Chapter 19: Goin Up

Mulder jogged up the path behind the cabin, put on a sudden burst of speed around the building and took the porch steps two at a time.

Breathing hard, he stopped and put his hands on his knees, feeling the pull in his abdominal muscles as he stretched up and down, letting his hands slide down his bare legs to touch his ankles, then back up to the cuff of his ragged shorts. He did that a couple of times, then straightened out and stretched his back and arms, wincing at the crackle and pop of his spine readjusting to the lack of motion. A couple of deep knee bends and arm stretches later, he turned and walked easily into the house, doing a mental coin toss between coffee and a shower.

Scully solved his dilemma, meeting him as he was kicking off his running shoes. She smiled kindly at him, then made a face and flicked a finger at the sweat-soaked collar of his t-shirt.

“You stink,” she told him.

He almost smiled back.

“I know.” He looked down at the luggage by the door as if noticing it for the first time, although it had been there when he’d left the house for his morning run over an hour ago.

“I can still drive you into the city,” he said.

“Shower,” Scully told him. “Then breakfast.”

“You cooked?” he teased. “Dear Diary; once again Agent Scully has made my heart flutter, this time with promises of eggs over easy.”

“Shut up,” she said with a laugh.

Mulder moved towards the bathroom, pausing at the door to deliver a parting shot. “That Doggett is getting you trained good.” He closed the door on her protests, still wearing that half-smile.

***

After he’d managed to use up all the hot water, something Skinner would have groused about all day, he joined Scully in the kitchen, accepting a cup of coffee from her with a nod of gratitude.

The cat tried its best to trip him on his way from the doorway to the table, and he had to dance clumsily to keep from squashing its head. He ignored both Sundae’s hiss and Scully’s laugh and sat down at the table. Sipping coffee, he burned his mouth and noticed that Scully had given him the large red mug with the pewter “W” on the side, but he didn’t have time to wonder about it as she set a plate down in front of him. He gave the bagel a skeptical look, and then picked it up with a sigh.

“If this is light cream cheese on here, Scully, I’m going to have to throw you in the Falls, you know that, right?”

“It’s chokecherry, made local,” she replied. “Guaranteed to be completely bad for you.”

“Doggett is picking you up at the airport, right?”

“He’ll be there,” she confirmed, then gave his damp hair a ruffle that made him feel foolish. “You sound like my mother.” She reached for his bagel, paused in the process of breaking off a piece for herself to give him a thoughtful look.

“Did you want me to stay, Mulder?”

She thought he was going to say ‘yes’; the look in his eyes suggested he would.

“No,” he said, “You went way above and beyond here…and in case I didn’t mention it, it’s been totally appreciated…thank you, Dana.”

She laughed at that.

“You’re welcome…Fox.”

He gave her a sour look that she ignored. Still smiling, voice serious, she said, “You know I will.”

“And I also know that man of yours is probably already at the gate, looking at his watch and cursing my name. Not to mention mom and the uber-Scully.” He touched her hand briefly. “You need to get back.”

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and she stood up from the table to answer it, scooping it up off the counter before Mulder could comment on the ‘Inspector Gadget’ ring tone she’d downloaded.

Mulder pushed bagel bits around his plate, drank his coffee and listened to her end of the conversation, knowing it was Langly just from the exasperation he could hear underlying her words. When she put on a more tolerant tone, he knew that Byers had come on the line, and was probably giving her the flight information she needed without the ‘I’m a hacker-god’ commentary. He thought briefly that he might have to do some hacking of his own, see if he could find a good conspiracy collectibles site and do a little gift giving for his friends, for they had also been a big help to them—to him, during all this, and he didn’t think he could convey that with just a first name, the way he and Scully seemed to be able to.

“Those guys,” Scully said, shutting off the phone and coming back to his side. “are still the most paranoid people I’ve ever met.” Somehow, it didn’t seem like such an insult now as it had the first time she’d said it. “But despite that, they’ve got everything arranged, and if the in-flight movie is “Love, Actually”, I owe Frohike a bottle of scotch.”

Mulder stood and put the coffee cup in the sink. “When’s the flight?”

Scully glanced at her watch. “If I leave now, I can have the truck back to the rental company and still make the feeder plane to Edmonton. From there, it’s just a quick layover in Minneapolis, then home.” The way she said it made Mulder feel a little guilty for keeping her with him as long as he had. After…after everything, Doggett had gone back to the apartment in Georgetown, taken up daddy duties like a pro, and between him and Scully’s mom, he’d only felt bad about keeping his best friend hostage on some mountain top about a thousand times a day. But he knew that she never would have left, even if he’d found some old inappropriate behavior and tried to drive her away. So the raging guilt had abated, and now, when it was finally time for her to go, he realized again what they’d all done for him.

“Don’t, Mulder,” she broke into his thoughts. “I was right where I needed to be. I know it. You know it. We all know it. Don’t borrow guilt.”

“You going to be starting up a psychic hotline, Scully?”

“Sure,” she laughed, letting him lead the way from the kitchen to the front door. “Right after I give up my lucrative career as a spokes-model for Feria.”

“I knew it!”

At the door, she pulled him into an unexpected hug. He patted her awkwardly for a moment, then eased into the comfort of her embrace, and pressed his cheek to the top of her head. It was several moments before she let him go, and turned to slip into her shoes.

“We’re good?” she asked, not looking at him.

“We’re good,” he confirmed.

He found his own boots, carried her suitcases out to the truck, hugged her again, made her promise to phone as soon as she could, and then ignored her tears the way she ignored his.

He watched the truck drive away for a very long time.

***
He tried reading, but his last trip to the city for books had been a lifetime ago, and he decided he had chosen badly. He tried eating, but cooking for one beyond soup and sandwiches was too much effort today, and he decided to have sunflower seeds instead. He finished the pot of coffee and put on another one with hands that shook from the first ten cups.

He tried booting up the computer but couldn’t even concentrate enough to beat level seven on Trogdor. There was nothing but spam in his email box, and when he discovered some spywarin’ bastard had installed a Bonzai Buddy on his hard drive while he wasn’t looking, he shut down the computer in complete disgust.

Finally, he overfed the cat, checked the time on the microwave, compared it to the clock in the living room, and stomped outside, not bothering to tie his boots, and then cursing colorfully when he nearly tripped over the laces.

Catching himself on the porch, he checked the door locks, checked his gun, and then considered the steps a moment before shrugging and continuing out into the yard. If God wanted him so bad that He would stoop to tripping him on the stairs, he decided, then He could have him.

God let him live instead, and he was warming up the truck a minute later, the ignition roaring loud enough to scare birds out of the trees around the house.

The rough nature of the trail he was driving along (it was too far degraded to be properly called a road anymore) kept him from speeding (he knew he’d gotten lucky with the shoelaces, among other things lately, and he wasn’t about to push that luck).

Radio reception was sketchy at best this high up, and what did filter through tended towards big-haired fundamentalists and sports commentary, but never the good kind of either, so after a burst of static and a dire prediction about the Flames chances this year, Mulder pushed a cd into the player. Skinner had installed the system into the truck at Mulder’s insistence, and they had both enjoyed burning discs off of the computer and surprising each other with their taste in music.

This was one of Skinner’s discs, Mulder realized. While he enjoyed the traditional flavor of the Easter Canadian bands, he had to admit he wasn’t the fan that Skinner was, and it made him wonder if Skinner hadn’t maybe been a fisherman in a past life.

“As opposed to an old Jewish woman,” he muttered aloud.

He slowed the truck at the turn off to Bow Falls without realizing it; a three second internal debate took him a hundred feet past the parking lot entrance and he had to back up to pull the truck in.

Parking between a beat up and ancient Citroen and a typical soccer mom Ford Explorer, he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel until the song ended, then abruptly shut off the ignition and exited the vehicle.

The steps up to the Falls seemed less steep today, although he knew it had nothing to do with the stairs themselves and everything to do with the crazy exercise regimen he had been putting himself through these past few weeks. Filling countless hours with running, lifting and even swimming when he could get to the gym. He was probably in the best shape he’d been in since Oxford, he thought. Maybe even better than that.

Voices froze him at the top of the steps.

A couple were sitting on the rock; ‘my rock—our rock—the rock’ his mind whispered; holding hands and looking out at the Falls. In front of Mulder, a woman held a camera while a tall, curly haired man herded two small curly haired children into her viewfinder. The children smiled, and one of the boys on the rock said something that made the other boy turn and kiss him, then throw an arm around his shoulders.

Mulder turned abruptly and ran back down the stairs.

Back in the truck he found a different disc with the same Celtic feel, took a couple of minutes to let his breathing return to something approaching normal, and then pulled out of the parking lot with enough zeal to spray gravel all over the other cars.

Twenty minutes later he was easing down highway sixteen and into downtown Banff. As usual, he had to marvel at the town—small city, really—that for all its growth still held to a main street with slant parking and a movie theater called the Bijou.

On the south end of the city, he bought a drive-thru A and W root beer milkshake-- Skinner had teased him unmercifully about them, but he was hopelessly addicted—and finished it in the hospital parking lot, watching the S.T.A.R.S. helicopters taking off and landing.

He checked his wrist for the time and wondered if the habit would die before he bought a new watch, then climbed out of the truck

At the front desk, the receptionist greeted him with warm familiarity.

“Fox, I swear we can set our watches by you.”

He gave her a wan smile. “Hi, Mikayla.”

“Did Dana get away okay?”

“Yeah.” Mulder saw that she wanted to make more idle chit-chat with him, and while he appreciated all the staff here—God knew he had put their patience to the test often enough—he still felt suspicious too; so as she opened her mouth to say something else, he gently interrupted her with “Can I go up?”

She gave him a warm understanding look. “Of course. I think Dr. Powley is up there, and Dr. Kaye, too.”

“Thanks,” he tried another smile for her, but found the hospital environment left him in short supply, as usual. So he settled for just waving as he turned and walked towards the bank of elevators at the end of the corridor.

***

For several minutes, Mulder simply stood in the doorway of the large physical-therapy room, surprised that the thudding of his heart wasn’t echoing off the walls loud enough to bring several nurses running.

Skinner was completely absorbed in the arm curls he was doing and failed to notice Mulder watching him, leaving the other man completely free to enjoy the show.

He was straddling a workout bench, and even at this distance, Mulder could see that one leg was still showing less muscle than the other, the loose cotton sweat pants Skinner was wearing seemed to cling more to one thigh, one calf. If he had been wearing shorts, Mulder knew he’d be able to see the difference even more clearly, not to mention the odd scar, and he was dimly glad that he didn’t have to.

The arm had healed quicker, strengthened faster, didn’t show the same damage as the leg did, and it showed in the amount of work Skinner was doing with it. The weight bar moved up and down as he curled his arm with smooth, rapid repetition, and although his white t-shirt was soaked and sticking to his chest and his face and scalp were turning red from the exertion, there was no hesitation in the movement.

Mulder thought he could watch this all day.

Instead he got to watch for about two minutes more, and then Skinner dropped the weight with a crash and a sigh and reached behind him for a towel. Mulder waited until he had mopped his face and neck, and was reaching for the water bottle on the floor beside him, and then he stepped into the room, saying, “Dynamic tension must be hard work, Walter.”

They grinned hugely at one another from opposite ends of the room.

When Mulder started moving again, Skinner tried to rise from his seat, sat back abruptly with a grimace and reached for the metal cane on the floor next to the water bottle. Mulder sped up and was at Skinner’s side before he could stand, crouching beside him and taking the cane from his hand.

“Don’t get up on my account, big guy—you know I don’t stand on ceremony.”

“Apparently neither do I,” Skinner replied, but his tone was less dejected than usual, and Mulder picked up on it immediately.

“Something I should know?” he asked.

Skinner responded by running a hand through Mulder’s hair, murmuring, “Spooky,” and then pulling him up by his shoulders to sit straddling the bench opposite him. Mulder let himself be guided, more thrilled than he let on to be manhandled in true Skinner fashion, when only weeks ago he had still been expecting to be scattering ashes over Bow Falls.

Marita’s final blow should have completely destroyed Skinner. The program she had been running through the palm pilot was set to mimic the gunshots that had killed Alex Krycek so long ago, and the nanocytes were poised to take most of his brain out.

Instead, and quite by accident, just when they should have been finishing the job, John Doggett had done his little ‘boot-heel’ reprogramming, and what had started out as painful death had turned into something coma-like and healing, while the nanocytes in Skinner’s system went about with their new agenda, knitting torn tissue, rebuilding cells on the most basic level, reversing the damage they had done.

It hadn’t happened overnight, and the muscle damage in Skinner’s arm and leg was still mending. But that didn’t matter to Mulder. The only vision of Skinner his heart allowed him to replay was the one of him opening his eyes in his hospital bed after two weeks full of tears, no answers, planning for funerals and Scully standing between him and total gun-to-the-head despair. He’d looked around, found Mulder staring stupidly at him, and said “Puppy. Where are my glasses? You look like Hell.”

It was the most eloquent “I love you” Mulder could recall ever hearing.

“Dr. Kaye was here earlier,” Skinner brought him back to the moment, still stroking his hair with one hand. Mulder pushed into his touch, let himself be petted, and did a little exploring of his own, letting his hand and gaze wander over the bad arm, wondering if the small black X that was apparently the nanocyte version of a bandage was going to be a permanent thing.

“I’m sorry I missed her,” he replied, leaning over to press a soft kiss to the X.

“No you’re not. She head locked you out of this room that first day so fast I don’t think your feet touched the floor.”

Mulder remembered seeing Skinner struggling with the exercises the physical therapist had demanded of him, and he still resented the way she had overreacted to his very calm, very rational inquiries about whether or not the stress might not be a little much just then.

Skinner grinned as if he could read Mulder’s mind. “You’ve got that wet cat look on your face, Puppy. You know she was right.”

Mulder refused to agree, and chose to kiss Skinner instead. On the lips, softly, on the cheek, nuzzling a moment, and then,  putting a hand on either side of Skinner’s head, he pressed his mouth to the X in the middle of his forehead.

Skinner wanted to be distracted. Wanted to kiss Mulder back. A part of him that he thought might have gone the way of the dinosaur a few weeks back spoke up now, as it had been doing the last few days, suggesting the best distraction would be to bend his lover over the bench and have his wild way with him.

Mulder frowned when Skinner laughed out loud.

“What is it, Walter? You’re looking very smug.”

“Yesterday’s agenda was pretty much standard. Therapy, nap, food—or what passes for food around here—more therapy, crappy Canadian television with you---“

“I thought you said you liked ‘Corner Gas’” Mulder protested. Skinner just smiled.

“Annoying tests and then sleep.” He turned his head in Mulder’s hands and kissed the palm suddenly presented to his mouth, then took the hands in his own and squeezed, almost painfully.

“However today’s agenda has a bit of variety.” He paused for dramatic effect, loving Mulder’s scowl as much as he loved the man’s smiles. “Today we’ve had therapy, nap, lunch and more therapy…”

“Walter…” Mulder tried out his own brand of AD surly growl. It didn’t work.

“And now, just to switch things up, we have shower, pack, paperwork, forty five minute drive, and then—“ he leaned in close, his lips on Mulder’s ear. “Hours of fucking you right through the mattress.”

Mulder jerked back like he’d been dealt an electric jolt.

“Wha—what?” The smile that bloomed on his face was nearly megawatt in intensity, lending credibility to the electrocution theory.

“Kaye gave me my walking papers. Says there’s nothing I can do here that I can’t do on an outpatient basis. Dr. Powley gave up on trying to explain me weeks ago. So, Puppy, whaddya say we get the hell outta Dodge?”

“Oh, shit,” He didn’t plan on tears anymore, they just happened. For a moment a look of alarm crossed Skinner’s face at Mulder’s outburst, but then he realized that he was seeing the damp evidence of his own feelings and he simply pulled the younger man into a strong, healthy embrace and pretended the blurring of his own vision was just because he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

Although it wasn’t on Skinner’s agenda, the emotional storm took some time to pass. But when it did, Mulder stood with a dazed grin, picked up Skinner’s cane and held out his hand.

“Come on, big guy…. let’s dance…”

THE END