Seven Year Itch part 1/3
by Rose Campion

Part 2
See part 0 for header information.


He locked his Raleigh to the nearest convenient rack, among the gaggle 
of student bikes and walked to the one story building that held the 
motor pool office. His group was waiting outside already, shivering 
in the cold and probably crabby at him for making them wait. Six 
talented students and his department head. Actually, the only other 
person in his department. It was a small campus, with only perhaps 
eleven hundred students at any one time. Every department was small. 
They were going to a conference for criminal justice student 
organization. His department head and he were going along mostly as 
chaperones, though they would both be presenters. They were headed to 
Pittsburgh. It was the first time Mulder had been more than an hour or 
so from home since he made the final trip here from DC, his pitiful 
collection of possesions limited to a few boxes shipped to his new 
address and what he could bring on the plane.

Garment bag over his shoulder he hiked quickly into the building to 
sign out the van that would take them. The forms to take thirty 
thousand dollars of college property out of state were nothing 
compared to getting a simple low end Ford from the Bureau. He pushed 
through them in record time and as he was getting the keys, he assured 
the woman behind the window that he would take good care of the 
vehicle. Never mind that it had been three months since he'd been 
behind the wheel of a vehicle that wasn't propelled by its human 
occupant. Once there had been a time when a car had been another 
natural extension of himself, just as much as his weapon. As he caught 
himself staring at the big vehicle he'd been given the keys to with 
trepidation, he wondered, when did I get so, agoraphobic wasn't quite 
the right word, but near to it. Once he had roamed the entire country, 
even the world, in search for the Truth. The Truth had nearly 
destroyed him. He was happy to remain here and dispense small truths 
to the eager minds reaching for it. Since coming to teach at this 
college he hadn't been further than a hour or so away. He'd been to 
Indianapolis a few times. Dayton all the time, of course. But never 
even as far away as Cincinnati. 

He found himself at that edgey place where he knew that in a minute, 
his chest might start to hurt and his breath would be hard to catch. 
He recognized himself slipping away to a distant place within. Verge 
of a panic attack, he knew, long familiar with that place. Once, when 
he first came here, he'd suffered silently through a lot of them. 
They'd started once he'd gotten to this safe place. He'd started 
decompressing from the trauma. And he'd learned to cope, learned to 
get over them. Learned that when he had to retreat, he found a quiet, 
peaceful place inside him, not the isolated, distant place that only 
led to more panic. He breathed deeply, calmly now. Exercises he'd 
taught himself to get through this, though he hadn't needed them much
lately.

Cowboy up, Mulder, he told himself. You aren't going anywhere but a 
mid-range hotel in Pittsburgh. There aren't any black lunged bastards 
or Alex Kryceks or alien bounty hunters there, just a few thousand 
young faces who hadn't yet had their souls scorched or even touched 
by nightmares probably. He walked to the van and his ducklings 
followed Mama Professor Duck over to meet him, dragging backpacks 
and assorted bags with them. 

Mama Duck was Lyddie Schmidt-Daviess, once a public defender with a 
brilliant, burned out career behind her. She would not be driving. She 
was immensely pregnant, though supposedly only six months along. Then 
the ducklings. Cassie, skin dark as chocolate, wisecracking and with 
eyes too wise for her twenty years, was in the program for pre-law. 
Sarah, a staunchly quiet redhead who reminded him a little of Scully 
already knew she'd be applying to the FBI academy at Quantico, once 
she got some experience behind her. Despite his not so subtle 
discouragement. Those two stood out as the stars to him and both of 
them would be presenting papers. But blond and very openly gay David, 
straggling behind to kiss his boyfriend goodbye was so brave to even 
contemplate being a cop, yet that was his dream. And quiet Lucy, with
hazel eyes that took in everything, leaving nothing missed, was cross-
disciplined in psychology and a natural profiler, Mulder was sure, 
though he didn't encourage her, knowing the vast gulf of pain there. 
Holly and Thomas, both more interested in the justice part of the 
major than the criminal, were pre-law and both destined to be public 
defenders, Mulder was sure. 

As they loaded bags into the back, each of them murmurred something 
along the lines of "Hey, Fox." or "Good morning, Fox." Yes, the 
students too. Ironic that he'd hated it for so long. Everyone here 
used it to him. Only Walter still called him Mulder. A long standing 
tradition at the college, everyone used their first names to each 
other. The youngest student could call the President by his first 
name- Dick. Mulder could have resisted it possibly, insisted everyone 
call him Mulder, but he needed this job, no, not just the job, but 
this life. It was necessary for him to be a full part of the campus, 
to fill the gaping hole where his heart had been with this life. And 
if being called Fox was part of that, so be it. Besides, the way they 
said Fox here was nothing like it had been used before- like a weapon 
in the mouth of his parents. And it went uncommented on here. And 
when Walter called him Mulder, it made it special, their special 
nickname. Neither of them were given to sappy endearments or mush 
like honey, sweetie or darling. 

It was still relatively early morning, the sun just acquainted again 
with the sky for only a few hours and the cold subdued everyone. They 
climbed silently into the plush seats of the van. Most of them brought 
out mp3 players and headphones and settled into musical isolation, 
some with school books, some without as if they were just going to 
catch up on sleep. Lucy, no surprise, got out a pulp true-crime book 
and flipped open to about the middle of it. Holly got out needles and 
yarn and started to knit. Lyddie sipped coffee from a generic white 
styrofoam cup. Even now there was no Starbucks here. That was fine. 
It was good to live in the middle of nowhere.

Mulder backed the van out of its space and out the driveway, then out 
to the road to the highway, the route memorized. A few minutes out 
from the campus, Lyddie spoke, "I know you probably memorized the 
whole map, but did you bring one just in case?"

"Of course. I'm a good boy scout. Be prepared."

"You brought your cell, no doubt. And am I right in thinking you won't 
be taking off your jacket, no matter how warm the van gets?"

"You would be correct in that assumption." he responded softly. She 
was asking if he was armed today. Lyddie wasn't an ex-cop herself, 
but she knew cops. She was the only one around here who came even 
close to understanding why he still needed to carry, she was probably 
the only one in the van to whom it occurred to ask. If it were widely 
known, well, Mulder didn't think too much about that. It wouldn't 
exactly be popular at this liberal college. Only Walter knew and 
understood the real, full reasons Mulder had and not coincidentally
carried a gun himself. Mulder wondered if Lyddie knew that he was 
armed constantly and sometimes wanted to say to her, unless you see 
me at home, or perhaps at the basketball court, I have a gun on me 
somewhere. That more than anything had been why he'd kept all his 
suits, used them as his teaching drag. Always an excuse to keep on 
the jacket that way. In the heat of the summer, when the jacket had 
to come off, there was still the ankle holster.

She didn't say anything else until after they'd hit the Ohio state 
line. "You allright? You seem kind of tense." She glanced at his hands 
and he stole a look down. They were white. He relaxed his death grip 
on the steering wheel.

Lyddie wasn't Scully. She didn't hold his soul. She wasn't his 
touchstone, his measure, his compass star. But she was caring and 
warm. She was his friend as well as colleague and boss. Sometimes 
it was good to have someone who cared for you in an uncomplicated way, 
who didn't carry your life in their hands. Someone who if they died, 
it wouldn't be death to you, just saddness. Lyddie was just his 
friend. He told her, "I had a fight with Walter as I was walking out 
the door."

"You picked a fight with Walter before you stormed out the door," 
She corrected. She knew him, knew them. 

"If not me, then who? Someone has to." He tried to be flippant but 
failed. He decided to go for simple honesty. "I didn't exactly storm 
out. He kind of kicked me out before I could say much more. Christ. 
I don't know why I do it sometimes, Lyddie."

"Bad one, eh? You didn't use the D word, did you?" Lyddie was on her 
way to divorce. Her ex-husband, the man whose baby she carried, was 
already settled down in Indianapolis with some young thing who he'd 
already gotten pregnant. 

"Out of the question. We're not married. We can't get divorced."

"Well then, whatever word you use to describe the breakup of a 
domestic partnership."

"Still out of the question." Some things were just unthinkable. 
Giving up Walter would be like giving up oxygen. Sometimes it scared 
him how much he needed that man. That was the only reason he could 
think of for how much he pushed him away at times. Fear. "But it was 
bad. I said things that were worse. For a man to say to another man."

"What did you say?"

"I as much as accused him of sponging off me." He took a quick glance 
in the rear view mirror to see if any of the ducklings were paying 
attention to them. Four headphones were on four heads. Holly and 
Thomas were in the furthest back bench, immersed in conversation with 
each other. Only then did he venture to say, "I might as well have 
ripped the balls off of him. And he just sent me out the door with a 
pat on the head and an I love you. He'd probably have kissed me if I 
let him. Why do I do it, Lyddie? I know better. God I know better. 
What possible motives could I have for treating him so badly?"

"Well, I've never known a psychologist who could figure out how their 
own mind works. But I know this. He'll forgive you."

"Maybe." Maybe not. Mulder wondered if he'd really stepped too far 
this time. Said the thing that would drive them apart permanently. 
Lyddie didn't really have an answer to that. She slouched down into 
her seat and appeared to nap. Mulder drove and thought about Walter. 

Mulder had left without telling anyone where he was going. No one 
left to care. Mother dead. Father dead. Scully gone. Frohike, Langly 
and Byers dead. He'd waited until Skinner, as Mulder had thought of 
him back then, had gone on vacation and submitted his resignation, 
with the minimum notice he thought he could get away with. The AD who 
accepted the resignation in Skinner's place was all but exultant to 
get it. They'd put him in his current position to force him out 
without actually firing him and it had worked. The only forwarding 
address he'd left with anyone was a lawyer's address he'd left at the 
Bureau's personnel office. 

Still, he hadn't been surprised, about a month after he'd arrived, to 
get a call from a voice from his past. What had surprised him was who 
that voice belonged to. He hadn't received the call at home, but in 
his office, still mostly empty of the piles of books that naturally 
accreted in professors' offices. His UFO books and almost all the 
books on supernatural phenomenon had just been dumped in the trash 
when he'd packed for the move. So had the 'I want to believe' poster. 
In the mostly empty office, just before class one day, he'd picked up 
the ringing phone, said "Hello?" He was just starting to break himself 
of the habit of answering the phone, 'Mulder.'

And Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner answered back, saying, 
"Good morning, Mulder. I just wanted to see how you were getting on in 
your new position."

"How did you find me, Sir. Um, Skinner. Sir." He wasn't sure of the 
etiquette here. They'd gone through hell together, but when Mulder 
had left, he wasn't exactly on first name basis with the man. Sir had 
seemed to work best back then, when he was trying to be respectful 
that was. But the man was also no longer his boss. 

"I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mulder. We must have 
files on just about all of the professors and half the students at 
that lefto hippy-dippy college you work at."  He must have heard 
something, some small choking noise that Mulder had made at the 
thought that the FBI was still watching him. "Seriously, Mulder, I 
recommended you for the position when they called. When you resigned 
suddenly, I assumed you'd gotten it. So I called the main campus 
switchboard and asked for your number." 

"You recommended me?" Mulder flustered at the thought. This early it 
was still painful. Though he was no longer bleeding, it was 
agonizing, the knowlege of just how much he'd needed this quiet, empty 
office and those young faces he would be going in front of in just a 
few minutes. This lifeline had been thrown to him by...Skinner? He 
was almost pathetically grateful. In the past, he might have been 
suspicious, paranoid, wondering why Skinner had done it, what 
ulterior motive was involved. Perhaps his new place in the world was 
already changing him, making him a new man. He was just grateful.  
"Look, I'm sorry. I can't talk at the moment. In five minutes I have 
to go tell thirty first year students how badly their writing bites 
without breaking their youthful spirits. Then we discuss the House on 
Mango Street. Humanities. Required class. For the professors as well as 
the students. Call me at home tonight." He'd given his former boss his 
new phone number and hung up.

That night, when Skinner had called, they had very carefully avoided the 
past. In his new, small, white walled apartment, even smaller than the 
Hegel Place apartment had been, he talked about his new life with the 
man who had once been his boss. About the trees. About the Meetinghouse
and just a few hints of what he'd found there. About the bicycle he'd found 
at a garage sale and was riding to work everyday, finding fun on it. How he 
had to let everyone here call him Fox. About how his office was still in the 
basement. About his students and their blue, green and purple hair, 
dreadlocks and facial piercings. When they were done talking, Skinner had 
said, "Thank you, Mulder."

"For what?" Mulder was confused.

"For making it out alive. For making my effort to get you out not be wasted."

"I'm still not so sure I made it out intact." Mulder admitted, the closest he 
had come yet to admitting to another human the big gaping, yet not visible 
hole that was torn into his chest. The bleeding had stopped. The mending 
had started and yet, there it was still and sometimes he still wondered if it 
would ever close completely. He struggled, with nightmares, day time panic 
attacks. 

"You made it out alive. Give the rest time."

"Goodnight, sir."

"Walter."

"Goodnight, Walter."

A few more phone calls and it hadn't been the concern of a former boss 
looking in to see how his subordinate was doing, it had been simple 
friendship. This continued for a year or so, two. Friends calling each other 
first one time a week, then twice, growing closer with each discussion. 
Mulder still wasn't sure when his heart and life were hijacked, but he knew 
that by the time Walter had made his first visit to the small midwestern 
town, it was more or less a done deal. 

By then, they were calling every night, Walter bearing most of the brunt of 
the ferocious long distance costs. Somewhere about the third month of  their
phone calls, goodnight had given way to 'take care', but Mulder to this  day
couldn't remember when 'take care' had given way to 'love you.' It had  slipped 
so naturally into the conversation that one night a year and a half  after
their calls had started, Mulder had reluctantly let the receiver slip back 
into the cradle and stared at the phone, knowing what he'd said, knowing  he'd
meant it, knowing he'd been saying it for a while, but that he couldn't 
remember when he'd begun, saying it or feeling it.  How long had it been? 
Weeks? Months? When had his world gotten so weird that falling in love  with
Walter Skinner had felt like the most natural thing in the world?

If Mulder had had any doubts that he'd fallen in love with Walter Skinner, 
they vaporized the instant the other man had stepped out of his rental car  and 
started up the walk to the tiny brick duplex where Mulder lived. It was 
finals. It had been the worst possible time for a visit, but Walter had called  
saying he thought it was time and that he had the time to visit now. The 
euphoria that nearly drowned Mulder at the sight of the other man was 
unmistakable. Walter had left his luggage in the car and all but run up the 
walk. Mulder had gathered the other man into his arms while they stood  outside 
his door. Mulder was on the stoop, for the moment half a head  taller and he
bent down and placed his lips on Walter's. His heart stopped  for a minute as
they kissed, or at least that's what it felt like. Walter kissed  with a heat
that seeped into Mulder's bones and never really left. It was  hard to smile
and kiss and keep his eyes open so that this memory would  remain imprinted on
his mind forever. But that's what he'd done, and he had  remembered. If he
couldn't remember the first 'love you', Mulder certainly  remembered their
first kiss, how his heart had seemed to contract painfully,  a clutch in his
chest, at the first brush of lip upon lip, then it released. And  he remembered 
the sweet scent of cut grass in the air, the distant murmur of  his fellow
inhabitants of the complex outside enjoying the first summer-like  evening, the 
caress of warm air, the soft purple of the twilight. It had been  so easy.
Walter had made it so easy for Mulder to simply let the soft animal  of his
body love what it loved. It was at that moment that Mulder knew that  the big
hole had finally closed over. He had a heart again.

Then Walter had pushed him away gently, "Shit. I'm sorry. We should have 
waited until we were inside. People are out. They can see. I know you live in
 the student apartments."

"Walter, it doesn't matter. I don't work for the Federal Bureau of Intolerance 
anymore," he'd said. He'd thought but didn't say 'and neither should you.'  
Mulder had continued, "This hippy-dippy lefto college I teach at has the 
best non-discrimination policy in the state of Indiana. Not only do I not 
have to be in the closet, when we finally get a chance to cohabitate, we'll 
get the exact same benefits as my heterosexual married colleagues."

"When? Isn't that a bit presumptious?"

"I always was. A few things don't change." Mulder had paused at that 
moment, not sure why he had to clear something before inviting Walter into 
his house. He took Walter's hands in his and said, "But most things have. 
Walter, I sometimes think that the only thing I have in common at all with 
your former subordinate back in DC is that I carry the same gun he used to 
carry and wear the suits he used to wear. I am not the same person I was 
back then. I had to reinvent myself. Remake myself. There wasn't enough 
left of me to go on living. He died. I was born and I'm still new and fragile. 
That's the only way I can describe what happened to my psyche."

"I think I understand. Mulder, I haven't come here because I secretly loved 
you all those years we worked together." Walter had said. Not a completely 
unjust assumption. Though Mulder had never considered himself anything 
but hetero until Walter, Walter was a deeply closeted gay man, going so far 
as being married seventeen years for cover. "You were irritating. Irrational. 
A massive pain in my ass. I couldn't help respecting you and your abilities. 
I cared for you, even liked you, but I fell in love with the man that I met on 
the phone."

The churning euphoria, the uncontrollable happiness that was so mixed 
with anxiety that it was impossible to tell them from each other had slipped 
away. It was replaced by a certitude, a contentment. "I don't think your 
former subordinate in DC could have fallen in love with you or anyone else. 
The best he had to settle for was codependancy with his partner. Welcome 
to my home, Walter. Yours if you want it to be."

And then he'd pulled Walter into his half of the single story brick duplex. 
Walter had looked around at the ascetic space, puzzled. The only furniture 
in the room was a desk and chair, with a stuffed briefcase sitting next to it. 
"Where's your television, Mulder? And your couch?"

"I hope a dumpster diver found them. Otherwise, they're in whatever landfill 
Alexandria sends its garbage to. I left DC with three boxes and a suitcase. 
A new man, remember. Doesn't matter now. Come to bed, Walter."

And Walter had come to his bed and never truly left it since, though it had 
been a few months until the day Walter had shown up, with the proverbial 
three boxes and a suitcase and a plan to stay forever, having told the 
Director and the whole Bureau to, quote, "fuck themselves sideways with a 
chainsaw."

Mulder brought himself back from memory, back to the van, the road ahead 
of them, Lyddie drowsing in the shotgun position, half his ducklings asleep 
behind him. Mulder glanced at his hands on the wheel, at the thick plain 
gold band he'd worn for years now, almost a part of his finger, never once 
taken off. He didn't remember the exact day, but sometime when they'd been 
searching for a house together, it had appeared on his plate at dinner one 
day. Walter never was overly demonstrative, never one to put up with a 
fuss. Mulder had waited until Walter turned away from the oven, meatloaf 
in hand. He'd nodded at Walter, then slipped the ring onto his ring finger. 
The marriage had happened a while back, probably the day Walter had 
shown up with his few possessions. They just hadn't gotten around to 
acknowleging it yet. Then they ate the dinner that Walter had cooked 
without exchanging a single word on the subject. Just as nonchalantly, a 
few days later, Mulder had woken Walter with a kiss, then slipped a 
matching band onto his finger and gone off to lead first year students in a 
discussion of Aristotle's "Ethics." Walter had, theoretically, gone back to 
sleep.

"Hey, Fox!" one of the ducklings called from the back of the van. Cassie. 
"Can we make a stop?"

They were four hours out on the road now, somewhere in  Ohio, having 
made good progress. They found a truck stop area. After he'd pulled in 
and parked, the ducklings scattered to various destinations, finding 
restrooms, fast food. Mama Duck Lyddie stuck by him and they loaded 
up on salads that seemed to be mostly styrofoam from one of the chains 
represented. Mulder added a burger, but discarded the squishy white bun, 
instead crumbling the cooked beef onto the salad. 

(Continued in part 3)