I thought the weekend would never come. I got to the airport almost an hour early on Friday evening, I was so eager to see Josh again. When I saw him coming down the ramp toward me, I forgot all my usual reserve and ran straight into his arms.

We spent almost the whole weekend in bed. I was exhausted and sore by the time I took him back to the airport Sunday evening, but he was so attentive, so thoughtful -- when I got back home, there were flowers waiting for me on the doorstep.

The card with them bore only three little words.

Yep. Those words.

I hugged the vase to my bosom and cried. I hadn't even realized how badly I had wanted to feel this way again.

I was in heaven.

And I was pretty sure I was falling in love.

~~~~~~~

The next week at work was a drag, no pun intended. Mulder and I were talking again, but the smooth work rhythm we'd developed had become unfamiliar and uneven, keeping us both off balance and on guard. I felt awkward around him, and I'm sure he felt the same about me.

Our partnership and our friendship, I was sure, were still intact, and always would be, but it was no longer the seamless entity it had been.

We were going through ... an adjustment. A temporary setback.

That was all.

But we weren't talking.

The only thing that kept me from feeling entirely alone at work was the phone calls from Josh. He called me at least three times a day, just to say he loved me and couldn't wait to see me again.

He was so eager to talk to me that if I wasn't in when he called, he would call again and again until he got me.

I have to admit it -- the mean-spirited side of me was enjoying Mulder's jealousy almost as much as the nice side of me was enjoying Josh's attention.

I wasn't going to invite Josh to D.C. again, figuring he couldn't afford the airfare, but he actually asked me if he could come, and of course I said yes.

That Friday, after we'd made love, Josh asked me about my relationship with Mulder.

"We're friends, Josh," I told him. "Good friends, and partners. Mulder has a lover, and as you already know, he doesn't like girls. There's nothing there for you to be concerned about."

He laughed; he seemed a little embarrassed, to be honest.

"I guess it's silly, being jealous of a gay man," he said, twirling a lock of my hair in his fingers. "I just can't help it -- he gets to be with you, and I don't. And it sounds like he does take up a lot of your time."

"Not as much as he used to before he met Daniel," I said. "But we do have to travel a lot -- we're federal agents, after all, and the entire United States is in our jurisdiction. The kind of cases we handle tend to be rather widely scattered."

"Are they dangerous cases?" Josh asked, suddenly looking worried. I was touched by his concern for me, even though I knew it was misplaced.

"No more dangerous than any other kind of police work," I told him, leaning over to kiss him softly. "You know how it goes -- it's just a job, most of the time, but it's punctuated with moments of sheer terror."

"I can't stand to think of you being in danger, Dana," Josh said, holding me closer. "I know your job means a lot to you, but it worries me. Don't you ever want to go back to medicine?"

"No," I said, firmly. "And don't worry about my job. I know how to take care of myself, Josh. Mulder looks after me, too. He's never been anything less than perfect backup, and he's a crack shot, too. Please don't worry about me."

"I'll try," he said, and rolled me over onto my back again.

~~~~~~~~~

We went on like that for about four weeks, talking on the phone all day, being together on the weekends. The fourth week, Josh admitted, while talking to me on the phone, that the plane tickets and phone calls were getting a little expensive.

I was a little upset. I thought he meant we would have to break up, or see each other less often, although frankly, there were times that seemed like the best course to take. I just didn't have much time to think lately, it seemed -- but there were times, late at night, that I began to feel just a little smothered and wondered if it wasn't time to bail.

Josh, however, wasn't thinking along those lines at all. He had decided that he was going to move to D.C. to be with me.

"It shouldn't take me long to find a job," he said, confidently. "There's always a demand for martial arts instructors, and I can always go back into police work or private detective work if I have to."

"Josh, are you sure?" I asked him. "We haven't really known each other that long, and it's a pretty big move, changing cities like that."

"Positive," he said. "I don't want to be without you, Dana. I've never known anyone quite like you; I fell in love with you almost right away."

That should have pleased me, but it actually made me a little uneasy. This had started out as a fling, and now -- with very little input on my part -- Josh was elevating it to a full- fledged exclusive relationship.

Josh must have sensed my discomfort; his voice grew softer.

"Of course, if you don't want me there," he said, "I'll understand. I guess I'm not the greatest prize on earth."

"Of course I want you here," I said, quickly. "But I hate to ask you to give up your job and all your friends for me."

"Hey, if I have you, what do I need with anybody else?" he said. "And anyway, you're not asking -- I'm offering. I've got enough money saved up to stay in a hotel for at least a couple of weeks while I job-hunt."

"You don't need money," I said. "You can stay with me until you get a job and a place of your own."

"Did I ever tell you that you're wonderful?" Josh asked, softly.

~~~~~~~~

When Josh arrived on Friday, I was in ecstasy. We spent the weekend in bed, as usual; Josh insisted on turning off the telephones, saying he wanted the maximum alone-time with me before he started looking for work.

On Monday, he asked if he could take me to work and borrow my car so he could go put in applications, and of course I said yes. He could hardly go job-hunting without transportation, and he'd sold his car in Miami and flown up here.

He called me twice that morning to report progress, and at noon we met for lunch outside the Hoover building. I offered to take him on the grand tour, let him and Mulder get to know each other a little better, but he declined.

"I shouldn't be this way, since my own sister is gay," he admitted, "but there's something about gay men that I just can't really deal with well. No offense to your partner, Dana. It's just me."

"You'll feel different when you get to know Mulder," I told him. "He's really a good agent, brilliant, even. He used to be a behavioral profiler."

"Psycho squad, huh?" Josh said, and there was no mistaking his contempt. I'd forgotten there were still cops out there who looked on profiling as -- well, spooky.

"It's Behavioral Sciences," I said, trying to be tactful. "They really don't like to be called the psycho squad."

"Well, then, they ought to stay away from psychos," Josh said, and laughed. He cuffed me on the upper arm, a little too hard actually, and I winced.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and rubbed the sore spot gently. "You're such a tough little feebie that I forget sometimes you're just my little girl underneath it all."

"I'm not a little girl, Josh," I said, a little nettled now. "I'm a grown woman, and I don't like to be hit like that."

"I said I was sorry, Dana," he said, and I could hear the contrition in his voice. He was genuinely apologizing, and I felt bad about snapping at him that way.

"It's all right," I said, and I snuggled under his arm. "I know you didn't mean it."

~~~~~~~

Six weeks went by, and the distance between me and Mulder was growing by the day. Our conversations now were almost entirely work-related; personal matters had become, by tacit agreement, verboten.

Well, not entirely; sometimes I'd ask him how Daniel was doing, and he would say fine, that Daniel had asked about me, too, and that he missed me.

I missed him, too. And even more, I missed Mulder, if you know what I mean. Our social times together had grown fewer since Daniel came into his life, but we'd always managed to eat lunch together several days a week, and to have dinner -- usually with Daniel, although sometimes, it was just the two of us -- at least once a week.

And of course, when we were in the field, we spent a lot of time together.

But we hadn't been in the field lately, for reasons I couldn't comprehend.

I had little time to wonder about it, though. I was either with Josh, or I was talking to Josh on the phone, almost all day, every day.

I didn't even get to see my mom as much as I had formerly. She would call now and then, but unless she called my cell phone while I was at work, it was difficult to get to talk to her; Josh was forever forgetting to turn the telephone ringer back on, on my cell phone and on the landline at home.

Even when the ringer was on, he couldn't remember to give me a telephone message to save his life.

Mom was always understanding about it, and would always ask me to give Josh her best, which made me feel even more guilty.

I told her a lot about Josh -- about how particular he was about some things, how definite his ideas were -- and she laughed, and said he sounded a lot like my father.

I suppose I thought so too. In a way, it was comforting to have a man around who took charge so completely, the way my father always did, but there were differences ... differences I couldn't quite put my finger on.

But Josh was good to me, in every way he knew how, so I forced myself to ignore these little thrills of fear and concentrate on what was good about us.

Mom invited us to dinner a couple of times, but Josh always begged off, saying he was too tired to drive all the way to Baltimore, and too stressed from job-hunting for an evening with "a bunch of strangers" to hold much appeal for him.

So we didn't go.

After a while, Mom stopped asking.

As much as I loved Josh, I was beginning to feel that I was neglecting Mom, and I hated the chill that had come over my partnership with Mulder.

I _really_ hated never seeing Daniel at all.

After three or four weeks of not seeing Daniel, I had asked Mulder if Daniel could join us for lunch sometime soon.

Mulder told me, very gently, that Daniel really couldn't come by the office anymore. It was just too risky, he said.

That made me sad, although I had to admit that it was only sensible. Everyone in the Bureau now knew I was dating Josh, which meant someone might figure out who Daniel had really been dropping by to see for the past two years. That could have put both Mulder's job and Daniel's Navy career in serious jeopardy.

Mulder, to give him credit, was trying to heal the gap between us. Like Mom, he invited me -- and, of course, Josh -- to come over for dinner some night, but I wasn't able to accept, much as I wanted to. Josh was still uncomfortable around them, which even he admitted was unfair, but he said he just couldn't handle spending the evening with two gay men.

So our evenings were reserved just for the two of us, and since Josh had given up so much to be with me, I didn't really feel I could complain about it.

I mean, I didn't really mind, I suppose. Every couple tends to go through that phase of counting the world well lost for love. I just got over it quicker than he did.

This relationship did call for some major adaptations on my part, however. For one thing, I had to learn to get by without transportation. Josh almost always had my car while he job-hunted. He took me to work every morning, and every evening at 5 p.m. sharp, he was outside the Hoover building, waiting for me.

I used to work late practically every evening. Now I couldn't, because Josh was waiting, and it wasn't fair to make him sit in the car for hours waiting for me.

Mulder didn't say much, but he always looked at his watch when I got up to leave.

I tried not to think about what that meant, just as I tried not to think about how much I missed the conversations Mulder and I used to have when we were working late, when the building g rew quiet and fatigue let us open up to each other. Our little basement office was dark, and private, and sometimes we would talk for hours, on into the night.

Those were some of my favorite times, when it was just he and I, alone together in the only place in the world that could fairly be said to be ours and ours alone.

When it was time to go home, Mulder would always take my hand, kiss me and tell me he loved me.

Now, I couldn't remember the last time Mulder had held my hand or kissed me. I couldn't even remember the last time we had really talked, at work or anywhere else.

Of course, these days, work was the only place I ever saw Mulder. And he was clearly unhappy about the changed situation; he didn't have to say anything for me to know that. But as Josh reminded me one morning as we sat in my kitchen eating breakfast, if Mulder couldn't adapt to my having a lover, he wasn't being much of a friend to me.

I had learned to live with Daniel's presence in Mulder's life, he pointed out; too bad Mulder couldn't seem to do the same for me.

"Strange that he could be so jealous, when he doesn't really want you for himself," Josh said, reflectively.

"That's not really fair, Josh," I said. "Mulder's never tried to mislead me into thinking he was anything other than what he is. It's just that we've been partners for more than four years now, and he's come to rely on me a lot."

"Well, I rely on you, too," Josh said, rising and standing behind me, stroking my arms. "And I like to think I have more right to. Don't I?"

"Of course you do," I said, putting my hand over his, although privately I wondered whether he really did. But then, he was my "significant other," wasn't he? Of course his rights were greater than Mulder's, just as Daniel's were greater than mine.

But just because I acknowledged Josh's point didn't mean I wanted Mulder hurt, though.

"Josh," I said, "try to go easy on Mulder, please? He still hasn't had much chance to get used to this."

"I'll try," Josh said. He walked over to the counter and poured another cup of coffee and took a slug. He made a face.

"The coffee's cold again, Dana," he said, tossing the liquid into the sink. "You need to make another pot."

Then he'd gone into the living room to peruse the classified ads in the Washington Post, leaving me to clean up the kitchen.