He wants to touch her. Grab her hand, bump his foot against hers, maybe come around to the other side of the booth so the edges of their bodies can touch - he's not picky. That's not really a friend thing, though. Or rather, it's not a post-breakup friend thing, even if it was a completely reasonable gesture pre-relationship.
The problem is, he can't quite believe her. Sure, Scully's always struggled to take a break from working, but it's different when the job isn't the X-files; it feels weird and lonely to think of her going home and sitting in an empty house, ten hours away from doing the whole thing all over again for another twelve hours.
(Maybe that's unfair. Maybe she's got non-book-club hobbies, or a TV show she watches to unwind, or a lover who shows up occasionally to screw her brains out and wake up the whole...apartment complex? Neighborhood? It occurs to him that he doesn't actually know where she's living, and that feels weird, too.)
(Really, the weird thing isn't what Scully's doing or not doing. It's that Mulder doesn't know and can't entirely guess, and he spent close to twenty years knowing just about everything about her. It's that he'll never know everything about her again, and a year hasn't been enough time to resign himself to that. There might never be a point when he's totally comfortable with that fact.)
Instead of doing anything - besides drumming his fingers lightly on the table, he allows himself that - he says, "It's good to see you, too. I, ah, think about you sometimes, so it's good to hear you're okay."
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The problem is, he can't quite believe her. Sure, Scully's always struggled to take a break from working, but it's different when the job isn't the X-files; it feels weird and lonely to think of her going home and sitting in an empty house, ten hours away from doing the whole thing all over again for another twelve hours.
(Maybe that's unfair. Maybe she's got non-book-club hobbies, or a TV show she watches to unwind, or a lover who shows up occasionally to screw her brains out and wake up the whole...apartment complex? Neighborhood? It occurs to him that he doesn't actually know where she's living, and that feels weird, too.)
(Really, the weird thing isn't what Scully's doing or not doing. It's that Mulder doesn't know and can't entirely guess, and he spent close to twenty years knowing just about everything about her. It's that he'll never know everything about her again, and a year hasn't been enough time to resign himself to that. There might never be a point when he's totally comfortable with that fact.)
Instead of doing anything - besides drumming his fingers lightly on the table, he allows himself that - he says, "It's good to see you, too. I, ah, think about you sometimes, so it's good to hear you're okay."