TITLE: Little Man AUTHOR: Fialka RATING: G CATEGORY: Um, is there a category for Doggettfic yet? Yeah, Doggett and Scully but not Scully/Doggett. I have my limits. Post-ep. SPOILERS: Hrmm. Not really, but it takes place after Badlaa. And can I just say that taking bathroom humour to its ultimate conclusion doesn't quite a good X-File make, but I thank you, Shibesy, for a wee bit of character to work with. SYNOPSIS: A little man may have some answers for Doggett. ARCHIVE: Gossamer, Ephemeral OK, others please ask. DISCLAIMER: If they were mine this would never be happening. FIRST POSTING: Feb 12, 2001 BETA THANKS: to Sarah Segretti (who refrained from saying revenge is sweet ) and Cofax (who always comes through). Residual mess-ups are completely my fault. ------------------------------------ LITTLE MAN by Fialka He asks her if she wants to get something to drink, when the excitement is over and the local PD have carted that weird abbreviated body off. She says she just wants to go home. "To drink, Agent Scully. Doesn't have to be alcohol." It would be just like her not to drink, he thinks, trying not to let irritation creep into his voice. "We could both use some coffee. It's a long drive back." She gives him her grim smile and thanks him, but she's already getting into her car. Ah well. It's nothing he didn't expect. Nothing that hasn't happened half a dozen times before. But the times before weren't prefaced with tears and the precious name of Mulder. He'd had the idea that maybe she was ready to open up. Or maybe she'd just had enough. He knows not to touch her now, though he didn't at first. At first he thought they might work their way towards being friends but he's given up. He's even stopped trying to make his days with her more palatable. Mostly he stays away, investigating in his manner while she investigates in hers. Apples and oranges, getting more fruity by the week. Doggett sighs and watches her go, pointless pride trailing in her wake. He doesn't much like his new partner, but he also doesn't like to see her cry. He's probably seen that more than he should, but then Scully seems stretched to her limits these days. The crazy ideas she's been having -- Indian fakirs traveling in the bodies of businessmen -- well, he doesn't have any other word for it. It's just crazy. And to tell the truth, it's not just lately. Only lately she's beginning to piss him off. A man can only hold out a hand in friendship so long before he starts to feel like an idiot and Doggett is feeling like a first-class, A-1, butt-of-the-joke-and-doesn't-get-it idiot these days. He watches Scully's tail lights ahead on the road, but her driving is steady. No pulling over to bawl her eyes out. Scully isn't into that kind of histrionics, thank god. Either that or she knows it's him behind her, and she figures that if she pulled over he would have to follow. And he would. How the hell could he just drive by when someone he knows is going to pieces by the side of the road? They hit the highway at last and he lets Scully lose him. He turns the radio on low and sinks into his seat, grateful to have her out of his life even just for the night. He's sure the feeling is quite mutual. Not for the first time he damns Mulder behind clenched teeth. Mulder for disappearing and Kersh for drop-kicking him into the shitpile of the X-Files, and damn Scully too, with that stick up her ass and her tight-mouthed pride. He's never felt so fucking useless in his life. Doggett sees a familiar off-ramp as he passes through the District and makes a sudden exit, inches from the barrier. Good thing there was no one in the right-hand lane this time of night. He yanks at his tie, again and again until he can pull it over his head and throw it into the backseat. The top button of his shirt comes flying off as he tugs on his collar and he curses again. He's going to have to find it and sew it back on now, and that's just the kind of thing he hates. For one second, he imagines asking Scully to do it for him. Yeah, right. Dana Scully, he's sure, has never sewn buttons on any man's shirt. ~~~ He's digging through the files again, and once again he's got no idea why. The more pissed off with it all he gets, the more compelled he feels to sit in this damn dark office and try to make sense of Mulder's mind. Mind, hell, Doggett would be glad if he could just figure the filing system out. He'd alphabetize it right now if he didn't think it would cause Scully to crawl up his own ass and chew her way out. Doggett stuffs a file about a man who ate cancer to regrow severed body parts back into the over-full top drawer and slams it shut. The cabinet is full of weird little men who took something they needed out of their victims, but nothing about anyone hitching rides inside someone else's carcass. And that's enough of that. He sits down at Scully's desk and stares at the way she's got everything neatly arranged. It sure wasn't like that the first time he saw it, when it was still Mulder's. There's nothing here to indicate it now belongs to someone else, though there's nothing left to show it was his either. Idly, Doggett tries the drawer. It's unlocked and he takes it as a sign that it wouldn't really matter if he has a look. Scully is far too paranoid these days to keep her secrets in an unlocked drawer. He tries to slide it open, but it won't come more than a couple of inches forward. Something, somewhere, is stuck. Frustrated, Doggett jerks the drawer hard and the whole damn thing comes out, spilling pens and clips and all kinds of weird shit onto the floor. Things he's never seen before. A little plastic windup robot, a top shaped like a flying saucer, a pair of chattering teeth, the jaws held shut with a thick rubber band. They must have been Mulder's desk toys. Tucked away like his nameplate, yeah, he remembers her sticking that in here after they got back from their first case. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn't seen her open the drawer since. He starts to slip it back into its groove and notices a picture stuck beneath the back panel. Not the usual gruesome stuff that Mulder liked to decorate with. This one is of Mulder and Scully, holding a casefile between them as if they're having some kind of ideological tug-of-war. There are pinholes in the top corners of the photo. Once upon a time it must have been tacked onto the wall behind the desk, the wall she won't look at, but won't let him change. He slides the photo free, holding it by the outer edges like a piece of evidence. Scully looks like Scully, a few years younger, but with the same intense cast to her face. She has her mouth half-open as if she's just waiting for a chance to stick her two cents in. It's Mulder's expression that he didn't expect, a look that can only be described as fascinated indulgence. He seems to be fixated on Scully's mouth. Doggett reaches for the desk lamp and angles it over the picture, staring at the other man's face. He'd figured she was in love with him when he found her asleep in Mulder's bed. What he should have known by now is that Scully wouldn't carry a torch like that without reason. If she was in love with Mulder then Mulder had to have loved her as well. Doggett moves to sit, but there's something beneath his foot, candle-sized and slightly squishy. It turns out to be a green rubber alien dressed as Santa, a tiny red hat still perched upon its head. He pulls the hat off the toy and turns it inside out, not surprised to see it's been sewn with tiny, even stitches. Hand-made, and it's not too hard to guess whose hands made it. He tries to connect this to the Scully he knows. He's not the most imaginative guy, but he can clearly see her smiling as she bends over her sewing, the glasses she sometimes wears perched on the end of her arrogant nose. He can see Mulder's heavy mouth twisting in a grin as he unwraps the package while she perches on the corner of his desk. He imagines Mulder giving the little green man a squeaky voice, making it bop up and down as it talks, making Scully laugh. And then he sees Mulder raise his face, and Scully leaning over to kiss him -- on the forehead and brief, but there's no mistaking other kisses far less chaste hanging around the corner, waiting for the end of the day and the safety of someone's apartment. Hers, Doggett bets. He's seen Mulder's. Doggett throws the alien on the desk and leans back, rubbing his hands over his face. He's got a partner who won't even call him by his last name without sticking an 'Agent' on it. He really doesn't need to be imagining this kind of intimate shit. The little man stares him down, evidence of a truth he hasn't wanted to notice. He's got a partner whose love is gone, probably never to return. A partner whose feet are far too small to fill a pair of shoes that legend is making larger every day. A partner with a partner whose jokes are going snide, who can barely hide his hatred of the cases they investigate, who's starting to treat her like she's incompetent and foolish and insane. Doggett collects the spilled items from the floor, tries to arrange them the way they were. He hesitates for a moment, the little green man cradled in the palm of his hand. It occurs to him that it might have been Mulder who stuffed it back there, wanting to keep it somewhere close, but maybe thinking it was too private to display. Too obviously something only Scully would give him. It's her desk now, whether she wants it or not. He'd like to leave the photo propped up on it with the cheery little alien standing guard but he knows it's not the best idea he's ever had. He'd be trying to tell her not to give up, and he's not sure that holding on to hope is doing Scully any good. Whether aliens really took him or he staged his own disappearance, Doggett is pretty sure that Agent Mulder is never going to be found. He dials Scully's cell and isn't surprised to find it off. Normally he just takes that as a sign to leave her alone, emergencies apart. Tonight he flips the Rolodex, but of course her home number isn't in it. Mulder probably knew it by heart. Either that, or when she was working with Mulder she never turned her cellphone off. He pulls out his wallet and looks at the card she gave him when they first started working together. Her business card, but her home number is written on the back. It takes him a second to connect the soft voice that answers "hello?" with the crisp snap of her name that he usually hears. "Agent Scully," he starts to say, then changes directions mid-word. "A-- It's me. John." "Agent Doggett." Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Doggett picks up the little rubber man. It's a fidget-toy, he realizes, malleable without really bending, just big enough to fit in his fist and rather comforting to squeeze. He wonders if she gave it to Mulder for just this reason, and if he played with it while he was on the phone, calling her at home just to hear her voice. "Is there something you need?" she asks, when his hesitation becomes noticeable. "We need," he says, bending the alien so it lies in his palm, head bowed and hands outstretched. "Dana, we need to talk." He waits to see how she'll react to the deliberate use of her name, but all he gets is silence. "You need to talk," he tries again. "And I need to listen. I haven't been very good about that." "Talk about what?" The guarded tone is the one he's used to hearing from her but he's sure she didn't always sound this way. He can hear it in the reports he read when he was first assigned down here, a long weekend holed up with impossibility. Somewhere along the way she moved from knee-jerk rejection to wonder at the things she couldn't explain. Maybe Mulder wasn't as brilliant as she thinks, but he had an instinct, a cop-sense Doggett can understand and admire. As far as prosecutions go, their results were pathetic, but as far as getting some resolution for people who wouldn't have had any, as far as making the world a little bit safer, they had a pretty good rate. He can't be Scully any more than she can be Mulder but something between them worked as investigators. Whatever it was, it's exactly what he and Scully don't have. Maybe it's as simple as the ability to communicate. "There was a time," he says, "when you stood in my place. It's in the files. You know what it all looks like from here." Nothing from the other side, not even breathing. "Come on, Scully. I need your help." He hears an intake of breath, sharp and unwilling. Another moment and the phone fumbles, as if she'd moved it away and is only now putting it back to her ear. "Listen," he presses on, before she can tell him how late it is or how she really can't help. "I didn't want this any more than you did, but you're stuck with me now, and I'm way out of my league. After these last couple of weeks, I'm not ashamed to admit that, okay? The question is, Agent Scully, what can you tell me that will help? What made you able to work on this kind of stuff? Because I read what you wrote, and I can see that most of the time you didn't know what to make of it either." "I was fascinated," she says quietly. "And I trusted Mulder, even when we didn't agree." The silence is on his side now, and he can't think of anything to say to that. "Tomorrow," she adds. "This isn't a conversation we should have over the phone." She hangs up, but there was no reprimand in her voice, none of her usual cool, impersonal distance. For once, he seems to have said the right thing. Doggett smiles and tosses the little man into the air, catching it deftly before he tucks it back into its secret place. ~~~ FIN ==================================================== Thanks for reading! Feed Fi? More candy at: or: And don't forget the real meal -- The Annotated X-Files or: << *|*>>=<< *|*>>=<< *|*>>=<< *|*>>=<< *|*>>=<< *|*>>=<< *|*>>= Our strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show. -Mignon McLaughlin