Spoilers: Millennium
Category: MSR
Rating: PG, for language
Synopsis: Scully has written Mulder a letter, and now she's
not sure she should have done so.
Disclaimer: Scully belongs to FOX.  And Fox.  Both.
Archive: Freely, but tell me.
Feedback: Please.  emshort@mindspring.com
 

*Cyrano in the Morning*

I feel like an idiot.

You know it's not a good day when you open your eyes to a
feeling of dread. The first thing I think, when I am aware
enough to think, is --

Shit.  I've gone and done it.

Ordinarily I have a great deal of self-control.  But every
once in a while I need to say something; I need to say it so
badly that I don't stop to reflect how it will sound, or how
the other person will react, or even what reaction I want.
And that's how it was for me, last night.

You should understand that.  I could see in your eyes, when
you backed away from that kiss, that you weren't quite sure
what you'd just done.  I wasn't either, and we drove home in
silence, and I went to bed; and lay there, in the darkness,
my brain jumping with the beginnings of dozens of sentences.
Which is why I crept out to my computer at three in the
morning and tortured myself until nearly six, trying to tell
you what was in my heart.

Once I made a resolution: when you finish an email that
you've spent more than one hour (or three Kleenex) writing,
don't press send.  Save the draft, review it later.  Like so
many of my best rules, I couldn't follow it -- because I
knew that in the morning I would have no courage left.  And
damn, but I was right.  I have no courage now.  When I think
of what I said -- how much I made open that I meant to keep
secret; how bare I stripped my heart; how easily you could
mock me, or doubt me, or tear me to shreds simply by failing
to reply -- when I remember that, I pull the blanket over my
head and moan.

It's like having a hangover.

Little bits come back to me of what I said.  Phrases that I
thought were so well-turned, so insightful, so correct: they
make me twitch, now.  Was I too formal?  I poured my heart
out, but I poured it out *carefully* -- will that bother
you?  I am as precise when I write a love-letter as when I
write a report.  There must be something pathological there.

I just didn't want to get anything wrong.  You're hard to
talk to when it matters most, and hard to write to as well.
I never know how you're going to react.  Can you blame me
for weighing my words?

But maybe I didn't think enough, after all, about all the
possible reactions that you might have.  What if I was
totally wrong about the meaning of that kiss?  Will you be
unable to answer me?  Or will you send some gentle
repudiation?  I can see us sinking into silence, again, the
same hostile silence that keeps turning up in the midst of
our partnership.  Please no.

I have to cling to what I know of you.  You never betray me
when I'm vulnerable.  Never.  And I have never been so
vulnerable as now -- now that I have told you, without being
asked, all my reasons to love you. Your dark passion and
your bright mind.  That you suffer, and that you endure, and
that you contrive to go on.  The way my gaze catches at the
hollow of your throat -- did I really mention that?  Yes.  I
think I did.

The kitchen sink is dripping, and I need to go to the
bathroom.  It is time to get out of bed, and begin to wait
for the ring of the phone.