Work Text:
Mid-October, 1997
Walking into Scully's apartment was like entering a sauna. It must be 80 degrees in here. Mulder was already sweating. “How do you pay your heating bill?” he said, setting down her briefcase. She'd left her laptop at the office and asked him to retrieve it. He shrugged off his overcoat and suit jacket, removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt. “Do you want your laptop in the bedroom?”
“Sorry,” Scully said, looking not at all sorry. “You know I'm always cold. Just leave the briefcase for now. You can turn the thermostat down if you want.”
He did know. He suspected it was the cancer treatment, not that she'd tell him. He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she lit the burner under the kettle.
“Do you want tea?” she asked.
He didn't drink tea unless it was iced. “Sure. How about if I make it? You just got out of the hospital.”
She snorted. “I think I'm capable of brewing tea, Mulder. Go. Sit.”
With Scully, you had to pick your battles. “How're you feeling?” he ventured.
“Happy to be home. Grateful to be in remission.” She hesitated. “How are you doing, Mulder?”
“Relieved that you're alive, naturally.” Scully would be okay, he was convinced now.
She smiled. “I should hope so.”
“Amazed I'm not in jail--or worse,” he said.
This case had amassed quite a body count: Blevins, a suicide, Arlinsky and Babcock, murdered to cover up the hoax; the Cigarette Smoking Man, ditto. The men who died on the mountaintop before he and Babcock had arrived, and Scott Osselhoff. whom he'd shot. “They're cleaning house. What I can't figure out is why they let us live.”
He plopped down on the sofa, began stacking Scully's journals to clear a space for the tea tray. Pathology, Journal of Clinical Pathology, Laboratory Investigation, the usual suspects, plus one outlier, a recent issue of Vogue. Cameron Diaz wasn't his type but yeah, she was hot. He leaned back and began flipping through it when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a book he didn't recognize from Scully's collection on the opposite side of the table. He set aside Vogue, picked up the slim, well-thumbed paperback: Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block. He'd never heard of it. He checked the publication date: 1989. Okay, so he was at Violent Crimes, wasn't reading anything extracurricular, apart from his subscription to Penthouse.
The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood.
It didn't sound like Scully's kind of thing. Dana was a straight A student.
“Do you want milk with your tea?”
He still didn't want tea. “Sure.” He turned the book over, began reading the blurbs. "Scully? Weetzie Bat—whose book is this?”
“I'm right here.” After settling the tray, she motioned for him to move over, and sat beside him. “To answer your first question, maybe your testimony made you too high profile a target. Maybe an FBI investigation into your murder would draw unwanted attention to the illicit projects you've been trying to expose.”
Mulder added three lumps of sugar and a generous splash of milk to his mug. He took a polite sip, then set it down. “It's a theory. Could be the most plausible one, given the lack of evidence.” He picked up the mystery book. “And this?”
“That was Melissa's,” she said evenly.
Shit. If Scully wanted to talk—about Melissa, about the book—she would. He could wait.
“I kept it, along with a few others, and some jewelry she'd made, when we cleaned out her apartment. She loved anything New Age but she had a few children's books, mostly classics—The Velveteen Rabbit, The Hobbit, that sort of thing.”
“Melissa meant well but she drove me a little nuts,” Mulder confessed.
Scully smiled. “Missy was a free spirit and a true believer. She was a little bit like you, Mulder,” she said slyly.
Best to let that slide. “What made you read it?”
“I found it when I was sorting through my belongings. I'd put it in the discard box, which was waiting to be picked up by Catholic Charities. After I got home from the hospital, on a whim, I rescued it, decided to read it. I'm so glad I did. It made me feel closer to Missy, and, well, I needed that. It's a hard book to describe. It's a goth fairy-tale, set in an idealized version of Los Angeles. A malicious genie in a bottle grants three wishes to Weetzie Bat. There are unforeseen consequences...”
There always are, Mulder knew.
“The characters have names like Witch Baby and My Secret-Agent Lover Man,” Scully enthused. “The last chapter is magical. You should read it, Mulder. I really think you'd love it.”
He doubted that.
“With a character named 'My Secret-Agent Lover Man,' how can I say no?” Mulder teased.
“I'd have thought it was the genie that would draw you in,” Scully rejoined.
“That, too.” Well, why not? Scully loved the book. If he read it, it would make her happy. That was good enough for him. He turned back to the first chapter.
They didn’t even realize where they were living. They didn’t care that Marilyn’s prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann’s; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer’s Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetson-style Tiny Naylor’s; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter’s, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers.
At least it wasn't Moby Dick.
He kept reading.
