Contact
by h0ldthiscat

Feedback: http://h0ldthiscat.tumblr.com/
Rating: PG-13
Category: XF Revival

Summary:  She can't be with him anymore, but being without
him seems even more impossible. They have fallen together
countless times since she moved out, and in that post-orgasmic
bubble of loveliness she always forgets why she did it.
     
Notes:  Written for a prompt/request on tumblr. Published there
as well.

I got to explore a headcanon I've had about revival Mulder, so
that was fun to play with:) Oh, revival speculation... *~*WhAt
DoEs It AlL mEaN?*~*

***

It hurts very much at first, then a little, then not at all. 

That's a lie, she tells herself one morning as she checks the OR
board and tries to ignore the throbbing in her lower back. She
could never not miss him. Her hands rub tiny circles above the
backs of her hipbones, push up the bottom of her scrub top to
press harder, to unconsciously trace the Ouroboros. She misses
him dully, achingly, in the way that she misses her bed after
back-to-back surgeries.

He and her bed are not synonymous anymore.

He is a sprawling sleeper anyway, she thinks, and throws her
styrofoam coffee cup in the trashcan as she heads back to her
office.

X

She is happy. She could have gone to Hopkins or Franklin
Square or even Mayo, they'd made an offer, but in the end
she'd decided to stay in DC. Mom's getting old, she'd told
herself as she signed her letter of resignation at Our Lady and
put her things in a box and started at GW the next day.

She is happy. She likes her staff, her patients. She likes her
office. They'd given her a large, brightly-lit corner office to call
her own. She hadn't wanted it, of course, but they'd insisted.
He'd come to visit several times, proving that there was no
place he didn't mark with the memory and the smell of him, as
equally inescapable and elusive as the truth he so desperately
sought.

Seeks, she corrects herself. He is still looking for something.
And she is done.

She is happy. Mostly.

X

She checks her email for at least half an hour before she finally
gets to it, the message sent either very late last night or very
early this morning. She is not the only recipient. The other
address looks like nonsense, would to the untrained eye, would
to anyone who hadn't had to memorize it years ago.

She reaches for her phone before she even tries to scan the
undecipherable body of the message. It is all encoded, with
characters that look meaningless, scrambled.

He picks up after a few rings. "Mulder."

"Who else has your encrypted email address?"

"What?"

"Besides me, who has that email address?"

"No one."

"Are you sure?"

"I haven't been posting it on Twitter if that's what you mean."

"That's not what I mean." She pauses, takes a deep breath.
"Have you checked it today?"

"Yeah, and I've already got somebody working on decoding
it."

She glances down at her watch, says a silent prayer for the
associates he's got on hand at this hour. "It's seven o'clock in
the morning."

"Ain't no rest for the wicked, Scully."

She smiles at that. Almost.

"How are you?" he asks, his voice pitching low.

"Hungry. Tired." She picks at a granola bar she finds in the top
drawer of her desk. "I just did an emergency valve replacement
on a ten year old who might not live to see her eleventh
birthday."

"I'm sorry." She hears him shift his phone to his other ear,
maybe step into the other room. "I know how powerless that
makes you feel."

"It's not the power I'm--"

"Hold on a sec, Scully." There is rustling, muffled voices, the
sound of something else she can't quite make out. Then he's
back. "Um. It's been decoded."

"And?"

"You're gonna want to come take a look."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think this is something you should hear over
the phone."

X

"Is it real?" She tries to steady her hand but the printout of the
email flaps querulously.

She watches him reach to take her hand in his and then stop
himself. She's glad he does. She wishes he wouldn't.

"It appears to be," he answers.

"What do you mean appears? Is this sort of thing easy to fake?"

"Not from what the staff told me."

She smirks, thinking not quite pitifully of the four twenty-
somethings who work on Mulder's blog with him, updating
their hundreds of thousands of readers on UFO sightings,
government mistrust, and general paranormal activity daily.

"The staff? Can't you call them something different?"

"Interns is too degrading. Plus, I pay them."

She looks back at the email, worries her thumb along her
bottom lip. "Mulder, this is..."

"I know."

"How did he find us?"

"I think the more important question is how did he know where
to look?"

"Well you don't exactly keep a low profile these days," she
sighs.

"There's no paper trail. No record to connect me to him in any
way."

She hears the note of sadness in his voice, and has to
remember, like always, that he lost a child too.

"Mulder..." She says it slowly, wetting her lips to buy time. "If
this is really him... is this even legal? When I gave... I told the
adoption service that he wasn't to have any contact. That I
didn't want that for him."

"I don't think he knows he's making contact. He has no idea.
He's just a kid from Wyoming seeking our advice as experts on
unexplainable phenomena."

She feels tears prick the back of her eyes. "Fuck."

He brings her into him for a hug. She doesn't pull away after a
few seconds, even though she knows she should.

"What do we do now?" She asks it against his chest,
absentmindedly fingering the soft material of his gray t-shirt.

"I sent the staff home."

She looks up to make sure she hasn't misunderstood. "I should
go, though."

She doesn't.

X

She can't be with him anymore, but being without him seems
even more impossible. They have fallen together countless
times since she moved out, and in that post-orgasmic bubble of
loveliness she always forgets why she did it.

"You've got..." He reaches toward her throat, licks his thumb,
and rubs at the top of her sternum.

"Blood?" She makes a face. "Must've missed it scrubbing out."

He rests his hand across her clavicle, worries her Adam's apple
with his thumb. "When you think about him, what does he look
like?"

She almost laughs at the cruelty of his question. "Tall. Taller
than me already."

"That's not too hard."

She shoves him. "He does something active. Soccer, maybe.
Something that involves a lot of running. His legs are long."

"That he got from you." He slides a hand down the front of her
thigh and she can't contain a shiver. "They just let you leave
the hospital?"

"No, I pushed my surgery back to this afternoon." She twists
her torso to look over her shoulder at the clock. "I should get
back."

He rolls away, lets her sit up and find her blouse. "You know
what they say. TIme and tide wait for no head of pediatric
surgery."

"I'm not familiar with that one."

He smirks and she kisses him, leans over him with her blouse
half-on and he pulls her down on top of him. When her phone
buzzes loudly and skitters across the bedside table she lets out a
frustrated groan.

"Leave it."

"I can't." She gasps as his hand roughly palms her breast and
he places a playful bite at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
"It's work. It's--"

Her brow furrows when she sees the familiar but unexpected
name on the screen. "I'm sorry, I have to--" She dismounts him
and accepts the call. "Dana Scully."

"Dana, it's Tad O'Malley."

"I know."

"So you didn't delete my number?"

She scoffs but can't help a smile from quirking up her lip. He'd
always been optimistically and presumptuously self-assured,
not unlike someone else she knew. Knows. What is happening?

"What do you want, Tad?"

Tad?, Mulder mouths, and she swats him away.

"Got a tip this morning, sounds like something that used to be
up your alley."

"I don't like the way he's talking about your alley," Mulder
grumbles.

Scully smacks his arm. "Jesus Christ."

"What?" O'Malley's voice says on the other end of the phone.

"Nothing. Used to be..." She pushes her hair out of her face,
behind her ear. She feels a headache forming right behind her
eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Some kid out west. Claims his friend's had contact with an
alien race and thinks it'd make an interesting story."

She bites her tongue to keep from screaming, counts to three.
"It would, Tad. It would make a very interesting story, but
that's all it is. A story." She throws Mulder a playful glance as
she expounds. "Science fiction."

"I don't know, this one's got a ring of truth to it."

Scully lets out a frustrated puff of air, cradles the phone
between her shoulder and ear as she buttons up her blouse. "I
have to go."

"Will you just look at the stuff this kid sent?"

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Please."

She turns to look over her shoulder at Mulder, who's feigning
disinterest and has suddenly become fascinated by his bedroom
ceiling. "Who else have you told?"

"No one, but we have to move fast. If NBC--."

She sighs. "Okay, I get it. Outside your office. Half an hour.
Don't be late, I have a surgery this afternoon."

"Thanks. Oh, and Dana?"

"What?" she snaps.

"Roll Mulder over and tell him to come along too." The line
goes dead.

She clicks her tongue in disgust. "Bastard."

"I didn't know you and Tad were still talking," Mulder says
casually. He's picked up his own phone and is scrolling
mindlessly through his Twitter feed.

"We're not," she says adamantly, pulling on her underwear and
then her skirt. "Come on."

"The illustrious Tad O'Malley wants little old me to come
along?" He scoops his t-shirt from the floor and pulls it over
his head.

"You are neither little nor old and you know it. Apparently
William's--" She stops herself. It's the first time she's said his
name in she doesn't know how long. She's never felt anything
quite like it before. "One of his so-called friends called the
goddamn media."

"Well he's clearly an excellent judge of character," Mulder
grumbles as he pulls his jeans back on and shuffles to the closet
to look for a jacket. "He gets that from you, you know."

Suddenly nothing is funny anymore. She is ready to go. She is
ready to be done. She is ready to be in her bath with a glass of
wine. She must be showing it on her face because he takes her
hand and says quietly, "Sorry. That was uncalled for."

She clears her throat and pulls on her suit jacket. "Let's just get
this over with, okay?"

In this moment, she is mostly unhappy.