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Martha's Vineyard
May 1979
Fox Mulder ran down the crooked stairs, taking the steps two at a time and yelling as he went. He was making good time until he collided with the solid form of the assistant principal of Martha's Vineyard Regional High School.
"Mr. Mulder." After four years of Fox Mulder, the assistant principal's tone carried a bored sort of warning. "I'd hope by this point in your academic career you would be familiar with just a few of MVR's rules."
"Yes, sir." Mulder dropped his backpack onto the floor and began to tuck in his shirt. He hadn't even buttoned it properly that morning.
"I wasn't referring to our dress code," Assistant Principal Skinner said. "I was referring to the rules which prohibit both running and yelling in the hallways."
Mulder stopped mid-tuck, his shirttail still hanging free of his pants. "Oh." Casually, he picked up his book bag and slung it over one shoulder. "It won't happen again, sir."
"See that it doesn't," warned Skinner, but rather than dismissing Mulder at this point, he continued, "Unless I'm mistaken, Mr. Mulder, you are a senior. As such, your locker is located on the second floor, along with those of the rest of the senior class. This is the basement, is it not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you down here with the intent to assert your negative influence on the lower classmen of my school?"
Mulder grinned. "Only the girls."
Skinner gave a long-suffering sigh. "If you were wise, Mr. Mulder, you would see to it that this was the only contact we had throughout the course of this school day. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal."
"Very well. Don't be late for homeroom."
Student and assistant principal parted ways on that note, and once Mulder was safely around the corner, he picked up his pace and began yelling once more as he made his way to the freshmen lockers. "Dana! Hey, Scully, guess what!"
Dana Scully could hear Fox Mulder's loud mouth quite clearly. Much to her chagrin, the same was true of Tad Appelgate, the junior editor of the school paper, with whom she was finally engaging in a potentially life-altering conversation.
"I'm sorry to hear that you and Michelle broke up," Dana said, faking sincerity and placing her hand on Tad's arm. "If there's anything I can do..."
Before Tad could form a response, yet another holler of, "Dana!" reverberated off the lockers. Not two seconds later, the sea of freshmen parted to reveal Fox Mulder.
Tad tried to remind himself that, while Mulder was older, taller, better looking, and had a car, the kid was still spooky as hell. The spooky angle only worked until Tad remembered the Mulder family had an income considerably larger than that of his own.
"Uh, excuse me," Tad mumbled, taking off down the hall. He left a crestfallen Dana Scully in his wake.
"Mulder!" Dana exclaimed. "What in the world is the matter with you? That was Tad!"
Mulder leaned against the locker adjacent to Dana's. "Ted?"
"Tad." The blank look on Mulder's face led her to continue, "As in the junior editor of the paper and the now-ex-boyfriend of Michelle Sanders. Tad, as in the boy I've been talking about for a month now?"
"Oh. Tad."
"Yes, Mulder. Tad." She took her algebra book from her locker and slammed the door. "You can be so dense sometimes. Don't you ever listen to a word I say?"
"Look, just because I don't pay attention to every spin of the revolving door of your love life--"
"Excuse me?"
Mulder didn't need to see the hot blue glare in Dana's eyes to know he had just stepped in it. Big time. "I didn't mean--"
"Shut up," she snapped, holding up one finger in a gesture of warning. "I'm going to go find Tad and see if I can salvage what was once a very promising conversation. Don't follow me."
Mulder's shoulders slumped as he watched Dana walk away, her short skirt swinging as she moved. "But I'm missing nine minutes," he said to no one at all.
-
Dana narrowed her eyes and squared her shoulders when she saw Mulder leaning against her locker. "What do you want?" she asked, reaching around him to spin the combination on her lock.
"Did you catch up to Tad?" Mulder asked, stepping out of her way.
"Yes."
Mulder waited, but no more information was forthcoming. "And? How did it go?"
"I thought you weren't interested in the revolving door of my love life." She tugged open the locker door with more force than necessary.
"I'm turning over a new leaf."
Dana took her book bag out of her locker and began shoving books into it, paying no attention to whether or not she actually needed them. "He said, and I quote, 'I don't date good girls, freshmen, or virgins. And, face it, Danes, you're all three.' Does that satisfy your curiosity, Mulder?"
Mulder looked at the floor, feeling the urge to apologize for his gender. "Dana..."
"It's fine," she said. "It worked out for me, too, because, as it turns out, I don't date idiots. You have to be some sort of moron to think that writing an article criticizing the new uniform policy makes you a rebel, and that being a sophomore makes you God. He thinks he's so tough, but did you see the way he ran when you showed up this morning?"
"Ouch," Mulder said. "Way to boost the ego, Dana."
"Oh, Mulder, I didn't mean it like that..."
"But now I know how you feel, right?"
"More or less." Dana glanced at him as she zipped up her backpack. "So, what did you want to talk to me about this morning?"
Mulder shook his head. "I'll tell you later. For now, what do you say we blow this Popsicle stand?"
"Let's go," she agreed, shutting her locker and picking up her book bag. She made a face when the full weight of the textbooks settled on her shoulders.
"Want me to carry that?" Mulder asked as they began walking.
"No," she answered sharply. A second ticked by before she remembered to add, "Thanks. I'm fine."
"You don't even need half those books," he said as they reached the stairs. Resting a hand on the small of her back, he directed her to walk ahead of him.
Looking over her shoulder at him, she said, "I don't care how spooky you are, Mulder. There is no way you know what I have for homework."
He shrugged. "It's the end of the year. The teachers are as tired of grading assignments as we are of doing them. At the same time, it's too early to study for finals, so I'm thinking the only homework you have is...biology, which explains why you're coming home with me." Although she couldn't see it, he waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Algebra, smart-ass. An entire page of quadratic equations."
"I'm retracting my previous statement. You've been doing my pre-calc since November. You can do quadratic equations in your sleep, Scully, or at least in homeroom tomorrow. You don't need any of those books." At the top of the stairs, he took his place at her side once more, shooting his best glare at Tad Appelgate as they passed the sophomore lockers.
"Speaking of pre-calc, do you have any tonight?"
Mulder shook his head. "There's a test tomorrow, though. Last one before finals."
"Are you going to pass it?"
"The test, the final, or the class?" Mulder asked, fishing his car keys from his pants pocket and pushing open the door for the back exit, which opened out onto the parking lot.
"All of the above, please."
"No, maybe, and yes." He saw her annoyed expression and said, "Don't you have your own grades to worry about?"
"I'm not the one who's going to college next year, Mulder. Yes, I do have my own schoolwork, but I also have three years to get my act together if I mess up. You, on the other hand, could have your Oxford admission revoked if you don't keep your grades at an acceptable level." She lowered her voice. "I don't want you to be stuck here, Mulder, not with all that's happened. You need to go to England, so you can start over."
He grabbed Dana by the arm, and she jumped at the unusual form of contact. Pulling her to the side, he said, "What about you, Dana?"
"What about me, Mulder? I'm fine here. I've never been happier."
"You don't get it, do you, Scully? It's fine now, but once I'm gone, you're just going to be that girl who hung out with Spooky Mulder all the time."
Dana looked at him in disbelief. "You don't have a very high opinion of me, do you?"
"It's not you, Scully -- it's everyone else. You've only been here a year, but I've lived here my whole life. I know these people; I used to be one of them. It's been five years since my sister disappeared, and we know nothing, so they make up lies to fill the gaps. Anything surrounding my family is fair game, including you. You've got the stigma now, Scully, and they're going to make your life hell. Once old Spooky is gone, they're going to go looking for a new pariah, and you're the closest thing to me. They're not going to let you forget it."
Dana grabbed his hand, her fingers closing around it in a death grip. She looked him in the eye as she said, "Listen to me, Mulder: I'm going to be fine. You told me all this going in, and I still wanted to be your friend. That doesn't change now, no matter where you're going to be come fall. There's nothing you can do to change it, and even if there was, I wouldn't let you."
"I could stay here."
"And end up hating me? No, Mulder. No. Just go to Oxford. You can't be in college and have your entire social life consist of a girl who's still in high school. That doesn't look good for either of us."
He pried his hand free of hers and turned away from her. "You don't understand, Scully. It's not that easy."
"What's there to understand, Mulder?"
"I'm going to miss you!"
The yelled confession came out before he had time to think, and it echoed from the buildings around them for what seemed like hours. Mulder's heart began to pound rapidly in his chest, and he felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his skull -- he hadn't wanted to say that, but there it was, out in the open, and now all he could do was wait for Dana to react.
Dana stared at him blankly for a moment, and then she began to laugh. "Mulder, you idiot," she said, breathless from laughing, "do you really think I don't feel the same way? I'm going to miss you, too, but you can't stay because of that."
"I just -- I guess I thought it would be easier for you, because your family moves around so much. I thought you would be used to it. Because of that."
"Mulder, leaving your friends is not something you ever get used to."
"I know," he said, smiling ruefully. "I know. I wasn't thinking."
"Oh, Mulder." Dana shook her head in amusement. "Come on. Let's go to your house. I'll help you study for pre-calc, and you can tell me about whatever had you so excited this morning, okay?"
-
Dana sat cross-legged on Mulder's bed, her skirt pulled neatly over her lap, while Mulder sat at his desk, excitedly rocking his chair back and forth on two of its legs. He grinned at her, while she stared at him wide-eyed and dumfounded until she finally found her words.
"Mulder, you're crazy," she stated. "There is absolutely no way you were abducted by aliens last night. It just -- it doesn't happen. It's impossible."
"But I lost nine minutes," he protested. "I looked up from my homework, and it was two fifty-seven. I looked back a second later, and it was six minutes after three."
"You looked up from your Playboy and it was two fifty-seven," Dana said, leaning over the side of the mattress and pulling the magazine out from under the bed. She held it up between two fingers. "You probably just zoned out into some fantasy about the centerfold. What in the world are you going to do if your mother ever finds this in your room, Mulder?"
"Deny everything," he answered. "She's not going to find it, though, just like your parents aren't going to find out you sneak out of the house to smoke. And I was not fantasizing about the centerfold. I didn't even get to the centerfold. Look at page fifteen."
She stared at him dubiously.
"Go on," he urged. "No naked women. I swear."
"Mulder," she said, "I'm a girl. I don't care if there are naked women."
"Then look at it."
Dana let out an exasperated sigh and thumbed through the page numbers until she found page fifteen. She spread the magazine open and frowned when she saw what was on the pages in front of her. "Sylvester Stallone," she said. She looked up at Mulder. "So you're telling me you actually buy this for the articles?"
"Yeah, I read them." Mulder had stopped rocking his chair and was now poised on the edge of it, somewhat nervously.
"I see," Dana said, sliding her forefinger between two pages that were further back in the magazine. She watched as the tension in Mulder's shoulders increased with each second her finger stayed between the pages. Casually, she said, "I have an older brother, you know..."
Then, she flipped open to the centerfold and held the open magazine up in front of her. "...so I'm pretty sure this is why you buy it," she concluded, waggling the picture back and forth, well out of Mulder's reach.
"Give it back," he said, leaning forward.
"Or?"
"Or I'll take it back."
Dana turned her head and faked yawning into her shoulder. "Maybe you didn't hear me the first time, but I have an older brother."
"And I'm not him."
With that, Mulder leaped off his chair and onto the bed, knocking Dana onto her back as he tried wrestling the magazine from her. She kept a firm grip on it even as she laughed, but soon released it for fear that it would get ripped in the struggle. "Okay, okay!" she surrendered, laughing.
"Ha!" he proclaimed, holding the magazine over his head, where Dana could never reach it. "Told you I'd..." He trailed off, realizing the Dana was no longer laughing.
"Dana?" he asked, dropping the magazine onto the floor. Worry replaced the mirth in his eyes as he looked down at her lying very still against the mattress. She wasn't looking back at him, but rather out the window on the right side of the room. "God, did I hurt you? I'm so sorry, I didn't...oh."
He wanted to kick himself when his mind finally processed the whole picture. Dana was flat on her back, and he was kneeling above her, one knee on either side of her hips. Her skirt had bunched up high on her thighs, exposing more skin that usual, while her shirt had come untucked, baring her midriff. Her red hair was spread across the pillow, and one arm was thrown over her head, her palm resting against the headboard. He'd seen this before, on page twenty-seven of the Playboy he'd just tossed aside.
"Shit," he said, scrambling off the bed. "Dana -- Scully -- Dana, I..."
"I think I should go," Dana said quickly, her hands smoothing her skirt and blouse back into place before she sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the mattress and stood up, her back to him. "I'm..."
"Don't go," Mulder said. "This wasn't anything, Dana. We're friends, and we were goofing, and..."
She turned around, and they faced each other from opposite sides of the bed. "It's your turn not to get it," she said after a long moment, looking at him with sad, grey eyes.
"What?" He forced his lungs to take in oxygen. His knotted stomach was up in his throat.
"Tad," she said. "The pre-calc. The magazine. The cigarettes. I just..."
"Dana?" Mulder prompted. Speaking actually hurt, he realized. The words clumped together in his throat, and he had to force them out before he choked. "You just what?"
"Today was the first time I had the nerve to talk to Tad," Dana said, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. "I'm just...I'm just tired of being all three, Mulder."
He stared at her, and opened his mouth to speak. The only thing that came out was, "Uh."
"You're my best friend, Mulder. I don't want to mess that up, not now. Not with you leaving for England in a few months. But I want..." She looked away, down at the beige shag carpet that covered his bedroom floor. The room was silent.
"Yes." Mulder heard his voice crack on the word, and a distant part of his mind told him he should be cringing at the sound.
Dana's head jerked up, and she frowned in confusion. "What?"
Clumsily, Mulder crawled across the bed on his knees, until he was kneeling at eye level with Dana. "Yes," he said, grabbing her right hand. His grip was every bit as strong as hers had been outside the school. "Don't you get it? Whatever you want, Scully, yes. I can't help you with being a freshman, but..." He grinned at her, knowing it was a dorky grin, but finding himself unable to care.
Dana laughed once, and the sound was both nervous and happy. "Is this going to be weird?" she asked, tilting her head as she looked into his eyes.
"Extremely weird." Mulder gave the answer without hesitation, and emphasized it with a nod of his head.
"Good."
:end: