Chapter 12-Rest Stop
“While you were sleeping,
I was listening to the radio and wonderin’ what you were dreaming,
When it came to mind that…”

Days went by. Skinner followed Krycek’s instructions to the letter, not allowing himself to question the validity of them, only knowing he had no other choice. He forced the medicine on his insensate lover every morning and every night, and told himself the man was getting better.

In fact, there seemed to be no change at first. Although Mulder seemed to be sleeping more easily, his night terrors still brought him up screaming and clawing at nothing, and Skinner found himself on short sleep rations, as his mind became attuned to the slightest movement or sound from Mulder.

He made Mulder drink water and juice, and when the delirious man fought against it, he wore the bruises like medals. He kept Mulder warm with quilts found in the linen closet, and kept him clean with repeated sponge baths and sheet changing. When Mulder talked, he talked back, even when it made no sense, answering the nonsensical questions with affirmations and love.

When Mulder slept, Skinner spent time exploring the cabin, never far enough away from his lover’s side that he wouldn’t hear him if he so much as hiccoughed. He discovered that the plumbing was as new as the appliances, and that the fireplace was in good working order. There was a heater for the place, but so far the days and nights had held warm, and he’d found no need for it.  He was startled to find food, canned stuff and non-perishables mostly, and plenty of it, stocked in clean cupboards. He tried to picture Mulder, weak and sick, taking time to stock up the place and do a few repairs around the house, and couldn’t do it.

It didn’t make sense, and his tired mind worried at this fact like a puppy with a bone, fighting for attention with his still frightened belief that Mulder was beyond help.

The morning after the last of the medicine was gone, Skinner stumbled out of the bedroom, exhausted and aching from holding his lover through yet another long spell of nightmares. No part of him begrudged Mulder’s need for this, but his body was telling him that it might not be something he wanted to be taking up on a full time basis. He wandered into the kitchen, and lit the burner under the teakettle. Searching out a clean mug and a teabag, he mumbled some half remembered shanty under his breath and wondered when he’d last slept. It felt like it had been years. 

A sound from behind him made him freeze. He turned his head slowly, waiting to see if the sound would be repeated. When nothing happened, he let out his breath slowly and shakily, and set his cup by the stove. He thought he should check on Mulder again while the water boiled, and found himself drawn to the kitchen table instead.

A creamy white envelope sat on the table, his name scrawled across it in handwriting that was hauntingly familiar, but not in a way that he remembered from his own life; more like a Civil War ghost. There was something almost sad about it, although he couldn’t have explained where that thought came from.

He moved towards the table, sat heavily on one of the metal and vinyl chairs (he’d already decided he hated their green-checked diner feel, although he suspected Mulder, were he capable of it, would love them), and reached for the envelope with hands that shook, though not from fear.

Until the kettle whistled shrilly for attention, he simply stared at the thing, the letters of his name burning into his tired eyes, his weary mind. Still moving mostly automatically, he made his tea and brought it back to the table, then considered the envelope once more.

He tore it open.

A newspaper clipping fell out of it, along with an old photo, a small key, and a single piece of paper as thick and creamy as the envelope.

The photo was the first thing he picked up, and tears pricked at his eyelids as he looked down on the old photo, white bordered and creased, of two young men, one idealistic, one far less so, smiling awkwardly up at him while standing in front of the very cabin he now sat in. Had Dirk really been that handsome, he wondered, and had *he* ever had that much hair? He smiled mirthlessly at that, turned the picture over and marveled at a date that seemed to be almost prehistoric.

Setting the picture gingerly aside, he unfolded the crisp piece of paper. More tears wanted to blur his vision, and he rubbed his eyes once and forced them back as he read:

Walt:

I told you so! That mountain air, you know. Once it gets into you, you never really lose it. Like so much that we hold onto as precious and dear, you never even know it’s there until you need it, and then, like life itself, tenacious and ever unfolding, it presents itself, and you know you are where you need to be.

I don’t know what it is in me that tells me you will someday see this. Perhaps it is the illness speaking, and I am simply raving like the madman you always told me I was. Or perhaps the cancer that is robbing me of my body is giving me instead some mental gift. A knowledge, or precognitive sense, that you will see this, see the mountains again; stand where we once stood, believer and skeptic finding the truth together.

If it’s a war that has brought you back here, Walt, I hope it is one far nobler than the one that first brought us up here. And if it’s something else—someone else—I can only hope that he’s seen beyond the hard assed Marine you always thought you were. I hope you let him in, the way you let me in. 

I wonder if you ever told him about us.

I’ve made certain provisions in the event that we do not get to speak face to face again, and I’m more and more sure that this will be the case. The doctors tell me that hope springs eternal, but you know that I always found the truth to be closer to my heart than that, and my heart tells me time is short.

All the information you need, all the by the book, sign in triplicate, ten cent words and yada yada bullshit that I always eschewed, you will find at the Royal Bank in Banff. The box number is 1013.

I hope he’s there, Walt, and I hope he loves you. As I once did. And as I do.

Peace,

Dirk

“Oh my God…” the whispered words slipped from Skinner’s lips in a trembling hushed sigh, and he set the paper aside, letting it touch the table as gently as if it were made of spun glass.

The newspaper clipping was, of course, an obituary. He barely skimmed it, letting the stark black type give him the facts without flowery phrases: Dirk Sheldon Rydholm…August 2001…donations to the Canadian Cancer Foundation in lieu of flowers…

He took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes again.

At the sound of his name, the paper went fluttering to the floor, and he jumped up so quickly that he nearly overturned the chair. The voice was weak, but clear, and he recognized it for a real thing, not some ghost. He’d had to deal with enough of those lately to know the difference.

He ran back to the bedroom, saw that Mulder was sitting up, and feared he was having a nightmare. But the younger man made no protest as Skinner moved to his side and eased him back down on the bed. Just looked at him with dark eyes that were actually seeing him, maybe for the first time since he’d gotten here. 

Skinner saw that Mulder’s brow was beaded with perspiration, and his skin was soaked, but he wasn’t shivering, and the fever that had produced that heat seemed to have disappeared, leaving only this damp reminder of what had been.

“Mulder?”

Mulder reached up one hand, stroked the beard that Skinner had been neglecting to cut since he’d first set out on his mad journey.

“You look like a bear.” Mulder’s voice was thick and hoarse, but perfectly clear and lucid just the same. Skinner caught his hand and held it to his cheek just a fraction longer than he needed to, then released him and shrugged.

“I thought it made me look rugged,” he replied.

“It makes you look like a gay Dan Haggerty.”

“Smart ass.”

They exchanged weak relieved grins. Mulder’s eyes slipped closed, then re-opened, a tell tale gleam in them that Skinner recognized immediately, even though it had been a long time since he’d seen it.

“Well, Grizzly Adams, here’s a deal for you,” he began, tugging gently on his lover’s beard. “You 86 the face fur, and I’ll let you have your filthy way with me.”

Skinner’s grin intensified, then disappeared altogether when he took a good look at Mulder. The man had just come out of a near-deadly infection-based coma that was in all likelihood of alien origin, not to mention the wounds from the attempted abduction that, while healing, were still wounds and not yet scars, and he hadn’t had anything put in him more nutritious than orange juice since who knew when.

And yet, and still, he was Mulder. His Mulder. And just as his heart leapt hearing the man talk, so did he feel gentle lust jolt through him at the suggestion. But he wasn’t about to hurt him—wasn’t about to push anything. Not now, when he’d been so sure he was going to lose him…

He smiled again, softer, and let his own hand brush Mulder’s chin. “That’s no baby’s bottom you’ve got going on there, you know.”

Mulder’s response was to nip at Skinner’s fingers, suck softly at one for a moment, then release him, and shift around on the bed, trying to sit up. Skinner watched him struggle for a moment, and wondered how long it had taken him to do this once already, without the delirium-induced strength from before. A moment later, though he was sitting down beside him and taking him into his arms. 

Mulder leaned gratefully into the other man’s embrace, more sweat coming off of him at the exertion. 

“Okay,” he breathed into the other man’s ear. “So maybe I’m not quite up to my contortionist impression, but…”

Skinner chuckled softly under his breath, held Mulder tight and ran his hand through his hair. That little voice inside him, the one that usually came from somewhere in his balls, was offering a hectoring opinion on just how good the man felt in his arms, not to mention reminding him strongly that he was naked, but Skinner ignored it for the time being, content to listen to his emotions instead.

Apparently, Mulder’s little voice was much stronger, however, and he turned his head so that they were face to face, and pressed his lips to Skinner’s. Mere moments later, both men were open mouthed and gently trying to devour one another. 

To Skinner, Mulder tasted sweet, like the peppermints his father had always carried with him. A familiar taste that he hadn’t had in so long…and all the more sweet for having gone without.

Mulder lost himself in the warmth and depth and security he found within the kiss, tasting all that he had been fighting for, all that he needed, all that Walter Skinner offered him, and it was enough.

When Skinner felt Mulder’s fingers brush lightly over the front of his pants, he pulled away suddenly. Mulder frowned and tried to recapture his mouth, but Skinner held him back with a determined look. Mulder took solace in the fact that Skinner had to take several deep breaths before he could speak.

“I thought you wanted the chin-rug gone first.”

“I’m willing to risk a little rug burn if you are, big guy,” he smiled and tried to control his own breathing. Another stroke over what was becoming a very conspicuous erection, and a whispered, “Please…” were Skinner’s undoing.

But even as his body hummed under his lover’s ministrations, he vowed that he was going to take all the time in the world if he had to, and not push Mulder, not even if the other man thought he should.

He carefully eased Mulder out of his arms, and shushed the small cry of protest with a soft kiss. When he had Mulder on his back on the bed again, he followed him down, lying beside him and holding him in a loose embrace, while allowing Mulder to move his hands over him. He reveled in the feel of those long nimble fingers as they undid buttons, stroked over chest and belly, and reacquainted themselves with his cock.

“Oh, God,” he groaned, “I’ve missed you so much!” Then he returned the favour, pushing away both Mulder’s hands and his growing desire, and letting his own big hands find all the familiar and so badly missed contours of his lover’s body. There were new things, of course; the wounds he had to carefully avoid, although he skimmed the edges of the bandages a few times, always mindful of causing Mulder any discomfort. He listened attentively to the man’s breathing, trying to distinguish pain from desire. Mulder seemed to sense this, and let loose a string of breathy affirmations, making sure Skinner knew that what he was doing was more than welcome. And when Skinner finally took hold of his cock, he also covered his mouth with his own, tasting the grateful moan as Mulder’s hips lifted off the bed. His lover’s excitement made his own more powerful, and he groaned in response, and rubbed himself on Mulder’s hip, almost able to ignore how the satiny skin was pulled taut over the bone there.

Mulder’s eyes had slipped closed at the first strong touch of Skinner’s hands, but now he opened them and found that when Skinner’s mouth pulled off of his own, his eyes were open too. For a moment that lasted well into eternity, they simply gazed at one another, trying to fill up all the empty places inside themselves with each other. 

Mulder looked bedraggled, worn, scraggly—an alley cat brought in from the cold bare moments before death. He also looked aroused, alert and nearly overwhelmed with some unspoken emotion. Skinner thought he’d never looked more beautiful.

Skinner’s clothes were in disarray, yanked open from neck to crotch. His chest was heaving, his cock jutting red and arrogant from his open pants. He looked almost feral, all soft gray beard and crisp salt and pepper curls across his chest. By contrast, his eyes shone dark and soft, almost aglow with something that romance novelists had been trying to capture since time immemorial, and Mulder thought he was quite the most breathtaking mass of contradictions he’d ever had the pleasure to know.

To love.

The moment ended when Skinner, who had been thrusting softly against Mulder’s body the whole time, came with terrific force, crying out his lover’s name as his body thrashed in almost helpless ecstasy. It was loose and wild and intense, and Mulder relished every moment of the other man’s orgasm, until he felt those hands, those remarkable hands, on his cock, stronger this time, stroking forcefully, cajoling his body into responding in tandem with his lover.

He threw his head back, and by contrast wrapped his arms around Skinner and hung on for his life, letting the sensations overwhelm him, knowing it was safe to do so, and his orgasm was all the more amazing for that knowledge.

Minutes later it was over, and for minutes more after that they simply clung to one another, letting their minds drift, each man feeling a peace that came from simply being together, a calm that they’d both been missing, unaware until now just how much.

Skinner felt himself drifting perilously close to sleep, and he shifted his body away from Mulder’s, knowing that he couldn’t let himself go just yet.

Mulder gave him a contented smile and reached up to stroke his cheek. 

“I could get used to this,” he whispered.

“Really?”

“No, absolutely not,” he replied. His eyes closed but the grin remained. “It had better be gone by the time I wake up.”

Skinner laughed quietly, stood shakily, and moved towards the door in search of clean clothes, a warm cloth for some clean up, and maybe something to eat. A glance back at his lover, and another laugh when he heard a completely familiar snore, and then he looked up at nothing, wondering if the right person would hear him as he whispered, 

“He loves me, Dirk. And I love him.”