Chapter Eight: A Locked Box

*********************************

Water was all around him as far as he could see. He was a
child floating in the Sutro salt water pool hundreds of feet
long with thousands of other kids suited in white and black
striped suits and billowy long bloomers. In his inflated water-
wings he could paddle without fearing his legs being too
short to touch the sandy bottom.

He heard the call of the carnival barkers and the squeals of
the other kids and he splashed around to face the shore. The
bumper cars were beeping and the ponies were walking in a
slow continuous circle in their corral, following the sandy
rump ahead of them.

"Joshua!"

Someone was calling his name. It was a man. He kicked
forward trying to find the voice among the swimmers.

"Joshua! Get out of the water!"

The voice sounded worried and he began to get scared. He
tried to kick toward shore, but the faster he'd paddle and
splash, the farther the dunes became. He began to cry out for
help and soon he saw one of the lifeguards rowing steadily
toward him in a rowboat, his back to him as he worked the
oars. He was wearing a long black coat as he rowed along
side him. The man reached into the water for him and pulled
his small child's frame up and into the boat.

The boy sat back and coughed, wiping the water from his
eyes. The man was wearing a suit and tie; he was tugging at
Joshua's arm.

"Joshua, show me your hands."

The child's arms lifted at his command and the fingers at the
ends of them were twisted and black.
 

**************************************

Marina Flat
10:00 AM
Saturday
 

Joshua woke slowly. His mind wanted to wake and shake the
dark images from the recent dream, but his body was too
lazy to reply properly and he merely flopped over, planting
his face in the pillow next to him. A faint masculine scent
reached his nose and his lower body decided to inform him it
was high time to get up.

He opened his eyes, emitting a hazy moan. He felt terrible,
and he felt incredible. Fortune had indeed spun her wheel in
his favor last night. He'd had everything a man could hope
for in a birthday: a good performance, good friends, good
news, and plenty of food, drink...and sex. Now the resulting
hangover from a night well-lived was making his mouth feel
like spun cotton, and his head like the bottom of a kettle
drum. He was fuzzy enough at that moment to forget he was
sharing the space with a woman as he threw the covers back
and stood up, walking stiffly toward the bath.

Agent Scully gave a polite little cough for his benefit.

Joshua froze mid-stride. Scully was sitting on the couch as
usual; this time she really appeared to be involved in the
paperwork she held in her lap.

"Oh, sorry. Good morning, Scully."

"Good morning, Joshua," she replied pleasantly, keeping her
eyes on her work. Now both agents knew he carried a shorn
scrotum. Joshua hurried into the bathroom and shut the
door.

###

A long hot shower, a shave, and a couple tall glasses of
orange juice later, Joshua was feeling a good deal more
himself as he joined Scully at the couch to look at some mail
she had brought him from the field office.

"How's your wound?" she asked him as he took a seat next to
her, only half-dressed in his robe and a pair of loose slacks.
He pulled the robe from his shoulder so she could examine
it. He could feel the tickle of her fingertips as she touched
the skin around the pink ridge of the stitched cut. He wished
it was still Mulder's touch, but he supposed he'd have to wait
until later this evening to even talk to him. Joshua had a
matinee performance today at 2:30.

"It looks like it's doing well. You're keeping it bandaged when
you go out?"

"Yes, are you and Mulder coming to the show again today?"

"No, we have some work to see to. I think Dillmont and
another SF agent will be joining you this afternoon. I enjoyed
your performance last night; it was magnificent."

Joshua tried to hide his disappointment at the prospects of
lounging in the green room with Dillmont as he thanked her
for the compliment. He pulled his robe back on and reclined
into the cushions to leaf through the stack of mail. Every last
one had been opened and resealed with a flimsy strip of clear
tape, courtesy of the Federal Government.

"They didn't find anything unusual in your recent mail. As far
as we know, Schmidt was the last suspect to send anything
through the US Post Office. It also appears that Harris has
stopped writing. Mulder arranged to give Harris access to
another pencil, but he's yet to use it."

Joshua looked up from flipping through his assortment of
bills, letters and birthday cards. "Why do you think they've
stopped?"

"We're not sure, exactly," she said, slipping her notes back
into a file. "But they do appear to stop writing over time--
perhaps after they've ceased to be useful."

"Is that your theory or Mulder's?" he asked with a grin.

She returned the good humor. "Mulder's, but I'd be inclined
to agree with him in this instance."

Joshua decided their casual repartee might be accepting of a
little probing. "How long have you been working with Agent
Mulder?"

"Almost seven years," she answered with reverence.

"That's a long time," Joshua acknowledged. "Pardon my
asking, but as a scientist, what drew you to Mulder's work?"

Scully sat up straighter, looking forward into the light of the
windows. "At first, I was assigned to him. Then over time I
developed an interest in the work, became invested."

"Six years is quite a commitment to make for something you
don't believe in."

Scully turned her head, considering his statement. "I may not
believe in Mulder's theories, but I do believe in Mulder. He's
a tough act to pass up. I guess I want to see how it ends."

Joshua nodded, pleased with the answer. "I imagine it will be
quite a curtain call." Scully smiled lightly and dropped her
eyes to her work--there was more to her story, but she
wasn't about to divulge its plot. Joshua let her off the hook
and busied himself with his mail. There was quite a lot of it.
He breezed past most of the business-related items, spending
his time reading the birthday cards and standing them up on
the coffee table one by one until something caught his eye.
There was a long envelope from the Philadelphia Westbridge
Bank with URGENT-FINAL NOTICE typed in red across it. He
popped the tape off and opened the head letter.

"Dear Sir: Since we have not received word from your
representatives, it is our duty by state law to take possession
of the property at 10056 Hampshire Lane and proceed with
the auctioning of your unclaimed possessions held at this
address...."

Joshua couldn't believe his eyes, and gave them a good rub
before continuing. Then he read the letter again from the
beginning just to make sure it wasn't last night's champagne
still talking.

"Something wrong?" Scully asked, picking up on his distress.

"Yes...it would appear I'm no longer a resident of
Pennsylvania."

"What's happened?"

Joshua stuffed the letter back into the envelope in disgust.
"There must be some mistake. The Westbridge Bank says I've
defaulted on my loan. They've taken my property *and* my
personal effects which will soon be sold to the highest
bidder."

"Are you having financial difficulties?"

Joshua shook his head in an amazed negative. "Last time I
checked, I was gainfully employed. Not to mention I'm about
to sign a rather impressive contract with the Vienna
Philharmonic. Dammit! I have a Louis XIV harpsichord at that
address."

"Are your other properties in good standing?"

"Yes, the flat in New York and this one here," he said,
indicating their surroundings, "I own outright. The
Philadelphia property is a new purchase. I have it on a short-
term loan. Somehow, $60,000 has vanished. I need to call
Nanette right away."

Scully pulled out her cellphone and offered it to Joshua. He
took it and dialed his manager and waited anxiously while the
phone rang and rang, unanswered. Joshua beeped it off, and
glanced at his watch. "She's not home and I have to be at
Davies in under two hours."

"We could go by there on your way to the Hall," Scully
suggested.

Joshua stood up to go finish dressing. "Good idea. I'd like to
get over to her house as soon as possible."
 

*****************************************

1034 Sloat Blvd.
12:45 PM
 

Nanette lived between the ocean and the zoo in the Parkside
district, away from the main bustle of the city. The land
leveled off at this southern end of the San Francisco
peninsula, allowing the scent of sea foam, giraffe and
eucalyptus to blow freely through the streets. Scully parked
outside the narrow two-story Victorian, positioned flush to
the neighboring bay windowed homes that were the city's
architectural trademark.

Joshua exited the car, bank letter in hand, and jogged up the
steps to ring the bell. He waited, but there was no answer.
Nanette wasn't expecting him and she might have hopped
aboard MUNI to do some shopping for the morning. Scully
joined him at the front landing.

"No one home?"

"No, but I do have a key," he said, pulling out a small chain of
keys and unlocking the front door.

They stepped inside and Joshua called out for Nanette, but
there was nobody home.

"Her coat and bag are gone," he said, pointing to the empty
coat rack as he turned to shut the door behind them.

"Are you going to leave her a note?" Scully asked, following
Joshua up the hardwood floor hallway to a large room at the
back of the house where Nanette kept her office.

"Yes, but I'd also like to have a look around." Joshua knew
Scully could tell he was just a little suspicious, and she took
up the unspoken suggestion to help him inspect the room.

Joshua started with the writing desk set next to the chintz-
curtained window. The desk was an antique from the turn-of-
the-century, filled with tiny drawers and slots for arranging
papers and checks and receipts. Nana managed his personal
expenses, credit cards and traveling arrangements. An
accountant in New York handled his investments, properties
and taxes, but ultimately it was Nanette's job to make sure he
kept up with all the payments. He wondered which end of the
financial duo had dropped the ball.

Nothing seemed amiss as he pulled out and replaced the
contents of each cubby. Behind him, he could hear Scully
fingering through the items on the bookshelf and wall desk,
dragging open the heavy oak drawers.

"Joshua?"

He jumped a little at the sound of her voice. Why was he so
nervous? "Yes?"

"There's a lock box in the bottom drawer of this desk; do you
know what's in it?"

Joshua came over to peek down at the green metal box. "I
have no idea," he answered, bending over to lift it onto the
desk. It wasn't heavy, but did sound like it was filled with
something. "It's locked all right."

Scully pulled out a lockpick. "I thought this might come in
handy here," she said, and in a moment the box top popped
open. Joshua lifted the lid; inside he found a stack of old
yellowed papers and warped photographs, decades old. He
pulled them out one by one, turning them over carefully as
some were bible-page-thin and brittle to the touch. There
were letters written in both French and Russian dating back
to the 1920s and 30s; and two birth certificates, one for
Nanette, and another, an old, partially burned synagogue
document handwritten in Cyrillic. Of the stained and faded
sepia-tone photos, there were pictures of an old farm in
winter; a photo of a young girl with bows in her hair and long
strings of pearls around her neck; two women in kerchiefs
picking flowers; and finally a photo of two young farmers,
standing arm in arm, smiling, with a large tractor behind
them. There was a caption at the bottom of this photo,
written in aged-brown ink. Joshua recognized the only
Russian he could read, his grandfather's name--Ivan Segulyev.

"That's my grandfather," he said to Scully, pointing to the
photo's lettering.

"Which man?"

Joshua shook his head. He'd never seen a photo of his
grandfather young, without the long beard. "I don't know. I
can't recognize him, only his name. By his age, this must
have been taken before he left the Ukraine."

Scully pulled out the Russian birth announcement, holding its
place in the stack so it could be slipped back in. "Is this your
grandfather's, too?"

Joshua looked it over again. The birth year was 1913, one
year too late. He did not see his grandfather's name on the
document. "No. I don't know who that belongs to."

"Was Nanette ever married?" Scully asked.

"Yes, for a brief period to a man here in San Francisco while I
was away on tour. He was ill; he died before I ever met him. I
think Nana married him so she could stay in the US and he
could have someone to take care of him in his last days."

"Do you remember his name?"

"It was Barry Anderson. Nanette kept his last name."

"Was he from Russia, originally?"

Joshua thought it over. "No. I don't think so. Funny, but I
never even saw a picture of him."

"I think we should give some of these documents a closer
look, Joshua. But I can't be responsible for them; that would
be an illegal seizure."

Joshua understood. "I'll take them, then. We can copy them,
and I'll put them back before she knows they're gone."

Joshua found a large manila envelope and carefully slid the
contents of the lock box into it, folding over the top while
Scully slipped the emptied box back into the bottom drawer,
closing it tight. "I think we'd better get out of here," he said,
and Scully agreed.
 

****************************************

1:30 PM

"I'll call you back after my performance. Just get out to
Philadelphia as soon as you can. Thank you...I hope it's all a
misunderstanding, too." Joshua set the cellphone back on the
dash as Scully drove him up to Davies.

"Well, this is strange...I don't know how much of that you
caught, but Nanette asked my accountant to turn over the
handling of the Philadelphia property in a signed letter from
myself about five months ago--around the time the bank
stopped receiving the payments. I'm concerned she may have
forged my signature. I know she knows how to do that; it's
been useful in getting things done while I'm out of reach, at
least until now."

"I can see where that ability might leave room for abuse,"
Scully commented.

Joshua let out a perturbed sigh. "I know she must have a very
good reason. Perhaps I am in some kind of financial bind and
she'd rather I didn't find out until the end of my California
concert series. But why she didn't tell me earlier...? God, I
can't even think about this right now. I have downbeat in
under an hour."

"You realize, Joshua, that however well-meaning Nanette's
motives may be, she's probably been hiding more than a few
unpleasant notices from you. Have you wondered how many
threat letters she might have intercepted?"

"I have been thinking about that," Joshua said, shifting
nervously, trying to maintain composure over his growing
uneasiness. "I keep telling myself she's just been trying to
protect me, but sixty thousand dollars... She's never handled
my large assets, nor taken an interest in them--it just doesn't
make sense."

"Are you assuming she embezzled the funds?"

"I hope not. If she needed money, all she needed to do was
ask--she knows that. What disturbs me even more, ironically,
is the photo of my grandfather. I know he purposely didn't
keep any photos of himself prior to his arrival in the US. He
was always afraid someone would find him and drag him
back, even after he became naturalized. I have no idea what
she's doing with one locked in a box in her office."

"If there's anything I've learned from my years as an agent,
Joshua, it's that people are often not what they seem."

Joshua pulled at a stray thread on his shirt sleeve, snapping it
off. "I realize that, but as an artist I *need* to be able to
completely rely on my representatives, especially during a
performance run. Thus far this week, my handlers have only
served to further complicate my life."

"I'll assure you, that Mulder and I are trying to do everything
we can to reverse that."

Joshua caught himself just short of saying something he
shouldn't. If anyone was guilty of complicating his life, it was
himself. He wondered if Mulder was awake yet and if he was
feeling the multi-layers of distraction, too.
 

****************************************

Marriott Hotel
1:35 PM

"...you were stolen from us...your life is not your own...we
have been searching...we have found you...we were sacrificed
for you...you are the one...stop before we stop you...see what
you will not see...see where you came from...you are us..."

"...bury the grain and slaughter the livestock...we are
hungry..."

The phrases had variations, but the strips of paper Mulder
was working with simplified and condensed into more or less
one message. Except, of course, the lines of Russian.

Mulder rolled over on the bed onto his back and stared up at
the blank ceiling. He was showered and dressed, but Scully
was late getting over to meet him. Her delay was fortunate,
because he needed this time to try and assimilate last night's
rather unexpected detour. Was it just a case of being caught
in the right frame of mind? he wondered. Or am I completely
losing my mind? One thing he did know for certain: last night
Joshua had taken him to bed and he'd offered no protest. He
hadn't been this surprised by himself since hypnotherapy had
called up his first visions of aliens. That otherworldly
revelation had completely shattered his world view. He
worried Joshua might have the potential to exact a similar
effect from him.

Certainly, Mulder had the openness of mind to appreciate the
aesthetics of both sexes; but to become sexually aroused and
satisfied by a male, well, he just didn't know what to make of
that and flipped back over on his side to look at the print-
outs again. His detour was just that, he decided, a random
occurrence. His work was his world and in that world was
Scully. Whatever happened last night had no influence on
that. Or so he hoped.

Scully had made thorough notes on the translations Nanette
had given her. Letter for letter had been spelled out on the
notepad he had torn into individual words. Comparing the
notes to the photoprints, he realized for the first time that
not all the letters were accounted for. Checking again, letter
by letter, he was able to find four stray characters. He copied
them down as accurately as he could onto a fresh piece of
stationery and walked over to his laptop, taking a seat at the
desk.

He searched the internet until he found an English/Russian
dictionary with spell-assist. Activating the Cyrillic typeface
option, he ran his fingers along the keyboard until he located
the matching symbols on the notepad. E, N, O & P were the
keys to hit and he began typing in random variations in
groups of three and asking the dictionary to translate. The
reply was the same each time--"No word match, try again"--
until a particular arrangement caught the interest of the
spell-assist and the computer rearranged the last two letters
adding the fourth to spell, in phonetic English, the word
CHUTOVE.
 

***********************************

San Francisco Public Library
4:10 PM
 

'...nous sommes excitées pour votre arrivée...'

Mulder was tempted to check the morning paper for a
special weather report from Hell. Not only had his by-the-
book partner brought him illegally seized evidence from
Joshua's manager's home this afternoon, but his virtually
useless college courses in conversational French were finally
beginning to pay off. Of course a freak cold snap in Hades
would go a long way to explaining last night, too, but he
really didn't want to go there again just yet. He didn't need
any additional fuel on the still smoldering fire he was trying
to snuff out and wondered if there was some truth to the
phrase, "freshly fucked glow," and if so, would Scully be able
to recognize it? The odd glances she was giving him as she sat
across the table, leafing through an oversized World
Almanac, might be evidence of it. Mulder didn't know if he
should feel ashamed, apologetic or smug.

"Mulder...?"

He matched her glance passively. "Yeah?"

"Are you doing okay with the translation? We should be able
to locate an interpreter for French far easier than the
Russian."

"Je suis trés compétent," he answered, hoping that meant,
'I'm all over it.' She just shook her head, cocking another
weird smile, and resumed flipping through the musty book of
facts, figures and numbers.

Mulder had the surreptitious photocopies of the lock box's
French letters spread out in front of him, along with an
English/French dictionary to help him with the longer words.
He was a little weak on the past imperfect conjugations as
well, but they'd already wasted two hours finding a Russian
translator who was now over 45 minutes late meeting them
at the library.

"Here it is, Mulder. Chutove, or Chutovo, depending on
translation--a Ukrainian agricultural village of 12,000 people,
45 miles from the south-western Russian border. Their main
crops are wheat, barley, vegetables, sugar beets, cherries and
apricots...herding animals, cattle, sheep, goats..." she read on
in silence for a few lines. "The population ratio of Ukraine is
73% Ukrainian and 22% Russian. Chief languages are
Ukrainian and Russian. The monetary unit is the Hryunya and
the chief religions are Ukrainian Orthodox and
Catholic...Nothing significant is jumping out at me. What was
particular about this village other than the fact Joshua's
grandfather hails from it?"

"Je ne sais pas. Mais, l'homme décharné..."

"Mulder, cut the French, already."

He smiled. He got a good ol' fashioned eyebrow for that. It
made all lack of logical sense that they'd be in step *today.*

"Tell me what they say...in English, sil vous plait."

Mulder tapped his pencil eraser on the edge of the copy,
glancing over his translation notes. "From what I can tell,
these are a series of letters dating from 1927-29 addressed
to Nanette's mother in Nice, France from her sister, Anna, in
Chutove, Ukraine. Nanette and her mother, Claire, were
either abandoned or never claimed by Nanette's father, and
from what these letters indicate, in need of a home. Most of
the contents are related to a planned relocation for the both
of them from France to Anna and her husband Ivan's wheat
farm in Chutove."

"Is there a last name given for Ivan or Anna? Joshua's
grandfather's first name was Ivan. That would make Joshua
Nanette's second cousin."

Mulder looked the signatures over. "Both sisters are
addressing themselves as Bizet--maiden names."

"Pardon me, but are you the agents who called me this
afternoon?" A heavy-set man in his late fifties with dark curly
hair and a short matching beard stood at the end of their
table addressing them in a rich accent. Leo Petrovsky was the
editor and publisher of the Ukraine Liberator, a native
language newspaper for Bay Area-Ukrainian immigrants.

"Yes, Mr. Petrovsky," Scully said, greeting him. "I'm Agent
Scully and this is my partner, Agent Mulder. Please have a
seat. We appreciate your helping us during your deadline."

Petrovsky gave a curt grunt and nod and took a heavy seat in
a chair at the end of the table. "I understand you need
translations of some documents."

"We do," said Scully. "There are several pages, but,
depending on your time, we'd like translations for these
first." She pushed over a stack of carefully unfolded papers.
On top was the singed synagogue document. Petrovsky
picked it up gently, turning it over in his hands. His thick lips
moved silently as he read it over.

"This is not Russian," he said, setting it down and laying his
finger on it. "This is a document in the Ukrainian language,
dated February 10, 1913. It is a birth record, handwritten by
a rabbi. These are very rare. The paper is burned, it must
have survived the destruction of holy places and relics during
the Revolution."

"Is there a name for the child on the document?" Mulder
asked.

Leo frowned, reading the document over again. "The name is
burned. It is hard to read. The first name is Alexander, the
family name is Ko...ka or Ko...kov, I can't be certain."

Mulder leaned back in his chair, rolling his pencil between
his finger and thumb. "I've been trying to determine the
cultural significance of a particular Russian phrase. Does
'...bury the grain and slaughter the livestock...we are hungry,'
mean anything to you?"

The man looked insulted and frowned at Mulder. "Of course,
you are speaking of the terror-famine of 1933."

Mulder was surprised at Leo's gruff reaction, and tried to
make amends. "I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Ukrainian
history. What famine?"

The man's dark eyes glanced Mulder over. "You are Jewish,
correct?"

Mulder nodded. "Yes, partially."

"And you've learned everything there is to know about the
Nazi Holocaust, am I right?"

"Of course."

"Yet you don't know there was an even greater crime
committed against humanity in that same decade--genocide
on a scale the modern world has never witnessed, and has
almost forgotten."

Mulder tried to say something calming in what was clearly a
hostile topic for this man, but Petrovsky was determined to
explain it in his own manner.

"Millions of Ukrainian and Russian men, women, and
children were murdered in the name of collectivization--all
to prove a useless point, to enforce an inhuman form of
government--socialism."

"How?" Scully interjected. The man softened at the sound of
her empathic voice, but continued to bluntly relate the
unimaginable details.

"Joseph Stalin ordered the murder of over nine million souls
by the worst means possible--by starving them--a man-made
famine. When Ukrainian peasants refused to bow under
Soviet collectivization--the seizure of their land--he ordered
the Red Army to march in and slaughter all their animals and
take their food supplies. Then Moscow raised the grain
procurement quota by 44%--a goal so high it left the
peasants with nothing to feed their families. Farmers who
failed to meet these demands or tried to flee their homes
were shot or sent to prison work farms in Siberia.

"The work animals died first. Dogs and cats were eaten, bark
from trees, grass, garbage, everything. Do you know what
happens to a man as he slowly starves? The mind goes insane,
loses all reason and value--parents were known to have killed
and eaten their children."

Scully closed her eyes and her fingers touched her forehead.

"I am sorry for my coarseness," he said, addressing Mulder in
a somewhat calmer tone. "But you, along with the rest of
complacent America, should know."

Mulder nodded in somber agreement. "Would the village of
Chutove have been ravaged by this famine as well?"

The man rolled his tongue about his mouth, thinking.
"Chutove...oh, yes, Chutovo--as I recall it was deserted along
with neighboring Poltava when the Red Cross arrived in 1934
to try and locate survivors."

Mulder slid a photograph toward the man, the one of
Joshua's grandfather. "Can you estimate when this photo was
taken by the caption or design of the tractor?"

Petrovsky looked at the photo carefully, pulling out a pair of
reading glasses. "It looks like a Lithuanian-made thresher,
circa 1929. My uncles had one similar. The words say: 'Ivan
Segulyev and his new iron workhorse.'"

"You lost family," Scully said, understanding.

"Yes. Most of them. Five uncles and two aunts and their 18
children. I lost two half brothers. Only my father managed to
escape into Poland. I do everything I can to see that they are
not forgotten."
 

###

5:50 PM

Mulder sat back in the scruffy plaid library chair waiting for
Scully to return with their dinner. Leo was still working over
the Russian/Ukrainian documents in his slow stubborn
manner, refusing to speak a word until he was finished.
Mulder picked up the Chronicle and leafed through it, not
really reading more than the headlines.

He glanced at his watch. Two hours until he'd have to face
Joshua again. He figured the best course was to thank him
for the evening, let him know he had no regrets, but for the
sake of the case (and his own questionable professional
reputation), they'd best keep things zipped up from here on.
Still, it was going to be some time before he shook free the
memory of that dark head descending into his lap. He
swallowed and unfolded the next section.

Joshua, roguishly handsome and leaning into the sound of his
violin, graced the entertainment section in full color. Mulder
recoiled from the unexpected jolt that image sent him. Jesus,
didn't the man *ever* take a bad picture? It was a review of
last night's performance--"Segulyev Mesmerizes Davies with
Mendelssohn."

Mulder added his own caption: *Later, violinist seduces
secret FBI guard in back of limo, film at eleven.* Mulder
couldn't help but chuckle at his own indulgent sense of self-
flagellation. Leo grunted from the table behind him and kept
on scribbling and crossing out words, mumbling something
about the absurdity of the English language.

Mulder ignored him and read from the review:

"...Segulyev takes risks with his phrasing, letting the emotion
of the moment carry his bow into a daring diversion of the
classic literature. His clarity of tone and exceptional
mastering of the higher octaves at once thrills and fools the
ear into an unbound sense of passion and sublime journey,
tossing the soul of the listener as one gloriously lost at sea."

Mulder only had half an idea what the hell that was supposed
to mean, but it sounded enthusiastic. The next paragraph
wasn't quite so favorable.

"...A pity that in his later years this remarkable modern
virtuoso has retired from pulling at the reins of advanced
interpretation at what should be his most personalized
moment--the cadenza. Where one would be expected to
witness an unveiling of genius, one instead hears much of
what Mendelssohn himself would have stroked from his own
violin over 150 years ago. Segulyev falls flat with a
technically accurate, yet unimaginative expression of the
written notes. With the likes of Nigel Kennedy penning their
own cadenzas, the violin concerto has experienced a revival
of the art of improvisation unknown since the days of
Mozart. Sadly, this movement has yet to make a pilgrimage
to Davies Symphony Hall."

Who the heck was this guy to say Joshua's performance was
unimaginative? Dick Greene, staff writer. Mulder doubted
Greene had sacrificed public school and his playmates to
begin studying journalism at the age of ten. He folded the
section over in disgust as the scent of smuggled Mongolian
barbecue filled the study room as Scully slipped in, closing
the door behind her.

###

6:12 PM

Mulder stabbed his chopsticks back into the noodles, holding
them while Leo made a big show of laying out his completed
translations. The scent of soy and toasted sesame was
beginning to draw forth a few wandering snifflers. It would
be only a matter of time before he and Scully got booted for
the inappropriate gastronomic use of library facilities.

"These are very important letters," said Petrovsky with grave
conviction. "Very significant. Take good care of them. They
are from a farming log written in Russian, kept by a man as
his family entered the start of the famine. The first five pages
mostly log the daily business activities, grain storage levels,
weather forecasts and harvest estimates. The second section
details an army raid made on the farm and the killing of their
goats and pigs. He speaks of burying food to hide from the
soldiers. He speaks of fear of hunger for his family as the
winter settles in. There is an old Orthodox prayer, then he
speaks of nothing. The log ends."

"This other document here is very odd. It is a list of family
names--I have tried to spell them out phonetically for you. It
is a register of a collection of a large sum of money--a total
of 35,000 rubles."

"Is the family name Segulyev on the list?"

"Yes it is--right here."

"Can you determine the name of the author of these
documents?" Mulder asked.

"There are no names given. The farmer refers to his friends
and family by their association to him--daughter, son, wife--
as is custom."

Scully then asked a question that completely baffled Mulder.
"How much would that total on the register be in today's US
currency? Anywhere close to sixty-thousand dollars?"

Leo looked impressed. "By today's standard exchange,
adjusting for 65 years or so of inflation and unitary
readjustment-- I'd say that would be a good educated guess."

***************************************

*********************************

Chapter Nine: Don Giovanni

*********************************

6:35 PM

Mulder's cellphone rang just as he and Scully were heading
out of the library. He answered it before the librarians could
chase him out with shooshes and wagging fingers. It was
Dillmont, sounding characteristically impatient.

"How soon can you get over to the opera house?"

"The opera house? Is something wrong?"

"No. Prince Charming asked me to call you, to tell you he's
attending the opera tonight. Deal is, it starts at 7PM sharp--
no late seating. I already had to stomach one concert today;
no way am I hanging out for four hours of screeching fat
women in armored brassieres."

Mulder smiled a little. So he was to be treated to the opera
tonight. He figured he might as well get in one last cultural
indulgence before ending this whole affair. "I'll be right
over." Mulder returned the phone to his pocket and joined
Scully outside on the long stone steps. "Scully, can I ask you
to take a cab back to the hotel? I have to meet Joshua at the
opera house in fifteen minutes."

Scully looked at him, intrigued. "The opera? I'm envious,
Mulder. That man is spoiling you."

Mulder shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, these are his
'social hours' as he calls them."

"Whenever you get tired of being social, remember I'll be
happy to switch shifts with you," she said with a parting
smile, and stepped down to the curb to hail a cab.

"I might have to take you up on that," he mumbled to
himself, heading off toward the garage.

###

War Memorial Opera House
6:57 PM

Dillmont was practically hopping up and down at the side of
the curb as Mulder handed his keys off to the valet along
with a meager tip.

"Jeeze, it's about time you got here," he said, rushing up to
Mulder with a ticket.

"Where's Joshua?"

"He's already gone in--he's got a real hottie with him tonight.
You get to stand in the back. Sorry, I didn't mention that--but
hey, this is your case."

Mulder glanced at his ticket in confusion. It had *standing
room only* printed across it. "He has a *what* with him
tonight?" Mulder asked, as Dillmont started pushing him in
the direction of the red carpeted entry.

"Some girl--I don't know. Now we have to chaperone his
dates. Guess you'll be sitting out in the car half the night.
Well, have fun!"

Mulder stood there and blinked stupidly, watching Dillmont
run off across the street toward the Civic Park Garage.

"Sir, if you'll hurry this way, we're about to close the
doors..."

Mulder flicked the ticket with his thumb and headed into the
War Memorial Opera House, alone.

###

The orchestra had begun the Overture by the time an usher
with a flashlight led Mulder to the standing area behind the
dress circle seating. It was an open pen of art-inclined
humanity, too poor or too late to get seats. Mulder jockeyed
for position between the waist-high leaning rails and peered
into the gloom in sparse hope of locating the elusive
musician among the seated hundreds.

The long velvet curtains opened and the arias got underway,
echoing in Italian vibrato throughout the old 1930s gray
stone structure. Mulder cursed his nearsightedness, until he
finally spotted Joshua sitting not too far away in a private
box--overhead and to the right. Dillmont was right; he was
with a hottie--a hottie who seemed to have formed a
permanent attachment to Joshua's right arm. What the hell
was this all about?

Mulder tapped a young woman standing next to him on the
shoulder. She looked up at him. "Can I borrow your
binoculars?" he whispered. She gave him a big smile and
removed the strap from around her neck, handing them
over. Mulder thanked her and peered through the eyepieces,
adjusting the focus until he could clearly see the hand-
painted Greek gods and goddesses captured mid-flight in a
mural across the ceiling and far wall. He then lifted his view
to the private box.

Joshua was seated in a comfortable red velvet chair, dressed
in what Mulder had come to recognize as his casual evening
wear--a collarless rough silk beige shirt and light coat. His
"date" was wearing a plain slip of a dress in pink with white
flowers along the sleeveless neckline. She looked very young,
only twenty or so. Mulder had no clue who she was, but one
thing he was sure of; she didn't come here tonight to watch
the opera. Her eyes kept flitting to the man next to her as he
sat gazing forward at the stage.

"It's almost more fun to watch the audience, isn't it?" a voice
whispered in his ear. Mulder lowered the binoculars,
remembering his make-shift spy equipment came with an
owner. He handed them back with a thanks, and tried to find
a comfortable standing position. He settled for leaning
against the near wall. He couldn't see the stage very well, but
if he turned his head, he could keep a wary eye on Joshua.

###

8:45 PM

An hour and 45 minutes later, the tenors showed no signs of
slowing down and Mulder's lower back was beginning a
throbbing cadence of its own. He shifted from one leg to the
other, hoping he'd eventually find a bearable position. He
had no idea how he was going to manage another two hours
like this without a packet of Tylenol.

Above, young Zeus and his consort gave the minions standing
in the shadows no notice. So this was what it was like to be
on the outside, Mulder thought with a gust of depression.
Well, it served him right. This was what he wanted, after all--
professional detachment. It's what he had insisted on in his
life ever since Diana's desertion--permanent removal from
the inconvenience of being convenienced. He'd set ground
rules early with Scully and over the years, those hands-off
conditions had left him in a endless state of limbo. As much
as he wished he could make changes, there was no easy way
to deploy them. Being with Joshua this past week had revived
him and made him yearn for feelings of affection and
intimacy with other human beings. Looking up with dread at
the box high above, his worst fears were confirmed as he
found the young woman's fingers laced in Joshua's as the
strings bowed the duplicity of Mozart's minor-toned laughter
in a pit somewhere below the stage.

Meanwhile, upon the stage, a young crass lover, Don
Giovanni, in long robes and too much rouge, made quick
work of deflowering the maidens of a small village. He threw
charm and passion on every hapless female who crossed his
path, leaving each simpering conquest cast away in his wake.
Love could be so easy for some men. Why was his situation
so...complicated? What was stopping him from allowing
himself those same indulgences? There had been a time in his
life, many years ago, when he'd rarely slept alone. It seemed
like another life, another person than the man left standing
alone in a crowd in the back of an opera house. At least he
could still rely on the companionship his career afforded
him. Scully's dedication to their partnership meant more to
him than he could have imagined right now, because whether
he could bring himself to name it or not, Mulder was feeling
Joshua's rejection like a cold spade digging a fresh hole in his
chest.

###

"Thank you, God," Mulder sighed, giving into a painful
stretch as the curtains closed on intermission. He followed
the rest of the flock out of the corral and slowly navigated
through the clump of people exiting the seated aisles.
Together, the murmuring mass milled into the main lobby
where drinks were being served at a long bar.

Peering through the crowd, Mulder found them standing
together near the bar, each with an ice filled glass in hand.
Joshua's fingers curved under the belly of a cognac glass,
swirling it absently while the young lady with her pearls and
white neck laughed like a bell and raised the chilled wine to
her red-painted lips. He watched her reach out with a slender
arm to brush Joshua's coat collar with the long tips of her
nails.

Mulder clasped his hands behind him and walked the back of
the room, working the stiffness out of his legs. He was
pretending not to watch her perfect white teeth catch the
candlelight as she smiled up at those sinfully deep eyes and
said any manner of unimportant things. Was she having an
effect on him? he wondered. Did Joshua even have a sexual
orientation, or did he reinvent himself as he went along?

Joshua had lovers before him, and there would be others to
follow him--just as there were others in his own lonely life
whose significance no one could touch, least of all this man.
It was more than insulting to find an affair ended before
you've had the chance to turn your lover down. No matter--
sooner or later Joshua would retire for the night, the girl
would leave, and Mulder would come in the front door and
say his piece and take his stolid detached post at the couch.

A waiter was at Mulder's elbow, holding up a clear soda with
a napkin stuck to its damp base. He took it, confused. "From
Monsieur Segulyev." Mulder gave the man a quarter and
looking through the ice and liquid he could see a dark stain
leaching through the delicate white paper. He peeled it away
and unfolded it at the concentric ring.

"It's not what you think. -J"

Mulder raised his eyes. Joshua was regarding him--for a
moment of brief understanding--then he turned away and
back to the lady at his side, who hadn't noticed she was no
longer the center of his attention.

******************************

10:15 PM
 

The statue was coming to dinner. Don Giovanni had insulted
the dead commander's brass image--and he had risen from
his grave to embody the effigy, seeking revenge on the
brazen young man who had flaunted his talent for deceit and
heartless seduction in the faces of an entire village.

The theatrical table was set and a resounding knock
thundered against the tall door. The statue was admitted by
the sniveling servant who soon fell to his knees. The voice
from the grave called out to Don Giovanni, reaching out to
him...leading him to his judgment.

"Joshua..."

Joshua dropped the hand of the maiden who had been
holding fast to him all evening to turn around. In the
shadows of the thick purple curtains at the back of the
private box, he saw the Thin Man--gaunt and disheveled. With
a cracked and bleeding smile, its bony hand reached out to
him through the pleats. The horrifying pulse of the final act
of Mozart's darkest opera rose as Joshua got to his feet to
face him. The arm of bone slipped back through the slit and
vanished.

"Joshua...?" The lady was touching his coat. "What is it?"

He shook his head. He couldn't have seen what he just saw,
but the curtain was still rocking from the intrusion. He
touched her shoulder. "I'll only be a moment."

He paused at the curtain before yanking it aside to reveal the
darkness of the sloping carpeted hall, dimly lit by flickering
simulated brass lamps. At the far end, the sidewing door was
slowly easing shut.

Joshua felt his pulse rising as he jogged to the end of the hall
and caught the door that led into a long stone hallway--
backstage. He entered and his own footfalls echoed in the
cold hall as he walked past empty dressing rooms and racks
of flowing bedazzled costumes. On the floor were half-
opened boxes of hats and shoes and powdered wigs. Ahead,
he saw a coat rack tip over, casting woolen vestments across
the floor. Joshua stepped over them and turned about, trying
to catch sight of the phantom hand that had pulled it over.

"Hello...?" he called out, but no one was there to answer him.
He moved ahead through a stone arch into a tall, wide room,
cold and dark--filled with chairs, tables and props, covered
in sheets and bound with cords, stacked one upon the other,
smelling of dust and damp mold.

"Joshua..." it whispered to him. In the back, beyond a
standing forest of fifty-foot-tall rolled backdrops, he saw a
door opening and heard the sound of the street beyond,
blowing a fog choked wind into the dark room.

"Who are you?" Joshua called out, shivering as his steps led
him forward past a row of half-dressed mannequins caught in
odd poses, staring blankly into space. He couldn't tell where
the voice was coming from. It was as if it was calling from
inside his own head--but it was a voice he didn't know. The
opened door blew and thudded against the jamb, bouncing
back open a crack. Joshua walked into the canvas forest, that
stank of cracked oil paint and turpentine, and found a way to
push through, careful not to knock one of the three-hundred
pound trunks over on himself. It was tight and dark within
the grove, but he could see the thin line of the door blinking
ahead, leading him steadily until a hand reached at him from
within the solid columns and he screamed, ripping his arm
free of the fingers.

In the opera house proper, Don Giovanni raised his voice in
one last bellow of defiance as black and twisted hands
reached up from the stage trapdoors, belching smoke,
dragging him down into hell.

Joshua stumbled his way through the forest of forgotten
scenes and leapt out the door into the alley. The lights of a
car were on him and the brakes screeched as the wheels
skidded toward him.

###

10:16 PM

From his lower berth, Mulder saw Joshua rise from his seat
and touch the shoulder of the woman seated next to him,
then move toward the rear of the box, out of view.
Something was going on. It wasn't like a musician to wander
off during an opera's climatic scenes. Mulder excused
himself from the pack of viewers and slipped out through the
back curtains and into the hall. He turned to his left to rush
up the curved passage to the private boxes. An usher stopped
him at the top of the rise and Mulder pulled his badge,
explaining that he was following a suspect.

Once cleared, Mulder made his way up the steep hallway,
circling the edge of the opera house until he came to the row
of box alcoves. The hall was empty; there was no way he
could have missed Joshua leaving. He counted the number of
openings until he found the right box and with a finger,
pulled the curtain open an inch and peered in. The lady was
seated alone in silhouette.

Looking up the hall to his right, he saw a backstage door,
resting slightly ajar. He hurried over to it and slipped into the
bowels of the structure, calling Joshua's name.

There were footstep ahead and Mulder heard the clatter of
something falling and Joshua's voice calling out to someone.

"Joshua?"

There was no reply, and soon Mulder found himself standing
before a dark archway which led into a large scene storage
room. The lighting was very dim, but he could just spot a
form slipping into the canvases piled up at the far end. He
ran forward and followed him in, calling out to him. Joshua
failed to respond and slid into darkness, screaming when
Mulder made a reach for his arm. A moment later the
violinist was rushing out the back door, oblivious of the car
speeding up the narrow alley. Mulder made a leap for him,
knocking both of them across the brick passage to safety as
the car swerved at the last minute, plummeting into a wall
with a deafening bang of buckling metal and shattered glass.

###

10:30 PM
 

"... Joshua's okay--I've got him back inside. Meet me in back
of the opera house as soon as possible."

Mulder ended the call to his partner as he pushed the
dressing room door open, letting Joshua in ahead of him. The
violinist reached for the nearest bench and eased himself
down on it, brushing the dirt and powdered glass from his
left pant leg.

"Are you all right?" Mulder asked, pocketing his phone. "You
nearly scared the shit out of me."

Joshua looked down at his left side, wincing. "I'm okay, but I
think the fall may have torn my stitches." He was beginning
to pull his shirt loose from his pants. "Can you see...?"

Mulder kneeled on the thin carpeting and helped Joshua pull
back the bandage. The wound was torn a little on one side.
"You're bleeding. We'll have to get you back into the ER
tonight."

"No!" Joshua said vehemently.

Mulder looked up at him, holding the bandage back against
the man's side, feeling Joshua's agitation in the heart rhythm
under his fingers. In truth, his own heart had yet to approach
a normal tempo. The valet was dead, crushed behind the
steering wheel. Mulder knew his call for an ambulance had
been a futile gesture.

"If I go back to the hospital, they'll pick up the story for sure.
A man was killed. You saw him...the blood. I want no part in
this."

Mulder tightened his lips. "If you neglect this wound, I'll have
no choice but to haul you in. What the hell were you doing,
running out like that?"

Joshua looked pensive. "I was following someone."

Mulder wasn't in the mood to play guessing games. "Who,
Joshua?"

Joshua regarded him obstinately for a few seconds, then he
relaxed, giving in. "I saw the Thin Man again."

"Here? In the opera?"

"Yes. I don't have the slightest idea how he could have gotten
in."

Mulder kept his hold tight on the man's side. "I do."

Joshua gave him a look of irritated disbelief.

"Dammit, Joshua. This...thing means business. You're going
to get yourself killed if you don't start trusting your own
eyes."

Joshua began to shake his head, "I don't think..."

"Did anyone else see this man? Did that woman see him?"
Mulder couldn't help but let a little venom into his voice at
the mention of her. It was easy to see Joshua picked right up
on that. Well, at least he was selectively observant--his whole
expression was changing to one that made Mulder's stomach
drop.

"No, she didn't see him..." Joshua said absently, as if he
didn't care to waste another word on her. He reached his
hand out to touch Mulder's chin. The agent flinched away.

"God, she really upset you. Mulder, I was doing a favor; she's
the Symphony Chairman's daughter." Mulder let his hand fall
from Joshua's side and he looked away, resting his arm on
his own knee, feeling heat rising to his neck. "I'm sorry.
There was no time for me to call you. Dillmont didn't exactly
get the hint and I sure as hell wasn't about to explain it to
him..."

"That's enough, Joshua. It's over; it was a mistake."

Joshua leaned over closer to him despite the pain it caused
him. "I don't believe that for a second."

Mulder didn't respond, just kept his eyes on the end of the
bench.

"Don't sit there and tell me you haven't been thinking about
me all day like I've been thinking of you, of how much I
wanted you last night and how much more I need you
tonight."

Mulder felt like he couldn't catch his breath, but refused
himself the luxury of air as his eyes closed and he feigned
resistance.

"Look at me and tell me you're going to put an end right now
to something that's just beginning."

Mulder turned to face him before he opened his eyes *...tell
me you haven't been thinking about me all day...* He
couldn't tell him that; it would be a lie. He opened his eyes
and met his adversary head-on.

Mulder couldn't tell who moved first, but somehow they met
halfway with mouths eager to finish off this argument with a
kiss. It wasn't gentle or subtle, and in Mulder's mind it quite
simply blew off the last of his pretenses and false
assumptions about the irrevocable attraction he felt for this
man. Their kiss was deep and powerful. He felt Joshua slip
off the bench toward him so his arms could grip him and
Mulder felt the violinist's hands reach up and dive into his
hair. The warmth of Joshua's mouth and tongue moving
against his own was devastating, wreaking far more damage
than any of the pleasures they had explored the previous
night.

Mulder was ruined. This first taste, this first introduction to
the inside of the man was making his mind bend with desire.
He wanted in, as far as he could reach--as deep as he could
fall, slip or move.

There were footsteps in the hall and the two men broke
apart, coming quickly to their feet as War Memorial Security
officers kicked the door open.
 

*****************************

12:15 AM
SUNDAY

"Why should I be surprised to find you here?"

Mulder didn't need to turn around to know that was Lt. Jarvis
about to come chew his ass from where it was poking out of
the passenger's side of the crushed '98 white BMW now
sporting a brick and leather dashboard. The victim had been
removed with the help of a hydraulic arm and a couple of
body bags. What was left of the valet remained smeared in
bloody splatters across the crumpled windshield.

Mulder reached for the claim stubs that had spilled from the
victim's pocket onto the floor with a latex-covered hand,
before easing himself back out of the stomach-churning
mess. Jarvis was at his hip, chewing the front of his
mustache.

"Mind telling me why you got your paws all over this car
before my men arrived?"

Mulder wasn't in the mood to play 'territorial cop' as he fit
the stubs into an evidence bag. "I was almost turned into
hamburger by this vehicle when I chased a suspect through
the backstage door into the alley."

"Which suspect?" Jarvis asked, doubtful.

"The unidentified thin man."

Jarvis' eyes grew suspiciously wider. "You saw the fella?"

Mulder nodded faintly and scanned the bystanders lit by
flashing police lights to make sure Joshua hadn't wandered
off again. He saw him lingering in the back, far from the
yellow tape, trying to remain inconspicuous. Mulder had
offered the musician his long trench to keep warm in the
chilled late evening and to help hide him from the media that
was beginning to file in by ones and twos. So far this incident
was announcing itself over the scanner as a solo head-on, not
an attempted murder. Mulder hoped it stayed that way for
Joshua's sake, but if he didn't get him out of here quick
someone was bound to recognize the violinist and start
telling stories.

"I followed the suspect through the opera house into this
alley just as the car struck the wall," Mulder explained to
Jarvis. "The valet may have swerved out of control in an
effort to miss him."

"That's a nice theory, son; but from the tire marks, I'd say
the driver was aiming for the stage door, not away from it."

Mulder pretended to find this news enlightening, never mind
the fact he'd observed that very thing from the start--before
shouting at a nearby parking attendant to call security and
rushing a stunned and shaken Joshua back inside to make
sure he was safe and uninjured.

Since the crash, Mulder had insisted Joshua keep close to
him until Scully arrived--but he had slipped off to locate his
date and get her to her car before "the Chairman gets wind of
this." It was the least the musician could do to stay put,
Mulder thought, considering he'd elected to lie to the SFPD to
cover him. Scully knew the real story, however, and Mulder
wondered what was taking her so long to get to the scene.

Just as he thought it, Mulder saw his partner exiting a cab at
the curbside. Her hair was a little damp at the edges--there
wasn't likely to be much sleep for either of them tonight.

"My God, Mulder. What the hell happened here?"

"The fat lady was singing," Mulder grimly replied, leading her
to the passenger's side so she could take a look. Jarvis had
eased back and was talking with his men, hopefully placated
for a while. In a low voice, Mulder related the true details of
the crash and Joshua's narrow escape to her.

She leaned in to inspect the damage. "Where's the victim?"

"Scooped out and deposited in the morgue's freezer. I'd like
you to autopsy what's left of the body, and determine if the
valet had any brain or blood abnormalities like we've seen in
Harris and Schmidt."

"Do you think the valet was deliberately aiming for Joshua?"
Mulder held up the bag of claim tickets, spreading them out
through the plastic. Written on the backs of them in felt-tip
were hauntingly familiar phrases and on one, a line of
Cyrillic.

"Joshua would appreciate it if we kept this aspect of the case
under Federal jurisdiction," he said quietly and she
understood. Stealing a glance at Jarvis, she slipped the bag
into a deep coat pocket.

"I've gotta get out of here," Mulder said, beginning to move
away from the mangled car.

"Where are you going?" she called after him.

"I need to take somebody home."
 

******************************

********************************

Chapter Ten: The Sound of Silence

********************************

12:40 AM

The backseat of the yellow cab lacked a certain level of taste
and privacy the two men had come to appreciate recently
while traveling by car together. They weren't really free to
communicate openly as the cabbie drove them carelessly
toward the Marina. All Mulder could do was look.

Joshua appeared less shaken, but still agitated by the
evening's events. The musician kept fiddling with the clip on
the seatbelt neither of them wore, watching the road spin by.
Mulder was surprised to feel a strange sense of calm, of
resignation, and ultimately, a rising undercurrent of desire.
He couldn't shake the recent arresting memory of pressing
his face to Joshua's, hunting for his tongue. At the opera
they'd kissed like secret lovers caught backstage at a dance
before the chaperones forced them apart. He was somewhat
glad for that intrusion. There was no predicting when they
would have pulled away from each other. A strange romance
was this, but one Mulder seemed powerless to stop. Soon
they'd be at Joshua's apartment and Mulder could only guess
at what was going to happen next. He just hoped they
survived it.

Joshua's dark eyes were regarding him with apology and
apprehension. Joshua knew he'd upset him, and was now
plainly showing concern. Why wasn't he more concerned for
his own life? His sanity? It wasn't every day a man in Joshua's
line of work found himself face to face with death. For
Mulder, however, it was just another day at the office.
Mulder knew how to handle danger; it was seduction that
remained a mystery to him--he'd have to trust Joshua in that.
He had no idea what to expect now--all he knew was that he
needed to feel the warm welcome of the man's mouth again,
and soon.

###

Mulder paid the cab driver and the two men walked briskly
up the entry to Joshua's flat. Joshua was fumbling for his
keys under Mulder's coat, which he still wore over his
shoulders. As much as he had wanted Mulder to come back
to him tonight, he was nearly frightened by the quiet
intensity he sensed coming from the agent who stood close
to him, the soft green in his eyes growing sharper by the
minute. It had been years since he'd been with a man. He
wasn't going to get the door opened fast enough.

The agent uttered an expletive and Joshua was taken by the
shoulders and pressed back against the wall as the man's
mouth descended on his, pressing a hungry tongue past his
own, slipping deep into him. Joshua felt himself harden in an
instant as his head thudded against the white stucco wall and
he gave up the search for his keys to the taste and feel of
Mulder's warm tongue working its way around his lips and
teeth.

Mulder was kissing him openly and passionately, with the
urgency of a starving man. His mouth hard on his, Joshua
could smell his sweat and cologne as his evening brush of
stubble grazed his lips and chin. Mulder's hand was holding
his head up to the wall for leverage as he sucked at his
mouth with a less-than-tender force. Joshua noted it hadn't
taken Mulder long to realize he was kissing a man and could
come at him with a man's drive for physical pleasure.
Mulder's long fingers were rifling through his short hair,
adjusting Joshua to fit his mouth as he bore down on him
from varying angles and pressures. Joshua found he had no
clear memory of the last time he'd been kissed half this
intensely. Mulder's tongue was exciting some long-forgotten
pleasure center in his head. He wanted to drop, fall to the
ground and be taken into the agent's rough custody. Mulder
was taller and heavier than him and Joshua ached to submit
to him--to lie down on his belly and be taken over without
mercy.

Their mouths still moving together greedily, Joshua felt
Mulder flip the coat lapel open and reach into his front
pocket for the elusive keys. The agent's knuckles brushed the
side of his cock where it lay prominent against the pleated
fly. Joshua choked down the whimper he felt rising in his
throat--he needed to be stronger than that. He reached up to
grip and pull on Mulder's neck and shoulder. He needed to
fight him to regain himself before he shocked them both with
his capacity for physical possession.

Mulder looped his finger through the keychain and extracted
it. His other hand held a fist-full of Joshua's hair as he pulled
him back from his mouth. "I need to fuck you tonight," he
said lowly between thick kisses, his eyes dark and wild.
"Anywhere. Any way. Show me. I need to know."

Joshua found he had to look away from what he saw
reflected in that beautiful face to keep himself in a
manageable state of emotion. He closed his eyes and
conjured a slow smile. "I'll show you everything."
 

###

Sooner or later a man in deep arousal will find the instinctive
urge to thrust just takes over. Mulder meant it when he said
he needed to fuck. The mechanics were foreign to him,
however, and he needed some guidance--but tonight his body
was far too impatient to wait politely for the official tour into
this chapter of male sexuality.

Joshua was under him in the bed, as naked as he. They were
sliding over one another, slick with sweat and slippery where
their cocks met hard and hot, a tense friction building
between them as they rolled over the sheets, knocking
pillows to the floor. Mulder was too far gone with arousal to
stop the hand that kept insinuating itself between them,
squeezing the head of his cock almost painfully as he fought
to keep the man still under him, his mouth busily devouring
his own, muffling their harsh, unguarded sounds.

If it had been a struggle with the keys outside, inside it was a
battle of the removal of clothes. Men were too overdressed--
there were coats, and buttons and other needless things that
tied and clipped and fastened. Women needed a gentle
undressing, a seduction. For men in this mindset, seduction
was entirely unnecessary--foreplay, a joke.

Joshua's pants were barely to his knees when he'd dropped
to the floor and made for Mulder's belt, pulling it aside with
a grunt of quiet fury. Mulder's mouth was still numb from
the bruising kisses Joshua and he shared, both outside and
while stumbling through the door, when he found those
perfect smooth lips around his hard and aching cock. Joshua
loved to give pleasure; that was not only obvious in the way
he was expertly stroking and licking his length, moaning, but
also in how he played the violin. He gave himself over to each
task fully, without restraint. It was easy to fall prey to it and
just let the virtuoso have his way with his body, or his mind,
through music or touch. But what Mulder really wanted
tonight was to take pleasure rather than receive it, which was
why he dragged Joshua to his feet and pushed him back onto
the bed, pulling his shirt up over his head with two frugal
moves of the arms and fists, parting the sheets for them to
fall into together.

Joshua's tongue and teeth were taking long hungry tastes of
his neck and shoulder while his practiced hands struggled
between them, wet with saliva to find the organ thrusting
against his pelvis and groin. "Come for me, come for me..."
he kept saying, but Mulder was too busy trying to bury
himself in a curve of thigh or a patch of slick soft belly as his
arms reached under the man's shoulder and waist, trying to
bring him closer--to thrust against him harder. Close as a
kiss, Joshua's fist found him tightly and the urge to climax
struck Mulder like an iron brand. There, it was right there
and he raised himself, rearing to throw his ass into it--so the
warm slippery fist could grip and pull and squeeze and he
could close his eyes and thrust and feel it rising in him and
peak, surging into climax. He groaned and came over the
smooth pale chest of the man who moments ago was
whispering to him and kissing him mindless.

******************************

Mulder's cheek was resting against the tile, his forehead on
his hands. His hair and skin were warm and wet as the mist
and spray of Joshua's shower gathered around him in a damp
cloud. He was standing while Joshua was down on his knees,
lathering and massaging the backs of his legs. The hands of a
violinist are strong and stimulating to whatever surface they
touch. It was heaven to be that surface as the warm soapy
hands came up over his ass, rolling and kneading, pressing
into the dip of his spine. There was a spot that had been
sorely neglected and the shot of pleasure made him give into
a shameless whimper.

A tenor's chuckle breathed across the tingling skin of his
shoulders as Joshua came up closely behind him. "Have you
forgiven me yet for making you stand for four hours?"

"Ask me again in ten minutes," Mulder answered. His eyes
remained closed, enjoying the massage as it continued up his
back and shoulders.

"I will. And again and again until you respond the way I want
you to." Joshua's hands slid down around his hips to his
balls, coating them in foamy lather and dragging Mulder's
long, slippery, limp cock through his fist.

"You shouldn't have made me come," Mulder mumbled to the
tiles. "Now you're in for a wait, regardless."

Joshua's chin was at his shoulder, his lips against his ear. "I
enjoy waiting."

Mulder slipped an arm around him and pulled Joshua
between himself and the tile wall, reaching for a kiss. He
could feel the man still hard and impatient against his
abdomen. His mouth moved from the musician's lips to his
ear where he licked the delicate curves line for line. He ran
his hand over Joshua's hip and gripped the offending organ,
stroking it, as mouth met mouth again, kissing slower this
time, dragging their lips over one another's, lingering.

"How's your wound?"

Joshua's head was tipped back, his lips parted awaiting
another kiss. "What?"

"You were bleeding, remember?"

Joshua looked down at his side, slowing his breathing to
touch the edge of the pinkish ripple of flesh. "It's stopped; I'll
be fine. The hospital sent me home the other day with plenty
of bandages..."

Mulder cut the health report short with a long tugging suck
at Joshua's exposed neck. Still savoring the musician's
throat, Mulder made a blind reach for the soap, lathering his
hand with every intention of pleasuring this man in his own
shower.

Joshua struggled against him, catching his wrist, rinsing it in
the spray. "Not yet," he smiled. "Not yet. I want you in me
when I come."

Mulder looked at him. The young man's dark hair lay wetly
across his forehead, giving him an almost Roman look. "You
were supposed to show me."

"Not like that, I wasn't. It's been too long for me. I need you
to be gentle."

"I can be gentle," Mulder said, relaxing his arm, feeling
suddenly very irresponsible.

Joshua kissed and nipped his lower lip, fondly. "*You* needed
to get off. In the worst way, I might add. There was no
slowing you down to point out the scenery."

Mulder felt a little embarrassed, sorry he'd been rough with
him. Man or no, he still didn't feel 100 percent satisfied
unless he served his lover just as well. "Give me a minute and
we can take all the time you want."

"I'd like to show you something first," Joshua said, sliding
down the wet wall to seat his ass on the edge of the shower
lip, drawing Mulder's sudsy groin closer to his face.

"I'm an old man. I told you; he's down for the count."

Joshua looked up at him like a misbehaving child. "You're
never too old for sex, Mulder. There's a lot you need to learn
about the sexual nature of men." The young man's eyes
returned to his swiggling cock as the soapy fingers of his
right hand slid between his legs, stroking him from ass to
balls.

Mulder knew what Joshua wanted and closed his eyes, giving
in to the feeling. There were many apprehensions he still
needed to shed. The last time anyone had touched him this
way it had been anything but tender and it had ended in
death.

Kristen. In the empty house they'd kissed for what felt like
hours. He ran his tongue over every inch of her pale skin,
between her legs, licking her to orgasm. She'd returned the
favor, rubbing herself over his brazen hardness, teasing him
with her moist cunt, and finally rewarding him with her
mouth. She sucked him as a bloodsucker feeds, intensely,
voraciously. He felt he might burst when her slick finger
found its way up into his ass--probing. It was the first and
last time he'd been penetrated. Her long nail made the
invasion as painful as it was enthralling. It hurt and it felt
good; what he wanted--he needed the pain. He couldn't come
until he felt it so deep in him he wanted to scream.

But this was different. He no longer wished to be punished.
He wanted a sanctuary from the guilt and obligations. He
wanted to be free. He wanted to be taken. He wanted to
nestle in and be safe.

Joshua--handsome, seductive, and gifted in more than just
music, perhaps wasn't so unusual a lover for him after all. At
least he hadn't asked for his blood. His slender, precise
fingers were asking for something, however: entry, and
Mulder took a step apart to let him in.

It felt better than he remembered. The teasing swirls around
his anus coupled with the flow of warm water over his back
was inviting, helping him relax. Joshua's mouth was against
his bellybutton, his tongue mimicking the movements of his
finger--more circles and a gentle push.

It wasn't like he remembered. This was different, pleasant,
tender. More than the sex, what Mulder was starved for was
the affection, the delight you feel from just being physically
close to another human being. Joshua's tongue began to
poke around his bellybutton, almost ticklish, as his finger
worked its way deeper. Suddenly, Mulder found himself
getting hard again--quickly.

"Ah, found you," Joshua smiled, licking his abdomen like it
was made of sugar. He continued to press and vibrate his
finger in that exact spot. Incredibly, Mulder felt a sudden
urge to ejaculate. But somehow that couldn't be right; he
wasn't nearly ready. Still, the sensation was the same. He
gasped, gripping Joshua's hair as the musician slowly worked
his finger out, standing up again and kissing him softly.

"That's what you need to find in me," he said, taking both
hands to draw Mulder's face to his for another deep, wet
kiss.

******************************

"Despite how it may seem, I'm not promiscuous," Joshua
explained, tossing Mulder a towel as they made their way
dripping out of the shower to dry off in the steamy air. "I
haven't had a great number of lovers. I was truly lamenting
when I said my fans were usually much younger or older.
Maybe I should have been a rock star."

Mulder caught the towel and unrolled it, laying it over his
back and sliding it forward over his chest, drying himself.
"Hook an amp up to the violin? I've seen that act. They're
called Jethro Tull--went out in the '80s. Stick to the classics--
you're doing just fine."

Joshua looked up at him from where he was bent over drying
his legs, to laugh outright. Mulder smiled, realizing how
much he was enjoying this--making someone happy, sharing
his body with someone again, awakening to their touches. He
couldn't believe how long it had been for himself. What had
he been waiting for?

"If you keep looking at me like that, Mulder, I might have to
ask you to fuck me right here on the bathroom floor,"
Joshua said in a lower voice, as he ran the towel over his
groin, squeezing the tip of his still-engorged cock in a
toweled fist.

Mulder buzzed his short hair through the towel, getting it
dried quickly, feeling his own half-filled penis stirring at the
image that comment evoked. "Get us out of here, then."

###

Joshua brought an extra towel from the bathroom and
unfolded it over the bottom sheet. "I hate messing the bed,"
he explained. He then bent next to his dresser, opening the
bottom drawer, rummaging around. He tossed a tube of
lubricant and a packet of condoms on the bed--the sight of
which sent a stark signal of reality to Mulder that things were
going to be a bit different from here on out. Fucking a
woman required fewer drug store supplies. He wondered if
he really had the guts to go through with this. Joshua stood
up and laid himself down on the bed before him. Even if his
mind wasn't quite tuned to this yet, his own cock was
certainly interested, jerking involuntary at the sight of
Joshua hard and waiting for him.

"I know you're nervous, Mulder. I won't hold you to
anything. Just come lie down and relax."

Mulder slid down onto the cool sheet next to him and Joshua
reached up and kissed his nose. The sweet gesture made him
smile a little. "You don't like your nose, do you?" Joshua
asked, amused.

"No," Mulder readily admitted.

"You shouldn't feel that way. It's one of your sexiest features.
You have an incredible face--it's fascinating to look at," he
said, running a finger over his chin. "I love unusual looking
men. Calvin Klein models don't interest me in the least--
they're too pretty. I like men who resemble men."

Mulder set his head on the pillow, feeling like a high school
kid on his first date--both nervous and flattered.

"Are you sure you want to do this? I'd be just as pleased with
your mouth."

Mulder came up on his elbow. "I want to do this; roll over."

###

Joshua grinned and rolled while Mulder came up behind him,
spooning him. He shivered when Mulder began to touch him,
running his hand over his chest and back and ass,
unhurriedly, almost lovingly. His warm fingers wandered to
his groin, caressing his balls, rolling them slowly, making him
want to purr like a cat, but he decided it was best to keep
himself somewhat in control. Not all men enjoyed
enthusiastic displays of appreciation. So far Mulder had been
relatively quiet in his passion, so Joshua reined himself.

Despite his assurances to Mulder, Joshua knew very well he
wouldn't be half as pleased with fellatio. He'd spent most of
the day fantasizing about Mulder's long beautiful cock--in his
hands, in his mouth, moving deeply into his ass. Joshua loved
being taken by a man. To him, being penetrated by a strong
virile man, intent on reaching orgasm in his body, was the
greatest pleasure on earth--an experience he hadn't received
in nearly six years. He'd forgotten how much he hungered for
it, how aroused thoughts of the act made him. It had been a
struggle to resist the urge to relieve himself at some point
today. That discipline was hopefully about to pay off for him
in a most satisfying way.

Mulder stroked his cock with a maddening light touch until
Joshua couldn't take it anymore and moved Mulder's hand,
pressing himself onto his stomach, spreading his legs. "I hate
having to put you through all the work," he said to him,
quietly. "But it's unfortunately necessary. Open the tube."

###

Mulder kneeled behind Joshua and popped the top on the
tube, somewhat relieved to see it had never been opened. He
broke the seal and squeezed the clear gel out onto the tips of
the fingers of his right hand, warming it with his thumb. "Use
it like I used the soap a few minutes ago."

Mulder slipped his fingers in the warm valley of Joshua's ass,
slickening the area and swirling gel over his pale anus.
Joshua's back rippled as he moved against his pillow, burying
a moan in the downy feathers. It sent a rush of erotic pride
through Mulder that this simple touch seemed to affect him
so much. "Does this feel all right?"

"Yes, it feels incredibly good," Joshua said serenely while
Mulder ministered to him. "I've always been anal-erotic--
since I was a child. It never occurred to me that I shouldn't
be. It wasn't until I was older, in my teens, when some boys
told me it made me queer. Whatever. I tell you, there are
advantages to being raised apart from your peers. You grow
up being more honest about yourself."

"Can I ask you something?" Mulder said, applying more gel,
tracing his fingers around Joshua's opening, massaging the
muscle, feeling braver about it. Joshua was a finely-shaped
man, from all angles. It felt good to be touching him, like he
was somehow connecting to a beauty within himself.

"Sure."

"When did you realize...? I mean, you were engaged to a
woman..." Mulder stopped himself before he said all the
wrong things.

Joshua just smiled. "Sometimes I want women; sometimes I
want men. I don't attempt to explain it. I like certain people
for who they are, not by their physical make-up. I often ask
women to touch me this way. They won't always do it,
though. You can slip your finger inside me now."

Mulder took his middle finger and pressed in, feeling the
muscle give under the small pressure. He found it wasn't a
particularly aversive thing to do. With the lubrication, the
inside of a man felt a lot like the inside of a woman, only
much tighter. It occurred to him there was no way in hell his
cock was going to fit in there.

"Just slide your finger in and out, slowly going deeper,"
Joshua said in a hushed voice as he began to rock his hips
slightly with Mulder's delving finger. He told him how good it
felt and after a while to go with two fingers and how to tug at
the resistance of the ring of muscle and how it would
gradually open to allow for a third.

Joshua was plainly becoming more and more distracted by
the sensations as he mumbled less directions and gave into
longer sighs, closing his eyes and rocking into the terry cloth
surface of the towel beneath him, stimulating his cock.
Mulder found it incredibly erotic to watch him becoming so
aroused. His own cock began to ache to be given the same
attention. He wanted to rock his own hips, to thrust and find
mutual arousal and gratification along with him. Mulder was
suddenly hit with a wild fantasy image of secretly watching
Joshua as he fucked that girl from the opera. He imagined
watching the rise and fall of his ass, knowing how much he
wanted her to touch his ass, to penetrate him. He saw himself
naked and hard above him, moving over the two of them,
entering him and fucking him while he moved deeply into the
woman beneath him.

"Mulder...?" Joshua had turned his head and was looking at
him, bemused. "Why don't you put a condom on. I think
we're both ready."

Mulder pulled out his fingers and wiped them on the end of
the towel. He reached back and tore off a plastic packet,
removing the rubber ring, sliding and unrolling it down his
cock. Joshua watched him with great interest as he
lubricated the condom with an extra glob of gel.

"I haven't had anyone quite like you," Joshua said, with
admiration, settling his head on his arms. "You're straight
and narrow which is good, but longer than most. Take your
time going in."

Not entirely sure how to go about this, Mulder just did what
came naturally, and eased himself between the musician's
splayed legs, aiming his cock down and forward. At first it
didn't feel like it was going to go anywhere. He backed off.

"This won't hurt you?"

"Not now. You've readied me. You'll only hurt me if you make
me wait. Just push until you feel me give."

Sitting up a bit, Mulder held the base of his erection and
aimed it more carefully, shifting his weight forward onto his
hips. Joshua's expression remained passive even though it
felt like he was about to puncture something. Then, like a
window suddenly opening, he was sliding in tight and
smooth. He paused halfway, watching Joshua groan and roll
his forehead on the pillow in ecstasy. "More," he whispered.
Mulder pushed forward, grateful for the dulling sensation the
condom lent him. A man was so much tighter than a woman,
there was no room to adjust to a less-stimulating angle. His
submerged cock was being born down upon with a
tremendous pressure--it was everything or nothing. Mulder
decided everything was a good place to be and slid in full.
 

###

The realization of being penetrated by someone you desire
was an experience Joshua believed no one should be denied.
There weren't enough words to describe the feeling--to feel
whole and complete, possessed, while aroused was something
he'd been missing for far too long. His very first sexual
experiences as a teenager had all involved penetration, with
that young man he'd played on stage with for over a year.
The closeness he'd felt opening up to someone else for the
first time had been a divine experience, a celebration of the
self. You know who you are when you begin to let another
inside.

This was how he felt now that Mulder's body was merged
with his. There was no other way to describe it--it felt like joy
and peace and laughter. It also felt like his cock was going to
burst if things didn't get moving along.

"Is that okay?" Mulder was asking him.

"It's perfect. Go ahead and move. Go gently at first."

Mulder was uncertain and his movements were almost
annoyingly gentle. But Joshua decided it was better to start
slow and build; he'd hate to ask Mulder to back off at any
point. That might intimidate him and Joshua knew once he
adjusted to the full depth of Mulder's gorgeous cock, he'd
want everything the man could offer in drive.

Joshua fed another long moan to his pillow and tried to hold
still while his body warmed to the deep sliding sensations
coursing through his rectum. Some say the male body is
designed for only one form of sexual satisfaction--the
stimulation of the penis to orgasm. Bullshit. Joshua knew
very well he craved a darker, more intimate form of sexual
experience, one that drew his entire body into the act. Being
slowly fucked by a man as beautiful and intelligent as Mulder
was pumping a steady stream of spine-melting pleasure from
his ass to his brain stem. His penis had nothing to do with it--
he was only marginally aware of it right now, slowly rubbing
against the terrycloth beneath him.
 

###

"Come closer. Lay down over me."

Mulder came down off his arms so he could rest the majority
of the weight of his body against Joshua's back and ass. It felt
so good being this close to another person. Joshua's back
was warm and smooth against his chest. He found himself
slipping an arm around his waist, trying to hug him, setting
his cheek to the man's shoulder as his cock continued to
stroke in and out of the warmth of his ass, pressing them
both into the soft give of the mattress.

Joshua's head was turned against the pillow, his eyes closed
in what looked to Mulder to be utter bliss. He was moaning
softly to him under each pump of his hips in an innocent
keening way, like a child soothing himself to sleep. Mulder
had assumed that when men had sex with one another they
made sounds similar to jocks watching a football game, loud
and obnoxious. Joshua was instead displaying a very delicate
and private part of his emotional make-up, and that honesty
was making Mulder's throat ache. It made him want to please
him that much more, to keep him safe and sheltered in his
arms. He kissed Joshua softly on the back of his neck,
stroking his hair, letting this connection between them slowly
build.

Joshua suddenly began to resist under him. A body that had
been so pliant was now fighting him; he'd turned his face into
the pillow, pushing up against Mulder with his arms. "Let me
up," he groaned. Mulder immediately withdrew from him as
Joshua came up onto his knees. "No, God, don't stop...I need
to come." Baffled, Mulder shifted up behind him and
reentered, pushing deep. Joshua's hand moved to his own
cock, jerking quickly. The musician sighed loudly and came
in several quick sharp spurts into the towel beneath him,
squeezing the head of his penis, emptying himself. "Keep
fucking me," he whispered, tossing the towel away and
dropping back onto all fours. "Please, as long as you want, as
hard as you want. Let me feel you."

There was a real pleading in his tone that drove a deep rush
of sexual power into Mulder. He did as he was asked, pulling
back and pushing in deeply until his groin thudded against
Joshua's ass. The musician groaned and lowered his head,
pushing back against him, submissively. "More," he pleaded.
It was astounding to see a strong adult male presenting
himself for such an invading act, in a sense begging for it. All
those forbidden notions, those sins of sex, of sodomy, that
had been only hinted to Mulder as a child, were making
themselves known to him in real adult experience. He should
have known better; he should have realized years ago that all
the most forbidden acts between human beings are also the
most exciting.

Mulder gave himself over to the pleasure of fucking, of
overpowering someone--just letting go of his mind and giving
his starved body permission to lose itself in the gripping,
thrusting motions it was made for. Mulder's groin was
brimming with pleasure as it moved with abandon in this new
erotic environment. The sensations were all foreign; his cock
was being too tightly held; he had lost his sense of knowing
what to expect and it was locking his release in his balls. It
was hell and it was heaven and he was helpless to do anything
about it, so he stopped thinking and  began to lose himself in
the all-encompassing psychological grip of lust, thrusting and
pumping short and quick until the resistance gave away in his
groin, and he opened his throat to moan in pleasure as he
felt his semen rushing from his balls and through his cock,
gathering warm and wet into the tip of the condom buried
deep inside Joshua's ass.

***************

"Please don't get up," Joshua pleaded, softly, opening his
eyes, as Mulder exited the bathroom to come back to bed
and lie down. "I know you need to stay awake. But don't get
dressed yet. Sit up if you have to."

Mulder could see Joshua was in a fragile state of mind. He
supposed that wasn't too unusual, considering he hadn't
done this in a while. Joshua seemed sluggish to him, almost
drunk with lassitude. It occurred to Mulder the man hadn't
moved a limb from where he had pulled out of him.

Mulder got back in bed and pulled the sheet over them both,
resting on his side, stroking Joshua's arm where it lay limp
against the bed. "Are you okay?"

Joshua closed his eyes and smiled faintly. "Yes. I'm just
acclimating. This act takes some breaking in, both before and
after. I feel wonderful, though. Thank you."

Mulder touched Joshua's hair where it had wound itself into
a small tangle over his brow, evening it out. "You're
welcome."

"I don't know if I told you, Mulder. But I haven't done this
with a man in over six years," he said opening his eyes,
looking somewhat embarrassed. "I forgot how much I missed
it."

"Well, I've got you beat," Mulder said, dryly. "I was working
on forty years."

Joshua smiled, beginning to come back into himself. "Is that
how old you are? I would have guessed younger."

"Thanks, but I don't believe you," Mulder said, tracing a
reddish mark on the low curve of Joshua's neck. "Did I do
this?"

Joshua grinned. "No. It's the violin. My mistress marks me
where I hold her under my chin. All fair-skinned violinists
and violists share this branding. You don't want to see what
happens to tubists."

"I suppose I don't."

Joshua's expression turned curious. "How long has it been
since you've been intimate with another person?"

Mulder looked at the pillow, saying nothing.

"You aren't going to tell me?"

"I'm embarrassed to tell you. Intimacy isn't a regular part of
my life right now. It hasn't been for a very long time."

"Since your engagement?" Joshua offered.

"Aside from a few isolated incidents, yeah, as long as that."

"So you and Scully haven't...?" Joshua started to ask.

Mulder looked up, startled. "No. No, we haven't. She's my
*partner.*"

Joshua seemed mildly surprised. "You make it sound like
that's an excuse."

"I'm going to ignore that," Mulder said, coolly. He found
himself defensive as he always was when he and Scully were
mistaken for lovers. No, he thought, we're mistaken for
spouses. Lovers carry about an air of mystique--he and Scully
bickered like Ma and Pa Kettle.

"I'm sorry. I was only curious. I didn't mean to offend you."

Mulder touched the violinist's hand, realizing Joshua would
have no idea how complicated things had become between
Scully and him over the years. "I think I've just grown tired of
being accused of something I've not had the pleasure of
experiencing."

"So you want to sleep with her," Joshua stated cautiously. He
seemed to understand this might not be an area he had
privilege to, but couldn't help himself from inquiring.

A knot of tension wound itself at the center of Mulder's
brow. "I don't know, honestly. It's complicated."

"Are you attracted to her?"

"Of course."

"Then...?"

"I think Scully and I have managed to evolve as a couple
without actually engaging as a couple. We're devoted,
protective, caring, yet some days we hardly seem to know
what to say to one another."

"So you have the weight of commitment without its simple
joys?"

"Perhaps. I'd rather not talk about it. She has no place in
what happens between us. Let's leave it at that."

Joshua nodded in agreement, averting his eyes. "I respect
that."

"The odd thing is, just these past few weeks I've been
thinking about how much I've wanted to be involved with
someone again, romantically. And to be perfectly honest, I
wasn't sure until now if what happened between us last night
was just a lapse of reasoning for me."

Joshua stilled, but didn't interrupt, letting him speak freely.

"It wasn't a lapse. It's...well, I don't know what it is, but I like
it."

Joshua sighed, letting his tension go. "I think I'm very
relieved to hear that."

Mulder exchanged a long look with him--conveying an
unspoken understanding that neither of them was taking this
situation lightly. "Joshua, I know I don't need to tell you that
what happens in this bed or elsewhere needs to stay between
us."

Joshua nodded. "Of course."

"You're a protected witness. It could mean my job."

"I'm also a man," Joshua said matter-of-factly.

Mulder wondered why he chose now to point that out. It
sounded like a prepared statement.

"I'm not saying this to reproach you," Joshua continued. "I
just know it can take some time to accept. I want you to
know I'm very patient in that regard."

Mulder could sense Joshua had experienced rejection of this
kind before. It was almost as if he was apologizing for not
being female. The truth was, if Joshua had been female,
Mulder never would have let him get this close. "Joshua. I'm
okay with this. I really am."

"All I can advise you is to try and not think about it too
much," Joshua said, finding his limbs and sitting up,
wrapping a small blanket around himself. "Don't try to label
yourself--just be honest," he said with a hopeful smile and
headed for the bathroom.

###

When Joshua emerged, he tried not to let himself feel too
disappointed at finding Mulder dressed and seated at the
couch with his book light on. The rest of the apartment was
dark. Mulder turned when he heard him, setting whatever he
was reading aside.

"Hey," he said gently with those kind eyes that had been the
first thing Joshua had learned to love about him. "Come
here."

Joshua wrapped his blanket around himself and came to
stand behind the back of the couch. Mulder reached up for
him and Joshua bent to receive his kiss. "I'm sorry I can't
sleep with you," Mulder said, stroking his cheek. Joshua
began to feel a little less hurt. "Why don't you put something
comfortable on and come join me?"

***************

3:11 AM
 

"My childhood wasn't all bad, you know."

Joshua had settled in next to Mulder, warm under a blanket,
reclining against him. Mulder was half-lying against the end
of the couch with his arm around Joshua, stroking his hair.
They were sitting in the dark, talking quietly, discussing what
Mulder and his partner had deciphered from the contents of
Nanette's lock box earlier that day. Joshua was relating how
some of the photo images had reminded him of his first
home.

"The farm in winter could be beautiful. I had a dog, Nell. We
found a way out through a loose board in the back of the
barn one day. In the morning, just as the sky began to turn
light gray, we'd escape and run out across the fields coated
in frost past the rows of icicles that would hang from the
irrigation pipes. Beyond the fields there was a small pond and
it would be frozen solid by the first of the year. I'd push her
out onto it. She was always spooked at first, feeling the solid
water under her paws. I'd run and slide and she would bark
and chase me into the bare tree branches at the far end. The
dog would curl at my feet, covering her nose with her tail to
sleep and I'd sit there under that twisted canopy in the snow
and listen to the morning.

"Have you ever listened to an early country dawn before the
stars have completely failed?" Behind him, Joshua could feel
Mulder shake his head. "It sounds like emptiness and
wholeness--everything and nothing at all. I would listen to its
grand pause--'tishena,' my grandfather called it.

"'Listen, Sasha,' he would say to me when it was quiet. 'The
sound of silence is the most beautiful chord of all.'"

"Why did your grandfather call you Sasha?" Mulder asked.

"Sasha is a nickname for Alexander, my middle name. There
was some argument over my birth name. My father wanted
Joshua; my grandfather made a fuss over Alexander. 'A
proper Russian name,' he said."

"Joshua," Mulder said with surprise. "Alexander is the first
name of the child on the birth record Nanette kept locked
away for so long."

"Is it? Well, it is a very common name. It could be anybody."

"But think about it. I can't keep track of my gas bill longer
than three days. I don't imagine someone would hold onto a
birth record for 86 years without a very good reason, or
close association."

"Who do you think it is?"

"I think it's the man standing with your grandfather in that
1929 photograph."

"Why do you think it's him? The photograph doesn't name
him."

"I don't know yet--it's just a feeling I have."

Joshua chuckled silently, rolling his head against Mulder's
arm, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of pressed
suit sleeve. He was beginning to lose the battle of staying
awake. "Do you always work on hunches and feelings?" he
asked, stifling a yawn.

"Mostly."

"Are you usually right?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Joshua..." Mulder paused
before changing the subject. "Did your grandfather ever talk
about a famine in Ukraine?"

"A famine? No. He mentioned times were hard and people
were losing their land, but he never said anything about a
famine. He spoke very little about his past."

"I learned today at the library that there was a Soviet-induced
holocaust in Ukraine between 1932 and '33--nearly nine
million people died."

"That's around the time I understand my grandfather left his
country. How horrible. I wonder why he never mentioned
anything about it."

"So do I...Oh, I meant to mention," Mulder said, tapping his
arm. "I saw your concert review in the paper today."

Joshua made a grumbling sound.

"That's what I thought, too. Who are these people to be so
critical of what you've spent a lifetime perfecting?"

"One moment they spear me for being empirical, the next,
they accuse me of being pedantic. I learned a long time ago
not to read my reviews too closely. Yet the mention of Nigel
Kennedy didn't slip past me."

"Who is he?"

"A British violinist who recently made classical music history
by bringing back the art of the improvisational cadenza--a
practice unobserved since Mozart's time."

"Improvisation?"

"Yes. The idea is the musician should be so melded to his
instrument, and the heart of the composer, that when the
cadenza begins, he or she will slip into an improvised solo.
Only jazz and rock musicians improvise solos. Classical
music has been a planned form of musical expression for
hundreds of years, but modern virtuosos are changing that,
and critics are expecting the rest of us to follow suit."

"Have you ever tried it?"

Joshua closed his eyes, feeling sleep coating his mind. "Not
onstage, but often, when I'm alone, I'll play something that
comes into my heart."
 

###

The next thing Joshua was aware of was the sound of
Mulder's voice, whispering to his partner as he slipped out
the front door. Something to the effect of, "I don't know why
he fell asleep on the couch."

Joshua's head had a pillow set under it and an extra blanket
had been thrown over his legs. He closed his eyes and went
back to sleep.
 

************************************
 
 

********************************

Chapter Eleven: Nanette

********************************

SF FBI Field Office
12:11 PM
 

Mulder flipped through the photocopied threat letters sitting
on the evidence table in front of him one by one, going
through the motions, not really seeing the words anymore.
His mind was elsewhere as he waited patiently for the
handwriting analyst to reach her conclusion. He could see
her through the interior window to the lab, bent over a
binocular microscope, carefully shifting the brittle pages of
the Cyrillic farm log over the lighted base. They were looking
for a match.

Mulder shifted his legs in the cold chair, trying to stay alert
and keep his mind from reoccupying itself with memories of
last night. It was too easy to lose himself in remembrances of
the smells and sounds and visions of sex. He'd slept like the
dead last night, mollified by the endorphin rush. It's amazing
how quickly the body readapts itself to an active sexual
status--once it gets a really good taste, it only wants more.
Joshua, naked and warm, moving under him, making small
sounds, responding to his touch, was everything he could
need right now. It would be so easy to just blow this whole
investigation off and go lock themselves in a secluded hotel
room somewhere and fuck each other senseless.

"Agent Mulder?"

He sat up straight, wiping the fantasy clear from his mind.
Dammit, he needed to get his priorities straight quickly
before he made an ass of himself, or gave himself an
erection, whichever came first.

"Yes?"

"I think you're going to want to see this."

He stood and moved through the connecting door, joining
the analyst behind the magnifier. She offered him to take a
peek. He bent to peer through the lenses. He was looking at a
close-up of a Cyrillic character that looked similar to an
uppercase "B."

"Take a look at that letter and note how the bottom stroke
fails to connect to the stem."

"I see that," he said as the paper was whipped away. He stood
back and let her readjust the viewer to a cell wall
photograph, same character. He looked again. "And this is a
match, right? I see the same anomaly in the bottom stroke."

"Yes, it is a match--a definite match. But look again, here."
She removed the photo and set in one of the earliest
handwritten threat letters made before Joshua had arrived in
San Francisco. Mulder peered into the dual eyepieces again. It
was English, but a similar letter, a capital "B" had the same
unconnected characteristic on the lower loop.

Mulder stood up. "They're all a match. So, I'm correct in
assuming that the phantom author is also the same person
who wrote this farm log and register?"

The analyst nodded in agreement. "Except, from what you've
told me, this would have to be a very old suspect to be
writing in adult penmanship from the late 1920s until today.
How old is the woman who had these documents in her
possession?"

"She looks to be about seventy."

The analyst shook her head. "It's not her, then--she'd be too
young. A child's writing takes time to develop into an adult
script."

"Do you think the 1930 documents could have been forged?"
Mulder asked, leaning against the edge of the examining
table, tapping the yellowed farm log page with his finger.

The woman looked skeptical. "I doubt it," she said, taking
another look at the farm log sample under the scope,
readjusting the knobs. "No, I don't think so. The implement
used to script this document is consistent with free-flowing
ink pens common to the late 1920s. It's not a ball point, in
other words. Plus, the India ink has faded to a brownish hue--
that takes at least forty years. If someone alive today forged
these papers, they did an extraordinary job."

************************

12:35 PM

Mulder was just thanking and sending the analyst on her way
when Scully arrived at the field office, meeting him at the
front door. He held it open for her.

"You're going to be very interested in what I found out this
morning," she said, leading him into the first conference
room.

Mulder sat across from her at the table as she pulled out a
set of photocopied documents from her file bag. "I tactfully
asked Dillmont to pull an early shift so I could get a head
start on a hunch," she explained.

She slid two documents out side by side so Mulder could
read them--a marriage certificate and a death certificate.
"The San Francisco County Recorder was kind enough to drop
everything and dig these up for me this morning," she said.

Mulder glanced them over. "This is Nanette's marriage
license," he realized.

"Yes, and her ticket to US citizenship. The problem is, she
married a dead man."

Mulder looked up. "Is the certificate a forgery?"

"Yes, and so is the death certificate. When I followed Joshua
to Nanette's home office, he mentioned she had married a
Barry Anderson out of convenience while Joshua was away
on tour in Europe in 1989--which, I've found, happens to be
the year her working VISA was due to expire. According to
these two official documents, she would have married
Anderson five months before he succumbed to bronchogenic
carcinoma, lung cancer. The records looked good until I put
in a call into SF Hospice. They gave me the name of the nurse
who had been assigned to Anderson's care. I reached her
about an hour ago. She can testify for certain that Barry
Anderson died two weeks before Thanksgiving, in his home,
over a month before his supposed wedding day."

Mulder stroked his lower lip. "So Nanette's been living here
on borrowed time."

"And stolen money."

"You've got a lead on Joshua's missing $60K?"

Scully nodded and passed a bagged canceled check and
several bank account statements across the table top.
"Nanette opened an account with Golden Gate Savings two
days after her 'marriage,' under the name Anna Anderson.
The account held a small savings of five thousand dollars
until just six months ago, when deposits and withdrawals in
the amount of $10,000 began to come and go monthly."

"Where was the money being sent?"

"That's where things get really interesting," Scully said,
pointing to the canceled check. Mulder smoothed the plastic
down so he could read it. The check was made out in the
amount of $10,000 to the 'Recovery Foundation of Poltava
Province.' On the memo line Nanette had written 'final
payment.'

"She's been paying back a debt to charity," Mulder realized.

"Yes, it would appear so. I checked my Eastern European
geography--Chutove is a village within Poltava Province."

"Interesting that she's been paying it back with Joshua's
money," he said, tapping the table's edge with his finger.
"Why?"

"I think we should ask her ourselves. We have grounds to
bring her in on document forgery."

Mulder agreed, but added, "I also want to call in a
psychoanalyst."

"Why?"

"I just had the Cyrillic handwriting in the farm log compared
to the legible scrawling on the cell wall. They're a match."

"But Mulder, aren't we assuming Joshua's grandfather, Ivan
the farmer, penned that log in the 1930s?"

Mulder shook his head, admittedly befuddled. "I'm thinking
they're a forgery--some sort of blackmail Nanette concocted
to get Joshua's grandfather to help her defect to the US. I
want Nanette to submit a handwriting sample while under
hypnosis. If she's an expert forger as these documents would
lead us to believe, then she can forge her way right through
the test. But if she's in trance, there's no telling how many
multiple 'personalities' may come to light on paper."

Scully caught his logic. "You think she might be the hand of
your Thin Man, Mulder?"

"I'm not positive. Not everything adds up, but she's the best
shot we've got. That, and I find it ironic that 'Anna Anderson'
was also the Americanized alias of the Polish mental
institution patient who fooled experts for decades into
believing she was Anastasia."

********************

2:24 PM

Mulder stepped out of the interrogation room, where Scully
was still trying to calm a very frightened Nanette Anderson,
and made his way over to the coffee vending machine. He
plunked in a few quarters and waited for the cup to drop and
fill. Mulder had decided not to read Nanette her forgery
charge in the event she would kindly submit to the
handwriting exam. He was dead wrong. She wouldn't agree to
anything. He could see the psychologist he'd requested from
Behavioral Sciences pacing the hall just outside, giving him
that 'look' again--the therapist had 'real cases' to get back to,
he'd said.

This whole scheme hadn't gone nearly the way Mulder
thought it would. The old woman was acting panicked and
erratic--begging for a phone call. He'd granted her one about
forty minutes ago. One guess who she'd called. The gurgling
machine shut off and Mulder picked up the paper cup, only
half-filled with thin, brownish, tepid fluid. He drank it back
quickly--he needed the caffeine to brace himself for the
ensuing encounter.

Mulder tossed the crumpled soggy cup in the wastebasket,
rinsing the foul taste from his mouth with a swallow of
equally awful-tasting drinking fountain water. It didn't
surprise him one bit to hear some familiar commotion
coming from the lobby.

"No, I won't take a seat. I need to speak with Agent Mulder
immediately."

Joshua was coming up the hall, not sounding very pleased.
Mulder spared the clerk and popped his head out the door.
Joshua stopped in the hall where he had marched just past
him and turned, flustered. It seemed he had given Dillmont
the slip.

The clerk caught up with him. "Sir, this man is insisting..."

"It's all right," Mulder said, opening the door the rest of the
way. "Joshua, please come in and have a seat." Mulder could
see the man was beyond agitated with him. So much for the
afterglow. He addressed the clerk. "And could you please call
Agent Dillmont and tell him we have Mr. Segulyev?"

"Agent Dillmont knows exactly where I am--he’s parking the
damn car," Joshua said, following Mulder into the room,
waiting impatiently for the door to shut before he started up
again. "What's going on here, Mulder? I came home to hear a
call on my voice mail from Nanette, in tears, telling me you'd
arrested her."

Mulder shook his head. "She's not charged with anything. I
have her here to submit to a writing test."

Joshua still didn't look remotely satisfied. "What the hell
for?"

"The letters you brought us from her lock box--some of the
handwriting matches the Cyrillic in the threats."

Joshua stood with his mouth slightly open. "I didn't bring you
those letters so you could throw her in prison--she's an old
woman for God's sake!"

"Joshua, please calm down. It's okay."

Joshua set his hands on his hips. "Don't tell me to calm
down. I want her released."

Mulder reached for Joshua's elbow to still him, but he took a
step back. "Joshua, I'll let her go as soon as she agrees to the
exam. If she's innocent, she has no reason to resist."

"No reason? How about scaring her half to death by locking
her in this place?" Joshua pointed in the general direction of
the interior offices. "That woman has seen first-hand how
'authorities' deal with suspicious people. She grew up in a
country where women's heads were blown off for so much as
saying a prayer. She has absolutely no reason to trust you."

Mulder folded his arms and looked down, waiting for Joshua
to finish his rant. Joshua waved his arm up into the air in a
gesture of frustration and turned around, pacing.

Mulder spoke quietly to him. "If you could talk to her--tell
her it's okay--she'll take the test and be home in time for
dinner."

Joshua still had his back to him, but he could see the violinist
was rubbing his forehead, beginning to give, having blown off
the top layer of his anger. He looked over his shoulder at
Mulder. "You *promise* me you'll let her go as soon as she's
done?"

"I promise, but there's something you need to know."

"What?"

"Nanette's been sending your mortgage payments to Chutove,
Ukraine."
 

###
 

When Joshua entered the interview room, Nanette got
immediately to her feet. He held her tightly while she shook
in his arms. "Joshua, darling, please don't let them take me
away."

"Nana...shh, you're not going anywhere. They haven't
charged you with anything. I won't let them...shh."

Once she calmed, he was able to get her to come sit with him
on a short pea-green vinyl couch at the end of the room. He
held her hands.

"Nana. Please listen to me. I've talked to Agent Mulder. We
can trust him. He only wants a sample of your handwriting."

She was shaking her head, looking very fragile and scared.

Joshua leaned in close to her so they could speak quietly.
Agent Scully had exited the room, leaving them in privacy.
"What are you afraid of, Nana? Tell me and I'll make them
release you."

"They want you to think I wrote those letters, Joshua. I
didn't! I swear it on my soul. I didn't write them."

Joshua touched her arm. "I know you didn't, Nana. The
writing test will prove that."

She gripped his hands tightly. "How can they tell? They want
to trap me. Like GPU officers, always forcing people to
confess. You cannot trust these men, Joshua."

Joshua had assumed this was the true nature of her fear,
echoes of her past. But still, he felt somewhat relieved she
wasn't resisting due to guilt. "Nana, this is America, not
Soviet Russia. You are innocent until proven guilty. They
can't keep you here for over 24 hours without charging you
with something. You haven't done anything wrong. You are
innocent. Take the test and prove it to them so I can take you
home."

She smiled through her misery and patted his shoulder. "But
you see, Joshua, I am not innocent. I have never been
innocent--since the day I came to America."

Joshua felt cold dread creep up on him and he spoke even
more softly to her. "What do you mean, Nana?"

"Did I ever tell you, Joshua, that I saw you for the first time a
week before I came to work for your grandfather?"

"No."

She patted his hand and started to relate a story to him from
13 years ago.

"When I came here to America I was filled with bitterness. I
had very dark feelings in my heart for your grandfather who
had done so well for himself in America. When I arrived at
the train station, your grandfather had a car waiting to bring
me to Berkeley. I met him again for the first time in 50 years
sitting in the audience at Zellerbach Hall waiting with a seat
for me. I was still wearing the same dress and shoes from
three days of traveling. I asked him why he had brought me
to the Hall instead of home where I could rest. He told me he
wanted me to meet his grandson. I sat and waited for you.
The people came in and I saw there was no seat for you. It
was then that the lights went down and he leaned in to me
and said in Russian, 'He will be holding the violin.'

"I cannot tell you, my darling, how beautiful you were,
seventeen years old and so handsome and proud with your
instrument. Then you played, with another beautiful young
man, a Schumann sonata for violin and piano. All the
coldness in my heart melted away as you played for me. I
remember I cried for you, because all the misery of our lives
we left behind had come to good--it had come to you. I know
you never learned I was there that night. I waited in the car
until your grandfather kissed you good-bye and sent you on
your way for the evening.

"'Now you understand,' he said to me as he entered the car
and I dried my tears, not wanting to cry anymore. Those were
the last words of Russian we ever exchanged and there was
no more bitterness in my heart."

Nana's voice trembled and she reached to touch his cheek,
gazing lovingly into his eyes. "You had the power to help me
forgive. You are my salvation, my darling. I love you like my
own child. Why have they brought me here? I won't go back
to that world, Joshua. Make them send me to France...please.
If I have to leave, let it be France."

"Nana. What have you done that would make them deport
you?"

"I know you know, Joshua. The mail--it comes to you. You
know the money is missing now, I'm sure of it."

"I don't care about the money, Nana. But why did you take
it?"

Her eyes grew wide, desperate, and her voice rose as she
went on, almost babbling. "I sent it away. I sent it so they
would stop hurting you--but I was wrong; it's done no good.
The debt is paid, but they're still after you. He won't let you
go, Joshua. He told me when he died that he'd never let your
family live in peace. I believed it; I wished for it, and now I
know the devil was in me--he lived in that land of suffering
and death. He drove us all mad and we forgot God, we forgot
who we were. I would give anything to take it back. I would
give anything."

"What did you do, Nana? Who are you talking about? Why
does he want me dead? Is this the man standing with my
grandfather in that old photo you kept?"

She didn't answer; she just covered her trembling mouth with
her hand, closing her eyes.

"Is his name Alexander? Why did Grandpapa call me Sasha,
Nana? Can you please tell me?"

She wiped her eyes and shook her head. She would say no
more.
 

###

2:54 PM

Nanette had agreed to submit to the writing examination, on
one condition--that Joshua remain in the room with her the
whole time.

Mulder sat across from Joshua at the opposite end of a table
while Nanette faced the therapist in the center. The
psychologist had set a pen and several wide sheets of thick
paper in front of her. He held up his finger in front of her
face, asking her to follow it with her eyes.

"Why is he doing that to her?" Joshua complained aloud, and
the therapist dropped his hand, giving Mulder another
impatient look.

"Joshua, I'd like Nanette to be in a light trance for this
examination."

Joshua glanced at his manager. She looked pale and scared
even though he was holding her left hand. "Why?"

"Trust me. It's to make sure she's writing in her natural
hand."

Joshua opened his mouth as if to launch a whole new
complaint campaign. Mulder broke his official FBI persona
and looked pleadingly at him, as his friend. "Just do this for
me, Joshua...please."

Joshua dropped his eyes, relenting. He nodded gently.

"Can we resume now?" the therapist asked.

"Yes, please."

###

Nanette was in trance and the pen was moving on the paper
before her. Her writing was small and precise--it didn't
resemble any of the samples. To get at her most primitive
consciousness, the therapist was gradually regressing her--
asking her to write from her point of view, memories from
the previous years. Joshua and Mulder both watched her
make short descriptive responses to particular memories--a
walk in the park, a concert, a holiday, a breakfast. Her
writing remained steady and unchanged.

They tried other things. The therapist told her to write short
responses about Joshua, Ivan, Alice Schmidt, the letters. Her
replies were all steady and neutral, no change.

After twenty more minutes, Mulder passed a note to the
psychologist. "Ask her to describe 'zariezam.'" It was the
Russian word for ‘slaughter.’ From what Scully had told him,
that particular word had upset Nanette a great deal during
her translation of the cell writing.

The therapist said the word as requested and Nanette's whole
body tensed and her lips twitched as she gripped the pen.
Her handwriting abruptly changed and she began to write in
French, in a blocky, rough manner. The words were odd,
disjointed, like a child's lettering. She wrote:

The soldiers come now.
There is blood on the road.
I run home.
I have grass and bark which I must not drop.
We are hungry.
The soldiers want grain and animals.
There are no animals.
They are slaughtered.
There is no grain.
It is eaten.

I see the house and run inside.
The men are gone.
They are dead or gone away.
Auntie is dead now since winter.
We buried her beside the back door.
Joseph has run off to beg for food.
He has not come back.
I hide under the table.
The room smells.
Tatiana is dead, her bones are in the hall.
She died a week ago.
Mama will not move her.

I hear Mama coming.
She is walking.
I did not know she could stand.
She is calling for the piggies.
There are no piggies.
She has a knife in her hand.
She is coming into the kitchen.
She is calling to me.
She is looking for me.
Her eyes are bad.
She thinks I am a pig.
I run.

My feet are swollen.
My shoes hurt.
I will be dead, soon.
I run.
 

"That's enough!" Joshua insisted, grasping Nanette's hand,
stopping the writing. It seemed his French was at least as
good as Mulder's.

Nanette came to, shaking, looking at Joshua. "What
happened? Am I done?" She looked to the writing in front of
her, dropping the pen from her clenched hand.

"Oh no..." she said weakly, and began to weep.
 

********************************

Evidence Room
4:10 PM

Mulder stretched his neck, hearing it crack painfully. He
couldn't believe just 12 hours earlier he'd been in such a
state of total relaxation. This job was eating him alive. He
flipped through the test papers again. The images the words
described were horrible, most likely from Nanette's
childhood traumas, her pitiful fight to survive the famine.
None of it was close to the type of handwritten evidence
Mulder had hoped for. Soon after the exam, Nanette was
cleared and released. Mulder told Joshua he would withhold
the evidence of Nanette's false marriage as a gesture of good
faith. 70-year-old self-reliant women weren't generally
menaces to society.

Still, he felt low, cheap. He was hitting dead ends and Joshua
knew it. Joshua had helped his manager out to his waiting car
a half hour ago to take her home, without FBI escort. Mulder
didn't know if he'd be coming back, although he'd asked him
to. Joshua's returning look had held a visible hurt--a
wavering of trust. Mulder felt like he was going to be sick.

The evidence room door opened and Scully slipped in,
reading over a fax.

"What's that?"

"The results of the blood work-up I ordered on the valet last
night," she said. "The autopsy itself didn't reveal any
abnormalities in Thomas Philmaker's brain function--or what
was left of it."

"The SFPD interviews with his co-workers I read this
afternoon also seemed to clear him of mental deficiencies,"
Mulder offered.

"Not to mention the fact he's never had a police record,"
Scully said, passing the fax to him. "I'm sorry, Mulder. For all
I can tell, this guy was a perfectly normal, law-abiding citizen
right up until the moment he drove into the wall," she said,
dropping into a nearby chair. She looked like she hadn't
caught much sleep last night between the autopsy and her 4
AM shift. "Maybe his remains were too traumatized for us to
find a connection?"

Mulder leaned forward on his elbows, pressing the heels of
his hands to his eyes. "Well, I'm out of ideas. You?"

"I think there's still one question we haven't addressed
properly yet."

"What's that?"

Scully chose a page of the farm log from the table in front of
her and held it up to the light. "Do we know if this is really
Ivan Segulyev's handwriting?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because of something I found on the back of this valet
ticket." Scully pushed forward the evidence bag containing
the ticket with the Cyrillic lettering. "I was in here earlier,
doing some translating of my own. The first word on this
ticket looked familiar to me. It's a name, Alexander. I then
looked at the ledger of names Petrovsky translated for us. Of
the five or so Alexanders on the list, one is an exact match
for the next string of letters on the ticket--a last name,
Kosynakov. Alexander Kosynakov, the half-burned name on
the synagogue birth certificate."

Mulder raised his head, feeling hopeful. "Who is he?"

"I don't know, but I'd like to ask Joshua if he can locate some
of his grandfather's US correspondence. Forged or not, I
want to see if we have correctly identified the author."

Mulder ran a hand through his hair, sighing.

"What is it?"

"That's not going to go over very well with Joshua. It looks
like we're accusing his dead grandfather of attacking him."

"Mulder, it doesn't matter what he thinks. We have to get to
the bottom of this."

Mulder folded his hands on the table in front of him, pensive.
"I'm just not scoring many good points with him today. He's
upset with me already over bringing Nanette in."

Scully gave him a questioning look. "Mulder, since when did
you develop such a paralyzing sense of empathy? Joshua's an
adult; he'll survive this. We have a responsibility to
investigate his case from all possible angles, whether they are
pleasant to the subject or not."

Mulder didn't answer. He tapped his thumbs together, trying
to figure a way around this without letting Joshua know
directly.

"Mulder?" Scully touched his hand to attract his attention. "I
don't understand. What's going on? Did Joshua say
something to you about his case?"

Mulder shook his head. "No, Scully. It's nothing. I just don't
want him to feel betrayed by me."

Scully gave him an odd look. "You're speaking in the singular
again, Mulder. We're both conducting this investigation--you
mean *us.*"

*******************************

********************************

Chapter Twelve: Four Seasons

********************************

1223 Divisadero
4:47 PM
 

Joshua sat in the backseat of the car, watching the light blue
and gray house pull into view. Mulder stopped the car, asking
him if this was the correct address--1223 Divisadero. It was.
He could still see the chip out of the front awning caused by
a zealous overthrow of a baseball. His silver ten-speed
bicycle used to rest against the turned column at the
entrance to the garage side-door. The vacant pathway was
now choked by fallen autumn leaves. This had been his home
for three years--the first three years of his professional
career--at sixteen, he'd been a musician coming into his own.

"Do you think your mother is home?" Mulder asked, twisting
in his seat behind the wheel to determine why Joshua was
reluctant to move a hand to the door handle.

Joshua didn't know how to answer his question. In Joshua's
mind this was never his mother's home. This was his
grandfather's home--the home he had remained in after
Joshua moved on to London, Venice, Cairo, Hong Kong.
Although he'd sent his mother the keys to this house after
the reading of his father's meager will, Joshua hadn't set foot
inside the home since his last visit with his grandfather, a few
months before he died. "I don't know if she's here or not," he
said, opening the car door. "I hope not."

The agents followed him up to the front door where he rang
the bell. It was an odd thing to do. He'd never rung the bell
before--he'd always strolled in. When no answer came, he
took out the tarnished keyring they'd picked up at his flat
before heading over. Joshua selected the longest key in the
loop and unlocked the door.

Inside, the wide wooden staircase with the cream and teal
runner welcomed him like it always had. It was still faded in
the same sunlight-exposed spots. The light fixture over the
landing still hung from a looped chain. It was strange how
little things changed. He walked in and invited Mulder and
Scully to have a look around and to head upstairs if they
wished. His grandfather's room used to be at the back of the
long hall upstairs if his mother had left it alone. He didn't
quite understand why Mulder felt it was important to look at
his grandfather's handwriting. Joshua *knew* it wasn't his
grandfather's writing; he didn't need an analyst to tell him
so.

The agents started up for the room, but Mulder paused,
noticing Joshua was still standing at the landing, looking into
the living room. Mulder asked him if he was okay.

Joshua sat himself down in a chair near the front door. "I'll
be fine. I'll come up in a minute." Across the room from him,
its back to the windows that looked out at the street, sat his
grandfather's wing-backed leather chair.

###

"Let's hear a season, Sasha."

It was early autumn. Joshua was in-between concert dates for
almost a week's reprieve. He'd had Nanette book him a flight
back to San Francisco so he could have a quick visit with
Grandpapa before heading off for a six-week French and
German chamber concert series with Philharmonia Baroque.
He was playing lead violin for Vivaldi's ‘Four Seasons’ with a
group of historical musicians who performed on instruments
made during the same era Vivaldi composed the music.
Joshua's Stradivarius was a precise historical match for 1726
and he was invited to join them as guest soloist.

Although he didn't even have his coat off yet and had barely
set his bags down, Joshua gladly kneeled on the wide stair
landing to unlock the case and shoulder the violin for
Grandpapa. He always played for him first as the old man sat
in his leather chair, wanting to hear the music before hugs
and kisses and conversation.

Joshua tightened the horsehairs on his bow, standing again.
"Which season would you like, Grandpapa?"

"Any but winter. It is too cold for winter."

"Summer, then," Joshua decided, and began to play. The
brightness of wide grassy meadows and green leaves and pale
blue skies sang through the violin. Joshua closed his eyes and
let the warmth of the melodic sun take the chill of November
out of his limbs as he played. When it was done, he opened
his eyes again to his grandfather's pleased and proud smile.

"It is good you are home, Joshua. I had forgotten the sound
of sunshine."

The lasting memory of that final homecoming, playing
summer out of season for his grandfather, would have been
perfect. Every note still sang in his ears--his grandfather
opening his arms for him as Joshua set the violin down and
came to the chair to kneel before him and wrap his arms
about him. He could still feel his long soft beard against his
face. It would have been perfect to see it all again, except the
chair was moved. His mother had turned it away from the
windows and back toward the hearth. It was wrong.
Grandpapa always looked outside, not inside. Joshua felt he
should get up and set it right, but somehow he couldn't
move. He turned his hands over; the sunlight from the bay
window passed over the knuckles of his left hand. In full
sunlight you could still see the discoloration, faint reminders
of a child's discipline gone horribly wrong.

###

The wrappings on his small hands had come off in the spring,
just as the last of the snow was melting, running into the
gutters outside his new Philadelphia home. Joshua had never
lived in such a crowded and busy place. The city scared him,
as did the vivid pink and white scarring on his hands. The
healing skin was stiff and thick and needed softening and
stretching before they could be retrained on the violin. His
left hand was the worst. It took most of the spring and the
aid of daily physical therapy to get the digits to fall into
precise position on the neck of the violin. His vibrato lacked
the finesse his nimble child's fingers had once brought to the
instrument. It was humbling and frustrating for a child of
seven to relearn what had once come so easily to him. From
that spring on, Joshua would understand the value of a sound
body. He became afraid for his hands, overly cautious when
handling sharp objects or riding his bike. He was afraid he'd
fall and break them like glass.

After the bandages had come off, Joshua could count on one
hand the number of times his mother took the five-hour
bustrip to Philadelphia to visit them, before Grandpapa and
he moved to San Francisco--distance ending the infrequent
visits altogether.

Grandpapa opened the door to her in surprise late that first
spring. "Mirriam? Why are you in Philadelphia?" She had been
delivered from a cab near the front of their small flat, lost
and nervous.

When Joshua saw her standing in the open doorway he ran
for his bedroom and closed and locked the door, terrified
she had come to take him back. He grabbed his violin case
and hid under the bed with it, hugging it to his chest. It was
some time later when his grandfather, talking through the
door soothingly, assured him it was safe to come out.

"Your mama wants to see you, Sasha," he said, sitting with
him on the bed, speaking softly, patting Joshua's head where
he had clung to his side, wide-eyed and shaking. "But she will
not take you from me. You are my child now--she cannot
claim you."

The only way his grandfather could get him downstairs was
to carry him gently, still clinging. At seven, Joshua had gotten
to be a large potato to carry. He remembered very little from
the visit other than he rarely let his head up from
Grandpapa's beard. He sat in his lap on the couch next to
her, refusing to let go, even for a second. Already he had
learned what being loved and kept safe under a caring
parent's guardianship meant to him, the difference it made.
His mother sat near them, trying to hold his scarred hand,
but he kept moving it away to hold onto Grandpapa. He no
longer recalled what she said to him. She cried; that he
remembered.

Afterwards, Grandpapa took him back upstairs and got him
changed and into his bed. He brought him a glass of milk,
and wiped the tear-stains from his face, rubbing his back
with a warm hand, calming him. "You don't have to be afraid,
Sasha. I will always be here with you to keep you safe."

Over time, Joshua began to believe that no one could take
him away. As the years passed he wasn't nearly so terrified
by her brief visits. He learned to accept them and would
entertain her like he would any occasional friend of his
grandfather's. But he would not play the violin for her.
Never. He hid it in the darkest corner of his room whenever
Grandpapa told him she was coming for a visit.

Joshua wouldn't see his father until he was sixteen. The week
before Joshua and Grandpapa moved to San Francisco,
Grandpapa arranged for them to stop by the farm. Joshua
didn't want to go, but Grandpapa told him it was the brave
thing to do, to face the past, so he went. His mother was
weepy and overly sweet as usual, while his father remained a
closed, dark face sitting at the back of the room. Joshua
wouldn't look at him as his Grandfather told them about his
awards and studies he was to receive in California. As he
recalled, they weren't even invited to sit down. Eventually, his
father just got up and walked out of the room. Joshua never
saw him alive again. The only other thing he could remember
from that visit was driving away, looking out the back of his
grandfather's car, watching the barn grow smaller and
smaller in the window.

Today, his mother was someone Joshua had grown to
tolerate. He saw her when he had to--a brief cordial visit on
the holidays, or when he happened to be in town. He kept to
himself, otherwise, and when they did meet, spoke only when
he had to--telling her only what he had to. The way he felt
about his father now was irrelevant. He had shut off those
emotions years ago, buried them over and covered the dark
seething pit with renunciation. He was relieved when he
heard his father had died. It was a pale footnote on a death
that had crushed his spirit a little over a year before.

###

It was the Black and White New Year's Eve Ball in Paris,
France, 1997. Outside, snow fell on the steps of the Theatre
du Chatelet as frozen winds blew along the Rue de Varénne.
Inside, the harpsichord was metering the brisk tempo going
into the final three movements of The Four Seasons, entering
winter. Joshua's solo violin broke free from the mincing
steps, struck like icicles from the first and second violins, his
solo blowing swirling slurs and biting staccatos into the
phrase, shattering into finer and finer notes that flew over
the instrument's range. Spring, summer, autumn--the prior
movements had seemed fake and distant to him, but winter--
winter was cold and heartless, bringing a frozen and brittle
death to everything it touched. Winter was something he was
akin to.

Earlier, at intermission before taking stage for the Vivaldi, a
woman in a long velvet red dress had pulled him aside from
his green room visitors to whisper four simple words in his
ear.

"Your grandfather is dead."

Movement II-Largo. Vivaldi's melody flew over the snowy
waste with charm. The music spoke of gold sunlight breaking
through thin blue clouds over a stiffened meadow. It sang of
peace and splendor in brilliant reflecting prism hues on each
blade of grass. It lied to him; it lied to those who listened
quietly to the way he played it. Under that frozen and
glinting carpet, nothing stirred.

The final Allegro could not come soon enough. A cloud had
risen from somewhere deep inside him. Joshua was cold; the
heat of the blinding auditorium lights could not stop the
frost's gradual consolidation as it poured into his veins. He
was locked in the winter night again, the dog pressed against
his side. The shivers were coming, those shivers that left him
weak and exhausted as they wracked his small body. No
amount of burrowing into the hay would stop the oncoming
chill. But he played against it, fast and furious, as the tempo
rose and the chamber orchestra followed his accelerando out
through the loose board in the barn wall, out across the
frozen fields to the pond. He ran as fast as he could, but they
could still follow him, blowing ice stinging his eyes, catching
him in a final F-minor chord as his feet broke the crystal
surface of the pond and he began to drown.

Later, someone would tell him he had seemed collected,
calm--his playing spirited and chilling. He hadn't heard it, but
he was told the audience had been stunned into silence for
several moments at the suite's conclusion before erupting
into applause, standing from their seats.

Joshua could not remember any of it because in his mind he
was playing to an empty room, a blindfold over his eyes ever
since intermission. The message of death only came to him in
full realization when his head struck the snow-littered steps
outside the stage door--blood from his nose staining the
pristine blanket in fingers of red.
 

###

The day was ending. The sunlight seeping through the
windows of the living room was falling toward his knees,
growing more orange. Upstairs, Joshua could hear the agents
shuffling and clunking about. He knew he needed to see to
them and rose from his seat, ascending the stairs.
 

***********************

"Let's move this thing back from the wall," Mulder suggested,
taking the opposite end of the large locked trunk they'd
found under the window in Joshua's grandfather's bedroom.
Pushing together, the weighted and leather-strapped trunk
slid forward so they could take a better look at how it was
latched.

"Wait," Scully said, tracing a strap with her fingertip. "It
comes back to here and then...Hold it...” She pushed
something in and a latch gave way, freeing the brass lock at
the front of the lid.

Together they moved to the front and lifted the lid. Inside,
the trunk was filled with the musty smell of age along with a
few items of clothing, framed photos of Joshua and various
friends, and envelopes containing papers and documents.

"I think we've found the lost treasure," Mulder mumbled as
he kneeled to begin rummaging through the items on the
right-hand side while Scully covered the left.

The agents had wandered upstairs together at Joshua's
invitation. Along the hall, Mulder had noticed in passing what
looked to be a child's bedroom, complete with awards and
photographs. The next room was obviously occupied by
Joshua's mother--a woman's dressing gown was hanging over
the end of the bed along with other, older feminine effects--
slippers, a knit sweater, a hair brush.

The room at the end of the hall had belonged to an older
man. The arrangement of polished antique furniture--the
bed, the desk, the trunk--suggested a solid, home-bodied
personality. Some of Joshua's grandfather's suits still hung in
the closet along with casual clothing. The dresser had been
cleared, however, and filled with books, magazines, and
other common household items--none of which seemed to
have belonged to Joshua's grandfather.

The trunk appeared to hold what they needed.

"Look at this," Mulder said, unfolding an infant's colorful
heavy woolen jumpsuit. It looked as if it was finely crafted by
knowledgeable hands. The pattern looked Russian.
Underneath it was a long, worn, black felt coat. Wrapped in
the coat was an old children's book. Scully watched as
Mulder opened it, turning the pages. The text was in Russian,
and the water-color illustrations were stylized after classic
Slavic artwork. On one page was a drawing of a frightening-
looking gaunt old man, with long gray hair and a beard,
locked in a closet in chains. Mulder exchanged a knowing
look with Scully and set the book aside as they continued to
dig deeper into the trunk.

"These look like they might be Mr. Segulyev's," Scully said as
she pulled some letters from a manila envelope. She flipped
through a few pages, passing some to Mulder. Mulder looked
at the handwriting. They were business letters addressed to a
New York legal office relating to common investments,
securities, and properties.

"This isn't the handwriting we've been seeing," Mulder said,
handing the pages back. "You were right, Scully. These are
signed by Ivan, but they're not a match, and I've been staring
at the threats long enough to put the FBI handwriting analyst
out of a job."

"Don't be too discouraged," she said, lifting a stack of folders
out of the way. "There's more. I think this trunk has a false
bottom."

"It does?" he said, assisting her in lifting out the remainder of
the contents. Scully reached into the bottom of the trunk and
tapped. It did sound hollow. Mulder helped her feel around
the edges for a release or seam.

"Let's tip it up," she suggested. Together, they lifted the
heavy trunk back on its edge and Mulder held it in place
while Scully felt around under the base. Presently, he heard a
click and a bolt sliding back. They set the trunk back down
and looked inside.

"The edge is raised," Scully said, reaching in to wedge the
bottom panel up and off with her fingertips.

Nestled in the bottom, yellowed with years, was a wrapped
parcel, tied with string. Scully lifted it out and set it on the
floor between them. The package had been mailed to a
Philadelphia address in 1984 and then forwarded to 1223
Divisadero in 1986. It looked like the San Francisco address
had been written by Ivan Segulyev. The first address had been
typed.

"It looks like this package was resealed, but never opened
after its second mailing," Scully said. "There's no return
address, but the stamps look Russian."

Mulder pulled out his pocket knife and began to cut the
string loose. "Let's see what Santa brought."

Mulder unwrapped the parcel to reveal an old, woman's
shoebox. The tape that had once held the lid on had long lost
its stick and the top slid right off.

There was a dark cloth-covered bundle inside. On top was a
Russian birth certificate. Scully picked it up and looked over
the Cyrillic. "It's Ivan's," she said after a moment, handing it
to Mulder.

He took it from her. The only character he could recognize
was the cross at the top center of the document. "How can
you tell?"

"I recognize his name. Joshua made a point of showing it to
me on the 1929 farm photo. He also said his grandfather was
born in 1912. This document is dated that same year."

Mulder fingered the edges of the paper. It wasn't burned like
the first one they'd found. "This can't be Ivan Segulyev's
birth certificate; I'm sure of it."

"Why?"

Mulder ran his thumb over the cross at the top. "Because
Joshua was raised Jewish."

"Maybe Ivan converted?"

"Maybe. But something tells me immigrant refugees of war
don't lose their religion that easily."

"Unless he was trying to hide his identity...Oh my God,
Mulder. You don't think Joshua's grandfather was a war
criminal, do you?"

Mulder looked up. "Why would you say that?"

"Well, the fact that Nanette seems to have had some leverage
against him in order to get into this country. And...Joshua
has stated many times that his grandfather was very closed-
mouthed about his past and deliberately failed to keep old
photographs of himself. I think he was hiding something."

Mulder shook his head, brooding. "I don't know what it
means. But I do know I want all the answers before we show
this to Joshua. I'd hate to present anything that might
wrongly accuse his grandfather without definite proof."

Scully nodded her agreement. "Let's see what's in this
bundle." She held the dark cloth on her lap and began to
unfold it. "Oh..." she said in mild disgust, moving the
wrapping to the floor. "There's a dead bird in here." Mulder
watched her nudge the feathery corpse aside. Beneath it was
a smaller wrapping. Scully exchanged a look with Mulder. He
told her with his eyes that *he* wasn't about to touch it. She
carefully unfolded the smaller wrapping with her fingers.
Inside was part of a charred bone. On the bone was writing.

"That's...that's not human is it?"

Scully snapped a Latex glove on her hand and lifted the bone
to her eyes for closer inspection. "It's human all right. It's
part of a mandible."

"And the writing...please tell me it's English. I really don't
want to take a human jaw to Leo for his translation."

"Sorry, Mulder. It's Russian."

Mulder looked in the shoebox. There was one more item
wedged in the bottom, a letter. He removed it and unfolded
it. The letter was in Russian, unreadable to him except for
two things: the year, 1933, and the identification of the
handwriting.

Mulder looked up at Scully, who was still fingering the bone.
"We've got a letter here, Scully, from the Thin Man and it's
signed Alexander Kosynakov."

***********************

Satisfied with their find, the agents began to repack the
evidence for easier removal.

"Where's Joshua?" Scully asked, rewrapping the bird bits.
"Did he ever come up?"

"I thought I heard him in the hall a few minutes ago," Mulder
said. "This is upsetting him. I'll go check on him if you can
finish reassembling this trunk."

She nodded and Mulder stood, brushing the dust from his
knees.

Mulder found Joshua at the other end of the upstairs hall,
sitting on the edge of his childhood bed, looking up at the
trophy shelf. Bits of dust hung suspended in the setting
sunlight that broke through the parting in the curtained
window.

Tarnished awards, urns and medallions occupied the
crowded shelf. Joshua was sitting with his back to the door,
idly fingering a faded blue ribbon.

"'And on his head they'd placed a garland, briefer than a
girl's'," Mulder quoted.

Joshua turned his head, letting his arm drop at his side. "'To
an Athlete Dying Young'...Housman, Mulder? I thought you
were sent to protect me from an untimely end?"

Mulder leaned on the door jamb. "I am, but that still doesn't
keep the awards of childhood from fading when the boy
becomes a man."

Joshua's thoughtful blue eyes met his. "No, I suppose it
doesn't. Although I think I've outgrown the thrill of being
pinned. Don't tell me--your room at home is lined with
similar adolescent achievements."

Mulder let his eyes take in the rest of the room. In addition
to the trophy shelf, framed newspaper and magazine articles
about the young virtuoso hung on the walls. "No, my room
no longer exists. The tracks of my lifetime achievements have
all been swept away by Baba Yaga's broom. I like it that way.
It keeps people from pointing out what I could have been.
Most people at least."

Joshua took in his space as well, glancing up at the ceiling. "It
is true; it all looks smaller than you remember. I'm sorry I
stalled myself here, Mulder. I was coming to assist you, but I
can't seem to make it the rest of the way down the hall."

"You don't have to, Joshua. I think we found what we were
looking for--correspondence, in Russian, dating back decades
it seems."

"Did you find it in a big leather-bound trunk under the rear
window?"

"Yes."

Joshua smiled, wistful. "Good, then his room hasn't
changed."

"It doesn't look like anyone's been moving things around.
The room is dusty; untouched is my guess."

Joshua ran his fingers over his eyebrow. "Do you think we
can go soon?"

"Yeah. Just give Scully another minute or so."

Joshua poked at the blue and black pattern on his bedspread.
"When I was nineteen, I was in this room, lying on this bed
the night before I left for tour. I couldn't sleep. My bags were
already sent on--all I had to do was wait for the car to come
pick me up," he said, taking a glance at Mulder before
continuing. "I kept feeling like I was forgetting something. My
mind wouldn't rest until I figured out what it was. I was
scared. I got up and walked to my grandfather's room. His
bed was empty, but from the hall I could see there was a light
on downstairs.

"I found him sitting in his chair staring out the window. The
sky was turning gray; it was nearing sunrise. I came and
kneeled next to his chair, putting my head in his lap while his
hand rested on my head.

"'I won't go without you,' I told him. I'd never been anywhere
without him. He'd always accompanied me. We sat in silence
for a while before he spoke.

"'I came here from far away, from a different land with
different skies,' he told me. 'I did not know at the time if
what I had done was right, if leaving my home behind was
what God wanted me to do. But now I know there was a
reason I was supposed to leave that place, Joshua--the reason
was you. God brought us together, but now he says it is time
for you to leave your Grandpapa and go be a violinist for the
world.'

"He told me to go get dressed and that he would sit with me
until the car arrived. I did and we sat together watching the
sun come up. I said very little to him other than good-bye. I
don't know if it was his words or the hand of God, but I recall
riding away from the house feeling safe, protected. I wasn't
afraid anymore."

Mulder regarded Joshua affectionately. "It must be the artist
in you--that you can pin-point the exact moment you became
a man."

Joshua smiled softly and got up, walking over to his old
wardrobe. He opened the stiffened door with a creak,
looking in. "Oh my God," he said with wonder.

Mulder took a few steps into the room to stand behind him.
"What?"

"Grandpapa's kept all my old violins in here. I told him to
give them away--to the Conservatory." Joshua opened the
second door, wide. In the wardrobe Mulder could see five
violin cases resting one next to the other on a deep shelf.
Joshua picked up the smallest one and blew the dust off the
case, coughing. He held it in one hand, unlatching it and
opening the velvet-lined lid. A diminutive violin lay inside
with a reduced bow. "I thought my room looked small...my
God, the strings are so close together. I must have been a tiny
child."

"Was that your first violin?" Mulder asked.

Joshua shook his head sadly. "No, it was my second. My first
was tossed in the fire by my father. This one is slightly larger,
but still so small compared to the Stradi."

"Does it still play?"

Joshua smiled fondly at the pint-sized instrument. "A child
could play it. I should give it to the Philadelphia Conservatory
along with the others. An instrument deserves to be played.
They gave me the Stradivarius, after all. Still, I'm glad to see
it again."

"What's this?" Mulder reached in and pulled a wide, thick,
strap-tied book from where it was resting behind the violins.
Joshua closed the case and set the violin back in the closet,
taking the heavy ring-bound tome from Mulder's hands as he
lifted it out.

"I don't know," Joshua said, bringing it over to set it on the
waist-high cabinet at the end of his old captain's bed. He
brushed the bits of dust and web wisps from the blue
marbled cover and releasing the straps, opened it.

Mulder watched Joshua's reaction as he examined the first
few pages of what was clearly a scrapbook of his career
assembled by his grandfather.

"I never saw this before," he said with amazement, turning
the next page. His eyes caught the memories as they
presented themselves page by page. "I had forgotten half of
this. This was when I first entered the Philadelphia
Conservatory," he said, pointing to a photo of a puffy-haired
boy holding a bow in line with a group of similar-aged
children. "The eighties did a number on my head. I look like
a mushroom," he laughed, turning another page. At the
bottom of each photo and in some of the margins, Joshua's
grandfather had written captions in a strong, bold hand
similar to the business letters Mulder and Scully had just
gathered.

"Is that you?" Mulder asked, when Joshua paused at a page
showing a newspaper photo of a child in silhouette in front
of a professional symphony orchestra.

Joshua looked delighted as he read the handwritten caption.
"'Joshua surprises New York City with his rendition of
Mozart's Violin Concerto #3.' Remarkable, that was my first
professional gig. I was twelve years old. They always want
children to play Mozart," he said and turned the next few
pages. "My God, Grandpapa saved every clipping of every
show I ever did. I knew he watched the papers for my reviews
and we would read them together and framed a few of my
favorites, but I had no idea he'd saved them *all.* He must
have been working on this for a very long time..."

Joshua turned more pages and paused, looking at a photo of
himself as a teen in San Francisco standing next to an old
man with white hair. "That's Master Gregory; he taught me
everything about being a showman. He died not too long
after I left for Europe."

The next section of the scrapbook was all about Europe, from
the newspaper story announcing Joshua's tour contract after
the recording of the Brahms, on through the foreign press
reviews of performances in Spain, France, England, Germany,
Switzerland, Japan, India, all in diverse languages.

Joshua was plainly moved and amazed by the thoroughness
of the coverage. "I can't believe it. Some of these papers...I
don't know how he could have acquired them. He followed
me all over the world..." Joshua said in almost a whisper,
flipping pages one after the other.

"I wonder when this ends..." Joshua said, skipping ahead
through what was easily over a hundred pages. Toward the
last fifth of the book Joshua slowed, turning the pages more
carefully, his eyes tracking and registering the years as they
flipped past: 1995, 1996... Soon he came to a set of clippings
that were not as securely mounted as the rest of the book.
The newsprint had begun to slip loose and some seemed as if
they hadn't been well-glued at all. The handwriting that had
been strong and bold before was now wavering, awkward,
and brief. A page or three later, the handwriting stopped
altogether. Even the clippings began to deteriorate in their
placing. Some had been partially glued to others, some only
folded into the binding. Others weren't cut properly, the
scissors having chewed the edges of the paper.

Joshua turned slowly, his expression tight and closed. He
paused at each page, taking the clippings in his fingers,
straightening them, unsticking them, laying them flat. Mulder
started to turn to leave, but Joshua, without looking up from
the book, grabbed his hand and held it, gripping him. Mulder
stayed, letting Joshua's fingers thread into his, but he
couldn't look at the scraps anymore. He couldn't bear to
watch Joshua picking up after his ailing grandfather's final
faltering steps.

Mulder breathed slowly and held onto Joshua's hand in
silence, his eyes rising to the trophy rack. In the curved base
of a tarnished award he saw Scully's reflection as she stood
behind him in the doorway, motionless, watching them. After
a moment she lowered her head and slipped past the door
and away.

Joshua made a pained sound.

"Are you okay?" Mulder whispered, turning to him.

Joshua held his mouth tightly, choking down the grief. "I
need to leave now," he said with effort. He had turned to the
last occupied page. Taped to it was a wrinkled and torn
section from the Paris Gazette. Mulder mentally translated
the French headline, "Tomorrow Night: Bring in the New Year
with Vivaldi, Segulyev and the Four Seasons."

###

Joshua excused himself to the bathroom. Mulder closed the
scrapbook, secured it and set it back into the closet where
Joshua's grandfather had left it for his grandson to find one
day along with his violins.

Scully was waiting in the living room with the shoebox in her
arms along with a stack of dusty folders. Her expression was
unreadable.

Joshua emerged looking pale and strained. Mulder was
following him down the long stairs to leave when a key
turned in the lock and the front door opened. A woman in
her late sixties came in, startled, until her eyes settled on
Joshua, a palpable longing coming over her thin and aging
face.

"Maelchik?" she said in a thin voice.

"Hello Mama," Joshua replied tentatively, stalling himself on
the stairs.
 

************************

She looked even older to him, frail and small. Her long hair
was shorter and grayer now, but still clipped behind her
head. He must have known this was going to happen--his
chest felt weighted as guilt piled on top of sorrow and began
to settle in. He'd give anything if he hadn't had to come here
today.

"Mama, these are FBI Agents Mulder and Scully. They asked
me to bring them here today; we needed to look through
some of Grandpapa's papers."

She looked frightened and her hands gripped the strap of her
purse. "Why the FBI, Joshua?"

"It's nothing to worry about Ms..." Mulder began, stopping
himself evidently when he remembered Joshua went by his
grandfather's name.

Joshua glanced at him, moving aside on the step he'd
immobilized himself on so Mulder could greet her. "Poltov,"
Joshua said, looking away, trying to gather himself.

"Ms. Poltov," Mulder said, descending to the landing to shake
her hand, reassuringly. "We're just investigating..."

"Someone's been sending me threats in the mail," Joshua said
over him. Mulder looked back at him, questioning. "It's
nothing Mama, they just wanted to check out some old
correspondence to eliminate the people Grandpapa and I
used to know."

His mother took some steps forward around Mulder to come
closer to him, reaching up to cover his hand with hers on the
banister. "What threats, Joshua? Are you in trouble?"

"No Mama," he said, moving his hand casually away. "I'm not
in any trouble."

"How long have you been here, Joshua? When did you come
to San Francisco?"

He forced his eyes from the floor to look at her. She'd better
not cry, he thought to himself. I won't be able to stand it if
she cries.

"Joshua, we'll be outside," Mulder said, opening the door for
him and Scully to quickly exit. He watched the door close
after them. Dammit, he didn't want to do this right now,
especially not alone.

"Look at me, maelchik," she said in that sing-songy way of
hers. "Let me see you. Why won't you look at your mama?"
Her hand was on his, tugging him from his perch on the
stairs. He descended and gave her a quick hug, trying not to
cringe as he felt how thin she was, and how tightly her arms
were squeezing his shoulders. He felt like she would break
him. He stepped back from her, trying to find the strength to
muster a smile, to make this visit as brief and polite as
possible.

"I'm sorry, Mama, I've been busy." She was pulling him by the
hand into the living room.

"Sit, sit. Let me look at you. I never get to look at you. You're
getting so old, so grown-up."

Joshua suppressed a sigh. "Mama, I've been grown-up for a
very long time."

She smiled a thin and wavering smile, tears beginning to
gather in her tired dark-blue eyes. "I know, I know. All
grown-up. I thought about you all day on Friday. My little
boy, my maelchik, turning thirty. I was not much older than
that when I had you. When are you going to be married,
Joshua? You should be married--a man of thirty needs a wife
and children."

"Mama," he squeezed her hands, to try and calm her. Her
voice had been rising. "I have music, Mama; I don't need a
family."

She reached out her hand to touch his cheek, stroking his
face. He closed his eyes, hoping if he indulged her, she'd let
him go faster. "You need more than music, maelchik--you
need the love of a woman."

God, all these years and she still didn't know the first thing
about him--who he was, what he did. Sure, he played that
silly violin, but what of it? To her he was still supposed to be
some hard-working farm boy with a dull pregnant wife. He
felt the pattern starting again, the pattern that marked all
their brief infrequent visits together--she babbles, he
becomes angry and frustrated, he makes a polite excuse to
leave and sickens himself with the guilt for weeks until they
are hopelessly destined to meet again.

He opened his eyes, taking her hand from where it had been
starting to paw through his hair. "I'm never getting married,
Mama. You might as well accept that."

She shook her head, tsking him. "Whatever happened to that
young lady of yours, the girl from New Hampshire? She was
so lovely, Joshua. I still have the photo you sent. I don't
understand why you let her go."

"She's dead, Mama," Joshua said bluntly.

"What?"

He took a long breath, trying to tamp down the darkness he
felt threatening to rise in him. "She died last July," he said
quietly. "She shot herself."

His mama brought her hand over her mouth. "No, Joshua.
Why?"

He brought his hands up over his eyes, dragging his fingers
through his hair. God, he didn't want to do this right now. "I
don't know."

"No, no...this is not true--it can't be. You were going to be
married. She would have been so happy..."

"Mama!" He sat up straight, pulling away, trying to keep his
dread from turning into a panic. "It's not my fault."

"But you were so good together..."

This was what he couldn't stand, the endless pointlessness of
trying to get his mother to understand he was nothing like
what she believed him to be. He took her hands, leaning in,
forcing her to stop going on about his false marriage. "It was
a mistake, Mama. I made a mistake and now she's gone and I
can't do a damn thing about it. I'm sorry I could not marry
her--I regret it deeply. I tried to make it happen, but I just
couldn't...I won't ever try to marry again. I have my violin
and that's all I'll ever need."

His mama just sat there, looking so sad and upset with him--
disappointed, always disappointed. "No, Joshua. You do not
want to be alone. You don't know what it's like to be alone
and old. You do not want to live like this. You are young--you
can still be happy..."

He sighed and got up, beginning to pace the living room, a
room that brought back so many wonderful and painful
memories for him. When his Grandpapa was alive, he felt like
there was no one else in the world who mattered. But he was
gone, his chair was turned away from the window, empty.
Joshua knew all about what it felt like to be alone. He'd been
alone now for over two years.

"Mama, I'm sorry that you're lonely. But I have my own life
now. I'm happy. I am a concert violinist. I've played for the
grandest music halls in the world. This is my life, and I am
choosing how I want to live it. I will not be anybody but who I
am."

"But you are a man, Joshua, you can choose anything. You do
not have to chose to be alone."

He caught her teary glance, shocked and aghast. "What are
you saying, Mama? That because you're a woman your life
was not your responsibility? That you were forced to marry
my father? That you were forced to give me up?" He choked
on the words as they came out. He was shaking--he had no
idea why these truths were forcing themselves out now. He
and Mama never spoke about this. They always pretended
everything had been normal between them, just like every
mother and son. But now, after seeing Grandpapa's last days
laid out page by page, he just didn't have the distance
necessary for pretending.

She was quiet, and he turned away from her. The tears he
was tired of fighting were making themselves known, and he
wiped them away shamefully. He would not cry for her.

"A woman has no choice in who she loves, Joshua. I loved
your papa. I could not leave him."

Joshua crossed his arms, hugging himself, trying to breathe
evenly. "Not even for me," he whispered, glancing at her
through swimming eyes. She was staring at her hands.

"Your papa loved you, Joshua. It ruined him when Grandpapa
took you away."

Joshua laughed bitterly, letting the wetness he felt on his face
stay and mock him with the irony that he still cared enough
about that bastard to be upset. "Let's get something straight,
Mama. Fathers who love their children don't make them
sleep outside in the dead of winter." He looked at her then,
openly, letting her for once see the raw and painful anger
there. "And don't try to tell me again that it was my fault--
like you used to--telling me I needed to behave, that I needed
to mind him better."

"I tried to come see you..." She was weeping now, holding her
hands tightly in her lap. "I had no choice," she said weakly.

Joshua wiped his eyes on his sleeve with a snort. He couldn't
take it any more--he was not going to stand here while she
cried. "You had a choice, Mama," he said, heading for the
front door, feeling the sickening suffocation of guilt pressing
in on him. He paused a moment as he turned the knob. "You
had a key to the barn, too," he said with his back to her, and
left the house.

***************************
********************************

Chapter Thirteen: Lullaby

********************************

6:12 PM

Mulder glanced at his watch. Joshua had been inside for over
fifteen minutes. He was beginning to feel it would be a good
idea just to leave. Joshua could call for a car, after all. He
didn't want himself and Scully to pressure the situation.
Joshua had enough to deal with this afternoon.

No sooner had he begun to reach for the handle when Joshua
came out the front door of the house, closing it behind him.
Mulder hadn't seen his mother in the doorway.

Joshua kept his eyes down as he made for the rear door,
sliding into the backseat and shutting it firmly, bringing a
hand over his eyes.

Mulder looked over his shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asked
softly.

Joshua shook his head briefly. "Just get me away from here,"
he whispered. Mulder exchanged a look of concern with
Scully and started the engine.

###

Marina Flat
6:32 PM

"Look, Scully. Take the car. I'm going to start my shift early.
Don't bother calling Dillmont," Mulder told his partner,
handing her the keys as he let Joshua go on ahead up into his
flat. "I think he could use a friend right now."

Scully regarded him thoughtfully a moment. She seemed
almost sad. "You're right, Mulder. I'll just..." she paused,
stumbling over the words.

"What's wrong, Scully?" he asked, feeling his chest clenching
for the confrontation he wasn't nearly ready to face yet.

She was looking up the street, avoiding his eyes. "I'll take
care of the evidence. Just..." she dropped her eyes and
sighed. "You're a good friend to him, Mulder. Take care of
him, okay?" She managed a smile and Mulder felt his entire
body relax. Impulsively, he reached out and brushed her
cheek lightly with his thumb. She looked up at him and
smiled warmly. "Goodnight, Mulder," she said with a tone of
affection he hadn't heard from her in a long while, like a C-
minor chord, both sad and sweet.

"Goodnight, Scully," he replied with a gentle smile, and
headed for the stairs to the flat.

*******************************

Joshua was in the shower, his clothes left thrown on the end
of the bed. Mulder took off his coat and sat back in one of
Joshua's big comfortable chairs, waiting for him to come out.
Through the echoing spray of the water Mulder could hear an
occasional muffled sound of frustration or grief delivered to
the tiled walls. Over a quarter of an hour later, the water
hushed, but it was several long minutes before Joshua
emerged--dried, robed and downcast.

"Are you all right?" Mulder asked him, as he watched Joshua
slip out of his robe and into a fresh loose cotton shirt and
pair of undershorts. The musician's back was to him, but he
nodded as he sat heavily on the edge of the bed, his posture
betraying his exhaustion.

"I'm sorry you had to go through all that today."

Joshua turned his head so Mulder could see his face in
profile. His eyes were slightly red-rimmed and he would not
look at him directly. "Are you?" Joshua asked, bitterly.

Mulder stood and came over to sit at the edge of the bed,
and put his arm around Joshua, pulling him into a hug. He
felt Joshua's tension begin to ease as the musician gradually
surrendered against his side, lowering his dark head and
wrapping his arms around him in need. Mulder held him
quietly, stroking his back. After a while he felt Joshua begin
to breathe more steadily, calming against him.

"Family is never easy," Mulder said into the man's hair.

Joshua gave a short, bitter laugh and sat up, laying his hand
over Mulder's. "Especially mine," he said sadly, shifting to lay
down on the bed. "I know in my heart that I'm supposed to
love her and care about her because she's my mother--for no
other reason than that. But tell me how I'm supposed to feel
kindly toward someone who chose to stand beside the one
person in my life who hurt me the most?"

Mulder regarded Joshua, conveying understanding. "I know
how hard it can be to learn to trust someone who failed to
protect you as a child. All I can say is that I know just how
difficult it can be to forgive *yourself* for being the one who
failed to provide that protection."

"You're speaking from experience," Joshua said in
realization.

Mulder lowered his head. He sat still, summoning the
courage to describe it. "You asked me once if I had ever
killed a woman..." Joshua eased himself up on his elbow,
drawing closer to Mulder, trying to catch his eyes. "I haven't,
but I've come very close."

"What happened?" Joshua asked softly.

Mulder's face rippled with a wave of deep remorse and self-
reproach before he spoke--so quietly, he wondered if Joshua
could hear him. "In all my training as an agent, all my drilled
responses...there was a case with a man, a sick man who got
inside my head and turned all those honed skills against me.
He turned me into a weapon against myself, against my
partner--the only person in this godforsaken world who
would ever draw fire from me--and he made me turn my
instinct on her. I stared her right in the face and held my
weapon at her head, Joshua...she was wearing a goddamned
vest and I knew it and aimed for her head..." He bit the inside
of his lip, trying to gather the words and force them out. "He
had tapped into every known weakness in me...my wounds,
my childhood fears...he made me see her as an enemy and I
believed him because those false truths were buried in me.
My head was screaming for me to let go and act...to save
myself, to save her..."

Joshua started to reach for his hand, but paused as Mulder
glanced at him with a look that said 'wait.' "She stopped me,
Joshua; I have no idea how she knew to do what she did
because in my mind she was already dead. I saw her dead and
bleeding on the floor. Afterwards, months later, I was still
haunted by that vision and just how close it came to being a
reality."

"You've never forgiven yourself."

Mulder shook his head. "Nor will I. It's something I'll always
carry with me."

"I had no idea...I'm sorry; I've been callous with you."

Mulder managed a half-felt grin. "I'm not trying to one-up
you, Joshua. We all have our own sins to bear. I doubt the
weight of living is felt any lighter one person to another. All
we can do is try to keep going, doing our best. Death comes
when we're ready to give up that load."

"I'm not nearly ready, Mulder. I want you to know that."

Mulder took Joshua's hand briefly and let it go, nodding.
"Neither am I."

"Will you lie down with me? Just for a while?" Joshua asked
quietly. His lapis eyes were softened from grief, vulnerable. "I
can't seem to summon the energy to finish dressing."

Mulder loosened his tie and smiled. "Move over, then."
 

###

8:55 PM

Joshua woke a few hours later to the smell of melted cheese
and spicy meat. He opened a lazy eye, still burning a little
from the emotions he'd shed earlier in the day. He felt better
now, warm and sleepy, covered in a thick blanket. Mulder
was seated at the kitchen bar on a stool, his dress shirt
unbuttoned, revealing a white V-neck t-shirt. He was
bouncing a knee and flipping through a magazine while
taking a bite from a slice of what Joshua knew to be pizza--a
delivered pizza. The big soggy box was sitting on his kitchen
countertop next to a six-pack of cola. So this is what happens
if I sleep through the dinner hour, he thought, amused. My
guardian reverts to his feral state. Good Lord, that wasn't a
paper plate Mulder was dining off of, was it?

Joshua sat up, the blanket sliding from his shoulder where it
had been carefully tucked. "Please tell me you're not eating
pepperoni in my house," he said, sliding his bare feet to the
cold floor and stretching into a standing position.

Mulder looked over at him. "Nope, this is Luigi's finest--
sausage, mushrooms and olives. I saved you some," he
grinned, flapping his slice at him from across the room.

"Ugh," Joshua commented, yawning, and pulled on his robe
to come  join Mulder on a stool, facing him from the
opposite side of the bar.

"Cola?" Mulder offered, reaching for the six-pack behind
him. He slipped a frosty can from its plastic ring and set it in
front of Joshua on the counter, popping the tab with one
hand. It fizzed over onto the smooth polished tile, leaving a
tan ring.

Joshua started to get up. "Let me get a cup..."

Mulder stilled him with a hand on his wrist and a smirk. "Sit.
Just once I want to see you drink out of a can."

Joshua looked uncomfortably at the cola top fizzing with
carbonated run-off. He wasn't expected to suck that off first,
was he? Who knew where that can had been. "My fingers will
get sticky," he said, pointedly.

Mulder snorted. "Excuse me? You'll stick your fingers in my
ass, but you won't touch the side of an aluminum can? What
planet were you raised on?"

Joshua tried to look offended and valiantly gripped the cold
can in his right hand. With an obstinate raise of his brows, he
lifted the soda to his mouth, taking a quick series of gulps.
He set it down, triumphantly smug, but was soon mortified
by an unexpected belch that rose up from his belly. He
clamped a hand over his mouth, catching the burp just shy of
announcing itself with a loud rabble. He blinked against the
carbonation sting in his throat before he spoke in a strangled
voice. "God, I hate soda."

Mulder was beside himself with low chuckles over his
companion's faux pas. "Don't tell me you've never let one go
in public before, Joshua. I won't believe it," he said, wiping
part of the ridiculous grin from his own face with a napkin.
"Here, try the pizza. I can't wait to see what you do with
this."

Mulder peeled off a delivered paper plate and flimsy napkin
and set them in front of him. The top right corner of the
napkin was soggy from God-only-knew-what and the Dali-
esque pizza slice Mulder plopped on the plate didn't begin to
have a serviceable edge to lift from. "I suppose a request for
a fork will go un-honored," Joshua said, trying to stay stoic,
but the enjoyment he saw reflected in Mulder's hazel
challenge made the request impossible to resist. Hell, he'd
eat cold Spam out of the can if it made this man happy.
Joshua peered at his slice and began to poke at an olive with
his index finger. "I hate olives, too."

"There's no pleasing you, is there?" Mulder teased.

"That's *not* true," Joshua said, lifting the flimsy plate and
dipping his head toward the rubbery cheese to shove the
slice over the edge and in the general direction of his mouth.
He bit down and pulled back quickly, but not quick enough
to stop a long string of cheese from clinging to his chin. He
set the plate down and quickly retrieved the dairy garland
with a grunt. He popped it in his mouth and chewed. "This
isn't even real mozzarella--it's a Monterey Jack substitute,"
he mumbled, figuring talking with his mouth full would
probably thrill the agent as well.

Mulder applauded him with a lively nod. "Not bad. Good
form. Nice work with the cheese, although you could have
done without the gourmet review."

Joshua smiled and shrugged, taking another big bite, licking
the sauce off his upper lip. "I didn't say it wasn't tasty...to a
certain palate."

"The oil and cheese palate?"

Joshua nodded, reaching for his napkin. At the last second he
decided against the mystery stain and grabbed a paper towel
off the roller to his left instead. "Thank you, Mulder. I'm
feeling much better now."

Mulder smiled at him and took a swig from his own cola,
downing it and crushing the can in his fist. "Remind me to
take you to a Giants game sometime. I'll show you the finer
points of devouring a ballpark frank with hot mustard and
extra pickle relish."

"I'll hold you to that," Joshua replied, fondly recalling falling
asleep against this man's side a few hours ago. "If there's
ever a way to please me, I'm sure you'll find it."

###

They finished off the pizza together and Joshua managed to
survive sucking down the rest of the can of soda. They
laughed and chatted about nothing important throughout the
remainder of their meal--not the case, not his mother or
grandfather or Nanette, not a thing that had draped such a
heavy shadow over Joshua's life earlier that day. It pleased
Joshua that Mulder could be so easy to just be with. He'd
never been with someone who took so naturally to the
domestic side of life. It amazed him to watch Mulder wipe
down the counter and pack out the pizza debris with the
trash. Yes, it was nice to have a man around the house.

Joshua felt a genuine rush of happiness when they eventually
fell onto the bed, half-naked and kissing. There had been a
brief toothpaste battle in the bathroom that had left Joshua's
sink a mess of blue smears. But he didn't care one bit as he
relished the feel of Mulder's spearminted mouth on his, his
long arms holding him down on the bed as he felt the man
pressing against him, growing hard in his boxers. They rolled
about and kissed unhurriedly, taking a languid pace, enjoying
the night and the light and heavy feeling of being caressed
and gripped and tasted and licked with curiosity and
tenderness.

When they finally reached that heated state of deep arousal,
Joshua wanted to be taken again and rolled over onto his
back, inviting Mulder to face him between his legs. The
invitation was taken honorably, after some teasing
preparation, by the firm full thrust of the agent's cock and
the warm lubricated grip of his matching fist stroking him
over and over into a sheer humbling climax. Mulder took his
time finishing, kissing and fucking him slowly until his ass
ached in a most gratifying way and he could watch the man's
orgasm rise and come over him lap for lap like a deep swell
in the Bay, both shuddering and groaning with the depth of
pleasure it brought them.

*********************************

11:45 PM

Mulder lay on his back watching the streetlights and passing
cars reflecting white and red light against the windows.
Mulder supposed he should have gotten up and dressed
himself by now, but he wasn't quite ready to give up the
warmth and comfort of Joshua's bed--especially while Joshua
was still in it. The sleeping violinist was lying with his arm
thrown over Mulder's chest, with his lips against his
shoulder, leaving a warm moist spot growing with every deep
even breath (not that the man would ever admit to drooling).
Mulder knew he was getting sloppy with his duties, but
tonight he didn't care as much. He was too assuaged by the
calming effects of deeply satisfying sex and intimacy. They'd
spent a long time after the sex, just lying together, kissing
and touching, not wanting to move apart. It had felt
wonderful--being with Joshua made him feel strong and
important, valued, appreciated. It was nice to do something
right for someone for a change. He hoped the nature of the
case would ease up on Joshua from here on out--he never
wanted to put him through the emotional strain that visiting
his mother's house had brought him. Although all the pieces
had yet to connect, Mulder sensed they were very close to
finding a resolution. More than anything he wanted to bring
Joshua peace again, beyond the bedroom. For now he could
hold him and try to stay awake, while his weapon cast a
shadow across the wide headboard where it lay overhead,
ready.

###

Mulder woke to the sound of the violin. He opened his eyes,
reluctant to kill the soothing dreams the music was bringing
to his subconscious. Dreams...? Shit. He'd fallen asleep after
all. He leaned up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes. Joshua sat
at the foot of the bed, his back to him, playing the violin in
silhouette. The raw honestly in the slow sad music sounding
through the strings kept him from speaking, from
interrupting him. He eased his head back against the pillow
and just listened, enraptured, until Joshua finished, laying
the Stradivarius on the bedcover.

"That's beautiful; what was it?" Mulder asked quietly.

"I don't know..." Joshua answered, in a distant voice. "It just
came out of me. It wanted to be played. Although part of it I
believe was from a Russian lullaby my grandfather used to
play when I was very young. I thought I had forgotten it."

"Do you think you could remember it? I'd love to hear it
again."

Joshua shook his head. "I don't think I can...It's breaking my
heart." He sounded like he was on the verge of tears and got
up to put the instrument away. He stood naked and pale
against the dark sweep of the piano.

"Joshua?"

The violinist turned, releasing a heavy sigh.

"Come back to bed."

***************************************

********************************

Chapter Fourteen: Vintage

********************************

3:35 AM

It was nearing four AM, a time of morning Joshua had come
to dread. He had been unable to get back to sleep after his
improv a few hours ago. He was lying on his side next to
Mulder, who was now dressed and leaning back against the
headboard on pillows, typing in his laptop. The glow of the
monitor cast a bluish tone over his unusually handsome face,
giving his eyes a curious doll-like transparency.

Joshua hadn't realized it at first, but Mulder had started his
shift a few hours early last evening, giving them more time
than usual together. Even so, Joshua felt himself wishing for
more, wishing for a time when Mulder wouldn't have to leave
him before dawn--a time when he could sleep next to him all
night and into a late morning with newspapers, coffee and
tousled hair. He wondered if that day would ever come, or if
this was all going to end when the guillotine over his head
disintegrated. It surprised Joshua how much the course of
this affair mattered to him. He usually accepted relationships
as they came, and was at peace with them when they went.
Yet here he was with someone whose duty was to show up
every night and he was already hoping and yearning for
more.

Over the years, Joshua had supposed the trust and security
he was seeking in a companion could only be found in the
female of the species, and he had spent over half a decade
looking for a commitment there. But deep down, he knew the
only times he had completely lost himself had been during
those few, brief heated grapplings with members of his own
sex. It was the only way to get at the core of him, to set free
that soul-deep release. More often than not, he'd awake cold
and alone wishing for a male lover who could extend those
needs into the waking hours, to become more than a hard
body, but a friend, a confidant. He knew it meant his job to
stay alert, but Joshua longed to unshackle Mulder from his
professional obligations, and in freeing themselves, see what
roles they would assume. An idea quickly formed in his head
and he sat up.

"Mulder, call your partner, tell her not to come."

Mulder looked up from his laptop. "You know I can't do that,
Joshua. We're on shifts."

"Then let's take you off shift. I have tomorrow... or today,
rather... off. Let's get the hell out of here for the day; no one
will be the wiser."

"You mean leave San Francisco?"

"Yes, if the threat is here in town, then let's leave town. I'll
take you up to Sonoma, show you a thing or two about
grapes. It's beautiful this time of year; the vines will be
changing colors."

Mulder tapped his space bar--he was thinking it over.

"I'm not under house arrest. If I want to leave town I can,
right? You can offer to take the watch for the day."

Mulder rubbed his forehead. "What do I tell Scully?"

"Tell her she has the day off."

The agent gave him a sarcastic look. "That's going to be just
to the left side of normal for me. She's certain to be
suspicious."

Joshua flopped over on his back, grinning like an errant
child. "What does she think we're going to do in Sonoma,
sleep together?"

Mulder pursed his lips. "You do have a point."

"Come on, you deserve it," he said, running his hand over
Mulder's thigh. "We'll go back to your hotel so you can
change and shower. I'll call for the car to meet us there by
six. We'll get an early breakfast and head on up. It's about a
two-hour drive; you can sleep on the way."

###

Marriott Hotel
5:10 AM

Mulder emerged from the hotel bathroom to find Joshua
flipping through the suits in his closet. "Where's the suit you
wore the night we went to Berkeley?" Joshua asked over the
whir of the hairdryer. Somehow, Mulder had gone to bed
with a man and woken up with a wife. Oddly, he just didn't
mind all that much--at least Joshua noticed what he wore.
"The dark blue one, far right."

"That's it." Joshua removed the hanger and laid it out on the
bed while Mulder finished drying his hair, a towel tucked
around his waist. Joshua looked at the suit and then at
Mulder in the towel with poorly disguised lust. "I love you in
blue. You have no idea how badly I wanted to kiss you that
night."

"As early as that?" Mulder asked, shutting off the blow-dryer
and letting the towel drop carelessly. He walked over to sit
on the edge of the bed, slipping into a pair of boxers. Joshua
didn't miss a beat of it, either. He certainly had a thing for
his cock, and he wasn't about to be shy about it.

"I pretty much wanted to fuck you from the start. Kissing
you, however, took longer to decide. Ten to fifteen minutes
later I think," he grinned, still eyeing the bulge as it slid into
dark navy wool. "You drove me crazy that first night we were
together in my bed, wanting your mouth."

"Why didn't you just...I don't know...ask me?"

Joshua cupped his own chin, thinking. "I don't know. I was
afraid you'd be offended. Not all men like to be kissed like
that. It's easy to get a man to give you his cock; his mouth on
the other hand, is a whole other matter. The act of kissing is
much more intimate."

Mulder nodded in agreement as he put on a crisp white shirt
and then his socks and shoes. Kissing Joshua had certainly
rushed him a great deal farther along this path he was now
charging right up without much caution. He wasn't going
away with Joshua today solely because he had been asked. He
wanted to see if he felt any different being away from his job
and other obligations, namely Scully. He wanted to see if he
could gain some distance from the guilt and the fear he'd
never be able to explain this situation with Joshua to her. It
didn't help matters that he was dressing in front of his lover
just a few doors up the hall from her room where she was
hopefully still sleeping in.

He'd called Scully on his cell earlier while they were taking a
cab back to the Marriott. He'd told her Joshua was heading
out of town and he might as well tag along, dutiful agent that
he was. He hated deceiving her about it and felt even more
foolish when he resorted to Joshua's dialogue suggestion
about telling her to just take the day off.

"You're kidding, Mulder. You're asking me to spend an entire
Monday off the clock. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

"I dunno, Scully. There's plenty of things to do in the city.
You could catch a movie, a show, a ...."  In the backseat next
to him, Joshua mouthed the word 'zoo.' "Go to the zoo, lots
of stuff to see there." God, he was a miserable liar.

Mulder slipped on his coat and clipped on his holster. "Tie or
no tie?" he asked his fashion consultant.

"Hmm, no tie...I like seeing a little flesh. It's like getting an
early peek at a birthday present."

Mulder had to laugh at that comment as he picked up his
wallet, badge and keys. God, this was getting fucking weird,
he thought with humor--*Wake up Mulder, you have a
boyfriend.* And a rather talented and attractive one at that.
Joshua was looking especially striking in a dark thick
charcoal wool coat and slacks. He wore a finely tailored pale
yellow linen shirt, sans tie. Joshua was quite a gift to behold
himself, and Mulder was finally beginning to really appreciate
it. He was looking forward to being with him someplace
beyond the SFPD and FBI beat. "Why don't you head down to
the lobby while I slip some paperwork under Scully's door."

Joshua nodded and with an amused smile, reached for the
doorhandle. As he passed him, Mulder added, "I just hope for
your sake, that San Francisco really does have a zoo."

"It does," Joshua insisted, pulling the door shut behind them.

###

Joshua and Mulder enjoyed a quick breakfast in the hotel
lounge before heading out to wait for the car that pulled up
at exactly 6:00 AM. It was a short black limousine not
dissimilar from the one they took to the Cliff House the eve
of Joshua's surprise party.

"This certainly falls a few yards short of inconspicuous,"
Mulder commented, sliding onto the dark leather after
Joshua.

"You'd be surprised, Mulder. Lots of visitors take hired cars
to the Napa and Sonoma valleys. You get choice parking and
don't have to worry about sampling yourself silly."

"Well, I don't know about all that sampling myself. I'm still
armed," Mulder yawned, crossing his arms, waiting for the
car's heater to unthaw him from the ten minutes they'd
stood out front. He closed his eyes. It was a cold clear
autumn day with a blustering wind that seemed to come up
out of nowhere. He'd avoided the warming effects of coffee
at breakfast so he could catch a nap.

"Mulder, I told you. I want you off-duty today. Expect to be
liberally plied with wine, cheese and chocolate. Besides, I
asked my driver to bring his weapon today."

Mulder opened his eye, concerned. "What?"

"It's okay," Joshua assured him, lowering the privacy shield.
"He's a licensed security guard. He's worked for me many
times. Andy, show Mulder your gun."

Mulder leaned forward to see the driver was indeed packing.
He gave Joshua a dissatisfied look and raised the screen back
into its closed position. "Joshua, I don't like this at all," he
whispered, although it was unnecessary; the driver couldn't
hear them unless the comm was on. "I don't know this man."

Joshua leaned over and squeezed his hand. "It's all right.
Trust me. I've known Andy for years--he's fine. He's safe. I
want you to relax today, have a good time."

Mulder settled himself back into the seat, closing his eyes. "I
would prefer it if you had asked me about this ahead of time.
I could have run a background check."

"I'm sorry," Joshua said, rubbing his hand soothingly. "I want
just this one day. Then we're back under your orders, okay?"

Mulder nodded reluctantly, and reclaiming his hand, soon
began to drift off to sleep.

###

8:45 AM

Aside from waking during a quick stop at the bank for
Joshua to pick up a "shameless amount of spending cash,"
Mulder slept the entire ride up, the smooth rolling of the car
lulling him into a surprisingly refreshing two-hour nap.

Joshua woke him with a gentle nudge once the car came to a
full stop.

Mulder straightened up, blinking. "Where are we?"

"On top of the world," Joshua smiled, throwing open his
door. "Come have a look."

Mulder slid out of the car and got to his feet, taking a
stretch. He could hardly believe what his eyes saw when they
came into focus. They were parked at the top of a tall hill
surrounded by white marble channels of running water,
cascading down the hillside over descending steps into
rectangular pools with spraying fountains. The crest of the
hill was pyramid-shaped, covered in fresh manicured grass
set with windows and terraces and rose gardens--a geometric
palace built into the peak of a hill. He'd never seen
architecture quite like it before.

Turning around, he realized they were surrounded on all four
sides by low rolling hills corduroyed in a patchwork of
grapevines. The vines were freshly harvested, but still
bedecked in their wide pointed leaves, all painted in various
shades of burnt orange, red, burgundy, forest green, and
earthy browns--each patch taking on its own combined and
distinctive color--block for block over the landscape. The
short, thick, twisted espaliered vines stood proud, in row
after row like old children joining hands, stretching across
the verdant slopes. It looked like Eden.

"Welcome to Bundschu Vineyard, Mulder," Joshua said,
enjoying his awed reaction to waking in such a place. "They
make damn good sparkling wine here."

"God..." was the only thing he could think to say about it.

"Yes, I do believe we have a higher power to thank for the
rest."

Joshua had picked up a thermos of coffee at some point on
the way up and offered a cup to Mulder, who took it, still
trying to convince himself he wasn't dreaming. He sipped it
slowly, watching a flock of starlings swirling like schooling
fish through the cold blue air, coming to light on the rows
upon rows of vines running along the vineyard hillside.

"The winery doesn't open for another twenty minutes. We
can have a seat at the fountains and enjoy the air."

Mulder followed him down the white stone steps to the
closest fountain pool and had a seat on the low wall. The
water was flickering circles of yellow morning sunlight across
the shallow tiled bottom.

Mulder took in the view and the coffee, feeling himself finally
coming alert as the hot beverage warmed his belly. Joshua
sat near him on his left, wrapped in his heavy wool coat
watching the birds, while the fountain rushed to his right,
hitting them with an occasional light mist. "I love Sonoma,"
Joshua said. "I'm glad I was able to bring you here. Do you
feel rested? I plan on running you all over the valley."

"Pour me another cup and I'll be ready to go."

###

The inside of the hill was as beautiful and unusual as the
exterior. Mulder stood under a long skylight looking down at
the thin clouds reflected in a slate-bottomed pool lapping at
his feet. He'd just finished touring a display of centuries-old
casks and antiquated grape presses and barrels. Everywhere
he went, he smelled the musty rich scent of fermenting
grapes.

Joshua was at the tasting counter trying to decide between
the extra dry or medium dry bubbling wine. He tried to
persuade him to come have a taste, but Mulder opted for the
water glass and biscotti instead--the coffee was still too fresh
in his stomach. Joshua collected him after he made his
purchase and they headed out from the palace in the hill, on
to the next engineering wonder.

Each of the wineries they stopped at had a selection of four
or five bottles open for tasting. They stood together at the
long bars crowded with visitors, sipping and listening as the
viticulturists poured and explained the importance of
temperature, soil and air-- or why each wine was fruity, dry,
sweet, oakey, or reminiscent of watermelon, peaches, or
chocolate.

Joshua was standing close at his side at a long bar, swirling a
cabernet under his nose a few times before taking a small
sip. "This is an especially complex red. The vineyards here at
St. Supré are over 75 years old. Their roots go very deep,
picking up flavor essences in the soil. This cab has an oakey
taste with both raspberry and chocolate overtones." He
handed his glass to Mulder. "Try it." Mulder took a sip. It
tasted incredible, but he couldn't say it was anything like
chocolate.

"It's good," he said, handing the glass back. "But I'm just not
tasting the Hershey's."

Joshua finished off the swallow. "It takes some practice.
You'll get the hang of it. I think I'll get a few bottles for Andy.
He enjoys a good cab."

After a while, the visits all began to blur together. Joshua
knew his wineries and grapes from Clos du Bois's
Johannisberg Riesling to Lytton Spring's Gewurztraminer. The
landscaping and structure of the wineries were both eclectic
and traditional--from a hall built of piled wire-wrapped
stone, to the dark and wet musty caverns of Ravenswood.
Mulder remembered one with a large frog pond that he and
Joshua walked around to sit at a bench near some willow
trees. There were old stone manors covered in vines and
homesteads surrounded by manicured Elizabethan knot
gardens and white fences. Mulder followed him about in a
pleasant wine-induced buzz the majority of the afternoon,
just enjoying the exceptional scenery. He had told himself to
take it easy on the alcohol, but Joshua was always there at
his side at the tasting table swirling "just a sip of Gamay" or
"you must try this Merlot." The deal was you were welcome
to dump the remainder of your glass into a tureen, and they
often did, but all those little sips add up over time. By
midday, Mulder surrendered his gun to the driver, officially
retiring from duty until his head cleared or Joshua had his
fill of buying up bottles of wine.

"My collection's been getting low," he explained, handing
Andy his gift of selected Cabernet along with another
handbox of late harvest dessert wines to load into the leaden
trunk.

###

The chill in the air made the contrasting interior of the warm
car cozy and inviting. There was hot cider and slices of
cheese to be enjoyed between stops along with warming hand
rubs, cold noses and deep, flavorful kisses.

"I knew you would be good to kiss," Joshua said, shifting
back on the seat, catching his breath from a particularly
intense round of oral contact that had left them both blurry-
eyed and aroused. They were traveling up Highway 12,
cruising to the next port or sherry.

"How's that?" Mulder asked, cooling off by popping a
jalapeno-stuffed olive in his mouth.

"Because you have an honest face. There's a sincerity about
you, an openness I rarely see. You're not afraid to show
yourself. I enjoy that about you."

Mulder thought the compliment over as he discarded the
toothpick in a small bag, selecting a bite of sharp Gruyere,
chewing it thoughtfully. He swallowed. "You'd be surprised
how often that honesty gets my ass into trouble."

"How so?"

"I have difficulty keeping my opinions to myself."

"Such as...?"

"Well, my insistence on the existence of extra-terrestrial life
for one."

Joshua looked a bit stunned, yet somehow intrigued. "How
do you figure that for a fact?"

Mulder paused a second, then decided to take the leap. "I've
witnessed it."

Joshua gave a nervous laugh. "You're shitting me."

"No, I'm not shitting you. I've seen aliens. Lots of them." He
stole a glance at Joshua. The violinist was hovering over his
cider, about to take a sip. He cleared his throat instead and
set the cup back down in its holder.

"Where?" he asked, sounding both a little scared and awed.

"All over. They live here. With us."

Mulder gave Joshua a break while he tore himself off a
handful of baguette, chewing quietly.

"In California?"

Mulder grinned. "No, not in California. Much colder regions."

"What do they look like?"

"Four-and-a-half-feet tall, dark-gray skin, big lidless eyes,
large bald heads--you know, the usual," Mulder said,
casually, like he was describing a race of New Guinea
tribesmen.

Joshua blinked, trying to gain some logic over this turn in the
conversation. "What do they want?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," Mulder said, regarding
him with reassurance like a father looking into the eyes of
his child when he tells him there's no such thing as monsters.
The problem was, there were.

"I don't... Shit, I can't believe it. But I do believe it, coming
from you. I'm thoroughly disturbed now, thank you."

"You still think kissing me is a good idea now that you know
my real reason for joining the FBI?"

Joshua quirked a half-formed smile. "God help me, I do."

###

In the heart of town Sonoma Square offered four blocks of
shops, cafes, galleries, and restaurants, plus an adobe
mission and even a cheese factory. Aside from clothing,
Mulder wasn't much of a shopper, so he tried not to get in
too much trouble with the bell pepper-shaped egg timers and
expandable sponges while Joshua set about buying up half of
what must have been the eleventh store they'd stepped into.
The driver had already taken three armfuls of bags back to
the car in the last hour and a half.

Assorted mustard-based condiments, a six-piece glassware
set, a blue and black melty-looking vase and a rubber duck
were being rung up while Joshua asked the sales clerk if the
dish towel set came in lime green. Feeling a tad out of the
loop, Mulder wandered outside to spy a used bookstore one
shop over. He sent a hand signal to Joshua who was fingering
a wreath of garlic (now that's something that might actually
come in handy) while he slipped away next door, leaving the
armed driver to keep an eye on him.

The bookshop had that comforting musty smell of old paper
and leather bindings Mulder loved. He inhaled fondly as he
made his narrow way back to the parapsychology shelving.

He had read most of the first and second chapters of Carl
Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" when he felt Joshua
sneak up from behind, pressing up against him in the quiet
corner, his chin on his shoulder. "Good book?" he asked.

"Interesting. I used to have a paperback copy. I don't know
what happened to it. Someone cleaned my bedroom a few
months ago and I haven't been able to find a damn thing
since."

"Then let me buy it for you."

Mulder shook his head, closing the book, easing back into
Joshua as he returned it to the shelf.

"I'm determined to buy you something today, you know."

Mulder chuckled. "I think you've bought most of the state of
California something today."

Joshua kissed the back of his neck. "I know you're bored. We
can get going. We have lunch reservations in Harrisburg in 30
minutes, anyway."

"I'm sorry about that. I know you said you didn't get the time
to shop very often. I shouldn't keep you from it. Go buy all
the dish towels you want."

"I did. They're for Nana. I don't cook, remember?" Joshua
said happily, giving him a warm hug. Mulder brought his chin
to his for a brief kiss before a large woman started to wander
into eye-shot and they moved apart. There was something so
indulgently sinful about nuzzling one's male lover in public,
Mulder thought. He couldn't deny the heady feeling Joshua's
close presence was stirring in his belly. Maybe they could get
a hotel room for a few hours after lunch? Or there was
always the back of the car. It had served them before.

He tugged Joshua's coat sleeve. "Let's get going."

###

They were being seated at Fantina's Ristorante in Harrisburg
when Mulder noticed Joshua had a bag stuffed in the inside
pocket of his coat. "What's that?" he asked as they took two
chairs opposite one another at a table near the windows
overlooking the Italian vegetable and herb garden.

"You didn't really think I was going to leave Sonoma without
buying you something, did you?"

Mulder set his napkin in his lap as the waiter brought their
bread and poured the ice water. "It's not the rubber duck, is
it?"

Joshua grinned and pulled out the bag, handing it across the
table to him. It looked like a book.

Mulder opened the bag and recognized the scent of the old
bookstore. "When the heck...?" He pulled it out. It wasn't the
Sagan after all, but an old thick book on classical music--
*The Lives of the Great Composers* by Schumann. He opened
the worn bound leather cover and looked inside. It was a first
edition, signed by the author. "Joshua, it's..."

"It's the first book I ever owned on the composers. My
grandfather bought me a copy when I was seven and used to
read it to me at night. I loved hearing about the madness of
Wagner and the licentious liaisons of Mozart. It's a wonderful
book, written by a man who actually knew many of the great
late nineteenth century composers when he was a court
pianist in Germany. I thought you'd like it."

Mulder was so deeply moved by the gift; he wasn't sure what
to say.

"Look at the cover engraving..."

Mulder closed the heavy leather cover. On the front was an
embossed image of a man with a long beard.

"That's a reproduction of a famous lithograph of Johannes
Brahms--the same one I saw hanging in the farm house over
the piano when I was a kid. See why I loved the book so
much?"

Mulder was beside himself with how to thank Joshua for
something so profoundly meaningful, to both of them. He
could hardly believe it was only five days ago that Joshua and
he had first begun to know one another, sitting in his flat
listening to him play the violin and talk about Beethoven. He
was so moved in fact, all he could think to do was make a
light joke. "I've heard you know it's time to question your
sexuality when another man starts buying you gifts."

Joshua grinned, pleased to no end. "It's taken a *book* to
bring this to your attention? I must be doing something
wrong."

"No, you've been doing everything right," Mulder said,
thoughtfully, passing his hand over the age-worn cover of the
book, feeling the ripple of the leather under his fingertips.
"Thank you, Joshua."
 

###

Their last stop of the day was Viansa, an Italian villa-style
winery that specialized in both fine foods and vino. The
upstairs room of the villa was packed with round tables and
tasting dishes and crackers for sampling sauces, dips,
condiments, and dressings. Joshua was in heaven, quickly
filling a hand basket with items such as garlic olive dipping
oil, peach-pineapple salsa and butter pecan ice cream
topping. Mulder almost lost him in the shuffle of nibblers a
few times, trying to catch his dark head behind the tall
harvest pumpkin and cornstalk centerpieces.

Mulder caught up with his companion, dropping a couple of
chilled bottles of spring water into the basket. "Here, Mulder,
try this." Joshua was holding a small fudge-dipped cracker to
his lips. He sucked it in quickly, trying to be discreet, but
wound up with a few centimeters of Joshua's middle finger in
his mouth. Joshua pulled it out slowly. "We'll definitely be
needing a jar of this."

"Joshua..." Mulder warned in a hushed voice. He saw an old
woman was giving them a pinched and disgusted look from
across the table. Joshua followed Mulder's gaze and laughed
silently, ecstatic they'd made someone squirm.

"Don't worry about it. I doubt that old woman's had a decent
roll in the hay in three decades," he whispered, moving away.
Mulder watched him, realizing he had a long way to go
before reaching Joshua's level of comfort with the nature of
their relationship. He doubted if he ever would be completely
comfortable--he was raised with too many biases and was
quite frankly, still amazed he found intimacy with a man this
surprisingly pleasurable. Was it just the lack of
companionship in his life for so many years that was making
him bond to Joshua, or was it simply the person? Would he
feel differently if Joshua were a woman? He told himself he
needed time before he could fully define the nature of his
emerging feelings. He doubted they would ever have it.

###

Mulder stood on the Viansa verandah waiting for Joshua to
ring his leaden basket through the checkout. The view from
here was similar to the one they'd started the day with, but
now the color of the sky was changing and the hills were
dusted with an aging golden light. They'd need to be heading
back soon. Joshua soon joined him at his point of
contemplation. He handed Mulder his water and set the bag
down while Mulder unscrewed the top and had a long drink.
Wine tended to leave one parched.

Joshua was quiet, looking out over the valley. "I don't want
to go back," he said.

"I can't blame you," Mulder said, watching the sun beginning
to swell into a deep orange-red as it touched the peaks of the
distant mountains.

"I want you to stay with me out here tonight, in the valley."

Mulder turned to meet Joshua's resolved expression. "You
know I don't think that's a good idea, Joshua."

"Why? What makes it any different from my flat?"

"I haven't slept," Mulder said, seriously.

"There's something I wanted today more than anything else,
but I've been waiting until now to ask you, because I wanted
to be sure...I wanted to know if you would be the same
outside of your duty to me as an agent. I wanted to know you
as a companion, a lover."

Mulder could feel an instinctive call for caution rising up his
spine, but the honesty in Joshua's eyes as he spoke softly to
him was quickly dissolving his reserve. "What is it you want?"

"I want to sleep with you. I want us to make love without a
time limit. I want to wake up with you in my arms and order
in breakfast. I want to feel what it's like to be with you as if
we had just met in a cafe and not under these bizarre
circumstances."

Mulder didn't know what to say. His gut was urging him to
refuse, while his heart was saying yes to the seductive image
Joshua was presenting. It would be nice to fall asleep with
someone. That was something normal people did. He wanted
that more than he could admit. "You've already made
arrangements," he realized.

Joshua gave him the faintest nod. He looked like he was
wagering his soul on this. It was damn difficult to refuse this
man anything, Mulder was discovering.

Mulder took another drink and screwed the cap back on the
water bottle. "So where are we staying? Better not be the
Napa Motel Six--I expect the best from you."

Joshua held the deepest gratitude in his tentative answering
smile. "I won't disappoint you."

###

Despite the fact Mulder had only three or four hours of sleep
in the past 24 hours, it was Joshua who gave up the struggle
to remain awake as they rode up to the far end of the
neighboring Napa Valley toward the mountainside resort of
Auberge du Soleil, their exclusive lodging for the evening.
Mulder watched the aisles of vines flicker past the window
like a shuffled desk of playing cards, while Joshua breathed
quietly in his ear from where he had nestled against his side
to sleep. Mulder found it hard not to watch him, unguarded
and relaxed. That ten-year-old boy became visible when the
violinist slept.

*He loves you,* Mulder told himself. It made him feel
remarkably good. In Mulder's life, being loved openly by
someone was a rare and beautiful thing. Tonight, he intended
to cherish it.

###

Their room was covered wall to curved ceiling in terra-cotta
stucco framed by rough solid beams of oak. Blocks cut from
aged wine barrels burned steadily in the stone fireplace next
to the bed, setting off a rich earthy scent. Four square white
paned windows looked out over the patchwork of Napa
Valley vineyards at twilight. Mulder removed his long coat
and hung it over a chair. Joshua came over from where he
had been sitting, watching the fire blaze up, and touched his
wrist. His cheek to his, he whispered, "Do you want dinner or
me now? I'm hungry for both."

Mulder lowered his head until his nose touched Joshua's
hair. "Dinner first. We have all night for the rest."

###

A white tablecloth, two chairs, candlelight and three courses
later, they were back in the room, an opened bottle of
Orange Muscat forgotten on the hearth. The softness of the
bed sheets welcomed them as their skin glowed with firelight
and reflected the glistening trails where mouths had met
flesh. Slowly, they took turns tasting each other like so many
sips of wine. They had arrived at this haven unprepared, so
lips and tongues and fingers worked unhurriedly, each taking
possession of the other in turn. Like a canon duet, they
brought one another to the edge of release and then with a
caress or soothing rub, calmed, to change hands and begin
again with a slow, deep kiss.

Mulder came to understand why Joshua took such care with
himself. He was amazingly sensitive to the places where
Mulder was licking him now with lazy intent. Joshua's balls,
wet with saliva and melting loose under the warmth of his
tongue, ached with each passing of his mouth. Mulder rolled
him then, when the feeling became unbearable, and spread
his legs, continuing the tastings along his perineum to the
sensitive rim of his anus, almost like a clit, begging to be
soothed and teased.

It was something Mulder was good at, something he knew
would please, and with the removal of the 4 AM hourglass
and thoughts of Scully out of his head, he became fully lost
in it, tuned only to the soft cries of pleasure coming from the
man held captive under his slow ministrations. He had no
intention of letting him go for a long, long while.

###

Mulder should have known that the rubber duck would make
an appearance before the night was over. It was rocking on
the water rippling the reflection of the dimmed bulb lighting
overhead. Just under the duck's squeakable ass, Mulder
could see the outline of his legs scissored between Joshua's.
The younger man reclined with a washcloth over his eyes at
the opposite end of the large tub. He watched as his
companion reached out with a lazy hand to grope for the
bottle of lemon Calistoga and bring it to his lips, taking
several large swallows.

"I think," Joshua started to say, after he'd downed half of it.
"I think I might have had too much to drink today."

"Headache?"

"Not just yet, but I feel something coming on--an involuntary
clenching at the temples. I think I'll be in for it tomorrow. I
really don't hold wine very well...the sulfides..."

Mulder freed his legs causing the water to kick up into
waves. Joshua grumbled from under his towel. "Stop
moaning and turn around."

Joshua sat up, leaning his head over so the washcloth
plopped into the slightly steaming water. He turned around
and leaned back against his lover, nestling himself between
his legs. "What are you going to do?"

"Shh...just lie still."

Joshua complied, lying limp against Mulder while he poured
a little herbed bath oil into his palm, smoothing it between
his hands and then applying it with his fingers across
Joshua's forehead, rubbing in tight circles at his temples.
Joshua made a sound of utter contentment and relaxed even
further until his chin touched the surface of the water. "Does
that help?" Mulder asked, repeating the motions and then
journeying down the back of the violinist's head to rub the
tendons at the base of his neck.

"Shit...you have incredible hands," he answered between
grunts of pleasure.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should--your hands were the first thing I noticed about
you. You have a pianist's hands, long and perfect, excellent
for hitting octaves. And other important notes of interest..."

"Don't start," Mulder chided, slipping his hands forward to
rub Joshua's jaw and chin.

"Mwy?" he tried to ask.

"Because, you're spent."

"Wrong again, agent." Joshua took Mulder's right hand and
dipped it down deep into the warm water.

"Shit..." Mulder commented, feeling both impressed and old
while he was examining the evidence. "What I wouldn't give
to be thirty again. And you've had too much wine."

"Hmm...never been a problem for me. I feel I should tell you I
only drink when I'm especially happy. Or in Sonoma. Today, I
was both."

"Well, I wasn't exactly reserved myself. Oh, crap."

"What?"

"Andy still has my weapon."

"We'll go next door and get it in a minute. I'm enjoying this
too much right now."

"So am I."

"I have a confession to make."

"What?"

"There's something I still want from you."

"And that's..." Mulder stopped when he realized what that
was. He dipped his head to talk against the top of Joshua's
head. "I thought you preferred...um--I hate trying to find the
right words--the bottom?"

"Usually, but not all the time. One of most incredible aspects
of sex between men is the ability to switch roles. You can
keep stroking me by the way; I was enjoying that."

Mulder resumed manipulating Joshua under the water. Just
discussing fucking him was getting the young man solid in a
big hurry, not to mention the palpable stirring within
himself. Perhaps there was still some youth left in him. "Well,
I'll try anything once, but don't we need supplies?"

Joshua moaned and began to thrust into Mulder's hand.
"Your call. I've tested clean for six years since my last male
lover and there's plenty of bath oil."

"Am I going to smell like rosemary tomorrow?" he joked.

"God, I hope so."

Joshua sat up and pulled the drain. Mulder made to stand.
"Sit," Joshua told him. "I'm just going to warm us up and
lower the water table. I want you here, where I can see you."

Mulder gave him a strange, but acquiescing look and sat back
in the water on his knees.

Joshua turned on the hot tap and reset the plug. "Listen. Not
everyone goes for this. If it bothers you, let me know, okay?"

Mulder gave him a nervous grin. "Okay."

When the water had filled, Joshua took a folded towel down
off the rack and dropped it into the water. "For your knees,"
he explained, and turning Mulder around, he began to touch
and kiss his shoulders much like he did that first night on the
piano bench.

"God, I love your back. Beautiful..." Mulder could feel
Joshua's erection nudging against him as he gently bent him
forward and over, giving him access to his ass. "Put a towel
under your head," he suggested. "Get comfortable." Mulder
took his advice and lay against the wide edge of the bath,
settling his head in his arms upon a thick towel, closing his
eyes.

Joshua began by pouring a few droplets of bath oil over his
exposed back and ass, massaging it into his skin, kneading
the muscles and tendons, releasing his tension, relaxing him.
His chest was lying comfortably against the gentle sloping
back of the tub. The fact he was half-submerged gave him an
embryonic feel, like he was floating, secure. It was so quiet in
the room, he nearly went to sleep while Joshua massaged him
between his shoulder blades and down his spine, taking his
time. He could hear the tap dripping and the gentle whoosh
of water as Joshua moved behind him. He felt the violinist's
fingers slide between the cheeks of his ass, rubbing oil from
his anus to balls, giving the area a warm, slick, sensual coat.
The slippery sensation of hands and fingers rolling over his
balls, ass and cock, fingering, tugging gently, brought him
back from twilight and into the first stages of arousal. All the
while Joshua was murmuring softly to him against his skin,
kissing him, telling him how beautiful his body was, how
strong and masculine--exactly what he loved to fuck.

The musician leaned in, resting his aroused cock between the
cheeks of his ass, beginning to thrust slowly, running the
shaft past his anus, getting him used to the sensation of
having some pressure and weight directed toward such a
vulnerable and untested part of his body. It felt good and
Mulder turned his head to the side to reward his lover with a
low moan.

"I thought you might like this," Joshua whispered, his hands
reaching under the water to flick over his flat nipples. "Are
you ready for more?"

###

Seeing the man exposed and submissive before him was
almost like a dream. Joshua felt he could spend hours
running his hands over the long plane of Mulder's back, or
the narrow firmness of the well-formed muscles of his ass
and thighs. Joshua found himself in the grips of the strongest
physical attraction he'd ever felt for another person. Mulder
was beautiful in every way possible to him. He was so
desperately amorous for him right now, after their long day
together, he almost regretted not waiting longer until Mulder
had a chance to sleep. He figured after this Mulder would
most certainly be signing off for the night and Joshua could
only imagine himself waking a few hours from now, naked
against him in the bed, wanting more. There was something
he hadn't told Mulder--that although he'd had lovers enter
him, he himself hadn't had the pleasure of fucking a man
since the night he lost his virginity when he was seventeen.
He'd been waiting for this a long time.

Mulder seemed relaxed and ready for more, so he sat back
and replaced the gentle friction over Mulder's tight puckered
anus with the pad of his thumb, circling it over the muscle,
easing it, then gently pressing in. Mulder responded well to
that feeling, having experienced Joshua's fingers in previous
nights. He loved touching Mulder this way, feeling him inside,
pink and warm and beautiful--something that was impossible
to describe to most men who tended to associate their
assholes with foul and unclean imagery. Joshua had known
men who would think nothing of fucking him deep and hard,
but wouldn't allow that same vulnerable invitation to be
offered from themselves. This was a rare treat indeed.

In a minute he exchanged his thumb for his index finger and
slid in deep, letting his other hand take hold of Mulder's
cock, stroking him slowly, from base to tip, careful not to
oversensitize the head. He smiled when he felt the man under
him begin to rock back into his probing, so he added another
finger, sliding them in all the way and spreading them out on
the retreat, stretching the tiny ring of muscle, teasing some
give out of it. Bending his fingers, he found Mulder's prostate
gland, massaging it gently, moaning a little along with Mulder
as he felt his cock harden solid in his hand.
 

###

Mulder felt two fingers become three, and although it was
more than what he was used to feeling over the past few
nights, Joshua's slow but steady pace kept him relaxed
enough to not mind the extra pressure in his rectum, which
had seemed impossibly tight at first but was now noticeably
softer and more open. It wasn't half bad, this sliding, deep
feeling, and the occasional motions against his prostate sent
a shock of astounding arousal from deep in his groin through
to the head of his penis. Mulder wondered why he had never
pursued anal penetration with women or explored himself on
his own for that matter. He supposed it was another of those
cultural biases--to touch one's own ass in pleasure was
somehow dirty, evil and wrong. What utter nonsense. Joshua
was right about him, he needed to expand his thinking. He'd
wasted nearly forty years not knowing this side of his
sexuality. It felt almost like a rebirth.

"I'm going to try you now," Joshua said, slowly sliding his
fingers out.  "Tell me if it feels wrong." Mulder nodded,
murmuring his assent and opened his heavy eyes. If he
turned his head just right he could see Joshua kneeling back
and lubricating his cock with oil. It was a gorgeous sight to
see those hands at work. He seemed to be taking his time
with it, taking some pleasure for himself. God, now watching
a man masturbate himself was turning him on, what next?
Well, he knew what next--if those Oxford boys could see him
now.

"Are you watching me, Mulder?"

"Yeah."

"Good, because one of the hardest things to get used to as a
man is not being able to see what's happening to you. We're
visual creatures. Feeling without watching is foreign to us."
He came back up and Mulder lost his glistening, erect organ
from his line of sight. "I'll tell you what I'm doing." Mulder
felt something against his anus and immediately tensed. "It's
okay, that's my thumb again, relax."

Mulder closed his eyes and gave into the feel of being rubbed
again around the anus; more oil was being spread. "You'll feel
the head now." Something soft and big was pressing in next
to Joshua's thumb as it slowly slid out. There was a moment
of pure terror as he felt his anus resist and then suddenly
give under the pressure and pop open and slip over like an
elastic band. It didn't hurt, but the oddness of it made him
clench. Joshua's hand was on his lower back, rubbing him.
"It's okay, Mulder. I'm in, or the head is, anyway. The rest is
easy. Tell me if I go too deep for you."

###

Watching the end of his cock slowly disappearing into this
man was an undeniably erotic experience. As much as he
wanted to thrust deeply into that incredibly tight clenching
heat, he knew he had to go slow--in a little, then back a bit
before pressing in again. He could feel the muscle ring
squeezing him, holding onto him as he descended into bliss.
He couldn't help but groan aloud at the sensation. Joshua
had found it somewhat mentally frustrating to be so aroused
these past several days without the psychological release of
thrusting into someone. He needed this badly. "Does that feel
okay?" he whispered, trying to hide how incredible this was
feeling in case Mulder wanted to stop.

"I'm okay. How far are you?"

"Almost there. Let me try the whole thing," he said and slid
steadily in until his balls rested against his lover's ass. God,
that was nice. "Done." He rested his cock there, in him,
waiting with all the patience he could muster for Mulder to
tell him it was okay to move.

###

Joshua was waiting for him, asking him if he felt okay.
Mulder wasn't sure...wasn't sure what he was feeling. It just
felt odd. He felt fullness and pressure and something kind of
good at the root of his balls. But the fact was, his brain
wasn't used to registering these types of sensations in this
part of his body. An erect cock was quite different from the
touch of fingers. Being fully penetrated was setting off some
natural alarm system in his brain, threatening to cancel this
experiment that had thus far brought him a great deal of
pleasurable anticipation. He supposed he thought it was
going to feel immediately different, like what he imagined a
woman feels. Except, he wasn't a woman. Joshua certainly
felt something pretty intense when he fucked *him.* Why
wasn't he feeling that? Was he missing something?

"Mulder?" Joshua was beginning to retreat.

"No. It's all right. My brain just got confused."

Joshua chuckled warmly, caressing his back and thighs some
more, soothingly. "It will do that until you learn to associate
these feelings with pleasure. We can try again some other
time."

"Wait."

"Wait?"

"Go ahead and move; I want to feel you." They'd made it this
far, after all.

"Okay, I'll start slowly."

Joshua sank back in until they met balls to ass again--then he
took a tiny pull back, thrusting gently in a shallow increment.
He felt Joshua lean back over him and take his confused
penis in hand, stroking it in a familiar and stimulating way.
Mulder soon discovered that as the pleasure rose in his cock,
the sensations in his ass grew more favorable and
comfortable--that nice little feeling near his balls was
growing into a rising disassociated sensation, a warming tug
that was definitely becoming a good thing, a really good
thing.

"More," he whispered and Joshua was more than willing to
oblige him.

###

Mulder was asking for more. That pleading tone in his deep
throaty voice sent a rush of heat straight to Joshua's groin.
Mulder was enjoying this; he wanted this, wanted him inside
him, letting Joshua take his pleasure from him in such a
vulnerable and giving way. The notion he was finally fucking
Mulder was stimulating in the extreme--as stimulating as the
unbearably tight sheath of his ass, hot and slick around him.

Joshua let go of Mulder's cock and came back up on his
knees, holding the man's hips firmly so he could thrust more
deeply, more satisfactorily. When Mulder responded with a
rough and urgent groan, Joshua couldn't resist the instinct to
move a little more vigorously, knowing he couldn't last like
this for very long. It was too close, too good, too passionate.
Water was kicking up and splashing over the edge of the tub
from his efforts. He needed this too much to hold back from
the deep pleasure gathering in his balls, drawing them up so
tight he was beginning to ache from holding back.

###

"I'm sorry.... I've wanted this so much."

And that's when it occurred to Mulder, this was Joshua in
him, about to come; this brilliant, attractive young man who
had taken notice of him, who had shown him such kindness
and understanding. It was Joshua who desired him, accepted
him, who had taken him away from the dullness he'd been
drowning in and reminded him of who he was inside, a
tender and passionate man-- someone worthy of love,
someone who could give love. This was about so much more
than getting off in a strange and unusual way. This was about
opening up and taking someone inside himself--opening up
his soul.

These thoughts were bringing about deep waves of pleasure
emanating from his pelvic area and sweeping over his entire
body, not just the length of his cock. His heart rate was rising
and he felt himself coming up off the edge of the tub, bracing
himself, seeking more and more of that strange and beautiful
pleasure taking possession of him. All the while Joshua was
fucking him, steady and solid, building to his own peak,
making soft unguarded sounds, thrusting faster and deeper,
holding them together.

Mulder almost didn't recognize his own orgasm when it hit. It
came from within, a crashing intense sensation--stronger and
longer than anything he had ever experienced. He cried out,
gripping the head of his penis, thrusting sharply, feeling his
come rising and spurting hard through his fingers. He felt
overpowered by it as it slowly retreated with Joshua's final,
disjointed, shuddering thrusts, leaving him with a peaceful,
sinking feeling of profound satisfaction, an exquisite
emotional release unlike anything he had ever felt before. He
felt rewarded, fulfilled--all he wanted to do was curl up and
sleep. He slumped back heavily against the edge of the tub,
softly moaning. Joshua was pressed up behind him, hugging
him, kissing him feverishly, thanking him, as the escaped
water pooled across the bathroom floor.

###

Joshua lay awake watching the fire whipping down. He had
re-laid it after he and Mulder made it up out of the tub, both
a little shaken and amazed, yet still somewhat shy about
showing it to one another. Joshua sat him on the edge of the
bed, drying his nodding head with a towel, before laying him
down naked under the warm covers of the bed to a well-
earned rest. It was well into the night now; it felt late. His
lover was sound asleep spooned against him, his arm over his
hip under the sheets. But Joshua couldn't sleep, not yet. Not
while his chest was aching and his eyes burning from more
than an errant wisp of smoldering firewood.

He knew this feeling that held him bitterly. The emotion was
deep and profound. The whole day--the companionship, the
wine, the kisses, the lovemaking--it was unmistakable, it rang
through his very bones. And now that the night was passing
so easily into dawn, he knew deep in his soul he was marked.
It's a terrifying and wonderful moment when a man realizes
he no longer belongs exclusively to himself. Now, in this
room, in this bed, being held so closely, he wondered if any
of himself remained at all. As much as he had wanted this
day, he had been wholly unprepared for what it would bring
him.

As close as they were, as close as they had become, the truth
burned into his mind--there was no composition written in
any key, in any century, by any composer for gun and violin.
And neither was ever likely to set their instrument aside.

***************************

5:30 AM
 

Joshua was woken from a heavy sleep by someone calling his
name. He opened his eyes. It was nearly dawn. The sky
outside the window was beginning to turn gray. Mulder was
still pressed up behind him, breathing deeply and steadily. It
wasn't him. Maybe he had been dreaming. He closed his eyes.

"Joshua..."

Joshua's bones went cold. He knew that voice. He opened his
eyes and turned his head slowly. The room was dark, empty,
but to his horror he realized the door was open, the dim light
of the hall peering in. He struggled to sit up and in doing so
looked back toward the fireplace. The Thin Man was standing
at the hearth, smiling. He opened his tattered and filthy coat
of felt to expose his distended and sickened stomach.

"I am swollen," he said.

His gray eyes were fixed on him as Joshua reached next to
him to shake Mulder awake. Mulder didn't respond, just kept
sleeping despite Joshua calling out his name. "Mulder, wake
up! Wake up!"

Mulder stirred, and mumbled something.

Joshua tore his eyes away from the specter to look down at
him. "Mulder, he's here!"

Mulder opened his eyes, struggling out of the depths of sleep.
"Who's here?"

"The Thin Man! He's..." To his shock the Thin Man had
vanished from the hearth. Joshua scanned the room with his
eyes. There was a silhouette floating in the doorway. "He's at
the door; can you see him?"

Mulder was sitting up now, blinking into the darkness.
"Joshua? Why is the door open?"

"He's there in the doorway. He's turning now," Joshua
whispered. "God, can't you see him?"

"No...Fuck! My weapon!" Mulder jumped out of bed to his
feet, grabbing his pants and pulling them on. "Shit, where's
Andy? I thought he was watching the door."

"He's gone now. Didn't you see him? I think he moved up the
hall."

"Who, Joshua?"

"The Thin Man, Mulder--he was in our room!"

"Look, stay right there; don't leave the room. I'm going next
door to get my weapon and have a look around, okay?"

Joshua pulled the sheet over his legs. He was shaking.
"Okay."

###

Mulder quickly checked the closets and the bathroom before
locking Joshua in the room and heading next door to knock
on Andy's door. The door pushed open with the pressure of
his knuckles. Inside, the room was lit, but empty. "Andy?"
There was no answer.

Mulder found his gun resting on a table next to an opened
bottle of Cabernay. He unholstered it, checking to make sure
it was still ready to fire. It was. If his guess was right, the Thin
Man was announcing the next attack, which could come from
anywhere at any minute--possibly from Andy, who was
missing from his post. Mulder inspected the room quickly,
anxious to get back to Joshua. His worst fears were realized
when he found a scrap of hotel stationery crumpled on the
floor. There was writing on it: "The soldiers are coming."

"Mulder...!" He heard Joshua yell from the room next door
and he ran out of Andy's room and back to theirs. The door
was thrown open. Andy was standing at the foot of the bed.
Fuck! He hadn't been gone more than fifteen seconds. Andy's
revolver was drawn, pointed at Joshua's chest where he sat
naked on the bed.

"Drop your weapon!" Mulder shouted. But the security guard
didn't acknowledge him; he had a glassy look to his eyes, a
stillness. His attention was focused only on Joshua.

"Joshua, listen to me," Mulder said, stepping stealthily
toward the armed man. "When I say 'Go,' I want you to dive
for the floor and under the bed as fast as you can."

Joshua gave a solemn nod. Mulder took another step and
said, "Go."

Joshua moved and Mulder fired his weapon. In the same
second he heard Andy's revolver turn, load and connect,
blasting past where Joshua had been sitting, breaking a
chunk of plaster from the wall. Andy was on the ground
holding his shoulder and squirming from where Mulder had
shot him in the upper arm, throwing off his aim and making
him drop the weapon. Joshua crawled forward from beneath
the fallen bedclothes to grab the pistol and hold it nervously
on Andy.

"Joshua, don't point that thing unless you know how to use
it," Mulder snapped, holding Andy down with his knee while
he looked for something to tie his hands with. His handcuffs
were conveniently back in the trunk of the car--perfect. He
ordered Andy to put his arms behind his back, which the now
visibly shaken and confused man did, as Mulder bound his
wrists with a telephone cord.

"Joshua, I want you to get on this phone, if it's still working,
and call hotel security. Now!"
 

****************************************

St. Helena Hospital
9:58 AM

Andy was safely admitted to the St. Helena Hospital where
the bullet wound was explored, bound and dressed. He was
going to be fine, but still had no reasonable explanation for
why he was found standing over Joshua with his weapon in
his hand, or why he failed to respond to Mulder's shout to
drop it.

It was pissing rain when the rental company pulled up with a
sedan to take Mulder and Joshua, and Joshua's spending
spree packed in the trunk, back to San Francisco. Mulder had
been delayed for almost two hours at the hospital answering
questions and filling out paperwork. Joshua had little to do
but pace around the visitor's seating area watching the rain
beat against the windows. It was a good thing they were in a
hospital, considering the level of anxiety he was
experiencing. One look at his lover's face, post-shooting, and
he knew things had made a turn for the worse. That self-
sacrificing stubbornness and determination he so admired in
Mulder was about to come crashing down on him. Mulder
hadn't so much as asked him if he was okay since they left
the scene. Joshua was shaking in his woolen coat and
stomped his legs to try and gain an edge over it. He was being
avoided. Fuck, he hated this feeling.

Eventually Mulder made an appearance, holding a set of keys.
"Come on. We're outta here."

###

In the car, Mulder kept a steely watch on the narrow valley
freeway, navigating through the traffic and downpour. The
windshield wipers were swishing aside a cascading sheet of
water with an audible whoosh-whoosh. Joshua sat huddled in
his coat, miserable at Mulder's silence.

"Can we talk about this?" he finally asked when the stress of
waiting had reached an unbearable level.

"What's to discuss? I think it's obvious...some changes are
going to be made."

Joshua shifted his legs, crossing one over the other, trying to
brace himself. "What changes?"

"I can't even begin to tell you how furious I am with myself,"
Mulder announced suddenly. "This stupidity on my part ends
now."

Joshua folded his arms across his chest, hugging himself,
trying to stay calm. "Mulder, I understand. But that doesn't
mean we can't..."

"Dammit, Joshua. That's exactly what this means," the agent
said, slapping the steering wheel with his palm. "I can't
protect you if I'm fucking you. I think we proved that today.
I'm sorry," he said, bringing some calm back into his voice,
"but continuing to risk your life is not an option."

Joshua swallowed an angry retort and looked away out his
window at the valley. Its once-brilliant colors were dulled and
smeared by sheets of rain. This place had been a paradise to
him not 12 hours earlier. He couldn't believe this was
happening. Why was he being punished like this?  "I don't
think you realize how much I care about what happens with
us," he said thickly.

Mulder's fingers tapped the steering wheel and he heard the
agent sigh heavily. "Joshua..."

"Don't," he said, stopping him. He could hear the beginnings
of the 'this is the end' tone in the agent's voice. He ground
his foot into the floor of the car to keep himself from coming
apart. Two hours was a long time to wait to scream.
 

***************************************

He didn't scream. Instead, he dumped his packages
unceremoniously onto the floor near the kitchen bar and
made straight over to the violin, shouldering it and playing
vigorously every late-twentieth century discordant ugliness
he could recall. They were abstract and sharp tones that
reflected the broken and tousled contents of his chest. He
was much too angry for tears.

Mulder was standing near his front door on the phone, trying
to reach Dillmont, but instead arranged for another agent
from the SF office to head over. Then he called his partner,
telling her he'd be right over. Joshua knew it was only
business, but that call hurt him almost more than Mulder's
conversation or lack thereof in the car.

Joshua played loudly and harshly, whipping the bow, as
Mulder sat near the door in the chair Dillmont usually
occupied until the bell rang. A strange agent arrived, armed,
female, young. Joshua ignored her attempt to call out an
introduction to him.

"He's a little upset," he heard Mulder mutter.

"Goddamn right, the violinist's upset!" Joshua snapped,
sliding his violin back in the case with a 'tonk.' "I'll be in the
only place a person can find any privacy in this room," he
said with mocking calmness and headed toward the
bathroom, shedding his shirt as he went.

Ten minutes later, pelted with hot spray and half covered in
soap, he sank along the tile wall of his shower, brought to his
knees by hard, choking sobs.

**********************************