#pre-xf

1988 - Stanford

“Dana.”

“Hmm?” She didn’t look up. Dana was sprawled out on her small living room floor, surrounded by books and notes. Melissa, on the couch, put down her book and sat up straight, face serious.

“Dana,” Melissa said again, and this time her sister glanced up. “I need to talk to you about something.”

The younger woman straightened and pulled her glasses from her face, noting the worry line on her sister’s forehead. “Oh,” she said. “Okay,” and she moved to the couch, pulled a pillow to her lap. “What’s up?”

Melissa took a deep breath. “You know I’ve dated a handful of guys,” she began. Dana nodded and felt a plucked string of curiosity. So we’re talking about boys now, she thought. There was no way that her sister, Melissa Scully, had gotten serious enough with some guy for that conversation, but— “Well, I’ve also… Dana, I’ve dated some girls too.”

Dana’s eyebrows went up. That was not what she’d been expecting. “Oh,” she said again. “Um… oh. Okay.”

Melissa worried her bottom lip. “Yeah. And there’s one… one that I’ve dated quite a bit more than others. Off and on.”

Dana’s eyebrows rose even higher and she leaned forward, curious now. “Really?”

“Yes,” Melissa said. “Her name’s Samantha. We met at Brown years ago and dated for a long time. But I… I guess I panicked a few times and dated other people, I guess just because that’s what I do, but… well, we’re together again. And I think it’s serious this time.”

Dana sat with this for a long moment, thinking, adjusting. “How serious?” She asked after a time.

Melissa cleared her throat, eyes to the coffee table. “We’re living together again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. But we’re thinking about buying a house.”

“What?” Now this Dana couldn’t wrap her head around. “You, Melissa, are thinking about buying a house. Like owning a piece of property that will require you to stay in one place presumably for more than a year.”

“Yes. In Baltimore, near mom. And near Samantha’s brother.”

To be near family, Dana thought. To be near both of their families. This was serious. She took in Melissa’s nervous fidget. “Well,” she began, searching her sister’s face, knowing how hard this must have been for her to divulge. “Melissa, that’s great.” She smiled, reached to take the other woman’s hand. “It sounds like… it sounds like you really love her.”

A smile, then, finally broke over Melissa’s face. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

1989 - Baltimore

“You like leggy brunettes,” Samantha said.

Her brother made a face, not liking to be pinned down so easily. So narrowly. “Yeah,” he shrugged. “I guess.”

“But have you tried short red-heads?”

Now he was confused. Samantha wiped the side of the wooden spoon with her index finger and licked it, eyebrows raised in question.

“What are you talking about?”

She couldn’t help the small turn of her lips, half sheepish. She turned away from him to stir the sauce again. “Melissa’s sister is coming tonight, too,” she said. “Her name is Dana.”

“What? Samantha…”

“It’s just dinner.”

“Are you kidding me? Is this a setup?”

“No!” She said, turning to face him again. “No. Not really.” The smirk grew back. “Just family. Just dinner.”

—

He tried to be angry. He did. He frowned and pouted and snarked for a full twenty minutes. But then a key turned in the lock and the door opened and first Melissa came through the door and then there was… her. Short, rumpled from the plane ride, dragging a too-heavy suitcase, she was all freckles and messy ponytail and an easy guffaw at something Melissa had said. She wore a loose sweater that hung off her shoulder, dark jeans, and her laugh was contagious. He forgot to be angry. He forgot not to smile.

“You’re here!” Samantha called from the kitchen, rushing to meet them, arms open, sleeves pushed up. There were hugs and kisses and “how was your flights,” and then Samantha turned to the side and gestured at him. “Dana, this is Fox. My brother. He’s in the FBI.”

Dana’s eyebrows went up and her cheeks went just a bit red. He stood, uncomfortable, at the threshold between kitchen and living room, for just a moment before stepping forward to shake her hand. “Fox,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” he said, because it was all he could say, because when he touched her hand he felt the strangest thing, like deja vu or a half-remembered dream. Her fingers were soft, but her grip was firm, and it lingered just a moment. “Nice to meet you,” he managed to get out.

Melissa and Samantha were sharing a look—a look like knowing. Like the same one they’d made at each other over a seminar table in Providence four years earlier.

—

She was nothing like her sister. This, he learned quickly. She had just finished her third year of medical school and she planned to specialize in pathology—forensics, specifically. Like him, she would spend her days with the dead. She spoke German. And Latin. And Greek. She knew nautical terminology and thought Melissa’s crystal fetish was bullshit. She told him he was probably wrong about his most recent case (“That sounds like porphyria, not occultism,” she’d said with a furrowed brow.) He couldn’t stop staring at her.

She caught him, once or twice, and he could swear she was blushing. After two glasses of wine, she tilted in her seat, head dropping to her sister’s shoulder.

“You tired, Day?” Melissa asked.

Dana yawned. “Long flight.”

Samantha offered her a sympathetic pout from across the table. “Guest bed is all made up if you want to turn in.”

But she shook her head, lifted it, and said, “No. No, I’m okay. I think I just need some air.”

Melissa gently nudged her sister so she sat up straight again, stood, stretched,  and began clearing plates from the table. “Why don’t you go for a walk? Let me just clean up here, and—“

“I’ll go.” All three of the women looked at him, and he cleared his throat. “I mean,” he said, “I kind of want to stretch my legs.”

He watched Dana’s face, which was red-red, and he didn’t think it was only from the wine. “Okay,” she said.

—

She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She didn’t even believe in this kind of thing, whatever this was she was feeling. She walked beside him on the sidewalk and felt the whole weight of his body beside hers, the heat of it, like vibrations of energy that made her want to reach out and touch, to feel the vibratory hum that seemed to move through his skin. She told herself that her life was too complicated for this. She was almost-dating her married instructor. She lived on the other side of the country. He was practically her brother-in-law. Everything about it was wrong.

Still. She hadn’t felt like this in… well, ever, she didn’t think. It wasn’t like this with Daniel. The hair on her arms stood on end, brushed against the inside of her sweater with every movement. She could feel all of her skin at once.

“So you have one more year,” he said. “And then what?” He was picking at his fingers as they walked, strolled really, around the block in the warm June air.

“Then internship and residency,” she said. “Another few years.”

“Will you stay in California?”

“I, um… I don’t know. Probably not. Most of my family is on the east coast right now, so…”

“So you’ll come back here?”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

He nodded, a small smile touching his own lips as they rounded the next block. She felt herself drift toward him, unthinking, and her shoulder bumped his upper arm. He looked down at her, and she up at him, still amused, confused, by this uncontrolled attraction. His eyes were so curious, so intense. He moved his hand, just a bit, so it brushed against hers. It was an invitation—subtle, easy to ignore. But she took it, let her fingers slide between his, her palm into his warm one, and they were both smiling sheepishly. She shook her head and laughed.

“What?” He asked.

“I don’t know, I… this is just so strange.”

He tugged her hand so she bumped against him again. “Strange how?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know you. I don’t live here. I—“

“Have a boyfriend?” He asked, already looking disappointed.

“Well,” she said. “Sort of? I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

He was nodding slowly, still holding her hand tight. It tingled, made her warm everywhere, just that small point of contact. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll just keep this simple.”

“Right,” she said. “Besides, you’re kind of family.”

“Right,” he said.

They were quiet for several moments, walking comfortably, still hand-in-hand. But when they turned the corner back onto Melissa and Samantha’s street, she stopped. She glanced at the house, made sure it was still too far for them to be spied on, then turned to look up at him. She watched him watching her, those eyes still so intense, just a bit hopeful, and she thought about how smart it would be to do as he said and keep this simple. She told herself to thank him for the walk and then let go of his hand. She would see him again at holidays, feel a small twinge of sadness, and move on. Avoid confusion, Dana. Avoid awkwardness. Nip this right here in the bud. She would have. She should have.

But then, instead, she kissed him.

She reached up and pulled his mouth down to hers, pressed her lips to his with almost no pressure–just a glance of skin on skin. But the shock of warmth and electricity that had first passed between their hands intensified—doubled, tripled, drove them into each other with a need that felt otherworldly. One of his hands moved to hold her face, the other to her hip, and she found her body drawn against his, felt herself falling down and down and down and never hitting the bottom of whatever this was, head spinning instead in a whirl of feeling she’d not known before. Their mouths opened. Their tongues touched. Their noses brushed against each other. She smiled against his lips, overwhelmed with the sheer joy that was pumping through her body with every beat of her heart.

And then she caught hold of herself again, found her senses. She broke the kiss, pulling his forehead to rest on hers while she took a long, deep breath with her eyes closed.

Then she stepped back, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, face on fire, and said, “Sorry.”

She turned and started walking back toward the house, leaving Fox Mulder dumbfounded on the sidewalk until he could gather enough wits to turn and follow her.

—end chapter 1—

—

Baltimore

He showed up at two in the morning, not drunk, but ragged and rough around the edges. Samatha knew when she heard the knock, reassured Melissa’s sleepy “Wassat?” with a kiss to her forehead and a hand on her back.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “It’s probably Fox.”

He stumbled in and headed for the couch, days of stubble on his face and eyes full of ghosts.

“Sit,” Samantha said. “I’ll make tea.”

He slumped with his face in his hands until she brought him chamomile and made him sit straight. She lay a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Bad?”

“Kids again,” he said. “Another monster.”

She nodded and took a sip of her own tea. “Do you want to talk about the case? Or the happy thing?”

After a sip, he set his own mug down and rubbed his temples. “Happy,” he said. “You first.”

Samantha leaned back against the couch and thought for a moment. “The last time I felt really happy… last week Melissa sent some flowers to me at work. No reason. Just because. Then she picked me up and we went down to the waterfront and just walked around. We had some dinner, then ice cream near the tall ships. It was like a real, old-fashioned date. We haven’t done that in a long time and it was just… perfect. You forget how important it is to do that kind of thing every now and then.”

She catches a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. “You’re so lucky, Sam.”

She is. She knows she is. She wants to tell him that they’ve been talking about kids, but it feels too soon, and maybe too sensitive in light of his terrible case. “What about you? When were you really happy last?”

He let out a breath that was also half of an ironic chuckle. “Well, I had a really good burrito a few days ago.”

Samantha smirked. “It was that good, huh?”

“It was a damned fine burrito.”

“And it made you really happy?” She poked his bicep. “Tell me really. When?”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I think you know.”

She pursed her lips and thought back. “June,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You really like her.”

“Yeah.” He took another sip of his tea and Samantha watched his face soften as he remembered. “She kissed me, you know. On that first night.”

“She what?” Samantha laughed. “Oh, I was so right. Melissa owes me a coke. That little minx.”

“She told me her life was too complicated. And then she kissed me right down there, at the end of the street. And then she ran inside.”

“But you came back for her. Twice.” Fox had shown up after work the next night, looking sheepish, but Dana and Melissa had already left for dinner at their mother’s house. He tried again the following evening, this time with case reports in tow. Samantha laughed, remembering. “And you brought her homework.”

“Autopsy reports and photos. Oh, you should have seen her eyes.” He was really smiling now. “And she’s damned good at what she does. She spotted something in the photos the medical examiner missed.”

“Yes, but the important question is whether or not there was more snogging.”

“Hmm.” He pursed his lips, leaned back against the cushions. “Seems rude to kiss and tell”

“Well,” she said, “as long as there was more kissing.”

His smile turned sad and his eyes unfocused. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Her life is somewhere else.”

Moments of silence stretched out in the dim-lit room while they finished their tea. The smell of chamomile clung to their mugs and softened the edges of their thoughts toward sleep. Samantha rested her head in her palm, elbow against the back of the sofa, and regarded her brother—her sensitive, sad, smartass brother who loved too easily and too hard and had only ever been hurt. He needed someone good like Dana. Someone as smart as him who wouldn’t let him crumble like this, who wouldn’t hurt him.

“She called a few days ago,” Samantha said.

“Oh yeah?” He looked startled. Interested.

She nodded. “She was kind of upset. Apparently she finally broke it off with some professor she’d been half-dating.”

At this, his eyes lit up, as she knew they would. “Really?”

She smiled and took his mug from him, carried both back to the kitchen and set them in the sink. “Give her some space,” she said when she came back into the living room to stand behind the couch. “But then give her a call.” She patted him on the shoulder one last time before turning toward the steps. “Guest bed’s all yours.”

Samantha went back up to bed, leaving her brother on the couch to think. He’d come in broken and Sam had patched up his cracks as usual. She was good to him that way. He stood from the couch and turned out the downstairs light on his way up the stairs. He thought of Dana. He thought of that second and final night they’d spent talking, out on the porch, before he’d been called away to another case in the morning. He remembered how he’d said “I want to kiss you again,” before boldly cupping her face in his hands and lowering his lips to hers—how she’d let him, kissed him back, tucked her fingers around his and squeezed before pulling back and shaking her head.

“It’s too much,” she’d said. “I’m sorry.”

But she’d given him a hug before he’d gone home and whispered into his ear, “If things weren’t the way they are…” And her nose had brushed the skin just below his ear; he’d shivered. Then she’d pulled, back, looked him in the eye with the weight of everything she felt and seemed to want, and left it at that. She turned and went back up to bed while he stood there wondering, longing, and bleeding his heart out right there in the foyer.

Now, though, things might be different. Had she broken things off because of him? Of course not. Arrogant, he thought. Stupid, he thought. She probably hardly remembered him. He pulled off his shoes and stripped out of his rumpled, many-days-old work clothes to slide into the bed. He thought of her freckles and her blue eyes and her warm hands and her lips. He thought of how her hair smelled and the curve of her hip under his hand when she’d kissed him the first time. He thought he would wait a little bit, and then find a reason to call her. Maybe even find a case in California. By the time he fell asleep, the thundercloud of suffering, the torturous case of the previous days, had faded almost completely, and it was only her he saw in his dreams.

—

October, 1989

“Hello?” She answered the phone on the third ring, trying not to burn herself on the pasta she was draining.

“Is this Dana?” The voice was familiar, and she felt an immediate jolt down her spine—was it?

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly out of breath.

“Hi,” the voice said. “This is, um, Fox Mulder. Samantha’s brother.”

She almost dropped her colander, almost burned herself on slightly undercooked rotini. “Oh!” she said, trying to pull it together. “Hi! Um, how are you?”

“Oh, you know. Saving the world from the worst of humanity while barely keeping it together. Same old. How’s med school?”

She was grinning, cradling the phone to her ear like a precious thing, overwhelmed to hear his voice again after so many months. “Oh, you know.” She said. “Saving lives and removing catheters when all I want to do is poke dead things with a sharp stick. Same old.”

He laughed, and she felt the sound of it deep in her belly, in her elbows, in her fingers, in her feet. She left the pasta in the sink and moved to sit at her tiny kitchen table, lest she swoon and hit her head on the counter. Had it been like this in June? (Yes, she remembered. It had.)

“So I have this case,” he began. “And I thought maybe you might want to take a look at the autopsy report. Maybe help me out?”

“Oh,” she said, a little disappointed. “Okay. But you know I’m not a real doctor yet, right? I’m not really qualified.”

“Hmm. Could’ve fooled me.”

There was a brief pause as she thought. The power of intrigue was strong—a real FBI case, probably a murder, and he wanted her to review it. Even if that’s all he wanted from her, how could she say no? “Okay, I’ll take a look.”

“Good.”

“But…”

“But?”

“Um, I guess… is that the only reason you called?”

“Ah,” he said, and she could practically hear him smiling. “Well. Not quite.”

“No?”

“Well,” he said again. “I guess I missed talking to you. Missed you.”

Now she was blushing, head to toe. “You did?”

“I did,” he said, serious and sheepish at once. “When are you coming back to Baltimore? You know, in case I need you. Ah, your expertise. Professionally.”

She laughed and fingered her spiraling phone cord. “Unfortunately, not for Thanksgiving. Our break is short and I’m low on funds.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, sounded ready to fork over a few hundred dollars for a cross-country plane ride, and she blushed even further at the thought.

“But my term is up in December, so I’ll be back for Christmas.”

“Christmas,” he said and sighed. “Okay. I guess I can wait that long.”

“No cases in the Bay Area?”

“No,” he said. “Believe me, I looked. Nothing the Bureau would justify my consulting on, at least.”

She’d been half-joking, but the thought of him trying to find an excuse to come see her made her heart beat faster, made her wish she’d bought a ticket home for Thanksgiving anyway. “Well,” she said, “maybe you can call again soon? At least after you send me that file.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Let me get your address.”

After she’d given it to him and they chatted for a few more minutes about family and work, she told him, “Things are a little less complicated now. Just so you know.”

“Does that mean you have room for new complications?”

“I… maybe.”

“I could be a good complication.”

“You could?”

“Yeah. The kind that brings you autopsy reports and good coffee and lets you shoot down all his stupid ideas.”

Her ears were hot and she couldn’t stop smiling. She wanted to reach right through the phone and kiss him, to drag him right across the country and into her bedroom. “Hmm. That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It wouldn’t be. It might even be good.”

If he kept talking to her like that, with that voice, this conversation was going to take very different turn, and she was sure he was already racking up his long-distance phone bill. Save that for next time, Dana, she thought with another hot flush. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “And I look forward to reading about your case.”

“Right. The case. I suppose I should let you go.”

Don’t, she thought. “Okay,” she said.

“Goodbye, Dana.”

“Goodbye, Fox.”

They hung up.

Two days later, an envelope arrived with his case notes, photos, and an autopsy report. On top of the file was a handwritten note on scratch paper.

Dana,

Your brain is amazing—what does it think about this? I can’t wait to hear your voice again. How many days until Christmas break?

-FM

-end chapter two-