Chapter Text
(‘94)
The first year it was a half melted Hershey kiss that he found in his coat pocket and dropped on her desk with a wink. “In case that date of yours forgets Scully.’ He hopes the date forgets, and she rolls her eyes to fill the space where she might have to otherwise lay the truth. There is no date. Post Jersey Devil and Rob, the beige of most men has lost its interest. She admits to herself in the silence after he goes that she wants his tossed away afterthoughts in their small, private darkness, more than she wants candlelight or grand gestures. She eats the candy and thinks that it tastes like possibility.
(‘95)
In a way they have both died this year. She still feels the dull edges of her missing time press on every day and she wonders if, once he is recovered, he will feel the same. There’s a torn red tissue heart on the floor next to the vending machine when she rests her head on it, hoping for clarity with the coolness, with him half a degree from death one room away. When the danger is passed she buys him a card from the kiosk in the lobby, reduced for being past its date. It features a cross-eyed cat and declares “I’d spend all nine of my lives with you”. The look they share wonders how many lives they have used up, whether there are imprints of them lying cold in Pfaster’s closet, in the frigid submarine air, in the places they can’t remember and can’t seem to find a way to talk about. Survival is the best gift they give that year.
(′96)
He comes back, and the sinking weight of him on the end of her couch is the promise she didn’t know she needed. It has been a runaway year and there have been moments where she wondered if she is not his only one, wondered if maybe she needs to find a way to stop him from being hers. Between girls named Bambi and solo expeditions it has felt a little like he is leaving her behind. But he comes back and sits on her couch and they don’t say anything. Silence is their safety blanket and it settles like heavy snow over the cracks of the year, whiting out her questions until they are back on the same page. He brought Chinese food and she brought forgiveness. They both leave satisfied.
(’97)
She can’t smell the white roses over the antiseptic and death creeps into their embrace. St Valentine isn’t even a real saint but she doesn’t think that will stop Mulder from martyring himself. She can still feel Jerse in the muscles of her thighs, in the disturbance of tissues left untouched for too long, now ruffled by passion and brutality and the threat that that night, and that man will be the last to love her the way she wants to be loved. She wishes Mulder’s roses were red, and his kisses too. She wishes he would bloody the pure, hospital white of their love and bruise it into muscle memory, before it’s too late. His lips are dry and so are her cheeks.
(′98)
She wanted to be in Maine. On a mountain. In the tub. Anywhere except back at work, chasing an AI that she isn’t sure she believes in with three stooges on her side and Mulder off somewhere with nightmare makeup and the body of a co-ed. It ends on Valentines day in tragedy, romance with a deathwish and over bad diner coffee Scully ponders what she would do if she were left behind to choose between a world alone or some kind of half-life with Mulder. She smiles bitterly as it occurs to her that perhaps she’s already living it and is surprised to feel Mulder take her hand and squeeze. It isn’t until she looks back down from his hopeful face that she notices the candy heart slid across the table to rest against her coffee cup. It says ‘smile’, and she will not ask for her gift back, however unintentionally it was given.
(′99)
Until today she hadn’t known that she could hate anyone so completely as she does the Cigarette Smoking Man. To throw away two sons, to strip away their sense of safety in the world, their ability to believe in family or goodness or even just wake up knowing who exactly they are… If it weren’t for all the cancer man has done, there would be no Agent Fowley, no conspiracy, no lost sister waiting to step out whenever Mulder found some small peace. But there are all of those things and a small voice in Scully’s head wonders if perhaps she too has become part of Mulder’s personal hell, her sleepwalking feet carrying her into danger and dragging him in yet another direction. If he could be a father, if he could love someone whole and untouched by all this darkness, then perhaps he could forge something new and clean where the light would warm without burning. She will not let Fowley have him, but she decides, standing at 2am before a rack of romance VHS tapes in a convenience store with no name, afraid of her own sleeping mind, that once this is over she won’t let herself have him either. She will give him the freedom nobody else has ever allowed him. The freedom from duty, guilt, and a history so heavy it can never be escaped. She will give him up.
(2000)
She gives him permission to answer her phone at 8am, knowing it is her mother and knowing how much it will mean to him for her to tacitly acknowledge that he is where he belongs. That he belongs to her. In the hazy morning light she threads her fingers int the hairs on his chest and lets his warmth flow into her. He sounds giddy, passing the time of day with her mother and she realises that perhaps being a part of her mess of a family is part of what he wants. He has nobody left and she feels suddenly bad for keeping their secret selfishly to herself. When he’s done she rolls onto him, stretching along him until her bare toes brush his ankles and they are nose to nose. She doesn’t blink when she tells him she loves him and he doesn’t stop kissing her until they are both out of air. Then there is no space for thought and they leave both their families, dead and living, to tangle with the sheets at the foot of their bed. Perhaps Saint Valentine is worth a damn after all, she thinks, trapped in a small slice of heaven with Mulder’s hand counting rosary between her legs. Perhaps Hallmark have a point, she writes on the signature line of his collarbone in teeth marks and tongue swipes. Perhaps love really can find a way, and he’s signing this love note heavy against her, firm strokes leaning into a happy ending as she falls apart beneath him. Perhaps this will last forever, perhaps they can go to sleep and wake again, and make love again and her mother will get the son-in-law she always wanted. There’s a warmth within her that makes it all seem possible, even the things she knows to be impossible. She believes, for now, in love and life and most of all in Mulder, the way he has always believed in her.