Chapter Text
He is truly unbelievable sometimes, Scully thought. There were stormclouds rolling in her, threads of electricity flickering in their midst.
The resounding dismissal she had just let loose upon her partner’s plan for their weekend — chasing unborn crop circles over in England — still hung in the air between them.
“I’ll just cancel your ticket,” was all Mulder said. “Thanks for lunch.”
He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t argue any of the points Scully had made. He simply accepted that she wasn’t coming, and went quietly to the door.
But of course, he had given her that look.
Scully stared at him, trying to quell the part of her that actually wouldn’t say no to an airing of grievances right now, an all-cards-on-the-table argument.
“Look, we’re always running,” she said, wanting him to understand. “We’re always chasing the next big thing. Why don’t you ever just stay still?”
It was impossible to keep the frustration from her voice, and she saw it register on Mulder’s face as he lingered at the doorway.
“I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing,” Mulder replied, an edge in his voice now. Turning, he stalked off down the hall.
Scully slumped on her chair, watching her partner’s slides stutter as his abandoned projector clicked and whirred. The way Mulder had just announced that she would join him, on her weekend, to go investigate a nonsense overseas event that hadn’t even yet occurred….she dug her thumbnails into the carton of half-eaten salad in her hands.
She’d felt a bitter satisfaction in skewering Mulder’s excited rundown of the mysteries plaguing foreign fields with her own take: sneaky farmers who happened to ace geometry in high school. Because why the hell shouldn’t she lose patience with him?
Here she was, fresh from the morgue, worrying about hospital paperwork on a Saturday, denied so much as ten minutes to herself since finishing late last night and then starting early that morning - all in the name of getting Mulder’s casefile to completion.
And while she’d sliced, diced, and scribbled reports, what had he been doing? Entertaining himself, from all that she could see. Delving into his folklore hobbies while he relaxed with music in their office, booking them plane tickets to England without even bothering to call and check in with her first. The Fox Mulder Show in high gear.
Well, he could handle this one on his own.
And yet….and yet. Hearing his footsteps retreat down the hall, the memory of his face, disbelieving and definitely slightly hurt as she’d shut him down fresh in her mind, Scully found herself wavering. Not for the first time, not for the hundredth time.
Why was he so damned hard to say no to?
With an annoyed sigh, Scully propelled herself off the chair and marched out of the room. “Mulder!” she called.
He was waiting for the elevator at the end of the hall. Turning over his shoulder, he gave Scully a hopeful half-smile.
Putting her hands on her hips, Scully scowled at him. “You could have just asked me first,” she said as she walked up the hall, still pissed, but as always, unable to stop herself from wanting to follow the leads, follow him into the next adventure.
Why is our dynamic still so much leader and follower though, even now? Why can’t he just tell me what’s happening, and we decide together?
Mulder looked back at her, all innocence. “So you’ll come?” he asked happily. Watching unreserved jubilation flood Mulder’s face, it was hard to keep her irritation at full boil.
Maybe, Scully reasoned grumpily, he thinks deciding together is exactly what just took place.
“Can you at least get us onto a later flight, Mulder?” she asked. “What is it, eight hours to London? Less? If I can have a little more time to finish things up here, pack, and take a nap, we’ll still get there well within the timeframe whoever you’re dealing with in England has outlined for any, uh…” She searched for the right word, consciously trying not to be cutting. “Phenomena, to occur.”
Nodding, Mulder took Scully by the shoulders as he moved past her, swapping their places in front of the elevator. “I’ll try and change it now,” he said, eyes alight, already halfway back down the hall towards their office.
“Mulder - what are you going to tell Skinner?” Scully called. She knew there was no kind of work-related justification they could hang this trip on.
“We have a budget for research and training,” Mulder called back breezily, hovering at the office door. “Just like any other department. This is research, Scully!”
He disappeared from view, and the elevator dinged beside her, its doors gliding back. Shaking her head, already engulfing herself in second guesses, Scully stepped inside.
Fatigue washed over her as she watched the digital display tick through the ascent to the car-parking level. If I’m going with him, I’m going when I’m ready, or not at all. Tickets be damned, she thought.
~~ ~~ ~~
Scully had just awoken from a deep and restorative sleep after a flurry of report-writing, packing and finally, showering, when her cellphone trilled.
“Scully,” she said groggily, clamping the phone to her skull.
“Hey, Scully,” Mulder said. “I couldn’t get a later flight. I tried, I’m sorry.” He sounded contrite, but it was secondary to that tone of giddy impatience she knew so well, his evergreen desire to spring into the next case, the next quest. “Could you still make it for five thirty?”
Turning over to check the time, Scully made some lightning internal deliberations. There was an odd sense of a precipice in the moment. But she sighed, and gave a soft hum into the phone. “Yeah. I just have to make a couple of stops, drop in this paperwork,” she said. “I’ll see you at the airport.”
She found Mulder loitering by the international check-in counters. He gave her a lopsided welcome grin, and as she smiled back, the cogs of reality suddenly rolled into gear in Scully’s brain. This wasn’t a case. They weren’t even going to be on US soil. Somehow, Mulder had convinced her to fly to England with him, for something that had nothing at all to do with their work, however he might imagine himself pitching it to Skinner.
She and her partner were ostensibly researching crop circle phenomena in Avebury, assuming the computer calculations Mulder had been so excited about led to farmland events beyond chasing wild geese. But while they were there, what else would they do? Go visit the area, no doubt. Go out for meals together. Stay somewhere with zero threat of local PD or anyone else they knew turning up with questions or updates.
It would just be her and Mulder, on what she now realised sounded far more like a vacation than anything else.
Mulder reached for Scully’s bag, carrying it along with his to the check-in desk. As they handed over their passports and received boarding passes in exchange, Mulder leaned in to bump his shoulder companionably against Scully’s. “Glad you’re coming along after all?” he asked.
For some reason, in the wake of her most recent thoughts, his words set off an echo of the annoyed feelings Scully had had during their exchange at the office that morning. Was Mulder even aware of how his invite…no, summons, on this trip had looked from her point of view? His cocky assumption that she would drop everything to come with him, his failure to let her even draw breath before launching into the next thing on his agenda?
And yet hadn’t she just gone right along with it, even so?
Dipping her head with a tight smile, she took a couple of strides out in front of Mulder, making him tail her as they progressed through the security queue.
He caught her arm as they came out the other side and began the walk towards their gate. “Hey - Scully, wait,” he said, drawing her gently around to face him. Scully lifted her chin, brows arched.
“I get it, I should have asked you about the trip. I’m just so used to thinking of us as…a team.” Something flickered in his eyes. “But…I dunno. Maybe you feel like I’ve dragged you along,” Mulder said. He turned to scan the listings of upcoming departure times, his face shadowing.
“Mulder!” Scully exclaimed, taken aback. “This has nothing to do with us being a team!” She looked up at him, her hand half-lifting to reach for his arm, but he continued to evade her gaze.
Seeing his face, Scully’s mind flashed back to a moment, not so many weeks ago, when she had stood and defended her reasoning for going roadtripping with the Smoking Man, Mulder staring at her with hurt blazing in his eyes. I know we’re not past it yet, she thought.
And there was still so much more unsaid, unresolved in the invisible tapestry they had slowly woven between them over these past years. An energy that was sometimes more undertow than undercurrent.
Wanting to make peace, she offered her answer to her partner’s original question at the check-in desk. “Mulder…I am glad I’m coming with you.”
Softening, he finally turned back to her, a little sheepish now. “And I’m glad you’re here too, Scully. Really glad,” he said.