An 0DD Duch

While she continues, there is a distinctive rustling of either material-on-material friction or her fingers rubbing material between them.

Her attention remains fixed where her hand is.

Position A is regained after she says, "Please? Just..." and pouts: her arm snaps abruptly back to her side, leveling her shoulders (and dropping whatever she was fondling.)

When she finishes, "...for me?" we get a glimpse of Mulder's face before Scully switches gears and becomes serious again.

Now, granted, Scully could have been fiddling with Mulder's coat or a button hole or a bunch in his shirt or his hand or her hand (though there isn't an audible skin-on-skin noise) if not his tie, but she was fiddling with something. Otherwise moving her hand forward, keeping it in empty air, then pulling it back only after pleading her case wouldn't make sense.

So, the most plausible explanation would be....

-Timeline: Production Drafts-

Here's a fun little aside I've thought up.

One of the quirks in Rush is its timetable, specifically a date printed on one of the teenager's exam papers (here.) If taken at face value, this would place the episode around Thanksgiving, before New Year's 2000.

After investigating the production dates, I discovered (and will prove) the episode was crafted after Millennium.

Millennium, September 13, 1999:

Rush, September 17, 1999 and Rush, September 24, 1999 respectively:

Which means Millennium's kiss (courtesy of John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz) was written no later than September 17.

Which means Rush was written after the kiss was penned.

Which means Rush was created off in the "after" era.

Couldn't find filming dates of either episode (probably wouldn't matter, regardless), but the on-screen goof can probably be explained by an oversight: Rush was aired December 5, which means a lot of its production was taking place during November (leading up to Thanksgiving.) Some exhausted or misinformed crew member must have accidentally included the wrong detail.

(Besides, timelines were never clear in The X-Files, anyway.)

-Bonus-

Want more content?

You can find a gifset of Scully's insane levels of flirtation (and territoriality) here. And this gifset. And this one. And this. And that. And Mulder's crack here.

@agent-troi's Rush meta here (including a line from Mulder) and here. My entrance meta here. @fringephile's thoughts/screenshots here. @scullysbagelbites's thoughts here. @unremarkablehouse's thoughts on Scully's turtleneck (hickies) here and etc. here. My season of secret sex meta here.

Wikipedia, Avatar:

Wikipedia, Talitha Cumi:

October 26 1997, Memento Mori: Duchovny asks to make changes in script or emotional content when a scene seems wrong. When Scully first tells Mulder in last season’s “Memento Mori” episode that she has brain cancer, the writers wanted him to cry. He objected.

“That’s not interesting to me,” Duchovny says. “It may be true, some people may react that way. But in my life, most people try not to feel. I see actors trying to feel. To me that’s unreal. We go through life trying not to cry.”

Instead of crying, Duchovny played composed but struggling. “Who cares if I’m crying. Are you crying watching?”

Wikipedia, Kill Swtich:

Wikipedia, Travelers:

Wikipedia, Mind's Eye:

Wikipedia, All Souls:

July 30, 1998: VOX: Did you implant that mythical level into the show?

Duchovny: When you start to do a show, when Chris starts to write the show, really what exists is that first script and in that first script all that exists about Mulder is that he´s interested in aliens. Life began when he went under hypnotic regression and came to believe that his sister was abducted by aliens when he was 12. This is really all we had. The rest of all the stuff we had to create because we had to make more shows. Chris never had it in his mind, certainly I never assumed that anything like that existed. Just like in “Twin Peaks", the first show is “Who killed Laura Palmer?" - David Lynch didn´t know who killed Laura Palmer, that just happend. He had to say as he went on. So, we had to do more shows, we had to explain the past, we had to dramatize the past in certain ways. I wanted to be involved in that because it was my character and I wanted to be able to play interesting things. So there were certain kind of moves and certain kinds of movements mythological that I like in other stories like starwars, Joseph Campbell´s writings or pick and choose from anywhere wich is what we do. The idea I had was in that movie, Sophie´s Choice, they are taking Sofie´s boy and just impulsively she gives them the girl. So I thought what if that happened to Mulder - if they came to abduct him and his mother as they were taking Mulder away gave them the girl. We haven´t seen that episode yet, but I would like to have that play and all these little things that we steal. There is stuff we still haven´t done, that I enjoyed like being involved and figuring out how it all happened.

Wikipedia, Milagro:

Wikipedia, The Unnatural: Originally, Darren McGavin was set to reprise his role as Arthur Dales; the character had previously appeared in the fifth-season episode "Travelers" and the sixth-season episode "Agua Mala". Unfortunately, two days into filming, McGavin suffered a stroke, forcing Duchovny and the producers to scrap the few scenes he had shot, rewrite the script to explain his absence, and replace his character with M. Emmet Walsh.

Wikipedia, Amor Fati:

Wikipedia, Closure:

Wikipedia, Deadalive:

Wikipedia, Alone:

Wikipedia, Existence:

What part of the mythology didn't David Duchovny contribute to??

Wikipedia, William:

Also relevant: David Duchovny's Contributions to the Mythology DD McGuyvering S8 and S9 Together

Other posts: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

BONUS

The Official Guide to The X-Files, Vol 1: Part of Duchovny's goal has been to flesh out the character of Fox Mulder-which, he points out, was understandably vague when the show began-in order to make the part more enticing for him as a performer. "It's definitely been exciting, just something added to my experience, in terms of being able to guide the destiny of the character," he explains. "Because the character had no destiny. Like any TV show, you're forced to eventually create a history for the character that it never had."

Once The X-Files had survived the initial Nielsen weeding-out process and he and Carter realized the show was going to be around for a while, Duchovny offers, "it became important to me as an actor to make that history as interesting as I could."

The second-season finale, entitled "Anasazi," and revelations about Mulder's family played out in the two opening episodes of the third season, offer such mythic highlights, exploring Mulder's character and family history, down to his father's role in alien experimentation. Those episodes also shed light on the abduction of Mulder's sister, Samantha, which figured prominently in the character's motivation. From Duchovny's perspective, those mythic qualities can be found as well in movies ranging from Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Those episodes, he maintains, coupled with earlier story arcs have "created a unique mythology for television in the character, and I'm really proud of that fact-that I was conscious enough to say to Chris, 'Look, I have some ideas, I want to be involved with the creation of this myth."

Duchovny contends that Anderson's pregnancy and brief absence unwittingly contributed to that emotional resonance. Having Mulder search for her echoed the loss he felt in losing his sister, while Scully's abduction gave her an experience to draw upon-all of which, in Duchovny's eyes, provided "raw material to use in the future."

According to the actor, the depth of those episodes stands above "a kind of formula that we were drifting into in the middle of last year" with stand-alone installments dealing with whatever monsters and/or paranormal phenomena the writers could dream up. In terms of producing those hours, he contends, The X-Files was "maybe an interesting show, maybe better than most shows...but as an actor, not so interesting to play."

Now the show can go back and forth, delving into it mythology, then pulling back to do more standard and self-contained episodes. "The intensity's too much, and it can get melodramatic," Duchovny says regarding the need to break up the mythology segments, adding that the producers have achieved a "nice balance now" between the two.

Seeming as much of a perfectionist as Carter, Duchovny acknowledges that he occasionally bristles when he's presented with a deluge of gobbledygook dialogue-those sequences where Mulder launches into remarkably detailed explanations about some event or series of events from the past. "At first it was almost impossible-it's kind of a muscular thing," he says. "You try and make it interesting from an acting point of view...[But] sometimes it's just like you memorize...and spit it out."

In summary, they were both attracted to each other from the moment the met in the Pilot, but that's merely attraction. Scully loved Mulder (Tooms-ish) before Mulder loved Scully (Ascension-ish). However, Mulder realized he was IN love with Scully (FTF-ish) before Scully realized she was IN love with Mulder (Milagro-ish). Finally, Mulder *allowed himself to be in love* with Scully (Closure-ish) before Scully *allowed herself to be in love* with Mulder (all things).