What I Would Have Missed
AN: I do this sort of half-asleep navel gazing Scully is engaged in all the time…now you know where my crackfic comes from! This inspiration for this came directly from Chris Carter and Frank Spotniz and their take on this episode. I’ve actually had it plotted for years. Enjoy!
Perhaps Mulder was right. If you stopped along the way you could easily miss something important. For example, Scully knew that if she had not seen the mysterious blonde woman from he last few days, she wouldn’t have run into Mulder outside of the hospital. And if she hadn’t, she would not have gone to his place for tea and she would not be there, safe and comfortable, wrapped in his Navajo horse blanket, drowsing to the sound of the bubbles in his fish tank and of the shower in the bathroom.
How long had she been out? She wasn’t sure. Long enough that Mulder had bundled her up on the couch. Still, she made no move to shift or to get up. She was far too comfortable at the moment. She was enjoying the luxury of just…being. Was this what happened to you when you reached enlightenment, she wondered in her drowsy state? Did nirvana feel like this, that moment of ecstasy, when everything in the world seemed to make a weirdly, wonderful sense? Maybe this is what Saint Teresa experienced so long ago, pierced by the golden arrow, that sense of knowing, of being, of finally understanding what it was all about.
Or, she sleepily laughed at herself, perhaps this is what happens when one finally releases those things they’ve held on to for so long and just…lets it happen. How long had she held that guilt regarding Daniel? Far too long, she knew that. She held on to the hurt of his betrayal, the shame of what she had done, and the anger at herself for allowing it. But more than that, she had also had held on to the regret, the pain of what she might have had with this man, and the reality of the path she chose instead. For as much as she told Mulder that she wouldn’t change a thing about their time together, there was that small part of her that did regret the decisions that she had made. If she had just not been so quick to lose her temper with Daniel, to at least try to work it out, things might have been different. She could have had that life that now the X-files had taken away from her.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. Now, with time and understanding, she knew that as much as she clung on to all of that regret, it, like Daniel’s hope, was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, a pipe dream of what-ifs that she hung her own pain on for years. She had clung to the “what-ifs” as things in her life were taken from her. If she had not made that decision to leave Daniel and go into pathology, she would never have caught the eye of the FBI. If she had not been such a promising scientist she would never have come to Blevins attention, or Spenders as it turned out, and never would have been assigned to work with Mulder. If Samantha Mulder hadn’t been taken, then Mulder wouldn’t have been on his quest, and she wouldn’t have been drawn in, and faced all the things she did in her work, her kidnapping, her cancer, her sister, Emily, her loss of her fertility. If she had chosen a different path all of those years ago, perhaps, just maybe, she would have the happiness that she had dreamed of so long ago with Daniel.
But the “what-ifs” never looked at the other side of the coin. They never looked at what it would have meant if she had stayed. Perhaps things would have been wonderful. But Scully also knew the chances were high that they wouldn’t have been. What would the scandal have been had she stayed and made Daniel choose? If she had forced a decision rather than walked away, who was to say he would have chosen her? What would have happened to her reputation and career after something like that? Could she even live with herself, knowing what she did?
“What-ifs” were such funny, completely useless things. She could spend a lifetime prodding them, thinking about them, brooding over them, but it would accomplish nothing. For in the process of thinking about what she might have had or what she had lost, she paid no attention whatsoever to what she had gained. “What-ifs” blind her to all the good she might have missed had you not taken the path that you did. For example, if Scully hadn’t taken the path to the X-files, she would have never had Mulder constantly challenging her suppositions, she would have never been introduced to the possibilities of new ideas, and she wouldn’t have even considered the usefulness of alternative medicine towards helping Daniel with his condition. Thus, if she hadn’t left Daniel all those years ago, she would never have discovered the means by which to save him in the future.
All the things she might have not experienced had she chosen a different path. Perhaps she had missed out on some things by not choosing Daniel. But if she had, she would have never have known what it was like to stand on her own two feet away from him. She would never have been able to say she forged her own career. She would never have tried barbecue in every state famous for it, and a few that weren’t. She would have never spent a lonely, Christmas Eve at a haunted mansion and scare herself silly with it. She would never have gotten to know a little girl named Emily, or have met two wonderful women named Penny and Cassandra. She wouldn’t have learned that underneath Frohike’s creepy exterior he had a heart of gold that was fiercely protective of her, or that Langley was such a sensitive soul hiding behind the façade of anarchist gamer, or that Byers was such a hopeless romantic and far more normal than he ever let on to anyone.
Most of all she would have never have met the likes of anyone like Fox Mulder.
What would her life had been like if he had never come into it? Perhaps, it would be considerably safer. But did she regret it? Scully couldn’t bring herself to, not one moment. For all that her life since she had joined the X-files had brought heartache and sorrow, it had brought her something else, a man that she could care for, respect, and trust.
Trust. As she told Maggie that word meant everything to her. When she thought of the word, rolled it around her mind, the image she always conjured was that of Mulder. He was the man who had driven like a bat out of hell from Baltimore to DC in order to save her from a liver-eating mutant, who had included her in his clandestine investigations even when it was against his better judgment. It was Mulder who raised hell during her disappearance, and when everyone else had given up on her, he insisted that they would find her.
He had been the one who had saved her when she was dying of cancer, bringing in the mysterious chip. He had been the one to find and keep the ova that they had used to make Emily, and he had been the one to hold her when she mourned the loss of the only child she would ever have from her own body. Mulder had been the only man she had considered when she had the chance to try and have a baby. In all the ways, big and small, that mattered in her life, it was Mulder that she trusted.
If she had made a different choice in her life, had walked the other path she would have never been given the chance to know him and to have him in her life. She could have missed so much. Perhaps, in the end, it wasn’t about all the other roads she could have taken. It was about understanding and appreciating the road she had. Those were roads that were obviously not meant for her, she just hadn’t seen that at the time. This was the one that was. And she needed to see it out to its end.
The gentle spray of shower stopped. Scully’s eyes popped wide open. She could hear in the bathroom the faint noises of Mulder moving about, the sound of the shower door in its groove, rattling as he opened it, the faucet as it turned on, the scrape of a brush over teeth. They were prosaic noises, but ones that alerted her that he was emerging soon, maybe to go to his own bed. It was a chance, an opportunity, a signal to approach the very thing she had been ignoring for so long. Her burdens were behind her…mostly. There was one burden left for her to tackle, one last thing she needed to confront. If she didn’t do it now, she may not ever have the courage again to face it.
Daniel had been wrong. This thing was right.
She rose, stumbling on unsteady feet, blinking in the light of the bedroom as she shuffled to the restroom door. What should she do? Should she knock? Yell out that she needed to talk to him? Simply stand there and wait and blurt it all out? What in the world would he say? What if she messed it up? Dear God, what if she said something completely stupid? Was this even a good idea?
Something inside of her in that moment said yes.
Before she could dither and speculate any further, the door swung open in a whoosh of soap-scented steam. Mulder exited in its wake in pajama pants and nothing else. Coherent thought, what little she had in her sleepy brain, fled her in that moment as she stared stupidly at him.
“You okay?” Concern immediately writ itself on is face, hair still dripping down into it. “Sorry, was just getting ready for bed. Is there something you need?”
Need…yes, need, she needed to tell him something very important. She blinked.
“You really were worn out,” he chuckled, tossing his used clothing into a heap by the bedroom door. “Look, if you want, take the bed, I’ll take the couch, I can get you something to wear.”
“Mulder!” She found her voice suddenly, forcing it out between lips that didn’t seem to be able to focus. He stopped, just as he was about to wander off to settle her in, frowning curiously at her. “I…”
She started, stopping, as words seemed to escape her in that moment. God, why couldn’t she get this straight? “I’m sorry for not going to England with you.”
A faint smile lifted his full mouth as he shrugged and waived it off. “You were right in the end, there wasn’t anything there. Besides, you were needed here, obviously.”
“For Daniel, yes.” She wasn’t getting her point across and damn it if she couldn’t figure it out. “It’s just that…I wanted so desperately for you to stop and just listen, talk, just…be.”
He chuckled, arms crossing over his very wet and very naked chest. “Scully, I have a hard time doing that when I’m not drugged out.”
“I know, but...I needed it.”
“And you got your weekend without me. And you had your epiphany.”
“I did, and it was good. I realized things I never thought I would before.”
“See, I’m rubbing off on you. If you hadn’t caught onto that, you’d never have saved his life.”
“Yes, but not just that.” She ran nervous fingers through her hair, conscious of how strange all of this was. “Mulder, seeing Daniel, I thought a lot of the road I didn’t take. But I thought also of the road I did. If I hadn’t have taken that road, I wouldn’t have been able to save him. I also would never have met you.”
He looked mildly flattered. “Scully, thank you, for what it’s worth. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”
“That’s just it, Mulder. It’s more than a good thing. It’s the thing that’s kept me going for all these years. You are the thing that’s kept me going.” Suddenly she found her words, the ones that had eluded her, and they tumbled out almost faster than she could manage. “You are the thing that’s given me hope all these years. Your unshakeable belief has given me courage to face those things I never could before, to be willing to ask the questions that never would have occurred to me. So many things have happened, so many things I regret, but the one thing I can’t regret in all of this over the last seven years is you. You are…everything in my life.”
It was as honest of a declaration as she had ever made to him. It was powerful, and truthful, and she couldn’t even look him in the eye at the moment. She was too afraid of what she would see if she did.
“Ten years ago, Mulder, I would have given anything to be with Daniel Waterston, to have that life. But now, at this moment, I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it, without telling you how I feel and having you understand…”
She didn’t know if she could call this love. She didn’t want to. She was too afraid to.
“I realize that all other roads, Mulder, were wrong for me. This one is the right one, this one…with you. And I want to explore just what that might mean and where we might come out on the other side.”
There, she said it. Well, perhaps not as directly as she might have liked, but it was out there between them now. And there was no taking it back.
So she waited.
Silence.
The showerhead in the bathroom dripped, a hard spatter against the tub. It broke harshly into the quiet that followed her declaration, a counterpoint to the lack of words from Mulder. She stood before him, emotionally naked if not physically, willing him to do something. To have some sort of reaction to the fact that she had just put her heart out there for him, the one man she trusted, and please, dear God, don’t ignore it.
She didn’t dare look up at him. If she did, she would likely see the very rejection that she was starting to sense already from him. It was so much better not to confirm it in that moment, not to see how her gamble had failed. She had been so sure when she had stumbled up, been so positive when she reasoned it out in her dazed state. She had been certain and now she realized, she perhaps had just made the greatest blunder she ever had with him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say. “I crossed a line, I know, and I’m sorry, I just…needed to tell you.”
What else was there to say? There was no apologizing for this. He just stood there, stock still, dripping all over his carpet, saying nothing. With flaming cheeks and tears in her heavy eyes, she turned from him, prepared to grab her coat and shoes and simply make a run for it downstairs. She turned away, shame filling her.
Before she could manage her frantic flight, his fingers reached for her, clamped on her elbow, and without any further preamble pulled her roughly towards him. Shock was the first sensation, even before she registered the warmth of his mouth on hers, the hungry desire as he crushed her up against wet, naked skin. When she could finally wrap her head around what exactly was going on, he let her go, pulling back enough to stare down at her, stars in his diamond-bright, green eyes.
“Jesus, I was wondering when you would finally get around to the same idea,” he grinned, a laugh welling up inside of him, just under Scully’s grasping fingertips as she found it transferring through to her, pooling inside of her along with happiness and desire.
“You were wondering? Just how long have you…”
“Forever,” he murmured, leaning down for a repeat performance, one in which Scully found herself a much more willing participant. Her fingers tangled through wet hair as his fumbled with clothing to find smooth skin. All thought of embarrassment or rejection were forgotten with soft moans and pleading whimpers, as they made their way over discarded clothing to the bed.
It was hours later when Scully woke with a start. She blinked, fuzzy brained and confused, realizing that the bed that shifted underneath her was not her own. Where was she again? It took a second to realize that she was in Mulder’s bed and another second to realize she wasn’t alone. It was slightly after that she realized she was naked.
When events finally did come rushing back to her, she smiled.
In the darkness, she leaned over to study his face, what she could see of it, relaxed in sleep, as it never was in the waking hours. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of a cross-Atlantic flight, or perhaps it was the way she had made him scream her given name last night. Funny how she had gone from “Scully” to “Dana” when caught in something so intimate.
Her clothes were scattered in a heap on one side of the bed, and she quietly gathered them to take them to the bathroom. As she dressed, she studied herself, the woman she was that morning, fresh from Mulder’s bed. Clandestine, yes, it broke several FBI rules of conduct. But wrong? No, no this felt right. For the first time in a very, very long time, this decision in her life felt right. It felt like the right path. All the others were wrong.
She stepped out and contemplated her partner, now in every sense of that word, as he lay in his bed. If she didn’t leave now, she wouldn’t be able to make it home in time to change before the busy rush hour. Still, it was so inviting, just to return to that bed and the comfort of his body so close to hers. There would be other days for that, and other nights. After all, this was simply just the first step along the path. They had all the time in the world to wander it and see where they might end up.
Perhaps Mulder was right. If you stopped along the way you could easily miss something important. For example, Scully knew that if she had not seen the mysterious blonde woman from he last few days, she wouldn’t have run into Mulder outside of the hospital. And if she hadn’t, she would not have gone to his place for tea and she would not be there, safe and comfortable, wrapped in his Navajo horse blanket, drowsing to the sound of the bubbles in his fish tank and of the shower in the bathroom.
How long had she been out? She wasn’t sure. Long enough that Mulder had bundled her up on the couch. Still, she made no move to shift or to get up. She was far too comfortable at the moment. She was enjoying the luxury of just…being. Was this what happened to you when you reached enlightenment, she wondered in her drowsy state? Did nirvana feel like this, that moment of ecstasy, when everything in the world seemed to make a weirdly, wonderful sense? Maybe this is what Saint Teresa experienced so long ago, pierced by the golden arrow, that sense of knowing, of being, of finally understanding what it was all about.
Or, she sleepily laughed at herself, perhaps this is what happens when one finally releases those things they’ve held on to for so long and just…lets it happen. How long had she held that guilt regarding Daniel? Far too long, she knew that. She held on to the hurt of his betrayal, the shame of what she had done, and the anger at herself for allowing it. But more than that, she had also had held on to the regret, the pain of what she might have had with this man, and the reality of the path she chose instead. For as much as she told Mulder that she wouldn’t change a thing about their time together, there was that small part of her that did regret the decisions that she had made. If she had just not been so quick to lose her temper with Daniel, to at least try to work it out, things might have been different. She could have had that life that now the X-files had taken away from her.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. Now, with time and understanding, she knew that as much as she clung on to all of that regret, it, like Daniel’s hope, was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, a pipe dream of what-ifs that she hung her own pain on for years. She had clung to the “what-ifs” as things in her life were taken from her. If she had not made that decision to leave Daniel and go into pathology, she would never have caught the eye of the FBI. If she had not been such a promising scientist she would never have come to Blevins attention, or Spenders as it turned out, and never would have been assigned to work with Mulder. If Samantha Mulder hadn’t been taken, then Mulder wouldn’t have been on his quest, and she wouldn’t have been drawn in, and faced all the things she did in her work, her kidnapping, her cancer, her sister, Emily, her loss of her fertility. If she had chosen a different path all of those years ago, perhaps, just maybe, she would have the happiness that she had dreamed of so long ago with Daniel.
But the “what-ifs” never looked at the other side of the coin. They never looked at what it would have meant if she had stayed. Perhaps things would have been wonderful. But Scully also knew the chances were high that they wouldn’t have been. What would the scandal have been had she stayed and made Daniel choose? If she had forced a decision rather than walked away, who was to say he would have chosen her? What would have happened to her reputation and career after something like that? Could she even live with herself, knowing what she did?
“What-ifs” were such funny, completely useless things. She could spend a lifetime prodding them, thinking about them, brooding over them, but it would accomplish nothing. For in the process of thinking about what she might have had or what she had lost, she paid no attention whatsoever to what she had gained. “What-ifs” blind her to all the good she might have missed had you not taken the path that you did. For example, if Scully hadn’t taken the path to the X-files, she would have never had Mulder constantly challenging her suppositions, she would have never been introduced to the possibilities of new ideas, and she wouldn’t have even considered the usefulness of alternative medicine towards helping Daniel with his condition. Thus, if she hadn’t left Daniel all those years ago, she would never have discovered the means by which to save him in the future.
All the things she might have not experienced had she chosen a different path. Perhaps she had missed out on some things by not choosing Daniel. But if she had, she would have never have known what it was like to stand on her own two feet away from him. She would never have been able to say she forged her own career. She would never have tried barbecue in every state famous for it, and a few that weren’t. She would have never spent a lonely, Christmas Eve at a haunted mansion and scare herself silly with it. She would never have gotten to know a little girl named Emily, or have met two wonderful women named Penny and Cassandra. She wouldn’t have learned that underneath Frohike’s creepy exterior he had a heart of gold that was fiercely protective of her, or that Langley was such a sensitive soul hiding behind the façade of anarchist gamer, or that Byers was such a hopeless romantic and far more normal than he ever let on to anyone.
Most of all she would have never have met the likes of anyone like Fox Mulder.
What would her life had been like if he had never come into it? Perhaps, it would be considerably safer. But did she regret it? Scully couldn’t bring herself to, not one moment. For all that her life since she had joined the X-files had brought heartache and sorrow, it had brought her something else, a man that she could care for, respect, and trust.
Trust. As she told Maggie that word meant everything to her. When she thought of the word, rolled it around her mind, the image she always conjured was that of Mulder. He was the man who had driven like a bat out of hell from Baltimore to DC in order to save her from a liver-eating mutant, who had included her in his clandestine investigations even when it was against his better judgment. It was Mulder who raised hell during her disappearance, and when everyone else had given up on her, he insisted that they would find her.
He had been the one who had saved her when she was dying of cancer, bringing in the mysterious chip. He had been the one to find and keep the ova that they had used to make Emily, and he had been the one to hold her when she mourned the loss of the only child she would ever have from her own body. Mulder had been the only man she had considered when she had the chance to try and have a baby. In all the ways, big and small, that mattered in her life, it was Mulder that she trusted.
If she had made a different choice in her life, had walked the other path she would have never been given the chance to know him and to have him in her life. She could have missed so much. Perhaps, in the end, it wasn’t about all the other roads she could have taken. It was about understanding and appreciating the road she had. Those were roads that were obviously not meant for her, she just hadn’t seen that at the time. This was the one that was. And she needed to see it out to its end.
The gentle spray of shower stopped. Scully’s eyes popped wide open. She could hear in the bathroom the faint noises of Mulder moving about, the sound of the shower door in its groove, rattling as he opened it, the faucet as it turned on, the scrape of a brush over teeth. They were prosaic noises, but ones that alerted her that he was emerging soon, maybe to go to his own bed. It was a chance, an opportunity, a signal to approach the very thing she had been ignoring for so long. Her burdens were behind her…mostly. There was one burden left for her to tackle, one last thing she needed to confront. If she didn’t do it now, she may not ever have the courage again to face it.
Daniel had been wrong. This thing was right.
She rose, stumbling on unsteady feet, blinking in the light of the bedroom as she shuffled to the restroom door. What should she do? Should she knock? Yell out that she needed to talk to him? Simply stand there and wait and blurt it all out? What in the world would he say? What if she messed it up? Dear God, what if she said something completely stupid? Was this even a good idea?
Something inside of her in that moment said yes.
Before she could dither and speculate any further, the door swung open in a whoosh of soap-scented steam. Mulder exited in its wake in pajama pants and nothing else. Coherent thought, what little she had in her sleepy brain, fled her in that moment as she stared stupidly at him.
“You okay?” Concern immediately writ itself on is face, hair still dripping down into it. “Sorry, was just getting ready for bed. Is there something you need?”
Need…yes, need, she needed to tell him something very important. She blinked.
“You really were worn out,” he chuckled, tossing his used clothing into a heap by the bedroom door. “Look, if you want, take the bed, I’ll take the couch, I can get you something to wear.”
“Mulder!” She found her voice suddenly, forcing it out between lips that didn’t seem to be able to focus. He stopped, just as he was about to wander off to settle her in, frowning curiously at her. “I…”
She started, stopping, as words seemed to escape her in that moment. God, why couldn’t she get this straight? “I’m sorry for not going to England with you.”
A faint smile lifted his full mouth as he shrugged and waived it off. “You were right in the end, there wasn’t anything there. Besides, you were needed here, obviously.”
“For Daniel, yes.” She wasn’t getting her point across and damn it if she couldn’t figure it out. “It’s just that…I wanted so desperately for you to stop and just listen, talk, just…be.”
He chuckled, arms crossing over his very wet and very naked chest. “Scully, I have a hard time doing that when I’m not drugged out.”
“I know, but...I needed it.”
“And you got your weekend without me. And you had your epiphany.”
“I did, and it was good. I realized things I never thought I would before.”
“See, I’m rubbing off on you. If you hadn’t caught onto that, you’d never have saved his life.”
“Yes, but not just that.” She ran nervous fingers through her hair, conscious of how strange all of this was. “Mulder, seeing Daniel, I thought a lot of the road I didn’t take. But I thought also of the road I did. If I hadn’t have taken that road, I wouldn’t have been able to save him. I also would never have met you.”
He looked mildly flattered. “Scully, thank you, for what it’s worth. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”
“That’s just it, Mulder. It’s more than a good thing. It’s the thing that’s kept me going for all these years. You are the thing that’s kept me going.” Suddenly she found her words, the ones that had eluded her, and they tumbled out almost faster than she could manage. “You are the thing that’s given me hope all these years. Your unshakeable belief has given me courage to face those things I never could before, to be willing to ask the questions that never would have occurred to me. So many things have happened, so many things I regret, but the one thing I can’t regret in all of this over the last seven years is you. You are…everything in my life.”
It was as honest of a declaration as she had ever made to him. It was powerful, and truthful, and she couldn’t even look him in the eye at the moment. She was too afraid of what she would see if she did.
“Ten years ago, Mulder, I would have given anything to be with Daniel Waterston, to have that life. But now, at this moment, I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it, without telling you how I feel and having you understand…”
She didn’t know if she could call this love. She didn’t want to. She was too afraid to.
“I realize that all other roads, Mulder, were wrong for me. This one is the right one, this one…with you. And I want to explore just what that might mean and where we might come out on the other side.”
There, she said it. Well, perhaps not as directly as she might have liked, but it was out there between them now. And there was no taking it back.
So she waited.
Silence.
The showerhead in the bathroom dripped, a hard spatter against the tub. It broke harshly into the quiet that followed her declaration, a counterpoint to the lack of words from Mulder. She stood before him, emotionally naked if not physically, willing him to do something. To have some sort of reaction to the fact that she had just put her heart out there for him, the one man she trusted, and please, dear God, don’t ignore it.
She didn’t dare look up at him. If she did, she would likely see the very rejection that she was starting to sense already from him. It was so much better not to confirm it in that moment, not to see how her gamble had failed. She had been so sure when she had stumbled up, been so positive when she reasoned it out in her dazed state. She had been certain and now she realized, she perhaps had just made the greatest blunder she ever had with him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say. “I crossed a line, I know, and I’m sorry, I just…needed to tell you.”
What else was there to say? There was no apologizing for this. He just stood there, stock still, dripping all over his carpet, saying nothing. With flaming cheeks and tears in her heavy eyes, she turned from him, prepared to grab her coat and shoes and simply make a run for it downstairs. She turned away, shame filling her.
Before she could manage her frantic flight, his fingers reached for her, clamped on her elbow, and without any further preamble pulled her roughly towards him. Shock was the first sensation, even before she registered the warmth of his mouth on hers, the hungry desire as he crushed her up against wet, naked skin. When she could finally wrap her head around what exactly was going on, he let her go, pulling back enough to stare down at her, stars in his diamond-bright, green eyes.
“Jesus, I was wondering when you would finally get around to the same idea,” he grinned, a laugh welling up inside of him, just under Scully’s grasping fingertips as she found it transferring through to her, pooling inside of her along with happiness and desire.
“You were wondering? Just how long have you…”
“Forever,” he murmured, leaning down for a repeat performance, one in which Scully found herself a much more willing participant. Her fingers tangled through wet hair as his fumbled with clothing to find smooth skin. All thought of embarrassment or rejection were forgotten with soft moans and pleading whimpers, as they made their way over discarded clothing to the bed.
It was hours later when Scully woke with a start. She blinked, fuzzy brained and confused, realizing that the bed that shifted underneath her was not her own. Where was she again? It took a second to realize that she was in Mulder’s bed and another second to realize she wasn’t alone. It was slightly after that she realized she was naked.
When events finally did come rushing back to her, she smiled.
In the darkness, she leaned over to study his face, what she could see of it, relaxed in sleep, as it never was in the waking hours. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of a cross-Atlantic flight, or perhaps it was the way she had made him scream her given name last night. Funny how she had gone from “Scully” to “Dana” when caught in something so intimate.
Her clothes were scattered in a heap on one side of the bed, and she quietly gathered them to take them to the bathroom. As she dressed, she studied herself, the woman she was that morning, fresh from Mulder’s bed. Clandestine, yes, it broke several FBI rules of conduct. But wrong? No, no this felt right. For the first time in a very, very long time, this decision in her life felt right. It felt like the right path. All the others were wrong.
She stepped out and contemplated her partner, now in every sense of that word, as he lay in his bed. If she didn’t leave now, she wouldn’t be able to make it home in time to change before the busy rush hour. Still, it was so inviting, just to return to that bed and the comfort of his body so close to hers. There would be other days for that, and other nights. After all, this was simply just the first step along the path. They had all the time in the world to wander it and see where they might end up.