Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Mulder, what the hell is going on with you?”
He has been impossible for almost a week now. Withdrawn, irritable and even worse, he doesn’t seem to hear a word of what I’m saying.
The way he doesn't even react to my cussing is more evidence than I'd scientifically need.
“Have you heard anything of what I just told you?”

There is a new case on our - metaphorical - desk, something Skinner sent down three days ago and Mulder hasn’t even looked at the file yet.
“Hmm?” he makes without looking up from whatever he is reading at his - very much not metaphorical and moreover only - desk.

With an exasperated sigh I shove Clyde Bruckman’s autopsy report into its file and close the filing cabinet with a bit more force than necessary.
At least the bang finally grants me his attention.

Mulder pushes his glasses up his nose and looks over to me.
“Is everything alright, Scully?” he has the audacity to ask in a completely innocent tone. “I'm getting some bad vibes from your direction.”

The man can not be for real.
I blink at him slowly, internally reasoning why I should not be going straight for his throat.
“I'm fine,” I say, perfectly calm.

And he, Oxford educated psychologist with the social aptitude far exceeding that of a three year old, just shrugs and turns back to his reading.
It only takes me a few steps to reach the desk and snatch the slim paper from his hand before he can pull away.

It’s a porn magazine. The dirtier kind, by the looks of it.
There is a busty blonde on the cover, her eyes half closed. Her mouth hangs open and her tongue is sticking out like a dog’s. It all looks rather over dramatic.

“That’s research.” Mulder defends himself and I give him a skeptically raised eyebrow.
I smirk. “Is that what we're calling it now?”

Two hands are wrapped round the woman’s throat. They seem to belong to a broad-shouldered but faceless man towering over her. It’s brutal, obscene. I don’t like it.
Only now I read the title of the issue ‘choking, gagging and asphyxiation - having fun while staying safe’.

“Oh dear, it’s even a special edition,” I remark while flipping through the pages. Mulder actually manages to look embarrassed.
“I see what you mean. You could almost call it a medical journal.” I have to concentrate on not letting my smile slip into a scornful sneer.

“It's really not what it looks like.”
He’s full on blushing now and it’s strangely endearing.

“That’s what they always say,” I tease Mulder, throwing the thing back to him and he catches it mid air with a sheepish grin.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Scully.”

I scoff. “Why? Because you're not as pretty as her?”
That shuts him up. I give Mulder my sweetest smile before I turn and pick up my coat and purse from the rack by the door.
When I turn back once more, my hand is already on the door handle.
“Good night, Mulder.” I nod to the magazine still hanging limply in his hands. “And sweet dreams.”

“Scully, wait.”
My hand tightens around the handle. There is a sense of urgency in his voice, a kind of anxiety that gets to me. I turn around.

“Do you think he was for real?”
It takes me a second to understand.
“You mean, if Clyde Bruckman was actually psychic or just messing with us?”
The magazine. The woman on the cover.

He shrugs apologetically. “Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? It’s just... There is so much evidence, Scully. Everything he told us did come true in the end.”
My joke must have struck a cord then.

I remember what Bruckman told me, when we were alone in that hotel room.
About both of us in bed, me holding his hand tenderly. When it had finally happened, I hadn’t even noticed.

“No, Mulder.” I shake my head and put my bag down. “He got lucky. Or maybe he was just... thinking ahead, guessing at the most probable version of events. You know, like... like a chess player does. Maybe even subconsciously.”
Mulder watches me intently with dark, curious eyes, his chin resting in his hands.

“I know you want to believe in these things. I guess Bruckman himself believed in them, but... there is just no scientific explanation.”
“Banana pie?” he asks and I bite my lip. “That’s one hell of a guess.”
“Mulder...”
Here we are again. Trapped in the same old deadlock situation.
Discussing the supernatural, that I can not explain, but that - prophecy or not - was still nothing more than chance and illusion. Banana pie or not.

“Don’t you think that’s weird?”
I shake my head and stifle an exasperated sigh. “Mulder, I think he was poor old man living in a delusion that made his life hell for him. A delusion that finally drove him to suicide.”
He briefly closes his eyes, a slow painful blink.
“Non of his prophecies were real, Mulder. He just got under our skin.”

Our skin. I have not told him.
Mulder raises an eyebrow. I don’t need to.
“So, you asked him, too.”

I hesitate. Meeting his eyes before finally dropping into my usual chair in front of his desk.
“Yes, I did,” I confess, “And now you wanna know, how he told me I’d die.”
What a wonderful conversation for a Thursday night, when all I want is to get home and take a long hot bath.

Mulder leans back, watching me.
“And?”
Who would have thought it would be that easy to get his full undivided attention?
I savor his curiosity for another moment, before I lean in and bestow the mythical wisdom on him. “He told me that I wouldn’t.”

In the following silence I cross my arms in front of my chest, a challenge. Now what Mulder? What can you possibly make of that?

“That’s spooky.” Mulder grins, hands behind his head. A picture of innocence and calm, but I know this doesn’t leave him cold.
“It’s impossible.” I correct him.
“So of course you don’t believe it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He chuckles, but there is something else. Something behind the confident facade.

“So, what if it is true?”
It’s one of his typical questions. Mulder never really concerned himself with the why. It’s one of the things about him that endears me as much as it infuriates.

“Mulder-” Maybe he is actually able to sense my internal eye roll, because he cuts me off before I can say another word.
“No Scully, think about it. How many times did we almost die? The virus worms in the ice? The ship stuck in time? Those god damn glow bugs?”
I wish he would not talk about death this lightly.

“Mulder, what are you saying?”
“Every time, Scully. Every bloody time, even when they tried to sacrifice us to the devil, we got away unscratched. Well, mostly.” Grinning, he holds up his hand, where a large bandage covers the knife wound this last case left him with. I don’t return the expression.

“Mulder...”
“Remember half a year ago, when Smokey blew me up in that buried train car in New Mexico and you thought I was dead for a week?”
“God, Mulder.” I shake my head, exasperated.

I am painfully aware of what that little adventure around the encrypted files and the boxcar in the desert has cost us both. And how much more it could have cost him.
“I’m sorry.” Mulder gives me an apologetic glance and I want to believe he really means it. “All I’m saying is, look at us. We’re golden.”

“You were damn lucky that time,” I tell him, “We both were damn lucky all those times.”
His father was not.
And neither was my sister.

“We should take that as a sign to be more careful in the future. Not make it out to be a secret magical power granting us immortality. Moreover...”
I lean in, elbows perched on the desk and holding his gaze.
“I can not remember Bruckman prophesying you everlasting life.”

Mulder’s face twists and I can see the redness creeping up from his neck.
I bet he had hoped that I didn’t catch the words between them in the car, too busy driving on the rugged dirt track. Bad luck, Mulder. How could I skip such a delicious tease?

I lean in even closer, dropping my voice to a rough whisper that I know will only serve to make him even more flustered.
“Mister auto-erotic asphyxiation.”

***

She draws out the words, clearly revelling in teasing me.
I like to think that I have the emotional maturity to stand above her bait. And yet I can feel the blood rushing hot into my cheeks.
“Come on, Mulder,” she grins, boring through me with her bright blue eyes. “If my prediction is true, so is yours. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.” My face twists under her probing gaze.
“And you're not worried about that?”

I am.
In fact, the thought terrifies me. Just not necessarily for the reasons she might suspect.
Well, I guess nobody likes a stranger taking one grumpy look at them and openly declaring that one of their most secret and humiliating interests is what’s going to kill them.

The other reason might be a little more complicated to explain.
I don’t want sex. I don't have sex.
I did, back in college, in my Oxford years. Because I thought it was something you were supposed to do as a student.
Chase the girls, get drunk and fuck in the corner of dingy parties or in stuffy dorm rooms.
But I never enjoyed it. Never found any satisfaction in sex.
Not until the first time Phoebe Green put her hand around my throat and made me whine like a dog.

“Mulder?” I blink.
Scully has reached over the desk and pulled the magazine over to her side, studying the cover with a decidedly bored face.
“Hm?”
“I asked you if you’re worried about it.”
Scully’s eyes move over the page, her attention momentarily captured by whatever she found there. Her tongue slips out and wets her lips, resting there for a moment as she looks back up.

“Well, I guess it’s like Bruckman said, there are worse ways to go.” I shrug, leaning back in my chair in an attempt to portrait a calmness, I do not feel. “At least if you are not too interested in a dignified memory.” She grants me an amused smile.
“That would certainly not be a problem for you, Mulder.”
“Hey!” I give her an expression of mock outrage. “I’ll have you know, Agent Scully, that I am a well respected expert in my field.”
“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” she replies, her voice perfectly even. “I bet you’re working very hard on that.”

I can feel the heat creeping into my cheeks, upon her words.
It’s good to laugh with Scully after a case like this, but there is something else underneath this conversation. A danger to this topic, that we both keep dancing around.
“Sounds like you’re the expert,” I retort and now it is her turn to turn red.

“Wait, Scully, don’t tell me...”
I can not believe my eyes when cold, professional Agent Dana Scully, dissolves into a flustered grin right before my eyes. She flops the magazine back on the desk and wraps her arms around herself.
“I don’t believe it.”

“I’m a woman, Mulder. I can have... ” She halts for a moment, “...interests. Especially because it’s not at all like this!”
“Okay, then how is it?”
She pauses, weighting me for a moment under her gaze, before she begins. “I had a boyfriend once, back in junior year.”
I’m about to make a snide comment about her dating life, but I don’t dare to interrupt.
“Zach was a year above me, real rebel type, you know? Leather jacket, motorbike. He used to be into these things. Ropes and handcuffs and so on.”
She pauses and gives me a second to mentally catch up to the idea of high school Scully on the backseat of a motorbike, her red hair teased, her makeup a little less subtle. I smile at the mental image.

“What?”
“Nothing. Just... good ol’ christian girl like you? Military family? Not really the type of guy your father would agree with, I imagine.”
“You’re right, he wasn’t. I think that’s what attracted me to him. We had some fun times, he... taught me a lot about myself.”
Again she pauses and leaves me guessing what those things might have been.
By the color of her cheeks I think I might have an idea.

“What happened then?” I ask quietly, not wanting to disturb her.
“It didn’t work out between us,” She tells me, her eyes dark, and I wonder if it’s supposed to be a warning.

“Why not?”
The question feels like I’m stepping right into a trap and yet it is out before I can stop it.
Scully’s eyes snap up to me and her voice is a note harsher when she answers. “He was of the opinion that it was only the man’s part to tie up the girl.”
By the sound of it that might have been a verbatim quote.
“I disagreed.”

“He didn’t deserve you anyway.”
It’s a dumb thing to say. I’d much better just shut up, but again my mouth is quicker than my brain.
Scully eyes me with a sneer. “Is that another field you’re an expert in, Mulder?”

“I’m sorry. That was stupid.”
I run my hands over my face, a little too hard maybe. Keep them up a little too long. Because while I’m still trying to figure out how to tell her, I can hear her heels clicking on the hard vinyl floor. When I look up, she is leaning against the desk, only inches to my left.

“You’re really worried about Bruckman’s prophecy, aren’t you?”
The switch from mocking to concerned is instant and I can’t help but marvel at the fact that of all the nutcases in the FBI she has been sent down to investigate mine.
I swallow. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I think he was right.”
Her eyes are full of warmth. “Mulder, no... you don’t really believe that.”

I shrug. I don’t know what else to tell her, and if I even could the way my throat constricts when she holds my gaze.
“Don’t tell me that you...” the silence stretches until her eyes go wide. “You didn’t, right?”

“I did. Once.” My throat, rightfully, feels like sand paper and I can hear her draw a sharp breath. “Mulder, that’s...”
I cut off her oncoming lecture with a shake of my head.
“Incredibly stupid? Yeah, you're right. But I needed to know, and...”
And sometimes the nights get long and dark and lonely enough that the thought alone is no longer enough.

“And?”
“And I need to ask you for a favor.”
It’s another incredibly stupid idea. But unfortunately one I have not been able to shake, since our grumpy psychic gave me the good news.

“What is it, Mulder?”
“If I...” there really is no good way to say it, so I just spit it out. “If I did it again, would you be willing to watch me?”
“What?!”
“As a medical doctor, I mean. And as a friend. To make sure I am safe.”
Her mouth falls open.
“Mulder...”
I know her objections. And I know she is right about all of them.
If there is no FBI policy about this kind of entanglement, then only because nobody thought of it before.

“I’m sorry.” I retreat, shame flooding through me like a wave.
“I should not have asked that of you. That probably was against every policy in the book. And wouldn’t want to make you go against that.”
Scully scoffs.
“What?”
“Mulder, don’t get me wrong, but bureau policy went pretty much out the window when you confessed you asphyxiation fetish to me, don’t you think?”

I swallow and close my eyes. Let the humiliation wash over me. Let her put me down easy.
Instead she puts a hand up to my cheek.
“That was really brave of you, Mulder,” She says quietly and I let her pull my head down, find her eyes again. I lean into her touch, almost unconsciously. “I am very proud of you.”
Her praise runs all the way through me and settles hot into the pit of my stomach.
“Scully...”

“I’ll do it, Mulder.” Her voice is warm and her hand glides lower, grazes my throat, just for a moment, but I shudder under her touch.
“Under one condition.”
“What?” I rasp. My brain is already leaving me to fend for myself.

Scully chuckles. She knows the power she hold over me here and maybe that should not turn me on the way it does.
“You will have to buy me dinner first.”

Well, that’s a request I can get behind.
I bow down a little further, lean in until I can feel her breath on my neck and whisper. “I think I know a spot you’ll like.”