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She'd started coming over just to make sure he wasn't alone. It might be for her benefit: she got lonely too. They did simple things, like watch a movie or fix grilled cheese sandwiches. Once a week became the standard. Then came the alternating, because one day he mentioned how he only went to her place under gloomy pretenses. He caught her cleaning his kitchen one evening, and he made sure that he kept his place clean after that. Well, not spotless, but sanitary.
Their apartments have battle scars, they concluded. The rooms have bullet holes and cracked wood. A random broken tile or dented wall. You have to jiggle her door handle and his desk still wobbles. The places they call home are alike, in that way.
One night they got carried away with a chess game, and she just slept on his couch. One night they talked into the morning about the places they had lived, and he ended up sleeping on her couch. They silently agreed that couch-sleeping was safe.
Then came the dinner date. They didn't dare call it such, of course. There was a new restaurant and he had thought, "why the hell not?" He didn't care to listen to the cons his mind conjured. The evening was filled with outward conversation of b-movies and the Discovery Channel, and internal realizations that this "thing" they developed could blossom into happiness and comfort. To be non-work-related, they imagined. To grow.
One night they went to a movie.
One night they went bowling.
One night they went to a bar and got tipsy. "Remember that time," she giggled, "when you broke that kid's yo-yo?"
They laugh, and he leaned in he said, "it's the little things."
"Yeah," she said, growing earnest, "They mean a lot." Their eyes a shade darker, their thoughts the same, they mutually decided to bid goodnight and take cabs home. It came naturally, the wanting.
Then came the night Mulder almost told her, but she had drifted off before he had managed the words. As he laid on his bed, he couldn't stop staring at the light filtering in from the living room. In the soft glow, waiting for shadows to move, he wrote sonnets of her intelligence and beauty and strength with his thoughts. He had drifted off, picturing himself waking in an empty apartment.
That same night Scully woke up on his couch. She laid there, eyes closed, and brewed scene after scene of her next move. How would she put forth the question, and establish her feelings as well? To communicate a need, she defined, was to ask it of another.
So in the stillness, she walked to his bedroom, then stopped at the doorway. "Mulder," she queried.
"Scully," he acknowledged.
She gently stepped pass the frame, and simply asked if he was ready. "Because I am," she whispers out to him.
A collective sigh was breathed the night the pieces slipped into place.