Scully watched with confused and annoyed eyes as Dwight barreled into the bomb shelter, carrying a huge sort of contraption and a bag of potatoes. He dropped both, and the vegetables went rolling around on the floor as he dove down and tackled Trout, clasping the Vance employee’s hands behind his back and sitting on top of him to keep him in place. Even though this entire thing was basically Dwight’s fault, and even though Scully loathed practically everything about him, it was actually sort of helpful that he was restraining Trout at the moment, so Scully reached behind her and pulled out her cuffs, tossing them toward him with practiced efficiency.

“Cuff him,” she instructed coldly, ignoring the look of excitement and false importance on Dwight’s face. She then shifted and directed her attention to her partner, who was sitting on his knees with a hand pressed to his left shoulder and his face twisted in pain and irritation. “Let me see,” she murmured, her voice a soft kind of whisper that was almost always reserved for these moments and this man. She got down on her knees beside him and pried his hand away so that she could inspect his wound.

“I’m fine, it’s fine. I think it just grazed me as it went by,” he assured her, his body language just this side of shrugging her off the way that he usually did. She peered at his shoulder and peeled his shirt away gingerly. He hissed, but her fingers were warm and gentle against him and he thought maybe it was more a caress than a checkup.

“You need stitches,” she whispered, and he looked down at where her hand was pressed against him and then back up at her face, but she found herself unable to look him in the eye, unable to meet his meaningful stare and unable to drag her attention from the bullet-wound and the blood on his skin. She was too raw…she’d had too few hours of sleep…

She was too much in love with him to look him in the eye.

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath.

“Hey, Scully?” he mumbled, and she hummed, still unable to really address him in any real kind of way. She pressed her palm against him and tried to silently tell him that she was sorry. “You were right,” he announced, and at that she momentarily forgot her self-consciousness and her eyes widened. She looked up at him in surprise and her mouth dropped open at the look of resignation on his face.

“What?” she breathed, so unused to hearing him mutter anything involving her having been right about anything that she practically couldn‘t breathe, and a grin started to seep into his features. She felt her stomach flutter a little and raised an eyebrow at him because otherwise she‘d have smiled, but she couldn‘t do that because…well because she was Scully.

“It wasn’t aliens,” he whispered fondly, and somehow it sounded more like a confession…more like affection and promise and assurance than humor or defeat or resignation. She finally smiled softly at him and looked back at his shoulder.

“Yeah, well,” she sighed, “don’t be too disappointed.“ She felt more than saw the look of question on his face, asking her to explain and expound on why he shouldn’t feel the sting of disappointment he always did when there was nothing paranormal going on at all. She smiled at his shoulder and raised her eyebrows. “He did mention Lee Harvey Oswald,” she explained dryly, and he laughed. She felt her stomach flip again as he dipped his head low and let his breath fan against her ear.

“Maybe it’s a conspiracy,” he whispered, and she chuckled in response, pulling away from him and telling him clinically that he should apply pressure while she checked on the rest of the hostages and got them all out of there safely. He nodded at her and there was a moment where their eyes locked and something passed between them. There was a moment where she found herself completely unable to keep her expression from giving her away, and Mulder’s eyes widened slightly because there was no mistaking the look of complete infatuation on her face…the look of fondness and affection…the look of something way beyond even lust.

She stood up and walked back to check on Pam, telling herself she’d just deal with this later. There would be plenty of time later.

***

The lights on the ambulance had been turned off because there was no rush, there was no emergency, there were no real victims to tend to and heal. Pam sat on the ledge of the back door, her eyes closed as one of the EMT’s dabbed alcohol and cotton balls against the cut on her neck. It stung, but she didn’t really mind.

Mulder, however, sat to her left, complaining and whining and huffing in that way that only men could, and Scully stood away from him with her arms crossed, watching in amusement as another EMT attempted to dress his flesh wound.

“Ouch, damnit, what are you doing down there? Can’t you just let Scully do this? You’re killing me with that needle,” he announced, and Pam sighed, wondering if he was always like this.

“Sir, your flesh is very raw right now and you insisted that I put these stitches in right here in this parking lot, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m sure your partner can tell you that the pain is your own fault,” the EMT countered, and Pam pried one of her eyes open to look over at Scully who was rolling her eyes in annoyance.

“Jesus, Mulder, you’d think you were the one locked up in that bomb shelter this whole time, with the amount of complaining you’re doing,” she muttered, her voice back to its dry monotone that Pam had gotten so used to over the past few days. The EMT at Pam’s neck finished taping a small bandage against the cut and told her to replace it the next day and then she’d be fine. Pam nodded and thanked him.

“I’m the one who got shot,” Mulder was saying beside her, “I didn’t see you diving in front of any bullets today,” he accused.

“Please, Mulder. Just…be quiet and let the woman do her job,” Scully instructed sounding like either a tired parent or an exhausted fifth grade teacher. She stepped past Mulder and moved to stand in front of Pam with crossed arms and a concerned expression. “How’s your neck?” she wondered and Pam pressed the tips of her fingers against the bandage in curiosity.

“I can’t even feel it,” she told Scully with a shrug, and Scully nodded her approval as if she’d figured that would be the case.

Pam shifted on the ledge of the ambulance and thought about the way that Scranton had become a novel by John Grisham and Mulder and Scully had shown up like Holmes and Watson or Batman and Robin. She thought about the way that despite their trench coats and stoicism, despite their sunglasses and affinity for asking and re-asking the same few questions over and over again, they had become part of Vance Refrigeration and Dunder Mifflin and Scranton in general and she was glad, grateful, well aware of the fact that the city owed them a great debt.

She considered Jim and what she would say to him…what she would tell him when she saw him and how she would handle the fact that he had basically overheard her pouring her heart out on the telephone. She considered apologizing and demanding apologies. She considered stealing his black sweater and burning it just so he would never accidentally (or purposely) wear it to work again and make her remember the way that she’d treated him…the way that she’d needed a second to think and that had sealed her solitary fate…the way he’d looked at her when she’d stopped him from kissing her and the way that he‘d basically walked away from her without looking back.

She considered Sprinkles, but only for a second.

And she also considered how she had a new apartment and she was independent and capable and generally happy, even if she and Jim were still whatever it was that they were. She considered that she was a grown up and she wanted so badly to do grown up things and feel genuinely adult. She tilted her head at Scully.

“Listen, Agent Scully, I um…this might be weird and everything but I was just thinking, you guys are staying at a motel, right?” she wondered and Scully turned back to her from glaring in Mulder’s direction and sighed.

“Yes, the one right off the highway,” she told her shortly, and Pam had to keep herself from grinning at the way that it was so easy for Scully to slip in and out of her professional role. She was suddenly all business when hours ago she’d been so quiet and feminine, so honest and thoughtful.

“I was just thinking that maybe, um, I mean if you want, you and Agent Mulder could come to my apartment for dinner tonight. If you…want…” she offered, her cheeks turning pink with the fact that she was all too aware that she was extending an awkward kind of invitation. Scully visibly softened a bit, turning for a moment into the woman Pam had gotten to know inside the shelter, and she glanced at Mulder quickly then back to Pam with a quiet smile.

“That would be really nice, Pam,” she told her, “Thank you.”

***

It was three o’clock in the afternoon by the time they’d taken everyone’s statements and been cleared by the medics and told they were free to go, and they spent the first fifteen minutes of their twenty minute car ride in a blatantly awkward and forced kind of silence. Scully had the radio tuned to some AM station that was explaining blandly the dangers of mercury poisoning for people who ate excessive amounts of salmon and Mulder was getting to the point where he thought he might literally have preferred to have been knocked unconscious in the bomb shelter. This was ridiculous. He heaved a sigh and Scully glanced at him quickly and then looked quickly away.

“How’s your shoulder?” she asked flatly, her eyes intent on the road and her face stoic and clear of emotion. Mulder pursed his lips and studied her profile.

“Fine,” he answered, his voice just as devoid of feeling as hers. She nodded in response, and he nodded in response to her nod. The electric silence hung in the air and he felt her energy stirring in the drivers seat, pulsing like there were things she needed to let out, or…

Well, he always thought Scully needed to let some things out.

“So,” he began, “are we going to talk about this, or…”

Her brow furrowed and he was not in the least bit surprised at the way that she feigned ignorance, the way that she kept her breathing even and the way that she didn’t look over at him and the way that her fingers were loose and calm on the steering wheel. Scully was almost never overpowered by emotion in a way that would give her a heaving chest or white knuckles.

“About what?” she wondered, asking him to explain himself because she knew that he was no more brave than she was, usually. He wasn’t any more courageous when it came to these things that weren’t paranormal or tragic or life-threatening. He let out a cynical chuckle and raised his eyebrows.

“Pick something,” he muttered and she licked her lips carefully.

“I don’t know what you…” she began and he found himself turning his torso toward her, ignoring the way pain sliced through his arm at the motion and ignoring the way that the seatbelt he was wearing didn’t really allow for it. He turned the radio off with a harsh hand and she went silent, raising an eyebrow in her signature look of skepticism and mild irritation.

“Come on, Scully” he interrupted, as if that could communicate what he was really trying to say…it was the best he could do at the moment. He licked at his bottom lip angrily and forced himself to go on, “I have to be honest with you, this is getting impossible for me…which is saying something because we both know I‘m a masochist, so…” There was a tickle of satisfaction somewhere low in his stomach at the way that finally her cheeks were turning pink with discomfort, finally her eyes seemed glazed over in thought, finally her knuckles were white on the steering wheel and her breath puffed out of her mouth in uncalculated gushes. He was satisfied because sometimes her defense mechanisms were too much for him and sometimes he felt like there were gulfs between them full of words unsaid and sprinkled with stifled emotions. “Can we just… I don’t want to lie to you,” he admitted softly, honestly, “but I have been. I mean, we have been…lying. Let‘s just try to…”

“I can’t,” she forced out and he froze. He eyed her cautiously and tried to keep himself from feeling completely jolted. He looked for a way that he might be misunderstanding her.

“What?” he asked as she finally pulled their sedan into the motel parking lot. She threw the car into park and turned the ignition off, her movements a little bit jerky…shaky…forced in the way that her words had been. He inhaled audibly and she turned her gaze on him and he was surprised to find that it was soft…pleading…full of unshed tears that shocked him and he was reminded momentarily of hallways and bees and telling her she‘d saved him…

“Please, Mulder,” she murmured and her voice was eerily free of the tears that were hanging in her eyes. She wasn’t unsure or confused or searching for words the way that he had been…she just spoke to him, calm and quiet and strangely honest. “I can’t do this right now. I’m exhausted and confused and I’ve been locked in a bomb shelter and I don’t want it to be like this…with bullet wounds and muddy clothes and that look on your face…just…” she sighed and looked down at her hands, stark white against the gray of the steering wheel, shaking her head slightly, and he thought maybe he actually did understand what she was trying to say. He thought maybe he agreed. “I don’t want to lie either,” she admitted, “But I need to for a few more hours because I don’t want it to be like this.”

He chewed on the inside of his cheek and nodded, feeling the way her tone of voice brought a little bit of a lump to his throat and the way that he wanted to reach over and touch her… but he couldn’t do that yet because she didn‘t want it to be like this. So he just sat there and breathed in the air she was breathing out the way he’d done for years, and he convinced himself that breathing the same air as her was almost touching her, the way he’d convinced himself thousands of times before.

She correctly assumed his silence was concession and shook her shoulders a bit as if regrouping before pushing open the drivers side door and climbing out, leaving Mulder to sit and stare after her again. She rounded the front of the car and tapped on his window, and he pushed his door open a few inches so that he could hear her.

“Get changed,” she told him like the drill sergeant he was sometimes sure she’d been in a past life, “We’re going to Pam’s for dinner.”

He nodded quietly and climbed gingerly from the car, wincing at the pull on his shoulder and wondering if the universe kept a tally of all of the times it had totally screwed Fox William Mulder out of getting what he wanted. He sighed.

Just one more hit in a long line of many, he thought tiredly, but hopefully...soon...that would all change.