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Mulder sat in the near-dark, too tired to turn on the light but also too tired to sleep. Only the little bit of light coming in from the window kept the apartment from being as dark as it had been hiding under those leaves in the Siberian forest, praying no one would find him. As dark as the alien oil that had invaded his body...
When that oil well had started to erupt later, Mulder had felt a shock of deep terror at the sight of the black stuff spewing at him. Not even the threat of getting blown to hell immediately afterward had scared him that badly.
His mind chased itself in circles. He tried so hard not to think about Alex... so of course he couldn't help himself. Every thought of every recent brush with death twined with memories of Alex. Every thought of betrayal.
Every memory of being briefly loved by someone who wasn't a part of himself. Had that ever been real?
Mulder knew he should have trusted his doubts and never gotten involved in that relationship. If he'd been smart, maybe he wouldn't feel like someone had ripped his soul out, and Fox wouldn't be weeping quietly in a dark corner. William had been right. Yet, instead of gloating, he was silent and still in a way that scared Mulder.
Mulder's eyes felt burned and dry. Tears had been, as always, useless. They just made him feel worse, sicker. Weak.
He heard knocking at the door. He shouldn't get it, not while he was in this state. He didn't want anyone to see him like this.
But he needed to get out of this hole for at least a little while...
Mulder slowly pulled himself to his feet.
******************************************************
//This is a big mistake.// Daniel Pendrell knocked at the door anyway. Apartment #42. He wondered if Michael or any of the others were Douglas Adams fans. Probably.
The door opened just a crack to reveal a sliver of face and one very reddened eye. It blinked at him a few times. "Go away, Pendrell. Michael's not coming out to play tonight," Mulder said softly. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over stones.
//Has he been crying?// "I'm concerned about you too."
"Like hell. You just want to see if you can pry any information out of me."
"The rumors going around have been pretty wild," //Never mind that weirdness with the rock I saw for myself.// "but I'm not the gossiping type. Besides, it's not so unusual to try to get in good with your lover's family."
"And that's me?"
"You and whoever else is in there. We need to talk."
To Danny's surprise, Mulder gave in immediately. "Sure, but not here." Total, weary surrender didn't bode well for Mulder's state of mind.
Michael had mentioned once that the apartment was bugged. After that, Danny had started to check his own and recently found one. People really were out to get Mulder.
"I know a safe place," Danny said.
Mulder sighed. "Let me get ready."
The door opened a bit more onto almost complete darkness. The thought of Mulder sitting in the dark brooding on whatever had happened over the last few, mysterious days sent a chill into Danny's heart. Standing out in the hallway, he wondered again, as he'd wondered over and over while Mulder had been missing, if being involved with them was a good idea.
Mulder put on black sneakers and a leather jacket, then left with Danny in silence. The drive passed similarly, with Mulder quiet and looking too worn out to move. The flashes of light from passing cars on his face revealed a serious gash on his forehead and the evidence of an extended crying jag. Michael had always said that Mulder was the one who dealt with the pain...
Danny pulled the car into the driveway and spent three minutes struggling with the locks on the front door. Aunt Deirdre and Uncle Justin had replaced them a year after they got the house. //A little over a year after Mom and Dad had died, leaving it to them...// Danny swallowed down the lump in his throat. It was stupid to still cry about it three years after the car accident.
Once Danny had the door closed behind them, Mulder asked, "Where are we?"
"My aunt's house. She and her husband took the kids on vacation for a week, so I'm taking care of it and the cats."
It always jarred him to see his aunt and uncle's furnishings intermingled with his parents'--the furniture he'd grown up with. He figured that being uncomfortable here would put him on equal ground with Mulder, who seemed to be off-balance already.
Besides, there was no way in hell he'd even think of putting a move on Mulder in his parents' house.
Same body or no, Michael and Mulder were two very different people. Danny never forgot that. His attraction to Mulder had a different source. But that didn't make it any less wrong...
He loved Michael too deeply to cheat with anyone else. He just had to remind his treacherous groin of that.
As he led Mulder to his parents' favorite couch, the one that had one of Grandma's afghans draped over the back, he fought off the furry obstacles throwing themselves around his ankles. Stormy, Misty, Morris Q. Pussycat, and Shadow Skitty all knew that someone coming in the door meant food and intended to show him how deeply they loved him. Once he fed them, he lost much of his attraction.
Then he came home to his own cat, who threw jealous fits at smelling others on him. Fortunately, Mr. Whiskers was too old to get really nasty. But she could be terribly subtle...
"If you trip me and I break my neck, you won't get any food!" Danny protested, and Mulder laughed a little. It made Danny smile. "All right, furballs, I'm going to the kitchen. Do you want the chicken or the Deep Sea Delight?" As Danny headed for the cat food, a river of fur followed. "I'll be right back, Mulder."
Danny returned to find Mulder still sitting on the couch but with a picture frame in his hand. "Is your family trying to keep the redhead strain going single-handed?"
//He wants to avoid the subject. Too bad.// "You can talk here, Mulder. No bugs."
"Why would I want to talk?"
"Because you have no one else to confide in. Agent Scully doesn't know--"
"How do you figure that?"
"I know her. A little. If she knew, you wouldn't be working right now. She'd make you get help."
Mulder looked so sad. "Once you're officially crazy, people can do anything to you. If you try to get help against the abuse, they can just tell your intended rescuers that you're crazy, imagining it all... How long do you think I'd survive, considering my enemies?"
"I never thought about it that way."
"I consider my options once in a while." Mulder looked down. "Besides, I did confide in someone, and it didn't help me. In fact... he betrayed me."
"But I won't. I can tell that what you've just been through is eating you alive. Just what I know scares the hell out of me. The organism in that confiscated rock, the days you disappeared, Agent Scully facing a Senate subcommittee and being held in contempt of Congress... Something big happened, then got swept under the rug. The evidence vanished, and all the people who were involved are dead or missing."
"People have died for knowing some of the things I know."
"But no one will realize I know. Tell me, Mulder. I won't pass judgment, no matter what you say."
Mulder spoke without ever looking up, instead his eyes watched his fingers trace patterns over the faded denim on his thighs. His voice ensnared Danny in a nightmarish spell as he described events in ways that somehow let the younger man see them. The horror, pain, fear, betrayal... Danny now knew how it felt to be faced with death and mutilation repeatedly over a short period of time, to be betrayed terribly by someone he loved. He'd picked up on that too despite Mulder's efforts to hide it. //You loved Krycek, and he gave you to the horror of the experiments. It's amazing you can trust me at all.//
By the end, tears flowed silently down Mulder's face. Danny pulled him near and held him. He tried to pull away, but Danny said, "It's okay. I won't hurt you." He shuddered a bit, then turned his face into the younger man's neck. He seemed to be trying to slow and even out his breathing. "You're just tired, Mulder. Anyone would be a mess after what you've been through."
//I was a mess, and I wasn't even sure what was going on with you.// Danny had been dying to know for sure for months whether Michael was a splinter of Special Agent Mulder, but he'd never wondered what the side effects of having that knowledge would be. Mulder threw himself into deadly situations. When he'd disappeared, he, of course, took Michael with him. Danny had spent days in terror wondering if they'd ever get back.
This wouldn't be the last time, either. This was Fox Mulder's life; when he didn't fling himself into danger, he had danger looking for him.
With the secret nature of their relationship--well, secret aside from whoever had planted the bug in Danny's apartment--Danny wouldn't even know Michael was dead until news of Mulder's death filtered through the bureau.
//I'd thought dealing with the mental illness would be hardest. Am I strong enough to come to terms with this too?//
Danny's hands slid under the leather to stroke across the worn cotton of Mulder's sweatshirt before finding their way to warm skin. They glided over his spine, vertebra by vertebra. Mulder--at least Danny thought it was Mulder--sighed and relaxed a little, which made him feel better too. The terror and anxiety of the past few days slowly dissolved under the welcome human contact. He didn't know when they started to kiss, when their arms tightened around one another...
//I'm making out on my parents' couch with someone forbidden, just like I'm some damned teenager.// But the thought only made Danny harder.
Then Mulder went stiff in his arms. //Oh God, time to stop.// Before Danny could let go, he was knocked away to the other end of the couch. As he struggled to catch a breath, he looked up into eyes like black ice. Hands like steel manacles pinned his to the couch.
"Just when you start to earn a little trust, you do something stupid. Why is that, Daniel?"
William.
******************************************************
Usually William had to seize control. This time Mulder had flung it to him in a panic, begging him to take over, save them from this mess. It should have warmed what little heart he had to hear one of the boys admitting that he was right, that he was needed.
"I was... was about to pull away..." Danny said.
"It shouldn't have started to begin with."
None of this should have. He'd always let Fox have his little one-night stands because the kid couldn't function as well without them. The boy would get his small fix of faux affection and be content for a while.
Daniel Pendrell had gotten under Fox's skin too quickly for William to anticipate and stop. William had never thought the boy would need anyone that much, or after so short a time. If he'd been wise, he would have forced an end to the romance immediately, hurt Fox a little in the beginning to spare the kid greater pain in the future. But he'd been too soft-hearted, too happy to see the boy so elated, and failed to take matters into his own hands, as he should have.
Despite all the odds, Fox had changed due to that relationship, and it was all Daniel's fault.
William thought of the scars Alex Krycek had left on Mulder. He'd taken control of things too late. [Everything went wrong despite me...] There was no way in hell he was going to let anyone else play with his boys.
"It ends here, tonight," William said.
Daniel got an odd look in his eyes. "He says I'm good for him."
William only barely restrained the urge to shake the little bastard. "Fox is desperate for love. He wouldn't know 'good for him' if it bit him on the ass. If you were as kind as you think you are, you would have broken it off with him as soon as you found out what we are. Driven him home instead of letting him stay over and fall into bed with you."
"I care about him. If I had sent him packing when I found out about all of you, it would have hurt him badly."
"Not as much as you'll hurt him in the future." [Everyone leaves, sooner or later, whether they want to or not.] "Besides, this can't end well, Daniel. We're fucked up." William's hands tightened on Danny's wrist. "I'm not going to stand by while you fuck with Mulder too, especially when he's already down and vulnerable. Back away."
[You're involved with Fox, you're involved with all of us, and you don't even know us. Maybe you think you do, but you're wrong. I'm the first, the memory and common sense. Mulder's the breadwinner and whipping boy. Baby is the voice of our pain. Are you even aware of Baby? Fox Mulder was the great futile hope for normality. Fox is the intrepid seeker after a true-blue love that doesn't exist in this world who'll settle for any scrap of affection he can get from a one-night stand. But you see only what you want to see...]
William smiled. "How much do I have to scare you to make you see sense?"
"Michael has told me about you, you know."
William looked through his memories to see exactly what the kid had said and was appalled. Fox had told of a personality forced to become hard and cold and grow up too fast to deal with the burden of its memories and protect its younger brothers. The one who never got any love. That kind of nonsense inspired sneers or pity, when all William had ever wanted was respect or fear. Who knew what kind of stupid conclusions the labrat had come to based on that?
"Fox romanticizes everything. It's his nature." William felt delicate bones start to grind under his grip. "This isn't about me anyway."
Pendrell winced and briefly bit his lip but kept on anyway. "Do you know why you don't feel for other people?"
This had to be stopped. "Because I'm a fucking sociopath?"
"Because you're terrified of getting hurt or the others getting hurt. But it doesn't have to be that way. Has anyone ever held you?"
"You think life is so simple?"
"You can't hurt me. The others would never forgive you. All you can do is..." Daniel did the last thing William would have expected; he pulled his attacker down toward him.
William saw it coming and knew he wouldn't be able to stop it in time. Panicked, he tried to dive under to avoid it, but the others wouldn't let him.
/I remember another couch when you popped up despite all your promises. Live with it./
[You actually enjoy this, so why don't you take over?]
/I wouldn't miss this for the world./
//I'm not jumping in either,// Mulder said. //Deal with it.//
A soft voice, rarely heard, said, ||I'm futile. There's nothing I can do.||
Usually Fox Mulder was just a shadow, a veil, that barely qualified as a personality. For him to come out... It was like hearing your dog talk to you.
||You're not helping yourself.||
Baby could take it. Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise for the labrat?
/Too late./
Then Daniel Pendrell had William tightly clasped in his arms. William twitched helplessly, unable to break free without seriously hurting his captor. The hug was heat and pressure, a manacle, a claim of ownership. The others' memories flashed through his mind for comparison: Mom's absent-minded loose clasps, Dad's evil lust, Phoebe's steel-clawed possession, all the pick-ups who pretended love through their touches, Patterson's steel-armed ownership, Matheson's caresses like the hugs a man would give his favorite dog, Scully's concerned embraces, her clutching-him- tightly-as-an-anchor clasps. The last memory was from a boy two decades dead as the bad things gripped him and started to fasten him to a metal table...
When William broke free of Pendrell's grasp at last, he almost tumbled off the couch from the force of his escape, but he managed to remain upright somehow. He stared down at Daniel, who had such a stupidly expectant look on his face. "What was that supposed to do? Was I supposed to see flights of angels? Realize the error of my ways? It did nothing but show me how stubbornly dangerous you are."
William backed toward the door and got himself out of the house as soon as possible. The late November cold hit like a shock, but they would warm up once they started moving. He immediately took up a fast but measured run, pacing himself. He'd memorized the route Pendrell had taken to get here, but he only intended to find a place he could call a cab from. Given Mulder's life, they always stashed a small wad of cash in a few different items of clothing just in case they got taken at an odd time. The leather jacket had $100 in ten dollar bills in an inside pocket.
William hated having to leave like that, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make a dent on Pendrell, not tonight.
/Not ever!/
[Shut up! It's necessary.]
Fox felt rebellious, and Fox had been gaining power lately...
William could beat on Krycek and easily maintain his even keel. Daniel Pendrell... he was far more dangerous and got under William's skin like no one had since Dad.
And emotion was dangerous...
If dying had scared William at all, he would have locked Mulder away years ago. What terrified him was dying alone, with the others going on without him after they bled him dry. It had almost happened once. During the near-integration, the emerging personality had started to devour him alive, cannibalizing him for what it wanted to use, with the intention of jettisoning the rest. The machinations of the Consortium and the stress they'd caused had halted the process, but William had been left weaker and with pieces of himself missing.
And with a terror he'd never felt before and a determination to make sure it never happened again.
William had tried to ride herd on the others more sternly, keep them in their assigned roles, but he hadn't been as strong as he had once been, and Fox and Mulder now united against him at times. Their alliance had prevented him from having any real say in the decision to rescue Krycek, and all he could do was console himself with the sure knowledge that it would all turn out to be a disaster and prove him right. It had taken a while and almost gotten them mutilated and killed in the process, but it had worked, and Mulder wouldn't be trying anything like that again for a long while.
William could never have anticipated this thing with Daniel, never expected that one pick-up, initially like so many of Fox's others, would lead to such a strong emotional bond so quickly. Abetted by Mulder, Fox was using the relationship to change and grow stronger. Even if William managed to put an end to it now, the damage had been done.
He refused to be helpless; he couldn't be. He'd honed and beaten himself into something cold and deadly to protect the babies. The fact that those babies now hacked at him changed nothing. He had a purpose, and he would achieve it even if he had to go against their wishes to do it. For their own good.
/We're too tired to do this. We have to go back./
[I know why you want to go back. No.]
/We have to./
Fox's shove hurt, but William had to be strong. Fox couldn't look out for his own interests here, so big brother would have to save the day again. [No.]
/Mulder, you have to stop this./
//I don't know what's right.//
[We're too fatigued to deal with him the way we should. Fox, he put the moves on Mulder!]
/He saw Mulder hurt and wanted to comfort him. I felt that it was really thoughtful. He was going to back off when Mulder balked anyway./
William sighed at the reminder that he didn't instinctively understand the way Fox thought. The stupid kid's first impulse was still to think that sex solved everything. William also realized that they'd stopped moving and were now standing still and looking dumbstruck on the sidewalk.
[We can discuss this tomorrow when we're more rested.]
/We're discussing it now!/ Fox sounded frightened beneath the petulance. The gulag cell had scared the hell out of him, reminded him of the basement. Now he would want some kind of physical affection to ground and calm him.
It couldn't come from Daniel Pendrell. William fought Fox's next shove and just said, [No.]
//Please don't fight...//
******************************************************
Danny had run for the car as soon as the shock wore off. He'd managed to screw things up with Mulder and William; hell, he probably would have messed Michael up too if his lover had shown. He would never forget the way William had closed his eyes and gone rigid in his embrace, as if gripped by something horrible and incomprehensible. //Yeah, Danny, you know everything. You're an idiot.//
Figuring... they? might have memorized the route, he found them five minutes and ten blocks later. They stood rooted to the ground, shivering and occasionally twitching their head. The head shake looked a bit like a seizure.
Danny rolled down the window and yelled, "Michael!" No effect. "Fox!"
Trembling, Michael? turned to face him. "Danny, I'm so glad you came. Could you take me back? Please?" The accent, posture, and look of shining entreaty all suggested Michael.
Danny could swear he saw a sheen of sweat on Michael's face. "Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Danny squirmed. "That thing with Mulder earlier, I'm so sor--"
"It's okay. Really. I sometimes get the urge to stroke him into a better mood myself."
Danny tried as hard as he could to forget he'd ever heard that last sentence. "Get in." They were complicated and difficult to deal with, but he couldn't just throw them away for it. He was just tired, that was all.
//I just have to try harder and be more careful with them. I love Michael too much to do anything else.//
******************************************************
Fox sighed and snuggled closer to Danny. He had an afghan wrapped around him, his lover's warmth at his back, and a purring cat on either side. He leaned into the hand stroking his hair.
"So, everything's really... okay?" Danny asked softly.
Fox twined his fingers through Morris' fur and buried all the terrors of the last few days. He wouldn't think about the gulag cell or his misjudgment of Alex's character. He wouldn't let the memory leakages from Mulder--who, as usual, had faced the most frightening bits solo-- upset him. Repression was good for the soul.
Fox had left Mulder to cry, brood, and self-blame all alone after his first offers of comfort had been rebuffed. Mulder hated to be seen in a moment of weakness and didn't accept help very gracefully. Fox's every attempt to soothe William had failed miserably too, as William had shied away from every overture like an animal who'd been beaten too many times to accept the next hand that came at him.
/William, I'm so sorry. I never realized.../ William refused to answer.
Fox closed his eyes. "We're okay, Danny. We're tough. We're just... just having a really bad night." /We'll survive. We always have before./