Work Text:
When Mulder gets back to her apartment he tries to close the door gently, but years of risk have honed her to hard edges. At the click of the door in the lock, she sits bolt upright a room away.
"Mulder?" Through the open door to the bedroom he sees her rub the sleep out of her eyes. ”What are you doing up so early?"
He drops a bag of groceries on the table, shrugs his jacket off. "Went down to the farmers' market," he says casually, like it's something he does all the time. "I grabbed some breakfast."
When Scully looks at him she's both suspicious and pleased, and he keeps hoping for the day when she's just pleased. When it's not obvious how hard he's trying.
He is trying. He'd stopped for a while, and he won't make that mistake again.
Grabbing a couple of croissants - they'll make a mess in the bed even with plates; she'll complain but she won't really care - and two cups of coffee, Mulder makes his way back over to the bed. He kicks off his pants and slides back in next to her.
She's drinking her coffee and looking at him unbleary, taking small, thoughful bites of her pastry. Mulder wishes he could read her mind, but even after twenty-three years, she still has secrets from him. Even though he's always laid bare.
They eat in silence, their arms and legs touching. Her skin warm from sleep and smooth against his; he savors these small things like an addict, hoards them in case she goes away again. Something to remember her by the next time he fucks up, probably irreparably.
Once she's done he takes their cups and plates into the kitchen. Recycles the cups, like he's supposed to; puts the plates in the dishwasher. He doesn't hate being domesticated.
Scully's still in bed when he gets back, looking happy and relaxed; the lines around her eyes - so few compared to his, he thinks, a little ruefully - have softened. "That was a nice surprise," she says.
He climbs back under the covers, but this time he pulls her with him so she's lying down facing him. “I have something else for you. For your birthday."
Scully rolls her eyes. "Mulder, my birthday was months ago."
"Then it's either a very early or very late present." He pauses to see if she'll catch the reference, wonders if that night is as ingrained in her memory as it is in his.
He's rewarded when she grumbles, in a good-natured way, "At least you didn't drag me outside in the middle of the night this time."
It's not a baseball lesson but he's still not sure she'll like it, and he's been shying away from risk these last few months. But when he saw it at the market, at one of those little artsy booths, he couldn't help himself.
When he hands her the pouch she raises her eyebrows. "Jewelry?" she guesses. "That's not like you."
He nudges her with his shoulder. "Just open it," he says gruffly.
"Mulder, tell me it's not one of those UFO necklaces."
He threatens to take the pouch out of her hands and open the damn thing himself, but she snatches it back, saying, "It's my present!"
It used to be easy like this. He wants it back.
When Scully finally, finally opens the pouch, he's pleased to see her eyes go wide. She turns it around between her fingers.
It's a ring, an ouroboros, like the one on her back. Gold - well, gold-plated - with onyx eyes.
He hopes he hasn’t presumed too much. And he hopes Scully will read into it even half of what he intended.
An apology for every time he’s taken her for granted.
The memory of Melissa, a matched set with Scully’s cross and Maggie’s quarter. All of the ways they’ve tried to believe. Every path to truth.
The eternal return: that in every possible iteration of the universe, every trip around the circle, this is the life he chooses. Here, with her. Whatever else.
And it's her. Just her. He has taken so much from her over the years - his heart constricts to think how much - and this is his attempt, however clumsy, to give a little of her back.
"Mulder," she starts. And stops.
"I think it'll fit," he says, "I think it's your size," pretending there's a universe in which he doesn't know the shape of her fingers better than he knows his own heart.
As he watches, she slides the ring onto her ring finger. On her left hand.
He knows his heart well enough to know that this could stop it from beating.
"Scully," he says, and now he's the one who's run out of words. "Dana--"
He kisses her hand, the metal cool against his lips, and she just says, "We'll have to get one for you, too."
It's long minutes before he remembers how to speak. Her hands and her eyes and a bed that remembers the weight of their bodies.
Is this all it takes, he wonders. Rings on their fingers. For two decades he's been thinking, idly and sometimes not so idly, about what it would mean to marry Dana Scully, but something about it had always seemed ridiculous. What judge, what priest could put words to their union? She's the entire universe.
What vows could they speak that haven't already been written in blood?
"Are you finally making an honest man out of me?” he says, but it doesn’t come out the way he intended. He’s had decades to turn his sarcasm into a weapon, but Dana Scully has always had the power to disarm him.
“Something like that.” She curls into him, her head tucked against his shoulder. How many times they’ve lain like this, in hospital beds and ragged motel rooms, in his apartment and hers. In the home that they shared, once, before their past destroyed all hope for a shared future.
After a while, she turns her face up to him, kisses him near the corner of his mouth. Teases, "I'm gonna find something that represents an embarrassing chapter of your life."
Mulder grimaces and holds her closer. "You know that's not why I picked it."
"Yeah, I know. Still."
He presses his lips to the top of her head. "Shouldn't be too hard. My whole life is embarrassing."
When push comes to shove he doesn't really believe that, but self-flagellation is another area of his expertise. What an arsenal he's acquired: sarcasm, obsessiveness, crippling regret, self-loathing. So much weaponry at his disposal, and he's almost always the shooter and the victim.
Scully doesn't deny his words. She doesn't need to: her choices are an affirmation of his worth. At least that's how he explains it to himself: someone like her wouldn't drop two decades on a total waste of space.
She just pulls him to her and kisses him, hard, and that's a better answer anyway. Scully comes up on all fours over him, knees on either side of his hips, her t-shirt riding up to her waist. She rests her palms flat against the mattress above his head, and Mulder reaches up and twines his fingers through hers. The weight of her in his hands as she stretches sinuous down the length of him, her legs on top of his.
It’s been sixteen years since he worked up the courage to kiss her, and sometimes he still can’t believe she’s really here.
And maybe it will all come to nothing. Maybe they'll never find the truth they've sought, and on every trip around the circle they'll make all the same mistakes. They’ll die and be reborn and die and be reborn, and their names will turn to dust. And on every trip around the circle he will love her and be loved by her and be so fucking grateful.
Maybe this will be the only truth he ever knows: her body warm and soft and pressed against him, sunlight streaming in through the window.
He doesn’t try to convince himself that it’s enough. It doesn’t have to be.
But it’s something.