Is that it? She comes on strong when she's too drunk to care that she's flirting with a woman, but now that she's sobering up, she gives me the cold shoulder. She called me 'Agent Scully,' dammit. I grab my purse and lock the car. "Monica." My voice is muted by the noise of another car arriving. Still, she hears me and turns. She shouldn't walk to her loft alone. I drove right in without needing a code for the gate. The gate wasn't even closed. "Can I come up? Use your restroom?" I reach her in a few steps.

"Sure." Her smile is lazy. "But you don't need an excuse."

Given the fact that she dismissed me just a moment ago, I'm not sure what she means. "It's not an excuse." I just want to make sure she arrives safely, that's all.

I follow her. Monica walks carefully now, like she's trying to prove to me that she is indeed capable of getting home safely, then stands at the elevator, punches a button. She holds the door for a guy who looks like he belongs in a gang. He very well could, given the section of town she lives in. "Hi," she smiles. And to my amazement, he smiles right back.

"What floor can I get for you ladies?"

"Two," Monica says, still smiling. "For both of us." She leans back against the elevator, resting her weight against it, closing her eyes, her guard very much down. Is she counting on me again to cover her back? Or is she this naïve? She can't be. She's an agent.

The young man's eyes are on her breasts, and my eyes are on him. "Yo, Monica, you all right?"

Well, at least she knows him. I feel a little better.

She nods, grinning, eyes still closed.

"Yeah, you look like you doin' all right." He returns her smile and addresses me. "Shit, the girl's a badload."

I have no intention of talking to him, even if knew what he was saying.

Monica does, though. "Are you home this weekend?"

"You know it. Gotta see the rents."

She opens her eyes as the elevator comes to a halt. "Yeah? Well you better clean up that mouth or they're going to send you right back."

He grins widely. "Yo, I can clean it up. I'm clean. You ladies have a pleasurable evening." He holds the door for us.

Monica pushes herself forward, swaying. I catch her, and the guy reaches out to steady us both.

"Whoa there. You got her?" he asks me.

I nod.

"All right then," he says. His eyes are on us as we move away. "Banging," he mutters. "Damn." And the elevator closes.

"Who the hell was that?"

"Jamal. Home from college. Parents live the next floor up. The rents." She shoves her hand in her jeans pocket and pulls out her keys. "That's what they're calling parents these days, Dana. 'Rents'."

"I guess you pick up a lot of slang living in this part of town."

Monica looks at me and rolls her eyes. "Most of the slang I pick up is from a teacher who lives here. She picks it up from her students; I pick it up from her." She fumbles with her keys at the door and finally gets it open.

She goes straight to the kitchen. "Bathroom's that way," she says, pointing.

I remember where it is; I've been here before. I also remember that she hangs her terry cloth robe on the back of the bathroom door. I found it sexy then and I find it sexy now. I wash up and stare at myself in the mirror. I look nervous.

When I rejoin her, she's sitting on her sofa, shoes off, bare feet on the edge of the coffee table. Something about the image of her stops me dead in my tracks, makes my heart thud hard in my chest. She's drinking a bottle of water. "Care for one?" She tilts it toward me.

I shake my head, realizing that staying is not a good idea. Not with her looking like this, pretty and sexy and just... edible. Indiscriminate flirting, I remind myself. It isn't me she's interested in, it's companionship. A fuck. "I'll be going."

Monica lets me get a few feet away before calling to me. "Agent Scully?" Her half smile is as sleepy and sexy as her eyes, and she crooks her finger, motioning me back. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

I answer her question by arching my eyebrows.

"I believe you still have my bra."

"Oh." Crap, she remembered. "I forgot."

"Mm," she says, stretching her arm out to me, hand open, fingers wiggling. "Did you?"

"Yes." I didn't forget. How could I forget with her pert nipples, her ample breasts straining against her t-shirt? I'd have to be blind. My face burns and I fumble with my purse, open it, and pull the bra out too fast. I'm in too much of a hurry, clumsy, and so her bra comes out of my purse, heavy, pulling a receipt and my keys with it. The keys clatter to the floor and before I can even see where they've gone, Monica's bending, scooping them up, more graceful than she's been all evening. By the time I get the receipt into my purse and have the bra firmly in hand, she's leaning back once more, her bare feet arcing against the heavy chest that she uses as a coffee table. "Here." I offer her the rather plain white bra. Bigger cups than I would've thought before I saw her without it. But it's quite obvious how full her breasts are now, the t-shirt hugging them.

"Maybe I'll just keep these for a while." She jingles the keys. Her look is sly. "Let's see what we have here; I may want to trade."

"Hand them over."

She studies them instead, one by one, and I study her. "House. Car. Hmm." She holds one up. "Office?"

I nod. "If you can call it that. My hole in the wall at Quantico."

"No key to the classroom?"

I smile. "Do you think I'm the only one who uses that auditorium?"

"What's your hole in the wall like?"

"It's a hole in the wall." I snap my fingers. "Hand them over."

"What's this?" She holds another key up.

"Mulder's apartment."

She makes a face. "And what's this one for?"

"My mother's house." I move to her to snatch them away, but she blocks me with a raised arm. "Monica, come on."

She holds the keys away from me with one hand, out of my reach, while holding me back with the other. "Oh." She brings them close to her face and looks at one front and back, and then looks at me, smiling. "The basement," she says.

"Your office."

"It will never be my office. Yours and Mulder's."

She's right; it isn't her office. But it never was mine, either. It's Mulder's office, dark and cluttered and emotionless. I see Monica there, in the gloom, when she should be somewhere light, somewhere with lots of windows. I nod. "Mulder's. Anyway, what would you want with my keys?"

She rests her head against the back of the sofa and looks at me through half-closed eyes. "What would you want with my bra?"

"I don't want it. I'm trying to give it back."

"You don't want it." She swings the keys back and forth as if to hypnotize me with them. I make a very feeble attempt at grabbing them again. "You don't want my bra but you went to such lengths to get it."

I turn an even deeper shade of red, and this time my attempt at taking the keys isn't feeble. Still, she parries quite well for someone who's drunk. "Give them to me, dammit."

"Give me my bra."

"Give me my keys and you'll get your bra back."

She grins in that way of hers, that totally charming way, lips curving downward then up again as her smile broadens. "I have other bras, but I bet you don't have other keys."

I don't. I lean over to take them again and my breasts press against her forearm. I am completely aware of her arm flexing beneath my right nipple, and I press into it hard enough to fall if she were to move, but she doesn't move away. She presses right back against me, loving this little game. "Monica."

"Okay, here's what I'll do." She purses her lips, thinking. "There are six keys. Answer six questions for me and you'll get them back."

"Give me my keys, Monica." I say this as firmly as I can. I'm terribly turned on by this woman who's flirted with everyone this evening, more turned on than I've been in years. I have absolutely no desire to get my keys back at this point, but I do need to control what's going on here. It's a struggle to maintain my composure around Monica; it always has been, and I think she knows it.

"Six keys. Six questions. And don't give me any vague answers, like 'maybe' either. Direct answers."

"No." I stick my hand out. "Just hand them to me. Now."

"First question," she begins. "Is Mulder really William's father?"

"Yes. Give me the-"

"Question two. Are you in love with him?"

It should be obvious to her that I'm not. I thought I'd spelled it out by now. "No."

"Were you ever in love with him?"

"No."

She looks perplexed. "Then why were you with him?" she asks softly.

"That's not a 'yes or no' question."

"I didn't say it had to be a yes or no question. I said direct." She shakes the keys at me, emphasizing each syllable: "Direct."

"I love him deeply. He is... he and I have only had each other to count on for the past seven, eight years. There was no one else. The hours we worked, the job itself... He was all I had. And I needed that connection. Or so I thought at the time." I shrug. "And he loved me. He still does."

"No kidding." Her voice is tight. "I'm quite aware of that. Everyone is. He may as well broadcast it. And would you sit down already? You look like you've got one foot out the door."

Well. Being admonished by Monica is as much of a turn on as everything else about her. The tone of her voice causes the image I had earlier - of Monica lying passively beneath Mulder - to slip away. It's replaced by an image of me lying passively beneath Monica. I sit opposite her in a chair; I'm on the edge of the seat, arms propped on my knees, hands clasped together. I'm ready to bolt, but I'm beginning to think that I might like to pounce instead.

Monica is leaning back on the sofa, looking casual and sexy, her bare feet rubbing the edge of the coffee table. She lazily drops her knees open, closes them. Again. Again. "Yeah," she says, softly sarcastic. "I can see how that's a lot more relaxing for you. Do I really make you feel that uncomfortable - that you can't wait to get out of here?" And then she holds her hand up quickly. "Never mind. That's a question. Strike it." She stares at me intently. "Okay, next one. And it's a doozy, so brace yourself."

Oh God. I do brace myself.

"What's your favorite thing to do?" she asks, sounding like a reporter for some teen magazine. "Not a mom thing with William, not a family thing, not a work thing, and NOT," she stresses. "NOT A Mulder thing. What's your favorite thing?"

"Running."

She studies me intently, furrowing her brows. "I want to ask you why."

"Ask me why."

"I don't want to use up my questions," she says solemnly. "I have other things to ask."

"I like the solitude. I like the demand of it."

"I didn't realize you were into it so much. I mean, I know it's what you've done in the mornings when we've been away on assignment, but..."

"I race sometimes, once a month or so."

"I'm impressed. Do you...? No, wait, let me rephrase. I imagine you race to win."

"I only race against myself."

"How appropriate," she murmurs, dropping her knees open, then slowly closing them. This thing she's doing with her legs is causing a tugging sensation right between mine. I try looking at her eyes, but they're too sexy to look at. And her breasts are out of the question. I stare at her feet. Toenails nicely painted pink. Okay, can't stare at the feet. Forehead. I stare at her forehead. "All right, Agent Scully, question six."

I wait with great anticipation, thinking this question will be a doozy. This one will be the shocker.

She swallows, looks at me, then down at the floor. "If I wanted to kiss you, would you let me?"

It was a doozy, all right, one I felt from my head to my toes. I knew it would be a revealing question, but I had no idea she'd be so bold. "Actually," I say thoughtfully. "That was question seven."