Comprising:
1) One of These Dark and Moonless Nights...
2) ...I'll Be The Last Around
3) I Could Never Quit You, No

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PART 1 - ONE OF THESE DARK AND MOONLESS NIGHTS...

Summary: Another conversation in the dark for our heroes.

Note: This is what happens after JiM stays up until 2 am listening to Kelly
Joe Phelps Delta blues guitar playing, "Katy" and the line that became the
title keeps swirling in the head...and then I said, "I'll just write that
down as a title...I'll just write the first paragraph... I'll just write page
four..." *sigh*

~~~~~

I am lying on my office couch in the dark again, just staring at the bars of
light on the wall and wondering why the hell I'm still alive. Any way you
look at the odds, as a gambler, as mathematician, as anyone with an ounce of
common sense, there is no good reason for me to still be here. But here I
am, chronically fucked up and so dirty that nothing will ever wash me clean.
I can disappear in the darkness now, from all the things I have done and
thought and become.

Despair is just one more ugly thing I have to get used to.

There is suddenly someone else in the darkness, blocking out my consideration
of the bars of light that shine in from the street.

"Hey."

"Mulder, what are you doing here?"

"Haven't we played this scene before?"

"And, as I recall, it wound up with me dying, so let's try something
different this time."

"Like that was *my* fault?" His voice is quieter than I have heard it in the
past few months. Microphones and feedback had harshened its smooth tones.

"Are you really here?" I am not even sure if I speak my question aloud. But
it is not as insane as it sounds. I have had many conversations with Mulder,
lying on this couch and watching the shadows move up my walls. He has never
been here for any of them.

"I'm here," he says quietly.

"Why?"

"Not here."

"The office isn't bugged any more, Mulder. No videos, no audio, nothing.
Say whatever you want, it's just me and the roaches."

"Not here," he says firmly. "Get up."

Like a half-trained dog I snarl, but I am sitting up. "What do you want from
me?"

"You still haven't figured it out, have you?" He is shaking his head, the
reflected streetlights making his face a strobing harlequin's mask. "Get up."

"You could try 'please' or 'sir'. Some common courtesy," I explain, shoving
my feet back into my shoes.

"We're pretty far past common courtesy, Skinner."

He is right and something in me twists at that. How would it have been
between us, if the first words we had exchanged had been meaningless
pleasantries just designed to make a connection with another human being?
Instead, all our words had been useful stock phrases that covered a multitude
of sins and intentions.

"Can we pretend?" I say suddenly and wince at the brittle sound of my own
words, cracking in the dimness. I wonder if they will leave ashy streaks on
the crisp white shirt he is wearing.

A slight shift and I can see a slice of pale grin. "Sure, Walt. Would you
like to come home with me?"

The darkness shifts suddenly, rattles and shivers, waiting for me to answer.
"OK, that's different."

"You probably won't even end up dead this time." Unbelievably, his voice is
low and coaxing. He actually wants this. How unexpected.

I stand up and grope around for my suit jacket, slung across the end of the
sofa. "That is one of the strangest things you've ever said to me."

This time, I can hear the grin even though I cannot see it. "I have a lot
more strange things to say to you, Walt. Come home with me and I'll tell you
all of them."

"Do you ever shut up?"

"I don't talk with my mouth full," he says, so pleasantly that I am half-way
into my jacket before I catch on.

"Mulder, if this is a sting operation, just shoot me now and save us all a
whole lot of bother. Hell, I'll make it easy on you. I'll shoot myself."

A hand comes out of the dark and grips my left wrist. "Anyone ever tell you
you've got self-esteem issues?"

"Anyone ever tell you that making passes at your boss suggests that you've
got self-destructive impulses?" He tugs on my captive wrist and I follow him
blindly.

"You know, maybe we shouldn't talk at all. These conversations seem to run
off-course pretty quickly."

"You had a plan for how this one would go?" He leads me through the darkened
outer office. There are lights on in the corridor and we head for the
brightness.

"I was hoping for more honest enthusiasm, frankly."

I give a laugh and Mulder stops. All right, in retrospect, the sound is more
of a choking stutter. His fingers still cuff my wrist and he draws us closer
together. He shakes my arm gently and I know what he asking.

"Honesty? You came to *me* for honesty?" Despair is an ugly thing, but a
wise man knows his companions. "No wonder they thought you were crazy."

In the light that spills from the corridor, I see Mulder's mouth move into a
very slight smile. "Not crazy. Just lowered expectations."

Mulder hit me once before and it knocked the glasses from my face, leaving me
half-blind with pain and fuzzy vision. This is worse. He is serious. Trust
Mulder to find the last unbruised place I had. "Scraping the bottom, are
you, Mulder?" My voice is deep and raw even to my own ears.

His hand leaves my wrist cold and then both hands are on my shoulders,
shoving me back against the wall. My head bounces once on the plasterboard.
"Is this where you get all teary and confess your deep unworthiness and all
your sins? Because we can skip that part; I was at the hearings, I remember
every word of your testimony."

"Fuck you, Mulder."

"Hey, the conversation's back on track."

I can't help myself anymore, maybe I never could. I start to laugh. Rusty,
choking noises that twist his lips, too. "You're gonna win this one, too,
aren't you, Mulder?"

He nods and I can suddenly see his eyes in the dimness. They are deeper and
darker than anything else I have looked into tonight. His hand slides back
down my arm to take my hand. Another tug and he is leading me again and we
head toward the lighted corridor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PART 2 - ...I'LL BE THE LAST AROUND

Summary: Mulder has plans for Skinner after that conversation in the dark...

~~~~~

I am standing under the stream of hot water in Mulder's shower, letting the
water wash over me. My skin feels gritty with the residue of all the secrets
I have spoken today. My eyes ache and I taste blood; I think I have bitten
my lip.

"Hey," Mulder says from beyond the shower curtain. I jump, not used to
having anyone there, waiting for me on the other side.

"I thought you were working late."

"The Director sent me home for not playing nice with the other kids."

"What did you do this time?"

Mulder begins to talk and I let the laughter in his voice wash over me, the
easy trust warmer than the water, warmer than I have any right to hope for.
But there it is and I am too greedy to return a gift given in error.

It has been like this every day for the past three weeks.

I woke that first morning in Mulder's waterbed, warm and rested. I stared
at myself in that mirrored ceiling, surprised that I wasn't caked with grime.
I found myself waiting for the punch line. It came minutes later when Fox
Mulder walked into the room, plunked down a mug of coffee, then calmly
announced that I had one hour before my counseling appointment. The
appointment he had made for me with the top psychologist used by the Bureau.
While I was still trying to decide between shouting and just hitting him, he
kissed me.

I open my lips and let the water stream in, filling my mouth with liquid
heat. Mulder kisses like that, like he is trying to fill me with all that I
need to survive. He did that first morning, too. It was a first caress,
because for all of his brazen innuendo that first night, all he had done was
take me home to his apartment, strip me and tuck me into a warm and
undulating bed. I fell asleep under his watchful eye.

He rewards me with sex. But he is so blatant about it that I am perfectly
aware of what he is doing and so could stop it at any moment. I don't.

Every time I opened my mouth to snarl that first morning, he kissed me. My
coffee was stone cold and we were both breathless before I finally just
growled, "Fine," and tried to yank him into bed.

"No," he said seriously. "Not now. You have 29 minutes to get there and
it's 17 blocks from here."

"You son of a bitch!"

"You've met my mother?" he grinned, then his expression softened as he looked
at me. "You need this, Walt. Badly. And I don't mean sex."

I hate it when he's right. The same way that I hate the daily sessions with
the solemn-faced psychologist whose security clearance is higher than my own
and who listens to everything I tell her with the same gently interested
expression on her face. She speaks maybe five words to me and suddenly the
only voice scraping the walls of that fern-colored room is my own. It pours
out of me and I am a lanced wound and I barely survive it, day after day,
that emptying.

Then I come home and Mulder finds me here, as he has every afternoon for
three weeks, in his huge old claw-footed tub, the water running so hot that
it begins to feel cool against my reddened skin. He never asks. But when I
step out, finally, it is always the same.

"Mulder, I can dry myself."

"Yes," he agrees pleasantly. "Indulge me." As always, I do. I suffer his
gentle ministrations, half-embarrassed and half-enslaved by the look of
intense concentration in his eyes, the earnest curve of his lips. It is
neither paternal nor erotic but some weird mixture of the two, and something
more, that leaves my throat aching and my forehead creased as I blink rapidly.

My solemn-faced therapist wants me more in touch with my feelings. If I
touch any more of them, I will crawl under the covers of Mulder's bed and
never come out. I do not belong there; I have nothing more than squatter's
rights to claim, but I have nowhere else to go.

That first morning, Mulder showed me a letter requesting four months leave of
absence for me from the Bureau, citing personal reasons. I nodded as I read
it, appreciated his skill at forging my signature. I was drawing a breath to
say or shout *something* when it finally hit me.

I don't want to go back. The Bureau certainly doesn't want me there; my
new-found honesty and embarrassing penchant for answering any and every
Senate query has made me a leper in the halls of the Hoover building.

I am finally at the bottom. Confession has hollowed me out, the truth
scouring away anything I have kept hidden and only Mulder seems to see
anything left worth keeping.

So I spend my mornings watching dust motes dance in the sunbeams that cut
through his high-ceilinged apartment and listen to the whisper of pages as I
turn them. Afternoons, I listen to my past whisper out as I turn it over for
my silent listener and wait for her to pass a sentence that never comes.
Nights, I lie in Mulder's arms or he sprawls across my chest and I whisper it
all again. Mulder passed judgment a long time ago and my sentence is life.

He stands up and slings the dampened towel around my neck. My mouth opens and
he answers a question I have not yet asked. "Because I want to, Walt. Deal
with it."

My mouth opens again and he says even more crisply, "Because you want to,
Walt."

"That's a reason?" I finally get my footing, rare in a conversation with
Mulder.

"The only reason that matters any more."

His fingers are moving like a flautist's down his shirtfront. I skin the
steam-limp dress shirt away from him, then unbuckle his belt, stabbing my
thumb on the metal tongue. Mulder takes my hand in his and raises the
wounded finger to his lips. Gently, unhurriedly, he presses his mouth over
the pad of my thumb, lips warm and moist as he soothes the minor injury. I
shiver and am in danger of shattering again. Mulder does not care; he seems
to like putting the shards back together in whatever new patterns I choose.

"Remember," he says, as he strips away the rest of his clothing then turns
away and steps into the shower, "I intend to win."

As I hear the water begin splashing down his body, I realize that he already
has. There is nothing to do but go and wait for him in bed, so I do. This
time when I look up, the mirrors reflect a man who is nearly clean.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PART THREE - I COULD NEVER QUIT YOU, NO

Summary: Mulder is gone and Skinner has to get himself a life...

~~~~~

He's been gone for a week now. I am sitting on my own couch, staring at my
own walls and wondering why I don't recognize them any more. Even the creaks
and hums and clicks that ought to seem familiar are no longer "home" to me.
Mulder left and he took it all with him; the conversations, the laughter, the
quiet sense of belonging. Mulder left and he took away the silence. I do
not know how to be quiet any more without him.

He has not called and I cannot make my fingers dial. I knew this time would
come and he did, too. It just came sooner than I expected. In one month, I
will need to decide what to do about the Bureau. No, that is not right; in
one month, I will tell the Bureau to go fuck itself. Then I will need to
decide what to do about the rest of my sorry life.

For the last three months, Mulder has made all of my decisions. I rested in
Mulder's slipstream and ate when he fed me, slept when he closed my eyes,
talked when he listened. Piece by piece, I unearthed the fragments of myself
and he fitted them together, sometimes laughing with delight at what he found.

The case is a simple one. It isn't even an X File. It is merely a
kidnapping. No, that is wrong. Someone's wife is missing, a daughter
stolen, a sister dangled just out of reach and Mulder has gone to get her
back again. But he was gone, so I left. I came back here, to this orderly
calm and now I miss the silence that was between us. I miss the words and the
laughter and the touches, too. I miss the sex.

There is a stillness that rings after the last word of austere truth has been
spoken and finally heard. There is a quiet between one sleeping breath and
the next, my head pillowed on his chest. There is a muteness in orgasm, when
we both hang in the still point of the universe and clutch and spin. Mulder
has taken all these silences away with him and still more.

I have spent these months talking, it seems. To my therapist. To Mulder.
To myself, if no one is there to listen. But now that he is gone, it is all
I can do to account for myself to my sober psychiatrist. I tell her how it
felt to die, I tell her what it meant to wake up and know that I would do
anything to keep from ever feeling that again, I tell her what I did to keep
living and how it killed me anyway. I tell her everything but the newest
truth.

I cannot sit and stare at my unfamiliar walls all day. So I fix leaking
faucets, sticking drawers, rusted hinges. I read books. I go out to eat and
then wander the Smithsonian or jog the Mall. I talk to my therapist.

My neighbors are two elderly women, one arthritic, the other blind. I fix
their leaks and drips and patch their rents and clean the muck from their
gutters. I read the Times to the blind woman until her friend goes out to
evening mass, then I read to her from her plainly-bound edition of 'Tom
Jones'. Today, I have painted their front door a startling shade of purple.
It surprises me how beautifully it mutes into the dark green of the house. I
am trying to wash the mulberry smears from my hands when my phone rings.

"Hi. It's me."

The silences all rush back and I am voiceless.

"Walt?" For the first time in three months, Mulder sounds unsure of himself.
That knowledge frees my tongue.

"Is the case over?"

/Are you coming home?/

"Yeah, we found her. She was still alive. The perp's dead, though. Scully
shot him when he went for her."

"Is Scully all right?"

/Are you all right?/

"She will be." Mulder's faith in his partner firms his tone, but it fails
him again at the next breath. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"You sound tired."

"I'm fine."

"Walt," he says, then sighs. "Do you know why I left?"

I feel a flair of resentment that he knows me so well. But didn't I hand over
all the keys three months ago? Why should it bother me now that all my doors
stand open so that he may come and go through my mind as he likes?

"Because it was time."

"It was time," he agrees. "But for what?"

"Mulder," I feel a snarl being birthed. "I don't feel like playing twenty
questions."

Paradoxically, my harsh tone seems to please him. "What have you been doing
all week?"

"Repairs. Movies. I read. I ate. Saw my therapist. Real exciting stuff."

/Waiting for you to call/

"What would you have done if I'd been there?"

"Repairs. Movies. Books. Therapy."

/Sex/

"You forgot fucking me until I passed out," he says helpfully.

"Is there a point anywhere in sight, Mulder?" I am growling now. I haven't
done that in months.

"What did you do today, Walt?"

"I spent the day painting my neighbors' house. My hands are probably gonna be
'Mulberry Sunset' forever."

/I spent hours not thinking about you/

"Is that what they call that shade?" He makes a harrumph noise. "I might have
gone with something like 'Victorian Twilight' or maybe 'Icelandic Nightfall'."

"Where the hell are you?" A hideous suspicion is igniting.

"Staring at something which clearly ought not to be named 'Mulberry Sunset',"
he says, just before I yank the door open and he spills into my apartment.
He sprawls on the floor and looks up at me with a goofy smile.

"You shouldn't lean against doors. You never know when they're gonna open,"
I say stupidly and offer him a mottled hand up. Then the front door slams
closed as I shove him against it and kiss him until neither one of us can
breathe.

There is a silence that swirls in the time between the last touch of lips and
the next breath drawn. Mulder has brought that back with him.

"Why...?"

"I wanted you to know that you have a life."

I shake my head, hands flexing on his shoulders.

"Yes," he insists, hands gripping my upper arms.

/Stay/

"Stay," I whisper, wanting the quiet back again. Mulder has stopped making
my decisions for me. Now all I want is for him to make his own.

"Yes."

I smile and draw him close again, so that I can listen to the sound of his
breath and his words and his laughter and all the silences in between.

THE END