Summary: Team Mulder/Scully tries its best to make it through Christmas dinner.

Author's note: This is, ultimately, the result of my having been hopelessly inspired by the XF2 Photo Heard Round The World - at the very least, enough to dust off P.I, Criminal, and the Tater - despite my having moved comfortably into the X-Files Fanfic Author's Retirement Community And Senior Retreat (located in sunny South Florida - great shuffleboard!) In any case, let's just say I was inspired further by Chris Carter's suggestion that a new audience should fall in love with Mulder and Scully. I hope you all enjoy the ride!

* This is the epilogue/deleted scene from 'Team Building.' Unfortunately, the full-text version of Team Building (which I had hoped to attach this to) is a little much for ephemeral, so if anyone knows of a site where I could host it, please drop me a line and let me know!

Feedback graciously accepted at: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com

Thanks to Alyssa for helping keep it in character.

'Cause this is real and this is good. It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
Built to Last, Melee

"I don't know, maybe he put the whammy on them."
"Mulder, please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy."
- Mulder and Scully, 1997

Mulder and Scully sat across from one other at Maggie Scully's long, mahogany dining room table of abject Christmas boredom.

To Mulder's right sat Emma, squirming and looking six different kinds of uncomfortable in a dark green dress Scully had picked out for her earlier that morning. Next to Emma sat Scully's horrid little nephew, Matthew, who had been sullenly picking at his food and then gutting it with his fork. On the other side of Matthew sat Mrs. Scully, who had been programming something inexplicable into her cell phone for the past hour, and then two of Scully's third cousins, one of whom was drunk (Mulder was pretty sure) and the other of whom was the one with the nervous tick (at some point six years ago, he'd stopped listening to Scully's last-minute rundowns of names and descriptions.) On the other side of Cousin Twitch sat Scully's sister-in-law, Tara, and on the other side of Tara sat Scully's older brother Bill, whose posture had remained, since the very first day Mulder had met him, the most rigid of anyone Mulder had ever known. On the table next to Bill lay a pair of worn, fabric- lined, hardcover books: The Night Before Christmas and The Christmas Story.

As Bill opened the first book, he nudged William to his right and implied something Mulder couldn't hear about William's dinner table posture, which only made Mulder carefully consider how long it would take him to staple Bill's head to the carpet.

God, how Mulder hated these dinners.

To the right of William, Scully shot Bill a warning look, patted William's shoulder, and reached a hand to the back of her neck in the universal sign of exhaustion.

A lamp on a low wooden hutch cast them all in a deceptively calm, buttery light; the glow twinkled nicely over the heads of Scullys and non-Scullys alike.

Mulder, antsy out of his mind, had been alternately staring with increased desperation at his watch and then pretending to have a conversation with Scully's cousin, Drink-o McDrunk (he really, really should have worked on recalling these names) as every once in awhile he snuck glances at his phone for Google updates. The two greatest inventions in the world, decided Mulder, were mobile email and Google updating. That, and the green lace bra Scully wore only on special occasions - that bra was fucking magic.

Dinner had been slow and leisurely (or slow and painful, depending on the point of view), and, as was the tradition every year at Christmas time, the eldest Scully had been tasked with reciting first The Night Before Christmas, and then - as if that wasn't agonizing enough - The Christmas Story.

Ultimately, it wasn't that Mulder didn't respect Scully tradition, or the art of religious storytelling, or the very idea of Christmas as this Special Day That Should Be Commemorated By Going Completely Overboard In Every Way - all of that was fine and good. It was just, when put all together, these things managed somehow to form a nexus of boredom so great that it put the three months he'd literally spent dead to shame.

"Twas the night before Christmas," began Bill Scully, "When all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a..."

Mulder pulled out his phone to double-triple-quadruple check for anything interesting on his news-feed. So far, his Google keywords had only pulled up a few bogus looking articles. Apparently, not a whole hell of a lot happened on Christmas besides suicide. Go figure.

Mulder eyed Emma at his immediate right. She'd apparently been carving her mashed potatoes into what looked like a snapping turtle with two faces. Mulder took a break from his news- gathering, flipped through his contacts, and texted:

'NICE WORK, H.SKILLET. WHAT HAVE U UNCOVERED?'

Emma, whose fork remained buried in her mashed potato artwork, paused for a second, a Scully-like look of concentration on her face. She pulled her phone out of some hidden pocket of her dress, glanced at the screen, and then at Mulder, and grinned. She typed back:

'MASHEDLUMPYTURTLE-A-SAUR.'

Mulder forced back a chuckle. In his mind was Emma, all of six years old and at the height of her kitchen appliance obsession. She'd just gotten ready for bed, and had been waiting patiently at the kitchen sink for a glass of water. Mulder had been reaching for a cup from the cabinet when Emma had turned and inexplicably leaned in close to the lowly humming refrigerator. She'd pressed her pale cheek to the door and listened with wide green eyes, her palms flat against its surface. After a full minute in which Mulder had simply stared at her, fascinated, Emma finally whispered, "Don't worry, I'll tell him. Goodnight, Mr. Refrigerator."

Mulder nodded at Emma's dinner creature. He smiled and winked and she winked back. He sighed, realized how truly ridiculous it was to be texting his daughter from half an inch away, and took a moment to curse Bill Scully and his inability to read just a little goddamned faster. Mulder replied:

'I THINK UR CREATURE LIVED MILLIONS of YEARS AGO.'

Emma grinned adoringly up at him, which melted Mulder in a sort of pathetic way. Satisfied that at least he was his daughter's favorite person (if perhaps nobody else's at this particular table), he began to scroll again through the few Google headlines on his news-page:

"Giant Two HEADED Bird Sighting in Fayettesville..."

"Mysterious KILLER PLANT Found on Dairy Farm..."

"Herd of MUTILATED COWS discovered on I-95..."

When Mulder looked up again, he realized that Scully had been studying him from across the table, her chin perched on her palm, her eyes lowly lidded, her red hair falling like a rusty waterfall across her brow. She smiled at him with a certain mischief lingering on her lips, like she knew a secret she'd never reveal.

Mulder scrolled to Scully in his address book, typed:

'U WANT 2 MAKE OUT?'

He clicked his phone shut, watched as she pulled out hers and read, her cheeks flushing the color of her lips. A half-smile was visible from beneath the cloud of her long red hair, mysterious as any impressionist's vision: gentle and calm and yet full of movement, filled from top to bottom with color. Beautiful.

Mulder's phone vibrated a moment later:

'CHARMING, Mulder.'

Mulder grinned wickedly. He typed back:

'I'M A CHARMER. SHH, DON'T TELL MY WIFE.'

"Away to the window I flew like a flash," read Bill, eyeing his sister with annoyance, "Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the luster of mid-day to objects below..."

For a split second, Mulder recalled Scully as she'd once been, years ago, when she was sick with Cancer. Tubes had flowed from her and over her and into her like misplaced bakery box strings. Her skin had faded to eggshell, the color of clean sheets. Her red hair fell in bold streaks against her neck, her eyes closed in a thick, drugged sleep. Mulder had dropped to his knees before her like a man who had lost his religion, and sobbed, thrashing away at a fear so great it had left him without direction or purpose. "Don't leave me," he'd whispered to her, as he'd brushed errant snarls away from the face he'd so loved. "I can't do this alone..."

Mulder startled as his phone vibrated. He took a deep, equalizing breath, and opened it.

'PARTNER THINKS WIFE CAN MAYBE DO BETTER IF THAT's ALL U GOT.'

Mulder shot Scully a wry glance. Scully sat calm and still - a challenge on her part. Mulder was about to fire off a retort when his phone vibrated at him first. Mulder read the display: TATER:

'U READING GOOGLE ALERTS?'

Mulder looked across the table at William, who shot him a lopsided, hopeful grin. Very familiar, that grin. Did Mulder's own facial expressions always come off so manipulative when they were splashed across his own face?

Mulder wrote back:

'WHICH One?'

William answered:

'HERD of DEAD COWS ON HIGHWAY IN PA. UNEXPLAINED. MADE of AWESOME. CAN WE GO? U CAN TELL MOM I WANT 2 LEARN 2 MILK COWS 4 XMAS.'

Mulder frowned, wrote back:

'NO MILKING DEAD COWS. ALREADY HUNTED POLTERGEIST. CAN'T HAVE IT ALL. EAT UR BROCCOLI.'

William let out a frustrated sigh. He pushed his dinner away and typed furiously:

'WHAT R MY CHANCES IF I KEEP BEGGING U IN ATTEMPT 2 WEAR U DOWN?'

Mulder texted him back:

'BETTER CHANCE of BASKETBALL WITH BABY JESUS.'

William groaned. Mulder recalled the last time they had had this discussion, as quite often, these days, it seemed they were having this exact same discussion.

William had wanted to travel with he and Scully to Mississippi last week, where there had been reports of automobiles turning on by themselves, and driving themselves, and disappearing for days on end, and then turning up again, miraculously. William had pleaded his case, although Mulder and Scully had quickly set forth a stringent law: field work was off-limits for anyone under the age of 30 - a law that William had disagreed with immediately, his exact argument being that it was "a completely retarded rule and a lot of stupid crap!" And then he had stalked away from them, slamming the door to his room and turning up some loud music Mulder hadn't recognized. Later that night, William had scribbled on the dry-erase board attached to his door: "TRUST NO One! NO One!!!!" and refused to speak to either he or Scully for two days.

Mulder's phone vibrated again. This time, it was Scully:

'NO DEAD COWS @ The DINNER TABLE PLS.'

Mulder's brows went up. He typed:

'HOW DO U KNOW WHAT I AM LOOKING AT, STUPENDOUS YAPPI?'

Scully shook her head, typed. Mulder read her reply:

'NOT PSYCHIC BUT NOT STUPID. I 2 HAVE GOOGLE ALERT. PARTNER SAYS U WILL HAVE ZERO FUN WITH WIFE IF THERE IS DRIVING, RUNNING, CHASING, CATTLE MANURE, GHOSTS of CATTLE, OR FIELD TRIP 2 ER 2NITE.'

Mulder glanced first at William, who folded his hands neatly on the table in front of him, tilted his head, and batted his eyelashes, and then at Scully, who folded her hands neatly on the table and shot him a pointed glance. He sighed and texted Scully:

'sPUD WANTS 2 SEE DEAD COWS ON HIGHWAY. NOT MY FAULT. BLAME GOOGLE.'

"More rapid than eagles, his coursers, they came, and he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name," read Bill Scully, loudly, shooting Mulder and Scully looks that threatened violence. "Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!"

Mulder's phone vibrated. He flipped it open:

'WHAT DID U TELL TATER ABOUT The COWS?'

Mulder shrugged, typed back:

'BETTER CHANCE of ALIEN ABDUCTION.'

Scully nodded to herself and stifled a chuckle. Mulder's phone vibrated again. This time, the display read H.SKILLET:

'TELL SPUD NO DEAD COWS 2NITE, OK? 2MOROW PLS? SLEEPY NOW.'

Mulder frowned. He looked from Emma to William as Scully caught the direction of his gaze and her expression grew suspicious. Mulder's phone vibrated. Display read Scully:

'WHAT HAS THING 1 TOLD THING 2?'

Mulder shot his son a warning look, wrote back:

'sPUD TOLD SKILLET ABOUT DEAD COWS. TACTICAL MOVE. VERY SNEAKY. CHILD IS TRYING 2 DOUBLE-TEAM US.'

Scully looked over at William and narrowed her eyes, her brows pinching in thought above the freckled bridge of her nose. Mulder had seen her do this kind of thing before, this pseudo profiling thing - both with suspects and their children alike, although these days, suspects and children seemed to often coalesce into the same thing.

William pushed his glasses back up his nose and shot Scully a beatific but mischievous smile. Scully continued to study him.

Bill Scully glanced at both of them and cleared his throat as if it were a threat, and continued to read. His face had gone some vaguely unfortunate shade of red.

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top, the coursers, they flew..."

Mulder's phone vibrated. He clicked it open. Scully had texted all three of them:

'WHAT EVIDENCE HERE DENOTES X-FILE?'

Mulder re-read the sentence, turning the situation over and over in his head to try and gauge Scully's strategy. He glanced at William who glanced at Scully. William bent over his keypad.

Mulder's phone vibrated:

'ALL COWS HAD HOLES POKED IN NECK. SOMEONE MAKING COW SLURPEES. VAMPIRES???'

Mulder grinned proudly. Scully shook her head. She made a face not unlike the face he'd often see her make when he suggested crap like bi-location and spontaneous human combustion, and she'd immediately answer with, "No seriously, Mulder."

Scully typed. A second later came her mass reply:

'PLS TELL ME THAT's NOT REALLY WHAT UR SUGGESTING, TATER.'

Mulder bit away the full-throated laugh that threatened to interrupt Bill Scully's comically distracted reading.

"And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof, the prancing and pawing of each little hoof..."

William blew out an exasperated sigh, shoved his glasses back up his nose, and slunk further into his chair as he typed, paused, typed, paused, glanced over at Scully, paused, and typed some more. He clicked his phone shut and gazed up at his mother, a dangerously familiar, cocky expression on his face. Scully clicked her phone open and read, her eyebrow firmly arched. She glanced at William, and then at her phone, and then at Mulder, and then she typed. Mulder glanced at Emma. Emma glanced at Mulder.

"As I drew in my head, and was turning around," snarled Bill, peering first at Mulder and then at Scully, "down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot..."

William glanced at his phone and then at Scully. Scully raised an eyebrow as if in challenge. William raised a very similar eyebrow as if in rebuttal. Mother and son continued to gaze at one another in an entirely silent conversation, and suddenly, Mulder felt excluded in a completely preposterous way.

He was reminded of a moment, many years ago, when he and Scully had been flying over Dallas to try and locate and diffuse a bomb. There had been four of them in the helicopter - Mulder, Scully, Special Agent Lisbon, and SAC in Charge, Darius Michaud. SAC Michaud had been going over the suspect's profile, and Mulder and Scully had, of course, gotten into a heated debate about the origins of domestic terrorism, which had ended in a silent grudge-match of eyebrow vs. cocky grin. At some point, Mulder, his eyes glittering and evenly matched with Scully's, had registered that someone else was speaking. It was Special Agent Lisbon, who had chucked his thumb at both of them, and asked SAC Michaud, "Is the Ghoul Patrol almost finished here with their exclusive argument or are we waiting for one of them to throw the other from the chopper?"

Mulder typed:

'NO FAIR NOT SHARING IN The SHARING CIRCLE.'

Scully glanced at Mulder, and then at William, and then at Mulder, where her gaze finally remained, and then hardened, and then made Mulder think back to the days of the old slide projector, when Scully would stand there, arms folded, brows raised, her disbelieving voice like clockwork: "I refuse to go to Ohio based on a blurry photograph and a ten-year old's assertion of some one-armed, shrouded stairwell monster."

Mulder's phone vibrated back at him and he clicked it open:

'The RONNIE STRICKLAND CASE?? R U CRAZY?? DO I HAVE 2 POP A CAP, Mulder?'

Mulder's mouth opened. He shook his head and glanced at his son. William caught his eye and shrugged. Great. His own kid had just thrown him under the bus. Mulder sighed and typed back the first thing that came into his head:

'POP A CAP, Scully?' Scully made a face. Mulder's phone vibrated:

'sHUT UP, Mulder.'

Damn it.

Mulder had specifically told William to put that case-file back in the drawer when he was finished with it, and had specifically attached a 'Do Not Tell Your Mother' clause to the end of the contract. Of course, his first mistake had probably been entering into a verbal contract with a ten-year-old, but how could he have said no? Mulder blamed Scully by genetic association. William had her eyes.

Mulder's phone buzzed again. This time it was Emma:

'U LOOK LIKE UR IN TRUBBLE DADDY.'

Bill Scully caught Mulder's eye, shot him an acid glance, and violently turned a page in The Night Before Christmas. Mulder forced a smile and then glanced over at Mrs. Scully, who seemed to be watching the four of them (or was he being paranoid?)

Mulder sighed and typed:

'TOLD SPUD 2 PUT FILE BACK. CHILD IS VERY CONVINCING LIAR. HIGHLY DANGEROUS. SUSPECT MIND CONTROL. FURTHER RESEARCH PENDING.'

Scully flipped open her phone, read, and rolled her eyes. She typed, closed her screen.

Mulder flipped open his phone, read:

'4 MIND CONTROL 2 WORK, A MIND HAS 2 1ST EXIST, Mulder.'

Mulder groaned inwardly. What humor. Since when had inappropriate comedy become her department? What was next? Mulder in blue scrubs repeating the phrase "what are you suggesting?" over and over?

Mulder shot a sideways glance at Bill, whose assault on the pages of The Night Before Christmas had begun to border on abuse, and got worse the longer his sister remained disinterested in his storytelling.

"The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath..."

Mulder shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He texted Scully:

'sO WHAT DID U TELL TATER?'

Scully glanced over William's shoulder at something he seemed to be completely enraptured with all of a sudden. She pointed at something on his screen, and William nodded at her. Scully's lips quirked in what seemed suspiciously like self-satisfied gloating. Mulder frowned.

When his phone vibrated, he opened it, reading:

'PROMISED WE WOULD TAKE HIM 2 SEE DEAD COWS IF HE WROTE ANNOTATED CASE REPORT ON SCIENCE BEHIND VAMPIRISM.'

Mulder blinked, dumbfounded.

He had a sudden mental image of Scully leaning against his desk in the basement office, rattling off an impressive myriad of possible paranormal explanations for some unexplained disappearances of teenagers in the Midwest. By the end of this five minute spiel of hers, the last words of which had been, "-- frequently attributed to psychological stress factors which allows the poltergeist to manifest most strongly within adolescents," he had already closed the space between them and pressed his mouth quite savagely to hers - so savagely, in fact, that she'd yanked him forward onto the counter and strewn all else to the ground in one seemingly effortless movement.

Mulder typed a response:

'I THINK UR BETTER AT STRATEGO THAN U LET ON, SISTER SPOOKY.'

Scully glanced at her phone, breathed a silent laugh under her breath, replied:

'GAME, SET, MATCH, TEAM Scully.'

Mulder ran his fingers over the screen. He imagined a gameboard between them, the red and blue dancing pieces, Scully nodding her chin at him: "Your move, Mulder."

"His eyes - how they twinkled," read Bill, rubbing his fingers roughly over the bridge of his nose. "His dimples, how merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow."

Mulder felt his wandering mind touch upon a much younger Scully, her red hair cut short beneath her chin, her navy collar pulled tight across her neckline, her arms folded across her chest.

They'd just spent an entire Monday morning wandering clumsily around each other, each yawning and tripping over their own feet, each busying themselves with work that didn't interest them, each bumping into things, each snapping at the other like children and then glaring quietly at one another over a mountain of past-due paperwork. The greater truth - the one that neither of them could speak - was that they'd just crossed a forbidden line. They'd just done something so dangerous, so completely risky, and they'd done so much of it in so short time and in so many various, incredible, possibly unheard of positions, that the word 'sex' had become a nonsense word, a sort of gibberish term exhausted from too much incredulous repetition.

Of course, by the time lunch had rolled around, the air had grown strange and humid and thin and painful between them - so painful, in fact, that Mulder was sure his skin had been trying to peel away from his own body. And so, it had been at that precise moment, in a fit of directionless frustration, and in an effort to find a way to breathe normally again, that he'd proceeded to open his mouth and tell Scully... well, the truth. Or, the truth as he saw it, in other words.

And as these things went, Scully hadn't believed him.

But what else was new?

"This could divide us, Mulder," Scully had said. "It could come between us. It could end badly. And then what?" She'd taken hold of his hand, continued, "You know that I'm flattered by what you've just said. Surely, you know that. But I also think you need to stop for a moment and think strategically, here."

"Flattered," Mulder had echoed, his mind wrapping over and over that one, ugly, manhood shrinking word. FLATTERED. Amazingly enough, Mulder hadn't been able to recall the last time anyone had been so flattered by him that they'd screamed his name in high soprano and then wrapped their legs around him like some spider monkey scaling a tree. He blinked in disbelief. "You... are flattered."

"Mulder - "

"And I should - " He'd dropped her hand, advanced upon her, "-- think strategically."

"Mulder." She'd held up a palm in warning. "This conversation is clearly not appropriate for this environment, and in fact, is exactly why I didn't want - "

"DIDN'T WANT?" he'd managed. "Oh, no. You cannot fuck me like someone who's just gotten out of prison and then leave in the middle of the night, and then the next day tell me all about what you didn't want and ask me to think strategically about it."

Scully tilted her head to one side, a curious look on her face. "Prison, Mulder?" She took a deep breath. "Look, if I recall correctly, it was you who fuc - " She closed her eyes, opened them, and gazed at the floor, "--you who egged it on as much as I." She sighed. "Anyway. This was ultimately a joint mistake."

"It was... a joint... a what?"

It was too bad he'd already smashed in the garbage can after The Ronnie Strickland case - that's what it really was.

Scully's eyes had found his again, and an antagonistic look crept across her brow. She'd been pushing him far past his legal limits on purpose, and she'd been doing it all morning. But why?

"I think you're making too much of this," she'd said, "And I don't need you storming out of here as a consequence, like... like some kind of ridiculous, jilted, macho teenager who didn't get his way. I need you to accept what I'm saying and why I'm saying it, Mulder. I need you to know that I care about you, that I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't care so deeply."

His eyes, he'd realized, had gone cartoonishly huge, as if he were some frenzied animated rabbit who had just been hit in the foot with a sledgehammer.

"What... what I am trying to say, here, is that... we had... an incident," she'd rambled, her cheeks flushing fiery red. "We lost our heads for a bit, which I imagine was to eventually be expected in some way; we've both been through quite a bit of trauma, and we're both... fully-functioning adults. It's a perfectly normal reaction. But an... an incident... shouldn't necessarily evolve into a relationship. I think you and I both know how great a risk that would be - in so many ways."

Which was when Mulder had literally felt himself leave his own body upon a flood of anger so powerful that he couldn't possibly have coexisted with it.

"I..." He thrust a wagging finger in her face, trying to come up with a convincing counter-argument. "I went to Antarctica for you, God damn it!"

And then, in an effort to not punch either Scully or the wall, he'd stormed right out of the room feeling as if perhaps he WAS some kind of ridiculous, jilted, macho teenager, thankful only that at least in the basement there could never be an audience for this type of shit. He slammed the door viciously behind him--

- and then realized it would be impossible to prove Scully wrong from the hall, and also, he'd left his stupid fucking coat inside there with her -

- and thus came storming back in.

"Did you forget something, Mulder?"

- and glared at her.

"Yeah. My manhood, apparently."

- which made her recoil and step back.

He could still smell her and taste her and feel her inside his every pore; this woman who had pressed her lips to his like a wire desperate for an electrical outlet; this woman who had raked her nails possessively down his back; this woman, his Scully, this same woman whom he had followed to the ends of the Earth, whom he had chased mutants with through backyards and into sewers and over hills and into dark woods; this woman who had lost time and family and a perfectly good career in medicine because of him and this quest, this same woman who had stayed with him despite all of it, who had asked him only months previous to father a child with her, and now, and NOW, she was saying... she was saying... What the fuck did she actually fucking think she was saying?

Mulder had grabbed her by the shoulders, probably a little too hard.

"I was hoping for a little more maturity," she'd muttered, unimpressed with his manhandling. She'd set her hands on her hips and he'd towered over her, woozy with rage.

- this woman who was his opposite in every way, who had come to him as a scientist and a skeptic and a goddamned pain in the ass; this woman who had made it her job and her business to debunk all of his most interesting and impressive theories; this woman who had been his direct counterpoint, who, in the face of the most mind-blowing goddamned sex anyone in the history of sex had ever had, still refused to believe, as if his telling her he loved her was somehow like his telling her there lived werewolves in her filing cabinet.

"You want maturity?" he'd demanded. "That's funny, actually, because we've danced around this shit like middle-schoolers for years and you've never minded our lack of maturity before." He leaned closer. "Still co-defendants, PARTNER?"

Scully pushed angrily against his chest, trying to move him. "Co-defendants, maybe, but not lovers," she'd insisted, and then finished with, "PARTNER."

And then...

And THEN...

Something in him just snapped. Literally. He'd heard his own resolve and his own restraint, once wound together tightly like rope, physically frey and snap. And finally, teetering over the ledge of the most extraordinary sort of madness, and realizing, as always, that he would have to make the leap first, he'd backed her up against the wall, threaded one hand through her hair, wrapped the other around her waist, and then growled into her startled face the first stupid-ass thing to pop into his head, which was, "Antarctica, Scully."

And then he'd closed the connection between them, a makeshift data transfer.

- out flowed the person he was and the person he'd been and all that he'd seen and all that he still wanted to see; his desperation to find the truth and to make her see the truth, to make her understand how their work, and his passion, and this quest, and her science, how it had all lead up to this moment when the things they believed would be powerful and right and the same--

Scully's legs had begun to wobble beneath her, her back arching into him as if he'd caught her in some tractor beam, her lips coming to life, her hands sudden and frantic and wild in his hair and around his neck and over his back, clutching, clawing, grasping at him. She let out a small, tiny whimper. And then Mulder was holding her up just as surely as she'd ever held him up, and he'd decided that he just needed to kiss her and kiss her until there could be no mistake whatsoever about the kind of truth he saw with her -

Mulder's phone buzzed. Startled, he flipped it open:

'WHAT DO I WIN 4 OUTSMARTING 10YR OLD, MR. STRATEGO EXPERT?'

Mulder's eyebrow arched. Beneath the table, he felt Scully's toe nudge his.

"He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle," read Bill, sounding annoyed and weary, "and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight-"

Mulder glanced from William to Emma. An image flashed in his mind: Scully placing William in his tiny bassinet that very first night, covering him up with a blanket. Mulder's chin had rested gently on Scully's shoulder to watch. "Can you believe that's a person?" he'd whispered, his lips on her ear. "We made a person, Scully."

Mulder sent a reply to Scully:

'WHAT IF I LET U CAPTURE MY FLAG?'

Scully's answer flashed quickly across his screen:

'ALREADY HAVE.'

Mulder smiled. He typed:

'THEN ILL TELL U A SECRET. U READY?'

Scully's eyebrow arched.

Mulder texted again:

'I'M IN LOVE WITH MY PARTNER. SHH, DON'T TELL MY WIFE.'

Scully smiled. Her eyes locked with his. She typed:

'GOT NEWS 4 U. UR WIFE, SHE ALREADY SUSPECTS.'

"Happy Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!" finished Bill Scully, as he slammed closed his mother's hardcover Christmas book like a tennis player spiking a ball over the net, and glared at Mulder. Mulder blinked and shrugged innocently and forced a smile. Bill shook his head, took several deep breaths, and swigged down the rest of his wine. Then he turned to his sister, leaned in close, and muttered, "It's Christmas and you can't even stop for ten goddamned minutes?"

Scully studied Bill carefully. "Don't you have more to read?" she asked, nodding her chin in the direction of the second book. "We're all a-tingle with anticipation, you know."

Bill made a face. "You know, you're a real pain in my ass, Dana." He elbowed her in the shoulder. "Always have been."

"Oh yeah?" Scully said, and she elbowed him back. "Believe me, the feeling's mutual."

Mulder blinked. He gazed from Scully to her brother and back again, and wondered, briefly, if he should perhaps hop over the table to start the car. It wouldn't have been the first time the four of them had all ended up at Denny's for either Christmas dinner or dessert, and Mulder guessed it probably wouldn't be the last, either.

But then Bill glanced down at William and his expression inexplicably softened. He brushed his hand across the boy's head, and Scully smiled gratefully. "Pain in the ass," Bill repeated under his breath.

Mulder sighed, relieved, and shifted again in his chair. How many hours had they all been sitting here together now? Was it more than a hundred? Less than a hundred? Still trying to contemplate it, Mulder sent Scully another text:

'sO, SERIOUSLY. U WANT 2 MAKE OUT?'

Scully opened up her phone. Her laughter lit Mulder up from the inside. Her reply was fast and playful:

'YES. THROW ME ON The TABLE.'

Mulder nodded with a wink.

Scully grinned and winked back.

Somehow, their feet had gotten to doing wicked, naughty things to one another underneath the table.

Mulder leaned his chin on his palm and gazed with rapture at his partner, and decided that somehow, he might just make it through the second story after all.

End

Note: So why the epilogue?

Basically, this was the scene I had started writing when I was working to get my author's groove back on, having wholly convinced myself that I had been away from the fandom for too long to pull this off. Also, I just thought it would be pretty funny to show how Mulder and Scully had evolved along with technology and all the texting. Ultimately, though, I had decided it didn't belong in 'Team Building,' that when Mulder finished his fairytale-telling, that is when 'Team Building' ended. However, I still had this unfinished scene sitting here and thought it would be a shame to not include. So I finished it up and included it. Unfortunately, the full text version is a little unwieldy for ephemeral (160k) so if any of you out there have sites where I can host a full text version, please drop me a line and let me know!

Another author's note: You might notice that Mulder's version of 'The Antarctica Scene' is slightly different from Scully's - namely, the amount of dialogue that leads up to the kiss. My feeling on this was that Scully would see this memory as SHE wanted to see it (a very romantic moment in which Mulder kisses the shit out of her) and Mulder, on the flip side, would see all the shit that lead up to the kiss. Kind of my version of a 'Bad Blood' moment. Hopefully, it was as good for you as it was for me. Ha.

In any case, thanks for reading! - JL