"Well," Monica says cheerily, snapping out of her daze. "Gotta pee." And the heavy mood that she has set lightens it in a heartbeat. "Oh! Whoops." She's standing, swaying. Doggett's up and steadying her before I can react.
"I'll go with you." Maybe I can use this time to convince her that she should go home soon, alone. But I realize as she leans and wobbles and uses me as a crutch that she might be too drunk to make sense of what I tell her. Indeed, proof of this is the trip to the ladies room; it's slow and every man in the room watches us. It reinforces what I've already decided. She's drunk and there are many people ready and willing to take advantage of a drunken woman, even the men at our table. I think it's best that I take her home.
The restroom isn't empty when we get there, but a stall is free, and I guide her to it and hold the door closed, because she's too unsteady to work the latch. "You okay in there?" I ask after a minute. She's still working with the zipper of her jeans.
"Yeah," she says, and that's all. Finally, she gets her pants down, empties her very full bladder, and soon the toilet is flushing.
"Need any help?" I hear her struggling again with her jeans; this time to pull them up.
"No."
A moment later, the whole stall shakes as she bumps it heavily. Lost her balance. "Monica?"
"I'm all right." An interminably long time after, she pulls on the door and I release it. She walks unsteadily to the sink, oblivious of my gaze, or that of the other woman here, who's touching up her mascara.
"I think it's time for some coffee," I suggest. The woman eyes me, then Monica. She sums us up with a mere glance, it seems.
Monica doesn't reply, just washes her hands and rinses them and continues standing there, staring into the mirror, her hands under running water.
I guess I'd stare in the mirror, too, if I looked like her, if I had her long, chestnut hair and big brown eyes. She's tall, has a perfect figure and a wardrobe that shows it off; a wardrobe that constantly gets my attention. Tonight she's wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, and even in this simple outfit she looks pretty. She must have gone home and changed after work today. I came straight from Quantico, and I look as tense as I feel in my suit, hose and pumps. I smooth my jacket down. It's long and nice, cut tight across my chest, as is my blouse, and at work this looked great, but next to Monica, I appear uptight. I wish I'd had time to change into something comfortable. "No more margaritas."
She shakes her head, absorbed in her reflection, and I grab a couple of paper towels and turn the water off, irritated with her indifference. "Here." My voice is hard. I don't like her drunk. She's not even conscious of her surroundings; she's somewhere else, and someone could easily take advantage of her. "Dry your hands." The other woman glances at me and makes a beeline for the door.
Monica wipes her hands and continues staring in the mirror, but now it's my reflection she looks at. "Are you and Mulder...? Are you... with him?"
I snatch the paper towels from her hands and throw them away. "Wait until you sober up before you decide you want to fuck him, okay?"
She frowns at this at first, and then she looks amused. A smile plays on her lips. "I don't want to fuck him."
"That's certainly not the signal you're giving out."
She slowly shakes her head. "Maybe you're misreading my 'signal'." She says this last bit coyly.
"Monica, you're drunk. Do you realize that?"
She stares in the mirror at me with that same sensual smile, her eyelids hooded. "Yes."
I speak slowly so maybe what I'm saying will sink in. "Someone is going to take advantage of you tonight if you don't sober up. Let me take you home."
"The guys aren't going to take advantage of me," she says softly, brushing the hair back from her face and staring at herself in the mirror once again. "They aren't like that."
"All men are like that, Monica." She has no idea how vulnerable she is. Stupid girl. I could show her with one swift move, if I chose to.
"Are you speaking from experience?"
I'm somewhat taken aback by her question, but there doesn't seem to be anything snide in her voice. Her tone is mild, and she's staring at herself again, in a trance, it seems. Defenseless. I move close to her, behind her, and reach under her t-shirt and unsnap her bra, and I do this amazingly quickly, as if I've been practicing on someone else, as if I've unsnapped more bras than just my own. I haven't, I'm positive. I'd remember the sensation, the sudden moisture between my legs.
When I finish, I stand back, cross my arms and wait for the consequences of my inappropriate behavior. It takes her much longer to react to what I've done than it did for me to do it. She looks at me incredulously. "What...?" And then she realizes, reaching back, laughing. "What did you do that for?"
"I told you someone could take advantage of you tonight."
She finds this incredibly amusing, giggling while trying to hook her bra again. I can't help but smile for the first minute or so. Then I begin growing impatient. She reaches around and back again and again, to no avail. Just when I'm about to say something, she bends over, as if this will help her, but the bra has shifted and she still can't quite get her unsteady hands on it, and now matters are worse, because she keeps losing her balance, grabbing onto the sink for support.
She'll never get the damn thing fastened. "Monica."
"Dana." She stifles her giggles, concentrates very hard on her task.
I give her my best no-nonsense tone. "Agent Reyes."
She apparently finds my best no-nonsense tone entertaining. "Agent Scully," she mimics. She's still bent over, and now she lets out the laughter she's been holding in. She laughs so hard that tears streak out of her eyes.
"I'm going to leave you here."
"Wait." She stands and sniffs, trying to control herself. "Okay, I'm really going to try this time."
And she does. She tries very hard, only bursts into giggles once, briefly, but she's lost her coordination and it's not coming back any time soon.
"Let me do it."
She's instantly subdued. "I'll have it in a minute. Why don't you go back to our boys?" The laughing fit appears to have exhausted her. She looks drained.
"Excuse me? Our boys?" I stare her down.
"Oh." She straightens. "Forgive me. Your boys." She meets the challenge of my gaze, looking ridiculously sexy. One strap of her bra is sliding down past the short sleeve of her t-shirt, her hair is mussed from all the bending she's been doing, her cheeks are flushed and her mascara is streaked from her bout of laughter, which seems to have had sobering effects on her. She seems tired but her eyes are more alert than they've been all evening.
"Uh, no. They aren't mine. Help yourself."
"I don't want them," she says quite seriously.
The look she gives me is not one I care to decipher. I move the conversation back to her bra so I can get out of here. "You're tangled," I lie. "Here." I wave my finger at her left shoulder. "Pull your arm out of that sleeve."
"I have no interest in either Mulder or John," she reiterates, following my instructions. Her eyes are on my face.
"Now pull the strap down."
The strap has already fallen; she pulls it off her arm. "Do you?"
"What?" She's twisting around in the t-shirt. "No, no, not like that. Put your arm back in." I hold her shirt while she works her arm back into the sleeve.
"Do you have any interest in them?"
"I've already answered that." I wag my finger at her torso. "Do the same thing on the other side."
"No. You said that they weren't yours." She's so focused on my face, on our conversation about the men, that she continues following my instructions without questioning them. "You didn't say that you weren't interested." She has no idea what I've coaxed her to do until her bra falls to the floor.
I pick it up and put it in my purse. "Now. Ready?"
She's gone from focused to slack-jawed in a heartbeat. Her nipples are quite obviously erect beneath her body-hugging t-shirt. The guys will drool when they see her. Hell, I'm drooling. "Come on."
She still doesn't understand what I just did, and she won't for a few more minutes. I take her by the hand and pull her to the door, turning to look up at her to try and impress upon her one last time that someone will take advantage of her tonight. Someone already has. "No more alcohol, okay?"
"Dana? Do you have any interest in them?" Monica asks me quietly. She rubs her tongue over her bottom lip, a habit that I've always thought sexy.
A woman enters the restroom, brushing past us.
"I've told you twice already," I softly chastise. I can't resist the impulse: I stroke my thumb over her lips, smearing her lipstick. "No. I have no interest in either one of them, romantically, sexually... no interest." She closes her eyes, licks her lips when I move my hand away. "Come on."
"Are you taking me home?"
I nod.
Monica lets me lead her back to the table, and the guys are staring at us, right at her breasts, and then at me. They see our entwined hands; they see her smeared lipstick mouth; they see her bra sticking out of my purse when I reach inside for my wallet. "Wouldn't want you two fighting over who pays her bill." I drop the cash on the table, glance at Mulder and Doggett, pick up Monica's jacket, and pull her along again.
She stops when we're close to the door, turns and looks at Mulder and Doggett. "'Bye," she calls.
They're still staring at her, of course.
I give her hand a slight yank and she follows me to the parking lot, her gait becoming slower and slower until she stops all together. I jerk her back into action. "Where's your car?"
"John drove."
This is good; I don't need any complications right now. I unlock my car from a few feet away and guide her to the passenger's side. Between the two of us, we manage to get her into the seat, but when I get behind the wheel, I notice that she can't manage the seatbelt. "Here," I say gruffly, suddenly very aware of her. Her presence, her scent. I have to lean close to her to get it secured, but I do, and we drive away in silence.
I've never been good at small talk. "I guess you're pretty pissed at me." I throw her a questioning glance. Butterflies dance in my stomach when I realize she's been staring at me the whole time. Her body is turned toward me, the seatbelt keeping her somewhat upright.
"Why?" Her head leans against the headrest, her cheek against the leather.
"I ruined your plans."
"What plans?"
"To get laid."
She gasps. "Oh." But she's sharper than I gave her credit for earlier, because she quips: "Well, the night is still young."
It takes a minute for my voice to return. "Yeah."
She smiles sleepily. "I told you I had no interest in guys."
No interest in guys? Period? Or no interest in the guys we were with this evening? I swallow. "You were flirting with them a lot for someone who has no interest in them."
"Mm." That's all she has to say.
"And they seem to have a lot of interest in you." I can't look at her, not even a glance, but in my peripheral vision I see her curl up. "Doggett. He seemed really... unhappy tonight."
Her explanation is simple. "Mulder's an asshole."
"Is he in love with you?"
"Mulder? You've got to be kidding."
"No, Doggett."
She's quiet for a moment, and I finally steal a glance at her. She's still staring at me. "We're close friends," she says slowly. "I imagine that our relationship is a lot like yours and Mulder's. Without the bitterness."
My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. I don't like her observations. I don't like it that she thinks she knows me so well, because she doesn't.
"What else do you want to know?" she asks.
No interest in guys? "So why were you flirting with them?" I ask again.
"The margaritas, I'm sure." Her voice is soft.
"Yeah, well you need to be careful with the alcohol."
"Yes, ma'am," she murmurs. I look at her, curled up, holding her jacket. She smiles at me.
She doesn't understand. "You're an agent, but your guard was completely down. You could have been taken advantage of, raped."
"I was in company that I trusted."
"You shouldn't have trusted the company. They're men, Monica. Bottom line, they are men."
"But you were there. I knew I could let my guard down and drink as much as I wanted, because you'd have my back." She slips a hand from her jacket and touches my arm, rubs it, and we're holding hands suddenly. I'm sure my pulse couldn't be any faster if I were running. "I knew you wouldn't let them ... I knew you'd ..." She gives up trying to say what she planned to say. "I just knew."
I absolutely must not look at her. I have to look at the road. I'm - shit. "Dammit! Missed my turn." It'll be a pain in the butt to get back to it with all of the one-way streets around here.
"Hmm. Getting us lost, Agent Scully? Are you going to conveniently run out of gas as well?" She rubs her thumb over my knuckles.
I'm going to conveniently wreck us is what I'm going to do, because I can't think with her being so... sexy. I'm pulling into a one way street that's lined with parked cars, I've missed my turn, and I need to get us out of here, but she's ... she's flirting. I guess alcohol makes her indiscriminately flirtatious. "I didn't realize I was so transparent." If she thinks she's being cute, I'll gladly give her a little scare. I extricate my hand from hers.
"You're anything but." She leans her head back again and squirms around.
The street we're on doesn't exit where I thought it would, and if I turn at the end of it, it'll take even longer to get back to the street I missed. I parallel park and try to think.
"Oh, PARKing. Uh huh. That was my next guess." Monica's face is hidden by her hair; she's looking down at her seatbelt, unsnapping it. "There. Much better." She stretches her legs and bats her lashes at me. "Parking?"
"Be quiet. I've got to think."
She is quiet, for a moment, and then she's leaning near me, whispering. "I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you something."
I'm not sure if she's whispering because she's still drunk enough not to understand that I can barely hear her, or if she's whispering because she's sober enough to understand the effect she's having on me. "That trick back there in the bathroom? Sexy."
Oh my. "What are you talking about?"
"Getting my bra off, making the guys think we were fooling around."
I can't reply to this. I've got to focus on where we are and get the hell out of here so I can get her home. Her home. Get her to her home. Her loft. Which is northeast of where we are now. I just need to turn left at the end of this street, but I can't. My only option is to turn right. So how will I get back to where I need to be?
Monica sighs and moves away. "If you turn right at the stop sign, you can make a left on Dumbarton and then a right at Wisconsin, which will intersect with -"
"Yeah, I know." I don't need her to tell me how to get around; I've lived here longer than she has. I carefully back away from the car parked in front of me, pull forward, back away again.
"You've got plenty of room over here."
"I've got plenty of room to turn right," I tell her. And now I have plenty of room to turn left, which is what I do, driving the wrong way on this one way street in order to get back to where we were. I pull out just as the light begins to change and this time I don't miss my turn.
The rest of the trip passes in silence. I'm driving aggressively, and then I remember she's taken her seatbelt off, and I slow down a bit. I'm trying to concentrate on the road and not on her, not on the way she leaned close, the way she whispered in my ear, or the way she'd held my hand earlier. Indiscriminate flirting, that's what it was. Nothing would be different if this were Doggett or Mulder driving her home.
By the time I pull into the parking garage at Monica's building, my underarms are damp, my hands are cramped from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, and my jaw is sore from clenching my teeth. It's ridiculous. But one look at my passenger and all of these problems are magnified. She's curled up in her seat, facing me, her eyes closed, dark tresses partially hiding the small smile on her face. She's gorgeous. "Monica." I'm too loud. I wish I didn't have to wake her up.
"Dana," she sighs.
Good God. Her voice does a number on me. "Wake up; we're at your place."
Her eyes slowly open. "Wasn't asleep," she murmurs.
I unbuckle and get out of the car, and when I open her door, she's looking under her jacket, which is draped across her waist, and she appears to be trying to unbuckle her seatbelt. She unbuckled it fifteen minutes ago. "Come on," I say a bit too gruffly, and offer a hand.
"I can do it." Monica gets out of the car, brushing against me. "Goodnight, Agent Scully. Thanks for the ride." She leaves the door open and moves unsteadily toward the elevator. I slam it shut and watch her.