Title: Rain Man Author: Frohike Website: Frohike's Folly www.geocities.com/frohike51 Email: frohike51@aol.com Rating: G Category: Character observation? You tell me how to classify this one. Distribution: Anywhere you want. Just keep my name and email addy attached. Let me know where you put it, so I can come and visit sometime. Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully don't belong to me. Big surprise. The third person POV however, is mine. Spoilers: A small one for Requiem, but honestly, if you haven't heard this much about the episode, you must have been hiding under a rock for the last few months. A quick word of thanks. Mim, you're always there. That's what touchstones are for, isn't it? Jeri, thanks for putting down your own binoculars and taking the time to read this for me. *g* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm not a voyeur. My kicks are not derived by staring through binoculars into the windows and lives of other people. In fact, until I moved to Arlington, I'd never even thought of intruding on the privacy of another. It happened by accident, really. You'll have to excuse me if I'm not terribly specific with dates, time never meant a whole lot to me; still doesn't. I do know that I first saw him in late August of 1994. That's when I moved into the apartment building across the street from his. I'd spent the entire day unpacking, attempting to make this place look like home. It was hotter than Hell outside, but I had the windows open and a fan blowing to try and air-out the place. The apartment had gone unrented for a number of months and, while the landlord swore it had been cleaned, you couldn't prove it by me. Anyway, the musty smell was more than my nose could handle, so I put up with the heat while I cleaned and unpacked. I was in the bedroom late that night, when I caught a whiff of ozone signaling the coming of rain. When the first few drops began to fall, I closed the bedroom window and walked out to shut the ones in the living room. The rain picked up faster than I'd anticipated, so by the time I reached the last window, the ledge and the floor underneath were soaked. Grabbing a towel, I mopped up the water, thankful that I'd decided not to put one of my small bookshelves there after all. I tossed the towel on the kitchen counter and turned off the lights. It was probably around midnight or so. Walking past the window, I paused to watch the rain. That's when I saw him. He was standing in front of his window, staring out into the night. I'm not sure what made me stay and watch him or what made me go to the closet a short time later to pull out my binoculars. Maybe it was the way he was standing, so still, like he was afraid to move or he might miss something. For over an hour he stood there, staring out through the rain. His hand crept up to his neck and he seemed to be fingering something. A necklace? I don't know; my binoculars are pretty good, but they're not quite that strong, so I had to rely on an educated guess. He looked so sad. No, sad isn't quite right. Lost, is a better word. The rain slowed, then stopped completely. As soon as no more water fell from the sky, he moved away from the window and out of my sight. I put my binocs down and, after waiting a little while longer to see if he would reappear, decided to go to bed. I remember wondering who it was that had hurt him so deeply, just before I fell asleep. In the next couple of months, I only saw him a few more times. Never on a clear night, only when the rain was falling. His face always looked the same, sad and lost. Oh, I looked for him from time to time when the moon was full or the night especially clear, but he never appeared. Not knowing who he was, I began to think of him as the Rain Man. OK, I know what you're thinking, but no, I'd never even seen that movie, and this man was certainly no idiot savant. Two, maybe three months after the first time I saw him, he appeared at the window, just before the rain started to fall. I expected to see the usual face, the usual hand touching the chain around his neck. He surprised me. Both hands reached out and pressed against the glass, his forehead resting on the pane between them. Then the most amazing thing happened. Well, it was amazing to me because I'd never seen him do it. He smiled. Not a big ear-to-ear smile, mind you, a simple turning up of the corners of his mouth. He stared for a little while, then closed his eyes, seemingly content to stand there and listen to sound of the rain gently beating against his window. He left before it stopped completely that night; one of the few times didn't wait for the sky to finish the job. The first time I saw him in daylight was probably close to a year after I moved in. I told you, I'm not big on invading other people's privacy, so I never made the effort to find out anything about the guy. He was the Rain Man and that was enough. I was on my way to work, when I saw them getting out of a car in front of his building. Yeah, that's right, them. He was with a small, redheaded woman. He had bandages on his face and she was helping him up the steps. They'd gone halfway when he stopped and said something to her. He pulled from her grasp and started back down the stairs. "Mulder." I heard her say. Mulder? What kind of name was that? "I just need to get the file, Scully," he answered. OK, Mulder and Scully? I went out on a limb and decided that these must be last names; I mean, what were the chances of two people with such awful first names meeting and hanging out with one another, right? So, now the Rain Man had a name. Mulder. I stored that away as I watched the door close behind them. Time passed. I watched him at night, standing at his rain- soaked window. Sometimes I caught him leaving for work in the morning now as well. Scully showed up at his place on a regular basis, but in spite of the closeness they seemed to share, I didn't get the feeling that there was anything going on between them. Can't put my finger on why, since he constantly had his hand glued to the small of her back and she was never more than a few inches away from his side, but something told me that the bond was one of trust and friendship, not one borne of the male/female thing. I could be wrong. Maybe they'd been boffing each other silly all that time, but I don't think so. I know they got around to it eventually, but I'll get to that later on. We went through a real dry period, much to my disappointment. No rain, meant no Rain Man...I mean, Mulder. One night, I looked out, hoping to see some trace of clouds in the sky. Sirens wailed, but nothing else. The noise grew louder, so, out of morbid curiosity, I waited to see if the emergency vehicles were coming down our street. An ambulance and a couple of police cruisers screeched to a halt in front of Mulder's building. My heart leapt into my throat and I glanced over at his window. The lights were on, but the shades were drawn, so I couldn't see inside. I watched, unable to move, praying that he wasn't the reason for the commotion. A stretcher was brought out of the building. The white sheet mounded high above the bed, telling me that the person underneath had been of considerable girth. I breathed a sigh of relief, not my Rain Man. A few nights later, still no rain in the forecast. I couldn't sleep, so I wandered the apartment, finally ending up in front of the window again. The nights had been cool, so I'd taken to leaving the windows open to help cut down on the electric bill. I leaned out and breathed in the night air. A popping sound startled me, then I saw a tall dark figure running between the buildings. At first, I thought it might have been him, but then I saw Scully half-carrying Mulder to her car. She put him in the back seat and drove off. I didn't see either of them again for a few weeks. Seems like I hardly saw him at all for the next year. Every so often, I'd look out and see him taping an x on his window. OK, so he's a little strange. I'm sure there must have been a purpose in this, but I never did figure it out. Maybe he had a superhero thing going on. I did notice that on the few times it did rain after he'd taped the window, he didn't show up, so I guess that x must have meant something. Seems like it showed up an awful lot. I began to find myself resenting the letter as a whole, to the point of frowning whenever I had need to write it down. OK, so maybe I'm a little strange. One night, during a particularly nasty storm, he came to the window. The rain was coming down so hard that I almost missed him standing there. If it hadn't been for a well-timed bolt of lightning, I might have gone to bed. There was something about the way he was standing there that night. Something about the single arm resting against the pane, supporting his head, that worried me. I stood and watched, waiting for the lightning to illuminate him. As the storm gave way to simple rainfall, I broke out my new, high-powered binocs and trained them on him. Yeah, I'd broken down and bought myself an expensive birthday present a few days earlier, finally admitting my obsession with Rain Man. As he came into focus, I could see that he'd been crying. What now, I wondered. For all the times I'd seen him staring out the window, this was the hardest to watch. He always seemed so strong to me, even through the sadness. Maybe he'd cried at the window before. Maybe this was just the first time I'd been able to look closely enough to see the tracks of his tears. I almost called the local oldies station to ask them to dedicate that Smokey Robinson song to him that night, but never made the call. I doubt he had the radio on anyway and he didn't strike me as the oldies type. Besides, if all the stars aligned and he was listening to the station at precisely the time the dedication was read...well, he probably wouldn't have appreciated the intent and I might have lost my rainy night trysts. Scully came over a little more often after that night. She didn't stay, I'm not implying that there was anything going on, but she did seem to be a more regular fixture around the place. I didn't know her, but it seemed to me that she'd lost a lot of weight, weight she didn't need to lose in the first place. Mulder seemed more protective of her as well. I can't explain it really. I don't mean that he overtly hovered over her or carried her up and down the stairs or anything like that. He just seemed to watch her more closely, usually when she wasn't paying attention. I can hear you now...you're saying wait a minute; this chick's not just watching him in the rain anymore. Guilty as charged. At this point I'd become a regular fixture around Rain Man's place myself. I had no designs on the man, don't get me wrong. No, really. I was just drawn to him like the proverbial moth to a flame, or is that lightning to a lightning rod, given the way we 'met'. He intrigued me; he gave me a reason to believe. Believe in what, I'm not entirely sure, that's just the feeling he gave me. In late September, my company sent me out of state to open a new branch. It was a big opportunity and one I would have welcomed, had it not meant three months away from home. I went, of course, but missed him terribly the whole time I was gone. I returned on Christmas Eve. One of the ladies at the new office had offered me a place to be for Christmas, but I lied and said that I was expected at my mother's house. Yeah, right. My mother hadn't spent a holiday, birthday, any day with me in over ten years. No, I wanted to be home to spend Christmas Eve with him. I prayed for rain the entire flight, but landed in crisp, clear conditions. Just my luck. When I got home, I could see the light of the television flickering in his apartment. I turned on the radio and sat in front of the window, waiting to see if he would join me. I must have nodded off for a while, because it was sometime between five and six when I realized the light was on in his apartment. They moved into view, sitting down on his couch together. I grabbed the binoculars and focused in on them as they opened their presents to one another. He turned toward her after opening his, so I never did see what he'd gotten; her either for that matter, but I wasn't really paying attention. He was smiling you see. When Rain Man smiles, everything else disappears. The next couple of years went on in pretty much the same way. There were good times and sad times. Nights when the rain lasted for hours and I found myself telling him my life story. Nights when I started to believe he was actually listening. God, I sound so pathetic. I dated, had a relationship here and there, so I did have a life outside of my obsession. When all was said and done though, I couldn't find anyone to take me away from my Rain Man. I still didn't desire him, not in the way you're thinking anyway. Never seriously considered making myself known to him. I needed the illusion, not the man himself. He was my constant, my reason to believe. Sure, I've said that before, but that's really the way it was and once you've figured it out, why bother to look for other ways to describe what you feel? Things took a dramatic change earlier this year. Remember that thing I said I'd get to eventually? Well, this is it. Mulder came home after being gone for a few days. I watched him unpack his things, wondering what adventures he'd found on his trip. Later that night, Scully showed up. Like I said, she'd been regular around his place for a long time, so I didn't think anything of it. He looked concerned and brought her a mug of something to drink. They sat on the couch and talked for a long time. She fell asleep. I don't think he realized it right away, because he just kept right on talking. When he saw that she'd drifted off, he got up, wrapped a blanket around her and kissed her on the forehead, before going to bed himself. I smiled. This was the first time I'd seen any real display of affection, not counting the hand on the back thing he always did. Now, I'm not saying that anything beyond a kiss happened that night, but I know something definitely happened not long after. I got in, just ahead of the rain that night. We'd had to redo the inventory when a huge screw up was found in the paperwork. I was exhausted, but the boss had given me the next day off to make up for having to put in all those extra hours. In spite of the disgusting time of night, it was after two in case you're interested, and in spite of the fact that my eyelids kept slamming shut on me as I tried to unlock my front door, I found myself drawn to the window to look for him. It was raining after all, so I had to look. Sure enough, he was there. I rubbed my eyes and willed them to stay open for a few more minutes, as I reached for the binocs. When both the lenses and my eyes focused, I saw that my Rain Man was shirtless and wearing only a pair of black boxers. Now, I still had no big desire to jump the guy, but I will admit that the sight of him that night was more than a little arousing. I'm only human. I watched him standing there, looking at peace with the world, when two small arms slid around his waist. I knew who it was before I even raised the binoculars to her face. Hey, shut up! I said I was only human. Scully was there, smiling up at him, wearing that blue dress shirt he was so fond of. He pulled her even closer and they stood there, looking at the rain, together. Over the next few weeks, I rarely saw them apart. He would disappear on the weekends, presumably to spend them at her place, but they stayed at his place during the week. Maybe he lives closer to their office? After all these years, I still don't know what they do, but I do know that whatever it is, they're in it together. I'm guessing it's government work. I mean, they dress like Feds and if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...I could be wrong; wouldn't be the first time, but in this case, I don't think so. Two weeks ago, it rained for the first time in quite a while. I sat by the window and waited. The light was on in the apartment, but he didn't show up. A strange little man looked out briefly, before shutting off the light. At first I thought that maybe Rain Man had moved out without my knowing about it. Then I saw the man leave the apartment. I recognized him when a longhaired, blonde guy got out of the van to ask him a question. These guys showed up every so often; must be friends of his. I wondered where he was and why they were there without him. The rain lasted for days. Each night I sat and waited, each night no Rain Man appeared in the window. I found myself becoming a little more depressed with each no show. Last night, the rain started again. Hoping against hope, I rushed home and sat by the window, not bothering to change out of my wet clothes. The desk light came on and I pressed my head against the glass. Please, please, please, I chanted in my head. I could see a figure coming toward the window slowly. Scully came into view. I was disappointed at first, but soon rationalized that if she was there, he'd be along shortly. I waited, she waited, he didn't appear. Her head dropped to the glass. I picked up the binoculars too get a better look. Her shoulders were shaking and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She looked like Mulder had looked on that first night, sad and lost. Oh my God, no. Where is he? What's happened to my Rain Man? Please don't tell me he's gone. He can't be gone. She needs him. I need him. Oh God, Rain Man, please come home to us.