#2x25

Irritation and pique flaking off him like shed skin, leaving a trail of destruction through the Hoover building. Starting an argument with Skinner (the spineless fucking snake), then a fight; losing it. There was something burning in him, building to a fever-pitch and then a fever. It all made a dark and paranoid kind of sense, until Scully showed up at his apartment—

A startling wake-up, her outstretched hand (you didn’t answer your door) and she was there, she was caretaking and nagging (I couldn’t find you at work; I was worried about you), insistent and forgiving, so principled it was maddening (I need to know that they’re not going to let us hang ourselves with this—that I’m doing the right thing).

That poked a hole for the irritation to seep away, evaporate like seawater, leaving behind a crust of salt and silt. So much hanging in the balance, and he was still used to thinking of it as his future he was gambling on. But—

I had to lie today. 

What did she see, when she looked at him? What did she think, when those big blue eyes landed on his face? Why was it worth it to her—why did she do it? Why didn’t she just fucking give up on him already, and leave him to bristle and brood?

He wished she would. He always did, but right now all he wanted was to be alone, to find the answers, to get her out of the blast zone, to get some sleep.

Get the fuck out of here already, he thought, could never have said, didn’t really mean. Why did she stand there and take it? He was so surly; he felt it scraping at his own edges, chafing, leaving his mouth sour and bitten.

She needed to know one more thing, and he didn’t have an answer other than it was the swirling cloud, it was the dancing light, it was something I’m afraid has always been inside of me that’s decided to finally crawl out, and he couldn’t say that so he told her he didn’t know, and—

She was troubled. Scully always was, but this time she fretted over her own future as well as for him, and it was almost sweetly nostalgic—that throwback to the beginning, when she hadn’t been sure he wasn’t going to hijack her career and fly it into the side of a mountain. Almost sweet except she licked her lips in the nervous way instead of the turned-on way and asked for reassurance which he couldn’t give her.

She’d come here with a desperate hope—of learning that he had a good reason for what he was doing, what he had done—and she would be leaving with more fear than she’d carried in. Because not only did he not have a good reason, it seemed that he had no reason at all.

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The rest is here, on ao3.