Spoilers for Milagro. I've always just been so curious if they ever talked about what they read.
When Scully was first partnered with Mulder, all she knew about him was his inclination towards 'spooky' behavior and the monograph he wrote on serial killers that she had to read as part of her Quantico training. Her professor at the time went on and on about his brilliant mind. How Fox Mulder's profiling abilities were unmatched to anyone he'd ever seen.
What would her partner think of her?
She remembered in her college English course when her professor taught her that if she was going to quote a piece of literature and it had an error in it, or if it didn't make sense in the context of the rest of the sentence, that she could fix it with square brackets and insert what she meant and the readers would denote it as her authorial voice fixing the error. She thought about that when recalling that line from Padgett's novel.
What would [Fox Mulder, her partner, the man she trusted above all else, the man who she loved despite years of trying to stifle it] think of her?
It was something she'd always wondered, and not only in the hypothetical context Padgett presented. Another writing tip about emphatic stressing of certain words in sentences through the use of italics came to mind from her college professor. How much a sentence could change based on what was stylistically emphasized.
What did her partner think of her?
What did her partner think of her?
What did her partner think of her?
She wanted to know it all.
Surely Mulder had profiled her over the years, and surely he knew how much it would piss her off, which is why he never told her about it. That wasn't to say Mulder occasionally overstepped occasionally - preemptively knowing how she'd feel before she even said anything. Sometimes Mulder was like an old woman who knew it was going to rain because her joints ached. Only, instead of rain, it was Scully's moods, and she could only wonder if it too was something bone deep.
It bothered her from time to time, made her feel naked. Everything she'd learned about profiling she'd learned from him in the most literal sense. He was her academic foundation at the academy, and then she'd learned a lot through seeing him in action over the years. Scully liked to think she knew Mulder better than he knew himself, but her skills paled in comparison to his. Her attempts to get into the mind of another were like Mulder picking up a knife to perform an autopsy.
She was certain about some aspects of him, though. Like his possessiveness and territoriality in regards to her. It was through Mulder's response that she knew whatever Padgett wrote was invasive and upsetting.
He was angry. Furious. Livid. She saw it in the way his nostrils flared and how his jaw clenched when they saw each other the next day after he'd had Padgett arrested. Scully could also tell he hadn't gotten much sleep and connecting A to B to C told her that he'd spent all night reading Padgett's novel.
She'd only read one chapter before deciding she should stop before she was too unsettled to sleep.
Preconsciously, she knew this wasn't her strength as an investigator. She was a marshall of cold facts, quick to organize, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesize their relative hard values into discrete categories. Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism that she was soft, malleable, not up to her male counterparts.
Was that really why she relied on facts? Was broaching anything appearing like a subjective approach bound to make her seem emotional? Weak? Too feminine? Did she like cold hard facts because of their objectivity? The fact that someone could criticize her findings and it would be just that: a criticism of her findings rather than a criticism of her ability to interpret something rooted in emotions or empathy - as those would be a reflection of the most vulnerable parts of her mind? Her inability to open up and reveal her true self bleeding into her work?
Regardless, she hated this. She hated feeling open and vulnerable and exposed, like her heart had been cut and Padgett was using her blood instead of ink to write this novel, and that everyone who got a hold of his writing was getting a piece of her. Body, mind, and soul. Above all else, she hated how Padgett's words kept bouncing around in her head.
"You're curious about me."
"Motive is never easy, sometimes it occurs to one only later."
Scully hated that he was right. She was curious, but she had a hard time figuring out why. Was the reason Padgett intrigued her so much because he reminded her of a cheap, knockoff version of Mulder? After years spent wondering what Mulder-the-profiler saw he looked into her mind, was this author's interpretation of her scratching the itch of curiosity? Seeing Padgett's writing was the closest she had ever gotten to seeing someone try to understand her motivations. Are these the same conclusions Mulder would have come to? A woman so repressed, so unsure of herself, that the slightest bit of attention was all she needed?
Even being in Padgett's apartment felt like being in a life size dollhouse; the layout was Mulder's apartment, only missing the small characteristics Mulder had put there over the years, signs of wear and tear that made apartment 42 so much different than apartment 44, yet in every other sense, it was the same.
She had a hard time crossing the threshold of the bedroom because that's where the similarities stopped. She hadn't been in Mulder's bedroom to picture it like she could the rest of the apartment; in that moment it became her sitting on the lonely mattress with a stranger who had just admitted to stalking her.
When the lightbulb had gone out in his room, she'd only turned to look at it for a moment before her attention was drawn to Padgett - how much in the darkness his back and his spiky brown hair resembled her partner. An omnipresent being looking down at them might even see what appeared to be Mulder and Scully, side by side as always. But then he turned and she was reminded he was most distinctly not Mulder.
Then Mulder barged in with such confidence she felt the indignant sting of embarrassment. Did he know she'd be here? Was she that easy to read? What was it about her that keyed Mulder into the insight she'd put herself in this situation? It was obvious it had just been a coincidence, but for a split second, when she first saw him, she felt like yet again Mulder had read her.
The manuscript Mulder had thrust in her hands was heavy - her fingers ached holding the weight of who this man saw her to be. After hearing Padgett had written about having sex with her, she had to know what Mulder had read. It was important she knew for her own sake, so she could know what aspects of herself, fictionalized or not, were now open record in a criminal trial for all of her peers and colleagues to read if they wished. But it was also important that she knew what parts of herself, parts she wasn't ready to give to Mulder, were now written plain as day on a page. Was Padgett accurate in his depictions of her? Would it be worse if it was wrong and Mulder took it as fact?
She almost thought about going home, she wanted to have privacy when she read this, but she didn't want to taint her home by bringing Padgett in, if only through the spirit of him on the page. He didn't deserve that, so instead she ended up using an empty interrogation room. It felt oddly fitting. Mulder and Padgett might as well have been on the opposite side of the one-way glass, examining her while she was none the wiser.
She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear with a sigh, ready to see if she recognized herself in the words. If she'd open the page to see a portrait of her on an 8.5 by 11 inch canvas. When she opened the manuscript, she stumbled across a passage she'd already read.
Even now, as she pushed an errant strand of titian hair behind her ear she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful... fatally, stunningly prepossessing. Yet the compensatory respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart... to let it open, to let someone in.
Within a moment, the side of her face burned where her fingertips had just been to push her hair aside. She felt embarassed at even the smallest acknowledgement of one of her habits, and she couldn't help but think of how Padgett would describe her reactions to his words right now and it made her uncomfortable.
As soon as that thought ran through her mind, lashing her confidence like a whip, another thought acted as a salve: What would Mulder think?
Scully sighed in resignation as she steeled herself to keep reading. She had to know how she was being perceived, what Mulder might have seen.
But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become... simply aroused.
All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle "C" of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.
She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence. But the images came perforce and she let them play - let them flood in like savory - or more a sugary confection - from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache,' 'pang,' 'prick,' 'twinge' - how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there or only helped her discover a landscape she, by necessity, blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her?
That was a thought that came into the forefront of her mind as the stranger kissed her plump, swollen lips. Her partner was only the distance of a thin wall away from her. Would he hear her moan? Did she want him to? She was wanton, drunk with lust and desire. With every new mark the stranger's mouth left on her too-long neglected body, she felt the rigid workplace woman melt away, a winter becoming spring as she felt herself bloom open for him.
Her azulean gaze rolled back when the stranger's desire came into contact with hers, her throbbing heat beckoning him with every beat of her heart.
"Please. I need this," she moaned, begging for the stranger to help her become the woman her work so often repressed.
Mulder was able to make it that far before shoving the manuscript away from him in disgust, the sound of the matte paper sliding across the table sounding no different than if Padgett was here laughing at him.
Mulder had spent years cultivating fantasies of Scully that felt right. How many times had he paused, cock in hand and sweat on brow, and sighed while mentally backing up a few steps. Maybe Fantasy-Scully had said something Real-Scully never would have, or maybe she came faster than was realistic, or maybe the look in her eyes wasn't quite right. He never wanted Fantasy-Scully to do anything Real-Scully wouldn't - he wasn't masturbating to some actress in one of his movies, no. His heart was racing and his dick was throbbing because of the woman he was in love with and he wanted to do her justice.
Yet Padgett claimed the stranger "knew her more completely than she knew herself."
Mulder wanted to dismiss it outright. He wanted to read this passage and scoff that an outsider could even think to know the enigmatic woman he worked with. But every time he almost scoffed at the words, he'd have a moment of recognition - a moment where he vividly saw his partner on the pages in a way he thought only he had observed.
But at the same time, it didn't feel like her at all. Or at least, he hoped it didn't. Padgett's Scully read as a woman concerned with how others perceived her, which Mulder agreed with, but as a woman dissatisfied with the constraints her work put on her. Mulder had always feared Scully's work on the X-Files hindered her from living a life she wanted to, but he trusted her when she said she wouldn't be anywhere she didn't want to be. He knew in his soul that was true of his stubborn, strong-willed partner, but for as much confidence he had in her, he lacked confidence in himself.
However, if there was one thing he knew about Scully, it was that she didn't need validation from a man to recognize her strength. Mulder knew, as much as it both pained him and made him want to laugh, Scully was insecure with her looks from time to time. But he knew she was confident in her abilities at work. Scully was the smartest, most capable agent he knew - not this timid girl Padgett made her out to be.
He could handle the writing to a point: it was an invasion for Padgett to use her like this, but it crossed a line. A really big fucking line.
He was using her as a sick proverbial plaything, using the likeness of Scully and splaying her open for anyone to see. While Mulder could question the validity of Padgett's assessments, he couldn't help but think of the other copies of this manuscript that had been distributed to those working the case - would the rookie agents who didn't know shit about Scully read this and think they knew her on the most intimate level imaginable? Mulder was still trying to understand her intricacies and he was her partner of seven years, yet Agent Nobody might look at her tomorrow and have the audacity to think he knew her.
Even worse, they would read this and imagine that this wanton woman, pleading and begging for this man to change her life with his cock, was Scully. Fiction being construed as reality always had harmful consequences. The potential of other people reading Scully's body described so lewdly made him feel physically sick. The thought she was sitting across town, reading about herself being violated in this way, made him want to throw on his coat and race to her house right now and save her the injustice.
But would that be hypocritical of him? That's something that bothered Mulder almost as much as reading this filth, that nagging voice in the back of his head asking if he was any better than Padgett. He couldn't count the hours he'd spent with Fantasy-Scully in the lonely solitude of his apartment. How often he'd turn to her and fantasized about loving her in the way she deserved. How many times she'd been there to comfort him while he dealt with the reality that she may be as close as he ever got to Real-Scully.
Was what he had always considered reverence actually some perverted objectification of the woman he loved so dearly?
What would Scully think if she knew?
His chest tightened uncomfortably at the thought of Scully finding out how many times he'd fantasized about making love to her and the disgust he imagined might follow. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel like he didn't respect her when the truth was he respected her more than anyone he'd ever met.
Which is why his blood was boiling at the idea this man wanted to release a cheap dimestore paperback of Scully's intimacy, watering down all of her complexities for the consumption of people who didn't respect anything about her and just wanted to get off on some cheap erotica.
Mulder collected the manuscript he'd thrown and sat back down with a frustrated sigh. He needed to know just how far this was going to go, despite wanting to vomit at the image of this undeserving man touching her. Padgett's narrator was selfish. Clearly driven by his own pleasure. He may be tapping into the mind of Scully, but in a manner that objectifies rather than cherishes it. The stranger's hands roam her body to know it, as a means of conquering rather than an attempt to elicit pleasure out of her. He writes odes to her pebbled, rosy nipples, but nothing about what it elicits in her other than bland descriptions.
Arousal.
Excitement.
He discusses her while evading her simultaneously. Padgett's woman, physically, sounds like a woman drawn from a Harlequin romance novel that merely had similarities to Scully. There were long paragraphs describing her titan hair and creamy, pale skin - but when the stranger kisses her neck, he doesn't take note of the little pink scar that resides there. The smooth expanse of her stomach is talked about without any regard to the bullet wound that was still healing, puckered pink skin that always seemed to cause an irrational flicker of insecurity to appear in Scully's eyes when it was brought up.
This was a romanticization of a version of Scully.
This was not his partner.
Padgett's narrator - for he refuses to acknowledge it as a self-insert of Padgett - doesn't even taste her. He states simply that, yet again, she's eager, before he thrusts into her all the way with little regard for readiness- marking her reactions as pleasure in response to him rather than reactions of her own pleasure. Aside from the notion her clit is enlarged, there is no move to touch it, to stimulate her like she deserves. This Fake-Scully doesn't touch herself either because she is plainly acting as a conduit for the narrator's own pleasure.
Despite his greatest intentions not to, he found himself drifting back to his own fantasies of Scully, mentally comparing and contrasting the intentions of the mind at work in both instances. In all his fantasies, he imagined Scully was the one to really act on her sexual impulses. It's what he would need: full obvious desire that this, he, was what she wanted. Depending from scenario to scenario, maybe he instigated it, maybe she did, but in all cases, Scully most certainly didn't demurely lay there "trembling with uncertainty" as Mulder did whatever he wanted to her and read every reaction as a success. Padgett's narrator might as well be fucking a sex doll he'd imbued with a personality for the amount of regard he actually gave Scully's autonomy.
In his mind, she'd be just as bossy in the bedroom as she was in the office. Mulder couldn't help but wonder what her voice would sound like. High and breathy or low and guttural? He wondered if the Scully he knew would arch her back in a silent plea for more, encouraging touches she liked while dismissing ones she didn't.
She gently stroked the stranger's arms in soft encouragement as their mutual pleasure started to crest. Her gaze fell into the direction of her partner's apartment, undoubtedly thinking of him for a moment as a blush spread across her chest. She'd spent so long on the pedestal of purity he had put her on that the prospect of falling off meant falling into an abyss she was afraid to drown in. Could he look at her the same way when he realized she'd found what it was like to live? Her azulean gaze returned to the stranger's as a small smile graced her renaissance features.
She'd been lonely for so long that the prospect of becoming whole, joining with the stranger, felt as empowering.
With a final snap of his hips against her spread legs, they came together, and she cried for, she finally-
Mulder stopped when he realized his white knuckled grip was threatening to tear the pages, despite that being exactly what he wanted to do to this filth.
He didn't put her on a pedestal of purity, most certainly not in his own fantasies, but did she think he did? Is that how the outside world saw their relationship? A eunuch and a nun side by side? They'd been through so much, she… she had to know he cared about her more than he should. They'd had tense moments before, moments that lived inside his mind, ready to be called upon when his heart was racing and his hand was unbuckling his jeans, but surely his mind was the only thing keeping those moments alive, surely Scully never thought twice.
And he was damn sure there was no way Scully would actually think of what he thought of her while she was having sex with some stranger, could she? He mentally reprimanded himself for taking this lunatic's words as any form of truth about Scully. But the thought still lingered...
Jerse.
He'd read over that case file nearly twenty times, certain words leaving a little knick on his heart every time his eyes scanned them. Prior relations. Appeared Agent Scully spent the night. Wearing his shirt. Various little breadcrumbs that lead him to the conclusion she'd had sex with the man.
He'd spent so long trying to rationalize his feelings towards the idea of her being touched by and touching another man, spent so long dancing around the obvious conclusion, that he hadn't thought about her motivations other than wondering if this was her way of spiting him. He couldn't help but consider if it was her acknowledging his feelings for her and throwing them back in his face. He'd never considered the possibility she thought of him during.
Then, with the curse of an eidetic memory, he remembered being on the phone with her and scoffing at the idea she'd had a date. It was more in response to her blowing off the case, but had she taken it as him implying she was undesirable? She'd been so direct about having a life outside of the X-Files, had his comment been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and led her straight into the arms of a madman - not to spite him, but to assure herself that she was a desirable woman who was admired?
And then she was almost incinerated, and he continued to burn her with his childish insults.
Mulder leaned his face into his hands and pressed his palms into his eyes. She deserved so much more than she'd been given. He released his hands and blinked away the stars left in his vision, his eyes focusing on a single word on the page.
Lonely.
Over the years they'd become two sides of the same coin, initially considered opposites, but in all actuality, two complimentary entities completely and utterly connected. Did that mean she felt the same overwhelming loneliness he did? Loneliness he only felt reprieved of Monday through Friday from nine to five?
Was she Margaret Mary in the story of the sacred heart? Would her loneliness be absolved once she gave it to Mulder, who'd let her heart lay alongside his, absorbing all he had to give her as his touch healed her?
Mulder had spent seven years with her, desperately trying to understand the enigma that was Dana Katherine Scully, and he still didn't have the gall to consider himself an expert.
Padgett spent all of three pages and thought himself a god.
"Agent Scully is already in love."
Padgett had been so wrong about so many things about her, yet Scully couldn't help but feel her face flush at just how right he had been at that moment. She couldn't even bear to look at Mulder after he said it. She'd tried for a fleeting moment, but as soon as she saw the hint of a question in his gaze, she turned away.
Avoidance seemed to be one of their favorite methods of communicating where personal issues were concerned.
However, she knew that they wouldn't be able to avoid talking about Padgett for too long. He'd died a few floors beneath where they currently sat, and even though she'd clung to Mulder and sobbed for longer than she was proud to admit just yesterday, they still hadn't had an open conversation about it. While usually that wasn't abnormal for them, dancing around uncomfortable topics, Mulder was like a dog with a bone when he was worried about her. If the way he was currently fidgeting on the couch next to her, glancing at her every time he thought she wouldn't notice, was any indication, he wanted to talk about it - if only to make sure she was alright.
"I'm sorry I read it," Mulder says out of the blue as a TV news report dimly came through the speakers about shots fired at a local apartment complex where a federal agent was attacked. It looked like depictions of her were just everywhere nowadays.
"What do you mean?" she asked, turning head slightly to face him.
"He violated you by writing what he did, and my reading it probably wasn't any better," he replied, contrition heavy in his tone.
This wasn't what she'd anticipated he was concerned about and it took her a moment to catch up with him. "I-Mulder, you had to. It was evidence," she stammered lamely.
"And I'm sorry about that, Scully. That other people might've read it," he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. "I, uh, I sealed the file."
"What?" she replied, uncertain of his meaning.
"The case was an X-File, so I took the authority to seal the file so all copies of the manuscript have been collected, all disposed of except for one, and no one can access it without permission," he replied, picking at a loose thread of his jeans.
She stared at him for a moment, processing her relief that no one had the potential of stumbling across it if they searched her name. Mulder shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and let the thread drop as he clasped his hands together. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you, um, I should have-"
"No," she interrupted, not wanting him to chastise himself for something that meant so much to her. "I'm just really relieved. Thank you, Mulder."
He nodded softly before turning to look at her. "It wasn't right, what he wrote."
Scully found herself hung up on Mulder's word choice. Right. Did he mean it wasn't acceptable Padgett wrote it in the first place? Or did he mean it factually wasn't correct? Was it both?
Scully was frustrated because as much as she wished it wasn't the case, it was important to her that Mulder knew what parts were wrong. The thought he was apologizing for reading it because he considered it true, akin to reading straight out of her diary, made her uncomfortable. Yet at the same time, she'd spent years trying to hide just how deep her feelings for him went - she wasn't ready to give herself fully to him and reveal the most intimate side of herself to him, but because of Padgett she felt like she had to in the most clinical way possible.
All because it mattered so much to her how Mulder thought of her.
"He-," she started, her voice faltering slightly. "I think he got some parts right. I guess I was curious about him."
"Why?" Mulder prompted, shifting slightly on the couch so he didn't have to crane his neck to look at her.
Now it was her turn to fidget. Scully drew her hands into her lap and started idly playing with the nail of her middle finger. "I spend so much time trying to prevent myself from being underestimated. I don't want people at work thinking I'm too sensitive or too this or that. I try to dress professionally so I'm taken seriously. I guess I just wanted to see if someone was still able to break down the walls I've built and see me."
"Did you want him to see you?" Mulder asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
"No, but I wanted to know if you do," she thought to herself.
"I don't think so," she sighed.
"But you still were curious?" he asked, appearing to get lost in her cryptic answers.
She took a deep breath, trying to navigate this awkward terrain of how much she wanted to reveal about herself. Mulder must've taken that the wrong way because he quickly added, "I'm sorry. I don't want to make you talk about anything you aren't comfortable with."
She let out a little exhalation of laughter at Mulder's seemingly endless chivalry. Yesterday, on the very floor a few feet away from them, he'd opened her shirt and checked her for wounds while she was trying to remember how to breathe properly. He'd rocked her and kissed her temple while she cried, shedding a few tears of his own. He'd seen her at her worst, yet he still never wanted to take more than she was comfortable giving.
"You're not making me uncomfortable," she assured. "I guess I'm just not used to having to reflect inward like this."
"Do you think he was right and it's bothering you?" Mulder prompted, trying to help her gain footing in her thought process with a prompt.
"Do you think he was right?" she replied, throwing his question back at him instead of answering.
Scully noticed his gaze wander to the six bullet holes still marring his wall. She'd been adamant that they spend time at his apartment rather than go to hers. She refused to allow Padgett the ability to turn the sanctuary of Mulder's apartment, a space she'd always felt safe, into a museum of her pain. But she hadn't considered that maybe Mulder needed the reprieve more than her. He looked like he'd barely slept and, being the floor next to them was shining clean, she'd be willing to assume it was from spending the night on his hands and knees getting her blood out of the woodwork.
"He depicted a woman who didn't want to be objectified by those around her. A woman flattered when she receives a well-deserved compliment, who feels insecure at times and curious about the motivations of those around her," he mused. "I think while much of that can apply to you, it can apply to any number of women who work in such testosterone-heavy fields like you do. I think that Padgett is an example of someone who took an introductory course in psychology and thinks himself a profiler."
"Like you?" she replied boldly.
Mulder looked hurt and she realized her phrasing wasn't the best, so she lamely added, "A profiler."
"Have I ever made you feel like he did?" Mulder asked, his eyes boring into hers to try and read an answer he wasn't sure she'd verbally give.
"No," she shook her head. "There's a difference, Mulder."
"What's that?" he asked softly. She looked at him, trying to see if he was mentally trying to guess, only to see genuine wonder. Maybe that was the biggest difference of all: Padgett claimed to know her while Mulder didn't presume he did.
"I trust you," she admitted, a sentiment she'd shared with him a thousand times over, but now felt exponentially more vulnerable taking into consideration just how intimately Padgett had thought about her. Was admitting she was okay with him reading this inadvertently admitting she was okay with him knowing that side of her?
"And you don't trust him," he added, as if he wasn't following or didn't want to say the wrong thing in case it wasn't what she meant. But it was.
"I felt objectified by Padgett," she replied, watching as he nodded in agreement. "I can only guess, but I presume that when you read, um, all of what he wrote, you tried to subjectify the woman on the page. I presume you thought of how those depictions made me, the real flesh and blood Scully, feel."
He looked pensive and she added, "You were right. Everything he wrote was a priori. Him making analytical judgements based on observation independent of experience. He's never had sex with me, but it's more than that. It's a priori of him knowing me," she murmured. Then, turning to him, she said, "If you ever were to profile me, or try to get into my mind, it's a posteriori - knowledge gained through experience."
His eyes widened slightly at the accidental implication that they'd had sex and she felt a blush threaten to creep on her cheeks. "I mean, you know me. Anything you think of me has a kernel of truth because you're my best friend, you know everything about me, even parts I'd rather hide."
"I don't know everything, Scully," he denied with a shake of his head. Then, adding with a whisper, "There's so much I don't know."
"Sometimes I feel like you know me better than my own mother," she chuckled, only to see he was still pensive.
"Why did you go into his apartment?" he asked. "Why did you put yourself in potential danger like that?"
"I knew he wouldn't hurt me. He just wanted to know me," she said with disdain. "And I wanted to try and find out why."
"But he did end up hurting you," he clarified. His voice was angrier than she presumed he intended it to be, but she knew it was at Padgett and not her.
"He only hurt me when he deemed me unattainable. He lashed out because his perception of me had proven wrong…" she replied, trailing off as the unsaid words hung in the air.
"...because I'm already in love."
Mulder heard the unsaid words regardless, but she didn't have to be a profiler or a Padgett to know he wasn't going to push her. Neither of them were ready for that. Instead, he intertwined his fingers with hers and brought the back of her hand up to his mouth and pressed a gentle kiss.
Scully smiled in response as her heart beat erratically in her chest, reminding her of the very thing Padgett tried to steal that had belonged to Mulder this whole time.
Thank you for reading! - Nicole (gaycrouton on Twitter and Tumblr)