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The raindrops hammered on the roof of the car, a staccato rhythm that punctuated the silence. The sun had long since set, the lights in the windows outside had slowly petered out until only one solitary light in an upstairs window at the end of the street remained. Inside the car she sat in silence, another pointless stake out, another perfunctory case assigned they suspected mostly out of spite. This was the newest method with which Kersh had attempted to punish them for not towing the line
Nothing of note to report. A quiet night with the lights turned out hours ago. The perp had long since turned in as they should have too. Mulder had left the car fifteen minutes ago to go to the bathroom and not returned. She was beginning to worry as the door opened and he slipped back behind the steering wheel carrying a damp brown paper bag.
He pulled out a sandwich and handed her a questionable looking but very welcome gas station grilled cheese in a paper bag. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him admonishingly.
“Mulder, we’re on a stakeout. If Kersh finds out that you left your post to get food he’ll have both our asses”
Mulder chuckled softly “And how would he find that out?” he asked conspiratorially “We both know this is a bust; this guy is guilty of little more than a few misdemeanours. This is hardly even a federal case, let alone something that requires twenty-four-hour surveillance.” He bit into his own sandwich and chewed slowly “We both know what this is Scully; this is punishment for Dallas.”
She couldn’t argue, she knew he was right. Kersh wanted them both gone, but him even more so. He was clearly trying to force Mulder out, make the job so mundane, so unbearable that he would make the decision himself. It was a testament to Mulder’s sheer stubbornness that he hadn’t given in. The more pointless shit Kersh piled onto them the less likely that Mulder would quit. At this point she suspected he hadn’t handed in his notice out of pure spite.
She bit into her sandwich and chewed carefully. It was either better than it looked or she was just ravenous. It really wasn’t as bad as she had expected on first glance. The bread was just the right side of soggy, the cheese processed and almost solid but still somewhat melted.
They ate in companionable silence neither even bothering to look up at the apartment they were meant to be watching. The perp had long since taken himself to bed as they should have too. They knew they would see nothing until they handed over to the daytime team at eight a.m.
“This is a waste of time Scully” he sad softly his mouth still full, chewing on his own meatball sub. “I’m so sorry that this is the price of your loyalty to the X-Files; you deserve better than this.”
She rolled her eyes, this had become a regular feature of their time together and it was beginning to irritate her.
“If I didn’t want to be here Mulder, I wouldn’t be” she said taking another bite and chewing carefully “please stop talking about the X-files like they’re your baby. After all these years and all that’s happened I have as much skin in the game as you do.”
She looked over at his profile wanting to dare him to argue. He didn’t.
She looked over at him, taking another bite of her own sandwich.
“I saw Colton last week” he said out of the blue staring up towards the window they knew would remain dark until morning. “He’s up for A.D” Mulder spat disparagingly “Vice, I thought it was fitting”
Scully chuckled “I bet you did.” She turned to face him, staring at his profile with little apology or restraint. She suspected their interaction had more to it than he was letting on. They’d only bumped into Colton together once in an elevator and he had goaded Mulder with derogatory comments to her about her career choices. She had practically bundled him out into the corridor. They had never spoken of it again.
“It’s the only place a sleazeball like him could have ended up. What an asshole Scully,” he said derisively “I can’t believe you ever even entertained him. You’re worth ten of him”
She smiled. “Not that you’re biased” she teased softly taking another bite “I take it he made some kind of comment to warrant this outburst? I take it that it was about me?”
Mulder curled a lip and exhaled with derision. “How did you guess?”
“Experience. Colton is part of the old boys’ club.” She replied “He’s labouring under the illusion that being born with a penis gives him the upper hand. Maybe it does? In reality he’s smarting because I wasn’t interested. You ask any woman in our profession and they will have had a similar experience. Colton wanted more from me than I wanted from him and we all know what that means”
Mulder didn’t reply taking another bite of his sandwich.
“What did he say?” she asked
Mulder scoffed and didn’t answer. “You don’t want to know”
He was both right and wrong, she could make a pretty good guess about what he had said and knew it would be either upsetting or downright offensive.
“I do,” she replied softly. “I think I deserve to know what’s being passed around the watercooler Mulder”
He sighed. “He said that he’d heard what had happened, that we’re back to grunt work. He said he was glad to see that sleeping with your superior had done you a huge amount of good.”
“Nice,” she replied “I hope you put him straight”
“I reminded that we’re partners and that therefore I am not your superior and that I was fairly confident you were not sleeping with Skinner or Kersh so I thought the implication was quite offensive”
She chuckled “I bet you did. You didn’t think to clarify that we’re not in fact sleeping together then?”
Mulder looked at her indignantly “I didn’t think it justified a response,” he turned slightly to face her “and frankly the nature of our relationship, whatever that may be is nobodies’ business but ours. Do you not agree?”
She smiled “Of course I do, but not disputing it does fuel the rumour mill Mulder.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side “I didn’t think that sort of thing bothered you”
She shrugged “It doesn’t, it’s just interesting that’s your reaction”
There was a moment of silence, there had been something simmering under the surface never too far from the fore since that afternoon not so long ago in his hallway.
“I did say he was asshole” he added breaking the silence a smile creeping in at the corner of his lips.
“I bet that went down like a lead balloon”
He looked out the window incredulously “ Something like that,” he took a bite of his sandwich and looked over at her “As I walked away he said that if you ever wanted a means to make an honest living he’d find a home for you in vice” he scoffed taking another bite “He said he was sure you’d fit right in”
She shook her head “You know he was goading you” she replied “He was trying to get a rise out of you. Probably hoping he’d have something to take to HR I hope you didn’t give him the satisfaction.”
“No, I was very well restrained” he replied “If I had my way however his head would have gone…” he trailed off not even bothering to finish the sentence.
She smiled derisively as he adjusted the radio dial and found nothing but static.
“I don’t care what Colton thinks of me,” she replied. “I’ve told you before and I’d tell you again. I wouldn’t change a day”
“Well then you’re just about as spooky as me these days,” he replied the ghost of a smile playing at his lips “I suspect you must be beyond help.”
She laughed “So I’m told.”
They finished eating in companionable silence. Mulder gave up flicking trough the radio and turned it off more aggressively than he had intended. It was not the first time they’d been issued a car for a stake out that didn’t have a functional radio. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his eyes with his hands. She knew he was frustrated and bored. This was rarely a good combination.
A long moments silence passed between them, she reached for the napkin he had brought and wiped her hands.
“You never told me that Colton made a pass at you” he said suddenly turning his whole body towards her studying her intently.
She shrugged “Why would I? It was before I even met you. The bureau is still a male dominated arena Mulder and I’m a young-ish woman with half a brain. If I told you every man who’s done that we’ve encountered at work we’d never get anything done. It’s just noise that you get used to tuning out as a woman.”
“Scully,” he said teasingly “You know as well as I do that there’s more to it than you have half a brain and that you’re young-ish. There’s modesty and then there’s whatever nonsense this is…”
She raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“Nonsense Mulder, I’m talking nonsense?”
Mulder chuckled “Absolute nonsense,” He reached over her knees to the glove box and pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds and offering the bag to Scully which she declined. He took out a seed and broke it between his teeth “You know it is.”
“I’m not sure that I do, Mulder”
“Young-ish and half a brain? Really?” he teased “You’ve got the most brilliant mind. For God sake Scully you rewrote Einstein for your senior thesis.”
She scoffed “I’m not sure that’s so much brilliance Mulder as it was youthful arrogance.”
“Maybe. I read it remember, it might have been arrogant, but it was still brilliant.” He opened the window and threw out a handful of shells. “And come on Scully, you really think that’s all it is? That you’re young-ish? I believe I once told you that it’s remotely plausible someone might think you’re hot.”
She laughed. “I’m the only woman Frohike interacts with on a regular basis,”
He cocked his head to the side and his expression softened. “Do you actually think that? Think that little of yourself?” he knew she had always been a little insecure about her appearance. Growing up in the shadow of her more glamourous, though no more beautiful sister she had learned to draw her confidence from her intelligence and her brain. She was confident in her abilities and had never really learned to see herself in that way. The girl he’d met in 1993 was soft, funny and adorably awkward. At times she was somewhat oblivious to the effect she had on the men around her, and even more so to the effect she had on him.
“Scully if you really don’t know that you’re the most beautiful woman in most rooms then there’s something really sad about that”
She looked down at her hands a shy smile fleeting across her lips.
“Mulder,” she said “I don’t know what to say.”
He shrugged. “You don’t need to say anything. It’s just a fact”
The silence spanned between them, neither quite knowing what to say. The charge that had started to grow in recent months on occasion since that afternoon in his hallway. Since those desperate declarations and the near kiss that they’d never spoken of again.
“When did you have your first kiss, Scully?” he asked out of the blue breaking the tension. She laughed softly, rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I’m serious he continued, we never talk about any of this stuff, there’s nothing better to do. I’m bored. It’s no big deal Scully”
“If it’s no big deal when was yours?” she retorted.
He grinned. “Summer of ’76 on the Aquinnah cliff’s with my best friends sister”
“older or younger?” Scully asked interest piqued
“A year older,” he said grinning “She’d been stood up by her jerk of a boyfriend, I was besotted and had been pining for years. She was back with him by the Monday and I was heartbroken,”
Scully smiled “That’s cute, what was her name? This older woman who broke your heart?”
“Lisa” he replied “She still lives on the vineyard in the same town as my Mom; sometimes I see her. I think I’m her one that got away. I think I had a lucky escape- she’s a lot”
Scully studied his profile, imagining a fifteen-year-old Mulder, sad and damaged and pining after a girl who loved someone else.
“Your turn,” he said a smile splitting his face.
“Nope” she said firmly.
“C’mon Scully, I showed you mine!” the glint in his eye was infectious. There were times like this when he teased, when his demeanor shifted into carefree and playful that she was transported back six years and a what felt like a lifetime ago. When she would look at him and butterflies danced in her stomach, when she would laugh longer and easier. Back to a time the charge that passed between them was electric with possibility rather than humming with the weight of years of what was left unsaid.
“Marcus” she said rolling her eyes. “My Twelfth-grade boyfriend at the movies”
“Very conventional,” Mulder grinned. “First time?”
She laughed “No chance!”
“Just age then, I was seventeen.”
She shook her head “Twenty, I was good Catholic girl.”
His face was splitting ear to ear. He was tickled by this, she could feel it rolling off him in waves.
“Magic number?” he said knowing he was pushing it now.
“You’re not going to drop it are you?” she said shaking her head “Four”
The look on his face was unreadable, grinning but ambiguous. “Eight.” He replied.
“Worst break up?” he asked.
“oof” she said softly “now that’s a story”
His eyes twinkled in the moonlight as he waited with rapt attention. “Daniel; he was my attending. He was married. He didn’t leave his wife, and I had enough of waiting.” His face fell, this had taken a more serious turn than he’d expected. “It’s why I left medicine.”
“So you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that?” she nodded “Remind me to send him a thank you card”
She laughed. “You?”
Shit. He hadn’t thought this through. Should he lie? He knew she’d see right through it.
“Diana,” he answered apologetically. “We were pretty much living together at that point, I came home from a VCS consult and she’d gone. Not a word.”
If it was possible to hate that woman any more than she already did then this would do it.
“I’m sorry,” she said “I’m not sure what to say.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“either way, I’m sorry. It’s awful when people you love treat you with so little thought”
The mood shifted, the tension rising inexplicably. The electric spark from earlier back and his expression suddenly serious.
“I didn’t love her, not really,” he said softly “She was there for me at a time when I needed someone. She was ambitious and being with her gave me something I needed at the time. I thought I loved her, I know better now.”
Scully held his gaze for a long moment. If ever there was a time to raise the subject of that day in the hallway this was it. She found herself paralysed by the enormity of it, the change, the unknown and the intensity of the feelings she pressed down beneath the surface.
The air was thick with it, the tension. She could feel it pressing down and drawing her in. They had reached a junction and it was time to pick a direction. They were hovering in the edge of a precipice both waiting for the other to jump in. If ever there was a time to address it, address all there was between them, now was the time.
Neither did. The moment passed. She coughed and looked away.
“I don’t suppose you’re hiding a drink in that bag are you?”
He smiled and reached down into the paper bag he’d carried back into the car handing her a paper cup. “Iced tea,” he said knowingly a glint in his eye, his hand deliberately brushing hers as he handed it over. Iced tea, another stakeout not unlike this where she had made the closest to a declaration that she ever had and he had shut it down . The weight of that conversation from all those years ago in another dark car pressed in on them both
She smiled and fixed his gaze; looking up over heavy lids with a look that could be called nothing if not flirtatious.
“Must be fate” she replied as the staccato rhythm of the raindrops on the roof continued to fall.