#eightdaysofmulder

I don’t want to say it’s all Diana Fowley’s fault, but she sure as fuck isn’t helping. She tends to always have an excuse to call him down to the basement with a question about a case. She inevitably makes her way up to the bullpen around lunchtime to see if he wants to get something to eat. Mulder usually asks if I’d like to join, but I know it’s an empty invitation. 

I’m not proud of it, but I do have a jealous streak. It isn’t even always romantic, either. I remember competing with my siblings for my father’s attention, and burning with anger if he seemed more impressed with one of them at any given moment. It was the same in school, from the time I was a child all the way through Quantico. I had such a desire to please my teachers and needed to be the favorite in every class. 

Needless to say, being the subject of Mulder’s undivided attention—with the exception of the weekly cryptid or the occasional busty entomologist—for nearly six years felt good. Having to share him with Diana Fowley does not. 

I know they have history. And I know she’s attractive. But it’s not even that. It’s the effect she has on him. The way he’ll believe anything she says without a scrap of evidence. The way she makes me feel like a nagging shrew. The way she gets to call him Fox. 

He’s coming back from lunch now, striding across the bullpen towards me, and, is he…whistling? I sincerely hope all he had to eat was a sandwich. 

“Hey, Scully,” he says, smiling. “It’s unseasonably warm out. What do you say we get out of here for a bit?”

“You’ve been gone for nearly an hour. Weren’t you at lunch with Agent Fowley?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says. “She got an urgent phone call before we made it out of the building, so I just went back to my apartment to pick up this book on cryptozoology that’s been on my mind.”

I notice he’s empty-handed. “But you didn’t find it?”

Mulder shakes his head. “I think it might still be in our old office. But I found something else.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small wooden top.

“A dreidel?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “This was mine when I was a kid. Ended up in the back of my bookcase somehow. Come on, I’ll teach you how to play. ‘Tis the season, after all, and I promise it’ll be more fun than running another background check. Although that isn’t saying much.” 

I could use a break. This work is mind-numbingly dull and playing hooky for an afternoon with Mulder sounds much more intriguing. I return his smile and shrug on my coat. 

As I’m following him through the bullpen, he calls out to me, a little too loudly, “I hope we’re not stuck on this stakeout the rest of the day, but knowing our perp I wouldn’t bet on making it back before sunset.” 

“That’s too bad, Agent Mulder,” I reply, matching his volume and trying not to grin. “I was hoping to get ahead on all this paperwork.” 

The elevator down to the lobby is crowded but he gives me a conspiratorial wink and I feel myself blushing. I’m pressed up close to him and can smell his musk and aftershave. We both can’t help but laugh once the lobby’s revolving door propels us onto the sidewalk. He’s right. It’s warm out for December and in the sun I barely need my coat. 

We wander until we’re a safe distance from getting spotted and find ourselves a bench near the reflecting pool. Thanks to the temperate weather, the Mall is busy and we can easily blend in with the crowd of tourists and office workers.

“Ever played dreidel before, Scully?” he asks.

“I can’t say I have.” 

“It’s easy.” He holds the top out to me in his palm.

“This is nun,” he explains, pointing to the side of the dreidel embossed with a character that looks like a backward letter C. “If your spin lands on nun, you do nothing, which is easy to remember. But nun looks deceptively similar to gimel”—he turns the top to a side with a nearly identical symbol, but this one has a little leg sticking out of the bottom, “and if you land on gimel, you get the whole pot.”

“What’s in our pot, Mulder?” I ask. 

“Sam and I used to play with gelt but since we don’t have any, we can use these instead,” he says, pulling a bag of sunflower seeds out of his jacket pocket. 

“If you land on shin,” he says, showing me a character that looks like a W, “you have to add a coin, or a seed in our case, to the pot. That leaves hey”—now he shows me the final side of the dreidel— “and that means you take half the pot.”

“I think I got it,” I say.

He starts divvying up a pile of seeds between the two of us. He brings one to his mouth, cracks open the shell with his teeth, and eats it. I’ve seen him do the same motion hundreds of times and it always makes me wonder what else his nimble mouth is capable of. I’m sure Diana has intimate knowledge of that. 

“For good luck,” he says. 

“Sure, Fox,” I say teasingly. 

He cringes.

“Sorry,” I say, my eyes drifting to my pile of sunflower seeds. “That’s what Diana calls you.” 

“Yes, and I hate it,” he says. “I’ve asked her not to, but it’s not a battle worth fighting. I think she does it just to irritate me.” 

“I know you two were,” I pause. “Together.”

Why am I prying? He knows that I know. I know he’ll never say anything outwardly negative about her as much as I wish that he would. And I don’t want him to think that I’m fishing. But I can’t resist. 

“A long time ago,” he says quietly.  

“It must be nice to have her back, though” I say. “An old friend.”

He shrugs and plucks one seed from each of our piles to start the pot. 

“You go first,” he says, handing me the dreidel. 

I give it a flick with my fingers but my spin is too enthusiastic and the dreidel ends up falling off the bench.

“Easy there, tiger,” Mulder says with a laugh, leaning over to pick it up off the ground. 

I try again more gently, and land on hey. “Nice, Scully,” he says, as I take one seed back from the pot. 

We go back and forth like this for a while, our respective sunflower seed piles growing and shrinking. 

“I never did this with Diana,” he says absentmindedly as he adds to the pot after landing on shin. 

“You don’t need to tell me that, Mulder,” I say softly, once again avoiding his eyes. 

“It’s true,” he says, bringing his fingertips to my chin, encouraging me to look up and face him. “I’m not going to lie to you. We were very close for a while and, at the time, I would’ve said she was the love of my life—”

I flinch and hope he doesn’t notice. 

“—but that was before I met you.” 

“Oh, please, Mulder,” I say, leaning back and away from him. “You were in a relationship with her. You lived together. You were…intimate. I’m just your partner.”

“I hope you don’t believe that, Scully,” he says sternly, and I realize he’s serious. “I thought I loved Diana because she was the first person to accept me for who I am, but it didn’t take long to realize that she didn’t really see me. She saw a version of me that she felt she could mold into someone she’d want to be with. When I didn’t want to go along with that, she picked up and left. But you see me, Scully. You really see me for who I am and you haven’t run away yet.”

He reaches across our sunflower seed piles to hold my hand. His touch is gentle yet firm, as if to reassure me. My lips are trembling and I feel tears welling up in my eyes. I’m scared to speak, not knowing what sounds will come out. 

“And I see you,” he continues. “You’re so fucking loyal and honest and you fight for what you believe in. You’re principled and kind and even though you challenge me every day, there’s no one else I’d rather argue with. You give my life meaning.”

He squeezes my hand tighter. I try to hold back my tears but it’s no use. I blink and they’re streaming warm down my face. My heart and my mind are racing. Passersby are milling all around us but we’re frozen like statues. 

“Mulder,” I gasp. “I don’t know what to say.” 

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, smiling as he passes me the dreidel. “Just spin.”

Catching my breath, I give the dreidel one last spin on the bench. 

“Gimel!” he shouts excitedly. “You get all the seeds, Scully. And all of me. Don’t forget that.” 

“Too bad I don’t like sunflower seeds,” I say, smiling at him shyly. 

“Well, I can take those off your hands,” he says, sweeping all three piles of seeds back towards him. “But you are stuck with me, unfortunately.”

We lock eyes. “I can live with that,” I say. 

He returns the seeds to the plastic bag and tucks it back into his jacket pocket. As we walk back to the Hoover building, he drapes his arm around me. For the first time in months, we’re back in sync. 

She doesn’t fully share Mulder’s belief that colonizing aliens will invade the planet in less than a week, and she isn’t sure he’s fully convinced either. She knows they will be together, though, when it does (or doesn’t) happen. 

They spent their early days on the run chasing leads, trying to uncover the plan for colonization, and doing anything they could to fight it. But the trail has long gone cold. It’s been years since they pursued even a dead end or red herring, and she can tell Mulder’s heart isn’t in it anymore. They live small and quiet lives now. They have each other, but not their son and not the answers they spent years searching for. He cracks jokes that it wouldn’t be the worst thing if all of humanity perishes in a fiery invasion or becomes slaves to an extraterrestrial master race in a matter of days. She suspects they aren’t jokes.

It’s Sunday and she’s barely seen him all day. He burrows away in his office most of the time now. He doesn’t tell her what he’s working on and she doesn’t ask. Back when they first became lovers, a lazy Sunday without any work was such a rarity that they’d spend nearly the entire day in bed exploring each other’s bodies. She can still remember every freckle on his body but she can’t remember the last time they made love, or the last time he made her laugh. Still, she endures.

“Six days to go,” she hears his baritone from behind her and she turns to face him. She’s at the kitchen table reviewing her surgery schedule for the week ahead and doesn’t hear him approaching.

“Should we escape to Acapulco now so I can at least go out with a tan?” she deadpans.

“You don’t tan, Scully,” he says, sliding into a chair facing her. “You burn. We both know that.” 

She shrugs. “How do you want to ride out our final days then?”

“I want to find our son. Apologize to him for not being able to save the world.” 

She grimaces. It’s as if he’s jabbing his finger into an open wound in her flesh, a wound that will never heal. 

“I’d like that, too,” she says quietly, looking down at her notes now and away from him. “But it’s not going to happen.” 

“I have a lead.”

Her breath catches in her throat. They’ve gone down this road before and it never ends well. 

“It can’t be him,” she says. 

“I think this time it is,” he says, leaning toward her from across the table. He speaks with an urgency she hasn’t heard from him in years. For a moment, they’re back in the basement and he’s trying to convince her there’s a swamp monster in St. Augustine or a lizard man in Louisville. The stakes are higher now and the possibilities even more remote. 

“There’s a boy in Wyoming. The birth and adoption dates line up,” he continues.

She shakes her head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’d agree with you if it weren’t for the video.”

“What video?” 

“Come,” he says, leading her from the kitchen to his office. 

Of course, she follows him. She doesn’t always believe him but she’ll always follow him. That hasn’t changed.

He taps on the keyboard to wake up his computer. The browser is opened to a YouTube video. On the screen, a cluster of kids face away from the camera in what looks like a school playground. The title reads MY BOY CAN MOVE SH!T WITH HIS MIND.

Before she can object, Mulder clicks play. In the video, the circle of kids opens up to reveal a tall, red-headed boy with blue eyes and a nose he hasn’t grown into yet. He’s holding a toy model of the Millenium Falcon. 

“Do it, Jackson. I’m filming now,” a prepubescent voice calls from out of the frame. 

“You can’t post this,” Jackson says. “My parents will kill me.” 

“I won’t, I swear,” the off-camera voice lies.

“Fine,” Jackson says. 

He extends his arms out with the spaceship in his hands. Then, he squeezes his eyes shut, furrows his brow, and the Millenium Falcon begins to levitate. It’s slow and shaky at first, but then it rises higher and higher until it’s roughly 8 feet in the air. The crowd of boys erupt in shrieks and Holy shits! 

“Damn, this is gonna get like a million views,” says the filming boy.

Suddenly, Jacken opens his eyes and the ship crashes at his feet with a thud. “You said you weren’t going to post!” He yells and lunges at the camera. The video ends.

“I had some hackers look into the IP address that the video was posted from,” Mulder says. “It’s from a school in a small town in northern Wyoming. I was also able to get enrollment records from the school. There’s only one Jackson. Jackson Van De Kamp. Date of birth: May 20, 2001. I did a little more digging and found out he was adopted, in a sealed adoption, on April 28 of the following year.” 

“When did you find this?” she asks, still staring at the screen.

“About a month ago. It popped up on some of the parapsychology channels I still monitor. I wanted to wait until I had all the information before I told you.”

“How many times have you watched it?”

“Hundreds,” he says. “It’s him. Look at him. It has to be.” 

“Play it again,” she says. 

They watch the video a second time, then a third, then again and again. She asks him to pause on the clearest images of William’s face and she touches the screen, caressing the pixels of his cheek with her fingertip. She knows in her bones it’s their son. Even if the dates didn’t match and he wasn’t demonstrating telekinesis in a viral video, she would know it’s him.

“We can get a flight now and be there by morning,” he says.

“And then what?”

That’s the part of the plan they’ve never discussed. She knows Mulder has never stopped looking for William. They were once in the car right outside the home of a family with a four-year-old adopted boy in rural Pennsylvania before getting a call from a source that it was a trap. They flew to Utah once to identify the body of an adopted, runaway eight-year-old in a morgue. In the storm of emotions that comes every time they’ve gotten close, she always feels a low rumble of relief. Relief that she won’t have to explain herself to him. Relief that she won’t have to tear a family apart.

“We can watch him,” Mulder says. “Make sure he’s safe. I’m sure there’s a local hospital that could use an experienced pediatric surgeon. And there’s nothing I’m doing here that I can’t do there.”

“You want to move to Wyoming?” She arches her eyebrows.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. “If it’s really him.” 

“What about colonization?” 

“Even more reason,” he says resolutely. “I’d need to see him one last time before it all goes to shit. Even if it’s just a glance from across the street. I’d trade everything for that and I know you would, too.”

He’s right. If the world is ending, Scully needs her son to know she never gave up on him, that she isn’t a quitter. 

That fear evaporated when he saw his son for the first time. Red and screaming in Scully’s arms, her own face white and nearly lifeless, hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat. In that moment, it all became clear. He loved this child and would die to keep him safe. His fear was replaced by a primal urge to protect. He lifted up Scully, exhausted and bleeding and clinging to their son, and carried them to the helicopter without thinking. He only had one imperative now: To love his son. 

He thought he was acting on that obligation when he left at Scully’s urging. But seven months later, he realizes he’s wrong. Fueled by bitter gas station coffee and instinctual need, he drives through the night, devouring the miles that separate him from them. Adrenaline and yearning render sleep unnecessary. 

On the second night of his son’s first Hanukkah, he finally makes it home. 

He knocks lightly on her door, then hears her soft, barefoot steps on the other side. The shadow of her feet darken the doorway and he knows she sees him through the peephole. He hears her stepping away from the door and sliding open the drawer to the small side table in her entryway. She’s retrieving her weapon, and he doesn’t blame her. Then, she unbolts the door and is standing in front of him. 

She looks tired, gaunt with deep hollows around her eyes. She’s thinner than she was even before the baby and her skin is so pale it’s nearly translucent. He imagines he doesn’t look much better himself. The months apart weren’t kind to either of them. 

“Is it really you?” she asks, taking a step back, her eyes wide with terror and hope. 

He wants to reach out and hold her close to him, to feel the shape of her body and inhale her scent, but he doesn’t want to scare her. 

“The one and only Fox Mulder.” He gives her a tentative smile. “We used to share an office, rarely agreed on anything, but managed to swap enough genetic material to create one perfect baby boy who I’ve missed desperately. Sound familiar?”

She doesn’t walk towards him as much as fall into him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest. “Mulder,” she whispers against the fabric of his wrinkled t-shirt. 

He’s been awake for over 36 hours and he’s beyond unkempt. He’s long crossed the line between stubble and bearded and hasn’t showered in three days, but she doesn’t seem to mind as he presses a kiss to the crown of her head and pulls her in tighter. He feels her birdlike bones through her clothes. 

She pulls back to look into his eyes. They’re both crying and smiling now as he leans in to kiss her. Her lips are slightly chapped, the way he knows they always get in winter, and he parts them with his own to deepen the kiss. She tastes like tea and tears and home. He wants to stay like this forever, but there’s someone else he needs to see. 

“Where’s William?” he asks, his face still close to hers.

“Come,” she says, leading him by the hand. “I was just putting him down.” 

He follows Scully into her spare bedroom that’s now been transformed into a nursery. When he left, William was still sleeping in the bassinet next to her bed and most of the nursery furniture was still unassembled. He hates thinking that she did this on her own. William lies in a blonde wood crib in the middle of the room. He’s gazing up at a mobile of floating moons and planets through heavy eyelids. 

“Can I?” he asks, reaching down to pick up the baby.

Scully nods. 

More than half a year has passed since he last held William and he’s shocked by how much he’s changed. The boy is heavier in Mulder’s arms. As he’s lifted up by unfamiliar hands he becomes more alert. He holds his head up on his own, reaches out to grab his father’s face, and smiles a big, gummy smile with a hint of pearly white teeth breaking through. He has a dusting of light hair and his mother’s bright blue eyes. 

“He’s incredible,” he whispers to her. 

“I know,” she says, wiping away tears. 

He’s spent seven months imagining this moment and his only regret is that it took him so long to come back. 

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” she says.

“You never would have let me,” he says, and she doesn’t argue. 

“When are you leaving?” she asks.

“I’m not,” he says definitively. 

“Mulder,” she sighs, the pain evident behind her eyes. “You can’t stay. You know that.”

“No, Scully, I don’t,” he says. “There’s been no credible threat or any evidence that my being here puts us in danger. It’s killing me to be so far away from both of you, and if you try to tell me you don’t feel the same way I know you’re lying.”

“It’s not that simple,” she says, bringing her hand to cup his elbow.

“It is,” he insists. “It’s exactly that simple. I love you, I love our son, and I need to be here with you. You know we have a better shot fighting off any threat together than we do apart. We’ve been a good team for nine years, Scully. Let’s not break up the squad just yet—especially when we’ve got this promising new rookie.”

She laughs softly but hot tears are running down her cheeks. He leans in to kiss them away, still holding William in between them. 

“Unless I’m cramping your style here.” He smiles

“Never,” she says with a sharp exhale, catching her breath as she cries. 

“Tell me everything about him.”

They make their way to her couch and William falls asleep in his arms as she tells him everything he’s missed. William sleeps through the night and can sit up on his own. He eats oatmeal, mashed up bananas, and applesauce, and she wants to try peanut butter next to make sure he’s not allergic. He isn’t crawling yet but can roll over on the floor and reach for toys. It’s all equally mundane and miraculous. 

It’s been over an hour before he takes his eyes off her and the baby long enough to notice the menorah on her kitchen table. She has two candles lit, plus the taller one in the middle, the shamash. 

“What’s that, Scully?” he asks, taking one hand off William’s warm back to point to the menorah. “You go and convert while I was gone?”

“It’s your heritage,” she says.

“Oh Scully, you didn’t have to do that,” He’s surprised by how choked up he feels. He hasn’t owned a menorah in his entire adult life. 

“I was so scared he’d never get the chance to know you,” she says, “and I wanted something he could share with you.” 

“And you went with a menorah instead of a scale model of the Starship Enterprise?” 

It earns him a warm smile. “Maybe next year,” she says. 

He watches the candles burning, translucent wax slowly seeping down their sides. For the first time in months, he feels like he’s in the right place at the right time. He’s done running. His family is here and he isn’t going anywhere. 

The office is sepulchral without their usual verbal volley of theories and retorts. Free of his frenetic energy, the space feels like it’s lost its electric charge. It’s like walking into a room knowing the party has already dispersed. His scent has fully permeated the air, warm and musky, as if it’s a skin he’s recently shed. Sitting in his chair, she feels like a child playing pretend. His warmth is long gone from the fabric but it still holds his shape. 

It’s her office, too, but it doesn’t feel like it. She has no desk, no name plate, no personal items of her own to pair with his old awards, family photos, and news clippings. It’s as if this is his life and she’s just passing through. Part of her wants to make her mark, to leave something of herself in their basement lair, but she also fears doing so would forever bind her to this place. During her first case on the X-Files she felt like a visitor in a strange land, but each day finds her tip-toeing closer and closer into Mulder’s world—if not his life. 

She’s reading a case file from 1991 about a boy in Tennessee who Mulder believed was possessed by the spirit of his great-great grandfather when she notices a second signature alongside Mulder’s in the case report: Diana Fowley. Next to Mulder’s staccato, detached scrawl, Fowley’s signature is all sensuous curves, looping letters smoothly linked together. Scully locates a few other files from the same year and sees the same name. 

It doesn’t shock her that Mulder had a partner before her. It’s standard FBI protocol for all field agents to have one. But she is surprised that he never mentioned her before. Was Diana sent to debunk Mulder’s work like she was? Or was she a fellow believer? Did she make the basement her home as well?

Scully’s curiosity gets the better of her and she picks up the phone. 

“Holly? Hi, it’s Dana Scully. Agent Mulder is out and I had a question about an old case of his so I was hoping I could speak to his previous partner. Her name is Diana Fowley. Do you think you could find her extension for me?”

“Sure, Dana, no problem,” Holly says on the other end of the line. 

Scully hears Holly clacking at the keys on her computer over the phone. She immediately feels embarrassed. Would she be snooping around like this if Mulder’s old partner was a man? 

“Hi Dana,” Holly says finally. “It looks like Agent Fowley is currently stationed in Berlin in the counterterrorism unit. Do you want me to connect you to her office?”

“No, that’s fine,” Scully demurs. “It’s after working hours on her time. I’ll probably figure this out on my own anyway. Thank you, though.”

“Anytime,” Holly says and hangs up the phone. 

Counterterrorism? It doesn’t seem like a natural stepping stone after working on the X-Files. Scully tries to resume her work but that name keeps appearing and taunting her. 

She’s flipping through a file for a case on a murderous Loch Ness-esque monster spotted in Lake Erie when she sees a photo paper-clipped to a crime scene report. 

In the photo, Mulder is walking around the shores of a marshy lake with a tall, brunette woman a few paces ahead of him. Scully can’t deny the woman is pretty. She has strong features and wears a fitted skirt suit that clings to her feminine frame. Her dark hair is perfectly in place, the way Scully wishes hers looked out on assignment when it instead typically devolved into a halo of frizz. She looks like a woman—while Scully sometimes feels like a girl playing dress-up in the boxy pantsuits she bought, believing they’d make her look more professional. Instead of acting as sartorial armor, though, she fears her outfits just make her look small and sexless. 

Then, she sees it. On Mulder’s left ring finger there’s a gold band, shining in the sunlight. And on Diana’s: a matching one. 

It’s possible Diana had a husband at home, but Mulder? It doesn’t make any sense. Scully reviewed his personnel files when she was first assigned to work with him and he’s never been married. 

After an hour of struggling to focus on work and pacing around the office she decides to take her research to some more unofficial channels. 

****

“Agent Scully, what a pleasant surprise,” Frohike says as he welcomes her into the Lone Gunmen HQ, bolting the door shut behind her.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Byers chimes in.

“Yeah,” adds Langly. “Didn’t expect to see you while Mulder’s out of town.”

“Who is Diana Fowley?” she blurts out. She spent the drive over concocting a plausible backstory for her question but once she arrives, she’s too anxious for answers.

The three men look at each other silently for a moment and Scully’s heartbeat accelerates.

“She was Mulder’s chickadee when he just got out of the Academy,” Frohike says, looking down and avoiding eye contact with her. “Good-looking.” 

“She was there when he discovered the X-Files. She has a background in para-science,” says Langly.

“But she got a legat appointment abroad and they split up,” says Byers.

“Were they married?” She asks. 

“Not officially,” says Frohike. “But Diana was a little ... possessive of Mulder. She made him wear a ring.”

“It was actually kind of romantic,” Byers says.

“Oh come on, man,” Langly snipes. “He was totally whipped.”

“It was complicated,” Frohike says, splitting the difference.

Scully bites her bottom lip. “I need to go. I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell Mulder about this.” 

“Your secret’s safe with us, Agent Scully. I’ll walk you to your car,” says Frohike, standing to meet her. 

“That’s totally unnecessary,” she says. 

“You can never be too careful,” he replies. 

Scully wants to protest that she’s carrying a gun and is inarguably in better fighting shape than this short, balding man, but she just smiles and nods. 

She’s about to unlock her car when Frohike says, “Listen Scully, no matter what you hear about Diana I want you to know you have nothing to worry about.”

“Excuse me?” She asks, taken aback. 

“Even if you and Mulder don’t have that type of relationship, I can assure you we’re all much happier to see him with you than Diana. There was a lot of passion there, but also a lot of mind-fuckery. I don’t think she always had his best interests at heart.”

“Frohike, that’s alright, my curiosity was purely professional,” she says. 

“Sure,” Frohike nods. “But trust me, I can tell from the way he talks about you that you two have a good thing going whether that’s just as partners or something…more. It’s a lot more significant than a fake gold ring, anyway.”

She looks at him quizzically.

“What? We obviously analyzed it. Had to make sure it wasn’t a device she was using to track our boy. Didn’t find anything nefarious, but didn’t find any real gold, either. Totally hollow inside, just like the woman who gave it to him.” 

“Thank you, Frohike,” she says.

“Get home safe.”

It’s the first weekend in December and they’re holed up in his apartment after returning from Southern California where he shot a brain-eating fast-food employee. It’s not a normal life, but it’s theirs and he wouldn’t want it any other way. Her only rule is that they keep it strictly platonic in public, but he’s already looking forward to breaking that one.

He wakes up on Sunday morning with his arms wrapped around her listening to her snore. Yes, Dana Scully snores. That wasn’t a surprise when they started sleeping together. Years of overnight stakeouts and crosscountry flights will teach you your partner’s sleeping sounds. He’s always loved her snoring. Just like her, it’s gentle yet persistent, not a deep and guttural utterance but a soft and steady rhythm of air catching in her throat.

He closes his eyes and tries to let the sound of her breathing soothe him back to sleep, but his dick has other ideas. Lying here naked with Scully’s also-naked, velvety soft body pressed against his is just too much stimulation after too many years of drought. He traces her lips with his fingertips as he buries his face in her auburn hair.

“Mmm, Mulder,” she whispers nearly inaudibly.

“Good morning,” he says, letting his hand roam from her mouth to left breast.

He lazily circles his fingers around her nipple, just barely making contact as it hardens into a tight little nub. By the time he repeats the pattern on the right side, she’s rocking her hips back against him. The pressure of her ass grinding against his erection is a sublime form of torture.

“I need you,” he whispers in her ear, and it isn’t hyperbole. He’s known for years that he couldn’t live without her, but it’s only in the past couple of months that he’s learned how much his body simply craves hers.

“So take me,” she says firmly, turning over to face him. She tilts her chin up as if to dare him, and he can see her full lips, the milky white skin of her throat, her perfect breasts.

It’s almost enough to make him come on the spot. He accepts her challenge, rolling on top of her and pinning her wrists above her head with his hands. She lets out a gasp. That’s one new thing he’s learned: Dana Scully likes it rough.

The first time they’d made love, they’d both been so gentle, so afraid that one false move would wake them up from this impossible dream. He’d only just recovered from his impromptu brain surgery but even if he was at his full strength he wouldn’t have dared touch her with anything less than tender reverence. He knew she was tough but he needed her to feel safe with him.

By their third time, she told him, You don’t have to treat me like glass. I’m not going to break. And while he would sooner put a bullet through his own brain than hurt her in any way, he’s enjoying learning what she likes—a little nibbling on her ear lobe, a firm hand behind her head when she sucks him off, no handcuffs…yet.

He presses her wrists into the bed and kisses her hard on the mouth.

“Don’t move,” he says, taking his hands off her wrists to trace the outline of her torso.

He runs his fingers over her breasts and the narrow indentation of her waistline before firmly gripping her hips. He lowers himself until he’s facing the damp curls between her legs. He bows his head, nose first, into her pubis. He fucking loves how she smells.

She spreads her legs open around him and he uses his thumbs to part her outer lips and pauses to admire her swollen, glistening center.

“Please,” she whimpers.

“Oh, Scully,” he whispers into her clit. Then he gives her one long stroke with the flat of his tongue and she shivers around him.

He draws circles with his tongue, savoring her sharp, salty, Scully taste as she makes hot little moans. He picks up the pace and she starts bucking her hips into his face. He wraps his arms around her and squeezes her ass. She’s moaning harder now, a deep involuntary sound from the base of her throat. She tremors against him.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” she begs, as if there’s anything else in the world he’d rather be doing.

He’s humming against her clit now as he licks and sucks on her. He glances up and sees her eyes are shut tight and she’s thrown her head back.

“Oh, fuck, Mulder,” she utters. “Get up here and fuck me.”

Her hips keep thrusting up against him as he presses a wet kiss to her inner thigh, then her navel, then the space between her breasts and rises to meet her. She snakes a hand in between their bodies and guides him inside her. She is so fucking hot and wet all around him. She’s already got one foot over the ledge, so he doesn’t hesitate, just drives into her. Each time the base of his cock grinds against her clit she gasps and quivers, and it doesn’t take long before she gives in to her orgasm. She’s thrashing against him and all he can do is hold on for dear life. He buries his head in between her neck and shoulder and thrusts into her wildly. His heart is hammering out of his chest and he realizes he would happily die in this moment, balls deep in Dana Scully. But he doesn’t die. He comes hard, exploding inside her as he greedily sucks at her neck. It’ll likely leave a mark and he’s glad it’s turtleneck season.

Once he’s fully emptied himself, he rolls off of her, taking one of her small hands in his and bringing it to his racing heart. They lie in silence, catching their breath.

“Why didn’t we do this years ago?” she asks

“Because I’m a goddamn idiot,” he replies, staring at the ceiling. “If I’d known it would be this good I would have bent you over my desk the day I met you.”

He feels her shake her head next to him. “Not then,” she says. “We didn’t even know each other.”

“Well, what about three years ago? If I recall, you were ready to go with Eddie VanBlundht.”

It’s been a long time since either of them has mentioned that name. He knows she’s embarrassed by nearly falling for VanBlundht’s facade.

Scully sighs and turns on her side toward him. “Only because I thought he was you.”

“Is it weird that I was a little jealous of the guy?” he asks. “For having the balls to do what I could only dream about?”

“Mulder, I did think something was off about you—or him, rather. But maybe I just wanted so badly for it to be real that I didn’t question it.”

Her words bloom in his chest. She wanted him enough that she was willing to suspend her disbelief.

“So you would have been into it…if I had made a move earlier?” He asks hopefully.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now. We can make up for lost time.” It’s classic Scully. Grounded in reality.

“You don’t think I’m small potatoes?” he asks.

“Oh, Mulder,” she whispers into his neck. “I don’t think you’re small anything.”

“Thank you, Scully,” he grins and kisses the top of her head.

“Did you spend the holiday with your family?” she asks, coming to sit across from him at his desk.

Mulder shakes his head. “Nope. Frohike made his famous chicken wings, which is close enough to turkey for me.”

“What about Hanukkah? You celebrated with your mother last year,” she says, hesitating as she eases into new territory.

Two years into their partnership and they still do this awkward dance around each other when it comes to anything remotely personal. She’s more than partly to blame herself since she doesn’t willingly share much about her own life.

“‘Celebrate’ is a generous word,” Mulder says. “We didn’t exactly light the menorah and spin a dreidel around. My mom started taking her sleeping pills earlier and earlier each day until she was basically conking out after lunch. I don’t think she really likes having me around.”

“That can’t be true.”

Mulder shrugs. “I think I just remind her of Samantha. Or rather Samantha’s absence.”

“What about your father?” Scully says, trying to change the subject.

“It’s funny,” he says. “My dad’s family was Jewish and my mother only converted before they got married, but as long as I can remember he never wanted anything to do with religion. Besides, Hanukkah isn’t even a very significant holiday. It just happens to fall around Christmas so it’s gotten swept up in that all-American, gift-giving, capitalist fervor.”

“What’s the story again?” She’s familiar with the basics of the holiday but she knows Mulder likes weaving a tale for her, and she likes to listen as he does.

“Well, it all started with the rise of the Greek king Antiochus the fourth in the second century BCE. The Greeks had a mostly live-and-let-live attitude toward the Jews until then, but Antiochus wasn’t a big fan. He forbade Jews from practicing their religion and demanded they worship Greek gods instead. This all came to a head when Antiochus invaded Jerusalem, killing thousands of Jews and turning the Holy Temple into a shrine to Zeus. He also forced Jewish people to eat pork, which was strictly forbidden by the Torah, but now that I mention it, oddly puts me in the mood for bacon.”

Scully smiles but shakes her head at him.

“Anyway, a small group of Jews known as the Maccabees formed an army and managed to overpower the much larger Greek forces. They retook the temple and got rid of all the Greek idols but ran into a little problem when they went to rededicate it by lighting the menorah with pure olive oil. Because the Maccabees were soldiers returning from the battlefield, they themselves couldn’t produce pure oil until waiting seven days after having handled dead bodies. All the oil in the temple had been defiled by the Greeks except for one jug that supposedly only had enough to last for one night. But of course, as the legend goes, it ended up keeping the menorah lit for eight days, just in time for the Maccabees to start churning out their own oil. Since this all went down after the Torah was written, the only biblical allusion to the Hanukkah is actually in the New Testament when Jesus visits Jerusalem to observe the holiday—”

“—in the book of John,” Scully finishes his sentence.

“Someone paid attention in Sunday school,” he says, and she fights the feeling of a blush rising to her cheeks.

“Are you surprised?” she asks with a smile.

“Not at all,” he says, returning her grin. “Of course, some scholars consider the Maccabees to be religious fundamentalists who even killed fellow Jews they didn’t consider to be hardcore enough. And some versions of the story don’t include any reference to the so-called ‘miracle of oil,’ so who’s to say what really happened?”

“Mulder, you are willing to believe in claims of parasitic alien life forms, shape-shifting mutants, and widespread government conspiracies, but miracles don’t pass muster?” Scully asks, the corners of her lips creeping up into a smile.

He shifts in his chair, leaning forward, closer to her. “I recently witnessed one miracle that I believe in.”

“Which was?”

“Watching you go from the brink of death in that hospital bed a few months ago to sitting here and debating Talmudic wisdom with me right now. If that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is.”

She instinctively pulls back, bracing her hands on the armrests of her chair. He doesn’t budge, keeping his eyes locked on her.

“Mulder, I can’t clarify what happened to me, why I was returned or why I recovered,” she says quietly, “but when I was unconscious in the hospital, I saw things that I believe can only be explained by the existence of a higher power.”

She hadn’t confessed this to Mulder before and she isn’t sure why. This is a man who believes in werewolves and time-traveling killers. Why is she scared to tell him about her own visions?

“What did you see?” He asks, softly, leaning in towards her.

“I saw my father. I saw my sister—and I saw you,” she says quietly. “But it wasn’t just seeing. I felt your presence.”

Mulder pauses for a beat, opening his lips to speak but not saying anything.

“Scully, I’ve heard about near-death experiences, people believing their seeing through a portal into the afterlife. But in nearly every case they can be explained by low-oxygen levels or misfiring neurons in the brain.”

“No, Mulder,” she says, looking down at her hands now. “I read my medical report. I never suffered from hypoxia or unusual neurological activity. There’s no scientific explanation for what happened.”

“So you think it was God?”

“I don’t know, Mulder,” her voice quavers. “But I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t.”

“Whatever it was, I’m glad you made it through.”

“Thank you,” she says, feeling the heat rising in her chest.

She spends more and more time in the office. Only here does she feel like she’s upholding her unspoken promises—to never stop looking for him and to never give up on his work. The more time passes since his abduction, though, the more it feels like she’s spinning her wheels. She’s in constant contact with the Lone Gunmen but they’ve all but admitted the chatter on abductees in rural Oregon has dried up. There have been no reports of a man who fits his description wandering into a hospital or turning up at a morgue in months.

So she crisscrosses the country with her new partner hunting down humanoid bats and parasitic slugs, telling herself it’s what Mulder would have wanted. Ironically, if he were here, he’d tell her to go home, to rest, to take care of the baby and herself, but he isn’t here. 

Now that it’s winter, she comes in before sunrise and stays long after sunset. Surrounded by his yellowing news clippings, file cabinets of notes written in his indecipherable (to all but her) scrawl, and array of trinkets and memorabilia, this is where she feels closest to him. Holed up in the basement, she lives in darkness.

Doggett is out for the week and she cherishes the time she can spend in the office on her own. He’s been a good partner, but sharing this space with anyone else but Mulder feels like a betrayal. Even Skinner left early for the day. He came down to the basement to tell her he’d be out until late next week and wished her a happy holiday. He does things like that now–checks in on her. She just nodded, gave him a tight-lipped smile, and wished him well. 

She declined her mother’s invitation to join her at Bill’s in San Diego for Christmas this year, and when Maggie offered to stay back in DC with her, she begged her not to. If she can’t be with him, she only wants to be alone. 

It’s getting late, even for her, but she isn’t ready to go home. Her apartment is too quiet and empty.

To bide the time before she can sleep, she walks around the downtown shopping district. She likes the anonymity it provides. Here, she can be just another woman doing last-minute Christmas shopping. 

There’s an upscale baby and children’s clothes boutique that she often walks past but doesn’t dare go inside. It’s full of beautiful but expensive and impractical items like dry-clean only cashmere sweaters that will inevitably be covered in spit up, drool, and mashed up food. There’s nothing she would ever buy but she knows Mulder wouldn’t be able to resist the impossibly small pieces. She imagines rolling her eyes, but smiling, as he drapes tiny onesies over her belly and insists on spending hundreds of dollars on clothing their baby will outgrow in a matter of months.

She hasn’t bought anything useful or necessary for the baby, either. It wouldn’t be right to do it without him. Her mother keeps asking if she wants help cleaning out her second bedroom for the nursery, but she still imagines that there will be time to do it with Mulder once he’s back. “Once,” she repeats to herself. Never “if.”

Down the block from the children’s shop is a small Judaica store she hadn’t noticed before. A warm glow of light emanates from inside and she’s drawn to pull the door open. 

She’s the only customer inside. The store is full of merchandise—intricately carved mezuzahs, Kiddush cups, servingware, and a wall of books in Hebrew and English—but it feels cozy, not crowded.

An older woman with wiry gray hair and black-frame glasses stands at the register near a glass case of jewelry. “Let me know if you need help with anything,” she says as Scully surveys the shelves. 

She finds a small selection of menorahs and examines them one by one. There’s one made from shiny silver with inlaid blue stones, and another angular, more modern style. Then her eyes land on a small brass menorah. It’s tarnished in spots but still catches the light. Tiny olive leaves are sculpted along the branches.

“We’re a little picked over,” the woman calls over to her. “Last minute and all, you know?”

Scully smiles and nods at her. “This one is beautiful,” she says, picking up the brass menorah. It feels solid, heavier than she expected. 

“It is, right? I found it at an estate sale. I wish I knew more about it but I can tell it’s old, possibly from the mid-1800s, and it’s similar to ones I’ve seen from the Netherlands.” 

“I’ll take it,” Scully says. She’s never known Mulder to own a menorah, but it feels like something she needs to do to honor him.

At the register, the woman carefully wraps the menorah in tissue paper before placing it in a shopping bag.

“I’ll throw in some candles for you, too,” she says. “Happy Hanukkah.” “Thank you.”

“And, I don’t mean to assume,” the woman says, her eyes dropping to toward Scully’s belly, “but b'sha'ah tovah.”

“Excuse me?”

“May your baby be born at a favorable time,” she says. “It’s a traditional Jewish blessing. We tend to be a little superstitious around pregnancy so we don’t say mazel tov until after the baby is born.” 

“I appreciate that, thank you,” Scully says, bringing her hand to her stomach.

The shopkeeper’s words echo in her mind on the drive home. It feels like the only appropriate thing anyone has said to her about her pregnancy. She’s given hollow smiles and nods to ultrasound technicians who’ve congratulated her and asked how happy she was to be having a baby. Her mother has been a little more sensitive, but Maggie still insists on trying to cheer her up and look on the bright side even though her blessing is tinged with darkness. But: b’sha’ah tovah, at a favorable time. It gives her comfort—the hope that the right time will come, that Mulder will return to her and their child. 

Back at her apartment, she gently unwraps the menorah and sets it in the center of her kitchen table. Looking closely at it, she sees there’s even more detail to each individual olive leaf, lines and shading etched into the brass, than she noticed in the store. 

The next night, she comes straight home from work and digs a box of matches from her kitchen drawer to light the menorah. She and Mulder once celebrated an improvised Hanukkah with battery-powered candles in an airport bar, so she knows to light the center candle, the shamash, first. Then she places a candle in the far right branch and uses the shamash to light that one, too. 

She grins at the improbability of it all: Dana Katherine Scully, star Sunday school pupil and lapsed Catholic, lighting a menorah. She doesn’t know the Hebrew prayer that Mulder recited to her once so she silently says her own. She prays for her baby and for Mulder, prays they’ll be together again soon. 

More than two millennia ago, a group of Jews kept a menorah, just like this one, lit for eight nights through the power of their beliefs alone. Like the Maccabees, she’s exhausted nearly all of her resources. To the FBI, Mulder’s disappearance is essentially a cold case with no leads left to track. There’s no evidence for her to analyze or put under a microscope hoping it will guide her to him. All she has left to go on is faith. 

The warm glow of the candles reflecting on the brass cuts through the darkness surrounding her. She feels the tiniest flutter within her and it nearly takes her breath away. She brings a palm to her belly and feels it again. Life perseveres.