TITLE:  White Roses
AUTHOR: Kitsunagari
RATING: G 
DISCLAIMER:  Mulder & Scully are of course the property of Chris 
Carter, 1013 productions and 20C Fox.  At least in _this_reality. 
Bwahahahaha

FEEDBACK:  Yes please!  Take pity on a new(ish) girl - here's 
where to send it - kitsunagarix@yahoo.com.  Unless of course, if 
you thought the story sucked - in that case just print it out and 
stomp on it a couple of times - maybe feed it to your dog - let 
your imagination take flight!  Just don't flame me!  :0)

DISTRIBUTION:  Any old where, just so long as my name's attached. 
 If you could also drop me a quick email to let me know it would 
be much appreciated too!

SPOILERS:  A very small (miniscule really) FTF one, plus even 
smaller season 2 and 5 spoilers.

CLASSIFICATION: S, R, A

KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully romance

SUMMARY:  Who is Mulder sending white roses to?  Starring: 
JealousScully.





A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel 
tells us the truth about its author.

 - G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, 15
*****************************************************************
  The phone rang.



  Special Agent Dana Scully looked up in mild surprise from the 
file she was reading at Mulder's desk, and reached for the phone.



  "Dana Scully."



  A woman's voice spoke uncertainly.  "Uh...hello?  This is 
Madeline from Shop and Smell the Roses. I was looking for a 
Mr..." sounds of paper being rustled crackled down the phone 
"...a Mr...Fox is it?  Fox Mulder."



  Scully grabbed the dwindling pad of Post-It notes nearest to 
her and picked up a pen.  "No, I'm sorry, he's actually not here 
right now...is there something I can help you with?"



  "I don't know...maybe.  Mr Mulder orders two delivered bunches 
of white roses every month..."  Scully's eyebrows shot up in 
surprise "it's just that, well, we've hired a new girl, and she 
got all the orders confused, and well, the upshot is that we are 
all out of white roses - can you help me with this, or do I have 
to speak to Mr Mulder?"



  Scully took several seconds to find her voice.  "Uh...no.  I 

think you'll need to speak directly to him.  Can I get him to 
call you back?"  She took down the phone number and hung up, and 
sat staring at the Post-It notepad, as if the answers to the 
questions that bubbled up in an endless stream would 
accommodatingly present themselves upon it. 



  Two bunches of white roses.



  Every month.

 

  Who would Mulder be sending roses to?  It's not like he 
had...well, not like he had a girlfriend.



  Did he?



  Scully slapped the Post-It notepad down sharply.  If Mulder was 
sending roses to somebody that was none of her business.



  And she was _not_  jealous.



  Where the hell was Mulder with that damn coffee anyway.



  A coffee cup appeared as if by magic in front of her.  "Here 
you go Scully...they didn't have any skim milk left, so I got you 
a regular."



  Scully jumped startled.



  Mulder sat down in the chair opposite Scully and crossed his 
feet on top of the desk and smiled at her.  "Although maybe I 
should have made it a decaf."



  Scully just treated him to a minor Look while she grasped 
desperately at the shreds of her composure. 



 Mulder grinned at her a little more and took a sip of his 
coffee.  Placing the cup on the desk, he flicked his eyes back up 
to meet hers and leaned back in his chair.  "So, what did you 
find out?"



  Scully's eyes widened and in a startled movement she knocked 
over her coffee cup and quickly leapt to her feet to avoid the 
hot staining liquid, picking up the file she had been perusing 
also, tipping off the brown puddle that had already formed on it. 
 "Damn it!" she exclaimed in impotent fury.  



  "Here," Mulder passed her a couple of the napkins that had come 
with the coffee and they both mopped up the encroaching brown  
mess and finally restored the desk to some sort of order.  Mulder 
sprawled again in the chair on the other side of the desk as 
Scully stood over the waste-paper basket, drying her hands with a 
napkin.



  "So, Scully, all java-related mishaps aside, what did you find 
out?"



  Scully finished off drying her hands and tossed the used napkin 
in the basket rather viciously.  Why did she feel as if she'd 
been snooping?



  "Find out Mulder?  About what?"



  "About what?"  Mulder looked at her with a slightly incredulous 
smile.  "About that file that you've been studying for the past 
couple of hours."



  Scully sat down as comprehension dawned.  "Oh, that."



  "Did you find anything?  Is there any reason for us to do down 
there?"  Mulder prompted.



  Scully picked up the slightly sodden file and toyed with it, 
not meeting Mulder's eyes.  "Uh, no.  No.  Everything in the 
autopsy report was just what I expected, given the circumstances 
you described."  She flicked her eyes up to meet his as he nodded 
slowly, his expression slightly questioning, and then down again 
studying the fascinating mysteries of the manila folder on her 
lap. 



  Silence filled the next few moments.



  "Scully..."



  "Hmm?"  She looked up again, blue eyes slightly widened.



  Mulder gave her an odd, appraising look.  "Are you okay?  You 
seem a little...I don't know...on edge."



  She blinked at him.  "I'm fine Mulder."  Her eyes darted to the 
partially buried 'Out' tray on the desk and the manila folder 
peeping out from its shadowed depths.  "Isn't that the report on 
that cattle mutilation case that we have to give to Skinner?"



  Mulder nodded slowly in a slightly puzzled fashion. "Yeah...but 
that report's not due until tomorrow." 



  Before he had even finished speaking, Scully was on her feet, 
folder in hand and halfway to the door.  "Oh well, you know.  No 
time like the present." With that, she quickly exited from the 
office - leaving a confused and bewildered Mulder in her wake.





  For what seemed like the fiftieth time, Scully read the same 
line on the file she was reading.  She stole another quick look 
at Mulder, who was rifling through a filing cabinet.  Enough was 
enough.  She was behaving in a childish, irrational fashion.  So 
Mulder sent two bunches of roses to someone every month.  Big 
deal.



  And she _definitely_ wasn't jealous.



  Please Lord, don't let it be Diana Fowley.



  This was getting ridiculous.  "Mulder..."



  "Hmmm?"  he turned around to look at her the light reflecting 
off his wire-rimmed glasses.



  "A woman called before.  She was from some florist, she said 
that they were out of white roses this month and wanted to know 
what you wanted to send instead.  I wrote the number down, but I 
think we may have thrown it away when we were cleaning up the 
coffee."  She was relieved that she had managed to keep a normal 
tone - she didn't sound at all like a jealous fish-wife.  Which 
was logical of course - because she _wasn't_ jealous.




  Even from where she was sitting, she could see Mulder looked 
distinctly uncomfortable.  "Uh, that's okay.  I remember the 
number.  Thanks."  And he proceeded to bury himself in filing 
once more.



  That was it.  No explanation.  "No problem," she said in tones 
of steel, and reapplied herself vehemently to reading the file.



    And the rest of the afternoon passed in silence as taut as a 
bowstring.


*****************************************************************

  Her bedclothes already in irretrievable disarray, Scully turned 
over for what must have been the one thousandth time that night, 
grunting in exasperation.  She looked at her clock, which smugly 
informed her that precisely 2 minutes had gone by since she had 
last looked at it.  2.08am.  She rolled on her back and covered 
her face with a pillow, but her newly chosen mantra seemed to 
marquee across the inside of her eyelids - matching the way the 
phrase drove like a steam-train around the inside of her skull.



IMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUS



  In annoyance, she flung her pillow at the wall.  Great.  Now 
she had to get up and get it.  In defeat, she switched on the 
lamp.  Hot milk.  Maybe that would work.  



  Silently, she padded out to the kitchen, microwaved some milk 
and collapsed on the couch and sipped it meditatively.



IMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUS



  She slammed down the glass and flipped on the television set 
and just as quickly flipped it off.  Ugh, infomercials.  She 
didn't need distraction _that_ badly.



IMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUSIMNOTJEALOUS



  She threw a cushion across the room and then laughed ruefully 
at her second childish outburst for that evening.  The laughter 
died away to a sigh.



  Who was she kidding.



  Of _course_ she was jealous.



  How annoying.



  Mulder was sending roses to somebody.  He'd never sent roses to 
_her_.



  Mulder thought enough of someone to send them two bunches of 
roses every month, for heaven only knew how long, and had kept 
that from her.



  And that hurt.  It hurt a _lot_.



  Scully thought she knew him better than anybody, but she hadn't 
even known this little thing.  Whoever this...this _person_ was, 
she had stained that unique bond that she had with Mulder.



  Trust.



  Loyalty.



  Respect.



  Friendship.



  Love.

 

   Well, maybe that bond didn't mean as much to Mulder as it did 
to her.  Oh sure, he trusted her, was loyal, respected her, liked 
her, yadda yadda yadda.  But love?  Sure, they had never spoken 
of their feelings.  She hadn't thought they needed to - the 
knowledge was there, unspoken.  Maybe she only felt that because 
that's what she wanted to believe.  



  A thousand tender touches, glances, moments; the fleeting 
possibility of a kiss in a hallway, declarations made in the heat 
of the moment, a brief drug induced 'I love you'.  What did they 
all mean, anyway?  Sure, she had stored them away, relishing the 
memories warmth on indulgent occasion.  



  But...maybe she had misunderstood.  Taken things mean lightly 
or flippantly to heart.  Her cheeks burned at the possibility, 
and she frantically sifted through every image, trying to 
reassure herself that she had not been imagining things.  She 
lingered over that moment in the hallway and beyond the memory of 
the words spoken she remembered the look in Mulder's eyes as he 
leaned down to kiss her...



  A moment of joyous, complete certainty washed over her.  Of 
course Mulder loved her.  



  But those roses...



  Doubt assailed her, gnawing viciously at her stomach, and she 
resorted to something she hadn't done since adolescence.  Taking 
her immaculately manicured thumbnail between her teeth, she 
chewed on it viciously.


*****************************************************************

  No sleep and a chronic case of jealousy did not make for a 
cheerful Scully.  What's worse, she felt like a cartoon character 
as she stood outside of Shop and Smell the Roses, the florist 
where Mulder ordered those damned white roses from.  As she stood 
outside, debating whether or not she should go in, she felt like 
she had a little AngelScully on one shoulder and a little 
DevilScully on the other.



  Or maybe it was just RationalScully and JealousScully.



  At any rate, it felt like a running dialogue was running 
through her head.



  RationalScully: "This is a betrayal of Mulder's trust.  If he 
wanted you to know who he sent the roses to, he'd have told you."



  JealousScully: "'Betrayal of Trust!'  What do you call his 
keeping this from you?"



  RationalScully: "What are you going to do once you find out?  
Check out the competition?  Tell her to stay away from your man?"



  JealousScully:  "At least then you'll _know_."



  Scully shook her head.  For once, she was going to be 
irrational.  Squaring her shoulders, she walked into the shop.  



  The refreshing sweetness that was every florist's aroma helped 
to settle Scully's somewhat frayed nerves.  She pretended to 
check out the merchandise as she surreptitiously eyed the girl at 
the counter.  She didn't want the chance of running into the 
woman she had spoken to...she might remember her name.  However, 
the nervous ineptitude and youth of the girl behind the counter 
made Scully fairly sure that this was the hapless 'new girl'.  



  Scully waited until the present customer concluded his business 
and then assumed her G-Woman persona.  "Excuse me, ma'am."  The 
girl looked cowed by this sudden appearance of Authority.  "I'm 
Special Agent Dana Scully with the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation."  Scully flipped open her ID, and the girl's eyes 
widened even more.  "I need to have a look at the recipient 
address of some flowers that are ordered from here on a monthly 
basis."  



The girl nodded dumbly.  "Do...do you have the uh, the name of 
the sender?" she stammered nervously.  Scully took a deep breath.



  "Fox Mulder."

*****************************************************************


  Scully tapped her ID nervously against the palm of one hand and 
mentally cursed her choice of employee.  The girl was taking 
years to find the customer record that Scully needed, and every 
second Scully's guilt increased at an exponential rate.  However, 
she could hardly back out now.  



  "Here it is..." the girl returned at last.  "I remember this 
guy now...he was in here just yesterday.  He usually orders white 
roses, but because...uh...that is for some reason we ran out, so 
he came in to select some others.  I remember he took one bunch 
and said he was going to deliver them personally."  The girl 
sighed.  "He was really cute.  He wasn't...he wasn't like a  
_murdererer_ or something?"



  Scully held out her hand for the customer record.  "No, no.  
Nothing like that.  May I have that please?"  The girl obligingly 
handed the paper over.  



  Scully quickly scanned the contents.

  

  "Oh my God," she whispered, tears beginning to slide down her 
cheeks.



  She felt like a 1000-ton anvil had just dropped out of the sky 
and crushed her into a sorry guilt-ridden pulp.



  She felt smaller than the lowest amoeba ever to slither its way 
out of the primoridal ooze.



  And she understood.

****************************************************************


  It had been raining, and the sodden smell of earth and grass 
permeated the air.  Scully slammed her car door.  She could 
already see his familiar lanky form in the distance, and for the 
thousandth time since leaving the florist she berated herself.



  How could she have doubted him?



  She almost ran to where he stood, but slowed as she neared him, 
not wanting to burst upon him too unexpectedly.  She saw the 
roses, a dozen of them, white but for the palest blush of pink in 
the heart of the flower.  Her eyes involuntarily travelled up 
beyond the roses.



                                            MELISSA SCULLY

                     BELOVED DAUGHTER SISTER AND FRIEND



  Scully's eyes dropped away from the headstone inscription, 
again overcome with shame.  She felt Mulder's gaze fall upon her 
and then return to the headstone.  Without looking at her, he 
began to speak.



  "I know you've told me a thousand times at least, that what 
happened was not my fault Scully...and you could tell me a 
thousand more and I'd still feel that I was at least in some part 
to blame.  I made a promise to myself that I would make sure that 
nothing like that would ever happen again - that you would never 
be made to hurt in that way again because of me.  Of course, I 
failed."  He looked at his feet, his tone bitter.  "And now you 
have two graves because of me."



"Emily," whispered Scully, a tear tracing a now familiar path 
down her cheek.  Mulder looked at her, his eyes dark with sorrow, 
and nodded.



 "I guess the roses are just a way of reminding myself of that 
promise every month."



  Scully was speechless - she had doubted Mulder in what turned 
out to be one of the greatest proofs of the strength of his 
feelings for her.  But she _needed_ to hear it.



  "Why, Mulder?"



  "You know why, Scully."



  She nodded, tears again slipping unbidden down her cheeks.  "I 
just...I just need to hear it."



  Mulder looked at her intensely and with heartbreaking 
sincerity.  "Because...because I love you, Scully."



  Scully let out a sob  and wordlessly wrapped her arms around 
him and let the feel of his arms and the steady beat of his heart 
wash over her - strengthen her - before she pulled away slightly 
and looked up at him.  His dark eyes, unwavering shone too with 
unshed tears.  Without another word, he placed both hands gently 
on either side of her head and kissed her.



  Tenderly.



  Lingeringly.



  Lovingly.



   When they broke apart, Scully thought the love in his eyes 
would make her shatter into a thousand and one pieces each time 
she remembered what she had thought.  She pulled away slightly.  
"Mulder...I have a confession to make."



  He smiled tenderly at her and gently brushed away a 
recalcitrent tear from her cheek.  "Don't worry, Scully, I 
already know it was you who took my copy of the alien autopsy 
video."



  Scully tried to laugh, but it came out more as a sob.  His 
expression changed to concern.  "What is it, Scully?  You know 
you can tell me anything."



  Time to bite the bullet.  She looked straight into his eyes.  
"Mulder...when I found out that you were sending roses to 
somebody, I was...well, I was jealous."  His lips quirked in a 
quick half-smile and he opened his mouth to speak, but Scully 
shushed him with her fingers on his lips.  "No, let me finish.  
It seemed like...well, like you didn't want to tell me who the 
flowers were for.  So I...I used my FBI priveleges to find out.  
God, Mulder...I feel like such an idiot."



  Mulder, to her relief, looked only amused.  "What...did you 
think they were for 'another woman'?" he asked in a stage whisper 
and when  Scully didn't respond, his smile grew even wider.  "My 

God, Scully, I don't just go running off to Antarctica for just 
anybody, you know."  He cupped the delicate curve of her jawline 
in his hands and tilted her blue gaze up to meet his.  "No...I 
would only do that for the woman..." he placed a delicate kiss 
next to her ear and whispered the rest of his sentence into her 
ear.  "...who has my alien autopsy video.  I want that back by 
the way."  He leaned out, grinning, to guage her reaction.  She 
blinked, wondering if had just said what she thought he had.  
Then slowly, a smile dawned on her face, matching Mulder's.  



  "Mulder..."



  "Yes, Scully."



  "You are so lucky that I love you too much to shoot you."

*****************************************************************

KNOCK!  KNOCK!

  Bleary-eyed, Scully padded over to her apartment door.  On 
opening it, she was greeted with the sight of at least two dozen 
red-roses.



  "Are you Dana Scully?" the teenage delivery boy squinted at her 
suspiciously, as if daring her to say that she wasn't.



  "Yeah, that's me."



  "Sign here, please."  Scully did so.  "Here you go.  Have a 
nice day."



  Scully set the roses down on the table and hunted out the card 
- not that she didn't know who they were from.



  "Scully -

       I made a new promise - never to let _you_ forget how much 
to you mean to me.

  

   Love - FWM"



  Scully wiped away the tears that immediately sprang into 
action, and inhaled the velvet aroma of the roses, then continued 
reading.



   "PS - You can keep the video.  Is this true love or what?"



  And she smiled.  



                                                            
 THE END



I hope you liked it!  - Kit.  


The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what 
fiction means. - Oscar Wilde

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there 
truth is - it is her shadow. - Gamaliel Bailey