Three Times III - Restart

Restart

Even with recent releases playing on the video screens transatlantic flights are boring as hell. Fortunately I was asleep for the first four hours, despite the attendants' attempts to keep the passengers awake with drinks and food..

The combination of jet lag and a night spent high in the branches of a tree overlooking an English cornfield beats insomnia, even for me.

Lucky that I managed to get my flight home changed.

Lucky?

Would it have been so hard spending a couple of days wandering the Oxfordshire countryside, looking up old haunts, checking out the city sights, checking in with a few old friends?

Apparently. Anyway, it was far too hard to do alone.

I shouldn't have bothered flying over, I nearly didn't. Stubbornness, that was the only reason I actually carried on with the trip.

OK, so corn circles are dumb and most are the work of hoaxers. Like last night's batch of Young Farmers, who didn't look that young to me, who arrived approximately 30 minutes after last orders at the local pub.

But what if some of them aren't?

What if, in one tiny place, at one brief moment in time you could capture a cornfield making its own art-work? What if you could get some new weather phenomenon on film, or analyze the soil to identify some weird chemical migration, or some wondrous geothermal event? What if you could explain it with science, or with something as yet unknown to science?

I shouldn't sigh. It makes the people on either side of me nervous. Which reminds me how cramped my legs are getting. No aisle seats available, of course, all gone to those travelers who planned in advance.

Aren't you supposed to wander around on flights of more than a couple of hours? Stretch the legs, get the circulation going? Maybe if I told them it's necessary to roam the aisles to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis then the people I'd have to shift before I can stand up would smile and spring happily into action? Or maybe not.

Maybe I should have tried harder to convince Scully to come with me? Maybe if I'd talked about quaint stone cottages in the Chilterns, rather than the magic of a Mandelbrot series amid the cereals? Ouch, that pun was bad.

Whatever.

She's not here. Get over it.

Why had I wanted her to come with me anyway? We've spent most of the last two weeks avoiding one another. I've seldom been more grateful to hear Skinner's voice than when he told me that I was off the surveillance team and moreover, that Scully wasn't.

It's hard to believe, but the thought of spending any more hours in that car was threatening to send me cabin crazy.

Our customary mix of comradely calm, spiced with lively argument and the occasional bout of earth shatteringly trivial gossip had never seemed that hard before. Before the elephant took residence in the living room.

Back seat of the car. Whatever.

Just how do you start that conversation?

"We fucked. It didn't work. Wanna' try again?"

"When you said, 'Let me love you,' just what were you getting at?"

"I'm sorry about the other night. Can we still be friends?"

I could have started the conversation. Starting it isn't the problem. Having no fucking clue how she might respond is the problem.

Her words from the office echo through my brain, "Why don't you ever just stay still?"

I wouldn't know what I'd be missing.

Right now, what I'm missing is her.

After all these years, Dana Scully is still an unexplained mystery to me.

A puzzle, amenable neither to scientific logic nor to paranormal leaps of faith, she retains her status as the enigmatic Doctor.

Hormones? I don't dare ask.

Hey Scully - was that PMT the other day? And after your little excursion with cancer man - was that some kind of mid-cycle horniness? If I charted your mood swings, would I be looking at psychology or bio-chemistry?

She'd kill me.

Fair enough, I suppose.

Oh dear. She seems disturbed by the expression on my face. No wonder.

A few diversionary tactics should come in handy about now.

"I just find it hard to believe."

"What part?"

"The part where I go away for two days, and your whole life changes."

She denies it, of course. I wouldn't expect her to do anything else.

And even in this mood of easy-going calm, I can't help but fuck it up. "Well, for you, that's like saying you're having David Crosby's baby."

Great analogy. She could have been having mine.

Why did I bring that up?

Because we're here, on my couch again, having a conversation that skirts around as much as it reveals? Because we never really talked about what would happen if the IVF treatment had worked, and we never really talked about it, when it didn't.

Was I the not-quite-anonymous donor? Or something more?

It doesn't matter, it never happened.

Daniel meant something to her once. I haven't met him so I shouldn't be judging, but even from those few clues she's supplied, I can't stop myself from profiling him.

The older man, the authority figure. Powerful, at least in Scully's intellectual and academic domain - the world of reason where she had once expected to live her life. He would have been gratified by her attention, lapped it up.

The pretty young woman with the brain power to be his assistant, who he would flatter during the acceptance speech for his latest award, and even gallantly add to the credits list on his latest paper.

He'd still wanted her, even after she'd walked away. Had she wanted his children?

In a different life, with different choices, I suspect that I would have still ended up right here.

Scully could have been almost anywhere. In which case, maybe I wouldn't have been here, maybe I'd have been found with a bullet through the back of my head a long time ago.

"And all the... choices would then lead to this very moment. One wrong turn, and... we wouldn't be sitting here together. Well, that says a lot. That says a lot, a lot, a lot. That's probably more than we should be getting into at this late hour."

She's fallen asleep.

Maybe that's fortunate.

At least I can't make the mistake that I made last time we sat on this couch and talked.

Bed? No, she looks quite content where she is. If I say anything, she'll hear quite the wrong suggestion and we've done so well to get to here. Perhaps nothing did happen for a reason, perhaps we needed that brief time apart to remind us of why we're together.

Come on. Don't get maudlin. Wrap a blanket round her. If you wake her up, she'll blink and look embarrassed, then she'll be racing for her shoes and heading for the door. There's no need. Stay the night, Scully.

Stay forever.

My body clock's all over the place. I never actually switched to British time. Obviously. But then I'm not ready to sleep now, either. Despite it being 2 a.m.

No TV, because that might wake her up. Fortunately, the bed's ready to sleep in, a miracle based on a theory that if I changed the linen before I left, then I wouldn't be fumbling around exhausted when I got home. It kind of worked.

At least it worked well enough that it's a joy to slither between clean sheets, so much so that I can't be bothered to go hunting for pajamas.

I couldn't smell her on the pillows anymore, anyway. So washing the linen wasn't symbolic or anything.

Shit. Just how fucked up was that?

Get over it.

If something's meant to happen, it will.

Right. And when did I start believing in fate?

Stop it. No more. Today we made progress. How long since I could last say that? Seven years to get to here, nearly forty if Scully's analysis of roads traveled is correct. She needs time. I need time.

Close your eyes. Deep breaths. Remember those exercises, relax one joint, one muscle at a time. Let it go.

Toes, feet, ankles. Does it work like that? Can you do both feet at the same time? What about toes, can you do all five together? Aren't there two bones in each toe? No, three, like in fingers.

Hey, Scully - get in here. I need an anatomy lesson. And seeing as you're getting hooked up to your Buddhist inner-self maybe you can throw me a few bones about meditation.

Bad idea. Things are waking up that have no need to be on call. Go back to sleep. Down boy.

Scully certainly knows how to pick her moments. She steps through the bedroom door, and I have to close my eyes to pretend I'm asleep. I can't keep up the act for long, I can't keep up the act at all once I smell her and realize that she must be standing right next to the bed.

"I thought you'd be asleep."

So she thought that it would be a good time to come into the bedroom? "I kind of am."

"I'm sorry."

Maybe the jetlag is kicking in, or perhaps my brain's just running under par because I don't quite follow.

She senses my confusion and carries on. "I fell asleep while we were talking."

I try to keep it light. "While I was talking, actually."

And she blushes, and I have to rearrange the covers because I really don't want her to see my distinctly unspiritual reaction to the fresh pink glow of her cheeks. Why didn't I want her to hurry home?

She purrs. "You said that our choices led to this very moment."

My heart's pounding; only the fact that it's skipping every other beat is stopping it from going off the scale. One wrong turn, and we wouldn't be together.

She swallows, and her voice becomes a whisper. "But how can you know until after the choice has been made?"

You don't, that's life.

My hand brushes over hers, and she throws me a curve ball by deciding that now's a good moment to sit on the bed. "Do you have a spare toothbrush?"

And the question is so incongruous that I nearly fail to answer. "Bathroom cabinet," I finally remember, and then instantly panic in case there's something incriminating or even plain unsanitary lurking in there with it.

"It's OK, I won't look, straight in and out."

What?

Oh, I see what she means, and nearly laugh at the way even her simplest comment is being passed through every translation circuit in my head before coming back distorted, like some Chinese whisper at the end of a very roundabout journey. What language was that?

When she returns from the bathroom it looks like she's wearing only my pajama top. Where did she find that? The laundry basket, I realize, discarded unworn like most of clothes I took to England. And suddenly I understand the coded message she was sending me in the undocumented and mystical language of Toothbrush. She's planning on staying the night.

"May I stay?" she asks. I guess I must have looked too dumbstruck to be trusted to translate. And she's probably right to spell it out, because that's not a question she'd bother asking if she was heading for the couch.

Is this where our choices led? I ease back the cover as an invitation to slide in beside me. And there's a nasty taste of deja vu in my mouth as I ask her, "What do you want me to do?"

Her memory obviously doesn't work the same way as mine. Or if it does, then she's a better liar than me because she gives nothing away. There's no shiver of unguarded flashback. Nor does she reply with the words I've stored and replayed, and filed and rerun, and heard echo through my brain a thousand times in the last week. There's no, "Let me love you."

There's a different sort of statement in her action as she edges carefully towards me.

And it's only now that I remember that I'm naked, wild prey to her cultured hunter.

She licks her lips and that's not fair, because that's my job.

I don't know if she's moving in slow motion or if I'm experiencing the kind of clarity that people get in the instant just before the crash, but I do know she's heading my way. Inexorably.

Ready or not.

Not.

Did she sense my confusion? Is that why she stops her approach? The gleam in her eye, that I'd read as predator, morphs into uncertain.

She talks quietly, her eyes firmly locked on the corner of the pillowcase somewhere behind my left ear. "I wasn't assuming... anything."

"Nor was I."

"I should go."

No. No. No. I don't want her to go. What the hell am I doing? Scaring her away? Why?

"Stay." And I spread my arms and hold my breath, and I force myself to keep still and stay silent and just listen to the surge of blood that rushes through my head as I wait for her decision.

Some bit of my brain is arguing that this is the kill or cure solution and that one way or another this "problem" will soon be over. The rest of it's screaming at me to retreat before it's too late, because resolution might not mean closure, but the snuffing out of hope.

Every second that passes takes me closer to drowning. She said images from her life came to her in a Buddhist Temple. Well, how's this for an empathic response, the images of mine are flashing before my eyes right now.

I'm free, Scully. Are you?

Never mind. It doesn't matter. We're both tired. There's no hurry. It's easy, all I have to do is retreat and offer her an escape route. "Pass me my pajamas."

She's not looking at me but her lip quivers when I say the words and I know that I've just fucked up again.

What the hell am I doing? I'm a guy, doesn't that mean I'm ever ready?

Maybe I can issue a correction, something that she can take as an offer, or leave as a joke. "Or snuggle up and keep me warm."

Her mouth quirks into the barest smile, her eyes shift from the pillow to my chest and I guess she's checking my position in the bed so she can decide how to accede to my request. I've got no doubt that she plans to.

Hi, Scully. She sidles into my arms and I wrap myself around her. Her hair tickles my nose and I rub my cheek against its softness. Her ass wriggles against my groin and common sense almost flies out the window. No. I can't. Not yet.

I yawn to suggest that I'm heading off to sleep and to invite her to do the same. "Are you OK there?"

She yawns in sympathy and mumbles back sleepy words. "I'm right where I should be."

Actually, Scully. You're right where you shouldn't be. And that's just fine by me.

It only takes a couple of minutes before realize that my attempt to feign sleep has had a remarkable affect - her breathing has changed and the occasional soft snore tells me that she's out for the count. I guess it's not just my voice that puts her to sleep, my naked body has the same effect.

Should I be pleased by her trust or upset by her lack of interest?

Neither, I was pretending to be sleepy; she just assumed that I was telling the truth and fell in step. Like a good partner would.

Which leaves me free to perform that least rewarding of tasks, picking over the entrails of this weekend's events and trying to analyze what really happened to bring us to this place.

When Scully fell in love with Daniel Waterstone, she fell in love with a man who was around the same age as her own father.

Her mostly absent father. Her high days and holidays father - if she was lucky. The man who came to praise and smile, but who was never there to shout at, or to lean on.

The father who didn't need to know her doubts and fears. After all, their time together was short, and he was a busy man. Why waste precious moments on complaints? Why admit weakness that could only disappoint or cause concern, when she could show herself worthy?

Melissa leaving home must have felt like a betrayal.

Poor little Dana, all alone, the apple of her father's eye. The man she loved from afar, but seldom touched. The man who would praise her, as long as she kept her feelings hidden away.

When Scully fell in love with Daniel Waterstone he may already have been a little older than I am now. Not important, we'd both qualify as comfortably middle-aged in the big picture of Scully's life. Daddy age.

Poor Dana, to be loved by Daniel. The man who would praise her as long as she kept her feelings hidden away. So long as she was a supporter. So long as she put his life and his values ahead of her own.

And what does that make me?

She twists in my arms and I'm terrified that she'll wake up before I'm ready. Quiet, Scully. Shhh. Sleep. Just let it go. I slide my fingers over her hip and she settles back against me

Funny how my instructions to go back to dreaming work on her when they don't work on me. I guess she's been worried about Daniel lying in that hospital bed. She's probably running desperately low on sleep.

What the hell am I doing?

I don't profile her. I just don't.

I guess people profile all the time. Casually analyzing friends, colleagues, the kid on the fast-food counter who may or may not have just spat on your burger. I try to leave it at the office.

The problem is - I'm too good at it. By instinct and by training. A dangerous combination.

Phoebe.

Wow. There's a blast from the past! The first woman I knew too well. Do I still regret figuring out exactly what she saw in me? I regretted it for years. But it's an old wound now. Of significance only because it's a warning not to go looking for things I don't want to find.

Not that I've ever learned that lesson.

In fact, not learning that lesson is probably the story of my life.

Phoebe, bless her icy little heart, was a vampire, who milked her victims for emotions. I was a shamefully good food supply.

What sort of a meal is Scully looking for?

Whatever it is, I suspect I'm a disappointment. Not generous enough in my praise, not firm enough with my orders.

Or did she kick that habit when she walked away from Daniel?

Oh, I want to believe. I just don't. I don't know that much about her love life, but I do know she dated her instructor at Quantico.

Ed Jerse - was that a burst of adolescent rebellion? Against me? Against the injustice and emptiness of her life? Against my failure to live up to her high expectations? Against death?

I could choose to pin it on the cancer. I could.

And I could choose to ignore her empathy with my next door neighbor as he sat her down and told her the story of her life. But she did kick his programming, didn't she? She escaped from his story. Agent Scully is already in love.

I know that.

I've just got no idea what it means.

No wonder I quit profiling.

Slow measured breaths. Relax. Sleep. Come on, it's not like you're getting anywhere.

Breathe, you idiot. Relax. Sleep.

Breathe. Relax. Sleep.

Let's count sheep. Stars. Mutants. Bodies in shallow graves. Opportunities lost. Mistakes made.

Do numbers go that high?

I guess I did fall asleep, because I know that this sensation is waking up. It's still dark. Scully's still in my arms, but I can tell she's not asleep. Her breathing's a little off, her muscles lie a little too stiffly. She's awake, and yet she's still here? Maybe I am still dreaming.

"Awake?" She whispers.

"Dreaming."

"Nice dream?"

"The best."

"Dream on," she says, her voice rumbling through my chest as she starts to turn in my arms.

Scully? Don't do this, unless you mean it. Please.

My fingers slide through her hair and across her shoulders and she shivers in reply.

She lifts her face to mine and we're locked into an instant kiss.

She tastes sleepy and her lips part. The contact is soft and electric and she sighs like it's the most natural thing in the world. Me and her. In bed. Me naked. Her...

"Lose the shirt."

"Hmmm," she says.

And she rolls away from me, just far enough to give herself a chance of doing as I ask.

Leaning on my elbow, I watch the unveiling. "Beautiful."

She smiles hesitantly, as if startled, as if she's surprised by the word. She pushes forward to close the gap and her lips ignore mine and come to rest on the bridge of my nose instead. And I can't help but laugh at the incongruity of my word and her action.

Her lips move on and she nuzzles up against my cheek

I don't want to wake up from this dream. Her hand sweeps slowly down my back and I flex under her touch. Incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally gaining new points of contact for my freshly wakened cock to press against.

We've done this before, or something like it. But I don't remember the taste of her skin, or the heat of her body, or the smell of her arousal. How strange, to have known her, yet to have learned nothing.

How wonderful, to have a second chance.

"Ahh, Scully."

And it's the last thing I can say before the need overtakes me. She almost jumps out of the bed when my tongue touches her nipple. OK, I get the picture. No sudden moves. Not a problem. She's small but there's still plenty to explore.

Her fingers play with my hair as I move down her body and she nearly wrenches a chunk out as my lips brush over her belly button.

"Sorry," she says, but there's a quiver in her voice that doesn't sound at all apologetic.

I made her quiver! Other men probably award themselves points for groans. But hell, a quiver, from Scully, that's got to be a good three pointer.

I slide lower and she presses her fingers into my skull as an order to stop. What now? Thankfully, I'm able to block the question from hitting my lips.

"You don't have to," she says politely.

No kidding. And I shake my head a little to remind her to release her grip on my hair.

But she doesn't release it and her body tenses underneath me. My chin rests against the top of her curls and I lick the pale skin below her belly button and memorize the smell of her, the feel of her.

OK, whatever you say, Scully. I've got seven years worth of fantasies to work through, but I know that in the real world we're beginners. In any case my least important fantasies are the sexual ones.

I read a psychology paper once on parent-infant bonding. The hypothesis was that we don't cuddle up to our young because we love them, rather that we learn to love our kids by hugging them.

I've seen similar work on adult sexuality.

Is that the experiment that Scully's running here? Finding herself bonded to me in some kind of bizarre post-modern arranged marriage - is she now testing out the idea that physical contact feeds and reinforces desire?

Reassured that I'm planning to head up her body, her fingers relax a little, but she doesn't move them away. I guess she's still nervous.

Hell, Scully. So am I.

I'm trying to find a way to dance with you without treading on your toes.

I roll onto my side, pulling her with me and ease back to give myself enough space to look at her. If we ever ran away to some far off beach, saw sunlight for once, would she tan? Wear extra strong sun-screen? Would she choose to sit in the shade?

Or would she play in the waves with me?

Of course she'd play. She's been doing that for years.

I trace the high peaks and low plains of her body with my index finger and her hand strokes quietly over my face.

I attempt to say something about "last time" but I don't even get as far as completing the phrase before she seals my lips with her finger.

"This is the first time," she says, and her words sound like poetry - premeditated as well as rhythmic.

Her knuckles trail across my throat and down my body. Lying down we're close to the same height and as I curl into her touch everything is close to hand.

My cock twitches in anticipation and pushes shamelessly into the contact as her knuckles brush close by. She sighs and my breathing fails.

Whatever she wants is fine by me. Last time, and there was a last time despite Scully's words. Last time, she wanted control and I couldn't allow it. This time, she can have whatever she chooses.

"Whatever you want," I tell her.

And though I guess the words are ambiguous she seems to find some meaning, because her breathing hitches and her fist closes around my eager penis. At least he's not having to analyze her every move.

The little head can think for himself. Her thumb presses along the vein and an electric shock surges through me.

Her eyes seek mine and we're kissing again. Tongues duel and lips brush and teeth nip and it's enough to leave us both breathless.

I trace the curve of her spine as she gently squeezes. I slide my hand across her hip and down, and she throws her head back as my thumb finds the wet heat between her legs. And she is wet. Wonderfully, aromatically wet. For me. For our first time.

Her thighs part in invitation, and I slide a finger inside.

"Ahh," she says and buries her face in my neck, arching her back to maintain our contact while giving our hands the freedom to move.

Her fingers take advantage of the space, shifting over me. Caressing and stroking, testing my response. The sensation builds too fast for comfort or even for easy pleasure so I file it under experience instead.

"Am I too rough?"

How can she ask that? "Too beautiful," I reply and let my fingers move through her curls. Another finger joins the first, slowly stroking into her. The angle's awkward, so I have to content myself with letting the heel of my hand circle her mons and hoping that the indirect pressure will feel good.

She groans, so I guess it must be at least partly successful.

"Too much," she adds, and I ease back.

I find her hand, pulling it away from my body and onto hers. "Guide me," I tell her. And the little head howls at the big head about how dumb a move I've just made.

"Ahh," she says, as I finally catch onto the rhythm she needs.

"Join me," I suggest when I realize how close she is.

She does and I clear a space for her to play with her clit while I focus on the in and out of my fingers.

"God." She says, bucking, her head slammed back on the pillow, her eyes painfully tightly closed. Her breathing stutters to a halt, returning long seconds later as a series of gasps.

I stop moving, and her muscles' convulsions fade to tiny tremors.

Silent minutes tick away and it occurs to me that she might have fallen asleep, which I admit makes me smile, despite any temporary inconvenience it might cause me.

"Mulder."

Not asleep, then. "Hmmm?"

"Daniel."

And I tense but I try to respond. "It's OK, there's nothing to explain." Is there?

"We were never lovers. We never actually..."

Well, of course you didn't, Scully. It's called the Incest Taboo. How could you actually?

And this time, I guess I couldn't stop her from feeling the way my body reacted, the stiffness that locks my joints and paralyses my muscles.

"What do you want me to do?" she adds.

"Let me love you."

And this time she gets the shiver of deja vu and I hear a tiny cry emerge from deep in her throat.

"It's OK," I tell her. "Any time," I add.

The odd thing is, I mean it.