Work Text:
Claustrophobia
I.
It is commonly known that Andalites evolved as a grazing species, born to gallop across the verdant grasslands of their planet. With millennia to grow accustomed to this freedom, this space, it comes as no surprise that the act of confinement strikes them as abhorrent.
Small is the only way for Scully to describe the basement.
She straightens her shoulders, the blue-lavender fur on her body prickling in an involuntary fear response; instinct is not something that can be eradicated in such relatively few years of civilization. Not only is the basement small, it is cramped: the solitary desk covered in reams of paper, open flies, newspapers, magazines, articles, letters, notes written in a looping script. The only other inhabitant dwarfs the tiny space, a mottled green-yellow monstrosity; muscle and sinew under leathery skin, teal blades protruding from an atypical black suit. The hork-bajir turns to look at her, a pair of reading glasses perched on his pointed beak.
"Are you the one they sent to spy on me?" It's an odd sight, a smiling Hork-Bajir, but it's not enough to shake the gut reaction from her, the need to move into a more open area. The way he struggles to stand to his full height only serves as a reminder of the small enclosure. He crosses the room in two strides, the three blades in his forehead barely grazing the ceiling. The hand he extends is large enough to cover her entire shoulder, strong enough to wrench her arm from the socket, but his handshake is gentle, polite. It has always been a surprise to see the draconian forms of the Hork-Bajir and remember that they were once simple tree-dwellers, herbivores that spent peaceful lives tending to the flora of their home.
II.
She's small, even for an girl, the delicate framework of her skeleton visible in her jaw, her clavicles, the contoured outline of her seven-fingered hands. Mulder isn't used to working with such fragility, but he sees an underlying strength to her, a spiritual toughness. Female Andalites usually turn to the sciences; he isn't surprised when she tells him she has a background in medicine. But to leave that for a place in the field- she must have guts to defy the overbearing gender constructs of Andalite culture.
Scully brightens almost immediately when they go out into the field, the claustrophobic jitteriness dissipating in the face of wide, open sky. She treads lightly on the grass, infinitely graceful compared to his ungainly gait, the clumsy terrestrial steps of an organism accustomed to an arboreal lifestyle. At the crime scene, her hands dance across the desiccated corpse, the echo of her thought-speak cataloguing the weight, shape, size, state of decay, and so on.
When he tells her his theory about rogue extraterrestrials she furrows her brows, folds her arms across her chest.
<Mulder there's no way there's a sect of 'rogue extraterrestrials' randomly abducting innocent bystanders for nefarious purposes out in space, it's ridiculous. How do you think these aliens could just fly into charted space without alerting the Electorate?>
She is called away in the middle of their conversation; Mulder watches her go, eyeing the shift of velvet skin over her spine and the sway of her lethal Andalite tail.
III.
They lose time, nine minutes, and Scully stamps her hooves incredulously in the downpour.
She cannot even believe what is happening in her life, giving up a lucrative medical career to go gallivanting through the countryside with an over-excitable Hork-Bajir, chasing rogue aliens, ghosts, cryptids, the supernatural, the paranormal.
IV.
He traces his clawed fingers across her lower back, over the three dots that had so mysteriously appeared what must have been hours ago. She came to him nervously, disrobing almost immediately, and she would have been embarrassed if she weren't so confused, so uncertain of what it meant. Not even a week and he had charmed her into an alarming state of security regarding their partnership, and to his credit, he kept his gaze professional as he examined the strange markings.
"Just insect bites, Scully." That odd Hork-Bajir smile is back and Scully has really never seen anything like it- this gaping, raucous gash across his face that oozes and salivates, that curls in at the ends when he grins and tears through tough bark when he eats. The honed beak that Mulder uses to crack open the shells of sunflower seeds. Mouths are a disgusting thing, but on him it is strangely appealing.
She turns and winds her spindly Andalite arms around his torso, the tension that had her standing rigidly in his foyer draining away. Careful to angle his arm blades away, he returns the hug.
She ends up curled on his bed while he languishes on the floor, the moonlight through the blinds throws the room into black shadows and white highlights and he reassures her as they lay there, paired together to uncover something greater than themselves, two chiaroscuro figures discussing the grey area in between. In turn, she reassures him.
<I'm not here to spy, Mulder. I'm here to find the truth, just like you>