the Detour Continues Chapter 4
The Power Session. "Refuel Your Power". That's how Presenter A is starting off her workshop. She is standing next to a file cabinet that is supposed to be a gas machine. In her right hand is a 12 inch ruler that is supposed to be a nozzle.
"I'm refueling myself and my team," she announces with delight.
There are snickers scattered among the captive audience. Literally captive. This session is mandatory. Attendance is taken. No excuses. Even Agent Simons who had to leave the morning session because of nasty hangover had to drag his ass down here.
Scully tunes out of the gas analogy and looks around at the faces of these fellow agents. All the partners are sitting together. Some look bored, some interested. Most are doodling or whispering to whoever is sitting next to them. It feels surreal that she and Mulder should be a part of this group, as if they belonged because they are ordinary people, not outcasts from space.
Mulder is making some kind of list but she can't make out what it is. She has the latest draft of her presentation hidden under her agenda.
Mulder thinks she is actually taking part until he sees the typed page hidden beneath the carefully placed paper. "What are you doing?"
"Draft of my presentation." The pen returns to its place between her teeth.
He feels inferior. He is only working on his Imaginary Dinner Guest List of Deceased Baseball Players - majors and minors. "I can proof read it if you want."
"No…. " She finds a misplaced comma and scratches it out. "I'm fine."
"You think of anything we need to be communicating about, you let me know",
"Mmmm," she says and eviscerates another comma.
He groans. "I hate these things. "
She presses the pen with extra force. "Join the club."
Then, the horrible words, "….. break into your assigned groups" bounce around the room from the microphone. "Blahblahblah. Teambuilding. Blahblahblah."
She looks at Mulder in time to hear, "Jesus Christ' slip out of his mouth. He crumples his list of dinner guests and leans towards her. "Glad you decided not to play hooky?"
"Shut up, Mulder," she whispers back.
The groups scatter to various corners of the ballroom. This leaves the losers at the dance. Smith and Wesson wander over to their table, looking as bored as they can.
"Well," Smith sighs. "Guess it's us four."
Scully is about to extend her hand and introduce herself and Mulder when Smith digs into her purse. "Damn, where did I put my smokes? Wes, you have my smokes?"
"Nope."
"Its non-smoking," Mulder reminds them for no other reason than he is pissed off.
"Duh, tell me something I don't know - oh, here they are." Smith puts a new box of cigarettes on the table, next to her elbow. She likes to leave them where she can see them. Nobody knows if this is a personal, phobic issue or if she just enjoys irritating people by having them in view of their judging souls.
Scully pulls the table's sole pad of paper towards her. She doesn't trust Mulder to leave any idle thoughts off the page and the other two don't seem to care one way or another. "Does anybody have any thoughts?"
Mulder snorts from her right. Wesson tightens his tie. Smith looks around. "I need a smoke."
"Okay," Scully mumbles under her breath. So it's going to be this kind of a crowd.
"Let me ask you two something," Wesson says, making himself comfortable. "What's it like living in that basement office?"
So they do know who Mulder and Scully are. Here come the cracks.
"I'd kill for a basement office," Smith adds. "Get away from the boobs on the sixth floor."
"They aren't that bad," says Wesson.
"Oh? You know how many times I have to hear Adams clipping his nails?"
"Which one?"
"All of them."
"No, which Adams."
"Bobby. And they aren't his fingernails he's clipping."
They continue their discussion about life on the sixth floor while Mulder and Scully look at each other in amazement. They aren't the topic of the usual office dissing. They have been usurped by a guy named Adams who clips his toenails in the office. They wonder what other subjects and behaviour went on upstairs.
"I need that smoke," Smith groans. She nods politely to her new friends. "Back in a sec. These things drive me mental."
Wesson jumps to his feet.
"What about the exercise?" Scully wants to know.
"Oh, just make something up," he tells her helpfully. "Everyone else does."
Mulder drops his head onto his arms and swears into the table cloth.
But Scully keeps an eye on them as they leave the room and step into the foyer. Just before they get out the nearest doors, Smith finds a cigarette in her purse. Without missing beat, Wesson produces a lighter and slips it to the tip of the cigarette. Smith smiles, leans into the flame and stands back with a perfectly placed smile.
"Oh my God," Scully exclaims in that same amazed way when she sees a perfectly intact lower intestinal system hanging from a tree branch.
Mulder mumbles, "What" from where his face is buried.
"They're sleeping together."
His head bounces up. "What?"
"Smith and Wesson."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"It's obvious, Mulder."
"Scully, let's remember that I'm the one with hunches, you're the one who wants hard evidence. So unless you have something better than women's intuition, try and keep that rumour on hold until I decide to believe it."
Scully lingers a moment longer on her discovery and then returns to the empty piece of paper in front of her. "All right. Question One. 'My definition of a well-functioning team is …' "
"One where one person doesn't make the other listen to dumb ass questions." Mulder leans over and grabs the pen out of Scully's hand. "You want to know what a well functioning team is? Us. It is us."
"We have our problems, Mulder."
"Yes, yes we do. And despite those problems, as many million as I know there are, we are still the kind of team that works because of who we are, not who anybody else is. Given our lives, personal and professional, we're the team we've become because we've learned that from each other; things you can't learn in this kind of manufactured environment. Monday morning, all of these people will return to their cities, their desks. Maybe a few who made friends will email a few laughs back and forth. By ten AM, they'll have forgotten this weekend and these nuggets they have learned because they will be ass-deep back in their own caseloads, in their own worlds where this world won't even be remembered."
A creepy voice interrupts. "And how are we doing?"
One of the facilitators, his hands behind his back, is towering above them, smiling like a nosey neighbour.
"We've lost half of our pair and are just about to go find them so that we can complete this exercise," Mulder tells the facilitator.
"That's not a problem. You two just carry on without them, Agent…." He tilts his head so he can read Mulder's badge "Dippshitz."
Scully's eyes fly over to Mulder's chest. She can't believe she didn't bother reading his name badge. Dipshitz.
The facilitator, used to this kind of thing from the passive aggressive clients, nods and moseys away to his next victims.
"Mulder, take that off."
"Later. Now look around this room and tell me who else is sleeping together."
She leans over and tears the square sticker from his shirt. "This is the kind of thing that makes us a target. This kind of thing, Mulder, not little green men or spaceships."
"I was telling Agent Kinsley that the real description for Little Green Men was actually…"
"I don't care."
Other teams are already diligently working away. Some people glance awkwardly at their partner and pretend to be distracted by an overhead plane. Some teams are glaring at each other. A few smile because they have already practiced the answers. Some pause thoughtfully, wanting to be as honest as they can. These are the people Scully envies right now. The ones who know they have everything to lose but forge ahead because they have everything to gain.
Mulder spares two, maybe three seconds scowling. He leans towards Scully and quietly demands, "What is it you really plan on getting out of this weekend?" He would like to hear her say it aloud because he is sick and tired of coming up with empty guesses. He knows she wants to leave and he knows she also wants to stay and see what the other agents are like; what their lives are like, and are any of those lives like hers.
"Maybe I'd like to learn something, Mulder. About me. About us. Has that occurred to you?"
Mulder shoves back the chair. "Let me know if you find out anything good." He gets as far as the door before one of the facilitator reminds him in a loud whisper that the washrooms are to the left of the boardroom. It is code for, you aren't getting out of here that easy.
"Do I care?" Mulder growls into the man's face and walks past him out of the room.
"Sir, a reminder, this session is mandatory for all agents-"
The door slams on his last word. The facilitator turns around. Everybody is watching, envying the nerve of the rebel agent.
"Ooo look at that," Stonecypher whispers into Kinsey's ear. They are huddled in a corner of the ball room with another team. Stonecypher is poised at a flipchart, ready to capture every prudent idea.
"Somebody's pissed," Watson from Kansas remarks. "Isn't that the spaceman guy?"
"Agent Mulder," Stonecypher corrects. She hates inexactitudes. "She doesn't look too happy either."
Watson stretches his head around her so he can see. "That the pathologist?"
"Agent Scully. I wonder what she said to him."
"Who says she said anything?" Kinsley genuinely wants to know. "Maybe he said something to her."
"Ohhh," Watson and Grimm sigh at the same time. "Not happy."
A chorus of other whispers began to surface:
"… If he doesn't come back, he's in deep shit."
"..…Hey, we're not supposed to leave this thing at all."
"…..Oh, old Spooky likes to play with fire, I'll say that much."
"…..I wonder if I can have his office."
"…..I wonder if I can have his partner."
"…..You're a pig."
End of Chapter 4
