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the heat outside california is softer than dc, the air more warm fingers over lips than a splayed five-fingered star stinging against her cheek. as a child she and melissa used to stand on a bluff behind their house in san diego, where the water was roughest fifteen feet below, and open their mouths wide. try to taste the subtle hint of the sea in the salt air.
there is no bluff behind the motel 6, and the silence in the motel room is heavy and unsettling. the rattling breath of the air conditioning had shuddered to a stop somewhere around eleven and now she kicks the motel blanket down to her shins and lies flat across the middle of the mattress, her arms and legs flung out at her sides like a pinned butterfly. she stretches, sighs, tiny bones in her radius click like typewriter keys.
mulder’s hands had been like gossamer cuffs circling her wrists, delicate, an imagined sensation, a phantom limb. he’d held them against his chest like a bouquet, like a royal flush and she’d rocked up on her toes to kiss him. luck of the draw. she shifts again, hotter than before, and moves to press a palm against the cool motel wall above her head, thinks of breezes and ice melting on her lips.
the phone rings and she jumps. she is struck by the image of ice cream sliding off a cone. “hello?”
“scully?” it’s him and her name sounds like a question, but it’s her. it always is.
“mulder,” she rubs at her eyes. “what time is it? what’s wrong?”
“do you know what today is?”
“a thursday.”
“ha-ha, scully.”
“no, really, what day is it?” there is a smile in her voice that hums across the line like a key change.
she knows, of course she does. they’ve been playing this game for years. years and years, too many to think about, but she does think about them -- rewinds the tape and plays it again, sam. in 1993 he’d shown up at her door with binoculars and she’d stared, incredulous, first at him and then later at the sky where there were no ufos (they’re picky, scully. they don’t know it’s ufo day. it’s too overcast, anyways.) but where the clouds were so dense that his voice seemed to reverberate off and bounce back to her, amplified and awestruck. they’d been sitting so close that she could feel his breath on her shoulder and when the first raindrop had fallen, the first crack of lightening slapped the ground behind the capitol, he’d taken her hand and led her back to her apartment. she’d been wearing slippers the entire time.
she supposes this is something like tradition. they don’t talk about it before, or after, and every year she makes him convince her all over again, but on these nights she already has her shoes by the door, and she wears a t-shirt to bed instead of silk pajamas.
“it’s ufo day, scully.”
a practiced, extended sigh. not too long, not too short.
“and what is that again?”
he breathes and she knows he’s leaning against the wall outside her door, illuminated in red-gold by the light on the creaking porch. she sits cross-legged on the bed, makes herself wait.
“a day celebrating ufos,” he clarifies. “it’s a national holiday, like christmas.”
“and you didn’t just make it up to drag me out of bed at one in the morning to go alien hunting with you?”
“would i do that?”
silence for a beat. she wonders if he can feel her purse her lips through the receiver.
“that was one time,” he mutters. “and i told you you shouldn’t have worn your pajamas.”
“mmhm,” she hums, picking her way out of bed and slipping her feet into sneakers. she stops just outside the door, rests her head against the wood because the game isn’t up quite yet. there are rules for this kind of thing, you know, like building a house of cards. a flick of the wrist and the whole thing comes crashing down. she bites at her lip, worries a smile between her tongue and teeth like hard candy.
“scully?”
“yes?”
“will you please come? will you just trust me on this?
she smiles, covers her mouth like he can see her. “i don’t know, mulder.”
“you don’t know if you’ll come or you don’t know if you trust me?”
she opens the door then and he is exactly as she’d imagined he would be, leaning against the wall, half in shadow, smiling. she'd once thought that he would never cease to mystify her, that he would change and shift at every angle, colors in a painting warping in different light. but she'd been wrong. he was a palindrome of a man - the same backwards and forwards. he could still take her by surprise, make her stop in her tracks or tilt her head suddenly so his kiss found its destination, but even in total darkness she'd be able to read him like braille.
he reaches a hand towards her, across the softened circumference of light from the single bulb above them. she reaches out of the dark doorway, the back of her hand darting and white, and puts her fingers in his.
last year she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder and this year she’ll sit between his legs on the dock two blocks down, rest her head against his collar and scan the sky. she will wait for the ironic comfort of the inexplicable and the gentle burn of his hand on her back, her cheek, her neck.
“i trust you,” she says.
that night they see nothing in the sky but stars.