I can only hope that the aforementioned can find it in their hearts to forgive this fan for taking hours out from watching their show and using their tie-in products to create and showcase a not-for-profit piece of work. To them, I say...please don't hurt me!
Synopsis: This story was written during the Third Season. It's a goofy/funny piece.
WHAT WOMEN GO THROUGH
The Lancome foundation had gone on perfectly, Dana Scully affirmed as she turned her head this way and that, examining both sides of her face in the mirror, then tilting it to check out the coverage on her forehead. At first she had been concerned that she hadn't moisturized adequately--she didn't like to go wild on the Nivea, but she liked even less the prospect of her face flaking off onto the shoulders of her outfit halfway through the evening. But no, she noted, even, smooth, and perfectly textured to blend and enhance her skin tone. She screwed the lid onto the container and set it aside on her dresser.
Now, the eyes. Eyes were the trickiest part. Too little detailing and you looked haggard. Too much and you looked like the girl in high school half the sophomores lost their virginity to. Dana sifted through the roughly seventy dollars worth of make-up scattered across the top of the dresser, and finally found the small vial of Maybelline eye-shadow. She went with a flesh-tone, her complexion being such that anything much darker and she'd look like Joan Jett. When she adequately deepened the appearence of her eyes and covered the small lines that were forming from too many hours spent staring through a microscope, she did the fine detailing work with an eye liner pencil in nearly the same shade of jade green as her eyes. Finally, she swabbed her lashes with a mascara brush, thickening and darkening them.
Next she added just the barest whisper of blush. Her natural color was slightly pale, and as such she had to be careful not to over-blush. She lowered her brush and scruntinized. Too much on the left side? No. Not that was noticable. Okay, hair...
If men knew what we do to look beautiful for them, Dana thought while she brushed and clipped and spritzed, they'd do sit ups more often.
"Come on, Scully, do it as a favor for me."
Dana looked up from the Aptiva computer she was typing out the follow-up report on. When they had first been partnered, she and Mulder had agreed upon an equal division of the paperwork that routinely popped up in thei investigations. After reading a couple of Mulder's case summaries, sifting through his various asides, footnotes on related (in his mind) incidents, rambling digressions, and extrapolating for his bizarre sense of punctuation, she decided that it would be best is she handled the brunt of the paperwork and Mulder focused his attention on what he did best. In this case, he was erecting the panaramic diarama that came with his ten-inch alien action figure. The vampires, UFOs, genetic abnormalities, and various and sundries were taking a breather.
"The fact I'm doing this report constitutes a sort of favor for you, Mulder," she said as she highlighted a block of text and moving it down a page.
"I offered to do that, Scully. I didn't ask."
"Sure, like my five-year old nephew offered to fix my VCR while holding a power drill. I think not."
"I'm going to look bad if you don't help me out with this. Could you live with yourself if you let that happen to me?" Mulder carefully adjusted the arm of the alien, frowned at it, then moved it back. Dana wondered preceisely what effect he was going for.
"You'd be amazed at my powers of self-rationilization."
"You're a cold woman, Dana Scully. Cold and hard as diamonds." He delivered the second sentence in a faux-Jimmie Cagney yammer. Dana laughed and turned away from the computer.
"I'll listen."
"Raymond Banks is a friend from high school, grew up down the street from me in Chilmark. We stayed in touch a little bit over the years. I ran into him at a medical school reunion last month. Turns out, his sister went to Oxford with me. Graduated in my class. We talked a little bit, relived youthful memories, and he said he was going to be in DC on business..."
"And you told him that you had an unattached partner you could set up with as a consort?"
Mulder blinked, his puppy-dog eyes looking hurt. "Come on, Scully. I got a meeting tonight, otherwise Ray and I would be going out tonight. Boozing and carousing. I don't want the guy to have come all the way over here for nothing."
"What's he look like?"
Mulder stared at her in mock shock, and Dana realized she'd tipped her hand. She gazed diplomatically over the Aptiva's screen. "I have to know it's going to be worth my while."
"Why Scully, I never thought you were that superficial. I guess I have to stop going to Supercuts. I'd hate for you to be embarassed the next time we scour the sewers for a leech-man."
"That's my professional life, Mulder. I'm accostomed to be embarassed in my professional life. In my personal life, however, I try to exercise a degree of discretion. It is, after all, my personal time, the time that I have to build a life outside the Bureau, enrich my life, bring me happiness. And I'm not going to waste it dating a total Barney. What's he look like?"
"Okay," Mulder leaned back in his chair, "you know the brother on Wings?"
"The funny one or the anal-retentive one?"
"The anal one."
"He looks like him?" Dana was thinking of her other plans for the evening--clean the oven, read Entertainment Weekly, watch Lois and Clark, feed the lungfish--they weren't stacking up to the compulsive brother on Wings.
"I'll buy you lunch for the next week," Mulder said, "just to sweeten the pot."
"Well," Dana let him squirm a little bit, "all right. But if this guy turns out to be a mouth-breather, you're buying lunch for the month."
"Scully," he leaned forward, "you won't be disappointed."
She certainly hadn't been disappointed by their brief telephone conversation at lunch.
"Well, I'm a little disappointed Fox can't make it, but after the conference I've been sitting through all day, just getting out of a lecture hall will be a pleasant change of pace."
"There's a local production of The Rain Tree I managed to get tickets for. It was a nearly sold out show, but I have connections." It was the final test of sorts. She delivered the remark completely deadpan, and awaited his response. He passed by laughing a slight chuckle.
"Gee, must be a perk of being an FBI agent."
Dana smiled at the phone. Bingo. "The little joys are without number."
"You were on the phone with Ray for almost a half hour," Mulder remarked amusedly as he leaned back in his chair, away from the completed diarama to which he'd been adding toy dinosaurs from a Jurassic Park gift set he'd bought at lunch. "Do I take this to mean I can spend the month's food money on that limited-release Hyapatia Lee boxed set video collection, the digitally re-mastered ones with interviews with the actors and directors before the features?"
"I have no idea who that is, but yes, things look pretty safe at this moment. Ray sounds like a bright, intelligent, witty man."
"See, not all of my friends are wild-eyes conspiracy geeks."
"Just the ones who admit to being sociable with you. Actually, Ray said he's probably going to be in town for a few days. He'd like to see you."
"Well," Mulder turned back to his diarama and clamped the jaws of a Velocaraptor to the alien's arm, "I'll probably be able to get away from Murphy and Dullens at some point in the next few days."
"What do they have you doing, anyway?" Dana asked.
"Profiling for the linolium-knife slasher they're chasing."
"And they can't go to anybody else in the ISU?"
"I think Agent Dullens has the hots for me. She walked in on me in the bathroom of a Bureau jet. Latch was faulty. Poor thing's been entranced by that fleeing glimpse of my rippling musculature ever since."
"The rippling musculature of...what preceisely? Your thighs?"
"Female territorial-inspired jealousy is an ugly thing, Scully," Mulder said, not looking at her, arranging a sail-backed Dimetrodon just so in the diarama. Dana wondered, not for the first time, if he was crazy. Half an hour later, she realized he wasn't when it occurred to her that while she'd spent the better part of the day typing and proofreading reports, Mulder had been playing with toy aliens and dinosaurs and getting paid for it.
What to wear, what to wear. It had been so long since Dana had gone out socially that she had virtually no date clothes. Her mother had bought her a black and grey checked jumper with flap pockets and a fit-and-flare silhouette for Christmas, but Dana didn't really think she was tall enough to do a jumper. She'd look like a pepper-shaker.
Last month she'd gone on a sweater spree and bought three way overpriced ones that she dug out now. The first was an argyle chenelle tunic with ribbed cuffs and crocheted edges. Nice for a get together with friends, or just to spend a lazy fall afternoon in, walking around the neighborhood, looking at the colored leaves, but way too casual for tonight. The second was a ribbed turtleneck in a color called camel. Nice with a pair of guncheck trousers, but too business-like, she decided. The last was a merino tunic that she rejected for the same reason as the first tunics.
In the end it came down to a dead heat between her flocked velvet dress with the floral bodice and poly/spandex stretch velvet skirt, and the silk houndstooth blouse/gabardine trousers comination. After a serious appraisal of the evening--community theatre, dinner, a leisurely walk, she decided upon the blouse and slacks. Too bad, though. She really wanted an opportunity to wear that dress.
The clothing covered her well, she decided after a few spins in front of the full-length mirror. They made her seem taller than she was and accentuated her curves which were pretty generous when she got out of pantsuits. "Nice," she said, then patted her hair. Firm, but flexible. The hair was a gamble: she'd parted it on the left side and let it flow luxuriously over her right cheek and ear. A simple enough style to execute, but it left her forehead bangless and exposed, and if she didn't get the right body and fullness out of it she'd have the forehead of a dolphin.
"Worth much more than a month of lunches," she said with moxie.
Her intercom buzzed. She took a breath. "Show time."
"Captain of the football team," Ray Banks affirmed with a nod of his absolutely lucious head. Dana leaned forward, resting her head on her clasped hands and smiling attentively. My God, he is the guy from Wings incarnate, she thought.
Ray Banks was not disappointing. When she'd buzzed him up to the apartment, she'd taken the few moments it would take him to reach her door to take a deep breath and do a quick mental relaxation exercise. It was the same one she did immediately before getting a shot. When she'd opened the door, she found on the other side, not a drooling, thinning-pated, pot-bellied, mouth-breathing, gold-chain-wearing, overeager, sex-obsessed single-guy-mutant. He'd stood sideways, as if trying to make himself a harder target for whoever opened the door, making him look skittish and vulnerable. His smile was wan, but hopeful, and his blue-grey eyes were perfect, unlying allies. His hair was parted on the side and cut short enough to be neat, but not so short that a few chocolate strands didn't stray boyishly over his brow. His nose was aquiline and distinguished above a strong jaw. When he spoke, his voice was clear and firm, but not overbearing. He figited slightly when he spoke to her, absently fingering the flaps and pockets of his charcoal overcoat which covered a casual, olive blazer and khakis.
It may not have exactly been love at first sight, but Dana sure was glad to have spent so much time on her hair.
"You're telling me my partner, Fox Mulder, was captain of his high school football team?" Dana asked across the small round table at Il Scalioni resturaunt, across the plates of scallops, mussels, clams, baby shrimp, scungilli, and calamari, across the flickering candle that made a yellow glow dance in Ray's eyes. A mischevious twinkling that was in direct opposite to the torpid, sleeping-dog quality Mulder's held.
"He was kind of a jock," Ray nodded. "Like basketball, cross-country, baseball..."
"You have to be kidding me. I always pictured Mulder's high school years as being spent in his parents basement, obsesssing over reruns of Star Trek."
Ray laughed, and covered his face self-consciously. Dana loved vulnerability in a man. "Well he was sort of like that growing up...We had this Tom Sawyer childhood in Massachusetts. Ate apples from an orchard down the street. During the summertimes we'd steal watermelons from a patch in the lot behind my house. There was a swimming hole we swam in, even though Fox's family belonged to a country club." He paused and sipped his wine. He'd nursed the same glass for the better part of an hour. Very good sign. "Fox always liked rocketships, though. Space, astronauts...I'm not even going to start on the moon landing."
"So what turned him into Bruce Jenner?"
Ray grinned devilsishly. "Angela Delvecchio happened. She moved to our block the summer between our seventh and eighth grade years. I'd already discovered girls--I had two older sisters who had a lot of friends--but Fox...I still remember the day the Delvecchio family moved in. It was this muggy, bright day in July, and Fox and I were playing one-on-one in my front yard--the Mulders didn't want basketball hoops on their property--and at some point, I don't remember exactly when, we noticed the moving trucks in front of the big two-story colonial that had been on the market for months. And we only stopped out of idle curiosity. Fox had the ball, I was standing behind him. My arms were up, I was blocking him, but we were both watching the people moving the stuff out. Then Angela got out of the family car." Ray leaned back and took a long, deep breath. His eyes rolled, and he smiled. "She was tall, taller than we were. And she had what had to have been the longest legs in Chilmark, Mass. She was wearing these cut-off jeans that showed them off perfectly, and a halter-top. She had long, black hair that she had in a...what do you call those things? The U-shaped things that go over your head to hold your hair back?"
"A headband."
"Are you sure," he eyed her suspiciously. "I hear headband and I think of Pat Benetar, Olivia Newton-John..."
"Same term, different decoration." Dana nodded.
"Well, anyway, she had on one of those...Fox was transfixed. He didn't move. I mean, I was standing there behind him, blocking, and he's absolutely motionless. Like concrete. I say, 'Yo, Foxy, come on and finish up and lose this game, would ya?' And he--doesn't move a muscle, just stares, gapes--says 'Look at her! She's beautiful!' That night--not lying, that evening--all his model Apollo rocketships and lunar landers and vinyl mummies and werewolves got boxed up and stowed under his bed. We spent the rest of that summer playing ball and riding bikes. Nice out-door, out-in-the-open stuff."
Dana laughed. "So what happened with Mulder and the Italian beauty?"
"Oh, that's a long story..."
As Ray began, leaning forward so that his skin caught the glow of the candle, and assumed a ruddy, healthy glow, Dana decided that she owed Mulder big time. After she'd sufficiently tortured him with Angela Delvecchio
Dinner lasted a sweet two and half hours, afterward they wandered to a frozen yogurt place and got dishes of raspberry. They made good conversation, maintaining the easy back-and-forth that, on a first date, either happened or didn't and generally established how well things would proceed. Ray was funny and warm and seemed naturally subdued and low-key. In many ways, Mulder's sibling, and while that thought, if lingered over would disturb her, she just let it skip and enjoyed Ray for himself.
"I'm in town for about a week," Ray said haltingly, not able to look at her, keeping his eyes on the road back to her building.
"Good," Dana said. "I had a good time. I'd like to do this again, if we could."
Ray's face brightened to match the dashboard. "Great. I'd like that, too. I...I don't have much of a life in Baltimore. This is actually the best date I've had in a long time. Wouldn't you know it, it'd be out of town."
Dana smiled. "Nothing is easy."
"It certainly never has been with me. With me and women."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Dana said.
"It's nothing. It's nothing," he said morosely. "It's just a...trend that I'm stuck in. I've, uh, I've been used. Before, I mean. I've been..." he looked out the window. "Some women have taken advantage of me, that's all."
"I've never understood women like that. We've spent so much time being hurt and abused by men...I think maybe some women just think they have to be as cold and ruthless as some men."
"Must be."
A downer, but not quite enough to kill the magic of the evening. He walked her to the door of her building to kiss her goodnight, his lips barely touching hers, then moving in more aggressively. When they parted, he whispered in her ear, "Why don't we go for a drive?" He stroked her cheek gently, tentatively. Dana felt her heart flutter, and her next breath was a shallow one.
"Why?"
"Because I can see what's behind your eyes," he whispered intensely, his hand craessing her exposed, sensitive neck.
"I...I don't understand," Dana breathed, confused. The hand suddenly clenched around her throat, the fingertips boring into the flesh around the carotid arteries, depriving the brain of blood, as the pressing thumb constrcte dher windpipe. She wheezed and twisted, trying to understand.
"You're just like all the rest! You pretty yourself up! You listen, and you laugh your little laughs, but I know what your are! I know what you're planning to do!"
"Ray," she choked, "I don't ..."
But his free hand came out of the pocket of his overcoat, holding something flat and metal that glinted in the lights of the building.
A linolium knife.
Dana chopped at the inside of his elbow, bending it, destabilizing his grip. She turned and kicked out with her right leg, forcing him to stumble backward several steps. He looked shocked. Dana dug in her small, black, purse as Ray charged. Dana leveled the compact 9mm off-duty sidearm. Ray brought the blade back to begin his slashing arc.
Scully dropped him with one shot.
The gunfire would bring attention, so she placed her weapon on the building ledge beside her and dug out her cellular phone. She was about to key 911, when she thought better of it. Instead, she called Mulder.
"Mulder," he answered.
"Mulder, preceisly how well do you know your old buddy Ray?" As she waited for the response, she patted down her hair. It still felt perfect. Two hours she'd spent getting dressed up. Mulder was babbling through a confused response and sirens were wailing in the distance. So was Ray.
"I don't know what you mean Scully...what's going on?"
Scully sighed. "Let's just say the day will never come when you're not buying lunch."