Chapter Text
Mulder was flipping through a coffee-stained copy of Cosmopolitan in the corner booth when she blustered in, having just barely survived the torrential downpour in her rental car. The wind had almost blown her off the two-lane highway somewhere between the cypress swamps and the ocean in North Carolina. The rain pelted down against the diner windows. Inside, it was warm and smelled like bacon.
“Scully, when’s your birthday?”
She leaned onto the table, peering down at him. “You know you can write my birthday down somewhere.”
He looked up at her and batted his eyelashes. “Where’s the fun in that when you know how much I enjoy re-learning it every time?”
She parried the slight flirt. No time for that today. “Why, do you want to break into my computer and steal all the case notes that I have to write about you? Because it could have been my passcode to everything all along.”
“No,” he said, pulling the issue closer to his nose and wiggling his eyebrows. “I want to read you your looooove horoscope. It’s on page 107 and I’m betting it’ll have all sorts of illuminating things to say about your destiny.”
“Really,” she said, tossing off her damp coat into the corner of the booth, taking his offering in stride. “That’s fine, I already know what it says.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know, probably something like, ‘you’re irritated with your coworker. Because of the moon. Et cetera.’”
He gave his eyebrows another wiggle. “You’re irritated with me?”
“Yes.” She shot him a dark look over the menu. He hadn’t cut the act yet. Okay. “In fact, once the waxing moon enters Venus’s forty-umpth quadrant, your coworker, who – unless he is supervised constantly,” she lowered her voice to a furious whisper, “will continue to destroy evidence, lie to the Forest Service, jeopardize a hostage, make my office answering machine a living nightmare –”
“Hey, that was all just some light espionage in search of the truth.”
Unfazed, he wasn’t savvy yet. She’d need to get to the point. “This coworker. Colleague. The guy sniffing the perfume samples out of a magazine like an adolescent – perhaps he’s forgotten, he’s supposed to be looking out the window to identify and follow a pale blue Lincoln with Georgia plates. Someone who is a murderer. In case you forgot.”
He registered no change in stupidity that she could see. “You eaten today, Scully?”
“Maybe you got too lost in –” she studied the cover – it was a brief study – “‘The Early Prime of Brooke Shields’?” She put a finger on the spine to lower it to the table. “Mulder, can you please just drink your coffee, watch the road, and give me five minutes of peace?”
“Steak and eggs?” The waitress set the food down with impeccable timing. “Extra hashbrowns. Extra sausage. Extra grits with cheese. Anything I forgot?”
“Hot sauce?” he asked.
“Hot sauce, darling. There you go.” She furnished a bottle from her apron pocket and set it on the table, then turned to Scully.
“Chicken caesar salad, extra lemon, dressing on the side, and there’s your diet Coke with lemon for the lady friend.” Scully chose not to publicize her surprise that the man who couldn’t remember her birthday remembered her go-to diner order.
“Thank you,” Mulder checked her tag, “Charnelle.”
“You’re welcome, honey. Y’all holler if you need anything.”
They passed most of their meal without much incident. Though it wasn’t completely peaceful. He read inane tidbits aloud from different celebrity interviews every few minutes, which she fully ignored. Her career at the Bureau was halfway in the garbage because of this guy, and he couldn’t even shut his mouth when he ate. Who cares what kind of sundress Winona Ryder was wearing.
Her salad (and the extra lemon, and the dressing on the side) disappeared quickly, and it was a nice reminder that she was a human being in need of nourishment, and not just a robot programmed to perform 6-hour-long autopsies for no reason. It almost calmed her down. Almost.
“Okay, okay, here we are. ‘Relationship horoscopes.’” Never mind. “Ooh! The theme is ‘forbidden love.’”
“Great.”
“So what’s your birthday again?”
He was just a little too annoying sometimes. She decided to throw him a bone, with a tiny smile. “February.”
“Of course, I remember now. And you were born in…196……1?”
And just like that, her smile was gone. Why did she bother? “1964, and you knew that.” She began stacking their plates for Charnelle, taking the fork out of Mulder’s hand. “I don’t need love advice. I don’t even think about boys. I’ve been on too many red-eye flights this year. Too many dead bodies in my work week.”
He didn’t acknowledge this, soliloquizing instead, “Scully, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. People all over the world for thousands of years have consulted the stars for advice about their intimate lives —”
Her patience for his monologues on this particular case was long gone. “I don’t have an intimate life.” She frowned, looking for Charnelle.
Mulder seemed to recalibrate and ran some mental computations. “When’s the last time you –“ he fished for the words for a second too long, found the worst ones, “– knocked boots, anyway?” He winced as the words came out.
“That’s not appropriate,” Scully said reflexively, half paying attention as she flagged down the waitress. “Check, please.”
“Absolutely, darling.” Charnelle swept their plates up in one gesture.
“Excuse me,” Mulder cut in, “before the check, my partner here needs a healthy helping of dessert.” He scanned the room for a chalkboard. “What kind of pie do you serve here?”
“We’ve got pecan pie, apple pie, peach pie, cherry pie, sweet potato pie, and chocolate chess pie. We might have blackberry pie. I can check.”
“Can we get two slices of sweet potato pie, Charnelle?”
“Apple pie, please,” Scully cut in, though acquiescing to the pie. All this casework and babysitting made a girl hungry. “And do you have nonfat vanilla ice cream?”
A few bites of pie in, the sugar sinking into her made her feel a little more sweet. She wasn’t sure why, but she disclosed, “I’m a Pisces. Not that you’ll remember to write that down, either.”
Mulder eagerly flipped back to page 107. “Ah, a woman of the water. Pisces, Pisces. Here we are.”
She exaggerated an eye roll. He looked up at her, then dove in, committing to the bit. He used a dramatic voice. “‘Pisces, this is the time to tap into your inner power and take control of your relationships, both in and out of the bedroom. Nothing is off limits. Embrace your natural sensuality and use it –’”
He stopped, unaware he had switched into his own natural voice, cleared his throat, then started again, “--’use it to assert dominance, guiding your partners into submission.’”
Mulder glanced up at her tentatively. “Any of this resonating so far?”
“Yes, every word,” she replied drily. “I’m a ‘vicious minx waiting to emerge from the shadows.’ Blah, blah, blah.”
He pressed on undeterred. “‘Whether you're with an exciting new fling or deepening a forbidden workplace tryst, trust your instincts to lead the way –’”
She could see he was a few beats behind on registering the full meaning of ‘workplace tryst,’ but mercifully he didn’t dwell on it. “This does go on for a while.”
“Okay, almost done. Here: ‘Your emotional depth gives you the power to influence and captivate, so take charge and make sure you're getting the attention and satisfaction you deserve. You’re in control now—own it, and let others follow your lead.” He looked up at her, and his voice caught slightly. “Nothing is forbidden anymore.”
Scully left each mortifying prognostication to hang empty in the air and sipped the bottom of her diet Coke dry. She pushed her almost-finished pie plate toward Mulder and gathered her things to leave. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
“Are you sure you’re not just out of planetary alignment? Tomorrow is the full moon. Maybe you just need to synchronize with the stars.”
She sighed, but smiled before she could catch herself. “I’ll have time to consult the constellations in a few weeks. Right now, I have to make some calls and faxes. If you can bear to orbit yourself into this planet, call me if you see Lofton.”
He looked blankly back at her, not prepared for the abrupt turn back into work-talk. The salad churned momentarily in her stomach. Stress returned.
“Remember? The murderer?” She felt like she was talking to a five-year-old who had somehow tricked Oxford and the FBI into letting him have a gun. “The guy killing college students across the South because he claims that an alien– ” she employed air quotes “–’made’ him do it? The guy we’re out here in –” she checked the cover of the menu, “– Tarboro to find?”
“Should’ve seen this coming in my crystal ball,” he said as made a point to crane his head back toward the road to watch for the car. “I got it, I got it–”
“And while you’re here, try growing up,” she said tersely. The calories from the pie were restoring her strength, and fueling her irritation more. “We have that subcommittee meeting tomorrow, and that report on the killer mice in Tulsa was due to Skinner four days ago. We’re behind on everything important. I can’t work 24-hour days like these all the time. I have plans this weekend.”
She started to go, then saw him grimacing. “What?”
Mulder pointed at the bill Charnelle had left, sheepishly. “I don’t have cash on me.”
Unbelievable. Fed up, she made a show of finding her wallet, threw a twenty on the table, grabbed her coat, said under her breath, “Do I honestly have to do everything around here?” The bell on the door tinkled too cheerily on her way out.
On her way back to her car, she threw a glance back at the diner and could make out Mulder through the window. He was still looking down at the damn magazine. And – huh – smiling. Looking lost in thought. It was a private moment. She shouldn’t have seen it. She wished she hadn’t. She unlocked the car, skidded out of the gravel parking lot back onto State Road 258.
No, she didn’t like that smile one bit.