Walter Skinner was exhausted. He felt like he could barely keep his eyes open as he looked around the room at his co-workers, superiors and subordinates.  They all stared back at him curiously, and he realized he had missed a question. After a moment to glance down at the open file folder in front of him, he bluffed his way through a reply, wondering dimly if this Follmer fellow could be trusted. Somehow he doubted it. He took in the men and women around the conference table again as someone else started speaking, saw that Kersh was glaring and Crane was smirking, and he spared a tired thought for the gun hanging in it’s holster on the coat rack in the corner with his jacket, and he wondered what would happen, given his current state of mind, if he had it in his hand.

Mulder was alive. It really was the only thing keeping him going, and he knew it. Of course, he hadn’t seen him since-since he’d been forced to make the choice. Between Mulder and Scully’s baby. In the end it had been the right choice, although it hadn’t felt like it at the time. The baby was safe, Mulder was alive and responding to treatment, and Krycek was gone, disappeared back into whatever rat hole he had emerged from to put Walter into the painful position of deciding between his lover, who seemed on the verge of death again, and a child who had yet to experience life. He had another stray thought of guns and bullets and vengeance, then shook it off and tried to concentrate on the rest of the meeting. His focus on staff changes, budget cuts and solve rates didn’t last long.

He wanted desperately to see Mulder, but Scully wouldn’t allow it. She recited passages from medical journals about infection risks and treatment response times, and he accepted her instructions without argument, assuming she was only doing what was best for Mulder. It didn’t stop the need in him, though, only muted it from a stabbing pain to a dull bruising throb. A curious thought about Scully’s behavior tried to come into focus, but he ignored it. 

After what seemed an eternity, the meeting ended, and Skinner was left alone in his office. He thought he should probably go over whatever notes he’d managed to take during the meeting, make some additional comments, and get the information to Kim to type up for him. Make some attempt at normalcy. Instead, he sat back in his desk chair, removed his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the onset of a headache. He closed his eyes and wondered if Kim had any Tylenol, or maybe Demerol…

He was back in Raleigh. Back in the cemetery, and he thought it was the day of the funeral, but the sky was black as ink, the stars were hard bright points in the sky, and the snow was almost gone. He moved forward, towards the grave, wanting to stop himself, unable to control his steps. 

“No,” his voice came out in a choked whisper. “He’s alive.”

He paused at the edge of the grave, and could literally feel the tendons in his neck creaking in protest as he tried to keep from looking down into that dark, cold hole. He felt the presence of someone beside him, and for a moment he thought it was Scully, and that he would have to hold her and comfort her, to be strong and supportive, and he knew he simply wasn’t capable of it anymore. He knew what people thought. Of Scully and Mulder. Their relationship. And his to them. But he was just too tired and too scared to make sense of it all right now. Not when that grave seemed to beckon him with answers to questions he didn't want to ask.

“This is crazy.”

He couldn’t turn away from the grave, but he recognized John Doggett’s skeptical tone. He thought he started to argue with the man, but then the darkness of that hole in the ground seemed to swallow him up, and time jumped.

He was walking away now, away from Doggett, away from the tombstone. A cold wind whipped snow around him and he struggled for purchase on the slushy, icy ground. Mulder lay dead in his arms.

“Skinner!” Doggett’s voice sounded far away, and Skinner felt some sort of relief; he thought he was doing the right thing. Suddenly Mulder shifted in his arms, startling him, and his treacherous footing gave way. He fell with a shout and the body in his arms flew forward and hit the ground face first with a sickening thud. Skinner cried out again and scrabbled madly for his lover. The snow, which had been slight and damp only a moment before became thick and obscuring, the flakes swirling twister-like around him, stinging him with sharp edges. He reached Mulder’s body and turned him over, calling out his name in a voice full of regret and unshed tears.

The name turned into a rich shout of terror as the old woman opened her eyes and glared at him from the depths of a burial suit much too large for her.

“NO!”

“Sir?” 

Skinner sat up so abruptly he nearly tipped his chair over. He struggled to control his breathing, and felt a pain in his chest that he suspected was trying to be a heart attack but lacked the final nail for his coffin.

John Doggett was staring at him, more curious than worried, and Skinner felt himself calming under the man’s unflinching pale blue gaze.

“Agent Doggett. I didn’t hear you come in.” He thought he sounded all right, but Doggett’s expression didn’t change. He put his glasses on his face and a growl into his voice.

“I must have fallen asleep. What can I do for you, Agent?”

“Via Negativa, sir.” Doggett replied, taking a seat in front of the desk.

“What?”

“A nightmare, sir? I seem to recall this scenario. Only the other way around.” He offered a grin. “Would you like me to pinch you?”

Skinner shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“I think we all are, sir. Although I imagine our Deputy Director will be less than enthused.” Doggett was still smiling.

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t Agent Scully call you sir?” Now Doggett looked even more confused. “I thought for sure, you bein’ such a good friend to them and all—“

He jumped to his feet angrily. “Dammit, John, what are you saying?” Sudden hope warred with fierce dread in his heart. 

“Agent Mulder, sir. He’s awake.”

As quickly as the sudden burst of energy had lifted him, an equally powerful weakness in his legs dropped him back into his chair. “Oh my god…”

“Agent Scully’s been with him all day. Apparently he came outta whatever it was this morning.” He paused, frowned thoughtfully, as though trying to resolve his own disbelief in everything that had happened since his re-assignment to the X-Files. “I can’t believe she didn’t call. Even with their relationship and everything, she should have known that you would be concerned.”

“Their relationship…” Skinner mulled that statement over for a moment, then: “Has he asked—I mean, has he said anything?”

“I don’t know, sir. I saw them briefly this morning, but Agent Scully’s determined to be the only one in or out of that room.” He smiled a completely sexist and sunny grin that would have gotten him shot had any female agent been within earshot. “You should see her, sir. Pregnant, and glowing like a new bride, but still handing out orders like a man. Protecting him, I guess.”

Skinner stood abruptly. “Thank you for telling me, Agent Doggett.”

Doggett stood with him. “Are you sure you’re okay, sir?”

“Fine. Thank you.” He ushered Doggett out of the room as quickly as he could, then barked at Kim to cancel his last two meetings of the day. He found his jacket, gun, and overcoat and was out the door before he could change his mind.

Had Mulder asked for him, he wondered silently as he rode the elevator to the parkade. Why hadn’t Scully called him? His mind wandered restlessly as he strode to his car, fumbled for keys, let himself in. Mulder had been through something that Skinner could almost imagine, but a thousand times worse. Did he know where he was? Did he know who he was? The questions burned and nagged as he started the car, and continued as he pulled out of the lot so fast the sound of tires screeching echoed through the concrete walls long after he was gone.

Again the question: Why hadn’t Scully told him? She knew what he and Fox meant to each other. She’d never been their biggest supporter, he knew, but she certainly hadn’t denied the existence of their relationship. Time spent together, the three of them, had been strained at first, but Skinner had chalked that up to her feelings for him. He and Scully had a history of mistrust, and he knew it wouldn’t work itself out overnight.

But now, as he drove through the city at what was surely ticket-getting speed, he began to re-evaluate her behaviors, her actions. He seemed to remember lingering glances that might not have been inappropriate, but now appeared suspicious. He knew what the gossip mill at the bureau had to say about his lover and his partner, and he realized that while Scully had never encouraged the stories, she hadn’t exactly discouraged them, either. He remembered Mulder teasing him about it, telling him that he and Walter would dance a tango through the steno pool when they retired, and that would really give them something to talk about. 

Skinner had known from the start, as had Mulder, that discretion was going to be paramount in any relationship they formed, but now he wondered if Scully had been practicing discretion, or denial.

He thought about Doggett’s words. “Protecting him…” and got a vision of a vixen standing over her mate, teeth bared, eyes dark and piercing and sparking with something rabid and insane. He shook the thought away with a visible effort, and tried to tell himself that Scully wasn’t like that.

The closer he got to the hospital, the more thoughts formed in his head, and the angrier he got. He realized on some distant level that he was just projecting his fears and worries onto the closest pregnant red-head, but it didn’t stop the flow of images in his mind, nor the unhappy story he was piecing together from said images.

Mulder had always maintained that he loved Scully and she loved him, but that it was a bond more fraternal than lusting, and neither one was going to risk what they had for what society considered the correct definition of intimate.

By the time he was parking the car, he was wondering just how Scully defined her relationship with Mulder, and if she had deliberately not called him. He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t make himself not believe it, either.

Striding down the corridor, he told himself that it had been a mistake on Scully’s part. Just a mistake. Like Scully telling his secretary that Mulder liked to sleep on the left side of the bed had been a mistake. Like Scully showing Holly pictures of the two of them taken during one of the Bureau’s annual Christmas parties, images of Fox holding his best friend and grinning like an idiot, had been a mistake. Never mind that he and Mulder had left said party early, lusting so desperately for one another that they’d barely made it back to his apartment with their clothing intact.

A security guard he didn’t recognize was opening the door to Mulder’s room to allow a nurse he did recognize to leave. The nurse was smiling, and as Skinner approached her, he thought he heard her mutter “stubborn bastard…”

“Ma’am,” he said, catching her attention. “That man in there. Is he—?” He wasn’t sure how to finish. ‘Is he all right?’ seemed too stupid, ‘Is he asking for me?’ seemed too obvious, and ‘Is he considering marrying Agent Scully?’ seemed too bitchy.

The nurse recognized him not only as the man who had admitted her patient, but also as the man who had yanked said patient off of life-support. That the results had been positive was not lost on her, but she still viewed him with some small measure of distrust, and Skinner caught her passing a look to the security guard before she spoke.

“Mr. Mulder is resting comfortably,” she told him. “Although we had to threaten restraints before he understood that he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital today. If it wasn’t for his—“she faltered a moment. “His—Agent Scully, I suppose he would’ve been much more difficult to handle.”

“What do you mean?” 

The nurse flinched, and he realized he’d barked at her. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” He offered her his most disarming grin, and she relaxed some. “I was just wondering about his condition…and Agent Scully’s.”

“They’re both fine, now.” She smiled wistfully. “Agent Scully’s a lucky woman. And Mister Mulder is lucky to have her.”

This was obviously a new definition of ‘lucky’ that Skinner had never been privy to before, and he didn’t think he liked it. “Where is Agent Scully now?” A part of him was desperate to see his lover, but he didn’t like the way the security guard was looking at him, and he needed answers first. 

“She’s in the lab, running some tests. The doctors have told her that she should be resting herself, what with the baby and all, but she seems determined to monitor every aspect of the man’s recovery herself. She’s very devoted.”

“Yeah.” He turned towards the elevators “She is.”

He found her in the lab, sitting on a high stool and making notes in a worn field journal. Her glasses were perched on the end of her nose, and she held a vial of what appeared to be blood in one small hand while she wrote with the other.

She glanced up, startled when he knocked on the door, and he saw a flash of something mean and frightened and wholly un-Scully-like cross her face. Then she was standing and removing her glasses and rearranging her features into something cold and neutral.

“No one called me,” he said quietly, thinking ‘*you* didn’t call me.’

She didn’t reply for a moment, and he could almost see her thoughts. They weren’t kind. In fact, the look on her face seemed to confirm all the suspicions he’d been having on the way over here. Again he saw her struggle internally over something, and she said,

“I know. We thought—“

He didn’t let her finish. All of his emotions were suddenly there; his fears for his lover. His concerns for work, his future, Krycek’s death threats, even Scully’s baby. But mostly it was Mulder, and the thought of life without him, that brought all of it to a head, and he snapped at her.

“Don’t give me any crap, Scully!”

“Sir--?”

“A man’s life is hanging in the balance here, Scully--*my* man’s life, not to put too fine a point on it, and you didn’t think that warranted one damned phone call?”

“If you’ll just let me explain—“

“What have you been doing here all day? Playing ‘Fox and Dana, sitting in a tree…’? Did you not stop and think for a moment that someone else might have just more than a passing interest in his recovery?”

“Shut up!” 

He recoiled as if slapped. He had been on the receiving end of years of Scully’s sarcasm, dry tones, cold answers and tearful confessions. But this outburst was raw and hysterical in its anger, and he knew he was right.

“I talked to Agent Doggett, you know. How many other people, yourself included, have you been trying to fool with a handful of long-suffering looks and matronly sighs?”
He stepped further into the room and she backpedaled awkwardly, her blue eyes wide with unspoken protests of innocence.

“It would have been too much to have to try and—“ she said tentatively. “I mean, you know how it would look, and with the baby, and—“

It was too late for her attempt at damage control. Skinner had repressed so much for so long—every feeling, every thought, and every memory. And now, with hope bursting in his heart like fireworks to the nth level, he would not deny himself. Nor be denied. Not even by this woman who was inextricably linked to him in so many ways.

“The hell!” he was roaring now, and still advancing. She flinched and backed into the stool she’d been sitting on earlier. It tipped with a crash, and neither of them noticed. He got up in her face so close his body brushed her distended stomach, but she was between him and the counter now, and had no avenue of escape.

“This isn’t about explanations! This is only about you, Dana! About some sort of deliberate obfuscation on your part, where you seem to have convinced everyone, even yourself, that you’ve just gone from widow to bride, and you know damned well that isn’t the case—“

“But sir—“

She was crying now, fat tears magnifying her pupils, and he suddenly realized that he was gripping her upper arms—he could feel slender muscle and bone under his fingers.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered, dropping his hands to his side and backing away.

Still crying, Scully put her hands to her stomach and slid away from him in the space he left between them. 

“Dana—“ he murmured.

She looked up at him, tears glistening on her cheeks.

“Bastard,” she hissed, and despite his anger with her, it hurt.

Their relationship had never been an easy one, but until this moment, he’d thought they’d achieved some sort of acceptable balance. He knew she’d never been happy with her partner’s choice of him as a lover, but she’d gone along with it. Definitely more for Mulder’s sake than his own. Too much time spent watching them together, and he knew the level of intimacy that they shared. He had been extraordinarily careful not to stand in the way of that friendship. But only now did he realize that there was more to it. Even Fox had been unaware of the feelings she apparently had been harboring.

“You’re a bastard,” she said again, but defeat thickened the words. “But I’m a bitch, so I guess that puts us even.”

Her words surprised him, but not as much as her next ones. “He’s been asking for you.” 

His eyes widened as he realized the depths of her deception, and he jammed his hands deep into his pockets as he fought off a sudden maddening urge to strangle her.

“What did you tell him?” His tone was soft but deadly.

“Nothing,” she replied flatly. “Just bland reassurances that he was going to be all right.” She sniffled loudly. “Nothing new for us, I suppose.”

“So he has no idea that I’m here. That I’ve been here.” Skinner was still speaking in that quiet voice that was more frightening to Scully than his loudest blustering tirades, and she found she couldn’t meet his eyes. She shook her head in answer to his questions.

“So, you knew he wanted to see me, and you didn’t call me. Didn’t even acknowledge the request. Is that correct, Agent Scully?” His voice shook with barely restrained anger.

“I didn’t mean to—“

“Yes. You did.” He tipped her face up to look him in the eye, and his words were cold and clear. “Dana, I can’t tell you the number of times that Fox told me that you were his best friend. His only friend, sometimes, and that he loved you very much. I want you to think about that. And I want you to ask yourself what kind of friend you are being to him now.”

He left her weeping into her hands.
 

At the door to Mulder’s room, he paused, suddenly nervous. He didn’t know what to expect. It had been so long since he’d been able to look into his lover’s eyes. Able to hear his voice. While there had been some measure of satisfaction in watching the rise and fall of the man’s chest while he’d been unconscious, it wasn’t the same, somehow. And now he felt…he didn’t know what he felt. Trepidation, maybe, uncompromising love, definitely, but…

“Ah, the hell with it.” He steeled himself and pushed open the door.

He’d never forget the first sight of his lover alive and conscious.

Mulder was standing with his back to the door, apparently doing something to the bed, and his back and ass were exposed through the ties of the hospital gown he was wearing. He didn’t turn around when he heard the door, but his words were clear enough:

“If you think my complacency can be bought with a bowl full of orange Jello, Nurse Moore, let me tell you—“ He finished whatever he was doing and started to turn as he spoke. The final words died in his mouth as he realized that there was no nurse there, no Jello. Only Skinner. His eyes grew wide and disbelieving, and his mouth worked soundlessly.

Walter’s vision blurred as tears formed in his eyes, and he could think of only one thing to say.

“Hey.”

Some wordless sound came out of Mulder’s mouth, and he groped behind himself for the bed as his legs buckled under him.

Skinner was across the room in a heartbeat, and he gathered his suddenly boneless lover up in a frantic embrace that made them both groan.

Mulder took his face in his hands and their eyes met, held, locked.

“Oh my god…” his words came out in a whispery sigh. “Is it really you, Walter?”

His reply was a soft kiss and a tightening of his arms. He thought if he spoke, or let go of Mulder, the dream would evaporate, and it wouldn’t be true. And he didn’t think he could stand it if that happened. He closed his eyes and stroked his hands over his lover’s body. Mulder tasted like medicine and smelled like industrial soap, and it was ambrosia to his senses. One hand instinctively made its way into Mulder’s hair, as it had so many times in the past, and he relished the familiar feel of the silky strands, longer than he remembered, but just fine for all that. He could feel Mulder’s heart beating next to his own, and he knew he never wanted to lose that rhythm ever again.

After a time, he reluctantly loosened his hold on the man and opened his eyes.

Mulder’s eyes were wet with unshed tears, and he offered Skinner a trembling smile.

“Hey,” he whispered, and Skinner smiled back, then gave him a stern ‘we’re in the office and you just lost another cell phone’ look.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he declared. This got him another grin, and a surprising nod of acquiescence, and he helped Mulder back into the bed, smoothing the covers over him longer than he had to, then took Mulder’s hands in his own and they were silent for a few minutes, little shifts in fingers and thumbs speaking more eloquently than all the words in the universe could.

Mulder’s eyes roamed restlessly around the room, never catching Skinner’s gaze. Finally, he looked down at their hands, then up at his lover’s face.

“I asked for you,” the confession came out of him in a breathy sigh. “Didn’t Scully tell you?” 

Skinner didn’t reply right away. He thought about what Mulder must have been thinking when he did that. He thought about how the man must have felt lying here all day, wondering about his lover, wondering about himself. He thought about what Scully had done, and why she’d done it, and how Mulder felt about her. When he finally spoke, his words came out calm and easy.

“You must have dreamed it, Fox,” he said. “We don’t know what exactly happened, or how you-well, you know.” He shrugged, thinking this was not the time to get into all the technical bullshit, and Mulder seemed to agree with him. “But Scully called me as soon as you came back to us.”

“I knew she would.” His feelings for his best friend shone clear in his eyes, and Skinner didn’t regret his deception for a moment, although he knew that he and Scully were going to have to work this out somehow. And soon. But for now it was enough to just stand here and feel his lover moving, breathing, living. To be able to look into his eyes and see him looking back. To know that they had somehow been given a second chance. And he knew he would never let anyone take any of it away from him again.