Work Text:
It’s been a hard day for him. It’s not the anniversary of anything in particular, it’s just that he woke up and it was one of those mornings where it felt like a bearing was pressing down on his chest, pinning him to the cushions of his beat up leather couch.
He even considered calling in sick, but that would just lead to Scully showing up to his apartment to inquire about his health and then he’d have to explain something he barely understood himself. Just a hard day. Just one of those.
The bore of expense reports and backlogged paperwork keeps his head relatively occupied throughout the day, and by the time lunch rolls around, he almost feels okay. Hoping to shake off the remains of whatever was weighing down on him, he throws down a file he was barely even skimming and stands up with a huff, already reaching for his coat as Scully drags her eyes from a motel receipt up to him.
“Lunch?” he offers, and she nods, reaching for her coat and purse as well.
They take a longer lunch, going a bit out of their way for some marvelous fried chicken at Hutton’s. His spirits are lifted as he watches her dipping her wings in spicy jam and licking her fingers afterwards. It’s a treat to see this after those agonizing months where she could barely keep much food down due to her sickness, and the following couple of years where she’d developed an affinity for healthy superfoods and pretended she’d never enjoyed a greasy carb in her life. It used to make him sick, to think that her sudden health kick was probably just a deep-seated fear that stepping a toe out of the ‘healthy’ line could trigger the return of her illness.
But they’re past that, now. They’re past so many things, over so many hurdles. He steals another one of her french fries just to see her eyebrows scrunch up in indignation and laughs, light as a feather. That feeling from the morning is already forgotten.
“And I’m sure she thought I was fooled, but she was red as a beet, Mulder! Then I go into Skinner’s office,” she says, grinning and leaning over the table at him, “and I swear to you there was lipstick on his collar. Just a little bit, on the corner.” She reaches out, touching his collar, her index finger running over the spot she’s referring to.
“That could still be a coincidence, Scully,” he says. For all that he’s the believer and she’s the skeptic, they’re the exact opposite when it comes to office gossip. “I mean, it’s Skinner! I can’t see him making out with his secretary at all, let alone during office hours!”
Scully just shakes her head in amusement. “For a profiler, you can really miss these things when you want to.”
“It’s not-”
“I mean, you didn’t even realize I was into you for years ,” she laughed.
“Now wait a minute, Scully-”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “Yes?”
“You weren’t as subtle as you think! I caught you staring a few times, don’t try to deny it.”
“I’m not denying anything, Mulder. But there were times I wasn’t subtle at all and you were completely oblivious.” She dips her last fry into what’s left of his sauce as she says so, tossing it into her mouth with a victorious glint in her eye as if she’s won this little argument.
He scoffs. “Really? Like when?”
“Maybe,” she starts, beckoning the waitress over for their check, “how about that time I came into your motel room with wine and cheese, talking about rules against agents consorting-”
“Wait, what?”
“And you ran off to chase a mothman!”
“You weren’t-” his voice raises a little, startling a couple of patrons and the waitress who’d just arrived with their check. He pays for their lunch, because it’s his turn, and waits until she’s left with his credit card to continue. He lowers his voice to a hiss “you were not coming onto me that time, Scully, no way,” he says, incredulous. There’s no way he missed that, over two years ago, almost three. He wouldn’t - would he?
Scully just rolls her eyes and laughs, already grabbing her purse from the corner of the booth. “See? Oblivious,” she teases.
He grabs the receipt from the waitress still in complete shock, and continues that way even as they drive back to the Hoover Building. Once they’re out of the elevator and back into their basement office, he gives Scully a sidelong glance as she shrugs out of her coat.
“Was that the first time?”
“Hmm? What’s that?” she asks distractedly, clearly not still mulling over their conversation like he is.
“I mean, was that the first time you came onto me and I didn’t notice it?”
Once again, he’s making her laugh. He loves that sound. Loves when he’s responsible for it. He’s just not getting the meaning of it right now.
“Oh, no, not at all. No, the first time... well, consciously? Because I do have to remind you that I came into your room in my underwear on our first case-”
“Okay, that doesn’t count, you were scared about the marks on your back.”
“Yeah, I know it doesn’t count. But honestly, I don’t see that I would’ve done it with anyone else after knowing them for a day. So, really, I’d say that subconsciously it does count a bit,” she says, biting the pencil she’s holding and frowning as she contemplates her answer, completely oblivious, herself, to the maelstrom of emotions passing through his face. “I don’t remember the first time, Mulder, it just happened. Often.”
“Can’t be that often, if you were so busy not noticing when I was flirting with you,” he grumbled.
“Oh, come on, I noticed it. I just thought you were playing around. Actually,” she says, “it’s funny, I think every time you joke-flirted with me, I became more convinced you were not into me at all.”
They stare at each other for a few long seconds before giving into their laughter.
“What a pair we make, Jesus,” she scoffs, finally settling down with a new file.
“Eh, we figured it out in the end,” he shrugs, earning him a look and a soft smile from her, before diving back into the work.
It’s later, much later, when they’re in her bed, that he stops and thinks again about their conversation during lunch. He reflects on it, his thoughts coming slow, while he feels the pull of sleep beckoning him with each pass of her fingers through his hair.
They’re not in their usual positions - somehow, Scully sensed there was something weighing on him earlier that day, and insisted on holding him once they went to bed. It’s not the first time, and he stopped feeling self-conscious about it long ago. Though he is usually the big spoon, being held by her is not bad at all; in fact, he figures he hasn’t felt so safe and cared for in, hell, decades. Their height difference almost makes it a bit awkward - he’s sure that, from a bird’s eye view, she must look like a cute backpack draped over his back - but her leg is over his hip, one of her hands caressing his stomach and holding him near her while the other caresses his head, her chin pressed up against his shoulder with her lips just barely touching his neck - and it’s perfect.
He wonders, about the time they’ve missed and the opportunities they didn’t take, to do this sooner, to let themselves enjoy this closeness. Scully has argued many times that everything takes as long as it takes, and that if it took them so long there must’ve been a reason. Sometimes he does think she has a point - figures that, any earlier, he might’ve made a mess of things, or any number of the horrors they’ve been through together might’ve torn them apart for good. Other times, he’s not so sure. He thinks of what it could’ve been like, if maybe he’d gotten his head out of his ass and realized what was in front of him from the beginning, maybe even before the first time they lost the Files - and he knows he’s seeing it all through very rose-tinted glasses, but it’s a nice fantasy.
His thoughts swirl, round and about, lulling him to a state of near sleep so good he almost doesn’t register the words she speaks. Her lips move against his neck, her hot breath on his skin is proof that she really did just say something and he’s not imagining it, but his brain still takes a second to catch up.
“Marry me, Mulder,” she says, barely a whisper.
Marry me. Marry me ? He feels his whole body go completely still - and surely that’s his heart stopping, too. He must’ve heard her completely wrong. God, he was just in an elaborate daydream, or an actual dream - he must’ve fallen asleep already. There’s just no way-
“Marry me,” she says again, murmuring against his neck, “I mean it.”
“Scully,” he whispers, stunned, afraid of breaking the spell, of waking up on his couch, back home with some old black and white movie playing on the TV. Just a dream. “Scully, you...” his mouth goes dry and he’s at a loss for words.
She hums, waits patiently for his thoughts to rearrange themselves. She’s completely relaxed against him, and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she’s asleep.
A few more seconds pass before he hears himself croak over the loud beating of his own heart. “Would you really want that with me?”
He feels her exhale a soft laugh, mouth pressed to his ear and arm tightening around him, pulling him back even closer as she answers, her voice soft like he’s never heard it. “I do want it. I want you , Mulder. For as long as you’ll have me,” she says, burying her face into his neck again and pressing a soft kiss there.
His heart stutters again then leaps. If it’s a fantasy, dream, or another human-eating fungus-induced hallucination, he doesn’t want it to ever end. He grabs the hand resting on his stomach, brings it up slowly to his lips and kisses her knuckles. Turns around as delicately as he can manage in his haste to kiss her mouth, deeply, hands cupping her face. She responds in kind, one arm around his neck and another on his chest as she kisses him back languidly.
“Yes,” he mutters, then repeats himself, louder, firm, “yes, of course yes, I’ll marry you any damn day of the week, Scully! As long as I’ll have you? How about forever?”
She laughs and kisses him again, and again, and once more for good measure. He could float away in this moment, but she’s still holding him, tethering him to this world, to her.
“Sounds good,” she says, and no more words are needed.