~ Driftwood ~
|
Posted: 21st January 2001
Driftwood
Skinner
had seen the sun rise in all corners of the globe, from the steamy, jungle
daybreaks of Vietnam, to the pollution-filtered, hazy dawns of Washington DC.
Each possessed their own special kind of beauty, but African sunrises had a
depth and intensity that were unique. Skinner didn't think he'd ever grow tired
of the way the first golden rays of the sun lit the sea, sparkling like glowing
apricot-pink gems on the churning white surface of the waves, and lighting the
horizon with streaks of gentle, morning fire.
Skinner
sat on the porch of his small beach house, a blanket wrapped around his body, a
cup of tepid tea in his hand. He hadn't
planned on waking at this unearthly hour simply to view the sunrise, but, like
so much else in his life in the five years since Mulder’s abduction, it had
just happened. Five years...He glanced at the date on his watch and realised,
without surprise, that today was the anniversary of Mulder’s disappearance.
Days and months had passed without him even noticing the date in this lazy,
beautiful place, but of course some inner sensor would not let this
day of all days pass by un-noticed.
Skinner
warmed his cold hands around his cup of tea, and gazed out into the black depths
of the night. It was five years to the day since Mulder had disappeared, and
four since he had performed a vanishing act of his own...
*****
Deputy
Director Kersh’s ears were moving in time with his jaw as his mouth opened and
closed in furious speech. Skinner gazed at the sight, transfixed. He had stopped
listening some time ago – Kersh was always perpetually angry anyway. At least
this time Skinner wasn’t the object of his ire – that misfortune belonged to
Agent John Doggett, who was taking the unjustified chewing out much better than
Skinner would have done in his position. Skinner had the strangest sense of deja
vu. Today was the first anniversary of Mulder’s abduction, and he had no idea
why he was spending it here, in this job he had grown to loathe, taking orders
from a man he despised. He seemed to have been sitting in this chair, watching
Kersh lose his temper at some hapless agent or another, for years. It had an
otherworldly quality to it, and he felt as if he had stepped outside his own
body, and could suddenly see the whole universe, and his place in it, very
clearly. "You know," he murmured, finding himself rising to his feet, full of resolve, "I think I've had enough of this. I think it's time to leave." "What the hell are you playing at?" Kersh demanded after a moment's shocked silence. "You can't just walk out of this meeting, AD Skinner."
"Oh, I think I can." He smiled,
politely, never feeling more sure of anything in his life. "I resign, Al. I
quit. Oh, you can probably make me work out the terms of my contract, but I
strongly recommend that you don't."
Doggett got to his feet, an expression of total surprise on his face. "Sir, you don't have to..." he began. "It's all right, John, this doesn't have anything to do with you," Skinner interrupted him. Doggett nodded, glanced briefly at Kersh’s thunderous face, and then slipped quietly out of the room, leaving the other two men to it. "That's strange - I never took you for a quitter, Walter." Kersh rocked back on his heels, an ugly sneer on his face. "I'm not quitting, Al. I just…I just need to go home," Skinner said softly, not even sure what he meant by the words. Kersh reacted angrily, more, Skinner suspected, because he knew that he had lost any power he had ever had over his subordinate than for any other reason. "If you walk out of this office then you're throwing away your career, Walter," Kersh warned. "What career, Al?" Skinner smiled mildly. "We both know that my career effectively came to a halt the day I re-opened the X Files, years ago, against orders from above, and thereby showed that I wasn't prepared to be anyone's lackey."
He said the words calmly, without malice, but
his inference clearly wasn’t lost on Kersh whose dark skin turned an
apoplectic ruddy colour in hue, his eyes blazing.
"You know, the difference between you and
me, Walter, is that I'm prepared to do what the hell it takes to get to the
top," Kersh snapped at him.
Skinner thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. "You're right, Al. That is the difference between us," he said softly, before opening the door, and walking out into his new life. He never looked back.
*****
Skinner
wasn’t sure why he felt so wide awake at this unearthly hour. He and Ben had
both gotten mildly drunk the previous night as
usual, and he had staggered back to his house, singing away merrily to himself
as he swayed across the beach. He had slept for a few hours, but something had
woken him in the cold, dark moments before dawn. His bladder had protested the
amount of alcohol he had consumed the previous night and he had gotten up to
relieve the ache, and as he had padded barefoot back to bed, a flash of white in
the sky outside had claimed his attention so he had gone out on the porch to
watch. Strange lights in the sky were not unusual in this area - he had seen
them before, but none quite like this. This had been just one light, and
brighter and more intense than any other he had ever seen. It had hovered in the
sky, and a low, vibrant hum had filled the air, and then it had gone.
Feeling
too restless to return to bed, Skinner had made himself a pot of tea, pulled a
blanket around his body, and settled down to watch the sunrise. The night was
always darkest just before dawn, but he loved the inky, velvet depths of that
darkness. Soon, very soon, the first, faintest rays of the sun would glimmer on
the horizon, heralding a brand new day, and not just any day; an anniversary.
Five years since Mulder’s disappearance. What would the day bring, he
wondered? On the first anniversary of Mulder’s abduction he had quit his job.
On the second he had gotten involved in a fight in a market in Turkey, and had
ended up nursing a sore jaw and two broken ribs. On the third he had spent the
day downing whisky after whisky in a pub in England until he was too blind drunk
to stand, and on the fourth he had stayed in his room in Tunisia all day,
watching the whirring fan cast endless shadows on the ceiling. Maybe this year
he would spend this day as he spent most of his days; swimming, reading,
fishing, talking to Ben, or any one of his other new friends in the bar in
town…or maybe he would spend the day alone, dozing in the sun on the porch,
listening to the chorusing cicadas, and remembering the past. He had long since
given up fighting memories. Now he let them come, good and bad, and he was sure
that on this day, of all days, there would be plenty of memories clamouring for
his attention…
*****
Skinner
packed his possessions into boxes, feeling curiously light-hearted now that he
had made his decision to leave. He glanced around his apartment, but there was
nothing to keep him here. Nobody would care if he stayed or went, except
possibly Scully. He had only stayed this long because of her. Her pregnancy had
given him a reason to carry on in those first, dark days after Mulder’s
disappearance. He couldn’t have just left her to cope alone in a hostile world
in her condition, so he had done what he always did - shouldered his duties and
responsibilities, and put one foot in front of the other when there was a huge
gaping hole where his heart had once been. There had been so many times in the
year since Mulder’s abduction when he had been tempted to throw it all in and
leave, and each time it had been Scully who had pulled
him back from the brink.
“Mulder
wouldn’t want you to give up your career over him,” she had said, and she
might even have been right, but the time had come to stop thinking about what
Mulder would have wanted and start thinking about what Walter Skinner wanted –
what Walter Skinner needed - and what
he needed right now was to get as far away from Washington DC as possible.
Scully
would be fine. Her baby son was four months old, and there hadn’t been any
threat to her or her child – Mulder’s child. When Scully had made a decision
to have a child through IVF, Mulder had been the first person she had approached
for help, and of course he had agreed – after discussing it with Skinner
first. It had seemed very right, and very natural: Mulder was not only
Scully’s partner - he was also her best friend. Both he and Skinner knew how
much she wanted a child and they were just happy that they could help. Skinner
didn’t regret it for an instant. He knew that Scully missed Mulder, but with
her new baby and a new partner in her life she was making a fresh start for
herself, while he was just drifting, aimlessly. She had moved on, and he…he
had not.
Skinner
picked up a shirt that was still lying where his lover had left it, a year ago,
slung carelessly over the back of the armchair, and held it to his face, taking
a deep inhalation of the scent that still lingered there. He hadn’t moved any
of Mulder’s possessions until now. He could see Mulder, in his mind’s eye,
dressed only in his boxer shorts, lazily reading the newspaper as was his habit
on Sunday mornings, one long limb slung carelessly, casually over the arm of the
chair, his hair still tousled from where he had slept on it.
Skinner closed his eyes, still holding the
shirt. There were memories all around, and they just made him even more acutely
aware of what he had lost. Mulder had been his lover for such a short time, and
if it hadn’t been for Scully, then Skinner seriously doubted that he and
Mulder would ever have overcome their reserve and finally consummated what had
been, on his side at least, a constant, unswerving devotion that he had never
quite been able to hide. The fact that Mulder might reciprocate those emotions
had taken him totally by surprise. It had been Scully who had engineered the
candlelight dinner for two that had finally brought them together. Each of them
had thought that she was to be their date...only
she had never shown up. She had
called the next day though. Skinner could still remember the feel of
Mulder’s warm head on his chest as they lay in bed that
first morning. He could still remember the way the sun had shone through drapes
they hadn’t had either the time or inclination to close during the passionate
haste of the previous evening. The sunlight had revealed coppery undertones in
Mulder's hair, which Skinner had always assumed, wrongly, to just be a plain
dark brown; that had been the first of many small, unimportant and yet thrilling
discoveries that he had made about his new lover. He
had reached for the phone, taking care not to disturb Mulder’s slumbering form
draped over his chest, and had spoken to Scully for a few minutes - until she
had asked to speak to Mulder.
"Uh, how do you know he's here?" he had stammered down the phone, and she had laughed out loud. "He sure as hell better be there after all the trouble I went to in order to finally get you two guys together!"
And somehow, after that day, Mulder had never
left. At least not until...
Skinner threw Mulder’s shirt into a black sack
with the rest of his belongings. He wouldn’t throw them out – not just yet.
He’d put them all in storage and decide what to do with them when he came
back…if he came back.
He
sold his apartment, wrapped up his affairs in the US, and spent the next three
years trying to outrun his own misery, only to find that it went with him
wherever he travelled. As he drifted from town to town, and country to country,
searching for he knew not what, a quotation rose unbidden to his mind taunting
him with the folly of ever hoping to find rest, or escape, or whatever it was he
sought in his endless travels: "Different skies, same soul…” He
couldn’t remember who had said those words, but they held a profound truth for
him. It didn’t matter where he went, because he took his sadness with him,
packed up in his heart.
For a
man who had always been used to the tyranny of the clock, the phone, and the
incessant, meticulously-timed appointments that formed his working day, the
novelty of having all the time in the world to do whatever he pleased, and the
liberty to go wherever he wanted, was, at first, bewildering. In a frenzied
attempt to cast off any trace of his former life he gave up his neatly pressed
clothing, state of the art suitcase, cell phone, and carefully prearranged
travel itinerary, and abandoned himself solely to the forces of chance - and
fate. For three years he roamed wherever his
footsteps took him, making his decisions about where to go next on the roll of a
dice, or by the end of his pencil thrust at random into a place on a map. From
owning an apartment, a car, and a closet full of expensive clothes, he went to
wearing only the clothes he stood up in, and a few other meagre belongings,
which he kept stuffed into a canvas bag that could easily be slung over his
shoulder. Travelling light, he called it. Dangerously unprepared, was Scully's
reproving verdict, but he hoped he managed to allay her fears with the postcards
he sent regularly – and the gifts he found in countless remote towns and
villages, and despatched back home in order to delight little Thomas Scully. He
loved that boy as if he was his own son, but the child’s wide hazel eyes, and
full lips were painful reminders of what he had lost - and it was memories of
Mulder that had driven him away from Washington DC in the first place… *****
Skinner
got up, and stretched. He threw the dregs of his tea out onto the beach, and
leaned against the wall of his house. He wondered what Scully was doing, and
little Thomas Scully, who would now be four years old. He had pictures of the
child pinned up all around the house; the little boy grew more like his father
with each passing year. Skinner hoped that he’d see the child again one day,
but not yet. He couldn’t face going back home just yet.
Home. Only he didn’t think of Washington DC as
‘home’ any more. He wasn’t even sure that he thought of the US as home.
When he and Mulder had been together he would have called anyplace where Mulder
was 'home.' It had been that simple. Love had made it that simple. When Mulder
had been abducted he had never expected to find anywhere else to call 'home'.
For three long years he had been a drifter, someone who wandered through, like a
ghost. He had made fleeting friendships, shared a cup of tea here, a game of
chess in a rundown bar, or a conversation on a
bus there, but mostly he kept himself to himself, and made no real connection
with anyone… until one day he had walked into a tiny African town by the sea
and everything had changed. He wasn't sure why his footsteps had brought him
here but they had, unerringly, with each roll of his dice, and each stab of his
pencil into the map…
*****
It was
just a small town – barely more
than a tiny smudge on his map. There were some houses, a tiny market, and a
small, ramshackle bar, which was his first port of call. He downed a few beers -
and drowned in a sea of friendly, welcoming faces. He didn’t know why they
should welcome him so enthusiastically; they didn’t know him, and yet they
greeted him as if he were one of their own, returning to the fold after a long
time away in a hostile world. Skinner, used to the urban jungle of Washington
DC, where making eye contact on the Metro with a stranger could cost you your
life, felt that he should have been surprised by the warmth of their
welcome...and yet he wasn't. Finding this town, on this remote stretch of the
Ivory Coast, felt somehow right...like coming home.
“Heya!”
A tall, slender man, with ebony skin and shining white teeth wrapped an arm
around his shoulder by way of greeting. “Adeben.” He said, pointing at his
own chest. “You took a long time to find your way back. Yes?”
“Back?”
Skinner frowned. The stranger was talking in pidgin English, but even so,
Skinner wasn’t sure he had misunderstood the man’s meaning.
“Yes.
You take a long time.” The man beamed. He found Skinner’s hand, and pumped
it hard. “Adeben,” he said again. “Ben to you!”
Skinner
looked at the man for a while and then gave a slow nod. “Yes. Ben.” He shook
the stranger’s hand vigorously. “Walter.” He said, pointing at his own
chest. Ben grinned and shrugged, as if an introduction hadn’t been necessary,
and beckoned over the crowd of smiling faces that were beaming at them.
Skinner
stayed at first in a tiny room above the bar, or just slept on the beach. The
days slipped away without him even noticing, and one day he realized that he had
been here for three months, which was longer than he had ever stayed anywhere
since his journeying had begun. Each day he wondered whether he would wake up
and feel that familiar restless tingling in his gut, telling him that it was
time to move on, but it didn’t happen, and as the days passed he became more
confident that it wouldn’t happen. He sent Scully a letter telling her where
he was, and that he was okay, and was surprised, a month or so later, to receive
one back from her, startled, and slightly incoherent in tone, informing him that
his newfound ‘home’ was the very place she had visited several years
previously, when an alien spacecraft had been found hidden in the surf. He asked
Ben about the spaceship, and his friend nodded, as if he had been expecting the
question, and took Skinner to a remote section of the beach that he hadn’t
visited before.
“Your
ship.” Ben paused on the cliff, and pointed, and Skinner took a sharp intake
of breath. Despite having read Scully’s report at the time, he wasn’t sure
that he had ever really believed the alien ship existed before, but sure enough
– there it was. The outline of the spacecraft was just visible from above,
almost hidden by the sea. He scrambled down the cliff and along the beach, and
then realized that the craft was protected by a strange optical illusion – the
closer you got to it, the less visible it became.
“Wait
until low tide…then you can see it better,” Ben advised him over his
shoulder. Skinner ignored him, and threw himself into the water, eager to swim
out to the craft to get a clearer view but Ben held him back.
“Don’t
touch,” his friend warned.
“Why?”
He turned, confused.
“Nobody
touches. If you do, you bring the swarms of locusts, or the bees.” Ben
shrugged. “Sometimes even worse.”
“Worse?
How?” Skinner frowned.
“The
sea boils red – like blood, and you burn alive.” Ben nodded violently, and
Skinner shook his head.
“That’s
just superstition, Ben.”
“No,”
Ben said firmly, pulling him back towards the shore. “No touch, Walter.” And
there was something about the vehement way he spoke, and the serious look in
those dark eyes that made Skinner think twice about trying to reach the
spacecraft. These people had lived in close proximity to this strange alien ship
for countless centuries – they had an understanding of it that he did not.
He
couldn’t just let the matter pass though. It seemed too important, too much of
a coincidence that his footsteps had brought him to this place for him to do
nothing. So he did the one thing he could do – he asked questions. The
townsfolk were all happy enough to talk to him, but they all said the same thing
– don’t touch the ship. They recounted tales of people disappearing, and
visitations by grave, African warriors, warning against going near the ship.
“Some truths are not for us,” they told him, nodding vigorously, and
shrugging expressively. They had grown, over
the years, to think of the spacecraft almost as if it were some kind of ancient
monument to the dead, and as such it was treated with respect, and not
disturbed. Remembering the details from Scully’s report, Skinner began to
wonder if they might not be right. Mostly there was still enough of the AD left
in him to make him disinclined to believe any of it, but all the same, he kept a
respectful distance from the spacecraft. It was almost impossible to see most of
the time anyway. Only on certain days, at low tide, when the sun was shining
directly on it, did the silvery outline of the spacecraft become visible. At
first he was mesmerised by it, and spent long hours sitting on the beach just
waiting to catch a glimpse of the alien ship, but in time he became so used to
it, lying on the sea bed, unchanging and unknowable, that he barely gave it a
second thought. Like the rest of the townsfolk, he ignored it.
On the
day he first saw that spaceship, Skinner knew that he had reached his
journey’s end. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just something he knew
in his gut, and he had learned to listen to his instincts over the past few
years. This area of the world was beautiful but that wasn't why he decided to
stay; he had been in other, equally beautiful places during his travels. No, he
decided to stay because something clicked into place the moment he had first set
foot in this place, and seeing the ship had just made it clear to him: he
wouldn’t be going back home because he was already home.
*****
The
faintest smudge of pink on the horizon brought a slow, gentle smile to Skinner's
face
as he leaned against the wooden wall of his porch, gazing across the dark sea.
The sun crept, slow inch by slow inch, above the horizon, flooding the sky with
the first rays of golden-pink morning light. Skinner couldn't remember when he
had last felt this relaxed. The sun illuminated the long yellow sands of the
beach, and the dark shape of his boat as it lay, upturned, a few yards away from
his house. Everything took shape around him, bright and clean and newborn. The
beach was littered with the usual debris of driftwood – the scenery constantly
changing with each dawning day. Skinner watched as the sun’s rays broadened
and flattened, until it was almost light.
'Different
skies, same soul.' Only here, in this remote town by the sea, had he come to
understand that. You couldn't outrun the past. It went with you wherever you
travelled, but at least here, he could nurse his broken heart among friends. The
pain didn't go away, but somehow it was easier to bear in this place, that he
now called ‘home’.
***** It took him a little while to adjust to his new
life. He was a wealthy man after selling his possessions in the US, and it
barely made even the slightest dent in his savings when he built his beach house
on a beautiful stretch of land directly facing the bay where the spaceship lay
buried. He constructed the house himself, buying only the best materials from
local traders, knowing that he was paying far too much but not caring. The
townsfolk all helped in their haphazard way, showing up at strange times of the
day to do little jobs, or just to bring him food and drink, until it was done.
In return, he bought enough alcohol to make his house warming party a very fine
event indeed, and one that would be remembered and spoken about for a long time.
He invited the whole town, and the whole town showed up - for months afterwards
he was greeted wherever he went with the words, “Hey, Walter – when you have
another party?” He couldn’t remember when he had last enjoyed
an occasion so much. His three years of wandering had been lonely, restless, and
empty, but now his newly built house was filled with colour, laughter, and the
sounds of music, and people enjoying themselves. As his guests began to drift
away, and the sun started to creep above the horizon, Skinner found himself
sitting on the porch with Ben, each of them with a drink in his hand, looking
out over the sea.
"What this place needs is a woman,"
Ben told him drunkenly.
Skinner shook his head, sadly. "No, Ben. What this place needs is a Mulder, and he isn't coming back.” There was something about his life here that was so special he wouldn't taint it with lies and half-truths. Mulder was the love of his life, and he was proud of that, not ashamed. "He is the one you pine for, even when the sun is shining and life is good? He is why your eyes are always sad?" Ben asked. Skinner smiled and nodded, and Ben nodded back, seeming to understand without needing explanations. "He come back?"
"No." Skinner shook his head and took
a deep sip of his drink. "Mulder would have loved it here. At least he
would if we could have tied him down for long enough to make him appreciate the
peace of this place." He gave a wry smile. He could see his lover in his
mind's eye, dressed in the African uniform of open cotton shirt, and faded
shorts, could almost hear Mulder's dry, ironic tones as he wandered around the
house, examining it in minute detail. Mulder would put his head on one side,
smile, and ask him if he had built the place himself, and when he replied in the
affirmative, Mulder would laugh and make some comment about Skinner being 'good
with his hands' before pulling him into an embrace with an injunction to 'prove
to me just how good, big guy!' "He dead?" Ben put a hand on his arm, breaking him out of his reverie. Skinner swallowed down the lump in his throat. "No, not dead, just gone." "Then he come back." Ben smiled, and
nodded confidently, and Skinner smiled back, uncertainly. If only it were that
simple.
He
bought a small boat, and kept himself fit by vigorous sailing sessions, combined
with long runs along the coast. You could run for miles in either direction
without encountering another human being, although the townsfolk thought he was
crazy to waste his energy on such a pointless pastime. He enjoyed it though. He
loved the feel of the sand beneath his bare feet, and the taste of the salty air
on his lips, and sometimes, if he lost himself in the running, he was sure that
he could feel Mulder jogging alongside him. They had often run together, back in
DC, and there were occasions when he could sense Mulder’s presence so strongly
that he held entire conversations with the other man, lost in an endorphin haze.
The sensation that his lover was with him was so strong that later, when he
stopped running and looked back along the beach, he was often surprised to see
only one set of footprints.
The
memories of that terrible day in Oregon five years ago were easier to bear now -
not because, as the old cliché went, time was a healer, but because he had
found a place where he could get the memories out, and examine them, and nobody
cared whether he turned up in town the next morning with a hangover, or not at
all. Sometimes, when the memories hurt too much, he locked himself away for a
few days, and the townsfolk respected that, but if it was any longer than a week
then Ben, or one of his other friends, would come knocking at the door of the
beach house. They would sit him up, pour water down his inebriated throat, and
take him out into the sun, or back to their homes for a meal, or out onto the
sea in one of their boats, and they didn't expect him to make conversation, or
to be sober, or amusing, or interesting. They just accepted him as he was, and
he didn't think he'd been more grateful for anything in his life. It was strange
how here, among people he had known for such a small amount of time, he had
found more kindness and acceptance than he had known back in his old life, in
DC. ***** The sun was now clearly visible, sitting on the
horizon, warming the land awake, and the tingling sensation in his stomach had
become so acute as to be uncomfortable. Skinner wasn’t sure why – but he
assumed it had something to do with this being the anniversary of Mulder’s
abduction. It was the first such anniversary he had spent in his new home, and
he wasn’t sure how he’d feel as the day progressed. Unable to sit still any
longer, Skinner got up, stretched, and stepped out onto the beach. The wet sand
squidged between his toes, and the newly risen sun warmed his back and head,
making the sea shine a hundred different shades of aquamarine. He stretched
again, and wandered down the beach towards his upturned boat. Shedding his
blanket at the water's edge, he slid, naked, into the cold sea. It cleared his
head, and he paddled along idly for a while, lost in thought. He swam back to
his boat, and rested on it, gazing towards the distant headland, feeling at one
with himself, and peaceful, despite the constant ache in his heart. Something
caught his attention…not something that was there, but something that wasn't.
It was low tide, and usually the sun glinted off the half-buried spaceship
across the bay at this time of the morning. Skinner couldn't shake off the
feeling that something wasn't right, and he had come to trust his instincts over
the past few years. He tugged at his boat, righted it, pushed it out into the
water, and grabbed the oars, trying to identify what he was feeling as he rowed.
No, it wasn't that something wasn't right…it was that something was different.
He rowed steadily, easily, across the bay, tied the boat to the ramshackle
wooden jetty, and then climbed out. It was
only then that he realised that he was still
naked. That didn't bother him particularly - it was early so nobody was around,
and he wasn't sure they would have cared anyway. He walked along the beach a
little way, still not entirely sure what he was looking for...and then stopped. "No. Christ…no." Skinner took a deep breath, and walked slowly forwards. The man was lying on his front, his body smooth and…white; a white man, here, where he knew himself to be the only white face for miles around. Skinner's whole body was shaking as he edged closer, and closer, until he could make out the scars on the man's back, and the bunched, knotted cords of his muscles under the surface of the skin. The man remained unmoving, face down on the sand, his dark hair fluttering in the sea breeze, and Skinner's heart plummeted towards the soles of his bare feet. He knelt down beside the stranger, placed a gentle hand on the man's throat and let out a hoarse cry when he found a pulse. His hands were trembling as he turned the man over, and…found himself looking not at a stranger, but instead at a familiar, beloved face.
Mulder.
"Mulder." Skinner took the other man's
head onto his lap, and gently brushed his face with shaking fingers.
"Fox," he whispered. The sun edged even higher on the horizon, bathing
the beach in pure, white light that seemed to cleanse and heal as it warmed the
two men's cold, wet skin. "Fox," Skinner whispered again. Two eyelids began to flutter, and then he was looking into upside-down hazel eyes, that gazed at him incredulously, as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
"Walter."
Mulder's voice was raw, and guttural, but so unmistakably him that Skinner could
have wept. "I had a dream, Walter," Mulder croaked. "It's all right. It's okay." Skinner soothed Mulder's hair, and hugged him into his lap. He couldn't believe this was happening. Not now, after all these years. Tears began to roll down his cheeks, and Mulder gave a faint ghost of a smile. "Don't cry, Walter." "I'm not," Skinner replied, rocking back and forth, hugging Mulder to him as he did so, his tears spilling onto the other man's face. "I'm not, my love, I'm not." Mulder smiled, hazily, and then looked around, his eyes bleary. "Where are we, Walter?" He asked, staring at the sea, and the boat bobbing by the jetty as if he had been transported to an alien world. "Home, Mulder," Skinner said, with a smile, wrapping his arms around his lover and pulling him up the sand, away from the cold sea. The golden-pink rays of the new dawn embraced them both in their warm glow, and Skinner felt whole again for the first time in five years. Mulder reached up a wondering hand and touched Skinner's wet cheeks. "We're home, my love," Skinner repeated softly. "I’ve been waiting for you. You’ve come home." The End Friendly feedback to Xanthe@xanthe.org
Driftwood everything is open
everywhere there's
trouble you're driftwood
floating underwater
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