by Val Adams
alter Skinner wiped the sweat off his face and head with an old
bar towel and slugged back half a bottle of water. God, it was hot
up here tonight. Grinning at Ace, who sat shirtless and dripping
behind his drums, Walter plucked the sweat-soaked t-shirt away
from his body with his fingertips then readjusted the guitar strap
over his shoulder. After the band had taken a few seconds to
regroup, Shelly stepped up to the microphone, Ace tapped the
count-off on his sticks, and Skinner added his rhythm guitar to
Henny's lead as the band launched another song for the late crowd
here at Blue Jake's.
Blue Jake's was not a trendy club. It was a gathering place just off the beaten path in D.C. that attracted mostly the over-40 crowd—people who liked their food hot, their music familiar and their drinks simple and strong. After midnight on Sundays, former Gunnery Sergeant Pete Shelly and several other moonlighting ex- Marines took over the small stage and played for one or two hours, depending on the crowd. The band's playlist had started out short, with just a few songs the former soldiers associated with jungle heat and forced optimism. Now, after a year of weekly gigs, it ranged across decades. But the newer songs had the same flavor as the older ones the band loved—blues and bass-driven rock.
Blue Jake, the very large and very black man who owned the joint, watched his friends and former comrades in arms from behind the bar and kept an eye out for trouble. The early Sunday night crowd, who came primarily for a good simple meal set to the backdrop of a solo blues guitar, cleared out in time for the second wave. The late crowd, a surprising mix of Vietnam vets and aging hippie activists, came to hear Shelly's band and to let the music remind them of the good times. And to find kindred souls to help them work through the bad.
The band had started by accident, really, springing out of a challenge during one of Jake's Marine reunion nights. Shelly, who had known the young, guitar-playing Walt Skinner in boot camp many years earlier, had handed him a guitar and demanded "Bad Moon Rising," which Shelly had then sung as badly as Skinner had played it. After that, Skinner, who had retired from the FBI and was looking for something or someone to connect with to help fill his time, had started bringing his own guitar to Jake's on Sunday nights. Not long after that, after Jake's official closing time on Sundays, a group of aging rock-n-rollers had started to stay and mess around on their instruments, laughing and talking between attempts at playing their favorite old songs.
The group fluctuated in number for several weeks as interest among the would-be musicians grew and then faded. As a nuclear group took form, the friendships grew stronger and Skinner began to feel more at ease than he had felt in any group for years. One night, after a long session of talking, drinking and singing, Skinner had gruffly admitted his homosexuality to his fellow ex-Marines. Amid their banter and good-natured razzing, he found the acceptance and friendship he had been seeking.
With time, the group had evened out to include Shelly on lead vocals, Lieutenant "Ace" McCorkle on drums, Private "Henny" Henderson on lead guitar, Private First Class "Knuckles" Martini on keyboards, Sergeant "Thumper" Jones on bass guitar, and Lance Corporal "Bulldog" Skinner on rhythm guitar. One night after they'd been at it for a few months, Jake commented that they had finally started to play real music. Now they were the house band late on Sundays, and they had a small but devoted following.
The song came to a close, and Skinner slipped the guitar strap over his head and set his instrument in its stand on the stage. They'd have a short break—Henny and Ace needed a smoke—before tuning up for the final set.
"Hey, Jake! Got a cold beer back there somewhere?" Skinner leaned into the stream of semi-cool air coming out of the swamp cooler over the bar, hoping both to cool off a little and dry off a little.
"What? No whiskey tonight? What's up with you, man?" The black man slid a frosty mug of draft beer across the bar and went back to washing glasses.
"Too damn hot." Skinner took a long pull on the beer and closed his eyes in satisfaction. "Oh, yeah. That's good."
He turned his back to the bar and let the cooler blow on his neck while he drank his beer and surveyed the crowd. The room was on the small side, with space for only about 20 tables on the ground floor. A row of booths lined the back wall, and a narrow staircase led up to a narrow balcony that held five tables and the sound and light control boards for the small stage below. All five tables upstairs were occupied, but Skinner never let his eyes move upwards to check them out.
"Did you see him?" Skinner asked without turning around as he finished his beer.
"Yeah, man. Your old friend looks pretty much like what you said. Only differences are his hair is lighter than you described and he's got a pretty good tan. Didn't know you went for the surfer type, Dog."
"I don't. Is he upstairs again?"
"Same table as always. You gonna talk to him tonight?"
Skinner turned back to his friend and slid the empty mug across the bar. "I wouldn't know what to say to him. Things change, Jake."
"Yeah. Well, they can always change more, Dog."
Skinner hesitated a moment, then said, "We have a lot of bad times between us."
Without looking up, the black man replied, "Must have been some good in there somewhere, too. Why else would he be here? And why else would you be looking for him every Sunday now?"
Skinner knew that Jake was right. There had been some very good times, back when he had first met FBI Agent Alex Krycek. He had fallen hard for the young man. Sometimes Skinner could still taste Alex's kisses and feel the heat of that silky skin under his fingers. He did remember the good times. Were those memories enough to push aside all the bad ones, enough to make him forget what they had done to each other?
"Maybe," he said.
Jake braced his hands against the sink behind the bar and held Skinner's eyes with his own. "Ever since you noticed him coming here nearly six weeks ago, you ain't made a move—either to scare him off or to let him come close. I don't think he even knows you know he's here. Does he?"
Skinner shifted uncomfortably on the barstool and stared at the bottles lined up under the mirror behind his friend. Jake started washing more glasses. "Well? Does he?"
"No."
The black man kept his hands busy in the hot water, reaching for the spray hose every now and then. Glancing up at the big man he had known for many years, Jake cleared his throat before saying quietly, "Maggie says he's been sitting at that table off and on for months, long before you even noticed he was coming here. Why doesn't he say something?"
"Damned if I know, Jake. That's part of the problem."
"What's the rest of the problem?"
After a moment's hesitation, Skinner replied, "I'm not sure what I want anymore."
Alex Krycek sat at the small table that had become "his" after his first two or three visits to this club. In the upstairs corner, close to the balcony rail but tucked underneath the lighting array, he could see everything and everyone from his place and know that the lights shining from just above him kept anyone on the lower level from getting a good look at his face. But that lighting array made it even hotter up here than it already was. Jesus!
Alex rolled the sleeves of his pale yellow linen shirt up over his forearms, not caring if anyone noticed his prosthesis. The thin material was cooler than just about anything he could have worn, but it was still clinging to his sweaty chest and shoulders like a spider web. Out of habit, he scanned the faces of the patrons on the floor below, now able to recognize some of the regular couples and stags. He didn't know who he expected to see, but he was prepared for anything. As usual.
He was safe enough, though—as safe as anyone on the planet these days. Alex locked the heels of his loafers on the bottom rung of his chair and tilted it back against the wall letting his right arm rest on top of the rail. Relaxing almost completely, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He had thought he'd never be able to stand the smell of cigarette smoke again, but it was right in this place. The music that was played here cried out for it and sounded at home in the haze. Smoke and rock and roll. Smoke and blues.
Maggie passed by, her tray loaded with boat drinks for the three flashily dressed younger women who sat at the next table looking very out of place. She raised her eyebrows at him as she passed back by, and Alex lifted his glass, smiling slightly. A few minutes later, the waitress was setting a tall glass of ice beside the half-empty bottle of whiskey in front of him.
"There you go. You sure you don't need anything else, honey? Food, maybe?"
"No thanks, Maggie. This is everything, I guess." Alex smiled up at her.
Maggie grinned back at him. "Well then, I'll check on you later, hon."
Alex watched the middle-aged woman walk heavily down the steps. Like everyone else in Blue Jake's, Maggie had seen some hard years. And although he was a decade or more younger than the average patron here, Alex felt at home among these people. He had seen a few hard years himself. Alex poured the whiskey over the ice in his glass and sipped slowly. Whiskey, not vodka. Sometimes he thought he'd never drink vodka again.
Vodka had been the preferred drink of Alex Krycek, traitor. Spy and assassin. Whore. Vodka reminded Alex of who he had once been—who he had had to become to do his job. And now that everything was over, he just couldn't stand the taste of it anymore.
He rarely wore jeans anymore either, preferring dark colored chinos like the pair he was wearing now. He had stopped darkening his hair and let it return to its natural medium brown shade. His time under the sun on the beaches of the Caribbean islands had lightened the color even more. He had allowed his hair to grow longer and now it brushed the back of his collar and fell over his forehead in gentle waves. His green eyes were even more striking than ever under the sandy mop of hair.
In fact, the only thing of the other Alex Krycek that the real one had kept was his leather jacket. It was too hot to wear it tonight, but he still had it. Alex grinned to himself. That jacket had been his before he had been recruited, was part of his youth. He had adopted it as a trademark when he had gone under cover, thinking it made him look tougher, but it had turned into his security blanket. A reminder to himself of who he really was.
His life had gone to hell practically the moment he turned 21. The fact that he had been revealed, in the end, to be one of the good guys didn't give him much peace of mind. He had killed more than once out of grim necessity, playing a very dangerous game among very dangerous men, and killing had become easy for him. He had also allowed his body to be used for the good of the cause, and had discovered along the line that he preferred killing over performing some of the degrading sexual acts he had been forced into. His nightmares contained various combinations of black oil and darkness, blood and pain, and sweat and semen.
Towards the end, Alex had even begun to pray for death. When Walter Skinner had shot and killed Alex's clone in the parking garage of the FBI, the real Alex had wished – just for a moment—that it had been himself who had caught the bullets. But he had never wished such an event on Skinner. Knowing that he had pushed Walter Skinner to commit such an act was one of the most profound regrets of Alex's life—and that was saying a lot.
But there had been an end. Finally. And Alex had come out of hiding, even from beyond the illusion of his own death, and helped lock it down. Men in high levels of power had been brought down finally and irrevocably. Other men had stepped up to take their place, and they were intent on keeping Earth, and the human race itself, safe. Many of the new leaders may have been tainted somewhat by events of the past years, but most of them were basically good men. Men like Walter Skinner.
Alex had stood face to face with Skinner one day when both of them had been called to testify before yet another committee. He had wanted somehow to apologize, to explain to Skinner—to Walter—why he had done what he had done. He desperately wanted to salvage any kind of relationship with the man that he could. But he had looked into the solemn brown eyes of the man whose life he had both ruined and saved so many times and had found nothing to say. Skinner, too, had been silent. They had not shaken hands, had not spoken, their eyes revealing nothing to each other.
Really, Alex thought. What did I expect to happen? Maybe silence was the best I could hope for.
Mulder hadn't been silent. Mulder had yelled and ranted at him and tried to punch him again. Just like always. It was sort of comforting to Alex that some things had remained constant as the rest of his world had tilted slightly on its axis and then had come right again. After Mulder had calmed down, Alex had offered his hand and Mulder had wept as he shook it. Now Mulder and Scully were raising their son together, somewhere on the Eastern seaboard. Alex had no intention of trying to find out where.
Alex had retired, accepted his rather hefty pension, and tried to disappear. He had leased a small house on the island of St. John in the Caribbean and had spent several months there doing nothing but sleeping, reading old classics and light fiction, trying to let go. He had begun to shake off his other persona and get on with his life there on the quiet, sun-drenched beaches and in the clear green water. He spoke to no one except store clerks and taxi drivers, boatmen and fishing equipment salesmen. He made no other contact with anyone. No one tried to reach him.
The isolation and the nightmares, even his missing arm, hadn't seemed too high a price to pay for the life he had led, so he bore them all as best he could. Eventually, Alex had allowed himself go to the nightclubs on St. John and nearby St. Thomas, had got drunk, and danced until he was exhausted. He had dragged himself home after sunrise a few times and slept until late afternoon. No one to check up on him, no one to hide from, no one to care.
He didn't want sex and couldn't even become aroused for the first few months of his new life. When he began to think of intimacy again, that was exactly what he wanted. Intimacy. He doubted he could ever have it, though, because the only person he was interested in getting closer to was a man who had hated him enough to kill him.
Eventually, Alex began to return to the States now and then for a few weeks at a time. It didn't seem to matter what city he started his visit in. Somehow, he always ended up in Crystal City, hands jammed into the pockets of his leather jacket as he stood in the shadows, counting off storeys until he found the 17th floor balcony belonging to one Walter S. Skinner, retired Assistant Director of the FBI. He never thought of calling or of trying to see the man. He didn't think Skinner would want that. Too fucking much water under the bridge and too many memories of what he'd endured at Krycek's hands.
Almost a year ago now, late on a Sunday night, Alex had been thinking warm thoughts when he had seen Skinner emerging from the Towers garage. The big man had been dressed in old jeans and a leather jacket, with a leather guitar case strapped across his back, and he was riding a Harley like he knew what he was doing. Instinctively calling up old skills, Alex had raced to his car and followed the man—to Blue Jake's.
Curious, Alex had gone inside, slipping upstairs before he caught anyone's eye. He had had to wait for about an hour to see Skinner again, but when he had, it had been worth it. Not only had he seen Skinner, he had also heard him play his heart out on that guitar. Sometimes now, he even got to hear him sing. Alex knew that this was closer than he had ever again hoped to get to the man whose body still appealed to him.
Even Skinner's position in the band reflected the man's character. Rhythm guitar – not lead. Not the one with the intricate solos and dizzying exercises in emotional expression. Just the guy in the background with the steadying beat, the continuous pick, or the grounding chords. The guy who filled the empty space behind the lead guitar with sound and cohesion. The guy who would occasionally step up to a microphone and add background vocals to make the lead singer sound better.
When Walter did take a guitar solo, he played with a slide—using a smooth finger bit on the middle finger of his chording hand to lengthen the notes and make the guitar sing, cry, or speak for him.
And when he sang... Alex held his breath, just thinking about that voice. Walter's speaking voice had always done things to him, but this other voice was pure sex—as it had been in bed the few times that they had made it to a bed.
Alex could understand everything Walter felt by listening to his music. And he let both the joy and the pain wash over him every time he came to Blue Jake's, anonymously sharing little pieces of Walter Skinner's new life.
He drained his glass, and leaned farther back in the shadows as the band returned to the stage. Only a few more songs and they'd be finished for the night. His eyes tracked the strong, familiar form of the man he had come here to be near, and felt his heart start to race as Skinner stepped to center mike preparing to take a rare turn at the lead vocal.
On the stage under the hot lights, as he stood near the microphone, Skinner had decided to stop kidding himself about what he wanted. He was still wondering if it really had been long enough—if all the bad blood between him and the man he had never managed to put out of his mind could be forgiven if not totally forgotten.
It was time to find out.
At a signal from Shelly, the light tech washed the stage in blue light. Ace kicked off the song with a snare riff and a heavy beat as the bass player cranked up the volume on his amp and played a medium tempo, thumping line. Henny joined in with a screaming guitar intro, tapering the volume down only when it was time for the singer to begin. Conversations around the room stopped, and all attention was riveted to the stage as the band played their own bluesed-up version of a Neill Young song from 1969.
Skinner leaned into the mike, one hand wrapped around it, the other gripping the stand about halfway down. His eyes closed and his body swayed unconsciously into the beat, his weight shifting subtly as he began to sing. His voice was strong and heart- breakingly expressive as he sang:
"Be on my side, I'll be on your side, baby.
There's no reason for you to hide.
It's so hard for me standing here all alone
When you could be takin' me for a ride.
Oh, she could drag me over the rainbow
And take me away.
"Down by the river, I shot my baby
Down by the river, dead"
Dimly wondering if he should take the lyrics personally, Alex felt the blood rush away from his head as Walter's smoky voice melted his brain and Walter's body tortured him from a distance. The man was sex on wheels even without that lust-inducing voice. Alex shifted uncomfortably in his chair as the second verse began.
"Take my hand, I'll take your hand, baby.
Together we might get away.
This much madness is too much sorrow.
It's impossible to make it today.
Oh, she could drag me over the rainbow
And take me away.
"Down by the river, I shot my baby
Down by the river, dead"
Walter stepped away from the mike, and Henny stepped forward to fill the bridge of the song with a soaring guitar solo that rose to a powerful crescendo before dropping back to let the drums and the thumping bass line take over once again.
Walter gripped the mike and looked directly up into the balcony to catch the green eyes of the man watching from the table in the corner. He held those eyes with his own as he sang in that husky voice:
"Be on my side, I'll be on your side, baby.
There's no reason for you to hide.
It's so hard for me standing here all alone
When you could be takin' me for a ride.
Oh, she could drag me over the rainbow
And take me away.
"Down by the river, I shot my baby
Down by the river, dead"
The song roared to a conclusion, the lights faded out to heavy applause from the audience. When the lights came back up on the stage, Skinner was nowhere to be seen. Alex was still visually searching the stage when the man himself pulled out a chair and sat down across the table.
Skinner wiped the sweat off his face and head with the bar towel he had grabbed on his way up, and dropped it onto the table. Looking into the stunned face of an uncertain Alex Krycek, Skinner felt his heart fill. This was going to be okay.
He smiled and said, "Hi. Come here often?"
Not meeting the other man's eyes, Alex cleared his throat and tried to remember to breathe. "Yeah... I, uh, like the music."
"Can I buy you a drink? I'm with the band."
Startled, Alex looked directly into the other man's face and detected a distinct twinkle in the eyes of the only man he'd ever truly wanted. He slowly let out the breath he had been holding. Maybe this was going to be okay.
After a minute, his lips twitched slightly and he replied, "Yeah, I know. I just heard you sing."
Walter, too, seemed to release a breath. "So, can I buy you a drink later?"
"Sure. My name's Alex, by the way."
"Walt," said Skinner, offering his hand across the table. "So, stick around after the set, okay? I'd like to get to know you."
Truly smiling, Alex took the hand and held it briefly before letting go. "Same here."
Skinner stood, ready to go back to the stage. Pausing, he looked down at the younger man, who was smiling up at him in a sort of joyful disbelief.
"Why don't you come downstairs and sit with Jake at the bar? It's a hell of a lot cooler down there, not that that's saying much... But it'd be nice to be able to see you better while I play."
Slowly, Alex stood and looked slightly up into the other man's eyes. "Cooler would be great. And I'd really like to be... closer."
"Yeah."
The two men studied each other silently for a minute. Hesitating only slightly, Walter moved nearer the younger man and placed a gentle hand on Alex's shoulder. His eyes were very serious, but warm and revealing.
"Alex, " he said softly. "I know this was a little silly, but I would like for us to start over. I know that neither one of us can forget all the shit we've been through with each other. But I'd like to see if we could accept that and maybe..." He broke off, suddenly uncertain of the word he was reaching for. Alex filled in the blank.
"Transcend it?"
Walter smiled. "Yeah. Transcend it."
Looking away from the other man, Alex raked his hand through his hair and said, "Walt, I want that more than you can possibly know."
The hand on Alex's shoulder moved to wrap around the back of his neck and slowly drew him forward into Walter's embrace. Alex wrapped his arms around Walter's waist and buried his face against the sweaty neck of the man who had had the courage to make the first move. Walter pressed the younger man close to his body and, with his back to their audience, he surreptitiously dropped a kiss on the thick hair. Then he reluctantly pulled away.
"Come with me. I still have some music left to play."
Taking the hand Walter offered him, Alex followed his second chance down the stairs.
"You certainly do," he said.
