Work Text:
i.
“Mulder, nothing is out there.” She tapped the windshield.
“Come on, Scully.” His voice was so weightless that she felt the sound waves had done him an injustice. Why stay so near to the ground, why travel through the open windows to meet her when they could get a head start for the sky, reach out to the aliens? First contact. “You don’t believe that. You have alien DNA. You’re out there.”
She could leave him in the dirt. She could put the car into drive and speed through the hills, let those dry Santa Ana winds set beating the heart he’d just unintentionally stopped. But even in that fantasy she was already coming back for him. He leaned on the hood of the car and smiled at her with the old eagerness to please, the insecurity that no amount of cuffed sleeves and ruffled hair could counteract. I need you on this, Scully. She curled her hands around her coffee.
“Nothing is out there now, then.”
ii.
“Scully, it’s me. Turn on channel 4.”
“Why, what is it?”
She was already watching the news. She just wanted to hear him say it, missed the way he couldn’t stop to catch his breath between sentences, the way his feet brushed the ground like gravity had changed.
“UFO sightings in Los Angeles, all across the city in one night. It’s happening right now, Scully; we have to get out there.”
“I don’t know, Mulder. Skinner stuck his neck out to get the X-Files reopened—we can’t just start assigning ourselves cases.”
“Who said anything about a case?”
The time difference was in their favor.
iii.
She’d seen the California sky like this before, in the dead of night, curled into Mulder on a blanket at the Griffith Observatory. He’d bribed the guards into letting them stay out there well past closing. They'd finished the wine. His profile locked into the darkness like pieces of Melissa's old outer space puzzle, painted with clear and obvious pictures to telegraph their placement in the world. Mulder had always seen better at night. What was she doing letting him leave the car without her? Who was she kidding? He'd taken her keys once and she’d never really gotten them back.
She shone her flashlight into the sky, three quick flashes. Mulder jumped like a puppet whose strings had been jerked.
“That isn’t funny.” His eyes were their own flashlights, so bright and proud they warmed her from the inside. It was funny and he loved it. She got out of the car.
“They’re saying it was military testing.” She slammed the door.
“They?”
“I know.” She slid next to him, bumped his shoulder with hers. The stars bore witness.
“Do you think we’ll see it again?” she asked. Her voice was smaller than she’d intended, an echo from another car he’d pulled her out of and another sky spread before them like a blanket. Scully, wake up, you’ve gotta see this. She stretched back 22 years, to a time when I’ve never seen anything like it they’d never known the sky to tear them apart, when it was all possibility. What are they. She touched the ring around her neck and he grabbed her hand. Do you think we’ll see it again, Mulder, do you think we’ll see ourselves like that again
“I do."