Work Text:
1993
“He works hard,” she says, because it’s easier than describing the way the wire on his glasses hits his nose or the sound of two file folders meeting. He’s a freight train when she’s in danger.
“He surprises you,” says Melissa, rolling cookie dough in her palms. It’s not a question.
****
Two days after Christmas, his partner is back in the office, heels clicking down the hall. Someone to listen to again. Someone to listen. He weaves his pencil through his fingers, constructing absentmindedness, a big show, like he hasn’t been waiting for her. He’s about to launch into the details of a reported abduction in Fresno when she drops a box on his desk. He drops the pencil.
“Scully, I didn’t get you anything.”
“I didn’t buy it so you would.”
1996
She wakes up to a trail of paper leading out of her room and a casually dressed FBI agent leaning on her kitchen counter.
“Mulder.”
“And a holly jolly Christmas to you too, Scully!”
“Mulder, what is this?”
“Coffee?”
She sighs, nods. He sets down his mug and pours some for her, crossing the distance between them in what can’t be more than three steps. He’s faster now even than he was when they met. He pulls Kleenex from his pocket like his hands can stop bullets. Her hands, which her parents expected to hold beating hearts, can stop nothing. But the mug is warm beneath her fingers, and for no reason that she can explain, she feels alive. Her gaze meets his. She remembers that she’s meant to be annoyed and raises an eyebrow.
“Mulder?” She flicks her eyes at the floor. “What’s with the pieces of paper?”
“Recipes.”
“For what?”
“Christmas cookies.”
She stares at him for a second before remembering to close her lips. He bends down to collect the paper closest to her feet and hands it to her. Snickerdoodle. He retrieves them one at a time, like a lab fetching tennis balls in the least efficient manner: Pick up the closest one, return to her, place it in her hands, repeat. She shuffles through the recipes. They were all photocopied from the same book.
He’s smiling expectantly, hands in his pockets.
She laughs. The walls don’t recognize the sound anymore; it echoes back to her like she’s never heard it before, tumbling and low, and she keeps laughing, cries even, surprised to have ever forgotten that tears and laughter can go hand in hand. As if he's taught her anything more vital.
“Why so many recipes, Mulder?” She wants to ruffle his hair or go clean out his kitchen or, more than anything, to take his t-shirt in her fist and kiss him like she isn’t dying.
“Because,” he shrugs. “I wanted you to have options. We can make whatever you want.”
“You brought ingredients for—” She selects a recipe. “Cranberry Citrus Pecan Clusters?”
“Oh.”
She hides another laugh. “Good. They sound terrible.” He straightens his shoulders. The hope in his eyes is just shy of desperation and she hates it, hates the cancer that sent him looking for cookbooks at the library late at night, hates how hard he’s trying, loves him for it. She hates what they aren’t saying. She loves him for not saying it.
“I think I have all of the ingredients for these chocolate chip cookies.” She pulls a recipe from her pile and waves it in front of his face.
“Chocolate chip it is.”
****
“Not yet. They’re still too hot.”
“Scully, last night a bearded old man in a red velvet suit broke the space-time continuum and you think the rules still apply to cooki—” A full cookie hits the floor. “Ah. Ice water please.”
“Mmhmm.” She kneels to clean the melted chocolate. A casualty of his pride. The cookie, too. A blood stain peeks out from the rolled-up sleeve of her pajamas, the threads around it bleached into oblivion. But she doesn’t crumble.
He piles two plates high with cookies, carries them to the couch, and waits. She washes her hands and follows, jumping as a throw pillow jabs her in the rib.
“What’s this?” She sets aside the pillow and takes the gift in her hands.
“I know we said we weren’t doing presents…”
“We did say that.” She leaves the box on the couch and goes to her room. He’s done it this time. He crossed the line. He didn’t listen. Spooky Mulder got desperate.
She comes back with a box of her own.
“I got you something too. Just in case.” The wrapping paper matches her hair and he refuses to think that “just in case” means anything other than, “Just in case you got me something.”
“But this is the last time, okay?”
He hopes it isn’t. Maybe that doesn’t matter. He can’t wrap her laugh or more time. He can’t wrap color in her cheeks, so he made her cookies.
“Okay, Scully.”
1999
The specter of it hangs over them like the Ghost of Christmas Future. If she asks, she knows, he’ll spend the holiday with her, but she isn’t sure he wants her to ask. She's afraid that he doesn't. She's afraid that he does. She leaves a present on his desk and runs.
She couldn't pick a worse place to hide than Bill and Tara’s, where the floor is a mine field of baby toys and the walls are familiar with the laughter of a one-year-old child. She expects Tara to be pregnant with another by the time they reach next Christmas. Good Catholics.
Her mother fixes her with sad eyes every time she holds Matthew. He grabs her finger once and she cries in the bathroom.
I’m fine, mom.
She runs. She runs every morning before the sunrise, runs from the likelihood that the IVF will never take, runs from the fact that the first thing she thought of when the doctor asked if she had anyone in mind was Mulder’s smile.
2002
A baby wakes them up through the walls of the motel room next door. They eat chocolate chips out of a bag.
2006
The camera catches her dragging the front gate closed by the glow of her headlights. She’s home, with an hour and 15 minutes left of Christmas. He flicks on the tree lights.
“Hi.” She shakes the snow from her coat.
“Can I interest you in some carrots, Rudolph?”
“What?”
“Your nose. It’s all red.”
“It’s cold out there.”
“I can see that.”
She runs her tongue across her lower lip. “Sorry. I’m just tired. Dr. Reynolds was out today, so they had us all working extra patients. And you know how many kids have little accidents on Christmas.”
He does not. Scully’s attending physician has children with whom to spend the holidays. Scully only has him, and only within these four walls.
She collapses on the couch next to him and he leans on her, burying his lips in her hair. He doesn’t know that he can do anything else. “What can I do?”
“I’m okay.” She lies down, pulling him down with her so she’s tangled around him. She rests her head on his shoulder.
She made him swear that he really, honestly wouldn’t get her a present this year; she didn’t have the free time to go shopping, and he couldn’t risk a drive into town, anyway. He sketched for her instead, a flip book of Queegueg the dog taking down the white whale. She lifts her head at the sight of the wrapping paper behind the throw pillow.
“Mulder, we promised.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t have time.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
2012
Three days after the world ends, they watch the sunrise from the porch.
The sky is streaks of muted gray and brilliant red that don’t belong side by side. She leans against his knees, wrapped in a blanket. They wait for a wind that doesn’t come. Nothing is coming. Nothing out there, anyway. She reaches for his hand.
****
He locks the office door and throws pencils at the ceiling.
The world didn’t end.
No, it didn’t.
They’re that sky. He’s the gray.
2016
She wakes to a piece of paper on her face and a newly recertified FBI agent standing over her.
“Subtle.”
She holds the paper far enough back that she can read it and wishes for her glasses. Chocolate Chip Cookies.
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Spooky.”
The recipe looks familiar—not just the ingredients but the font, the sprigs of holly in the top left corner. She swings her feet down to the rug.
“Is this the same recipe? The one you brought me 20 years ago?”
“Good eye, Scully.”
“The same photocopy?”
He scuffs the floorboards. “I still can’t find it. I know it’s in there som—”
She stands, puts her hands on his shoulders. “Mulder, it’s okay. It’s okay.” She wraps her arms around his scratchy flannel waist and buries her nose in blue plaid. He tracked down the same book at a new library and he’s sorry that he couldn’t replicate the past more exactly.
“It doesn’t have to be just like it was,” she murmurs. “It just has to be us.”
They kiss.
“We didn’t do that 20 years ago, Agent Scully.”
“Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to, Agent Mulder.”
“Oh, do tell.”
He takes her hand and pulls her toward the kitchen.
****
“Scully, if you keep this up, there won’t be any chips left for the cookies.” He throws one at her open mouth. It hits her cheek.
“One more!” She pounds the table. He could swear that they’re young.
He aims, fires. She catches it on her tongue and throws up her arms in victory.
“Years of basketball put to a good end.” She points to him and nods, still licking the last of the chip from her teeth.
“You want to go two on one? You and me against this recipe?”
“I want to go one on one, actually.” She pulls him toward the porch and grabs a blanket.
“We’re never going to make these cookies, are we?”
****
“Butter?”
“Check.”
“Brown sugar?”
“Check.”
“Eggs?”
“Check.”
“Chocolate chips?”
He waves the half-eaten bag in the air. “Mmmm?”
“We’ll make do.” She plugs in the blender. He grabs the biggest mixing bowl they have, and she debates telling him that he missed a button on his shirt. She tucks her hair behind her ear.
“Aren’t you taking off your ring so it doesn’t get dirty?”
She digs her hands into the flour. “Never ask me that again.”
He digs his hands in too, and for a second the flour is dirt and they are unearthing a skeleton. He finds her palms and guides them to his chest, wipes the flour all over his new flannel. “Deal.”
She rubs her nose in blue plaid and white flour.
A recipe is a kind of dance, a kitchen basically a basement. Last week he had lingered in the doorway of their office, daring her to make him move, and she’d slipped past him. She slides under his arm again here. He kisses her again here.
By the time the last batch is out of the oven, there is sugar in her hair and a melted chocolate chip cookie on the floor. Neither of them is in any condition to touch the furniture. They sink into the couch anyway. They act surprised.