Of course, Mulder has a fantasy about Monica and me. He tries to tell me about it now and then, but I shut him up before he gets far. I know he's attracted to her. He doesn't love her - he loves me - but he'd like to fuck her. So would most men in the Hoover Building. Some of the women, too.

It's tough when you're a woman at the Bureau. You're subject to sexual harassment every day. The FBI doesn't realize we're in the twenty first century; there are plenty of females in administrative roles at the Bureau, but agents? Monica and I are two of the few. Best to let them think you're queer, even if you aren't. So I don't give them any cause for contemplation. When Monica stares at me, I stare right back.

She's staring at me now, swallowing her fourth margarita. It isn't prepared like she wanted, and neither is the enchilada, but because she's Monica, she hardly complains. Or maybe her quiet compliance has more to do with her state of inebriation. She looks at my quesadilla in mild disgust. "You should come to my place sometime," she says, the alcohol slurring her words. "I'll fix you a real Mexican dinner."

"Take her up on it, Scully," Doggett says. "Damn good eatin'."

Mulder vies for the spotlight, as usual. "I'll take you up on it."

Monica smiles at him distractedly and returns her gaze to me and my plate.

"I don't know Monica, this is pretty good," I tell her. The truth is I don't even taste my food; I'm just eating out of nervousness, I think.

"Let me try it." She leans forward and dips her fork to my plate. I stare at her lips as she chews. I thought Mulder was the most intriguing person I'd ever known until I met her, but Monica fascinates me. I can't read her. Sometimes I wonder if I'm looking too hard for something behind the amiable exterior. Maybe years of X files have me too paranoid to accept that some friendly faces aren't just masks.

"It's all right," she says. "I can do better."

"I'm sure you can." Mulder's flirting isn't very subtle. He and Doggett have been fighting for Monica's attention all evening, the tension between them almost palpable. It's an odd moment in our history: this is the first time the four of us have gone out to dinner together. Mulder and me all the time, John and Monica, all the time, but never as a group. It's no wonder; for all the time we've spent working cases, we have little else in common. We're segregated even here, Doggett sitting beside Reyes on one side of the table, Mulder beside me on the other. Not a good arrangement, as far as I can tell, Mulder and Doggett facing each other. I'm afraid one of them will reach over and strangle the other before the night is over.

It's a good arrangement for Monica, though. She's safer here, across from me. If she sat beside Mulder as he had requested, she'd be cornered between the two men. At least this way she has an escape.

I knew they'd be after her tonight. Doggett has marked his territory around her, and Mulder tries to push John's buttons whenever he can. But the two men aren't the only reason for the strain; Monica and I add an undercurrent that defies rational explanation. She has a bit of hero worship going on with me, and I'm not sure I like it. I only know that when she looks at me with those doe eyes, I want to bolt.

So we sit here, co-workers trying to make it through a meal. As a unit, the four of us are fine for business, but sit our personalities down at a dinner table and the strain becomes obvious. The pitchers of margaritas are helping with that, though. They're certainly helping Monica.

In fact, she's the only one here that seems completely at ease. Probably the alcohol. She's explaining to Mulder why she hasn't eaten the food on her plate and why she's diving for chips and salsa instead. "It's not the real deal," she says almost inaudibly. I think she's so drunk she doesn't realize that she's whispering.

"But it's good," he argues.

She clumsily reaches over and tears a piece of his quesadilla, squeezes it between her thumb and forefinger. "It's nothing but grease. This is not how food is prepared in Mexico."

"But the cooks, the waiters, everybody working here is Mexican."

Monica looks at him for a moment. "They're Hispanic. They're not Mexican."

"From Mexico, right?"

I can't believe Mulder is being so obtuse. "Monica." She swings her gaze at me, but before I can rescue her from the conversation, Mulder's back at it.

"But when you ordered your dinner, you told them to prepare it a certain way and they did. They fixed it just like you wanted. How could you not like it?"

Someone who didn't know him might overlook his sardonic tone, thinking it's playful. To me, he's beginning to sound a lot like a bully, as he does when he drinks. Monica peers at him, her eyes mere slits. "If I gave you the ingredients for a meatloaf and you cooked it for me, does that guarantee I'll like it? No. You may prepare it wrong. You may add too much onion, too little pepper, overcook it, undercook it..." She lifts the pitcher and it slips in her grip.

Mulder's there immediately, his hand covering hers, helping her lift and pour. The way he leans toward her, the way he speaks to her, makes me angry. He has no right to be coming on to her. "If I fixed it, you most definitely wouldn't like it." Mulder's wisecrack makes Monica smile, and she looks up at him gratefully. The gaze he returns her is pure lust. What an embarrassment.

I need to leave before I say something I shouldn't. If Doggett loves her, as rumor has it - hell, as the look on his face has it - then he should cut the quiet act and wrangle the alpha male position from Mulder. Mulder has no long-term interest in Monica; the leer on his face says it all. I've seen that look before, and I have no doubt he won't quit pushing until he gets what he wants from her.

As furious as this makes me, as angry as I am at Mulder for being a prick and at Doggett for being a wimp, I'm mostly angry at Monica. She was giggling at everything her partner said when we first got here, and then the alcohol took effect, and now it's Mulder she favors. She'll be going home with one of them tonight.

I can't imagine her with Doggett. Not sexually, anyway. I've never been able to picture them as a couple. But I've often imagined what she and Mulder would be like together. I can see her beneath him, her legs wrapped around him as he thrusts into her. She'll cry out, as I once did; he's a large man and focused only on his pleasure in bed. He'll go down on her first, warming her up to him, but he won't have his mouth on her long enough to give her an orgasm. He'll pull away and hover over her for a moment, letting her appreciate his size, and there won't be further prelude. He'll spread her legs and guide his penis, hardly entering her. And he'll keep his hand down there, feeling how wide he's stretching her, and without warning, while looking right into her eyes and smiling softly, he'll thrust inside so forcefully that the breath will be knocked out of her, and when it comes back, when she's able to breathe, all she'll be able to do is hold on and beg for a quick ride. But Mulder isn't a quick ride. Something shattered in me that first time with him, years ago, when I thought men were the only choice.

Once I became cognizant of women - as sexual beings - as a possible alternative to the unfulfilling relationships I was having with men - it was too late. Mulder killed my sex drive, but I'm not sure if it was working with him or fucking him that did it. I only know that I quit wanting sex a few years ago and have never thought again about sharing my bed with anyone. Except the one time; the one time that I was so tired of being lonely, the one time that created William.  So whether or not a relationship with a woman would have been a similar disappointment is something I never found out. I don't think about it much, and I suppose the reason I'm thinking about it right now is because of the woman sitting across from me, looking naïve and vulnerable. I don't want Mulder to ruin her like he ruined me.

It seems to be out of my hands, though, because she's looking at him like she's in a daydream. "Tell me something."

I'm pretty sure he'll tell her anything she wants to hear. Both of them will. Mulder's eyes are on hers, rapt. Doggett stares at his beer, but he's listening to Monica.

"When was the last time someone blew you away? I mean totally blew you out of the water?"

I have no idea what she's talking about. I don't want to know. I do want to know. I find myself leaning forward, listening just as carefully to her slurred words as the guys.

"What do you mean?" Mulder asks.

"I mean like... someone who was ... just gorgeous..." Her voice is so soft I can barely hear her. "Or smart or strong ... or maybe it was their eyes... maybe they have the most beautiful eyes you've ever seen." She gazes at each of us in turn. "But their eyes are a trap," she says softly, hoarsely. "They're so beautiful to look at that you don't realize they're weapons until it's too late."

"And how can eyes be weapons?" Doggett asks. "Eyes are the mirrors of the soul, they say."

Monica nods. "They are."

"So how can they be weapons?"

"Maybe their eyes are so beautiful that you can't help but stare into them, maybe it's the beauty of them that draws you in." Her voice becomes even softer, until she's mumbling more to herself than to us, rubbing the lip of her glass, staring at the contents sloshing. "And then you're trapped. And those beautiful eyes stare right down into your heart, right through you." She's so far away that I'm not sure she's even aware of us. "And you're as helpless as a fly in a spider's web, and the spider can take you any time it wants."

We're all silent, considering spiders and flies. I think Mulder probably assumes she's talking about him, while Doggett hopes that it's his crystal blue eyes she's referring to. I just stare at her, wondering how anyone can so brazenly flirt with two men at the same time.

 Posted 6/20/03