Chapter Text
It was not in his nature to pinch pennies. But rise high enough and you’d find yourself doing all kinds of things you didn’t expect, including budget management.
And people management, the far more irritating source of his problems today. Numbers, at least, stayed where you put them and did what you told them. They didn’t sit there staring at you with deliberately blank expressions, playing it so irritatingly cool that all your instincts kicked into high gear.
The reports checked out, though. Incident and case reports both. Three rounds to the chest: they’d gotten off cheaply once again. And all right, from a big-picture perspective a live drug dealer might be better, might rat out larger networks or be useful for leverage in organized crime. (From an even bigger-picture perspective: it was better not to kill people. He wasn’t completely morally bankrupt, just realistic.) But from a budget and personnel allocation standpoint, not having to send two agents all the way from Washington to Podunk, Oregon to testify in a trial and maybe in subsequent appeals was a reasonable resolution to a case.
Mulder seemed to think he was putting one over on everyone with the X-Files. And he was, but not monetarily. He could book as many flight as he wanted, go drive off as many rental cars into as many sunsets as there were in a year, and he still couldn’t spend a fraction of what Homicide or Narcotics spent. Because legitimate departments did things with immense deliberation and care: they had stakeouts, they called for backup, they worked in larger teams. They communicated, took shifts. They logged every piece of evidence at every scene—and he saw the costs for processing and storage space. It wasn’t cheap. Next to that, a basement room and a guy who would probably cut off several of his own fingers before letting anyone onto his turf was a goddamn bargain.
Skinner only groused over expense reports because it made Mulder feel like he’d won. That was fine. Smugness was free. And if Mulder thought he was sticking it to The Man, well, it made it that much easier to send him off after the next drug dealer, or murderer, or whatever. Although he hoped there weren’t any more of these particular kinds of drug dealers. Nasty business. But they both said the supplier wasn’t part of a larger network, and if they both agreed on a conclusion, it was basically gospel.
Which was why he’d already signed off on the case file. All he actually had to do was go through the expense reports—not line item, just general fund allocation—and they could officially close it. Except…there was something off about this one. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it probably had something to do with Mulder looking so pleased with himself instead of being pissy and insufferable. Especially during an expenses meeting.
“You requested biohazard contamination equipment for the narcotics removal even though the DEA had standard equipment available?”
“I felt it was best given the possible side effects of some of the compounds, sir. We were initially put on this case because of suspicious deaths of people who turned out to be addicts.”
“Those were overdoses. Intentional recreational use. Don’t you think biohazard containment was overkill?”
“Agent Scully made the call in consultation with other medical professionals at the hospital she took me to,” Mulder supplied. He was being helpful. Skinner’s mistrust deepened.
Whenever something turned out to not be weird alien cryptozoological shit, Mulder was usually somewhere between sullen and bored, and Scully was so eager not to gloat that she went for meticulously professional. She probably shined her shoes and squared away her bed before coming into the office. This was—not that. Mulder was wearing that guileless who, me? look he always wore when he was getting away with something, and when Skinner turned to Scully, who was usually a neutral party if not an outright ally in reining Mulder in, she seemed…distracted.
“It seemed prudent to be overcautious rather than deal with the effects of the drug on any officers,” she managed, and started to fiddle with her cuffs.
“Which are what, exactly?”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“The effects of this drug. What are they? Your reports are both a little vague as to the nature of its effects. How is it different from any of the drugs Narcotics normally encounters? Do we need to brief them more thoroughly on this in case it starts popping up elsewhere?”
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” Mulder said. “We believe the supplier derived certain compounds from an organic process to which only he seemed to have access. With his facility already destroyed and now with him dead, I don’t think we’ll ever know what was in it. Or how to reproduce it.”
Scully stopped fiddling with her necklace long enough to agree with him.
Did they switch bodies? He didn’t doubt that if such a thing were possible, these two would be the ones to stumble into it headfirst, and come out asking for approval on the weirdest possible purchases. A fifty pound bag of rice, a single ticket to a Ferris wheel, and four antique books on the history of Ukraine. No wait—two tickets to a symphony, a dart board, and a request for genetic sequencing on turtles. He shook his head. Probably also Mulder’s idea of dates.
“Fine. But if I’m going to justify the expense I still need to know how the drugs are worse, even if I don’t know why.” I never know why.
The two agents glanced at each other. It looked choreographed, but then, they were always eerily in synch with one another. He wished even half his other reports could work half as well together—hell, if he could be certain Mulder wouldn’t start rambling about aliens he’d force them to give seminars. But of course he could never do that. Not only was Mulder pathologically incapable of resisting a tangent, having these two up on a stage was only going to fuel speculation of impropriety. If only one of them were married, or not quite so annoyingly attractive. Unfortunately, they both seemed married to their jobs. And each other.
He’d never bothered believing the rumors one way or another. If they were sleeping together, it was only his business once it started affecting the job. (Although with Mulder, how could anyone ever tell?) He’d been promoted within the Bureau because he was a pragmatist, not a policy wonk.
“I think the…” Scully started, and then trailed off. Shook herself visibly, started again. “Sir, we observed overdose victims and habitual users who had taken only very small doses still experienced cardiovascular distress. Euphoria, photophillia, um…”
“Like fentanyl or carfentanyl compared to heroin,” Mulder supplied. “Only for MDMA, maybe combined with sildenafil.” What the hell? Weird enough for Mulder finally bothering to learn medical terminology six years into being partnered with a doctor, weirder still that Scully wasn’t the one using it.
And then—the real kicker—Agent Scully turned to her partner and smiled at him. Not a brief, professional smile that said thanks or that’s right; the kind of high-wattage, gut-melting smile that said you’ve saved me or you understand me. And instead of dropping dead or proposing, which honestly would have been reasonable responses, Mulder just…accepted it.
Which meant it had happened before. Shit. They were sleeping together. I wish I didn’t know that.
“Great,” he said, as annoyed and sarcastic as he felt. They didn’t even register it, and usually at least one of these two fatherless morons could be relied upon to respond to the Dad voice. But no, they were probably too busy marinating in hormones and butterflies. Which meant that they were only recently sleeping together. They’re going to be so much more insufferable. He was already dreading the next two months. Maybe he could find them an assignment in Oregon again? Something far away. It was worth the expense.
“Good work,” he tried, and at least that made them look at him again. “Submit the line item expense reports to accounting by the end of the week. New case assignments will be forthcoming.” He hoped they could at least pick up on the get the hell out of my office vibe.
They chorused their “yes, sir,” and hustled out. They stayed ostentatiously apart from one another; he bet himself that he could have measured exactly one foot between them at all times, and then didn’t take his own bet. He wasn’t stupid. They were going to snap back together like magnets later. He made a mental note to absolutely not go near their office for the next two weeks, and to maybe risk parking on the street instead of in the garage. He really didn’t want to know.
Well, his two o’clock was about to arrive, and if Montalbano and Chavez hadn’t been abducted and replaced by aliens, they were going to be much harder to deal with than these two idiots. Maybe I can get Montalbano and Chavez to sleep together. Maybe then they’ll stop trying to one-up each other. Or at least leave me out of it.
But no, he wouldn’t. Skinner wasn’t a matchmaker. He was a pragmatist. And, if Mulder and Scully think they’re getting away with this, they’re going to be that much more pliable. But deep in his wounded, shadow-haunted soul, he was still the tiniest bit of a romantic, and the tiniest, tiniest bit pleased. They worked well together, in every sense. He was happy for them. He was just also happier for himself. It was nice to have leverage. If nothing else, it would mean that he had one glorious, foolproof way to shut Mulder the fuck up if he needed to.
Smiling to himself, he called in the next pair of agents.