Sometimes I lie awake at night and think of how close it was.

How I almost didn't end up here and how much more that would have hurt. Hell, how that would have destroyed me. As it was, it was a near thing anyway; I've paid and paid for betraying everything and everyone and all for the man lying next to me right now, his breathing steady and deep in the dark - the smell of sex still heavy in the air. All the doors and windows closed and locked up tight against the world, leaving us alone and alive.

I intend to keep it that way. As long as I can. As long as I have bullets and blood to protect it. To protect him.

From them. From his own good intentions. From the end of the world, which came way too soon, despite all my good intentions. Which I gave up at the last to save one man. One out of millions or billions or whatever. How many other people were on this planet before the invasion got itself kicked into high gear? Fuck, it was a lost cause anyway, a sinking ship—and we all know what rats do once that ship starts sinking, once that burning cold water comes creeping up from the depths of the ocean.

Or oil, as the case may be.

Someday they'll find us; that's also inevitable. And, when they do, they'll probably infect him. Make him one of their own. Me, they'll certainly kill. After they strip my brain of any potentially useful information. I'm of no other use to them since I can't be turned. The vaccine the Consortium eventually developed was at least good for that, even if only a handful actually ever got it.

The end came way too soon, you see, for their good intentions.

I'll go down fighting, of course, but there's nowhere else to go these days so maybe that doesn't count for much. I'm practical. There's no way I'm getting out of this alive. He calls that me being overly pessimistic. I tell him in turn that he's out of touch with reality and hopelessly optimistic. Of course, he said once that when you're at the bottom there is nowhere else but up from there. I think that's bullshit, but I let him win the argument that day anyway.

I'm not sure he believed it at the time any more than I did, but we have far better things to do with our remaining time than spend it fighting with each other.

Doing what it takes to survive comes to mind.

So does fucking each other silly every day and twice on Sundays.

Not that we really know anymore what day of the week it is. Monday? Wednesday? Sometime in late November maybe? December? Wintertime, oh yeah, definitely.

But then it's pretty much winter around here most of the time. Dark and cold, and we haven't seen anyone but each other in nearly a year now. The last guy who came on through only stopped for the morning and wasn't very forthcoming. His mother was a native to this region and he was heading up to their old village, hoping to become forgotten there. We'd fed him and given him some fresh killed elk meat and he gave us some chocolate bars and a bottle of whiskey in trade that he'd been saving for emergencies.

It's actually a pretty good brand and we haven't cracked it yet. I don't think my occasional dark moods and his own lingering deep regrets constitute emergencies. No matter how much it may hurt.

Not that it's not beautiful here, don't get me wrong. And just breathing feels like a gift some days.

The summers are lovely and green and glorious, short as they are, and there's a stream just a day's walk from here where the salmon run heavy in the water and the bears gather for the feast. For the berries that weigh down the bushes and blacken your fingers and mouth and make the best pies in all the world. Even the winters have their own appeal, especially the soft fall and fresh taste of that first snow, before you grow to hate the stuff, and all those long nights are somewhat conducive towards snuggling. Not that we ever really need an excuse.

Things have changed between us.

An understatement if I've ever heard one and the only continuous bright spot in all this—and all that drags me back from those supremely black spells of mine when nothing else can, when my gun seems to fit my hand entirely too well and I think it would be far better thing for all concerned if it was finally over.

Besides the thought of him being left all alone here, if I ever did give into the urge. The thought of how he might hate me for it. Think of me a coward.

Which I am, don't get me wrong.

After all, I ran away from the battle and came here and dragged him with me. Drugged for a couple of days and then handcuffed and gagged when necessary. Until we ran into a little trouble at the border and I let him go—thinking he would take the opportunity to run back to DC and his plush office and certain death or infection along with all the rest—and he stuck around and saved my sorry ass instead.

I never thanked him for it and he never asked.

My shoulder still aches on occasion from that little incident. Not as bad as the ghost pain from my arm, but it makes me pretty damn aware of just how battered and bruised and scarred and wrecked and so not a prize I am.

He says the same shit about himself, but I can't see it. Maybe I never could.

I think it's why I couldn't kill him when they ordered me to. And why I saved him at the last. And why I still get up in the morning, even when the sun hasn't and won't for another five months, not really.

And why I'll fight that useless battle when they finally come for us.

I love him and I don't know how that happened, let alone why, and I've never really told him but I think he knows anyway. He's not a fucking genius like Mulder, but he's no slouch either.

Why else would I have picked him out of those million-billion people to bring with me back to my little rustic refuge in the wilds of Alaska. Kicking and screaming at first and then resentful as hell for long days afterward. A man who had every good reason to distrust and hate me. A man I'd tortured and eventually even killed, never mind that I brought him back.

Because I owed him.

Because I found I couldn't live without him.

Because I was fooling myself if I thought I could.

Not that I knew it until that precise moment when I'd stood there—my finger on the lingering pulse of his life—and let it all go black. Let him die.

Which I was supposed to do.

I wasn't supposed to put pen to pad again and re-write his life and, in so doing, my own. Except, in that moment, I'd seen and touched and tasted my own death. A choking pressure and a deadly pain in my heart. And behind that pain, something that had looked and felt precisely like nothing. Because it was nothing. A great black pit of nothing waiting to swallow me up, to drag me down and roll me under, and did I mention that I'm a coward?

That I'd always thought I didn't need anyone or anything?

That I knew well how to lie, even to myself.

Even about how I'd always rather liked the sound of that gruff military-issue voice and those stern brown eyes and how he moved under this clothes, like a big man should move, graceful and imposing at the same time.

How honest he seemed and how strong, strong in all the ways that counted the most. Even when I was killing him it had seemed that I could feel his heart beating from across the room and could sense those powerful lungs pumping and hadn't been able to imagine them stopping for good, let alone forever.

Of course, I could be looking back at things with a memory clouded by long hours spent in bed with the man, with all the pleasure and comfort and warmth he's given me since—gifts I can never repay. Allowing him a few more months of existence, or years if we're very, very lucky, I know can never make up for one single solitary kiss.

For having him hold me when the night proves too much.

When the cold here reminds me of what another cold November took from me.

We have a limited cache of drugs here; I can't take them for a pain I've learned to live with, even if it's sometimes a near thing. Even if it drives me crazy sometimes and makes me look at my gun with almost as much longing as when those black moods creep up upon me.

He's got his own aches and pains, of course. Physical, yes, neither of us is getting any younger and the work to stay alive here is hard and the cold insatiable, but mostly he grieves for the world he lost. For his friends and his family and for all the agents who were once under his command, those for whom he felt personally responsible even if he didn't like them all that much.

Mulder and Scully he liked more than a little, I think. He mourns for them most of all.

For all the things he felt he could have said or done differently. For what he didn't dare to do and how he didn't believe.

Until it was way, way too late.

I'm not entirely sure they're dead, mind you. But then I can't be sure that they're them anymore either, in which case we're better off thinking of them as dead. Though I think the not knowing bugs him more than me. Like he's left something unfinished. Walked out before the play came to its final act, or before the last battle of the war was fought. Leaving his buddies in the lurch as it were.

I doubt he's walked away from much in his life. I don't think he likes the feeling. Even though he finally seems to have accepted it. Being here. With me. More than accepted it; I do what it takes to keep things running around here, but he makes much more of an art of it. He created our routines and carved the items that decorate our walls, as well as the games that fill our days—a real chessboard, puzzles, dominos—all the things that I never would have thought necessary, let alone would have ever thought to bring. Turning a bare and sometimes downright miserable means of survival into something more, a seeming lifestyle choice.

Without him here, this would be just four bare walls to keep the weather out, hardly better than a hole in the ground to hide in, and I doubt I would have lasted out the month, let alone that first winter.

No matter that there's enough supplies here for a good ten years.

Ten years.

If we actually get that long I'll be shocked, amazed, willing to believe in something greater than death and destruction and the void that lies beyond them.

I'll believe in the truth of those dark brown eyes, hidden behind fragile glass lenses. In those callused hands as they touch me and mold me to his liking, as they soothe me to sleep when nothing else can. His body curled around me like an anchor, like a shield. Like the only thing keeping me sane and human and real and alive. And that means more than the pleasure—though the pleasure is nothing to sneeze at—and sometimes when he just wants to cuddle, I have nothing against that either.

Which seems somehow vaguely wrong or sad or something for a man who's killed so very many that hecan't even remember them all anymore. Who lived hand in hand, once upon a time in a not so fairytale-like world, with conspiracy and murder and lies and betrayal and the torture of the innocent and the guilty alike.

I'm not that man anymore, but that doesn't necessarily mean I know who I am. Tonight.

In his arms.

Hundreds of miles from what remains of civilization and breathing each other's air and aching a little inside from when he fucked me. So damn hard and long and rough that I knew he'd been hurting tonight. Remembering. Regretting. Needing something to ground himself.

Which just happened to be me. A one-armed all-shot-up desperate excuse for a man, let alone a savior.

One of the two last living men probably left on the whole damn earth.

Which isn't why he screws me, though; because of that old joke and because there's no other choice left to him. But because it was his choice and I let him and I liked it and found out later, much too late, that I needed it. The taste of his spit and sweat and semen. The heat of his body and how he burns me with it. Branding me with his cock. With his seed. With his need.

I don't know how it happened and we've never really talked about it, not then and not now, almost three years later. We've never explored what might have been going through his head, let alone his heart and all points south, that night he'd simply walked over in the dark and slid into my bed, into my body. Breaking me apart with pain and pleasure and the sheer force of his body, neither of us making a sound right up until the end. And, even then, smothering it in each other's flesh. After, he'd crept silently back to his own bed, a little further from the fire since he stays warmer than I do, and climbed in, rolled over and sighed. Sad and deep and contented and confused all at once.

And I'd forced myself to turn over as well, to turn away, and listen only to the wind the rest of the night. To stay where I was.

To pretend it had meant nothing and never would.

Hell, all the next day, we'd been business as usual, all small talk and very little even of that, hauling in more wood and reading for a couple of hours, each from his own battered paperback books. Eyes averted, feet up, no big deal. Hash for breakfast and rabbit stew and biscuits with gravy for lunch. Doling out more of that same stew, plus a berry cobbler, for supper at the last, before going back to our own corners to stare into the fire. The snow falling heavily outside now, as it had been for days. Our first winter together. Not our last.

After which, our eyes had met and glanced off each other and, almost as one, we'd gotten up and gotten ready for bed and somewhere in the middle of that our normal routine was shattered once again and we'd found ourselves sharing our first kiss.

Not earth-shattering, more clumsy than anything else, but it'd been the beginning and the end and the heart and soul and saving of me ever since.

We'd tumbled into my bed again then, sinking down beneath a mountain of blankets and quilts, and I don't know if the kissing made the difference, but our second time hadn't really been about sex at all, but something so much more.

Something tentative and terrifying and sweet and sure and almost as gentle as it was rough, as tender as it was violent.

I hadn't ever expected him to kiss me like that.

A quick fumble and fuck in the dark was something I was rather more used to, the sex of my partner notwithstanding. Shared heat, urges, agonies, these I understood, even if I didn't dare indulge myself all that often.

I'd just figured him for the same, but that kiss and our first true night together taught me otherwise. Plus the cold sober sex we'd had by the faint light of dawn the next morning. The almost continuous chain of kisses we'd exchanged over blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Real maple syrup slathered over it all—an indulgence and a treat, one that made our lips stick together and our tongues almost impossibly sweet—and he'd deliberately spilled some on me, the shit, just to lick it off again.

Or so I accused him anyway, which had made him laugh. Throw his head back and let it all go, loud and deep and so very alive. And it was the first real laugh that I'd heard in months, let alone from him ever, and I'd laughed too. Hadn't been able to help myself.

His eyes so warm on mine in that moment. His hands so big. His cock already hard again and pressing up against my thigh.

And we hadn't made it to bed that time. The floor had proved just fine, thank you, if a bit chilly. Still, we'd made our own heat, our own friction, and quickly added salt sticky to the sweet.

Still, I think I'd shocked him a little when I licked his own come off him after. When I stood up and offered him a hand up and invited him to share my bed from then on, putting words to the deed. To the desire. Which was a promise and a place that maybe I hadn't had the right to offer and that wasn't near good enough for the man I was giving it to, but was all I had.

All that I'd ever had.

His answer to me that day had been simple. Eyes gleaming behind those glasses, he'd pushed me back towards the bed and bent me down on it and knelt himself to take me into his mouth, sucking me back to need and life and completion. Then kissed me again afterwards, letting me taste myself and him at the same time.

And it's been all downhill from there.

When it's not been uphill.

And, though we've never laid a hand on each other in anger again, that doesn't mean we don't fight. Get on each other's nerves. Have good days and bad days and days that never seem to get themselves going, let alone see us anywhere. We've both had our share of yelling and screaming and shaking and shivering and injuries, both the kind you can see and the kind you can't.

Together, we've hunted and fished, hauled and shoveled, cooked and chopped, and have gotten right damned sick—by the time spring finally deigns to put in an appearance and God only knows when that's going to be—of moose and rabbit and elk, of a seemingly endless parade of canned soups and milk and soggy tinned vegetables.

We've learned to recognize and work around the moods of the wind and the woods as well as our own. To look out for each other and take up the slack if necessary. To not judge. To not accuse. To tread lightly when the slightest footfall may break you. Fuck, we've even been known to cry a little around each other, though we never let on to the other that we can see the tears.

We've learned to fall asleep together, safe from the distant cry of wolves as they pick their way across the snow beneath a curved and alien moon.

To laugh at each other's bad jokes and to steer well clear of those things that will never be funny, never be easy between us, no matter how much time has passed since and how often we've held and helped and humored each other along through chores and boredom and illness and fits of actual temper.

We've both gotten wickedly cold and dangerously wet and so damn tired sometimes that you can hardly pick your feet up, let alone get all those layers off to take a much-needed bath or put yourself to bed.

So there, yeah, that's your trained assassin, your double agent, your bully boy and would be protector of the earth, being tucked between the sheets like a six year old, big fluffy woolen socks and hot water bottle and all. With the man who was once an Assistant Director of the FBI puttering around, washing up dishes and wiping down the table and throwing another couple of logs onto the fire before locking up, locking us down for another long night.

Before sliding in under the covers with his killer and holding him close, holding him near, half hard already but not doing anything about it.

And if he knows that I'm still awake when I should be asleep he doesn't say anything about that either. As I feel that void that's still there, still waiting for me, and sense the sheer fragility of our little life here, and all that love I should never have had and don't know what to do with wells up inside me and I just lie there in those big arms, crying silently, the tears turning cold as they slip down my cheeks. Cold as his arms are warm and human and all too fucking necessary to me.

And it's too close.

And it hurts too much.

And he says nothing and, somehow, makes it everything. Enough for me to get by for yet another night, another day, another year maybe.

Until they come. Until they take him away from me. After which, I won't care anymore and certainly won't be able to cry anymore, and there'll be no other choice left to me but over how quick I die and at whose hands.

My own or theirs.

I think he knows that too. And that's why he lets me keep the gun even on the worse of my very bad days.

And that's why he holds me so tight. And never talks about the future and rarely brings up the past and fucks me so damn hard and kisses me just as sweetly, every last time the same as the first. Soul deep and demanding kisses—like he really knows me and like he really cares, and has forgiven if not forgotten, and like we have all the time in the world.

When we don't.

I would give anything for it to be otherwise, but we don't.

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