This is just a random piece of fluff that I had clogging up my brain, and I had to get it out. I'd watched the pilot a little while ago, and I noticed the glasses– so I decided to write a fic about them! Insightful. Stupendous. Marvelous and magnificent. It must have been fate, that's all that I can say.
I got nothing. No rights, no money, no personal possessions. No friends, no family– NO ONE LOVES ME!
Oh...Christ, thought Special Agent Dana Scully of the FBI as she stood in the doorway of her office early on Wednesday morning. She was panicking– her palms were sweaty, her throat was dry, she was having difficulty focusing. All her flight-or-fight instincts were screaming "FLIGHT!" at her, and she was incredibly tempted to give into them. Shakily, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose in an effort to bring the world into some semblance of focus.
This sudden fear was not caused by some grotesque, unnatural beast (though she'd seen her share of them and was more inclined to fight them rather than run away). It wasn't because of the huge stack of unfinished paperwork that was balanced precariously on the sole desk in the center of the room. The fact that it was Wednesday and not Friday like she'd momentarily thought upon awakening this morning was inconsequential. The strange and slightly unnerving photographs pinned to the walls had nothing to do with her fright.
It was all because of a pair of stupid wire rimmed glasses.
She'd caught a glimpse of them when her partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder, had looked up at her and smiled his good-morning greeting. From then on, it felt as though her internal organs had been shutting down, and all Scully wanted to do was to run like hell back down the hallway, into the elevator, and outside, where freedom (and a distinct absence of a certain pair of glasses) awaited her.
But, being the brave and self-sacrificing woman that she was, instead she stepped forward into the tiny office that she and her partner shared and walked her unwilling self over to her chair. Setting her purse down on the floor, she sat across the desk from Mulder, steeling herself– she knew that it would be a long day.
She'd always had a thing with those glasses– an almost-violent love-hate relationship, ever since the day she'd first laid eyes on her now-partner. She loved the way they looked on the man, loved how they made his hazel eyes almost sparkle. But she fervently hated them for pretty much the same reasons. To be constantly reminded of how infuriatingly attractive her partner was was no blessing in any way, shape or form.
"Hey, Mulder," she said, inwardly applauding herself because her voice hadn't cracked.
"Scully," Mulder greeted her. He glanced up at her momentarily, and their eyes locked– but only for a second as he quickly broke eye contact and returned to the tabloid in front of him, studying it furiously.
Scully cleared her throat. "We got anything today?"
Mulder's eyebrows rose and he looked back up at his partner. "Why Scully," he said in mock-surprise. "Are you eager to get on a case?"
Dana rolled her eyes and rummaged through her bag for a pen. If nothing else was going to happen today, she figured that she might at least get a start on some of the paperwork that had been haunting them for the past few years. "Shut up, Mulder," she said offhandly. Her partner snorted.
"My, aren't we defensive! Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Or have you just not been able to have your morning cup of coffee?"
Scully didn't dare look up, for fear of the potential effects of The Glasses. "I said, shut up."
Unfortunately for her, it seemed that her partner was in a teasing mood. "What's got you so on edge, Scully?" he goaded her. Now Dana did look up, despite The Glasses. Wire rims or not, Mulder was beginning to make her angry. "You have a bad date last night or something?"
"No!" exclaimed Dana. "And even if I did, what's it to you? Why the hell do you want to get a rise out of me? What do you want from me?"
xXx
Mulder had been edgy only since his partner had walked into the office a few minutes ago. Until then, he had been having a relatively good morning. He hadn't spilled his coffee all over himself, like he was wont to do. He hadn't gotten cursed out as he was driving from his apartment to the FBI building. And Miss Kitty from last night had been very accommodating over the phone.
But then Scully had to walk in wearing those damn glasses. He pushed his own pair back up the bridge of his nose and tried to avoid her gaze– he'd made her angry, provoking her just so he could feel a bit better about how he was feeling towards those glasses.
"What do you want?" Scully cried once more, blue eyes sparkling dangerously, making Mulder feel a way Miss Kitty could never manage.
"Take off the glasses," Mulder muttered into his cup of Starbucks'.
There was a pause.
"What?" Scully finally asked, unsure of what she had just heard. "Mulder, what are you talking about?"
"Why are you wearing those glasses anyway, Scully?" he asked, eyes fixed on the folder in front of him but not actually seeing it. "Don't you usually wear contacts or something?"
"I– uh..." Scully scrambled to get her thoughts pulled back together after her partner's total non-sequitur. "I didn't have time to put them in this morning. I woke up late and I– wait a minute, why does it matter?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mulder said, trying to think up an appropriate answer for his bizarre request. "It's just that you look so..." sexy, he thought. "So bookish when you wear them. Like an old librarian." One of those librarians from those magazines under my couch. Which aren't mine.
His partner's mouth hung upon in indignation, and Mulder winced– he'd known those were the wrong words as soon as they'd left his mouth. He watched in despair as his partner visibly drew herself together for an explosion that would probably leave him ripped to little tiny pieces.
The phone rang. Mulder practically dove across the desk in order to pick it up.
"Mulder," he said. He listened to the voice on the other end for a moment. "All right, sir. I'll send it up in about half an hour."
As he hung up the phone, Scully raised an eyebrow at him. "That was Skinner," he said. "Said he'd fire me if I didn't get a certain piece of paperwork up to him by noon."
Scully gave a cold smile. "Was this the piece he was, perhaps, talking about?" she asked, waving a bit of paper at him.
Mulder studied it for a moment, then said, "Yes! How did you know?"
"Because Skinner has been asking me for it for the past two months," his partner replied. "But I don't think that I'm going to give it to you until you explain why exactly you don't like my glasses. Alright?"
"Scully..."
"I'm serious, Mulder. I want to know this."
"Scully, I could lose my job!" Mulder whined. But Scully was adamant.
"Your own damn fault if you do."
"You are heartless," Mulder pouted, flopping back into his chair. "What makes you think that there's anything more to my dislike of your glasses than my just not liking them?"
"Because if you didn't like something I was wearing just because you didn't think it looked good on me, you wouldn't mention it," Scully explained. "Whereas, if something I was wearing was making you uncomfortable, you'd react just as you are right now."
Mulder regarded his partner levelly. "You think that you know me so well."
"I do," replied Dana, equally calmly. "Now tell me what's wrong with my glasses or kiss this paper goodbye."
xXx
Scully would never have destroyed the paper– she cared too much about Mulder and his well being to do such a terrible thing. But Mulder's comments were driving her out of her mind with both anger and with curiosity. An old librarian?
Mulder spun his chair around and stared at the wall behind him– Scully let out a frustrated sigh. But before she could make a move to pretend to shred the document into a thousand tiny pieces, her partner spoke up.
"I asked you to take off your glasses because I hate the way you look in them," he said. Dana was about to shriek in exasperation when he spun back around and looked her square in the eye. "I hate the way that they bring out your eyes and make you more attractive than you have any right to be– especially to me. I hate the way that they make everything you do have some sort of sexual double-meaning– at least in my mind. I really really hate those glasses."
Scully was speechless. Of all the explanations that she'd expected to come issuing forth from her partner's mouth, this was the one that had never crossed her mind. She tried to come up with something to say, to rebut Mulder or to tell him off for kidding around, but she kept drawing a blank. Finally, she cleared her throat.
"Well...that explains a lot."
Mulder's face broke out in a grin. "You think so?"
Scully nodded and handed him the document. Their fingers touched as the paper changed hands and something that felt a great deal like a bolt of electricity flew between them. Scully's eyes jerked up to meet her partners and they were standing close too close for comfort and he was drawing even closer and oh no her eyes were fluttering shut what the hell was she doing there were about a thousand regulations in the FBI rulebook that expressly forbid this sort of thing–
The phone shrilled again, and the two agents jerked apart. Scully walked quickly back over to her chair and sat down, patting at her hair in an attempt to regain her shaken composure. Mulder picked up the phone, hazel eyes not leaving the petite woman seated on the other side of the desk.
"Mulder," he said. There was a pause as he listened to the person on the other end of the phone. "Yes, I understand, sir. Might I extend the deadline, then, to...say...two pm? Alright then, how about one o'clock? Yes, it will be on your desk at one sharp. Thank you sir. Goodbye." He hung up the phone.
"Skinner says that that isn't the form that he wants," he said, pointing to the piece of paper on his desk.
"Ah, I think I know which one it is, then," Scully said, shifting through the mounds of paperwork before her. She pulled out a seemingly-random form and presented it to her partner. "This is it."
He took it, careful not to let their fingers brush again and studied it. "How is it you always know which paper he's talking about without my ever having to describe it to you?" he asked.
"Simple," his partner replied, eyes dancing. "I actually pay attention when he calls us in to his meetings."
"Well," Mulder said craftily, placing the paper down on his chair and walking over to Dana. "It shouldn't take too long to complete. And I've got a nagging sensation that you and I have something to finish up. Have you got any idea what it is?"
Dana smiled up at him and licked her lips in a way that made Mulder very glad that she had chosen to wear her glasses that day. She reached up and pulled his wire rims off, tossing them on the desk. "Those have been bugging me ever since I walked into the office this morning," she said, by way of explanation.
"Really?" Mulder asked, attempting to raise his eyebrow in a direct mimicry of the Scully-Skeptic look. "Care to explain why?"
"Nope," his partner said, and pulled him in for a kiss.
God, how horrible was that? Pretty damn horrible, that's how. It's just something that I had lurking in the dark and mysterious corners of my mind– I cannot be held accountable for how it turned out! Not at all! Please don't hurt me.
Review please! It's not that hard. Just click on that lovely lavender button and type in whatever comes to mind! I'm not that picky. At all.