Skull and Cross Bones
Title: Skull and Cross Bones
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: PG (for now)
Category: Crossover, AU
Fandoms: Bones/X-Files
Spoilers: Up to Bones season 5 finale with vague references to a particular new season 6 character, and let's say up to X-Files season 7.
Author's Notes: This would never happen, but be with me and suspend reality for a little fun. This story is written as if Bones and the X-Files existed at the same time and in the same universe. I originally started writing for an X-Files challenge, but found myself a little slow for the deadline and the story was getting a little too long already. So now I'm just posting for fun and to share with whoever might be interested! Thanks for reading!
“I’m sorry, why is it that you think we need this consultation?”
“Because he might respond more readily to some familiar faces, and I was told that these people are the best at what they do. And since you, Dr. Brennan, are also the best at what you do, and Seeley is the best at what he does, this should be a wonderful union,” Cam explained with a smile lacking genuine conviction.
“Honestly, Cam, I thought these people were like…an urban legend or something,” Booth commented out of the side of his mouth and Cam raised her eyebrows in acceptance.
“Honestly, Seeley?” she replied, “So did I.”
**
The heater was broken so he spent the afternoon wearing his overcoat.
It seemed strangely appropriate since Scully had spent the past two weeks quietly frosting him for no earthly reason that he could imagine. Or at least no reason other than the fact that he was generally acting exactly like himself, with the usual amount of self-importance, self-loathing, and obsession with work that he would think she would be used to by this point in their partnership. He’d been considering recently whether or not he was expecting her to accept much too much when it came to his personality malfunctions.
At times he’d felt her Catholic guilt rubbing off on him, so that he’d almost apologized simply for existing.
A tiny shiver ran down his spine when a draft eased its way through the crack in the door. Dana Scully, however, seemed fine and unaffected sitting at her desk. No overcoat, no chill, no shiver…just nothing. She was all blank stare and quickly tapping fingers as she wrote up a report about the likelihood of overgrown poison ivy being used as a murder weapon. Or the unlikelihood of it, he figured, since her reaction to his theory of killer-ivy had been to deem it ‘ridiculous.’
Predictable.
He squinted at her in consideration and pushed his frozen hands into his coat pockets.
He heaved a sigh.
She did not glance in his direction.
“Who do we call about the tundra situation we have going on here, Scully?” he murmured mostly just to break the silence, and her eyebrows quirked while her gaze stayed glued to her computer monitor.
“Hm?” she wondered distantly.
“The ice box,” he explained, “The fact that my manhood is knitting a sweater right now in a misguided attempt at survival,” and there was vague disappointment in the pit of his stomach when she didn’t even crack a half-hearted grin. With his hands still in his pockets, he lifted them toward her, palms up, in a helpless kind of gesture. “Who do I complain to?” he asked her, his own irritation with her and the situation barely evident, but still present enough that he was sure it wasn’t lost on her.
“Apparently, Mulder, you complain to me,” she responded coolly, and he tipped his head to the right, reigning in his desire to call her out - blame her for the temperature in the room since it seemed she was colder than she had ever been when it came to him. He was genuinely starting to wonder if the chill was just seeping out of her pores and into the air to attack him for something he did not recall doing.
“Apparently, Scully,” he mocked, “you are unaffected by the sub-zero atmosphere.”
“Sub-zero is an exaggeration,” she countered and he felt his temper flare slightly, but he grinned at her despite himself.
“My extremities beg to differ,” he declared and finally there was a hint of interest as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye in dry amusement. “Do I call Skinner or what?” he asked and her mouth tipped in the direction of a smirk.
“I’m sure Skinner will be fascinated by the temperature of your extremities, Mulder.”
“Hey, I’m still convinced he started the water-cooler rumor about my natural hair color,” he told her playfully and the knot in his stomach almost started to release, relax, let go just a little. He watched her intently, analyzing every micro-expression and shift of body language. If he had taken the time to psycho-analyze himself - which he made every effort not to do on a regular basis - he would have labeled himself a motherless boy wanting approval from his homeroom teacher. Sad. True. Impossible.
“If I’m not mistaken, the rumor was about my natural hair color and was started by you,” she responded, playing along. And where normally he would feel relieved that she was participating in the repartee, this, he could tell, was participation simply for the sake of participating, and that did not please him in the least. He preferred participation with that little sliver of heat…something to boil his blood a little…just something. But it wasn’t there and her energy was as flat and bored as ever and the room was just as frosty as it had been before.
The knot in his stomach returned and he sighed through his response, “It was a social experiment.”
“Well, it worked,” she answered.
He pursed his lips.
“How are you not cold right now? The only explanation I can fathom is that you’re secretly part penguin or something.”
“Part penguin?”
“Part fish, maybe,” he offered in a boyish mumble, watching her, studying this lack of eye contact and lazy tongue of hers, the unwillingness to pay him any mind.
“I’m part amphibian. Kermit the frog is my second cousin.”
“That doesn’t make any sense - frogs are extremely affected by the cold,” he argued seriously and she finally seared him with a stare, meeting his intent gaze with an irritated one of her own that he could not avoid, and he was glued to his seat and fascinated by her, as he always was in times of mysterious emotional turmoil in their partnership.
“I’m trying to do my job,” she informed him icily and once again he wondered if she had manufactured the temperature deliberately to bother him. “If it’s too cold for you, tell maintenance to fix it just like we always do,” she instructed firmly and he blinked at her, refusing to look away or back down despite her clear intention of forcing him to leave her alone.
There was a heavy silence as he wondered what the hell was going on.
“Did I forget your birthday or something, Scully?” he eventually asked and she rolled her eyes at him.
“Go fix the temperature, Mulder.”
So, sighing, he got up and made his way to the door, refusing to speak another word to her as he followed orders and headed up the three flights of stairs to the maintenance office where he was greeted by a 1987-era Sony boombox blaring The Clash’s London Calling, a cluttered desk covered mostly in empty cardboard boxes, and a cart full of toilet paper.
No maintenance workers to be found, naturally.
He felt his irritation with the world in general, but more specifically with the red-headed female world, bubbling just beneath the surface.
He racked his brain for what exactly he had done this time. Which moment two weeks ago had become the metaphorical nail in the coffin of this partnership and how long would she force him to wallow and suffer before he was forgiven? He would apologize except for that he had no idea what indiscretion had ruffled her non-existent feathers. And in the back of his mind, as always, was the fear that this was finally that day or week or month when everything would come crashing down around him and she would transfer to the federal morgue in Cheektowaga, New York or St. George, Alaska or some other nightmarishly-far no man’s land.
This would be the moment. He was sure. She had probably already packed for Twin Falls, Idaho.
He wondered if a person could die of bitterness and passive-aggressive defeat.
He wondered if a person could recover from being inherently over-dramatic.
Rolling his eyes, he turned and made his way back toward the stairs, since he’d apparently have to take his frozen-genital-issues up with maintenance at another time. When he was about halfway back to the underworld he heard the unmistakable click-clacking of her shoes against cement - a sound that would catch his ear any hour of any day for it’s familiarity - and he leaned against the wall of the stairwell to wait for her, his arms crossed and his mind tripping over itself to come up with something clever to say, something to charm her out of her disinterest and general sour demeanor.
She turned the corner onto the landing and literally bumped into him, her cheeks tingeing with a flush of what he assumed must be irritation as she looked up at him in surprise.
And there was a little bit of that heat he’d been craving for so many days.
Now, if there was a support group for someone who was addicted to facial expressions Fox Mulder would absolutely join. There was something uniquely gripping about Dana Scully when she was caught off guard. He’d probably spent hours or possibly days of his life so far trying to tug that look out of her, digging through his arsenal of tricks, innuendo, and unexpected honesty to find ways to shock her whenever possible.
It was rare that he succeeded, and so he was all the more inclined to attempt it.
Taking two steps back from him until she was on the landing just below, she eyed him with that particular facial expression draped all over her face and he bit back a chuckle of inner-victory.
“Scully,” he greeted in a low murmur and she quirked an eyebrow at him indulgently, taking in his casual stance and loosely crossed arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, the tone of her voice squashing the sizzle that had started in his veins.
He nodded at her. “Still cold down there, I guess, huh?” he responded boldly, and she glared at him for the double meaning which was not lost on her, he was sure, and she was obviously irritated - which again was unfortunately predictable. He licked his lips and watched her, curious what she would say in response, imagining different directions the conversation might take as if it were a game of chess.
Opening her mouth, she stood there for a moment, letting him hang in the limbo of curiosity before she blurted: “Skinner wants to see us.”
She was simply predictable, lately, and he was disappointed.
She pushed past him and continued up the stairs without him, assuming, as usual, that he would follow.
And because he was some kind of addict, some kind of kid seeking punishment and structure, some kind of disciple to this stoic and stern FBI Madonna, he did, indeed, follow her, as it seemed more and more that he would even if it was to the ends of the earth.
He huffed indignantly at himself and took the stairs two at a time until he was close enough behind her to catch the drifting hint of her perfume. He inhaled and carried on.
**
Scully found it impossible lately to shake the slight furrow from her brow, and on this occasion could feel it deepening.
“Sir, Mulder has requested countless times that you no longer offer his services for consultation,” Scully argued and she could feel Mulder’s surprise that she would defend him. This, along with the subject matter at hand, annoyed her.
“Be that as it may, this is connected to an X-File and the Jeffersonian has specifically requested your assistance immediately. Also, you were the one who was mentioned by name, Agent Scully, so it seems Mulder’s countless requests are irrelevant. The Bureau is trying to be cooperative and avoid causing a stir,” Skinner explained gruffly.
“Oh, we wouldn’t want to cause a stir,” Mulder agreed sardonically and Scully shot him a withering stare he promptly ignored.
“These people have a higher solve rate than almost anybody else at the FBI. You have mentioned to me on numerous occasions that you admire Temperance Brennan’s work, Agent Scully, and I expect the two of you to handle this consultation with aplomb. These are important people. Play nice.”
“Honestly, sir,” Scully started, “I was under the impression that Temperance Brennan worked alone.”
“You were incorrect,” Skinner answered. He slid the case file toward them and returned deliberately to his computer, clearly indicating that he was finished discussing the issue.
Scully glanced at Mulder and shrugged her shoulders, reaching forward to accept the assignment because in her assessment they did not have a choice.
She was halfway out of her seat when Mulder cleared his throat and she felt her blood pressure inch up a notch just because it seemed to do that when Mulder was about to say something foolish.
“Sir,” he blurted, “were you aware that there isn’t any heat in our office?” Waiting for a reaction from their boss, but receiving none, Mulder continued: “Who do I talk to about that?”
“Maintenance.”
“Maintenance is busy taking a call from London, sir,” Mulder replied, foolish as predicted and probably purposely trying to get a rise out of the inimitable Dana Scully. She kept her expression neutral and refused to comment.
“Excuse me?” Skinner asked, shooting a glare over the rims of his glasses.
“They’re MIA,” Mulder responded smoothly.
“You can open an X-File on it when you finish your consultation,” Skinner suggested in a flat and unhappy tone, and at that, Scully, finally for the first time in almost a week, cracked a genuine smile.
**
“I feel it is not necessary for me to participate in a meeting with these people at this stage. There is nothing forensic to be discussed,” Bones stated without any hint of emotion, though she was aware that it was lingering just under the surface. She watched Booth nod his head and she could not decide if she was pleased or disappointed. She remembered that there was a time once when she would have been clamoring to be involved at every juncture, sticking her nose in where it most certainly did not belong. She would have insisted on being asked to participate. But things had changed. “Am I correct?” she added belatedly.
“Yeah, Bones, absolutely. I got it covered,” Booth responded without looking her in the eye. “I’ll call you when we’re on our way.”
She wondered if he noticed that everything had changed.
He must have, she thought, since she was certain it was something that could not be missed.
**
They were in the elevator when Mulder finally got around to inching the file folder open, and when he finally did he felt a little of the blood drain from his face.
“Hey Scully have you looked this case-file over?” he asked, trying to maintain as cool a voice as possible.
“Uh, no, I was finishing the report on deadly potted plants that you asked for,” she responded, a comment to which he deliberately did not respond.
“You might want to give it a glance,” he suggested and she reached out for the folder as the doors dinged their arrival at their destination.
“Too late now,” Scully muttered, “I’m sure the agent in charge will debrief us.”
Mulder chewed at the inside of his cheek and stayed silent.
**
Booth found himself arbitrarily clicking icons on his desktop with quick and restless fingers.
He was flying solo for the morning and that was the right decision, he told himself.
It was best.
These were FBI legends he was about to meet and he didn’t need the distraction of Bones and her lack of social etiquette and her concerned glances and her technical jargon. She was needed in the lab, anyway, he reasoned. It was her idea. It made perfect sense.
That seemed to be the consensus a lot lately since they had both returned from their sojourns across the globe. He would run meetings and work the field while she worked diligently in the lab, and admittedly it was so grossly reminiscent of their earliest work together that he sometimes thought he was having serious déjà vu.
It was fine.
They were doing okay.
They hadn’t discussed the nightmare of his confessions of much too much emotion when it came to her, or the fact that he’d been seeing someone since Afghanistan - a blonde bombshell with the journalistic savvy of Walter Cronkite. He and Bones hadn’t had any meetings to talk about ‘how they were feeling.’ And Booth thought that was just fine.
Naturally, Sweets was lingering around and asking lots of questions but hadn’t voiced any concern or whiny complaints about their behavior so far or their lack of communication, so Booth felt like they were in the clear for the time being
This was a good system.
It was the right decision.
Everything was going to be perfectly fine.
He clicked an icon and some file folders opened up on his computer screen. He scrolled through the documents without actually registering what it was he was looking at.
He puffed his cheeks out and sighed.
And something like eight minutes later there was a tapping at his door and for a quick second, like without any deliberate thought, it floated through his mind that maybe it was Bones. It was a flash, a lightening bolt of emotion - missing her. But he was used to this particular jolt at this point, having experienced it consistently for the past year, so he was practiced at pushing it down and away. Swallowing, he looked up with calm control and called out for the visitors to come in.
“Agent Booth?”
The voice was a smooth alto and came out of a petite knockout of a woman that he’d heard was made almost entirely of stone and ice. She was unmistakably exactly as she had been described.
“Agent Scully?” Booth responded, grinning and stepping around his desk to shake her hand. Her mouth was a tipped flat line as she nodded a greeting at him and the jittery restlessness he’d been feeling settled deep into his stomach and out of sight, while not entirely out of mind.
“This is my partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder,” Scully told him blandly, gesturing over her shoulder to the man himself, who Booth had honestly thought was fiction prior to this point - to the extent that he had jokingly referenced the guy in casual conversation as some kind of metaphor for an agent who had lost their noodle.
“Agent Mulder, I’ve heard of your profiling work. Good to meet you,” he offered as casually as possible and Mulder sort of shrugged at him from the doorway, awkward, lanky, stormy-eyed the way people claimed. Silence settled into the room then as they all stood around in their FBI issue suits and badges, looking at each other.
It crossed Booth’s mind to ask how many FBI agents it took to start a conversation, but he exercised his self-control instead and took the initiative, as he was wont to do in almost any situation.
“I actually thought you guys were a bureau myth,” he blurted. Not the wisest opening line, he thought to himself, again feeling that twinge of missing the more level-headed member of his partnership.
One auburn eyebrow inched toward Scully’s hairline as she assessed him without comment.
Mulder shifted from one foot to another with his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in thought as Booth stood there, awkward and unsure what to say next.
“We try to maintain that status so people don’t bother us for consultations,” Mulder finally offered and Booth watched as Scully’s veneer cracked just a bit and a half-smile leaked through.
“We’re happy to help you in any way we can, Agent Booth,” she corrected, smooth as silk and loaded with decorum.
They looked normal. Tailored, groomed, rested, a little overly-serious, but not manic by any means. Booth did not get the impression that either one of them would lose their mind at any given moment, which was sort of the way they had been described whenever he’d heard tell of the infamous X-Files. Fox Mulder had always been called a vagabond genius gone horribly wrong who was known to run around half-cocked shooting at people and seeing lights in the sky. Scully was supposed to be a five foot three bitch whose scientific background had done nothing to keep her from being brainwashed by her no-good, but well dressed, partner. He was expecting a Gene Hackman sort of character, with a Jodie Foster kind of side-kick.
But these two just seemed…
If he’d passed them on the street he’d think they worked for accounting.
He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk and coughed into his hand.
“Have a seat,” he offered, “I’ll debrief you.” And the two basement-dwellers shared a brief glance that was not lost on the overly-perceptive Seeley Booth.
“That would be helpful,” Scully told him with a smile and Mulder shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, fingers fidgeting and eyes half-lidded in an attempt, it seemed, to avoid any direct contact with anyone in the room.
“Well, we understand how busy you are, and that you have requested not to be called in for consultation, and we’re particularly grateful that you’re stepping in for us here because this guy is refusing to talk unless he can talk to you, which certainly surprised me initially.
There was an extended moment of quiet, then.
“Because you thought we were a bureau myth,” Scully stated.
“Right,” Booth responded matter-of-factly, looking from Scully to her partner and back again, “no disrespect intended.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mulder mumbled dejectedly and Booth felt the sizzle of missing Temperance Brennan push against the walls of his stomach again, unexpectedly and inexplicably.
“So who’s our guy?” Scully asked and Mulder huffed from his seat, receiving a glare of apparent irritation from Scully in response.
Booth watched them in interest before turning his gaze to the file folder open on his desk, flipping through some papers to get to the prior record of the perp. “Uh, Eddie Van Blundht?” he offered. It was a strange name - spelled pretty funny, he thought not for the first time, looking up to see if there was any recognition on the faces in front of him.
As he looked up, though, the spelling of Blundht became an afterthought for Booth because, for a second, he genuinely thought that Dana Scully was about to pass out in her chair.
Chapter 2: The Loser in the Limelight
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: PG (for now)
Category: Crossover, AU
Fandoms: Bones/X-Files
Spoilers: Up to Bones season 5 finale with vague references to a particular new season 6 character, and let's say up to X-Files season 7.
Author's Notes: This would never happen, but be with me and suspend reality for a little fun. This story is written as if Bones and the X-Files existed at the same time and in the same universe. I originally started writing for an X-Files challenge, but found myself a little slow for the deadline and the story was getting a little too long already. So now I'm just posting for fun and to share with whoever might be interested! Thanks for reading!
“I’m sorry, why is it that you think we need this consultation?”
“Because he might respond more readily to some familiar faces, and I was told that these people are the best at what they do. And since you, Dr. Brennan, are also the best at what you do, and Seeley is the best at what he does, this should be a wonderful union,” Cam explained with a smile lacking genuine conviction.
“Honestly, Cam, I thought these people were like…an urban legend or something,” Booth commented out of the side of his mouth and Cam raised her eyebrows in acceptance.
“Honestly, Seeley?” she replied, “So did I.”
**
The heater was broken so he spent the afternoon wearing his overcoat.
It seemed strangely appropriate since Scully had spent the past two weeks quietly frosting him for no earthly reason that he could imagine. Or at least no reason other than the fact that he was generally acting exactly like himself, with the usual amount of self-importance, self-loathing, and obsession with work that he would think she would be used to by this point in their partnership. He’d been considering recently whether or not he was expecting her to accept much too much when it came to his personality malfunctions.
At times he’d felt her Catholic guilt rubbing off on him, so that he’d almost apologized simply for existing.
A tiny shiver ran down his spine when a draft eased its way through the crack in the door. Dana Scully, however, seemed fine and unaffected sitting at her desk. No overcoat, no chill, no shiver…just nothing. She was all blank stare and quickly tapping fingers as she wrote up a report about the likelihood of overgrown poison ivy being used as a murder weapon. Or the unlikelihood of it, he figured, since her reaction to his theory of killer-ivy had been to deem it ‘ridiculous.’
Predictable.
He squinted at her in consideration and pushed his frozen hands into his coat pockets.
He heaved a sigh.
She did not glance in his direction.
“Who do we call about the tundra situation we have going on here, Scully?” he murmured mostly just to break the silence, and her eyebrows quirked while her gaze stayed glued to her computer monitor.
“Hm?” she wondered distantly.
“The ice box,” he explained, “The fact that my manhood is knitting a sweater right now in a misguided attempt at survival,” and there was vague disappointment in the pit of his stomach when she didn’t even crack a half-hearted grin. With his hands still in his pockets, he lifted them toward her, palms up, in a helpless kind of gesture. “Who do I complain to?” he asked her, his own irritation with her and the situation barely evident, but still present enough that he was sure it wasn’t lost on her.
“Apparently, Mulder, you complain to me,” she responded coolly, and he tipped his head to the right, reigning in his desire to call her out - blame her for the temperature in the room since it seemed she was colder than she had ever been when it came to him. He was genuinely starting to wonder if the chill was just seeping out of her pores and into the air to attack him for something he did not recall doing.
“Apparently, Scully,” he mocked, “you are unaffected by the sub-zero atmosphere.”
“Sub-zero is an exaggeration,” she countered and he felt his temper flare slightly, but he grinned at her despite himself.
“My extremities beg to differ,” he declared and finally there was a hint of interest as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye in dry amusement. “Do I call Skinner or what?” he asked and her mouth tipped in the direction of a smirk.
“I’m sure Skinner will be fascinated by the temperature of your extremities, Mulder.”
“Hey, I’m still convinced he started the water-cooler rumor about my natural hair color,” he told her playfully and the knot in his stomach almost started to release, relax, let go just a little. He watched her intently, analyzing every micro-expression and shift of body language. If he had taken the time to psycho-analyze himself - which he made every effort not to do on a regular basis - he would have labeled himself a motherless boy wanting approval from his homeroom teacher. Sad. True. Impossible.
“If I’m not mistaken, the rumor was about my natural hair color and was started by you,” she responded, playing along. And where normally he would feel relieved that she was participating in the repartee, this, he could tell, was participation simply for the sake of participating, and that did not please him in the least. He preferred participation with that little sliver of heat…something to boil his blood a little…just something. But it wasn’t there and her energy was as flat and bored as ever and the room was just as frosty as it had been before.
The knot in his stomach returned and he sighed through his response, “It was a social experiment.”
“Well, it worked,” she answered.
He pursed his lips.
“How are you not cold right now? The only explanation I can fathom is that you’re secretly part penguin or something.”
“Part penguin?”
“Part fish, maybe,” he offered in a boyish mumble, watching her, studying this lack of eye contact and lazy tongue of hers, the unwillingness to pay him any mind.
“I’m part amphibian. Kermit the frog is my second cousin.”
“That doesn’t make any sense - frogs are extremely affected by the cold,” he argued seriously and she finally seared him with a stare, meeting his intent gaze with an irritated one of her own that he could not avoid, and he was glued to his seat and fascinated by her, as he always was in times of mysterious emotional turmoil in their partnership.
“I’m trying to do my job,” she informed him icily and once again he wondered if she had manufactured the temperature deliberately to bother him. “If it’s too cold for you, tell maintenance to fix it just like we always do,” she instructed firmly and he blinked at her, refusing to look away or back down despite her clear intention of forcing him to leave her alone.
There was a heavy silence as he wondered what the hell was going on.
“Did I forget your birthday or something, Scully?” he eventually asked and she rolled her eyes at him.
“Go fix the temperature, Mulder.”
So, sighing, he got up and made his way to the door, refusing to speak another word to her as he followed orders and headed up the three flights of stairs to the maintenance office where he was greeted by a 1987-era Sony boombox blaring The Clash’s London Calling, a cluttered desk covered mostly in empty cardboard boxes, and a cart full of toilet paper.
No maintenance workers to be found, naturally.
He felt his irritation with the world in general, but more specifically with the red-headed female world, bubbling just beneath the surface.
He racked his brain for what exactly he had done this time. Which moment two weeks ago had become the metaphorical nail in the coffin of this partnership and how long would she force him to wallow and suffer before he was forgiven? He would apologize except for that he had no idea what indiscretion had ruffled her non-existent feathers. And in the back of his mind, as always, was the fear that this was finally that day or week or month when everything would come crashing down around him and she would transfer to the federal morgue in Cheektowaga, New York or St. George, Alaska or some other nightmarishly-far no man’s land.
This would be the moment. He was sure. She had probably already packed for Twin Falls, Idaho.
He wondered if a person could die of bitterness and passive-aggressive defeat.
He wondered if a person could recover from being inherently over-dramatic.
Rolling his eyes, he turned and made his way back toward the stairs, since he’d apparently have to take his frozen-genital-issues up with maintenance at another time. When he was about halfway back to the underworld he heard the unmistakable click-clacking of her shoes against cement - a sound that would catch his ear any hour of any day for it’s familiarity - and he leaned against the wall of the stairwell to wait for her, his arms crossed and his mind tripping over itself to come up with something clever to say, something to charm her out of her disinterest and general sour demeanor.
She turned the corner onto the landing and literally bumped into him, her cheeks tingeing with a flush of what he assumed must be irritation as she looked up at him in surprise.
And there was a little bit of that heat he’d been craving for so many days.
Now, if there was a support group for someone who was addicted to facial expressions Fox Mulder would absolutely join. There was something uniquely gripping about Dana Scully when she was caught off guard. He’d probably spent hours or possibly days of his life so far trying to tug that look out of her, digging through his arsenal of tricks, innuendo, and unexpected honesty to find ways to shock her whenever possible.
It was rare that he succeeded, and so he was all the more inclined to attempt it.
Taking two steps back from him until she was on the landing just below, she eyed him with that particular facial expression draped all over her face and he bit back a chuckle of inner-victory.
“Scully,” he greeted in a low murmur and she quirked an eyebrow at him indulgently, taking in his casual stance and loosely crossed arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, the tone of her voice squashing the sizzle that had started in his veins.
He nodded at her. “Still cold down there, I guess, huh?” he responded boldly, and she glared at him for the double meaning which was not lost on her, he was sure, and she was obviously irritated - which again was unfortunately predictable. He licked his lips and watched her, curious what she would say in response, imagining different directions the conversation might take as if it were a game of chess.
Opening her mouth, she stood there for a moment, letting him hang in the limbo of curiosity before she blurted: “Skinner wants to see us.”
She was simply predictable, lately, and he was disappointed.
She pushed past him and continued up the stairs without him, assuming, as usual, that he would follow.
And because he was some kind of addict, some kind of kid seeking punishment and structure, some kind of disciple to this stoic and stern FBI Madonna, he did, indeed, follow her, as it seemed more and more that he would even if it was to the ends of the earth.
He huffed indignantly at himself and took the stairs two at a time until he was close enough behind her to catch the drifting hint of her perfume. He inhaled and carried on.
**
Scully found it impossible lately to shake the slight furrow from her brow, and on this occasion could feel it deepening.
“Sir, Mulder has requested countless times that you no longer offer his services for consultation,” Scully argued and she could feel Mulder’s surprise that she would defend him. This, along with the subject matter at hand, annoyed her.
“Be that as it may, this is connected to an X-File and the Jeffersonian has specifically requested your assistance immediately. Also, you were the one who was mentioned by name, Agent Scully, so it seems Mulder’s countless requests are irrelevant. The Bureau is trying to be cooperative and avoid causing a stir,” Skinner explained gruffly.
“Oh, we wouldn’t want to cause a stir,” Mulder agreed sardonically and Scully shot him a withering stare he promptly ignored.
“These people have a higher solve rate than almost anybody else at the FBI. You have mentioned to me on numerous occasions that you admire Temperance Brennan’s work, Agent Scully, and I expect the two of you to handle this consultation with aplomb. These are important people. Play nice.”
“Honestly, sir,” Scully started, “I was under the impression that Temperance Brennan worked alone.”
“You were incorrect,” Skinner answered. He slid the case file toward them and returned deliberately to his computer, clearly indicating that he was finished discussing the issue.
Scully glanced at Mulder and shrugged her shoulders, reaching forward to accept the assignment because in her assessment they did not have a choice.
She was halfway out of her seat when Mulder cleared his throat and she felt her blood pressure inch up a notch just because it seemed to do that when Mulder was about to say something foolish.
“Sir,” he blurted, “were you aware that there isn’t any heat in our office?” Waiting for a reaction from their boss, but receiving none, Mulder continued: “Who do I talk to about that?”
“Maintenance.”
“Maintenance is busy taking a call from London, sir,” Mulder replied, foolish as predicted and probably purposely trying to get a rise out of the inimitable Dana Scully. She kept her expression neutral and refused to comment.
“Excuse me?” Skinner asked, shooting a glare over the rims of his glasses.
“They’re MIA,” Mulder responded smoothly.
“You can open an X-File on it when you finish your consultation,” Skinner suggested in a flat and unhappy tone, and at that, Scully, finally for the first time in almost a week, cracked a genuine smile.
**
“I feel it is not necessary for me to participate in a meeting with these people at this stage. There is nothing forensic to be discussed,” Bones stated without any hint of emotion, though she was aware that it was lingering just under the surface. She watched Booth nod his head and she could not decide if she was pleased or disappointed. She remembered that there was a time once when she would have been clamoring to be involved at every juncture, sticking her nose in where it most certainly did not belong. She would have insisted on being asked to participate. But things had changed. “Am I correct?” she added belatedly.
“Yeah, Bones, absolutely. I got it covered,” Booth responded without looking her in the eye. “I’ll call you when we’re on our way.”
She wondered if he noticed that everything had changed.
He must have, she thought, since she was certain it was something that could not be missed.
**
They were in the elevator when Mulder finally got around to inching the file folder open, and when he finally did he felt a little of the blood drain from his face.
“Hey Scully have you looked this case-file over?” he asked, trying to maintain as cool a voice as possible.
“Uh, no, I was finishing the report on deadly potted plants that you asked for,” she responded, a comment to which he deliberately did not respond.
“You might want to give it a glance,” he suggested and she reached out for the folder as the doors dinged their arrival at their destination.
“Too late now,” Scully muttered, “I’m sure the agent in charge will debrief us.”
Mulder chewed at the inside of his cheek and stayed silent.
**
Booth found himself arbitrarily clicking icons on his desktop with quick and restless fingers.
He was flying solo for the morning and that was the right decision, he told himself.
It was best.
These were FBI legends he was about to meet and he didn’t need the distraction of Bones and her lack of social etiquette and her concerned glances and her technical jargon. She was needed in the lab, anyway, he reasoned. It was her idea. It made perfect sense.
That seemed to be the consensus a lot lately since they had both returned from their sojourns across the globe. He would run meetings and work the field while she worked diligently in the lab, and admittedly it was so grossly reminiscent of their earliest work together that he sometimes thought he was having serious déjà vu.
It was fine.
They were doing okay.
They hadn’t discussed the nightmare of his confessions of much too much emotion when it came to her, or the fact that he’d been seeing someone since Afghanistan - a blonde bombshell with the journalistic savvy of Walter Cronkite. He and Bones hadn’t had any meetings to talk about ‘how they were feeling.’ And Booth thought that was just fine.
Naturally, Sweets was lingering around and asking lots of questions but hadn’t voiced any concern or whiny complaints about their behavior so far or their lack of communication, so Booth felt like they were in the clear for the time being
This was a good system.
It was the right decision.
Everything was going to be perfectly fine.
He clicked an icon and some file folders opened up on his computer screen. He scrolled through the documents without actually registering what it was he was looking at.
He puffed his cheeks out and sighed.
And something like eight minutes later there was a tapping at his door and for a quick second, like without any deliberate thought, it floated through his mind that maybe it was Bones. It was a flash, a lightening bolt of emotion - missing her. But he was used to this particular jolt at this point, having experienced it consistently for the past year, so he was practiced at pushing it down and away. Swallowing, he looked up with calm control and called out for the visitors to come in.
“Agent Booth?”
The voice was a smooth alto and came out of a petite knockout of a woman that he’d heard was made almost entirely of stone and ice. She was unmistakably exactly as she had been described.
“Agent Scully?” Booth responded, grinning and stepping around his desk to shake her hand. Her mouth was a tipped flat line as she nodded a greeting at him and the jittery restlessness he’d been feeling settled deep into his stomach and out of sight, while not entirely out of mind.
“This is my partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder,” Scully told him blandly, gesturing over her shoulder to the man himself, who Booth had honestly thought was fiction prior to this point - to the extent that he had jokingly referenced the guy in casual conversation as some kind of metaphor for an agent who had lost their noodle.
“Agent Mulder, I’ve heard of your profiling work. Good to meet you,” he offered as casually as possible and Mulder sort of shrugged at him from the doorway, awkward, lanky, stormy-eyed the way people claimed. Silence settled into the room then as they all stood around in their FBI issue suits and badges, looking at each other.
It crossed Booth’s mind to ask how many FBI agents it took to start a conversation, but he exercised his self-control instead and took the initiative, as he was wont to do in almost any situation.
“I actually thought you guys were a bureau myth,” he blurted. Not the wisest opening line, he thought to himself, again feeling that twinge of missing the more level-headed member of his partnership.
One auburn eyebrow inched toward Scully’s hairline as she assessed him without comment.
Mulder shifted from one foot to another with his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in thought as Booth stood there, awkward and unsure what to say next.
“We try to maintain that status so people don’t bother us for consultations,” Mulder finally offered and Booth watched as Scully’s veneer cracked just a bit and a half-smile leaked through.
“We’re happy to help you in any way we can, Agent Booth,” she corrected, smooth as silk and loaded with decorum.
They looked normal. Tailored, groomed, rested, a little overly-serious, but not manic by any means. Booth did not get the impression that either one of them would lose their mind at any given moment, which was sort of the way they had been described whenever he’d heard tell of the infamous X-Files. Fox Mulder had always been called a vagabond genius gone horribly wrong who was known to run around half-cocked shooting at people and seeing lights in the sky. Scully was supposed to be a five foot three bitch whose scientific background had done nothing to keep her from being brainwashed by her no-good, but well dressed, partner. He was expecting a Gene Hackman sort of character, with a Jodie Foster kind of side-kick.
But these two just seemed…
If he’d passed them on the street he’d think they worked for accounting.
He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk and coughed into his hand.
“Have a seat,” he offered, “I’ll debrief you.” And the two basement-dwellers shared a brief glance that was not lost on the overly-perceptive Seeley Booth.
“That would be helpful,” Scully told him with a smile and Mulder shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, fingers fidgeting and eyes half-lidded in an attempt, it seemed, to avoid any direct contact with anyone in the room.
“Well, we understand how busy you are, and that you have requested not to be called in for consultation, and we’re particularly grateful that you’re stepping in for us here because this guy is refusing to talk unless he can talk to you, which certainly surprised me initially.
There was an extended moment of quiet, then.
“Because you thought we were a bureau myth,” Scully stated.
“Right,” Booth responded matter-of-factly, looking from Scully to her partner and back again, “no disrespect intended.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mulder mumbled dejectedly and Booth felt the sizzle of missing Temperance Brennan push against the walls of his stomach again, unexpectedly and inexplicably.
“So who’s our guy?” Scully asked and Mulder huffed from his seat, receiving a glare of apparent irritation from Scully in response.
Booth watched them in interest before turning his gaze to the file folder open on his desk, flipping through some papers to get to the prior record of the perp. “Uh, Eddie Van Blundht?” he offered. It was a strange name - spelled pretty funny, he thought not for the first time, looking up to see if there was any recognition on the faces in front of him.
As he looked up, though, the spelling of Blundht became an afterthought for Booth because, for a second, he genuinely thought that Dana Scully was about to pass out in her chair.
Chapter 2: The Loser in the Limelight