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Chapter Text

In an uncharacteristic display of sadism—the man usually just settled for bludgeoning him outright with reprimands—Kersh had maneuvered him into something guaranteed to make him miserable and waste even more of his time on a pointless charade. He’d mandated psychotherapy.

“A traumatic absence requiring admission to a hospital or other medical facility now requires three sessions with a psychiatric professional to ensure fitness for duty.”

“I’m fit for my duties, sir.” And then, because he never could resist, “Such as they are.”

If the zinger landed, it only served to make things worse. “You will be—after three sessions. This is not a discussion, Agent Mulder. Dismissed.”

So here he was, Tuesday afternoon in a beige room, waiting to go into what would inevitably be another beige room with some insipid landscapes on the wall, and maybe one of those little zen sand garden things to fiddle with. Someone with a soothing voice was probably going to tell him it all went back to his childhood. Yeah, no shit.

He’d assumed the doctor would be a woman mostly because all the doctors (well, doctor, singular) in his life were women, but he realized his mistake when a rather stout man opened the door. The guy was utterly a shrink. For fuck’s sake, he was even wearing a sweatervest under that nebbish blazer, a blazer that—yep, it had elbow patches. If this guy had an Austrian accent he was going to lose it.

“Agent Fox Mulder? I’m Doctor Richard Mahoney. It’s nice to meet you. Please, come in.” Nope, American. Can’t have everything.

And look at that—the room was beige. The wall art was Kandinsky knockoffs, though. And the couch was better than he’d expected, a genuinely comfortable beast of a thing that didn’t make him feel oversized. You’re feeling very sleepy indeed.

Unfortunately, a nap didn’t seem to be the main thing on Doctor Mahoney’s mind. He was sitting forward in his chair, expression bland but eyes intent. He knew that expression very well. He’d practiced it in the mirror for use in interrogations.

“Listen, doc, I get that this is mandatory. And you get that this is mandatory. So what do you say we just skip the formalities and put on an episode of Matlock or something? That’s 45 minutes. Honestly we’ll both probably get more out of a rerun than me running my mouth.”

“Do you think you have so little to say?”

Mulder grinned and wagged his finger. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You’re not gonna get me that easy.”

“Why do you think I want to ‘get’ you?”

A stare-off ensued, one that Mulder only lost because he flopped backward on the couch in what he thought was a pretty good demonstration of insouciance. “All right, sorry doc, my mistake. Not everyone is out to get me. God, just saying that I feel better already. It’s like a weight has been lifted, et cetera.”

“Do you think you’re here because of paranoia?”

“Oh, you want a diagnosis? Sure, here you go: subject displays obsessive-compulsive behaviors enhanced by paranoid delusions, all of which feed a narcissistic streak that may be either schizoid or antisocial, depending on which way you hold it up to the light. Also, a tendency toward fantastical thinking, although I’d argue that’s a consequence of my work and not a true sign of any confabulatory disorders.”

“Also, a bit flippant.”

“Well, now you’re just being rude.”

Mahoney only inclined his head. “You’re clearly very familiar with the field of psychology. Do you have an interest in it?”

Mulder chuckled a little. “An interest? Yeah, I have an interest. Degree in psychology from Oxford, and then I did a stint in Behavioral after Quantico.” And then of course I underwent hypnotic regression and learned some things that changed the way I thought about the world. He wasn’t going to say that part, though. “Psych majors make the worst patients, huh?”

“Is it important to you that you be the worst?” Dr. Mahoney asked mildly. When Mulder didn’t answer, he prodded him again. “Or the best?”

“‘The most promising criminal profiler to come out of Quantico in twenty years,’ end quote. No, I don’t need to be the best. I was, and look what happened.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Directly? No, I’m here because of what happened in the field. Indirectly? Sure. Although I guess you could argue that everything in my life is indirectly responsible for me being here. But I don’t think we have time to connect all those dots.”

“So let’s talk about the field incident, then. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Oh, there was a hurricane and I got attacked and several people died. Other than that it went swimmingly.” He cracked a smile at his own joke, but Dr. Mahoney didn’t seem in the mood to indulge him.

“You were attacked.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t bad. Doesn’t even break the top ten injuries.”

“Leaving aside the question of exactly how many times you’ve been injured in the field—for now—let me just remind you that the injury still required hospitalization. That’s serious by anyone’s standards.”

Mulder waved his hand. “Scully just made me go to a hospital for observation because of the possible contamination, but they didn’t find anything even with the additional tests. But hey, joke’s on her because I’m here and she has to be in a meeting. Wait, no, sorry—joke’s on me.”

Dr. Mahoney didn’t rise to the bait. Didn’t even seem to realize it was bait. “And Scully is…?”

“My partner. She’s a medical doctor. You know she had to deliver a baby and fight a monster in that hurricane? But no, I’m the one who gets assigned a shrink.”

“She sounds like a very impressive person. Do you feel her skills create an imbalance in your partnership, if she can order you to get tests and go to the hospital?”

That was so far off base he zoned back in. “What? No. She’s a doctor.”

“You seem more resentful of her than of the criminal you apprehended.”

He stopped himself from correcting that—letting people think he meant human monsters was ultimately easier for everyone—but it only made him more annoyed at the guy: for not understanding, for sitting in a nice cozy office and thinking he could understand.

“No. There are no problems with my partnership. Only thing in my life that’s going right,” he muttered, and god damn it, now he’d done it. He’d given this mild-mannered cliche of a man something to really work with. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can always trust myself with exactly enough ammo to shoot myself in the foot.

But strangely, Dr. Mahoney didn’t go for that bait, either. All he said was “that’s good to hear,” and asked again about the incident.

“Look, it was just a run-of-the-mill monster. We figured it out, we fixed it. End of story. No big deal.”

“Are there run-of-the-mill monsters?”

“For me there are.”

“So injuries are ordinary and monsters are ordinary. That’s remarkably jaded even for an experienced agent. Is there anything you would consider extra-ordinary?”

“I don’t know, the baby thing was pretty cool.”

“You said your partner did that. Did you also participate?”

“Not really.”

“So she was able to have a positive experience, while yours sounds like it was wholly negative. Is that accurate?”

“I don’t think she had a positive experience in a hurricane with a monster. And she’s a doctor, I think babies are old hat for her.” He was being more sarcastic than he meant to, an edge creeping into his voice of genuine anger. “No, scratch that. I think delivering a baby was maybe the worst part of the whole thing for her, because she can’t have children anymore. I’m glad I didn’t have to see the look on her face. I’m sure it would have been genuinely traumatizing, instead of just part of the job that I wish you’d let me get back to.”

Mahoney gave him a look of compassion, which was infuriating. As if he could understand. As if he could even really know. “I’m sorry to hear that—”

“You and me both.”

Mahoney recalibrated. “You said ‘anymore.’ Is this a recent development? Did something happen, another field incident?”

Oh, the weight of that question. The oblivious cruelty of it. “I happened.”

“I don’t understand.”

And Mulder wasn’t going to help him understand. He wasn’t. He was just going to sit here, or turn the conversation back, or—well, something, he would do something, because he couldn’t talk about this. Not now, not to this stereotype who thought he was an archetype, the kindly older fellow who just wanted to help, when really he was sitting there picking off scabs that had barely formed at all. It was a wonder the carpet wasn’t sopping with blood. 

“Do you feel responsible for your partner’s infertility for some reason?” Mahoney pressed.

“I am responsible.”

“I know of many causes for infertility, but very few that an FBI agent can induce. Did you injure her in the abdomen?”

“Of course not!”

“Then why do you think you’re responsible?”

“It’s complicated.”

And then they waited. And waited. He was prepared to wait through three sessions or three hundred, if that was what it took. Her pain was not his to parade around like he owned it. It was only his to bear.

Mahoney did finally give in first. “So, you ended up in the hospital, but in your estimation, it was your partner who sustained the more long-lasting injury from this case. Do you think she should be here instead?”

“I don’t think she should be here, period.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What I mean, doc, is what I said. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be in your office, in my office, she shouldn’t be in the FBI, hell, she should probably get the hell out of Washington and start over in some cute Vermont town where they make organic granola and breed specialty chickens. She should be running a hospital. She should have six kids and a white picket fence.” He couldn’t bring himself to say husband. He couldn’t bring himself to say happy either.

“You think she doesn’t belong here? Or you don’t want her here?”

“Both—neither. She belongs anywhere she wants, can do anything she wants.”

“So it’s you who doesn’t want her here.”

He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “No. That’s not it.”

Mahoney waited. And now he was caught, because he had to explain. He couldn’t let the implication stand—even though it didn’t matter what some guy in a beige room thought—that he disliked Scully. That this was some kind of macho resentment, a woman on his turf, no girls allowed. “That’s not it,” he insisted. “I want her here. I need her.”

“You need a partner. But if there are unhealthy dynamics that are undermining—”

“No.” It came out like a bark. “No, I need her. What I’m saying is that she doesn’t need me.”

“And you want her to need you?”

Yes. He let his head fall into his hands, scrubbed his face hard just to see the spots bloom behind his eyes. Let out a breath; came up for air. “Doc, if I were half the man I should be, I would have driven her out of here years ago.”

Mahoney digested that tidbit visibly, shifting in his seat. “I see,” he said slowly. “You believe she’s martyring herself. You would rather be the martyr.”

He’d never thought the word martyr could sound so sordid. Maybe it was six years with a Catholic, but weren’t martyrs supposed to be the good guys? Well, fuck it, he’d take the title regardless. “If that’s what it takes.”

Mahoney sighed. “Self-sacrifice can be noble, Fox. But if there’s one thing law enforcement loves, it’s the idea of nobility. Even when it’s not necessary. Even when it’s actively detrimental. With one great act, martyrs are forgiven everything. It makes things very easy.”

“You think martyrdom is easy?”

“For you, a career agent? Yes.”

And then Mahoney made them both sit with that. Made him really think about it, which entirely sucked in a way he couldn’t even feel good about, because—again—martyr. Fuck.

“Our time is almost up,” Mahoney said eventually, and damn it, it was. How had all of that happened? And happened so quickly? He’d been sure he was going to talk about baseball. He’d even been looking forward to it. “Fox, I’m glad you came in to talk to me, and glad you shared some of what you’ve been working with. For this week, I’d like you to think about whether you need to drive your partner away, or drive her out. Or even that you could. As someone who made it through med school, I can tell you definitively that it takes a certain kind of bull-headed tenacity baked into your personality to survive—and to thrive. Most of us do thrive in that challenge. This job, which I don’t doubt is also challenging, may not be wearing her down. It may be exactly what she wants. So maybe this week, you can think about what she may be getting out of the job as well as what you get out of this job. Whether martyrdom or—perhaps—something entirely positive and life-affirming.”

“Homework, doc?”

“If you like.”

He didn’t like. He didn’t like at all.

Chapter Text

“Hey Scully, you ever think maybe of leaving the Bureau?”

She didn’t even look up from what she was typing. “I don’t think anyone’s going to pay for us to find aliens freelance, Mulder.”

“No, I mean…” He trailed off until she was forced to look at him, to demand that he finish his sentence.

“You mean?”

“I mean—just you. Leaving the Bureau, doing something else. Combination bed and breakfast and used bookshop.”

“Sure, that sounds nice—if I were to pitch my entire personality into the sea, maybe.”

“Oh, come on, French windows, cute coffee shops, claw foot tubs.”

“Mulder, have we met? Do I seem like the customer service type to you?” She did the thing where she rolled her eyes without rolling her eyes. “And I have a claw foot tub. My own. One that a thousand strangers don’t get in and out of that I then have to clean.”

“Okay, okay, no B&B, but—something other than this. Don’t you want to run a hospital?”

“And do even more paperwork? Ugh.” She frowned at him “What’s this actually about? You can’t be quitting, you’d last about two weeks without this job. Oh—is this about a case? Please don’t tell me there’s a haunted bathtub. Not after Florida. Please.”

“This is not about—wait a minute, haunted bathtub? Is that what you think I’m doing over here?”

“I’d be happy if that was what you were doing over there. It’d be a step up from what I actually think you’re doing over there.”

“Which is?”

“Contemplating the futility of sharpening a pencil only to dull it with words destined to be erased. Or reading about March Madness.”

Mulder, who had done both of those things things earlier that very morning, drew himself up with wounded dignity. “I was doing research.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe when you hit a good stopping place with your research you can finish your expense reports. They were due yesterday.”

“It’s fine. Bonnie likes me.”

“Bonnie from accounting? She went on maternity leave three weeks ago, Mulder.”

“Oh. Well, then I’m fucked.”

“Yes.” And then, because apparently she couldn’t ever resist either, Scully threw in a sarcastic little “detective,” just loud enough for him to hear.

He’d never felt so diligent about expense reports before. Or about any of the paperwork that followed, which prevented him so conveniently from bringing up the topic any further. Maybe she’s happy here. Maybe that’s all that needs to be said.

Chapter Text

“Last time we talked at length about your partner,” Mahoney said without preamble when he walked into the beige room. “Would you like to  continue that discussion, or are there other aspects of the field incident you’d like to address this time?”

“I’d like to talk about baseball.”

“Okay, what about baseball?”

Mulder blinked at him. “Rogers is doing well, huh? Despite all the press about his injuries.”

Mahoney just blinked back in that infuriatingly calm way he had. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about baseball. You’ll have to explain all of that to me.”

Bluff called. He wasn’t about to get into the nitty-gritty of the season, especially when he could just tell that Mahoney was going to pretend he didn’t know a mitt from a bat, was going to make it as dull and stupefying as possible if Mulder really did go through with the misdirect. “Fine. Yeah, okay, sure, let’s talk about Scully.”

“Did you have any insights in the past week about her feelings about the job? Or your own?”

My feelings are fuck off and die. He managed not to say it. Barely. “I think we’re both committed to the job. For better or worse.”

“You’ve talked about her commitment. You haven’t really talked about your own. Couldn’t you quit? What was it you said last week—run a chicken farm?

“Ha! No. No, this is what I do. It’s who I am.”

“Your job and your identity don’t have to be the same thing.”

“And yet—they are.”

“What about our other point of discussion? Martyrdom—do you feel that this devotion to the job is a form of self-sacrifice?”

“I… No. Not martyrdom. Atonement.”

“Those concepts are very near to one another—where do you see the distinction?”

“I…I owe so much. I'm not even sure martyrdom would do it. Atonement is what I owe to the people who are still here. Person, really.”

“Your partner.”

Mulder nodded. Didn’t say anything, didn’t dare.

“Do you believe she’s keeping score?”

“No, but I am.”

“Okay. What would it take for that score to be settled?”

“I—I have no idea.”

“Some martyrdom? Some grand gesture?”

“I don’t think there’s a way. Honestly, I don’t. I went to the ends of the earth for her, and that only makes up for getting her stuck there in the first place. And no, that’s not hyperbole. I literally went to Antartica for her. No one else was coming. It was just me.”

“Just her. Just you. That sounds very lonely.”

He huffed a laugh and looked down. “I thought you were going to say entitled.”

“Why would I say that?”

“Oh you know, it’s the oldest bullshit in the book. ‘I bought you dinner, you have to blow me.’ ‘I went to Antartica, you have to…forgive me.” There were other words besides forgiveness that he was not going to venture.

“Do you think she owes you forgiveness?”

“Well, no, but…”

“But?” he eventually prompted.

“Look, if our positions had been reversed, she’d have done the same. I know she would’ve. That’s what matters, right?”

“That you’re even?”

“Well…that we’re equals, anyway. That’s a good partnership.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

Mulder scowled. “That’s a good partnership,” he said, no hint of equivocation. “You put yourself on the line, you know you have someone there to back you up.”

“In this recent incident, you did put yourself on the line. And she backed you up?”

“Of course.”

“What about the previous incident?”

“What do you mean? What previous incident?”

“Well, you seem to hold equivalency in high regard. So was the previous incident—I don’t know what it was, but I assume there was one—a time when she put herself on the line, and you backed her up?”

“I—no.” He thought back. The room felt suddenly full of thorns. “No, that was me, too.”

“Well, go back as far as you need to. Did you back her up?”

It was further back than he was prepared to admit. And the cause was dubious, too: he’d still been the one to get them involved. “Yes.”

“So your partnership is equal in the sense of intention even if not in literal tit-for-tat. Or to put it another way, you may have debts, one to the other, but you’re both paying them back in good faith, or intend to. So why do you think the debt is so much greater on your side?”

“I ruined her life.” He wasn’t shouting. Not quite. “Her sister’s dead,” he continued more quietly, but just as raggedly, “her career is stalled, she’s been kidnapped, attacked, and nearly killed a dozen times over. She can’t have children because of me.”

Mahoney looked like he was about to say something, but Mulder cut him off. “Oh, now you’re going to say that because I wasn’t directly responsible that I don’t bear any responsibility? Sorry doc, that’s not how it works. Indirectly, it all comes back to me.”

“You give yourself an awful lot of credit in order to be awfully hard on yourself.”

“Yeah, well—egomaniac. I thought we covered that.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re telling me that you’re the source of all the bad things in her life. What about the good things? What about the just plain everyday things?”

“Oh, so the occasional birthday present makes up for all the rest? What part of ‘I ruined her life’ wasn’t clear?”

“I understand that you think that. But tell me—does she think that?”

“Does it matter?” He let all the bitterness and anger seep into his voice, all of it very usefully concealing the fact that he didn’t have an answer.

“Well, why don’t you tell me? We’ve had almost two full sessions now, ostensibly about your experiences in the field, but all of which have stayed very firmly on the topic of your partner. For someone who claims to be self-obsessed, you care a great deal about another person. And for someone so keen on unraveling mysteries, you’re very reluctant to seek even the most basic answers.”

“She’s not a case, she’s my partner.”

“And yet her interiority seems to be a mystery to you.”

“She gets to have privacy. I’m not a stalker.”

“I seem to recall something about how you followed her to the ends of the earth.”

“Touche, doc. All right, no, she’s never actually said the words ‘Mulder, you ruined my life, you asshole.’ I don’t think she has to, for one, and for two, I don’t think she can. I mean, what comes after that? This is still her job.”

“What does come after that?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘what comes after that?’ like it was an inevitability, not a genuine question. I think you have a theory, but a theory isn’t a fact. You need actual evidence.”

“Jesus, did you and she go to the same medical school? You’re both obsessed with logical proof.”

Finally, finally that got a rise out of him. He looked briefly but intensely annoyed. Wow, I really have a talent for pissing off doctors. “I mostly learned it in college, actually. As, I might add, did you. Psychology is a science. You’ve created a dichotomy in your head between belief and fact, between intuition and evidence, but all humans need both. At some point you knew that. I think you still know it. You’re only acting as though you don’t because you’ve fallen into a pattern, one that used to be helpful to you but is now hurting you. But since you have a very cavalier attitude toward your own wellbeing, let me also suggest that it is probably hurting your partner, too. Nobody belongs in a box, even one so generous as the box marked ‘rational.’”

“If she heard you say she wasn’t rational she’d kick your ass, doc.”

He sighed, a short and sharp sound that felt aggressive compared to his other reactions. “I very much doubt that. I think your partner sounds like a patient and generous person, and is intelligent enough to conclude that not every decision she makes is purely rational or scientific. We all contain multitudes, Agent Mulder. And for someone who claimed that he had no issue with the fantastic, I think you’re being very close-minded to the possibilities.”

Ouch. That one stung. Okay, it more than stung, and he didn’t have a single rejoinder to throw up in defense. The seconds trickled away until the clock read 3:29.

“Since we’re almost out of time, this week I want you to consider the question mark at the end of that statement: what comes after that? I want you to think of at least one possibility beyond the one you’ve already concocted.”

“That’s it? Two of three sessions and I have to think of a single alternative scenario? I’ll turn in my homework right now, doc: Hitler and Stalin show up and do the can-can, Bigfoot appears and declares peace on earth, and Scully moves to Tibet to become a Buddhist nun. I may be crazy, but I don’t want for ideas.” He knew he was being an asshole, but he couldn’t stop himself. Call him crazy, spooky, whatever, but he took exception to unimaginative.

But as usual, Mahoney didn’t take the bait. “Would you like a more challenging assignment?”

Goddamnit, no wonder people ended up in padded rooms if shrinks just kept finding all these new sharp corners to back them into. “Well—yeah.”

“Okay.” Mahoney regarded him levelly, and then reached for a much smaller pad than his yellow legal. Oh, shit. Do I actually need drugs? The sound of the page tearing off was painfully loud, the sight of Mahoney standing suddenly intimidating for all that Mulder, standing, easily had a head on him. But he wasn’t standing, was he? He was all but head-in-hands on the couch, a Freudian victim at last. “I’ll see you next week, Fox.”

He took the paper as gingerly as he could, as if it—and not his stupid brain—were diseased. He didn’t read it, just stood. “Take two and call you in the morning?”

“You can reach me by phone if necessary, yes.”

Goddamn, did the man even know what a joke was? Maybe you’re just not that funny. Now there was a sobering thought. He walked out with the rueful insight that nobody really laughed at his jokes, only to decide by halfway down the hall that it didn’t matter, since he still thought he was funny. And only then did he glance at the prescription sheet.

Chickenscratched on the page wasn’t some unpronounceable drug. All it said was Have a real conversation.

He crumpled up the paper and threw it in the next trashcan he saw. But it didn’t help at all.

Chapter Text

“Hey Scully—“

“Hm?”

She was working on something, still mostly engrossed in whatever she was typing. That meant he could look at her for as long as it took for her to look back. And he didn’t think about how she was beautiful even when she seemed so tired, or how all the ties binding them together were starting to get so tight sometimes he couldn’t breathe or feel his fingers, or about how he never wanted it to be the weekend anymore. He didn’t think about it and so it wasn’t real. He just existed as a a pair of eyes—no, even that was too much. He existed as the act of looking at her, quiet in self-abnegation, until she looked back.

“What is it?”

“Oh. Uh—hey, do you think it’s possible for someone to be rational all of the time?”

“Someone? Or you? Because no to both, although I wish you’d try harder at it.”

“Not even you?”

“Of course not. A purely rational being would be a robot or a computer program, or something like that. And even that would be suspect, since humans would at some point have had a hand in creating them.” She turned suspicious. “Why?”

“I’m just curious.”

“This isn’t a prelude to some case with those Star Trek aliens, is it?”

“Vulcans? No, those are fictional. Although I didn’t know you watched Star Trek.”

“I don’t. Science fiction doesn’t really appeal to me lately. I can’t imagine why.” She turned back to her computer and pecked out another sentence or two.

“So is God the ultimate rational being, then?”

That piqued her interest. “No,” she said slowly. “No, I think God is beyond rational or irrational. He originated both concepts, after all. And some of the best human qualities aren’t strictly rational: perseverance in the face of doubt or certain defeat, the capacity for joy despite the certainty of death, even love itself.”

She was looking at him with that calm, open look she had, and he thought that cowardice was the most rational of sins. And maybe the worst of them, too, for all that it was venial and so, so easy. “False dichotomy, in other words,” was all he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed, giving him an inscrutable look. “That.”

He didn’t say any more, and the conversation died a quiet death.

Chapter Text

He’d meant to come into this last session in the full armor of his indignation and wait out the 45 minutes in silence. This fucking guy, he’d been thinking, even as he stewed in the waiting room, even as the door opened and he went in. This fucking asshole. What kind of person—what kind of doctor—played such a petty trick? It was condescending bordering on cruel.

It was…flippant.

He threw himself down on the couch, and before he could stop himself, the words just came out of his mouth. “You’re an asshole, doc. And no, before you ask with that fake-nice smile, I didn’t have that real conversation. What the hell is a real conversation, anyway? You want a real conversation? She called me when she found out she had cancer—the first person, even before her mother. Just like I called her when my dad got shot. I still had his blood on my shirt. Every conversation that has ever mattered, I’ve had it with her. So I don’t know where you get off with your little note bullshit, have a real conversation.”

Infuriatingly, that only made Dr. Mahoney smile—a real smile, one that made him sit back and scrunch up his eyes in delight. He even chuckled a little. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. I’m just appreciating the fact that this is the first bit of real conversation we’ve had. And even if you’re yelling at me, I do appreciate it, Fox. Do you know why I went into psychiatry?”

“Because gynecology was already full?”

“Because most doctor-patient relationships are necessarily brief. This one may be, too—I have no idea whether I will see you again after this session—but I genuinely want to have conversations that matter with people. In high-stress fields—like mine, and like yours—there are always opportunities to break and share terrible news. Cancer, death. Those conversations matter, yes, but in a way, they’re all the same. We know the scripts for them, we understand the psychological underpinnings and can reasonably expect the course they will take. They’re a basis for intimacy, but by themselves they don’t actually constitute a relationship. They’re outliers. I believe you’re someone who has become comfortable with living in those outliers—you have a job that takes you into the extremes of human behavior. What I want to remind you is that life does not only happen in those extremes, and it’s not a failure to resort to calmer, more mundane measures.”

“So what you’re saying is what everyone has been saying to me for ten years: just be normal. Have a normal conversation.” He knew that wasn’t the point, but he felt petulant and attacked, and he couldn’t help himself.

“It doesn’t make you less interesting or capable to be normal once in a while. If anything, it adds variance—even extremity can get bit one-note. Being normal—sometimes—makes you human. And I would argue that being human is—at least according to my profession, and probably according to yours—one of the most challenging things you can do.”

“Sometimes I don’t think I know how to be human.” It came out without him meaning to say it, and his voice was very small. Shit. Now the diagnoses would start, the sweeping generalizations. Spooky Mulder. Belongs on another planet.

But Dr. Mahoney only nodded. “That, in itself, is a very normal thing. No one is born knowing how to be human. It’s one of the conundrums of our species. We have to learn how to do it together, every generation, and every individual, over and over again.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face to clear up his expression. “Jesus, doc, you sure you don’t have depression?”

“Do you think that’s depressing? I don’t. I think it’s wonderful. If you don’t know how to be human, Fox—which, for the record, I think you do, I think it’s just giving you a little trouble right now—then you can figure it out. That’s the other thing our species does. We don’t know things—so we figure them out. And we do it by asking each other questions and giving each other answers.”

“All right—so what’s the answer?”

“Hm.” He really did pause to consider it. “My answer to you is to add yourself to the list of authorities you question. You’re a man who doesn’t like authority—clearly—but you also are an authority. Despite your best efforts, I suspect. And of course, we are all authorities in being ourselves—experts, but not infallible. So do what you do best, and question the assumptions you’ve made.”

Mulder gogged at him. “So your advice is: be myself?”

“Why did you think I wanted you to change?” He looked genuinely surprised.

“I—I don’t know. Most people do.”

“The people who care about you don’t want to change you, Fox. They just don’t want you to suffer.”

He was pretty sure they talked about other things after that, but that was what stuck with him once he walked out the door.

Am I suffering? It was a stupid question, and even stupider still was the fact that he didn’t have an answer. He wasn’t happy. But he wasn’t unhappy, either. He’d spent a long time convincing himself he was beyond such things. Ordinary people had happiness. He had the Truth.

But her happiness mattered to him even if his own didn’t.

Chapter Text

“Scully?”

It was 4:55 and she’d clearly been checking the time for the past half-hour, waiting for five o’clock. It had been a slow day.

“Mm?”

No better time than now. No worse time, either. Same difference, in the end, so might as well go for it. “Have I ruined your life?”

She looked up slowly, pinned him butterfly-like with those eyes. Morpho blue. That’s what it is. Six years and I finally figured out what that color reminds me of. “What kind of question is that?”

He leaned back in his chair, feeling strangely relaxed. His old shooting instructor’s caution came back to him as a reassurance: when you shoot a bullet, you can’t take it back. Well, shots fired, Scully. “Pretty reasonable one, I thought.”

He was trying to be a little flippant, keeping the tone light even if the mood was dark, but she was still looking at him with flinty anger that he didn’t quite understand. “All right—one, who says my life is ruined, and two, who says you’re even capable of ruining it?”

“Ouch.”

“No, seriously—what the hell?”

“I just thought…”

She made him sit there and squirm. “You thought what?”

“You. This,” he said unhelpfully, gesturing to the office. “Everything that’s happened. The cancer, the—everything. You don’t have to keep doing this. You can do something else. You can do anything else. You don’t have to stay.”

“Oh, thank you for your permission, Mulder. I’m so glad.”

What was happening? She’d gone beyond annoyed so fast. Didn’t even stop at pissed off, just went straight to furious. What had he said? 

“I just—in the hallway, before you got taken away—I wasn’t thinking. Or I was, but only about myself. You’re not beholden to anyone, Scully. You should have the life that you wanted.”

Furious didn’t touch what she looked like when he finished rambling. Furious was next door; the pure rage on her face was an entirely different country, one that was about to declare all-out war and rain hellfire down on his head.

But…what did I say?

Instead of informing him, she stood up and grabbed her bag and her coat with the kind of tight, jabbing motions meant for a boxing ring. And then she just—stalked out. No goodbye, no goodnight, not even a pithy, cutting comment under her breath. One minute there, the other gone.

What just happened? He almost wanted to be back in that beige office, because sure, he was questioning himself, but he didn’t have the slightest clue about the answers.

Chapter Text

There was a knock at his door. He checked the peephole but of course it was only ever her. And of course he let her in. She walked past him without a word and only turned around near the couch, looking for permission to sit. She brandished a bottle of wine at him like an offering, and he took it without a word. Went to the kitchen, got a corkscrew. When he got back she was still standing, giving off the impression of fidgeting even if she was meticulously still. It’s her eyes. She was scanning the room, looking everywhere but at him.

“I’m sorry I snapped,” she said.

“S’okay.” It was, too. He just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

He offered her a glass—okay, cup, he’d never seen the point of wine glasses—and she took it. Took a sip. Sat on the edge of the couch, all but ready to bolt.

He went and sat on the other side of the couch like he was approaching a feral cat, a wide berth and no sharp movements.  “What did I say?”

She huffed a little laugh into her cup and said, incongruously, “yeah,” like he’d settled some argument she’d been having with herself. Then she shook her head. “Mulder, are the X-Files yours or ours?”

“Oh. Uh. Well, I found them, and I have a couple years on you, so…90-10 split?”

She was staring at him with something very close to desolation. Why do I always do this? “I’m kidding—it’s 50-50. You know that.” She just kept staring. “You know that, right?”

Now she was tearing up.

“What did I say this time?” He couldn’t keep the exasperation from his voice, but it was meant for himself. How am I fucking this up? How?

“I don’t know that. It’s your work and you’ve decided it’s bad for me, but then it’s our work. You want me to leave, but you can’t do this without me. You make these vague comments and you almost— Mulder, would you just tell me what you want? Really?”

She was flushed and soft with vulnerability and the air was all but humming between them, a symphony about to start. I want to kiss you. I want to have never met you. I want you to hate me. I want you to hate me so goddamn much that we go five rounds, all night, sleepless and sore until I’ve made it up to you. I want to know that I understand I will never, ever be able to make it up to you. I want you to know I will never stop trying to.

He couldn’t say any of it, flat out couldn’t form the words. “I just want to have a real conversation,” he said instead, and even that cost him.

She looked taken aback. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

He sighed. “I thought so, but I don’t know anymore. Everything I thought I knew was wrong, and I have no answers, and even looking for the answers has caused everyone in my life a world of pain.”

“So you were being serious earlier. About ruining my life.”

He looked at her, slightly horrified. “You thought I was making fun of you?”

“No, but—I thought you were making a point. That my life isn’t so bad. That I have the option of leaving. That I get to walk away every Friday at five o’clock if I want to, which I so often do. That it means I’m not committed.”

“I don’t—I would never think that. You’ve given so much Scully. More than me. So many huge losses and so many terrors and so many petty little offenses that must have stacked up…I guess 4:55 on a Friday was exactly the wrong time to ask that question, but I meant it."

They stared at each other again, and there was that symphony feeling, warming up, all the instruments about to start finding their harmony. They had gotten closer on the couch somehow. Not touching, but not at polar ends of it.

He looked her in the eye. “Did I ruin your life?” he asked, very softly.

Her face was always so transparent, and he watched it fill then with an emotion he couldn’t place at first. Not contempt, or hesitation. Her whole expression filled up with glory. Brimmed over with it. "I have seen things that I cannot explain,” she said with such reverence that he was humbled, could not help but receive it without argument or objection.

And then she was Scully again, solemn but essentially skeptical. “That I cannot yet explain," she added. He shook his head at her consistency, but she leaned in, earnest now. "No—I know it's not what motivates you, all right? I know. You can be...content with mystery. But Mulder, I want to explain things. And here, with you, with the X-Files...I'm not stuck diagnosing the common cold eighteen times a day and fighting with insurance companies over routine appendectomies. I'm not in a lab eighteen hours a day, hoping for a breakthrough in a year, or five, as long as the funding holds out. I'm getting to solve the problems no one else can solve. To explain things very few people have ever had the chance to explain." 

 He had to take a minute to mull that over, because it was all just too close to what he wanted to hear and he didn't trust it. I didn't ruin her life? That can't be right. But then why did he feel so much lighter? 

In an effort to avoid dealing with it, he made it about himself. "You think I'm content?"

"Well—for some definition of contentment. You're always looking for something. But I think you like looking. And I think you like finding things, too."

He could allow that. "Are you content?"

Her smile was very small, but it was there. "Maybe not. But at the end of the day, I get to console myself with making a difference. It's better than most people get."

“But I don’t want that to be enough for you. What I mean is—” he added hastily, seeing her get annoyed with being told what to do, “—I don’t want you to have to settle. If you can be content somewhere, someway else.”

Mollified, she shrugged. “I never valued contentment all that much, to be honest. It always seemed like another word for boring.”

Sometimes she tied him in knots, and sometimes she made him want to pull out his hair by the fistful. And then she went and said something like that, and all he could think was oh. You get it. And it was so simple. We’re the same.

She shook her head, amused at herself or at him or at the whole conversation. “So to answer your question: no, Mulder, you didn’t ruin my life.”

“It’s just—your abduction. Your sister.”

“What do you want me to say, Mulder? That I’m not sad about that? I am. Sometimes I can’t think. Sometimes I can’t breathe. But I don’t hold you responsible for any of it.” She looked at his face and her frown deepened. “I don’t. I shouldn’t have to ask you of all people to believe me.” She paused. “And you shouldn’t be the one wracked with guilt.”

“Why should you feel guilty?”

She looked rueful. “Catholic. It was a joke.”

“Oh. Hah.” Well, she’s never going to be onstage for singing or for comedy.

She gave him an I don’t want your pity look and scooched herself upright on the couch. And just a little bit closer. “The people who are responsible for Melissa, and for me, and for your sister and everyone else—we’ll hold them accountable. Some of them we already have. That gives me more purpose in life, Mulder, not less, and there are plenty of other things in my life that are far from ruined.”

“Like what?”

“Mm, like my job. My relationships.” He was imagining the pause there, wasn’t he? He had to be. Right? “My skill set.”

He knew—he knew—he should be feeling as hangdog and penitent as a person could feel. Instead his whole body went taut for a second after she said that, and she hadn’t licked her lips but she might as well have, the way he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. “What?”

“I’m still a doctor, Mulder.”

“Oh, that. Right.”

“That,” she huffed, amused that all the years of medical school and training were a footnote. I am an asshole. “And everything I learned at the Bureau, too. Forensics, interrogation. Marksmanship.”

That part he didn’t need prompting to remember. “You’re a hell of a shot, I’ll give you that.”

“You haven’t noticed any decline in your range of motion, have you?”

He sat up, sat forward just the tiniest bit so he could demonstrate: he could rotate his shoulder just fine. “All clear. Although the scar is still pretty gnarly.”

“Is it? Have you noticed any expansion of the keloid areas?” She was all professional concern now.

“The bumpy parts? Uh—maybe. Is that bad?”

She just frowned and reached out, started trying to feel the edges of his scar through his shirt.

His range of motion was fine and apparently his range of sensation was fine, too. You are supposed to be miserable! he tried to remind himself. It didn’t work very well.

“Hm,” she said. “It might have expanded. Hard to tell.” She was smoothing his shirt over his skin, trying to guess at the shapes below, and his idiot brain was just going oh it expanded all right, it’s really hard, c’mon, let’s compare scars, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

“All right, off,” she said, and got up in the same breath. The sudden void of her absence was like cold water.

“What?”

She clicked on the nearest lamp, and the room got mercifully more clinical and less full of suggestive shadows. “Off,” she repeated. “I should have checked the keyloidosis in this hospital but I was more worried about your throat.”

This is extremely normal and she is a normal doctor doing normal doctor things. He pulled his shirt off, and when worrying about whether he was wearing enough deodorant didn’t calm him down, he kicked it up a notch. She’s checking to see if you have some kind of hideous fungus. Or cancer. You’re probably dying.

Yeah, he was dying, all right.

He didn’t exactly want to stand up right now, but that meant she came back and leaned over him, started running one hand over his scar and nudging his head to one side so that he stopped blocking the light. He put all of his willpower into projecting nonchalance, but the apartment was a little chilly and at this distance, he could feel her warmth. It was, in fact, pretty much all he could feel.

Oh, god, I’m going to develop a fetish from this. If this had been a hospital setting it wouldn’t have done anything for him. Hell, yesterday this wouldn’t have done as much. Sure, it would have done something, would have made a nice entry or two into the Unprofessional Thoughts file he kept in his head. But not like this. It turned out that drowning in guilt was a really great libido suppressant. Well, shit.

But—and this was probably just more of him being an asshole—maybe he wasn’t the only one hearing those symphonic stirrings. Wasn’t this taking a little long? It was just a scar.

She put one knee on the couch, right alongside him, and leaned in closer.

“Am I gonna live?”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and when had their faces gotten this close together? “I’m sorry I shot you.”

Maybe we both have some issues with guilt. “I’m not,” he said, and he hadn’t meant anything in his whole life as much as he meant that. And then he just closed his eyes, because this was the moment, the universe was made of strings and they were all vibrating, they were all striking up the symphony at last.

She didn’t kiss him.

He could feel the moment pass like another gunshot wound, no blood or violence but still, that muted blow was going to scar, was going to be an ache that healed but never faded.

That’s okay he was already telling himself. But there was a brush of hair against his shoulder. And then—very carefully, very precisely, she ran her tongue along the contours of his scar.

In his catalogue of intimate acts, which he poured substantial time (and money) into expanding, someone licking his scar wasn’t even an entry. It had never occurred to him that someone might do it, and especially not the person who had caused the scar in the first place. So it took him a second to process: do I even like this?

And then, oh yes. Oh, hell yes, I like this. He liked it so much his arms were already around her waist, tugging her into his lap. He liked it so much it hurt.

He entirely missed the moment when he was almost-but-not-quite kissing her. Didn’t even register it. But shit, they’d done that part already, and here was the years-belated follow-through, making out like they were making up for something, pain or grief or just wasting too much time. I can’t believe this is going to start with her licking my shoulder, the tiniest, most uninteresting part of his brain was thinking. One of the least erogenous body parts. Only—it wasn’t. She couldn’t have destroyed him any more thoroughly if she’d knelt down and licked his cock.

Ooh—maybe not quite. He moaned. Out loud. He couldn’t help it. Imagining what she might do to him combined with what she was actively, right this second doing to him was unbearable.

And apparently him responding did something for her, because she ground herself against him, and fuck, he knew everybody said he’d lost his mind, but here was proof he hadn’t: only at this very moment was he in the process of losing it entirely.

Are you sure? he wanted to ask with those last crumbs of rationality. But all he got out was “Are you—?” before she just said “yes,” against his mouth. “Are—?”

“Yes,” he told her. “Yes.” They were done with normal conversation. He could check that off his list. Look at that, I’m cured. All it took was three sessions and six years and Jesus fucking Christ what is she doing.

She was unzipping his pants was what she was doing, grazing his dick as she did, and his whole body flushed with urgency. It was like they’d practiced this, the way he just lifted her up along with his hips and flipped them over. It gave him a chance to shuck his jeans and his boxers for good measure. And god, he was going to be reliving that moment until the day he died, the way her eyes went wide and greedy, lit from inside with some hellfire delight. It only lasted half a second, right before she realized she was still fully clothed and started unbuttoning her top, but he was going to bask in that unspoken flattery like sunlight.

Okay, no he wasn’t—one glimpse of her cleavage against the black sheen of her bra and he forgot everything that had come before. He failed spectacularly in helping with the remaining buttons or the clasp, but he could—oh he could—devote himself, ardently and excessively, to her breasts. He filled his hands and his mouth with her, tonguing and fretting her nipples with his teeth until she gasped. She kept going back and forth between trying to get her pants fully off and raking her hands through his hair, rubbing herself against his stubble.

He finally did it for her, just tugged at her slacks until he glimpsed, in his reluctant glances away from the rest of her, the blue cotton of her panties.

They had polka dots.

He didn’t mean to laugh. He didn’t. It was just that this was so very not porn, with lace and nylon and straps in too many places, everybody hairlessly smooth. Here instead he could see a few little amber curls in the crease of her thighs, and there was nothing showy about powder blue with worn elastic.  He hadn’t thought she’d worn a print since 1995, but apparently he’d been wrong. She will never, ever stop surprising me.

He was giddy, but when he looked back at her face she was annoyed. “I didn’t exactly expect to be showing anybody—”

“Nooo, nonono, it’s cute,” he said, laughing again, grinning into her stomach as he kissed his way down.

“Cute’s for kittens,” she muttered, and she had to have set him up for that one intentionally, right?

“Oh yeah,” he said, mouth over the cotton now. “Such a cute pussy.”

She made a noise that started out as a huff, but right about when he pulled her panties to one side to lick her cunt it turned dramatically into a moan.

Make that sound for me again. And oh she did. She made him earn it but she did, gasping and moaning so softly and steadily it fell over him like snowfall. It was nothing like he’d expected. And he had done a fair bit of expecting: some half-awake nights he was convinced she’d be wildly loud, and others he was equally sure she’d bite her lip, that he’d have to deduce her pleasure from her breath and the rustle of bedsheets.

But it turned out he did live too much in the extremes—and in assumptions that she just kept knocking down. In reality, she kept up a steady murmur of instruction and encouragement in monosyllables, telling him “more, down, there,” until he figured out exactly how to make her forget she knew any words at all.

By the time she scrabbled at his shoulder and murmured “c’mere, c’mere,” he had about forty new fetishes. He was obsessed with the little noises she made, and he was obsessed with the way she rested one foot on his shoulder (she literally curled her toes when he got it right, dear God), and he was obsessed with the lines she’d scratched on her own body, primal red claw marks left on her thighs and hips during the moments when she wasn’t raking her hands through his hair. Stripes and polka dots. Hell, he probably had a thing for prints now, too.

“I want…I want…”

He sucked a bruise just under her clavicle. “Tell me.”

She ignored him. Showed him instead, pressing his mouth back to hers. Not that he was in any real place to complain when it happened, but women who were squeamish about tasting themselves got on his nerves. Scully…was not one of them. And how. She was so enthusiastic he almost missed her hand snaking down to guide him inside her.

“Fuck,” he breathed.“Ohh, fuck. Oh, Scully fuck.”

“That’s the idea.” He had closed his eyes to block off anything but feeling, but when she spoke he could see her face, just a little bit amused as well as just a little bit overwhelmed.

He opened his eyes and yes, it was that expression exactly. It looked like a challenge. You shouldn’t have the wherewithal to be cracking jokes. Let’s fix that, shall we?

He started to move. Not hard, not deep, just experimental little thrusts to see what worked before he found the spot and then—

“Ohgod,” she yelped. “Oh god, do that again,” and then she didn’t wait to see if he would. She ground herself against him and fuck, he forgot sometimes that she’d gone through field training, the same as him. She was stronger than her size implied, and she knew what she wanted. And she liked getting it.

He had assumed—wrongly, again—that she would be as precise as she always was, as restrained, or that she would be completely wanton, removing her personality with her pantyhose. Neither were true. She was deliberate but eager, testing him too, trying to see what he liked.

I like everything you do. I like everything about you. He’d meant to make love to her, some corny rose-petals-and-candles affair that never got him off even in fantasies, but God, she was as needy as he was, liked it as rough and to the point as he did. “Fuck me,” he didn’t mean to say, but she liked that too, went even more electric underneath him, so he did it again. “Fuck, Scully, fuck me, God, that cunt of yours is perfect, God I’m going to fuck you into the floor—”

“God, God yes—” she said, delirious. Her voice went right through him, another bullet. You coming undone is my favorite thing. He didn’t have the words to say it so he just didn’t stop, didn’t want to and didn’t dare. He fucked her until the edges of his vision went white; he fucked her until he was hoarse and gasping; he fucked her until it was torment, but only when she was stroking the back of his neck instead of digging bloody crescents into it did he let himself come, the suddenness of his pleasure like violence.

Even coming down felt good—felt great, because he should have been petrified of this what did we just do moment, but instead she was just this mirror to all his giddiest, most triumphant feelings. It was what did we just do with an exclamation point at the end, like they’d discovered a new element or a new sense or a whole new continent, finally something paranormal without suffering or pain.

He licked a pearl of sweat from her brow out of sheer impulse and cognitive overload. Right at her temple, so that could smell her hair and the slightly alkaline tang of her face powder. She laughed with surprise.

“I guess I deserve that,” she said.

“You taste good,” he told her, and it was true. Part of him wanted to just stay like this, braced over her, savoring. Unfortunately, his arms were already getting tired in this position. He didn’t want to crush her, but he didn’t really want her on top of him either, they were all sweaty. He wanted to just lie next to her, but the couch made that difficult. Oh, this is why people have beds.

But getting into bed meant getting up, and getting up meant dealing with several messes all at once, the bodily fluids and the emotional fallout and the holy shit what of it all. So he gave himself a second, and then five seconds, and then a few more, until she made the decision and wriggled out from underneath him. She seemed entirely unabashed. Oh, doctor. Right. She’d dealt with far worse fluids. “Be right back,” she said, and without further preamble went to the bathroom.

What now?

Well don’t just sit there. He didn’t quite know what was going to happen next, but at least he got to pick the setting. After giving the couch a quick swipe with his discarded shirt, he went to sit on the bed instead—only to realize that he looked like an idiot, sitting there like he was waiting for the bus. It’s not my fault. I never use the bed.

He got under the covers, only to realize from his alarm clock that it wasn’t even nine PM, and that there was no way they were just going to go to sleep like normal people. If that was even what normal people did. He had no idea.

The toilet flushed, the door unlocked, and he heard his name from the other room.

“In here,” he called, and she found him getting back out of bed and getting into a pair of sweats like he should have done already. She’d found her shirt and her panties, it seemed, and he knew that dumbstruck meant silent, but he preferred the false etymology because he felt entirely, profoundly stupid when looking at her. Couldn’t think of anything at all except she’s so pretty.

“Hi,” he said instead, which wasn’t much better, but probably wouldn’t make her mad.

“Hi,” she said. And then she crawled over and into the bed, laying so she was looking at him. “Hi,” she said again, soft as a caress.

He got back into bed. And this was supposed to be the part where they just stared lovingly into each other’s eyes and whisper sweet nothings and happily ever after blah blah blah.

“So based on the evidence, I’m about seventy percent sure you don’t hate me,” he said instead.

She snorted. “Why seventy?”

“People put up with a lot for a good lay.”

She made a face at him. “Who says you’re good?”

“You. Repeatedly. I get called a lot of things, but I think God might be my favorite.”

“I wasn’t—” She smiled helplessly and shook her head. “I don’t hate you.”

“Okay, now I’m like…seventy-one percent sure.”

“Self-flagellation is not an attractive quality, Mulder.”

“Not into the weird shit, got it.”

She looked for a second like she was going to brain him with a pillow, but then she seemed to realize something, and reached for the button on her shirt. Flicked it open. Braless, the curve of her breasts was even more stunning, just soft and perfect.

“Mulder…” she sighed, and he could only stare, struggling for air now, as she drew her fingers back along the buttons and eyelets, drawing his eye down.

And then she started buttoning her shirt back up.

He looked up at her face and found her suppressing a laugh. “I’m going to ruin your life,” she told him.

“I guess I deserve that,” he agreed.

Chapter Text

She’d always liked talking to him. In fact, she’d never met anyone she wanted to talk to more. Even immediately after their first case, even in the middle of the night, even stranded in the middle (maybe not the middle) of a lake or a desert or whatever nightmarish small town he’d managed to find—even at her worst, or at his, they never ran out of things to say. Which was why it had been so awful lately, the conversations still going but the shadow of things unsaid getting deeper and darker every day. She’d been trying to fix it, but it didn’t work when she didn’t know what was wrong.

She was so relieved when they finally had it out that she’d gotten…carried away. Not that she was complaining. She’d wanted honesty, and she’d gotten it.

But there were a few things that she might keep to herself.

If he ever asked her later—which she was 98% sure he wouldn’t, but then again, what was her life except extreme probabilities—she’d admit it. After all, she hadn’t lied. She had been worried about the keyloidosis. It just happened to be a personal worry rather than a professional one. Just because there was absolutely nothing dangerous about keyloid scarring didn’t mean that she wasn’t concerned she had disfigured him. They were pretty nice shoulders, after all.