The last thing Mulder expected at midnight on Christmas Eve was a knock at his door. Earlier that evening he and Scully had been trapped in a haunted house with two eccentric ghosts. These ghosts were two former lovers with a penchant for psychoanalyzing those who dared to enter the house. Legend claimed the undead couple died by murder-suicide and attempted to drive other couples to the same grim fate. While Mulder and Scully managed to escape the house unscathed – albeit utterly bewildered by what happened – Mulder couldn't shake the ghost's haunting words. Maurice had called Mulder narcissistic and socially maladjusted. An egomaniac. And, worst of all, lonely.
Mulder had always fancied himself a lone wolf by choice. He was a man on a mission, a crusader, a rebel with a cause. Maurice had turned that notion on his head, suggesting the more sinister connotation: people didn't want to spend time with him. Rightly, the ghost had pointed out Scully was only inside the house because he had stolen her car keys. Admittedly, not his finest moment.
As Mulder watched A Christmas Carol, after the whole ordeal, he wondered what the ghosts had said to Scully. Did they shake her confidence the way they did to him? Did they play on her insecurities? Did they say she was lonely?
When Mulder finally answered the knock at the door, Scully was standing on the other side. To say he was shocked would be a massive understatement. He had lured her to the house on Christmas Eve under false pretenses and coaxed her inside by tricking her. Despite what the ghosts may have said about him, he did feel guilty about it. He had to admit the uncomfortable truth to himself: he was lonely. Maurice was right. Besides his mother, he didn't have any family. Not many friends. Hell, he didn't even celebrate Christmas, but he wanted Scully by his side that day.
"I, uh, I couldn't sleep," she said. Her confusion over the night's events was still written all over her face.
"I was, um . . ." She sighed. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah." He put his arm around her shoulders and led her into the apartment, closing the door behind her.
"Aren't you supposed to be opening Christmas gifts with your family?" he asked.
Ignoring his question, she said, "Mulder, none of that really happened out there tonight. That was all in our heads, right?"
Like many of their adventures, he couldn't explain it. Not rationally anyhow. Unsure what else to say, he decided to simply agree. "It must have been."
"Not that, uh, my only joy in life is proving you wrong," she said.
That must have been something the ghosts said to her, the same way they claimed to know all his innermost desires and subconscious motives.
"When have you proved me wrong?" he quipped.
"Well, why else would you want me out there with you?"
"You didn't want to be there?" As soon as he said it, he realized he sounded like an idiot. Of course, she didn't want to be out playing Ghostbusters with him on Christmas Eve. How self-involved could he be?
"Oh, that's, um, that's self-righteous and narcissistic of me to say, isn't it?" he asked, repeating Maurice's diagnosis from a few hours prior.
"No, I mean, maybe I did want to be out there with you."
His heart leapt. It didn't make sense why she would want to be with him rather than her family, but he was nonetheless ridiculously grateful. Since his incident in the Bermuda Triangle, their dynamic was slowly improving, mending itself. He remembered some of their conversation at the hospital, but it was hazy, like trying to look through foggy glass. He knew that they discussed Diana to some extent, but he couldn't conjure the details no matter how hard he tried.
Suddenly he remembered the Christmas gift he had thoughtfully picked out for her—another small effort to heal their partnership.
He grabbed the gift off the table behind her and said shyly, "Now, um, I know we said we weren't going to exchange gifts, but, uh, I got you a little something."
She grinned, touched. "Mulder –"
"Merry Christmas."
"Well, I got you a little something too," she said, pulling a rectangle-shaped gift out of her jacket pocket.
He chuckled. With childlike excitement, he shook the gift, then sat down on the couch to open it. Scully followed, matching his giddy energy. Side-by-side they began to tear open the wrapping on their respective gifts.
Scully stopped unwrapping and said, "You go first."
Mulder ripped the paper to reveal a VHS tape with Robert Redford on the cover holding a baseball bat.
"The Natural? Scully, how did you know?"
"It was between that and Bull Durham."
"This is one of my all-time favorite movies. And the best baseball movie. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Open yours," he said, gesturing to her wrapped gift.
Scully tore off the wrapping paper, discovering a collapsible folding umbrella.
"An umbrella?"
"Not just any umbrella," he said, a glint in his eyes. He sat forward on the couch and gently took the umbrella from her hands. He unsnapped the fabric tie that held it closed.
When he put his hand inside the umbrella, preparing to open it, Scully intervened.
"Wait!"
"What?"
"Isn't it unlucky to open an umbrella indoors?"
He shot her an incredulous, teasing look. "Scully, are you superstitious?"
Realizing how it sounded, she smiled sheepishly at herself. She gestured for him to carry on. Mulder opened the umbrella. It was a deep navy blue with dots of white that were almost translucent scattered across its expanse.
Mulder handed the umbrella off to her and proceeded to walk around the apartment, shutting off all the lights.
"Mulder," she laughed, "what are you doing?"
"Just wait."
Once he shut off all the lamps and the apartment was dark, he hit a light switch that turned on an overhead light fixture.
Scully gasped. The concentrated overhead light lit up the umbrella from above, the translucent dots shining down on her face. The umbrella's canopy mimicked the night sky, each dot representing a star. Some stars were larger than others, presumably to scale, emphasizing recognizable constellations. With the light shining through, the stars illuminated a full, beautiful sky-scape.
Mulder sat back down next to her and took back the umbrella, using his long arms to hold it slightly higher so she could appreciate the view. She leaned back and rested her head on the couch, her eyes tracing over the speckled fabric like she was cataloging each star. He mimicked her posture, letting his head fall back like they were stargazing together under a blanket of real night sky.
"I like this," she said softly.
A week prior, he spotted the umbrella in the planetarium gift shop. He almost breezed by the window, but something about the umbrella made him stop and think of Scully. Perhaps it was all the time they had spent staring at the night sky, searching together for truths elusive and infinite. Or maybe he was overly romanticizing what amounted to a stretch of yawning nylon. Either way, he found it charming enough to break their rule to not buy each other gifts.
Mulder rolled his head to the side to observe her. Scully's face was lit up by freckles of warm starlight, a silent galaxy spread across her face. She looked beautiful, even more so than usual. Her face was relaxed and happy, a contrast to her usual professional stoicism. Seeing her reaction was worth every penny.
"Did you know every star we're able to see is larger and brighter than our Sun?" he asked.
Scully smiled and rolled her head so she was facing him, their noses almost touching. "No one likes an astronomy geek, Mulder."
He chuckled. His eyes traced the constellations scattered across her cheek. He ached to kiss her.
"Sometimes I do think about the vastness of the universe," she said, looking back up at the celestial canopy of the umbrella. "About how insignificant we truly are. Strangely it can be a comfort sometimes, knowing that some of the things I worry about truly don't matter."
How perfectly Scully to take a silly gift and extrapolate it into a deep thought on the nature of the universe. And how Mulder of him to immediately catastrophize what she meant by worries. What did she worry about? Was he the cause of her worries? Does she still worry about her illness returning?
After a long moment, he said, "I just thought it was a cool umbrella."
She playfully smacked his hand.
"What do you worry about?" he asked, unable to stop himself.
She turned her head back to him, her expression growing pensive. Sometimes he wished he could read her mind. For two people who knew each other so well, they still struggled to truly understand each other. They could bicker back and forth for hours about a case, and accurately predict exactly what the other would say. When it came to matters of the heart, though, they guarded their secrets. In reality, he would probably live to regret being able to read her mind. Half the time she probably thought about kicking his ass.
"The usual things," she said. "Where I am in my life versus my peers professionally. And personally."
He swallowed. It was the truth, but certainly not what he wanted to hear.
He took a deep breath. "Scully, I know it was wrong of me to steal your keys. I tricked you into that house. I want you to know that if you want to get out of the car like you said before, I don't want to hold you back."
She blinked slowly, her brow furrowing. "I know that," she said. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be. I make my own choices."
He knew that. Scully was fiercely independent and would never let anyone control her. Yet, he worried about her sense of loyalty and whether that could cloud her judgment. The last thing he wanted was to hold her back from the life she wanted. For now, though, he was grateful she chose to come over, to spend this precious time with him.
Her eyes dropped to his lips, sending a jolt of electricity through him.
Did she want him to kiss her? In an instant, his mind flashed back to when they had almost kissed. The moment had been so intense, so loaded with heaviness. As she looked at him under the faux night sky of the umbrella, he saw only lightness in her eyes. They were enjoying each other's company simply for the sake of it, enjoying some levity in their otherwise dark world.
Her lips were only a breath away. It would be so easy.
Suddenly the overhead light flickered off and on a few times, causing Mulder's grip on the umbrella to falter.
"Oh!" she gasped, both of them fumbling to catch the umbrella.
Mulder immediately got to his feet and turned on a nearby table lamp.
"I swear the wiring in this building is shit," he muttered. Mulder turned off the overhead light, setting the room back to normal.
A little flustered, Scully got a grip on the umbrella and closed it. As he sat back down next to her he said, "Hope that didn't poke your eye out."
"No, no, I'm fine. Thank you for this."
"What do you say we pop this in?" Mulder said, holding up The Natural and wiggling his eyebrows. "Want to pull an all-nighter?"
Scully bit her lip, conflicted. He was mostly joking, but it sent a little thrill through him that she even contemplated staying. Again his guilt resurfaced. She should be sleeping, not prolonging this strange night.
"No, uh, you should go home. Sorry, I'm doing it again. I'm being selfish."
With a mischievous glint in her eye, she said, "I know I probably shouldn't stay but I want to."
His eyebrows raised in surprise. "Wow, Scully's walking on the wild side tonight."
He unwrapped the VHS tape from its cellophane and popped it into the VCR. As he settled into the couch, Scully removed her boots and blazer. Once more comfortable, she leaned back with a sigh. Her body was close – very close – though no parts of their bodies touched.
It was rare that they socialized like this outside of work. It was even more rare that he instigated any extracurricular quality time with her. Today he dressed it up as a case and let that be the pretext. That gave him some plausible deniability. His reticence to outright ask her to spend time with him was not for lack of wanting – he very much wanted to spend more time with her for any reason. However, he assumed their work obligations more than filled her daily Mulder quota. But maybe he was wrong.
As the movie progressed, Mulder became more and more aware of how close they were sitting. One small movement could bridge the empty space. Tension in that small gap between their bodies vibrated at a frequency perhaps only he could feel. There had always been an unexplainable magnetism drawing them together. That night, though, the compulsion to be near her was breaking through his carefully constructed barriers.
He had a pesky, intrusive thought: hold her hand. Adrenaline coursed through him like he was a dorky teenager again, strategizing how to sneakily put his arm around his date. Scully yawned. While he felt electrified by her closeness, apparently all she felt was tired.
Holding her hand was a dumb idea anyway. It was presumptuous and misguided. A Christmas gift and a half-remembered heart-to-heart in a hospital room were not enough to put their relationship back on track. Deep down, he knew it was too soon. Besides, he didn't want to be the first one to leap again unless he knew she fully reciprocated his feelings.
Truthfully, he couldn't even fully articulate his feelings anymore. Before Diana came back, before that damned bee interrupted his kiss with Scully, his feelings were simple. He loved Scully, but he was content with loving her from afar. Especially after her illness, her happiness came first. He had an unconscious pact with himself to never push the boundaries of their friendship unless it was unmistakably, undeniably clear that it was what she wanted. Now, everything was complicated. He didn't know what Scully wanted and Diana's presence had fucked with his head.
Scully fell asleep first. He noticed her drooping eyelids early on and decided not to tease her or draw attention to it. It was understandable that she would be tired after the tumultuous night they shared. Eventually, her head tilted toward him, coming to rest on the couch's back cushion.
He continued to watch the movie but glanced over at her frequently, watching her sleep. Her breathing was a lullaby, her rising and falling chest a comfort. Her sleeping form was better than any meditation or hypnosis. A pang of tenderness filled his chest. What wouldn't he do for this woman? In the space between their legs, he grazed his knuckles over the side of her thigh. It was the lightest touch, but it made him feel connected to her in some small way.
Hours later, the beginnings of morning sun filtered through the blinds, waking him. Her soft hair tickled his cheek, and he could smell the faint vestiges of her floral perfume. Squinting, he lifted his head from the back of the couch, his neck screaming out in pain. It was hard to believe she was still sound asleep, her mouth slightly open, still breathing deeply.
"Scully," he whispered, but his voice came out hoarse with sleep.
He cleared his throat and gently tugged on her arm. "Hey, Scully," he repeated.
She blinked and sucked in a deep breath. Stretching out her arms, she blinked a few more times, becoming acclimated to the light in the room.
"Sorry," she mumbled, "I guess I fell asleep."
He laughed softly at her confusion. "Yeah, you did."
She sat up, self-consciously running her hands through her hair and attempting to smooth the wrinkles from her blouse. It was painfully cute.
"I'm sorry I didn't wake you sooner. I fell asleep myself."
"Guy movies are boring," she replied, a hint of a smile pulling at her lips.
It surprised him a little that she didn't seem in a rush to leave given her imminent family obligations.
She slowly stood and blandly stated, "I should go."
After putting her blazer and shoes back on, she grabbed the umbrella off the floor. She regarded it wistfully for a moment with a subtle smile, and it filled his heart with joy to watch her remember it in real time. She wasn't humoring him last night, she really did like it.
She walked to the front door and he trailed behind her. He opened the door for her, but she lingered in the doorway as if expecting something. Or maybe she was building the courage to say something herself. He wasn't sure which.
"Thanks for spending Christmas Eve with me," he said.
"You're welcome." She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. "This was nice," she murmured.
He nodded. "As lame and sad as this sounds, this might be the best Christmas Eve I ever had."
Her expression told him that she did find this sad, but she was also touched. She swallowed. "Um, you know, you can just ask me to hang out with you next time."
For a split second, he felt embarrassed at how transparent he must have been at the haunted house. It must have been obvious how much he wanted her there. Scully could cut to his core, see completely through him. At the same time, the words next time delighted him.
"Yeah, uh, maybe we can play baseball instead of watching it sometime," he suggested.
"The only way that will ever happen is if you trick me again."
She beamed at him in a loving way that made his stomach drop. Deciding to take a chance, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.
"Merry Christmas," he whispered against her skin.
When he pulled away, her expression was slightly dazed. The kiss surprised her. Her fingers tightly clutched the umbrella in her hands.
"Merry Christmas," she replied with equal reverence.
As she walked to the elevator, he remained in the doorway. She pushed the call button and looked back at him over her shoulder. He gave her a silly little wave goodbye, once again feeling like his younger self on a first date. She smiled shyly back before stepping into the elevator.
For the first time in months, he felt hopeful.
