Title: ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH (1/2)
Author: Jean Robinson (jeanrobinson@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the
property of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox
Television Network. All others are the property of the
author. No infringement is intended. 
Rating: PG
Classification: S, A
Archive: Please ask permission.
Spoilers: Though "Ice."
Summary: Who's been sleeping in my bed?
Feedback: Ho, ho, ho me at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
Author's notes at the end
*****************************

ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH (1/2)
By Jean Robinson


The first time he found her asleep in his office, he
was merely amused.

The second time, he woke her by poking her in the
shoulder with a slide carousel and teased her about
nodding off before he'd even begun to bore her with
his latest Bigfoot sightings.

The third time he opened the X-Files door to the sight
of his partner slumped over the back table, head
pillowed on her folded arms and eyeglasses clasped
loosely in one lax fist, Fox Mulder backed out quietly
and stood in the dim basement hallway, considering.

Three times in four days. Scully might have been
catching forty winks on the job yesterday, too, but
since she'd spent the entire day upstairs at her own
desk, he couldn't be sure.

He'd read quite a bit on the life and times of Dana
Katherine Scully, MD before she'd even knocked on his
door to announce she had been "assigned" to work with
him, but neither narcolepsy nor insomnia had been
mentioned in any of the reports, official or
unofficial, that he'd amassed on her. Sleep disorders
were his personal specialty, not hers. Every late
night call he'd directed at her apartment had had her
answering in rough, gravel tones that indicated she'd
been zonked or close to it before he'd interrupted to
impart all manner of dark secrets that couldn't be
uttered in daylight with the same effect.

She'd spent quite a bit of time down here with him
since her assignment, enduring mini lectures,
impromptu audio/visual displays, and cryptic phone
calls with a good deal of eye-rolling but a surprising
amount of patience. Every time he thought he had Dana
Scully figured out she'd pull a new trick out of her
repertoire, but so far they'd all worked to his
advantage. She'd gone along with his weird ideas and
unorthodox investigative methods, at the risk of
tainting her own career with his redolent reputation. 

The sleeping thing, however, was a new quirk. An
alarming new quirk, to tell the truth.

Maybe she was sick. Except Scully didn't look sick,
and when she wasn't snoring softly against the cheap
metal table hidden at the back of the office, she
certainly didn't act sick. Hell, they'd just come back
from the Icy Cape and she hadn't so much as sniffled
once on the plane. Not that he was any kind of doctor,
of course, but you'd think that after going to the
North Pole it was a distinct possibility that you'd
return with a head cold. . . .

Wait a minute.

Mulder frowned, thankful once again that the FBI's
most unwanted had been relegated to such an
undesirable location; it meant that no one would be
wandering by to see him standing outside his own
office, rubbing his chin and grimacing like an idiot.

Leaps of logic were his specialty, and he'd just
realized that Scully's nocturnal habits had gotten
screwy since their return from the Polar Ice Cap Trip
From Hell. Of course, a little more investigative
digging wouldn't hurt, so he spent the next two hours
roaming the building, seeking out various individuals
and engaging in the sort of water cooler gossip he
normally avoided at all costs.

It wasn't difficult to get people talking about
Scully, but it was tough to accomplish it casually,
precisely because everyone knew Mulder tended to be
more loquacious when the subject was aliens or
conspiracies than when it centered on his partner.
Sure, there were a dozen or more male agents drooling
over her and more than a few female ones ready and
willing to make a catty remark about Scully's true
hair color, but that wasn't the kind of information he
needed. And, "Oh, by the way, have you caught Agent
Scully napping on her desk lately?" wasn't exactly
something a guy could come right out and ask.

But he managed to make enough oblique inquiries to
determine that his partner, when not dead to the world
in the basement, was her typical industrious self.
Trips to the labs, to Quantico, various meetings and
lunches all spoke of someone alert to her
surroundings. And if he left a wake of curious
co-workers giving him puzzled looks as he extricated
himself from one conversation and moved on to the
next, at least Mulder was convinced Scully was not
suffering from a physical ailment.

That left a mental ailment, something else that hadn't
popped up in all his advance notes on the little spy
sent to document his life. While the spying part
turned out to be a false alarm -- a credit to Scully's
integrity, not to the intelligence of those who had
selected her for the job -- she had indeed cramped his
style.

In a nice way, that is. Unaccustomed as he was to
coloring within the lines, it was kind of fun to have
a partner who, while she preferred to connect the dots
with surgical precision, wasn't adverse to a little
wild finger-painting now and then. Or at least didn't
object to cleaning up after his artistic sprees, i.e.
explaining his absences, insubordination and otherwise
unacceptable conduct with fearless determination and
unswerving loyalty.

But something had changed after their little run-in
with the arctic ammonia worms. Something that made
Scully's bed less inviting than the metal folding
chair in his office. Mulder had been to her apartment
three times; twice for airport runs, and once to kick
her door down while a suspected murderer attempted to
dine on Scully pate. His glimpses of her sleeping
space had been brief -- during his struggle with
Eugene Victor Tooms he'd been too busy getting knocked
on his ass in the bathroom to appreciate her bed
linens -- but even if Scully didn't snooze on pure
Egyptian cotton, wouldn't a mattress be more comfy
than her seat in the X-Files office?

Apparently not, if the last few days were anything to
go by.

Mulder eased his office door open once again; this
time his partner was conscious.

Conscious and irritated, to be precise.

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, setting
down the file she'd been reading when he arrived. "I
need you to sign off on this before three o'clock, and
I have to assist at an autopsy in ten minutes."

Mulder glanced at his watch; he'd spent longer than
he'd intended in covert operations concerning her
health. Time for the glib approach. "Sorry. Just out
taking in the sights and the sounds of the J. Edgar
Hoover Building."

She gave him a disgruntled look as she handed him a
form and a pen. "You haven't been out getting into
trouble again, have you?"

"Trouble? Who, me?" He scrawled his name without
looking at what he was signing, his gaze intent on the
closed file she'd left on the table. "I never go
looking for trouble, Scully. You know that."

She sighed. "It seems to find you anyway. Please tell
me I'm not going to be called into Skinner's office
first thing Monday morning to defend you."

Monday. He'd forgotten it was Friday. A whole
Scully-less weekend stretched before him. "Nope. Well,
unless putting fingerprint powder in Tom Colton's
coffee is grounds for a complaint. . . . "

"Mulder! Tell me you didn't."

"All right." He smiled at her, but she didn't return
it. "I didn't. I haven't even seen the guy since the
hearing. Really."

She didn't look terribly convinced, but took the
signed paper he offered to her and began collecting
her belongings without further argument, clearly
preparing for departure.

Mulder dropped down into his swivel chair and eyed her
surreptitiously as she neatened her space, tidying
piles of paper and returning files to their proper
cabinets. She'd been awake long enough to comb back
her hair and smooth the herringbone dents from her
cheeks. He bet anything that half of her eagerness to
beat a hasty retreat was to escape before he could say
something to indicate he'd seen her dozing on duty
again. She'd covered it well the first two times, but
he knew better. His partner had been mortified.

"Doing anything this weekend, Scully?" he inquired as
she draped her trench coat over one arm.

"Errands." A terse response meant to cover endless
possibilities, none of which she wanted to share with
him. It was also Scully-speak for "don't call me 90
times to talk about why Reticulans are gray, because
unless they're invading, it can wait until Monday."

What the hell. "Scully, are you all right?" The direct
approach had never worked before, but nothing
ventured, nothing gained.

She froze in the doorway, glancing back at him with an
expression that on anyone else he would have deemed as
panic. Then it was gone, and he was left with Scully's
more familiar countenance: a mix of weary tolerance,
mild annoyance, and something secretive. "I'm fine,
Mulder. I'll see you Monday. Have a good weekend."

"You, too."

She nodded in acknowledgment and left, her heels
clicking a brisk, even cadence to the end of the
hallway. Mulder waited until he heard the elevator
ding, then the double swish of the doors opening and
closing before bolting out of his chair to lunge at
the cabinets and locate the file she'd been perusing
when he came in.

Second drawer down, let your fingers do the walking,
isn't it wonderful to have a photographic memory for
those times you need to memorize your partner's
movements and replicate them. . . ah, yes, here it is.
Mulder yanked the file out and flipped it open without
reading the cover.

He had a pretty good idea of which one it would be
before he'd gotten up, and he was right. The Arctic
Ice Core Project Rescue Team. Scully had been reliving
the joys of their time sequestered with a pile of dead
bodies, a few hostile scientists, some creepy crawlies
of undetermined origins, and a dog with a taste for
human flesh. Not exactly Santa Claus Village, but
personally he'd thought skulking through Tooms'
bile-coated hidey-hole had been worse.

So she had issues with the case. On the long plane
ride home she'd been quiet, unnaturally so, failing to
acknowledge any of his verbal gambits with more than a
single syllable response. At the time he'd chalked up
her silence to a combination of exhaustion and stress;
none of them had gotten any sleep and to say the
situation at Icy Cape had been tense was like saying
Babe Ruth hit a few home runs.

He'd also thought she was still shocked at Dr. Hodge's
news that the government had come in and bombed the
entire site. Despite everything she'd experienced in
her brief time on the X-Files, Scully continued to
struggle with the idea that the comforting system of
order and authority she'd been taught to respect since
childhood could be the real enemy. Yes, she'd argued
for the worms' destruction. Mulder was fairly sure
she'd been referring to the worms alone, though, not
the wholesale eradication of the entire facility and
all the evidence within.

But apparently Scully had more on her mind than just
the loss of a few microscope slides.

She pointed her weapon at you, Mulder old boy. She
would have fired if you hadn't backed down. You saw
that in her eyes. You =knew= she'd do it.

And that, he reasoned, after all Scully's past
assertions to him that she wasn't a spy, that he had
to trust her, that she just wanted to solve the case,
that had to have given her serious pause. By-the-book,
law-and-order, procedures-and-protocols Dana Scully
being reduced to turning on her own partner.

Maybe she was having nightmares that she =had= shot
him. It would explain her sudden need to sleep in the
X-Files office. The room was probably the only place
she could convince herself that she really hadn't;
that he was alive and healthy and still walking around
making outlandish claims about Air Force test pilots
flying planes built with alien technology and
carnivorous beast women from New Jersey.

Of course, he'd been royally pissed at her when she
had sided with Hodge and DaSilva instead of him. That
she'd allowed her fear to override her normal common
sense in the span of a few seconds had him seeing red.
Only the knowledge that he was outnumbered caused him
to back down; taking out Scully would have given the
other two scientists the opportunity to jump him. He
knew he'd eventually be able to get his partner to see
reason, if she didn't get infected first. The other
two would have locked him up to die with nary a qualm.

His confinement in the storage room had given him time
to see things from Scully's perspective, but the anger
at her betrayal hadn't completely dissipated when
she'd returned bearing the "cure" for his alleged
illness. Her sheepish, eyes-down smile to acknowledge
her error wasn't enough to soothe his wounded pride,
so he'd grabbed her and given her a dose of her own
medicine.

Mulder had fully intended to scare her when he yanked
down her shirt, wrapped one hand around her neck and
squeezed. She'd held her ground, but he'd felt her
pulse triphammering under his fingertips. Mission
accomplished.

Okay, so perhaps demonstrating his power to choke the
daylights out of Scully hadn't been the brightest idea
he'd ever had, but he'd been furious, and anyway, it
was over and done with. There were no "do-overs" in
the X-Files division, no way for him to go back and
say, "Yeah, I wanted to wring your neck -- literally
-- but I was also concerned that you might have been
the infected one after all, because why else would you
have aimed at me so quickly?"

But maybe his partner needed to hear that. Maybe a
justification of his actions would give her grounds to
justify her own, and she could stop using his office
as a surrogate bedroom.

Mulder sat back down and considered his options. One,
wait until Monday and confront her. Pros: He'd have
the weekend to prepare his speech, and he'd have the
home field advantage. Cons: It also gave Scully the
weekend to rest up, rationalize her behavior, and
simply vacate the office if the conversation took an
uncomfortable turn. Sitting her down and talking with
her was one thing. Mulder wasn't about to resort to
the level of locking the door so she couldn't escape.

Two, call her and attempt to have this discussion over
the phone. Pros: Scully tended to be more open without
the face-to-face interaction. Being partnered with a
profiler had to make her wonder if Mulder was
constantly reading meanings into her body language,
and that =definitely= made her twitchy. Scully's poker
face had improved tenfold in the short time they'd
been working together, no question. Cons: She'd hang
up in a heartbeat the minute she heard what he wanted
to talk about.

Three, invite her out for dinner or lunch over the
weekend. Pros: Neutral ground for everyone. Cons:
She'd already said she didn't want to be bothered by
him, and since he'd never invited her out without the
offer being connected to a case, she'd arrive
suspicious and on her guard. If she even accepted.

Four, invite her to his apartment. Forget it. If being
asked out to a restaurant would make her leery, a
summons to his home would set her internal alarms
blaring, "Red Alert!" 

Five, invite himself over to her apartment.

On the face of it, the last option looked to be the
worst of all. As he'd never asked Scully over to
socialize, she'd never asked him, either. The only
time he'd truly been "in" her home, he'd shared the
experience with a killer and a cavalry charge of
police officers, paramedics and FBI agents who arrived
too late to do anything but gawk at the sight of Tooms
handcuffed to Scully's plumbing.

So he wasn't in the habit of dropping by his partner's
apartment, announced or otherwise. Not without a damn
good reason, such as the sudden belief that Scully had
been transformed from hunter to prey without her
knowledge or permission.

Impromptu improvisation had worked for him in the
past, though, and with a little creative thinking, he
bet he could talk himself past Scully's threshold.

Tonight.

End part 1
____________

Mulder decided on nine p.m. as the witching hour. Late
enough for Scully to be finished with dinner, but too
early for her to turn in for the night.

Assuming she was alone, of course.

She hadn't mentioned seeing anyone since her date with
Mr. Just A Guy during the Atlantic City case, but then
again, he hadn't asked. She'd never really discussed
her personal life with him, and he liked it that way.
He already had as much background information on her
as he needed; as long as her life outside the office
didn't interfere with their investigations, he didn't
really care.

She could claim that she wanted a life, but Mulder
suspected that a quiet evening at home without
interruption by man, machine, or mutant was what
Scully truly craved. Change into something comfy, do a
little research on her laptop, maybe watch some
mindless TV show or make use of that giant bathtub,
and fall asleep dreaming of sheep instead of shadows.

A profiler knows these things.

So he was pretty sure he wouldn't be disturbing
anything more than Scully's peace of mind by knocking
on her door on a Friday night sans invitation.

"Who is it?"

Cautious. She definitely sounded cautious. Scully had
learned the hard way to beware of unexpected guests.

"It's me, Mulder."

There was a pause, and he pictured her standing on
tiptoe to see out her peephole, verifying the presence
of her partner and not an unwelcome visitor of the
paranormal variety. A rattle, a click and she opened
the door a fraction, a small frown of anxiety creasing
her brow.

"Mulder, what is it? What's wrong?"

He was careful not to smile; being overly friendly
would arouse her suspicions. "Can I come in?"

She opened the door wider to admit him, continuing to
throw questions as he stepped past her into her living
area. "What's the matter? Are you hurt? Is there
something new with one of our cases?"

He'd successfully flustered her by coming over, but
any minute her confusion would morph into alarm.
"Scully, sit down." It felt odd giving her orders in
her own home, but in her bewilderment she didn't seem
to notice that he'd usurped her role as hostess.

He seated himself on one of her armchairs and waited
until she sank down slowly onto the couch. "Mulder,
what is it?" she asked again.

He'd been right about one thing; Scully had been
prepared for a lazy evening alone. A single mug of tea
sat on the coffee table, surrounded by a pile of
periodicals and a yellow legal pad. The top page was
half covered with his partner's bold handwriting.

She sat stiffly, wrapped in a plush white bathrobe
that almost swallowed her whole. It looked new, and
was a definite improvement over that tatty red thing
she'd brought on their first assignment together. She
was still wearing her reading glasses; they gave her
face a serious, owlish appearance.

All right, make that a serious cute owl. Mulder had
long ago decided against informing Scully how utterly
adorable her wire rims made her look, as if she should
be studying for a college final instead of reading up
on the latest techniques in dissecting the dead. Not
telling her didn't stop him from noticing,
unfortunately, and he fought the urge to smile as she
chewed on her lower lip and plotted her next move to
unearth the purpose of his visit.

"Do you want something to drink?" Years of etiquette
training kicked in; Mrs. Scully must have done one
heck of a job if her daughter still remembered her
manners when faced with a guest whose presence was a
continued mystery.

"No, I'm fine. I just. . . " Now that he was here, he
didn't want to leap right into this. Maybe he could
sidle in the back door. "You were looking over our
report about Icy Cape. Was there something you wanted
to change about it?"

"You came all the way over here to ask me that?"
Scully's gaze, which had reflected mild worry and
perplexity, turned guarded. "I just wanted to review
it, Mulder." Apparently she'd decided that until she
knew where he was headed with this line of
questioning, the less she revealed, the better.

"Scully, nobody even read it. Once the facility was
destroyed and the evidence gone, our whole trip became
moot. Nobody. . ." he paused and chose his next words
very carefully, "Nobody questioned your actions."

She narrowed her eyes, smoothing the overlapping edge
of the robe across her knees. "What are you talking
about?"

"'During the course of the investigation of the murder
of Dr. Denny Murphy, Agents Mulder and Scully engaged
in a verbal altercation during which both agents drew
their weapons,'" Mulder quoted. "'Agent Mulder first
aimed at Dr. Lawrence Hodge, and, in an attempt to
protect Dr. Hodge, Agent Scully aimed her weapon at
Agent Mulder. He subsequently re-trained his weapon on
her. The standoff was resolved when Agent Mulder
surrendered and submitted to being confined for the
duration of the investigation.'" 

He leaned forward and stared earnestly at her, trying
to read what was going on behind those wide blue eyes.
Profiling where actions seemed likely was one thing,
but more often than not Scully's thoughts remained
hidden to him. "Scully, I would have done the same
thing in your position. For all you knew I =was=
infected. And we might never have figured out how to
kill those things if DaSilva hadn't been left out
there to screw up Hodge's experiment."

She sat silent, expressionless, as if mesmerized by
his words. The fingers that had been worrying the
terrycloth on her lap now lay flat and still on her
thighs. The silence drew out longer and longer until
Mulder, sensing disaster but not knowing what form it
might take, plunged on in a desperate attempt to head
it off.

"I'm not angry with you for doing that. I'm not
disappointed, or upset, or planning to report you. I
just want you to know that you were within your
rights, and you acted properly. In case. . . in case
that's what's been keeping you up at night."

That made her jump a little, and that tiny line
between her eyebrows reappeared. "Keeping me up at
night?" she repeated.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Here goes nothing.
"You've fallen asleep in the office three times in the
last week. Three times that I know about. I know you
don't find the decor as stimulating as I do, but it's
not like you to just nod off like that. You don't seem
to be sick, so I thought. . . I thought you might be
worried. About what happened up there. And what almost
happened." It was as close as he dared come to saying,
"About the fact that you nearly gunned me down before
I could defend myself," but Scully got the drift.

"You think I've been worried that I could have shot
you? That I was prepared to do it if you forced me
to?"

She sounded far too calm for his assumptions to be
true. If he'd hit home she'd be edgy and defensive by
now, and she wasn't. She seemed almost nonchalant.

So he'd miscalculated. But not by much. Surely the
change in nap habits was connected to the events at
Icy Cape. There just wasn't anything else for her to
be distraught about, barring some unknown family
emergency.

Mulder nodded in response to her questions. "I assumed
that, yes, because you don't normally use my office as
a bedroom."

Scully flushed. At least he'd been right about her
being embarrassed to have been caught slumbering.
Abruptly she stood up and walked away, towards her
kitchen.

Mulder hesitated. When she didn't return, he got up
and followed her. His partner was standing facing her
sink, arms braced against its edge and head bowed.

"Scully?" he ventured quietly. Much as he wanted to
know what was wrong, prying it out of her by force
wasn't on his agenda. If she told him, great. If she
couldn't, or wouldn't, then he'd live to fight another
day.

She raised her head but didn't turn around. Apparently
her internal struggle was at an end, and she was about
to deliver the results of the war.

"I have been. . . concerned. . . that I hadn't acted
in your best interests. That I had allowed myself to
be swayed by the simplest interpretation of the
available evidence and the presence of the others. The
pack mentality, as it were."

Mulder waited.

Scully took a deep breath and made a visible effort to
relax her hunched shoulders. "But," she continued,
"that's not why I've been. . . unable to rest at a
more appropriate time and place."

Typical Scully to be so diplomatic when admitting to a
fault.

She turned around finally to stare him in the eyes.
"Mulder, I wasn't troubled because I had to threaten
you with my weapon," she said softly. "I was troubled
because =you= threatened me with =yours.="

He stepped back in shock, as if the words themselves
had the physical power to knock him off balance.
"What? Scully. . . what?"

She continued to make eye contact, the expression on
her face both sad and determined. "Mulder, when I
first met you, when we were in Oregon, you said I
=had= to trust you. You demanded it, and I agreed.
When you lied to those agents in the Lauren Kyte case,
I didn't say anything. When Petersen, that building
manager for Eurisko, told me to back off, I took your
side and made him give you the disk to destroy the
operating system. I bailed you out of the drunk tank
after you made a nuisance of yourself in New Jersey. I
intervened when Tom Colton tried to keep you off the
Tooms case. When you got caught at Ellens Air Base, I
forced them to let you go. I did all that because you
told me I had to trust you, and I did."

She blinked and steadied her voice, which had started
to shake slightly at the end of her recitation. She
wasn't crying, though; not even close. Just unnerved
at the way her pleasant Friday evening had come
unraveled without warning.

"But at Icy Cape, it was clear to me that while you
demanded absolute trust from me, you weren't willing
to give it in return. After all I'd done for you,
proven to you, did you really think I would have let
them hurt you? Do you know what happened while you
were in that room? They were all for abandoning you. I
wouldn't let them. Me, Mulder. Your partner. I
insisted on speaking with you, explaining things,
before we did anything drastic like administering the
worm to you. Hodge and DaSilva wanted me to help them
restrain you so they could do it without even telling
you what was happening. I refused. Because =I= still
trusted =you=, Mulder."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing, couldn't
process it. Before he could even try, Scully had
forged ahead to the conclusion of her tirade.

"Yes, it disturbed me to point my gun at you, knowing
I might have to fire it to protect the others from
you. But it disturbed me more to see you aiming back
at me, because when you told me in Oregon that nothing
mattered but finding your sister, all I could think
was how far you were really prepared to go. If. . . if
getting rid of me was something you'd already
considered and decided was an acceptable means to an
end."

He remembered delivering his passionate speech during
a Pacific northwest thunderstorm, remembered grabbing
Scully's arm to punctuate the depth of his commitment
to locating Samantha. He thought he remembered the
flicker in her eyes, what he'd interpreted then as
mere sympathy and what now, looking back, he belatedly
recognized as fear.

She'd probably gone home wondering just what kind of
nutcase she was working with, but in the months that
followed, he hadn't done anything overtly threatening.
Scully had relaxed, dismissed her initial alarm as an
overreaction.

Until she found herself staring down the receiving end
of Mulder's service weapon in the Arctic.

All this time he'd thought Scully was perturbed by
what =she'd= done. It had never occurred to him to
wonder how his behavior, fueled by his past conduct,
had affected her.

So much for being a profiler and knowing things.

She was watching him carefully now, waiting for his
response.

"I wouldn't have shot you," he said, his voice
cracking a bit. "Not for that. You have to believe me.
I was angry at you, but I would never have hurt you. I
was afraid you would get hurt yourself, staying out
there with them with no one to back you up."

Scully tilted her head a little, as if weighing his
words. Mulder could almost see the wheels turning
inside her mind, could visualize her taking his
statement and balancing it against her memory of his
gun, and the later events in the storage room, with
his hand pressing ominously against her neck. He knew
that instant of sweet revenge would come back to haunt
him. He was about to apologize for that, too, and then
realized doing so would make matters worse.

Scully pushed away from the sink and strode past him
back to the living room. Confused, he followed, and
they resumed their original positions on the couch and
armchair.

She adjusted her glasses and cleared her throat. She
looked suddenly tired, and he remembered what had
started all this -- her lack of sleep. "I can
understand how both of our actions can be construed as
less than professional, Mulder. I wish I'd responded
differently to the situation. I. . . I can see that
you do, too."

He nodded, afraid to interrupt what he thought was her
acceptance of his apology.

Scully glanced at her watch. "It's late, Mulder."

He blinked, surprised. "Don't you want me to cross my
heart and swear never to do it again?" he asked,
trying out a small smile to see how an attempt at
humor might fare.

Scully reached for her mug, more, it seemed, to have
something to do with her hands than out of any desire
to drink the tepid liquid. "Could you honestly do
that? And mean it?"

He thought about it and finally shook his head. "No.
Probably not."

She smiled then, just a little. "Neither could I. Go
home, Mulder. I'll see you on Monday."

"Awake?" He was pushing it, but he couldn't resist
teasing her, now that the earlier tension was gone.

Scully set down her mug and picked up her notepad and
pen. "Unless you've got more slides of Bigfoot."


End


Author's notes: Happy holidays to tuatha, my E-muse
Secret Santa. I realize this isn't a Christmas story,
but it's been rolling around in my head for a while.
Hope everyone enjoys some early Moose and Squirrel
along with all that leftover eggnog and fruitcake. <g>
Many thanks also to my betas-to-the-rescue, BoneTree
and Sarah Segretti. Next time I'll warn you in advance
about the long sentences. <g>

Feedback would go wonderfully with my last few
Christmas cookies: jeanrobinson@yahoo.com.