Driving Towards the Morning
The sun is hot during the days and the water pressure of the last motel wasn’t quite enough to wash the grime of the constant travel from her skin to begin with. Not that it would matter, anyway, because they’re running low on funds and she can’t remember the last time they had a car with a fully functioning AC. That’s why they mostly drive at night nowadays, but they left early today and she’s already regretting that choice.
She’s sitting in a run-down bathroom stall on a truck stop of some nameless town in the middle of nowhere, reading the scribbles on the walls, when she’s suddenly overcome with the urge to add her own tag in the mix, just to leave a memento, a reminder that they exist still. They are nameless ghosts now and it’s not like she’s ever done the work for the fame and recognition, but there’s something devastating about the thought that no one will ever say Scully was here again.
In an act of teenage-like rebellion she scratches S♥M on the wall of the stall with the tip of her pocket knife. She doesn’t carry a sharpie in her purse and she likes this better anyway because they can’t paint over it. Not that she thinks anyone cares in this particular place. She feels better afterwards, lighter, more grounded, more real.
She doesn’t tell Mulder about it. She desperately wishes she could call Melissa because she would find it funny but Melissa is gone and so is everyone else. All she has is Mulder now. He’s her sunrise and sunset and every moment in between. She covers his hand on the gearstick and gives it a squeeze. He pushes the pedal a little deeper and the old car lurches forward with a slight delay, almost hesitant.
“Where to now?” she asks and he shrugs.
“Morning seems like a good enough direction.”
They drive fast and talk slow nowadays, a word here and another there, because there’s too much to say and nothing at all. They mostly communicate through little touches and glances, a morse-like code of squeezes as they hold hands while driving. One long and one short for Do you want to switch? Two long ones for Let’s find the next motel and stop to rest. Three shorts for what she likes to think is I love you, though it could also be You’re the only home I have now, please don’t leave me.
It’s cold and dark when they stop at a deserted beach somewhere to wait for sunrise after a night of driving. They make love on a spread-out sleeping bag between the rocks in the corner of the beach and she comes with a soft gasp just as the first rays of sun find their way to their hiding place. They go skinny dipping to wash the sex and the traveling off their skin and she feels clean for the first time in weeks. Dressed in clean, warm clothes again, they zip their sleeping bags together and curl up for a nap right there on the beach. She rests her head on his chest and lets his heartbeat lull her to sleep with the seagulls screaming in the background. His hand is still stroking her hair when she slowly slips into slumber.
They find a motel a few hours later and decide to stop for a while. They’re covered in sweat and seasalt as their tongues swipe patterns on each other’s torsos in turns. She lets him pour tequila in her bellybutton and laughs when he drinks it, leaving little hickeys around her navel.
At sunset the next day they shove their belongings in the two suitcases again and close the door of yet another nameless motel, ready to hit the road. It’s not a whole lot, the life they have now, but it’s enough, she thinks and squeezes his hand three times as he takes the ramp to the interstate. He squeezes back three times and she feels oddly at ease with the universe.