AUTHOR: Dana Hale
RATING: K
SPOILERS: See how many lines you can recognize from various episodes...
SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully discuss the meaning of Scully's dream over the phone one night.
DISCLAIMER: The X-Files television show and characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and the Fox Corporation.
"Langly, what's the big idea with you dealing me this crappy hand? I fold." Frohike threw his cards face down on the table.
Byers checked his hand. A two of hearts and a seven of spades. "I fold."
"Looks like it's you and me Scully. Watcha gonna do?" Mulder eyeballed his competition.
"All in." Scully pushed her large pile of blue and red chips to the middle of the poker table, adding them to Mulder's already outrageous bet. He was bluffing; she could tell. Her steely eyes never left the questioning gaze of her partner sitting across the table from her.
"Watch out, Mulder. Looks like she's finally got you where she wants you," Frohike said.
"I can't look," quipped Byers.
"Are you sure you want to do that, Scully?" Mulder toyed with her.
"Lay down your cards, Mulder. Show us the river, Langly." Scully said confidently.
Mulder only had a pair of dueces. Scully had flopped a full house earlier on in the hand. She wiggled her eyebrows at Mulder and he slumped in his chair in defeat.
"She's hot!" Fohike exclaimed.
"We better call it a night before she leaves us all high and dry," said Byers.
"Where do I cash in, boys?" Scully exuberantly asked as she scooped up all the chips from the middle of the table.
"Cash in! Right here, baby cakes!" Frohike held out his arms to her and made smooching sounds with his lips.
Without a moment's hesitation, Scully made a tight fist with her right hand and connected it solid with Frohike's jaw, causing him to hurtle over his chair and crash backwards onto the floor. "DON'T call me BABY CAKES!" Scully spat out at him. She left the room in a tuft.
Frohike sat stunned on the floor holding his jaw. "I was expecting a left."
Mulder laughed hysterically.
"Ice Queen..." Langly muttered.
The sound of her phone woke Scully from her strange dream. She looked over at her clock. It read 11:21. She groaned as the phone kept ringing. She knew that ring. It was a ring that was distinctly all Mulder's.
"Where are you about to drag me off to tonight?" she asked with a yawn when she picked up the receiver.
"No where. Why do you always assume-"
"Because. Just because." Scully said, cutting him off.
"Did I wake you?"
"Mulder, you always wake me."
"Oh."
She could hear him crackle a sunflower seed in his mouth. Scully frowned and sat up in bed, now fully awake. "I just had the strangest dream, Mulder."
"You know, a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned to ask."
"Well, considering my dream, that's a scary thought."
"Do tell."
"Mulder, do you know how to play poker?"
"That's the question you haven't learned to ask?"
She knew that on the other end of the phone he was wearing that smirky face of his. And she was right, but the smirk soon turned to a genuine smile as he started to have a vision of a poker table with shed clothes strewn all over it and Scully sitting there...
"Wait a minute, Scully. What kind of poker?"
"Mulder, get your mind out of the gutter."
"Party pooper."
"Do you want to know about my dream or not?"
"I'm listening!"
Scully let out a sigh. "I beat you and the Lone Gunman in a game of 'No Limit Texas Hold-Em,' and then I hit Frohike in the jaw because he said I could 'cash in' with him and he called me Baby Cakes."
She blurted it out so fast before even realizing that she probably shouldn't be telling him this. She knew the second after it all came flying out of her mouth that she would never live this down.
She was met with silence on the other end of the phone. Dead-pan silence. Oh boy, now I did it, she thought.
And then came the laughter. Mulder laughed as he had never laughed before. And then he laughed some more. Scully was forced to just sit there and take it. After about a minute, she dared to speak again. "Are you finished, Mulder?"
"Yeah, I think so..." He managed to get out in one last chuckle as he wiped a tear from his eye. "So what do you think it means?"
"I don't want to know."
"Well, Agent Scully, I have a theory."
"Oh no..."
"It's like this...you're secretly in love with Frohike, but your subconscious won't allow you to admit it."
"That's quite a theory, Mulder, but you realize that it's my job to poke holes in your theories and prove you wrong."
"When have you proved me wrong, Scully?"
"It's just one of those weird dreams. It doesn't have to mean anything," Scully said, ignoring his question. "And it certainly doesn't mean that I'm in love with Frohike."
"You just keep telling yourself that."
"Okay, if you want it to mean something, I have a theory. Care to hear it?"
"Always. Lay it on me, G-woman."
"It means that I am a woman, who, day in and day out, has to put up with a bunch of men who are crackpots and I can beat the crap out of any one of them."
"Scully?"
"What?"
"I just got turned on."
"Mulder, why did you call me?"
"Oh...um... I forgot."
"Okay then, well I'm going back to bed."
"Okay."
"Goodnight, Mulder."
"Goodnight, Baby Cakes."