Chapter Text
“Agent Mulder?” The call echoes in the cavernous space of the Hoover building’s parking deck. “Agent Mulder, wait a second.”
He and Scully have stopped walking and turned around in that coordinated way Mulder secretly loves. It’s fluid, synchronized, like they’ve practiced it, like they’re in the opening credits of a buddy cop TV show.
“Wait. Hold on, please,” Agent Hertz adds, lifting her hand in a tiny wave.
Just moments ago, he’d been telling Scully about an incredibly interesting story about the success of the childhood chicken pox vaccination program in the Post that morning. He is always a little suspicious of mass vaccination programs, but she points out they save lives, which he can’t deny.
Their conversation interrupted, now wary, they exchange a look.
Agent Hertz has never said more than two words to either of them. She’s on the career fast track, a favorite of the higher-ups. When they’ve discussed her—which has been seldom—Mulder has speculated that she’s probably intentionally avoiding catching career cooties by giving the basement dwellers a wide berth.
Hertz isn’t giving anyone a wide berth now. She’s making a beeline across the parking garage towards them, the clip of her heels setting a brisk rhythm. Both Mulder and Scully watch, rooted in curiosity.
“Hello, Agent Mulder,” Agent Hertz says breathlessly, extending her hand. “I … don’t know if we’ve officially met. I’m Fiona Hertz.”
“Uh, hi,” Mulder says, shaking her hand hesitantly. “Nice to meet you.” He gestures to his left. “This is my partner, Dana Scu—”
“Are you free this evening?” Agent Hertz interrupts forcefully.
Mulder turns his head to look in confusion at Scully, who is very subtly raising an eyebrow. He feels like he must be missing something here.
“Why?” he asks casually, scratching his chin. “You need a hand with a case?”
“No,” Agent Hertz says. Her cheeks flush pink, and she runs her fingers through her bottle-blonde hair. “No, I meant if you were free socially. If you wanted to get a drink— or dinner, maybe.”
He just stares back at her, momentarily speechless.
It’s not unheard of for women to hit on him at work, although it used to be more common than it is now, presumably because over time his kooky reputation has become larger than life.
And Agent Hertz isn’t unattractive. She’s probably early thirties, nice-looking, and, by all accounts, a sharp, capable agent.
But this is … weird. He’s not that familiar with the ins and outs of recent dating etiquette, but he knows this is weird. He doesn’t know this woman, and she didn’t take any time to make a pretense of getting to know him. There was no attempt to ease gracefully into it. She accosted him in the goddamn parking deck before work at 7:30 in the morning like there was an emergency.
Not to mention—his eyes dart to his partner, who is standing there, wide-eyed—there’s something off about how she hasn’t even looked in Scully’s direction. She hasn’t acknowledged her presence. Who asks someone out right in front of their partner? There have been rumors for years that he and Scully are sleeping together. The rumors aren’t true, but Agent Hertz doesn’t know they aren’t true. He’s offended on Scully’s behalf.
“I’m not free, no,” he says politely but firmly. “I’m sorry.”
He’s aware of the movement of Scully shifting her center of gravity from foot to foot, like she is trying to find a comfortable way to stand.
Agent Hertz blinks rapidly for a moment, like she’s having trouble processing his answer. “Oh. Okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, although he isn’t really sure why he’s apologizing.
She runs her fingers through her hair again, clearly a nervous habit, and her eyes fall, but she doesn’t say anything else.
Or … make any move to walk away.
All three of them stand there in silence. Mulder glances anxiously over his shoulder at the door to the lobby, wondering if they should just walk away, and then back at Agent Hertz.
Agent Hertz’s eyes have risen to his again, a new smile on her lips, her fingers twirling her hair, as though she is recalculating her approach. “Was I too forward?” she says, her smile expanding coyly. “I don’t mean to be. I just know what I want." Her pitch drops lower. "If you want to do the asking, I can promise you I’ll say yes.”
Mulder wonders if this can possibly be real. Possibly she has lost some kind of bet. No one can be this committed to making an interaction this unbearable.
“That’s okay,” he says flatly. “I’m sure. My answer is no.”
“Right,” she says. The smile drops. Her fingers are twisting the end of one piece of her hair so aggressively he worries it will get tangled and stuck there. “I get it.” She looks like she might start to cry, and Mulder desperately wants to disappear. “Maybe … another time then,” she adds.
There’s another moment of painful silence where it seems she expects a response, but he just manages a tense smile, biting his lip. Jesus, it feels like he’s breaking up with someone.
“Okay then,” she says. “Have a good day.” She lifts her chin high, swivels and starts to move back across the parking deck, the pace of her heels slower than before.
Mulder watches the departing Agent Hertz, then grabs Scully’s arm and walks quickly several paces towards the entrance.
“What the hell was that all about?” Mulder mutters under his breath, when they seem a safe distance away.
“I don’t know,” Scully replies innocently. “I’m confused, too. Why would you turn her down?”
His head pops towards his partner. “Seriously?”
“I mean, she’s attractive.”
“She’s insane, Scully,” he says. “I have real concerns about her sanity.”
“She’s insane for asking you out?” Scully can't hide her smile now.
“Come on,” Mulder protests. “We haven’t ever spoken before. She doesn’t know me.”
“Women get hit on by practical strangers all the time,” Scully observes.
“I presume women don’t always automatically say yes?”
She lifts an eyebrow and shrugs. He has a brief, unsettling flash of a snake eating its own tail forever and ever, and he blinks it immediately away. Things have been good with Scully lately. They’ve been closer, even flirty at times. He doesn’t want to jinx it.
“You’ve got to admit that was weird,” he says again stubbornly. “You’re just teasing me, right?”
“A little weird,” she admits. “You’re just too alluring for your own good, Mulder.” She pats his arm affectionately. “Try to dim the charm.”
“Very funny,” he says, feeling oddly embarrassed. He starts to walk towards the entrance to the building. “Frankly, I thought my charm was pretty dim already.”
He steps through the door to the Hoover Building, and at first, it’s an undefined feeling. An instinct to be alert. He quite can’t put his finger on what seems off. Maybe, he thinks, it’s just residue from the encounter with Agent Hertz.
With each step further into the lobby, he’s gradually aware of the sensation of pins and needles crawling over his body. Walking towards the security entrance, the sensation becomes so visceral that he actually brushes his hand in a panic over his arm, like he’s trying to sweep a bug away.
“Everything all right?” Scully says, turning around to give him a look as they wait for their turns to show their badges.
“Yeah,” he manages. “I thought there was … a bug.”
The young man behind the security desk, some new guy, stares at him with a slightly open mouth. He doesn’t blink when Mulder shows him his badge.
Mulder wonders if they’ve hired someone who will be conducting security while stoned all the time, or whether they’ve just hired an idiot.
As they make their way towards the elevator—the walk they both make everyday—Mulder slows his pace.
He’s realizing he can hear something, a sound in the background.
He stops. It’s some kind of hushed murmur. Like the soft shhhhhhhh of a TV on static with the volume turned low.
Scully, noticing he’s no longer right behind her, turns to look back.
“You hear that?” he says.
She responds with a puzzled shake of her head.
He angles his head. It sounds like… the sound of collective whispering? Many people talking in soft voices?
Spinning around, looking intently, he tries to identify the source of the sound. Everywhere his eyes land—across the lobby, down the lobby hall, at the people behind the security desk—he’s startled to see someone’s face staring straight back at him.
“Is it just me, or are we being stared at?” he hisses anxiously to Scully as he catches up with her. “Talked about?”
She frowns, pressing the elevator button. “I don’t know.” She arches her head to discreetly look around them. “It does seem like there’s a strange mood in the building today. But I don’t know if I notice more people staring than usual.”
The elevator dings and they step inside. From the door, they can see two more would-be passengers hurrying towards them. Scully holds the door and leans in to speak to Mulder more quietly.
“Are you all right?”
“Something seems weird.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m getting a weird feeling.”
“Maybe you’re just feeling self-conscious because of your parking dock encounter,” she suggests in a lower tone.
“I don’t think that’s—”
He cuts himself off as the others walk into the elevator.
“Good morning,” Scully says in her polite, professional voice.
One of the newcomers, an older agent from the fourth floor, flashes a quick perfunctory smile in return and then immediately looks back at the Post rolled in his hand. Mulder idly wonders if he’s reading the same story about chicken pox vaccinations he was telling Scully about earlier.
The other elevator passenger, a small, pale administrative assistant, doesn’t respond. Glancing at her briefly, Mulder realizes why. Because she is staring.
Unceasingly.
At him.
Immediately unnerved, he steps away quickly towards the wall of the elevator.
After a period of a few seconds, the elevator begins to descend. He decides to surreptitiously glance back to see if the woman has looked away.
She’s still locked in an intense stare, her eyes directly on him.
“Hello,” she says to him in a high-pitched voice. She smiles.
Mulder feels irrational spikes of fear running up his spine. He looks desperately at Scully, who just seems to take in his panic with a curious expression, and then looks back at the administrative assistant. The young woman wears glasses that slightly magnify her pupils, which shouldn’t freak him out, but does.
“Hi,” he says quickly, as though trying to get it over with.
“Are … you the one they call Spooky?” the young woman asks breathlessly. She takes a wobbly step closer to him.
“Uh, probably,” he says, taking a step backwards. She continues to stare, and the unblinking effect of her light brown eyes reminds uncannily Mulder of an owl. Or like the big, eerie eyes of the grays.
He steps backwards again and collides directly into his partner, who stumbles a little on impact. “Ow,” Scully complains softly.
“I know that’s not your actual name,” the woman says, nodding vigorously. “Spooky. I didn’t think it was.” She licks her lips in anticipation. “What is your name?”
“Oh,” he mutters, turning away from her, “not worth knowing.”
Scully sucks in a breath next to him, no doubt appalled to be witnessing this encounter. “Hi, I’m Agent Scully,” she says to the young woman, the smooth professional voice back in place. “We work in the basement on the X-files.”
“You’re his partner?” the young woman says, attention locking suddenly on Scully.
“Yes,” Scully says. “Where do you—”
“Is he single?” the woman interrupts intensely.
Scully’s mouth twitches in reaction to the rudeness of this interruption. The elevator opens on the basement level, and she gives the woman a somewhat inauthentic, close-lipped smile. “Nice talking to you,” she says neutrally.
She exits the elevator without a word, Mulder hastily following after her.
“Have a good day, Agent Spooky,” the woman cries out in his direction.
Mulder rushes down the hall, not wanting to be in the vicinity of the elevator for a moment longer. When he can’t resist peeking back, the woman is tracking his movements with her blank, birdlike eyes.
“I’m on the fourth floor,” she calls down the hall. “My name is Keira. Come see me any time. Just exit on the fourth floor and turn to the—”
The elevator door shuts. Mulder swallows.
“You saw it yourself,” Mulder insists. He’s pacing back and forth across their office. “Something is happening. I’m giving off some … pheromones, some strange energy, I’m cursed, something.”
“Two women found you attractive,” Scully observes wryly, massaging her temple. “That’s hardly an X-file. That’s hardly a curse.”
“People were staring as we walked into the building,” Mulder argues, aware his pitch was rising. “Not just those two women. Lots of people. They were whispering. You noticed it, too.”
“Yes, but Mulder… they always stare. They always whisper.”
“Not like this!” He gestures wildly with his hand, and his pace picks up.
“Mulder, this is an interesting anxiety for you,” she says, her eyes following him moving back and forth. “It’s like the plot line of one of your movies, maybe. But I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“If it were the plot line of one of my movies,” Mulder says, walking to flop dramatically into his chair behind his desk, “it wouldn’t be an anxiety. It would be … fun. This isn’t fun.”
She smothers a smile. “Try to settle down.”
“Maybe it’s a love potion.” He looks over at her anxiously. “What have I eaten in the last 24 hours? Could someone have slipped me a mickey?”
“Think about this. If you were having some oversized sexual effect on women,” Scully says soothingly, “wouldn’t it be affecting me?”
This insight, delivered with such confidence, doesn’t particularly comfort him. Does he simply have no discernible sexual effect on Scully at all? Stung, he drops his chin into his hand, trying not to be overly dejected by the question and its implications.
“Knock, knock! Anyone here?”
Mulder’s head pops up in alarm. He looks at Scully questioningly.
The voice is coming from the other side of the door of their office. They are isolated enough in the building that it’s fairly unusual for someone to show up without notice.
“Were you expecting someone this morning? Some results or something?” he whispers to Scully. She shakes her head.
“Agent Mulder?” the voice calls through the door uncertainly.
It’s a male voice, vaguely familiar. “Yeah,” Mulder calls back. “Come on in. It’s open.”
The door pushes in immediately, and Findlay from records appears before them clutching a thick file folder. Both agents stand up. “Oh, hello,” he says brightly. “I just dropped by to bring you your photos. The ones you requested.”
Mulder frowns, glancing for a half second at Scully. “The ones I requested?”
“Yes,” Findlay says, stepping into the office further. “The photos you requested.”
Mulder stares at the fat file folder in Findlay’s hands, trying to remember. “I don’t recall that I–”
“You were interested in photos with female victims, in the Midwest ,who had unusual strangulation patterns, who died in bed, with little sign of struggle. I have all the photos that meet those requirements right here.” He lifts the file folder gingerly.
For a beat Mulder stares in disbelief.
“That … was for the incubus case,” he says. “That was more than a year ago.”
“Closer to eighteen months,” Scully muses, watching Findlay closely.
Findlay smiles nervously. He is a Black man in his mid-40s, bespectacled, wearing a sweater vest, now clutching this one giant file folder with both hands it is a life raft.
“Has it been … that long?” he says. “I must have gotten behind. I apologize. It’s inexcusable.”
The details of the request are now slowly coming back to Mulder. “When I asked for those photos,” he recalls, “you said it was too big of a task for your department. That photos weren’t tagged with descriptors about strangulation patterns and signs of struggle, so it would require a hand search of all crime scene photos. That you wouldn’t be able to spare the personnel.”
Findlay had stared him down with utter disdain, Mulder remembers. He’d made no secret he thought finding photos for the X-files was a giant waste of time.
Now the man tentatively moves forward and, like he’s making an offering at a sacred temple, places the file folder on Mulder’s desk.
“Well, the thing is,” he says, his eyes cutting up to Mulder’s, “I saw you this morning coming into the building. And it jogged my memory that I never completed that request. Which actually turned out to be very interesting.” He places his palm on top of the file and spreads his fingers lovingly. “I went through the photos myself, by hand. I was thorough.” A shy smile. “Do you want me to wait while you look at them? To see if you have any questions? Or additional needs?”
Mulder turns his head and locks eyes with Scully, bobbing his eyebrows up and down significantly. For a beat her expression is blank, but she seems to come alive, turning to Findlay with a luminous smile.
“Mr. Findlay,” Scully begins conversationally, “don’t I remember talking to you about your domestic partner, who works at Northeast Georgetown Medical Center?”
At first Findlay completely ignores her. His attention remains fixed on Mulder, and it’s like Scully didn’t speak.
“Mr. Findlay?” Scully prompts, her voice rising.
Findlay seems to recognize she’s talking, confusedly, and gives her a surprised glance. “Yes,” Findlay responds distantly, his eyes not leaving Mulder. “That’s right. Simon … is an administrator at Northeast Georgetown Medical Center.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she says, nodding as though it’s a normal conversation. “I remembered that he worked there because I was a patient at that hospital for a while. And you said you and Simon live in Georgetown, right? I also live in Georgetown.”
“Yes, Simon and I live in Georgetown.” Findlay’s answer is remote, almost robotic. “We restored a house together in Herring Hill.”
He doesn’t seem to be registering what he is saying at all. His soft eyes make it very obvious he’s not thinking about Simon right now.
“Well, thanks for the photos,” Mulder says, snatching the file folder off the desk. That’s enough of playing unwilling homewrecker for one morning. “No questions or additional requests. Nice talking to you.”
Findlay is immediately distraught. “You’re sure? I know a lot about all of them. I can elaborate on anything you need.”
“I’m sure,” Mulder says quickly. “And I’d love to talk more, but Agent Scully and I … have a meeting we have to get to.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Findlay says, placing his palm on his chest in concern. “I won’t keep you.” He starts to reluctantly walk away, but then turns back. “I might stop back down here, though, at lunch. Just to be sure you understand everything.”
Mulder can’t find the words to formulate a fast enough response.
“Maybe I will bring some sandwiches,” Findlay suggests brightly. “The Parisian style bakery near here does such delicious ones. Do you like swiss and turkey sandwiches, Agent Mulder? We can eat and work.”
“If there’s… I don’t know if…” His capacity for language—and for lying specifically—has seemingly left him. “Maybe,” he manages in a small voice.
“Oh great. See you then,” Findlay says happily, turning to go. “Goodbye, Agent Mulder.”
“Goodbye,” Scully calls after him.
He doesn’t answer. The door closes.
Mulder spins swiftly towards her and gestures to the closed door with dramatic flourish.
“Okay,” Scully says seriously. “You’re right. It’s weird.”
“Scully,” he says, “that man has always hated me. He hates the X-files.”
“I think he hates that you misplace his files and return things late,” Scully says. “He’s always been fine with me. Which is one reason that was odd. Usually he’s so excited to talk to me about his partner, about his house in Georgetown.”
“He said he saw me earlier,” Mulder says, springing to his feet and beginning to pace again. “Obviously it seems to affect people as they see me. Or if they’re somehow in my proximity.”
“And this suggests your effect is not exclusively on women,” Scully speculates.
“That’s right,” Mulder says, whirling to point at her dramatically. “Maybe it’s just anyone who can be attracted to men.”
Scully falls silent, her fingers tapping on the tidy table in her area. He wonders if she is taking herself through the same thought process he is: if that’s the case, then, it ought to be affecting her. Yet somehow it isn’t.
Maybe knowing him well is some kind of inoculation against attraction, he thinks darkly. It sure sometimes feels like that’s how it works in his regular life.
He swallows and ramps up his pacing again. Focus on the forest, not this one particular tree. There are more people to worry about than Scully. Lots of people, actually.
He suddenly halts.
“Scully, there are seven thousand employees in this building,” he says. “How many of them are attracted to men?”
“I don’t know how we could possibly know that.”
“Say everyone attracted to men in this building wanted to bring me lunch…”
“That’s a whole lot of swiss and turkey sandwiches.”
He runs his hand down his face. “There are more men than women in this building,” he says. “But how many g-men have some kind of repressed attractions?”
“Mulder…” She stops, her eyes growing round, like she is choosing her words tactfully. “We have a meeting upstairs with Skinner in the afternoon. It occurs to me … that this could be an unsettling way to find out people’s proclivities.”
A beat. He isn’t sure what she intends to imply here, but the possibilities are unnerving.
“I need … to go home,” he realizes aloud. “I can’t stay here today.”
She studies him. “You know this very well could be an overreaction. Maybe this is something simple. Are you wearing … a new cologne?”
“As a former gawky adolescent boy, I assure you that there are no colognes in existence that have this kind of effect on women,” Mulder says with morbid certainty.
“It could be something else easily isolated.”
“Scully,” he says urgently. “I can’t… I’m not going to… I don’t think I’m going to handle this well.”
“All right,” she concedes, touching his arm. “It’s okay. I’ll cover for you.”
“Thank you.” He sighs and begins gathering up his things.
“I’ll do some research and give you a call later,” she adds.
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to sneak out of the building? Like Elvis?”
“I … guess so?” he says weakly.
“Hmm. Not even taking the bait for an Elvis joke,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re awfully glum for someone who thinks the whole world is attracted to him.”
Mulder stops shuffling papers and gives her a woebegone look.
Her expression softens. “I’m sorry, Mulder,” she says in a different voice.
“It’s … fine.”
“This is upsetting you. I shouldn’t tease you.”
“It’s okay,” he says dolefully. “We both know I would be cracking jokes like crazy if it were happening to you.”
For different reasons, probably. He would be losing his mind if every man in town were abruptly sniffing around Scully. Jesus, he’d be ready to lock her away in a safe room. He’d have his gun out and be ready to aim it at anyone who looked at her funny, like some kind of unhinged cowboy. Jokes would probably be his calming and coping mechanism, his way of keeping cool.
“Try not to worry,” she says gently, reaching for him again, running her palm reassuringly up and down his arm. “We’ll figure this out.”
Her reaction to this seems so normal. So entirely, devastatingly calm and normal. Apparently any moments of particular connection he’d thought they’d shared in recent months were all in his head.
“I’ll be in touch, all right?” she adds.
He offers her a wan smile of friendship, and then he turns to push papers into his bag.
He walks out the office a few minutes later, looking reluctantly behind him like a child being sent to the principal’s office.
What would it be like if she had been affected? What if all morning she’d been moony, staring, standing closer than usual, making inappropriate overtures? Jesus, what if she had actually been aggressive— like the women in one of his videos?
He tries to imagine it. He tries to decide if it would be amazing, like some furtive, long-repressed fantasy come to life.
No, he thinks. This isn’t one of his videos, and in real life, if she had changed her behavior suddenly, he’d probably be trying to hide from her. In real life, he would be trying so hard to keep from doing something incredibly stupid and disrespectful. In real life, it would have actually been a very specific kind of painful—seeing her act like she wanted him like that, under those conditions. An uncanny simulacrum. A cruel parody of having what you hoped for.
So it’s actually good that my apparent magic charisma doesn’t affect her, he thinks as he steps into the empty elevator. Really, that would be much worse. What a relief that the ability to make people want him works on everyone but the one person he truly wants.
***