Summary: An assistant's job is never done. One Son missing scene. Harem Jeffrey Spender challenge fic.

TITLE: Staying Late
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
RATING: R
ARCHIVE: List archives, otherwise please ask.
KEYWORDS: Kersh's Assistant, Jeffrey
SPOILERS: One Son, S.R. 819
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, thank you very much.
SUMMARY: An assistant's job is never done.

***

For the 500 Word Jeffrey challenge at the Harem.
Kersh's assistant made her first appearance in
"Triangle" and was played by Laura Leigh Hughes,
but she wasn't given a name.

Author's Notes at the end.


*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*

The phone rang about six or seven times before
going to voice mail. "You've reached the office
of Agents Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley. We
are unable to take your call at this time. Please
leave a message, or you can reach us by cell phone
at...."

She kept trying. It was late, after nine in the
evening. She was still sitting at her desk, the
only assistant in the building whose boss kept
her from going home on a Friday night. All
because of a missing agent and her barely
competent partner.

Assistant Director Kersh was looking for Agent
Spender, and had a bee up his ass about the report
that Agent Fowley had flown the coop. Guess who
got stuck hunting him down when no one answered
the phone?

She was starting to get pissed off. The elevator
wasn't working, so she had to walk down four
flights of stairs. Good thing she was in shape,
she thought. She'd have to lose her heels for
the trek back up.

She remembered the first stories she'd heard about
this office when she was hired. Spooky Mulder and
his partner, solving unexplained cases that no one
else wanted. Ghosts and boogeymen and aliens.

She'd always been glad she didn't have to cross
paths with Mulder or his partner, Scully. She
didn't like people who operated outside the
mainstream. There was something wrong with a
person who didn't accept things at face value.

Damn basement office. Smelled like mildew and ash.

And cigarette smoke?

Now she really *was* pissed.

"Agent Spender! You know there is no smoking
allowed in this building!" Under her breath,
"Not even for you fucking basement rats."

She didn't like the rogue agents who walked
past her desk, often summoned by A.D. Kersh,
more often just wanting to pick a fight.
I don't like this assignment, whine whine
whine. She thought they should consider
themselves lucky.

"Agent Spender?" She knocked on the door.

Lucky because they got field assignments and
weren't stuck answering phones for the most
humorless man in the federal government. Lucky
because they didn't have to read their own
reports. She thought of the last one to cross
her desk, signed by Agents Mulder and Scully.
Such crap. Assistant Director Skinner had been
infected by some kind of electronic bugs.

Uh-huh. And the sky was falling, and the world
was ending, and yadda yadda yadda.

No answer at the door.

Knocking again. "Agent Spender!"

Silence.

She tried the handle. The door wasn't even shut
all the way. The air that rushed out reeked, and
she recalled a time she'd joined Agent Colton out
at the firing range. The air there had this same
smell.

Without, of course, the hint of blood.

On the floor in front of the desk, Jeffrey Spender
lay sprawled out, a gunshot wound to the face.

Blood was everywhere.

No weapon.

She took all this in. Hitched a breath or two.

When the body on the ground moaned, she screamed.


*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*

A/N: Okay, to be fair, Jeffrey isn't in this very
much. And I really did want to write Happy!Jeffy
resfic. But I always wanted to know who found him
on the floor in the basement. And its my challenge,
so yeah.

Beta-free, 30-minute story. Feedback/criticism
welcome as always. texgoddess@yahoo.com

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"And that while the things that actually happened to you would invariably disappoint, the things that never happened to you would never dim, never fade. They'd always be engraved on your heart with sort of a sweet sadness to them." - Wilder, DC
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http://users.pdsys.org/~maidenjedi