That time Mulder accidentally called Scully baby at work. With an audience. (In case you’re taking prompts, which I hope you do, because I ❤️ u)

somekindofseizure:

The first time he hears someone call Scully baby, they’re in
a diner in a torn-cushioned booth the color of a kidney bean.  The waitress brings her a piece of pie and
pauses before putting the fork down, holds it up to the light, finds some
infraction she never actually burdens Scully with.

“Sorry, baby, let me get you a new one,” is all she says.

“You liked that,” Mulder says as Scully folds her hands on
the disco-glittered table and smiles at her pie.  Like she’s waiting for it to smile back.  “I’ve noticed this.  You like it when people you don’t even know
call you baby and honey.”

She shrugs, doesn’t take her eyes off the pie.

“Don’t you mind it?  Find
it condescending?”

“When it’s done condescendingly, yes.  When it’s done because there’s enough
rudeness and cruelty and thoughtlessness in the world that a stranger decides
they’d like you to know they care about you regardless of the fact that they
don’t know you, then no, I don’t mind at all.”

“What if it’s meant to get a better tip?”

“That’s very cynical, Mulder.”  She tends to have a sunnier worldview with a
piece of pie in front of her.  She licks
her lips and he can practically and presciently taste the peach on them though
he has no idea what she herself tastes like.
He has a sudden urge for her to get whipped cream on her nose.  

When the waitress returns with the new fork, she squeezes
Scully’s shoulder cap before she goes, as if to prove a point.  For all his studying of human (and non-human)
behavior, his Oxford degree and his basement full of books, Scully is better at
picking up these interpersonal subtleties.
How a thing is meant.

The first time he calls her baby himself, they’re in bed and
she’s tired and struggling, and it’s meant to convey that she should take as
long as she needs, that he’s happy to do this all night if he has to.  He doesn’t know why it’s come out of his mouth.
He’s learned to call her Dana when he wants a certain kind of emphasis.  Other than that, it’s always Scully, or
nothing at all – there’s never anyone else he’d be talking to.  But this particular bedroom occasion seems to
call for something other than the name he uses to tell her he needs her to
perform an autopsy, or that he’s angry with her, or even to tell her he loves
her.  

The second time he calls her baby, it’s more deliberate,
experimental, a sexual Frisbee he tosses as she crawls up his body on the
couch.  She catches it between her teeth
and undoes the top button on her shirt, clearly one hundred and fifty percent
clear on how it’s meant.  It goes over so
well that he tries other words in similar circumstances – honey, sweetie, once,
even tiger.  She smiles sometimes when
she hears them, but she never outright says she likes it, never calls him anything herself.  He can only go by the fact that
she keeps coming back, keeps ordering up that pie.

It’s twenty years before they discuss it again.  

They’re in the kitchen at work, taking advantage of the
third floor’s superior coffee machine.  There
are four other agents and six different kinds of milk (“milk”), handfuls of number
one dad, best grandpa in the world, don’t talk to me until I drink this
mugs.  He’s talking sports with Skinner,
who’s peeling an orange over the trashcan.
Scully’s got her back to them – a tight white blouse and a sleek pair of
pants he ironed and watched her put on this morning.  She’s just come back.  He’s been shaving every day.  He’s been ironing.  He’s on his best behavior.

Their cups are both paper, no slogans, no declarations of
superiority.  They both know better by
now than to tempt fate like that.  She
goes to hand him his cup and folds back the little paper handles first
so he can slip his finger through.

“Thank you, baby.”  It
just comes out.   Everything stops – the
peeling, Skinner’s Monday morning quarterbacking.  The coffee machine makes good on its claim to
be conversation-quiet.
Conversation?  Mulder can
practically hear the blood rushing to Scully’s face.  

“Anyway,” Skinner finally says and other sounds resume.

“Sorry,” Mulder’s already saying when the elevator doors
close.  “I’m sorry.”

“You can’t call me that at work, Mulder,” she says
anyway.  He would give anything to be
able to put a slice of pie in front of her.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Consciously. But subconsciously, it was meant as a statement of ownership.”

“That’s very cynical of you, Scully.”

“You wanted them to know I’m yours.”

“So what if I did?” he tries, and she shakes her head at him
in that too-Neanderthal-to-bother-debating way, but later, with her voice
hoarse and legs splayed the just-sore-enough width of his hips, she brings the
subject up again.

“Feels so good, baby,” she says.

And though he’s not great at this kind of thing, he’s fairly
sure it means she owns him back.

“Don’t think I’m going to tip you any better,” he whispers, and she smiles but doesn’t laugh.  She’s already got her eye on the pie.