Title: Hunting The Fox
Author: Morticia
E-mail: Mort.themad@ntlworld.com
Status: WIP
Archive: Yes, but please ask first.
Pairing: M/Sk
Fandom: The X-Files
Category: Angst
Rating: NC-17 in places

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Part 1

There's a cold chill in the air tonight. The trees are shedding their autumnal leaves into thick blankets of russet and gold over the forest floor.

Soon their branches will be naked to the coming freeze, their black bark will be outlined with the white of winter and the piles of fiery leaves will wither and fade under the early morning frosts.

This place will become a tranquil haven in the winter white. A fire will blaze in the hearth of the log cabin, its crackling warmth defying the external chill, its glowing light dispersing the gloom of the long nights.

It is a sanctuary here.

My sanctuary.

My home.

Except that isn't really true. It is not my *address*. It is not the place that other people *call* my home. Yet, nevertheless, it is the home of my heart. It is the place where I run to when I need to escape from the madness of my life.

When the outside world closes in on me, and the voices of my friends and acquaintances become a wild cacophony of white-noise, it is here that I run to and hide.

Yes, it is my hide-away from a world gone mad. A refuge in which I can catch my breath, calm my nerves, soothe my spirit and regain my soul.

A place where I can simply be.

Here I am not Assistant Director Walter Skinner of the FBI.

To my few neighbours I am simply Walter, an odd and reclusive man, who periodically arrives unannounced, with few belongings and fewer words. I am the loner who hikes through the forests, cutting logs, fishing, setting snares and blending with the natural order of things as easily as though I were born here in this wilderness.

Only to disappear again, without explanation, until the next time. Over the years, they have become used to me. They understand that I always arrive and leave alone. They accept my occassional visit to their distant town when supplies run low and I find myself unexpectedly able to stay longer than I have planned. My face is known to them, as is my taciturn manner and unyielding privacy.

They do not invade it.

Sometimes I wonder what they think of me. It amuses me on the long evenings to consider them discussing me in the town's sole tavern. Do they imagine my other life? Do they speculate whether I am a salesman or a stockbroker, or perhaps a bank clerk?

I suspect so. Despite their unfailing respect for my privacy, it is impossible to believe that they are truly as indifferent to me as I pretend to be to them.

Often I dream of lingering after my purchases at the store, chewing the fat with them, losing myself in chit-chat about the price of grain or the weather. To be normal like them. For my worries to be as mundane as theirs. For my needs to be so uncomplicated, and my concerns so trivial.

Trivial.

It's a cruel word. A disparaging word. I do not mean to be cruel.

For these good people are not *trivial*.

They are the back-bone of the *real* America. They are the people I had in my mind when I took my vow to serve and protect. They are my reason to go on when I look in the mirror and see reflected in my eyes the horrors that I have seen, the evil that men do.

They are my life-line.

It is the memory of their intrinsic goodness that holds me steadfast each time that my mobile phone finally rings, its harsh caw rudely ripping me from the womb of my cabin and back into the harsh reality of D.C.

I come here every fall and prepare the cabin for the long winter ahead. I saddle the walls, cut the log piles, bank the soil against the eaves, cut back the ivy and brambles that have grown like green cancer across the doorway and in so doing, I cut away some of the layers of hurt that have banded my soul in the interim.

Each log I chop, each weed I pull and each branch I lop represents the shedding of my own armour. It is like peeling an onion. Each layer I remove stings my eyes with bitter tears. It is a cleansing, a catharsis, a healing.

Sharon always understood that. Never once, in all our years of marriage, did she ask to accompany me here. It is *my* place. It was always *my* place. I did not invite her, and she never questioned my decision.

I believe she understood.

I would be as tightly wound as a coil when I would throw my clothes into a rough bag and drive down here as though the devil himself was snapping at my heels. I would return calm, collected, together, at peace, and she would say nothing, merely smile her welcome and continue as though I had never been away.

Catharsis.

My grandfather brought me to this place as a boy. I saw it as a place of adventure then, as all young boys would. I spent many happy summer vacations here, kicking back my heels and fantasizing that I was a wild frontiersman, battling Indians and wild bears. I played with his old coon-hound, although I was wrestling grizzlies in my overactive imagination. It was an uncomplicated, happy place.

Then I grew, as boys must, and I shunned this place in favor of arcades and discotheques and bars, and I discovered the wondrousness that was girl.

The cabin became a vague memory, a place of childhood fantasy, and I since I was no longer a child, my interest in it waned.

The war changed that. Changed me. Changed everything.

By the time I returned home from Vietnam, my grandfather had been dead for several years and the cabin, his bequest to me, had become an overgrown and abandoned hovel, only a small annual tax deduction appearing on my bank account even reminding me of its existence.

But, like I said, the war changed that.

When I finally emerged from hospital, scarred and tormented, my very soul grievously wounded in a war that nobody even cared to acknowledge had occurred, the cabin became my place of healing. My haven, my sanctuary, my home.

Although many years have passed, it still captivates me. Sometimes I come here only out of duty. I come to tend to it, as it once tended me. At peace with myself, I arrive here only to cut away the brambles that scar it, as once it healed *my* scars.

More often, as late, I come here because I find that I need it once again.

After Sharon died, I haunted the cabin as she haunted me.

The magic was still here, though.

I emerged whole once more, as though I had absorbed the solid strength of its very walls into my own limbs. Somewhere between the physical labor and the solitude, I made peace with my demons of guilt and grief.

Yet, recently, although I come here more often, the magic seems to have faded a little. I come for peace and find myself still disturbed by dreams of violence and fear. I come for solitude and find myself invaded.

*He* is here.

Nothing I can do makes him leave.

Nothing short of a shotgun will end his ceaseless, shameless raids, and I cannot bear to harm him.

He has made this place his home, with the cunning cheek of his species and he blithely waves his tail in defiance of my gentle attempts to remove him.

The irony is breathtaking.

I come here, now, to escape a Fox, only to be haunted by one. He lurks, just at the periphery of my vision, his russet red pelt camouflaged by the blankets of fallen fire-hued leaves. I can almost see his feral grin as he coughs his barking laugh at the futility of my attempts to evade his ever-watchful gaze.

He accompanies my treks. I see him fleetingly from the corners of my eyes as I walk. His curiosity is unquenchable. His hazel gaze follows my every movement, as though I am the most entertaining creature he has ever seen.

He mocks me with his constant presence.

He evades the stones I throw with lightening reactions, and a careless wave of his brush. It is as if he knows that my bark is worse than my bite.

He is confident that his beauty and grace will win me over.

He plays a waiting game, does the fox, wearing me down, overcoming my resistance by the simple act of refusing to leave.

At times I am tempted to simply pack my bags, jump into my car and race back to the city, leaving him alone.

Then I laugh at myself. A grown man like me letting himself be spooked by a mere animal. Besides, if I run from him, I simply run back to that which I am running from already.

I am in a literal fox snare.

Ironic, isn't it?

Part 2

It is Thanksgiving Weekend before I return to the Cabin again.

The passing of fall into Winter awoke the slumbering dark demons that lurk within people's souls it seems, and I have spent the last two months deeply mired in too much work to give more than fleeting consideration to my own problems.

In olden days, people believed that birds were the receptacles of souls, that they transported people from their physical bodies to their final spiritual destination.

Nonsense, of course. Except, every year without fail, as winter's dark cloak descends, as the birds flock together and depart en mass for warmer climes, so it seems that the conscience of mankind leaves also.

The last two months I have been stunned, yet regrettably not surprised, by the depths of barbarity that so-called civilised people can descend to. Sometimes I wonder whether Mulder is right after all, with his outrageous stories of aliens and demons. Surely the only explanation for the evil that lurks within men's souls must be external forces. The alternative is unthinkable; that people as ordinary and outwardly sane as I am, can do such things to each other.

Yet, as always, it seems that even monsters take holidays.

As Thanksgiving approached, the incidents of violence finally reversed in their escalation and slowly began to peter out.

It's a bizarre fact, yet one I can almost depend on, that murder is seasonal. Mulder would argue with me, although that's a given anyway, but over the years I have developed my own theories to explain human behaviour.

In Spring, the murderers are usually random opportunists, emerging from their winter hibernation, lured by the scent of sex in the air. Taunted by the whispering hope of new life, they bitterly snuff out the young and vibrant as though they wish to destroy the very promise of Spring itself.

During the Summer, the murderers are more passionate. In the heady days of oppressive heat, they stew and simmer until their emotions leap free like outraged beasts, ripping and ravaging against those who would defy their greed.

Summer murders are always *colorful*, it seems. The blood is liberally splashed around crime scenes like a sick exclamation mark.

As Fall draws to an end though, the real perversions emerge. As though the return of the darkness and the cessation of the heat are signals to them, the evil within men's hearts finally shows its monstrous head. These are not the opportunists, or the ones who burn with uncontrolled passion, these are the true masters of the game.

Like pond life, they slowly emerge from the murky depths of their sordid little lives, slowly judging and assessing, waiting and watching until they finally crawl out of their lairs. They are slow, careful, precise. They chose their victims with obsessive precision. They lure and they play with their victims with a cat-like cruelty. There is no passion, no hate, nor even rage in them. They are separate from us. They do not see us as people. They do not accept the validity of our rights to even live unmolested.

In Winter, though, most people are simply satisfied to kill themselves instead.

Between Thanksgiving and New Year, the morgues teem with a steady flow of suicides.

Which is why it is rare for me to have an excuse to work through the winter holidays. The FBI have no interest in solitary suicides.

People rarely notice whether or not I take a summer vacation or an Easter break. They don't question how late I stay on an evening or the weekends that I remain in the Hoover building. Thanksgiving and Christmas, however, are a completely different ball game.

It is as though common sense falters and good manners are forgotten in the frantic rush to slaughter a turkey. Mulder actually dared to come right out and ask me, in front of an office full of people just to add insult to injury, whether I had any plans for this weekend and if not did I want to join him and Scully for dinner.

If he'd splashed my face on a bill-board with the legend, `Walter Skinner, sad lonely bastard,' written in meter high letters I would have been no more embarrassed.

What did he expect me to say? Was I supposed to publicly admit that the extent of my plans was a sole TV-dinner in my lonely apartment? So, it was embarrassment that made me say it. And it wasn't a lie, at least, not really.

I *did* load the trunk of the car with a huge turkey and all the trimmings, before setting out on this previously unplanned drive.

And I did share my dinner with a "gorgeous red-head" although I barely believed he would truly be waiting for me after all this time. Surely he would have moved on to new pastures and friendlier hosts.

Yet, he was still lurking in lone vigil by the cabin, his white teeth bared in a grin of mocking welcome, as though to say "See, I *knew* you would give in and return to me."

Which is not to say he immediately forgave me for my former transgressions against him, of course.

It is peculiar that even the handicap of a fur face failed to mask his mingled expression of smug satisfaction and cunning wariness as he approached the peace offering that I had lain to the side of the log pile on the left of the cabin. I remembered that it was one of his favourite haunts from which to spy on me.

His wise hazel eyes glinted with sly intelligence as he visibly weighed the temptation of the proffered food against the possibility that my hand concealed a weapon.

So I backed away from him, until I was seated on my haunches on the steps of the cabin and I ate my own dinner there. His eventual trust and then hungry wolfing of my offering both caused me to grin inanely at his pleasure and yet be saddened with guilt for my former treatment of my would-be friend.

The winter has not been easy on him so far. His thick pelt is slightly shaggy, his ears a little torn, his eyes a little dull, and we are barely into the cold weather yet.

Suddenly it occurs to me that he may not survive the bleak winter of this place, that I may return at Christmas, or Spring, and find my wish fulfilled, my unwelcome visitor forever gone, and the idea is startlingly upsetting.

It appears that he has found a tiny crack in the armour of my heart and has levered at it until he can sneak furtively inside, lurking so quietly that I am now surprised to find he has been there all along.

Except that can't be strictly true. Somewhere in my subconscious I have been aware of his presence. Why else would I have blurted out to Mulder that he and Scully could do whatever they damn well wanted this weekend because I had a date out of town?

And I can only blame the look of complete and absolute disbelief on Mulder's face at my proclamation that caused me to publicly add, with such uncharacteristic smugness, that my dinner companion was to be a gorgeous red-head of my own.

It was unprofessional and unfair. To the best of my knowledge, Mulder and Scully have never taken their relationship over that thin but precarious ledge between friendship and romance, despite the cruel toilet gossip that inevitably clings to a partnership of two sexes.

Mulder is a man, Scully is a woman; therefore they are sleeping together, is the general consensus. It is the natural order of things.

The idea is both crude and ignorant.

It also hurts me on a level so deep that I can barely vocalize my feelings.

Yet, just as I refuse to believe the gossip so I like to pretend on occasion that something sparks in those hazel eyes for someone other than Dana Scully. So, perhaps I am fooling only myself.

Just as I chose to see disappointment in Mulder's eyes when I announced my "hot date".

Surely I only imagined the dampening of embers deep within the rapidly ducking eyes, as he swung away from me in relief that I hadn't responded to his obviously thoughtless, though admittedly sweet, intention to invite me to share Thanksgiving with his partner and himself, or was it maybe embarrassment? Disappointment? Jealousy?

I cough a bark of laughter at my own wild imagination and the fox grins back, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth as it sprawls beside the log pile, replete.

He seems content to just lie there and watch me as I talk to myself, although I have no doubt that he would leap to his feet and race away to a safer distance should I move towards him.

Perhaps that is a trait of *all* foxes. To watch you constantly as though you are the fulcrum on which their world turns. To thrust their unwelcome presence into your face with such unceasing fervor, despite your best efforts to drive them away, that one day you suddenly find yourself unable to imagine life without them.

And then, at that point, when they have won your heart, when victory is theirs, they scramble away in terror should you dare to take a step towards them.

Their huge hazel eyes look at you with incomprehension, as though you are an alien being, and they hesitantly stutter that they hadn't *meant* to turn you on and they thought you were straight, since you *had* been married, and anyway you are their boss, so it's a *bad* idea and they really don't feel too good and need to go sit down somewhere private.

And so, feeling like a prize fool, you let them go, let *him* go, watch him flee your office as though you had suddenly grown horns, and you both pretend that it never happened at all.

As though words unacknowledged could become words that had never existed, your life returns to a semblance of normality, interspersed only with the odd awkward moment as you falter in the middle of a briefing, unable suddenly to look him in the face.

Until Thanksgiving comes and he walks up to you in the central FBI control room, in the midst of all of your colleagues, and he invites you to dinner. As though it had never happened. As though the six months of mutual awkwardness are merely a dream. As if, god, maybe, just maybe, as if he has come to regret his panicked flight from your office.

And so you tell him, publicly, that you aren't interested. You announce that you are spoken for, that someone *didn't* run from you, that it is too damned late.

You lie.

And then you sit alone, on the steps of a solitary cabin, and you try to explain to a fox why you didn't accept the dinner invitation of a Fox.

And the truth is, you can't even understand why yourself.

Part 3

From the high position of the sun through the bedroom window, I can tell that it is almost noon when I awake, without even looking at my watch. Which is just as well, since I am loath to move my arm lest I should disturb him.

I can't believe that he is lying on my bed, his lithe body stretched languidly along the outline of my legs. I must have left the front door ajar when I came to bed and at some point he has snuck in after me.

No, I distinctly remember both closing *and* locking the door so there is obviously a hole somewhere in the foundations, a tunnel through which he enters and then makes himself at home.

Perhaps he sees *me* as the interloper here. Does he consider that he is sharing his bed with me rather than the other way around? Is this now *his* bed?

I toy vaguely with the idea of seeking out and blocking the hole. I have little wish to return at Christmas and discover that he has moved his family in too.

If he has a family.

I have never seen another of his kind though, not around here. Oddly enough, I have never seen a fox here ever, before his arrival this Spring. This is bear country, wolf country, not a safe place for a tiny fox no matter how cunning he may be.

Then again, he is canny enough to have made his home *inside* the cabin and bold enough to let me know the fact. Why else would he, a wild creature, have crept onto my bed in the middle of the night if not to stake a clear claim? Unless, perhaps, he was simply cold.

My kidneys are beginning to stab me, the urge to relieve my bladder increasing past endurance. I drank too much last night as I sat on the steps of the cabin until the light faded, until the fox became just another indistinct log shadow, until the burning fire of whiskey traveling down my throat was no longer sufficient to protect me against the descending chill of night.

Once the sun sank behind the trees, an instant mantle of cold collapsed around me and I staggered to bed, lost and alone.

I did not wake up alone though, and the sun is high, and the chill has dissipated somewhat and I am oddly content. Except I have to rise out of bed and take care of this pressing need.

I try to ease slowly around the sleeping fox, loath to break the spell of his contented slumber, but he jerks awake regardless, an almost comical look of horror on his furry features as he realises he is face to face with me in the bed. Perhaps I am not the only one who became a little intoxicated last night.

For a moment we both freeze in a comical tableau of uncertainly, and then with a contemptuous flick of his brush he is gone, scooting across the bedroom floor, disappearing so quickly that despite the way I leap to my feet and follow, I cannot see which direction he took to escape the cabin. I resolve to at least check the walls and floor later to find his tunnel.

Although I have decided not to block it, after all, I would still feel better if I knew where he was finding his entrance into *my* home.

Then, unable to put it off any longer, I walk to the bathroom, shivering a little at the chill air on my bare skin, and stand for long helpless moments simply staring at the mocking toilet bowl.

The cold isn't helping, I decide eventually. I return to the living area, sweep the worst of the ashes from the hearth, and rebuild the fire before trying again.

It's no use. Despite my resolve, necessity weakens me and I find my trembling fingers reaching for my rigid cock and starting the ritual soothing strokes that will finally allow the release of my painfully reluctant bladder.

For months now I have woken almost every morning with this painful proof of my unsatisfied desires and unless I give in to my urge for release, I am prevented from *any* relief.

No matter how much I fight it, I am captive to my own traitorous body. The only times I am spared this humiliating ecstasy is on the occasions when I wake already satisfied, my sheets and stomach as sticky as a teenager's.

At least I did not do *that* last night in front of my witness. Albeit he is an animal, I could not bear the thought of that. Perhaps I should find his secret entrance after all, lest one night he should witness my secret guilt.

Do I call 'Fox' in my sleep as I cum like an adolescent? As I am whispering his name now, as my fingers speed along my shaft, their slick progress hastened as my precum weeps from my swollen glans, coating my hand.

There is something hauntingly bizarre about the idea of calling out Fox's name in passion while his namesake observes me.

I shiver suddenly in remembrance of the fact that the fox only appeared at the cabin, when Fox rejected me.

For a moment, I am stunned into passivity, my fingers halting their desperate play on my aching cock as I check furtively over my shoulder, suddenly sure that the beast is there, his knowing hazel eyes observing my shame.

Yet the bathroom is empty. The fox long gone. Only his memory casting shadows of doubt over my behaviour.

I cannot even imagine what I was thinking.

Perhaps Fox has infected me with his madness, because just for a moment, I imagined that the fox was more than just a flesh and blood animal. For a fleeting few seconds, I actually wondered whether it was something more mystical, some psychic projection or capricious spirit.

I laugh a little hysterically at my own imagination and decide that I am more affected by Fox than I had previously realised, if I could be so haunted by a mere animal.

It is co-incidence, of course. That is all.

Simply a bizarre co-incidence.

Part 4

"What?" I snap curtly.

He flinches a little at the harshness of my voice, as do I. I had not meant to bite. Yet, despite my bitter tone, he continues with familiar perseverance.

"I just asked whether you had a nice weekend, Sir," he repeats in his low, melodic voice.

For a moment, his hazel eyes meet mine and I flounder a little as I realise that the color is not *almost* the same as the fox's knowing eyes. It is *exactly* the same.

The realisation makes my stomach lurch uncomfortably, as I remember those bright eyes staring at me across my bed and for a moment my memory blurs so that I imagine the eyes were in *his* face at the time. The fantasy of Fox in my bed is too much for me to deal with though.

It hurts me on too many levels to even contemplate that which I can never have.

"Very," I reply shortly, my tone and expression clearly indicating that the word is the full extent of information that I am willing to offer so he may as well leave. I want him gone. I want him to follow his colleagues out of the door, not hover here uninvited after the others have gone, taunting me with his presence.

Yet, when he simply replies, "Good," and turns to walk out of my office, I have to clench my teeth to control my urge to call him back.

Instead I turn to the window and stare at the vague reflected outline of my face in the thick glass. It is raining outside, rivulets of water running down the window, distorting my reflected cheeks with the impression of bitter tears.

I reach a finger out and lightly trace along the cold glass, following the path of trickling water from the dark pools of my eyes to the broken image of my pursed lips.

It is bitterly cold outside. Soon the rain will turn to ice, according to the weather pundits, and the gaudy Christmas lights strewn across the streets below will lose their commercial harshness, mellowed by the soft filter of snow.

For the first time in several years, I find myself actually looking forward to Christmas. I can envisage the cabin deeply nestled in a thick blanket of snow, myself curled up contentedly in front of a blazing fire, whiskey in my hands and the fox curled at my feet.

The thought of which jerks me back to reality.

It is not the *fox* that I truly want to find curled at my feet on Christmas morning, but it seems the closest I will ever come to getting what I really want.

I am far past the age when Santa Klaus rewarded me for my good deeds with the deliverance of my deepest desires.

Not that I can be accused of doing many good deeds at the moment, anyway. For instance, there was no need for me to be so vicious just now when Mulder asked about my weekend.

Especially since Scully had already answered my own `casual' question about *their* weekend by advising me that he had cried off at the last minute and had failed to accompany her to her mother's house after all.

So presumably *he* spent Thanksgiving alone in his apartment with a stack of videos and cold pizza.

I want to think he was sulking, that he was so offended by the idea of my "gorgeous red-headed lover" that he wrapped himself in a bitter mantle of misery and regret all weekend.

The truth, more probably, is that he simply couldn't face three days of Mrs. Scully's constant well meaning hints that it is time her daughter `settled down'. It's probably the reason he invited me too, on reflection. He wanted me there as a distraction. In front of Dana's boss, her mother would presumably have limited her show of enthusiasm for her would-be son-in-law.

She is another person who cannot believe that Mulder and Scully are just `partners'. Their love for each other is obvious to everyone. Perhaps it is just me who cannot perceive that love to be anything other than the natural, protective closeness that develops between people in our line of work.

Their partnership is tested too often by the threat of death for them to ever break their code of platonic friendship. Nothing so effectively both brings people together and yet keeps them forever apart as the ever constant shadow of mortality that hangs over the heads of field operatives.

Which is why it would be stupid for me to get involved with him anyway, even if he hadn't turned out to be so obviously, surprisingly, heterosexual after all.

Hard enough to be his partner and stand by. How much more intolerable to be the one who sends him into danger on a daily basis.

Although, to be honest, my job more often involves pulling him out of whatever mess he has thrown himself into with reckless abandonment.

I am reminded again of my own little fox.

Although I spent all Sunday crawling on my hands and knees around the cabin, I couldn't find his tunnel anywhere. It disturbed me to a point of near obsession. The door *was* locked, as were all the windows, and yet there was no visible sign of how he had made his entrance and exit.

I couldn't possibly have failed to find it. The cabin is not that large. He is not *that* small. Even crawling on his belly he would need no less than ten centimeters clearance.

I became convinced that he was still in the cabin, lurking somewhere under a piece of furniture. It was not until I had upturned everything that I thought to glance out of the window and saw him sitting on the log pile, his bright hazel eyes fixed on the window, his mouth opened in a wide grin of undoubted amusement.

It was unsettling, to say the least.

Particularly since he was still sitting contentedly on the log pile when I went to bed that evening, his belly distended by the large portion of cold turkey that I had provided for his supper as I began to clear down the kitchen in preparation for my return to DC. Yet, I awoke early Monday to again find him sprawled across my legs.

This time I moved faster, when he woke and fled, but he moved like fiery lightening, vanishing so quickly and completely that I was left to shuffle from foot to foot in confusion as I stood alone once more in the living room.

I quickly dressed and proceeded to walk around the perimeter of the cabin, deciding that I would spot the tunnel from its other end, if only by the spoor of footprints.

But the ground was too hard for the fox's dainty feet to have made any impression, and there were no tell-tale signs of a fox hole.

In the meantime, he simply sat on the log pile and grinned at me.

I finally decided that I would have to wait until Christmas to get to the bottom of things. If it snowed, as surely it would, his footprints would clearly give him away and the mystery would be solved.

So, I had filled my car trunk with my clothes, left him the remainder of the turkey carcass, locked the heavy door of the cabin under his watchful glare and had returned to Washington.

To my other Fox.

Part 5

It is late when I finally leave the J. Edgar Hoover building and begin my long drive to the cabin. My trunk is already packed for my trip and although the roads are treacherous with snow, the vacationers have, by and large, already left DC, so the traffic is light and I make good time until I reach the mountains.

The midnight sky is illuminated by drifting swirls of snow. My headlights cut two wide yellow swathes through the white insubstantial curtain, like arrows directing me onwards through what is rapidly becoming a blizzard.

On either side of the road, the trees bow wearily, their branches bent and twisted by the weight of the heavy smothering blanket that is descending.

I can already picture the cabin in my head. Comatose, half-buried in the deep drifts, its hearth patiently waiting for me to bring it back to life with a blaze of welcoming heat. I am relieved that I left a substantial supply of wood inside, since the log pile must surely now be a shapeless mound of unblemished white.

I pray that the fox is inside the cabin. If he is not, will I dig into the log pile and find him below, his body as stiff and cold as the dead wood? I find my foot itching to depress the accelerator further. Only experience and common sense keeps my speed slow and steady.

Although, to be honest, it is foolish to continue at all, without snow chains on my tires, with the very real possibility that even should I reach the cabin safely, I will be trapped within the cabin until the Spring thaw.

At this moment, the idea does not feel completely unwelcome. I have little inclination to return to Washington at all, ever. The idea of being trapped on the mountain for the rest of my existence has a definite temptation. Better, surely, to keep my hopes alive in my heart. Better to live with the regrets of 'what if' than the reality of what will be.

Except, I will undoubtedly pull myself together. I just need a little space and time to think things through.

Yes, I am running away again. I admit it with very little shame. The events of tonight have left me floundering and unsure. I do not like the feeling. I am a man who needs to control, to be *in* control. Tonight though, the emotions in my head swirl with the same random blindness as the flurries of snow that I am cutting through as I flee towards my sanctuary.

My most prevalent and fervent wish is that I had left D.C. hours ago. I should have put my foot down, finally, and refused to stay.

I couldn't though.

Despite my loathing of the annual Christmas party and my tendency to find the darkest corner in which to glower with sullen inapproachability, it would be unacceptable for me to shun the occasion completely. So, in the event, I stayed almost to the bitter end, unable to even pass the interminable hours with a drink in my hand in view of my planned journey.

Other than the possibility of dying of sheer boredom, however, the Christmas party is not really a trial. It is one of the unfortunate necessities that come with my job. Like wearing a suit and tie even in the baking heat of summer, like attending budget meetings and morgues, and like explaining to the parents of your operatives why their son or daughter will never be coming home.

Necessary evils, all of them, and in the scheme of things, the Christmas party usually comes low on my hate list of "things I must do".

Usually.

But then again, usually I am not uncomfortably aware of the presence of Fox Mulder. He isn't exactly a 'party animal' either. He lurks too, on the periphery of the crowd, uncomfortable and out of place. His bright eyes glinting with interest as he observes the other revelers, his quick mind judging and filing details away for future reference even as he himself stays remote and aloof.

Like my fox on the log pile, he observes and grins, and remains forever alien and apart.

Other years, I have always seen him as a kindred spirit. It is one of the rare occasions when we have been equal. Both feeling as vulnerable as fish out of water and both hiding our discomfort behind masks. Mine one of sullen indifference, his one of slightly amused contempt.

It was a different kind of discomfort for us both this year, though, for which I fully accept the blame.

It was the first *social* occasion we had shared since my ill-conceived decision to blurt out my feelings for him. No matter that nine months have passed. Nine months in which we have both desperately tried to pretend that the conversation never took place.

He is so painfully awkward around me now.

He conspicuously avoided me for hours this evening, until the slow shifting of the crowd eventually placed him too near me for him to avoid conversation.

Then, blushing like a teenager and unable to meet my eyes, he blurted out, "Do you have any plans for Christmas, Sir?"

Had I been naive enough to imagine the question was anything other than a polite disinterested comment to fill in an awkward silence, his use of the honorific "Sir" would have rapidly restored my senses.

"I'm going away for a few days," I replied coldly.

He was silent for a long time, sipping nervously on his coke and looking anywhere but at my face, before finally asking, "Alone?"

"No," I answered, a little harsher than necessary, my defensive hackles rising in the face of his unthinking insensitivity.

"Ummm," he muttered. "The mysterious red-head again?" he asked.

His comment surprised me, under the circumstances. Then again, he always manages to surprise me. I decided to surprise him in return.

"Yes, he's waiting for me at my cabin," I said mildly.

He choked on his drink and blushed a delicious shade of scarlet.

It was a stupid and immature comment for me to have made. Not only was it a red herring, it was also irresponsible given the very real threat to my job should my bi-sexual nature become public knowledge.

So why did I say it?

I'm not sure.

Perhaps just because I couldn't bear to seem lonely and unloved. Perhaps I just wanted him to believe that he had missed a wonderful opportunity by turning me down. Or, maybe, somewhere deep inside, I still had the tiniest hope that he might feel jealous.

Unfortunately, he choked so dramatically that Scully raced across the room to his rescue and in the resulting confusion I wandered off to find a small drink after all, just to settle my nerves.

By the time I had fought my way to the makeshift bar and back again, he had disappeared back into the throng. I didn't catch sight of him again, although I remained until the party petered out to thin straggles of people. I never saw him leave, although I spoke to Scully some hours later and she confirmed that he had gone home shortly after the choking 'incident', saying he felt unwell.

I was both guilty and angry. Guilty that I had obviously made the party even more unbearable for him. Angry that he, who was supposedly open to new experiences and ideas, should find my secret so obviously sickening.

Where was all his tolerance and open-minded fairness now? Did he think that I would throw myself at him like a crazed beast?

It was that type of prejudice that had forced me to keep my nature hidden for my whole life. To find it in Mulder, of all people, was intolerable. It was unbearable to be an object of derision and disgust to the one person whose opinion truly mattered to me.

So I locked my misery behind a mask of surly indifference until I could finally slip away down to the basement car park to make my escape from the unfriendly city. The urge to go *home* was as impossible to refute as a physical addiction.

Only the cabin could soothe the pain in my heart. Only in the solitude of the wilderness could I escape the loneliness of this crowded, unfriendly metropolis.

And perhaps, in the welcoming grin of my little fox, I could forget the grimace of disgust in *his* face.

Pathetic, that I should come to this.

I am no better than an old woman doting on a poodle.

I am driving 90 kilometers on a bitter winter's night, with a trunk full of tasty tit-bits for an animal.

Hell, I even bought him a stocking. I found it in a pet shop. It's filled with doggie treats. I know he's not a dog, but it was the most appropriate thing I could find.

Worrying that I was in the pet shop in the first place, of course.

Pathetic.

Only, it's Christmas, isn't it? I had to buy something for *someone*, and I couldn't think of anyone else. Or at least, not someone I would actually dare to give a gift to.

Which is why I nearly didn't leave D.C. at all.

The gift.

The plain package I found on my passenger seat.

No note.

No tag.

No gift wrap.

Just a plain box.

So small I barely noticed it. Too small to be a bomb. Too small to even contain a severed finger, which is not beyond the realms of possibility. I have had some *very* strange deliveries in my time.

It was Christmas Eve, so I took a chance and didn't send for the bomb squad or forensics. Besides, I decided that anyone who could access my car without tripping its alarm was far too canny to have left a fingerprint on the box.

So I opened it.

Then I sat in my car for so long that the roads were almost clear of traffic when I finally turned the key in the ignition and headed for the cabin.

I can barely think. The gift is so personal, so significant, so strange that I need time to contemplate its meaning.

I don't dare to hope, I cannot bear to misread the signals only to have my heart crushed under his contemptuous feet.

Perhaps it is simply a peace offering.

Perhaps it isn't even from *him* at all.

Yet, who else would give me a pair of cufflinks in the shape of tiny red-gold foxes?

Part 6

The snow was descending in flakes so thick and heavy that, despite the best efforts of my wiper blades, I could barely see the road ahead.

In view of the severe precipice on the right-hand side of the winding road that led me the last few kilometers to the cabin, I slowed my progress still further. I was driving so hunched over the steering wheel that my nose was virtually pressed to the freezing glass, in an effort to identify where the white road became the white fence beyond which a white deadly expanse lurked.

Even so, the endless, unbroken white blurred before my tired eyes; the constant refraction of my headlights off the road causing my vision to become increasingly unfocused.

I only realised that I was dozing behind the wheel when my headlights picked up an incongruous flash of color in the unending whiteness. Startled to full awareness, I had to wait for the wiper blades to make another sweep across the snow laden windscreen before I could look for the anomaly.

So it was too late.

My horrified eyes met his frozen fear-filled gaze only a split second before his red pelt disappeared under my front bumper.

I heard the dull thud of his tiny body striking the underside of the car and in my panic, I made the classic mistake of letting my foot slam down on the brake pedal.

The wheel spun out of my control as immediately I felt the car's wheels lock and it began its slow, suicidal dance over the ice-bound road.

Although I knew only seconds of real time were passing, in my mind it was like a slow-motion fairground ride. As I fumbled desperately with my seatbelt, the car spun on its axis, each rotation bringing it nearer, not to the tree-lined ridge to the left of the road but inevitably instead, to the sheer drop on the right.

A thin, meter-high fence was the sole barrier between my heavy car and a plunge of several hundred meters down to the valley below.

A broken fence.

I fought the clasp of my seatbelt with frantic, numb fingers. I was going to die. I had killed the fox, and I was going to die.

Suddenly the catch released, the belt sprung free, but it was too late. The front of the car was already ploughing over the flimsy barrier. As I reached for the door handle, the bonnet dipped and I was falling in a spinning metal coffin.

And as I plunged downwards, through the side window, I saw the mangled body of the fox floating at my side, its grin now the broken, bloody grimace of a corpse.

"Fox," I screamed, in my last breath, as I plummeted to my death.

"Shush, Walter. I'm here."

The low, musical voice jerked me out of my threshing nightmare and into pure fantasy.

"Fox?" I whimpered hoarsely.

"I'm here, Walter," he replied, his soft eyes swirling a surprisingly intense green and gold in the dim grey of my bedroom in the cabin.

"You're not dead?" I choked.

"No," he grinned, with fond amusement.

"Am *I* dead?" I asked, bewildered.

He barked with laughter at my foolish notion.

"But, but," I struggled helplessly, still too dazed and breathless from my all too realistic nightmare to even begin to face the impossible fact that he was here.

"But, nothing," he whispered gently, his fingers tracing my face soothingly.

"What-, why-, I don't understand."

"I came to collect my Christmas present, Walter," he mocked gently. "It was careless of you to leave without giving me my present."

"Present," I repeated helplessly. I hadn't bought him a present. I hadn't *dared* to buy him a present under the circumstances. "What present?"

"You, Walter. I've been a good boy, so I get what I want for Christmas, and what I want for Christmas, is you."

"The storm," I gasped. "The snow. How did you."

He quietened me by simply descending his mouth to mine and plunging his hot, fierce tongue between my teeth.

His sweetness burst in my mouth, like the honey that followed bitter medicine in my childhood, the contrast of his kiss after his previous scorn literally stealing my breath away. When he released me, I was gasping, my heart thudding, the blood pounding through my cock.

Yet, still I found the strength to demand, "How did you get in here? I locked the door."

For a moment his face blurred in front of my eyes into the grinning features of the little fox. His teeth flashed with a feral whiteness as he barked in laughter once more.

"I came down the chimney," he snorted. "It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"

For a moment, my mind struggled with the impossible image. Quite apart from the mechanics of the idea, the fire was lit. I could still see the hazy orange glow of low embers through the open bedroom door. Then I dismissed the problem from my mind.

Impossible to think when Fox dipped his shaggy head to my groin, teased the string of my pajama bottoms open with his sharp teeth, nuzzled into the revealed darkness and slowly, torturously ran a rough tongue from the top of my shaft down to its swollen head.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" I asked him sadly.

He poked his head up for a moment to meet my gaze, his bright eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Are you?" he challenged, then he burrowed the tip of his tongue back into my glans, laving hungrily into my slit like a bee seeking nectar.

Arching my back in ecstasy, I capitulated fully to this fantasy come true. Deliriously I decided that if I was dreaming then so be it.

Let me dream.

I raise my hips to allow his long, confident fingers to ease my pajama pants down my shuddering thighs as he straddles me, his head buried in my groin, driving all thoughts of resistance from my head.

"Turn over," he whispers and I stiffen for a moment, uncertain.

This is *my* dream, I tell myself, and never in my fantasies have I imagined that I would be vulnerable to him.

His nips me gently as he teases my ball sac between his sharp teeth. I squeal and shudder, my cock jerking back to life.

"Turn over," he croons, a little more insistently, punctuating his request with a matching nip on my left testicle, then glaring at me with something wild and dangerous in his eyes.

I turn over, unable to resist his unexpectedly sexy aura of control. Besides, this is my dream, so I must want this to happen, I tell myself.

He pulls a pillow down and slides it under my hips, raising my ass cheeks so that they are exposed to the chill air and his hot eyes.

Perhaps that is why I feel myself burning despite the cold and the tremors that run along my body, causing my flanks to tremble, are certainly not shivers of cold.

"Beautiful," he breathes, running his hands gently over my cheeks. "You are so beautiful, Walter. So strong. So firm. So hot."

His gentle strokes transform into a tight possessive grip and he pulls the muscles of my ass apart to expose my most private place to his inspection.

I think a little of my trembling is suddenly fear. I have never been thus examined before, have never taken this vulnerable position, and even in a dream it takes a wealth of trust to hold me in place.

I brace myself for the prodding exploration of his finger and am surprised instead by the hot, darting lick of his tongue. I gasp in mingled shock and pleasure as his wet, eager tongue begins to bury itself between my tight, virginal, ass muscles.

I squirm and shiver beneath him as he burrows in as though digging for treasure, his tongue thrusting in and out of my sphincter until my ass is aflame with sensation.

I can feel his nose and chin digging into the crack of my ass as his tongue penetrates me so deeply that my brain sizzles with a series of tiny electrical malfunctions.

The more he fills me, the more empty I feel. It is not enough. He has woken a need in me that I never knew existed and now I cannot bear anything but the fulfilment of my body's new but insistent desires.

I want him to fuck me.

The realisation of that fact is almost enough to break the spell.

I am Walter Skinner. To put it crudely, I am the fucker, not the fuckee.

Except, obviously not in this dream, since I hear myself gasp, "Fuck me, Fox."

It is enough to stop him in his tracks, and I whimper in abandonment as his tongue withdraws, leaving me unbearably empty and cold.

"You sure?" he asks uncertainly, his voice hitching with such cautious but obvious hope that I relax and accept my own desires.

"Well, since this is only a dream," I reply smugly. "Why not?"

He gives a little choking sound at my answer, a stifled laugh most probably, and then I feel a slick finger pushing into my already relaxed hole.

It is quickly joined by a second and as he scissors and flexes his fingers inside me I can feel my passage being coated by a cool slippery gel. Fortunately, it seems that lube comes as part of the standard package of my wet dreams.

Even so, when he finally removes his careful fingers and I feel the hard probing head of his cock at my entrance I feel myself go tense and rigid with fear.

He feels so huge. It seems impossible that he will enter me without tearing me. God, how the hell did anyone ever let me do this to them? I wonder.

Then he is pushing against me, slick and hard, slowly piercing my body, skewering me, tearing open my layers of armour and pride as he buries himself with a slow, torturous driving motion.

I feel as though I am being ripped in half, turned inside out, as the pain blurs with pleasure as he slides over my prostate, sending a shiver of pure delight through my insides. My nerve endings jump, sending jolts of stimulation to my cock. I can feel it crushed beneath me, pulsing with need, lying stiff and hard against my stomach, weeping in abandonment.

I want to touch it, soothe it, but my fingers refuse to uncurl from where they are biting into the bedcovers as I brace myself against the brutal bliss of Fox's invasion. I cannot prevent a groan of pain escaping my lips as he fills me, and instantly he shudders to a halt, pausing inside me. I gasp with relief, trying to catch my breath and adjust to the sensation of being so stretched and filled.

Then, before I can decide whether I am enjoying the momentary relief of his stillness, I feel the touch of his hot, eager tongue as he licks downwards from my shoulder blades to the middle of my back. The wet sensuous stroke electrifies me. Suddenly it is unbearable that he is not moving inside me. I buck my body upwards, impaling myself deeper, greedily consuming all the sensation he can offer.

As though he senses my capitulation, he starts to slide within me. His breath hot on my back, his hands constantly moving over my hips and flanks, stroking, soothing, possessive.

"Oh god," I gasp, as he deepens his thrusts, as they become harder and faster, his cock flailing my insides.

It strikes me again how vulnerable I am. His weight is pinning me to the bed so securely that I cannot even reach down and touch my own raging erection. I am not in control. All I can do is lie here helplessly and let him drive me mad with pleasure and frustration.

Oddly, it is a comforting thought.

Surely that is the meaning of my dream, of *both* my dreams tonight.

In my nightmare of the car crash, I was out of control too. My car waltzing over the snow while I struggled helplessly, trapped and powerless, unable to be anything other than a witness to my own death. Here, in this dream, I am again helpless, but this time there is no fear, only a pleasure so intense that I could die from it.

It is on this thought, that Fox finally stops his incessant stroking of my flanks and slides a hand under my hips, seeking and finding my own hardness. The touch of his fingertips is enough to make me howl. I brace my hands and push upwards, almost dislodging him as I take my weight onto my hands and knees so that my groin is freed from the pillow.

In this new position, I feel both less vulnerable and yet more submissive, as I kneel, head dangling between my perspiration drenched biceps, my legs spread apart so that he can kneel between my thighs and drive into me without obstruction.

His hand is tight on my cock, pumping in rhythm with his own thrusts as he slams into me with bruising, battering force, and I am screaming now in tandem with his grunting moans, using my voice to spur him on.

The pleasure is maddening. It is too much, and yet still not enough. My body is alight with sensation. I cannot judge what is pain, what is ecstasy. I cannot differentiate between the fire in my cock and the blazing furnace in my ass. The sensations merge and overlap into a white-hot flame.

I scream again, as the pressure becomes unbearable and I erupt into orgasm. I am pumping into his hand, he is pumping into my ass, and my fried brain overloads, my vision blurring, my heart leaping in overdrive as I gasp for breath and I am falling again, spinning out over that cliff, plunging down towards the valley below as my arms and legs give way and I collapse.

"Fox," I scream, with my last breath, as I plummet into unconsciousness.

~~~

The sun is bright when I wake. Its rays trickle through the window and dance over my body and their warmth on my naked body only emphasizes the general chill of the room and the fact that I am almost blue with cold.

My nostrils are assaulted by the heavy lingering musk of sex and sweat.

I jerk awake as realisation strikes me.

"Fox?" I call out in panic, scrambling upwards through the tangle of stained, knotted sheets.

And I see him, curled in sleepy contentment on my discarded pajama bottoms.

Not Fox.

Just *the* fox.

My cry has awakened him, and his eyes are bright, and a little wary, but he does not unfurl himself and run. Like a cat, he is curled in on himself, his generous brush wrapped around his body like a blanket so that his snout is hidden by its dense fur. So I cannot see his grin, although I know that it is there.

My cheeks burn as my dream comes flooding back to me in intense, humiliating detail, even as my heart lurches at the terrible understanding that it *was* just a dream.

I cannot prevent a sob escaping my throat and I surge to my feet, only to stagger a little as pain knifes through my ass.

I sway uncertainly, my head swirling with confusion as my ass insists that I *was* well and truly fucked last night.

Tentatively I reach around and touch myself. My fingers meet tender flesh and come away slightly greasy, oily. That's when I see the half-empty tube of lube discarded on the floor.

Moving painfully, I pick it up and identify it as my own tube. It is clearly identifiable because the use-by date expired several years ago.

What the fuck did I do last night?

In my sleep did I *really* retrieve this from my bathroom cabinet and fuck myself, presumably with my own fingers, while fantasizing it was Fox?

It not only seems pathetic, it seems unbelievable.

Suddenly I am sure that it *wasn't* a dream. He *was* here.

I race, still naked, to the front door and struggle with the lock. Then I throw the door open and stagger out into the deep snow, my eyes frantically casting around, searching for evidence of footprints.

It has snowed again, though. Even my own tracks from last night have disappeared under a thick blanket of white. The cold biting into my bare feet finally reminds me that I am standing stark naked, almost knee deep in snow.

Thank God, I have no near neighbours.

So, it was a dream, I accept, and I am uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

Even so, I can't help glancing up at the chimney as I re-enter the cabin, and looking for footprints on the roof.

Part 7

In the event, fortunately or not depending on one's point of view, the expected further blizzards have not materialized and by New Year's Day, the roads are largely clear again, helped undoubtedly by the judicious use of snow ploughs.

In the interim week, I have spent the long, lonely days in a daze of combined relief and disappointment that my dream lover did not return.

The intensity of my own fantasy has both frightened and bewildered me. After my Christmas Eve dream, it took two days before I could sit down in comfort, and each time a small dart of pain shot through my ass it became impossible to believe that I could have inflicted such damage to myself in an auto-erotic dream, simply with my own fingers.

The internal bruising is too deep, yet I have checked methodically for anything that I might have used upon myself in my dream-state and have come up empty handed.

It is like stigmata perhaps. Simply the physical manifestation of a mental desire. Bizarre and strange, admittedly, but not my main source of consternation.

What is far more worrying is that I can't begin to understand *why* I did it at all, dream or no dream.

I am what people call a Top. I always have been.

I don't subscribe to the belief that people can only be one or the other, top or bottom. I have met a number of gay couples, discretely of course, whose sexual dynamics have surprised me since, as often as not, the more physically imposing have admitted that *they* are often the more submissive partner sexually. I, however, have always clearly defined my own role as being a Top.

Whether I have slept with men or women, I have always been sexually dominant, just as I have a tendency to be psychologically dominant in my non-sexual relationships.

That is not to suggest that I am an aggressive lover. To be honest, I am probably as staid and boring in bed as it is possible to be, other than my predilection towards anal sex. Although, I confess that my secret sexual fantasies are often impressively bizarre.

Nevertheless, even in my fantasies, I have never harbored a secret desire to be submissive in the bedroom.

For years I have fantasized about Fox Mulder, admittedly, but in my head he has been sprawled face down on my bed, his legs apart, his buttocks quivering under my thrusting cock, his face buried in my pillow to stifle his sobs of joyous passion as I take him and make him mine.

Or face down in the middle of a briefing having been spanked for misbehaving, his pink ass quivering deliciously, framed to perfection by the dark leather inlay of my desk.

Or spread-eagled on my conference table, his legs in the air, his face screwed up in bliss as I press him down with the weight of my body and fuck him to oblivion in full view of the entire FBI staff.

Every morning for the last several months I have woken with a raging hard-on and have imagined it is Fox's hot velveteen passage wrapped around me rather than my own fingers as I have brought myself to orgasm.

Every time he has bounced out of my office, his tight butt clearly outlined beneath his tailored pants, I have furtively had to rub myself under my desk as my mouth has gone dry with the desire to plough his furrow.

Yet now, all I am fantasizing about is his cock in *my* ass.

It is extremely disturbing.

Several times I have wandered into the cabin's tiny bathroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror, as though I will see some visible sign of the strange change that is happening inside my heart.

I suspect that my fantasies are a subconscious way to adapt to reality.

Mulder will *never* let me touch him. He never lets *anyone* touch him.

He's too wild, too untrusting, too damn fox-like.

Just like *my* fox.

Although my little furry friend has learnt to share the cabin with me this week, his bright intelligent eyes have never completely lost their glare of mistrust. He deigns to accept the food that I offer. He graciously accepts the warmth of my fire and the comfort of the foot of my bed. He has even taken to curling contentedly near my feet as I sit in my favorite chair of an evening before the crackling fire.

Should I attempt to touch him, however, the wild beast returns with a vengeance. His grin becomes a snarl, his pelt bristles and he growls threateningly. Should I ignore his warnings and persist in my attentions, he simply flees, returning only when he is sure that I am chastened and have paid sufficient penance for my transgression.

He controls our relationship. He draws the lines in the sand. He tolerates me on his terms only and should I overstep the mark I am swiftly slapped down for my presumption.

And in accepting this, in bending my own will to the fox, in allowing him to dominate our relationship, perhaps subconsciously I am preparing myself to the fact that if the cufflinks *were* from Fox, and if there ever *is* a chance that we will have a relationship, then it will be on *his* terms, and although I tell myself that it is unacceptable, I know that I will be as helpless to resist his charm as I am to resist his namesake.

~~~

The long drive back to DC gives me more time to contemplate my own surprising behaviour than I am comfortable with. Descending the mountain is trial enough. Although it is daylight, and the snow has largely cleared, the memory of my nightmare of driving off the edge still has the power to make me break out in a cold sweat.

By the time I reach the highway back to the city, I feel cold and shaken and all too vulnerable to the memories of the *other* dream. I decide it is a good thing that I will be too busy to return to the cabin for several weeks.

My *sanctuary* has become a frightening place now. Somewhere that I am evidently out of control. Whether it is the effect of the isolation, the culmination of months of frustrated desire, or the haunting presence of the little fox, I cannot trust myself alone there any more.

I needed the discipline of work, I decide.

I need to face the *real* Fox and thereby dissolve the memory of my dream lover from my head. I have little doubt that a few minutes in Mulder's presence will quickly disavow me of my fantasies.

~~~

I wore the cufflinks to work this morning and watched him carefully all through my general post-vacation briefing of the Department Heads. Despite the way that I pointedly removed my jacket half-way through the meeting, so that my shirt-sleeves were on view as I handed out small stacks of files from the mountain of paperwork on my desk, no-one noticed my tiny adornments.

Even when I sat back at my desk and deliberately played with the cufflinks as I talked, his hazel eyes never even darted to see what I was doing. So I then dropped my hands below the desk and furtively stroked myself.

He didn't notice that either.

Which, admittedly, was a little suspicious in itself, since Fox never misses *anything*, but I decided I was clutching at straws since he was one of the first agents to race out of my office when I finally called the meeting to a close.

When I was finally alone, I breathed a deep sigh of mingled disappointment and relief before unzipping my fly and comforting myself properly.

Part 8

"What do you want, Agent Mulder?" I snap, jerking upright and pushing my glasses up from where they have slipped down my nose.

"You're wearing them," he purrs, beginning to prowl down my office towards me.

I shake my head desperately, checking my watch. It is almost midnight. I stayed late, pouring over the endless stack of reports on my desk. I vaguely remember the sounds of the building slowly dying away as people packed up and went home. Hungry and exhausted I had begun to droop over my desk and at some point, I must have simply fallen asleep.

"What?" I ask, as his comment finally sinks in.

He gives a feral grin, seating his ass on the edge of the desk and reaching out with his right hand so that his fingers can glide over the cufflinks.

Heat burns my face and I shuffle uncertainly. At least he is confirming that the gift *was* from him.

"Why did you give me them?" I ask, deciding I am too tired to fence with him.

"I wanted you to wear my mark, Walter," he replies smugly.

I stiffen in my chair. His answer, combined with his mocking grin, offends me.

"Your mark?" I demand.

"You're mine, Walter," he drawls. "Don't you remember? You were my Christmas present for being a good boy. And I *was* good, wasn't I?"

I surge to my feet in panic, the room swirling around me.

Am I dreaming? I must be. I'm still asleep. I am still collapsed over my desk and only dreaming that Fox is here, with that leer in his voice and those bright, knowing eyes, and that distinct bulge in his pants.

I try to push past him, but he is too fast, too sleek, he leaps into my path, catches me, spins me around until I am facing the desk, and then his hands snake around my hips and he starts to fumble with my belt even as his erection grinds into my ass.

"Stop it," I growl. "Get off me, I don't want this, don't want to *do* this."

His hands close on my own erection, its throbbing hardness giving the obvious lie to my words.

"Here, Walter," he purrs, easing my pants down my hips, ignoring my sob of helpless desire. "On your desk. Haven't you *always* dreamt of me taking you over your desk?"

"No, I've dreamt of taking *you* over my desk," I gasp.

He gives a bark of laughter.

"Oh, it's *so* much better this way, Walter," he whispers into my ear, pausing to nibble on the sparse hair at the nape of my neck.

I shudder and nod in agreement, kicking off my shoes so that I can step out of the pants that are now tangled around my ankles.

"No briefs, Walter?" he tutts, with a chuckle, as he rubs his still clothed groin against my bare butt.

"I- I wanted to - to-," I try to explain, my face burning with humiliation.

"Play with yourself under the desk during the briefing," he chortles with evident amusement. "I saw you do it, Walter. I *smelt* you doing it," he whispers into my ear. "You were a bad, bad boy today, weren't you?"

He accompanies his accusation with a vicious squeeze of my balls and I whimper as the delicious pain forces a dribble of pre-cum out of my jutting cock.

"Bend over, Walter," he hisses, pushing against my shoulder blades and I find myself folding over until my head is pressed against the stack of files and the edge of the desk is cutting into my waist.

I spread my legs for balance, thrusting my bare ass up enough to allow my cock and balls to hang free of the desk.

I hear the sharp teeth of his zipper and I choke back a sob of humiliation as I realise that he does not even intend to undress.

Then my sob becomes a choking gasp of terror. He is not intending to prepare me for his entrance.

I try to jerk upright, but his left hand is firmly holding my shoulders down and although I try to use my hands to push myself up, they slip and slide on the files. I turn my head to the side so that I can see him from the corner of a terrified eye and I groan in relief. He is using his right hand to slick lube over his cock. He's still going to hurt me with his entrance, but he doesn't want to *damage* me, at least.

I try to relax my ass muscles but the moment I feel his cock poking at my tight pucker I stiffen in terror.

"Relax," he purrs. "This is what you want, Walter. You were a bad boy so you want it to hurt, don't you?"

I sob in agreement. Of course I do. I must do. If I didn't, I wouldn't be dreaming this, would I? And I am so hot, so turned on that I am literally dripping onto the floor in anticipation. I want him to ram into me, fuck me until I can't walk, batter my insides so thoroughly that it will be a week or more before I can sit or move or walk without remembering him inside me.

Even so, I know I will scream when he enters me.

"The security guard," I gasp.

He reaches for the wooden ruler in my side drawer, pauses, gives a cheeky grin and slaps it once across my ass, hard enough to make me cry out, then hands it to me.

"Bite down on it, Walter," he suggests. "Hard."

It takes a moment for his words to sink in since I am still dazed from the unbelievably erotic feeling of the sharp blow across my butt, and I have barely clamped my teeth on the thin wood before his cock rips me apart.

There is nothing slow and sensual about him this time. He takes me in one vicious thrust, embedding himself so deeply that his balls slap against the back of my own scrotum.

Then he pauses to allow the white-hot blaze of agony to recede. I am gasping around my make-shift gag, lights flashing around my vision as the intense pain threatens to steal my consciousness. Then I adjust to my invader, the pain dulling, receding, the burn becoming bearable, and I drop the ruler from my mouth and unashamedly gasp, "Do it."

Galvanized by my words, he begins to rock inside me, his hands now soothing and caressing my sweat-drenched sides, his cock apologetically stroking my abraded passage, turning the burning pain into throbbing waves of ecstasy.

I have lost my glasses, they have tumbled off onto the desk, and my eyes are blurred with sweat and tears, so I close them and lose myself completely in the fiery sensation of complete, abandoned pleasure.

He plays with me, changing his strokes from fast to slow, from soft to hard, driving me to screaming fever pitch, then dragging me back from the edge with gentle rocking.

I try to reach my own neglected cock, but he pins my wrists to the desk with surprisingly strong hands, trapping me so that I can do no more than wail and squirm as he beats my insides with his cock.

"Oh God," I howl, no longer caring if the entire security force batter down the door. "Let me come, Fox. I need to come."

I am so close that the merest hint of friction on my cock would make me erupt in a fountain of cum all over my office carpet.

But he hasn't finished playing with me yet. Although he releases my wrists, he growls in my ear. "Don't move your hands. If you take your hands off the desk, I'll take my cock out of your ass."

The threat is effective enough to hold me in place, although my knuckles turn white with the effort of ignoring the whimpering protest of my neglected erection.

His own hands freed, Fox wraps his arms around my sides and takes hold of my nipples, dragging a fresh scream from my throat as he takes each nipple between a finger and thumb and squeezes viciously.

I buck wildly, my thrusting ass impaling itself eagerly on Fox's cock as my chest burns under the unceasing pressure of his fingers.

"I think you need my mark in these too," he croons into my ear. "What do you think, Walter? Shall we pierce them? Put tiny foxes in your tits?"

I groan, gasping for breath, his fingers, his words, driving me crazy.

"Maybe we should pierce your cock too, huh?" he whispers. "I think it's a wonderful place for a little fox to live, don't you?"

His right hand releases my throbbing nipple and gently takes hold of my cock.

"A little fox just here?" he asks, his fingers suddenly tightening around my glans as he gives a final deep thrust inside me.

As he squeezes, my cum shoots out between his fingers, splattering the side of my desk. My knees give way as the power of my orgasm racks my body. I collapse to the floor, my cock still pumping onto the carpet, my ass and chest burning.

I don't actually pass out, but it takes several minutes before I am able to catch my breath, force my eyes open and struggle to my knees.

My trousers and shoes are lying in a discarded heap next to me. My shirt is undone, its tails dragging on the semen stained floor. I can feel liquid running out of my tender ass, an open tube of lubrication is on the edge of my desk, half hidden by the sprawled papers and Fox has gone.

This was no dream. He was here. He *was* here. I simply didn't hear him leave.

I reach carefully between my legs to find the evidence of his presence. Other than lube, my fingers come back unsatisfied. So, he wore a condom, of course. Of course he wore a condom, I tell myself, although it worries me that I hadn't even checked. Why did he leave though?

How the hell could he fuck me like that and just leave?

I struggle to my feet and dress, wincing a little as the pants touch my sore ass, then I reach for my phone and dial security.

"AD Skinner," I identify myself curtly. "Has Agent Mulder left the building yet?"

There is a pause.

"Agent Mulder checked out of the building at 8.37pm, Sir," the Security Guard replies.

I almost drop the phone in shock. This is the Headquarters of the FBI. If Security say he left at 8.37, then he did.

"Is, um, is *anyone* still in the building?" I ask, dry mouthed.

"No, Sir. You're the last," the guard confirms.

Somehow I manage to thank him and hang up, before I fall apart.

Part 9

My life is spiralling out of control. The edges of reality and fantasy are blurring so that I can no longer judge what is true and what is not.

When dreams begin to merge seamlessly with reality, how is it possible to be sure where a dream starts and ends? Do I dream, or do I merely dream that I dream?

I was pretty shaken last night, I admit. It took me the best part of an hour to pull myself together after my call to security. I was numb, bewildered, and frankly, I was terrified. For a long time I just sat on the floor and rocked like the inmate of an insane asylum, unable to reconcile my burning ass with the Guard's words.

It wasn't my ass that truly hurt though, it was my chest, and I'm not referring to my bruised nipples.

At first, the pain inside my chest was so sharp and deep that I literally feared I was going to suffer a heart attack. The pain was chokingly intense, knifing me in my gullet, stealing my breath, making it impossible for me to even move without feeling sick and giddy.

When the tears began to run down my cheeks and splash to the floor, tiny crystalline droplets that splintered on impact and then burrowed into the carpet, I regarded them as something so anomalous that they were separate from me, alien and strange.

Only when I finally acknowledged that I, who never cry, was crying, did I understand that the pain in my chest was not a malfunctioning heart, but rather was a broken one.

But then, as somehow I always do, I eventually tired of my own self-pity, straightened my shoulders, uncreased the deep gouges of grief from my face, and hauled myself to my feet. Then I methodically cleaned my office, scrubbing at the sticky evidence on my carpet until only a dark, wet stain remained.

The problem is, that even now, I am still uncertain about what, exactly, it was evidence of.

The obvious explanation, of course, is that I was dreaming again. I *was* asleep when he appeared. More to the point, since Fox handled me with such undeniable familiarity, if I wasn't dreaming last night, then I wasn't dreaming on Christmas Eve either and that is impossible, isn't it?

Besides, the only way Fox could have been there, as a flesh and blood person, is if he could walk invisibly into the Hoover Building, avoiding the security guards *and* the cameras. I checked them before I left, the cameras I mean. Before I went home, I went down to the control room, confiscated the video tapes and watched them myself, needing to see the truth with my own eyes.

At exactly 8.37, Agent Fox Mulder left the building, clearly identifiable despite the way his hands were deeply thrust into his pockets and his head was ducked into the upturned collar of his jacket against the bitter chill of a January night. He did not return. I personally checked every security tape between 8.37 and midnight, so I know he did not return.

By 10.43, everyone had left the building except the Security Guards and myself. Therefore, at 11.49, I couldn't possibly have seen Mulder in my office.

According to the cameras and the security guards, and plain old common sense.

Which is not necessarily to say it is definitely the truth, however.

Let's face it, that cigarette smoking bastard has never had any difficulty appearing and disappearing from my office. Just as my failure to find Fox's footprints on Christmas morning didn't actually *prove* he'd never been to my cabin, so the evidence that he wasn't in the building last night didn't actually *prove* he wasn't in my office.

Just like the fact that although there is no discernable tunnel into my cabin, that little pertinent fact doesn't stop the little fox from getting inside it whenever the fancy takes him.

Shit, if a fox can walk though walls, maybe Fox can too.

I'm clutching at straws here, I know.

Yet, not only does my ass feels like a battering ram has been inside it, there is also an unmistakeable dark pink welt across my buttocks from where he struck me with the wooden rule.

I have not been to bed. I have instead stood here for hours, in front of my full-length bedroom mirror, checking the angle of the blow, trying to envisage whether I could have struck myself in exactly that direction.

My ass feels like a crime scene. I can imagine yellow tape being fixed across it, while forensics agents stomp around with their measuring tapes and chalk markers establishing exactly what blunt instrument could have done the dastardly deed.

The more obvious alternative, of course, is that I *did* do this to myself, and that begs the question of my own sanity.

I cannot blame overwork, for once in my life. Hell, I've only been back in DC for two days. It's probably a good idea to get myself a medical check-up though, once the bruising fades, of course.

What was it that Scrooge blamed the manifestation of Marley's ghost on? Cheese, I think. Perhaps my dream lover is simply a bad case of indigestion.

At least I can laugh now, albeit a little hysterically, as pale beams of sunlight speckle the room as the light of a new day struggles through my window, dispelling my fear a little. Terror always broods most prevalently in darkness.

Another literary figure comes to mind as I sip my third cup of coffee and ponder my sore ass. The inimitable Sherlock Holmes who said, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, or something like that, I'm a little too tired to be certain.

The sentiment is true enough, though.

Let's look at this logically. I am not mad. Or, at least, I've decided to leave that deduction to be my final option, if all else fails.

Therefore, either I am a sad lonely bastard who is so frustrated that I am beginning to physically manifest the evidence of my own erotic desires or I am suffering from a medical condition that causes graphic hallucinations. Or, I am ingesting some form of hallucigen, or Fox *was* there on both occasions, or, last option before madness, I am being visited by an Incubus.

I take a step back.

Hallucigenic drugs.

That would make sense. Both incidents happened in the middle of the night after I had spent most of the day at work. It would have been relatively easy for someone to slip a dose of something into my coffee. Something with a delayed reaction so that it didn't affect me for several hours. Long enough for me to have driven to the cabin or to be at home, where I *should* have been last night at the time of my *visitation*.

I cannot begin to guess who would benefit from drugging me in this manner. It's hardly Fox himself since I'm not doing anything that I don't want to do with him anyway.

It would explain my out of character behaviour though, my complete polarity of sexual desire. It would explain why the hell I wanted to *be* fucked at all, wouldn't it?

Fuck, what the hell was I thinking? I should have gone and had a blood test last night to check for narcotic substances. Next time I will do that straight away, I decide firmly, only to be stunned by my own casual decision.

Next time.

Why am I assuming it will happen again? Why doesn't the idea terrify me enough to ensure it can't happen again? Am I *hoping* it will happen again? Am I that damned desperate for love, or even just sex, that I am actually enjoying this?

Yes.

Despite the very real fear, I *am* unbelievably turned on by the whole thing.

Why pretend otherwise to myself? I'll save the protests and the outrage for the rest of the world, but at least I should be honest with myself.

So what if it *is* a dream, a fantasy or a drug-induced haze? It is also the most wonderfully erotic experience that I have ever imagined.

Which brings me back to the Incubus idea.

That's the term, isn't it, for a male sexual demon? A demon who seduces and rapes you, if you can even call it rape if you are begging for more of the same. It's hardly a non-consensual haunting, is it? Hell, maybe it isn't a drug after all. Maybe I am living an X-file. A bored demon has decided to wear Fox's face and fuck me to death. There are admittedly far worse ways to go.

I'm making light of it, I know. It's a coping mechanism perhaps. Better to face the idea of a mythical demon than the stark reality of my own possible madness.

I think, for now, I'll concentrate on the probability of drug-induced hallucinations.

It's ironic that the only person I could possibly discuss this with, the only person who has the open-mind and brilliant brain to help me work out what is happening, is Fox himself, and of course that is completely out of the question.

Part 10

"Hi," a sultry voice purrs.

I almost drop my car keys in shock. The car park had been empty. I could have sworn it. Where did he come from? How did he drape himself so seductively over my car's hood without me seeing him as I approached?

It's Fox, of course.

Only it isn't. Not really. This isn't Fox. This is *my* Fox. My incubus. My dream lover. My hallucination.

My heart is thudding in my chest, a cold sweat has broken out all over my body and my hands are too clammy to insert the keys into my car door. I am terrified. I am also ecstatic to see him. It's been a week since his last apparition and I have missed him so badly that I have barely been able to think.

A week is just long enough. Somehow he knows that, or *someone* knows that. Three days to recover and get over the shock. Two days to start putting it behind me and getting on with my life. Then a further two days to start aching with loneliness and loss, and so by the time he appears, I am like a starving man suddenly offered a feast.

Even so, I try a token protest.

"Get off my car and get out of my life. I don't know who you are or what you want, but you aren't Fox, and I'm not interested anyway."

He stretches languidly and uncurls his long limbs, sliding to his feet beside me and leaning in towards my body, his bright eyes and sharp white teeth flashing incongruously in the dim car park.

"Walter, Walter, Walter," he tutts, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "I saw you watching me today."

"What?" I demand, guiltily.

He barks his wild laugh.

"You checked me out. In the men's room. Don't bother denying it, Walter. I saw you do it. I saw the way you licked your lips, the way your breath hitched, the way your eyes dilated with need," he says confidently, although his smile is less accusatory than his words. His grin is decidedly friendly, in fact.

I flush with sudden heat. It is true. I did `check him out'. But it wasn't sexual, not really. I just suddenly found myself shoulder to shoulder with Fox at the urinals and couldn't help my eyes from darting sideways. I had to know, had to be sure, whether his cock was the one I had seen in my dreams, had felt in my dreams to be more precise, since I had never seen it in daylight.

It had been nothing more than that. Just checking the evidence, that's all. The fact that I almost crashed to my knees and worshipped him with my mouth when his thick, proud cock emerged from his fly, is beside the point.

"I just, just wanted to be, to be, um, sure," I stutter.

He rubs up against me, trapping me against the car door, his interest hard and obvious as it pushes into my thigh.

"You're very nervous, Walter," he mocks, flicking out his tongue to lave at my ear.

I jerk at his hot wet touch, my glasses slipping precariously as sweat beads my forehead and begins to run freely down the bridge of my nose.

"Stop it," I hiss helplessly. "You aren't Fox, you aren't real."

He gives an almost comical double-take, then shrugs.

"Sure, Walter. You want to keep pretending this is a dream, I can live with that," he agrees cheerfully.

His words startle me. I feel myself teetering on the brink of madness again. What if it is *real*? Is he playing these games for *my* benefit? Does he think I want to pretend he is just a fantasy? When I asked him at the Cabin, "This is a dream, isn't it?" did I make him think that I wouldn't allow our relationship to be real?

It's impossible for me to think the idea through though, as he grinds his hips against me, crushing my erection painfully with his own.

"This is for you, Walter," he purrs, digging his hard cock into my groin. "Only you. It's all yours, Walter. What do you want to do with it?"

I can feel my own cock weeping, can feel the spreading dampness staining my pants. I can smell my own rut in the dank night air and from his grin and flaring nostrils, I know that he can too. I want him inside me so badly that I can barely breathe but I want something else too and he knows it.

"What were you thinking, Walter," he whispers into my ear, his breath so hot against the side of my face that I shudder and groan. "When you were watching me earlier, what did you want to do?"

My cheeks flame. I can't say it, can't admit it aloud. This is *not* me. I am not this person who wants to sink to my knees to the rough floor of this car park and bury my face into his groin. I do *not* want this. I am not this person. This is *not* me.

"Say it, Walter," he insists.

"No," I gasp, my eyes darting for escape. I want to run, want to get the fuck out of here before I destroy myself.

"Say it," he hisses, his right hand grasping my crotch and squeezing until I yelp with desire.

"I want, I want, I can't," I wail, pressing myself into him, desperate for the rough sensation of his long elegant fingers.

"Let it go, Walter," he purrs, then runs his tongue sensuously along my jaw line from the tip of my chin up to my ear, and then he nips sharply at my ear lobe until my eyes water and I am shivering in reaction, my legs so weak that I can barely stand.

His hands are ripping open the front of my shirt as he continues to croon at me.

"Let go. Forget who you are, who you *think* you are. Let it go. Just relax and let me love you."

He pulls my shirt open, then takes my wrists in his hands and forces my arms over my head so that I am bent backwards, the back of my head on the car roof and my spine arched unnaturally so that my chest is thrust forward. Still pinning me in place, Fox drops his head to my exposed chest, rimming my areolae with his feverish tongue before teasing each nub to a hard point with his teeth.

As he sucks and bites, I twist and struggle against his assault. My cock is so hard, so painful, so over sensitised by the rough friction of my pants legs that I am terrified that I will cum without him even touching my groin.

Without releasing my nipple from his teeth, he looks up from under his wildly mussed hair and as I meet his eyes and see the evil intent there, I begin to struggle in earnest. I am gasping, sobbing, begging now for him to stop. I can't bear that I should do this, that I should allow him to prove his dominance over me in this fashion.

But he is merciless. He bites down, so hard that I scream, positive that he will tear my nipple off my chest. And I cum, explosively, soaking the inside of my pants with my own semen, just as he knew I would.

My knees give way and I sink towards the floor. He guides me down, easing my fall, his sure fingers grasping my shoulders to prevent me from simply crashing onto my knees on the cold, hard concrete. I feel him remove my glasses, his fingers gentle, loving, soothing, and as my vision blurs, it is suddenly easier to do this, to let go of my false pride and my rigid self-control and just relax to my own desires.

I just flashed for him. I allowed him to prove that he is the Top, he is in control, he calls the shots and my body dances to his tune. It's too late now for false posturing.

So I let go.

He is remarkably patient with me, waiting quietly as I work this out in my head, as my numb, shaking fingers fumble with his zipper. I am trembling with fear that he will abuse my trust by scorning me for this act.

I am momentarily reminded that I am on my knees in a public car-park, preparing to give head to one of my Agents. I almost surge to my feet in panic. This is *not* me, I remind myself. I, Walter Skinner, do not kneel to anyone.

"I love you, Walter," he whispers.

His hands are stroking my shoulders, rubbing my neck, and he is still and submissive as I perform this act of submission to him.

And I am lost.

He is allowing me at least this much control, that I can set the pace and decide my own limits. I forget that I am kneeling at his feet, my bruised nipples bare to the chilly night air, my crotch darkly stained with my own cum. I am lost instead in rapture as I retrieve his magnificent cock.

As it emerges, its smooth circumcised head is glossy with pre-cum and suddenly I understand that its proud pulsing rigidity is just for me.

It is enough, suddenly, that I do this to him. That it is I who has caused his cock to engorge and weep. Tentatively I dart out my tongue and lick the pearly drops that are glistening on his swollen glans.

He tastes salty and sweet, and something else, something a little musky and wild. His smell is the same, clean yet pungent, intoxicating. I kiss the tip of his cock, delighting in his gasp of pleasure, then I bypass it completely, burrowing my face into his pubic hair instead and nibbling at it, teasing the salt taste out of the strands.

He staggers a little, before bracing his back against the car for support. I wait until I am sure he is steady before I dive in for payback. I punish him for his earlier teasing of my tits by sucking one of his testicles into my mouth. I am determined to make him come without me touching his cock too.

As he judders in reaction, his breath emerging like white smoke into the chilly night air, I roll his ball around with my tongue. His hands are frantically stroking my head as I alternate from one ball to the other with teasing slowness, occasionally pausing to nip lightly on his ball sac, making him squeal and squirm.

He makes no attempt to stop me, or even control my pace, although he is gasping in as much pain as pleasure now as I make him so unbearably sensitive that he is sobbing.

His self-control, his willingness to stay passive, despite my loving abuse shames me. Why am I trying to win this game? Why do I need to regain control of the situation? What is the point of this false pride when all I really want to do is open my mouth and swallow him whole?

So I do.

He gives a completely different type of sobbing gasp as I relax my throat muscles completely and take him deeply into my throat. If I could have spared the breath I would have chuckled at his obvious surprise at my ability to deep throat.

I haven't spent all of these years as a Top without learning how to fully satisfy my bed-partner too. Admittedly I've never done it on my knees before for an almost fully dressed man who has never offered me his ass and quite probably never will, but suddenly it just really doesn't seem to matter that much, after all.

As he begins to thrust in and out of my mouth, his moans of pure delight make my own cock go rigid once more. I unfasten my fly and stroke myself in rhythm with Fox's undulating hips.

Faster and faster he fucks my face, and my own hands keep pace so that as he screams and pumps into me, so my own balls tighten and pearly strands of cum shoot from my own cock.

Perhaps it is the fact of having two orgasms so quickly after each other, or oxygen deprivation, or sheer exhaustion, but I feel myself beginning to black out even before Fox's now flaccid cock is fully withdrawn from my mouth.

"I love you, Walter Skinner," I hear him whisper, and I feel his lips pressed against my forehead, and then his arms gathering me up, and then I remember no more.

~~~

I awake, alone, in my car.

The motor is running, so that the heater is on, and so despite my sodden crotch, I have not frozen to death, in the sub-zero temperature of the underground car park.

The clock in my dashboard says it is 1.30 in the morning.

Other than a now bitter taste in my mouth, there is no evidence that anyone else has ever been here.

I climb stiffly out of the car, walk to the trunk and retrieve a clean pair of pants from the overnight bag that I habitually carry in case of emergencies.

Not that it was *this* kind of emergency that I had envisaged, of course.

I change as rapidly as possible in the frigid air, then I get back into the car and drive to the nearest all night clinic.

Part 11

"Let it go," he suggests.

I look up sharply, my eyes narrowing suspiciously at the familiar turn of phrase.

"No harm was done. It was simply too good an opportunity to miss, Sir," Mulder says earnestly, seemingly unaware of my sudden scrutiny, although his passion for his subject is causing him to lean towards me over my desk.

I swallow dryly, trying desperately not to remember him folding me over this same desk and fucking me until I almost passed out.

"I agree with Agent Mulder, Sir," Scully says, with typical staunch loyalty. "Although his methods were a little unorthodox, since Collins is lawfully dead, the complications that would have arisen in a court are now moot."

Her presence grounds me, forces me back to reality, allows me to pretend that my last sight of Agent Mulder hadn't been from my knees as I swallowed his cock. He's been out of town all week on a case, hence this meeting.

"So," I reply acerbically. "From now on, instead of getting warrants to search properties, I should release a general memo that we simply ensure that the perpetrator is shot dead? Thus saving the cost of a public trial and the inconvenience of having to explain to a lawyer why procedures were not followed, presumably."

Scully has the grace to blush and dip her head. Mulder, on the other hand, hasn't got the sense to accept when he is outgunned.

"I would have gotten a warrant, but there wasn't time. Collins was following a timetable. He always killed his victims at midnight. By the time we made the connection and realised that he had snatched the boy, it was already 11.32. We barely had time to make it, as it was."

"Your mobile's battery was flat, was it, Agent Mulder?" I drawl sarcastically. "You had 28 minutes to place a call, logging your intention to enter the crime scene. A warrant could have been raised and filed here at Headquarters."

Mulder bites his lower lip silently for a moment, his hands fidgeting on his lap as his brain races for an answer. Then he looks up at me again, his hazel eyes flashing with satisfaction. He has thought of an excuse, evidently, and is preparing to regale me with some pearl of convoluted wisdom.

"If I had -," he begins.

"I don't want to hear it," I interrupt bluntly.

"But-," he protests sulkily.

"But nothing," I reply.

His eyes dart upwards and meet mine. I shudder a little, remembering the time he had said those words to me, or *someone* said those words to me, or I *dreamed* he said those words to me. I have to remove my glasses and rub my eyes against a sudden blinding stab of pain.

"Are you alright, Sir?" Scully asks in obvious concern.

"Headache," I grunt. "You two *always* give me a headache. Get out of here."

I see Scully and Mulder exchange a quick relieved glance with each other and they scurry out of my office before I change my mind.

My head really *does* hurt. Tension perhaps. It has been six nights since my last nocturnal encounter, which means, if I am right, that tonight is the night, so to speak.

I'm not sure what to think about that.

Last week, after I left the car park, I drove straight to an all-night clinic and requested a blood-test. The advantage of an FBI warrant card is that you can go to a clinic and ask to be tested for illegal substances without *too* many awkward questions being asked.

Anyway, in the event, the test came back negative.

Of course, as the doctor there pointed out, some drugs dissipate so quickly that they are difficult if not impossible to trace. I was uncertain how long I had been asleep in the car, but the bottom line is that I am personally convinced that whatever is the truth about the mystery of Fox, the answer isn't a hallucigenic drug.

The obvious thing would have been to have just come right out and ask Mulder to his face whether he was sleeping with me. Only I couldn't, could I? What could I say?

"Oh, by the way, Agent Mulder, did you come to my cabin on Christmas Eve and fuck my brains out? Did you sneak into the Hoover building and smack my ass before you fucked me over my desk? Did I kneel in a car park last week and suck you off until I passed out?"

Exactly.

~~~

I deliberately dawdle at the office so that I will be the last person leaving the basement car park. My heart is thudding audibly as I emerge from the lift and cross the concrete expanse to where I had left the car.

Was it some subconscious urge that had made me park it in a dimly lit corner, far away from security cameras or prying eyes? I wonder as I approach, my eyes scanning the shadowy recesses nervously as I wait for him to leap out from behind a pillar or something. Nothing. The car park is deserted. There is no Fox draped insolently across my bonnet.

Instead of sighing with relief, I am shattered by his absence. The pit of my stomach churns with bitter disappointment.

I try to tell myself that it is for the best, that I need to get on with my life, that I need to escape this crazy spiral of madness.

But the truth is that I want to howl in frustration and loss because my dream lover is not here. How pathetic is that?

I climb into the car and just sit there for a long while, my forehead resting on the cool plastic of the steering wheel. I run the engine to encourage the heater to work, in case I freeze to death.

It is only when the faint smell of the exhaust hits my nostrils, that I realise I have been sitting here brooding for over an hour. I will asphyxiate on the fumes if I don't pull myself together and move.

Where would my pride be then if I was found dead in the car park of carbon monoxide poisoning with an unsatisfied erection poking out of my lap? I ask myself. The fact that I wouldn't be alive to care, isn't the point.

Sadly, I put the car into gear and depress the accelerator. It's just gone 11pm and although the traffic is consequently light, I still have to pause at the exit, waiting for a break in the traffic. It is only for a few seconds, but long enough for him to open my passenger door and slide in.

"Hello, Walter," he smirks.

I stall the engine in my shock, then have to fumble with my keys to start the car up again as I blush like an adolescent.

"I thought you weren't coming," I admit in a low whisper, uncaring of the fact that I am thus admitting that I was hoping he would turn up tonight.

He throws his head back, revealing his long, eminently kissable neck, and gives a peal of laughter that ripples through the car and down my spine.

"I have *every* intention of coming, tonight," he replies.

Like a fool, I stall the car again.

~~~

"Absolutely NOT," I hiss furiously.

He arches a brow sardonically, his hazel eyes burning with the heat of a forest fire and he grins.

"I think you *will*, Walter," he purrs seductively, pushing me back against the wall, grinding his hips into mine.

I have been hard since the moment he entered the car. Now, with just this pressing of his groin into mine I can feel my cock beginning to leak against my boxers.

I can feel my cheeks flushing with embarrassment as the damp patch spreads and my breathing hitches. He takes advantage of my weakness and moves in for the kill, thrusting his left leg between mine, forcing my legs apart so that he can rub the front of his thigh up and down the bulge in my groin.

I gasp with mingled lust and embarrassment. We are in public godammit, dream or no dream.

"Stop it," I hiss desperately, as over his shoulders I can see the other customers watching our performance with avid curiosity, even through the rapidly steaming lenses of my glasses.

"Stop what?" he asks innocently. "This?" and he thrusts his knee up and brutally grinds it into my cock. "Or this?" and he nips lightly at a point just under my jawline, then slides his tongue across to my right ear and blows his warm teasing breath inside. "Or this, maybe?" and his hands slide under my jacket to grasp my nipples and pinching them tightly, he gives each a vicious twist.

"SHIT," I howl helplessly, my cock erupting inside my pants as though I am a sixteen year old virgin.

I look down in horror at the dark patch that is spreading across my crotch, my face is flaming as I look up again at the customers who were watching his assault on me with amusement. I expect to see scorn and derision in their eyes at my humiliation. Instead, all I see is dilated pupils and not a little jealousy.

And suddenly my embarrassment is swept aside by a feeling of pride. He wants me. Fox wants me. Enough to publicly claim me. Enough to want to mark me as his.

"Okay," I gasp. "I'll do it."

We both ignore the sardonic round of applause from an obvious, leather-clad dom in the corner, whose boy has been watching our whole performance with his jaw practically on the floor.

Fox's head jerks back in surprise and he peers anxiously into my face, and although he is grinning with excited glee, his eyes are a little wary and uncertain.

"You sure?" he whispers tentatively, all of his confidence having seemingly fled him. He seems a little guilty now that he wrested my agreement in such a full-on, public way.

It is that quality in him, more than anything that has swept me off my feet. Fox in full fury is like a Tsunami, bowling me over and riding roughshod over my own proclaimed desires. When though, as now, his grin is replaced by a slightly lost expression of mingled hope and fear, I truly am captive to him. I would do anything to put the smile back on his beautiful face.

I'm not agreeing because he has just proven to me, yet again, that my body is a slave to my desire of him. I'm agreeing because it will make him happy, and at this point, that's the only thing that seems important to me.

"I'm sure," I assure him, and this time it is I who drive our bodies back against the wall of the room and grind my wet groin into his until he is as stained as I am.

"It's going to hurt," he warns, when I finally remove my tongue from his mouth.

"I know," I soothe. I have no doubt that I will wake sore too. God only knows how I will accomplish doing *this* to myself in my sleep.

At this point though, to be honest, I simply don't give a damn.

Part 12

I rang in sick today for the first time in my life. I am past terror. I have taken a step into the twilight zone and I can't find my way back out again.

I can't even drink my breakfast coffee, my fingers are trembling too much around my cup for me to risk raising it to my lips and I have an unbelievable urge to smoke a cigarette, except fortunately I don't own any.

Instead, I jump in my car and drive to my doctor's surgery, increasingly convinced that there is something decidedly, terrifyingly, wrong with me.

Somnabulence. Sleepwalking. Nothing to worry about, the doctor assures me, ushering me out of his office.

He checked my heart, sent me for an EEG to rule out Nocturnal Epilepsy, and now has pronounced me exceptionally fit and well for a man my age and has so cheerfully handed me his bill that I almost expect him to pat me on the head and hand me a lollipop as I leave.

To be fair to the man, I didn't tell him the details. All I said was that I was having strange, waking dreams and losing small periods of time. That I was sometimes uncertain whether my dreams were true. I found myself completely unable to verbalise any examples of the physical manifestation of my so-called dreams.

He did look a little strangely at me when I opened my shirt for him to press the stethoscope to my chest and I flushed in embarrassment, but fortunately he didn't say anything.

He did sign me a prescription for some strong antibiotic cream though.

The most worrying question, though, is given my pure panic when I woke and found this particular physical manifestation of my dream, is why the hell was I still wearing them?

And the answer is, they are *real*.

I could have pierced my own nipples, admittedly. I have enough sharp implements in my apartment to have achieved that much.

What I didn't have in my apartment, however, was a pair of nipple rings with tiny dancing foxes.

~~~

It's Wednesday morning, I am stuck in the most pointless, boring meeting in the whole world, with the Senator from hell. My nipples are so sore I can't even make notes without gasping in pain. Fox is sitting on the far side of the conference table, turning last month's minutes into paper aeroplanes and completely ignoring both of us, and I am the happiest man in the world.

After all the weeks of uncertainty and stupid games, I should be furious with him. I certainly ought to stop him testing the aerodynamics of his paper creations every time the Senator is looking the other way.

Instead, I'm finding his fidgeting endearing. It must be love. It would certainly explain the sappy grin that keeps trying to sneak over my features.

I am trying to listen to Senator Asshole, but all I can think about is the note that I found on my desk this morning.

*I'm sorry about what happened on Monday. I'll explain everything. Hope you feel better soon, Mulder.*

It bothers me a little that he signed it Mulder. I know he professes to hate the name Fox, but he can hardly really have a problem with it since he has adorned my sleeves and tits with the symbol.

Besides, he left the note in clear view on my desk, so he could hardly write anything that might implicate us, I remind myself.

It doesn't matter anyway. None of it matters. He's ready to come clean, stop playing games and I have decided the games *were* my fault all along.

I lied about the little fox, my `gorgeous red-head'. I pretended that I was spoken for and he saw through my deception and followed me to the cabin. Then I insisted I was just dreaming that he was there, so on top of my earlier deception, he mistakenly assumed I wasn't prepared to have more than an occassional fling with him.

So what has changed?

I have, I decide. In accepting the nipple rings, I have shown him that I am serious about him, that I am prepared to wear his permanent mark of ownership.

On Monday I was relieved that he didn't insist on a tattoo. This morning, I am wondering whether it would have been a better idea. Surely it wouldn't hurt as much. *Nothing* could hurt as much as my tits do right now.

Even so, I don't care. I am *still* the happiest man in the world.

~~~

"Are you okay, Sir?" Mulder asks as I catch him up in the corridor.

There are too many people for me to slam him against the wall and pound him, although his eyes widen a little warily at the undoubted look of mania in my own eyes. I can't believe he just packed up the debris of his minutes and walked out of my office at the end of the meeting. We have things to discuss. Not later. Now.

"What makes you ask, *Agent*," I hiss, pointedly.

He just blinks innocently.

"You were off sick yesterday, and to be honest, you still look like shit. Besides, you spent the whole meeting looking like you were about to have a heart attack," he says bluntly.

It's as good a description as any, I suppose. My nipples are on fire, so red and swollen that every time I shifted in my seat and the cloth of my shirt rubbed against them under my jacket, I winced and clutched at my chest.

"Chest pains," I say significantly, unwilling to elaborate in such a public place.

"Did you go to the Doctor?" he asks, his eyes flashing with such genuine concern that my ire is dampened. Of course he was right to leave. Now isn't the time to talk when we could be interrupted.

"Yes. I'm fine. He gave me some cream," I reply more calmly.

It's not his fault, after all. He *did* warn me it would hurt. I'm just fucking relieved that he didn't convince me to get my cock pierced too.

Anyway, to be completely honest, now that I know it *is* real, that it *is* really Fox who I am sleeping with, the nipple rings make me feel a little dangerous and out of control myself.

It's a good feeling, being a secret rebel.

Just before the corridor splits, and I have to turn away, I hear myself blurt.

"I want to see you tonight."

He stops dead.

"This is about Monday, isn't it?" he asks resignedly.

"Yes," I mutter quietly, wincing at the possibility of being overheard.

"It's going to be bad then. I know it's bad when you want to have a talk with me *after* work," he gripes. "You wait for Dana to go home so she can't stick up for me."

He looks so cute, standing there with a pout, that I am a little distracted. Even so, I am angry too. Why is he still playing games with me?

On the otherhand, perhaps it is for the benefit of the onlookers. He's smart. He is probably just establishing a mutual alibi for us staying behind together. A reaming out is a damn good excuse for me to lock my office door.

My mouth goes dry as I picture him taking me over my desk again. I'll clear the files off this time though, I decide.

"You are in serious trouble, Agent Mulder," I snap loudly enough that I see ears perking up all down the corridor. They, of course, can't see the sparkle in my eyes.

Neither, worryingly, can Fox it appears since a look of genuine panic flashes over his face.

"Look, Sir. I'm really sorry about what I did on Monday. I admit it was stupid and I'm as embarrassed as hell about it."

My face burns. I can't believe he'd blurt it out like this. I just said he was smart. I was wrong, obviously.

"I think we need to talk now," I growl, and grab him by the arm to propel him back to my office.

He struggles a little, but not much. Suddenly aware of our audience he pipes down and lets me lead him into my office.

For a moment I am distracted by the pile of files on my desk. It seems twice as high as it was when I left on Monday night. Who would think that one day off could wreak such havoc?

I make sure that the door is closed before I turn to him.

"That was a little careless of you, don't you think?" I ask mildly.

"What was?" he asks stupidly.

"Blurting out about Monday night in front of a corridor full of people," I reply, a little anger creeping back into my voice.

"Well, it was embarrassing, I admit," Fox replies defensively. "But it's hardly a state secret, is it? I really don't see why you're making such a big deal out of it."

The blood drains from my face. Has he gone mad? Does he really think it is acceptable for the Assistant Director of the FBI to get his nipples pierced just so he can wear his kinky boyfriend's `mark'? We could both lose our jobs over our affair. He knows that. We *both* know that.

He's playing with me, I decide. He likes games. That much is beyond question. I decide that I can play games too.

"Perhaps you are right," I say thoughtfully. "Maybe we should take out an advert, centre spread with a photo. No, what the hell, a bill board would be better."

The color drains from his face too.

"A photo?" he whimpers. "You've got a photo?"

"No," I admit trying not to laugh. "Not at the moment. But it's not a problem, I can get one today."

"Shit," he gasps, dropping heavily into one of my visitors chairs and burying his face in his hands.

I grin, feeling a lot more in control now.

"So, you don't like the photo idea?" I tease.

"I'm never going to live this down, am I?" he whispers miserably. "I didn't know it was a hoax until I got there. It was a damn pathetic hoax too. Looked like it had been made out of egg cartons and bacofoil. As soon as I saw it, I was going to leave. It would have been fine if that security guard hadn't spotted me and thought I was a burglar, or something. He called the police and it took hours to straighten out.

"Not because I'd done anything illegal, but because they were all too busy taking the piss out of me for believing in UFO's at all, let alone flying all the way down from DC to look at the work of a couple of 12 year old kids. By the time they finished I had missed the last flight back to DC. That's why I was late getting in yesterday morning. But hell, it's not like I'm punching a clock is it? Shit, I never saw anyone with a fucking camera though.

"This is all I need," he moaned miserably. "A picture of me `Spooky Mulder' sitting on an overgrown egg carton. As if everyone didn't already think I was a joke."

I am too cold, frozen, numb, terrified to comfort him.

"So," I choke. "You were *where* Monday night?"

"Arizona," Mulder confesses, his face burning with humiliation.

"Your ticket?" I snap.

He looks at me in bemusement but reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieves a dog-eared plane ticket.

I stare blindly at the dates and times of his flights and something breaks deep inside me.

With careful precision I rip his ticket in two, it makes very little noise, just enough to mask the shattering of my own heart.

"This comes out of your own pocket. The department isn't paying," I growl. "Get out."

I don't even look up as he leaves.

Part 13

I take a taxi home that night.

It's not something that I consciously plan. It is not until I am descending in the lift towards the basement that I suffer a panic attack so severe that I find myself slamming both hands against the control panel, pressing all of the floor buttons simultaneously, in a frantic urge to emerge anywhere except into the car park.

At first, the lift is too confused to respond at all. I seem to have overloaded its processors by depressing all of the buttons together, and it continues downwards for several seconds, by which time I am almost gibbering in terror.

The lift finally stops on the 3rd floor and I leap out, perspiration dripping from my forehead and my shirt collar suddenly feeling far too tight. I take the stairs the rest of the way, despite the pain this causes as each downwards step makes my jacket rub cruelly against my bruised nipples.

The pain is welcome. Sharp and knifing, it overwhelms all other considerations. I focus on the burning sensation, honing my awareness down to this one, unavoidable pain. Concentrating upon it allows me to pretend that there is nothing peculiar about waiting in the lobby for a taxi when I have a perfectly good car in the car park below.

I tell the curious guards that I am not feeling well and since I am so flushed and sweat-drenched that I look like I have emerged from a sauna, they accept my explanation with concerned nods but no attempt to breach my privacy with further questions, for which I am grateful at least.

~~~

Two pertinent facts follow. Unless you bear them in mind, you may not understand my actions during the rest of the events that follow. Of course, I am not asking you to actually believe my account of things, just to withhold judgment for a little while longer.

Firstly, despite the fact that the substantial weight of the elaborate rings in my raw, swollen nipples was undoubtedly the reason that my chest was so unbearably sensitive, it did not even once occur to me to remove them. As strange as this seems, since the logical reaction would have been to remove them, the reason I didn't will become clear to you.

Secondly, at this point I was finally, absolutely, certain that Fox was not Mulder after all. So much so that I couldn't bear to look at Mulder, instead hiding in my office like a terrified rabbit driven to ground by an unknown but deadly predator.

Even so, I still knew that should I find Fox in the car park I would be unable to resist him. Whoever or whatever he really was. And that's why I couldn't go down there. Not because I was terrified of him, but rather because I was terrified of what I myself might do.

~~~

The taxi trick works so well that my car begins to gather dust in the basement for the next several days.

I send Mulder and Scully out of town first thing Thursday morning, to a case of ritualised farm animal slaughter in Seattle. It's a pretty lame case to be honest, but a couple of reports of crop circles appearing the same evening, in the fields adjacent to the killings, thankfully seems to fire Mulder's imagination enough for him to go without complaint.

Scully, on the other hand, is on the phone a dozen times a day to me, threatening to drag Mulder back to DC before one of the farmer's irate sons shoots him for suggesting aliens might have dissected their prize herd. So I know it is only a matter of time before I have to face Fox once more.

By which I have revealed two more pertinent facts, I suppose.

One. I am convinced at this point that I will only experience a manifestation when either Mulder is in town, *or* I at least believe he is in town.

If he is a figment of my imagination, the important thing is obviously not where *he* is, but whether my subconscious believes that he *might* be here. If, on the other hand, he is a clone, his masters will not make the mistake of sending him to me again when Mulder is out of town.

Two. Despite my absolute certainty that Fox will not appear while Mulder is in Seattle, I still will not walk down to the car park, just in case.

Paranoia and consistency are uneasy bedfellows.

~~~

Looking back, the oddest thing for me is that I remember working at all that week, let alone maintaining a mask of self-control. I was in a complete haze of grief, loss, anger and utter desolation. I was in mourning, perhaps, for a lover who it seemed had never existed except in my own imagination. I was also convinced that I was on the borderline of sanity.

I was walking a narrow tightrope between reality and fantasy and knew that with each precarious step I took to try and reclaim my life, I could stumble and fall so far that I would never be able to rise again.

I remember deciding that I should go to Personnel and request compassionate leave or something, only to dismiss the idea when I realised that I would have to fill in a form. It would undoubtedly have caused a few eyebrows to raise when in the box marked `name and relationship of deceased' I printed my own name.

That's how I felt though.

Dead.

I was too depressed, too disjointed from reality to even care anymore how I looked to other people. It was only by falling back on the discipline of work, that I was able to keep at least a façade of sanity in place.

I did some crazy things, I admit, but I don't think that what I did was mad under the circumstances. The situation was mad. My personal reactions to what was happening to me were simply a little out of control.

Although I could stand up in any court in the land and swear, hand on heart, that it was mere coincidence that I finally made the decision to retrieve my car on the following Monday night, I know that I still must be lying to myself.

I *knew* Mulder was back in town, since he and Scully had called by my office for a debriefing session that I had only gotten through by directing all of my questions toward Scully and blanking *him* completely. I also knew that Monday was Fox's preferred visitation day, and therefore I *knew* that he would be waiting for me.

SO why did I do it?

In retrospect, it does make sense, because -

No. Wait. I promised I would not do this. It's so easy with 20/20 hindsight to look back and justify my actions. I can pretend that I guessed *this* fact or *that* fact and that my actions were based a solid premise. That somehow, I knew what was *really* happening, so my own decisions were based on that knowledge.

To the very few people that I have told this tale to before now, that is how I have related it. After the event, so that my own memories are so colored by the eventual outcome, that it might almost seem that I at least subconsciously, chose the path I walked.

But here, in this private journal, I have to tell the whole truth, and the only way for you to understand what really went on is for you watch the events unfold day by day, week by week, as I took one blind and foolish step after another, since that is how I remember it happening.

So, I'll return instead to that last Monday night in January when I descended to the basement to collect my car.

Except that's a lie.

I went to the basement to kill Fox.

~~~

He is waiting for me, of course. Not on the car, this time, but inside it. Somehow, that only fuels my anger more.

"Get out," I snarl, wrenching the driver's door open and glaring at him. "Get the fuck out of my car."

He turns his beautiful face toward me, his features etched with bewildered embarrassment as though he is shocked to find himself in my car at all. His hazel eyes are dark and dull with hurt and confusion at my anger.

"I'm sorry. I was cold waiting for you and I didn't know how long you'd be," he explains in a low voice. "I just, just wanted to check you were okay. You were so, well, strange earlier. Is it your chest? Are you still in pain?"

Pain.

What the hell does he know about pain?

The persistent throbbing ache of my nipples is just the top layer of damage. I feel as though my whole chest is flayed open, exposed, and now he has come to chew on the wound a little. Playing with my heart as a cat teases a mouse.

Who is he, this doppelganger Fox? A fantasy, a shapeshifter or a clone?

Does it even matter? Since, either way, I will end this tonight. I will hit him, cut him, see whether he bleeds red or green and the thought of pummelling my fists into him suddenly feels like one hell of a good idea. Or maybe just pummelling my cock into him until he, whatever he is, is as bruised and heart-sore as I am.

"Why are you here?" I demand, as he climbs out of the car to face me. "What do you really want?"

"I've been, um, thinking about you, about us, our relationship with each other. I haven't been completely honest with you," he begins nervously, walking around the front of the car so that we are face to face.

"Yeah?" I demand sarcastically. "That's supposed to be news to me?"

He pauses in obvious confusion.

"I want to confess something," he says, his eyes fixed firmly on the concrete between our feet.

"I already know, you bastard," I hiss.

"You do?" He jerks his head upwards and finally looks me in the eyes, embarrassment and confusion both evident on his face.

A split-second before I move, his eyes widen in fear, as if he finally sees my intentions, but he seems unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes since he reacts too slowly to avoid me. My left hand reaches out and grabs his lapels, hauling him towards me, then I swing him around, smashing him backwards into the side of the car so violently that the breath is knocked out of him.

My right hand draws back in a fist. His nose, I think. That's where I'll strike him. That's where a single blow can wreak most havoc. I cannot bear that he looks like Mulder any more.

I swing my arm, and although I find myself pulling my punch at the last minute, unable after all to disfigure him, my knuckles still connect with his nose hard enough that we are both immediately drenched in a fountain of red blood. Red blood.

He's not a clone, then. Just an hallucination. A screaming, choking hallucination now. The blood horrifies me. He can't really be hurt, surely. He can certainly scream and cry and yell, though, like a real person, despite the fact that I have in reality just punched my desk, or my wall. Undoubtedly, tomorrow my knuckles will be raw and bruised, even broken.

I don't care, I decide. His pain may be an illusion, but it still helps to release some of my unbearable tension. In striking him, I am striking myself, my dreams, my hopes, my desires.

Although, his eyes widen in sheer terror as I swing my fist towards his unprotected face again, to crush, to maim, to destroy, he does not even struggle in my arms. He is limp with horrified disbelief as though he cannot believe that I, of all people, should do this to him.

Then his hazel eyes blink shut as he flinches in terror, as he sees my fist descend once more, and a series of images flash through my brain like a slide show of emotions. I see it all as though it is slow motion. My hatred, my pain, my disappointment, my undoubted madness, my lust, my love.

My fist swings past his face this time, my fingers uncurling, clutching desperately at his thick dark hair and I am moaning, dragging his face towards mine, kissing away the pain I have caused him, licking apologetically at the bitter, coppery blood, pressing my lips into his, and invading his mouth with my hot stabbing tongue.

He is shuddering and gasping, too shocked by my change of tactics and attitude to react at first to my passionate kiss. But then, as I grind against him, my hands digging into his shoulders, my chest rubbing against his so that my nipples blaze with hot, delicious pain at the friction, I feel him harden against my own erection, feel his chest heaving, his lips softening, his tongue beginning to dance in time with my own. His breath is harsh and sobbing as he struggles to draw oxygen through his blood-clogged nostrils to compensate for the way I am sucking the air out of his lungs with the vampiric suction of my kiss.

It doesn't matter who he is. Doesn't matter if I *am* mad. I love him. I want him. I need him.

I don't want to hurt him, after all.

Even if he is just a figment of my imagination.

Holding him firmly in place with nothing more than the passion of my kiss, I reach my hands down between our hot, heaving bodies and start to undo his belt. I will sink to my knees and beg his forgiveness not with words but with actions. I will pleasure him until my eager mouth forces him to forgive me for my unforgivable crime.

I raised my hand to him, I struck him, I frightened him and somehow that is the worst thing of all, that he might leave me, never to return. That my violence will drive him away from me. Whoever, or whatever, he is.

Perhaps it was the aftermath of shock that held him steady for my kiss, maybe he was so relieved that I did not break his face after all, that a kiss was little enough price to pay to quell my maddened rage.

All I know is, the moment that I finally finish unthreading his belt and discard it on the floor so that my fingers are free to unfasten his trousers, he goes ballistic. Kicking, punching, yelling, his eyes huge with mingled terror, confusion and rage.

His aggressiveness catches me so completely by surprise that I stagger backwards a couple of steps. Instead of continuing his assault though, the moment I release him, he darts past me and races towards his car, which I only just realise is parked a few spaces to our left.

His car. Mulder's car.

And suddenly, as though a fog lifts, I come to my senses.

This isn't Fox.

It's Mulder.

Part 14

I am running again.

Understand that I am not running from the consequences of my actions tonight, although I am terribly, horrifically, aware of what I have done.

I have assaulted Special Agent Fox Mulder in the car park of the Hoover building. I have both physically and sexually assaulted the man I love.

I cannot even hope that it was just another variation on my dream. Not this time. Because the front of my shirt is still splattered with his blood and his leather belt is now curled in mute accusation on the passenger seat of my car.

I was too stunned by my realization of his identity to move. Before I could even gather myself to take a step after him, his car door slammed, his engine revved and he took off in a squeal of tires. I could only watch helplessly as his car disappeared in a frantic rush of tail lights, the enormity of my crime washing over me like a cold, blanket of shame. Or the feel of a body bag being zipped tight over my face, stealing my breath, choking me with terror.

I am going to the cabin not to escape the penalty that I will surely pay when he reports my crime against him. Although it will undoubtedly delay the process of the handcuffs being locked onto my guilty wrists, that is not the reason that I run there.

I flee there like an animal going to ground, chased not by the threat of physical pursuit and retribution, but by my own despair and selfish need.

I know.

I have no excuse.

I should have gone after Mulder, should have talked to him, apologised, tried to explain the inexplicable. If only just to assure him that I will turn myself in for my assault on him, if that is what he requires of me. That I will offer no defence or excuse. That I accept that there *is* no rational explanation for my behaviour.

So why, instead, am I already 40km out of DC with no intention of turning back?

Because I need Fox.

I need to see him, talk to him, touch him, lose myself in the fantasy of him one last time, before I am forced to face the reality that he does not even exist.

And the only place that I believe that I will find him is if I return to the place where he first visited me, where this whole mad nightmare started.

The cabin.

~~~

From the smoke curling from the chimney, I know he is waiting for me when I arrive, as somehow I always knew he would be.

He is curled languidly in my favorite chair, before a fire that has obviously been burning down for some hours judging by its warm orange glow and low flames.

He turns his face towards me, and I sway in confusion. His nose is bruised and swollen, his mouth splattered with congealed blood.

For a moment I believe he is Mulder, after all. How else would his face bear the evidence of my violence?

Impossible though, that he could have arrived here before me. Let alone several hours before me.

"Walter, Walter, Walter," he croons, shaking his head in sorrow, as he unfolds his legs from the dark leather and rises to his feet. The fire is casting honeyed rays of red and spun-gold through his hair and his eyes are not accusing. They are dark, soft, gentle, loving and maybe even a little amused.

"Fox?" I whimper, and he is there before me, folding me in his arms, comforting me, soothing me.

"I'm sorry," I blurt out, as he kisses me and I taste the blood on his face and understand that in striking Mulder, I somehow struck him too.

He is the Fox that I want Mulder to be, perhaps.

"Perhaps I am also the Fox that Mulder wants to be," he soothes, as though he is reading my mind. Then again, he is a projection of my mind, after all, so of course he knows what I am thinking.

"I love you, Walter," he purrs.

"Your face," I sob. "I'm so sorry I hit you."

And although I physically struck Mulder, it *was* Fox I had tried to assault, and we both know it.

His features blur a little as my eyes sting with tears of shame.

"I know you are," he replies. "See?"

I feel his fingers gently caressing the underside of my chin, then pressing a little harder as they force my head to rise so that I am looking at him once more.

The bruises on his face are gone.

So, had I even harbored the tinniest hope that he was Mulder after all, despite the impossibility of him being here in my cabin, at this moment, as he heals himself in front of my very eyes, I know he is Fox.

There is no point pretending anything else.

I know, and still consciously decide that I will sleep with him. I don't have either the time or inclination to play games any longer.

"I don't have much time, Fox. They'll be coming for me," I groan.

"No they won't. He won't report you," he replies with such confidence that I actually try to believe him for a moment. "You're safe here. You're always safe here."

Then I realise that since he is my illusion, he is only parroting my own hopes. Except, surely that isn't true, since I *want* to be punished. I want to pay the price of my crime.

Just not quite yet.

Not when he is here, holding me, slowly turning me and guiding me towards the bedroom where the sheets are already turned down in anticipation of our joining.

I can barely walk. My body is chilled. Shivers of fear tremble through my limbs so that I am awkward, stumbling like an hour-old colt. He swings me up in his arms like I am as weightless as a child, and in this action he proves to me, once and for all, that he is not *real*.

And I don't care.

I cling to him helpless and confused, breathing in his wild scent and his strong comfort.

I am mad, I decide.

But for a few hours, perhaps the whole night if I am lucky, I will be his. Surely, I can have that much before I am ripped away from here to face reality once more.

~~~

Layer by layer, with infinite gentleness, he peels away my clothing until I can no longer hide my trembling body from his eyes. Fear; lust; confusion; desire, all of these emotions cause my skin to crawl and shudder. I know that I am teetering on the brink of madness and that if I do this thing, if I allow this to happen, then I will be embracing the insanity and will never be able to turn back.

While I struggle with my doubts, he simply strips his own clothes with such deft assurance that I can only drown in the vision of his sheer perfection. Impossible to believe that there has ever been anyone else in my heart but this glorious creature before me, whose bright hazel eyes never leave my face all the time that he is undressing.

It is those haunting, knowing eyes which hold me in place. His gaze holds me in thrall like I am a hunted beast who has finally been run to ground.

"Lie down on the bed, Walter," he whispers softly and like a marionette, I wordlessly obey.

"On your back," he instructs. "Hands over your head."

He is holding my black tie between his hands. It is curled around his fingers like an asp, full of deadly promise, and I immediately know that he intends to tie me to the bedpost.

The knowledge jerks me back to some semblance of sanity. I cannot allow it. I have not sunk this low. I am *not* this person that he causes me to be.

I will not do it.

I will never let him do this to me.

~~~

My fingers flex automatically, checking the tightness of the restraints. My heart is thudding in my sweat-drenched chest and I cannot stop a low growl of distress escaping my throat as my tiny struggles tighten the bondage.

I, Walter Skinner, am voluntarily helpless, at his mercy, and I don't even know who or what he really is.

Even so, I find myself opening my legs wider to facilitate the tying of each of my ankles.

He has retrieved Mulder's belt from the car. I admit that when he first left the bedroom after securing my wrists and returned with the belt in his hands, I feared that he would strike me, would demand retribution for my own earlier violence.

My panic must have shown on my face, because he took the time to cover my mouth with gentle, loving kisses before continuing his bondage. First one ankle, then the other. My belt on the left leg, Mulder's on the right.

He rises and walks to the foot of the bed so that he can look at me, displayed spread-eagled for his pleasure. I can feel the heat of my shame, a blush that seems to reach all the way down to my feet.

Yet, I cannot help but notice his excitement. His cock is rearing in eager anticipation, its head glistening as though it is crying with happiness.

"See what you do to me, Walter?" he whispers.

My mouth is dry as I watch him pour oil into his left hand and then rub his hands together, warming it, before slowly gliding his fingers up and down his shaft.

I watch his hands moving faster and faster, until his head is thrown back in ecstasy. His Adam's apple is throbbing in his exposed throat as he warbles in pleasure.

I struggle uselessly against my bonds. Unbearable that he should do this to himself when I am so near, so needy, so helpless.

"Fox," I hear myself whisper in invitation.

His only answer is to elongate his strokes with his left hand, while his right hand creeps up and begins to squeeze and caress his nipples to hardness.

My own tits leap to attention, causing the tiny foxes to dance and jangle on their hoops. I am arching my back, desperately trying to somehow move and allow my own cock some relief. It is so stiff with need that it is lying almost flat against my stomach, and my pre-cum is dripping into my navel.

The sensation is maddening.

"Come here and touch me," I demand.

"I am *your* dream, Walter," he replies softly. "Imagine that I *am* touching you. Imagine that my hands are on you now, stroking you."

I choke a little as his right hand glides over his taut stomach, leaving a glistening snail's trail of oil, then runs in wide circles around his dark pinkish-brown nipples. He is bucking now into his left hand, his breath coming in ragged gasps of grunting pleasure.

My balls are so tight they are threatening to rip themselves right off my body. Shudders ripple down my flanks as I jerk in my restraints.

I *can* feel his ghostly fingers on my own body. As he squeezes his tits, one by one, I can feel the delicious pain in my own.

"Oh God. Oh yeah. Oh, Walter," he screams as his cock gushes forth a fountain of cum that splashes the footrest of my bed.

"FOX," I scream, desperate for release.

Then he is by my side, sitting on the edge of the bed just near enough that his scent drives me wild, just far enough that I cannot touch him.

"Do you want me, Walter?" he purrs, and for a moment the look of covetous satisfaction in his eyes causes my pride to rear its head once more.

I will not beg him, I decide. I will not give him this power over me. I will not plead for his touch.

My cock weeps bitterly at my decision but I clamp my mouth shut to hold in the words of defeat that gather treacherously in my throat.

He leans over and I shudder with excitement as his mouth opens and approaches my erection. Yet, he bypasses my need, instead reaching down to tease one of the dangling fox charms with his teeth. His action causes the loop of the ring to pull against my still tender nipple and I am stabbed by a sensation too wonderful to be pain, despite the involuntary tears that spring up in my eyes.

"Fox," I gasp, and with the single word I try to convey so much. Please touch me, fuck me, love me but please don't make me beg. I cannot bear that I should beg.

"Oh, Walter, my love," he murmurs, his eyes softening in understanding. "I would never do anything that would harm you. If you can't trust me, trust in yourself. I'm not who you thought I was, but I'm not what you think I am either. You can trust me. You *have* to trust in me enough to do this. Please."

I am almost beyond rational thought, yet still I manage to shake my head.

His eyes swirl with panic.

"Please, Walter. You have to submit to me. It's the only way. You *have* to."

"I can't," I hiss. I have already gone too far, have already given up too much of myself to this creature. Finally, the price he is asking is too high.

He flinches from my words, his face panicked, sad, desolate.

"Please," he begs. "I can only stay if you need me, really need me. You have to submit to me fully or it will all unravel Walter, it will all fall apart."

"No," I reply, realising that I do have the power here after all. He only pretends his assurance, I realise. He only wears a mask of confidence. I can regain control.

He sobs as he sees the new resolution in my face, and then he simply begins to fade.

Like a ghost, his form begins to waver and shimmer, its substance becoming translucent as fog.

"Please, Walter," he wails as he begins to dissipate. "You need me. Please say you need me."

His form wavers like a shimmering cobweb caught in a strong, unexpected breeze. He is unravelling, pinpoints of bright white light now blazing *through* his body. He is fading, dying, and suddenly I know, beyond any doubt, that if I let him leave, I will never see him again.

"I need you, Fox," I howl.

For a moment I believe I am too late. His incorporeal shade blinks and flickers as though he is too weak to reform in the white light. Around me, the very cabin is shimmering, the walls threatening to dissolve, the white light is eating everything, like a ravenous beast, bleaching the room of color and substance.

Then, gradually, Fox gains control over his form, gaining substance and weight. The blinding brightness is driven back until the cabin is bathed once more in nothing but the orange reflection of the fire's low embers.

"Let me love you," Fox whispers seductively. "Need me, Walter."

His eyes are a little wary still, swirling with the panic of his near demise, of my inadvertent exorcism of him from my life.

"Take me," I reply, and when his smile remains tentative, I add a heartfelt, "Please."

Part 15

Of course, as I am writing this down, I now understand what my subconscious was trying to say to me as I made the choice to lie helpless and bound at Fox's tender, loving mercy.

I know that it was my own choice to submit to him. It was a coping mechanism, to deal with what I couldn't have consciously accepted.

And, given the way it all ended, perhaps there was more to it than that too. Perhaps I somehow *knew* what was happening. Perhaps I knew what the white light was and why it was so fatally threatening to him.

Or perhaps it was just my own pain that governed the events of that night at the cabin as I waited for the hand of retribution to fall on me.

But I am jumping ahead again and the whole point of this journal is so that you can see things from *my* point of view. The facts don't matter. *Everyone* knows the facts, now. Everyone believes they know what happened and those few people I have tried to talk to obviously see my memories as evidence of madness.

But I was there. It happened to me. I *know* what happened.

The facts are irrelevant.

~~~

I wake confused and panicked. It takes a moment for me to understand why I can't move. It is only when Fox's smiling face looms over mine, his eyes soft and warm, and I try to take him into my arms, that I realise I am still tied up.

My ass is tingling with that pleasant soreness that proves I have been well and truly fucked. The memory of our lovemaking fills me with such tender fondness for this creature who put me at his mercy only so that he could torture me with mindless pleasure, that I am not angry to find myself still restrained, but only confused.

"Aren't you going to let me go?" I ask, remarkably calmly under the circumstances.

"I can't," he whispers sorrowfully.

I am about to argue that he will damn well have to or I will end up wetting the bed, when I realise that instead of the usual dull ache in my kidneys that always accompanies my waking of a morning, there is instead an irritating sting in my cock.

I look down my prone body, in complete disbelief, to see that I have been cathetered.

"What the fucking hell are you playing at?" I roar in absolute fury, all my affection drowned in a wave of horrified apprehension.

Fox bites his lower lip pensively, his eyes shifting away from mine.

"It wasn't me," he mutters defensively. "I didn't do it."

Obviously, I'm neither amused nor convinced by his reply.

"Then who the fuck DID?" I yell.

Fox shuffles in an agony of indecision, wringing his hands together nervously as he refuses to look me in the eye.

"I can't tell you. If I tell you, it will fall apart," he cries.

The image of him shimmering out of existence once more is almost enough to choke my angry response back into my throat. I cannot bear that he should leave me, but this is too much to bear also.

"I'm waiting for an explanation, Fox, and it had better be a damned good one," I growl.

"It's not my fault," he whispers. "I've tried. Really tried, Walter, but it's breaking through now. It's all coming apart."

"What is?" I demand, but he just flinches from the harsh tone of my voice.

"TELL ME!" I roar.

"I can't," he sobs brokenly. "It's all coming apart. Unravelling. I'm losing you."

I try to force my anger and panic out of my voice as I reply.

"Fox, there's no need for this. Let me go and we'll talk about this. I love you. I want to work something out. Whoever is frightening you, controlling you, we can work it out together. I don't care *what* you are, or why you've done what you've done. I love you, Fox."

"You can't love me," he replies bitterly. "I'm not real, remember? I'm just a figment of your imagination, aren't I?"

Pain suddenly stabs my chest. Literal pain. Knifing across my nipples as though they are on fire. I arch and groan, struggling uselessly against my restraints, and the room and Fox begin to fade a little as my vision blurs.

"Don't go," I scream.

The fog lifts a little, and Fox stops fading, yet he does not resume his former substance, instead remaining slightly translucent.

"It's falling apart," he whispers as though from a great distance.

I can barely concentrate on him for the pain in my chest. I look down and see the stark, angry red of my swollen nipples. No sooner though does it register that they should surely be healing by now, than the discolouration spreads between them until I can see a deep vivid wound that almost cuts my chest in two.

"FOX," I cry out in terror, and he bends towards me, insubstantial, gossamer, his lips feel like the whispery caress of silken spider webs as they waft against my own.

"I love you," he murmurs. "I've always loved you, Walter. Remember that. Remember me."

I can only lie there, bound and helpless as the room grows brighter, and his form disintegrates, each atom ripped apart by the ever expanding white glow. Behind Fox's head, the walls of my bedroom crumble away, the ornate footrest of my bed warps and twists, its rich oaken gleam becoming metallic grey.

The bold geometric pattern of my duvet fades to a plain, canary yellow and a white veil descends over the stark red of the bleeding gash across my chest.

At first, I have no conception that this is any more than another waking dream. Even Fox's disappearance, while distressing, has no power to make me believe that this vision is any more real than anything else I have experienced since Christmas Eve.

So, it is not the evidence of my eyes that causes me to doubt. It is rather my sense of smell that I finally trust, since my eyes and my ears have become lying, treacherous strangers to me. I realise that even the sweet, wild, musky scent of Fox has dissipated, replaced by the sour, alkaline smell of disinfectant.

~~~

It is February the second. I have been in this hospital, they tell me, for 40 days and nights, which has almost biblical connotations that are oddly ironic since they apparently pulled me out of the wreckage of my car on Christmas morning.

My deadly plunge off the mountain was halted by a conveniently placed ledge and a copse of gorse bushes that apparently wrapped themselves around the undercarriage of my car. All night, my car balanced precariously on the ridge of this ledge, swaying on the fulcrum of its axis, two wheels on the ground, two overhanging the sheer drop to the next ledge, several hundred deadly feet below.

A miracle, they are calling it.

It took a mountain rescue team, two paramedics, a helicopter, a crane, hydraulic cutting equipment and a brilliant surgeon to effect that miraculous rescue, of course. Evidently, my survival ruined the Christmas lunches of many families, although I am sure they are all too good-hearted to see it that way.

I have been in a coma for 40 days and nights.

I never *did* reach the cabin. Never met "Fox". Never assaulted "Mulder". Never even pierced my nipples. It was perhaps just a way of explaining to myself the pain in my chest from where the steering column had sheered off and embedded itself inside me.

Oddly enough though, that is what saved my life. That despite the immense damage, I remained impaled and the steering wheel itself staunched the wound and slowed the blood loss, while the sub-zero temperatures of the blizzard slowed my heart rate down to such a level that I became comatose.

~~~

This is the point at which, you undoubtedly sigh deeply with a feeling of anti-climax. Such a mundane explanation. So trite. So *ordinary*.

I wish, in a way, that you were right. That I simply dreamt everything while so deep in a coma that nothing I remember can possibly be real.

Yet, if you were right, please believe me, I would never have bothered to write this journal at all.

If all that preceded my waking in the hospital was truly the fever dreams of a badly injured car-wreck victim, then it would hardly still haunt me so badly, so many years later, that I am forced to finally put pen to paper and try to exorcise a ghost.

You see, in a way, it wasn't until after I woke in the hospital that things *really* became strange.

Part 16

I suppose this is where dreams, memories and supposed reality begin to truly conflict.

If I accept, that everything that I remember happening after Christmas Eve was simply a coma-induced dream. If I believe that from the moment my car went off the road, to the time I finally awoke in the hospital, the events I remember are simply my mind's wild imaginings to try to make sense of the pain in my body, then I have to believe that my memory of the car crash is at least the truth.

Only it cannot be.

Because the fox died.

I struck him with my car, and he died. I saw his broken, mangled body falling as I fell, as my car twisted and turned before catching on the narrow ledge, the fox fell with me.

Yet, even as I write this journal, he is curled contentedly on my lap as I sit in my wheelchair in front of the dying embers of the fire, his strange hazel eyes closed in sleep, his whiskers twitching as he dreams.

He is old now, of course, as am I. His ancient pelt is a little moth-eaten. There are thin scars cris-crossing his snout and his right ear is somewhat shredded. Evidence of what though? There is no scar that cannot be accounted for by a territorial battle with a badger or bear. There is no real reason to suppose that he was struck by my car. His presence in my memory of the event is possibly as flawed as the rest of my "memories".

Yet, if he were not there, then why did I brake?

It was his presence in the road that caused me to panic and depress the brake enough that the car spun out of control. Understand that although the road conditions were treacherous that night, I had driven that same road countless times throughout my life, often in similar or even worse weather. Without the vision of the fox in my headlights, I would not have crashed the car.

Which begs the question of whether my hallucinations actually started *before* my accident, and if that is true then doesn't that cast a whole different light on everything?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. All I know is that the fox is here, in the cabin with me, and at least, to that extent, I am not completely alone.

He is not a *tame* fox now, although you might think so from his apparent trust in me. It is more an acknowledgement of my own helplessness though. I simply am no threat to him any more.

He snuffles in his sleep, a little agitated now. He gives a tiny barking yelp, before sighing and settling back down into a deeper slumber. I wonder what he is dreaming. What dreams do foxes dream? What fantastical fantasies do their minds devise?

Before I write this next part, I have so take the time to stop and explain something.

What I am about to tell you *isn't* the truth. I know *that* much at least. I know that this particular memory *was* just a drug-induced fantasy, since it occurred the night *after* I left hospital and returned to the cabin.

Yes, I know. You don't have to say it. It was stupid and irresponsible of me to simply wheel myself out of the hospital when the nurses were pre-occupied with the alarm of a failing life-support machine down the corridor.

It was equally irresponsible of the taxi driver to agree to put my purloined wheelchair in his trunk and drive me up to the remote cabin, since I was still so swathed in bandages that I could have starred in a remake of "The Mummy".

Greed has a way of overcoming most principles though. He took a chance that I wouldn't actually expire on his back seat and drove me back up to the mountains in exchange for most of the cash in my wallet.

So, why did I do it? Sneak out of the hospital like a thief and run to the cabin?

Because, as you have probably already gathered from my mention of my wallet, someone had finally brought my personal possessions to the hospital room. Not only my wallet, ID and watch but also a small, plain, battered box in which I discovered a pair of red-gold cufflinks in the shape of tiny foxes.

If you think back with me, you'll remember that they were in my car *before* I set off to the cabin that night. So to one extent their retrieval from my mangled car should not have surprised me, let alone terrified me enough to run from the hospital.

But they did.

You see, I admit it. I not only ran in my dreams. I ran after I had woken, and in doing so, I ran straight back to a new dream.

That's why I hesitate to mention it at all. Because it sounds so crazy, even to myself. I was popping pain-killers like they were going out of fashion, after all.

Besides, as I said, I don't actually expect *anyone* to believe that I really had a conversation with the fox.

Sitting here now, with him curled on my lap, flesh and blood, no more, no less, even *I* cannot believe it.

Even so, it is relevant. It explains what I did next, because *I* believed it at the time, which ultimately is all that matters.

So I will brave your mockery and tell you anyway. What you then choose to believe is your own business, not mine.

~~~

It is a measure of my stupidity, I decide, that it is not until the taxi driver has pulled away that I realise there is no way that I can manoeuvre myself into the cabin.

He has left me here, sitting in my wheelchair, with night drawing in and two small, but mountainous, steps between the path and the door of the cabin.

I cannot even slide out of the chair, and drag my shattered legs with my arms because of the terrible damage to my chest.

I am going to freeze and die here, like a fool.

Yet, there is a certain serendipity to the thought. It is beautiful here, with the sun dipping into the trees, its weary red glow trickling through the bare winter branches. Soon the sun will sink finally into exhausted slumber, taking with it the last of its warmth and light, and I will be alone.

After the last two weeks of bustle and noise in the hospital, the fatal peace is wonderful. I refused all visitors after waking, despite the knowledge that Mulder and Scully drove up several times to see me. I was crippled, lost and shattered. I no more wanted to face them than I wanted to face reality. So I remained alone. Even so, the inane smiles and endless chatter of the nurses drove me to distraction.

So I am happy to be here. Happy to spend my last night on this earth, in a place that I loved. The only place that I have ever *felt* truly loved. And if it was all a dream, then so what? It was real to me. Real enough to put a wry smile on my face as I prepare to descend into the final dream. The dream from which there will be no rude, cruel awakening.

When the fox appears, his eyes glinting their green/gold fire, I am at first convinced that I *have* passed on to that next place and that my destiny is to forever haunt this lonely cabin with him at my side as the winter winds wail around us.

"I'm sorry I killed you, little fox," I say, so softly that my voice is almost lost in the heavy breeze that has whipped up with the retiring of the sun. I shiver a little in the chill air, surprised that even in death there is cold. I always thought hell was burning brimstone. Instead it is the ghostly chill of loneliness.

He shimmers, the air around him swirling with a stomach churning speed as he expands, grows, changes, and Fox is there, as beautiful and alien as ever.

"You didn't kill me, Walter," he replies with a gentle smile. "You are killing yourself though. Let's go inside, light a fire, warm you up, make you comfortable."

He is moving as he speaks, wheeling me towards the cabin, effortlessly lifting me over the steps, pushing me inside and then closing the door against the cold night air as he rummages at the hearth.

~~~

I know.

It couldn't have happened.

I KNOW THAT DAMMIT!

Yet, how, if it did not, did I manage to get inside? How did I light a fire? How did I survive that night alone in the cabin?

Yes, I've heard the usual explanation. That the taxi driver did not leave me on the path but instead settled me inside and lit the fire for me. It is unbelievable that he would do anything else.

But, I tell you three times.

He did not.

~~~

"I don't believe in you," I tell the fox bluntly.

Still wearing Fox's body, he throws back his head and gives a bark of laughter.

"It doesn't matter, Walter," he replies, his teeth flashing ferally in the blazing firelight. "Because *I* believe in *you*."

"None of it happened," I tell him firmly. "I was in a coma. I never arrived here, never returned to Washington, never did *any* of it. It was a dream. This is a dream too. I'm still outside, dying, freezing to death maybe. I am dreaming you."

He slinks across the room, folding himself down onto his haunches and resting his chin on my knees, his bright eyes sparkling with loving amusement as he watches the expressions dancing over my face. I find myself stroking his hair, running my fingers through the fine, clean strands, marvelling in its texture, its solidity. He is a remarkably *solid* hallucination.

"Do I *feel* like a dream?" he purrs contentedly.

"No," I admit. He feels wonderful. "But you felt real when I was in my coma, too."

"Forty days and nights," he agrees.

"Were you my temptation in the desert?" I laugh bitterly.

He blinks in complete confusion. Presumably he is not a Christian fox, I decide.

"I protected you, Walter. I was your shield and your guide. You were my charge. I eased the passing of your dreamtime as much as you let me. Dreams are conduits, Walter."

"For creatures like you?"

The fox nods.

"And what are you?" I ask.

He struggles to reply to my question. Not so much being evasive, I understand, as being unable to find an answer that I will accept.

"I just *am*," he finally replies, a little dejected by his failure to find the right words to explain his nature.

"Why me? Why did you pick me to haunt?" I demand.

"You're the guardian," he explains.

"Guardian?"

"Of this place, my place, my home. You tend my home. I tend you. I have always been here, Walter. Each time you came here, I was here, waiting for you, healing you, giving back the love that you bring here, as your grandfather did before you."

"So you are a spirit? The spirit of this place, this cabin?" I ask.

"I suppose. I just wanted to make you happy," the fox shrugs.

"Why?" I ask bluntly.

"I thought you would die. I wanted you to die happy," he replies. "I tried to give you what you wanted, only you fought me all the way. You wouldn't believe. You didn't *want* to be happy, maybe," he replies with thoughtful sadness.

"Why did you pretend to be *him*?" I demand.

"Because you didn't want the fox, you wanted Fox. You confused me," the fox pouts, the expression sitting with an odd familiarity on Fox's face.

"How so?" I ask mildly.

"Last spring, when you came up here, when you were so sad and solemn and you cried every night in your sleep."

"I did not," I protest, offended by the suggestion.

"Did so," the fox spits like a three-year old.

I can't help but laugh. There is something too deliciously endearing about hearing the fox's simple speech from Mulder's usually so descriptive lips. Now the fox has stopped pretending to be Fox, he is surprisingly uncomplicated and quite charming in his own way.

"So, what confused you?" I asked.

"You kept calling out fox in your sleep. How was I supposed to know you meant *him*? I made a mistake," the fox explains.

"And that's why you came to me?"

"That's why I became the fox," the fox explains, rolling his eyes at my denseness.

"So you aren't really a fox?"

"How many talking foxes *have* you met?" he asks me petulantly, then takes a disapproving look at his own ass as though bitterly disappointed that he doesn't have a brush to flick contemptuously at me, anymore.

I can't help but laugh. This is either the doozy of all dreams, or I *am* mad, but even though I feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, I *do* like this fox.

"So, before you were a fox, what were you?" I ask.

He shrugs nonchalantly. "Lots of things. I was a coon-hound once," he says, with a cheeky wink.

"Blue? You were old Blue?" I gasp.

"I told you I've known you for a long time," the fox said quietly. "That's why I know."

"Know what?"

"I know what you want," the fox said so softly that I understood it wasn't an idle boast or a promise, it was merely a statement of fact.

"You can read my mind," I reply.

He nods, then shakes his head a little.

"Not always," he confesses thoughtfully. "It's easier, when I am in this form," and he gestures at Fox's body. "When I am a human, I can almost think like a human. It makes it easier."

"And when you are the fox?" I query, oddly comfortable with the idea now that I talking to a creature so strange that he beggars belief.

"I am a little confused by his nature sometimes," he says slowly. "His instincts come with his body, although my thoughts are my own, or yours."

"So, when you are in Fox's body, you have *his* instincts?" I demand.

"To an extent yes, although sometimes my understanding blurs between what is him, and what is the him that you want him to be."

His sentence is a little clumsy, but I understand what he is trying to say.

"Then were you dominant sexually because he is, or because I wanted him to be?" I demand. This point is very important to me, to my own peace of mind.

He bites his lower lip pensively, and I have to remind myself again that this is *not* Fox.

"I don't know. All I understood for sure was that what I did to you, what I as *Fox* did to you, he would not have allowed you to do to him."

So, Fox *is* straight, after all. I'm not surprised, just crushed a little at the confirmation of my deepest fear. Although, it doesn't matter any more. Not now. Nothing matters any more.

"He loves you," the fox says suddenly.

"What?" I demand.

"Fox loves you. His instincts, *my* instincts as him, were to make you happy."

"But that's what you said you wanted to do, anyway," I argue.

"It's different," the fox argues.

"Different how?"

"I don't know," he snarls in frustration. "It just is."

I chew on this.

"So he loves me, and wants to make me happy, despite the fact he has made my work life a misery since the day I met him and the idea of my touching him revolts him?" I ask with more than a little sarcasm.

The fox just glowers at me sulkily.

"It's complicated," he mutters.

"Obviously," I snap bitterly. "It's hardly relevant now anyway, is it? I'm crippled and scarred. I need so many operations to repair my legs that by the time I can walk again, I'll have reached mandatory retirement. My life is over."

His hazel eyes pool with tears as he sees my distress.

"No it's not, Walter. That's what I wanted to show you, prove to you, that your life is still worth living. That life isn't about being in charge. That there is pleasure in submission, and joy in trusting another with your body and your heart."

"Even if that were true, little fox, the only person I want is a man who was revolted by me even before my accident," I tell him bitterly.

"You've got *me* Walter," he offers tentatively. "You can touch me."

I gaze at him sadly, ignoring the treacherous twitch of my cock at his shameless offer. He means well, I understand that, and I let him down gently.

"You're wearing his body, and I admit that it was enough at first, but this isn't about sex, it's about love. I love him, not you. When you weren't separate beings in my mind, I could handle the illusion, but now I know you aren't Fox, I can't do it."

"I've really hurt you, haven't I?" the fox whimpered. "I just wanted to make you happy."

I fold my arms around him, soothing his sobs of contrition.

"You did, little fox. For a few weeks I *was* happy, and for a few hours, when I truly thought you were him, I was the happiest man alive," I assure him. "Some people never even get *that* much happiness in their lives. So I do thank you, for that at least."

"You want me to leave, don't you?" the fox asks with a choking sob.

"No," I assure him. "This is your home and I want you to stay. But, if somehow I do survive this night. If somehow I really am inside the cabin, if somehow you *are* still here when I wake, I'd rather you didn't take *this* form in front of me again."

The fox sniffles but nods in agreement.

"Can I still be the fox sometimes?" he asks.

"I love the fox," I answer solemnly. "I don't want the fox to leave."

He gives a bark of relieved laughter and immediately his features begin to blur and shrink until the tiny fox is stood on the carpet before me. He grins, waves his brush in the air, and races off. Straight *through* the door.

Which at least answers *that* mystery, if only with another one.

~~~

I am too tired to write anymore tonight. The fire is almost out and there is a distinct chill in the air. Winter will come early this year, I think. I can feel it in my legs, the bitter gnawing ache of arthritic bones.

My walking stick is propped up by the front door, where it has been gathering dust for days. As fall moves into winter, my strength wanes, the pain returns and I find myself back in the wheelchair.

I should winter in Washington, really. It would make more sense to be there than alone and vulnerable here. Yet that old foolish pride still remains. I will only visit there in the summer, when the pain is bearable, and I can walk into a room, albeit aided heavily by my stick. When I really need people, I cannot bear to be around them.

It angers him, worries him, that I am alone here.

I tell him that I cannot leave the fox. That he is old and frail too. That he needs me.

It softens him, defeats him, because the one person who believes, has always believed, is Mulder.

Part 17

They arrived at some point in the night, when the fire had burned down to a low glow and the painkillers had finally stolen me away into restless sleep.

I think I half-woke, because I have a vague memory of petulantly saying "You promised you wouldn't do this," as Fox carried me to bed.

I remember being both angry with the fox for breaking his promise not to assume Fox's form and yet filled with relief as my body was lain gently on my bed and covered with the warm softness of my duvet.

Of course, it wasn't the fox at all.

It was Mulder.

~~~

I wake to daylight streaming through my window, the smell of hot coffee, the sight of Mulder sprawled on the bedside chair and Dana Scully standing in the door frame, hands on hips, her tiny frame tense with angry disapproval.

As soon as she notices that my eyes are open, she opens her mouth to harange me for my stupidity in coming here to the cabin.

"Shush," I murmur before she even has a chance to speak. I gesture towards Mulder, wincing a little at the way my arm movement pulls against the healing scar on my chest. "He's sleeping."

Scully's face softens as she follows my gaze. In sleep, Mulder looks like a petulant five year-old. His face scrunches into a deep frown, his lower lip pouts out and he snuffles constantly as though in conversation with himself. Even asleep he is constantly in motion. In this way, the difference between Mulder and Fox is clear.

Despite his genius, Mulder is never at peace, never at rest, never confident of his own charm. His constant defiance of authority is not due to confidence in himself, it is simply because of his inability to refuse the call of his own curiosity. In that respect, Mulder is more like the fox, than Fox.

"He's exhausted," Dana agrees quietly. "He was in Baltimore when the hospital rang me to say you had disappeared."

I try to work out how fast he would have had to drive to reach here in the middle of the night, stopping on the way to pick up Scully, and give myself a headache as I realise it is a miracle that they arrived here in one piece at all.

"Why did you call him?" I hiss, angry that she put his life at risk by tempting him to drive so far.

"No one else was exactly sure where your cabin was, Sir. There are hundreds of side roads through the woods and your cabin isn't marked on any maps. We didn't want to take the risk of waiting for daylight to ask the local townsfolk. You might have died of hypothermia, or something," she stage whispers back, but the agitation in her voice is clear and she is struggling not to raise her volume.

The rays of sunlight are plying over her hair, haloing her with copper and gold.

"Your hair is beautiful, Dana," I interrupt slowly. "Did you know that it is the color of a Fox?"

Scully almost falls over in complete shock and I see her pale skin flush until it competes with the redness of her hair.

"I'll - um - I'll go fetch your tablets, Sir," she finally gasps before turning tail and running.

I chuckle a little and relax back against my pillows so that I can watch Mulder sleep.

~~~

Even as I wrote that down, I still felt a little guilty about deliberately flustering Dana that way. I just needed to get her out of the room and if I had used my normal barking tactic I would have woken Mulder.

I had a bitter-sweet need to spend those few moments before he woke alone. I drank him in, preserving every atom of his face in my memory, so that I could lock the vision away and then jealously pore over it in my memory after I had driven him away.

Make no mistake, I had no intention of even exchanging a civil word with him once he did awaken. Not that any of it was *his* fault, but I had so much pain, so much bitterness, that it had to come out and who better to bear the brunt of it than Mulder?

Because, whatever happened, I was determined that I would never see him again.

It was the only way I could even imagine surviving the experience, the only way that I could deal with my loss. I couldn't bear the thought that I would be forever taunted by the sight of his face, now that I had lost him.

~~~

"What the hell are you both doing here?" I bark, once Scully has retuned with coffee and Mulder has slowly blinked himself awake.

"We're your friends, Sir," Mulder replies sincerely. "We care about you."

"I *choose* my friends, Agent Mulder. I do not count you amongst them. You are my subordinates. You are my acquaintances. I have never asked for, or wanted, your friendship."

Mulder reels as though I my words have slapped him, as I suppose they have. Particularly since it is a lie. I once asked him for far more than friendship. I ignore the pain in his eyes though and harden my heart to his obvious distress. He will not speak of the "other" thing in front of Scully, after all.

"If you won't listen to us as friends, then listen to me as a Doctor," Scully starts.

"You are not *my* doctor," I interrupt cuttingly.

I see the same look of bewildered hurt in her face now. Two sets of wounded eyes now stare at me and I have to struggle not to give in and beg their forgiveness. I have to be strong. Better they think me an unfeeling bastard than I should somehow give myself away to be mad.

Scully, as always, takes charge. She jumps to her feet, her whole body quivering with outrage. Planting her hands on her hips she stares me down.

"Your Doctor is not here. So you have a choice, *Sir*"

It is amazing how much scorn one word can portray.

"You either accept our help, or we take you back to the hospital. There's no other option. You can rant and rave all you like. You can fire us, if it would make you feel better. But you're not staying here alone, and that's final."

I know there's no point arguing with her. I can't physically throw them off the property and they are more than capable of manhandling me into their car and driving me down the mountain. Besides, the idea of having Scully here for a couple of days isn't such a bad thing.

I *am* in a lot of pain. I will struggle to feed myself and keep the fire going alone. Scully is a quiet person, calm, centered, peaceful. I can visualise her of a an evening, curled in front of the fire, reading a book so quietly that I will barely notice her presence.

All I really have to do is get rid of Mulder.

"The cabin's far too small for three people," I state firmly. "There's only one bedroom and the couch."

~~~

Yes, I know. I walked right into it, didn't I?

As soon as I pointed out the restrictions of the accommodation, it was obvious to both Mulder and Scully that he should be the one who stayed. Particularly since Mulder had an affinity for couches anyway.

They had the discussion in front of me, disregarding any of my protests as though I was mute.

When the topic of my possible need for help in washing and toileting came up, I think I literally screamed in fury at the idea of Mulder helping me in such a fashion. I was so horrified by the idea of him touching me in such an intimate manner that I was fully prepared to go back down to the hospital after all.

So why didn't I?

Why did I finally agree to at least stay alone in the cabin with him while Scully drove back down the mountain to consult with my surgeon?

Because something had finally registered with me and I wanted a chance to speak to Mulder alone.

I had every intention of returning to the hospital afterwards and I was determined that I would never see Mulder again after that day. Even so, I needed to know the answer to two questions.

Firstly, why had he given me the cuff links?

And secondly, how the hell had he known where my cabin was?

Part 18

"I'll - um - make a drink, shall I? Or food, yeah, food's good, isn't it?" Mulder mutters, as soon as the car pulls out of sight. He's clearly nervous and agitated, as though he no more wants to be alone with me, that I want to be alone with him.

For the first time since waking from my coma, I feel a little in control.

"Shut the fuck up and sit down," I growl.

He almost falls over at my unexpected aggression, but meekly slides into the furthest chair away from me and begins to twist his hands self-consciously. I wheel my chair closer, just for effect, and see a thin beading of perspiration beginning to shimmer on his forehead.

Curious.

His eyes are huge, and more than a little wary as I reach into my inside pocket. I almost laugh at the way he subconsciously shifts to allow better access to his own gun. He honestly seems to think I might shoot him. For a moment, when my hand returns from inside my jacket without an automatic, he begins to relax a little, until I open my palm and reveal the battered jewellery box.

I see the color draining out of his face and I know, finally, beyond any doubt, that the gift was from Mulder.

"Would you care to explain the meaning of this?" I purr sarcastically.

~~~

Looking back, I agree that I handled the whole thing badly.

He had done nothing to deserve my anger. He certainly didn't deserve for me to treat him like an errant schoolboy with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

But I was so scared, and bitter, and heart-broken that I was lashing out blindly, hurting the one person who I loved.

Besides, at that point, I didn't know *his* side of the story, did I?

~~~

I watch him chewing his lower lip, his eyes darting in panic as he too obviously considers lying to me. I pin him with my glare until the ghostly paleness of his face is drowned in a deep red flush of pure embarrassment.

"It was just a gift," he finally mumbles.

"An odd gift, *Agent* Mulder," I accuse coldly. Jewellery is the gift of lovers. I can only see such a personal present as being some manner of sarcastic message. I had never thought Mulder capable of cruelty, but there is no other interpretation I can make of his thoughtless *gift*.

"Yeah, well, um, I wasn't thinking," he replies, his words tumbling over themselves in panic.

"I think we should discuss the fact that you broke into my car," I add maliciously.

I am not prepared for the look of horrified panic on his face. He shoots to his feet, as though he might actually bolt for the door, then realisation dawns on his face and he relaxes again, his breath slowing down as he slowly sinks back into his chair.

"Oh, yeah. To put the present in," he agrees with relief, as though he had imagined I meant something else by my words.

For a moment the room seems to sway around me and I struggle to remember that it is *I* who is mad, that I cannot trust my own interpretations of his behaviour, that the sudden suspicion that leapt into my brain is just another echo of my coma dreams.

My voice is deliberately harsh and cruel when I finally reply. I cannot bear another minute in his company. His face, his words, his presence are all threatening to drive me back into insanity.

"I don't want your *gift*," I spit, throwing the box at him so hard that he winces as it hits his lap. "I don't want your friendship and I don't want you in my house. Get out!"

For a moment, I actually think he might cry, then I realise his shining eyes are probably due to the pain of the box striking him.

Except, of course, it is a very *small* box.

I see him try to pull himself together. He takes a few deep breaths, smoothes out the miserable look from his features and tries a wry smile.

"I can't, Sir. Dana took the car. You don't expect me to walk, do you?"

I am tempted to say yes, but it is early February and he will be dead of exposure before he reaches half way down. So I just grunt, and try to pointedly ignore his presence instead.

It doesn't work. Mulder never could sit still or silent for more than five minutes.

"I know you're in pain, Sir. But I don't understand why you're so angry with me," he says hesitantly. "Have I done something or is this still about last March?"

I am surprised that he has brought the subject up himself.

"You made yourself perfectly clear, Agent Mulder. I did not mention the matter again and I did not expect you to either," I hiss cuttingly. "I certainly didn't expect you to have the bad taste to give me a Christmas gift, under the circumstances."

He drops his eyes to the carpet, blushing again.

"I thought, maybe, we could just be friends," he whispers.

"I told you. You aren't my friend," I snap.

"Obviously," he replies, with a choking sob that knifes me in my heart. Why is he doing this? Why is he pretending to care? So I ask him.

"What the hell do you care?" I growl bitterly.

"I *do* care, Walter. Can I call you Walter?"

I shrug carelessly. He may as well since he won't be calling me Sir for much longer. Hell, he won't be calling me anything once Dana returns and I tell her to take me back to the hospital.

"Whatever," I grunt ungraciously.

"I want to talk about us," he mumbles.

"There is no us," I remind him snidely.

He blushes.

"I mean our relationship with each other," he clarifies.

"We have no relationship," I bark.

"Damn it, Walter. STOP IT," he yells in frustration.

"The door's over there, Mulder. Close it behind you."

For a moment, I think he will take me up on my request. His face is red with anger, his fists clenching and unclenching furiously. I get the distinct impression he wants to hit me, and that would be fine in my book because I'd be able to hit him back, then.

Then I am ashamed of myself.

Particularly when he collapses back into his chair with a sigh of weariness.

"I didn't come here to fight you," he mumbles.

"Why exactly did you come here?"

"I told you. We were worried about you. I just wanted to know you were alright."

"Because you care," I drawl sarcastically.

"That's right, I do. I know things have been awkward between us this last year and I know it's my fault. I didn't handle it very well," he confesses awkwardly.

"I noticed."

"But you misunderstood me, Walter. It didn't mean I didn't care about you. Just, just that, well you're not my type," he finishes weakly.

"You mean I'm a man. It's okay, I understand," I laugh coldly.

"No, you obviously fucking don't," he yells, jerking to his feet and beginning to pace up and down in front of the fire, his whole body shaking with agitation.

Suddenly I can't bear to see him like this, so upset, so confused. I have no right to take out my disappointment on him. He had no obligation to feel for me what I did for him, and I am completely out of order trying to make him feel guilty about my own emotional problem.

I have acted unforgivably today. I have even berated him for buying me a Christmas gift as though it had been an act of sarcasm on his part rather than the gesture of a kind heart. He had tried to show me that he bore no grudge against me for having had the bad judgement to proposition one of my subordinates.

"I'm sorry, Mulder," I whisper, so contritely that it manages to freeze his frantic pacing. "It was a beautiful gift. I guess I am just embarrassed that I didn't think to buy one for you."

It's a lie, but a kind lie, and he takes my words at face value, a shy, sad smile dancing around his lips. He peers into my face and whatever he sees there suddenly seems to give him the courage to speak, and if his tone is a little bitter, I only have my own behaviour to blame.

"I don't have a problem that you're a man. I'd have a problem if you weren't a man to be brutally honest. I'm not like you, Walter, I don't play *both* sides of the fence," he spits, then turns his face towards the fire as though he cannot look at me now that he has admitted the truth.

For a long time, I am too stunned to even reply. I can feel reality shifting once more, as though the cogs and wheels of the universe are having to quickly reverse time to allow a different reality to emerge.

"You're gay?" I finally ask, in total disbelief.

He shrugs awkwardly, his stiff shoulders still turned away from me. For a long time there is silence in the room save for the occasional sharp cracks from the fire as the logs burn.

"I'm not in a relationship," he finally explains, his voice so soft I can barely hear it. "I haven't been in one for years. But if I were, then yes, it would be with a man," he confesses.

"So," I say sadly, sorry for having misjudged him so badly. "It's just me that's the problem. You just don't fancy me."

I had never even thought of *that* explanation before. Mulder had said no to me, so he was obviously straight. That had been my obvious, unthinking arrogance. It had never once even crossed my mind that he simply thought me an old, bald guy with no more sex appeal than an old pair of socks.

Feeling very old, bald, unsexy and crippled, I feel myself shrinking in my wheelchair and wishing, more than anything, that I had died in the car crash, never knowing the truth after all.

Mulder has turned to face me at last. His face is pale and frightened as though he is expecting a blow. He has a hell of an imagination, I know, but surely even he can't imagine that I could rise out of this chair and strike him. Besides, why would I? None of this is *his* fault.

Even so, I can't help bitterly asking, "Did you find it amusing, Mulder? Knowing I wanted you? Or did it just disgust you that I even imagined you might be interested in me?"

Mulder literally staggers as he hears my words. His eyes widen in what actually seems like horror at my evident misunderstanding.

"Oh god, Walter. That's not true. Shit, you're the sexiest thing I've ever seen on two legs. Why the fuck do you think I am single? I can't go near anyone else without picturing you in my head."

"You said I wasn't your type," I reply, completely bewildered.

To my surprise he back-peddles to the door.

"I think I heard the car," he gasps, his eyes flaring in panic. "I'll just go check, okay?"

"Not okay," I reply, wheeling towards him as he fumbles with the ancient door handle.

"Look, I didn't, I wasn't, I mean I'm not interested, okay?" he almost screams at me as I bear down on him.

"I don't understand," I shout back. "You said you're gay, that you fancy me. You know I want you. What the hell is wrong with you?"

It's the wrong thing to say. I know it as soon as the words leave my lips. Mulder actually looks as though he might throw up in sheer panic and I find myself rolling my chair back to allow him to escape.

"Just tell me one thing," I demand, as he starts to scurry through the door.

He freezes like a rabbit caught between two headlamps.

"How did you know how to find the cabin?" I ask.

His face is almost as green as the flecking of his eyes as he turns his haunted looking face towards me one last time.

"I've been here in my dreams," he whispers.

Before I can answer, he has fled.

He races down the path and collapses on his knees near the tree line. I can hear the sound of his violent vomiting even as I wheel myself frantically towards the bathroom before my own churning stomach erupts.

Part 19

He didn't return to the cabin at all. He simply sat outside and waited for Dana to return. He didn't even respond to my pleas that he at least came and collected his jacket before he died of hypothermia.

Dana later told me that he was off work ill for days as a result. I suspect it was more than a chill that made him so ill, though.

So, as you can no doubt gather, Dana stayed with me after all. Mulder took the car and returned to Washington. He didn't even give me the chance to offer to go to the hospital instead. As soon as Dana pulled up, he snatched the keys and was gone, leaving me to explain what had happened.

Only, obviously, I wasn't sure what the hell had happened myself.

It was several days later, when we were sitting in front of the fire reading our respective books, that I finally found the courage to discuss Mulder with her.

~~~

"Did you know that Mulder is gay?" I ask, so unexpectedly that she almost drops her book in surprise.

Her eyes are guarded and suspicious when she turns to look at me.

"Why do you ask, Sir?" she replies carefully, all her protective instincts in full alert mode.

"Well, I know it's not something that can be generally discussed at work, but I can't imagine him keeping a secret like that from you," I say with an attempt at casualness. It is important that she knows I am not trying to cause Mulder any trouble over the issue.

"He's not in a relationship. He hasn't been in one for years, so it hardly matters either way, does it?" she replies staunchly.

"I think it matters that he is alone, Dana. I think it matters a lot," I reply.

She looks at me sharply and I see her putting two and two together. Then she gives a groan of such distress that I am bewildered by her reaction.

"Oh god, tell me you didn't," she whispers, her face twisting in concern.

"Didn't what?" I demand.

She groans again and covers her face with her hands.

"You did," she decides. "That's why he wouldn't stay here with you. That's why he took the damn car and fled like that. Oh shit. How could you?"

I am sitting with my mouth gaping almost to the floor. What the hell is she accusing me of? What the hell have I done?

~~~

At this point, I am going to simply cry author's prerogative and skip over the rest of the conversation.

Dana is a doctor, she's an FBI agent, her reports are exhaustingly, horrifically detailed. I'll never forget what she told me, every word she spoke is etched permanently in my memory. It already hurts me too much to consider, so I refuse to add to my own pain by recounting it for you.

All that's necessary for you to understand, anyway, is that Mulder was hurt once. Badly hurt. So brutalised that he could no longer bear to be physically touched in an intimate manner.

It made a horrible kind of sense, of course. It explained a lot of things. The fact that he had turned me down. The way he had been skittish around me from then on in, as though the man he had previously seen as a protective bear, overnight became a potential ravaging wolf.

It explained why he might find me attractive but be damned sure that he wanted no relationship with me. It must have cut him like a knife when I told him about my "gorgeous red-head", though. He must have been consumed with jealousy and bitter regret because of his own unconquerable fear. It explained the gift of the personalised cuff links, too.

The little foxes had no doubt been his attempt to give me *something* of himself even though he couldn't even dare dream of there ever being more between us.

What it didn't explain, of course, was what he had meant when he said he had dreamed of coming to the cabin and that that was why he knew exactly where it was.

Since he refused my phone calls, I had no opportunity to ask.

~~~

Dana left at the end of a fortnight and was replaced by a big brute of a nurse. That's unfair actually, he was a smart funny man who did everything he could to help me become independent.

Rafe was a trained physiotherapist, was not averse to me spending my evenings with the odd glass of scotch, and he even risked life and limb to set up a satellite dish on one of the overhanging trees so that we could watch the game on Saturdays.

The fact that he would inevitably have to run out in the middle of the second half to kick the old generator back into play was always met with good-humor and some nonsensical explanation as to why it always died at the point when the game got interesting.

More to the point, the fox liked him. Don't misunderstand me, the fact that the fox wouldn't appear in front of Dana didn't mean she wasn't "good people" but the fact that the fox emerged and made friends with Rafe convinced me that he really was the all-round good guy that he appeared to be.

The only problem with him was he was so damned *big*. He had to duck through the doorways of the cabin and he was so wide that if he was in the bathroom there was absolutely no point in trying to enter it at the same time.

Bath times were consequently both difficult and hilarious.

We got to know each other well, of course, and I eventually learned that he had been a second-league basketball star, with his eyes firmly fixed on first-league fame, before a knee injury had left him not only with a noticeable limp but also unemployed.

Instead of becoming the bitter alcoholic that I would have become in his place, he became a nurse. It was Rafe who got me through those first months without Mulder. It was he who saw me through operation after operation on my shattered legs and it was he who convinced me that the Bureau's offer of a consultancy position was worth taking.

I still refused to leave the cabin, but I gave up my pioneering ways enough to invest a small fortune in a new gas-driven generator. Twice a year a huge tanker would make the laborious trek up the mountain to refill my tank and so I had electricity for my lights and computer, and hot water, and storage heaters.

Before he left me, in that first August, Rafe built a solid ramp that would allow me to wheel myself freely in and out of the cabin. I was walking on sticks by then, but we both knew the winter would take its toll on me.

He also chopped me a huge pile of logs and devised a pannier for my wheelchair so that I could collect them at will. Despite the newly installed heaters, I still needed the fire. It was more than warmth, it was the heart of the cabin and I had to keep it beating.

Every year, no matter what is happening in his life, Rafe always visits me to chew over the fat and cut my log pile ready for the winter.

As I told Mulder, there are acquaintances in life, and there are friends. Rafe is one of the very few people who I would unhesitatingly call my friend.

I have a car too, of course. I rarely use it, but it is adapted so that I can drive it with my hands alone. So even in the winter I am not truly trapped here, except by my own refusal to leave.

~~~

I have just re-read what I have written. It seems so sad. If I ever transcribe it from this journal onto my word processor, I will have to give this story more thought, perhaps. By now, anybody reading it will either be in tears or will have long ago given up and turned on their television.

And that's not what I wanted to achieve. Because this isn't a bleak story at all.

I'm not here alone because Mulder never came back to me.

I'm alone because he still has a job to do and I was too damn proud to move in with him. I made him move in with me instead, and obviously that means he rarely spends more than a night or two a week at this, our home.

I'm alone tonight because he's stuck in Washington chairing an investigation into the misappropriation of tax payers' money by that same Senator Asshole that Mulder threw paper airplanes at so many years ago.

I know, it doesn't sound like Mulder's cup of tea at all, does it? It's not, but like I told him when he finally gave in and took the job, being the Director of the FBI might be a damn boring job, but someone's got to do it and at least in this role he can finally make a real difference.

The responsibility sits a little uncomfortably on his shoulders, I think, though he carries it well.

Then again, like the song said, in my opinion the only thing that looks good on Mulder is me.

I guess, if you're still reading this, you want to know what happened. How we ended up together and are still together 15 years later.

I'll tell you.

But not tonight, because it is late again, and I am tired, and the fox is shining his now almost opaque eyes at me and suggesting that it is long past time we went to bed.

Part 20

Where was I?

Oh yes. I was about to tell you how Mulder and I finally got together.

Before I start, I suppose there's something I should explain. I never told him that Dana had breached his confidence and told me what had happened to him. To this day he doesn't know that I know the details and that, given our long relationship and mutual trust, proves that he still cannot face what happened.

That's why I'm writing this journal by hand, to be honest.

I never did intend anyone to read it. My secrets, *our* secrets, will die with us. Once I have written the last line, and entered the last full stop, I will place this battered leather book in the fire and let it burn.

So why am I writing it?

Catharsis, again.

I am simply laying a ghost.

~~~

It was exactly one year from the day that Mulder made his panicked escape from the mountain that he returned. I have asked him whether he chose the date deliberately and he has always denied it. Perhaps he is telling the truth as he sees it, that it was only a strange coincidence, but I myself am not convinced.

You see, I knew he was coming.

I can't explain why, anymore than I can explain anything else that happened in our long and torturous romance. That's how I see it, looking back, a romance of two desperately lonely and damaged people who fought our own feelings for so long that we exhausted ourselves too much to have the energy to fight anymore.

I spent the whole day jumping at every noise, limping to the doorway only to constantly turn away disappointed, although I was never sure of exactly what I was expecting to find on the other side of that door.

As the evening began to draw in, as early and rapidly as February evenings do, I stoked the fire to a new and wasteful blaze, then wrapped myself in my warmest clothes and moved to sit on the cabin porch next to the fox. He was sitting upright, his head firmly fixed towards the road, his strange hazel eyes expectant.

There was an almost electrical energy that night. I could feel the air particles around me leaping and buzzing as though charged. Or perhaps it was only my blood zinging through my veins as an almost painful feeling of hope began to infuse my body.

In the twilight, it was easy to see his car's headlights working their way inexorably up the mountain.

I waited only until I was sure he was safely past the part of the road where I had had my accident and then I limped into the cabin, leaving the door open in invitation. I entered my bedroom and retrieved the tiny box from my bedside drawer.

The parcel had arrived on Christmas Eve. No tag, no gay wrapping, no return address. Yet it had told me all I needed to know, had confirmed everything, while answering nothing. It didn't matter though. I had long since decided that I cared less what was reality or fantasy. Ultimately, the only thing that mattered was what we chose to do about it, about us.

I had wondered whether he even knew he had sent the package to me. Probably not, I decided, in view of his failure to follow the gift with a visit or even a phone call. His subconscious had simply sent me a signal to pave the way for him.

And, finally, I was ready.

~~~

"Walter?" he calls tentatively from the open front door, his voice wavering a little, fear perhaps, or maybe only the cold.

"Come in and get warm," I offer mildly, as I walk out of the bedroom to greet him.

"You're walking," he mutters, a little nervously.

"It comes and goes," I shrug, but I am careful not to approach him any further. His is as skittish as a wild colt and I know it will take very little to make him turn tail and run away again.

I can wait. I have waited a year. I have waited a lifetime. I can be patient a little longer.

Moving slowly, so as not to startle him, I make my way to my favorite chair and seat myself. My legs tire easily, but that is not why I sit. I sit to make myself look smaller, less threatening, less predatory. It seems to have unsettled him greatly that I can walk at all.

Presumably, he has only gained the courage to come because he assumed I was still in my chair. I had been last weekend when Dana visited but the weather has turned milder since then.

He looks down at the floor between his legs, scuffing the carpet nervously with his right foot, his wind-blown hair flopping over his forehead to hide his eyes from my perusal.

"I don't know why I'm here," he confesses in a near whisper.

"That's okay. You don't need a reason to come and see me," I reply quietly. "Help yourself to a drink, why don't you?"

He looks longingly at the whiskey bottle. He's not a drinker, but purely for medicinal purposes he looks like he would benefit from a shot. But he shakes his head.

"I'd better not, it's a long drive back," he mutters.

"You can stay the night," I offer. "There's a couch," I add, lest he misunderstand me.

"No, I can't stay," he replies, although he finally removes his coat and settles himself into the armchair opposite mine.

We sit there for a long time, not speaking, both of us pretending to be enthralled by the dancing flames in the hearth. When he finally speaks, it is in a whisper so low that it takes me a moment to be sure that it was his voice I heard rather than a moan of wind through the chimney.

"I've missed you," he whispers, and my heart soars.

"I've missed you too," I reply.

He jerks a little in fear, as though he hadn't realised that he had spoken outloud until I replied.

"I - um - I don't mean, well, I'm not saying -um, I just wondered how you were, that's all. Now I know you're okay, I'll just leave," he stutters, although he makes no attempt to rise from his chair.

"Fox, I love you," I whisper and he crumbles before my eyes, shrinking into his chair, his expression lost and confused.

"Don't say that, Walter, please don't say that," he begs.

"But I do love you, Fox. Can't I even say that? We don't have to do anything about it. You can simply leave here and never come back, but I *do* have to at least tell you the truth," I reply, my voice deliberately soothing.

"The truth?" he suddenly demands, his eyes flashing with furious panic. "What is the truth, Walter? Do you know? Because I'm telling you, if the truth is out there, I sure as hell can't see it."

The confusion in his voice and the wild panic in his eyes makes me want to rush to his side and comfort him. Thankfully, I have enough self-control to remain seated.

"I don't understand, Fox. What is wrong? Please tell me what is wrong."

"Ever had a dream come true, Walter?" he demands shakily.

I am too stunned to answer. Does he finally know what it has taken *me* so long to understand?

"Have you ever been so unhappy, so needy that you have to pretend your dreams are real? Have you ever found yourself not knowing what is real and what is dream until suddenly you wake up and you're still you, and nothing is right after all and you want to die because maybe if you die you'll dream again and never wake up?"

He is crying now, tears streaming down his over-pale cheeks like a winter storm, and I understand, of course, that he is not talking about me. He is talking about himself.

He knows.

He finally knows.

I find myself running my hands over my chest, almost hugging myself in joy. Now we can work it out. Now the truth is at our fingertips but I still have to tread warily, I have to treat him like fragile glass lest he shatter.

"I've dreamt of you, Fox," I admit and watch the way his eyes skip in panic. "They were wonderful dreams. I think we all dream of what we cannot have. Sometimes though, just sometimes, dreams *can* come true."

"Not mine," he barks, so bitterly that I feel tears of my own beginning to pool in my eyes.

"Why not, Fox?" I ask gently, careful to keep my tone light.

"I can't do it," he gasps. "Satisfied?"

"You're impotent?" I ask with studied innocence.

He looks at me in complete shock and then actually begins to laugh in a shaky, high-pitched voice.

"That's classic," he sniggers. "Very funny."

"What's funny about it?" I ask solemnly. You see, after Dana's revelation, the fox's words had finally made sense to me.

"Why the hell are you asking me *that*?" Fox asks in bewilderment.

"It's important for me to understand if there is a medical reason why you don't want to fuck me," I reply gently.

His jaw drops open in comical surprise.

"Fuck *you*?" he repeats disbelievingly.

"Well, obviously, if you don't want to," I reply sadly.

"I want to," he gasps. "You can't begin to imagine how much I want to. How much I've dreamed of fucking you. I just thought, thought,"

"Thought what? That I would want to Top?" I interrupt.

He nods, biting his lip nervously.

"I don't understand. I've wanted you since the first time I saw you, but I just assumed that, well that you'd be the same in bed as you are out of it. You're just a screaming dom, Walter."

I grin ruefully. Without the little fox's interference, I would have been. I would have automatically assumed that Fox's ass was mine, and I would have scared him away. Without Dana's revelation I wouldn't have known why Fox couldn't possibly ever enter a relationship if he wasn't the top.

Without Fox's own dreams that somehow had managed to infiltrate my coma so that I experienced first hand what he only dared to dream we might do together, I would never have been ready for him now.

"I want to show you something," I say softly.

"What?" he whispers, his eyes wary.

"I don't want you to be frightened, Fox."

He stiffens a little at the suggestion.

"What would I be frightened of," he says belligerently, although his trembling fingers and stark eyes give him away.

I unbutton my shirt and see his eyes go wide in terror.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, oh SHIT!" he gasps.

"Come closer and look at them," I suggest.

Nervously he does so and then his eyes go even impossibly wider.

"They're foxes," he chokes, as though he had just possibly been clinging to the hope that I was simply surprisingly kinky, after all.

"Yes," I confirm with a gentle, loving smile.

"I don't understand," he whimpers, swaying a little as though he might faint. "Where did you get them?"

"They arrived Christmas Eve, Fox. It's the second year you have bought me a present and I haven't bought one for you," I reply apologetically.

He shakes his head in frantic denial.

"I didn't. I never. I mean I don't remember. Shit. It was a dream, Walter. That's all. I swear it was just a dream."

"Well, I appreciate the thought anyway, Fox. That's all that counts, anyway, isn't it? The thought."

"You're - um - you're not mad with me?" he asks eventually, still flinching a little in doubt.

"I'm wearing them, aren't I?" I answer.

He just nods dumbly and I register the fact that I have finally, after all these years, managed to render him speechless.

"They mean I'm yours, Fox, if you'll have me," I add when he finally seems to have absorbed the fact that I really am wearing the nipple rings.

"Oh god, you mean it, don't you? You really mean it?" he chokes, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks, but his eyes are shining now, not with terror but with hope.

"I love you, Fox. I'll take you any way I can have you. Top. Bottom. Whatever. Shit, I'll take you celibate if it's the only way I can have you in my life. Although I'd prefer to skip the last option," I assure him.

He gives a tiny bark of laughter and for a moment, he is the fox, and everything blurs a little as I feel the earth shift a little on its axis once more.

"I love you too, Walter, and I'm willing to try to make this work," he says tentatively.

"Then come and love me," I whisper seductively, drawing him into the bedroom.

He is literally trembling with fear. One day I'm going to get to the bottom of that fear. I'm going to find out who abused my Fox and I'm going to kill them, slowly. This isn't the time or place for aggression though.

I *know* the passion Fox is capable of. The fox showed it to me so that I can hold it in my head like a promise of hope that will get us both through the difficult, early days.

And the only way to ever reach that wonderful, shining future is to give him my complete and utter trust. In the gift of my submission, he will slowly learn that trust is a good thing and that he can trust me too.

So I strip completely, allowing him to see me, judge me, adjust to my body, and then naked, I climb onto the bed and kneel in place, my ass exposed for his inspection.

I hear him choke a little, overcome by my offer.

"I don't know if I can do this," he whispers, although his hands are stroking my ass as though I am a present that he longs for but barely believes he has permission to open.

"You can," I assure him and again I am grateful to the fox. Even if he is clumsy, even if he fails to prepare me properly, he won't damage me. The fox proved that to me. The fox proved to me that Fox's cock could bring my ass nothing but pleasure, no matter how rough or gentle it was as it entered me.

"What if I hurt you?"

"You won't hurt me. I trust you Fox. I love you and I need you."

"Oh god, I want you so much," he gasps.

"Then take me," I purr.

~~~

That's it.

Well that, and the next fifteen years spent loving and growing older together.

As I already told you, I think, Fox never told me about what had happened to him that made him so terrified of penetration. I, in turn, never told him I knew he was frightened at all.

It worked, you see. Quite simply, there was and never will be a time when I am dissatisfied to let Fox love me. There is nothing, ever, that could be more satisfying than letting Fox fuck me. There was never, therefore, any reason to make an issue of it.

Moreover, our relationship changed him. In discovering that I could be a strong man, yet still submit to him sexually, he discovered depths within himself. He learned to have confidence in himself, real confidence. In being my lover he learned that nothing is black and white. That people are multi-layered. That to allow yourself to appear weak in some things is only proof of overall confidence and strength.

I'm not so arrogant as to suggest that without me he wouldn't have eventually risen to the top anyway. He was always the brightest and most brilliant of the Agents it was my honor to serve with. The very individuality that cost him the respect of his peers was the same trait that would inevitably have allowed him to rise above them and shine.

I like to believe, though, that I may have played my part too.

~~~

I will put this in the fire now.

He will be home soon.

I need to go and get myself ready. It takes a little time to manouver myself out of my chair, into the bed, and fix myself in the restraints.

He always scolds me for doing it. He says we are both getting too old to play these games. He rolls his eyes at me as though I am a foolish old man who should he satisfied with a vanilla sex life at my age.

And then he ravages me.

Love is wonderful, isn't it?

The End

Archived: May 19, 2001

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