Chapter Text
Once they were back in DC, they fell into a pattern of sleeping over at each other’s apartments several nights a week. Scully began leaving a spare toothbrush and extra clothes at Mulder’s apartment, and he in turn left a slowly growing pile of obscure books on the paranormal next to her bed.
Something about it felt almost more forbidden than if they were actually sleeping together. People might guess that, but no one would guess that they were doing whatever it was they were doing. There were days Scully still had a hard time believing it was a “real” relationship, but then she would wake up to Mulder in her kitchen making her coffee, or find herself buying sunflower seeds for him when she went grocery shopping and it would hit Scully over and over again that they really were in love.
It was nice, to have each other but not own each other. Scully found she liked days and cases where she woke up alone just as nice as ones when she woke up wrapped up in Mulder’s arms. Knowing he was there for her without having to physically be there with her, or in her, to prove it began doing something to her brain. She found herself relaxing, slowly, into the general trust the relationship gave her. She was someone who needed space, and Mulder was good enough to recognize that.
Still, something did eat at her. Scully couldn’t believe that they were the only two people in human history who had felt this way.
Feigning the excuse that she was researching a case, she pulled up all the data that the FBI had on human sexuality, and went to work early one day before Mulder or almost anyone else was at the office. There were rumors and conjectures over famous people, as well as some studies here and there, but nothing seemed to match what she was looking for. Maybe she and Mulder really were freaks, the biggest freaks on the planet, and she would just have to get used to that.
And then she found something interesting.
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Scully walked into the office just after Mulder had arrived.
“Hey, Scully.” He flashed that dopey, lopsided, stupid, amazing smile she had become addicted to, even if she refused to show it. “You’re here early.”
“I was researching something.”
“Oh yeah?” He noticed the book under her arm and came over to inspect it. “Anything to do with an X-File?”
Mulder placed a hand on the small of her back as he stood next to Scully, and she privately let herself relax into the safe warmth that promised no danger, asked nothing of her, didn’t demand to be anything more that it was. Home.
“Actually, it’s something like that. I was researching us.” She stepped forward and placed the book on his desk.
“Us?” Mulder followed close behind, his warmth still enveloping her.
“I wanted to understand human sexuality better, to see if there was anything in the scientific literature that corresponds to whatever we are.” Scully turned to face him, looking up with a stare to assure him they were ok, that she wasn’t leaving. There was power, she realized then, in holding him this way, instead of with her hands. After years of forcing her hands onto bodies they didn’t really want, holding a man with just her eyes wasn’t just enough, wasn’t just safe, it was truth. “Have you ever heard of Dr. Kinsey’s work?”
“A little bit.” Mulder shrugged. “I mean, I know he conducted one of the first major studies on human sexuality.”
“Correct, and are you familiar with the Kinsey scale?”
This, Mulder shook his head at.
“It’s an attempt to display the range of human sexuality from homosexual to heterosexual, with some degree of bisexuality in-between, but when he was conducting his research, he found a group of people that didn’t fit into any category, and who experienced little to no sexual attraction at all.” Scully opened the book to the diagram she was talking about, and watched as a twinkle appeared in Mulder’s eyes as she pointed to the category that represented them, entirely, and proved the truth: that they were real. “The category he gave to those people, was called ‘X.’”