~~~~

Subtext 02: The Burning Zone

~~~~

I can't believe I almost let her do it to me again.

Almost Mulder?

God I really hate that inner mocking voice. So maybe Phoebe did manage to fuck me over again. At least it wasn't as traumatic as it was last time. Last time, she made damn sure I stayed away from ANY woman for nearly a year. Last time, she made damn sure it was years before I made any serious attempts at a long-lasting romantic relationship. The fact that the relationship was with Diana was just dumb luck on my part.

Maybe I've grown as a human being. I must've, given the fact that Phoebe's reappearance didn't phase me nearly as much as it should've. Despite evidence to the contrary, my innate sense of fairness led me to believe she might've grown too. Even confronted with the knowledge that she'd brought me in on a case she knew would terrify me, I still had to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe I =should= have SUCKER tattooed on my forehead.

I know Scully thinks I should.

Glancing at my watch, I congratulate myself. Nearly two whole minutes without making a conscious ScullyThought. That fact alone would be news worthy. However, it's doubly so, given that the woman herself is not two feet in front of me, happily chowing down on her grilled chicken salad. We are sharing another of our 'comfortable silences'.

I swear to God that we never had 'comfortable silences' before the 'incident that occurred when we returned from Icy Cape.'

I never referred to events during my life in quotations before the
'incident', either. Yet another of the wide and varied joys Special
Agent Dr. Dana Katherine Scully has brought into my life.

That's not fair. I recognize it the moment the thought occurs to me. She has brought a few joys into my life; not the least of which is a partner whom I can trust. It's just that I can't seem to separate
everything I know to be true about her - her integrity, her
intelligence, her concern for our fellow human being's - from the
woman who calmly sat in her apartment mere hours after we made love and rationally explained why, exactly, it was a mistake.

It's not that I didn't have doubts myself; hell, you could've filled a
room with them. I just would've rather not pretended the whole thing never happened. Which, naturally, is precisely what she wants. I wonder sometimes if she hasn't succeeded in convincing herself it =didn't= happen; that it was just some kind of weird dream, the result of too many freezing nights and some bad Chinese.

It's only sometimes when I catch her eye I know it actually happened; like now, for instance. I know she knows. Just like I know she knows that I know. It's unspoken between us. It lies under the surface, unassuming, deceptively buried. It manifests itself in little ways. We don't share facts about each other's lives the way that we once did; the mundane oddities that make a person unique aren't shared as often, if ever. These damnable silences grow in number the more time that passes. Unless you count catching a bite at the local Grease Pit in whatever small town dump we happen to be in, we don't share meals.

I think that's the biggest reason why her request for my attendance at lunch surprised me so much. Maybe she just felt sorry for me; it wouldn't surprise me if her opinion of me drastically decreased the moment she found out I'd allowed Phoebe to use me once, then actually considered repeating the process anew. Or maybe she realized we couldn't pretend the 'incident' never happened if the patterns we developed within two weeks together were shot to hell.

Whatever the reason, I find myself grateful to her as she wipes a
smear of salad dressing off her cheek in a manner I find oddly
endearing.

Jesus, I think the way she cleans her face is cute and I'm making up words like ScullyThought to describe her in my mind, because normal words just aren't good enough for her. Either Phoebe really fucked me up this time and finally pushed me over the edge I've been clinging to, or I've got it bad for my partner.

Given the current state of our relationship, I'm going to go with the insanity plea for awhile longer.

Shaking off my thoughts, I focus on the positive emotion present; I'm happy to be sharing lunch with Scully. I needed the human contact after Phoebe left. I stared at the goodbye tape she left me for almost twenty minutes before Scully came into the office. I weighed my decisions; to listen or not to listen. Do I give it a chance, possibly hear something that may once again endear Phoebe to me? Or do I assume it's classic Inspector Green: A mind fuck for the road. I still stick to my original story.

Ten to one I couldn't dance to it.

I wonder if I should be thankful to Scully for more than lunch.
Perhaps, somewhere in my subconscious, Phoebe didn't succeed this time because I knew I had Scully now. Even though I don't really =have= her, not if you ask Scully. I suppose it's just her presence in my life that plants the idea to begin with; there's someone sane who doesn't think I'm a total lunatic. She isn't afraid to be with me and she even listens to my whacked out theories. I sometimes think she actually trusts me.

Maybe that's better than anything I ever thought I had with Phoebe to begin with. Maybe I should just accept that what happened between Scully and I happened. I don't have to be in love with her, I don't have to be hurt because she 'rejected' me. I don't have to imagine her special ScullyScent clings to my suits when I get home at night and I sure as hell don't have to acknowledge how fucking adorable the way she falls asleep on stakeouts is . . .

Yep; definitely going to have SUCKER tattooed to my forehead.

~~~~

END

THANKS: To Sharon Fetter, for reassuring me that I really was on the right track.

Subtext 02: Melting Point

by Brandon D. Ray

I wonder if inviting Mulder to lunch was a mistake?

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I know how taxing this case was for him, and I thought maybe getting out of the office for an hour and having lunch together would help him unwind. We haven't really gone out like this very much recently -- not since we got back from Icy Cape.

That's at least partially my fault. After I made one of the larger mistakes of my life by having sex with my partner, I proceeded to make an even bigger one by treating him like a stranger the next morning. I sat on my sofa wrapped in a blanket, and I calmly and logically explained to him why this had been a mistake and could not be allowed to happen again. And then I dismissed him, as if he were hired help.

I should have known better. I've been dealing with men all my life -- first my father and brothers, and then as I grew older there were the boys and men at school, at work and in social settings. I *know* how fragile the male ego is; I *know* how vulnerable they are. According to the cliches women are the weaker sex, but that's true only physically. On the emotional plane it's a different story.

So I should have known better. I should have realized that Mulder would be on pins and needles when he walked out of my bedroom, and I should have found a nice, friendly face-saving way to let him down gently and talk him through it. Not, I will admit, while sitting bare-assed naked on my living room sofa, still smelling of sex -- but I should have thought of *something*.

Unfortunately, I was so horrified at what I had allowed to happen that I wasn't able to see past my own need to rebuild my defenses, and so I pushed him away.

I realized my error almost as soon as he had left, but of course by then it was too late. Going after him would just have made matters worse, and by the time I saw him again at work later that same morning he had completely shut me out.

Not that I blame him.

We drifted along for several weeks after that, and I don't believe I thought about the matter more than 15 or 20 times a day. I kept looking for some chance, some opportunity to bring it up and talk it out with him, but the time never seemed to be quite right. And as more and more time passed it started to seem less and less important -- although I couldn't help but notice that as we drifted along we were also drifting apart, and no longer sharing the sort of small, casual intimacies we'd shared before the trip to Icy Cape.

I even started to think that maybe that was for the best. After all, I reasoned, it was those casual intimacies that caused the problem in the first place, wasn't it? It was that level of personal involvement that moved me to invite him in for coffee when we got back to D.C. that night, and from there on it seemed almost inevitable, like a row of dominoes going down one right after the other. You don't knock over that initial domino, and the rest of them stay standing, too.

Right?

But then I met Phoebe Green.

I don't know if I can even find the words to describe how shocked and appalled I was as I came to realize what sort of a person she is. I have known women in the past who were that exploitive and manipulative, but I've never had the displeasure of seeing one in action this close up. And as the case progressed and I came to realize how thoroughly she still had her hooks into *my* partner, I found that all the careful arguments I'd built up to rationalize the distance between me and Mulder seemed less and less valid. And the ice I'd started to encase myself in began melting away.

But it wasn't until I saw them kissing in the hotel ballroom that I finally gave it up. In that moment something snapped, and there's no use in pretending that it wasn't at least partly personal. Oh, I tried to persuade myself that it was just professional concern, and that all I really cared about was that Mulder not be distracted from the real business at hand. I even tried to be angry at him for necking with his girlfriend when he was supposed to be working.

For all of about two seconds I tried to feel those things, and they were two of the longest seconds of my life. Then the fire alarm went off, and I was shocked to find myself actually taking pleasure in breaking up that little scene. I didn't really have time to examine my emotions right then, but later, after the smoke had cleared, I went over the sequence of events in my mind, and there was no denying it: I was jealous of Phoebe Green.

Which is impossible. I can *not* be jealous -- not over Mulder. All the reasons for not becoming involved with him remain valid, and the fact that he's my work partner and we have to depend on each other in the field is actually the least of them. I just can't afford to let it happen, for so many different reasons, and that means I have to choose between reestablishing our previous friendship, or requesting that they transfer me away from this temptation.

And I've never been a quitter.

So here we are, sitting across from each other in this sub shop, trying to rebuild ... something. Neither of us has said a word since we left the office, and the silence has been deafening, to say the least. Mulder keeps looking at me, and I can tell from the expression on his face that he's thinking about that night. Which is a step in the right direction, I suppose, since it's the first time since it happened that he's allowed his guard down even this far.

I guess I have Phoebe to thank for that, but I'm going to have to take the next step myself, because it's pretty clear Mulder isn't going to do it.

If only I could figure out what that step should be.

Fini