Chapter Text
The feeling of being home is slow to settle in her mind. It’s elusive, there one second and gone the next, fading in and out of existence as she tries to wrap her head around the concept of standing still. It’s not easy.
She forgot what it feels like to open her eyes and see familiar things, things they wouldn’t have to leave behind.
Fun things. Beautiful things. Stuff that doesn’t fit into a duffle bag, stuff for which you don’t have any use when you’re constantly moving around. When everything is temporary.
She tried not to miss her things too much. Her coffee mugs she picked out so carefully when she moved into her first apartment. Her books. The pictures on her walls. The blanket she put over her legs when she was reading a book at night.
They’re material things. Soulless objects, useless trinkets, and she doesn’t need them. That’s what she kept telling herself. She chose Mulder. She’ll always choose Mulder; his steady presence and unwavering affection has always been enough to keep her grounded, to keep her moving.
But when they move into their house and get some of their boxes out of storage, when she opens her first one and takes out a salad bowl that she rarely ever even used, she bursts into tears.
“Scully?” Mulder comes over to where she’s kneeling on the floor in front of her open box. “What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head, wiping her face with one hand. “I have no idea.”
He sits down cross-legged next to her and rubs her back in soothing circles. “It’s a lot,” he says.
“Yeah.” And that’s it, really. A perfect summary of her feelings. This is a lot. This is a whole new life.
Fear, dread has her stomach in knots while happiness blooms in her chest, pushing at the confines of her body until she can barely breathe.
“That’s a nice bowl,” he says.
“I kept it at the back of the cupboard.” She holds it in both hands, unable to tear her gaze away. “There’s another one in one of these boxes that I liked better. I don’t even know where this one came from. I don’t think I bought it. It must have been a gift. But it was never my favorite.”
His hand doesn’t stop moving, warm and large against her back. “It’s amazing what accumulates in cupboards over time.”
“Yeah. Things you don’t even remember having.”
“We can give them a new life now.”
When she turns her head to look at him, his smile looks tentative, unsure. He’s as lost as she is. For some reason, that makes her feel better. She puts the bowl down between them and kisses him. His lips are soft against hers and he slides an arm around her back, his other hand gently cupping her face as he kisses her back.
“Hey,” he says against her lips. “Can you believe we’re going to be eating dinner from our own plates tonight?”
The smile that spreads across her face is so wide it almost hurts. “No, I can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ll be able to for a while.”
“We’ll use our own shower. And sleep on our own mattress.”
“And wake up with the sun because there are no blinds or curtains on the bedroom window.”
“Scully.” He laughs. “You could sleep under fluorescent lights in the middle of a busy construction site.”
“Fine.” She grins and finds his hand to link their fingers together. “You’ll be up with the sun while I sleep in. In our own bedroom. In our own bed.”
“I’ll bring you coffee. That I made for you with our own coffee machine.”
She sighs. “Are we ever going to get used to this?”
“To having our own things again?”
“To having a real home.”
He sits back and bites his lip, obviously giving her question some serious thought. “You know what?” he says after a long moment. “I kind of hope that we won’t.”
She tilts her head at him. “What do you mean?”
“I think we’ll get settled and it will feel normal. Like a normal life. But I hope we’ll never become so complacent that we take any of the good things for granted.”
“But isn’t that what we should want? To not be constantly afraid of losing it all?”
“Of course,” he says. “What I mean is, I hope we won’t ever stop being grateful. Or forget how precious this is.”
“Oh. Yes.” She studies his face, sees the hope in his expression, and feels one or two of those knots in her stomach loosen. Having her things back is great, but only because she gets to share them all with him. They’re taking a risk by standing still like this, and their life is nobody’s definition of normal. He’s still a fugitive. He’s still not safe, he can’t leave this place, he can’t go back to the way things were. But they’re together, and she can’t remember a second of their lives being normal since the day they met. “I am grateful. I can’t see that ever changing.”
“Do you want to use that bowl tonight?”
“I think I wanna unpack the rest of this first.” She nods at the box.
His eyes wander across the room, across the piles of boxes along the walls, to the one he’d chosen to start with, and then back to hers. “Let’s see what else you have in there, then.”
“Don’t you want to have a look at your own stuff?”
He shrugs. “We’re in no hurry, right? It might be fun to take our time and do this together.”
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe what she feels for this man. After all this time, they’re still a team. “I’d like that.”
Everything belongs to both of them now anyway. Those are her memories inside that cardboard box, but they’ll be his too. Their things will blend together and make a new whole.
“Hey, I remember these,” he says as he unwraps one of her mugs from the tissue paper that’s been protecting it all this time, since the day her mom packed up her old life for her after she and Mulder had already left.
“You can bring me my coffee in it tomorrow morning,” she teases, and he kisses her again, mug in hand, over her abandoned salad bowl.
In their home. Where their things live, where they can sit on their own couch and paint the walls whatever color they like, where they can keep leftovers from dinner in the freezer, knowing they’ll still be here months from now.
In this place, where they can finally feel like they belong.