Work Text:
The tension was so thick in the air that Mulder thought he was going to suffocate in it. He felt his breathing was shallow as he tried to look through the menu for something that could take his mind off the day for more than five minutes.
As he looked over his menu, his partner seemed to do exactly the same. But she didn’t seem to be choking on the air, she looked calm, her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked and he had to do everything in his power not to stare at her for a moment longer.
He wondered how she could look so calm. She was always the person who could go back to pretending nothing happened within the blink of an eye. It was a great quality in the field when she needed to be stoic and professional when talking to a suspect or a victim, but it was a devastating quality as he looked in her eyes and found no recollection of what they had been through just a few hours prior.
If he was careful enough, his mind wouldn’t transform his hold on the menu into her hair between his fingers, her scalp right at his fingertips. He shook himself out of it. That red hair was now neatly combed and at least a meter away from him.
“You okay there?” she asked without even looking up from her menu. “You’ve been looking at the mains for quite a while now.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. “I just can’t seem to decide. What are you having?”
-”Probably the fish,” she answered, finally looking up to meet his gaze with a slight smile. “I think I’ve had my fair share of meat for at least a month.”
Mulder found himself choking on his tongue. Of course, this was typical Scully.
The case they’d worked on for the past few days had been disgusting, to say the least. People poisoned by meat that could only be described as alien but it had been modified to look like ordinary beef.
What the meat was originally made of they never managed to find out. The proof was once again snatched away right before their eyes, burned to a crisp. But when Scully discovered that a pizza she had ordered with him in the motel might have had this meat sprinkled among the salami, she got so angry she swore to Mulder that she would never eat meat again.
But he could not help but hope that her comment had been about a more recent encounter.
“You’re right,” he said, “I might join you in on the fish.” He closed the menu and put it down on the table, crossing his arms over the table and softly gripping at his own shirt to focus his mind on the now.
She closed her menu as well, putting it down onto his and she leaned in, her face supported on her hand and a lock of her hair falling in front of her face. “I’ve never seen you eat fish.”
“You should’ve seen me in England,” he said with a small smile. He wanted to put her hair behind her ear, but something was holding him back again.
He found he had nothing much to say to her. He was afraid that anything they would talk about would eventually return to the hours beforehand. He could hear her mind churning, trying to figure out what they were to each other now. As a matter of fact, he didn’t know either.
Had they simply been so grateful that they survived the factory building down? Was it a combination of lost hope, sleepless nights and strenuous seeking the truth that ended up in him professing her name against her mouth and her skin more than a thousand times? Or was this something deeper? Was this the culmination of all their longing stares, bitten lips, solved cases, jealous exes and hidden lust?
It had probably been that for him.
He couldn’t read if that had been the same thing for her.
But something sparked between them. She was just as devout as he had been, he had the marks on his back where her nails dug into his skin, and the bruises on his neck where she had kissed him to show for it, even the edges of a bite on his shoulder. Or was this all for show? Had she been so strained by the case that she let everything go, just for a moment? Did she expect everything to return back to whatever they had been before?
Mulder found he didn’t want to go back to what they were before, he wanted that and more. He wanted her as his partner, in every sense of the word.
He tried to study her, to see if somewhere in her manners he could see something that betrayed her feelings. He couldn’t find anything.
“What’re you thinking?” she asked after they had placed their orders.
He exhaled through his nose, dismissing the memory of him laying next to her on the motel bed, kissing her lips, neck, chest. “I don’t know, just… things.”
-”What things?”
He bit his cheek, again. It was something he always did when she asked him a question he couldn’t immediately give her an answer to.
Her expression changed from calm to worried within a split second. “Is everything okay?”
Mulder nodded, lifting his arms off the table and dropping them against his thighs.
“Everything’s fine, Scully.” He hated how defeated his voice sounded. It sounded like how he would apologise to Diana when they’d had a row, making excuses for things he wasn’t even responsible for.
She reached for his arm, her posture shifting so that her ribs were against the table’s edge. More of her hair fell in front of her eyes. When her fingertips met his shoulder, she looked at him and tilted her head downward, fully meeting his eyes through her fringe. “Sure?”
That’s when he saw it.
It’s as if he saw a rose bloom right in the midst of her sky-blue eyes. The pupils widened just enough for him to look inside her and see her. He willed himself to do the same, to show her everything that he was, how he loved her, cared for her, how he never wanted her to leave. How he felt he indebted his life to her.
She was the first and only person who saw him as himself. Someone who didn’t think he was a charity case with a lost sister or a pushover to wrap around their finger. She acknowledged his flaws and helped him accept them, she kept him sharp when he was losing it to what he believed to be true, she brought him food and would hold him for hours when the enormity of the lies became too much for him.
That was all her by nature, by design. Nothing about her was feigned, manipulated, or built on lies. She was the only honest thing in his life, and he loved her completely.
One of his hands sneaked up and covered her small palm on his shoulder. He thought she would flinch, would pull back and sit back in the chair and go back to playing pretend, but she didn’t. She kept her hand on his shoulder, her eyes still on him.
“Mulder, you can tell me,” she breathed.
He lifted her hand in his and kissed one of her knuckles. “It’s nothing, I think I’m just tired.” He managed with a smile.
To his surprise, he saw a smile colour her face as well. “Well, I’m not putting it past you, I’m exhausted,” she admitted.
“Really?” He quipped. “The infamous Dana Scully, the most talented pathologist of the Bureau, tired?”
-”I have every right to be!” She laughed. “I nearly died in a burning factory, spent my night in a hospital that really could do with better beds, I—” She looked at him with a faint red glow over her face.
He saw her swallow the words right back and felt his heart crumble.
She leaned in, just a bit. “—I slept a total of two hours in a motel room in the arms of a very handsome, albeit crackpot psychologist after performing some other notoriously tiring activities. I am exhausted and I cannot wait to get back in my bed in DC and sleep for an eternity.”
He felt a smile creep upon his lips. “Really?” He let one of his hands slip over the table and finally curled her frayed fringe back behind her ear. “Tell me more about this psych you’re seeing—”
She laughed, giggled more, really. “Oh, I can’t. I’m afraid that if I tell you he’ll be able to hear me. He’s a psychologist after all, what if he can read my thoughts?”
A foolish grin stayed on her face and Mulder couldn’t do anything but smile in response. She was always beautiful, and she was even more gorgeous when she let her stern composure go, no matter the situation they could be in. When she let go, showed him Dana instead of Special Agent Scully, it would always unlock a notorious wide grin on her. The grin that coloured her cheeks the faintest shade of pink, made the blue in her eyes brighter and saturated the red of her hair more.
Looking at her was comparable to looking at a painting being made, seeing the sketch put on canvas, the foundations built up with large splotches of paint and then every detail added, every small spot, freckle, and colour that made the face of Dana Scully.
Every time he believed he couldn’t be mesmerised enough by her, she managed to take him by surprise.
“I’ll let you in on a secret, Scully,” he whispered.
“Oh?” she leaned in more.
“It’s just that this psychologist you’re talking about has begun to play a mind game with me, and he can read my thoughts, as you very well know, and he just saw the thought that made me look like I was worrying myself crazy and now he wants me to tell you.”
“I’m intrigued.”
There was a pause, a comfortable but long silence in which Mulder tried to figure out how to best tell this astounding woman how he felt.
“Would you kill me if I told you that I was thinking about you?” He finally managed.
She slightly flinched at that but quickly regained her composure. The corners of her mouth tugged upward ever so slightly and she leaned in closer.
“In what way?” she whispered.
-“In every way. About what you mean to me. About how beautiful you are and your spirit is. I feel like I don’t tell you enough how much I care about you, how much everything you’ve done means to me.”
He let a sigh escape his mouth and brought his hand to hers.
“I thought about how you’re one of the most important people in my life, scratch that, you are the most important person in my life. And I don’t tell you enough.”
Her smile brightened, her fingers rubbing against his. “Where’s all this coming from?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I think these thoughts have always been on the backburner for me. But I realised that it killed me, nearly losing you in the factory, both of us on the edge, looking into the abyss of death and I would have never told you that you’re my favourite person in the world. I guess I’m making up for a lost time, for the many lost times when I should have told you how much I love you.”
He eyed her to gauge her reaction. “Did any of that come out right?”
She smiled, affectionately putting both of her hands around his. “A bit rambly, but I didn’t need you to tell me, Mulder. I already know, I’ve always known, and I think you showed me plenty this morning,” she said with a wicked smile.
“But I understand how you feel,” she continued, “I think it would kill me if I never got the chance to tell you that you mean more to me than I could ever imagine. I don’t know how or in what way, you know it takes me a while to figure that out, but the overwhelming love I feel for you is in me just as much as I believe it may be in you.”
He didn’t know if he should cry out of happiness or yell it off of the rooftops. Scully loved him, in a way, in an unfathomable way. But she loved him, and that was good enough for him.
“Scully, I don’t know what to say,” he croaked.
“You needn’t say anything,” she said with a reassuring smile, “this is an understanding. We don’t need to say anything else.”
He felt so grateful for her, and that she knew the exact words that he needed to hear. He wanted to say it, to really speak out his love, but he could gauge it was too soon. They had reached a new level together, and they would have to test the boundaries of whatever they were now before he could muster all the courage to tell her he loved her. He was willing to be patient as long as she felt safe, comfortable and content with him, then it would all be worth it.
Their food arrived and the spell broke. Over their fish and chips, they laughed, quipping jokes about the case and Skinner, stealing a chip from the other every now and then, and in one fit of laughter, Mulder managed to knock over his beer. They could only laugh and continue to laugh at the absurdity of the past few days and smile in content at the great moments it caused.
They were a complicated partnership, relationship, friendship, all combined into one. But it was clear to them both that the other’s company made them feel safe and valued. The kind of partnership that didn’t need them relying on each other, they could fly solo whenever they wanted to, but both of them found that their lives were much more enjoyable when the other was in the picture.
After they finished their food and the massive slice of carrot cake that they shared, they sat in silent contempt as they were waiting for the check.
“I’m really considering it, Mulder.”
“Hmm?”
“Never eating meat again. That man over at the bar just chucked down a massive steak like it was a pop-tart and all I could see were those red slabs in the factory.”
“They’re still haunting you?”
“I thought that after studying medicine and all the work I’ve done with you on the X-Files I’d have seen it all, but this is the first thing that has gotten me motivated enough for a lifestyle change.”
He grinned. “What’s holding you back?”
“My mother makes a killer turkey for special occasions. I cannot refuse eating something comparable to edible gold.”
“Turkey’s poultry though, you could just hold back from red meat.”
“Mm,” she hummed in agreement, “that’s possible, but I feel like I should actually properly try it.”
“Tell you what,” he clasped his hands together and leaned in, “we both try it, that way you don’t have to go at it alone.”
She smirked. “Oh, but you have no spine. The next time we’re out on a case you’re going to beg me to get burgers and you’ll cry like a child when I hand you something else.”
He mock-pouted. “That made the psychologist reading your thoughts very upset. He personally thinks that the man sitting across from you has much more spine than you think.”
She laughed again. “Okay, fine, but if you budge first, you owe me dinner, no, three dinners. Deal?” She extended her hand.
He took it and shook it firmly. “Deal.”
As their fingers intertwined he felt a spark between them. In response, his eyes found hers and they stared at each other for an eternity, a keen eye would notice the electricity that crackled between them.
He noticed something different in how they looked at each other now. There was something deeper going on between the two of them, now that their feelings had come to the surface. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, even when the waitress came to them and Scully paid for their food.
“Come on, Mulder,” she snapped him out of his trance. “The night’s still young, we fly out tomorrow, and I think I will have to postpone our vegetarian challenge for the next day.”
“Why?” He said as he took his coat from the chair and stood up, walking her to the exit with his hand in the small of her back. “Have you got plans?”
“Some,” she said with a blush to her cheeks, “but you know what they say. Show, don’t tell.” She smirked at him and rolled her tongue over her lips. A keen eye, and Mulder, noticed her eyes flashing to his trousers.
“Why Ms Scully, a most daunting temptress you are,” he said with a grin as their faces were met with the cool outdoor air. He took her hand in his and pulled her out on the sidewalk.
For the first time, she didn’t let go of his hand. They walked all the way back to their horrible motel with fingers intertwined and neither felt any need anymore to let go. They were in the middle of nowhere, no one knew them here. In D.C., they would have to be careful, keep their longing stares and intertwined fingers to a minimum.
But here, in this town on this night, they could do everything they wanted.