Fox Mulder sat alone in the lunch hall. He enjoyed these solitary moments of reflection, and the other kids thought he was weird anyway. While they read Harry Potter and talked about football, he opted for sci-fi pulps and exposing the conspiracies of Mountview Elementary, of which there had so far been three. The latest of these were the suspicious lumps in the mashed potato, which Mulder suspected to be a primitive form of alien life.

He was busy extracting the unappetising lumps when a shadow fell over his lunch tray. Expecting a bully, he was equally relieved and suspicious to instead see a girl with a shock of red hair that covered most of her face, clutching a tray and eyeing the empty seat next to him.

"Hi," said the girl. "I'm Dana. Dana Scully."

His voice was a little uncertain, as he was unused to people being nice to him. "I'm Mulder. But most of the kids around here call me Spooky."

"Really? I heard them calling you Stinky." She motioned with her tray to the cool kids' table, where Tommy Colton was piling baked beans onto a spoon.

"You must have misheard," replied Mulder coolly, an instant before the beans collided with his face with a resounding splat. Laughter filled the lunch hall as rapidly cooling tomato juice stained his shirt, and Scully couldn't help but smile at Mulder's exasperated sigh.

"Hey Stinky Mulder," shouted Tommy Colton. "Who's your girlfriend?"

"Just ignore him," said Mulder apologetically.

"Oh sorry, I forgot that's your mom," guffawed Tommy, high-fiving his pals.

"Mind if I sit here?" asked Scully, and sat down next to him without waiting for a response, offering him a serviette. "For the beans," she explained.

"You do realise that by sitting next to me you're forfeiting any hope of a social life for the next few years, right?"

"That's okay," replied Scully. "Most kids say I'm boring anyway. So, what are you reading?"

Mulder turned his book over so she could see the cover. It was a well-thumbed paperback copy of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. "Its just a sci-fi book."

"Heinlein?" asked Scully, raising one eyebrow behind her thick red veil of hair. "I prefer his shorts."

"You read sci-fi too?" asked Mulder incredulously. "But you're..."

"A girl?" smirked Scully. She couldn't be sure, but it seemed like Mulder was blushing a little. "You're funny, Mulder."

"So," Mulder leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. "Do you believe? In aliens? In the unknown?"

Scully laughed. "No, silly. I just like reading." She pointed at his face. "You missed some bean juice."

*

(A/N Just a teaser/prologue, please review and let me know what you think. All feedback appreciated.)