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The late afternoon sky is weighted with clouds: a dove-grey sheet flung over the landscape, smothering them. Scully lies on the porch. The grain of the wood presses patterns into her back and shoulders, bare except for underwear and a sports bra. She shifts, peeling skin away from skin. She pictures herself splayed out like a specimen pinned for display.
Her tanktop and her long pants are draped over a chair to dry. She stripped them off as she climbed the stairs, toeing off her oldest sneakers. The neighbors are far enough away that no one can ogle. Still, she won't strip completely. She appreciates the way the fabric soaks sweat out of her creases, and she'd rather avoid splinters in interesting places. She doesn't trust Mulder with the tweezers. The laboring fan wafts air over her, drying her down from slick to sticky.
"This was not the day for yard work," Mulder says from somewhere near. He rattles ice in a big-bellied glass pitcher.
"Have you read the recent statistics on the rise of tick-borne diseases?" she asks. He appears in her vision, a looming figure rendered strange by his relative position to her. Upside-down, his face is almost unfamiliar. She relishes the chance to fit it together all over again in her mind, to recontextualize him. Here is the shadow cast by his lower lip, distinct from the chiaroscuro stubble shading his jaw. His eyes are cenotes, deep, the light wavering in them. His mouth quirks with amusement.
"Assume I haven't."
"They're dire," she says.
They lease out the pastures around their house for hay. All summer, it will grow and grow, green and then gold, pressed into strange patterns by rabbits and deer and hawks dipping after mice. What's beyond the fence doesn't concern her, but the yard must be kept trim. They have been slack, enjoying their leisure, spending their mornings on the porch with coffee admiring the dew, spending their evenings watching the breeze shift the sighing grasses.
This morning, the neighbors' cat deigned to visit, disappearing afterwards into the verdant lawn, even the imperious tail tip vanishing among the nodding blades. Cat-height grass, most of the way to Scully's knees. She went to the station and filled the red plastic can with gas, watching the vapors shimmer like memory. They produced the mower and the weed whacker from the outbuilding, covered themselves in sun protection, and turned shag into velvet.
Now she pulls a long-stemmed seedhead out of her ponytail and slips it into the cool dim space between the boards. The satiny grains catch, swinging back and forth, a pendulum upended. "I didn't lose you to an alien virus. I'm not watching you get Lyme."
He nudges her shoulder with his toe. She sits up enough to accept a glass. condensation already pearling on its sides. He sets the pitcher on the porch rail. Whatever he's made is the color of alien slime. The light glows lurid inside it.
"Keep talking like that and I'll think you like having me around," he says, folding down next to her. He's shirtless, flecked with green from chin to calf, an ersatz sort of farmer's tan. He clinks his glass against hers. Scully sips: lemon, lime, a squeeze of orange. A whisper of chili. A heavy spoonful of sugar and a healthy dash of salt. Essentially, it's a margarita, gentled to suit their aging palates, sunshine without the burn. A good beverage for a hot day.
She tips half the glass into herself and then stretches out again, still damp. The ice settles with a resigned rattle. Mulder spits a cube from his own glass into his palm and drops it onto her belly. She hisses. He pushes it with his fingertip, no doubt tracing ancient holy glyphs on her. It's the kind of thing Mulder would do.
She watches him watch her, his brow smooth and unworried. The movement of his skin over hers is sensual, undemanding, a pleasure in itself. She's still too hot to think about the ways their bodies could move together, too exhausted. Their yard will never be mistaken for a pasture, but the grass was tall enough to resist their efforts to groom it into smoothness. They took a first pass with the weed whacker before they could shove the mower back and forth, turning the wreckage into some semblance of order.
She's too old for this. When she dreamed, once upon a time, of a suburban house with a white picket fence, she was never the one tending the yard. Or scrubbing the grout or scraping the dishes, now that she thinks of it. Some mysterious force at work, she supposes, organizing her imaginary life. She has taken a break from the hospital; she helps Mulder shift the furniture and let the light in through the windows still gleaming with cleaner. Their house is less tidy than her mother's, but it's comfortable.
Darker clouds are shirred where the trees make a horizon. Lightning embroiders their edges in delicate, searing patterns. She hears thunder rumble, distant as desire.
"Should we go in?" Mulder asks. He tips the last sliver of ice into her navel: par, she thinks.
"We have time," she says. She rolls onto her belly, props herself up on her elbows. What's in her glass is watered down, but she drinks it anyway, feeling the coolness slide all the way down her throat to her belly. Mulder sprawls next to her, tipped onto his side. They watch the storm roll in, lingering until the clouds are hanging over the house, rain whipping through the porch slats to spatter them. Mulder gets up to rescue the pitcher. Scully gathers their discarded clothes. They step into the dark of the house.
"Well, we can't shower," Mulder says.
Scully looks at him, up and sideways, knowing he'll always recognize a challenge. They burst through the door together and clatter down the steps. The rain is just cool enough to refresh. It sluices down. What's left of the grass is pounded flat. Rivulets stream down Scully's thighs and calves, carrying flakes of grass like some strange molted skin. Each drop feels like it splashes on her purposefully: a thousand tiny fists with a personal grudge. Wind shimmers in the leaves of the trees and tugs Scully's hair.
She feels so much a part of everything alive. She wants to shout with glee. When she looks at Mulder, he has the same fierce joy in his smile.
Here we are, she thinks.
Lightning, bright enough that they flinch. Thunder so close the air shivers. They run inside, dripping, laughing.
"Like that storm in Oregon," he says. "The first time."
She remembers.
This time, they won't lose time, unless it's on purpose. This time they'll dry off and make dinner and eat together at their table while her hair dries in unruly waves, and when the storm passes, they'll wash away the residue of their hard work and fall into their comfortable bed.
She looks at the breadth of her life, all the days of it fanned out in her memory, and finds that she's happy.
Let us hold it, she prays, maybe to God or maybe just to the universe. Let us keep it. Amen.