Chapter Text
Interstate 70, somewhere in Kansas
April 1995
They’re driving through Kansas after a case and Mulder is about two grain silos away from swerving their rental car off the road into a ditch. If he can even find one; I-70 is long, flat, and utterly lacking in any noteworthy landmarks or reasons to live. Their case was a bust, and they’re heading back to Wichita empty-handed; the entire state feels like a gigantic waste of time in Mulder’s estimation. Why the fuck was Dorothy so eager to get home to this place?
Scully’s been quiet for over an hour; he thinks she might be napping. He can’t blame her; if he could drive with his eyes closed he would, if only to not have to see another mile of endless corn. God, he hates corn.
She stirs, rolls her head from side to side. So she’s awake, Mulder thinks in relief. He’s sick of hearing his own thoughts.
“Tell me something, Scully,” he says without preamble.
“Hm?” she replies, turning away from the window.
“This is the most boring road in the continental U.S., and I’m slowly going insane. Talk to me; I need something to anchor me to reality.”
“That’s an admission I’d never expected to hear from you, Mulder. I never dared hope,” she says dryly. She absently takes a sunflower seed from the open bag in the center console, cracks the shell with her teeth.
“Humor me. What were you like in high school?”
She balks. “You don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I think I do.”
She chews the seed pensively. “You can’t make fun of me later. This stays in this car.”
He glances at her, wiggles his eyebrows. She rolls her eyes.
“Okay, fine,” Mulder concedes. “This car has a Cone of Silence around it.”
“That’s technically not- never mind.” She plucks another seed out of the bag. “I was a good student, obviously. I had big dreams, wanted to make a difference in the world; make my father proud.”
“So you were a nerd,” Mulder surmises. “I can see it.”
“I tried to hide it, though. I went through some pretty outrageous phases in my teen years. You know about the smoking thing,” she says, “But… I didn’t stick to just cigarettes.”
“Dana Katherine,” Mulder says in mock horror, “Were you a stoner?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t do it all the time. Just when I was out with friends. Occasionally.” She picks a sunflower seed shell off the tip of her tongue and places it in a tissue from her purse.
“That’s not that scandalous, Scully. I smoked a few joints in my time.” He glances at her and smiles. She eats sunflower seeds so carefully, and it warms his heart to see her sharing one of his rituals. He takes a few from the bag, in communion.
“I was kind of a punk,” she says quietly.
Well, that was unexpected. “You? Really?” He glances at her in her uninspired beige suit, red hair in soft waves around her face. “I can’t picture it.”
“Please don’t try to,” she groans. “I couldn’t really commit to the full look, what with Catholic school dress codes. Most days I just wore too much eyeliner and didn’t brush my hair. I’d go to local punk shows on the weekends with my friends, though. We’d tell our parents we were staying at the other’s house, and since my grades were good I don’t think they ever bothered to verify that information.”
“That’s the kind of sordid detail I’m looking for,” he quips, chomping on a seed. The idea of teenage Scully - Dana, back then - in ripped tights and boots, lying to her parents, sneaking around, was intriguing. She would have been way too cool for teenage Fox, and the realization makes his stomach flip inexplicably. He clears his throat. “Alright, next question. When did you lose you v-card?”
“Mulder!”
“Hey, we’ll trade. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“This is not an appropriate topic of conversation while we’re on a case,” Scully argues.
“Case is technically over, and who’s gonna know? The only other ears for miles around are on the corn.”
She groans. “If you promise not to make any more awful jokes…” she cautions.
“Scout’s honor,” he replies, raising a hand.
Scully shifts in her seat, turns to look out the window again. “I was sixteen.”
He glances at her quickly. “Really? Wow.”
“Wow?” She prompts.
“That’s… younger than I expected for you.”
“Oh, so you’ve given this some thought?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
Mulder tugs his collar absently. “That’s not what I said. So sixteen, huh?”
“Yes. It was at a party and it was terrible. His name was Andrew and we were kind of friends, kind of more than friends, and very awkward. Not the finest thirty seconds of my high school career.” She sighs. “Your turn.”
Mulder suddenly regrets broaching the subject. “Uh, we can stop playing this game, if you want.”
“Nuh-uh, you’re not backing out now. We had a deal. When?”
He bites his lip. “I was eighteen, at Oxford. I, uh… wasn’t super social in high school.”
Scully hums in understanding. “Who was it?”
He lowers his voice. “You’ve met her, actually.”
Scully’s eyes widen. Mulder can hear her thoughts spinning. She gasps. “Oh! Her!”
“Yup.” He repositions his hands on the steering wheel, suddenly finding the cracked asphalt ahead very interesting.
“Well, that’s… she’s…” Scully flounders.
“It was okay. I mean, I was a teenage boy, I was mostly just glad to be having it. But I wasn’t her first and that made it a little uncomfortable… she wasn’t the kindest person, sometimes.”
Scully nods. “I’ll admit she didn’t make a very good impression on me. I didn’t like the way she talked to you,” she confesses.
Mulder doesn’t respond. The only sound in the car is the hum of the engine, the road beneath the tires.
“One good thing about teenage mistakes,” Scully posits after a while, “Is that you learn from them.”
“It took me a while to learn from mine,” Mulder admits, staring ahead.
Scully, mercifully, doesn’t look at him. She leans her head against the window, watches miles of corn pass them by.