Well-Suited by Amal Nahurriyeh Email: amalnahurriyeh@gmail.com Summary: She's lost him somewhere Pairing: MSR Rating: R+ (sex described enough to get the idea, not in any graphic detail) Warnings: None. Timeline/Spoilers: Between The Truth and IWTB. Compliant with the universe of White Board, not necessarily in the same universe. Disclaimer: Intellectual property is a capitalist fiction designed to oppress the working fic-writer. That said, I don't own them either. Author's Note: Written for wendelah1, for her donation to famine relief in the Horn of Africa. For this prompt at the Uniform/Suit Kinkmeme. This may possibly become just as much a fic about my kink for Scully in suits, but, well. I think I'll be forgiven. Want to get me to write a ficlet for you? Go here and let me know; I'm still taking prompts. She dresses for work on a cool Monday morning in March. God, it's good to be an attending, to be allowed to wear something other than scrubs at least occasionally. She straightens her pantyhose, slides on her shoes, checks in the mirror to make sure the seams on her skirt lay flat, and walks down the wooden steps, the clomp of her heels echoing. He is sitting at the kitchen table, Washington Post spread out around him like he's reading tarot. He whistles appreciatively. "Nice, Dr. Scully." She smiles slightly and pours coffee into her travel mug. "I should be off at six. Hopefully the traffic won't be too awful." "You've been working there for a year, and yet you still make the claim that Richmond rush hour might be nonexistent today. This is a pretty persistent delusion, Scully. You might want to consider treatment for that." He turns the page. "I'll consider that," she says, screwing the lid on. "Text me if you want me to pick something up on the way home." "I'll be fine," he says, and doesn't look up when she leaves. When she gets home, he's wearing the same pajamas as at breakfast, and his hands are stained with newsprint. She hauls him into the shower with her, because it's the only way she can think of to make sure he changes his clothes. *** She doesn't lock herself in her office and cry, though she damn near considers it. It's not Jacob's fault, really; she's a reasonably attractive woman, or so she's been assured by relevant parties, and it's not like she's wearing a wedding ring. In fact, nobody at the hospital even knows she lives with someone, because she can't tell anyone, because even discounting the fact that it would probably be bad for her medical license if she were known to be harboring a felon, she can't let them find him, can't let them take him away again. So, a pretty, apparently single woman on the receiving end of a perfectly pleasant, non-lecherous pass from an attractive professional in a public setting should not be on the verge of hysterics. It's just. It's just. It's just that she's lost him, somehow, in the shambles of their little home and the lives they made. She sees the other doctors in their suits, their ties knotted with excessive precision, and all she can see is how he used to fill out a suit, the way his neck looked emerging from a white starched collar, the way she used to fantasize about sliding her hands between his shirt buttons to find the heat of his skin. She'll flash back, at terribly boring meetings sometimes, to the one time they broke their absolutely-not-in-the-office rule, and he put duct tape over the camera in the smoke detector and pinned her against the door, her fingers gripping desperately at the lapels of his jacket and her inner thighs rug-burned from the wool of his pants, bursting out laughing and coming in the same moment when he whispered in her ear *should we try to talk about paperwork in case there's audio?* Now, she cuts his hair so that he doesn't have to chance getting recognized by a barber, and sometimes he doesn't shave for a week. He doesn't even own a shirt with buttons, she's fairly sure, let alone a suit. And she misses it, desperately. Misses him, her partner, the one she used to be so sure she'd follow until the end of her days. Only she did, she followed him, and look where she ended up. *** Her Blackberry chirps as she's climbing into bed after brushing her teeth. She mutters and picks it up. "God, it's my mother again." "Why did you ever teach her to use e-mail?" Mulder says, pulling half the sheets of her as he settles in. She did it to send baby pictures, she thinks, but doesn't say. She yanks her half of the sheets back. "She wants to know what I want to do for my birthday." "I knew there was something entirely crucial and not at all arbitrary I was forgetting," he mumbled into his pillow. She pulls the covers up, and he wraps his arm around her, warm and solid. "So, Scully. What do you want to do for your birthday?" She strokes his arm and closes her eyes. "I want to take you somewhere." "Anywhere in particular?" He nuzzles her ear. "Somewhere nice," she says, starting to drift. "Somewhere you have to wear a suit." "I think we could manage that," he says. She smiles and lets consciousness fade. She doesn't believe him, but it's a nice fantasy, at any rate.