"Snapshot" 
By Dawson E. Rambo 
 
Disclaimers: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and other tangentially mentioned 
characters are copyrighted by Chris Carter, TenThirteen productions, and 
by Fox Television, a unit of 20th Century Fox, Inc. All rights are 
reserved, and these characters were used without permission. No 
infringement is intended. 
 
Classification: V,MSR,A 
Rating: PG (Some situations might not be suitable for all ages) 
 
====================================================================== 
        His need. His aching hunger. Scully had only to raise her eyes 
to his to see the hunger that was slowly leeching the life out of her 
partner...her friend. His hands were on her shoulders, the fingers 
grasping tightly, as a drowning man might grip a life preserver. He was 
neither pulling her closer nor pushing her away; Mulder held her like a 
talisman against the wolves that lurked in the shadows, eager, 
hungry...waiting. Waiting for Mulder to drop his guard, to relax for an 
instant, just for that fleeting second they would need to do their dirty 
work. 
        Time compressed. In the space between two heartbeats Scully 
experienced a thousand emotions, most of them unnamable, images and 
textures and sounds and smells...cases long filed away in the CLOSED 
cabinet, moments between her and Mulder that seemed innocent at the 
time, building blocks in the natural progression of their partnership. 
Each shared moment a square in a quilt they used to blanket themselves 
against the darkness and the coldness of the never-ending night. Scully 
remembered all the touches, the seemingly indiscriminate glances of skin 
against skin, the warm, soft pressure of Mulder's hand at the small of 
her back as they walked along a corridor, the way his eyes twinkled when 
he was teasing her, the small curl the corner of his mouth made when he 
was getting ready to zing her with a question she knew she didn't want 
to answer. 
        Unbidden, without Scully being aware of it, her hands crept up 
from her sides, palms resting on his chest. She told her brain to send 
the message to the muscles in her arms. All she would need would be the 
slightest pressure, no more force than then a whisper, and Mulder would 
pull away. He would feel her distancing herself, putting the wall back 
up where it belonged. And as always, he would respect her position and 
step away, trailing his fingers down her shoulder, across her arm, until 
there was nothing left, nothing but a fat, empty space between them that 
could be measured with a micrometer. 
        Mulder felt Scully's heartbeat through his fingers, her 
lifeblood pulsing in some unnamed vein beneath his fingers. He was only 
slightly startled to realize that his heart...somehow... had 
synchronized with hers, and they were beating in tandem...as one. 
        "Scul-" he started to say, but before he could form the last 
syllable of her name, quicker than Mulder had ever seen her move, Dana 
reached up and put two fingers across his lips, silencing him. 
        "Shhhh," she whispered, afraid that if she actually spoke the 
thought that was tripping across her mind that it would break the 
fragile spell cast between them. 
        She leaned forward, turning her head to the side, placing one 
ear against his chest. Once she was sure that he wasn't going to say 
anything, Scully lowered her hand to his chest once again. She was not 
surprised to find their heartbeats joined. It all made sense somehow. 
        In that moment, the complications erased themselves from 
Scully's mind as neatly as if they had been written in disappearing ink. 
Gone was the thought that two professionals engaged in the active 
investigations of the paranormal should not feel the way that she felt 
about Mulder and she knew he felt about her. Gone was the fear that if 
her innermost thoughts, that little voice that spoke only in the wolf 
hours of the night when the only thing to talk to was the cold pillow on 
the empty side of her bed, were known to the Powers That Be that it 
would be a matter of seconds before she and Mulder were reassigned to 
different time zones. Gone was the fear that if they admitted what was 
in their hearts, in their souls, that it would somehow compromise what 
they had. 
        Dana smiled ruefully into Fox's chest. It was such a 
contradiction, such a conundrum. At times, her relationship with Mulder 
was so deliciously understated, the most important things being left 
unsaid rather than said, the voices of their two souls speaking in the 
spaces between their audible words. And at times, times like these, it 
was so maddeningly frustrating...being unable to feel his arms wrap 
around her, being unable to take solace and comfort in his warmth, his 
stoic heroism. 
        Mulder dropped his chin, his view filled with Scully's coppery 
hair, the scent of her shampoo, and faintly, beneath that, the flower-
spice-sand smell of Dana Katherine Scully filling his nose. He felt the 
warmth of her pressed against him, not too much, not so much that his 
body's autonomic reactions would take over and create a... pressing 
embarrassment. 
        His mind was filled with images as well. Not the images that he 
would have suspected when this moment finally arrived. Any man, he knew, 
that was forced by circumstance to work in close proximity with a 
beautiful, intelligent and just damn outright sexy woman as Scully would 
have the occasional fantasy, the occasional daydream wondering What It 
Would Be Like. It was human nature, after all, and no matter what else 
had happened in the last four years, Mulder was reasonably certain that 
he was, in fact, still a human being. 
        He turned his face to the side, pressing his cheek against the 
top of Scully's head, feeling the spider's tickle of her hair against 
his stubbly jaw. He sighed, not out of desperation or frustration, but 
out of contentment. 
        Was the wanting enough? he asked himself. Was the simple fact 
that he wanted Dana in his life in every single way possible enough? Was 
it enough that she knew how he felt without either of the ever having 
actually mouthed the words? Snide remarks and adolescent teasing aside, 
Mulder knew that Scully realized how he felt, how important she was to 
him. And her eyes had answered his a thousand times, speaking softly, 
undetected beneath the argument and discussions and debates about 
theories and procedures and whose damn turn it was, anyway, to do the 
paperwork, or buy the pizza, or pick the rental movie.
         She had become such an utterly required part of his life in 
these 48 or 50 months...the mushy part of him wanted to sit down and 
think about how Scully was his soul mate, his other half, the person 
that completed him, that made him whole. But those were words, concepts, 
constructs built by society in an attempt to define something Mulder 
knew in his bones that was ultimately unable to be categorized, 
quantified or explained. 
        Scully simply was. 
        They simply...were. 
        "This can't happen," Scully whispered. She felt Mulder move 
against her, felt him starting to pull away. Her palms closed, catching 
his shirt. She held him where he was, quickly adding, "No. Let me 
finish." 
        Mulder froze, his mind in agony. He knew she was not denying 
him, she was not pushing HIM away. She was not rejecting him as a man, 
as a person, or as her partner. She was...what? His mind struggled to 
find a phrase, a word, a description for what Scully was doing. 
        "It's not that I don't want....it," she whispered, struggling as 
he was to find the words. "It's...just not time yet, Mulder." 
        When will it <be> time? Scully's mind asked, but she had no 
answer. "I don't know if there ever _will_ be a time, Mulder," she 
whispered again, feeling the hot sting of the tears as they stared to 
fill her eyes. "I have to believe that there will be a time and a place 
for...this. Part of me wants it so bad I can taste it. I can see it in 
my mind, every detail, every day and night spent together, our..." She 
paused, feeling the word lodge in her throat, a huge lump she had to 
swallow to speak around, "...love filling every corner of our lives. But 
not yet Mulder...not until..." 
        And, astonishing them both, Mulder finished the thought. 
"...we're healed." 
        Scully's head snapped back, her blue eyes tracking and locking 
with his hazel ones. "Yes," she whispered. "That's it exactly. We're 
both so..." 
        "...wounded," he finished. "Neither of us has..." 
        "...joy," Scully added. Mulder nodded. "Neither of us is ready 
for the actual...maintenance of that...kind of relationship." 
        Mulder nodded. She saw something move behind his eyes, and again 
unbidden, her hand reached up to caress his cheek. "It doesn't have to 
do with Samantha...or Melissa...or your father...or my father, even." 
Mulder nodded, his eyes encouraging her, begging her to talk it out, to 
finish it, so they could put it in a box until they needed it. Until 
they were able to deal with it the way it _deserved_ to be dealt with. 
        "It's not the lies and the secrets...or the shadow government 
dogging our every step...it's not about who's apartment is less likely 
to be bugged...it's not about Pendrall, or Phoebe, or Jack...or any of 
the people in our pasts, Mulder. It's about..." 
        "...us," he finished. He lowered his head until their foreheads 
touched. He closed his eyes, his whispers blowing warm breath across her 
face, tickling her eyebrows and the fine, almost invisible hairs above 
her upper lip. 
        "Don't you know how much I want to?" Scully asked, and then 
answered herself. "Of course you do. I can feel it on you, Mulder. It's 
caressing me...I can feel your need, your want, and it matches my own." 
        Her next sentence was spoken through gritted teeth. 
        "But. Now. Is. Not. The. Time." 
        Mulder chuckled against her. "Who you trying to convince, 
Scully? Me or you?" 
        Scully opened her eyes and pulled back, her expression 
beseeching. "Both of us, Mulder...I know you understand. I know you do." 
        Lips pursed, Mulder nodded once...twice. 
        "Yeah," he said, his voice hoarse, ragged. "I do." 
        Scully saw the pain rear up behind his eyes, and she knew it 
wasn't the pain of rejection or abandonment. It was something else, 
something so much more primal and animalistic. 
        "But before we go," she whispered, one hand sliding up over his 
chest, across his shoulder, cupping his neck, "...just once. Just one 
little one." 
        "A test one," Mulder offered, slowly lowering his head. They 
approached each other slowly, by fractions of inches. Mulder noticed 
Scully's eyelids drooping, her gaze focused on his lips. His entire body 
trembled in anticipation, a tuning fork vibrating in syncopation. 
        They had never kissed before, Scully thought, yet we are doing 
it as if we had a thousand times previously. And she knew, in both their 
minds and hearts, they had. 
        Mulder waited until their lips were a scant inch apart, and then 
whispered, "I love you, Dana," before capturing her mouth with his own. 
Scully had intended it to be a little kiss, a slight pressing, some 
gentle osculating, and then a quick parting so they could both go home 
and dream about this kiss for the next month. 
        At the first press of his lips, Scully felt something inside her 
belly uncoil and shift, sending slippery tentacles of warmth sliding 
through her limbs. Her fingers, stroking the small hairs at the back of 
his neck, felt charged...electric, somehow. A sound, the hungry groan of 
a feeding animal, escaped her lips, and she felt herself slowly moving 
closer to him, pressing her body against his. 
        The one hand still against Mulder's chest curled even tighter, 
and she used the leverage to pull him against her, harder. The kiss 
deepened, and Scully felt as if this was the only moment in time that 
had ever existed; that every single thing in her life, every single 
decision she had ever made, to go to medical school, to join the FBI, to 
accept assignment to the X-Files, every little decision down to the 
choice of which shoes to wear this morning had existed for the singular 
reason to bring her to this time, this place, with this man. 
        Mulder's mind was spinning, and then slowly, the energy 
rocketing across the synapses of his brain gathered into his cortex and 
vanished into the bioelectric mist. Nothing existed but Scully's mouth, 
the warmth and softness of her lips, the gentle, snug pressure of her 
petite body against his. Gone were thoughts of his missing sister and 
dead father. Gone were worries about the shadow government, Mr. X, 
Skinner, the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation. There was nothing 
but...happiness. Satisfaction. Completeness. They fit together like the 
precision-machined interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Her lips made 
for his, his for hers. 
        A moment approached, and they both saw it over the horizon of 
their mind's eye. A point in time, a divergence in the reality of this 
moment, and the harsher, starker reality of what could only be described 
as "After." There was no yesterday, no tomorrow, only Before and After 
this kiss. As he fell into the kiss slightly deeper, Mulder saw that the 
approaching point was not a point at all, but a fork, a place where the 
current path diverged. To the left, in his mind, was one possible future 
After, to the right another. One choice meant giving up his pursuit of 
the truth, his seemingly never-ending crusade to discover who and what 
was responsible for Samantha's disappearance. On that path, the Kiss was 
the first of many, a single step in the logical progression towards what 
both their hearts wanted, what both their souls hungered for. It was a 
life of home, hearth, family, children, normal jobs with normal hours, 
the occasional barbecue, and buying a new car every five years. It was a 
life of being together with Scully, as they were meant to be together, 
as man and wife. 
        And at the same point, the same divergence, lay another path, a 
path marked by the continuation of his quest, the endless pursuit of 
what was right, what was truth. On that path, the Kiss was a singular 
event, a cherished memory dragged out in the darkest hours before the 
breaking of the dawn, a warm morsel of comfort and love to be secreted 
and harbored for the storms that were to come. Their lives were to be 
much the same, with a certain knowledge now possessed, but a life of 
greasy spoons in far-away cities and towns, nights spent alone in hotel 
rooms, clutching pillows to chests to ward off the cackling calls of the 
spirits of the night. A chance to discover what he had set out to, a 
chance, perhaps, after that, to circle around once again and take the 
first path, the path that his heart truly wanted. 
        In the end, the decision was made for him. 
        Scully lightened the pressure and started to pull away, and then 
came back at him again, her own hunger surprising her only for an 
instant. Her mind saw the same point approaching, but the signs were 
labeled differently. To the left, she saw them together, married, with 
children and a home and a life, but she saw something else, she saw the 
emptiness in Mulder's eyes, saw how he had abandoned Samantha for her 
when he was so close, how he would always wonder if the tradeoff had 
been fair, if had been just and right. She knew that on the surface, 
they would be happy, they would be together as one forever. 
        But on the right, the other path, the other choice, in it Scully 
saw what was to be, what had to be. The chase would continue, and they 
would be together. Even though the temptation would be almost too much 
to resist, she knew they would. The truth demanded discovery, and she 
wanted to be by his side when Mulder did discover the truth. She wanted 
to help, to give him all of her, all she had to offer, so that he would 
once and for all quiet the demons that tormented his soul and raked 
their slimy, razor-sharp fingers against his heart. 
        They parted, both of them breathing heavily. Mulder watched as 
Scully licked suddenly-puffy lips, her hand coming up to wipe some of 
the moisture of the kiss away. She cocked her head to the side and 
reached up with the same hand, using her thumb to remove the small smear 
of her lipstick that stained the corner of his mouth. 
        "Wow," he whispered, his eyes wide, his surprise and arousal 
genuine and obvious. 
        "Wow is right, Mulder," Scully whispered. Mulder blinked, and 
took a step back, turning away from her, going back towards his desk. 
She reached a hand out and caught his arm, slowly turning him back to 
face her. 
        "The most incredible moment of my life, Mulder," she whispered, 
capturing his eyes with her own once again. She smiled softly, waiting 
for his own return grin before continuing. "I can't say when it will 
happen again...we can't go where we want to right now, Mulder...but when 
the time is right...I'll be by your side." 
        "I know," he nodded, his hand aching to reach out and reel her 
back into his embrace once again. "I know, Scully." 
        Scully smiled and tapped his chest with her palm once, twice, 
and then turned to go back to her desk. Her trenchcoat and briefcase 
were waiting, right next to her zippered laptop case. "Go home, change, 
and pick up the movies, Mulder. I'll order the pizza for about an hour." 
She turned to leave, not trusting herself to look back over her 
shoulder. At the door, she paused. 
        "Mulder?" 
        "Yeah, Scully?" 
        "Two things. First...don't get anything romantic or mushy, all 
right? I'm in the mood for something with a little action in it." She 
heard an assenting, surprised grunt from Mulder. 
        "What's the other?" he asked. 
        Scully took a breath, and turned to face him. Even at this 
distance, he affected her. She could feel his power, his electricity 
reaching across the office towards her, dragging her back into his arms. 
        "I love you, too," she said, and then opened the door and 
marched through, closing it securely behind her.

END---------