Fic - When Halfspent Was the Night
Fandom: The X-Files
Pairing/Characters: Mulder/Scully
Content Advisory: General audiences
Words: 1,255
Summary: The office Christmas party. Or not quite. Post-ep for 6x6, 'How the Ghosts Stole Christmas'.
Written for enj412, for her generous donation in the help_haiti auction. I'm sorry it's so late! And many thanks to my lovely beta colebaltblue.
Standing in someone else's kitchen in the small hours of the morning making tea is the sort of thing she hadn't expect to find herself doing after she had left college. Scully taps her fingernails on the counter and watches Mulder pour water from the kettle into the two mugs.
"I didn't know you drank tea."
Mulder is reaching into the refrigerator and he looks back at her over his shoulder. "Not often. Milk?" She raises an eyebrow at him, and he grins and shrugs and pours a splash into his own mug, the red-brown liquid swirling into a pale pink as he fishes out the teabags.
She can hear the muted noise of the TV through the door, the volume turned right down on some old black and white movie she doesn't recognise. It's hours too early for It's a Wonderful Life; hell, even with the traditional Scully family crack-of-dawn start it feels too early to be Christmas. It doesn't help that she missed Midnight Mass for one of Mulder's more bizarre snipe hunts.
Outside it's snowing very lightly. It's not enough to settle, especially not with the ground still wet from yesterday's rain, but there's something childishly thrilling about snow on Christmas Day, like the cards her great-aunt in Ireland used to send with the badly-painted animals against a landscape draped in white. Mulder hands her a mug and the heat of it seeps through the cheap pottery and warms her palms.
"So what do you want to do, Scully?" he asks, stopping in the doorway, his head half-tilted as if he couldn't get his lanky frame through otherwise. The fluorescent kitchen light draws the shadows of his face in harsher colours and accentuates the dark circles under his eyes, the crow's feet at their edges.
"I thought you might have some... Mulder family traditions." Scully draws the mug up to her face, blowing on the dark surface of her tea. Mulder huffs a laugh.
"If you count my dad being drunk or not being around at all and my mom chain-smoking in the kitchen and burning dinner, sure, we have traditions." He does duck as he goes through the doorway, sauntering across his apartment like a cat in its den. "But I grew out of my Johnny Apollo, my grandparents are all dead, and we never called Mom's parents on Christmas anyway."
"Old feud?"
"Old religion." He folds himself up onto the couch, putting his tea down on the coffee table amongst the torn gift-wrap. "They still used to send gifts, we just all had to pretend it was late for Hanukkah or something."
Scully sits next to him still cradling her mug. She takes a sip and the heat of it catches at her tongue, bitter with tannin. Cheap, but not entirely unpleasant.
"Scully family traditions all come out of having four kids and Dad in the Navy," she says, putting her mug down on the table near to Mulder's.
"Six am does seem pretty regimental. Did you all have to line up for inspection?"
"And were made to scrub out the pans with a toothbrush if we didn't pass muster." She smiles. On the TV screen a man in a fedora extends his hand to a woman in a long dark coat. "I guess it was that Dad was still half on ship time the years he was home, and kids don't need to be asked twice if they want to get up and open their presents. Missy always used to make a point of sleeping through it when she got older though."
At least missing Melissa at Christmas doesn't sting quite as much. Good to keep your bad memories spread throughout the year, particularly when you keep a whole bunch of them in your apartment.
She realises, suddenly, that Mulder is looking at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners the way they always do, something quietly sad in his expression. The apartment is warm and well worn, like the old leather couch, like him with his familiar hands and the soft lines she's watched grow across his face, year on year. He brushes the backs of his fingers against her elbow as he reaches for his tea.
"Maybe we ought to look into making our own traditions. I always meant to throw an office Christmas party."
"We don't have a dedicated office anymore, Mulder, and if your idea of a festive night out is combined ghost hunting and psychoanalysis..."
"Hey, I went to parties like that in college," he says, taking a mouthful of tea. The figures move on the television on the edge of sight; she is looking at the fishtank glowing behind his right shoulder, at their gifts to one another nudged up together on the table amid the ruins of the paper, at the way the light spreads in hemispheres across the walls.
In her mother's house in Baltimore Bill and Tara are asleep in the spare room, Matthew in the little folding crib that's been thirty years in the attic waiting for a new occupant. There is a tree in the front room, the old familiar decorations up and a welcoming wreath on the front door; she can create the whole scene out of memory.
Mulder's one concession to the season seems to be a sprig of plastic holly sticky-taped to the television. He is her best friend, the best thing about getting out of bed every morning, even with their work in ruins and him scratching cases up out of the dust like a pacing lion.
"So I guess you'll need to be heading home soon."
Scully blinks away her reverie, turning towards him. Mulder's staring at the TV now, the greyscale man and woman walking down a road gleaming wetly under old-fashioned streetlamps. He slurps noisily at his tea and she tightens her hands around her own mug.
"If you want me to leave, Mulder..."
"No!" His head snaps around. "No, I just- you must need to get some sleep. I thought you'd want to be with your family."
It would be far, far too much to say it, and he's needy and reckless and endlessly infuriating and really almost entirely the reason that she's now running background checks from the bullpen and chasing fertiliser sales for a living instead of having her own, aboveground office with a door that would close behind her when she went home. He takes her ghost hunting. He sleeps on his couch. He puts milk in tea.
"I can stay a little longer," she says, letting her shoulders sink back into the buttery leather. "It is Christmas after all."
Mulder smiles and ducks his head like a little kid, his eyes lingering for a moment on her gift lying nonchalantly on the tabletop. It had seemed an almost trivial thing to buy him, except she isn't sure she has anything trivial left when it comes to Mulder. There are fathoms to this, whole dimensions curled and folded between them.
"Do you want another cup?" he asks eventually, gesturing with his tea mug. She hasn't finished hers but it's cooled in her hands and she hands it over to him gratefully, watching out of the corner of her eye as he walks back into the kitchen, his sock feet sliding on the floor.
The TV screen flickers, the picture dimming and buzzing with static. Outside the snow is still falling into the dull glow of the city night, as if you could strain your ears and hear bells.
Pairing/Characters: Mulder/Scully
Content Advisory: General audiences
Words: 1,255
Summary: The office Christmas party. Or not quite. Post-ep for 6x6, 'How the Ghosts Stole Christmas'.
Written for enj412, for her generous donation in the help_haiti auction. I'm sorry it's so late! And many thanks to my lovely beta colebaltblue.
Standing in someone else's kitchen in the small hours of the morning making tea is the sort of thing she hadn't expect to find herself doing after she had left college. Scully taps her fingernails on the counter and watches Mulder pour water from the kettle into the two mugs.
"I didn't know you drank tea."
Mulder is reaching into the refrigerator and he looks back at her over his shoulder. "Not often. Milk?" She raises an eyebrow at him, and he grins and shrugs and pours a splash into his own mug, the red-brown liquid swirling into a pale pink as he fishes out the teabags.
She can hear the muted noise of the TV through the door, the volume turned right down on some old black and white movie she doesn't recognise. It's hours too early for It's a Wonderful Life; hell, even with the traditional Scully family crack-of-dawn start it feels too early to be Christmas. It doesn't help that she missed Midnight Mass for one of Mulder's more bizarre snipe hunts.
Outside it's snowing very lightly. It's not enough to settle, especially not with the ground still wet from yesterday's rain, but there's something childishly thrilling about snow on Christmas Day, like the cards her great-aunt in Ireland used to send with the badly-painted animals against a landscape draped in white. Mulder hands her a mug and the heat of it seeps through the cheap pottery and warms her palms.
"So what do you want to do, Scully?" he asks, stopping in the doorway, his head half-tilted as if he couldn't get his lanky frame through otherwise. The fluorescent kitchen light draws the shadows of his face in harsher colours and accentuates the dark circles under his eyes, the crow's feet at their edges.
"I thought you might have some... Mulder family traditions." Scully draws the mug up to her face, blowing on the dark surface of her tea. Mulder huffs a laugh.
"If you count my dad being drunk or not being around at all and my mom chain-smoking in the kitchen and burning dinner, sure, we have traditions." He does duck as he goes through the doorway, sauntering across his apartment like a cat in its den. "But I grew out of my Johnny Apollo, my grandparents are all dead, and we never called Mom's parents on Christmas anyway."
"Old feud?"
"Old religion." He folds himself up onto the couch, putting his tea down on the coffee table amongst the torn gift-wrap. "They still used to send gifts, we just all had to pretend it was late for Hanukkah or something."
Scully sits next to him still cradling her mug. She takes a sip and the heat of it catches at her tongue, bitter with tannin. Cheap, but not entirely unpleasant.
"Scully family traditions all come out of having four kids and Dad in the Navy," she says, putting her mug down on the table near to Mulder's.
"Six am does seem pretty regimental. Did you all have to line up for inspection?"
"And were made to scrub out the pans with a toothbrush if we didn't pass muster." She smiles. On the TV screen a man in a fedora extends his hand to a woman in a long dark coat. "I guess it was that Dad was still half on ship time the years he was home, and kids don't need to be asked twice if they want to get up and open their presents. Missy always used to make a point of sleeping through it when she got older though."
At least missing Melissa at Christmas doesn't sting quite as much. Good to keep your bad memories spread throughout the year, particularly when you keep a whole bunch of them in your apartment.
She realises, suddenly, that Mulder is looking at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners the way they always do, something quietly sad in his expression. The apartment is warm and well worn, like the old leather couch, like him with his familiar hands and the soft lines she's watched grow across his face, year on year. He brushes the backs of his fingers against her elbow as he reaches for his tea.
"Maybe we ought to look into making our own traditions. I always meant to throw an office Christmas party."
"We don't have a dedicated office anymore, Mulder, and if your idea of a festive night out is combined ghost hunting and psychoanalysis..."
"Hey, I went to parties like that in college," he says, taking a mouthful of tea. The figures move on the television on the edge of sight; she is looking at the fishtank glowing behind his right shoulder, at their gifts to one another nudged up together on the table amid the ruins of the paper, at the way the light spreads in hemispheres across the walls.
In her mother's house in Baltimore Bill and Tara are asleep in the spare room, Matthew in the little folding crib that's been thirty years in the attic waiting for a new occupant. There is a tree in the front room, the old familiar decorations up and a welcoming wreath on the front door; she can create the whole scene out of memory.
Mulder's one concession to the season seems to be a sprig of plastic holly sticky-taped to the television. He is her best friend, the best thing about getting out of bed every morning, even with their work in ruins and him scratching cases up out of the dust like a pacing lion.
"So I guess you'll need to be heading home soon."
Scully blinks away her reverie, turning towards him. Mulder's staring at the TV now, the greyscale man and woman walking down a road gleaming wetly under old-fashioned streetlamps. He slurps noisily at his tea and she tightens her hands around her own mug.
"If you want me to leave, Mulder..."
"No!" His head snaps around. "No, I just- you must need to get some sleep. I thought you'd want to be with your family."
It would be far, far too much to say it, and he's needy and reckless and endlessly infuriating and really almost entirely the reason that she's now running background checks from the bullpen and chasing fertiliser sales for a living instead of having her own, aboveground office with a door that would close behind her when she went home. He takes her ghost hunting. He sleeps on his couch. He puts milk in tea.
"I can stay a little longer," she says, letting her shoulders sink back into the buttery leather. "It is Christmas after all."
Mulder smiles and ducks his head like a little kid, his eyes lingering for a moment on her gift lying nonchalantly on the tabletop. It had seemed an almost trivial thing to buy him, except she isn't sure she has anything trivial left when it comes to Mulder. There are fathoms to this, whole dimensions curled and folded between them.
"Do you want another cup?" he asks eventually, gesturing with his tea mug. She hasn't finished hers but it's cooled in her hands and she hands it over to him gratefully, watching out of the corner of her eye as he walks back into the kitchen, his sock feet sliding on the floor.
The TV screen flickers, the picture dimming and buzzing with static. Outside the snow is still falling into the dull glow of the city night, as if you could strain your ears and hear bells.