Title: Paper Cup Aquarium
Author: Mary Parker
Rating: PG, I suppose
Spoilers: Season 7, "all things" in particular
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine.  Chris Carter's, Fox's,
1013's.  No profit for me.
Summary: Scully's life proceeds in logical increments.

It wasn't fear that kept Scully from finding 
Mulder in his apartment some dull night and 
sitting him down for some frank conversation and 
hopefully some explosive sex. Not fear exactly. 
Not reserve exactly - their intimacy was beyond 
any precedent she knew, and the frank discussion 
would only be the verbal expression of a long 
series of looks, brief touches, and small sweet 
kisses on the forhead. Not anxiety, not 
apprehension, not reluctance or inability. There 
was just a sense of needing to wait, of an 
opportune moment only visible as a smudge on the 
horizon. There was no place to make landfall 
where they were, drifting in the vast oceans of 
conspiracy and other theories.

She imagined from time to time the moment that 
would be. Sometimes in her mind tears were shed, 
but in recognition of joy and rememberance of 
sorrow and lost time. Sometimes they just kissed 
each other until they couldn't breathe.

They were so backwards. Didn't sex usually come 
first? Then the emotional baggage. But they had 
issues to stock three marriages and none of the 
benefits.

No, Scully's hesitation wasn't caused by terror, 
merely by a sense of the incremental: while 
Mulder went flat out or full stop, she had 
always progressed through logical steps, as if 
each stage of her life was a cup slowly filling 
with water. The spillover would come, but it was 
a matter of time. She was patient. Mulder was 
not, though he had cobbled together a 
jury-rigged patchwork sort of patience; it wore 
thin easily and these days she would see that 
spooky look in his eyes that said he was ready 
to run. So she let him go to England by himself, 
though eager herself for a sight of London. By 
now she knew when a cusp was approaching. The 
tension between them over the baby and Pfaster 
had added a lot of water to the cup; she could 
sense something was about to brim over.

And then: Daniel. He touched her and she 
shivered. The cup tipped. All her memories 
spilled on the ground and lay flapping and 
gasping like so many tiny bright fish. She 
couldn't sort through them quickly enough, 
couldn't tell what was worth saving from the 
paper cup aquarium of her life.

So she took a deep breath, grabbed a blind 
double handful of minnow memories, and offered 
them to God on a Buddhist shrine. Melissa, 
Emily, her mother, but mostly Mulder, looking 
at her with such tenderness. Scully found that 
her crossroads life had turned into a 
cloverleaf interchange, looping and looping, 
but here was her exit to the way through. She 
took it. What else was there?

And then: Mulder, puzzled on his couch. She woke 
up on his couch to find him watching her, 
cradling a cup of tea long-cooled. She took it 
from him, set it on the table.

Now, she said. Now is the time.