Work Text:
Title: Real 3: Real Chances
Author: Grey
Fandom: XF
Pairing: M/Sk
Rating: PG-13
Date: May 1, 1999
Spoilers: Tunguska, Terma
Website: http://grey.ravenshadow.net
Disclaimer: It's a sin, but these guys aren't mine, just borrowed.
Summary: The third in the Real series, Mulder tells Walter what really happened to him at Tunguska.
Real 3: Real Chances
by Grey
[email protected]
Bracing himself forward against the cool marble of the sink's edge, Mulder leaned in, his face drawn and haggard. The deep shudder hit him again as he shook his head to drive away the lingering sensations, the cold slick trails of oily invasion moving over the paralyzed muscles, just under the trapped skin. God, he hated remembering, hated the thought of those alien trails slithering up through his nose, draining ice down his throat into his stomach, then into his eyes, blacking out the light, freezing his brain into icy slivers of fearful memories. Jesus.
Grabbing himself his middle, he fell to his knees, heaving again as the trembling started, the retching tearing at his gut with raw abandon. The long spasms blocked his breath, ripped his belly, and delivered an even deeper misery knowing nothing he did could rid himself of the taint of the black cancer. It writhed wildly inside him, raising the terror of losing his mind, losing control of his life, of his will to survive.
Several rounds later, he sat back on his haunches, his body weary and tired of fighting. Sleeping tortured him with demons, scratchy fingers and flashing images of a Russian cell, Krycek's laughter taunting him from the shadows as he lay helpless, trapped in cages of chicken wire and stone, stripped and abused, naked and violated. Krycek should be dead, but he wasn't. He himself should be dead, and yet he wasn't. Nothing made sense.
Shivering, still unsteady, he pulled himself up and ran some warm water, the heated splashes a shock to his skin. Turning off the tap, he wiped his face and then turned to find his way to the kitchen. Once there, he found that Walter had no tequila hidden away, but had several brands of good Scotch handy. Grabbing the Chivas, he poured himself a drink and then took both bottle and glass to the sofa. Sagging down, he sipped the liquor, the fluid pure heat across his tongue to his stomach. He finished that and then served another. By the third one, he no longer suffered the queasy sensation, but enjoyed the cushion that softened the cutting edges of his thoughts, muffled the screams, eased back the painful intensity of his own hateful dread.
"What's going on, Mulder?"
Glancing up, his vision challenged both by booze and dim lighting, he saw Walter Skinner standing bare-chested in the doorway.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Just thinking."
Stepping to the chair across from him, Walter sat down and stared, his dark eyes focused. Frowning, he reached over and picked up the bottle, noted the amount, and set it back down. "Just thinking about what?"
"Oh, the usual. Destiny, fate, how to throw a curve ball. The inextricable relationships in our lives that are neither accidental nor somehow in our control, either." He wanted to sound flippant and relaxed, but the words slurred on a lazy tongue.
Slumping back, settling in, the gruff voice softened. "You think our relationship is inextricable, out of your control, that you've got no choice in being here?
"I didn't say that."
"What did you say then?"
"Nothing worth repeating." Rubbing his face with both hands, he squeezed his eyes shut while he talked, his voice hoarse from the earlier strain. "I came downstairs because I didn't want to wake you. I'm sorry."
"It's three in the morning, Mulder. Come back to bed. You're exhausted, and from the looks of it, pretty much three sheets to the wind. You need to sleep it off. You'll feel better in the morning."
"I'm not drunk, Walter." He opened his eyes, his head pounding from the effort to stay calm, to avoid the anger growling inside him. "I had a couple of drinks, because I couldn't sleep. That's all. No reason to make a fucking federal case out of it."
"I'm not making a federal case out of it. I just want you to get some sleep so we can talk in the morning."
"We can talk now if you want, but I can't go back to bed right now. Maybe later."
After a long pause, Walter shifted forward in his seat, his elbows supported on his knees. "What's wrong, Mulder?"
"Nothing's wrong. I'm just not much of a sleeper."
His face grim, Walter shook his head, his eyes solemn. "If we're going to do this thing, you're going to have to stop lying. What's bothering you?"
"Nothing's bothering me. Leave it alone."
"I can't leave it alone, Mulder. I care about you and I don't have to be a genius to figure out something very wrong is going on with you right now, something that doesn't have a thing to do with what happened between us last night. What is it?"
He chewed his lower lip, struggling with both the need to share and yet the compulsion to keep quiet, to baby the secrets that ruled so much of his life. Swallowing hard, he thought of the blood-stained sheets of their shared bed before he forced the words forward. "I never told you some things, some things you should know before we go any further."
"What things?"
"We didn't use a condom last night and we should have."
Stunned, Walter sat back in his chair as he pushed up his glasses. "Your last report said you were negative. I am, too."
"For AIDS, yeah, but you know I've been exposed to the retrovirus."
"In Alaska, yeah, I know that. Scully doesn't think it's contagious other than through direct contact with the alien blood, at least not from the reports I've read."
"I know, but I was bleeding last night and we don't know enough about it to take any more chances than we have to."
His deep voice tightened with concern, his stolid face suddenly more animated. "You were bleeding? Why didn't you say something? I didn't mean to be so rough. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. It wasn't you. It just happens sometimes. I just think we have to be really careful. I don't want to ever expose you to something I might have, something that could ever hurt you."
Walter watched him carefully, his brown eyes clear and intense. "What is it that you really want to tell me?"
Closing his eyes momentarily, Mulder willed himself to stay present, to tell the story he most wanted to forget. "I never really told you about what happened in Tunguska."
"Tunguska. Shit."
"What?"
"You were in Russia with Krycek, right?"
"Yeah."
"Did he hurt you?" The words snapped in the air, the anger feeding the power in each one.
"He betrayed me, but he didn't touch me if that's what you're thinking."
"Thank god."
"Something else happened though, something I didn't even tell Scully about."
"Jesus, Mulder, you're scaring the shit out of me here. What is it?"
"Black cancer."
"My god." Walter stood and stepped to sit beside him, his arms wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him against the blaze of bare skin. Strong hands cradled his head, and he found no way to resist the pressure, the comfort of hearing the heartbeat, the regular rhythm soothing to his pulsing nerves. Fingers ran through his hair and the faintest of kisses touched the top of his head. Finally, a whisper prompted him to continue. "Tell me what happened."
"They do these tests. They have all these men there and they give them some kind of vaccination and then expose them to it, over and over." An involuntary shudder shook him and Walter held him tighter, the embrace an anchor. "It's obscene how they do it. You're paralyzed and stripped. It's so fucking cold and you're in this room, held down by chicken wire. You're just lying there, unable to do anything while this shit is dumped on your face and the worms, god, the worms crawl inside you. But they're not worms, Walter. You can feel it stealing your thoughts, your body, taking over as it smothers you, swallows you up and then you're nothing."
"Jesus, Mulder." He rocked with his lover's body, the heat holding down the swarm of anger, the buzzing rage that made him want to slice open Krycek's chest, rip out his fucking heart, and burn it to bloody ash and serve it to the devil who already owned it.
After a few more moments, Walter spoke quietly, his voice rich solace coating his ear. "I'm so sorry."
"You didn't do anything."
"No, but I hate that it happened."
"Me, too. I should've known better than to trust that ratbitch Krycek. Son of a bitch let them have me. He knew exactly what they'd do."
"Bastard."
"Yeah."
Pulling back a little, Walter met his eyes, his face solemn. "You said they gave you a vaccination? Maybe it worked, maybe you don't have this thing inside you. Have you had any symptoms?"
"It's hard to say."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what are the symptoms? I've seen people paralyzed with this shit, but I've also seen people walking around acting normal. It's only when they die that you even know they had it. Remember the report Scully wrote about what we found in Florida, in the nursing home? Those people were just hosts, test subjects, but we didn't know that until they died and the worms came out. I mean, I could be carrying these things around, just lying dormant inside me, just waiting to wake up and take over."
Warm hands grabbed his shoulders as Walter pulled him closer, his voice a beacon as he spoke. "We can find out, Mulder. Scully can do some blood work."
"You mean run tests?" He pulled away, shifting to sit at the end of the sofa, suddenly angry, their bodies not touching. "Might as well be in fucking Russia, Walter. Besides, I've had a ton of blood tests since then, and nothing's shown up except the retrovirus. It's not active either, but it's still there and it shows up. This black cancer thing is so alien, none of the tests even show it. Even on the Florida patients, we had nothing that proved it ever existed in the blood tests we ran."
"But those people were all dead. All the tests we ran were postmortem."
"I know, and I'm not, but it still doesn't show up."
"Maybe we just don't know what to look for."
"Maybe, but I don't want Scully to know. Not yet anyway. If I get sick, and have to tell her, I will, but not before then."
"But why? She's a doctor."
"And my partner and friend. I know what it's like to feel helpless when your partner's sick and you can't do a damn thing to help."
"Like when she had cancer."
"Exactly."
"Jesus, Mulder, how long were you going to keep all this to yourself? I'd be crazy by now."
"I didn't want to think about it, what it really meant." He slumped forward as he ran his hand through his hair. "Maybe I wanted to pretend it wasn't real, that it never happened. It was all those other poor bastards, not Fox Mulder."
"But it was real, right? It wasn't just a nightmare?"
"It was a nightmare all right, but it was real, too." His weariness weighed down his aching bones, his muscles too weak to move them.
The cushion beside him sagged as Walter sat closer, the whispers velvet to his ear. "Let's go upstairs to bed, Mulder. You're tired. Let me hold you."
"I can't risk sleeping. I can't control it when I'm sleeping."
"Control what? The nightmares?"
Turning his head, he found his lover's face so near, the warm breath tickled his cheek. "How do you know about those?"
"You had a couple earlier, but settled down when I held you. I must have been sleeping too soundly the last time or I would've heard you get up. I won't let that happen again. Come upstairs. I can help you sleep if you let me."
A sad smile stretched his face. "You think you can guard me even in my sleep, Walter?"
"If I have to, yeah. You have to rest. You can't keep going on like this, not sleeping, drinking, worrying about things like this and keeping it all to yourself. I love you, Mulder. Let me help you whenever I can."
His eyes stinging, he caressed the side of his lover's cheek, the whisker burn to his hand a solid blessing. "You help me by just being here, by being real."
Turning his head, the older man kissed his palm, the wet heat electric pleasure.
"God, Walter, let's go upstairs."
"To sleep."
"Maybe."
"Mulder?"
"What?"
"You've got that look."
"What look?"
"That dangerous look."
"And you love it."
"Yeah, I guess I do."
"You're addicted to danger, sir. Admit it."
"Addicted to Mulder."
"Same difference."
Drawing Walter to him, he buried his face against the warmth, licking the right nipple, sucking it between his lips with a renewed desire to draw life into his body. Mulder suddenly realized that taking a chance again might be worth it, that maybe loving this man might not be such an impossible mission after all.
The End