TITLE: Refrain

AUTHOR: Exley_61 (typo@clam.rutgers.edu )

RATING: PG-13

SPOILERS: None

DISTRIBUTION: I'll do Emphemeral, otherwise practically anywhere, just let me know.

CATEGORY: BIG UST, MSR Scully Angst and Mulder Angst

DISCLAIMER: prop. of CC productions & Fox

SUMMARY: In one instant, everything changes for Mulder. With one look, he is prompted to search for a different truth. A truth as seemingly elusive and as obscure as any X-file......

QUICK NOTE: I wanted to thank everyone who emailed me and embraced me into the Xfic world. It has been incredible. This is my second story and I hope you enjoy. Special thanks to my betas.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please do. It's my second shot out of the gates and I would like to know your thoughts on it.

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REFRAIN

by Exley_61

typo@clam.rutgers.edu

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I wonder if he heard the throbbing, the ache beneath the thin plaster of my skin. I can't conceal it any longer. Time strokes, provokes, and titillates, dilating my eyes as I have watched him, examined him in tinted shades of demand.

It frightens me. He frightens me. I am the master carpenter of the ultimate lie, sealing the door against temptation, against him. I build an impenetrable facade in which I take refuge, adhering to the call of reason, but reason does not hold against him. He demolishes it, over and over, splintering my resolve into shards.

Mulder.

He steals me from myself -- a master strategist. In a campaign of a slow, minute collection of advances, he tricks me into a smile, a laugh, a touch that absorbs through my blood and streamlines into my heart.

There are no plans of defense to combat against this siege, no method or desire to persuade him to release me.

I am captured, catapulted into a canyon of foreign terrain. Foreign, for I have neglected to nurture or rather, acknowledge the beating of a racing heart or the sunburn flush that creeps up my neck and tinges my face.

And despite my attempted abandonment, my hunger, thirst, no -- my yearning has allowed him to see past my reserves, crawling through the ever-expanding fissure, bursting through the cemented efforts of my ill-fated intention.

Though the sun's glowing rays of admittance display the truth of my feelings to myself; it is only to myself -- or so I try to believe. But it's a lie. He has been given a glimpse of the sun's discovery and he doesn't, hasn't, turned away. Desperate, I have attempted to confuse him, distract him -- to hammer down my lidded desire behind arched stares and level words.

I don't think it's worked, not completely.

And I'm frightened. This fear fences my craving -- concealing me, cloaking me in despair's embrace, leaving me to flounder behind a bank of continued denial to myself and to him.

I don't need him, I don't want him, he doesn't want me.

Denial.

It spindles, sprawling out in an ever-growing, encompassing circle that covers the fingered imprint he leaves upon my heart, upon my soul.

I continue to battle a war already lost, never admitting defeat -- allowing my feelings to forever remain stale-mated in a belted lie, tightened against the truth, but not within it.

And I can't take it anymore. Yet, I can't help feeling surprised that I have faltered, letting the plaster crack upon the walls of my well-tended reserve.

So I sit on the bed, in my room, sketched in shadows interrupted only by moonlight glaring its dull glow through the leafy veil of tree branches, branches that brush against my window.

I hear the stereo, the CD repeats and repeats. The singer's voice pours from the speakers, saturating my bedroom and myself, in clear, dulcet tones.

Burying my face against the chilled cotton pillow case, I feel the coldness creep into my skin and bathe my heart in anxiety. I want him. It has become a deafening refrain that can never touch his ears.

For, I can't tell him, it's our game, you see. I don't know who created the rules, perhaps we both did. We have stood, juxtaposed with one another, moving in our Russian dance of roulette. But the music has stopped, and the bullet has fired, shattering my lies, leaving an open frame of revelation that tears through my soul. Unhinged and off balance, I display a truth that I cannot, that I must not, allow him to see.

And I want to cry, a cavalcade of tears that will cleanse my heart and free it of the need that is buried there. But I can't cry, I can't --

I won't.

Frozen, I am caught in a mire of confused, conflicting sentiment and need -- unable to demolish the wall that bars my inner-most wants -- unable to expose them to the outside world -- to him.

No.

For what would this flooding reality mean, to us, our work, our life, were I to give it the birth it so desperately wants? I know that I would never be able to remain the same, no longer able to play in the fun house of illusion --

It would be destroyed, leaving me bare, standing among the debris of my broken mirrors. I can't allow myself that vulnerability.

I can't.

I won't.

Falling back, my quilted bedspread catches me. I curl my body into a shell, seeking a soothing solace that isn't there, that I know will never be there again.

I want to cry.

My body shudders against a gripping anguish, an anguish that attempts to push through my mortar of repression, a repression who's seal I refuse to let shatter... and I know it.

I don't want to love him, want him, need him.

I don't want to,

want to...

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'Open the door, Scully. Open it!' I silently command, banging on the door yet again, the wood scratching against my knuckles.

Nothing.

Damn it! I pace in front of her doorway. Waiting, always waiting. Driving a hand through my hair, I step up to her door once more, knocking.

"Scully!"

Still no response. An angry growl barks through my lips. I know she's there. I know it. I can hear music playing, trapped behind her apartment walls.

And so I pace.

This is ridiculous, insane. I'm not going to wait out here all night and I'm not leaving before I see her.

Damn it! What *am* I doing here? She doesn't want to see me. You'd think I could get a clue. Shaking my head, I grimace.

I do have a clue or at least a fragment of this puzzle, only it's not enough. It's too vague to decipher and that is unacceptable. Answers have to be given, words said. I refuse to allow what happened less than an hour ago dictate what I am rapidly beginning to believe could mean my future, our future. No, this is where I should be and I'm not leaving here, her, us -- not without a fight.

The image of her face, of her eyes and how she looked upon me, flashes before me. A sinking dread gathers, dropping over my senses.

I stop and blindly look up and down her hallway, trying to clear the vision. Rubbing my hand against my chin, I continue pacing, unable to stop thinking upon the events once more.

The office. I shiver, a swamping fear dipping me into an ever deepening well of anxiety. It is as if my soul knows a secret that is yet to be whispered in my ear, causing my thoughts to grip upon a piercing possibility.

Maybe, just maybe, I really don't want to know what lies behind her earlier behavior.

I stop my movements. Perhaps, perhaps I'm afraid to know.

No, no perhaps, it's a definite. And acknowledging that discovery scares me even more, propelling me, forcing myself to confront whatever truth is to be laid out before me. This fear has quickly evolved into a desperate demand that races my heart, beads my temples, and moistening my palms in sweat.

So, I'm here, wanting, needing, to see her -- battling against my trepidation. Sighing, I plunge my hands into my pants' pockets, flipping a coin, playing with the gathered change.

Again, I'm assaulted by earlier's events, unable to stop replaying the snap-shot reel of memories. I can't stop freezing it, pausing it, upon her face. No, not her face, not exactly. I'm unable to stop seeing the screen capture of her eyes.

Shuddering, I grip a shoulder, rolling, loosening the tightening muscles. I let my hand fall to my side, drumming my fingers against my leg.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the images of her, us, in the office. But, unable to stop them, they flicker, flaring into full blown replay...

We were in the office, each to our own task. I had risen from my desk, case file in hand, bringing it over for her to look at. I plopped the manilla folder open, leaning over to point out a particularly odd witness statement.

Instead of glancing over my discovery, she shot out of her seat, causing me to fall back, out of her way.

"Scully?"

She said nothing, not with words. I felt her eyes pinning my body, freezing it against movement or response. My throat constricted, an involuntary action as confusion clouded my senses.

I wondered what I had or hadn't done and couldn't effectively explain away her response, her behavior. Finally, I spoke again.

"Scully?"

I watched her as her eyes seemed to rip into me, blanketing me in a net of contempt.

Contempt?

Punched and nearly breathless by that look, I watched, wordless once more, as she gathered her briefcase and purse. My mouth hinged open but words refused to issue forth, to form -- stuck in the natal stages of thought.

All I could do was observe. She did not face me again, striding to the door, she tore it open.

I watched, suffocating. She paused, but only for a moment before clasping the knob more firmly. She walked through the doorway, letting the door close gently behind her, cutting her out of my sight and I feared, much more.

I couldn't explain it but this was something big, something that nudged at my subconscious, needling and yet refusing to step from the shadows. I felt a shudder race over my skin and chill my senses.

I had expected the door to reverberate in the door frame, coating my ears in a ringing endorsement for my lack of whatever. But it hadn't, and she didn't. And that scared me.

She was gone.

Gone...

I looked around the office, dazed. Falling back into my chair, my apprehension expanded, sprawling and then collecting into an agitation that crawled under my skin, itching. Trapped, I was reeling, captured in the memory of that stare, of that look.

Contempt.

A cold, dark fear latched onto my chest, clasping my heart -- squeezing. I have seen Scully angry, irritated, but never this, never towards me.

My throat was dry. No matter how many times I swallowed, it remained dry -- almost choking me as the word, the thought, the implication tumbled and rumbled, stampeding through my mind and knocking against the crumbling walls of my confusion.

Contempt.

The look was for me, not for what I might have done, but what I had done. I felt it, knew it to be an end result that I had created. That *something* had crept over her features, aiming, striking me down. The calm, definite finality with which she seemed to slip from the office hammered at me, louder and louder, imprisoning my thoughts with its pounding refrain.

Contempt.

Time, ticking, tapping out the minutes into fifteen, twenty and even more passed by, blaring into my contemplations, prodding me, triggering me into action.

Abruptly, I stood, ripping my jacket off the back of my chair, knocking over case files and not looking back. I tore through the crowding, shrinking, office space and burst out of the room and down J. Edgar Hoover's empty hallways. The sound of my footsteps ricocheted off the walls as I ran, running toward the answer that, ultimately, only she could give...

Part 2

Jerked back to the moment, I felt eyes upon me. I looked around and saw someone, a neighbor, had passed me, going on to the elevator.

I shook my head, clearing it. Enough! My hallway vigil is over.

I utter another frustrated sigh, stepping to her door again. Digging into my pocket, I pull my keys out, searching for her's. Finding it, I insert it into the lock and give it a turn, entering her apartment.

The rooms are doused in darkness, the lights forgotten in the glimmer of moonlight.

I reach behind me and push the door closed as my eyes adjust to the black. I can make out the surroundings and she isn't among them.

I step further into the apartment, cocking my head and listening. The music mists down the hallway from her bedroom, pulling me, directing me to its doorway.

I am there, standing in the door frame. I see her.

She lies on the bed, curled and facing away from me. I loiter at the door, waiting, needing her to look at me, acknowledge me, but she doesn't.

I want to speak, intrude upon the music that pervades the room and impregnates the air, but I don't. I note the rate of her breathing, watching, cataloging the rise and fall of her body, watching as the moonlight picks its way through the room and lands upon her, spotlighting her.

I force myself to move, to enter her bedroom, closer, cutting the distance between us with the hesitant fall of my steps --pausing mid-way toward her bed, toward her.

I lick my lips, my emotions becoming a cocktail of determination and fear. I swallow it, letting it sink into my bones, inebriate my senses and loosen my tongue.

"Scully?"

No response. I know she is awake. Memories crest into my mind, recalling car rides, plane rides, and all night paper vigils. Fastened within each remembrance are the rare times when she has fallen asleep, pillowing against me. I can almost feel the soft rise of her breath against my skin again, its timed rhythm memorized.

She is not sleeping.

"Scully."

That's when I see it; her body begins to shake, shudder. I close out the distance left between us, erasing it within three easy strides. I stand beside her bed, my knees brushing against the quilt. Aching, I want to reach out to her, have her look at me, but the memory of our last parting sneaks up, immobilizing and gluing my hands at my sides.

I shake my head, clearing it of fear. This is Scully, my partner, my friend.

This is my Scully.

My Scully. The implication of that phrasing stalks into my mind, demanding my immediate attention, demanding my acknowledgment. I don't think I want to. I don't....

"Scully, look at me."

I wait, moments, minutes, hours -- there's no difference. Finally she falls onto her back and meets my gaze, searching, dissecting -- scrutinizing. I see her features begin to crumble, but she bits her lip, suppressing, commanding, controlling the reaction that surfaces, demanding it to obey her will.

I am lost as I watch her battle -- fighting against something so strong that I can see it strangling her determination, leaving her intent to slide away in defeat. She turns her head away.

"Scully?"

At the sound of my call she tears herself from the bed, flocking to the rocking chair that faces the window. I watch, breathless, wordless as she begins to sway in the seat.

It is as if she is crumbling, shrinking before my very eyes as she struggles, striving to avoid me, my gaze and I don't know what to do.

Confusion swathes me in its blankets, bundling me against action, any action or support that I want to give her -- that is, if she would let me. But I know she won't. She never does and with that reminder, anger begins to thread through my bonded tongue, snapping the strings that hold it mute and spurring me into response.

"Scully," I call, my tone dipped in red -- blotting out the vision of blackened shadows that drape the room.

She doesn't say anything. I walk over to her and grab an arm of the wooden chair, spinning it around to make her face me. I squat down before her.

She doesn't react.

"I want to know what's going on with you, and I want to know now," I demand. I watch her, her breathing increases in agitation. Reluctant, she meets my stare and again, I am blanketed in contempt. Instead of shrinking away from that look, I meet it, trying to see past it, or at least understand it.

"What's wrong?" I ask, unable to let a shade of desperation mix with my anger. I firmly grip her hand. It's shaking.

She tries to free herself but I won't let her. Not this time. I refuse to let her walk out on me again, emotionally or physically, despite how her actions seem to shred my very being -- a reaction I haven't acknowledged, until now.

"Scully, what is it, what... what did I do? I... I don't understand."

The last words leak from my lips in a deflating whisper. I close my eyes, squeezing them shut and turning my head to the side for the barest of seconds before facing her again. I speak, my voice stronger.

"Talk to me, Scully! I'm your friend, your...," I coax, imploring her to eradicate the confusion that has blanketed me, the confusion that partners with an anxiety that is ripping my heart apart.

"I can't," she whispers, her eyes closing -- curtaining her view from my face. I study her features, her eyes are screwed shut. The skin over her cheek bones are pale and pulled taut with tension.

I gently squeeze her hand and she flinches. "Scully."

Slowly, she cracks her eyes open, exposing the blue color to the room and my gaze. I draw back, my throat catching.

The contempt is gone, replaced by a tidal wave of blue fear. It drenches me in its brilliance. I have never seen Scully afraid, not like this, never like this... never...

...never of me.

My voice catches, my throat suddenly hoarse as a phantasm of possibilities possess my thoughts -- loudest of all is, 'What have I done?' The question rears before me again, a deafening echoing.

"Scully, tell me."

She leans forward, reaching toward my face. I feel the coolness of her shaky hands against my heated skin. I stare, seeking, recording the way her eyes scan my features before raising to my own.

I notice her eyes are filled, trapping tears, tears that plead to fall and my heart aches, spreading in my chest, caught beneath my bones.

"Don't cry," I whisper, tender. My hand reaches up, capturing her face within my palm.

Suddenly a guttural sob rips from her throat and the tears, her tears, plummet in rapids, drenching her face and flowing over my hand.

"I don't want this... I don't...," she croaks, her voice raw and blocked with a storm of emotions that wracks her face, tearing from the depths of her soul.

She grips me, pulling me toward her and I am lost as she clutches my jacket by the lapels, her strength anchoring me too her. I hear pained defeat echoing in her sobs and I can do nothing but hold her.

I pull her from the chair, into my lap and we sink back to the floor, leaning against the side of the bed. We rock as I clasp her against my chest. She entwines her arms around me, her fists bunching the material of my shirt, burying them beneath my jacket.

I hold her, crushing against me. I can feel her heart beating, thumping against my skin, reverberating against my soul.

Again, time eludes me: seconds, minutes -- hours could have past. I wouldn't know. All I do know is the weight of her body, the heat of her touch and her anguish that flows.

Eventually, she lifts her head and meets my eyes. Searching, she submerges me within the cleansed emotions reflected, displayed before me.

She is vulnerable. Her vulnerability unmasks my own and I can only stare, caught in a riot of rumbling feelings.

I can feel my will drowning, the seal of fabricated confusion, a confusion that I have bathed in lies, stresses -- buckling against the monsoon of thoughts and desires that I have contained for longer than I care to remember, longer than I... longer.

"I hate you," she whispers as she tenderly wipes tears from my face while crying her own, "I hate you."

I am stunned, confused, hurting and unable to mask the whirlpool of pain her words stir within me, unable to mask anything anymore, not with her -- never with her again. But as quickly as those feelings submerge me, I am lifted from them, buoyed by an already discovered understanding, a knowing that is bared in her eyes.

I let out a series of low, shuddering breaths as the impact of her gaze washes onto the sands of my heart, cautiously -- oh so very cautiously -- carrying her toward me. She arrives, her eyes closing, ending the voyage.

Leaning forward and wrapping her arms around me, she buries her face into the hollow between my shoulder and neck. I can feel the tears saturate my shirt in their steady flow, her hair, feather wisps, tickles my skin as she shakes her head from side to side, repeating over and over -- softly, gently, in my ear," I hate you."

Eventually, she pulls back to face me again and my breath catches, trapped between my lips as she comes toward me, canceling any space that remains between us.

I wait, watching and nearly incredulous. She is seeking me, reaching for me. As her lips brush mine, I question her.

"Why do you hate me, Scully?" I whisper against her lips, prisoner to her stare, her touch, her taste.

"Don't you know, Mulder? Can't you tell?" she asks her mouth still against mine, her voice shuddering out the question on the bed of a sigh.

Oh yes I know. The secret has whispered through the dam of my subconscious, breaking from the shadows -- flooding me in a bath of revealed truth.

Yes, I can tell, but I want her, need her to say it -- for her to *really* know it -- know it as I now know it.

"Because of this," she answers, sealing the words with a lingering kiss that tosses me into a deluge of heated bliss, soaking and saturating me, "This."

I pull back for a moment, studying her eyes, netted in them, lost within them and her.

"Scully," I say, gripping her to me as I feel my tears continue to dive down my cheeks, faster and stronger. My voice is jagged, rough with need -- need and... and...and love, "I hate you, too."

Refusing to let her go, us go, I carefully wedge my foot within the door frame of her shattered shield, a shield that has fallen, clattering to the ground, landing beside my own.

She reaches a hand to my face and brushes the silent wetness, capturing it within her shaking palm, absorbing a part of me within her skin.

"Don't cry," she whispers, the tears still falling from her own eyes.

How could I not?

"I... Scully," I stammer, looking at her. All I can feel is my heart cracking, punctured by the smell of her , the look of her -- the need of her.

"Shh...," she whispers, still studying my face as she repeats herself, "Shh...."

"No, no more silence," I reply, giving her a quivering, yet determined smile. My words hammer, bursting any lingering protective, no- hindering barricades that stand before us, "No more."

Looking at her, my head shaking side to side, I mirror my words with motion. I leave my eyes naked and open for her to peer through. She leans forward, wrapping her arms about my waist, her head against my chest. I hear and feel her breath hitching against me.

I clutch her, my arms mimicking hers as we sit on the floor. I can feel her head nodding, agreeing as she repeats my words, my thoughts -- our need, "No more, no more walls."

She pulls back to face me again and my breath catches, trapped between my lips as she comes toward me once again.

I move forward as well, to meet her, but her arms hold me in place. This is to be her claiming, her reaffirmation and I can do nothing but let it happen, silently demand it to happen with all of my being.

"I'm tired of fighting," she says letting her lips touch against mine before pulling slightly away.

Fighting. Fighting against feelings, fate and future. I have wanted her, waited for her, needed her.

I have her.

"So am I," I whisper, prisoner to her stare, her touch.

"We don't have to fight anymore," she says.

No... we don't.

And it is her resolution, her need to accept and claim -- to notify her heart and thoughts that the battle against me, against us, is, indeed over.

I answer, covering her hand and pulling her against me. She shifts against my body, her warm curves sinking into mine as I seal our truce with a heated kiss that declares, demands and decimates any lingering fear. Our tongues tangle, tasting and tantalizing one another in swaying, scintillating sensations.

We break apart reluctant, our mouths reaching and halting as our eyes study each other.

"Wow," I can't help saying. She smiles and my eyes are drawn to the swollen fullness of her lips.

Struck, I realize that I have been missing that smile for such a long time. It had been dressing her features less and less and my face falls at the realization.

"I've missed that," I whisper, reaching my finger tips to trace her upturned mouth, my eyes solemn and serious.

"What?" she asks against the pads of my fingers.

"Your smile," I answer, leaning in to replace my fingers with a gentle, sensuous touching of skin against the most sensitive of skin, my lips stamping my need with the softest, yet most profound of touches.

My heart is thundering, throbbing against my chest as the kiss lingers, tweaking my blood and strumming my senses. Our kiss, hot, searing -- a branding mark that devastates and elates, rising, reaching and gripping my very being to dizzying heights, beyond the scattered sky, the contemplated stars, beyond.

This is my Scully.

The phrase is no longer an implication but a verification, a declaration of... of my life, my soul --

My Scully.

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I didn't want to love him, want him, need him.

I didn't want to, want to...

but I have and I do.

~finis~