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[For a moment, Alex just sighs, and she pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to find some way for this not to be as bad as it was for him. And for them, because she was still furious with Rey as well, because this was still a what the fuck is even happening situation.

Making a little angry noise of frustration, she just put the phone down on the chair next to her so she didn't do something like throw it in her anger. It wouldn't help anything.]

It's not my fault what someone does with the information that they have, Richard. I tried to explain why you did it, but it's not my fault if someone doesn't get it like I do. And honestly? If I hadn't had that fight with her, things would be quite different between us when you showed up! I only realized that I love you when I told her it without thinking.

It would have been no different than normal for me.

[It's an admission made with frost. The fact that he'd been falling for her for months, that he'd been holding himself back for far longer than she'd known because her feelings weren't the same.]

And maybe you should have thought about what she was going to do with it before you told her.

Well, that would have been two of us!

[He went cold and Alex went hot, her eyes narrowing at him as one of her hands went to her hip. If he was drawing armor from the beginning, then Alex was too, and she just was wishing that things were as easy as they had been back then. But they weren't, and honestly, she wouldn't have wanted them to be. She'd told him before that she would have chosen this, and she would have.

Even if there were days like today when his words were sharp daggers that he slipped easily into the empty spaces in her armor. He was always better at that than she was.]

How the hell was I supposed to know that she'd use it as a weapon against you? It wasn't like I ever thought you could want me back! You weren't even here and the last time I'd seen you, you used your marriage as a weapon against me because you were pissed about Turkey.

And you thought I thought you could?

[The words are still cold, still almost emotionless. If she thought he had any idea that she really could love him, that his hope of what might have become of the night before Geneva, or Brazil, would really come to pass, she was being an idiot.

He had no idea if she would love him the way he'd struggled not to love her.]

What, do you plan on doing about her?

I wasn't the one who was bringing up my wife any time we got a little close, Richard. That was all you. Any time I thought there was some movement towards us suddenly there was a Coralee reminder shoved in my face. And that was you. That wasn't me. Yes, I went to Turkey, which I apologized for, but I was also spending damn near every night at your house, trying to be logical about the tapes we watched, and coming to you when I had big things or just needed to find out if I was being insane.

It was so bad Nic asked me if I was in love with you. How could you not see it?

[Alex is all fire and emotion and anger and hurt, because she can't not be. Especially when he's so cold, it's almost like she needs to burn the brighter for both of them.]

I'm going to tell her she was fucking out of line, because she was. Even if she thought she was protecting me from being hurt down the line, she was completely out of line and disregarded my feelings about you and used them as a weapon to hurt you. If you think I'm in any way okay with her doing that, then you've lost it. Because I am not in the slightest.

Maybe you should think about why I would have said them. I assure you it had very little to do with your feelings.

[He chooses to leave the situation with Rey alone for now. Time will tell if Alex does anything to stop the girl's onslaught of abuse, and if it doesn't, he'll be looking into ways of blocking her from contacting him. Maybe that hacker friend of Alex's can help.

Their argument, however, has gone far beyond Rey. It's become a match. Who fell first and who hurt the worst (not that Richard really understands that's where it's gone).]

[Alex just lets out an angry huff of air, and she shakes her head, because what the hell is evening happening right now honestly? Even she doesn't know. All she knows is that they're both angry, and they're both being versions of their worst selves, and she hates it when they do it, because it just makes her feel like they're two seconds from pulling their preverbal balls up and going home from the playground because they don't like how the other one is acting.

It happened countless times with the show and the tapes, but this was different and this was them, and this was them fighting about it being them. In the end it's all she could do to muttered:]

Jesus, Richard. Why would you do that to yourself? I swear sometimes you are the most intelligent idiot I've ever met. Was it just since you came back from Charlie?

[Her questions brought to light what he'd said. What he'd never planned on admitting to anyone, even himself. The barriers he put up to stop himself from longing for Alex's companionship. How, after Coralee made it clear she wasn't coming back, that she didn't want him anymore, he used her as a protective shield, as a piece of his armor to keep his feelings for Alex at bay.

So of course, he planned to change the subject.]

How many other people have you told?

[Well, that was certainly quite a loud groan of frustration, because of course he would drop a bomb on her like that and then completely ignore any follow ups on it. Alex had told him when she was missing the time that she'd been in love with him for a very long time without even knowing it, and now there was this and she still wanted to know about the night Coralee left again, and he was asking questions about this again.

Throwing up her hands angrily, Alex just reached for her phone, and she had half a mind to whip it back at him, but didn't. Instead she just curled her hands around it so tightly that her knuckles went white.]

No one, no one, not even Jeff knows the full story. People know pieces of it. I described you to a lot of people as a skeptic and the Scully to my Mulder. [You just deal with that pop culture reference for now, Richard.] Loads of people know about the demons. Jeff and Peter Grant and Rey are the only people who know about the key and about Coralee. No one knows about you as a kid, or about Charlie.

As I said, I told Rey about you because she was trying to talk me out of what I feel for you. Peter was talking about our worlds and how differences were on a professional level and I told you about Jeff before.

[She's still angry, and she's still hot, and she wants to move. So she does, sliding through her messages until she finds the locked ones on her friendr from that time, and then she walks over and hands it to him with the messages from Rey open.]

Maybe you'll believe me if you read it. Or not. It's up to you. I'm the Mulder here.

Edited (fixed a screw up.) 2018-07-31 01:01 (UTC)

[Richard's eyes glance at the phone. There's a part of him that doesn't want to read the messages, doesn't want to know what life Alex had while he wasn't here. Of course, she had a life, and he was fine with that. He was fine not knowing what she'd been doing while she was here. While he was trying to keep her and Charlie safe. While he was dealing with his father's suddenly being alive and kidnapped to Geneva with Coralee. While he was trying not to let her walk into the same trap that he knew he was walking into.

Except, that life seemed to keep popping up and attacking him. Every time he turned around she had told someone new. Told someone about Coralee, the woman he tried to avoid talking about. Tried to push back as far as he could. The woman who seemed to keep ghosting to the front of his life without a care of how deeply she'd scared his soul. And yet Alex was casually telling her friends about it.

It takes moments, several before his had even moves, and when it does it's almost only a cursory look over the information before he flips through it, absorbing the information quickly before pausing completely at one very specific string of comments. One very specific offer of cooking and a bottle of red.

His thumb flicks a few more times to find a second conversation. More entrenched in the same type of banter that he thought was him and Alex. There was, of course, Alex's flirty way of being, but their's was something different - or so he thought. Clearly, he was wrong. Clearly, he'd been, invading. Or so he felt as if he were. He also felt as if the pit of his stomach was going to drop out of his feet, or come up through his throat. Whichever it found more convenient.

Carefully, he placed the phone down before turning to the door.]

I'm, going out.

[The words were tight before he started heading toward that door.]

[Alex is a frenzy of activity, and she's never good with stillness, especially when she's alone with the ferret wheel in her brain running laps around the worst case scenario. Despite knowing that she shouldn't watch him read it, she can't help it. There's a hope there, an Alex level of hope that he would just read the conversation with Rey and see what it was that she was talking about, that he would understand why she had told her, that she was trying to make Rey understand.

But honestly, she should have known that he'd read so much more than that. Read it and memorize it, because that's what he did with information, especially information that he didn't like and she knew it. When he's wearing this much armor, he's nearly impossible for even Alex to read, and she just swallowed heavily when he placed the phone down like that.

And he was leaving. Again. Because this was what happened when they fought, and Alex was torn between letting him go and cooling off and trying to stop him because she knew how he was, and she knew what his brain would do. Strand was never good when he was alone, especially when his thoughts were what she was imagining them like now. As he started to move towards the door, Alex followed him, grabbing her phone and sliding her thumb across it to open it.

She didn't know what she was expecting, but of course it was John. Of course it was. Letting out a loud groan, Alex moved to follow him before he could get to the door.]

Richard, wait. This was before you showed up. When I'd given up hope that you would. It didn't mean anything. It was me trying and failing to get over you. That's all.

[That, only made it worse. She was using him as an excuse to take things that were between them, that were theirs and make them something between this man and her.]

Aren't you the one who doesn't give up hope?

[His frown only deepened. It's not about her giving up hope at him being here. It's not even about Alex sleeping with John (although it does feel painfully like Coralee's discretion. It was the things that had been them, the things that he'd given only to her that she'd just tossed out to someone else. Threw into the street for anyone to pick up.]

I'm not, doing this right now. I'll be back later.

[Maybe. Once he's compartmentalized this.]

[For a moment, Alex just blinked. Pain flashed on her face, because that was the downside of having such an expressive girlfriend. It was great when you were teasing her, but when she was hurting, it was evident. And this was a hurt like she'd not had from him before, at least not in a long time. The last time he'd hurt her this badly, he hadn't needed to see it, hadn't needed to watch her face just crumple, hadn't needed to watch her eyes lower in defeat, and he hadn't needed to watch her posture get smaller.

Even when she was worried about the two of them breaking up over the post on the network, Alex hadn't looked like this. She can't even look at him right now, not with the way that those words felt as if he'd slapped her. More than that, he doesn't even need to say that 'maybe'. It's there written in everything about him, and she didn't say anything as she just wrapped her arms around her chest and stepped out of his way.

He wanted to go, and it was clear that she couldn't make him stay. More than that, she knew Richard, and she knew how he could be when he was hurt and angry, how his bite could cut and sear and Alex's armor wasn't up to it anymore if it ever had been. She didn't know how to do that, not when he was doing this.]

[Logically, he knew that he wasn't being fair, that this had been before he'd arrived, that she had a right to a life outside of this and a right to move on from this whenever she wanted to. That logic didn't reach his heart though, and the feeling that it was being crushed by just how she had gone about it. Banter and everything that had always been them, just thrown out to this John person.

He tries not to watch as she crumbled. He knew this was entirely him, that once, maybe he would have been able to explain himself, to explain how the whole thing felt like a betrayal even if he knew it wasn't, but he knew that the person he was now would just shoot barbs like the one he just had if he stayed. Richard was a man who used his words as weapons, it wasn't something you could stop just because you were upsetting someone.

His fingers clenched and unclenched, part of him wanting to reach out, knowing that this wasn't her fault, but his heart still couldn't do it. Not now. He needed to decompress, to compartmentalize what she'd done and to reason out why it wasn't as horrible as he felt like it was.

Instead, he just continued walking, leaving the house. He'd find his own solace alone in his office. He'd think things through and force his heart to stop feeling as if she'd taken a dagger to it with her actions. Actions he knew shouldn't be bothering him, but did. She, would seek comfort in some of her many friends. Simon and Stan maybe (maybe even John came a bitter voice in the back of his head. A voice he chose very strongly to ignore.) Eventually, he would be back, or she'd walk into his office, but he would probably be back. He wasn't planning on being gone for any length of time. He wasn't packing suits or making arrangements to disappear. He was just, removing himself from the equation for a while.]

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