Original Title: You Make Me (Lux) Author: Shawne Spoilers: post-ep Bad Blood Rating: PG Classification: VRH Keywords: M/S UST, DAL Archive: Nope, just on this site -- this was a version that was so schmoopy my beta went into a diabetic coma. As you can tell, Dreamshaper had an enormous hand in making the fic publicly presentable, and cutting out a lot of the schmoop. I owe her much thanks, and aside from dedicating the official version to her, she gets this one too, because I am *so* amused by it. ;) Make sure you know what you're getting into when you venture in here! Are you sure you don't want to read the completed version? Huh? OK, I'll keep quiet now. :) ======================================================= Scully-- You make me see things. I swear you do. Around other people, I don't get sudden and complete hallucinations. I don't see things that aren't there, and I don't see them so clearly that I can't doubt they're anything but reality. If you're wondering where all this came from, let me make it clear that I'm writing to you now after our little trip to Chaney, Texas. That's about where I started to lose my mind and go a bit delusional, imagining all kinds of impossible... Hang on a minute. If you think I'm going to admit that I didn't see Ronnie Strickland jumping at you like a "flying squirrel" of some sort (those are your words, Scully, not mine), skip the next paragraph or two. That I most definitely saw. What I'm pretty sure I didn't see at the time (but seriously I'm-not-kidding-here thought I did), was the buck teeth on that miiighty fiiine cowboy sheriff you were salivating over. In retrospect, you were right about that. Our return trip was enough for me to notice that Sheriff Hartwell was... that he was... all right, I admit it. Sheriff Hartwell was orthodontically unchallenged. Happy now? But that's not the point I'm trying to put across (gloating and smirking the way you are now isn't making you very attractive, by the way). Frankly, I really, really thought, at the time, that he had spectacularly huge front teeth. Or at the very least... a slight over bite. He didn't, as I later discovered to my secret chagrin. But it was one hell of a convincing hallucination. So I've been trying to figure out what it means, Scully. Why I see things around you, things that pass themselves off as reality in my eyes and to my mind... and yet, they're things that simply don't exist. I've come to rather a simple conclusion. You make me see, make me do things, Scully. You make me do a lot of things I would never consider doing otherwise. Before you protest, let me say that that isn't necessarily a bad thing. And before you give up on me as a lost cause and tell me I've lost every one of my marbles (even the ones that are already cracked), I'll try and explain what I mean. I'm not going to pretend I'm not a... weird person, Scully. I know I'm someone a lot of people aren't comfortable around, someone who's the topic of watercooler conversations. I've overheard a few of those in my day, classics such as "That guy down in the basement investigating aliens - why's he investigating his own kind?" and "Agent Mulder's a lot like Elvis... no one's quite sure if he's dead or alive." Oh, ha ha ha. Frankly, Scully, that doesn't affect me much. I know I seem... eccentric to others. Hell, I practically live in the darkness of my basement office. I'm always eating sunflower seeds, I talk about aliens and conspiracy and goat-sucker crap... Fox William Mulder, poster boy for the extremely abnormal. But I have to admit... I like it that way. Do I sound slightly over-defensive? Reading back over what I just wrote... I sound decidely sarcastic and embittered. I really don't mind, you know, when people point and whisper in the hallways. I don't give a shit when they look at me and shake their heads pityingly, saying in low mock-concerned voices, "That poor man has soooo many social problems." I get that a lot. To use a cliche, I've been getting that ever since I stopped marching to the beat of a universal drummer. In a way, it makes me feel good. I'm not one of the crowd, I'm different, I stand out. I never used to care, Scully, what others thought. And even now, my general opinion of those who have opinions of me... it's an apathetic one. They can think what they damn well like, just as long as they don't get in my way, and don't try to rein me in. To come to the point - and yes, I do have one, though it's been long in the making - one of the other things you make me do, Scully, is to actually care what others think. You make me see myself as the rest of the world sees me - a crackpot living on some kind of crazed internal fire, fighting a quest for a sister who is more likely to be dead than abducted. And you make me realise that this isn't the person I should be, or could have been. I should take less risks, ditch you less often, care for you and protect you and give you all my strength. I shouldn't make you worry, because that hurts you, and I've already hurt you way too much. I could have been more settled mentally, less set in my ways and reluctant to change... even for you. Because of you, Scully, I actually see myself as others see me... and all I see, sometimes, is how much I give you pain. Your family doesn't approve of me (I'm not going to name people here, but the phrase Total B.S. does come to mind), your friends think you've lost your mind staying by my side (actually, do you have friends anymore?), your colleagues pity you for getting a bum assignment for five years. The list just goes on and on. And because you make me see all this, Scully, you also make me want to change it, even though I know I can't. I know that my life needs to be lived the way it has been. Alone, remote, searching for a truth that -at times- only I can see. As much as I'd like to change for you, to become the perfect man, the guy you dreamed of as a child... I can't. I'm me, and you're stuck with me. I'd like to be more open, though. To just be able to say the three simple words I can write so easily. To wake up in the morning and say "I love you", to go to sleep at night with you knowing that, to be able to say it to you whenever I felt like it. And it might be nice to loosen up a little sometimes, to be able to enjoy the world without fearing it might collapse in on me when I'm not looking. On a related note, I've already established that I'm an odd guy. That also means I live an odd life, one which I gleefully loaned you five years ago, and one you're still paying regular installments to share with me. I like it, my life. The challenges I face at work, the crazy sleeping hours, the conspiracy-charged days and the Scully-infused nights. Like the strange person that I am, I actually like living in my own secluded world. It's mine, it's private, and if I'm really lucky, there are only two people in it. You, and me. Yup, the huge punchline is coming up now. This is another thing you make me want to do, Scully, contrary to my every natural impulse and inclination. I'm a loner, a maverick, the black sheep in the white flock. You make me want to jump into the nearest vat of white dye and scream to everyone who cares to hear, "Fox Mulder is now certifiably normal!!" (Well, that probably isn't the best way to prove any sort of normalcy, but I trust you get my point.) I know you want, need, deserve a normal life, Scully. Unlike me, you never intended to lose yourself in a web of darkness and deceit. You didn't know what you were getting in on when you first met me. And in a lot of ways, you didn't have a choice about that. You never did. From what little I care to remember of our first few months working together... you had a social life. There were appointments, dinner dates, lunches with colleagues from Quantico. You smiled a lot more, and people in the halls of the F.B.I. building greeted you cheerily, and you greeted them right back. You had a comfortable circle of friends, and a family you loved. The most outrageous thing you had done was to turn away from a career in medicine. But even after that, you got back into the swing of things, and made your life normal again. Unfortunately, I met you, took your life from your hands, and returned it mangled and unfamiliar. I took away your normal life, Scully, even as you brought just a bit of normalcy into mine. So... (yet another point that's been long in the making!) when I'm around you, Scully, I sometimes have the wildest daydreams. I imagine us quitting the F.B.I., and settling in as a happy couple in some suburban neighbourhood, growing old and grey together. You'll be a practising, successful doctor, and I'll be a dutiful househusband, doing the occasional criminal profile for the local PD. I'll be at home waiting for you everyday, to kiss the exhaustion off your face, to love and care for the beautiful normal children we'd have. OK, that obviously isn't a wild daydream in anyone's book but mine. I think you understand what I mean, though. Don't you, Scully? That's a life I can't have with you, and it's a life you'll never have now that you're with me. What amazes me is that... when I'm with you, I actually want something like that. A life in which my biggest concerns are tuition bills for college, and making less money than my more intelligent wife. A life of balancing checkbooks, baking cookies, and sleeping outdoors in hammocks would be considered adventure. It's something I never wanted, Scully. Ever. Even as a child, the kind of domestic life I envisioned for myself was more Tarzan and Jane than Rob and Laura Petrie. Trying to imagine myself living such a staid and boring life with anyone but you would just about induce natural death by asphyxiation. Basically, you make me wish I could be someone I'm not. You make me imagine what it might be like to be a normal person, one who isn't haunted by a past that shadows his future. I stopped believing in a lot of things before I met you, Scully. You walked into my office thirty-two years after I was born. That's a pretty big number, thirty-two. It gave me more than enough time to get disillusioned with the world I lived in... and I lost more beliefs, ideals, hopes and dreams than I care to count. I only clung on to one, perhaps foolishly. I clung on to the possibility that Sam might still be alive, and that the truth would one day prevail. Otherwise, I was a pretty cynical old man when I first met you. After three remarkably rotten decades on this earth, my personal field of vision and ambition had been narrowed down to Sam, and the truth. Nothing else seemed to be a worthwhile pursuit; no other dreams needed to be chased. Cue the drumroll for dramatic effect, and you must have realised by now that you, once again, changed that. You made me see things I'd lost sight of, Scully. You made me believe that beauty could exist uncorrupted, that children could survive into adulthood untainted, that love was exactly what romance novels made it out to be. I spent nearly twenty years of my life finding shadows in the stars, Scully. Whenever I looked up into the ebony canvas of night sky, I didn't see pinpoints of hope and light. I saw fear and anxiety and sleeplessness. A shroud above all of us, waiting to close in, the twinkling stars cruel reminders of the darkness that would sooner or later eclipse us all. Now, I seek out the stars hidden in shadows, the stars which you taught me to look for. You make me believe in magic, because touching you lifts me about six feet off the ground, and looking into your eyes is like disappearing into the safest place in the world. You make me think true love exists, because I still have you with me, no matter how painful and battle-ravaged our lives might get. Most of all, you make me believe in hope, because your continuing faith in me and our quest means that some good must eventually come of it. No matter how many times I've disappointed you, Scully, you give me your trust. Because of that, I find hope for myself, for you, for everyone who doesn't know what we're fighting for. Who we're fighting for. You've made me idealistic again, Scully. I was becoming disillusioned, even with my quest. How often can a man think he has found the truth, have it taken away from him and hidden in lies, before he starts to lose faith? You make me believe in the existence of the truth I'm looking for, even though I might never come into physical contact with it, and thus never gain proof of it. It has to be there, somewhere... if nothing else, it has to be there because I believe it's there. Even the silliest of beliefs that I've since lost... you make me want to relive them all. I want to wait up for Santa with you, straining to hear bells and reindeer hooves on the roof. I want to go looking for colourful Easter eggs in the garden, and try to find the tracks of the elusive Easter bunny. As long as I get to do it with you, I don't mind looking like a fool. It would be nice to be a child again. Glancing over what I've written, I realise I have another case to make about the things you make me do, Scully. I'm typically a sensible kind of man, given to the usual fallibilities of my gender. I forget birthdays, I get loud and rowdy and enthusiastic about mindless contact sports, I get insensitive and completely thick-headed at the most inopportune times of the month. Usually just as the female I'm most concerned with hits the peak of her PMS cycle (or whatever the hell you call it). I enjoy my... collection of video tapes (I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending you don't know what they are), and I don't give much consideration to romance and candlelight dinners and moonlit walks by the beach. I'm a pensive, sensitive guy, Scully, most of the time. Sometimes. But that doesn't mean I go for schmaltz and the kind of fluffy, weepy chick-generated concepts regarding romance in our generation. None of that two-lives-bound-by-fate kind of crap, or match-made-in-heaven rubbish. I believed, quite simply, that a woman either fit... or she didn't. That is, until I met you. (Felt that one coming, didn't you?) Disgustingly enough, Scully, I want to wine you and dine you and whisper sweet nothings to you under the moonlight. Sitting on the beach, listening to the lapping waves, watching gold and silver fireflies dart through the water before us. I want to hold your hand, and feel sparks and see fireworks and hear violins. I want to kiss you under the mistletoe, serenade you at night, shower you with cheesy little gifts like perfume and soft toy hearts with "Be My Valentine" scrawled across them in loopy feminine cursive writing. I want to saddle up and ride off into the sunset with you, leaving the world behind, living happily ever after. You make me want to live in cliches, Scully, and do sweet honey bunny things I'd normally run from like the hounds of Hell were chasing my beef-coated heels. And before I try to summarise this really long dissertation on "The Stuff Scully Makes Me Do When She Doesn't Know It"... I think I forgot to mention that not only do you make me want to change mentally and emotionally, you make me want to change physically as well. As far as I know, I'll need a pretty comprehensive system overhaul to get back to the state I was in before you came to me. I figure I'll need (a) a new heart - the old one's all worn out. Stress, and way too much of you, have completely destroyed its ability to function normally. For some odd reason, it stops beating when you come near me, only to start humming like a bee when you touch me, and basically skips like a dirty CD when you talk to me. It's disgusting, Scully. I feel absolutely unhealthy all the time. (b) a new brain - though maybe a lobotomy might be better. I think about you too much, and the model I have now can't handle over-heated cogitation for long. I'll also need a whole new memory bank (hopefully with better picture viewing capabilities) to remember every bit of you and every thing you've ever said. The current one's way past overflowing. (c) a new stomach - I'm probably only going to start eating healthy when you're around me twenty-four hours a day... I've found that I tend to get less reckless with what I put in my mouth when you're watching me disapprovingly. Since I doubt we're going to move in with each other in the near future, I'll be eating junk food and sunflower seeds and drinking month-old milk for a long time more to come. Cast iron isn't enough to support this diet! and not to forget (d) a new set of lungs - the ones I have right now tend to give out whenever you hold my hand. Don't ask me why. I think they're getting old, weak, and Scully-infected. Dang. I think I'm still whooped up on chloral hydrate. How long do the effects of that drug last, Scully? It's been a few days now, so I guess it can't be that. I'm most likely just hooked on you, and that's why I'm so high today. I'm afraid to go back and read this entry, so I don't think I will. Not tonight, anyway. I'm sure I won't be disappointed by how insane it sounds when I read it tomorrow. I might burn it. But seriously, Scully? Seriously, you make me think of things, and do things, I normally wouldn't think of or do. You make me believe in shattered dreams, and you make me hopeful for whatever lies ahead. You make me a person I'm not, a person I ordinarily can't be. And I wouldn't want it any other way. Good night, Scully. I hope you're sleeping now. You should be sleeping now; it's late. If you are, sleep well. Sleep sweetly, and try not to worry. You'll make me dream of you tonight, and I'll be thinking of you like always. I love you, Mulder ======================================================= sooooo schmoopy...