Chapter Text
Introduction
It’s a cheap toy, a party favor, but Mulder has been obsessively playing with it ever since he returned to his desk, turning it over and over, holding it up to the fluorescent light above the bullpen cubicles, peeking through.
Inside, the kaleidoscope looks like a little imploding stained glass window. No, like a chopped-up Matisse, he thinks dreamily. Mass-produced wedges of plastic, a poorly cut mirror glued sloppily into a cardboard tube—each part ugly individually, yet together they make a pattern, intricate, shifting and shifting, never the same.
“Did you see the stack of your phone messages, Mulder? I left them on your desk.”
Mulder aims the kaleidoscope towards Scully, sitting at the next desk. He watches as each of the plastic shards fall into a new pattern, framed by Scully’s flame-colored hair behind it.
“Mulder?”
“Yep,” he says, lowering the kaleidoscope, sighing. “I saw them. Thanks.”
He eyes the messages sitting in a neat stack; there are at least six pieces of paper there, with the tail ends of Scully’s neat handwriting on each.
How could so many people have possibly called while he was in an hour long meeting with Kersh? Nothing he and Scully are doing is remotely important. He has no desire to pick up the pieces of paper and look at them, no more than he does to make the calls he’s supposed to be making.
“Some of those people seemed rather anxious to talk to you, Mulder.” Her voice sounds cool and removed. “Some of them called more than once.”
“Scully.” He slouches down in his chair petulantly. “I just can’t do any more bullshit today. I just can’t.” He tosses his head back dramatically. “I’m literally being bored to death.”
She takes a moment to look around and make sure they’re not being observed too closely, then she rolls around her desk to his side. To his delight, she lifts and drops his arm, pretending to scrutinize it.
“4:48 p.m., begin external examination of white male, age 37, found with a child's toy,” she says with a lowered voice, taking the small cardboard kaleidoscope out of his hand. “Where’d you pick up your toy, Mulder?”
“Somebody’s retirement party on the second floor.” Mulder lifts his eyes to look at her again. “I detoured on the way back from the meeting.”
“I assume there was cake?”
“Obviously there was cake. The only bright spot in my day.”
Scully examines the kaleidoscope, running a fingertip over the words “28 Colorful Years At The Bureau, Agent Darby” printed on the side.
“Well, cheer up,” she says, handing the kaleidoscope back to him. “Just look at the generous tokens of appreciation we have to look forward to.”
Mulder groans. “Twenty-eight years.”
“Just ten more minutes until the weekend,” she says, squeezing his forearm. “You can make it, Mulder.”
“Did you finish your important background checks for today, Agent Scully?”
“It’s possible I might not make it through all of them,” she says slyly, beginning the roll back to her desk. “And you?”
He just gives her his best miserable look.
“Poor Mulder,” she says. “We’ll just have to take it up again on Monday.”
“Hey, Scully.” He rolls his chair closer to the opening between their desks, turning the kaleidoscope over in his hands. “I heard about a possible active haunting on the waterfront in Baltimore. Behind a sixties-style tiki bar, if you can believe that.”
“I don’t believe it, in fact,” she says dryly.
“I thought maybe we might drive over tonight and check it out. Worse comes to worst and it turns out to be a bust, I’ll buy you a drink in a pineapple.”
Her unsettled expression puzzles him, because it’s not one of the two reactions he expects, which would either be the exasperated Mulder, how ridiculous eye roll, or, if he were lucky, a more flirtatious Tell me more about this pineapple drink eyebrow lift. Either reaction could easily end with her in the passenger seat on the way to Baltimore.
“I have to say no, I’m afraid,” she says, turning back towards her desk.
“Come on,” he coaxes, picking up the kaleidoscope again, turning it slowly and looking inside. “I‘ll wear a Hawaiian shirt.”
“I have plans,” she explains.
“Oh yeah?” He removes the kaleidoscope from his eye to look at her. “Friday night date?”
She doesn’t say anything right away and seems to consider her next words. “Actually… yes.”
“Really?” He casually rolls his seat a little to try to see her more full on. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”
“It’s very new. Only been a few weeks,” she says, beginning to put away items on her desk.
“A few… weeks?” He becomes aware he’s rattling the kaleidoscope a little in his hand. “Well, you’re quite the little secret keeper, aren’t you, Scully? Who is - who have you been dating?”
“His name is Ryan,” she says, stacking the pile of papers in front of her efficiently. “He lives in the building across the street from mine, and he sometimes runs at the same time I do.”
“He asked you out while you were running?” He keeps rolling his chair closer and closer, and he knows he’s going to crash into the back of her desk soon.
“Something like that,” she says. Her cell begins to ring. “Hold on, Mulder – I think this must be him. Excuse me a moment.”
She stands up and walks discreetly to the side of the bullpen. His eyes trail her. It’s almost unheard of that she would need privacy from him to talk on the phone. It hasn’t been the case since the early days of their partnership.
He twists the kaleidoscope back and forth, back and forth. He’s in serious danger of breaking it.
As she begins to talk, to say hello or whatever it is she is saying, her eyebrows lift, her face seems to brighten a little. She’s animated. She’s smiling. Mulder is leaning forward further and further over the edge of his desk to try to see her face better as she walks away, but she turns and begins walking the other direction. He clenches his fist around the kaleidoscope in frustration.
He needs to know what exactly this is. He needs to understand what exactly is happening here.
Something moves in the corner of his eye, and he looks slowly to his right to see Agents Dupree and Ngyuen, in nearby desks, outright staring at his strange physical position. He wonders if they overheard the entire conversation about Scully’s date. This probably looks bad.
He sits up straight, clears his throat, places the kaleidoscope carefully next to him like a professional, adjusts his tie, and soberly examines the papers on his desk.
Scully reappears a moment later with her phone in her hand, a cautious expression on her face. “Ryan’s going to meet me downstairs, Mulder,” she says. She moves over to her desk and begins packing up her belongings, eyeing him hopefully. “Did… did you want to come down with me and meet him? I told him you might.”
He just stares back at her with blank eyes, his mind racing.
He can’t possibly say he has calls to finish here, as she would never believe that. He can’t say he has somewhere else to be, because she knows perfectly well he doesn’t. He can’t say that he is worried about how he’s going to react to this situation because he is having turbulent emotions, since that isn’t something they talk about.
“Yeah, sure,” he says lightly. “Just let me get my stuff together.”
Ryan wears an expensive gray suit and looks young, possibly younger than Scully, maybe early thirties. He has strawberry blond hair, visible cheekbones, and broad shoulders. He is handsome. Handsome by anyone’s standards. Mulder’s stomach clenches painfully.
When Ryan spots Scully coming towards him across the lobby, he smiles, leans in and casually gives her a kiss on the lips. Just a light peck. Just seconds. It sends a sharp shock through Mulder. Like a door slammed straight into his face.
He should not have come downstairs. He should have made up any ridiculous excuse not to be here. He wonders if it’s too late to turn and run.
Ryan reaches out his hand to shake Mulder’s and smiles widely. His teeth are very shiny and very white.
“Hey, glad to meet you, Fox,” Ryan says. “Dana’s told me so much about you.”
“Yeah?” Mulder says, feeling some kind of smile forming on his own face and then hardening. “Nice to meet you, too … Ryan.”
His eyes can’t seem to tear away from Ryan’s mouth, those freakishly bright teeth, the barely-visible pink tongue. The more Mulder stares at that mouth, the more unnatural it looks.
“Ryan is from Boston, Mulder,” Scully is saying, then turning to Ryan. “Mulder is from Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Ah, another Masshole,” Ryan grins. “I’m actually from Newton. Been to the Vineyard many times though. You a Patriots fan?”
Mulder is still thinking about that alien mouth. About it being on Scully’s skin, on her lips, on the base of her neck, on the soft skin of her stomach, on other places, don’t think about it. He tries not to think about it. He really shouldn’t think about it.
“Mulder?” Scully prompts.
“Oh,” Mulder says. “No, not a Patriots fan.” He catches Scully’s eye. She is giving him a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you look. “Uh, what do you do for a living, Ryan?”
“I’m in banking,” Ryan says. “Citibank.” He makes a helpless gesture. “Not as exciting as the FBI, I’m afraid.”
But a hell of a lot more lucrative. Glamorously so. Mulder tries to remember the fancy apartments in the building across the street from Scully’s. Maybe Scully has seen inside those apartments now. Images click rapidly through his mind. Designer couch. A dozen long-stemmed roses. Champagne. Satin sheets.
“Ah, you’d be surprised,” Mulder says. “A government job’s a government job.”
“Yeah, but I don’t wear a weapon, like she does,” Ryan says, flashing a playful smile at Scully. “That’s pretty hot.”
Mulder’s head turns in horror towards Scully to see her reaction. She returns Ryan’s smile, but her eyes dart uncomfortably back to Mulder’s.
“Banking can be hot, too, I’d imagine,” Mulder manages.
Scully turns to Ryan. “We should probably be going, right?”
“Our reservation’s not until seven,” Ryan points out. “I was thinking we could go get a drink at a bar around here. Maybe Fox could come with us?”
Mulder can’t understand this invitation at all; he has been pretty rude, or at least awkward. But Ryan is all fluid friendliness, effortless affability, and Mulder recognizes the type: the socially generous popular kid. After all, he has nothing to lose by extending a welcome to Mulder. He perceives zero threat. He already has everything, doesn’t he? A whole evening ahead with Scully. A whole night. Morning.
Scully has her lips pressed together tightly now and is staring stonily at Mulder.
“No,” Mulder says. “I’m, uh – no. Not tonight. Thanks anyway.”
Don’t worry, Scully, he thinks. It sounds like hell to me, too.
When Scully and her date have exited out the front lobby door, Mulder walks over and leans against the window to watch as they walk away. He doesn’t care that Quentin and Mario at the security desk are watching him, no doubt coming to all sorts of humiliating conclusions.
At about twenty paces away Ryan places his arm around Scully, drawing her in a little, and Mulder thinks about how small she looks compared to this…banker. He knows intellectually that Scully is physically diminutive, but he doesn’t usually think of her that way. He has also just never seen someone else put his arm around Scully like that before. Not from the outside.
He presses his cheek against the glass. She’s my person, he thinks. My only person.
As the back of Scully’s head moves further from him, he wonders what she is thinking right at that moment. Is she still annoyed with Mulder for acting so strangely, or has she already stopped thinking about him altogether? Does she ever think about him when she is with Ryan, or is it a welcomed chance to get work off her mind?
A few weeks of dating, she said. Very new, she said. He thinks about the probability of whether she has slept with Ryan yet.
When Scully and Ryan turn around the block and disappear out of sight, Mulder backs away from the window.
He stands, still, in the middle of the lobby. His body sways ever-so-slightly.
“You all right, man?” Quentin calls from the security desk. His voice is sympathetic.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
“No.”
“For what it’s worth, I always thought she was into you, too.”
Mulder turns to look at Quentin. “She’s my partner,” he says numbly. “It’s not romantic between us.”
“I see that,” says Quentin, shaking his head, sad eyes. “Sorry, man.”
Mulder nods. He turns and begins walking to his car.
It isn’t romantic between them, he thinks.
Indisputably true.
It is intense between them. It is important between them. It is tightly-knit between them. But it is not romantic. He knows that. Everyone knows that. She is single; he is single. No one has any obvious, stated reason not to date whomever they want.
It’s just that he had long known there was a subtext.
An underlying melodic theme that sometimes was a little more prominent, that sometimes pushed through to dominate the main score. He thought this was mutually understood. He thought that, in recent years anyway, they both had realized that this was going to happen. That there would come a day. He barely gave it conscious thought himself, but he was still always, always aware of it: there would come a day this would happen, but that they don’t speak about it.
He abruptly stops walking, just a few feet before the glass door into the garage, halted by his thoughts.
It’s the unspoken-ness: that’s exactly the trap. That’s what keeps his hands tied. That’s what forces him into having to smile and shake hands with some banker who wants to be Scully’s goddamn boyfriend. That’s what makes it impossible for him to do anything about this but stand in a window and watch them walk away.
Is it impossible for him to do anything else? When nothing has ever been said or expressed, what could he possibly do? What would he even want to do?
He pushes absent-mindedly through the glass door to the parking garage.
And he imagines his feelings like shards, turning over and over in a kaleidoscope, the picture changing each time he stops to examine them.
Each shard with its particular own sharp corner. Each shard leaving a unique puncture mark every soft place it lands.