Work Text:
Inside Straight
by Lysandra
At two o'clock on Friday, Mulder left Scully with the paperwork so he could
go to Mautner's bachelor party. She didn't begrudge him the bachelor party;
she was just jealous that he got to take a Friday afternoon off. He winked
at her as he headed out to a strip club in a bad part of DC. He called her
at nine o'clock Friday night, drunk as a skunk, saying wholly inappropriate
things -- "I'm sure your tits are better than theirs, Scully, because yours
are real" -- and when he woke up the next morning he must have realized what
he'd said because he called offering to make it up to her. She accepted, if
only to get a free meal out of it and to see if he still had a hangover.
Now it was Saturday night. He'd brought dinner from Mario's, his favorite
Italian restaurant; his hangover, if he'd had one, wasn't in evidence. All
he'd said about the phone call was "remind me to use a designated dialer
next time, Scully." She'd told him not to worry about it, and asked if he'd
brought dessert.
After they'd eaten he persuaded her to play poker, and was currently sitting
on the other end of her couch, making her laugh as he shuffled the cards
like a pro and twisted his imaginary handlebar moustache. She was usually a
pretty good bluffer, but sensed that he could see through her poker face,
and that he was trying to distract her. He'd started telling a story about
card counters in Vegas, then interrupted himself to ask her a question, and
she ended up relating a story of her own.
"When I was in fifth grade," she told him, "I cheated on a math test." He
looked like he didn't believe this of her, so she explained further. "It
wasn't really me who cheated; it was Brian Regan. He was terrible at math."
She looked over her cards. "Two, please." She put her two worst cards face
down and hoped for at least one more king as Mulder slid two cards toward
her. "Now that I think of it, I'll bet he had dyscalculia; he was probably
transposing the numbers. But even now it's not commonly diagnosed, though
dyslexia is now more easily recognizable." The edges of Mulder's mouth
crept up; he loved it when she used polysyllabic words.
She didn't give anything away as she looked at her cards, delighted that not
only did she now have three kings, but a one-eyed jack, which Mulder had
declared to be wild. Yes, four of a kind would do nicely. Mulder raised
his eyebrows at her, as if asking if the cards were to her liking, and she
silently urged him to concentrate on his own hand.
He made a show of rearranging his cards, putting them in some sort of order.
"So this poor dyscalculic kid had to sit next to the brilliant little Dana,"
-- she looked up at the sound of her given name, and he was waiting for her
reaction -- "and what? He cheated off your paper?"
"Yes," she admitted. "I knew he was doing it, and I didn't stop him."
They weren't playing for money, not even betting matchsticks. If Mulder's
bad luck held out, it'd soon be a shame they weren't playing strip poker.
"What've you got, Mulder?" She took a sip of wine as she waited for him to
show his cards.
"Full house," he said, laying down two queens and three aces. "Let's see
'em, Scully."
She was silent, instead placing her cards on the table and letting them
speak for themselves.
"Shit, Scully, is that a one-eyed jack?"
"It was your rule," she told him, and she couldn't help but laugh. "Deal,
Mulder." He gathered up the cards and shuffled as she went on with her
story. "So I was overcome with guilt over letting Brian cheat, but I
couldn't bring myself to turn him in. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, and
Brian wasn't in school the next two days so I couldn't even talk to him."
She looked at her cards and imagined Mulder's face because she was about to
say that she'd keep them all. "I wished it was Saturday because that was
when I went to confession. None for me," she said when he pointed at her
hand.
"None?" he asked, and she confirmed it with a shake of her head. His pupils
actually dilated. Such a bad poker player.
She went on. "On Friday afternoon, I had a brainstorm, and after the rest
of the class had left, I told Mrs. Seger that I had copied from Brian's
paper. I figured this would work since we had all the same answers, and how
was she to know who'd copied from whom?"
"I'll take three," Mulder answered, discarding three cards and replacing
them with new ones from the deck. "I take it Mrs. Seger didn't buy that her
most brilliant student had cheated?"
"No," she admitted. "She said, 'Dana, you are such a little girl, and you
have such a big heart.' I was confused, being that I'd just confessed my
crime, and here she was praising me. As you might expect, she went on to
tell me that she had seen Brian cheating, and that she knew I hadn't copied
from him, that it was the other way around."
Mulder smiled, just a little, as if he didn't want her to know she'd amused
him. "Of course." He fiddled with his cards as if they were very good
indeed, but she suspected he was bluffing.
"I thought that I should have helped him study harder, and that I shouldn't
have let him see my paper, and that once I had, I should have told Mrs.
Seger right away. I ended up feeling doubly ashamed -- not only for
cheating, but now for lying, too -- and I ended up crying." She felt her
face flushing with the memory. She chanced a look at Mulder, whose eyes
were warm and inviting. He wasn't smiling, though; he was frowning as if
his cards were very important.
"It was humiliating," she admitted. "But Mrs. Seger was so sweet to me,
very motherly. You know what she said?" Mulder shook his head.
"She said, 'Dana, you are a fine young woman.' She whispered it, like it
was our secret. She said, 'You didn't want to betray your friend; you
didn't want to embarrass him; am I right?' I said she was right, and she
told me that she wasn't in the business of embarrassing people, either. She
said that she'd talked to Brian after class that day, that he'd admitted to
cheating from my paper, and that he'd been suspended and that's why he was
out of school."
Mulder smiled then, a real smile. "I'm glad you've relaxed your morals,
because it's saved my ass on numerous occasions," he said. He laid down his
cards. She was right; he had nothing. "You've taken the blame for my
actions more than once. It's why I keep you around." She tossed a pillow
at his head, but he caught it and threw it back. Well, they weren't called
throw pillows for nothing.
"I wish we were playing for money," she said as she revealed her hand. He'd
dealt her a straight.
"Are you sure you don't cheat?" he asked.
"Pretty sure, yeah." She offered him some more wine, but he raised his
eyebrows and said it was getting late.
"You are a fine young woman," he said, winking at her. "And a damn fine
poker player."
"Sure," she said.
"Tell me another story next time," he said as he got up and put on his
jacket.
"Next time it's your turn," she answered.
"Fair enough." He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. "You are a fine
woman, Scully." He whispered it in her ear, his hot breath making her
shiver.
As she washed the wine glasses she wondered what story he'd tell her, the
next time.
* End 1/1 *
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