TITLE: All Out Of Love

NAME: Mik

E-MAIL: mikdok@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: SRA

RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.

SUMMARY: The why behind Scully's departure.

ARCHIVE: Anywhere as long as my name and addy stay attached.

FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is an AU, very vague spoilers for multiple episodes, nothing current.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Skinner Mulder Scully NC-17

DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, Dana Scully and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything.

Author's Notes: Sometimes having everything isn't enough. To Tamra, who wanted the offpage story. Thanks for the idea.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

All Out Of Love

by Mik

She perched on the brick fence and stared out at a blue Pacific sprinkled with the glitter of sunlight. Orange blossoms sweetened the air she breathed. Gulls swooped and cried overhead and a sun warm breeze caressed her cheek. Paradise on a terra cotta terrace, California's gift to a world weary woman.

Inside, a man she knew and desired and even...yes, possibly even loved, slept soundly on her bed in the pleasant afterglow of sex. She gathered her dressing gown together and tilted her face back to let the sun bathe her face in warmth she'd only dreamed of on April days in DC. Everything in her world was golden and warm and perfect.

And yet …

It had been eight months. And she still remembered every moment of that goodbye as if it was a video she played each morning on the treadmill. His sweet, goofy smile, the heat of his reluctant embrace, the careless toss of a wave as she turned back to look one last time.

Eight months and she still tortured herself with what ifs and whys. What if he didn't really want me to go? Why didn't he stop me? What if he missed me? Why did he never write? What if I went back to see him? Why hasn't he come to see me?

She didn't want much, she reminded herself. Only to know she was loved. She thought he loved her, but he let her go so easily.

She turned and glanced inside to the figure sprawled in languor across her bed. He cherishes me, she reminded herself. He sends flowers, calls daily, writes when he's out of town. He wants to marry me, have a family. Why isn't he enough?

"Because I'm a fool," she mumbled.

Inside, the house was still cool and she tied the sash of her gown snuggly as she wandered through the whitewashed surroundings of faux Southwest styles. She didn't really care for it, but the place came furnished, and she needed the stark contrast to that Early American tidiness of her old apartment.

She filled the kettle, flipped the switch and spooned coffee into the French press. All little actions she took every day. All so familiar, yet all so new. She glanced across the terra cotta tiles of the bar and wished he was hunched over it, long legs tangled in one of the stools, making snide, slightly suggestive jokes as she moved around the kitchen.

The suggestions were always there. Even from the beginning she sensed desire in him. And he had told her he loved her, more than once. Just remembering his words used to send a little electric thrill through her body. Why had she never responded? Because she was never certain that he meant it. She wanted to believe.

"Something funny?"

She looked up, realizing that she was smirking. "Oh, no...just smiling to myself," she said, and tipped her face up to accept his kiss.

"I hope I put that smile there," he said, with a tiny smirk of his own.

She recognized the faint uncertainty there. She knew he knew about him. He was someone they never discussed, but this he knew … she had come here to free herself from another him. "Oh, of course you did," she said, not quite quickly enough. Poor man, she thought guiltily. I know how that uncertainty feels. She moved, very deliberately, to slide her arms around his middle and looked up at him. "You make me smile all the time."

He wasn't as tall as Mulder. He was blond and blue eyed. He was as opposite in type as she could get without choosing a woman. And yet, every time she looked up into his eyes, and saw the adoration there, she longed to see those grey green eyes laughing at her, just once more.

He stole a quick kiss and held her close. "Do you love me?" he asked.

The question disconcerted her. It was direct, to the point, inescapable, the very question she should have asked Mulder. "Oh, don't you know how I feel about you?" she countered lightly. Damn! And that's just the way Mulder would have answered.

"No." He held tight. "Sometimes, I'm not sure."

She reached up and touched his cheek. "I love you with every drop of love in me," she answered.

The trouble was there wasn't much love left in her. Eight years of hope and longing and desire had depleted her stock. Eight years of unrequited love, and unanswered prayers had emptied her heart. In truth, she was all out of love. She'd left it behind with her furniture and an Apollo Thirteen keychain.

She had a feeling he knew it.

He released her. "Coffee...I could just go for some." He reached for the kettle as it clicked off and splashed water into the press. "I like the way you make coffee. Have I ever told you that?" He eased the press down gently. "Where did you learn this?"

"Someone taught me..." She cut herself off. "Oh, just something I picked up somewhere."

He filled two cups. "Why didn't you marry him?"

He might as well have thrown the boiling coffee over her. She jerked back against the refrigerator, clutching at the throat of her gown. "I...what do you...I..." She stopped. He was no fool. There was no reason she should behave like one. "He never asked me."

"Is that why you left him?" He still wasn't looking at her.

"No." She could have lived the rest of her life without a proposal, if only she had known that she meant something to him, something more tangible than being his partner, even more than being his friend.

"Did he cheat on you?" There was an edge in his voice.

"No," she repeated softly. "If anything, a relationship with me would have been cheating." She reached for her cup. "He was married to his career."

"A fool."

She smiled around the cup. "Aren't we all, sometimes?"

"But you still love him?"

"I …" She stopped. Searched herself for a truthful answer. "No." And she didn't. She'd run out of love. She just hung on to the wrapper, the memories, the longing for something she never got to taste.

He reached for her coffee and put it down before pulling her into his arms. "Will you marry me?"

She looked up, taking in his kind face, his earnest expression, the profound offer he had laid before her. He was everything she had been raised to believe she wanted. He was honorable, loyal and kind. He was dependable and sturdy. He was Catholic, and military, and could dance, play chess, and cook. He wanted children, he wanted fidelity. He wanted her.

"Oh …" she heard the word come out in a high, girlish breath. "I'd like to think about it, if I may."

She felt him stiffen in her arms and pull away. "Is there anything to think about?"

"Oh, you know me." She forced a mock serious smile. "I'm a scientist. I have to think about everything."

He wasn't fooled by the expression. "If he called you and asked you to come back, would you have to think about that?"

She opened her mouth to refute the implication...paused...frowning again. Well? Would she? She nodded slowly. "Yes, I would. I'd give it a lot of thought."

Something in him shifted toward tenderness. "Tell me about him?"

"Mulder?" She arched her brows in that way that used to drive Mulder crazy. "Why would you want to know about him?"

"Because I like to size up my competition."

She laughed a bit helplessly. "He's hardly your competition."

He leaned against the counter, thick, muscular arms folded over his broad, so unlike Mulder chest. "Tell me?"

She sighed, all the way down to her bare toes. "He was my partner. That's all. I...thought..." She shrugged. "I thought for a long time that he felt something for me. But he didn't. Not what I wanted him to feel." She could still feel that ineffable dismay when she told him she was leaving. There she stood, waiting on tenterhooks, hoping for him to crush her against him, and beg her not to go, and he smiled and said, 'That's great, Scully. Congratulations.'

"Is this the scientist with irrefutable evidence speaking, or a woman and her famous intuition?"

She smiled again. "A little of both, I think. When I decided to take this post, I went to him and laid it all on the line. And he just said..." Again she shrugged, this time matching that jerky, lackadaisical shrug of his. "...He said, 'You do what you have to do'." And what I had to do was leave him behind and get on with my life.

"Dana, you are one of the most straightforward women I know, but you are also blessedly female. When you say you laid it on the line, do you mean you told him you loved him and asked him if he loved you?"

"Well, no, but I..." She bit her lip. "He knew."

He leaned down, to rest his forehead against hers. "Dana, my darling, despite the advertising, men are not mind readers."

She blushed and backed away from him. Why did she suddenly feel so giddy and girlish? Was it really the idea of saying those words to Mulder? And if she did? And if he did? She waited. No. Nothing. Void. It truly was empty, that place once filled up by his existence. When was the last time she had looked in there to see how much feeling she had for him? On the flight out here, she had fallen asleep and was jerked awake by the sound of him calling her name.

At that moment, she was prepared to get on the next eastbound plane and rush back to him. By the time the plane touched down, she was sufficiently rational to take a cab and report to her new assignment. And she never looked back.

"Why don't you call him?"

"Call him?" You mean...look back?

"Sure." He reached for the unit on the wall. "It's an interesting concept...called communication."

"I don't need to call him. And it's been months...and..."

He pressed the receiver into her hands. "If you accept my proposal, I want it to be wholehearted, without any wondering about what might have been."

She was surprisingly calm as she dialed. She had no idea what she was going to say to him. The phone rang twice. Just as she was ready to hang up, she heard a voice.

"Hello?"

She looked at the phone in surprise and alarm. She knew that voice. It wasn't the voice she expected to hear coming out of Mulder's phone on a Saturday morning. For a moment she panicked. Something must be wrong. But the voice sounded so calm, so relaxed so...normal. Suddenly a million glances, a hundred gestures, an untold number of inexplicable happenings made sense to her. She smiled and replaced the receiver.

"Well?"

"What was the question?"

"Will you marry me?"

She checked that place in her heart one last time. She wasn't, as she supposed, out of love, just out of love with Mulder. "Yes."

- END -