In my headcanon, Mulder is the one of the two of them who gets scared during scary movies. Can you write the first time Scully discovers this?
I meant this to be funny yet it sort of turned into an odd sort of introspection into early MSR. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened but hopefully you still like it.
Tagging @today-in-fic
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Scully sits at her desk, pecking away at the addendum on her End Of Case Report regarding the Succubus who had attached itself to Skinner of all people. The Fright Fest marathon is left flickering across her TV screen because she can’t find the remote, and the living room lamp bathes her apartment in a calming ambiance.
The calm has always helped her to focus in the past, yet the last few years spent working with Mulder has replaced the old version of what “calm” means to her. Calm no longer consists of time spent alone in the silence of solitude. Calm now equates to the soft sounds of Mulder murmuring to himself as he reads through case files; the faint scent of Mulder’s cologne drifting over to her side of the office; the repetitive tapping, flicking, and rolling of Mulder’s pencils along the desk… Mulder is Scully’s new calm.
Tonight, he is on his way over to help with their bi-yearly review papers. Two out of the three years that they’ve been partners, she has been the one who filled out the God-awful things while he gathered the receipts and flipped pencils into the ceiling. Not this year. She about fell over when he offered to do his half of the paperwork as long as he could crash her exciting night of JAMA reading to do so.
The triple knock on her door followed by the usual “It’s me” sends an instant smile across her lips. “Come in.”
“Hey, Scully.” At the sound of his voice, Queequeg comes barreling down the hallway yipping away at the man intruding on his domain. “And hey to you, too.”
“No, Queequeg,” Scully shames the orange ball of fluff still barking and prancing around Mulder’s feet. “It’s just Mulder. Shh, sit.”
Mulder looks down with a scrunched nose, simply stepping over her excited dog, and makes his way inside. “You sure you’re feeding that thing enough? I could always toss him the broccoli you force me to order with my noodles just to be sure.”
“One of these days that thing will grow on you,” she urges and pretends to refocus on her report.
He chuckles and when he thinks she’s no longer looking, Mulder quickly ruffles Queequeg’s fur. “Like something akin to a foot fungus is my guess.”
Biting back a smile, she returns to typing and hears the rustling of plastic and him shooing away a nosy Pomeranian. His close proximity delivers a heavenly smell of fried rice and freshly showered Mulder that wafts up right up her nostrils.
His presence, as comforting as it is, is also distracting. She’s nearly done with the last paragraph and knows if she doesn’t finish it now, it won’t get done tonight.
“Didn’t think I’d actually show, did ya?”
As her fingers fly across the keyboard, keeping her eyes trained on the monitor, she mumbles, “You never cease to amaze me, Mulder.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say? The thought of you spending the night alone watching chick flicks while thinking endlessly about missing your partner lead me here like a moth to a flame,” he banters.
Typing away, she huffs out a laugh. “You sure you’re not describing your own Friday night?”
His shoes thud along the floor and she listens to him strip off his jacket, trying very hard not to look up and watch the show as that familiar calm drapes around her.
“Nah, I’d never watch Lifetime without you, Scully.” She shakes her head, hiding her grin, and quickly finishes her last sentence as he makes his way past her TV.
“I’m not watching Lifetime, Mulder, and I never have any spare time to miss you,” she lies.
Instead of a hearing a witty quip, Scully hears a gasp and sudden scuffle of feet as he stumbles.
She drops her chin to her chest and her reading glasses creep down to the end of her nose. She stares at her partner clad in a tight, grey T-shirt and jeans with one hand fisted at his side as the other makes a terrible attempt to cover his gaping mouth. “Mulder?”
Silence reigns as she watches the line in his brow crease and his posture go rigid.
What the hell?
“Hey, Mulder…” She pulls off her glasses and moves over to his side, her bare toes gripping the carpet in anticipation. His eyes are big and glued to the screen. She follows his gaze over to the image of an insidious clown hiding in the shadows, looming over its next victim. “You okay?”
Her fingers graze across his skin and he instantly jumps, letting out a high pitched squeak. “IT… I mean, it’s okay, I’m fine.” He’s breathless and she can see his pulse racing against the lean muscles of his neck.
“Mulder you shrieked, what…” she trails off as the situation finally dawns on her. Fox Mulder is afraid of scary movies.
He just shakes his head and shrugs, spinning around to avoid eye contact. As he pulls out the Chinese food, he scoffs and mutters, “Funny, huh? Spooky Mulder gets freaked out by killer clowns.”
Clowns.
She has no idea what to say so she just whispers, “Oh.”
He flops down on the couch in front of her, flicking the dog hair off his pant leg and peeks up at her through his long lashes. “Clowns in general, to be specific.”
She wants to reassure him that the sense of unease felt by sufferers of Coulrophobia is nothing to be ashamed of, yet the irony that her best friend—one who risks his life fighting real-life monsters as often as he does his dry cleaning, leaves her fighting hard against a rising giggle.
Just as she controls herself and moves to dissuade his concern of criticism, Mulder busts out laughing. His near cackle startles both her and the dog, sending Queequeg running out from behind the couch with the missing remote control set firmly between his teeth.
“Oh, Scully, the look on your face,” he chuckles, breathless and grinning. “It’s okay to laugh at me. I do.”
Shaking her head with a smile, she scoops up the chewed remote and tosses it to him. “Sorry, I don’t like laughing at you, or you or anyone else laughing at you for that matter. But the thought of you being afraid of clowns is just something I never would have pictured about you, Mulder.”
“Freaked out is a better descriptor. The circus was—is a reoccuring nightmare for me. The creepy clown vibe gets me every time.”
Scully finds herself smiling more tonight than she has in months. Mulder would say that was his fault as to why that is, yet he is the reason she is smiling now, and that’s what matters most to her. As she sits down next to him and sorts through their food, she can’t help but concede to why these moments are rare, but fully admits that she’d like there to be a lot more of them.
“Anything else that freaks you out that I should know about?”
He nods as a noodle dangles from his bottom lip, and shivers with a look of disgust at the thought that strikes. “One other. But, let's save that one for future reference. I can’t tell you all my secrets just yet.”
“The secret side of Fox Mulder. I can hardly wait.” For some reason that idea titillates her, and she can’t help but look forward to the “yet.”
Fifteen minutes later, they sit quietly in the dim light of her living room, food eaten, and feet propped up on her coffee table; their calm before the inevitable storm.
Mulder clicks through the channels and sighs. “So, you ready to knock out this paper work?”
“Nah, IT can wait,” she teases without missing a beat.
Groaning, Mulder rolls his eyes as Queequeg hops up on the pinstriped cushion next to him and trots across their laps, curling up in a ball next to her, smelling suspiciously like broccoli.
“I’m never going to live this one down, am I? He nudges her, shifting her side to lean against his.
Calm.
She stares at the Lifetime movie now quietly playing out in front of them and smirks. “Don’t worry, Mulder, if we ever come across an X-File involving a scary, flesh-eating clown, I’ll be there to hold your hand.”
She watches him grin out of the corner of her eye just as her hand slips easily within his.
“I think I’d like that, Scully.” He squeezes her fingers resting in his lap. “I know I would.”
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