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He was always surprised at just how relaxed Scully could look with a beer in her hand and her feet propped up on a coffee table. He, by all rights, shouldn’t be. After all, he’d seen her in much the same way many times before; after cases, on weekends, on nights when his decoy stack of papers had been thrown aside within minutes, on evenings when she’d called him over with no decoy at all which they had both, naturally, never acknowledged. But it still made him stare for a second too long as he took his seat next to her and clinked his bottle neck to hers.
“To another X-file filed” she said, raising the bottle to her lips.
“To us” he countered, giving her a wink as she looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “What? I’m pretty sure that was record solving time, Scully. If there were some kind of crime solving awards at the end of the year, we’d definitely be shortlisted for that one” Scully rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly at her partner.
“Does it count as ‘solving’ when there was no real case to solve?” Mulder considered it for a moment. Sure, the two hour flight and three hour drive had taken them longer than it had to realise the three ‘disappeared’ teens were just your everyday, run-of-the-mill kids regularly sneaking out of the house to party late into the night (albeit very well). But they had figured it out pretty damn quickly. The kids stricken faces as the agents had spilled the truth to their parents were a picture Mulder wouldn’t be forgetting for a while, especially the “ oh come on, man. We thought you were cool” that one of them had grumbled as he had slouched into the sofa. That had been a definite highlight of the day.
Deciding she was probably right but that she didn’t need to be told so, Mulder shrugged.
“Doesn’t really matter. We’re one hell of a mystery solving team and that you can’t deny”
“Eat your heart out, Scooby and co.” Scully smiled, clinking her bottle against his again. The pair of them sat in her dimly lit living room in silence for a moment, sipping on their beers and taking in the relaxation that only comes on a Friday when work is finished and a weekend with no plans awaits.
“God, I wonder what little Scully would think if someone told her that one day her life would come down to being the better half of a mystery solving duo.” Her statement and small laugh which followed it hung in the air for a moment. Mulder dropped his head lazily to the back of the sofa and rolled it to one side to look at her.
“You mean little Dana” he corrected, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. Scully quirked an eyebrow at him and mirrored his actions, dropping her head against the back of the sofa.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Little Dana.” The words sounded foreign on her tongue and she wondered when was the last time she had thought of herself as Dana. She wondered when she had stopped. She was, of course, still Dana. It was Dana her mother phones, Dana the librarian recommended books to and Dana who occasionally - very occasionally - got asked out by men at bars. But it was Scully who declined them.
She remembered the first time she had stated her name as Scully. At work, she had become known as Scully before she really had the opportunity to do anything about it. She was part of ‘Mulder and Scully’ before she even had the chance to learn the names of the people addressing her, but the day someone said “ what’s you’re name?” and she had, without hesitation, replied “Scully” was another matter. She’d been at the market of all places, picking through vegetables. She was making dinner for Melissa that evening and had decided to try her hand at cooking something other than pasta. It was sure to go wrong and Melissa was sure to tell her just how god-awful it was before they gave up and ordered take out, but who knows. Maybe it would go right. It probably wasn’t a great idea though, because her journal had taken longer than she had first anticipated and she was now running way too late for her own liking. As she caught the attention of the stallholder to pay, a handsome man beside her had tapped her on the shoulder and smiled down at her.
“Excuse me, Miss. I think you dropped this” he had told her, holding out her purse.
“Oh, god. Thank you!” she had gushed, unsure as to how the item had managed to fall out of her handbag without her noticing.
“My pleasure,” he had paused, appraised her, and cocked his head to one side. “May I ask your name?”
“Scully” she had said, preoccupied with juggling the change she was trying to force back into her purse and the paper bag she now had nestled in the crook of her arm. She had stopped momentarily and frowned as she realised what she had said. The thought had occurred to her at the time that this was probably a pivotal moment for her. Something had shifted but she didn’t have time to consider if that was a good or bad thing.
“Scully?” the man laughed. “Unusual name.” She grumbled as her handbag slipped down her arm uncomfortably and she tried to shrug it back up, a task made hard by her full hands.
“Yeah well, that’s what they call me” she had mumbled. The man chuckled softly at her and reached out to hitch the bag back onto her shoulder. Scully looked at him and rearranging her arms more comfortably around the bag of vegetables.
“Thank you” she sighed and had given him an apologetic smile.
“So, Scully,” he emphasised her name and she had realised she didn’t think she liked the way it sounded from his mouth, “is there any chance you would like to go for a coffee some time?”
She had politely declined and had thought little more about the man, the overwhelming memory of the encounter being how she had so naturally told him her name-which-wasn’t-quite-her-name. She hadn’t been quite sure how she felt about what had happened but had let it go and before long, she was used to the curious head quirks, questioning frowns and what-a-strange-name’ s .
But now, sat here with Mulder, she wondered what little Dana would have made of her.
“What was little Dana like?” Mulder asked and then quickly changed his mind. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he turned his body towards Scully and curled one leg up underneath him. “No, scrap that. What was teenage Dana like? I bet she was interesting” he coaxed, his head propped up on one hand against the back of the sofa. Scully laughed and shook her head, raising her beer to her lips.
“Oh, she wasn’t, believe me,” but Mulder wasn’t put off so easily.
“No, go on. What was 18 year old Dana like? Don’t tell me she stayed up all night reading journals and sipping on tea” he sounded almost disappointed at the picture he was painting. Scully gave a snort of laughter and raised an eyebrow. After a short pause where she contemplated if she should tell him or not, she said,
“Not quite, no.” Mulder’s face lit up.
“Ohhhh the plot thickens. Come on, Scully. You know all about me when I was younger. I know nothing about that little red head. Give a man a break. Fair is fair.” Scully looked over to him.
“That’s not true. I know about pre-teen Mulder, not ‘Mulder: the crazy years’.”
“Yeah, well anything you wanna know is yours. Just tell me. What did 18-year-old-Scully do for kicks?” he sat up straight now, his interest well and truly piqued. Scully rolled her eyes but seemed to accept that she was not getting away from this conversation. In the lazy Friday evening light, she pondered how hard she was really willing to try, and decided the battle wasn’t worth it. So she rose to her feet and made her way to the kitchen to grab two more beers.
“She did whatever she damn well wanted,” she confessed, “and didn’t really give a shit about the repercussions.” Mulder looked scandalised as she flopped back down to the sofa and handed him his second beer. Scully felt a smile of satisfaction tug at her lips. He definitely wasn’t expecting that.
“Well I’ll drink to that” he said, lifting his beer towards her. Instead of hitting the necks together, Scully tapped the bottom of her glass against the rim of his, causing his beer to immediately foam and froth. Mulder yelped and quickly brought the neck to his mouth in an attempt to stop the beer going all over himself and her sofa. She laughed loudly at his panicked actions and his muffled yelps as his mouth filled with beer foam. Shaking off the beer that had escaped over his fingers holding the glass and then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Mulder frowned at his laughing friend.
“Scullllly” he grumbled. She simply continued to laugh and curled up on her end of the sofa, turning her body to face him.
“So. Teenage Dana. Let me see... I don’t know, Mulder. At that point I think I was just sick of working so hard. I’d always done what I was told and I didn’t want to anymore. Melissa was a bad influence on me, I think. She was always the one who snuck out at night and came back with outrageous stories I pretended to be disapproving of. And then when I turned 18 I just…I didn’t want to miss out any more” she shrugged.
“And what did you define ‘missing out’ as?” he asked, intrigued at the idea of a teenage Scully finding out what it was like to break the rules.
“Melissa new some older guys and she brought me with her to a couple of house parties. I remember one, she dressed me up and did my makeup. I had on this tiny little leather mini skirt and bright red lipstick. I must have looked like a hooker,” she laughed at the memory, “but it was the first time I felt I had more to offer than knowledge and facts. Melissa was always the one with the looks and the dates and that was the first night I felt like maybe that could be me too. I felt so reckless” she told him wistfully. Mulder smiled at the thought of a young Scully being hit on by older guys. It was hard to reconcile the idea of his tightly buttoned up partner with the red lipped, tight skirted younger self she had described, but he knew that 18-year-old-Mulder would definitely have hit on her. Jesus.
“I thought you weren’t big on being appreciated for your looks?” he asked. Scully shrugged and sipped her beer.
“I’m not. But there’s a difference between feeling like you’re solely being appreciated for your looks and realising that you don’t look half-bad, you know?” Mulder thought he understood.
“So young Scully -”
“Young Dana” she corrected.
“Right. Young Dana went out and partied deep into the night? Sex, drugs and rock and roll?” he teased. Scully laughed.
“Little bit of rock and roll, a little more drugs, and a lot more sex” she confessed, watching him as she brought the bottle to her lips again and took a long swig. Mulder looked at her expressionless and then shook his head and blinked.
“You’re killing me here, Scully” he told her eventually, and she laughed loudly, her head tipping back slightly. He rarely saw her laugh like that and he took a moment to appreciate that he had caused it.
“Mhmmm. I’m sure I am. All I’m saying, Young Dana ” - she emphasised the name and he nodded in approval - “had some times when she didn’t want to do what she was told anymore. The whole rebellion thing wore off pretty quickly, but I guess I learnt that sometimes it’s okay to bend rules a little bit. They don’t need to be followed to the letter all the time. She taught me that.” Scully shrugged and Mulder nodded in understanding.
“Well I guess I have a lot to thank her for. Seems she’s responsible for the little white lies on our reports, huh?” Scully nodded.
“Guess so.” A moment of quiet fell between them as they looked at each other. Scully became aware that the air seemed thicker and she wondered if that was because of something she had said. Perhaps she had overshared a little and telling Mulder about her misspent youth had crossed some kind of invisible line. She scolded herself lightly. Usually she was so good at keeping track of those damned invisible lines. Although there was so many of them, no one could blame her for losing track of one or two every now and then. Before she could say anything to try and break the weird tension, Mulder spoke.
“So what do you think it would take to draw this wild Scully back out?” he asked, his tongue flicking quickly over his lip in a way which was remarkably similar to his nervous habit. Scully laughed.
“I think we’ve seen the last of her” she confessed. Mulder hummed contemplatively.
“That’s a shame.” He placed his bottle on the table next to his first and then leant back against the sofa once more, looking her over. “She sounded pretty interesting.” Scully held one hand up to her heart in mock-hurt.
“Are you saying that you don’t think I’m interesting, Agent Mulder?” she gasped, the smile at the edge of her lips telling him she wasn’t wounded in the slightest. Mulder laughed and shook his head. Then the smile dropped from his mouth and his eyes traced her features intensely. In the momentary silence, she found herself thinking that pesky thick-aired tension was back again. Mulder shook his head slightly and gave her a soft smile which made her heart perform an acrobatic trick.
“No, Scully,” he paused and he studied her face once more, ran over the eyes which were staring up at him through their lashes and her slightly parted lips. The smile had fallen as she took in the serious tone of his voice.
“I think you’re incredibly interesting.”
fin.