"Scully?"

"Hmm?" She was already drifting, half asleep, her body throbbing and sated. She felt like she'd just run a marathon, both physically and emotionally drained. At least they'd managed to stagger to the bedroom before she'd completely lost the will to move. His fingers were tracing circles around the ball of her shoulder and it was soothing, pulling her down deeper and deeper.

"Are you awake enough to talk, just for a minute?"

She rolled over to face him, tucking her head against his chest and struggling not to yawn. "Sure."

"I just wanted to ask… about something you said earlier. That you'd met someone in London."

She was wide awake now, a trickle of ice water dripping down her spine to collect in the pit of her stomach. She was going to tell him the truth, anything he asked. She owed him that.

"I did."

"What kind of someone? Like…" He trailed off and she could feel his heart rate increasing beneath her cheek. All she could do was wait. Was this all going to be over before it had even begun? "Was it someone like Ed Jerse?"

She swallowed, not sure how to answer. It hadn't really been like Ed at all. Ed had been a desperate act of rebellion, a need to be noticed, to break free of the control she both craved and sometimes fought against when it all became too much. So, how was what she had experienced with Stella different? It hadn't been a frantic act to prove to herself that she was in charge of her own life. It had felt more like a coming to terms, an acceptance, of who she was and who she wasn't.

She realized she had been silent far too long and that Mulder was undoubtedly thinking the worst.

"No," she whispered, "not like that."

"But you got another tattoo." His fingers were still caressing her exposed shoulder and he hadn't hesitated in his movements, but she could sense his uncertainty. He wanted to know, but he was afraid. Hell, so was she. She imagined she could still feel the burning prickle of the tattoo needle in the hollow of her hip bone.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I needed to. For me."

His fingers left her shoulder and trailed downward until they stopped on her lower back. He traced a slow circle there before he spoke again. "I think I know what this one means now, what it meant to you at the time. For me, it was always a reminder not to take you for granted." His fingers moved onward to the flesh of her hip where her leg was twined over top of his. He couldn't reach the underside, but he tapped the tip of his finger on the opposite side. "Will you tell me about it? Why a triangle? Or is it some sort of pyramid? Was it some Egyptian guy?" She could tell from the strain in his voice that he wasn't really feeling the humour in it, that he was deflecting to protect himself from what he feared to hear in her answer.

"It's the Greek letter delta." She traced a triangle of her own on his chest as she spoke. "It's the symbol that denotes change. Once a physics major, always a physics major, I guess." She blew out a breath as Mulder's fingers echoed her own, sketching a triangle on the back of her hip and she shivered. "I was ready for things to be different, to take a chance, to try and break out of the patterns that have dominated my life for so long. It was time to stop the circle, one way or another."

Mulder hummed in response and they lay together in silence for a few minutes.

"It wasn't a man," Scully said finally, into the darkness of the room. "It was a woman."

There was silence again as Mulder digested this tidbit of information.

"A friend?"

She bit down on her lip, pinching it between her canines until it hurt. "More than a friend."

"A lover?"

"Yes." It wasn't what she had expected or intended to happen — it had just been part of the natural flow of things, cause and effect, action and reaction.

She didn't know if Mulder would understand, if she even could make him understand. It's not like it had been some sort of transcendent epiphany or something equally ridiculous… it had simply been what she'd needed, when she'd needed it, to interrupt the pattern of behaviour she'd been locked in for so long.

"Why?" He was hurt, of course he was, and she felt terrible for that pain. She knew he was already internalizing it – this was his fault, he'd driven her to it, driven her away. His self-centered desire to punish himself for everything that happened to the people around him made her crazy.

"Not everything is about you, Mulder," she said softly, and he snorted, no doubt remembering the last time she'd said those same words to him, but she owed him a proper explanation this time. "When I realized that my feelings for you went beyond work, beyond our friendship, I fought to bury them for a long time. I was terrified. Do you know why?"

He pulled her closer, resting his chin against the top of her head. "Tell me."

"Because I saw myself repeating the same behaviours, the same patterns, that had collapsed in on me before. I am attracted to the men who control me, who have power over me, who challenge me. I crave the approval of those men. I subvert myself to get it and then, once I have it, the appeal is gone, like a light switch has been flicked off. Once that happens, all I want to do is exert my control. I rebel, I push back. I do everything in my power to drive them away.

"I saw myself doing the same thing with you. I was attracted to you — not just physically, but to your passion, your drive for truth and for what you believed needed to be done. Giving myself over to it was a rush, being a part of something bigger than myself. But, soon it was more than just the work. What I felt for you got deeper, more overwhelming, and I didn't know what to do about it except to deny that it was happening. The more I felt I was losing control, the more I pushed you away personally. We had the work to keep us together and I convinced myself that it was enough, that I could channel everything I felt into our common cause. It was safer. Even if I argued with you, challenged you, I knew you couldn't walk away from the X-Files and, therefore, you couldn't walk away from me.

"And, then we lost it. And Diana showed up. And I felt like I didn't know anything anymore. Our work was gone, and I'd lost you. You weren't even mine, and I'd lost you."

She sighed, and he rubbed his cheek over her hair, strands catching in the stubble on his jaw. "You hadn't lost me. I don't think you could ever do that."

"I thought I had. On the flight to London, all I could think about was that none of it mattered. What had I accomplished in the last six years? I'd put everything I had into our work and our partnership and, along the way, I'd lost myself. I don't know if this even makes any sense…"

"Sometimes, it doesn't have to make sense." His jaw moved against her scalp. "Just by talking, one thought to the next, the mind makes connections that we can't put into words, a feeling more than a process."

"And then I met Stella, at the conference."

"Stella," she heard him murmur under his breath, rolling the syllables around in his mouth.

"She was everything I'd ever wished I could be. Confident, impeccably put together, determined, strong."

"Scully, how could you possibly think that you aren't already all of those things?" he said incredulously.

She huffed out a sound that was a combination of a scoff and a laugh. "You don't get it. She embodies them. I can project those attributes, but I feel like I'm just an imposter, hoping that if I pretend hard enough it'll actually be true. Why do you think I always worried that you just saw me as a stand in for your sister, as the geeky lab partner you kept around because I'd do the grunt work and leave you free to chase off wherever your whims might take you, knowing full well that I'd file the expense reports and whatever else needed doing to keep Skinner happy."

"Is that really what you thought?"

"Sometimes, yeah, it was. How was I supposed to compete with someone like Diana? Tall, beautiful, a believer in the paranormal and supernatural, and you had already been intimately involved with her, so clearly she did it for you. And, you clearly had no reservations about the fact that she was your partner."

"Ouch."

She paused. "I'm sorry. That isn't fair. It's just… emotions aren't always rational things. Seeing you with her made me feel insecure about what I meant to you and, in turn, it made me doubt myself."

"I can understand that. I wish you had just talked to me about it."

"I couldn't. I needed to sort myself out first. It isn't your job to fix me or protect me or define me. I needed to do it for myself." She nibbled on the corner of her lip as she thought. "We're so close to each other that I think it's easy to lose perspective. Let's be honest, I think we're both self-aware enough to be able to admit that we have strong codependent tendencies."

Mulder snorted a quiet laugh out his nose. "Maybe just a little."

He didn't say anything for a long time, and Scully lay there, listening to the calming sound of his breathing.

"Do you have feelings for her — for Stella?"

He was quiet now, so quiet, and this was the specific topic she had dreaded before he'd even walked through her door tonight. She just had to hope that he would listen to her all the way through before he came to his conclusion to storm out on her right now, or to stay.

"I… I don't know. Sort of. It wasn't a meaningless physical thing, but I knew, right from the beginning, that it wasn't — couldn't be — anything more than it was. It was what I needed to force myself to question what it was that I wanted, and there was an emotional connection." She swallowed tightly. "I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense and if it hurts you. I think… I think I could have fallen in love with her, under different circumstances or at a different time in my life." Reaching for his hand, she twined her fingers with his and then raised their joined hands to her lips, kissing the back of his hand softly. "But I made a choice. And that choice was you. It's been you for a long time. I can't imagine my life without you in it, and I don't want to, if I have the option."

Mulder blew out a long, shaky breath. "You don't know how long I've been waiting to hear that. It's been you for a long time for me, too." His voice prickled with hurt. "Would you really have left if I hadn't felt the same way?"

It was hard to force herself to speak the truth, but she knew she owed him her full honesty. "I would have tried. I'd reached a tipping point, Mulder, and I couldn't stay balanced on the peak of that triangle any longer. It was time to fall, to one side or the other. With you in every way, or… without you. I couldn't do the balancing act any longer. It was breaking me. I needed things to change."

"Delta." He traced a triangle over the side of her hip.

"Yes."

He was quiet again for a minute and she could practically feel him thinking. "Is it petty to say that I'm jealous?"

Scully gave a harsh chuckle that was mostly without mirth. "After the way I've acted around Diana, I don't think I have any right to think it's petty to be jealous. Pot, meet kettle."

"True… but I didn't sleep with her."

She drew in a hard and sudden breath at the sting his words caused in her chest. "I guess I deserved that."

"Do you regret it?"

"I know it would be easier for you to forgive my actions if I did," she said after a long pause. "I know that if our situation was reversed, I would be feeling hurt. Jealous. Betrayed." The last word came out as a whisper. "I know that's selfish. I just want you to know that I didn't act this way to try and hurt you or punish you… or myself. It wasn't about wanting to feel desired or noticed. It wasn't like before, with Ed."

Mulder didn't say anything, so she went on, filling the silence, trying to help him understand — needing for him to understand.

"It was a coming to terms, for me, personally. An evaluation of my life, my choices, my behaviours." Stella's words came back to her, and she murmured that echoed sentence into the darkness. "Sometimes we need something that we can only get from another human being and it's okay to want that." She wished she could see Mulder's eyes, to get a better read on his thoughts, but maybe it was better this way; letting the words ebb and flow between them, letting them fall wherever they might land. This was not a conversation for daylight.

"As much as I feel like it would be easier, I can't be sorry about what happened. It was what I needed at the time, and I don't know that we would be here right now if it hadn't. I can't guess at how things might have turned out if I hadn't gone to London, if I hadn't met her, if things hadn't happened how they did and when they did."

His voice was soft and low, tinged with fatigue and, if she wasn't mistaken, a sort of longing. She knew he wished he'd been the one to help her, that she hadn't turned to someone other than him. A stranger. "Was it because she was a woman? I didn't know that you… well, that you were attracted to, uh…"

She felt the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek, the comforting gallop of his heartbeat. "Yes and no, I suppose. I'd like to think that it wouldn't have mattered, that attraction can transcend the physical. I think I would have found myself drawn to Stella whether she'd been male or female. But, in this case, I think us both being women made it easier for me to let my guard down on an emotional level." She shifted from her side to her back, staring up at the ceiling, but keeping his hand in hers. "Does it make it easier for you, that I was with a woman rather than a man?"

"As much as I wish it didn't? Yes."

She stroked along the back of his hand with the pad of her thumb. "Women have always had a latent… appeal, I guess you could say, for me. I notice when another woman is attractive, but not in a competitive way. When I was younger, I felt more of a kinship with female celebrities than male ones. And, that's all it was for most of my life. It's only been in the last few years that I've felt more open to the idea that I was attracted to women as well as men and, in accepting that, I felt like I was accepting a part of myself that had always been there. As a rule, I think I'm more attracted to men than women. Everything I've ever fantasized about by myself has been based on a male/female scenario." She felt a slight blush creep into her cheeks and her voice hitched ever so slightly. He noticed. Of course, he noticed.

"Care to elaborate?"

It seemed ridiculous to be embarrassed when they were lying naked together in her bed. "You. Always you." She gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow.

"You can do better than that. Give me some specifics, here."

"Oh, God… okay… um… In the office — so many there. You taking me on your desk. Giving you a blow job while you sat in your swivel chair. Uh… Skinner's office. Sometimes he walked in on us and you would just keep going."

He turned his head towards her. "Really? I thought I was the only one who'd had that one. What else?"

She felt surge of relief. He wasn't leaving. While she was sure that they would revisit this conversation a few more times in the weeks that followed, he had at least seemed accepting of her honesty, and that was everything she could have hoped for. His hand slid up her chest to cup one of her breasts, his thumb tracing concentric circles around her areola to her nipple, making her breath quicken.

"Rental cars. The back seat. Me crawling over you to ride you in the driver's seat, neither of us being able to wait long enough to remove any clothing so you just unzipped your pants and hiked my skirt to my waist. You slide my panties aside as you enter me." She let out a low moan as he unexpectedly pinched her nipple between his fingers. "Me, bent over the front of the car, my arms stretched over the hood toward the windshield, and you taking me hard and fast from behind. You're losing control and you're begging me to come because you don't know if you can hold out any longer."

"Jesus Christ." His voice was gravelled with desire as he rolled over next to her and pulled her in close. His erection was already hot and hard against her back. He still wanted her. Fresh tears prickled in her eyes as she leaned her head back against his shoulder. Her hands found his, pushing his palms more firmly against her breasts. She needed this closeness, this connection with him, even more than she had the first time.

Her voice was tight and breathless. "Want me to stop?"

"Not a chance. Keep going." He gave a slow grind against her back, groaning a little as she pushed back against him.

She licked her lips, craving his mouth on hers, even though her lips still felt a little tender from their earlier love making. "Motel rooms. You unexpectedly pulling back the curtain and joining me in the shower, our skin slippery from soap, working each other up. You coming to my bed in the middle of the night, overcome with desire, not able to take it anymore. Sometimes me, doing the same thing to you… imagining the look in your eyes as you wake up to me taking you into my mouth."

It was getting harder to talk as he suckled and nibbled at the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulders, one of his hands now anchored between her legs as he stroked her with his fingers and his body rocking against hers.

"More," he murmured into her skin. "Don't stop. I love your voice. I love knowing that you were imagining the same things I was."

"Your apartment. Your couch. Oh, God… that couch. Every time I sat on it, I thought about you sleeping there, you touching yourself while you were stretched out on it."

"Mmmm… all the fucking time. Thinking about you."

"On the floor, all the times we would be too frantic to even make it to the couch. Against the front door, banging into it so hard that the neighbours yell and it just makes you laugh as you keep pounding into me, harder and harder. On your mysterious water bed, watching ourselves in the mirrors." She gasped as he adjusted her position slightly and then slid inside her with an even stroke, filling her completely. She moaned and pushed back against him as he began to thrust slowly, his fingers still keeping their same rhythm against her slick flesh.

"Keep going." His lips moved up her neck in a series of wet, open-mouthed kisses until he stopped to suck on her earlobe before pulling it between his teeth and biting down on it gently.

"My… my apartment…" She was struggling against the arousal coursing through her, making it hard to think, hard to do anything other than give in to the crest her body was so desperately surging toward. "Bubble bath. You surprising me, pulling me gently out of the tub, making love on the bathroom rug. Me, sitting on the kitchen counter, both of us watching as you slide in and out of me, and I'm so wet. So wet for you."

A rumbling groan emerged from Mulder's throat as he bit down harder, the spike of pain in the midst of the overwhelming pleasure sending an equally strong pulse of desire to her core. Her nipples were tingly and hard. She was getting close, so close…

"Kitchen table. You going down on me. My legs over your shoulders as you devour me." She shuddered as the first distant thrum of her orgasm began.

"Scully…" Her name was a half growl, half whimper as his hips undulated faster. His fingers were frantic against her now. "Come for me. Want you to come first."

"My bedroom… Mulder…" She threw her head back against his shoulder as he gripped her even tighter. "My bed… just like this… just like… oh, God…" And she was coming, her whole body shuddering with the force of it. Mulder thrust a few more times before his own body stiffened and he groaned loudly as he pulsed inside her.

They stayed like that, his body fully wrapped around hers, as their breathing stilled and their bodies cooled. It felt incredible, to be overwhelmed by his presence — the full body sensation of skin against skin, his breath against her neck, the smell of sex, of him and her, his contented sigh, the firmness of his arms around her, holding her close. Her heart was so full that it felt like her chest couldn't possibly contain it, that it was about to soar away like a balloon.

"Scully?" He nuzzled the back of her neck with his nose.

"Yeah?"

"You're still my one in five billion. Nothing could ever change that."

She rolled over, with some difficulty as her entire body seemed to have turned to gelatin, so she could face him, stroking the contours of his face with her fingers. She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, still marvelling at the notion that she could. "And you are mine."

Only a short epilogue to go! Mega thanks to my fantastic beta, Josie Lange!