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“Salt Lake City, transfer effective immediately.” She hesitates in his doorway for only a moment, and then she turns to leave. “I have to go.”
His head is spinning and his heart is racing. He springs up from his desk to chase her down, to stop her from leaving. He makes it to the hall, but all he can manage is her name. She stops at the elevator, her back to him. He sees her ball her hands into determined little fists and the way she takes a deep breath and straightens her spine. When she turns, the wobble of her chin and the tears in her eyes threaten to break the composure she’s just worked so hard to muster.
There’s an ache in his chest. He wants to tell her everything in that moment; how much she means to him and how much he needs her. He’s as afraid that she’ll think he’s only talking about their work as much as he’s afraid she’ll know he isn’t talking about work at all.
“Is this...is this what you want?” he asks.
The elevator doors open up behind her and she turns away from him to step inside. He moves a few steps closer and then she turns around again and he stops. She only gives him a glance before bowing her head. The doors close and he’s alone in his hallway. He doubles over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. It feels like he’s been kicked in the gut.
With Scully sent to Utah, Mulder is reassigned to counter-terrorism. He hates it. Hates the work, hates the other agents in the unit, and hates his new superior. They’ve got him chasing down suspicious purchases of fertilizer and harassing confused farmers day in and day out. Shit detail. He’d quit, but he doesn’t like the thought of how smugly satisfied They’ll be knowing he had given up. Easy as it would be to search the directory for her new information, he doesn’t even contact Scully. Nor does she contact him. He doesn’t drive by her old apartment and he takes her number out of his speed dial. He refuses to be broken.
He lasts six weeks.
Six long, torturous, miserable, and painful weeks and then he’s at the airport one Friday afternoon, booking the next flight out to Salt Lake City. For four and a half hours he gorges himself on tiny bags of peanuts and shreds his cocktail napkins into tiny pieces on the tray table in front of him. He rents a car and drives the few miles to the field office in the area, solely relying on hope and a hunch that she’ll be there.
His badge gets him in the door without issue, but he can’t go aimlessly wandering the halls. He stops a woman pushing a cart, assuming she’s a mail clerk that will know every office blindfolded. Luck is on his side. When he asks where he can find Agent Scully, she tells him to take the stairs down one flight, third door on the right. He takes a few deep breaths in the stairwell and wipes his sweaty palms on the front of his pants before he heads down the hall.
He passes a janitor’s closet and a storage room. The third door is missing a real nameplate. Someone has scribbled SCULLY onto a piece of lined paper, ripped that in half, and taped it to the empty slot where a nameplate should be. The door is open, but he knocks anyway, just a few light taps with his knuckle as he enters.
Scully is hunched over a small table in the corner, squished between a bookcase and filing cabinet. The room is cold, dimly lit, and not a window in sight. It’s barely bigger than a broom closet.
“You can take the girl out of the basement,” he says. “But, I guess you can’t really take the basement out of the girl.”
Scully blinks as she looks up and drops her pen on the table. She looks the same to him, but changed somehow. Her eyes, he realizes, look grey.
“Mulder,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d check out the new digs.” He looks around. He bets if he stretches his arms out, he’d be able to touch both sides of the walls. “Please tell me this is just temporary while they renovate the corner office for you.”
She doesn’t answer, just looks down at the papers on the table and begins collecting them into a neat pile. Watching her gather her things in this pathetic excuse for an office, he feels like his heart is being squeezed in a vice. She doesn’t deserve this.
“What’re you working on?” he asks.
“Nothing,” she answers. “Reviewing autopsy reports.”
“Can I take you to dinner?”
She checks her watch and glances past Mulder to the door. He turns to see what she’s looking for, but there isn’t anything there. She’s nervous, he realizes, but he doesn’t know what for.
“Or maybe I should go,” he says. “I didn’t mean to...catch you off guard.”
“No, it’s okay,” she says, softly. “It’s been a long week. Do you mind if...we could order in.”
“Sure.”
He scans her bookshelves as he waits for her to pack up her satchel. Nothing but textbooks on forensics and pathology, some of them with cracked, ancient binding. She turns the light off and he follows her down the hall and up the stairs. She pauses for a moment and waves a file folder in her hand.
“I just have to…” she says.
“Take your time.”
She nods and knocks on the first door to the left. He hears a mumbled conversation and nonchalantly steps into the view of the open office. Scully is in the antechamber of another office, passing the file folder to a woman who looks like she just sucked on a lemon. Her disdain is more than obvious and Mulder wonders what it’s about. For a fleeting second, the woman’s eyes meet Mulder’s and her expression turns from sour to suspicious. He turns his head and keeps moving past the door to wait for Scully. She comes out a few moments later with her eyes forward and doesn’t look at him, doesn’t wait for him as she heads to the exit. He follows a few paces behind.
“You drove?” she asks.
“Got a free upgrade to a Toyota Corolla,” he answers, waggling his brows at her. “Riding in style around the Beehive State. What was the deal with the wicked witch of the west back there?”
“Things are different here. People are...different.” She turns her head and a slight breeze ruffles her hair. He almost lifts his hand to brush it out of her eyes. “I’m over there.” She points to the left of the parking lot. “You can follow me out. It’s not far.”
“After you.”
He watches her walk away. The tired slump of her shoulders and bowed head is depressing. He doesn’t even have to see her face to see how sad and defeated she is. He’s angry with himself for waiting so long to come to her. He should’ve been on a plane immediately. He should have never let her go.
The drive to her apartment is only about ten minutes. The building is compact and lacks character, bland and beige and ugly. Next door is an empty lot of dirt and shrubs and a clear view of the highway. He hopes the interior makes up for the exterior. His hopes are dashed as soon as he steps foot inside. It’s even worse.
Her apartment is a studio with ancient appliances and worn carpet. Clearly, it came furnished with pea-green, threadbare chairs and a pull-out couch. He doesn’t recognize a thing. What little she does have is still in boxes, pushed up against the walls and stacked to make as much room as possible. They’ve stayed in nicer motels throughout the years. He hates everything about it, but especially that this is what she’s been calling home for the last six weeks.
“It’s temporary,” she says, watching him look around.
“You don’t deserve this,” he replies.
“I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“It’s over, Mulder. You need to accept that and move on.”
“Move on? Are you serious?”
“What do you want from me, Mulder? The files are destroyed. The OPR was quite clear that there’s no hope of ever reinstating the department. I’ve been exiled to what’s arguably the least friendly, most backwards and misogynistic field office in the country, which I’m sure was intended to break my resolve somehow.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“If I quit now, they win. I don’t see you walking away.”
The defiant tilt of her chin ends the debate. He nods in agreement and shoves his hands into his pockets in frustration. She’s right, as usual, and he hates that she’s right about this. But, he didn’t come here to argue. He takes his hands out of his pockets and swings them awkwardly for a moment. He wants to touch her, but he doesn’t.
“I need you,” he says.
“You don’t need me,” she whispers as she sinks down and perches on the edge of one of the chairs. “You never have. I just held you back.” For a few moments, she holds her face in one hand and rubs her temples. When she looks up, her eyes are heavy and tired. She blinks and then her eyes well up and she looks down at her lap, picking at the skin along her thumbnail.
“You’re wrong, Scully. You are so wrong.”
“Why did they assign me to you, Mulder? To rein you in. To shut you down.”
“And you saved me. Your goddamn strict science and rationalism have saved me a thousand times over. You kept me honest. You made me a whole person. And I’m not...” He pauses and swallows hard against the tightening in his throat. He’d built up his courage and come out here to tell her all the things he’d held back, but fear has a merciless stranglehold on him and steals his voice.
She looks up at him with her brows furrowed and he kneels down in front of her. He puts his hands on her knees, palms up, and she automatically slips her hands into his as if they’ve done this a thousand times. He bows his head over their hands for a few moments and then looks up and gazes openly into her eyes.
“I’m not just talking about the work,” he says. “When I say I need you, I mean you are the other half of me. You’re right, they’ve taken everything from us and I’ve spent these last weeks being furious and disgruntled and railing at the injustice of...we were so close, Scully. We were on the verge. But...but…”
She squeezes his hands and he bows his head again.
“It’s not the work I want back,” he says. “It’s you.”
She chokes on whatever reply she’s about to give and then lowers her head so her forehead rests against his. He pulls his hands free of hers and wraps his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair and into him. She hides her face against his shoulder and both hands slide over the back of his head and through his hair.
“What do we do?” she asks. “I know you, Mulder, you’ll never give up.”
“I’m not giving up. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m not leaving here without you. Everything else...I don’t know.”
Her fingers tighten, pulling gently at his hair. He leans his head against hers and they stay that way until finally she picks her head up and stares at him. He brushes his thumbs along the crescents beneath her eyes, damp with tears. Her lips part even before he leans in as though she anticipates his kiss. He whispers her name as their mouths meet and her whimpered reply makes the six weeks away from her worth the lost time.
When they pull back, maybe minutes or hours later, there’s a mixture of shock and awe in Scully’s expression and Mulder can’t help the lopsided and goofy grin that pulls at his cheeks. He can feel every muscle in his face lift in happiness and then Scully smiles as well. She’s the first to look away, glancing to the side at the pull-out couch and then biting her lip when she returns to his gaze.
Like most things, they don’t discuss the next step. Mulder gets up and takes Scully’s hands to help her from the chair. They empty the couch of cushions, stacking them in a little space next to the arm that she’s designated as the holding area, and then they unfold the bed together. They remove blazers and shoes and belts, but come to an unspoken agreement that that’s enough for now. Cuffs and collars are loosened for comfort and then they lay down facing each other, nose to nose, Mulder’s arms around her and Scully’s arms folded between them with her hands on his chest.
They take turns pressing soft kisses to one another’s face; her cheek, his brow, the side of her nose, his chin, the back of her jaw, the corner of his mouth. Things escalate slowly and gradually. The lazy circles Mulder makes against Scully’s upper back move lower until his hand rests lightly at the hint of a curve below her hip. Their legs shift and twine. Scully moves one hand to Mulder’s side, fingers tugging unconsciously at his shirt.
The bed is surprisingly comfortable, not that Mulder would notice if it wasn’t. It does squeak though with nearly every move they make and they can’t help laughing at the absurdity every so often. He can’t believe the anger and heartache he’s been holding for the last six weeks has evaporated so quickly into joy. He can’t believe he’s here and that they’re doing this.
And then things simmer and slow and then they’re back to where they started, nose to nose, albeit a little more entwined. He could be afraid she’s changed her mind or that this isn’t what she wants, but he isn’t, not with the way her fingers play at his nape or the way she moves to trace his lips every so often with the pad of her thumb. No skin has even been uncovered and yet he feels more exposed and naked than he ever has been, and he’s not afraid of that either.
“What do we do now?” she whispers.
“Got any good Chinese takeout around these parts?”
She smiles and brushes his nose with his. He shifts and sighs and they both tighten their hold on each other, just a little.
“I don’t know,” he says. “You should...be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can.”
“Maybe one day I will be. But, you haven’t found the truth yet and I have my own questions that need answers. I have...my own injustices that need to be resolved.”
“You wanna go rogue?”
“I’ve been out here for the past six weeks thinking that I didn’t want to burn bridges. I thought maybe if I kept my head down, stayed below radar, I’d earn the chance to come back.”
He nods. “How’s that been working out?”
“Not very well.”
“I’m at the end of my rope, Scully. Tell me you feel the same.”
She slides down and curls herself up against his chest. He makes a shelter out of his arms and curves himself around her in return.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Just maybe not right now.”
“Thank you for coming after me.”
“I’ll always come after you.”
“I know.”
They fall asleep twined like a yin and yang; two halves, one whole. He’s needed respite from his crusade for so long and tonight he has it. Tomorrow, they’ll form a plan, but for now, they’ll lie together and just forget the world.
The End