Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Margaret: Hi, Ted. I'm Margaret. You sound down. Is your New Year's not starting off well?
Ted the Bellhop: No, Margaret. This New Year's Eve is not starting off well! This one is going pretty fucking badly! (Four Rooms) Vol4.9.2011 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Six Episode: Tithonus
AN: Somehow, Mulder turned into a raging twelve-year-old in this fic today, I felt as if I were channeling one of my younger brothers…oye.
Whatever peace on earth and goodwill to men Christmas generated, it gave way to the New Year, and a return of Mulder's dour attitude. Scully should have realized that all good things must come to an end.
"Read 'em and weep," Mulder tossed a stack of manila files onto her desk, flopping into his own chair as he grabbed one off the top.
"What's this?" She glanced from the disturbingly tall stack to her partner's languid boredom as he stretched out long legs and began flipping through one of the random folders on top.
"Our new assignment!" The cheer he forced was sarcastic enough to sting as he waved it vaguely in Scully's direction. "More background checks!"
"New assignment?" Hadn't this been what their work for the last two months?
"Well they are now Department of Health and Human Services applicants, so different government title."
"I see." Scully sighed, sipping at her coffee and wishing she had thought to bring a bucket of it and not just a mug. The problem was she did see and she knew exactly what was going on. It was a game of chicken at this point between herself and Mulder and Assistant Director Kersh, who was going to blink first. And she knew that Kersh was betting that Mulder, with his penchant for independent thinking and deep seated need to do something more with his day than watching the shadows on the bullpen ceiling would be the one to blink first. Sadly, Kersh obviously wasn't a keen observer of human behavior, else he would have known that there wasn't a creature alive more stubborn than Fox Mulder. He would wait Kersh out to the grave if he wanted to, just to prove a point. And Scully had a feeling that it was his point that was the only thing keeping Mulder going now.
"Here's a promising one," Mulder flipped to the cover page, hazel eyes scanning the information quickly. "Names Sally Berktrom, age thirty-seven, has a nursing degree from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri and has done some administrative work for the local osteopathic medical school in her town. She's single, no parents, no relatives, and claims her only dependents as her four cats, Binky, Muffin, Herby, and Doodle."
"Doodle?" Scully snaked a hand across to read the form in disbelief. "No..."
"I wonder if she calls it Doody for short." Mulder tossed the file across her desk in disgust. "Honestly, who names their cats as dependents?"
"Who names their cat Doodle," Scully wondered, amazed at what some people would admit to on a government employment form. Curious, she grabbed the next one on the stack. "How about this one, Myron James, forty-three, Lancaster, California, a wife, no kids, but under previous criminal history admits to having been arrested for growing marijuana in his garden shed for 'medicinal purposes'."
"He at least has the pharmaceutical knowledge required to work in a department like this." Mulder was already flipping though a third file. "This person seems at least somewhat normal, Letitia Summers, from Atlanta, ten years in medical administration. Top of her class at Georgia Tech, one of the first African-American administrators in her field in the city."
"Sounds like a winner. What's the dirty secret on her record?"
"Who says there has to be one?"
"I don't know. Does she have a cat named Binky as a dependent?"
"Nope, a son named DaSean and a daughter named Tanisha, a husband who is in construction, and a mother who is retired and living in the home with them."
"You mean to tell me she's perfectly normal?" Scully felt vaguely disappointed as Mulder nodded his dark head sadly. "Sounds like she's a great hire."
"How much you want to bet we'll spend half-an-hour doing background checks on her only to have her lose out on a promising job working for her country to someone who names their cat after something I did in the bathroom this morning." Mulder frowned in disgust. "What has this country come to when being the lowest common denominator is a key component for being hired for a job."
"Are you talking about cat lady or about yourself?" Something in Mulder's glower told her he wasn't speaking about strictly about Sally Berktrom or Letitia Summers.
"Why would I be speaking about myself," Mulder's guilty gaze slid to the pile of paperwork, ignoring her.
"I don't know, Mulder, I have to wonder if I'm not speaking about myself." Scully could at least be honest about that much. "It's galling to me that I spent eight years in school and another two in residency, and still went through the Academy, and my reward for all of that is to sit here trolling through people's personnel files, laughing at the names they give their cats." She felt the tiniest bit of guilt twinge as she realized she had been laughing at a woman she had never even met.
"What, you hadn't caught on that when we signed that dotted line in HR we signed away any and all dignity we might have had before then."
"I don't think that the US government is in the habit of hiring Oxford graduates to do background checks on potential future employees."
"What do you want me to say, Scully, of course it pisses me off." Agitation sent his hands shoving through his dark hair, making it stand on end, Mulder's natural energy stifled in the mediocrity of their task. "And if we say anything Kersh will tell us to quit or find something worse for us to do. And frankly I'm not big on janitorial duty at the moment, cleaning up someone else's doodle."
He was right, but the fact didn't change Scully's ambivalence. Her skin itched with it. "I'd take anything right now, I'd take doing an autopsy for the locals over this." She stared down at her well-manicured hands. When was the last time she had held a scalpel in them? Dallas? No, Bethesda, in the morgue at the Naval Hospital, where the strange bodies from the FEMA office was kept. The events of Dallas and the summer before seemed so long ago to her now.
"Maybe you should," Mulder mumbled quietly, gathering a stack of folders. "Take the first thing you can get that isn't this, get away from here for a while and do something real for a change."
"And leave you alone to do all of this?" Scully feared what might happen if she actually let Mulder call Sally Berktrom and her cats. "I'm in the dog house too, Mulder, and I'll pay my penance."
"How very Catholic of you," he snickered mildly. "Look, Scully, I'm serious. Your career has suffered enough, and I know I'm the one they want. If you have a chance to redeem yourself…"
"Nothing doing," she replied with much more firmness than she intended. The file she was holding snapped loudly as she smacked it against her scarred desktop. "Don't help them do their job, Mulder. I'm not abandoning you."
"I didn't say 'abandon', I'm just saying be strategic. If one of us can get out of this hell hole, perhaps they can help the other." He chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully for the briefest of moments. "Well, there may be no hope for me, but for you…"
It was by far not the first time they had shared this conversation, and Scully doubted it would be the last. This time she chose to simply strategically ignore him. "How about you do a background check on…Ian Poon."
"Poon…that's seriously his last name?"
It took about five full seconds for Scully's brain to catch up with Mulder's twelve-year-old snicker as she pulled from the deepest dredges of her memory regarding vulgar slang and adolescent, teenaged male humor. Her yes narrowed dangerously at her unrepentant partner. "Grow up!"
"If I haven't managed that by now, Scully, I'm not going to do it anytime soon."
"And that's why we are in this mess in the first place," she muttered, grabbing a file and turning her back on him as she reached for her desk phone.