Chapter Text
Scully awakens to the sound of her cordless phone ringing. She glances at her alarm clock as it changes to 5:37, and reaches across her nightstand to answer the phone.
“What is it, Mulder?”
“And good morning to you, Sunshine.”
“Please tell me you have a reason for calling before 6.00AM.”
“I’m in Charleston. The Bureau down here needs a profile on a possible serial killer. They called me last night and booked me on the last flight out. I just got approval for you to come down here today, too. Kimberly should be calling about booking you a flight, soon. There are a couple of bodies I want you to see. The local ME has already done preliminary autopsies, but I want you to have another look.”
She stretches her neck to one side, then the other.
“Alright. Where will I meet you?”
“Give me a call when you land, I’m not sure where I’ll be today. Oh but Scully, can you do something for me?”
When does anything good ever follow this kind of question, she wonders, half asleep and fully annoyed.
“There’s an occult aspect to this. It’s the strangest timing, but I’ve been keeping a file on recent crimes involving occult symbols, and I took it home last week to review. I think it’s in the second drawer of my desk. Could you get it for me on the way to the airport?
“Fine.”
“Very important, Scully. Second drawer. Not the third drawer. I don’t want to be responsible for compromising your virtue.”
“Too late for that, Mulder.”
“Your virtue is already compromised? Why Dr Scully—”
Without responding directly to his teasing remark, she rebuffs him.
“Mulder, I already know what isn’t in your third drawer that definitely isn't yours.”
“Well then, be my guest, Scully. Just remember, we’re on the clock today.”
She hears the smile in his voice and can't help grinning as she hangs up the phone.
…
Scully lets herself into Mulder’s apartment, and then pockets her keys. She rifles through his second drawer, flicks through files. The first file she sees is marked ‘Yankees–Misc’, and on the next Mulder has scrawled ‘Elvis sightings: ‘77–Kalamazoo.’ There is no audience for it, but she finds herself rolling her eyes, nonetheless.
She finds a manila folder with ‘Crime scenes–occult symbology–1990 & later’ written on it in Mulder’s scrawl, and picks it up. As she is paging through, checking its contents, Mulder’s phone rings.
She wonders if it’s Mulder calling to speak to her, and waits for the beep to decide whether to pick up.
As she waits, she opens the third drawer, just a crack. At first she sees only two unopened bags of sunflower seeds. She opens the drawer all the way, and lifts one of the bags up. Underneath is a softbound copy of her senior thesis: 'Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation.' She is almost certain that he has a copy of her thesis in the basement office.
He has two copies? The third drawer might compromise your virtue?
Mulder’s machine beeps. Scully puts the occult file in her bag as the caller begins to leave their message.
“Hello Mr Mulder, this is Alberto Fibonacci—”
She smirks. His informants have got to get more realistic code names, she thinks.
“—I’m calling from Fibonacci Fine Jewelry”.
Scully’s head snaps up, and she walks towards the machine, unable to stop herself from listening, unable even to pretend to herself that she isn’t listening.
“I’m calling to confirm we’ve completed the appraisal and cleaning of the ring you brought in. I can give you further details when you collect the ring, but as you thought, it’s turn of the century. That filigree is characteristic of the period. It’s 14 karat gold, with a 1.5 carat diamond. A lovely piece, and quite valuable now, Sir. We can discuss that in person. Well, come in any time, 9-5 Monday-Wednesday, and we look forward to showing you the ring again. It can easily be resized at any stage if you wish. What a beautiful family piece. It’s come up very well after a clean.”
Scully stands frozen, staring at his phone.
A family piece, she thinks. His grandmother’s ring, maybe?
It’s an ordinary kind of inheritance for a rich boy from the Vineyard: a house, some bank accounts, the family jewels. So much of Mulder’s life and career—and by association, her own—has involved the grim inheritance and legacy of his father’s decisions. It’s strange to consider, for once, a part of the Mulder legacy that can be cleaned at the jeweler’s, and stored in a safe.
Later that morning Scully boards the plane to Charleston, and tries to imagine what the ring augurs.
…
A few weeks later, Mulder announces he has to run some errands downtown, and asks if she’d like to meet him at the Old Ebbitt Grill for lunch afterward. She agrees, concealing her surprise at him suggesting such a formal venue for lunch.
Very occasionally, when one of them has to run an errand, and the weather is nice, they’ll ask the other along. Sometimes Scully will slip on the low-heeled court shoes she keeps in the office, and they’ll go for a stroll. But these optional social events between them are so rare. They’ve eaten so many meals together, but almost all of them have been on the road, at diners, places quickly chosen at the end of a long day.
Missy used to ask her, when she first started to work with Mulder, whether they hung out outside of work, and the truth was, almost never. She’s not quite sure why it was the case then, or why it’s still the case now. Somehow, almost everything between them happens at work, or in the many moments around it, on the road, in the air, or in their conversations at a hundred interchangeable motels. What was harder to explain to Missy was how more has been packed into work, and these moments around work than in so many whole other relationships she’s been in before.
She arrives at the Old Ebbitt Grill before he does, and is shown to stools at the bar, the only free seats left in the restaurant. She knows that the stools will be awkward and uncomfortable for both of them: her legs are too short, and his are too long. She orders iced tea for both of them while she waits.
Mulder arrives and squeezes her shoulder affectionately as he sits down.
“Thanks for grabbing us a spot, Scully.”
He takes a long sip from his iced tea, and sighs appreciatively.
As the waiter walks away after taking their order, Scully angles her body towards him.
“Mulder?” she asks.
Somehow it seems more polite, more generous, not to put too much information into her question: why lunch, today, or why such a fancy restaurant? She wants to give him the space to answer the question he wants to answer.
“You know I’ve had some meetings with my father’s lawyers recently, and mine. They’re still sorting out probate and a few things from the estate. But it got me thinking, I wanted you to know...”
He pauses and pulls from his pocket a set of keys with a keychain on it that says ‘JOE’S GYM, ALEXANDRIA’ and features a picture of what appears to be a knockoff Popeye character.
“This is a key to my safe deposit box at Craddock. You know where my bank is on 8th, right?”
“Yes,” she says, cautiously. She’d walked there with him once, when he was depositing a check.
“It’s just, you know, some legal documents, a few valuables. Anyway, if anything ever happens to me, this key is in my desk, in the top drawer.
This is the first keychain between them, but it is a gift he retains, for now.
“Anything in there is yours to do with as you see fit. You’d just have to give them my name, and yours. I've listed you as having full access to the box.”
“Mulder, I can’t—”
“I’ve left a key with my lawyer, too, Scully, but from my recent experience, that’s pretty much the slowest way to get anything done. And I don’t like the idea of you not having access, if I’m missing, or if you need…anything. I could list the guys, but let’s face it, you never know how that might go. I trust you to do whatever you think is best. What’s right.”
His words are joking, but his tone is serious, and seems to conceal a certain nervousness, or eagerness to resolve the matter quickly. She realizes, suddenly, that this is a strange parallel, a mirror image, of a conversation they had in the first year of their partnership, when she asked him to witness her living will.
Her mind flashes back to the discussion they’d had at her kitchen table, the strange intimacy of sharing with him the things she would want, the précis of her medical, ethical and religious views, on a page. She remembers a part of their conversation, her response to his surprise at asking him to hold her secondary power of attorney, alongside her mother.
I trust you, Mulder, I know you would respect my wishes.
You have my word, Scully.
As always, some part of her wants to ask him for more information. To know what is in the safe deposit box and what he wants done with it, to know anything there is to know, and to be prepared. And she may do that later. For now, it remains as some sanctioned bit of mystery between them—the trust to ask, without explaining, and to accept, without questioning.
For now, she says the words she knows he needs to hear.
“You have my word, Mulder.”