Visitor (11/13)
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: Stories from all fandoms are archived at 
http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.

+ + + + 

11 - Tea

His phone makes its cheerful little jingling sound as he's on his 
way to therapy. He doesn't go as often anymore, but it feels good 
to check in. His therapist always seems pleased and that's a sign 
to pay attention to. There are fewer resentful silences in their 
sessions, fewer open wounds.

He swipes his thumb across the screen as he walks into the waiting 
room.

"Sunday," says the text. "Teaism Dupont. Ten a.m."

He sends her back the little picture of the cup of coffee and 
imagines her face as she reads it.

"You seem like you're in a good mood today," his therapist says.

"Yeah," he says. "Things are good."

"I'm glad to hear it," she tells him. "How's work?"

He tells her about the boundaries he's put between himself and the 
cases, and about the routines he's put in his days. She nods 
approvingly. They talk around the details of the people he's 
riddling out and the ones he's unraveled. She doesn't press him; 
he is grateful for her familiarity with the particulars of his 
profession.

"How does it feel to be back at the Bureau but not investigating 
the X-Files?" she asks him.

"It's fine," he says, and he means it. "It's less complicated. It 
helps that we're at Quantico and not in the Hoover Building."

"We?" his therapist says gently.

"Dana's assigned there too," he says. It's easier to say her name 
than it used to be. It helps separate the Scully he talks about at 
therapy from the Scully he sees in the hallways. The one he loves 
without restraint or condition and the one he works with might 
look the same, but he treats them differently, at least in his 
process. He has never had a problem working with Scully. They're a 
perfect match as colleagues.

"Is that difficult?" his therapist asks.

"No," he says. "We're in different divisions. She does her thing, 
I do mine. We meet in the middle, if at all."

"It sounds like you're both handling your transition well," his 
therapist says.

He smiles and doesn't tell her about pinky promises in the 
hallways, the way they still wall themselves off from the rest of 
the world, the mix of hope and dread he felt when she told him not 
to worry. Some things about him were never broken.

Sunday morning, he wakes early and goes for a run. The air is 
swampy, but he needs to burn off the energy. He's drenched in 
sweat by the time he gets back to the house. He takes a cold 
shower and swigs from a glass of ice water as he dresses. His new 
jeans fit in a much more flattering way than the ones he donated. 
He leaves the top few buttons of his shirt undone - he's still too 
hot for an undershirt.

The tea place is busy, but he sees Scully right away. She looks 
relaxed in linen pants and a sleeveless blouse, big sunglasses 
pushed up into her hair. He's never seen either of those items of 
clothing before. She seems to go through stages in her wardrobe, 
some sort of punctuated equilibrium of fashion where she suddenly 
upgrades everything and catches up with the trends. He remembers 
it happening around the time they went to Antarctica - all at once 
she was all black suits with tight skirts and undone buttons on 
her white dress shirts instead of the colorful quirky pantsuits 
with the shoulder pads. It's happened again, and she looks more 
poised and polished than ever. She stands her ground in the crowd, 
even in flat sandals.

"Hey," he says, hanging his sunglasses from the vee of his shirt, 
because of course he picked the one without pockets.

"Hey," she says, and the way she tips her face up makes him lean 
down and kiss her cheek automatically. He pulls back and looks at 
her, gauging whether to apologize or not, but she smiles slightly 
and he relaxes.

"I thought we said coffee, Scully," he teases.

"Neither of us is young enough to be slamming back espresso," she 
tells him. "Are you all right, Mulder? You look a little flushed."

"I went running," he says.

She looks him up and down, her eyes lingering on his chest where 
his shirt is open. "Good. I'm glad you're getting your exercise 
in."

"As my doctor?" he asks. "Or just as an interested party?"

She rolls her eyes, but there's the hint of a smile in the corner 
of her mouth.

She orders mint tea, hot, even though it's already in the 
eighties, and he has an iced Earl Grey that tastes like studying 
too late at Oxford, his tea gone cold while he turned pages and 
scribbled notes. He picks up a bag of salted oatmeal cookies as 
she's ordering a double helping of some kind of sweet potatoes.

"Lunch," she explains.

"I wasn't judging, Scully," he says, and pays for all of it, 
despite the look she gives him. "I told you, I'm taking you out 
for coffee. Or tea and sweet potatoes. It's not like we've ever 
been traditional."

"No, we never have," she says. "Thank you."

"To my gainful employment," he says, clinking the lip of his glass 
against her cup. They both sip. He sighs with pleasure at the 
chill that runs down through his chest. Scully seems unaffected by 
the heat of her tea, though steam curls lazily up from the cup. 
The chatter and the clinking of cups and spoons wraps cozily 
around them, the words too muffled to comprehend. They can hear 
each other, but nobody else is listening to them.

"This is nice," she says. "I wish we'd done this more often."

"We drank a lot of coffee," he says. "Back in the day. If I had 
known you preferred tea...."

"You know what I mean," she tells him, but there's no exasperation 
in her voice.

"I do know what you mean," he says. "I didn't think you'd want to 
go out with me, especially after spending every working hour 
together."

"Mulder," she says, "for a profiler, you certainly do miss the 
signs sometimes."

"It was right under my nose," he jokes, gesturing at the height of 
her head when she's standing in front of him. She reaches across 
and breaks off part of his cookie.

"Hey!" he protests.

"You deserved it," she says, and he shrugs his assent. The only 
thing her height has ever stopped her from doing is getting things 
off the highest shelf in the kitchen.

"Thank you," he says.

"What for?" She sips at her tea.

"For coming here with me," he says.

"You thought I wouldn't come," she says.

He shrugs one shoulder. "I think there was a time you wouldn't 
have said yes. In fact, I think there was a time you didn't say 
yes."

"I didn't say no," she reminds him. "I said ask me again. And you 
did."

"The most terrifying moment of my life," he jokes. "Hey, next 
weekend, do you want to go to the junior prom?"

"Why do you think I moved out?" she asks suddenly.

He blows out a long breath. "Scully, that's a heavy question when 
it isn't even happy hour."

"I didn't leave because I didn't love you," she says. "I didn't 
leave because I didn't want to be your friend. You shut me out."

"I know," he says. "I'm sorry."

"It was too hard," she tells him.

"I know," he says. "Thank you."

"For leaving?" The skepticism in her voice sends a little frisson 
through him. He's missed that so much, that give and take between 
them.

"For telling me why you left," he says. "For not abandoning me 
entirely."

"I told you, Mulder, it would have taken too long to explain your 
health history to anyone else," she says, stirring her tea.

He reaches out and takes her hand. Her fingers clench and then 
relax in his. "Scully. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says quietly.

"I haven't been an easy person to live with," he says. "You didn't 
deserve that."

"Hmm," she says, a noncommittal sound.

They drink their tea for a moment. She gazes into her cup. He eats 
part of his cookie. It's the perfect texture, homey and sweet. It 
makes him think of holiday baking, curled up on the couch with 
Scully as they waited for the oven timer to ding, the whole house 
filled with the perfume of sugar and spices. When he looks up, 
she's watching him, her eyes still lingering on his exposed chest.

"You look good," she says.

"So do you," he tells her.

"Regular hours and a skin care routine," she says wryly. "Makes 
all the difference in the world."

"No madmen dragging you out of bed at all hours to hunt snipes," 
he suggests.

"No," she agrees. "No madmen in or out of bed."

"A woman like you?" he teases. "You should be beating them off 
with a stick."

"If a gun didn't work, I can't expect a stick would suffice," she 
says.

"Touché." He takes a swallow of tea. "I thought you were seeing 
someone."

She sighs. "I gave up," she says. "It was pointless."

"Why pointless?" he asks, his heart lifting.

"What can you talk about?" she says wryly. "'What do you do for a 
living?' 'Have you ever shot anyone?' 'Do you have any kids?'"

He winces. "Did you tell them you shot your partner?"

She rolls her eyes. "No. Should I have?"

"You would have weeded out some of them pretty quickly," he tells 
her.

"What would it have said about the ones who were left?" she asks.

"Good point," he says.

"I think I've met my quota of madmen," she says. "A lifetime's 
worth."

"I'm not as mad as I used to be," he offers.

"No," she says slowly. "I can almost believe in Mulder 2.0."

"Almost," he says.

"I just don't want to think that you're doing all of this just for 
me," she tells him.

"At first I was," he says. "But then I wasn't. If you told me you 
were never coming home, I wouldn't stop. I can't rely on you for 
my happiness."

"No," she says. "Sometimes there isn't enough to go around."

"I seem to remember telling you once that you made me a whole 
person," he says.

"I seem to remember that too," she says with a wry twist to her 
mouth. Subconsciously, she reaches up to touch her neck.

"That wasn't fair," he tells her. "I wanted to tell you how I felt 
about you, but that wasn't the right way to say it. I put a heavy 
burden on you."

She lifts her eyes to his. "Thank you," she says after a moment.

"I don't need you to complete me," he says. "You don't need to 
carry that weight. I can be responsible for my own well-being now. 
But that being said, Scully, I don't feel entirely myself unless 
you're around."

"I know what you mean," she says, and they gaze at each other. The 
silence heaps up between them like snow on Christmas Eve, soft and 
sweet.

He offers her a cookie and she takes it and breaks it into small 
pieces, eating them slowly.

"Can we start over?" she says.

"All over?" he asks. "Twenty-three years is a lot to rewind, 
Scully."

"I know that," she says. "I don't want to erase any of that. But 
we could do this. Coffee. Dinner. Drinks after work once in a 
while."

"What does your therapist say about that?" he asks.

Scully purses her lips. "She says that codependency is rarely 
positive. Yours?"

"The same thing. I think they have a script. Maybe we should have 
gone to marriage counseling instead," he teases. "At least they 
wouldn't be trying to keep us apart."

"She makes me call you Fox," Scully says, frowning.

"Mine too," he says. "Dana."

"It sounds so strange," she complains.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't mind it as much as I did."

"Fox," she says again, testing him. He shrugs.

"If that's what you need to make this feel new," he tells her.


She shakes her head. "Maybe on special occasions." She sighs and 
picks up her tea. "Nobody understands us but us, Mulder."

"It's lonely sometimes," he says. "But I'd rather be lonely with 
you than anybody else."

She looks up at him. "When I said you didn't need to worry about a 
dog, I didn't mean because I wasn't coming home."

"No?" he says.

"No," she says with a little smile. "I like dogs. I've wanted 
another dog for a while. It just never seemed like the right 
time."

"Oh," he says. "What kind of dog?"

"Doesn't matter," she says.

"Maybe not a Pomeranian," he tells her. "Too many natural 
predators."

"I don't chase swamp monsters anymore," she says. "I don't think 
it would be a concern."

"Things change," he says.

"Some things don't," she tells him, and drinks her tea.

She lets him kiss her cheek again when they leave, her carrying 
her takeaway box of sweet potatoes, him carrying a spark of hope 
in the hand cupped over his heart.

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Feedback is welcome at leiascully@gmail.com.  Stories from all 
fandoms are archived at 
http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.