From: "Emily Short" Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 23:05:02 -0700 Subject: Insomnia (revised) Source: direct ************* This is a revision. Please remove the existing copy of Insomnia from the database and replace with this one. Sorry for the trouble, and many thanks -- Emily Short ************* Title - Insomnia Author - Emily Short Email address - emshort@mindspring.com Rating - PG Category - SR Spoilers - Redux II Keywords - Mulder/Scully romance Summary - After his reunion with Samantha and the cure of Scully's cancer, Mulder is feeling directionless and confused -- leading him to make ever greater demands on Scully's time and patience... ***** Disclaimer: I do not own Fox Mulder or Dana Scully. They belong to Chris Carter and 1013. No copyright infringement is intended, nor am I earning any money by using them. Duh. ***** Insomnia by Emily Short I can see him lurking at the doorway. Muldershadow against the dim light beyond. I've gotten used to this: to the fact that even in my own apartment I have no place that is private where he is concerned. He is watching me. I suppose he thinks I am sleep. He does that a lot now, coming over at two or three in the morning to make sure that I'm in my bed, alive. He stays between ten minutes and an hour, and then goes home. I'm touched; I'm also furious. There's precious little I can lay claim to any more, but the pleasure of my own undisturbed company is supposed to be one of those things. Sometimes it's a hell of a lot easier to be in a motel, roaches or no. Then he just goes to sleep sitting against the connecting door, listening to me breathe. "You know, a guy could get shot, sneaking into someone's apartment after dark," I say after a long time -- during which he hasn't moved a bit. "You gave me the key, Scully." "For emergencies, Mulder. Not for after-midnight reconnaissance missions." I see his shoulder twitch; when he speaks, it is in the taunting voice that covers hurt. The voice he used after the Ed Jerse thing... "What's the matter, Scully? Afraid I'll walk in on a moment of torrid passion?" I pause long enough to let him know he shouldn't have said that. "I'm an adult. I'm entitled to some privacy. How would you like it if I came over to your apartment at night and woke you up?" He peels away from the doorframe to stand upright. "Depends what you came to do," he says, in that voice that always makes me want to throw something at him. Don't say it if you don't mean it, Mulder. Apparently the silence weighs on him because eventually he adds, "I'm sorry, Scully, I just..." The emotion hits me suddenly as it always does: a strange mix of annoyance and joy when I realize that I put up with things from Mulder that I would not accept from anyone else in the world. I would never let anyone else push me so far. For Mulder, at least, I am still a human being. "Come in here," I say. "I can't talk to you when I can't see you." He comes and sits down on the bed beside me -- close enough that I can smell the outdoor smell he brought in with him. And the Mulder smell. "What's going on here?" I ask softly. He knows what I mean. At work, we're fine. We coorperate as well as we ever did. Perhaps better, now that I've come to realize that at least some of Mulder's seemingly nonsensical paranoia has a foundation in fact. But at night there's this. And he calls me over the weekend, sometimes with nothing to say, no excuse. We fall into long silences. I do the dishes with the phone propped on my shoulder so that he can listen to me breathe. It's crazy. I'm contemplating making him buy me one of those headset phones. "I don't know, Scully. Ever since I found Samantha, I haven't been able to sleep." "You couldn't sleep *before* you found her, either," I remind him wryly. "At least I drifted off long enough to have the occasional nightmare." "No more nightmares?" "No." He has threaded his fingers through mine and his looking at our joined hands. "What am I doing, Scully? Why don't I quit the X-Files and try to find myself a normal life? I have Samantha back --" "Because you don't know why, or what happened." "No." Since the Cancer Man died, Mulder has seen his sister twice. He hasn't told me much about the meetings but I sense two things: that he is convinced this is really her, and that she can't tell him what he needs to know. "You know I'm on your side, Mulder. I want the truth too." "That's part of it -- why I can't seem to leave you alone," he finishes with a rueful smile. "What's the other part?" My heart seems to be speeding up. He lets go of my hand, puts his thumb on the spot between my eyebrows. "Because you are the only thing I've managed to achieve. My only victory." I know what he means, and if that wasn't exactly the answer I had in mind, I can still tell how strongly he feels about this. But I can't let the statement go. "Maybe. Mom thinks--" Mulder's gaze flicks to my throat, where my cross is. "Your mother thinks it was a divine miracle," he says flatly. "And your brother certainly isn't willing to believe that your good-for-nothing partner did you any good." "We still don't know how the chip could have affected the cancer." Oh Dana, go gently; he needs this victory for himself. "What do *you* believe, Scully?" "I think that it is not impossible for God to work through human agency," I say in my best scientist voice. "That means what? That God controlled me?" I can't help laughing. "You do look like an unlikely vessel for divine grace," I admit finally. "But for what it's worth -- the spiritual aspect of what happened to me aside -- and I feel it as a miracle, Mulder -- I am grateful to you." Pathetically inadequate. "I --" My voice stumbles over itself. "You've saved my life before, but this was above and beyond." "I got you into it," he mutters. "No!" I sit up and put my arms around him fiercely. "No. I run my own risks. Don't apologize for letting me." He puts his arm around me, returning my hug, and we sit there for a while in the darkness. "This has been my fight for such a long time," he says eventually. "I was the one who had Samantha to save. You told me once you didn't know how far you could follow me." I sigh. "I'm on your side, Mulder, but I can't help you when you're working against yourself -- when you're pushing yourself to the point of insanity, when you're breaking all the rules just to follow some madness of your own! There are limits, Mulder, there are limits to what we are allowed to do as Bureau agents and there are limits to what I can watch you do to yourself as a human being. You compromise every rule, you put everything in jeopardy to follow some strange lead you've found, you risk your memories, your sanity, your job..." He puts a finger over my lips. I realize that I've been getting worked up and that I am practically shouting now. I finish in a whisper. "What will happen if you cut through all the lies, but you've already destroyed everything you could have used against our real enemies? If you lose your credibility, Mulder, who will listen to the truth when you find it?" "I'll have you," he says in a low voice. "You're credible." I push my head against him as though I were trying to burrow in. "I just wish you listened to me more often. I know you trust me -- but you don't trust my judgement." "I do, Scully." "On that Philadelphia case, with your Boris Badinoff bad guy..." He snickers, and I start to giggle too. It sounds silly even to my own ears, and I realize that I've had too much emotion for one evening. I wipe at my face and am not surprised to find that it is damp with tears. "I'm not sure you should bring that up if you want to secure my faith in your judgement," Mulder answers finally. "My professional judgement was exactly right. He was a cut-rate con artist. The Philadelphia branch..." "Even I have never dated anyone with a talking tattoo." My spine stiffens. I run through a list of possible responses. 'Right, Mulder, but what about your vampire woman?' 'I suppose Phoebe Green is proof of your good judgement...' 'Tattoos don't turn you on? Gee, I wish you'd mentioned that earlier.' "He listened to me," I say at last. "You talked to him," Mulder answers. I am surprised. There is more than a little resentment in his voice. "What's your point?" "In all the years I've known you, you've always kept yourself locked up so tightly in case some scrap of the real Dana Scully should show through." "We're professional partners." "Bull. Shit." He says it as two separate words. His arm is still around me, though. "We're partners, but that doesn't mean you check your emotional baggage at the door." "You don't need me leaning on you." "What's that supposed to mean, Agent Scully? That I'm not strong enough to handle it?" I recognize this as a just reproof. He doesn't respect me as much as I want him to, doesn't have enough faith in my professional judgement; but I in turn don't have faith in his abilities when it comes to dealing with my problems. Never mind that on the few occasions when I've been honest enough to let him see what I'm feeling, he has handled it just fine. "I'm sorry," I say. He lets out a long breath. "I'm sorry too. I'll even get you a desk if you want." I feel a smile tugging at my mouth. He kisses the top of my head. "While we're on the subject" -- and before I lose my nerve, I add mentally -- "I wish you would stop making your little cracks about my love life." "Cracks about your love life?" he repeats blankly. "'What's the matter, Scully? Afraid I'll walk in on a moment of torrid passion?' It's annoying." He lets go of me and moves back far enough to see my face. "All right, that wasn't the most mature remark I could have made. But I sense that there's something else lurking behind this question. Is the fact that you're not dating anyone right now bothering you that much?" He says it in a way that assures me he will listen -- properly -- to the answer. A challenge, in fact. Can you, Dana Scully, be honest with your partner about your emotions, now that you've admitted you should try? I find myself wishing we could do a trial run on some other topic... "Yes, actually." I look away from him. "I have no life. And now that I'm not dying any more, it somehow seems important to -- to get on with the things I wanted to do. As odd as it may seem to you, I always thought that eventually I would find someone..." "Why should that seem odd?" "I know you don't think of me in that light." Damn. Damn damn damn. I sound petulant and immature even to myself. Mulder does that to me sometimes. "Scully, I --" "When I told you I was busy, in Philadelphia, you couldn't believe I really had a date." "Scully." It's his please-stop-being-stupid voice. "Did it ever occur to you that I might not *want* you going out with some stranger in Philadelphia?" "What, in case he had a talking tattoo? Is this about my bad judgement again?" "No, it's about our relationship and the fact that your having a boyfriend would make my life miserable." "Well, I might have something to do on weekends other than hang on the telephone saying nothing." "Exactly." "So what it comes down to is that you're possessive and self-centered, and that this now extends to my personal life as well as my professional one," I say. Something in me is cold and bitter. He seems to feel it; he pulls away from me more, and his jaw clenches. Which is why what he says knocks me on my ass. "What it comes down to is that I'm in love with you, Scully." I just sit there staring at him. I think my jaw has dropped perceptibly. He continues in a speculative tone of voice. "There's a range of acceptable responses. 'I love you too' is popular, but tends to lead to complications. 'Thank you, but I don't feel the same way,' polite though a little stiff. 'We can still be friends' is the one I'd expected you to opt for, but you seem to have been struck dumb." I sit there, still silent, looking at him. He laughs, a dark, jaded laugh. "Never mind. Forget I said it. I'd hate to have to explain to Skinner why you resigned." "I can't do this, Mulder," I say, when I finally get my voice to work. "I can't --" "Please, as a favor to me, allow yourself to need someone else, just a little bit. You did after Penny died..." I remember what he's talking about. Our conversation in the hospital hallway, which ended with me in his arms. It's one of my favorite memories too, despite all the darkness that surrounds it; a memory of peace. At the time I believed what he said, about the truth saving both of us, though I lost my faith again later. The truth. If anyone deserved the truth, it was Mulder. I could lie to myself if I chose, but it was time I stopped lying to him. "I love you too," I say softly. "I'm just not sure I'm not afraid to act on it." And I understand it as reality for the first time, saying it aloud. I've denied it to plenty of people: to myself, to my mother, to acquaintances in the ladies' room asking rude questions. What will I do now? If I become Fox Mulder's girlfriend, who will be his conscience? It is a difficult job, but I realize it's the role I've assigned myself. I'm the one who 'saw' when he punched Roche. I'm the one who dealt with the aftermath of his psychotic hole-in-the-head episodes. He even said it himself, when I was in the hospital this most recent time: "I knew that if I was wrong, you would talk me out of it." How can I maintain the detachment to be that to him, if I become more as well? And how for that matter will I keep myself, if I ever become his lover? Will he leave me anything in reserve, or will he consume me utterly? Because, among other things, I have always found him incredibly attractive. I think the first year of our partnership that must have been fairly obvious, though I eventually got better at hiding it, both from him and from myself. We already have so few boundaries between ourselves that if I let the last physical and emotional ones dissolve, our personalities might blur and run together. He has been silent while I have been thinking, but he has been watching me gravely. He reaches over and touches my cheek, finally. "Talk to me." "I'm afraid this will change everything," I explain, not very clearly. "I was sort of under the impression you wanted things to change." Of course I did. I wanted to equalize our relationship. I wanted to stop being secondary in the partnership. I wanted Mulder to stop second-guessing me. I wanted not to have the kind of resentment towards him that I always have, eventually, toward figures of authority; the ones I had toward Ahab when I was a teenager. But I also wanted to be the one with control, living on a plane of emotional and moral superiority. "All right," I say, throwing it all to the wind. "But I don't want to start this unless both of us mean to make it work. We've been through too much together to throw it away for the sake of a bad two-week affair and a lifetime of bitterness." He grins. Then he lifts my hand, which is resting on the bed beside him, and kisses it. "You're a brave woman, Scully." "But you knew that already." I scoot over and lift the covers. "Here. Join me." "As much as I've been dreaming of an invitation like that, if you seduce me now we will both be late to work in the morning." "That's not what I had in mind. I just don't want you driving home at this hour." I need you to stay, so that the fact that you are warm and present will reassure me, should I have doubts, later on in the night, about the thing I have just committed myself to. "You can sleep here. Or lie awake, or whatever it is that you do." "Okay, but I'd rather not sleep in my jeans," he says. "You're wearing underwear, right? Nothing I haven't seen before." Something impish provokes me to add, "Or am not going to see again." He shoots an amused glance in my direction, but obediently strips down to his boxers and gets into bed beside me. "You're right," he says. "This is much better than watching you from the door." I turn to face him, but I don't get to say anything because he kisses me. After that, he falls asleep, despite all his protestations that he can't. I on the other hand lie there staring at the ceiling. But I am smiling, and I can't seem to stop.