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1—Jersey Devil
“I have a date,” she says, and he freezes. That’s not really what he expected to hear.
“Can you cancel?” The words have left his mouth before he can stop them.
Of course she doesn’t cancel. Not that he honestly thought she would. And it’s fine. He’s fine on his own. This isn’t even a case, she doesn’t have to be here. It’s really, honestly fine. It’s just that… she has a date.
Somehow he never considered the possibility. Somehow, Scully dating was not a thought that ever crossed his mind. She mentioned a boyfriend before they left on their first case to Oregon, but she never brought him up again, and he didn’t think she was looking for a new one.
But it seems she is actually looking. He wonders who the guy is.
She’s a beautiful woman with a razor-sharp mind. She must get asked all the time. If this guy has any sense at all, he’ll work his ass off to make a good impression.
He kind of hopes the guy is boring. And then he feels bad for hoping that. Scully deserves to have a nice time.
And it’s not as if he could give her that. They’re partners. It would be weird, and inappropriate, and she’d say no anyway. Probably. The chances that she’d say yes if he asked her are slim to none.
He wonders where she’d want to go. Dinner and a movie? Stargazing? A museum and then drinks?
Anyway, he investigates without her. It’s not a problem. Only then, he has a breakthrough. A new idea. Something they haven’t considered before. She might find this interesting.
He checks his watch and hesitates. She’ll be at dinner with the potential new love of her life right now. Well, he thinks. If she is, she won’t have her beeper on her. She can call him back whenever it’s convenient.
“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” he tells her not two minutes later, a little pleased that she wasn’t so absorbed in her date that she decided to ignore him. God, he’s an asshole.
“That’s, okay!” she says, sounding eager in a way that makes him feel way too relieved. “What’s up?”
He’s not actually sure. Sure about the case-that-isn’t-a-case, yeah. Just not quite sure about what the fuck is going on inside his mind these days.
It’s okay. They have work to do.
2—before the abduction
She smiles at him and his heart skips a beat. He hasn’t seen her in two days. Sometimes he still wants to head down to the basement in the morning, looking forward to the moment she walks through the door, and then he remembers that they don’t have the X-files anymore.
Not working with her is awful. They’re a team. They work best together.
Also, not seeing her every day is actually kind of the worst thing that has happened to him in a long time.
They’re in the morgue of all places and she’s in full scientist mode and there’s that idiot Krycek hovering awkwardly in the background, and he kind of hopes this moment never ends.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
He hates so much that they’re not partners anymore, but maybe there’s another way to spend more time with her.
It’s hard not to think about it as a possibility now. It’s just that if she told him no, it would make this whole thing really awkward.
Maybe it’s better not to risk it.
On the other hand, she might say yes.
He kind of wishes Krycek would just leave, because he won’t ask her in front that guy anyway. Then again, maybe he should wait a few more days. Maybe another week. Or two. Just to observe a bit, assess the situation.
And then he’s gonna do it. He’s gonna take the risk. He can’t even take his eyes off her, he’s already dreading spending more than a day without her again. He’s totally gonna do it. Soon.
Or he would have. He didn’t really anticipate her being taken from him like this.
3—Never Again
She’s right to be mad at him. He deserves it. He’s mad at himself. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been angrier.
There’s that bruise on her face that reminds him every day of how much he fucked up.
She thinks he cares about what did or did not happen between her and Jerse, as if he has any right to care. She’s wrong anyway, he doesn’t give a fuck. Not about that. He doesn’t even want to know, it wouldn’t change a damned thing.
What pisses him off is that he didn’t notice that she wasn’t okay.
That fucking desk, it was never about that fucking desk. Yeah, of course she should have one, that’s just another thing that makes him an asshole, that he didn’t even think of that.
He wants to smash his own desk into tiny pieces with his bare hands until it’s reduced to kindling.
There are so many reasons he hates himself right now. She needed a friend and he behaved like an asshole, and she ended up in the apartment of a killer who beat the shit out of her, and now he can’t even be mad that she won’t talk to him because he’s done nothing to deserve her trust.
But most of all he hates himself for wanting to show up at her door and ask to be let in. Not just into her place. Into her thoughts. He wants to be the friend he no longer deserves to be.
And fuck it all, he wants to be the one she goes for drinks with, and he wants to be the one to take her home at the end of the night.
This isn’t the time to ask. Maybe it will never be the time to ask ever again. But he really wishes that he could.
4—Fight the Future
Those few minutes of that day are playing on a constant loop in his mind. Her walking out on him, him going after her. The words he said, the tears in her eyes, the hammering of his heart as they both leaned in.
And then that bee, that fucking bee.
It’s no use imagining what would have happened afterwards without that fucking bee.
That doesn’t mean he’ll ever stop wondering.
The fact remains that they almost kissed. And that she never brought it up again. But then, neither did he.
He’s having coffee with her later. They’re meeting for coffee. Just to hang out, apparently. As the friends they are.
If he’d just ask, he thinks. If he’d just ask, he’d know. But why didn’t she bring it up again?
He turns over on his couch and groans into his pillow. How can she expect him to be the brave one here, that won’t work. He’s Spooky Mulder. The weird guy from the basement that’s currently not even his. She’s Scully.
Yeah, sure, she cares about him, he’s aware of that. But he would like her to do a whole lot more than care about him in this nice partnerly way they always seem to fall back into. Only he knows he’ll never ask. He’s got too much to lose.
Shit, he thinks, he’s faced down monsters, both human and supernatural, and he can’t ask the woman he’s in love with if she would maybe perhaps by any chance like to have coffee with him in a non-platonic way?
“Pathetic,” he mumbles into his cushion. “You’re pathetic.”
It’s not really the kind of pep talk he needs right now, but it’s the best he can come up with.
He won’t ask anyway. He should, he wants to. But if she regrets it, he’d rather not hear that. Why the hell can’t she just bring up that fucking kiss again?
5—Milagro
She’s asleep with her head on his shoulder, in the safety of her apartment, on her couch, and his arm that rests behind her back is kind of falling asleep too but he’s not gonna move.
There is no wound anywhere, but she’s lost blood, she’s tired, and even though she says she’s fine, he knows the shock sits deep.
It sits deep for him as well.
For a moment, he honestly thought she was dead.
Not only would he have curled himself around her right there on the floor and followed her, his last thought would have been of how she died without ever knowing that he loves her.
How long will they let this go on?
That creep said she was in love. He doesn’t really want to believe a word that pervert said, but what if just this one thing were true?
But even if that were the case, it might not be him. He doesn’t know everything about her life.
He knows his own heart though.
It’s been years. Years. This is ridiculous. Surely by now their friendship is strong enough that it could take the blow if she rejected him? It would be weird between them for a while, but he doesn’t think it would drive them apart.
If she were anyone else, he wouldn’t be such a coward about it.
Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure that she’s the one true love of his life, and that really kind of sucks, because he’s pretty sure he’d actually rather be nothing but her friend forever than risk making things awkward.
He has to get his shit together. They both have to. It’s taking a hell of a long time to figure out the first step here. If only he had a map so he’d know where to go.
+1—After Millennium
“Would you like to go on a date with me sometime?” he asks, and she lifts her head from his chest and blinks at him.
“Um,” she says.
“Is that a yes?”
“I’m naked in your bed,” she points out.
“So… that is a yes, then?”
“Oh my god.” She rolls her eyes at him. “Yes, obviously, yes, I’ll go on a date with you!”
“Thank god.” He lets out a long breath.
“Did you think I was gonna say no? After…” She waves a hand, indicating their entwined bodies in matching states of undress. “After all this?”
He shakes his head. “I mean, no, but I’ve wanted to ask for a really long time, so I also had a really long time to convince myself you might say no.”
She thinks about that for a second. “And by ‘a very long time,’ you mean…”
“Oh, about…” He pretends to count on his fingers. “Just over six years?”
“Hmm. What was stopping you?”
“You might have said no.”
“I might have said yes!”
“The risk was too high,” he says. “So I decided to observe and assess before I did anything.”
“For over six years?”
He nods. “My study was very thorough.”
“Evidently.” She laughs. “Oh well. I didn’t ask either, after all. We got here eventually.”
“Yeah, and I’m not leaving.”
“Good,” she says. “Neither am I.”
He thinks he’ll take her stargazing, and then for hot drinks when they get cold. It’ll be fun. Maybe actually dinner and a movie and stargazing and drinks and a trip to a museum and a ride in a hot air balloon if she’s into that. All in one day. They have a lot to catch up on. He’s looking forward to it. But right now she’s leaning in to kiss him, and he thinks they’ll just catch up on all that first, and then just go from there.