Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt:
Princess Leia: Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited.
Han Solo: Sorry sweetheart. I haven't got time for anything else. (The Empire Strikes Back) Vol 3. Week.25 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Five Episode: Chinga

Scully, marry me….

It wasn't exactly the first time Mulder had said something flippant and inappropriate in front of her, but it was the first time she had gotten a marriage proposal out of it. Scully felt her cheeks flame briefly at the very thought. Jesus, one off handed, Mulder cheeky statement and she was blushing like a teenager. She could have been reciting from the Malleus Maleficarum and gotten the same result. And why was Mulder in the office? They had agreed to simultaneously go on vacation.

"So that your partner?" Captain Bonsaint was watching her curiously as Scully quietly studied the fallen body of Dave, the butcher. His meat knife was shoved through his right eyes, sticking out at a disturbing angle to the rest of his face.

"Partner," Scully had only been half listening, lost more in her thoughts of Mulder's words than the body that lay on the cold, grocery store floor.

"Well you are FBI, I know you have a partner, was that them on the phone?"

"Agent Mulder, yes, he and I work together." Work being the operative word. He worked more than she apparently. Honestly did she need to hold his hand even through vacations?

"Just curious, not many FBI agents I know who can sit there and discuss things such as witches with a straight face." The police captain's thick, New England accent glided lazily over his words, perhaps growing up in these parts had inured him to tales of women riding broomsticks.

"Agent Mulder and I work on strange cases usually involving some element of the unexplained. Often our work means we have to deal with such things as the occult." She smiled tightly as she glanced down at the unfortunate man on the floor. "Do you know if they were using any chemicals in the store that could have caused mass hysteria? Cleaning agents, perhaps something that got into the ventilation system?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but I can have my men look into it. You said you were on vacation Agent Scully?" Far from having the look of a territorial, local law enforcement officer, Captain Bonsaint was eyeing her with a disturbing amount of speculation.

"I'm here on vacation, Captain, the first one I've had in many years. And I'd like to keep it that way." She smiled tightly but politely at the police officer, wishing to make it perfectly clear that there was a boundary to what she was willing to do. Honestly, she had just driven up to gather some supplies to take with her to the hotel. She hadn't realized there was an issue till she stepped inside to find people with angry, red, bleeding claw marks on their face, crying and sobbing on the floor.

"Right, of course Agent Scully. I wouldn't want to disturb your vacation." The man didn't sound like he had a problem with disturbing her vacation. He shifted, the thick uniform belt with his gun and badge on it creaked, and he looked a trifle uncomfortable as he studied the fallen butcher's body. "It's just that…well, we don't get many situations like this around these parts."

What had Mulder said about Stephen King and serial killers? "I can't imagine you do."

She was here on vacation, she wanted to scream, and she was here minding her own business. She happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was sad and unfortunate this happened, but in reality it was none of Scully's business. The local tiffs between the town butcher and one of the women about didn't bother her. All she wanted was to walk on the beach, eat a cup of clam chowder, and pretend that in the last year she hadn't suffered from a major illness and lost a daughter. For a few brief, shining days she wanted her life to be…normal.

Without her partner spontaneously proposing marriage to her, she noted with dry amusement.

The police captain seemed to ignore her silent please to be left alone. "Look, Agent Scully, I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, but," Bonsaint paused, looking embarrassed as he ran a hand across his graying hair. "Look, our town, we fish for lobster and cod here. We have eight people on the police force. Most of them just hang around looking for people to give speeding tickets to. It's not everyday we have something like this happen. And really, this isn't the first strange occurrence with Melissa Turner there's been."

"You said you didn't believe in witchcraft, Captain Bonsaint." Scully pulled away from the dead body as around the corner paramedics and a man with a coroner's jacket came upon the grim scene. One of the young medical workers paused as he saw the large, wicked looking blades protruding out of the butcher's face. Scully could honestly say that even with all the myriad of fishing accidents she was sure the local medical teams saw, she doubted many saw a body look quite like this.

"I don't believe in it, Agent Scully," Bonsaint defended himself quickly, moving out of coroner teams way. "But this isn't the first time with Melissa, and I know there will be trouble over it."

"Just because she was sleeping with what, the only available man in town?" Scully's face frowned in deep disapproval. "No offence, Captain, but this is the late twentieth century, women can date who they like and it's no one's business."

"I know that, you know that, but this town…you know how it is."

Sadly, Scully did. For all that she had lived in major, metropolitan areas all her life, Mulder had drug her to enough of these small towns, especially New England ones to know how mass hysteria like this started. There was the town in New Hampshire years ago where everyone was convinced that it was an attack of a satanic cult. Then there was the town in Massachusetts with its cockroaches and Dr. Bambi. Somehow the idea of the talk and suspicion of a small town didn't surprise her in the least.

"Most of the people in this town have roots that go back clear to colonial times, and they carry those old superstitions with them. Course no one wants to admit it, but you know strange things happen in some of the woods and places up here. There's this town up north, they have all sorts of crazy stories coming out of there about supernaturals and vampires."

"Any of them true?" Perhaps that was what Mulder was thinking of when he warned her to stay away.

"I'm not one to comment on the eccentric tendencies of my neighbors, Agent Scully, but I'm just saying people have crazy ideas up here, most of them not true. And I don't want this to turn into one of those situations."

"I see,' she murmured, and indeed she did see. He wanted to mooch off her skill and talent while she was here. And frankly Scully was of a mind to take her rented convertible, screw this town, and move up the coast to the next one. But it was the principle of the thing. She had paid for a hotel here. She had her heart set on staying here. So what if she helped the captain for a couple of hours this afternoon. She would give him some insight, help him out with a few lines of questioning, then she would go to her hotel room, crawl into a hot bath, and ignore any phone calls that came her way.

"Look, Captain Bonsaint, I'll at least go with you to check with Melissa Turner. I'll help you chat with her, and then I'm going to my hotel. I'm here on vacation and nothing more. And if you want to chat with an expert in strange phenomenon, I can give you my partner's number down in DC. I'm sure he would love to talk your ear off about it."

It seemed to mollify the officer somewhat. "I don't need your help for all of this, just to assure people that nothing crazy is happening."

"I understand," Scully muttered, watching as the body of Dave was carefully placed into a body bag and lifted to the gurney. The blade made it impossible to zip the plastic covering all the way, and it stuck out weirdly from the rest of the zipped nylon. She could offer to look at the body, but she wasn't going to do it. This was her vacation, and damn it she was sticking by that.

Mulder was going to give her that smug look and tell her he told her so, she just knew it.

"Anyway, if you can go with me to check out how Melissa is doing?" There was real worry in Bonsaint's eyes.

"Sure," Scully sighed, turning her back on the gruesome scene of Dave. Why did these things always seem to follow her, why? Why couldn't she just have a nice, normal vacation, just for once?

"I hope you like your stay while you are with us," the captain offered conversationally.

"So far it's turning out to be a dandy," Scully muttered, trying not to think of Dave with the knife sticking out of his eye.