Summary: post Je Souhaite; Scully grills Mulder about his third wish
originally posted in mid Oct 2000
Author: Circe Invidiosa
Category: MSR, post ep
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Je Souhaite
Disclaimers: I make absolutely no claims on the characters. They are property of Fox, 1013 Productions.
Archiving: yours for the asking
Summary: Scully grills Mulder on his 3rd wish…
“Well?” She put her beer down and looked straight at him. Scully was getting impatient.
“Well, what?” Mulder was still sitting smugly.
“Are you deaf? What was your third wish?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in it, Scully,” he said avoiding her question.
“Whether I do or not isn’t the point. You do. So just tell me.” She wasn’t going to take much more of this.
“But then it won’t come true,” he couldn’t resist teasing.
“Fine. Whatever. Pass the popcorn,” she said exasperated. She gave him an indignant look then leaned forward to fix her gaze at the television.
He didn’t move but stared at her, hoping to make her break. But she continued to stare at the TV. Mulder took some popcorn and threw a piece at her head. He was trying to get her to look at him. She ignored him. He threw another piece. Scully turned to face him on his cue. She tried to look resentful but he grinned at her and winked and she couldn’t suppress her smile any longer.
“Mulder, you’re such a jerk,” she said, shaking her head.
“You love it,” he smirked.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. That must be it. Just tell me.”
He finally answered her. “I didn’t make one.”
Confused, she raised her eyebrow and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I didn’t make a third wish,” he repeated.
Scully waved her hands through the air. “Then where is the mysterious Jenn? I thought she wouldn’t leave until you made all three wishes.”
He declared, “I gave away my last wish.” He sat back and crossed his arms.
“What? You just gave it away? You can do that?” she asked with disbelief.
He shrugged. “I guess so. She said I could to begin with.”
She asked, “Well, who’d you give it to?”
“Jenn,” he replied.
“How come?”
He shrugged again. “She needed it more than I did.”
She playfully smacked at his arms. “Quit being cryptic, Mulder.”
He caught her hand and held it. “She was unhappy because of the wishes she made. She’s paid for it long enough. And it seemed like if I couldn’t make the world a better place, I could at least give someone else a chance…everyone deserves a chance at contentment…”
She didn’t pull her hand away from his, but let him entwine his fingers in hers. She asked, pretending not to hear him, “So let me get this straight…after all that preparation you put into
your wish, you just gave it away…”
“You were right, Scully, it was too much to achieve at once. It can’t be instantaneous. Humanity needs the progression of time and effort in order to appreciate where they came from and how they got there. And besides, I couldn’t take the chance of my wish totally screwing up again. I only had the one left.”
She scolded him. “The road to hell, Mulder…but you still could have asked for something for yourself.”
He nodded. “Yeah, but maybe I don’t need anything I can’t get myself with time and effort…It’s like you just said, you’re fairly happy, and that’s something. I guess I decided that, overall, I am too, and that’s something as well.”
She smiled at him and said quietly, “Yeah, I guess it is.”
Mulder pulled her towards him. She leaned her back into him as his arms wrapped around her. They sat for a while watching the television with token interest.
He finally spoke, “What would you have wished for?”
She expected he would eventually ask her this question. She shrugged. “I dunno.”
He pressed her. “Come on, you must have thought about it.”
“Sure, I guess.” She paused and said, “Honestly? I think I would have asked for this.”
“What? Caddyshack? Popcorn and beer?” he asked, teasing her.
Scully sighed. “Why’d you ask if you’re just going to wisecrack?”
“Sorry, go on,” he said, still chuckling. “You’d ask for this…”
“Yeah, you know, sitting here like this…relaxing…with you.”
He countered. “We’ve sat here lots of times together.”
“Yeah, but this is different.” She sat up and turned around to face him. “There’s no reason for me to be here other than the fact that you asked me here tonight. There’s no emergency, no case we have to work on, no conspiracy we have to overcome…I’m here simply because you want me here with you.”
His fingers reached over to trace her face. He murmured, “I wonder how your wish could possibly go wrong.” He pulled her hair away from her neck and kissed her lightly under her ear. Her eyes closed involuntarily as her hand caressed the back of his head.
“Well, one way is to make me watch this movie straight through,” she muttered.
He continued to kiss her neck, and without looking, his hand flung out toward the coffee table trying to hit at the remote control in a vain attempt to shut off the VCR. She giggled at his ineffectiveness. He nearly knocked over his beer before she finally reached over and shut it off herself.
“Okay, so that’s two wishes.” He looked up at her smiling.
“Mulder, I shut it off myself,” Scully said with some impatience in her voice.
“I didn’t say I was good at this. What else do you want, Scully?”
She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything else.”
He asked her doubtfully, “You don’t want to change anything? You like the way things are?”
“Yes…tonight I do,” she said quietly.
Then she smiled at him and offered him her hand with a grin. “Here, Mulder, I don’t want anything else. I give you my last wish. What do you want?”
He leaned back and shaking his head said, “I don’t think I could handle any more wishes today.”
She still held her hand out to him. At last, he grasped her hand and pulled her to him. She leaned against him and put her head against his chest. His arm encircled her shoulders as he kissed
the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair. “All my best wishes are for you, Scully,” he murmured. “What do you mean?” she asked in return.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “If I had really given any consideration to what I wanted, instead of trying to outwit Jenn, most of my wishes revolve around you and what I want for you.”
Scully felt her chest tighten. His words had a sobering effect to the giddiness she had been feeling that evening. She wanted the mood to swing back to frivolous. But she knew she couldn’t let it lie. She closed her eyes and finally asked, “What do you want for me?”
“The usual things: your safety, your health…” He trailed off.
“That’s two,” she said impishly throwing his own words back at him.
He continued, “And time.”
“Time for what?” She sat up again and looked at him with her eyebrow raised.
“For everything. For thinking, relaxing, enjoying yourself, just being happy…for evenings like this…with me,” he replied.
“So basically you’d wish yourself on me?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking…” he said with a smirk.
“Mulder…” she cautioned him. It hadn’t been that long since they had started exploring this new stage of their relationship and she was still uneasy when they openly discussed it or even
joked about it.
He smiled at her and took her hand again. “I’m trying to say I’d ask for this too. I’m trying to say, you’re right…again.”
“As usual,” she corrected him.
“Uh huh.” He leaned in towards her and kissed her lightly on her lips. She pulled him back into a longer kiss.
When they parted, he whispered, “Best wishes, Scully.”