Handfasting
by MSR_Pusher
Chapter 12: Parameters
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The clinking of silverware and the low hum of conversation at the bistro provided a stark contrast to the chaotic noise in Scully's head. She pressed down a little too hard, splitting the skin, watching the juice bleed into the greens as if she’d ruined something without meaning to.
Across the table, Margaret Scully took a delicate sip of her iced tea, her eyes fixed on her daughter in that quiet, unrelenting way that made Scully feel transparent.
"You look tired, Dana," Maggie noted, setting her glass down. It wasn't an accusation, just a gentle observation. "Are you getting enough sleep with the new... arrangement?"
Scully stiffened. "I'm sleeping fine, Mom. My apartment is exactly as it was. We just happen to be sharing the space,” she added, a beat too quickly.
"Sharing the space," Maggie repeated, the corners of her mouth twitching into a knowing, incredibly frustrating little smile. "Right. And how is Fox handling the transition? It must be an adjustment for him, moving out of that bachelor pad and into your home."
"He's fine. He leaves his files on the coffee table and insists on watching basketball at deafening volumes, but it's manageable," Scully replied, reciting the carefully rehearsed narrative she had prepared. "It’s a practical, temporary situation. Strictly business." The words felt rehearsed. Hollow. Even to her own ears.
Maggie hummed thoughtfully, reaching for her napkin. "Well, I'm just glad he finally convinced you to look for a bigger place. He was telling me how worried he was that you felt cramped, and how he wanted to make sure you had a proper kitchen since he knows it’s the only thing that reliably slows your mind down.”
Scully’s chest tightened because that was true, and because she had never told him that.
Scully’s fork froze halfway to her mouth. The bistro suddenly felt entirely too warm, too small, like the air had been quietly siphoned away. Her pulse climbed, uneven and unfamiliar, like her body knew something her mind refused to accept.
"He... he was telling you?" Scully blinked, her analytical brain scrambling, failing, for once, to neatly categorize what this meant. She didn’t like not understanding the variables. She liked it even less that Mulder seemed to be rewriting them. "Mom, when exactly were you speaking to Mulder?"
Maggie paused, realizing her slip, but she didn't look particularly apologetic. "Oh, on Thursday. He called to check on how I was doing after the flight, but the conversation turned to you, as it usually does. He was asking me about your favorite childhood books, something about wanting to track down an old out-of-print copy of a sea-faring journal you used to love."
Scully’s fork froze halfway to her mouth.
"He called you to talk about my childhood reading habits?" Scully repeated, her voice dropping a register as a wave of intense, defensive confusion washed over her. "My partner, my temporary, legally arranged roommate, called my mother to chat about my need for kitchen space and to solicit personal anecdotes from my youth?"
"Dana, calm down," Maggie said softly, leaning across the small table. “He cares about you, Dana,” Maggie said gently. “Deeply.” The word settled between them, heavy and inescapable. “Is it really such a crime that he checks in? He wanted to know if you were still as stubborn about taking your vitamins as you were when you were seven."
"It's a violation of the parameters," Scully fired back. Parameters she suddenly felt were slipping through her fingers, no matter how tightly she tried to hold them in place. She hated how something that should feel comforting instead felt destabilizing. "We agreed to keep this strictly professional. He doesn't need to be calling you to... to profile me through my own mother."
"He isn't profiling you, Dana," Maggie corrected, her voice losing its lightness, settling into a heavy, profound seriousness. “He is just doing what he's always done. He's anchoring himself to you.” Maggie held her gaze, her voice soft but steady. “And Dana… anchors only work if you let them hold. That cord they wrapped around your hands in the ceremony, that wasn’t what tethered you to each other. It was just a symbol. Something visible for what’s already been there for so long. You felt it, didn’t you?” Maggie asked gently. “Even if you won’t admit it.”
Scully’s breath hitched, sharp and involuntary, her fingers curling slightly against the table as if she could still feel the phantom weight of it there. "What are you talking about?"
Maggie looked down at her iced tea, tracing the condensation on the glass with her finger. "I never really told you about the first time I truly met Fox. Not the brief introductions before, but really met him. It was at the hospital. Right after you were… returned to us."
Scully’s breath caught. It was a dark, terrifying chasm of time that she had no memory of, a blank space in her life that she rarely allowed herself to think about.
"I was sitting next to your bed in that intensive care unit," Maggie continued softly, her eyes finding her daughter's, "when he came blazing through those doors. He was completely unhinged, Dana. I had never seen a man so frantic. He was yelling, swearing, practically threatening every doctor and military official in the ward, demanding to know exactly what had been done to you. Everyone was terrified of him. He was a man completely out of his mind with grief."
Scully stared at her mother, completely paralyzed. She had known Mulder was upset, but she had never pictured him like that, violent, raw, and entirely stripped of his composure. A strange, painful flutter bloomed in her chest at the thought of him willing to tear a hospital apart just to get to her. No one had ever chosen her like that. Not without hesitation. Not without condition.
"But then, when the anger burned out and there was nothing left to fight..." Maggie’s voice cracked slightly. "He was just so utterly despondent. He sat in that hard plastic chair next to your bed for days. He looked like his entire world had ended. He never, ever gave up on you."
Maggie reached across the table, her hand hovering just inches from Scully's tight fists. "Do you know how we survived those days when you were on that ventilator? I sat next to him, and I told him stories about you. I told him about your tomboy phase and about how you used to organize your Halloween candy by color. I even told him about the time you were playing with your brothers' BB gun and accidentally shot that little rabbit, how you wept, so completely heartbroken and regretful that you had caused something harm. He would just sit there, holding your hand, listening to every word like it was oxygen. It was a coping mechanism for both of us, Dana. It kept you alive in that room when we were so terrified we were going to lose you."
The bistro dissolved into a heavy, ringing white noise. Scully felt a sudden, agonizing burn behind her eyes, the sheer, crushing weight of his devotion, quiet, relentless, and completely unasked for pressing down on her chest. But the terror of letting that devotion in was still too great. She swallowed hard, desperately pulling the fractured pieces of her armor back together.
"Mom," Scully whispered, her voice trembling slightly before she forced it into a rigid, defensive line. "That was years ago. And it's... it's more complicated than that. He has a whole history, parts of his life where I am still just on the outside looking in."
She looked away, staring blindly at the street outside the window. Diana Fowley. The name materialized in her mind, lingering between her and Mulder like a pungent, suffocating odor. Her mother hadn't seen the way Mulder looked at Diana, the history in it, the ease. The blind loyalty. And now that Diana had simply disappeared into the ether, vanishing without a trace, the lack of closure only made her memory heavier. You couldn't force a man to move on from an unresolved absence, especially Mulder, who had that exact kind of open-ended grief imprinted on him since he was twelve years old. Scully could survive a loveless, pragmatic marriage. But she could not survive opening her entire heart to a man only to find out she was constantly competing with an unfinished past, forever terrified he was just waiting for someone else to walk back through the door.
"There are ghosts in his life, Mom," Scully said vaguely, her jaw tight. "And I can't compete with them. I won't."
Maggie sighed, her expression softening into one of profound, aching tenderness. She reached out, finally placing her hand over her daughter’s trembling fingers.
"Dana, look at me," Maggie said gently. "Every relationship has ghosts. Every single one. Relationships are not easy, and they are rarely uncomplicated. But the good ones? The real ones? They are worth the work."
Maggie gave her daughter's hand a firm, grounding squeeze. "I watched you grow up moving from base to base. Out of all my children, being a Navy brat was the hardest on you. You hated being uprooted. You learned very early on,” Maggie continued softly, “that loving something meant eventually losing it. So you learned not to need it too much in the first place.”
Scully closed her eyes, a single, traitorous tear slipping free. Her mother had just effortlessly diagnosed the exact, terrified core of her soul.
"You are treating this marriage like another temporary assignment," Maggie whispered, her voice fiercely maternal. "You're building walls and reciting parameters because you're terrified of what happens if you actually let him in. But he is not going to leave you, Dana. Please, my beautiful, brave girl... don’t close your heart to him before he ever gets the chance to hold it.”
For a long, suspended moment, Scully couldn't speak. The sheer weight of her mother's words stripped away all of her carefully constructed defenses, leaving her completely exposed to the terrifying reality that she was already, deeply, irrevocably in love with him.
Before she could formulate a response, the sharp, shrill ring of her cell phone shattered the quiet intimacy of the moment.
Scully jumped, grateful for the lifeline, and quickly fished the phone out of her purse. "Scully," she answered, her voice slightly breathless.
"Hey," came Mulder's low, familiar voice, instantly sending a fresh wave of warmth straight to her chest. "I am really sorry to interrupt your lunch with your mom. I hope she's doing well, by the way."
Scully closed her eyes, fighting a sudden, overwhelming urge to laugh at the sheer absurdity of him. "She's fine, Mulder. What is it?"
"We caught a break," he said, the relaxed tone vanishing, replaced instantly by his sharp, professional edge. "Local PD just finished the preliminary sweep of the missing kid's vehicle. They're reporting traces of irradiated soil fused to the undercarriage and a completely drained electrical system. I need you to look at this forensic data, Scully. We've got a lead."
She looked at her mother across the table, taking a slow, fortifying breath as she slid back into the one role that made her feel entirely safe. "I'm on my way," she said firmly.
