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After the burning of the X-Files, a morbidly poetic end to the most significant chapter in either of their lives thus far, they were shuffled to and from the bull pin and various sundry departments for the next few weeks, a pair of conjoined black sheep. Scully supposed their superiors presumed they were laced together with the sinew of superstition and paranoia, inseparable for fear of killing the other, or worse, creating a far more terrifying entity upon separation.
When they were assigned to surveillance, Scully attended to her duties to the best of her abilities despite her preoccupation with the dissolution of the X-Files and Agent Fowley’s undetermined loyalties to her partner. Mulder, however, to absolutely no one’s surprise, least of all his superiors, would go along with the tasks well enough but could be found in and out of unaffiliated offices, skirting around Fowley and Spender, trying to ascertain any information that would wiggle free of the red tape wound around the fate of the X-Files.
Skinner had about two weeks of this behavior before reassigning them temporarily to Texas to aid the FBI agency in Dallas. “You’ll be there for about three weeks,” he tells them over their plane tickets and hotel accommodations laid out neatly before each of them. “You’re on temporary assignment until their additional agents report back in from their investigations in Waco.” He closes his own file, adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses, and gives them each a weighted gaze, lingering on Mulder, who returns it with a rebellious cock of the head.
“Take this opportunity to clear your heads. Get out of DC and back out in the field. I strongly urge both of you to consider your futures here at the Bureau. Don’t go out in the wilderness looking for ghosts; you won’t find them, and if Dallas’ A.D. gives me one whisper that you’re getting into anything… spooky,” Scully can swear she sees the corner of his lip quiver in amusement, “I’ll personally ensure you’ll never see the X-Files again. Understood?”
“That threat leaves the possibility that the X-Files will be reopened,” Mulder notes. “Am I to understand this is a… test of some sort?”
“Agent Mulder, the fate of the X-Files is way above either of our pay-grades. I don’t need to tell you what I would do if I were in control of those events, but, as it is, I am not. I am, however, in control of your current assignment. Dallas needs agents and, to be perfectly honest, you don’t have a place here. Whether it’s the X-Files or not, you’ll be given new assignments when you return three weeks hence.”
Scully reaches forward as Skinner speaks, fingering through the plane tickets and hotel accommodations. Seats 22E and 22F on a Boeing 737, paid courtesy of Uncle Sam. She wonders if Mulder will give her the window seat on the flight over the desolate sun-scorched plains. She mentally runs through the catalogue of her wardrobe and determines it worthwhile to stop by a shopping mall before their flight for some more seasonable clothing.
“Nothing spooky?” Mulder presses. “No horror movies or haunted houses? Can’t even pay my respects at the Goatman’s Bridge, Dealey Plaza? What the hell else is there to do in Dallas, huh?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Mulder.” Skinner glowers.
“I suppose I do,” Mulder laughs darkly, then sweeps up his papers and makes his escape, slamming the door haphazardly behind him. Scully offers an apologetic shrug to Skinner and follows him.
These days, she thinks sardonically, she is always following in Mulder’s footsteps, for better or for worse. Conjoined black sheep indeed.
Within a week they’re in the sweltering city of Dallas. Texan summers are notoriously merciless and this June is no different. From the second Scully steps off the plane she’s enveloped in an unwelcome layer of sweat that makes her hair fluff up uncharacteristically and the foundation melt right off her skin, leaving her freckled and rosy-cheeked. They’re situated in a motel within two miles of the agency right across from a strip of bars and nightclubs, and by some divine intervention, the establishment boasts a modest swimming pool.
Their actual assignment is lackluster at best and mind-numbing at it’s worst. Scully was lead to believe there would be a great deal of work to be done, with Dallas short-handed, but it often seemed their director was scrambling for work for them to do and they were back in their hotel rooms by five pm every day, weekends guaranteed off. In her evenings, Scully finished a half dozen columns for various medical journals that the X-Files had perpetually put off and still had time to spare, which she devoted to working through the books she’d packed with her. When she wasn’t reading those, she was cooling off in the pool, floating in the chlorinated waters, her hair rendered a crimson halo, freckled limbs stretched before her.
And sometimes, sometimes, she spent her evenings with Mulder.
If she thought that the X-Files had set them adrift from the FBI mainstream before, it was nothing compared to now. She knew from her undergraduate psychology courses that survivors of tragedy are bound together in ways tighter and more inextricable than family or marriage. She dimly considered asking one of the female agents she worked with out to the bars or clubs, or hell, even just for coffee, but what the hell would she talk about? Her disgraced status from the Hoover Building? Her laughable research in the scraps left of the X-Files?
The final nail in the coffin was, damn it, she was bored. The X-Files had fostered a cortisol addiction in her that far rivaled her once nicotine addiction and the most stressful thing in her day-to-day was the Dallas traffic. In the same vein as she found herself inexplicably attracted to dangerous boys with marijuana and fast cars in high school, she was drawn to Mulder and the dangers his company promised.
Mulder was tolerating the assignment better than expected —as far she could tell. He often went to the Y to play basketball and swim in the Olympic swimming pool. In the late evenings he was at a dive bar across the street from the hotel, knocking back bourbon whiskeys and shelling sunflower seeds by the dozen. It occurred to her to examine him for signs of alcoholism, particularly after he knocked on her hotel room door late one night, bourbon dripping off his languid lips, mildly suggesting they hit up Dealey Plaza and find that grassy knoll together. But she was just as bored as he was, so who was she to criticize him for his methods of distraction?
One Friday evening, dressed as casually as she dared in a button-down spaghetti-strap dress, she walked across the street and into the bar she’d seen Mulder so many times come-and-go from.
“Well, well, well. You’re not one of my usual barflies,” he crows at her as she enters. The bar has little else but a smattering of college students and middle-aged men. Mulder stands out in jeans and a blue cambric button-down, nursing a Budweiser and a small mountain of peanut shells.
“I should think not,” she smiles at him, then clambers precariously into the barstool beside him and orders a vodka cranberry.
“Finally sick of trying to drown yourself in the pool?” He quips. She flushes hotly with the realization he must have been watching her in her navy blue bikini while she cooled off.
“I’m taking a break from my efforts,” she grins. “There’s always tomorrow, after all.”
“Maybe I’ll come help you sometime. Finish the job,” he laughs. The bartender sets down her vodka cranberry and she smiles politely, taking a sip. “My tab,” Mulder directs him by way of payment.
“I’m surprised you’re not out with Agent Spinel,” he remarks. Scully remembers her vividly, a willowy brunette with green eyes not dissimilar to Mulder’s.
“And why’s that?”
“She asked me about you.”
“Uh-huh. What’d she ask?”
“Age, history, marital status,” he says casually.
“Sure she wasn’t trying to see if you were single?”
“I'm obviously no expert, but it seemed to me she was trying to suss out if you were single.” He raises his beer towards her in respect. “Spinel your type, Scully?”
“I don’t know if I’ve had enough drinks to really answer that question, Mulder.”
“Whoa, now I really wanna know the answer.”
“Is Agent Spinel your type?” She takes two big-girl swallows of her cranberry vodka to give her courage.
Mulder shrugs. “When it’s been this long, I feel like damn near any girl’s my type. But if we’re being selective here, not in particular, no.”
Her mind races with how long “this long” had been and just what his type was, but Agent Fowley’s hawk-eyed gaze strikes a bitterness through those fantasies.
“I thought about asking her to dinner,” she tells him instead, “in a friendly way, mind you, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell to talk to her about. What the hell do normal people talk about over dinner, Mulder?”
“That’s a fantastic question. Should open an X-File on that. Oops, too soon?” He serves her a rakish grin and tips back his Budweiser.
“No, but seriously, this job has taken a lot of things from me. My sister, my health, my love life, my reputation… but I didn’t expect it to take my ability to hold a normal conversation.”
“S’not so bad, Scully. Who wants to talk to normal people anyway, huh?”
I do, she snaps, but she knows that isn’t quite true. She decides to interrogate Mulder while she has him and asks, “When you were in, um,” she polishes off the rest of her drink and gestures to the bartender for a refill, “in high school, what social group did you fit into?”
Mulder snorts. “Not even the geeks liked me, Scully. I mostly kept to myself until I got into college. I got shit for ‘taking on airs’ and going off to Oxford, but once I got there, well.” He laughs darkly. “Let’s just say, instead of friends, I slept with anyone who would have me.” Mulder typically leaves suggestions of his sex life at deflective jokes, so the admission leaves her startled. She examines him closely for tell-tale signs of humor but it’s absent besides a sardonic demeanor.
“Anyone? Does that mean…?”
He shoots her a pointed look and she giggles into her drink. She waves her hand towards him apologetically. “I’m sorry, you’re being honest with me and I’m just being a jerk about it. I can’t say I was much better in high school or college, myself.”
“Is it too soon to get an answer to my question…?” He trails off and fixes her with a puppy-dog gaze. He is far too handsome in this cramped dive-bar in this sweltering city and she isn’t quite liquored up enough for this.
“I have a feeling if I answer your lewd question I’m going to find myself regretting it.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he smirks. She tilts her head back with the force of her eye-roll.
“Something tells me I’ll live to regret this,” she mutters, “let’s just say, before my assignment to the X-Files, I may have had a couple of female friends who I considered to be… more than friends.”
Mulder nods, quantifying her in this new light. “Uh-huh. Do you still, uh… lean that way?”
“I’m selective of whom I find attractive regardless of their gender,” she says strategically. “Does that answer your question?”
The truth of the matter was it had been a long time since anyone took up much space in her mind besides Mulder, Mulder, Mulder — man, woman, or Reticulan, and it left her bereft in more ways than one.
She watches him chew the inside of his cheek, a Mulderism indicating he wants to say something, and the snake on her lower back itches unbearably. “Your turn,” she directs.
“You ever hear of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Scully?”
“As far as I’m aware, I just fueled your imagination for the next decade, so it’s the least you could do.” The vodka has crept into the back of her throat and loosened her tongue. She can feel the lazy, warm smile on her lips and the hot flush rising up her chest. She leans towards him surreptitiously, close enough to smell his pine aftershave, “I’m asking, but I sure as hell won’t tell, Mulder.”
He leans towards her, brushes the framing her cheek aside, and whispers in her ear, beer-laden and warm.
“Once.”
Then, with a lingering hand at her waist, he raises his other hand and asks for two shots of tequila. She doesn’t doubt he can feel the delicious shudder that races down her spine.
Her mind races with the implications but she decides not to pursue the matter and instead savor the pricelessness of the secret he’s given her. He hands her a shot glass and lime wedge, then starts shaking salt onto his hand.
“What’re we drinking to?” She asks lazily, intoxicated on their shared secrets.
“In memoriam the X-Files, Scully,” his grin is tempered with sorrow. He raises his shot-glass to her.
“In memoriam,” she concurs, then takes her shot.
Lick. Shot. Bite. She drops the spent lime wedge into the shot-glass and licks her lips, tingling with acidity and salinity.
“What the hell are you wearing, anyway?” He drawls, bottom lip glistening with lime juice. She considers licking it off for him, especially when he casually snaps the strap of her dress. “Seein’ more skin since…”
“Since…?” She presses, curious and afraid of what he’ll say. Don’t say Philadelphia, please… The humiliation of the photos the investigators demanded she stand naked for has never left her, neither the fact they were in that damned filing cabinet beside Mulder’s desk. For the first time, she’s a little glad it’s burned to ashes.
“… Bellefleur,” he mumbles and has the decency to look embarrassed.
She laughs with relief. “Our first case, huh?”
“I thought I had been sent the FBI’s sexiest sleeper cell spy and had no idea how I was going to turn you down,” he smiles at her. “Turns you were just scared of some mosquito bites.”
She whacks him on the shoulder good-naturedly. “Knew you were looking.”
“You asked me to. And besides, what about when I was dying from fever and woke up, in your bed, half-naked?”
“That was quite a different matter. I rather saved your life, and I’m a medical doctor. You’d be far from the first naked person I’ve seen.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t sneak one unsavory peek? Not even a little one?”
The truth of the matter was, she’d tried not to. She was furious, beyond stressed, and terrified for his life as he mewled from the depths of fever to her for reprieve. There may have been one unsavory look from her as she dragged his briefs down his hips, but it was quickly tempered with the fear she’d witness him like this again on a steel cart with a Y-incision across his chest.
“As I said, Mulder,” she swirls her third vodka-cranberry before taking a sip, “it was a different matter.” She gestures to the bartender once he finishes serving two women hard ciders. “How much for a pack of Morley’s?” She’s been craving the relief having something between her lips gives — her own form of oral fixation. Besides, it’d been how many years since she’d smoked? She’d proven she could quit, so why not indulge for a night?
“Five—“
“I’ll give you a ten if you don’t sell her any,” Mulder pipes up, sliding the promised bill towards him. The bartender eyes them each warily, and Scully can tell Mulder has his loyalty. She groans. The bartender takes the ten and, by way of apology, fixes her another drink to replace her half-finished one.
“For Christsake, Mulder, you drilled a hole in your fucking skull—“ it feels delicious to curse at him like this, “—and took ketamine without ever asking my permission, so why can’t I risk my life for once?”
He cocks an eyebrow at her. It’s the same eyebrow-cock he gives her whenever they’re on a case in the middle-of-nowhere-Americana and she’s thrown perfect hard science in his face to debunk his bizarre arguments, not dissimilar to when she’d ask a question to her late father, Ahab, and he knew she already knew the answer.
“Careful on those vodka-cranberries, Scully, I don’t want to have to potato-sack you back to your room,” he says casually.
She’s drank too much for her limit (three drinks, a hard rule since her med-school days) and the pulsating club music that had been drowned by the crackly noise of the television blaring a ballgame was coming to the forefront. The surface of her drink ripples in reaction to the soundwaves and she tries to discern the beat despite the extraneous noise.
“That club gets so fuckin’ loud on the weekends,” Mulder sighs. “Goddamn college kids.”
Maybe it’s the three-going-on-four vodka-cranberries with a tequila shot on top. Maybe it’s the tedium of being exiled from her home territory and relegated to a braindead detail in Dallas. It’s certainly exaggerated by the dull pulse of righteous fury she feels towards her partner, his simple-minded misogynistic possession over her at once titillating and infuriating. Maybe it’s the way his shirt is shoved carelessly above his elbows, exposing corded arms tanned gloriously by the baking Texan sun.
“You wanna dance?” She blurts.
He eyes her warily. “You’re not serious.” When she doesn’t react, his eyes widen. “You are serious.”
“So what if I am!” She grabs at his arm, laughing airily. “When’s the last time you’ve been in a club, huh, Mulder?”
“What, not to drag some unsavory son of a bitch out? God fuckin’ knows, Scully. You some clubhound or something?”
“I haven’t been since med school,” she tells him, “and my worthless lawyer-boyfriend dumped me for some poor girl in high school during my favorite ABBA song. C’mon, no one knows us, and if you’re half as bored as I am, it’ll at the very least be interesting.”
She stands, tottering in her strappy sandals for a second and his arms come hard around her waist to balance her. “Thanks,” she drawls, then grabs a hand at her waist, “C’mon,” she purrs.
He calls something indiscernible to the barkeep as she entwines her pinky-finger with his and leads him out of the dive-bar to the next door to the right, the brief summer air whipping under her dress and carrying them into the nightclub.
There’s no bouncer to waylay them, only the thunderous cacophony of electronic music and ceaseless flood of bodies, writhing and jumping and rocking to the music. She looks behind her to see Mulder trailing after her, good-humor tempering his glazed-eyed look. She finds an empty square two-feet of space they fit into, chest-to-chest, and there really isn’t any other choice at this point but to dance.
For at least five minutes, they’re not federal agents anymore, bound by inextricable serpentine oaths to a government shadowed in conspiracy, nerves frayed to split-ends by Quantico training and latent post-traumatic stress. The flashing lights, halcyon purples, blues, and reds, render them anonymous and fictitious within the confines of this seedy nightclub in the middle of Dallas. Time, much as it was in Bellefleur back in ’93, is suspended and set adrift as she dances with him. She tries to keep at least a measure of distance as she moves with the blast-beats but the shuffle of the crowd drives her into his chest over and over, and soon his arms encircle her in a loose, warm cage as she sways her hips against him. She isn’t sure if it’s him or her or the pulse of twenty-somethings that spin her back to his, but his hands, too-warm and strong, come to her hips and drive her against him.
“Didn’t know you could dance,” she shouts behind her shoulder over the heavy electronica. He laughs in her ear, deliciously intimate and unmistakably flirtatious. She moves down his body in her dance, feeling profane as she cants her hips to unmistakably brush his groin as she rocks. His fingers ghost over her bare arms and shoulders, raising hellfire as they carve ancient sigils over her Irish-Catholic freckle-tan. Intoxicated, she spins again and hooks her arms around his neck, giggling as she brings them nose-to-nose. His hands move hard against her waist, fingers digging into the flesh with decidedly un-platonic intent.
“I’m more used to the waltz,” he tells her, his eyes an indiscernible color in the nightclub’s lights as she watches his lips curve around the syllables and wishes they were on her, “but I’m adaptable.”
She wants to blame the alcohol bidding her to kiss him then, but she knows it isn’t. It’s the sharp eyes of Agent Fowley as she commands a loyalty over Mulder’s heart more arcane and older than the one Scully had fostered through the fires of consternation. It’s in the desolation she feels in this unspoken loneliness their calling has condemned them to, an isolation so bone-deep they were sent to Texas to escape it. She thinks he can feel it too, from the flutter of his lashes and the curve of his lip as if to move around hers, and the promise of the kiss to come hangs in the air as the song comes to a shuddering stop.
They both look up to see a hot-shot DJ in a full neon sweatsuit taking the stage and shouting indiscernibly over the roaring hip-hop music — not entirely unpleasant, but it’s enough. The spell is broken. He gestures c’mon to her with a jerk of his head and she follows him, more than a little crestfallen. It’s replaced by delight at the rush of chilly air once they’re outside the club, sending goosebumps all over her too-bare skin. She feels a little embarrassed and eager to crawl into a bath and her lumpy queen-sized bed.
“Lemme walk you,” Mulder tells her, winding an arm around her waist, an echo of their prior dance. She lets him lead her back to the motel and to their adjoined rooms, the rustle of crickets on the air and the whirr of the pool filter backing her racing thoughts. She wants to slip into his room and into his bed and arms, all sweat and alcohol and greed, taking only what she wants (which is everything) and leaving no evidence behind in her hunger. She doesn’t think she’s alone as he brings her to a halt before her door. His eyes linger on her, heavy-lidded and hungry. It’s the same look he gives when dogged on a lead and the truth is just before him if only he has the strength to take it for his own. She tilts her head at him, daring him to do so.
“G’night,” he mumbles instead, leaning forward and pressing a clumsy kiss on her cheek, sweeping the other with a heavy hand. And he’s gone, retreated to the chilly AC of his private room.
The shower can’t run cold enough to quench her disappointment, but while her sex-drive would have to wait somewhat later to be sated, their misanthropic dancing did reignite their once deadened bond. She knew as soon as he knocked on her door in the morning, idly suggesting an excellent café to combat their hangover. He didn’t mention her blatant flirtations nor his own susceptibility, instead he gave her a blow-by-blow of the Zapruder film and all the wildest conspiracies of the JFK assassination over coffee and eggs over easy. It felt too good to be able to smile and snark with him in their shared conspiracy, two souls bound by forces far greater than either of them to one another.
She suspects it gave them the strength to sprint through midnight cornfields and conquer the Antarctic in the days to come, but she doesn’t tell him until much, much later.