Walter Skinner stared moodily out over the city from his balcony, then looked down at the still smoking stub of the joint he'd just finished smoking pinched between his thumb and middle finger.

Frowning slightly, he pitched the thing over the side of the balcony, pushed himself away from the rail with a sigh, and sat down heavily on the cool concrete deck.  He crossed his arms over his chest and continued frowning at nothing for a while, then gave it up when it felt too much like work.

He heard movement behind him, but felt no urge to turn around. He couldn't decide if it was the dope making him lazy, or if he was just indulging in an overwhelming desire not to know.  In fact, he was sure of only one thing: If another crazed killer alien replicant *was* stalking him on his balcony, then so be it. The damned thing could chuck him over the edge without the benefit of seeing any facial expression of terror he might have to offer as he drew his last breath and discovered he couldn't fly after all.

"Kiss my ass," he muttered to no one. The softness of his tone was matched only by the softness of the reply he heard whispered in his ear.

"Anytime, boss, you know it," Fox Mulder said, putting his arms around his lover from behind and resting his head on one impressive shoulder.

"You're not an alien."

Mulder seemed to accept this as a logical greeting.

"Neither are you."

"Then I guess neither one of us is in danger of going over the railing. How's the baby?" Skinner leaned back a little, turned the frown into something more non-committal, and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.

"The baby's fine. She's named him William. Were you planning on tossing me over the edge, Walter?"

Skinner took hold of Mulder's hands, surrounding himself with the man's presence the way an old woman would pull on a shawl against a cold wind.

"Nope-you can't fly. William, huh? Your middle name." The conversation was making perfect sense to him and, oddly enough, to Mulder as well, and this worried him for a moment, then he opted to just go with it, assuming that he *was* making sense, regardless of the pot-related paranoia he was suddenly experiencing.

"My father's name," Mulder replied. "He couldn't fly, either."

"Also *her* father's name.  And her brother's." Skinner added.

"Hmmm…" Mulder paused a moment to think about this, and press a kiss to Skinner's temple. "Coincidence? Or just unimaginative writers?"

He was pleased to see a smile tug at the corner of Skinner's mouth, replacing the brooding expression with something less burdened, less weary. He continued talking in the same light vein. 

"I think I convinced her to replace Ahab as the middle name, though."

Skinner snorted involuntary laughter. "I should hope so." He got a sudden clear picture of little Billy Ahab's first day of school, and laughed a little more, thinking maybe 'Fox William' hadn't had it so bad…

"Yeah, I like William Sergei better."

Skinner sobered instantly, and Mulder hugged him tighter, letting his mouth roam softly over an unshaven cheek, a tense jaw, the soft skin of an earlobe. Then he whispered "You don't like it?"

"Why would she do that?"

"Love?" Mulder ventured. This earned him another laugh that was suspiciously giggle-like in nature, and he gave Skinner a quizzical look, then said:

"Actually, I think it's because little William, is bald, surly, and already bossing her around." 

They both laughed this time, Skinner moreso, especially when Mulder stretched around to give him an inappropriate kiss on the nose.

Skinner was still holding Mulder's hands, and now he released one of them, and tugged hard on the other, pulling Mulder sharply off balance.  The younger man, who had been crouching behind him until this time, stumbled, recovered, lost his balance completely, and fell gracefully into Skinner's lap.

"I love it when a plan comes together." 

Skinner didn't get the smirk he was expecting from that comment. Instead, Mulder was staring at him with an expression that was wholly Scully, from the pointedly raised eyebrow to the pursed lips of unsuspended disbelief.

"Dana?" Skinner inquired. "Is that you?"

"Oh!" Mulder suddenly exclaimed.  He made no attempt to extricate himself from his lover's embrace, a fact for which some more unhappy, less stoned part of Skinner was grateful.

"Mr. Skinner," Mulder admonished with a smile, "I do believe you've been indulging in some very un-choirboyish tendencies."

Skinner shrugged. "Maybe."  He shook his head and laughed a little more, and it was a sad sound. "William Sergei…"

Mulder held him and he held Mulder and they both looked out the bars of the balcony railing in silence for a while.

"If there'd been any other choice, Fox--"

"Is that what this is about?"

Another shrug, and he felt the pleasant friction of the other man's body shifting in his arms. His thoughts were still wandering freely through a valley of less pleasant memories, and he briefly wished the drugs had been a little more mind-altering, a little more distracting. He felt less giddy than he thought he would, more weary than he wanted to, and didn't know if he liked it. 

Mulder watched his lover's face, read the emotional weather there, and found what he thought to be the most appropriate response.

He gave him a thorough, no-nonsense kiss, and the flavour of understanding danced on Walter's tongue.

Skinner was breathing hard like a man who'd just run wind sprints when Mulder pulled his mouth away and stood up, holding out a hand to the older man, who just stared at it stupidly for a moment, then realized it was a tool for movement, for standing, and used it. Mulder's hand felt warm and strong in his own as he hauled himself to his feet. 

He made no protest as Mulder wrapped an arm around his waist, holding him up against a small waver that threatened to put him on his ass. No comment either, when a gentle nudge and an indulgent smile got him moving in the general direction of the balcony door. He moved slowly, feeling like lead weights were attached to his feet, and gauze curtains had been pulled over his eyes.

His thoughts wandered back to those final moments with Fox and Alex in the car park, and again, he told himself, 'if there'd been any other choice…'

Threats to his own life from the man over the course of many years had gone mostly unheeded, although he'd played both sides of the fence in his time, trying to keep his moral boat from capsizing, more worried about the other passengers than the captain. It was this attitude that had brought him to the point where the most rational course of action in his life seemed to be to liberate a small portion of seized Panama Red from Evidence, and smoke it alone on his balcony. 

He could have gone along for the rest of his life, he supposed, letting the one-armed powers that be keep using him, testing him, testing his loyalties. It hadn't much mattered up until now. He'd fed Krycek just enough information to keep the man from killing him, without compromising Mulder and Scully, at least not in any permanently damaging way.

But when Krycek had come to him after Mulder's return, and starting making his threats again, he'd upped the ante. It was no longer just about knocking off one middle-aged Assistant Director who'd been off the fast track for years. He'd threatened Dana, her unborn child, Fox…

"He wouldn't stop…" he didn't realize he'd spoken aloud, didn't notice the hitch in his voice. But Mulder did.

"I know, Walter. I was there, remember? It was classic Ol' Yeller."

Skinner tried to grasp the logic of this statement, and immediately decided it would have been impossible, even if he hadn't been stoned. He searched his thought processes for a suitable reply.

"I love you."

They sat down on the couch and Mulder squirmed his way back into his lover's arms.

"Of course you do," Mulder replied, "You have to."

Skinner tried to give him a skeptical look, and wound up smiling by accident.

"I must have missed that chapter in the OPR handbook," he said. "What did you mean by Ol' Yeller? Have you eaten?"

Mulder laughed, and Skinner was pretty sure it was at him, not with him.

"You amaze me," he said.

"Nothing amazing about me, Mulder." His eyes wanted to close, but he fought it. For about two seconds. He leaned back on the sofa, and felt Mulder's hands on the sides of his face. 

"Do I need to open my eyes for this?"

"No. Just your ears…your mind…your heart." He could feel Mulder's breath warm on his cheek, as each word was spoken scant inches from his ear. His arms tightened around his lover, although the younger man was showing no inclination to move away. In fact, he seemed determined to pull their bodies even closer together, although Skinner thought he was damned near inside him already. He pictured his body rearranging its internal organs to make room for Mulder, thought that was a hell of a metaphor for his whole relationship with the man, and decided he should get up and get a pen, maybe jot some of this down in his oft-forgotten field journal, just for posterity's sake—it all sounded pretty good to him right now. Granted, so did a pint of pistachio ice cream and a six-pack of beer, but that was beside the point.

Instead, he just kept his eyes closed, and listened to Mulder.

"You *are* amazing, Walter. And not just because when you're stoned you can carry on three different conversations at once. The last time I smoked dope was at Oxford, and the most stimulating thing I came up with was managing not to drool on my shirt before I fell asleep." Mulder relished the deep rumble of laughter that shook his lover's chest beneath him, although Skinner didn't reply, and didn't open his eyes, either. After a moment, Mulder continued talking, still holding Skinner's face, softly brushing bristly cheeks with his thumbs, punctuating his words with caresses across jaw and temple, keeping his touch light and unthreatening, knowing that he was walking a fine line between comforting a man who loathed the idea of needing comfort, and just putting a drug-addled old man to sleep for sure.

"And you're not just amazing because you took out a serious threat to my life, either. Not to mention a threat to Scully, and baby Bill too. You knew about Alex and me, and you knew what Alex could do to you. And you still did what had to be done. That's what I mean by Ol' Yeller."

"The Disney movie," Skinner muttered under his breath. "Hydrophobia…"

"Right. A rabid dog has to be put down, no matter how much you love it."

"That's very profound, Fox."

"Just the truth, Walter."

"Did you love him?" He didn't think he wanted an answer, but the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"I—I don't think so." Mulder sounded unsure for the first time. "Maybe I could have, in another life, under different circumstances. I think he might have—" He took one hand off of Walter and touched the side of his own face, almost without realizing it. At the loss of contact, Skinner cracked his eyes open.

"He loved you." He confirmed the thought that Mulder wouldn't speak aloud.

"No. Whatever Krycek and I had, it wasn't love…" His words trailed off, and Skinner took his silence as an opportunity to kiss him. Mulder allowed it.

"I can't believe you've been sitting here smoking dope all night." he said when Skinner released him.

"Not *all* night. I would have waited for you, but I didn't even know if you had any unchoirboy tendencies in you—"

This made Mulder laugh.

"—and…and I didn't know if you'd be coming back here tonight." 

This did not.

"Christ, Walter! You're kidding, right?" Mulder slipped out of Skinner's arms and quickly reversed their roles, pulling the bulkier man into his arms with some effort. Skinner didn't help, but didn't hinder him in any way, either.

"Scully and I? Scully? Are you--? After eight years, Walter Skinner, you, of all people, should know better."

He couldn't help it. Mulder's lecturing, schoolmarmish tone set him to giggling furiously, and the distracted frown on his lover's face, which he was now looking up at from where he lay with his head in Mulder's lap, just made it funnier. He thought for a moment that if Mulder shook a finger at him, he might just piss his pants.  Trying to sober himself up with the worries he'd had earlier, about Mulder and Scully and what might be happening with the two of them, which should have worked, totally backfired when he pictured the argument between them over who was going to be the top. He covered his mouth with a hand, trying to smother the laughter, and was totally ineffectual. Some not high part of him realized he was nearly hysterical, and recognized it as a reaction to the last few weeks, hell, last year of his life, but the radically stoned part of him told the tight-assed rational part of him to take a hike, and he just kept on laughing.

Mulder just held him tight, acknowledging the weakness without words. All the "I love yous" and "it's okays" in the world wouldn't help Skinner now, and he knew that this would just have to run its course.
He was still a little annoyed that Walter would think he was panting after Scully after all this time, but he decided that was a conversation best held when one of them wasn't higher than God. Or maybe held when they both were. This made him laugh a little, too.

After too long, Skinner's laughter trailed off into no more than the occasional snort, and he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. He smiled up at Mulder, who beamed right back and whispered the sweetest words Walter Skinner had ever heard:

"There's a pint of pistachio in the freezer."

Maybe it wasn't all better, but it was going to be all right.