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"You're telling me, you've never ridden a roller coaster?" he mumbles, words forming around the sunflower seed pressed between his lips.
"No, I've never ridden a roller coaster, Mulder. Why's that so hard to believe?" she says, too tired, at this point, to be exasperated at his inability to let it go. Her head lolls lazily against the headrest to glance at him. He plucks the empty shell from his teeth and deposits it through the crack in the car window.
"I just figured everyone has ridden one at some point."
He looks delightfully rumpled in the early morning hours. A fact that she finds herself appreciating more and more each time they are called in to do surveillance work. So soft and warm. Like her favorite, worn cotton sheets that she wishes were wrapped around her in the comfort of her own bed. Like something else she wishes were wrapped around her in the comfort of her own bed.
Or someone else.
She blushes and clears her throat, disguising it as a cough. Thoughts like these are dangerous. Especially, when she is exhausted and stuck inside a tiny rental car with Mulder when he looks the way he looks with his face and his hair and his sleeves rolled up, and God has she been staring at him this whole time?
Another yawn clamors its way from her mouth so impressive, her eyes water in response. She glances, bleary eyed, at the clock on the dash. 5:23 am. They've been at this for nearly nineteen hours.
"Stay awake, Red. So, what's another thing you've never done," he asks, tone heavy and thick with sleep.
(Something else she appreciates almost more than his rumpled appearance? How the sound of his rough, drowsy voice can send a tingle from her ears, all the way down her spine.)
"Nuh-uh, I already answered. 'S your turn," she manages, stifling another yawn.
"Fine, um," he starts, shifting lower in his seat and leaning against the armrest to get more comfortable. His shoulder briefly grazes hers, and she stops breathing. "Well, I've never won a prize of any kind."
"Seriously?"
"Yep. Samantha was always the one with the luck." His voice trails off as though mentioning her name evokes a series of painful flashbacks. Her heart sinks into her gut.
"This one time, uh, when we were at Virginia Beach, she spent hours playing this coin pusher arcade game and won three stuffed animals. She ended up giving one to me, so I didn't feel like I left empty-handed," he chuckles fondly.
The cadence of his soothing voice as he tells his story causes her heavy eyelids to flutter shut, and she feels her head slump against his shoulder, sleep tugging at the periphery of her conscious mind.
She feels him tense then relax at the contact, and she smiles inwardly, victorious, as he continues. "And, when she was around six, her poster drawing for a stop smoking campaign at school won her tickets to a Red Sox game. She was too young to really appreciate baseball, but her favorite thing was eating ice cream out of those miniature, plastic hats."
A peaceful sense of bliss washes over her as she hears Mulder continue his story. She feels so close to him, in this moment, that suddenly she's not sleepy at all. How can she be with the feel of his deep voice as he speaks vibrating against her skin so profoundly, or the musky smell of his day-old deodorant invading her nostrils? She relaxes even further against him.
"That was the year they traded Tony Conigliaro, who was a damn good right fielder, and I remember being so upset that I didn't get to see him play. I had all his baseball cards. I think they had a shot at winning the World Series had he stayed on."
He pauses, then shrugs his shoulder slightly.
"You awake, Scully?"
She's navigating that thin line between wakefulness and sleep when she hears his question, and her mistake is not to answer back right away because she suddenly feels him move, and panic sets, thinking he's going to retreat to his side of the car. But then it's not a mistake at all because he's not moving away from her, but towards her as he shifts to gingerly press his lips against her hair and suddenly she's falling, falling-- like that roller coaster she's never ridden before-- because, God, Mulder is kissing her.
As if it weren't enough that those pouty lips of his were lingering against the top of her head, she hears him inhale slightly, and the realization that Mulder is smelling her hair makes her heart race against her chest.
The moment is gone almost before it began, and he slowly pulls away, carefully guiding her head to rest against the back of the seat while brushing a wayward strand of hair from her face. Her heartbeat is still pounding in her ears.
Scully never used to be a fan of stakeouts. In fact she outright despised them. There was never enough excitement, no adrenaline rush, nothing to get her blood pumping. Now, though? Now she's willing to rethink her stance on them.
•••••
A few weeks later, Mulder takes Scully to Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, Maryland.
She rides her very first roller coaster. The skin on Mulder's forearm is marked with little fingernail crescents from her death grip, but he doesn't mind. He wears them proudly. They eat ice cream, not from a hat, and Scully spends hours teaching Mulder the intricacies of Skee Ball until he wins his very first prize-- a stuffed, lime green alien with silver, sparkly eyes. Monday morning Scully walks in to their basement office to see it proudly displayed amongst faded pictures of UFOs and newspaper clippings.
They both vehimently deny it was ever a date.