Chapter Text
Six Weeks Later…
Mulder had a lot of time to think as he made the long drive from Pennsylvania to D.C.
He picked some flowers out of the stone walled beds in front of Scully’s apartment, then changed his mind and headed to the flower shop. Thirty minutes later he was back with an arrangement of lilies and roses hidden behind his back as he knocked.
Patiently he waited as she peered through the peephole.
“Mulder, you’re back,” Scully said as she opened the door. She was dressed in a cotton robe, drying her hair while motioning for him to come in. “This is the third shower I’ve taken today. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that smell out of my hair from that stakeout.”
Mulder nodded, revealing the bouquet from behind his back with a smile.
“Mulder, they’re beautiful.” Scully’s face lit with emotion, taking them from his hand, burying her nose inside the blooms.
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, grinning nervously, a little uneasy at the attention. “You, have anything to eat? I didn’t get to stop on the drive down.”
“That’s right, you drove straight from Pennsylvania,” Scully replied. “I just couldn’t bring myself to order another pizza. You could have the rest of my salad I bought from the diner, or there’s probably one of those frozen dinners somewhere you could heat up in the microwave.”
“Did I leave any clothes here?” Mulder asked, loosening his tie, “I’m ready to get out of these.”
“I think you might have left something in the guest bedroom,” Scully called out as she searched for a vase for the flowers. “If you want those cleaned, put them with my pile for the dry cleaner.”
Mulder smiled. Ah, yes, he was back with his significant other. It wasn’t the widely acceptable definition, it was theirs.
“Scully, there’s, uh, there’s something…” he said, stumbling over his words as he slumped onto the couch.
“What’s wrong?” Scully joined him, sitting beside him, cinching her terry cloth belt and straightening her robe.
“I’m not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “Watching all these married women cheating on all their husbands, and then a man who seemingly has the perfect family sleeping with every woman within a fifty mile radius.” He covered her hand that was resting on the couch. “Next week you have your doctor’s appointment.”
“Mulder, if you’re trying to tell me you want to take a step back..”
“No.” A crooked grin grew across his face. “I’m trying to say, in a way, what I witnessed, it reaffirmed my commitment. Everything in that town was built on lies, in the end, underneath it all, they had nothing but lies. What we have is true.. And that, that’s something.”
“Something I treasure,” Scully replied softly.
“Before we get the results, I want you to know that it’s not going to change how I feel, what I want.. my commitment to us.”
Scully laced their fingers. “Nor will it change mine.”
He leaned in and brushed her lips with his.
She cupped his jaw, stroking his cheek with her thumb, deepening their kiss.
*****
“It was my last chance.”
Her words rang inside his head, forcing his eyes closed as he held her tight.
“Never give up on a miracle,” he murmured. This was not the time to speak philosophy, but he believed with his very soul that they didn’t need the intervention of anyone, but each other.
Daniel had come back into her life at such an odd time.
She and Mulder had made promises of commitment, promises of traveling along a path, of continuing this journey and yet the only thing they managed to continue was fruitless pursuits. They had flung themselves out of the airplane, then ran straight off a cliff and into their work. If you could even call it that. Ectoplasm, Mulder? Really? It was almost as if they took a moment to breathe; they both might shatter instantaneously.
They had never permitted their synapses to fire on the thoughts of how intangible and improbable having a baby would be because they couldn’t give up on the miracle of it occurring. So instead Moose and Squirrel chased down the likes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the many other cases thrust about in a hurricane fury.
When the storm settled and the sea calmed, was the answer so obvious? Was a romantic relationship racked with turmoil and heartbreak impossible to salvage and had they crossed the line of friendship for it to never return? Were these cases all they had left keeping the fraying threads attached, or were miracles merely a way for the human mind to explain that which simple science and logic had no answers?
They were on an ever circulating treadmill, always going forward yet going nowhere. Then there was Daniel, or more importantly what he symbolized. A clear path defined by someone long ago, simple answers, a cog in society to be born, contribute, multiply, raise, grow old, and die.
The proposition was far removed than the step through the looking glass and sky diving into the abyss that Mulder offered if she only took his hand. It left her stuck on the treadmill unless she made a decision - to leave Mulder and pursue a life most ordinary, or to entwine their future, their lives, and create a world from the stitching of the unknown.
If this was all a simulation created by God, did we have the right to annihilate destiny, incinerate fate, and rewrite the code in our own design? To not only control the programming, but manipulate the operating system? All for our own needs, disregarding the existential reverberations of such hubris?
The track with Mulder romanced the heart and the mind, enlivened the soul, but there was much to be had by taking the road already paved. Scully had awakened, not just spiritually, not just to her own choices and desires, but from her nap on Mulder’s couch. He had tucked her inside his blanket and left her to her dreams, alone, in his living room.
Quietly she made her way into his bathroom and emerged with a dilemma - Did she let him sleep or wake him and tell him?
“It might be easier to sleep if you laid down,” Mulder mumbled from under the covers.
Seeing the die had been cast, Scully kicked off her shoes, folded her sweater and skirt and slid in beside him. Mulder fluffed up his pillow and leaned up on his elbow. “What’s on your mind, G-woman? Are we still contemplating the Big Bang?”
“I feel like there might have been more left unsaid.”
“Between us? I find that hard to believe,” Mulder replied sarcastically, staring at her mouth, watching her tongue swipe delicately along her top lip.
“When I turned down Daniel, I did it because I was choosing myself. At this time in my life, I know the direction I want to be heading.”
Mulder lifted his brow and gave her a nod. “That’s important.”
“I would like it if we were heading in the same direction.”
She felt his probing eyes as he shifted closer to her from underneath the thin sheet. “We’re not?”
“When I was meditating, when I had my visions, it wasn’t just about Daniel. I saw my past, my father, my sister, and you. Us.”
“You saw us?”
“I did.”
Mulder cocked his head. “How was my hair?”
“Fine. It was your ties that were hideous.” Their innocuous flirtations made her smile, but it failed to obscure the underlying weight bleeding through. “Mulder, I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to believe.”
He took a deep breath. “Scully, then you need to know, I think Alethea came into our lives to enable us to see. We’re looking out in the universe for science and answers, but it’s in us. That we can be our own light without influence or control, our own gods of creation. Nothing special, or divine, or the predictability of atoms or the differential distribution of quarks, just you and me. I believe we shouldn’t give up.. Not because of some “God” chromosome or chip or spaceship or Alien DNA, but because we are us, for that reason alone I believe we can create a miracle.”
“.. so do I.”
Mulder splayed his hand around her waist edging her towards him. Her hand ran up his chest, his hand sliding beneath her sweater just as the rough scruff of his jaw brushed the sensitive skin of her mouth. She slanted her head as his tongue gracefully plunged between her lips. His velvety kiss wasn’t demanding, but soft, coaxing.
They shed their clothes and she slid beneath him, her legs around his waist, fingernails teasing him as they kissed. A tortured moan escaped his lips and she kissed him deeper, tightening the fist in his hair. His hand massaged each breast attentively, thoroughly, forging shivers of pleasure. Scully struggled for breath as Mulder entered her, and then went completely still.
“Scully,” he whispered, thickening inside her.
The call of her name from his lips made her thighs tremble, chest tingle, and her heart pump. Her core flexed around him. “Mulder.”
There was something in the way they pulsed and throbbed together, in the long stride of his hips and how hers returned his cadence. What started as a slow slide morphed into a faster and harder movement of deep sharp thrusts.
She could feel the orgasm building inside them both, she could taste it in his kiss, feel it in his frantic stroke. Her body a vice around him as he buried deep inside her, her nails marking the skin at the back of his neck, their breaths ragged, she pulled him flush against her and released at the rhythmic pump of his cock, the sensations, rattling her to her very bones.
They stared into each other, riding the emotions.
Scully’s eyes watered and it furrowed Mulder’s brow. Instead of speaking, she shifted away from him and he spooned her, their hands intertwined, she kissed his fingers as she pressed her lips to them. They laid that way for a long moment. Under her breath she murmured, “Mulder, I love you.”
He replied, his voice quiet, but strong. “I tried to tell you.”
She glanced over her shoulder, steaming, but then he kissed her lips and melted her all over again. “I’ve loved you for a very very long time,” he whispered against her ear.
“You think,” she said hesitantly, “this time..”
“I know,” he replied, his voice unwavering.
She settled back into his arms, drifting off into the sea of their shared dreams.