TITLE: Driven (1 of 1) AUTHORS: Paige Caldwell CATEGORY: MSR, Vignette SPOILERS: Through Season 7 RATING: R DISCLAIMER: They're not mine. I wish they were. SUMMARY: "Driven. It may have described Mulder, but it defined me..." FEEDBACK: paigecaldwell@hotmail.com NOTES: My new webpage can be found at: http://www.iwtbxf.com/paige/ Driven. It may have described Mulder, but it defined me. From the very beginning, I steered my life with single-minded direction. Intelligence was my map, ambition my fuel. I wanted to travel the road to distinction, first in my education and then in my career. I never yielded to relationships. I either went around them or treated them like temporary rest stops. Except for Mulder. He hit me like a head-on collision. With Mulder, driven was a high speed chase en route to obsession. I wasn't sure if I could keep up with him or even if I wanted to. He was tall, dark and handsome, but I could abstain from a cliche. What I couldn't resist was that he was dangerously thrilling. Mulder was the type of man good Catholic girls feared by day and secretly fantasized about at night. Fortunately, religion had already taken a back seat to science, otherwise I'd be spending hours in a church confessional explaining the object of my lust and rechargeable batteries. Of course, my Duracell powered sex drive wasn't as satisfying as the real thing. But the real thing had an annoying habit of ditching me at work and I wasn't about to test him in bed. Better for me to spend my time and energy on goals more rewarding. Like proving him wrong. My "all business, no pleasure" nature seemed to appeal to Mulder. I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or insulted. I wanted him to be intrigued by my mind. Instead, he ignored my body. He was oblivious to the fact that I was a female, save the monthly ritual of pre-menstrual chivalry. During those few precious days, he was quite aware that I was a woman. He refrained from debating my every word and instinctively knew when to pull up to the drug store to let me out for an emergency tampon. It didn't take me long to figure out that my period brought on a period of sensitivity in my partner. I exploited this advantage as I would any other career opportunity. Instead of rolling my eyes at his ludicrous theories, I lowered my voice one cranky decibel. It worked better than the blast of a three Skinner alarm. My experiment was a success, that is if you consider success the undermining of a fanatical but otherwise decent man. Driven began to feel like manipulation. I was ashamed. I tried to make it up to him by standing in front of the vanity mirror each morning practicing the words "I believe..." until I looked as ridiculous as I sounded. The best I could do was to down-shift from argumentative overdrive to logic under the speed limit. For months, our partnership hummed along like a well-tuned engine despite the fact that Mulder's theories reminded me of fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. But soon our daily bantering took on the tingling edge of verbal foreplay. Batteries expired in unopened packages as I spent night after night contemplating my next witty move. Our relationship was perfect. Because we were both driven in entirely different ways, we complimented each other. Who needed sex or romance? We were in intellectual love. It all changed the day Diana Fowley screeched into town in her Batmobile out of Hell. With headlights blaring and flames shooting out her tail end, she took Mulder for a joy ride and left me feeling like road kill. Up to this point we had circumvented most obstacles on the road to platonic nirvana, but this was different. This was another woman, one with enough sexual drive to compare me to the horse and buggy era. When she spoke, I could literally hear the sound of her eight cylinder engine revving up for a drag race. As I was still trying to reach the gas pedal in my Ford Taurus, I decided the best thing to do was wait until her tires went flat or her engine backfired. Meanwhile, I decided to switch gears... and bras. Before long, Diana went to the Big Consortium in the Sky and I was sporting enough cleavage to deserve a little cat suit of my own. Although I knew of no short cut to Mulder's bed, I began plotting different ways to get there. I smiled more often. I flirted and giggled like a love-struck groupie. I even played with his tie when I should have been strangling him with it. After refusing to go to England to frolic through crop circles, I think Mulder finally caught up with me. He realized that I had reached a perilous intersection. If I turned left, I might end up a new age lesbian with wind chimes in my window. If I turned right, the temporary rest stop named Daniel might become a permanent one. So he came back early and took over the wheel, offering me a soft shoulder to rest upon and covering me with a blanket whose former owner must have been a mule. I feigned sleep just long enough for Mulder to change the sheets on his bed. He caught me peeking around the corner. I then discovered the downside to being driven. I was so motivated to have the man that I completely forgot what to do with him. I stood there like a deer caught in headlights, the blanket wrapped around my breasts and my underwear caught on my heel. He took a step forward. "Don't...." I held up a restraining hand, causing the blanket to drop beneath one breast. I was exposed, a diminutive Amazon trying to forestall the invasion of my territory. "Don't what?" Mulder asked patiently. "Touch me, look at me or remember that this ever happened." I said, tugging the blanket up to my my neck. The end of it was caught on the door jam. "Where did you get this damn blanket, anyway?" "Agent Fowley left it here the night I was sick." I let the blanket fall to my feet. "What? She slept on the couch, Scully." I crossed my arms over my breasts and nudged the blanket with my toe. "She obviously wasn't as driven as I thought." "No one is as driven as you, Scully," Mulder said. He stripped off his t-shirt and offered it to me. "I've never met anyone with such a sheer force of will." "Sheer force of will, huh?" Rather than put on the t-shirt, I held it up to my nose. It smelled like clean cotton and Irish Spring .. distinctly him. "Have you looked in the mirror lately?" "I don't have to." Mulder's fingers skimmed the arch of my neck as if he was touching fine china. "I know what I am, Scully. Driven, occasionally obsessive and generally a pain in the ass." "Well, you're not as driven as you used to be." I offered, not arguing with him about being obsessive and a pain in the ass. "Yes, I am," he admitted, pausing to lift my chin so my lips were inches from his. "Only my goal has changed." "To what?" "You," he said before kissing me.