Title: "Mountain", #5 in the "Gone" series
Author: JiM
Series: "Gone", XF slash
Pairing: M/Sk
Date: 6/00
Feedback: jimpage363@aol.com
Thanks: Dawn and Karen and MT and MJ and Amirin - with friends like this, who
could fail? And, as always, Mona, who keeps a dynamite page.
Website: Stories 1 - 4 can be found at:
www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html
Note:The "Old Man of the Mountain" can be viewed at:
http://www.franconianotch.org/recreation.html (bottom of the page)

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"Mountain" by JiM


Something happened to Mulder today, out under those bare spring-gnawed trees.
He sits across from me, drinking his coffee in slow measured sips and I can
almost see him, feel him ringing like a crystal bowl. One dead man's words,
nailed to a tree, have left him silent, pale and gasping, a bruised look to
his eyes. The only question is: will the blow, whatever it was, shatter him?

I shake my head. How can I worry about him when I can't even answer the
question for myself? I may yet shatter; I can feel the cracks spidering
outward, cutting deeply through everything I ever thought I knew. Mulder
believes there is something new on the other side but I am not so sure. I
have seen men come back from their breakdowns and seen only fractured ruins
in their eyes, watched their days carved into portions carefully allotted to
pills and therapists. If that's what waits for me, I won't come back from
this trip. I'll just keep driving.

But what about Mulder? He wasn't ready for this. I have known, in some way,
that this was coming for a long time. I could feel the levies and dams
washing away within, could tell my control was flaking away like rust. But I
don't think Mulder did. After all, it's such an ordinary kind of terror,
this awakening to find oneself rimed with middle age.

It's lonely as hell to discover that you have neither children nor wife nor
good friends nor a spectacular career to show for the efforts of an entire
adult life. I was full of such promise when I left college... At least
Mulder can point to the concerted efforts of an entire shadow conspiracy that
he opposed with every breath in his body, several times to the point of
death. They were more than reason enough for a man to fail. And he did not,
not entirely. But me? No answer. Yes, I opposed them, but not
whole-heartedly. I tried to balance between expediencies and I was chewed up
and spit out. Now there is nothing left of who I wanted to be. All those
nights I sat in the desert and wanted, I think I was wanting to become
myself. And now, I don't think it's possible.


We drink our coffee before the round stone fireplace, raised up like an altar
to a benign household god. Our hostess comes and goes as silently and kindly
as breath. Coffee and brandy and something baroquely soothing plays on
hidden speakers while Mulder continues his inner inventory and I watch the
flames. The innkeeper's dog leans against my knee and sighs in contentment
as I stroke his silky head. Perhaps it is progress; I have made one living
being content for one entire minute. It is more than I ever thought of
before.

Tomorrow, I think that we will climb the path and go look at the Old Man of
the Mountain. The stone profile has been crumbling away for decades and they
have spent outrageous amounts of time and money demanding that it remain
exactly as it was with wire and spackle and bolts. But they are fools. All
things change, even mountains. I need to see that mountain, to watch the
facade crumble into gravel and scree and to lay my hand against the rock and
know that I will still be myself when everything loose within me has fallen
away. I think Mulder does, too.

He hasn't said a word by the time we both head up to bed. We slip around one
another quietly as we undress and use the tiny bathroom off our room. Mulder
is sitting on the end of his bed when I come out of the bathroom in boxers
and a tee shirt. He is staring blindly at the work boot in his hand; the
other remains on his foot. When I lay my hand on his shoulder, he starts,
then looks up at me. I can do nothing but nod, I am as lost as he. But
somehow, that's enough. He nods back, a small smile forming on his lips.
Sometimes, it is enough to know that one isn't lost all alone. I fall asleep
to the sound of his breathing in the moonlit darkness.

When I open my eyes, it is deep in the night. The moon no longer shines
directly in the window, but it throws long silver rhombuses on the rug.
Mulder stands in only his shorts, looking out the window. His back is against
the window frame so that I see exactly one half of him silvered in the
moonlight, the other half too deeply shadowed for me to pick out even his
most familiar features without my glasses. He has the window open and icy
air pours past him, carrying the scents of granite and trees and time. I can
no longer hear him breathing and it is this that finally makes me whisper,
"Mulder?"

There is no answer for a long time, then he replies to a conversation that I
hadn't realized we were having until this moment. "I just want
something...*someone* to hold on to," Mulder says softly, mostly to himself.
The words hang in the cold night air and shimmer like quicksilver. He is
looking at me now, frosted by the moon and shivering in the cold, standing
alone and proud, more than half of him made indistinct in the darkness.

After a long moment, maybe the last moment in a long lifetime of numbing
disappointments, I hold up one corner of the quilt. If it isn't quite an
invitation, it is an acceptance of something I never before acknowledged,
something that is now almost comfortingly inevitable. I move back to give
it some room.

Mulder stares blindly toward me, then makes his way over and slides between
the warm sheets, settling with a shiver into the space that I have left for
him. There is a long silence and we lay without touching, without talking. I
can hear him breathing in the silvery darkness again.

"Mulder, is this why I invited you along?" I am staring at the ceiling as if
not making eye contact will rob this moment of all its dangerous rhythms.

"I think so...part of it, anyway," Mulder says gently.

"I didn't know." I sound a little desperate, like a man who doesn't know why
he just invited someone into his bed.

"I know," Mulder says in that same gentle tone. My right arm is up above my
head, my fist clenching, flexing and opening like some kind of destructive
night-blooming thing.

Mulder's voice sounds again in the darkness, as comfortingly familiar as a
stuffed animal. "It's all right. It's just something new."

It makes me laugh, small choked noises and my lungs are clenching in time
with my fist. "Damn straight, it's new."

"You really never knew?"

"I... don't think so... no."

"It'll be all right," Mulder says again.

The sheets whisper beneath me as I turn to face him in the dark. "I'm too
old for 'new'," I say, clutching desperately at who I used to be as the rocks
begin to slide in earnest.

"What else is there?" Mulder shoots back.

Pills, I think. Therapists and that carved up look in my own eyes. Pills,
or Mulder. As if I've made any other choice in the past ten years. I reach
out my hand, fumble it towards him. He catches it securely in his own hand
and holds on tightly, as if I would fall away, slip beneath the waves, be
dragged off if he did not grip me with all his strength.

"So, what happens now?"

"How the hell do I know?" Mulder says with a touch of irritation.

"Hey! I'm the trembling virgin here, dammit. It's not like *I* have a clue."

Mulder's laughter pisses me off for one white-hot moment, then I see that it
really is funny. I guess sex always is. We are both still chuckling when he
realizes that my hand is shaking again, fingers clutching his a little too
tightly. Then Mulder is pulling my hand up to rest on his chest and saying
quietly in the dark, "It'll be OK, Walter. Just let it go for tonight."

"But..." I have no idea what I meant to say; I have only the dimmest sense of
outrage that I can't just leap off the cliff now and be done with it. I am
terrified and must turn and fight my fear and he is telling me to lay beside
it and ...

"Sleep would be good," Mulder says, then yawns. Immediately, I remember that
I have hauled this man six hundred miles from his home and he hasn't slept in
over 24 hours. "It's not that I don't want you, because, trust me, I do.
For *years* now," he mumbles. "But I think slow would be good here. At
least, I'd kinda like to make love to you when I'm not strung out on caffeine
and existential crisis," he says softly, eyes gleaming in the uncertain light.

I can feel myself blinking; he is braver than I am. He has said the words
that I can barely think. But I am a fighter and my hand is still in the grip
of a comrade. Tonight, I think, we will sleep beside one another. Then
tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime very soon, we will make love and he
will be my lover. And I will be his.

We are both insane.

But all I do is nod. Mulder smiles again, that very gentle smile that goes
with the voice and I think of how cowardly I am, making him carry me through
this. Without thought, I am leaning toward him and my dry lips brush his
cheek. When I settle back, he blinks slowly at me and his smile is so happy;
once again, I have made another living being happy for one instant in time.
It is a good feeling to take down into sleep with me, my fingers still
tangled up with his, rising and falling on his sleeping chest.

If a mountain can reshape itself, so can I.

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