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Mulder was a disaster in the kitchen.
He was a genius, yes. But he was also a disaster.
Compared to Scully’s sane method of cooking, following all the rules and keeping it all to the book and perfectly in time, creating little mess and little waste, it always looked like a tornado had torn through the kitchen after Mulder had been in there.
Even something as simple as scrambled eggs would take him a fair amount of time and would leave a fine dusting of interesting spices across the countertop and eggshell everywhere.
When he’d been living alone he rarely bothered cooking. He knew how to, but there never seemed much point when he was cooking for just himself. Occasionally he would cook for his mother or Scully, but other than that he didn’t really have any need to.
During Scully’s abduction he’d found himself spending more and more time at Maggie Scully’s place, helping, and often hindering, in the kitchen as she prepared a dinner that could feed an army, but usually only had two stomachs to fill; two stomachs that had very little appetite.
During Scully’s cancer he tried to help where he could, researching foods that would be easy on her stomach, that were full of antioxidants and nutrients that would keep her strong, keep her fighting. Lots of light meals, vegetables that would get moved around on her plate and soup that he would leave in the fridge and know she had tried by the small amount missing in the tub when he would check the next day, but know that ultimately, she couldn’t stomach food. More often than not, he would make these meals in his kitchen before driving them over to hers, not wanting to put any more stress on her than her body was already dealing with by exposing her to the mess that he created with every dish he created.
When Scully was pregnant, and he’d been returned, he often found himself at her apartment, or her at his, cooking something hearty and healthy. He’d tell her he didn’t want her standing on her feet all day, especially after being at work all day. He’d tell her to take a break, go sit on the couch with a book or the television. Half the time she wouldn’t listen, sitting instead at the dining table and complaining at the mess he was making. The rest of the time he would go through when he was done to find her snoring with a spot of drool in the corner of her mouth, hands folded protectively around her stomach.
Those days he always made sure to clean the kitchen before waking her.
When he was in hiding he became very resourceful with what he cooked. It all tasted like ashes in his mouth, but at least he was eating something. At least he was pushing forwards until the day he could see her – see them – again.
When they were on the run she became their primary cook. She was better at quick, easy, simple dishes that didn’t take much to prepare or clean. Things they could cook in minimal motel kitchenettes and with the small camping stove they bought. Things that would fill them up without making them uncomfortable. Things that were cheap enough and healthy enough to sustain a constant road-trip. Things from tins and cans, things that didn’t create leftovers that they had to either throw out and waste, or carry them around with them.
When they moved into their house, he had a lot of time on his hands. Most of it was spent searching, but in those rare moments when even he had to admit that the lines were blurring, he would turn to recipe books. Recipe books that Maggie had gifted them, or that he had ordered from the Library and asked Scully to pick up on her way home. Most days, when he remembered to listen to the alarm that was always set for half five, he would have dinner at least starting to cook by the time Scully got home from the hospital. It was the least he could do. She put up with so much from him, after all. He frequently found himself experimenting, deciding that actually, no, the recipe did not call for coriander so much as cumin.
Occasionally, on particularly clearheaded days, when Scully had managed to drag him from the depths of his despair, he’d bake. Muffins, cookies, bread; it didn’t matter what, and he wasn’t as good at it as he was with meals, but it would make Scully smile, as he presented her with a sticky cinnamon roll or jam on bread, still warm from the oven. They were never elegant: Mulder wasn’t an elegant person. They were rustic, like all of his cooking: like him himself. But that wouldn’t matter to either of them as he swiped chocolate frosting from the corner of her lip with his thumb and stuck it in his mouth to suck it off.
In the few years where they were separated, where she was living with her mom, and then in a house of her own, one much more sprawling than she actually needed, and very un-Scully-like in its sharp lines and impersonal touches, he stopped cooking altogether. He had no reason to. No Scully to cook for. No family to cook for. He certainly didn’t want to eat anything. When he did eat, it would be from tins and cans, a way of dragging himself back to when they were on the run, to the times of seeing her in pain, mourning the loss of their child and her normal life. It was his punishment. He had broken her, and himself, way back then, and never quite managed to fix either of them.
‘Do you want dinner? I can cook whatever you fancy?’ He’d asked at the end of their first official case back at the bureau.
‘Mulder,’ she’d shaken her head, a sad purse to her lips. ‘No. Not tonight. But…’ A hopeful smile from him. ‘Cook something for yourself. You look hungry.’
A million innuendoes raced through his mind as she walked to her car, none appealing to his need to express how desperately he just wanted to sit and have dinner with her, smile at her as she lounged on their sofa in his worn-through Knicks t-shirt in the dim light of their living room.
When Maggie died she left him her recipe books. He spent days and weeks afterwards pouring over them, memorising her little additions, alterations to quantities and timings to master the perfect pot roast or the most sublime soufflé. He started making the recipes that looked the most used, the ones with the pages more worn, more splattered with tomato and surrounded by notes, both faded and fresh. He hadn’t noticed at first, but as he worked his way though he realised that there were darker notes on a couple of the pages, the writing slightly looser though still by the same hand. For when Dana’s sick embellished the chicken and vegetable broth page. Dana’s birthday (reminds her of Ahab) was scrawled under a fish pie recipe that had many other inscriptions about it, adding several various vegetables and altering the amounts of cream and fish used. He wondered if Maggie knew, somehow, that she was going to die. Of course, he thought, she knew she would die, but he wondered if she knew it was coming soon, that she would need someone to pass on the care of her daughter to, and that this was her way of fully entrusting him with that job, in whatever form that took. At that realisation he had made her mother’s lasagne (favourite comfort food, add extra parmesan if dire) and driven it over to her, knocked on the door of her sharp house and proffered the glass dish. A sceptical look, mingled with deep-rooted pain and memory-filled sadness, crossed her face, as if to say ‘are you really bringing me reheatable food after the death of my mother?’ and ‘I’ve had enough of being given reheatable meals to eat alone for a lifetime’ and ‘I’ve been through this enough times with your death and the loss of our son’ and ‘I don’t want to mourn anymore’. And so he shrugged, in the silence, and peeled the foil from the top, showing the extra parmesan. They remained in silence as she took the still-warm tray from him and walked into the depths of her house, leaving the door open, an invitation he could take or leave.
He’d never leave. Not if she didn’t ask him to.
She cried as they ate it straight from the dish. No explanation was needed.
He’d cooked for her because he wanted to make her feel better. Maybe that was the only reason to cook for someone. Maybe that was his only reason.
Maybe that was all they needed.