Disclaimer: I do not own The X-Files. If I did, there's be way more coherency in the overall story arc.
Authors Notes: I have returned! After a long absence in the world of fan fiction I've been inspired by The X-Files. The first show that, to me, signaled the resurgence of the 90s reboots. I've been re-watching old X-Files episodes in anticipation of the upcoming season. Yes, despite this show disappointing me with the second movie and the cliffhanger ending of the abbreviated season 10 (so many mixed feelings when it returned!) this show and its characters will always hold a special place in my heart.
I've always liked the more upbeat, weird, funny Monster-of-the-Week episodes. It's a shame there's only been three holiday episodes over the entire series run and one of them was a depressing 2-parter that wasn't really a MOTW episode. The fanfic I'm writing takes place in the mid-early years. Maybe season 2 or 3. I hope this reads okay. It's been a while since I've written something.
The Xmas Excursion
Dana Scully was not one to leave her holiday shopping until the last minute. She had an unofficial plan every year with rarely any deviation. Some people (a tall, sarcastic one in particular) would call it anal-retentive. She called it being prepared. Waiting until the last weekend before Christmas was akin to throwing yourself to wolves. And yet here she was at Pentagon City, dodging harried mothers, wailing toddlers, and lackadaisical teenagers with no spatial awareness.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," she muttered to herself as someone bumped into her for the fifth time in ten minutes.
It's been a couple of years since her, well, she couldn't decide if it was supposed to be a promotion or a demotion. She was handpicked out of many other new faces to be an FBI agent but none of the other agents, no matter how green, worked in the dusty basement. An optimist would liken it to their own private office, away from the pencil-pushers in their rattling cubicles, but then she doubted they'd take the room if they knew they'd be sharing it with the resident "spooky" agent.
Speaking of... she stopped by the escalators, near a map of the mall and looked over the directory. She had been trying to decide whether to get her partner a present or not. They've been through the wringer over the past couple of years and she considered him a friend. A bit of a strange, sometimes exasperating friend, but a friend nonetheless. The problem was what to get him? Would she go for something professional and perfunctory, like a red tie? Maybe try for something more casual but generic like a snowflake-printed shot glass? They hadn't gotten presents for each other before so he'd likely feel embarrassed if she got him something too forward.
"Out of the way, kid," A man grumbled as he elbowed past her.
"Who are you calling 'kid'?" She called at his retreating form.
Maybe she should've worn her heels after all. Who cares that it was raining, bordering on sleet? She's pretty damn sure she could run over a frozen lake in black pumps.
The toy store was packed and the clothing stores were various degrees of crowded with the more casual shops full up and the high end boutiques less-filled but hardly sparse. She managed to grab a couple of small toys for her nephews inside the department store and had a mental list of clothes sizes for her brothers and her mother and after balking at the prices in Banana Republic and Armani, she doubled back to the department store. Should've just stayed there to go through the racks while there was still relative breathing room.
Her oldest brother and her mother were relatively easy to shop for. They had given her a small list of suggestions about a month back and she found a power drill for Bill along with a crock pot for her mother. Her mother's old pot seemed to break down just a few days after her father died. Knowing how old Ahab loved his slow cooker pork, it was something of a weird omen. It was high time her mother upgraded to a new crock pot, perhaps in a more compact size.
Last but not least was her youngest brother. She headed into the men's section with a plan in mind. The young man didn't own a suit and was overdue for something formal to put in his closet, at least to have for a date night with his wife.
"Okay, Charlie," she mumbled to herself as she looked over the suits. "What would look good on you?"
After going through a couple of pinstripe suits in navy, dark green, and brown, she settled on a classic black ensemble. She walked out of the suit section and seeing the scattered group of women and bedraggled husband, she turned around and tried to cut through the shoe section. A pair of shoes caught her eye. High heeled boots. Looking down at her tennis shoes she considered splurging on something for herself. Then her phone rang. She grimaced and juggled the basket in her left hand with the suit on the hanger until both were being held in her left arm. She grabbed her large phone and took the call, wondering if her mother was trying to get ahold of her.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Scully. It's me."
Any other person who answered like that would've merited a roll of her eyes but the fact was she did know his voice. She'd know him even if he hadn't addressed her by her last name.
"Mulder," she sighed as she hobbled to a display shelf. "I'm a little busy right now. Do you need something?"
"Busy? What are you doing?"
A loud alarm suddenly rang from all the way across the store. A couple of employees ran right past her with walkie-talkies and a few shouts from the front of the store made her curious – but not curious enough to lug all her things down there just to take a peek at the brazen shoplifting that would merit this fast a response.
"Take a guess," she deadpanned.
"Your smoke alarm has good batteries." Her partner could totally match her deadpan.
"Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if a small fire did break out here," she sighed as she looked at a kid trying to screw out a flashing holiday light. "I'm at the mall."
"Dana Scully!" He said in mock outrage, "You are not shopping on the weekend before Christmas."
"Believe it or not, I said the same thing to myself," she replied as she leaned her basket on the shelf. "Turns out paperwork, mandatory overtime, and a couple of oh so important weekend cases you dragged me to really cut into my scheduled shopping time."
Mulder had the nerve to chuckle, "Are you still upset about the Frosty incident?"
"No, but thanks for the reminder," Scully draped the suit over her shoulder and spied a pair of registers a few yards down. "Three days. In Wisconsin. On an "abominable snowman" tip. And it turned out to be a regular snowman."
"Hey, what mall are you at?" He had a knack for smoothly changing the subject. This was not one of those times. "I'll stop by and treat you to an apology Cinnabon."
"How about I just eat a cup of sugar. It's cheaper."
"Where's your Christmas spirit? You don't like to indulge around this time of year?"
"You just want to buy me that big cinnamon bun, knowing I won't eat most of it so you can get credit for being nice while stuffing yourself with a frosting glob masquerading as a roll."
"Did you have some kind of traumatic pastry incident that I'm unaware of?"
"Mulder…"
"Okay, no sweets. But I can still come pick you up. Help you lug all the last minute gifts you got for the Scully clan"
"No, thank you. I drove here and I'd rather not leave my car in the parking lot for longer than necessary. Especially with the weather getting worse."
"Are you sure? It's really no trouble."
Looks like Mulder was in one of his talkative moods. They didn't usually hit around the holidays. It was always a constant readjustment around him. He started with his chatty, late night calls all the way in the beginning, on their very first case together. And for all her self rationalization, it wasn't something she would've expected given his reputation. Not the one that prompted little ALF stickers to appear on their basement door but the one that spoke of his Oxford education and years of credibility in the Violent Crimes Section.
After getting past that tall, suspicious, intimidating package it was definitely surprising to find that he had the sense of humor of a teenage boy with the attention span to match. That was one of many odd dichotomies that made up Fox Mulder. Brilliant, grounded profiler with an alien obsession. Sarcastic agnostic with a belief in the spectral and spiritual. Devastatingly handsome with no love life outside of some old porno videos. Wait, scratch that last observation.
"Scully? You still there?"
"I'm getting in line Mulder, and it's hard to hold onto my things and this phone at the same time."
"In line where? What shop?"
She sighed, knowing he'd keep asking unless she told him or hung up. And seeing as she was twenty people back on the shortest line, she figured it couldn't hurt to humor him. She set her heavy basket down at her feet and plopped the suit on top. Now both her hands were free.
"I'm at Macy's in Pentagon City."
"That tourist trap!" He scoffed, "And you haven't been trampled?"
"Not for lack of trying."
"Maybe you could get ahead by flashing the cashiers a little something."
"Mulder!"
"I meant your badge."
She was glad he couldn't see her red cheeks, "I'm only slightly less outraged."
"What did you get, anyway?"
"Something for Bill, something for Charlie, a few things for his kids, and something my mom's been wanting to get but putting off for a while."
"Gonna get any more specific or should I guess?" His voice held more than a hint of amusement.
An old woman grumbled at her to move and she shoved the basket the three inches that the line in front of her managed to progress. She gave the woman a look as if to say, 'satisfied?' and got a haughty sniff in return.
"How about I guess what you're doing? Sitting alone in your apartment with your Knicks shirt and an old pair of sweatpants, waiting for your microwave burrito, and bugging your co-worker because there's nothing decent on television."
"Close. It's a Kermit the Frog shirt and a microwave chicken pot pie."
"…Seriously?"
"Yeah. The supermarket ran out of turkey pot pie so I made due."
She shook her head. "If you shopped earlier you would've gotten the turkey one. So I guess you're not the only one who went last minute shopping."
"I guess but I prefer chicken over turkey anyway."
Another few paces forward. And one of the cashiers in front seemed to be having some kind of scanner malfunction. Great.
"I hope you've got something a little more filling for Christmas."
"Like a goose with all the trimmings? Maybe some chestnuts roasted by the chimney with care? Fi-ggy pu-dding? A pah-tridge in a peah tree?"
"I get it," she tried not to crack up at his ever worsening Cockney accent. "A bachelor's holiday for you."
"And a gallon of vodka."
"Hope you tip the Chinese delivery guy on Christmas."
"You think he'd take Kermit underpants?"
"What?"
"It came with the shirt."
'Attention shoppers, there's two new cashiers open in the Kitchen section of the store on the third floor. If you're nearby, please make your way over and we will be happy to assist you check out.'
The generic 'thank you for shopping' message was drowned out by the screams of the people in her line and the stamping as they made their way to the elevators. They were on the second floor and when she was grabbing the crock pot upstairs she saw the registers were empty so everyone up there grabbed their items and headed downstairs to pay. Would've been nice if that announcement had come around twenty minutes earlier.
"Move your bedazzled keister, Brunhilda!"
"Up yours, Priss Kringle!"
"Out of the way, people! I got places to be!"
"You're all trampling my little girl! I'm gonna sue!"
It didn't speak very highly of her (or the shoppers, she supposed), that Scully's first instinct was to dive to the side onto the shag carpeting several feet away. She faced ice leeches, liver-eating mutants, and flukemen but true terror grabbed hold of her in the form of an angry mob in a crowded mall. She was distantly aware of someone calling her name. It was faint and increasingly worried. Looking to her left she saw her cell phone. Heavy and sturdy enough that it survived the drop. But her basket was several paces away, her purchases strewn over the floor. The nice black suit was trampled and the crock pot box was dented.
"Scully? What happened!?"
She picked up her phone and brushed back her hair, strands having gotten lose from her ponytail.
"You know those animal documentaries where the antelopes are drinking at the river and then a crocodile suddenly pops up and tries to snatch one of them?"
"Scully…?"
"I just survived an honest to God stampede. I'll call you later."
She ended the call with the press of a button and shoved the phone into her bag before getting to her feet. An employee finally seemed to notice her and rushed over, asking if she was okay.
"I'm fine. I think I'll have to get a new suit though."
The young woman – surely a new, seasonal hire – helped gather her things and offered several apologies before she suddenly stopped. Scully half expected the woman in the work vest caught sight of a cranky customer. But instead she held something small and black in her hand. Her wallet? No. Scully's eyes widened.
"You're in the FBI?" The woman said with nervous awe.
"I, yes, but…"
"Are you going to arrest our customers for attacking a federal agent? Are you going to take in Gary for making that announcement? I swear he didn't mean for them to rush you! I don't think it was a violation of the fire code. I know there's a lot of people here but my boss says-!"
"Ahem! Cindy," Scully placed a steady hand on the woman's shoulder after glancing at her name tag. "It is Cindy, right?"
"Yes," she nodded jerkily.
"Look, I'm off-duty. And I just want to get my purchases and go. If you could help me, that would be appreciated."
Cindy immediately brightened, relief palpable. She practically bounded over to the register where the only other man working was watching in vague interest. He was finished checking out an old man who didn't seem to have heard the announcement. In fact, just about everyone in the 20+ long line was long gone. It was a small miracle. And all it cost her was some rug burn on her knees and a mini heart attack. Her phone was ringing and she had no desire to pick it up. She was ready to leave the Mall of Mayhem and get home for some tea and a long bath.
The cashier scanned her dented crock pot box and the fairly unscathed drill box.
"That it?"
"Wait, where's my suit?"
Scully turned around, looking for the young woman who was holding on to the suit, right behind her. Instead Cindy had gone and brought back a new suit, wholly untrampled and unwrinkled.
Scully offered a small, sincere smile, "Thank you."
"No problem, agent. I mean, ma'am. I mean…" She excused herself, but not before whispering something to the cashier.
With her presents bagged and tagged, she made her way out of Macy's, dodging the overzealous perfume spritzers and the small boy splayed out in the middle of the exit, mid-tantrum. She checked her receipt and she noticed a discount. Maybe Mulder was right about flashing her badge. And right on cue, her phone rang.
"Mulder, I'm heading home so can you just-"
"I'm getting in the car."
"No you're not," she insisted loudly, "I've survived the running of the bull-headed and lived."
"You sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine."
Mulder sounded as if he was shifting out of a coat. It really was coming down hard. She'd have to hang up to dig out her umbrella from her bag.
"Well, as long as you're okay," he paused as to collect his thoughts, maybe offer one last argument as to why he should go to her aid. "Can you get me a Cinnabon?"
"Seriously?"
"You can make it my Christmas present."
"And what are you getting me? A helmet for the next shopping adventure?"
"I'll keep that in mind for next year. But I think you'll find some use out of what I got you."
She blinked at her phone, as if expecting to see Mulder's face materialize. She'd be able to see if he was being sincere or not if she could see him.
"You… got me a present?"
"Uh, yeah. Is that okay?"
"What? No. I mean, yes. I mean…"
"You didn't get me anything," he guessed.
And she probably should've apologized and offered to buy his lunch for the next month as a belated Christmas gift but instead she insisted, "I did. I'm just surprised you got me something."
"Alright. So you wanna swing by my place later and pick it up? I know you'll be spending Christmas with your family."
"Umm, it'll take me a while. Because it's raining and I have all these bags."
"It's okay. I'll stay up. Not really feeling tired anyway."
Scully cursed to herself and shoved her phone into her bag. She hauled out her umbrella and dashed to her car. Though her socks got soaked, she managed to stave off most of the slushy rain and she shoved the bags into her back seat before returning to the mall. A choice had to be made. Either brave the dinner time rush or hope she finds something on the drive back home. She shook her head. How forgetful could she be? First this late shopping and now forgetting Mulder's gift? Even after she had been thinking on what to get him? And did she ever settle on the tie or the glass?
With no real idea of where she was going, she found herself at the food court. Maybe a Cinnabon really was the way to go. She saw the wreaths wrapped around the columns and the lights on the banisters above. All seemed lost when she spotted a maintenance man plugging something in.
Hark! A cheery eyed beacon of hope!
She rushed over to him. "Hi, who do I have to talk to so I can buy this?"
The main in the jumpsuit gave her a disbelieving look.
"You cannot buy this. It's mall property."
With a smile reserved for every perp she's ever interviewed she pulled out her, small slim government issued trump card.
"I'm FBI."
The maintenance man's eyes got wide and he shuffled off to get his boss. It only took fifteen minutes to get her decently large gift wrapped up (in a trash bag) all for the low price of five dollars. The bulk of the weight was in the little motorized fan and cord. She was glad that the crowds around were so packed and more interested in their own problems than paying attention to the woman hauling off a mall decoration in the hopes it would amuse her partner.
It was a long drive to her place thanks to traffic and road conditions so she was putting Mulder's gift in a bag and getting ready to get back out by 11 pm. She didn't have time for a courtesy call and just hoped he was decent. Two knocks at his door was all it took before he opened it and offered her a winsome smile. He was in a plain shirt and navy sweatpants.
"Merry Christmas," he offered as he stepped aside to let her in.
"Early Christmas," Scully corrected. "If it was actually Christmas today, forget the mall. My family would be getting envelopes full of twenties."
"You want something to drink?"
"Like your gallon jug of vodka? Pass," she raised an eyebrow and let herself smile coyly, "You're wearing a gray shirt. What's the matter? Not easy being green?"
He grinned ruefully and looked down at his old Hanes, "Funny story. I was feeding Hawn and Meir when Meir hopped out, straight for my shirt. Kermit never saw it coming."
Scully couldn't help the startled snort, "Sure Mulder. Tell me another one."
"Fish on frog violence is serious business."
"What'd you get me?" She was straight to the point. Might've been a combination of nerves and tiredness from her trip.
He walked over and pulled a plain-wrapped box from under his kitchen counter. She gave him a look before carefully unwrapping her gift. It was rectangular. Not heavy at all. Nothing rattling, though she did resist the urge to shake it. It was shoe box. For a second, dreams of high heeled boots danced in her head. When she opened the box, it was something a little different, though not wholly unrelated.
"Panty hose?"
"Yeah."
She blinked a couple of times as she pulled out the multi pack of hosiery. There were several different colors. She half expected some lacy garters mixed in with them. She wouldn't put it past him.
"Remember how you said you kept ruining your nylon socks when you were out on cases with those skirts."
"It's why I switched to pantsuits," she said still turning each pack around. "Is this your way of telling me you want me to go back to skirts?"
He just smiled, "So, what'd you get me?"
Scully resisted the urge to cackle as she handed him the large Macy's bag. There's no way he'd expect it. She watched him untie the bag and pull out the butcher paper wrapped bundle. His brow furrowed as he tried to unwrap the less-than-festive wrapping paper. She might have overdone it on the tape. But finally he got it off and he pulled out the mass of white nylon. She darted forward and found the fan, switched it on, and waited for the realization to dawn. She was not disappointed.
"…Seriously?"
"It's an abominable snowman!"
She threw her head back and let the tension of the day dissipate through her hearty laughter. After a moment, Mulder joined her, his bemused chuckles growing more cheery as he watched his oft-straight laced partner try to calm down, only to erupt in giggles with one look at his inflated gift. As midnight drew close, the two agents celebrated an early Christmas under the blinking LED of a smiling, inflatable Frosty the Snowman.
End Notes: I feel like that Frosty case would also make another fun fic. I like writing banter and mystery and maybe a bit of flirtyness. This show has it all and I can't think of a better show to get me back to my writing roots.
I want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a wonderful New Year. Thanks for reading!