Oh, Nonny, thank you so much!!! I've been wanting to write something Arcadia for a while but just haven't been able to start.
There's not so much making out as I am sure you would have liked, though there is more than was in the episode.
Brine
2480 words, read here on AO3
Dawn was breaking over the rooftops by the time they were done at the house. Statements and initial debriefs given, they were left to their own devices.
She was sat in their minivan rental, door kicked open as she examined a map of the area, whilst he was wandering around the driveway on the phone, looking frustrated.
Fingers traced the veins of half-remembered roads from her childhood, her happiest teenage years sat in the passenger seat of their father’s car as Bill Jr drove his three siblings to the beach for the day.
‘Next flight out is six this evening. We can try and get a motel, try and catch some sleep?’ he slumped down in the driver’s seat, dropping back.
‘Too wired,’ she murmured, ‘besides, we’re not gonna manage to get a room for just today.’
‘You have a better suggestion?’ it seemed like exhaustion was wearing him thin. That, or the honeymoon phase was over.
She dropped the map on the dash, tapped a location, ‘I’ll drive.’
‘Sure. Seat’s adjusted to your height anyway,’ he shrugged, and they swapped positions.
There was a despondency setting in about him, and maybe it was the tiredness, but Mulder didn’t get tired. She was more inclined to believe it was the comedown of living in one another’s footprints for a week, of maintaining a façade of domestic bliss whilst hating one another’s guts.
No, that wasn’t fair. She didn’t hate his guts, and she hoped he didn’t hate her, either. But she did feel betrayed by him, by his unwavering trust in a traitor. And maybe, just maybe, his jabs about playing house had hit just a little close to home.
The first stop on their journey was Target. He was dozing – or sulking, she couldn’t quite tell – in the passenger seat, so she left him and went in alone, grabbing the few items she needed and charging it to the bureau card out of spite. After all, they’d bought three weeks-worth of wardrobe that would all be donated to charity shops on the bureau card, she could write it off as that if she had to.
‘Get what you want?’ he asked as she dumped the two bags in the back. She nodded, slid back into the passenger seat and set off again without a verbal answer.
They spent an hour more on the road, the aircon in their rental much more efficient than the usual cars the bureau sprung out for. She could feel, the closer she got, the further her body relaxed, the stress of the weeks melting away. She’d managed to find an old local station on the radio she used to listen to as a teenager for a bit of the journey, Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane and Emerson, Lake and Palmer sinking back into her bones.
It was a Monday. First day of March. Still term time. The drive down to the beach was clear, the weather less scorching than they would have had in the summer, though still hot.
He looked confused when she pulled into the dusty car park of a long-abandoned pier. Rightfully so, she guessed. To anybody else, it probably looked derelict and a health and safety hazard. To her, it was home.
‘Get out. We’re going swimming.’
‘What if I don’t want to go swimming?’
‘Then you can sit in the car and roast,’ she shrugged, dismissive, as she unstuck herself from the leather of the seat. She sensed a quip on the tip of his tongue and shot him a glare. He thought better of it, joined her next to the car. ‘Good choice.’
Bags in hand she led the way, hopped a waist-high crumbling concrete wall, nodded for him to follow as she jumped down onto the sand from the promenade – a drop of about his height.
He could see the odd movement of people wandering along the beach further down, but there was nobody in the area surrounding the pier. Closer, he could see half the planks were missing and the other half rotting, sunlight filtering through the gaps to reflect off the sea below.
Scully was sauntering away from him, barefoot with her shoes in hand, towards the shady patch of cool sand under the pier, and he jogged to keep up, ‘you sure this is safe, Scully?’
‘Been like this for years. We’re fine. They put iron struts in as support back in the seventies, hasn’t been any structural damage since then other than during big storms, and looking at the sky I don’t think we have to worry,’ She’d moved over to one of the uprights, laid her palm against it as her thumbnail carved a rut in the splintering wood. After a moment of reverie, she turned back to him, ‘swimming.’
‘I don’t have anything to swim in.’ She pulled out a pair of neon orange board shorts and chucked them at him. ‘I actually prefer speedos,’ he deadpanned, and she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
‘They’re your size. You can either wear them or wear nothing. Or, as I said, go sit in the car and roast.’
‘These’ll be fine,’ he nodded, looking around to find somewhere to change. She just rolled her eyes, pulled her cardigan off over her head, and he was somewhat shocked to realise she hadn’t been wearing anything but a bra underneath said cardigan. There was a look of challenge in her eyes as she slid down the zipper of her skirt. When he realised she was seeing how far he would let her go he cleared his throat and turned around, cautiously pulled his polo over his head, certain he heard her derisive snort as he did so. Well, she could watch him strip all she wanted, but he wasn’t going to give her more fuel to add to her angry fire of distaste that she seemed to be aiming towards him at all times these days. He cleared his throat again once he was changed, looked over his shoulder to find her in a bikini, a red bikini, with oh so little coverage that he choked, ‘Christ, give a man some warning won’t you?’
‘You don’t like it?’ her voice was innocent. She knew exactly what she was doing. ‘It was the only one in my size – they don’t really have a lot of swimwear options this time of year.’
‘Well...it’s uh...it’s a look. I’m going to get into the water now.’
‘It’ll be cold,’ she hollered after him as he started jogging down to the shore whilst she was laying two towels out, and she heard him mutter something that distinctly sounded like that’s what I’m counting on.
Her smirk fading, she slathered sunscreen onto her skin, giving each of them a moment to think things through. She didn’t really know what she intended when she bought the swimsuit – there were other, less revealing one-pieces in her size. But she’d wanted to wind Mulder up just a little bit more before they flew home. He’d spent the week antagonising her – the week of her birthday no less – and she deserved her own chance at it.
Sunscreen rubbed in, towels laid out and waiting, both her and Mulder’s clothes folded neatly into piles, there was nothing more she could do to procrastinate from joining him in the water.
Compared to the heat of the sand and the sun, the sea was practically icy, and the initial shock of it on her calves and knees and thighs made her gasp, the wave that lapped up over her stomach stole her breath. But within moments her body was acclimatising, getting used to the cooler water as she sank further into it; ribs, breasts, shoulders, finally taking a breath and diving under.
The slip of sand beneath her feet and the motion of the waves soothed her and she rolled onto her back, floated for a moment through the slats of sunbeams and shadows in the steady roll of the ocean. She could spend the rest of her life here, she thought, just being carried by the tide, letting it rock her to sleep. Saltwater played at the corners of her mouth, filled her ears with a rushing gurgle. Her hair splayed out around her, a halo free-floating in the current. When she was a child she would lay in the bath with her head under the water, look up at the fiery strands twisting about her like kelp; imagine she was a mermaid with the ability to stay under for hours at a time. Her mother would scold her, tell her not to scare the death out of her, floating under the water like that, ghost-like.
She righted herself, shuddering at the memory of the implication in her mother’s voice, and twisted in the water to see where her partner had gotten to.
He was swimming out further and further, following the line of the pier. She was a strong swimmer, but so was he, and she doubted she could catch him, even though he was taking a leisurely pace. She’d wondered, at the very start of their partnership, if this was how their relationship would go – him strides ahead of her at every opportunity. And though that fear had relaxed over the years, it had ramped up again since the introduction of his old flame into their lives. They both seemed keener to space themselves from one another, whilst she constantly craved being right there next to him at the same time. It was near impossible for her to make up her mind as to where she wanted to be around him these days, when before it had always seemed such an easy decision.
As if sensing the turmoil of the eddies swirling in her brain he paused in his strokes, looked up and started treading water as he waved to her. A truce. She swam out towards him, and he met her in the middle, neither of them able to touch the bottom as they bobbed in the gentle swell of the tide.
‘Hi.’
‘Hey.’
‘So, where exactly are we in Dana Scully’s childhood?’
‘Mid-70s. I was a teenager and we were living here. Bill would pack us into Ahab’s car and drive us all down here so Mom could get some peace and quiet. Four teenagers in one house does not a restful existence make.’
‘I can imagine,’ he nodded, swimming around her as she floated on her back.
‘Sometimes there was a whole group of us who’d come down here, mostly Bill and Missy’s friends. We’d swim – sometimes surf if the waves were right – and play catch and have picnics and barbeques. The pier was our spot. We knew when it was going to be busy, to get there early, and we even created a rota one summer to make sure someone was always there at the crack of dawn to save our spot. But nobody ever really came under here unless there was no other space. It was where we smoked and played loud music on a boombox.’
She lapsed into silence, the sound of seagulls and breaking waves on the shore filling the air, water licking at the uprights of the pier and the haunting whistle of the gentle breeze through the broken windows of the buildings above them.
‘Do you regret growing up?’
She rolled over onto her stomach to look at him; study his face. With a mournful sigh, she gave ‘everyone regrets growing up,’ before ducking under the water, letting the sting of salt tears burn with the ocean. She brushed past him under the surface, bobbing up a few yards behind him, ‘come on, I want to try and reach the end of the pier.’
They set into a steady pace, one or the other pulling ahead slightly before being caught again. It was how they worked: challenging, pushing and keeping pace with one another.
‘We’re not okay, are we, Scully?’
She bit the inside of her cheek, twisted like a sea otter from front to back to front again, ‘no, Mulder, we’re not.’
‘Why?’ it sounded like he was genuinely asking, like he genuinely didn’t know.
‘Why do you think?’
‘Diana.’
Her skin prickled at the resignation in his voice, at the exasperation she felt he was aiming at her, ‘yes and no. Or, not just Diana. You and me, too,’ she sighed, stopped swimming, looked down into the depths, unable to see the bottom. It thrilled her and terrified her all at once, just like he did. ‘You have history with her, Mulder, I understand that. But so do we. Six years of history. I...I think that should mean something, too.’
‘It does. It’s just...Diana...’
‘You love her,’ despite all her best efforts her voice sounded choked with emotion.
He swam closer to her, brushed a finger across her chin to tilt it up to him, ‘loved. Or at least thought I did. We were married.’
‘I know,’ she nodded, pulling her gaze from his again, staring out into the horizon.
‘You do?’
‘Byers told me.’
Mulder let out a breath through his nose, uncertain what to think of not having told her himself. He was a coward, he knew that. ‘Of course, he did. He’d tell you anything if you asked him. Frohike might be the one with the crush, but Byers certainly has a soft spot for you. And, of all of them, he’s the one who knows you don’t need protecting.’
‘It’s just about trust, Mulder. If you can’t trust me implicitly, what are we doing?’
‘Right now we’re swimming.’
‘Mulder,’ the warning in her tone matched the one in her eyes.
‘I don’t know, Scully, what are we doing?’ the conversation felt cyclical, like every other conversation they’d had lately.
‘Fuck if I know,’ she shook her head. ‘I’ve spent the past year and a half trying to save our partnership, our friendship, and some days I can’t even tell if you want it anymore.’
‘Scully...our friendship is everything. I want...I’ll take anything you’ll give me. I thought you realised that. Maybe...maybe I haven’t taken your fears and concerns as seriously as I could have, but Scully, that was never as a brush off. Diana...she’s a blind spot, a weakness from my past. That doesn’t mean I don’t hold your opinions higher than anyone else’s on the planet and beyond it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Mulder?’
‘Hmm?’
‘When you said you’d take anything I’d give you...what exactly did you mean?’ a sly smile was growing on her face, somewhat shyly, and he was positive the redness in her cheeks was not sunburn.
‘I meant whatever you want me to have meant.’
‘Really?’
‘Mmhm,’ he nodded, inched slightly closer to her so their legs were brushing as they trod water together.
timy, you wonderful human being 💕💞💓💗💖💘💝 just here to tell you that you are wonderful and enough and that you already did great things in life - be proud of yourself! love yaaaa 💖💝💕
Uhg, wtf? WHO IS CUTTING THE DAMN ONIONS AGAIN
Annie, you have no fucking idea how much this means to me! Life is still not treating me well, I’ve been crying at work, things are better now, but still this one fucking message just made me so damn happy. Just knowing you thought about me and made the effort to send me this lovely message.
Sometimes it doesn’t take long ass analytic conversations to get rid of sadness, sometimes a shower of love from a friend is enough to push someone into the light 💗
Thank you, bb! This is honestly the best thing ever 😭❣️
