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feejee-mermaid · 1 year ago

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Pause (2/11)

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic

Chapter 2: Back in the Atmosphere

The drive to Alexandria is so second nature to her that she’s determined to watch out for changes, hints that might suggest how much time has passed. She scans her surroundings as she drives, her head darting left to right to see everything.

She notices a new, neon-bright exterior to a bar in Georgetown, as conspicuous as a tropical fish. On M Street there's a bike rental shop that she doesn't recognize. The bridge itself, the waters of the Potomac, the stone-lined George Washington Memorial parkway: these all look the same to her. Of course, it’s dark out, so she is limited by what she can see in the overlapping circles of streetlights.

A small billboard advertising a top 40 radio station catches her attention, but she can’t be sure whether that was there before. It’s amazing how much of one’s surroundings one doesn’t notice in everyday life, she thinks. However, the sign makes her realize she could give the radio a try.

Yes. She should turn on the car radio.

She fiddles with the console and tries a public radio station first, thinking there might be news of the day playing that could provide a date or other clues. That station seems to be running some kind of evening documentary program on the history of the Vietnam War memorial. Scully turns it up to listen more closely: “…and wanted to make something that allowed people to remember, but wanted to serve as a visual reminder that the dead did not come back.” It’s an account of events from years ago: not especially helpful now.

She hits scan, moving through the ripping static noises to other stations, listening for a moment to each one. Classic rock. Latin. A commercial for car insurance.

She remembers the call number of the top 40 station from the billboard, and she tunes into that, her eyes periodically darting back up to the road.

“…You’re listening to Washington’s hit music station, Z104.”

The deejay’s patter seems like it might reveal promising information. She turns it up, but the deejay quickly transitions into music. It’s some sentimental pop ballad with piano.

She sighs. It shouldn’t be so difficult to find out what the date is, should it?

Scully turns her attention to the song. It’s completely unfamiliar to her, but it’s not like it’s entirely unusual for her to fail to recognize pop music. On the other hand, she did have the impression that teen music was edgier than this. This song seems very soft. She remembers those teenagers in Oklahoma, that lightning case, the kind of angst-ridden, angry music they liked. Their music reminded her a little of the punk music she admired in high school.

The male singer of the ballad on the radio is very emotional. As she drives into Alexandria, she listens, with mild curiosity, to the lyrics. He seems to be posing questions to a woman returning from a long, otherworldly absence.

Tell me, he challenges her. Did you sail across the sun? Did Venus blow your mind? Did you see that heaven is overrated? Did you miss me when you were looking for yourself out there?

A chill again trickles through her, running down her limbs.

Did you fall from a shooting star?

No. She doesn’t like this song. Her heart has begun thumping again, so loudly she hears it in her head. She turns off the radio.

What she needs more than any half-ass clue hunting, more than this nerve-wracking guessing game, is to find her partner. He will tell her whatever she needs to know. She doesn’t need to deduce it from radio stations.

That sounds enough like common sense to calm her down.

Hegal Place and his apartment building don’t look any different to her, thank God. The interior still has that musty historical smell, with a dash of insecticide and Pine Sol. The numbers on the elevator buttons are still mostly worn off; the lighting in the halls is still tinged amber and curiously dim.

She moves quickly down his hallway, but hesitates at the spot where she remembers last speaking to him. When he was cupping her head with such tenderness. When he was leaning in with the most desperate, longing expression on his face. How long ago was that? she wonders? What happened next?

She examines the floor for evidence that she had landed there, unconscious, felled by a sting. But there is nothing to see there but dingy beige tile, worn and scuffed by too much foot traffic.

Scully swallows. She walks, determined, to #42 —and then stands there just staring at the closed door. Taking a fortifying breath. Steeling herself for the worst.

If it isn’t him, if he doesn’t live here any more, well, she’s going to be upset, but she’ll just go to the Hoover building next. It will be okay. She will be okay. She’ll figure it out. She can still find Mulder.

That’s all perfectly logical, and she’s aware of that. But she isn’t operating on pure logic here. Her heart just wants him to be here, in his pajamas, arms open, ready to order her some takeout. Please let him be here, she thinks, little tears springing in her eyes. Please let it be Mulder.

She knocks on the door. And waits, listening for any noise inside.

And then she tries again.

There is no response. She bites her lip, hoping she’ll still hear him any moment. What time it is shouldn’t matter. There’s no time of night that Mulder wouldn’t wake up hearing knocking on his door.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reaches into her pocket, fumbling a little, and she produces his key. All right. If it’s not his apartment, it won’t fit. And then she will know.

She notices the sound of her own shallow breathing as she pushes the key in.

It slides into the lock perfectly, same as it always has.

Scully presses her eyes closed and releases a long sigh. She turns the key, unlocks it, and pushes open his door.

The space inside is lit only by the mottled green glow of the fish tank, but she’s greeted by the unmistakable sight of Mulder’s familiar apartment. The couch. The patterned Navajo blanket. The art on the walls. She would know it anywhere. It’s as familiar as any place on earth to her.

Her knees almost buckle from relief. Whatever else happens, she is safe now, and at least has a place to sleep tonight. Not her own home, but nearly as close as she can imagine.

“Mulder?” she calls. “Hello?”

There's no answer, and the silence unnerves her. She flips on a switch, and the room is illuminated. She takes some tentative steps inside.

His place is very messy, even for Mulder. There are several meals’ worth of dirty dishes stacked on the coffee table, which isn’t typical for him. Papers and files are strewn over the desk, spilling haphazardly onto the floor. This paper chaos is more typical for him, although it seems especially out of hand.

She picks up a fast food wrapper off the floor and glances at some of the papers on his desk, which seem to be a mix of bills and old article clippings. Is he out of town? Or is he just out for the night, chasing down a source? She wonders why it’s gotten so messy.

The phone on his desk is peeking out from under a newspaper, but she's relieved to see it. Immediately she picks it up and dials his cell number. It goes straight to voicemail. She hangs it up and sighs heavily, standing still a moment. Taking in the information around her.

Where are you, Mulder?

She wanders into the kitchen. The clock over his stove top says 11:38, which answers one of her questions, although hardly the most important.

The kitchen is also in unhygienic disarray, with a heap of unwashed dishes resting in the sink, as though he hasn’t been bothered with them in quite some time. The garbage can is overflowing, to-go containers piled precariously on top. She crumples up the fast food wrapper and sticks it in the side of the can as best she can.

The room doesn’t smell particularly good, and this turns her already-vulnerable stomach. What’s more, Scully doesn’t like what she sees here. Not any of this. It sets her on edge.

Mulder often comes across as disorganized and scattered, but he isn’t dirty. He can actually be oddly fastidious, sometimes even more than her about select topics. She has never seen dirty dishes piling up in his kitchen before.

“Mulder?” she calls out again, more loudly, her voice a little shrill. She doesn’t know why she’s calling his name when it’s clear he’s not here.

She decides to look in his refrigerator for evidence he’s been here recently, and she braces herself for seeing and smelling a landscape of rotting food. Holding her breath, she throws open the door of the fridge quickly.

Much to her relief, it’s inoffensive. There’s very little inside, in fact—except a glass pan of lasagna covered in plastic wrap with a single square cut out. She slides the pan out a little to look at it, and sees a note taped to the top of the plastic.

Her breath catches.

The note is on familiar stationary, yellow paper decorated with little sunshines and daisies. The note has two sentences written in precise cursive in blue pen: “Please eat at least half this time. I’ll check when I come back for the pan on Sunday. -M”

The word “half” is underlined three times. It’s unquestionably her mother’s handwriting.

Scully slides it back into the fridge and closes the door.

She thinks about the last time her mother and Mulder took care of one another. She thinks about how this might relate to her memory problems— what Mulder would call “lost time.”

Did you sail across the sun? Did Venus blow your mind?

No. She is not ready to face this possibility. Not again. She feels tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

No. Absolutely not.

She turns to the sink and looks around for Mulder’s dish soap and sponge.

With grim determination she begins to work on his pile of dirty dishes, holding her breath against the smell. The hot water scalds her hands, but strangely, she finds the sensation not unpleasant.

The soap and water makes her left hand sting a little, and she considers again the cut there. It’s deeper than she first realized. She chooses to ignore it.

Because that’s what she’s doing right now. She’s ignoring things. And doing dishes.

Once she finishes the dishes in the sink, she goes into the living room and scoops up the dirty dishes off of his coffee table, and takes them into the sink next. It gives her a reassuring sense of control. At least Mulder’s goddamn dish problem is in hand.

When she’s done with that, she has created so many clean dishes they don’t even fit in his drying rack, so she spreads out some dish towels on his countertop and lets them rest there to dry out, too. She’ll get his help to put them all up later. Hopefully.

Next she finds his garbage bags, and she empties his overflowing garbage, carrying it down the hall of his building to the garbage chute, holding it out away from her body so she can’t smell it.

She returns to his kitchen to wash her hands. As she stands surveying her good work, she realizes she is starving.

Well. She knows there’s at least one thing to eat, and she trusts her mom’s cooking.

She pulls out her mother’s lasagna from the fridge, uncovers it, and slices herself off a giant slab of lasagna, much bigger than the tiny piece Mulder had apparently previously cut for himself. She places it on a freshly clean plate and heats it, watching it in the microwave.

I’m sorry, Mom, she thinks. No doubt Mulder should be taking your sensible food advice and eating this, but your daughter needs food, too.

It comes out of the microwave appealingly gooey and bubbly. Her stomach rumbles, and she wonders again when she last ate.

She finds a clean fork and takes an eager bite, humming in immediate satisfaction as she stands there clutching the plate. Her mother’s lasagna. Ground sausage and ricotta, a smidge of basil and garlic, generous mozzarella. It tastes like childhood, nourishing and wholesome. Scully feels suddenly desperate with the need to see her mother. Soon, she promises herself. After she talks to Mulder.

She decides not to sit down to eat, feeling too antsy. Instead, she walks around curiously as she shovels hungry forkfuls from her plate to her mouth. She peers at the detritus around the apartment for any hint of what might be happening.

On his kitchen table she leans over to stare closely at a pair of glasses Mulder has left sitting precariously close to the edge, deciding they are the same pair he always wore. Next to his computer, she tries to read the content of a receipt sitting out prominently, but the type is smeared.

She notices the door to his bedroom is cracked open, which surprises her. Normally he uses his bedroom as some kind of disastrous storage facility, with boxes of files he doesn’t keep at the office for whatever reason. As well as, no doubt, an impressive treasure trove of his pornography.

Hands full of her plate and fork, she nudges the door with her toe. To her surprise, it falls open easily. She sticks her head inside — and then lowers the plate, her eyes widening.

His bedroom is a normal bedroom. Cluttered, yes. Unmade bed. Clothes on the floor. But a normal bedroom, with a queen-sized bed.

She takes a step inside the room, aware that she is definitely snooping now. It’s always struck her as profoundly strange and sad that Mulder didn’t have a dedicated place to sleep. Or, if she’s being honest, to have sex. She isn’t sure how she feels to know that something about his life has changed this much. It should make her glad for him, but it also makes her uneasy.

She’s afraid to look too closely at the reading material piled around on the dresser and bedside table, but even a quick perfunctory glance tells her it’s not porn. A more systematic sweep of the room and she doesn’t see any of his magazines, actually, and that surprises her, too.

His bed is tousled and looks like it hasn’t been made for days, weeks, maybe ever. His pillow is slightly indented, and Scully has a very powerful impulse to go press her face down upon it, to inhale his scent, so familiar from routinely working in his aura: in motel rooms, in cars, on sojourns in the woods. From when they hold each other close after they’ve almost lost each other. The thought immediately embarrasses her. She should walk right out of this room right now. It’s not her business to be in here.

But her eye is caught by something vivid green laying on his bed, near his pillow but slightly obscured by a fold in his comforter. She takes a few steps forward to see it more clearly, resisting the urge to go pick it up.

She can see it now. It’s a sweater, a very small green sweater. She can make out its basic silhouette quite clearly. Way too small to be Mulder’s. Too small to be most men’s, truthfully, and cut rather slim.

She stands there unmoving, gripping the plate of her mother’s lasagna tightly, mouth gaping a little in disbelief, trying to take in the sight of that unfamiliar woman’s sweater on her partner’s bed.

Maybe this is the reason for the bedroom. Maybe he has a girlfriend. Maybe that’s where he is right now, somewhere out with his girlfriend. Maybe at his girlfriend’s apartment.

It gives Scully a sickening, vertigo feeling, like she possibly could throw up the lasagna. Is nothing what she expects now? Can she depend on anything? Does she even know this person — Mulder with a girlfriend? Is he the same man, the man she trusts and needs right now?

Immediately she shakes her head at herself in disgust. She’s being ridiculous; she knows she is. Mulder with a girlfriend is probably the same partner to her as Mulder without a girlfriend. Why shouldn’t he be? There’s no reason to feel so devastated, so empty. Mulder isn’t her boyfriend. He never has been.

It’s just that so much of this is not what she remembers. What she most clearly remembers, in fact, is him trying to kiss her. But that was one little moment, one tiny blip in time, and she doesn’t even know what happened after that.

She rotates around the bedroom, her eyes scanning his work shirts strewn on the floor. Truthfully, besides the sweater, nothing in the state of this apartment especially suggests to her a happy Mulder with a girlfriend.

Actually, there’s nothing that seems clear here at all. Nothing that adds up to a straightforward picture. It’s all contradictory and disorienting. She releases a quiet sigh.

She’s only eaten about half, but the lasagna has lost its appeal. She looks down at the plate wrinkling her forehead, deciding to throw it out. This thought process is interrupted when his phone begins ringing.

She follows the sound of the ring back into his living room, considering for a moment whether to pick it up. Probably not the wisest idea, given everything she doesn’t understand here. Before she talks to anyone else, she wants to talk to Mulder.

Sitting carefully on his couch, setting her plate on the coffee table, she listens to the rings, letting his machine pick up. His message is exactly the same message she has heard a thousand times, which makes her want to weep.

After the beep, the caller’s message begins. “Hey, Mulder.”

It’s Byers. Scully straightens up, alert.

“We’re just calling to make sure you…got home okay. Because you, uh, seemed a little off. It’s about 12:45 now, so it seems like you should be there by now…but perhaps you made another stop. Or something. Well. Just call when you get this.”

There is a scuffling sound, and then Frohike’s voice: “We worry, my friend. Please let us know you’re home okay. No more scares.” Beep.

Scully stares at the machine, processing this new information.

No more scares.

Seemed a little off.

Should be there by now.

She leans her head back on the leather of his couch, drained. She wonders if she should call the Gunmen back and try to extract more information from them. They could at least answer her most basic questions. Had Mulder been at their place? Where might he have gone from there? Should she be looking for him? What “scares?” Oh, and what year is it? And as far as they know, has she been anywhere unusual as of late?

Her eyes fall closed, and she is suddenly so unbelievably tired.

I could easily fall asleep, she realizes in surprise. Which seems preposterous, given the circumstances, the countless unanswered questions. But it’s just all so overwhelming, so impossible to parse. Her body and mind seem to have given up on her.

For a moment she lets herself drift, her limbs going slack.

The sound of a key scraping in the door startles her awake.

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feejee-mermaid · 1 year ago

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yet another installment of txf + text posts

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feejee-mermaid · 1 year ago

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starting a series of paintings with this vibe. first installment

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feejee-mermaid · 1 year ago

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Parallel, Chapter 6/6

Rated X | Read it here on AO3

She wakes with an arid gasp, shooting upright and scanning her surroundings in a panic. It’s dark, and she reaches blindly across the bed for Mulder to find that he isn’t there.

There’s no sunset, no window, no California king size bed. As seconds pass and her hammering heart slows enough for her thoughts to organize themselves, she realizes that she’s back in Georgetown. The bedside clock reads just past 3:00 am, and she scrambles for her watch to confirm the date. Fewer than five hours have passed since she got into bed.

She picks up the phone and begins to dial Mulder’s number, but hangs up before it has a chance to ring. She doesn’t just need to hear his voice, she needs to see him, to smell him, to know that he’s the right one. That he is hers.

She takes all of five minutes to change her clothes and brush her teeth, forgoing any attempt to look halfway decent. Not that it should matter what she looks like; he’s seen her at her objective worst. He’s seen her exhausted, and dirty, and on the brink of death, and he still looks at her with so much wonder, so much admiration it makes her uncomfortable, because she feels so undeserving of it. She walks out the door in jeans and an oversized sweater, her hair combed but her face bare, and her heart pinned to her sleeve.

Her mind is oddly blank as she drives to his apartment, ascends the elevator, and knocks on his door. She’s operating on instinct, allowing her emotions to lead for once instead of stuffing them down. Allowing the ache in her chest to seek resolution instead of ignoring it. He doesn’t answer and she knocks again, more urgently this time, afraid that she might lose her nerve.

He opens the door and squints at the lights in the hallway. He’s wearing flannel pajama pants but no shirt, and his hair is entirely flat on one side. His rumpled, boyish appearance is disarming and endearing all at once.

“Scully?” he asks groggily, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Did something happen?”

She steps forward and wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her nose into his chest so she can breathe him in deep. A feeling of calm washes over her and she sighs with relief. This is him. This is the right one. Her Mulder.

“You okay?” he asks, returning her hug. “Scully, it’s 3:00 am,” he adds with an edge of surprise.

“I’m okay,” she says, her voice muffled against his skin. “I just had a bizarre dream and I needed to know that you were here.”

“Here at my apartment?” he asks, pulling away a little. She nods, not quite ready to explain it. Not quite sure how. “You could’ve called me,” he points out, and for the first time since leaving her apartment she feels embarrassed and afraid of what he’ll think of her.

“I know,” she says, avoiding his eyes. “But the nature of this dream was—I don’t think I would have felt sure it was really you just from a phone call.”

She can feel his interest piquing, and she wishes she’d been more vague. Most people find discussion of other people’s dreams intolerably boring, but Mulder isn’t most people.

“Come sit down,” he says, gently steering her towards the living room. “I’ll put a pot of coffee on.”

“It’s 3:00 am, Mulder,” she objects, though she knows it’s useless.

He brings her a cup of coffee in what he must have gathered is her favorite mug among his collection. It’s tall and narrow, bearing the faded logo of a long-since closed diner they used to frequent in the days before she started sleeping with her weapon in her bedside drawer. It has just the right amount of cream and sugar, and she tries to remember when and how he perfected that. He never asked, just observed, like he’s observing her now. Watching her bring the mug to her lips and blow the steam away, take a sip and then lower it back to her lap. Three, four, five times he watches her do this, saying nothing. She feels the weight of his attention and for once she lets it sit, lets herself become acclimated to it instead of distracting it away.

“Was it a nightmare?” he says suddenly, and she lifts her eyes to find that his are on her, his elbow propped on the back of the couch and his head resting on his fist.

Her memory flashes on him wrapped around her in the shower, and then his hand gently kneading her breast, and she feels her cheeks warm.

“No,” she says. “Not a nightmare.”

“What was it, then? Not a nightmare, but strange enough to send you across town at 3:00 am? I’ll admit that I’m intrigued,” he says, setting his cup on the coffee table.

She looks down at her lap, running her thumb along the rim of her mug nervously. Her thumbnail is tattered, her manicure ruined, and she frowns as she examines the other hand to find it similarly defaced.

“I think—” she begins, preemptively embarrassed. “I think that maybe our conversation influenced it. In fact, I’m positive that it did.”

“Our conversation?” he asks, oblivious. Leave it to Mulder to have no recollection of an extensive discussion on alternate universes.

“Albert Homnell’s theories on alternate dimensions?” she reminds him, and in her periphery she sees him nod.

“That’s interesting dream fodder,” he says, taking a drink before returning his mug to the coffee table. “What’d your subconscious cook up?”

She steals a glance at him. He still has that unkempt, unguarded, fresh-from-sleep look about him. His cheeks are dark with stubble and his already hooded eyes are drooping. Knowing him, he likely only went to bed a couple hours ago.

“It’s not important, Mulder. I should go so we can both get some sleep,” she says, moving to stand. The weight of his hand on her forearm stills her.

“C’mon, Scully. You’re already here, and now you’ve got me curious,” he gently chides her, and she acquiesces with a sigh.

“It’s, uh…it’s a bit awkward,” she prefaces, setting her mug on the table beside his so she can wring her hands instead.

“If you were hoping that would dissuade my curiosity, you should know that it has the opposite effect,” he says with a smile in his voice, and despite herself she smiles as well.

“I dreamt that…we were together,” she says quickly, her eyes darting between his face and the wall behind the couch. His eyebrows lift, but he otherwise gives no reaction.

“Together?” he repeats.

“Married, actually,” she says, then sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. It feels like the hardest part is out of the way.

“Married?” Mulder repeats again, his eyebrows sailing higher.

“Mmm hmm,” Scully says with a clipped nod.

“Okay,” he says, studying her closely. She can only look at him for milliseconds before she has to look away. Each time he manages to catch her eye, her stomach does backflips at the memory of his mouth on hers and…everything else. “What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I don’t think a dream about us being married would make you drive over here in the middle of the night to confirm my existence, so I’m wondering what else happened. There was more, right?”

He’s not being argumentative, and he does have a point.

“Well, it was sort of…it was like an entirely different world,” she attempts to explain. “We lived on the West Coast, and California was part of Canada, and my sister was there, and so was—”

“California was part of Canada?” he interrupts.

She stops and looks at his face. She was about to tell him about Sam, but that very well might just hurt him.

“Yes,” she confirms, but doesn’t elaborate. The more she tells him, the more he’ll want to know, and talking about it makes it feel real again. All of it. She shifts in her seat. “It was very vivid, and a bit disconcerting. So when I finally woke up back at my apartment, I just felt the need to be sure that I am me and you are you, if you will.”

“Was your dream version of me not your dream version of me?” he asks playfully, though she detects a hint of nervousness underneath.

She thinks about the other Mulder for a moment. Tanned, just slightly less serious, unburdened by a lifetime of tragedy. It feels like a betrayal to even entertain the idea that he might be a “better” version of the Mulder sitting right in front of her.

“He was great,” she says sincerely, “but he wasn’t you.”

Something like surprise flashes across his face, and then his eyes narrow just slightly.

“Married, huh?” he asks, and something about the tenor of his voice betrays what he’s thinking. Scully swallows nervously. “How sure are you that it was just a dream?”

Scully balks.

“What else would it be?”

Mulder shrugs, but the look on his face tells her that he’s prepared to defend his theory and she doesn’t quite feel up for that, not after what she’s just been through. And if it was real, what would that mean? For her and the version of herself who is married to Malibu Mulder.

She looks at her lap again, unsure where to go from here. She’d had such clarity back at her apartment, when she could still feel his kiss tingling on her lips. Now, it really does feel like just a dream, fading away into her memories with each passing moment. She notices her thumbnails again and runs the pads of her index fingers over their jagged edges as she tries to recall what happened to them.

So what do you say? Are we finally gonna hit that ghost tour on the way back?

She looks up at him and is momentarily surprised not to see a tanned, shaggy-haired man on the couch beside her.

“I don’t think it matters, Mulder,” she says, and he cocks his head at her. “Regardless of what it was, I think…I think it was an answer of sorts.”

“An answer to what?”

He no longer looks sleepy. His eyes are alert and focused, jumping around her face as he waits for her to speak. There’s so much expectation there, so much interest, and the stakes feel so impossibly high.

“Why did you kiss me on New Year’s Eve?” she blurts out, which is partly deflection but still very much on topic.

Mulder gapes at her, completely caught off guard, and sits up straighter.

“Where did that come from?” he asks uncomfortably, reaching for his mug only to find it empty. “I guess it seemed like the thing to do at the moment. Did it bother you?”

The fact that he seems genuinely concerned that she might be upset about it is almost funny, if not for the fact that they have been stuck in this confusing limbo for what is starting to feel like an eternity.

“No, Mulder, it didn’t bother me,” she says with a slight laugh and a shake of her head.

“Okay. Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

There’s a heavy pause and someone slams a door in the hallway. He answered her question, but at the same time he didn’t answer it at all. He didn’t say what she needed him to say, which was that he kissed her because he wanted to. If he would just give her that, she might feel brave enough to take them the rest of the way.

In her effort to look anywhere but his face, her eyes fall to the scar on his shoulder. She scoots closer and reaches out to touch it, and Mulder follows her hand with his eyes as she brushes the pad of her middle finger across the smooth pink flesh. Without thinking, she leans forward and presses her lips to it, laying her hand on his chest for stability. Beneath her palm, his heart is hammering so hard she has to resist the urge to count out his pulse rate.

I love you, she mouths against his skin.

When she lifts her head to look at him, there’s an incredibly pained expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her hand still resting on his chest, fingers splayed.

“In your dream—” he begins, then clears his throat. “Were we happy?”

“Together?” she asks, and he nods. “Yes,” she says with a soft smile, remembering how easy it felt to just let him love her.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” he asks, and now it is she who nods.

It feels as though they could fall down this rabbit hole forever, continuously ignoring the fact that they never seem to arrive anywhere.

“I wonder why you haven’t kissed me again,” she says quietly, and immediately her blood runs cold. Despite a hundred different death-defying situations she’s found herself in, this feels like the most terrifying yet.

“I wonder if you’d want me to,” he says back, and again his heart is thumping against her palm, giving him away. For some reason knowing that he is also afraid makes her feel brave.

“I would, Mulder.”

He sighs, and the warmth of his coffee breath against her cheeks is so familiar she barely hesitates at all before arching up to kiss him. He initially receives her kiss with surprise, but before she can pull away his hands are on her jaw and he’s kissing her back in earnest.

With her eyes closed, muscle memory takes over. It’s not that she’s pretending he’s Malibu Mulder, but that when she was kissing Malibu Mulder she was pretending he was her Mulder. And so kissing him, sliding her tongue across his, letting him pull her closer, all feel like things they’ve done before.

But where Malibu Mulder had the practiced, comfortable demeanor of a man kissing his wife, her Mulder has the nervous, adrenaline-fueled energy of a man kissing his partner for the very first time beyond a peck in a hospital waiting room. And his nervous energy combined with her own un-sated desires from just hours prior put them on a fast track from kissing, to making out, to him pulling her into his lap and grinding his erection against the seam of her jeans.

“Is this okay?” he mumbles against her mouth as his hands slip under her sweater.

“Uh-huh,” she assures him, moving her hips in tight circles when she finds just the right press of his erection against her clit.

Both his hands find her breasts, gently kneading and brushing his thumbs across her nipples. She’s fairly certain that if they keep this up she’s going to have an orgasm fully clothed in his lap. She’s fairly certain that she intends to do just that.

“Mulder,” she whispers, high and needy, and he groans.

Does he know? She wants him to know. Somehow, she thinks it won’t feel as good if he doesn’t. She brings her lips to his ear, circling her hips while he continues to gently pinch her nipples in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

“Wait, stop stop stop,” he says suddenly, pulling his hands out from under her sweater and stilling her hips. Her orgasm slips away, and the stark reality of what they are doing quickly settles in. She immediately feels ashamed and moves to get off him, but again he grabs her by the hips to stop her. “No, don’t go,” he begs. “I just…I need a minute.”

“We can stop if you want to stop,” she says, not looking at his face.

“Scully,” he says sternly, then waits until she looks at him. “I do not want to stop. Do you want to stop?” She shakes her head. “Great, then we’re on the same page. I just—this is a little embarrassing but I just didn’t want to make a mess, if you catch my drift.”

“Oh,” she says with a nervous laugh. The idea that he may have also been on the brink of an orgasm sets off a fresh wave of arousal.

“I don’t want to stop,” he says again, “but I do want to be sure that this isn’t…I don’t know, too fast? Too much too soon? I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret later.”

Scully lets out a blustering sigh.

“You’re probably right,” she says.

“So what should we do?” he asks, brushing her hair behind her ear.

“I think I should go?” she says, uncharacteristically lifting the end of her statement into a pseudo-question.

“Yeah,” Mulder agrees reluctantly.

She awkwardly removes herself from his lap, quickly averting her eyes when she sees that he is still very much erect. She walks to his front door on unsteady legs and he trails a few steps behind her. When her hand is on the knob, she turns around and looks up at him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course,” he answers.

Seconds tick by. Her hand is still resting on the door knob behind her back, but she doesn’t turn it.

“Goodnight, then,” she says, still unmoving.

“Goodnight.”

She turns the knob and the latch pops open, allowing a sliver of light in from the hallway. Still, she just looks at Mulder. He stares back at her, his bare chest rising and falling at a labored clip. He takes one step forward and she reflexively lifts her chin, her mouth falling partly open.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you goodnight?” he asks, and she’s already nodding emphatically before the final word leaves his mouth.

The first kiss is chaste. The second is lingering. On the third, she swipes her tongue across his bottom lip and he hums. The fourth, his hands are on her waist and the door slams closed when he presses her against it with his body. The height difference is awkward, but they are beyond motivated to compensate for it, and he alternately stoops a bit and lifts her off the ground while her calves ache from standing on her tiptoes. His stubble scrapes her chin and his eager teeth pinch her lip painfully, but she’s never been so happy to be so uncomfortable.

When he straightens up she feels the brush of his groin against her belly. The throbbing between her legs is nearly unbearable, and she knows she is past the point of self-control. If Mulder doesn’t stop this, she won’t either. She slips her fingers under the waist of his cotton pajama pants and he heaves a shuddering breath.

“What are you doing?” he asks tightly.

“Tell me to stop,” she whispers around desperate kisses.

“Fuck, I don’t want to,” he groans.

Her hand slides lower until she feels the tickle of his pubic hair against the tips of her fingers. He’s breathing so hard he’s pulling the air right from her mouth as they attempt to keep kissing, making her feel light-headed. His hands move from her hips to her ass cheeks, the grip of his fingers desperate and feral, and she is completely incapable of rational thought. She wraps her hand around his shaft, smooth and thick and warm, and his knees warble before he steadies himself with one hand against the door.

“Jesus fucking christ,” he hisses.

“I don’t want to go,” she whimpers, giving him one firm stroke.

His hands are back on her ass, kneading and pulling her pelvis against him, which makes her bump up against her own hand. He starts tugging at the waist of her jeans, fumbling with the button, then the zipper, and before she really registers what’s happening he’s wedging his hand under the stiff denim with his palm pressed against her belly. There’s no room for him to move, but she feels the brush of his fingers across her clit and an involuntary moan bubbles up from the back of her throat. Mulder’s forehead drops against the door with a loud thunk.

They stay frozen like that for a few seconds, with her hand wrapped around his cock and his fingers resting over her slick lips.

“I want you,” he breathes into her ear. The heat of his breath makes her quiver under his fingers and he groans.

“Then take me to bed,” she says, feeling bold beyond what she thought herself capable of.

He doesn’t need any time to contemplate her proposition. He withdraws his hand and she withdraws hers, and he scoops her up and carries her to his bedroom with a level of urgency befitting the situation. The room is dark save for what leaks in from the living room or around the blinds, and he sets her carefully on the floor before divesting her of her sweater. She pushes his pajama pants off his hips but they get caught on his erection, which makes her laugh. The shine of his smile in the dim room sets her at ease, and they slow down a bit. As much as they both want this, there’s no need to rush.

He lays her down on the bed and peels her jeans from her legs, leaving her panties on while he kisses the insides of her thighs. She knows that the second he touches her she’s going to come, and she’s as excited as she is nervous. He kisses as far as the seam of her leg, pulling in a deep breath through his nose that makes her self-conscious. Then he kisses her right over her panties, and a jolt of pleasure shoots through her pelvis.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

“Is this okay?” he asks, brushing his nose back and forth across her clit.

She feels herself unraveling. She’s too far gone to stop it.

“Oh my god,” she says again.

Her hips arch up off the bed and he presses his face between her legs as an orgasm tears through her, powerful and overwhelming. She cries out, completely unable to contain it, and she feels the wet heat of his mouth directly on her pussy as she comes and comes and comes. When the height of it has passed, she looks down and sees her panties pulled to the side, and Mulder’s face buried between her thighs, eyes closed in concentration. As she slowly comes down, she feels surprised and a little embarrassed.

Mulder crawls up to the bed beside her and kisses her neck while she catches her breath.

“That was…unexpected,” she finally says, feeling her cheeks warm.

“Was it okay?” he asks nervously.

“Yes, very much so,” she reassures him. “Just not the standard order of operations, I suppose.”

Mulder chuckles a little.

“Well, you know I’m never one to do things by the book,” he says lightly, tucking his face into the crook of her neck.

“That quality about you typically annoys me, but I find myself willing to make an exception,” she quips.

He starts dropping little kisses to the side of her neck, and despite her recent release she clenches her thighs together, ready for more. She rolls to her side and finds his lips, and they just lie there and kiss for a while, completely nude save for her panties. Her hand wanders down the firm planes of his back, over his hip, and finally back to his cock, which is stiff to the point of leaking. His breathing shudders and his muscles tense as she strokes him languidly.

“I think it’s only fair that you don’t judge me for my unimpressive stamina at this point,” he says, drawing the end of the sentence out with a low moan.

“I would never,” she says, greedy to see and feel him lose control in the same way he’s seen her.

Releasing him, she wriggles out of her panties and kicks them away, then gently pushes on his shoulder. Rolling him to his back, she slowly climbs on top of him. She still feels nervous, even after what they’ve already done. She settles over his lap, sitting directly atop his shaft such that it brushes across her clit when she shifts her hips forward and back. Immediately she knows that she’ll come again if she keeps it up, and it feels embarrassing for reasons she couldn’t possibly explain. It’s like her body is telling all her secrets to his, revealing just how much she’s wanted this and for how long.

His body answers by gripping her hips to hold her steady and grinding against her. She’s folded in half, her forehead resting against his, and her mouth hanging open in overwhelm.

“Oh my god,” she breathes into his face, and he has clearly already intuited what that means for her.

“Come on,” he says softly, rutting up into her.

She lifts her hips and reaches down between them, taking hold of him and guiding him inside her. There’s a stretch, a sting, and then overwhelming pleasure. She loses herself again, sitting up and planting her hands on his chest for stability as she rides him roughly.

“Oh fuuuuuuuck,” he hisses.

His shoulders lift off the mattress, his hands still planted on her hips. She’s right there, right there on the edge, and when he starts throbbing inside her she is gone, gone, gone.

Later, she’ll blush when she thinks about how loud she was, how brazen. How greedily she continued to fuck him until he was too soft to continue. How he flipped her to her back and slipped two fingers inside her, making her come again. But in the moment, all she knows is that she has never felt so good in her life, so safe. He touches her like he’s done it a hundred times, like he knows just what she needs. And when she finally becomes over sensitive and pushes his hand away, he throws a blanket over them both and wraps his arms around her. It’s nearly 6:00 am and the hazy yellow light of sunrise signals the arrival of morning.

“We have work in a few hours,” she says sleepily, resting her head on his chest.

“I think today is a good day to play hooky,” he tells her, giving her a squeeze.

They are quiet for a few minutes, and she starts to doze off.

“I’m glad you came over,” he says quietly.

“Me too,” she agrees, tilting her head up in invitation of a kiss.

She drifts in a sea of dopamine and oxytocin for some time, slipping into sleep until Mulder sighs or shifts and reminds her that she is not sleeping alone for the first time in years.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, pulling her back again.

“Hm?”

“The dream me, or alternate me…was he an improvement over the model in this universe?”

She props herself up on an elbow and looks at him in the hazy morning light. He looks uncertain. Vulnerable.

“Not any more than the alternate version of me was,” she says, meeting his eye. “I think we’re products of our experiences in many ways, but at the core we’re still the same people. You would still be you and I would still be me even if our lives had taken different paths, but maybe those paths were meant to cross. I don’t wish you were different, Mulder, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The corner of his mouth quirks.

“I was actually referring to the sex,” he admits sheepishly.

Scully’s mouth falls open in surprise, and then she drops her forehead against his chest to hide her face in embarrassment.

“I wouldn’t know,” she tells him, resettling herself.

“Really?” he asks in disbelief. “Not even a kiss?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Wow. It took me nearly seven years to do what that man did in a day. What’s his secret?” he asks, jostling her playfully.

“We were married, Mulder,” she says with an edge of irritation. “Can I please go to sleep now?”

“Okay, okay. Sweet dreams, Scully.”

She snorts a laugh.

“Goodnight, Mulder.”

She falls asleep surprisingly fast and is quickly pulled into the limitless world of dreams. These dreams are of the ambiguous, hazy nature she’s used to. They are non-linear and full of missing context, but when she wakes she’ll recall the twinkle of Christmas lights and Mulder’s hand on her rounded belly, and the loud bark of her father’s laugh.

Tagging @today-in-fic

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feejee-mermaid · 1 year ago

Text

False Front

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic CW: suggestion of possible rape / sexual assault (from canon) written for the X-Files Flicked Switch Fanfic Exchange

He’s doing everything, every single thing he can think of, but Mulder’s getting nowhere and he knows it. He blusters around Skinner’s office, he fires off orders to the Gunmen, he drives back to her apartment and searches over every square inch. Of course he calls her cell countless times. You never know when she might be able to pick up.

It’s actually the cell phone that finally does it, that makes him give up on her apartment and go home.

He’s on the floor methodically sorting the contents of her wastepaper basket—tissues, an empty tube of makeup, two endearing chocolate wrappers—when Frohike calls and tells him that it appears that the signal never actually left her building.

He finds the phone in her desk drawer. Turned off. Silent. It’s devastating. All day it has been absorbing his diligent calls here in this drawer. Not anywhere near her.

Mulder closes the desk drawer slowly, observing absently that his hands are trembling. He locks up her apartment and walks out to his car. He’s been through this so many times now, a familiar refrain: she’s gone, maybe forever, he has to bring her back, he has no idea how. It only gets harder. Because one of these times they won’t figure it out. One of these times the worst is bound to come true.

It’s very important at this stage not to give in to his darkest anxieties, that fear and that dread. Keeping his face impassive helps; that’s an old trick, predating his partner. His mind can be an even more useful ally, and it’s straining to go into profiler mode, reaching out instinctively for every possible scrap of information he has.

On the drive to Alexandria he keeps mentally revisiting those emails, all that fabricated correspondence between the account of Dana Katherine Scully and this unknown Cobra. Those missives turned out to tell quite a tale.

I think about how much of a mark I could have left on the world, had I not ended up in the F.B.I., had I been free to pursue what I wanted.

I wish you and I could meet like normal people do, just have dinner, wine and challenging conversation. I want that so badly. I daydream about it.

You and I — we understand one another, don’t we? That’s so rare and beautiful. Often I feel like there’s no one in my life who really understands anything about me.

This isn’t Scully. These aren’t her words. It’s creative writing from someone else, likely C.G.B. Spender himself. The moment the Gunmen told him these emails existed, Mulder knew this.

Even so, the fabricated words get under his skin. They bother him deeply. At a fucking cellular level.

Maybe it’s that the smoking man doesn’t sound so far off? Maybe because little bits and pieces do sound eerily like something Scully could say—maybe, possibly, under the right circumstances. Mulder doesn’t like that. It makes her feel farther away somehow.

When the Gunmen said Scully had been writing to someone named Cobra, he’d so easily dismissed them. No. She would have told me, he’d said. That utter confidence haunts him now. Because even if he were right in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit she hasn’t told him.

Mulder pictures Spender smiling to himself, typing away at home in a cloud of smoke, dreaming up this fictional romance between Scully and her Defense Department confidante.

He suspects the smoking man likes the idea of Mulder, his supposed son, uncovering this. He probably got some sick little thrill imagining Mulder discovering Scully’s tawdry secret online relationship. Look, Mulder, your loyal girl betrayed you. What an extra little zing that must give him. In addition to the heady exhilaration of murdering his son’s adored partner.

Mulder slams his palm down on the steering wheel angrily.

How could she go anywhere with him? How could she believe any word that came out of his mouth? Was she threatened? Blackmailed? What could possibly make it worth it?

He’s breathing much too fast. He takes a long, extended breath and releases it. No point in asking all these questions. There’s too much he still doesn’t know.

Something else keeps poking at his mind, though.

It’s the second time in just over a year that some would-be writer has presumed he knows Scully well enough to attempt to represent her inner life. That someone has been inspired to write the complex heart and mind of Dana Scully.

Such utter, arrogant bullshit. Why would anyone delude themselves that they could know Scully like this? What is it about Scully that makes men think they can read her? As far as Mulder knows, no one has ever understood her heart. Certainly not Phillip Padgett. Not C.G.B. Spender.

Not—all too clearly—Fox Mulder.

Mulder’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel, his knuckles going white as he tries to rein himself in. Thoughts, not feelings, he reminds himself. Mind, not heart.

*** At home he’s restless, because there is nothing productive for him to do there. No leads to follow up on. Nothing to do but wait.

He’s hungry—who even remembers when the fuck he last ate?—so he walks into his kitchen and bangs around impatiently looking for something to eat. There’s an unopened bag of bagels in his fridge along with a tub of sealed cream cheese. These items weren’t purchased with him in mind, which depresses him. But he’s got to eat something, and well, here they are. No point in passing out. He begins slathering cream cheese on a bagel.

The last time they had sex—the fifth time overall—was a little under a week ago. Here, his place.

She showed up at his door, that determined look in her eyes. No discussion, no words, exactly like the other times, a pattern Mulder finds both hot and disturbing. Sudden, fierce, take-no-prisoners kissing, the pulling open of clothing, the hitching up of her work skirt, a frantic fuck against his front door.

Afterwards she’d clung to his sweaty neck to catch her breath, and he’d buried his face in her rosemary-scented hair. He’d wept just a little—he couldn’t help it. The emotions involved are titanic, completely beyond his ability to cope with. It is amazing, everything, but something is off, too, and he doesn’t know what to do to correct the course.

He could tell by the way she tightened her hold that she noticed his tears, but she didn’t ask about them.

Much to his relief, she had changed into his tee-shirt, crawled into his bed and stayed the night—a first—leaving that rosemary scent behind on his pillowcase, plus several strands of copper hair.

The next morning they got up, dressed, had coffee, and discussed their case. Matter-of-factly. Like Mulder and Scully. Like nothing was different. Like she had dropped by for coffee before work. Like this incredible sex they kept having existed only in his imagination or in some alternate dimension. He didn’t ask any questions, and neither did she.

Now he’s got nothing but questions. He’s haunted by fucking questions. What if he never sees her again? What if she never eats any of these bagels he optimistically bought hoping she’d stay over again soon? What if he never has the chance to find out what she meant by any of it, what it could have meant if it had continued? What if it’s his fault she’s gone, what if it’s all because she’s been used as a tool somehow to get to him?

Not everything is about you, Mulder.

He sits on his couch and forces himself to focus on eating, polishing the bagel off in a few large ravenous bites. He licks every bit of cream cheese off his fingertips. He still feels hungry.

Brushing stray crumbs off his shirt, he remembers guiltily that he should update Mrs. Scully. When he called her the day before yesterday, to find out more about Scully’s nonexistent family emergency, she’d been worried—in her controlled, subdued way. Asking only basic questions—she’s been through this too many times, too. He’s only updated her once since, with pathetically little to go on. It’s probably time for another check-in.

When he looks at his phone on the desk, he practically jumps out of his skin.

There’s a flashing light. A fucking message. He leaps to his feet. How had he not seen it? Why didn’t he check his messages right away? What was he thinking?

He rushes to the button, presses it, waits.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

He stumbles back and falls into his desk chair in boneless relief.

“I’m on my way back. I’m coming straight to your place. I’m going to be about two hours. Will you ask the Gunmen to be there, too? I have something important to show you. Something I think could… change lives.”

She sounds all right, he marvels. Upbeat. Not like a recent victim. His shoulders droop in a release of tension, and he folds his hands over his forehead, taking a deep breath.

Not dead, not dead, not dead. The worst did not happen.

For a moment he lets himself just sit on the couch. Emotions pass over him like clear water through jagged rocks.

*** The thing is, he doesn’t know how to love Scully, and he assumes that’s probably the problem.

He knows how to feel. He has always been a proficient feeler of feelings. He feels all sorts of things when it comes to her in particular, a whole panoply of finely tuned emotions.

Love isn’t feeling. He knows that. He’s not the most experienced with love as a practical matter. He’s not been a big relationship guy in his life, and the love in his family, while present, hasn’t flowed as freely and easily as in other families. But he knows enough to know that love isn’t a question of emoting. He knows it’s a question of impact, of touch, of effect. Of every action having a reaction.

He knows it’s his actions that perpetually disappoint her. He’s painfully aware of that. She often needs him to be something, and he disappoints her. He can say all sorts of beautiful words to her. He can fuck her exquisitely, as he’s learned recently.

But he can’t seem to do what she needs. He can’t figure out how to love her. Not in the way that matters. Not in the way she can touch and discern and trust and rely upon.

Not in the way, he worries, that would allow her to really love him back.

*** He’s been carefully listening out for her, distracted even while the Gunmen are talking to him. So he knows she’s walking up his hallway before she gets to the door.

He swings the door open just as she raises her hand to knock.

“Mulder,” she says, her face pink, a trace of a smile. She looks uninjured and hopeful. She steps closer, and he knows she expects him to put his arms around her.

“The prodigal partner returns,” he says casually. He doesn’t step forward to greet her, and her eyes widen, betray a trace of worry.

Behind him, the Gunmen rise from the couch and stand in a tight trio in that way they always do, like they’re a chorus in a goddamned Greek tragedy.

“It’s good to see you alive, Agent Scully.”

“We thought you were toast.”

“Mulder was losing his shit,” Frohike adds.

“I’m sorry to make everyone worry,” Scully replies. Her eyes turn questioningly back on Mulder’s. He turns around brusquely to walk into the living room.

“Did you get the tapes, Mulder?” she says, following behind him. “I sent you tapes in the mail. Tapes I recorded of our conversations, from a wire I’d hidden on me. I’d expect them to be here by now.”

“I didn’t,” Mulder says, sinking onto the couch. He looks up and makes sullen eye contact with her. “I got a message on my machine about a family emergency. And a secondhand message from Skinner. That’s the extent of the communication I received.”

“I couldn’t communicate easily,” she says. “It was a singular opportunity. I was trying to get information out of him. I needed to get his trust, make him think I was accepting his story.”

Mulder slumps down further on the couch. It sounds somewhat understandable, like something he would do, but it doesn’t make him feel better. “And what was his story?”

Scully produces a plastic case. “It came down to this,” she says, holding it out to Mulder. Her voice is excited; her eyes light up. “I think this could actually be something significant. I got it from a man who went by the name Cobra.”

Mulder doesn’t miss Frohike and Langly exchanging knowing glances. He doesn’t take the case from her hand.

“Yeah,” he says. “We’re familiar with Cobra. A man working on a shadow project for the Department of Defense. Your email account has been having a somewhat flirtatious relationship with him for the past six months. You set up an in-person meet-up with him recently.”

Scully is taken aback. She eyes the Gunmen, and then gives him a significant look. “Mulder.” She drops her voice. “You know those emails weren’t really from me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he replies. “There were a lot of feelings revealed in those emails. Didn’t really seem like you.”

Frohike clears his throat. She presses her lips together and holds out the small square case to Langly. “This disk,” she says to the Gunmen. “Please see what’s on it.”

Langly takes it from her hands, nodding, and the three Gunmen begin to huddle around their computers.

Scully hesitantly moves to sit next to Mulder on the couch, her eyes on him.

“If I’m right,” she says, “then everything that’s happened these past few days will be more than worth it, Mulder.”

“Your death wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“That’s familiar,” she replies back tightly. “Only usually it’s me who says it to you.”

He can’t answer her. Actually, he finds he can’t even look at her, even though he knows in his heart he’s being unfair.

“I had to take the risk.” Her voice has hardened.

He swallows and rises to his feet, pacing to release some pent-up energy before settling in the door, clinging to the door frame while the Gunmen work.

After a moment, the Gunmen look at one another awkwardly.

“There’s nothing on this,” Frohike mutters.

“It’s empty,” adds Langly.

“Completely.”

“No.” Scully springs from her seat. “It can’t be,” she insists. She bends over to look at the computer, as if somehow she will be able to conjure something the Gunmen can’t. “It can’t be. It’s got to be on there.”

Langly looks embarrassed for her, Byers openly sympathetic.

Mulder can’t help but make eye contact with her now. She’s looking back at him as if afraid of his reaction, and he knows that should bother him.

He can only stare at her in silent frustration, gripping the door above him.

*** They sit around his table and listen to her tell her story.

He can tell Scully’s rattled, but she makes a game attempt to hide it. She speaks in her very best authoritative agent voice, as though she is making a report to Skinner. She sticks to the facts, offering very little commentary, but she keeps repeatedly licking her lips, pushing her hair behind her ear, her most obvious nervous tics.

“I didn’t understand exactly what he wanted,” she says. “But I thought there was something to be gained by playing along. Seeing what I could find out.”

“Something for him to gain, maybe,” Mulder says. “Cobra’s trust.”

The Gunmen’s eyes bounce from her to him.

“I think there was more to it than that,” Scully says emphatically. “He seemed to sincerely want to convince me. It’s why I thought he… it’s why I believed the disk was real.”

There is a painful silence. Langly doesn’t seem to know where to look.

“It’s funny, it’s like he imagines himself to be a kind of silver-tongued Richard III,” Byers comments thoughtfully. “Convincing his own Princess Anne to bend to his will.”

Scully rotates to look at him. Frohike raises his eyebrows.

“What, you guys don’t know your Shakespeare?” Byers says. “The villain who uses charm as a weapon? Richard III? ‘Was ever woman in this humor wooed?’ It’s a famous—”

“I know it,” Scully cuts him off sharply. “Richard’s charm works on Anne, Byers. Spender’s did not on me.”

Mulder bites back what he wants to say: didn’t it, though? Didn’t you do everything he wanted you to? He must not be hiding his thoughts as well as he thinks, because Scully, glimpsing his face, flushes.

He suspects Byers is right, that Spender imagines himself a kingly mastermind, using Scully as a pawn to be easily moved about. Like she’s some early modern female character in a Shakespearean tragedy, passive and at the mercy of men.

“Mulder, I went to his office,” Scully says forcefully. “We can go there right now. You and me. There could be evidence there.”

Both of her fists are clenched. He can practically feel her desperation crossing over into anger, radiating off of her in waves. If there’s anything he knows about his partner, it’s that she never wants to have been anyone’s pawn—anyone’s passive placeholder—ever again.

“Yeah,” Mulder says softly, meeting her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

***

She asks him to drive, and she calls out the instructions to him in a resolute, crisp voice. As she does, he steals glimpses at her in the passenger seat. She doesn’t notice, looking ahead, her posture stiff and straight.

He suspects his standoffishness is starting to seriously piss her off. He doesn’t himself quite understand why he’s still so intensely angry with her. He wishes he weren’t. It’s like he’s experiencing a powerful torrent of emotion, an opened fire hydrant, and he can’t stop.

“If someone offers you valuable information,” Scully says to him out of nowhere, pronouncing each syllable very clearly, “you have to pursue it. Even if you’re not sure it’s entirely reliable. You have to find out. You know that.”

Mulder is quiet.

“Is this the cold shoulder, Mulder?” Her voice sounds bitter. “You’re very fortunate that’s not how I chose to respond to every one of your in-the-moment miscalculations.”

“Why would you not tell your partner, Scully? Why keep it a secret from me?”

“I told you, he didn’t want me to,” she says tightly. “He told me the offer was only good if I didn’t.”

“Really raises some questions, doesn’t it?” Mulder asks. “Why would he want to separate you from your partner? What does offering you the cure for the world’s diseases have to do with me?”

“I sent you the tapes,” Scully says sharply. “I didn’t listen to him. You act like I had no agency.”

He laughs darkly. “You had exactly the amount of agency he wanted you to have.”

She sucks in air. More and more pissed off. Still, she has to be able to see, doesn’t she? He wonders if she really believes they will find evidence at Spender’s office, or if she’s only clinging to that idea to protect herself.

“He knew he didn’t entirely have me,” she comments decisively after a pause. “He tried everything to get in my head. He even attempted a little pop psychology, and he did it badly.”

“Oh yeah?” Mulder says, risking a look at her. “What kind of pop psychology?”

“Let’s see.” She tilts her head and recites facetiously. “I’m attracted to powerful men, but I fear their power. I keep walls up. I’m devoted to you on one level, yet I live alone. I’d die for you, but I won’t let myself love you.” She gives him a scathing look and turns to gaze out the window. “Cosmopolitan magazine level insight, really.”

“Sounds like it,” Mulder says gruffly. If she’s intentionally lobbing a grenade, it found its target. His mind is spinning trying not to read into these statements, trying not to parse what parts she’s insinuating are ridiculous.

“He’s like anyone else, Mulder. He has weaknesses.” She gazes straight out the front window. “Whatever else is true, I’m sure of that much.”

“We all have weaknesses,” he mutters tightly. “Which is why we have partners and we don’t just … go off on our own.”

She turns and fixes him with a slow, deadpan look of disbelief. She doesn’t even need to say it. They both know perfectly well what a patently absurd thing that is for him to say to her.

With an exasperated shake of her head, she turns back to the passenger window.

In the silence that follows, Mulder contemplates the impressive depths of his own hypocrisy.

If he’d been approached in the same way, with the promise of some information he’d wanted badly, he knows he would have gone, too. He knows he would have because he’s done exactly that sort of thing before.

He just has this tendency to hold her to a different, only-for-Scully standard. This isn’t the first time he’s done it. It’s actually an embarrassing pattern.

Sometimes, he expects her to be more rational than he would ever ask himself to be. He expects her to be more prudent than he ever is. He expects her to leave aside her personal biases when his are woven into the fabric of their entire work.

Why does he do it? Is it because of their respective genders? Does it come from his deep feelings for Scully, his overwhelming desire to keep her safe? This all might factor into it and affect his professionalism, but he thinks it comes down to something more.

He’s come to depend on Scully playing a certain role in their partnership. And when she veers off course—makes him guess—it both delights and unnerves him. She plays the same familiar theme in their shared duet, the perfect counterpoint to his, the well-matched half of their mutual composition. If she suddenly seems to go solo, to improvise, to take up the fucking sitar or the ukulele or something, he doesn’t always cope well.

He glances over in the car to look balefully at the back of her head, still intently focused out the window. He can’t keep her in a box. He’s probably held her back for too long.

Then he thinks about Spender’s fucking emails, his fucking pop psychology, getting Scully to board some goddamn boat to meet some man for him.

Come on. This road trip with the smoker isn’t her pushing her limits. It’s not her spreading her wings. It’s her possibly getting killed. It’s beneath her. It’s just … stupid.

He suppresses the urge to slam his hand down on the steering wheel again. Next to him, she sighs.

***

What was once set up to appear to be Spender’s offices is now a completely empty building. Mulder is faintly surprised. He thought maybe it would turn out to be a legitimate office building who’d unwittingly played landlord to a liar. He thought they’d find a bunch of bewildered receptionists and cubicle dwellers who responded in confusion to their questions.

Instead, the whole thing turns out to be a mirage. Empty room after empty room. Everything and everyone evaporated into thin air.

This is an elaborate ruse just for Scully, he ponders, staring at an abandoned pad of sticky notes on the floor. Spender spent some money on this sham. Why go to all this trouble and then leave the most important loose end alive? It sends a shiver down his spine.

Scully is upset, of course, and he’s trying to be more understanding. She’s making it hard. She sounds unacceptably, uncharacteristically credulous, like she’s never even heard the word “skepticism” before in her life. It’s grating on him.

“Mulder, I looked into his eyes. I swear what he told me was true,” she says stubbornly.

“He did it all for himself—to get the science on that disk,” Mulder’s voice is taut. “His sincerity was a mask, Scully. The man's motives never changed.”

“You think he used me to save himself—at the expense of the human race.”

“No, he knows what that science is worth, how powerful it is. He'd let nothing stand in his way.”

“You may be right... but for a moment, I saw something else in him. A longing for something more than power. Maybe for something he could never have.”

Mulder wants to yell at her that that’s complete horseshit. He wants to take her shoulders and shake her and ask her what the fuck is wrong with her. But he exercises some restraint.

“And what is that something he can’t have, Scully? Compassion? Redemption? You really think, after all this, he cares about any of that?”

She wraps her arms around herself in a protective gesture, looking up and down the walls of what had apparently once been his false office. Her back is to him.

“Aren’t you the same person who once told me ‘the truth is out there, but so are lies?’” Mulder pushes. “Where’s that Dana Scully?”

She walks to the window and stands in front of it, still hugging herself and looking out into the afternoon light. From Mulder’s vantage point she looks only like a silhouette, an outline of herself.

“I get it,” she says after a heavy beat. “I see what you’re saying.”

Now there’s a melancholy timbre in her voice, a sound of defeat. He hears it rarely, for all of their struggles, and he doesn’t like it.

She doesn’t turn away from the window. Her head tilts forward until her forehead rests lightly against the glass.

“I was duped, clearly,” she says, her voice expressionless. “Please. Can you just take me back to your apartment so I can get my car and go home?”

*** On the drive back, her face is as inaccessible as a marble statue’s. For a while she shuts her eyes, but he knows she isn’t asleep.

“Hey, are you hungry?”

“Not really,” she says, stretching her neck from side to side as though it is sore.

“You sure? When did you last eat?”

“I don’t feel like eating, Mulder.”

“You’re a little pale.” He refuses to sit in silence.

“I’m tired,” she says with a tone of finality. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, thinking about the sunrise meeting.”

Mulder nods in an attempt at sympathy, sending her repeated sideways looks. Something in what she just said nudges at his thoughts, bothers him.

“The meeting with Cobra was at sunrise?”

“Yes,” she says shortly.

“But you didn’t come back to my apartment until one,” Mulder says. “It’s not that long a drive.”

She shifts in her seat, apparently attempting to get comfortable. “No.”

“You didn’t come straight back?”

“I made another stop,” Scully says evasively.

“Another stop? For a few hours?”

“Yes.”

Her lack of communication is again making him angry.

“Where could you possibly go between here and Milford, Pennsylvania?” He knows his tone is too nasty. “Philadelphia?”

She exhales sharply. “Do I need to account for all of my time now, Mulder? And is that little rule going to apply to you, too?”

“I was looking for you,” he snaps. “I was worried sick about you. Where would you go before trying to call me?”

“To the hospital,” she replies hotly.

His head spins to look at her. “Why?”

“Just to get … something checked out.”

Every muscle in his body seizes up, alert. “To get what checked out?”

She pauses. “I had them do a rape kit.”

He swallows, aware that his heart is pounding loudly in his ears. The sides of his vision begin to narrow until he can only see a tiny fragment of the road ahead. He starts pulling the car over, guiding the car into a grocery store parking lot.

When he has safely maneuvered them into a spot at the back of the lot, he turns to face her.

“Why did you have them do a rape kit, Scully?” he asks quietly. His voice is shaking.

She’s meeting his eyes, but her face is difficult to read, a complete mask. “They didn’t … find any evidence of anything.” She extends her fingertips and meticulously picks a piece of fuzz off of his sweater. “We had been in the car, driving for many hours, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in different clothes. Pajamas. In a bed. Obviously, it unsettled me, and I kept thinking about it, so … a rape kit.”

He’s ashamed at how badly he’s reacting, how frightened he is to the very core. He knows that it’s her who should be comforted. He tries to calm himself, reaches out and clasps her hand.

“Scully,” he whispers.

“It had been close to 36 hours at that point,” she continues in an even, formal voice. “So, as you know, that affects the quality of the forensic evidence. I did bring the underwear I was wearing, just in case.”

“Oh Jesus,” he says. He feels physically ill. “Scully.”

“I don’t think anything happened,” she adds. “I went just because I kept thinking about it, but I didn’t think his agenda was…” She drifts off, bites her lip. “I admit that I wonder a little more now.”

They’re both too familiar with the process of testing for forensic evidence of rape and sexual assault. A thousand possible scenarios pass through his mind. He knows they have passed through hers, too.

“They found nothing?” he whispers.

“A small fragment of latex in my clothes … concerned them,” she says softly. “But it’s latex from latex gloves, and you know… I have lots of latex gloves. It could have easily come from my car, from the autopsy I did earlier in the week.”

“Scully,” he says urgently. “You could have called me. In the hospital. I would have come.”

“It’s… okay, Mulder. It was very likely nothing.”

“You thought this was possible,” Mulder says, in a sudden explosion of feeling, “and you stayed? You stayed in that house with him? Anything could have happened, he could have…”

He stops himself, seeing her expression. “I’m so sorry,” he says, instantly penitent. “I’m so sorry.” He leans over and presses his cheek into the palm of her hand. “I know why you stayed. You needed to finish the job.”

“You would have done the same?” Her voice sounds unexpectedly small, like someone else’s.

It doesn’t happen to me in quite the same way, he thinks. Sometimes ex-girlfriends attempt seductions when I am down for the count. Sometimes my brain is violated with surgical knives. But it’s not like this. Not like this.

“I would have,” he promises. He scoots over as far as he can in the car seat and tentatively threads his arms around her, pulling her against his shoulder. “I imagine you know this,” he says roughly, “but I have to say it, especially because I’ve been such a dick to you since you came back. None of this is your fault. You were trying to find out all you could. So you could do the right thing, like you always do.”

“I know, Mulder,” she says, her voice a soft whimper against his shirt. “I know, but I should have known better.”

“We can’t always know better,” he replies into her hair. “We take risks, and sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t. We can’t second guess. It’s the job.”

She pulls her face back to look at him, and her lip is slightly trembling. “I think I wanted to believe him,” she says. “I wanted it to be real, because if it worked, it would mean everything we’ve gone through all these years would turn out to have an actual impact. Would turn out to have real meaning after all. I could make it all make sense.”

He thinks about that: his little Catholic, wanting so badly to turn her suffering into redemption.

“Listen, of all people, I understand that,” he says, swiping her tear away with his finger. “I know all about wanting to believe.”

“And it felt like he was approaching me seriously,” she says in a hushed voice, like it’s a dark secret. “As an adversary, an intelligent mind. The way he deals with you.” Practically in a whisper. “It–it probably flattered me more than it should have. I’m embarrassed about it.”

“Scully—”

“No,” she says quickly, her face flushing. “It’s true. He’s always seen me as …a test subject. A lever used to motivate you. A chess piece. And he was talking to me like I was … a player. Mulder, he must have known how I’d respond to that.”

She’s so ashamed of this tiny manifestation of pride, this smallest and most sympathetic of vanities. Mulder runs his thumbs lightly up and down her jaw bones.

Her voice is low and terse. “And this possible touching thing, thinking about it now. This dress he had me wear...” She peters out in disgust.

Mulder’s insides are churning. Holding firmly to each side of her face, he pulls it close to him, so he can stare closely into her pale eyes. “I’ll kill him, Scully,” he says hoarsely. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

He can so easily imagine doing it— the satisfaction of killing Spender. Extinguishing the life out of the man’s arrogant eyes, the surprise as he realizes he’s lost, that he can’t do whatever he wants after all.

Scully, eyes wide and glacial blue, shakes her head almost imperceptibly from within his hold on her cheeks. And he understands, from his experience of her in hundreds of different situations and hundreds of discrete moments, exactly what she’s trying to communicate. That doesn’t help, Mulder. That’s not what I need. This isn’t his story to write.

“Okay,” he says gently, lightly pushing her hair back from her face. “Okay, yep, I get it. I won’t do anything unpredictable right now.”

“Thank you.” She exhales, tilts her head down.

He tucks a lock behind her ear, his mind racing. “What if we left your car at my place?” he asks. “I could take you home. We could pick up some food on the way. You could get to your bed faster that way.”

She looks up to him, her expression guarded. “And what about you?”

He hesitates, wondering what she wants him to say. Every moment of physical intimacy they’ve ever had has been initiated without words; he doesn’t have a precedent of using language to approach it. He decides it’s safer not to assume.

“I could take a cab home,” he suggests politely. “Or call the Gunmen and ask them for a ride. You might want some peace and quiet.”

Her expression scarcely changes, but he can tell from the smallest twitch of her mouth that it was the wrong answer.

He opts for another approach. More direct.

“Or … I could stay with you,” he offers.

She lifts her lip just a fraction. It could be the beginning of a smile. “Hmm,” she says.

“I, uh, like that option best,” he adds. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. “Because you’ve been gone, and I’ve been worried and what you’ve just told me worries me, too. So it would make me feel better to be around. That’s usually comforting to me, and, uh, I hope it is to you, too.”

Her eyebrows raise. He hopes that his unbearable awkwardness is at least coming across as sincere.

“I appreciate that, Mulder,” she replies.

“It’s up to you, obviously.”

She turns to face the front windshield, nodding slowly. “Why don’t you drive to my place?”

*** She doesn’t cry again. But that night, she tugs him into her bed with her and wraps her limbs tightly around him, pressing her cheek against his chest.

“I’m sorry you were so scared,” she mumbles into his shirt. “I would have been scared, too.”

“If I did something uncharacteristically rash like run off and get myself lost at sea, you mean?”

“It’s not outside of the realm of extreme possibility.”

“Hey, you said you saw something else in him,” Mulder says. Part of him doesn’t want to bring it up, but he worries Scully is still torturing herself with self-doubt. “You said he was wanting something he could never have.”

She’s quiet a beat. “I was probably deluding myself.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was just thinking—he’s always spinning webs of lies, always writing this bullshit involving the lives of other people, setting up false fronts. Sometimes it must occur to him that he doesn’t interact with anything real.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Mulder says softly. “Maybe you perceived him having a moment of … clarity. That nothing in his world is genuine.”

“If he even cares about that,” she says dismissively. “Like you said. There’s no reason to think so.”

“You said you saw something in his eyes,” Mulder points out. “That’s a good enough reason. Your perception, your judgment. I don’t doubt that.”

She lifts her head and stares at him for a moment, her expression enigmatic. Then she kisses him gently on the lips, the fingers of one hand moving slowly through his hair. He tries not to tense up, but she’s never kissed him like this before. In this unhurried, tender way.

She then lays her head down right below his collarbone—where she can probably hear his heart thumping quickly—and he curls his arm around her.

“I would die for you, you know,” she says. “He was right about that much.”

He knows what she’s referring to, Spender’s claim into her psychology. If his heart wasn’t racing before, it is now.

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know you would. But I would never want you to.”

“He wasn’t right about all of it,” she adds.

I love you, too, he thinks. And to show her, he draws her in, ever closer.

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