TITLE: ... But Dreams Are Free – Chapter 00 – I Know I’m Losing You

NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.
SUMMARY: Four years after Choices Cost.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Nnnnnnnnnope.
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 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I become king...

Author's Notes: Is a man only as real as his dreams?

More Notes: This is an old story. I had planned to write it when I finished Choices Cost, but I got distracted by other projects. Now I’m free to write it and I hope it will be the better for the delay. I think I have a better understanding now of what the story is about.

Still More Notes: And, Susan, happy endings come in many different forms, not always the ones we want.

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.

... But Dreams Are Free – Chapter 00 – I Know I’m Losing You

by Mik

Kim made an unusual noise. It was somewhere between a sniff and a gulp and it came out as a strangled squeak. In the more than one dozen years she had served as my assistant, I had never heard her lose her composure. "Excuse me, Sir," she murmured, holding out the file.

I took the pen she proffered. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, Sir." Her voice softened slightly and her eyes dealt a glancing blow to the box on the corner of my desk. "I just realized ... today is the day, isn’t it?"

"Yes, it is." I signed off on an expense request with a flourish. Despite the bravado, I wasn’t feeling as much satisfaction as I thought I would. I’d worked hard for this day. We had been planning for it for more than four years.

I should say I had been planning it. Somewhere in the course of events, Mulder seemed to lose focus on our goals. The last few months he’d been slightly to the left of indifferent.

Not that it had ever been easy. Mulder had not come out gracefully. Almost fiercely defiant about his choice of life partner, he was still reticent about actually admitting he was gay, or even displaying any sort of commitment in front of witnesses. It was as if he wanted everyone to know that yes, he was in love with me, Walter S. Skinner, but that didn’t make him gay.

It didn’t take long for the work environment to become impossible for him. He had never enjoyed much camaraderie among his peers and when word spread that he was sleeping with another man, ranks closed against him, making it painfully evident that he was not then, nor ever to be one of the boys. Only his longsuffering Dr. Scully stood by him, but when regulations forced me to transfer him out of my chain of command, they were no longer partnered, and he endured a series of field assignments with rookies, troublemakers and short timers ... all the agents no one else wanted. Finally he resigned, and there was much rejoicing from senior staff and Accounting.

After that, he struggled to remain gainfully employed. He taught a few courses at Quantico and consulted on police cases in D.C. and Virginia. Mostly, though, he paced, fretted and occasionally whined. He didn’t like not being an equal contributor to the daily expenses and chafed living in what he perceived as my home. More than once over the years, he’d informed me he would ‘be late with the rent’, as if he was nothing more than a tenant, and not the man I was loving and living with. We had even planned a vacation in Europe that first summer, a sort of honeymoon, but as he had turned in his badge at that point, he refused to go because he couldn’t pay a full share.

And now it was my turn to retire. My plans, carefully laid long ago, were coming into effect, whether Mulder liked them or not. I wanted him to be happy for me, for us, but the closer it got to my last day of work, the more distant he had become. I almost dreaded the end of this day, and going home to him.

"It won’t be the same around here." Kim’s comment seemed to convey more than the required rhetoric. There was a certain conviction that with me went the last of an era of conservatism, political and compassionate. With me went the last clarity between black and white, the dirty grey banner of Homeland Security settling over the Bureau, smothering hard won rights of privacy, legal search and seizure and assumption of innocent before proof of guilt.

I should have been flattered, or even saddened, by her remark. But since my mind was still at home with a sulky, silent partner, I almost ignored it entirely, and only at the last possible moment gave her a nod to indicate that I’d heard her.

She hesitated. "I’ll bet ... he’s excited." Kim had never once made reference to Mulder after he left the Bureau. It was as if, in her universe, he no longer existed, either as a coworker, or as a gifted irritant she must bar from my thoughts and my door. And my failure to respond must have embarrassed her further, for when I did finally look up, there was a faint glow of pink to her cheeks. "Excuse me, Sir." She collected the files and left.

I leaned forward into the upturned palm of my hand and gloomily considered a framed photograph on my desk. It was taken four years ago, just before we’d entered into our relationship. He had received an award for his achievements in law enforcement, and he was standing at the podium, looking bemused, the framed certificate in his hands. His face was turned slightly, his brows drawn. I remember that moment because he had turned to look down the dais at me, as if for guidance. It was a cherished moment for me.

He didn’t know then how I felt about him. And I had no idea that he had begun to have feelings for me that were causing chaos in his normally ordered mind.

Those were difficult weeks. Difficult and wonderful. It was like watching an incredible sunset, beautiful and blinding, give way to a star filled night. He struggled with needs and wants so intense they might have torn him apart, and when I withdrew out of concern for his well being, he pursued. He sought answers, he searched for comprehension, he wanted an explanation for the bewildering longing that was threatening to consume him.

For all that, he still didn’t enter into our relationship, our commitment, our bed lightly. He agonized over it. I should have realized then that he’d never truly be happy.

His passion was like the ocean, capable of drowning a man, but with a distinct ebb and flow. He would crave me for days, then pull back, out into the sea, beyond my reach, leaving me on shore, salty, and dry. Yet on shore I would remain because nothing was so cool, so refreshing, so good as when he rushed back to me, and swept me up in the swirling, bubbling current that was his need.

It used to be that, even when sexual frenzy had been calmed, and he was dancing out of my physical reach, he stayed close to me emotionally. No matter how he felt about the expressions of our animal nature, he needed me as a friend, a guide, a buoy. More than once he confessed that he saw in me a father figure he’d never had before. It had disturbed me at first, but we’d discussed it, we’d even seen someone professionally for a time, and we came to accept that perhaps ‘father’ was not so much the man who gave him life, but who taught him how to live. These days, he didn’t even seem to need that.

Sighing, I reached for the photograph. "What happened, Mulder?" I mumbled. "Where did you go?" I leaned over and put the photograph into a box on the corner of my desk.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I had to juggle things a little to get inside, and nearly tipped the box over coming through the door. As was usual of late, the house was dark, except for the blue light of the new plasma screen television in the living room, but there was no sound at all.

I left my keys and briefcase on the table, skimmed through the mail left there, and came through, the box still tucked under my arm. Mulder was in one of the occasional chairs, his arms hanging over the back of it, his legs stretched out carelessly. He looked half asleep, but he lifted and turned his head as I entered. He hadn’t shaved. "Hey, look, it’s the F Queer I."

Four years ago, the jokes were funny. Now they were just poisonous. "You’re not dressed," I observed. "We’re supposed to be there at eight."

His eyes narrowed. "Do I really need to --"

"Yes." I cut him off. "Mulder, it’s a dinner in my honor. It’s appropriate that my partner is there with me."

He gave me a mockingly solemn expression. "The Federal Bureau of Investigation requests the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Skinner on the occasion of --"

"Mulder, don’t start that now. Please?" I started up the stairs. "Come get dressed. I don’t want to be late."

Mulder sighed and elevated himself from the chair. "Coming, coming." He pulled the remote from his pocket, flicked the room into darkness and started after me.

"What was that you were watching?"

"Telemundo."

"With no sound?"

He shrugged. "I can’t speak Spanish."

He took his shower in the guest bath. He did that a lot. He said he didn’t like crowding me in mine. When I came back into the bedroom, he was showered, shaved, and working a tie into the collar of a starched white shirt.

I looked at the jacket on the bed. "New suit?"

"Yeah." He reached for a cufflink. "I figured even old J. Edgar sprung for a new frock for Clyde now and again."

"Mulder." I reached for the garment bag on the back of the door. "I wish you wouldn’t say things like that."

"You’re right." He looked mildly chagrinned, reaching for his other cufflink. "Clyde was the one wearing the pants in that family."

"Mulder."

"Right." He nodded. "No J. Edgar Hoover jokes tonight."

I pulled my shirt on. "Thank you."

He was quiet a moment, watching me dress. "Which tie are you wearing?"

I indicated my choice with a tip of my head.

He looked down at it. "No. It clashes."

I tucked my shirt down and zipped. "Mulder, how would you know? You’re color-blind."

He smiled at me with the tolerant patience of the ages. "I don’t have to see colors to know that this stripe pattern doesn’t go with the pattern in that suit." He rummaged around behind the cupboard doors. "Here." He produced a solid black tie with absolutely no pattern.

I looked down at it, confused. "This isn’t mine."

"Yes, it is." He draped it around my collar, and began to measure it. "Happy retirement."

"You bought me a tie as a retirement gift?" Only Mulder could or would do something like that.

"Yeah, I thought it would go with all those flannel shirts you’ll be wearing." He finished the knot and patted where it rested. "There." There was a flicker of an affectionate smile. "You’ll be the best looking lumberjack in the county."

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Only Mulder could yank me out of my despair like that. The laugh faded. And only Mulder could push me in. "Thank you." I reached for my jacket. "You look nice."

He was hunched over the bureau, peering into the mirror and flicking his fingers through his longish hair. "Thanks." He stood and looked at me. "Ready?"

I puffed out a sigh. "Yes." I wasn’t. Now that it was finally here, I wasn’t ready at all. "Let’s go."

He wasn’t moving. He was looking at me, head cocked just to the left, teeth fixed on that lower lip. "You know ... you don’t have to --"

"Mulder, I want to. It’s what I’ve been planning for. What we were planning for." Were.

He reached for the light switch. "Then let’s go."

Halfway down the stairs, he added, "By the way, the realtor called today. You didn’t tell me you’d already put this place on the market." He sounded irritated, put out, possibly even hurt.

That was the ultimate finality, the last page to turn on this chapter of our life. And as much as I looked forward to that happily ever after chapter, part of me -- a larger part of me than I expected -- was reluctant to let this chapter end. I reached the closet and pulled out our overcoats. "We discussed this, Mulder," I chided as he slunk down the remaining stairs behind me.

Mulder was clearly more reluctant than even I. "When did we discuss that?" He jerked his coat from my hand petulantly. "We didn’t discuss you selling the place out from under me without warning."

I frowned at him. "First of all, this is hardly without warning. We decided more than two years ago that we’d put it on the market when I retired. And secondly, why is this suddenly such a crisis? We are selling the place because we’re moving out of the area. We don’t need both houses. That’s not selling this place ‘out from under you’."

"Two years ago?" he protested, tossing his coat over his shoulder. "I’m supposed to remember that?"

"Why not? You remember everything else." I folded my coat over my arm. "We agreed we would be selling this house when we bought the cabin."

"No, you agreed." He reached for the door.

I put my hand on the door, cutting off his exit. "You don’t want to do this?"

He opened his mouth. He glared at me. He stopped, sighed, deflated. "No, we’ll do it. It’s your dream." He gave the door a little tug. "Let’s go."

- END chapter 00 -