So, I was thinking... How funny would it be to see Mulder and Scully on an actual date? I think it would be hilarious... So I went and did it. Well, it ended up introspective more than funny, but I think probably some parts are funny.
No spoilers...Wait - actually, one line refers to Wetwired, and another to Never Again, and come to think of it, another refers to the first movie (Fight the Future). Set around season five... After the season four drama, and probably after Fight the Future since I make a couple vague references to it, but before the season six confusion.
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are not mine. Love, it seems, buys nothing but a broken heart...*sob*
Oh, and so as to head off any possible confusion, this is not about an established romantic relationship between our lovely agents. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"This is… nice," said Scully with stiff politeness, obviously struggling to find a word.
Mulder shifted uncomfortably in his seat across from her and gave her a bright smile and a nod.
They sat in silence for several moments, during which each became suddenly and inexplicably lost in the other patrons and various fixtures and furniture in the restaurant.
"So…" Mulder began vaguely, staring fixedly at a lamp. He grasped for a way to continue, and found nothing.
Scully stole a look at him, and was struck by a sudden urge to laugh. He'd made an effort to clean up, and had emerged with his typical work outfit, minus the suit coat, though he looked like he'd shaved and brushed his hair. His tie had little green aliens dancing on it.
It was a very familiar tie to Scully. She'd bought it for him as a joke birthday present several years ago, and since then it had seen its fair share of mutants, monsters, and shady government officials.
"I thought they were grey," she murmured, about willing to say anything, anything at all to break this silence. She hadn't been this nervous around him since she'd been hypnotized by her television into thinking he was working for cancerman.
He looked confused for a moment, and then followed her gaze down to the tie with a sheepish grin. "It was the only one that didn't smell moldy," he offered by way of explanation.
She nodded brightly and took a sip of her water, wishing she'd ordered something stronger. Mulder seemed more than content with his beer, which he kept taking large gulps from. She felt weirdly exposed in her sensible skirt and blouse, in front of this man who had seen her in much less; read, nothing at all.
They stared above each other's heads for another drawn-out minute.
Scully thumped her water glass down on the table. "This is silly," she told him, staring directly into his eyes. He looked down at her, and she felt herself fighting the urge to look away.
But he grinned. "First dates are supposed to be awkward, Scully. Not that we would know."
"Most first dates don't happen five years into a relationship."
He looked shocked. "Scully!" He whispered, scandalized. She rolled her eyes.
"It is a relationship, Mulder. A partnership can be a relationship." He nodded eagerly, and she let out a breath of half annoyance and half amusement. "You know we're breaking regulations by even calling it a date," she pointed out. He leaned back in his chair, looking innocent.
"A guy can't have dinner with his partner?"
"Not if we're calling it a date."
"Who's calling it a date?"
"You, if I recall. For the past week." She rested her chin on laced fingers and regarded him. He had regained the light that had convinced her to follow him here in the first place. Well, that, and his incessant bugging. Mulder's obsessive personality lingered close to the surface, though usually it was busy with things like proving the existence of aliens or saving the world. This time he'd fixated on a "date" with his partner. For a week now, he'd alternately reasoned, cajoled, pleaded and coerced her into going out on a formal dinner date. She'd agreed for the sake of a moment's peace.
"It's not like there's many regulations we have left to break, anyways. If they were going to kick us out of the Bureau, they would've done it already."
"They did do it already."
"Oh, yeah." He thought about that for a moment, then shrugged and lifted his beer first to her in a sort of silent toast, and then to his lips. He took a much lighter sip this time.
"Tell me again," Scully idly swirled her water glass around, watching the ice clink softly against the side. "Why does this have to be a 'date'?"
He shrugged, the picture of boyish innocence. "When was the last time you went on a date, Scully?"
She thought for a moment. "Does Ed Jerse count?"
He thought for a moment. "Besides him."
"I can't remember."
"Me either."
Scully laughed at that. "Is that what this is about? Mulder?"
He sat back, hooking one arm languidly over the back of his chair. "Don't you ever feel the urge to… get out more?"
"I guess…" She frowned. "No offence, Mulder, but that idea generally involves spending time with someone who I don't see every day."
"I know. I was hoping this would be a close second."
She ducked her head and smiled. "Spending time with you isn't a second, Mulder."
He smiled, looking pleased.
"Well," she amended, "that is, when our time together doesn't involve giant flukemen. That puts a damper on things."
"To a lack of giant flukes!" Mulder raised his beer at her. She grinned and clinked her water against it. They each took a sip and fell into silence again, but a comfortable one.
"Do you ever wonder," murmured Mulder dreamily, "if they know?"
Scully took a moment to assess his mood and figure out who they were before answering. He was staring at the other people in the restaurant, a cornucopia of starstruck lovers, elderly couples, young groups of friends and boisterous families
"About the giant flukes? I should hope not."
He threw her an amused glance, but the dreaminess hadn't left his gaze. "About… well, about any of it. What do you think it would be like to sit here and not know?"
"Well, for one, we wouldn't be sitting here."
He considered that for a moment. "You don't believe in fate," he stated finally. There was a curiously sad note in his voice that made her pause.
"No, I guess I don't," she conceded.
His eyes sparkled at her. "You don't ever think what might have happened? What if they hadn't picked you? Or, what if you went into medicine instead of the FBI? Hell, what if Samantha was never taken? Then what?"
"I don't know, Mulder," she answered evenly, knowing what he wanted her to say but unable to say it.
"You never think, maybe we were meant to be here?"
"I don't know," she told him quietly.
"Do you ever think," he continued in a thoughtful, quiet tone, "that if maybe it was fate, or even if it wasn't, if it was just chance… Maybe… Maybe we'd be sitting here for a different reason."
"And maybe, Mulder, if a gust of solar wind had come along at the wrong time, there wouldn't be a planet here for us to be sitting on."
This got a smirk out of him, which was a start.
"Wouldn't it be crazy if it turned out this was all chance?" He waved an arm around at the couples in the restaurant. "All these people think they've found their 'one,' but what if it was just a… a fluke?" He grinned. "Pardon the pun."
"I guess it wouldn't matter," she glanced sideways at the people Mulder had indicated, resigned to a philosophical conversation. "All you have is your own perception."
He nodded. "But, think about it. See them over there?" Scully glanced at the couple he had indicated. They were young, holding hands over the table, plates forgotten, staring at each other with small smiles on their faces. As they watched, the man leaned over the table to kiss the woman lightly on the lips.
Scully and Mulder turned back to each other.
"Yes?" She invited him to continue.
"So they're in love. What if another girl comes along, or another boy, do they suddenly realize that they'd rather be with someone else?"
"It happens."
He looked frustrated and moved his hands expressively through the air, as though the right motions would bring down the words he was looking for. "What I mean is… Say the guy is married. Then he meets her. They get along, but he loves his wife, so he's not looking for romance. He never knows that if he hadn't already been in a relationship, it would have been this girl that he married instead. The whole world changes."
"That's not something you can possibly control. You'd never know."
"Exactly," he said simply. He stared at her, and she looked back at the smiling couple.
"Besides, what's to say he'd be happier with her? He loves his wife, you said."
"Maybe he wouldn't have been happier, but he'd be just as in love with this other girl if he hadn't already been in love with his wife."
"Unless he's a polygamist." Scully deadpanned. She smiled at Mulder's bemused reaction. "The point is, Mulder, that there isn't a point to this. It's all beyond our control. We just have to live the best we can with what we have."
"Or who we have." He met her eyes with a soft smile.
"Yes." Scully glanced away to hide her answering smile. "Maybe we're just lucky."
The waiter appeared at their side bearing a tray on one arm. He stiffly set each plate in front of them, reaching across the table in a slightly awkward way. Pulling back, he sent Mulder's napkin-wrapped utensils flying onto the floor.
"Oh, I am terribly sorry, sir," he said, not sounding at all apologetic. "Please – let me get that."
Mulder had reached down to pick up the scattered silverware, but the waiter swooped down and grabbed it before he could. He dropped them onto the now empty tray and produced a new set from nowhere.
"Anything else I can get you?" He asked politely, looking suddenly vaguely nervous.
Scully smiled and shook her head, and the waiter darted off.
"That was a little odd," she commented with amusement, staring after him.
Mulder gave a discreet cough.
"Something in your throat?" She asked him teasingly, shaking out her napkin in front of her face and laying it carefully on her lap. "If you didn't inhale your food-" She looked up and met his gaze.
He had gone a light shade of pink, and was hurriedly shoving something in his pocket. His meal had not been touched.
"Mulder?" She asked suspiciously.
He grinned with false brightness. "I'm starved!" He set about properly inhaling his meal; with his mouth full, he couldn't speak.
Scully glared at him. "Mulder, what aren't you telling me?"
He looked innocent. "What do you mean?" he mumbled around a mouthful.
"Mulder."
He blushed deeper and set down his fork. He pulled from inside his napkin a crumpled sheet of paper and tossed it to her. "I… may have had an ulterior motive for asking you here." He said quietly, embarrassed, staring at his plate.
She unfolded the paper. No unusual activity sub. D. It read, cryptically.
Scully looked up at Mulder. "And that motive is?"
He nodded at the paper in her hands. "Our waiter. I know him, distantly, through the Gunmen. He's proved moderately useful in the past, and I wanted to check in, see if he'd managed to come up with anything halfway good. Um, I guess not."
"Subject D?"
"A low-level operative thought to be working for Cancerman. He's been keeping an eye on the man, just in case."
"And you didn't tell me because…?" Scully made a questioning gesture. "You know I would have come." Mulder blushed again.
"I guess I just wanted to… try it this way."
Scully sat back in her chair, fighting down the smile that threatened her composed exterior. Mulder was the picture of abashed regret, staring down with pink still in his cheeks, twisting his napkin with worried fingers.
"You could have just told me that, too," she said softly. He looked up, and the grin he gave her was radiant.
"Okay…" He began slowly. "Well maybe next time, I will."
They finished their meal in a companionable quiet. Mulder held the door for her as they left the restaurant, and rested one hand lightly on her lower back as they walked across the darkened parking lot to their cars, parked side-by-side.
They stopped beside the cars and turned to face each other. Scully's perfunctory goodnight died unspoken as she took in her partner's thoughtful expression.
"Something on your mind?" She teased instead.
"What if you're right?"
The question was unexpected, and it threw her. Scully took a moment to run through recent memory, but came up blank. "Right about what?"
Mulder shrugged and gestured expansively to the night. "Fate. Destiny. Us."
"Us?"
"If it wasn't fate, then what was it?"
Scully shifted her mind back to the conversation of earlier. "You find it so hard to believe in simple chance?"
Mulder said nothing for a long moment, staring at the cars on the road. White headlights rushed headlong towards them, turning at the last moment into dim red bulbs that vanished as fast as they'd come. Scully waited patiently, watching him struggle silently with his mind.
"I guess I do," he said finally. He turned his gaze back to her. She nodded, accepting it.
"Goodnight, Mulder," she told him. She smiled, and was rewarded with a smile in return.
"See you tomorrow?" he asked, suddenly cheerful, rummaging through his coat pockets for his keys. Scully pulled them out of her own pocket and tossed it to him. He blushed and grinned sheepishly at her.
"I'll bring coffee if you bring bagels. And it better be light cream cheese."
"Still trying to make up for that ice cream yesterday?"
She shoved him lightly toward his car. "Light cream cheese, Mulder. And just be glad I'm not making you come work out with me."
"Ooh, Scully, I wouldn't mind at all…"
"Goodnight, Mulder."
She got into her car and shut the door. He stood by his own door as she backed out of the parking space and drove away. Her headlights too turned to taillights and vanished, closed away by the darkness, swallowed up and soon replaced.
The thought stirred him to get in his own car and follow her, if only to keep those lights in sight.
He didn't. He did get into his car, but only to drive in the opposite direction, back to his own lonely apartment. Luck or fate, he knew perfectly well that those lights would appear tomorrow morning same as they did five or more days every week. And they'd be bringing coffee. He couldn't ask for more luck than that.
...So? Like? Not like? Hate with a flaming passion? Why not tell me about it? I love hearing from everyone - it absolutely makes my day when I see a new review. Besides that, it inspires me to write more. So if you lean towards "like," then you probably want me to write more, yeah?