EMXC 1st Year fanfic- October 1, 1994 thru October 1, 1995 Archived: 10/01/95 ============================================================== Just a little something to take up the time between "Irresistible" and the next new episode. The characters are the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions, and Fox Broadcasting, and no copyright infringement is intended. Be warned... there's romance involved, though I would rate it PG-13. Enjoy! THE DOOMED by Annie Reed FancyKatz@aol.com January 19, 1995 Dana Scully sat in her car outside of her partner's apartment building, trying to decide whether to go up to the door or start the car back up and leave. Indecision was not normally a problem for her, but then again, lately she seemed to be having problems with all sorts of things that usually came quite easily. She looked up at Fox Mulder's window. What the heck was wrong with her? It's not like she'd never been here before. She even had a key to his apartment on her keyring. And he'd made it quite clear that she was welcome here anytime, that he did not consider her presence an intrusion. But something subtle had changed in their relationship over the last few months. They were closer now than they'd ever been. They joked easily with each other, shared their stories with each other, and relied on each other with absolute trust. They did not always agree on every case... in fact, they rarely agreed. But their disagreements no longer deteriorated into bitter arguments. Instead, they each listened to the other's opinion with an open mind, respecting each other's unique differences. The catalyst had been Duane Barry... no doubt about it. Dana still couldn't remember what had happened to her during that time, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to find out. But that episode had left her... and Mulder... shaken, more so than she'd first realized. She had pressured the Bureau to return her to work as soon as possible, telling an overly concerned Fox Mulder that she was ready for work, that she'd lost too much time already. In reality, she was just trying to regain some measure of control over her life, control which Barry had ripped away from her. For a while work had kept her occupied. Until this last case... Dana was still embarrassed when she thought about how totally she'd lost control while they'd been in Minnesota. Simple things that she normally did with ease, such as an autopsy, were almost beyond her. Desecration of the dead was vile enough, probably the most horrid thing she had ever seen, but then she'd been kidnapped by the perp himself. The reality of her mortality had hit her, all at once, and when it was finally over and she was safe, she'd grabbed onto Mulder for dear life as she felt herself drowning in her own emotions. God, of all people to lose control in front of, she'd had to do it in front of Mulder. The last thing she wanted was for him to feel like he had to take care of her. Don't be so hard on yourself, Dana, she thought. Something like that happens to a guy, and you're scraping him up off the bar room floor. Men drink, women cry. Yeah, right... and let's hear the next rationalization of the day, shall we? Dana grabbed the keys almost angrily from the ignition and got out of the car. Taking a deep breath, she headed up to Mulder's apartment. She was just about to knock on the door when she heard voices inside. Damn, she knew she should have called first. She hesitated outside the door, disappointment warring with relief, before she realized that it was mainly Mulder's voice she heard. "Ha! I see you, you imp. Take that, sucker!" Mulder was shouting. "Hey, Frohicke... did you get the BFG 9000 yet? I can't pick it up." What the hell... ?? "Mulder?" she asked through the door, raising her voice to be heard. "You ok in there?" "Hey, Scully, come on in!" Mulder called to her. "I'd come over to get the door, but I'm a little busy right now." Dana opened the door and thought for a moment that she'd stepped into the wrong apartment. There was Mulder, sitting in front of his computer in his sweats and his favorite cut-off t-shirt, yelling at the screen. Usually such behavior was reserved only for sporting events, and Dana didn't think he'd had cable rewired into his computer. She could hear Frohicke's voice over the speaker phone Mulder had just bought for his desk. She'd gone with him to pick it out. Hadn't he told her it was so he could type and talk at the same time? Yeah... but then again he didn't tell you exactly *what* he would be typing, did he, Dana. "Scully, come over here, you gotta see this," Mulder said excitedly. "Is that the delicious Dana Scully I hear?" Frohicke asked over the speaker phone. "What exactly are you two up to?" Dana asked, moving behind Mulder to get a clear look at the screen. "Blowing away demons, my dear lady," Frohicke replied. "Care to join us?" Dana watched as the scenes on the screen moved by at a dizzying speed. "Uh, no thanks, Frohicke. I'll just watch a while, if it's okay with you." She moved a chair over next to Mulder so she could sit and get a clear look at the screen. This game was mesmerizing, Dana decided. It was the most three-dimensional game she had ever seen, although her previous exposure was limited to her nieces' and nephews' Nintendo games. Mulder explained it to her as they went along. She even got so that she could recognize the character on the screen that Frohicke was controlling. It seemed that they were both playing the same game over their modems, working in tandem to blow away all the bad guys, imps, demons, and specters that they could find. And they had an impressive arsenal at their control. Boy, if they'd only had a BFG 9000, or even one of the plasma rifles or a chaingun on a couple of their cases, it might have saved a few trips to the emergency room. After a while, Dana quit watching the game and started watching her partner. This was a Fox Mulder she'd never seen, not even the couple of times she'd gone with him to a basketball game. He used the same intensity on this game that he used when he was working. He shouted at the screen, yelled at Frohicke to keep up, and hooted with glee when he managed to kill a particularly nasty looking demon. He even got into a giggling fit with Frohicke once when Frohicke got lost and couldn't find his way back to Mulder. Imagine... Mulder giggling. Dana was amazed... her partner rarely even laughed these days, and she didn't think she'd ever heard him have a fit of the giggles before. This was his relief valve, she thought suddenly. Playing this game gave him a chance to blow away the "demons" he couldn't in real life. In this game he could get shot up, die, and still come back to fight again. And win.... finally, Fox Mulder got a chance to win. Something must have happened in the game, because Mulder suddenly sat back in his chair. "Yes!" he exulted, his arms thrown up and over his head, a broad grin on his face. "What?" Dana asked, confused. From what she'd learned about the game, it appeared that they'd just cleared another level, but they must have cleared at least five or six in the time she'd been sitting there. "We've never made it through this far before... the bastards always wiped us out on this level, and we couldn't find the key to the damn door." Dana didn't understand all the jargon, but Mulder's elation was infectious and she grinned back at him. He threw his arms around her, drew her into a victory hug, and then unexpectedly kissed her soundly on the lips. Dana felt an electric charge go through her body at the touch of his lips on hers. Then just as quickly he released her and yelled at the phone, "ok, Frohicke... onward and upward." He looked back once to grin at her, and then his attention returned to the screen. Just like that, Dana realized, her heart still beating wildly in her chest. That's how easy the line is crossed, the one that separates a man and a woman from being "just friends" to being.... well, something else. She wasn't ready to define what that something else was... oh, no... not just yet. Dana forced herself to watch the game and not stare at Mulder, but she really wasn't focusing on it anymore. All of a sudden she was very aware of him sitting next to her, and that awareness was doing incredible things to her body. She hadn't felt like this in a long, long time... but for heaven's sake it was her *partner* who was the cause of all this. This wasn't right. She shouldn't be feeling this way. Thoughts flew through her mind, and she struggled to sort them out... once again, struggling for control. Never before in her life had she found a friend like Mulder. Sure, she'd had plenty of girlfriends at school and casual friends during her academy days. And there had been lovers here and there, a couple of whom she'd met at the academy and at the Bureau. But never anyone like Mulder, never anyone she'd even remotely considered a soulmate. Her bond with Mulder surpassed even those she'd had with men she'd been in love with during her life. He'd seen her at her best, and unfortunately, he'd also seen her at her worst. He trusted her with his life, just as she trusted him with hers. She had difficulty imagining her life without Mulder in it. And from what her family told her about his actions at the hospital when she'd been in a coma, Mulder obviously needed her in his life, too. But he *was* her partner. All the Bureau's rules and regs preached against partners getting involved. It interfered with your job, made you take unnecessary risks, made you over-protective, created tension at the office... there were a million negative reasons that argued against more than a "professional" working relationship. And none of them apply to us, Dana thought with some surprise. They already had more than a "professional" working relationship. They were protective of each other, but it didn't affect their ability to do their job. If anything, it allowed them to do their job. She doubted that the people who wrote those rules and regs took into account how a team was supposed to cope with attacks from both the bad guys and the "good" guys. And lord knows, there couldn't be any more tension at the office than what they'd already lived through. Maybe they were just moving to the next step in their relationship, Dana thought, just part of the natural progression of things. And maybe, just maybe, she shouldn't try to control herself so tightly. Look at Mulder... he had loosened up enough to enjoy a game with Frohicke, of all people, and it looked like he was having the time of his life. He reminded her of the Fox Mulder she had first met in the basement office of the FBI's "most unwanted"... a happier person who was elated with any evidence he found of extreme possibilities. Dana came out of her reverie when she heard Frohicke say something about needing to get off the modem because The Thinker, the new member of The Lone Gunmen, had just called in pretty ticked off when he couldn't log on to their computer. "Same time tomorrow?" Mulder asked, and Frohicke agreed. Mulder turned off the computer and turned to look at her. She didn't know what to expect, maybe an awkward silence, but instead Mulder asked her if she wanted to order pizza... he was starved. She looked at her watch and was startled to discover that she'd been here for hours. How time flies when you're walking that thin line, she thought. "That sounds great, Mulder," she replied. "Good," he said, reaching for the phone. "I'll order, you look for a video." Dana got up and went over to where Mulder kept his tapes. She studiously avoided any in his "special" collection, and went straight for mainstream titles. One title caught her eye... "Sleepless in Seattle". Not your normal Mulder movie, but it was one of her favorites. She popped it in the VCR. Pizza and a movie... this was all too normal, Dana thought, picking up what she swore was going to be her last piece of pizza. She'd thought she was too nervous to eat, but when the pizza had been delivered, it smelled wonderful and she realized she was pretty hungry, too. Mulder had been... well, Mulder... the whole evening. Maybe she'd just imagined the kiss, or maybe he hadn't meant it in *that* way. Or maybe she was just losing her mind. "You finished?" he asked when she put down the last slice. "Yeah, I'm stuffed," she replied, patting her stomach. Mulder got up to take the rest of the pizza into the kitchen. When he came back, he sat down on the couch next to Dana, one arm draped around her shoulder. Her heartbeat kicked into overdrive. Almost instinctively, she snuggled in next to him and his arm tightened protectively around her. They sat like that for the rest of the movie, neither one saying a word. When the two main characters finally found each other at the top of the Empire State Building at the end of the movie, Mulder reached over with his free hand and tilted Dana's face up to his. She found herself staring into his hazel eyes, eyes that were filled with caring and longing, as he covered her mouth with his own. This time the kiss was long and deep, and Dana felt herself melting into him, returning his kiss with equal passion. No, there was no doubt about how he felt about her. Her last conscious thought was that the sound she heard must have been her control hitting the ground after she threw it out the window... Sometime later Dana woke up to find Mulder lying next to her, propped up on one elbow. He's been watching me sleep, she thought with wonder. She was almost afraid to read the expression that was reflected so clearly in his eyes. She smiled at him and ran one hand lightly around his face. He took her hand and gently kissed her fingers, then he reached over to stroke her hair. "I was just thinking," he said. "I never did ask you why you came by today. Not that I'm complaining or anything," he added hastily. Her hand had moved down to his chest. She'd touched him before, of course, but always in connection with work, never like this. Her fingertips were full of wonderful sensations and she just couldn't seem to get enough of him. "No particular reason," she replied automatically, then paused. There was a reason. The man's seen you naked, Dana, she thought. What else have you got to hide? "No, that's not quite right," she admitted. "I wanted some company and you're the best company I can think of. I just didn't want to be alone." Mulder moved to gather Dana into his arms, their bodies snug up against each other. "You're never alone," he murmured as he bent down to kiss her. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------- As you could probably tell, this story was inspired by watching friends play a networked version of a popular computer game. I'm not nearly as good as they are.... I just sat back and watched the masters at work. :) BTW, the title refers to the game, not where I think a relationship between our heroes would be headed if the events in this story actually took place.