Gotta appreciate how tone deaf Bill is in his self righteousness when he tells Mulder to leave work outside Scully's hospital room and to let her die with dignity. For one, Mulder has never been so casual with Scully that he'd simply let her die. Not when she was in a coma and they'd known each other for around a year, definitely not now. And two, not one person in that hospital thought they were just coworkers
Going back to this post, you also gotta keep in mind that the Scully family is now estranged from Dana’s other brother Charlie. So poor Margaret is down to two out of her four children left to her and quite honestly, Bill Jr. has strong workaholic vibes just like his sister. Dana might check up on her regularly, but Bill? Bill the career military man who is stoic and a paragon of ‘traditional’ manhood almost to a fault? Bill is not calling his elderly mother regularly, and I’d bet he skips the occasional holiday for work reasons.
Margaret Scully is short on sons. Fox Mulder is short on mothers and practically every other family member short of his estranged biological father who periodically tries to kill him.
I’d bet that Fox, especially post main series Fox who is grieving the loss of his own son, his work, etc and has nothing else to do becomes The Best Son in Law. I’m sorry, Chris Carter. Your lack of understanding of your own character disturbs me. Sure, he would mope for a while after everything went to hell but Fox Mulder has a compulsive need to stay busy. You bet your sweet bippy that he’s over at Margaret’s house moving furniture for her or helping organize her basement. They’re going on coffee dates where she politely nods whenever the subject veers into strange phenomena territory. (Which is often.)
And on a related subject, Dana Scully would not abandon her mother to go live in the boonies because it’s ’safer’. When a gunman was out hunting her and killed her sister, she didn’t pack up and go into hiding, cutting off her family. She basically bullied Skinner into going to her mother to tell her that she was okay. You know, her boss?
Melissa always thought that Bill was an asshole for how little he regarded their sister Dana’s eccentric federal bureau partner, Fox Mulder. But, Melissa is no longer with us. And so, Bill thinks this: that Dana faces her job with the same constitution a man going to war would have. Comes home from work to holidays and birthdays with the same subtle, hollow ache that succeeded their father’s retirement from the service. And what? Bill’s just supposed to be okay with that? Ok that this Armani flash bastard with a badge and a gun is seemingly nothing but the greatest common denominator in a long list of ailments to Dana’s very well-being—audaciously ranting and raving about alien abductions and government chip implants at even her dying bedside? He’s supposed to be okay with that? Okay with the fact that this man will undoubtedly be the reason his mother loses another daughter?
Yeah, no.
Bill thinks that he should kick Fox Mulder’s fucking teeth in.
Mulder is in the big hammock out back, sprawled like a Roman Emperor. The chickens are out, pecking for bugs among the goat droppings. He has a lemon shandy in a frosty glass. He has a tomato sandwich with tomatoes from their garden and homemade bread. He has Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell next to him.
He has misgivings.
Scully enters his field of view, stage left, “Mulder, you’d better put those damn chickens away before he gets here, especially Francisco. That rooster is a complete menace.”
She glares at the enormous bird. They’ve had a few scuffles, she and Francisco. There have been Band-Aids and three stitches.
He slurps at his drink. “You don’t think your brother wants to see my big cock?”
She is silent for a long moment. Then, “I swear to God I will literally kill you, Mulder. I will shoot you and I will bury you out here and I will put a big gazebo over your grave and every time I sit in it I will think about how much you had it coming.”
She stalks back to the house.
“Jesus,” Mulder says to the chickens. “Someone is in a mood.”
***
It’s an awkward greeting, but not as awkward as he’d imagined. He and Bill have always hated each other, which makes it easy to pick up where they’d left off, like two enemy pirate captains running into one another at a bar in Tortuga.
Bill, per usual, looks like he was waiting for the Dulcolax to kick in. Douchebag plaid shorts that Rob Petrie wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot golf club.
He sweeps his sister up in a massive hug and she got rather teary and Bill, to his credit, looks a bit pink around the eyes and nose as well. He puts his sister down after a moment, smoothing her hair.
Bill and Mulder then acknowledge one another’s undeniable existence on the material plane. Shake hands like sulky but well-mannered children after a baseball game.
***
Now they’re on the deck while Mulder tends the grill, three gorgeous steaks from a neighbor’s cow before him.
“It’s beautiful out here, Dana,” Bill says.
“Mostly Mulder’s doing,” Scully replies, sipping at the wine her brother had brought. “He’s honestly a wizard with this property.” She glances at him when she says it and he smiles back.
“Really?” Bill says. “Well, color me impressed. Mulder, I had no idea you were such an adept little homemaker.”
Mulder moves the steaks to a serving platter. “Oh, sure. Dana just uses me for cooking, yardwork, and sex.”
Bill chokes on his beer and Scully closes her eyes for a beat the way Anne Boleyn must have when they led her from the Tower.
Mulder sets the platter on the table, uncovers the potato salad and the asparagus. Sourdough rolls and goat-milk butter.
“Now Bill,” he says, “you tell me if that steak is too rare and I’ll pop it right in the microwave for you. Let me know if you need anything else, some A-1 or ketchup or anything at all. I want you to feel at home.”
Absolute daggers in Scully’s eyes.
Bill coughs lightly. “Everything looks fantastic, thank you both.”
“It was good of you to make the drive, Bill,” Scully says, loading up plates with food. “I know it’s a bit of a haul.”
Bill smiles indulgently. “Couldn’t be this close to my kid sister after so long and not swing by!”
“Though we would have understood,” Mulder says, warmly. He butters a roll and passes it to his brother in law. “Never feel obligated.”
Bill narrows his eyes as he accepts the bread. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to need some new pictures of the kids,” Scully says brightly. “Matthew must have grown six inches since that school photo you sent, Bill! And Mom says Claire has lost two teeth.”
“I’ll tell Tara to send some,” Bill says, puffing up.
They eat in silence for a time. Knives cutting through the tender steaks and stabbing into waxy potatoes and young asparagus. Butter dripping down chins.
“It’s a shame William isn’t growing up here,” Bill says, wiping his plate with another roll. “Dana, how could-“
Her fork clatters to her plate and he shuts up.
A roaring silence like an event horizon.
“Bill,” Scully says, sweetly. “We have the most beautiful rooster to show you.”
When it’s obvious Bill is down for the count, Mulder follows Scully back out into her living room. She doesn’t pause to look or speak to him. She marches straight into the kitchen and begins to wordlessly fill up a glass of water at the sink.
“Scully,” he begins, unsure of what he’s about to say.
“Sounds like you’ve had an exciting evening,” she interjects crisply.
“Yeah. Exciting.” He steps sideways to attempt to gauge her expression, but she’s facing the sink.
“You gave Bill marital advice?”
“Yeah, I–” Mulder shrugs. “I did. He asked. I guess he and Tara had a fight. I, uh, wasn’t sure what to say, but he insisted. I did the best I could.”
She watches the water glass fill with laser focus. “Then I guess I’ll know how to explain it to Mom if they end up divorcing,” she replies without affect.
“Yeah,” Mulder says glumly.
“Thank you for driving him here tonight,” she says formally.
“Uh, of course.”
“Apparently it ruined some plans.”
“Scully,” he says plaintively. “It wasn’t … a date.”
She turns from the sink to regard him frostily, and he feels like he’s lying to her, although he isn’t. “It wasn’t,” he repeats.
She looks like she wants to say something, but thinks better, pinching her lips together. She sets the water glass on the counter.
“Bill thought I was on a date, but I wasn’t,” he adds.
She turns around, showing her back to him again, to close the cabinet. Then she rests her palms on the countertop, appearing to closely study the design of her own kitchen shelving.
Her small, silk-covered shoulders rise and then fall.
“You know, I bet I can guess this story,” she says in a strange, distant voice. “You met up with Diana Fowley after work because she had some important information about the X-files that she said she had to share right away. On a Friday night. Over drinks.”
He sighs. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Of course, you didn’t mention this work-related meeting to me this afternoon at work.”
“No, you’re right. I didn’t.”
She doesn’t move, her back still to him. He suspects she intended to place the glass of water on the bedside table next to Bill, but she doesn’t touch it again. She just leans against the countertop, as though collecting herself.
Mulder knows she’ll be angry at what he says next.
“Diana asked me to do some unofficial fieldwork for the X-files. She thinks if I do, if she can put it together into a convincing report—”
“She can request you back on the X-files,” Scully finishes, her head bobbing up and down in a knowing nod. “As her partner. Right?”
“Right,” Mulder says, a lump in his throat. “Exactly.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Scully turns around now, and with a jolt he sees there are tears streaming down her face, though her expression is neutral.
“We both know what’s going to happen,” she says flatly.
Mulder is dumbfounded. “Do we?”
“Of course,” she says sharply. “You’ll do it. You’ll be her partner. It’s what you want, isn’t it? You told me what your priorities were on our first case. The X-files come before anything and anyone else. I know perfectly well that includes me.”
Mulder is appalled to hear his own words cited back to him like that. It’s not an especially pretty picture she presents, of a man so single-minded, so disloyal that he would so predictably toss aside his partner of six years, his best friend.
“I’m sure she made all kinds of implicit promises to help assuage any discomfort you might have.” Scully’s words grow venomous, full of more overt anger than she normally reveals. “She offered to give you a little more than just the X-files, too, didn’t she? She made it very hard to refuse? Made you feel like you wouldn’t be lonely?” She places her hands over her face in apparent regret. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “That’s … unnecessarily petty of me. I’m not thinking straight.”
Mulder shifts weight from one foot to another, watching uncomfortably as she hides her face. He isn’t sure he should tell her that her guess about Diana was so on target.
“Scully, she expressed concern for your career,” he points out gently instead. “She argued that you would be able to get a better placement in the Bureau. Which is true, and something I wish you would think about.”
Scully lets her hands drop from her face and looks at him incredulously. “Is that what she said?”
“Yes,” Mulder says, “and while it’s true that—”
“Mulder,” she interrupts with a bitter laugh, “you’re fortunate that violent criminals are usually men, because you can be truly terrible at profiling women.”
He’s taken aback. “Am I terrible at profiling Diana? Or am I terrible at profiling you?”
She looks up at the ceiling, considering for a moment, then drops her gaze down to meet his eyes again defiantly. “Both.”
He feels something crucial is being lost in this conversation. He’s getting this wrong, for sure. “It’s not like I told Diana yes.”
She smiles humorlessly. “You didn’t tell her no either, did you?”
“Well … I didn’t say those words, no.”
“So, what, you did an interpretive dance?”
Brushing past him out of the kitchen, she speeds into the living room, Bill’s glass of water apparently forgotten. Mulder follows behind her.
“Listen,” she continues in a different, more placating tone, “I’m not angry. Not really. You’ve always been upfront about who you are.” She turns to look at him with a sad smile. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”
She means this to be conciliatory, but it’s like she spit in his face. That familiar feeling burns in his chest, his old friend from boyhood: shame.
“No,”’ he says urgently, “you should expect something else. You can’t just think that I— I’m not just…. you don’t get it at all.”
“What don’t I get?”
“Look,” he says earnestly, “back when we first started to work together, I didn’t understand that you and I were going to…”
Scully groans, collapsing into a chair in her living room, her head flopping into her hands. “Oh god, I really don’t want a speech like this.”
“What? I just want to explain.”
“I don’t see what there is to explain.” He watches her trembling fingers swiping a fresh round of tears away, and he scrambles to sit on the couch across from her.
“Scully—”
“Look,” she says, smoothing her hair back, visibly calming herself down. “It’ll be okay. Really. I don’t need a partner breakup talk.” Her voice wavers a little. “I’ll probably go back to Quantico. I’m sure after a while you could even consult with me on cases. I might need a little time to adjust first.”
“I haven’t—”
“And I don’t want to talk to her, Mulder. Only you,” adds Scully fiercely as an afterthought. “I don’t trust her. You shouldn’t either.”
“Jesus, I’m not going to do it, Scully,” he manages to get out. “I wouldn’t … I couldn’t do that.”
She looks uncertain for the first time in the conversation. “You’re … really not?” she says.
He shakes his head emphatically.
She regards him quizzically. “So you plan on turning her offer down entirely?”
“Of course.”
“Soon?”
“Yeah, soon,” he shrugs. “I mean, what can I say?” He attempts a charming smile. “I’m finding all those background checks more interesting than I thought.”
She doesn’t return the smile. She seems to find a little thread on the arm of the chair that she plucks at, her tongue darting out to swipe over her bottom lip.
“What?” he says, his stomach knotting. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she says, continuing to pinch the thread on the chair. “I … guess I just don't completely believe you.”
Again Mulder is stunned. “You don’t believe me?”
“No. Not entirely.” Her eyes won’t meet his, like she feels guilty for the sin of mistrust.
“Why… not?”
She swallows, then raises her eyes to his. “I suppose I worry … that you’re telling me what I want to hear. So you don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of me being upset.” She straightens her posture. “And if that’s the case, Mulder, I wish you would just show me the respect of telling me the truth. So I won’t be unpleasantly taken by surprise later.”
“The inconvenience of you…” He stops, holding back his anger. “Since when do we not believe each other, Scully?”
Her nostrils flare, but her tone is icy calm. “Since you started going on secret dates with ex-girlfriends trying to recruit you to be their new partner behind my back, I suppose.”
“It was not a date,” Mulder repeats in a hiss.
“What exactly do you think a date is, Mulder?”
He sucks his teeth in irritation, jerking his limbs around restlessly on the couch. “Well, for one, I think a date is primarily about someone trying to initiate a relationship, not about work.”
“And you’re saying this wasn’t about both?”
There’s a moment of silence.
Mulder feels the beginning of a headache throbbing in his temples, and his eyes flash longingly towards the door. Maybe he should just leave. Maybe that’s for the best. He could try explaining this all again in the daytime, when Bill isn’t here, when they’re both in better moods.
Then his eyes fall back on Scully.
She looks small and defeated in the chair, looking at the floor, tears still visible on her cheeks. He wonders if it’s possible she might cry more if he were to leave now. He thinks about her belief that he’d go back to the basement office without her. How sure she seems to be that he would do it.
Something deep inside him aches like an old, unhealed wound. He knows he won’t be leaving. He knows it in the same certain way he knew he was going to take Bill home from the bar tonight. It doesn’t even feel like a real choice.
He squirms around on the couch again, trying futilely to get comfortable, and it makes something in his pocket poke him in the thigh.
“Oh,” he says softly, remembering. He digs his hand into his pocket to fish out an object. “I, uh, brought you something, Scully.”
She looks up at him warily. “What? An autopsy report?”
“No, no,” Mulder says. He extricates it from his pocket. It’s slightly dented, but otherwise unblemished. He leans over to hand her the coaster he’d picked up from the table at the bar.
“What’s this?” She examines it with a frown.
“It’s just a coaster.”
“Did you steal this, Mulder?”
“Yeah,” he admits sheepishly. “I stole it from the Honest Man Pub.”
“That’s almost painfully ironic."
Mulder shrugs. “Yeah.”
“Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges,” Scully reads from the coaster. “Herman Melville.”
“It reminded me of you,” says Mulder, feeling a little self-conscious. “Melville. Truth. You know. All your favorites.”
“You stole this for me on your date?”
“Scully,” Mulder says, “it wasn’t a…” He stops himself, closing his eyes. “Yeah. I stole the coaster on my date.”
Scully is holding the coaster in her fingers, turning it over and over, and she looks up at him.
“So you and Bill were at the Honest Man Pub tonight,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says.
“I like that place,” she muses softly. “Good food. I like the chicken club sandwich.”
He nods. “I do, too. I didn’t eat tonight though.”
She stares in mystification at the coaster, her brow creasing. “What … what was Bill and Tara’s fight about?”
“Oh.” Mulder scratches the back of his neck. “Tara wants to go back to work, and I guess Bill doesn’t want her to.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Scully replies.
Mulder just nods numbly.
“What did you tell him?”
“Uhhh … nothing too remarkable. Be completely honest, admit when you were a dick, listen to her.”
“Did Bill listen?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mulder says. “I hope so.”
“Why do you hope so?” Scully asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Bill’s been nothing but awful to you,” Scully says, her eyes fixed on him. “It sounds like he’s been awful to Tara, too. Why would you try to help him at all?”
“I don’t know,” Mulder says truthfully. He considers. “He wanted to be better. And… it seems like despite how he acted, he actually does love her. I just hoped he could get it together.”
Really and truly, Mulder hadn’t intended for this statement to have any double meaning. But in the chair across from him, Scully goes unusually silent and still.
He has thirty seconds of horror replaying the words back, thinking about how she must have heard them. About the implications. About what he might have revealed inadvertently.
There is a short but unbearable stretch of silence.
“So why didn’t you eat?” she asks at last.
“What?” he says, swallowing.
“You said you didn’t eat at the pub,” she points out. “You didn’t eat dinner?”
“Oh,” he says. “No. Because the night ended early. The Bill thing. And Diana sort of decided she needed to, uh, raise the stakes.”
“Raise the stakes,” repeats Scully.
“Yeah …” He rubs his hands together in agitation. “I don’t think I was as enthusiastic about her offer to be partners again as she thought I’d be,” he says. “She tried to raise the stakes. Manipulate the situation. I wasn’t that wild about it.”
“How did she try to manipulate the situation?” Scully asks.
“It was like you said before,” he says reluctantly. “She made some offers. Like she thought she had to do more to … you know. To compete.”
“Compete.” Scully repeats. “Compete with what?”
Mulder doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I’ve known her a long time, and I think her heart is more or less in the right place,” he says. “But I think she felt like she needed to compete with … you know, Scully. The reason I wasn’t going to say yes.”
Scully’s face is blank, and Mulder realizes in shame that he is going to have to spell it out. “I have a partner. I don’t want a new partner. She tried to compete with that.”
Scully’s clutching the coaster tightly in one hand, wide-eyed.
“Anyway, I don’t like feeling manipulated like that,” Mulder says, shrugging self-consciously. The more he thinks about it, the more clearly he sees it. “Diana knows things about me from our past together, and she … tries to use those things as a lever with me. She knows that relationships are a big deal to me, that intimacy in a relationship is a big deal to me.”
“Is that true?”
“Yeah,” he says, feeling his face warm. “Does that surprise you?”
“No,” she says, almost a whisper.
“I mean, you’re right about what you said. In some ways.” He looks closely at his hands. “I went there with a goal, thinking she might give us some avenue to work on the X-files. But there’s no way I’d… there’s no way I would choose to go back to the X-files … like that. Without you, I mean.”
She is only continuing to stare, her face unchanging. He wonders what she is thinking.
“I guess I can’t prove to you that I’m telling you the truth,” he says, suddenly feeling deflated. “The only evidence I have is a lack of evidence. That Diana asked me to come home with her, and I … didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Mulder huffs in frustration. “That’s what I’m saying, Scully. What I’m trying to tell you. I don’t want that.”
Scully’s eyes fall again on the coaster, her brows knitting together. She examines it thoughtfully. “Instead you went home with Bill.”
“Right,” he says. He tries to smile. “Obviously I’d never miss a chance to go home with a Scully.”
To his great relief she offers a tiny, enigmatic smile in response. “You two did seem to hit it off surprisingly well tonight.”
Through her smile the beginnings of fresh tears begin to pool in the bottom of her eyes.
“Aw, I’m just kidding,” he pleads. “You’re still my favorite.”
“Really that is evidence you were telling the truth, isn’t it?” she reasons, wiping her eyes. “You brought Bill home safely, even though he’s been an asshole to you for years. You tried to help him.”
“He wasn’t so bad tonight.”
“I didn’t believe you,” she says. “I thought you’d do anything to get the X-files back.” Her voice lowers tremulously. “I’m sorry, Mulder.”
“No, come on,” he says, frowning. “I see why you came to that conclusion. It wasn’t unfounded. But I…” He scrunches closed his eyes, then opens them. “It actually isn’t … just the work for me any more. I have some other priorities.”
“Do you?” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
She’s staring hard at him now, her eyes darting back and forth across his face.
He stands from her couch, hoping he projects more confidence than he feels, and walks directly over to her in her chair. She tracks his movements warily.
He extends his hand. “C’mon, Scully,” he says roughly.
Her eyebrows lift higher, but she places her hand in his, and he lifts her to her feet, drawing her as close to him as he dares.
“Let me show you my priorities,” he says.
It would be much smoother if he just kissed her, but he doesn’t. He hesitates. It’s his habit to check in with her, after all. He always wants to know what she thinks, and that’s one reason he knows he loves her.
Her eyes are round. Her face has lost some color. But her body, her center of gravity, is tipping ever-so-slightly towards him.
Solemnly he nods, and his hands slide around her waist. Her body feels tiny, warm and fragile, slippery with silk.
He bends down to let his lips cover hers. One light kiss, slightly hesitant. Then another firmer, more hungry. He feels her shiver a little in his arms, and he wants to feel it again.
Tilting his head reverently, he begins to kiss her from every angle, his hands moving up and down, up and down her back. His palms graze the soft slope of her rear end once as he caresses her, and then stop to grasp her there intentionally. He's beginning to feel dizzy, lost in the barrage of sensory details. It’s the kind of kissing that hides nothing, he realizes dimly. Not his swift, overwhelming arousal. Not the fierce intensity of his emotions. That should probably worry him a little, but it doesn’t.
Her own arms have wound around his neck, and it almost feels like she’s trying to climb him, her own mouth pushing in farther towards him, her body meshing into his. He can hear the frantic, uneven quality of her breath. And it occurs to him: she’s not hiding very much, either.
“Bedroom,” she whispers into his ear.
“What about Bill?” Mulder whispers back urgently.
“He won’t know,” Scully says. She pulls back to look at him, her cheeks flushed deep pink. “Does it bother you?”
“Noooo,” Mulder says, shaking his head. “Not enough to stop, anyway.”
They start to move towards Scully’s bedroom, still entangled, Mulder walking forward and Scully taking backwards steps.
He’s distracted by kissing her again and again, and neither of them notice Bill’s shoes on the floor, still lying where they had remained after they both had worked so hard together to remove them.
Scully stumbles backwards first, which pulls Mulder off balance, too. They both crash loudly into an end table on their way down to the floor.
“Fuck,” Mulder exclaims as they land in a pile. He sits up, feeling a bruise rising on his knee already.
Scully pushes herself up and puts her hand over her mouth, laughing. “Are you all right, Mulder?”
“Yeah, you?”
She nods, still laughing, pushing an errant strand of hair from her face. “Wait. Shh.” She abruptly quiets and leans over, placing her finger over his lips, tilting her head to listen seriously for a beat. Then she relaxes and smiles again. “If that didn’t wake Bill up, he’s really out.”
Mulder doesn’t feel as amused. He’d wanted this to be more perfect. “Not an auspicious start,” he says, trying to sound light, but feeling some knots of anxiety.
Scully’s expression softens. She scoots towards him on the floor, taking a firm hold of his forearms.
“It’s okay,” she says soothingly, her forehead pressing to his. “Small hiccups.”
“I know,” he says, feeling silly. “But—”
“Truth, uncompromisingly told, will always have its ragged edges.”
She smiles playfully, her thumbs running back and forth lightly over his arms. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in her pajamas, saucily quoting bar coaster wisdom back to him, Scully is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. His hands find her face, cradling her cheeks.
“Right, Mulder?”
“That’s right,” he whispers back at her, barely vocalizing.
“And that’s what this is, right, Mulder?” she says, her voice cracking slightly on his name. “The truth?”
In response he leans in and kisses her in a way that he hopes tells her everything, that leaves no secret hidden.
Then he whispers softly in her ear. “That’s right.” Another kiss, this one infused with pure hope. “That’s absolutely right.”
They nailed the older brother tone for Bill Scully, because he might be kind of right but I still wanna hit him every time he talks to Scully and if that’s not the older brother experience I don’t know what is
