Title: The Midnight Clear
Rating: PG
Classification: UST, V, with a little twist of A, maybe.
Archive: Yes to Gossamer, all others please ask first.
Disclaimer: If I did own the X-Files, Mulder or Scully,
presumably I'd be wondering how to resolve the whole disappearing
main character thing instead of writing about them for free on
the internet. These characters are owned by Chris Carter, Ten
Thirteen Productions, and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: "Let us get back our childlike faith again."
Spoilers: Very slight, for the Emily and Biogenesis-6E-AF arcs.
Feedback: cazfic@ymail.com
URL: http://cazq.freeservers.com
Author's Note: Come on back to season 7 with me, post-Hungry,
pre-Millennium. In my delightful little imaginary universe, I
choose to disregard that little graveside belated exchange of
Christmas greetings at the start of Millennium. Won't you join me?
Thanks to Jesemie's Evil Twin, Kristy and Alicia K for
splendiferous beta, to EPur, Shawne and Maren for splendiferously
strange Group!Live!Machete!Beta, and to Virginia as ever.
For all those who have listened lately, but especially for those
associated with new bags, bears and boxes of Tori. Happy holidays.
*****
The Midnight Clear (1/1) by CazQ
(cazfic@ymail.com)
*****
Whatever doubts assail us, or what fears,
Let us hold close one day, remembering
Its poignant meaning for the hearts of men.
Let us get back our childlike faith again.
- Grace Noll Crowell
*****
Lay-Z Nites Desert Inn,
Fallen Angel Lake, New Mexico
December 23, 1999
*****
She stepped out of the motel room, change for the soda machine in
hand, and looked idly over the parking lot, expecting desert
solitude. But there he was.
Mulder was sitting - no, *lounging* - on the hood of their rental,
eating a Twinkie. While she had showered and changed into sweats
and a t-shirt, he was still dressed as he had been when they had
left the hospital. Unbidden, the image of Ryan Duffy and his
girlfriend lying in adjoining, narrow hospital beds, two sets of
vacant stares fixed on the ceiling, jumped into her head. The
final dead-ends on a dead-end road of an investigation.
She turned her attention back to the sight before her. Admittedly
Mulder's suit jacket was rolled up on the hood of the car next to
him, his tie was hanging loosely round his neck and his top
button was undone. This was not quite Mulder after hours, then;
more Mulder in transition.
She walked slowly down the white-painted flight of metal steps
from the second floor, the blistered paint flaking under her
sneakers. She crossed the dusty forecourt towards him, strolling
under the strings of white Christmas tree lights strung over the
few parked cars. He didn't speak when she stopped by the car, but
turned his head and nodded towards the empty space on the hood as
if inviting her pull up a seat and take a load off.
She almost turned and walked away, still nursing her silent
resentment at being in Podunk, New Mexico, two nights before
Christmas on a non-starter of a case, but something stopped her.
She thought perhaps it was the utterly absorbed look he had as he
lay back against the dusty windshield and looked at the night sky
like it was a puzzling case-file he knew could crack. There was
something about Mulder when he was totally focused, the way he
just seemed to forget his body and let it relax completely. It
was as if he was wondering just where to apply the lever of his
mind in order to crack the whole universe open to his eyes. She
stared at his tired, stubbled face for a second before climbing a
little awkwardly onto the hood, sitting down Indian-style next to
him.
"What're you doing?" she asked carefully, after a
minute or two had passed in silence.
He shrugged, as much as was possible from his near-horizontal
position. "Waiting for a flying white light to come and take
me home." He turned his head when she didn't comment, and
gave her an uncertain half-smile. "C'mon, don't you think it
have to beat flying home for Christmas with dear old United
Useless Airlines?"
She rolled her eyes at him and shifted on the hood, stretching
her legs out in front of her and supporting her weight on her
right hand, almost leaning back to join him. Mulder was still
staring up at her, waiting for her to tag in and play, but she
wasn't in the mood. She closed her left hand into a fist,
jingling the quarters enclosed in it, then set them down neatly
in front of her.
"I guess I won't know this year. I just called United and
every other airline that flies out of Albuquerque to California -
again - and none of them can get me out to San Diego in time, not
this soon before Christmas. Even if they could, everyone's gifts
are sitting at home in D.C."
"You can't fly stand-by?" he asked tentatively.
She shrugged slightly. "A couple of airlines suggested it,
but I'd rather not take the chance when I *know* I already have a
reserved seat I can take to at least get back to D.C. Come to
that, if I left now I could drive, I suppose, be there in time
for Christmas morning, but it's not a hugely appealing prospect."
He stared at her for a long moment, his own expression
inscrutable, and then grimaced, as if he'd bitten into an apple
and found it sour and under-ripe. "Sorry, Scully. Really. I
didn't mean for us to get stuck out here so long --"
"That's not what bothers me," she interrupted, shaking
her head. "It's that we shouldn't have been here in the
first place." She felt her frustration surge through her,
tried to suppress the urge to slam a hand down on the metal to
vent it. "Mulder, sometimes you can be so damn...*focused*
you get tunnel vision. You had two and two and you immediately
jumped to the conclusion that they made five. If you would just
stop to consider sometimes before jumping in with both feet --"
Now it was his turn to interrupt. "I didn't hear you
protesting that two and two made four before we got out here."
"Because sometimes it's so hard not to get caught up in your
slipstream when you're waving two plane tickets and a file and
announcing that this week New Mexico is our featured destination,"
she said, sighing. "You saw what you wanted to see in those
reports. Yes, what Duffy and his girlfriend described to the
police did sound like the shape-shifting beings we've encountered
- if that was what you were *looking* to see. But it was all too
vague, vague enough that you saw an outline that rang a bell in
your head, joined all the dots together in a hurry and decided it
had to be the real deal. What did we get out of this? Nothing. We
have two kids in catatonic states who aren't going to be giving
us a new statement any time soon, and another expense form to try
and sneak past Skinner."
"There *are* things here you can't explain," he said, a
little sullenly because he knew she was telling the truth. "The
marks on the rocks outside town where Duffy said he saw the
lights come down? What happened to the police officer who filed
the original report? The *reason* those kids are lying in
hospital beds having apparently checked out of this world for
good? What's your reasoned scientific conclusion going to be?"
She tapped her fingertips idly on the hood, feeling the stored
warmth of the day radiating out under her skin. New Mexico was
warm enough to be comfortable by day at this time of year, but
the temperature fell rapidly at night, and she shivered a little
as the breeze gusted briefly before dying down again.
"I don't know," she said tiredly. "I'm going to go
home, take a long, hot bath, call Tara and tell her to set one
less place for Christmas dinner, and enjoy the holiday. Then I'll
think about it."
"I'm sorry," he said again, still not looking at her.
"I guess...Christmas isn't a family time for me. I mean, we
did the whole tree and gifts thing when we were kids, because it
fitted with Mom's idea of what a good American Norman Rockwell-esque
family should do, but it's been years now since I did anything
more than sit home with some files and a TV dinner on Christmas.
I didn't think" - he paused and shook his head, annoyed at
himself - "I didn't mean to spoil your family Christmas."
She glanced over at him then, saw that he had crumbs from the
Twinkie on his shirt front. Over to their left an illuminated
snowman glowed intermittently beneath the motel sign, the aging
plastic coated with dust from the persistent desert winds, the
bulb within flickering on and off, weakening. When the light died
every so often it altered the play of light on Mulder's face,
making it look older, time-washed.
"To tell you the truth, I can live without Christmas in
California this year, for a lot of reasons," she said at
last. "Tara isn't great company when she's trying to be the
perfect Stepford Christmas wife, Bill is - well, Bill is Bill,
and Charlie and his wife won't make the kids travel that far at
Christmas. I'm more annoyed at the thought of explaining to Bill
and Mom *why* I'm not out there. Once I get past that, it might
be nice to have Christmas in peace at my place this year. It's
got to beat trying to fight my way through Dulles the day before
Christmas."
Emily's little, childishly chubby form sat between them for a
moment, unspeaking and unspoken of. Yes, Christmas in California
was something she could have done without anyway, to be honest,
although it was difficult to tell Mom that when she fretted
gently about not wanting her daughter to spend the holidays alone,
to tell Bill that when he automatically assumed that Tara should
plan to put clean sheets on both guest beds. In a way, perhaps
Mulder had rescued her from something this year. She felt the old
familiar slow-burning pain for a moment or two in her empty arms,
and then shook her head, a quick, automatic movement, in
dismissal.
She felt warm fingers on her own, and looked down in surprise.
Mulder was looking at her intently, his right hand resting
lightly on her left. "I'm still sorry, though," he said
quietly. "I just wanted you to know that."
She exhaled sharply, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes
only for it to fall right back down again, and nodded. They sat
for a minute or two more, and she was opening her mouth to offer
up a suitably innocuous remark when she was subjected to a sneak
attack. She yelped and tried to wriggle away from the hand
lightly tickling her side without falling off the car.
"Mulder, no, no, *stop* that --"
Her scolding might have been more effective had she not been
overtaken, involuntarily, by laughter. Mulder grinned and
relented, rolling back across the hood and holding up his hands
innocently as if to say "diversionary tactics, moi?"
What he did say instead was "Okay, okay, pax, I promise. I'm
sorry."
"No you're not," she said, glaring at him as she
settled cautiously back down, poised now to fend off any more
surprise attacks. "I *hate* being tickled, Mulder. When I
was seven I gave Charlie a black eye because he started tickling
me and I flailed about so much trying to get away that I socked
him with my elbow."
Mulder let out a delighted bark of laughter. "You really
were a little savage as a kid, huh?" He settled back down,
folding his arms behind his head on the windshield. Somehow
catching her realisation of the vulnerability of his posture, he
attempted to bat his eyelashes at her and said, in a tone
dripping with syrupy smugness, "Tragically for you and your
prospects of revenge, I am not ticklish in the slightest. Not
even behind my
knees."
"There are other methods of exacting revenge, you know,"
she said darkly, looking up at the sky instead of at him.
"Promises, promises," he leered, although without
injecting the full dose of dirty-old-man lechery she knew he was
capable of.
They fell silent again for a while. Overhead, a steadily shining
point of light described a long, steady arc down towards the
western horizon. A satellite, she thought, oddly pleased. A
shooting star was undeniably a lovely thing to see, but her inner
science geek got off on being able to look up at the night sky
and actually *see* evidence of man's technological achievement,
imagining the dozens of satellites orbiting quietly miles above
her head in a perfectly balanced ballet.
She scanned the night sky idly for more. The stars in these huge
desert skies seemed terribly close, a scatter of salt gleaming on
a perfectly black sky that lacked the airbrushed light blur of
night over a city. Her thoughts drifted idly from star to star,
individual memories like the points making up constellations. To
the year Mom and Dad gave Charlie a telescope that he promptly
lost interest in and donated to her. To her father explaining to
her how sailors could navigate using the stars. To Amelia Robbins
as The Star in her grade school's Christmas pageant one year
overbalancing on her chair and toppling onto the approaching Wise
Men.
In the motel office, Elvis began to croon "Are You Lonesome
Tonight?", slightly crackly because the small transistor
radio wasn't tuned in perfectly. Light spilled out through the
half-open door, glowed between the open slats of the shades, and
she saw the motel manager, an elderly man with desert-tanned skin
and improbably lustrous black hair, snoozing quietly behind the
front desk. A string of utterly tasteless gold, red and green
tinsel decorations drooped over his head, threatening to fall
down right into his wide-open mouth.
"So, Scully, what'd you get me for Christmas?" Mulder
said suddenly, as a beat-up Chevy cruised past slowly out of town
on the main road east to Truth or Consequences, its lights
illuminating them briefly.
"I hand-crafted your gift, actually. Martha Stewart
recommends the personal touch. I'm giving you an original Dana
Scully tin-foil hat. All the sharpest bachelors in D.C. are going
to be wearing them to keep out government mind-control rays this
spring. What'd you get *me*?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn to gape at her
delightedly for a second, and then he shot back, just as deadpan
casual, "A solid platinum, diamond-encrusted set of scalpels.
In a Tiffany box. I figure a woman needs something she can use to
accessorise that really *special* autopsy, y'know?"
She raised her eyebrows and grinned up at the stars. "Generous,
Mulder. I'm impressed."
"Nah, I billed them to the Bureau as work-related expenses.
I wanted to see what Skinner would say when they processed the
forms."
She burst out laughing then, and he joined her, the sound seeming
far too loud in the peaceful desert night. She clapped a hand
over her mouth and shook, enjoying the warmth that started
glowing under her skin as she let the peals of laughter out.
When they had both calmed down, she swatted him on the shoulder
lightly.
"What was that for? You started it," he protested. Then,
deadpan again, "I didn't really get you that for Christmas,
Scully."
"You don't say," she murmured lazily. "What *did*
you get me?"
"New set of scrubs. Got your name embroidered on the front,
and on the back I had them write 'Dana Scully, Roving Pathologist
- You Ice 'Em, I Slice 'Em'."
That precipitated a fresh outburst of laughter, and she realised
that she had almost forgotten being pissed at him already. He was
playing her a little, pushing the buttons to try and appease her,
but hell, she was enjoying it. They didn't do this enough, just
kick back and have a little fun. Everything was always so life or
death, fate of the universe,
Quest-for-the-Ultimate-Truth serious with them.
She looked down at him looking back up at her, saw his smile
widen as he enjoyed her enjoyment of their little game, and felt
a starburst of affection illuminate her from within.
"Mulder, what are you doing on Christmas day?" she
asked, watching his face carefully.
"Uh, nothing much, I guess. I was thinking maybe I'd stay in
bed late, maybe go over and watch the Gunmen kick some festive
butt playing Quake online..." He trailed off, and she felt
him watching her in the dimness. His gaze was so intense that she
wondered if maybe he could see into her, see her heart beating a
little faster, the same way she could see hope beginning to
unfold and tremble a little inside him.
"I was thinking," she said, studiedly casual, "since
I'm going to be home, maybe you'd like to come over for dinner?
It won't be a Norman Rockwell Christmas - it probably won't even
be a Martha Stewart one - but you could come over after I get
back from Mass, maybe, model that tin-foil hat for me, we could
watch 'It's a Wonderful Life', or 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas',
depending on your tastes..."
Now it was her turn to trail off, letting the offer hang there in
the night air, watching him pause and contemplate on the edge of
acceptance.
In the motel office, Elvis had segued into Bing Crosby. She
wanted to laugh at the incongruity, sitting in the desert
listening to someone croon about roasting chestnuts over an open
fire, but she was too intent on watching Mulder, readying herself
for him to crack a half-hearted joke, for him to back away
hastily from the cliff's edge.
"I would like that very much," he said instead, simply,
his face open and yet somehow unreadable. She bit her lip to hold
in her exclamation of surprise and felt him slip his hand into
hers, this time, instead of on top of it. She nodded, watching a
smile break like a quiet moon-rise over his features, and felt
him stroke the back of her hand with his thumb, very
slowly and gently.
"I do have something for you, I forgot," he said after
a moment, sitting up and releasing her fingers reluctantly. He
slid gracefully off the hood and unlocked the car, rummaging
around behind the driver's seat. He emerged carrying a small
plastic bag from the local convenience store, still smiling.
"Mulder, what --"
"Shut your eyes," he instructed. She complied, holding
out her hands and doing her best to look highly suspicious of him
without being able to fix him with a glare, but he did not place
anything on her open palms. She heard him climbing back up next
to her, the rustle of plastic, and felt the warmth of his breath
on her skin in the rapidly cooling air - unnecessarily close? -
as he leant over and placed something on her head. His fingers
moved gently over her hair, settling something there as he
lingered, so near. Hardly thinking about it, she leaned slightly
into his touch, hearing a familiar voice whispering in her head,
saying how easy it would be to just lean forward a little more,
tilt her head a little, move that little distance to meet him,
near enough to --
"Okay, open them," he said, sounding extremely pleased
with himself. She opened her eyes and started slightly to find
his face inches from hers (so easy, just a little distance, it
would be so easy), and for a second they sat locked together in a
breath, her hands trembling slightly like starlight filtering
through air.
Turning her head, she saw herself in the windshield, the
reflection dust-covered and blurred, but enough to show her the
cheap plastic headband over her hair, and the fuzzy red antlers
attached to it.
She didn't even have to give him a raise of the eyebrow.
"I, uh, saw them and thought of you?" he offered,
shrugging in a fluid, relaxed movement.
"Mulder," she said, feeling her earlier giggles start
bubbling in her throat again, "I don't even want to *try*
and analyse the implications of that." And then, to her
utter astonishment, he placed a hand on each of her shoulders,
his thumbs resting oh-so-gently on her collarbones where they lay
under the thin t-shirt, leaned forward and kissed her, just once,
on the forehead.
Right there, she thought dizzily, as his lips left her skin, that's
where Missy used to say you had your third eye, the eye of your
spirit --
"What was that for?" she blurted out.
He ran the tip of a finger lightly down the curve of her cheek,
his eyes slightly dreamy, and then answered, mumbling a little as
though suddenly embarrassed.
"Because you look good in convenience-store antlers. And
because I never thanked you properly...for coming to get me."
For coming and *saving* me, his eyes told her.
In the motel office, Bing faded away, to be replaced "these
messages from our sponsors" and then by a lazy, drawling man's
voice. "Coming up next on our regular Friday night requests
hour, a song for Mrs. Ruth Steiger of Dry Creek from her husband
Tom, the lovely Sarah Vaughan with 'Fly Me To The Moon'. On the
half-hour we'll be bringing you the latest weather and travel
updates for the county so don't go away..."
The woman's voice melted into the still air, pouring out through
the open door with the warm light.
"Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars..."
"They're playing our song, Scully," Mulder said,
looking down at his hands and then back up at her. "Want to
star-gaze with me for a little while?"
"Sure," she said quietly, "sure." She lay
back beside him on the car's hood, their heads resting inches
apart on the windshield as the stars moved imperceptibly above
them. Their hands lay on the cooling metal between their bodies,
not touching, but near enough. She let herself swim amongst the
spread of stars again, idly picturing Mulder sprawled on her
couch singing along with the Grinch and Cindy Lou-Who. Near
enough for now, she thought contentedly, and perhaps, with time,
coming a little nearer.
FINIS
*****
Yes, there really is a place in New Mexico called Truth or
Consequences. Tell me if that delights you as much as it does me:
cazfic@ymail.com
