Character: Dana Scully

Fandom: The X-files

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 2398

Prompt: Smiling Jack: Me I don't care what you do, but - just so you know - polite vampire society looks down on that kind of thing.

Toreador: Pfft. They can be polite and pass me the salt for my rat! Wk 49

Setting: Second Season Episode: "Red Museum"

AN: Borrowed Dialogue

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Wisconsin, strange cults, and vegetarians be damned, Scully was starving. And who cared if she had been working for weeks to work off the weight she had gained in her illness, the giant plate of juicy, greasy, barbecued beef ribs in front of her would be hers. Well…just as soon as Mulder stopped staring at her as if she had suddenly grown two heads.

"Scully are you sure you can handle all of that?" He sounded dubious as he picked up one of the giant ribs himself, studying it as if he was trying to decide what was the best way to attack it.

"Mulder, aren't you the one who loves barbecue? When we were in Tennessee on the faith healing case, you tried to convince me that we should go on a barbecue case tour of all the major barbecue spots." She cheekily grinned at him as she snagged a rib off the platter, and began to delicately nibble on one end. Well, as delicately as anyone could manage gnawing on giant, cow bone.

Mulder stared at her, transfixed.

"Your sauce is dripping, Mulder," she smiled sweetly, pointing to the giant blob of grease and barbecue sauce that threaten to fall straight into the uncovered part of his lap. He blinked, and quickly moved the rib out of immediate danger, before finally giving in and beginning to eat himself.

When he finally managed to finish his rib, well before she had finished hers, he set it down and reached for another, watching as she steadfastly chewed.

"We'll be here all night at this rate," he teased, stripping one side of the bone practically with one bite.

"I have smaller teeth, makes for good bone cleaning," she laughed, neatly setting the bone on her plate and reaching for another rib.

"You sound so clinical when you say that."

"I am a pathologist," she shrugged, cheerfully starting her next victim. She chewed thoughtfully on the smoky meat. "Perhaps it's simply the barbaric side of me seeking to come out."

"I think I need to see more of this barbaric side, Scully," Mulder winked as he reached over for a third rib, and looking as if he had no intention of stopping.

To say it was an orgy of meaty, greasy goodness was an understatement. Though, to Mulder's credit, he finished a vast majority of the ribs that Scully, with her smaller teeth and smaller appetite could not. But she was the last to finish, thoughtfully chewing on her bone as Mulder wiped grease and sauce from off his face and hands.

"Of all the strange and weird things I've made you eat, Scully, in a million years I never imagined I'd get you to eat beef ribs."

"Why not?"

"You just don't seem the beef rib, eating type." He frowned playfully as she continued clean the bone she was working on. "Seriously, you look far to girlie to be a cave woman."

"I'm not all that girlie," she protested mildly.

"How long did it take you after we got back from Washington for you to get your nails done?"

"A couple of days," she shrugged, noticing self-consciously that she had barbecue sauce and meat stuck under her nails of each forefinger.

"And how many pairs of shoes do you own?"

"Shut up, Mulder," she groused, dropping her last bone on the plate in front of her, sighing with happy, replete contentment.

"You know, Mulder, with ribs like these, I'd say the Church of the Red Museum has its work cut out for it." Honestly, they were some of the best ribs she had eaten in years. And she wasn't going to admit to Mulder just how recently it had been since she had eaten ribs either.

Not that he would notice, she realized. He was too busy staring at the corner of her mouth, she wasn't sure at what. Wondering if it was something on her face, she began to reach, but he beat her too it, leaning across the table with the corner of his napkin, and gently wiping at something just below her cheek.

It was the briefest touch, but she was startled by it, the intimacy of it. Of course, Mulder hadn't exactly ever been one to pay much attention to such things as personal space; he was always the touchy, feely type. But she had never had him do something as personal, and really as strange as removing barbecue sauce off her face. She felt her cheeks turn bright crimson.

"Thanks," she murmured, ducking her head slightly as she wiped her now grimy fingers off with her napkin.

Quick, she thought, change the subject to something remotely safe. She cleared her throat as she tried to tidy her hands up as best she could. "So, you started to tell me about walk-ins but I'm not sure if I grasped the finer points." Frankly she had never even heard of the concept before. It sounded like something her sister Melissa might have spoken of once, but she had only half been listening.

"Well, it, it's kind of a new age religion based on an old idea. That if you lose hope or despair and want to leave this mortal coil, you become open and vulnerable."

"To inhabitation by a new spirit." Scully asked.

"A new enlightened spirit," he clarified. Scully wondered how it was he knew all these archaic bits of random knowledge. "According to the literature, Abe Lincoln was a walk-in. And Mikhail Gorbachev and Charles Colson, Nixon's advisor."

Only Nixon's advisor, huh," she smiled. "But not Nixon?"

"No. Not even they want to claim Nixon." Mulder grinned.

"So are you still subscribing to the sheriff's claims of a possession?" Not that he ever seriously was, but she was starting to see where the sheriff and the people of Delta Glen were getting the idea. Especially now that she knew something of these supposed "walk-ins".

Mulder looked hesitant to agree whole-heartedly with the good sheriff. "Don't know. In the absence of any other plausible explanation... it's a novel theory," he hedged, pulling off his sauce covered bib, and tossing it beside the battlefield of stripped and roasted cattle bones.

Scully considered the sheriff's ideas, of the possession of the children, and thought of the fear and uncertainty emanating from Gary Kane that day. The boy was terrified, she was sure that part hadn't been an act, for all of the sheriff's prompting and leading the witness. She had felt something while she had stood there in the hallway, a presence that had been watching them. It had unnerved her, but she had found nothing when she had turned around to investigate.

"Well, I'll tell you something," she began thoughtfully, as outside the front window of the restaurant she heard some sort of commotion break out. "I kind of feel weird saying this..."

Mulder's eyes turned towards whatever was going on outside, narrowing as the tendon in his jaw line twinge just a bit.

"Really," he murmured, only half listening to her. His attention was focused outside, as someone yelled at a tall, gangly boy with the red turban of the Church of the Red Museum. Loud, obnoxious car honking and the screeching of tires on pavement soon followed the boy, as someone clearly made every effort to harass the young man. Mulder's frown darkened, and he began to rise to see what was going on.

"What's going on," Scully frowned as Mulder got a better look out of the window, before spinning around to grab his coat.

"I think the sperm posse just rode into town."

She blinked at Mulder's retreating figure, as he strode angrily and purposefully towards the door. The proprietor of the restaurant watched him go with wide, surprised eyes.

"I'll…" Scully began when the owner turned his confused gaze towards her, expectantly. "I'll just pay up." She hastily reached into her pocket and produced two twenty dollar bills, enough to cover dinner and then some. She left them on the table as she grabbed her overcoat, and rushed out the door after her partner.

Mulder stood surrounded by defiant looking, angry teenagers, all watching him with varying degrees of mutiny and annoyance. The leader of the group practically stood toe to toe with her tall, lanky partner, and if he didn't watch it soon could be under arrest for attempting to assault a federal officer. Hoping to intercede before that happened; she rushed over, hoping to diffuse the situation.

"Mulder," she called worriedly, wondering if she should offer to run back inside and give the sheriff a call. The boy who stood sneering at Mulder, lips curled, cast her a dismissive glance as she walked up, slipping on her coat.

"Yeah, well, why don't you run along with the little wife? You're going to miss the tour bus." He spat out at Mulder, his friends tittering behind him thinking this answer was particularly witty. All except for one of the girls with them, she was eyeing Scully. More specifically she was eyeing her right side, under her jacket.

"She's got a gun," she breathed to the boy, the obvious leader, tugging on the sleeve of his shirt.

"Well, what's she going to do, shoot us? Go call my dad, Katie, I think he'd like to hear about this." He looked triumphant at the pair of them. It finally clicked with Scully just who he meant his father was.

"Who's your dad," Mulder asked, though she could tell the realization was dawning on him as well.

"He's the sheriff," the boy grinned darkly, challenging Mulder to make something of it.

That boy didn't know at all whom he was talking to, Scully softly snorted, as Mulder fought the urge to grin knowingly at the arrogant jackass. Instead he glanced sideways to Scully, obviously amused by this little piss head that hid behind his father's badge while he tormented the town.

"Yeah, I think he would like to hear about this," Mulder agreed, making as he himself planned to put the phone call in.

Obviously his lack of fear at the boy's empty threat made the others in the pack nervous. One boy shuffled worriedly in the back, and called out to his leader. "Come on, let's just get out of here, Rick."

Rick, the sheriff's son, didn't like hearing this sort of talk. But even he must have caught on that neither she nor Mulder was particularly impressed or worried about his threat of calling the sheriff. He chose instead to glare angrily at Mulder, before moving past the tall, wall that was her partner, deliberately shoving into him, hard, as if they were standing each other off in the middle of a high school hallway. As he sauntered off to his parked truck, she and Mulder watched the others teenagers follow.

God, she sighed, had kids really gotten worse in the time since she had graduated high school, or was it just this particular batch? "Kind of hard to tell the villains without a scorecard."

"Tell me about it," Mulder mused as Rick and his gang pulled out screeching from I front of the restaurant and tore down the road, music blaring from their stereo.

"You think he'll say anything to Sheriff Mazeroski about it?"

"Nah," Mulder shook his head negatively, watching the red taillights disappear in the distance. "It would only cause his father to question why it is he had a confrontation with two federal agents. And I think Rick there likes to keep his nefarious activities as low a profile from his dad as possible."

"How can he miss them? Half the town has got to be talking about what a jerk his son is," Scully wondered. It wasn't a large community at all, and surely Rick's behavior hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Perhaps the community encourages it," Mulder replied darkly. "The sheriff just barely hides his disdain for the Church of the Red Museum. And kids are perceptive, they pick up on the opinions of their parents, often carrying them out to a cruel and hurtful end."

"Why does the Church stay here if they are so persecuted," Scully asked, as she glanced towards the red turbaned boy who had wandered off in the opposite direction during the stand off between Mulder and his persecutors.

"Why has any faith stood up in the face of those who oppress them over the centuries." He shrugged philosophically. "It makes them stronger."

Ah, martyrdom, Scully thought. That was a concept she could understand well. "Is that why you stick with the X-files then?" She waited mischievously for him to glare at her before grinning broadly and laughing.

"I don't know, you know more about saints than I do, Scully. Do I qualify?"

"I think the Pope can make a dispensation for you. Maybe name you as Blessed."

"What miracles have I pulled off lately," he snorted.

"Should I start on the list now or later," she replied, taking his arm and leading him back to their parked car. "Come on, I paid up already."

"You have a list?" He was far too pleased by this idea. "What's on it?"

"I don't know…the fact that you haven't keeled over from lack of sleep yet might be on the list."

"Maybe that only makes me a zombie." Disturbingly enough, he sounded as if he rather liked the idea of being a zombie.

"I take that back, Mulder, you're far too weird to ever be a saint."

"I don't know, you can't tell me some of those saints weren't touched in the head. St. Francis of Assisi? Man gave up everything to become homeless and frolic with animals like Snow White."

Frolic like Snow White? Scully choked as she rounded the car, staring at Mulder over its top. "Mulder, if you were Catholic you'd go to so many kinds of hell for that statement."

"Good thing I'm an atheist, Scully, I just have to deal with the hell on this earth." He winked at her as he got into the car.