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Dana Scully is standing outside Fox Mulder’s motel room in jeans and an over sized tee shirt emblazoned with the foreboding initials of their institution. Her hair is wet and tucked behind her ears. Above them, the Texas summer sun is setting on their strip of urban sprawl and, somewhere nearby, on the yawning wound next to the Dallas Federal Building.
Just another day of domestic terror in America.
“You said something about a pizza?” She asks without preamble, shouldering her way into his room, leaving the dread-filled sky aloft with dust for the purr of his air conditioning. The room is rife with the aroma of pepperoni pizza.
“Your diet is terrible.” He retorts, shutting the evening out, “A bagel for breakfast, then you go ahead and skip lunch, and now here you are eating my pizza.” A ribbing for sure, he knows full well why they both had to skip lunch today.
Scully has made herself comfortable on the foot of his bed, eating a slice while leaning over the pizza box and showing a startling lack of decorum.
“Well,” she says, through a mouthful, “Maybe once I am summarily dismissed for my role in today’s debacle, I’ll have the time to focus on healthy eating.” The first third of her slice disappears. “You could have ordered me a salad.”
Earlier that afternoon they had stood among the smoldering debris and settling ash, amid the scream of fire trucks and ambulances and pedestrians, as those least concussed from the blast attempted to sort of the kind of error that causes a building to explode in downtown Dallas. The SAC was dead, that much was clear, and the advisory agents who helped lead the search in the misidentified building took no time at all to decide that Agents Mulder and Scully could be chargeable scapegoats.
It was almost fifty minutes after the explosion that Mulder was able to press a bottle of water into her dusty hand and nearly two hours after that that they were finally dismissed. Their piteous statements had been recorded and re-recorded for posterity, a joint hearing in DC was scheduled for the following morning, and plane tickets were booked for the crack of dawn.
Their rental car was ensconced in a neighborhood of roadblocks and caution tape, so they left the wreckage they had tried to valiantly to prevent in a taxi.
Mulder was grateful he had insisted on booking a motel for the two of them outside of the auxiliary field agent’s group rates, much to the chagrin of their AD. In a less appealing parallel universe, he envisions them separately performing their penance in the mundane beige of motels everywhere while less condemned agents came and went in the parking lot. Scully is on his bed eating pizza so at least he has that going for him in this universe. Tonight he just wants to forget about today.
Mulder pulls up a desk chair to the foot of the bed and joins her in the box. His knee knocks hers a bit so she tucks it further beneath herself to give him his space, opting then to graduate to a hasty napkin plate cradled in her right hand as she begins her second piece.
“Oh, Scully, don’t be so catastrophic.” He grabs the biggest slice and digs in. “Those field agents are scrambling to cover their own asses. We’re just playing lip service to OPR. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time - or the right place at the wrong time, if you ask me - and we’ll be back running routine surveillance and auditing sugar beet farmers by tomorrow afternoon. Cross my heart.”
He says this around a massive bite, haphazardly crossing his chest while a pepperoni dangles on the cheesy bridge between his mouth and the slice before dropping back into the box.
“Someone’s got to get blamed for this, Mulder,” Scully says, snatching the fallen pepperoni, “and I don’t see anyone in cuffs. We were the last agents in the room with SAC Michaud. They are looking to us to find out what went wrong.”
“Well, he’s dead so they can’t ask him. We know what happened in there, Scully,” He’s exasperating her, he knows, but he can’t help but feel oddly vindicated about this whole matter. He was right, finally, after all, and he’s sure someone higher up will see that here.
Scully flops her slice back on the box and leans back against the headboard in a huff, clearly not feeling the same way. She folds her arms across her chest and he wonders obliquely if she will eat anymore pizza.
“You’re usually so worried about someone taking us down and now here we are - being blamed for the explosion is just the cherry on top. Why aren’t you perturbed by this at all? This level of paranoia is usually your expertise.”
“We’re not terrorists, Scully. We may be royal pains in their asses but we’ve never knowingly endangered innocents in the name of our cause. Besides, the X-Files is closed, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“Termination?” She posits thoughtfully.
“Paid vacation?” He’s hoping.
“Demotion?”
“Firing squad?” Her eyebrows skyrocket up her forehead. She can’t understand why this seems like such a trivial matter to him.
“Or maybe they just split us up once and for all.”
An ax drops on the mood. Mulder sighs and stretches back in his chair, spilling his legs towards Scully. He nudges her foot dangling off the edge of his bed with his own.
“Want to watch a movie? Casablanca’s on channel 34 in ten minutes.” Let’s just eat some pizza, he wants to say, it’s been a long, shitty day and I just want to sit here and eat some pizza.
Not surprisingly, she pops up to her feet with her eyes on the door. Mulder is well aware that she is operating on a different plane of perspective about this matter. He sighs, his pizza suddenly losing its appeal.
“I need to debrief myself on this whole situation and review my notes, Mulder. I feel like we’ve already been caught with our pants down on this and I want at least a modicum of exonerating evidence before our hearing tomorrow. You should consider doing the same.” She fixes him all at once with a pointed, pleading, and disapproving look.
“Relax, Scully. Eat some pizza.” Mulder fixes her with one of his own.
“For someone who was trapped in a vending room with 10 gallons of explosives not six hours ago, you are acting rather glib about this whole situation.”
“Paid leave, worst case scenario, I promise. Either that or they will send us straight to East Bumfuck, Idaho, to investigate innocent farmers and their heaping piles of manure. Actually, maybe that would be the worst case scenario.” Although, he actually likes bad diner food and Scully as his captive audience while they drive the requisite four hours to get to any small town meriting investigation in the heartland, but the smug satisfaction it gives his superiors to send him there makes him sick.
“You really think they are going to keep us on domestic terrorism after this? Geez, Mulder, a little gravity might keep you from starving to death in this fantasy of yours.”
She’s edging towards the door now, her arms folded against his brassiness. He wishes he wasn’t ruffling her feathers so much, but he’s getting irritated with her irritation. He wants her to sit with him and forget about this shitstorm for a minute. She may be right after all, this may end more poorly for them than he is hoping. It usually does.
“Take my word for it, Scully, we’ll be neck deep in shit again before you know it.” He knows she’s already more than halfway gone. They'll be no convincing her back onto his bed tonight. So much for this universe too.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she says wearily, her eyebrows slipping into something nearing defeat.
He lets her leave then, lets her leave him with paltry justifications and a half eaten box of congealing pizza on top of his bedspread.
Out of doors, the night had dipped into creamy twilight sending the street lamps flickering into their nightly obligations. Behind her, the void that held Mulder sucks into oblivion and she is left alone with her solitary concerns for their partnership, for her career, and for the X-Files.
Back in her room, Scully flips the TV to channel 34.