#morewinepls

Mulder tosses the camera away, ignoring the photo that prints and slips onto the table. He reaches for the discarded pizza box, holding it out as a secret apology.

“Hi,” she says yawning and stretching. He peels his eyes away from the tiniest speck of skin that shows.

“Hi,” he answers back, still holding out the pizza box.

“What time is it?”

“A little after 12am.”

Her eyes widen at the answer. All tranquillity gone as she frantically begins lacing up her shoes.

“In need to go,” she tells him in a huff. “I I haven’t been back since I left and my mom especially, she’ll be going crazy, have all of DC out looking for me.”

Mulder just stares at her, pizza box still outstretched. It’s not fair for her parents to have driven her out the house only to have her crawling back out of panic.

“Stay,” he says, unsure exactly where it’s came from.

She stops what she’s doing to look at him, a look of ‘you’re an idiot’ wrote on her face and he tries not to look offended by it by swallowing.

“I can’t stay, Mulder. I need to go home.”

“But it’s late,” he argues. “You can call them tomorrow, say you stayed here. Which you did.”

The look turns into an eyebrow rise. “Tell my parents that I stayed at a boy’s house?”

“Better a boy’s house then being kidnapped.” His tone softens when he sees a smile break through. “Stay. Eat. You haven’t eaten.”

Her gaze finally falls to the pizza box, as if only just noticing it. Dana sighs, toeing off her shoes and opens the lid.

“It’s ham. Not one I’d go for personally, I’m more meat feast but it was Langley’s turn to choose and he always chooses ham.” It’s a babble of words he’s not even sure she’s listening to, she just pokes the pizza with her finger.

“How old is it?” she asks, looking up at him.

“A day, technically. But it’s okay, it’s still edible.”

She gives him a ‘sure’ look before her stomach grumbles and she gives in. Picking up a slice, she bites into it.

“Good?” he asks, sheepishly.

“It’ll do,” she answers, mouth full of cold pizza.

“I have a blanket for you, too.” He hands her the fox covered blanket, a present one of his cousins gave him as a birthday present thinking they were funny.

She looks at it and smiles to herself, before looking back up to him.

“Thank you, Mulder.”

“You’re welcome, Dana.”

She gives him one of her rare, genuine smiles and his stomach flutters once more.

  ii) “You know it’s rude to take pictures of someone without their consent.”

He brings the camera away from his face, feeling guilty at his lack of restraint as the photo falls onto the grass.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, pushing both the camera and the picture away from himself. Ashamed, he looks down to the grass, watching the ash from her cigarette flit across the earth.

A smirk breaks out across her face as she looks up at him.

“It’s okay,” she says, rubbing away some of the guilt and awkwardness. “Explain it to me again.”

Mulder glances up just in time to see her take a puff of the cigarette and boy, if it isn’t the hottest thing he’s seen in his life.

He swallows, fumbling to push his glasses up as he reaches for the dice once more.

“Okay,” he begins, holding the die up to eye level and finding her surprisingly attentive to what he has to say. “So, this is a D-20. It’s your most used dice; you roll it to hit and for any skill checks and saving throws you need to do.” He drops the die into her hand, feeling more confident how he’s talking about something he knows.

She plays with the die in one hand whilst flicking ash with the other. It’s a weirdly captivating image and Mulder is once again resisting the urge to snap a photo.

“What about those?” she asks, pointing to the rest of the dice in the box.

“They’re mostly damage dice, sometimes healing.”

She drops the D-20 back into the box, leans back and takes another drag.

“And that’s how you spend your free time?” she asks, an eyebrow raised. “Rolling dice?”

He tries not to feel embarrassed as he nods, pushing up his glasses once more.

“Yeah. Every weekend. I have a campaign. You’re free to play if you want…” His request trails as he realises what he’s said. Avoiding the probably amused look on her face and begins frantically gathering his stuff up.

Stupid, he repeats in his head. Stupid, stupid, Stupid Spooky.

Lost in his own thoughts he barely feels her hand on his arm, halting his movements.

His lips purse as he looks up, bracing himself for the quip about how dumb he is. Instead, what he’s met with a smile and four words he’d never expected to hear.

“Sure. I’ll come round.”

Somewhere in the distance the bell rings and Mulder doesn’t stop the smile that escapes. She stands and he follows, haphazardly holding his things in his arms. She flicks the cigarette over the fence and turns back to him.

“Thanks for you sandwich. I’ll bring you one next time.” And with one last smile she walks off, headed to whatever her next class is.

Mulder remains standing there, dumbstruck and excited. He couldn’t wait to tell The Lone Gunmen about their new party member.

   iii) It’s the third time he’s done it and he doesn’t understand why.

The camera he’d been given for a Christmas two years ago had never been used as much as it had been in the past month.

Why the sudden urge to take photos when he’s never had it before?

Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s her wielding some command spell. Take a picture of me. Take a picture of me. He’s failed the saving throw and his weak-minded brain does.

That’s stupid, he chides to himself. It’s all me.

The camera clicks, the familiar quick flash of light across the darkened basement and he waits for the reprimand, waits to be told off for taking pictures again.

It never comes.

Instead she smiles. Something he almost misses because he’s too busy being distracted by the picture he just took.

“I was waiting for you to do that.”

She takes the cigarette out of her mouth before she speaks and he watches, now mesmerised by the by the puffs of smoke she hadn’t breathed out before talking.

“Are you ever going to let me see these pictures?”

Mulder attempts to smile knowingly (it probably looks more like a cheesy grin then the coy smirk he was going for) and tucks the picture away into his shirt pocket.

They’re for me, he thinks and not for the first time does he think it’s true that he’s a creep.

She shuts her eyes again and only when he’s certain she’s not looking does he pull out the picture. The other two he’d hidden away in his Monster Manual, not having been looked at since he’d first picked them up, resisting the urge to stare at them, to always have her in his sight.

This is the first time he allows himself to stare at a moment caught in time, a beautiful moment. It feels less creepy, less weird to look at a picture he’d been allowed to take then to gaze awestruck at the physical version that lies barely a step away.

The replica in his hand, he’s free to touch. No hand slapping his out of the way, no disgusted look that he- Spooky Mulder who’s sister ran off because even his own blood couldn’t stand to be around him- had dared touch her. This copy is still, none the wiser. He lets his thumb trace her cheek, tickle the long edge of her nose, trace her lips.

He loses himself in imaging what they’d feel like, under his fingertips, under his lips…Could he kiss off all the purple lipstick she occasionally wears before some teacher tells her to take it off for the fiftieth time that day, would it repaint itself onto his own mouth, a living proof of what he’d just done.

He gulps, his mouth aching, hands clammy and his glasses foggy. Is it hot down here?

“Scully,” he calls, his gaze still stuck on the picture.

“Hmm…?”

He wants to say it. He wants to ask her. The words just on the tip of his tongue but his tongue’s too fat, bloated with words too heavy to form. Maybe he doesn’t need words, maybe he could just do. But he’s stuck. Paralysed like on the same night the aliens came for his sister. He’s a sweaty mess and she’s waiting for his reply but he can’t see, he can’t hear, speak, or move.

“Goodnight.”

The spell is broken.

He falls. All senses rushing back into him. Overwhelmed and hating himself for not doing it, for not just upping the courage and kissing her, doing nothing like he did that night.

He pushes the picture into his pocket, stumbling over his feet in an effort to get up and out the basement.

“Mulder,” she calls but he’s reached the top of the staircase, thankful once again for his long legs, and he doesn’t turn back.

“I wasn’t planning on staying.”

He hears her but doesn’t respond. He doesn’t care what does she, where she stays, he just needed to get out.

Out and away.

 iv) He doesn’t try to pretend that he hasn’t been avoiding her. After the war with himself the other week he decided he needed a break, a breather away from the gorgeously-brilliant-yet-overwhelming being that is Dana Scully. A chance to regain some kind of control over himself.

And also to deal with the guilt.

He just left and hadn’t said a word to her since. She’d walk down one end of the corridor and he’d turn around, his gut twisting and pulling at the old guilt and the new guilt. He just wasn’t ready to face the situation, to talk about what the fuck actually happened down there in the basement.

Because nothing happened.

He wanted it to and she knows it.

Or at least he thinks she does.

But this time he isn’t so careful about where he’s turning. He forgets to take it slow around the corner and walks smack-bang into Scully herself.

“Fuck! Sorry…” He steadies the books in his arms and keeps his eyes anywhere but at her. Maybe if he doesn’t look at her she won’t see him.

But that lack of logic fails him.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“No I haven’t.”

“Yes you have.”

There’s a pause for a moment, as Mulder still refuses to look at her. He doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to see the sadness, the confusion, the wondering why the sudden halt in their friendship.

“I’ve been busy,” Mulder says after a while.

“Busy…” Her voice is full of scepticism and it only makes it gut twist harder.

“Yeah…”

It’s a lie, of course. His days have flit between baseball try-outs and D&D- something he’d not been inviting Scully to- but that’s all. The breather he hoped for, the attempt at regaining control, was futile because he was too busy thinking about Scully and staring at that empty seat during the sessions.

“Why did you run out the basement the other week?”

His eyes flick around the corridor, students run past them but they don’t pay them any attention.

“Is this the right time?” Mulder groans, wanting to leave, wanting to leave everything as it was, to go back to how it was because he fucked it up. “People are looking.”

She immediately counters a, “People don’t care.”

He tries to find the words, to come to his sense, but how does he explain that he ran out because he couldn’t kiss her? He ran out because she was the only perfect thing left that hadn’t been destroyed by Fox Mulder. How does he begin to explain all that?

The words falter, unformed, and when he does finally make eye contact with her his stomach plummets. He lips part slightly and her eyes fall downcast, but not before her watches her blue eyes turn greyish and her aura change to blue.

“Forget I said anything.” The cockiness and confidence has disappeared and it only makes Mulder feel more sadness, more guilty. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

She turns to go and his brain screams at him to do something, to stop her from leaving his life forever- somehow, he knows, that this will be the last he sees of her and it can’t be. His heart squeezes, his brain screams, stomach twists. If she walks away then maybe he is destroying her.

“Scully, wait-” he calls. Just as she turns, he grabs her arm, pulling her towards him and without thinking, without any gut tug or weary thought he bends slightly and his lips touch hers. Just a touch, a taste, a promise of more, and an apology.

It’s only a second but it feels much longer and when he finally finds the courage to open his eyes, her own stare back at him, bluer than ever before. Her cheeks tint pink and it’s incredible; never has he seen her display such a pallet of colours before.

She bows her head, letting her hair hide her face and Mulder resists the urge to push it away. He just smiles and whispers That’s why I walked out.

The realisation passes across her face and she smiles back.

He takes no pictures that day but for the one in his memory.

 v) He waits outside the Sushi Bar- the best he could do. The reviews were good and the place was cheap but he’ll do better next times, he promises.

He sits, waiting, outside the Sushi Bar absolutely shitting himself.

The nerves had been with him since he’d woke up. Never had he fussed about what clothes to wear as much as he did today. He tried to gel his hair, too, but that just resulted in pouring too much on his hand and it didn’t work anyway. He’d cleaned his glasses more times then he could count and he just hoped to whoever that he hadn’t been stood up.

He tries to override the irrational thoughts with rational ones: This was her idea after all, she’d all but begged him to take her on a date. If she wanted it so much why wouldn’t she show?

That answer seemed to subdue his irrational thoughts. For now.

It had been a whirlwind of a month and at times Mulder wondered if his heart would keep up or would it just explode from it all. A few stolen kisses, a shared carton of apple juice from the cafeteria, that one time she stayed over after a longer D&D session and she’d fallen asleep on him. A warmth ran through him when he thought of that one: her weight against him, her evened out breaths and how sometimes she’ll talk in her sleep, dibbling on him in the progress, the smell of her hair. He’d stayed awake just a revel in it all, unbelieving that this was real.

He smiles to himself now. It was real, the whole month. And Scully was going on a date with him today. She is.

“You could’ve waited inside, you know.”

Lost in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed the shadow cast over him and when he looked up, a toothy-smile rips across his face and relief spreads through him.

“I didn’t think you’d show,” he admits before he can think.

Scully frowns, “Why wouldn’t I? It was my idea.”

His smile doesn’t go away and as his eyes unsubtly check her out it’s only then he takes in what she’s wearing and how she looks.

Gone is the thick grey jacket, the yellow beanies, and shorts. The shirt she wears is colourful and she owns a pair of jeans that aren’t black. As a whole she looks different; hair pulled back with tendrils framing her face and her makeup is much lighter too.

There’s an unsettling feeling that she’d changed her appearance because of them and that doesn’t really sit well with him.

“Why the change?” he asks when his fun-hearted scrutinising his done.

She gives him a knowing look. “Melissa didn’t think I’d get in anywhere dressed as I usually am, so she dragged me back inside and made me change. This was all her idea.”

He smiles at the comedic image of her sister chasing her out of the house whilst Scully fights to break free. He doesn’t bet that it was an easy ordeal.

“So, are we going inside or was your idea just to sit here all day?”

Mulder stands, opens the door and gestures, “After you.”

They find seats easily and order their food soon enough. Whilst they wait, Scully doesn’t miss the moment to take Mulder’s chopsticks. A questioning look from Mulder as he watches her proceed to stick her chopsticks up her nose, and his in her ears.

She laughs at the horrified look she gives him.

And he doesn’t miss the chance to snap the picture.

“Am I ever going to see these pictures you keep taking of me?” she asks as she pulls the chopsticks out and throws them in the trash.

He tucks the photo away, smiling shyly. “Soon,” he promises.

.:.:.:.:

“So where else are you taking me?” she asks as they walk along a long stretch of field that Scully had more eloquently described as “Nowhere” during the drive.

It was a long shot, his second idea of a date, one he was wholly confident about but the way he saw it they were going to be sitting on a field in a big open space, she could smoke and he could watch.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” he says as they reach a wired fence.

She looks at him questioningly before her eyes move to the wires above. When she looks back forward, Mulder already has the broken fence moved over enough to climb through.

“Something tells me we’re not supposed to be here,” she says.

“You’re not supposed to smoke and you still do,” he nods for her to climb through before he follows.

“If we get caught…”

“I’ll tell your parents it was my idea.”

They begin to trek through the high grass. Adrenaline creeps through at the thought of being here. He’d only heard about it at this point, from Langley and Frohike who’d only heard it from a few of their buddies, and for ages he’d wanted to come here.

He laces their hands together, cautious of losing her as they delve deeper into the leaves. The sky is dark now, any moment he’ll see them and he wants the best view.

“Mulder, what is this place?” she asks. He doesn’t pretend to not hear the slight worry in her voice.

“I know it’s a push but just wait it out with me okay, and then decide.”

They make it to a clearing and Mulder scans the area. There seems to be no one around. Content he sits down on the grass, pulling Scully down with him. She sits on her knees, eyeing him cautiously, her own eyes darting around.

“Mulder, will you tell me why we’re here?”

Mulder sighs, enough of the riddles, he hears her say.

“I was told they fly spaceships here, Scully.”

Her mouth falls open and he waits for her to run. To get up and leave. It’s the one thing he’s not revealed to her yet. Sure, she knows that she has a fondness for aliens and space but she has no idea how far deep it runs.

“Spaceships?” she asks.

Just as the word is spoken a light zooms past above them.

A rush of excitement runs through him, his hand clutching Scully’s arm, all nerves and trepidation forgotten.

“Did you see it, Scully?” he all but screams at her. “Look, there’s another one.”

The second one zooms past before a third quickly joins them. Mulder is struck, unbelieving, doubting what he’s seeing but he revels in it anyway, wanting to believe just for this moment.

His thoughts wonder and he pulls his gaze away, a sombre mood filling him up. He looks to Scully, sees her awe-struck by the lights above her, and swallows.

Pushes up his glasses.

“Scully, can I tell you something?”

She doesn’t look away as she answers, “Sure.”

“I think my sister was abducted by aliens.”