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Dana Scully was thirty five years old. She was a medical doctor and an FBI agent. She had graduated at the top of her classes from high school, college, medical school and Quantico. She could take down suspects more than twice her size, could go eye to eye with serial killers of the worst kind without flinching and eat a bucket of fried chicken with one hand while dissecting a decomposing human body with the other. During her bi-annual gun recertification at the shooting alley, she often had an audience because she was so damn good at it. She could run in four inch heels and make it seem like nothing.
She had faced the worst kind of monsters, both human and… not so human. She had stared down a fat sucking vampire, come face to face with a six foot humanoid worm, fought five hundred year old red eyed Spanish conquistadors, handled ghosts, aliens and almost been digested alive by a humongous underground mushroom all while maintaining a perfectly coiffed hairdo and French manicure.
She had survived cancer for crying out loud.
She was not a weak woman, by any stretch of the imagination. She could handle herself. At eleven years old, she had punched Bill in the face and made his nose bleed, because he teased Charlie for the stutter that plagued him until he was a teenager. She stood up for the underdog, fought for them, gave them a voice when they didn’t have one of their own.
Dana Scully was not the kind of woman to shy away from any challenge that she faced. Whatever came her way, she took it in her stride and dealt with it admirably and without complaint. If there was any kind of injustice to be found, she would be there to put the wrong, right. She was a strong woman, emotionally, mentally and physically and was afraid of nothing. Nothing fazed her.
Unless that nothing involved eight legs and the ability to disappear into seemingly thin air and had the ability to appear much later, somewhere completely unexpected. That nothing was what led to her standing on top of Mulder’s desk and staring, unblinking, at the small gap between a small table that held a leaning pile of files and the wall, while she waited for him to return from the coffee run.
After what felt like an eternity, Mulder pushed open the office door, a brown paper bag in one hand and a tray of takeout coffees in the other and looked with surprise at the woman standing on his desk.
“What-”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, holding a hand up to silence him. “Just get rid of it.”
He followed her gaze to the corner of the room and nodded in understanding. He didn’t dare laugh or even allow the hint of a smile to cross his lips. He valued his life too much. He had known about her fear of spiders since early on in their partnership, when she had knocked on his door not long after he had left her for the night, and asked him to remove a monster from her bathtub. Confusion had crossed his face, but, already unable to deny her anything, he had grabbed his room key and followed her back to her room where she simply pointed at the bathroom. Curious, he had stepped inside and after examining the bathtub, began to chuckle. One look at her face put a stop to his amusement. He realised that her fear was genuine and he had gotten rid of the offending creature without another word. Over the years, he had removed what felt like hundreds of varying sizes of arachnids for her, all without complaint.
This was the first time he’d found her standing on a desk though.
“Where is it?” Mulder asked, setting the bag and coffees on his leather chair.
“There,” she said, pointing to the table. “It’s not moved for fifteen minutes.”
“You’ve been up there fifteen minutes?”
“Can you not with the questions?” she snapped, glaring at him.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he muttered, fully aware of how she became whenever spiders were in the vicinity. He wasn’t taking it personally.
Sighing and carefully approaching the area in question, he looked all around, grabbed a paper cup and returned to the table, where a sense of dread began to overtake him.
“Uh... Scully?”
“No. No, no, no, don’t say it. It’s there!” A strangled sound emerged from her and Mulder knew that if he didn’t act fast, she would end up in tears. He’d seen it happen before.
“I’ll find it,” he said, glancing up at her and spinning to look for potential hiding spots. “Just… stay there.”
Mulder removed the files off the table and carefully lifted it to check underneath and make sure he hadn’t missed it. Confident it wasn’t there, he set it on the other side of the room. He retrieved a flashlight from the top drawer of the desk and returned to where the creature was last sighted and shone the light down the back of the cabinet. Moving the beam slowly up and down and checking every shadow, he eventually pulled the cabinet out to look where the light couldn’t reach.
“So, how big are we talking here Scully?” He looked over at her and saw her biting her bottom lip. Usually that movement made him more than a little hot under the collar, but right now, it was the last thing on his mind. “Ballpark.”
“Big enough. Can you see it?”
He sighed a little and shook his head, knowing full well that she would remain on the desk until he found and disposed of the spider. Moving to some shelving that was loaded with books, he crouched down and shone the torch underneath the lowest wall shelf, moving from one end to the other, where he eventually spotted the offending creature, in the furthest corner. Mulder wanted to say that it was far more scared of her than she was of it, but he didn’t think she would appreciate his words, so he wisely remained silent.
“Found him,” announced Mulder, keeping the light trained on the arachnid and looking briefly at Scully over his shoulder. “He’s a big guy isn’t he?”
“Yes, thank you for noticing, but can you get rid of it now please?”
He nodded and assessed the situation. It was a big thing, probably as big as his palm and he didn’t really like the idea of catching it by hand, just in case it tried to bite him. He wasn’t sure the FBI insurance team would pay out any medical bills for a spider bite.
“Yeah, I just…” Casting another quick glance back, he gestured with his free hand at the desk. “Hey, can you go into the bottom drawer for me? I think there’s a plastic tub I can put him in so I can take him outside?”
“Do you really have to gender it?” Scully grumbled.
“I could give him a name instead.”
“Don’t you dare,” warned Scully as she lowered herself carefully to her knees and attempted to root in the drawer in question. It was the same drawer that held the videos that definitely weren’t his, but when she pulled it open, the only thing in there was a box of pencils and a plastic tub that could have held takeout at one point. She made a mental note to ask him about the videos another time. “We are not keeping that thing as an office pet.” Mulder chuckled at her words, glad that her sense of humour hadn’t disappeared entirely. “Here,” she said, waiting until he looked at her to toss the clear plastic tub at him, which he caught one handed.
Mulder removed the lid and stuck the end of the pen sized flashlight in his mouth and then, before the spider knew what had happened, he quickly trapped it in the tub, pulled it along the underside of the shelf and replaced the lid before it could escape.
“Got it,” announced Mulder, standing up with a groan and ignoring the popping sounds from his knees as he did so. He was getting too old for crawling around on dusty floors. “You sure you don’t want to adopt him?”
“Mulder, I swear to God, if you don’t get that thing out of here, I will call Skinner right now and request that transfer to Utah.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Fine, fine. I’ll be right back.”
As he made his way towards the door, she stopped him. “Can you just… make sure there are no more back there first?” Her voice was quiet, almost embarrassed at needing to ask him, but she wasn’t about to get down off the desk until she was certain they were alone in the office. “Please?”
Without uttering a word of complaint, Mulder set the tub on the filing cabinet by the door and did as he was asked. He searched the entire area for anymore trespassers, checking and double-checking every darkened corner until he was confident they were alone. Finding nothing more than a stray pen and some dust bunnies, he came and stood in front of the desk, hands on hips and looked up at her.
“You can come down now.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
He held a hand out to her, which she took hesitantly. Her eyes skittered around the room but then she looked at Mulder and knew he’d done everything in his power to make sure they were alone. Stepping onto the guest chair and without giving him a chance to react, she leant down, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly on the lips.
“Thank you,” she murmured against his lips with a smile, lingering a little longer in his arms.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, smiling when she unwrapped herself from around him and took the final step down onto the ground.
She cast a cautious glance in the direction of the occupied tub and grimaced before looking back at Mulder. “You can get rid of that thing now.”
He chuckled at her words. “Yes ma’am.”
After taking the creature outside, he returned to the office, showed her the empty box and tossed it back into the drawer. He didn’t particularly want to use it again but it would come in handy for future animal catching.
“It’s gone?”
“It’s gone,” confirmed Mulder.
“I’m sorry for behaving like that,” she said. “I just... saw it and… panicked.”
“Don’t worry about it, I know how you feel about them. But uh…” he replied, finally getting to set down one of the takeaway coffee cups on her desk. “If it means you kiss me like that at work again, I’ll move anything you want.”
She smirked and lowered her eyes to the file in front of her. “Down boy,” she murmured, raising her eyes to his for a moment. “That was a one off by the way,” she continued, glancing at the door for eavesdroppers and keeping her voice low. “Anyone could have walked in here and caught us and I’m not risking that.” He laughed and went back to his desk. Scully watched him as he walked away, running her eyes down his back and met his eyes when he sat down. “But um… I’ll thank you properly tonight.”
Mulder choked on his coffee and began to cough, making Scully hide a laugh behind her hand. She so very rarely talked this way in work, preferring to keep their personal relationship out of the office, that whenever she brought it up, it always surprised him. This time was no different.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, regaining his equilibrium.
“Good.”
They smiled at one another for a second before Mulder’s desk phone rang, breaking the moment between them. Scully’s eyes darted to where the critter had been hiding and shuddered and then looked at Mulder who was listening to someone intently, a nod and the occasional uh-huh and okay now and again.
He’s a keeper, she thought. My own personal spider remover. Scully smiled happily to herself and returned her attention to the paperwork she had been completing before all the excitement. She glanced at him again and grinned when he winked at her.
Yep. Definitely a keeper.