Timeline: 1x4 Jersey Devil

Category: Missing scenes/post-episode

"What an ass," Dana mumbled as she tried to merge onto the already jammed I-95 South. This is exactly what she wanted to: drive home by herself through traffic for several hours. She would be as fresh as a daisy for her godson's birthday party. Another thing she was dying to do: hang out with a room full of sugar spiked six year old kids. But, it was Ellen, and she wasn't going to cancel on her and she wasn't going to complain about the party. All her grumbling would be internal.

Not that children were a bad thing in general. Dana could understand why people had them. They just made her vaguely uncomfortable, because she didn't know what to say to them. She was better at an autopsy than making small talk with a five year old. So, she was in no rush to start a family. Maybe she wasn't cut out for motherhood at all. It certainly was the last thing on her mind. This was probably part of the problem her family had with her line of work: it didn't scream—I'm going to be a wife and mother someday. It was more—take some insurance out on me.

The phone rang and Dana looked briefly from the road and then blindly felt for the phone on the passenger side seat. 'Better not be Mulder,' she thought. If it was, he was in for an earful. "Scully," she barked into the phone.

"Dana?"

"Oh, Ellen. Hey, sorry."

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm just sorry I snapped at you. Wrong target."

"Everything alright?"

"Yeah. How's the party setup coming along?"

"I've just about got everything put together. You're still coming right?"

She could hear the uncertainty in Ellen's voice. 'You cancel once on someone because of your new job and they think you're going to cancel every time.' Dana didn't want to be that friend—the type that chooses work over relationships. "Sure, of course. I wouldn't miss it. Listen, I'd love to help you get things together, but I'm stuck in traffic on 95."

"Sounds like fun. Well, don't worry about it, Dana. I'm just glad you're coming. Drive safe."

...

Back on the road again. How many hours had it been? Mulder required assistance. Imagine that. I-95 bliss. Back to save her new partner. Her new asinine partner. Maybe her original statement didn't need revision—he was a jerk. Mulder was a grade-A jerk. She couldn't leave him alone for five minutes without him getting in trouble with the local authorities. How does an FBI agent end up in the drunk tank perfectly sober? It was perfectly clear that he was crazy. Dana saw an opening in the traffic and gunned the car, switching lanes. Although, what was her hurry? She should let him stew.

This little stunt just proved how ridiculous Ellen's question was. Agent Mulder was not dating material. And he certainly wasn't father material. If Dana was looking for a life and someone to make a life with, the last person she should be gazing in the direction of should be Fox Mulder. She'd really be hitching her wagon to a winner then. Yes, she had told Ellen he was cute when she'd first met him, but the effect wore thin when you got to know the man. He teased and he read dirty magazines. And he raved about aliens; that was something she couldn't tell Ellen. Dana had brothers, she was well aware that men could be crude and she generally let their remarks roll off her. Besides, you couldn't get very far in the man's world that is law enforcement having too delicate of sensibilities. But, Agent Mulder had seemed to be particularly unprofessional lately. Reading "Hanky Panky" at work, teasing her about having a date…it was all very annoying and it irritated her. She hadn't signed on to babysit a juvenile.

Maybe he was getting under her skin, because she was feeling too sensitive about her life of late. Correction, lack of a life. There was no date to hurry home to. Just a kid's birthday party—someone else's kid. And that had been the way of things for several months. She hadn't dated seriously since Jack. She'd come away from her breakup with Jack realizing that her tendency to date the men she worked with wasn't a good plan of action for the future. That and the firm belief that FBI men didn't make good boyfriends. She wanted to decompress after work, not continuing to talk shop. Danger wasn't all it was cracked up to be either in a mate. Moreover, FBI men tended to be too obsessed with their work. That certainly summed up Fox Mulder. He was so work obsessed that Dana had already surmised that he was completely devoid of a personal life and he probably liked it that way.

Dana was looking for someone more settled—perhaps someone more like Rod.

Mulder glanced up at the clock for the fourth time in the last half hour. His eyes were beginning to swim. Photographs, footprints, and drawings of the Jersey Devil danced in front of him like animated cartoons, mocking him. He wasn't getting anywhere. If he wasn't so sure he'd seen the thing, he'd cash it in and go home for the night. He needed a break.

He felt a little lonely tonight. He was beginning to get used to having Agent Scully around. Having her trash his theory would be a welcome respite from staring at these images in the dark all evening. But, she was on a date. He glanced over at the table Agent Scully used. He couldn't make her materialize by force of will. He glanced at the clock again and wondered if he could come up with a reason to interrupt her date. It would have to be a good reason, or she'd think he was just trying to ruin her evening. He didn't so much want to ruin hers, as rescue his. When was the last time he'd gone on a date? The realization that it had been much too long ago made him rub his eyes.

Scully chewed her food, ingesting her dinner, but having a difficult time ingesting Rod's tasteless conversation. He was painfully dull. She hadn't wanted shop talk, and that included state planning and taxation. She didn't want to hear about his ex. She didn't want to be told how children change everything. There was a gulf separating them, but he seemed unaware of the distance. Another bad date. Another first…and last date. This was impossible.

'Saved by the bell, so to speak,' Dana thought as she excused herself from the table after her beeper had gone off. Maybe Agent Mulder needed to be rescued from the drunk tank again. She didn't think she'd mind, so long as she didn't have to drive to Atlantic City again. 'Let it at least be a local PD's office.'

She had left her cell phone at home, because she generally considered it poor etiquette to bring work along with you on a date and Mulder had already developed a tendency to call her on off hours with hunches and surmises. She hadn't planned on taking any calls, including her partner's. Mulder had probably already tried her phone before resorting to her beeper.

She dialed the office number, waiting for Mulder to pick up.

"Scully," he answered.

"Mulder."

"Sorry to interrupt your evening."

He probably wasn't all that sorry, she considered. "That's ok, what's up?" But it was okay all the same. Mulder wasn't really a jerk; he probably needed her. And Rod was about as much fun as watching paint dry.

...

Dana sank into the warm bath. She'd spent the afternoon with Agent Mulder at the Smithsonian, talking with an ethno-biologist. Mulder's enthusiasm was apparently contagious, as the ethno-biologist had been eager to talk for hours. It was still wholly more interesting than Rod's dinner-talk. She had no interest in a repeat showing with Rod. Being alone was better than that. Spending the day with her partner was better than that. Mulder wasn't so bad anyway. She'd just been hypersensitive.

Just as Dana was having warmer thoughts about her partner her phone rang. She sighed. She'd called her mom earlier, so it had to be Mulder. She reached for the hand towel closest to her and dried off her sudsy hand before grabbing her phone. She looked at the caller-ID. Just as she thought.

"Scully," she said, careful not to make a noise in the water.

"Scully, I've been thinking," he began without introduction.

"Mmhmm?"

"What do you think the chances are that a juvenile could survive alone in the woods?"

"I don't suppose you mean my godson," Scully deadpanned.

"It might warrant further investigation, if it's out there," he continued undeterred.

He couldn't be serious. 'Please God let him be joking.' "Not tonight, Mulder."

"Why? What are you doing?"

"Reading," she lied.

"No hot date, huh?"

She wanted to tell him to shut up. "No, not tonight, Mulder."

"Huh. Well, sorry things didn't work out with…"

"Rod," she supplied.

"Rod…you're not going to be the Maggie May to his Stewart, huh?"

"Very funny, Mulder."

"You could have just stayed with me in Atlantic City, if you'd known Rod the Mod was going to be a bust."

"I suppose I could have."

"But, I take it you don't want to chase down beast kids with me?"

Scully leaned her head against the tiled wall of the tub. "Another time, Mulder. Let's just wait for the next mutant to come along."