(loosely related to the Visitor-flavored S11 rewrite Iâll eventually get around to)
She blinked at the screen of Mulderâs phone and gently pushed his wrist until it was at a distance she could focus on. Technology changed but Mulder didnât. She couldnât count the near misses with magazines and file folders, the threat of papercuts across her cheeks. Â
âFord isnât going to make Tauruses anymore,â he told her before sheâd had a chance to actually read the headline. That was also standard procedure. Mulder was a scrolling marquee of odd headlines and interesting trivia. He was the original clickbait, drawing her in with his promises to change her world and alter her perception. Â
âNo more Ford Tauruses?â she murmured, astonished.  âWhat are they going to make instead?â
He shrugged.  âBig-ass trucks, probably. Gotta keep rolling coal.â Â
âIâm not even going to ask what that means,â she said, only half-listening. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was trying to tally up all the hours sheâd spent in Ford Tauruses, beige, white, or silver. Professionally bland. Sheâd slept in the front and back seats (once waking up most of the way through a truly spectacular sex dream about fucking Mulder in the back of a Taurus, maybe that one, it wasnât as if she could tell them apart). Sheâd had what felt like a thousand meals in them, mostly fast food salads. Sheâd driven them probably tens of thousands of miles. It felt like leaving her old apartment (and it felt like sheâd spent more time in a Ford Taurus than sheâd spent in her apartment). How strange. How the world moved on. Â
Sheâd understood her sentimental reaction to the basement office, to the view from their bench by the Potomac, even to the drive to work, despite the traffic around the Hoover Building. She hadnât expected to be sentimental about a car sheâd only ever rented, not even owned. Even then, there was the convertible in California. A rented Ford Taurus was the equivalent of a peanut butter sandwich without jelly. Still, sheâd driven them all over the country. Something she couldnât quantify was tucked into the glove compartments, crumpled in the cup holders. At least sheâd grown comfortable with things she couldnât quantify, after all those years with Mulder, bickering back and forth in another anonymous rented Ford Taurus, each one slotted away in the rental company parking lots like so many manila folders. Â
Theyâd left a part of themselves in a herd of Tauruses (though theyâd never acted out her sex dream there - it was too mundane to fuck in a Ford Taurus if you werenât a teenager with no other options). There would still be Tauruses for a decade or so, but the fleets would diminish as the cars stopped running one by one. Â
God. At least Proust had madeleines. Surely she could find some worthier trigger for her nostalgia than a mid-size American sedan with roughly the same design scheme as a dentistâs waiting room.
And yet. Mountains and deserts and endless plains framed by the windshield. Sunrises and sunsets glaring off the visors as she tried to stretch herself to block the brightest light. Files read. Classic songs sung along to. Sunflower seeds eaten (mostly Mulder) and bad coffee gingerly sipped. Easing up the passenger seat on its rails after Mulder had been lounging in it. Mulder lifting her bags out of the trunk though she was perfectly capable of doing it herself. Rain and sleet and snow pushed away by the wipers. The slow slow slide from fascination into love. Sheâd grieved in those cars, and once or twice wept in them. Sheâd wrestled with maps. Sheâd wrestled with ideas. Sheâd seen mysterious lights from the passenger seat and watched trains rattle their way past, the sound of their wheels the same as the ache of the road in her bones. Â
âI didnât think this would hit you that hard,â Mulder said. He was watching her shrewdly. He put his finger and thumb to his mouth, as if he were about to slip in a sunflower seed. Force of habit, she thought. Heâd mostly given them up (mostly). Â
âI didnât either,â she said.
âItâs all right, Scully,â he said.  âWe grew up together in Ford Tauruses.â
Yes, she thought, though that wasnât quite it. Â
âRememberâŚâ he began, and oh, yes, she remembered, and their stories unspooled the way the roads did, crisscrossing the map of their past.
ellievsbear
areudirty
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
