5 headcanon Mulder and Scully have a serious conversation about their relationship post Rush
mature | 1.6k wds | post-Rush, implied Per Manum
A/N: This is a variation on the conversation from “Plus One,” which everyone knows really belonged in season seven. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this prompt—I had to catch up to “Rush” in my rewatch. It’s also not in the numbered 5 headcanon format because it didn’t really seem to work that way. I haven’t felt very capable of writing lately, so I don’t know how this is. It’s some words, I guess, which s more than I thought I could produce.
“Maybe we’re too old,” he’d said. “Back in the day,” he’d sad.
She feels every minute of her almost thirty-six years. Knows the phrase advanced maternal age would apply to her now were it even possible for her to become pregnant. Which it is not. Does that make her an old maid? Her mother has stopped asking about her future, for which she is grateful.
Their life seems bound to be only this: the chase, the work, the occasional comfort of each other’s arms when time and affection allows. They are friends. They are sometimes lovers. They are hot and cold. They never (never but once, that awkward New-Year’s kiss) display their affection publicly.
“Come on, Mulder, let’s go.” She tugs at his arm, and they leave Tony Reed’s hospital room, enter the sterile hallway of scrubbed floors and mixed medicinal smells.
“You okay?” He asks at the elevator.
She shrugs, thinking of the way Chastity had eyed Mulder, of the way Max had done the same to her, but held his evaluation in the past tense. The insecurity is stupid, irrational, offensive to her feminist sensibilities. And yet…
She shakes her head. “Fine,” she says.
In the car he touches her knee; she startles to look at him. “Dinner?”
Ah, she thinks. It will be that kind of night. Hot, not cold. “I have food at my place,” she says. “We could throw something together?”
His fingers tighten over the fabric, draw a subtle circle on the inside of her lower thigh. “Okay.”
They are stretched on her couch, her head in his lap while he runs his fingers through her hair.
She shrugs, hooking her fingers over his wrist, pulling it down to kiss his pulse point. The room smells of cinnamon from the lit candle on her coffee table. “I feel old,” she says.
They returned from Pittsfield two hours ago to a hasty dinner and a bottle of wine, and now they are slow and sleepy. He moves his left hand to the waistband of her pants, tucking only the tips of his fingers under. She arches, just a bit, to let him know she likes it.
She sighs. “I’m not young either.”
He frowns, gives her hip a squeeze. “Scully,” he says. “What’s this about?”
She turns her face away, her body too, so she’s looking at his knees and his hand is on her ribs over her shirt. “What if you meet someone else?”
His muscles stiffen under her head. “What?”
It’s quiet for a moment as she thinks.
“Hey.” He tugs her up, pulls her so she’s sitting across his lap, holds her face in his hands. “Not ever.”
“Mulder, what are we doing? What are we?” She can’t believe she’s said it aloud, voiced the rabid, gnawing question that’s been eating at her for months. Her face is hot with having spoken it and she feels she needs to redirect, reframe. “I mean what’s going to happen?”
“What’s going to happen when?”
“When we really are old. When we retire. When the Bureau finally kicks us out?” When there isn’t work, she wants to say. What will hold us together?
“I’ll always be around, Scully.”
Around, she thinks. Calling her on the weekends, maybe. Showing up with beer and popcorn when he’s in the mood for more than monster hunting. “Just hanging out?”
“I’ll be wherever you want me,” he says. “I’m right here.”
“And what will we do?” She asks, shifting her weight on his lap, lifting her arms to his neck, leaning into him.
A low rumble of laughter in his chest, his hands moving freely now over her body. “We’ll think of something,” he murmurs. She dives in to catch his mouth, draws her tongue across his lips. He pulls her tight to him, devours her insecurities, smothers her in love so she cannot doubt.
