Chapter Text
Scully turned the light on.
She locked the door behind her, sliding the bag off her shoulder, dropping the stack of mail on the table. She kicked off her heels, hung her coat in the closet, shaking off the droplets of water. The curtains were drawn. The machine blinked by the phone.
Home. Her apartment. For the first time in three days.
It was nothing unusual. She was gone from home often, and for longer than that, days or weeks at a time spent on the road for work. The only part that was unusual: she had not traveled farther than Alexandria during those three days. Nor had she known when she walked out her door that it would be days before she returned.
She clicked play on the machine. Her mother’s voice floated out, inviting her over for dinner next weekend. The second caller hung up. The machine beeped a third time and it was Mulder, doing that weird voice of his as he asked her to meet him at the ballpark on his side of town. It was the message from Saturday night. She hadn’t erased it; she hadn’t even properly played it. She had stepped out of the shower, heard the beep and the message as he left it in real time. Twenty minutes later she had been pulling on her coat, locking the door behind her, the lamp on in her bedroom and fresh fruit in her fridge.
The lamp still shone now. It gave off warm light, dispelling some of the gray. Scully pulled back the curtains, watching the sky spitting rain.
Mulder had been awake when she stirred that morning, before the alarm, before sunrise. He hadn’t been alert, just awake, lying there watching the window, and when she had rolled next to him, he had lifted his arm, silently pulling her close. Too early for words, too spent from the night before. He wasn’t due in court until nine; her briefing would be even later. They had a full hour, at least, before the alarm would go off. She had fallen back asleep. Whether Mulder did too, she didn’t know, but when she woke up again, he had showered and dressed and was perched on the edge of the bed to tell her goodbye, saying she should sleep all she wanted, take the day off from work if she wanted, there was nothing in that briefing that wouldn’t wait for them both.
It was true— there was nothing. And yet Scully was up before he was out the door. She showered and dressed too, finding one of her suits she kept at the edge of his closet, strange to be there alone without Mulder in the next room. It was one thing to be there waiting for him; it felt weird to even think about spending a whole day there of her own accord. As if Mulder’s home was not his physical address, it was simply wherever he was in relation to her.
She had arrived at the briefing, on time for once, without a partner to herd. No one to lean in and mutter the predictable joke about how it was a misnomer— briefings contained the word brief. He was right; it dragged on. She endured it from the back row, taking copious notes the way she learned in college, occupying one part of her mind while the other part of it drifted. These things were rote by now. It wasn’t real work, not like the time they spent out in the field. Court cases and briefings never had any outcome. It was a meaningless ritual they had to perform, a trade-off they made to do the work that mattered. She had ducked out of the meeting as soon as it ended, before she caught Skinner’s eye. Their boss knew too many things, a keen gaze that missed nothing. She had the feeling that, were he inclined to do so, he could relate a pretty fair history of her involvement with Mulder, despite the effort they made to give nothing away. Today was not a day she could submit to more scrutiny. She offered small polite smiles, avoided everyone’s gaze and disappeared from the room.
Five minutes later, she had stood holding the key in front of the door to their office. The crowded elevator emptied out as it descended downwards, floor by floor, until it was only her stepping out into the basement. She had every intention of walking through that door, working through the afternoon, just like she was supposed to. The exemplary agent, the thankless tasks, the long hours, the job well done.
Right up until the moment she couldn’t. She stood there, trying to summon the energy to turn the key in the lock, face the disarray of the office, the desk piled disastrously higher after yesterday’s absence. She knew what awaited: she’d spend hours sorting files into some semblance of order, write up her findings from Quantico, triage the day’s emails, without Mulder there to wheedle and banter, help the day speed along.
She was not one to leave work. She honored duty, she bore responsibility, she rarely ever even took so much as a personal day off. But the next thing she knew she had the key in the ignition of her Bureau-loaned Buick, turning left onto 10th Street, pointing the car home.
Here, she cracked the windows open, letting the humid air in. Put on a pot of tea, gave the houseplants some water. Queued up her favorite CD. Dusted off the book by her bed.
Home, alone.
When her phone rang hours later, Scully had left the handset far out of reach. Her cell phone was turned off. She had napped through the worst of the rain, grazed through the pantry for snacks, stretched through a half-dozen yoga poses, then dispensed a bottle of bubble bath into the tub, running the water so scalding it fogged up every surface in the room.
She sloshed there now, turning the page of her book, not even registering the distant phone as something worth her attention. It felt decadent, and rebellious, and when the water lost heat, she simply drained enough to add more, refusing to care when the voice in her head said she had better things to do with her Tuesday afternoon.
“In here,” Scully said, when she heard the key in the lock, the soft click of her front door closing.
Footsteps crossed the apartment. The bathroom door— ajar, behind her— pushed open. “Hey,” she said, speed-reading down to the page break, which of course left her in suspense.
“Hey yourself,” Mulder said, coming into her field of vision. He leaned against the counter, tugging the knot loose from his tie. He surveyed the scene that she made. “Well done, Scully. I approve. What’s the book?”
Scully showed him the cover, sticking the book flap between pages, marking her place. She closed it, careful to keep it away from the water. “How did it go?”
All he had in answer was a heavy sigh. He made his don’t ask face.
“That bad?”
“They didn’t even call me up until three. Took all of five minutes. The DA thinks the guy will walk.” Mulder pumped his fist, clenching a sarcastic victory. “You really feel it, you know, when you’re out there making a difference.” He laid his hand over his heart.
Scully passed the book to Mulder, who turned around to find a safe place to set it.
“What about you?” he asked.
She splashed a few drops of water. “Scintillating, as you can see,” she said. “Highly productive. I definitely did not take a half day to play hooky.”
“See, I told you that would be a terrible idea.”
“Right as always,” she said.
It made him grin, tiredly. Fatigue showed in his eyes, in the weary line of his shoulders. She stirred the water around with her fingers.
“Want to get in?”
“Are you serious?” he said, skeptical, where usually he was hopeful. “I was going to go, if you need some peace and quiet.”
Scully gave him a look. “No you weren’t. And there’s room. Don’t slosh the water—”
The warning was in vain. Mulder shucked off his clothes with enthusiasm, sliding into the bathtub behind her, displacing his body weight in water before she could rescind the offer.
She waited for the waves to subside, topping off the hot water to bring it back up to the edge, then settled back against him.
There was room for two. Together they found the spot where all their limbs fit, one of Mulder’s big knees sticking out of the water. “Ah, Scully,” he said, breathing the sigh of approval he gave her when she solved a problem he had not known existed. She felt him relax all the way, draping his arms over the side of the tub. She did the same, laying her head back against him. He brushed her hair out of his face when it tickled, then left his hand there, idly rubbing her scalp in a way that made her realize why a cat would want to purr.
It felt wonderful to just drift. He was tired enough to not start talking. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, misting over the windows as the gray day turned grayer, dusk setting in. Long moments passed, the only sound in the room the heat cycling on, or a stray drip from the faucet.
She could doze off, if she hadn’t just dozed through most of the afternoon. She traced plot lines instead, trying to mentally solve the fictional murder without the aid of the book. Mulder dripped water along the length of her arm, tracing the long line of tendon up to the crook of her elbow. He rubbed that spot, lost in thought, and Scully finally detached herself from classifying red herrings to tip her head up.
“Sorry, nothing,” he said, in answer to the unspoken question.
She touched the bony knob on his wrist, leaving droplets of water. “I can hear you thinking.”
Another moment of silence. Finally, all he said was, “Last night.”
“Ah,” she said softly.
She hadn’t known what he would say. She hadn’t known if he would say anything. Sometimes they didn’t— sometimes, an earth-shattering event happened but they each just absorbed it, incorporating a new truth between them, not needing to conduct a verbal post-mortem.
“Was it worse than I thought?” she asked, defaulting to the earlier mood when she had reported about her day.
“Yes,” he said gravely. “I’m sore in places I did not know existed. Please do not ever do that to me again.”
She smiled, making him place a swift kiss on the top of her head. The mood shifted, though, as surely as the water shifted and rippled around them.
“I—” Mulder said, and then couldn’t seem to say anything.
“What is it,” she said, rubbing his wrist with her thumb.
In the quiet, he said, “That wasn’t just me, right? It was different. Last night—it was different. It’s never been like that before.”
Scully, carefully, smoothed down the fine hairs on the back of his hand.
“You’ve never been like that before,” he said.
“It was different,” she agreed.
“What happened? What made it…” He trailed off. She waited to see if he found the words for it, and he didn’t, possibly because those words didn’t exist. He splayed his hand up, catching her fingers between his own.
“Well, there were dairy products involved,” she said.
“Well, yes, there was that,” he said dryly. “Was that all it was? We got silly and dirty?”
He knew that it wasn’t. She knew that he knew it. It was— it was something that she had held away from herself since she woke up that morning. For the last three days, even, if she was honest with herself.
“Because I’ll do that every time,” Mulder was saying. “I’ll buy out the produce section. Empty the freezer aisle. We can try whatever you want. I’ll cover you in gravy and mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving.”
Scully laughed. She felt so absurdly, stupidly grateful for him, there to forge the path when she didn’t know one existed, to make a fool of himself before anyone else got the chance. He was a ridiculous person, and the force of affection hit her so strongly her eyes filled with tears.
“Scully,” he said, his voice changing, going soft and urgent as the small sob escaped her. He cupped her head, tucking hair back. “What is it?” he said.
She shook her head swiftly, choking off the emotion.
“Tell me,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm instead of progressing to panic. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s nothing. What is it? The baseball? I told you, I’ll get season tickets.”
She laughed again, crying. “Stop being ridiculous,” she said through the lump in her throat.
“Well, stop scaring me. I’m pretty sure I can take it. Ninety-five percent sure. Sixty-five percent sure,” he amended. He said it one more time, softly, seriously, “Dana. What is it?”
The care in his voice, the concern, the careful use of her name; it turned her inside out. She was going to say it out loud, and it took her a moment to work up the words. This was what intimacy was; not sex in the bed when she had her legs wrapped around him, but opening up to him when she most wanted to run. “It’s just hormones,” she said, taking a deep, shaky breath, feeling foolish and vulnerable. “It’s— I’m just— I’m—”
It was her shortest sentences that took the ground from beneath him. I quit. I have cancer. I love you.
“I’m ovulating,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, Scully.”
“Or I would be, if—”
He pulled her into his arms. She was already halfway there in the limited space of the tub, but he gathered her up, wrapping his arms around her and not letting her go. “I didn’t know,” he said softly. “I didn’t know it was like that for you.”
“It’s not always,” she said, wrapping her arms over his where he held her from behind. “But it’s sometimes… and lately…” She exhaled another breath. “Like last night, or this weekend, sometimes I want you so badly I can’t hardly breathe.”
He released all the air in his chest, pressing his face to her scalp, cheek catching the strands of her hair. He brushed her hair down and kissed it, then held her again. “I had no idea. I mean, some idea, about the fifth time you jumped me, but I never… I just thought I was really hot stuff.”
She snorted a little, wiping her dripping nose.
“Thanks for crushing my dreams. You’d have jumped the pizza guy if I wasn’t there.”
“He had a goatee,” she said.
“And a kickass Slayer t-shirt.”
“And I think he was fifteen. Stop it,” she said. Goddamn him for always moving them past the impossible subjects, making her laugh. She shook her head at the futility of trying to keep him confined to one track. Her heart squeezed again, grateful. If she focused on that, it shut out the emotions that had lurked like a shadow just out of her reach all day.
Mulder didn’t let go. He kept his arms around her, brushing the shell of her ear, resting his chin on her shoulder. The water had started to cool by the time he spoke again. “Hey, Scully,” he said. “Can I ask you a question?”
He had gone quiet, and the question was quiet. Her answer was quiet. “Yes?” she said.
The ripples sloshed in the tub as he took a deep breath. “If you could—” he started, and then couldn’t say it. Whatever it was was difficult for him. “If you could have children.” He finally got the words out. “Completely healthy. Would you— still want them? With me? Or,” and he said this so softly, “is it safe to be with me because you can’t?”
His chin was brushing her shoulder. His arm was resting high on her stomach, just beneath her breasts. So she knew he could feel it, the breath she drew in and held. Nothing else for a moment. Her mind was stunned with the question.
When she did not break the silence, he sighed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter,” he said. But she turned around, let him see the look on her face.
It was wrenched with emotion. Raw, completely open. Her face was crumpling in front of him with her effort to hold back the tears. She slipped in the tub and he caught her, helping her turn to face him. Did he really not know? She was nodding. She didn’t stop nodding. With you. A tear slid down anyway, to drop off her chin.
“Scully,” he whispered, not to shush her, to let her know he was there. He used all of his body to wrap her up, chest to chest, belly to belly, her face buried in his neck until she felt small, fiercely guarded. Enveloped. Safe. Like he could just swallow her up, absorb her into his chest, put her beneath his ribs alongside his lungs and his heart, the vital organs that kept him alive.
She cried. The tears came, and she didn’t block them that time. She cried until they were both wet with salt tears along with the tepid bathwater. The dam broke, and deluged her, and it was all right, because she would survive it. She wrapped herself around him, and held him, and emptied herself, and he rocked them both gently, not needing her to stop, or calm down, or tell him anything more.
When they pulled apart, Mulder’s eyes looked like they did after a long night without sleep, red-rimmed and subdued. He brushed her cheeks with his thumbs, cupping her face, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He kissed her wet cheeks, then hugged her again, getting snot all over his shoulder. She snuffled a laugh at the mess, trying to dry her face with wet hands, trying to clean them both up. He didn’t care. He grabbed the oversized towel, using it in the most ineffectual way possible, dabbing with the corner at her puffy eyes.
It was raining again by the time they climbed out of the tub. The overcast sky had more to give, relenting to the wet part of spring. Mulder wrapped her up in the towel and dried her off, the towel thick and plush, his hands gentle and brisk. The heat ran in the vents, but the water had cooled down enough that it felt good to be warm again. He tied her fluffy robe around her. She gave him the pair of sweats and a t-shirt that he kept her drawer, and he chuckled softly as her stomach growled, loud.
They scrambled eggs and some sausage that she had in the freezer. She checked the fresh oranges, sliced one, and set him to work juicing the rest. Toast with jam, tea with honey. They ate in quiet companionship, sticking to brief, mindless comments, one or two offhand things that Mulder thought might make her laugh.
They were clearing the plates off the table when he finally remembered, saying, “You never told me. How was the briefing?” and she smiled at the crumbs she was scraping into the sink.
“Mulder. You don’t care about the briefing.”
“I profoundly don’t care about the briefing,” he said. “It must’ve been great, judging by your enthusiasm and newfound workplace fervor.”
This was the shift that she wanted, back to safe, solid ground. She could feel one thing and it didn’t have to overtake her. She could apply time to the problem, could feel it, let it pass, return to it only when she was ready. He came up behind her, adding bowls to the sink. “I did make a suggestion,” she said, “about amending the guidelines for appropriate conduct between federal agents. It seemed well-received.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“All we have to do is demonstrate for the panel the conduct we’ve found effective, and they’ll take it under advisement.”
Mulder squeezed her so hard with the hug from behind that it lifted her up on her toes. It felt good— the heaviness around her heart in the process of lifting. The rain falling on the windows, blocking them off from the world. Mulder manhandling her, happy as an overgrown puppy to have her sarcastic with him again, not treating her like she would break. It made her feel strong. He rubbed his stubble on her ear and her neck, trying to tickle.
“Not a problem,” he said. “Half the building’s convinced we’ve been fucking for years. Might as well give them a show.”
“Mulder!” She dropped a dish in the sink as he mimed it a moment, grab-assing her, playful, bending her over the sink. He smacked a kiss to her ear and let her go, except she was too quick for him, turning around and grabbing him back before he got out of reach.
He obeyed, letting himself be towed back to the counter, her soapy hands on his t-shirt. He helped her hop up, then placed himself between her knees. She rested her arms on his shoulders, enjoying the change in their height.
“We used all the oranges,” he said, making a mournful face.
“I don’t want oranges.”
“Fair’s fair, Scully. Your kitchen table and mine.”
She shut him up. She tipped his chin up, and brushed his jaw, and looked in his eyes. He hadn’t kissed her all day, not on the mouth, and she made up for that now, sliding to the edge of the counter to draw him as close as she could. The unconventional part of her liked that they did not kiss when he walked in a room. It made her an addict when they rationed that contact. The lack of the thing was part of the thing itself— the payoff worthwhile, the wait exquisite in its own way. She kissed him slowly, languidly, thoroughly. Eyelids, cheek, nose. The edge of his mouth, his temple, back to the edge of his mouth. Each one of his lips at a time. He made a small sound as her mouth finally parted, allowing him the first slip of her tongue. He shivered under her hands, and she hummed in response, letting her body press his, the communication they needed.
She thought about it sometimes, wondered if others could look at them and see the richness their lives held in these weekends and evenings, separate from their work. She wondered if they carried it visibly, even during the hours they were so careful to pack it away, not look or touch. It was a strange thing to wonder. She wondered it anyway. Mulder reached around her, flicking off the light over the sink.
He carried her to the bedroom, lifting her off the counter, her knees hugging his hips, her arms around his neck, the way he’d done the night before—or was it the night before that? Anyway, a recurring theme to the weekend. They bumped a chair with her ankle, then had to stop and let him curse through the pain when he almost dropped her because he whacked the doorframe with his elbow. And then she went logical for a moment, requesting a detour to the bathroom. He parted ways with her there, and had crawled under the covers, nursing his sore arm, by the time she rejoined him, shutting off the rest of the lights.
“Remember the first time we did this?” he said, going nostalgic as she climbed under the sheets.
She paused, one knee down on the bed, one palm too. “You mean the time you broke my bedside table and my neighbors almost called the police?”
“I did not break your bedside table,” Mulder said. “And no. I meant the first time we slept together, but thanks for reminding me, I do sleep better knowing your neighbors are still halfway vigilant.”
“You and me both,” Scully said. She curled up facing him. “The first time I slept with you wasn’t here.”
“I know. I didn’t mean here, I just meant the first time in general.”
She tried to follow his thoughts. It was a tangle, as usual. “What about it?” she asked.
Mulder laid his hand on his heart with emotion. “What every guy dreams of. ‘What about it,’ she asks.”
She poked his shin with her toes.
“I was trying to have a moment here, Scully. Work with me,” he said.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m with you.” He curled up on his side and she faced him across the pillow, tucking her hands under her cheek. “I remember,” she said, with faux solemnity.
They had lost the sentimental moment, but he went with it anyway. “I remember,” he said. “And I remember the way it felt when you kissed me, and the look on your face, and I remember the moment I thought, I am royally fucked for the rest of my life.”
His gray eyes were on hers. “Mulder,” she chided gently. “You keep rewriting history.”
“I am not,” he protested.
“You say it like it’s out of some movie. We were messy and sweaty and half out of our minds.”
“I know. That’s what I’m saying.” He picked something off her cheek just below her eye, inspected it closely, then shook it off his finger. An eyelash. “I’m not rewriting anything,” he said again as he did this. “I’m telling you, Scully. I slept with you that first time, and I thought— this is it. For the rest of my life.”
He could do that, Scully thought. He could arrive at big sweeping truths in the most unconvincing fashion, and then present them to her clad in sweatpants on a Tuesday night. He didn’t mind it, rewriting the future, devoting himself to unproven claims. She was the one full of doubts— not doubts about him, but that anything between them could be so certain, so permanent. Their lives, their work had always seemed perilous at best. It was often one threat or another, the future as uncertain as the present. One day at a time seemed the best she could manage.
“Mulder,” she said softly.
He brushed her chin. “Breathe, Scully. It’s okay. It’s not like I asked for your hand in marriage. No more big declarations.”
“I just don’t know what that looks like,” she said, his breath on her cheek in the small space between them. “Knowing like that, for sure. The rest of our lives.”
He just waited, saying nothing, his expression giving nothing away. She felt the same tightening in her chest that she had felt in the bath. How impossible it was to express what she really meant.
“It’s not that I don’t…” All the words were insufficient. They were coming out wrong. Or not coming out at all. “It’s not you that I can’t picture. It’s just— what we do. How we live. Nothing in our lives is constant. It seems… wrong… to think the future could be any different.”
“I know,” he said.
All he did was lift up his arm, and she crawled against him. It wasn’t him reaching for her; it was him letting her in. The way he had done in the bath. The way he had done all those long years ago, that second night, that first case, that first time as his partner that she felt seizing fear, felt a great big unknown with the ground dropping out from beneath her. She had known him all of seventy-two hours when her instinctive reaction, in fear and relief, was to push into his arms.
It hadn’t included an epiphany, like the one Mulder claimed when he said he knocked on her door and his life changed. He had opened his door and she hadn’t known anything— she still didn’t know anything. She had just found herself in that moment, like she had found herself in this moment. Without sweeping certainty. But… in the moment. And, moment by moment, nowhere else in the world that she wanted to be.
Mulder exhaled, breathing into her hair. Rain tapped on the window. She inhaled the scent of his chest, the fabric softener, the bubble bath.
“Scully,” he said, into her hair. He always left his face in her hair, even when they were ready to drift off to sleep. “If it makes a difference? I didn’t say I could picture it either. It’s more like… I can’t picture anything else.”
A long pause.
“Can you?” he asked.
There was no warmth radiating off the water, sloshing around her, spilling out— what she had felt that afternoon in the bath. There was just the warmth radiating from him, and the soft pajamas, and his skin. The question was honest. The second one that day that had stunned her in its simplicity.
She knew the answer. He knew the answer.
“No,” she said, honest. “I can’t picture anything else.” And that was the problem, wasn’t it, the proof of a negative still did not prove a positive. Or something like that. It had been a long day.
It had been a long day for him too. Mulder rolled away from her a little, reaching up behind them to turn off the bedside lamp, careful not to knock it over. He sank back down on the pillows and pulled her onto his chest. She burrowed against him, nuzzling into his shirt. She realized something in the dark.
“Mulder,” she whispered.
“Scully?”
“It’s barely past seven-thirty.”
A pause. A glance at the window. A hearty chuckle from his chest.
“Um,” he whispered back. “I think it started off sexy, back there in the kitchen, but then you had to go to the bathroom and I just got tired.”
She shook a little on his chest, in silent laughter. “Is this a new low, or a new personal best?”
“What if,” he proposed, “we go to sleep now, but then you wake me up in this hot way before midnight, to jump me one last time for old time’s sake?”
“One last time?” She arched an eyebrow, which he must have sensed without seeing it since she hadn’t moved in the dark.
“One last time for the night,” he explained. “One last time before your sex-crazed hormones go back into hiding and you’re just plain old Scully again.”
Her other eyebrow joined the first, but instead of tackling the latter half of that sentence, she said, “Mulder, do you even understand how biology works?”
“No,” he agreed. “Which is why I’ve seduced a pathologist.”
He grinned in the dark, which she knew the same way he had known about her eyebrows. Scully sighed, exhausted now too. She starfished on top of him, scooting up to rest her head on his shoulder with her hair splayed on the pillow. He sneezed some of it off his nose.
“Use your imagination,” he offered, “when you wake me up. Tie me to the bed if you want to. Cover me with some of that jam from the toast? Torture me until I—”
“Mulder,” she said.
He shifted a little beneath her, pulling the covers across them.
Another long moment.
“I was going to say, torture me until I come.”
“Mulder.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re talking a lot in your sleep.”
He yawned, long and loud.
“We only live once, Scully.”
“So my crackpot, brilliant partner once told me.”
He grinned at that one too.
The rest could wait for tomorrow. A lifetime to figure it out. Tonight— Mulder running his mouth, taking up space in the bed, too warm under the covers, equal parts honest and ridiculous, careful with the tender, bruised-fruit pieces of her heart.
Home, she thought, sweet home.