A/N: Hi there! This is my VERY FIRST TXF fanfic. I have, most recently, written tons of Downton Abbey fics, and, historically, Walking Dead and Harry Potter fics. I actually can't believe it's taken me this long to try writing a little something about these two, as they were, way back in the '90s, my OG OTP. I don't even know if people still read TXF FF, but I wanted to throw this out into the universe. Thanks for reading, if you are here!

~CeeCee

There was only darkness, at first.

A warm, comfortable darkness, which cradled her completely and smelled enticing and safe.

It was the sound of chimes that woke her, vibrating in this comforting blackness.

She gasped awake. The room she was in wasn't one of her own, but deeply familiar, and only slightly brighter than the darkness had been. She was alert and unworried. Her heart beat was slow and her breath was even.

She tugged at the flannel blanket that covered her semi-supine form, pulling it up to her nose. That was it, the smell from the darkness. She immediately knew where she was.

Mulder.

She sat up and blinked, glancing around the moonlight-tinged living room of Apartment 42. The chimes sounded again, in the recesses of her mind.

She thought of Daniel, how her heart had ached and tugged at the sight of him after all these years. Of Maggie, all her righteousness and anger falling away to reveal a daughter who simply wanted her distracted father's attention, at last. She thought of Colleen Azar, of the woman's preternatural calm and focus, a former scientist turned believer.

Colleen had admonished her: she needed to slow down. How she had rankled at that! She'd been surprised to find herself so angry with the woman; no, if she was being honest with herself, she'd been seething, her fury a nest of snakes in the pit of her stomach.

But somehow, her ire had burned out, leaving only clarity in its wake: accidents sometimes weren't really accidents; they were messages, if only one would listen.

Dana Scully was listening, at last.

She could pretend she was surprised when, at long last, she caught up to the blond woman in the khaki outfit only to find…Mulder.

She could pretend that, yes, but it would be pretense only. And to herself, which was even worse than lying to someone else.

No, when she saw his familiar, much-loved face, there had been a click deep inside of her, like a deadbolt twisted open on a door she'd long ago forgotten existed.

He was back from England.

From his latest jaunt, chasing the world's oddities in unusual places.

He grinned that goofy grin he had, slung his arm around her shoulder, and pushed her towards a Thai takeout place on the way to his apartment.

They had sat as they so often had over the past half-dozen years or so, on his battered sofa, the good smells of green curry and coconut rice and the couch's worn leather, imprinted with its owner's scent, making her entire body hum slightly. She had felt the stresses of the weekend seep away.

Their conversation had been both earnest and silly, disjointed and seamless in turns, as it always seemed to be, though of course, that was an illusion; as difficult as it was to imagine, there was a time she hadn't known the man seated beside her. But now, their chat easily moved from her groans over terrible Stonehenge puns to his earnest appreciation of her unconventional methods in seeking out the source of Daniel's illness to her experience in the Buddhist temple, which she recounted with a small amount of embarrassment.

He responded and before she could help herself she had tucked her shoulder under his arm, his words somehow less important that the mere sound of his voice.

She had drifted to sleep, his musings becoming a low, faraway rumble, like a distant waterfall.

And now, here she was, awake at last. She glanced over at the large digital clock by his living room window. 2:32 a.m. She stood, still holding the throw he had tucked around her shoulders. She pulled it up to her nose again and inhaled deeply.

And thought she heard the sound of chimes, which was impossible.

She smiled and dropped the blanket onto the still-warm spot where she had been snoozing and walked towards the bedroom. The door was open.

She stood in the doorway, her heart pulsing and roaring in her ears. She couldn't stop grinning, and she shocked herself by releasing a short but loud burst of giggles. Mulder's slumbering form, sheets tangled around him, shifted slightly, but he didn't wake.

What am I doing? What am I thinking of doing? She clapped her hands over her mouth and shook her head.

There are no such things as accidents, a voice whispered back. It should have sounded like that annoyingly right former scientist's, but it didn't. It sounded like Mulder. It sounded like her own voice.

Mulder. They had wound themselves so inextricably together for all these years. She tried not to think too hard about it, most times. It was…just the way it was. It wasn't until she had gotten ill, had witnessed the deep-seated anger in Bill, that she truly understood his anger directed at Mulder.

Oh, her brother had blamed her partner for interfering during a family time, in a place where work should be verboten. What she had realized that first time in the hospital was that Bill had been terrified, not only by the idea that his little sister might die of cancer, but by how largely Mulder loomed in her life. How he seemed to take up almost everything that Dana Scully was.

It hadn't seemed right to Bill Scully, a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, she now realized. He had attempted to categorize Mulder as her partner, her coworker, maybe, in moments of generosity, her friend, but he'd been left frustrated by the task.

Mulder was all those things to her.

And many other things.

Mulder had so much of her, nearly all of the time - no wonder Bill was angry. What was left for anyone else?

What was left for her?

She sometimes wondered why she stayed in that basement office. It hardly felt like a choice anymore. She thought of a few months ago, on New Year's. That brief, almost chaste kiss they had shared.

The world didn't end.

She giggled again through her fingers and leaned against the doorjamb. Her breath was uneven and jagged. Was this it, then? Had the past three days been leading up to this very moment? Had the past seven years?

She stared at Mulder's sleeping form and was suddenly unsure. Perhaps she should retreat back to the couch, a place she understood, where she had landed and slept many times. Being here, on the edge of his private space, was too uncertain.

Her feet moved her another step inside, towards the bed, the fingers of her right hand curled around the doorway. She was afraid to let go. She let out another sound, between a sigh and a laugh.

"Scully."

She yelped, gasped. He was awake. Dammit, you idiot. Now the laughter bubbled up and out of her and she was glad she was still holding on to something.

"Mulder, it's me," she answered, then could say no more. Her laugher took over, tinged with madness and lust.

"Yes, I was pretty sure it was," he was standing now, close enough she could feel the warmth of his body. "Are you okay, Scully?" His hair was sticking up. She only just resisted the urge to pat it down.

He was wearing only a crumpled white tee shirt and boxers. Not that it mattered. She had seen him as naked as the day he was born, shivering with shock in a Rhode Island motel shower stall; she'd changed the wound dressings on his bare chest, from a gunshot she herself had inflicted upon him. He had seen her in her skivvies on their first case together, that wild trip to Oregon when her world had been fundamentally changed though she'd not known it then. Physical nakedness didn't equal intimacy.

No, what mattered was that she was here. In his bedroom. At three o'clock in the morning.

This was no accident.

She wasn't sure any of it had been an accident, these past seven years. Maybe all of it, every moment, every sarcastic aside, every intellectual debate, every dash through the woods or the swamp or the snow, every shadowy hallway or unidentified light in the night sky had led to this. She had simply never listened

"Yes, Mulder, I'm okay," she answered, and started laughing again.

"Scully, did you break into my liquor cabinet?" He was watching her carefully, a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth. He seemed as awake as she was now.

"You don't have anything as extravagant as a liquor cabinet, Mulder," she retorted. She took another step closer to him. She felt a little drunk on her own boldness. "I wasn't even sure you actually had a bed."

"That's a really weird story, actually, Scully, because I didn't. But then I did, but it was a water bed and it kept leaking, so I replaced it with a normal one," he shrugged, as if large pieces of unpurchased furniture appearing out of nowhere was merely fodder for a pleasant anecdote rather than fundamentally impossible.

"'Really weird' doesn't cover it Mulder. That makes no sense," she replied. She stepped even closer, now fully enveloped in the sleep-pressed scent of him. She reached up and smoothed down the stray bit of hair that she'd resisted a few minutes before.

"I know Scully, but it's true," he shrugged, not seeming to take any special note of her hand on his head. They were affectionate enough with each other these days that she wasn't certain he thought anything of it. Why should he?

But she knew now. She understood at last, that all of those affectionate brushes and touches and embraces had each been their own but were also part of a whole. She slid her hand down the nape of his neck, resting her palm on his scratchy cheek. He sighed, made a small sound, but his hands remained at his sides.

"I want to believe you, Mulder, but…" she trailed off, refreshed her grin. He grinned back. There was a glimmer of knowledge in his smile.

"Hey, Scully, you're the one who admitted you communed with God this afternoon. You can't suddenly slide back into incredulity now, can you?" His hands remained at his sides, but now he stepped closer.

She took a deep breath, heard chimes again, closer now.

"No, I guess not, Mulder," she shrugged, mimicking his motion. She deliberately reached up and placed her other hand on his face, rubbing his cheek with her thumb. His eyes widened. "I spent most of the weekend hashing out the past. There's nowhere to move but forward, I can see that now."

His face shifted, his smile gone, his brow creasing. He suddenly softened and became boyish. She felt a tension she'd not know was running through him slacken and drain away. His hands, at last, found her waist, tugged at her green sweater. The minute his fingers found her bare skin, she pulled him down and kissed him, a kiss that was only vaguely related to their reserved, restrained one a few months ago.

This one started lush and expanded into languidness. Her breaths were even and warm and sure, so very sure. His matched hers. He tugged her sweater over her head, then gently smoothed her staticky hair down. She laughed against his mouth.

"Scully? Is it okay? I didn't mean –"

"Yes, you did, Mulder. You did mean it," she pressed herself closer to him. She felt giddy, like a girl in the backseat of a car on prom night. She'd forgotten she could feel like this.

"Yeah, okay, yeah, I guess I did," he replied, his hair once again askew, his eyes searching her face. He leaned over and kissed her again, a long, gentler kiss. "I guess I always mean it when it comes to you, Scully." He paused a moment, then grinned wickedly. "Want to sit on my accidental bed? That's not a trick question."

"I do, Mulder," she slipped past him, shucking off her skirt on the way. She dove into the tangle of sheets and inhaled again, thinking of the endless succession of lonely motel beds she'd slept on, scattered all over the country, knowing he was only one door or one floor or several yards down the hall from her, wanting to go to him, but not quite sure exactly how to travel that space between them.

But now she was here. He followed, laying down beside her. He tugged her towards him, sighing again, his expression both boyish and wise. He stroked her cheek, her waist.

"Why now? Why tonight?" He searched her face. "Please know, Scully, I am not complaining. The very opposite."

"I know, Mulder. Always searching for the truth," she laughed again. "Why? Because there are no accidents."

"And everything's led to this," he answered, as if this were perfectly plausible. She was beginning to think it was.

"Thank goodness you're open-minded, Mulder, or I'd never be able to get you to understand."

They laughed together this time, then moved together, breathed together.

And distantly, she heard the sound of impossible chimes.