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By dee_ayy
March 3, 2000
Disclaimer: Legally they belong to 1013 and 20th Century Fox Film Corp. (still hate you, Rupert!). But we all know these characters transcend the boundaries of the law, don't we? (Translation: Don't sue!)
Spoilers: Uh huh. For the 7th-season episode "First Person Shooter." Be warned.
Category: MT, post-ep.
Rating: R for language...
Feedback: Makes it all seem worthwhile. dee_ayy@yahoo.com
Archive: Why surely.
Thanks: To my x-ray crew, for the encouragement and medical advice, and as always to Vickie. It was my desire to beat you with one that kept me up till 2am all week. Thanks a LOT, Vic.
Summary: Cyberbabe apparently gave Mulder more than one kind of jolt. Post-ep for "First Person Shooter."
________________
Bruised Masculinity
By dee_ayy
I’m enjoying the admiration of my friends, being the center of attention. We slayed the dragon, Frohike is saying. Well, maybe we did, maybe she did, maybe they did. But damn, it was exhilarating. I don’t want the moment to end. I’m enjoying the adrenaline rush, the endorphins, whatever the hell they are. The racing pulse, the giddy lightheadedness. It’s a powerful feeling, and I like it.
But I see her, on the fringe, in my peripheral vision, with that pursed look on her face that always means trouble. She’s indulging me, letting me have my moment. But it’s not gonna last long, I can tell.
And I’m right. Only a second later she is pushing her way through the boys to me.
“You’re bleeding, Mulder,” she tells me. Here we go.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, and I really mean it. I am fine. I’m great, fucking great.
As if to prove how wrong I am, she reaches up and touches my forehead lightly. But it sends a shot of pain through my head akin to being hit by a hammer, and before I can stop myself, I flinch away. But that movement sends a wave of dizziness over me, and I have to close my eyes.
“Uh huh, sure you are,” she says matter-of-factly. “Did you lose consciousness at all?”
I must have taken a second too long to say “No.” She knows me too damn well.
“For how long?” she asks.
“I didn’t,” I protest.
“How long, Mulder?” God, I want to smack her sometimes. I look at the Gunmen, and their looks of admiration from a moment ago have been replaced with concern. I fucking hate that.
Couldn’t she have at least let me have my moment for a minute longer? Waited until we got out of here?
“I was just stunned for a second, Scully. I didn’t black out.”
“Uh huh.” No emotion from her, just that matter-of-fact look that says ‘you’re full of shit and we both know it.’ I hate that look. “Come on, Mulder, let’s go get you checked out.”
I have options here. I could tap into that testosterone she finds so annoying and get belligerent with her; just flat-out refuse. Don’t think that would go over so well after this escapade, though. I could go immature and whine. But I don’t think that would do much for my standing with the guys. I’m currently some macho action hero in their eyes, why ruin that. I could try to reason with her, but my head hurts too much to be bothered. I could buy some time.
“Not dressed like this, I’m not.” Like a kid trying to avoid bedtime. Not my best deflection, to be sure.
I go to change, and I have to admit that my head is throbbing. And my jaw hurts, too. She got some good shots in, no doubt about that. When I take off the breastplate, there are bruises forming on my chest already. Great. So much for macho action hero.
Look, guys, come see. That girl actually beat the shit out of me.
As I’m buttoning my shirt I catch Byers peeking around the corner. Though he retreats before he knows I saw him, I ask “She send you to check up on me?”
He shows himself. “Yeah,” he admits.
“She thinks she’s my mother. She’s a pain in the ass,” I point out. She is.
“You’re lucky to have her covering your ass, Mulder,” he points out.
Yeah, usually.
+ + + + +
So what do you tell an ER doctor in a case like this? I was nicked with a broadsword and roundhouse-kicked by the stiletto heels of one bodacious, but virtual, babe? Yeah, sure.
Scully tells him I was mugged. MUGGED? God, thanks a lot. From champion of all virtual reality to pansy-ass mugging victim all in the space of an hour. She really doesn’t get it. Why don’t you tell him I was mugged by a girl while you’re at it, Scully. Make the humiliation complete. Mugged.
The first time they all turn their backs I whisper “mugged?” to her.
She smiles sweetly at me and simply says “nondisclosure agreement, remember?” She’s enjoying this far too much. Who’s getting their ya ya’s out now, Scully?
I’m still feeling damn fine, exhilarated, as we’re led down the hall to a treatment room. Not even Scully has been able to dampen the rush. We’re left to our own devices for a minute, so I decide to strike.
“You know, you looked pretty hot in that breastplate, Scully,” I tease.
Her head snaps up and she stops me dead with a glare of disgust unlike any I’ve ever seen from her. And I’ve seen them all.
“What?” I ask innocently, but the arrival of a nurse puts an end to our exchange. I’ll have to file away mention of breastplates for future reference, though. It’s always good to know how to get a rise out of my partner.
I’m so used to the routine that I don’t pay any attention to the nurse. She’s gonna take my vitals. She’s gonna ask me exactly what happened. That’s gonna be a fun one to explain.
But she only holds the pulse point on my wrist for two or three seconds before she drops it and pulls out that thing that clips on your finger. I don’t even bother to look at the readout, but instead watch the woman’s face. It furrows into a look of puzzlement, and she pushes a button and looks again. Scully stands up to look, too. So finally I give in and turn.
A 98 on the oxygenation score, that’s fine. But is that my pulse? 146?
She resets the machine again, and clips the thing on another finger. 98 and 141 this time. Huh.
“Do you feel okay?” she asks me.
Yeah, I feel fine. Little headache, I tell her. I’m not gonna lie now.
“No lightheadedness, dizziness, chest pain?”
No and no, I tell her, but I do have that bruise on my chest that kinda hurts, and I show her. She runs from the room like she was shot out of a cannon. What the fuck?
“What?” I ask Scully.
“Your heart’s beating too fast, Mulder.”
Thank you for stating the obvious, Dr. Scully. It’s time to cut me a break, I think, Dr. Scully. We came in here for a headache.
“That blow to your chest might have upset the rhythm of your heart. Didn’t you notice your heart was beating too fast?”
Oh, goody. Recrimination time. Nope, I hadn’t noticed. I thought it was the adrenaline rush.
She gives me that disgusted/disapproving look again when I tell her that.
+ + + + +
Suddenly I’ve got myself the undivided attention of a doctor. The pulse thing is still spewing out apparently alarming numbers. 136, 142, 144. One time it fell down to 128, but only for a minute. My headache is forgotten by everyone but me.
The guy wants to know what happened to me. Specifically to get that bruise on my chest. I got kicked, I tell him. Square in the chest, and it knocked me down.
I don’t volunteer by whom.
“The attack was by one man?” he asks. Ahh, the assumptions we make.
“There was only one assailant, yes,” I tell him. Ahh, the games of semantics we play to protect our egos.
They hook me to an EKG; I saw that coming. I sit there and watch the doctor watch the screen. His brow furrows for a minute, he actually scratches his chin, then shrugs and turns back to me. When he relinquishes his spot in front of the squiggly lines, Scully moves in and studies it herself.
I can’t see her reaction, because the doctor makes me lie flat and he listens to my heart and presses on my chest. When he presses on the center of that bruise, it takes my breath away. So of course he does it again. I think this is how doctors get their ya ya’s out.
Hey, folks, my head still hurts.
Time for x-rays. He didn’t forget my head after all; he orders a CT scan and pictures of my jaw along with the chest films. I’d actually forgotten all about the welt on my jaw.
+ + + + +
When I get back from X-ray they finally pay attention to the egg on my forehead. It’s amazing how you can lie and tell the truth at the same time. One assailant; injuries inflicted with a “blade” and by kicking. All true, all not exactly the truth. Again I get to insist that I did not lose consciousness. I don’t think I’m lying. I never had that foggy-headed feeling. I’ve been unconscious before, I know what it feels like, I remind Scully.
That was a mistake. Suddenly Dr. Feelgood wants a complete history. Ha! That’s a bigger mistake. I just tell him that I’m an FBI Agent and I’ve had my bell rung a couple of times, and leave it at that.
“An FBI agent?” he asks. “I thought you were mugged?”
Ahhh, let the emasculation continue. “FBI agents can’t be mugged?” I ask. God Scully, I hate you for doing this to me. But it shuts the good doctor up. He leaves in search of the x-rays.
My partner studies the EKG some more. “It’s not really going down, Mulder.” I look. 138.
Yeah, so? But I don’t ask aloud and she doesn’t elaborate.
+ + + + +
Okay, so now the news is dulling the thrill of victory a bit. X-rays and exams and CT scans I’ve done. Plenty of times. But the x-rays don't show anything, and the seemingly home remedies the doc tries to get my heart to slow down--bearing down hard, rubbing on my neck--don’t work. So now we need an echocardiogram? A cardiologist? Maybe it’s time to ‘fess up.
“Should we tell them the whole story?” I ask Scully while we wait.
“About what?” she asks.
About what happened.
“They have the truth,” she says, meaning it. I arch my eyebrows in disbelief, even though it makes the knot on my forehead move and hurt. “We have been completely honest about the mechanism of injury, Mulder.”
True. And she’s the doctor. But I can’t believe she’s doing this.
+ + + + +
The jelly they put all over my chest for the “echo” is cold, and I can’t for the life of me read the look on the cardiologist’s face as he looks at the ultrasound screen. He keeps moving the wand thing and looking, then moving it again and looking again.
When I try to speak to ask him what he sees, he tells me to be quiet. Okay, fine. It’s only my heart, asshole.
He finishes, hands me a towel so I can wipe the goo off my chest, and says “Looks good,” as he walks away. What a guy.
Well, I suppose that’s encouraging, but it’s not good enough for Scully, who runs after him.
She’s back after a minute, and I give her my ‘So?’ look.
“He said it doesn’t look like there’s any damage to your heart, and there’s no fluid building up around it.”
Okay, so that has to be good news. “Now what?” I ask her.
She shrugs and looks away. Is she still mad at me?
+ + + + +
I get a much clearer explanation from Dr. Feelgood the ER doc than I did from Dr. Personality, the cardiologist. Paroxysomething atrial tachycardia. A fast heartbeat. They don’t really know what’s causing it, but it’s probably the blow to my chest, or perhaps just ‘the stress and excitement’ of being mugged. To his credit, the doctor doesn't even pretend to believe that as he suggests it, but I wonder what he'd think if he really knew what I'd been doing tonight. He tells me that the beat is regular, just fast, and I’m ‘hemodynamically stable,’ meaning blood is getting everywhere it should. I’m not exhibiting any other symptoms. Doesn’t look like anything to be too concerned about. I like that answer, and I’m ready for him to unhook the machine so I can go home.
Then I get the 'but.'
But, just to be on the safe side, since the tachycardia really hasn’t abated all that much in the two hours I’ve been here, and I did take a pretty good shot, they’re gonna keep me here hooked to a monitor overnight.
Shit.
I don’t want to ask, don’t really want to know, yet the words come out anyway. “And if it doesn’t slow down?”
He says it should while I sleep, but if not there are a couple of options. Medication is one. Okay, I could deal with that. Then he starts going on about how the heart beats because of electrical impulses from the nervous system, and when that gets disrupted sometimes the easiest way to fix it is to apply another electrical impulse to shock it back into its normal rhythm.
Shock? Images of countless bodies arching off tables in countless medical TV shows race through my mind. Oh, fuck.
He tells me not to worry, and leaves.
I find myself trying to remember if that damn game gear, with its 12 volts of virtual death, had actually shocked me. Could that have done this? No, no, it didn’t emit the shock. I’m sure it didn’t. I’d have felt that.
But just to be sure. . . . “Scully, that breastplate thing didn’t shock you, did it?”
I can tell she hadn’t thought of that, and the hard-edged, angry look she’s been sporting softens a little. “No, no it didn’t. Did it shock you?”
“No. But if it had, could it have done this?”
“I don’t think so, Mulder. You need a lot more than 12 volts to change your heart rhythm.”
Yeah, all you need is a good swift kick from a girl.
+ + + + +
Comfy cozy, stuck in yet another hospital bed in yet another strange town. At least the nurse, who’s gonna be bothering the shit out of me all night what with neuro checks for the ‘slight concussion’ they’ve decided I have and checking my blood pressure every fifteen seconds, is attractive. Not in the obnoxious, come-fuck-me Jade Blue Afterglow way, but she leaves an impression nonetheless.
I hear Scully make that sound of disgust she’s so fond of as the door shuts behind the nurse.
What?
“God, Mulder,” she says to me, “will you stop? This is serious!”
Stop what?
“Stop, stop,” she motions toward the door, and the lingering aura of the girl, with her hand. She is really disgusted. “Stop, THAT. Stop being such a guy.”
I almost laugh. Almost. “Scully, I am a guy,” I point out helpfully.
She flops down in the chair in resignation. And after a moment she looks up at me. The anger’s abated, but there’s still something there.
“So, Mulder,” she says carefully. “Look where all this landed you. Was it worth it?”
I’m not entirely sure what she’s getting at.
“That damn game, that virtual vixen, the whole thing. Look where it got you.” She points at the heart monitor, and I follow her finger to the readout; still in the low 120s, but better.
“Just another foe in a long line of foes,” I tell her. “What’s your point?”
“She was not just another foe, and you know it. And this was not just another case. Don’t be ridiculous. None of it was real!”
Okay, this time I do laugh. “It felt damn real to me, Scully! And I have the bruises to prove it!”
She takes a deep breath. Probably to keep from killing me. “Okay, so, then, tell me this. Why did you stay in there? You got the Gunmen out, and you didn’t leave. What was that all about?”
I close my eyes for a second and picture that woman darting across the playing field. And I just followed. Didn’t think, just went. I don’t even really know why. Habit. Instinct. Curiosity.
I try all three of those on my partner, and she dismisses each one out of hand. She, it seems, has it all figured out for me.
“Come on,” she says incredulously. “It was not. It was testosterone. It was blood lust. It was the thrill of the hunt. You, Mulder, were not using your head. You were being led by your. . . .”
Oh, damn, how I want her to finish that sentence, but she doesn’t. So I just look at her open-mouthed, in shock, for a long moment.
“How long have you known me?” I ask her finally.
She just cocks her head. I’m getting angry now. Watch that heart monitor, Scully. Watch it go.
“Have you ever, ever known me to allow myself to be led by my cock?” She recoils when I use the word she wouldn’t. Gotcha, partner, but there’s no time to enjoy it. I have a point to make. “I follow my head, yes. My heart, always. But other parts of my anatomy? Shit, I wish I followed it a little more often. I’d have a much more fulfilling sex life.”
She’s stunned, but still I continue. “You’re wrong, Scully. Totally wrong. Why do you think she didn't kill me? Retro and Mishima got it in seconds from her. Why not me? She did a number on me, sure. But she didn’t kill me. Why not?”
I’ve got her attention now. “At the risk of administering a further blow to my already bruised masculinity, let me make a confession. You know that blood lust, that testosterone frenzy you were so critical of, and so sure was ruling the day? I didn’t have it. I could have, but didn’t. That’s the secret to beating these things. I was in there to win a game. Just a game--it was always just a game. I didn’t want to kill her--or anything else for that matter. I wanted to win. Okay, so winning the game meant neutralizing her, but the win is what I was after, not the kill. And I think that made the difference.”
She has sunk into her chair as I was speaking, and I see her processing what I am saying. But this time I am after a ‘kill,’ and it’s time.
“But you know what, Scully? Cyberbabe never fired a gun at me until you entered the game. Then it was six-shooters and machine guns and tanks. And still she never shot at me, only you. What’s that all about? What were you feeling in there, Scully? What was your objective?”
“To get you out of there.”
I have no doubt that this is true. “But you wanted to kill her, didn’t you?”
She stands up suddenly, trying not to let her anger show, and failing miserably. She’s sputtering, stopping herself from saying what she really wants to. She ends up with “Mulder, you need your rest. I’ll be back in the morning.” But she’s really saying ‘I can’t look at you right now, let alone talk about this.’
Scully hates it when I’m right.
She leaves before I can tell her I’m flattered; before I can say thank you.
+ + + + +
I awaken to sunlight streaming in my room, and take inventory. The forehead is sore, the jaw hurts when I move it, and everything else is stiff. But I’ll live. I turn my head to the left to check out the heart monitor, and it’s holding steady at 82 beats per minute. That’s probably fast for me, but it’s solidly in the ‘normal’ range. That means no drugs, no shocks, thank God.
And then a sound to my right draws my attention, and I find my partner slumped in the chair, sound asleep.
When had she come back, and how had I missed it while being awakened every five minutes? I clear my throat, and it has the desired effect--she opens her eyes.
“When did you come back?” I ask.
“Just a little while ago,” she says. “I must have dozed off. How do you feel?”
I grin. “Like I’ve been beat up by a girl.”
She smiles back. “That was no ordinary girl.”
I nod my agreement and add, “and neither are you.”
Is it possible I made Dana Scully blush?
“You know, I wasn’t just glad to see you all decked out to play, Scully. When that door opened and you were there, I was happy as hell to see you.” She adds a smile to the blush.
After a second she regains her normal composure and speaks. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand this one, Mulder. I’ll never understand what you were thinking or feeling, or what I was, for that matter. Or why it matters. And I still don’t understand what the appeal is for you. I can’t figure it out.”
“I’m a guy, you’re a girl,” I point out. “Maybe we aren’t meant to figure it out. That’s part of the fun, don’t you think?”
She looks pensive for a moment, then grins slightly and nods. And I just have to add something.
“But we’ve gotta get you playing more regularly, Scully. You were in the zone.”
I couldn’t resist.
<Game Over.>