Blood of Abraham - Chapter Twenty Seven

by Mik

Bram didn't seem particularly interested that I came home. But Skinner did. He met me at the door of the condo with a rib threatening hug and a fervent whisper that he missed me. I have to say it wasn't just the hug that left me feeling a bit squishy inside.

I'd never had a welcome quite like that, not from anyone, not even my ne're-lamented wife. It was an evening of hugs, drinks, a massage, and lots of silly conversation that was totally Kersh-free. If I'd known he'd go to all that trouble every time I went away, I think I'd go away more often. Then again, that just might have been his motivation.

And all the while, Bram sat on a blanket in the middle of the floor, far more interested in banging things with a yellow rubber hammer than anything the big people were doing. But I suppose the point is that he was sitting. Upright. He looked funny in that position. I was accustomed to a more horizontal shape. Sitting up, he looked even less like me. There was something that gravity did to his face, pulling the corners of his mouth in thoughtful concentration, making him look eternally sad.

I didn't realize I'd gotten lost in my study of him until Skinner nudged me, gently. "It's good to have you home," he said for about the tenth time.

I nodded, still watching Bram. "I would have thought you'd have appreciated the quiet," I suggested. His ears looked different, a little bit pointed at the top.

"I missed the noise," he chuckled, looking up and around to encompass the room from open beamed ceiling to toy strewn floor. "This place used to be a box, and now it's a home." He nudged me again with his socked foot, almost caressing mine. "Having you here makes it a home."

I smiled, but didn't look at him. "Did his hair get darker?" I sat forward. "It looks darker than when I left."

"It's probably just the light." Skinner shifted around to look at him. Then twisted to look back at me. "You know...maybe it is a bit. It used to be like yours."

"His face has changed."

"He's growing, Mulder. They do that."

"No." I stood and circled the blanket. "He's changed."

"Are you suggesting it is a different child?" He was struggling not to laugh at me.

"No, but he's changed a lot in four days." The kid finally seemed to notice me and looked up, lips parted, eyes widened, staring querulously. His eyes were much darker than mine now and with a new definition of color. Definitely not blue anymore. They were..."Holy shit, his eyes are green."

Skinner knelt beside him, turning the kid's face in his fingers. "They are." They both looked up at me. "Is that a problem?"

"My sister's eyes weren't green."

"Yours are." His brow furrowed like a cornfield. "Sort of."

"Not like that." I knelt as well. "I only know one person with eyes that color."

"Who?" The moment the question formed on his lips, the answer registered in his mind. He backed up, horrified and repulsed and trying to hide it. "That's not possible."

"No," I echoed, feeling faintly sick, "it's not." But that expression, that slightly doubtful yet cocky expression...I knew it very well.

Skinner recovered from the shock first. "Mulder, do you think..."

"No," I repeated emphatically. "Absolutely not."

"Let's not rush into any conclusions, just yet." Skinner pulled me to my feet. "Let's review the evidence."

"We have no 'evidence'. We have hearsay."

"We have him." Skinner flicked a hand toward the baby, who had lost interest in us and had resumed banging things on other things. "He's incontrovertible. We have DNA which says he can only be your son or your brother. Given the implications of the latter, I prefer the former, so let's look at that for a few moments."

"What about the implications of the former?" I challenged.

He surprised me by picking Bram up and bouncing him a little in his arms. "I can accept that you fathered a child."

"Well, I can't." I sat down heavily. "I still can't account for it."

"When was the last time you..." Skinner stopped and lowered his voice. "When was the last time you had sex?"

I looked up at him. "The night before I went to New Orleans."

He shook his head. "I mean, with a woman."

"Years ago." I waved a hand backward, in the direction of dusty history. "Literally. I think...when I was in Los Angeles. You know, when Scully was..." I hated that memory. I hated it so much I couldn't put it into words.

He understood. "And with a man?" He made a face. "Besides me."

I sighed. I'd managed to keep the details of that night out of our conversations all this time. But looking at Bram, looking at Skinner looking at me, I knew I had to tell him now. "It was not quite two years ago." I could see him calculate it. "Yeah, the time frame is doable. But since it wasn't with a woman, it's kinda moot."

"Who was it?" It was the first time I'd heard something even close to cold in his voice. It almost sounded like jealousy.

"It doesn't matter," I reiterated, "unless human science has actually come up with a way for a man to get pregnant and give birth, this kid..." I wasn't even looking at him and I could feel those eyes boring into the top of my skull, as if he meant to open my brain and pick out that memory himself. "Why are you asking?"

"This is why I am asking. Here. Look at me." He was holding Bram out to me. "This is why."

"If you're asking me to ascertain Bram's parentage, then you have no right to ask," I answered as levelly as I could. "Because my last sexual encounter had nothing to do with him. Now..." I sighed, "if you're asking me as my lover, then maybe you have a right to know."

He looked startled...positively gobsmacked as they used to say at Oxford. I'd never seen him look so surprised, so utterly beyond his element. I really think he saw it a hundred and eighty degrees different. "I...I wasn't asking..." he stopped. "It's very late. He should be in bed."

I should have felt a little smug, I'd talked him down from a position he thought he held fast. But, the thing is, I'm not sure if my position was valid. I had been wondering for days, even weeks, maybe since the day Bram appeared on my doorstep, if that last encounter didn't have something to do with my unexpected fatherhood. Learning the truth of Samantha's origins only gave my uncertainty legs.

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It was a hot night. I felt perspiration bead up on my brow and upper lip just thinking about it. I was angry - not for any specific reason, not due to any particular event, just a general anger at the state of the universe. I was hot, restless and horny, as well. I rarely cruised at home, being a firm believer of the old adage that one does not have bowel movements in one's kitchen, but that night I was too full of all the wrong feelings to follow my own advice.

I went to a bar on Duke Street. You know, that end of Duke Street. It was dark, it was noisy, it was cool but it didn't blast trance music into the street, have flashing, multi colored lights or flashing, multi colored boys dancing on the sidewalk outside. It was just a pub, for men who liked men and liked to do manly things with them. I ordered a beer at the bar and skulked around 'til I found an empty booth back by the billiards room. I watched the crowd, shopping, as it were, for him; for the guy I'm always looking for. I never find him.

After a while, I had emptied several bottles, waved off a couple of invitations, and decided I was ready to go home, get out the porn and relax when someone caught my attention. The guy.

Hard to miss a guy wearing a leather jacket in Virginia in August. Tight jeans, white shirt, dark hair, eyes like a girl's; the kind that can fill a dark room with passion. I was instantly hard. I got up, walked toward him, our eyes met, and he turned away. I thought for a moment I'd been rejected, and I went outside, even angrier, maybe even dangerously so.

But he was there in the alley. I barely saw him in the red glare of the neon. He gave me an uncertain look. I could only see half his face. Green eyes, messy hair, a mouth like melted chocolate. He pulled back into the darkness, and I followed.

He didn't wait for me. Hearing my steps on the tar and gravel ground, he quickened his own.

I walked faster.

He started to run.

I chased him.

I caught him at the back of the building, wrapping my arm around his neck. I pulled him back against me, sucking sweat from his cheek, his neck, the corner of his mouth. His skin was soft but firm, it caressed my lips but didn't surrender to my teeth. He made little sounds against me, half protest, half poetry. I groped the front of his jeans. His hands flailed around pushing his jeans down. My hands fumbled for a condom.

I pushed him over the rail of the bar's back steps and took him. I wasn't kind about it. I didn't even offer him pleasure for it. I was teaching him a lesson for being so elusive all these years.

He moaned, he cried, he pushed back against me, he used me as hard as I used him. He never said a word, but his sounds were inside my head, making my heart beat faster and faster. I shut my eyes, so I wouldn't see the empty beer cans and crumpled cigarette packs in the grass growing in the cracks against the wall. I reveled in the smell of sweat and sex and leather and the sounds of mewling submission and wet flesh slapping against flesh. I came, hard.

The anger was gone. The restlessness dissipated. Suddenly, I was a free man. All the shades and all the memories and all the regrets unshackled themselves from my shoulders and flew away to make some other poor bastard miserable. I withdrew and tossed the condom on the ground with a dozen others. I pressed a kiss to his sweat soaked neck, and patted his slick, wet butt. And I left him.

But he has never left me.

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I was in the kitchen, making tea when he came back from Bram's room. I don't know...coffee didn't sound as if it would taste right, and if I had one beer I'd have a dozen more. "He's down," he announced to my back.

I didn't look around. I didn't have my face arranged yet, and I didn't want him to see the story there. "You've got a way with him." I spooned sugar in, too much, but I needed something to do with my hands. "You should have been his father."

His voice was as dry as desert sand. "That would have been a little difficult."

"I don't know why it would be any more difficult for you, than for me." I turned around, without thinking, and saw his face. Oh. My. God. He knew.

He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. We just stood there, staring at one another. When I couldn't stand the silence screaming in my ears, I started an explanation, but he held up a hand and sent a glance to the door of Rachel's room. Then he gestured me out of the kitchen.

I left the tea sitting there.

We sat, him hunching toward me from his chair, me holding back a little in mine. He spoke softly, almost kindly, but I knew him too well not to realize that was his effort not to shout. "How did it happen?" he asked quietly.

I shook my head. "I don't know that it did happen. I never saw his face-"

He held up a hand. "That won't do. This is a time for honesty. Did you have a relationship with him?"

"Not that kind, no. I worked with him, you know that, you know how long, you know what happened." I was feeling pretty desperate. "I admit I had a...a...thing for him. I never acted on it. Not while he was in the Bureau."

For a moment he made a face as if he wanted to spit something out of his mouth, something bitter and gritty. Bu the moment passed. "And two years ago?" he prompted in that same soft voice.

"I saw him in a bar. I think it was him." I was lying. I knew it was him. Skinner knew that I knew, and knew that I knew he knew. "We never spoke. We just..." No, I couldn't say it.

He seemed somewhat relieved. "There's no chance that..."

"That what?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. It's ridiculous."

"No chance that it was really a woman?" I finished for him. "No chance that it was..." There was something in his eyes...something more than just the notion that I'd been duped by a trick, or tricked by a dupe. There was something far more sinister in his expression. "...who? Who do you think it was? You think I fucked my sister in an alley behind a bar?" I know my voice was rising. My temper was rising. I was rising out of my chair. He was rising out of his in an effort to calm me down. "What kind of sick fuck do you think I am? Besides," I wiped feeling from my face as he settled me back into the chair, "I was using a condom."

He should have laughed. I mean, it was that ridiculous. But he didn't. He just asked, "What did you do with it?"

"With what?" I was shaking now. Shaking in horror and disgust and fear.

"The condom," he explained patiently, his hand on mine, kneeling beside me. "What did you do with it? Did you take it with you?"

"Yeah, I brought it along as a souvenir," I jeered, pulling my hand free. "What do you think I did? I threw it away."

He took the hint and backed away, finding his chair unerringly. "Where?"

"I don't know...there." I pointed to the floor. "On the ground."

"Is it possible...hear me out...is it possible someone retrieved it?"

I stared at him. "Are you suggesting Krycek...or whomever it was...picked up my used condom and trotted off to use in his little laboratory?"

He looked back at me, trying to make me see things from where he sat. "Can you think of a more reasonable solution?"

I hated to even consider it, but it did make sense. Krycek, if it was indeed him, or someone watching him - or me, collected the DNA to build little Mulders with. But that begged the question...where did Bram get those green eyes? Was it possible? Could it be...? "No, I can't."

Skinner didn't immediately respond. I wondered if, for a minute, he had been hoping I had an alternative solution. Finally, he let both hands fall to his thighs with a resounding slap. "Very well, we have a working hypothesis and no evidence at present to rule it out. What do you want to do next?"

"I don't know. " Actually, I did have a plan beginning to gel somewhere behind my eyes, but at that moment, there was something more important to resolve. "The first thing I need to do is find out if you're okay with this disclosure."

That challenged him. I know he had decided his position was going to be that of understanding, supportive lover, the one with the clinical knowledge of events, but no practical soiling of his own hands with the facts. I'd just asked him to roll up his mental sleeves and dig around in the muck and goo and bodily fluids of reality and tell me what he found.

I have to give him credit. He pulled up his feelings and rinsed them off and examined them, unblinkingly. "It happened before I had any right to object. I can't say I like it, but I'm not going to hold it against you...or Bram."

Well, it wasn't exactly the florid protestations of love and devotion I think I was secretly hoping to hear, but it was reassuring. Skinner had given his word, and now, even if it was proven that Bram was somehow related to the ratbastard formerly known as Alex Krycek, he'd never, ever act on it. "Fair enough. Then the next step is to somehow acquire some of his DNA for comparison."

"'Acquire?'" he echoed, a brow arched.

"A minimum of blood loss," I promised.

"Do you even know where to find him?" He settled back in his chair, looking way too casual for the conversation. "The last I heard, he was headed back to the Soviets, his tail tucked between his legs."

That was news to me. In fact, I don't believe it was accurate reporting in any way. I think he was just trying to pull me off the trail before I ever got started. Perhaps he feared for my safety. Perhaps he feared for Krycek's. Perhaps he just didn't want the worst confirmed, so his promise would never be tried or tested. "I've got a few sources I can try," I answered glibly. Actually, all I had was a gut feeling that if Krycek had arranged for Bram to end up on my doorstep, he had also arranged a front row seat for the show. If he was in town, I would find him.

End Chapter Twenty Seven
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