There is a saying, rooted in eons of storytelling – fables, mythology, fairytale – as well as the collective consciousness of a millennia of women who have loved, lost, or had to deal with a man like Fox Mulder on a regular basis.
Be careful what you wish for, Dana, she thinks as she flicks another page in the file in front of her, careful not to let her thoughts show on her face.
The object of her thoughts paces back and forth in front of her as she reads, something that frequently irritated her years ago, but that she now tries to think of as a kind of pendulum, a living Newton's cradle of equal and opposite reaction.
"What do you make of it, Scully?"
A pendulum that invariably talks.
"Mulder, is there some small chance that you might like to go and get me a cup of tea?" She enquires, giving him the look that he is supposed to read as I'm busy, Mulder.
He duly ignores her look and stops pacing to glare at her. "How can you think about tea at a time like this?"
She shrugs. "Dehydration makes you do the strangest things." Then blinks at him, supremely unconcerned as his glare deepens.
He holds it for one beat. Two. Then surrenders in the face of her apparent indifference. "I – okay, but when I get back we have things to discuss."
"Absolutely." She stares at the page, knowing full well his head whips around at the tiny note of false enthusiasm that she deliberately injects into the word. Keeps staring as he thumps out the door, shutting it with more force than strictly necessary.
She waits until the elevator dings closed before breaking into a grin.
She has forgotten, in the passage of time and the memories of regret, in the mire of things unspoken and the dark days spent vexed or blindly terrified or both, just how much fun this could be.
She is under no illusions about hating the dark, the lies, the trail of death of destruction and of hurting themselves and others to get to the elusive, ever-shifting Truth. She has not forgotten the endless nights of worry. She has not forgotten their son.
She has learned to live with her scars.
But somehow, in her quest to ensure that some memories never die she misplaced the little moments, and now, they make her feel strangely like she is a cat lying in a pool of sunlight, her body liquid and warm.
Now, there are moments when she banters with him and she feels as if she is feeling the wind on her face after being in hibernation. She swears sometimes she can feel the energy rising from her skin.
There are moments where their eyes spark off each other and the current between them is suddenly, abruptly alive again after being grounded for so long in regret, distance, sorrow.
It threw her the first time it happened; she'd forgotten that this is their way. That they follow their own pursuits across the globe but their map of each other lies just under their skin, and they each know the routes by heart.
Now she is amused and semi-frustrated to catch herself thinking, for longer than thirty seconds, about what she should wear to work. She thinks about whether he has noticed that her perfume has changed. About the tilt of his gaze and what might be at the back of it.
And she is astounded and not surprised at the same time about how easily they slide together, how the words between them are a puzzle piece that fits, and the difference is now how confident she is of that, that now she can revel in it instead of wonder if it will disappear.
She is thinking, idly, of power dynamics and of the chocolate bar she has stashed in her newly reinstated desk when Mulder comes back in, clearly taking very seriously the art of being in a snit.
He places her tea, in a china cup no less, in front of her with a very deliberate clink. "Your tea. Is there anything else you'd like, Your Highness?"
She regards him silently, just long enough to make the righteousness on his face flicker into another kind of awareness. Just long enough to make the air between them a distance to cross.
Then she smirks. "I think you're wrong, Mulder."
Seeing him scramble to remember just what exactly he was wrong about is enough to make her mentally reward herself with two chocolate bars.
He recovers and graces her with an insincere smile. "You think that the genetically modified mosquitoes just happened to place themselves into a low socio-economic area on their own, with no consultation with the public?"
"I've never heard of that." She said gravely.
"What, genetically modified mosquitoes? We've talked about them on several occasions, Scully." He runs a hand through his hair, exasperated.
"Yes, we have. However, I've never heard of a genetically modified mosquito conversing with a member of the public."
He stares at her, so obviously irked beyond measure that she can't help the small twitch of her lips. She sees the moment he realises she is messing with him. Uh, oh.
In two strides he is standing in front of her, vaguely menacing in a way that her body responds to before she remembers that this is oh-so-familiar territory. Sense memory, she thinks. Knows that she is blushing and knows that he can see it.
"Scully? Do you think you can explain to the court why you believe it is important not to take this seriously?" He says conversationally, leaning a hip on her desk.
She fights not to shrink in her chair, and smirks up at him, deliberately sarcastic in order to get that too-knowing, smug look off his face. "GE mosquitoes, Mulder? Really?"
He twitches irritably, taking the bait. "Yes, really! You know that there are government funded organisations that have been fighting to stop the spread of disease by releasing male mosquitoes who will falsely impregnate females. What they haven't told you is that some of these males will impregnate females, whose little buzzy, winged children will carry diseases such as the one found in that file. It is our duty to find the perpetrator and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."
"I quite agree with you." He looks slightly mollified, so she throws in the kicker. "But I do wonder how you will accomplish that, given the size of the perpetrator."
"What do you mean?" Mulder looks confused, and, rightly, suspicious.
"Well, being buzzy and winged and all Mulder, I feel this suspect will be very hard to catch." She grins up at him.
"Scully, I-" He looks down at her with that expression on his face that she used to think meant he was furious with her and that the benefit of years has taught her actually means he is wondering whether he'd prefer to kiss her or set a Chupacabra on her.
She would have ducked her head, years ago. Would have made some excuse or backed down under the weight of his belief. Now, today, she is damn well going to play and make no apology for it. She holds his gaze, and he must divine some of what she is thinking, because he shifts slightly to run his hand down her shoulder, back up to cup the back of her neck.
"Scully."
"Mulder." She says evenly, trying to ignore the heat rising in her cheeks, his fingers tangling in the hair at the base of her neck.
"Did your mother ever tell you to go outside and play?"
She blinks. "What?"
He grins. Tugs her hair gently. "I think we need to leave the office for a while."
She blinks again. "I think I can count on one elbow how many times you've said that to me."
He shrugs, suddenly pensive, sad. "There's a first time for everything, Scully."
She looks sharply at him. Be careful what you wish for.
Then she lets it go, and covers his hand with hers. "Then let's go outside, Agent Mulder."
A/N: So happy it's back! There are so many stories to tell, in such a short space of time.