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She’s not going home tonight.
There are two candles burning on the coffee table and she has her head on his shoulder, watching the steady flames, her book forgotten in her lap. He’s reading next to her, absorbed in his own book, only moving to adjust his glasses and turn the pages. She listens to the sound of his breathing. It’s late.
So many date nights end this way—them, side by side on the couch, until it’s time to sleep. Until it’s too late for her to drive home, until she’s too tired and Mulder insists it isn’t safe for her when she can barely keep her eyes open. Sometimes she argues for a minute just to pretend, tells him she’s fine, but then they head upstairs and crawl into bed and sleep next to each other, in the bed they bought together years ago.
They should really go to bed, she thinks. They really should. But there’s a buzzing underneath her skin tonight that makes her restless.
“Where are you going?” Mulder asks as she gets up, but she just shrugs.
“Just need to stretch my legs. Too much sitting.”
He nods and goes back to his reading. And she starts walking. There’s something pressing on her chest and she can’t tell what it is. It’s an ache, an emptiness, her heart contracting around a void she cannot fill.
There are two mugs on the kitchen counter, side by side. She stops and stares; somehow, the sight of them feels significant. The ache inside her grows.
He bought the yogurt that she likes when he went shopping. It’s right there in the fridge when she opens it, right where she saw it earlier.
She’s walking aimlessly, around this house that used to be her home. It has seen more of her these past few months. More than her own place, which is all fixed up now after the fire a few weeks ago. Some days, she feels almost disappointed that it didn’t burn all the way down. It never fills her with an ache that steals her breath and burns like tears behind her eyes.
Not like this place, this space in which she has lived and laughed and loved and cried, this space which is filled with so much past.
It’s just a house. It’s just a house, four walls and windows and a roof. An object, nothing more. But still she wonders whether it misses her at all, the way she feels its absence when she isn’t here.
There are gaps on the bookshelf. Between all of Mulder’s books, there are empty spaces, books collapsed against each other. Fallen over where they couldn’t hold themselves up without their old neighbors. Mulder left holes on the shelves where her books used to live, and it’s all wrong. He could have filled those gaps so easily. There are piles on his desk, piles of heavy tomes and battered paperbacks on the stairs, the old table behind the couch, the floor of his small study. Her heart contracts harder in her chest. She’s seen the empty drawer in the bedroom that used to hold her socks.
“Scully?” he asks, and she realizes she’s been staring at the same empty spot on the wall where a framed photo of them used to hang, one that she took with her when she left. The nail is still in the wall. He left the nail, but never hung another picture.
“Mulder,” she says, and turns to him, wraps her arms around her middle, curls herself around the pain, the compression of her heart folding in on itself like a dying star. “Mulder, I—”
“What’s wrong?”
She takes a breath, another breath, her lips moving around soundless words. “I don’t wanna go,” she manages at last.
He puts his book down on the table, takes off his glasses and lays them down on top. “Go where?”
“Anywhere,” she says. Out there it’s cold and she’s alone, and if she steps across the threshold, the void will swallow her.
“It’s late.” He reaches out a hand towards her. “Of course you’re staying here tonight.”
“No, that’s not…” She doesn’t move towards him, doesn’t reach for his hand in return, just stares at it. She wants to touch him, wants to so badly. But she’s a planet that’s collapsing; if she’s not careful, her gravity will pull him in and crush him. “Mulder,” she says again. Just saying his name gives her the strength she needs. “Mulder, can I come home?”
His movements are slow as he gets up, as he walks over to where she’s standing, right there in the middle of the room. She watches him; he needs to stop, he can’t come any closer. She has to stop him, warn him, because if he touches her, she’ll never let him go. She won’t be able to.
“Come home as in…” He trails off. He stops, stands still just two last feet away from her.
“I want to move back in.”
“Okay,” he says, and nothing more.
“Okay?”
“Okay. You’re here all the time anyway.” His smile is small, but she can see it in his eyes: a hint of fear that maybe she doesn’t mean it.
She cannot take it any longer, and he dropped his shields a long time ago. He’s exposed and vulnerable, defenseless because that’s his choice, and she realizes that the same is true for her. “Right now?”
He blinks at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean right now. Tonight. I can’t—” She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she knows he gets it. She can’t handle one more night apart, not even if they’re spending it together.
His hesitation lasts no more than seconds, but it feels like an eternity. “We should take both our cars. It’s not all gonna fit, but maybe we can make a decent start.”
She nods. They will not get a moving truck anywhere at this time of night. “It’s after eleven,” she says carefully. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
He closes the remaining distance and takes her face between his palms. He stands at the event horizon of the black hole in her soul, and he kisses her slowly, softly, before he speaks against her lips. “I want you back here yesterday. I want you back here months ago.”
On the way out, he holds her hand, and she can’t stop smiling.
It takes one trip back and forth with both their cars. One trip only to get most of her stuff that they can transport without a moving van. She never realized what a Spartan existence she’s been living. Maybe he never filled the gaps she left, but she just brought all of her own along with her when she moved out.
Back at the house, it takes them a few trips to get it all inside, and then they stand there, panting, in between recycled shopping bags and suitcases, in between boxes from her last move that she never threw away.
Her things. Back where they belong.
He’s looking at her, and she reaches out a hand, catches his, and holds on tight. She can’t speak. She’s still buzzing, exhausted, restless.
His lips twitch in the tiniest smile. “You want to unpack before we go to bed, don’t you?”
For a moment, she bites her lip. It’s so late. “I just want to live here again.”
He gets what she means. Without another word, he picks up a box full of books and carries it towards the shelf with all the empty spaces. She watches him as he starts to unpack; she stands there breathless and loves him so much it hurts.
Unpacking takes longer than packing. She refolds her clothes and puts them away while he’s still busy downstairs, helping her, making this space theirs the way it used to be. The way it will be once again.
With every pair of socks she puts into her drawer, with every clink of plates from downstairs as he moves her things back into the cupboards, she breathes easier.
The picture of them waits at the bottom of her suitcase, wrapped in a towel to protect the frame. She saves it for last. Only when all of her clothes are put away, she takes it out, unwraps it carefully. She holds it in her hands. Their smiles are so wide she barely recognized them for a while. Now, they look like them again.
When she walks downstairs, her back aching and her arms heavy, the house feels different. She feels different. She hangs the picture on the wall and swears the house around her settles into its foundation. There is no black hole in her chest.
Mulder appears next to her, and she turns around to face him.
“Done,” he says, and yawns, shakes out his arms, and rolls his neck. Then he smiles. “Everything’s where it belongs.”
It’s half past five in the morning and they haven’t slept and she feels light-headed, she can see the sparkle in his eyes when he looks at her. He’s always been up for crazy ideas.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for doing this for me.”
“For us,” he says.
Something between a sob and a laugh wrenches its way from her throat, and with a few steps they meet in the middle, and then his arms are around her.
“You must be tired,” she says.
“Hmm.” He squeezes her tight and she feels his lips in her hair. “I’m feeling better than I have in a long time.”
“Me too,” she promises.
“Ready for bed?”
“Yeah.”
Again, he understands. She doesn’t want to celebrate. She doesn’t even want to acknowledge any of this any further. She wants it to be normal. She just wants to back here. All she wants is to fall asleep in his arms and have a very late breakfast in a few hours.
“I love you,” he says.
Her gaze falls out the window where the night is losing darkness, softening its way into sunrise. It will be light out by the time they get up. Maybe they can have their coffee on the porch.
“I love you too.”
She rests her cheek against his warm chest and smiles. As it turns out, she did go home tonight.