(no subject)
TITLE: Homecoming
AUTHOR: Frey
RATING: PG
CATEGORY: V, MSR
SPOILERS: post-Amor Fati; FtF, a few other small references
SUMMARY: It is Halloween, and raining. October 31, 1999.
October 31, 1999
Washington, DC
It is Halloween, and raining.
"Mom," Scully warns.
"Honey, I think it would be good for you. You haven't seen your brother since Matthew was born."
"I do-- I plan on coming over, Mom, but I can't tonight."
"Tell Fox he can come. Is that the problem, Dana?"
Scully's knee hits the table a little too forcefully as she turns to grab her book from the table. "That's not the problem." She winces. Too firm.
"Listen, I have to finish up some case work tonight, because Mulder's booked us an 8:00 flight."
"Tomorrow morning?" Her mother's voice is more subdued, and Scully is pinched by guilt.
"Yes. I'm sorry, Mom. He's been pent-up and restless for days, ever since the hospital released him." She pauses. "And I'm not altogether sure they should have."
"Well, Bill will be here for four more days. I really do wish you were able to stop by, Dana. Matthew is a bumblebee this year-- he's going trick-or-treating around the living room!" Maggie's voice has warmed again, and Scully wants to put down the phone. Yes, Mom, I heard about Matthew already. Yes, my nephew is adorable. She wonders when she stopped being able to enjoy conversation without smatterings of the paranormal. Or maybe she just can't enjoy it without Mulder.
"Mom, I've really got to go." Scully can hear her mother sigh. "Say hello to Bill and Tara for me, all right? We'll be back before they leave again."
"Have a good trip, honey."
She's already hung up the phone before she remembers that most normal people say goodbye first.
- - - - - - - -
The car is full of his energy, and she can almost smell it as he slings her bag into the back seat, wedges it snug next to his.
"An hour!" he says, already behind the wheel. She chances a look back at her apartment window before facing the passenger door, where Mulder is opening it for her from the inside, clearing his sunflower seed packets from her seat. He gets out of the way just in time, and as they buckle their seatbelts, they are careful not to touch.
- - - - - - - -
She watches him in the line outside the loading gate, as he struggles with his carry-on and can't seem to stop fidgeting. He stumbles into the side of a chair and steadies himself with one hand, but she can see him trembling from three yards away.
Suddenly fearful, she hurries him on board and sits him down, crouches before him so she can check his head. The stitches have held, but his forehead is shiny with sweat. He looks up into her face, dazed.
"I shouldn't have agreed to this," Scully mutters, raking her hand backwards through his hair to hold his head to her shoulder.
He looks like a startled rabbit for a split second as he jerks away, and Scully lets the full realization of his reaction wash over her. She is on a plane with Mulder, and she isn't actually here to work. They're traveling together as freely and openly as any two unrelated, uninvolved adults who, on several separate occasions, have flung themselves to the far ends of the earth simply in order to keep on loving each other.
Scully has never felt more possessive of anyone in her life as she does at this moment.
"I'll be fine," interrupts Mulder, putting his head back against the headrest as she sits down in the seat beside him.
Yes; Scully is very glad she didn't tell her mother they weren't exactly, officially, on case, in the strictest of terms.
- - - - - - - -
He'd called her yesterday afternoon, after she'd given him his twice daily checkup and left his apartment. "Sleep, Mulder," she commanded, suspecting somewhat guiltily that if she didn't know for certain that he was resting, she might have to check him just one more time.
"Dana Scully," she intoned, as she caught it on the third ring.
"Scully," he replied, so softly it embarassed her. Three days ago she felt she might have kissed him, right there in his hallway, the sum of a wager he'd made a year ago. Loss here, gain there, Antarctica and Africa and a blizzard of cows between them, and they stood before each other like they'd never stepped away.
"Mulder? You're supposed to be asleep."
"I am asleep."
"Mmhmm. Why are you calling? -- Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I'm okay. I was calling because the Gunmen just stopped by with something."
She almost rolled her eyes. "Mulder, no. You're still recovering. The Bureau isn't going to let you work anything in this condition, let alone something from the guys."
"Because you delivered your medical opinion so willingly."
"My medical opinion has saved your ass for too many years for you to be complaining, partner."
"Oh, I'm not complaining." His tone left a settled, awkward silence between them again. She could hear Mulder shift on his bed. "Listen, Scully. ... We've had a rough couple of weeks."
Oh, my God, she thought dully. He's telling me it was all an emotional buzz. We've been on our post-near-death-experience high again, and he's trying to let me off easy.
"And, now I've got this open slot. Of time. And a paycheck and the federal treasury. And the Bureau will assume we're doing same old, same old, and Skinner's got enough on his plate trying to clean up the fact that for approximately a week and a half I was the smartest man alive. You want-- do you want to come with me to Washington? State?"
"Oh," she said aloud. She actually flushed with relief.
- - - - - - - -
Arrival in Seattle is wet but oddly clear. The sky is grey and green watercolor, and coming off the ramp in the airport rental garage, Mulder sucks in air loudly, wheels his arms wide.
"So, Mulder. What do you want for your birthday?" she calls to him on a whim.
"My birthday happened already, Scully! I'm almost eleven months away from forty!"
"But I didn't get you anything."
Their bags are stowed right where they started out, in the rear seat of a silver Lariat rental. Mulder bounds back from the car and catches her hand just as the sky breaks loose and rain blankets them from all other sound. "This isn't something?"
- - - - - - - -
As he mercilessly scrubs his hair with a motel towel, Scully takes it from him.
Mulder is perched on the bathroom counter, his legs wide, dripping rainwater from head to toe. Magically, she finds herself between his knees towelling his hair ever so carefully, the curve of the back of his head to the nape of his neck, gently rubbing up through his temples to the crown of his head, where she finds once again the scars. They feel almost fresh enough to bleed, under her fingers.
She's too near to be able to look him in the eye, and he's nosing at her hair where it's tucked behind her ear. Breathless, she can't believe how close she came to losing him, how much merely seeing and hearing him has become who she is. He rubs his jaw along hers deliberately, with his late afternoon shadow. They don't kiss.
She can't believe she didn't kiss him.
- - - - - - - -
In her own bed, alone, that night, she pretends she's talking to him, because she can't trust herself to go into his room and wake him. I know now, she smiles in the darkness. I know what the words in the hallway really mean, apart from how I need you in my mind. You saved me, my touchstone; you are my family.
-End-