Chapter Text
Mulder wakes alone.
He is unsurprised.
The pillow beside him is empty and the sheet is cool beneath his fingers.
The clock reads 6:43 am.
He slept.
Well.
The night before lingers in his mind in fragments.
Scully; lying on his couch, mouth slack with exhaustion.
He drapes the Afghan over her, telling himself she needs the rest more than she needs a bed.
Mulder knows if he wakes her, she will insist on driving home.
And if she drives home, he won't be able to continue observing the softness she so methodically hides when she is awake.
He dips his head to press his lips to her hairline but jerks himself back before he can satisfy the urge.
“Sleep it off, Mulder,” he murmurs, turning to his bedroom.
He succumbs to his own exhaustion before he can revisit the dangerous line he nearly crossed.
Hours later he wakes with a start to find Scully standing beside his bed.
She is backlit by the soft glow that filters in from the living room.
Mulder is unsure how long she has been standing there, but he manages to observe her before her guarded features return.
The hunger in her eyes startles him.
“It’s me,” she says softly, putting a reassuring hand to his shoulder.
He says nothing but reaches his hand to her. His fingers wrap around her waist.
Her breathing hitches.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving.”
He pulls her closer to the bed as he sits up.
She allows him to guide her, making no move to pull away.
“Mulder, it's late. Go back to sleep.”
His other hand comes up to her opposite side before it slides lower, resting on her hip.
He has situated her between his knees, close enough that he can feel her warmth through the thin cotton of his boxers.
“I’m sorry I woke you. I’m going home,” she repeats. “I’ll see you Monday.”
He pulls her even closer, arching his neck to look up at her. His chin rests against her stomach.
His hands move slowly to meet at the small of her back before sliding lower, drawing her even more firmly against him.
“You’re not going home, Scully. And, I’m not going back to sleep.”
His voice is low with sleep and thick with desire.
Her hand follows the line of his arm to his face, then curls into his hair.
His scalp tingles where she pulls it.
Scully meets the heat of his gaze and holds it.
Mulder is not blind to the size of this moment.
After seven years of saying no, the magnitude of this yes could reorder cities.
He can’t say whether the credit belongs to those long years they spent denying themselves, their instant and relentless chemistry, or the quiet intimacy built in offices, motels, and midnight stakeouts.
Whatever finally pushed them across the line, the result is better than anything he imagined.
This annoys him slightly, as he has imagined it often.
He stretches himself across her cooled side of the bed and drags her pillow to his face.
He didn’t expect to wake up with her in his arms but that didn’t stop him from hoping.
It has been their dynamic since day one.
He is impulsive where she is disciplined.
Affectionate where she is restrained.
Reckless where she is armored.
But while she may claim she wants a normal life, anytime ordinary knocks on her door, Scully sneaks out the window.
Her FBI instructor, Jack.
Tattooed psychopath, Ed.
Obsessed loner, Phillip.
These are the men that Dana Scully makes room for.
And yet, perfectly acceptable Rob gets abandoned so she can pursue Jersey Devils with her slightly less acceptable partner.
Mulder has often considered that Scully grew up chasing the approval of a father who was more myth than man. Always somewhere over the horizon.
She learned to love at a distance.
Though that distance is often read as coldness, his Scully is no ice queen.
Her passion is not absent. It is buried.
Mulder realized early on that restraint is not something she endures. It is something she savors.
And if he is honest, that knowledge alone stayed his own hand more than once.
The night's revelation of Daniel confirms it:
Scully wants to earn love.
To work for it.
And if she keeps it at arm’s length, it can’t destroy her.
So, no, the empty pillow does not surprise Mulder.
It disappoints him, but he is unsurprised.