RATING: NC-17 - Mucho sex, even for me.
CLASSIFICATION: S, A
KEYWORDS: DSR, Doggett/Scully Relationship, AU
SPOILERS: Season 8
ARCHIVE: No, not yet. There might be revisions. Please ask.
DISCLAIMERS: He is Chris Carter, millionaire. He owns a mansion and a yacht.
SUMMARY: Sequel to Dace Liepins' "Comfort During Wartime", wherein the phenomenon from that fic continues, and Doggett flails for sanity. Should you read that fic first? Yeah, probably - just to reacquaint yourself with the hows and whats and whens. Where can I read that fic, you say? Why, here!

PRAISE BE TO: Dace Liepins, for saying "yes" to my sequel request, and for writing a story whose sequel potential grabbed me by the muse and wouldn't let go. Shawn Colvin gets thanks for the title(s).

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Part I:
Imploded

It had only happened once.

It hadn't repeated itself since its occurrence after the Tipet case, since well before William was born. He assumed it never would, which was what made it so priceless, and dear.

Doggett had had to watch his one "encounter" with Scully - the strange, blissful, soul-saving morning of sex she may or may not have actually granted him after waking him from his Anthony Tipet-inspired nightmares - grow further away from him, becoming distant with time and changing circumstance. For weeks afterward he'd carefully watched her demeanor, but if there was any confession to be made, Scully seemed unaware of it. He gradually began to believe she had nothing to confess - certainly the truth would out, wouldn't it? Certainly an impulsive sexual encounter with a co-worker couldn't go un-talked-about all these months, more than a year? Not even by Scully, whose capacity for personal denial did seem to go way beyond anything he'd ever experienced.

So as his pride refused to let him push her on it, he was left with no other choice: he came to believe as she did.

With one fierce, tiny mutiny: he let the memory of that dream - or whatever it had been - become the thing he lived for.

He relived it silently, in little daydreams, whenever he was in her presence, watching her body drift and sway and lean and sit through the days and months they worked together. He would watch the play of light on her hair when her back was turned. When he was alone, he would graze his tongue against the roof of his mouth and recall the taste of her kiss. He would let his eyes drift half-shut and remember the soft rasp of her tongue on his chest, licking away the sweat of his fever dream, proving they were both alive. He would glance slightly upward and think of being on his back as she rocked above him, of her eyes losing focus as she shook and whimpered and came, as he arced off the bed to thrust his cock into her tight, clenching pussy. His groin would flood with heat, and excitement would bloom in his chest, in the place where hope used to be.

He felt pretty sure the whole thing wasn't healthy, but he was angry. And tired. And sick of being alone. Mostly, he didn't think about it long enough to let himself give a fuck.

On the outside, he continued to do his job, letting nothing slide. Cases got worked, freaks got snagged, and perhaps most importantly, his partner's back got watched. He kept his priorities straight – he wouldn't be of much use to Scully or himself if he let his daydreams take away his edge. He'd given them their place, but work wasn't it. He separated his personal needs from his job, kept it all under control.

But when he was alone, he let his needs take over.

He didn't know what had actually happened or how to explain it, but his belief was set in stone: he had somehow been granted the actual, first-hand experience of what it was like to be with her. Now that experience was his – nothing and no one could take it away. It was the one salve that seemed to ease the hurt of Mulder's return, of their baby together, of the family that wasn't his.

Even though that had always been the point of it all.

Even he was surprised at how hard he'd taken that particular blow. His sleep had become disturbed, seemingly permanently. Even when he wasn't lying awake wishing for another “visitation”, the dreams that he counted as "real" ones always included Scully, and quite often involved her life with Mulder. He was tortured with dreams of their happiness, their love for each other, their closeness. It was hellish to wake up and recall what he'd witnessed.

Sometimes the tone of his visions changed, and became about Scully's problems with Mulder - her anger at him for his inattention to family while he continued to chase phantoms - or various other scars that were on her heart. Those were no less agonizing – he cringed and angered at the thought of her suffering at the hands of her "choice", when he wanted to give her so much better. Still, he labeled that category of dream "wishful thinking", and marveled at his brain's originality when it came to conjuring ways to torment him.

He dreamed about her more frequently than he did about himself. He saw her laughing and crying and in fear. He saw her with William, and sometimes saw both of them with Emily, playing at being a cobbled-together family. He saw sides of her that seemed unreal and yet perfectly honest. Sometimes, when he was very lucky – in a pathetic sort of way – his dreams let him participate with her, in ways she accepted, and appreciated. It was almost as if his dream self got bolder when this happened, because with each “success”, the dream time he shared with her seemed to increase.

But still, never in the way he really wanted to.

As the months passed, he did not chide himself to let go, or to open his heart and accept other possibilities. He learned to forget the shame of being obsessed and turned back to that one experience for comfort and strength, again and again. It was a way of controlling the uncontrollable, of flipping the proverbial finger at a life that took away wives and children and peace of mind as capriciously as if it were changing its order in a restaurant. A life that would reward his devotion to a woman with a front-row seat to her choice of another man.

Any way he could, he fought against his and Scully’s encounter going dim with repetition. He'd written it down once, though he felt he couldn't do it justice with language. His attempt to chronicle it just made it seem tawdry, but he wrote it down anyway. He thought about speaking it into a tape recorder. He murmured the story to the shadows in the corner of his bedroom at night, hoping that one of them would come alive again and take her shape, coming to him to fill his empty spaces with her sainted touch and her blessed body.

It didn't happen. Night after night, Doggett fell asleep bereft, awoke the next morning with an sour feeling in his soul. And on the last night of his solitude, that was exactly what he expected to happen again.

Except it didn't.

He'd been dreaming one of his usual scenarios, one where Scully was in a cage that sat in the middle of an open field. He’d been standing by, wanting to get her out and powerless to do so, when suddenly she’d opened it herself, stepped out and raised a hand to his cheek.

He'd awoken with a start….

…surprised beyond belief to feel gentle fingers drifting over his jaw.

- Click here for Part II -