Homeless

by Mort

Pairing:  Skinner/Mulder

Rating:  PG

The shrill cry of his alarm ripped Skinner out of sleep just before six. By 6.30 he was showered, shaved, dressed and driving down the freeway with a steaming coffee in his cup holder and a granola bar clutched in his left hand. By 7 am he was doing his normal routine in the otherwise deserted gym. At 7.30, after a quick second shower, he was sitting at his desk in an immaculate suit working his way through a pile of budget reviews. At 8 am, he was in a meeting with four department heads. At 8.45, his assistant brought him his mail.

That was the moment of divergence, the point at which his life slewed from the mundane. It wasn’t a moment of high drama. There was simply a small hitch in his breathing, a moment as unremarkable as the slide of a slow moving train gently skipping tracks before rumbling onwards to a new, uncertain destination.

At 8.50 he made a phone call to a hospital in Denver, Colorado. At 9.08 he turned on his PC, opened a long prepared document, printed it off and sealed it in an envelope. At 9.15, he put on his overcoat, told his stunned assistant to cancel all his appointments, and took the envelope to the office of the Director.

An hour later, accompanied by a security guard, he carried a cardboard box of personal possessions as he walked out of the J. Edgar Hoover building for the last time.

He wasn’t sure whether he felt bitter or relieved that his departure had been accepted with no more than a token protest. Deep inside, his ego roared like an angry lion at the casual dismissal of his years of loyal servitude to the ideals of justice and law. Yet, its voice of protest was muted by the hammering, excited thunder of his heart.

Despite the apparent suddenness of his decision, he’d actually been marking time for over eighteen months. It had always been a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. His suitcases had been packed for so long that they had gathered a thin layer of dust over their surfaces. His instructions to both realtor and attorney had been typed as long ago as his letter of resignation. He’d made all his pre-take-off preparations and then had just circled his life in a holding pattern, waiting for one final piece of the puzzle to slot into place before making his break for freedom.

By 10.30, the suit he’d worn to work that morning was folded, with military precision, inside a large box marked ‘Goodwill’. By noon, the possessions he couldn’t carry, but would possibly want sometime in the future, were stowed in packing crates ready to go into the storage container he’d rented over a year previously. At 1.15 pm, after he’d finished the last of a half dozen necessary phone calls, he pulled the dust sheet off a midnight black Audi A4 convertible in the basement parking lot, stowed his cases in its small trunk, dropped the hood, and drove $ 45,000 of German mid-life crisis out onto the freeway.

It deliberately took him six days to get there, a slow road-trip which was, of itself, as important as reaching his destination. It was a week of shedding his skin, of peeling away the detritus gathered during decades of duty to reveal the man within. As the miles rumbled away, his wind-whipped skin blistered and peeled under the unforgiving sun and, with each passing morning, the face he greeted in a series of roadside motels was rawer and pinker and newer. With each passing day, the eyes that stared back at him from a visage burned by wind and sun seemed brighter and less haunted, as each mile he drove left memory and responsibility further behind.

He arrived in Denver late Sunday afternoon, booked himself into the Hyatt Regency and swam twenty laps in its heated outdoor pool. He spent the evening in his hotel room, watching pay-per-view movies, and eating sunflower seeds.

By 9 am Monday morning, when he arrived at the hospital, he felt finally ready to chase an elusive one-armed ghost.

In the end, it wasn’t a bribe that opened a door that his FBI credentials had failed to break through on that telephone call a week and a lifetime ago. It was compassion. A single, harried, overworked nurse in the ER took the time to stare at the old photograph in his hand, bite her lower lip and admit that, yes, it was vaguely possible the man in the photo was the man who had been treated for a knife wound there the previous Saturday night.

He had, definitely, been lacking a left arm.

“But he wasn’t admitted. He was gone by the time his blood-work tripped the CDC flag on the computer,” she said.

He thanked her with a soft smile that left her staring dreamily into space long after his departure.

His next stop was the Denver FBI field office. Martha Hilliard, the Special Agent In Charge, was less than helpful until he suggested she made a call to the Director’s office. Twenty minutes later, she emerged from her office with the bright eyes and thin lips of someone whose ass had been well and truly roasted.

“My agents are at your full disposal in this matter, Sir,” she told him, through gritted teeth.

Sometimes it was helpful to know where all the bodies were buried.

Even so, she made no secret of the fact she thought he was crazy.

“Agent Mulder’s dead, Sir. Everyone knows that he and Agent Scully died at Camp David. They…” She stuttered to a halt, her eyes widening a little as she remembered that he, too, had been granted a Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on that day. Although his award, unlike Mulder and Scully’s, had obviously not been a posthumous one. “You were there, Sir,” she reminded him, in a now genuinely respectful tone.

“We never found his body,” Skinner replied, his own eyes dark with the grief of memories best left unvisited. “We found an arm, a left arm, and enough blood to indicate Agent Mulder had been mortally injured but we never found his actual body.”

She met his comment with averted eyes and pointed silence. Over two thousand people had perished at Camp David and less than three hundred identifiable body parts had been recovered. Then again, few of the people who had perished that day had still been human enough to leave body parts anyway.

“Even if he *is* alive, why the hell would Agent Mulder be living as a bum?” she demanded. “He’s a national hero.”

It was a good question. One he didn’t really have an answer to although, oddly, the moment he’d opened the envelope containing the CDC report stating that the blood of a homeless itinerant had revealed traces of alien-hybrid DNA he’d *known* the anonymous source was Fox William Mulder.

“Perhaps he lost his memory in the explosion,” he suggested. “Perhaps he’s got amnesia.”

She stared at him a moment, her eyes narrowed in contemplation, then nodded decisively. “He was badly injured. His partner was dead. Combination of shock and PTSD. Makes sense.”

Skinner gave a harrumph of agreement, choosing not to react to the emphasis she’d placed on the word ‘partner’. The whole world, it seemed, had decided that Mulder and Scully had obviously been lovers. It added a realm of romantic tragedy to the tale of the two ex-FBI agents who, while on the run from the dark forces in their own Government, had almost single-handedly confounded the efforts of an alien race to colonize the Earth.

It was probably true, although to Skinner’s *certain* knowledge, the only person who had successfully tripped Mulder into bed over the last dozen odd years had been Alex Ratbastard Krycek. A little gem of information that Krycek himself had gleefully imparted on one of the occasions Skinner had been writhing under a microscopic assault. Sometimes Skinner wondered whether it had been *that* particular nasty torture that had signed Krycek’s death warrant in his heart, rather than the nanos themselves.

There was something ironically apt that Skinner had laid one one-armed ghost to rest only to now be haunted by another. It felt like the twisting hand of fate, wrenching him out of his complacent existence and forcing him to finally confront his own past failures.

But, even with the FBI’s reluctant cooperation, in a city of half a million people, with a population of over 11,000 homeless, trying to find one itinerant man who didn’t want to be found was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Enquiries at all the homeless shelters drew a blank, a couple of tentative leads at a central soup kitchen petered out to nothing and, despite passing Mulder’s photograph to every ER, drop-in center and charitable organization in the area, the one-armed patient with the knife wound had, apparently, disappeared into thin air.

“There’s little more we can do, other than put out an APB,” Martha said, on the sixth day, as they ate lunch together at his hotel.

“Out of the question. We have no way of knowing his state of mind.”

She nodded her agreement. “Officers have a regrettable tendency to shoot first and ask questions later if someone resists arrest. Particularly if they look like a down and out. And, since we *don’t* know his state of mind, I can’t in conscience assure the police he’s not dangerous.”

“Then all that leaves me with is going undercover,” Skinner said.

“As a bum?” she asked incredulously. “Forgive me for saying this, Walter, but I don’t see you pulling it off.”

“A couple of days growth and a whiskey hang-over and you’ll be surprised how disreputable I can look,” he chuckled. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll give you my ex-wife’s number.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be found? I’ve been giving it a lot of thought this week, and the more I consider the man he was the more I can see how he might have deliberately chosen this lifestyle. He fits the profile of a certain kind of society drop-out. Highly intelligent but socially inept.”

“I know,” he replied, with a gentle smile. “I knew that when I came here looking for him.”

“But you said you thought he had amnesia,” she said, with a confused frown.

“It seemed…easier,” he admitted. “You weren’t being particularly receptive to me, at the time. I decided you’d be more sympathetic towards Mulder if you believed he was mentally ill than if I said he’d simply chosen to drop out of society.”

“I’m not suggesting he isn’t mentally ill,” she countered. “It isn’t exactly a *sane* choice, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” Skinner mused thoughtfully. “The man’s a genius, Martha, but he has the social skills of an amoeba. It’s not a criticism. If he’d been even a tad more social, he’d never have coped with spending years as a pariah. He was the lone voice crying in the wilderness, while everyone called him a lunatic.”

“A modern-day Cassandra .”

“Exactly. No-one ever likes a harbinger of doom.”

“But he was right,” she argued. “He was declared a national hero. Why didn’t he jump at the chance to spit in the eye of all the people who’d mocked him?”

“Another man might have,” Skinner agreed. “But not Mulder. He never cared about the opinions of strangers, only those of the few select people he cared about. Scully was the last, Martha. With her death, he lost his last friend.”

“Clearly that isn’t true,” she replied, gesturing in his direction.

Skinner just shrugged uncomfortably.

He returned to his room, then took one last swim in the Hyatt’s pool, one last luxurious shower in his opulent en-suite bathroom and spent one last night sleeping in a comfortable king-sized bed. But before he crawled into that bed, he deliberately drank three-quarters of a bottle of whiskey.

He woke the next morning and stared bleary-eyed at his reflection in the mirror. His face looked slightly flushed and definitely puffy. His eyes were hooded and bloodshot over his darkly stubbled jaw. He *looked* like a man who’d taken a bottle to bed. More to the point, sniffing under his armpits, he *smelt* like he’d been drinking heavily. The sweet-sour scent of alcohol was seeping out of his pores.

And that, as he knew from his time working undercover in his early days at the Bureau, was the difference between merely ‘looking’ the part and ‘being’ the part. He knew that, regardless of cleanliness, an alcoholic had a distinct body odor that was different than mere unwashed musk. If he was going to play the role of a down and out itinerant, he needed to do more than dress the part. He had to smell the part. He had to *be* the part.

He locked his valuables in the trunk of his car, left his keys in reception along with his credit card to cover the parking fees, and walked out onto the morning streets of Denver with nothing more than $ 200 in small bills and change in his back pocket.

An hour later he exchanged 18 of those dollars for a change of clothes at a Salvation Army store. If anyone wondered why a man might walk into a thrift store looking like a regular, if hung-over, Joe and leave wearing three layers of clean but mismatched clothes topped with a faded, threadbare overcoat and a woolen hat, they kept their opinions to themselves.

He bought himself a half bottle of cheap rotgut, wrapped in a brown paper bag, and spent the day sitting in a park off Jefferson Street, furtively sipping and sinking slowly into his new persona as each averted head or slightly disgusted look from passers-by established his gradual sinking from the ranks of normal and respectable to that of one of society’s ‘outsiders’.

That night he booked himself a small, dank, cockroach infested room in one of the run-down hotels he’d visited earlier that week in his search for Mulder. He was gratified that the desk clerk didn’t seem to recognize him although, since the guy managed to grab his money and throw him a key without taking his eyes off a small portable TV, his lack of interest wasn’t necessarily a guarantee that Skinner’s disguise was holding up.

But then that was *exactly* why he booked himself into the hotel rather than immediately attempting to join the ranks of truly homeless people who slept rough in the hidden corners of the city. He knew he needed a further few days to complete his transformation into a man who truly looked and smelled like he’d fallen through the gates of a personal hell.

For three nights he remained in the dirty cess-pool of life that purported to be a ‘hotel’. Sleeping in his clothes so they became rumpled and creased and imbued with the scent of his unwashed body. Tossing restlessly each night as the paper-thin walls of his room were invaded by the sounds of his ‘neighbors’ rows and screams as they took out the hopelessness of their lives on each other. Trying to ignore the itch of his growing beard and the clicking sound of insects scuttling across the threadbare, stained carpet of his room.

He barely ate because he knew his new ‘persona’ would hardly waste any of his rapidly disappearing dollars on *food*. He continued to drink. Not enough to *be* drunk, but with steady, slow, methodical constancy to ensure that his bloodstream remained permanently sufficiently proof to maintain the physical evidence of his drinking.

Each morning the face that greeted him was more sallow, his eyes were more sunken and bloodshot, and the sweet-sickly odor of his flesh was more distinct through his clothes.

On the fourth morning, he stared at himself in the cracked mirror in the corner of his room and knew that no-one would recognize the face looking back at him.

And somehow, the scariest part of that knowledge was the fact that *he* actually felt strangely comfortable with the man in the mirror. There was something liberating about the idea of playing the role he was choosing to play, about the idea of walking out onto the streets in a mantle of invisibility.

“I understand you,” he said, staring into his own dark brown eyes. But it was a pair of slanted hazel eyes he was seeing as he spoke. “The perfect disguise. The only way to truly become unseen is to become that which other people don’t *want* to see. Prejudice has become your protection.”

He checked out of the hotel at 6.30 with just $ 37 left in his pocket. At 7.45, he was standing in line with a couple of dozen other itinerants at a shelter. For 60 cents he had a sit-down breakfast of tea, toast and scrambled eggs. At 9.30, he was gently but firmly evicted from the shelter alongside the others and found himself shuffling along the street with a couple of similarly middle-aged homeless men who’d shared his table in the shelter.

He felt both triumphant and guilty. Triumphant because his new ‘friends’ had accepted him without question. Guilty because, unlike them, all he had to do was flag down a cab and within ten minutes he could be back living in the luxury of the Hyatt.

Although he’d carefully prepared a background tale, neither of his companions had queried him about what had brought him to an apparent life of homelessness.

“We don’t want your story. We all have stories,” Travelin’ Jack had told him bluntly, through a mouth full of rotting teeth. “A man’s story is his own.”

“Who you was ain’t no-one’s business,” Jack’s friend Woody had confirmed, with a sage nod. “Who you is now, is all what matters.”

It was Woody who named Skinner. “You ain’t no Walt,” he’d said firmly, when Skinner had introduced himself. He’d stared thoughtfully at Skinner for a long time, then smirked and nodded to himself. “Reckon you’re Bear,” he’d announced firmly.

And so Bear, Woody and Travelin’ Jack had left the shelter together.

They spent the morning panhandling outside the Central Bus Station with Jack and Woody showing Skinner how to achieve the right balance between looking pathetic and intimidating.

“There’s four kinds a folks,” Woody explained. “Them as truly don’t see ya. Them as don’t *want* ta see ya. Them as feel sorry for ya, and them as is scart of ya. First kind’s a waste a time. Second kind’ll maybe giv’ ya somat if you get in their face. Third kind’s as like to give ya a lecture as money and the scart ones… well, ya gotta be careful a them, ‘cos they’ll call a cop soon as help ya but them’s the ones who give the real good money if ya play ‘em right.”

"Gimme a dollar, a five, a 10 or a 20," Jack chanted at passers-by. "Change ain't goin' to do me no good."

To Skinner’s surprise, a small proportion of people actually responded positively to Jack’s demands.

By mid-afternoon, the three men had collected enough money to pay for a motel room for the night. They’d also received a couple of warnings from the local cops, the second of which had been serious enough for Travelin’ Jack to call it quits for the day.

Instead of paying for a room, the three spent their takings at a liquor store and then, clutching their booty in brown bags, made their way to Jack and Woody’s ‘home’ inside a trash strewn corpse of an abandoned factory building.

“This is ours,” Travelin’ Jack announced proudly, using his hand to mark the demarcation of their claimed realm.

It was at this point that Skinner realized that what he’d initially dismissed as ‘trash’ were actually piles of ‘belongings’. Stacks of old newspapers, rags and empty boxes formed a small rectangular ‘room’, and as he looked carefully around them, he realized that there were numerous such ‘rooms’, and that several of the piles of ‘trash’ were actually sleeping people bundled up in enough rags to make their forms bulky and indistinct.

“How many people live here?” he asked.

Woody shrugged, “Forty, fifty, changes all the time. We’ll find ya a spot of ya own later, but ya can stay here for now.”

In the event, the ‘Bear’ never did find his own den. Instead his own slowly growing pile of appropriate belongings joined theirs and the three men shared a fire every evening and body warmth every night. Judging from the daily increasing itch in his rapidly growing beard, it was clear that warmth wasn’t the only thing his companions were sharing with him, and so Skinner soon had good reason to be grateful that he was bald under his woolen hat.

But head lice aside, Skinner found himself adapting remarkably well to the lifestyle of an itinerant. Being happy, almost. He was honest enough to admit that a large portion of his feelings of contentment were probably down to the fact that, unlike his companions, he was living the lifestyle through choice. Unlike them, he had other options. He wasn’t plagued by feelings of depression or futility or hopelessness. The discomforts of being homeless were transitory for him and so were bearable. Even enjoyable in a way.

There was something about sitting huddled around a small fire, with his face too uncomfortably hot and a chill wind biting into his spine, with the burn of alcohol in his veins and the ache of hunger in his stomach, that took him back in time to the jungles of his youth. To the discomfort, yes. But also to the feeling of being well and truly alive.

Strange, perhaps, that it took the feeling of living on the edge of death to make him feel grateful for life, but it had been true in ‘nam, and it was true again as he slept on a mattress of newspaper in an abandoned factory in Denver.

Sometimes it srtuck him so strange that he was ‘happy’ that he’d laugh out loud.

And in that place, no one looked askance at him. No one judged him. No one cared whether his chuckles were genuine humor or the mark of impending madness. He was simply ‘Bear’ and he belonged.

It had been many years since he’d felt as though he belonged.

The days grew shorter, the nights longer, and Summer gave way to Fall. Woody, Jack and Bear moved shortly after the leaves began to turn because Developers purchased the factory site. It took a few nights to find a new ‘home’. They spent two of those nights on the street, huddled in the doorway of a major chain store, and the remainder in a shelter when the weather turned so suddenly that another night outside would have risked their deaths.

Initially, Skinner didn’t understand his companions’ aversion to staying in a shelter, unable to comprehend why only the prospect of fatal exposure would drive Woody and Jack to choose to spend the night in a real bed. But within hours of their arrival at the shelter he understood the claustrophobia they felt. Not only the oppression of the walls and roof but of the regimen itself. The necessity to ‘conform’. To act in a certain way. To obey rules and regulations. To ‘behave’.

In just a few short weeks he had, he decided, become a subversive.

He left the next morning convinced that it was a waste of time looking for Mulder in the shelters. They were clearly the *last* place Mulder would choose to stay, regardless of his financial situation.

Less constructively, he also left the shelter with a severe infestation of bed bugs.

Weekly, he slipped away from his companions and used a little of the change he received from his panhandling to call Martha Hilliard. It wasn’t that he truly expected her to succeed where he was failing but he was well aware of how ironic it would be if he remained living on the streets unaware, long after Mulder had been found and ‘rescued’ by the FBI.

Weekly, the telephone conversation between himself and ASAC Hilliard became more strained.

As time passed, her initial incredulity and even amusement at his decision to go undercover in the world of the homeless changed into concern. It became increasingly obvious to him that Martha was beginning to think it was *he* who was suffering from some kind of mental illness. *He* who needed to be protected from himself.

He became a little paranoid. Even to the extent of limiting their conversations to under a minute lest she traced the call and sent Agents to pick him up ‘for his own good’.

On the Wednesday of his sixth week on the streets, he bade a strangely sorrowful farewell to Travelin’ Jack and Woody, acquired a shopping cart which he loaded with his growing collection of faded newspapers and cardboard boxes, and took to the streets in earnest .

Had he been pressed to explain himself, he would have argued that the cart was nothing more than a deepening of his disguise and that by carrying his ‘home’ with him, he was increasing his chances of finding Mulder.

The cart was more than a mobile home. It opened a new universe of possibilities. The ability to ‘carry’ belongings with him created a compulsion to acquire belongings. He told himself he was merely being ‘in character’, just playing the part, but despite his own self-excusing, he learned the thrill of rummaging through the detritus of trash cans in search of items that ‘normal’ people had carelessly thrown away. Items of value. Items that had *worth*.

Dog-eared books with a little water damage or the odd missing page were rescued and lovingly placed inside his cart for future enjoyment. A sequined black purse with a broken strap and a cracked but still functional mirror attached to its lining. Sometimes he liked to sit in the park and stare at his reflection in the tiny mirror for hours, as though the answer to the mystery of life might somehow be revealed inside his own dark eyes if only he stared for long enough. An empty Godiva chocolate box, gold foiled and bedecked with a silk ribbon. He often held the box and wondered over the secrets it had held. Who had loved enough to gift the chocolate? Had the romance bloomed or had it died already, discarded as easily as the box, once the chocolate had been consumed?

His search for Mulder continued, but it changed, warped, until it became a search for more than just a *man*. As he rooted through trash, he couldn’t fool himself that he expected to find Mulder himself inside each pile of debris he examined. And yet each trash can beckoned to him, drew him to it with a siren song, promised him the answer he sought even though he’d long since forgotten the question he was asking.

“What are you looking for?” he’d sometimes ask himself.

“I don’t know,” he’d reply to himself, with confused honesty. “But I’ll know it when I find it.”

He had become, he decided, perhaps a little insane.

“Come home, Walter,” Martha pleaded, whenever he remembered to telephone her. “You’ve lost yourself in your undercover role. It happens to the best of us. Please come home. Don’t make me come and find you.”

“You can’t find me,” he’d always reply. “Because I can’t find myself. And until *I* find me, I’ll remain invisible.”

He knew she didn’t understand. He didn’t understand himself. All he knew was that what he was saying was true. He’d passed out of the world of visibility into a dimension of shadows. A place from which only he could find a door back to the real world. But to pass through that door he needed a key. And the key was something intangible. Something he’d only recognize when he finally held it in his hands. Something he’d find in the places where people carelessly discarded what was most valuable in the mistaken belief that it was nothing more than trash.

He grew leaner. Chilblains formed on his knuckles and toes. Lice burrowed and bedded and bred in his beard as it grew longer and grayer. Threads unraveled from the elbows of his overcoat. His shopping cart filled to overflowing.

And still the key eluded him.

The first frost came and went, then winter took residence and settled for the duration. Its gnarled fingers wrapped themselves inexorably through the city streets, chilling brick and underpass, spreading in sheets of ice over sidewalks, falling with quiet deadliness in deceptively pretty snowflakes, biting cruelly into flesh and bone and sinew. Driving the gaunt, gray man towards the promise of soup and shelter, forcing him to discard his mantle of invisibility and replace it with a shadowed cloak of resentful need.

He staggered through streets strewn with stars, blinking with confusion at the brightly lit shop fronts and the hands that pressed unasked for money into his hands as he passed.

Voices loud and unfamiliar, all repeating the same inane phrase at him until he was reeling with confusion and praying desperately for invisibility to swallow him once more.

Bank notes, crisp and green, clutched in his numb fingers. Alien. Unwanted.

“This isn’t it,” he croaked. “This isn’t the key.”

But the passing faces just bobbed past him, smiling, happy, not understanding his confusion as they pressed yet more of the strange paper in his hands and chanted over and over….

And gradually, the fog in his mind cleared as he blinked owlishly at the stars strung from lamppost to lamppost. He heard the words and finally understood them.

‘Merry Christmas.’

Christmas. He rocked in confusion. Had it truly been so long? Had he been searching for Mulder for so many months?

It was Christmas. A time to be at home. To be with family.

But then he looked at his shopping cart, at the paper and cardboard and detritus that spilled from its metal meshing.

“This is my home,” he reminded himself, and nodded sagely. “I have no family.” And he nodded again at the inarguable truth of his own words. “And, anyway, I still haven’t found the key.”

He nodded again, though in honesty he wasn’t exactly certain whether his final statement had the same ring of truth or was simply a mantra repeated so often to himself that it had grown a sense of reason where none truly existed.

“Soup,” he muttered to himself, stuffing the green paper into his freyed pockets and nodding firmly. “The key is soup. Soup. That’s key, right now.”

He wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it held a ring of compulsion if not necessarily the brightness of a universal truth, so he took hold of his shopping cart and began to wheel it through the milling shoppers with a fresh sense of purpose.

Between the crowded sidewalks and the numbness of his feet, it took him almost two hours to reach the soup kitchen he’d once frequented with Woody and Travelin’ Jack. He had money in his pocket. Even more money as his journey continued as though the garish strings of Christmas lights had the miraculous power to illuminate his presence to people who ordinarily saw nothing more than the passing of a shadow when he crossed their paths. Whether it was guilt or Christmas spirit, he couldn’t say, but for a brief moment in time he slid unwittingly into the dimension of the real world and became visible once more.

He had money in his pocket. Money enough to buy food from the vendors he passed on the streets. Money enough that even his wild appearance and unique body odor might have met no comment except ‘you want onions with that?’ But still, it never occurred to him to do so. That was what ‘real’people did. People who had found the key.

Or, perhaps, people who simply hadn’t yet realized the key was key.

“The key is key,” he told himself and chuckled loudly, uncaring of the wary looks of passers-by. “The key is *key*.”

It seemed terribly funny and so he congratulated himself for finding the evidence of such wit in himself.

The soup was good. Thick and hearty. Filled with chunks of fresh vegetables and fat noodles of pasta. He drank it crouched at one of perhaps two dozen tables in a room almost obscenely strewn with cheap tinsel decorations and filled with the irritatingly smiling faces of numerous volunteers. One of whom advised him cheerfully, as they offered him another bread roll, that he was welcome to visit the backroom after he’d eaten his fill and take his choice of donated clothes to replace his threadbare coat and tattered shoes.

He rewarded her enthusiasm with one of his old trademark surly glares. The ones that made FBI Agents wet themselves at fifty paces. Then he snickered to himself as she hurried off with her tail between her legs.

“Your disposition hasn’t improved then,” an atonal voice remarked dryly from across the table.

He should have been shocked. Or at least surprised. But the little voice in the back of his head reminded him sagely that soup was key. So he simply smiled wryly and took a casual bite of his bread roll before looking up and meeting the familiar hazel eyes.

“Unlike you, Mulder, I never believed clothes maketh the man. It wasn’t the suit I wore that made me the man I was. The man I still am.”

Something sparked in Mulder’s eyes. For a moment, Skinner thought it was anger, but then the full lips twitched behind their protective camouflage of a ratty beard, and Skinner realized it was humor.

“I’m hardly GQ myself, these days,” Mulder snorted wryly.

“Gray,” Skinner replied, his eyes narrowing into a frown. “I didn’t expect that.”

Mulder rubbed his chin and shrugged. “More white, to be honest. Just the beard though. Grew in that way. Odd really. The rest of my hair’s still dark,” he said. “If I take off the hat, I look like Mr. Potato Head.”

Skinner guffawed quietly.

“I suppose it goes without saying that this is the last place I ever expected to see you, Sir,” Mulder said, and although his tone was mild, his brows drew together into a suspicious frown.

“I was looking for you,” Skinner admitted quietly.

“That’s one hell of a disguise, Sir.”

“My name’s Walter, and I said I *was* looking for you. Seems I kind of lost myself somewhere along the way though. Can’t quite… can’t quite find the way back.”

Mulder stared at him carefully, his eyes oddly both suspicious and soft. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I know the feeling.”

Skinner arched an eyebrow.

Mulder shrugged. “This wasn’t quite planned either,” he admitted, gesturing at himself ruefully. “I kind of fell through a crack in the sidewalk, you know?”

“Yeah,” Skinner agreed. “I think I stumbled into that hole myself, Mulder.”

“Fox.”

“Fox?” Skinner asked, a little warily. “Thought you hated the name.”

“I did,” Mulder sighed, “But it kind of suits me more now. And anyway, Mulder’s not… well, it’s not a good name these days.”

“No. I don’t suppose it is. It’s a little too…memorable.”

Mulder coughed suddenly, a deep, wet sounding cough that made Skinner stiffen with alarm for a moment, but Mulder waved away his concern. “Just a damned cold. I never wanted to be a hero, Walter. I just… just wanted to find the truth. Should have known it would rise up and bite my ass in the end.”

“It bit everyone’s ass, Fox. Would have *kicked* our asses, if not for you and…” His voice trailed off awkwardly.

“You can say her name, Walter. I promise not to fall apart. Well, not much. And anyway, it’s kind of de rigor in this place. It’s the Christmas thing. Time of loss and all that. Brings it all back. All the lost souls gather in this place and suddenly remember *why* they’re here. Go a little maudlin. Or crazy. Though with us, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. Fucking awful time of year, don’t you think?” He chuckled wryly, then regretted it when his laughter turned into another fit of coughing.

“I think I’ve gone a little crazy myself,” Skinner admitted quietly. “I started off looking for you and then… well, somewhere along the way I realized it wasn’t just *you* I’d lost. Problem is I can’t figure out what I’m looking for. There’s something I need. Something that’s key. *The* key. And I can’t find it. And if I don’t find it, I can’t go home. Wherever home is.” He chuckled gruffly. “Told you I was crazy.”

“Crazy is thinking you’re Napoleon,” Mulder snorted. “Crazy is acting weird but not *knowing* you’re acting weird. Take it from me. I have a degree in this shit. You’re not crazy. Weird, perhaps, but not crazy.”

“Yeah well, consider the source,” Skinner replied. “You’re hardly a poster-child for sanity yourself, Fox.”

“You think so?” Mulder asked, his eyes brightening with amusement. “I’m happy, Walter. For the first time in a long time. Perhaps the first time ever. This, living like this, makes me happy. What’s insane about that?”

Skinner shuffled uncomfortably. “It’s not normal, Fox.”

“Since when have I ever been normal?” Fox laughed lightly. Then he sobered abruptly. “Don’t compare us, Walter. Don’t assume because we’re both sitting here, in similar circumstances, means we are in any way the same. You’re living like this because you’ve lost something. But me… well, I’m here because I’ve found something.”

“What?”

“Peace,” Mulder replied simply. Then, with a sigh at Skinner’s look of incomprehension, he continued. “When Scully died, I wanted to die, too. What happened that day at Camp David was… well, it was unsurvivable. We both knew that going in. We both knew that, if we succeeded, neither of us would leave the building alive. We made our peace with that. We said our good-byes. It was okay. Not good, but… but okay.”

“But you survived.”

“Yeah. And I wasn’t prepared for that, Walter.” He paused a moment, as a fit of coughing stole his breath, then continued quietly. “They call it survivor’s guilt, but it was more than that. It was the end of everything. Dying there would have been… well, a relief, I suppose. I was prepared to die. I wasn’t prepared for having to live. Without Scully. Without my quest. Without a… a *reason*. And that’s when… well, when I fell through that crack in the sidewalk, I guess. I didn’t want to live but killing myself would have been… wrong. I knew that. Scully told me that. Kicked my ass when I suggested it.”

“Her ghost, you mean?” Skinner asked carefully.

Mulder snickered. “It’s okay, Walt. I’m not going wiggy on you. I see dead people. I have for a long time, but it’s not a big deal. They don’t hang around like a bad smell. They get on with being dead most of the time and leave me alone. Anyway,” he continued, when Skinner didn’t get up and run from the room screaming, “it was Scully who convinced me that I didn’t have any obligation to do anything *but* survive. I didn’t need to find a new purpose. I didn’t need a new quest. All I needed to do was live.”

“How?”

“Remember that time Scully and I went looking for Big Blue? We were stuck in the middle of the lake, our boat had sunk…”

“I remember your expenses claim,” Skinner interrupted, with a flash of the AD ghosting over his features.

Mulder grinned and chuckled. “I’ll bet. Anyway, we were talking about Moby Dick, and she remarked I reminded her of Ahab, and I remember saying… hang on, let me see if I can recall it word for word… I told Scully that ‘if you have a peg leg or hooks for hands then maybe it’s enough to simply keep on living. You know, braving facing life with your disability. But without these things you're actually meant to make something of your life, achieve something, earn a raise, wear a necktie. So, if anything, I'm actually the antithesis of Ahab, because if I did have a peg leg I'd quite possibly be more happy and more content not to be chasing after these creatures of the unknown.’”

“So that’s what this is all about?” Skinner said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Simply living?”

“I think about Alex a lot. Alex Krycek,” Mulder clarified, in case Skinner hadn’t made the connection. “Hard not to, under the circumstances. See, I can’t figure out why he didn’t get out of the game after Tunguska. Can you even imagine how hard it must have been to get the other Consortium members to take him seriously after he lost his arm? If he ever had a chance to walk away with his life, it was after he lost his arm.”

“I don’t think the Consortium was something you could just resign from.”

Mulder smiled wryly. “Maybe not. At any time, before or after Tunguska, they’d have tracked him down and killed him. But I think at *that* moment, he could have done it. He could have pulled the poor helpless cripple routine and slipped away. So why didn’t he? Why wasn’t it enough for him to just survive? Why did he still feel the need to be a player?”

“Maybe he couldn’t live with the idea of paying such a price and coming out with nothing,” Skinner suggested.

“He didn’t have nothing. He had his life. But he just threw it away,” Mulder snarled, then coughed wetly.

“If you die for something you believe in, you haven’t thrown your life away,” Skinner argued, trying to ignore the wheezing noise of Mulder’s breathing. “He was my enemy and I hated him, and I lost very little sleep over killing him, but I always *respected* him. I respect any man who refuses to let go of his ideals, even if I hate the ideals he represents.”

“Yeah? That go for Spender, too?” Mulder mocked gently.

Skinner flushed but nodded. “Yes. Even him. No matter how evil he was, and there’s no arguing that Spender was an evil man, he believed in himself and his reasons for doing what he did. I’d have gladly killed him a dozen times over but, strange as it may sound, I would never have enjoyed seeing him broken. There’s no victory in destroying a man’s soul. In all my years in law enforcement, I met countless human monsters and was instrumental in sending as many as possible to Death Row. Some of them went quietly. Some of them were dragged to their deaths begging and pleading for mercy. I loathed each and every one of them, but I *respected* the ones who accepted the consequences of their actions and paid the price without any wailing or gnashing of teeth.”

“You’re a strange man, Walter Skinner,” Mulder said, his expression thoughtful.

“Stones and glass houses come to mind,” Skinner chuckled.

“Maybe,” Mulder laughed. “But that’s it. That’s my story. Unlike Ahab, unlike Alex, I made the decision that I have nothing else to prove. Surviving’s enough. That’s the key to happiness, Walter. Not possessions or position or other people’s opinions of me. Just being alive.”

Skinner was silent a long time, pondering Mulder’s words, mulling them over in his head.

“Possessions,” he whispered eventually. “That *is* the key. I see it now.”

“I presume you’re talking about *your* key?” Mulder asked.

Skinner grinned unexpectedly and nodded. “Survivor’s guilt,” he clarified. “After Camp David, after it was all over, I was numb. Mourning you and Scully was a large part of it. Anti-climax was another, I suppose. All those years of fighting the colonization and suddenly it was over and instead of feeling relieved I felt…lost. Without purpose. I found myself just marking time. Waiting to retire. Waiting to die, maybe. And yet all the time I had this vague feeling of something unfinished. Something left undone.

“I don’t remember when I decided you were still alive. It wasn’t a sudden realization, more a slow creeping suspicion that gradually turned into a certainty. Though, to be honest, I rather suspected it was some form of delusion on my part. Some attempt to deny reality, maybe. But, just in case, I got my affairs in order. Put feelers out. Pulled some strings with the CDC. I figured no matter how well you slipped under the radar, no matter how good your new identity, you wouldn’t be able to change your blood work and, sooner or later, you’d end up needing medical attention.”

“And then I got mugged,” Mulder snorted ruefully. “Can’t stay out of trouble, can I?”

“I tried all the official channels to find you,” Skinner continued, “and then I decided to try the unofficial.” He gestured ruefully at his clothing. “That was six months ago.”

“You’ve been living like this for six months? Just to find me?”

Skinner shook his head. “No. I…” He took a deep breath and swallowed heavily. “I lost myself in the role, Fox. I told myself it wasn’t enough to look and act the part. I had to *be* the part. And, somewhere along the way, I forgot I was looking for you at all. For the last three months or so, I’ve been… well, I don’t know what I’ve been doing. Told you I’d gone a little crazy. Believe it or not, I’ve spent most of the last three months rooting through other people’s garbage.”

“Looking for what?” Mulder asked softly.

Skinner was silent for a long time, then sighed and closed his eyes. “I wasn’t sure, Fox. All I knew was that someone had discarded something by mistake. Something that *had* to be found and restored to its rightful place. Something that was absolutely *key* to that person, only they’d never realized what they had thrown away. Only I didn’t know what it was. So I just had to keep looking for it. Everywhere. Every garbage pail and trash can. Hoping I’d recognize it when I found it and knowing I could never go home unless I *did* find it and give it back.”

“You said you ‘weren’t’ sure, Walter. That suggests that you now *are* sure. So what was it, Walter? What were you searching for? What had been thrown away by mistake?” Mulder whispered.

Skinner opened his eyes slowly and met Mulder’s gaze. “Me, Fox. Me.”

Mulder opened his mouth, closed it again, then settled for a coughing fit by way of reply.

“That’s a nasty cough.”

Mulder considered a moment, then nodded. “Hurts like fuck sometimes,” he admitted, with a shrug. “But, what the hell. It’s just a cough.”

“I’m no doctor, but it sounds more like a chest infection to me.”

“Like you said, you’re not a doctor.”

“No. No, I’m not.”

Mulder dropped his eyes to his. “I didn’t know, Walter. I didn’t think. I just… just needed to find a way to survive being alive. I didn’t mean to… to make you think I was dead. I just… just ran away. Not from you. From everyone.”

“I know,” Skinner replied gently. “Besides, how the hell were you supposed to know I needed you, when I didn’t even figure it out myself until now?”

“I can’t be what you want me to be. I don’t even want to try,” Mulder admitted. “That’s the key *I* found. To put *me* first. To stop trying to be what other people want me to be. To just be myself for the first time in my goddamned life.”

“I’m not asking you to *be* anything, Fox. Just to… just to find a little room in your life for me. Is that so very much to ask?”

“Yes,” Mulder replied simply.

Skinner swallowed heavily and changed tactics. “It’s going to be a hard winter on the streets,” he said, voice and expression deliberately bland.

Mulder’s eyes sparked with annoyance. “I’m not a fucking stray dog that needs rescuing, Skinner.”

“No. No, you’re not. Be easier if you were.”

“So that’s what this is all about? You want to collar and leash me? Drag me into the pound ‘for my own good’?”

Skinner took a deep breath. Then another. “That *was* my intention,” he admitted finally.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

“I said it *was* my intention. Initially. Not now. Not anymore.”

“So what changed?”

“I did. I didn’t understand. Now I do. Well, I *think* I do. Living like this was just a way to find you. I didn’t… didn’t expect to lose myself in the process. Or to find myself. I think I love you, Fox. I think I’ve loved you for a long time. And…and I think you knew how I felt about you. I think you always knew.”

Mulder threw him a dirty look but then sighed and nodded. “I suspected,” he admitted sadly. “But I didn’t think you’d ever admit it to yourself, let alone me. I didn’t throw you away, Walter. You never gave me the chance to. You can’t discard what you don’t have.”

“You had Scully. The X Files. Your quest. Even if I’d wised up earlier, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“Yes, it would,” Mulder sighed. “It would have changed everything.” Then he shrugged. “But probably not for the better,” he admitted. “It was a crazy time, Walter. We all had our roles to play. Sacrifices we had to make. I don’t think I could have done what I had to do if we’d been together. It’s far easier to be a ‘hero’ when you’ve got nothing left to lose.”

“The war’s over now, Fox. Maybe it’s time to do more than survive life. Maybe it’s time for you to actually start living again,” Skinner suggested softly.

“Mortgage, nine-to-five, Armani suits, a Labrador and a station wagon?” Mulder snorted rudely. “I’ll pass, thanks. You’ve found your ‘key’ so you can go home. It’s not what you expected to find. It’s sure as hell not what you wanted to find. But sometimes life kicks you in the balls like that. Accept it for what it is. Nothing valuable after all. Just an old unrequited love for a male subordinate. Well, you’ve finally admitted it to yourself, so now you can get past it. We only get haunted by ghosts until we acknowledge them, Walt. Maybe all your subconscious was telling you to do, for the last few months, was to finally get out of the closet and get a life.”

Skinner blushed but nodded. “Maybe it was.”

“So find yourself a nice cute houseboy to play happy families with. This stray’s too old to learn new tricks.”

“Maybe I’m not planning on going ‘home’,” Skinner replied.

Mulder gave a rough bark of laughter. “You planning to remain one of the great unwashed, Walt?”

Skinner shook his head, his eyes softening. “Hell, no. Believe me, I’ve been dreaming of it for too damned long not to keep my promise to myself.”

“What promise?”

“To celebrate finding you with at least two days in a luxury suite at the Hyatt. Soft bed. Warm Jacuzzi. A *lot* of medicated soap.” He scratched his beard significantly.

“Bugs,” Mulder agreed fervently. “The only downside.”

“Only?”

Mulder just shrugged and dipped his eyes.

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“I can’t.”

“Just to the hotel, Mulder. No strings. Just a chance to eat, sleep, wash, whatever. Then… whatever you want.”

“Uh huh. What happens after two days when I say I’m leaving? A nice straightjacket with my name on it?”

“I only accepted my bi-sexuality half an hour ago, Fox. It’s a little too early for me to contemplate bondage as well,” Skinner replied dryly.

Mulder gave a snort of laughter that turned into a coughing fit.

“Be good for your chest, all that steam,” Skinner wheedled. “Hot bath. Room service. It’s Christmas, Fox. Live a little.”

“It’s tempting,” Mulder admitted, a little ruefully. “But you seem to have overlooked the obvious.”

“Which is?”

“That there is no way in hell either of us could even get inside the lobby of a decent hotel without getting drop-kicked to the sidewalk by the doorman.”

“I have a plan,” Skinner grinned.

Mulder’s eyes brightened. “Yeah?”

“We wash up best we can in the restroom here. Get changed into some of the donated clothes in the backroom. They might not be Armani, but they’re clean at least. Then I use the payphone to call the hotel and confirm a reservation. They already have my credit card so they know I’m good for the bill. Sure, we’ll still look slightly dubious, but we won’t actually look homeless, so we’ll get into the lobby, grab the keycard and then…”

“Jacuzzi,” Mulder sighed.

“Exactly.”

Mulder frowned at Skinner’s smug grin. “This won’t change anything, you know. I’m not going to roll over just for a bath and a soft bed. Just two days, Walter. Then I’m out of there.”

“Sure, Fox. Just two days,” Skinner agreed equitably.

Mulder glowered at his bland expression suspiciously for a moment, then rose to his feet and headed for the backroom without further comment.

While Mulder chose some ‘new’ clothes and headed for the restrooms to clean up a little, Skinner made his phone call. Not to the Hyatt, as he’d said he would, but to Martha Hilliard. Despite his blasé words to Mulder, Skinner wasn’t entirely convinced he could bluff their way into the exclusive hotel without some FBI assistance. Fortunately, after a few minutes of berating him for ‘worrying the hell out of me’, Martha proved she could think on her feet by not only offering to call the hotel on his behalf but by coming up with the perfect solution to their problem.

“We used them for an undercover job last year,” she explained.

“It’s a great idea, but I don’t think Mulder will agree to come to the FBI office to fetch them, Martha,” he told her reluctantly. “He’ll think it’s a trap.”

“No problem,” she replied. “I’ll put them in a cab and send it to pick you up. You can get changed en route to the hotel.”

“Thanks, Martha. I owe you.”

“Big time,” she laughed. “Merry Christmas. To both of you.”

“Thanks… Oh, and don’t bother with the fake beards. Neither of us need them.”

Which was why, forty minutes later, Mulder and Skinner entered the lobby of the Hyatt Regency dressed as a pair of Santas.

The beauty of staying in a top class hotel, Skinner decided, as he called down to reception for someone to collect his luggage from the trunk of his car, was that it not only had its own pharmacy but that the staff of said pharmacy was too polite to ask why a guest staying in one of its most expensive suites might require scissors, comb, razors and a large container of ‘Nix’ delivered to his room.

Within minutes of the arrival of the medication, their clothes, including the Santa suits, were in a plastic garbage bag, their beards had been cut and then shaved, and Skinner had Mulder’s head pinned over the sink as he combed it out and covered it with the pesticide lotion.

“Pubes next,” he said, with a faint blush.

“I can handle that part myself,” Mulder told him with an offended sniff and shoved him out of the bathroom.

Skinner just shrugged and backed away. He hadn’t been sure whether Mulder would be able to manage the task with just one hand but was definitely relieved at Mulder’s refusal of help. He might have made the mental leap that he was ‘in love’ with another man but he wasn’t sure he was ready to contemplate any physical expression of that affection yet.

Ten minutes later they were sharing the Jacuzzi.

Oddly enough, Skinner felt no embarrassment about being naked with Mulder. Possibly because he’d spent his whole life stripping in front of other men in gyms without a second thought. Or possibly because Mulder himself was so blasé about getting undressed in front of him. They were both slightly embarrassed about their shaved groins, possibly, but Mulder showed no hesitation at all about revealing the stump of his severed arm.

His total lack of self-consciousness about the mutilation forced Skinner to ask the question.

“Did you and Alex…um… I mean, after Tunguska, did you…”

“A couple of times,” Mulder replied easily. “We pretty much hated each other by then but we still fucked on occasion.” Then he flushed slightly. “So you knew about me and Krycek, huh?”

“I suspected it, when you were partners. Whether it continued afterwards I wasn’t sure. Didn’t see it was any of my business as long as it didn’t affect the work.”

“I never loved him,” Mulder said thoughtfully. “Not even at the beginning. But hell, he had a sexy ass. I don’t think I would have survived it if I *had* loved him, you know?”

“Yeah,” Skinner breathed. “I know.”

“Scully, on the other hand, well, I loved her more than anyone in the whole damned world,” Mulder admitted. “She was my touchstone, Walter. My one in 5 billion.”

“Did she… did she know about Krycek?” Skinner asked gruffly.

“None of her business,” Mulder replied, with a blithe shrug. “We never discussed our sex lives with each other. Not that there was ever much to discuss anyway. I was too obsessed with my work, and when Scully *did* get into a relationship I inevitably fucked it up. Not on purpose,” he added hurriedly, at Skinner’s sudden frown. “I just had this horrible habit of calling her in the middle of the night or dragging her halfway across the country whenever she had a hot date.”

“Oh,” Skinner said, completely bemused by Mulder’s casual dismissal of the idea that he and Scully had been lovers. He’d never been sure, but he’d ‘assumed’. Evidently, the assumption had been wrong.

“She knew about you,” Mulder said suddenly.

“What?”

“She knew I was in love with you,” Mulder clarified, meeting Skinner’s eyes almost aggressively.

“You were?” Skinner asked weakly.

“There was a time when she didn’t trust you. When she was sure you were working for *them*. She couldn’t understand why I kept giving you the benefit of the doubt. You know how Scully was. She just kept going on about it until she got on my last damned nerve. So I told her.”

“And… and what did she say?”

Mulder snickered. “Very little. It sure as hell shut her up though.”

“I never knew that you…” Skinner said hesitantly, his expression both guilty and hopeful.

“Water under the bridge, Walter. History. Let’s not go there.”

Skinner flinched slightly at the suddenly shuttered look on Mulder’s face, but then nodded his acceptance. It was either too damned late for the conversation or still too early.

“Then let’s talk about something else.”

“What?” Mulder asked suspiciously, surprised at his easy capitulation.

“Food,” Walter announced portentously.

Mulder was silent for a while, then sighed expansively. “Food,” he groaned. “Food’s good, Walt. Food’s very good. But I don’t want to just *talk* about it.”

“Well,” Skinner said reasonably, “if we don’t talk about it, how are we going to know what to order from room service?”

“I want everything,” Mulder announced firmly.

“Me too,” Skinner agreed, with a boyish grin.

“I wonder if it’s actually possible for someone to explode from eating too much,” Mulder said, an hour later, rubbing his stomach contemplatively as he stared with near bemusement at the decimated food trolley. When he’d told Skinner he wanted ‘everything’ on the room service menu, he’d been joking.

At least he *thought* he’d been joking. Until the food arrived and the pair of them had attacked it with the enthusiasm of slavering wolves.

“Just one small wafer thin meent, monseir?” Skinner cackled gleefully.

Mulder cracked up.

They both spent several minutes simply snickering and clutching their over-filled bellies as though their laughter might literally rip their strained stomach linings apart.

“I feel sick,” Skinner finally admitted.

“Me too,” Mulder agreed happily. “I was just thinking… what’s the odds we’ll find those wafer thin mints on the pillows?”

The comment, though funny, was enough to douse Skinner’s feeling of contentment. “Um… about that,” he began awkwardly.

“Chill, Walter,” Mulder murmured, with a weird telepathy. “All I want to do for the next two days is eat and *sleep*.”

“It’s just… just…” Skinner mumbled helplessly, lost for how to explain that, despite his new found revelation that he ‘loved’, he was far from ready to take that love to another level. He needed time to adjust to the idea, but was simultaneously filled with dread that he was making a terrible mistake by not simply sweeping Mulder up in his arms and showering him with passion.

“It’s just time for us to get some sleep,” Mulder interrupted kindly.

“I *do* love you, you know?” Skinner insisted, his eyes shadowed.

“Listen to me, Walter. After Scully and I went on the run together, we shared a bed just about every night. It was good. It was love. It was the best. We’d hold each other and kiss each other and just *be* there for each other. I miss that. I miss *her*. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that love doesn’t *have* to be about sex to be real.”

Skinner’s face relaxed, his eyes softening with gratitude at Mulder’s understanding. “Then… would you sleep with me, Fox?”

Mulder met his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that, Walter. I’d like that a lot.”

Skinner reached out for his hand and led him towards the bed. Then he stopped in his tracks and snickered.

“What?”

“You were right about the mints,” he laughed.

###

“Christmas is over, Walter. Time for me to go.”

“Fox… I, well I…”

“I said two days, Walter. That’s all I promised you. I have to leave now.”

“You don’t *have* to do anything, Fox. Isn’t that the damned point? That you don’t have to conform anymore? hat you don’t *have* to do anything you don’t want to do? Well, you don’t want to leave. I know you don’t. You’re just doing what you think you *ought* to do.”

“You don’t understand, Walter. This was… this was good. This was nice. All of it. I’d forgotten how it felt to be clean. I’d forgotten how damned good it felt to have a *friend*. The last two days have been… wonderful. But this isn’t what I want, Walter. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. I’d climb out of my skin, imprisoned in four walls again. I’d go crazy doing the breakfast, lunch and dinner thing. It’s a cage. A nice cage, admittedly. But it’s still a cage.”

“You want to travel, instead of settling down anywhere?” Skinner asked desperately. “We could do that. We could just keep moving. City to city. Country to country. Anything you want.”

“Hotel room to hotel room?” Mulder demanded. “Replace these four bland anonymous walls for another four anonymous walls and convince myself that’s okay because the view from the window changes? That’s not freedom, Walter. That’s just geography.”

“You’re telling me you *want* to live on the streets alone?” Skinner demanded incredulously.

“Want to?” Mulder repeated sadly. “No. I don’t *want* to. I don’t *want* to be cold and dirty and hungry. I sure as hell don’t want to go back to sharing my scalp with a colony of head lice. And, no, I don’t *want* to be alone. But sometimes it isn’t about what you *want* as much as what you can survive, Walter. I can survive on the streets. What I *can’t* do is climb back into one of the cages people call ‘lives’ again. I need to be free.”

“Freedom’s just a word for having nothing left to lose,” Skinner quoted bitterly.

Mulder bit his lower lip. “That’s not true. I don’t want to lose you, Walter. And I know that losing you is the cost of my freedom. But I can’t stay.”

“Then I’ll come with you,” Skinner said gruffly.

Mulder shook his head in angry denial. “I can’t let you do that. You couldn’t survive it.”

“I survived it for six months,” Skinner reminded him gruffly.

“You went mildly insane for six months,” Mulder retorted. “That’s not quite the same thing, is it? You don’t belong on the streets, Walter.”

“And you do?”

“I don’t think *anyone* belongs on the streets. It’s just that for some people it’s the only available, survivable option.”

“Then it’s time to make another option available.”

“Walter…”

“No. You’ve had your say, Fox. Now hear me out. You need total freedom. You want to do what you want, whenever you want. Go where you want. Move or stay as the mood takes you. Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Mulder agreed. “But more than that. I want to be invisible, Walter. I want to move through the world unnoticed. Unremarked upon. I don’t want to make nice with neighbors or even hotel staff. I don’t want to exchange meaningless pleasantries with waitresses in diners. And I don’t want to cope with the effort and struggle of trying to survive as a hermit somewhere. I don’t want to live *that* much. Do you understand me? I need to stay in a city, because I don’t have the energy it would take to try and survive in the wilderness. But the only way I can cope with being around the people in a city is to be invisible to them. That’s the bottom line, Walter. It’s not the idea of walls that drives me insane. It’s people. Hell, I once thought about buying a mobile home and just driving around the country, never staying more than one night in any single place, but then I figured that the more I moved around the more people I’d have to deal with. Buying gas, buying provisions, handling small town cops. All that crap. I… well, I just couldn’t face it. This is easier, Walt. Better. ”

“And me? Do you want to be invisible to me, too?” Walter asked softly.

“No,” Mulder whispered. “But… but it’s the only way.”

“No it’s not. I can’t pretend to fully understand, Fox. Though even you have to admit that my time on the streets gave me a better perspective than most people to understand why you see it as an acceptable option. And, in turn, I’ll admit that my objection to the idea is based more on my personal selfishness than your happiness. I can see your wounds. I see how you bleed because in many ways I bleed from the same places. But I’m not as wounded as you. I didn’t pay the price you did. I still have reserves to draw on. Enough for both of us, if you’ll let me help you.”

Mulder just frowned at him suspiciously.

Skinner took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly and then laid his cards on the table. “I’m thinking the Winnebago idea could work, Fox. And you’d call the shots. You want to move on, even in the middle of the night, we just up sticks and move. You want to hang around somewhere, well that’s fine. I’ll take care of the mundane things, like filling the tank and keeping the kitchen stocked. You eat when you want, sleep when you want, go where you want. I run all necessary interference with other people. You want to spend the rest of your life never speaking to another living soul again, then that’s fine. The choice is yours. All the freedom you could ever want, but warm and comfortable and well-fed and *clean*.”

“What kind of shitty life would that be for you, Walter?”

“A hell of a lot less shitty than living the rest of my life without you in it.”

“You think that now,” Mulder snorted. “Just wait until I get some sudden impulse to haul ass at three in the morning.”

Skinner blushed slightly. “I’m hoping we’ll have better things to do with our asses at three in the morning, Fox.”

Mulder frowned with confusion. “Are you saying… um…”

“I’m slow, not dead, Fox. Maybe it’s taking me a little time to adjust to the fact that I’m sharing a bed with another man, but it’s you I’m in love with. You that I want to be with. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life celibate, and I’m the monogamous type so, let’s face it, if we stay together we’ll eventually end up doing more than just ‘sleeping’ together, won’t we?”

Mulder blinked at him uncertainly for a moment or two, then rolled his eyes and snickered. “Jeez, Walt. It’s a damn good job you’ve decided to come out of the closet because if you’d made that speech to a woman she’d have decked you. And they say romance is dead.”

“I’ve always been better at practical than romantic,” Skinner admitted sheepishly. “I guess it didn’t come out right.”

“It came out fine,” Mulder chuckled. “I get that you love me. I get that you’re even starting to come around to the idea that you might enjoy fucking me. And I fully understand why the two ideas don’t quite mesh in your head yet. You’re a pretty old dog to learn such a new trick. So I don’t have a problem with that. What I *do* have a problem with is the fact you think we’re going to stay together long enough for it to be an issue. Staying together’s a crazy idea, Walt. It won’t ever work.”

“Crazier than you living alone on the streets?” Skinner chuffed.

“The thing is,” Mulder said hesitantly. “The last couple of days haven’t… well, I’ve kinda been on my best behavior. I wanted… wanted this to be a good memory, you know? So I… well, I told myself I could manage two days without losing it.”

“Losing it?” Skinner asked carefully.

“I get… get quiet sometimes. Real quiet. As in ‘lost in my own world’ quiet.”

“Are we talking fugues here?”

“No,” Mulder denied quickly. “I’m fully capable of functioning. I just can’t communicate with other people on *any* level. Do you see now why it’s better for me to live alone? It wouldn’t be fair to you, Walter.”

Skinner digested that slowly. “Do these episodes last for hours? Days?”

“Weeks sometimes,” Mulder admitted in a near whisper. “I just…just can’t deal with people when I feel like that.”

“Perhaps it won’t happen so much, if you’re not on your own,” Skinner suggested.

“Maybe.”

“Well,” Skinner said, with a casual shrug, “we'll find out for sure before long, won’t we?”

“You don’t care? You aren’t changing your mind?” Mulder asked, his expression bewildered.

“I care to the extent that it’s indicative of some form of mental illness,” Skinner retorted bluntly, “but since I wasn’t laboring under the mistaken impression that you were fully sane when I made the offer, I reckon it’s pretty irrelevant.”

“You’re the crazy one,” Mulder retorted, but his eyes lost their shadowed cast and brightened with hope.

“So, we’ll be crazy together,” Skinner said gruffly. “Pass the phone book, Fox. Let’s go look at Winnebagos.”

Mulder worried his lower lip. “I’ll need to get hold of some ID. Can’t access my savings without…”

“No time for that now,” Skinner interrupted. “Let’s wipe out my savings account first of all, since I *do* have ID. Like you said before, the name Mulder’s still a little too memorable. Let’s get all the paperwork in my name until the heat dies down. Last thing we need is getting mobbed by reporters. This will be the third time you’ve come back from the dead, Fox. That kind of thing tends to make headlines. Besides, if nothing’s in your name, you won’t feel tied down and caged. You’re just ‘along for the ride’. I’m not trying to steal your freedom, Fox. I just want to expand its horizon a little. And on a practical note, I may as well trade my convertible in. I’m not going to be needing it.”

“Convertible?” Mulder demanded. “Since when has Walter Sergei Skinner driven a convertible?”

Skinner grinned. “There’s *so* much you don’t know about me, Fox. An entire secret life. Countless fascinating facts to be peeled away from me like layers off an onion.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. Could take you years to find out all my dark and sordid secrets. Like the time I went to the masked ball at the White House and ended up stuck in a laundry chute with… Nah, too long a story. We need to get moving. You can force the details out of me some other time.”

Mulder’s face finally relaxed into a genuine smile. “And what happens when you *do* run out of dark and sordid secrets to confess?”

Skinner pretended to give the matter serious consideration. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to make up some more. Highly improbable ones, of course. Like the fact that my lover almost single-handedly saved the world from alien colonization.”

“Nah,” Mulder snickered. “No one’s ever going to believe *that* one, Walt.”

And, still laughing, he handed Skinner the phone book.


 

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