pack of condoms...You devil-woman you!"

"What the--how in the--Mulder, I never--" Scully sputtered.

Mulder turned his mouth down into a mock frown. "I'm disappointed, Scully. Only a three-pack?"

"Give me that!" Scully said, grabbing the bag roughly from Mulder's hand and then scooping up the Ho-Ho's and condoms and dumping them back into the bag. "I did not, I repeat NOT, buy these. I bought Rocky Road ice cream and a pack of sugarless gum." She added as an afterthought, "I thought that bag should've been colder."

"You really didn't buy those?" Mulder asked, a real frown replacing the mock one and his eyes losing their hint of desire that had begun to glow there. Scully could practically hear the air hissing out of his joy bubble.

"I must have picked up the wrong bag, Mulder," Scully said with more than a hint of disgust in her voice. *Of all the things to have happen now* she thought to herself, *right before my just-partners speech.* There was no way she could start a serious conversation now. She had to get things back on track first. "I'm going back to Akbar's to straighten this out."

"Well hold on," Mulder said as he hurried over to the couch, bent down and grabbed his shoes, and sat down. "I'll go with you."

Scully waited in silence while he laced up his shoes, unable to take her eyes off the fluid movements of his long graceful fingers as he pulled each lace tight, looped it into a bow, then pulled it snug. *Is that how he'd handle me?* she wondered before she could stop herself. *Would he tug and stretch me firmly, insistently, but gently, so I wouldn't come undone?*

"There," Mulder said, standing up so suddenly she was jolted out of her reverie. "Let's go."

He opened the door for her and then followed her through, pulled it shut behind them and locked it, mumbling something Scully couldn't quite make out. When he turned to follow her down the hallway, the evil grin was back on his face.

"What was that, Mulder?" she asked. "I couldn't hear you."

Mulder shrugged. "I was just laughing to myself that somewhere out there is some poor schmuck who's gonna reach for a wetsuit at a very delicate moment and pull out a pack of sugarless gum instead."

She was about to get mad at him for thinking about such a thing, when suddenly she thought of something else. "Ha!" she laughed. "Not only that, but by then it'll be covered with melted Rocky Road ice cream."

She and Mulder laughed their way down the stairs together and headed out into the night, towards Akbar's All-Nite Market

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