It's the sixth time. That he's been in her bed (it still feels not-quite-real to say it). Well, perhaps not technically the sixth, because one of those times (the third, holy fuck, the third…), they never made it that far. They barely made it through the front door that time, much less into her bedroom.

He gets hard just thinking about the third time.

But for all intents and purposes, this is the sixth.

She makes up the bed each morning, he's learned (not that he'd have ever expected otherwise), and as unnecessary as he's always found that chore to be, he has to admit there's something magical about that readied bed at night. About that moment just before—when he's kissed her until she's flushed and gasping, when they're stumbling their way across the floor, when she's whining his name in that desperate, pleading tone….

When they bump against the edge of the bed, and she stops...

She always stops (well, except for the third time of course). Runs her fingers lingeringly along his jaw, then turns away (his own fingers usually follow behind, incapable of not touching now that they're allowed) to neatly turn down the bed.

And he fights back tears.

Every single time.

It surprised him at first— that influx of emotion from such a simple act. He attributed it to first-time jitters (he'd waited seven years for this after all). But when it happened again, and again and again, he began to realize why.

It's still difficult to accept, even after all these years, that she actually wants to be here. With him. That she's chosen this. And when she interrupts their lust-addled frenzy to fold down those sheets…, she folds away his doubts as well, as absurd as that may sound. She gathers his insecurities into her delicate doctor's hands and turns them down, right along with the sheets and blankets, until they're buried so deeply beneath cotton and down, he forgets they even exist.

It's easy to get caught up in the rush of hormones, the flood of desire after so long without. But that simple pause amidst the chaos…that's her making a conscious decision. That's her choosing this. Choosing him. And it's the most amazing thing in the world.

Tonight—this sixth time—she does it again.

He smiles through almost-there tears and presses her against those turned-down sheets. And he shows her how much he appreciates that choice. He worships her the way she was meant to be worshipped—with reverent hands and adoring lips and a tongue that transcends her directly to Heaven. She greets her maker with whimpers of his name ("God, oh God, oh my fucking God"), and he's never been more happy than in this moment, Scully unravelling beneath his lips, after turning down the bed and choosing him (all over again) for the sixth time.

Her grip on his hair slackens, and she breathes his name in a way that makes his knees weak, "Mullllderrrr… "(he never imagined he'd hear his name on her lips in quite that voice).

Then she rolls him over and climbs astride his hips.

He loves her like this, hovering above him like an avenging angel, all fire and fury and sweet, soft skin. The look of pure pleasure on her face as she slides him in is almost enough to send him knocking at Heaven's door himself. It's something he'll never get used to, the feel of being inside her— her body has a way of taking every one of his lost and broken bits and piecing them back together.

She rocks above him as he clutches at her hips, and my God, he's never seen a more breathtaking sight. The way she sucks on her bottom lip as the intensity grows could make a grown man weep (he knows from experience). She whimpers, her head falling back limply on her neck, and suddenly her hands are at her breasts, fingers pinching her own nipples, and holy shit, if he wasn't weeping before, he definitely is now.

"Fuuuckkk," he moans, his hips surging forward.

"Yeah…, yeah…," she gasps, and then she's bouncing on top of him as though she's made of rubber, a ball pulled by gravity toward his solid-pavement-body, again and again and again.

She catches his eye as he groans her name, and though he fights it (Christ, if he could watch her like this forever…), he can't keep himself from coming—she's surely the most beautiful thing to have ever existed. He stills her hips with his solid-pavement-hands, and he pumps into her body until he's dizzy, until he's empty and full and desperately in love, all in equal measure.

She lies beside him and strokes his chest, and he doesn't feel like pavement at all anymore. He feels like liquid, thick and warm, spilling across the sheets (still turned down, but, he's proud to note, not nearly as neat anymore).

"Jesus, Scully, you're…," he murmurs, unable to put together words just yet, "This past week has been…" He doesn't know what he's trying to say, only that he needs her to know how much this all means to him, the folded-down sheets and these six glorious nights and the fact that she chooses him. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't realize how much I've missed this—being with a woman. It's been way too long…"

"Mmmmm," she agrees contentedly, then adds, "How long exactly?" with a tickle along his jaw and a lighthearted grin. And grin or not, his heart stops. He stiffens briefly before consciously taking a breath and trying to relax. But he's not fast enough—she notices.

"Mulder?" she props herself onto her elbow to see him, hand sliding absently from his chest.

"So long, I can barely remember," he responds with a chuckle. He reaches across his body to pull her hand back (he suddenly needs her hand on his skin more than anything), hoping the subject will be dropped.

But no. "You hesitated. Why? How long has it been, Mulder?" She sits up more fully now, looking him squarely in the face. When she pulls her hand away this time, the loss of it stings like an open wound.

They haven't discussed this yet, and he supposes he was foolish to think it wouldn't come up—naive to believe in this fairytale world where beds are turned down and princesses choose frogs instead of princes. What did you expect? his inner voice smirks. Real life doesn't come with a happy ending, especially where you're concerned.

He washes his eyes over her body and, as quickly as he can, memorizes her every pore, her every stunning cell, tucks them into the furthest corner of his brain to draw back out tomorrow (and the next day, and each day thereafter), for he's sure this is his very last chance to see her like this, soft and open and still willing to allow him here in her bed.

"Mulder, you're scaring me. What aren't you saying?"

He braces himself for the look he knows he's about to see in her eyes, the pain he's sure he's about to inflict. Will there ever be a time he's not responsible for hurting her?

"It was last year," he states quietly.

There's a pause, a moment before she puts two and two together. He wants that pause to last forever, but Scully's much too intelligent—two and two equals four and she knows it, and four equals potentially the worst decision he's ever had the pleasure of making.

He hears her breath as it sucks through her teeth and into her lungs, feels the vacuum of air against his skin as she pushes herself away from him and off the bed, dragging away a blanket with which to cover herself (she's never covered herself from him, not once those five other times—somehow that hurts even more than what he knows is about to come).

"Diana!" she spits out, and the word splashes across his skin like acid. "Jesus, Mulder!" She reaches for her robe and wraps it around herself almost aggressively.

He pulls himself to the edge of the bed and sits, leaning forward and dropping his head into his hands. Has there been anything in his life he hasn't fucked up? His head throbs, the same way it did that day he allowed Diana to slip into his bed.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, but the words lie uselessly there on the floor. God, he's pathetic.

"Christ, Mulder! I don't even know what to say!" She's begun pacing, walking back and forth against the far end of the room, and though he's always secretly pictured her as some sleek, wild animal, this image of her hurts like hell. He's driven her to this, and he hates himself for it.

But despite her anger, he can also hear the pain in her voice, can see it in the way she's biting at her lip. Her eyes are red.

"I'm sorry," he says again, because what else is there to say?

"Were you really that desperate? So in need of a lay? So pissed off at me, you figured what the hell? Might as well cover all your bases and fuck the enemy?" Her language shocks him—those words are so damn hot when she uses them in bed, but now, when she's hurt and looking to hurt him back, they make him want to vomit.

"It wasn't like that," he pleads. There are tears in her eyes, and she angrily swipes them away. "It was one time. I was sick, and she took care of me—you were gone. I didn't even realize what was happening, and then she was there, in my bed. I regretted it as soon as it was over—just the thought of it makes me sick now, Scully."

She turns toward the wall and wraps herself tightly in her arms. He's reminded of a caterpillar bound in its cocoon. Except Scully has never been a caterpillar. She's been a butterfly as long as he's known her. He was foolish to have expected she could ever be happy beside him. Butterflies belong in the sunlight, in the clear, blue sky; they can't survive buried beneath the dirt with the grubs.

Words have never pierced his heart more precisely than when she says, "I think you should go now."

"I never meant to hurt you," he whispers.

She turns around and strides quickly toward the bathroom, purposely avoiding his eyes.

"Scully," he says, and she pauses at the threshold of the room, her back to him. "Diana never turned down the bed for me. Not once…"

"Lock up on your way out," she says quietly, and closes the door behind her.

…

For five hours, he sits. It's dark and cold and punishing in his apartment, but he doesn't turn on the lights. He doesn't raise the heat. He welcomes the punishment with open (empty) arms.

His couch has witnessed its share of his self-loathing, but tonight there is a depth to that loathing it's never seen. The skin on his face crackles from tears he doesn't remember shedding. The knuckles on his hand bleed from punches he doesn't remember throwing. The back of his throat aches from curses he doesn't remember screaming.

He is worthless without her.

He'd known it couldn't last. He'd known he'd fuck it up. That she allowed him these six nights (much less the past seven years) is already so much more of a gift than he ever could have hoped for. She deserves so much more. So much more than a man who takes the best relationship of his life and treats it like shit.

If it hadn't been Diana, it would have been something else. There's no question in his mind. Inevitably he'd have let her down (he's let her down for years—why would this new phase of their relationship stop him?). Regardless of his intentions, he has a knack for taking her beautiful butterfly wings and destroying them, for driving her back to that cocoon again and again and again.

Her voice last night—anger laced with pain laced with sorrow—it's all he's heard in his mind since. He's terrified that when she inevitably walks away, that devastated voice will be the only thing to remain.

He tries hearing other versions of her—the sound of Mulder, it's me, or God Mulder, yessss, fuck, right there!, or even Mulder, you're certifiably crazy, but it's impossible—every version of her is overpowered by Diana! Jesus Christ, Mulder! DianaJesusChristMulder dianajesuschristmulderdianajesuschristmulder… With each repetition, the knife in his heart twists the slightest bit deeper, until he's holding his hands over his ears to block it all out.

He's desperate to hear her—the real her and not this horrible version in his head. His brain has become a violent, dizzying whirlpool; he'll go insane listening to her words spiral themselves around it even one more time.

With stumbling fingers, he grabs for his phone. He dials her number, willing the tears not to fall.

Two rings, three, then four, and though her machine picks up, he can't help but smile through those fought-back tears because it's her—that beautiful Scully voice flooding his ears, replacing those terrible words with promises that if he leaves a message, she'll return his call soon, and even though he doesn't know whether he believes her, it makes things the slightest bit better, even if only for just a moment.

Until the message completes and her voice is replaced with a beep that reminds him of a flatline, and suddenly, the metaphor in that is simply too much to take. It pushes him over the edge.

Before he can think, he's sobbing into the phone, pouring out his regret, his remorse, punctuating his apologies with please and I love you and I can't live without you and everything he's ever wished he could tell her in seven long years but hasn't.

Eventually, the words dry up and so do his tears, so he sits with the phone in his hand, breath hitching, nose running (he knows she promised to call back soon, but hanging up feels like an ending he's not nearly ready to accept). It's pathetic, and he knows it, but it's Scully, it's fucking Scully, and the thought of losing her makes him want to die.

Then, without warning, she's there in his ear (really her, not some cheapened automated version of her making promises he's not sure she'll keep), and she says quietly, "Mulder, I'm coming over," and even though she hangs up then, he closes his eyes and he breathes.

Because finally the whirlpool has stopped.

….

He thinks he may fall asleep then, because she is there, rising above him, smile on her lips and hands at her breasts and oh dear Lord, she's so fucking beautiful, he wants to cry (in his dream, he hasn't been crying for the past five hours). But then from her mouth falls Diana! Jesus Christ, Mulder!, and he wakes in a cold sweat, still in the dark (though it's morning by now, and the light's just beginning to filter its way through his blinds).

There's knocking at his door, and he realizes it's her. He's not sure whether to be elated or terrified, so instead he's neither. Instead he's just Mulder, fucked-up and hopeless, a grub desperately in love with a butterfly.

"I'm coming in, Mulder," she calls over the sound of keys in the lock.

The door opens, and warmth and light and everything good in the world spills across his dark, gray floor, Scully included. "Jesus, it's freezing in here!" she says, and she's right, but he only just now notices. When she turns on the light, he squints, but even through half-shut eyes, she's still really, really there.

Her eyes though— they're just as red and swollen as he's sure his own must be. It makes her no less stunning though. Not even close.

"You're hurt," she murmurs, and sits beside him, taking his hands in hers. Looking down, he sees the blood across his knuckles. He knows it should hurt (there's a hole here somewhere he doesn't remember punching), but he feels no pain. All he feels are her warm, tender hands, and it's the most calming thing in the world, her touch after five hours without it, after five hours of worrying he'd never feel it again.

Rising, she returns with a damp cloth, silently proceeding to clean his bruised, torn flesh, and he's almost able to pretend that it's just any other day. Except that it's still fucking cold, and she's sitting there shivering, and last year, he made a decision that may have ruined his life.

Finished, she lays the cloth on the table and turns to him. "Have I ever told you about my quilt, Mulder?" she asks, then somehow, out of a Mary Poppins bag he hadn't even noticed she was carrying, pulls out a quilt large enough to cover them both. In fact, there's enough room under there to cover the Diana-sized elephant in the room as well.

It's warm, her quilt, and they sit beneath it for a moment before she begins to speak. He's so tired. He wants nothing more than to pull her up against him, to snuggle beside her and slide his nose through her hair (He'd always wondered—before—whether her hair is silkier than her satin pajamas. It is. But then he learned of a spot on her tummy that's silkier than them both.)

"My mother started making this quilt when Bill was a baby…," she begins, and he wonders why she's telling him this. But really, does it matter? She's talking to him, with her real Scully voice, here on his couch beside him. "She worked at it for months, adding bits here, adding bits there…, but quilting while taking care of a baby is difficult, to say the least. Before she knew it, along came Melissa..."

She pauses for a moment before continuing, fingering the fabrics with hands he longs to feel on his skin instead. "And if quilting with one was difficult, doing it with two was close to impossible. In fact, see here?" She presses her hand to a place above his knee, and just that slight bit of contact makes his heart skip a beat.

"Here you can see that instead of machine sewing, she hand-stitched. She learned to work while Melissa was nursing, but you can't sit at a machine with a baby at your breast." She smiles sadly.

"Scully, why are you telling me this?" he asks. "I thought…," but before he can tell her all the terrible things he thought, she puts her fingers to his lips, and suddenly his thoughts are forgotten.

"Hush, Mulder, and listen." Her fingers are gone as quickly as they appeared, but the sensation of them lingers like a shadow. "So, soon after Melissa, I was born, and let me tell you, I was a handful." He can't help but smile, even through his despair, because he's never known a more perfect handful than Scully.

"But she continued to work at it, between the tantrums and the feedings and the naps, and by the time Charlie came, it was nearly complete. Right here…" She indicates a spot by his chest and he sucks in a breath, "…is where she had to switch her background fabric, can you see?"

He glances down and notices she's right. The change is subtle but there. He nods.

"That's because Bill took the scissors to her bag of fabric one day." Bill was an asshole, even as a child, he thinks with a smirk. "But Mom didn't mind. She made do. She was always so good at that." You're good at that, too, he wants to tell her, you've made do with me and my mismatched fabrics for years.

But he doesn't tell her. Because she's already begun again, "Finally, when Charlie turned one—on his first birthday, in fact—she actually finished. I've always thought that must have been such a relief, wouldn't you think? Not having that incomplete feeling hanging over your head all the time?"

He nods, perplexed. He can tell she's going somewhere with this, but he's not sure where. All he knows is that if Scully is leading him somewhere, he'll damn sure follow.

"Do you know how long it took her in all, Mulder?"

He shakes his head. He's never been good at remembering the ages of all the various Scullys.

"Seven years," she says. "It took her seven years to finally get there."

Seven years.

He thinks he understands now. And in this metaphor, he's beginning to think that he's Asshole Bill, wielding a pair of shears, fucking with the finally-complete quilt of their relationship. "Scully, I'm so sorry," he says, dropping forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, tears threatening to make yet another appearance.

"Shut up, Mulder. I'm not done with my story." And who is he to argue, when her orders are issued so eloquently?

"Look right here." She pushes his elbow from his knee to indicate a spot just a few inches over. "Do you see that tear in the fabric, where it's been so poorly stitched back together?"

He nods.

"That's from a day when Missy and I were sharing the quilt, and we got in a fight over who was hogging more than half. It was her, just so you know." She whispers that last part, and he smiles. "But we yanked and we yanked, and then we heard a terrible rip. Our hearts just about stopped. And you've never seen the two of us work together more quickly—we got out Mom's mending kit and did our best to patch it back up. Didn't do a very good job, as you can see, but it escaped Mom's notice for at least a couple months!" Just thinking of little handful-Dana furiously sewing with her chubby, baby fingers makes his heart want to melt.

"And here," she points to a place hovering above her belly (right above that silky-soft spot, he thinks), "If you'll look here, there's an entire square that's been replaced. That's from when Bill brought the quilt outside and draped it around himself like a cape while he rode his bike." She laughs, and the sound burrows beneath his skin, warms him even more than the quilt does. "The damn thing got completely twisted in his bike chain, and Dad had to literally cut out a chunk of it!" Her swollen, red eyes aren't quite so swollen anymore. Not quite so red.

She continues, pointing here and there, showing him every imperfection, telling him stories of how each occurred and how each was mended, until he's almost overcome by the beauty of it all. Until he's hardly paying attention anymore. Until all he's doing is listening to her voice (that wonderful Scully voice) and watching her lips (they've kissed him from here to Heaven and back) and basking in the fact that she's here she's here she's here, when he thought she'd never be here again.

"Mulder?" she asks, when she's finally done.

"Yeah?" he whispers back (those darn tears, waiting in the wings once again). He can't look at her.

"Isn't my quilt beautiful?"

He sniffs. "It's the most beautiful quilt I've ever seen, Scully. I love it."

He turns to meet her eyes, and she reaches across to fold his jaw into her palms. "And I love you, Mulder." She blinks back her own tears before continuing, "It took us seven years to make our quilt. Seven loooong years. A rip in the fabric isn't going to destroy it, even one as significant as this. It won't even come close. I plan to mend this thing until my fingers are worn to the bone if that's what it takes. I hope you plan to do the same."

He's reminded again of her turning down the bed, of her choosing to be with him time and time again. He doesn't think he'll ever not be in awe of this woman, doesn't think he'll ever understand what he's done to deserve her.

"I'm a terrible sewer, Scully," he admits with a smile, "But maybe you can teach me." He runs his fingers through her silky-soft hair, then tilts his head to kiss her butterfly-thumb.

"Welllll…," she says softly. Her hands slide around his neck and her forehead lands against his own. "It starts with something long and hard, sliding through a hole…" Her fingers play with the hairs at the base of his skull. "Then there's a lot of in and out, in and out, in and out…"

He captures her lips between his teeth before she's able to finish. He's a good pupil (he's already got that long and hard bit down), but really, he's much more of a hands-on learner anyway…

….

It's the first time. That she's been in his bed (it still feels not-quite-real to say it). And the mending to their quilt that they do while tangled amongst his sheets (with lips, with hands, with sweat-slicked bodies), well…, it blows that third time right out of the water.