From: Sarah Parsons Date: 5 Nov 1998 10:44:56 -0800 Subject: Story TITLE: Frohike's Finest Hour AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com DISTRIBUTION: Wherever you want. SPOILER WARNING: Very mild spoilers for: E.B.E.,One Breath, Unusual Suspects, Kill Switch, The End RATING: G CLASSIFICATION: Story KEYWORDS: Mulder, Scully, Gunmen, A, H, SUMMARY: Can never see enough of the Gunmen. This is the first X-Files story I ever wrote. This has got to have been the best day of my life. How else could it have ended up like this? Me and her. Together. I reach down and touch the piece of hair that's blown across her face. It's red, but red doesn't even begin to describe the color of it. It's red and gold and there's brown in there, too. I know that. And it shines and sort of falls in a halo around her head now that it's short. It used to be longer, back when I first saw her. It looked good that way, too. And she was so cute. Young, you know. A chippy. I could hardly believe she was an FBI agent. Like Mulder. I mean, you have to be some kind of weirdo to go into law enforcement, right? Someone who wants to get into other people's business. And here was this girl. Looked like she came right out of Catholic school. You know, the kind where they wear those short, little pleated skirts. Usually blue or green plaid. And those matching sweaters. You know the kind. Never tight enough. Sometimes with monograms. Hers would be DKS. Or is it DCS? Who cares? I mean it's just a bunch of letters on a sweater, isn't it? It's not like it means anything. Three letters, like FBI. So there she was, with Mulder. And I wondered, what the hell is she doing with him? She's totally not his type. I mean, she's tiny and redheaded and sweet-looking, with freckles that just barely show through her makeup, right? And he likes 'em tall and brunette and stacked out to here, like Diana Fowley or that girlfriend of his from Oxford. But there they are and they're being really cute together and she's like, looking at him and I want her to be looking at me. I mean, she's more my size anyway. And you can just tell that he doesn't appreciate her. Well, I can't say he doesn't appreciate her, that wouldn't really be fair. Mulder's a doofus, but he's not a total idiot and you'd have to be a total idiot not to appreciate her. But the fact is, he doesn't appreciate her enough. Not like I do. Not like Langly appreciates the hottest new micromachine or Byers appreciates a well-turned phrase describing the exact angle of impact in the Zapruder film. She's better than a pair of night-vision goggles or the coolest mini surveillance cam. I mean, just the way she raises her eyebrows when you say something she considers "inappropriate" is pure poetry. I could spend the rest of my life just looking at that. And watching her sleep-. I mean I thought I had it made when I taped her sleeping on the couch while Esther Nairn hunted the rogue AI she and her partner had created. Better than any tape Mulder ever loaned me. But this. This is more than a guy like me has reason to expect. I mean, I know what I am. Cerebro-tech-geek in the body of a Hobbit. And while Hobbits can be cute, they don't exactly stack up to six-feet two of, what? Obsessive angst-boy and his endless quest? Not being fair again. You remember how you got involved in the quest, don't you? So what does that make me? Sancho Panza? Labels? We don't need no stinking labels! And what could be the label for this moment? Heaven? She breathes quietly. Ladylike. Like she does everything else. She even shoots like a Lady. Precise, perfect in both aim and execution. Not a mess like the rest of us when the firefight broke out. She took careful aim and lay one of the Mafiosos unloading the weapons flat out on the ground. It didn't help her much because she went down in the next volley while Mulder, Langly and Byers got trapped behind the crates. I was the only one who could get to her. Me. Who'd have thought that? Me running like a maniac through a hail of bullets to rescue Agent Scully of the FBI from a pissed off bunch of Mafia gun runners. It wasn't too hard to get there. It wasn't hard to drag her back to cover. It didn't feel like anything could touch me with her needing help. I would have run through fire. Fact is, I did. So now, here we are. Waiting. Just the two of us. Cozy, like. And I get to watch her. To chart the perfection of her porcelain skin, dotted here and there with the freckles that just peek out from beneath her powder. The beauty mark that she takes so much care to hide just above her lip. The long lashes resting against her cheekbones. The lips a guy like me can only dream about. I could do without the blood that streaks down the side of her face from where the bullet grazed her skull, but I wipe the most of that away with my handkerchief. I always wondered why I carried one. I never use it to blow my nose, but now I know. Never know when the woman you love is going to have a bleeding headwound. Gotta have something with you to stop the bleeding, right? The Mafia-types are still shooting at Mulder off and on, but I can hear the sirens coming this way. We'll be rescued pretty soon now. And they'll take her away from me, to the hospital, again. She spends too much time in hospitals. I remember the time I went to see her there. I'll never be able to do that again. I'll remember those tubes and wires until I die. She should never go to hospitals. She should spend all her time in gardens. Gardens full of perfect flowers. Yeah, it's sappy, but she deserves all the sappy she can get. Even from me. The pervert's pervert. Yeah, I'm full of surprises. It's not that I can't bring myself to think of her flat on her back and covered with whipped cream, God knows. It's just that I don't think of her ONLY that way. Especially not at times like this. When she's here and I remember how much more she is than merely "tasty". Boy is that not a fit word to describe her. I sometimes think the dictionary doesn't have the right word. I think maybe it would take a hundred dictionaries to list all the things that make her so perfect. "Yeah, Mulder, we're over here! She's hit, but she'll be ok!" I yell. The cops are pulling up now. I wonder if the Feds got enough of the transaction before Langly sneezed and blew the deal to convict. It would seem a shame to lose them after all this. I know the equipment was right. I had the headphones on and was taping before the shooting started. Everything was A-ok. I look at her again so I'll be able to remember this was real. That it actually happened. That one dark night in Washington, D.C. in the year 1998 Dana Scully slept for a whole hour in my lap. Like she belonged there. Like she was mine. Man. It just blows your mind, doesn't it?