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She didn’t have her car and so he offered her a ride. Good partner that he is. Until she remembered that she needed to go grocery shopping. Right now? Yes, right now. That is why he’s in the produce department, between the carrots and the apples, one half of a pair.

Scully is squeezing the tomatoes, scrutinizing them. He’s never seen her like this, in a grocery store. What an odd, strangely intimate moment to observe. He’s seen her naked, scared and hurt, but seeing her bagging tomatoes and licking her lips while doing so is a sight he’s unaccustomed to and wildly unprepared for. As if noticing his stares, Scully turns to him and carefully puts the bag of tomatoes in the cart. Their cart.

“You have to check them,” she says, giving him a side glance, “for ripeness.” She wanders off, knowing he will follow. As he does, one wheel spinning wildly, squeaking madly, he can’t help but wonder one thing:

Are they - him and Scully - ripe, too?

They make it through the aisles, a maze built out of products, barely speaking a word. From the outside, they must look like they do this every week. Exhausted couple goes grocery shopping before the weekend. Mulder looks around, sees other men like him, women like Scully, variations of them both. But are they a couple? Is this why he’s here? 

“Don’t you need anything?” Scully asks him as she puts a bag of flour into the cart. He stares into it, sees the small empty corner that he figures must be reserved for his purchases.

“Uhm,” he says, staring at the shelves. What is he supposed to do with flour? He briefly considers buying a bag anyway, just to make Scully happy, but decides against it. They move on, Scully occasionally stopping to load their cart. Mulder makes eye-contact with a father of two small children, who fight over what cereal to buy. He gives him a small nod in acknowledgment and grabs a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for himself.

“Look,” he says to Scully, “I’m buying something.” He half expects her to give him a lecture about how cereal is just sugar and wheat, both of which are not good for him. Instead, she gives him a smile and says, “we need milk.”

We.

Not “you need milk”, not “I need milk”. It’s “we need milk”. Mulder quickly glances around, looking for witnesses. Did anyone else hear her say it? She said “we”! In his euphoria, he almost loses Scully. He quickly makes his way through the aisle, wanting to catch up with her. His cart crashes into someone else’s and he gets a dirty look. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the fact that they need milk.

He’s beginning to think they are as a ripe as the tomatoes Scully bought. Or even overripe.

Scully buys rice, pasta, yogurt and all kinds of reasonable food Mulder hasn’t had in his cupboards for years. If ever. He buys eggs and fresh orange juice, his purchases slowly tipping over to her side of the cart. Scully hands him two bags of sunflower seeds and he takes them from her, his fingers brushing hers in a silent thank you.

He’s lost all sense of time and space. They’re closer to the exit now – he thinks. Only a few aisles remain. Scully dashes into one and he follows, staring at shelves of feminine hygiene products. They’ve come a long way from fruits and vegetables to tampons. Mulder moves on slowly and finds himself in front of condoms. He stares at the colorful selection in front of him. Blue, green, yellow – condoms that glow. It’s been a long time since he’s had to even think about buying a box of condoms. 

“Mulder?”

“Hm?” Scully is next to him, her eyes darting between him and the condom selection.

“I’m done here,” she says, the words drawn out. “Do you need… these?” He can’t look at her. She’s pointing at one of the boxes that reads “x-tra large”, waiting for his answer. 

“Do I need these?” He parrots back and dares to look at her. Now he definitely feels like a tomato. Ripe or not, he knows they’re a matching color. 

“How would I-,” but she stops herself. They’re almost there. He can hear the incessant beep-beep of the checkout counter. “You don’t need them,” she says, meeting his eyes.

“I don’t.” 

Scully shakes her head. “Unless you have plans this weekend that don’t include me.”

“No plans,” he interrupts her. “No plans other than… this.” He makes a hand gesture towards the shopping cart. He can no longer say which items are hers and which are his. He’s beginning to realize that Scully never planned to keep them apart. They’ve been inching towards the inevitable since New Year’s Eve and his half-drugged, tender kiss. Maybe even before that. Ripe, he thinks again. They really are.

“Then we don’t need them.” The “we” is back and he likes this “we” - and its implications -  even better. 

“Or we could try out the glowing ones.” He beams at her. Not because of his joke. Well, not entirely. It’s because he understands now. He gets to go home with her. He gets to be with her. In every way. 

"Maybe next time,” she says. “Ready?”

She turns away from the traitorous glass, shakes her hips side to side and tries to slip the jeans over the swell of her stomach but they refuse to budge.

It’s only natural. Weight gain in middle age, during menopause, is normal. It’s typical. She’s no different to any other fifty-six-year-old. Except she’s an FBI agent, a scientist, a fucking doctor. She rewrote Einstein. Yet she can’t take a pair of jeans off. She hooks her thumbs down the sides and yanks, but the jeans hold firm.

It’s only fucking natural. Rage boils in the pit of her fat gut. She stabs at the flab there. Turns back to the mirror and makes a smiley face from her navel. Does a Mulder impression. Do you think I’m spooky?

“Scully?”

“I’m fine,” she snaps.

“Right. How do they look?”

Her ass is certainly lifted by the confines of the material. From the back, she looks pretty good. But the bulge over the waistband and the ridiculously long legs make her look like a circus freak. Are there even circus freaks any more? She remembers The Enigma from that bizarre case years ago and briefly entertains becoming the ‘Dr Dana the Denim-clad Muffin Top’ for the rest of her years. Because she is never going to be able to extract herself from these pants. People might pay. There’s a porn site for every fetish.

“They’re a bit tight,” she says, wriggling again to no avail. Her sigh sounds like a fighter jet launching.

Mulder’s whole head appears through the curtains. “Ooh, hot.”

Not helpful. Not in the least. She exhales sharply and he pulls a face in response. But he doesn’t leave. “I need a bigger size.” It cuts to say it. Slashes. She’s bleeding out. Not in the heart being extracted by a psychic surgeon kind of way.

“I’ll get some for you.”

Fucking typical. He’s not even going to ask why. What is it with men? Don’t they get it? She’s known Mulder how long? Long enough for him to understand how hard it is for her to admit something like that. The least he could do is offer some comfort. “Fine.”

He leaves. Then comes back straight away. “It’s not fine though, is it, Scully?”

Fucking typical. Now the psychologist comes out. “I’m fine.”

“You didn’t say, I’m fine. You said, it’s fine. There’s a difference.” Are you shitting me? This is not how she likes her Mulder. “I’m feeling there’s something going on here but I haven’t quite worked it out.”

Before she can blast him out for his lack of investigative skills, he’s inside the changing room. There’s barely enough oxygen for one but with him in the tiny space she’s suffocating. He’s looking down on her. On to her shiny fucking roots. Her protruding gut. Her comedically short legs. Embarrassment leaves a red streak across her cheeks. Breathing hurts. Not just because the waistband of the jeans is digging in to her skin, but because her chest is tight with humiliation.

“I can’t get them off,” she whispers.

“What?” His face is so close to hers, she can feel his cheekbone scrape against her skin. Because of course he hasn’t put on an ounce of fat over the years. Just a bulk of muscle. And she’s not going to complain about that. But if he laughs. If he so much as cracks that beautiful fucking face of his…

She looks down at the floor. “I can’t get the jeans off. They’re…stuck.” Tears burn in her eyes and she feels doubly stupid. A fat old woman trying on a pair of too-small jeans and then CRYING about it.

“Hey,” he croons, lifting her chin with a gently finger. “We’ll figure it out.”

She shakes her head. The tears fly loose. She sniffs, cuffing the wet away with the heel of her hand and takes a ragged breath in. How dare he be so fucking understanding. “I’m fat, Mulder,” she says, leaning into his shoulder.

“No you’re not,” he says, kissing the top of her greying head. “You’re just giving me more to handle.” She slumps against him, half laughing then dissolving into tears again. “There’s always been too much of you for me, Scully. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

She bumps her head against his shoulder, then lifts her face to him. “These jeans are not just too small, they’re too long. They might even fit your chicken legs.”

His eyes slide down to the floor and he chuckles chestily. “I can’t believe how often I forget just how short you are, Scully. Because, as I said, you’ve always seemed so much bigger to me.”

“Metaphorically speaking.”

“Yes, you’re figuratively enormous. Huge.” He slips his fingers down the back of the jeans and wriggles his wrists.

“Vast, gigantic,” she says, jiggling with his movements. The waistband stretches over her hips and with a pop slips under her buttocks, taking with it, her underwear.

“Impressive, grand,” he murmurs, pulling away from her as the pants fold open over her upper thighs and slide, along with the pale blue panties, down to her knees, “wholly magnificent.”

She’s bare before him. Not in a what are they, Mulder? way, but in a literal, naked-from-the-waist-down-in-a-changing-room-way. And the way he’s looking at her, the light in his eyes, the slight part in his lips, the want, everything else fades to nothing. There’s no sales assistant asking politely at the curtain if everything’s okay. There’s no security camera on the ceiling flashing a red intrusive eye at them. There’s no greys, no lines, no layers of quarantine fat. There’s just him and her and love.

They emerged from the airport frowsy and rumpled, squinting into the gold sunset.  Mulder jerked his chin toward the parking.  “Come on.  I drove.  I’ll take you home.”

“Mulder, you don’t have to drive all the way to Maryland,” Scully protested.  “I’ll just get a cab.”

They looked at the line.  Scully looked back at Mulder.  “Maybe you could drop me in the city.”

Their bags rattled on the asphalt as the wheels caught.  Mulder put them both in his trunk.  They climbed into his car, the familiarity of it tempered by the unease of transit.  The couch: that would be where they truly landed.

“Dinner?” Mulder suggested.  “I know a great little Cuban place.”

“I have some frozen meals,” she said absently, looking out the window.  “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said, and cracked a sunflower seed.  

+ + + + 

“Hey, Scully, I got tickets to the football game and Danny can’t make it,” he said, waving two slender pieces of paper in her face.  “What do you say?  America’s favorite game?”

“That’s baseball,” she said absently, tapping away at the keyboard.  “And thank you, but no.  I need to finish this report.”

“Game’s not until tomorrow,” he said.

“Maybe next time,” she told him.  “My new issue of JAMA came in and there’s an article I’m really interested in.  Plus, my sister is coming to town.  Maybe Pendrell would want to go?  Or Skinner?”

“Hah,” Mulder said.  “Next time.”

+ + + +

“Baseball tickets,” he said.  “You.  Me.  Hot dogs.  Beer.  And before you ask, no, neither of the teams have a racial slur in their name.”  

“That’s a relief,” she said.  “But I really need to clean my apartment this weekend.”

He stared at her.  “Baseball, Scully.  America’s favorite game, actually.  The sport of kings.”

“That’s horse racing.”

“I promise it’ll be more fun than scrubbing your bathtub,” he said.

“Unless you’re offering to scrub my bathtub, I can’t make it,” she said.  “And I hope that’s not a euphemism.”

“My euphemisms are better than that,” he said, affronted.

+ + + +

Concert tickets to the symphony, courtesy of his friend in the Senate.  Dinner.  Drinks.  The new niche film.  The summer blockbuster.  The art gallery.  Every time, she turned him down with an absent smile.  Scully would go with him to the most ridiculous places, but it was never anything he could call a date.  There was always some kind of link to work, some plausible deniability.

“She’s too smart for you,” Frohike said.

“I know,” Mulder told him ruefully.

“Maybe you should just let her know how you feel?” Byers suggested.

“Ugh,” Langly said.  “Or not.”

“Thank you, boys,” Mulder said, scraping his fork through the remains of a plate of huevos rancheros.  “Very helpful.”

+ + + + 

Years later, when they were together, he pulled her close in the bed and nestled his cheek against her hair.

“Can you believe our first date was at the baseball field?” he murmured.

“That wasn’t our first date,” she told him.  

“What?” he said.  

“Mulder, we’ve been on hundreds of dates,” she said, rolling over in his arms and gazing at him.  “Diner dinners.  Midnight milkshakes where we didn’t even bother with two straws.  Every time we shared a piece of pie.  Not to mention that haunted house on Christmas.”

“That was all work,” he protested.

“There was clear intent,” she teased.  “I saw how you licked that whipped cream off the fork before you handed it to me.  It was clearly foreshadowing of your lingual abilities.”

“I am fluent in tongues,” he said smugly.

“Every blatantly unnecessary trip to the Smithsonian,” she continued.  “Every rendezvous by the Potomac under the cherry blossoms.  Every time you came over to my place and passed out watching a movie or staring at a photograph.”

“Hollywood,” he suggested.

“Well, by that time, it should have been obvious that it was a date,” she said, her hand sliding along his back.  “But yes, everything we did in Hollywood was a date.”

“A Skinner-approved date,” he said thoughtfully.

“A Skinner-mandated date,” she corrected, and they both looked at each other.

“Huh,” he said.  “I did not see that coming.”

“Apparently Skinner did,” she said.  

“That’s why he has the big office,” Mulder told her, nuzzling at her.

“We should have sex on his desk,” Scully said in a husky voice.  “After all, he is partially responsible for this situation.”

Mulder paused.  “I’m sure you didn’t actually mean that, but I’m into it anyway.”

Neither of us mentions that, since she left her car at the Hoover building, I’ll have to drive her back. We also don’t mention the fact that it’s been three months since Scully has set foot in what was once our home. When we arrive, make it up the winding driveway and past the gate, all the way up to the front door, after a moment of awkwardness Scully manages to make herself at home again. She doesn’t say anything about the pictures of us that are still in the same place but face down in their frames. She doesn’t comment on the pathetic lack of food or the mess of the den and the study. Instead she gets on her tiptoes and reaches in the rack above the fridge where we always kept the wine. Sure enough there is still some waiting for us. We put on a movie but end up barely paying attention to it, content to talk and drink. For the first time in easily two years I see Scully smile. I even get a laugh. A Scully laugh even during our best times was a rare occurrence. I can’t help but smile back and feel the sting of tears in my eyes.

She’s cracking up now as we think back on our case in Texas with the vampires and the buck-toothed sheriff (though Scully still denies it). She’s laughing so hard her head is thrown back and she looks so beautiful I could cry. Instead I tell her how terribly jealous I was of that vampire sheriff. She gets a kick out of that and arches a brow. “Mulder, we don’t know for sure that they were vampires. That is a bit of a leap,” she scoffs, taking another sip of her wine. We talk about Mutato and ponder the fate of the townsfolk of Albion, Indiana. I remember how right it felt to hold her in my arms as we danced to Cher.

Scully then recalls a long ago evening, a lot like this one, when she sat across the couch from Eddie Van Blundht and almost let him kiss her. That’s when I make my move.

By this point we’ve moved significantly closer to each other on the couch. Her smiling face is only inches from mine and I lean in to kiss her. I feel like I’ve come home. Everything about her is beautifully familiar and occasionally we pull back away just to look into each other’s eyes, remind ourselves this is real. She doesn’t protest when I lift her up and carry her upstairs to the bedroom. It’s a well rehearsed dance of ours but I still feel slightly nervous.

Once in bed we move slowly. Take our time to get reacquainted. Her small hands take hold my face while her manicured fingers comb through my hair. Meanwhile I’m joyfully realizing her breasts are still the perfect weight in my hands.

We’ve never been good with words so I let my fingers, lips, and tongue tell her how much I’ve missed her. My kisses down her flat stomach tell her that I love her. I’m shouting that she’s everything, my goddamn everything, as my lips wrap around to tease and suck on her clit. I beg her forgiveness each time my thumbs swipe over her pink, peaked nipples.

She responds in kind with soft moans and mewls and the scrape of her fingernails across the nape of my neck. She’s close, I can tell, but I take it she wants me close when she pulls me up to meet her, cradles me between her legs. She stares up at me and I look down, completely drunk on her until those manicured fingers come back into play. She pumps me once, twice before guiding me and I enter her in one slow push.

“I missed you,” she exhales once I’m in to the hilt. I see a stray tear trickle to her cheek, wipe it away with my thumb as I withdraw.

“I missed you too, Scully.”

One hard thrust has me back inside her and she arches her back, throws back her head. Her skin is flushed scarlet and I stare, completely mesmerized by the bounce of her breasts as we move together.

It’s been nearly a year since the last time but in the moment, it feels like no time’s passed at all. Nearly twenty years together hasn’t dulled the passion but instead made us experts.

She comes with a rush of tears and pulls me as close to her as she can. Our tears mingle. I press kisses to her lips, her face, the curve of her neck before my lips move to the shell of her ear. I tell her every lovely thing I can think of. Everything I should’ve said to her every fucking day she shared this house with me.

I don’t know how long it goes on before I begin to feel the telltale tingle. She must sense it because she pulls away enough to look into my eyes and it sends me over the edge. I call her name as I come. Collapse on top of her completely spent. In a daze I hold her, still dotting her with kisses anywhere and everywhere I can reach. At some point she frees herself, gets up to clean up and returns wearing one of my tee shirts. One of her favorites as I recall.

Anger and frustration radiate off him in waves, choking the small cabin of the fleet sedan. His hand taps frantically against the wheel at a light that won’t turn. And moments later he smacks his palm violently against the dash.

“Goddammit!” Mulder yells at nothing in particular. “Those bastards! Those smug bastards and their tests. Their lies!”

“Mulder, you have to calm down!” Scully exclaims. “Despite what I said about this toxin coming from our labs, we don’t know anything for sure.”

“Scully, you know this was an inside job! You heard what that man said. They’re cleaning everything up, making everything go away. Sound familiar?”

She swallows slowly, the locus of his anger becoming clearer. They’re here yet again, staring at the mounting evidence of the evils the government is capable of, the level of deception it can achieve.

Her cancer, specifically her recovery, had confirmed for him the falseness of his own memories, about Samantha, about her abduction, about everything -- his worldview left in tatters. This is why the Spartans chose him in the first place, for the doubts he aired in public.

So he has me back, Scully had thought a number of times since her final days in the hospital, but at the cost of his beliefs. Sometimes she catches him looking at her like the exchange has not been worth it.

“We’ll have to prove it,” she ventures quietly.

Mulder snorts in exasperation and rolls his eyes.

“And he’s right,” Scully continues. “What can we do with this information anyway? How does sharing this make anyone safer? How does the truth matter if it’s not going to help bring about justice?”

“Scully, how can you say that?!” Mulder erupts in response, the tires squealing as he jerks the car toward the curb and throws it into park. “And that’s certainly not what you said in front of Skinner!”

“All I mean is,” Scully turns toward him, the seatbelt strap cutting uncomfortably into the side of her neck, “his methods are abhorrent, but he’s not wrong. There are some truths that might do more harm than good. We’re not the ones who get to decide what’s best for the public, are we?”

Mulder’s face reddens and he bites his lip so hard the color drains from it.

“Get out of the car, Scully.” His tone is measured, holding back a torrent.

“What the hell, Mulder!” She exclaims, “I’m just saying…”.

“Get. Out. Of. The. Car.” He breathes through his teeth. “Before I do something I’ll regret.”

Scully stares at him, his widened eyes, the angry set of his jaw, the clench of his fists. Then she reaches beside her and pulls the handle, not moving her gaze from his. As she opens the door, he gives a stiff nod. She pauses, waiting for some sign of de-escalation and then she unbuckles the belt and swings her legs out onto the curb.

“I’ll call you.” She throws the words over her shoulder as the door slams behind her. She thinks she hears him mutter, “don’t bother” as he swings out into traffic to the sound of honking where he’s cut someone off.

Scully is stunned and watches him squeal away, her mouth half open. In the thousand arguments they’ve had over the years, he’s never made her get out of the car before. She thrusts her hands angrily into her coat pockets, searching for her phone to call a cab.

She jabs a few numbers on the keypad, but she’s too distracted to remember who she’s trying to call. The Hoover building isn’t far. She needs to walk. She needs airspace away from Mulder’s anger and frustration.

She doesn’t know at what point the word truth became their weapon. It used to be their mantra, their common cause. But lately they swing it at each other like a bludgeon, daring the other to duck, letting the force of accusations sting.

She wonders how much she even knows him anymore. There had been moments just a few months ago, lying in her hospital bed when she felt every wall between them melting away, when she could just think a thought, let it glimmer in her eyes and he could look at her and know. She remembers the warm scruff of his cheek against her pale skin when he had bent to kiss hers, the warmth of his desperate breaths against her cold hands on nights when he had come to sit with her.

Most of all, she treasures the softness of his face on the day she had called him into her room and told him she was cured. His eyes had brimmed with tears, as had hers, and he had rushed to hug her, gathering her against him with a ferocity that had taken her breath away. When he had pulled away, grasping her hands in his, she saw the storm behind his eyes dissipating as if her own life were a burst of sun burning off a bank of cloud.

Everything vibrating between them seemed self-evident by then -- the nurses had long since stopped asking if he was family or bothering about what right he had to visit after hours. Then Father McHugh had arrived with her mother as Mulder sat there on her bed, their expressions making promises that neither of them had since put action to.

But he hasn’t looked at her like that in months.

Whatever emotions he had felt at her recovery, they’ve long since been consumed by his disillusions. Deep down she knows in moments like this one -- when he’s left her standing on a curb, when he has gone behind her back, when he has doubted the memories she uncovered by hypnosis -- it’s not that he is angry at her. He is angry at the larger forces beyond his control. It’s just easier for him to vent at her because she’s right in front of him, countering him, challenging him. She knows this, but today it stings more intensely than it has all year.

How could he possibly have thought I wouldn’t know he was lying? she thinks, angry for not the first time that week that he’d gone along with Skinner’s advice to keep her in the dark about his undercover role. They have been able to read each other, easily, from the very beginning. He knows that. He can’t have imagined she wouldn’t catch on to his bluff. But this is where they are now. He is doing what he can to push her away.

She is walking faster now, the Washington streets a blurry backdrop to her strident gait. She’s walking as if she can out-walk the chasm yawning between them, as if she walks fast enough, she can leap it and find themselves back on the same side. She walks through the front entrance of the Hoover building and winds her way down to their offices, half-expecting him to be there, feet propped up on the desk, chewing a pencil and ready to dive into another case. That’s how it so often is with him -- sharp words one day, and an unquestioning acceptance of her the next.

But the office is dark except for a patch of light cast by her desk lamp. She gathers a few personal things, her car keys and a stack of files about the Pine Bluff labs. There she sees a hastily scrawled post-it stuck to the back of her chair. “S -- I just need some time -- M.”

So in his haste, he had beaten her back to the office, gathered his things and cleared out. She rips the post-it off the chair with more force than necessary and swats at the push-button light switch on the desk lamp. It clicks off and leaves her alone in the dark, the thump of her heartbeat still hurried by the pace of her walk.

She doesn’t see him for 4 days.

He’s allotted a some personal leave due to his involvement in what the report simply lists as “a stressful and traumatic situation.” Then it’s the weekend and her phone still hasn’t rung. Despite saying she’d call him, she hasn’t, taking his post-it non-apology as a request for radio silence. Her fingers have itched constantly with the urge to press speed dial. Calling him is a reflex, one she didn’t know was so potent until going cold turkey.

Skinner has been vague about what happened to Mulder, and she’s not even sure Skinner knows the whole story. The parts of the report detailing his time with the Spartans are almost immediately classified or stricken from record, leaving only her own bare-bones understanding of his involvement. Knowing what they did to his finger, and watching the surveillance tapes of the bank heist, she imagines the worst. Humiliation and hazing rituals and any other number of unsavory details she would rather not know. Her stomach had turned over on itself at the sight of him brandishing a weapon at the civilians in the bank. She imagines things he doesn’t want to tell her. She doesn’t sleep well.

Sunday night she begins to wonder whether she’ll show up Monday morning to a vacant office and a resignation letter. She’s washing up dishes and setting out clothes for the morning when she hears the knock on her door.

In the time it takes her to wipe her dishwater hands on a towel, she feels herself move from relief at the realization he’s come to make amends to a suddenly searing hot anger at the presumption that she’ll just dutifully open the door and let him back in. She’s spent the four days wishing he’d talk to her, and now she is right back on that curb, furious at how he pushed her away.

These de’tentes always come on his terms. Because you let him, her brain taunts her. She makes a determined pace toward the door. He knocks again.

“Scully, it’s me. Open up.”

The way he’s demanding stokes her resolve. She cracks the door, the security chain hanging between them as if demarking a military no-fly zone.

“What is it, Mulder?” She answers, letting her annoyance coat every word.

“Scully, let me in.” He pushes against the door with his shoulder, oblivious to the chain in the lock.

“Mulder, it’s late. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” She moves to shut him out, both wanting to wound him and wanting him to try harder, but he wedges his heel between the door and the doorframe.

“Scully, don’t be ridiculous.” He sighs exasperated, pushing further into the sliver of apartment his toe can access. “We need to talk.”

“I’m not the ridiculous one, Mulder!” She exclaims. “I’m not the one who made you get out of a car on the side of some random road! I’m not the one who left some stupid post-it note on your chair and didn’t call for four days! I’m not the one who took an undercover assignment and didn’t tell you about it, who made you look stupid in front of a joint task force, who…”.

“You’re right.” He cuts her off just as her momentum gets going, as she begins to dig deeper into the deep well of slights and injuries built up over the past few months. “You’re right,” he says again with a sigh, “that was me.”

She looks at him, her mouth still open with all the things she wants to throw back in his face, but she hadn’t expected him to cave so quickly.

“I’m sorry.” He can’t quite look at her. “Please just let me in?”

She steps back from the door and slides the chain from its groove and he quickly angles his way in before she can change her mind. Scully doesn’t move toward the couch or even the kitchen. She stands still in the entryway, her arms crossed, waiting.

Mulder opens his mouth and swallows a few times, trying to figure out where to start, what the best way of disarming might be. He looks at her slowly, catching the combination of worry and anger in her eyes.

“You asked me what happened,” he begins.

“What happened?”

“I had a gun to the back of my neck.” He tries to control his breathing, but the memory of that moment, his hands helpless behind him, raises his blood pressure and his words come out quickly. “They took me out behind this tattered warehouse and forced me down into the dirt.”

Scully’s eyes flare in concern, but her arms stay crossed.

“They had proof I was crossing them.” Mulder gulps. “A recording from my apartment the night you were there. They had me under surveillance. They heard everything.”

“How - ?” Scully reaches a hand toward him.

“How did I get away?” Mulder finishes her thought for her. “Bremer let me go. I don’t know why. I think he’s deep cover or something.” Mulder shakes his head, the adrenaline from the memory still flooding him. “I thought for sure that was it. That after all this time, everything I’ve done, some stupid thug would put a bullet through my head.”

Scully nods, her features softened now by the distress in his voice.

“The worst part was, I wasn’t even surprised. It felt fitting.” He is rambling now and she loosens, moving toward the kitchen, letting him talk as he follows her in. “It was so depressing. If I’d have had to guess what my last thoughts would be, I would have guessed them to be much more poignant than they were, you know.”  

Scully fills a kettle with water and turns on the gas flame, pulling mugs off their hooks over the stove. “You think it’s going to be all regrets or worries about the chances you didn’t take or your failures.” Mulder paces a little around her table, pausing to grip the top of her chairs as he shifts into stream-of-consciousness, the way he sometimes does when he’s unspooling the evidence for one of his cases. “In reality, it’s much simpler. More selfish.” He grimaces. “All I could think about was, how much will this hurt? Will I know I’m dead before I die? Will my last image be of this shit-pile? I was too terrified to even get angry.” He stops moving and takes a long breath.

“Do you know what it’s like to know for certain you’re going to die?” He looks at her with a deep gravity in his eyes.

Scully nods slightly, and says in a low voice, “Yes.” She pauses, fixing him in her gaze. “I do.”

Mulder’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head. “Shit. Of course you do. God…” he trails off. She can see the self-loathing settling over him as he realizes she had been right where he had, staring not down the barrel of a gun, but the long march of incurable cancer. “God, Scully, I’m sorry. I never even asked you…”.

“It’s okay, Mulder.” She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I don’t think I would have known how to talk about it anyway.”

“But I should have asked,” he says. “I should have at least tried to listen.”

“You’re right though.” She doesn’t look at him as she rips open the tea bags and drops them into the cups. “At the end, there wasn’t much more than the pain. And fear.”

Mulder moves toward her and leans against the counter across from the stove.

“I remember wishing I were a better person. That my faith would have been stronger than my animal brain, that it would have steadied me more.” She pours the steaming water over the tea bags. “But underneath, that’s who we all are, you know?” She looks up at him and hands him a cup. “We’re bodies clawing for self-preservation. Everything else falls by the wayside.”

Mulder nods again and blows ripples across the surface of his tea. “I remember the strangest things,” he says. “Like, they walked me through these sheets of torn plastic. I remember thinking, they look like long flapping angel wings.”

Scully curves her hands around her mug and stares at a spot somewhere behind him. “I remember the color of my hospital gown. It reminded me of this old plastic nativity set we had growing up. The Mary doll wore this robe, it was the exact same color, aquamarine or something.” Mulder nods. “It was the strangest thing to remember. Like, why would my mind make that connection then?”

She looks up at Mulder who has grown quiet. “Mulder, why are you here?”

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he begins. “I’m sorry I made you get out of the car.”

“Okay,” she says lowly.

“I wasn’t ready to talk. I was angry at all of it, the way we’d been played, the way they’d treated those lives -- my life -- like collateral. It was just a reminder…”.

“A reminder that we still don’t know who’s behind all this,” Scully finishes for him.

“I was going to say, a reminder that I don’t know what I believe anymore.” He looks away, slumping into a familiar posture of defeat.

Scully reaches out a hand and smoothes her palm back and forth over his forearm. “We’ll figure it out. I believe we will.” She tries to sound reassuring, but it comes out flat.

Mulder sighs and settles a hand on top of hers. “Scully, your belief in me is all I have left.” He looks at her with pain in his eyes. “But I confided in you so easily, it almost got me killed.”

Scully nods, comprehending a little more now what is bothering him. This thing between them is a liability. Whatever it means or doesn’t, their entanglement put him at risk.

“But I need you.” He squeezes her hand and then reaches to brush a tendril of hair behind her left ear, letting his warm hand linger against her neck. She sets down her tea and leans into him, wrapping her arms beneath the coat he’s still wearing, pressing her cheek against his chest. She lets out a long breath.

“I know.” She whispers.

Mulder rests his chin on the top of her head and runs his hands along her hair before tightening their embrace. Neither of them say anything for long minutes until Scully feels lulled by the steady rhythm of his pulse in her ear. She pulls back and looks up at him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” She questions with a slight smile.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Mulder smiles back.

“What’ll it be this time,” she teases. “Bigfoot? Nessie? Or some other monster of the deep?”

“I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?” he grins, their equilibrium reestablishing itself in their banter.  “Thanks for the tea.” He knows their familiar dance and moves toward the door to make his exit.

“Anytime.”

When he’s gone and Scully turns back to her empty apartment, she feels the chasm between them receding. She thinks about what she didn’t tell him of her thoughts those last days in the hospital, the thoughts she had time to ponder in those moments before she was discharged, after her mother and Father McHugh had left her and the memory of Mulder’s weight titling the side of her bed brought a flush to her face. She didn’t tell him about how, once the fear settles down and the animal brain is quiet, what you’re left with is a visceral clarity. She had known she’d have died loving him, known it would have been his face she would see her last moments, known without a doubt that he felt the same.