Title: "I could never quit you, no" , sequel to "...I'll be the last around" Author: JiM Pairing: M/Sk Feedback: jimpage363@aol.com Website: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html (Thanks Mona!) Summary: Mulder is gone and Skinner has to get himself a life. Note: This is what happens after JiM stays up until 2 am AGAIN, still listening to Kelly Joe Phelps playing Delta blues guitar. The title is another line from the track "Katy". It makes a LOT more sense if you read the first two tales, found on my webpage, "One of these dark and moonless nights," and "...I'll be the last around." This is the final of the three. Thanks: MJ and Dawn and Karen and Leila. * * * "I could never quit you, no" by JiM * * * He's been gone for a week now. I am sitting on my own couch, staring at my own walls and wondering why I don't recognize them any more. Even the creaks and hums and clicks that ought to seem familiar are no longer "home" to me. Mulder left and he took it all with him; the conversations, the laughter, the quiet sense of belonging. Mulder left and he took away the silence. I do not know how to be quiet any more without him. He has not called and I cannot make my fingers dial. I knew this time would come and he did, too. It just came sooner than I expected. In one month, I will need to decide what to do about the Bureau. No, that is not right; in one month, I will tell the Bureau to go fuck itself. Then I will need to decide what to do about the rest of my sorry life. For the last three months, Mulder has made all of my decisions. I rested in Mulder's slipstream and ate when he fed me, slept when he closed my eyes, talked when he listened. Piece by piece, I unearthed the fragments of myself and he fitted them together, sometimes laughing with delight at what he found. The case is a simple one. It isn't even an X File. It is merely a kidnapping. No, that is wrong. Someone's wife is missing, a daughter stolen, a sister dangled just out of reach and Mulder has gone to get her back again. But he was gone, so I left. I came back here, to this orderly calm and now I miss the silence that was between us. I miss the words and the laughter and the touches, too. I miss the sex. There is a stillness that rings after the last word of austere truth has been spoken and finally heard. There is a quiet between one sleeping breath and the next, my head pillowed on his chest. There is a muteness in orgasm, when we both hang in the still point of the universe and clutch and spin. Mulder has taken all these silences away with him and still more. I have spent these months talking, it seems. To my therapist. To Mulder. To myself, if no one is there to listen. But now that he is gone, it is all I can do to account for myself to my sober psychiatrist. I tell her how it felt to die, I tell her what it meant to wake up and know that I would do anything to keep from ever feeling that again, I tell her what I did to keep living and how it killed me anyway. I tell her everything but the newest truth. I cannot sit and stare at my unfamiliar walls all day. So I fix leaking faucets, sticking drawers, rusted hinges. I read books. I go out to eat and then wander the Smithsonian or jog the Mall. I talk to my therapist. My neighbors are two elderly women, one arthritic, the other blind. I fix their leaks and drips and patch their rents and clean the muck from their gutters. I read the Times to the blind woman until her friend goes out to evening mass, then I read to her from her plainly-bound edition of 'Tom Jones'. Today, I have painted their front door a startling shade of purple. It surprises me how beautifully it mutes into the dark green of the house. I am trying to wash the mulberry smears from my hands when my phone rings. "Hi. It's me." The silences all rush back and I am voiceless. "Walt?" For the first time in three months, Mulder sounds unsure of himself. That knowledge frees my tongue. "Is the case over?" /Are you coming home?/ "Yeah, we found her. She was still alive. The perp's dead, though. Scully shot him when he went for her." "Is Scully all right?" /Are you all right?/ "She will be." Mulder's faith in his partner firms his tone, but it fails him again at the next breath. "Are you all right?" "I'm fine." "You sound tired." "I'm fine." "Walt," he says, then sighs. "Do you know why I left?" I feel a flair of resentment that he knows me so well. But didn't I hand over all the keys three months ago? Why should it bother me now that all my doors stand open so that he may come and go through my mind as he likes? "Because it was time." "It was time," he agrees. "But for what?" "Mulder," I feel a snarl being birthed. "I don't feel like playing twenty questions." Paradoxically, my harsh tone seems to please him. "What have you been doing all week?" "Repairs. Movies. I read. I ate. Saw my therapist. Real exciting stuff." /Waiting for you to call/ "What would you have done if I'd been there?" "Repairs. Movies. Books. Therapy." /Sex/ "You forgot fucking me until I passed out," he says helpfully. "Is there a point anywhere in sight, Mulder?" I am growling now. I haven't done that in months. "What did you do today, Walt?" "I spent the day painting my neighbors' house. My hands are probably gonna be 'Mulberry Sunset' forever." /I spent hours not thinking about you/ "Is that what they call that shade?" He makes a harrumph noise. "I might have gone with something like 'Victorian Twilight' or maybe 'Icelandic Nightfall'." "Where the hell are you?" A hideous suspicion is igniting. "Staring at something which clearly ought not to be named 'Mulberry Sunset'," he says, just before I yank the door open and he spills into my apartment. He sprawls on the floor and looks up at me with a goofy smile. "You shouldn't lean against doors. You never know when they're gonna open," I say stupidly and offer him a mottled hand up. Then the front door slams closed as I shove him against it and kiss him until neither one of us can breathe. There is a silence that swirls in the time between the last touch of lips and the next breath drawn. Mulder has brought that back with him. "Why...?" "I wanted you to know that you have a life." I shake my head, hands flexing on his shoulders. "Yes," he insists, hands gripping my upper arms. /Stay/ "Stay," I whisper, wanting the quiet back again. Mulder has stopped making my decisions for me. Now all I want is for him to make his own. "Yes." I smile and draw him close again, so that I can listen to the sound of his breath and his words and his laughter and all the silences in between.