better late than never
Just as Scully is finishing her second cup of coffee, Mulder stomps through the front door. She hears his boots hit the floor and then watches him stride into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He adds a bouquet of rather carelessly picked wildflowers — rhododendrons, mostly, probably from the bit of their property near the road, where they’ve run riot all week.
“Happy anniversary, Scully,” he says, depositing the makeshift vase next to her coffee mug.
She drinks the rest of it in one gulp. Scully appreciates, at least, that he is still full of surprises. “Okay,” she says. “The anniversary of what, exactly?”
He sits down next to her and props his feet up on the dining room table. She hates that, she loves him; she’s made an art form of ignoring his bad behavior. At least he took his boots off first.
“Thirty years ago today, you walked into my office.”
That feels impossible, but she can’t argue with the math, so she picks something else to fight about. “We’re calling that an anniversary?”
His grin is slow, easy. “Well, we never got married.”
“Still.” She purses her lips. “Thirty years.”
When she looks at him, she still sees the man who sat in that basement office thirty years ago. No one tells you this: that in your eyes, the people you love will never really age. In every moment he is every version of himself she’s ever known.
What a gift, to know someone so well.
“There’s something else,” he says. He stands up and heads toward the stairs.
As always, she follows him. “If it’s a cow slideshow, I’m leaving.”
But he stops outside the door to the spare room, which was Mulder’s writing room for a while, and which these days hosts the very occasional human guest and a rotating assortment of rodents that she can’t quite bring herself to kill. It feels unsporting to build a house in the middle of nowhere and then complain about the animals who were there first.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and she obliges.
The door creaks, and his heavy footsteps move away from her. She hears the lamp click on.
Scully takes a few steps into the room. The spare bed’s made up more neatly than usual. There’s a new rug, and an armchair that she thought had been relegated to the basement.
And underneath the open window, with a view out to the horizon, there’s a desk. Parsons-style, practical and unshowy, with a lovely grain. There are framed pictures of her mother, of her nieces and nephews, even Bill. And there’s a standard-issue nameplate that says DR. DANA SCULLY in that standard-issue font.
He’s still smiling but he looks a little nervous, too, and it’s impossible to overstate how endearing she finds that, after all this time. “I heard you wanted one of these.”
“Took you long enough,” she deadpans, because even after all this time, sincerity doesn’t come easily to either of them.
Mulder looks over his handiwork, clearly pleased. “Better late than never.”
She crosses to him and wraps her arms around his waist. Better late than never should be emblazoned on their family crest.
It’s still the earliest part of spring, but the breeze that comes in through the window is warm and fragrant. He rests his chin on top of her head. “Thirty years,” he says, and she feels his voice down to her toes.
Scully smiles against his chest. “It’s not the worst way to spend a life.”
“We’ll see how you feel about that in another thirty.”
And she pulls him just a little closer. “I’ll be there.”
