Till Death us do part
They have shared almost everything. From the weird and wacky work that obsesses them to the personal traumas and near-death experiences of the paranormal investigator.
But could their shared passion for the truth ever become sexual?
Don't hold your breath, warns Chrissy Iley

The emotion that is withheld is always the most precious. The desire that is sublimated is always the most exquisite. There's so much withheld and sublimated in Mulder and Scully's
relationship, it's almost part of the unexplained phenomenon. It's an implosion, an emotional and sexual vortex that's going on, but in a parallel universe.
It's not so much unrequited love as an unconsummated, interrupted, constantly tested and shaken affair. Obviously, Mulder and Scully cannot get it together and live happily, or unhappily, ever after. That would be the end of the show. The lingering sexual tension drives the series on. What they have is moments that have been building since they met.
Apparent opposites, she's the scientific sceptic, the solid one, he's the emotional, irrational, obsessive believer. But they turn out, of course, to be a perfect foil for one another. His life is devoid of creature comforts to allow for the
complexities of this one passion. His passion for proof comes from his belief that his sister was abducted by aliens.
They would never have chosen each other, because they are so different. She's analytical, he's spontaneous. They each have something the other needs on a primal level. He sees her as the sister he lost.
That's why their love is sometimes of a brother/sister type. He's in outer space. She reins him in. But she needs him because she's too analytical, too grounded. He's a free spirit who blows into her life, forcing her to look at things she can't explain. He needs more of an emotional crutch than she does.
But Scully was raised a Catholic. She lost her faith because of the life she's seen in the FBI, violence, deception and the death of her father. Mulder gives her the faith back because he's a believer. He's religious in his convictions and when his faith falters, Scully can give him back what he has given her.
They are always being separated. In one episode, she is so fed up with the job that she wants to leave the FBI, and he's saying, "I can't go on without you". Another time he wants to throw it all in. She says, "I'd cosider it more than a professional loss."
Up until series four, ask him the one thing he wants most, and it is to have his sister back. But in series five, when Scully gets cancer, the thing he wants most is for Scully to be well. She's saved him, he's saved her, they've developed a kind of third eye.
Even in episodes when they're rarely together, they're linked by thought and by the life-saving mobile phone encounters. Their shorthand way of speaking is intimate and intense. Few words say much. It's typical of their dislocated personalities. Perhaps their most intense life-changing moments happen in phone life, not real life.
Sure, they love each other, because they epend on each other, and gradually they are consumed by the eroticism of the shared struggle, even though their endeavours are often set up to be in conflict; she to prove him wrong, and he to prove there is something more out there, beyond her cynicism. Their relationship has certainly been a slow burn. Initially, it wasn't intended even to simmer.
Chris Carter, the creator, said that he wanted to avoid the romantic tie-ins that most shows have, so he set out proposefully to avoid it. And in some ways, you get the sense that they're both asexual. He, who feels much more than he expresses, has a kind of hormonal stoicism. She's always dressed in those bulky greys and browns, muted. Even their talk is monotone.
It's not until the fifth series where he's hidind in her bedroom and she enters her apartment, starts taking her shirt off to go to bed and a hidden mulder says, "Keep going, FBI woman," that there is a frisson. But it was the fans, the X-philes, that were excited.
The fanatical online X-philes want the romance. There are several websites devoted to "shippers", people who are interested primarily in the relationship aspect of the show. They want the questions asked, but they never need to know any absolutes. All very existential. The interesting space is between a truth and a lie. One of the "shippers" sites prints out romantic moments of dialogue, such as:
Scully: Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anyone but you.
Mulder: If there's an ice tea in that bag, it could be love. Scully: Must be fate, Mulder, it's root beer.
On another "shippers" site, fans can write their own scripts, fantasies about what might happen between Scully and Mulder. Some of them are x-rated. The point being, because nothing has happened, speculation is intriguing, obsessive even. Even when nothing is happening, the romantic moments guide says, "Mulder and Scully spend most of the episode apart, but only physically." Mulder comes nearest to showing his love for Scully in the episode when his sole driving force is to find a cure for her cancer.
For once, his voice is quavering, his face tear-streaked. We see her limp instead of capable. He sits on her bed. They are holding hands. He kisses her gently and it's always most powerful when no words are being spoken. They often stare at each other. The longest time they shared one of their exquisite stares was a full 10 seconds.
He can't take her illness. She's the one who's supposed to be the doctor. Their dynamic is that she's the one he can rely on. He is much more dependent on her than she on him. In the cancer episode, he goes to her in the middle of the night, falls crying at her bedside, his head resting next to her. He can't take the possibility of living without her. He returns to her the next day and admits having sat with her that night.
Admitting his need for her by sayind, with painted laughter, he hoped if he was making the wrong decision, she'd talk him out of it. He kisses her on the face once again, but closer to her lips. Her cancer goes into remission and, if this was a normal show, you'd expect a continuation of this kind of emotional intensity. Well, perhaps they flirt more, as a kind of vague acknowledgment of what has gone before, but that's it.
I asked David Duchovny about this. Didn't he think it was confusing for people to believe something was about to happen and then it never did? "So, Scully had cancer and we never talk about it. So many things have happened. Still, Scully doesn't believe. It's the suspension of disbelief that we've earned. Mulder and Scully kissing is easily something that you can never refer to again; people won't think they've got to grow in their relationship, they have to finish that kiss. We never raise those kind of expectations."
This is because there are so many suspensons of disbelief going on, and in each new episode you don't think of the questions asked and dismissed in the previous one. It's as if all hopes are raised only to be dashed. All lover's stares are started, never to be finished.
They are their own world. Even so, they rarely call each other by their Christian names. Mulder: sounds like smoulder, sounds like mould, sounds like something that's at the same time anticipated and decaying.
Scully sounds like "Good dog, Scully. Good girl." When she is called by her first name, Dana, you sometimes wonder who it is. Dana is a bimbo name. It's the name of people who win the Eurovision Song Contest. Scully is the terrier that doesn't give up. She's never wimpy. If there's blood, it's nothing, and she can dissect the yuckiest, slimiest and crawliest thing without flinching.
Interestingly, she has been voted sexiest woman on TV several times over. Yet she conforms to none of the usual pouty, blonde breathlessness. She's the sexy scientist, cleverer than the man in the series.
In the film, though, it's more obvious, traditional, boy-saves-girl stuff and their relationship is altogether less subtle. She's more simpering, he's more testosterone, but not so much so that fans of the TV series would find it unrealistic or that things have moved on beyond the point of no return. They all know that point will never come.
In a way, it's very pure. It's never going to happen, so it's always going to be beautiful. It's always going to be longed for. Questioning the truth of their relationship and existence is as much what drives The X-files as the existence of abducting aliens. Just as we want to know we are not alone, we want to know that in a parallel universe, true love exists - and it's Mulder and Scully who love each other.