Mixed Signals, on the Rocks By Melody Clark Disclaimers: 1013, Deus Est Genre: DSR 1/1 PG13 for language Episodes: AU after mid-season 8: no baby on board Melody@productionoffices.com for full version Love seems so cruel, when we are younger, she reflected. The glacial soul of science haunting the scholastic natural world, life but a fractal pattern in the mad array of chance. The love of young minds for nihilists...existentialists...the dark poets. The way youthful hearts turn toward noble pain like some darkly nourishing sun. All the doomed romantics were youthful. Byron. Shelley. Keats. And when she was younger, her life had appeared to her a dark fantasy...a coldly tragic one. She had, once, loved a man. This man, as a boy, watched helpless as the other half of his sky was seized - stolen: enveloped by a beam of particulate light, spirited away. At the age when young men are taught that the world is made of more math than magic, he saw his sister abducted by the mystery itself. His eyes had been made open. They would never close again. Dana had loved her Peter Pan, but much as Wendy, had been barred from Neverland. The needs and tasks and trusts of manhood would be sheltered in reflexive habits throughout his life, performed when necessary, so that he might go about the work of his life... seeing the world as a child. But her lost boy... Mulder...was gone. Gone to join Samantha. He would never be coming home. She had mourned for him, would mourn for him. A part of her wanted to go with him. And still another part of Dana Scully, realized she could never really go with him to the places he had to go. And she had to go on without him, toward her own future, whatever it was going to be. And this moment it was this very thing which, as everything, hung precariously in the balance. "Mrs. Scully...Ms..." The Nurse squinted tiredly at what was probably her thirtieth chart of the day, searching for the name, as if remembering it faintly. "Dr Scully?" "Dana Scully," she said, standing from her lobby seat, as if summoned from her chair for sentencing by an unseen judge. "Doctor was called away on an emergency. She said to tell you all the results came back normal. Everything was negative." Dana Scully breathed for the first time in moments. She reached slyly backward, covertly touching the chair. "There's no recurrence?" "No, nothing. You're in perfect health. Clear sailing." "It was nothing," she said to herself, in half-belief. "Really nothing. Just a nosebleed." The nurse shrugged. "Maybe from the anticoagulants you were taking?" She nodded. "Probably, yes." Had she not heard the sound of a door opening, she might have surrendered to the chair. >From somewhere at a distance, someone was forcing aside a magnetic slide door. Doggett, of course, entering as a cool and forceful stormfront, focused on one beachhead in his line of sight, not stopping till he reached her. "Dana, what's the matter?" He was indeed a protective force, encircling her. Suddenly, he was the world and everything in it. "I'm fine, John," she said, softly, relief still coursing new blood to her fingers and toes. "Really. I just had a scare yesterday, and we ran some tests." She smiled to herself, accepting it a bit now. "It was nothing. I'm sorry you came all the way down here - " "Naw, I was out chasing stuff for Skinner. It was nothing. Its been real quiet. He told me where you were, and I kinda chewed him out for not tellin' me." "Wait, that was my decision. I didn't want to worry anyone." "You'll tell Skinner. You just won't tell me." "I didn't say that, I just..." He waved his hand, as if batting the question away. "Nothin'. Stupid thing to say. You're okay, that's what's important." He checked the time on his wrist, moving a little away. "I guess I better get back down to - " "Agent Doggett," she said quickly, bent back into official form again...because she knew if she hadn't just said it, she would never have the guts to spit it out. He stayed there, waiting for her words. She pursed away a shy smile, tossing a glance away at a wall, searching for reasonable words. "Since there is nothing, at the office, to accomplish. And as I have yet to eat an actual meal today, I wondered if you might be available to join me for an early dinner. There is a new Creole restaurant on Mount Vernon Avenue, I've been meaning to hazard. I thought perhaps..." Please, she thought, let him be looking at her with a polite openness, a sort of courteous whynot in his face. Let the words have been received as she wished they had been meant...as "let us, two friends, go have some food and wine together". But she was standing here, smiling shyly as a schoolgirl, because his answer meant far too much to her than she wanted him to know. Of course, when she forced herself to investigate his silence, he was smiling intently, his thunderbolt blue eyes mercilessly teasing. "You asking me out on a date, Agent Scully?" She lifted her head with perfect aplomb, as befits a first officer on Ahab's Pequod. "Lets call it, an early dinner." "But it's really...a date." "But lets call it...dinner. And you have yet to answer." "It's still a date. And I accept with pleasure." "It's dinner." She retrieved her coat from the chair. "And you're incorrigible, Agent Doggett." "A date. And the same to ya, Agent Scully." Mama Leo's Cuisine du Lac was an open, steaming embrace against a winter night. It was a wide swathe of a restaurant, haunted with warm and bewitching scents. There sat a scattering of people in tables at back. There was an older three-dimensional image of a face she had seen in her mother's yearbooks, and at Christmas when she was a child. The family friend had moved off, then returned. Now she was walking down the floor toward her, extending both arms. "Starbuck!" she said, "I would know your sweet face anywhere." Okay, maybe not such a great idea. "Hello, Mrs Leo," Scully said. "Good to see you again." "And to see you, all grown up, FBI woman. Imagine that. Excellent fashion sense. And - " Her eyes opened wide, when observing Scully's companion. Her brightened eyes shined admiration over at Scully again. "Oh, my, we have excellent taste in everything, don't we?" "This is Special Agent John Doggett - " Doggett was enjoying hell out of this. "An honor to meet a friend of Agent Scully's." " - my partner - " Scully added. "Oooh, partner?" she said, liking the word, rolling it around a bit, "partner...yes, partner. I'll find you two the perfect table. A partner table." "Agent Doggett, kindly stop smiling that way." "Was I? I'm real sorry, Agent Scully. Her smile is kinda infectious. I'll try to stop, though, I promise... Couldn't help but hear the family nickname, though." "That goes no further." "Naw, I know how to keep my mouth shut. Does bring to mind a kinda risqué joke involving the name of the fish though - " "Which you will not tell - " "No way, you won't hear it from me. Starbuck." She swung a look at him that might have shaved steel, but he only smiled more brightly in reply. "Your table! Your perfect table!" Mrs. Leo clapped her hands together for attention, then beckoned them into the dark. "Come with me." The room was empty but for them. The cherrywood walls gleamed back the tapering candlelight. It was light enough...not too bright... If it had been too...well, too, Dana would have of course immediately requested a more brightly lit setting. They claimed their chairs, were handed menus, then Mrs. Leo skittered away. Dana was studying the menu, to distract herself, break the embarrassing tension of the moment, when the lights dimmed further. And music lifted. Moonlight Sonata. "Oh. My. God." "I like that song," Doggett said, shifting back in his chair. He was examining the menu as if it was a Nascar cheatsheet. Disinterested...distracted. Good, she thought. Good. "Something from the bar?" some waitress said, suddenly beside them. "Just iced tea," Scully said softly, fighting a tinge of darkness near her mood. What was this now? "The same," Doggett said, smiling for awhile at the waitress, watching her walk away. Scully fought the darkness harder. Rankled at herself. Irritated at him now. The first wasn't rational, and the second wasn't fair. "You know, Dana, I kinda thought this was a celebration," Doggett said. "But you look more like we're sitting at a wake." "I know. I'm sorry. I've been moody lately, since the baby..." "I understand." "I know you do. Listen, Agent Doggett, please, don't not drink on my account. Technically, we're off badge." "Yeah, I know. We're on it and off it and on it. I don't care about the bar, 'cause I don't drink much. And I've already had several rounds of mixed signals on the rocks. I'd like some truth, straight up, if you don't mind. If you'll pardon the tortured metaphor." "I'm sorry, John. I don't know my own heart anymore." "No, I think you do. Dana. I think that's the problem. You're scared to death. You're used to running after someone that eludes you. And I'm not goin' anywhere. With just a little more encouragement, I'd make a couple of pretty bold steps forward. I'm a grown man, Dana. I stopped being an awkward kid twenty years ago" She pursed her lips, looked away. If this was meant to go anywhere...if her future was here...it would go that way now. The music faded into a gentle rhythm...dance number...something moody and lilting. "That's gotta be a sign," Doggett said, rising. Scully looked upward, at the tall, dark-suited man. Blue eyes big as open sky. He scintillated dignity, decency, caring. Impenetrable, undeniable. His soul was gentle and his heart was open wide, and she knew she could quite easily fall inside it, with no hope of rescue. Some nights, she thought of him so much, she wondered if she had already fallen and just not realized. He extended a hand. "Dana, may I have this dance?" By instinct, she reached to touch fingers, and found her hand claimed, herself drawn toward him, his arms around her. "Yes," she whispered, to his question, a shiver spreading lightly through her skin. "You cold?" She sobbed out a laugh. Her eyes were stinging. "No, John, I'm not cold." The music floated, they barely moved, it was more embrace than slow dance. That had just been an excuse. She was feeling guilty and happy and confused and certain, all at a time. She had not felt like this in... Ever, she made herself admit. Ever. "Why do you have to be so goddamned wonderful?" she whispered, fighting tears. "I could ask you the same thing." "I went in there today, thinking it was a recurrence of my cancer. Thinking it was somehow over. That I would follow the ones I'd loved and lost. And I told myself, if it wasn't, then I had to get on with my life. And I knew, in a very real way that terrified me more deeply than any X-File I have ever known, that my future..." "I'd say that qualifies as a little encouragement," he said, then closed the distance between their mouths, drawing her toward him and into the kiss.