The thing with Jim was that Pam wasn’t sure how to talk to him anymore.

Like she didn’t know what would be appropriate…what wouldn’t be met with a blank stare, or with a grimace of disbelief, or with a cold grin of disappointment. She wasn’t sure how she could tell him things, real things, if every time conversation got a little bit serious he literally bailed, coming up with some reason to leave the room or to make a phone call, coming up with some excuse that never really rang true, and avoiding eye contact because she guessed it was probably too painful for him…too much…or maybe not enough.

Pam’s problem had always been that she didn’t know how to speak her mind without hurting someone.

She had spoken up on beach day and had ended up hurting herself. Because look where it had gotten her.

But still every day she came into work wondering if this would be it…if finally they would broach the topic of what had happened before Stamford and how she had left her engagement ring on a freshly dusted kitchen table with a note that said something like “I think we both need to grow up,” and how her mother had asked her if it was all because of Jim and she had said yes without hesitation. Every day she came into work wondering if she’d get to say it out loud to him again the way she had in May, only better, and if maybe he would look at her in a different way…maybe he would respond with something more like “I’m sorry” and less like “I wanted to be not here.”

I wanted to be not here like I wanted to be not Jim like I wanted to fall out of love with you…

Sometimes acting like nothing was wrong, like he hadn’t shattered her as if she was made of porcelain and then looked at the glue in his hand like he had no idea what to do with it, sometimes that was too hard for her. Sometimes it was impossible.

Sometimes the jokes weren’t funny and his smile caused more pain than anything else.

Sometimes she hated her life.

She hated the way that he followed her to her car, but didn’t follow her any further than that. She hated the way that at night she would lie awake and stare at the ceiling, listening nervously for suspicious sounds or the murmur of voices, thinking uncontrollably about Jordan and Henry and Caroline and the rest of the seven who had somehow dropped off the face of the earth, and wondering if it was wrong that sometimes she counted Jim as the eighth.

Sometimes she thought Jim had been the first to disappear.

And then she felt terrible, because it felt like she was jinxing him.

It felt like she was jinxing herself and asking for trouble. And really all she wanted was for trouble to go away, to leave Scranton exactly the way the city had been before trouble had arrived on a fuel spilling train and had cast its lit match down on the tracks in its wake.

Pam’s problem had always been that she had impossible dreams, so she’d resigned herself to living in nightmares.

And the thing with Jim was that Pam wasn’t sure how to talk to him anymore.

***

The thing with Mulder was that Scully found herself staring at his ass way more than was healthy.

Like she would be in the middle of something, performing an autopsy or filling out expense reports or questioning a suspect, and she would find that her eyes were just stuck there and she hadn’t even realized it had happened. The only thing that kept her from being absolutely appalled with herself was the argument that he did have a very attractive back side, and it was probably impossible for her to go every single day without noticing it at all. She’d been effectively achieving the impossible for five years, and it seemed year six was her breaking point.

Scully’s problem was that she had built her reputation on being all about the job…being preoccupied with facts and proof and statistics.

Really she was as normal as any other woman on the face of the planet, and she hadn’t had sex in over two years and it was getting ridiculous. And Mulder’s ass looked really good in a suit.

But she bit her tongue, ignored the flush in her cheeks, and went back to work every time her gaze lingered there because they were partners and this job was her life and Mulder depended on her professionalism. He depended on her sometimes cool blank stare, on her sometimes warm, understanding smile, on her sometimes grimace of concern and empathetic understanding. He needed things from her and she was sure that none of those things included a raised eyebrow of sexual intrigue. Or a rub down. Or… that just wasn’t what he expected of her, and she was nothing if not the kind of person who met expectations. Even impossible and painful expectations.

Expectations that called for her to be without gender and without emotion and without sex in general.

Sometimes acting like she wasn’t attracted to him was completely draining. Sometimes she would excuse herself from an investigation and sit in the ladies room with her head in her hands, instructing herself to get it together and remember all the reasons why kissing him was a bad idea. Sometimes she thought she was probably in love with him, but that idea usually stopped her short and left her breathless.

Sometimes the innuendo wasn’t funny because it was a little bit too true and she could never admit that to him.

Sometimes she hated her life.

Sometimes she hated the way that, when they were on the road, he would sit on her bed and eat Chinese food and watch baseball until midnight, and then he would toss an inappropriate comment at her and shuffle through the connecting door to sleep with a thin wall separating her hands from his face and her lips from his mouth and her body from… Sometimes she hated the way that she would lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling, wondering if he could ever see her as an actual woman after all of the hours she spent silently begging him to treat her like a man.

Sometimes she hated the fact that she had done this to herself.

She had nobody else to blame.

And the only person who understood her at all anymore most likely saw her as a replacement for the sister who had been ripped away from him when she was eight years old, and probably wanted nothing to do with her wandering eyes and her lust-filled mind.

Scully’s problem was that she’d always had impossible dreams, and so had resigned herself to living in nightmares.

And the thing with Mulder was that Scully found herself staring at his ass way more than was healthy.