Thank you for your patience on this chapter! Find it here on AO3. Tagging @today-in-fic
She’s awake at first light, and despite the early hour, her brain needs something concrete to do. After firing up the coffee pot and finding the only item in Mulder’s pantry that isn’t expired—bagels—she jumps in the shower and scrubs away her remaining exhaustion. After, she changes back into her dress pants and blouse, then stations herself at Mulder’s desk with a pen and notepad. She begins by making a list:
F.M. lab draw & tox screen
Batch number to Gunmen
Antidote efficacy/mechanism?
Drug half-life
Parsons?
Other victims? Autopsies?
She studies her list for another moment, then hesitates before adding, sever emotional connection, underlining it twice.
A noise at her back alerts her that Mulder is awake, and she waves a distracted hand in the air.
“I made coffee,” she says, her eyes on her notes. “And eat a bagel if you can stomach it.”
She hears him moving around the kitchen, clinking around looking for a mug. When he settles onto the couch a few minutes later, half a bagel in one hand and a coffee in the other, she turns.
She studies him first clinically, then personally. Dark smudges under his eyes mirror her own exhaustion, and he’s dressed in nothing but his boxers, but he looks better. A little color has returned to his face and his muscles look relaxed, not seized up in pain like they were last night. She crosses the room and takes a seat beside him.
“How do you feel?”
“Like the Flukeman wormed its way into my body and ate my heart for dinner.”
“Charming.” She touches two fingers to the spot under his jaw where his pulse beats steadily.
“Any nausea?”
“Some.”
“Headache?”
“Small one.”
“Dizziness?”
“No.”
She feels him studying her as she tips his head this way and that, checking his pupils, tracking his reactivity.
“You’re feeling restless,” he says knowingly.
She withdraws her hands, unnerved by his scrutiny, which on normal days is already profiler-sharp. Now that his unnatural powers include experiencing her own feelings, the invasion of privacy is nearly suffocating.
“I’m fine,” she says automatically, truth be damned. Ignoring his searching look, she presses forward with the day’s plans. If she has to live even an hour longer than necessary with Mulder being privy to her innerworkings, she may die of exposure.
Seeing that he hasn’t touched his bagel, she gestures impatiently at the food. “Eat.”
His eyebrows rise ever so slightly but dutifully, he takes a bite.
“Good,” she says with a satisfied nod. “I want to draw your blood this morning and get a tox screen and serum concentration. We need to know how much of the drug remains in your system. I’ll take those to the lab myself once we’re done here.”
He nods and for a moment, she feels irrationally pleased by his willingness to follow her lead, but she quickly squashes the feeling before it can pass to Mulder.
“For your part,” she continues, “I need you to call the Gunmen. I was able to memorize a batch number off one of the antidote syringes that Agent Fowley brought, and I need them to run the number.”
“Go girl,” he cheers quietly, the corners of his lips lifting.
She fights hard not to feel the warmth that trickles into her bloodstream at his praise, his kind eyes, his soft smile.
She recovers quickly. “And I want everything you have on this drug. Manufacturer, dosage, method of ingestion, the complete file. If you have any research, I need immediate access to it.”
Another nod. She refuses to think about how much simpler this would be if he’d involved her in this case from the beginning, if he hadn’t buddied up with Diana Fowley and cut her and her science out—until her science suited him, of course.
“And,” she continues, “I need everything you have on Daniel Parsons.”
The change in his expression is nearly imperceptible, but she notices.
“Mulder?”
He takes a slow sip of coffee before answering. “I found him because of his connection to the drug.”
“So I gathered.”
He leans forward, elbows on knees. “He was involved in the distribution network, but his primary role, at least in the early days of production, was in its creation.”
“In what capacity?”
“By another name and in another lifetime, he used to be a respected neurochemist. Published, tenure track, ran in all the right circles. Changed his name after a big falling-out with the scientific community.”
“Because of this drug?” she intuits.
A nod. “Yes,” he adds, a touch eagerly, “I actually ran across his work years ago, back in the early days of the X-Files, when he still went by the name Dr. David Clayton.”
She wants to ask more about the disreputable scientist but finds herself chasing a different line of questioning altogether. “The early days of the X-Files? Predating—me?”
He nods, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. “With, uh, with Diana, actually. She, uh, she brought the case to me a few weeks ago, after she’d picked up a tip from a connection on the black market. Of course, she’d known about my interest in Dr. Clayton and his particular brand of neuroscience.”
Scully purses her lips. “That explains your involvement in the case. But it doesn’t touch why you decided that the best way to investigate was to take the drug yourself.”
He shakes his head, his gaze dropping to his feet. “I can’t explain that.”
“You knew people had died taking that drug. You knew exactly what it could do, and to your knowledge at the time, there wasn’t a known antidote.” Anger sweeps in, causing her hands to shake. “Why, Mulder?”
His face is a confusing mix of emotions, both hers and his—fury, disbelief, embarrassment. “I thought it would help me understand how the drug works.”
She considers this for a long moment. She’s overly aware of his tendency to dive too deeply into profiling. She’s seen him slip into the mind of the most heinous criminals, watched him lose himself entirely to a case. She’s known for years that he undervalues his own health and wellbeing, and that he’s willing to suffer greatly for answers. But something about his explanation gives her pause. He’s lying.
“That’s not why you did it,” she counters.
His eyes hold hers. “It’s part of the reason.”
“Mulder.”
“I don’t know how to explain the rest.”
His non-answer frustrates her, but it’s too much to parse out this morning. She flips back to her list, thumbing the page agitatedly.
“What else do you need?” he asks after a beat.
She meets his gaze stonily. “I need to speak with Agent Fowley.”
Mulder’s head tilts in surprise, and Scully wishes dearly that neither of them had cause to interact with her ever again. But the need for answers is dire, and she finds confidence in explaining the science to him.
“For whatever reason, this supposed ‘antidote’ isn’t quite the panacea she made it out to be. If what you and she said was true, every other person who ingested the drug has died. That means that the antidote has been successful at keeping you alive, but it’s not preventing you from experiencing the effects the drug was intended to cause.”
“Because I still feel you,” he says. The suffocating intimacy of it nearly sucks the air from the room.
She nods tightly, wishing they’d stick to the evidence and ignore any explorations of their shared connection. All she wants is to break the bond, and for that, she needs only science.
“There could be any number of reasons, besides the antidote, as to why you haven’t succumbed,” she continues primly. “Dosage, drug interactions, natural immunity, genetics. I fully expect that having access to the information I need will help me understand what processes are occurring in your body. From there, we can determine what we need to break the connection between us, without endangering your life.”
Mulder hums, fiddling restlessly with the last bite of his bagel, tapping the bread against the lid of his mug. Scully crinkles her nose as crumbs fall onto his chest and into his coffee. Seeing her disapproving look, he gives a boyish shrug.
The gesture throws her, sending an image flashing through her mind, of what he might have been like as an unrefined eight-year-old, energy incarnate, a constant headache to his parents and a comedic genius to his little sister. It tempers her frustration slightly, and she sees not the profiler or reckless agent she knows, but just Fox Mulder: a boy who grew into a man flubbing his way through murky emotional landscapes that no one ever taught him how to navigate.
She softens to him and his painful, unwanted foray into her feelings.
“Mulder.”
“Hmm?” In his boxers and crumb-littered chest, he looks for all the world like a man untouched by worry. But she knows him better than that, clocks the restless bouncing of his leg, the tightened grip on his mug.
“What do you need to say?”
He feigns surprise. Who, me? “Not a thing, Scully. Keep going with your—your list. Dosage, meds, all the—the genetics stuff—”
The uncharacteristic way he’s deferring to her has the opposite effect he likely intends, and she finds her frustration rising.
“Out with it, Mulder,” she urges, “please. It is frustrating enough that you can practically read my mind, so it’s only fair that you—you fess up to whatever’s going through your own head. We usually—we usually can figure things out if we put our minds together. So stop—stop dancing around whatever it is you clearly want to say to me right now, because it very well could be useful to our investigation.”
“It’s not mind-reading, it’s emotional transference,” he corrects with such sanctimony that she braces herself for what is surely about to become a full-blown lecture.
“Mulder.”
He accepts defeat with a sigh. After a minute, he speaks. “You’re eager to break our connection.” Though it’s spoken as a statement, she hears the question in his voice, and it confuses her.
“Of course,” she says carefully. “Why would I now want . . .?” She breaks off as she realizes Mulder is staring at her longingly. She shakes her head. “Surely you don’t want this connection?”
He laughs, but she catches the self-protection in his easy deflection. “No, course not. You’re a handful, Scully.”
She doesn’t laugh with him, still perplexed by what’s left unspoken—that he wants to stay on the receiving end of her feelings. The intrusiveness doesn’t seem to bother him at all.
“So is it all just a curiosity for you?” she asks, surprised by the cold, protective edge of her own voice. “The way I feel?”
She watches as his face morphs into careful neutrality, a soldier about to step foot on a mine-riddled battlefield. “I am curious, yes,” he says.
“You’re an Oxford-trained psychologist, and an FBI profiler to boot. Don’t tell me you view this as some sort of auspicious opportunity at a research project?” Outrage bubbles under her skin and she nearly smiles watching Mulder try to control the onslaught of feelings that aren’t his own.
“No,” he grinds through a wince of pain. “Stop that, dammit. I’d hope you knew me better than to suggest I’d ever debase you like that.”
“Debase me?”
“Disrespect you, disregard your privacy, all of that,” he says with a dismissive flourish of his hand.
“Mulder,” she gapes in disbelief, “by all accounts, you took that drug willingly. You knew exactly what it would do to you. You knew it would give you unfettered access to my feelings. How is that not exactly what you’re describing—disrespect and disregard for my privacy?”
He’s chagrined at that. “What I’m trying to say,” he pivots, “is that I’m not conducting a heinous human experiment on my partner. I’m not interested in your feelings for research purposes, or anything so crass or utilitarian as that. I’m—I’m trying to tell you—I’m trying to tell you that I, me, Fox Mulder, as your partner and your friend . . . I like knowing how you feel.”
The simplicity of it shocks her, and for a moment, she can’t speak. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you went through such lengths just to—just to figure out what I’m feeling?”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but it’s answer enough.
“Mulder,” she whispers disbelievingly, “why didn’t you just ask me?”
His gaze flicks up at that, a wry smile on his face. “Come now, Scully. Would you really have told me?”
“I tell you everything,” she says defensively, cheeks reddening at her own lie.
“You tell me you’re fine.”
“You experimented on yourself and on me. You took a dangerous drug knowing it would expose my emotional state—”
“That’s not what I was doing—”
“It’s exactly what you did!”
He stands, fury rippling off him. “You are a goddamned closed book, Scully! You—you never say what you’re actually feeling. You—you act like you need nothing, want nothing, require absolutely nothing from anyone—”
She flinches, pain searing her like a hot iron.
Sensing her hurt, he crumples back to the couch, shaking his head in despair. “Scully, I didn’t mean that—”
“No, you’re right,” she says in a monotone, even as she starts to pack away her emotions into their careful boxes.
He’s right, of course. How many times has she tried to convince him that she needs no caretaking, that her needs are minimal, that her emotions are carefully tucked away in neat little boxes that won’t ever rattle their careful cages? And for what? To what end? To hide the shameful, un-partnerly lust she’s been burying for years? To ensure she’s never too much of an emotional burden for him, the man who has done nothing but suffer? To convince them both that she’s strong, tough, and unflappable in the face of every evil, every danger?
But in the end, has it backfired? He told her emotional walls made him feel like a shell of a person. He pursued a dangerous drug knowing it might crack that shell wide open. And somehow, even after spending a night in unbearable pain, he isn’t racing to find a cure-all because he likes knowing what she’s feeling. If she’s the queen of feeling fine, then he’s the king of self-destructing for the sake of understanding.
“Even now,” he says bleakly, “even now I can feel you bottling back up. Haven’t you—don’t you finally trust me, after all these years?”
She scoffs. “Of course I trust you.”
“With your safety,” he concedes with a nod. “You know I’ll come out guns-blazing if your life is in danger. But with your feelings? Almost never.”
“And you’ve been such an open book yourself?”
“I like to think I’ve made it pretty clear how I feel.”
Her mouth parts incredulously. “You can’t be serious.” She thinks back to the night he used her too roughly, how she left his apartment confused and defeated.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” he says, “that people might not be so eager to open up to you if you’re unwilling to show them the same courtesy?”
She turns from him, unable to breathe past the growing knot of humiliation in her chest. “Why do you even want to know how I feel?” she deflects, her eyes flicking back to him. “Why does it matter?”
His eyes fill with such sadness, and for once, it isn’t her own. “Why does it matter?” he repeats in disbelief. “Scully, you have to know. You must know.”
But she doesn’t. They’ve spent months in a nebulous friends-with-benefits arrangement that went from heavenly to hellish overnight, brought on by what she assumed was his rekindling with Diana. If she shut down to him, it was because he did the same thing to her. The thought fuels her righteous outrage.
“Whatever connection exists as a result of your foolhardy decision to manufacture understanding,” she says, standing abruptly, “it needs to be broken as soon as humanly possible.”
Pain flashes across his face, but he masks it quickly with a wry smile. “Ah,” he says gamely, “but without my newfound powers, how ever would I know that you’re mad at me, my dear?”
With a scowl, she tips the rest of his bagel into his coffee cup, then stalks off to the kitchen.
Just got home from Camp Miasma, a birthday outing for my 42nd. Gillian Anderson is excellent, as we knew she would be. The film is playing with a lot of meta commentary about- among many other things- our relationship to icons. She is just such a*fucking icon* and has meant so much to me (and so many of us) over the years. Looking back from watching x-files at 13, it's not totally clear to me what I saw of myself in Scully (I'm a far less stoic and simply less capable person lol) but I identified with*something* deeply. It's been a pleasure to see her work over the years, and I can't help but to feel some "pride" (is that the word here?) in watching her thrive, particularly at this chapter of her career.
Anyway I really don't have a point but I figure some of you must also have lots of feelings about Gillian Anderson 😆 Also the movie is Soo good!!
I honestly think it makes for a much better story if William is a normal baby ( if he has some psychic powers it's not insane based on everything that happened to Scully and Mulder).
But to just have a normal baby created out of love be two people who have had a lot of pain in their lives is just way better than what we got.
