Title: Follow Your Heart Written By: Clare Contact: cosmo.mouse@gmail.com Rating: PG13 Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters depicted here. Notes: This minific was supposed to be part of a longer one for the SHODDS challenge, I couldn't get my head into that but I liked this part so I decide to amend it. ~~~ Setting the scene: Mulder and Scully are attempting their relationship, although he has again had to leave due to the threat on him. Doggett and Reyes have settled into an unsteady relationship in which Doggett has just proposed. Reyes knows he still has feelings for Scully although he denies this. While on a case, the truth of his feelings come out in a telephone call. The accept to split amicably, and Reyes tells him to follow his heart. But thinking he knows how Scully fells can he do anything accept leave? ~~~ Throwing the last of his belongings in the bag, Doggett slumped down onto the bed. He sat for a moment, watching the rain hitting the thin window of the small room. The droplets conjoining and making their own paths among the cluttered window, no longer individual, now together. The only thing he wanted. He hated doing this to himself, every sight of her twisting with his emotion more and more. She was with Mulder, he knew that. She would have been with him at that moment if she could have. Curled up in the next room with him as she slept peacefully. With a deep sigh John got up, zipped closed the bag and headed for the door. Fluffing her pillow again, Dana let out and almost inaudible frustrated shout. She couldn't sleep and the thin scratchy sheets were doing nothing but irritating her further. Resolutely she climbed out of the bed, pulling her dressing down around her as she ventured out into the cold confines of the room. The case they were working on had brought them to this sleepy village, full of empty streets, people unwilling to answer their questions and perhaps a final conclusion that could bring him back to her. Her mind drifted back to Mulder, as she found it so often did, thinking of what he would make of it all. Had he actually been there. It was to help him, looking for a safe route back into some kind of normality they could finally call a life together. But her mind questioned it with each look Doggett give her, the thought nagging at her brain not letting it go. Was that really what she wanted. The sound of the front door of the house they were occupying slamming shut called her to the window. Through the haze of rain that was falling continuously she could make out John walking slowly to his car parked in front of the house. Almost instinctively he looked up at her, silhouetted against the harsh light from her room. As the moment passed between them, she felt something run through her veins. Something undeniable, but that which she'd tried to suppress for so long and she knew what she had to do. *** "Where are you going?" Dana shouted into the pouring rain that greeted her as she pushed open the veranda door. She could see John's outline stood next to the car his hand still gripping his bag, the rain beginning to soak into the sweater he was wearing. "John!" She shouted once again. Doggett froze momentarily as he heard her voice "Go back inside Dana" he replied throwing his bag onto the back seat and slamming the door "Where are you going?" "You heard that guy, he got it right. This is your business, nothing to do with me. So why exactly am I bothering?" He spat as he walked back toward her "You're bothering because you're my…" she paused "our friend, mine and Mulder's." "Yeah, and that's why I'm leaving. You don't need me here" "So you're going to go back to Monica?" Doggett shook his head as we walked back to where his car sat in the driveway of the small house "She's not there" "What?" Scully asked slightly taken aback, "Where did she go?" "I doesn't matter Dana" "What do you mean it doesn't matter" She shouted chasing after him forgetting her shoeless feet as the now muddy earth squelched slightly between her toes "You asked her to marry you John and now you're saying it doesn't matter!" "There's more than you know okay." "More than I know! You love her John, she loves you. What else is there to know? " "Dana," he replied turning back to look at her, her hair now soaking wet and clinging to her face. Her eyes shone back at him in the faint moon light. He felt his heart clog his throat, leaving no words to escape his mouth. Staring back at him she felt the same emotion run through her veins, filling every inch of her with more uncertainty and confusion. But yet she looked upon him with a certain clarity, as though something inside of her sparked afresh. "John" She said reaching out her hand and resting it on his extended arm, willing him to let the feeling he held so close in his heart and perhaps quell the conflicting feelings she had felt in her heart. He stood in silence for a while, watching the rain cascade down her soft skin. His mind questioned everything. What he was doing stood here with her, what she was doing and what might come to pass between them. As he looked, he noticed a water drop roll down across her face as though a tear were falling, without thinking he reached his hand out to wipe it away. Besides her best intentions, Dana couldn't help but be slightly taken aback by his sudden move, she still questioned her own motives in the situation. Her sudden breath at his response caused John to look closer at her, trying to figure out just exactly where the situation was headed. "I'm sorry" John said moving away from her, backing away from the situation. "I've got to go" Dana stood stunned for a moment, everything that had just happened playing through her head. Every emotion and every second. She watched him walk away from her, heading back to his car, back to DC and away from her. Suddenly, as though she had been hit by a complete realisation she knew what she had to do. She would finally listen to what her heart was telling her. "John" she shouted as she ran to the car, his hand hovering on the handle as he unlocked the car. "I need to go Dana" He replied, a slight tinge of sadness echoing through his voice. "You don't" she answered finally standing next to him again. "Not if it's not what you want" "It's nothing to do with what I want" "It's everything to do with what you want John" "And what if I can't have what I want" "You never know unless you try" She responded, looking up at him. Waiting. Hoping. With a final look in her eyes he took his chance. Cupping her face within his hands he lowered his head so their lips meet in a tender kiss, filling both of them with the emotions they had hidden from for so long. Pulling herself closer to him Dana responded to his kiss, breaking all the rules her head had told her. Their kiss deepened. The taste of their newfound lust intermingling with rain that was still falling heavily on them without notice. He had got what he wanted, what he'd dreamed almost every day since he'd met this beautiful woman. And now, he knew that she felt the same way. "Just remember the same old reason Reflected in your eyes You said you wanted me"