Only When You Leave (2)

By Mort

Sequel to Only When You Leave

M/K

Written especially for the poorly Wolfie and her brave pooch Doc.  Hope you both get better soon.

Summary:  Sometimes it takes the threat of losing someone before you truly understand how much they mean to you.

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“Since you’re the one with the eidetic memory, please feel free to contradict me, but I could have sworn you offered me flowers, chocolates and moonlight serenades, Mulder,” Alex grumbled.

“There’s moonlight up there *somewhere*,” Mulder countered, then shivered in the darkness as he considered the 30 foot vertical mine shaft between them and that moonlight. And, as always, his feelings of guilt emerged as defensive sarcasm. “Besides, you’re diabetic, Alex.”

Alex didn’t answer and it was too dark for Mulder to see the expression on his face, but the silence felt like accusation enough.

Mulder felt like kicking himself.

What the hell had he said *that* for?  Why had he given name to the most terrifying part of the whole damned situation? Did he actually think, in his wildest imagination, that Alex had *forgotten* the ticking timebomb in his own body?

He wanted to say sorry.

Instead, he gruffly asked, “How’s your arm?”

Alex remained silent for a moment or two longer, as though waiting for the apology that wasn’t forthcoming, then expressed his disappointment with a dose of sarcasm himself.

“Still broken,” he snarled, though the effect was slightly ruined by the fact he had to stop between the two words and take a ragged breath.

Broken.

It was too small and inadequate a word to describe the splintered shards of bone that Mulder had seen protruding out of Alex’s left forearm, like a set of Wolverine claws, before the battery in the flashlight had failed.

Why the hell hadn’t he checked the batteries were fully charged?

Because, he reminded himself grimly, they weren’t supposed to be checking out the crime scene in the middle of the damned night.  They were *supposed* to be safely tucked up in bed in the Pink Diva Motel, ten miles down the road, and meeting Sheriff Dork-brain for an escorted tour of the hillside after breakfast.

What the hell kind of name for a motel was the ‘Pink Diva’ anyway? If he’d actually believed Skinner had a sense of humor, Mulder would have suspected he’d arranged the accommodations personally. The AD hadn’t actually *said* anything about the rumors currently circulating about ‘Spooky Mulder’ and his new  partner, but Mulder had noticed a frequent glare of confused disapproval from behind the ubiquitous wirerims.

“Sheriff Dobson *said* the hill was honeycombed with old mineshafts,” Alex muttered quietly. “He *said* we needed a local guide. But no. You knew better, didn’t you, Mulder?”

“Dobson’s a suspect,” Mulder snapped defensively.

Well, he *was*. The perp was a local. Therefore all locals were suspects. The sheriff was a local. Ergo *he* was a suspect. Even if he *had* been the guy who’d called the FBI in for assistance.

Alex didn’t reply.

Oddly, his silence irritated Mulder more than an argument would have. And it also pricked his conscience.

“Okay,” he grunted. “Chances are that Dobson *isn’t* anything to do with the disappearances. But that’s good, Alex. That means he’ll send out a Search and Rescue team the moment we don’t turn up for our meeting. And it won’t take long for them to find us. We got barely two hundred yards from where I parked the car. ”

“Yeah,” Alex breathed softly. “Sure. Won’t take long. We’ll be fine.”

Mulder winced.

*He’d* be fine. He wasn’t the one with the shattered arm. It wasn’t *that* cold. Not pressed together as they were to conserve body heat, with Alex sitting between his splayed thighs and Mulder’s arms wrapped carefully around his waist. If anything, he felt *too* hot with his whole chest blanketed by the heat pouring off Alex’s shivering back.

Fever, he figured, because Alex was shivering constantly despite the heat radiating off his body.

And *Mulder* wasn’t diabetic. A diabetic who had already missed a crucial meal.

Why the hell hadn’t they eaten dinner last night?

Well, gee, could it be that he’d been too eager to investigate the case to remember his promise to treat Alex with proper consideration?

But, he reminded his uneasy conscience, he *often* forgot to keep that promise. Alex was used to working around his partner’s obsessions. And Mulder wouldn’t have ignored Alex’s request to stop for dinner if he’d sounded *really* upset about Mulder’s reluctance to do so. Actually, come to think about it, he *had* offered to give in when Alex had tried putting his foot down and insisting they ate before setting off for their ‘moonlight stroll in the woods.’

Though, admittedly, Alex’s snarky ‘stroll’ comment had elicited a response from himself along the lines of, “Sure, Alex, let’s find a late night restaurant and act like a couple of tourists instead of FBI Agents on the clock.”

Maybe he *did* owe Alex an apology.

He settled for awkwardly patting Alex’s abdomen – which was, to his understanding, about the only part of Alex’s body that wasn’t currently either bruised, scraped or broken.

“Ow,” Alex groaned.

So, okay then, maybe Alex’s stomach was bruised, too.

“Don’t you think you’ve already done *enough* damage?” Alex snarled.

“I didn’t mean to fall on top of you,” Mulder mumbled, his tone somewhere between sheepish and defensive.

“Any idea what time it is?” Alex asked.

“I can’t see my watch, but I think it’s got to be about 2 AM.”

Alex refrained from making any comment about Mulder’s failure to have a watch with a backlight. His own digital sports watch, guaranteed to work in 50 foot of water and withstand being dropped from a two story building, had proven however to be vulnerable to being crushed under the weight of a falling Mulder.

As had his arm.

“So,” Mulder muttered. “Your thing’s broken, huh?”

“My *glucometer*,” Alex stressed carefully, “is broken. As is my arm, and my watch, and my cell phone, and very possibly my right leg.”

“Ah,” Mulder said awkwardly, embarrassed at the reminder that he’d mistakenly left his *own* cell phone in their car.  “So your left leg’s fine then?”

After a moment’s stunned silence, Alex snarled. “Yeah, my left leg is battered and bruised and hurts like fuck, but it isn’t broken so obviously it’s *fine*.”

“I was just asking,” Mulder huffed, with a misunderstood sniff. “Sorry I bothered.”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

It was impossible to sleep, with the cold, rock strewn floor biting into his ass and Alex’s heat crushing his chest, but Mulder attempted to rest as his breathing unconsciously echoed Alex’s heartbeat. Even the slight tremors running through Alex’s body were faint and rhythmic enough not to prevent him from surrendering to his exhaustion, resting his head on Alex’s right shoulder and trying to at least doze.

It was only when Alex’s trembling increased to full body shivers that Mulder shook his head to clear it and guiltily asked, “You cold, Alex?”

“No,” Alex denied, through chattering teeth. “I’m burning up.”

Mulder frowned into the darkness. He’d assumed Alex’s shivers and sweating were the symptoms of shock or fever but, if that were the case, then the heat radiating off Alex’s body should be making him feel cold, not warm.

So Alex was probably actually showing symptoms of hypoglycemia.

Having decided to become a thoughtful and sensitive partner to Alex Krycek, Mulder had not only read extensively on the subject of diabetes but had prepared a little emergency kit containing both insulin and glucagon. Whether Alex’s blood sugar rose too high or dropped too low, Mulder now had the means of treating him.

Well, he would have if the kit hadn’t been locked in the trunk of their car.

“I think I need to stretch my legs a little, take a leak, you know?” Mulder said, his tone deliberately casual. There *had* to be some way out of the mineshaft.  If he stumbled around long enough, surely he’d find some tunnel that led to the surface. He could possibly get to the car, call for help, get the emergency kit and be back before Alex even noticed he’d gone missing.

“My right arm isn’t broken,” Alex said.

“So?” Mulder blinked, bemused by the non-sequitur.

“So if you so much as *try* leaving me here alone, you asshole, I’ll break your goddamned neck,” Alex growled.

Mulder blinked uncertainly at the absolute *promise* in those words. On a daily basis, Alex was such an accommodating and easily emotionally manipulated partner that Mulder had a bad tendency of forgetting there was a lean, feral wolf lurking under Alex’s fluffy puppy exterior.

“Awww,” he drawled, to cover his momentary shock. “And I thought you loved me, Alex.”

“Yeah, and look where it’s gotten me,” Alex snapped back. “Fuck, I used to dream of the moment you might finally stop playing games and admit you want to jump my bones.  Just my luck you’d do it from the top of a 30ft mine shaft.”

Mulder opened his mouth to point out that it was Alex who’d stepped on the entrance of the shaft and thereby caused them *both* to fall. Then he reconsidered. It had, after all, been *his* idea that had caused them to be stumbling around on the hillside in the first place.

Besides, he wanted to pursue something else that Alex had said.

“You think I’ve been playing games with you?”

Alex was silent for a long while but, just before Mulder lost patience with his hesitation, he quietly said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do, Mulder. At first I thought…well, I figured your whole offer to try a relationship with me was a… a… well, not a deception exactly but that you were fooling yourself. I figured you were straight, I was gay and never the twain, you know? You were so desperate for my help to get Scully back that you would have promised me *anything*.”

Mulder stiffened slightly. “If you thought I was lying to you, why did you stay?”

“I didn’t think you were lying to *me*. I thought you were lying to yourself,” Alex clarified, his tone unmistakably sad.

“But why did you stay?” Mulder demanded, gentling his own voice as both compassion and curiosity overcame his initial defensiveness.

“Because I’m pathetic?” Alex suggested wryly. “Or maybe even because I’m as arrogant as you are. Maybe I thought I’d prove to be irresistible, after all.”

Mulder thought about that and, though he blushed a little, he found it was easier to be honest when they were sitting together in inky darkness, with Alex’s back pressed into his chest and Alex’s body feeling *right* in his arms.

“It’s not arrogance if you’re right. It’s just honesty.”

“You talking about me or about yourself?”

“Both.  You *are* pretty damned irresistible, Alex.”

Alex laughed, a brittle sound that seemed little to do with his worsening physical condition. “Could have fooled me, partner. Except for when you’re playing to an audience, you seem pretty damned *indifferent* to me.”

And although Mulder sensed that the pain in Alex’s voice was emotional, it was Alex’s physical condition that forced him to be brutally honest in his reply.

Because with another eight hours minimum before there was any possibility of someone realizing they were missing, let alone someone coming to look for them, he couldn’t escape the high probability that Alex might *die* before rescue came. Of shock, of exposure, of blood loss from the shattered arm that had proven impossible to bandage adequately with Mulder’s tee shirt, given the amount of bone fragments piercing the flesh, of severe hypoglycaemia or perhaps even a fun combination of all four.

“I’m not *really* obsessive-compulsive,” he stated.

“Huh?”

“Do you remember a few weeks ago, we were arguing about that werewolf sighting in Oregon…”

“Supposed sighting,” Alex interrupted.

“Whatever. Anyway, you accused me of being obsessive-compulsive.”

“That’s because you are.”

“Maybe about the work,” Mulder admitted, with a wry grin, “but do you remember *why* you said it?”

“Because you were pissing me off?” Alex suggested sweetly.

“Well, that too, but your quoted ‘proof’ was my ‘cleanliness fetish’.”

Alex thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “For someone who’d happily live like a slob if I wasn’t forever picking up after you, it’s frightening how much time you spend on personal hygiene. I’d never have agreed to move into your apartment if I’d realized the necessity to pre-book my own bathroom time three days in advance.”

“It’s not a cleanliness fetish.”

“So what the fuck are you doing in the bathroom all the damned time? Oh, jeez, it’s bulimia, isn’t it? You’re just running the shower to cover up the sound of you thr…”

“Jerking off,” Mulder interrupted.

The cavern was abruptly filled with a shattering silence.

“So,” Mulder continued, when it became evident that Alex was speechless, “I’m not indifferent to you. Dishonest, maybe. Scared, maybe. But certainly not *indifferent*.”

“Oh,” Alex breathed, moving his undamaged right arm to his stomach and tentatively stroking the back of Mulder’s hand.

Mulder shuddered as he finally allowed himself to react to his partner’s touch and felt his cock jump angrily within the confines of his pants.

“What do you think about, Mulder?” Alex asked quietly, lacing his fingers between Mulder’s and squeezing gently. “When you’re jerking off, what are you thinking about?”

Mulder’s face burned in the darkness and he swallowed several times as he struggled for courage. It was one thing to acknowledge fantasies in his own head. Another entirely to vocalize those fantasies to another person.  He squirmed awkwardly.

“Just pretend I’m a 1-900 number, Marty, and give me all the sordid details,” Alex drawled.

“Bastard,” Mulder spat, both hating the reminder that Alex had originally been sent to spy on him, yet conversely relieved that Alex already knew about  his predilection for ‘dirty talk’.

Still, there was one hell of a difference between talking ‘dirty’ to a complete stranger who was being paid to listen, and saying the same things to someone he knew.

Hell, no wonder his sex life was non-existent.

“Think of it this way,” Alex suggested cheerfully. “It’s not like you’ve got to worry about whether I’ll still respect you in the morning, is it?”

Mulder reeled slightly. “Don’t say that,” he insisted furiously. “You’re going to be fine, Alex. Someone’s going to find us and…”

“And it’s going to be too damned late,” Alex interrupted. “Don’t bullshit me, Mulder. We both know I haven’t got a chance in hell of getting out of here alive. In fact, if you don’t stop farting about I’m going to be too damned woozy to even enjoy hearing you blush. Death-bed confessions are good for the soul.”

“I think *you’re* the one who’s supposed to confess,” Mulder joked weakly.

“Been there, done that,” Alex chuckled. “Besides, if I *have* got any more buried secrets, you’ll hear them soon enough. Once my blood sugar *really* drops, it’s like I’ve been on an all-night binge. I’ll be so ‘drunk’ I’ll tell you anything. Admittedly not particularly legibly, but you can’t have everything, can you?”

Mulder shook his head in bewilderment. “How the hell can you be so calm about it, Alex? I always thought you were the kind of person who’d fight like an alley cat to his last breath.”

“Fight who? It’s not an enemy, Mulder. It’s just death. I can’t shoot it or stab it or gouge its eyes out. And, yeah, I’m going to hang on like a fucking tic until the last damned minute, but I refuse to waste the last couple of hours of my life pretending I believe the cavalry are miraculously going to turn up like in some bad movie. Not when I could spend those hours listening to ‘Marty’ instead.”

Mulder swallowed heavily and lowered his face until it was resting on Alex’s head and his nostrils were filled with the slightly dusty smell of Alex’s hair. His eyes were stinging suspiciously and he didn’t trust himself to say anything that wouldn’t betray how near to tears he was.  Yet neither could he bear the silence. So he settled for blurting out nonsense just to fill the darkness with a sound other than Alex’s labored breathing or his own breaking heart.

“I really *hate* your shampoo,” he muttered. “Why the hell do you use a medicated shampoo anyway? You don’t have dandruff. Besides, if you *did* have a scalp problem you should go see a dermatologist. All these shop-bought self-help treatments are probably a rip-off.  And they smell like mouthwash…”

“Jeez. No wonder you have to *pay* people to listen to you, Marty.”

Mulder shook himself angrily. He was wasting Alex’s precious last hours with self-pity. There’d be time enough later to deal with his own grief and guilt. Lots of hours, considering he’d probably have his ass kicked out of the Bureau for getting his junior partner killed. Though being fired seemed almost inconsequential under the circumstances.

“There’s no Marty here,” he said, his voice gruff with grief. “Marty left the building a couple of months ago.  About three weeks after you moved in, to tell the truth. He couldn’t compete with reality. He didn’t go quietly. He did his best to hang around.  He’d wait until you’d gone to bed, or gone out for the evening, and then he’d get his tapes out or dial his favorite numbers,  but he soon figured out it was pretty pointless when the face he wanted to see on the screen was your face and the voice he wanted to hear on the phone was your voice. And Marty didn’t really know how to cope with that. So at first he grew sulky and sullen, and then he just packed his bags and left.

“So that just left Mulder, who was never very good at coping with *anything*. Well, not as far as relationships go. So instead of Mulder facing the truth head on, he started employing stealth tactics like taking long showers.”

“Look, Mulder, you don’t have to talk about this,” Alex said.

“I want to.”

“Sure you do. That’s why you’re talking in the third person, because you *so* want to have this conversation.”

“Okay,” Mulder snapped defensively. “I *don’t* want to talk about it.”

“So don’t,” Alex sighed.

“What I want to do is *do* it.”

“Do what?”

“Fuck you. Okay? That what you wanted to hear? Well, I’ve said it now. It’s true. I’ve spent two damned months fantasizing about how it would feel to fuck you.”  Mulder paused, taking a deep breath and fighting the wave of combined grief and shame that was threatening to overwhelm him. “I don’t think about ‘making love’ to you, Alex. There’s nothing soft or sweet or gentle about it. I don’t sit there and imagine picking out china and drapes with you. I think about fucking you. And…and that’s why I didn’t say anything to you. Not because I was ‘playing games’. Not because I was breaking our ‘deal’ to let you seduce me if you could. Because…because I knew damned well that what was going on in my head was *not* what you were looking for from me and…and I didn’t want to cheapen your feelings for me by…by suggesting that you’d settle for sex.”

Alex snorted softly.

“What?” Mulder demanded, torn between confusion and offense.

“I’m a man, Mulder. Of course I’d settle for sex,” Alex chuckled. “Sure, I’d hope it might turn into more and become *regular* sex.”

“But…but…I thought you wanted the whole deal.”

“What deal. Like us living together? We do, Mulder. Like us being friends? Well, unless I’m badly mistaken, we are. Like you loving me? Well, shit, Mulder. Maybe you’ll never get the chance to say the words. Maybe the words would never have entered your head in any case. But you want to tell me why the fuck I can feel tears dripping down the back of my neck if you *don’t* care for me at least a little? So it’s okay. I kinda wish you’d told me you wanted my ass before, when we could have done something about it, but thanks for telling me. Thanks for being honest with me. It helps, you know? It helps.”

“I can’t just sit here, Alex. What if there’s a way out? What if we’re sitting just twenty feet away from an exit?”

“What if you blunder off and get lost in the dark?” Alex countered. “I don’t want to die alone, Mulder. I can deal with the pain. I can cope with the idea I’m never going to get out of here. But…but I…I can’t face it alone.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Bit headachy and nauseous now,” Alex admitted reluctantly. “I can’t keep my eyes open without feeling sick.  Still, it’s not like there’s anything to look at anyway. It’ll happen pretty quickly from now on. The blood I’m losing isn’t helping any. Look, I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“I want you to tell the inquiry board that it was *my* idea to come out here tonight. That you argued with me. That I set off without you and you came after me to try and stop me. The fact I fell down the shaft first will support that idea, Mulder.”

“I’m not going to lie. This was *my* fault.”

“It was *both* our faults. You didn’t put a goddamned gun to my head, Mulder. You didn’t *make* me come with you. And since I’ll be dead, it isn’t going to matter a damn what people think of *me*. The important thing is that you keep your job. You have to, Mulder. If you get fired, who’s going to save Scully? Who’s going to stop Spender and his cronies from whatever the hell it is they’re really up to? So tell them whatever you need to, Mulder. With my blessing, alright?”

“Not alright,” Mulder replied, shaking his head in negation, his eyes still tightly closed in a desperate attempt to stem his tears. “If the truth damns me, then so be it, but I won’t hide behind a lie, Alex. I…I appreciate why you’re suggesting it, but I…I can’t do it. I can’t look Skinner in the eye and lie to him like that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” a familiar voice boomed from above Mulder’s head. “Though I highly doubt I benefit from the same level of integrity when it comes to your expense reports.”

Mulder’s eyes snapped open in shock.

AD Skinner was dangling from a rope, perhaps ten feet off the ground, his silhouette haloed by the glow from a light strapped to a climbing helmet.

Mulder watched speechlessly as Skinner rapelled himself with surprising grace until he stood on the floor of the mine shaft, then detached the rope from his body harness and dropped to his knees to check Alex’s condition.

Alex, who was having serious difficulty opening his eyes at all, blinked rapidly, gave a sudden and highly improbable giggle and launched into an out of tune rendition of ‘The Cavalry are coming, hurrah, hurrah.’

“It’s the diabetes, Sir,” Mulder apologized rapidly.

Skinner gave Mulder a withering look, while reaching into his overcoat to withdraw a packet of glucagon. “I’m well aware of Agent Krycek’s medical condition,” he growled. “Otherwise I’d have left the pair of you here until morning.” He threw Mulder a walkie-talkie. “Make yourself useful. Sheriff Dobson’s already sent for Search and Rescue. Let him know we need paramedics and some kind of stretcher to get Agent Krycek out of here. Damn, his arm’s one hell of a mess.”

Mulder made the call, then just stood there gaping as Skinner expertly checked Alex for further injuries and carefully rewrapped his arm in a large dressing – which had also miraculously appeared from one of Skinner’s pockets.

“I feel sick,” Alex announced groggily.

“Never you mind, boy,” Skinner told him, in a surprisingly gentle voice. “You just lie there and rest while Agent Mulder and I have a nice little ‘chat’.”

Then he turned his attention to Mulder and any illusion of gentleness was quickly dispersed. “You’re damned lucky you were close enough for me to drive here in my own car,” he growled. “It’s going to be at least another half hour before the Search and Rescue team get here with proper climbing gear.”

Mulder just blinked uncomprehendingly and gestured helplessly at the AD’s climbing harness and helmet.

“Pot holing,” Skinner announced, with a dismissive shrug. “Hobby of mine. Fortunately, I hadn’t cleared the gear out my trunk. Damn good job I always carry a full medical kit too.”

“But…but how did you know to come looking in the first place?” Mulder demanded, still not quite sure that he wasn’t hallucinating the whole ‘rescue’.

“I was working late. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from some ‘Pink Diva Motel’ asking me whether they could rent the rooms Kim had booked, since you hadn’t checked in. So I called the Sheriff, who called me back to say he’d found your car abandoned. So I weighed the inconvenience of driving up here myself with the potential embarrassment of mobilizing a huge manhunt for my missing agents, and came to the conclusion that it was more probable you’d gotten yourself into trouble than you’d been ‘kidnapped’. And, surprise, surprise, Agent Mulder, you haven’t proven me wrong.”

“I…I don’t know what to say,” Mulder said, torn between gratitude, embarrassment and sheer disbelief that Skinner had come to the rescue like an improbable spiderman.

“I’m sure something will come to you as you spend the next six weeks transcribing tapes,” Skinner replied, with an evil smirk. “Or maybe even longer, if Agent Krycek’s arm sets badly. I’ve known bad breaks like that take *months* to heal.”

Mulder groaned.

“Of course,” Skinner added. “That’s the *good* news.”

“It is?” Mulder asked weakly, bracing himself.

“Since it looks like your own descent was, shall we say, pretty uncontrolled, I doubt you have any idea how long it takes for someone to *safely* descend down a mine shaft,” Skinner continued. “And voices travel pretty far in cave systems.”

“They do?” Mulder gulped.

“Oh yes,” Skinner agreed. “Interesting things, ‘deathbed’ confessions.”

Mulder literally slapped himself on the forehead.  “You’ll…you’ll have my…my resig…resig…resi…”

“What?” Skinner growled. “And deprive me of the pleasure of assigning you to do those tape transcriptions you hate so much? I don’t think so. Besides, I subscribe to the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ school of thought. You’re both adults. Well, Agent Krycek is an adult. Sometimes I’m not quite so sure about you.”

“Then…then what’s the *bad* news?”

“Ever heard the term it’s time to ‘fish or cut bait’?”

Mulder nodded suspiciously.

“Well. Let’s just say that I imagine Agent Krycek is now expecting certain *changes* in your ongoing personal relationship. So, if you were just saying what you thought a dying man wanted to hear, you’d better admit it right now. The pair of you are liability enough without personal BS getting in the way of your work. Tell me now if one of you needs to be reassigned.”

Mulder flushed and dipped his eyes from Skinner’s face before replying.

“If…if this hadn’t happened, I don’t know whether I would have ever admitted how I feel about him,” he said, then raised his gaze to meet Skinner’s eyes. “But I don’t regret it. This is the second time I’ve only faced what Alex means to me when faced with actually losing him. I don’t want to make that mistake a third time.”

And though Skinner just uttered a grumpy harrumph of acceptance, Mulder was momentarily certain he saw a flash of approval flicker in the other man’s dark eyes.

“Mulder?” Alex called out sleepily. “I’m cold, Mulder. Where are you?”

And uncaring that their boss was standing just a few feet away, Mulder moved to cradle Alex gently in his arms. 

“I’m here, Alex. We’re *both* still here. And…and I love you.”

The End