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I’m sorry for your loss.
The phrase leaves a sour taste on his tongue, hollows out a deepening pit in his stomach. Mulder blinks through it, his teeth drawing blood where he bites down on his inner cheek.
Scully is not lost.
You don’t lose a person like you lose your keys in the sofa, or your wallet in the back seat, or money on a bad bet.
Scully is not lost, and yet she is gone, slipped through his fingers like ice in the summer heat.
The sound of gunshots sends Mulder running from the basement, taking two steps at a time in his haste.
His gun is brandished as he barrels through his front door, not quite sure what he's expecting. Padgett’s accomplice to be lying somewhere in his apartment, taken down by his partner. The man dead, or wounded, and Scully standing there to tell him what’s happened, maybe.
What he’s not expecting, however, is Scully to be the one sprawled on his living room floor.
His heart bottoms out in his stomach as he rushes over to her; his breath hitches, catches painfully somewhere along his ribs on its way out.
“Scully?” The sound of his voice is barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears. He’s not sure if he's said anything at all or if what’s escaped his throat was a strangled puff of air.
She’s so still, and he stares intently at her, waiting for—almost willing—movement; anything, even the faintest twitch of a finger, a flutter of her lashes.
Blood covers her chest, pools sickeningly at her neck. What was once a white blouse is now stained crimson, the buttons slippery, slick with Scully’s blood. He doesn't touch her. His hands hover in limbo above her torso, frozen, terrified. He doesn’t want to press his shaky fingers to her skin, doesn't want to find it cold to the touch.
Shaking his head, Mulder snaps himself out of it. With blurry eyes, his heart clamoring against his sternum, he does it—gently, almost reverently, he brushes the back of his hand against her cheek.
Warm. Not cold.
Scully’s skin is warm.
Warmwarmwarm. He repeats it like a mantra as he checks for a pulse, praying she’s just knocked out, unconscious, subdued.
With each passing second he waits for her to come to, to suddenly gasp for air, to open her eyes and tell him that she’s fine, just like every other time. She’s Scully, and Scully is always fine, even when she’s not. Especially when she's not.
But there's nothing; no pulse, not even the faint murmur of one, and Scully does not miraculously lift herself from the floor.
Mulder chokes on a sob and swallows it down. He’s wasted far too many precious seconds already. He rips open her blouse carefully but quickly, his fingers staining almost immediately; he's idly aware of one reddened button popping off. He thinks he can hear it rolling across the floor somewhere behind him.
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“Come on, Scully.”
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“Scully,” he hiccups, her name like a prayer on his lips. He’ll pray, he swears he’ll pray every single night without fail if God just gives him this one thing first. “Scully, please.”
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
He doesn’t hear the commotion coming from his hallway, or the clamber of footsteps behind him, or the barked orders coming from a man they both know well. Mulder hears nothing except the little voice in his brain alternating between ScullyScullyScully and 30 compressions, 2 breaths. There's no space in between for anything else.
A hand on his shoulder jolts him, makes him lose his count.
“Mulder.”
Skinner?
“Mulder, you have to stop,” he’s told, and no, it can’t be Skinner, because Skinner would never tell him to stop trying to save Scully’s life.
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“Mulder,” more stern now. The hand on his shoulder yanks and Mulder falls back onto his haunches.
“What the hell are you doing!” he screams, his throat tight. He shoves Skinner away, swatting at his outstretched arms, and returns to Scully.
Skinner’s on his knees now. “I’m trying to help you,” he says, low. Somber. “You can’t do this.”
He tips Scully's head back, pinches her nose, and breathes twice. "Funny, because I am."
"Mulder..."
“If you want to help, tell them to do their job,” Mulder spits, eyeing the EMTs briefly, though they continue to stand around and do nothing. Useless.
“She’s gone.” Mulder’s throat closes completely. A strangled noise slips past his lips as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Mulder.”
Mulder stops. He stares down at his hands, red with Scully’s blood. His fingers stick together.
He stares down past his hands. Scully.
Scully is also red. Her hair, bright and fanned out around her head. Like a halo, he thinks. Her chest, stained. Her fingers, he notices now, are also red, covered in her own blood, like she’d tried to fend off her attacker as he stole her last breaths.
He wonders if she screamed, for him or at all. The thought makes him nauseous and he dry heaves.
His hands begin to shake uncontrollably, any calm provided by their task of reviving Scully now gone. He doesn’t know if Skinner is still beside him. He doesn’t care. Scully is still in front of him and he raises an unsteady hand to brush a piece of hair from her face. He tucks it behind her ear and it’s the familiar motion that breaks the dam.
Sobbing now, he pulls Scully’s limp body into his chest, burrowing his face into her neck. He wills her to wake up. To get up. To move, to breathe, to look at him, to come back.
Please, please, please.
“Scully,” he croaks, the sound foreign to his own ears. He presses a chaste kiss to her cheek, to her forehead; his fingers grip at the back of her head, gathering her hair.
He doesn’t know how long he stays in this position. He doesn’t know how long it's been when Skinner finally uncurls him from her body, peeling him up off the floor like a child, or when the man forces him into a crushing hug, a wordless sharing of a mutual sadness.
He doesn’t know when they wheel her away, or when the EMTs' muddled I'm sorry for your loss sentiments float through the stillness, though he supposes he has to be grateful that he blacks out and misses the part where they put her into a body bag. He doesn’t think he’d have been able to handle that.
Scully’s blood is staining his living room carpet, the darkened spot a reminder of the life she lost, of the life he lost.
How is he supposed to stay here in his apartment? How is he supposed to live and breathe and sleep fifteen feet away from where Scully’s blood continues to seep into the fabric of his rug?
His eyes blur; he doesn’t think he’s seen clearly since he opened the door hours ago. He just assumes it's been a few hours, though he's unsure, hasn't looked at a clock. His throat burns with the effort of biting back full-body sobs. Her blood is still beneath his nails.
“Mulder.” He nearly jumps out of his skin. For a second, he hears her; for a second, it's Scully calling his name, alive and well. For a split second, it's all a trick after all. “I need you to get some sleep.”
Through his glassy vision he sees Skinner, the man he assumed left with Scully’s body an indeterminate amount of time ago.
Mulder wonders how Skinner even knew to show up, how the EMTs arrived so quickly. His thoughts were on Scully, not calling it in; his neighbors know he's FBI, so logic dictates one of them must have called the cops when the first of the gunshots went off. Scully's gunshots, firing at Padgett's unknown accomplice, the bullets from which are now embedded into his walls.
Just another reminder.
“Can you sleep right now?” he counters, voice thready as he stares defiantly up at his boss. With his eyes damp, red around the rims, he knows the look falls flat.
“I cared about her too.”
But it’s different, isn’t it. Skinner’s care for Scully and his own. Everything about he and Scully was different.
“Leave me alone, Skinner.”
Skinner sighs, though it comes out something like a grumble. “I can’t do that.”
Mulder lets out a humorless laugh. “Why, you think I'll do something stupid?”
Skinner stares at him, lips pulled into a flat line, and Mulder knows. He thinks the worry has been a nagging little thing in the back of Skinner's mind with each close-call, at least ever since it became abundantly clear to people other than himself just what Scully means to him.
What’s a little more blood on his living room floor? It’s a morbid thought, but it pokes through the dense fog regardless.
Without Scully… without Scully the x-files just don’t seem as important. It sounds ridiculous to say about what's become his life's work, but since the day she walked through that basement door it's been them. They're not the x-files, not really, without Scully and her voice of reason, her challenges.
He doesn’t know who he is without her anymore; it should terrify him, how utterly intertwined their lives are to him now, but it feels all at once less like a thought and more like a fact. His life can be split into two distinct camps: before Scully and after Scully. Mulder is not the same man he was pre-Scully, and although he's spent many a night in the past six years wondering why the hell she hasn't left yet, like all the others, he's never seriously envisioned a future without her in it.
He doesn’t know who he would be post-Scully; he doesn’t want to find out.
“I’m sorry,” Skinner says again.
Mulder doesn’t remember how he gets into his bed; this stupid water bed, sloshing around beneath his weight. His pillow is wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying. He doesn’t want to sleep, can’t bear the possibility of dreaming about Scully, but the emotional toll of the day creeps up and the darkness beckons him, sings him a sweet lullaby.
It sounds like her.
Mulder wakes with a start, gasping for air. He’s drenched in sweat, his shirt clinging to his damp skin, and his hands are gripped tightly in the comforter.
The room is near-black, the only glow shining in through his curtains coming from a faraway streetlight. It’s late, or perhaps it's ungodly early. When he squints over at his alarm clock, the red, blocky numbers read 4:27. Blinking in the darkness, he exhales a long breath before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
Vague remnants of a dream plague him, but he can’t place them.
As he tugs his moistened t-shirt off, he fumbles around blindly in his second drawer for another one. With one arm free from its sweaty confines, he stops abruptly, the memory knocking the wind out of him.
Scully.
Mulder slides clumsily down to the floor, back against the dresser, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He liked it better when he was asleep, blissfully unaware.
It’s 4:33 in the morning and Scully is still dead.
He's not sure know how long he sits there, immobile, half-dressed and unable to rid his mind of her. The image of her limp body, her red-stained chest, her hair fanned out, almost blending in with the blood soaking into his carpet. Her fingers, her nails, stained red.
Nails. His nails.
His eyes trail down as he inspects his own fingertips as best as he can in the dark. He picks at them; dry, not sticky. Furrowing a brow, he brings his fingers up to his face, just in front of his line of sight. He squints.
Clean.
Scully’s blood is no longer caked beneath his nails.
He must’ve washed his hands before crawling into bed. Though he doesn’t recall doing so, he doesn’t remember getting into bed at all, either. Trauma messes with memory, he knows this. He's no stranger to the occurrence.
His throat is dry, and he pushes himself from the floor long enough to peel the sodden shirt fully off, toss it to the floor with a rough flick of his wrist, and drag himself into the kitchen for a glass of water. He makes quick work of swallowing it down so he can get back to sleep, back to a dreamless world where Scully’s alive, where she wasn't killed on his living room floor.
He has to move, he already knows. He can’t stay here. He has to rip up the carpeting, burn it.
His carpet.
On his way back to his bedroom, he notices it. The blood stain, or lack thereof. Scully’s blood is no longer a dark puddle on his rug. Did Skinner somehow get it cleaned before he left? Maybe he thought living without the stain would make it easier to live without Scully. Maybe he left and came back to clean it. He doesn’t remember the man coming or going.
He still has to burn it.
Taking a shuddering breath, Mulder forces himself away from the living room and back into his bedroom. A chill hits his bare skin and he rummages around in his drawer once more, plucks out a clean shirt. He tries to pull it over his head as he walks but it won’t budge, the neck hole far too small.
He sits on the edge of his bed and peers at the fabric, but his unfocused eyes won’t settle. It doesn’t matter, though, because he can smell it now. All encompassing.
It’s Scully’s shirt, and he immediately knows exactly which one it is. It’s black, long sleeves, unassuming. She’d worn it over to his apartment one evening, months ago; she’d spilled a glass of water, the front completely soaked, and he had given her one of his old Knicks t-shirts to change into. Her shirt was folded and placed on the edge of his couch, only to be forgotten when Scully left later that night.
He still has it, kept it folded and eventually put into his own dresser so as to get it out of his living room. She never asked for it back, and he liked having a piece of her here at all times. It still smells faintly of her perfume, the one she wears most days, a subtle floral note. He holds the shirt close, breathing in her scent until it’s burning in his nose.
His fingers have a vice grip on it now, his mouth open on a silent cry as he hugs Scully’s shirt to his chest. Curling back onto his bed, he lies against his pillow, clutching onto the cotton and the memories it holds.
An anguished noise breaks free as his eyes close, the exhale sounding suspiciously like her name.
Mulder doesn’t go in to work, not yet ready to go back down into the basement knowing Scully won’t be there. He knows Skinner will understand.
His phone rings but he doesn’t answer any of the calls. It’ll be more of the same, I’m sorry for your loss, and he can’t take it, can’t bear to hear another person solidify the fact that Scully is gone, lost, dead.
Deaddeaddead.
He doesn’t know what time it is, hasn’t left his bed all day except to go to the bathroom and drink a glass of water every few hours so he doesn’t dehydrate and shrivel up.
If Scully was here he's sure she’d rattle off some scientific fact about what really happens when you’re dehydrated. You wouldn’t shrivel up, Mulder, he can hear her. It makes him smile, her voice in his head. He wonders, horrified, if a time will come when he can no longer hear it.
He grips her shirt tighter to his bare chest.
His phone rings a few more times throughout the day, and after the sixth unanswered call he gets up and rips the cord from the wall. He can't decide if the silence is peaceful or unsettling.
All at once it's dark again, and he doesn’t know if he’s fallen asleep or if he’s been staring at his ceiling so long time has simply passed by. Craning his neck, he sees that it’s nearly 8:30.
When he hears the sound of his front door closing—a minute later or ten or maybe thirty—his heart ping-pongs in his chest.
“Skinner, go away,” he calls out. His voice is rough, like sandpaper. “I didn’t do anything stupid, so consider me sufficiently checked up on.”
“Mulder?”
His breath lodges itself in his throat.
“Are you here?”
It’s her voice again, but it’s impossible.
It’s impossible—until she’s there, standing in the open doorway to his bedroom. He’s hallucinating now, too. God, man, get it together.
“Mulder?” the hallucination asks, concerned. Could a hallucination so readily supply Scully’s signature single-brow-raise?
He thinks he stops breathing all together. His eyes are wide as he stares at her, tears flooding his vision until she disappears completely. It's for the best, he decides; he’s only dreaming, a cruel, beautiful dream.
And then her footsteps—hers, because he's been able to pick out her footfall from a mile away since the third month of their partnership—come closer, and there’s a dip in his mattress, and there are hands on his knee. His skin tingles beneath her touch.
“Mulder,” she says again, so close, so real. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Blinking away fresh tears, he's able to see her. His voice betrays him with a crack around her name. "Scully?"
She’s staring back at him with those eyes of hers, so expressive, so bright, so alive, and he lunges forward, encasing her in a hug so tight she gasps with it. His hands grip at her back for a moment before one finds purchase at the base of her neck, the other gathering into her hair.
Scully pulls away and he panics, afraid to let go, afraid if he doesn't have a grounding touch on her she’ll vanish.
But then she’s still here; still sitting on his bed, still regarding him with such worry that he laughs. He laughs, a little hysterical, before a wide smile blooms on his tear-soaked face. His eyes are puffy as he looks at her, the tears now of hesitant relief.
Mulder pulls her back in and she goes willingly. “You’re alive,” he breathes, so quietly into her neck.
She tenses as soon as the words are out, hanging between them.
“What? Mulder, look at me.”
It takes a second but allows himself to be pried away. He looks at her then, everywhere. Her eyes, assessing him so carefully, unease displayed clearly; her lips, pulled into a line; her chest, covered in a simple white blouse but devoid of any blood; her hands, one still poised on his shoulders, the other resting again on his knee.
“You died,” he murmurs, unable to keep the awe from his voice as he takes her in. “Padgett’s accomplice, Scully, he—he ripped your heart out.”
Realization dawns on her then, face softening, concern morphing into understanding. “What happened?”
Mulder swallows around the lump in his throat, averting his gaze. It's still difficult to process, the knowledge that it was all in his head, all simply a culmination of his unspoken worries upon finding Scully last night, motionless, the terror that he was too late. He knows this now, the living, breathing evidence of the fact right in front of his face, but it felt so… real.
He can still feel the gut-wrenching sadness of his dream-self, can still feel her blood sticky on his fingers. Glancing down at the digits in question, he forces himself to remember it was never there.
“It happened like it did,” he says, running a hand down his tired face. “I heard the gunshots, I ran up here, I found you on the floor. Only this time you didn’t wake up.”
There was no sudden arousal, no gasp, no stutter of her heart.
"Oh, Mulder." The hand on his shoulder squeezes in support. “You can talk about it, if you want.”
Part of him wants to, but a larger, more irrational part of him doesn't, afraid that speaking it into existence will somehow make it real. It's an insane thought, even by his own standards, but the images are so fresh in his mind, so much more like actual memories than a simple figment of his imagination.
“It’s stupid,” he mutters on an exhale. “I’m sorry you had to come over here, Scully.”
“Don’t do that.” Her voice is quiet but firm. She tugs on his hand, cradling the fingers that aren’t coated in her blood but very well could have been. “Don’t close off.”
“I should’ve done that from the start.” The words spill from his lips before he can think better of them. She looks at him, forehead creased. “You could’ve died because of me, Scully. Last night was just another tick on a long list of harms you've experienced because of me, because of my own family trauma, my own personal crusade. You never asked to be thrown into this, and maybe if it hadn’t been for me—”
Scully stops him with a harsh squeeze of his hand. The bones crush together and he startles with the pain.
“Stop it,” she says, forcing him to look at her. “When I had my cancer," His eyes fall closed involuntarily at the mention, "I told you that even if I knew for certain, I wouldn’t change a day.”
“Sure, Scully, but—”
“I wouldn’t change a day." She repeats the sentiment emphatically. “Except for that Flukeman thing; I still could’ve lived without that one just fine.”
Her lips quirk at that, and he can’t help but return the gesture.
“I could’ve lived without that, too,” he laughs a little, a faint huff. “Not without you, though, Scully. Never without you.”
Staring into her eyes, he begs her to understand. Her face shifts, eyes gleaming even in the dull barely-light of his bedroom. Her mouth curls into a sad smile, sad for him, and he wants to wipe it away with a brush of his thumb. She's collected enough sadness because of him.
“I’m right here, Mulder." It's a promise; she lifts their joined hands to her chest, pressing his palm just above her left breast. His breath snags on a shard of his own cracking heart, and he chokes on whatever he was going to say.
Her heartbeat is strong beneath his hand, tangible proof that she’s here with him, alive. He counts the beats as they come and begs the voice in his head to stop counting to the tune of 30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“It was so real,” he rasps, leaning forward until his forehead rests against hers. “It was so real, Scully. I did CPR but you were gone, I held your body in my arms, I… your blood soaked into my rug, and I remember telling myself I had to rip it to shreds, I had to burn it. I was going to move.”
“Move?”
It's obvious, he thinks.
“I wouldn’t be able to live in the apartment you died in.”
There are a few quiet moments between them, foreheads pressed together, Mulder’s hand still placed gently against Scully’s beating heart. It’s reassuring, and the longer he’s here with her, touching her, the more the nightmarish images slowly begin to recede.
“I’m sorry about your rug.”
It surprises him and he laughs, a loud and unexpected sound, and when he pulls back she’s grinning at him. Oh, he loves her; he knows it so confidently in this moment, her cheek cradled in his palm. She leans into the touch. He knows it right now, just as he’s known it for a long while, though unable to say it out loud.
Mulder wants to. He wants to tell her how much he loves her; how badly her imagined loss wrecked him and how a real loss would shatter him; how he never wants to let her go; how he wants nothing more than to grow old with her, the two of them bickering in rocking chairs. She'll always win the non-argument and he'll smile as she does. He wants to lean down and press a soft kiss to her full lips, to breathe his love into them, but now isn’t the time.
He refuses to leave any room for doubt, to allow for the possibility that she'll believe he's only saying it as a knee-jerk reaction to almost losing her, to thinking he did lose her.
He drags her closer, pulling her into a tight hold. “I’d choose you over the rug any day, Scully,” he muses into her hair. She chuckles and then winces, Mulder recognizing the tell-tale sign of a pained gasp. "Scully?"
"It's nothing—"
"Shit, I'm sorry, your ribs—" Mulder lets her go at once, jolting away as if he's been burned. "I'm so sorry."
Her death might've been a nightmare, but the bruises blooming along her ribs from her encounter last night are real.
"I'm fine," she says, already dragging him back toward her. "It's just sore. They're bruised, not broken."
He gently skims the expanse of her ribs, over her blouse but beneath the suit jacket, careful to keep his touch feather-light. He can't see the bruises, the angry splotches of discoloration marring her pale skin, but knowing they're there is enough to bring the anger bubbling back. Scully's soft touch, the curl of her fingers around his, brings him back.
They’re quiet for a long moment, and then: “You should get some sleep.”
Mulder doesn’t have the slightest clue what time it is anymore, doesn’t know how long it’s been since she walked into his room. Exhaustion weighs on his body, a bone-deep kind of weariness settling in, but he’s not sure he wants to chance sleep.
The last time he went to sleep, his unconscious mind convinced him Scully was dead.
“Not sure I’m ready for that yet,” he sighs, honest. “I can’t—I won't go through that again, Scully.”
“You still need rest." Her eyes trace the lines of his face. “You look like hell.”
“Ouch. You sure know how to make a man feel good.”
Scully rolls her eyes and stands from the bed. She reaches over to grab at the corner of his comforter, and then she holds it up like a tent. “Get in.”
“Are you tucking me in right now?”
“Yes. Now swing your legs back onto the bed and get in.”
The edges of his mouth lifting ever-so-slightly, he does as he’s told. When he’s comfortable she pulls the blanket up to his shoulders, doing everything short of tucking in the sides to burrito him into the bed.
She stands back, admiring her handiwork, and he thinks she’s going to leave then. He wants to ask her to stay, at least until he falls asleep, or maybe to keep him company so he doesn’t have to sleep at all, but he can't bring himself to form the question.
Scully surprises him, though, by shimmying out of her suit jacket and placing it carefully across the chair in the corner of the room. Mulder watches as she hesitates for a few seconds; mind seemingly made up, she walks along the foot of the bed, rounds it, and lifts the other side of the comforter before crawling in.
He’s staring at her, mouth open, when she levels him with a soft smile.
“I thought it might help.” She speaks quietly, almost self-conscious. “If I’m here, I mean. If you have the nightmare again, I’ll be here to show you it’s not real.”
He could cry; he wants to, overtaken with gratitude and love for her over the simple gesture, but he doesn't think there are any tears left.
“You’re probably exhausted,” is what he settles for. “I can’t make you stay here because I might wake up in the middle of the night thinking you’re dead.”
“You’re not asking, I’m insisting.” She scrambles further into the blanket, laying on her back with the edges pulled to her chest. Scully beside him right now, fully in her work suit sans jacket, is not at all how he’d expected her first time in his bed to go. “Besides, if I’m that tired I’ll fall asleep. This is a bed.” She pauses. “Kind of, mostly.”
He laughs, nodding against his pillow. “This damn water bed.”
“It has character,” she decides, deliberately shifting her weight to make the bed shake. She snorts. “And we don’t even have to put any money in the magic fingers.”
If this were a normal night—though a normal night wouldn't include Scully in his bedroom, let alone his bed—he might make a joke, a teasing quip of I've got some magic fingers, but he won’t ruin the sweetness of the moment with a cheap sexual innuendo. Even if she did absolutely walk right into it.
He decides on a genuine, “thank you, Scully," instead.
They lay there, side by side: Scully staring at the ceiling with her arms crossed behind her head, Mulder on his back at first but eventually turning onto his side, facing her.
“What are you thinking about?”
Turning toward him, she absentmindedly licks at her lips. “Why didn’t you answer your phone all day?” she asks. “Skinner tried, I tried. More than once. I was worried.”
“I thought it was more people calling to tell me they were sorry for my loss. I’d heard it enough, or at least I was under the impression that I had. I couldn’t take any more.”
She nods, thoughtful. “You’d have realized I wasn’t dead if you came to work.”
“I thought you were dead, Scully. I couldn’t bear the thought of going down to our office and finding it empty, knowing you’d never walk through that door.”
She looks at him like he’s just said something groundbreaking and he doesn’t quite understand it; does she think he’d have no reaction to her death? Surely not.
Quiet, Scully reaches over and grabs his right hand, gently tugging him forward. “Come here.”
He goes where she rolls him, but she doesn’t let go when he assumes she will. She scoots back, swiveling onto her left side and tugging until she’s able to drape his arm over her torso. Scully's back is flush to his chest now and he instinctively holds his breath, scared to break the spell. She presses his palm to the spot above her heart again; his eyes fall closed at the contact.
“Scully...”
“I’m right here,” she murmurs softly.
His heart races in his chest, thumping roughly against his ribs; he's overwhelmed by the closeness, the intimacy of it all. She’s warm in his arms, alivealivealive, and her hand feels so tiny where it covers his own. Her heart beat is steady and strong, fluttering like a bird against his palm.
The thought of drifting off to sleep isn’t so daunting with Scully here with him, her chest rising and falling with the soft cadence of her breaths.
“Mulder?” He hums, eyes still closed. “If it hadn’t been for you... I’d be stuck. In a career that doesn’t challenge me, in a long-term relationship that’s going nowhere, in my beliefs.”
“I don’t think any of that’s true.”
His voice sounds so loud in the stillness of the room.
“You know I was an instructor at the academy up until I was assigned to you. Teaching is rewarding, don't get me wrong, but it’s the same thing every day, every year, again and again with new recruits,” she says. “My relationship with Ethan ended because he didn’t like my work, he didn't like the x-files, and he didn’t like that I spent all my time in a basement or on long trips with my attractive partner.”
Mulder smirks. “Attractive?”
He can’t see her but he knows she’s rolling her eyes; her cheeks are probably an adorable shade of pink, too.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know you’re good looking.”
“Me believing I'm fairly good looking and you thinking I'm attractive are two different pieces of information, Scully,” he chuckles lightly, and her thumb brushes across the skin of the hand she's still cradling. He pauses, and then: “Your beliefs?”
“You were there, Mulder; you met Day 1 x-files Dana Scully.” Scully inhales a deep breath. “I still have my beliefs, that's not in question, but I’m not so rigid. I’m open to possibility, even those that may defy the logics or the boundaries of science. Without you, I’d have never seen the things I have; I'd never be here.”
Mulder considers her, feeling a small swell of pride—she’s grown tremendously since he's met her, not only as an agent but as a person. He can’t take credit for any of this, of course; he'd never try to. Though he likes to believe he played a small part, helping her along the ride, all of the hard work has been done by her.
He's seen this transformation; he's watched her shift from the more quiet, by-the-books Scully he traveled to Bellefleur, Oregon with, into a woman willing to defy the government, to speak her convictions with confidence. But he’s also seen how much she’s gone through to get here, how much it's cost her.
Sure, the x-files challenges her, and she challenges him, but at what cost?
“You’d be safe, though, Scully,” he sighs. “You’d be happy, you’d be safe. You wouldn’t run the risk of getting your heart pulled from your chest on my living room floor.”
“I am happy,” she says immediately, squeezing his hand. “Working on the x-files, with you. I can’t know for sure I wouldn’t be happy in some sister life where I was never assigned to work with you, but I know for certain I’m happy here.”
His heart doubles in size, he's sure of it. I’m happy here.
He’s happy here, too.
“And I’m safe.”
“Scully—”
“No matter what job I might have chosen, I’d be at risk. Car accidents, plane crash, psycho with a weapon, a freak accident,” she lists. If this is supposed to make him feel better… “Do you know what the difference is?”
“No,” he mumbles into her back.
“I wouldn’t have you by my side,” she whispers. “By virtue of our work we’re put in risky situations, Mulder, but I’m safe because I’m with you. You have my back, like I have yours, and I know you’ll do whatever you can to keep me out of harm’s way.”
“Of course,” he manages thickly. “I hate seeing you in danger, Scully, but I’m selfish, too, because I wouldn’t want to do this without you.”
Scully hums, and then she’s pressing a kiss to his knuckles, her lips soft on his skin.
“Mulder?”
“Yeah?”
“Sleep.”
Smiling to himself, he leans up and presses a kiss to her right shoulderblade before lowering himself back down. He adjusts the arm covering her torso, making sure the weight isn’t too much on her or pressing against her bruises too heavily, and then he shifts into a more comfortable position to rest his head.
“Scully?”
"Doesn't sound like you're sleeping back there."
"I just—you'll still be here in the morning, right?"
You won't regret spending the night in my bed and disappear at the first sign of light, is what he means.
Her voice is a note above a whisper. "Yeah, I'll be here."
Releasing a breath, he feels himself settle into something like contentment.
"I'll make pancakes."
She snorts. "You have the kitchen of a 20-year-old fraternity brother."
"I'll purchase pancakes," he amends on a muffled laugh.
"Mulder?"
He hums in response, already drifting.
"Make it waffles."
"Waffles."
"And Mulder?"
"Hm."
"Go to sleep."
His fingers grip at the fabric of her shirt and he shimmies so his nose is pressed to the base of her neck. She doesn't tense; she lets out a steady exhale, and after a short while he feels the space between her breaths even out. The sound of her soft breathing lulls him to sleep as his awareness wanes, his last thoughts of bringing a sleepy-eyed Scully fresh waffles from her favorite cafe down the block in the morning.