SEARCH PART SEVEN
North Carolina, After Disgusting Hallucinogenic Fungus Incident - Field Trip
Dana Scully and Fox Mulder sat together sipping bad airport coffee silently, both hunched over a bit with exhaustion and a general feeling of uncleanliness on top of a residual scalded feeling. Skinner had left earlier that day, after assuring himself that his two most accident-prone agents hadn't managed to permanently damage themselves. 'The hospital may have said we're fine, but I still feel disgustingly dirty. Uggh! Who'd have ever bothered to think about fungal exoenzymes, besides a few literally moldy nerds, let alone the possiblility of spending hours slathered in it. I am going straight out to Fredericksburg. I am going to hug my friend, pet my friend's dogs and the kittens. And then I am going to take a long bath. When the water gets cold, I am going to take another long bath. And then... What the hell is that?'
"Mulder, you had better not be humming the theme from Little Shop of Horrors." Someone who didn't know her well would have missed the sudden flash of humor in her eyes.
"What, Scully, you don't fancy yourself as Audrey?" Mulder smirked at her, pleased that his sometimes too-cultured partner had recognized something as lowly as a song from a musical.
"Not if you're Seymour," Scully offered him a perfect replica of his patented smirk in response.
"Oh! To the quick, Scully, to the quick," Mulder miming a gesture of pain. "Speaking of which, while we're stuck here in airport purgatory, why don't you tell me all about whatever Seymour has put you in your recent good mood?"
"Mulder... well..." She tried to look stern, but she had been thinking about talking to her partner for some time - he was, after all, one of her closest friends. She was almost certain he would take Lil's gender in stride - certainly better than her family would. Besides, the near miss with the awful flesh-eating acid fungus from Timothy Leary's hell had reminded her how much she really liked him, even if he WAS sometimes annoying and intrusive.
"You mean you really are seeing someone!" Mulder almost choked, "Well, come on, then, tell all, allow me to live vicariously, etc."
Just for that, Scully waited until he was taking a sip of his coffee before she told him. The resulting snort-and-spray was rather disgusting, but satisfying.