Fortune Cookie Night

It's a strange noise, really, a tuneless, nasal, breathy sound, so quietthat you have to listen closely to be sure you aren't imagining it.

I first noticed it our first year as partners, in a brief quiet time just before they closed the X-Files. Mulder was paging through a stack of tabloids in search of noteworthy cases while I worked on an autopsy report. We had just closed a kidnapping case that had ended, for once, in a family joyfully reunited; the FBI had gotten good press, and for a while we were gettinglooks of grudging respect instead of scorn in the hallways. 

I had paused in my typing to crack my neck and sip my coffee, and the room was very quiet without the clicking of the keys. The sound caught at theedges of my hearing, and it was a while before I could be sure it was comingfrom my partner. He was sitting with his feet propped on his desk, crunchingsunflower seeds, completely engrossed in a paper with the headline "FarmerPleads: Please Save My Pig Baby!" and humming softly, unaware.

He noticed my silence after a minute or two, and shot an inquisitive glance my way. I smiled at him and asked if he needed more coffee. 

After the cancer, the day he drove me home from the hospital, he tucked me up on my couch with an afghan and the remote control, and despite my protests he made lunch while my mother stroked my hair and looked at me with wonder. I heard him humming as he set the tray of soup and sandwiches on the coffee table.

The night he took me to play baseball, I could feel the vibrations of itin my back as we hit ball after ball into the starry sky.

And then there was the fortune cookie night.

We had been sitting in Mulder's living room for hours, trying to clear out a backlog of paperwork that had somehow been overlooked until days before it was due. We took a break around ten, eating Chinese takeout while Mulder watched "Plan 9 From Outer Space" for the fifty-first time. 

I held out a hand for his empty carton, taking the trash to the kitchen and returning with our fortune cookies. I tossed him his cookie, and he caught it one-handed without turning his eyes from the screen. 

"Ooo, Mulder, I'm impressed," I said. "Were you that good a catcher whenyou played baseball as a kid?" 

He turned to me then, and smiled a lazy smile. "Not even close," he 
replied. "There was a reason I played right field. Deep right."

I smiled back, and took my place beside him on the couch, raising my feet to his coffee table in a mirror of his own position. "Ready?" I asked, holding my fortune cookie aloft.

"As always," he said, and at his nod we opened the wrappers, breaking the cookies almost simultaneously. I managed to divide mine into neat halves, but Mulder used too much force, shattering the brittle pastry in an explosion of shards and dust.

"It's all in the wrist," I said smugly. "You go first."

He extracted the small paper from the ruins of the cookie, and read aloud. "A friend will tell you the truth," he said, then snorted. "These thingsare always so vague, there's no way they could be wrong," he said. "Theyalways say things like, 'Tomorrow, you will sleep for a time.' It's a shame,really. Who knows how many genuine prognosticators have been ridiculed becauseof fortune cookies and psychic networks? People like that Amazing Yappi.The only thing amazing about him is his ability to move his eyebrows independently of one another-- an ability that you share, by the way. Maybe I should start calling you The Amazing Scully."

I sat without replying, staring in disbelief at the scrap of paper I held in my hand.

"Scully?" Mulder's concerned voice broke through my daze. "Are you OK?"

Without a word, I handed the fortune to him. He looked at me, bewildered, then read it aloud. "You will make a long-awaited confession." His eyes flicked from the small red words to my face, and he grinned teasingly. "So, Scully... you got something you need to tell me?"

I bit my lip and looked down, strangely shaken for such a tiny thing. A warm touch lifted my chin, and I found myself meeting his gaze. 

"You know you can tell me anything, Scully," he said, voice tender and serious.

I gave a little, nervous laugh. "I know," I said, and kissed him, losingmyself this time in his ripe-plum mouth. He tasted warm and spicy, like happiness and wontons.

The next morning, I drifted awake without opening my eyes, feeling much too soft and sleepy to move. We were a tangled heap of sheets and Special Agents, Mulder stretched diagonally across the bed with most of my body tucked under his cradling arm. He was awake, stroking my hair tenderly where it fanned across his chest. 

And he was humming.