Chapter Text
Mulder's phone was ringing, but he was eating his sandwich and couldn't answer. He grunted.
At her desk, Scully turned around to look at him.
"It's Tuesday," he told her, nodding at the phone while trying to keep his sandwich from sliding apart.
She squinted at him. "You're right, Mulder, it is Tuesday."
"Deek's supposed to call!" Mulder gestured at the phone with an elbow and his sandwich took the opportunity to eject a tomato onto his tie. "Fabulous," he mumbled, dropping his lunch back into its sytrofoam corral.
Scully wheeled closer in her chair and grabbed a clean napkin from his desk. "You're a mess," she whispered to him.
"Fix me," he whispered back. The phone rang again and Mulder waved his mayonnaisey hands. "And answer the phone!"
"Mulder," she said in her new way, the way that seemed to say he was crazy and obnoxious and she couldn't help loving him. She was beautiful, and he wanted to touch her, but there was mayonnaise on his hands and he didn't think she'd appreciate it.
Shaking her head, she plucked the tomato from his tie, tossed it in with the rest of his sandwich, then licked her fingers and leaned over to get the phone.
"Scully," she said. "Hi, Deek." Trapping the receiver between her ear and shoulder, she shoved a napkin into Mulder's hands. "No, he's here, covered in mayonnaise, but here."
"Kinky," Mulder grumbled, not having much success with the pulpy napkin and starting to feel like a doomed toddler.
"He had some trouble with his sandwich," Scully explained, dabbing at his tie with another napkin. Done, she balled it up, threw it at him, and wheeled away again.
Mulder pressed his hands together, enjoying that they were not only greasy, but had now achieved a wonderful grittiness too, with bits of cheap napkin sticking to his skin like papier-mache.
"I'm going to wash my hands," he told Scully, who waved at him, then pried a pickle loose from the ruins of his sandwich.
When he got back from the bathroom, Scully was off the phone, sitting with her elbows on her desk and her chin propped up on one hand.
"So?" Mulder collapsed into his chair and gave his sandwich a dirty look. Pushing it away, he discovered a small bag of potato chips hiding behind the carton.
"They found the body," she said, turning to face him across his desk. "Autopsy showed abnormalities in many of the major organ systems. It's not likely she would have been able to produce offspring or even live past twenty." She grabbed the bag of Lay's. "Probably a result of generations of inbreeding."
Mulder crunched on a chip. "Small gene pool."
"Yes." Scully nodded. "Deek had them run her DNA against the adult female that was shot in Atlantic City. There's about a seventy percent chance they're related. He's faxing us the report and all the lab work."
Checking his watch, Mulder leaned back in his chair and groaned. "Oh Scully, what are we doing here?"
Scully ate another of his potato chips. "Working?"
"To the naked eye, perhaps, but on the cellular level, I'm deeply deeply bored." He sat up. "Isn't there some bomb threat in a supply closet that we could be checking out?"
"I doubt it," Scully said, stretching one leg under Mulder's desk so that her foot hooked behind his ankle.
He couldn't believe she was flirting with him at work. "Just a small threat?"
"Where's the fun in that?" And now she leaned forward, resting her elbow on his desk, running her hand into her hair and leaving it there like she was some sort of FBI pin-up girl.
To the rest of the bullpen, it might have looked like they were having a serious discussion about a case, arguing over a turnip farmer's annual manure consumption, or conspiring to sneak off and hunt aliens after dark. But the truth was that Scully was wearing a tight sweater and Mulder didn't feel like thinking about work. He knew they were going to be good together because this was already the best relationship of his life. It had always been good. It could only get better.
Mulder mirrored Scully's pose and gave her a lazy smile. "Mmm, Scully," he drawled, kicking his shoe off so he could run his toes up her ankle. "I feel a two-hour lunch coming on."
*****
Scully, in a wool coat that was meant to stop at the knees of a taller woman but instead slapped around her calves, edged down the sidewalk, staying close to the buildings and out of the snow. Her strides were long, timed to the rattling bells of a Salvation Army Santa who was sitting on an upturned metal garbage can and smiling over his ratty fake beard. Scully smiled back as she passed him but there wasn't any change in her pockets.
Pulling her scarf up over her chin with her teeth, she poked a gloved hand around in her bag, looking for her phone. The Santa shot her a hopeful look, but when she emerged with the Nokia he turned away again, blowing into his hands and rattling his bell.
Scully shuffled her feet in the snow and dialed her phone. Then she moved away from the laundromat storefront in front of her, tucked herself behind the brick and peered through the glass around the corner at Mulder, who was setting down a laundry basket in order to answer his ringing phone.
"Mulder," he said.
"It's me," she said, smiling under her scarf. Mulder wedged the phone against his shoulder and picked up the laundry basket again. He was beautiful. She leaned against the brick and watched.
"Hey, Scully," he said. "What are you up to?"
"Not much," she said. "You doing your laundry?"
The phone was slipping from Mulder's shoulder and he caught it with a hand, bracing the laundry basket between his thigh and the washer and loading clothes in the machine one at a time. "I told you I would be," he said. "I was about a day away from having nothing to wear but my tux."
"I'd have taken you to the opera, then," she said, rubbing at the window to clear the fog which she learned was on the inside of the glass.
"Hmpf," said Mulder. She watched him fight with a change machine that kept returning his dollar. He was wearing a t-shirt with at least two visible stains and a pair of jeans that had seen better years.
"Hey, Mulder, you washing those old Levis of yours? Last time I saw them they could stand up by themselves." She shivered a little, remembering the last time she'd seen those jeans, two nights before when she'd woken up in Mulder's bed and gone looking for another blanket. It was bitterly cold and at some point during the night it had started snowing. When she crawled back into bed, she'd found that Mulder had shifted over in his sleep, leaving a warm patch of sheet just in front of his chest for her to snuggle into. In his sleep, he'd wrapped an arm across her chest and he'd kissed her shoulder.
"Of course I'm washing them," Mulder said. The machine took his dollar and spit out a handful of quarters. There was no one else in the laundromat. "Hang on one sec?"
Scully pressed her face to the glass and watched as Mulder set his phone down on the ironing table so he could kick off his shoes, take off his jeans and throw them in the machine with the rest of the laundry. His legs looked skinny in plaid silk boxers, hairy and wiry and muscular. Scully felt tingly and embarrassed and she held her breath. Mulder tossed in a cup of detergent, shut the machine, inserted a handful of quarters and started it, and then picked up his trench coat and put it on, his bare legs sticking out the bottom giving him the look of a kid in a big beach towel. Scully bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud.
Mulder raked his fingers through his hair and picked up the phone again. He sat up on the table, swinging his legs and watching his laundry. "You still there?"
"Yeah, Mulder," Scully said. "I'm still here."
"Stay that way," he said.
"Planning on it," Scully said. The Santa was watching her with amusement, now, and she felt around in her bag for her wallet and took out a five dollar bill, which she pushed into the slot at the top of his collection jar.
"Merry Christmas," he said to her.
Scully clapped her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and said, "Merry Christmas" back.
It was snowing harder now, the flakes big and thick and slow like old dogs. There were very few cars on the roads, and the snow piled up, slushy and brown. Every shop had lights up, and a string of almost-life-sized plastic reindeer hung from the telephone cables that crossed the street where the traffic light was. Even at just past noon it was dusky, the sky a wooly slate of grey with snow drifting like feathers. "Hey Mulder," Scully said. "When you going to be done with your laundry?"
"Oh, maybe forty minutes?"
"Good," Scully said. "I wanted to take you to lunch. It's like a ghost town today because of the snow. Let's go somewhere and have burgers and coffee."
Mulder clapped a hand to his cheek even though he thought she couldn't see him. "Dana Katherine Scully craving hamburgers! How could I say no?"
"Don't," Scully said, but her phone sounded empty. She shook it. "Mulder?"
Mulder was looking at the viewscreen of his phone. The line had obviously closed; Scully's phone had cut out.
She started to dial his number again, but changed her mind. Grinning at the Santa, she crossed to the door of the laundromat. Inside, Mulder was dialing, and Scully's phone rang from her pocket, but she didn't answer it. She didn't need to, anymore, didn't need to stare through foggy glass at the wonderful man with no pants who was her best friend for life. She was right here. And she wasn't going anywhere.
Taking a deep breath, freezing her lungs, tasting snow and smiling, she reached up and opened the door.