Interregnum XI

Horatio

Category: DSR

Summary: Three months dead. Six months gone. Was it time? How would she know?

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: Season 8 through Mulder's funeral in DeadAlive.

Timeline: This story is set three months after Mulder was buried.

Archive: XFMU; anything else, just let me know so I can visit.

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.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Amanda and Meridy.

Notes: See Interregnum I: Secrets for information about the series. "Affirmation" makes reference to an event in Interregnum X: Encounters, but it is not necessary to have read that story to make sense of this one.

Dana Scully closed and locked the door, tracing the numerals 4 and 2 with her finger before turning toward the elevator.

It was a familiar and now comforting ritual: feeding the fish, running the dust cloth over the desk, the coffee table, the dresser, the basketball . . . and sliding her fingers down the smooth wool of the suits still hanging in neat array in the closet.

Her mother had told her not to rush it. Take your time, she'd said. And she should know. So Scully had left everything alone. Kept it neat. Kept it clean. Out of respect. Out of avoidance of the unimaginable pain it would cause to box up, remove, empty out.

"You'll know when it's time," Maggie had said.

Scully had thought of the diocesan charities as she gazed on Mulder's suits this afternoon. Imagined removing the suits from their hangers, folding them neatly, laying them in a box. But then her throat had closed up, and she'd slammed the closet door and leaned her forehead against the wood, gasping for control.

Three months dead. Six months gone. Was it time? How would she know? She shook her head doubtfully as she walked down Hegel Place to her car.

Glancing at her watch, she frowned. Wasn't it time? Time for him to call? Doggett's plane was scheduled to arrive fifteen minutes ago. She should have heard from him.

Her heart began doing that erratic thing it did lately whenever John Doggett was traveling. Ever since his fateful escape from a plane crash a month ago ("I'll never complain about a traffic jam again," he vowed afterward), she had insisted he call her upon landing from every flight. He had obliged her on trips to Des Moines and Orlando, and on his arrival in Omaha three days ago.

As she squeezed her nearly seven-months-pregnant bulk behind the steering wheel, she could feel acid building in her stomach. Call, call, she prayed. Several blocks past Hegel Place her phone trilled, and she snatched it from the seat in relief.

John Doggett's voice rumbled reassuringly in her ear. "The plane was a little late. I'm still waitin' to get offa this thing. Where are you?"

"I'm in Alexandria, heading back to the Hoover Building."

"What are you doin' in Alexandria?" he asked.

Scully hesitated. "Just an errand." How else could she explain the ritual? Would he understand? But then, he had lost someone too, so maybe . . .

"Agent Scully?" said the voice in her ear. "Are you there?"

She shook herself. "I'm here, Agent Doggett."

"Do you wanna meet me at the office?"

"No," Scully said. "I'll be at the labs doing the post on the body you shipped out here. It got here faster than you did."

"Yeah, well, the dead don't have to interview crazy witnesses."

Scully chuckled.

Doggett went on, "I gotta run something by ballistics when I get in, then I'll catch up with you at the morgue."

"Good enough. See you then, Agent Doggett."

* * * *

Doggett strode down the hallway of the FBI labs, his eyes on the floor. So deep in thought was he that he almost collided with a blue-coated technician.

"Sorry," he mumbled, side-stepping around the young woman.

In between puzzling over the details of their current case, he had been pondering another matter. Since the Day He Didn't Die (he always thought of his deliverance from the plane crash in capital letters), his interactions with Agent Scully had taken on a subtly different tone. There was a greater openness, a greater comfort level. They touched more often – Doggett was conscious of every graze of her fingers on his sleeve, and he enjoyed a new freedom of placing a supportive hand on her elbow. They ate lunch together more often, and talked, as people do, of their families, their pasts. There were only two exceptions: Scully never spoke of Mulder, and Doggett never spoke of Luke.

The avoidance of those two subjects was a reminder to Doggett of the perilous waters they were navigating. Wherever their relationship was heading, it would not be an easy journey. Scully was expecting a child. She was still grieving. Doggett was well acquainted with that tortured journey, and he knew it couldn't be rushed.

But on the flight from Omaha he had decided to chance a next step. Something innocuous, something small.

It was time.

He entered the autopsy suite just as Scully was pulling off her gloves. At the sight of her he felt a familiar jolt, and asked himself not for the first time how a very pregnant woman in baggy scrubs could look so beautiful.

As the morgue assistant closed the victim's body cavity, Doggett stepped around the table to Scully's side. "Find out anything interesting?" he asked.

Scully tossed the gloves into the waste hamper and exhaled. "Some rather puzzling features."

He snorted. "Tell me somethin' new."

"It's an X-file, Agent Doggett. There are always things that don't add up."

"Addition don't even cover it." He pulled out his notebook and flipped through page after page of notes. "I think I need a course in advanced calculus to make sense of our witness's story."

She looked at him in amusement, then pushed through the doors and headed toward the locker room. Her feet hurt, her back ached, and she wanted to get out of her scrubs.

Doggett fell into step beside her. "I'd like to get your insight on some of this stuff," he said. "Also hear what you found out in the post. How about we compare notes over dinner?"

"Okay. We can grab some Chinese at the Golden Dragon."

Doggett slid his notebook back into his pocket. When he didn't reply, Scully said, "Or something else?"

"I actually had somethin' nicer in mind."

Her eyebrows arched in question.

"You like Middle Eastern?" he asked.

Scully slowed her steps slightly. "Yes."

"I developed a taste when I was in Lebanon. There's a new place downtown I've been wantin' to try."

Scully stopped and turned to him, her hand rubbing her lower back. "I don't think I'm up for anything fancy tonight. I'm pretty tired."

"All right. Forget tonight. But how about tomorrow night?"

Scully was surprised at his persistence. "Agent Doggett, you don't have to--"

"I want to." His expression was at once hesitant and eager. He spoke his next words carefully, as though he had rehearsed them. "I'd like to take you to dinner."

Scully's breath caught on the way from her lungs to her trachea.

He was asking her on a date.

A date. When was the last time she had been asked on a date? Her mind blurred at the long parade of years that stretched back to such an event. She and Mulder had never gone on a 'date.' The notion was almost laughable. A date was so normal. There was nothing normal about her relationship with Mulder. Could you date someone you had found shivering naked in a bathtub with a hole drilled in his head? someone you had plugged with a bullet? someone who had crossed Antarctica to rescue you?

You could love such a man. You could love him more than you loved your own life. You could fall into bed with him one night after seven years of loving him.

But you couldn't date him.

Scully looked at the man before her. John Doggett had U.S.M.C., N.Y.P.D., and F.B.I. stamped into every line of his face. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd been a Boy Scout, or if he bore a tattoo somewhere on his body. He was a conventional man; it was only natural that he would do the conventional thing and ask her on a date.

But was she a person who went on dates? And was she ready to take this friendship to another level? She didn't think so.

"Whaddya say?" he was asking her as her hesitation stretched out. His eyes were soft, expectant. She should stop it right here, right now. Tell him no, firmly.

"Yes." A rasp.

Doggett nodded, carefully concealing his surprise. He hadn't really expected an affirmative response at his first attempt. "Good. Then we'll go over these case notes after you change. I'll be in the car."

He turned on his heel and strode down the hallway. Scully gaped at his back. What on earth had she just done?

If she could have seen the smile spreading across her partner's face, she would have had her answer: She had made John Doggett a very happy man.

* * * *

Their legs were tangled together. She threaded her fingers through his hair, wrapped her arms around his broad back, sighed into his neck.

"Mulder," she murmured.

"Scully," was his answer, his lips grazing her ear.

"Feels good," she murmured throatily, riding a crest of pleasure.

"How d'ya like this dinner?" he asked, but his voice had changed. It was deeper, rougher. She turned her head and met his eyes. Blue eyes. Narrow nose. Thin lips. John Doggett lowered those lips to hers, and her excitement doubled.

"I'm still hungry," she panted into his mouth.

In response he moved inside her, and her body responded with wave after wave of exquisite spasms.

Heart pounding, eyes fluttering, awareness dawned on Scully sluggishly. When it did, when she realized she was alone in her bed, she groaned. At the recollection of her dream, she covered her face with her hands as though shamed by her body's betrayal.

She lay breathing heavily for several minutes, waiting for the throbbing of her nocturnal orgasm to subside. Finally she untangled her legs from the covers and turned onto her side.

"God DAMN hormones!" she cursed, and inexplicably began to weep.

* * * *

Doggett unlocked the office door and, whistling, took off his jacket and hung it on a hook. He rolled up his sleeves and sat down, rocking back and clasping his hands behind his head.

It was going to be a good day. Because tonight he was having dinner with Dana Scully.

He looked over at the empty desk on the other side of the room. She must be running late, he thought. He hoped she had let herself sleep in a little. She needed it.

As if cue, the phone rang.

"I'm sorry, Agent Doggett," Scully said. "I'm feeling a little under the weather this morning and I won't be coming in."

Doggett rocked forward and planted his feet on the floor with a thump. "Are you all right?"

"I'm probably just overtired from the postmortem yesterday."

"Anything I can do?"

"No, but thanks for asking."

"Well, take care of yourself, Agent Scully."

"I will. I'll e-mail you my autopsy report in a few minutes. And Agent Doggett?" There was a pause on the line. "I'm sorry about dinner tonight. I really am."

"Don't worry about it. Just feel better, okay?"

She promised she'd try, and hung up. Doggett rested his head in his hand, disappointment vying with concern.

In her apartment Scully stared at the phone. In the wake of other concerns, she had forgotten her dream of last night until Doggett's gravelly voice recalled it. At the memory her heart gave a momentary skip. But the dream was soon forgotten as she picked up the phone again, anxiety squeezing her chest.

After a few minutes she was connected with her doctor. "What seems to be the problem, Dana?" the woman asked.

Scully swallowed. "I've had some bleeding."

* * * *

The next morning Doggett was again greeted by an empty office. He hung up his jacket, picked up the report that had been sent down from ballistics, and for fifteen minutes tried to make sense of the data. He looked at the phone. He stood up and walked around the office, stared at the 'I Want to Believe' poster, fingered a snapshot of Scully and Mulder in their FBI jackets. He sat down. Sifted through Scully's autopsy results. He got up. He pulled open his drawer and took out a baseball, tossing it from one hand to another. Slap, slap. He sat down and rocked back in his chair.

After an hour of this, he picked up the phone. Scully didn't answer. He tried her cell phone. Nothing but the canned voicemail message. His brows knitting, he dialed the assistant director's office.

An interminable elevator ride later he stalked up to Skinner's assistant. "Is he in there?" he barked.

Kim looked up in surprise. "As I told you on the phone, Agent Doggett, he's unavailable right now."

But Doggett was already moving toward the door, ignoring her objections.

Inside his office Skinner was deep in a telephone conversation. At Doggett's interruption he scowled.

Kim followed Doggett in. "I tried to tell him, sir," she explained, but Skinner waved her away, saying, "It's all right." She withdrew, closing the door.

Skinner said into his phone, "I'll get back to you." Replacing the receiver in its cradle, he leaned back in his chair. "Agent Doggett?"

The other man charged up to the A.D.'s desk. "Where is she? Where's Agent Scully?"

Skinner's face became a mask, and he didn't answer.

"You know where she is, don't you?" barked Doggett.

Skinner's eyes didn't leave the other man, but a flicker of indecision played across his face. Finally he said quietly, "I assumed she told you."

"Told me what?"

Skinner drew in a breath and looked down at his desk blotter. "She's in the hospital."

"WHAT!? What hospital?"

"Agent Doggett--"

"WHAT HOSPITAL?" Doggett repeated angrily.

"St Mary's."

In three strides Doggett was out the door, unheeding as Skinner jumped up and called to him.

* * * *

Doggett tapped lightly on the door, then pushed it open slowly. Scully was sitting up in bed, looking out the window. On her lap lay a book, open but ignored. At his entrance she closed it and turned to him. He read the title upside down: 'Pocket Guide to Fetal Monitoring and Assessment,' and swallowed. But he noted with relief that there were no beeping monitors, and no IVs connected to her arm.

"Agent Doggett," said Scully.

"Agent Scully."

He stepped closer, his brows drawn together and his eyes anxious. Those blue eyes. Scully recalled her dream again, and embarrassment washed over her in a hot wave.

Doggett asked, "Are you all right? Is the baby all right?"

"I'm fine. The baby's fine."

He nodded once, then let out a breath. But his hands were clenched by his sides.

"Agent Doggett, I--" Scully began.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he interrupted her. "Why did I have to pry this out of A.D. Skinner?"

Scully dropped her eyes, and her hands played with the cover of the book on her lap.

He didn't wait for a reply but went on. "Were you gonna tell accounting and the steno pool before you told me? Why won't you trust me?"

Scully looked up at that. "I do trust you."

"Then why--"

"I didn't want to worry you."

"What the hell do you think I do when I don't know where you are?" His voice was ragged.

"I was afraid of this -- that you'd overreact. I thought I'd be in and out in a day, and I wanted to save you any worry."

"And when it turned out you weren't out in a day?"

Scully sighed and chewed her lip.

Doggett pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down. His fingers crawled through his hair. "You gotta stop doing this to me. Not telling me things."

Scully's shoulders sagged. His concern for her was touching, but at the same time troubling. She said, "I was going to call you this morning."

He looked up at her. "So you're all right? Why are you here?"

"I had a slight antepartum hemorrhage."

Doggett's face blanched, and Scully waved her hand. "It's not as bad as it sounds. The operative word is 'slight.' They did some blood tests and an ultrasound, and everything looks fine."

His pale eyes probed hers. "You're sure?"

Scully read his real meaning: You're not lying to me, are you? "Yes," she said, "I'm sure. There's nothing to worry about. I can go home this afternoon."

"Maybe you should cut back on your work."

"In almost six weeks I'll go on maternity leave. Until then, I'll just be careful not to overdo it." She reached over and touched his hand. "I'm sorry I scared you."

He held her gaze a long moment, then lightly took hold of her hand. "Forget it. I'm just glad you're all right." He dropped his eyes to their hands, and gently rubbed the back of hers with his thumb.

Scully felt a current travel up her arm from the point of contact, turning to a flush that spread over her skin. She swallowed with difficulty.

Doggett raised his eyes to hers again, and with his other hand reached up and softly brushed her hair. His journey from anger, to anxiousness, and finally relief had left him overcharged, and his emotions trammeled over his better instincts. His body moved on its own. In a blink his face was hovering over hers.

Scully suppressed a gasp. When did he do that? Had she lost consciousness momentarily? His lips were parted slightly, his breath caressed her mouth -- just as in her dream. Scully's eyes darted frantically from his lips, to the mole on his chin, to his eyes -- those penetrating eyes, now with lids half-lowered. Why couldn't she breathe?

Her voice was a croak. "Agent Doggett."

He froze. His eyes widened and focused on her face, where he saw surprise, alarm, and something else. A warning?

Doggett pushed back the chair abruptly and strode to the window, where he stood looking out, his hands on his hips and his shoulders rising up and down.

The silence stretched out. Finally he said, "Why do you always call me by my title?"

Scully started. This wasn't what she had expected. She had readied herself for other accusations, such as, "Why won't you let me kiss you?" or, "What the hell is it you want?"

"After all we've been through," he added bitterly, still gazing out the window.

Scully tried to regroup her faculties. Her heart still hadn't returned to its normal tempo from its galloping pace of a moment ago. "We're colleagues . . ." she began, knowing as soon as she uttered it that it was a poor excuse for an answer.

"We're a lot more than that," he said, turning around and pinning her with his eyes.

"Yes," she agreed. "We're friends."

He considered her statement, but decided not to pursue it. "You think by pinnin' a label on me, you won't have to think of me as a human being? As a man?"

She flushed at the last words, for his being just that was what she had become so acutely aware of recently. She didn't answer him.

Doggett thrust his fists into his pockets. "I've thought lately that maybe we might be gettin' a little closer than just 'friends'. But now--" He shrugged. "I don't know. I can't get a handle on this damn push-pull business."

Scully looked at her lap.

"Talk to me, Agent Scully," he said.

She spoke slowly. "I've had some time to think while I've been here. It's part of the reason I didn't call you. I was . . . thinking."

"About what?"

About dreams of you making love to me, she thought. About raging hormones. About feelings run amok. About a dead man, and the tragic past, and the uncertain future. About the messiness of human nature. What, indeed, had she not thought about during the long quiet hours?

"About . . . us," she merely said. "About your asking me to dinner. About . . . the implications."

Doggett waited, tense. "And?"

"And I began to analyze my feelings for you."

He let his breath out with a puff. Leave it to a scientist. "And what are your feelings?"

"Confused."

He nodded. She was pregnant, she'd suffered a terrible loss; of course she was confused. "That's understandable," he said quietly.

"And I began to wonder," she continued, "if perhaps you weren't a little confused, too."

The furrows at the bridge of his nose deepened. "How?"

"Your concern for me -- and for my baby. Are you sure it's me -- that it's us -- that you care about?"

"What do you mean? 'Course, I care about you."

Scully looked at him, and hesitated. Did she really want to confront this? But it was only fair. In the past he had complained about her "secrets and lies," and she had to admit those complaints were not unreasonable, even if she had good reasons for concealing the truth. Now she needed to know if he, too, was hiding the truth -- from himself.

She plunged ahead. "Have you examined your motives with respect to me? Are you sure that I, and my baby, aren't just a substitute for what you lost?" A beat. "For your son?"

His face clouded with anger. For several seconds he couldn't speak. Then he ground out, "You think I'm just usin' you to fill a hole in my life?"

The pain in his eyes was piercing, and Scully had to resist the urge to look away. "I think it's worth considering," she said.

Doggett took a step closer. "I got news for you. Nothing could ever replace my boy! NOTHING!" He jabbed his finger the air in front of her as his voice rose. "Not you. Not your baby. I'll NEVER be able to replace Luke. Not in my whole, goddamn, miserable life!" On the last words his voice broke.

Scully clenched her book until her fingers cramped. Doggett's eyes were glittering with a wet sheen. She had seen him angry before, but she had never seen him mortally wounded. She realized with an agonizing shock the power she had to hurt him.

He was yanking open the door. Turning to her again he said, "I'm not the only one with a hole in my life." His voice lowered, and its controlled quietness unnerved Scully even more than his earlier shout. "And you don't have to worry, Agent Scully." He spoke her title acidly. "Because I'll never love your child the way I loved mine."

As the door closed behind him, Scully pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. "Damn! DAMN!"

* * * *

She sat in her car, head bowed over the steering wheel, waiting for the resurgence of the determination she had felt this morning. She had prayed during Mass for guidance, for strength, for discernment. By the time she accepted the Host on her tongue she was sure of only one thing: she couldn't face her partner at work on Monday morning without first confronting the hurt she had sown between them.

Doggett's truck was parked at the curb in front of his house. Drawing a deep breath, Scully climbed out of her car. At his door she knocked and waited. Somewhere in the distance a power tool was screaming, but in Doggett's house there was only silence. Scully rang the doorbell and waited some more. At last she retreated down the walk and followed the sound of the power tool around to the back yard. There she found a deck jutting from house, raised a few feet above a patch of lawn. Two sawhorses stood on the deck, and across them lay a door. Over the door leaned Doggett, wielding a sander with a grimly controlled fury.

He was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, work gloves, and a paint mask affixed over his nose and mouth. Despite the late-afternoon November chill, beads of sweat dotted his forehead. As Scully watched his biceps flex and relax under his T-shirt, his masculinity hit her like a shock wave, and her cheeks grew hot. Where Mulder had been all smooth and soft surfaces, this man was flinty and hard. But just as beneath Mulder's sensitivity lay an unswerving toughness, under Doggett's steel she knew there was a core of gentleness.

Opposites in so many ways, yet alike in the ways that counted.

Right here and now, however, the virility of the man before her made her knees unsteady -- and this time she forgot to curse her hormones. Carefully Scully mounted the three steps to the deck until she came into Doggett's line of vision. He straightened and blinked, then switched off the sander. In the silence that descended they could hear a dog barking far off.

Pulling the paint mask down until it dangled around his neck, Doggett stared at his partner. He had thought of little else but Scully since he had stalked out of the hospital two days ago. He'd been a damn fool, he finally decided, to fall for a woman he worked with. And not only that, but a woman who was still in love with a dead man -- and who was about to bring a child into the world. He was nuts to ask for all that. Dana Scully had done him a favor. He was better off alone.

Now here she was. He had not expected to see her until tomorrow, when he presumed she would don her cool and professional mask. But now her face was anything but cool and professional. Her eyes were downcast, and her cheeks showed two little red spots.

"Agent Scully," he said. A question.

Scully lifted her eyes from the T-shirt outlining his pectorals to his sawdust-smudged face. She had spent all day debating what she would say when she got here. She would apologize. No, she wouldn't apologize. She would explain. But how could she explain? She found her voice at last. "I wanted to explain."

He looked off to the side, away from her. "I don't have time for this . . . this whatever it is between us." He looked back at her. "I got work to do. And so do you."

Scully nodded sadly. Of course, he was fed up with her. "Yes," she agreed. "And I'll leave you to it in a minute. But first I wanted to answer your question."

His eyes narrowed in puzzlement. Scully looked down at her shoes -- or rather, at her belly, which blocked the view of her feet. She swallowed, looked back up at him. "'Agent Doggett' was safe. 'John' opens up a world of possibilities that I'm not--" She corrected herself. "That I wasn't ready for."

He pondered her words in silence.

She continued. "I've been afraid. Of so many things."

Doggett was still, only his chest moving with his breathing. Scully opened her mouth as if to say more, then shut it. She seemed unable to go on.

He laid the sander carefully on the door. "I can understand that."

"I didn't think I could ever care about anyone again," she said. "Caring about you was frightening. It was easier to push you away."

Doggett felt the anger that had ground away the old paint on the door begin to subside. What she had been through -- was still going through -- how could he have expected otherwise but that she would run full tilt in the opposite direction?

Scully went on. "I'm sorry about the other day, about what I said. I'm sorry I hurt you. That's all I wanted to say. I'll let you get back to work." She turned and descended the steps.

Doggett watched her, frozen. Then he tore off his gloves and paint mask and tossed them on the door. "Agent Scully, wait!" He took the steps quickly. When he stopped before her, he was acutely conscious of his griminess next to this immaculate woman. But he couldn't let her leave. Not yet. He swallowed. "I -- I didn't mean what I said about your child."

She sighed. "Of course not. I knew that."

His eyes searched her. "You said 'wasn't'."

She looked at him questioningly.

He tried again. "You talked about possibilities you weren't ready for. Past tense?"

The neighborhood dog had stopped barking, and the quietness of the oncoming dusk settled over them softly. Scully said, "That's right."

Doggett's heart seemed absurdly loud to his ears. Okay, so he was a damn fool. He was nuts. The hell with it. "How about the present?" he said hoarsely.

Scully sucked in a breath. The smells of sawdust and sweat and longing emanating from his body were intoxicating. Solid and earthy and alive, they banished fear, and ghosts, to a remote corner of her mind.

She placed a hand on his chest. Felt his heart thudding. Saw lines of uncertainty furrow his brow. "I'd like to try," she whispered, and added in the merest breath: "John."

* * * *

Later Scully would not be able to remember how it happened. How his hand wound up on her neck, sliding under her hair, sending a warm current down her spine. Or how her arms ended up encircling his back. Or how their mouths came to be touching.

She only remembered the surprising softness of his lips, tentative and astonishingly delicate for a man's, feather-dusting her own lips, asking, not demanding. Their gentleness penetrated her heart, and she felt herself coming alive from a long, cold death. Her answer to his tender query was a slight parting of her lips, and she moaned into his mouth.

Doggett's legs nearly buckled. As her tongue touched his, he was pulled down by an undertow of desire and he tasted her as if he had never tasted a woman before. He dropped one hand to her behind to steady himself. He was half afraid that the Scully of old would return and she would pull away at any moment, and he would collapse. But she only wrapped her arms more tightly around him, squeezing out all the air between their bodies until they were one from lips to knees.

Scully's hands roamed over the musculature of Doggett's back as though memorizing it for an anatomy exam. She pressed herself into his chest, thrilling at the friction against her over-sensitive breasts. She tried to meld her abdomen with his pelvis, and felt an answering pressure in return. With a gasp, she deepened the kiss.

Then the baby kicked.

Their eyes, half-closed, flew open, and they gaped at each other cross-eyed from an inch apart. A laugh burst from Scully's mouth.

"I felt that," Doggett said. Little J. Edgar had slugged him where a man doesn't want to be slugged.

Scully's shoulders were shaking, and she hid her face in his T-shirt. Doggett chuckled into her hair. "I think he objects to this."

Her laughter gradually subsiding, she pulled back to look at him. Her expression had turned serious and faraway, as though she were remembering things she had momentarily let herself forget. She let out a soft sigh and observed, "I think he -- or she -- is as surprised at 'this' as I am."

Doggett brushed away some grains of sawdust from her flushed cheek. "Movin' a little too fast, are we?"

Scully nodded. "There's so much--" She stopped, tried to find the words, gave up. "I might need to catch my breath and get my bearings."

Doggett quelled a surge of fear. She wasn't going to flee, was she? "Probably be good for both of us," he said. In fact, he was still breathing hard. "Why don't we go inside, get something to eat. Anyway, I'm gettin' you dirty. I should change."

She ran her hand tenderly up and down the dust on his arm. She smiled up at him. "Got milk?"

Hot damn! She wasn't going to flee. He couldn't stop a goofy grin from spreading across his face. "You bet." Taking her arm, he led her up the steps and into the house. "And microwave pizza rolls."

She looked at him in horror.

* * * *

The moon had risen in the sky, illuminating the man in the backyard. Scully had returned from the bathroom to find Doggett there, and she watched him unobserved as he wound the extension cord around his arm, then stowed it in the tool shed. The gloves and sander followed. Then he closed and locked the door and gave the padlock a confirming yank.

So this is normal life, Scully thought with lips parted in wonder.

Turning around, Doggett saw her and crossed the yard to the back door. "Puttin' stuff away," he explained unnecessarily. Scully was looking at him with eyes wide and unusually bright. God almighty, she was a vision. He still could hardly believe this was happening.

Scully wrenched herself away from her contemplation of the simple scene. "It's late. I should go."

His face registered disappointment, but he said nothing. They walked through the house, past their dirty dishes and the empty pizza box. Scully had taken one look at the contents of Doggett's freezer and had insisted they order out. The hours that followed were passed in conversation by turns solemn and light-hearted, and in kisses alternately tender and devouring. Scully reflected that she had kissed John Doggett more in one night than she had Fox Mulder in seven years. Well, they were different men.

They stopped by her car, and Doggett laid his hand alongside Scully's cheek. "You could stay with me tonight," he said in a low and husky voice.

She met his look, those eyes hazy with desire. Experienced a tug of response. Then she leaned into his hand and moved her head slightly. "Not this night, John. I need some time. I need to take this slowly." And, she thought, I need to talk to my doctor.

He nodded. Not this night meant another night. He could wait. "Take as much time as you need, Dana." He gathered her to his chest and kissed her hair. All that mattered was that he could hold her, care for her, help her heal -- and that she would let him. They had plenty of time.

Scully snaked her arms around his waist and nestled her face into the curve of his neck. She breathed in his musky cologne and smiled, remembering earlier when he had returned from changing into clean clothes. Then he had smelled of soap and, when he had kissed her softly, mint toothpaste. Bless his heart, he had brushed his teeth for her.

She hugged him more tightly. Lifting her head, her eyes fell on the moon hanging in the sky over his shoulder. The ceaseless wheel of time. The dead are dead; they're never coming back. Life -- and love -- go on.

Doggett pulled back a little to look at her. What was she thinking? He wondered if he would ever learn how to read all her inscrutable moods. "Wanna share those thoughts?" he asked softly.

Scully turned her focus to him, to the honest face, the gentle eyes, and smiled sadly. "It's nothing. I was just thinking about an errand I need to do soon."

It would take a few weekends to box things up and empty out. She'd call her mother; they could start next Saturday.

Scully's throat tightened, but a new calm overshadowed the sadness. At last she knew.

It was time.

END

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