TITLE: Dendrite - Chapter Six -
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk.
This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not suitable for
children, Baptists or Republicans.
SUMMARY: First time M/Sk. Do you need any more information? Well, I guess you do. I know what this story appears to be...but please, please bear with me. It's gonna' be okay. They promised.
ARCHIVE: Only
with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Okay...hmmm...no specific spoilers for specific eps. Back in the good old days when Skinner was still their
boss, nothing had been burnt and no one's best friends
had died needlessly for the sake of ratings or to jump sharks.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other
X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th
Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is
intended and no profit is being made from their use. I personally think
Chris Carter, et al, should just give them to me, since they're
not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat them much, much better, but there
you are.
Author's notes: See Chapter One for assorted notes, credits and ramblings. They will be omitted henceforth to save virtual trees.
If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop
If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.
Dendrite - Chapter Six -
by Mik
I was still intoxicated. I had to be. There could be no other explanation for his presence. He was dead. I'd seen him die. I'd seen his body in the morgue. I'd watched his casket sink into the ground. And if nothing else could prove he was dead, I'd thrown him down a flight of stairs. That, if nothing else, should have killed him.
Yet, there he stood, unruffled, unwrinkled, undamaged, undead, drinking my scotch as if he came back from the dead every day. And looking damned amused about it.
"I'd like to know what the hell you find so funny. This has been one of the worst days of my li-career." It had been one of the worst days of my life, and I didn't understand why I felt I had to make that distinction to him, and I didn't like not understanding why I felt that way. It made me almost as uncomfortable as sharing a drink with a dead man.
"Oh, come on, Skinner, tell me you don't see something ironic in all this? I've come back from the dead. I'm Lazarus, without the Christ waving his arms over me. I'm an X-File. Isn't that something to laugh about?"
There was something not quite sincere about his words. Something about that faintly forced laugh that pinched me somewhere. "I...I need to change," I muttered, circling around him to reach the stairs. "Help yourself to another, if you like." I took the stairs two at a time, not looking back. At the landing, I scooped up my soiled clothes, and peering down through the rails, looking for his shadow, let my fingers rake across the back of my other hand, hard.
"I believe the prescribed test is to pinch oneself," Mulder chuckled, behind me.
I jerked around. He was standing in the doorway of my bedroom. "How the hell..."
"I don't know." He reached out and took my hand, flipping it over to consider the three thin streams of red. "But you didn't need to make yourself bleed to prove you're awake. You are. This is really happening to you. You're not going to wake up in the morning and find me in your shower."
I grimaced at the implication. "I should hope not."
My vehemence seemed to wound him. "I guess this demonstrates, however," he said, releasing my hand, "that you can't get too far from me."
"Why is that?" I pushed past him and dropped the clothes on the floor of the bathroom.
He followed me in, as if invited. "Don't ask me, I didn't make the rules." He pulled open the cupboard over the sink and handed me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
"Would you stop that, please?" I took the bottle and unscrewed the cap. "It's very disconcerting."
"You think it's fun for me? I was enjoying that drink." He watched me fumble with the bottle. "Let me do that." He snatched the bottle and splashed the peroxide over the self-inflicted wounds.
I withstood the ministrations only because he was giving me no choice. "You've got quite a grip for a dead man," I observed, as he bound it up with gauze.
"Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?" When he pulled too tight and I winced, he made a shushing sound. "Now, now...close your eyes and pretend it's some pretty nurse doing this." He smiled nostalgically. "Or Scully."
"Could you..."I hesitated. "That thing you did downstairs...you know...could you look like someone else?"
"For you?" He drew a deep breath. "No, for you, I'm afraid I will always be myself." He sounded almost regretful. "There." He pulled back to consider his handiwork. "Good as new."
"Except...for the bleeding, the peroxide and the bandages."
He shrugged. "Except for that."
I went out to my bureau and pulled out socks and shorts. When I looked up he was leaning in the doorway. "Could you at least turn around while I change?"
"I suppose." He turned around. "I don't know what you have to be so shy about," he called over his shoulder. "Might as well get used to it. Besides," he turned again, just as I was tugging a pair of boxers into place, "I've been with you longer than you think."
I scrambled for my coat like a modest girl. "Will you just turn around? Please?"
He smiled at me and made a great show of turning around. "I think it only fair to tell you now, I've held your dick while you took a leak."
That made heat rush all over my body. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
He looked over his shoulder again. "I told you it was freaky. There was a period of time when I was seeing things through your eyes, feeling things with your hands." His eyes dropped down over me and his smile was taunting. "Feeling everything."
"That's disgusting," I snarled. "It didn't happen. You were hallucinating."
"Oh, so now ghosts hallucinate," he mocked me.
"Maybe I'm the one hallucinating," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on my socks. "Yes, that's it." I tugged on a sock. "That's the only explanation."
"It's one explanation." He moved to the bedside and sat down, near me but not next to me. "I remember being in a corridor, and coming upon Scully." His voice softened, all trace of leering humor gone. "She was crying. I wanted to touch her, but when I reached out, it was your hand. Not mine."
I felt chilled fingers of fear tickle down my spine and it was only sheer presence of will that kept me from betraying myself with a shiver. I did remember that moment. I remembered feeling detached from myself and the feelings which should have been flooding me at that moment. I remembered that I was afraid that years of bottling my emotions and keeping my anger, joy and longing under tight restraint had finally robbed me of the ability to respond to tragedy. "Yes," I said hoarsely, "I remember that moment."
The leer was back. "And do you remember me being there?" he probed, almost gleefully.
That expression, that tone of voice irritated me far more than circumstances merited...but then, who was to say what a conversation with a ghost merited - aside from a seventy-two hour hold? "I remember you being on a metal table, in pieces," I snapped.
He pulled back sharply, as if I'd taken a swing at him. His expression seemed to indicate the blow would have been preferable. "Yes," he said softly, as he stood. "Well, I don't remember that." He turned around and in a blink he was gone.
It would be fanciful to say he vanished. He simply turned around and disappeared from my field of vision. He might have descended the stairs or stepped into another room in a blink. But he was gone, that was the key point. I finished dressing, looking up every few seconds to see if he was back. By the time I had put on a pair of jeans and clean shirt, I was starting to convince myself he'd never been there at all, that it was just alcohol and grief playing tricks on me. Yes, that was a far more palatable explanation than Mulder returning from the great beyond to 'get his wings'.
I emptied the pockets of my soiled trousers and dropped them into the bag for the cleaners, and put away my cufflinks and wallet, and slid my watch back into place. Well, delusion, ghost or miraculous recovery, I'd still been unnecessarily cruel. If it hadn't been an alcohol flavored dream, I owed him an apology.
I would have given him one, if I could have found him. Coming downstairs, I did a swift check of the kitchen, great room and bath. I even opened the front door and looked up and down the corridor. Nothing. The only evidence that any of this might have been real was that big brass master key on the table in the foyer. I shoved it into my pocket so I wouldn't have to look at it, wouldn't have to contemplate its meaning.
Assuring myself that, key or no, it was all just some fanciful form of grief, I started toward the bar, thinking I needed just a taste of something to clear my head. Mid-step, I switched directions. It was a taste of something that put me in this frame of mind, this state that would leave me open to visitations from the grave. No, I decided, what I needed was a large cup of strong, black coffee. Maybe two. Maybe a bathtub full.
I got all the way back to the kitchen door before I stalled and whipped around hard enough to send my glasses shifting roughly askew on my face. "Fuck!" I wasn't imagining anything.
He was standing on the terrace...on the wrong side of the terrace, his feet wedged between the bars, his hands behind him, gripping the rails, staring down into the pool, seventeen floors below. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Get back here," I demanded, throwing the door wide and rushing out. I stopped just short of trying to wrestle him back onto the terrace, for fear of dropping him. I'd nearly done that once before and never quite got over the rush of fear and unholy power. "Mulder, what are you doing?"
He continued to look down glumly. "Contemplating death." He sighed, all his previous cockiness as invisible as a ghost. "I am dead, aren't I?"
I know I was supposed to be compassionate but noncommittal, I know I wasn't supposed to yell, scold, commiserate. I was supposed to keep my voice level and soothing without being patronizing. I knew all that. So, in light of that knowledge, I barked, "Mulder, we've been through this. You were there at the funeral, that should have convinced you." Although I'm not sure why it should have. I had been there, and I wasn't convinced. Maybe it was having him standing next to me that caused the confusion.
"Yes, I was." He nodded jerkily, still staring down. "I didn't feel it, you know. I mean, I felt something...being knocked down, I think. It didn't hurt. It wasn't painful. It was just falling over," he released the rail with one hand, to make the same gesture one would make to push something over the edge.
"Mulder!"
He was unconcerned. Somehow he managed to maintain his grip on the rail with one hand, without slipping. "A man should feel his death, don't you think?" He tossed a wistful look over his shoulder, his body swaying slightly over the open space. "I know everyone hopes for an easy, painless death, but when you die like that, when you - for lack of a better term - get blown to pieces...shouldn't you feel it? Just a little?"
"You feel cheated," I drawled, "because it didn't hurt when you were blown into vapor?"
"Yeah, I do." He smiled grimly. "I know. I should count my blessings. But I spent my life chasing truth. I want the truth about my death." He looked down again.
I was starting to be afraid. I moved closer, carefully, trying to actually use all I'd been taught when dealing with suicides. No sudden or aggressive movements. No threats. No promises. "Maybe that is the truth, Mulder. Maybe you don't feel death."
Mulder shook his head and the setting sunlight shot green-gold streaks through his hair. "My dad did. He complained of being cold. And of hearing rushing wind in his head." He peered down further. "Do you suppose it would kill me if I stepped off this ledge and plunged seventeen stories into your common area?"
"You? I doubt it," I said with some assurance. After all, how could he possibly die again? Of course, technically, he couldn't live again, either. "But maybe you could harm someone down there."
He wrestled with that likelihood for a moment. "No," he decided. "I have to know."
I was only seconds too slow. "Mulder, wait!" Before I could reach him, he let go of the rail and stepped forward as if stepping onto a train. And dropped like a rock.
I didn't want to look, I didn't want to see his arms and legs flailing desperately to get purchase against gravity. I shut my eyes, listening for a horrific thud which I certainly wouldn't have been able to hear, seventeen stories up. But surely I would hear screaming. I heard nothing. Opening my eyes and steeling my resolve, I stepped to the railing and leaned over to look down. There he was, his body sprawled like a badly drawn swastika, a shadow of red splattered out around him like a red gloriole. The urge to vomit rose up in me again. Instead I jerked around and raced for the door.
There was no crowd around him, even though at that hour of the day there were still people gathered around the pool, or having a barbecue on the deck. As I reached the gate, mobile in hand, wondering how I was going to explain to EMTs that I had to report a dead body which had already been buried once, he was sitting on a chaise, squinting into the falling light, looking dismayed.
I rushed up to him. My first instinct was to punch him, hard, for putting my heart in my throat and sending my brain pounding out of my ears. My second instinct was to touch him, roughly, to see if he was real, and whole, and then punch him hard. But I just stood there, gaping. "What the hell are you, a cat? How many lives do you have?"
He shook his head. His shoulders twitched up and down. For a moment I thought he was crying. I know I felt like crying...at least, I felt like something. But that sonofabitch was...laughing. I couldn't stand it. My heart was still pounding in terror and he was laughing. I grabbed the lapel of his jacket and slapped him, hard. "Don't you ever do that to me again." I slapped him again. "Ever." Then I shook him. "Do you understand me?"
Eyes wide in surprise, he put both his hands on my wrist. "Skinner," he croaked, "people are watching."
I pulled my hands back. "What do they...what are they watching?" I sent a cautious glance toward the pool. People were staring. Shit. However, no one seemed inclined to interfere or put up any protest, so perhaps they hadn't seen exactly what had happened. "What did...did anyone see anything when you..." I couldn't say 'jumped', "came down?"
He shook his head, straightening his jacket and smoothing down his tie. "No. No one saw anything except you smacking around a stranger." He stood up and patted me where my tie ought to be. "You need to work on that temper of yours. You have anger issues."
"No," I said, through clenched teeth, following him back to the gate, "I have Mulder issues."
He shrugged. "Potato, potahto."
End 06