As he came through the office door, he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at his desk.

Dana Scully sat coolly at her table across the way, her laptop in front of her, typing as if nothing in the world was wrong.

Mulder stepped slowly into the room, carefully approaching his desk as if it were a bomb, not even setting down his own briefcase on it as he first riffled through the neatly stacked files in one corner, his hands then moving to the finally clean and open space right where he sat. He frowned as he picked up his nameplate, still reading Fox Mulder on it, and then glanced all around the area where he stood.

"Where are my pens and pencils," he sounded genuinely concerned. Scully didn't bother looking up.

"In the top desk drawer, where they should be," she stated firmly, stopping in her typing long enough to finally gaze back at her wondering partner. "I figured after six months of working with you, Mulder, I'd had all I could stand with your mess."

"My mess," Mulder sounded affronted. "It's organized, I know where everything exactly is."

"Mmmmm," Scully only gave him a doubtful look. "Well if I'm here working with you, Agent Mulder, then can I ask that the 'organization' be kept to a dull roar? I couldn't find the case file we were working on this morning, till I realized you had filed it under C rather than by last name, which started with an R."

"That was C for Combustion," Mulder glared at her as if any idiot could figure that out. He did not like this encroachment on his personal space. And that was the point, she had realized, this was no longer just 'his' personal space anymore, it was theirs, a partnership.

"Right," she shook her head and reached for a pen on her always neat, and always tidy table tucked away in the corner. She ignored him as he began to rifle through his other drawers, searching to see what else this new woman in his life could have done to his stuff. He paused at the one drawer that locked, and the only one Scully hadn't bothered to mess with.

"Hey, Scully, you know this drawer," he said, but he got no further before she responded.

"The one with the stuff that doesn't belong to you?"

"Yeah, that one," she tried to ignore the wicked, boyish grin that broke on his face, he rarely if ever got embarrassed when she found his latest porn stash.

"Didn't touch it, Mulder, frankly with Bill and Charlie there isn't a kink I haven't seen," she shrugged, before meeting his impish smile with one of her own. "Though I have to say I think Miss 1991's breasts are fake, you can still see the scaring if you look close enough."

Watching Mulder nearly clock himself on the edge of his desk as he almost fell out of his chair was well worth it.