Title : When Life Hands You Lemons
Author : Shawne
E-Mail : shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com 
Rating : PG-13
Category : SRH
Spoilers : none
Keywords : MSR, fluff, PWP
Summary : Mulder and Scully get down and dirty.
Archive : Just ask me, and I will say yes. OK to the standard Gossamer and
Ephemeral.
Disclaimers : What, you thought Mulder and Scully were *mine*? I mock the
ground you walk on!!
Author's Notes : My recent stories have all been delightfully cheerful and
fluffy. This one, by contrast... is no exception. In fact, I apologise right
now for the fact that it has almost no redeeming plot at all. It is,
essentially, a means to an end. ;) Please just enjoy the M/S interaction as
much as I enjoyed writing it. Also, this is for Lisa, who beta read, and
everyone else who read it as a result of my insecurities.
======================================================
"Mulder, after we get clean, you're going to walk the three miles to that
dump to bring my car back."
Her key turned noisily in the lock, and she pushed the door of her
apartment open. She turned to stare me down for the fifth time since we'd
entered her building, and I smiled at her as apologetically, as charmingly,
as I could.
"I don't know why I even agreed to meet you in the first place," she
muttered darkly as she picked her way gingerly towards the kitchen. I stood
uncomfortably in the doorway, still gauging her reaction, still unsure if I
was to be welcomed into her home today.
Once again, she turned to shoot me one of her Death Stares, then  realised
I was waiting nervously for her to invite me in. Her eyes almost danced, and
she nearly gave in to a smile. But then she pulled herself together, no
doubt with the help of memories of what I'd done this time round, and
snapped, "Well, aren't you coming in?"
Eager to appease, I darted through the door, and closed it gently behind
me. I began to sidle over the spotless floor, trying to keep from tracking
too much dirt on it.
"Watch where you walk," she called to me warningly. "I just had the entire
place vacuumed a while ago."
"Right," I called back, and decided to be safe now, rather than sorry
later. Reaching down, I pulled off my mud-soaked trainers... but not before
I noticed the two thick footprints I had already left imprinted on the
floor. Damn.
"You'd better come in here and tell me everything, Mulder," Scully yelled
again, her voice slightly muffled, yet amplified. I heard the clatter of
metal against metal, and guessed that she was banging around in her
cupboards, looking for something. "You know I'm going to get it out of you
sooner or later."
Sheepishly, I stole into the kitchen on tiptoe, not wanting to antagonise
her any further. My socks were probably about the only part of my clothes
that were still the same colour they had been when I'd put them on this
morning. Looking at her now, I could just about describe her attire in the
same way.
I moved until I was almost directly behind her, then coughed delicately to
get her attention. She started, a little, but kept her composure quite
remarkably.
There was a tight smile on her face when she spun around to face me next,
holding two lemons in one hand and a juicer in the other.
"Now, what was our little trip to the Georgetown Dumps this morning all
about?" Moving over to her kitchen table, she motioned for me to follow her,
but jabbed me ominously with a lemon when I tried to sit on one of her
carved wooden chairs. "You don't deserve to sit down, Mulder," she pointed
out wryly.
"Oh. Right," I replied, still trying to win her over with a smile. She
ignored me completely, returning to the counter to retrieve a bowl and knife
she had obviously set out earlier. I stood awkwardly next to the table, not
quite knowing what to tell her. Worse... not quite knowing what she wanted
to hear.
"Well?" She pulled the chopping block at the far end of the table closer to
her, and placed a lemon on it. I winced as she sliced mercilessly into the
yellow fruit, seeming to enjoy its dissection in a decidely violent way.
"Um... I'm sorry, Scully?" I finally ventured, weakly, more than slightly
terrified by the energy she was using to attack the poor lemon. Better to
pander to her now, when she was engrossed in mauling fruit, than when she
changed her mind about homicide and turned to mauling me instead.
"You've apologised before, Mulder. And while I do love to hear you
grovel..." Her voice trailed off as she picked up a lemon half and began
pushing it forcefully through the juicer. I watched, mesmerised, as the
liquid flesh yielded into pulp under her relentless hands. "...right now, I
just want to hear your reasons for bringing me to that dump."
I cleared my throat nervously. Scully seemed more annoyed than angry now,
which was in itself a good thing. A very good thing. However, a Scully who
was annoyed, dirty and tired was still someone I had no intention of
grappling with, and instinctively, I moved around the table so that I was
directly opposite her. There. At least now, there was a distance of three
feet separating us.
"I told you before, Scully," I managed, still in fearful awe of the way she
had so effectively squeezed the life out of a harmless piece of fruit.
She sighed loudly, pushing the juicer aside and throwing the empty wounds
of lemon rinds on the table. "I know, Mulder. We were there following some
kind of lead, as usual. Or so you say. What I need to know is what you were
rooting around for in the trash... and why you made me dig through it with
you, even though you refused to tell me what we were looking for." Picking
up the second lemon, she studied it thoughtfully before locking her steely
gaze on me.
If I hadn't been quite so worried about my physical safety, I would have
laughed at the memories of this morning. The pained distaste written into
every part of Scully's body as she drove rigidly into the dump, the obvious
disgust in her eyes when she first saw me (covered in dirt as I had been),
the horror on her face when I asked her to help me... and best (or possibly
worst) of all, the terror in her voice when she screamed to me for help -
after having fallen into a monstrous pile of rubbish.
I had to give her credit though. She had rooted through the dumps with me
for almost fifteen minutes. Of course, about seven of those minutes had been
spent whining and demanding why we were in the dump, of all places, on a
beautiful Saturday morning. The other eight had simply flown by in tense and
bitter silence as she poked listlessly at banana peels and crushed soda
cans.
The last straw, for her, had obviously come when she'd tripped over a
dented fender which had been ripped off the front of a car and thrown
carelessly at the bottom of a heap of rain-soaked garbage. When she had
landed with a resounding splash in the muddy goo, her face had changed
colours, most noticeably from blue to red to purple. She'd yelled my name
several times, so ferociously that the alley cats living among the little
trash hills had darted away in fear.
Oh, I had seen her fall, and I had known she was yelling for me to help her
out of the mess she was literally in. But I had been more than a bit afraid
of actually showing myself to her, as an angry Scully was also not a Scully
to be reckoned with. In fact, Scully in any circumstance was to be handled
carefully, with finesse and skill.
And I'd had absolutely no idea what to expect from a Scully covered in mud
and smelling of nine different kinds of poo. Fortunately, the anger I'd
sensed in her hand when I eventually reached over to pull her out hadn't
lasted long... because the next thing I knew, she had tugged at my hand, and
dragged me headlong into the rubbish heap next to her.
Should I have been angry? Probably not. In all fairness, I had  deserved
it, waking her up at eight on a Saturday morning and asking her to meet me
at the Georgetown Dumps, a good five minutes' drive out of the city centre.
Plus, she was in a sticky situation - pardon the pun - that had been almost
entirely my fault.
Looking over at her, though, as we'd both half-sat on a brown expanse of
mud, surrounded by the putrid smell of rot and decay, I'd  almost had a
coronary. Even when dressed liberally in dirt and decorated with the odd
scrap of newspaper, Scully had been criminally beautiful. Her blue eyes had
twinkled at me in mischief, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth,
just before she'd snapped back into Death Stare mode.
If anyone can look good dressed in rubbish, it's my Scully.
"Mulder?" She nudged me from my thoughts with a grimy elbow, and I blinked
rapidly to get rid of the image forming in my mind. The decidedly unchaste
image forming in my mind.
Don't think I didn't appreciate the irony of the term 'dirty mind' right
then. Because I did.
"I'm still waiting for an answer." She ground more lemon juice into the
bowl, fiercely, and pushed clumps of muddied hair off her dirt-streaked
face.
Swallowing, I looked away. I was beginning to feel extremely  glad that the
lower part of my body was hidden from her sharp and intense eyes by the
table. It would mean real, inescapable Death for me and any little Mulders
to come if she could see what my body was trying to tell her now. She would
probably think I was sick or perverted or something.
I couldn't be quite sure I wasn't.
"Like I said, Scully, I was following a lead." I kept my eyes averted,
focusing only on the wasted bits of lemon curled up on the table. "I'm sorry
you fell, but I didn't mean for that to happen."
She snorted derisively, and swept the lemon bits up into her hands. "I
should hope not, Mulder."
"What's this for?" I indicated the little bowl of lemon juice with some
curiosity, hoping also to change the subject for at least a few minutes.
"You making me lemonade?"
"You wish," she responded immediately, and smiled at last. She turned and
opened the cupboard below her sink, throwing the rinds she held in her hands
into the trash can. "The last thing I'm going to do for you after what you
did for me today is make you lemonade, Mulder."
"I knew that," I shot back easily, glad that she seemed amenable  to my
not-entirely-subtle change of subject. "Just checking."
"This is for my shower," she continued, picking up the bowl and walking out
of the kitchen. I followed her, still clutching my filthy shoes guiltily.
"Lemons are really good for... getting rid of odours." I couldn't see her
face, but I could tell she was smiling.
Well, I couldn't really deny it, and say that Scully was smelling her best
right about now. Because she wasn't... not that it mattered. There were
still things I wanted to do to her that would have been just as appropriate
if done when she was clean. The end result would have been the same.
"Quite the domestic person, aren't you, Scully?" I asked idly, pausing when
she too stopped in the middle of her living room. Frankly, I had no desire
to banter with her now, even though bantering was about the only kind of
sexual foreplay we ever got around to engaging in. What I really wanted to
do was to take her in my arms and carry her into her bathroom... then show
her exactly how clean we could get when we both took a shower. Together.
Scully turned and glanced at me appraisingly, her eyes sweeping my body
from head to toe. Just before she bent down and picked up the newspaper from
her coffee table, I caught a hint of a blush colouring her cheeks... which I
quite naturally put down to my sexist remark about her domestic skills.
"My mom taught me that," she explained, straightening up and proceeding on
into her bedroom. "Come on in."
Who would have thought that those three words could be quite so lethal? My
mind staggered backward and my heart waltzed down to my groin in joy. And
all Scully had done was invite me into her bedroom. She wasn't inviting me
to have sex there, for God's sake.
Damn it.
I really should just politely decline, and go. If I waited around here
another second more, I would completely embarrass myself and Scully. It
would be best to leave while I still possessed some shred of masculine
dignity. Except it was getting increasingly difficult to walk, what with...
"Mulder, you sit here."
With a presence of mind I didn't know I had, I quickly dropped my hands in
front of me, and whispered a silent prayer of thanks to the Nike gods. My
trainers were blocking her view.
"Come on," she continued impatiently. "I've waited long enough for a
shower. Don't keep me waiting anymore." I obediently headed over to the spot
on the floor she was pointing at, and noticed that my dear sensible Scully
had spread newspaper over it to keep everything clean.
She could just as easily have made me sit like a naughty child in her
living room. Why invite me into her bedroom? I was about to tease her about
that when she reached down and pulled off her shoes.
"Now make yourself useful," she said, a secretive grin spreading over her
face. She placed her shoes, still caked with mud and other unmentionable
things, on the sheet of newspaper, and waited for me to take my place. More
than a bit baffled, I eased myself into a cross-legged position on the
paper, then looked up questioningly at her.
"What do you want me to do with these?" I asked plaintively.
"Nothing much, Mulder. Just clean them." She threw me a box of tissues off
her nightstand, and shoved the trash can over to me. "It's the least you can
do." With that, and one last gleeful smile, she moved away from me and into
the bathroom, slamming the door shut after her.
Damn it.
This was Scully's way of getting back at me. She was making me sit here, in
her bedroom, under unspoken honour not to touch or look at anything, and
clean her shoes. When she full well knew that was the last thing I could
bear to do, the last thing on my mind right now!
I froze, mid-Kleenex. Shit. Where did that come from? How had I come to
suddenly assume that she had known... that she had known that I had
wanted... that she had blushed because...?
Oh no.
Scully hadn't blushed because I'd made a dig at her domestic skills, which
were probably (and quite justifiably) the antithesis of Martha Stewart's.
She'd blushed because she had seen... uh, because she had seen...
All the blood and heat previously concentrated in the lower half of my body
turned cold, as my face started to burn up at an alarming rate. Scully had
known, and she was taking her revenge in the subtlest way she could find -
she had invited me into her bedroom, compelled me to clean her shoes, and
was now less than three strides away from me.
Naked. Taking a shower. Taking a shower alone.
Three strides away, but safe behind a closed door.
In that moment, I realised that Scully was an evil woman. She always seemed
professional and remote and controlled and good, but when we got right down
to it... Scully was one evil woman.
I frowned, and renewed my exertions with a strength fuelled by guilty rage
and cheated desire. Scrubbing at one of her shoes, I watched the brown
colour soak into the white tissue.
How many times would I have to apologise to get her to forgive me for
dragging her out today? Admittedly, I'd been vague on the subject of my
contact, but I was still working out details on that front, and I wasn't yet
ready to tell Scully everything. And what exactly was so wrong about wanting
her next to me, wherever I went and whatever I did? OK, maybe I'd been a
little selfish, practically forcing her to come to meet me, and not giving
her much choice in sifting through the garbage. But well...
This was Hell, what she was putting me through. It was five hundred times
worse than falling into garbage. At least.
I could hear the splash of water through the paper-thin walls, and my
imagination started working furiously to keep up with my hands. She was
turning the taps, adjusting the temperature of the water... sticking out
that small perfect hand to test the warmth of the flow. Now, she was
stepping out of her muddy clothes, revealing pale clean skin, soft and
sweet-smelling...
My vision blurred, and the heat rushed back between my legs.
This little attempt at revenge on Scully's part was not amusing. Hell was
not something people toyed with, and she had just sent me there for a
prolonged eternity.
What right did she have to do this to me?
First of all, after she'd fallen into the muck herself, she had
(purportedly "by accident") pulled me in after her. Then she had insisted we
drive back in my car because we were both "bedraggled and disgusting" and
her car didn't deserve to carry us in it. Not only that, she had made it
absolutely clear that I was going to have to trudge the three miles back to
the dumps to retrieve the car she had insisted on leaving behind.
For crying out loud, wasn't that enough?
"You're pushing it, Scully," I said loudly, not really caring if she could
hear me, but subconsciously glad that she couldn't, not over the rushing
water. "You really are."
"What, Mulder?" she yelled out, and I could not mistake the squeaking of
metal for anything else. She had twisted the taps shut. "Did you say
something?"
This was torture. My mind was once again painting pictures I didn't need to
see, gleefully adding details I would rather live without. I could see her,
standing in the tub, shivering slightly, skin glistening wet, hair slicked
back... delightfully bare. Her smell a mixture of Scully and soap and lemon
juice. I screwed my eyes tightly shut in a vain attempt to block out the
tantalising images.
"Nothing, Scully," I croaked out at last, wishing fervently that I wasn't
speaking in such an unnaturally high voice. That, however, couldn't be
helped, since I was pinching my arm with all my might, trying to regain some
kind of control over my libido.
I could hear, almost feel, her hesitating, then the metal taps squeaked
again, and I heard running water instead. Biting my lip, I mentally scolded
my testosterone for being so pathetically weak, even as I energetically
returned to polishing Scully's shoe like a good shoeshine boy.
"Hey, Mulder?" She played with the taps again, until I could only hear a
trickle of water in the background. I have never had cause to curse Scully
for being callous, but I suppose there's always a first time for everything.
If she kept this up, flirting with me from inside her shower, I would go
insane.
"You're the one who's pushing it," she continued loudly, confidently, when
I made no reply to her.
My mind had lewdly (as usual) wandered off into its own R-rated universe.
It was currently listing the top ten reasons why Scully would look good in
nothing but a layer of soap. But no part of me could ever stand up to the
power that is this woman... and my mind was no different. When it finally
processed her words, it faltered and melted at once into a pile of goo.
Shit. Paper-thin walls work both ways.
I didn't know what to say in my defense, or even if I should have to defend
myself at all. Thankfully for me, she took the awkwardness... and made it
even worse by continuing her lecture from the bathroom.
"You dragged me out there today, and you're still refusing to tell me why,
or even what we were looking for." There was a moment's pause in her tirade,
and my mind naughtily suggested that she had dropped the soap, had bent over
to look for it... and, well...
Shut up, Mulder. Now was not the time for this.
"I tripped and fell in garbage, Mulder. That's not the way I like to spend
my Saturday mornings." Miscellaneous unidentifiable sounds began drifting
through the walls again, and my mind hastened to analyse each one. Was that
squeak Scully rubbing the soap all over her beautiful naked body? And that
scrape... was it Scully adjusting the shower head to better wash herself
with? That other noise... the...
"Can't you at least tell me what's going on?"
Her last question ended in a gushing tumult of water, and my keen senses
told me that she was now waiting for an answer. Even as the idea of Scully
standing under hot jets of cleansing liquid danced around in the back of my
mind, I tried to think of something more intelligent to say. Something that
would not betray my lust.
The safest answer was the one I had given her all day.
"Scully," I called, and waited for her to turn down the volume of water I
imagined was rushing all over her. "I'm really, really sorry. OK? That's
about all I have the right to say."
For some reason, I could tell she was smiling now.
Sighing, I picked up the other shoe and resumed my work of penitence. Oh
well. Hell or not, I owed this much to Scully, at least. I would clean her
shoes, and then I would get the heck out of here to save myself any further
embarrassment. I would go home, and chalk all this up to another bad day in
a lifetime of bad days.
Suddenly, I realised that I could no longer hear water. She had closed off
the taps completely. She must be done with her bath at last.
Good. No more searing temptation.
I was about to get to my feet, show her her newly-polished shoes, then make
some kind of excuse and leave. I never got that chance.
The next thing I knew, the bathroom door had opened slowly into the room,
and Scully's head appeared around it, tousled and wet and sexy. Her eyes
held whispers of fire and knowing, and the inviting smile on her face turned
my legs to water.
"Mulder," she paused, then added, significantly, "I think it's about time
you came clean with me."
My legs turned to fire, and I continued to stare at her, completely and
utterly dumbfounded.
"Come on, Mulder," she murmured, and flashed me a smile I had known only in
my dreams and fantasies. "I still have some lemon juice left."
======================================================
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Added June 4, 1999