Title: Waiting For Morning (1/1)
Author: Brighid
Spoilers: "Three" and "Small Potatoes"
Rating: PG for some strong language
Category: VA (?)

This is my first X-Files story. Feedback of a constructive nature is
appreciated on any or all counts.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Just borrowing. Will return them, mostly undamaged.
Belong to Chris Carer, 1013, and Fox. Making money? As if!

Want to archive? (blushes) If you like it, sure. Just don't take my name off
it.

Waiting For Morning by Brighid

I have watched through many nights with him. It is, I have found out, part
of the job. Mulder has a knack for inspiring midnight vigils. Often I wait
by a phone, wondering if it will be him, or if this time it will be the
call, the last call, the lonely call. Other times, I have sat and listened
to the thump and hiss of hospital machinery, telling me he was still alive,
despite his bull-headed pursuit of the Truth. Whatever the hell that was.

Yet still, I am surprised when he shows up at my door, past midnight, edgy
and fine-drawn and holding a bottle of wine. Shades of Eddie Van Blundht
haunt me, send a brief shiver through me; but no, this is Mulder, poised in
my doorway as if he doesn't know whether to enter or run away. I don't give
him a choice. I grab the bottle and haul him in.

Still, he doesn't speak. His mouth opens once or twice, and a slow tremour
runs through him, but there are no words of explanation, no easy banter, no
lewd commentary. I reach out, touch his grey sweatshirt lightly, so lightly
that it didn't even graze the skin underneath.

"Mulder? What's wrong?" I feel my brow furrow when he arches away from me,
as if touched by a live wire. "Mulder, why are you here?"

He raises his free hand, and rakes it through his already rumpled hair.
"I've just had a shit-awful night. I thought I'd see you. Saw your light was
on, thought maybe-"

His voice trails off, and he starts to pace like an animal, caged.
Snake-fast he is past me, heading for the door. "Look, this was a stupid
idea. I'm sorry, Scully. I gotta go."

 "MULDER." It isn't a shout, not quite, but it pins him where he stands,
hand hovering over the doorknob. "Mulder, I'm awake, you're here, so why
don't you just sit down and talk about it?"

 He turns to me again, and his face is a mixture of hope, despair, and
something else that makes my gut knot ever so slightly. I move into the
living room, stopping the video I had been watching, then go on through into
the kitchen to get a couple of wine glasses and a cork-screw. I join him on
the couch, and wait while he pours out the wine.

 He looks at me over the rim of his glass as he passes me mine. A faintly
satirical gleam lights his eye as our gazes meet. "D‚j… vu all over again,
eh, Scully?"

 "Don't remind me, Mulder." I tilt my head and wait.

 His long fingered hands play fretfully with the wineglass, raising it to
his mouth but he doesn't really drink any. His gaze slips from mine,
wandering everywhere and nowhere at once. I reach out, tap his temple.
Again, he jumps as if electrocuted, nearly dropping the wine. "Spill. What
brings you here, Mulder?"

 He meets my gaze again, and the naked helplessness in his eyes almost
unmakes me. "Would you believe I just wanted to talk to you? Just - talk?"
he says at last, his voice low and a little breathless. I lean back further
into the white embrace of my couch, and take him in. Rumpled, a little
wild-eyed, clad in a worn grey sweatshirt and equally worn jeans. Unlaced
sneakers. Shaking hands.

 "So talk," I order him with a gentleness that surprises even me. He shoots
me a grateful look, and relaxes into the sofa. It is slow at first, halting,
but eventually it becomes a torrent, and I am drowning in the life of Fox
William Mulder. Everything he is laid at my feet, a sort of human sacrifice.

 And he never drinks a drop of the damn wine.

 Neither do I, really. It is a prop, something to hold onto and stare at
when things get too damned intense. I nearly snap the stem in two when he at
last halts, and turns that hazel gaze on me. "It's your turn," he says, his
voice rough and worn from two hours of talking.

 I stare open-mouthed a minute, stall by sipping at the wine. "What do you
want to know?" I ask at last.

 "Everything," he replies, and his hands are shaking even worse than before.
"I want to know everything about you, everything I've missed the last six
years, everything I almost lost six months ago. Everything." His voice
throbs, pulses through me.

 I tell him everything. It is like stripping off my clothes in front of him,
and he watches me as if memorizing every detail of my face, my form, my
soul.

 Eventually there is only silence between us, but it is not empty at all. It
weaves us together, strong as spider-silk. "That what you wanted to know?" I
ask at last.

 "Yes." His gaze is calmer now, the wildness of midnight soothed away as
dawn approaches. "Thank-you."  He sets the wineglass down, and reaches over
to take my hand in his.

 I am sprawled bonelessly against the couch, and let myself be pulled
against his shoulder. There is a brief tensing of his body, and then he
relaxes under me.  "What brought all this on?" I ask at last.

 I can hear the incredibly slow beat of his heart underneath my head, slow
even for him. When he finally speaks, his voice echoes like summer thunder
in my ears. "When you were gone - abducted - I investigated a case out in
California-" he pauses, and I search my memory, trying to make a connection.

 "I made some people very angry. One of them managed to find me tonight. It
was-" he hesitates again, and I sense that he is looking for words that will
let me understand something he isn't sure I'm ready for. "It was
unpleasant," he says at last. "Made me realize that my priorities have been
a little fucked up the last few years. I've almost lost you twice, and I've
never even totally known what I was losing. I just thought it was time to
get to know you, let you know me. More than time."

 I sit up, a bit concerned, and still trying to peg the case he was
referring to. "This person that 'found' you-" I begin, but he reaches out
and shushes me with gentle fingers.

 "S'okay," he says, and smiles that slightly crooked smile that is at once
endearing and maddening. "It's taken care of." He yawns a bit, and
stretches. "What time is it?"

 "5:50," I reply, glancing at the display on the VCR.

 He seems to fold in on himself again, drawing subtly away from me despite
the fact that we are still touching. "Almost dawn. Time I was going."

 He stands, pulls me to my feet. For a moment we stay like that, staring at
one another. A smaller, quieter version of his earlier smile ghosts his face
as he bends in, presses cool lips against my forehead. "Thanks, Scully. For
everything."

 I follow him to the doorway, let him out into the hall, knowing it is past
time for him to go home, yet wanting to keep him here all the same. It is
not until I have locked the door behind him, and I am clearing away the
bottle and glasses that I make the connection my subconscious has been
striving for. The case in California was-vampires. Vampires who burst into
flame in sunlight.

 And dawn is coming. The wine bottle drops from my suddenly nerveless
fingers, making an ugly stain on the white sofa. The rational part of me,
the Scully who balances Mulder, scoffs and jeers at the welling panic, but
still - I am frightened by what Mulder's belief might lead him to.

 I am out the door as fast as I can run, not even bothering to lock it
behind me. The elevator is old and slow; I take the stairs in a headlong
rush, moved by an unreasoning panic. I reach the street as full dawn breaks,
washing away the fragile pink with a burst of white and gold. I see his car,
but no Mulder. I spin around, searching the street for some sign of him, but
find nothing.

 And then I hear it, the faint whoosh of a fire catching and holding. I look
up to the roof of my building. There, brighter than the dawn, is a
man-shape, ablaze and burning white-hot. There is the faint smell of
scorched flesh, but even more sickening is the fact that it is moving,
swaying on the edge, arms outstretched. I move forward just as the form
topples over. It is oddly silent as it plummets, and I expect to be crushed
even as I race up to try and break its fall. His fall. Mulder's fall.

 The body breaks apart before it has even passed the third story. A fine
down of ash blankets me. It gets in my hair, clogs my mouth and nose so that
I can barely breathe, and covers my eyes so that it blinds me. I am weeping
and staggering, and the early morning commuters must think me mad, or at
least drunk. But I only had one glass of wine.

 While Mulder had drunk none.

END