Work Text:
"It's a holly jolly Christmas, it's the best time of the year ...."
"Mulder, shut the hell up."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm trying to write this friggin' report about our friggin' trip to that friggin' stupid town. Either shut the hell up or get out."
That does it. I'm outta here, he thought to himself. Bitch can have her peace and quiet. Maybe Duane will come back for her. He managed to remember to grab his jacket and cell-phone before he left the office, slamming the crap out of the door and knowing all the while that he didn’t mean any of what he’d just thought.
Scully stopped typing and watched the door frame shudder. I lost it, she thought. Sometimes, Dana Scully, you are a moron. Recrimination didn't set in totally yet. Something else took over. She didn't quite know how to describe it, but it shook her badly. Literally. Dana Scully sat at her desk, shivering, as if in shock.
It took her a while to calm down and start thinking again. When she did, she realized that had hurt herself more than she had hurt Mulder. If that was possible. Sure, things hadn't being going great in their relationship for a while. She’d meant to sit down with him and work things out, but she hadn't felt ready to deal with it, there hadn't been time .... Excuses. Stupid excuses. And her procrastination had finally led her to blow up at her partner. It hadn't been an all-out screaming match, but they both knew that their less boisterous manner of dealing with deep emotions was perhaps even more demonstrative than yelling matches would have been. Quiet and dangerous. In the best manner of the FBI, she snorted at herself.
Mulder had finally pulled himself out of a funk, no thanks to her, his alleged friend, and what had she done? Told him to go to hell. Sigh. Some days she really wished self-flagellation was her thing. God. What must Mulder be thinking now? The hurt would be worse than any anger he might harbour. And she knew the anger was there. They'd both been simmering for weeks now. Comity hadn't helped. No, definitely, Comity hadn't helped. Neither had Kevin Kryder. But she'd been sure they could work things out.
We still can. I know we can. Swallow our foolish egos and sit down and be honest. Before we kill each other. They wouldn't physically hurt each other, that she knew. But emotions were deadlier than bullets. Gave new meaning to the idea of "dying for each other," didn't it?
She knew Mulder would be back. She just knew. Just as he knew she'd be waiting for him.
Hours later they were both still waiting.
Mulder took the stairs to the basement, knowing that Scully would be waiting. He was too drained to be angry anymore. The hurt had gone too deep to be numbed, but everything else seem to have faded away, until he was just tired and wanted it all to be over. He just wanted Scully to be Scully and their relationship to be what it once had been. He wanted to just be Mulder and to come to work everyday, knowing that no matter what happened, it could never be too unbearable because she would be there and they would work it out. Knowing that comfort again, how easy it was to be with Scully, to talk or to listen to the silences, to exchange a look and understand that somehow they had moved beyond the limited communication most men and women shared. Men are from Mars and women from Venus, but the team busy looking for either alien race was anything but divided by gender.
He knew that Scully would be hurting, too. Probably even worse than he was. After all, this time she was the one who'd let loose. At least she hadn't taken off without him. At least he knew where he could find her. So he opened the door and walked in, wanting nothing more than that it all be over with, that it had never happened, that he had never let the weeks go by without saying something.
Scully had fallen asleep, slumped over her desk, her face going through a chameleon act as the colours of her computer's screen saver danced around and reflected off her glasses. He tip-toed over, took off her glasses, and watched her sleep for a while. Strange how he'd never really thought of watching somebody sleep as one of the most intimate things he could think of.
A couple of hours later Scully jerked awake when the arm she was propped up on finally gave way to numbness, and she hit her head on the desk. Adrenaline rushed around inside her and she jumped up, scaring the crap out of both Mulder and herself. “G-Woman Attacked by Killer Desk” went through her mind.
"Okay?"
"Uh, yeah. I think. You?"
"Yeah."
"Good." So this is what they call a pregnant silence. "What time is it?"
"After midnight."
"Shit."
"Really, Scully, your language today is most unbecoming to one of the Bureau's finest."
"Mulder, this damn report was due today."
"Want me to finish it?"
"No, no. We agreed that I'd do the report and you'd take care of all the blasted forms and the
expense account. It shouldn't take me long. How are you doing?"
"Almost done. Nothing too weird for us to try to explain away in the paperwork this time."
"Speak for your end of things."
"Scully, you mean you're having a hard time telling Skinner it was a cosmic mishap that turned two teenagers into murderous Valley girls?"
Silence descended as Scully ignored that remark to get back to the report. Mulder busied himself searching for those damn receipts for the rental cars; damn, he was *sure* they'd been in his wallet. Maybe at home on the living room table?
Half an hour later Scully was nearly done. God, she couldn't wait to get to bed. But first she had to finish this report and THEN have a heart to heart with Mulder. She was trying to tie everything together in the last paragraph, but something seemed to be preventing her from putting together a sentence that said exactly what she wanted it to. Sigh.
"Mulder?"
"Yeah, Scully?" he was under his desk, now looking for the same receipts, which he'd found, but then dropped somewhere amid the mess of files and forms either on or under his desk. He still wasn't sure if they weren't on his desk.
"How do you define friendship?"
She heard him scuffling around, wondered what the heck he was up to and if she even wanted to know.
"Us."
"What?" She wasn't convinced that she'd heard correctly, given that Mulder was still lost beneath the desk and shuffling papers around.
His head finally poked up and he glanced across at her, waving the receipts in one hand. "Us," he said again.
Us, Scully thought. The word seemed to embody everything she would ever want to define as friendship, and more. She stared at Mulder, his head bent over the calculator now. He suddenly seemed aware of her gaze. Or maybe her silence. He looked up, giving her a smile.
Now I know we'll be able to work things out, she admitted to herself with more than a little
"Why, Scully?"
She recognized the worry in his voice. He thought she was having doubts about continuing their friendship. "I'm trying to explain why Margi and Terry did what they did, why their connection went beyond the fact that they were born at the same time, in the same place. I was wondering if the term "friendship" said it all."
"Only to people like Terry and Margi. Or you and me." He smiled again. "Someone who's never had what we have or they have, who's never been so ... attuned or connected ... or whatever it is we are, Scully, they'd never define friendship the same way. But Skinner will understand what you mean. After all, he knows us. And he knows what we have."
This time she smiled. "What do we have, Mulder? No, you know what? I don't want an answer. Sometimes the undefinable is more comforting."
"Welcome to the X-Files."
"No, Mulder, welcome to us."
Scully turned back to the computer, saved her file, and they both knew that while they still had things they needed to work out, it wouldn't be so hard. After all, they had so much together, experiences nobody else would want to have even as nightmares. But even leaving aside all that, they had the undefinable "us." And it would take more than a simple explainable cosmic phenomenon to shatter it for good.
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