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Two days. Two (almost) full days without seeing her. Without nor seeing nor talking to her, and furthermore with nothing to do.
And it was well known Fox Mulder could not live without something on his hands, be it monsters to chase or governments to bring down.
Two full days of intense nothing, he had walked up and down his apartment a thousand times, he had sprawled down on the couch just as many and then got up again after a solid thirty seconds.
He had been thinking about Scully. Well to be honest he had been thinking about Scully again, nothing new under the sun.
Something in his mind had finally clicked and he had realized how stupid and blind he had been. Hell he had probably felt something for her from day one, from the moment she had entered his room during their first case in Bellefleur, wet and worried about those punctures on her back. It had come so natural for him to open up about his past and his quest to find the truth.
Under very particular circumstances, he had found the courage to say the three words and she had given him the most Scully-esque answer, exactly the kind he was expecting to receive and that had made him smile like a fool while she walked away. He could swear he had seen a little smile on her face then, when she was turning around. Well maybe it had all been in his head but a man can dream after all, can’t he?
He had started bouncing his ball and he almost missed the knock at the door. His inner self reacted with an almost pavlovian response, as he already knew who was on the other side of the door, he had come to recognize her knocking pattern after a while, as people do.
The old lady next door. Why on Earth was the lady knocking at his door at nine in the evening was a mystery, and it made him turn his eyes and groan in annoyance, at least internally.
“How can I help you?” - he asked, trying to be as polite as possible.
“Good evening Mr. Mulder could you please stop making that noise? My husband’s not feeling well and he would like to rest a bit” - she was so small, wrinkly a sweet and he instantly felt ashamed, he hadn’t even realized it was that late. He hand’t even realized he was standing on the doorway wearing nothing but a large tee and his boxers. Shit.
“Yes ma’am of course. I’m sorry about the noise” - he smiled again, as embarrassed as ever, she thanked him.
He opted for a long, warm shower, after discarding the idea of a run. It was too cold and he wasn’t in the right mood.
Mulder almost jumped off his skull when he came back to the living room with just a towel lazily wrapped around his waist and he saw Scully on his couch.
She was reading... maybe one of his books? And she looked as she was in her own living room. She had also brought beers.
“Scully! Did you wait for me to have gone in the shower to sneak in and steal my books?”
“Yes exactly, because I knew I wouldn’t have been able to find… Dhalgren anywhere else.” - she gave him that playful grin that made his insides turn, bend and knot.
“Uuh, one of the weirdest sci-fi novels, quite endearing, Scully”
“Or maybe you realized I was in the shower and you couldn’t resist the idea of seeing me like this” - a small, playful grin only got him an eye roll on her part, without interruptions in her reading.
The little moments of banter had momentarily erased the consciousness of his extremely interesting attire. Not that Scully hadn’t seen him like that before of course, but he suddenly felt shy. He could swear she had hinted a smile as he was going back to put some clothes on though.
“Shut up Mulder. And be quick!”
Returning from the bedroom in a wrinkly, yet soft t-shirt and jeans, Mulder realized his partner had not only brought beers, but also what appeared to be take away boxes, white and inviting. He hummed in approval.
Taking in the whole scene he also noticed that the Scully sitting on his couch was his actual favorite Scully; casual, everyday Dana Scully was wearing light-wash jeans and a tight, black sweater.
“Is this a date?” - she looked up at him, shaking her head slowly. Was that a trace of guilt in her expression?
“Skinner called me about an hour ago, he emailed me some files about a murder.”
“And you came here right away”
“Well, yes”
“With food and alcoholic beverages…”
“We need food to survive, Mulder”
“Totally not a date, then.”
“Totally”
His shit-eating grin spread wide, instantly. She could’ve waited till the morning to discuss this, he was sure, but she had instead gone directly to his apartment. Not unusual, not new, yet it never failed to make his heart feel a little bigger, fuller.
As it had turned out, Scully hadn’t driven to Mulder’s apartment late on a Sunday night to steal his books, or to glance at his bare chest for that matters.
And she hadn’t come for a date. Not in the conventional understanding of those occasions anyway, but if there’s something they had never been, both individually and as partners, that was conventional and normal. And, maybe, the perfect ending to a long, boring weekend, was a night filled with greasy takeout and gruesome pictures of unexplainable deaths.