#xfiles ff

The first time he invited her to his home, she wasn't surprised to find his room covered wall to wall in clippings, photos, and documents all connected by a red piece of yarn. Scully could see where he'd added new sections, little knots continuing the path of his investigation into the paranormal (his sister, truthfully, but he doesn't bring that up all that much).

Scully had noticed that her own room at the university was quickly becoming part of it all, the entirety of her bulletin board victim to Mulder's brain. She was almost sad for him, some days, but she knew that she didn't really understand the whole of it. It wasn't her business, anyway.

Beyond the chaos of his room, the rest of the house was relatively utilitarian, with the exception of a few photos and knickknacks here and there. Mulder was in a couple, as a young boy and as he is now. She chuckled at his toothy grin and unkempt hair. Most of the other frames held the face of a bald man with glasses, in navy or government uniforms, badges everywhere.

"Uncle Walt," Mulder explained after she'd raised an eyebrow. "He's been sort of my foster dad since I was fifteen. After I ran away from home enough times, my parents sent me to him. He's close enough to school that they didn't want to pay for me to stay in a dorm. He's FBI; I call him Skinman. Feel free to do the same."

"I'm sure that gets on his nerves," she commented as he flopped onto the leather sofa, feet coming to a rest on the coffee table. Mulder gave her a wink and patted beside him, peering over his glasses suggestively. "I'm sure you get on his nerves."

"No doubt about it, Scully." He elongated the last syllable of her name, something he enjoyed doing. She had seen it as teasing in the beginning, but it was better than 'Doc.'

Instead of sitting where he wanted her to, she sat at the other end of the black sofa, feet curled under her as they both stared at a blank tv screen.

"You going to force me to watch an old horror movie or are we actually going to study, Mulder?" Scully asked, pulling her backpack from the floor and setting it between them. She wasn't one for close quarters (unlike Mulder, who got in her space far too many times) and she definitely wasn't about to cuddle with Mulder on his uncle's couch.

"Told you, got a Psych test Monday that I really shouldn't fail, so you're going to help me stay on track." Scully sighed in relief (she wasn't a movie person) and gave Mulder a small smile. "Plus, if Skinman caught me necking a girl on the couch he'd make me wash the entire bathroom with my toothbrush."

"My father would do the same, believe me." Scully laughed. "And don't think I'll be necking you quite so soon, Mr. Mulder." He put his hand over his heart, feigning a wound and she smirked. "Get your books out, idiot."

They worked for a number of hours, Scully watching the sunset over snow-covered suburbia in her moments of distraction. Despite Mulder's comment about his test, he spent more time throwing paper balls at her than he did studying, and she tried her best to ignore it over her biology notes. While it was all very fascinating to her, Scully could only read about a double helix a handful of times before she wanted to throw her book at the silent tv.

"Mulder I doubt Freud would appreciate you throwing his theories about my forehead." She said, head down toward her studies, only looking at him through her lashes as he laughed silently. "I also doubt your psych prof would enjoy you balling up his lectures."

"Ah, yes, the fruit of his mind, finding itself on my living room floor. How tragic." He then goes off and recites what she can only describe as a meager soliloquy about paper ball graves under the coffee table. Scully decides then that he'll most likely keep talking until her brain overloads, so she puts away the books. At the movement, he smiles, and it clicks that getting her to give up was his plan. "You want anything? A beer?"

"Mulder, your uncle is FBI." She replies cautiously, rolling her eyes. A moment of silence passes and the two hear the door click open, heavy footsteps entering the foyer. "And is right there."

The boy adjusts his glasses and scoots closer to her on the couch, throwing an arm over the back, grinning at her. I hate this kid. I hate him so much, she thinks. It isn't wholly true, but she does often feel the incessant need to punch him in the throat. Scully distracts herself from maiming him by crossing her arms, lifting her head at the sound of Mulder's uncle making an appearance.

"Evening, Skinman," Mulder greets him, kicking a paper ball with his foot.

"Fox," Walter replies tersely. He notices the redhead at his nephew's side and nods a head in her direction. "Walter Skinner."

"Dana Scully, sir." She stretches out a hand toward him and he comes forward to shake it. He reminds her of her father, but not quite as stiff. She notices that he is the only one she's ever met to call Mulder by his first name, but then again he's the only family member Scully's met. "I go to school with Mulder."

"Nice to meet you, Dana. Feel free to call me Walt." She nods and flicks her eyes toward Mulder briefly, a question. "Have you two eaten yet?" The man asks, setting his things on the coffee table, pointedly eyeing the paper at his feet.

Both teens shake their head.

"I'll order a pizza while Fox cleans up." Mulder gives him a mock salute and Scully laughs internally as Walter makes his way to the kitchen.

Scully does end up helping Mulder pick up his mess, just to avoid being pouted at.

fin

They met at an orientation party during frosh week. She criticized his Spooky label, he fingered her caduceus pin, and though she thought he was a jerk, they stuck like glue.

Her friends don't like him and he doesn't really have friends, having went through several roommates before midterms, but they don't mind. He thinks she’s cute and likes to bombard her with his daily dose of "The Truth." Some days she humors his theories but others she just babbles on in her skeptic tone, taking a puff of her cigarette periodically, while they stand under their proclaimed tree. Today he isn't really listening to it all, just staring at her bright red lips that suck on a menthol; she doesn't realize that all he wants to do is stick his tongue down her throat the second she butts out her cigarette on the tree, right next to where he carved their names in a moment of boyish stupidity. Well, considering the crude markings he made in that tree with his pocket blade, maybe she does know.

She's smart; smart in a way he'd never expected and she doesn't think he's crazy despite the fact that she repeats it, her rouged smirk flicked over a shoulder as she starts walking to class.

They don't exchange farewells because they know they'll be side by side once again after she's organized her notes and referenced her beloved periodic table, and he's changed into his worn out alien sweater for their nightly hunts for the Truth. Sometimes that just means another tattoo for him and another piercing for her, just like tonight's escapade. He jokes to her about matching "Mr. and Mrs. Spooky" tattoos and she rolls her eyes, continuing her quick strides to match his long legged ones, all the while going over what stretch of flesh or cartilage she'll stick a metal hoop through that night.

While she goes on about it, he thinks that she'd taste sweet, contrary to the fact that she constantly smells like formaldehyde due to the biology classes she takes. He doesn't mind, anyway. She had an interesting smell, he'd noticed, between the smokes, the preservative, her drug store shampoo, and the perfume he knew she dabbed on her wrist every morning. It all mixed together into to something he didn't understand why he loved, and he has to hide himself away in a copy of Gunmen to keep from burying his face in her hair daily.

While he's lost in his musings, she asks him what part of his body he's going to attack with ink and he quips back that maybe he should get her given name on his ass cheek, like all the romantics do. She gives him a side glance he doesn't understand and replies that Ahab would flay him alive if he ever found out, and he smiles as they round the corner to their favourite ink shop. He likes that most nights she sits with him for the tattoo and just watches. Sometimes she'll read aloud to him from a conspiracy article he'd tucked into her back pocket to read later, or it'll just be his favourite column from a weathered copy of Gunmen. She thinks the zine is a bag of cats, he knows, but she doesn't mention it because he'll have questions about her faith lined up.

The only intimate touch he's ever been blessed to give her was to finger her shiny gold cross as they sat under their tree one day. She'd looked at him funny afterward, but said nothing. The instance had been akin to the times she'd seen him in his dorm room, a short sleeve shirt exposing the bulk of his tattoos, where she'd dance her fingers across the black ink and smirked at his four favoured words, immortalized on his bicep under a saucer in a picturesque landscape. He had brought the poster to the shop and the artist had thought he was crazy. That had earned another smirk from his companion, but he brushed it off. He knew what he stood for, Scully and a tattoo artist be damned. That was at the beginning of the semester, though, and he had let it go.

After the night was over and his forearm was permanently branded with a caduceus, they start their trek back to campus. She'd acquired a new set of earrings, choosing after to wander around and look at the body art on the walls instead of sitting right next to him, so she was unaware of the new artwork on his arm. When he shows her, she says nothing, an unreadable emotion passing over her face. Her beautiful mouth falls open slightly, but she remains silent as they walk. He wonders quietly if she hates it, but he can't really tell as she adjusts her leather jacket around her, the late October breeze whipping her fire engine hair about her face.

Later, when they're back in their respective dorm rooms, his empty with no prospect for a new roommate, he plans out how he is going to convince her into a skeleton costume the upcoming weekend. She knows he'll dress up like Marty McFly, he even has the costume hanging in his wardrobe, but she isn't fond of the holiday for reasons she'll probably never discuss. Regardless of all she's claimed and despite the fact that she still chooses him over her friends mainly every day, she does think he's kind of spooky, and he knows it, but he doesn't relent his constant shoving of what he believes to be the truth down her throat.

It's all he can do to keep his tongue out of her mouth.

He thinks she's beautiful under the leather and baggy tops, and one day he hopes he will get to see more of her porcelain skin past her neck and her dainty perfumed wrists. He will always stand with her at their tree while she smokes menthols in -30 degree weather. And she'll only be clad in her leather jacket, black skirt, and a pair of tights with so many holes that all he can imagine when he sees them is grabbing them and ripping them off her only to bury his face between her sweet legs. But he doesn't.

He won't because in a way that she respects his search for the Truth, he respects her love and loyalty to what he views as an oppressive deity. He wonders if the priest can look her in the eye with all the piercings she has and the fact that she's technically a chain smoker. And he knows that she harbours some girlhood fantasies of a traditional marriage with a traditional groom (which really blows him out of the picture, the way he sees it) in a big church, and so he respects it all. However, like she will always be ready with her icy skepticism, he will have his own whenever she opens her mouth to deny his sightings and refuse his crazy conspiracies. Sometimes he hates the way she stares defiantly up at him from a foot below, but most days he cherishes their vocal fencing matches.

For all the days she defies him and refuses to accept his beliefs for her own, she will still sneak across campus to hold him as he shakes from a nightmare about his sister. She'll sit cross-legged on the bed, her head resting against the beloved poster, his head in her lap as he shakes and cries his sister’s name into her bare legs. Those are the days where he thinks he'll reach up and kiss her with his tear stained mouth, her face clean of make-up, hair pinned back with two berets. Even when it's winter she'll trek through the snow in a pair of too-short shorts, a baggy cropped shirt with their university's name across her chest, where he knows she isn't wearing a bra, and she will hold him until he goes back to sleep. It makes him want to kiss her so badly it hurts.

Those times it is never the violent kiss he often thinks of, where he wants to press her up against the tree he carved their names into (whether or not they are dating) and kiss her so hard her lips bruise; so that he comes away with red lipstick smeared on his face.

The nights where she presses her bare lips to his sweaty forehead are the ones where he wants to turn his face to meet her soft lips, kiss her slowly and be the one to hold her for once, smiling down at the mole he barely sees through the layers of make up.

During exam week they rarely see each other; she spends her nights buried in textbooks, an eye at the microscope, using the phone in the lounge to call him and recite every bone in the body while he listens with bleary eyes, Elvis playing softly from the forgotten headset around his neck. Though he doesn't know if she's right he gives her noncommittal noises of praise and reassures her over and over again that she'll be fine. She doesn't believe him but she breathlessly thanks him all the same, hanging up and leaving him to cradle the phone against his ear as if she's still on the line.

He realizes he's a lovesick idiot but he doesn't care. He doesn't care because he does love her, even if she's somewhat cold to him and refuses to get inked with something spooky, or that she protested the skeleton costume as hard as she could (she gave up eventually, though), or that she won't tell him why she refuses to call her father anything but Ahab when he's told her his life story. He doesn't care because he is so blinded by his love for his insufferable red head that he lets all of that go.

And when exams are over and winter break hits, she goes home to her military housing to no doubt be chastised by her mother (who refuses to call him anything but Fox) about her piercings, and he goes home to a suffocating house where his parents barely speak full sentences to each other and he reluctantly sits through their Jewish customs. He only does it for his great aunt, who wears her number like armor, who he loves despite the haunting look in her eyes.

When it's all over and they come back to the cold bricks of their scholastic home, he doesn't see her for a while. Psych majors and science geeks usually don't cross paths most days. He finds out his marks and he's at the top half of the class as usual. He's actually quite smart (not that anyone really cares) and his parents shovel their money towards his schooling so that they don't have to see him at home and think it should have been you.

So he finds himself wandering around campus daily, making his way to stand at their tree in hope that she'll be there, smoking menthols and shaking in her skirt and ripped tights. Today it turns out that she isn't, but he stands there for a while anyway. A yearbook junkie with a Polaroid around his neck stares at him quizzically for a couple seconds before turning to take a photo of a group of students.

After a few minutes he hears the familiar stomp of her combat boots, but they're quicker than usual, and he turns just in time to see her leap into the air towards him, her short legs wrapping around his torso. All he can do is catch her, a noise of surprise emitting from him before she smacks her lips against his. He doesn't really register what's happening until the flash of the kid's Polaroid goes off, snapping him back to reality. She's still in his arms and hers have wrapped around his neck although her face has pulled away. She's beaming while going off about how he was right and she has the highest marks in all of her classes. He laughs, congratulating her as she disentangles her small form from his tall one.

The kid approaches them and hands over the Polaroid, and gives the pair a wistful "Happy New Year" before walking away.

He looks down at the photo in his hands and they both laugh. She's got her hands on his cheeks and her face pressed against his surprised expression, his glasses slightly askew in the photo. Their tree is in the back and he can just make out his carving and he chuckles at its total cliche.

She drags him along in the direction of his dorm as he adjusts his glasses, rattling on about her holiday and he realizes that this is the most she's ever talked about her personal life so he really listens for once. Later, after she's gone back to her dorm, he pins the photo on his wall and writes the date on its border. They don't ever really speak about the kiss again but they don't dismiss it.

A month later, she gets her first tattoo and he can't wrap his mind around why she would get those four words when he went on thinking that she didn't believe. He got those words because he spoke them in a session about his sister, paid for by his parents in the hopes to shut him up (little did they know that it would only fuel the fire). He thought her faith in God would keep her from what he thinks to be the Truth. He always thought he knew that she didn't believe.

But that's the difference, she tells him as they make the journey to the shop. He already does and she wants to.

He almost kisses her for the millionth time after her forearm is permanently painted with those four words and a picturesque landscape, a saucer floating in the distance. He also wants to cry as she wonders how brutally Ahab is going to murder the both of them when he finds out. For the moment he only puts his arm around her and laughs as they walk back to campus, the sunset washing over the pair.

When he looks down at her, the setting sun's golden hues highlight her beautiful face, and he does kiss her.

After he pulls away she's looking at him seriously and he thinks he's royally fucked everything up, but after a moment she gives him a red smirk and snuggles closer to him.

A week later he buys her her own alien sweater and she crudely sews a UFO patch to her jacket to match the pin on his bag.

The warmer months come and they sit under their tree, atop an old blanket while she leans against him, her periodic table pinned down by a rock while he asks her Jungian questions. They don't acknowledge what they are but it isn't a big deal. The tattoos are enough for him (she only got a couple more but he's still giddy when he thinks of them all) and she decides that reading to him from Gunmen and sometimes the Bible is enough for her. She doesn't care if he's only half listening when she quietly relays a psalm to him, because he knows that when it comes to the important stuff he will listen.

Summer break approaches too quickly and they decide to road trip.

He wants to meet the Gunmen and she wants him to meet her parents, so he feels sick to his stomach. Ahab's overseas but her mother greets him with a warm smile and a hug, calling him Fox despite the fact that he has to keep himself from wincing every time she says it. His tattooed girl gives him a light kiss on the hair as she passes to help wash dinner dishes and he smiles genuinely for the first time in ages.

He sleeps on the couch that night, a judgmental, crucified Lord gazing down at him all the while.

The next morning they're off in his run down station wagon with a sagging roof to what he calls a remote location to meet his heroes. She falls asleep for most of the ride as he blasts Elvis, but when she is awake she rests her hand on the back of his neck, playing with the scruff at the top of his spine and he enjoys it all, crooning along to his musical hero. She only flashes him a tired red smirk, donning a pair of aviators to fight the summer sun. With the leather jacket it makes her look like a cop (minus all the patches and pins) and that makes him chuckle.

It's not really perfect, the car breaks down halfway across the state and she wants to punch him for not bringing any snacks save for a kilogram of sunflower seeds, but she knows that she loves him and doesn't mind starving and sleeping a night or two in the broken car miles from town. She's smart and so is he, they'll figure it out. The Gunmen better be worth it, she tells him and he just smirks, reaching over to kiss her. It's wonderful and stupid all at the same time and she loves it. She loves him. For that she doesn't mind snuggling in a worn out backseat.

And they are worth it, although the pair doesn't appreciate how much the short one tries to look up her skirt as she perches on a desk clear of wires and newspapers. He was surprised to find out that they were only a pale trio of guys a couple years older than the two of them, and they keep in touch. She gets flowers from two people on Valentine's day and she can never tell which bouquet she likes more - the red roses or the tulips bunched together with a mood ring.

He only meets Ahab once and he almost wets himself, but she just smiles and tucks her inked arm around his, the other hand playing with her crucifix.

The next couple of years carry on the same way, and only when they are seniors do the questions about "The Truth" become replaced by "The Future."

She needs her medical degree and he just needs to get off the continent. England always looked nice to him, and he was smart enough for Oxford if he decided to do to go. They don't talk about it as the year comes to an end, but he knows she's applied to places that will take her far away from him and he doesn't let the sadness show.

She can see it in his hazel eyes, however, and it kills her.

Even when he kisses her flesh in the middle of the night in his cold dorm room it kills her how much leaving is going to hurt him. She looks into his eyes and whispers what they silently vowed to never say and he does cry. He cries into her shoulder as he comes and she cradles him against her.

The last week he finds her among the boxes in her dorm, silently crying as she packs up the last of her things. He says nothing as he comes forward to wrap his arms around her, her body fitting so nicely with his as he rests his chin on the crown of her head. He lets her sob into his sweater, smoothing down her fire engine hair, and he kisses her forehead.

He drives her to the airport because she doesn't trust his station wagon to hold up on the drive home, and she leaves him with a broken heart at the gates with empty promises to write or call. They might have stuck like glue all those years ago, but it seemed like someone was trying to peel them apart. Everything inside of him hurt as he got back into his car, driving home to a suffocating home with only one parent. His folks divorced after years of torment and in some ways he was glad for it. Glad he didn't have to see the tight lipped hatred they held for each other anymore.

He does go to England and years later he finds himself at Quantico.

He sees her across a classroom auditorium and at first he thinks he's seeing things again, but deep inside he knows it's her. The nose ring and the plethora of earrings are all gone, but he can see the saucer when she rolls up her sleeves to take notes. He's too distracted when their instructor calls his name, and so he stupidly answers. She looks up towards him as his academy nickname Spooky reverberates around the room. He can see her jaw drop and he smirks at her from across the room. After class is over he finds her standing among the sea of students who rush to their next class, their instructor barking out homework.

He wonders why she isn't a doctor and she's surprised he hadn't joined the Gunmen once and for all.

It isn't the same as it was (and let's face it, it never really will be) but he smiles at the UFO pin on her rucksack and walks beside her for a little while before he has to go to class. He looks down at her face and he can tell she's matured more than he has. He still can't see her mole, but the lipstick is a tamer shade of red, as is her hair. She still smells like formaldehyde, but the perfume is different.

And he realizes after all these years that he still loves her.

He can see the same realization in her eyes when she looks up at him, a quiet goodbye on her lips before leaving him for another class, and he smiles for the first time in years.