#but i think the idea of them convinced antarctica is haunted only for it to be just some norwegians is hysterical

[eruscreaminginthedistance]

0__0

[leiascully]

Fic:  Baseball Metaphors (15/15)

Part One  |  Part Two  |  Part Three |  Part Four |  Part Five |  Part Six|  Part Seven |  Part Eight |  Part Nine  |   Part Ten  |  Part Eleven  |  Part Twelve | Part Thirteen |  Part Fourteen

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of what, like Visitor, began as a one-shot and ended up a thirty thousand word journey.  It’s possible that this is the epilogue of Deathly Hallows of epilogues, and if that’s true for you, please feel free to ignore it and live forever with Mulder and Scully in the throes of some truly epic afterglow.  But I wanted to follow the thread a little further, and explore what their future might have been if this had been their present sometime in the middle of Season 3 (honestly, a terrible time to set it, given how many killer episodes and how much mytharc I ended up having to write out of their moderately peaceful life together).  I’m sorry to say that it’s safe for work, PG at most.

Jenny won't take elopement for an answer, so Scully relents and lets her help plan the reception.  Despite her dull taste in paint colors, Jenny turns out to have exquisite taste when it comes to planning weddings, and she and Scully talk flowers and place settings and the details of the reception dress for hours.  She coaxes out all of the details Scully never thought she cared about as Mulder watches, fascinated.  In another life Jenny would have made a great interrogator.  Maybe even in this one.  

They go to the wedding, of course.  The minister is boring and the vows are boilerplate.  Mulder slides his thumb smugly under the hem of Scully's dress.  She smiles like an angel and pulls him into the garden during the reception so that he can keep the promise his thumb made.  But they both cry, just a little.  It's not because of Ethan and Jenny, they swear to each other.  It's just the idea of weddings, of course.  It's the idea that they, one day soon, will be standing up in front of each other and saying their various versions of same old words that somehow still mean something every time.

Eventually, the baby is born, and their time with Ethan and Jenny peters out, except for Scully's occasional wedding planning dates.  She dandles the baby on her knee and discusses the merits of a veil versus a fascinator for the reception (the fascinator wins) while Jenny changes out the cabbage leaves in her nursing bra.  

They get married in her mother's living room.  Maggie isn't happy about the lack of a Catholic wedding necessarily, but she gives them her blessing as they join hands and promise themselves to each other, forever and ever.  At least the priest makes house calls, Mulder thinks.  They all sign the document afterwards and Scully's mother serves up cake and coffee.  It's all very civilized.  Scully glows in a dress she got from the department store.  Mulder touches the white rose pinned to the lapel of his new bespoke suit.  When everyone's plates are just crumbs and the cups are dregs, they hug Maggie and take their leave.  She presses a horseshoe and a bell into Mulder's hands.

"Melissa would have wanted you to have it," she says.  Scully cries.

That night in bed, they explore each other slowly, their hunger tempered now by months of indulgence.  He spends so long after his first orgasm coaxing gentle climaxes out of her that she reaches down and finds him firm again, and she slides her leg over his hip and takes him in.  They make love gazing into each other's eyes, as if each touch is part of a ritual that will keep them safe and whole and happy.

Only afterwards do they realize they forgot the condom.  

The train from DC to Portland, Maine takes twelve hours, give or take.  They spend most of it holding hands.  Scully pages through the issues of JAMA she's never managed to catch up on.  Mulder reads a treatise on alien behavior that someone sent him anonymously, sharing the most entertaining portions aloud with Scully.  

The B&B may or may not be haunted, but it's picturesque as hell.  They rent a car and drive into the woods and there it is, white clapboard and black gables spattered with wet leaves that the wind has pasted there.  The bed is deep and soft and they spend the weekend hiking, eating, drinking wine by the fireplace, and making love with no barriers between them, holding their hope cupped in their palms like a candle flame in a breeze.  

Scully doesn't get pregnant. It's just as well.  They keep going out on cases.  They dip in and out of the darkness of their own minds.  Krycek reappears, the bad penny forever turning up.  That's after the black oil, after the airport in Hong Kong.  

"I should have made him my best man," Mulder muses, when everything's over, because there's nothing to do but whistle in the dark.

"Frohike would have been a better choice," Scully demurs.  

At the reception, Byers gives a lovely toast and Frohike demands to dance with the bride.  Langly tries to DJ.  No one dances.  It's a small party, but Teena Mulder comes down.  She kisses Scully's cheek and presses a glass of wine into her hand.  "I said the seven blessings," she says.  "I always knew it would be you.  Fox will know what to do."  

He ducks his head.  "Thank you, Mom."

She reaches up and strokes his cheek.  "You're a good son, Fox.  I think you'll make a good husband."

"He is," Scully says fiercely.

Teena's eyes soften.  She nods.  They drink the wine and Mulder steps on the glass.  "Mazel tov," Teena says, and makes her excuses.

They don't tell anyone about the marriage, not even Skinner.  Scully wears her ring on the chain around her neck, next to her cross.  It seems safer that way.  They do move in together, quietly, submitting separate change of address forms weeks apart.  There's some kind of solace in coming to work in separate cars and opening the door of their new apartment to find the other one already waiting in a place that isn't filled with their own ghosts.  Mulder keeps his old place too; it's a convenient place to meet up with his informants.  

They fake his death there one day, when Scully is dying of cancer and Mulder is at the end of his rope.  He comes back from the land of the lost with a chip for the back of her neck.  Bill steps in front of him, a snarl on his face, but Maggie lays a hand on her son's arm.

"That's her husband," she says calmly, and weathers the hurricane of Bill's fury and confusion while Mulder coaxes Scully to sit up, kissing her dry cheek and whispering to her about miracles.  She has the little bottle in one hand and her rosary in the other.  

"You can't let go," he says.  "I know I said 'til death do us part, but Scully, that can't be now."  He kneels at her bedside and sobs against her thigh while she strokes his hair.  

"I'll do it," she says, and he can hear that there isn't really hope in her voice, but she wants to spare him the agony of never having tried.  

She gets better.  They go to the doctor to discuss the ova from the facility Mulder found.  The specialist thinks there's hope.  It takes a few months, but eventually the test comes back positive.  "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Scully," the specialist says, and neither of them correct her.  The conspiracy they've been unraveling may be so much lint and chaff, but this is real.  They put their hands together on her belly.

When they find Emily, the adoption agency is only too happy to let them fill out the paperwork.  A nice young married couple, steady jobs, maybe a little on the dangerous side, but at least they've got good insurance and a government pension, right?  And it can't be so risky, if Agent Scully is pregnant and still going in to the office.  They have to tell Skinner after that.  He doesn't look particularly surprised. They fly their daughter across the country and settle, dazed and dazzled, into some kind of routine.

At least their new place has a bedroom for her, and one for the baby on the way.  They burn through a lot of their sick days, but Emily begins to grow and thrive and Scully's belly rounds.  Mulder helps her with her reading at night; Scully coaxes her through math.  It works.  They're a family.   When they bring home little William, Emily is delighted.  

Cassandra Spender disappears from a bridge in Pennsylvania.  Her son batters down the door to the basement, but they don't know much more than he does.  Scully was home with Emily when the itching began, not in her neck but in her brain, but it was bathtime for Emily, and there were stories to be read, and then Mulder to hold her in the dark, and she never left DC.  

Diana Fowley strides back into their lives, bearing news of a psychic child.  She studies the ring on Scully's hand (no point in secrets anymore) and their family photos on the desk.  "Congratulations," she says in a deliberately even voice.  The door closes behind her with a click.  She doesn't come back.

They go to Texas while Maggie watches the kids.  Somehow they end up in Antarctica, but somehow they get back with all their fingers and toes and a few more insights into the vast global conspiracy that used to be the lodestar of their lives.  They lose the X-Files for a little while, but they have other things that are important, like where Emily's other shoe is and whether there are any clean bottles to store breastmilk in and why Mulder's mother sends such expensive presents.

(Scully never goes to Africa.  Mulder never goes to Oregon.  Despite it all, they have their health and strength.)

They're happy.  They still argue.  One Christmas Eve, Mulder convinces Scully to leave the kids at her mother's and takes her ghosthunting for old time's sake.  One strange day through a series of strange coincidences, Scully meets her ex at a hospital.

"All the choices we've made," she says later, blurry after a glass of wine, "they've all led to this moment."

"I'd make the same ones," he says.  

"Me too," she says, taking his hand.  "You know, the kids are in bed."

"Are you propositioning me, Agent Scully?" he asks, mocking outrage.

"It's my turn," she says, and leads him into their bedroom, and he thinks they just might live happily ever after after all.

[ghostbustermelanieking]

au where scully is reassigned from the x files but mulder isn't?

1. Shortly after the incident in Antarctica, Mulder and Scully get the news that the X-Files have been reopened. They both apply for reassignment immediately. “This is it, Scully,” he tells her that night at her place, sitting on her couch. “We testify to OPR about what we know, and we’ll get the Files back in no time. We’re finally close to finding the truth.”

She shakes her head with an eye roll and a small smile, frostbite still visible on her cheeks. She tells him she hopes so, patting his knee absently.

But it doesn’t happen the way that they’re hoping. Of course it doesn’t. The next morning, they go in and they are given the news that only Mulder has been reassigned to the X-Files. Mulder and Diana Fowley. Scully is meant to stay under Kersh.

Mulder is furious, initially, ranting angrily to Scully on the bench on the hall, not caring who hears him. They’re splitting us up again, Scully, they’re trying to weaken us. Scully is surprisingly quiet, her arms crossed over her chest and her mouth set in a hard line. He remembers, involuntarily, a few weeks ago when he told her to go be a doctor and she told him that she wouldn’t quit. Now it feels as if their positions are reversed again. Except the decisions have been made for them.

He wonders, briefly, if this is what was supposed to happen. If this is his way of saving Scully, by moving on without her. He wonders if he needs to let her go or if that’s the worst possible thing he could do.

He says instead, “This isn’t the end, Scully, I’m not going to let them do this to us. This isn’t over yet.”

She purses her lips and nods, but she doesn’t say anything. He gets the sense that she doesn’t quite agree.

2. It should be the end, Scully thinks. This whole thing, everything that happened after Dallas, it should be a sign. Mulder’s ex-partner and ex-girlfriend has come back, has taken her rightful place on the Files, and Mulder never tried to kiss her again. She feels out of place here, like she is intruding. She doesn’t want it to end—god, she doesn’t want it to end—but she doesn’t know how else it can go, now. Mulder has a new partner, a partner that believes him, and she can move on with her career. She hates even acknowledging these prospects, but it seems to be the situation.

But Mulder won’t let things go. After everything, she probably should’ve expected him not to let things go, but she really thought he would. But he keeps making excuses. Keeps calling her on the Bureau phones and distracting her, asking her to lunch (she starts declining when Diana begins to accompany them, even though Mulder’s face falls every time she does), asking her for opinions on files. (“This is what Diana thinks, Scully, but what do you think?”) He asks her to movies or over to the Gunmen’s for poker night, and the Gunmen make faces whenever he mentions Diana’s name, and she feels a rush of gratitude. On a case in Nevada, Mulder is abducted by a man ordering him to drive west, and Scully follows the story the the news, white-knuckling her coffee mugs and ignoring orders to work, calling Fowley and snapping directions at her over the phone. As soon as Mulder’s safe, she calls him and listens to him tell the story over the phone, his words muted, on the verge of tears. She harbors a quiet fury for Diana’s apparent helplessness, refusal to do anything but send state police after Mulder. She wishes she had been there.

In November, Mulder goes rogue. Apparently he’d gone into the Bermuda Triangle in search of a ghost ship with the assistance of the Gunmen rather than Diana. The Gunmen lose him. Scully pursues the information through the halls of the Bureau. She goes down into the X-Files office and finds it empty; no sign of Diana. The smoker calls down to the office looking for Fowley, telling Scully about the information she’s given to Kersh, but midway through, he realizes that he isn’t talking to Diana, and Scully immediately hangs up. It’s the kind of thing she’s been suspicious of since the summer, but she has no time to pursue it. Skinner gets her the info, and she and the Gunmen race off and fish Mulder out of the ocean. Sitting on the deck of their boat, Mulder stretched out on his back breathing raspily and Scully holding his wet hand in hers, she wonders why Diana didn’t come for him.

In the hospital, he speaks of Nazis and The Wizard of Oz and tells her she saved the world. She looks down on him affectionately and starts to leave so he can rest, but he calls her back. “Hey, Scully?” he calls.

She goes back to the bed and leans close, replying, “Yes?” in a half-serious, half-indulgent voice.

He doesn’t speak for a moment, just looks at her, his eyes dopey with the painkillers. And then he says it, as serious as she’s ever heard him: “I love you.”

Her heart leaps on instinct, with excitement, before she tamps it down. He’s high as a kite, she reminds herself. He’s out of it, and he has a partner. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. “Oh, brother,” she says, rolling her eyes.

She turns to leave the room again and nearly runs into Diana, a look of panic that she can’t tell whether or not is staged on her face. “Oh my god, Fox,” she says, and Scully can’t stop the grimace moving across her face. She keeps moving, her eyes half-shut.

“Hi, Diana,” she hears Mulder say, sounding a little dismayed. She looks back, in the doorway, in time to see Diana sit on the edge of the bed and Mulder touch the blooming bruise on his cheek, not really looking at her. He looks at Scully instead, something like pleading in his eyes.

She looks away. She leaves the room and pretends that regret isn’t twisting in the pit of her chest. Tomorrow, she tells herself, he’ll have come to his sense.

3. On Christmas Eve, he calls her out to a haunted house. He tells her a ghost story full of tragic, star-crossed love, and she scoffs and rolls her eyes, and it feels just like old times until she says, “Shouldn’t you be bothering your partner with this, Mulder?”

He thinks, You’re my partner, automatically, and even after months of working with Diana, it still feels true. He still misses her. He doesn’t know how to be around Diana, as much as part of him wants things to be the way they were before she left; part of him wants to investigate with Diana and Scully, but the rest of him knows that it is a bad idea. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to handle things here, but mostly, he just knows that he misses Scully. That he wants to work with Scully.

The truth is that Diana couldn’t come even if he wanted her to, because she’s spending Christmas with her father and sisters in Connecticut. “I haven’t seen them since I moved to Europe,” she’d said the other day, and Mulder had thought that was strange because Diana had stayed protective over her father after her mother’s death, on into adulthood. But strange or not, she is in Connecticut. He doesn’t tell Scully that, though, because it doesn’t matter. He’d want her here whether Diana was in town or not. He says instead, “You are my partner, Scully. I don’t care what the FBI says.”

His chest lifts when he sees the corners of her mouth lift in a small smile. She spends Christmas Eve ghost-hunting with him, and gives him a present that he didn’t expect in the early hours of the morning even though they hadn’t discussed presents at all this year.

4. In early January, they send Scully to New York for a case alongside a green, brown-nosing young agent. Kersh indicates that this case may be a chance for her to improve upon her career, and though a part of her feels a loyal pang towards Mulder and the Files at that, the part of her that is filled with rage every time she goes to the basement to meet Mulder and sees the new nameplate—Agent Diana Fowley—on the door hopes that this will be a new chance for her.

That silly, stupid, traitorous hope is squashed after a little while on the case. She realizes that this is an X-File. She denies it at first—Mulder gets ahold of the file somehow, and calls her at the airport, teasing her about how he should be investigating this case along with her—but it becomes more and more undeniable as she keeps digging. Mulder does some digging for her, too, keeps taking her calls. At one point, she asks, “Don’t you and Agent Fowley have a case?” and he simply says, “No.”

He calls her while she is alone with the suspect, Fellig, and she asks him to do some more research for her. Within the next hour, she is sprawled on the floor of Fellig’s apartment, a bullet through her gut. She thinks of a lot of things as Fellig instructs her to close her eyes, as Ritter calls an ambulance. She wonders if anyone will tell Mulder.

—

Later, when she wakes up in the hospital, Mulder is there, sitting at her bedside in a chair. She shouldn’t be so surprised to see him, but she is.

His eyes light up when he sees her, and he seizes one hand in both of his, holding it gently. “Scully,” he whispers, his voice soft and tender; he leans down to press his cheek to her pale knuckles.

“Mulder?” she rasps, still in disbelief. “You came?” She wants to ask, What about the X-Files?—really wants to ask, What about Agent Fowley?—but every word hurts.

His eyes are teary. “Course I did,” he murmurs, and he leans in to kiss her forehead. Her eyes slip close, exhausted and in pain and somehow contented, despite it all.

5. Cassandra Spender reappears, asking for Mulder. Scully gets wind of it by whispers across the bullpen, by passing Jeffrey Spender’s desk on the way to the lunch cart. She convinces Mulder to do it; she feels out of place, considering she’s not his partner anymore, but after nearly a month cozied up on her couch with him watching old movies and eating takeout he’d brought her, she feels more comfortable with him. And anyways, she’s as involved in this conspiracy as he is, had as much reason to see the truth brought to light. She urges him to do it on the basis of answers about her own abduction, and he agrees. She notices that Diana is gone; he tells her that she’s gone to visit her sister in Oklahoma and he can’t get in touch with her.

Cassandra Spender tells them stories of alien colonization and of her own husband’s involvement in it. Mulder invites her down to the X-Files office to do research on the Spenders, though Scully protests that they don’t want them working together. (She’d had to stop making calls to Mulder at the office, stop having lunch with him, at Kersh’s insistence. It almost harkens back to their first separation in 1994; Scully’s almost surprised they’re still hanging out outside of work, instead of being reduced to signals and dark parking garage meetings like before.) As she predicts, they’re quickly caught and she’s threatened with dismissal. Jeffrey Spender claims it’s by request of Agent Fowley, and Scully’s face grows red with anger. She can’t look Mulder in the eye.

Mulder protests that this is ridiculous, that Diana would never, and he’s immediately cut off. Apparently, they’ve gotten tired of the trouble Mulder and Scully have gotten into together. They’re reconsidering Mulder’s position on the Files and within the FBI as well.

It’s revenge, Scully knows, for talking to Agent Spender’s mother, but pointing that out would do no good. They’re both sent home.

Scully knows she should probably just leave things alone, but something inside her doesn’t want to let things go. She knows that Fowley is involved with the men who have done these things to them; she’s suspected it for a long time. So she keeps digging. She shares her research with Mulder, and they pass it on to Skinner. She stays at Mulder’s apartment probably longer than she should, drinking a beer he found at the back of his fridge and trying to figure out whether or not, now that she’s shared her suspicions about CGB Spender, she should share her suspicions about Fowley, when Cassandra bursts in. She wants Mulder to kill her, and for a long moment, Scully is afraid he will. And then, before she knows it, the CDC is bursting in to force them into quarantine. Diana Fowley, fresh back from Oklahoma (or, as Scully suspects, somewhere that is notably not Oklahoma), is on their tails, with an excess of lies that Mulder believes. She lies from Mulder’s apartment to the military base that they’re taken to, and Mulder never stops to question it. He actually seems fucking disappointed in Scully for questioning Diana. And that is the moment when Scully is finished trying to protect his feelings in this whole situation. It’s been obvious to her for months; now she needs to prove it to him.

—

Scully goes to the Gunmen. She’d desperate at this point. She may not be Mulder’s partner anymore, but she is still his friend, and she is not going to let a woman who is likely consorting with the men who abducted and assaulted her continue to manipulate him. They find information that proves every suspicion she’s ever had.

But Mulder doesn’t want to hear it. She tries to make him understand. She gives him evidence of Fowley’s activity in Europe. She points out the convenience of Fowley’s sudden reappearance, of their being partnered on the X-Files. She points out all the convenient times that Diana has been missing, that she has provided little to no help in maintaining the Files. That she is basically sabotaging him from the inside. And Mulder won’t hear it. He scoffs, he waves off their defenses. He says that Scully has given him no reason not to trust Diana, and something in her just snaps. She says, “Well, then I can’t help you anymore.”

“Scully, you’re making this personal,” he says, and every word feels like a slap across the face.

Seething with rage, she says evenly, “Because it is personal, Mulder. Because without the FBI, without the X-Files, personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away then there is no reason for me to continue.”

She turns and walks away, her heels clacking on the floorboards. For a second, she thinks: This is it. This is when he’s finally going to let me go. And then he catches up to her. He catches her shoulder gently, saying, “Scully, wait.”

She turns on him hard. “Wait for what, Mulder?” she snaps. “We’re not partners anymore.” He flinches immediately, but she doesn’t care; this is the way she’s been feeling since her reassignment. She says, “You want to keep this impersonal? Fine. Speaking from a strictly professional standpoint, I don’t see why you need me anymore. You’ve got the X-Files, and you’ve got a partner who probably believes you, whether she’s working against you or not.” She bites her lower lip, hard, her hands in her pockets. “Where do I fit into that equation?” she asks.

And then she’s gone, slipping out of the Gunmen’s apartment and going down to her car.

6. She gets home and tells herself that it is over now. She’s serious this time. She’s going to stay at home until she hears about whether or not she is keeping her job.

But as she should’ve expected, that plan more or less blows up in her face. Agent Spender calls with information for her. He wants her to intercept the transport of his mother by train at the Potomac yards. Scully is tempted to say no, partially out of not wanting to be involved and partially out of contempt for Jeffrey Spender, but remembering everything she and Cassandra have been through, she finds herself unable to.

Mulder calls her en route to Cassandra. He wants to come pick her up, to go somewhere with him and Diana. She laughs bitterly at that. “That’s not going to happen, Mulder,” she says, teeth gritted. She tells him she is going to find Cassandra. She refuses to come with him. He decides to come with her instead.

Against her better judgement, she decides to go pick him up. For Cassandra, she tells herself. No other reason. They make it to the Potomac yards, but they can’t stop the train. Mulder tells her and Skinner that something bad is about to go down at El Rico Air Base. And by morning, everyone at El Rico Air Base is dead.

Scully goes home. Even after everything case down, after Mulder tries to apologize, she still goes home. She’s tired of the whole thing. After everything, she couldn’t even save Cassandra. She doesn’t want to hear Mulder’s apologies; she can’t do this anymore. She just wants it all to be over.

—

The next morning, she gets a call from Skinner. “Agent Scully, I’m calling to tell you that your suspension had been lifted,” he says solemnly. “And that you’ve been reassigned to the X-Files, by request of Agent Mulder.”

Scully bites down on her lower lip so hard that it bleeds. “Excuse me, sir,” she says, “but I believe that the X-Files are currently at their maximum capacity of agents.”

“I’m afraid they’re not. Agent Fowley requested a transfer,” says Skinner. He clears his throat. “And I’m afraid there’s worse news. Agent Spender’s blood was found all over the office. It will be a while before either of you can begin work.”

Scully grimaces. “That’s horrible. Do they have any idea who did it?”

“No, but I can tell you who Mulder suspects,” Skinner says.

Scully nods, staring at the rug, tears blurring her vision. She knows who he’s talking about, and she’s too exhausted to consider it. It’s been some of the longest few days of her life. And now they’re offering the X-Files back, and she’s not sure that she wants it, after everything that’s happened. At one point, she didn’t, and then she didn’t, and now she doesn’t again. She doesn’t know what to do now. All she really wants is for things to be the way they were before all of this started. Before Diana Fowley came back, before Mulder had essentially rejected her and her trust.

“Is… everything okay, Scully?” Skinner asks on the other end. She sniffles quietly and wipes her eyes; she’d almost forgotten he was there. “I thought this would be good news.”

“I… appreciate you calling to give me the news, sir,” she says quietly. “But I don’t know that I can accept the position.”

Skinner is quiet for a moment on the other end. And then he says, “You know, Mulder’s been making requests for you to be transferred back to the Files since the beginning, you know. The whole time he was partnered with Agent Fowley. He’s been asking to work with you the whole time.”

Her eyes blur further; she’s not sure if she’s grateful or extraordinarily embarrassed that Skinner managed to see through her act, see what she’s been worried about. She thanks Skinner quietly and hangs up quickly, rests her chin on her hand across the arm of the couch. She tries to tell herself it doesn’t mean anything. She tries not to think of her and Mulder on this couch a week ago, her half-asleep and him stroking the bottom of her foot absently from where it lay across his thigh, kissing her hair absently as he left. Of his teary eyes in a hallway last summer as he begged her to stay.

7. He’s at her door by that night. Of course he is. He’s apologizing before she can even get the door all the way open. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She sighs wearily, leaning against the door. “What do you want, Mulder?”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, reaching out to stop her from closing the door, although she’s made no move to close it. “I’m so sorry, Scully. You… you were right. I was an ass, and I’m sorry.”

Her hands clenched harder around the doorknob. She looks at him without saying a word.

“I-I’m sorry that they partnered me with Diana,” he says softly.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she mutters, resentful and remorseful all in the same breath.

He isn’t finished. He begins, “It's… it’s been hard for me to know how to deal with this. Part of me wants things to… to be the way they were before Diana left. She… she meant a lot to me, and it’s tempting to try and look past everything else and just remember what it was like before. But even from the beginning, I… things didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to work without you. I didn’t know how to work without you. I kept making excuses to hang out with you because I missed you so much.”

She looks down, away from him, at the doormat. She doesn’t know how to talk about this. She’s thinking about it, every lunch and mid-day phone call and movie night, and the memories are almost painful. “Mulder…” she says softly.

“You said you didn’t see why I needed you anymore, but I do need you, Scully.” His voice breaks a little. “I always need you. You’re my partner.”

She sniffles. She remembers when, while high off his ass, he told her that he loved her. She’s still not sure she believes him. She says, “You still trust her.”

“I…” He’s hesitating. He reaches out gently to touch her shoulder. “I don’t know anymore, Scully. I trust you. And I should’ve listened to you, and I never should’ve told you that you were making it personal, because it’s always been personal with us.” He rubs a circle along the back of her shoulder, steps a little closer. She doesn’t step away. “I’ve really, really missed you,” he murmurs. “And I’d love to work with you again, if you want.”

She gulps. She lifts her chin a little to meet his eyes. “I missed you, too,” she whispers, the back of her neck reddening.

He squeezes her shoulder. “I… I was wondering if we could talk about things,” he murmurs. “You and me. I was wondering if we could try and work on them.”

She wipes one eyes with the tip of her finger. She takes a deep breath and steps aside in the doorway so he can come in.

[vetgleek]

His warmth (A Meihem fanfiction)

At the Ecopoint, Mei had not much to do besides looking at data. More and more data. Every. Single. Day. She didn’t mind it, it was her job, but it did get boring every once in a while. Of course, every now and then she could show everyone at the base who the ping-pong queen was. But then again, she was there so help save the world, not play around.

It was getting late, she was probably running late for dinner. She saved everything she was doing, powered out the monitors (they had to save energy after all!) and got out of the Climatology monitoring station.

Walking through the base, towards the crew quarters, Mei couldn’t shake around the feeling that something was wrong. The base was too quiet. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.

She started to notice that the corridors were getting darker. Her surroundings colder. The wind outside was beginning to turn into a raging snow storm. Even though she was already used to the weather, she started to feel cold.

Anxiety took her over, so the climatologist started walking faster. She tried to convince herself that she was safe, that the base was built to endure the worst climates on the Arctic. Still she wouldn’t entirely believe herself for some reason.

“Snowball?” she called, her voice squeakier than normal. But the AI assistant of the Ecopoint failed to show itself. That was odd. Snowball was always around.

Mei made the left turn that should get her to the quarters’ kitchen, but instead found herself at the cryostasis laboratory. How could she have ended up there? She was sure she was headed to the right place!

As she started to turn around to leave, something caught her eye. There was an out of the ordinary glow coming from where she knew the cryostasis pods stood. Curiosity brought out the best of her, so she decided to approach the pods to see what originated that glow.

Her breathing started getting faster, to the point she was almost hyperventilating. The uneasiness she had been feeling did nothing but increase. Mei was feeling colder and colder by the minute. The nagging at the back of her mind bothered her. It pushed her to go back, but she just couldn’t follow the instinct. She had to find out what was going on.

Standing in front of the pods, Mei saw each of her colleagues’ names written across the pods. The word ‘MALFUNCTION’ spread in red, bold letters above each of them.

She frowned, worry drawn in her features. There had to be a mistake. The pods shouldn’t even be in use at that moment! What the heck was going on? She started trembling, but this time it wasn’t just because of the cold.

“Guys?” Mei half screamed, hoping with all of her heart that the others would come around the corner, having some explanation about what was going on with the pods. Probably joking around about how scared she was…

But that never happened. No sound could be heard besides the ongoing raging of the storm outside and her own heartbeat pounding at her ears.

She needed to get out of there, she needed to find everyone. But before…

Mei took a step forward, closing the gap between herself and one of the pods. The closer she came to them, the more a little voice in her head warned her to back off. As she was finally at an arm’s distance from the pod that had Captain Opara’s name on it, the surrounding cold she was feeling became almost unbearable. But that didn’t stop her from taking a peek inside.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

With tears on her eyes and cold sweat on her forehead, Mei sat up on her bed as she woke up from her nightmare. She could feel her throat aching from her scream. Panting, she hugged herself. The weather at Watchpoint Gibraltar was nice and warm at night, but she was trembling from the cold.

Disoriented as she felt, she glanced at the empty spot beside her on the bed. For a second, she knew something was missing there, and it took her brain another couple to figure out what it was. Or rather, who was.

“Jamie!?” she shrieked. She was so, so cold. In her mind, the image of what she had seen inside the pod in her nightmare was as vivid as what she had seen back in Antarctica. Back when she had found out she had been the sole survivor of her whole team. She let out a big sob.

In an instant that felt like an eternity after waking up, her bathroom door was violently hurled open. She heard the familiar sound of uneven steps coming, running, closer. In a few long strides, Junkrat reached her bed, cursing himself for his bad bathroom break timing.

Before she could react, he was already embracing her. He was so warm. “Its okay love, I’m ‘ere” he whispered to her, soothingly, “you’re with me now”. She pressed herself into his arms and his bare torso, clinging to him as if her life depended on it.  

As scared and cold as she had felt, he made everything better. It wasn’t magic, it wasn’t going to go away in a few seconds, but his sole presence comforted her. He was her sun.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t help a few more sobs escape from her lips. “I-I… I just… I can’t h-help see-seeing them… i-in my n-night-mares…” she managed to whimper between hiccups, “I-I st-still miss them”.  She buried her face in the crook of his neck.

Jamison shushed her softly, caressing the back of her head with his metallic hand, and keeping her as close to him as he could with his real one. He knew it would be stupid for him to say it had been just a nightmare. It wasn’t. And he knew he couldn’t take her pain away, as much as he wanted to. But he could be her rock. He could be the heat her body so desperately craved. “It’ll by alroight” he said.

He wasn’t a stranger to this episodes anymore. The first time it had scared him to death. When Mei had told him her story, he hadn’t had to ask to know it still haunted her. But heck, he didn’t expect it to be that bad. That night she had been ashamed of the wreck she was, of appearing weak in front of him. He couldn’t stand to see the woman he loved hurting like that. He wanted to help her feel better, so he hugged her. He hugged her so tight that she could feel how much he cared for her. How much he wanted her to stop suffering. He didn’t let go of her even as they both fell asleep again. Jamie couldn’t help to think back on that time as he strengthened his grip on her.

Pulling her head back, puffy brown eyes stared into his ambers, with silent gratitude in them. The tear stream coming from her eyes wouldn’t stop, but at least it was slowing down. “Don’t ever let go of me, Jamie” she softly pleaded him.

“As if you had ta ask, Snowflake” he said with a smile. It wasn’t the wicked cheshire grin he flashed every time he provoked an explosion. Mei recognized it as the tender smile he gave only to her. That warm smile that melted all the way to her heart. She couldn’t help but giving him back a small smile in return.

Without letting go of her, Jamison leaned down on her bed and made sure both of them were comfortable. He kissed away the tears on her cheeks before pecking his little snowflake on her rose lips. “I love you” he said, looking back into her eyes and lingering barely an inch away from her face.

She almost forgot the coldness she had felt when she suddenly woke up. The contact of his skin with hers felt almost electrical as she heard him say that. Jamison had that effect in her ever since she let her icy walls down. Ever since she let him into her life. “I love you too” she said before kissing him back.

Mei didn’t know how the junker became such a big part of her life so quickly. But she certainly believed she could live forever immersed in Jamie’s warmth.

Thanks a lot for reading! Hopefully it wasn't that bad ^^'. This is my first Overwatch fanfic and my first time writing after many, many years, so please, let me hear what you think about it! I may write more Meihem oneshots in the future (already have a few ideas) but I still have no idea of when or if they'll be published. Again, thank you so much!