Disclaimer- Alas, the big, bald, beautiful one and all other X-files characters do not belong to me. No money made, yadda yadda, no harm, no foul, etc. Spoilers: Je Souhaite, as well as probably a bit of everything else. Warning: This starts out as more or less canon-based, but sort of gradually loses its head from there. You'll see. Mostly very much an AU. Multiple AUs actually. Summary: Sometimes the happy ending isn't the one you think it is.
How can I ask love to hold the mystery, When just look at me,
It's all push and pull collateral.
I don't want to be the one that gets the next surprise, I'll plan it out this time,
Though I used to think that things were meant to be.Farewell to the old me,
Farewell to the old me,
My life is working better now,
It all was changing anyhow.Farewell to the Old Me- Dar Williams
"So, really, how are things going?" asked the woman across the table from him. She looked up puckishly over her gigantic coffee at him.
They were sitting together in a small coffee shop that somehow had managed to weather the predations of the big chain corporate coffee shops. A chalkboard announced the drinks menu in loopy, multi-colored writing, probably done by the requisite teenager with the nose piercing who was standing behind the counter. The sizes of the drinks were small, medium and large, not some faux foreign language. Fittingly, the place was called "Capitol Brew" and the tables had old campaign buttons and stickers decorating them, embedded in a thick layer of resin. Whoever had made the tables was decidedly non-partisan- the rainbow colored buttons were a full cross section of Republican, Democratic, and small third party candidates, for all levels of elected office.
Mulder shrugged, then thought about his answer.
It had started accidentally enough at first, this meeting for coffee with the woman who had once been a jenniyah, who his wish had freed from her geis. He had run into her one morning when he'd stopped to get coffee. She'd been at one of the small tables, drinking some mocha drink piled high with whipped cream. She'd had a little mustache from the cream. She seemed content to watch the world go by. He'd been planning to just grab a cup of plain java and go, but it seemed natural to stop a while, sit with her. Ask her how she was enjoying her freedom. She was. Since then they'd met on an irregular basis- a couple of times a month. For coffee. To talk about life, the universe, everything. She might look like a young woman, but she had the advantage of centuries of experience. She also seemed to be able to tell just by looking at him when he was withholding, not that he would lie to her, the truth being his touchstone.
Today was a Sunday, the one day that Scully had gotten him to promise not to come into work. She insisted that he needed a break. He saw it as twenty-four hours of yawning emptiness that he couldn't fill with his usual business. And you could run only so far in a day. As fit as he was, he didn't think he could sustain a marathon every Sunday.
"It's lonely, you know," he said finally.
She looked at him, a demand that he expand. This genie had turned out to be surprisingly good as a friend, and like all good friends, she demanded and gave in turn, utter honesty. Sometimes she apologized for things she'd said, if she'd pushed too hard. She was out of practice at being anything other than a bound servant. He was her first friend in centuries.
"I love Scully. She loves me. She means the world to me. But sometimes I wonder if maybe it's possible to love someone that much, but not feel as if my heart would be ripped from chest if something were to happen to her. If I could love someone without always having to be the strong one, the one who protects."
He didn't say his every thought. That Scully had once been so strong, and that it was his fault that she'd been beaten down, turned fragile. She depended too much on him. She had given over a portion of her soul for him to watch over, and as time went on, he grew less and less certain of his ability to keep it safe. The recovery people, the self-help crowd had a name for this state that existed between them- co-dependence. He mused over this thought for a while- was there a book for it? "Meditations for Special Agents Who Love Too Much"?
"That's not all that's going with you," she said.
"Work. I've been warned that my department's going to be audited soon. They may be able to shut the X-files down if they don't like what they find," he said. He shook his head. That wasn't the worst of it. It seemed like every time he was on the verge of being able to present proof, to justify with hard facts the continued existence of his life's work, they were ripped from him. He was tired, just so damn tired and frustrated. And with this brain illness, his possible death looming on the horizon. Something had to give. And soon.
"Things will work out for you," she said. "I have a good feeling about this. I've got to get going. I have to be at work in a few."
The genie supposedly had a job, as a clerk in a large public library. She loved books, she'd decided. And she loved people, watching all the people that came in, everyone looking for something- the answers to some question or another.
"Okay, I'll see you again sometime," he said, raising his cup of plain coffee, just a little creamer in it. "Just one last thing, what is that thing you're drinking?"
"Toffee nut latte, extra shot, with whip and extra sprinkles," she said, gathering her cup and going.
Mulder sighed and leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee slowly, wondering what exactly he would fill up the rest of the day with. He wasn't far from work. He could sneak in to the office, straighten a few files. That wouldn't be really work, would it?
He was pulled from his musings by the sound of the door opening up. He startled to recognize the latest inhabitant of the small coffee shop. Walter Skinner. His boss. Skinner looked like someone who knew how to enjoy a weekend. Or at least he made a good pretense of it. He was dressed in casual clothes. A nice, very nice yellow oxford cloth shirt and a pair of chinos. He took his place in line, ordered and paid for a cappuccino, all without seeming to notice Mulder, despite that the agent was less than fifteen feet from him. While Mulder was contemplating which plan would work better, quickly sneaking out while Skinner's back was still turned, or brazening it out, actually facing and talking to his boss like he was a human being. Assuming of course, he was noticed.
But Skinner turned suddenly, his eye's meeting Mulder's. And, mercy of mercies, wonder of wonders, the big man actually broke into a brief smile at the sight of his subordinate. "Agent Mulder," he said. "Mind if I join you?"
Without waiting for a response from his agent, Skinner collected his cappuccino and settled himself into the chair opposite.
"I hope you don't mind me joining you. I just saw you through the window and I just wanted to touch base with you. See how you're doing."
Skinner was a good man, Mulder thought, not for the first time. And he was a good boss. Mulder had believed in Skinner at times when not even Scully wanted to trust the man. And in return, Skinner had helped them in ways that he shouldn't have. Even now, Mulder's heart softened a little when he thought of how Skinner, with the best of intentions, had sold himself to the smoking man, for a cure for Scully's cancer.
"I'm surprised to see you out of the office," Skinner said. "I know you have that audit coming up. And you weren't in yesterday morning either."
"I had a doctor's appointment," Mulder said. That much was true, but he gave no clue what the appointment was for. Skinner would have been concerned, if he found out. Scully had told him how she'd found Skinner that time. The one where Mulder was in the hospital in a near psychotic state. Skinner was beside himself, Scully had said. Completely wrought. He cared, Mulder decided. He really cared.
Skinner then proceeded to surprise Mulder again. "If you like, I could help you prepare for the audit. I don't think anything we can do will make the man happy with your expenses, but at least I can make sure all your pennies add up and all your ts are crossed."
"I'd appreciate that," Mulder said, thinking of all the expense reports he'd wanted to go over before the pending audit. He, too, didn't think that there was really anything that could be done, and while he thought that his expenses were reasonable, especially considering the things he could have claimed, but didn't, the stuff he ended up paying for himself, he knew that the auditor wasn't likely to see it this way. But if he could avoid even the smallest math error, that might help his case.
"Yes, I'd truly appreciate that, sir," Mulder said, taking a final sip of his coffee.
"Walter," Skinner said. "It's the weekend. And so much has happened. I think we're beyond sir and agent, don't you, Mulder?"
"Fox," Mulder said, thinking of how once, long ago, Skinner had called him Fox and how then, he had all but cringed at it. But things had changed so much between them.
It was late when they finally called it a day. The mid-spring day had slipped by completely unnoticed while the pair of them had been going over accounts and paper work in the basement office. As they walked out into the world again, the evening was still mild and windy, fresh smelling, with something that promised freedom and sweetness to Mulder mockingly.
"Dinner?" Skinner asked. "Did you have plans?"
"No," Mulder said, cautiously. "No, I didn't."
All the same, he wasn't sure if it was safe to go to dinner with his boss. Because being around the big, bald, beautiful man all day had reawakened something that Mulder thought he had put to rest long ago. He had the urge, stronger than ever, to wrap his arms around those wide shoulders, feel that strong heartbeat as he pressed himself against that muscled chest. And yet, as dangerous as it was to want those things, as foolhardy as it was to even continue to talk to the man, it was just so easy for Mulder to say, "Yes, let's go out to dinner. If you're not busy."
Mulder recognized the place that Skinner took them too. He'd been there before. Not as a restaurant, but as a crime scene. Skinner had been shot here for refusing to drop the investigation into Melissa Scully's murder. After it was over, after Mulder had gotten out of the hospital, he'd gone to the scene, out of more than simple curiousity. No, Mulder had felt a burning need to find any bit of evidence, no matter how small, to know that there was nothing more he could have done. Cardinale, the man who had done it was dead by then. Not that Mulder found anything. It had been made to look like a simple hold up gone bad and the evidence technicians had been over the place already with fine toothed combs.
"This is the place," Mulder said, "Where you were shot. I'd have thought you would stay away because of the memories."
"I like the place," Skinner said. "They know me here. And I wasn't about to let them keep me away. They scare me away from my life, they win."
Skinner guided Mulder to their table with a hand placed in the small of his back. Mulder thought immediately of how he'd helped Skinner to stand that once, when he'd come back to work too soon. He thought about how warm and vital the man felt under his hand. He'd never dared touch Skinner again in that gentle, caring kind of way. He'd never again had the excuse. They'd touched since, but it had been Skinner restraining him from violence.
He wanted, Mulder decided, to be able to touch the man. He wanted those rippling muscles under his hands, that warmth stealing into his body. It was only in the middle of eating that Mulder realized that Skinner wanted the same thing. Their hands kept brushing each other's as they passed the salt and pepper. When Skinner spilled a little out of his water glass and Mulder lent him a spare napkin. When they both reached for the cream for their coffee at the same time.
"Come home with me," Mulder said when the bill finally came, shocking himself. This was, undoubtedly, him speaking, making the words, finally giving existence to a desire that had been unspoken for years, that he'd buried so deeply he hadn't quite known it existed. "Spend the night."
Skinner didn't answer for a moment, his normally expressive face a blank. His brown eyes were unreadable, bottomless pools. He wasn't, Mulder decided, shocked. Nor even surprised. There was suddenly the slight trace of a smile on his lips, not as big as the earlier one, but undeniably there.
"Should we go back to the Hoover and pick up my car?" Skinner asked finally. "Or should we just take a cab from here."
"A cab," Mulder said, not wanting to waste a minute, now that he had made his move, and, mercy of mercies, found that it been received well. He wasn't going to let Walter slip away on him.
And yet, even as all of this made sense, that it was so easy to reach out for Walter's hand while they sat in the cab, to know that he'd wanted this for years, that he desired the other man intensely, Mulder felt the strangest sense of, no, not quite deja vu. No, it was sense that he remembered a time where he hadn't felt this about Skinner at all. Where it had been Scully that he desired, physically as well as emotionally, but that he'd never dared make a move for her. It was a strangely distant, but still distinct set of memories. Yes, he could remember not being gay. And yet, at the same time, he knew he was gay, he always had been. Yes, he remembered the day he came out to Scully as clearly as anything, boyfriends, even a few lovers he'd lived with briefly. He'd been discreetly closeted his whole adult life. And yet, he still remembered the women.
The feeling haunted him during the cab ride back to his apartment, and during the elevator ride up to the fourth floor, even while he opened the door. He almost expected to see some of his porn, the ones with women, out where he'd left them last night. When he glanced over at the floor nearby the television, the couple that he'd left out were still there, but the covers weren't blazoned with silicone breasted blondes. Instead, the star of the one on top was Ramrod Stevens, that porn star that looked so much like Alex Krycek. Mulder remembered now jerking off to that one last night, even as he felt hotly guilty about who the star looked like.
Yes, it was the old familiar apartment, no. 42, Hegal Place. In both realities, the couch was just the same, so were the prints over it. Fish swam contentedly in both realities that Mulder was balanced between. The room was just cluttered enough to be comfortable, but still neat. There were a few minor differences that Mulder could see. By the desk, a small print that wasn't there in one reality- genuine Picasso, a gift from Richard. He'd left a glass on the coffee table last night, in one reality. It was still here now, but instead of being a plain, straight sided glass, it was a vintage glass, printed with blobs that vaguely resembled flying saucers. No, the only major differences were internal- who he remembered loving, what he remembered feeling. It all was jarring, nearly overwhelmed him. He wondered if he was going mad as he shut and locked the door behind them.
But as Skinner suddenly grabbed Mulder and started tugging up Mulder's sweatshirt, and resting his hot, heavy hands on the now bare skin at the small of Mulder's back before pressing his lips to Mulder's, reality folded back itself into one seamless continuity again. Mulder remembered only his desire for this man who was ravishing his mouth, now pressing his tongue against Mulder's lips, asking, not demanding entrance. It was so easy, just so easy to open his lips, let this man in. He had loved him so long already. There was no one else he trusted this much, not even Scully.
Eventually, Walter pushed him away to arms length and looked him up and down. "I've been waiting for you for so long. For some clear signal," he said, after drinking his fill of the sight of Mulder.
"I've been waiting for you too," Mulder said pulling Walter back into a tight embrace. Then, after that, all there was to do was to lead Walter into his bedroom. Now that he finally had him, after waiting so damn long, he was never going to let go of the man again. Damn the Bureau. Damn the conspiracy. Damn it all. Nothing else mattered except the sweet taste of Walter on his lips, on the soft comfort that their bodies could give each other, and reassuringly strength that infused ever fiber of the man.
Across the clearing, a small woman watched Mulder walk into the circle of light. Again. The inevitable would happen. She'd seen it before. No matter what she'd tweaked thus far, it had always ended like this- badly.
She'd paid close attention to the past several days of Mulder's life. She had, again and again. It would be close to the truth to say that she might know things about Mulder that he didn't even know about himself. Like where he got that simply atrocious waterbed. Actually, once she'd seen the model Morris Fletcher had originally had in mind, she'd intervened, no, not with a wish, but walking up to him in the store and suggesting that no man would get lucky with her in such a thing.
Her part-time position as a library clerk left her with plenty of time to be a busy body, and though she'd been recently freed from the obligation of the carpet, she'd lost none of her power. Mulder had wished only to set her free. He didn't wish for her to become a normal person with no power. She still had long life and great power, but was freed from the conditions of a Jinniyah's life. No more being at the beck and call of whoever opened that damn rug. No more three wishes. She could grant however many it took to get the job done.
She'd once thought that she forever had been cured of the desire to work her magic on people. In truth, it was a hard habit to break. One could not run away from one's own nature, people worried about what wasn't chronically. For all that she was a genie, she was still a person. And after all, one could only sit and watch the world go by so long before one died of boredom. And unlike the people who'd had the misfortune to open her carpet, she had enough experience to know what to wish for. She knew all the pitfalls, all the classic mistakes. And she knew about scale. Most people- they thought too big. They wished for a million dollars so they could quit their jobs. They never thought, not once, about wishing that Lorraine, in the next cubicle over, who made their work lives such hell, would get a job in another state. No, she didn't make those kind of mistakes.
It all played out the same: the audit, the call from Oregon, the illicit trip out to the coast. Then, Alex Krycek and his damnable information. And finally, Mulder and his boss making the last trip out to Oregon, to Mulder's apparently inevitable date with destiny.
Mon Dieu. There, again, Walter Skinner finally noticing that Mulder was gone from sight. Then, the sight of the alien craft pulling away. This time, the only difference was the pure, unadultered anguish in Walter's voice as he called out, "Fox!" Then, he collapsed to his knees, weeping.
No, no and no. There had to be some way. Some adjustment she could make that would alter the fabric of reality enough without warping the grain out of recognition. But no, nothing kept him away. She had tried five variations thus far and none kept this from happening. She had had Dana Scully invite Fox to her bed and the pair become lovers. Mulder was still taken. One time, the IVF attempt the pair of them had made had been successful. Mulder still ended up leaving his pregnant partner behind and traveling to Oregon with Walter, and meeting up with the aliens. She'd found reasons to send Scully, not Walter, and still, the end result was Mulder gone.
The woman watched over the weeping man from a distance for a while and thought. Satisfied that her choices would work this time, she made a few, small, quick wishes, little, minor changes in the fabric of reality. It had to work this time.
Jenn put her coffee cup down, ran a finger around the rim, smiled and him and asked, "How's Walter?"
They were at their usual place- the Capitol Brew, for their usual Sunday mid-morning coffee. He'd gone running first, up and down the Mall, and he was still slightly sweaty when he'd sat down across from her.
For a minute, the question didn't quite make sense. His mind didn't parse. Walter, the only Walter he knew, was Walter Skinner, his boss, long lusted for, but untouchable by virtue of his position. Then, slowly, like awakening from a long sleep, he remembered, forgetting another branching of reality entirely, the rift healing as if it had never been.
This morning. Waking with Walter in his bed. They'd spent last night together at Hegal Place, as they'd spent half of the nights that Mulder was in town, the other half spent in Crystal City. They hadn't made love last night. Mulder had been too tired, having crawled back into town on the zoo flight. But they had slept together, no pajamas, just for the feel of skin upon skin, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world upon waking to drift into the act of love. Yes, he remembered how sweet it had been. Walter on his stomach, Mulder on top, feeling at home in Walter's body, deep inside it. Walter's muscles had been taut, like silken cords under his skin, as they moved together. Walter had hidden his face in his folded arms, as if his pleasure was so overwhelming he had to retreat. And though Mulder had been on top, he been enthralled to Walter's voice telling him what to do. Eyes closed, voice soft and rough, Walter had whispered, every now and then, instructions. "Harder now," he'd said. And, "Yes, good. Faster" and, "Please, now. Come for me now." What choice did Mulder have but obey the gentle commands, as sweet as they were? Tenderly, Walter had taken his breath away from him with the bliss of it all. When it was over and Mulder was lying on his back, Walter resting his bald head on Mulder's shoulder, Mulder wrestled hard with the joy, the sheer joy of it, threatening to loose his feet from this earth. He so loved that man, and their lovemaking had only gotten better and better the longer they had been together.
Yes, as he sipped his own coffee, Mulder could only smile and think about how they'd gotten together, last year. After he'd gone out seeking the Queen Anne and gotten nothing more than his lungs full of water. Later, at the hospital, Walter had brought him flowers. Though when the others were there, he'd talked tough and promised to kick Mulder's ass but good, later, Walter had come back alone. It had started out as a circumspect, cautious affair, but after months, they'd grown tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. They'd reasoned that if the surveillance pictures were going to show up in the Director's office, they would have by then. That was when they started splitting their time between each other's places, not daring to take the final step of moving in together.
"You're grinning," Jenn had pronounced finally, when he didn't answer her. Of course, she had to know what that grin meant. They'd known each other for years, hadn't they? How long ago had they met? He couldn't remember, but they'd been friends for forever, like she'd always been there. He startled to remember that no, it hadn't been that long. Not years, just months since he'd unrolled a carpet to find her there.
"He's wonderful," Mulder said, noticing his smile for the first time. He must look quite the idiot, with such glee plastered on his face. "We've never been better. It's just that..."
"What?"
"It's just that sometimes, I wish, that we didn't have to sneak around. That we didn't have to hide. That someone besides you and Scully could know," Mulder said. He'd been thinking this a long time, but especially this morning. What was the Bible quote, about hiding a lantern under a bushel basket. Yes, that was what it felt like. For so long, he had been warming himself at Walter's warm brilliant light, and then covering it up zealously at every turn. He could hardly stand it any more, the lies. It chafed, he realized, this restriction, this deception. The touchstone of his life, his faith, his north star, had always been, could only be the truth. And his life, with the way things were, with the endless rounds of doctors and worry and hiding his worry from Walter, needed that truth like he needed oxygen.
"You know, sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I had been a little bit more selfish with those wishes you gave me," Mulder said, rubbing his forehead a little. Like he had almost grown to expect, the pain was suddenly there, the shimmerings of voices that he shouldn't be able to hear starting to sound in the back corners of his mind. An anomalous brain condition his doctors had called it. They couldn't make heads nor tails out of his EEG, nor of any of the MRIs or other tests they had run. "Instead of wasting them on some misguided altruism, I could have stopped this thing going on in my head. Not that I regret spending my third wish on you. I'm thinking of the other two."
"Trust me. Some things are for the best," she said. Actually, there seemed to be nothing she could do for the condition. If she wished it away with one round of wishes, it appeared again in the next. Jenn was beginning to suspect it was somehow ineluctable, one of those rare wishes she just couldn't grant. An unchangeable condition of the universe. She had a sudden idea. Yet another way she might try and keep Mulder away from his seemingly destined abduction.
"Anyway, as far as wishes go, you didn't do too badly. At least you didn't end up dead from them, like some people," Jenn said.
"Has anyone ever not screwed them up?" Mulder asked, thinking of the endless streams of stupidity and venial greed that seemed to flow from humanity. Jenn had told him stories about some of the more egregious mistakes people had made with the wishes she'd granted them.
"A few people. There was a three-year-old girl once a couple of decades ago. She wished for a cookie, to find her lost dolly and a kitten. She got all three, and she was happy. The kitten grew up to be an ornery tomcat who bit anyone but her. She loved him though and he adored her."
"So, in order to be happy, you have to think small?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Sitting back, drinking coffee and watching the world go by?"
"Quite," Jenn said. "There was another man once who used his wishes wisely, so I thought. He wished for enough material possessions that he would be comfortable, but not so many that they would be a burden to him, for a wise but generous spirit, so that he could share his fortune, but not impoverish himself, and for his third wish, he wanted to forget that he had met me and made the wishes."
"So he lived happily ever after? A perfect life. No tragedy, no foolishness. Who was this paragon?"
"No one you'd know. He was a cheesemaker in eighteenth century Amsterdam. And his life wasn't perfect. Just happy. He lost his wife young and he never married again. His dairy burned down one time. But because he'd been so generous to others, his neighbors helped him rebuild. He was never rich, but there was always bread on his table. He didn't let ordinary tragedies break him. Look at the time. I have to go. I'll be late for work."
"I should go too. I'm meeting Walter for lunch," Mulder said, smiling to think of his handsome lover. Jenn flew away in a fluster of twittery energy. She was so different than when he'd first unrolled her from the rug. Her air of bored indifference was gone. She had immersed herself fully into life, Mulder decided.
Mulder walked the dozen or so city blocks to the place where he'd agreed to meet Walter. The spring sun felt good, warming his body even though the breeze still held hints of chill in it. Even though he'd gone running this morning, he still exulted in the stroll. This was what Jenn had meant by taking pleasure in the small things. Yes, he thought. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered with a foolish wish for world peace. I'd just wish for one walk every day that feels as good as this one. The advantage of being a runner was that he was able to put worry aside just by the simple act of movement. For this moment, it held true for the walk as it had for his mornings run.
He found the little pub Walter had specified. It had deep and high booths, the better to remain out of sight. Mulder was loathe to go into the small, dark, sometimes smoky establishment, leaving the sun and the fresh air behind. Only the prospect of finding the source of all good things- Walter, drove him inside.
Walter was in a booth towards the back already, waiting for him. The Sunday Post was spread neatly out on the table. Walter took one section at a time and studied it before putting it neatly on a read pile. Mulder had a tendency to plow through the paper, going from section to section, skimming, then delving deeply when something caught his attention. Walter was studying the sports scores. Time for baseball again, Mulder thought with a smile. If nothing else in his crazy life made sense, at least there was always the cyclical rhythm of the seasons- football, basketball and baseball.
"Hey, gorgeous," Mulder said, claiming the seat across from Walter. He claimed the front page section from the pile and added, "How's the home town team doing?"
Walter, as always, beamed at him, looking slightly bewildered, Mulder thought, as if Walter was never sure that this bluebird of happiness calling itself Mulder had truly alighted into his life.
"How'd coffee with Jenn go?" Walter asked. He knew the whole story. He'd dragged the explanation out of Mulder the evening of the day Mulder had appeared from out of nowhere in his office during a meeting. Genies. Leave it to Mulder to find a real life "I Dream of Jeanie."
"Sounds like she likes her new job. I'm sorry I took part of our morning to go meet her. I just didn't see any other time. I've got to get to the office this afternoon."
"Still worried about the audit?" Walter asked, even though he knew. Mulder had been fretting about this for a long time.
"They could shut us down again," Mulder said, thinking of the X-files office doors locked once again, for the third, and probably final time. It was his life, those files. No, it had been his life. Now, it was an important, vital part of his life. And he didn't think that loving Walter alone would be enough to sustain him should the X-files be taken away from him.
"The auditor can only make the recommendation," Walter said, patiently. "I know Chesty. He thinks he's a big man. He blusters. He'll try and cow you. You have to understand that the Bureau has been in a perpetual budget crisis for years. It's his job to find places to cut. But the decision is the Director's, not his. And I have something to say about it too."
"I know," Mulder said. He was suddenly nervous. It was more imperative these days more than ever that no one find out about them. With the X-files hanging on by such a slender thread, and that thread held with adamantine grip by Walter. But if they were discovered. Mulder didn't like to think about that. Walter seemed to understand the discomfort that Mulder was feeling, must have felt it too, the ghosts of wolves at the door. Walter changed the subject.
"Jenn have anything else interesting to say?"
"She told me about the only persons she knew who were completely happy with their wishes."
"And?"
"A three year old whose most ambitious wish was for a cookie before dinner. And an 18th century cheesemaker who wished to forget that he'd made any wishes."
"So, I take it you don't count among those who were satisfied with their wishes."
"I'm glad of the third, but I can't help but think that I wasted the other two. Chalk it up to experience, which is always a good thing. But I could have done better. What would you have wished for?"
Walter made a small show of pretending to think for a while. Then he pronounced, in perfect, deadpan seriousness, "A cheeseburger, a Heineken and lunch with you."
Mulder tossed a ball of wadded up napkin at Walter's head. Say nothing else about the man's shiny pate, it made a good target. It was strange how the serious, intense man made him feel more playful than he ever had. "Walter!"
Walter's sly, unexpected smile made an appearance. "Yeah, but my wishes will come true," he said. Then suddenly, his cell phone rang. He muttered a curse under his breath, Mulder didn't quite catch it, and he ground his teeth just slightly. On the second ring he said, "Or maybe not." Then he answered it, barking, "Skinner!" into it. Mulder almost felt sorry for whoever at work had dared interrupt Walter on a Sunday. Walter listened seriously, with full attention, his eyes focused on a place a million miles away. Walter was now at work, not that he ever truly left it. Finally, Walter concluded, "I'm on my way."
"A situation, huh?" Mulder asked as Walter folded the phone and put it back into his jacket pocket.
"A total cock-up you mean. I'll try and be home as soon as damage control is in hand," Walter said, standing and reaching for his jacket. The man moved like, like. Mulder struggled for a comparison that was worthy of the controlled grace and power that Walter's body was capable of. Like some huge predator, perhaps a polar bear- dangerous, fast and with a fluid smoothness that seemed impossible for its ungainly bulk.
"I assume I'll hear about it on the news, or if they elect to call me in," Mulder said.
"The whole point of the exercise is to avoid this getting to the news. It's a hostage situation in Pennsylvania," Walter said. "Later."
It took less than an hour to get out to the scene in Pennsylvania, thanks to light, weekend traffic. Add another half hour to stop first at the Hoover and switch his casual jacket for the one with FBI blazoned on the back and be more fully briefed by his staff. By the time he got to the scene, the news vultures had gotten there all ready, but they were reporting it as just another hostage situation, albeit one that had closed down the expressway. It was true, in it's way. But the big concern wasn't who, but what the man had taken hostage.
The semi had been parked diagonally across the road, blocking all three lanes of traffic with its dull red container. Skinner thought they'd said the thing was full of sodium hydroxide. Skinner had thought it would be some kind of tanker truck. Traffic coming from the other direction had been diverted, routed onto a detour. No, the only cars on the interstate at the moment were state cop cruisers, bucars and other government vehicles. Walter pulled his car up to a likely looking clump of bucars, with a cluster of serious, urgent looking agents standing together nearby, discussing tactics, no doubt. As he parked, Walter picked out the obvious leader of the pack, the one the other agents were looking at as if he had the answers. That one was a tall, intense man with a roadmap of wrinkles in his forehead, his eyes slightly squinted against the bright sunshine. He wore a white dress shirt and red tie under his FBI jacket. He was talking urgently to his cohorts and they were listening intently.
Walter stepped out of the car and walked right up to that one. He had the distinct feeling that if the FBI's protocol were to include saluting, this agent would have given him a crisp, military precise salute. "Agent..." Walter struggled a moment to find and retrieve the man's name from memory. It was not forthcoming.
"Doggett, sir," the man said. "John Doggett."
"You're the agent in charge here?"
"Sir."
"Tell me what's going on. I've heard the briefings, but I want you to draw me a picture."
Doggett nodded. Walter wouldn't have thought it possible, but Doggett stood a little straighter and taller and started to talk, not put off at all by Walter's brusque demands. "Behind the wheel of that semi truck is one James Kennedy Walton. He's got the truck wired with twenty pounds of plastic explosive. We're still not sure where he got them. Inside the container is several thousand gallons of sodium hydroxide, in small totes about a meter by a meter each. They're reinforced with a wire cage, but he's got enough firepower there to have that not make a difference. It blows, we have to evacuate the whole county."
"And just how did he get a hold of a semi truck full of it? I mean, shouldn't something that dangerous be highly controlled and regulated."
"It is. But that's his truck. He makes his living shipping the stuff."
"And how did you get involved?"
"I've been chasing the guy for months. His hobby is bank robbery. He's made twenty hits in the past year. Banks scattered in every state from Louisiana to New Jersey. It took us a while to piece together that our suspect was a truck driver, but once we did it was simple police work to track him down. Should have been a simple bust."
"What does he want?" Walter asked.
"The usual. His fifteen minutes of fame. I don't think we should give it to him. I think he's a nutcase. He's been going on and on about aliens or some nonsense like that," Doggett said, grimacing.
Walter shuddered, the shade of Duane Barry suddenly seeming to walk over his grave. He thought about calling Mulder in, but decided against it for the moment. Mulder didn't need the exposure at the moment. Yes, it'd definitely be a good idea for his monster boy to keep a low profile for the time being. Not unless there proved to be an actual alien connection. "Any accomplices? Does he have anyone he's working with? During his crime spree?"
"I think he's got militia connections but I haven't been able to dig up a clear link. I think this one is worse than that unibomber freak."
"What, exactly, are his demands?"
"He wants national news coverage, to expose this supposed alien menace. He claims the money is to raise an army against them. Hold on," Doggett listened to his ear piece. "Looks like we're getting our break. Guy's not hiding in the back. Sharpshooter's suddenly got a clear shot."
Something wrenched inside of Walter's guts and he wanted to bark out the command, "No!" It wasn't right. It was a bad decision, he could feel it at every level. Doggett seemed to feel the same way. He opened his mouth as if he were going to give the order to hold fire. But before he could, the shot sounded, clear, distinctive. Even at this distance, Walter could see the sudden splash of crimson against the driver's side window of the cab. Then came the explosion. He dove for cover on the ground behind the car, along with the others. It didn't help though. It burned like nothing he'd ever felt before and he knew, with the strong certainty of someone who as already been dead that this was it. He was buying the farm. He found time to wonder if he'd remembered to tell Mulder that he loved him recently.
The shot rang out, like a crystal vase shattering on a concrete floor in a silent room. Crimson splashed onto the truck's window. They waited a minute, then Doggett was barking into his mike, "Team A, go, now!"
A squad of men in tactical armor rushed the truck and then it was all over. Even as Skinner watched them haul a single body from the cab, and the bomb squad started swarming over the truck, he shuddered.
Confused, he remembered quite clearly. the truck had gone up in one of the most magnificent fireballs Skinner could remember. Taking them with it. And yet, plain as daylight, there, the truck stood. Here he stood still, uninjured. He shook his head, wondering if he was going mad.
In a few minutes though, action was demanded of him, someone was wanting him to go up in front of the cameras and give a statement. And so he put on his best inscrutable face and did what needed to be done. In a little while, he was just wondering if maybe his imagination had been over active, that he'd just imagined the truck blowing.
Sometime in the middle of it, Doggett pulled him aside. "We're damn lucky," he said, the crags in between his eyebrows deepening for a minute. "The guy had the whole thing set on a deadman switch. Shoulda blown the instant he was shot. Goddamn lucky for us he's not as good at electronics as he was at bank robbery. It woulda blown, except one of the connections came lose. So say the folks from the bomb squad."
Walter felt suddenly very weak in the knees, though he put on his best iron face and didn't let it show. He thought again, about how earlier, he'd been sure that the bomb had blown. Deciding again that it really just was his imagination, he forced his mind back to the matter at hand. It could have been a fatal mistake. He'd escaped by the skin of his teeth again, like he had so often since taking on the supervision of the X-files. On the positive side, had there been that fatal mistake, neither he, nor Doggett, would still be around to face the negative repercussions on their respective careers. As it was, his career was no more in shards than it had been this morning, before he'd come out here. That was about the best he could ask for, most days. He got on with the business at hand.
Mulder watched Walter leave, cutting through the early afternoon weekend lunch crowd with purpose. When that man was on the move, no one, no, no one got in his way, Mulder thought. It was something about him, like lesser ships moving out of the way of an aircraft carrier. He sighed with a pleasure tinged strongly by regret at the sight of Walter's retreat.
As he was deciding whether to order lunch on his own, or just pay for the drinks they'd ordered and head home, or even to call Scully and ask if she wanted to join him, the lightheadedness came again. The shimmer of voices at the edge of his hearing became stronger. His decision made for him, he dug into his wallet, threw what he thought would be an adequate amount of money onto the table and stood up, meaning to head back to his place immediately. He could get through these bad spells if he could just take them lying down, maybe with the television playing for that veneer of reality to reassure himself that everything would be all right.
He didn't make three steps before big, black spots filled his vision. He couldn't keep his feet and he was falling, his body not his for the moment.
Somewhere, somehow, there was an end to it all. He could return home to DC, the situation defused as well as he could make it. He thought maybe even the Bureau looked good on this one, not just having failed to fuck up totally. In the car on the road back to DC, he finally had a spare minute to answer his cell phone. He'd set it on vibrate only mode before facing the press, and it had gone off several times during his long statement and question session. He'd gotten one voice mail and several text messages. He thumbed through his text messages first. The first one was Scully's cell number and the text, "Please call."
The messages got more urgent as the hours had worn on. He'd left DC at just past noon and it was now full night. From "Please Call," they escalated to "Please Call. Urgent," and then, "Please Call. Emergency." Wondering what the situation was that required such immediate attention, he speed dialed Scully, even as he sped up slightly. There was no answer from Scully and that worried Skinner even more. It occurred to him that one of the places where she wouldn't answer her phone was within the halls of a hospital. She'd know better than to use it near sensitive medical equipment. Getting her voicemail finally, he said, "Agent Scully. This is Walter Skinner. I've gotten your messages. Work took me to Pennsylvania, but I'm on my way home now. Call me as soon as you get this message. I should be home in an hour."
Not five minutes, anxious, extended minutes, later, his phone chirped at him again. He picked it up and had it to his ear before it had a chance to ring a second time. "Skinner!" he barked into it, half sick with worry.
"Sir. Walter," Scully's voice answered him. He recognized the tone. Worried as sick as he was, thinly strung and about ready to snap. She'd used that voice, among other times, when Mulder had gotten himself lost at sea in the Bermuda Triangle. That had been the day that Skinner had realized he loved Mulder. That he was willing to throw everything- his job, his pension, his position, away because he couldn't stomach the thought of a universe without a Mulder in it.
"Agent Scully, what's the emergency?"
"Agent Mulder, sir. He's in the hospital again. Northeast Georgetown. He was in a restaurant not far from the Hoover when he collapsed. He started going into convulsions. No treatment so far has been able to stop them. He came out of it just long enough to ask them to call me, but he slipped back into the convulsions almost immediately. The doctors have been unable to determine the cause, but it appears to be centered in the temporal lobe, but it's spread over his whole brain."
Walter thought immediately of the illness that had nearly claimed Mulder from him so shortly after they'd found each other. Over, done, cured, so the doctors had said. No more signs of irregular temporal lobe activity. Or at least, immediately after it happened. Walter wondered, sometimes, if there wasn't some residual effect. Mulder occasionally had what he claimed to be tension headaches, and he'd shut himself up alone in a room, with the lights off and the television on.
"I'm on my way, Agent Scully," Skinner said, wishing he could increase his speed yet again. He was far from the only one rushing back to DC on this dark, spring evening. Traffic was thickening and slowing as they got closer and closer to the city. To make things worse, though the day had been fine and clear earlier, a storm system was rolling in. One by one, the stars were covered by thick, impenetrable blackness. Then, big drops of rain started splashing onto his windshield. "Traffic's bad. It's starting to rain. That'll slow me down. But I'll be there as quickly as I can. Have they tried the phenytoin?"
"First thing. It didn't do anything more than slow them down slightly, even on increased dosages. They've got him sedated. Enough to take down a tiger, honestly. I don't know what to do, sir," she said. She was obviously on the verge of tears.
Mulder loved Walter, but Scully was still closer to Mulder than just a long term work partner. They were friends. Confidants. Walter remembered one time, not long after he and Mulder had started their affair, she had come up to him. She'd given him one long, hard look up and down. Then she'd said, "I love him like he was one of my brothers, sir. And I mean this with all due respect, but if you harm him in any way, I'll kick your ass."
"I'll be there soon, but I don't know if there's anything I can do either," Walter said. He said his goodbyes to Scully, with another promise to be there as quickly as he could. Then he set the phone down on the passenger seat without taking his eyes off the road. He drove as fast as traffic conditions would let him, with grimly efficient skill, his jaw set. He had to take his hands off the wheel every now and then and stretch them, one by one, for fear that his death grip on it would cause his hands to lock into place.
By the time Skinner finally got to the hospital hours later, having been delayed by a semi accident blocking the road, Scully was asleep in the chair by Mulder's bedside. She never seemed tinier, curled up in that vinyl padded chair. Awake, the woman was a dynamo, her short stature unnoticed by sheer dint of intensity. But asleep, without the full fury of her personality to animate that body, it was like a little doll, her face porcelain, the hint of a blush on her cheeks. She'd kicked off her heels and had been wearing a jacket earlier, which she now used as a makeshift blanket. Her red hair was mussed slightly, curled a bit around the ends. She might have run her fingers through it a few times, in frustration, as she'd waited for him.
Mulder himself was deadly still on the bed. He wasn't in restraints, like Walter had almost expected, like he'd been mentally preparing himself for. No, instead, the rails of the bed had been fully padded with foam rubber so that Mulder couldn't hurt himself as he convulsed. As before, he was attached to monitors. Yes, there was the EEG. As before, the line skittered and danced all over the graph, even as Mulder's body was completely still on the bed, doing a fair imitation of the deepest possible sleep. What was it that had been said about Mulder the last time that this had happened. No, he wasn't dying, Walter thought. No, if anything else, Mulder was more fully alive, more fully awake than he ever had been. Other than the leads for the monitors and the IV, Mulder might have just been sleeping. It was almost as if Walter might be able to just reach over, shake Mulder by the shoulder and say to him, "C'mon, buddy, wake up. I'm taking you home."
Walter reached out and touched Mulder on the cheek, gently, one swift caress sweeping from cheekbone to chin, before waking Scully. She would only do the inevitable, unenviable thing of having to tell him again the exact same thing she had told him in the car, that there seemed to be nothing that they could do, no lead that they could follow. At least the last time there had been leads to follow, things to do, Mulder asking for help. This time, there was no Kritschgau, no mysterious rubbings, no ship in Africa. No, there seemed to be very little reason for this illness to have started now, like it had. What could have triggered it?
Reaching out for Scully, Walter shook her awake and she started the long, arduous task of going through Mulder's chart with him. Most of it made very little sense to Walter. He listened though, carefully, for any little sliver of hope. Any positive prognosis she could offer. She couched it in very gentle, neutral terms, but the meaning was the same. Call it a rose if you like, but shit still stinks. And Mulder was still dying.
In the end, there was nothing to do but wait by Mulder's bedside and hope that the brainstorms would subside before his mind destroyed itself. Scully, of course, was unable to acquiesce to the same fatalism that came to Walter almost naturally, perhaps from some genetic memory from his Russian ancestors. Scully stormed around. Scully raged. Scully tracked down every lead, no matter how flimsy it might be. Walter sat at Mulder's bedside every minute he could spare and, when he thought no one was liable to come in, he held Mulder's hand.
They drugged him deeper and deeper, until only monitor that showed more than a bare minimum of activity was the EEG. That crackled with life, spiking and peaking in irregular bursts.
After three days of useless waiting, Scully came in, looking exhausted. She was followed by the Gunmen, all of whom looked just as tired, just as grim. Skinner had long ago resigned himself to the odd trio as a fixture in their lives, even more prominent in times when Mulder or Scully were in trouble. Like now.
"Anything?" he asked, more pro forma than out of any actual hope.
Scully sighed and then said, "No, we're packing it in for the night. You should go home too. There's nothing more to be done."
He couldn't fault her or the Gunmen for taking some rest. But he wasn't going to leave Mulder's bedside. "I'll sleep in the chair," he said. Just like he had the other three nights, waking just in time to get back to Crystal City and change for work.
She didn't protest. She knew it would do no good. She moved to stand at the other side of Mulder's bed. She brushed a hand over his forehead, touching him softly. Skinner was reminded of a mother touching a feverish child. "We'll find a cure, Mulder. I promise it," she said. She didn't sound convinced though, finally starting to doubt- in herself, in the powers of science...in everything.
Then she left. Only the sight of Mulder prevented Walter from following her, offering her some comfort. One by one, the Gunmen stopped at Mulder's bedside to offer their respects. "Hang in there, guy," Frohike said.
"You'd better get well soon," Langly said. "Talented as we are at these G-man activities, they're really cutting into my gaming time."
Byers, the shy one, didn't say anything, just squeezed Mulder's hand awkwardly, briefly, then turned on his heels and fled. Walter, for some reason, remembered another time he'd been in a hospital room with Mulder and the Gunmen. Mulder had asked for Byers clothes. Byers had started to strip down, no hesitation, at least once it became clear what Mulder wanted with the clothes.
Alone in the room with Mulder, who was both a substantial presence and an absence, Skinner started to settle himself in for another uncomfortable night in the chair. His jacket hung from the back of another chair. He found the blanket that the kind nurses had lent him. He set his PDA to ring an alarm at four thirty, plenty of time for the double commute out of and back into the city. He set that within reach, then waiting patiently for what sleep and what dreams would come.
Walter dreamed, one of the least comfortable dreams he'd had for a while. Not quite a nightmare at first, but it grew worse. He was flat on his back in a stall. A barn. A horse barn. A horse was standing on his chest. Light pressure at first, but it grew and grew, until it seemed that he couldn't breathe, that must be impossible that his heart was beating. The horse was a long-haired stallion with a long, black mane. The horse was laughing at him. Not big, honest laughter either, but derisive snickering. "Oh, Walter, you just don't get it, do you?" the horse said.
After that, the dream grew dark and confused and lasted for a long, long time.
When he finally woke, Walter was in a hospital bed himself, feeling like someone had moved into his chest cavity and started redecorating, beginning with ripping out a few load bearing walls and not shoring up the ceiling where they'd been. He opened his eyes and looked around cautiously. A flash of red caught his sight. Scully. He struggled to sit up at first, but laid back down once he realized that wasn't going to happen without more effort than he had in him at the moment.
When he stopped struggling to sit up, he found the energy to focus his eyes. Scully. Her pretty, pale skin was blotched and her blue eyes were rimmed with bright red. She'd been crying.
"Sir? Relax," she said, reaching out a cool hand to touch his forehead, just like she had Mulder's last night. It had been just last night, Skinner hoped. "You're lucky to be alive, sir. You suffered another attack of the nanos. You nearly died. You coded. Luckily, we were able to revive you."
Somehow, Skinner doubted it was luck at all.
"Mulder..." he said. His voice was so dry and raspy that he doubted it even belonged to him.
"He's..." At this,Scully hesitated, wiped a hand across her face. She was crying again. Then she pulled herself together. He could see definite signs of her having been raised by a military man. Tears would have failed to move her father, and so she would have learned to push them away, to make herself calm when others would break down. "He's missing, sir. When the night nurse came in to check on Mulder, she found him gone, and you were half dead on the floor. Oh, sir. He's gone!"
The words were worse than any pain that had gone before.
Only a dark, spritely woman had been standing unnoticed in the hospital corridor and noticed a man insinuate himself into Mulder's hospital room. Alex Krycek, she recognized immediately. She froze, unable to think or do anything but watch as the man pulled out a small, handheld computer from his jacket pocket. As he manipulated the computer, Walter, who had been sleeping peacefully in the chair moaned in his sleep. Big, angry black veins started appearing on Walter's skin, then, he fell out of the chair, onto the floor, seemingly lifeless. Then Krycek shoved Walter out of the way. Moving the limp body of the big man was a struggle for Krycek, even though he seemed, not quite athletic, but still strong, like he was used to hardscrabble fights and rough times.
Walter pushed away, Krycek leaned over Fox's still body. He drew a small case out of his jacket pocket, the breast pocket opposite the one he'd put the hand held computer back into. The case snapped open revealed a syringe and a couple of vials of some milky fluid. Jenn watched with fascination as Krycek, even hampered by his artificial arm, expertly plunged the hypodermic needle into one of the vials and drew the fluid into the syringe. Modern people didn't know what an age of miracles they lived it, Jenn thought. Had Krycek lost that arm during the years that she had been an ordinary human girl, he would have been lucky to have the village smith fashion him a hook that he would be able to get some use out of the shortened limb. No, the man probably only felt bitterness about how slow and clumsy the response of his artificial limb was, not wonder that it worked at all, that he could control it so precisely as to hold a tiny glass vial in it, without crushing it.
Once the syringe was full, and the bubbles tapped out, then Krycek used his artificial hand to turn Mulder's head and hold it in place. With the other, real hand, he plunged the syringe right into Mulder's temple and depressed the plunger. "C'mon, Mulder, wake up. I'm taking you away from all of this," Krycek said, ironically.
And slowly, amazingly, Mulder's eyes did open. And he was able to speak. His first word, obviously, was hissed. "Krycek!"
"Lucky for me you're still too drugged to beat the crap out of me. What is it with you? Is it some kind of repressed sexual thing? Sublimation?" Krycek said as he packed his equipment away again.
Mulder saved his breath this time and didn't respond.
"Mulder, there's an unprecedented opportunity awaiting you, if only you get out of that hospital bed and follow me."
Mulder caught sight of Walter's body. Jenn could see the agony that was writ plain on Mulder's face. And fury. "I'm not going anywhere with you. You killed him, Krycek."
"Well, just a little. Hold on," Krycek said. He pulled the hand held computer out again and fiddled with it. Walter gasped in a big breath, then started breathing more or less normally after that. "There. All better. Your boyfriend's in the land of the living again. And you don't have any choice. You're coming with me."
Mulder might have been able to talk, but his body was still more or less unresponsive. Krycek pulled casual clothes- jeans, a sweatshirt, tennis shoes out of the bag he'd set down earlier and dressed Mulder like he was a doll. Then he lowered the bedrail and levered Mulder up to a sitting position. "You'll be getting back more control over your body as time goes on, but for now, just do me a favor and don't fight me. And remember, I've got your boyfriend's life in the palm of my hand."
Slowly, Krycek got Mulder to his feet. Even though he was supporting Mulder by main strength, they made it through the door, down the hall and eventually, out of the building. Presumably, once outside, into a car and away from the hospital.
Jenn sighed. Had she, she wondered, seriously underestimated the strength of the Krycek factor? He'd always seemed such a bit player in the whole thing to her. He'd pop up in Mulder's life every now and then to wreck some small mayhem or disburse some tidbit of information, the whereabouts of the downed UFO the latest one, but mostly he was an enigma. How could she neutralize the Krycek factor with the smallest possible change? Something that would make that enmity between them disappear and at the same time, take Krycek out of the power game that was being played. She needed to think. Her brain felt thick, flabby, powerless. Coffee was needed. She would go find a diner, sit, drink coffee and think.
He was still in his hospital bed when they sent the agent to take his statement. It was the same day he'd woken up even. The agent they'd sent was Doggett, of the semi-truck incident. No, it probably wasn't a coincidence. The man had just finished up with his case. And he had plenty of experience with missing person cases, or so Skinner had heard. He was a bright star in the Bureau. On the fast track, so talk from above had it. From what Skinner had seen, the man was good at what he did.
John Doggett was all grim seriousness. Dressed this time in full suit and tie, his perpetual expression was still a near frown.
"Mind if I take a seat, AD Skinner?" he asked. Walter would have shrugged if he could. What good was it sending this agent, as excellent as an agent as he no doubt was, out to search for Mulder. Skinner knew who had Mulder- Alex Krycek. But God alone knew where Krycek had gotten by now. And no doubt he was under the protection of men who were themselves protected, men who could not be pursued. The same men who were always above and beyond the law. He could only hope that this time, as the last time, that whatever element it was among them that had looked out for Mulder would do it again, and deliver him home once their schemes had no more use for him.
When Scully continued to hover as Doggett took his seat, he said, "I was hoping to have a few words alone with the AD, Agent Scully."
Scully shot the agent a look of pure venom as she stalked to the door of the room. "I'll just be outside, sir. Call if you need anything."
Skinner wondered at what seemed like unnecessarily bad blood between the two agents, especially so quickly. Unless they'd had some previous run-in that he hadn't heard about. Scully didn't take too well to being called Mrs. Spooky and was not one to forget a slight easily. Doggett for his part, seemed one the boys, easily fitting in to the boys' club mentality that could dominate the middle levels of the Bureau sometimes.
"So, according to Agent Scully, you were in the hospital room at the same time Agent Mulder is believed to have disappeared," Agent Doggett said. "And that furthermore, you were the victim of some manner of attack yourself."
Ah, perhaps there was the cause of the antinomy. They had talked already. Doggett sounded doubtful that Skinner had been attacked. No doubt the hospital doctors were describing this as some kind of odd cardiac incident. Doggett would think that Scully's story would be the science-fiction it sounded like. Except for the fact that it had happened to him, in all its unbelievable agony, he would have classed it as such. Scully for her part was so vested in her faith of science that once she found proof that passed muster to her, she expected that everyone else would naturally have to believe.
"Yes, I was in the room at the time," Skinner said, cautiously. There was no way he could be a suspect, and yet the paranoia he'd learned over the years made him truly understand the fact that anything he said could and would be used against him. "I was not conscious. I didn't see anything or anyone. I fell asleep. I woke up in this hospital bed."
"Okay, well, what about this line that Agent Scully is trying to feed me about you being the victim of an attack by this Alex Krycek? I did a search on him by the way. Found nothing. No date of birth. No known residence. No convictions. No warrants. Nothing. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the man doesn't exist."
Oh, he exists all right, Skinner thought. He's the stuff my nightmares are made of. He's had me on his puppet strings for longer than a man should have to bear. "That was the name he used at one point," Skinner said. "I doubt it's his real one. I don't even believe he's a citizen of this country."
Doggett's eyes opened slightly wider for a moment as he pondered the possibility that there was a foreign national out there that could just waltz right into a hospital, or apparently anywhere else, without a trace, without bleeping on the radar. "Russian? FSB?"
"Something far more dangerous than that. He speaks fluent Russian, but he may or not actually be Russian."
"Regardless, I'd like to know if you stand behind Agent Scully's assertion that he attacked you in some way."
"Who assigned you to this case, Agent Doggett?" Skinner asked.
Skinner grimaced when he heard Doggett's answer. "AD Kersh, sir."
Kersh. He'd never been able to prove it, of course not, but Skinner had thought for years that Kersh was one of theirs. That he'd been bought. Compromised.
"Why you? Why not Agent Scully?"
"She's a little too close to the case, Sir. Rumor has it, last time her partner went missing, she went looking for him in Africa."
"Let me draw you a picture, Agent Doggett. You don't want to go looking into this case. You don't want to get involved. The men who've taken Agent Mulder walk the halls of the Hoover with impunity."
"Well, how 'bout you put that picture in a frame for me, and tell me who this is then?" Doggett asked. He took a surveillance picture out of a file and passed it to Skinner. Though the picture was grainy and unfocused, there was no denying that it was Alex Krycek, mostly dragging a limp Fox Mulder along with him through what looked like the hospital parking garage.
"That's the man known sometimes as Alex Krycek, who, as you say, doesn't exist."
"Looks like Agent Mulder's going along with him pretty willingly, wouldn't you say? No struggle. No force."
"Did Agent Scully show you Agent Mulder's chart? He was having near constant seizures. The only way to slow them down was to dope him with enough phenobarbituates to take down a bear. I'd say that picture looks like he's being dragged to me."
Agent Doggett asked Skinner yet more useless questions, all the while sounding like he believed that Mulder was the fugitive, not the victim. Skinner answered them as best he could, trying to make it clear again and again that there was no way Mulder could have gotten out of that bed under his own power and that, yes, he was no doubt in the custody of a dangerous man or men. Finally, Doggett called it a day and left. Not a minute later, Scully came in.
"Sir," she said. She looked flustered even though her suit and hair were as neat as always. "I need to go to Oregon. Strange things have been happening in Bellefleur again. Abductions. I think it may be related somehow to what was happening to Mulder. But."
"AD Kersh is filling in for me while I'm in the hospital, and there's no way you could get an 302 signed," Walter said, knowing just exactly what Kersh would do. He could maneuver around Kersh though, even flat on his back. "Go to Kim. Tell her to get out one of the signed requests for personal leave that I have on file for you, and to date it and submit it as if it hit my desk the evening of the last day I was in the office. Then get on the next plane to Oregon."
He would have been on that plane himself, except he hardly felt like walking the few feet to the bathroom was feasible under his own power, much less the trip cross country. He'd go as soon as he was back on his feet though. "If you can't afford the ticket, I'll pay."
"Oh, no, sir. That's fine."
"Get going then," he said, brusquely, as if that could cover up the tears that were threatening at the thought of Mulder being gone. Missing. First the sudden, acute return of the brain malady, then Mulder gone, and God alone knew what was happening to him, if he was worsening without the drugs. If they would let him burn himself out. Mulder in the tender hands of Alex Krycek. Could things get worse?
Doggett returned the next day. "Just a few more brief questions," he promised as he sat down next to Skinner's bedside again. Skinner was almost up to getting out of bed again. He'd been able to sit up earlier. Even though he was getting older, he still seemed to have a vital constitution. Nothing kept him down for very long.
"You seem pretty close to Agent Mulder. I figure, if Agent Mulder has a lover, you'd probably know who, right?"
Skinner startled. That was pretty close to home. A very astute guess on Doggett's part, or the man had gone snooping. They were careful, he and Mulder, to keep knowledge of their relationship hidden to those who would keep close mouthed about it, like Scully, or the Gunmen. "Why do you say that?" he asked, cautiously.
"I figure, you were spending the night in his hospital room. You must be close to family, or something," Doggett said. The tone wasn't accusatory, surprisingly. Just open and guileless.
"Agent Mulder has no other family left," Skinner said. "He needed someone to watch out for him."
"Well, I was over at his place, to see if I could find anything. Any kind of clue. I figure he's got a lover. I thought maybe you might know who. Save me a lot of work digging up who those size eighteen neck shirts hanging in his closet belong to. Mulder's a sixteen and a half. There are other things too. Mulder has two different brands of toothpaste in his medicine cabinet. One squeezed from the bottom, one from the middle. Two different brands of shaving cream. Two razors."
Skinner was quiet a long time, trying to think over every angle. Doggett was definitely trying to get him to admit to being Mulder's lover. That fact was true, and Skinner wasn't exactly ashamed of it, but the fact also remained that it was dangerous for both Mulder and Skinner. If he lost his job at the Bureau, how was he going to go look for Mulder? What resources would he have? He spent a nervous moment regretting that they hadn't been more careful, more circumspect.
Doggett seemed uncomfortable finally at Skinner's silence. He shifted in his plastic hospital chair, trying to find a good position on the molded, orange plastic. "Look," he said. "Been common knowledge for a long time that Mulder's as queer as a three dollar bill. I don't care. Live and let live, I say. I'm just trying to find Mulder and I don't want to waste time tracking down a guy who wears size 18 neck, pinpoint oxford shirts. Not if the guy might be right under my nose. I'm thinking it's probably someone Mulder works with, but I also figure it ain't OPR's business who Mulder sleeps with either. So, you know who this guy is?"
He decided to trust the man. He seemed worthy of it. For so long, Skinner hadn't trusted anyone. But he wanted to trust that this agent truly was on the side of the good, and that furthermore, he'd be good to his word and that he wouldn't be turning Skinner in. He was afraid his instincts for who could be trusted were rusty from disuse, but he decided to do it anyway.
"I'm not admitting to anything," Skinner said, cautiously. "But, yes, I know who those shirts belong to."
"And?"
"It is someone who works at the Bureau. Someone who has already given a statement and shared everything he knows about Mulder's disappearance."
"Good enough," Doggett said. "I have just one more question for you. I'm just wondering why, at a time like this, Agent Scully might take time off and seem to head off on vacation. Where's she headed?"
"Agent Doggett," Skinner tried, not quite for withering, because he knew he'd never make it, but for impersonally authoritative at least. It was difficult to maintain, flat on his back. Especially flat on his back, feeling like the effort to sit up just wouldn't be worth it at the moment. It was one thing to trust this agent. It was another thing all together to give him information that no doubt would have the whole Seattle field office swarming down on the lead Scully was following. Knowing what he knew, Skinner thought it was the better part of valor to let Scully and the three stooges take care of this one. "What Agent Scully chooses to do with her time is up to her. She did not disclose any of her plans to me and I wouldn't expect her to."
"You're covering for her. She's out following a lead. She might have some idea where this Krycek guy mighta taken Mulder. You know, considerin' all you told me about this guy, I'm thinking it's a pretty damn fool thing for her to do, taking off after him without backup."
Oh, thought Skinner. She has backup. Three surprisingly valiant, intelligent men who've risked their all for her and Mulder many times before.
"I don't know where Scully has gone," Skinner insisted again.
"Right," Doggett said, rising to his feet. "Well, sir, I'll do my best to find him for you, even if you're going treat me like a mushroom."
Skinner puzzled at that one for a bit, until he remembered the rest of the phrase. Keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit.
He felt regretful that he didn't extend the full measure of trust that he felt he might be capable of giving to Doggett. If only he could trust the man not to respond in a way that had SOP, FBI, stamped all over it. Ironically, it was the upright, play by the rules attitude that made Skinner trust the guy, but the same attitude made him refrain from passing on the information.
Mulder was balking again. He and Krycek were hiking through the damp Oregon woods. Krycek had gotten Mulder low top sneakers and as he sank ankle deep in cold mud again and again, he'd stop to curse Krycek roundly. Krycek, of course, the bastard, had a pair of black motorcycle boots on. Not the usual kind of hiking gear, but certainly he fared much better in the mud than Mulder did.
And despite that injection that Krycek had given him, and then repeated several times in the two days since he'd taken Mulder from the hospital, Mulder kept hearing the susurrus of mental noise. Only parts of it seemed immensely cold and alien to him, like listening to a swarm of insects, only more so. It made him shiver even more than mud down his shoes.
"C'mon, Mulder, we've got to get going. We're nearly there."
"Where the hell are we going? You know everytime we head off into one of these ventures of yours, I end up holding the bag, and you end up with the goods."
"Not all the time, Mulder," Krycek said, darkly. Mulder suddenly thought of Tunguska. Mulder hadn't exactly been in the cream after that, but Krycek had come out decidedly on the short end of the stick. "Just get a move on."
"Fuck you," Mulder said, planting his feet firmly as he could in the current patch of mud. He felt as if his legs were going to turn to the consistency of that mud any minute now.
"Press of a button, Mulder," Krycek said. "Your boyfriend's life. In my hands. Of course, if you don't care."
Krycek made as if he were rummaging in the pocket of his leather jacket for the handheld computer.
"You can't. Don't you have to be right there? Otherwise, why would you have come to the hospital?"
"Oh, sure. With the beta version," Krycek said, with a shark-like grin. He pulled out the palm computer. "It's amazing how fast wireless technology has advanced. If I'm in cell phone range, well, poor Walter is putty in my hands."
With an enraged howl, Mulder attempted to launch himself at Krycek. But as weak as Mulder was and tired, he must have telegraphed his every move. Krycek sidestepped with no effort and Mulder plunged face forward into the mud. It was cold. The cold, Mulder decided, was definitely worse than the humiliation. Krycek just tucked the palm computer into his jacket pocket again. Then he leaned over Mulder and pulled him up by the scruff of his neck.
"No more games, Mulder. I'm sick of putting up with your crap. We're almost there. I'm about to give you everything you've ever dreamed about. We'd better get a move on. It's getting dark."
They wandered around the woods for several more hours, as the eerie twilight darkened and deepened. Finally light disappeared all together, leaving them in near perfect darkness. "I'm beginning to think this is some kind of snipe hunt," Mulder complained. The buzzing in his head, the swarm, as he'd started to think of it, had grown stronger and stronger all the time and he felt like he was about to fall down on his face again. He plodded, one foot after the other, following Krycek at this point more because Krycek was something that wasn't woods than fear that Krycek would and could make good on his threat to set off the nanos from this distance.
Then Krycek disappeared. Everything did. He was caught in a column of pure light. The peace he felt was suddenly overwhelming. He walked over to join the others who were waiting. Yes, this was meant to happen.
Ore-fucking-gon. That's where Agent Scully had gone. It'd taken every single one of his built up favors with the secretarial crowd to get the information. Doggett had gone to them as soon as it was clear that Skinner wasn't about to spill the info. Everyone knew, if you really wanted to know what went on in an organization, ask the secretaries. Even the FBI was no exception. Skinner's personal assistant Kim was known to be a woman of much prepossession and discretion. But everyone talks to someone and apparently, she'd let slip where Scully was going to what could only be called an unnamed, but generally reliable source. The gossip vine had thoroughly stripped the source of the info, but it had wended its way right to him.
So, he'd gathered a small team, no more than three other agents, called ahead to the field office and took off for Oregon. He hated fucking Oregon all the other times he'd been there. This time was proving to be no exception. They'd landed in the rain. All the rental car company had available was a Neon, so he and the other agents all had to fold themselves into the compact car and drive off to Bellefluer in that. The roads were slick and they lost time, slowed down by an SUV who thought it could tangle with a logging truck and lost. Messily. There were delays both way, with logs having rolled across the median and onto all but one lane of traffic. The local PD seemed to have it in hand, but these kind of big accidents always took time to clear. Doggett winced when he saw the vehicles. The SUV had flipped and the passenger compartment was completely crushed. A bad omen, he thought, then wondered where the heck that thought came from. No such thing as omens.
At least once he cleared the accident and made it to Bellefleur, he had better luck. He spotted Scully right away.
When he'd found out where Scully was going, he'd first asked for permission to look at these so called X-files that Mr and Mrs Spooky investigated. They'd been to Bellefleur before. It was site for those supposed alien abductions. What a load of crap.
So, he spotted Scully right away, getting into her rental car, walking out of one of the local residences. Dollars to doughnuts the woman wasn't here on vacation or to visit old pals. He kept a low profile, but he followed her as she drove out of town, heading for the woods. When she stopped her car and got out, he parked his rental down the road just a bit. He directed his team to spread out through the woods, he himself would tail Scully. It had gotten dark by then. Not much moon on a night like this and the deeper they went into the trees, the thicker the darkness was. He wished he dared get out his flashlight, but he didn't want to be seen by Scully. She, at least, had hers out, casting a bright beam, that unfortunately seemed to emphasize how pitch black it was, rather than illuminate.
How the heck, he wondered as they tramped through the trees, did he end up with the short end of this stick? Stalking a fellow agent on her personal leave time? Chasing after someone so paranoid that she wouldn't even share her leads with investigation that was supposed to find her partner? And it was bad enough that Mr. and Mrs. Spooky were so paranoid, but he'd been really surprised to find it in AD Skinner. Who, Doggett thought wryly, should be the one called Mrs. Spooky. Keep that one close to my chest. I'd have expected it out of Mulder, but not the AD.
Before long, he heard not one, but two voices cry out simultaneously. "Mulder!" they both called. Then the whole sky lit up with a godawful bright light for a moment. Doggett looked up and saw what his mind could only describe as a UFO- a big, ominous metallic object hanging in the air in exactly the way that objects that big and solid shouldn't. What the hell? He froze, knowing what he was seeing. Knowing that there was no way it could be what his mind was telling him it was. Then the UFO rose precipitously, so amazingly fast. There was no way a craft using current technology could do that. Suddenly, it was gone, flying so fast it was out of sight before he could hardly register that it was moving. Then Scully called out again with such desperation and pain that he forgot himself. He ran to the sound of her voice, his natural instinct to help the damsel in distress taking over.
Jenn sat at her usual table at Capitol Brew. Not one of her usual sweet mocha drinks in front of her, but plain, black Italian roast- thick, strong, brain fuel. Seeming to sense important thinking going on, the usually friendly, chatty server kept a certain distance.
Krycek, it could be said, was a bad seed from the beginning. From the first time he met Mulder and Scully, he'd already been corrupted. No, not even that. He'd been recruited by certain men who thought they'd acquired a tame panther. Krycek had been in it from the very beginning for anything he could get out of it. To use a modern metaphor, he played for Team Krycek, and Team Krycek only. He was a bad boy.
And one thing Jenn had seen over and over again. Women never learned. You couldn't change a bad boy. You couldn't tame him. She'd seen woman after woman waste their wishes on some stupid man. No, you couldn't tame them.
But they could tame themselves. They could want to change. Bad boys could grow up and become good men.
But how?
For a genie, travelling back in time was no more difficult than anywhere else. Perhaps some day, Scully's science would find the reason and truth behind the magic. Something about how the genie influenced the quantum nature of the universe, bending uncertainty principles to the will. Quarks, mesons, all of that, dancing to the genie's wishes. In the meantime, all Jenn knew was all she had to do was wish for something and it was so.
She was back where Alex Krycek had first intersected with her favorite agent. The lonely halls of the Hoover. Lunch time. Most of the agents had gone out to lunch already. Those so dedicated as to skip lunch were tied to their desks, buried deep in whatever they were working on. Yes, at this time, Mulder wasn't on the X-files, Scully was separated from him. They didn't even talk hardly. Mulder said it was too dangerous to Scully, but that wasn't it entirely. He didn't have his basement office any more, but a cubicle up here with all the other agents. He wasn't at his desk at the moment, but someone else was.
Jenn watched as Scully wandered through the offices. She'd been here on official business and been on her way back to the elevators, which would take her down to the street and back on her way to Quantico where she'd been teaching at the moment. Jenn watched. You could almost see Scully wax nostalgic about the basement office as her finger hovered over the elevator call button. Oh, this would take just a little nudge in the right direction, Jenn decided.
Suddenly, Scully's hand moved away from the elevator as an impulse struck her. Not one to go with sudden flights of fancy usually, she decided to go with this one. It couldn't hurt to ask, could it? She made her way back through the maze of innocuous beige dividers and coworkers to where she knew Mulder had his office these days. Scully paused to gather herself against the impending coldness she expected from Mulder, who'd impassively tell her, no doubt, that even a lunch date between two former partners was far too dangerous. The man was paranoid, Scully thought. Even considering what they'd been through.
The person in the cubicle wasn't the one she was expecting. No, instead of her Mulder, she was confronted with that green agent that Mulder had been working with. What was his name? He was in a bad suit and his hair was slicked with some kind of gel that made it look greasy. Scully almost startled.
Oh, this will never do, Jenn thought. Scully was definitely getting the kind of impression that Jenn had wanted to avoid. A bit of working her will on the universe and things were much better. Just the small details. One wink and the suit, while no Brooks Brothers, nothing Agent Mulder would suffer to wear, had always been a better suit. So were all the other's in the man's closet. Say, a five hundred dollar suit, rather than the hundred dollar suit it had been. And that morning, due to Jenn's wishes, Agent Krycek had neglected to slick his hair back with gel. It sort of fell agreeably onto his forehead. Yes, much better. Another bit of wishing and the pair hadn't yet met. Scully had gotten sick, sick as a dog, from an unexpected stomach flu. She hadn't been able to do the autopsy and Mulder had reluctantly found someone else.
The universe smoothed over as if it had never been altered. It was like a big vat of water, in some ways. It flowed back into place, no matter how big the alteration, leaving nothing but a seamless, flawless surface, once the disturbance was over.
Scully startled. Then she got a better look at the agent. Kind of green, but definitely on the good looking side. "Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking for Agent Mulder. I must have stepped into the wrong cube or something."
Now, for the crucial part. Krycek. He was smooth, that one. You couldn't tell that underneath that poker face, he was making calculations again and again, playing and replaying for every advantage. He started to smile, though Jenn was reminded more of sharks, or politicians. She'd been owned by enough politicians over the years, Nixon and Mussolini only the most prominent of them. She hated politicians. Uh-uh, Alex. Time for you to start thinking like a red-blooded, healthy young man. You don't remember that she's Agent Mulder's partner. You don't remember the plans that the Consortium have been talking about for her. None of that. The only thing you know about Miss Dana Scully at this moment is that she's, how did the American's say it? Yes, that she's hot. And you like her. A lot. That you'd like to get to know her better.
Alex's smile seemed to melt into a more genuine one. Scully caught the green eyes drifting southward for a few seconds. She also caught him taking hold of himself and forcing his eyes upwards to meet hers. He had very bright green eyes, she thought. Very unusual. He was kind of handsome, wasn't he?
"Oh, no. This is Agent Mulder's office. I was just dropping this off for him. He's out. I'm not sure when he'll be back," the green agent said. He held out his hand and Scully shook it. The handshake was firm, but not crushing, and definitely he wasn't holding back because she was a woman. She appreciated that. "Alex Krycek. Can I help you with something?"
"No, I was just hoping to see him," she said. "Are you his new partner?"
Krycek snorted wryly, then said, "Hardly. We just worked a case together. He put up with me because I filed the 302 first. Even so, he kept ditching me like a bad date. He'd asked to see a copy of my report." Krycek indicated the sheathe of papers he'd put on Mulder's desk. "Are you his former partner? The infamous Agent Scully, right? Mulder's said a lot of things about you."
Jenn snapped her fingers, and suddenly, Scully's interest in the young man surged from tepid to hot. Cupid has nothing on me, Jenn decided. Scully raised an eyebrow and gave Krycek one more shrewd, discerning look. Definitely better than that last guy she dated. "All good, I hope," Scully said.
"The guy seems to worship the ground you walk on," Krycek said. It seemed to Scully suddenly from the looks this Krycek fellow was giving her, that given the chance, he'd like to be doing some worshipping of his own. She liked the thought of that. Sure, Mulder adored her, trusted her. He probably even loved her in a way. But she was also sure he was gay. Alex here seemed like a heterosexual, beyond a doubt. Go for it, she told herself. Go for him.
"I've changed my mind," Scully said, decisively. "You can help me."
"You name it," Krycek said.
"I came here hoping I could convince Agent Mulder to take me out to lunch."
"And you think I've got any pull with him? Not likely."
Scully smiled and her whole face lit up. Her red tresses bounced a little as she shook her head no. She was really pretty, Jenn thought. Her skin perfectly flawless, her bone structure fine and pointed intelligence danced in those blue eyes. Yes, Jenn thought, look at her Alex. This is the one. Fall for her. Fall hard.
"No, I was hoping you would take me to lunch instead," Scully said.
"I'd be honored," Krycek said.
As they gathered their things and left, neither of them noticed the dark haired woman watching them, following them, not quite able to contain a little bounce in her step. No one saw her unless she wanted to be seen.
He finally laid back against the pillow having spent himself. He was normally careful not to actually come inside of Dana, in addition to wearing a condom, and her being on the pill. Just to make it even less likely that something would happen. But this time, just as he was thinking of pulling out, she did some diabolical, rhythmic internal squeezing and he'd lost it right then. Dana kind of giggled. Who'd have thought, Miss Dana Scully, giggling. She rolled herself off top of him. He grabbed the bottom of the condom carefully so nothing would spill. Then he went to skin it off him.
"Oh, fuck!" he couldn't help but say as he got a good look at it.
Dana had buried herself in the blanket, luxuriating the feeling of being well-loved and well-fucked. "We just did," she said, her voice a near purr. Once one got underneath the cool, collected exterior, one discovered in Dana Scully a wild woman. She excited Alex in a way that no one ever had before. She ruled his every thought, waking, sleeping. He loved her, he thought. And that was a very scary thing indeed for a man in his position, knowing what he knew about what the forces that be wanted to do to her. He'd stop them. Somehow. Still, the responsibility weighed heavily in his stomach, even as the rest of him seemed to take flight around her.
"Dana, um," Krycek began, struck almost speechless for the first time. "The, uh, condom broke."
"That's okay, I'm on the pill," she said, nonchalantly. Some things about her were so much a breezily modern girl. And yet others were still so much like a Catholic school girl. "Oh. Fudge," she said after a minute.
"What?"
"I'm on those antibiotics. That can affect the effectiveness of the pill," she said, the hint of panic creeping into her voice. She'd gotten a cut on her arm that, despite the precautions she took, had gotten infected. She was nearly through with her course of antibiotics and the cut was healing beautifully.
Then she composed herself. "The chances of conception, even given no protection at all, in an average month are still fairly low. I'm not going to panic. People try for months and months, even years to get pregnant. Our chances of something happening from just this once are very low."
Well, if the doctor said it, and she must know about these things, then he wasn't going to panic either. He disposed of what was left of the condom without comment, then settled back into Dana's bed. She rolled over onto her side and he snuggled into her, relishing how delicate and small she felt against his body. She was a little flower. A delicate little flower armed with a Glock. And not afraid to use it.
She jumped upright after a moment. "Of course!" she said. "I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner."
She hopped out of bed and went into her bathroom. The light went on and Alex could hear the sounds of rummaging. After a while, she came out bearing a couple of boxes that she dropped on the bed. "The last of my stash. I haven't needed them for a while, until you. But I'd say, you're definitely Spongeworthy."
He looked at the boxes and cocked an eyebrow at her, a habit of hers that had been distressingly easy to pick up.
"Just until my next cycle of pills," she said. "Just a little extra peace of mind."
Yes, a little extra peace of mind. Something they could all use. He was walking on an extremely thin line here with her and he knew it. The possible repercussions were the sort of things that made one freeze at one's core, wake up in the middle of the night, cold dark dread filling one's soul. Dread, Krycek had discovered for the first time, was cold and dark and dry, like the Tunisian desert at night in the winter. For the first time, he had something that would strike him to the core, should he lose it. It was a sobering thought. No, more than sobering. This feeling was to sober what being falling down, long past vomiting, piss your pants, on a weeklong bender drunk was to being merely a few over the limit.
If this is what falling in love is, Krycek thought as Scully's deliciously soft hair brushed up against his face while she snuggled deeper into his shoulder, then I'm never going to do it again.
He'd put off his report to Spender as long as he could get away with it. But, as could be expected, the day came where he had to pay the piper. He was summoned in the usual way. Spender just appeared in his car, waiting for him. Krycek was on his way home from the Bureau for the evening. He was going to meet Dana as soon as she through with some autopsy she was doing.
"Why, hello, Alex. So good to see you. At long last," Spender said. Normally Krycek hated the smooth and oily voice. Today, it caused shivers of revulsion to shimmy up and down his spine. If the cause was so good, if they truly were saving America and even the world, then why were the means so reprehensible and those who set those means into motion so repulsive? Why was it people like Spender and that snake Bill Mulder at the helm, and not people like Fox Mulder?
"You've been avoiding me, Alex," Spender said. "The committee isn't happy. It's time for your report."
"It's not ready. There are more factors involved here than you told me about. I need more time to analyze them before I can recommend a course of action."
"You report today. As soon as we get there. Drive."
Alex clenched his jaw, but he started the car. Spender lit another cigarette. Alex nearly choked, as usual, on the sudden, thick smoke that filled the car interior. It wasn't even good, clean, nice smelling smoke, like from a campfire. No, cigarette smoke was stale from the very first exhale. For the first time, he dared to reach over to the control panel and lower all the windows. Spender frown as the wind whipped around the compartment, blowing the smoke away and disturbing Spender's hair.
"I'm allergic," Krycek said, concentrating on driving and wondering idly if he'd be able to reach his gun before Spender reacted, and if they go through a stretch of country isolated enough for him to shoot the bastard and dump him. And how he'd escape his death warrant if he did just that.
No, that didn't happen. Spender directed him to a suburb on the far side of the city. Once there, they parked near an almost anonymous office tower of the type that littered suburbia. Ten stories, glass and concrete, no sign indicating a company, part of it for rent. It could have been anywhere. They went up together, into a generically luxurious office. Krycek was shepherded into a conference room with a big, plate glass window that looked out over miles and miles of office parks, strip malls, parking lots and expressways.
Three men were waiting for him and Spender. Krycek recognized them as Spender's major domos, men under him, not anyone above him or his equal.
"Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us, Alex, as to these further factors that need such careful analysis that you've put off your report for nearly a month."
"Well," Krycek began. He had a bundle of papers in his brief case that were meant to be the start of his report to these men. He'd foundered, struggled again and again, trying to come up with some justification, some reason for them to leave Scully alone. Some way he could convince them that she was toothless enough to be no threat.
"First of all, I'm struggling here because I fail to see that either Mulder or Scully are as dangerous or as much of a problem that you've led me to believe. Not only doesn't Dana Scully not have any idea of what the truth is, she doesn't want to see it. She doesn't want to look. She refuses to believe."
Part of this was true. Part of it was an outright lie.
"Keep her at Quantico. Keep her busy with conventional cases, simple murders, the like, and she will be happy enough to never nose into our business."
"That's your carefully considered opinion?" asked one of Spender's henchmen. This one was a big, dangerous looking black man that put Krycek in mind of nothing so much as a silverback gorilla.
"It is. I've had ample opportunity to observe her. She would be a formidable problem, if only, like Mulder, she wanted to believe."
"And what of Mulder?" asked Spender. "You say he's not as much of a problem as we've led you to believe. Perhaps you can explain your perception."
"He knows nothing. He has a few bits and pieces. Nothing of significance as far as I can tell from his files. He doesn't have enough to even begin to put them together. The problem here is not Mulder. The problem is that Mulder has a source again. There's a leak from our side. I need more time to find who this leak is. Find the leak, plug it, and Mulder is left wandering around in the dark again, a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn't there."
"All right, then, Alex," Spender said, blowing out a cumulonimbus of smoke. "Go find your leak. And plug it. Let me know when you have a plumbing bill for me."
And then they all filed out, leaving him alone in the conference room. The big silverback stared at him as they left, but he was soon alone, left to show himself out apparently.
His phone chirped. He startled, so still on his adrenaline high from lying so bald facedly to such deadly men.
"Krycek," he answered, expecting it to be Mulder, who, now that they were more or less partners, expected Alex to be his bitch and run his little errands day and night.
"Alex, where are you?"
It was Scully. Alex might have been a new initiate into the mystery of things female, but he could tell this much, whatever was causing that catch in Scully's voice and that roughness, it wasn't good. Yes, she'd probably been crying already.
"I had an errand to run," he lied. "I'm on my way to meet you now. I'm in, uh, Tyson's Corner."
He had guessed. Wherever he actually was, that was close enough. It was the right direction.
"You have to come home now, Alex," she said, and he could tell that she was crying again.
"I can't talk now, sweetie, it's not a good time. But I'm on my way. I promise," he said. He'd already left the conference room and he was on his way back to the elevator.
"Look, I'm about to get into an elevator," he said. "The phone is probably going to cut off. But I'm on my way. Whatever's wrong, I'll be there soon. We'll make it okay. All right, sweetie?"
He didn't hear her answer. The elevator doors had shut, enclosing him into the steel capsule. He shut his phone down and hurried back to his car. All the way, he was picturing various emergencies. Fox Mulder dead. Fox Mulder in some trouble. Because for all that she seemed to love Alex, Fox Mulder was ever present on her mind.
Alex was not, therefore, prepared to pull up in front of Scully's Georgetown apartment and as soon as he got out of his car, to be confronted with a full-on furious Mulder, something he'd seen but never been on a collision course with before. He hadn't even gone two steps when he was grabbed by the collar and thrown against the hood of his car.
"You goddamn, lousy, son of a bitch," Mulder yelled, drawing back in preparation to take a good swing.
Enough was enough. Whatever he'd done to piss Mulder off so much, Alex wasn't going to take the abuse. He was much quicker than Mulder and he ducked. Mulder presented a perfect opening, his stomach unguarded and vulnerable. One quick punch to the gut and Mulder would be out on the pavement. Usually, he preferred not to fight, but when he did, Alex fought for keeps. Luckily for Mulder though, Scully was right there. She pulled Mulder away from him and started yelling.
"Go home, Mulder!" she yelled. "I told you, this is between him and me. Didn't I tell you to go home?"
Krycek was almost sorry for Mulder. To be on the receiving end of Scully's fury was something that was always ferverishly to be avoided.
She continued. "Last time I checked, Mulder, I am an adult. And this is my conversation to be having with him. If you continue brawling in the street like this, I will call the police."
The pair of them sprang apart and Mulder lifted his hands and stared at them, as if surprised by the violence he'd been intending to commit.
"I'll call you in the morning," Mulder said, then he shook his head as if he still didn't understand something. "And you," he said, pointing to Krycek. "Will do right by her."
With that, Mulder stalked off.
It wasn't that far from Georgetown to a little bar that Mulder knew not too far from the Hoover. Even on foot, it was a fairly quick trip, fueled by righteous indignation and anger.
You know, Mulder, he told himself. If that whole Christian God we pay for our sins thing is true, you're going to have a pretty large balance in your wrath account that you're going to have to pony up in repentance.
Actually, that was the confusing thing. The sudden, unthinking anger he felt towards Krycek, almost as if it were displaced somehow. Scully was right. This was between her and Krycek. And he didn't have any claim on Scully. He couldn't. Not of that kind.
Ah. Yeah. The bar, he thought as he came to its door. It was about a block from the Hoover and blessedly, therefore, free of other fibbies. They all seemed to avoid it for some reason. His theory was that they didn't come because they didn't want to run into people from work. That meant it was all his.
It was the sort of generic yuppie sports bar you saw all over, the walls decorated with a mix of sports pennants and jerseys and antique junk. The bar was polished dark wood and as he settled onto a stool at it, he tried to decided between hard liquor or beer. A quicker drunk or a slower drunk? Both would leave him regretful and hungover in the morning. There was a reason he hardly ever drank, but this evening seemed to call for it.
The barmaid was perky and blond. She looked far too young to be legally serving alcohol. She was new here. "Howdy!" she said with a smile that actually caused dimples to appear in her cheeks. The perky extended not just to her breasts, but to her voice. Another young innocent, not yet beat down by the world. "What can I get for you?"
Suddenly it became a hard liquor kind of night immediately. "Snakebite," Mulder said.
"Okay. But you know what they say, 'One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor,'" she said as she began expertly setting up the shot, getting out the lime and salt. She indicated the four or so bottles of tequila on the top shelf. "Any preference on the tequila?"
He shook his head. That was part of the problem with yuppie bars. They actually expected you to enjoy the getting drunk process, to have an opinion about obscure tastes in something that was mostly a burn down the throat. The taste, as far as Mulder was concerned, was merely incidental to the getting drunk process. "Uh-uh. House brand. Your cheapest."
By his third one, she seemed inclined to ask for his car keys. "I didn't drive here," he promised. At least he hadn't started babbling about his work. He had a vague impression of himself drunk, in a similar bar, spouting off about chasing little green men with a badge and gun, but he couldn't remember whether that was a memory of something he'd done or whether it was just something he feared himself doing some day. His memory seemed muddled, confused. Nothing was quite as it should be.
He was about to call for his fourth, when a large body settled itself on the stool next to his. A large, familiar presence. Fuck. This was exactly the last person in the world Mulder wanted to be caught drunk and maudlin by. Because he knew that he would say something that they both would regret and that would no doubt cost him the job that he was hanging onto by the skin of his teeth anyway.
"Agent Mulder," Skinner said, nodding towards the perky bartender. She tore herself away from some conversation with a group of jerks in ties.
"Well, hello, big, bald and beautiful! What can I get for you?" she said, downright sparkling at the newcomer. Mulder expected Skinner to sit up and take notice, to straighten his spine and posture a little. It was the standard response of a man confronted with a pretty girl sending off interested signals, even if it was a situation like this, where the signals were sent only to encourage bigger tips. When she'd been pouring earlier, Mulder had noticed a dent in her ring finger. Her perkiness was married or at least engaged.
Skinner still remained slouched on his stool, the only time Mulder had seen the big man slouch. "Scotch," he said. "A double." When she seemed inclined to ask which of the single malts on the top shelf he wanted, he added, "J and P, if you have it. Anything else but that single malt crap if you don't."
Miss Perky served Skinner and then retreated to the group of suits, glad to be in the company of those who were happy to flirt. She'd set Mulder up with another shot while she'd been at it and that was good enough for him.
"As usual, I'm way ahead of you, sir," Mulder said after the burn from his tequila had gone away.
"And as usual, Mulder, you'll find it doesn't take me long to catch up," Skinner said, downing his own drink. "And that I'm not as far behind as you think."
They waited in silence until they could capture the attention of their barmaid again. When Mulder had another shot of tequila under his belt, about two more than he could handle gracefully, he said, unable to stop the little demon that seemed to own control of his mouth at the moment. "So, what sorrows are you attempting to drown?"
By way of a response, Skinner dug into the pocket of the suit jacket he'd draped over a nearby bar seat. He held a small something cupped in his hand. He dumped this onto the surface of the bar. A gold band, recognizably only one thing- a wedding ring. A man's wedding ring.
"I don't know how. I don't know why. But tonight I got the courage to do something I should have done years ago," Skinner said. "Something I never had the nerve to do."
Mulder indicated with a nod of his head that he was listening and Skinner continued. "I asked Sharon for a divorce. It was wrong of me to keep her like that. To have married her in the first place."
"I didn't know you were married, sir," Mulder said.
"Didn't know? You should have assumed. It's expected, Mulder. For the climb to the top. Single men don't get promoted. A pretty wife is a symbol of all the right things. The ultimate success accessory."
"So the fact I've never climbed to the top of the career ladder at the Bureau has everything to do with the fact I'm single and nothing to do with me chasing little green men and UFOs."
"You're the exception, Agent Mulder, always the exception," Skinner said, motioning to the barmaid that he wanted another. "There won't be pressure on me for a while, thankfully. I'm at an age where divorce is almost expected. Though I've only got a few more years before they realize I didn't get divorced to trade my wife in for a newer, prettier model. But at least I have some breathing room."
"So why did you ask for the divorce," Mulder said, the generous lashings of alcohol he'd laced himself with had removed most, if not all of his better judgment.
It seemed that Skinner had had a similar removal, because he said almost immediately, without hesitation. "Because I'm gay, Agent Mulder, and I'm sick of using such a lovely, beautiful, caring woman as nothing more than a disguise to hide behind. Because I decided tonight that I loved her and cared enough for her to let her go. She cried. I don't think I've ever seen a woman cry so much. But I think she was relieved, too. I hope."
He seemed inclined to go further, but Mulder's phone chirped. He shrugged apologetically, and Skinner nodded. He understood. Almost nothing in their lives was safe from that particular interruption.
Mulder dug his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the antenna. "Mulder," he said into it, as soberly as he could muster. If it was something important, he was screwed, he thought.
"Hey there, Agent Mulder," said the voice on the phone, that strange combination of New York laid heavily over Southern drawl. Ordinarily, Mulder would have been happy to hear that voice. "I just happened to be in town. I was wondering if maybe you'd want to get together. I'm free tonight."
"John," he said, cautiously. "It's not a good time. I'm sorry. Some other time? I'll probably be up to New York again before too much longer. Next weekend probably."
Alex Krycek's buddy in homicide, the one who'd given him the information on the Coles case, had turned out to be a most interesting...acquaintance for Mulder to have made.
"Oh," John said, sounding disappointed. He was a big boy though. He knew the score. He wasn't about to make a fuss. "All right. Some other time then. You got my number."
Mulder hung up, and turned to Skinner, who was trying very, very hard to look like he wasn't listening. That same demon who couldn't shut up earlier took charge of Mulder's mouth again. "Boyfriend of mine. Sort of. He's married. I'm the other woman."
Score one for me, Mulder thought grimly, wondering if he'd just cost himself his job, despite Skinner's earlier confession. He still had the ability to shock Skinner. The man was looking kind of poleaxed. Probably the liquor wasn't helping.
They had another couple more drinks together, mostly in silence before Skinner ventured. "You're not here drowning your sorrow over him, are you? The man on the phone?"
"No. That relationship is going fairly well, as such things go. I don't expect too much from him and he tends not to let me down," Mulder said, shaking his head, unable to do anything but say the truth by this point, in its full untarnished glory. "It's Scully, sir."
He had to clap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from announcing what had happened to her. She was right. It was her news, not his. Hers to share with the world or not. Hers to discuss with the only other person in the world who had a vote in what would happen next. And that person was not Fox Mulder.
"She's going through a life change. Something significant. And it's not something I can be at her side for. I'm not going through it with her."
Somehow, there was a strange juxtaposition of feeling. Part of him knew that it should be this way, her with a man who loved her as intensely as Krycek loved her. He'd been blind to it for a long time, but tonight, his eyes opened, Mulder had seen the fire that burned in Krycek's eyes when he looked at Scully. It was fitting that she should have someone who loved her like that, when Mulder himself couldn't. But part of Mulder felt otherwise. It was like something in him knew what it was like to love her. Like a straight man loves a woman. Like an echo of memory, he could almost feel what it would be to just look at her and have his cock stiffen. Part of him knew that, impossible as it was, he should be with her. That he appreciated her loveliness on a level more than merely intellectually and aesthetically. That in some way, they were soul mates. Then...then reality asserted itself. Fact was, he was gay. He couldn't get it up for her, much less impregnate her. He thought longingly at how Krycek had that mad passion for Scully. No one would ever look at him that way.
Well, he'd caught John in New York making a similar kind of look, sometimes. But John had also not made a single move to leave his wife and anytime Mulder caught him in a longing stare, John suddenly found an excuse to leave quickly. Mulder liked John immensely and had he not been so cautious, he could have let himself feel far more for the intense, masculine cop. In another life, another set of circumstances, they might have been very happy together.
"It's understandable, Agent Mulder," Skinner said. "You're not in love with her. But you do love her."
"With my life, sir. There's nothing I wouldn't do for her."
"Including letting her go gracefully? To this other man? I'm assuming she's found love with another man," Skinner said with exaggerated gentleness.
"I'm going to have to, aren't I?" Mulder said. "I don't see that life has given me any other choice."
Mulder glanced at his watch, suddenly aware that the hour was getting late and that furthermore, he'd settled into this evening's drinking bout with no ballast in his stomach. He was definitely getting to the point where remaining on the stool was doubtful.
Full of Dutch courage like he was, he reached out to his boss in a way he'd never thought he could. "Do you have a place to go for tonight?" he asked, touching Skinner on the forearm. He hoped he sounded solicitous, caring. More likely it was lubricous and slobbery. Skinner didn't seem to take offense.
"I was thinking of sleeping it off on the office couch," Skinner said, after downing what Mulder decided would be his last scotch for the evening.
"Uh-uh," Mulder said shaking his head. "You're coming home with me."
Then he remembered the flaw in his little plan to offer Skinner shelter and succor for the night. No guest room. Hell, no main bedroom. The apartment's sole bedroom was a storage room, not even a bed in there. He'd slept on the sofa ever since he'd moved in to the apartment, after the end of his disastrous relationship with Richard. He'd always meant to get around to getting a bed.
"I, uh, um. All I can offer you is the couch, but it's probably more comfortable than the couch in your office. And there's no early morning cleaning crew in my apartment."
Well, Mulder wasn't quite sure what he would do for himself, but he thought he might have a sleeping bag around somewhere. Or just a pile of blankets on the floor.
Skinner spent a moment tracing a condensation ring on the smooth, dark wood of the bar with his index finger. Then he looked into Mulder's eyes. He seemed a lot more sober than Mulder felt. Well, not only was Skinner a bigger guy, the way he drank, Mulder guessed that he was a much more frequent drinker than Mulder was. Yeah, he probably held his liquor a lot better than Mulder did. That was probably a good thing, because Mulder was thinking that perhaps the floor wasn't such a bad place to be at the moment. Perhaps he could use a bit of support from the big guy.
Skinner shrugged. "You get us a cab, I'll settle the tab."
Mulder tried to protest, tried to hand Skinner a handful of bills for his portion but they were refused. The big guy was nothing if not stubborn.
Outside, the night was surprisingly mild, and if Alexandria were a little closer or if he were a little bit more sober, he might have started walking that way. The breeze seemed almost playful as it rifled through his hair, reminding him of a lover's hands, of John's hands. No, better not think about that, about something that could only be stunted, hidden in the darkness. Better not to let himself care for John.
Meanwhile, Skinner's phone rang. Skinner barked into it, "Skinner here."
Definitely Skinner was less drunk than Mulder. He listened patiently to the other end of the line. "Sharon," he responded finally. "I'm fine. I'm staying with a friend tonight."
He paused. Mulder tried really hard to not be listening.
"Sharon. No. We'll talk about it tomorrow. We've already both said too much that we'll regret," he said, sounding infinitely patient. "I'm sorry. Beyond words. But it's for the better this way."
Skinner listened for a few moments more, then said. "Tomorrow. At five. Jane's office. Yes. I do love you. Goodnight, Sharon."
Skinner folded his phone shut and stuck it back in the pocket of his suit jacket. "She wants me to come home and spend the night. Says that there isn't any reason for me to move out right away."
"Better to make a clean break of it," Mulder said, then suddenly, their cab was there.
The news, for all its pounding, thudding, heart snatching finality, was nothing that Krycek didn't expect somehow.
And for all that it seemed to rip his heart right out of his chest with breathtaking, world-shaking, earthmoving rapidity, part of him was flying. Yes, the ground had suddenly turned to liquid under his feet, but part of him was more ecstatic than he'd ever been.
She was pregnant.
With his child.
And that was the most amazing, frightening, terrible thing he'd ever heard anyone say to him.
Because he could dream his little dreams of a cottage with white fence and roses, in the Ukrainian countryside where he'd spent some of his childhood. With the children playing in the yard and her waiting there for him to come home. He could dream that all he wanted, but he knew that it could never be for the likes of him. He was in so deep that he could only hope to stay afloat, never hope to get out of the morass.
Even if he could smooth talk his way out of his superiors abducting her, turning her over to their experiments, even if he could stop them from using him against her, even if they would allow him to marry her, Krycek knew that he couldn't stop them from taking the child. Or another one.
How? How could he do right by her? Yet, he knew, not just for the sake of their own souls that he would have to.
Mulder told him he had to. And there was a connection between the two of them that he could neither deny nor ignore, that was not of his choosing. Some common thread of fate bound them together. He could feel it in his very bones.
He was frozen. Unable to speak. Scully was calm, but in the way that seemed to indicate that it was an exquisite act of control, that any minute she might lose. Her lovely ivory face was ice at this moment. Ice that would melt at any moment into a river of tears.
And nothing he could do or say would stop it.
No, no, no, Jenn thought, looking in at the two of them. This was not going right at all. People could be so unpredictable at the worst of times.
She looked in the window at the pair of them. Scully curled up on the couch, looking drained. Jenn definitely recognized a woman who had cried all the tears she had. On the other side of the room, in a chair, slack jawed and thunderstruck, sat Alex Krycek. His mind was obviously spinning at hundreds of miles an hour, but, to use a modern way of putting it, the clutch refused to engage and in the end, he was just spinning his wheels. Soon, though, Jenn thought, the clutch would engage, the wheels would bite dirt and he would flee. No, that wasn't how it was supposed to go.
Right. He needed a little push in the right direction. A little encouragement. A little lubrication to the mouth. A simple snap of the fingers and it was so.
It's okay, Alex, Jenn found herself saying outloud. The truth doesn't hurt as much as you think it will. It won't. I promise. You'll have a happy storybook ending. I can give you that sort of thing.
Not knowing why he was doing it, but as a creature of instinct, he just went with it, he was on his feet and across the room. He knelt at Scully's feet, as if worshipping her like the queen that she was.
"That's the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me," he said, the first thing either of them had said in five minutes. She looked at him doubtfully. "But Dana. There's something I have to say to you. Something important. I want you to promise me that you will listen before you do anything. Can you do that?"
Scully nodded.
"I am not who I have said I am. I am not Alex Krycek, son of cold war refugees. My name is Valery Ivanovich Chernokov. I was born in Moscow. I was taken from my parents at five and raised in a variety of foster homes all across the country formerly known as the Soviet Union. I even spent a few years in this country, in various Baltic states and in England. I report not just to Mulder and to the FBI hierarchy, but also to a man you know as the smoking man. I know him as C. B. G. Spender, but I have no more reason to believe that is his real name than my name is Alex Krycek.
"I love you more than I can express with mere words, and I would make you my wife in an instant, stay with you. Raise our child. I'd stay home so that you could keep your job. But I'm also scared beyond words. Because there is a struggle going on that you and Mulder have only scratched the surface of. Because those little green men that you and Mulder have been chasing are real. And their agents walk among us. In the halls of the FBI. Everywhere. There is a conspiracy of power that stretches beyond anything that the most paranoid could confabulate."
He should have known. She came from military stock. She was tougher than he'd have ever imagined she would be. All she said at first was, "Do you have proof of this?"
"Solid, hard, incontrovertible evidence," he promised, knowing where and how he could get it.
The woman in her that came from generations of captain's wives, of women who had sent their men off to battle again and again spoke. "Then we will fight them. However we can. And yes."
"What?"
"Yes. I will marry you. That was a proposal, wasn't it?"
Yes. Yes, it was. Instead of answering her, he just stood up. He scooped her into his arms, marveling at everything- at her compact, delicate strength, at the incredible loveliness of her, at how his fear had seemed to melt, bubble and change into passion. Suddenly, he just knew it would be all right. If he loved her enough, then he couldn't but help have his happy ending.
Once they were back at Mulder's apartment, Mulder showed Skinner to the couch with a flourish. "I'll just go get some more blankets," he said, stumbling towards his storage room. He opened the door up, and oddly, no boxes fell out at him, tumbling off their piles. He turned the lights on and did a double take. If Skinner hadn't been with him, he would have headed back out into the hall to check and make sure he'd gone into the right apartment. As it was, he looked subtly around. And yes, this was definitely his apartment.
Yes, there was the fish tank. The long familiar couch and its necessary corollary- the television. The small Picasso print that was one of the few things he'd taken when he'd left Richard. The coat rack. All familiar.
What he couldn't place though was where the bedroom set waiting for him in the bedroom had come from. No. No, he did remember.
He'd bought the set at a yard sale not long after he'd left Richard. Though Richard had furnished an apartment lavishly for him, part of their little arrangement, Mulder had left almost all of that behind, taking only what fit into a single suitcase. This apartment at Hegal place had seemed so empty. He'd come across the sale on a morning run, just as it was opening. The waterfall front deco style in walnut veneer had appealed to him for some reason and the price had been right. Even so, he'd rarely slept in the bed, preferring the couch and the television. The room was a bit cluttery. Things he had no immediate use or place for tended to get stacked on the floor around the bed, but there it was, ready for use. Made up. He remembered washing the sheets last week, on general principle. He'd had the sudden thought that they'd probably gotten dusty or something so he'd pulled them off and stuck them in his laundry basket with the rest.
As he was contemplating this so strange, yet so familiar bed, he was suddenly embraced from behind. Mulder jumped, startled. He'd almost forgotten Skinner was here. He nearly jumped again at the feel of lips brushing the back of his neck, moving softly towards his ear. Uh, oh. Because he was suddenly aware very much of just how attractive Skinner was, something he'd always very successfully pushed to the back of his brain.
It was hard to find the coordination to do it, but Mulder wriggled out of Skinner's arms. "Walter," he said, as gentle with the big man now as Walter had been with him earlier. "Tomorrow. When the both of us are sober, we will negotiate when and what. But for the moment, you're still married. I have a boyfriend. And both of us are over the legal limit."
Skinner, thankfully, even drunk, was a gentleman. He nodded. He didn't, thankfully, seem to be ashamed. "I didn't expect anything. Just wanted to let you know how I've felt about you for a long time."
Then he retreated to the couch, leaving Mulder to throw himself onto the strange bed, with the sheets that smelled heavily of his laundry detergent, just thankful that room wasn't spinning and he didn't seem likely to be tossing his cookies any time soon. No, indeed, he felt a curious, groundless elation that buoyed him even as he drifted to sleep.
Mulder woke to the unfamiliar feel of sheets tangled around his legs and a feeling something like a jackhammer going off right between his eyebrows. Oh, yeah. There was a reason he didn't drink. He remembered last night fairly clearly, all things considered, and was both relieved and disappointed to find he occupied the double bed by himself.
Outside the window, it was still dark and he checked the time- not quite six. Even though his body protested, it was close enough time to get going that he just dragged himself out of bed anyway.
Grabbing a t-shirt to put on, he listened at the closed door for any signs of Skinner. There were no unseemly noises, so he ventured forth.
There'd been no noise, but Skinner sat upright on the couch, looking at a wallet sized picture. Mulder didn't think the big guy was crying at the moment, but tracks indicated that at some point in the near past, he had been. Mulder was going to say something blandly soothing as he headed into the small kitchen for a glass of water.
But his phone rang. It took him a minute to scramble for his jacket pocket and pull it out.
"Mulder," he practically whimpered into the p