MJ

"I guess we won't be ditching the latex after all." He'd stopped in my office, file folders in hand; one of them, apparently, was the medical report we'd been expecting. He looked calm, at any rate, probably looking far calmer than he felt; I'm fairly sure I must have been turning either white or green, since he saw fit to ditch the folders and help me into my desk chair.

We'd been together eighteen months at this point, and this was the third incident that had caused us to dig out the condoms in that period. We hadn't really been worried any of these times, but it had seemed to be a wise idea. The first time, he'd been mugged by a group of teenage vampire wannabees who'd developed a kink for blood sports. The second time, a couple of trained Consortium goons had gotten hold of him, and we're still not quite sure what kind of medical testing or experimentation they'd been doing on him before Scully and I found him. I still think it had something to do with involuntary sperm donation, but we'll probably never know. This time he'd been gnawed on pretty severely by a laboratory-developed man-eating something-or-other that looked suspiciously like a werewolf.

For every time I've wondered, or been asked, about Fox Mulder's mental stability or lack thereof, only one thought has crept into my head. Anyone else who's had the shit happen to him that has happened to this man would be completely nonfunctional. Anyone else would be spending all of his time in a nice, padded cell. Something or other keeps him able to get out of bed, get dressed, and pick up a badge and a gun in the morning without actually swallowing the gun. He's not on antidepressants—I'm the one with the Serzone prescription—he's not on anti-anxiety medications, and I'm the one with the ulcer. Fox Mulder is a hell of a lot more stable than he has a right to be. I'm not saying he isn't slightly deranged in his own special way. I'm just saying that anyone else in his shoes would be in a hell of a lot worse shape than he is. I know I would be.

He's nearly died more times than I can count. He's been shot, infected with alien retroviruses, beaten, used as a lab rat for anti-alien vaccines, drugged…hell, pretty much everything at this point. Why should an ordinary medical diagnosis of a known earthbound virus make him blink? He's probably surprised that it didn't happen to him sooner. Talk about your high-risk candidate. No wonder he's calm. I'm sure he thinks this is the least of many things that could happen to him.

I feel an arm draping around me from behind my chair. "Walter…you'd better let me get you a glass of water."

"No." I shake my head. "No. I'm okay, Fox." He never lets anyone else call him that, and I've never done it in public. I need to hear myself say it right now. "What about you?"

"I feel fine." The arm shifts, the hand flows along my neck as he moves. Finally he moves to the other side of the desk and slides into one of my desk chairs. "Look, with my luck, it's amazing this didn't happen sooner. I've had more blood transfusions in my life than a czarevitch, and I haven't got hemophilia for an excuse. Between my injuries, my transfusions, and some of my more interesting—well, we'd better not get into that…anyway, how I've stayed alive this long, let alone clean, is a mystery. I'm pushing forty; my luck's starting to catch up with me, that's all."

"What do we do?"

He stares at me. "We? I'm the one with the problem, not you."

"We. You don't think you're handling this by yourself, do you? The last time I checked, there were two of us in this relationship."

"That's true, but you'd be perfectly justified in not wanting to continue things, you know."

I take the glasses off. I put the glasses down. I stare. Directly at him. If looks could kill, he'd have no reason to ask about his medical coverage for this. "Fox Mulder, I have had the opportunity of hearing you say some incredibly stupid things to me. But that has got to be the singularly most idiotic thing that I have ever heard coming out of your mouth. You've told me things about Reticulans I find more comprehensible than that. You can't possibly think that coming back with positive test results is going to send me packing."

He looks across at me, then lowers his eyelids. He droops. "People leave all the time."

"Who, Fox? Your sister was abducted. That was hardly her choice. Your father didn't volunteer to get killed just to escape from you. Scully's abduction wasn't your fault, and she's been back for how many years? And Diana Fowley was just out to get you when she left. You can hardly count her in the picture. The only time people deliberately leave you is when you deliberately push them away, and I'm not about to let you do that to me. Do you understand me?"

He looks up at me now, eyes searching my face. I don't know what he's looking for. I hope that he finds it. "I just don't want to be a bother."

I have to smile. It's all I can do to avoid laughing. "Hell, that's a first. You've been a bother of one sort or another to me since you started working for me. Now you're concerned? Too late. You can't possibly be more of a bother to me now than you've been already. Vampires? Robotic roach infestations? Mutant liver-eating monsters? Your own partner shooting you? Traipsing off to Antarctica without notice and billing the Bureau? It took six months to dig you out of the Antarctica mess between the bills and the destroyed property, not to mention the hospitalization. Compared to that, this is a minor personal inconvenience to me. Am I making myself clear?" He nods. "Besides, you infernal idiot, if you haven't noticed, I love you."

Finally, a smile. Not much of one, but it's there. "Yeah. Yeah, I've noticed."

It was about time that he had.

»»»

I wake up in the middle of the night. He's there, still in my arms. Now I see why I woke up. He's awake himself, sobbing very quietly against me. I can feel his chest heaving; now that I'm awake, I notice a damp patch on my chest where his head rests against me. I haven't seen him like this since Modell.

I'm in love with a much younger man who will almost certainly die before I do. I'm the one who should be doing the crying, right?

But then, I've been ready for that possibility all along, haven't I? I've risked losing him more times than I can count, had stood in hospital rooms watching him sleep even before we were lovers, wondering if he had a chance to pull through. I've always been prepared to lose him, even before I fell in love with him. That numbs the pain of knowing that this time, it's probably true that I will.

I draw him tighter against me, kiss the unruly brown mop of hair that falls just below my face. "I'm here, Fox. It's all right." No, it's not all right. It never will be. I want to hit someone, I want to have someone I can attack for doing this to him. But there is no one to blame. Even the thing that got him was never intended to be a carrier; it merely attacked the wrong person at some point before it attacked him. No one wears a label saying "Unclean, unclean" on them; even if they did, the creature wouldn't have known. Just fucking bad luck, the bad luck that was bound to catch up with him at some point in a risky job. I choke back my anger. I don't want him to think it's directed at him. For him, I have to make things be all right. He trusts me to do that for him. I can't let him down.

»»»

Dana Scully sits in my office, looking at me silently over a cup of tea. She's known about us for a bit over a year, came to terms with it a few months after that. It wasn't easy for her, and I respect that. She wasn't upset about the superior-subordinate matter; after all, she'd dated Jack Willis. I don't even think it was good Catholic disapproval that Fox and I were sharing a bed. I'm almost certain that it was pure shock at the idea that Fox Mulder could actually have a private life, one that she didn't know about, and absolute astonishment that I of all humans would be feckless enough to take on the personal challenge of Fox Mulder.

Now I've been seeking her medical advice. Fox told her almost immediately after telling me. He offered her the chance to get out of the partnership. He didn't think she'd have a problem about their working together at the office, but she's patched him up in the field so many times. He was afraid she'd put herself at risk, or be afraid that she would, out in the field. She called him a fucking idiot, said she'd have him as her partner or no partner at all. They disagree with each other as much as they ever have, but she's been loyal to him as a partner. They've been together longer than Fox and I have as a couple. This is as rough for her as it is for me. Maybe worse.

"The thing is, Walter, he could be asymptomatic for years. There have been some setbacks with the pharmaceutical cocktails, but people who have been relatively careful and followed their medications have remained asymptomatic for—well, in some cases, apparently, a good ten years. We don't know everything yet. And early intervention seems to be the most important thing. He certainly got that. Right now, I'm more worried about you. Would you like to have me get you an antianxiety prescription? Ativan? Xanax? You're not going to be effective at work if you're busy agonizing about what's going to happen to Mulder eight years from now. And I want you to get your blood pressure checked."

Never argue with Dana Scully if you can help it. She's small, but she carries live rounds. And she's not afraid to use them. I let her get me the Ativan, and I called my doctor to run a blood pressure check on me. It beat arguing with her by a longshot.

»»»

My birthday. Fox insisted on taking me out, though I'd have been just a happy with a quiet evening at home. Dinner, then tickets for the Eric Clapton concert at USAir Arena. Clapton makes me go weak, always has. Sharon and I danced to "Wonderful Tonight" on our fifth anniversary. I can testify that everything was downhill for the next twelve years.

I wonder if Fox and I will make seventeen years. Or twelve. Or five.

I wonder what it's like to bury your lover.

He looks good; he seems to be perfectly healthy. He's keeping up his regular running and swimming schedule. His doctor tells us he's the picture of health.

He's just got a fucking time bomb in his bloodstream.

As if I didn't myself.

I keep forgetting about that. I keep forgetting about the Consortium nanocytes that carbonized my system, that nearly killed me. I keep forgetting that Alex Krycek nearly killed me, then saved me, then put a chokehold on me with that fucking handheld computer. Before Fox and I became lovers. When I was afraid to let him open my shirt that night in my office, not for fear of seeing my injuries, but for fear of those slender, graceful hands of his touching my body that intimately, for fear of my own body betraying my hidden need for him. He couldn't understand then why I warned him away from investigating my case—bad enough that the rat bastard was trying to blackmail me with my own blood, but I couldn't bear to have Fox made vulnerable to Alex Krycek as well.

I could still die first. Sooner than I care to. We might both live longer than either of us has a right to expect. Scully tells me that fortune telling like this is crazy, not to think too far ahead and dwell on projected outcomes. I know the "one day at a time" principle as well as any alcoholic. But that doesn't make it easy to practice it.

The concert is incredible. I haven't seen Clapton perform live in years; he's still got tremendous power. Fox has never seen him live before. He doesn't really know music, but even he gets that he's in the presence of genius.

Then the Master launches into "Tears in Heaven."

Fox is gripping my hand with enough strength to crush it. I turn; he's looking at me. He's not thinking about himself here. I may forget the nanocytes ninety-eight percent of the time. Apparently he doesn't.

We leave early.

»»»

Fox turns around in my arms. The sunlight filtering through the curtains awakens him early this Saturday morning. We were spooned together in sleep; now he is facing me, a hand sliding slowly along my back, his mouth closing over mine. I can feel the hardness, the heat, of his erection pressing into me.

My lips move to his ear, down his neck, to his nipples. "Mmmm. You want a back rub?" he offers.

"I'd rather have you." I move my hands down his back, kneading them into his muscular ass. This man, I swear, has an ass that stops traffic when he crosses the street. I remember yelling at him in my office a few times when he was wearing shirtsleeves just for the momentary thrill of seeing him turn on his heel and stomp out of my office. My own erection pulses at the recollection of that ass draped in Hugo Boss trousers.

Now he is sliding down slightly, still in my grasp, suckling one of my nipples in return. I can feel small spikes of arousal radiating through me from that alone. If I let him do it, I could come just from nipple stimulation. We do that occasionally; I enjoy it, and he—well, he's amused by it. Maybe a little bit astonished. He breaks the contact abruptly, afraid that I will come from it right now. "How do you want me?"

"Any way I can get you," I growl at him. Then, deciding, "side, I think. Okay with you?" I enjoy it that way, his back pressed to my chest, my arms around him, my face burrowing into his neck, nibbling behind his ear, listening to him moan.

He smiles, looks satisfied as a well-fed kitten. "Fine with me." He reaches over to the nightstand, grabs two condoms. He tosses one to me; kissing again, we wrestle with the wrappers, and I quickly slide one down over his cock, stroking and pumping him as I go. I keep my grip on him as he covers me with the other rubber, handling it less than I did his to keep it lubed.

»»»

We go, at Fox's request, to spend an evening with the Gunmen. We've done this a couple of times. They're strange, they're—well, I don't know q good word for them—and they're as unlikely a trio as any I've ever seen. But they're geniuses, they're in on anything and everything, and they're hopelessly devoted to my lover; they would, and do, do anything for him. This, apparently, is the night he's decided to break the news to them. Not about us—they've known that for over a year. They've handled it pretty well, I guess. This time, it's the other news.

We're having pizza and beer when the shoe drops. "Frohike, guys, look, I need you to do something for me."

Frohike nods; the other two follow suit, like a chorus of those bobbing-head ducks from the novelty store. "Sure, man; what do you need?"

"I need to be sure that some stuff gets to the right places, you know…if anything happens to me."

"What are you expecting this time?" Langly asks. "Alien abduction? Another phony suicide?"

Fox tears into a slice of pepperoni pizza. "Neither," with pizza still in his mouth. "I'm just making plans. I need to get things in order a bit."

"What's the imperative?" Frohike asks. "Something's got you expecting trouble."

"My blood tests, that's what. I turned up positive this year." Fox continues to munch on the pizza as if nothing's happened. I have to put my piece down—the other three are looking at him with total consternation, as if he'd said that one of them was really a Consortium spy.

"Shit." Frohike.

"Jesus." Langly.

"Oh, God." Byers. Byers is pale, looks ready to collapse. I'm not surprised. I'd always wondered , since I'd met the Gunmen, if there hadn't been something there once between the two of them. "Fox." He reaches out, touches Fox's sleeve. The other two avert their eyes; apparently, what I had wondered, they had known.

Fox looks over at him, face drawn. "It's…it's okay. I've got Walter." Byers looks over at me, considers, then nods. Apparently I am solid enough to support his ex-lover. If only he knew—but then, my lover shares everything with them, even those things which he refuses to tell me. I must conclude that Byers doesn't consider my situation with the nanocytes to be a liability to Fox; at least, not right now.

Fox talks to Langly briefly after we eat, apparently reviewing a programming code Langly's found. Byers comes over to me, drops a hand on my shoulder. "Look, Skinner—if there's anything I can do…" He lets go of my arm. "Anything. He seems okay right now, though. Are you all right?"

I shrug. "I'm clean, as far as that goes. We've been careful. Otherwise —I have my own problems: I suppose he's told you?" Byers nods. "And I can't say this isn't stressful.' He nods again, very definitely.

"Even if all you need's to talk about it," he tells me. "I still care about him, you know. And the guys"—he indicates Langly and Frohike—"will do anything for him. You let us know." Firmly, a hand back on my upper arm.

"I will." I mean it. He's lucky to have them as friends. Strange as they may be, separately or combined, they are the sort of friends I wish I had, the sort I haven't had since back during the war. The thought gives me pause. What Fox and they have been through together—they're war buddies themselves. And to the four of them, this is just one more battle to fight together.

»»»

Lunch with Scully and John Byers. They've been talking, it seems. Scully thinks that the Gunmen have found something that might be done about the nanovirus. Scully wants me to try it.

I shake my head over a forkful of grilled steak salad. "No."

"Look, I understand it's highly experimental, Walter," she tells me, "but I really don't see any particular danger in it. It can't make things worse, at any rate."

"No."

"Walter…" she sighs, looking at me for all the world as if I'm four years old. What part of "no" doesn't she get here?

"Scully, Byers, look, I know you two mean well. But the fact is, I don't want it."

"Just because it's dormant doesn't mean that something may not trigger it, Walter. Anything might. It could kill you at any time."

"I'm aware of that, Scully. And I said no."

"Walter…why?"

Why? Why shouldn't I want to be cured of this thing in my blood? I think the question of why I should want to be rid of it is a much better one. My lover could die any time. He's working out, he's taking vitamins, he's on every medication Scully can find for him, but he's not being cured. Why should I be cured when he can't be? The nanovirus is my penance for sending Fox out there all of those times. It's the only way I can share what he's going through. Scully and Byers have no right to deprive me of it. He could die—so might I. The possibility that something might make this thing in me turn back on is the one hope I have that I'll never see anything happen to Fox Mulder that I won't be strong enough to handle. It reassures me that one way or another, I can still die first.

"Because this is how it has to be, Scully."

»»»

Seven-thirty in the evening. Most of the occupants of the Hoover Building —in fact, most of downtown DC—have gone home. Fox is in Atlanta on a case, hot on the trail of a suspected Flukeman sighting. I am still in my office, working on reports. I could have gone home, could have saved this work for tomorrow, but events in the office lately have made my being here late tonight seem practical.

A noise in the hallway, very faint—I expected it.

Sure enough, he's here.

Fox hasn't been looking that well lately. His appetite's been down, not that he's ever had much of one, and his weight's been dropping. Scully and his doctor have been playing prescription roulette with him. He looked like he was coming down with the flu when he left for Atlanta the other day.

"Skinner."

"Krycek, what the hell do you want?"

He waves a handheld computer, some kind of custom Palm Pilot job, in my face. "Call off your pet dog in Atlanta, Skinner."

I shake my head. "No way, Krycek. Mulder's down there for the duration. What he finds, he finds."

Krycek stares at me like I'm an idiot. He shakes the object in his hand. "I'm telling you, Skinner, call him back here. They could kill him down there."

"And if I don't?"

"You know how this works, Skinner. You've had it happen before. This time it doesn't have to get turned off before you die."

They could kill him down there. Maybe they're serious about it this time. They could have killed him a dozen times over; thoughtful of them to finally get around to wanting to do it to him now. I can rescue Fox from that with one phone call, if he'll listen to me.

If he'll listen. Being my lover hasn't ever made him more obliging about work than he was before.

And if he listens? Krycek tells me I'll live.

And Fox gets to hurry up and die that much more slowly.

The night before Fox flew down to Atlanta with Scully, we were watching an old horror movie on cable. Some old Dracula flick. Bela Lugosi, cape around his face, muttering "The blood…is the life…" I have to grin, thinking about it. I guess you can go old and slow, or—what's that line? Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Yeah, right.

I know how I want to go. I wonder which choice Fox would like.

I wonder if God will forgive me for making Fox's choice for him.

I wonder if Fox will forgive me.