Blood of Abraham-Chapter Twenty Five

by Mik

Waiting a week for the other shoe to come crashing through the roof was enough to have me jumping at phones ringing, doors slamming, too much noise, not enough noise, coffee too hot, coffee too cold, being around too many people, being utterly alone.

Bram, especially, was putting me on edge. His laughter, his crying, his neediness, his lack of need for me, I wanted to get away from him, but couldn't let him out of my sight.

I was snarling at everyone, complaining about everything. At work, I crabbed about delays with paperwork, files missing, meetings too long. At home, I yelled about television too loud, Bram making too much noise, not enough hot water for a shower, not enough coffee in the pot.

When Kersh handed me the assignment, I didn't argue, I just took it. For once I knew this wasn't him trying to get under my skin. I knew where it came from and it wasn't that far upstairs. Barely containing my anger, and with Scully trailing, nipping at me with low voiced caution, I marched toward Skinner's office and ignored Kim's startled protest.

We tended to avoid one another at work, lest one of us give away something about our living arrangements, or sleeping arrangements, but on this occasion, there was nothing lover-like in his demeanor, and the only intimacy he betrayed was that of a supervisor recognizing an employee on the verge of meltdown. Before my fanny ever hit the seat of the chair, he was putting his bulwark in place. "You're going to go to New Orleans. There's a case there that needs your particular-"

I threw the file on the desk. "So you admit you set this up," I accused, digging into my own trenches of protest.

"I did not," he denied evenly, "but I was aware of it, and I approve of it."

"I can't leave right now!" I jumped up, startling Scully who was just settling back into her own chair. "I can't leave Bram exposed like that."

He stared me back into my seat. "There's a case there that needs your particular expertise." He fingered the file briefly and handed it across the desk. "It should take two or three days at the most. And Bram will not be exposed in any way."

"But he-"

"-won't be exposed in any way."

I dropped the file on the desk, less violently this time. "I don't want to go."

"Well, that's unfortunate, because you are going." He lifted the file and offered it to Scully, who took it, the traitor. His voice softened. "You need to get away, step back from the situation. For your own health and that of everyone around you."

"I'm not-"

"You kicked a paper towel dispenser off the wall of the mezzanine men's room," he cut in.

"It was empty."

"And that justified destroying government property?"

Sometimes I think anything can justify destroying government property but I didn't think that observation would help my case, so I slouched in my chair, pouting like the mature Special Agent that I am. "I don't want to go," I repeated.

"But you're going," he repeated.

"Bram-"

"Rachel wouldn't let anything less than a full company of soldiers take that child out of the house, and you know it, and if it helps," he looked down at his hands, spread open in that generous manner they teach you in Assistant Director School, "I'll be there much of the time, myself."

I looked at Scully, in vain, for support. She had her nose in the file, and out of my business. I sighed the sigh of a kid being sent to do his homework after he finishes his sprouts. "All right. We're going." I got up and slunk toward the door. "It was just the towel dispenser. If it had been the soap dispenser, that I could understand."

"Your flight is at four. You're going to have to hurry."

"Yeah...I'll miss you, as well."

Just as I turned away, I thought I saw the tiniest smile crack that stone expression. I felt slightly better.

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Since Skinner decided to send us out of town on the same day as the first storm of the season, our flight was delayed, and we were stuck at Ronald Reagan Airport, drinking really bad coffee and waiting for a disposition on our flight.

Scully, who had kept herself entertained with the case, finally observed that the storm looked fairly mild compared to some we'd had the year previous, and we ought to be in the air relatively soon.

I had been thinking the same thing, about one storm in particular. "Do you remember the blizzard that knocked out power in half of Virginia last year?"

She didn't look up, but I saw her fingers tightened momentarily around the highlighter in her hand. "Yes, I do."

"I'll never forget Skinner marching in to rescue us, like a rampant St. Bernard or something."

"I can imagine," she said, still staring at a paper inside the dark brown folder.

"That blizzard changed everything," I said thoughtfully.

"Well," she closed the file and looked out the window next to our table, "I hardly think this storm is going to fall in the life changing category."

I reached into my pocket impulsively, and produced my mobile.

"Mulder, you called them from the cab."

"I know, but I just want to check."

"What? Do you want to check if Bram is all right or if Skinner still loves you?"

I did not have my usual glib retort. I spluttered. A stupid, telling, soundless splutter. "It's...it's not like that," I finished finally.

"It's not like what?" She still wasn't looking at me.

"Skinner doesn't l-love me." There I go, stammering again. Just once I'd like to make a personal assertion without that adolescent verbal zigzag.

There was a tiny twist of amusement around the corners of her mouth. "You think that, do you?"

"He doesn't!" Could I sound any more like a pubescent girl? All I needed was a pink, Hello Kitty tee shirt and glitter polish for my nails. I jammed the phone back into my pocket and pulled my expression and voice under control. "He doesn't. If you actually think that, and aren't just trying to get under my skin, you're mistaken."

She looked up, the smile all but gone. "And if you actually think that, and aren't trying to hide your feelings from me, you are mistaken."

I shook my head. I didn't trust my voice, or my vocabulary at that moment. It wasn't possible. He was good to me, yes...but that was for Bram's sake. He slept with me, but that was just sex. He'd been supportive throughout my newfound fatherhood, but that was just his supervisory nature and his sense of what was right and what ought to be. None of it was personal. "He's a good man," I managed finally. "He has strong convictions about things. He has strong convictions about Bram. He...acts on those convictions."

"I don't deny any of that," Scully allowed, "but he also loves you. Mulder, he has for years."

"No." There. That was the end of it. I just said no.

"Okay." She closed the folder and tucked it into her bag. "I remember when we talked about everything."

"Oh, can you be a little more childish?" I sneered.

"It was working so well for you, I thought I'd try it."

I slid down from my chair. "I'm going for a walk. Call me when they announce our flight."

"Mulder," she called after me, her voice half impatiently maternal and half conciliatory whine, but I kept walking. I don't know where she gets these improbable ideas, except from jealousy. On the whole, both of us were acting like teenagers; full of all that unbridled passion about things for which we know nothing, but believe everything. Even the Gunmen were a clique of snickering geeks, believing themselves superior to the rest of us, and at the same time wanting to be a part of the drama.

Skinner was the only one above it all. He was rarely emotional. He waited until he had the facts, and then he made rational decisions, based on those facts. He wasn't the kind to let his feelings direct his actions. And he certainly wasn't the sort to do something as ridiculous and high school as fall in love.

He sent me off, not, as he and Scully were both insisting, for my own good, but to get rid of an ever increasing annoyance. You didn't do that to someone you love. Even I knew that. Didn't he understand I needed to be there? I knew there was an assault being planned just on the other side of our horizon, and I needed to be there to...to...well, I'm not sure what I would do, but damn it, I needed to be there to do it.

My mobile buzzed in my pocket and when I checked the caller ID I almost shoved it back into my pocket. I was not yet ready to talk to Scully. Lately talking to Scully was more and more difficult and it wasn't just me. She seemed more...defensively assertive would be the best way to describe it. Skinner and the Gunmen would have me believe it was jealousy that put that extra, impatient edge in her tone, but I couldn't accept that. Scully didn't want me. She could have had me a dozen times over, but she'd never reached toward me, never even sent a contemplative glance at me with anything more than our current case on her mind. Perhaps it disturbed her that I was sleeping with Skinner, which although I'd never exactly admitted, had become accepted as fact. Perhaps it bothered her that, in her childless state, she had to watch me coping so badly with the kid dumped unceremoniously and non-meritoriously in my lap.

I felt that buzz in my pocket again. With a loud sigh for my wounded sensibilities, I pulled the device out and snapped it open. "Yeah?"

"The plane! The plane!"

I laughed. It was rare Scully even attempted humor, but when she did, it was befitting her assignment with the X-Files; weird, unexpected and often unexplained. "Will you show me your tattoo later?" I asked, trying to sound dirty.

"I will if you will."

I snapped the phone shut and turned around, walking a little bit faster, feeling just a little bit better. It always helped to be in harmony with Scully, or at the very least singing the same tune.

When I reached the gate, she was waiting for me, and seemed as willing – nay, eager as I not to revisit the conversation. We boarded in amiable silence, buckled up and braced ourselves without a word about the blow-up. I still wanted to call home and reassure myself but decided that would open the door to more conversation. Sort of the 'in plain sight' clause in a verbal probable cause.

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New Orleans held bitter memories for me, both professionally and personally. I'd loved and lost and made a fool of myself there. I'm sure I'm not the only person who can say that about the Crescent City, but I resent that I could say it. Scully, on the other hand, adored it as if it were no more than a land Disney created as a place to put his Haunted Mansion. She rhapsodized about architecture and music and food. She twitted me about the reputation it had for paranormal phenomenon and my unwillingness to believe any of it.

To me it was humid, and dirty and kind of sad. I just couldn't see the colors and magic, nor hear the music, and celebration. I only remembered being alone when someone I wanted to see never came, the only thing about the city that I found haunting was the way the mistakes I'd made followed me for years.

We landed too late to meet with anyone from the field office, and too early to go to bed, so we had an early (for New Orleans) supper and wandered around the French Quarter. Scully would have been happy to stay out all night. The city did cast some kind of magic over her, I couldn't deny that. Usually I'm the one who wants to be out and prowling, but on this occasion I couldn't have bribed her with an alien autopsy to come in out of the night.

I'm not a party guy...never have been. I have no use for crowds and noise, unless it's at a Knicks game. Seeing Scully turn into one of those women who would flash their breasts for a set of cheap beads irritated me. Not that she was flashing, it was too cold and no one was throwing beads, but I definitely got that vibe. I'm not sure what I wanted to be doing, but I did know I wanted to be doing it indoors, and quietly. I couldn't get her to stay still long enough to tell her I wanted to go back to the hotel and review files, or sleep, or...call home.

We found ourselves at a street corner I'd been to before. I felt a wash of sorrow, banging and buffeting my insides, dredging up feelings I preferred buried and forgotten. I was such a fool. Always had been. All those people, and I had been left completely alone.

"Mulder?" She bumped my elbow impatiently. "Someone's got fresh beignets. Can you smell them? Let's go get some."

I shook my head. "No, I'm tired. I'm going back to the hotel."

"Tired? Mulder, it's only..." she looked at her watch, then gave it a second glance. "Okay, it's after one. But let's get one beignet and a coffee and we'll go back. I promise."

I agreed more to get away from that spot than to surrender to her uncharacteristic wheedling. We found the shop two streets over, and there were a few people already in the queue for the next batch. Experience told me we'd end up waiting, and I wanted to move along, but she was dug in. And evidently, she felt I owed it to her to be a little more excited about the prospect of deep fried dough in baker's sugar.

Maybe it was my own melancholy, but an unexpected hush seemed to have come over the city while we stood there. Maybe we were too far removed from the revelers or perhaps we'd reached the witching hour. What I had perceived as hundreds of people had dwindled to a dozen. The raucous music was now a lonely saxophone floating from a nearby window. Even the oppressive weight of the air seemed to ease, become a little more breathable.

We were next up when my mobile rang. I probably jumped a foot. Scully gave me a look of pity, patience and contempt. "Go on. I'll get these."

I twisted away from the queue, covering one ear with my hand and the other with the phone. "Mulder."

He actually sounded relieved which did nothing for my sense of relief. "There you are. I tried calling the hotel five times."

"What's wrong?" I said it so sharply that Scully, in the act of surrendering the cash, turned in my direction.

"Nothing, not a thing," he said quickly. "I just..."

Scully was mouthing impatient 'What's wrong?'s at me and I stopped hearing him as I tried to pantomime waiting for an answer. "I'm sorry...what did you say?"

"I said," his voice softened, "I missed you. I wanted to say goodnight."

I had to put my back to Scully so she couldn't read in my face the way my heart did a mushy flipflop and landed in a puddle somewhere in the middle of me. "Oh."

His voice got crisp and matter of fact...for that read normal. "Where have you been? I've been a little concerned I couldn't reach you."

"You should have tried my mobile," I countered. It wasn't fair he could say something like that, from a thousand km away, and then go back to business without giving me time to clean up the mess.

"I did. Six times."

I pulled my phone away and looked at it. Six missed calls. "Oh," I said again.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah. We just..." Scully was walking toward me, calling my name, demanding details, "Scully wanted to do the whole French Quarter experience. We were...uh...reveling."

"Mulder, you've never reveled in your life," he said dryly.

That's what you think, I thought. "Anyway, we're all safe and sound. Having a beignet and then going back to our rooms. How's the kid?"

"Fine. He sat up tonight."

"Sat up?" If Skinner's warm almost-intimacy had turned my middle to mush, the knowledge that my son finally achieved one of those baby milestones when I was away from home turned me right back to stone. "On his own?"

"Yes, I emailed you a picture."

A picture. How am I supposed to ever feel the full fruit of fatherhood, when this so called flesh and blood of mine is demonstrated more in technology than communion?

"Mulder?"

I realized belatedly that there was something hot and out of place in my eyes, on my face and I rubbed at it impatiently. "Uh, yeah, thank you. I'll look at it when we get back to the hotel. Umm...anything else?"

"Should there be?"

"Mulder, are you all right?" Scully was there, holding out a greasy paper bag.

"No," I told him. "Yes," I told her. Fuck! I said to myself.

"Well, other than the fact that I wanted to tell you I miss you," he was rumbling softly into the phone.

I swallowed hard but said nothing. How could I with Scully standing there, looking up at me, licking white powder from her fingers, smearing it over her lips. "Thank you," I said finally, feeling as if my throat was bruised. "I'll call you tomorrow." I snapped the mobile closed and shoved it into my pocket. "Thank you," I told Scully, and reached in for a pastry. She couldn't know what he'd done to me. Things had to be just as they were sixty seconds ago, before Bram sat up and Skinner missed me. They had to be. They would be.

Somehow.

End Chapter Twenty Five

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