#ihom

Four.

“Dana!” A familiar voice calls out to her in the auditorium.

Dana looks up to see Ellen waving at her amidst the sea of seats. She brushes past a congregation of people, making her way towards her friend and sitting down beside her. As the only two females this year, Dana and Ellen had bonded immediately, a friendship forming not so soon after. It didn’t make sense otherwise.

“Did you check your emails?” Ellen asks her.

“No. Emily wouldn’t go to school so I didn’t have time to check. Why?”

“Agent Banks is sick,” Ellen says with a roll of her eyes. “So we’re getting a cover until he comes back.”

That doesn’t surprise Dana- the man was about 90 years old anyway.

“Did it say who?”

“I didn’t get that far but I heard the guys say it’s someone called Spooky. Do you have any idea?”

Dana shrugs but based on that nickname she didn’t have high hopes about them. In any case at least she could count on no arguments for the time being; Agent Banks liked to pick on her especially.

“Anyway, where were you on Saturday?” Ellen asks, moving on. “Me and Candice waited for you but you didn’t show. What happened to being more social?”

Dana internally groans. That was this Saturday. Dana had completely forgotten about her plans with Ellen, she was too busy having the best orgasm of her life that night. Of course Ellen didn’t know about that.

“Emily…Emily wasn’t feeling well,” she lies. Dana hated using her daughter as an excuse but she couldn’t exactly tell her the truth.

“Right,” says Ellen, not sounding completely convinced. “I think it’s about time we got you a babysitter.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into one…” Dana half agrees but only to move away from the topic.

Voices in the auditorium quieten down as everyone finds their seats and gets comfortable. The door to the side opens and there’s a murmur of voices and gasps. Dana isn’t paying attention, too busy arranging her pens in the colour of the rainbow. It’s only when she feels Ellen tap her arm and buzz excitedly, “It’s him. He’s Spooky. Dana, look…” Does Dana look up to see what the commotion was about.

And honestly, she wished she hadn’t.

In fact, at that moment, she wished she wasn’t in the academy at all.

Because the person who was making her classmates and friend coo with excitement was the very person who had given her a fantastic orgasm the night before.

.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

It amazed Mulder just how neutral he could become when a thousand thoughts and feelings where running through his body. Confusion, surprise, excitement, happiness, and even anger all swirled within him at once and yet his face betrayed none of it. He was stoic, slightly rumpled from having his usual bout of no sleep and unprepared to actually teach a class full of future FBI agents, but still standing nonetheless when all he wanted to do was leave and never come back.

Somehow the universe was in his favour and somehow it wasn’t. In a sea of indistinguishable males she stood out like the perfect ruby. There was no denying who she was. He’d bet his gun and badge that when he looked at the roster he’d see her name in there. The woman he hadn’t stopped thinking about since Saturday night. Just why did it have to be here of all places.

Mulder tries to ignore it, ignore her, to focus on the male portion of the room but his eyes are drawn to her, seeing red hair in his peripheral standing out against all the grey. He fumbles through his slides, tries to focus on what he is actually here to do, to explain profiling, but his brain is a jumbled mess and of course he fucks up the date of imprisonment of a serial killer he helped to catch in front of everyone, in front of her, just like a buffoon…

He thinks he got away with it, thinks nobody noticed but a voice speaks up from the right-hand corner, loud and clear, unmistakably her.

“1989,” she says with an emphasis on the wrong number. “Ian Lucas Gates was imprisoned in 1989, he committed his first murder in 1987.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come up and teach the class then, Agent Scully, seeing as you know everything.”

It was an outburst. An unnecessary outburst that has Mulder biting his tongue and wishing to take it all back. The rest of the class murmurs amongst themselves, looking wearily from one person to the next. Mulder chances a glance at Scully who stares back at him with a glare that could kill him on the spot if it had the power to.

“Perhaps I will, Agent Mulder, seeing as I know more than you,” she counters.

Someone coughs to disguise a laugh as Scully waits for his reply. The room was stifling with tension and he doesn’t miss the way the woman next to her is continuously looking back and forth between them.

This isn’t the time, Mulder thinks. He switches off the projector and looks at the time, thankful for the class to almost be over.

“Collect your work sheets on the way out,” he says to them knowing they wouldn’t begrudge a 10 minute early dismissal.

They raise to their feet in a matter of seconds, chairs scraping back, bags being collected, a small chatter starting to form. Mulder turns his back to them all, fussing with some papers on the desk for something to do, mortified at himself for snapping at her like that. It was a mess. A big mess. And he had four weeks of this shit.

Scully and her other only female classmate are the last to leave. He should let them leave and next time he’ll do a better job at pretending he doesn’t know her.

But he does know her. More than probably anyone else in the room does and it’s that that wins out.

“Scully,” he gently calls. She stops in her tracks, as does her friend. “A word. Please?”

Her friend looks at them with suspicion.

“It’s fine,” says Dana. “I’ll catch up with you.” Once the other woman is gone Scully turns. The anger on her face almost knocks him down, he wasn’t expecting it. Meekly, he makes his way to the door, closing and locking it. Once it’s just the two of them all pretences drop.

“What the fuck was that?” she bites, referencing their little moment. “And why are you here?”

“Why am I here? Why are you here?” He wasn’t going to start with this. He wanted to go in slowly. He’s found her! In the worst possible place but he’s still found her and he finds himself giddy over the realisation. He softens slightly. “You said you were studying science.”

But Scully was still angry. “Well I can’t exactly say I’m training to be an FBI agent, can I? Besides, I didn’t see you being honest about this.”

He shakes his head. “I thought you already knew.”

“No, I—” She starts to go red and looks away and it dawns on Mulder just what has gone wrong here.

“You didn’t do your homework before we met…” he says.

She sighs still looking away from him. “Charlotte said there was nothing to worry about.”

“Who the fuck is Charlotte?”

“Kind of like my manager, sort of…She runs the…” she reddens even more. “Agency. When I told her I didn’t have time to look into you she did and she said nothing about you being FBI so…”

“I think you need to fire her, or…or move onto to another agency because she sucks. You’re lucky it was me.”

Scully scoffs. “Oh am I?”

“Yes. Because if it was anyone else here you’d be out, Scully. Do you understand that?”

She says nothing but the anger lessens slightly.

“So what came first, the agency or the academy?”

“They sort of…happened at the same time.”

“Why?”

The anger that had lessened ever so slightly comes back full force.

“Why should I tell you? You think just because you got to fuck me one night that you suddenly get to know the ins and outs of my life? You can get to fuck, many men have had that privilege and I don’t see them questioning my choices so why should you get to?”

Mulder sighs. This conversation was a rollercoaster and not going exactly how he planned, what little planning he’d done in the first place.

“You’re all I’ve thought about for two days,” he admits.

“Well now you’re just being fucking weird.”

Mulder sighs again. “I’m being serious. I’ve been wanting to find you since then but not through the agency and not by paying $300 to pretend.” He reaches out to grab her hand then thinks better of it, lacing his own hands together to keep them from touching hers. “That night was different for you, too, right?”

Scully shifts on her feet, crossing her arms, saying nothing.

“I’m just trying to protect you, Scully. I’ve seen your work and out of all of them you have the biggest chance here. I don’t want to see it ruined.”

“So why are you being a dick about it?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just…I care about you and, shit…I’m your instructor.” He wipes his hands over his face.

“You really feel that way?” she asks.

“Oh yeah.”

She moves closer to him, reaching out to take his hand. His heart gets stuck somewhere up his throat, his stomach doing somersaults. What are you doing? he wants to ask her.

“It’s just for 4 weeks, right? You being here?” He nods not daring to speak. “And then you go off to…whichever department you belong to.” He nods again. “So we can wait.” She isn’t looking at him. “And reassess in 4 weeks?”

“We’ll reassess in 4 weeks,” Mulder croaks, throat dry.

“Okay.” She squeezes his hand before dropping it. “I need to go pick up my daughter now.”

She starts backing away, making her way towards the door. She’s almost out of it when he calls for her again.

“Scully? I’m sorry for what happened in class. I shouldn’t have attacked you like that.”

She leans against the door, smiling and Mulder is so happy to see that smile again.

“I’m used to it. Agent Banks grills me all the time in here.”

Mulder makes a face. “Agent Banks is your instructor here?”

“Unfortunately. And I think he hates women.”

“Oh unfortunately he does. But from what I hear the man is on his deathbed so…”

She smiles again. “I won’t say what I was going to say.” She looks at him again, softer this time, like she did that night. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mulder.”

“See you tomorrow.”

He still smiling to himself when she’s gone, finally basking in the giddiness of seeing her again. Four weeks. He just needs to survive these four weeks and then maybe…

The door opens again and it’s her, muttering a string of sorries as she reaches for a work sheet before disappearing once more. The door clicks shut and she is gone.