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The landscape was plain white as far as the eye could see; iced and frosted, hard and still, a complete and unique scenery out of space and time. It was such a contrast with Scully’s most recent memories; as warm and comfortable as a desperate hug from Mulder when she’d told him she had given Skinner her letter of resignation. But out here, it was just whiteness and iciness. A handful of flakes twirled in all directions as if they didn’t know where to land. The rest of them, too heavy or too frosted, remained impassive and stuck to the thick icy coating despite the wind blowing.
Mulder lay there on his front. Motionless. Barely conscious. His face in direct contact atop the ice and his hair and clothes soaking wet.
Gathering her strength, Scully wrapped her arms around his shivering body and hauled Mulder up into her lap, his back against her. Blanketed in the comforting stillness of one another's proximity, she slowly realized where they were and what she’d probably just been through: Mulder had come to rescue her all the way to the middlest of Nowhereland, Earth. Endeared and grateful for her partner’s unwavering reliability, she closed her eyes a short moment, immediately greeted by the familiar scent of his hair.
Eventually, she looked down at him; he seemed to have passed out. But she couldn’t let that happen. Hypothermia included exhaustion, numb skin and toes and fingers, shivering, slurred speech, lethargy, stumbling, muscle cramps and many more dangerous symptoms. The next step was the blood slowing down in your veins and your heart shrinking.
“Mulder, you can't fall asleep.”
“Uh-uh. I know. I'm not,” he said slowly through chattering teeth. “I just wanna close my eyes for, ow, for a short while.”
She held him tighter, shifting his weight over her, so that her hand could move up to the entrance of his collar.
“Don't get the wrong message, Mulder, but I, um …” Without further warning, she slid her palm underneath his clothes, gliding down to his chest.
“Jeez, Scully, your hand is freezing.”
“Are your eyes open now?”
“Yes. Take, ah … take your hand — hand out,” he whimpered.
“It will get warmer in just a little bit,” she replied.
Mulder closed his eyes again and Scully rubbed her hand on his torso, looking around for the exit door to this white and cold land of void Canada, Alaska, Antarctica, or God only knew where.
“How are we going to get out of here, Mulder?”
He opened his eyes and tilted his face to her slightly, breathing through his nostrils as the glacial winds burned his lungs.
“Those aliens that you didn't see?” He smiled weakly. “I believe they'll turn their ship around and give us a ride home,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Really?”
“Sure. Hang on and, uh, and wait for it.”
Talking seemed like a superhuman effort to him. Exhausted, Mulder closed his eyes again and tilted his face back ahead as it was before, his hair meeting with Scully’s mouth and nose again.
“And if they don't?” She asked with a touch of apprehension. “Any more realistic scenarios? I don’t know … Sled dogs?”
“Won't happen. They've been removed of Antarctica four years ago.”
There was a pause while they caught their breath.
“How did you get here?”
“Snowcat.”
“Good,” she said with relief. “Where is it?”
“It's out of gas.”
“What about your phone?”
“No signal.” Using his hand that lay on the ice, he painfully pulled it out of his pocket. “No signal,” he confirmed as he showed it to her, “and furthermore water-damaged.”
His arm fell numbly onto the ice again, dropping the phone.
“Who knows you're here?”
“Ahem.”
“Oh, Mulder … Not even the Gunmen?”
“No,” he breathed, “not unless they tracked my phone — assuming that's, ah, assuming that’s even possible with no signal.”
She pulled his hand from the snow to protect it from frostbite as much as possible, and brought it to his stomach, next to his other one on top of his sweater, and she rubbed them energetically while her other hand restlessly stroke his chest.
“We need to get moving. We're going to freeze to death if we keep lying here in the snow.”
“I drove several hours to get here, Scully. Not to sound defeatist but, uh, we can't walk that long in these sub-freezing temperatures without proper layers of clothes. A lot, lot more layers. And dry, too,” he said, talking as slowly as a young child learning to read.
“Well, we need to think of something, Mulder, because staying here is going to kill us all the same.”
“I remember I once told you …” he breathed, “the best way to regenerate body heat is to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with someone else who is already naked.”
“That's why I’m pinching your nipples, Mulder.”
“You are? Damn, I'm so cold I can't even feel it,” he whispered disappointedly.
She squeezed his hands over his stomach. “You can't quit now, Mulder.”
“I'm not. I'm just so cold. And tired.”
“I know. I am too. Think of something warm. A mug. Think of a steaming mug of hot chocolate.”
“I'll have coffee.”
“That's good too, Mulder. Try to visualize it and wrap your hands around it.”
“Can I visualize something else I’d like to wrap my hands around?”
“No,” she said as she looked down at him with a smile. “Stick to the mug. Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“You can blow onto it and feel the hot steam as it brushes your face. Do you see it steaming?” His eyes were closed and he didn't answer right away, therefore she asked again, squeezing his hands for a reaction, “Still with me, Mulder?”
“Yes. You're there too, Scully. As elegant as ever in your black suit with a white blouse underneath, collared but unbuttoned to the top. I'm wearing a suit and a tie, too. Must be after a long day at the office.”
“What am I doing?”
“You're drinking a mug of hot chocolate.”
“Where are we?”
“It's a restaurant, I think.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The place is dimly lit, warm and comfy. Our table is square and made of hardwood. We're sitting on either side of the same corner, facing the room on the same angled bench following the shape of the table. It's of wood too and covered with white leather seating.”
“This place looks nice.”
“It is. There is a single red Anthurium flower in a transparent bottle-shaped vase that sits in the middle of the table, and a small basket filled with individual sachets of sugar, salt, pepper and a small bottle of Tabasco sauce too, and then there's our two white mugs; yours being slightly bigger than mine,” he continued, “both steaming.”
“I can almost smell it,” she said, smiling and closing her eyes.
“I can almost hear you.”
“What were the chances of a snowzilla in D.C., Mulder?” Scully asked, wrapping and warming her hands around the mug.
“What are we talking about?” Scully whispered.
Mulder chuckled. “Weather and statistics.”
“The greatest snowstorm occurred January 27-29, 1772. It piled up snow three feet deep from the Blue Ridge Mountains east to the Chesapeake Bay. In Winchester, Virginia, the snow was measured at 2 feet 9,” Mulder replied.
“How do you know all this?”
He shrugged his shoulders, smiling. “After that, there’s been several sporadic episodes every now and then in every decade: in 1922, 1936, 1958, 1979, and finally 1996 where we got about 17 inches.”
Scully raised her eyebrows in awe. “Scully, meet your new partner, Mr. Encyclopedia,” she said with a somewhat deep voice, mimicking her boss.
Mulder smiled. “So, to answer your question: the last snowstorm was just two years ago; chances were very low.”
She turned her face toward the window outside of which snow was fiercely falling. “And yet, it’s very snowing.”
“Can’t we talk about heat? Tropics or something?” Scully asked with a soft smile, her shoulders shivering.
“Party pooper,” he mumbled. “What’s interesting here, Scully, are the statistics.”
“Is that going to help us getting warm or finding a way out of here?” Scully asked.
“Maybe.”
Mulder shivered. To try to get warmer, he slid his arms inside his sleeves and folded them inside his sweater across his chest. And then he took Scully’s hand.
“Give me your other hand, Scully.”
“Mulder, if I open your sweater any wider, you’re going to freeze to death.”
“No, I won’t. Give me your hand.”
When she reluctantly obliged, Mulder pulled her hands to drape her arms over his chest and stomach, pushing her sleeves up to expose her skin against his, and then he lay her flat palms onto his stomach and covered them with his own, squeezing them gently.
“It’s not a sleeping bag, but there’s progress, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I’m so cold,” she breathed, chuckling.
“I know,” he said softly, rubbing her arms. “I’m trying to figure something out. Go back to the mug, Scully.”
“What about the statistics, Mulder?”
He waved his hand to the waitress and asked her to pour some scotch into his coffee. After that, he added a few drops of Tabasco sauce.
“Want some too?”
“In my chocolate? I’ll pass, thank you.” What were the odds that Mulder asked scotch in his coffee — let alone put Tabasco? She wondered. “Scotch and Tabasco sauce, Mulder, really?” He grinned. “Um. So, statistics?”
“Statistics are just numbers to remind us that something is likely or unlikely to happen, Scully. But they're just chances. If I roll a dice and want to get a six, even though I have just one chance out of six, it doesn't mean it won't happen right away with just one single shot.”
“So what you're saying is that they're a mathematical improbability?”
“Sort of, yeah; you can put it that way. What I’m saying is that they shouldn't be taken for granted and if you really want something to happen you should believe in your chances no matter the odds against it.”
“That's nice positive thinking,” she said. “Are you saying too that we can hope for Skinner to land a chopper out of nowhere in the next few minutes? Because that would really come in handy.”
“It certainly would. And nothing is impossible, really. Do you know for example that you have about 1.15% chances of landing on any of the five most valuable properties in Monopoly on your first turn? That's very low, you'll admit that, but that happens.”
“I did not know that, Mulder. Thank you, I’ll surely sleep better tonight.”
“Samantha told me so and I never bothered to check because it always happened to her.” Scully reached out her hand to his forearm. “If you want to talk about sun and heat,” he continued more cheerfully, “do you know that summer on Uranus lasts 21 years?”
“Let’s move out there,” she joked.
“Small technicalities though, it's not summer the way we have it and I don't think you could take the minus 300 degrees.”
“Minus 300? Oh, my God!” She chuckled.
Mulder grinned and raised his mug to his lips, and Scully wondered if he remembered he had added the strangest and most improbable ingredients in it. She looked at him dubious, hiding the faint of a smile that threatened to crack into a laughter.
He drank.
“God!” He exclaimed. He coughed in his fist, and she laughed out loud. “Forget Uranus, Scully. Try this,” he said, handing his mug to her, “and I promise you that this snow outside will soon be nothing more than a bad dream.” She declined but he insisted. “Oh come on, Scully, live a little. We might be stuck here for a little while.”
She reluctantly took the mug and gave him a falsely annoyed smile. Then she raised it to her lips.
“Go on,” he encouraged her as if he were daring her to drink a potion made of spit drops from a toad in heat and snail’s slime. Which to her point of view might have been less disgusting.
And thus she drank, immediately feeling her mouth on fire and bouncing her upper body forward as if she were to throw up.
Mulder laughed and quickly grabbed a napkin on the table to wipe the few drops that spilled out of her mouth. “Swallow, Scully,” he said, still laughing.
She did, and she shook her hands in the air at the strength of the beverage, and then she laughed too, taking the napkin from his hand to wipe her mouth. “Oh my God, Mulder, how can you drink this? It's terrible.”
“Don't you feel warmer already?”
“Well, yeah, but …”
“Mulder, that's sick,” she commented through gritted teeth.
“I had you big time,” he whispered in her ear. She tilted her face to him and smiled.
She pulled her sleeves back down underneath his clothes. “Come on, Mulder, we have to move out of here. The sun is going to set eventually.”
“I'm cold already,” he said regretfully as she withdrew her arms from his skin. She pulled his zipper all the way up. Then he shifted forward to let her free and she painfully helped him up. “What do you propose we do?” He asked.
“We have to find a shelter somewhere, a cave or something to get warm.”
“Like an igloo?”
“Exactly. It'll work as a sleeping bag, Mulder.”
“I can't express how anxious I am to get there.”
As they both stood, Mulder wrapped his arm around her shoulders and Scully wrapped hers around his waist, and they started walking with heavy feet on the creaking ice.
They kept moving slowly forward, each step being a small victory when they started to hear a noise. In this gigantic silent land that only voiced the echoing of the wind, it was a noticeable and foreign noise. They stopped, strained to hear. After a few more minutes all the while they rubbed each other's back, a red snowcat appeared on the horizon, heading toward the huge gap left by the spaceship taking off.
“Oh my God, I don't believe this.”
“Wanna discuss statistics again, Scully?”
“I know!”
“You don't want to believe hard enough, Scully. Betting against the odds is how gamblers make huge money in casinos and now how FBI agents save their butts in frigid land of Antarctica.”
Less than five minutes later, a bearded man in his forties opened the door of his snowcat.
“Are you guys all right?” The driver asked.
“Yes, we are. And thanks to you, we’ll be even better now. Hi, I'm Agent Scully and this is Agent Mulder. We're with the FBI.”
“Greg Parker,” he said.
“It's great to meet you, Greg,” Mulder said as he shook his hand awkwardly, his whole body tensed and cramped.
“What's the FBI doing out here?” Greg asked as he opened the door behind the driver’s seat for them.
“We were investigating the rate of paranormal effects in the melting of the Antarctic glaciers. Our snowcat unfortunately fell into the water,” Mulder said. Scully casted him a reproachful look.
“The FBI does supernatural business?” Greg asked in awe.
“Paranormal —” Mulder corrected, but he was immediately cut off by his partner.
“What are you doing here?” Scully asked, quickly redirecting the conversation toward Greg and hauling Mulder up into the vehicle.
“Our camp is just a few miles south. There are four of us. We saw some sort of a big explosion or something and I wondered if an iceberg had collapsed. Did you see it? Like a geyser or something.”
“You're scientists?” Scully asked as she sat down next to Mulder, ignoring Greg’s question.
“Yes,” Greg said as he sat back behind the wheel. “Here, take my coat and cover yourself up, I'll put the heat up after you've warmed up a little.”
Mulder weakly wound one arm around Scully's shoulders and his other one went to her opposite arm to pull her closer to him. She nestled against him, grabbing the coat and pulling it just under their chins when the engine roared to life.
“How about a little more of coffee, scotch and Tabasco till this place heats up?”
“I don't think so, Mulder; I still can't feel my tongue and throat. I'll stick with my chocolate.”
“Melt the ice, Scully.”
“It’s ‘break’ the ice, Mulder.”
“Melt, break, bite … Whatever.” He slid closer to her, laying his arm atop the crest rail behind her. “Don't keep me on ice.”
She smiled and he smiled too in reply. Then he took his mug and drank all the rest of his beverage, breathing out another “God!” after he finished it.
“Mulder, you're nuts.”
“So I've been told,” he said as he waved the waitress for a refill.
“Looks like it's calming down,” she said, glancing toward the window.
“It does.” He looked down at her. “Are you still cold?”
“A little. But nothing like how I felt before.”
He dropped his arm on her shoulder and rubbed her upper arm. When the waitress arrived at their table he ordered two Irish coffees instead of his refill.
“There,” he said, “no weird spicy sauce anymore. Irish coffee is a real thing consisting of hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar, stirred, topped with thick cream.”
“Sounds promising. Are you trying to get me drunk on working hours?”
“I'm trying to get you warm, Scully.”
“Cheers,” he said after the drinks were served.
“Cheers,” she said. She clicked her glass to his and drank a sip. “Oh, this is so much better than chocolate.”
He casually wiped the whipped cream off the above of her lips with his thumb and she put down her glass to grab a napkin while he licked his thumb.
“I knew you'd like it. So, um, tell me. About that resignation idea —”
“I won't resign, Mulder.”
“Okay, good.” He nodded and stared down at her. “Good,” he repeated.
She nodded too, knowingly, and stared back at him.
“I meant every word I said. Back then.” He said sullenly after a silent moment, and he squeezed her shoulder gently.
“I know, Mulder.”
There was another thoughtful minute. “And that damn bee!” He exclaimed all of a sudden. “Tell me about odds!”
She chuckled and they locked their eyes again. It lasted a long moment. Then eventually he put his glass down and wrapped her tighter, cupping the back of her head to pull her against his chest and burying his nose in her hair, smelling her. She closed her eyes. That was what she last remembered before waking up in the middle of Freezingcoldville, a warm embrace from a man whom she loved in more ways than one, altogether compulsively expressing their mutual love and respect and soothing; overcoming insecurity and chasing away the paralyzing fears and mad uncertainties due to the mad realm of their non-existent mundaneness.
She inhaled deeply, readying herself to pull back from him and she felt his lips on her forehead. She tilted her face up and stared at him as he kept stroking the back of her hair. His face was calm, his breathing full, and his eyes tenderly smiling. After all they had been through all these years — and this last Antarctic episode wouldn't contradict her —, she knew it would be hard if not impossible to find a man that she'd love and respect more than this one. They cared about each other in a way she’d only imagined could be possible in a mother-child relationship. It wasn't that she childized Mulder, far from it. Not all the time, anyway. But hugging him warmed her from heart to toes; it made her feel complete to the very core of herself. Made her feel home. His eyes were locked on hers like a harmless tripwire. Maybe not even completely harmless. Or like a strand of DNA into a knot, or like two sides of a personality, inseparable Siamese. She didn't know what their gaze was like. She felt overwhelmed. She cupped the nape of his neck, almost digging her sharp nails into his flesh, and she broke eye contact to press her lips onto his cheek, fluttering her eyes shut again. When she eventually broke the kiss, he held her tight and nestled his tucked face into the crook between her neck and shoulder, breathing her in.
“Guys. Hey, guys, we're here.”
Greg’s voice came out as a charm-breaker and it took Mulder and Scully a few seconds to register where they were. They looked at each other awkwardly, still completely covered under the heavy coat — save for their heads. Snuggled under Mulder’s arms, Scully sat straight again and looked around.
“We've got satellite phones if you want to call someone to come pick you up,” he continued. “And coffee and tea and chocolate and everything.” Scully chuckled softly. “Um, yes. Great. Thank you,” Mulder said. “We'll be out in a minute.”
Greg closed the snowcat door behind him, letting the icy wind engulf inside for fractions of a second before he went away.
“You okay?” Mulder asked.
“I’m much better, thanks. You?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other, their faces inches away. Then Mulder stood, taking their impromptu coat-blanket as he did, and told Scully to keep it, handing it to her. When she averted her eyes indecisively, he began to move, his arm reaching toward the door handle.
“Mulder,” she called out softly, stopping him short in his track as she took his hand.
He turned around to look at her and squeezed her hand back, and she guided him to sit again.
“That was real, wasn't it?”
“What was?”
“That … coffee dream. I mean, um, I know it wasn't really real. But it felt real. It felt like we were there together — wherever that was — in communion. I mean I don't even know how to describe it, it was like you were really physically there with me.”
“I felt the same,” he said reassuringly.
She nodded her head and they stared into each other's eyes again. It reminded her so much of when he had tried to kiss her in his hallway. She remembered him saying “I'm sorry” afterward; he’d thought he had done something wrong. Now she was torn between the fear to lose all the trust and friendship they had built along the years and the aching urge to take this relationship to the next, intimate level. She took his other hand, squeezed them as she lay them in her lap and closed her eyes, struggling and inwardly cursing herself for her lack of courage and forcing herself to get it together.
“If that's what you’re struggling with,” he murmured in her ear, “I'm not as spooky as some former colleagues of mine like to call me.”
She chuckled and opened her eyes, squeezing his hands again. “I don't believe you are,” she said gently. “I'm a bit, um, nervous is all.”
“Close your eyes, Scully.”
She looked at his hazel eyes glowing with sincerity and affection a few more seconds, and then she did as she was told. Two seconds later, she felt his lips move onto hers, firm and tender, velvety and warm. She instantly gave herself up to the moment. The delicate touch of his mouth filled her head with lust and sent shivers down her spine. They relished each other for some time and she couldn’t help but to invite her tongue to have a taste of his lips, too. When she did, Mulder broke apart and pulled back, just enough to look at her. He smiled softly and she smiled back.
Scully pulled at his hands so he resumed kissing her and they moved in again. This time, Mulder let go of Scully’s hands and slid his palms all the way up to her shoulders, then to her neck, to finally embrace her face in his large and warm hands. She enclosed his arms between the two of them by winding her arms around his neck while he angled her face to kiss her more deeply, his nose nuzzling her cheek. She felt weightlessness in her stomach as she let his tongue in and welcomed it with her own. Her breathing was full and her heart went into rhythms she hoped would not lead straight to ventricular fibrillation; she was melting under his touch. And there was something odd, too. After a while, she reluctantly pulled away, bringing their foreheads together. His eyes were still closed.
“Mulder,” she called gently, caressing his tired face.
He opened his eyes and stared right into hers.
“Sleeping bag?” He asked with the faint of a smile and she chuckled. “I’m only talking with medical interest, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated. “Maybe. We’ll see. But, Mulder?”
“Hmm?”
“You taste like coffee and scotch.”
“Whoa. You too? I wondered if I’d imagined that chocolate flavor in your mouth.”
“Is this real now?”
“I surely hope so.” He took her hand off of his face while she nodded, and he kissed her knuckles. “Come on,” he said, standing up and keeping her hand in his, “it’s going to look suspicious. Care for a coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think they have Tabasco sauce, too?”
“Ha ha! Greg did say they had ‘coffee and tea and chocolate and everything’. So who knows? What do you think the odds are?”