"There's never any food in the kitchen," he says wryly. It's hard to look at her straight on, to take in her beautiful round face without being drawn straight to her belly, and so he tries to take her in sidelong. And he tries to make it look natural, not like he's avoiding her gaze, because staring at her stomach feels like crossing some invisible line. There's Scully, and then there's Scully's new little project, and he's only really a part of one of those things. "The, uh, place looks good."

He's not a stammerer, no fan of junk words and hesitation. Everything he says, he says with certainty - mostly thanks to Socratic debate at Oxford and the need to control witness questioning. But being back here, nearly a year gone and an utter stranger, has knocked him on his ass.