#masmtwm

Rhys Darby: yeah, I can lose the moustache! I can lose the shirt if you want!

X-Files casting director: …

X-Files casting director: ok.

X-Files casting director: you can keep the moustache.

"Scully...do you realize what that means though??"

"What what means?"

"'You don't'." I mean...that can only mean one thing, Scully. You're -- "

"Mulder."

"IMMORTAL, Scully. You are. Immortal."

"Mulder..."

"You asked how you die and he literally said you don't die. You don't die, Scully! You're going to see the future. You're going to see if the Red Sox ever break the curse, which they're not gonna do, because they suck. Nobody's immortal enough to see that happen."

"Mulder, even IF he meant it literally, which -- "

"Why wouldn't he mean it literally? That thing he said about you ending up in bed with him, it wasn't what you expected but it did HAPPEN, but there's a lot less ambiguity in -- "

"Well, what about what he said about how you die?"

"Well. Uh, he wasn't. He wasn't saying that ABOUT me, he was just using it as an example. I think he was just trying to get me to shut up."

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway, the future is changeable. We're not slaves to our fate. Bruckman was wrong about that."

"OK."

"You're immortal though, Scully."

"OK, Mulder."

It becomes one of his favorite go-to lines, anytime Scully has survived another scrape, when the adrenaline has subsided and he knows she'll be all right and the relief-silliness high has set in, when he's sitting beside her hospital bed or bringing her her tea when she winces trying to get up from the kitchen table. Killer kittycats/jaguar spirit? "Thank God you're immortal, Scully, or Fluffy and Garfield might have been the last sight you ever saw." After the Bermuda Triangle incident? "I'm onto you, Scully. How many hundreds of years have you been saving the world, anyway?" Pressed way too close to her on his couch after a Christmas Eve haunted-house fever dream? "I knew it couldn't be real the whole time. You're immortal, remember?"

There are only two times he thinks of bringing it up but doesn't. One is when she has cancer. They both think of it while she's sick and getting worse, and of the dark jokes they could make about it. But neither wants to hurt the other one. Even after she's better, when life has opened wide before them again and bit by bit they're daring to accept the reality of it, it's on the tip of his tongue sometimes but it feels too close, too sacred. But he wonders if she wonders, too.