Title: How I Slept With My Partner (Without Really Trying)
Author: Jaime Lyn
Category: UST/MSR, careful lack of Doggett/Reyes mentions (just because I didn't want them in here. If you're a fan, I apologize.)
Email: Leiaj21@hotmail.com
Spoilers: Season 8 stuff. Basically, if you didn't know about Scully getting *&^%$#@!, you probably don't want to read this.
Archive: Nowhere until I post all the parts. This is NOT (I repeat NOT) a work in progress. All the parts can (and DO) stand alone. But this IS a series. And I bet all those archives would rather have all the parts before they post only the beginning, right? I assure you, once all parts are posted, anyone and everyone who would like to archive this is more than welcome to.
Summary:
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone in this story except... well, me. I own me, but not anyone else. I also don't own a BMW. But if you'd like to buy me one, please feel free to email me.Short Note: "How I Slept With My Partner (Without Really Trying)" is just the "secret-header-name" for some notes Jose Chung is gathering for his next fiction novel. He's asked me, Jaime Lyn, to conduct a few interviews for him, as he is sick at home with the flu. All personal accounts contained, herein, are the property of Dana Katherine Scully and Fox William Mulder. The names will be changed, of course, but the accounts will most likely remain intact. For those of you who read "How to Blend in With Normal People," this piece is also a direct follow up to that story (or an indirect one, or a prequel, or a sequel, or a "middle"-quel, or a whatever) so please read at your discretion.
All insanity I blame on the cat, who likes to sleep in the sink.
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How I Slept With My Partner (Without Really Trying)
Compiled by Jaime Lyn
Co authored by Dana Scully and Fox Mulder
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Interview Notes for
“Outside the Boundaries”
a novella by Jose Chung
September 13, 2002.
Subjects: Dana Scully, Special Agent: pathology department, The X Files division. Fox Mulder, Special Agent, VICAP, behavioral sciences.
Addendum: Interview meeting for fictional follow up novella by Jose Chung. (Interviewer is not the author. See notes for Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space.”) Novella to focus on aspects of Diana Lusky’s emotional state, romantic relationship with the outlandish Muldrake, and the birth of her son.
Interviewer: Jaime Lyn (filling in for Mr. Chung)--
Mulder Tells a Funny Story
(Just to Begin the Session):All I know is that Scully told me she was going to start a baby book. Just one day out of the blue she came into the living room wearing her nightclothes and her blue robe and she said, “Mulder—“
And I looked at her funny because she was wearing these two different colored socks, one red and green striped sock and the other one blue, which was a bit odd for Scully but I wasn’t going to question her. She’d just, you know, popped a baby out of her uterus the week before and she was kind of irritable . Understandably irritable, that is. Or else the pain and the lack of sleep was killing brain cells left and right. Nevertheless I said, “Yes—“
And she folded her arms across her chest and said, “I want to keep a baby book. A record of things. Do you mind, Mulder?”
I shook my head vigorously that I didn’t mind, mostly out of common sense and self-preservation. Scully had a look on her face. That ‘my whole body hurts so go ahead and fuck with me’ look that you just don’t argue with. So I said, “I think that’s a very interesting idea.”
And Scully said “Good,” and nodded at me. Then she walked out of the living room just as randomly as she had entered and she disappeared into our bedroom. A dryer sheet fell off the back of her robe as she grabbed the door handle and closed it behind her. She may have slammed the door. I don’t know. The TV was awfully loud at the time.
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“That is absolute crap, Mulder.”
Dana Scully, a small but very lovely and well-tailored looking young woman, crisp in a pair of black slacks and a gray vee-neck shirt, makes a face like she’s tasted poisoned seafood.
Fox Mulder, a rather good looking young guy, with dark brown hair, unreadable hazel eyes and nicely toned arms, turns to look at Scully with an innocent expression. “Do you deny that you asked me about the baby book?” he asks.
“I deny that I walked into the room looking like a welfare case.”
Mulder folds those nice arms of his across his chest. “Well, how would you describe it?”
Scully narrows her eyes. “First of all, I wasn’t wearing mismatched socks. Second of all… I don’t even have a second of all, Mulder. Is that what you think of me? That I’m this post-partum, vagabond looking, blood sucking….” Scully pauses and waves her hands in mid-air for emphasis, “…monster-personified X File that’s going to rip off the top of your skull if you so much as disagree with me?”
Mulder stares at her, not blinking. “Did I say bloodsucking? I never said bloodsucking.”
Scully shakes her head and rubs her forehead with her thumb and index finger. “Oh Christ,” she says. Then she looks at me. “You’re not recording this, are you?”
“Well…” Uncomfortably, I clear my throat. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was told that every little thing is important.”
Scully nods slowly and shoots Mulder a look that could very well have shattered the coffee table.
I am sitting on the couch across from both of them—Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, with a tape recorder in one hand, a notebook in my lap, and a number two pencil in my other hand. (I started off with a roller-point pen but I find that the eraser comes in handy with these two. All they do is disagree with each other. How do you live like that?)
Basically, I’m here because of Jose Chung. Apparently some book he wrote forever ago, “From Outer Space” or something like that, broke some landmark record for the most amount of copies sold in a five-year period. Thus, his agent (who makes ten percent of Jose Chung’s royalties,) advised that Mr. Chung should write a sequel. So just yesterday, Mr. Chung called my publishing company and my publishing company called me in to consult and edit. Then I called Mr. Chung’s agent and was advised that Mr. Chung had subsequently fallen ill with the flu and would be unable to complete his research for the follow up novel. My boss was, of course, extraordinarily unhappy. Without the research for Mr. Chung’s novel, the book could not be published in time and that would put Harperly Publishing way, way behind schedule. (In other words, nobody would be making money.) So I –being the only willing editor and consultant on hand, rode in on my crappy, non-white, underpaid steed to make the rescue. I was ordered to contact Mr. Chung’s research subjects—a miss Dana Scully and a Mr. Fox Mulder, for an interview. (For those of you without intimate knowledge of “From Outer Space,” Scully is the woman whose bizarre real life inspired the character Diana Lusky, and Mulder is the man who inspired Muldrake.)
So anyway, that was Friday afternoon. Today is Saturday. My boss said the interview was to be done ASAP (like, when is anything ever NOT needed in rush order these days) and if Miss Scully and Mr. Mulder (or one or the other) gave me their permission to be interviewed, I was to use Mr. Chung’s questions and instructions to gather an amalgamation of their everyday lives and fax it to his agent’s office by Sunday evening. Yeah. So this interview is for a book I’m not even writing. If not for Mr. Chung being at home with a fever of one hundred and three, I’d probably be sleeping right now. Or else I’d be eating breakfast in bed. Damn that man and his damn best selling “From Outer Space” novel. Why can’t he just leave well enough alone? I hate sequels. They’re never as good as the original and this is the kind of nonsense you have to put up with to write them.
I clear my throat. “Why don’t we backtrack,” I offer, looking from Scully to Mulder and back again. They both look incredibly agitated.
“To where?” Mulder asks, leaning forward on his tanned elbows. His black t-shirt rides up slightly as he moves, revealing quite dashing biceps. The guy’s about as emotional as a piece of wood, but Jesus, he really is in good shape. Okay. I need to quit staring at him. His girlfriend—err, partner, err…whatever they’re calling it these days—knows how to fire a gun.
Scully snaps her head around to glance at Mulder. “Mulder, I hope you understand that is not your interview,” she says to him. “I was the primary research source for the first book. You bowed out of that one, rather ambivalently, if I recall. I don’t know why you’re all of a sudden so interested in sticking around. You don’t even like the guy’s work. You’ve never even read ‘From Outer Space.’ ”
Mulder wags his index finger at her like an angry five year old. “You underestimate me,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t learn my lesson the first time, Scully. When you decided to open your mouth and I ended up looking like a complete buffoon because you thought it best to completely circumnavigate the truth and spin some otherworldly tale—“
Scully arches an auburn eyebrow. “Otherwordly tale, Mulder?”
“About a case we investigated involving teenagers and alien abductions. You reduced the entire scenario to nothing more than science fiction -- at least from my end of it. It was all girly screams and fake aliens and my ‘willingness to believe in almost anything.’ You honestly think I didn’t read that book, Diana Lusky?”
Scully opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She blinks a few times. Then she shakes her head with what looks like derision. I decide to make a note of her hands—neatly folded in her lap, but the right one is slightly fidgety. I wonder if she’s debating whether to slap him or choke him. Maybe she really can’t make up her mind.
Mulder shakes his head. “Look, all I’m saying is that your account of certain events and mine are completely different. You know that, don’t you?”
I sigh. This is getting us nowhere. I want to be out of here by one. Damn it.
“Okay,” I say, “how bout this. I'll leave this tape recorder with you. Mulder, why don’t you give me an overview of yourself, your life, and your version of Dana with the baby. Dana, I’d like you to do the same. And if either of you notice anything completely removed from your own recollection of the events, you can feel free to amend each other’s stories. I’ll leave you be for awhile, then I’ll come back to get your stories—“ I pause, flipping through several pages of pre-recorded, typed out notes and advisories. “—at three o clock. And we can review a bit… oh, and I need you to talk about this ‘following a light in the sky’ thing. Okay?”
Scully glances at Mulder’s profile with what appears to be apprehension in her eyes, her hands still folded neatly in her lap. Then, as if he can feel her looking at him, Mulder returns her glance with warm hazel eyes and a sort of half-smile; he shrugs his shoulders crookedly. Scully cocks her head to one side. I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to say to her but apparently he’s doing it quite clearly without opening his mouth. This is nuts. Are they talking with their eyes? What the—
Neither of them answers me for a good thirty seconds; they just stare at each other with these bizarre expressions on their faces. Scully smiles at Mulder as if he’s just told her a joke. Her silent, amused response is a rather odd reaction to nothing, but she has a rather nice smile to make up for it. Her delicately shaped lips upturn so that her blue eyes sparkle and her ivory cheeks redden.... Wait--is she blushing? What the heck is she blushing about? I must have missed something in the translation.
“That sounds fine,” Scully finally says, looking not at me but at Mulder.
“Mr. Mulder?” I ask.
“Fine,” he says, looking not at me but at Scully.
Oh for the love of God, this is going to be a long day.
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Go to PART ONE: MULDER