Chapter Text
“Why do you think that we’ve never slept together?”
Mulder chokes on his Coke in response to Scully’s sudden question. He coughs and the soda that was in his mouth dribbles down the front of his white shirt.
Scully keeps her gaze steady on him as he fights for his life in the driver’s seat, coughing residual cola out of his lungs. She’s sitting sideways in the passenger seat with her feet tucked underneath her.
“Does that answer your question?” Mulder asks, his voice hoarse from aspirating soda.
Scully drags her eyes from his pained face down to his now stained shirt and sighs. “Funnily enough, no, it doesn’t.”
She unlatches the glove compartment and hands him a fist full of crumpled fast food napkins. They won’t do much good to the stain blooming on his chest like a gunshot wound.
She shifts her body and peers out the windshield, her eyes narrowing on the house of the man they’re currently staking out. Mulder’s hunch is that this man is selling some kind of miracle tonic that claims to cure blindness. The thing is that it actually works . At first. Whoever drinks it turns up dead a week later. The causes of death have seemingly been unrelated but Mulder thinks they’re connected somehow. Two long hours ago, their target went inside the house and has yet to reemerge.
And Scully is bored out of her fucking mind.
Maybe that’s why she posed the question in the first place. That and the fact that she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks thanks to the constant array of flat motel mattresses she is treated to on the FBI’s dime. So she might be a little delirious.
“Do I need to remind you of someone by the name of Assistant Director Walter Skinner?” Mulder asks. He abandons his drink in the cup holder, not wanting another Scully Question to make him dry drown.
Scully waves her hand. “Mulder, that man doesn’t know half the shit we get up to while we’re out in the field. They make it so easy.”
“Please explain to me how easy it is, Scully.”
“Okay,” she nods, accepting his challenge. “They pair us up. Two young, smart, attractive people. They get us to trust each other and rely on each other more than anyone else. They practically spoon feed us our own codependency. Then, we have to spend countless hours together. Seeing each other more than our own families. Traveling the country, staying in sleazy motels. It’s the perfect setup for a torrid love affair.”
Mulder stares at Scully across the dark car.
He blinks a few times. “Scully, what the fuck are you talking about?”
She turns and looks him in the eyes, holding his gaze. Her shoulders deflate as she sighs. She rubs a hand down her face.
“I don’t know, Mulder. I’m bored.”
He laughs. “You’re starting to sound like me.”
Scully sits up straight. “Oh my god. You’re right. Is this how it starts?”
“Welcome to the club, Scully.”