Work Text:
(Pre-episode)
“Frohike, you really do know how to treat a woman. I have to admit, I’m impressed.”
“Years of practice, sweetheart. You ain’t seen nothing yet. More whiskey?”
“Please.”
Frohike poured another finger of whiskey into each of the two tumblers on the desk in front of him. He clinked one glass against the other and raised it to his lips, taking a swallow before returning his hands to the keyboard.
Langly came into the room just in time to hear Agent Scully’s voice issuing from the computer speakers.
“That’s so good. I’m glad I thought to stop by.”
“Whoa, dude, what the hell are you doing?”
Frohike spun around, nearly knocking over both the glasses and his chair in the process. “What the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing?! I thought you and Byers went out.”
“No, Byers went out. I was trying to finish packing for Vegas. Now spill. And please tell me you’re not building a Scully-bot, man. That’s way creepy, even for you.”
“It’s not… I just…” He took a breath and tried again. “Look, it’s just a little side project, all right? I was digitizing all the phone and surveillance recordings so we could junk the originals or tape over them. And as it happens, we have a whole lot of audio samples from our intrepid FBI duo. So I set up a database, wrote a tidy bit of software, and--”
“Not making yourself look any less creepy, dude.” Langly crossed his arms over his chest.
“I wrote one for Mulder, too!”
“Yeah, that’s… not helping.”
“Argh!” Frohike rubbed a hand over the top of his head in frustration. “This is why I didn’t tell you guys about it yet. Look. What if, hypothetically, we someday find ourselves in a situation where it would be advantageous if we could, say, make it seem as if a call were coming from someone with a little more authority than the three of us? For the paper, I mean.”
“You mean impersonating a federal officer. Are you nuts?” Langly shook his head. “Never mind the fact that it’s super illegal, Mulder and Scully would totally kick our asses if they ever found out.”
“I’m just saying hypothetically! As a last resort. You never know, man. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t hurt to have something like this in our back pocket if push ever comes to shove.”
“Yeah, well, all I know is, if you don’t quit screwing around and finish packing, we’re never gonna be ready to leave tonight. And you know how Byers gets if we don’t stick to his travel schedule. I don’t want to deal with hours of bitching because we were late getting on the road.”
“All right, all right,” Frohike grumbled before downing the last of the whiskey in both glasses and standing up from the desk. “But mark my words: this is totally going to come in handy someday.”
