Today Is Your Birthday
Nothing further was said, either of the movie or the uncertainty of their future.
Skinner signed off the the credit card expense without comment and refused to discuss the movie further. Scully did note, with more relief than she cared to admit, that the film tanked, horribly. Within a month it was gone from the theaters, and she had to admit she did take a vicious delight in the way the movie was skewered by critics, who claimed universally that if The Lazarus Bowl was remembered at all, it would be in the same vein as Troll 2 or any number of Ed Wood movies, hilarious in its absurd awfulness.
That didn’t make Mulder feel better, but he at least grumbled quietly to himself. In truth, his mood had been gloomy since their return from Los Angeles. Any and all questions on Scully’s part regarding whether he felt all right or not were meant with flat responses of “fine” and an irritated roll of his eyes. Since Mulder considered modern medicine simple a step above medieval torture, Scully left it, but watched with worry and wondered if their discussion that last morning in LA had perhaps left him as unsettled as she.
As September slid quietly and uneventfully into October, Mulder’s mood improved somewhat. His beloved Yankees were in the playoffs, and their few evenings together were marked by Mulder’s eyes being glued to the television set whenever they were on. As his birthday approached, Scully made a few discreet inquiries to old friends of her father’s, ex-Navy who remembered well Admiral Scully’s little girl, and were happy to provide her with last minute tickets near home plate. The twelve-year-old glee on Mulder’s face as she passed them over to him at dinner on his birthday was worth the mild teasing of old men who despaired that their old captain’s daughter was all grown up.
They took the train up from DC to New York, more slow, but less stress. Scully watched the red-and-gold leaves whiz past the window, houses and cars a blur as the train barrelled through Maryland and Pennsylvania, leaving her slightly green around the gills. In truth, much to her chagrin, she hadn’t been feeling well that day, waking feeling unsettled and nervous, the begins of a mild headache marring what should have been a blissful, fun event, a rare “normal” activity for them. Even Mulder had noticed.
“Feeling okay?” He watched her with mild worry, cool fingers reaching under her hair to passage the pressure points on the back of her skull. Scully groaned, humming as she felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders relax, the ringing feeling in her sinus lessening.
“Mmmm, better now,” she sighed, leaning into his touch as he worked. “I should be the one spoiling you.”
“What, home plate tickets to a Yankee’s playoff game isn’t spoiling me?”
“It’s your birthday,” she offered weakly, but didn’t stop him in his ministrations.
“Funny, I have one of those every year,” he chuckled, causing her to smirk, despite the fact her eyes were closed.
“You know what I mean, Mulder. How often do I get to do something nice for you?”
“I don’t know, last night you were pretty nice,” he purred above her ear. She shivered but still manage to sigh in mild annoyance.
“Is that all you think about?”
“Well, I am male and alive, yeah.”
Scully had long ago given up on Mulder and his tendency to use sexual innuendo as a deflection tool and decided simply to find a new trajectory of attack. “People who care for each other make big deals out of their birthdays.”
“I am not disputing this.” He released her neck, allowing her to twist and turn it as vertebrae popped pleasurably. Now free, she chose to slide into his side then, his arm wrapping around her shoulder as she snuggled into leather jacket.
“Why don’t you want me doing something nice for you,” she pressed when she was settled, feeling the deep seated need to keep pushing the issue.
“I didn’t say I didn’t.”
“But it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“Scully, I usually try to pretend my birthday doesn’t exist.”
This was true. Their first year together as partners he had managed to evade it completely. It was only at her persistence that it ever got celebrated at all.
“I know,” she sighed, saddened by the idea he never like to commemorate something as momentous as his existence. “I wish you would.”
He squeezed her shoulder appreciatively. “Thank you for caring.”
They fell into silence then, the hum and clack of the train on the rails the only sound. Why it was so important for Scully that Mulder recognize his importance, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was “what ifs” still racing through her brain, the questions regarding their own future, of where they were going, of when their work would come to its end, if it would come to an end, and when. She had that deep seated need to reassure him that she was there, that she appreciated him, that at the end of all this, he mattered to her.
“You know,” he murmured into the stillness. “I have to admit I wasn’t so thrilled with turning 39.”
She smiled softly at that. “Worried you’re turning into an old man?”
He snorted. “Watch who you call old man.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m well aware of your virility and vitality.”
He snorted again, but didn’t respond. Scully waited him out, listening to the faint beat of his heart in his chest through the layers of leather and cotton. She too had played this game over several birthdays, as irrational as it was, that regret that another year had passed and what was there to show for it.
“I guess I had hoped that I’d be further along in life than I am,” he admitted quietly as the train slowed at another station. She could feel his head turn to look out of the window. “You look at your life and realize everything is passing you by and you ask what you have accomplished.”
Normally, she would laugh off his maudlin thoughts, point out the ways in which he had succeeded, big and small, in his time in the X-files, for all that the truth still remained elusively out of their grasp. But she said nothing now. Mulder had never been one to slow down, to stop and consider life, preferring to focus on the far off an ephemeral future where everything would be answered and all truths were known. For years she had asked him to stop. For once, he actually seemed to be, and a nugget of hope that perhaps, maybe, he really was considering just what an end for him, for all of this, would look like.
“Thirty-nine-years-old,” he muttered, as if he couldn’t believe it. “My professional life is a bust, has been for years. My family is all gone now. I’m alone. I’ve left nothing in my wake, no lasting legacy, just a basement room filled with cases no one cares about and would rather I would forget, and a list of government officials who would like to nail my ass to their wall as a trophy. My name is a laughing stock in the Bureau, and when it does come up it’s used as a watchword for the dangers of rising too far too fast. I’ve wasted so much of my life...on what? Just to find out the truth I had been searching for all these years was that my entire existence was a web of lies, spun by others who wanted to use me for whatever agenda they had, and that the one thing I wanted most of all was gone before I even began looking for it. In the end, I am left asking myself, what the hell have you done? And now…”
He drifted, his arm tightening around her as she turned her cheek up to look at him, to see the sadness and regret that etched his face with grief. He had lost so much, she sometimes forgot that, the true depth of everything that was taken away from him. But there was one thing he had always possessed, had an abundance of, even when she didn’t.
“You’ve always had hope,” she murmured, causing him to look down at her, his expression quizzical and guarded. “When things were at their bleakest, you always had hope that the truth would win out.”
“I did,” he admitted, nodding, but taking no comfort in her words. “But what good is hope when it’s time that is working against you.”
“Time?” She laughed, wondering what brought on this fit of dramatics. “Mulder, thirty-nine isn’t the end of the world. You aren’t even technically in middle age. You have decades yet, if you don’t get yourself blown up, shot, or infected with yet another alien virus.”
As his unofficial physician she was being flippant, knowing all too well his lengthy medical history and having had to nurse him through years of medical visits and job-related threats to his life. It was a joke now between them. But he didn’t seem to be laughing.
“You planning on doing any of those things?” She prodded his middle playfully. He blinked, wiggling slightly from her assaulting digit, but at least he graced her with something of a smile.”
“No, I don’t plan to die of any of those things.”
“Well, then, I think you are being far too fatalistic.” She flashed him a brilliant grin as she attempted to sit up. “And it’s your birthday, Mulder. You’re alive, you’re here, and you are going to see your Yankees crush...whoever it is they are playing.”
This did earn an honest to goodness laugh out of him. “You don’t even know who they are playing?”
“Of course I do, another baseball team,” she sniffed, stretching as she did. The action was simple enough. But the train lurched as it began to leave it’s station, picking up speed again, and she swayed with the motion, her head swimming in a most unpleasant way, causing the world outside their window to spin in a way she was certain it wasn’t supposed to. She closed her eyes as they began to cross.
“Ugh,” she muttered, collapsing against Mulder again, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I’ve not had motion sickness like this since I was a kid.”
“I never knew you got motion sickness.” Mulder was sympathetic as he reached up to stroke her head.
“Oh, only when I tried to read in the car, or when we drove through someplace with a lot of curves.” She shuddered, the hint of nausea that threatened finally passing. “Seriously, though, I thought I’d outgrown that once I’d gotten proper glasses.”
“Trains can mess you up, all the stopping and starting.” He shifted behind her, twisting his torso enough to allow her to lean properly against him, wrapping both arms around her as he nestled her close. “Lay back and get a bit of a nap. I’ll wake you up when we get to Grand Central Station.”
“Okay,” she acquiesced without opening her eyes, happy to just be curled with him on a lazy, quiet afternoon in October, off to watch a baseball game.