Get A Life (1/?)

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TITLE: Get A Life (1/?)
AUTHOR: Chyld
DISCLAIMER:
RATING: P.G.
THANK YOUS: Since I’m kind of a closet fanfic, I didn’t really show
this to very many people. I guess I’ll thank my family and my ex-
boyfriend (aka The Slug) for liking it enough to bug me to finish.
And thanks to my old friend for laughing, thinking the story idea was
funny, and encouraging me even though she doesn’t like X-Files.
SUMMARY: Mulder's lack of any social/personal activity finally takes
its toll and he becomes an X-File unto himself.

Scully headed down the flight of stairs leading to the basement
with a tiny twinge of regret
sparking inside her. Her eyes drifted wistfully back up the
staircase to the faint bars of spring
sunlight struggling in from the upstairs. It was such a beautiful
day and she hated to spend it tucked away in the fat rolls of the
great, federal underbelly. The fact that it was Monday morning
didn't help matters either by knowing that she had four more days of
sunless suffocation before she was free again and then it would most
likely not be as pretty. She sighed heavily and shifted the weight
of her briefcase to the other arm as she rounded the turn of the
stairwell.
Her weekend had been spent leisurely about town and at home. She'd
stepped out to pick up groceries, caught a matinee, and for all
general intents and purposes, laid on her ass. It had been well
deserved too, she'd later noted, but it had not been in the original
plan. The paperwork from two previous X-files and a small mountain
of unfiled reports that had been accumulating since sometime last
Christmas had been staring her in the face Friday evening. She had
been on the verge of gathering her share of the files in the standard
cardboard box for transport home when Mulder had stopped her.
"Why don't you take the weekend off?" He'd asked, leaning over the
folding chair she'd been using to set the box on. "I can manage here."
She'd looked up at him, a faint glimmer of suspicious curiosity
showing. "Are you sure? What's up, Mulder?"
"Who said anything was up?" He'd asked with a purposefully impish
expression that they both knew grated on her nerves when she expected
an answer. After about two point five seconds of The Look, he
finally conceded. "I just thought you could use some time off,,,get
away from this paperwork for a while."
She'd watched the whipped puppy expression drift over his handsome
face and felt her suspicion ebb, somewhat. Shields down. "You don't
have to do that. I can handle it. And I'm sure your Lone Gunmen
buddies will miss you back at the clubhouse."
"That's okay," he'd said, grabbing the cardboard box up and
swinging it in the direction of his desk. "Langley can wait ‘till
next weekend to show me the new secret handshake. Anyway, I'm going
for a new record here."
"And what record would that be?" She'd asked dubiously from behind
folded arms.
"I'm seeing how long I can stay down here before Skinner or anyone
notices I'm gone." He was smiling, but she couldn't ignore the
quietly bitter edge to his tone.
"Mulder," she'd begun.
"No," he interjected before she could start. He pulled a file or
two from the box and plopped down on the corner of his desk. His
tone had returned to normal. "I've just been working on some things
lately,,,going back over old cases. Some of these were pretty out
there; I can hardly believe some of the stuff in these old files."
He leaned back over the box, shuffling through the rest. "I thought
I might take in a pizza and go back over some of these. It's really
interesting."
"Mulder," she'd sighed, only half joking. "You really need to get
a life."
His eyes shone a small flicker of hurt before closing off again.
He'd responded, motioning with the files to the office around them.
"This is my life, Scully. You should know that by now."
There was a pause as she tried for some way to respond to this.
She knew the importance of his work to him and his quest for the
truth. She knew there was no real way to pull him away from it, if
only for the weekend, to indulge something as frivolous as social
activity. "Spooky" Fox Mulder would have none of it and might
spontaneously combust upon contact with the fresh air and sunlight.
In the midst of her trying to formulate some type of a response,
something in his eyes softened. "I know this isn't your fight. Your
life is outside of the X-Files. I wouldn't ask you to waste your
weekend digging through the filing cabinet just because I have
nothing better to do."
"Not that I would anyway." She responded, attempting to and
succeeding in making him smile.
"Just for that," he said, getting up from his desk. "I'm giving
Frohike your number."
"After the third call of nothing but heavy breathing," she said,
giving him The Other Look. "The Irresistible Agent Scully would have
to kick your ass."
At that, Mulder let out a giant whoop of laughter that startled
them both then became contagious. They laughed for a while before it
had eventually died down to a giggle. Slinging her purse over her
shoulder, she'd headed for the door. Turning to him as her hand
grasped the knob, she said, "Try to make it home at least once this
weekend to shower. I'll request to be reassigned if you start
stinking up the place."
"Can do."
Shaking the memory, Scully disembarked the stairwell and made her
way across the walk to her and Mulder's office. The happy thoughts
had entrapped a faint smile on her tiny, red pout as she gripped on
the doorknob with her freehand. It slid open with a small creak in
one of the lower hinges and the remnants of that smile vanished,
leaving only a strange, nonplused expression. Walking into a
darkened office was not unaccustomed; she often stepped into possible
new X-Files this way, with Mulder waiting for her with the slide
projector ready. There had even been a time or two that she'd made
it to work before him and had to turn on the lights herself. She was
a woman of the 90's, fully capable of operating the switch all by
herself. But it had never been complete blackness. Though they
weren't anything to write home about, the office did have windows:
rectangular slats to make sure they all didn't suffocate down there.
But this was different. The darkness was complete; it seemed thick,
almost solid, like wading into some midnight pool. There was also
the smell. It had been the first thing she'd noticed, even before
the darkness. It was damp and earthy, like something that's sat far
too long in the corner of some old cellar. Not disgusting yet, but
incredibly strong.
"Mulder?" She managed into the darkness. There was a crawling
sensation in her stomach as she reached into the curtain of darkness
to feel for the switch. It, of course, didn't work when she found
it. As always, she thought not of a flashlight as she took her first
cautious step into the black. Her foot landed on something, or
several little somethings in the floor that crackled under her
weight. She drew back as if bitten and looked down. At first there
appeared to be countless dead beetles strewn about the floor, but as
she squatted down for a better look, she realized them to be
sunflower seed shells.
There was an extensive pause at this discovery before she managed
to move again. Standing up, she made her way into the office, guided
by the light that struggled in from the doorway. Her feet hit more
seeds in their path and they crackled beneath her like the bones of
hundreds of small
animals in the bed of a lion's den. She had made her way to a chair
next to the wall that she
recognized even in the dark when she stopped. Something in the
darkness of the office had moved. It had been a very faint, but
audible sound. Papers had shifted, something had brushed against a
piece of furniture and now it was still. The only sounds she could
make out were of distant traffic outside and her own breathing,
ringing a bit sharply in her ears.
"Who's there?" Any fear she felt didn't translate in her voice,
which was authoritative and
demanding. "Mulder?"
Somewhere in the murk, the shuffling returned, accompanied by an
unidentifiable animal sound. It took the blink of an eye for her gun
to be out and ready. She paused, listening. There was nothing for a
short time then, there it was again. A faint scuttling sound from
the corner of the office and the sound of heavy breathing. Warning
bells went off inside her head, but she took a step forward into the
room. "Who's there?" She demanded coolly. No answer came. She
took another step forward; the heel of her pump came down square in
the middle of something cold and squishy. With a small grunt of
disapproval, she pulled her foot back and squatted yet again, gun
ready, to appraise her find. The floor under whatever she had
stepped in felt unstable and as she felt about the edges of it, she
realized why. It was a box, a pizza box to be exact, and she had
just stuck her heel in the middle of a several days old, congealed
slice of pepperoni with olives. Her forehead became a knotted ridge
of territory at this breakthrough. It was Mulder's pizza, unfinished
and seemingly untouched. A sinking sensation entered the pit of her
stomach. Thoughts raced through her head at hyper speed as she tried
desperately to put together some kind of rational explanation of what
this could mean. In the process of this, there was a noise and
Scully spun around in her crouch just in time for the oncoming attack.
There was a small, bird like shriek as two large hands clamped down
on her shoulders from the front, knocking her on her back. She
rolled some, but her head still cracked against the hard floor,
sending an array of white explosions across her visual field. Her
gun was knocked from her hand on impact and it landed somewhere
across the room from her, going off and most likely blowing a hole in
the light fixture from the sounds of shattering glass she heard. Or
thought she heard. She couldn't be for sure as her consciousness
fluxed temporarily and the world swam around her surreally. The
white explosions had left green after images that called her toward
seductive unconsciousness. She fought the urge with the screaming
thought that if she blinked out now, she might not wake up again.
Somewhere outside of her, she vaguely noticed the fact that she was
now ass deep in pepperoni and olives.
Rolling some to her right and using all her strength, she sent a
blind haymaker crashing into the side of whatever it was's head.
There was a strange squeal, almost human, like that of a young girl.
Eerie, yet familiar . . . She shook the thoughts from her head
desperately and attempted to gain some leverage and swing the weight
from atop her. But the heavy, masculine hands were there again--
anticipatingly--to stifle her efforts. Though her entire frame was
taunt with fear and nerves, she couldn't shake the feeling of
familiarity.
Something clicked inside her and she felt a mix of relief and white
hot dread. She stared up at the darkness above her, agape. "Mulder?"
There was a cool moment where everything seemed to pause and the
only sounds were of their out of sync breathing. She knew those
hands, that build, that weird girly scream that had popped up
inappropriately. Instinctively, something in her gut had reacted and
she knew. Like a screaming infant thrust into its mother's arms,
something inside had calmed at the recognition. She blinked several
times before her wits seemed to return to her. Suddenly, she felt a
small wave of anger wash over her.
"What are you doing?" She demanded, having regained most of her
breath. "Are you trying to scare me?"
She waited a moment or so for an answer, but none came. Doubt
crept in and a tiny sliver of alarm prick her spine. It was
dismissed somewhat by the thought that she knew this must be
Mulder. It smelled like him, a very ripe version, but obviously
him. It felt like him, mostly. But
something felt wrong, very wrong.
"Mulder?" The fear crept back in. It was Mulder; she was certain,
but something besides the fact that he had thrown her onto the floor
in the pitch blackness and was now hovering over her like some winged
angle of death filled her with a feeling of dread. Something
felt,,,different.
The thing sat up some, then dipped down next to her face and she
could hear/feel it sniffing at her. There was a pause as it pressed
its face up against hers and held there for a few seconds before
jerking back and clawing the side of her face with several days worth
of stubble. It jumped off her with an odd flutter and pulled away.
Slowly, Scully sat up and stared into the darkness.
"Mulder? What the hell . . . ?" She would have finished, but the
words dried up in her throat. This was just wrong. She held out one
hand toward the figure. "Mulder?"
A cold, rather large nose found its way into her palm where it
sniffed appraisingly before
snuggling forth. Suddenly numb with dread, Dana found her purse in
the darkness and began
fumbling through it for her keys. On the ring next to her Apollo
key chain that Mulder had given
her on her birthday was a tiny flashlight which she now pulled out.
She twisted the head and the
tiny space about her was weakly lit. The small glow from the light
was enough for her to see by and enough she saw.
"Oh my God . . . "