Character: Fox Mulder

Fandom: The X-Files

Rating: PG-13

Prompt: Picture of a table full of Guinness Vol 32 on scifi_muses

Setting: Deep Throat

AN: For the opposite side of this story, read "The Hit" at 1breath, (for the folks you can find it under Seasons: First.)

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My fortress of solitude was being invaded.

Perhaps "fortress" was too strong of a word to put on to the tiny, basement hovel I had carved out for myself. But solitude wasn't, no one ever came down to the land of the Goblin spiders for anything, not even so much as "Hey, how are you doing?" I could be dead down there for all most FBI Agents cared, and I preferred it that way. Less chance of getting the long, speculative sideways looks, as if people expected me to whip out an anal probe and attempt to use it on them.

Not that a few people around this place might not need a good anal probe. Hell, a few might even like it.

The basement offered me a refuge from the whispers of "Spooky" Mulder that followed me like ghostly sighs along the hallways on any day I deigned to come up from the bowels of the Hoover Building. There I could research alien abductions and cattle mutilations, read up on the latest findings on psychic research, or catch up on the less serious but always engaging articles in my latest adult magazines. Who would have thought there could be such engaging stories in those type of things?

I suppose some would say it was something akin to a man-cave. But it was my office, my passion, my life's work there in those rickety cabinets and dusty corners, and it was now being turned up and disturbed by the efficient and neat Dana Scully. I should have expected it when she came back to my office after turning in her report, all optimism about us working together. I'd waved her vaguely in the direction of an old table I used to collect random bits of unused office equipment on and told her to knock herself out. I thought she'd glare at me archly, demand a real desk, and put an order in to requisitions so some twenty-something office monkey could bring something down for her.

She'd cleaned the entire area herself. Cleaned…really removing the layers of dust and grime off the ancient woodwork where she set herself up. I was vaguely stunned when I entered my office two days later to see her primly positioned behind the table, files organized, writing implements stored in a handy container, working on a laptop she had set up in the corner. Out of the sea of unwanted overhead projectors, broken typewriters, and un-sifted boxes of case files Scully had created a small island of calm. Orderly, exacting, clearly defined. Just like the agent who sat there.

I hated it.

Of course I hadn't said I hated it, I'd joked that if she was that handy cleaning off the table, perhaps I should let her have a crack at my bathroom. She'd been less than amused. And so began our new existence as partners, she in her personal bubble of tidiness in the corner, while I danced between my jumble of slide photos, the musty case files in their ancient cabinets, and the morass of magazines, newspapers, photographs, and reports still cluttering the area around my desk. It made sense to me in its own, chaotic sort of way, and I liked it that way.

I knew it drove her crazy, but Scully was, if anything unerringly polite, and the hell she was going to say anything about it. No when she could sit back and quietly question my methods. Still, it was an odd jarring of my personal space, the work I had built for myself with the X-files for the past three years. I liked my world, the familiarity of the madness. Scully stood out against it like a French wine at a kegger. Sitting there with her notes and doubts, eying my collection of pornographic magazines with a silent but pointed raised eyebrow.

She'd caught on I'd left those in prominent view on purpose.

I don't know why I suggested the bar to meet, I wasn't exactly that big of a drinker save for the occasional beer. I suspect it was more just the impulse of getting her away from that table, out of my fortress and into a setting where I wasn't constantly reminded of how jarring her presence was there. I had planned to be out at the Pentagon that day anyway, I had a question or two for the Department of Defense regarding a phone call I'd received from an Anita Budahas about a still missing husband taken into Air Force custody months ago. I figured on the swing back I could coax Scully out to lunch, see what the picture perfect agent was like when she wasn't married to her laptop and case notes.

Unsurprisingly, I was running late, and the bar I'd chosen mostly because I passed it on my way home every night was packed to the gills with the sort of up-and-coming Washington wannabes that made me want to kick their asses for simply existing. The skeeziness practically oozed out of the door, the sort of political jostling that sent me screaming for the basement in the first place. They jammed into the place like sardines, slamming cheap beers and scotch and sodas to fortify them for their long afternoons of power brokering and closed-door meetings, playing desk jockey for the powerful of DC. Hell a job like that, I might need to have a few in me before I went back to the office.

I scanned the sea of dark suits and macho postures for the telltale red hair of my partner. Granted, I couldn't tell Forest Green from Black three-fourths of the time, but I could still pick out Scully's bright hair in the dim light streaming in from the afternoon window. She sat perched up on a high barstool, just as prim and proper as if she was sitting at her table in the office, a stack of files at her elbow. Typical, the woman was as bad about work as I was it seemed. Automatically I turned towards her, glancing around the crowded room for a table where the two of us could sit like civilized adults, beginning to regret this idea of the bar anyway. But I paused when I saw the man who slipped beside her with a wide, apologetic, charming smile.

It was a fairly old move, as far as pick-up methods were concerned. Accidentally spill your drink, not enough to cause a scene, but enough to have to apologize profusely, and then turn on the charm and slip a line in there while their guard is down. A tactic used by all the smoother college kids out there, but usually not so effective once the women have reached the experience level to catch on to the act. Curious, I watched the tableau, interested in seeing how my partner handled herself.

I don't know why I found it interesting…I find a lot of human interactions interesting, watching people in various situations, how they react to cues both expressed and unexpressed. The cock of a head, the small smile given after speaking, a glimmer in the eye, all telling signs of the interaction going on. I couldn't help myself, the study of such behavior was what I did, part of how I saw the world. So much could be spoken in those simple, wordless gestures, volumes of conversation most of us never pick up on. I watched the interplay between my partner and this stranger. He was interested, albeit in a passing sort of way, obviously he was a man who didn't get a chance to see many pretty women period. Scully on the other hand was politely not, but flattered all the same. I don't see why she should be surprised, she's an attractive woman, and this can't be an uncommon occurrence for her. Still, the man persists…he doesn't look like a guy used to rejection. Definitely more than a desk jockey for a Congressman, he's an up and coming Washington player, perhaps works for a Senator, has eyes on something bigger, oozes that charm and confidence that only politicians ever seem to have, but with a cocky arrogance that reminded me a tad of someone else I knew intimately.

Maybe I could have been him if I'd gone into politics or the State Department, like Dad wanted. He had much more in the way of people skills than I did, though clearly not enough to impress the likes of Dr. Scully. Politely she turned away all further inquiries as crestfallen her would-be hot date turned and wandered off, already re-writing the events of that interplay in his mind, he wasn't shot down, he was simply being polite. I could see him doing it even as he wandered back to his cluster of other DC go-getters, drink in hand. By this evening, when he's still in the office at 9 at night, he'll have forgotten the pretty red head. I'm certain that by now Scully has already forgotten him.

Pity, I shrug as I make my way to her, he seemed nice enough. Did Scully have someone in her life? Funny, I hadn't asked. She seemed fairly closed mouthed about anything particularly personal in the short time we've shared office space. Though I had picked up on the small photograph on her desk, a faded photo of what I surmised were the Scully children, Dana in the middle, one of the smallest of the bunch, hanging off her elder brother's shoulder. Everything else about my new partner's personal life was still a mystery.

Which is perhaps just how she wanted it. Seems I wasn't the only emotionally distant person in this arrangement.