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Ellen flopped her head back against the seat of the couch. She was sitting on the floor, a bowl of chips in her lap and a half-empty wine glass on the coffee table in front of her.
‘So, you haven’t mentioned your partner at all, Dana. What gives?’
‘What’s to talk about? He’s a good partner.’
‘Good?’
Scully sipped her wine, knowing where Ellen was going with this. Ever the match-maker, she would press her like a ripe orange until she was pulped for details.
‘He’s…focused.’
‘Focused?’
‘Are you just going to repeat everything I say?’
‘I will until you give me something to work with here. I need hard evidence, G-Woman.’
Holding back her initial random thoughts was tricky. The wine was opening her up, turning her back into her teen self. The Dana who ran her mouth off without the checks and balances that adulthood, seven years of college and more than a few revelatory humiliations had provided.
Impetuous, arrogant, self-absorbed. Brilliant, empathetic, incisive.
‘Mulder has a back-story like a South American soap opera. He is on a personal quest that drives him further and further away from any sense of normality – so far sometimes that he goes past the boundaries of common sense without a thought for the consequences.’
Ellen shifted her legs up and hugged her knees. ‘For you, you mean? He’s putting you in danger?’
‘No! Nothing like that. Well, not yet, at any rate. But he’s passionate, he’s tenacious, he’s determined.’
‘They’re good traits, Dana. A guy who knows what he wants is hard to find.’
Scully swirled the last dregs of wine around the glass watching purple liquid smear the inside like waves unfurling on a beach. ‘But it’s like he’s blinded to the life he could have. There’s a fine line between passion and obsession, Ellen, and at the moment, I don’t think Mulder’s aware that he’s crossing it. Or even cares.’
‘So,’ Ellen said with a wicked smile, ‘are you going to make it your job to keep him this side of the line?’
Tucking her legs under her, Scully grabbed a handful of chips. ‘And how should I do that?’
‘You’re an imaginative woman, Dana. And an attractive one. A trained agent. Surely you’ve learned many strategies to keep people on the straight and narrow.’
‘And Mulder is an imaginative man. A trained agent. A psychologist. And he’s more experienced than I am. I’m pretty sure he would resist all my attempts to keep him on the straight and narrow. And loudly. Besides the X-Files are hardly the straight and narrow of FBI units. I’m already the skeptical spy, remember?’
Ellen grabbed another bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. ‘But you could have fun trying.’
Snorting, Scully rested her forehead on her hand. ‘Aside from the fact that Mulder rarely does anything I say, or his superiors say, or,’ she screwed up her nose, ‘anything anyone says, you are forgetting one thing.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘He’s my partner.’
And he can be moody, rude, obnoxious, infuriating.
‘Okay, but are there actual rules that prevent partners from…’
‘From what? Ellen! Are you suggesting that I sleep with Mulder? Because…’
‘Because what? I’m sure you said he was hot.’
‘What!’ Scully nearly spit out her wine. ‘I said no such thing. And I don’t just jump into bed with the men I work with.’
‘Well,’ Ellen said, ‘not all of them.’ She waited a beat before bursting into a cackle of laughter.
Scully rolled her lips together. Had she really told Ellen that Mulder was hot? Maybe the last time they got drunk together. She rifled through her memory banks but her mind flicked back to that first meeting with Mulder instead.
Floppy hair, interesting nose, glasses hiding eyes that would change from green to grey to black according to the light, jawline so sharp she could use it to file her nails. Looked damned fine in a shirt and suit pants.
‘Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted.’
‘What?’ Ellen said.
‘Oh,’ Scully said. ‘I said that out loud.’ She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘That was what he said when I first met him. Then he called me Scully with more than just a hint of superiority, challenged me to fail his first test and spent that entire case trying out my loyalty.’
‘But you thought he was hot, though?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘You think he’s cute?’
‘He’s cute,’ Scully sighed.
‘And there’s an attraction.’
Scully took a long, contemplative swallow of her wine, enjoying the burn as it tracked down her throat.
‘There might even be more than an attraction,’ she conceded. ‘It’s a nice idea. But it’s not going to happen.’