TITLE: Dendrite - Chapter Eight - La Villa Strangiato
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 Eight - La Villa Strangiato
by Mik
Oh, God. It was not a dream.
Throughout the night, I had slept half wary that there was something to dread about the morning. He couldn't be there, and yet I felt his weight on the bed. He was dead and buried, yet his low, even respiration was as rhythmic and real as the hum of my clock radio. And when I opened my eyes, he was there, eyes closed, expression relaxed, his bare shoulder so close he must feel bathed in my breath.
Do ghosts sleep?
Now where did that question come from? It was too fantastic for my usual morning thought processes. It assumed that I believed in ghosts, and that he was a ghost and that he was asleep in my bed. But on that Saturday morning, evidence suggested that all three were true.
It's shock, I comforted myself. It's not real. All the same, I took great pains getting out of bed, for fear of disturbing that slumbering void in reality. Across the bed, his clothes were a neat pile on the floor. The chair he'd offered to use was still in the corner. It was all exactly as I'd left it the night before. Wasn't I supposed to wake and find everything was back to normal?
Carefully, my eyes fixed on that sleeping face. I picked up my mobile and backed toward the door to the bathroom. Shutting the door carefully, I pressed contacts and scrolled through names. There, near the bottom, was Dana Scully's home number. She was the only person I could ask. I pressed enter.
I expected her to be up and about the business of her life, but she sounded groggy and out of sorts when she answered, mumbling something like "whadehelldyawan?" Realizing to whom she was speaking, she snapped into protocol with impressive speed. "Sir."
"Agent," I whispered. "I'm sorry to call so early. I was just...I wanted to...that is..." Well, hell, exactly how to put it? "Are you all right? You've had a very difficult week and...and I just wanted to know if you're all right."
She sounded bewildered by my concern, possibly suspicious. "That was very kind of you, Sir. I'm fine."
I couldn't be in this muddle alone. Surely the woman nearest and dearest to him must be experiencing visitation in some form or another, she just didn't recognize it yet. "Nothing...bothering you?"
"No, Sir."
"Well, that's good." I didn't sound as if it was good, and I'm sure she recognized that. "If you...if you need to talk..." There was nothing else to say.
"Thank you, Sir." She barely stifled her yawn. "'night, Sir." And the line disengaged.
I folded the phone and put it on the counter, pushing the band of my pajama pants down to take pressure off my bladder. The first satisfying splash hit the water and I tipped my head back trying to relax and let it flow.
"Is she all right?"
I jerked around, spraying the floor, his trouser leg and the door with urine before my brain sent signals to the plumbing to shut down. "Geez, Mulder." I tucked myself back into place. "I am going to put a bell on you!" I grabbed a towel and started mopping.
He stepped back. "Don't snap at me! I was sleeping," he complained. "First good sleep I've had in years."
I shoved the towel at him and aimed him toward the door. "Then go back to sleep and let me finish here."
"I think it's the door," he said. "No barriers. Leave the door open and it will be all right."
"I can't take a leak with the door open," I protested.
He looked at me sorrowfully.
"Okay," I sighed and made a great show of opening the door. "If you'd be so kind?"
He stepped outside. I could hear him brushing at his trousers. "Is she all right?" he asked after a discreet pause.
"She was until I woke her up," I said, flushing.
"Could we go see her?"
"We?" I turned on the tap. "And who will you be? A Jehovah's Witness?"
He pushed the door open wider and held out the towel. "I miss her."
It bothered me. I'm not sure why. I washed my hands and splashed water on my face. "You go see her."
He shoved the towel into the hamper and went to sit on the corner of the bed. I could see him in the mirror and something in his expression made me feel like the biggest, meanest shit in the world. I looked around the door at him. "Mulder, try and be a little bit reasonable. How would I explain bringing you along?"
His only answer was a big, shoulder rolling sigh.
"Well, you never were reasonable before, I don't know why I thought being dead would make a difference," I muttered. "Okay. We'll figure something out. But let me get a coffee first, okay?"
His eyes flickered hopefully and he got up to collect his clothing from the other side of the bed.
I left him there to dress while I went downstairs to start breakfast. I got all the way to the refrigerator before it occurred to me what I'd done, and I turned around.
He was standing there, shirt shrugged on but unbuttoned, one shoe in his hand, looking exasperated.
"Sorry," I said, and I almost meant it. "Do you think you're allowed to wear other clothes?"
"I don't know. Why?" He sniffed at his shirt. "Am I getting a little bit ripe?"
"No, not at all," I said quickly. He wasn't, for all that. He smelled...like a summer afternoon...warm with fresh cut grass and barbecues. Definitely didn't smell like anything I ever associated with death. "I was just curious."
"Dunno." He sat and pulled the Nunn Bush oxford on his foot. "Might be an interesting experiment." He fingered the laces. "Hey, Skinner?"
I was scooping coffee into the machines. "Hmm?"
"Could we go by my place? Is it..." he gave the laces a tug, "still my place?"
I felt a lump in my throat. "Yes, so far as I know, it's yours 'til the end of the month. I believe Agent Scully said something about your mother coming then to close it up."
"Oh, I don't want her doing that." He looked slightly panicked. "She's not exactly the broadest minded person on the planet."
Ah, yes. His pornography collection was legendary around the water coolers of the Bureau. "I don't have a key..."
"Scully does. You could tell her I gave you some death bed instructions or something. Or I could write you a note?" he offered, sounding just this side of desperate.
"That's a good idea." I pushed the button. "Let's get dressed and I'll call her again." I patted his shoulder as I passed.
He stood and hobbled, like the nursery rhyme, after me. Diddle diddle dumpling, my son...Mulder.
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We met Scully at the door of number
"Um, this is-"
"Fred," he put in, holding out a hand. "Walt said he needed a hand with some boxes and things."
She didn't take his hand. In fact, it was almost as if she didn't hear him. She gave me another look and slid a key into the lock. Mulder and I exchanged glances over her head. He looked disappointed but not surprised.
It was clear Mulder would never have won an award from Good Housekeeping. The place wasn't dirty, exactly, just neglected. Mail stood in stacks on the table, on the floor and on the chairs. Dust was everywhere, thicker in some places than others. The bedroom looked as if it was seldom if ever used for anything more than storage. His sofa, a shamefully battered futon, still had the pillow and blankets that had been wrapped around him his last night on earth.
The bookshelf that held his television, fish tank and video collection was the only thing in the place that looked as if it got any regular attention. Fish rushed the top of the tank looking hopefully for a meal, and I dropped a few flakes in for them.
"Uh, Sir..." Scully began, rushing to my side as if she thought she could block my view of the titles of videos just below the fish tank. "There's something you should know..."
"Agent Scully," I said patiently, snapping the lid on the fish food with finality, "I know about his taste in videos. That's why I'm here. He had been concerned about his mother...uh..."
She looked both relieved and ashamed. "Yes, Sir. I...have some boxes in my car. I'll go get them." She didn't even give 'Fred' a second look.
As soon as she pulled the door closed behind her, I started pulling DVDs from the shelf. "Little Mermaid? Cars? Close Encounters Director's Cut? Mulder, these look pretty benign to me. Little Mermaid?" I repeated.
"I like Disney, okay?" He snatched the case from my hands. "Besides, this isn't the stuff I was talking about." He opened a drawer in the table by the window, pulled out a set of keys, and then knelt in front of the futon. He pulled out a long, low footlocker, and pushed the key into the lock. Before he opened it, he looked up at me. "I don't want to give you the wrong impression. This was purely curiosity. Research. That's all."
"Of course. Naughty Aliens of Alpha Centauri?" I pulled a few VHS cases out. I felt my ears going red. This was certainly not what I'd expected. And absolutely not something his mother should have seen. "Agent Scully-"
"She doesn't know the...ah...nature of some of it. She just knows it's porn. Lots of porn." He looked down into the footlocker. "A guy gets lonely, you know. And sometimes, a guy needs a little variety."
I dropped the videos back into the footlocker, and locked it. "No one needs to know about it, Mulder. I'll make sure they get destroyed, if that's what you want."
He nodded jerkily. It's an interesting fact; ghosts can blush.
"I'll take it...uh..." I stopped. "Sorry. Get some other things together and we'll make a pile by the door and take it all down at once."
He stood, hands on hips, shaking his head morosely. "I don't know what else I'd want. I don't have any case files here, and Scully will take care of my personal notes. There are very few trophy shelves in Purgatory." He looked around. "My fish?"
I nodded. "I'll take care of them."
"Oh." He jerked open the drawer again and pulled out a roll of masking tape. "Sentimental value," he answered before I could ask.
As it happened, we didn't take a lot from the place. We collected his clothes on the pretense of taking them to the Salvation Army, and I dismantled the aquarium while Mulder came up with an almost clean mayonnaise jar to transport the fish. Scully thought about doing some cleaning, but changed her mind, deciding Mrs. Mulder would just hire someone anyway.
She got a little misty going through the drawer where all the details of his personal quests were kept, but she bit her lip and boxed everything up. She left the few photos of his family behind, but got his personal weapon out of the gun safe and surrendered it to me.
"Anything else?" I asked Mulder.
Scully looked around the room that had been his world, his womb for so long. "No, I don't think so. He wasn't a man of trinkets. He wasn't sentimental."
I knew she was wrong and I wanted to tell her so, but there was nothing I could say without telling her how I knew what I knew. So I put a hand on her shoulder.
She endured it for a moment and then shrugged it away. "If you'll lock up, Sir. I think I could use a drink. And I think I'd like to have it alone." She held out the key. It dangled from an Apollo 11 commemorative keychain. I let it fall into my hand, thinking, and you thought he wasn't sentimental.
Mulder moved in front of the door. "An iced tea, perhaps?" he asked gently.
She turned around, blinking hard. "I just had the strangest feeling," she said quietly.
"Yeah." My voice was unexpectedly husky. "He's okay, Agent. Wherever he is, he's okay."
Her lip quivered a little and she nodded. She didn't meet my eyes. She didn't meet his. She whirled away and out the door.
With the echo of the door slam still heavy between us, I looked across the room at him. "Feel better?"
He looked miserable. "Yeah," he lied. "Let's get out of here. Please?"
We got.
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We put his aquarium in the study. He seemed relieved to have rescued the fish, even if he felt compelled to make a joke that they deserved to live, being the only generation to have survived him. The fish seemed happy about the clean environment, and the fresh food and new charcoal in their filter, and yet...if fish could be melancholy, those fish were. "It's as if they know," I said. Ridiculous, I told myself. Fish don't mourn. And even if they did why would they mourn a guy who never cleaned their tank and frequently forgot to feed them?
He didn't answer. He was pulling a pair of jeans from the box in the corner. He dropped his still perfectly pressed trousers and tugged the jeans on. I didn't mean to look. But I did. And he wasn't lying about the lack of underwear in the afterlife. It made me feel very uncomfortable. Especially after seeing the titles in his video stash. "Well," I said with false heartiness, "you look comfortable."
He shot me a funny look.
"Well, for a ghost," I amended.
He unbuttoned the dress shirt. Considering what it had been through over the last couple of days, it was remarkably fresh. "I wanted to thank you," he began, as his head emerged from a tattered blue Knicks tee.
"For?" I eased the top of the aquarium down and turned on the light. I swear those fish blinked in surprise.
He hooked the shirt on the doorknob. "All of this. Taking me there. Putting up with me. Getting that...this stuff." He kicked at the box at his feet.
I waved it off. "Listen, I wouldn't want my mother to encounter something like that either." I started for the door. Even though he stood there, I didn't pause or hesitate. I was starting to understand the 'rules' of this haunting. From the hallway I looked back. "And as for putting up with you, I think we've established I had no choice." He still felt warm. And I'd walked right through him. I needed a drink.
"Would she?" Mulder called after, following me to the bar.
"Would whom? Would she what?" I pulled the ice bucket from the refrigerator and set it on the bar. I didn't even ask if he wanted a drink. I had a feeling, somehow, that he did.
"Your mother," he persisted. "Find gay porn in your effects?"
I felt my face get a little hot. "No." I dropped ice into both glasses. When I looked up, he was leaning against the bookcase, with a knowing expression. He knew. He knew the way I knew he needed a drink and was still in love with Agent Scully. I poured Scotch wordlessly. Since he knew, I didn't need to say anything.
"Ever watched any?"
I shook my head and went to my chair.
"Ever wanted to?"
I got up again. Sitting there made me feel like a target. "No."
He grinned at me and picked up his own glass. "Feel free to satisfy your curiosity."
I turned sharply, nearly spilling. "What do you mean?" I demanded hotly.
"My videos," he answered, looking innocently surprised.
"No, thank you." I put my glass down and went into the kitchen.
"What else are you curious about?" he asked from his perch on the edge of the breakfast table. Even though I knew there would be, I saw no sly grin on his face nor heard it in his voice.
I was trying to sound unconcerned by his suggestion, even though I knew my red face was betraying me. "Nothing. I am shockingly lacking in curiosity." I pulled the refrigerator door open and pretended to be fascinated by the contents.
"If that were true, you would have known I meant the gay porn when I told you to satisfy your curiosity. But you didn't, so you're curious about...about more." He slid from the table. "C'mon...I'm dead...it's not like it's going to kill me if you're curious." Despite the chuckle in his voice, there was no taunt, no dare. It almost sounded sincere.
Still it had the impact of a cannon ball to the chest. Fox Spooky Mulder...the late Fox Spooky Mulder had just offered up his body for my exploration. "I'm not curious, I'm not gay, I'm not interested." I shut the refrigerator. "Now, go away." I went back to my drink and my chair. "Go play with your fish."
"I can't," he complained. "You know that."
I felt my fingers curling into fists and breathed deep to keep even a note of patience in my voice. "Leave the door open." The patience was frayed beyond use. "Just leave me alone."
It took him probably thirty seconds to appreciate that he'd said something wrong, something dangerous. He reached out, his hands open in a conciliatory gesture. "Skinner, I didn't mean to-"
Right. Patience up, anger redlining. I whirled on him, voice and fist plunged into my pockets for safety. "Mulder, unless you're trying to get me to kill you again, go away, because, I swear before all I hold holy, if I have to look at you a moment longer, I'm going to get out my service revolver and shoot you 'til death sticks."
End 08