(no subject)
TITLE: Relearning
AUTHOR: Frey
RATING: PG
CATEGORY: V, M/S UST
SPOILERS: Trevor, S6 knowledge
SUMMARY: They stand for little moments in silence before
they go their separate ways.
~ ~ ~
It feels good to be working a case with him again. Really good. Better than she used to admit to herself.
At first they felt a little skittish. His jokes were the same, for the most part - maybe not quite as funny, but she's not in a position to judge. Besides, she'd rather he tell his jokes to her than share his college-boy smirks with Diana Fowley.
They're holding back some things. He's being careful. They agree on the motive and share around the details - he can have his brittle bullets, she'll stick to chemistry. Implying smiles, they stand for little moments in silence before they go their separate ways.
He walks close with his shoulders. After months of sitting in cold cookie-cutter cubbies, they meet again in dark hallways like smudgy silhouettes. They gravitate to odd corners of kitchen crime scenes, away from the detectives, sharing the kinds of things that used to shock her about this job. He says: ghosts, magnetic superhuman powers. She eyes him up and down (strictly professional, of course) and wonders where he buys his new ties. They're nice. Just a little more grown up than what she remembers.
She notices the way he speaks, and finds small changes. He's courteous, urbane. He likes to assert their familiarity in public - private smiles, or clumsy double-entendres. Her heart brims and flickers when he does, somewhat to her chagrin -- she knows how dangerous they are together (she should, after all this) but likes his deliberate waltz anyway. He's working like a cautery, remelding their torn tissue.
The case with the boy breaks up a happy couple. At least they seemed happy. The woman dressed in pastel blouses and sundresses and had a house out of Better Homes and Gardens. There have been days Scully doesn't think she'd be opposed to a life like that. Those days have come around a lot lately.
The agents stood, awkward, by the trunk of the car and watched the woman's fiance walk away. Scully was secretly relieved they hadn't yet been married, though it was unlike her to involve herself in the personal lives of strangers. Divorce is just so messy -- this is clean and doesn't stain. They'd maybe shared a hinted word or two, but hardly sacred vows. The man owes nothing to her.
She knows what would have been written on the claim. "Irreconcilable differences," a quick and painless cut. It was no one's fault, because the man just wanted to forget.
Scully believes in social equality, no matter what her father used to say, and she believes in desperate measures. On some days she even believes in spontaneous human combustion. So she is surprised to find, that night, while walking to the car (all lit inside, with Mulder at the wheel), that she no longer believes that things cannot be reconciled. And it feels good.
- end -
A/N: Yes, it's mostly about Rob Bowman's awesome direction.