Fluffuary Days 14-16: Not Actually Unrequited Love, Caught in the Rain, Feelings Realization
[Ao3]
*-*-*-*-*
This downpour was six years in the making.
That first drenching, that first shiver in Oregon near the excavated graves of the dead, had sunk deep into her bones. Smiles of madness, of enlightenment, a knock of shoulders in quest of the truth, soaked into every crevice that ached to be filled with wonder. With the impossible. They were young enough then not to care about soggy hair or dampened ideals-- not to consider the consequences of their mutual intensity.
Now, Kansas gymnasium awash with light and lilting love songs, Scully watched another couple-- one, too, with years of affection between them-- float closer, hint mischievously, "You should try it sometime," and glide away in a haze of happily ever after. Her partner, face carefully neutral, glanced from the watermarks dotting her makeup to his dripping shoes to the dance floor.
She waited, noted the true rain king's head bobbing above the sea of dancers. Sighed as the rush of impulse, so often muted by time and old patterns, began to fade into practicality: they needed to shower, get changed, check when they could fly out tomorrow.
Mulder's eyes caught hers. Lips quirked in acceptance, if also a brush of disappointment, he asked, "Another time, Scully?"
Safely back on solid ground, she squeezed a damp sleeve, flicked drops from her fingers. "You owe me, Mulder."
"I do," he promised.
*-*-*-*-*
The rain visited them again, months after the millennium had turned, weeks after their initial journey had concluded. After they created new lines, vanquished old fears. The truth in its various forms was out there, dug up before the world, resting in the stars, sealed between them.
He'd kept his word when the world didn't end. He'd led and she'd followed, until they'd parted ways one weekend over crop circles and matters of the heart.
Yet when she woke to the sound of fate pattering down the apartment window, partner still sleeping in the sheets she'd vacated, Scully realized the storm was revelation: a brew of clashing opposites and passionate integrity. A force that echoed, not preceded,
their choices.
The rain had waited until they marked and walked their own path.
