It's a fair question. It's not one she expected, but he's got the right to ask-- has the right to ask far more bitterly than he has. Maybe that's a good sign, the honest care in his voice. (Maybe it's a terrible sign, the tenderness he still holds for her. They're supposed to be moving on.)
And... she can't say, really, that she's happier than she was when things were at their best. But it's evened out-- the peaks don't come with valleys; she doesn't feel like she's drifting further, inevitably, into darkness. It's a tradeoff that felt necessary.
"I am," she says evenly. "I think so. It's... been an adjustment. But things are... good." She takes a breath.
"It's good to see you," she adds.
It could be a platitude, but she sounds too earnest.
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."
She's always been a workaholic, but it's different at the hospital. When they were on the x-files the odds were always stacked against them, but in medicine it's sure to be a losing game. The house always wins in the end, and that does take a toll on her. (It's rewarding work. That's the truth-- it's not just something she tells herself-- but it weighs on her, too.)
And... yes. She's happy, or happy enough. It's not the life she'd planned on having-- but that's been off the menu for decades. It's maybe not the life she'd pick now, if she could have anything-- but they aren't good for each other. It's not even that he's not good for her. She thinks maybe that's what he took away from her leaving, and of course he did-- of course that's what it sounded like on his end. That she was trapped and so she was escaping. But neither of them were doing well, living like that. She'd been at a loss to fix it, so she--
Well, she ran away.
It's so strange to sit across from one another like strangers. Like colleagues, at best, except when they were colleagues it was never like this. Objectively it's a good thing that they're able to do this-- that they can stay in each other's lives in some capacity. (That she can keep an eye on him, if only occasionally, from a distance.) But at the same time it's impossible, knowing what they used to have, not to wish for more.
"Maybe we should talk more," she says softly. It feels like a dangerous suggestion.
His expression sharpens at the idea, like he's coming into focus around the premise of getting to talk to Scully again. More is impossible to quantify - does it mean you can text me once a week when you see a calf in a field and think I'd like a photo of its big brown eyes, or does it mean actual conversations? Two AM questions - that can be answered long after two AM - and news articles he reads and opinions on politics and yes, baby cows and garden flowers and the monarch butterfly chrysalis he'd discovered a few days ago.
(And asking about her, of course, but that's the stuff he doesn't really have tacit permission for anymore. There's a certain danger to investigating Scully too deeply: What are you doing tonight, oh I'm going out with someone, it's a third date, feels pretty significant. She's always been more private a person than Mulder, anyway; he'd rather she threw him the things she wanted him to know about, without his probing for them.)
The food arrives, and that gives him an excuse not to reply for a moment. When the waitress has walked away, though, and he's squeezing ketchup onto his plate, he asks, "How much more?"
And there it is-- that spark of interest in his eyes, confirmation that it's a dangerous offer. Not a bad one, necessarily-- when she left it seemed like nothing stirred much interest for him. For either of them, really; they'd been going through the motions of life, rudderless and drifting. But seeing him intrigued and animate she feels that base desire to chase after him, to explore whatever it is that's caught his attention.
Even after years together, she's not sure Mulder has ever understood the pull he has on her. It's not quite right to say like a moth to flame, because-- until the last year or so, at least-- there was no element of self-destruction to it. But he overwhelms her-- he always has, from those early days of professional admiration to the last time she walked out their door. In a room with him, she can't help being in love with him-- she can't even question it. With his magnet to her brain there's never an option but to follow him, to trust him, to adore him.
In his absence, yes, she loves him still; but away from his lodestone it's possible to see the course they'd charted. His brilliance squandered in newspaper clippings and undone chores and half-abandoned notes and charts; her need to care for others focused wholly, frantically, on Mulder-- and still insufficient to keep him whole.
"I don't know." She toys with her fork at the uneasy admission, poking at a piece of chicken as though it has a better answer. "I just-- I'd like if we didn't have to find an excuse for it. If it didn't feel like I was prying when I ask how you are."
Mulder could probably make jokes about animal magnetism, maybe even mesmerism - but the truth is, he has no idea why Scully's so drawn to his particular charisma. Theirs has always been a synchrony without much logic to it beyond opposites attract. Sure, the balance of science and what some people call pseudoscience, normal and paranormal, is there - but they're uniquely suited to each other in disposition as well.
He thought so, anyway. He's back to hoping it might be true.
"It's not." That part is easy: Scully's always entitled to know how he's doing, even when the answer is something like I feel lost without you and I'm angry that we have to be apart. Maybe especially then - some part of him would have liked to have lashed out. He knows better, sure, but those early days were hard. The first November without her felt like dying. Dipping a fry in some ketchup, he goes on, "I don't know how to do this halfway, Scully. If we're not together but we're talking - you're going to have to be the one who hits the brakes."
Considering they've ended up where they are because of her choices, it seems fair enough to her. That doesn't mean she doesn't inwardly wince at it. But he's got a point.
"Do you think-- would that be okay? We've never really been good at boundaries." He's never been good at boundaries, and she's never been good at it with him, even if she's an enigma to everyone else.
"If it's going to hurt you to hear from me but have me step away sometimes... I don't want to make things worse for you."
"Scully." Around a mouthful of burger - not the most auspicious way to reply. So he chews and swallows before he goes on. "You already left. How could you make things worse?"
Okay, even Mulder, the wronged party in his own mind, has to admit that that's cruel. There's no room for an apology in him at the moment - or ever, possibly - but he tries to clarify, the look on his face pure wait, let's walk that back.
(He maybe doesn't deserve the chance to rephrase it, but damned if he's not going to try. He's missed her so much, even if he can't keep hurt and cynicism from surfacing.)
"I'm not expecting you to be on call for me. If you don't respond, you don't respond." Like it's that easy. He'd like to imagine, though, that he'll let go an unanswered text in favor of a long run or an Outer Limits marathon.
This time the wince is a visible one. She isn't upset-- it's true, and she deserves that-- but it's part of why she's so hesitant. He has every right to still be angry, but if that's where they are, it's no foundation to build a new relationship of any sort.
But it means something that he catches himself that he so obviously regrets the barb. It doesn't mean it doesn't sting, or that he didn't mean it, but it's a step in the right direction.
"Okay." It sounds a little more sure than she really is, but not by much. But she misses him; she worries about him more than she should, and it's not like Scully has ever been good at relinquishing control over anything in her life, Mulder's well- being included.
"You can keep me up to date on your hunt for Bigfoot," she adds.
He fires a shot, and it lands - and he hates himself a little for it. But Scully doesn't comment on it; she's taking the high road here, and Mulder knows he doesn't deserve that mercy. What he deserves is probably a tense argument in a diner booth and six months of silence. When he gets something kinder, he takes it and tries to return it in kind.
"We'll see what kind of cell reception I can get in the mountains. Last time I was up there, smartphones didn't exist." He doesn't want to talk about that occasion, though - making his way to an ice cave in search of an alien corpse while Scully lay dying of cancer. It'll be summer this time, warm and green, and he won't be on a mountain. He'll still be alone, but this time, it'll actually be his fault, and he can live with that. "And you can tell me about..."
He's still not sure what she does in her spare time. He's not sure she knows, either; sometimes he wonders if half the reason she works so hard and so long is to avoid having to think when there's no more work to do. If she's taken up hobbies, she hasn't shared them. If she has friends, she hasn't told him about them. If all she does is lay down on the couch to watch TV or read a book, he'd still be interested, but even he knows he's lost any right to make demands.
"Whatever you want," he finishes, and something in his voice softens. "I just want to hear from you."
It isn't pure magnanimity that gives him some leniency to be angry, to lash out. It isn't only her desire to face her sins either. Simply put, she misses him terribly. She's not totally alone in life now, but no one else is Mulder. It's hard not being able to turn to him and invoke some strange ancient memory, remember the time in the volcano, that time in the woods, that terrible turbulence flying to Texas, remember that small town we stayed in for a month before the cops drove by three nights in a row and we bolted? No one else understands the things she's experienced like he does, and without that history she can't help holding people at arm's length.
Ironic then that she's trying to keep him close but at a distance. But the truth is that while being cut off from him is probably healthier than being together was, it isn't much easier. Maybe they can have a healthy friendship.
"There's not much to tell," she admits. "Mostly work. I was thinking about adopting a dog but I'm not home enough. But... we can check in, once in a while."
It might make things hard for her, to have more frequent reminders. But she already left. How much worse could it be?
"Then you can tell me about work - everything that won't violate HIPAA." Because as it is, it sounds suspiciously like they'll talk about him for a while, and then she'll disappear until it's convenient to ask him about himself again. If they're going to do this, then he wants some of Scully, too, to be allowed back into the privacy of her life.
(Maybe he should have suggested they get a dog, back when they were still together. He hadn't liked the idea, because he hadn't really liked Queequeg, and on some level, he knows that it'd probably be like other couples having a kid to try and save a marriage. But maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe some long-legged, non-cannibalistic creature who'd go on runs with him would have given them both enough purpose that they could live in the same house.)
"When you want to," he adds after a moment, because we can check in, once in a while isn't a continuing conversation. He's imagining something besides what he's likely to receive - for all he knows, checking in means awkwardly conversing every three months, not every four. "Or when you give in and get a dog, and you need a sitter."
"I don't get the really intriguing ones any more," she says with a laugh. More hopeless cases and consulting on the weird ones-- most of the staff don't know her whole history but, well, they know she's the one to ask if they encounter something spooky, if only because nothing surprises her. "But, we should have lunch when the annual 'What We Got Stuck In Our Orifices' list comes out."
Probably a risky joke, but she makes it anyway.
"I've thought a little about going back to teaching pathology, but... seeing living patients feels more hopeful. Even when it isn't."
"I'll put it on my calendar." Maybe that's a risky joke with some exes, but Mulder's too interested in the subject matter to play up the obscenity of it. He wants to see some x-rays, or at least imagine them.
He considers the problem of wanting to spend less time with the dead - and he has to admit that he likes the idea of her returning to teaching, if only because Quantico's only half an hour away from his place. He could drive down and meet her for lunch, easy.
More importantly - maybe she'd have a little more time to herself at the end of the day. Classes have a set start and end time. "Could you teach live-person medicine? First aid for agents, or maybe join a medical school?"
Luring him down to Quantico would be an interesting prospect. Whether going back to the Bureau would be good for him, she's not sure. Maybe. Work is good for him-- and if he got involved in teaching, or consulting, it would certainly be to their benefit. On the other hand it might be another rabbit hole of conspiracy and danger, and he'd have no one to watch his back.
"First aid, sure, but I don't have the qualifications for medical school. I'm not sure I'd want that, anyway." It would be impossible not to dwell on her own time in med school, dropped back into that world, and though she's made peace with it she doesn't really want to revisit it.
"I guess maybe it's something to keep in my back pocket." For if life in the hospital grinds her down too much.
"Maybe." She'd get bored with first aid - he's pretty sure about that. The medicine Scully's interested in is complicated and occasionally bleeding-edge in terms of treatment plans. Teaching green agents about wrapping sprains and tying tourniquets won't keep her interest in the same way, however good an instructor she can be.
So that vague plan, the one that goes Scully's nearer to me, ????, profit, is scuttled for the moment. Instead, they'll just meet awkwardly between their homes over a meal and struggle to find things to say to each other. Because that's the worst part of this, as well as the most tantalizing part of talking to Scully more regularly: He doesn't know what to say to her to make the conversation move easily, but being around her will inevitably solve the problem. For the moment, he falls quiet, dipping a pair of fries into his ketchup.
With a vague hum, she turns her attention, mostly, back to her salad. It's not a comfortable silence, but it's not as awkward as she might have feared. That has to be a good sign, right?
(She feels superstitious. It's unscientific, looking for evidence to support a theory she's already decided on. We can do this, we can be friends.)
They eat, and eventually she decides to try a question that feels a little more dangerous.
He laughs a little, the surprise on his face a clear indication that he's never, in fact, thought about this. "I don't think Quantico wants a class on how to lose your mind tracking down serial killers."
They certainly wouldn't want anything on the X-files or Military Tribunals 101. However meaningful his years at the Bureau were, they were fraught at the best of times; either he was making their lives hell, or they were making his life hell. The skills he possesses are undeniable - the more he thinks about it, the easier it is to see the logic - but can he justify teaching profiling when he's been out of the game so long? Hell, can he justify teaching profiling when it nearly destroyed him multiple times?
It's impossible to articulate why she asked. Part of her is on the cusp of saying I just hate to see you wasting your brilliance like this, but even in the sanctum of her mind she hears it in her father's voice, and even at her age it makes youthful indignation rise in her gorge. Mulder will take it the wrong way because there's no other way to take it, and if he were to teach anything it'd be a master class in contrariness.
But the truth is, she does hate to see him wasting his time, his potential, his incredible mind.
"Not necessarily at the Academy," she reasons. "Maybe not on paper but in practice you'd be qualified to teach psychology, I bet." She offers a little smile. "Or mysterious courses meeting at strange times of day to discuss the history of the paranormal."
He has connections, he has time and opportunity, she'd bet he could figure something out.
"Fox Mulder, the nutty professor," he says dryly. He could teach psychology as effectively as she could medicine, he suspects - which is to say, well, but he probably couldn't justify it to any school looking to hire him. Maybe at a community college, but in his heart of hearts, he'd feel like he was slumming, regardless of whether it was actually true. "We could both be teachers in our old age, Scully."
And, some part of him thinks, they could be bored out of their minds. He tries to think back to anything that might come close to teaching: younger agents trailing behind him, trying to build alliances or friendships, and he, closing himself off to them at every turn. "But I'd lack the pedagogy. I've never taught anyone."
"I think that's true of a lot of college professors."
It's the kind of thing he could look into, at least. And-- it's a matter of self-image, she thinks; just because he's never consciously taught anyone doesn't mean they haven't learned. A man with a curious mind, she imagines he'd be suited to it if he had the temperament to try.
"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."
Again, he gives her an eminently reasonable reply. It's a surprise, and mostly a pleasant one, though there's that little part of her, still frustrated by the bad years, that can't help wondering if it's intentional-- a way to needle her, to say see, you had no reason to leave, everything could have been fine if you stayed. She knows he doesn't mean that-- even apart she trusts him too much to seriously entertain the idea-- but quieting her own worst impulses is easier said than done.
She doesn't expect him to be over them, exactly. Obviously she isn't-- if she was she wouldn't be here, watching him across the table and wishing they were leaving together. Her brand of fantasy is both more and less intimate than his: she misses being able to lean on his shoulder, misses waking up on cold mornings in a warm embrace. Scully has always been good at being alone, and that's why she's all right without him. But she misses not having to be alone.
"I guess I am," she concedes, careful. "That seems fair."
But if he'll be as reasonable in meddling as he has been responding to it, maybe that's not the end of the world. She'll at least hear him out.
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And... she can't say, really, that she's happier than she was when things were at their best. But it's evened out-- the peaks don't come with valleys; she doesn't feel like she's drifting further, inevitably, into darkness. It's a tradeoff that felt necessary.
"I am," she says evenly. "I think so. It's... been an adjustment. But things are... good." She takes a breath.
"It's good to see you," she adds.
It could be a platitude, but she sounds too earnest.
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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."
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And... yes. She's happy, or happy enough. It's not the life she'd planned on having-- but that's been off the menu for decades. It's maybe not the life she'd pick now, if she could have anything-- but they aren't good for each other. It's not even that he's not good for her. She thinks maybe that's what he took away from her leaving, and of course he did-- of course that's what it sounded like on his end. That she was trapped and so she was escaping. But neither of them were doing well, living like that. She'd been at a loss to fix it, so she--
Well, she ran away.
It's so strange to sit across from one another like strangers. Like colleagues, at best, except when they were colleagues it was never like this. Objectively it's a good thing that they're able to do this-- that they can stay in each other's lives in some capacity. (That she can keep an eye on him, if only occasionally, from a distance.) But at the same time it's impossible, knowing what they used to have, not to wish for more.
"Maybe we should talk more," she says softly. It feels like a dangerous suggestion.
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(And asking about her, of course, but that's the stuff he doesn't really have tacit permission for anymore. There's a certain danger to investigating Scully too deeply: What are you doing tonight, oh I'm going out with someone, it's a third date, feels pretty significant. She's always been more private a person than Mulder, anyway; he'd rather she threw him the things she wanted him to know about, without his probing for them.)
The food arrives, and that gives him an excuse not to reply for a moment. When the waitress has walked away, though, and he's squeezing ketchup onto his plate, he asks, "How much more?"
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Even after years together, she's not sure Mulder has ever understood the pull he has on her. It's not quite right to say like a moth to flame, because-- until the last year or so, at least-- there was no element of self-destruction to it. But he overwhelms her-- he always has, from those early days of professional admiration to the last time she walked out their door. In a room with him, she can't help being in love with him-- she can't even question it. With his magnet to her brain there's never an option but to follow him, to trust him, to adore him.
In his absence, yes, she loves him still; but away from his lodestone it's possible to see the course they'd charted. His brilliance squandered in newspaper clippings and undone chores and half-abandoned notes and charts; her need to care for others focused wholly, frantically, on Mulder-- and still insufficient to keep him whole.
"I don't know." She toys with her fork at the uneasy admission, poking at a piece of chicken as though it has a better answer. "I just-- I'd like if we didn't have to find an excuse for it. If it didn't feel like I was prying when I ask how you are."
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He thought so, anyway. He's back to hoping it might be true.
"It's not." That part is easy: Scully's always entitled to know how he's doing, even when the answer is something like I feel lost without you and I'm angry that we have to be apart. Maybe especially then - some part of him would have liked to have lashed out. He knows better, sure, but those early days were hard. The first November without her felt like dying. Dipping a fry in some ketchup, he goes on, "I don't know how to do this halfway, Scully. If we're not together but we're talking - you're going to have to be the one who hits the brakes."
Not a fair thing to ask of her, but a true one.
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"Do you think-- would that be okay? We've never really been good at boundaries." He's never been good at boundaries, and she's never been good at it with him, even if she's an enigma to everyone else.
"If it's going to hurt you to hear from me but have me step away sometimes... I don't want to make things worse for you."
Which might seem laughable, considering.
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Okay, even Mulder, the wronged party in his own mind, has to admit that that's cruel. There's no room for an apology in him at the moment - or ever, possibly - but he tries to clarify, the look on his face pure wait, let's walk that back.
(He maybe doesn't deserve the chance to rephrase it, but damned if he's not going to try. He's missed her so much, even if he can't keep hurt and cynicism from surfacing.)
"I'm not expecting you to be on call for me. If you don't respond, you don't respond." Like it's that easy. He'd like to imagine, though, that he'll let go an unanswered text in favor of a long run or an Outer Limits marathon.
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But it means something that he catches himself that he so obviously regrets the barb. It doesn't mean it doesn't sting, or that he didn't mean it, but it's a step in the right direction.
"Okay." It sounds a little more sure than she really is, but not by much. But she misses him; she worries about him more than she should, and it's not like Scully has ever been good at relinquishing control over anything in her life, Mulder's well- being included.
"You can keep me up to date on your hunt for Bigfoot," she adds.
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"We'll see what kind of cell reception I can get in the mountains. Last time I was up there, smartphones didn't exist." He doesn't want to talk about that occasion, though - making his way to an ice cave in search of an alien corpse while Scully lay dying of cancer. It'll be summer this time, warm and green, and he won't be on a mountain. He'll still be alone, but this time, it'll actually be his fault, and he can live with that. "And you can tell me about..."
He's still not sure what she does in her spare time. He's not sure she knows, either; sometimes he wonders if half the reason she works so hard and so long is to avoid having to think when there's no more work to do. If she's taken up hobbies, she hasn't shared them. If she has friends, she hasn't told him about them. If all she does is lay down on the couch to watch TV or read a book, he'd still be interested, but even he knows he's lost any right to make demands.
"Whatever you want," he finishes, and something in his voice softens. "I just want to hear from you."
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Ironic then that she's trying to keep him close but at a distance. But the truth is that while being cut off from him is probably healthier than being together was, it isn't much easier. Maybe they can have a healthy friendship.
"There's not much to tell," she admits. "Mostly work. I was thinking about adopting a dog but I'm not home enough. But... we can check in, once in a while."
It might make things hard for her, to have more frequent reminders. But she already left. How much worse could it be?
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(Maybe he should have suggested they get a dog, back when they were still together. He hadn't liked the idea, because he hadn't really liked Queequeg, and on some level, he knows that it'd probably be like other couples having a kid to try and save a marriage. But maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe some long-legged, non-cannibalistic creature who'd go on runs with him would have given them both enough purpose that they could live in the same house.)
"When you want to," he adds after a moment, because we can check in, once in a while isn't a continuing conversation. He's imagining something besides what he's likely to receive - for all he knows, checking in means awkwardly conversing every three months, not every four. "Or when you give in and get a dog, and you need a sitter."
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Probably a risky joke, but she makes it anyway.
"I've thought a little about going back to teaching pathology, but... seeing living patients feels more hopeful. Even when it isn't."
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He considers the problem of wanting to spend less time with the dead - and he has to admit that he likes the idea of her returning to teaching, if only because Quantico's only half an hour away from his place. He could drive down and meet her for lunch, easy.
More importantly - maybe she'd have a little more time to herself at the end of the day. Classes have a set start and end time. "Could you teach live-person medicine? First aid for agents, or maybe join a medical school?"
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"First aid, sure, but I don't have the qualifications for medical school. I'm not sure I'd want that, anyway." It would be impossible not to dwell on her own time in med school, dropped back into that world, and though she's made peace with it she doesn't really want to revisit it.
"I guess maybe it's something to keep in my back pocket." For if life in the hospital grinds her down too much.
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So that vague plan, the one that goes Scully's nearer to me, ????, profit, is scuttled for the moment. Instead, they'll just meet awkwardly between their homes over a meal and struggle to find things to say to each other. Because that's the worst part of this, as well as the most tantalizing part of talking to Scully more regularly: He doesn't know what to say to her to make the conversation move easily, but being around her will inevitably solve the problem. For the moment, he falls quiet, dipping a pair of fries into his ketchup.
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(She feels superstitious. It's unscientific, looking for evidence to support a theory she's already decided on. We can do this, we can be friends.)
They eat, and eventually she decides to try a question that feels a little more dangerous.
"Do you ever think about teaching, or something?"
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They certainly wouldn't want anything on the X-files or Military Tribunals 101. However meaningful his years at the Bureau were, they were fraught at the best of times; either he was making their lives hell, or they were making his life hell. The skills he possesses are undeniable - the more he thinks about it, the easier it is to see the logic - but can he justify teaching profiling when he's been out of the game so long? Hell, can he justify teaching profiling when it nearly destroyed him multiple times?
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But the truth is, she does hate to see him wasting his time, his potential, his incredible mind.
"Not necessarily at the Academy," she reasons. "Maybe not on paper but in practice you'd be qualified to teach psychology, I bet." She offers a little smile. "Or mysterious courses meeting at strange times of day to discuss the history of the paranormal."
He has connections, he has time and opportunity, she'd bet he could figure something out.
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And, some part of him thinks, they could be bored out of their minds. He tries to think back to anything that might come close to teaching: younger agents trailing behind him, trying to build alliances or friendships, and he, closing himself off to them at every turn. "But I'd lack the pedagogy. I've never taught anyone."
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It's the kind of thing he could look into, at least. And-- it's a matter of self-image, she thinks; just because he's never consciously taught anyone doesn't mean they haven't learned. A man with a curious mind, she imagines he'd be suited to it if he had the temperament to try.
She shakes her head a bit.
"I'm sorry-- I shouldn't meddle, I know."
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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."
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She doesn't expect him to be over them, exactly. Obviously she isn't-- if she was she wouldn't be here, watching him across the table and wishing they were leaving together. Her brand of fantasy is both more and less intimate than his: she misses being able to lean on his shoulder, misses waking up on cold mornings in a warm embrace. Scully has always been good at being alone, and that's why she's all right without him. But she misses not having to be alone.
"I guess I am," she concedes, careful. "That seems fair."
But if he'll be as reasonable in meddling as he has been responding to it, maybe that's not the end of the world. She'll at least hear him out.