Title: Seven Year Itch- pt. 3/3 
Author: Rose Campion 
Feedback Email: rosecampion@earthlink.net 
Author's Website: 
Category: Romance, Crossover   Queer As Folk 
Pairings: Mulder/Skinner     
Rating: R 
Archive at Gossamer: Yes 
Gossamer Category: Crossover 
Gossamer Sub-category: Romance 
Gossamer Keywords: Slash 
Summary: Mulder and Skinner have been living in a small Indiana town for seven 
years when Mulder has to make a trip to the big city of Pittsburgh. 
Read parts 1 and 2 first. 

Seven Year Itch- pt. 3/3
by Rose Campion

Part 1
Please see part 0 (template) for warnings and summary.

Seven Year Itch- pt 3/3

warnings, disclaimer, etc. in part 1. Read parts 1 and 2. This won't
make sense alone. 

Feedback. I crave it. Please, please, please. 

Three days later, he was back in Indiana, the van turned in, ducklings
and Mama Duck dispersed to their homes, bike collected and pedalled 
back home. Indiana being what it was, and the Greenhouse effect 
adding to the volatile nature of the weather, it was nearly forty 
degrees warmer on the day of his return than it had been on his 
departure. He shucked the rain jacket and was pedalling home in the 
rumpled suit he'd driven home in. None of them had wanted to stay any 
longer after the last session of the conference was over, so they'd 
just grabbed things and piled into the van, Mulder still wearing his 
professional drag. Not long past the college, a stranger called out to
 Mulder, "Hey! Are you a Mormon?"

"What?" Mulder was almost non-plussed, then looked down at what he 
was wearing, simple dark suit, plain dark tie, white dress shirt. 
Of course he might get mistaken for one of their missionaries. They 
rode bicycles a lot too and dressed sort of like this.

"You know, latter day saints?"

"No, I'm a Friend. A Quaker." he called out as he sped past, headed 
for home. He made good time and almost got home before the storm 
broke. The clouds had been huge and threatening as they'd pulled into 
the campus drive, so Mulder wasn't surprised by the sudden clap of 
thunder and the drenching of warm rain. 

He was out in it for only a minute or two before he pulled up under 
the portecochere. He locked up the bike carefully out of the rain, 
noting that the driveway beyond held not just Walter's truck, but 
two others and a compact car. Company was over. God, not what he'd 
wanted, not how he pictured this return happening. He unstrapped his 
bags from the bike, wrapped the flourescent leg band back on the 
handlebars, secured his helmet to the bike. He waited under the 
portecochere for a few minutes and the downpour lessened to a 
drizzle, a gentle, warm springtime rain. He walked around the house. 

He didn't mount the steps, but stared up at the house, standing on 
the walk. He dropped the garment bag, not noticing it landed in a 
puddle created in the cracked, dipped concrete. He wondered, did he 
deserve to walk up those steps, back into Walter's dream house and 
the marriage he'd dishonored. No, he'd never said the words, the 
vows of fidelity and all the rest. Except in his heart, the only 
place where it really mattered. Yes, he thought at the ache in the 
center of him, I didn't forget what it felt like to have your heart 
gone. It feels just like this now. He heard the distinct sounds of 
live music spilling from the door, a piano, a guitar, more, raucous 
good-time music, making up for in good cheer what it sometimes lacked 
in skill.

The screen door was closed, but the other was propped open to let the 
warm air spill into the house. Light poured from the door and windows 
like a welcoming beacon, but Mulder wondered how he could dare to 
approach that safety. This life, this marriage, this love, even this 
house that he hated some days, had been his net, and he had fucked it 
up for the sake of vanity and anger. Oh, God, he ached like nothing 
before.

A familiar figure appeard at the screen door, opened it and closed it 
behind him. Walter walked to the bottom of the steps. He was dressed 
in work clothes, the old dress shirts and pants left over from that 
other life of his, but used now for carpentry. They were stained, 
worn. The shirt Walter was wearing, once blindingly white and 
starched was covered with little dribbles of paint. So were the 
gray gabardine pants. Walter was barefoot at the moment, an odd 
juxtoposition seen with his old work clothes and he carried a 
sweating beer in a brown bottle, big hands totally hiding the label. 
Drips of paint still decorated those hands. Walter had been working 
this weekend. In the dim light of the purple twilight, Mulder could 
still see that those paint drips were dark gold.

"Mulder, what are you waiting for?" Walter asked, looking at his 
husband, his lover, clearly seeing the pain on Mulder's face, the 
bewilderment, the longing. The look on Walter's face was gentle 
concern and confusion.

"Who's here?" Mulder asked hoarsely. 

"Mickey. Kenny. Rob and Trisha. John and John. A few other people. 
The Beautiful Twins were here earlier but they're gone now. I called 
in a few favors and resorted to some outright bribery to get some 
work done on the house this weekend. I couldn't send them away 
hungry. They talked me into grilling rather than pizza. I thought 
you were going to be home much later. And you know Mickey. Once she 
gets out the guitar, it's all over.  Do you want me to send them home?"

This wasn't how he'd been planning to deal with this. The 
conversation that he'd needed to have right now had been effectively 
derailed before it had begun. But he couldn't bear the thought of 
sending any of Walter's, his, their friends away, not when they were 
obviously having such a good time. They were part of this life, the 
people who loved them. Apparently enough to drop their weekend plans 
and engage in what no doubt had been exacting physical labor under 
the stern taskmaster that was Walter on a project. In exchange for 
little more apparently than dinner and a chance to use the piano. 

"No, don't." Mulder said decisive on at least that issue. "But you. 
I. We. Need to talk. Now."

"Come up to the porch at least. Out of the rain."

In a moment, they were both settled on the capacious veranda that 
wrapped all the way around to the side of the house. It was deep and 
sheltered, with a half wall at the bottom and a generous overhang 
that blocked out all but the worst storms. Many a thunderstorm they'd 
sat out there, listening and safe. Walter sat upright, cautious and 
waiting, on a wicker settee that had seen better days and was losing 
a snake of wicker from around one of its legs. 

Mulder found the nearby porch swing. The sudden warm spell was 
unexpected so the furniture didn't have its usual pads. The thin 
slats of the wooden swing were hard underneath Mulder's back. Under 
the porch, it was so dark that they couldn't quite see each other, 
just forms draped in shadow. Without comment Walter reached over to 
the table. One of their smoking friends, banished to the porch even 
in the winter, had left matches out on the table. Walter struck one 
and lit the candle inside the hurricane, casting them both in 
chirascuro. After waiting in silence for several minutes, waiting 
for Mulder to begin, Walter finally lost patience and started, 
"Let me guess that your outburst on Wednesday had nothing to do 
with a certain sweater."

"Oh, God. No. Nothing to do with anything. Just a symptom I suppose." 
Mulder dug in garment bag that he'd set down on the porch floorboards 
beside him. He produced a soft, thin sweater. He reached over to 
Walter and pressed it into his hands. "It's yours now. It doesn't 
matter. It's just a sweater and I was a dick to yell at you about it." 

Walter fondled the sweater for a moment and then set it aside next to 
him on the settee. "No good. The only appeal it has is that you wear 
it. Mulder, I know that you didn't mean most of what you said on 
Wednesday because you were out of your head with worry about 
leaving home for the first time in nine years. But you have to 
understand that I was out of my head with worry that my husband 
left me for the first time in years. I just needed a little reminder 
of you. That's why I was wearing it. I knew you were probably 
planning on taking it. I thought if I wore it and looked at you 
sadly enough, you'd let me get away with it. I didn't plan on you 
going on the warpath. I'd forgotten that you'd needed comfort too. 
Did you have any? While you were gone?"

Mulder didn't have to ask to know that Walter meant panic attacks, 
though possibly full out flashbacks. Mulder had never had the worst 
of full blown post-traumatic stress symptoms, he'd always managed to 
keep it together enough to cope, but he had, at the beginning and 
ironically, once Walter was settled in safely, more than a couple 
flashbacks, to the things that had happened to him while he was 
abducted, to other unpleasant things. It'd been years since he'd had 
an actual flashback though. "A few panic attacks. Mild. I could 
reason my way through them. Played a lot of freecell in my room at 
night. You?"

"I kept busy. I had friends around. So, no out and out attacks. Just 
crushing generalized anxiety. I nearly called Dr Peterson and asked 
her to renew my Xanax prescription. God, what a pair we make. You 
think I'd be over this by now."

"Walter, the kinds of things we went through, it's a miracle we're 
both still standing. That was the kind of pain from which most people 
don't recover. We've both spent time dead, for God's sake. Just for 
that, I don't know about you, but personally, I'm reserving my right 
to have panic attacks for the rest of my life. If I'd been thinking 
clearly, I would have left a few of mine for you. I should have 
thought about what you'd be going through."

"Those pills are a controlled substance." Walter said firmly. Of 
course. You could take the man out of the law, but despite everything 
they'd been through, you couldn't take the law out of the man. 
No matter that the DEA had far bigger things on their minds than two 
old guys sharing a Xanax prescription. "But I wish you had called. 
That would have made me feel better."

"I couldn't...Walter, I screwed up really bad when I was gone. I did 
something truly, astoundingly stupid. Walter, I get scared sometimes,
 you know, about how much you mean to me. The fact that I don't seem 
to know who I am without you around. My whole life disappeared 
beneath me in a cataclysmic earthquake of the soul, so to speak. And 
when I went to rebuild, there you were. I get terrified that you're 
so close to me and I wonder what if it's not healthy, like Scully and 
I were at the end. I get scared about what would happen if someday, 
you aren't there. I get scared about growing old, because it means 
you're growing old too. I don't deserve you. I'm a vain, spineless 
bastard. Walter, I let some guy pick me up. A cute young thing. We 
didn't do anything besides exchange a few gropes before I came to my 
senses and went back to the hotel. Alone. But there you have it. 
God, I won't lie. It felt good knowing that some cute young thing 
who wasn't a hero-worshipping student wanted to jump my bones. I'm 
a bastard. Total bastard. If you want to kick me out, I can go sleep 
on the couch in my office."

Mulder waited in wrenching anxiety for Walter to respond. The other 
man almost always chose his words carefully, taking his time to put 
together his thoughts so that he expressed exactly what he meant. 
Walter was looking at an invisible point about halfway between them, 
brow creased, jaw set. Not the famous 'I'm keeping my temper in 
check' jaw set, but definitely serious. Long minutes passed in 
silence. Mulder knew that the conversation would pick up again in 
a while, that it wasn't over. But for now, he could only squirm and 
grip the hard wood slats of the swing until Walter decided to speak. 
It took all Mulder's willpower not to disturb the silence with the 
swing. The chains that linked it to beams in the porch ceiling 
squeaked with every motion back and forth.

"I'd be lying if I said that didn't hurt." Walter spoke finally, 
solemnly. He took off his wirerims, like he did sometimes when he 
was saying something important. He folded them carefully and set 
them on the wicker table beside the hurricane lantern. "But you're 
not going to sleep on a couch ever again if I have anything to say 
about it. Especially not over this. Why did you stop? Not go through 
with it?"

"He wanted me to take my ring off. I realized that nothing in the 
world would make me do that. Came to my senses and realized I didn't 
want him fucking me. That he was a predatory little creep. That I 
only ever want you to touch me. You don't know what kind of hell I've 
put myself in. Worrying that I've completely screwed us up, when I 
thought I'd worked my way through the whole self-destructive thing."

"Mulder, nothing in the world could make me give you up. Not even if 
you'd slept with him and four of his buddies. You didn't break any 
promises to me. You've never sworn fidelity to me. I guess I was 
always too afraid to ask it of you. I guess I thought that you'd run 
if I tried to hold you down too much. That's why I gave you the ring 
the way I did. I thought if we said the words, if we made it too 
real, that you'd wake up and this dream of ours would be over. And 
it can't be over, because I need you here beside me. What you did, 
it's over and done and you came back to me. And we won't talk about 
it anymore. Unless you need to."

Mulder turned this over in his mind. It contained more forgiveness 
than he'd expected, without completely letting him off the hook. 
A thought occurred to him, drifting to the forefront of his mind, 
when it had been swimming around there for a while. He went with it, 
hoping it would lead somewhere useful. "Walter, do you remember the 
first time one of said that we loved the other. Despite this memory 
of mine, I can't."

"Like it was yesterday." Walter said. Mulder kept quiet, asking him 
to tell the story by his silence. "It was December 23, 2004. You read 
a poem to me. Do you remember. Mary Oliver. Your students were 
reading her for Humanities."

Mulder remembered the poem. He spoke it now.

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk
on your knees for a hundred miles
through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let
the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair,
yours, and I will tell you mine.
But meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the soft pebbles of rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese,
high in the clear blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination.
Calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting,
over and over and over and over again;
announcing your place in the family of things.

As he finished reciting the poem, Mulder couldn't help noticing the 
raw emotion in Walter's face. "Yes, I remember reading that poem to 
you. You often had me read you things that we read in Humanities. 
You still do. I love that poem. At the time, it felt like a lifeline. 
And I needed to send it out to you."

"And it was. You read the poem to me. And then you said, and I 
quote, 'I've got to go. I have to get to a christmas party. Love 
you Walter.' You said it as if you'd said it hundreds of times 
before and that was how I knew it was true. Best damn Christmas 
present I ever got."

Mulder recognized what they were doing. They'd done it before after 
arguments. Reaffirming their love by telling the stories of the past, 
rebuilding what had been broken in the wake of their rupture. 
Reattaching each of the hundreds, thousands of tiny threads that 
connected them. "Those weren't exactly halcyon days. But at least 
something good came of them. God. You know, I miss brick city 
sometimes. Sitting in that tiny room, waiting for you to call as 
the highlight of my day. Or when you first moved in and we couldn't 
turn left or right without tripping over each other."

"Believe it or not, I sometimes miss brick city too. It was a shock 
to the system, living with practically nothing like you were. 
I remember when I first came to visit. You didn't even have curtains 
or any dishes besides a few bowls you'd stolen from the dining hall."

Back when he'd first moved to the college, Mulder had just gotten a 
meal plan from the college and ate in the dining hall with the 
students. It had seemed simplest. He'd had things far more important 
to deal with than figuring out how to get the basic necessity of 
food into him. Once Walter had shown up, things had changed 
immediately. Mulder had been taken to the nearest Target and had his 
cart filled with all the basic housekeeping necessities he'd 
neglected. "I should have known from the beginning it was serious. 
I remember picking out a toaster and china on our first date."

"You seemed agreeable to it. I knew the instant I got out of my 
rental car in brick city that I'd be staying with you forever."

"So did I."

"We were meant to be. It's that simple." Walter crossed over to the 
porch swing and sat down next to Mulder, then wrapped his arm around 
the slighter man. Mulder returned the gesture and they leaned into 
each other, shoulders pressed into each other, tops of their heads 
touching, graying and bald. They kept silent a long time, but 
the silence was no longer empty and waiting. It was filled with 
what had been spoken before, the love that still resonated in the 
air around them. Simple comfort of bodies touching each other, the 
mere prescence of each other was healing the connections that had 
been snapped. The goodtime music spilling from inside toned down and 
became mostly John and the piano, singing a mellow song whose words 
they couldn't quite make out. It took a good long while before 
Mulder felt the need to speak again.

"Walter. If you need to keep not saying the words, that's fine. 
But I think I need to say them. In front of witnesses. With a 
party after preferably."

"We could do it now. We've got witnesses. A party is already going." 
Walter was suddenly eager, like a kid at a birthday party. He almost 
leaped up from the porch swing, but Mulder held him down.

"Uh-uh, big guy. Or, if we do, you're going to be the one to explain 
to your big brothers and sisters why they missed their baby brother's 
wedding."  Skinners, Mulder had learned long ago, came in six packs. 
Three brothers, all bigger than Walter and two sisters who weren't as 
big physically, but made up for it with their bustle and bossiness. 
There had been some fuss, early on, when they'd learned that their 
baby brother had taken to shacking up with a former, male subordinate, 
but eventually, they all rallied round and welcomed Mulder to the 
family, just another baby brother to them. He even counted it as a 
victory the year they'd all come for Thanksgiving and Betsy, the 
oldest Skinner sibling, had smacked Mulder's fingers with a spoon 
for snitching stuffing before dinner. Just like he'd seen her smack 
Walter a few minutes earlier. 

"Both John and Monica are going to want to come too. But, we don't 
want to make a fuss. Considering it's been seven years we've been 
living together."

"We'll figure something out. Think Mickey and company would play for 
the party?"

"As if we could stop her." As if on cue, the music picked up again, 
something rollicking that probably really needed an electric guitar. 
Definitely music one could dance to though.

"We'll make plans later. Let's go in. We can push back the table in 
the dining room and if we're really nice, maybe they'll play 
something we can two step to."

"Been a long time since we did that." Mulder was swelling with 
unexpected, undeserved happiness. "You weren't dancing already?"

"No. It's just not the same without you for a partner. You're a good 
dancer, better than anyone else around."

Mulder wanted to feel strong limbs next to him, guiding him gently 
into the next step, next turn and flourish. When you danced, if it 
was good, you didn't hang onto your partner or drape yourself all 
over him. You stood straight and tall on your own, but you still 
depended on him, just as he depended on you. You moved together and 
if it was good, it was better than anything else going. "I'm going to 
change then I'll come down. Got drenched on the way home. Thought I 
could beat the storm and I didn't. Hold on, I have something for 
you. Souvenier from Pittsburgh."

Mulder dug into his garment bag again and pulled out the one purchase 
he'd made in Pittsburgh. He'd gone back to the bookstore again, in 
daylight. Not stopping at the Liberty Diner. He handed the bag to 
Walter who fumbled getting the slick rectangle of cloth out of it. 
In the dim candlelight, the bright colors were muted almost to 
irrecognizability but its identity was obvious. Walter held the 
rainbow flag up wonderingly. "I figured it's not going to shock 
the neighbors. They obviously know what's going on here. But if 
you don't want it outside, we could put it the study or something. 
Or if don't want it in the house, I guess I'll take it to the office."

"No. I'm just trying to figure out the best place to mount a second 
flagpole bracket. Why? I thought you didn't want to identify..."

"I'm still bisexual, not gay, but it also seems pretty obvious I've 
cast my lot in with you. Since I'll be here with you forever, why not?"

Yes, forever. And someday soon, they'd say the words even if they 
weren't the kind of guys to make a fuss, but it would be real, not 
that it hadn't been real. But even more real. Meanwhile, their 
friends were inside, no doubt wondering what was keeping Walter 
so long.

(Continued in part 2)