SIX MONTHS AGO:

Dana Scully could hear Fox Mulder talking to his television through the door of the apartment, recognized the words, and knew it didn't bode well.

She knocked and heard him call out "It's open!"

She pushed open the door slowly, noting that the apartment, which was never going to be a bright and airy loft, was gloomier than usual, and her nose wrinkled at the smell of old pizza.

Walking through the foyer, she could make out Mulder's long body stretched out on the couch, illuminated by nothing more than the light of the television.

He sat up as she stepped into the room.

"Hey, Scully. How was your weekend?"

She ignored the question and sat down next to him on the couch.

"Plan Nine from Outer Space?" she inquired archly.  He didn't reply, so she continued. "What are we using the Ed Wood Investigative Method for tonight?"

"Crimes of the heart," he answered, completely deadpan.

"Okay…" her reply was doubtful as she searched his profile for clues while he continued to stare at the television.  "Do you mind if I turn on a light?"

Without waiting for an answer, she reached over and switched on a small deco lamp sitting on the end table.

She managed to bite back the shocked gasp that wanted to escape her, but couldn't help but flinch a little at her partner's haggard features. 

She thought he might have looked worse when he'd nearly died in the Arctic, but this was definitely a close second.

He apparently had opted not to shave since she had seen him last on Friday.  His hair looked clean, though, so she supposed he'd showered at some point, but it was mussed badly, all cowlicks and corkscrews.

Without thinking, she reached out one hand to smooth it down, but when he turned to face her, the hand froze in mid air and she couldn't help the little 'oh' that escaped her.

His eyes were dark, wet and bruised looking, sunk into sockets shadowed so deep it almost appeared as though he had applied football eyeblack.

Her hand descended slowly from hair level to wrap itself around his wrist, an instinctive doctor's move that she was practically unaware of.

"Mulder, are you sick?"

The laugh that came out of him was harsh, jagged and raw.

"Sick? No! No, although you missed a truly 'bulemilicious' moment after my last attempt at supper." He waved airily at a grease-spotted pizza box sitting on the coffee table, half open, half a slice missing.

"Are you hurt?" Scully couldn't see any marks on his arms or face, and there were no bloodstains on his jeans, although the thin black t-shirt he was wearing had a tear in one shoulder.

"Not the way you think, Scully."

"What happened to you, Mulder?" she demanded.

"Well, that's what Ed Wood and I are trying to figure out."  That laugh again, sounding more like a sob, and Scully was seized by an overwhelming urge to hug him.  She squeezed his wrist instead and waited to see if he would say anything more.  Instead, he turned back to the television, and she did the same, respecting his need for quiet, not pushing him. Yet.

They watched Vampira rise from the grave in silence, then Mulder slipped his arm from her grip and, eyes still intent on the screen, he said flatly,

"It's over, Scully."

At first she thought he was talking about the movie. Her next thought was of work-their work, the X-Files, and she thought that maybe something had happened there that she had missed over the weekend. Finally, though, she realized what he was talking about, and she sighed.

"Mulder, did you break up with Walter?" She had a moment where she realized she sounded like a best girlfriend talking to the head cheerleader about the captain of the high school football team, but she shook off the thought to concentrate on his next words.

"No, he ended it." Same flat tone, betraying nothing, but she felt his body shudder, in contrast to the lack of emotion in his voice. "Apparently, A.D. Skinner had his itch scratched, and is moving onto the next item on the agenda." 

"I don't believe that, Mulder." Her voice bore out her conviction.  He turned to her, then, a small look of surprise on his face. She reached for his hand, lacing her small fingers in his large ones, and he accepted the small comfort with a grateful squeeze while he waited for her to continue.
"I know what I saw, Mulder. The two of you together-it was-he was-" She struggled to find the words. 

She remembered the first time that the three of them had done anything together, after they had told her they were a couple. Just dinner and coffee afterwards, and Scully remembered feeling, not for the first time, jealous. Not of Skinner, although that's probably what most people who knew her and Mulder would have thought. No, she had watched Walter Skinner watch Fox Mulder, and thought she was looking at a man who had stumbled over a pot of gold by accident, and now couldn't quite believe his good fortune.  He had the dazed look of a little boy with the key to the candy store.  A million other metaphors came to mind, but Scully had chosen to ignore them. She simply sipped her coffee, envied her partner, and  hoped that she'd find a man to look at her that way someday. 

"I don't believe it," she said again.

"This isn't some alien abduction story that it's your job to debunk, Scully." His tone was suddenly harsh, startling her. "This is my life. And I think I know what happened. I was there, y'know."

She knew his angry words for what they were, and didn't judge him for them, or take offense. She just gripped his hand a little tighter and asked. "What did he say?"

He looked back at the television, and she didn't think he was going to answer her. When he finally did, there was a tremor to his voice that she liked less than either the anger or the monotone she'd gotten earlier. 

"I knew he had a late meeting on Friday with the Director, so I picked up some take out-y'know, I thought it would be nice. We ate, we talked, inconsequential stuff-"

"Like what?" She didn't know if interrupting him would halt his narrative, but she felt strongly that one or the other of them must have said or done something to make this happen. So she reacted as she would in an investigation, trying to draw information from him subtly, to make sense of this turn of events.

"Just work, mostly. Plans for the weekend.  There's a club I wanted to go to-wanted to take him to-we don't go out a whole lot, as you may or may not have surmised." He offered her a small, sad smile.

"And?" He seemed confused by this, so she added, "what was his reaction?"

He shrugged. "I-I don't remember. I think he said he had work to do this weekend, but maybe some other time. We didn't dwell on it, just talked about other things."  He frowned a little, and his next words were muttered, more to himself than to her. "Or rather, I talked…"

Scully thought that maybe the combination of Ed Wood and her company was working for her partner just as he always claimed it did. He seemed to be looking inward, finding the incident in his memory, and analyzing it.  At least she hoped he was.

"Then what?"

"Then nothing," he replied.  "We watched some t.v, sat around, had a beer. Then he told me to get out."

"Just like that?" Her skeptical voice again, earning her a frown.

"Yeah, just like that." He sighed, fell silent, put more pressure on their linked hands.

"Tell me what he said, Mulder." Her voice brooked no argument, and she again saw him groping through memory for the words that had turned him into the hollow-eyed mess that she saw before her.

"Not a whole hell of a lot, Scully," he said, finally. "He looked like he does in the office sometimes, when I can tell just by his posture that he's going to turn down my 302. Like he's angry and unhappy and tense-all at the same time. He just stood there for a moment-I think I made a joke about work.  He still looked really unhappy, so I told him to relax-" he paused, then continued with a little flush of colour in his stubbled cheeks. "I'm pretty sure I told him I knew what would take the edge off.  And he replied 'I don't think I can do this anymore, Fox.'"

"You let him call you Fox?" She supposed she had known that, maybe even heard Skinner call him that, but it surprised her nevertheless. 

"Only in the-only at home." More colour, but it did little to restore a healthy look to his features. It only seemed to make him look feverish and a little more ill. "Anyway, he said that it wasn't working, and that I should be able to see that, and that it was better to end it now than to prolong something that was going to end badly anyway, so what was the point."  He thought for a moment more, then: " I think he said that I should go find someone else.  Someone who could give me what I want."

She didn't know what to say to that, but it didn't sound right.  It didn't sound like what Mulder thought it sounded like, but it didn't sound like Skinner, either.

She heard the tears in his voice before she saw them on his face when he whispered the last: "He's what I want, Scully."

She pulled him into her arms when he started crying in earnest, rocking him and crooning wordlessly, stroking his hair and his back.  It wasn't the first time she'd done this, nor did she think it would be the last. Despite his apparent reserve, which many people at first mistook for arrogance, Mulder was a man for whom emotional storms were always brewing close to the surface.  He used much of his inner strength holding those emotions down, unless he was alone, or with someone he trusted. And there wasn't anyone he trusted more than Scully. Walter Skinner had been a close second, but now…

Scully held him and comforted him as best she could, and he let himself be comforted.  When static hiss from the television drew both their attention, he sat back up and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, muttered something vaguely apologetic, and reached for the remote control.

"Why don't I make some tea?" Scully offered.  He nodded absently.

It didn't take much time to brew up two cups of tea, and she brought them back to the living room. Mulder was changing channels on the television, sitting hunched forward, hugging a throw pillow.  He looked up at her as she resumed her place beside him and handed him one of the steaming cups.

"Thanks."

"Anytime, Mulder.  You know that." 

They sipped tea in companionable silence, then, once Mulder had settled on the news channel, Scully posed a new question.

"Did you argue with him?"

He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, almost reflective, and his eyes got a little shiny again.

"In a manner of speaking…" his words trailed off.

"Let me guess. You told him that his behaviour was inappropriate, that he was being unreasonable, and that you could decide these things for yourself."

She heard more of a smile in his voice than she saw on his face. "You forgot the part where I called him a selfish, unfeeling bastard."

"Charming."

She blew on her tea to cool it, reflecting briefly on his words, picturing the scene.

"I have a theory, if you'd like to hear it."

He raised a skeptical eyebrow in an eerie imitation of her during some of his more outlandish 'theories', and it almost made her laugh. But he indicated she should continue.

"You said he got real quiet after you mentioned going out to a club.  Was it a gay club, Mulder?"

He nodded. "But-"

"Hear me out, Mulder. I think you scared him-"

"I don't scare anybody," he countered. "And he doesn't scare that easily.  He's seeing me, isn't he?" The tea suddenly churned in his stomach and he swallowed the conspicuous lump in his throat. "Was seeing me…"he corrected sadly.

"I'm suggesting that Walter Skinner is not ready to be "out and proud", as they say, and he thinks you are. And he wants you to be happy."

"He has a funny way of showing it." 

Scully's hand on his arm diffused the sudden anger, leaving him feeling lonely and tired again, but, at the edge of his awareness, where he was actually paying attention to what she was saying, he felt a glimmer of hope.

"I don't think he was kicking you out so much as he was offering you a way out, Mulder.  I think he was just trying to let you off the hook and out of his closet.  Does that make sense?"

"I've called him."

The sudden switch in subjects caught her off guard for a moment, but she recovered quickly enough and asked him what happened.

"Nothing. I get his voice mail. He hasn't called back."

He sighed noisily into his cup, and didn't say anymore. Scully kept one hand on him, grounding him in her way, and studied the leaves at the bottom of her cup. Finally, she sighed herself, and grumbled something Mulder didn't quite catch. He asked her to repeat it.

"Men," she muttered to herself, then gave him a piercing look and continued. "You two were so busy trying to be 'the guy', the big macho man, that you didn't even listen to what the other was saying. He was being the 'tough love guy', you were being the 'rebel without a clue', and it got you both exactly nowhere."

He digested her words and realized she was right. If what she said about his lover was true, then Walter had been a jerk for not telling him exactly what was on his mind. And he himself had been an even bigger asshole for not trying harder, for just assuming the worst, as usual, and, rather than trying to rationalize the situation and correct it, settling for gratuitous name-calling instead. How mature was that?

He cleared his throat, and Scully heard the tears threatening again when he asked, in a small voice, "now what?"

"Now, Mulder, you get some rest. Frankly, you look like hell."

"Thank you. That makes me feel so much better." Sarcasm dripped from the words.

Scully ran her hand through his hair, brought it down to rest on his cheek, and he leaned into her, closing his eyes briefly.

"Seriously, Mulder. You need to sleep. You need to eat. And then you need to see Walter and get this straightened out-no pun intended."

They both smiled, and Mulder wondered briefly about the power of best friends.  He'd just spent two days in a fog of depression, nausea and exhaustion, and with a cup of tea and half an Ed Wood movie, Scully, his best friend, had managed to set his feet on the path again, feeling, if not physically, at least mentally refreshed enough to muster up the reserves and head back into the fray.  He thought briefly of her abduction and her illness, and wondered what the hell he would do without her.

Scully watched her best friend win his internal struggle with his emotions, understood the depths of them, maybe even more than he did, and decided that if Mulder couldn't convince Walter Skinner to take him back and make their relationship work, then she would take it upon herself personally to give their boss a good swift kick in the ass.  With the highest heels she owned.

She stood and took Mulder's empty cup from him.

"I gotta go. I still haven't unpacked from the weekend. Mom sends her love by the way."

Mulder nodded his thanks.

"I'll see you at work tomorrow," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied.  She took the cups to the kitchen as he lied back down on the couch, and a moment later he heard the door open, then close behind her.  He closed his eyes and fell asleep still wondering what he was going to say to Walter the next time he saw him.