THIS IS NOT MINE. I am posting it for the author who has little access to a computer. Please address feedback to ============================================== Disclaimer: Chris Charter and/or Ten Thirteen Productions own the characters Scully and Mulder. No infringement on their rights is meant. The following piece of fiction is meant for perusal and enjoyment only, yadda, yadda... MSR V PG-13 Spoiler: Never Again Summary: Scully decides to change her working relationship with her partner. Archive: Gossamer and Purple Rhino O.K. Others please ask. Thank you to my sister Nez, whom I neglected to give credit to in my last submission, "Another Solution". She gave me the idea for that Vignette. In this piece, hers was the idea to get the two together (not my first inclination.) Thanks to Melissa. And a very tremendous and effusive thanks to Mary Greten and the Beta Readers Circle. Their help was invaluable. Touching Decisions By Iggy The quiet determination with which Dana entered the lowest floor at the Bureau and the office furthest to the back went unmarked by the man sitting behind his desk with his feet propped up, a manila file open on his lap. She smiled languidly. Last night's mishap repeated itself in her head: a man's hands playing her back, her ribs, cupping her face, kissing her. It had been crazy, perfect. Almost perfect, her mind amended after her peripheral vision fastened accusingly on Fox Mulder wearing a standard issue gray suit and nondescript low-key tie. It had been a long time since she'd let herself feel like that. Not since, well, forever. Last night she'd felt light-headed, happy, if fleetingly. She was pretty drunk. Her date was reluctant but a gentleman when, using her last shred of sobriety, she decided "Enough." "Hey, you ought to look at this", Mulder pushed off-handedly right into his latest case without even so much as glance or a greeting. "Typical," she quipped to herself. An inaudible sigh escaped her. She'd gotten up this morning, smoked menthol cigarettes during her long watershed bath and vowed to inform him before day's end of her decision to leave the X-Files. She became slowly cognizant since her cancer that the more the "truth" unfolded, the less any of it mattered to her: Not the cases, not the research, not her personal losses, nor any of the vast number of unresolved cases. She'd been given a second chance. No amount of answers or regrets could add up to that. The shift had been subtle, but when the extraneous had finally fallen to the wayside, there stood one affirming fact in her mind. She was in love with her partner. It was growing increasingly difficult to be around him. She knew there were very good reasons why they could never be-why they shouldn't be more than they were now. She knew herself too well to doubt it. And he was the posterboy for the emotionally unavailable. She kept her face immobile. In her early youth, her face had been naturally an open book. Her brothers and their friends had teased and used it against her endlessly. They taught her emotions were to be guarded as well as a good hand of cards. She learned to control her features. In this line of work, it stood her well. But, with Mulder, she was more than unusually conscious of her facial expressions and they required extra control. "Another case," she frowned, feeling the corners of her face drag and stretch her cheeks. "What does it matter? What's the point? Who, cares?" her sentiments shouted in silence. She wanted to shake him. Ironic that she would come to hate the work that had once been the singular purpose and reward in her life. Back when she could equal his passion and dedication convinced of its importance. Ocassionally, he would focus that beam of concentration usually reserved for his work on her. The intensity of it made her senses swim and filled her with a completeness that astounded her in its warmth. It made her insides twist with longing. And when it was gone, she always suffered a jolt of separation that was both disorienting and disappointing. Then he would go on with whatever new thing presented itself, unaware of the emotions he'd evoked. She wanted to pick up the file on his lap and toss it behind her. She wanted him to gape at her in surprise so she could laugh at him. She wanted...to be held and told she was loved, that she was beautiful. Instead, she calmly rounded his desk, brown briefcase in hand, and stood about a foot to the left of his chair, rocking on her heels, looking down at the file in his lap. A short, tight, smile involuntarily broke out on her face as she began to take the facts in. After two minutes of reading, her eye involuntarily noted how his artistically tapered his fingers accentuated the gold tennis bracelet he wore. Suddenly she realized he gravitated towards her until her leg was pressed up against his knee. She'd never been more distressed that she never set limits to his invasion of her personal space. His head nearly rested on her stomach. She craved to hold his face in her hands. Mulder was errie. When he could focus outside of his obsessions, he displayed an innocent fascination with everything around him; coming too close and saw everything from behind a two-way mirror that couldn't touch him. She couldn't deny his magnetism. Part of his charm was that he didn't seem wholly unaware of it or he didn't have the confidence to use it. It came out in short spurts, leaving her breathless one minute and feeling like the other end of an unshared joke, the next. Torturous as this was, she was grateful for it or her troubles would have doubled long before now. Her temperature began to climb. she shied back. Her emotions were another thing she was good at reigning in. She permitted herself to be quickly anxious and then willed herself to stop. Taking in and exhaling measured breaths, her heartbeat responded to her will. Mulder was too quiet. She flashed a covert look and found him looking off into space, so that she was seeing him in profile. She comforted herself that despite the fact that Mulder could pick up on the most minute detail on a case, he could also be counted on to miss the most obvious right under his nose. His nose had so much character. Well defined, it made his face gentle. His large and thickly outlined eyes matched the gray of his suit today, the pale lashes reflecting the light. The thatch of hair that flopped over his and the jut of his lower lip were reminiscent of the child he'd been, but his skin had a porous texture that looked ready to sprout hair. Long ago she could pick out the flaws in his face. Now, it was the most beautiful face she knew. Mulder looked at her, looked away and at a second glance realized that she was ogling him. He turned around and looked at her fully. She smiled back. He stared straight at her, seemingly unaware that he was staring. The room had gone silent. She concentrated again on the file, looking back periodically and smiling at him. He smiled in return, but his smile was unreadable. And he wouldn't stop staring. Their eyes locked. An electro-chemical connection shot out between them. "This is it," she thought, her mouth going dry. The room hazed over. The air mistified. "Say something." She silently induced herself or him. A seeming millenium later and he still didn't say or do a thing. His lips parted but he said nothing. Scully forced her own voice out. "Are you suggesting we pursue this further?" she asked, her familiar choice of words sounding ambiguously seductive even to her ears. Her statically charged nerves pinpricked on edge. Unable to look at him, she waited, her back ramrod straight, for a response. Three tortuous seconds: none came. What did she expect? She puckered her lips and strode determinedly toward the back of the room. She laid down the brown briefcase she'd been carrying on the middle of a cluttered desk piled high with paperwork, reference materials, books, magazines, and odd bits--all Mulder's. His things were placed essentially where they'd been when she'd come to work on the X-files--everywhere. Not unlike their owner, they permeated every inch of space. Beginning with a small three-eyed, "Toy Story", alien, she began to deliberately, systematically and noisely take piles of material and sandwich or lay them down anywhere they fit. Mulder's gaze pulled against his will to watch her. Arching both eyebrows and extending his lips, he rolled his eyes briefly skyward, then focused on the very edge of his desk. It might have been pain that crossed his countenance. He swallowed hard. Finally, he dared to venture. "Scully, What are you doing?" "Clearing out a desk for myself." She replied nonchalantly, starting on the drawers. "I think it's about time I had a desk." He considered his next statement. "O.K.," he replied, fearing her reaction to any other. "Yeah," she affirmed sharply. "Scully?" he forced out, his voice cracking, looking confused. His struggling to say something became painful for her. If he were going to express his undying love of or even lust for her, he wouldn't have that little-boy-lost look he was wearing. If it was a "Dear Jane", she didn't want to hear it. "--I'm sorry, Mulder. I'm...." she cut him off. Her voice trailing off. She was doing it again, about to revert to the routine, pretending nothing had happened, like all the times before. The anger at him cascaded out of her and immediately came back self-directed. God, she was such a coward. Who was she to expect him to do more than she was willing to? He was her best friend, her partner, the man she loved. There was no going back. She battled it since day one. She'd rather it be over than for it to go on like this. Suddenly, her morning ablution ponderings and decisions went down the drain. She rose from behind the desk. Her head suffused with blood as if protesting her new decision. The room took on a surreal quality. She felt her body move towards him as if she were walking waist high in water. She went to Mulder, her nerve endings aflame. Slowly, coming out of a fog, saw him get up to meet her. She lifted a shaking hand to his face and his eyes closed as if in prayer. His arms snaked around her waist, gently lying on her hips; the pressure just barely registering gave her the opportunity to break free at any time. His body shivered in anticipation of her next move.. Standing on the very tips of her toes, she kissed the edge of his cheek and heard him expel a sharp breath and a tiny moan. She kissed a slow, steady road to his mouth up to its edges, then kissed and bit his chin. Although his breathing was coming out in short rasps with his obvious arousal, he appeared frozen in terror. His partner, however grew more confident and sure of herself with every passing second. "Look. At. Me, Mulder. Look at me, Fox" she commanded. He opened his eyes. "Now." Her instinct instructed. "I love you." She spoke the words. The terror gradually disappeared from Mulder's face until his grin reached his ears. In his hopelessness, he never dared to presume. Taking her face in between his hands, he met her lips with his own-- his best friend, his partner, the woman he loved.