Title: Big Mouth
From: Evan Black EvanJ4mesBlack@gmail.com
Rating: PG
Summary: Mulder suffers from foot-in-mouth disease. Only Dr Scully can cure him.




BIG MOUTH


'I miss you,' he said. It just fell out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Here they were having a conversation about a flock of dead birds which had dropped out of the sky over Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and all of a sudden he'd said it.

They hadn't even been apart that long or that far. He was in his apartment and she was in hers - just like they had been every night for the past four years. They'd had countless conversations from their respective apartments, thousands of phone-minutes, hundreds of thousands of words. And yet neither of them had ever said that before.

Mulder couldn't believe he had now. It was as if his thoughts had decided they wanted a voice. Not his work thoughts, his personal thoughts. The ones he never allowed out of his mouth. 

Until now. And he hadn't allowed it out. It had snuck out all by itself like a bad teenager.

There was a silent response from Scully and Mulder thought he might be able to salvage the situation.

'I mean your input,' he said hurriedly. 'I miss your input.'

'When?' said Scully suspiciously.

'Well, when you're not around.'

'But I am around Mulder. You only saw me an hour ago at the office, and I'll be back in at eight tomorrow. I'm about around as I ever am.'

Yes, thought Mulder, and it's not enough. He managed to keep those thoughts under control though; they never got anywhere near his mouth.

'Well yeah,' said Mulder starting to sweat, 'I know you're around Scully.'

'How can you miss me if I'm around?'

Mulder wondered if he could make some mechanical noises and hang up and pretend his phone was on the fritz. It might work. It worked in cartoons. 

'I can't,' he said hurriedly. 'You want to know what's really weird about these birds Scully?'

Long pause from Scully before she said, 'You mean apart from the fact that they fell out of the sky dead?'

'Yeah, apart from that,' said Mulder.

'Enlighten me Mulder.'

'They're not even the same species. There's crows and sparrows and finches and jays and all kinds of stuff, so it's not like a flock got into trouble and all got killed.'

'That IS weird,' said Scully in a voice which made him think he'd probably got away with 'I miss you'.

'Yeah,' he said, warming to his task, 'And you want to know the weirdest thing of all Scully?'

'Okay,' she said.

'Some of them had been dead for a while!'

There was another very long pause while Scully digested that. It was one of the things Mulder loved about her - the fact that Scully didn't feel the need to say ANYthing at times. One of the many things he loved about her. In fact, while he was thinking about the dead birds, Mulder was thinking about how much he loved Scully. This was nothing new. This was a kind of subtitled commentary that ran through his head during most of the day and some of the night. Even while he was running from mutants and stabbing aliens in the back of the neck there was a ticker-tape with Scully's name on it chuntering away in his brain. That was how 'I miss you' had leaked out. Something was sure to sometime. But he'd got away with it, so he could now go back to repression, denial and frustration. 

Great.

'Dead for a while,' mused Scully.

'Yep,' said Mulder, wondering how she could make those words sound sexy. In his head he could see her eyelids lower slowly as she worked through the conundrum. Dead for a while... It sent shivers down his spine. 

'Then it's a safe bet the birds were killed elsewhere, and transported to Elizabethtown or were in transit OVER Elizabethtown when something happened to cause them to fall or be thrown...'

He wondered what she was wearing. 

'What are you wearing Scully?'

Mulder almost choked when he realized he'd said it out loud. Damn his mouth! Was there no accountability?? His suddenly tense hand pressed the phone to his ear so hard that it hurt. Really he should just beat himself to death with it and put an end to the humiliation he felt suffusing his entire body from the tips of his bright red ears to his embarrassed toes.

'Pyjamas,' said Scully. 'Why? What are YOU wearing Mulder?'

'A towel,' said Mulder, before he could make up something attractive.

'Just a towel Mulder?' said Scully, and Mulder could hear her eyebrows raise even through the phone line.

'It's a nice towel Scully,' said Mulder. 'Not a ratty one.'

'Is it the one you got while I was with you?'

She meant the expensive fluffy cream one SHE'D insisted he buy even though he'd wanted to get one with a Duff Beer logo on it. It was boring but super-warm and soft. He used it all the time.

'Yeah that one,' he said.

'Why are you calling me about dead birds while wrapped in a towel Mulder?'

His mind was a blank so he had to tell the truth:

'Because I just had a shower and put a lasagne in the microwave and then the Knicks game hadn't started yet so I was googling weird shit and then I found this thing about the birds.'

She digested that too because she didn't quite see how all that meant that Mulder still hadn't put any clothes on. 

'Isn't your lasagne getting cold?'

'I don't know,' he said, and he didn't. He hadn't heard it ping. 'Hold on,' he said and went to the kitchen and found that he hadn't switched the microwave on so he set the timer and hit Start.

'Did you forget to switch it on Mulder?'

'No,' he said. He didn't want her thinking he was some kind of moron.

'What was all that beeping then?'

'My answer machine,' he said. 'I was checking for messages.'

'While you're on the phone to me? Thanks.'

Mulder wondered why everything about his relationship with Scully always got so complicated.  Why couldn't everything be simple instead? He had no clue how to change things around.

'I love you,' his big mouth said right out loud without checking with his brain first.

Mulder was smart, but even he couldn't think of a single solitary thing that rhymed with or sounded like 'I love you' which he could pretend that he'd said instead of 'I love you.' He also couldn't think of any way to catch 'I love you' and turn it around the skilful way he had with 'I miss you'.

He tried though, you've got to give him that...

...'When you talk about dead birds that way!' he stuttered.

Scully was silent for so long that Mulder thought there might really be a fault on the line. 

'Scully?'

'I'm still here Mulder,' said Scully in a voice that sounded very strange and weird.

Why? thought Mulder. Why the hell ARE you still here Scully? After all this time and all I've put you through and all you've given up. Sometimes I don't even know how you can stand the sight of me, let alone come to work every day and listen to my bullshit and risk your reputation and your life for the work we do in that shitty little basement. Why the hell? I don't understand it!

'Because I love you too,' said Scully, making Mulder realize that he'd said all that out loud as well. 

I miss you. 

I love you. 

So THAT was how things went from hopelessly complicated to very very simple.

 'What are you wearing' was something they'd hopefully address at a later date. 

All these thoughts fired through Mulder's brain in the blink of an eye.

And when his stunned and stupid brain finally accepted that what his ears had heard come out of Scully's mouth was reality, and not some fantastic dream from which he'd soon wake, he knew that it wasn't his mouth that had been too big to keep quiet any longer.

It was his heart.