TITLE: ...But Dreams Are Free – Chapter 02 – The Last Night of My Life
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:

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 02 – The Last Night of My Life

by Mik

It was a fine day. Just the kind of day I always envisioned when I decided I wanted to retire to this place. The lake and the sky were competing to see which was a true shade of blue and the trees that divided lake from sky were refereeing by being as green as possible. Only the last faint trail of early morning mist, sailing along the far edge of the water like a large grey swan, broke the brilliant color scheme.

The air was sharp with the scent of trees, clean soil, a hint of chimney smoke, the newly hewn and hammered lumber of a new deck and fresh brewed coffee.

I stood on the brand new deck with a steaming mug of that fresh coffee, the king of my kingdom. And inside, poised to defile my pristine morning contemplation was Queen. A CD of their Greatest Hits. I remember once, in ‘Nam, being told that sometimes you could hear the bullet leave the sniper’s rifle, even if he was a thousand yards away, if his bullet was meant for you. And I felt that CD a moment before it began. Clap clap stomp. Clap clap stomp. We will we will rock you. Clap clap stomp. Clap clap stomp. A flock of geese lifted into the air in a cacophony of protest. Clap clap stomp. Clap clap stomp. We will we will rock you. Clap clap stomp. Even the windows were vibrating.

The door slid open behind me. Mulder was smiling. "No matter what else you can say, the acoustics in this place are great." He reached for my coffee and sipped. "It is an amazing view," he said, answering my unspoken statement.

"Yes." I was trying not to wince in rhythm. "Mulder, if you’re going to be out here, maybe you should turn that off?"

"That’s why I turned it up." He took another liberal sip. "So I could hear it out here."

"Mulder, Jay and June can hear it out here."

His eyes crinkled up, puzzled. "Walter, they went back to Wisconsin last week."

"My point exactly."

"Okay, okay." He handed the cup back to me. "I get it. You never were much of a Queen fan, anyway."

"I like them fine, in small decibels."

"Ha ha," he retorted and went back inside. A moment later, the windows stopped vibrating. But Mulder did not return.

I finished my coffee and went back inside. Mulder was hunched over a bowl of cereal, staring at a newspaper spread out over the whole of the refectory table. He didn’t look up when I came in, but announced, "This newspaper’s two days old. And we’re out of milk."

"That’s what the internet is for," I reminded him.

"Milk?"

"News." I jiggled the carton he’d left on the counter. Not even enough for another cup of coffee.

He made a sound. It might have been ‘um’ or ‘huh’ or ‘you’re absolutely right and I’m sorry I used the last of the milk without telling you.’ I’m not sure. Then he chewed for a moment and added, "I’ll go up to town and get more."

"News?"

"Milk."

"Mulder," I said impatiently, "we won’t be able to just ‘go up to town’ whenever we like once the snows come. We’ve got to learn to plan and conserve. We had a perfectly reasonable grocery list, if we had been careful."

"Perfectly reasonable before it got so cold we started living on tea, coffee and hot chocolate." He put the bowl down. "That’s where all the milk went." He resumed his study of the two day old newspaper with an annoyed frown.

"All right," I conceded, "but we can get around that next time. We’ll get the nondairy stuff for coffee and tea, and instant hot chocolate. And there will come a time when powered milk will be inevitable. We may as well get some now." I reached for a notepad. "We’d better make another list before we go."

He looked up sharply. "We?"

"Yes, I thought we’d both ... unless ..." I was feeling flustered, a new but increasingly common feeling around him. "Would you prefer to go alone?"

His expression changed. "Not at all. I just assumed you’d be busy. Yeah, let’s both go. I’ll let you buy me lunch."

"Lunch?" I pointed at the table. "You just finished a bathtub full of cereal. How can you be thinking about lunch?"

He patted his stomach. "Gotta’ store up fat for the winter, like the animals do." He put his dish in the sink and started for the stairs. "Leave it," he called as I moved to rinse it. "Washing dishes is one of the few times during the day when my hands are warm."

"Mulder, it’s not that cold," I countered, exasperated. I rinsed the bowl anyway and balanced it in the rack. "What are you going to do when the snows come?"

He didn’t respond right away so I turned around. He was standing at the bottom of the ladder-like stairs, looking almost pained. "I don’t know," he said quietly and went upstairs.

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Mulder had wanted to take his car, for the sake of the better heater, but I insisted on the truck and I’m glad I did. We put in another big stock of every little comfort food Mulder could think of, a case of our favorite wine, cigars and a dozen books. For years I had been buying books and setting them aside for just this time in my life; long winter nights snowed in, companionable silence, a good fire and a good book, but Mulder had made no such provisions, so we’d cleared off the best seller shelf at the cozy little nook that passed for the local bookstore. We also picked up more candles and batteries and another sleeping bag because Mulder was certain we were going to freeze to death in the dark.

And then I took him to lunch.

There wasn’t much in the way of eateries there; a coffee shop, a gas station with a two seat counter offering microwaved burgers and stale doughnuts, and a McDonalds that was only open in summer. However, there was one nice restaurant in the wide place in the road the locals called ‘town’. It was evidently famous for its game birds and homebaked bread. There were a dozen out of state vehicles scattered in front of the place and we had to wait several minutes to get our table next to the massive stone fireplace.

Our waitress was cheerfully and optimistically young. She was not pretty by even the most generous use of the word, but she thought she was. She lavished smiles and hair tossing on Mulder, who was turned toward the fireplace, warming his hands. "You know," he observed as she left us, "she’d probably lose ten pounds if she’d take all those rings off and wash her face."

"Mulder, you sound positively curmudgeonly," I said indulgently. At least he wasn’t ogling women.

He answered with a superior frown. "I just prefer women who are more uncluttered, more organized in their appearance."

"Like Dana?" I suggested, tucking my napkin into my lap.

He snatched his own napkin up and shoved it out of sight. "Exactly like Dana," he agreed, stammering only slightly in an effort to casually use her first name.

During the earliest part of our relationship I had jealously put a divider between them. It wasn’t hard to do; Dana Scully was fairly fair minded about homosexuality except as pertained to men she knew. Although she stood by him during the last unhappy days at the Bureau, their affection cooled, their friendship waned. I always secretly suspected that she took it personally. Later on, as his restlessness grew more profound, I had tried to encourage her presence. She came, but rarely. We always seemed to have a pleasant enough time, but he would shift deeper into that place where I wasn’t allowed to follow after she’d gone. "We should invite her up to see the lodge," I suggested.

He was considering his hands in the firelight. "Yes, we should do that soon." He looked up as our cream of unspecified greens soup arrived and perhaps it was only me, perhaps it was just the firelight, but he looked flushed with guilt. "Before the snows come," he added quickly and picked up his spoon.

It began to rain as we drove away from town. We had to pull to the side of the dirt and gravel road and get the tarp tied down over the bed of the truck to protect our supplies. Mulder didn’t complain as he scrambled around in the downpour, slipping in ever growing mud pies. He didn’t have to. There wasn’t a single syllable he could utter that could add more meaning to his expression, the grim tightness around his eyes and mouth, the way the rain made his hair hang straight down over his brows, the faint blueness to his compressed lips, the way he climbed back into the cab when the task was done, and sat shivering.

I tugged my jacket off and handed it to him. "Honestly, Mulder, we had weather this bad or worse back in D.C."

"Yes, we did," he agreed, holding the jacket against him like a blanket. "But we didn’t have to deal with it on deserted dirt roads like this. And there was always a Starbucks or a Krispy Kreme to turn into and wait it out."

"Is that what this is about?" I demanded. "I cut off your Starbucks connection?"

"Is what about?" He scraped hair away from his eyes.

"This prolonged tantrum you’re having."

"Tantrum? Thank you very much." He looked away. "I thought I’d been behaving in a perfectly amiable manner."

I stabbed the key into the ignition. "You thought wrong."

That’s when he went silent on me.

And stayed that way three days.

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The first day, we were both equally angry, so it was easy to communicate with slamming doors and avoiding one another.

The second day, I was starting to soften, and looking for signs of the same in him. He wasn’t softening a bit. If I came downstairs, he went outside. If I went outside, he went upstairs. If I went upstairs, he went down. He made sure every door was shut properly, every dish rinsed, he didn’t touch the milk, the coffee, my morning paper. He was turning martyrdom into his own particular art form. I’d seen him do it before, but this time was a masterpiece. That’s not to suggest that Mulder has never had cause to feel wounded. I’ve personally been witness to horrific physical and emotional torture. I’ve even visited some of it on him, in the name of duty. The man feels deeply. But occasionally he dips into the pocket of his sorrow and comes up with injuries that were never inflicted, except in his imagination.

The third day it had descended from art to comedy. Icicles dripped off his glances; his words, which were rare, were dipped in nitroglycerin and shattered on my ears. Not knowing any other recourse, I ignored him. I learned years ago not to try talking to him in this state. He stopped being Mulder ... at least the one I knew. Any reproach I might make would be turned against me, as he appropriated and personalized any complaint. It was maddening to have my own protests thrown back at me as if they had originated in his bosom. So long ago I quit arguing with him. It was just easier on my blood pressure.

The rain had continued, in fact it seemed to have gotten worse. By that evening, sitting out on the porch, the rain was falling so hard that I could not see beyond the bottom of our steps. The trees were just suggestions of shadows, the lake just a vague memory. There was no wind that night and the rain fell in straight, thunderous sheets. It was awe inspiring, and I leaned back in my Adirondack chaise and admired the power of nature on display.

He came out the back door, after a while. I heard the spring squeal on the door and made a mental note to oil it when the weather cleared. He came as far as the back of my chair, and leaned against the wall behind me. I tensed, not knowing if we were about to do battle, or if he was going to make some fatal announcement. Well, fatal to me.

After several minutes of silence, I heard the fabric of his jacket rasp against the wood as he slid down to his haunches. "Rain’s something, isn’t it?" he murmured.

"Yeah," I agreed. I didn’t smile, but I drew a deep breath of relief. I realize to observers it wasn’t profound, but to us, it was enough.

I felt him shift, and then his cheek was against my thigh. "Never rained like this in D.C."

I reached over and slid my fingers through his hair. "Thank God. The traffic was bad enough there."

He reached up and covered my hand with his. "It would be nice, now and again, if you acted like you understood. Like you cared."

"I care, Mulder," I said quietly.

"I know." He rubbed his cheek against my jeans. "But it would be nice if you acted that way."

"What can we do to make this more bearable for you?"

He shrugged. "I don’t know. This isn’t the life I ever envisioned for myself. So it’s hard to pick out something that could it make feel more ... natural." His fingers slipped from mine. "It reminds me of rainy days at the end of summer, when I was a kid. Enforced silence because Mom and Dad didn’t like noise in the house. All of our friends going home soon, school looming ahead. Nothing to do. We felt sort of ... robbed, I guess." He turned his head so he could look up at me. "I hated those days."

"You had rainy days in Virginia," I pointed out softly.

"Yeah, but it was my place." The very corner of his mouth turned up. "I could make noise if I wanted. I could play basketball in the rain if I wanted. I could go out and find my friends if I wanted."

"Mulder," I protested weakly, "this is your place."

He turned back away from me, and watched the rain. It wasn’t. We both knew it.

I tried to make my hand move to touch his hair again, but it wouldn’t. It was as if some sort of force field prevented me. A force field of his unhappiness. What do I do, Mulder? I asked him, silently. Give up my dreams? Go back to D.C.? Be the one who is unhappy? Would that make it better? Knowing Mulder, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the victory, knowing I was miserable. Some choice: stay where I was happy, but he was not, or give up and go back where we could both be unhappy. I had to find a way to make this place feel like home to him. And soon.

After a while, he sighed, and sat up. "Let’s go to bed."

Usually a remark like that from him causes all the blood to rush from my head to my lap, but just enough blood remained for me to argue, "Are you sure?"

He gave me something just short of a leer. "Yeah." He tugged at my hand as he stood. "I’m in the mood for some of that legendary hot make up sex."

I followed him. I was reluctant, but not stupid. At the stairs, I paused to start my usual evening lock up regime, but he tugged again, impatiently. "Leave it. Who’s going to come in? Bears? I’ve got a rep in this area, remember? They’re scared of me." He tapped his chest with his free hand while pulling on me with the other. "Now, come on."

I smiled, remembering another night in these woods, a night when I cradled him in my arms, but the smile faded. He’d had a nightmare that night, and his tortured cries were probably heard across six counties. As I followed him up the stairs, I had a heavy feeling that my nightmare was about to begin.

I wish I could explain what went wrong that night. Mulder did everything to make our first coupling in literally months everything it was supposed to be; he teased, he tormented, he licked, sucked, bit. He whined, panted, trembled, moaned. He presented me with a hot, tight, willing body, and he used it every possible way to send me to the moon and back in one loud, earth shaking lift off of passion. It was incredibly intense, spectacular and ... anonymous. The connection between us, the love that made our lovemaking ineffable joy, had been severed. He was just another body in bed. And when I fell back, clutching my sweat soaked chest, and he settled down beside me, I knew. He was going.

He was already gone.

- END chapter 02 -