Car Ride (1/1) J.C. Sun valeanna1@aol.com CATEGORY: V, somewhat MSR SPOILERS: None RATING: G, but with one very small adult theme SUMMARY: It's a long, long car drive, and a certain female is reflecting upon changes in her relationship during the past year/s with her male co-worker.... DISTRIBUTION: Yeah, right, like anybody's going to want to....Feel free to distribute...Just keep it unaltered and my name and notes, etc, on it DISCLAIMER: I don't mention any names, so is it my fault if readers supply the names of two FBI agents? AUTHOR'S NOTE: As noted previously, I'm a newbie, with all the unforgivable ignorance and idiocy of the breed. This is my first offering as well as my first attempt at X-Files fanfic. Also, this takes place pre Leonard Betts and the whole ensuing thing; it could happen any warm night on the road. However, I think it takes on a certain poignancy after the episode.. Any comments will be gratefully responded to, while mindless flames will be used to burn down the school.... _Car Ride_ J.C.Sun The road stretches before me, a long, dark ribbon highlighted in yellow, and vaguely orange about the edges with the sharp light of roadside lamps. Sometimes, when I dare spare the scenery a glance, I can discern the moon, nestled in a bank of star filled night and spreading it's silver light over the farmlands of eastern-central somewhere. Acre upon acre of wheat, barley, soy, and corn undulate like the waves of a turbulent ocean. There are no living souls out in the perfect summer night; my partner and I are the only living creatures on earth. My partner is next to me, as he always is, but for the first time in months, he's wearing his glasses. They make him look like an owl: a giant, somber six-foot owl perched in the driver'sside seat. However, I doubt any owl has ever rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbow and cradled a book in his lap, or chased the paranormal for a living. Nor do I think any owl has ever looked quite like him: the slightly twisted nose, the clear hazel eyes and the annoying, annoying little lock that, even now,droops across his forehead. It takes a wrench of will to resist the urge to reach out and to smooth it into place. I smile. Not so very long ago, I wouldn't have thought this. In fact, I'd most likely be itching to slap him, if not chucking him out the window wholesale. I saw myself as his babysitter, someone the Bureau assigned to control a loose cannon; my career had been sidetracked by his idiocy. After all,he had had the reputation of being a brilliant, yet intellectually distant overacheiver with a streak of stubborness as wide as the Mississippi and a penchant for telling off his betters. Now, I know better. Oh, yes the stubborness is there and the arrogance, as well as the brilliant mind....But there is also the compassion he has for all living creatures, theadmiration he holds for things of beauty, the love of the truth, and the pain he still bears for the little sister he lost. I understand him, he understands me, and we have truly partners.I am not blinded now by his shining mind or the Bureau reports or the anger or those hypntoic, breathtaking green eyes... Sometimes, though, at night, I will start out of a dream to find my arms wrapped around a stray pillow, my head will be thrown back, and my hips moving against someone who is not there. There are many, many more times when I find myself will catch myself having dreaming what his hair must feel like between my fingers, and what the taste of his mouth must be, what it must feel like to have his strong arms tighten around me as a lover, enclosing me in a circle of warmth and security. Then, though, he'll make some thoroughly stupid remark, and I'll fight the urge to pelt him with paperclips. Or he'll go and run off on so cockamamie mission, leaving me to play catch up to his wild intuition.... We're friends, I think firmly. Good, close, friends that can tell each other everything; friends that trust each other with their lives. Perhaps, someday, sometime, it will develop into something more, but for now, I am content (afraid, a little voice whispers, afraid) to keep things as they are. After all, we have all the time in the world. All the time in the world. The radio is silent, and the miles slip by like water through my fingers. He begins reading aloud from his book, and the the only sound in the entire car is his voice reading--reciting? I cannot tell--a poem. It's not one of those modern creations full of sharp sounds and whirling chaos, that he seems to favors nowadays. These syllables have a rythm to them, a certain ebb and flow pleasing to my ear. His smoky voice carresses each syllable; he imbues each line with a spoken music. The taut, corrosive sarcasm/anger that almost always present in his voice is gone, left behind with the end of our case, although some remains in his sharp t's and r's. And quietly appreciative, I listen. Perhaps Oxford did leave it's mark on him. Perhaps. And miles to go before I sleep," he murmurs, closing the book. "And miles to go before I sleep." He then shoots me one of those sly, heart-breakingly off-center and lovely smiles he specializes in and has the audacity to wink at me. Together, we laugh, and the sound is silver. *End*