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Scully startles when she hears the knock at her door. It’s 10pm and her suit has long been replaced by flannel pajama pants and a loose t-shirt. Three gentle raps of knuckles against the hardwood, tap tap tap, and she knows who stands on the other side. That’s his knock. It’s hours past the time when it would be considered appropriate to have your colleague over for a visit, but they’d strayed past the line between appropriate and inappropriate years ago. Hell, she wonders if that line ever really existed for them in the first place.
From the comfort of her couch, she glances at the clock and purses her lips. 10pm is early for him. She wonders if he’s been drinking. With a sigh, she crosses the floor and opens the door.
“You’re awake,” he says as he gently pushes past her and into her apartment.
He smells of Irish Spring soap and the aroma of the margherita pizza in his hand. She can't help but salivate at the thought of the garlic and basil. “You’re sober.”
He sets the box on the table and shrugs. “Our flights board at 10:13 tomorrow morning.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
“I’m swapping the whiskey for mozzarella tonight.”
She eyes him suspiciously. She isn’t sure what’s warranted this late night dinner, but there isn’t much she’s sure of lately when it comes to the two of them. Or is it three of them? With Fowley making her entrance back into his life, *their lives*, Scully is having a hard time deciphering if she and Mulder are in the same book, let alone on the same page.
“Where are we going?” she asks, pulling plates from the cupboard and shoving her feelings aside. Tired and now hungry, she doesn’t have the energy to attempt to crack the code of their relationship. He dances behind her to grab two water glasses, their feet familiar with the steps of maneuvering around each other in her kitchen. “I didn’t see a casefile on the desk, and the projector wasn’t loaded with new slides.”
“San Diego County, California.”
They settle at her dining table and Mulder barely has their glasses of water poured when she takes her first bite. She must have hummed a bit as the taste flooded her mouth, judging by the look of amusement on Mulder’s face. She ignores it.
“Remind me what’s in California.”
“The Falls of Arcadia,” Mulder responds around a bite. At the corner of his mouth is an errant drop of sauce, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to take her eyes off of it. She zeroes in, watching as his lips continue to move, but she hears nothing. It wouldn’t be completely out of character for her to simply reach forward and swipe the sauce away with the pad of her thumb. It might raise a flag, however, if she leaned forward and licked it away. Her tongue twitches against the roof of her mouth as she imagines the feeling of his stubble, the taste of his lips.
She’s pondered this for the last few weeks, wondering what he’d taste like. Sweet from the sugar in his morning coffee, she guesses, but the sunflower seeds would suggest a salty bite. She wonders how his tongue would feel against hers, what it would feel to take his bottom lip between her teeth. These thoughts circle her brain, endlessly day after day. It’s become nearly uncontrollable.
The moment in his hallway ruined everything.
For five years they managed to walk a straight line, to bump through life as partners, keeping everything platonic and friendly. Her thoughts of him didn’t go beyond the case at hand, his beautiful mind and its theories, and the strong bond they had forged through all of the trauma they’d both suffered. They were friends. Best friends. It worked well for both of them, she thought. They’d both accepted that this life was the life that they’d chosen. It was the life they were going to live for the foreseeable future.
And then Antarctica happened. And her almost transfer to Salt Lake City and their almost kiss.
“The Klines disappearance…” he continues.
At first she thought she could ignore it- they both could. Simply pretend it hadn’t happened.
But the smell of his cologne reminded her of how he’d gripped the back of her neck, and suddenly she was back in that hallway and she could feel the heat from his breath on her lips all over again. It was a short amount of time before she had to admit to herself that she was wrong. There was no pretending they hadn’t nearly kissed and certainly no going back in time to change anything.
For the last few months, she’s allowed herself to indulge in the occasional fantasy. When he’d told her he loved her in the hospital after that ship incident in the Bermuda Triangle, she lay in bed that night and pretended that he meant it. She let herself lay in the warmth of that love, curl into it like it was her favorite sweater, worn around the edges with wear, but still strong and The comfort that it brought her tugged at the corners of her lips. Even knowing reality would wipe it from her face in the morning, she fell asleep smiling.
She’s found herself wondering how he kisses- is it slow and deep? Would he wrap his fingers in her hair, gripping it as his tongue slips along hers? Does he moan? He moans, she’s sure of it, and if she concentrates, she is able to imagine the vibration of it against her lips.
He’s the type to nibble along her collarbone, using his teeth to map the distance to the tender skin behind her ear. She imagines his hot breath dancing across her skin, tickling her until nothing but gooseflesh remains. He smothers her with himself, every inch of her- all she feels is him. His breath, his lips, his hands, his body. She can hardly breathe, suffocated. What a lovely way to die.
Jesus.
“Are you ok with that?” she hears him ask.
God, yes, she thinks.
“Scully?”
Wait. Shit.
“Yeah,” she utters quickly.
“Did you even hear me?”
She glances at him, and she sees that he’s watching her intently. His plate is clean, save for a few pieces of crust and crumbs. When had he finished his food? What was he rambling on about? Work. California. She clears her throat. “The Klines?”
He nods, slowly. “...David and Nancy Kline went missing, yeah. And skinner called,” he adds. Then, “Tonight.” He pauses for a second then chuckles. “Were you listening to anything I said?”
“I, uh…” she shrugs. Caught red handed. Is she blushing? Christ, she’s probably blushing.
“Are you feeling ok? You barely touched your pizza.”
“I’m fine,” she responds, and places her napkin over her plate. Suddenly, she’s not very hungry. She takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, trying to force her libido to a dull roar. “Repeat what you were saying.”
He stares at her.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention, Mulder,” she offers. “Please repeat what you were saying.”
“Is this because I don’t have the projector? We could always head to the office-”
“Mulder.”
“The Falls of Arcadia, San Diego County. The offer was accepted, and the house was acquired by the Bureau. We move in tomorrow, late afternoon. I got us early flights, so that we could meet up with the local P.D. beforehand.”
How could she be so careless? Foolish. Jesus, she can barely recognize herself anymore. She’s sure that if she looked in the mirror right now, she’d see teenage Dana with braces and raging hormones, not her adult, proper self.
Get a fucking grip, she tells herself. You’re an adult woman. Act like it.
“That’s fine,” she says. She gathers the plates from dinner and walks them into the kitchen. Good, yeah, she thinks. Maybe some distance between them will help-
He follows behind her, and she can feel his body heat radiating up her back when he tucks the pizza box in the refrigerator, then pulls out a bottle of cabernet. His skin against hers would feel like she’d been set aflame, burning with the passion of-
Stop it. She snags two glasses from the cupboard, and hurries to the couch. “I still think it’s…interesting that we need to go undercover as a married couple. It sounds like a romance novel trope. Or a piece of that fanfiction.”
“It was a married couple that went missing,” Mulder says, then takes a sip of his wine. “What’s ridiculous about us playing the same role?”
Scully leans into the far end of the couch, tucking one of her legs under the other, and brings her glass to her lips. If Mulder has anything to say about the fact that she is chugging her glass of cabernet and then pouring herself a second, he chooses to stay mute. Even his face stays neutral. Smart boy. “That’s not the ridiculous part.”
“Then what?”
“You don’t find it interesting that we are the ones who were given this assignment? To play the part of a married couple?”
He shrugs. “It could be fun.”
Scully feels the corners of her mouth twitch and the smile comes with an easiness that only alcohol can provide. She touches the glass to her mouth, sliding it along her bottom lip, and then takes a long pull. Undercover married. It would be almost too easy for them to fall into the roles of husband and wife; they’d been perfecting the art of marriage for the last six years. All that’s really missing is the fake names and some public displays of affection. Pretend hand holding, pretend snuggling on the couch, pretend kissing. As she drains her second glass of wine, she wonders if she could convince Rob Petrie to pretend go down on her, in the name of husbandly duties and all that. “It could be,” she agrees.
“We can be the Petries.”
Scully’s eyebrow rises. “Like the dish?”
“Rob and Laura.”
“Ah,” she says with a nod. “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
“I wonder if we can rent a kid actor to play Ritchie,” he says with his glass to his mouth, and his voice muffles into the glass.
“I don’t think we could get Skinner to sign off on that expense.”
Mulder lifts his feet to the coffee table, crossinghis legs at the ankles. “Rob and Laura Petrie. I’m a stay at home husband who is attempting to write the next Great American Novel, and you’re the breadwinner.”
“Sounds believable.”
“It’s the 90’s. Husbands are staying home all the time. Gender role reversal and all that.”
“Right,” Scully agrees. She pours herself a third glass of Cabernet, then drains the little drops that remain of the bottle into Mulder’s glass.
“The Petries when we are out in the open, ourselves behind closed doors,” he continues. ”We can just move all of our equipment in on moving day, disguise it all as fine china and whatever else in the boxes. Easy-peasy. The way I see it, we should be able to bounce back and forth with ease.”
Bounce? She’d like to bounce on his dick like a rubber ball on a concrete floor. She disguises her giggle by clearing her throat. “How, uh. How did we meet?”
“UFO conference,” Mulder answers immediately, and Scully laughs. “Seriously.” She laughs harder. “No, I’m serious, Scully. It’s not funny, it’s charming- how much wine have you had? Did you drink that whole bottle?”
“We are trying to blend in,” Scully argues. “We met in college. Abnormal psychology. You spoke in front of the class about personality disorders, we locked eyes, and that was it. Love at first sight.”
Mulder gasps. “ Why, Scully, who knew you were such a romantic?”
“We married after graduation,” she continues. “No children. We will be celebrating our ten year anniversary soon.”
“It sounds like you’ve thought about this.”
“We are going on a cruise to celebrate. Caribbean. We could use a nice break from life and the sandy beaches are calling to us.”
Mulder smiles. “What do we do for fun?”
“Besides going on cruises?”
He nods.
She chews on her bottom lip, thinking for a moment. “We like concerts- classic rock at outdoor venues. We like to think we enjoy going on long hikes, but we don’t. Every Wednesday night we go to this little mexican restaurant and eat bottomless tacos and get drunk off cheap tequila.”
“Thursday mornings must be tough,” he says with a chuckle. “We have a standing movie date every Sunday- a matinee. We always fight about what we’re going to see, but I always let you win because your movie choice is always better. Then we come home and relax in bed for the rest of the evening.”
“And watch trashy tv.”
“While eating junk food.”
“No phones or email,” she says.
“Just us and our bed.”
“And sex,” she adds, and immediately regrets it. Shit. Too much wine, she’s had too much wine. She isn’t sure if the heat she feels pinking her cheeks is the wine or her blushing. Probably both.
“Lots of sex,” he says in agreement, and she’s flooded with relief. He reaches his glass over and clinks it against hers. “Cheers to the Petries and their happy marriage.”
“Cheers.”
She watches as Mulder glances at the clock, then stands. “It’s getting late. I should probably head out.”
“Right,” she agrees, getting to her feet as well. “Of course.”
She wants to ask him to stay, to take him by the hand and pull him to her room. She wants to show him her knowledge of the human body using nothing but her tongue, to taste her name on his lips when he’s inside of her, and to hear what he sounds like when he cums. But she doesn’t. Instead, she follows him to the door, and smiles when he says he’ll see her tomorrow, closing the door behind him.