Different
by ff lindy
I had woken on the couch, itchy because of the thick wool blanket that had found its way over me. I heard the faint sound of the TV in Mulder's bedroom and pulled myself off the now warm leather. I padded with stocking feet to his doorway and opened the latch carefully. He panned his sleepy eyes up to meet mine and smiled in a tiny, half wakeful way. I wandered into the room and sat carefully down on the bed beside him, curling my feet up under me on the bed. He outstretched an arm, inviting me to curl up next to him, so I settled myself into the crook of his arm and focused my eyes on the small TV. It was in black and white, something my mom would have watched on a Monday afternoon when I was small while she folded laundry. I had found them before on PBS late at night. I felt my eyelids grown heavy, and fought to keep my vision as they began to droop. I didn't think I had fallen asleep, although I was no longer following the dialogue. I woke when the music played and credits rolled across the screen. I crooked my neck up to look at Mulder, his eyes still open, although not as wide as usual. I didn't think before I spanned the few inches between us and placed a kiss on his lips.
Where I expected questions and confusion, I simply felt his hands help me to twist my body around in his arms so my neck wouldn't have to do the adjusting. Soon my hands were creeping under the hem of his shirt, and my brain felt fuzzy, like I had one too many glasses of champagne and the bubbles had gone to my head.
XXX
When I woke up, belly down sprawled across my king sized bed it only took me a second to know what was missing. Her. Although every morning for the last 5 years I have awoken all alone, with a tiny wish that she would be there, that morning, I really thought she would. When we had settled in for the night her head was on my chest, her fingers making small circles on my skin that made me feel like this could be forever. I know that we did not stay cuddled up like that for long. That is part of what I love about her, she doesn't need anyone all of the time. Just knowing that she was in that bed beside me was all that I needed, and I thought that she felt the same, until I woke up alone. No note, no coffee in the pot, no discarded article of clothing to imply that she would be back. It was as if she had never been there at all. Even the blanket I had laid over her when she drifted off on my couch was folded neatly over the back as it had been.
There was an ache inside me, and for the first time in a long time I knew how it felt to need but not be needed. Feeling like a zombie I went through the motions of preparing for the day. I showered and got dressed in a bland gray suit, put on a lifeless tie, and poured myself a cup of bitter black coffee. Nothing felt right. I felt numb.
XXX
"So what now?" I had whispered through the darkness, my head on his chest peacefully.
"I don't know. I guess now things will be different."
"Do we start going to movies?"
"I don't think so. I think that would be weird."
I tried not to let my breathing change, but I felt like something had a hold of my stomach. It took a moment to name that thing: Guilt. I nodded into him and laid like that for a moment, pretending to be okay, until I heard his breathing become steady, then I unwrapped my self from him and rolled over, holding the blanket tightly over my bare chest and curling at the far edge of the bed until I fell asleep. I woke just a few hours later, and although I could not read the clock the light outside told me it was a socially acceptable time to get out of bed. I gathered my clothes and dressed in the bathroom, guilt still gnawing at my insides. When the latch of the door closed quietly behind me, he was still asleep.
XXX
The ding of the elevator door was such an every day noise. Usually it delighted me. It meant I no longer had to sit in the office alone. It meant she would be there. That morning however it made my spirits fall. It was a marker of impending doom. She walked in but didn't meet my eyes. "Good morning," she said in a painfully ordinary tone as she took her seat.
"Good morning," I repeated. "I think we've got a case. We don't have to sit around here and do paperwork any more."
"What's the case?" she looked up, but did not focus on me. I could see her gaze seem to drift about an inch to the right of my face.
"An abduction victim and her two daughters went missing. The police have got nothing. It was like they just disappeared. No forced entry, nothing missing, nothing out of place." I handed over the file Skinner had sent me so she could look through it.
"Where?"
"Washington State."
She nodded. "When do we leave?"
"Two."
"Airport at one?" she asked.
"Yep."
After a couple of forms and a good scour of the file she stood. "I'll see you at one."
"Okay," I said.
XXX
I let myself look at him for the first time when I arrived at the airport. It appeared that he had been sitting there for hours waiting for me, his face looked lifeless. The pain in the pit of my stomach reappeared as I looked at his eyes. He was looking away, he didn't know I was watching him, and I could see that he was feeling something, although I could not place what it was. I was too upset to focus on what it was. I forced my eyes to something else, his suitcase, his tie, anything but that face, which had become a reminder of my own indiscretion. We checked in and boarded the plane in silence, and I felt myself pretend he wasn't there, just to make it through the monotony of the flight. When the beverage cart came by and he touched my hand to get my attention I felt my mouth fill up with saliva as if I was about to be sick. My stomach contorted itself and I swallowed hard to prevent myself from wincing. "Club soda," I requested, and sipped it cautiously for the next 20 minutes.
Although we were forced to talk upon landing in Washington, and I managed to wade through the interaction of working beside him the feeling of demise at the very pit of me, faded too slowly. Of course, as the days passed I learned to live with it, but when things got too quiet inside me it would boil up again, and his touch somehow became a conditioned stimulus to nausea. Even just a tap on the shoulder coming from him, his hand settled on the small of my back, the rubbing of our fingers when a file was passed between us, caused my stomach to contract. The feelings of guilt that had surrounded me as a 10th grader confessing to the priest that I had allowed a boy to touch me in ways I knew God would not condone seemed to overtake me every time he was near me.
I tried my best to push the experience from my mind, to push him from my mind, to get over it like the confident woman I had convinced people I was. Then one day when I walked into the office and saw him sitting there I realized the truth: I hated him.
XXX
I could tell from that day in the airport on that she was disgusted with me. I wanted so badly to be over her, to care as little about what happened as she seemed to. I wanted to be strong like she was, but I wasn't. I was like a schoolboy in love. I needed her. Every occasion I could I touched her, I smiled at her, I tried to catch her eye. But she avoided me, she looked through me, and she pushed me away in every way she could. I internalized it all, reminding myself that I was a failure as a lover, that something I had done that night made her so disgusted by me that she could not even stand to be around me. And then finally one day, she spoke.
XXX
"Why did this happen?" I asked, standing in the doorway on the verge of tears. His eyes met mine, and for the first time since that night we looked into each other, and for the first time I saw more than the victory of a man who had conquered a woman, I saw a man who had been conquered himself, and the pain at the pit of my stomach, the feeling of guilt morphed somehow. It wasn't about me for a moment, and I felt my head get heavy. My neck could no longer support it and it was all I could do not to fall to the ground. I braced myself on the doorframe, hoping that he wouldn't notice. But he did, and he jumped to his feet. He was across the room and beside me in an instant and propped me against him to move me to a chair. My name was the only word on his lips and it hung in the air as he helped lean my head back safely onto the backrest. I felt the blood return to my brain and I tried to gather myself just before I realized that his touch did not make me sick. He was crouched down beside me, his face close enough to mine for me to notice the new wrinkles beginning to form near his eyes. These weeks had aged him.
"I hurt you," I said, my eyes glossing over with tears.
He looked down quickly, as if he didn't want me to know it was true. "You left."
"I thought you wouldn't want me to stay."
He looked up at me, into me, trying to read through my burning eyes. "I wanted you to stay forever."
I felt a shiver run down my spine and I blinked myself back to reality. "You said that it would be weird," the words sounded absurd as they fell from my mouth. "I wanted to make things right, to tell myself that I had not done anything wrong, that you were going to become more than just the partner I slept with, and you pushed me away."
He furrowed his brow. "When I said that things would be different, I meant different in the best kind of way. I meant that we would not have to pretend not to be in love anymore. I meant we would be able to be together, in love. And when I said that menial dates would be weird, I meant because we are so far past that. We know each other so much better than dark theatres full of awkward couples. I thought that after that night we could just be together. Still partners, still friends, but in love."
I tried to absorb the words, tried to fit these new ideas into the schema already outlined in my mind. "I thought that you were finished with me," I said, sounding weaker than I had intended to.
"I could never be finished with you."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry that I made you feel…" I trailed off, unable to find the words without making myself fall apart.
"As shitty as you have felt for the last 2 weeks?" he offered.
I expelled a breath that was supposed to be a quiet laugh but came out more of a donkey-like wheeze as the tears began to fall down my face.
"I never meant to hurt you Scully. If I could go back and do it again, I would not be too afraid to say I love you."
I closed my eyes and took it in. The remorse, the feelings of defeat were drifting from my shoulders. I allowed myself to be happy for the first time since that night, and the world looked a little different. "I never want to feel that way again," I whispered.
XXX
I cupped her face and ran my thumb along her jaw line. Color had appeared back in it that had been missing all this time. "Whatever it is this took from you, you have it back," I told her, although she already knew.
"You do too," she said. "And now things are going to be different."
"In a good way," I added.
"In the best way," she whispered just before I brought my mouth to hers.
XXXXXXXXXXX
For Zach, because I never thought that I would hurt someone the way you hurt me.