Chapter Text
“You’re beautiful, you know that?“
"Mulder, you’re drunk.” But she smiles, smile painted orange by the setting sun, and she swings their joined hands between them.
“I’m not. And you are. You are beautiful.” He touches the tip of her nose on an impulse.
She rolls her eyes a little, but she doesn’t stop smiling. He hasn’t seen her this happy since her mother.
“So,” he starts. “Are you ever going to ask the question you came here to ask me?” It’s been several hours. She is good at procrastinating.
“What makes you think I came here with a question?” she teases.
“I know you, Scully. You were driving with a purpose.”
“You’re just incredibly distracting,” she says.
There is silence for a moment, the crickets serving as a background. He’s expecting a do you want to give us another try, can I move back in, but definitely not a “will you marry me”. “Scully!” he says in surprise.
“Mulder,” she prompts him. “You asked. Eighteen years ago. Would you have preferred I brought a ring?” Her free hand slips into her pocket.
“No! I-I just… you surprised me.” He can still remember the day she left, bags on the porch. He’d asked her not to.
She seems to deflate a little. “You don’t have to say yes,” she says. “It seems a little… unconventional in our situation.” She pulls her hand out of his.
“No, wait, Scully, wait.” He grabs it again.
She turns her eyes up to meet his, burning blue eyes in the night. “You’re… all I have left now, Mulder.” Names are left unsaid between them, but they all register in his brain, like a knife. “I think my leaving was for the best, but I’m ready to come back. You’re my family, Mulder.”
He squeezes her hand tightly.
“But we don’t have to get married to make that official,” she adds. “It was just a thought.”
He kisses her, any echoes of trumpets flying free of his brain. “Of course,” he says. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
She smiles quickly and widely, ducking her head, and slips something over his finger. “So you did get a ring,” he says teasingly.
“It was my father’s,” she says. “Bill gave it to me after the funeral.”
He pulls her against him, heart swelling up. “I’ll get you one,” he promises.
He strokes her hair a little as the last of daylight fades away. He could spend time musing on decades wasted, but there are decades to come. And it seems to him that Scully will be a part of them.
“Oh, yeah,” she says lazily, happily. “I guess I am gonna be Mrs. Spooky now.”