Chapter Text
It wasn’t that they hadn’t tried or they didn’t want or intend to reconcile. As the years had passed since she left the house they shared for all that time under the cloak and dagger of hiding him as a fugitive, it became entirely the opposite.
Out of a need to see him and before they reopened the X-Files, she came back from time to time. In return, he had visited her in the city at the apartment he called everything their ordinary house was not.
Once they went back to the FBI, their time apart after hours became a need for solace from the intensity of working alongside one another in their old basement office again. There were memories of their time down there that included some of the most heated moments of her life, and she wasn’t just thinking of when they argued over the validity of a falsified photo of a UFO. Some of those memories included being bent over Mulder’s desk with her skirt around her waist and his breath hot in her ear as he pumped inside of her. She tried not to think about those moments too often because it only led to another lapse in judgement. Since he began working his government job again, there had been one or two frenzied conjugations while they watched the door for visitors to their quiet enclave in the bowels of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
She was trying desperately not to think of that now.
Scully watched as Mulder gave her a small demonstration with Arkie Seaver’s mugshots of his car accident. She felt annoyance creep into her belly. As per usual, Mulder slowly revealed the mass phenomenon of suicides from a rare form of schizophrenia. Nevertheless, there was a paranormal force at work and they had the job of investigating it.
If they stopped talking or she didn’t have an exit strategy, she might feel her guard fall and the longing set in for the warmth of his embrace and his mouth against hers. The only option was to continue to argue his point with science that she knew and reference any science she could pull out of her hat.
“Precisely my thinking Scully,” Mulder said with a nod as he stood up from behind his desk. “Which is why you and I are going to jump on I-95 South this morning and get back to our bread and butter.”
Mulder swept his arm across the back of his chair to pick up his coat as he finished that sentence and brushed past her to leave. She tossed the case file on the desk and grabbed her purse to follow him to the parkade. He grabbed her overnight bag from her trunk and tossed it into the back of his vehicle before they left for Henrico County. It was two hours away but if their day ran long, neither of them would want to try to make the drive back.
As they pulled into a gas station outside Old Church, Virginia, she pressed her thighs together and tried not to admire the way that Mulder looked exceptionally cool in his sunglasses, grey suit and white pressed shirt. He was taking care of himself now that he had a routine. He made comments frequently about how good she looked but she recognized how sporadically she complimented him.
Mulder glanced at her with confused eyes and a grin. “What?”
“You look good,” she commented and he raised his eyebrows in obvious surprise. She shook her head a little and tried to backtrack. “You look happy.”
He pursed his lips as he took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the front pocket of his suit jacket. “I like these cases. It’s these isolated incidents and pockets of abnormality that we get confirmation that it’s not just the mundane that fills our lives but smaller than the phenomenon of extraterrestrials visiting our planet to experiment on us like lab rats.”
She scoffed. “I wasn’t expecting that answer but I would have to agree, Mulder.”
He raised an eyebrow, mimicking her skeptical stare that she usually gave him. “Really?”
She ran her tongue along her upper lip and nodded. “It’s exciting to have our work relate to science but have so little of it confined to a lab.”
Mulder nodded as he thought about that. “Here I thought it was my charming company.”
She smiled and reached for the door handle. “I’m getting some water. You need seeds?”
“Flirt,” he jibed. They exited the SUV and she pulled her purse up her shoulder. “And yes.”
Scully entered the small convenience store where a coffee station called to her. Her heels clicked along the tile floor and she glanced over to the young woman behind the counter as she scrolled through her phone with a bored look on her face.
Thirty years ago, Scully could have been that young woman on summer break. She went through a rebellious phase where she wore too much black eyeliner, smoked cigarettes in secret and felt minimum wage jobs were a joke. The punk phase ended abruptly when she used CPR on a friend at a concert and realized medicine gave her a bigger thrill than anything else to date.
“Hi there,” the young woman muttered as she passed the counter.
“Hello,” Scully greeted as she looked out to where Mulder was at the pump. “I’ll be paying for the tank of gas at number seven too.”
The uniform was barely buttoned up over the tight tank top against the young woman’s skin and the name “Danny” was stitched into the shirt. She felt her age and the passing of time so acutely when faced with youth and beauty she admired. This young woman had her whole life ahead of her that probably had nothing to do with medical rape by conspirators against the global population or even anything outside of this small town. Something unexciting might be nice in comparison to the ways she had suffered over the years.
“Ok,” Danny replied and pressed a few keys into the register before going back to her phone.
Scully filled two coffee cups, gathered a large bottle of water and a bag of sunflower seeds along with a few sweet treats for later. She used a drink tray to carry most of the items to the counter. Mulder walked in with a swagger of his hips and found her at the register. He slapped his company credit card on the counter before taking the seeds from Scully’s fingers.
“You scan these?” Mulder asked the young woman as he ripped open the perforated edge with his teeth.
The attendant set down her phone and gave him a shake of her head with a secretive smile.
Mulder held the package out and Danny scanned it across the infrared gun before putting it back in his outstretched palm. Scully cleared her throat as she felt like an interloper of a moment being held between two people of inappropriate age differences. Danny couldn’t be older than her early twenties.
“How much?” Scully prompted.
Danny tucked her curly black hair behind her ear and smiled at Mulder again before scanning the rest of the snacks. She typed in a few more codes and looked at Mulder.
“Seventy-two oh five with the gas,” Danny announced.
“Did you get premium?” Scully muttered as Mulder pushed the card across the glass countertop.
“No. Regular,” he replied and gave Danny another look.
These were the times she began to feel invisible. While she knew she was attractive, she also understood her limitations. It was being amongst women with more curves and fewer age lines that she felt her small stature and flaws with a sharpness that made her invisible.
Mulder was handsome, fit, single and had all his hair. To any woman, he was a catch and their infrequent trysts together in bed weren’t enough to keep him from looking for a woman that would provide him with a family, a home and the emotional availability he had been pushing her for.
After he signed the receipt for their goods, Mulder tucked the seeds into his pocket. Danny put the water and other items in the bag and Scully took the receipt out of Mulder’s fingers after Danny gave it to her.
“Are you going to remember where you stuck this?” Scully asked as she slipped the paper into her purse. He shook his head. “Right.”
Mulder put his hand on her shoulder and they walked out of the gas station. His exchange with the young woman had obviously left his memory because he gave her side a squeeze before opening her door for her.
“You’re in a mood,” she commented.
He held the coffee tray for her as she climbed in and closed the door after she took the bag and drinks from him.
He got in next to her and buckled his seatbelt. “It’s not every day I get compliments from the elusive and enigmatic Dana Scully.”
“Here I thought it was the young woman who gave you sex eyes,” she muttered as she fastened her own buckle.
Mulder scoffed as he turned the ignition. “I never.”
“I believe the phrase is ‘I can’t even.’ If you’re going to pick up women that-”
“Scully,” he cut her off with a harsher tone than she was used to from him. He cleared his throat and said softly, “Seriously. Tone it down. She was being nice.”
Maybe she had been spending too much time around Mulder in their downtime and she felt possessive over him without warranted reasons. For good reason, most of their downtime was spent apart. It appeared that a separation suited them better because under the same roof, without the effort they continually put into their marriage, it was strained and too difficult.
“Sorry,” she muttered and took a sip of her coffee. “I just… I thought you were-”
“I wasn’t,” he affirmed and reached across the vehicle to squeeze her knee. “Promise.”
She felt her cheeks pink and patted his hand lightly. Mulder turned his hand over to squeeze her fingers and brought her hand to his lips. He kissed the back of it lightly and the lower part of her belly did a flip.
“Still friends?” he requested with a look a puppy might give its owner after peeing in a pair of shoes.
Scully nodded and pulled her hand back. Mulder donned his sunglasses again but she caught a look of hurt flash through them as they slid up his nose. His coolness was restored and he put the car in drive for them to get to the county jail in time to meet Arkie Seaver.
His interview was only more confusing. It only furthered Scully’s theory of drug and alcohol abuse but he provided the exact location to where he crashed his car.
The bright sunshine of Henrico County was warm on her skin and she felt the nostalgia of spending so many years examining strange evidence on the side of small highways. Mulder had his sunglasses on as he continued to portray the cool man in black - or charcoal grey in his instance. At his age, he wore the suit well and contrasted against the vast wilderness only metres away from them.
“His story makes a lot of sense,” Mulder announced as he approached her.
“Arkie’s double takes control of the wheel,” she repeated, laden with doubt.
“Yeah and then Arkie pumps the breaks with his left foot,” Mulder described as he backed up towards her and pointed to the black streaks of rubber on the asphalt. “Producing the skid marks that start up yonder.”
“Or there’s another explanation of course,” she countered as she walked towards the marks they were arguing over. “Which is that Arkie falls asleep at the wheel, waking up to find that he’s going off the highway, and applying the brakes there.”
“Yeah, but if he was asleep,” Mulder rejoined as he approached from behind. “He wouldn’t have been going at such a dangerous rate of speed.”
“You’re saying you believe him,” she stated with disbelief.
Standing on the side of the road while they examined skid marks was all too familiar. It was a case of I see this theory and you see that theory. Of course, Arkie’s story was so ridiculous that Mulder did believe him. To a point.
“No. I’m just saying that I think the kid is too stupid to make it up,” Mulder argued as he walked past her to get back into their car.
There was truth and facts to Mulder. There was conjecture and wavering states of what could be interpreted. The world was not black and white but many differing shades of a technicolor wheel of possibilities. It was exciting to work with but frustrating at the same time. She wondered if these conversations did more for Mulder than just get his mind working or if he found her strict science to be the wet blanket he once described it as.
From her point of view, he was too obsessive about their work and she was frustrated that he chose the mistress of the paranormal over her time and time again. He called her impossible to please and she called him selfish for only needing her when there was no one else. It didn’t help that they didn’t agree on much else except for trivial things most people had to compromise over. It wasn’t a question of chunky or smooth peanut butter or skim milk or two per cent. They went with smooth and two per cent because he conceded having sharp pieces of nuts on toast or in a sandwich wasn’t enjoyable and she could use the extra fat from the milk. Mulder didn’t like strawberry jam because of the chunks of strawberries frequently found in most jams so they compromised on raspberry. However, when it came to keeping the house at a state of cleanliness that didn’t give her orderly mind anxiety, they came to blows. Mulder was a perpetual slob and he could only make so many attempts at organizing the clutter he collected before he gave up and resented her for making him try.
That didn’t stop them from the occasional sleepover that was less reminiscent of the year they spent as lovers before his abduction. Frequently, she would come to the house with an overnight bag to go over files but sleep in the bedroom across the hall that used to be where she imagined William having a room if they ever found him.
It made them both a little crazy to cohabitate but not have the bravado to make a move past the strained limbo of post-lovers and current partners. Sometimes she felt the electricity of his desire for her so strongly but she couldn’t bring herself to make the first move back to a place that mended every wound they inflicted on each other.
Maybe she had to cut Mulder some slack. He used the wiles of being an attractive man to get what he wanted from women the way some women used their femininity to get what they wanted from men. There was no shame when a friendly waitress was engaging with a table because she did not want to sleep with her customers but appreciated a generous gratuity.
Scully was so used to getting the charming and enticing side all to herself. Law enforcement, particularly the FBI, was still mostly a boys club. When they encountered women, they were usually victims, suspects, doctors or nurses at hospitals they needed something from.
It was rare to encounter women with her credentials. More women were entering science fields but it was harder and harder to recruit a recent medical graduate and convince her to carry a gun, especially when the student loans from medical school were almost suffocating. An entry-level government salary barely covered living expenses.
Realizing that she was being territorial over Mulder without cause, Scully relaxed on their way to the hospital. He used charm and kindness to calm Little Judy down to speak to them. She wondered how he saw a connection to the case immediately through a window from some drawings that looked like strange games of Hangman.
The more they looked into Judy’s drawings, the more sinister and threatening the games seemed. As they drove to the closest diner, Mulder tasked Scully with looking for nearby motels in the area.
Two bottles of beer were set on the table while she scrolled through the Google search results. Mulder slid hers in front of her and ordered a sandwich for them to share.
“No mayo,” she reminded him as he specified the bread.
“Right, no mayo. Just bring it on the side,” he confirmed with a sigh. “Uh, fries and a side salad. Whatever is your healthiest dressing and put that on the side.”
Scully glanced up as he handed the waitress their menus and she caught his lingering stare towards the young woman as she walked away. She looked back down at her phone with a flush to her cheeks but this time she wasn’t feeling fluttery from a simple kiss on her hand.
“What?” he questioned and took a sip of his beer.
Scully looked back down to her phone. “The closest place within the FBI budget is the St. Rachel Motel ten minutes away.”
“You know it’s funny that I can stand outside a hospital while talking about our son and tell you that you’ve never been just anything to me,” Mulder started as he ignored her information. “And you still think that I’m checking out other women as a threat to how I feel about you.”
“So you admit that you were checking out other women,” she commented and he rolled his eyes with a shake of his head.
He looked cool and collected as he draped his arm across the back of the seat and leaned against the wall of the booth. Almost too cool and she knew that if she could just get out of her own head, she could climb across that table and muss his hair up while kissing him for all he was worth. Dana Scully didn’t do such things in public so she was left with pressing her thighs together and sighing in response.
She folded her hands across the table and looked at him plainly. “And how is that?”
“You told me you needed me and I know what you said about us, Scully,” he retorted and took another sip of his drink. “You think I stop feeling how I do because we’re in some fucked up limbo of our own making?"
The waitress returned with their meal and Mulder gave her a tight smile of gratitude. She took the hint and left immediately.
He put a dollop of ketchup on the edge of the plate and slathered the mayo onto his half of the toasted sandwich.
“Mulder… your cholesterol,” she chided as she put on half the dressing provided for her salad.
He took a french fry and scraped off some of the mayo and held it up between two fingers. “You know this tastes good.”
“Fat tastes amazing,” she agreed. “Doesn’t mean I want to eat it and die of a heart attack.”
They paused as they thought of Scully’s deceased mother. Her funeral had been a time they had taken solace in each other. Maggie held a special place in Mulder’s heart too and he had been Scully’s rock throughout her grieving process and after the funeral. He had held her while she cried, made her forget her name with his touch and allowed her to return to work sooner than any person would deem acceptable. He could have very well ordered her to take a week to mourn as per the FBI’s regulations but he sidestepped that protocol so she could distract herself with the case.
“I think you have a much healthier diet than both of your parents did,” Mulder noted as he shook the french fry side to side. "They ate lard out of the can, didn't they? This is a whole other level. It's practically a salad."
Scully’s eyes were drawn to the oil and egg combination on top of the deep fried potato. When she broke it down in her mind by ingredients and process, it sounded awful and distasteful that she didn't want it. As it was for so many things, she could talk herself out of the pleasures of the flesh just as easily.
Just as she could talk herself out of it, she could be easily swayed into it. It was how she found herself in bed with Mulder time and time again. In a bed, on the couch, on a table, in the kitchen or behind a desk… It was all semantics.
As soon as he began to retract his offer, Scully leaned across the narrow table and took a bite of the deep fried potato strip from his fingers. She revelled in the crunch of the food she forbid in her diet and the almost sweetness to the mayonnaise. Just like Mulder, she would have some regrets for the infraction but she could get over it.
“Tease,” he chided her and popped the rest of the fry in his mouth.
“Eat your food,” she ordered and he shook his head with a laugh.
Hopefully the St. Rachel Motel would have rooms on opposite sides of the parking lot.
They finished their meal and Mulder paid the bill with his company card, handing the receipt to Scully before she could remind him. Little changes in Mulder like that gave her hope there was a future for them outside of their work. He thanked the waitress on the way out and held the door for Scully to exit into the cold Virginia night air.
Scully had to remind herself how lonely and needy Mulder could be. He would isolate himself so far in his paranoia but then latch on to the first person who he felt he could trust.
He probably didn’t push her to make a commitment because their lines of who they were to each other weren’t in black and white. Three weeks ago after fighting against duplicitous independent contractors working with Titanpoint, they found it to be a catalyst to another encounter. They spent an hour pushing their wet bodies against one another under the powerful stream of water in their old master suite shower until he finally shuddered and finished inside of her. Since then, they had suffered a strange limbo of unspoken desires and longing.
It wasn’t the same as it was in the beginning. When they first began their romantic interlude, they couldn’t satisfy their cravings for each other enough. For anyone to assume their meetings to appease their desires of the flesh happened few and far between would be incorrect. She wondered if she had developed an addiction to him sexually or him to her. Or was it just so satisfying to finally be able to express the urges they had both suppressed for too long?
After Mulder had tried to kiss her in the hallway outside his apartment, she felt a yearning from him that she was experiencing now. It was a mix of frustration, anger, fear and desire. For her, the fear was that it was a chance missed or an opportunity that wouldn’t arise again to move their relationship into the next stage. Now, it felt like a chance they kept ruining for themselves.
It wasn’t just her holding back. He told her quite frankly after she was discharged from the hospital and cleared for duty that he found her distracting sometimes to the point of almost being annoying. He left her in the office to contemplate that notion while he delivered a report to Skinner’s office. When he returned, they argued about the lack of clarity to their relationship. They needed each other, they wanted to protect each other but they couldn’t function as partners and live together. Something had to give and eventually it would. Until then, she kept her guard up for a signal from him that he was ready to try again and be consistent versus the erratic and less than rational man who had all but driven her from their home.
Mulder’s eagerness to share a space when the St. Rachel Motel manager offered them one unit was worrisome to her. The motel was not unlike many they had visited in the past when circumstances forced them to share a space. In those instances, they had the luck of a king sized bed or two beds to a room or pure exhaustion to take sex out of the equation. Mulder had been yawning but she was well aware of his stamina and endurance after long days.
The hotel clerk caught a look on Scully’s face and reassured her there was a pull out. Thank God for the sisterhood.
“I’m just trying to get some shut eye,” he muttered as the woman walked away.
Scully nodded. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Sometimes her own lies sounded true to her but she could feel Mulder’s gaze on her as she walked in to sign for the room. There was a deep desperation fighting to ignore her hormones as he approached to put the company card down on the desk.
They opened the door to their suite and Mulder looked around the small living room.
“Quaint,” he noted and set his bag down on the dining table in the living room. Mulder pulled the cushions off the seat of the couch and looked at the hopeful bed. “Cozy.”
Scully gave him a look as she walked past him and into the small bedroom. Even if she had considered sharing the bed with Mulder before, the queen sized bed would be too cozy for the both of them. He took up far too much space and she couldn’t sleep next to him with the feelings in her belly pushing her to act upon them.
“Mulder do you want to shower first?” Scully asked as she set her bag on the bed and began unpacking her things.
“Is there only one bathroom here?” he asked as he entered the bedroom as he was loosening his tie. “That’s the opposite of convenient.”
“It is weird,” she commented.
Mulder peeked inside her bathroom. “There’s two doors… oh I see. I’m back in my room.”
“Are you going to shower first?” she repeated.
Mulder entered her bedroom again with three buttons undone on his shirt. “Do you mind? I feel like I can see the smell coming off my skin.”
She stepped towards him a little and gave him a whiff. He mostly smelled of his deodorant, aftershave and his own sweet smell. It bothered her that she appreciated even his sweat.
“You’re fine,” she commented and cleared her throat.
“It’s ripe under here,” he assured her and she waved her hand for him to utilize the shower.
She could hear the sound of the shower as it turned on and steam began to float out from the bathroom into her bedroom. She walked into his area of the suite as a shirtless Mulder was undoing his pants and she saw him standing in the second doorway.
“Sorry,” she conceded quickly and turned around.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” he reminded her and there was a clink and a thud as his pants hit the floor.
The door clicked shut and she walked back to her bed to sit down. He was probably next to naked now and she tried to ignore what was going on in her mind. This was reminiscent of so many years before they consummated their relationship when she had to cool her hormones within the quiet of a hot bath with a washcloth in her mouth to muffle her sounds.
Scully scratched her nails up her thighs and then pressed the pointed tips into her palms. She was a rational person with control over her constitution. She wouldn’t fall prey to her hormones that fluctuated between wanting to kill Mulder for glancing at other women to sitting on his face when he was kind to her.
Mulder exited in a towel with his clothes in one large palm and his abdominal muscles flexing as he ran a hand through his hair with the other.
“All yours,” he said as he walked through the adjoining door into his living room.
Would it have killed him to put on some underwear? she thought with obvious frustration. Or a shirt?
Scully shut her bedroom door and undressed slowly to have a shower as well. She carefully hung her suits and tucked the one she was wearing at the back of the rack before utilizing the shower. She scrubbed the day off her skin with a fresh bar of soap while keeping her hands away from every part of her that wanted to be touched. If she gave in to them in the shower, she might be heard or found by Mulder. Lord knows the man liked to burst into rooms at inopportune times.
She would have to wait and contain her feelings. She was a professional and she had the control to maintain these urges elsewhere.
When she stepped out of the shower and pulled a bottle of lotion from her toiletry bag, a neatly wrapped tampon fell to the floor. Scully tucked the towel tighter around her body and wondered if she packed this knowing it was coming or if she had missed her period.
She walked across the bedroom to retrieve her phone and opened her calendar for this month. She scrolled past to the previous month to see four X’s for the week previous…. She was late.
If she had been fifteen years younger, she might consider that pregnancy was a possibility but this wasn’t that. While she was still enjoying an infrequent sex life, at her age, conception was even less likely than when it happened the first time. As a doctor she knew it could be symptoms of premenopause but it stung, even more, to think of that after today’s events. The gas station attendant that flirted with Mulder, a man twice her age, and the waitress who he gave a longing look to.
Scully put her phone on her bedside table and walked calmly towards the bathroom to finish getting herself ready for bed. She sprayed the dry shampoo through her hair and brushed her locks before donning a pair of black, silky pyjamas.
She looked down at the material as the buttons slipped through the eyelets to fasten the shirt closed. The ticking of the clock on the wall beat in unison to her own heart.
Mulder knocked on her door one last time as she was approaching the bed and he entered as she was reaching for it. The familiarity threw her off.
“Hey, I’m just hitting the hay,” he said as he pointed over his shoulder.
Scully let out a slow breath. “I’ll see you in the morning, Mulder.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher and then grinned briefly. “Good night.”
The door swung closed and she could hear the groan of the pull-out couch springs as he laid down on it.
“Ninth run for the Yankees!” the television blared through the wall and she could hear him restlessly trying to find some sleep through the white noise of the crowd cheering.
What was she waiting for to be happy? Would the world have to end before she realized there was time missed with Mulder?
She had the sinking thought that waiting for her might not be what he wanted anymore. A younger woman could satisfy the basic biological need for a man to spread his genes and pass on his name. Females were typically categorized as wanting a family whereas males had the desire to expand their DNA among as many able-bodied women as possible.
In previous years, Mulder worried he was holding Scully back from a chance at motherhood and happiness. Scully now worried she was keeping them from moving forward with their lives because of their infrequent dabbles into the pleasures of the flesh.
It was now after midnight and nothing could be solved tonight. She would have to sleep and hope that her desires would tamper in the morning after a solid nights rest.