Title: Interregnum III: Intersections (1/1)

Author: Horatio

E-mail: Horatio1013@aol.com <mailto:Horatio1013@aol.com>

Summary: Some feelings, like some bodies, don't always stay 
buried.

Rating: PG 

Category: V, A, S, D

WARNING: Scully/Doggett UST

Spoilers: General season 8 up through The Gift. Takes place 
between The Gift and Medusa.

Archive: Fine with me! Just let me know.

Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property of 
Ten-Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television Network. No 
infringement is intended, and no money is being made from 
this endeavor.

Notes: This story is part of a loosely-knit series of 
Doggett/Scully vignettes. While each stands alone for the 
most part, the stories make most sense if they are read in 
order. They represent a slightly altered emotional 
landscape of season 8, in which Scully and Doggett actually 
open up to each other a little bit. 

Acknowledgements: Mucho thanks to Amanda for her beta help 
with "Intersections," and to Meg for her invaluable 
technical assistance.



INTERREGNUM III:
INTERSECTIONS

Fredericksburg, Virginia


John Doggett looked at his watch as he stepped out of the 
police station. "Two a.m. How the hell did that take so 
long?"

Scully fought back a yawn as they crossed to the parking 
lot. "I don't think they have much experience with 
unexplained phenomena."

"Yeah, well, they're not the only ones."

She almost smiled at him. "Oh, you're an old pro now, 
Agent Doggett."

She doesn't know the half of it, he thought soberly.

In the car, Scully settled into the passenger seat and 
closed her eyes, enjoying this new level of comfort with 
her partner. They seemed to have moved past the tension 
provoked by their acknowledgement of "personal feelings." 
Moved past it and, thankfully, buried it. It was over, done 
with, no more to be said.

But more than that, Doggett's disputatious attitude on 
their previous case had seemed subdued this week. That
business with the "little man" -- he had been so damn
critical and bull-headed then. Today, in contrast, he had 
given her theories a fair hearing, had not belittled them. 
She wondered if something had happened to him recently to 
change his outlook. 

She sighed. She was too tired to figure it out.

Doggett switched on the wipers against a drizzle. Their
rhythmic swish-swish began to hypnotize him, and his 
eyelids drifted closed. He shook himself, gripping the 
steering wheel hard. He was a lot more tired than he 
thought. He tugged at the knot of his tie and glanced 
over at his passenger. Scully's head was tipped back 
against the headrest. Dozing, he thought enviously, and 
refocused his eyes onto the rain-splashed road ahead. 

His mind drifted to the previous weekend, to a rural 
community in Pennsylvania. Like the alternating glare 
and darkness of the oncoming headlights, images strobed 
before his eyes: the diseased face of a horribly suffering 
man; a cabin of firelight and shadows; a dank underworld; a 
nude woman in a rock mold; himself, bewildered and naked in 
that same chamber. 

Dead. Buried. And restored to life.

Doggett gave his head an exasperated shake. In the many 
sleepless hours he'd spent since then trying to make sense 
of it, he still couldn't fit the experience into any 
reasonable framework. He would never understand it.

One thing he did understand, though: Fox Mulder was a
different man than he'd figured. 

A better one. 

John Doggett understood another thing, too. He had solved 
a puzzle that had been nagging him ever since he'd been 
assigned to find the missing agent. 

He finally had a sense of why Dana Scully loved the man. 

He darted a look sideways again, sighed, and rubbed a hand 
roughly over his face.

* * *

"Agent Scully."

Scully started at Doggett's voice, and opened her eyes to 
find herself in front of her apartment building. "Oh!"  
Feeling sheepish for abandoning her partner to the rigors 
of driving, she turned to thank him, but was brought up 
short by his exhausted and hollow-eyed appearance. She was 
suddenly wide awake and filled with concern. "We haven't 
eaten since noon," she said. "Want to grab a bite before 
you head on home?"

Doggett hesitated a second, then smiled gratefully. "I 
won't argue. I'm starvin'."

She led the way, second thoughts crowding her brain about 
the advisability of inviting up to her apartment a man with 
personal feelings for her. She hoped he wouldn't 
misinterpret her simple gesture of kindness. 

Hanging her coat on the rack, she proceeded to the kitchen. 
Doggett shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the 
back of the sofa. "Want a hand?" 

"That's okay," Scully called from the kitchen. "Just make 
yourself comfortable."

He muttered to himself, "Won't argue with that, either," 
and plopped heavily onto the sofa. 

Five minutes later Scully set a turkey sandwich and a 7-Up 
on the coffee table in front of him. She waved away his 
thanks and took her own snack over to her desk. "I want 
to check something on the computer." 

Doggett ate greedily while he listened to the patter of the 
keys. He wondered what she was "checking" on her computer. 
Probably just an excuse to keep the distance between them, 
he decided. They maintained the formalities as assiduously 
as ever. "Agent" Scully. "Agent" Doggett. As though that 
could make the feelings go away. Well, maybe it could make 
hers go away. . .

Scully's voice broke into his thoughts. "You didn't argue 
with me as much as usual on this case, Agent Doggett." 

The can of soda paused halfway to his mouth, and he stared 
at her back. He was unaccustomed to such a playful tone 
from her. "Did you want me to, Agent Scully?"

"No." She continued to look at the screen. "I was just 
wondering why, is all."

Why? Because, he thought, getting a second chance at life 
changed everything. Because life was too short for sniping. 
And how could he argue with her far-out theories after what 
he'd experienced? After what he'd seen? 

The vision of Fox Mulder in the basement rose before his 
eyes, and dread crawled through his gut as it did every 
time he came to this point of his recollection. What *had* 
he seen? A hallucination? Or a ghost? Doggett didn't 
believe in ghosts, but when a man is missing going on three 
months, a man who was dying from a brain disease. . . 

He swallowed with difficulty and forced a casual reply. "I 
guess I'm just taking your advice and tryin' to keep an 
open mind."

Scully nodded distractedly. Doggett pushed the apparition, 
and the dread, out of his mind and sank back into the 
cushions, feeling enormously tired. The sofa was so soft, 
the apartment so warm and comfortable. . .

Scully continued to read the e-mail from the guys. Still no 
news. No UFO activity. No John Does fitting Mulder's 
description in any hospital in the United States. Or in the 
morgues. 

Thank God, she thought.

She sighed and closed their message, then opened the one 
from her mother. Maggie wanted to take her daughter 
maternity shopping. Scully frowned. It was too soon. She 
saved the mail for a later reply, and rested her chin on 
her hand wearily. 

Suddenly it occurred to her that her guest was very 
quiet. "How's the sandwich, Agent Doggett?" she asked, 
twisting around in her chair. 

John Doggett had slid sideways on the sofa till his head 
rested on the sofa arm. He was softly snoring.

Nonplussed, Scully sat for a moment, considering the 
situation. Should she wake him, or let him be? She crossed 
the room to where Doggett lay slumbering. He must have been 
keeping longer hours than he'd let on.

"What have you been doing, John?" she whispered.

His plate was empty but for a few crumbs. Her mouth curved 
slightly. He had inhaled his food. It must be a man thing, 
she thought. Mulder was the same way. A pang of sadness 
pierced her.

She sat down on the coffee table and gingerly removed the 
crust of bread still clutched in the man's hand, laying it 
on his plate. She took the moment to study him, a luxury 
she couldn't allow herself ordinarily. 

His was a handsome face, which looked younger in sleep than 
it did awake. The lines that so often creased his brow were 
smoothed, revealing a gentleness usually hidden. She 
watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically under his 
dress shirt. Her eyes wandered to his throat where he had 
unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie; to his wrists, 
where pale hairs peeked out from his cuffs; to the strong, 
tapered fingers; to the muscular thighs in the black suit 
pants. . .
 
She stood up quickly, blushing hotly at her voyeurism. 

Taking the afghan that was draped over the overstuffed 
chair, she laid it gently over the sleeping man. "Good 
night, Doggett," she murmured, and escaped down the hall to 
her room.

* * *

Scully awoke from a dreamless sleep, a rare blessing these 
days. She drifted in a drowsy reverie, only slightly 
disturbed by morning nausea. A glance at the clock told her 
she had overslept. For a moment she wondered why she had 
forgotten to set the alarm. Then she remembered the late 
night at a Virginia police station.

And she remembered something else.

With a start, she bolted up in bed. John Doggett was asleep 
in her living room. Or was he? Perhaps he had woken and 
departed in the night. She threw on her robe and tiptoed 
down the hall.

He was still there, sprawled under the afghan just as she'd 
left him. Scully sighed, and padded softly into the 
kitchen.

The clattering of dishes woke Doggett, and his sleep-
drugged brain concluded that he had dozed off momentarily 
and Scully was cleaning up their sandwich dishes. Then he 
felt a blanket atop him. And sunlight. His eyes flew open. 
God almighty! He'd slept all night in her apartment. What a 
dumbass thing to do!

He sat up stiffly, massaging a kink in his neck. Pulling 
himself to his feet, he stumbled toward the sound of the 
dishes, halting at the kitchen doorway. Scully was 
puttering at the counter, her back to him. Her white terry-
cloth robe and red hair made a brilliant contrast in the 
morning sunshine, and drew a smile from him.

Suddenly she turned, and jumped at the sight of him 
standing there. Her hand flew up to pull her robe closed at 
her neck.

Doggett waved his hand in the direction of the living room. 
"Um. . . sorry about that." 

He looked thoroughly chagrined, and Scully had to suppress 
a smile as she took him in, hair sticking up at amusing 
angles, tie askew. "It's all right. You obviously needed 
the rest. Sleep okay?"

"Yeah, except for a stiff neck." He turned and twisted his 
head. "Uh, mind if I use your . . .?"

"Sure. Down the hall on the right."

Upon his return from the bathroom, Doggett rounded the 
doorway too fast and collided with his hostess. Hurriedly 
Scully stepped away, but not before she breathed in the 
fresh scent of soap. She noticed too that he had combed his 
hair and removed his tie. Hiding her discomfiture behind a 
fall of hair, she moved to the counter. "Coffee?" 

"You don't have to."

"It's already made," she said, and held a mug out to him. 
"It's decaf, though."

I should get out of here, he thought. He took the cup from 
her hand. "No problem. Thanks."

Scully poured herself a cup and motioned to the table. As 
they sat she noticed abstractedly that the afghan was 
folded in a neat square on the sofa. The gesture touched 
her inexplicably.

She lifted the cup to her lips and peered at her guest over 
it. "You've been working too hard, Agent Doggett. When's 
the last time you got some sleep?"

"I don't know. Couple days, I guess. I get kind of 
obsessive sometimes."

"I noticed." Scully sipped her coffee. "You come in on the 
weekends, too, don't you?"

His eyebrows rose. "How'd you know?"

She shrugged. "Little things. Things in different places 
than where I saw them on Friday night."

Damn, but she was observant. "I told you I was a bit of a 
workaholic."

"I understand obsession. But our cases haven't required 
that much work."

He was still, and avoided her eyes. Scully was debating 
whether to press him on it and had decided it wasn't her 
place, when he spoke. 

"I've been trying to find leads on Mulder's whereabouts."

Her fingers played with her mug while she considered this. 

He went on, "I know you think he's on a spaceship somewhere 
and that I'm wastin' my time. But it's something I've gotta 
do."

She nodded, understanding. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you..."

"Tell you what?"

"If you learned anything?"

Mulder's apparition rose in his memory again, and dread 
once more coiled in his intestines. He looked at that warm, 
sad, intelligent face. What if all she ended up with after 
all this time was a cold, dead body? Just as had happened
with him?

"Of course," he answered. 

"And you haven't found anything."

"I haven't found anything."

She gave him a wan smile. "Thank you for trying, at least."

They drank their coffee. Somewhere Doggett could hear a 
clock ticking, telling him he should go. He put his cup 
down, but she began again. 

"You shouldn't overextend yourself. I know the cost of 
sleep deprivation, medically. Slowed reflexes, impaired 
judgment, delayed response time. . ."

She's talking like a textbook again, he thought. Her 
emotion-avoidance response. Only she wasn't talking about 
Mulder now. At that thought an electric charge coursed over 
his skin.

". . . things that can get you hurt." Scully fingered her 
mug nervously, her eyes downcast, her long eyelashes dark 
against her cheek. She had forgotten to hold her robe 
closed, and Doggett's eyes were drawn to the triangle of 
pale skin revealed, and to the shadowed depths between her 
breasts. He felt a tide of desire pull at him, and cursed 
silently. 

Scully looked up into that flinty, forthright face. She 
liked him so very much. The ache of loss throbbed again. 
"If I lost you, too. . ." She hadn't meant to say it, but
the thought had fluttered forth on her breath, and she
flushed in embarrassment when she saw the intense look 
that her words had provoked. 

Scully felt herself flailing. She pushed back her chair 
abruptly and stood. "Look--"

Doggett rose too, and Scully found herself an inch from his 
collar. She moved to step away, but he laid a hand gently 
on her arm.

"Wait."

She halted at his soft command. He felt the warmth of her 
flesh through the thick cotton material, and the stirrings 
inside him snowballed. Her hair brushed his chin, and he 
breathed in an intoxicatingly sweet smell. This should not 
be happening, he told himself. But it was. And he didn't 
have the will to stop it.

Scully made no resistance to the pressure on her arm. He 
was close, so close. She felt his breath on her forehead. 
She could smell him, a combination of soap and night sweat, 
and trembled. She became absorbed in studying the hue of 
his shirt. Mulder liked blue shirts, too, the thought 
flashed across her mind. She stared at the broad chest 
before her, her breath accelerating, and felt the hormones 
crash over her in a wave.

She risked turning her head up to look at his face, and 
wished she hadn't. The look in his eyes rocked her. He was 
tense with desire and straining for control. She didn't 
know if she would be able to help him.

Doggett felt himself falling into the sky of her eyes. When 
those eyes dipped down, he experienced a pang of 
disappointment . . . until he realized that her gaze was 
now resting on his lips. And with that he lost it.

He closed the space between them quickly. 

Scully's first and last thought as his lips met hers was: 
This is a different man. No years of patient waiting, no 
infinitely gradual movement. Just direct, decisive, no-
nonsense. Like the man himself. After that, all thoughts 
fled.

Doggett noted with astonishment that she didn't pull away, 
but leaned into him. Her mouth was warm and wet, and opened 
to him like a flower at sunrise. He felt her hand snaking 
around his back, pulling him closer, and his blood went 
south in a rush. This should not be happening, he repeated 
to himself as he wrapped his arms around her body.

Scully was drowning, there was no breath left in her. The 
mingling of loneliness, loss, heartache, need, affection, 
and desire formed a potent concoction. With wonder she felt 
the ridges of Doggett's spine, the firm muscles of his 
back, the warm skin of his neck. Her lips and tongue tasted 
him hungrily. Her brain had shut down, and she was nothing 
but sensation. Warmth. Pressure. Feeling. Holding. Kissing. 
Taking. Giving. 

Doggett's hand slid down, down low, and he pulled her more 
tightly against him. Scully melted into his body, turning 
to hot liquid at the feel of him pressing against her 
abdomen. 

Her abdomen. The baby. 

Had she completely lost her mind?

In a panic she broke the kiss and pushed her palms against 
his chest. He loosed his hold on her, and she backed from 
his embrace. 

Doggett saw her through a haze as he struggled to control 
his ragged breathing: her hair disheveled, her lips red and 
swollen, two pink spots burning on her cheeks. She was 
incomprehensibly beautiful.

"I'm sorry," he rasped. "I shouldn't have--"

"No." She gulped air. "I . . . I . . . there's a lot going 
on with me right now. I'm having a little trouble sorting 
things out."

He nodded, and tried to bring his breathing back to normal, 
cursing his lack of self-control. He had no right to do 
this to her. She was too vulnerable right now.

Scully gripped the chair back for support. Her brain was 
thick and dull with the effort to make sense of what had 
just happened. This was an unexplained phenomenon beyond 
her powers of understanding.

"I should go," Doggett was saying, startling her out of her 
daze. Immoblized, Scully watched him move to the living 
room. She watched him retrieve his jacket from the sofa. 
Watched him put it on, watched him step to the door.

He was going to leave, and everything was a mess. But she 
was dumb, and had no words to call him back.

His gaze caught hers, and Scully watched it shift to the 
side, then back again. He's thinking, her brain told her. 
That's what he does when he's thinking.

Doggett stood there with his hand on the knob. He had to 
leave, they had to stop this now. But he didn't want her to 
think. . .

He tried to take the measure of her, standing there 
watching him. And was surprised at what he saw in her eyes.

Before Scully could process what was happening he was 
standing before her, and her heart -- she would remember 
this later with disbelief -- actually leapt in her breast. 

"You'll be all right?" he asked in his deep rumble.

Her own voice was unsteady. "I think so."

He nodded almost imperceptibly and, reaching up, tucked a 
stray lock of hair behind her ear. The tenderness of the 
gesture made her feel strong and weak all at once. 

"We'll talk later," he said. 

Talk? They were going to *talk* about this? Her mind 
reeled. "Yes," she whispered.

Then there was a blur of dark suit, and the sound of the 
door closing.

Scully dropped heavily into the chair and lowered her face 
to her hands. But the tears she expected did not come.


End



Feedback is gratefully appreciated at Horatio1013@aol.com 
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