#MN1068-06

[amplifyme]

MN 1068 - 06

The X-Files. MSR. Season 5. Rated: Teen and up. WC: 1387. Read on AO3.

Tagging @today-in-fic​

He’d said as he dropped a kiss on her brow: “I’m gonna grab a shower. My wallet’s on the coffee table if I’m not out before the food gets here.”

He wasn’t. So she answered the door and paid the kid, tipping him more generously than she knew Mulder would’ve. She gathered forks and paper towels and made it through the doorway into the living room before she lost her grip on his wallet. It fell open at her feet, spilling out the bills she’d haphazardly stuffed back into it. She emptied her hands and squatted to retrieve it.

It was the sharp corner, shoved into the folds of money and poking under her fingernail, that drew her attention. "Ouch!" Without thought she pulled the culprit free and held up a piece of yellow legal pad, a little more than two-thirds the size of a business card, and thickly laminated. She flipped it over and read what was there, scrawled diagonally across the printed lines of the paper in what she recognized was Mulder’s hand.

MN 1068 - 06

She was still frowning at it when he stepped out of the bedroom. He was in his usual post-shower state: almost dry and almost dressed. Loose running shorts, a sleeveless tee, and damp porcupine hair; his normal attire for a night in. He noticed the food first, rubbing his hands together in pleasure.

“Excellent. I’m starving! What’ve you got there, Sc -?” His lips clamped shut when he saw what she held, and his eyes darted to hers.

She experienced the briefest moment of embarrassment. But she hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. Besides, there were far fewer secrets between them these days. And if he trusted her enough with his wallet – which he’d done countless times before – then he also trusted her with whatever it contained.

Scully stood and offered him the stiff scrap of paper. “What’s this?” she chirped.

He had to open his mouth twice before he could get a word out. A tiny alarm chimed quietly in a corner of her brain. “It’s… it’s nothing. A keepsake. Nothing.” He took the preserved scrap of paper and his wallet from her and settled into his corner of the couch. He quickly tucked everything back in and laid it in the center of the coffee table. “Let’s eat.”

He would never be a completely open book. She would never be able to adequately plumb the depths of his unending mysteries. And she kind of liked it that way. But Scully knew avoidance when she saw it. Hunger won out over curiosity, though, and she took the offered food from his hand without saying anything. Soon the living room was scented with Garlic Chicken and Moo Shu pork as they ate in comfortable silence. The tank in the corner gurgled away and Mulder’s thumb pulsed on the remote until he settled on a nature documentary. The volume went up a little. They traded containers for a while and then switched back to their originals.

She waited until the smiling, happy, slightly desperate on-air staff of the local public broadcasting station launched into their spiel for funding before she turned to him.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

He looked over at her, scratching behind his ear with one hand, the other with a fork stuck out like a weapon between his fingers. “I did tell you, it’s nothing.” A smile that verged on bashful crossed his face and then was gone in an instant. “It’s stupid. You’ll laugh at me.”

“Mulder, I do that all the time anyway. Sometimes I think you encourage it. You get off on finding new ways to make me break out in incredulous laughter.”

His head bobbed. “True enough,” he conceded. “You know me well, Scully.”

“Maybe not.”

They traded a long look, and she tried not to seem too nosy. The recent addition of sexual intimacy to their relationship didn’t mean they had to share everything, did it? After all, they were still allowed some privacy.

“It’s gonna make you nuts if I don’t tell you, isn’t it?”

“No, not at all.” She shifted her attention back to the TV. “Okay, yes, it is,” she conceded after a minute, chin lifted proudly in defiance. “But then making me nuts is also something you delight in doing.”

“It’s… stupid,” he repeated after a minute, jamming his fork into the Moo Shu Pork and transferring the contents onto a thin pancake. He folded it closed and shoved most of it in his mouth.

She spent another minute trying to look engrossed in the episode of Masterpiece Theater that’d just started. “It’s fine, Mulder” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He swallowed a bite just in time to bark a laugh and tossed the empty tail end of his pancake into the container of pork. “Of course I do. If I hope to have a moment of peace tonight. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Well, I could just go home, if that’s the way you feel about it,” she teased.

Not surprisingly, he chose that moment to tackle her and push her flat on the couch. He loomed over her, wearing the shit-eating grin she treasured but would never dare admit to. He levered down enough to give her a long, hoisin flavored kiss and then tucked his nose into the notch of her jaw. “You promise not to laugh?”

There he was, being bashful again. And it was so not like him. Mulder was brash, confident, practically impossible to embarrass. Hesitant occasionally. Even vulnerable sometimes. But he sounded just like a shy twelve-year-old boy. Remember, she admonished herself, that’s who he is, too. Whatever this was, it mattered to him.

She wove her fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck. “I promise.”

“It was on the card I found in the filing system at the DOD.” He lifted his head and looked at her with soft, mossy eyes. “Your card, and it was printed in red in the upper right corner. MN 1068 - 06. It corresponded with the vial I found in the basement of the Pentagon. The one containing the chip that saved your life.”

“Mulder, we don’t know that for a fact.”

“I do. You believe in your brand of miracle, and I’ll believe in mine.” He cocked his head and offered a lop-sided smile. “All that matters is that we got one.”

She sat up, pushing back to gain a little bit of distance so she wouldn’t be distracted and miss the rest of his story. Mulder hovered close, his hand sweeping up and down her arm, cupping the curve of her jaw before sliding away.

“I jotted it down as soon as I got back to the Gunmen’s. I didn’t want to take the chance I’d forget. That ID number? It saved your life. So I carry it with me. As a reminder.” He scrubbed his face with both hands before turning back to her. “I wanted to keep the vial,” he chuckled under his breath. “I was going to do something with it, I don’t know. But I never got it back and didn’t think to ask until it was too late. Too much going on at the time. So… now you know.”

He gave her a long look from the corner of his eye and then slowly sank back against her, like a felled tree. She squirmed and shifted until she was on her back again, and gathered him in her arms, nuzzled him like the overgrown puppy he sometimes resembled.

He said, a few tranquil moments later, “Thanks for not laughing at me, Scully.”

“You’re welcome.” She dropped a kiss on the crown of his head and told him matter-of-factly, “I love you, Mulder.”

He wriggled against her and unhurriedly began rooting at her breasts with his glorious nose. His warm, humid breath played against nipples grown suddenly hard with a rush of anticipation and desire.

“Prove it,” he murmured, and gently closed his teeth on the peak of her left breast, dampening the fabric of her shirt and the bra beneath.

She shoved him away and took to her feet, holding out a hand in invitation. Then she led him to his bed and gave him all the proof he’d ever need.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Notes:

I want more than anything to write something angsty enough to rip your heart out. But the muse is demanding fluff lately, something she used to avoid at all costs. Despite any protests I might make, she usually gets her way.

Until next time…