Work Text:
The announcement comes on the loudspeakers as the ferry’s engines start slowing the boat for docking. Mulder, dressed in jeans and a turtleneck, stands up first, looks back, and waits as Scully shoulders her purse and follows him to the stairway down into the car hold. They maneuver their way through the parked cars to Mulder’s Taurus and sit silently in the car, listening to the water rushing around the ferry’s hull as it approaches the wharf.
They’ve spent most of the evening sitting silently together in the car. After a week of staying away from the Hoover building, in accordance with the orders Skinner gave him after the Roche case, Mulder had unexpectedly called the office at noon.
“Scully,” he had said when she picked up, “your department head needs you on an urgent mission.”
“Mulder,” she had responded, her voice a mix of exasperation at the fact that he was trying to go to work when he had been explicitly told to take two weeks off and amusement at his tone. “What can possibly be so urgent on a Friday afternoon?”
“Not telling yet, Scully. Pack your overnight bag, no suits necessary, and I’ll be waiting for you outside your apartment in an hour.”
Scully had done as she was instructed, as much out of curiosity as to placate her sometimes crazy partner. When Mulder pulled up in front of her door, she was dressed in khakis and a v-neck sweater, with a light coat thrown over her shoulders to ward off the November chill.
She had put her bag in his trunk, and they had driven up the eastern seaboard. They rode almost the whole way in silence, one of them fiddling with the radio every now and then. Scully hadn’t asked where they were going, and Mulder hadn’t told her. But by the time they reached southern Massachusetts and turned toward the Cape rather than continuing up to Boston, she had a pretty good idea of where they were heading.
Despite growing up as a Navy brat, Scully has spent relatively little time around car ferries, and she is fascinated by the staging areas and the way the cars are funneled onto the boat. Mulder seems to pay little attention to the details, as if this all has changed very little since his childhood. The chilly air doesn’t prevent Scully from finding her way out onto the bow so she can watch the lights of Woods Hole disappear behind the ferry and the dim shape of the Vineyard slowly appear ahead of them. Mulder says little, and as she leans on the railing, he stands near the door, as if he is more interested in watching her than in watching the dark shorelines and the red and green buoys roll past them.
The ferry finally docks and the cars are released, one by one, into the night. Scully idly wonders if this was the last boat of the evening, but she doesn’t ask. Once they are back on land, the little shops and stately houses of Vineyard Haven quickly disappear behind them and they drive through the interior of the island, on roads overhung with tree branches. After a while - Scully has lost track of the time, fading in and out of sleep - Mulder turns onto a dirt road. Several turns later, he pulls up in front of a classic shingled cottage with a big wraparound porch. Scully has never been here before, but she knows without asking that it is the house that belonged to Bill Mulder, that has been in Fox Mulder’s hands since his father’s death last year, and presumably will stay in his possession indefinitely, until Mulder can bring himself to sell it.
Inside, the house appears to have been untouched since the investigation into Bill Mulder’s death, and a fine layer of dust has settled over everything. Scully sneezes. Mulder takes her overnight bag to a bedroom upstairs and shakes out the comforter for her. She doesn’t ask whose bedroom this was. She rinses out the sink - which still has water - and brushes her teeth as Mulder retreats downstairs, presumably to sleep on the couch. As she brushes off the pillow and gingerly slides between the sheets, she wonders what is going through his mind right now. She briefly considers going downstairs and offering him her company, but she pushes aside the thought. He asked for her to come and she came. That was what he needed from her, and she gave it to him without question.
***
They stop for coffee and muffins at a cafe in Edgartown a few blocks from the wharves. Then they drive through the narrow lanes of the town, following signs to the boat. There is no one else in line for the Chappy Ferry at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning in November, and their lone car on the open boat must look like a conestoga wagon setting out into the great unknown.
They drive for a few minutes through dense woods that suddenly open out onto a large pond traversed by a narrow wooden bridge. Mulder pulls the car off the road into a sort-of parking space on the sandy shoulder and immediately gets out. Scully puts on her sunglasses, pulls her coat tighter around her, and follows him over to the bridge. When she reaches the guardrail, she realizes that she’s seen this bridge before.
“Mulder,” she says softly, “isn’t this where…”
“Kennedy, yeah,” he cuts her off, before striding over the bridge to the sand dunes on the other side. She follows, trailing a few feet behind him.
They cross a few more dunes and then they’re on the beach, empty sand stretching as far as they can see in both directions, touched by little waves reaching them from Nantucket. Mulder turns northward and starts marching through the sand, his sneakers kicking up little clouds of sand as he walks.
Scully shuffles to catch up, finally drawing even with him after a few strides where she is almost running. Mulder slows down so that she can walk at his pace, shoving his hands in the pockets of his open coat and bowing his head against the breeze. They walk parallel with one another for a while without speaking, each of them picking their way in the firmer sand along the faded jeep tracks that criss-cross the beach.
The weak November sun is trying its best to lend them warmth, but the wind whips mercilessly at Scully’s coat and hair, chilling her whole body. Sand sneaks into her canvas shoes and into her socks, chafing against her skin as she walks. But the discomfort feels like it is happening to someone else inhabiting Scully’s body - it is almost as if she is watching someone else trail behind Mulder on this empty beach.
At some point, Mulder speaks again. “I was almost eight when it happened,” he says, picking up suddenly as if their last conversation had paused just a few seconds ago. “Samantha wouldn’t…” He pauses, correcting himself. “She wouldn’t have remembered it. But I remember just enough - news crews swarming the island, eavesdropping on my parents’ conversations with friends, the endless speculation about drinking, affairs, all the Kennedys’ dirty laundry…” He trails off again and shakes his head. “That was the first time I learned to doubt politicians, and I guess I’ve never stopped.” He lets out a wry chuckle and falls silent again as he continues walking into the wind.
As Scully follows him down the beach, she reflects on what she has heard about the Chappaquiddick incident. She had been five at the time, and had only learned about it in long after the fact. Growing up in San Diego, the sordid details of politics in the Northeast had just seemed so remote. Her parents had been as proud as any other Irish Catholics when JFK was elected, but they weren’t outwardly disappointed when Ted Kennedy’s run a few years later fell flat. The Kennedys, who were minor deities here in Massachusetts, were just another political family plagued by problems that seem to come along with wealth and privilege.
Mulder is several yards ahead of her now, and she watches him striding across the sand like an explorer, his collar turned up and his coat rippling in the breeze. To their right in the shallow surf, terns are wheeling above them and then plunging into the surf. The action is so sudden and violent, each time Scully holds her breath, imagining the little bird may never emerge. Somehow, though, it always pulls free with whatever prize it was seeking and slowly rises again to rejoin its comrades. Looking from the birds back to Mulder, she wonders if part of him isn’t like these birds, with her standing on the shore, holding her breath and hoping he’ll come back to the surface.
***
Three miles up the sandbar, they sit in the sand in front of the lighthouse, gazing back toward the distant outlines of Cape Cod. They sit close together, Mulder’s forearms almost touching Scully’s as they both lean on hands stretched out behind their torsos. The breeze tears strands of hair out of Scully’s low ponytail and Mulder’s hair whips across his face without him seeming to notice. She turns to look at him and he turns at the same time, and she’s suddenly aware of the fact that their faces are only inches apart.
But he turns back toward the sea, retracts his arms, and wraps them around his knees, closing in on himself.
“I came out here once the year after Samantha disappeared,” he says in an even tone. He’s still looking out at the waves, and she wonders if he’s talking to her or to himself. “It was just a normal summer morning. My father was upstairs in his office, writing letters, making phone calls, ignoring us like he always did. My mother made me a sandwich to take with me to the baseball field, as if there had always been just one child to make sandwiches for. As if Sam was just a dream I had, as if she had never existed. And I finally decided that I couldn’t stand the denial. I couldn’t keep pretending anymore.
“So instead of biking to the school and playing ball like I was supposed to, I just kept biking. Something drew me out here, a few vague childhood memories of coming here once or twice on someone’s fishing boat. So I biked, swam, walked along the beach until I got here, and I just sat for hours. It was getting dark and my parents had sent people out searching for me by the time someone spotted me from their boat and picked me up. Even then, they had to pry me up. I didn’t want to leave, because I knew I would be going back to a world where I had to pretend that things were OK when we all knew they really weren’t.”
He chuckles drily. “My mother drove me to every single practice, every single game for the rest of the summer. A few weeks later, they told me I was going to boarding school. Back then, I thought they wanted to punish me for my little rebellion, but now I wonder whether having me around every day reminded them of their guilt.” He pauses again, and she looks at him expectantly. “If it’s really true that Sam’s disappearance was their fault.”
His words bring them back to the crisis of faith that brought them here in the first place. Scully briefly wonders whether Mulder’s next breath might bring him some big revelation about the truth of his sister’s disappearance. But he is still looking away from her, silent, his face expressionless. For the next few minutes they listen to the surf without speaking.
Without any preface, he goes on. “My father picked me up from school the next year and told me I would be spending the summer with my mother in Connecticut. And that was it. They had separated without telling me, and I found that I had almost no reaction at all. I was glad to get away from the Vineyard, from the farce that our family had become. Leaving for Oxford was just the final straw - the Mulder family really fell apart the night my sister was taken.”
Mulder has told her bits and pieces of this, but it has never seemed so vivid before. Scully puts her hand on Mulder’s shoulder, rubbing her thumb lightly back and forth. After a moment, he smiles up at her and covers her small hand with his larger one.
They sit in silence until Scully suddenly becomes aware that her hands are getting numb, and shoves them back into her coat pockets. Mulder smiles gently at her, stands, and reaches his hand down for hers. She takes it and stands beside him, still holding his hand. Without a word, they pick their way back down the beach, back to civilization.
***
They share a big plate of late-season fried clams on the porch of a little fish market overlooking the harbor in the now-empty fishing village of Menemsha. Mulder tells her about his last pleasant memories on the Vineyard, the summer after Samantha disappeared, when he and his school friends would bike down here after their baseball games to watch the filming of Jaws. His stories about the mechanical sharks and the pranks on set make Scully laugh with her mouth full of the clams.
As they walk back to the car, Mulder places his hand lightly on Scully’s back, a familiar touch that now causes a tingle of fear or excitement to run down her spine. She fights to maintain her neutral facial expression.
“I’m sorry to say that the wonderful ice cream place down on the beach is probably closed for the season,” he says.
Scully starts to shrug off his apology, but he continues.
“Some date I am, hm?”
She turns suddenly toward him and searches his face, looking for some sign that this is one of his usual jokes. She sees nothing familiar in his expression. His eyes are dark and his chin is set in a way that she’s never seen before. Feeling his grip on her waist tighten sends another shiver through her body.
It’s early evening when they get back to the house, but the November sun has already set and dusk is quickly turning into night. He ushers her through the door, gestures for her to sit on the couch, then settles himself in beside her. He apparently hasn’t thought to turn on any lights in the house, and she’s so lost in trying to read his mood that she doesn’t think to prompt him to.
So they sit side-by-side in the dark, not speaking. Scully briefly muses that it might actually be a good thing for Mulder to shut up every once in a while, but then she feels guilty for allowing the thought to enter her mind. She looks back over at him and observes that he hasn’t moved at all in the last half-hour, except for the slow blink of his eyelids and the even slower rise and fall of his chest.
Then he sighs, moves his arm to the back of the couch behind her, and she starts to breathe faster. His arm gradually curls around her shoulders, so slowly she barely notices its presence until he tightens it and pulls her closer to him. She can smell the fried seafood on his breath as she leans her head on his chest, trying to resist the urge to look up into his eyes to search for what is going through his mind. His free hand gently ruffles her hair as they sit, still saying nothing.
Then he breaks the silence. “Scully…” he says, his voice low and heavy in a tone she’s never heard before, “I want to take you upstairs and make love to you.” His hand is still stroking her head, and his touch is suddenly overwhelming. “God, Scully, I want to make love to you all night long.”
For several minutes she says nothing, does nothing, just listens to his breathing and feels his hand running back and forth across her scalp. Her head is the only part of her bare skin he dares to touch - he will take no further action until she gives him some sign that he can proceed. His embrace is mesmerizing, intoxicating. She avoids looking down to see whether his body has caught up with his mind yet.
She can easily picture how it would probably go. All she would have to do is turn her head up. He would close the rest of the distance, bringing his mouth down hungrily onto hers, devouring her as they rise off the couch together, still attached, pushing each other toward the stairs. She can imagine him pushing her down onto a big, brass bed - maybe the bed that belonged to his parents, when they still lived here together. She wonders if he would take his time exploring her body first, tasting all over, or whether he would tear off his clothes as she tore off hers and plunge into her immediately, saving the gentle touching for afterward. Regardless, she feels fairly certain that “all night long” isn’t just an empty boast on his part.
Shaking herself out of this thought, she finally pulls herself up so she is sitting up straight. His arm is still around her, although he has loosened his grip a little. He drops his other hand onto his knee, and she covers it with her hand. Then she responds. “Mulder, when-” She stops and corrects herself. “-if we make love someday, I don’t want it to be because of a crisis. It should be because it’s the right time and the right decision for us. Tonight is not that night.”
Her cheeks are pink and his eyes are closed again as she gazes up at him, looking for a reaction. But there is nothing else to say.
Mulder hasn’t thought to turn up the thermostat for their visit, so the room is cold. Scully shivers and Mulder pulls an old wool blanket over her. He holds her to himself until she falls asleep.
***
They wander through the rows of gingerbread beach cottages, most of them shuttered for the winter, before they arrive at the blocks of storefronts leading to the beach. Scully imagines what Oak Bluffs might be like in the summer, bustling with families and couples and old folks strolling along the now-quiet streets. Mulder squeezes her hand and leads her down toward the waterfront, stopping when they reach an old wooden door bearing the sign, “Flying Horses.” Scully expects the place to be closed, but for some reason it’s still open in November and its carnival music is spilling out into the street. Inside the building, rows of arcade games are occupied by a few wan-looking teenagers who don’t even look up as they pass by.
When they enter the next room, they are transported back decades - to a time before Samantha Mulder even existed, before a weary population stopped trusting the crooked politicians who were supposed to protect them from danger. Scully acknowledges the nostalgia is a little misplaced, since this heroic past was also full of oppression, ignorance, and disease. But the image is powerful.
In the old wooden shed, empty and stopped, is an ancient carousel, its painted horses bearing manes of real hair as they wait patiently for riders.
Mulder steps over to the counter, where a bored ride operator sits, and buys two tickets for them. There is no line, so they hand their tickets to the kid at the collection box and walk up to the ride. Mulder settles himself on one of the large horses on the outside. Scully chooses the horse in front of his and straps herself in, gently patting the old horsehair on her horse’s head. She turns back to look at him, sees his boyish grin, and smiles in response.
“Sam and I would beg our parents to take us here a few times every summer. We would always try to catch the brass ring, and we were never fast enough. But the last time we rode together, she caught it. I tried to grab it away from her, but she wouldn’t let me take it. I remember watching her go around and around on her free ride, laughing at me every time she passed me.”
Mulder trails off and the carousel slowly grinds to life like a mythical beast waking from a long dream. As it speeds up, the ride operator fills the ring dispenser. And then, when it is moving at full speed, rings appear on the end of the long metal arm. Scully reaches out idly and grabs one, only to hear Mulder snag three or four behind her. She looks back at him and he grins. Then he tosses the rings into the basket as the ride spins around, ready to grab more.
Scully grabs as many rings as she can, but Mulder has years of practice on her, and catches several on each rotation. And the whole world seems to collapse into this microcosm: the two of them going around and around on this carousel, as if they are caught in an anomaly of time and they will never stop spinning and laughing as they grab at the rings.
But the music finally cuts off, ending the spell. Scully catches a few more rings as the creaky machine’s rotations slow, and then she looks back again. Mulder is sitting back on his horse, his hand triumphantly grasping the brass ring. And in that moment, it doesn’t matter that he is too late by a quarter of a century. It doesn’t matter that, after four years of searching, he is no closer to finding answers. In that moment, he is twelve years old and his only goal is to hit a home run for the Chilmark Little League team and beat his sister at a game on a carnival ride.