#Karin Berquist

[randomfoggytiger]

Alpha In-Depth (Part I): Vibing and Internet Wive-ing

This was an anon request; and the idea intrigued me so much I immediately sat down and started hammering it out. So, here you go!

**Note**: I will ghost edit this later; but I'm working on Part II as I type so I'm in a bit of a hurry.

Surprisingly there is a lot of little details you can weave into an overall narrative in this episode. Alpha follows Arcadia and is followed up by Trevor, all three blending together to create the storm that is Milagro and the revelation that is The Unnatural. And, aside from that, there is still residual Diana-Fowley-under-every-rock suspicion and protection from Scully's side and some self-doubt (in denial) from Mulder's side. Both are half-right and half-wrong.

The Lead Up

I have a different read on S6 than most other meta; namely, that it was a ball compared to their previous seasons. What could have been in S4 (what was hinted in Home) was halted by Scully's cancer; and what couldn't be in S5 was aided by Mulder's "atheism" and Scully's loss and self-doubt (see here.)

But S6 is on the heels of FTF; and, while there was a huge setback in The Beginning with the files being taken from them and Mulder accidentally brushing aside Scully's big hallway confirmation, it's recovered in the name of grim survival: two agents, shoulder to shoulder, mucking through their toilet brush duties together, unbreakable. The shift in Drive is important, establishing Scully's skill at handling all the big mytharc pieces while Mulder is forced into a metal box hurtling down the highway; and Triangle affirms it by having Mulder stumble into another universe while both versions of Scully work overtime to save "Dorothy" and bring him home. By the end of Triangle all is normal: Scully is reaffirmed in her ability to add meaningfully to Mulder, not just his quest; and Mulder acknowledges this more openly, having to rediscover his FTF fears again on the Queen Anne (afraid of never seeing Scully again-- hence the kiss.)

The rest of the season is (mostly) a blast until the drama of Two Fathers/One Son-- which is important (and I wrote about it here) as a one-shot and 1 and 2 as a Typing Personality combo), because it establishes the central flaw of Mulder and Scully's ability to rip him out of it. By the next episode (Agua Mala) Scully is miffed, yes, but more at the storm than at Mulder-- because who would fly down to investigate a sea monster in a hurricane-- but whatever feelings that still lingered about One Son are demolished by the end when Dales forces Mulder to pause and acknowledge Scully's effect on the case. Not that he didn't want to; it's just that Mulder hadn't-- something a future Dales brother points out to him in The Unnatural. By Monday they're teasing and even beaming at each other, etc.

Suffice to say, there is normality restored with the X-Files back. On the heels of Monday there is Arcadia-- and while my posts on Arcadia were a bit dialed up to explore the psychological effects, the result is the same: Mulder and Scully enjoyed their time for different reasons. He enjoyed bullying the neighbors passive-aggressively and she enjoyed the domesticity of it all... but both of them were ready to leave by the end, Mulder having drawn firmer boundaries because of his discomfort with domesticity and Scully having retreated a little due to being teased to death (and almost literally dying.) This leads directly into the episode we're breaking down today:

Alpha

Ah-- Alpha, my Alpha... if only you weren't so badly written or were vastly more interesting.

The first shot of Mulder is him adding photo evidence to his corkboard, intently focusing on the crime. Scully appears in the hallway, having doubled back at some point from leaving the building, checking back in with him-- "Aren't you going home?", a question she may not have asked since Paper Hearts (correct me if I'm wrong.) It establishes that she and Mulder are on completely comfortable terms; and she's curious about his movements and well-being outside of the office, which is opposite to the prevailing meta that they were tense or on bad terms at this time.

"I AM home," Mulder cheerfully responds, still intensely focused, "just feathering the nest."

A fitting follow-up to Arcadia, which was an emphasis on a "normal", suburban home life. Mulder is still firmly rooted in his basement, not yet ready to step out on a Saturday night with his girl and baseball.

"Watcha got?" Scully slings out, interest piqued.

Mulder spells out the case, with Scully zipping out her own "Mind if I ask the cause of death?" in a scene not dissimilar to their quippy exchange in Fight Club (if more low-key and not as RST-y.) He's delighted she's involving herself this eagerly, hiding little smirks and smiles between his rapid-fire sentences and throwing out a quirky inflection to his "multiple bite wounds" detail, adding some pizazz to his delivery.

Scully's skepticism peaks when Mulder mentions the suspect is a dog; and she walks (read: leans on one leg then the other, seesawing into the room reminiscent of a teasing little girl on a playground) into the room to see the evidence herself and disprove it.

Mulder brandishes the X-Files enticingly ("That alone is not what drew me to this case") just out of her reach while he trots out the juiciest part ("The two men were found inside the container.") Scully plays along, taking the casefile when he dramatically relinquishes it--

until Mulder tells a joke so bad (repeating "doggone" thrice with various inflections, each more emphasized than the last, so that Scully will know he told a joke and smirk at his genius) that it spoils the mood and kicks her into full-on skepticism mode. Her "Yeah, I got it" is hilarious and deadpan; but it's a gentle "yeah, you stink" rather than her full-powered sarcasm-- and she bites off a smile of her own for "getting" him by a quick question about the investigation.

"Did anybody, um, examine the victim, Mulder?"

Scully's little quip amuses herself and Mulder, who gives a little head tilt in a 'well, y'know...' kind of way. Her amusement continues despite her charmed exasperation.

Mulder has witnesses, experts, and an outside source; but Scully doesn't budge. "Mulder, I don't have to tell you how absolutely and completely wrong that seems." He gives her a two confirmational head bobs and a few "yeah"s and "mhm"s, unphased by the nonsensical nature of the case.

Their vibe is very S7: lots of "yeahs", Scully sauntering around confidently and familiarly butting into Mulder's business after hours... it's domestic, really. Arcadia was the new wedding and honeymoon, settling in and sifting their lives together; Alpha is an exploration of "the couple"'s first cross-purposes disagreement (in this case, over the woman Karin); and Trevor will explore the complicated familial dynamics of two messed up people having a child. After those three episodes back-to-back, and no change in Mulder, the desperation of Milagro makes clearer sense.

Mulder KNOWS how ridiculous this case is.

Scully: "You're not going to tell me that a dog did this?"

Mulder: *a pause to consider*: "Bad dog."

Scully: "...Yeah."

At the first crime scene, Mulder leads the charge while Scully scuffles off to do some footwork of her own.

When Mulder questions the man in charge of the crime scene team, we learn a bit of backstory--

Man: "Did you ever own a dog, sir?"

Mulder: "Yeah."--

confirming a lot of meta speculation about Mulder's childhood (well, that and there might be a picture of a dog in Tena's house somewhere... if I recall the lore correctly.)

Mulder does a goofy little "gotcha" and hand clap over the man's not-so-subtle dog poop answer to his questions; and Scully, though not particularly fond of poop jokes, does almost crack a smile of her own... if only because Mulder stepped into that one (heh heh, puns.)

Scully takes over the interrogation while Mulder retraces her steps and stares into the same emptied box. ...Until he hears that there's a cryptozoologist involved in this case and scurries over, eager to get into the more outlandish aspects of mythological animals.

Scully's facial reaction-- "oh no"-- is perfect as he winds up and starts to rattle off his myths and monsters spiel; but he's put on pause when she ruthlessly cutting his speech down in the prime of its life with a smirk on her face.

As the case rattles on-- a dog attack in BELLFLOWER??? really?-- and Mulder scopes out the oddities about the newest crime scene (while avoiding dog feces and making a "Watch your step" joke to Scully. She heeds his warnings because she is, after all, practical),

In their exchange of theories, Mulder congratulates Scully on figuring out where he's going with his newest leap: "You get a biscuit, Scully." Scully stores her comeback for later, content (for now) to simply laugh at his idea of a dog with human intelligence.

A sidenote: Scully always, always holds the umbrella (Irresistible, Small Potatoes, etc., and here. Nice continuity.)

This leads them to Berquist Kennels, where Scully springs out her comeback pun, having lain in wait for the first golden opportunity: when Mulder responds "Actually, it's more of a behavior problem" to a contractor's questions, Scully smirks, realizing this is her moment (even the stars aligned so that she is accidentally holding her hands in front of her, clutched, like a devious little mastermind), and cuts in with the speed of light: "Yeah, he doesn't listen and he chews on the furniture."

Mulder, as shown above, is tickled-- but he's more caught out than overjoyed, huffing out a "heh" noise before digging for his badge.

An Odd Moment That Portents More

An odd moment happens: Mulder is completely at ease in Karin's office until Scully makes a sarcastic remark ("You sure this woman's not an authority on bats?"), his mood shifting a little.

He jovially makes a "tsk" sound, and reaches out in a "c'mon, none of that" gesture that almost fully envelops an unsuspecting Scully in a hug. He gets as far as grasping both shoulders before his partner turtles up, tucking her chin in and going straight and stiff as a board.

Scully's expressions shift swiftly from shock to realization that Mulder never gets this grabby without a motive (having just gone through an entire touchy-feely case where Mulder sort of used her as a cuddly prop to forward his sneaky motives.) Cynicism creeps in, and she begins to suspect that he has something to hide, searching through the room in earnest and starting to nail him down about "this expert."

Mulder, meanwhile, is not reading the room-- ironic, yes-- coasting through life unbothered while keeping crucial information back form Scully to determine her either way (which ends up shooting himself in the foot, because Scully's first impression of Karin is not a positive one.)

When Scully finds out he knew more about Karin than he initially let on, she is even more suspicious and not at all pleased... and Mulder knows he's in the doghouse (heheheh.)

THIS explains his weird arm grab earlier: Mulder knows Scully is viciously jealous, personally and professionally; and had tried to detour Scully from getting snippy about his new friend-- wanting his partner to trust and get along with her, a social outcast and someone he is already protective of. We saw how his last "friendship" shook out with Diana Fowley (not to mention his former collaborations with very helpful women in the field, i.e. Detective White in Syzygy and Bambi Berenbaum in War of the Coprophages); and this seems to be a redemption attempt on his part. A "see? I can make good friends-- I'm a good judge of character" mea culpa.

Mulder had even read Karin's books before even meeting her (an interesting parallel to reading Scully's thesis in the Pilot); but Scully is pleased when Mulder answers her "Better than human??" sniff over Karin's book with "She's not a real people person", giving her hope that this lady will be a very disinterested professional. She saunters away, playfulness restored (for now.)

Mulder is fidgety, holding something back; but the full jig is up when Scully finds Karin's 'I Want To Believe' poster.

"Well, she seems to have made a connection to you."

Karin now enters, not noticing Mulder's handwave at first. Then Mulder does something here he usually never does willingly:

"Karin? I'm Fox."

He's says it gently, establishing this is how they'd forged a connection between them; and Scully, savvy as she is, recognizes this and doesn't draw any attention to it. But still. (Not only did she have to content with Dr. Bambi and Fox, but now she has to contend with canid enthusiast Karin and Fox.)

Mulder is genuinely enthusiastic-- "Nice to finally meet you"-- sticking out his hand again with sparkling eyes (ala meeting his hero in Space.) Scully is... less enthusiastic.

When Karin realizes Mulder had come to consult her she asks, "Is there any other reason you came here?" It's sad when you consider her advanced illness and desperate wish for a loving-- or any-- human connection before her death; but this is Mulder pre-The Unnatural: everything is buried in work with no time for socializing.

Scully catches all of this, of course, without any of the context. She knows there is more going on, firmly pressing Mulder on the "friend" claim when Berquist leaves the room.

He admits that he and Karin met online; and Scully pauses, making sure her subtext meaning is clear: "Online."

Mulder catches it and closes his eyes, frustrated he'd fallen right into this pitfall. He firmly insists, "Two professionals exchanging information." Scully knows he's being honest... so that only leaves Karin's motive unexplored. And from what she's already seen of her (antisocial, not a people person) it's very unlikely that this woman's motives would extend only to professional interest.

Another murder, another crime scene.

Another Karin Berquist sighting, another opportunity for jealousy and suspicion.

Scully sees her coming and excuses herself-- "I don't think wolf woman is here to see me, so I'll..."-- not above giving the two "friends" some alone time (which reminds me of Mulder's "Don't say I didn't do nothing fer yeh", though it's a bit of a stretch.) She still tags along with Mulder back to the dog ranch where the three do some research, keeping her grouchy feelings in check until she sees proof positive that Karin is, indeed, amorous for her partner.

Scully then begins to grill Karin on her shift in opinions on the case (Mulder watching their pin-pong match with interest in both ideas), rolling her eyes at Berquist's assertion she's "just going by the facts."

When Karin explains the Chinese myth pertinent to the case, ending with the statement "...capable of opening doors, stealing wives, and disappearing into thin air. Maybe there is some basis in reality for this trickster myth", Scully snidely follows up with a pointed "Oh, I'm... fairly certain there is" while looking from Karin to Mulder, which earns her a measured look from Mulder. Scully turns from her waspish mood and this discussion, mocking the idea internally and recovering some of her former mood as she steps to the car.

Mulder follows her out, not irritated so much as confused; and his question-- "Everything okay, Scully?"-- sets her off.

"How well do you know this woman, Mulder?"

"How well do you know anybody you meet on the internet? She likes to talk."

Scully is appeased by his rationality, stepping back a little from her emphatic (read: aggravated) interrogation: "Well, I question her motives."

Mulder divines her interpretation, flattered but dismissive when he asks: "Are you suggesting that this case was the way to get me out here to meet me?" Off of Scully's confirming-but-not-admitting expression, he responds, "I'm flattered but, uh--" and does a little, flattered head shake.

He insists that Karin didn't kill a bunch of people to draw him to her; but Scully insists that "She's enamored of you, Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too."

Mulder's not buying it.

Two interesting things:

#1. A rather dark line of thinking for Scully, who would tie even extreme acts of violence to the lengths a woman would go to win Mulder's love or even his attention. This will ring more and more true in Milagro as it exposes Scully's desperation to be the center of his attention, too.

#2. Scully is alluding to this moment, yes; but more broadly, Diana Fowley lies right behind them with her treachery and cunning. Scully knows that her partner is easily manipulated, but it wasn't until the Fowley arc that she realized how much Mulder will believe on hopeful faith and blind loyalty. Since then, she's become his aggressive guardian. This will be immensely important in Part II.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[pinzandneedlez]

X-files queens who deserved better part 1

[the-meghan-m]

Can you imagine being Karin Berquist, hiding away in your house until you meet someone online you really like to the point you orchestrate a meeting, and then he comes and brings Dana Scully with him

[vampirewalterskinner]

Karin Berquist from S6E16 “Alpha” is autistic, right?

Also Scully needs to calm her ass jfc let women talk to Mulder. They’re autistic buddies.

[baronessblixen]

Saw your tags on the Alpha post-- I agree it was a "what was that?" moment w/ Scully and handsy Mulder; so I (quite literally) went frame-by-frame to analyze.

Scully was doing her ordinary snark with her "does she study bats?" comment; but instead of doing his usual Mulder smirk or snort of amusement, Mulder quite literally pounced on her, making a negative but fond coo-y "now now" noise. THAT is not a Mulder normal: and it so shocked Scully that she stiffened in place. Then, as she's processing what just happened, she gets a VERY suspicious look on her face, sussing out that Mulder knows more about Karin Berquist than he's telling her. Then she starts to ask very casual but pointed questions figuring out how well he knows Karin, etc.

All in all, it was a pretty intimate gesture with the underlying unspoken being Mulder wanted Scully to enthusiastically like Karin. Scully was quite literally jumped by his unusual-to-this-degree response, and figured out Mulder was being coy with something (or someone.)

Maybe I didn't explain it well enough in my post~! XDDD

But didn't she only stiffen when he touched her? I mean she wasn't even looking at him. That scene just baffles me 😂

[faceandamy]

Melinda Culea as Karin Berquist in The X-Files

Season 6 Episode 16 Alpha

[enigmaticxbee]

✖️✖️ 6x16 Alpha

The one where... Scully gets very territorial over a dog specialist Mulder consults while investigating a shapeshifting trickster were-dog.

Best: Scully’s full body shiver when Mulder lays both his hands on her in Karin Berquist’s office. I feel you girl.

Worst: Mulder and Scully aren’t really involved in any of the action of the episode, they show up after the climax. And spend most of the episode arguing about Karin Berquist’s motivations, which are honestly kind of hard to parse. They never even see the creature in its animal form.

✔️ Flashlights

❌ Woods/Desert

❌ Slideshow

❌ Autopsy

❌ Evidence Disappears

✔️ Scully Misses It - but so does Mulder

❌ Mulder Ditch

❌ Sunflower Seeds

❌ Voiceover

❌ Catch Phrase

❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor

❌ Mulder is Spooky

❌ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr!

❌ Fox/Dana

✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)

❌ Casual Scully

❌ Casual Mulder

✔️ Trench Coats

❌ Bad Tie Watch

❌ Glasses Watch

✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Scully

50 States: California x10 (38/50)

Investigate: Together & Apart

Solve Rate: 60%

✔️ Bechdel Test

MSR: 🐝🐝

Goriness: 👽👽👽

Creepiness: 👽👽

Humor: 👽👽

Rewatch Thoughts:

Poor Jo-Jo... why is the dog’s death more upsetting than all the human deaths 🥺

Cryptozoologist - Mulder’s boyish glee just thinking of all these creatures.

Mulder’s dog puns 😐

Scully: Don’t underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters too. Karin Berquist obviously, but given recent history Diana too. This is not the fun version of Jealous!Scully though.

Mulder wouldn’t be him if he didn’t blame himself for Karin Berquist’s death. And usually I’m all for Scully trying to convince him everything’s not his fault. But in this case she told him not to trust Karin and if he’d just listened to Scully...

Episode-Related Fanfic Recs:

Long Play by Lysandra - great banter and Mulder inner dialogue and very sexy, NSFW. (On Gossamer so if link doesn’t work you can search for it there.)

[therealsaintscully]

My list of X-Files inspired BBC Sherlock fic prompts

 I recently finished reading @88thparallel​‘s fabulous “Written in Ashes”, a BBC Sherlock fic inspired by the X-Files episode Demons. I’m a huge X-Files fan myself, and the idea of adapting an XF story into a Sherlock one sent me down a rabbit hole. I decided to compose a list of ideas, all up for grabs, for X-Files plots that can be adapted in interesting ways to a BBC Sherlock casefics.

Below you’ll find a list of X-Files episode with their original description, and some suggestions based on my knowledge of the two shows of what makes the plot an interesting one to write. As I mentioned, these ideas are PROMPTS, suggestions - feel free to write them. In fact it’ll be my honor! Let me know if and when you do (I might even create a collection for them in AO3).

Ice (1x07) - Mulder and Scully  investigate the death of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage.  Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: extreme nature adventures (mountains, snow, remote research facilities); isolated together with strangers in a distant location (Ice was supposed to be a bottle episode); a lot of suspense as Mulder and Scully’s trust in each other is put to the test (a handgun showdown), physical inspections rife with sexual tension, ooo! 

Darkness Falls (1x19) - Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate when a team of loggers disappear without a trace. Initially suspecting eco-terrorism, the agents find themselves trapped by a seemingly ancient menace lurking in the woods. According to Wikipedia, “Chris Carter was inspired to write this episode based on an interest in dendrochronology (sic? that’s how it’s spelled in wikipedia), a subject that involves analyzing annual growth rings found in non-tropical tree species.”  An interesting topic to develop!  Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Just like in Ice, opportunity to write magnificent nature descriptions; also like in Ice, Mulder and Scully have to fend to themselves against the ‘others’; wonderful quotes such as “Rugged manly-men. In the full bloom of their manhood.” and “Come on, Scully. It'll be a nice trip to the forest." A Three Garridebs moment could work here!

Pusher (3x17) - Ah, Pusher. An early Vince Gilligan classic! Mulder and Scully’s assistance is requested for a case involving a man, who goes by the pseudonym "Pusher", seemingly capable of bending people to his will. The suspect uses his mysterious abilities to manipulate Mulder into a dangerous end game.  Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Many parallels can be found between Modell and Eurus and or Moriarty; the game of cat and mouse in hopes of luring Mulder as the end game is quite similar to the TFP/TGG; the final game of Russian roulette with Mulder at the end is a classic MSR scene which could be lovely to write for John and Sherlock (Gillian is amazing with that One Tear™  while she threatens Modell); an opportunity to instill a fear of a very specific shade of blue in your readers; a chance of a sequel, since Modell returns with a vengeance in Kitsunegari.

Jose Chung's From Outer Space (3X20) - Mulder and Scully hear, and promptly investigate, a story about an alien abduction of two teenagers. Each witness provides a different version of the same facts. Within the episode, a thriller novelist, Jose Chung, writes a book about the incident.  Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Humor! Lots and lots self-aware, meta-type inner-jokes humor as an observant book writer describes Mulder/Sherlock’s many weird traits.

Avatar (3x21) - Assistant Director Walter Skinner  is accused of murdering a prostitute, Mulder and Scully investigate to determine the truth behind what happened. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A fine chance to turn Skinner into Sholto or one of John’s other army friends (Skinner discusses trauma from his days in Vietnam in this episode, which could be adapted to Afghanistan). John Asks for Sherlock’s help on behalf of Sholto/said friend and there’s a thrilling prospect of some good old jealousy :) *After writing this I kinda fell in love with this idea and I might attempt writing this, but I’m absolutely not claiming this exclusively! If you like the idea go ahead!

Paper Hearts (4X08) - Another Vince Gilligan episode, my go-to one these days for when I miss the show and need a good dose of Mulder and Scully. I can go on and on about why I love this episode but I’ll spare you from that right now ;) Mulder and Scully find that a child killer who Mulder had helped to apprehend several years earlier had claimed more victims than he had confessed to; and in the resulting investigation, learn that the killer is now claiming to have killed Mulder's sister Samantha. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: The Alice in Wonderland theme in the episode is somewhat reminiscent of the Hansel and Gretel theme from TRF so Moriarty could be one way to go; another way to go is have Eurus as a villain in a TFP plot fix-it (if you find the Sherrinford plot exaggerated), with Sherlock’s hope of finding Victor’s body by the end of the game.

Zero Sum (4x21) - In the episode, a case Mulder is asked to investigate is covertly covered up by the agents' boss Walter Skinner, who has made a sinister bargain with The Smoking Man. Scully is missing in this episode (Mulder cites her cancer treatments; Gillian Anderson was filming something else at the time). Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A wonderful opportunity for a Lestrade-as-Skinner story!  (and you’re given a fine chance to write a Lestade naked with nothing but pants situation); Mulder is a bit lost without Scully in this episode so that’s added background Johnlock angst; the story can happen when John is away, either during his honeymoon or after Mary dies.

The Pine Bluff Variant (5x18) - This is an underrated episode which I quite like, personally. Scully grows suspicious of Mulder when she thinks he may be helping a terrorist organization. Scully begins to wonder if he is now a traitor to the FBI. It is eventually revealed that Mulder is working as a mole in the group, and he is trying to stop them before they are able to use a biological weapon—that may have been created by members of the U.S. government—which causes rapid degeneration of human flesh. Cool plot points you might enjoy: alternating POVs between Sherlock and John; a lot of tension between John and Sherlock while John is suspicious; Mycroft recruiting Sherlock to appear as a traitor.

Triangle (6x03) - What can I possibly say about Triangle that hadn’t been said before? Cool plot points you might enjoy: An AU-within-AU opportunity - a chance for John and Sherlock to meet in a WW2 era, saved by rebel-Nazi Lestrade, Sherlock’s irregulars are The Lone Gunmen, a kiss, a punch, “You’re my one in five billion” (remember when there 5 billion people on this planet?) :) If you do write this, please make sure present John and past John pass each other by and get a strange, tingling sensation as a result! It’s one of my favorite scenes in the entire show.

Dreamland I & II (6x04 and 6x05) - Mulder and Scully visit Area 51. But when the agents witness the flight of a mysterious craft, Mulder and a member of the Men in Black switch bodies, unbeknownst to the others. In part two, Scully begins to suspect that her partner's strange behavior is more than it appears to be, while Mulder fights to return his life to normal before it is too late. Cool plot points you might enjoy: Humor, humor and more humor. Mostly Morris Fletcher trying to bed John (=Scully) who promptly pulls a gun on him. That should be an awesome scene to write in and of itself. And let’s not forget “Lately, for lunch, you've been having this six-ounce cup of yogurt, plain yogurt, into which you stir bee pollen because you're on a bee pollen kick even though I tell you you're a doctor and you should know better.“ as well as “I’d kiss you if you weren’t so damn ugly.”

Tithonus (6x09) - Another underrated episode. I think it deals with the theme of death’s inevitability rather beautifully. Scully learns that she, but not Mulder, is being given a chance to prove her worth at the FBI, and—paired with a new partner—she investigates a crime scene photographer with an uncanny knack for arriving just in time to see his victims' final moments. What she does not expect, however, is for Death to play a role himself. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: John exploring on his own, for one reason or another, attached to another investigator (things happen!); this episode further explores a theory referred throughout the show since Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, that Dana Scully is immortal (she seems to avoid death in this episode as well). It’s an Appointment in Samarra sort of story.

Monday (6x15) - Mulder and Scully are stuck in a deadly time loop. It’s a story that writes itself! Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Sherlock or John having a really bad morning, over and over again.

Alpha (6x16) - Mulder and Scully investigate several killings blamed on an Asian dog called the Wanshang Dhole, thought to be extinct. Mulder and Scully join an obstinate Sheriff, a seemingly eccentric hunter, and a reclusive canine expert to find it. However, there is more mystery to the expert than meets the eye. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: I enjoy this episode because it has some gentle but obvious MSR moments. Scully is suspicious (and low-key jealous) of Karin Berquist’s involvement in the case and it colors her opinion of the investigation. A key quote in this episode, preformed softly and beautifully by Gillian, is: “She's enamored of you Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too.”

The Unnatural (6x17) - This is a weird ass episode, let’s admit it. This is DD’s love story to baseball and it’s silly and sometimes boring/slow. BUT, it has lovely MRS moments.  Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: The structure of story within a story (Mulder retells his time spent with Arthur Dales who tells him the story of Josh Exley) is interesting enough. The opening and closing scenes are lovely as well of course!

X-Cops (7x12) - Mulder and Scully are interviewed for the Fox reality television program Cops during an X-Files investigation. Mulder, hunting what he believes to be a werewolf, discovers that the monster terrorizing people instead feeds on fear. While Mulder embraces the publicity of Cops, Scully is more uncomfortable about appearing on national television. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: It’s your chance to write a Sherlock crossver fic about an X-Files crossover episode. If that’s not cool, I don’t no what is.

Hollywood A.D. (7x18) - Let’s admit it, Hollywood A.D is not a good episode, as funny as it is. This episode was one of the first signs the show had lost its edge, possibly because they thought this would be their truly-this-time last season. However, it IS funny and gave rise to fans claims that by this point, Mulder and Scully were Definitely Sleeping Together. Wayne Federman, an entrepreneurial Hollywood producer and college friend of Walter Skinner picks up the idea for a film based on the X-Files, however Mulder and Scully find that the level of realism in their fictional portrayal is somewhat questionable. Meanwhile, during the filming of the movie, Mulder and Scully research the mysterious "Lazarus Bowl", an artifact that supposedly has the exact words that Jesus Christ spoke to raise Lazarus from the dead recorded on its surface. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: Lots of inner-jokes and crack humor, many fluffy moments, the chance to imagine who’ll play Lestrade, Sherlock and John in a BBC Film, Lazarus could refer to The Fall(!), which could be the plot to said film.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Mulder and Scully have both left the FBI, but when an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped, and a former priest who has been convicted of being a child molester claims to be experiencing psychic visions of the endangered agent, they reluctantly accept the FBI's request for their paranormal expertise. I know, I know. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t like it either at first, but a) compared to the revival seasons, it’s not that bad and b) in terms of established relationship angst, it’s a fucking goldmine. Cool plot points you might enjoy writing: A chance to write a post-recent-retirement fic for Sherlock and John, with a lot of tension in their established relationship based around John’s reluctance to return to their lives as investigators. IWTB has quotes like “This isn't my life anymore, Mulder. I'm done chasing monsters in the dark.” and “This stubbornness of yours, it's why I fell in love with you.”  So there! Don’t dismiss the idea so quickly!

Wow, this turned out longer than I expected! I hope you liked them, and even if you don’t write anything - I definitely enjoyed this exercise.

My finished fics are ready to be read on AO3 :)

[dreamingofscully]

6x16. “Alpha” - X-Files Rewatch

This episode is all about Scully being the Alpha, who marks her territory (Mulder). What casefile? Through this lens, I really enjoy this episode. You wouldn’t think there would be much to analyze here BUT BOY YOU'D BE WRONG. Also, there’s so many corny jokes, I love it.

Scully arriving from elsewhere in the building with her coat/briefcase seems to indicate she has an office elsewhere in the building. Perhaps she requested somewhere close to the labs? It’s super cute that she comes by to check on Mulder before she leaves. Despite how uncomfortable she was with his silliness in “Arcadia”, I think things are good between them now.

“Aren't you going home?” - Scully “I am home. I'm just feathering the nest.” - Mulder

This is cute, but also kinda sad. The work is his life, how can it be any different?

Mulder subtly trying to get Scully interested in the case. 

The desk lamp is POINTED AT THEIR PICTURE. Awww. ❤️

“What happened to the dog?” - Scully “Dog gone…. Dog gone… Doggone.” - Mulder, proud of his joke “Yeah, I got it.” - Scully

Sitting closely, and Mulder being even more of a dork than usual with his corny jokes. Scully loves it though. They’re so happy to have the X-Files back. Life is good for a little while.

THEIR CUTE SMILES AND FLIRTING ❤️

“Don’t mind him, he’ll go on forever.” - Scully

Mulder has definitely missed going on long monologues about weird shit in front of local law enforcement.

Of course Mulder’s heard of the animal. He has had even more time than usual lately to cram his brain with random strange things.

“You get a biscuit, Scully.” - Mulder, with more stupid jokes. But he’s gazing at her here, so we’ll forgive him. I’m not even mad about it anyways.

Their cute banter in front of the worker installing the fence at Karins. SO FLIRTY. (Also, being mistaken for a couple again!)

“You two looking for Karin about boarding?” - Stacy Muir “No, it's actually more of a behavior problem.” - Mulder “Yeah, he doesn't listen and he chews on the furniture.” - Scully, glancing at Mulder

Inside Karin’s house, Mulder’s random touch and Scully’s shiver in reaction. Reminiscent of his two-handed touch in “Arcadia” - is that done deliberately? Scully doesn’t seem uncomfortable, but shivers in reaction, as if she definitely enjoys it. Oof. Things are REALLY good between them.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 1:

“How is it that you know so much about her but you don't know what she looks like?” - Scully “I never actually met her.” - Mulder “But you assume that she's going to help us?” - Scully “No, actually, it's not an assumption. She is the one who told me about his case.” - Mulder “Oh, so you two are chummy?” - Scully “Well, I've read her books.” - Mulder “Ah. The Wolf Inside... Dogs Don't Lie... Better Than Human... Better Than Human?” - Scully “She's not a real people person.” - Mulder “Well, she seems to have made a connection to you.” - Scully, looking at the I Want To Believe poster on her wall (highlighting it with a desk lamp, sound familiar?)

Standing close by the bookshelf.

Mulder introducing himself as “Fox”, what? It probably has to do with her obsession with canines. They probably joked about his name, and it’s what she would refer to him as in their emails.

This would make Scully feel even more uncomfortable/jealous

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 2:

“Mulder... She's a friend of yours?” - Scully “We met on-line.” - Mulder “On-line…” - Scully “Two professionals exchanging information.” - Mulder

Standing close in the alley/crime scene.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 3:

Her expression when Karin shows up, and calling her “wolfwoman”. (Recognize this? She made a similar face in “Syzygy”.)

Karin’s “Classic dominant alpha territorial behaviour” when talking about the police officer being killed.

By contrast, Scully doesn’t need to be aggressive or violent to assert her dominance - just needs to exist. ❤️

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 4:

Mulder touching Karin’s hand on the computer mouse. Scully notices, shoots Mulder a sharp look. She immediately starts questioning Karin’s ideas. Her EXPRESSION. She thinks she’s figured Karin out, that she is attracted to Mulder, and she’s not going to let her get away with anything. It’s not only possessiveness but protectiveness. She only recently got Mulder away from the clutches of Diana, and she knows how vulnerable he is to women that seem vulnerable themselves.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 5:

In the car, Mulder knowing something’s wrong with Scully

Scully warning him: “She's enamored of you, Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too.” (I think this is also a veiled reference to Diana, that Mulder does NOT get, nor is he meant to.)

Mulder is gullible and oblivious when it comes to certain women, and Scully knows it!

Mulder gives her a curious look - thinks she’s jealous, perhaps?

Scully won’t tolerate anyone trying anything with Mulder, she’s fucking had it. After dealing with Diana so recently - no one else is going to try anything. She’s getting ahead of something before it develops. Mulder is empathetic with people who are different/loners (Oubliette/Mind’s Eye). He CAN be manipulated by a woman with a sad story.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 6:

Going to see Karin alone, confronting her about her intentions with Mulder. Look at that lean forward.

Scully’s “With Mulder, you found somebody you could communicate with.... someone who challenged you... But that wasn't enough. You needed to lure him out here.”

She knows what having a special connection to him feels like!

Karin’s “I lack your feminine wiles.” (Which is hilarious, because when it comes to Mulder, Scully doesn’t have ANY of that manipulativeness that she implies.)

“I'm watching you.” - Scully “You watch... But you don't see.” - Karin

Perhaps Karin did mean to lure Mulder out here to meet him, and she does lie about the creature. HOWEVER...

Once she sees Mulder and Scully together, she abandons her ideas of deepening her relationship with him. She sees what everyone else does - that M&S are incredibly close, that their body language and glances to each other suggest that the only person in the room that matters to each other is them. Karin’s suggestion here (to the case I’m sure) is also a reference to what Scully can’t see is right in front of her - that there’s no reason for her to be territorial because Mulder only has eyes for her.

I also believe Mulder would have mentioned Scully to Karin. She’s such an integral part of his life. Once Scully shows up, things “click” for her, she understands that she has no chance.

Mulder trusts Scully’s judgement, goes to see Karin for himself and asks about being misled. (This is a pretty big deal.)

Karin - she loves Mulder, in her way. He's a kindred spirit, like Scully says, the only other human she knows that she actually likes. Once she realizes that he belongs to another, that he has someone who is a good person (based on how her dogs react to her) and will look out for him, she realizes what she needs to do to stop the animal - risk and (potentially) sacrifice herself. After lying to Mulder about what she thinks the animal will do next, and he goes to Scully, she LOOKS AT THE “I WANT TO BELIEVE” POSTER. Did she choose to wrap it up and send it then? In essence, disconnecting herself from him, and giving him a gift as her last goodbye?

I love that Mulder calls Scully to the hospital so they can do the surveillance TOGETHER. ❤️ Mulder’s “You should take a load off. We might be here all night.”

Scully’s “So, what is he going to do? Walk in here, skitter across the linoleum and pee in the corners?” is so cute. And Mulder loves it when she jokes. Like I said earlier, they are in a good place again.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 7:

“Mulder, the only thing Karin Berquist is interested in is you.” - Scully, to which Mulder seems bashful about it. He’s so oblivious about women being interested in him. It’s adorable.

When Scully takes his magazine she sits a bit further from him than normal. She’s uncomfortable with her jealousy, tries to distance herself from it’s source.

Of course Scully falls asleep. ❤️ I love how she can sleep anywhere. She’s SNORING (quietly) - IT’S SO CUTE I CAN’T EVEN--. 😭 He’s gazing at her while she sleeps, then wakes her gently with the magazine. ❤️

At the ending, Scully’s tenderness about Mulder losing his friend is touching. The whole episode she was antagonistic towards Karin, thinking she had an ulterior motive, but in the end she did something altruistic. She was Mulder’s friend, and proved that in the end she wasn’t a bad person, at least in some ways. Scully knows he’ll blame himself, as well.

They have a really sweet interaction here. Scully making sure he’s okay, Mulder reassuring that he will be, talking about how he “believed her too quickly”. (He is a learning animal. Oh shit I made another corny joke, my b.)

The lamp is still aimed at the picture of them in the office. Like a fucking spotlight saying “THIS PLACE IS OURS.”

Scully Being Territorial, End Notes

I’m partially being silly when talking about this aspect of Scully’s personality, but I have to discuss a few things.

After the shit they’ve been through with Diana, I can’t blame Scully for overreacting and being protective of Mulder, not wanting to see him manipulated again.

That being said, this isn’t the first time she’s been possessive when it comes to him. I think it’s probably one of her flaws - she can get irrationally jealous when Mulder gets attention from another woman. It’s NOT just protectiveness but stems from her longing for something more with him, her fear that someone will swoop in and take the place in his life that she wants. I can empathize with that, I suffer from terrible jealousy sometimes myself (so perhaps this is a bit of self-projection, but hey, this is my analysis, so that’s what I see).

I absolutely love Scully, but I love that she seems like a real character, with flaws and eccentricities that truly make her unique.

[randomfoggytiger]

Alpha In-Depth (Part II): An Inversion of Roles

Tumblr has finally allowed me to finish up Part II (you can find Part I here)-- but let's not fiddle-faddle so we can get straight into this!

Picking up where Part I left off, Scully arrives on the next crime scene just before an attack happens. While investigating the property, she finds a photo from Karin, once again placing her within Scully's scope for the crime. She's diverted from further analysis by a scream; but she is too late to save the next victim. Alerting Mulder, she takes the initiative to call paramedics (while also wielding her gun.)

They both miss the shapeshifting canid right next to them.

Scully decides her next course of action is to confront Karin Berquist; who is, she's convinced, behind the crimes in an attempt to gain attention and love from Mulder, exploiting his friendship for her own schemes. This go-for-the-throat protectiveness (the dog puns continue) that Scully shields her partner with is not new; but it has hardened, become more blunt in the aftermath of Diana Fowley. While the emotions of that situation have been worked through and processed, Scully is not convinced of Mulder's ability to judge people's character rightly-- not like she used to be. This case restores a good chunk of that faith, but only after Mulder has been proven half-right and manipulated yet again.

"Where's Fox?" asks Karin.

"Continuing his investigation," Scully cryptically answers.

"You're not working together?"

"No," she responds decidedly, "this is my investigation."

"Of?"

"You."

Something I found unintentionally funny is that Scully starts out the conversation as the dominant aggressor (the alpha, heheh dog puns), cornering Karin and nicely scooting a dog out of her designated interrogator's chair.

Scully puts all her cards on the table: she has figured out that Berquist is dying, and that her eccentric habits are effects of her intensifying illness. And while she sympathizes with Karin's situation, she refuses to let a dying woman use her partner as a last-minute consolation prize-- something Scully protected him against even when she herself was dying from an incurable disease.

What is fascinating is that Scully has taken upon herself Mulder's role: confronting and understanding a potential witness with her expertise and sympathizing with said victim-- even if they are in the wrong for their human actions-- but forcing them to face the uncomfortable truth about their actions and consequences.

A refrain from Rain King pops back up again as she continues:

"With Mulder you found somebody you could communicate with. Someone who challenged you."

However, this moment is swallowed up by her following accusations:

"But that wasn't enough, you needed to lure him out here."

Karin doesn't deny it, and places all her cards on the table, having made as close a study of Scully as Scully has made of her: "I lack your feminine wiles."

Scully, caught and embarrassed, licks her lips and looks away.

Rallying, she asks, "You don't believe it, do you?"

Karin is vague, implying that the creature would have to be "more cunning than man" to survive for over a century.

"More cunning than you?" Scully pointedly asks. She furthers her statement by a warning: "I'm watching you." Her threat, though, lacks any bite (dog puns), mildly stated in compassionate warning. To Karin's "You watch but you don't see," she has nothing further to add.

After another another crime has been committed, Mulder begins to question his loyalty to Karin Berquist. He drops in, petting her dogs and delightedly chuckling when they obey his tongue-click to vacate a seat for him. Settling in, he begins to interrogate Karin on her tactics, hinting that he's been misled.

Mulder dodges her honest admission of her feelings ("I've been honest with you, though perhaps not myself. I was looking forward to meeting you-- I wouldn't admit how much") with a head duck, redirecting the conversation back to the case at hand;

and reads between the lines, realizing that Karin knows the murderer is Detweiler (the man who "transported" the mythical beast across seas.)

"So you knew that and didn't say?" he questions, his tone harsher and less forgiving in the face of all those senseless deaths.

Berquist carefully disguises her plan with false transparency, redirecting Mulder to track down and kill the animal by playing into his heroism (stating Scully's tail on Detweiler will be lost before she realizes it.)

He leaps up awkwardly, reaching for the phone to make a call, unsure how to address the more personal issues between them (and still annoyed and a little hurt that he'd been left in the dark-- not realizing how deftly he is being handled now.) Karin still hopes; but it dies again when she realizes he's called Scully, talking to her in low tones as if they're in a private conversation. Berquist at her 'I Want To Believe' poster with grim intention, affirming her decision.

When Mulder stalks into the hospital (nodding his head sideways at his partner), he is met with a bored, slumped over Scully straight out of Bad Blood (or Chimera), petulance and charm all rolled into one: "Tell me why you pulled me away from the suspect and chained me to this chair?"

Scully is actually, literally pouting that she couldn't be on active surveillance and had to sit idly by with no real reason other than Mulder said to.

Mulder is amused but wisely keeps it under wraps, motioning at the chair in invitation ("It's not yet dark-- you should take a load off. We might be here all night.") and incidentally waving her magazine pages around with wind current from his fingers. He rambles about staying longer, "it" being Detweiler, and his other string of reasons while Scully stands aghast that they're staying... until her partner whips out the monster theory ("Mulder.")

Scully is not one for blood curses: "So, what is he gonna do-- walk in here, skitter across the linoleum, and pee in the corners?"

Mulder can't hold back a big smile at that, looking away briefly to smile more fondly before it's back full-force and staying... though that doesn't stop him from taking the time correct her mistaken assumption ("It's about territoriality.")

Then, after properly informing her about alpha behavior, Mulder scoots back in his chair and lounges enticingly.

Scully cuts through this comfy zone by insisting he not listen to his new friend-- "The only person Karin is interested is in you." And, while briefly flattered by the truth in that statement, Mulder sinks into discomfort, never one to enjoy personal problems or unhappy endings.

"You're kidding yourself if you think she hasn't manipulated this entire situation for her own purposes."

He is unconvinced, silently crowing over being right by picking at his tie-- "He'll come here tonight, Scully, you'll see."

Then he motions to the chair again, the picture of ennui, reaching for her magazine when she doesn't comply at first (those Arcadia lack of boundaries coming into play.) Territorial to the last of her things (dog puns, gotta love 'em), Scully swoops in to snatch up her only source of entertainment. Mulder is miffed by her cancellation of his dibs, enviously watching its journey all the way back down to the chair as his partner plops, resigned, next to him.

Mulder is so smug because he is "proving" that he's right about his judgment concerning personal relationships. He knows Diana Fowley is a stain on his record (and Pheobe and Deep Throat, a bit, and informants, and various people on sundry cases); but wants to prove he is 'wiser' than a short time ago and can safely discern his allies from his foes. Moreover, he is proving to Scully that her enhanced concern and distrust of his friend-picking abilities is no longer needed because he's good to go.

As the night crawls on, Mulder finally gets two things: Scully's magazine and a clue. Realizing he'd been duped yet again, he looks at his watch, crestfallen; then stands to softly bop Scully-- who is snoring softly beside him-- to wakefulness with this episode's equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper. (Because this episode is relentless with dog puns and references.)

Mulder grimly confirms, "He's not coming."

Scully takes a second to wake fully, agreeing, "Well, you've got no argument from me"-- an attempt at some levity for his sake.

Mulder passes it over. "He's not coming here tonight. Karin knew that. She lied to me."

Scully wisely lets that one pass without comment, even if Mulder had already power-walked away in his disappointment.

Mulder and Scully arrive too late, appalled at finding the impaled bodies of the mythic monster (Detweiler) in Karin's front lawn.

Mulder looks at Karin's window, afraid she might be injured inside; but Scully's low "Mulder..." turns his focus back. The two of them identify the body, then see Karin's at the same time.

Mulder looks to Scully for confirmation, or any hope; but when Scully cannot do anything for Berquist, he remains impassive, only slightly shaking his head.

An odd ending for an odd woman.

The last scene is back in the basement, Mulder stressfully supporting his head in his hands (with his pencils untouched, a sign of true distress.)

Scully doubles back like their first scene together, asking, with an encouraging smile-- "You going home?"

Mulder inhales sharply, having been caught in the midst of silent mourning. "Ah... pretty soon," he says, self-consciously rubbing his eyes with the backs of his knuckles before almost crumpling again.

Scully isn't fooled, calmly walking in and asking, "You think this is your fault."

Mulder stumbles over his response at first, quiet in his self-abasement: "I think that I... believed her very quickly. I think that was my fault, yeah." His shame over failing, again, at picking friends and trusting people is overwhelming.

Seeing that this will not be an easy fix, Scully prepares herself for an emotional confession, rounding the desk to penetrate his sorrow and bring healing. Mulder knows this, too, and sits back, settling in for a Scully tete-a-tete: using logic to unwind his keyed up and self-punishment.

"Why wouldn't you believe her?"

Mulder uses her logic from earlier: "I barely knew her."

Scully doesn't deny that, but gives flavors it with nuance: "Well, she had a lot of secrets, that's for sure." She pauses to steel herself, looking up and away before recentering on her partner-- "I think Karin Berquist lived by her instincts. She seized people up pretty quickly and I think she figured you out to a T."

He is not flattered by that assessment, only more hideously chastising himself on the inside.

Scully slowly reveals her true meaning: "I think she saw in you a kindred spirit, Mulder." When he turns to her, eyes tearily glazed at her tenderness and understanding of his complicated feelings over this complicated situation, she continues, "She may not have been able to express that to you... maybe what she did was the highest form of compliment."

Mulder dips again, expelling a breath and playing with his nails again. There are too many painful paths to consider there, and all of them lead to Karin's loneliness at the end of her life and how Mulder couldn't-- can't-- fit into "it", yet.

Scully understands all this, of course (she always has); and after a comedic non-answer is given to her chummy "You gonna be okay?", she gives him a Paper Hearts smirk of acknowledgement.

Before she leaves, Scully gives Mulder a piece of Karin-- and herself-- that he can accept and cherish: "Oh-- this came for you."

Mulder's curiosity is ignited as Scully hands over a rolled up paper, briefly pulling him out of the slums of grief. When he sees it's from Berquist Kennels, Mulder steals a glance at his partner; but she's already fled halfway out of the door, jamming her coat on in her haste and not looking back. He knows she knows and is giving him space; but he doesn't know she knows what it is.

As Mulder unfurls his gift, he realizes it's a copy (or rendition) or his destroyed 'I Want To Believe' poster; and quickly-- but carefully-- tacks it up in his cozy underground not-unlike-a-Tooms nest.

As he sits back contemplating his motto, the events that led up to today, and all of the factors in between, Mulder-- though still not quite himself-- is resettled, at home. (It takes him a bit to realize home isn't in the basement anymore; but he'll figure it out.)

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

[scapegrace74-blog]

Seventeen: Dana Katherine Scully

A/N  You ever make a list?  A way to compile all the missed opportunities, the transgressions, the warning signs telling you that you’re on the wrong path?  Of course you have.  Part 17 and last in the series.  Part 1 and links to other parts are here. Rated NC-17.   Thanks for sticking with me on this big adventure!  I’ll be re-working a few areas of the story now that it’s done, and then re-posting the whole thing on AO3.

The stories came to light reluctantly, unearthed like buried evidence.  He spared Scully the sordid details, but in recounting each affair he came to a startling revelation: there were things worth remembering amongst the wreckage.  Like  tacking to starboard and port into a capricious wind, he’d been unknowingly heading inexorably towards the safety of shore.  Two or even one year ago, that destination meant answers about his sister and solitude.  Now he had a different objective in mind.

In rental cars, hotel lobbies and late-nite diners, over the next few weeks he turned his romantic history over to Scully for safekeeping.  It made his belly bottom out like he was crossing a tightrope, but it was a habitual fear, not a genuine one.  Scully knew the highs and lows of every other aspect of his life, and in contravention to the laws of physics, found him greater than the sum of his broken parts.

In California again investigating an animal he believed was a Wanshang Dhole, he watched his partner bare her teeth and mark him as her territory with secret delight.  She was welcome to chase away every would-be suitor, so long as she continued to submerge him in those bottomless blue eyes and bracket his days with her fierce mind and her quiet understanding.  He had sighted the harbour lights, and was navigating towards her as quickly as the fickle sea would allow.

Scully wasn’t privy to this certainty, however, which he realized once the case was over and they were back in Washington, going over their report in her living room.

“So, you said you met Karin Berquist online?”

He was concentrating on deciphering the manic scrawl of his case notes, and didn’t pick up on her vulnerable tone.

“Yeah, on a message board relating to crypto-zoology,” he replied after a long pause.

“Then she wasn’t...”  Trailing off into mute frustration.

“Hmmm?  Wasn’t what, Scully?”  He looked up at last, and saw her staring across the room at his laptop. 

“No, Scully.  No.  She wasn’t the woman you saw me...in Arcadia... I didn’t even know her name, as pathetic as that sounds.”

She nodded and went back to pretending to read the coroner’s report of  Dr.  Detweiler’s death, but he could tell her mind was elsewhere.  She was so unencumbered by self-doubt in their professional lives that he forgot there was a different Scully to account for in private.  One that hurt and doubted and sandbagged her heart like every other mortal human.  He rose and moved to her side on the couch.

“Did you need to see my notes?” she asked, hands fluttering purposelessly over sheets of paper in a manila folder on her lap.

“No.  Hey, Scully.  Stop for a second, okay.”  He took her tiny hands in his own, trying to get her to look at him.

“I’m not going to chat with her anymore.  Not like that.  I already told her, as soon as we got back from Arcadia.”

“You don’t need to...” she began.

“Yeah.  Yeah, I do.  You have my undivided attention, Scully.  I need you to believe that.  My undivided attention.”

Her wet eyes met his at last and they both exhaled loudly.  Their heads were close together, and all it would take was the slightest movement on both their parts to bring their lips together.  She kept glancing at his mouth.  He knew she wasn’t averse to the idea.  Resisting the magnetic pull she exerted, he backed away.

“But there’s still the last round of IVF to consider, and probably a lot more left for both of us to say...”

“One thing at a time,” she said quietly, and he nodded his understanding and went back to his report.

***

Scully’s attempt to bear their child ended in a wash of salt and iron just two weeks’ later.  He leaned against her brow in the cool shadows of her apartment as she grieved a wish that refused to be fulfilled.  After minutes of holding her to his chest and murmuring softly as to a fretful child, she stepped back, thanked him, and asked for some time alone.  The open-ended status of their relationship made that the only choice, so he drove himself home in the rain.

Despite the soul searching her request for his participation in the IVF had precipitated, he hadn’t really thought through what his role as a prospective father meant to him personally.  Scully had needed him in a way that could potentially bind them together for eternity.  He might have questioned the wisdom of her selection, but he never doubted his dedication to the outcome.  For her.  He had wanted this pregnancy for her.  Being asked to be part of something so monumentally important to her made his head float like a mylar balloon, if he examined it too closely.

But with his shot at fatherhood destroyed along with Scully’s hopes, he considered their future together.  They had the work, but the work was theirs at the whim of the FBI.  They had a rare and peculiar friendship, but without the structure of their partnership, it felt vulnerable and without form.  A child, as selfish as he knew it made him sound, would have been the bridge that linked them forever.  There would be no child.  He still wanted some permanent connection to her.

Phillip Padgett put into words what he knew in his heart.  Agent Scully was already in love.  She loved him enough to weep in his arms, as yet more blood that was and yet was not hers stained her skin.  He knew the dimensions of his love for her when her grief hurt more than his own.

***

Nothing soothed him quite like the slow waltz of baseball.  The acrid, loamy smell of the pitcher’s mound, the fluency of muscles swinging through, and the perfect parabolic arc of a well-struck ball.  It was oil to the choppy waters of his soul.  He lured Scully from her quiet apartment in the hopes it might ease her burdens as well.

She was warm and giddy in the fold of his body.  The crack of the bat combined with her throaty giggle aroused him, and for once he did not hide it from her, rubbing his crotch lightly against her rump.   Finally, as the day grew old, they separated and sent the ball boy home with a generous tip.

“That was fun, Mulder.  Thank you.”  They were picking up a few stray foul balls that had dropped behind the dugout fence, and her face was a contrast of bright and dark painted by the halogen lights.  He really wanted to kiss her where the berry-stained plush of her upper lip met ivory skin.

“Not a bad attempt for a first date.”

She froze, mid-bend.  “Is that what this was?  A date?”  She sounded unsure of both her question and the answer.

“I... I want it to be.  Scully, you have to know that I...”

“I do, Mulder.  I know.  But it’s too soon after... everything.  And we still need to talk some more.”

“So, hands before hips, then?  Did I teach you nothing tonight?”  He grinned, and was relieved when she returned it.  She’d seemed so small and sad a moment before.

“A new concept for you, huh Mulder?”

“Just another one of the crazy things you’ve talked me into, Scully.”

***

He’d been inside her mind, and it was like bathing in a glacier-fed stream.  Bracing.  Rigourous.  And so pure it was like looking through glass.

His extra-sensory abilities were fading slowly, but he could still read her thoughts as they stood under the chuppah of his doorframe and spoke vows like “constant”, like “touchstone”.

I cannot bear to hurt you as they have.  I can’t kiss you, and then break your heart.  Be patient with me, Mulder.  It’s a long walk for me to meet you where you stand.

He nodded his understanding, and she left.

***

He and Jade had watched the Big Apple drop in Times Square one year, huddling together in the lee of a building, trying to keep their backs to the cold wind.  It had been a while, but he still knew what he should do with a beautiful woman at midnight, on the cusp of a new millennium.

Scully’s lips felt as opulent as they looked.  Like an eider down duvet on a cold day.  Like kissing a cloud.  He held himself in check, just allowing the barest introduction of conjoined breath before he pulled back and read the epistle of her upturned face.

“The world didn’t end,” he informed her, surprised at how calm he felt.  Love without a healthy side of fear or dread or shame wasn’t a language in which he was conversant.

“No, it didn’t.”

Something was wrong, but she allowed him to guide her towards the elevator and down to the parking lot.  

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she adjusted the driver’s seat of the rental car.

“Alright, considering.  Looking forward to getting home and finding out if my mollies survived the zombie apocalypse.”

“Could... could we talk, first?  At my place?”

His gut fizzed and his mouth grew dry, but he simply nodded, and said “Yeah.  Wake me when we get there.”

Scully’s apartment was its usual haven of soft upholstery and oak furniture.  He sat on her sofa and watched her go about her routine; putting the kettle on to boil, stashing her garment bag behind her closet door.  She seemed ill at ease, but it wasn’t directed at him.  With patience learned over the previous seven years, he waited until she was ready to say what was on her mind.

“I need to ask you something, Mulder, and I’m afraid of what it might mean to us.”

"Are you mad at me?  Because of earlier?”  Off her confused look, he specified, “The kiss.”

“No, I’m not mad.  I’m glad you kissed me, Mulder.  It was sweet.  Unexpected.  But it reminded me that there is still some unfinished business between us that needs to be attended to before... well, before.”

He nodded, unsure where she was going.

“You’ve told me about your past relationships.  Fifteen.  Fifteen lovers.”

“Yes.”

“And I need to know why you didn’t tell me about Marita.”

He sat up straighter and looked her in the eye where she stood across the room.

“I never slept with Marita, Scully.  She made it pretty clear she was open to the idea, but it was such a strange time.  I was working with Ian and trying to be better, and well, I never took her up on it.”

This only seemed to make Scully more nervous, and a terrible idea began to form.

“Did someone tell you I’d slept with her?  Is that what you meant, when you called me a hypocrite after Philadelphia?  Because they were lying, Scully.  I don’t know how to make you believe me, but the last time I had intercourse was while you were missing.  I told you about it, and about how afterwards Elizabeth put me in touch with Ian, and I started to see him after you came back.”  He was speaking with the fervour of a condemned man, and Scully just looked more and more sad.

“I saw... on the paperwork for the IVF... you filled in 1994 where they asked about your last sexual partner, and I knew then.  I mean, I guessed.”

“What?  You’re scaring me, Scully.”

Instead of answering him, she went to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and withdrew a VHS tape.  She handed it to him as though it was radioactive.

“This was delivered to me, not long after you came back from Russia.  It’s a recording.  Of you.  And Marita.”

He shook his head as though trying to dislodge a pest.

“Then it’s a fake, Scully.  I went to her apartment in New York with Krycek.  I told you that.  She was the one who arranged for my visa into Russia.  But I never...” He trailed off, memories surfacing.

“I know it’s you, Mulder.  There’s audio.  You, ummm, you call out my name.”

“Jesus.”  He was numb.  Paralyzed with confusion and anger and mortification.

“You don’t remember, do you?  Whatever she did to you, it was without your consent.”

“I remember falling asleep on her couch while we waited for the visa.  I had a strange dream.  Something about the Arctic, being cold.  When I woke up, several hours had passed, and the visa had arrived.  That’s...  what’s on the tape, Scully?  I need to see, right now.”

Knowing there was no use in arguing, Scully loaded the disk into her machine.  The picture was grainy.  The camera must have been positioned behind gauzy drapes.  But there was nothing wrong with the audio.  By the time his younger self came, he was fighting the urge to vomit or throw something substantial at the television   Scully’s hand on his thigh brought him back inside himself.

“I think we both know what this is about, Mulder.  Somebody wanted to drive us apart, and this video was the wedge.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were harvesting your, uh, genetic material at the same time.”

“It almost worked.  You were so angry with me, and I couldn’t understand why.  I mean, I was being a pigheaded asshole, but no more than usual.  And then Ed Jerse, and...”

“But it didn’t work.  We’re here now.  And we can try to bring her to justice.”

“There’s no restitution with these people, Scully.  Our victory is that we’re still here.”

“Together.”

“Yes.  Together.”

They sat in thoughtful silence in her darkened living room as the first hours of the newborn millennium fell backwards into history.  He wondered if the Y2K prognosticators hadn’t been right, in some metaphysical sense.  His life to date and all the struggle and masochism it entailed seemed part of another world; one he would gladly leave behind to start with a clean slate, here in her cozy Georgetown apartment.

“It’s late,” she remarked, breaking his contemplation.

“Hmmm.”

“You could, umm, you can stay here.  If you want.”

Without asking, he knew what she was proposing.  It was tempting.  So very tempting.  A symbolic rebirth to mark the moment where everything that could hurt him had been exposed in the safe place between them.  But using sex to bury the past was a hallmark of his old self, in that before-world.  If he was starting fresh, he was doing it right.

“Not tonight, Scully.  I want... it’s got to be about moving forward.  Not looking back.”

He was worried she’d be hurt by his rejection, but one look in her eyes and he knew she understood.  She understood better than anyone.

“Plus, I rather enjoyed our baseball date.  Maybe I want another one.  A little more fondling over sporting equipment.  A whole lot of flirting.  Maybe I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t give it up that easily.”

She snorted to indicate her opinion on his latest wild theory.

“You’ve given me a lot of anecdotal evidence that says otherwise, Mulder.”

He knew she was teasing, but he clarified anyway.

“This is different, Scully.   This is the one time I’m going to get it right.”

***

Flirting with Scully was fun.  Fondling her even funner.  Their work was dire, isolating and dangerous, and despite what their colleagues might believe, they were both consummate professionals.  But even a harrowing case left small cracks through which a little pleasure could creep.  They still challenged, disagreed, bifurcated and reunited at a common conclusion.  The only difference was now their bodies leaned, glanced, parted and pleased all the while.

***

After shooting Donnie Pfaster, Scully hid in his apartment for three days.  The ostensible reason was that her place was a crime scene.  In truth, she came to his home to look for herself.  The foundations of her moral edifice had been shaken, and he was her bedrock.  He was humbled, and he made a quiet space for her in his previously forsaken bedroom.  They co-habitated chastely until their final night, when Scully grabbed the remote, extinguished the Knicks’ game mid-third quarter, dug her little knees into the buttery leather of his sofa on either side of his hips, and kissed his proverbial socks off.

“Thank you, Mulder,” she breathed as they finally broke for air.

“Three days of remembering to put the toilet seat down seems a small price to pay, if you’re going to keep kissing me like that.”

“I’d thank you properly for sacrificing your comfortable new bed for three nights, but it’s-”

“Not the right time, I know.”

“It’ll happen, Mulder.  Knowing us, at the least likely, inopportune moment.”

“I have a dentist appointment next Wednesday.  Nice reclining chair.  Bright lights.  Access to laughing gas.”

She shook her head in mock dismay, rust-coloured tendrils sweeping across his upturned face.  He tapped her lightly on her ass.

“Until then, you’d best be getting off my lap, Miss Scully.”

***

There was a certain inevitability in his mother’s death, and in wrapping up his near-thirty year quest to find out what happened to Samantha.  The Fox Mulder who measured the distance covered by every day and decision against the yardstick of his past failures had entered chrysalis shortly after meeting Dana Scully.  He emerged now, with the heavy weight of his guilt molting away and leaving him fledgling and raw.

He sensed Scully’s worry for him.  He wished he could explain how his grief, once given voice, left him feeling purged and new.  Reborn.

***

He yo-yoed between fear for her safety and anguish that the ground had once again shifted beneath the precarious balance of his trust.  When she finally re-appeared and told him her story of willing complicity with the Smoking Man, he made sure to place a wide expanse of floor between them, for fear that he would start shaking her and never stop.

“I had to do it, Mulder.  I wish there had been another way, and I tried to get a message to you.”

“What did he promise you?  What made the risk worthwhile?”

“I told you.  A cure for cancer.”

“As altruistic as you are, Scully, you’re also not a fool.  You might have wished that CancerMan had access to that kind of medical breakthrough, but you wouldn’t have bet your life on it.  No, there was something else.  Something you don’t want to tell me about because you’re afraid of how I’ll react.”

“You really are too smart for your own good, Mulder.”   She sighed, and seemed resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to let this issue drop.

“It’s been remarked upon before.  Come on, Scully.  Tell me the secret, selfish payoff that he duped you with.  A private parking spot at Hoover?  A limitless shoe budget?

“A baby,” she whispered, and he choked on the sharp bone of his arrogance.

“Jesus, Scully.  How... he didn’t...god, Scully, please tell me he didn’t...” Now he was dizzy with panic and guilt.

“No, Mulder.  Nothing like that.  He said... he said he wanted to give us something.  Give us something back.  Something that had been taken from both of us.”

For once in his life, he had no words.  The anguish and hope and rage and love that swirled in him like galaxies took away his voice, and he grasped her hand instead and simply held on.

***

He’d wanted to take Scully to England.  He’d pictured her, her Celtic features and Old World reserve, there amongst the hedgerows and cobble stones.  It would be an exorcism of sorts - replacing the ghosts in his memories with her familiar presence.

He understood her unwillingness to play into his schemes, though.  Despite their nearly symbiotic relationship, they were still very different people.  His obsessions were not her own, and she had autonomy stamped on her DNA.  She said “take a bath”, but what she meant was “not be subsumed by the enormity of your beliefs”.

They parted at Dulles with a lingering kiss.  As enjoyable as having her accompany him would have been, having someone to come back to was even better.  But the Scully he returned to several days later was different.  Transformed, although still intrinsically her.   Over tea she spoke, quietly and deliberately, about the unlikely path that had led her to him.  He marveled at the parallel and meandering journeys two dissimilar people could take to a place where the only answer to the existential “why?” was each other.  

She fell asleep, trusting and emptied of doubt, and he covered her and retired to his bedroom.  Once a symbol of the comfort he felt unworthy of, his bed now lay patiently awaiting the conclusion of their story.  He would never feel deserving of Scully, any more than a wave was deserving of the shore.  She was the only journey’s end that he could imagine, the only one he’d ever know.   She was the porch light to his roaming soul.

Content in that knowledge, he drifted just beyond consciousness.  Soft feet padded to the edge of his dream.  He opened his eyes to find Scully standing beside his bed, a corona from the soft glow of the living room haloing her perfect, naked form.  His skin crackled under a wash of adrenaline.

“It feels like the right time to do this the right way,” she whispered, touching his warm cheek.

“Yes.”  And he lifted the sheets and welcomed her in.

Love is a mirror that reflects what it finds.  When it’s right - fated, enduring - it radiates the light it sees outward into infinity, like the stars.

[frangipanidownunder]

Would you write a sequel to your last One Son fic, maybe before The Unnatural where Mulder tries to apologize? Your fic hurt me in the best kind of way.

Healing: fic

A/N You can read the original fic Superficial Burns but you don’t have to read it to understand this sequel, but it might help.

Thanks for the prompt, anon. This is set post One Son through to The Unnatural. 

They play house too soon. He presses to share the master bedroom,“to add authenticity”, but she pushes him out. She’s being petty, she knows, pointingout toothpaste tube and toilet seat misdemeanours. Still, he’s genuinely playful,attentive for a while, but she flips her gloves at him, bats away thecamcorder, turns her cheek as he goes to kiss her. Ironically, their discordonly gives them more authenticity as a couple.

She shut him out and sheshouldn’t have been surprised when he drops her home and doesn’t ask to carryher bag up. Her apartment is as empty as she feels. She goes to bed and punishesherself with the desperate noise he made when he came inside her, the way hislips pressed against the juncture of her jaw and ear lobe, the slow opening ofhis eyes, pupils dilated, surprise followed by awe followed by guilt.

She should have quit. She shouldhave walked away. He did.

Arthur Dales tells Mulder she saved his life, that she issavvy and Mulder has the good grace to look contrite. He’s mysterious about therobbery in the bank, about how he knew the female accomplice. He rambles onabout déjà vu and Scully can’t help but review the past through the lens of thepresent. Like the memory of their frantic coupling in her kitchen is trapped inthe wrong spot in her brain. Like if it only happened yesterday, she would saysomething to him, he would say something to her.

And then he admits to an onlinefriendship with Karin Berquist, a woman enamoured of him yet he acts like hecan’t see it. She wonders just how ignorant he can really be.

He fucked her in her apartmentand hasn’t talked about it since.

She saves a boy in a phonebooth.Saves a child. What she can’t do is save herself. Padgett’s words burn throughher. Agent Scully is already in love.She hates it. She fucking hates that it’s someone else telling her the secretsof her own heart. And that it is so fucking obvious.

She should have quit.

              After, Mulderbooks a motel room. He won’t leave her alone. Part of her wants to yell at himthat he’s as bad as Padgett, always there, hovering. He keeps looking at herchest like there’s a gaping hole there. It’s not that her heart is missing,that’s the thing. It’s that it’s still there. Beating. Full of a secret, hersecret. And she’s sure he can see it.

              “Scully,there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a while,” he says buthe’s lying across the bed with his long legs stretched out and his tee clingingto his frame and that soft expression he wears when he’s off the clock.

              “I’mtired.” She sounds like Laura Petrie.

              His lipspush out and his eyes flick to the television screen briefly. When he turnsback to look at her he sits up and rests his elbows on his knees, rubbing atthe back of his hair. He’s tired too. “I thought I’d lost you,” he says and he’salready taking a huge gulp of air in. He slaps the bed linen and she sees thathe is trembling. “I thought you were dead. In my apartment. On my floor. Yourheart gone.”

              “I’mfine, Mulder.” She’ll always be fine. Heart or not.

              Hecovers his face with his hands. Beautiful long fingers. His strangled moan is ashock. For a split second she thinks he’s weeping, but when his hands fallaway, his eyes are dry and angry. “You’re fine,” he says. “Well, that makes itall right.” The low rumbling is not, she finds out, on the television. It iscoming from him.

              Sheslips under the covers of her bed and turns out the lamp. He doesn’t move. Justgrowls like a wounded, angry Alpha.

The case in Las Vegas is nothing but a fever dream. Mulderpries her for more information but she can’t tell him anything. He accepts it,offers to buy her a bagel.

              “Realcream cheese,” he says and she laughs. It feels like her heart is beating to adifferent rhythm. A lighter one.

              Thediner is too shiny but she lets him yammer on as she tries to hide her eyesfrom the brightness. The bagel is good. Mulder is relaxed, smiling. These arethe times she knows she’ll never quit. He sips his second coffee so slowly shebegins to wonder if he’s building up to something.

              “You okay,Mulder?”

              He looksout to the street where an old couple wander past, arm in arm. “They seem happytogether,” he says. “How do you suppose that feels?”

              “Are youreally asking my expert opinion on the longevity of relationships, Mulder?”

              Hisfingers thrum on the table top, scattering grains of sugar. He chuckles. “We’reshit at this, aren’t we Scully?”

              “This?”

              “Talking.”

              “Ah,yes. That.”

              He doesthat slow blink again and she sees them in her apartment, rutting. Baseemotion. Need. The burn on her fingers.

              “Ishould have told you earlier, after…you know…that night. I was out of line.What I said to you about making it personal. Diana…she believes in me and I…”

              “Ibelieve in you, Mulder.” She stands up. He says nothing more. No scramblingbackwards, no apology, nothing. He fucked her in her apartment and then walkedaway. She holds his gaze just enough to make his lips press together. “I alwayshave.”

              He letsher leave. She should have quit.

              He callsher later. Wants to come round. She tells him she’s busy. He whispers a sorryas she cuts him off. He arrives 30 minutes later. He walks past her, goes tothe kitchen. To the same spot.

              “Why areyou here, Mulder?”

              Hestands where he stood, where he put his hands on her. Where she unzipped hispants and he bunched up her skirt. “You said that before,” he says, “And thenwe…”

              Shefolds her arms around her ribs. Covers her heart. “Fucked.”

              Heflinches.

              “It’swhat we did, Mulder. You could hardly ascribe a more romantic name to it. Didyou tell Diana?”

              “What?No!”

              His too-quickoutburst makes her feel unexpectedly superior. He fucked her and walked away.And maybe he has pushed it deep inside ever since, too.

              Hescratches his chin. “I stood outside your building for ten minutes that night, arguingwith myself about whether to turn round and go back to you.”

              “You’repretty hard to argue against,” she says. “You have this way of twistingeverything into the neat theory you’ve already designed.”

              “Scully.”It’s more resignation than warning. He leans back against the counter, one kneebent towards her. “I came here to say what I should have said then. That I’msorry I said that to you, about Diana. That I should never have reduced yourinput into our partnership to something purely emotional. I…” His hand slamshis bent thigh. “I am sorry, Scully. Truly. I never meant it to happen…”

              “Youneed to leave.”

              “Thatway,” he adds but he’s already nearly at the door. He looks back, framed in thedoorway. “I never meant it to happen that way, Scully. You mean more to me thanthat, much more.”

              He shutsthe door and she leans against it listening to him leave again. Footstepsfading. He won’t wait outside tonight.

              Shetries to sleep but her skin is crawling, burning. Her heart is red hot andheavy in her chest. She imagines strips of it peeling away, shavings of herlove falling deep into an empty cavity. But this time, she doesn’t think sheshould have quit. She knows she can never.

At 2am she drives across town.She knocks quietly. On his couch, he is backlit by the soft ocean colours ofhis fish tank. His stubble cuts a line across his jaw that is as sharp as thestabbing in her chest. Her fingers slide in and out of each other, knucklesrubbing together.

“You mean more to me too, Mulder,”she says. “And I’m sorry for asking you to leave. I…” she licks the dry patch onher lip and the couch creaks as he stands up. “I just wanted to say I’m sorrytoo. I am not good at this.” There is a tear building at the corner of one eye.It’s a weakness she dislikes. A demonstration of her vulnerability that she’sspent years trying to overcome. But he presses his thumb to it, collects hersoftness and lets it run down his wrist.

“Can we start again?”

“Ignore six years of partnership?”

His hand is a familiar comfort onher lower back as he urges her to sit. “No, use six years of partnership to ouradvantage instead of using it as wedge between us.”

One of his mollies floats to theside of the tank and she watches its graceful fins and tail fluttering in thewater. “How do we do that?”

“Doing more of that thing we’reshit at?” He laughs and she cuffs away the tears streaking her cheeks.

“And Diana? Where does she fit inall this?”

He looks ahead, at the posters onhis wall that catch the passing headlights from the street below. “Where shealways did, Scully. In the past.”

They flirt over clichés in the basement office. When hegrapples her tofutti rice dreamsicle from her hands, their skin sparks togetherin way that tingles but doesn’t burn. He kisses her lips and tells her he’sgoing to see Arthur Dales.

              “InFlorida?”

              “No, he’shere in Washington.”

She watches him for a while. The ease with which he swingsthe bat. The movement of his shoulders. He’s in his element.

              “So,uh… I get this message marked urgent on my answering service from one FoxMantle telling me to come down to the park for a very special very early orvery late birthday present. And, Mulder… I don’t see any nicely wrappedpresents lying around so, what gives?”

              It’s notuntil he tells her to “get over here, Scully,” she fully understands what thisis. Sure, it’s baseball. Sure, they flirt. Sure, it’s a date, Mulder-style. Butit’s more than the sum of its parts.

              It’shealing.

[mldrgrl]

36 and Four Minutes

by: mldrgrl Rated: PG-13 Summary: Based off a psychological study I read about a husband and wife team who attempted to create love in a lab.  This is set the night before The Unnatural and hopefully acts as a precursor for the season of secret sex ;)

It had been a rough year, to say the least.  Mulder could not remember a time in his life where so many shitty things seemed to happen in such a short period of time.  The worst of it was, he could feel Scully slipping away from him, little by little.  It scared him, to be honest, and he did not behave well when he was scared, which pushed her even further away than she already was.  He needed something to bring them back together, to get them on the same page before Skinner took action and tried to send them to another team building seminar.  The last thing in the world he wanted to do was attend a team building seminar, and he was fairly certain he was not going to find another pair of mothmen to get them out of it a second time should they be forced to go.

He learned about the study from one of his chats with Karin Berquist, of all people.  Though the reclusive and anti-social dog behaviorist put all her energy into canine studies, that was not how she began her career.  She told him to look up Arthur Aron’s 36 questions, which he did, and the study of lab-generated intimacy seemed like it would be the perfect tool to strengthen the bonds of his partnership, but first he had to get Scully on board, and that would be no easy task.  She wasn’t really talking to him all that much since Phillip Padgett wreaked his havoc on their lives.

Getting her out of the office was essential.  He didn’t want to be interrupted by work and he needed her to have her guard down a little.  He thought about surprising her at home, but she wasn’t too keen on surprises and treated him with suspicion when he showed up at her door.  Of course, every time he had shown up at her door unannounced, he always brought work with him, so she had every right to be suspicious.  On Friday night, he took a shot in the dark while she was shutting down her computer for the day.

“You wanna grab a beer with me?” Mulder asked.  He had come around to the front of his desk and rocked forward and back against the chair there as he watched her pack up.

“Now?” she answered, zipping up her bag.  “I’ve got some things I need to do.”

“Now?”

“Yes.  I’ll see you Monday.”

“What kind of things?”  

“Mulder.”

He let go of the chair and moved towards her to help her with her overcoat.  “Things I could help with?”

“Laundry.”

“Scully, it’s Friday night.  Don’t tell me you’re turning me down for dirty clothes.”

“There’s also soe cleaning I need to do and catching up on JAMA.”

“Now I’m hurt.”

“It’s not about you, Mulder.”

The fleeting glance up at him she gave said otherwise and it made him even more determined to get her to come out with him.  He had done some asshole things over the years and left her behind at times, chosen other options because he thought they were more important in the moment, but never did he do it because he simply didn’t want to be in a room with her, like she was doing now.  It stung.

“Dinner is included,” he said, careful to keep all traces of desperation out of his voice.  “My treat of course.”

“Look, I just…”

“...have better things to do?”  He swallowed and then nodded, unintentionally playing into her sympathies as he slowly trudged back to his desk.  “Some other time then.  Have a nice weekend.”

“Mulder…”

“Yeah?”

“One beer.”

Once he had her on the hook, he sweetened the deal ever further by taking her to a bar he’d dropped in on a few times that was by her apartment.  It had a relaxed atmosphere, served food, and he’d never seen it busy.  They both parked in front of her building and walked the few blocks over to the little hole in the wall.  They hung their jackets on a rack by the door and Mulder rolled up his shirtsleeves as he straddled a barstool at the far end of the bar.  

At the other end of the bar sat two older men, engrossed in conversation.  Behind them, in the middle section of a row of three booths, a man and woman sat together, also engrossed in conversation.  At the back near the restrooms, a jukebox played at a pleasant volume, only loud enough to keep the conversations private.

So few and far between were patrons, the bartender had been lounging at his station reading a paperback.  He had hopped to attention when the door scraped closed behind them and approached their corner with coasters and napkins at the ready.

“Shiner Bock,” Mulder answered when the kid, probably only just barely able to legally drink himself asked what he would have.

“Same for me,” Scully added.  “What are you reading?”

“Um, it’s called Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus,” the young man answered, opening their bottles.  “My girlfriend is making me read it.”

Mulder snorted softly.  “What was the fight about?”

“She says I don’t listen.  Well, she says I listen, but I don’t hear.”

“Could be an epidemic,” Scully said, inspecting a freestanding plastic menu on the countertop in front of her.

Mulder glanced her way and then raised his brows at the bartender.  The bartender raised his back as though he understood completely.

“Any advice?” the kid asked.

“She’d probably be the first to tell you that I’m the last person you should ask,” Mulder answered, tipping his head towards Scully as he took his first sip of his beer.

“Relationships are work,” Scully said.  “And they take time to cultivate.  Take your time and do the work.”

“How long have you guys been together?”

“Seven years,” Mulder answered, just as Scully also replied, “Oh, we’re just…”

“Then you must be doing something right.”  The kid glanced between the two of them and then straightened again.  “Would you like to order anything?”

“Chicken salad sandwich,” Scully answered.

“Burger, medium rare,” Mulder said.  After the kid walked away, Scully gave Mulder a bit of a scowl and he shrugged.  “What?” he asked.  “You walked into my office March of ‘92.  It is now March 26, 1999.  Happy late anniversary, honey.”  He held his beer out at a slight angle close to hers.

After a few moments, Scully actually picked up her bottle and tapped it against Mulder’s.  “I hadn’t even realized it’s been…that long.”

Mulder felt like this was the opening he’d been wanting.  He nodded a little and turned towards her on his stool.  “It is a long time.  And you know, if we go back to what you just said, relationships take time to cultivate.”

“Yes.”

“I read this study recently about an experiment a psychologist performed back in the ‘60s where he wanted to see if he could scientifically cultivate relationships within a lab.”

“That sounds absurd.”

“Well, it worked.”

Scully laughed lightly and took a pull from her beer.  “Worked how?”

“Their subjects were married within six months.”

“That’s not really proof of anything though.”

“Aren’t you curious how he did it?”

“You haven’t even told me what he did.”

“He developed a series of questions that people answer together and it can instantly bring two strangers into an intimate relationship.”

“Give me an example.”

Mulder took a sip of his beer and then held up a finger.  He backed off the barstool and went over to his jacket on the rack.  He fished out the paper that was folded in his breast pocket and went back to the bar.

“You have them with you?” Scully asked, raising her brow.

“You want to run our own experiment?” he answered.

“Let me see.”  She held out her hand for his paper, but he held it away.

“There are rules.  You can’t read them first.  We take turns doing the asking, but we both have to answer.”

“Where’s the experiment in it?”

“Either it’s cultivating, or it isn’t.”

“We’re not strangers, though.”

“No, but...how well do we really know each other?”

There was a look of both surprise and agreement in Scully’s eyes.  She took a long drink from her bottle and then placed it on the counter with extra care.  She wiped her knuckle across her bottom lip and the corner of her mouth.

“You don’t know what these questions are?” she asked.

“Nope.  I only read about the study.”

“What if there’s one we don’t want to answer?”

“I’m willing to answer all of them, whether I want to or not.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that, but alright.  I’ll play.”

Mulder smiled and unfolded the paper.  He grabbed a napkin from the bar and covered the printed list of questions so that they would stay hidden and then he placed the paper between them on the bar.

“Should we flip a coin to see who goes first?” he asked.

“Just start,” she answered.  “Before I change my mind.”

“Number one.  Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

“That’s easy,” she said, immediately after Mulder finished the question.  “Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“You said once that you’d try to live in her body as a day, she can’t also be your answer for dinner guest.”

“Last I checked, there were no rules in this questionnaire.”

“Well, there is one rule, complete honesty.”

“And that is my honest answer.  Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“Why?”

“She was an amazing woman with an amazing life and I’d like to know more about her from her own mouth.  I would love to know how she accomplished all she did.  I think she’d be just about the most fascinating dinner guest I could ever hope for.”

“Okay, fine.”

“And what would be your answer?”

“The King, of course.”

“I guess I should’ve expected that.  Why, though?  Why Elvis and why not...why not George Hale?”

“George Hale?  Because I’m having a dinner party, not an astronomy symposium.”

“He’s got to be a better conversationalist though.”

Mulder made a noise of disagreement with his beer at his lips and shook his head.  “I beg to differ.  Elvis would have stories.  Why would I pick George Hale?”

“Wouldn’t you want someone more...intellectually stimulating?”

“I mean, it’s dinner, not a life partner.”

“Oh.”  Scully ducked her head a little and hid a smile in her beer.

“What?”

“Nothing.  That’s just...good to know.”

He passed the paper her way.  “Your turn.”

“Two.  Would you like to be famous?  In what way?”

Mulder screwed up his face a little.  “No.  But, I think the better question is, if I had to be famous for something, what would it be?”

“What would it be then?”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pro baseball player.  I wanted to play for the Yankees and I wanted to hold records and be in the baseball hall of fame.”

“Did you ever try to pursue it?”

“Nah.  It was just a dream.  It sort of died on the vine before I was even out of Little League.”

“You played Little League?”

“West Tisbury Diamondback, second baseman, number 14.”

Scully smiled as though she was picturing it.  “How old were you?”

“Six.  Six, I think, when I started.  I was nine when I quit.”

“Why?  You seem to really love it.  Even still.”

“Things were already kind of rocky at home by then.  It was just better if I...you know.”

“Oh.”

“So what about you?”

“No aspirations for fame.”

“But, if you had to be famous for something, what would it be?”

Scully took a few moments to think.  She started to answer, then hesitated, and started again after another few moments.  “I’d like to discover something,” she said.  “Be the first to...find a cure for something or...just something in that arena.”

Mulder got quiet and scratched at the label on his bottle.  “Like a cure for cancer?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“There’s still time.”

“No.  I can’t imagine being locked in a lab somewhere running endless amounts of tests.  No.”

He wanted to tell her that at least she’d be safe, but he knew she’d find it patronizing.  Truthfully, he couldn’t imagine Scully spending her days in a lab any more than she could.  But, really, he just didn’t want to imagine her anywhere but his side.

“Mulder?”

“What?”

“Your turn.”

“Right.  Three.  Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? Why?”

“Not now,” she answered.  “I don’t have time to think when I make a call, usually.”

“You said not now, was there ever?”

A smile bloomed on Scully’s face and the apples of her cheeks turned a rosy hue.  “There was one time, I was about twelve or so, and I kind of had my first crush.”

Mulder smiled as Scully was momentarily lost in the joy of her memory.  She laughed to herself for a few moments and tucked her hair back over her ears.  It was possibly the cutest thing he’d ever seen her do.

“I was sort of a tomboy growing up, you know?” she continued.  “So, I really didn’t...I wanted him to see me as more than the girl he rode his bike to the beach with.  And Melissa was the girliest girl I knew.  Plus, she’d already had at least five or six boyfriends that I knew of, so I went to her for help.”

“What was this kid’s name?”

“Mikey.”

“I’m guessing you called Mikey in a Cyrano-like scenerio.”

“That is exactly what I did.”

“And what happened?”

“Crashed and burned.  He kept asking me why I was being so weird and I was so mortified by the whole experience I cried into my pillow for the next week and refused to ride bikes with him again.”

“That is so sad.”

“It’s a good memory, though.”  Scully flashed a smile at Mulder.  “Missy felt terrible about it and it brought us closer.”

“I’m glad you have that.”

“Me too.  So, do you rehearse your calls?”

“When I was with the VCU, sometimes I found it easier to work off a script if I had to make difficult calls.  You know, if I had to question a grieving widow about her husband’s murder or a parent who just lost a child.  I found that...it didn’t really work though.  People are more responsive to authenticity.”

“I’ve always thought you were good with people.”

“You have?”  He paused with his nearly empty beer close to his mouth, genuinely surprised.

“Yes.”

“Being good with people is not something I’ve ever been accused of.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

Mulder put his beer down and his brows came together.  He knew his shortcomings.  He had issues with authority.  He had no patience for arrogance or incompetence.  He was sometimes unduly antagonistic with suspects.  He truly didn’t understand how Scully could sit there and say he was good with people.

“You should see the look on your face right now,” Scully said.  

“I’m just a little...are you joking?”

“Are you really unaware of how compassionate you are?”

“I...um…”

A lull in the conversation followed.  Mulder stared at Scully and she stared at her beer.  They’d only made it through three questions and already she’d shocked him, and it was such an innocuous question at that.  He suddenly wished he’d read through all the questions so he could see what else might be coming.

“Number four,” Scully said, turning the paper towards her with her fingertips and breaking the silence.  “What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

Mulder blinked and cleared his head.  “Uh.  Um, I think, probably waking up to a sunny day, not too hot, maybe going for a nice run and finding a pick up game of basketball.  Ordering a really good pizza and watching the Yankees win the world series.  No, being at the game behind home plate.  That would be the perfect day.”

“I think the same as you, I’d like to wake up with the sun shining and a nice breeze.  I’d probably go to the beach and then have someone take me out in a sailboat for awhile.  I want to eat some really good seafood, sit in front of a bonfire for a bit, then end the day with a bubble bath and a glass of wine.”

“That sounds really nice.”

Scully shrugged.

“You want another beer?” he asked, noticing she was running low as he finished his.

“Sure.”

Mulder held up his beer bottle to get the bartender’s attention and then flashed two fingers at him.  The kid came back with two more beers and took their empty bottles away.

“Food should be ready in about five minutes or so,” the kid said.

“Do you have any chips or pretzels?” Scully asked.

“Sure.”

“Getting comfortable?” Mulder asked her.

“We’re only on question five and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not getting any laundry done tonight,” she answered, and then thanked the kid when he slid a bowl of pretzels onto the bar between them.  “Besides, if you’re buying, I might as well take advantage.”

Mulder chuckled and slid the paper back in his direction as she munched on a pretzel.  He then let out a full laugh when he read the next question and looked at her with a wide smile.

“When did you last sing to yourself?” he asked.  “To someone else?”

“You already know the answer to that question.”

“Yeah, but I want to hear you answer anyway.  And I don’t know when the last time you sang to yourself was.”

“I don’t sing.  I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.  The last time I was forced-”

“No one forced you.  I made a very polite request which you were kind enough to comply with.”

“Shut up, Mulder.  You answer.”

“I sang in the shower this morning.  A very soulful rendition of Heartbreak Hotel that would make angels weep.”

Scully rolled her eyes.  “I’m sure.”

“And I don’t remember the last time I sang to someone.  But, if we’re ever lost in the woods again, I want you to know I’d happily sing you to sleep and I’ll even take requests.”

“That is exactly why we’re never going into the woods ever again.  Question six.  If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?”

“Hm.  Hm.”  While Mulder was thinking about the question, their food was brought out.  They took a pause to arrange their plates and then he returned to his thoughts.  “So the problem is, this question assumes that there will be a decline both physically and mentally.  I’m not even actually really worried about either.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, I plan to be as handsome and brilliant at 90 as I am today.”

Scully, about to take a bite of her sandwich, burst out laughing and had to put the sandwich back down.  “That’s assuming you’re handsome and brilliant,” she said, wiping her greasy fingers with a napkin.

“Um, ouch.”

“You have to pick one.”

“Brains.”

“I think I would go with the body.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Don’t you remember that time on the Ardent?  If that’s what it feels like to be physically old, I’m choosing the body.”

“Damn, I’d forgotten about that.”

“Looks like you’re losing the brains already.”

“Har har.”  He gave her a fake glare before turning his attention to the next question.  He pursed his lips and glanced at Scully as she finally took a bite of her dinner.  “Um.  Number seven.  Do you...do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?”

“I don’t, remember?”

Mulder looked down at his burger.  “You don’t have to answer this one.”

“I think we’ve both come too close to death not to think about it.”

“Yeah, but it’s not something I like to think about.”

“Facing your own mortality is-”

“You, dying,” he interrupted.  “I don’t want to think about that.”

Scully wiped her fingers off with another napkin and then she turned herself towards Mulder and put a hand on his knee.  “I plan on going in my sleep, peacefully, a long time from now.”

“You can’t plan on that.”

“Don’t get maudlin on me.  Not when we’re having such a nice time.”

“You’re having a nice time?”

“I have free dinner, drinks, and good conversation.  I’m having a nice time, so tell me how you think you’ll die.”

Mulder laughed and she squeezed his knee before returning to her sandwich.  “I don’t know, but I’d like it to be the same as you.”

“You might want to think about that the next time you jump onto a moving train.”

“That’s why I need to keep my 30 year old brain intact to stop me from doing stupid things.”

“Hasn’t stopped you yet.”

“Touché.”  He lifted his beer at her in salute and then took a drink.

“Number eight.  Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.  Oh, I like this one.”

“I certainly didn’t think we had anything in common when we first met.”

“Well, we were both FBI agents.”  She smiled at him as she brought her sandwich up to her mouth.

“Let me think.”  He ate his burger, chewing slowly and washing down each bite with a sip of beer.  He watched Scully nibble on a slice of pickle that was laid out behind her sandwich.  

“Tick tock, Mulder.”

“Okay, we are both FBI agents.”

“Cheater.”

“We both like the same beer.  And we both prefer music over talk radio.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Don’t what?”

“Prefer music.”

“Really?  But…”

“I prefer that it keeps you occupied on long car rides.  You get antsy when we listen to talk radio.”

“I didn’t know that.  I thought that...I didn’t know you were being deferential.”

“It’s to save my sanity as much as yours.”

“We can listen to talk radio if you want.”

“Then I’d just miss out on your enthusiastic air guitar solos.”

Mulder actually felt himself blush at that.  Scully never seemed to pay that close attention to him, whether she was driving or engrossed in a casefile.  

“My turn,” she said.  “We both prefer driving over flying.  I think we are both good at what we do.   And we have both lost loved ones because of it.”

“I wish we didn’t have that in common.”

“I do too.”

Mulder nodded softly before he moved to the next question.  “Nine.  For what in your life do you feel most grateful?”

“That’s difficult.  I have a lot I’m grateful for.”

He left her to ponder while he ate his burger.  He was already low on his second beer, but he didn’t want another quite yet.  He didn’t intend to get drunk, and he didn’t want her to be either.  

“That I’m here,” Scully blurted suddenly.  “I am most grateful, above everything else, that I’m still here.”

“We can name that as another thing we have in common, because that’s my answer too.”  He looked at her hand where it rested on the bar and wanted to cover it with his, but he didn’t.

“10,” she said.  “If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?”

“I wish I’d had parents that talked more.  To me and to each other.  You know, when it wasn’t silent, it was loud.  I never knew which was worse.”

“It was always loud at my house.  I used to wish for silences.  I wouldn’t trade that chaos now for anything, but I used to back then.  I guess I would’ve liked to have had my dad around a little more, but sometimes it was confusing when he was home.”

“How so?”

“My mother was a fairly typical woman of her time.  She was devoted to her church, her husband, and her children, in that order.  Most of the time, we saw her as a very capable, strong woman, until Ahab came home, and it was like he was the king and we were all his subjects.  It was easier adjusting to new schools and new neighborhoods than it was adjusting to a mom who suddenly answered all questions with ‘go ask your father.’  And while she was strict, she still never ran as tight of ship as Ahab.  Rules changed, bedtimes changed, everything changed in the weeks he’d be there.

“At first, when he’d come home, we were all pretty reverent.  Happy to see him, excited he was home, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly.  The thing is, he was used to sailors who snapped to attention when all he had to do was walk by.  He wasn’t accustomed to rowdy children who were different each time he returned.  He loved us, of course, and we loved him, but I don’t know that we ever really knew each other.”

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk about your father.”

“That’s probably the most I’ve ever really talked about it.”

“What would you change then?”

Scully tilted her head and squinted her eyes closed for a bit.  “I think what I want, or what I would’ve wanted, is for my mother not to have made him so mythical.  And I would’ve liked for Ahab to have acknowledged her more as an equal partner.  Or even have acknowledged that she did more than he did.”

“They were happy though, weren’t they?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I think that counts for something.”  Mulder paused and snorted when he read the next question.  “Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.”

“This is a question that would probably be easier to answer if we were strangers.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I feel like I’d just be boring you with things you already know.”

“We could skip it, if you really wanted to.”

“It feels a little redundant, don’t you think?”

“Okay.  Well, go ahead with the next one then.”

“12.  If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?”

“Easy.  I’ve always wanted to be able to be invisible at will so I can get into any place at any time.”

“I think they mean real ability though.”

“Why isn’t invisibility a real ability?”

“Because people can’t be invisible.”

“Oh, you really want to debate that?”

“Okay, okay.  Then I want the ability to know all languages.”

“I guess that would be kind of cool.  Not as cool as invisibility, but still.”  He leaned over to bump his shoulder with hers and she rolled her eyes.  “13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?”

“I wouldn’t want to know the future, I know that much.”

“Why not?”

“It may not be something I like or want to hear.  I think I would like to know where…”  She stopped suddenly and sucked in her breath.  He put a hand on her back and leaned forward to look at her.  “I would like to know the truth of where Emily came from.”

“I’d like to know the truth about what happened to my sister.”

“Then again, Mulder, we may not like what we hear.”

He rubbed her back for a moment in a circle and then dropped his hand.  She gave him a small smile and looked at the paper.

“14,” she said. Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time?  Why haven't you done it?”

“I did the thing I dreamed of doing a few years back.”

“What was it?”

“Visiting Graceland.”

“When did you visit Graceland?”

“Uh…”  He gave her a sheepish look.  “You were in Philly.”

“Ah.  Well, lately I’ve been thinking about taking a cooking class or dance lessons-”

“Dance lessons!  What kind of dance lessons?”

“Any kind.  Or a painting class.  Something that would put me in the world of other people doing normal things.  As to why I haven’t done it, who has the time?”

Mulder was already racking his brain.  It was too bad she didn’t mention wanting to learn baseball.  He could teach her how to hit and they’d probably both have a lot of fun with it.  She deserved some fun in her life.  He looked over at her and saw she had a smear of mayonnaise on her cheek.  Without thinking, he reached over and thumbed it off.  It brought back memories of eating ribs and barbecue sauce on the corner of her mouth.  She looked at him then like she was looking at him now, like a mixture of amusement and shyness, but she hadn’t pulled away then and she didn’t pull away now.  He thought again about how grateful he was that she was still there beside him.

“Have you had enough?” Scully asked.

“Hm?”

“It’s your turn to ask.”

“Oh.  15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?”

“Making it through the academy.  In some ways, it was harder than med school.”

“Physically?”

“Mentally.  Emotionally.  I was one of only four women in my class.  Two dropped out.”

“I never knew that.”

“Yeah, but I had the best shot out of all of them.  That sure pissed some of those guys off.”

Mulder laughed and unconsciously rubbed the bullet wound in his shoulder.

“What’s your biggest accomplishment?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the monograph that put away Monte Propps?  That had to be pretty satisfying, all that hard work and putting away a serial killer in the end?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It wasn’t satisfying?”

“I’d feel better about it if he hadn’t murdered 13 people first.”

“But your work stopped him from murdering even more.  And it brought closure to the victim’s families.  That has to mean something.”

“Alright, then that’s my biggest accomplishment.”

“It’s not about what I think though, Mulder, you’re supposed to tell me.”

He couldn’t tell her, though.  He couldn’t sit there and tell her that his greatest accomplishment was that he hadn’t succeeded in pushing her away.  So he just shrugged and agreed that Monte Propps was his greatest accomplishment and had to look away because he could tell she didn’t believe him.

“16,” she said, quietly.  “What do you value most in a friendship?”

“Loyalty,” he said.

“Honesty,” she countered, giving him a raised eyebrow, which he ignored.

“Number 17.  What is your most treasured memory?”

For a moment or two, Scully looked like she was going to call him out on the change of subject, but she relaxed the tight expression on her face and her eyes moved up in thought.  “My parents woke us up early one morning, before the sun was even up, put us in the station wagon and told us to just go back to sleep, we were going to visit a cousin of ours or something.  Turns out they were surprising us with a day at Disneyland.  Pulling into that parking lot I felt like I’d never been so excited for something in my life.”

“I guess a kid never forgets his first trip to Disneyland.”

“Did you ever go?”

“No.  We didn’t really do the family vacation thing.  Summer’s on the island, that was it.  Not that I’m complaining.  I had a lot of fun back then.”  He paused for a second.  “Actually, I’m going to say that my most treasured memory involved summer vacation.  I had my first kiss and the first time I held hands with a girl on the same day.”

“What was her name?”

“Jenny.  Jenny Johnson.  Her family lived on the island year round.  She had a sister Samantha’s age.  Becky, I think.  Or Betsy?  That I can’t remember, but she and Sam used to play together.  I had to watch Sam, Jenny had to watch her sister as well, so we ended up spending a lot of time together.  We got permission to take the girls to a carnival that was in town one day and, I took my chances and kissed her when we were on this haunted house ride.  Well, first I put my arm around her when she screamed, because I’m smooth like that.”

Scully laughed out loud against her beer bottle and stopped just before she took a drink.  “A real Don Juan at--how old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve.  Keep going, I want the full story.”

“Well, it was the kind of ride where things pop out at you and stuff and at first it was a lot of surprise, but then it was just kind of silly, so we were laughing and just before the ride ended, I could kind of see in the dark that we were headed for the doors, and I just...leaned in and kissed her.”

“And then?”

“And then we were temporarily blinded by the sun, but when she blinked at me, she looked like the happiest anyone had ever looked to me.  She grabbed my hand when we got out of the ride and we pretty much spent the rest of the day like that.”

“That isn’t really what I expected you to say.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, but not a sweet little summer romance.”

“Little is right.  By the next day, all Sam could talk about was Fox and Jenny sittin’ in a tree, and I got pissed, and then Jenny got pissed that I was pissed and accused me of being embarrassed of dating an islander--I didn’t even know we were dating or what dating really was, and it that was pretty much the end of that.  But, that day at the carnival.  It was perfect.”

“I guess that’s a good segue into number 18.  What is your most terrible memory?”

“Ah, well.  I’m going to have to be predictable here and say the night Samantha...well…”

“Yeah.  And I’ll say when I found out Melissa…”

“Kind of a shitty thing to have in common.”

“I’ll say.”

“You’re empty,” Mulder said, nodding at Scully’s beer as she tipped her head back and drained the rest.  “Another round?”

“I’ll pass.”

“If you change your mind, say the word.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“19.  If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?  Why?”

Scully went quiet, her thumb circling the lip of her empty beer bottle.  Her gaze seemed to lack direction, like she was staring at nothing.  The silence was so prolonged, Mulder became attuned to the jukebox again.  Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams was playing.

“Bet you wish you had that third beer,” he said, uncomfortable with the stall in conversation.

A small smile lifted the corners of Scully’s lips, but she still didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have to answer this one if you don’t want to,” Mulder said.

“I’ll answer.  I’m just forming my thoughts.”

“Take your time.”

Another bout of silence passed and finally Scully sighed.  “When I thought that I was going to die, when the cancer...when I thought I wouldn’t make it out of the hospital, I tried to make peace with the things I would never do.  I didn’t want to leave this world with regrets.  So, I...I wrote letters.  To my mother.  To my brothers.  To...you.  And then I realized how unfair that was, how selfish it was to write the things down I could never say, but not let you do the same.  So, I tore them all up.”

His curiosity was instantly piqued.  “What did they say?”

“Maybe if there’s a question in there about things unsaid, I’ll tell you.  But, to answer this question, when I found out I was in remission, that I was going to be fine, I told myself it was a second chance at some of those things I’d always wanted to do.  It’s been, what, two years?  I don’t think I’ve done any of them.”

“Let’s change that.  Let’s do something on your list.”

“Maybe none of it was as important as I thought it was, if I haven’t done them yet.  Or maybe I just didn’t learn the lesson.  No, I don’t think I would change anything about the way I’m living now.  I’m happy enough with...everything.”

It was the ‘happy enough’ that struck Mulder.  He had a notion that there might be one or two things she would change that she was holding back on, but he wasn’t going to push.  It was a difficult question to answer and he was struggling himself to come up with something to say.

“All that really matters is whether or not I was a good person,” Scully continued.  “Right?  To...to God, to those left behind.  That’s what’s going to matter in the end.  Not whether or not I...I don’t know, walked the great wall of China or something.”

“Is that on your list?”

“No.”  Scully laughed.  “I was trying to think of a common bucket list item for most people.”

“I feel like the most common bucket list item would be jumping out of an airplane.”

“Okay, then.  Is that really going to matter down the line?”

“Probably not.  But, you’ll have a good story for the grandkids.”

“Ah, well.”

As soon as he said it, Mulder felt like an ass.  He meant it as a figure of speech, but he realized too late that it would bring up some unpleasant truths.  Scully would never have grandkids - unless by some miracle.  And she didn’t even know the whole story.  He rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably.

“Uh, I think I’d do some things differently,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Get out of the office more.  Do something fun on a Saturday night that doesn’t involve the gunmen starting arguments in internet chat rooms.”

“Is that what you guys do on the weekend?”

“Not every weekend.”

“Mulder, that’s just sad.”

“And what’re you doing on a Saturday night, Miss Scully?  Laundry?”

“Alright, we both need lives.”

“I’d toast to that, but I’m out of beer, and I need to hit the head anyway.”  He slid off the barstool and looked to the kid who was filling a drink order at the other end of the bar.

“You want me to order you another?”

“No, I’m good.  Be right back.”

Mulder quickly used the restroom and stared at his reflection in the spotted, foggy mirror as he washed his hands.  This was the most he’d ever really talked with Scully and he was enjoying himself.  He wondered if he could find a way to make it a regular thing.  Maybe then his Saturday nights wouldn’t feel so empty.

When he came back to the bar, he slowed his step.  The remnants of their food had been taken away and there was a glass of iced tea in front of his seat.  Scully looked like she was nursing a diet Coke.

“Didn’t want you to get parched,” she said, as he took a seat.

“Thanks.”

“So.  Number 20.  What does friendship mean to you?”

Mulder squeezed the wedge of lemon perched on the side of his glass into his tea.  He thought about the gunmen, who he spent Saturday nights with or came to for help with technological problems, but didn’t confide all that much in.  He thought about passing friendships he’d had in school or in the early days of work, people he went out for occasional beers with, but never saw outside the bullpen.  And he thought about Scully, who he felt knew him inside and out and never held things he might have said in the heat of the moment against him, and ordered him iced tea because he might get thirsty.

“I guess it means everything to me,” he said.  “I don’t know what I would do without…”  He stopped short of specifying Scully by name, but by that point he was only thinking about his relationship with her.  “Without someone to talk to,” he finished.

“Someone to rely on,” she said.

“Exactly.  What about you?”

“That’s my answer.  It means someone to rely on.  I think everyone needs that in their life.”

“Agreed.  21.  What roles do love and affection play in your life?”

Scully snorted and spoke into her glass.  “Not nearly enough as I’d like.”

“Which part?”

“Both.”  She sighed.  “No, that’s not true.  There is love in my life, though I’ll admit I could do better at it.  And affection...is something I think I’ve always struggled with.  I don’t dislike it, I’ve just never been very comfortable with it either.”

“So, you could use more love and try harder with affection?”

“Maybe.  But, I think to answer the question I’d have to say, it probably doesn’t play as significant a role as it could, or even should.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Why is it interesting?”

“Because I feel like you have so many people in your life that love you.”

“Who, my mother?  My brothers?”

“Hey, that’s three more than I’ve got.”

“Mulder, I lo...I think you’re wrong about that.”

“Name them.”

“We’re off track.  You haven’t answered yet.”

“I’m a big fan of love and affection.  When it’s in my life, I think it’s pretty great.  I wish it didn’t come and go so easily, because it’s hard not to have it.  Sometimes I think I need it as much as I want it.”

“Maybe you’ll find it once you start living it up on Saturday nights.”

“Maybe you will too.”

“22.  Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner.  Share a total of five items.”

“You are unbelievably smart.”

“I like how gentle you are.”

“Gentle?”

“When you deal with people in difficult situations.  We discussed it however many questions ago.  You’re very gentle and I like that about you.  I’ve appreciated it in my own difficult situations.”

“Oh.”  Mulder blinked.  It gave him a warm feeling to know he’d done something Scully appreciated.  “Um.  You are the most dependable person I know.”

“You are the most passionate person I know.”

“Is that just codeword for stubborn?”

“Maybe.”

Mulder grinned.  “What are we at, three?  You are more warm than I think you give yourself credit for.”

Scully scrunched her face as though she disagreed.  

“See,” he said.

“I think you always do things with the best of intentions.”

“You don’t take shit from anyone, especially me.”

“You…”  She closed her eyes and her brows came together.

“Uh oh, I only have three good qualities?”

“I just want to phrase this right.  You have an ability to empathize at will.”

“I’ll have to ponder that one later.  Last one?  I don’t know if I would call it stamina, but for all that you’ve endured, you get back up, you keep fighting, you’re still here, and you’re stronger every time.  Resilience, maybe, but it’s more than that.  It’s...you’re just incredible, Scully, you really are.”

Scully’s eyes grew glassy and wet.  “Dammit, Mulder,” she muttered, wiping her knuckles across her lashes.

“If the next question is what are negative qualities your partner possesses, I’ll start with unable to take a compliment, how about that?”  

In response, Scully gave Mulder’s bicep a shove and he laughed as he pretended to slip off his barstool.  She wiped her eyes again and then took a drink.

“I admire your ability to be free with your feelings,” she said.  “Next question.”

Not that free, Mulder thought, looking at the paper.  “Number 23.  How close and warm is your family?  Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?”

“Close-ish.  Not very warm, but warm enough.  I don’t think my childhood was more or less happy than anyone else’s.  It was sufficient for me, maybe not so much for Charlie or Melissa.”

“What about Bill Jr.?”

“He thrived on routine and order, as you can imagine.”  She smiled and then laughed softly.  “He would probably say it was idyllic.”

“I’m going to have to say my childhood was less than idyllic, not warm and not close.  I don’t think that will come as a surprise to you.”

“Was it always like that though?  Even before your sister was…”

“It was tumultuous.  I didn’t really know it at the time, I just thought everyone had parents who yelled at each other when they were together, or dads who worked all the time and hit them when they weren’t home when the streetlights came on.  It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t great.”

Scully reached over and covered Mulder’s hand with hers, giving it a squeeze.  “I’m sorry that you went through that.”

“I made peace with that a long time ago.”

She nodded and withdrew her hand.  “Oh, nice follow up question.  24.  How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?”

Mulder sat back and sipped his iced tea.  He pulled an ice cube into his mouth with his tongue and rolled it back and forth for a few moments before crunching down on it and shattering it into tiny pieces.  When he was finished, he sucked in his bottom lip and scraped his teeth across it.

“It’s complicated,” he said.  “I wish it weren’t.  I think I’ve done a lot in my life to try to...to please her somehow, to make her proud, to protect her, to just...I don’t know.  I’m not even sure she appreciates it, but I’ll do it anyway because she’s my mom.  I don’t know if what I’ve done for her is out of love or obligation.”

“Sometimes it can feel like that same thing.”

“That’s for damn sure.”  Mulder pulled another piece of ice into his mouth.

“I don’t think my mother and I understand each other very well.  I know she wanted a different life for me, but also wanted me to forge my own path.  I think she also thought at some point it would merge with her own ideals.  She makes me feel guilty a lot for not being as present as she’d like me to be.  I think our relationship is more about her than it is about me.  I suppose that’s fine, but I’d also say she doesn’t know me as well as she thinks she does.”

“Would you like it to be better?”

“Does it sound awful to say that I don’t think I need it to be?”

“Not if that’s the truth.”

“I don’t need it to be.”

“Okay then.  Make three true "we" statements each.  For instance, "we are both in this room feeling..."

“That’s kind of a weird question.  Okay, we are both FBI agents.”

“Oh, come on!”

“We eat together quite often, but it’s been a long time since we’ve had dinner together, if you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“And, we haven’t talked like this in a long time.”

“Have we ever?”

“There were some times back in the early days of our partnership where we dug a little deeper.  Never to this extent, but we’ve had some moments.”

“We should do this more often.  That’s my first we statement, by the way, and a general comment.  We should do this more often.  We make a great team.  And we both enjoy the same beer.”

“26.  Complete this sentence, "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."

“Huh.  I don’t know that there’s a lot I don’t share with you.”

“Well, that isn’t the question.”

“I know, but what I’m saying is...I mean, I don’t really feel like I’m not sharing something.  If there’s something I want to share, I share it with you.”

“There’s got to be something though.”  She shook her head dismissively.  “You share your slideshows and your theories and your strange depth of knowledge, but not…”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know, life things.  What are life things that people share?  Intimate things.  Their...toothbrushes, their inner demons, their beds, their hopes for the future.”

“Is that your answer?  Is that what you want to share with someone?”

“Of course I do, but at the same time, absolutely not.”

“I think we’ve shared some hopes with each other, and definitely demons.  As for toothbrushes and beds, just say the word.”

“Are you telling me that you feel fulfilled right now?”

Mulder was momentarily tongue-tied and stuttered out an answer.  “I don’t think I can say I feel unfulfilled  Are there things I want?  Sure.  Intimate things?  Yeah.  I think that desiring emotional or even physical intimacy is a different question from what would I like to share with someone?”

“I think it’s the same.”

“And I would argue that saying I want someone to share a meal with at the end of every day is completely separate from saying I wish I had someone to hold me every night.  Both answers imply a desire for intimacy, but a meal is a shared experience and the other is somewhat selfish.  So, personally, I don’t interpret the question in that way, but if you want to qualify it and remove ‘share’ from the equation, I wish I had someone with whom I could spend a night with and would still be there in the morning.  Absolutely.”

An extended silence followed, one in which Mulder could feel the tips of his ears burning with embarrassment.  He never intended to lay the burden of his ache for intimacy at her feet.  Not like that.  And now it was out in the ether and he couldn’t take it back.  Sure, he could make a self-deprecating joke about it, but then it might devalue the whole purpose of the questionnaire.  He wished he could tell what she was thinking, but her face was shadowed, her expression hidden by the angle of her chin, down and away.

“Alright,” Scully finally said.  “You make a valid point.  But, I would like to add that I believe the examples you’ve given can also be a shared experience.  You can want someone to share a night with, and then wake up and share the morning as well.”

“Then the most basic answer would always be that you want someone to share your life with.”

“That’s true, but...”

“And I also think in order to be shared, it has to be reciprocated as well.  You have to give of yourself, but you have to be willing to receive as well.”

“I suppose if you’re not willing to open yourself up like that, it wouldn’t be a whole life, it would be half a life.”

“I didn’t say I was unwilling.”

“Well, I didn’t either.”  She hesitated on her next breath and then laughed a little.  “And I honestly don’t even know what the point is that we’re trying to make anymore.”

Mulder sighed silently in relief that the tension he felt was bubbling had burst with her laughter and then hesitantly turned the paper towards him.  “Uh, number 27.  If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.”

“I’m sure you already know this, but I don’t open up very often.  And I don’t do need very well.”

“I know tonight is an anomaly.  That we probably won’t discuss it in the morning, or ever again.  It doesn’t have to be that way though.”

She shifted in her seat and tucked her hair back over her ear.  “Just answer the question.”

“I’d need her to know that I can be a bit of a stubborn asshole.  And that sometimes I am blinded by need and I don’t make the best decisions.”

“28.  Tell your partner what you like about them: be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.”

“That implies I wasn’t being honest the last time I answered the question.”

“Maybe for strangers they could only answer more superficially until they got to know each other.”

“What, things like, I like your eyes or your hair or the way the top of your nose moves when you speak?”

Scully reached up and touched the bridge of her nose between her brows almost self-consciously and then brought her hand down just as quickly and wrapped it around her glass.  “I think we can skip this one, unless you feel like there’s something you left out.”

“I do like more than three things about you, Scully.”  He smiled and leaned into her teasingly.  “But, if your quota was met earlier we can move on.”

“I do happen to like that stubbornness of yours.  Just so you know.”

“You do?”  He leaned back and scrutinized her, genuinely surprised.  “Why?”

“You don’t give up easily, whether it’s on cases or on people.  It’s that steadfast determination that gets you results where others may not.”

“I might have to remind you of this the next time you tell me to let something go.  29.  Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.”

“I was quite bookish in school.”

“No!”

Scully gave Mulder a flash of a scowl.  “I won an award for a state science fair when I was in sixth grade, of which I was very proud of, but you know, other kids don’t really appreciate that kind of thing.”

“Kids are jerks.”

“No one would’ve ever had to know, but the principal read it over the PA in our morning announcements and well...it was bad enough that attention was called to it, but for the rest of the school year, this kid, Stevie, would salute me every time I walked into class and called me Dr. Nerd.”

“Uh, not to diminish your feelings, but Stevie’s the one who should be embarrassed.  That’s the lamest nickname anyone has ever come up with in the history of nicknames.”

“Any nickname earned, however lame, can seem like the worst insult in the world when you’re ten.”

“True.  I bet you can rest assured that Stevie hasn’t gone on to much success in life.”

“Who knows.”

“Well, contrary to what you might believe, I was not always as agile and suave as I am today.”

“Oh, is that what I believe?”

“I was also ten in my story and I was at a birthday party at a skating rink for arguably the prettiest girl in school, but I was a pretty lousy skater.  I made it one round around the rink, mostly holding on to the side, and when I let go and tried to participate in the skate chain, I went ass over elbows in front of the entire class, but all I cared about was that I’d just ate shit in front of Cindy Palmer.”

Scully started laughing before he’d even made it to the punchline, like she might know what was coming.  She made a sympathetic noise over her chuckles.  “That’s terrible,” she stuttered and giggled at the same time.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Childhood is rough.  The smallest things seem like the end of the world.”

“That they do.”

“Lay the next one on me, Dr. Nerd.”

Scully gave Mulder a soft kick on the shin with the side of her foot.  “When did you last cry in front of another person?  By yourself?”

“Few weeks ago when you went to get cleaned up after…”  He gestured to his chest.  “Padgett.”

“That would be my answer for both parts of that question.”

“I don’t have a real hang-up about crying in front of people.  I can’t really remember the last time, but I’m sure it was you.”

“Fair enough.  31.  Tell your partner something that you like about them already.  Oh come on, we’ve answered this about six times.”

“Skip it.  Number 32.  What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?”

“Death of a child.”

“I was gonna say nothing is too serious, but I’m going to agree with you there.”

“Number 33.  If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone?  Why haven't you told them yet?”

“Wow.  Um…”  

“Yeah, this one might be a little…”

“I think I need a minute.”

“Take your time.”

The first thing that came to Mulder’s mind was that he would tell Scully how much she meant to him, but it conjured up memories from his hallway and really he’d already said what he’d needed her to hear.  He could reiterate it right here, right now, but it didn’t feel like the right time, to say it only because he was being prompted by a silly questionnaire.  If she were a stranger, he would answer honestly, that he had communicated those things one time, he just wished it wasn’t one of those things they didn’t talk about.  He chose a different option instead, one that was still truthful, but felt less necessary for him.

“I would want to tell my mother that I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for her,” he said.  “Couldn’t find my sister and couldn’t make her happy.  As to why I haven’t already told her, well there’s a big part of me that knows it isn’t my fault and that I’ve done everything I could.”

“It isn’t your fault.  You have done everything you could, more than enough, Mulder.”

“Logically, yes, I know that.  And I shouldn’t have to apologize for it, but I still feel compelled.”

Scully curled her hand over Mulder’s forearm and let it rest there for a few quiet moments.  He gave her an appreciative smile and then put his hand over hers.  He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t.  They stayed like that until the loud scrape of a barstool across the floor broke the solace.  He reached for his iced tea and she leaned back on her stool.

“I can’t answer the question,” Scully said, her voice almost at a whisper.  “There are reasons that...I just can’t.”

Mulder shrugged.  “You don’t need to explain it.  It’s just a silly questionnaire.”  

She looked down and plucked at the skin next to her thumbnail.  “It’s not silly and I should...I lack the courage to...it’s because I lack courage that I can’t answer.”

“You can have half a point for answering the second part of the question.”

She looked up at him and there was pain in her eyes.  He couldn’t tell if her anguish was from not being able to answer, or what she would answer if she could.  He reached over and swept his hand up and down her back a few times.

“You’re the most courageous person I know,” he said.  “That won’t change.”

“Yet I can’t even answer a simple question.”

“It’s not that simple.  Let’s just do the next one, we’re almost done.  Number 34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire.  After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item.  What would it be and why?”

“I want you to know that I want to answer it, Mulder.  I do.”

“Answer it when it’s the right time, Scully.  You’re gonna be around a long time.”

In the silence that followed the deep and uncertain breath Scully took, Mulder changed the format of the questionnaire and just answered.

“Well, since it says I’ve already gotten my fish to safety,” he said.  “I think I’d have to rescue my lamp.”

Scully cleared her throat.  “Your lamp?”

“My Saturn lamp.  My grandfather - my mother’s father, the only grandparent I ever met - got it for me when I was about four or five.  It was my nightlight when I was a kid.”

“That’s adorable, Mulder.”

“I mean, I think the couch is pretty unreasonable and I can get a basketball anywhere.”

“No, it’s a good choice.  I’d take a photo album I have that was given to me by my grandmother.”

“Mom’s side or dad’s side?”

“Dad’s.”

“Also pretty irreplaceable.”

“Yeah.”

“We went out of order, so go ahead with the next one.”

Scully hesitated when she turned the paper closer and there was a slight hitch in her breath.  “I think we’ve already answered this as well,” she answered, and then pushed the paper over to Mulder.

“35.  Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing?  Why?  I guess in my case missing might as well be dead and even if your sister hadn’t-”

“I wasn’t going to answer with Melissa,” she interrupted.  “It was awful, yes.  It’s one of the worst things I’ve been through.  But, it’s not the worst thing.”

Mulder puzzled over her answer for a moment and almost had to ask if she was referring to her father or mother, but it dawned on him suddenly and he pressed his lips together in a tight line.  The death of a child is a very serious thing.  He never really knew the true extent of her feelings about Emily because she wouldn’t share them, but he knew she was mired in silent grief for some time.  There had been a real lack of joy in her in the months that followed, one he thought had never really returned.

“It never occurred to me,” Mulder said.  “To think that…”

“I didn’t think it would.  Actually, it didn’t occur to me either until just now.”

“I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was.”

“It isn’t you who should be sorry.  And you were right, it was never meant to be.”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“No.  You were right.  It doesn’t mean I didn’t want her, wouldn’t have gladly taken her, quit the FBI, moved to a tiny town somewhere in the hopes that no one could get to her, but the circumstances were what they were.  Even if there was a way to treat her, the price would have been too great, I think, and it would’ve just been buying a piece of time.  I’ve been trying to accept that as fact.  Some days I can, some days I can’t.”

“Grief doesn’t really follow a strict timeline.”

“Sometimes I’m not even sure what I’m grieving; if it’s for her or the idea of her.  The loss of what I don’t have.”

“Maybe it’s both.  Do you want…”

“A child?  I’m not even sure.  I know I’m angry that the choice was taken away from me, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to explore my options or if I’ll ever be.  On the other hand, I can hear it ticking.”

“Are we talking about the proverbial biological clock here?”

“Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Sometimes faintly, sometimes loudly, reminding me that I’m not getting any younger.”

“Well, if you ever do decide to explore those options, I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”

Scully tipped her head and gazed at him sideways.  “I’ll remember that,” she said.  “If I ever reach a conclusion.”

Part of him felt this conversation was an opening to come clean about the full truth of her missing ova, but he wasn’t going to do that to her if she hadn’t even decided she wanted a child.  He didn’t want to hurt her unnecessarily further if the verdict was still out.  It was a burden he’d held for such a long time and he wasn’t keen on making it hers as well, even if it was technically her burden.  He would rather carry that cross for her and never let her know he was carrying it if he didn’t have to.

“So,” she said, sitting up taller and shaking off the melancholy that had settled momentarily on her shoulders.  “We went out of order again kind of.  Go ahead with the last one.”

“Okay, final question.  Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it.  Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.”

“Well, I can’t seem to get my laundry done when I need it because my partner is always keeping me out nights.”

“Send it out to a service.  That’s what I do.”

She smiled.  “Just give me a minute, I’ll think of something.”

“Maybe you’re lucky enough to be problem-free.  Laundry aside.”

“The only pressing issue I can really think of is how to tell my brother I’d rather not visit for the 4th of July.  He’s been sort of pestering me to come out, but if I decide to take a vacation this summer, I’d rather do something relaxing.”

“Like going to Maine?”

“Not Maine.”

“It’s Stephen King territory, Scully, you should’ve known you’d find a possessed doll up there the minute you set foot in the state.”

“Does that mean I’d have better or worse chances of an x-file finding me on a tiny island somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“That probably depends on how close to the Bermuda Triangle you plan to be.  But, a tropical island?  Really?”

“Might be nice to lay in a hammock and read a book or two.”

“You mean highlight your latest edition of JAMA.”

“At least I’d be on a beach while I’m at it.”

“Blame it on me.  Even if you didn’t, I’m sure Bill would do it for you, so just give him the satisfaction of being right as you let him down easy.”

“I’m not gonna blame you to spare his feelings.  You don’t deserve that.”

“I guess you can go with the truth then.  Just tell him you need a break.  You’re using up your days off for some much needed alone time.”

“That’s probably all I can do, but I know he won’t understand.”

“Then that’s his problem.”

“And now I’m supposed to ask you how I feel about this dilemma?”

“Still on the fence, I’d say.  You’re gonna want more time to mull it over and probably put it off a bit longer.”

“Correct.”

“Here’s my problem.  I want to ask my partner if she’d entertain the idea of coming into the office tomorrow morning, not all day or anything, just for a little while.  But, I know she has all that laundry to do that she could send out, and curling up in the titillating world of JAMA, and I certainly don’t want to take that away from her.”

Scully groaned.

“See, big problem,” he said.

“I need more information.  Why do you want your partner  to come in tomorrow?  What could you possibly want to do in the office on a Saturday when we don’t have something taking us out of town?”

“I ordered some Roswell newspaper volumes from archives about a month ago and they finally came in.”

“Newspapers.  From Roswell.”

“The 1940s.  Wouldn’t it be fun to peruse old-timey articles about mysterious lights in the sky and government cover-ups?”

Scully groaned again.

“Any advice for this problem of mine?”

“Yes.  Don’t ask.”

“I hear it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

“So.”

“So she won’t be missing anything by staying indoors.  What if I offered to buy her lunch?”

“Not good enough.”

“Breakfast?”

“Not listening.”

“Snacks from the vending machine every hour?”

“Your problem is going to wear a hole in your pocket.”

“Is now a good time to reflect on how I’m feeling?”

“There’s an air of desperation about you.  You’re still wondering how best to wear me down, and you know it’s only a matter of time before I say yes, but you’ll still be wondering if I’ll show up until I walk in tomorrow morning.”

“Does that mean my problem is solved?”

“It means you’ll have to wait to find out until tomorrow morning.”

“I guess that’s better than nothing.”

“There’s something else on this paper.”  Scully furrowed her brow and pushed the paper towards Mulder while keeping her fingers on it.  “Instructions.”

“You’ve reached the end of the questions.  The final task is to stare silently into your partner’s eyes for four minutes.  It’s important to finish with this step.  Some people have described this step as thrilling and terrifying.  Good luck.”

“You’ve got to me kidding me.”

“We don’t have to.”

“You know I’m not going to leave something half-assed.”

“I just thought it was fun questions.”

Scully sighed and then downed the rest of her watery Diet Coke.  She dropped the glass down on the bar with more force than necessary and turned on the stool to face Mulder.

“Got a timer on your watch?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Set it.”

He did as she asked and then laid his arm down on the bar so she could see it.  She grabbed his wrist and after a glance, let him go and rested her arm in front of his, glancing her fingers off of his as she pulled away.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Go.”

Mulder only glanced down to start the timer and then he met her gaze.  It was awkward at first, with her looking so defiant and both unaccustomed to really looking that purposefully at each other when they weren’t debating a casefile.  Her face finally softened a bit and she gave a small tilt of her head as though she was trying to read something off of him.  He hoped she couldn’t read his thoughts in that moment, that was for sure.

Just before she tilted her head, her eyelids dropped in a half-blink and then opened again and he saw in her what he felt like he was on the verge of really seeing in his hallway two years ago, but had tamped down.  He envisioned himself rising from his stool, kicking it out of the way, taking her face in his hands, pushing his fingers through her hair, and kissing her for all he was worth, once and for all.  He felt his lips part in anticipation, licked them closed, and swallowed.

Suddenly, Scully’s eyes turned glassy and she looked away, pulling back from him with a slight slump, but he reached out and touched her arm, laying his hand down over hers and she blinked back up at him.  She looked terrified, but he dipped his head a little and tried to tell her it was alright by widening his eyes just a little and nodding.  He understood.  This was not a game.  He wanted her to know he was sincere and grateful that she did this with him.  He cherished her answers.  He cherished that she listened.  Above all, he simply cherished all of her.

Four minutes could feel like a lifetime.  By the time Mulder’s watch went off, Scully looked a little less afraid, but she quickly averted her eyes again at the sound of the beep and pulled her hand out from under his.  He didn’t turn away though, and blindly silenced his watch.  She stared at the rows of alcohol above the back of the bar until he cleared his throat and swiveled forward in his seat.

“So, we should do this more often,” he said.

“Yeah,” she answered, with a slight scoff.  She turned her head towards him though, smiled softly, and then looked down at her lap.  “I did have a nice time.”

“I’m glad.  Let me get the check and we’ll get out of here.”

He helped her into her coat after he’d paid and then slung his own over his shoulder.  Twilight had set in and the streets were quiet.  They stopped under a street lamp in front of her apartment, near her car.  She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her feet for a few moments.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said.

“Don’t forget, my offer for breakfast, snacks, and lunch still stands.”

“It’s possible I won’t turn it down.  It’s also possible I will.”

“I know, you’re always trying to keep me guessing.”

“Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it?”

“Always.”

Scully smiled and he realized he’d seen her smile more tonight than he had in years.  It looked good on her.  On impulse, he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek, nearly catching the corner of her smile.  Her eyes followed his retreat and the slight upturn of her lips was still in place.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“Just because.  I’ll see you tomorrow.  Or Monday.”

“What if I were to want something from the deli on 13th and E?”

“Done.”

“I’ll add it to the things to consider.”

Mulder turned and took a few steps on his tip-toes towards his car.  He heard Scully chuckle and he gave her one last glance over his shoulder.  He made a promise to himself in that moment to surprise her with something fun, something she’d least expect.  He didn’t know what it was yet, but he’d think of something.

The End

[ghostbustermelanieking]

poor karin berquist