Chapter 3: Mari-Mac

“Hello?” As usual, Dana Scully gave herself a little silent congratulations for answering the phone like a human being and not an FBI agent.

“Scully, it’s me.”

Mulder’s voice, sounding small and terrified, and she wondered briefly how many grand fuck-ups in her life had started this way, with these three words uttered by this particular man.

She knew it didn’t matter.

“Mulder—what is it?”

John Doggett walked into the room. He immediately noticed the frown and the creased brow of a worried woman, and moved closer to her.

“Who is it?” He mouthed the words rather than speaking them aloud, and although she was looking at him, she didn’t reply; just continued holding the phone in a small hand growing white with tension and frowning at the sounds coming from it. And when he opened his mouth to repeat the question, she held up the other hand in a warning.

He immediately knew who was on the other end of the line.

Before any of the jealousies he had learned to live with could rear up and bite either one of them on the ass, he rearranged his features into something neutral with just a shade of understanding in eyes as blue as his lover’s, and touched her lightly on the arm. And when she mimed writing something, he found a pen and paper for her, and then slipped out of the room without another word.

***

“Will you come?”

“Of course I will.” Spoken with no hesitation at all, and Mulder almost sobbed with relief. He hadn’t realized until just now how much he missed his former partner. Oh, it wasn’t that they didn’t talk—when Walter wasn’t squawking about the phone bill he was bitching about the number of hours Mulder spent on the net, in chat. Not that he was a total nag about it. He had certainly billed his own number of hours with Dana Scully himself. But regardless of who was saving money the 1-800-collect way, the fact remained the same that he, Fox Mulder, adored his former partner and best friend, Dana Scully, and a part of him had felt incomplete being so far away from her.

And although the reason for her visit was nothing he even wanted to think about, he was grateful to know she was going to come.

“What about—“ he paused before throwing a not unwelcome but definitely new wrench into their plans. “John?”

“He’ll understand,” she promised, and he believed her. “I’ll need him to stay with William anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Scully, I wish there was some other way—“

“Nonsense, Mulder. This is Skinner we’re talking about. You don’t think he means something to me too?”

“I know—“ he felt a flush of shame rise in his cheeks, and wondered if she could hear it in his voice. “I—Dana, thank you.”

“I’ll call you back and let you know when I can be there,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up, and Mulder knew without a doubt that things were going to be all right. They had to be.

***
Scully hung up the phone and was in the process of digging her credit card out of her wallet when John came back into the room. Blue eyes met for a moment, Scully’s guilty azure, Doggett’s curious platinum.

“Mulder?”

“Mulder.”

“What did he want?”

Scully stiffened at his tone. She knew in her heart that John Doggett was not an insecure man. She knew that he loved her, and she knew that he had no doubts about her love for him.

But she also knew that he was always going to react this way to her relationship with Fox Mulder. And that she was always going to let him do it.

“It’s Skinner,” she said, picking up the phone again.

“Skinner?” New concern tinged his words. “Is he okay?”

He had to wait while she called the airport and booked the earliest flight to Calgary that she could get.

“Mulder says he’s fine right now,” she told him as she hung up the phone. “But…” She paused, and then surprised him by asking, “Do you remember Krycek?” The name tasted funny in her mouth.

“Hard to forget that little rat,” John replied. “But what does he have to do with Skinner and Mulder? I mean, aside from the fact that he’s dead, and Skinner’s the one who did us that favor.”

“Skinner did shoot him,” Scully agreed. “And with good reason.”

“He was threatening Mulder.”

John had accepted the relationship between Mulder and Skinner so easily that sometimes Scully was still surprised by it, and sometimes she felt ashamed, as she remembered some of her own less gracious reactions.

“There’s far more to it.” She suddenly clutched John’s hand tightly and said, “I should put on some coffee. This is a long story, and I’m going to have to pack, too.”

John agreed with a curt nod of his head, and then brushed Scully’s hair back with his free hand. He opened his mouth, closed it abruptly, and then, prompted by another squeeze of her hand, he asked, “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” She kissed the frown from his face and added, “Yes…”

“I can hear the “but” in there,” he told her.

She smiled; John had grown as adept at reading her as Mulder, and it warmed her heart.

“I need you here. Working. There are thing—files, reports—“

As if on cue, they both startled at a small sound from the other room.

“And William, of course,” Scully continued.

Another cry, this one more demanding.

“Best go see what his highness wants,” John said. “But then we’re going to talk. I know you and Mulder have this thing you do that doesn’t seem to need words, but I’m just a simple beat cop at heart, and you know what I need.”

They shared a kiss and said in unison, “Give a little, get a little.”

They kissed again in the doorway to the kitchen, and then Scully went to find her son, and John made his way to the coffeemaker, searching for the filters, and hopefully some answers.

***

Mulder left the waiting room and made his way back up the hall to the nurse’s station. He wasn’t sure what room Skinner was in, but after another heated exchange with the doctor about who exactly constituted a ‘member of the family’, and then a more informative conversation where he was told that Skinner would be released tomorrow barring any further complications, Mulder had immediately stormed off, emotions in a tailspin, to call the one person he knew would help him make sense of it all.

And just talking to Scully, just hearing himself telling her what was going on, and her complete acceptance of it, seemed to have lifted the weird veil of panic that had been draped over him, choking him, since Skinner had fallen to their kitchen floor a lifetime ago.

At least he knew that, with Scully coming, Skinner would have the best care possible. He wasn’t one to trust easily—just thinking that made him smile grimly—and he had the added homophobia so invasive throughout the hospital to make him even more wary of the staff here. And then of course, there was the question that was nagging at him like a bad tooth at the back of his skull—how had this happened?

Taking a deep breath, Mulder approached the nurse standing duty at the desk, and told her, “I’m Fox Mulder. I’m supposed to get some information from you regarding Walter Skinner.” His spine straightened involuntarily as he waited for a nasty response.

And never got it. While the nurse (Nurse Moore, Mulder read on her nametag) never thawed enough to offer a hug, or a smile for that matter, she did manage to explain to him that Skinner was to remain overnight, that he was in no immediate danger, no visitors would be allowed until morning, and that he should go home and come back before noon the next day with a set of clothes for the man, as he would be released then to await test results. She didn’t seem at all surprised to be relating this information to someone so obviously not a blood relative, and Mulder wondered if the doctor had warned her about his own experience with him.

Despite what she had told him, Mulder still argued with Nurse Moore for a useless five minutes over a visit to Skinner’s room. She wouldn’t give an inch. The patented Mulder tears were as ineffective as the patent pending Mulder charm, and the last resort Mulder anger didn’t help either. She had her orders, apparently, and nothing short of a live grenade shoved up her dress was going to budge her. The visual of that was enough to calm him somewhat, and he was able to accept that he was not going to be with Skinner until morning. He gave the nurse the number of his cell phone, told her not once or twice but three times to make sure to call him if there was any change at all, and then turned towards the bank of elevators that would dump him downstairs and out the door. Moving in the opposite direction of where he knew his lover was felt like pushing his way through taffy, and he thought his muscles were actually creaking in protest.

As the elevator descended to the lobby, he decided he would find a motel and stay there, close by, instead of trying to make the two hour drive back home, then trying to spend the night alone in their bed, and then driving back for another two hours in the morning. Unless of course something happened in the night, and then he’d have to—a motel room was the only answer.

He hoped that the only call he got for the rest of the day would be Scully.

End 3/19