I'm sitting here on the couch, exhausted, frightened, and pissed off, and even as I'm trying to sort out my thoughts into something less anxious, in hopes that sleep might actually come this night, all I can picture in my head is John Doggett, hanging onto Walter's leg like that damned dog on Frasier.

I shake my head and put the gun down again.

If Walter were to come down those stairs right now, and see me sitting here looking like I'm about to eat a bullet, he'd kick my ass.  Twice. No niceties for my man, not when I'm in full-on depression, not when I'm acting crazy. But one of these days I will learn how to get out of those damn chokeholds of his, and then we'll see who's in charge.

I laugh softly and it sounds like a sob. I won't kill myself. I know that. But if something doesn't change, and soon; if I can't get through this somehow…

Part of me is dead already, and I don't know how to bring it back to life.  Or even if I can. And that thought terrifies me.  Not as much for myself as for Walter, who doesn't deserve this. Any of it. 

Tonight was cathartic, in a way. Walter took it upon himself to draw me out of my self-imposed shell, the one I crawled into not long after being back, the one I thought I was protecting myself with. And, as is my usual MO, once he got me talking, I couldn't shut up. The verbal diarrhea I displayed would have pissed him off in the office, back in the day, but now he just smiles and says he can't get enough of the sound of my voice. I think he's just being sentimental 'cos his boyfriend's back from the dead.

Mostly back.

After we talked, Walter suggested the possibility of bed, and being open to possibilities, extreme or otherwise, hasn't changed for me. Of course, the fact that his kisses can still turn my bones into soup is always a powerful argument for his case. If I ever could have done to Scully what Walter does to me, she probably would have believed me a lot sooner…

I digress in my thoughts, and I know why I'm doing it, and then there's Doggett, traipsing through my thought processes again. Maliciously I do a little creative visualization, and picture both him and Kersh falling out of office windows, and my thoughts go back to Walter, and tonight.

In the bedroom, Walter was suddenly hesitant. He's been more than careful, despite my protests, since I came back. I don't know what he thinks, but I'm guessing that he's just afraid.

I smile as I can almost hear him blustering at that suggestion.  But if I was sleeping with someone who was abducted by aliens, apparently tortured to the point of death, buried for three months, exposed to some virus that could turn him into an alien and then saved by having his life support shut off, I'd be a little apprehensive myself. And I'm not the cautious sort that Walter is, so he must feel it more than I.

I tried to show him that everything was fine. I felt good, in fact, better than I have for a while. I gave him one of my patented Mulderleers, which he says makes me look like a demented rent-boy, but it always gets to him, and tonight was no exception.

I love when Walter strips me. He combines gentleness and need into something that I'd have to classify as restrained power. Shirt first, and then that seems to be enough for him. He takes long moments to kiss me and run his hands over my chest and back, generally pushing me onto the bed at that point. Maybe he realizes that his touch makes my legs weak. Only when I'm writhing under his hands, under his mouth, practically to the point of begging, does he take off my pants. The cool air is always a shock.

Tonight he pulled off me as soon as I was completely unclothed, standing to remove his own shirt and pants. He's totally fussy about the whole process, but, oddly enough, it just turns me on more. I watched him drop his wallet, change and other pocket fodder onto the dresser, then fold his pants over the chair by the door. My hand strayed down to my cock as he tossed socks, shorts and shirt into the hamper, and I couldn't help touching myself as he set his glasses on the nightstand, then just stood there, smiling down at me. I thought for a moment he might want me to do myself, which I know he likes to see once in a while, and it certainly seems to appeal to the closet exhibitionist in me, but a moment after our eyes locked, he was lying next to me on the bed, and pulling me into his arms.

I've never tried to analyze the attraction I have to being in Walter's embrace. It's a combination of security and safety and lust and whatever else that just works for me, and I'm not about to second-guess it to death, as I do with so much in my life. It feels right, and that's enough for me.

He rolled over on his back, bringing me with him, so we were lying face to face, with me on top of him. I struggled briefly, thinking I might be crushing him, but he was having none of it. He kept those iron bars he calls arms wrapped tight around me so that skin on skin contact was kept at a maximum, and took my mouth with his, doing those wonderful things with his tongue and teeth that, even when I kiss back, I can't duplicate. Not that I've ever gotten complaints from him. 

Thinking about it now, I feel my body responding just to the memory of how it felt to have his hard cock brushing up against my own, and part of me is tempted to go back to the bedroom and wake him up. I know he won't argue, even if he does have to be up in just a few short hours for work.

Then I remember the rest, and my ardor fades.

I tried to get out of his arms, not to leave, hell no! But rather to take more of him, to taste more than his mouth.  I was practically drooling at the thought of taking him in my mouth, but he didn't let up his grip on me until I giggled at the thought that the one thing I missed most while being dead was cocksucking.

He gave me a quizzical look, but as it appeared that I wasn't going to go into hysterics, or leave, he just smiled back and then quickly reversed our positions, his arms coming out from under me to hold himself up a little. Guess he has the same 'I'm too heavy for you' issues that I have.

I told him once just how sensitive my nipples were-I think I was trying to explain to him how I may have been an old Jewish woman once in a past life, and that's why they are that way. I didn't think he was paying attention, but apparently he was. Since then, one of his greatest joys in life is trying to drive me right out of my mind by working over my chest in a crazy suck-kiss-bite-lick pattern that's no pattern at all but completely random and guarantees that the begging I've been able to restrain so far will come bursting out of me in a breathless litany that generally doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But he seems to understand.

I touch my chest, hesitantly, thinking I can feel the marks through the t-shirt I'm wearing, and sigh as I remember more.

He moved down my body then, heating every bit of my skin with his mouth, and I thrust my hips in what I hoped was an inviting manner. But as his mouth neared my cock, I suddenly had a flash-a vision-a something that I don't even have words for.

I wasn't in bed with Walter anymore. I was back in that chair. That nightmare that most days I can barely remember. But now I can see it perfectly. I can feel the spikes through my wrists and ankles. I can feel the hooks in my cheeks. And I can see someone kneeling at my feet. At first I can't tell who it is, and then I don't care as my cock is engulfed in warm wetness. I think that was the first time I can remember calling out for Walter.

Suddenly the hooks are gone from my face, and I can lift my head. Not much, but enough to look down and see a very familiar bald head bobbing up and down over my crotch. For a moment I think I'm saved, and then, as I watch, red hair sprouts from that bald head, and Scully is suddenly smiling lavisciouly up at me, her lipstick smeared. Then she turns back to her task, and I think I'm going to cum, but I don't. I just stay painfully hard as her mouth works over me, and I cry out Walter's name again. 

Then, with another look up and a wink, Scully is gone, and a white haired man with the bluest eyes I'd ever known is in her place, and he's even better than she was, and I still can't come, although it feels like my balls are about to burst.

The changes are suddenly coming quicker, and I watch in horror as Alex Krycek sucks me right to the root, but by the time he brings his head back up, it's the cancerman, his lips sandpaper rough and dry and then he's Diana, who always liked to kiss it, and then Phoebe, who bites at the skin, making me cry in pain and pleasure. Faces blending into one another, faster and faster, all of them sucking me, and I'm terrified and turned on at the same time, even as I realize that those fuckers have been in my head, and have pulled images from it, and I don't know why they're doing it, I can only think that if I don't cum soon I'm going to die…

Even now, with the vision fading in my mind, the thought of it makes me tremble, and I clutch my arms around myself. My reaction earlier was a lot more spectacular.

I don't remember yelling, or throwing Walter off me, although he tells me he wasn't sure exactly what had happened himself until he was picking himself up off the floor. I only know that I came back to myself back in his arms, shaking so hard from adrenaline overload that I thought I might shake myself to pieces. My cock was shriveled and my balls were literally trying to climb back into my body. Walter never said a word. Just held me for the longest time, brushing a hand through my hair and pressing kisses to my sweaty brow.

I realize that I'm rocking a little on the couch, and I'm holding my muscles so clenched that they're starting to ache.

It doesn't happen every time. That's the sad thing. Like so much that's happened in my life, there's no pattern, no rhyme or reason to it. There are nights with Walter that are as amazing and wonderful to me as they've ever been, when both of us reach orgasm without a hitch, reveling in being together as much now as we did in the beginning. 

But when these episodes come, more often than not, I'm a mess for several days after, unable to eat, sleep, concentrate on anything. I get snappish, resentful of everyone, feeling like they're totally oblivious to whatever happened to me. I know rationally that it's not true, but I can't stop the biting angry words that spring to my lips. I can't help brushing off even the most innocent advances. I can't do anything, it seems, and the only thing more frustrating than that is the way Walter looks at me during it all. Hurt, but doing his best not to show it. To be supportive, to do whatever I need. His affection makes me feel like an even bigger asshole, and sometimes it makes me want to cry. Or worse.

I have to find out what they did to me. How they did it. I have to make it stop. For myself, and for him. The one truth in a lifetime of truth-seeking that I found, and that was everything I had hoped it would be. And I'm not giving up. I'll be as tenacious as a puppy with a slipper, I think, and then, like a tape looping itself on it’s reel, there's Doggett in my head again, panting and drooling over Walter.

I laugh sadly, then turn as I hear a familiar creak on the stairs.

"Fox?" Walter's voice is thick with sleep, but I can still hear the concern.

"Just getting a glass of water, hon. I'll be right up." I assure him, standing up and walking towards him, not looking back at the gun on the table, hoping he won't notice it either, and he doesn't. Just looks at me, squinting slightly without his glasses.

"Are you all right?" I swear I can see the tick in his jaw, even at this distance, in the dim light of just the small table lamp in the corner.

"Sure. Go on. I'll be right there."

He gives me a skeptical look, but nods, and turns to ascend the stairs. I watch his bare back and buttocks working efficiently as he marches back upstairs, and I feel a stirring in points south, but I ignore it, not wanting to tempt fate tonight. Maybe tomorrow, I think as he disappears from view.

Maybe tomorrow…

 After all, tomorrow is another day-and to find out what happens tomorrow, try chapter 3, Bathwater