Visitor (10/13) by leiascully Email: leiascully@gmail.com Distribution: Ask, please Rating: T for non-explicit sexual situations and some swearing Categories: SRA Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance Spoilers: XF Revival speculation (spoilers through series and IWTB) Summary: Mulder tries to put his life back together after Scully leaves him. Disclaimer: The X-Files and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this and no infringement is intended. Author's Notes: Pinky promises are professional, right? Stories from all fandoms are archived at http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully. + + + + 10 - Update It is strange, to be back in the BAU. The only human whose head he's tried to get into in the last few years is Scully's. His thoughts have been full of mutants and exogenesis and conspiracies, no room for the rest of humanity in all its twisted majesty. What a piece of work is man, he thinks, and god too, if there is one, for creating such a species. He riddles his way through the profiles he's given, content with the work. He was never in it for the big office and the antique desk. He wonders if someone has taken over the basement office yet. He wonders if they ever got all the smudges of smoke out of the corners of the ceiling. He wonders what happened to all of their files, if they're blocked in by batiments of boxes of old documents, relics of the FBI's attempts to go paperless. But he misses it like he misses the house in Chilmark, or the summer place in Quonochontaug: his memories of those places are memories of the people with whom he shared them. The basement will be just another musty room without Scully, the way his ideas of home died when Samantha vanished. He sees her around now, striding through the hallways, her red hair glinting. It draws his eye, no matter what else he's engaged in. She ventures out into the shared spaces more often now, he thinks. She was hiding from him before. She knows he knows that, but he passed her test by not seeking her out. He thinks obliquely of the Jersey Devil, who hunted him down and slashed him open. Scully has a strain of that wildness in her too. But he knows how to track a wild thing, and how to sit and wait for her to figure out he's not a threat. Never again will he promise her a nice trip to the forest; they will hold to the sunlit paths and let the darkness keep its own company under the canopies of the trees, no matter what strange call comes from the shadows. When he thinks about it, it all sounds like a fairy tale, grim and grotesque, as fairy tales were intended to be. In high school French, the happy endings promised long lives and lots of children. At least he and Scully have still got the chance for one of those. He opens his desk drawer, pretending to rummage around for a pencil, and gazes at the picture of William. He has to ration out these moments to himself when the world gets too strange. He could stare for hours at the curve of William's head, the fall of Scully's hair, two sets of long drooping lashes. No, there won't be many children in their happy ending, if they manage to write it, but at least somewhere in the world is proof that they loved each other beyond what seemed achievable. At least there was William. At least, for a little while, there was Emily (and he has always suspected - it seems the perfect cruel irony the minds of old men could comprehend - and he will never ask). Someone wanders over with that purposeful shuffle, file in hand, and he shuts the drawer. The photograph of him and Scully hasn't provoked any questions. A photograph of Scully and a child, tucked away like a secret, would surely provide fuel for the efficient machine of office gossip. Agent Harrison seems to be the only person who knows anything about their history, and it's almost pleasant that way. He has a clean slate. There's a rhythm to his work and a rhythm to his days. He works. He runs. He unpacks boxes that haven't seen the light of day in years and discards the things he doesn't need. He smoothes the baby clothes under his hand and then puts them in a bag to donate. His son never wore them. That doesn't mean nobody's child ever should. He recycles most of his papers from college but keeps a journal full of odd lines of poetry. Scully would enjoy it, he thinks. He read her thesis and made notes in the margin, but she never had anything of his from that time in his life. Here is his younger self, preserved in the scrawl of ink on yellowing paper, melodramatic and tilting at windmills. She will either love it or burn it. On a Wednesday in August, she finds him in the hallway. "I was asked to give this to you," she says, holding out an envelope. "Autopsy results for the Nguyen case." "You don't have to make excuses if you want to talk to me, Scully," he teases, taking the file. "My number hasn't changed." "Neither have you." She blinks up at him, trying to look fierce, but he can tell she's amused by the way the corners of her lips compress. She has a few lines around her eyes these days. He is deep enough in love to find them charming. They soften the stark beauty of her face. And there he goes again, getting lost in her eyes, and no map could ever help him see his way clear. "I don't know," he says. "I feel like the new and improved model. Fox Mulder 2.0." "I'm surprised you had the memory left to upgrade," she teases. "Ha," he says. "That's good, Scully. Smartphone jokes. Very topical." They are standing the way they have always stood: their bodies canted to make a shelter for their conversation, him leaning gently down over her. Twenty years of habit will not be undone. "Do you want to get coffee?" he asks. "Just coffee, no expectations. I owe you for the other week." "Do you make that clarification every time you ask someone out for coffee?" Scully parries. "Only if I'm afraid they might be overcome by the urge to jump my bones," he says, testing the waters, and she glints at him. He's treading on dangerous ground, flirting with her in the office. They are - he doesn't know the word - estranged, or separated, or broken up, or seeing other people, and for any of those reasons and more he shouldn't talk to her like she's Scully, but he can't possibly treat her like other people. "What about the urge to step on your toes?" she asks, too sweetly. He glances down. "Less of a concern. I like the new shoes, though." "Thank you," she says, in that voice that says "I couldn't possibly care less that you noticed" and "I'm pleased that you cared" all at once. God, how many times has he heard that voice. They look at each other. He forgets what he wanted to say. For a wordless moment, they are synchronized, as if they had never fallen out of step. "I really just came over here to give you these results," she murmurs. "All we've established is that you didn't come over here to jump my bones," he says, pushing his limits. "Allegedly." "It is not my intention, at this moment, to jump your bones," she says, and the tilt of her head says he's gone far enough. "I will, however, accept your offer of coffee." "A bold move, Agent Scully," he says. "When and where?" "I'll text you," she says. "Your number hasn't changed. Allegedly." "My phone's on silent after ten," he tells her, and he's unabashedly playing for time, but it's such a relief just to stand here with her. Some tension he hadn't even been aware of before releases, his soul and his body unknotting, and he feels twenty years younger, though there are lines around his eyes too. "As if I'm not the world expert in leaving messages for you," she says wryly. "'This is Fox Mulder. I've run off to Puerto Rico or Russia or possibly the Arctic on the strength of a message I found in my breakfast cereal. Leave a message with your name and number and I'll get back to you if I haven't been taken prisoner by shadowy government forces.'" "That's not verbatim," he says in a lofty voice. "It might as well be," she tells him. "I'm a new man," he says. "I text back." "Promise?" she asks, and he hears the challenge in it. "Promise," he tells her. "Pinky promise." He reaches down with his free hand and hooks his pinky through hers, gently swinging her hand back and forth. Her finger is cool, locked in the crook of his. He remembers how it always took her hours to warm up after an autopsy. "That sounds serious, Agent Mulder," she says, and the backs of her fingers brush his as she disengages. "As the grave," he agrees, and it's all right. He doesn't flinch, or have to tap his fingers for solace. His voice doesn't quaver. His stomach doesn't drop. He's all right. He sees her appraising him with her doctor eyes. It seems like he passes muster, but she's back on track now, after their brief detour into the way things used to be. "Did we schedule your wellness visit?" she asks. "I don't remember," he says. "We can talk about it over coffee. Synchronize our calendars. Discuss getting a dog." "Why would we need to talk about getting a dog?" she asks. "It's still your house," he tells her. "It seemed polite." She nods. She doesn't seem as irritated as she has been before, when he's mentioned the house. Maybe she's done some healing of her own. Maybe she's so far gone she doesn't care anymore. Whatever tension that had eased creeps back and lays light fingers between his shoulders. "I wouldn't want it to be a place you wouldn't want to come back to," he adds. "Don't worry about that," she says. "Get a dog if you want one." "I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that," he tells her. Briefly her pinky curls through his. "Don't worry," she repeats. "I have to get back to work." "Text me," he says, and she nods, already gone. He goes back to his desk and opens the drawer, reaching all the way to the back for a rubber band he doesn't need, the envelope full of her notes on his desk and her blissful, weary expression and William's round head under his fingertips for just a moment as he draws his hand out again. + + + + Feedback is welcome at leiascully@gmail.com. Stories from all fandoms are archived at http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.