disclaimer: not mine, don't sue
this is where it gets a bit M. some of you will clap your hands and squeal. :)
It is the next morning when she next opens her eyes. The sun is shining in because they forgot to close the curtains last night.
She thinks it is all a dream until he moves and opens his eyes.
A wake.
A live.
"Hi," she smiled, kind of embarrassed that she fell asleep on his chest. Scully loved it there, though, and settled herself back in. Mulder wrapped his arms around her again.
"Hi," he said back, brushing some of her hair off her forehead. Even though it's morning and they slept awkwardly last night, her hair still looks amazing. She looks amazing. Mulder tried to find some way to tell her that.
"Did you sleep well?" he opted to ask instead. If he had left it up to Scully, she would have not said another word for the rest of the morning.
"Mmmm, I did," she says contently, stretching and yawning as is custom to do in the morning. He didn't yawn. He didn't stretch. He watched her.
He couldn't take his eyes off her.
"I'm sorry about what happened last night. I didn't mean to make you cry."
"You didn't make me cry, Mulder. The movie did."
"Scully, you cried for a half hour before falling asleep. I turned the movie off so that you wouldn't, but you kept crying. I don't think you cried because of the movie."
He was right.
She didn't want him to be.
"I guess it was just seeing you. After all this time, it feels like we haven't been away from each other for more than a couple minutes. But it's been so long, and I've missed so much. I've wasted so much. My plan didn't work."
"What plan?"
"My plan to live a normal life. Ever since I had started working with you, maybe even a little bit before, I came up with these various plans that would help me live normally. Help me find a guy. Help me to settle down. Help me to start a family."
Everything that they had done together had squashed that, he realized.
"None of them worked. So, after we were reassigned the last time, instead of fighting, I felt moving was the best thing for me to do. It was like Plan Z or something. I was determined to make it work. But it didn't. And I'm sorry."
She was sorry.
He knew she was.
She knew he knew.
They both knew that they could never be sorry enough.
"You had no way of knowing that it wouldn't have worked. What if it would have, and you didn't go? I would never ever want to be the reason for your unhappiness," he explained to her, sitting up and brushing her hair back from her face. She looked like she was going to cry again. If she were anything like she was when she left, though, he knew she'd hold out until the last possible second. It would take an extreme amount of emotion to make her cry. She wouldn't just start bawling. Not like those girls in the movies.
Because
Real
Life
Isn't
Like
The
Movies.
"That's just it, though. You weren't the source of my unhappiness. Not long after I left, while I was still too stubborn to admit it, I figured out that you were my happiness. You were my other half. I've never had anything with anybody like what I had with you."
Like what she hoped she still had with him.
"So I wasted two years of my life rotting away in Salt Lake, unhappy and nothing like I hoped I would ever be. And you know what, Mulder? I'd probably still be there if Mark hadn't dragged me to this thing. I'd still be there if we hadn't run into each other. Because I'm too fucking stubborn to come back to you…"
She was on the verge of tears and when she closed her eyes, they came out. They ran down her still sleep-rosy cheeks until he kissed them off. Her face was burning with emotion, and he could feel the heat radiating off her when his lips touched her skin. Mulder wanted to stay strong for her, but in reality, he wanted to cry just as hard.
Maybe even harder.
Because everything that she had said was exactly what he had been feeling.
"No, Scully…" he started but stopped to try to hold on to his tears, "it's my fault. I didn't come looking for you. I let you be, because I thought that was what you would want. Even if I wanted you, I wanted to let you go. But there was this voice in the back of my head telling me that I would never be the same without you. If only I had bought a fucking ticket when I went after you to the airport--"
"You went to the airport after me?" she asked in disbelief because that was exactly what she had wanted him to do. She remembered looking for him, knowing that if he only came running down the terminal, nothing would change. She would not have been able to keep herself from running straight into his arms for good. For once, they did things like in the movies. But, unlike the movies
They
Missed
Their
Chance.
They thought.
"Yeah, I went to the airport. But too late. You were already long gone by the time I came to my senses. And I blamed you! I blamed you; I thought that if you really wanted to come back you would have! I was so stupid, Scully! I actually thought you would have come back on your own if you wanted to!" he yelled because he couldn't believe himself. He couldn't believe he would trust this woman to do what her heart told her to.
She didn't listen to her heart.
She heard with her head.
Hearts can feel but they can't think or listen or make decisions.
She didn't listen because she didn't think there was anything to listen to.
"Mulder, how can you blame yourself? You didn't leave! I left! I'm the one that uprooted my life just to run away from the one thing that was keeping me whole! And you're right, I wouldn't have come back! There's something wrong with me, Mulder, that makes me so stupid when it comes to these things. It's like I can't do what everyone expects me to do, yet my whole life I've striven to live up to everyone's expectations."
And she thought she could hurt him in the process.
Didn't she know that hurting him was just like hurting herself?
They cried and shook and held each other when they ran out of words. At that moment, they could only feel.
But not with their hearts or heads.
With their hands.
With their lips and tongues.
He replaced her tears with his thumbs as he kissed her lips passionately. He didn't want her to feel this way. He did the only thing that he thought would make her better.
Would it make her worse?
She thought about that as she slid his shirt over her head, but the second his lips connected, she couldn't concentrate. She wasn't thinking anymore.
She was only feeling.
Him.
His lips on her breast.
His hand in her hair.
His hand on her heart.
His tongue on her hip.
His chest beneath her fingers.
His back on her palm.
They lay down together, suddenly rid of all barriers.
When they came unto each other, it was like coming home.
She was all he wanted.
He was all she needed.
They didn't even close the curtains.
