template

       She'd like to think that the reason he only sleeps on one side of his big bed is because of her. That he knows she likes to creep in here in the middle of night and claim the other half of the bed. Knows it so well that he's unconsciously adjusted his sleeping habits to accommodate her.
        But she knows it's not true. He was married long before he ever met her. Some other woman whom she'll never meet had impressed the habit upon on him. She wonders if the automatic way he pulls her to him when she joins him is another hand-me-down from this unknown woman.
        She's never considered herself conventional, has scorned the label in fact. She's never let herself regret the strange, fascinating trajectory of her life. She's seen a thousand impossible things in the last seven years, and she's loved the wild unpredictability of her life, of her partner.
       But now, now, she's obsessed with conventional, with what is normal and usual and ordinary. This past life of his that she sees only in it's lingering effects is endlessly intriguing to her. She wants to know what it was like to have a marriage. To come home to someone at night. To wake up in the morning next to them. To have someone know all the ordinary, incidental details of your life, like where you keep your car keys and whether you dog-ear the page of books or take the time to find a piece of paper to mark your place. Wants to know what it's like to glance at a room and know just by how cups and papers are arranged if your other half has been there already. Wants to know how you gain this knowledge and how two people can blend their personalities to that point.
        There are things she knows about him, of course. Knows that he has barely visible freckles. That he reads the Post and the New York Times every morning. That he knows how to cook and considers leaving the kitchen a mess afterwards a serious offense.
        But there are so many things she doesn't know. She knows he was married and she's pretty sure there was a child. He seems too knowledgeable, too supportive not to have done this before. But she doesn't know what happened to the child . . . or the wife.
        She knows that sometimes when he’s distracted he runs his thumb over the place his wedding ring should be, but she doesn’t know why it wasn't there any more. She wonders why she is jealous of this unknown woman.
        And wonders if he feels the same way toward her lost partner. Something tells her that he doesn't. He's not a petty man or one given to unproductive emotion. His character often borders dangerously on ‘too damn good to be true.’ He treats her with endless attentive kindness and makes love to her with gentle reverence despite the fact that she’s heavily pregnant with another man’s child. He didn’t refuse her this affair though sometimes she catches a sad troubled look in his eyes and knows he thinks what he’s doing is wrong. But she wanted this, needed this intimacy, this connection with another human being. And he has yet to refuse her anything, no matter how much damage it could cause him.
        She feels guilty for this and wonders how she will be able to live with the knowledge that she’s hurt him.
        Part of her mind tells her to get over it. That he’s a grown man and quite capable of looking after himself. Another part mocks her for her concern. ‘If he wants to be a martyr, let him,’ it says.
        St. John, she thinks wryly, patron saint of the normal life.
        He shifts restlessly next to her and she realizes she’s been stroking one of his big, calloused hands while she thinks.
        “Dana?” His voice is quiet and slurred with sleep. “You all right?”
        She squeezes his hand gently. “I’m fine.”
        Moonlight turns his eyes a strange steely gray and she wants to turn on the lights and see them properly. “Can’t sleep?” he asks. His deep voice is waking up and she lays her head against his chest to feel its rumble.
        “I was thinking.”
        “Hmm,” he says, a soft sound with no real meaning just an acknowledgement that she has spoken. He never asks her what she thinks, and she never tells him.
        “Do you know that you always sleep on the left side of the bed?”
        He stays silent for a moment. “Yes.”
        “Why?”
        It’s a long moment before he answers. “In my . . . our apartment in New York, we had the bed next to the wall, and if I slept on the right, I’d have to crawl over my wife to get up in the morning.”
        “What was her name?” She asks.
        “Alison,” he answers readily this time, but she can hear even deeper pain this time.
        “How long were you married?”
        “Dana . . .” there is anguish in his tone now, deep and dark and soul-destroying and she wonders if she could make him cry. She‘s not sure. Once she would have taken it as a given that she could break any man she met. But he’s stronger than she can imagine.
        “How long?”
        “Ten years.”
        A long time, she thinks. Longer than she knew Mulder.
        “Where is she?”
        “Stop it.” His voice is quiet, but she can hear the anger in his voice. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard real anger in his voice. There have been varying degrees of irritation, annoyance and displeasure, but never real, true anger. She’s glad now that the faint light has turned his eyes silver. She’s not sure she could face them. They’re hard enough gone thermonuclear blue in irritation, and she doesn’t want to know what color they would turn in real anger.
        He’s staring at the ceiling now and she listens to the ragged edge of his breathing.
        “I . . . I have this life, this strange, incomprehensible life in a world gone mad controlled by powers most people can’t imagine,” she says her voice breaking. “And I just . . . want to know what a normal life is like.”
        “There’s no such thing.” His voice is hard and flat. “No one gets a free pass through life. Everyone gets their own share of pain and heartache and loss.”
        His eyes are bottomless silver pools of anguish.
        “What happened to you?” She asks softly.
        He looks at her steadily, his expression so still it makes the roiling turmoil in his eyes that much worse. Finally, he looks away, and had he been a lesser man she knows he would have gotten up and walked away from her.
        She shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have pushed him.   It was too much, too intimate. That’s not the way this relationship works. But it’s too late to take it back.
        The baby chooses that moment to pummel her stomach with its tiny feet. To her surprise, he turns his attention away from the ceiling and smiles at her. “Kid’s going to be a soccer player.” There’s something like bitterness in the set of his features, but there‘s joy in his tone.
        Suddenly, they’re no longer standing on the brink, an abyss of secrets and unacknowledged emotion yawning before them. They are, once again, just two people in a bed.
        She kisses him lightly. “You’ll have to teach it. Sports are outside my area of expertise.”
        He’s silent for a moment. “Okay.”
        She wonders what she has just offered and wonders if he knows what he‘s agreed to. Maybe he does. She has the feeling that if Mulder were to return tomorrow, and she were never to spend another night in this bed, he’d still teach her child to play soccer. In her own confused and complicated way, she loves him for that. And that’s normal enough for now.