Chapter Text
Mulder's getting lab results from Agent Pendrell when he hears a whispered conversation.
“--- you hear? Agent Scully's back.”
“Really? Jesus, I gotta admit, she's dedicated.”
“I know. Wonder why they keep her shut up in the basement.”
“Come on, you know she could leave anytime. But Mrs. Spooky's —”
A pair of male agents turn away from the nearby microscope they'd been huddled around, and the sight of Mulder seems to stop them in their tracks. The first man is a sallow-looking blond that Mulder doesn't recognize, but the second one, the one that had called Scully Mrs. Spooky, seems vaguely familiar.
The blond one frantically gathers up whatever slides he'd been looking at, while the other exits with a bashful apology.
“Morning, Agent Mulder. Uh, sorry.”
He's VCU. Mulder realizes at the sound of the man's unexpectedly high-pitched voice. They’d worked together in different times. Agent Bryant, or Byron, maybe. It doesn't matter.
Mrs. Spooky echoes in his mind and his stomach turns. He glances over at Pendrell, who stares into the lab results like they'll tell him his future.
“I'll just get those and… be on my way,” Mulder says.
Pendrell silently hands them over.
Mulder turns to leave, but before he can second guess himself, he stops to ask: “Mrs. Spooky? How often do people call her that?”
“Uh, well, kind of a lot. But don't worry, I'm sure Agent Scully can handle it,” says Pendrell, whose face is somehow both pale and red.
That doesn't make Mulder feel any better.
“Right,” he says, taking the lab results and walking away.
As he makes his way to the basement, guilt gnaws at him so incessantly he swears he can feel it in his gut. Already, he'd been wondering why Scully doesn't just leave. In the year and change that they've worked together, it's become incredibly clear to him that if she'd just spied like they'd asked her to, she could leave and have her pick of the FBI departments. Or she could leave, work as a doctor. Any hospital would be grateful to have her. It doesn't matter though, because for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, she doesn't. She bears kidnappings and abductions like they're some sort of penitence. For what, Mulder isn't sure.
Scully had said something to him months ago that he'd thought about near constantly ever since:
“I wouldn't put myself on the line for anyone but you.”
And despite the late-night confession, Mulder finds himself unable to accept that she will so easily throw away her credibility to play Mr. and Mrs. Spooky in the microcosm that is the Hoover Building basement. As he stews, he comes to the conclusion that he's probably been ruining her dating life without even realizing it. As much as he hates the idea of losing Scully to some conventional life, with a conventional boyfriend and a conventional dog, that's what she deserves. No one's going to want to adopt a labrador retriever with her if they think she's shacking up with some alien-hunting madman. Except for maybe Mulder, the alien-hunting madman himself.
As he opens the door to their office, he mentally chides himself for letting his thoughts go down that route. Again.
Scully is sitting in her usual position by his desk, browsing through a case file that Mulder, to his utter horror, recognizes immediately. Her reading glasses are even on. He almost turns and walks right back out the door, but something, some horrible masochistic tendency, forces him to stay.
“Hey, Scully. Got the results back. Want to take a look?”
She doesn't answer, clearly too engrossed in the riveting tale she's got her hands on. The lab report he's brought back is conclusive— the “alien heart” he'd been asked to investigate while she was gone is just a camel's heart filled with dyed-green corn syrup. Not the greatest hoax, though Mulder wants to know where a man from Peoria, Illinois had found a camel heart. Still, more than anything, he wants Scully's eyes off of that case file.
“Scully, the test results.”
No response.
“They’re positive. We’re having a baby!” he exclaims.
She doesn't laugh at his dumb joke, though he hadn't really expected her to. Instead, she just looks up at him with her eyebrows furrowed, like he's a dead body and this is a particularly confusing autopsy.
“Mulder, I think there are some pertinent details missing from this report,” she says, tone even.
“Are there?” He shuts the door with his foot and attempts to casually sit down across from her.
“Why were you still in Kristen Kilar's house that morning?” She asks.
Mulder leans back in his chair and looks at a couple of pencils in the ceiling.
“It's not what you think,” he says, prepared to deliver her the same spiel he'd given Skinner. “It’s just that…”
Suddenly, he can't remember what he said to Skinner. Not even a little bit. And one cursory glance at Scully tells him that even if he remembered, she’s perfectly ready to call him out on his bullshit. As she always is.
“I slept with her,” he admits. He doesn't add “I wore your necklace the whole time,” though he wonders desperately what she'd think of that. Psychology degree be damned, he's still not quite sure what it says about him. He'd only even remembered the presence of the necklace afterward, while lying in the dark, damp and languorous. At that moment, its slight weight had almost burned. Mulder wasn’t religious, but it had to have been blasphemy. If not against the heavenly father, then against Dana Scully, M.D.
He shifts to sit in a less lackadaisical way. Scully stares.
“You had sex with someone with a…” she pauses, blushing, and for a second, Mulder is able to find some delight in remembering just how Catholic she is. “A blood fetish?” she finishes.
He nods. Scully purses her lips and doesn't respond. By the way she's avoiding eye contact, Mulder can tell there's something she's not saying.
“In case you're wondering, I did not partake in any of those particular… proclivities of hers,” Mulder says, and that seems to ease her slightly.
“That's good,” she responds. He wonders if she's speaking from the perspective of a doctor or from that of a colleague that has to look him in the eyes every day.
“And you… took the proper precautions?” Scully continues. She’s clearly doing her best to sound clinical and removed, but her red face betrays her.
“Yes. I used protection.”
Now Mulder can feel his face warm. For all of his innuendo, this frank conversation about sex is throwing him off his rhythm.
“Good. I still think you should get checked.”
She goes to put the file away.
“What for?” Mulder asks. “I told you, I was safe."
“You can never be too sure!” She exclaims. “Especially regarding HIV. I get tested regularly no matter how safe or unsafe I've been.”
“Yeah, yeah, you're right,” he agrees. She sits back down across from him, and he doesn't meet her eyes. The phrase “no matter how safe or unsafe I've been” does not do wonders for his sanity. He'd been perfectly content to pretend that Scully was smooth and sexless underneath her blazers and pencil skirts. Like a Barbie doll. It was certainly more polite than constantly picturing her like he'd seen her in Bellefleur, half-naked and vulnerable in front of him. A possessive, slightly chauvinistic part of him hopes that she's not been vulnerable, not unsafe, with just any man.
“Well,” he says, suddenly unwilling to let the tension permeate for a moment longer. “This has been great, Doctor Scully, but I was looking for my friend, Special Agent Dana Scully. Do you know where I can find her?”
She at least smiles at this dumb joke and takes off her glasses. “Sorry, Mulder. What was it you wanted to talk about?”
Bringing up the camel's heart thing seems embarrassing now. They've already discussed enough of his dumb decisions in the last few minutes. Without really knowing why, he (or rather, the masochistic devil on his shoulder) blurts it out.
“I overheard someone calling you Mrs. Spooky earlier?”
It comes out like a question, for some reason. He winces at his own indiscretion.
“Wouldn't be the first time,” she responds coolly, though she visibly stiffens.
“It doesn't bother you?”
Scully walks away and starts flipping through the first book she can find on his shelves. It's a hardcover copy of The Power of Myth.
“If someone calls me that, then they're clearly not someone whose approval I need anyway. Why would I let it upset me?”
Mulder scoffs at her. “It can't help your dating prospects if everyone thinks you're screwing Spooky Mulder.”
She snaps the book shut and glares at him. “Contrary to what you may think, Mulder, I have better things to worry about than my dating life.”
“I'm sorry. It's just… I don’t know. It bothers me.”
She appears to soften at this admittance.
“Truthfully, the implication that we're romantically involved, while unprofessional, is the least troubling aspect of that nickname,” she explains.
“Agent Scully! I'm blushing.”
Mulder isn't blushing, but he is grinning like a kid in a candy store. It feels a little rude, but if Scully thinks so, she doesn't point it out.
“The insulting part is that they're completely dismissing my role and qualifications in favor of treating me as an extension of you, which couldn't be further from the truth. We’re wonderfully different people, and if we both subscribed to your theories, we'd never get anywhere.”
Mulder wants to quip back at her, because frankly, it goes both ways, but she’s right, so he restrains himself. He can't even articulate how helpful it's been just to have someone that can do autopsies.
But beyond her medical expertise, he knows, for reasons he can't explain, that if he had to go back to working alone, he'd be lost. He'd felt lost when Diana had left him, had wallowed in misery and started sleeping on his couch. But work had remained work, and in many ways, life had remained unchanged. It spoke to Diana’s general temperament about their engagement, but it also spoke to Scully's rapidly expanding place in his life. If losing Diana was losing an arm, then losing Scully was losing his left ventricle. He'd always known he had arms, but he'd never given much thought to the innards of his heart. Not until he could feel the world trying to pry it apart.
Of course, this is a deeply troubling way to feel about his coworker and friend of just over a year, but that's certainly not stopping him.
“That makes sense,” is all he says.
He must sound sheepish though, because Scully comes closer and kindly pats him on the shoulder.
“I guess what I'm saying, Mulder, is that if people are going to ridicule me, I'd prefer to be ridiculed as ‘Doctor Spooky,” she jokes.
“I'll remember that for when we get married,” he responds in kind. “Doctor Dana Spooky.”
“I imagine you'll have an alien officiate?” Scully continues, and in that moment, Mulder thinks that maybe he does kind of want to marry her. Her joke isn't clever, it's not even really funny, and if anyone else had said it, he would have written them off as a judgmental asshole. But instead, he can only think about her teasing smile and the knowledge that she respects him, respects his passion and his search for the truth. He nearly pledges his eternal devotion on the spot. Of course, Mulder knows that a part of it is born out of the sheer relief that she's even alive, but what does it matter, when the feeling is there?
“Elvis. Elvis will officiate, Vegas-style.” Upon her raised eyebrows, he adds, “The real one.”
She smiles, this time a grin that brightens her whole face, then returns to searching the filing cabinet.
“Very funny, Mulder. I'm glad to be back.”
She doesn't say I missed you, but Mulder hears it anyway and lets the imagined words warm him from the inside out.