Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: The Devil: Fair? Who do you think you're talking to? I don't recall anybody ever accusing me of being fair before. I think I'm insulted. (Bedazzled) Vol 3. Week 14 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Five Episode: Detour
"He's doing this to spite us." Fox Mulder was adamant, growling as he hurled himself into the X-files office, lanky limbs looking for his office chair to throw themselves in. It was promising to be one of Mulder's petulant afternoons.
"Skinner isn't trying to spite us, Mulder, he said so himself." Scully met her partner's petulance with rationality and reason as she trailed behind him to her table. She was met with scornful disdain from the overdramatic side of the office. "After the last two months for both of us, what's wrong with a little paid vacation."
"This isn't paid vacation, Scully, this is systematic punishment and torture." Mulder's hazel green eyes rolled skyward as he tipped his head back in futile annoyance. "Do you know what these team seminars even are?"
"Since I haven't been to one, I can't say that I do," Scully shrugged, settling primly behind her table as she began sorting through stacks of reports, news clippings, and half finished files, the collected detritus of Mulder's solo excursion while she was out on medical leave. Barely a week into her return and she was already thinking that time away from the office again wasn't such a bad idea.
"I had to go to a team building seminar with Jerry once when we were rookie newbs, too green and stupid to know better." Mulder leaned back and propped his long legs up on the corner of his desk, hands folding over another example of his amazingly poor taste in neckwear. "The entire episode was nothing more than eight hours of psycho-babble, huggy, feely crap punctuated by free food and occasional booze to keep our flagging spirits up."
"So are you speaking as a psychologist or as a man who hates to get in touch with his emotions?" Scully frowned down at a mess of random newspaper clippings all having to do with random sights of swarms of killer bees.
"I'm speaking as an FBI agent who has real field work to do rather than sitting at the Tampa Bay Hilton making small talk with Jim-Bob Field Office agent who is just excited to get out of following up leads on kids taking out rural post boxes with baseball bats."
"Wouldn't that technically be the postal services purview?" Scully didn't have to look up to feel the glare of annoyance shot at her general direction. "Besides it isn't a Hilton, it's a wilderness lodge in northern Florida. Frankly, it doesn't sound so bad, nice cabins, pools, the great outdoors…"
"You actually want to go on this pointless excursion, don't you?" Mulder made it sound as if he was accusing her of wanting to hang out with the loser squares of the Bureau, as if this were high school and they were the token cool yet intelligent outsiders, staying aloof in their disdain for conformity.
If that were the case, call Scully a conformist nerd. "Look, Mulder, what does it hurt to talk to other FBI agents, to real people? When was the last time you even did that?"
"Willingly or because I got assigned to a case?"
Scully wasn't amused. "Think about it, it's just the two of us, all the time, everyday. We go off to Pennsylvania, or the Midwest, or Timbuktu, and we hardly ever see other people within our fields except when we are consulting with them."
"Other people don't like the X-files, Scully, they don't get it."
"How can they get it when you don't let them understand it?"
"What, so people can take potshots at Spooky Mulder? No thanks." Mulder threw up his hands defiantly, even after all these years still preferring to be the distant, weird, basement dwelling malcontent to the rest of the Bureau's assimilation. "Besides, this entire exercise in group dynamics is meant to be a partnership building seminar. Partners…as in you and me."
Scully looked up from the stack of paperwork, meeting Mulder's pointed frown. "I understood that part, is there a problem with that?"
"No," he replied, "But this is you and me, Scully. You've lasted as my partner three times longer than anyone else in this place ever has, and that includes Jerry. Do you think we really need to work on our partner communications skills to improve our team dynamic?"
"Considering that in the last year we have spent our time bickering back and forth with each other over what we want out of this partnership, coupled with the fact that we've both suffered major personal blows with our families and health, and not to mention that we were both responsible for the fall of a Section Chief who we unveiled as being corrupt, I would say that perhaps having a chance to work out what all of that means in terms of our work relationship would be a good thing."
"But that's just it, Scully, we persevered despite all of that!" Mulder waved his hands excitedly at her as if she had made his point for him. "If we didn't have the communication and trust between each other that we do, we would never have gotten through any of that."
Trust…Scully sighed. He was half-right; there was no person in the world Scully trusted more than Mulder. And yet how many of their arguments and petty squabbles had been born out of her fear of relying on him, out of her worry of what his cause would do to her. And rather than discuss like rational human beings, she had turned to passive aggressive behavior and baiting him before exploding on him in a fury of her own personal neurosis. Poor Mulder had put up with a lot out of her last year, not just her cancer, but her trust issues, her crises over her future, her jealousy over Melissa Riedel, and hell, even the Ed Jerse mess.
"I'm just saying it can't hurt." She knew her more reasonable response would win out with Mulder in the end. Already she could see him pouting over it as he was beginning to realize he couldn't win this argument. "Think about it, a weekend in Florida, we can do the conference thing, and if we get bored, maybe we can hit up a bar, or the beach, or something. Celebrate the fact that we are both still here."
That idea Scully knew would mollify Mulder. She could see him turning it over in his amazingly quick mind. "Will there be skimpy pool wear involved in this weekend adventure in the woods?"
"Perhaps for some of the agents, not me," Scully snorted, earning a long suffering sigh from Mulder who finally seemed willing to at least go along with the idea. "And will you at least try to be on your best behavior while playing with others?"
"If you mean being deceptively petulant rather than outright rude, I might be able to manage that."
Honestly, Mulder was a man-child at times. "All I ask is that at least attempt to smile and take it. Besides, you never know…you might actually have fun doing it."
"My level of fun is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed to cover the bullshit that I have to listen to."
Scully sighed, closing her eyes and counting, slowly, to ten. Perhaps Mulder was right after all; this was a punishment from Skinner, for her at least, ensuring Mulder didn't make a total ass of himself.
