Title: Cooking With Mulder I: Nuking with Mulder
Summary: Mulder shares a secret with Scully involving marshmallows and radio waves.
Rating: G
Disclaimer: The fictional characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to Chris Carter, Fox Entertainment and 1013 productions and are used without permission in this strictly non-profit venture.

To JL, otherwise known as the captain, M. Suave himself, who showed me the way, and David, who at twenty-two has yet to chop an onion.

"You hungry, Scully?" Mulder asked as he made his way to his kitchen.

"Nope," replied his partner from the cavernous confines of his kitchen cabinet. The cabinet door hid most of her from view.

Apparently she'd made do without a chair, and now her knee was in danger of knocking over his tea-pot. Mulder leaned back against the lintel and grinned. Scully's jacket was stretched tight around her shoulder blades, and her gray pumped feet slipped and slid on the counter as she shoved boxes and cartons this way and that.

"You have enough packages of Hamburger Helper up here?" she asked over the sound of shuffling and rustling.

Mulder perked up, "Hamburger Helper? I forgot I had that."

In testimony to that Scully sneezed.

She looked at him over her shoulder, "D'you have anything that I could eat right now?"

"Try the cupboard next to you, the snack- food that isn't mine should be on the middle shelf."

Scully settled herself on her knees and scootched over one and opened the cabinet door.

Box upon box upon box of devil-dogs, twinkies, and sno- balls gleamed serenely back at her, the entire Hostess pantheon so-to-speak.

"Oh my god," Scully said, in the same tone of voice she'd used when the head of Leonard Betts had winked at her.

"Cool, hunh?" Mulder said, proud of the look of disgust on her face.

"This is so, so--"

"Evocative of a fatter, less-culturally aware America?"

"Girly." Scully supplied, as she jumped down to the floor with an incriminating package in her hand. "What are you doing with five cartons of pink coconut covered marshmallow puffs in your cupboard?"

"Would you believe getting in touch with my feminine side?"

Scully snorted.

"According to Cosmo most women like a little fem in a guy, don't you?"

Scully licked the wet corner of her lip, covered her mouth with her hand. Coughed. Turned the box over, and murmured casually while reading the nutritional information on the back: "If you wanted to join the sisterhood, all you had to do was take me underwear shopping," and then added just as casually, as her index finger ran down a column of numbers, "don't go there, Mulder." Her eyebrow climbed up into the sweep of hair on her brow, "I know your eating habits are execrable at best but the sulfite quotient is..."

"Do you have any idea what it does to me when you use words of three syllables or more?"

"Sno-balls, Mulder? Ring-dings, yes; Ho-ho's, okay; Twinkies, of course; but sno-balls?"

"Well, I was grocery shopping, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for your birthday."

"And you thought, refined sugar and palm oil, Scully's favorites."

"And I saw 'em, and I thought, these were perfect. Girlish but tough,"

"Girlish, but..." Scully gave up.

"Small," Mulder risked in the throes of honesty, "but resilient. Engagingly colorful--"

"I believe the word is kitschy."

"Exactly. You wouldn't believe how many of these Elvis ate in a week. But they're also really cool."

"Do tell."

"Better yet, I'll show you what distinguishes sno-balls from their counterparts. May I?" Mulder asked, holding out his hand for the package. Scully gave it to him.

"When I was a kid, I was introduced to the wonders of microwave cooking."

"They didn't have microwaves when we were kids, Mulder."

"You didn't grow up on the Vinyard."

"Ahh,"

Mulder released the snowball from it's cardboard and plastic confines, his fingers deft in their movements.

He directed Scully's movement with his free hand on her elbow as he scooted over to his own beat up, grease- printed black magic box.

"Mul--" Scully began.

"Shhhh," he said, and added in a stage whisper, "What I'm about to show you, is a secret known only to a select few."

Mulder lay his hand on the door handle, and said sotto voce to himself, "I shouldn't even be telling her this."

He shrugged. He lay the snowball on the black metal circular tray and closed the door.

"Observe." Mulder instructed. He set the timer for forty seconds, on Hi power and pressed start.

For a few minutes the snowball lay placidly in the yellowish light of microwave chamber. Then there was a ripple, and it began to expand, and expand and expand and tiny cracks appeared in the fuzzy pinkness of it's coconut coating, and those burst and the white mallow stretched until the sno-ball was the size of a small volley- ball and filled the window with it's rippling, heaving expanse.

Scully looked over at Mulder. His eyes gleamed with rapture.

"Isn't this great?" he asked, smiling.

The timer dinged. The microwave shut itself off. Quickly, Mulder jerked the door open and the distended glob of sugar and air collapsed upon itself, steam escaping from the many cracks that riddled it surface.

"Watch it, it's hot!" Scully said, as his fingers danced the still steaming glob of sugar to the edge of the tray.

"I know what I'm doing, relax." Mulder said, as he lay a paper napkin on the counter near the edge of the oven.

"And?" Scully asked.

"Here," Mulder said, fetching it out, "you can eat the first one."

The End

Notes: Pure, straight up fluff. There's no plot. This is inspired by many of my friends, and if this Mulder sometimes resembles a certain Big Red Alumnus ('95), known for his red cap and general nuttiness, you are not mistaken.