Title: My Turn 
Author: RosesDecay 
E-Mail address: RosesDecay@aol.com 
Category: Vignette...slight Humor...even slighter 
Angst? 
Spoilers: Minor ones for Never Again, Bad Blood, 
Triangle 
Keywords: Would you believe...MSR? :::ducks:::
Summary: The clock is ticking and Mulder's losing. 

Author's Note: Yes, it actually says MSR up there. 
This is my first foray out of slash in, oh, (checking 
watch), five months. Mulder just wants his Scully, 
okay? Set sometime after Triangle. 

Disclaimer: The X-Files and all characters related to 
the show do not belong to me. I don't claim any right 
to them. No infringement intended. 

~ My Turn ~ 

One of these days, I'm going to wake up with a 
horse's head on my pillow and a note from Scully 
telling me to burn in hell. 

I can feel it. It's a premonition, just a 
premonition, but it's got that particular ring to it 
that tells me it's going to come true. I always feel 
it when she gets restless, starts tugging at my hand 
to let go. I felt it with Jerse. I even felt it with 
that damn macho-wannabe sheriff, He In Need Of Dental 
Care. She starts glancing around, opening her eyes, 
seeing the whole wide world of pretty boys and manly 
men. And she stars snarling at me to just let go, to 
fucking let go of her hand before she does something 
stupid, like shoot me in the head. 

I had her to myself in the basement. In the basement 
it was just me and her, her and me, the outcasts, the 
rejects. The FBI's most unwanted, segregated from the 
Chosen Ones, hidden from the sunlight. Devour and 
regurgitate, that was us. She'd consume me and I'd 
gnaw on her from the inside out, and by the time I 
got far enough to see the florescent lights over my 
desk she'd start chewing on the pieces of me that 
emerged. She was all I really needed and I was all 
she had the energy to pursue. 

She was mine, goddammit. 

Now. Now we emerge from the basement, back into the 
sunlight and into the arms of the Normal Ones. My 
little waif, bleached milk-white from the shadows, 
back in the work force, back into the wide world of 
people. And she felt the sun on her skin and the 
pure, healthy light in her eyes and she started 
seeing things. Things other than me. 

Not a horse's head. She'd never kill a horse - I've 
snuck peeks at the photo albums her mother arranges 
on the coffee table. Little sunburnt tomboy perched 
on a horse, probably with an absurdly masculine name 
like "Lightning In A Bottle." She'd scoop my fish out 
of the tank instead, the four or five floating with 
bloated bellies on top, and scatter them through the 
sheets while I slept. Little sunburnt tomboy, tugging 
on my hand insistently. Lemme *go.* 

We don't have cubicles. I know there are people 
across Corporate America who would kill for an office 
without cubicles, but I crave them almost as much as 
I do her. Cubicles so she can shut herself up in a 
little box and do her work. Cubicles so the suave 
youngboys, fresh out of the Academy, can't see her 
and sidle over to sweep her off her feet. Cubicles so 
I can peek over the walls and distract her while 
she's on the phone, and see that irritated, amused 
smile as she tries tosound professional to the beet 
farmer on the line and project an aura of pure 
disdain at the same time. 

I want to keep her in my own little box, my own 
little world, where I can keep her safe. Safe from 
the cruel predators of the world who would harm her, 
use her, take her. 

Yeah, right. Like hell. I want to keep her in my own 
little box so she'll be blind, so she won't notice 
what she's missing. I want to make the rest of the 
world disappear, so all she'll see is me. Just on the 
off chance that someday, somehow, she'll delude 
herself into believing that maybe she could stand me, 
maybe I'm not that bad after all. 

And I'd wake up and smell that horrible smell, the 
familiar smell of rotting flesh and salt water, and 
dangling on a string in front of me would be a fish 
head, eyes bulging, a note tucked between two rotting 
lips. 

Let go. Let *go.* 

She eyes them. She eyes them all, with that predatory 
look she gets whenever I've fucked something up 
royally. All the toddling little twenty-one year olds 
from Quantaco, head of their classes, still amazed 
that if they flash their driver's licenses in bars 
they can get alcohol, actual alcohol. Their short 
gelled hair and their lean physiques and their boyish 
smiles. And she gives them those tiny smiles, both 
professional and coy. Innocents. Idealists. They can 
shoot a perp twenty miles away and save the cat from 
the Big Bad Oak in the front yard, but bring up alien 
visitation and government conspiracies and they 
laugh, shaking their heads. Ludicrous. Ludicrous to 
think that something so big could go virtually 
unnoticed. Ludicrous that such an intelligent woman 
would stay paired with that crazy lunatic Troll Under 
The Bridge, when the sun is shining bright and he's 
melting, melting. 

Soon now. Soon he's going to come along, Mr. Right, 
Mr. Perfect. She'll run her hands through his hair 
and deem it silk. She'll kiss his lips and call it 
magical. She'll fuck him like an animal and it will 
be the best they've ever had. She'll cry on his 
shoulder and she'll say he's the only one, the only 
one to trust, the only one who can lift her out of 
the dark corridors I drew her into so many years ago. 

She'll stand at an altar and give herself to him, 
mind, body, and soul, and say it was the best choice 
she ever made. 

And I'll be at home dumping fish food into the empty 
tank, watching that little sunburnt hand toy with the 
perfect diamond on her finger. Screaming at myself 
because I had years of perfect opportunities and I 
threw them in the gutter. 

I want her. I want her all to myself because I'm a 
selfish bastard and I always will be. I want my free 
reign again, to devour and be devoured, to consume 
and to be consumed. I want laugh along with her in 
gentle amusement when one of the endless Gel-Boys 
gives her a sardonic wink. I want to run my fingers 
down her spine as she stalks out of Kersh's office, 
angry at all the bureaucratic bullshit. I want to 
snatch her up when I see her with those frozen eyes 
and tight lips and mutters of "I'm fine." I want to 
grab her and kiss the truth right out of her, forcing 
"No you're not" into her teeth and right down her 
throat. I want to be able to say "I love you" 
whenever I goddamn feel like it, not when I'm so high 
up on morphine that I can *see* the Emerald City in 
the distance behind her. 

I want to hold on to that little sunburnt hand for 
the rest of time, alien invasions and government 
conspiracies be damned. 

And she wants me to let go. 

I'm going to have to say something, and soon. Make my 
move. Seize the day. Her tongue traces over her lips 
whenever she sees the tousled prettyboys mopping 
their hair after lunchtime trips to the pool, and she 
won't look at me no matter how deadly my stares. She 
doesn't want me to see that look. She doesn't want me 
to know, yet. 

Yes. It's all up to me. To tell her first. 

Because I know her. And sooner or later, she's going 
to get my fish to join her cause. 

~ 

"Is it my turn to hold you by your hands. Tell you I 
love you and you not hear me? Is it my turn to 
totally understand. To watch you walk out of my life 
and not do a damn thing?" 

- "I'd Die Without You," P.M. Dawn