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Now they lay on the sofa, Mulder’s back against Skinner’s chest, watching a documentary on ancient religions. Mulder noticed that Skinner seemed more interested in stroking a hand along his arm than in the show, and Skinner saw that Mulder’s eyes were half-closed. Mulder shivered as Skinner’s fingers reached the edge of the bandage on his wrist, then made their way back up his arm with deliberate languor, pausing at the pulse in the crook of his elbow, then dancing lightly over his forearm again, provoking another tremor in his body, and the light dusting of hair there stood on end. He turned a sleepy smile on his lover. Skinner kissed the corner of his mouth and retraced his finger trail up and down his arm, this time stopping on a solitary freckle just above the bandage. He studied it intently for a moment, and then gave the television a glance. “Are we watching this?” “Hey, there’s going to be Vikings after this. You like Vikings.” Skinner dug under their bodies with his other hand, and after a moment
he found the remote for the television buried in the cushions. Clicking
off the set with a stab of a button, he gave Mulder another kiss, this
one smothering something that wanted to be a pout, and declared, “Bed.”
“Who writes this crap for you?” Skinner gave Mulder a not unfriendly nudge, and when the younger man leaned forward, he slipped out from behind him, stood with a stretch and a crackling of knees and spine, and held out one big hand. Mulder threw another smile up at him and just enjoyed his view from the couch for a minute before allowing his lover to pull him to his feet, and from there, into his arms. Finding himself wrapped easily in a Skinner-sized bear hug, Mulder allowed his head to rest on a shoulder briefly, relishing the way he could lean into this embrace, secure in his belief that in this place, like no other, he could let down his guard, his defenses, and still remain strong. It was a heady feeling, dizzying in its intensity; he felt like he was being held in redwood, in stone, in uncompromising faith. He stepped back. “Seriously, Walter. You were right. I-I-We need to talk about this.” “Yes, we do.” Skinner agreed easily. “And we will.” This said with less good humor, and Mulder knew there’d be no ducking out of it this time. No words, no actions on his part, from tears to tease, were going to let him off the hook. Skinner was determined to know everything that he had felt, and seen, and everything he was feeling now, and Mulder was just going to have to give it to him. He wanted to give it to him. “Sleep first, though.” Skinner’s words broke into his thoughts. “I think we’ll both have a clearer perspective in the morning. Then we can talk about your—what did you call them? ‘Mysteries and wonders’?” Mulder leaned back into Skinner’s embrace and tentatively stroked a hand across the wide expanse of his chest. “Yeah, wonders. Miracles even.” He found a big hand, squeezed it firmly and turned towards the bedroom. “And by miracles, I don’t mean Gunmen in the coffee table.” Skinner laughed. “You’re so weird, Mulder.” “Spooky,” Mulder corrected. And Skinner led him away. ******* He woke early, which was unusual, and suddenly, which was not. At first he glanced around the room warily for a moment, not sure where he was. It took a minute for him to get his bearings. Early morning sunlight was creeping up the covers on the bed, not high enough to do more than warm the blankets over his legs, but with the intent to become something hotter and more uncomfortable in another few hours. Skinner was a snoring lump buried under the blankets beside him, and he turned carefully in the bed so as not to wake the man. The carpet felt warm under his bare feet when he stood, and he took a moment to shift and scratch, tugging at his yellow pajama pants just before they could become something wholly painful and wedgie-like. Pausing on the way to the bathroom, he watched the large brown rat running frantically in place in its cage on the dresser, the metal wheel it was on offering it no escape from the wire prison it was in. He tossed a few sunflower seeds into the cage, then moved on. In the bathroom, he urinated for what felt like an hour, and wondered how the Viking documentary had turned out. He let his mind slip a horned helmet and furry vest onto his lover for just long enough to surprise a small laugh out of him, then shook, flushed and turned on the shower. Shucking his pajamas, he paused a moment before stepping into the tub. The steam rising from the hot water smelled like smoke and swirled around him like fog and he felt disoriented. A shake of his head and a stern “What are you suggesting?” muttered to himself in his best Scully voice, and he felt better. The hot water pounded mercilessly onto his back and shoulders, and he groaned in pleasure. He reached for a bar of soap, and realized the bandage on his hand was a soggy mess. It didn’t seem any more important than the package of Morleys his fingers skated over in the soap dish. Looking down, he saw blood dripping onto the bottom of the white porcelain tub, mixing with the hot water and forming dark red rosettes that faded to pink as they swirled away towards the drain. “Aw, hell…” he murmured, realizing he’d reopened the cuts that Skinner had so lovingly and thoroughly ministered to the night before. Had he really believed that he could just hop into the shower without taking some sort of precautions? He held up his hand to check the damage even as he was shutting off the water. There was no blood. The bandage was intact, as white and blameless as it had been when he went to bed. It was damp, to be sure, but not ruined. “Just like me,” he grumbled. More blood dripped into the tub. A moment of discovery turned into a moment of panic when he realized that he was bleeding, but not from his hand. Dark red rivulets coursed down his thighs and it was from these that the roses in the tub were appearing. “Oh, shit…” Despite the sudden pain that flared up in his anus, he moved slowly, first tugging at the shower curtain and sure he could hear the individual squeak of each curtain hook as it scraped over the curtain rod, and then stumbling out of the tub and almost falling over. He grabbed for a towel and tried to remember if he’d closed the bathroom door, but before it could matter, said door swung open with a bang and bright light flooded into the room, momentarily blinding him. “No sleeping!” a harsh voice shouted at him, and he backed away from the door, tripped over a bathmat emblazoned with the FBI logo, and fell back into the tub, hitting his head so hard on the tiled surface of the wall that he saw stars. Not just stars, but whole constellations, planets, and even a UFO or two. For a fraction of a second, he wasn’t in the small bathroom in Walter’s house. He was in a smaller prison cell, surrounded by snarling young men in uniform, all of them with clubs and— He came back to himself when the door banged shut, and he heard the shout again, this time muffled by the cheap wood of the door. “No sleeping!” He knew what was coming next, and cold terror shoved an icicle dipped in Novocain into his heart. “Don’t worry. It’s just a flesh wound.” Startled, he turned and frowned at the rabbit beside him in the tub, it’s whiskers twitching like a grin as it combed its long ears with one paw. “Wha-fuck?” He struggled hugely, trying to extricate himself from the tub. More pain, more blood, and somebody started pounding on the door. The rabbit regarded him with Scully-blue eyes, still seeming to be smiling at him. Then it suddenly jerked its gaze upwards, and sank low in the tub, ears flattening along its skull. A shadow passed over them both, and in the distance Mulder thought he could hear some sort of wild birdcall. An eagle, or hawk. Maybe a dodo. And what the hell did it matter when— The doorframe splintered and Mulder emitted a shriek despite himself. “Well, that’s done it,” said the rabbit. “Better start dancing.” It turned, and with an almost sympathetic flick of a cotton puff tail, it loped easily off towards the end of the tub and disappeared. Another crack of wood breaking—the door sagged on its hinges—and Mulder tried to remember how he’d gotten through this the last time. How he’d managed to pull his thoughts away from what was being done to his body. Where he’d gone to save himself. To keep believing when everything in him was being destroyed from the inside out. The bathroom door at last gave in to the ferocious battering and fell forward with a crash. The man that walked into the room was army, but hardly regular. For one, he was naked. Huge, and hard muscled, and his army cap sat askew on a mop of greasy black hair. A cigarette jittered between his lips, and his eyes were completely black. Captain’s bars appeared to have been sewn directly onto his chest, and blood smeared the black stitching. “This is not happening, this is not happening…” Mulder tried to cover his face, but his arms, like his legs, refused to respond to his brain’s orders. “Wrong answer!” The man’s mouth never moved, but the voice echoed in Mulder’s skull, making his teeth ache and his eyes water. The soldier raised an arm, the bicep tattooed with what looked like ancient runes. Below them, another ink stain that might have been the symbol of the U.S. Army, but now was a blur of bruised color under thick hair. In his hand he held a huge club. “NO!” Suddenly he knew. He remembered. A warm, solid weight behind him, and his arms and legs reacquainted themselves with his neurological imperatives. He found he was able to stand, albeit slowly, although the soldier before him seemed to be moving even less quickly. Each step had the man sinking ankle deep into the floor, as though the linoleum had suddenly taken on the texture of wet clay. As if to emphasize that fact, Mulder suddenly saw a dark gargoyle’s features rise up from the floor, then recede, leaving nothing more than a ripple as it disappeared. Reaching behind him for balance, Mulder pushed himself to his feet. He was terrified, and there was no place to run to. He looked over to where B’rer Rabbit had disappeared, but there was no rabbit hole there, no burrow. Just the end of the tub, with a blue washcloth draped innocently over it. “Wrong answer,” the soldier told him, this time almost conversationally, and the cigarette fell from his lips as he grinned at him, revealing sharp yellow teeth. Mulder felt something digging into his back. He didn’t turn away from the monster before him, though, just looked up. And up. A huge pillar behind him, inscribed with runes and markings that one moment seemed to make total sense, and then were nothing but gibberish. But he thought if he could just hold onto it, just stay here and look at it, he could make sense of it. The soldier’s eyes were gleaming with crazed hate and lust as he looked at Mulder, but then they refocused on the pillar behind him, and something fearful and angry passed over those blank, black orbs for just a moment. Seconds later he was focusing on Mulder again, and now there was just a hand span of space between them. Mulder turned his back on the soldier and threw his arms wide, trying to embrace the monolith behind him. He was still holding tight when the club came crashing down on his head. ****** “Mulder! Mulder!” Mulder came awake with a startled grunt, and found himself sitting up in Skinner’s arms with a book in his lap. “What—what—“ he glanced fearfully at the bathroom door, then at the dresser top, and Skinner followed his gaze with a confused one of his own. “Where’d the rat go?” “Mulder, you were having a nightmare, I think,” Skinner replied. “You were thrashing around and brought that book down off the headboard. “That doesn’t explain the rabbit, though.” Mulder replied, rubbing the sore spot on his head and wishing he’d been reading a paperback. Another confused frown as Skinner gave him a glasses-free myopic squint, but his arms never let go from their embrace of him, and Mulder suddenly moved in close, offering a small smile and a sloppy kiss. “It was you,” he whispered. Skinner shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?” Mulder just kept on smiling. “I’ll show you.” ______________________ Totem by Rush
I've got a pantheon of animals in a pagan soul
I believe in what I see
Angels and demons dancing in my head
I've got celestial mechanics
I've got idols and icons, unspoken holy vows
That's why I believe Angels and demons inside of me
Sweet chariot, swing low, coming for me
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