Chapter Text
Scully has spent longer than usual flat ironing her hair, determined to look her best for this meeting. It’s been a long, often boring two years at the Academy mortuary, a far cry from what she’d imagined when fighting her father over her choice to joing the FBI. But today it all pays off, she has a re-assignment meeting with Section Head Blevins and she can’t fight the smile off her face as she navigates her way through the Hoover Building to find out what it is.
Anything active would be an improvement but she’s hoping for something where she can really see the difference daily, something investigative and changeable, to challenge her mind and not just her skills and concentration. Part of her longs to be sent into one of the departments dominated by burly men, to test her wits against the preconceptions and forge a path as far from the lab as she can get.
Scully settles in the chair with an easy smile and an open mind, then freezes when they ask her if she’s familiar with an Agent named Fox Mulder. Missy is the only one in the world with any idea quite how familiar she is with him, and for a few seconds her confidence slips, uncertainty flickering behind her just-steady gaze. She has not heard Mulder's name spoken outside of hushed gossip, or seen him or allowed herself to dwell on him during waking hours in the two years since she left him at the Vineyard.
Her dreams were beyond her control, and for a few months she’d half expected their paths to cross by chance. She’d looked for him at mixers, but gradually grew used to the idea that their week together was an an exceptional anomaly in her otherwise quite average life, the same way she’s grown used to explaining, to visiting family and friends, the presence on her apartment bookcase of the Mulder's souvenir collection. Remembering herself, her location, Scully reigns in her thoughts enough to recite the bureau-approved version of Mulder, recounting his legend and his lapse into ridicule, gathering her composure enough to direct a hint of an sardonic smile to the lingering smoker in the corner, a signal of her apparent indifferent amusement to the man she actually fell more than a little in love with two years ago.
As Blevins begins to explain his scheme, her new assignment, and she starts to understand what they want from her, her breathing accelerates and her eyes flicker in an uneasy battle to hide her reaction under the sturdy plaid of her suit and a neutral expression. They want her to spy on Mulder, to have her debunk his work and when she presses for confirmation, their answer is intended to be a bureau-sanctioned kiss of death.
But it won’t be, because they have unwittingly chosen perhaps the only Agent at the Bureau who has promised Mulder to assist him if ever she can. They have missed a critical detail, one which will undermine their intended sabotage at every turn and the thought lends lightness to Scully’s stride even as heavy fear of this long imagined reunion gathers in her stomach. She reaches the basement door and knocks before she has time to overthink.
‘Sorry! Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted!’ and he sounds as if no time has passed. She feels as if no time has passed, walking once more into his world with a secret smile playing across her lips, his shoulders broad and bent over his slides the way the once bent over her.
When he finally turns to look at her, she knows he was expecting her. There’s a slyness to his smile, a sparkle in his eyes that warns her not to say anything and when he shakes her hand he holds on just a little too long. His hair is also just a little too long and two years contracts to a moment as she fights not to reach in and smooth it back.
She’s just smiling at him and his eyes twinkling but while talking loudly and deliberately, as if to warn her that someone may be listening Mulder's words may be making her sound unwelcome, his body language is telling her that this will be fun, that he’s pleased to see her, that this is the beginning of something exciting.
And she thinks he’s right,
Two years ago she could have loved him and maybe he could have loved her, but they both needed something more than the other had to spare. Now? She doesn’t know if it will be like it was, but they have something more to offer one another; she will be his safeguard and he will be her adventure and together…
Mulder flicks the lights off and boots up the projector, his energy infectious and his questions quick-fire, igniting her brain with the possibilities of his imagination. Scully can tell straight away that they will argue, that they will bicker and fight and disagree and discover but god, in the spaces between…what a life they will lead.