~

‘Split Seconds’

~

The bartender’s looking at me funny.

I can hardly blame her. I make most people nervous. Especially when I’ve
already introduced them to myself, via my drunken hopeless ramblings. I
told her my nickname was Spooky, one dark night once upon a time. It
figures she’d cast a few wary glances my way from the opposite end of
the bar, only coming near me when I signaled for another drink. I’m
drinking scotch tonight, straight up. What I didn’t figure on, however,
was her warning the other patrons not to sit next to the ‘unstable guy
at the end of the bar’. I mean, what the fuck does she know about me?
I’m not unstable. I’m not. I may be a little crazy, but I’m not
unstable. I don’t hurt innocent people. I don’t burn people to death,
causing mass gravesites around the world. I don’t pretend to be
someone’s friend, a former lover, only to stab them in the back . . .

I do take my partner for granted sometimes. It’s not a sign that I’m
unstable though. No, it’s just a sign that I can be an arrogant, selfish
bastard when I want to be. I ditch her; I forget to consider her
feelings; I don’t mean to. It’s just that I get so totally focused on
one thing that I sometimes forget how much I owe her; how much I trust
her; how much I depend on her presence, her intelligence, her love in my
life. Her belief in me sustains me on the coldest, darkest nights. She
has walked with me willingly through the fires of hell, calming my
natural fear of the gloomy roads we travel. She grounds me as
effortlessly as she breathes. Scully is my North Star, my center, my
shelter from the storm. She somehow acts as my shelter, even as she
braves the harshness of our lives with me. I will never know how she
does this; I will merely be eternally grateful that she does.

Her importance in my life has neither increased, nor decreased since we
became lovers.  I have accepted this shift in our relationship as
naturally as any other we’ve endured – as just that; a natural, logical
progression of what we are to each other. We’ve shared minds and souls
and ideas for years; why should bodies and hearts and beds be any
different?

Apparently, Scully doesn’t feel the same. Apparently, I’ve misread every
signal she’s ever given me. Crazy fool that I am, I’d actually believed
on just this one thing we were in sync. That we were in total agreement
that what we had together was inevitable and all encompassing. That it
consumed us both willingly and without question. Scully obviously
doesn’t share such romantic notions with me. Scully isn’t as secure in
us as I am. Scully needs my reassurance.

So of course I, being the arrogant selfish bastard that I am, fail to
notice this until I’ve almost destroyed this fragile thing between us.

I swear to God that I didn’t know how insecure she was. I really
believed her dislike of Diana stemmed from some sense of professional
jealousy; maybe even a touch of personal, even though we weren’t
together romantically when those feelings were born. I didn’t realize I
was making her ‘feel like I was only letting her hang around until Diana
came back.’ Nor did I believe she could ever fathom that I’d ‘toss her
away like a sunflower seed shell once a partner of like mind came
along’. And I certainly never in my wildest imaginings thought ‘if I
trusted Diana so God damn much, I might as well admit it to myself and
stop jerking us both around’.  Scully obviously did though. And the fact
that she actually voiced them to me earlier today has made me come to
yet another realization.

I need her so much I could die from it.

Love is a given; I’ve loved her since Bellefleur Oregon. Trust has also
come and gone; it amazes me how early in our partnership I did begin to
trust her. Now, that trust has become a living, breathing thing between
us. Something that exists whether we’d like it to or not. But need – I
don’t =need= anyone. The only things I’m supposed to need are water,
food and oxygen. However, somewhere along the way, Dana Katherine Scully
got added to that list. I need her as surely as I love her.

And that frightens the hell out of me. It’s frightened the hell out of
me since that cold Christmas morning we first made love on the waterbed
I still think Frohike planted in my apartment. But even as I was
terrified, I never wavered in my commitment to be with her. We never got
a chance to discuss it, this new intimacy of ours. I had assumed there
was nothing =to= discuss.  We were together in every way two people
could be now – professionally, physically and spiritually. End of story.
Run the credits, cue the music cause the fat lady is about to go on.

Again, I was apparently wrong. In-between saving Skinner’s life, Scully
almost dying in New York, and the total explosion of the conspiracy
we’ve lived and breathed by, Scully had doubts she never got the chance
to voice. And they festered and picked at her until she exploded. They
were little eruptions at first – sniping at Diana; not so subtle hints
to me about trust. Then they became more obvious - =insisting= Diana
couldn’t be trusted; that she had been lying to me all along. It’s not
that I didn’t trust her judgment. It’s not even that I doubted what she
was saying. I just felt I owed Diana the benefit of the doubt. She’d
never been anything but on my side, from the very first day I met her.
She was the first person who held no scorn for my somewhat out there
ideas. She held me the night after I went through my hypnotic
regression; just held me, as I brokenly told her what I’d remembered
about the night Samantha was taken. It meant a lot – more than a lot. At
the time, it meant everything to me.

How could someone I’d once felt safe with – given a piece of my dreams
to – betray me the way Scully was saying? She couldn’t. Because if she
was, that meant my instincts, whom I entrusted my heart to once, was
grossly flawed. Scully was just mistaken, that’s all. It’s not that I
trust her less than Diana – it’s just that she doesn’t know her the way
I do. She can’t.

I realized the night I journeyed to Diana’s apartment that I was wrong.

I am not a man who easily admits when he’s wrong. I suppose it comes
from too many years of people =insisting= I was wrong, doubting me left
and right. In some ways, I =need= to be right. I need the validation it
brings. That search for validation, for the proof that I am =not= crazy
is what sustained me in this quest before there was Scully. I no longer
question my sanity in the way I have before. I no longer wonder if I
could be wrong, if I truly have just been seeing elves dressed up as
little green men my entire life. I know better now. I know what I’ve
believed is true and just. What Scully and I have both fought for and
against.

And now, in what should be my finest hour, a triumphant celebration that
I was right and they were wrong, is nothing but a hollow victory.
Because through nothing but my own arrogance, my own selfishness, Scully
is not here beside me, to share in my quiet relief.

Two days after the X-Files were officially handed back to us, I told
Scully of the kiss Diana gave me that night in her apartment. And, in my
infinite stupidity, respect for her, lack of ability to lie to her, or
some cursed combination of the three, I confessed that for a brief
second, I was tempted. I wanted to take her up on what she was so
obviously offering. I wanted to lose myself in her, to forget the
tenseness and the pain that lingered between Scully and myself for so
long. In that split second I actually considered it, the thought that
I’d probably lost Scully forever crossed my mind. The thought that we
might all be dead tomorrow anyway, that Scully’d never have to know.

I’m ashamed of that split second of time. I hate that a part of me is so
needy and so lost that I’d actually fathom betraying Scully on such a
deeply personal level. Apparently, she’d thought the same way, because
that was when she’d laid into me. I believe her rage ended with ‘Leave
me be, Mulder, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ She’d said it so calmly;
so wearily; so very like Scully it made me ache inside, just to think
about it. This ball of despair that lives inside my stomach burns at me,
as the scotch never could. The knowledge that I have hurt Scully in ways
I never had before, in ways I swore to myself I never would, saddens me
beyond measure. I know I will go to see her tomorrow. I know that she
will be distant, a bit cold. Her eyes won’t meet mine and she’ll try
valiantly to separate herself from what’s going on between us.

And then something will happen – I’ll say just the right thing, touch
her in just the right way and her eyes will meet mine again. Something
will flicker between us and she’ll forgive me. Her arms will encircle me
and I will be reborn in her comfort and her solace.  She will cleanse me
in the few moments we stand together, quietly reflecting and rejoicing
that what we have is strong enough to weather the storms of our life.
Then we will pull apart. We will go to work and rebuild our files. We’ll
travel to tiny towns, investigate freakish occurrences and unravel the
conspiracies that weave around us like vines. At night we’ll sink into
one another, forgetting the hell that came before for a few precious
hours as we heal together. Then we’ll get up and do it again, secure in
the knowledge that we’re trying to save a world.

She will forgive me my arrogance and my selfishness. I will forgive her
all her insecurity and her fear.  She will be the one to hold me in the
dead of night and I will be the one to give her the approval she so
desperately craves. And I swear to God that if it takes the rest of our
lives, I will make her believe in us as I do. I will make her see how
much I love and need and trust her. I will sustain her belief in me,
even if I can’t believe in myself.  I will give her a home and she will
give me a life.

Perhaps one day she will even absolve me all the split seconds of my
life.

~

END