Written for the amazingly talented @scull-dog and the prompt: Mulder is cleaning out the attic when he finds the email Scully printed out in trustno1. Look on her blog for the drawing created especially for this story. Tagging @today-in-fic
Several boxes of photos, his original FBI badge, rolls of film, two old Kodaks, a pair of binoculars with a lens missing, shoelaces knotted in a ball, piles of yellowing newspapers, a Tamagotchi, an old Nokia flip phone, a tie with ghost skulls floating on it, and wedged underneath, a matching pair of boxers. He couldn’t remember who’d given them to him. Probably Frohike. He pulled all the items out, even the blow-up alien doll complete with red hair, and a bag of old VHS tapes labelled ‘property of FBI’ which was a sure sign they were not. He rifled through his booty but couldn’t find what he was looking for.
He climbed over the mess and lifted up the old Aztec blanket that was draped over a chest. Dust jittered into the already stale air and he sneezed as he lifted the lid. The chest used to sit at the end of their bed, a relic from her apartment. He could still hear her curses when she walked into it at night, blaming the dark, the long days, the wine or him.
“I never used to do this, when it was at my place,” she said, climbing back into the bed.
He kissed her grazed shin. “Everything is bigger and bolder at our place, Scully.”
She breathed out a smile and let him run kisses over her tummy, running her hands through his hair and pulling him up so that he lay between her thighs, pushing against her. “Everything,” she said.
Now everything was just a mess. The floor, his files, their future. He pulled the contents of the box out along with the musty smell of old memories. Wrapped in tissue paper was a wad of clothes. Scully’s old suit jackets. Assorted cuts and colours. He held them up to his face, breathing in the raw essence that still clung to them. On the shoulder of one, a dark maroon, was a strand of her hair. Mid-length. About the time he was away. The time he told himself that being apart was for the best, for their safety. He’d often tried to put himself back in that frame of mind, those desperate times, when it seemed that the world was collapsing in on them, that the future offered nothing but the looming fear of death, that the past had finally overtaken them. But he’d never been able to recapture it, never been able to fully justify that decision. And now he can see that it was wrong. Plain and simple. Being apart would never be for the best. That much was clear.
He unfolded the jacket and imagined Scully filling it; her curves and lines, the shape of her transmuting over their years together - soft to hard, hard to soft, and everything in between. He spread the sleeves on the floor, swiping them flat. He straightened the collar, pulled the ends down. He wondered why she kept them. They marked her working life, just like his ties. A fashion parade of years. He looked at it for a long time, the stitching, the buttons, the length, lines that ran through it. It was well-made. Smart. He couldn’t remember her wearing it. It must have been something she bought when he was missing. A buzz of emotion stirred in the pit of his throat. He coughed it away. The jacket held the moments in her life that he didn’t know about, that he was not a part of. He began to fold it back up when he noticed a stub of paper sticking out of the pocket.
It felt soft in his hands and he thought of her skin under his fingers, the way she shifted and moved under him. The paper was worn, tiny threads on the surface, distorting some of the letters, along with the creases. He blinked as he read. The words jolted through him with such ferocity that he felt it like a blow to his guts. He doubled over.
How long had he looked at the blinking screen trying to find a way to start? How many words had he deleted before he settled for that greeting? What had she felt when she read them, her name, used so rarely but always with the weight of intimacy behind it?
He read on. Inside him the fear he’d lived through then scorched its way along his veins, so real, so familiar. Those months of not knowing anything but the desperate need to be right, to validate his quest. He spent every day unsure that his son and the love of his life were safe. He spent every day hating himself for putting them in that situation, hating her for being able to kiss William, rock him to sleep, whisper to him, tell him stories.
I’m lonely, Dana, uncertain of my ability to live like this.
His own words reached inside his chest and opened it wide, exposing his heart, leaving him breathless. More than ten years since he wrote those words and never had they been more real, more cutting.
She packed her clothes in a suitcase that seemed too compact for the task. But everything about Scully was compact. Not just physically, but in the way she was restrained, closed off. She wheeled it to the door and all he could hear was the squeak of the roller and the roar of dismay in his ears. She stood for a while, eyes cast down. Like she was waiting for permission to leave. Or maybe a reason to stay. He held the back of the chair watching his own fingers turn white as she walked through the door and started the car, the scrunch of the tyres on the driveway as mournful as any funereal anthem. Funny how he hadn’t noticed before that there was a different pitch when a car arrived. He’d stayed there, hands on that chair, for the longest time. Suspended in a hellish state of disbelief that she had left. Left him.
He knew she spent every day unsure that the love of her life was safe – she phoned him morning and night to make him tell her he was doing okay. And he spent every day hating himself for putting her in that situation, hating her for being able to go to work, talk to colleagues and get out of bed in the morning.
Her phone calls became nightly ones. Then Sunday ones. Then, when he hadn’t heard from her in a couple of weeks, he phoned her. There was noise in the background, a male voice. Laughter. He hung up and poured a large shot of whiskey. He watched the amber liquid splash around the glass, the reflections of the soft glow of the lamp Scully bought from an antique shop in Maine. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled the warm grains. He held it tight in his fist then launched it across the room, revelling in the shattering glass. He watched the liquid fall down the wall in streaks and he laughed and laughed until he cried.
She found him like that, hunched on the chair, tear-stained, silent. Her face was calm but her fingers trembled as she checked him over. She called him morning and night, never missing her time. She visited more often. She brought him books and music and fruit and plants for the yard. She brought him hope.
He read that email over and over, like she must have done all those years before. Trying to find the meaning behind the words. What would he write today? What would she write? Dearest Fox? Never. Her intimacy towards him was never captured in the spoken. Only in the way she watched him, the way she touched him, the way she let him in.
Darkness shrouded the bedroom, their room. He flipped on the lamp and unfolded the email again. He read aloud this time, hearing his own intonation, the desperation in his words. When he’d finished, he folded it along the original creases and held it in his fingers until sleep took him. The phone woke him. The email was lying on his chest. On his heart.
“Mulder?” her voice ran through him in golden waves.
He tucked the email in an envelope and pushed it into his bedside drawer.
He sees her standing on the busy street, sharp in her blue jacket and spike heels.
“Hitch-hiked. Relax, Scully. I’m kidding.”
