Gift for: akachankami
Title: The Gifts of the Magi (On a Kaiser Roll)
Author: maybe_amanda
Rating: G-est of G-ees!
Warnings: None
Word Count: 1882.
Summary: Mulder and Scully and the human condition. With condiments.
Timeline: Set sometime post season two and pre season four, but not necessarily season three. If you see what I mean.
Notes: For akachankami! Happy epiphany!
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Mulder finds Scully right where he'd left her: on an uncomfortable wooden chair in an under-heated office in the bowels of the Undershaw County Coroner's Office, staring daggers at a muted TV mounted in one corner. Scully wants a body, but not just any body. No, Scully wants the inexplicably pliant, warm, non-rotting corpse of one Christopher Moore aka Oliver Moore aka David Moore aka Marcus Moore aka twelve-or-so more Moores, a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-of-the-road middle-manager-cum-spree killer, who keeps dying, but refuses to stay dead.
Or something like that.
Mulder's formulated over a dozen theories as to what's really going on here, devised and dismissed over a dozen more about how it's being done - identical twins, identical triplets, exceptionally skilled, exceptionally fast plastic surgery, bi-location, tri-location, optical illusion, mass hypnosis, some sort of deal with the devil, alien intervention, and that tried-and-true classic, cloning and body-swapping. He'd shared each of these notions - none was really developed enough, even he had to admit, to be considered an idea - and Scully had met each with a dropped chin, a raised eyebrow, and a roaring silence that said it all.
In other words, Scully's been a bit irritable. And this delay isn't helping her disposition one bit.
Mulder had assumed Mr. Moore would prove to be a simple case of 'getting it wrapped to go.' He had hoped to leave Montana before any more snow could fall or any more airports could fill with merry-makers heading home for the holidays. But Dr. Oliver, the coroner whose office this is, refuses to release the body without proper authorization from the state, and Scully refuses to leave the state without the body. Frustrated, tired, hungry, trapped between a bureaucratic rock and a partnerly hard place, Mulder made the only sensible move he could: he'd offered to go find lunch.
"Cavalry's arrived," he announces, and stamps snow from his shoes. He places two white deli bags and two brown paper cups on the table in front of Scully with a flourish. "Ta da!"
"Good timing, Mr. Cavalry," Scully replies, "since I'm now officially hungry enough to eat a horse. What took you so long?"
What took him so long was the incredibly lengthy, incredibly slow-moving line-up at the diner four blocks away. "Elfeen's Deli is clearly the most popular lunch spot in town," Mulder explains. "It also has the slowest counter help in the Western hemisphere."
Scully peers at the grease pencil writing on first one bag, then the other. She frowns. "Worse than Rudd's?"
"Way worse than Rudd's," Mulder says as he takes a seat opposite her. "At Rudd's they go slow out of spite. Elfeen, whoever she may be, simply seems to favour hiring the very talkative and the very comatose."
"Keeps them both off the streets, I guess." Scully's frown deepens. "Is this written in code?"
"Klingon, I think." He passes her a cup of coffee - one cream, no sugar - and peels the lid from his own. "They're celebrating the season at Elfeen's. They were out of salad, so I got you The Everybody Knows on Seven Golden Grains." He nudges a bag towards her. "Can you even name seven grains?"
"Wheat, rice, oats, millet, rye, barley, spelt, quinoa, amaranth," Scully answers.
"Show off," Mulder replies. He thinks she might have made those last three up.
She lifts the wax-paper wrapped sandwich and a small packet of multi-grain Sun-chips from the bag. She probably sees right through the salad lie, but she lets it slide. "The Everybody Knows?" she asks.
He pulls three packets of mayonnaise and three of yellow mustard from his left jacket pocket, a stack of paper napkins festooned with holly leaves from his right, tosses it into a heap on the table. "Turkey," he says. "As in 'Everybody knows a turkey'. I asked them to hold the mistletoe."
"Thanks for that," she says. Wrappings removed, Scully eyes her lunch with suspicion. He's gotten used to that, though. Since Scully lost all that weight a while back, she eyes any food that isn't composed primarily of air and dust with suspicion. It's not a huge sandwich, so she might finish half of it, and he knows she has a weakness for salty, crunchy things, so maybe she'll nibble on a chip or two. It's hard to believe she's the same woman who once nearly ate him under the table at that all-you-can-eat rib place in Wisconsin. "What did you get?"
"The Gifts of the Magi on a Kaiser Roll."
"Intriguing name," she says. "And what exactly does that involve?"
"Breaded veal cutlet -"
"Yum."
"- with golden mustard -"
"Ah," she says. "Gold?"
He nods. " - Frank's Red-Hot sauce -"
"Frankincense?" she asks.
"And, um," he lifts the lid off his sandwich, "kale? I think that's kale. Something green and leafy and definitely not lettuce."
"Not exactly myrrh, is it?"
He takes a bite, chews, swallows. "Pretty good, though. Not sure the flavour would have been in any way improved by the addition of tree sap, however prized by the ancients." He takes another bite. Yeah, still pretty good, but it needs more mustard, so he sets to work fixing that. "Imagine the wise men showing up at the manger with kale," he says, two swallowed bites and a swig of coffee later. "Worst. Birthday gift. Ever!"
Scully's lips actually twitch into an almost-smile, but it doesn't last long. "You know, I've never really understood that story," she says.
"The wise men?" Mulder says. "As I'm sure Mother Superior Mary Methuselah probably mentioned, the Adoration of the Magi is only canonically mentioned in the Book of Matthew, and while an early part of the Christian tradition, it is considered by most scholars to be an attempt by early Christian - what?"
Scully's shaking her head. "The stuff you've got crammed into that brain," she mutters. "Not that story. The Gift of the Magi. The O. Henry story."
Mulder says, "Ah." But what he really means is, "Um?"
"This young newly-wed couple want to buy each other Christmas gifts but they're broke," she says.
"Okay," Mulder says. He's vaguely familiar with the story. He thinks. Maybe? A husband and wife exchange a comb and some paper clips. And there's a rubber duck? But that might be the Sesame Street version he might have watched with Sam.
"The wife has long hair and the husband has a pocket watch - "
"R-right."
"So she sells her hair to buy him a watch chain, and he sells his watch to buy her some combs for her hair."
"Right," Mulder says again. "Yeah, I remember. Read it in eighth grade or something. I remember thinking, 'Who'd want to buy hair?'"
She picks up her coffee stir stick, begins spinning it end to end between her fingers. "Seems like we read it just about every year. Teachers always pushed it as this great story about love, you know, about sacrifice."
"Right."
"But I could never quite bring myself to see it that way."
"What?" Mulder asks. "You think the story is a reflection of the fetishization of individual sacrifice at the expense of collective effort? Or would you say it's more accurately interpreted as a scathing indictment of rampant consumerism, and if so, does this mean I can skip giving you a gift this year?"
Scully gives him a withering look. "You've skipped giving me a gift every year."
"True, but it's reassuring to know I've always gotten you exactly what you've wanted." He scrunches the paper from his sandwich into a ball and tosses toward a garbage can he remembers seeing near the door. It may or may not have gone in.
Scully half-shrugs, takes a sip of her coffee. "It's not even that."
Mulder waits for her to elaborate. "Then what is it?" he finally prompts.
Scully raises her gaze to his, lifts her chin. There's defiance in her expression, and something else, something he's rarely seen in her eyes, and never had to name. "It's like the whole point of the story is no matter what you do, no matter how sincere your desire to make others happy, to do good, you're bound to fail."
Mulder blinks at her, unsure of how to respond. That assessment doesn't sound like Scully, not like the Scully he knows, at least. His Scully has a sometimes annoying tendency to be optimistic. Well, okay, maybe not optimistic. More like - hopeful. That's the word he's looking for - hopeful.
His first instinct is to argue her out of this glum stance. After all, it's a well-established fact that he's the morose one in this partnership, thank you very much. He's the one with the insane theories. The questionable reputation. The bleak outlook. The absent sister.
Only now, well, Scully's missing a sister, too, isn't she?
And this, he thinks, is why people hate the holidays.
"Is that what you actually believe?" he asks as gently as he can without sounding like he's trying to play therapist. "Or is this just an exercise in critical literary theory?"
Scully half grins, then sighs. "I don't know. Maybe it's more a reflection of three lousy nights of sleep."
"You didn't find our accommodations luxurious enough?" he asks. "I admit, they were somewhat lacking in ambiance."
"And hot water," Scully says. "And clean towels. And heat."
"And heat," Mulder agrees.
"What about you?" Scully asks after a moment.
"Me?"
"The story. What do you think the story is about?"
He could plead ignorance. Or just as easily make a joke of it. But -
"I think you're right," he says. "I think the story is telling us we're bound to be wrong. To make mistakes. To hurt and disappoint and confuse those we love, and in turn, to be hurt and disappointed and confused by those who claim to love us. To miscommunicate and obfuscate and, and show up with gold and frankincense and kale when a green salad would have sufficed."
Scully nods. She looks so sad that Mulder wants to scream. "I think It's just -"
"Agents," a voice calls. Sheriff Thomas comes into the room. "I got the all-clear from Helena. Dr. Oliver says Moore's all packed up and you're good to go. And he's sorry we had to keep you here so long," he says.
"No problem," Mulder lies.
The sheriff leaves and they gather their belonging, sort through their garbage. Mulder decides to leave the napkins, but takes the stir stick. He retrieves the ball of paper that had so easily, so carelessly missed its mark, and drops it in the trash. Scully sweeps herself into her enormous coat without ever once meeting his eye.
He should say something. He really should say something. And he's got nothing. But that's never stopped him.
"Scully," Mulder says, just as she turns and says, "Mulder."
They look at each other, one beat, two, then one more.
"You can have the window seat," Mulder finally says. "Or the aisle seat, maybe? And -and you can drive the rental back." He nearly rolls his eyes, because, oh lord, what a stupid thing to say. "If you want, I mean."
Scully smiles then, really smiles. "Yeah," she says. "Sure. Thanks. Come on, let's go home."