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Once, on the phone, with him in the basement office and her 700 miles away, he asked her to marry him.
That wasn’t the first time Fox Mulder asked Dana Scully to marry him, and it wasn’t the last time, either.
The first time he felt like he wanted to keep her for the rest of his life, that very first time, he did not say it. He was lost in her eyes, and the only thing he’d held on to was how she was beaming at him, at him for coming back, for waking up, for being there with her. And his heart screamed MARRY ME but his brain could only groan and say nothing of what he was really feeling.
So instead, Mulder told her that he felt like he got a bad case of freezer burn and dwelled in the world that was made of her smile.
There were many times afterwards when he’d felt it. The intensity of it, the pure intoxication of it. When she’s all about science. When she’s in the middle of arguing with him, calling him crazy. When she smiled and said come on Spooky¸ when she broke down and cried, which was rare, and when she let down her guard and laughed, which was like grace falling upon him.
Mulder was aware, very aware, that he had not even kissed her yet. They had not been partners in every sense, but when holding hands felt like magic, he knew that they would be good together. Still, this feeling was not about lust or physical desire. It was entirely a matter of the heart, and like Bambi’s rabbit friend Thumper, who saw a girl for the first time after winter, Mulder gulped.
Dana Scully was mesmerizing. She possessed the magical powers to turn a fox into a bunny rabbit. Mulder was sure that if she scratched his ear, his toes would wiggle involuntarily like Thumper’s foot thumping the ground.
And that particular time he’d let it slip was when she went on a weekend vacation in Maine, which was an hour away by plane. He called and called and called, wanting her to know that he was missing her. He wasn’t bored; there were many things he could do, but he wanted Scully to think about him. He was worried that a beautiful young woman taking a trip all by herself in a convertible would attract the wrong kind of crowds. It would send the wrong message, that she’s unattached, that she’s available.
But most of all, Mulder wanted to stay in her mind. If he couldn’t be physically there with her, he tried his best to be mentally there. He wanted her to be thinking about him, to be thinking about him all the time, like how he thinks about her all the time.
But the marriage proposal was unplanned. It was unplanned but so genuine. He couldn’t help it, he couldn’t hide it, he couldn’t stop it.
Scully, marry me.
Of course, she thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t.
Years, years later, even after they had been together and truly married, Mulder would still get this feeling of wanting to make Scully his. His wife, his partner for life, his everything.
Fox Mulder wondered if everyone in the world falls in love like the way he fell in love with Dana Scully.