Timeline: 4x20 Small Potatoes

Category: Post-episode fiction

'No, I'm no Eddie Van Blundt. If I were…" Mulder thought, quickly trying to push the thought from his mind. He was having enough trouble regaining his composure without going down that road. His damn sleeves were all crooked. Or, they were by the time he had fiddled with them all the way down the hallway with his partner at his side.

He'd been getting very little sleep over the past month. He was never particularly adept at sleep, but his world had been knocked on its ear by a particularly disturbing visual, making the task that much more impossible. It had been a visual that he wished he could embrace as some sort of hopeful sign, but for whatever reason couldn't.

Mulder held the door for Scully as she brushed by him. He felt the outline of her arm and shoulder against his chest and he inhaled deeply to stem the flood of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. If he could just get back to his apartment, where he could hide away until Monday and try to get a grip, then he might be able to avoid something inappropriate. It was of minimal comfort that Scully seemed nearly as discomfited. Minimal, because he didn't quite know what to make of her discomfort.

They road back to the office in silence. Total silence, because Scully snapped off the radio as soon as the engine kicked in. 'Why in heaven's name would she want to torture me any further by condemning us to silence?' Mulder thought somewhat angrily.

Scully began to wish that she had not in fact turned off the radio. They didn't usually listen to the radio. Mulder was usually too much of a talker to be interested in the radio: he always wanted to rant about something, discuss a case, bounce theories off of her, or regale her with the outcomes of sports games. But, he'd turned on the classic rock station as soon as they got in the car together to visit Eddie Van Blundt, seemingly to put an end to any form of conversation.

Her turning the station off had been intended as a gesture. An obtuse one, she admitted to herself. Mulder would never know that it was an invitation—an invitation to talk, to be a little more like…well, not like Eddie. She didn't want Mulder to be Eddie. But she'd realized after her embarrassing mistaken identity episode that she secretly wished Mulder would talk to her. Really talk. Of course, it was easier that he didn't. Sometimes, it was painfully obvious that if Mulder started really talking, they would both be in trouble.

'How transparent would I be, if I turned the radio back on?'

'For the love of God…turn the damn radio back on,' Mulder thought, audibly sighing. She was looking at him out of the corner of her eye. Like she was expecting something from him. But, as usual he was helpless to figure out Dana Scully. Helpless to provide whatever it was that she wanted.

Why had she been on the couch with him? Him. Yes, it had been Eddie, but Scully hadn't known that. It was an interesting situation to be sure. It looked like the beginning of one of the fantasies he'd occasionally let play out in his mind in a half-awake state of arousal. Not on assignment—Scully would have been very irritated to know that he was mentally undressing her while she slept in the next room, so he kept those thoughts confined to his apartment, where they couldn't contaminate her.

Yes, almost too interesting. Tempting. Because, he knew that if he let himself get caught up in the potential implications of that scenario he would lose control of himself. Mulder had been keeping control of himself for months now. He was under dutiful control. Until that is, he saw Scully sitting on her couch alongside him. Him.

The emotions that tore through him at that moment were almost too much to bear. He was angry. This asshole was impersonating him. Impersonating him, so as to make advances on his Scully. His Scully. And then there was the other side of it: the side that imagined that if Eddie could be sitting there looking like him, he also might be sitting there. That was the tantalizingly interesting side. Interesting, because Eddie seemed to be on the verge of success. More success than Mulder had ever had. But then, he'd never really tried anything. He was under dutiful control.

He would have had to wring Eddie's neck, if…but that wasn't necessary. Thankfully nothing had happened. Just as nothing had ever happened with them. Mulder had stopped whatever was about to take place. Would anything have happened? Was it possible that something like that could actually occur? Every time he contemplated that prospect, it felt as if his stomach was doing flips.

"Mulder!" Scully spoke loudly.

Mulder's head swiveled to glance at his seemingly aggravated partner.

"Mulder, you just blew that stop light."

"Oh."

Scully shook her head: so nonchalant about their safety. He was going to get them killed in a careless auto accident. She had thought he would get them killed in a much more exotic manner. Something involving mutants and monsters; something that would never make it into the papers. A car wreck would be anti-climatic. She snorted at the thought, but Mulder made no sign that he had taken notice of her.

His mind was clearly elsewhere. He was obviously not over the embarrassment of the Eddie incident. She blushed briefly at the thought of the 'incident' and turned to face the window so he wouldn't be able to see the heightened color spreading over her face. She was such a light-weight. A couple glasses of wine and she was spilling her guts. She usually kept them in good order where they belonged. It annoyed her that she hadn't known Eddie to be a fake. She'd scolded herself endlessly for not guessing that something was amiss. Not just in Eddie-Mulder's unusual behavior, but something about his essence. She was closer to him than anyone else in the world—even if they never did really talk. She should have known.

'Great. Now she's laughing.' Mulder shook his head, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. This is what he'd been trying to get a grip on. He was getting carried away at the thought that his partner might be open to…not extreme possibilities, but him. Him. He was trying to push that feeling down, both because it was clearly wrong and also because it was potentially dangerous. If he let it get the best of him, he'd do something stupid and then Scully would be beyond angry. She could be kind of cute when she was angry. There would be nothing cute about this: she would demand a transfer.

Scully wasn't interested in him. She was laughing at him. Or herself. He wasn't sure. Either way she was surely regretting the momentary lapse of judgment that had caused her to spend the evening sharing a bottle of wine with Eddie-Mulder. 'I mean, I'm fucking Spooky.' If Scully was going to take time off from writing monographs for the penology review, it wasn't going to be for him. It would be for some normal guy. Mulder didn't bother to define normal: it was unpleasant to think of Scully with someone else—the thought of it made his chest tighten. He just knew that at some point there would be someone else and that someone wouldn't be anything like him.

'That's why she's uncomfortable. That's why she's embarrassed. She doesn't want me getting any ideas. Trust me, Scully, I know better.'

Scully had allowed herself only an hour to feel embarrassed that Mulder had found her in a seemingly compromising situation with a man who looked exactly like him. After that she had counseled herself to stop acting like a school girl. If he hadn't walked in…well, she was on the verge of putting an end to it anyway. She was about to push him away. That was what she ended up doing after all. Of course, when she did push him away, she had realized that he wasn't Mulder. But the timing had nothing to do with it: she had been incredibly shocked and she was slow to react due to her astonishment. But she would have stopped it. Mulder must know that.

Mulder wasn't judging her. Scully was familiar with Mulder-judgment, and she wasn't getting a broadcast of that particular show. Instead, he was acting as if he'd been caught with his pants around his ankles. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around that one. If she engaged in too much analysis on the subject, it brought up irrational emotions that she didn't care to indulge. It was easier to get over her embarrassment and attempt to make him feel better by acting as if the whole thing hadn't happened.

'She's been acting like the whole fucking thing never happened. Like a light switch was thrown and the whole memory was erased.' What did that mean? It couldn't mean that she was pining away for him—wishing that he would show up with wine at her apartment to romance her and sweep her off her feet. It must have been too damn embarrassing to even deal with. In the sober light of day the very thought must have been repugnant to her.

Or, worse yet, just a blip on her radar. 'I'm stressing over every moment of that evening and every non-work related thing I've managed to say to her since, and she could care less. Whatever I thought I was seeing, I wasn't.' Eddie might have worked his way into her apartment and plied her with alcohol, but maybe she'd been about to cold-cock him when Mulder appeared in the door. Maybe that's what she would do to him, if he ever slipped and lost control.

It was disheartening, but he latched onto the idea. If he convinced himself of it, he could remain under dutiful control. That was of the utmost importance. He shelved away the notion—the very interesting notion—that Dana Scully might be willing to sit with him on a couch and…He shelved it away. It still tickled at him, however. Maybe he'd call on that notion someday. Maybe if his world was ending and there was nothing left to lose, he'd even test it.