TITLE: Time Well Spent
AUTHOR: Flynn
DATE: July 13, 2001
E-MAIL ADDRESS: flyn121@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION: No to Ephemeral or Goss; I’ll do them
myself.
ARCHING: I never say no. Just let me know where it
goes. Please keep author and headers attached.
FEEDBACK: Is it SO much to ask? Remember, I’m a
Gemini. You can’t go wrong with me.
RATING: R for harsh language.
SPOILERS: Existence, DeadAlive, Per Manum, tiny for
Requiem.
TIMEFRAME: Takes place after Existence, but not by
much. 
KEYWORDS: Doggett 
DISCLAIMER: Carter gets all credit. I’m just a
frustrated novelist.

SUMMARY: “I’m gonna listen at half-opened doors, in
public restrooms and the cafeteria and on the fu*****
street and anywhere else I hear people talk about her.
About *them.*” 



Thanks again, Christine. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time Well Spent
by Flynn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~



You never know what you’re going to hear in the men’s
room.

There was a time when I didn’t listen. I really didn’t
care what men talked about when they were in the can,
just so long as it didn’t have anything to do with me.
Usually it’s inconsequential anyway, what they have to
say - what sports are going to be on the tube this
weekend, how Junior’s doing in Little League, which
cases are going smoothly and which ones are tying the
department up in knots. Little stuff.

There was probably also a time when I might have had
something to add to these impromptu discussions of
life. I mean, my son was in Little League. I went to
his games. I waved banners and bought hotdogs, I
yelled and cheered, rejoiced or consoled as the
situation warranted, just like everyone else. I was
even on a team myself, in a manner of speaking. I was
a part of a whole, and that whole did some good work.
I helped find answers, hard answers to hard questions.
The whereabouts of a man whose homemade bomb had
killed a half-dozen people in a New York park. The
murderer of a woman butchered by a modern-day monster
and left out like so much garbage, for reasons I will
never begin to understand. The snot-nosed punk who
shot a college co-ed simply because he didn’t like the
way she looked at him. Cases like those are hard,
sure. First the NYPD and then the FBI - the work is
just plain hard. 

There was a time when I didn’t listen to what men said
in the can. I just didn’t care. That time has passed.
I’m not sure what changed, exactly, or when that
change took place. Maybe it came when an old comrade,
someone trusted if not exactly embraced in open
friendship, turned his back on everything I’d accepted
as gospel, selling out friends and colleagues and
maybe even his own damn soul, again for reasons I
cannot fathom. Maybe it has something more to do with
my partner being put in danger because someone I
thought - no, someone I *knew* I could trust - used
the power of his position and sold her out to ....
what? I don’t even know. I just know what they would
have done to her. What they did to Mulder. Or worse,
what they did to Duffy Haskell.

So I listen now. Boy, do I ever. The sounds of
footsteps outside my office. The faint click of what
is probably just the window shade moving in a breeze
but might conceivably be the cocking hammer of a gun
getting all set to blow my head off. I listen to
whispers. I listen to what people say, especially when
they don’t know I’m there. 

You can hear a lot of shit when you take the time.

It’s the usual stuff, for the most part - divisions
being audited, the promotions, the firings. Who said
what about so-and-so, and what the fallout might be
when it gets around. Then there’s the personal stuff:
who’s doing whom, where it’s going down and how often,
and how many people know about it. Skinner and his
assistant, for instance. They’ve been hot topics for
as long as I’ve been around. How about Freeh himself
and the cute blond from Justice? Oh yeah, and then
there’s that thing that went on for a while between
Scully and me, at least until Mulder came back from
the dead. 

Of course, I only hear about that sort of thing when
people don’t realize it’s me sitting in the next
stall.

It’s not terribly surprising, when you stop to think
about it. Scully’s rich fodder. Attractive women
usually are. I remember hearing about her and Spooky
Mulder when I was a rookie here in DC; how close they
were, and how they went at it hammer and tongs every
chance they got, whether they were on a case or not.
No one ever had the goods on them, not as far as I
could ever determine; but while the rumors were never
substantiated, they couldn’t really be disproved,
either. The two of them never took any pains to settle
the matter once and for all - I mean, there was never
any outward display of any sort - but at the same
time, her unswerving devotion to such an A-1 crackpot
didn’t do her any favors in the credibility
department. And then he disappeared and she fell into
the roll of grieving widow - well, that all but sealed
it. I guess the only thing kept people from counting
up the months until she’d start showing was what she’d
said, openly and angrily, to Shorty in Accounting; how
the work she’d suffered and bled for had left her
unable to have kids.
 
I’d heard the rumors about those two, and I have to
admit, I bought into them. When something comes down
from your SAC, even if it’s just over coffee in the
morning, it’s more than rumor. It’s taken as simple
fact. That’s why I used the approach with her that I
did. Not that it got me much more than a faceful of
water. Not exactly the reaction I’d been looking for.
Even after Kersh dumped me in the basement with her, I
couldn’t get a clear read on what those two had been
to each other. The files themselves revealed only that
they worked cases from different angles, and that they
were both good officers. She wasn’t there to decorate
the office. She wasn’t his company yes-man. She worked
for her answers just as hard as he did, if not harder.


It wasn’t until I heard the gossip involving yours
truly that I concluded the scuttlebutt about them had
probably been crap from the start. Close? Seven years
together - of course they were close. I didn’t need to
hear it from anyone to know, the woman’s heart was
broken. You don’t have to be doing the deed with
someone to love them, to need them more than the air
you breathe. That something physical had eventually
transpired between them was almost incidental. I mean,
think about it. You work that closely with someone for
so long, you go through so much bullshit with them and
for them and because of them .... pretty soon there’s
only one person in the world capable of understanding
what life is like for you on a daily basis. That can
lead to some pretty powerful feelings. Sometimes those
feelings get expressed in physical ways. I don’t know
exactly when it happened, and to tell the truth, I
don’t care. I just know the gossip that had them doing
the wild thing all those years was just plain wrong.

Mulder. I’ve scratched my head raw over that one. I
don’t understand how he came back the way he did. I’m
not the scientist my partner is, but I don’t think
even *she’s* gotten to the point where she could
really explain what happened. I mean, he was dead,
right? There isn’t a lot of gray when it comes to that
sort of thing. Either your alive or you’re not. Mulder
was not, and hadn’t been for quite some time when we
found him. She dressed him in a nice suit and tie,
wept as his coffin was lowered into the frozen ground,
and then went home and found reasons not to put a
bullet through her head. The best of reasons, as it
turned out, and one that made his surprising return
all the more poignant.

If anyone around here thought the matter would be
settled when he came back to work, they’d be in for a
rude awakening. Talk went on even worse than before.
How he’d literally risen from his grave. A regular
Lazarus. Don’t bother trying to kill Mulder because he
won’t stay dead. Very funny. And then there’s the
whole baby thing. One story held he was the father,
while another gave credit to some character that used
to haunt the Hoover in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Or
it was someone else altogether, someone she’d turned
to after her partner’s disappearance. Hey, women get
lonely too, right? Stuff like that happened all the
time.

I listened to what people had to say, but I figured
didn’t nobody have a clue about the real story.
Besides knowing the woman in question, I have eyes.
Sure, things weren’t as smooth between the two of them
as maybe they’d once been, but I figured time would
take care of that. I was right, too. By the time she
took her maternity leave, they were friends again. Not
that they included me in their little off-hour chats,
and God forbid Dana Scully should ever come out and
tell *me* just how she feels on a given subject ....
but I’ve been there. What I mean is, I’ve been an
expectant parent. I know the signs. The way they
looked at each other. His phonecalls to her here at
the office, sometimes seven or eight in a day. The way
he’d be there to answer the phone the times I happened
to call her at home. I doubt they were doing anything
physical, not with what she’d suffered through just to
get to that point in her pregnancy - but it would
happen. I was pretty confident about that. 

Still the gossip swirls around them. Just because
Mulder doesn’t work for the Bureau anymore don’t mean
the idiots around here’ve found better things to talk
about. 

I hear whispers in the halls. In the cafeteria. In the
elevator. I heard them as soon as I walked in the
front door this morning. I listen, but I don’t have
time for bullshit today. I have to get to the
conference room on the fourth floor - Skinner’s
quarterly meeting with division chiefs. As acting head
of the X-files, my presence is pretty much required.
Scully’s leave isn’t formally over for another two
weeks, but I know she feels pretty strongly about
being there, too. I want to spend a few minutes with
her before the meeting, going over the cases I have
pending before we present them to the AD. First things
first though - my back teeth are floating. Maybe that
fourth cup was a little over the top, I tell myself as
I duck into the second floor men’s room. 

The men’s room. That’s right. Gossip Grand Central.

At first I have the place all to myself. Suits me just
fine. I’m just washing my hands, though, when the door
opens and two suits walk by. They’re talking,
exchanging comments about the travails of being
parents or something, as they shoulder up to the bank
of urinals. I doubt they even see me. I’m just about
to head back out when I see one of my shoelaces is
loose. Wouldn’t do to trip on my own feet here in
these hallowed halls, would it? I step away from the
door, mindful to keep my back to the wall and my eye
on the room, and crouch down to set that little detail
right.

“Speaking of children, you heard about that thing with
Mulder, right?”

Here we go again. I recognize the voice. Lentz, from
Kersh’s former stomping grounds. Seemed benign enough
whenever I’ve had to deal with him. Yeah, I remind
myself with a snort, and so did Agent Cole, right up
to the night he tried to tear your throat out. What
was it Scully told me once? Trust no one? That’s some
damn good advice.

“I heard the great I-am fired his ass a couple months
ago.” That voice I can’t place. High and kind of soft.
I envision the face that goes along with it. Chubby.
Pasty. Little button nose. Doesn’t mention anything
but the termination. Means he only knows Mulder by
reputation. Probably a newbie, maybe some fresh
recruit in the Domestics ranks. Learn fast, baby. 

Lentz gives a derisive snort. “About damn time, if you
ask me. He was supposed to be on my detail in
Albuquerque, you know. Stood us up so he could run off
and play secret agent out on some damn oil rig in the
Pacific. Kersh loved delivering the bad news, let me
tell you. NO ONE blows off the Man and gets away with
it.”

Agent Babyface tsks serenely. “From what I hear, rules
just don’t apply to the guy. And fired or not, I heard
he’s been right here in this building, hanging around
with that blimp of a partner of his. Jeez, that boy
must like ‘em large, that’s all I have to say.”

It’s difficult, but I don’t let myself react. They’re
cretins, I tell myself. They don’t know her. They
don’t deserve to know her. For an instant I consider
saying something to that effect. Maybe just point out
the small fact that she happened to be nine fucking
months pregnant at the time. No, what would that
accomplish? After all, why would they listen to
anything *I* had to say? I’m Spooky’s successor. It’s
not like I have a snowball’s chance of changing what
anyone thinks of the man. 

Shoes safely retied, I slowly push myself straight.
Meeting in fifteen, I note absently. Just enough time
to get to the office. Get back to what really matters.
But I can’t leave yet. I have to know what these
assholes are saying about my partner.

One of the urinals flushes, but not even that can
drown Lentz’ voice. He’s making references to certain
aspects of female anatomy, no doubt as they apply to
Scully. Jesus, what a dickhead. “Not huge, mind you. A
nice handful. And that ass - gorgeous! I’m telling
you, kid. Ice Queen or not, new brat notwithstanding,
she is a babe. Dr. De-lish. And she’s God-damned
smart. I don’t care what the pool says, there’s no way
she’d waste her time boinking that loser. No, I’m
thinking she’s got a little something going on ....” A
dramatic pause, and I can just imagine those eyebrows
twitching. “.... upstairs, if you get my drift.”

Agent Babyface snorts a little at that. “Who, Skinner?
You’re full of shit. Talk about raising the dead. Or
in this case, fucking it.”

A second flush. I glance around. Shit, I’m about
fifteen seconds away from being as conspicuous as a
nun in a chorus line. Time for a quick exit. I take a
long step back.

“Put up or shut up, my friend.” Agent Babyface again.
I can’t help it, I find myself hesitating. Again. I
got time, I tell myself. They’re still yacking, and
I’m close enough to the door, I can be through it in a
heartbeat. “Twenty bucks says they’ve been going at it
every chance they get, old Spooky and the missus,
probably right there on that desk of his. And that Ice
Queen thing is bullshit. I got it on good authority,
that red hair ain’t no lie. The woman knows her
stuff.”

A harsh laugh. “Who came up with that? Colton? Kevin,
Tom Colton is a sorry-ass whiner with a career on a
fast-track to Tulsa. He lost to Spooky once years ago
and he’s *still* looking to get even. ‘Sides, Scully
would sooner blow *me* than touch someone like that
s.o.b. Forget him. I’m willing to bet Mulder’s been
choking the chicken so long, he couldn’t get it up for
a piece of kitty even if it was offered to him. You
can only stretch a slinky so far before the spring’s
shot, you know?”

Okay, that’s a little graphic. I realize I’m actually
feeling ill. Not from the words or images - God help
me, I’m no innocent here - but the thought that two
people I respect and one I truly admire had to work in
an environment so blatantly hostile .... Jesus, it’s
no wonder they never meshed well with other divisions.
Or that they realized the only true ally they had was
each other.

“So how’re we gonna settle this?” Lentz asks
truculently. I can’t see them from where I am, but I
can imagine him standing there, all five-foot-six of
him, with his sagging jowls and infamous comb-over,
legs planted firm and those stubby arms folded over
his paunch. It’s been a while since Jack Lentz made it
over the wall on the obstacle course at Quantico,
clearly.

I hear the rustle of bills. “See this? Show of faith.
I overheard Skinner’s *real* do -”

“Kim?”

“Whatever. Skinny redhead with the small tits. She
told him Scully’s on her way in for that meeting you
bigwigs have upstairs with ol’ Curly. And Jack, I’ve
yet to see a new mommy who isn’t just aching to whip
out the Polaroids. My Jackson says the kid’ll have a
nose the size of New Jersey.”

“And mine says the rugrat’ll bear more than a passing
resemblance to the good lady’s superior.” The word 
‘lady’ is definitely sneered.

“You’re on, my friend.”

The door opens behind me and someone brushes past me
and heads to the line of stalls. Perfect opportunity -
I lunge for it and practically throw myself back into
the hallway outside. There I pace slowly away, trying
with only limited success to wrestle my temper under
control. Deep breaths, John. Let it go. They’re
idiots.
They don’t know them. They don’t know her. 

I’m straightening my tie and running a hand over my
face when the door to the can opens again, and Beavis
and Butthead are spat out into the hallway a few paces
away.

I should be commended for my self-control.

Lentz sees me at once, and his smile disappears with
amazing speed. “John!” It comes out forcefully,
betraying his guilt in blaring tones. I wonder what
bullshit they came up with that I didn’t happen to
catch, and if their sophomoric allusions to Mulder’s
virility had extended at all to my own.

I draw myself up and give him a blank look. I’m not
the tallest guy in the Bureau, God knows, but I can
kick the shit out of this fat bastard standing on one
leg. “Jack,” I say coolly. Agent Babyface, who really
does have the face of a baby, starts to extend a hand
towards me. I ignore him and just stare at Lentz,
who’s wilting faster than a daisy in high summer.
Yeah, I want so badly to say, you might win some damn
washroom bet, but it doesn’t make you right. Not by a
long damned stretch. I’m gonna remember this.

And Jack evidently sees it in my expression, because
he quickly falls back a step. I can see he’s sweating.
A fat hand paddles at his forehead before he turns on
his heel. “Uh .... see you around, John.”

I let him get a few paces in. “Hey, Jack!” He spins
around again, and in his expression I see a
pasty-faced teenager caught doing a peeping-Tom in the
girls’ locker room. He doesn’t buy my smile, either.
Good. He knows I know. I hold one finger aloft,
indicating the conference room above us. “I’ll see you
at the meeting.” 

Lentz’s throat jerks rapidly as he swallows. “Uh ....
sure thing, John. I’ll just ....” With a feeble
gesture over his shoulder, he turns and bolts. Agent
Babyface stares at me for a few seconds before he
finally turns to follow, but Lentz never looks back

Oh yeah, I’m going to remember this. I’m going to
remember a fat damned federal troll trying to win a
buck at the expense of a colleague’s reputation.
Someone who just happens to have more guts than he
ever thought possible.

I’m gonna watch this guy. I’m gonna watch him sweat
during the meeting and when it’s a fading memory. And
I’m gonna listen at half-opened doors, in public
restrooms and the cafeteria and on the fucking street
and anywhere else I hear people talk about her. About
*them.* I’m gonna keep my ears tuned and my mouth
shut, and I’m gonna learn just who the enemy is. 

I’m going to remember who my friends are. 



~~~~~
end
~~~~~



Okay, I'll admit it: I was all set to hate Doggett.
Having said that, I must now also admit that he's
growing on me, and NOT in the same way a fungus does.
I like him. He has integrity. And he's walking in
awfully large footprints. 

Is he enough to keep me watching next season? 

Hmm. Jury's out. Ask me next Christmas.