Chapter Text
D.C., Maryland, Virginia (DMV), 1999
"Scully!"
"Mulder!"
It was too early in the morning for his antics but fortunately for him, she was well caffeinated and in a good enough of a mood. And with Mulder cocked back in his chair, feet on the desk, and toothpick in his stupid mouth with his stupid grin, she was in affable enough mood to figure out what had him so excited on this fine Monday.
Although. If it was a trip to a forest, she was absolutely going to turn it down for a couple of vacation days and some time at the spa.
Her and Mulder had very bad luck with forests. Historically awful. The last time they had been in one together, a giant mushroom had tried to eat them.
Yep. Mulder and Scully had almost been consumed by bugs, consumed by mothmen, consumed by mushrooms... If she never saw another forest in her life, she'd be a-okay. And that was coming from a little girl that had grown up in the outdoors. Scully was still fine on the water with her Navy father and Navy brother, but Mulder got seasick and also routinely got shipwrecked. It was starting to quickly look like if she wanted to be his partner and they both wanted to stay alive, they were going to have to be a little more metropolitan.
Although-
"I think I've got us a case." Her thoughts were broken up by her partner.
Scully sighed, already exhausted.
It was Monday, for Christ's sake.
But it was Mulder. So she shrugged her coat off and went over to his desk and took a seat.
"I still haven't finished the report on the magic mushroom trip we took, Mulder. And we both still look like ass and probably feel the same way."
Mulder's eyebrows raised. "Look like ass? When did you time travel back to high school, Scully?"
"About the same time I time traveled to your funeral while tripping on mushrooms."
His smile faded and Scully felt a modicum of guilt. It really wasn't his fault she'd stayed on the X-files. She'd fought for it after all. But then again he'd ran her down in the hallway when said she was going to quit and then-
"Scully, is that what I think it is?"
He was looking down at her hand and his smile was slowly returning.
She sighed. Her humiliation ritual continuing. "It is what you think it is, Mulder."
In her hand was a folder. It had not been labeled yet.
"It is my completed report from the events of last week. Or. Month, year. Or, whatever. I still need to wrap up the little field trip we took, but I felt this one was more pressing, and I'm still waiting on the investigation back from university looking into the fungus, so that one will have to wait."
She placed it on his desk.
It was rare that Scully actually labeled an X-file. She did most of the reports with input from Mulder, but was rarely the one to classify a case. For her to say a case garnered the treatment of an X-file, it had to mean that she really believed something had happened.
His smile slowly disappeared as he read through the cover page of the report. "You don't think it happened."
Scully sighed. "Mulder, what I think is we both went back to work too soon after being on Brown Mountain."
He gave her the look that said he could kill her if he wanted to. He stood up and began his ritualistic pacing.
"You were there, Scully. I was there."
"Were we, Mulder? I was at your wake. You had an alien in your bedroom. It's been two weeks since we got back to work and you want me to believe that we time traveled and met a bunch of rogue outlaws in 1899?"
"Francis Sinclair-"
"Is a nutjob."
"Yeah well," Mulder huffed. "Then so am I."
And that took the wind out of Scully's sails, because Mulder was, in fact, not a nutjob. And everyone thought he was. Everyone except for her.
Maybe that made her the nutjob.
But she also knew how to tame the wild dog in Mulder and was generally successful at it. In fact, she had anticipated this discussion and his irritancy at her. "C'mon, cowboy. Let's take a day."
At some point along the lines, Assistant Director Walter Skinner had starting letting his two wayward agents "take a day." He didn't ask, they offered no answers. It mainly had to do with the fact the former Marine had almost died, more than once, and he understood the toll it took.
Mulder and Scully had four bullet wounds, a possible alien abduction, several hostage scenarios, and a near death experience in both Texas and Antarctica in the same month between them. Aside from all the other shit they'd been through, they still managed to almost always get the bad guy, and with Scully editing the reporting, their solve rate was sky-high compared to other units. Much to Skinner's dismay, she assumed, they were his most productive agents. On cases where someone didn't end up dead (a unfortunately disturbing amount of the time), they were almost always locked up and the conviction rate remained high.
They worked through weekends and rarely burned off leave. They worked coast to coast, country to country. continent to continent.
Hell. Mulder spent days in a Russian gulag.
He also, by now, assumed that if he headed down to the X-files office, if neither were there, they were almost certainly together. If he needed them, his first call was always to Scully, and depending on the time of day, was always the same question - "How much wine, or whatever, have you all had?" Depending on the answer, that's when he would book their flights out.
They were lucky, in so many ways, that Skinner had turned out to be the man they hoped he was. All to say, that Skinner let them "take a day," and never questioned it. Scully wasn't sure what he did with their vacation days and paperwork, but somehow, he made it happen.
Mulder sighed and nodded. And that told her it was, indeed, a good day to "take a day."
They drove down to Bolling Air Force Base, which even without military I.D. they were able to access with her dependent status from her father and their federal credentials. Scully slung a hefty enough bag around her shoulders and parked near the waterfront where they walked to one of the gazebos there and sat. She hadn't taken Mulder on this base before - and to be honest it might have been the first time Mulder had been on a military base he hadn't broken into.
Across the Potomac River from them was Washington D.C.'s Reagan Airport.
"Didn't realize you could see the runway from here..."
"Mmmhmm." Scully looked around, and seeing no one, dug in her bag, producing a bottle of champagne and a small carton of orange juice.
"Scully!"
The amusement was high in his voice and she had to smile, grabbing two mugs out of her bag and pouring their impromptu mimosas.
Mulder took a swig of his and turned to her, "Gotta say, you're breaking more than one rule right now, especially on a military base."
At that, she grinned. He knew her so well and still didn't know her at all. Much like she suspected she knew him.
"Mulder, if you think this is the first time I've drank on a military base, you're sorely mistaken."
She could see the tension starting to drain from him, especially after the first sip. And she would never get tired of the look he got when he watched planes take off.
Her earthbound partner, always so fascinated with the sky.
From their place on the waterfront, they could hear the engines throttle up. Watch the plane as it went to rotation. And, because of the weather which was clear but a little windy, they flew right over the base.
"I used to do this all the time, you know? With my Mom."
She looked over at him. "What?"
"Watch the planes take off. She'd take me and Samantha to the airport when Dad was flying out somewhere and we'd just sit there and watch them go."
Scully looked back over at the airport and sighed, and, then decided to do what had been slowly becoming more common between them. She reached out, slid her right hand from his elbow and down his forearm and clinched at his hand.
He smiled and looked over her way. "It wasn't all bad, Scully. Some things were good." His smile did fade though. "Scully, you really don't believe what happened? With the tesseract? With Francis Sinclair?"
Her sigh was heavy. Because if she did believe, it meant that even holding his hand right now meant a lot more than it had a month ago. She didn't look at him until he pulled her hand up, put his lips on her skin, rested their hands back down.
If felt natural. It felt like they had been doing this forever. This dance.
"Mulder, we've experienced this shared state before. Recently. If what happened was real, then why don't we have any effects? We were burned from the mushrooms at Brown Mountain. It didn't matter that we were in an alternate reality. We suffered real life effects."
He nodded and bit his lip. And then took a deep breath and her anxiety increased. This was the look of a Mulder that...
"There is something I haven't told you, Scully."
And the roar of the airplane going over their head almost downed out the dissonance in her brain. Until he pulled up his shirt. And there it was. The bullet wound. Right through his side. Right where she stitched him up, in 1899.
It occurred to her oddly, first, that she hadn't seen him without his shirt for a long time.
It occurred to her, second, that maybe a long time meant one hundred years ago. Which meant.
"Is this what I think it is?"
Mulder nodded and Scully looked across the river as another plane revved its engines up.
Well, shit. She didn't know what to say about that.