Title: "O Spooky Knight"

Author: Emmyjean (emmyjeanb@yahoo.com)

URL: Between the Lines: A Fanfiction Archive (www.agentsndoctors.50megs.com)

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Takes place early on in the X-Files timeline - think first year.

Disclaimer: Not mine, and I'm not seeing any profit, but thanks for lending them to me for a little while.

Archive: Sure, just e-mail me.

Summary: Early Mulder and Scully. A stakeout. Halloween night. Silliness. What more could anyone ask? Happy Halloween!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dana Scully sighed, the action causing the car window to fog up and obscure her view of the rickety old house she and her partner had been watching for the past three hours. He had dragged her here to Rhode Island on Halloween night to stake out some old woman who apparently was suspected, at least by Mulder, of practicing witchcraft on nights when the moon was full...which it was tonight. However, they had not so much as seen a light go on in the house the entire time they had been sitting here, crammed inside a rented Taurus with empty pop cans and snack bags scattered all over the place.

She cast a glance at her unwavering partner, who was munching on pretzels as he kept his eyes fixed doggedly on the house. To say he had a one-track mind was an understatement.

He felt her gaze and looked over at her. He stopped chewing for a second and asked, "What?"

She shook her head and replied with a question of her own, "Mulder, what are we doing here?"

"Trying to catch a witch, Scully. Didn't you read the case file?"

"Yes, I did...twice. I was willing to go along with this whole thing at first, but now we've been sitting here for what seems like forever and nothing has happened. I'm not even sure anyone even lives in that house."

He continued to look at her and she could see that he savored these arguments with her...and she didn't know if she wanted to laugh or slap the smug look off his face.

"Why, did you have somewhere else to be tonight? You weren't planning on putting on your Catholic schoolgirl costume and going trick-or-treating, were you?"

She smiled despite herself and shook her head.

"No...no. Somehow I don't think I'd be much of a success in my neighborhood."

"Why, Scully? You might look kind of hot in the classic schoolgirl costume. I'm willing to bet you'd get more candy than you think," he told her with a small wink.

She sighed, considering the fact that she could probably nail him with a sexual harassment suit of she wanted to, with all the innuendo she endured on a daily basis. The thing was, she didn't mind...and she even liked the banter most of the time, much to her chagrin.

"I was referring to the fact that I'm thirtysomething years old, Mulder."

"Hmm," was his only response as he crunched another pretzel...no, wait. He was on Cheetos now.

After another few minutes of watching the completely still house, he surprised her by asking, "What did you used to dress as on Halloween, Scully?"

She wondered why he wanted to know, but figured he was simply a bored man trying to make conversation with his bored partner and replied, "Well...I did the usual witch and fairy princess thing once or twice early on. I went as a gypsy one year. Umm...there was the time I went as Lucille Ball."

"No way," he said incredulously as he smiled delightedly at this tidbit of information.

"Yep...it was a pretty big hit."

"I can imagine it would be."

There was a pause in which she thought he'd dropped it, and then he asked, "So...never as a Catholic schoolgirl, huh?"

She shook her head in the negative as she smirked and replied, "I attended Catholic schools my whole life, Mulder. Why would I want to wear something on Halloween that I wore every other day of the year?"

"Oooh…stop, Scully. You're killing me."

She looked over at him, trying without success to gauge his tone. She could have sworn she detected a slight leer in his voice...which was no shock, except that it sounded just the slightest bit sincere.

"What about you, Mulder? What costumes were your favorites?"

He thought for a moment, then replied, "I went as Spock one year."

She snorted and replied, "I might have guessed. What else?"

"Well...I was a cop, of course. Gotta do that one once...also the cowboy thing, which I did. I actually went as a woman one year."

"A woman? That's an image I could have done without," Scully commented, wrinkling her nose.

"Hey, I was pretty attractive...well, for a guy dressed in heels and a skirt."

"I'm sure."

They fell silent for a moment, then out of nowhere he said, "I was a knight once. I went as Sir Lancelot my senior year in high school."

Scully looked at him quizzically and asked, "You did? That doesn't seem like you at all, really, to go for such a "traditional" image."

He shook his head, swallowing a sip of root beer, and replied, "It wasn't. I only did it because there was this dance, and my date was going as Queen Guenevere. I didn't feel right in the damn thing all night."

"Why?"

"I dunno...I guess I didn't feel worthy at the time of donning the armor of a knight of the Round Table."

She laughed a little and responded, "Oh, come on, Mulder. I'm sure you weren't THAT terrible in your teenage years."

He cast a sidelong glance at her and, smiling slightly, replied, "I can't tell you one thing- my intentions toward Her Highness that night weren't honorable in the least."

Scully shot him a withering look despite the smile blooming on her own lips, and he grinned at her attempt at severity. Just then, a movement in the direction of the house caught her eye. She looked up and, to her utter amazement, saw a shadow moving across a window on the third floor of the house they were watching...and the light being cast from the said window glowed an eerie greenish yellow.

"Well...come on, Sir Spooky. Looks like the Wicked Witch of the West has decided to make an appearance," she cracked sarcastically, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening her door.

"Come on, Scully," Mulder replied jovially in response to her tone, "a knight can't just give up on his crusade. In my case it just happens to be the search for things that go bump in the night."

"Not to mention lights in the sky," she added as they traipsed up the hill towards the house for a closer look.

"Oh, I never forget about those, Scully. I'm always looking."

Smiling, they both walked fearlessly into the fog surrounding the old, decrepit mansion, secure in the knowledge that whatever they were going to find in there was no scarier than the things they encountered together every single day.

Halloween was just another day on the job for the two agents assigned to the X-Files division of the FBI.

 

FINIS

Happy Halloween Everyone!

~Emmyjean~