Title: We All Die Virgins
Author: Jaime Lyn
Email: Leiaj21@hotmail.com
Category: MSR, X-File (Temp category: WIP)
Spoilers: None. (Well, I would hope you know who Mulder and Scully ARE...) This is a season 8-9 free zone.
Disclaimer: Frank, Alice, Lily and Kelsey Harbor are mine, all mine. Detective Guinness is mine as well. But Mulder and Scully, and all other X-Files related characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, FOX, Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and some other rich people. You know--the ones who actually make money. :oP
Summary: Time flies. Life is short. What is a virgin but something left untouched? Only we can let ourselves leave this world without having ever really experienced it.
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Chapter 2
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Georgetown, Maryland
December 27th,
6:58amDana Scully was slowly but steadily getting a headache.
She’d already torn a hole right through her new Victoria’s Secret panty hose, misplaced her cell phone, spilled hot coffee all over the newspaper, and, worst of all, sliced a deep cut in her finger while closing the envelope for her phone bill. She knew she should have paid closer attention while sealing the damn thing, but all she could think of was the chunk of money she’d ripped from her waning bank account to cover the expense: eighty eight dollars for the month of November. Jesus Christ.
A harsh, swift knock pounded the front door. Scully, already tired and rattled, snapped her head up to face the door and dropped her house keys right on her bare, stockinged feet. Yelping in pain, she hopped backwards, a string of expletives dripping off her tongue. Bending her leg back, she grabbed her toes and massaged gently. “Use your key,” she called, out of breath.
A moment later, a key turned in the lock and the door crept open.
Without looking up, Scully cracked her neck and said, “do you have any idea what time it is?”
A wordless kiss was pressed to the top of her head, a strong arm patting her shoulder. Then a deep, throaty voice answered, “Is that like a knock knock joke? No wait, I think I’ve heard this one…”
Scully let go of her foot and turned, her hands on her hips. Fox Mulder was probably the only person who ever really saw her in a bad mood—or who could get her worked up into one.
To everyone else, Special Agent Dana Scully was a punctual, responsible, reliable professional. A mature adult. But with Fox Mulder, her partner and friend, the professional sometimes took a backseat to the whiny child, the out of sorts cop, and even, if the timing was right and he was looking especially handsome that day, the romantic. The romantic was the worst; uncontrollable emotions made Scully feel sloppy, uneven, and incredibly ridiculous.
Mulder grinned. “Is this the one with clowns and a Volkswagon? Because I know this one. Time to get a new car. Am I right?”
Mulder knew her moods, of course, probably better than she herself did. And especially these past few weeks, with their intimate borders blurring to the point where Scully ached when Mulder left, and with this new kissing thing he had slowly implemented in the mornings…and sometimes in the evenings…well, Scully felt slightly nervous around him. Today, her nervousness swirled with guilt over feeling so crabby.
Usually, she wasn’t such a… well, a bitch.
But frankly, her finger was bleeding and now her toe ached, and damn it all to hell, they were going to be late to work on top of everything else. “Mulder,” she sighed, and cracked her back.
“Scully,” Mulder mimicked, and he brushed past her on his way into the living room.
Scully whirled on her toes and stared, opened mouthed, as Mulder pulled out her desk chair and sat down in front of her computer. He pushed away from the desk with the balls of his feet, resting one long, finely tailored leg on her blotter and the other one on her window sill. He smacked the mouse, double clicked, and bent his arms behind his head.
Scully spread her arms in exasperation. “Mulder, are you purposely looking for reasons to get fired, or is this just an excuse to make my head explode?”
Mulder turned in his chair and smiled, his lopsided grin frustratingly attractive in the hubbub of early morning. “I forgot to check my mail,” he said by way of explanation, and turned back to the monitor. “I’m expecting something—an old friend called and left a message on my machine last night. He said he’d email me.”
Scully groaned and approached the computer slowly, the pain in her large toe a dull throb. She forced herself not to hobble, wincing with each step and feeling a bit ridiculous and put out. Plus—she was starving. She really wanted a bagel from Einstein’s and now she wasn’t going to get one. Damn it.
Her arms folded across her chest, Scully sighed and glanced at her watch. Seven oh two. Great. Just fabulous. They’d never make it to work in time now, not with rush hour traffic and Mulder, sitting in the middle of her living room, his feet on her window sill.
“You do realize that we have a budget meeting in forty minutes.”
Mulder nodded and clicked the mouse.
“And Skinner’s expecting us to be prompt.”
Mulder nodded again.
“Not that I have to reiterate this to you, because it’s been made perfectly clear on a number of occasions, but accounting already has us penciled under the column marked ‘do not requisition anything to these two people.’ Do you really want to make it worse, Mulder? Do want to end up working out of the trunk of your car?”
When Mulder nodded a third time, Scully narrowed her eyes and shook her head, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek. “Alright, Mulder. I’m taking off my shirt,” she said, her arms still folded in front of her.
Mulder squinted into the computer screen and typed up his password for the FBI mainframe. “You’re lying,” he said, “I can see your reflection.”
Scully rolled her eyes and leaned closer to read over Mulder’s shoulder, her hand gripping the back of the chair. The folds of her jacket brushed Mulder’s ear, and she could smell his after-shave. Coconut—almost a bitter type of coconut. She marked the scent in her memory for future reference.
“What is so important?” she asked, her eyes focused on the screen.
“Well---“ Mulder glanced in her direction, his thickly lashed, hazel eyes catching hers for a fraction of a second. An unexplainable, undeniable heat flared between them, suspending the moment, dragging the second out for a million years longer than it should have lasted. They were standing close—very close, a little too close, perhaps. That familiar ache, the one Scully had years ago nicknamed ‘Misplaced Sexual Frustration,’ began in the bottom of her stomach, tingled up her chest, and ran down her arms until her hand shook on the back of the chair. Mulder’s eyes strayed to her lips, an honestly innocent glance, but Scully broke away first, feeling suddenly foolish all the same.
Mulder cleared his throat. “This guy I know, he works in New York—NYPD out of the Island. Used to be FBI, but he found the bureaucracy stifling. Said he didn’t get into the ‘meat of things’ enough, or something like that. Anyway, he sends me snippets from time to time. Weird sightings, unsolved cases, that kind of thing. Last night he called me from the station and said he had something that I might want to look at. Usually, he just emails me. So I figured the phone call warranted a quick follow up.”
Scully nodded and removed her hand from the back of Mulder’s chair. She pressed her fingers into a fist behind her back to stifle the trembling. “Did this friend of yours happen to mention on your machine what he wanted you to look at?”
Mulder shook his head. “Naw,” he said, and scrolled up the list of unopened emails. When he got to the top, there was a message whose subject read, ‘Wildcat: Something Spooky for You.’
Scully raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth.
“Remind me never to tell you that story,” Mulder said before she could say a single word. He took a deep breath and clicked on the email, opening a message post-marked from MGuinness@NYPD.gov Mulder scrolled past all the headers and read while Scully scanned the paragraph over his shoulder.
“Wildcat— I thought you might be interested in this one.
“Young girl was brought to the station house the other day from LaGuardia Airport. She was hysterical, and claimed that her sister vanished while they were getting ready to board a plane for Los Angeles. The security guard who brought the girl down says that apparently nobody in the terminal had seen or heard anything unusual. And further, the few witnesses who remembered seeing and speaking with the girl don’t seem to remember her sister at all, even though the girl had two boarding passes with her that were checked at security. The girl's bizarre history complicates things further. I faxed the police report and the witness statements to your office. For what it’s worth, I feel terrible for this poor kid. Apparently, she’s all alone. Let me know if you think it’s worth a follow up. Mark.”
Scully rocked backwards on her heels, her hands at her hips. She knew what was coming next, knew the routine by heart. In the back of her mind, she could picture Assistant Director Walter Skinner pacing back and forth in the board room, his gaze glued to his watch, his ears red with anger. The budget people were there with him, their brown and gray striped ties tied a little too tight for their necks, their suits a little too stiff and starched. “So where are they? What the hell are they wasting government money on now, Skinner?” the budget men asked, their glasses perched on their pointy noses.
“Mulder,” Scully tried, her eyes closing in resignation. “The budget meeting?”
Mulder turned to face her, his expression unreadable. “You have your cell phone on you.”
Scully shook her head and stepped backwards, her hands rising, palm up, towards Mulder. “No,” she said. “Oh no. No. You are not going to do this. Not now. Not with—“ She glanced at her watch, “Jesus. Thirty two minutes until the meeting. Do you understand the ramifications of what I believe you’re suggesting? Do you understand that if we blow off this meeting, the next time we enter the Hoover building we’ll probably be working out of a broom closet?”
Mulder cocked his head to one side. “I thought we were already working out of the broom closet,” he said, smiling.
Scully opened her mouth and realized, before she could say anything, that she had no argument for that.
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Continued in Chapter 3