"No, no. Meddling from you is..." Welcome is probably too obvious as a lie, if a partial one; he doesn't mind when she sticks her oar in, but when they're not together, it - as the kids say - hits different. Not unexpected is more cruelty than she deserves, especially after what she's taken today. He drags a fry through ketchup like he might find the answer there, in the viscous trail it leaves. "It's worth listening to."

That, at least, is true. Even if he can't imagine himself standing at the front of a class, refusing to let a lesson on staging versus signature get boring, Scully can, and that means something. Maybe he should contact Quantico, make not-overly-sarcastic ha, ha noises when they inevitably ask if he's thinking of a class on little green men, and see what he'd actually be on the hook for. Or, hell, the local community college, where he could drone on about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and wonder where he landed on it.

He wants so badly to touch her foot under the table, to ask why they're torturing themselves like this, to scoop her up into his arms and carry her away someplace neither of them have ever been before and make love to her like they'll die tomorrow. By her metric, this was probably a terrible idea; he's supposed to be over the idea of them. But being around her feels more like living than anything he does on his own, no matter how deliberate he is about it. Running and cooking, medication and therapy, cleaning on nights when he can't sleep - it's all rote memorization of what life's supposed to look like, a fake-it-til-you-make-it existence. Time spent with Scully feels real.

So maybe she's right. He might have to allow for that. Maybe he needs something else to fill his days than a half-assed attempt at a memoir and endless collections of newspaper clippings.

"But that does put me in position to meddle back." He eats his fry and doesn't try to touch her. "You're opening yourself up to some risk, Scully."