Chapter 11: Old Black Rum

The orderly who had attacked Skinner sat sullenly in the small room, his hands cuffed behind him, one of the security guards hovering over him like a storm cloud. There were two chairs in the room, one of which he was sitting on, one door, and no windows.

From where he sat, the man could see Mulder in the hall outside the door talking on his cell phone. The other security guard was standing at the door, alternating his focus between Mulder and his prisoner. The frown the guard gave him was far from encouraging, but he refused to let his fear show. He glared right back.

“Thanks, Langly, your kung fu is the best…yeah…for sure, cheese steaks on me next time…Yeah? Good on him. Get him to call Scully, tell her what he found…uh huh…well, yeah, that, and besides, she’ll get off on the sound of his voice, and you know we all want to see that…thanks again…I will.”

Mulder shut down his cell phone, slipped it onto the belt clip attached to his jeans, and turned to the security guard.

The prisoner watched with growing trepidation as Mulder and the guard exchanged a few words and a nasty smile.

Mulder walked into the room while the guard stayed outside. The second guard abandoned his slouching menace above the orderly and met Mulder at the door. More words muttered between them, and then, much to the man’s alarm, the second guard joined his partner in the hall and politely closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with Mulder. Alone, and unobserved.

“You got a name?” Mulder asked, almost conversationally, as he turned the empty chair around and sat backwards on it, resting his hands lightly on the plastic chair back.

The man glanced down at the nametag still pinned to his scrubs and gave Mulder a sneer. All the while he was subtly struggling with the cuffs, not liking the way this was playing out at all.

“No,” Mulder said, still speaking in that low, almost pleasant tone. “I’m sure that’s a fake. What’s your real name?” He leaned a little closer, less pleasantly. “After all, you just tried to kill my lover—I ought to know what to call you.”

“Kiss my ass,” the man shot back through gritted teeth.

“Well, Mister “Ass”—must be a family name—you want to play nice here; it might just save your namesake.”

The man remained stubbornly silent at that, and Mulder’s eyes darkened a fraction. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm himself while his memory slammed image after image of his stricken lover into his brain with speeding truck force.

He felt a headache coming on, and rubbed his temples absently, still maintaining eye contact with the other man.

“Been to any good gay bars lately?” he demanded suddenly, blurting out the words in a harsh way that made the man twitch in his chair.

“You look a lot like someone who was asking about us not too long ago. A buddy of mine described you pretty well.” Mulder’s tone dropped again, keeping the other man off balance and unnerved.

The man muttered something Mulder couldn’t make out, but the look of distaste on his face spoke volumes.

“Sorry, what was that?” Still falsely calm, almost smiling, as his headache grew. “You were just there to score?” He leered. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? I’m sure we could have arranged something.” He stood and made an airy “love my curtains” gesture around the room. “This wasn’t necessary—“ He moved in close and lowered his voice. “Maybe we’d have both done ya.”

“Shut up, faggot!” the man yelled, fighting the cuffs so hard that he was almost bouncing in his seat.

Mulder snapped. All pretense of calm left him; all flirtatiousness and understanding were gone in a heartbeat.

With a surge of angry adrenaline feeding him strength, he hoisted the man to his feet, fingers digging cruelly into the man’s biceps. As he lifted, he moved forward, forcing the chair over, making the man stumble briefly, missing a nasty fall just from Mulder’s grip on him.

Mulder’s momentum increased as he bypassed the chair and shoved the man harder, knocking him up against the wall with enough force to jar him almost senseless. His teeth clicked together painfully on his tongue and his fisted hands were jammed into the small of his back.

Mulder’s eyes blazed and he was nearly panting into the other man’s face.

“Number one, asshole: That’s ‘Mister Faggot’ to you!” He shook the man briskly and tried not to relish the fear he now saw widening the eyes before him.

“Fuck you, ‘Mister Faggot’” the man sneered with the last of his bravado.

Mulder brought his knee up hard, slamming it into the man’s groin with enough force to drive all the air out of him, leaving him groaning and gasping for breath.

“Number two: In case you didn’t notice, buddy, there’s nobody here but us. Conveniently, any inconvenient witnesses are behind a closed door. And the best part? I don’t think those guys out there would even care if I took you apart right now. Hell, I think they might even approve.”

Another swift kick and a face slap, and Mulder danced the man back to the chair he’d been using moments ago, throwing him into with a hard shove, then backing away, wiping his hands on his jeans like he’d touched something nasty.

He didn’t want the man to catch his breath or regroup his defenses, but he recognized something dark and grotesque rising in him, and he knew he was the one who had to do the regrouping; the one who had to step back, refocus and remember why he was here; why he was doing this.  It was too easy to picture a life without Walter Skinner and the thought that this man could be in some way responsible for even making him have to think about it filled him with a white-hot rage that was almost blinding.

The man muttered something that Mulder almost heard, and he moved forward so fast the other man flinched.

“What? What did you say?” he demanded.

Silence from the man.

“Did you say ‘she’? ‘She’ who?”

More silence. Mulder thought a moment: about the guards outside, about the police on their way, about how much time he had.

And he thought about Skinner.

The smile on his face scared the man more than the previous physical violence.

***

“He slipped outta the cuffs—don’t know how—and Mr. Mulder here was just giving his statement when all hell broke loose.” One security guard was talking to the police while the other was supervising the transfer of the prisoner. Neither guard seemed particularly distressed that the man was being wheeled out on a stretcher, unconscious.

“Mr. Mulder was forced to act out of self-defense,” the guard continued. He gave the policeman who was taking notes a solemn look. “He’s a hero.”

The policeman shot a skeptical glance over at Mulder, who was holding a wet towel full of ice on the knuckles of one hand while letting a nurse fuss over the black eye and swollen lip he was now sporting in addition to the cut he has sustained in the original fight.

“Uh huh…” A final note on his pad, and a thank you, and the policeman hustled off after the perp, suspicious of the convenience of the matching stories he’d just heard, but not inclined to inquire further.

Both security guards approached Mulder.

“That was pretty extreme,” said the first one.  Mulder shrugged and discovered that in fact, *everything* did hurt.

“Probably too much,” said the second man.  Mulder locked eyes with him and they glared at one another briefly.

Then the guard offered Mulder a wide grin.

“That’s ‘Mr. Faggot to you’? Jeez, Mulder, I nearly peed myself on that one!” And he burst out laughing.

Mulder gave him a weary smile in return.

“Did you get anything out of him?” asked the other guard.

Mulder nodded. “I think so. A place to start, at any rate.”

“Well, then, that’s all that matters.” The man surprised Mulder by leaning forward and kissing him on his unhurt cheek. “Go on, now; we’ll take care of anything else that comes up here—you just take care of the big guy, kay?”

“Thank you. You have my number—call if anything happens, here or with—“ he jerked his head in the direction of the door the man had been rolled out of. “I can’t tell you how important this is.”

“Oh, we know.”

The guards exchanged a look, and their hands brushed quickly and discreetly together.

Mulder spared them a last appreciative smile and a half-hearted ‘aren’t you boys sexy?’ leer, and then turned and limped tiredly down the corridor.

***

By the time he hit Banff he was cruising on autopilot and he knew it. Aside from a couple of serious scuffles today, both of which had left him aching in places he didn’t know it was possible to feel pain, there was also the worry, tension and over-all exhaustion from the last few days. He’d never been a great sleeper, and circumstances had made it worse lately.

As the car climbed away from the city, Mulder thought about her—Not ‘her-Scully’ and not ‘her-Sam’; not even ‘her-Roxy’, although he did have a moment where he mentally reminded himself that he owed the queen a drink for helping them thus far.

But the woman who had him most preoccupied was the “she” that the perp at the hospital had mentioned.

She…Marie…Marie something. Despite vigorous application of his most persuasive appeals to the man in the hospital (said appeals still making his knuckles throb), Mulder couldn’t get more of a name than that. The difficulties he had encountered just getting that much out of the man convinced Mulder that he really didn’t know more than that. At least about her name.

More details had come easier, although his aching body might argue with him on his definition of ‘easy’.

This “Marie” was somewhere in Calgary; she wanted Skinner tracked, and the orderly had done just that with help from a few friends. Once Skinner had been sedated in the hospital, someone else was supposed to take care of things from there, and the orderly was simply supposed to vanish.

Mulder steered the car past the falls that marked the start of the grid road that wound its way up through the mountains and trees to their cabin. One eye was nearly swollen shut and now the other wanted to close as well. He had a sudden urge to just pull over into the brush at the side of the road, shut off the car and sleep for a month.

Instead, he stifled a yawn and cracked open the side window, letting cool air wash over him. Dimly he was aware that it felt good on his hurt places. Blinking rapidly, he reached for the radio and was pleased to find Elvis Presley, reminding him that lions weren’t the kind he loved enough. A worn smile floated around his lips, tried to beam, or at least light up his eyes, and settled for turning up one side of his mouth. Elvis made him think of his own ‘teddy bear’, and he pressed harder on the accelerator, coaxing a little more speed out of the car. Another half-smile, this one with a touch of embarrassment at his own folly.

Relief so great it almost made him light headed washed over him as the car found the driveway and he heard the familiar crunch of gravel under the tires.

As he parked the rental car he’d gotten next to the SUV that they’d originally taken into town, he remembered watching Walter laying the gravel for the driveway, all shirtless and glistening muscles, and he cranked off the ignition with enough force to almost break the key.  A shudder worked through him, and he suddenly brought his hands down on the steering wheel again and again and again, swearing under his breath and fighting the tears that were instantly burning in his eyes.

The steering wheel took the brunt of his emotions stoically, not complaining, and eventually his rage seeped from him even as his tears did not, and he shakily stepped out of the car.

The gravel under his feet made grumpy crackling noises, and the gloom of late evening hugged the surrounding trees, combining to make him nervous. He glanced around uneasily, imagining the ghosts of dead soldiers skulking in the woods.

He didn’t realize how tense he was holding himself until he tried putting his key into the door lock and his hands were shaking so bad it took several attempts.

Once inside, he slammed the door, locked it, keyed in the security code, heard a startled noise from the living room and almost wet his pants.

“Shit,” he muttered weakly, looking over at the couch and seeing Scully just visible in the dim light of the television screen.

Quietly, Mulder slipped into the living room. He watched Scully move on the couch, her small body rocking slightly, and she made another soft sound.

“Scully?” He spoke her name quietly, only realizing she was still asleep when he received no response.

A warm smile turned up the sides of his mouth as he took the television remote from her hand and carefully eased the gun out from under the pillow her head was cushioned on.  He shut off the TV, let his eyes adjust, and then pulled the crocheted afghan off of the rocking chair next to the couch and draped it over his sleeping friend.

The afghan had been a Christmas gift from a friend of a friend of Walter’s, and the two of them had put it to good use over the winter.

Scully settled under the blanket with a sigh and Mulder couldn’t resist touching her hair briefly before moving away.

The cabin was mostly dark by now and Mulder found his way to the bedroom mostly by memory. A dim sliver of light gleaming from under the bedroom door revealed itself to be one of the kerosene lamps spreading mellow light over the nightstand and part of the bed, while throwing interesting shadows around the rest of the room.

A bear growled from one of the pools of darkness as Mulder toed off his shoes. He glanced around warily, and then smiled as Skinner snored out another sleeping breath.

Mulder thought about taking a shower, and his stomach thought about lunch, which felt like it had been years ago.  He thought about the lead that needed following up, and his cuts and bruises thought about ibuprofen.

Deciding thinking was highly overrated, and too tired to even consider doing any more of it, Mulder made his way to the lamp, turned down the kerosene and blew out the existing flame, and then flopped down on his side of the bed. He curled up arms and legs, felt Skinner stirring beside him, and fell asleep while still trying to find a word that meant more than ‘exhausted’.

Hours later both men had managed to shift and meet in the middle of the bed, arms and legs entangled, although neither of them had woken…