Title: Fuzz

Author: JayBee

Rating: PG (for a few bad words . . .)

Category: Humor, a dash of UST, and lots of fluff

Distribution Statement: Anywhere you'd like, just keep these original headers attached, pleez.

Feedback: Always cherished; jaybee_bug@yahoo.com OR you can review

Spoilers: "The Beginning" & season 6

Summary: There's a fuzz on the ceiling. YES, this is an X Files fic. Thanks for asking.

Author's Notes: This little story was inspired by a real life occurrence. And, ahem, yes, Yaak is a real place. *g*

Disclaimer: Don't worry, Chris. No Mulders or Scullys were harmed in the making of this fic. Or would that be Scullies? Um, whatever.

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"Mulder, are you listening to me?"

I yell, but again, I don't get a response of any kind. I growl in anger, as I fiercely shuffle through the damn sea of paperwork spread out in my bedroom. It's probably been 5 hours straight of this, on a Saturday night. I glance at my alarm clock. The red numbers flash '12:00'. It had to have been at least past midnight.

Overloaded with work this week, which we had foolishly left to gather dust as we ran off, or at least Mulder dragged me with him, to investigate some stupid sighting of glowing green lights over Yaak, Montana. How the hell did he convince me to go with him? I sit down and blink, rubbing the bridge of my nose. No, I have no clue now. We weren't even supposed to be investigating X Files anymore. If Kersch found out-- well, if. Hopefully we'd be able to finish these damn papers tonight so I could get some real sleep for the first time this week . . .

"Mulder!" I yell again, not wanting to have to get up just to find out what the hell he was doing. He was supposed to be helping me here-- he was the one who got us into this mess in the first place! Typical, I mutter, but I'm far too tired to get very angry with him. I just want this night to be over with.

After a few more minutes of fruitlessly searching for a paper in the ridiculous mess, I stomp out of my bedroom.

"Mulder, where the hell--"

I stop short when I see him lying on his back on my couch, staring straight up at the ceiling, with absolutely no expression on his face, like he had gone into a daze. My jaw drops, I think, simply shocked at first and unable to phantom how he could just lay there past midnight when I was drowning in paperwork. My eyes follow his limp arm, flopped to the floor, and spot a single piece of paper sitting near it. No doubt what I had been looking for all along.

Then the anger begins to surface and I suddenly find use of my vocal cords again.

"Mulder, what the hell do you think you're doing? I--" he holds a single finger up to his lips and makes the softest of 'Shhhh' sounds, still gazing blankly upwards. As I had already worked my mind past the brink of exhaustion, it was mostly past any anger at the situation either, so I give up on screaming and just walked over to him.

"Mulder," I say, in a voice infinitely quieter now, the tired voice, the I-can-only-stand-five-more-minutes-of-this-before-I-collapse-into-a-state-of-comatose voice.

"Lay down, Scully." He murmurs so softly I wonder at first if he really said it. But then he sort of nods at me.

"What? Why?" I puff, slightly annoyed and slightly in wonder at why he was being so quiet.

"Just lay down." He repeats himself a little louder, his voice edged with some emotion I can't place. I look at the couch and then to the floor, and then to the couch again. He was stuffed into the corner of the couch on his back, completely stretched out, and I finally figured he meant for me to lay down on the couch with him. I sigh, no longer wishing to argue and just go along, so I lay down next to him flat on my back. The leather couch is cold and I lay sort of stiffly at first, my view filled completely with the blank white ceiling, and wonder what the hell Mulder was up to. But he shifts to accommodate the new pressure on the couch and I sink into the space next to him, which is warm from him laying there, and despite the fact that we still had a mound of papers to finish that Mulder had seemed to forget about, I relaxed. Despite the fact that I should be more than angry at Mulder, I still enjoyed the simple proximity and silence.

Then he pointed to the ceiling.

"See that?" He asked softly, his breath a warm tingle in my ear. I lazily follow where he's pointing and stare a moment. What was he talking-- wait, squinting, I do see something.

"You mean, that piece of fuzz?" I wonder quietly, my voice sounding as subdued as his. God, what is with that? How could he subdue an angry and exhausted Scully bent on finishing the damn paperwork into somebody who simply had no care in the world? It both annoyed me fiercely about him and made me think of how amazing he was.

Mulder nods slightly, which I mostly feel and not see, as my eyes are still trained on the dot of fuzz.

"Watch." He says simply, so I watch the fuzz. It's stupid. A little white bit of fuzz hanging from my ceiling, and somehow Mulder has convinced me to watch it when I know Kersch is going to have our hides on Monday. I feel him taking a deep breath, and then he blows in the direction of the fuzz. What the heck was he doing? That fuzz was all the way up there. There's no way--

About five seconds later the fuzz comes to life and dips and whirls in a wild spiral above us, spinning like a little planet, and a moment later comes to a light halt. Wow, I think.

Suddenly I'm grinning and am fighting back a chuckle. Wow?

I feel him beside me, bouncing with a light snicker, too, and I can't help it. I just laugh. You know how something isn't really that funny but you just can't stop laughing about it? You have no clue why, but you just can't. That's what it was like. I don't know how the hell, but next thing I knew I was laughing so hard my face was red and I was tearing up.

That sane part of me wondered if I had lost my mind, but also mused at how nice our laughter sounded mingled together, Mulder's and mine. They seemed to compliment each other perfectly.

I seemed to have lost all perspective of time. Hell, my alarm clock was unplugged. So I don't know when we stopped, but after a while we wore out and just laid there again, gazing at the ceiling, still breathing hard. That was all I listened to for a while, the puff of Mulder's breath right beside me, and my own.

Watching the little fuzz, I puffed at it myself. About three seconds later, it whirred about in its dance again, and I watched it with amusement.

"That is so . . . cool."

Mulder nods in agreement. "I know," he says, sounding very serious.

"You could, like, count how many seconds it takes." I say. I blew again and counted. One . . . two . . . three . . .

The fuzz bobbed up and down and bounced on the ceiling like a rubber ball before coming to rest again.

I grin again. "What is wrong with us?" I ask.

Mulder shrugged as best he could. I think we both have sunk to the center of the couch now, mashed together, gazing up like two bored children who just found the coolest thing in the world to do. Mulder blows at the fuzz again and I snicker.

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Two days later . . .

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"Great. What the hell are we gonna tell him this time, Mulder?"

We're sitting next to each other outside Assistant Director Kersch's office door, waiting for him to see us.

"Well . . . I don't know. I thought it was your turn to come up with something."

Of course we didn't get all the paperwork done. We ended up falling asleep on the couch, and I couldn't do it all on just one day, Sunday. I didn't even try.

"No way. It's definitely your turn. Remember last time with the crop circles? I had to say that I had a family emergency, Mulder."

"Oh. Yeah."

The annoying blonde secretary stuck her head out of the office door.

"Mulder, Scully, yore up." She called almost tauntingly. That little . . . hated us almost as much as Kersch did. I look at Mulder.

"You better have something good, Mulder." I mutter under my breath. He nods.

"Oh, I do, Scully, don't worry." He says as we pass the sneering secretary.

FINIS

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