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"And next time," she said, sighing softly before standing up. "We meet out in the open." She rested her hand on the top of his head, ever so briefly, ever so kindly, and Mulder opened his eyes on the exact same second. Because while they might touch each other all the time out of reflex, when one of them does it intentionally, it feels different. She ruffled his hair a little bit, but it lasted less than a second, and he was left wondering if it ever really happened.
He wanted more of her.
He needed more of her.
When Skinner told him they were going to shut down the X-Files, Mulder's first thought hadn't even been about the X-Files at all. His first thought was "Scully," followed by "What am I going to do without her?"
He thought back to the day when she entered his basement for the first time: welcoming smile, conventional wisdom and very strong opinions. He liked her. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he liked her from that very first moment. In fact, everything he had vowed himself not to feel when it came to her, he ended up feeling anyway. She had been assigned to debunk his work, so he didn't want to trust her. He did anyway. She knocked on his motel room: vulnerable, open, trusting him; and all his walls came crashing down. And not only did he trust her, he also told her his whole life story. He talked about Samantha. He took her to dig graves, and he laughed with her under the pouring rain.
Scully was worried about him, he knew that. Hell, he was worried, too. But past the layers of doubt and the pixels of self-hatred, what made Mulder take the next step was her. Always her. Or, more specifically, the look on her face, one he could see so painfully clearly, even in that darkened parking garage. She had looked at him like that a few times over the past year, but never with so much tenderness, or so much fear. And he might not know for sure what her fears were, but he did have an idea. Because she had reached for him with a sad, albeit genuine, lovingly smile; open-minded, and very much protective.
And he missed her.
So when Mulder heard the click of her heels taking her away, he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut. He shook his head, and with an impulsive recklessness, he got up and said:
"Scully."
Her name, whispered in the dark; his desperate call for help.
She turned around, and he was close now, so, so close. But he didn't know what to say. I'm thinking about leaving the Bureau. I want us to go rogue. I can't sleep at night and I had to stop myself from calling you every night in the last month. I miss you. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Miss us.
But this was Dana Scully, the partner he never knew he needed until he had her, the other part of the team, the missing half. The one that looked into his eyes and saw all of his unspoken words.
"I…" He began to say.
But he didn't need to. Not with her.
She sighed. "Oh, Mulder." And took a step forward, closing the distance between them and wrapping her tiny little arms around his large form.
His hands found her with a force he didn't even know he still had in him, as he pulled her closer and embraced her, burying his face in the space where her neck met her shoulder, breathing her in. She rocked back on her heels, unaccustomed with having his weight being thrown at her like this.
He sighed into her skin, taking deep gulps of air, faster than his lungs seemed capable to endure. His chest was slamming against her as his coat engulfed her body; and it hurt her, too, that he needed to breathe her this deeply to keep himself from losing his mind.
He loved her.
Mulder didn't know how much or to what extent, but, in that moment, he knew he loved her, and he knew his feelings ran deeper than he was willing to admit, deeper than just friendship or partnership. And as he felt her hands gripping him just as fiercely, her arms circling his waist and her fingers squeezing the shirt he was wearing underneath his coat, he knew that this hug was for her, too.
He needed to re-find his faith in her touch. But she needed to re-find him, too, so she could make sure he wasn't slipping away as it seemed to be happening ever since they shut down the X-Files. She had left a part of her in that basement when they closed that door, just like him; and he had stuffed some of her pieces in his pockets, just like she had taken a little bit of him in hers. And, somewhere along the way, his darkness had begun to swallow her.
"I missed you, too," she whispered, and he squeezed her tighter. She gripped him back under his coat. She felt like comfort and safety. She felt like Scully.
And no matter how many times he had told himself to push her away, he knows now he will never be able to. He's selfish that way. He needs her that way. So he won't force her to meet him again covertly if she doesn't want to. She had risked her career for him in the past, when she sat in a rented car and shared liverwurst and iced tea with him, when she chose to take his side.
"I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you," she had told him once.
And he could do that, too.
Because he might be paranoid to the point he felt the need to double-check his tracks whenever he crossed the street, but when he held her in that parking garage, he got his strength back, even if for just a second. He pressed their bodies closer, steadying them, grounding them. He was going to find himself again, his way back to the moon. But he was going to take her with him, because he couldn't, wouldn't, let her go, not when she felt this good in his arms.
He breathed her in one last time, inhaling and exhaling the air she had brought back to his lungs. "So, next time," he said at last, pulling himself back to look at her watery eyes and rosy cheeks. "We meet out in the open." And he smiled, light and chipper because he wanted her chest to feel softer, too. "'Kay?"
She nodded, smiling back. "You're not going to find little green men here, anyway," she said, playfully. Her voice was a bit constricted now, but he knew she was going to be alright. They both were.
"No, not here in the dark," he agreed, touching her face tentatively, with a shyness that seemed so out of place given how hard he had hugged her just now. He fixed a strand of hair that had gotten stuck on her cheek; and she reached out to take his hand on hers.
No, no little green men, he repeated to himself; and his inner voice sounded a lot like hers.
He smiled.
Just you.