January Sun 7/7: Walter

by Dawn Pares and Justin Glasser

***

The chill creeping into his skull woke him up.  Mulder
blinked, and opened his eyes.  He felt like he'd had his head in
the crisper of a fridge.  His forehead hurt where it began to
warm.  He fingered the skin on his face, wondering whether
he could get frostbite from glass.  He'd have to ask Scully.

It was almost dark: smudgy gray light just crept over the
horizon, hardly visible over the green glow of the radio. The
faint reassuring voices of the NPR announcers murmured
about the fall of the Yen.  There was no sign of Skinner
besides his coat, crumpled on the driver's seat. That bothered
him.  The fading halo of his profile was melting from the
window.  It was undoubtedly *cold* out there.  Wherever they
were. 
 
Then Mulder heard the cry of a gull, and recognized the crust
of salt in the cold, humid air.

A thin curve of white at the edge of the grayness; the sun
would rise soon. 

Mulder rubbed at his rough jaw, flipped the visor down to
make sure he'd wiped the trail of drool off his chin, and then
opened the passenger door. 

"Sir?" His voice got lost in the rythmic rush of the waves. 
Nothing.  He peered into the darkness, but no shape was
recognizably human. Mulder shrugged his coat up over his
shoulders and buttoned it, turning up the collar. He pushed up
and out of the car, his legs stiff and unwieldy like a colt's from
too much car travel. 
 
They'd left the crime scene around two a.m.  Scully, who had
gone to the hospital with Vivan MacElvey, had called from
airport at ten.

"You coming?" she'd asked, not even saying hello.

"I don't think so," he'd answered, his eyes on Skinner.  The
AD hadn't bothered to get involved in handling the press
coverage, but he stood over the FBI techs every step of the
way, watching carefully.  "we'll take the car back."

"Suit yourself," she'd sighed.  "See you tomorrow."

That was how he'd found himself in a car with his boss at two
in the morning, instead of on his own couch, a beer sweating
on the coffee table and the remote in hand.  Still, he had no
idea why they'd ended up here on the beach.  It shouldn't have
taken more than four hours tops to get back to D.C., and the
debriefing, and the start of the paperwork.  

Mulder had meant to stay awake and find out exactly what it
was Skinner had been looking for so closely at the scene, but
Skinner had been even more quiet than usual on the ride back,
and the car had been stuffy and overheated, and Mulder hadn't
really slept in maybe thirty-six hours, and he'd lost
consciousness maybe fifteen minutes into the ride. 

And now he was on an empty beach with a frigid wind that
licked his bones even through the coat, and there was Skinner,
just ahead of him, dim, a different shade of gray in the dull
predawn. 

"Sir?" he repeated, but the older man didn't seem to hear. 
Even if he'd been shoulder to shoulder with Skinner, Mulder
doubted the man would have been able to hear it. 

The cold grit of sand burrowed into his socks, through his thin
Italian loafers. 

He reached out to touch Skinner's shoulder, but stopped at the
last moment, tucking his hand back into his coat pocket. 
"Skinner," he muttered.  He could feel the salt wind already
making his hair stiff. 

Skinner stood with his arms crossed against his chest. 
Apparently he'd left his suit jacket in the car as well, or else
dropped it somewhere, because he was standing on a January
beach in his shirt sleeves.   Mulder couldn't tell if he was
shivering, but he should have been.  The light was too poor to
see if the bare forearms were marbled with gooseflesh. 
 
The lost jacket worried Mulder; Skinner was nothing if not
practical, and Mulder saw nothing practical in waiting for
hypothermia to turn your bones brittle on a frigid strip of sand. 

He found himself unbuttoning his own coat and hanging it
around Skinner's shoulders. 

Skinner turned his head and looked at him for the first time. 
For a disconcerting moment, Mulder was sure the older man
hadn't recognized him.

"Mulder?" he said, finally.  His voice sounded rough and
unused.

"You're going to freeze to death.  Come back to the car." 

"Wait," the other man replied, and turned his face back to the
horizon, and the widening band of light, now tinged with pink. 

Mulder nodded, and watched his breath plume white and
stream away as he exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again, the air
bitter in his lungs, hard as glass. 
He tucked his hands in his armpits and tensed against the cold,
but he, too, now, wanted very much to watch the sun rise and
paint this secluded beach with warmth.  Give the sand some
gold, the sky some blue, Skinner's ears some red.  Color. 

"She told me she didn't think she'd live to see another day,"
and it was flat, and it was apropos of nothing, but Mulder
nodded.  He understood. 

"But she did," he answered, and for no good reason he smiled. 
He was glad to think of Vivian MacElvey waking up in a
warm bed.  Even shivering awake from a nightmare, but
waking.  That was the important part. 

"What he did to those women, Mulder..." and for the first
time, maybe the first time ever, Mulder heard a tremor in the
other man's voice.  Maybe it was just the cold. 

Mulder stepped in front of the Assistant Director, and
although his fingers were already clumsy with the relentless
shear, he buttoned his coat.  The arms hung empty at Skinner's
sides, and Mulder was mildly surprised that he'd been able to
button it at all across a chest so much broader than his own. 

"He won't do it again," Mulder told him.  The sway of the
empty sleeves disturbed him somehow so he tucked them into
the pockets of the coat.  It was good to be the voice of reason
once in a while.  Good to be the one who could offer some
sort of reassurance.

"Vivian has you to thank for that," Skinner said.  Startled into
looking up, Mulder realized there was enough light to see the
other man's eyes.
 
"Well.  You can tell her he got in the way of the bullet.  His
bad luck."

An expression that wanted to be a smile lightened Skinner's
face.

"You did a good job, Mulder."
 
"Thank you, sir."  Mulder felt his face warm and was glad that
his cheeks had already been rouged by the salt wind. 
 
"The sun's up," Skinner said, and Mulder had realized it was
more than a strange flood of gratitude that had warmed the
back of his neck.  He turned, and was dazzled by the sun, the
diamonds of light on the sea and streak of gold in the sky. 

For a moment he was blinded, and he held a hand up to shield
his eyes.  Skinner's glasses glimmered with sunlight, making
his face bright and his expression closed at once, because
Mulder couldn't see the other man's eyes through the reflected
light.  He put his gaze out to sea again, feeling glad of
Skinner's relative closeness.  He felt anchored by the fact he
was close enough to reach out and touch the other man.  The
crash of the surf lulled him, and the faint spray and his face
reminded him of the summer house he had had as a boy. 
 
Eventually, he realized Skinner had been calling is name. 

"Mulder. 

"Mulder, it's cold.  let's get back to the car." 

Nodding, Mulder made a few stumbling steps, the sand
suddenly treacherous under foot.

"You'll have to unbutton this," Skinner said, a trace of humor
in his low, rumbling voice. 

Mulder was sure the older man would have reached out to
steady him had he had his hands available, but as it was
Skinner simply leaned against Mulder's shoulder, bracing him. 

He undid the coat with more finesse than he'd buttoned it with. 
For a second they stood, Mulder holding the flaps of the coat
open like a man opening a curtain.  He found it impossible to
look into Skinner's face, but he spoke anyway.

"You . . . "  He sighed.  Forced himself to meet Skinner's
bemused expression.  "She should thank you, sir," he said.  He
wasn't sure if his voice could be heard over the splash of the
waves, but Skinner moved, lifting one arm over Mulder's
shoulder's and turning him back toward the car.

Mulder tucked one between the man's warm back and the
thick fabric of his trench coat, and together, they made their
way back to the car, the clear January sun on their backs. 

The End