bullock@srv.net        





Rated: R

Spoilers:  all things, Requiem

Summary:  Real life and dreams interspersed 



IN SLEEP SHE SMILED by Clarisse





      He hangs suspended over her, poised to pour himself

into her,and she, a waiting vessel,is briefly distracted 

by the last higher-brain thought she will have tonight: 

that here, in this most intimate of moments, as in all things,

it is their differences and seeming incongruities that make 

them such a perfect fit.  His long, lean body settling into her

rounded curves.  When they are standing, he towers over her, but

prone their bodies seem made for each other, just as in their 

disparate approaches to their investigations they always seem to

fill in the gaps, one for the other.  Together they are more than

the sum of their parts. 



    But it is becoming too hard to consider all this.  His lips

are warm and moist, his eyes hungry for this new experience between

them.  And the weight of his body pressing against hers is 

intoxicating, both new in time and ancient in its pull.  He 

balances precariously on his right arm, his left curling around 

her waist, drawing her body toward him.  This is no dream, 

although she has dreamed of this moment more than she would

admit to anyone, even herself.     

  

***********************************************************

    She had come to his apartment, as she did every Friday, 

to feed his fish and wipe the thin layer of dust from his things.  

When he returned, she wanted everything to be as he had left it, 

needed everything to be the same as it had been before.  Although 

that wasn't exactly true.  His computer, his private files now 

resided in the care of trusted friends, safe from the prying eyes 

of whomever might still be left to pry.  The Consortium was long 

dead, a hideous burnt offering to their own convoluted conspiracy. 

Krycek said the Smoking Man was dead now too, but while some part 

of her was inclined to believe him, she knew instinctively that 

he should not be trusted. And anyway, the Smoking Man had a 

preternatural way of rising from the dead, like some vampire 

in a bad horror movie. 



    Where did the dust come from in this place where the 

windows were never opened and the daily movements of life needed

to stir it up came only once a week when she showed up for this 

mindless ritual of faith in his return?  A domestic X-File of 

sorts which she had neither the desire nor energy to investigate. 



    She had enough difficulty drumming up the enthusiasm to 

tackle the real X-Files that came across her desk each day.  

Her desk.  Her office.  Her name on the door.  The irony was not 

lost on her.  Neither was the irony that, after seven years of 

everything he had seen, they had seen, it only took one Close 

Encounter of the Third Kind witnessed by an Assistance Director 

to turn their previously thankless endeavors into the new cause 

celebre of the FBI.  The basement office remained, her personal 

shrine and, as Skinner could not bring himself to broach the 

subject, it remained the heart of the operation.  But now the 

dungeon they had once been relegated to was augmented with a 

six office suite on the third floor, sunlit and sumptuous by 

Bureau standards. Even the pompous little bean-counter of an 

auditor who had come second-guessing in May and left with a 

black eye and bloodied lip for his budgetary troubles, had 

seen the error of his ways and funds for their investigations 

were now as close to open-ended as government work would allow. 

Even the coffee was drinkable, although her doctor had laid 

down the law that it was strictly decaf from now on. 



    Her new team was good, young, some of them inexperienced, 

but they were sharp and open-minded and were beginning to 

bond with each other in ways that pleased her, although she 

knew that she remained something of an enigma to all of them. 

Kind and supportive, professional in all ways, but distant.  

The Widow Mulder, clothed in the ever-present black of mourning. 

When he came back she hoped he would be pleased that she had held

it together.  She prayed that the price for all the newfound 

assets at their disposal would not be too high.  Because, however 

you looked at it, it had been bought at the terrible cost of 

whatever he was now suffering at the hands of those who had taken 

him.  He had become the proof he had sought for so long.  When he 

came back they would stand together and face those costs, whatever 

they might be. 



    When he came back.   Everything hanging on that eventuality.  

She never considered, never allowed herself to consider, the 

possibility of it being if he came back.  He would return to her, 

as he had so many times before.  Together they would pick up where 

they left off, in their work, in their lives.  With one small 

addition, this impossible miracle growing within her. 



************************************************************

    She is floating now, her body not quite her own.   And he is 

over her and on her and in her  and this is real and it is right 

and it is where she was always meant to be.  And the voice is her 

head, always analyzing the moment, is quieted by the sound of his 

shallow breathing and the rushing whoosh pounding in her ears.  

And he is whispering her name, over and over again.  Scully.  

Her harsh surname. Her armor in a masculine world.  But it falls 

from his lips like a prayer and it is the most intimate and tender 

sound she has ever heard. 

************************************************************



    She finishes feeding the fish, mentally noting that the tank 

needs to be cleaned next week.  She'll ask Frohike to help this 

time.  The last time she had cleaned the tank the smell had 

triggered a wave of nausea that took her by surprise.  She 

of the cast-iron stomach borne of years of performing autopsies 

had finally met her match in the fetid intestinal by-products 

of three little fish.  He had always been the one with the weak 

stomach and would find this sudden chink in her armor amusing, 

endearing.



    She moves through the room, re-dusting and re-straightening 

the surfaces she has dusted and straightened before.  There is 

less dust this week than there was the week before.  She knows 

this weekly ritual isn't necessary but she needs this connection 

to his things in his absence.  She has always been the stable 

center that allows him to soar in his often-amazing feats of 

imagination and insight.  He can fly high because he knows she 

is down on terra firma, holding the rope.  But now she is the 

one who needs something to tether her to reality and his 

apartment has become her anchor.  



    She absentmindedly pulls the Indian blanket from the 

back of his couch. Flipping the blanket to shake out the dust, 

she catches the faint odor of his aftershave and the soapy clean 

fragrance stings her like a slap. The sensation literally takes 

her out at the knees and she finds herself sitting on the couch, 

the couch where all things start and end, and she is weeping now, 

her body wracked with weeks of pent-up emotion. It is all too much. 

Too unfair when they have finally broken through the barriers of 

their mutual fears and hesitation. Too awful that this miracle 

which is the product of their love is something she cannot share 

with him. May never be able to share with him.  She leans into 

the couch, pulling her knees as close to her chest as her growing 

stomach will allow, and drags the heavy blanket along the length of 

her body.  She sleeps. 



**************************************************************

    He is quiet now, his breath shallow and regular, as he lies 

curled around her, his arm draped heavily around the curve of 

her hip, his hand resting on the flat surface of her stomach.  

She lies here languidly poised on the edge of sleep, as warm 

as she has ever been, lying here in his bed, in his arms.  

<<I love you,>> she whispers. He does not answer and 

she thinks perhaps he is already asleep until his damp cheek 

comes to rest against her face and he kisses her so lightly 

on the skin beside her eye that she wonders for a moment 

if she had only imagined it.

***************************************************************



    In sleep, she smiles.