Friday By The One With Red Hair *Spoiler Alert!* Never Again and Leonard Betts. Disclaimer: They ain't mine. I didn't do it. I was drugged! Rating: PG Classification: Mulder/Scully UST, light angst Timeline: Set the evening that M and S get home after Leonard Betts. Archive: Anywhere, but please let me know at ds4fm@orange.net Summary: Mulder thinks aloud about Scully and the events of the last few weeks. ---- Friday -- I'm sitting at my desk, looking out of my window, watching the night go by. It's warm outside, but I'm cold. I shudder. It's Friday night. Well, Saturday morning, to be precise - about 2am - and we just got back from a case in Pittsburg. Nasty stuff - a man made of cancer, eating cancer, killing people who had cancer. Cancer. I mull the idea around in my head for a while. One of those things, I decide, that you hear about so often that it just doesn't seem real. I look down at the phone. A puddle of light from a street lamp is illuminating the speed dials. I consider calling Scully, but something stops me. What's going on? Ending a case on a Friday night has always been nice. A good way to finish off the week and actually get some sort of weekend, even if it is spent doing the paperwork. I've always like Friday nights. We'd developed some sort of routine. Or, at least, I felt that some sort of routine had manifested itself, even if she hadn't noticed. I don't know. Anyway, if it'd been a regular Friday at the office then we'd go our separate ways. I'd go home with some files and settle down for a quiet evening in. It used to be that I'd stay up working until about midnight and then put on a video or two and fall asleep on my couch, but since Scully and I started working together, that changed. I found myself consistently working until about ten before sitting down with a video, ostensibly for some time to myself but really just as an excuse to fantasise about my partner. She would normally call me about about midnight or whenever she went to bed, we'd have a short conversation and then I'd curl up on my couch and dream about her all night. Routine. Not that she's probably aware of any of it. Sometimes I think I should feel guilty for what I do. She's my partner, we work together, we trust each other. But the truth is that firstly there's something going on between the two of us that is going to have to be addressed soon, or else we're both going to go nuts. I've seen the way she looks at me and I know I'm not the only one with the late- night fantasy sessions. I can see it in her eyes. Secondly, I'm a man, and arguably it doesn't matter who it's about so long as I keep everything in good working order. It's not like I'm hurting anybody. Anyway, back to my point. Friday nights on the way home from a case have been different to that for a long time now. Normally we end up driving back to Scully's apartment, ordering a pizza and sitting up late watching a movie or just talking. Sure, I always take a bunch of files with me so we can pretend to ourselves that it's just work, but of course it isn't. It's not like we go into deep and meaningful discussions, per se - although we talk about her faith, my beliefs, the stuff that crops up in our work but which we normally approach in a more professional manner. Normally we talk for way longer than we realise and before I know it it's two in the morning and she's invited me to stay. She crawls off to her bedroom and leaves me on her couch and its fluffy afghans and pillows. She may think she's tough, but Scully's textiles are way up there on the 'girly' scale. I like that about her. So why tonight, on a post-case-Friday-night, am I sitting alone at my desk, wondering if I should call my partner? I don't know what happened recently. Everything seemed to be going so well. We were laughing more, smiling more. I even thought maybe that conversation that we needed to have was on its way to coming out. Sometimes the tension was pulled so tight between us that it was all I could do not to just crush her to me and never let her go. And then, a few weeks ago, the tension changed. She stopped smiling at my jokes and started scowling when she came in each morning. She flipped out about not having a desk, before taking off and getting involved with the Psycho Tattoo Guy who nearly got her killed. I nearly hit the roof when I read her report. She left the room after handing it to me, as if she was ashamed of what happened, but when she came back she seemed almost proud. She told me it wasn't about me, but I could tell just by looking at her that it was. Psycho Tattoo Guy. She'd be so mad if she knew that's how I think of him, but right now I don't care. She knows how desperately I want to find out if she slept with him. Why the hell do I even care? I don't own her. So I'm in love with her. So she's all I think about. So what? That doesn't mean she feels the same about me, and don't I know that for a fact. But I do care. I feel betrayed and hurt and used, in some strange way. Like she deliberately went out and found some guy, to see how she'd react. It makes me sick that I feel that way. I try not to let her see it, but of course she does. She reads my mind just as much as I read hers, God knows that much is true. The worst thing is that I just can't tell if she's mad at me, or relieved or disgusted or just confused. All I know for sure is that two weeks have passed - that's two regular-office-Friday-nights - and she hasn't called me on either of them. So I guess she got tired of playing Mrs Spooky with me. We work side by side week in, week out. We see each other most weekends. We have spent many a late night in a cheap motel watching a bad movie and eating popcorn together because our flight got cancelled, someone else got killed or bad weather stopped us being able to drive to the airport. I fell in love with her; she got tired of me. Fine. But it's not fine. Tonight was a different kind of Friday night rejection. She didn't turn me away because she's sick of me - she turned me away because of the case. Leonard Betts preyed on the sick. Leonard Betts attacked Scully. There: I admitted it to myself. She's clearly already convinced herself that she's got cancer, and I can't avoid the fact that such a deduction makes sense, given the circumstances. But I don't want that to be true. Just thinking about it scares the bejeezus out of me, and I saw fear in her tonight as I carried her overnight bag up the stairs to her apartment. The lift had to choose this week to break down, the week when she was too tired and miserable to carry her own luggage. I dropped her bag just inside the doorway, but I knew I wouldn't be staying in that warm, inviting place before she even turned around and told me that she was tired and would see me on Monday. So home I came, home to an empty apartment. I fed my fish, I sat down on this hard wooden chair and I started to think hard. And so here I am, late at night, thinking about my partner. In fact, I'm not so much thinking as worrying about her. I've got this horrible sense of dread in the pit of my stomach and I wish it would go away. I rest my hand on the phone again. It is cold and smooth. Will she be mad if I call her now? Will she be relieved? Touched? Will she be scared? The phone rings and I jump in surprise. In the silence of the dark apartment the noise is incredibly loud, and yet I'm so startled that it takes two rings before I think to actually lift the cold receiver to my ear. "Hi." My voice sounds loud and husky and harsh against the inky blackness. "Mulder... it's me. I'm sorry it's so late. It's just -" Her voice is smooth and silky as the moonlight. It slinks around my eardrum like milk. And yet somewhere, somehow, her voice is wavering. "You okay, Scully?" The sense of dread tightens, coils, taut as a piano string. She pauses. "I'm not sure. Mulder... I woke up. My nose was bleeding. I don't know..." Her smooth voice is stretched now, hard edged. The coil is taut. "Let me come over, Scully. I need to see you." She starts to refuse but stops before any words are spoken. She sighs once. The sound is harsh against my cold ear. I nod once to myself. I clear my dry throat. "I'll be there right away, okay?" "Okay." A soft click as she sets the phone down. I sit, stockstill. Mist is creeping in through the crack in the window. The coil is winding between us, pulling us together. The mist curls around me as I rise to my feet. So cold. The piano string snaps. I run out of my apartment and into the darkness as Friday fades slowly into Saturday. --- Finito --- Feedback? ds4fm@orange.net Flames will be used to warm up my flat ;) The Love Shack - http://www.ilovethexfiles.co.uk "Never give up on a miracle" - Mulder "I believe this is heaven to no-one else but me" - Elsewhere by Sarah McLachlan.