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Chapter Text

29 October 1986 

—West Potomac Park, Washington D.C.—

The park was more crowded than usual, busier, and that was good. Parks are easy places to become invisible; people rarely focus on faces that don't belong to those they love when they're surrounded and transfixed by nature. Kids threw frisbees to their golden haired dogs, and young lovers walked hand in hand on the riverside. One last farewell to summer was due before the first fall frost, and the city was celebrating the beauty of what would be the park's last bloom of the year. Trees lined the Potomac casting shadows and allowing for recluse from the surprising heatwave besieging D.C. in late October, but few took advantage of the shade. Instead, families unfolded picnic blankets, and parents laid back to spot shapes in clouds with their children. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, 80 degrees, partly cloudy, with a cool breeze from east; it was perfect weather to go for a long run.

A lighter clicked in the shadows near the riverbank, and a Morley began to burn. Yes... Perfect weather for a run. The cigarette smoking man slipped his Morley's back in his trench coat and patted the lighter in his inside pocket. Smoke clung to his dewed brow as he exhaled and tapped the ashes into the undergrowth at his feet. He'd been casing West Potomac Park for two hours now, leaning against an Oak, hidden behind a large bush, and he was nearly done with his first pack. He fingered the collar of his shirt before taking a long drag on his cigarette—the heat certainly wasn't lost on him today. His eyes surveyed the runner's track opposite his position on the river, searching for someone, seeking a familiar face, hoping for a glimpse...

He took a drag and snuffed out the butt of his cigarette on the Oak as a bird landed gently on the ground next to him. Its red feathers stood out in contrast against the foliage. Its crest stood proud as it twitched its head in the direction of the cigarette smoking man. He flicked the butt of his cigarette at the cardinal, and it hopped away, flying quickly to perch on the low hanging branch of a tree nearby. The man studied the bird as it began to whistle and raise its crest in alarm at the predator who flicked a smoldering pellet at it only moments before. It hopped from branch to branch in the tree, then hopped back onto the ground, slowly moving closer to the man. It picked at the foliage and foraged yet remained cautious. It kept its distance from the man in the shadows who lit another cigarette and crumpled the empty pack of Morley's in his hand, tossing it to the ground at his feet. 

In the shadows, the cardinal could be easily recognized. Its color and shape vividly contrasted with the dull background of brown leaves cluttering the earth in early stages of decomposition. The first faint breaths of fall had only just begun to transform the deciduous trees above. Most of their leaves were still thick and green but were in fact new blooms providing shade and concealment for the cigarette smoking man beneath. The leaves that had graced this tree during the long summer months had long ago fallen to the floor of the woods below. Despite the heat, there was a crispness to the wind. It was one that chilled the sweat on the man's neck as he turned to check the area of the park to the south. 

Families were gone from the park now. Their picnic blankets were neatly folded and nestled in the back of their station wagons as children nodded off to sleep in backseats, still clutching frisbees and dreaming of summer days long gone. The man opened a new pack of cigarettes while the light from the sun began to dim, and couples slowly made their way out of the park. A drunk shuffled towards a bench fifty yards away, and unceremoniously plopped his weight onto it. A bottle clattered to the paved path next to him. In his efforts to roll over and quickly conceal it, he found himself face down on the ground. A cloud of smoke enveloped the face of the cigarette smoking man as he smiled to himself in the shadows. He found great pleasure in surveillance—one often learned much more than originally planned if you kept your eyes and ears open. Sometimes, he mused, one may even find a laugh or two.

He snuffed out the butt of his cigarette once more in the bark of the tree, darkening the right eye of the smiley face he'd been burning into the trunk all day. He leaned up against the Oak and sighed. Checking his watch in the waning light, it was 6:45. He turned to search the faces of the drug dealers, patrolmen, joggers, and smitten teens moving about the park. It was getting late, and it was beginning to look like his informant was going to have some serious questions to answer in a few hours, but then the cigarette smoking man caught a glimpse of a ghost clad in grey. 

He let out a breath of smoke and licked the back of his teeth, swallowing the dry nicotine spit in his mouth as he flicked the half smoked cigarette into the bushes. He pulled his coat tight, settled into the shadow of the bush in front of him, and pressed himself tightly against the Oak. From a distance, the cigarette smoking man watched the man in grey run on the jogging track as he unawarely passed mere yards in front of his surveillor. 

The cigarette smoking man watched as the grey-clad jogger ran further down the track and away from the river and continued to make his way through the park in darkness. The man in the bushes lit another cigarette as he watched the jogger disappear and reappear on the track, zigzagging through the park and in-between the light of the street lamps. Finally, he was out of sight. 

The cardinal whistled faintly from a branch above him, and the smoking man exhaled  with a sigh. He pulled a file from the inside pocket of his coat and opened it, shuffling through pages until he found a picture. His eyes strained in the dim light to make out the details, but there was no mistaking his target. The brown hair, freckled pale complexion, strong brow, and square jaw of the man in the picture were immediately recognizable as he reappeared and rounded the turn of the jogging track, making his first loop of the night. 

It’d been a long time since he’d seen that face in the flesh. He took a drag on his cigarette and ran the back of his thumb across the head shot in the folder. 

And people say he looks like Bill… 

He studied the shape of the jogger running through the park. He noticed the ease of his stride, the tilt of his head, and the way his eyes never changed their focus while he ran. He relaxed against the tree and wondered why the man in grey found himself jogging so late at night. It wasn’t exactly the safest time of night… The smoking man noticed the shape of a gun padding the jogger’s right thigh and the way he leaned into every stride on his right leg. He guessed it had just been issued to him after his recent graduation from the FBI academy. He smiled and took a long drag on his cigarette, thumbing through the folder with his free hand to find where the jogger had been placed. 

The Investigative Support Unit, Concentration: Behavioral Science. My my... First Oxford, now profiling... Didn’t you grow up to be a smart boy…

The cardinal whistled again at the man in the shadows as he watched the shape of the man in grey move away from him on the track once more, always within sight yet still out of reach… The cigarette smoking man took another pull on his cigarette and began to walk away. 

He had found his mark. 

31 October 1965

—Quonochontaug, Rhode Island—

“Hey Daddy! Look at me, I’m a pirate!” Spender turned around just in time to see Fox  Mulder hobble onto the back porch with his fake peg leg, grinning from ear to ear. The four year old was quite the sight—a broad black hat sat low on his messy mop of brown hair and a patch slightly too big for his face sat awkwardly over his right eye. He’d completed the look with a long brown felt beard that fell nearly to his little waist. Spender smiled as he appraised the child in front of him. 

It’s a wonder he didn’t trip over that damned thing. 

He stifled a chuckle and felt Teena Mulder’s eyes on his back. He quickly looked away and ashed his cigarette in the tray behind him. 

“Well look at my little buccaneer,” Bill Mulder knocked back the rest of the whisky in his glass, flighting a glance at his son before refilling his glass from the decanter across the porch. 

Spender kept his face still despite the discontent he felt simmering in his stomach. Teena held Samantha firmly in her arms and walked over to stand behind Fox in the doorway. She adjusted his hat and rearranged Samantha’s bright red wig as Bill finished filling his glass and walked over towards a grinning and waiting Fox. He picked the hat off his young son’s head and waved it in the air, laughing. 

“Oh you really are something aren’t ya kiddo.” He smiled and placed the hat back on Fox’s head before rubbing a finger over his daughter’s cheek. Bill took another drink, ignoring the look his wife gave him, as he turned to walk down the steps of the porch and into the backyard, gesturing for Spender to follow him. 

“Stay close to your mother tonight, and be nice to your sister,” he took another sip and let out a tense breath, “and Teena...” 

“Bill?” She asked with just an air of annoyance to the reply. A moment passed and the air between the three adults on the porch turned icy as Bill raised his glass and pointed it in the general direction of the house, 

“Don’t let him eat too much of that garbage they hand out at the doors, will ya? He’ll be up all damn night again if you do.” Bill marched towards the edge of the water, gesturing again for Spender to follow, leaving his wife and children standing tense and quiet behind him in the doorway of their home. 

“Alright Bill…whatever you say.” Teena muttered to herself. She sighed and shifted the weight of her youngest child, Samantha, from one hip to the other while looking down at Fox. Spender studied the lines of her face. They’d gotten deeper after the birth of her second child and the lilt of her voice had never quite been the same. 

Spender let out a nearly inaudible sigh before lighting a fresh cigarette. He missed the friendship Bill, Teena, and himself used to have, but all that had changed nearly five years ago… Now he rarely saw Bill without a drink in his hand, and Teena— well —Teena hadn’t touched Spender in three years. He watched as she smiled and tickled Samantha’s belly, bringing out a giggle from the otherwise quiet young girl. He couldn’t help but think that the three of them, Samantha cradled in Teena's arms and Fox looking up from below, were the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

“And we…“ Teena laughed and turned to address her eldest, “have some houses to pillage, now don’t we my little Black Beard?” She tickled the back of Fox’s neck with her free hand, eliciting easy laughter from the boy, whose face immediately brightened and looked up to meet his mother’s.

“Plunder, Momma! Pirates plunder and vikings pillage—we got some houses to plunder before it gets dark. We gotta go now!” Young Fox began to pull on his mother’s jeans and Teena smiled.

“Alright, hold on, let me get your coat. We really should get moving if we don’t want to be out too late.” She opened the door to the house and was about to walk through it when she paused with her hand on the doorframe, “Spend… would you mind?” She glanced between him and Fox, asking Spender to do something she’d never asked of him before, something he’d always wanted to do but never had the chance. It was test, and he could tell.

He took a drag of his cigarette, “Of course.”

Her eyes met Spender’s, and for a moment he thought he saw something, a ghost of a feeling that used to be, but then it was gone as she carried her youngest child into the house in search of coats to protect her and her own from the wind of crisp autumn evening. 

An appropriate night for ghosts… Even after all these years…

Her voice was heavier than usual lately, Spender thought to himself. But why wouldn’t it be? It was barely four in the afternoon and Bill was already well on his way to being drunk—that is if he wasn’t already. Spender snuffed out his cigarette. He took a step towards Fox and smiled gently as he knelt down in front of the child.

Fox looked up at him nervously with wide bright eyes. Spender felt a rush of warmth for him and wanted nothing more than to leave with him and Teena to knock on the front doors of strangers’ houses and beg for treats.

What I’d give to put on a mask and face the night as just another anonymous father with the rest of the world.

He knelt there for a moment and considered the thought, what it would take, before he reached out and placed a worn hand on the four-year-old’s shoulder.

“Now what do we have here?” Spender tugged on the suspender Fox had fastened into the strap for his wooden sword’s sheath. He noticed it was all held together by nothing but tape, glue, and probably a little bit of childlike luck and prayer. He smiled to himself and cherished the thought of Fox hard at work on his Pirate outfit. The boy had been transfixed with pirates for a few months at that point, consuming an incredible amount of TV on the subject at an alarming rate. Now that he thought about it, it made sense for him to want to dress up as one for Halloween, and in a surprisingly accurate homemade costume for a four-year-old at that. 

“My my, this is a clever costume. Now, tell me young man, who helped you make it?”

Fox beamed with pride, “I did it all by myself, Sir! I even made my beard!” The little boy pointed at the felt hanging from his face. Spender inspected it more closely and found the rough hewn edges that could have only been cut by a child. He couldn’t help but chuckle as he spoke,

“Well that is impressive! You’ll have to show me how to grow a beard like that one day. You’re even better at it than an old man like me.” Spender stood up and walked Fox through the house and out to the front yard where Teena was waiting with the car to take the kids trick or treating. “Now take care of your mother tonight, alright matey?”

“Yes sir!”

“Now hold on a minute, what was that, Sailor?” Spender smiled and grabbed Fox’s shoulder just in time to catch the flash of fear in the young boy’s eyes as he turned him around. Spender immediately regretted his jab and correction until he saw Fox’s eyes fill with light once again, possibly brighter than they had been before,

“OH!” Fox hopped up excitedly, “I meant, Aye-Aye Captain!” he beamed up at Spender.

Spender laughed and patted the boy on the back before Fox turned and wrapped his arms around Spender’s legs. He didn’t know what to do except stand there as his best frien-… former best friend’s son hugged him fiercely and then barreled off in the direction of Teena's car. 

Spender stood and watched, dumbfounded and struck quiet, as the mousy hair’ed youngster ran to catch up with his mother and sister. In a daze, he reached into his pocket for another Morley only to find he’d finished the pack.

“Hey Mister!” Spender looked up to see a young Fox Mulder leaning out of his mother’s car window, waving his hand wildly.

Fox raised his voice to be heard above the crank of the engine, “Happy Halloween!”

Spender couldn’t help but smile and raise his hand to wave goodbye as Fox climbed back in the window and his mother drove away.

He grabbed another pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and made his way around the house and towards the shore in the backyard of the Mulders’ vacation home. He walked slowly and turned his thoughts over in his head as he listened to Teena drive off down the driveway. When he could no longer hear the roar of the engine and the crunch of gravel, he turned around to see an empty front yard. He sighed and closed his eyes but was immediately greeted by the image of Fox staring up with him with wide, bright eyes. 

This is going to make things difficult…

He sighed, very difficult, because tonight he needed to ask Bill to make a choice… 

It would be the hardest choice of both their lives.

Chapter Text

15 February 1988 

—Quantico, Virginia—

13:20

Agent Bill Patterson stood to his feet and glared at the man seated across from him. He didn’t like it when the feds from higher up got involved, and he sure as hell didn’t like it when they invaded his office. The man in black sitting in front of him flicked open a lighter and lit a fresh cigarette. Patterson clenched his fist and pointed at the cigarette smoking man as he let out a long drag of smoke.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but this is my unit and I decide if and when my agents transfer between departments. So you go run off and tell your superiors that he’s not moving and that’s final.”

The man sitting in front of him smiled and calmly snuffed out his Morley as he stood to his feet. 

“I believe that wouldn’t be a very wise career move on your part, Agent Patterson. See, my…superiors… as you so eloquently put it, would likely find that response rather inflammatory.” He folded his hands and let out a short laugh, “We wouldn't want any…sensitive information about your ventures with the D.C. call-service to get out to the general public, would we?..”

Agent Patterson swallowed hard and steadied himself on the desk. The cigarette smoking man’s mouth widened into a grin as he licked his lips.

“My my…that would be the end of a promising career…wouldn’t it?”

Patterson was frozen. He felt sick. Immediately his thoughts rushed to the blonde he’d met a week ago at a hotel in the capital. He hadn’t known… 

no one could ever prove…

He straightened up his stance and walked around to the front of his desk to face the man invading his office. His voice was gravel and grit when he spoke,

“Who the fuck do you think you are coming in here threatening to blackmail me?” He tossed a file off his desk and across the room as his voice rose and his face reddened, “Who do you work for? You don’t have the authority to come in here and tell me how to run my unit!”

The smoker chuckled, “I could have authority over any department in this building if the need were ever to arrive,” he made a show of lighting another cigarette, “and for sensitive reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose at the moment, the need has arisen to have control over yours.” 

The man seated in front of Patterson inhaled deeply on the Morley in his hand and his face twisted into an expression close to that of anger, but not quite. It inspired a feeling more sinister and tremulous in the beholder—it was one of disdain.

Agent Patterson felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck. His body was tense, and he stifled a gag as the man in front of him blew a cloud of smoke in his face before ashing his cigarette in Patterson’s coffee mug. He wasn’t going to let this man push him around, no matter how much of a pissing contest he tried to put on in the middle of his office. 

“Now, in case you didn’t hear me well enough the first time…” The smoking man rose to his feet and walked towards the back corner of Patterson’s office, 

“I said if you don’t have Agent Mulder transferred out of the Investigative Support Unit and into the Violent Crimes unit before the end of the day, you’re going to be wondering how it is that your legs ended up in the mail room before the rest of you.” The smoking man took a step forward as he lit a fresh cigarette, “Now, Agent Patterson, did I make myself clear, or do we have to go through this again?”

He calmly took a drag and smiled sickly at the agent in front of him.

Patterson could feel heat moving across his cheekbones as he flushed from anger. God dammit he hated power trips, and he wasn’t about to let this no-name son of a bitch push him around with this one. He tried his best to collect himself.

“It’s funny,” Patterson began to inch his way towards the door of his office as he splayed his fingers over the gun resting snugly against his back, “you walk into my office and demand that I immediately relocate the best damn agent in my unit miles away to work an office gig, without even providing a reasonable lie to cover up whatever screw-brained reason you have for the transfer, and you expect me to go along with it? With no questions asked?” Agent Patterson laughed and shook his head incredulously as he patted his hand on the gun in his holster, “And all that after threatening to blackmail me?” 

Patterson couldn’t help but smile as he heard a knock and the familiar voice of his secretary at the door.

“Sir?.. Is everything okay?..” 

Thank God… He felt the tension in his back release, Jennie’s back from lunch. 

Agent Patterson quickly stepped towards the door and opened it to the surprise of his secretary waiting on the other side. The cigarette smoking man took another long drag and stood back on his heels, shooting a cold glare at the man in front of him. Agent Patterson gestured towards the door,

“I think it’s time you left my office. Jennie, make sure our guest finds his way out of the building.”

13:25

The courtyard in front of the F.B.I.’s building in Quantico wasn’t the most practical place for a man like Spender to review case files, but it was going to have to work. He lit a cigarette and focused his eyes on Bill Patterson’s window—third floor, seventh pane from the left—he watched as the man settled himself in his office. Surely their meeting had riled him quite a bit, and Spender mused that not much work would likely be done in that office for the rest of the afternoon. He rolled the Morley between his fingers— the window was clear and allowed for a direct line of sight to Patterson’s desk chair. 

A fair marksman could make that shot in waning light with a headwind…

Spender shook the thought from his mind. He pulled a file from inside his coat and flipped to a report stapled to the back. It was a preliminary psych evaluation. Tremors, uncontrollable fits of rage, manic depressive episodes…

Apprehending the suspect, Rolf Hagen, took a serious toll on Agent Mulder due to the unprecedented methods he employed to profile, pursue, and capture the suspect…

Spender ashed his cigarette and took another pull, bracing himself as a gust of wind hit his back.

My professional opinion is that Agent Mulder should be deemed unfit for duty for a period of one week pending further psychological evaluation and treatment. Furthermore, Agent Mulder will be under the supervision of a clinical therapist for the entirety of his medical probation for the next 4 to 6 mon-

Spender ripped the report from the back of the file and tossed it into the nearest trashcan. It wouldn’t do to have someone monitoring the boy while he tried to work. Hell, what am I thinking? What with the master copy of the report being in his hands, and the director of the psychological department for the F.B.I. having a penchant for rather inappropriate, some would say illegal, sexual appetites, he found it very unlikely that the powers that be would be overly concerned with the absence of a psychological report on the leading agent on a case that successfully eliminated a notorious child serial killer. He flipped back a few pages in the file to read the final page of the lead investigator’s report for what seemed like the thousandth time. He took a long drag on his cigarette.

Rolf Hagen was shot three times in the head and chest. Two blows were fired directly to the chest with a final third shot to the head, at 22:57 on February 10, 1988, by myself, Agent Mulder. The only other witness to the event was an eight-year-old girl , Samantha Miller, whom Rolf Hagen had kidnapped from her home on the night of February 7th, 1988, presumably to torture, kill, and embalm, in the same manner as his other victims. Upon inspection, Miller had suffered deep lacerations on her hands and feet from being bound, and three of her molars were missing. The missing teeth are consistent with the signature mutilation Hagen inflicted on all but one of his previous 24 victims. Hagen was pronounced dead on scene upon the arrival of the Emergency Response Team. No other injuries were reported. 

The sky above Quantico began to turn dark as he stood leaning against the trashcan in the quickly cooling courtyard. He took a short drag on his cigarette before throwing it onto the walkway, tucking the file back into his pocket. For a moment, he felt lost. That boy can’t stay in the IVU much longer… He sighed. It’s going to kill him or worse, he thought, it’s going to drive him mad.

The cigarette smoking man walked along the sidewalk towards his waiting car in the garage across the street. The air around him sparked and stirred with electricity as a winter thunderstorm rolled in, but Spender couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the weather. His thoughts were somewhere else… 

7 April 1961

—A Cabin Somewhere in Massachusetts—

Thunder shook the frame of the house—if you could call it a house—and Teena Mulder jumped beneath the sheets with a sharp squeal.

“Jesus!” She collapsed back onto the pillow and draped a hand across her face, “Do you think this place can survive a storm like this?” She’d wrapped herself up in the sheets of the bed while her partner stirred the fire across the room. His eyes wandered over her silhouette in the firelight, and he felt a stirring in his chest when he saw the way she smiled at him from behind the pillow she’d clutched to her chest. 

“Not that it isn’t a beautiful little shack, Honey, but we’re about to run out of buckets to catch the rain comin’ in from all the leaks,” she teased him as she giggled. He laughed as well and surveyed the damage that’d been done to the cottage during the past two hours of the storm. So far, three buckets had been placed around the house—two in the kitchen, and one in the sitting room—but there was a spot on the ceiling of the bedroom that looked like it was about to give way to a stream of drips at any minute. He ran and grabbed a bowl from the kitchen to place under it.

At least it wasn’t over the bed…

It was a quaint little place—he thought—one he’d bought with his first paycheck from the Army after basic training. He’d always thought it needed a woman’s touch, and he smiled at the thought as he surveyed the new additions to his collection of bedding for the cottage. Yellow throw pillows, a light green sham for the duvet, and a matching yellow dust ruffle for the edge of the bed. Nothing in this place looked the same as it had a week ago—a fact that pleased him. Up until he’d brought Teena here, it’d been a bit of a bachelor pad. It was where he’d come to unwind alone with a couple bottles of gin for days or weeks at a time after a mission went particularly badly…or well depending on the assignment. He’d sit on the back porch and finish the bottles while staring into the woods, drinking to his family’s penance, to his own personal penance. 

Now, the new throw pillows were tossed about, the duvet was crumpled against the wall, and the only thing on the bed was a very naked Teena Mulder wrapped in white cotton sheets, and God… he just couldn’t stop looking at her.

“Spend, come back to bed please?” Teena shot him a look, letting the sheets fall away from her breasts for a moment, and he felt himself harden and shift in his BVDs. They’d been in the cottage for about three days now, and no one had come looking for either of them yet—a fact that was beginning to cause him a fair amount of distress as well as comfort the more he thought about it. He didn’t know how to feel about fucking his best friend’s wife, falling in love with her, and running away with her to the forest. The only thing he really knew was that after years of not knowing where he fit in his country, his job, in every relationship he’d tried to have up until this one, he’d finally found a place he wanted to be. It just so happened that the only place he wanted to be was in the arms of Teena Mulder. Spender laid himself across the foot of the bed and traced the length of Teena’s calf with his hand, letting his fingertips feather upwards and splay across the top of her thigh.

When he spoke, it was soft, low, nearly a growl, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, babe,” he curled his fingers through the bush of hair at the top of her mound and paused—Teena’s breath had quickened and her skin had begun to flush. Spender thought gods had never worshipped queens as beautiful as her. His breath caught as he buried his face against her inner thigh, “God you don’t have a clue what you do to me.” He felt himself straining against his briefs and quickly jumped up to remove them before he crawled forward on the bed to meet his love again. He let his lips trace up her leg, following the path his hand had taken only a moment before. Teena let out a gasp and dug her fingers into the bedding.

“Oh, you’re tellin’ me, love,” Teena breathed as she moved beneath him and laid back on the bed, moving the sheets away and opening herself up to Spender as he snaked his arms up against her legs and pushed them open and down against the bed. He kept trailing kisses along the top of her leg, moving across and down towards her inner thigh. Teena shifted under his arms, letting out soft pants and moans as his kisses zoned in on her warmth and wetness. He slipped a finger inside of her and she gasped—loudly. Suddenly, Spender felt her fingers tangle in the little bit of hair he had left on the top of his crew cut as she pulled him upwards towards her face. He expected her to kiss him, but instead her eyes met his, and he could tell she wanted to say something. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why she looked so scared.

“Spender, I…” she paused, and her hands left his hair to press against his chest. She rolled him over until he was on his back and she laid her head on his shoulder, spooning against his side. 

“What’s wrong, baby, tell me what’s up.” Spender ran a hand through her hair as his mind raced to catch up with the turn the night had taken. Her fingers nervously picked at the hair that peppered his stomach. The longer she was quiet, Spender thought, the worse it was going to be. That’d at least been his experience standing on the sides of desks opposite that of generals, but after a moment, she spoke, “I need to tell you something, Spend.” Her voice was shaking, and Spender resisted the urge to lift up her face to wipe away the tears he felt falling against his chest, “but I’m…” Teena choked back a tear, “I’m just not sure how to say it, and so I’m just going to ask you to hold me for a minute, okay?” 

He could hear the tremble in her voice, and didn’t know what to say. So, he held her, “Of course, my love. Take your time…” He felt her bury her face against his chest and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. He didn’t know what he could do, but he knew he could give her what she needed.

Or can I?.. 

Spender’s mind raced as he felt Teena sob against his chest. His distress grew, and his arms tightened around her.

She’s leaving me… God dammit I knew it was too small of a house… Bill has all that family money, and that property in Rhode Island, and what do I have? A leaky shack in the woods. I’ve…I’ve got nothing to offer her, nothing to give. 

“Teena, I know I don’t…” he paused as he felt her breath catch and her body shudder as she tried to regain composure. He ran his hand through her hair and gently pressed her head against his chest. “Baby, I know I’m not the best when it comes to talking about…my feelings,” oh God dammit, are you gonna cry right now? Spender felt his breath catch as he rubbed his hand up and down Teena’s back, trying his best to soothe her, “but, I hope you know that I—that I love you.” Her sobs came back in full force, and Spender let his head drop back against the bed beneath him. He decided to let his words and tears flow. He pried her arms from around his waist, and pulled her up to face him—

“No, Spend, please!” She cried and tried to cover her reddened face. Spender couldn’t help the tears that fell from the corners of his eyes.

“No, Teena, look at me,” she kept her face covered and Spender pulled her arms away and held them out between her face and his. He didn’t try to hide the tremor in his voice when he adjusted his tone and urged her, “Look at me!”

Teena froze and raised her eyes to meet his. Tears streamed silently down her face, and Spender let go of her hands. He knew his tears were flowing well at this point, and instead of trying to remember the last time he’d let himself cry in front of another person, he reached out to wipe away the tears of his lover. His mouth felt dry, and he almost didn’t realize that the person he heard speaking was actually himself,

“I have loved you since the first time Bill introduced us. Now, I know I’m not rich, and I know being with me would mean leaving behind the life you’d planned to build with him, but Teena goddammit we work. You and I work, and I’ve never felt—“ Spender had to pause as a sob wracked his body. He realized Teena had placed her hands on his arms and was paying rapt attention to every word he said, “Baby I’ve never felt like I wanted to be apart of something until I met you. I’ve never wanted anything more than to make you happy, and I want to do that for the rest of my life Teena, not just for some crazy week in the woods.” 

She reached out and gently cradled the side of his face in her hand. His chest felt tight, and the world was spinning when he opened his eyes to see her in front of him, studying his face with tears still streaming down her own. My God, there's a whole world in this woman's eyes. He lifted his hands and held her face, looking deep within those eyes, searching for an answer to what brought on the tears that had begun it all, “Teena if you don’t love me, if you can’t live this life with me, then please tell me. Because…” Spender leaned forward to press his forehead against hers, “Because I want to marry you, T. I—,” his voice cracked and he forced himself to lift up his head and look her in the eye as he let out a deep shuddering breath as he forced himself to regain his composure, “I want you to be my wife.”

She shook her head and let out a sigh as she grabbed Spender's hand and squeezed it, "You know I can't Spend... it just... it just wouldn't work."

That's it then... He’d messed everything up. This was it, the last time he’d be able to hold her. He squeezed her hand as he looked away and tore himself from her arms. He jumped out of the bed and grabbed his briefs, putting them on as he rushed out of the cabin and onto the covered porch at the back of the house. 

Goddammit… He needed some air. The night was cool despite the storm, and he wished he’d have grabbed his leather jacket before he’d stepped outside. He pressed his eyes shut hard, trying to stop the tears from coming. You had to go and fuck it up, and ask her to marry you didn’t you Spender? He bit down on his bottom lip and sucked in the cold night air as he felt the spray of the rain pelt against his exposed skin. You just had to ask her to commit to leaving him… The sound of thunder filled the night around him as he paced on the porch, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Everything had been fine… For the love of god we were about to make love, and then suddenly she just started sobbing?!

Spender picked up an empty bottle of gin and hurled it into the trees, letting out a half garbled scream as the glass shattered against the trunk of a pine at the tree line. The sky flashed just in time for him to see it break into a thousand pieces. He twirled around to face the back of the house and spotted a half empty bottle of gin. He hadn’t had a drop to drink around her since she’d told him that she didn’t like being reminded of Bill’s bad habits, but tonight seemed like the night to break an unspoken rule. He grabbed it and twisted the top off, closed his eyes, and took a huge gulp before he ducked back inside to grab his jacket off the hook next to the backdoor. He felt the gin burn all the way down to his stomach, hitting his heart on the way. He let the backdoor fly open as he jumped down the back steps and ran into the backyard, pulling the coat onto his body as he went. He barely noticed the sound of the door creaking open behind him as he tilted the bottle back for another taste of burning numbness as the rain drenched him and hid his tears from anyone who could see. 

Spender was startled by a noise behind him and he slipped in the mud, landing hard on his back with a grunt. He’d managed to save the gin, and he took another swig before rolling over to see what had startled him. Teena stood at the edge of the porch clutching her nightgown to her body as the rain dampened her hair and clothes. 

Fuck I must be a sight…

And he was… He was covered in mud from the waist down, and he was soaked to the bone while wallowing on the ground in his backyard with a bottle of gin hoisted over his head. He couldn’t help it—he started to laugh. Another swig and he stood up, pushed past her, and then he was in the house. She followed him inside, trying to get his attention but he’d already tuned out the world. 

She doesn’t want to do this with me? Fine. I don’t have to be apart of anything. I can be alone—I do alone just fine.

He took another drink as he dropped himself down on the sofa in the sitting room. Water drip, drip, dripped from the ceiling into the bucket sitting on top of the coffee table in front of him. Spender sat and watched it for a moment until a memory flashed before his eyes… the smell of shit, urine, blood…Men screaming, crying, praying in the cells around him…the drip, drip, drip of water falling onto his forehead… He snapped awake from his reverie to realize the ceiling had sprung another leak, this time right over his head. He took a long drink from the bottle and then another before he shakily placed it back on the coffee table.

“Goddammit did you hear a single fucking word I’ve been saying to you, Spender?” Suddenly he found himself in his sitting room again with Teena staring at him from the doorway. He looked down at the state he was in and was ashamed—he was soaked, covered in mud, and worse, drunk. He let his face turn to stone before he ventured a look into Teena’s eyes. They were wide, scared, and full of pain.

“Spend…” she turned her face away as tears began to fall, “Sweetheart… I’m pregnant,” the room started spinning faster, “It’s yours, Spender," he felt his stomach clench and his eyes burn, "and I'm going to keep it.”

Chapter Text

13 October 1989

—Willy’s Tavern, D.C.—

The place reeked of piss. Not that he cared, mind you. He thought it added a touch of grungy character that the joint would have lacked without the overpowering scent of ammonia. It was a blue collar bar, that was for certain, and when he’d gotten there it had been nearly full to capacity with off duty construction workers and what had proven to be an electrician union’s bowling team. It was the kind of place that locals had claimed as their own a generation ago; it was the kind of place an F.B.I. agent would never be expected to go on a Friday night. And that is exactly why agent Mulder had ended up there on his birthday. 

It had been three months since Barnett’s arrest, and he’d decided tonight was the night to do it. See, Mulder never drank. He thought whisky tasted like stale gasoline, beer never really got you drunk enough, and everything else was just way too damned complicated to order… So sue him. He didn’t understand alcohol. After watching his father drown himself in a glass every night (and day) of his childhood, he’d just never really been interested in the subject. He’d thought his time at Oxford might have changed that, but it’d just cemented his disinterest. It’d also cemented his separation from his peers. Everyone thought Mulder had gotten the nickname Spooky at the Academy, but it started as early as his first parapsychology course in England. One of his advisors’ assistants had let a copy of one of his papers on extra-terrestrial influence upon the perception of spirituality within the Oneida community slip into a departmental memo and well… 

Keeping friends had never really been Mulder’s strong suit. He hadn’t known who to call when he left the office that afternoon—he’d never been a big social drinker, and everyone in his unit was having trouble looking him in the eye after what had happened… He pressed his fingers into his temples and clenched his teeth at the thought. To hell with it, it didn't matter. The time had come. He needed to get good and stinking drunk.

An image of Steve Wallenberg’s face exploding in a mist of red, grey, and pink flashed before his eyes every time he shut them. He hadn’t slept in days. He fingered the glass in front of him mindlessly.

Happy 28th fuckin’ birthday Mulder. Here’s to celebrating with—he looked around the bar to see who was going to be the lucky few to close down the bar with him—all five of your closest buddies and pals. Yeah sure, he’d admit it, Willy’s Tavern was a depressing reminder of how humiliating alcoholism amongst the working class could be. Everyone at the bar looked like their beer guts were pushing fifty, and the place smelled like piss, but he didn’t really mind. What he did mind, however, was that the glasses smelled like it. 

This place is filthier than my apartment.

“Hey bartender,” Mulder dropped his glass on the bar and fumbled with it for a moment. “I need to talk to ya for a sec—hic—for a second,” he clumsily nudged the glass about the table, trying to get a grip on it, before craning his head up to look at the burly man in front of him wiping out the inside of a glass with a faded looking rag. Mulder felt a rumble in his stomach. He clutched his hand to his mouth and looked down at the counter in horror. Oh my god, I’m gonna fucking puke.

He burped.

“Hey!” Mulder slapped his hand down on the counter and grinned up at the six foot two bartender before him, “Hey, hey, hey, Bartender!” He laughed deliriously and wiped his sleeve across his forehead, beaded with sweat, “Now why dontcha tell me—,” another burp, “what cleaning solution you use to wash these things.” He lifted the dingy glass in front of his face and looked inside of it like it was a telescope as his head lolled about on his shoulders, “‘cuz buddy, lemme tell ya,” he let his glass drop to the counter again and studied the way the man wiped the filthy rag around the inside of the beer stein before him, “you’re gonna wanna get your money back.” His laughter was weak, and before he tried to grab his glass again the room had started to spin. Mulder decided it was a better idea to hold onto the edge of the bar for dear life and hope to god he didn’t fall overboard. He hadn’t accidentally ended up at sea… had he? 

The bartender snatched the glass off the counter in front of Mulder and lowered his eyes at the young F.B.I. agent, “Ok bud, you’ve had enough,” he turned around to finish cleaning up after a patron who’d gotten up to leave, “F.B.I. or not, I’m cuttin’ you off.” 

Mulder slumped against the bar and let his head rest on the damp spot where he had spilt half of his last vodka soda. Not worth the fight, he thought. His head was doing that thing where he felt like he was floating in the middle of a swimming pool. A weak moan escaped his lips as the din of the room swum in his ears. The christmas lights someone strung behind the top shelf of whisky and bourbon were glaring directly in his eyes and he clenched them shut for a moment; in the blackness behind his eyelids, the room started spinning more violently than before. The room tipped over.

“Oh god—,” Mulder felt himself slide off the stool and hit the ground with a solid thud. He laid there for a moment, letting the world stop wobbling before he chanced opening his eyes. When he did, the bartender was leaning over him with a furrowed look on his face. Mulder heaved a heavy sigh.

“Are you gonna keep lookin’ at me like that or are ya gonna take me home already?” the bartender looked at him with a puzzled expression. Mulder sighed, The big ones never do realize do they? He reached up and grabbed the arm of the burly man above him, just gotta turn on the ole Fox Mulder charm, he raised his voice and put on his best shit-eating grin, “Hey buddy, I’m a cheap lay, ya know, just ask all the fellas at Oxford—,” he was cut off mid-proposition when a hand appeared and rested over the shoulder of the confused (and increasingly flustered) man looming over Agent Mulder. 

“Excuse my friend,” an older man with a worn face and soothing voice had gotten the attention of the bartender, and just in time too. Mulder was certain the man’s head would have turned purple if someone hadn’t intervened during his display of shameless flirting, “I got here as fast as I could after he called me an hour ago.” The man pulled out his wallet and pressed a one-hundred dollar bill into the bartender’s hand, “I’m his boss. We had a uh…tough case this week. I’ll take care of him from here.” 

Mulder couldn’t figure what was going on or who this mystery man was, but he was sure of one thing, I’d bet my porn collection that isn’t Reggie Purdue. He's about half a foot shorter and thirty pounds lighter than my boss on a good day. The bartender looked back and forth between Mulder sprawled out on the ground in a drunken stupor and the older man, sober, and dressed in a well tailored suit standing next to him. 

Glowering at Mulder who was currently making puppy eyes at him from the floor, the bartender growled, “Just make sure he doesn’t puke in my bathroom,” and with that, he walked away, pocketing the bill he’d clutched in his hand. 

Mulder snorted and called out to the giant man as he stepped back behind the counter, "What's 'a matter? Can't take a little joke?" 

Letting himself sink back to the floor, he let out a quiet laugh, “What a prude.” The sound of a lighter flicking open above him and the smell of burning tobacco caught his attention and he lifted his head to investigate. The cigarette smoking man standing above Mulder had reached out a hand to help him up. Mulder studied it, “Ya know, you’re cute an’ all,” he struggled to raise his body up to a sitting position and felt his stomach roll when he finally found his head level with the man’s knees, “but grandpas aren’t usually my type. I tend to lean more towards the muscled da-,” 

“Listen to me closely Agent Mulder, I am not propositioning you,” the man spoke softly and took a drag on his cigarette before putting it out in the tray next to him on the bar. He leaned down and again offered his hand to the drunken agent, “Now let me help you up.”

Mulder huffed, “I finally put myself out there and start having a good time and the cal—the calvar—,” he fell back to the floor. It wasn’t his fault the floor kept rolling around underneath him every time he tried to stand up. Seriously, if anyone wanted to lay blame around the floor of Willy’s they’d have to point fingers at the nine vodka soda’s he’d managed to down before reaching this point of the night. Suddenly, he felt an arm wrap around his shoulder and hoist him up. The smell of nicotine enveloped him and he choked back a gag. “Whoa there boss where are we—where are you takin’ me?” the older man dropped him down into a booth and sat across from him. He slid a coffee across the table in front of Mulder,

“Drink up, Fox,” the man leaned back in his seat and pulled out another cigarette, placing a pack of Morleys on the table, “It’ll make you feel better.”

Mulder looked at the man sitting across from him as he pulled out a lighter and placed it on the table beside the pack of Morley’s, who the hell is this guy?  “My name’s Mulder…” he said with emphasis. But how did you know my name in the first place... The older man lit the cigarette and smiled through the smoke as he exhaled. Mulder leaned over the table and pointed his finger at the smoking man’s nose. He smiled, “but you—,” he slurred, “you already knew that, didn’t you?” Mulder burped and rested his head on his hand, propping himself up unsteadily, but with a great amount of satisfaction, "So tell me, Smokey. How do you know my name?" 

The cigarette smoking man let out a chuckle before he took another drag, “My, my, you did grow up to be clever.” Mulder squinted his eyes and studied the man’s face again. Something seemed familiar, an everyday kind of familiar he couldn’t quite place. I know him from somewhere, don’t I… He doubted he’d remember any of this in the morning, but decided to take a chance. It was something about the man’s eyes… they bored straight through him. To most people, perhaps that look might have inspired a feeling of intimacy, but not for Mulder. No, no, Mulder felt disarmed. 

He prodded, “Did you work at Quantico?” The smoking man hadn’t stopped staring at Mulder since they’d sat down. He was silent, and Mulder was starting to feel uncomfortable. This was bad. The old guy looked like a sadder, shorter, soberer version of his father. Scratch that, this was really bad. See, when Mulder got uncomfortable his self restraint went out the window. The same thing happened when he got drunk, obviously. Just ask Willy’s bartender. Put both situations together and there was a strong chance that he would end up saying something rather inappropriate and uncalled for like, “You know something? You kinda look like a sadder, shorter, soberer version of my father.” 

The man seated across from him let out a snort and exhaled the smoke from his cigarette, “Well, your father isn’t exactly the uh—happiest, or even the tallest person, I’ve ever met.” Mulder nearly fell out of his seat, Oh my god I said it out loud. The smoking man remained steady as he ashed his cigarette, “but of course, I’ll allow that my taste for alcohol isn’t as strong as Bill’s.” Mulder’s mind was spinning, and it wasn’t just the vodka. He was trying to force himself to focus, but the space behind his eyes had gotten fuzzy and the rising lump in his throat was warning of trouble to come. He shook his head and sat back in his seat.

“Excuse me,” he let his jaw drop and let out half a laugh as he looked forward at the smoking man in front of him, “I’m sorry, but have we met?” The older man looked away and fiddled with the pack of Morleys next to him, “Or let’s try this,” Mulder licked his bottom lip and watched as a hint of a smile flashed in the man’s eyes, “how—,” he ran a hand through his hair and stole himself, I better fucking remember this in the morning, he felt his heart race, “how the hell do you know my father?”

The cigarette smoking man locked eyes with Mulder, sending a chill down the agent’s spine. In that moment he knew—he should be afraid of this man—but the next he felt a throb in his throat again and all he could focus on was not puking.

“Mulder, you’re not at fault for what happened to Agent Wallenberg,” the smoking man offered a cigarette to Mulder, who was too busy trying not to empty the vodka saturated contents of his stomach all over the table to turn him down. The man retracted his hand and took the cigarette for himself. He snuffed out the old one, “It’s better to stay away from these things anyway,” he lit the fresh one, “I hear they’ll kill ya. Anyway…” Mulder’s mind was reeling—what in the hell is going on… 

“You followed protocol down to the letter, and no one blames you for it but yourself. You can’t—Fox—you can’t kill yourself over this. It's just not worth it,” but Mulder didn’t hear the last part of the smoking man’s sentence. 

He was stumbling as fast as he could towards the back door of the bar, hoping to make it outside before the inevitable. He felt fresh air on his face as the rest of his body turned sickeningly cold and his stomach clenched. He braced himself against a wall in the alley behind Willy’s Tavern and puked up the alcohol he had tried to use to numb the night away. Turns out, his plan had backfired. Instead of helping him drift off into a blissful numbness, like he’d planned, the vodka had left his joints feeling like jelly and he was drenched in a cold sweat. His head pounded, and he noticed that his vision kept dimming. He’d also lost the ability to focus his eyes for longer than a second or two at a time. He felt his eyes begin to water, and he bit his tongue as he felt his stomach clench again. His body heaved, but this time it was with a sob. Barnett's arrest, this mystery man who had somehow known his father, being alone on his birthday and drunker than he'd ever been in his life in a strange part of town... It was all just too much. 

An image of Wallenberg’s head caving in on itself flashed before his eyes and Mulder thought he was going to be sick again. Ole smokey’s waiting on me inside, and I can’t even pull myself together long enough to stop puking. He couldn’t figure out how the man knew his father. He couldn’t figure out why his face seemed so familiar… A sob wracked his body, Oh Samantha, where are you tonight… 

He clenched his hands into fists. It was his birthday for Christ’s sake, and here he was, drunk, alone at a bar on the edge of town, puking his guts out in an alleyway. Why couldn’t I have any goddamn friends like a normal person… Fucking Shit. He screamed, kicked the corner of the dumpster, and felt a snap in his left foot. His stomach dropped, and he wretched again as sobs continued to wrack his body. He fell sprawled out into the middle of the alley and covered his face with his hands. He tried to roll onto his right side but he felt a sharp pain in his foot and winced; a moan escaped his lips as the back door of the bar slammed open.

The cigarette smoking man emerged into the alleyway and appraised the scene in front of him. Mulder heard him light another cigarette. He moaned at the man who'd just joined him outside, “By all means, welcome to the penthouse suite of Willy’s Tavern.” The smoking man kicked a rock in the direction of the puddle of puke and ashed his cigarette. Mulder laughed deliriously. His voice was strained when he spoke, “I’d give you a tour, but can’t ya see I wanted a moment of privacy with all my friends and family?” He gestured to the empty beer crates and filth around them. His voice cracked and trailed off as he finished his thought, “It would be gracious of you to let me have a moment alone to celebrate my fucked up insomniatic lifestyle, ya know.” He sniffed and wiped his face with a torn and damp sleeve, “since it is my birthday and all…” Mulder struggled to hold back tears. His foot was throbbing and he was struggling to stay awake.

A hand rested on his forehead. No, it was a thumb, caressing the side of his face. He opened his eyes to see the smoking man kneeling above him; he was cradling the side of Mulder’s head in one hand as he tossed away his cigarette with the other. Mulder couldn’t decide what the look in the older man’s eyes meant. Pity, disgust, contempt?…A car drove by and its headlights illuminated the alleyway for a moment, shining light on the smoker’s eyes, and suddenly, Mulder knew. He knew those eyes. 

Christ… I... I know his face…

“Sa—,” tears flowed out of the corners of Mulder’s eyes and he swallowed the lump in his throat, “Samantha?…” The smoking man’s hand brushed Mulder’s hair back from his face and he sighed.

“Fox, you can’t keep beating yourself up every time you lose someone. It’s not your fault, son,” he choked on the last word. Mulder could have sworn he saw the older man’s eyes start to glisten before Mulder couldn’t hold his own open anymore. He was fighting sleep with all he had, knowing there was something important, something life changing he could learn in this alleyway. The hand was cradling his face again and he heard the older man’s voice soften, “Your father…” the man sighed and Mulder managed to open his eyes again. The man’s face was pained, lined with sorrow and regret—in an instant Mulder placed the look, and he sucked in a breath. It was like looking into a mirror. Their eyes locked, and he saw a tear roll down the man’s face,

“Your father is so proud of you, Fox. I—,” the man paused, choosing his words carefully, “he only wishes you’d give yourself the benefit of the doubt sometimes.”

Mulder moaned and closed his eyes, as much as he’d tried to push back against the unconsciousness that was fighting to overwhelm him, he’d finally given up. A single word escaped his lips as he leaned his face into the crook of the smoking man’s hand, “Mulder.”

The man leaning over him was puzzled, “What was that, son?” the word inexplicably caught in his throat again.

The agent moaned and pressed his hand against the older man’s arm, “My name’s Mulder.” 

He was asleep before his arm hit the ground.

Spender brushed the hair back from Fox’s forehead again and checked the young man’s pulse.

Well, at least he's not dead. 

The alleyway had cooled significantly in the time they’d been outside; he reminded himself that it was the middle of October. He needed to get the boy home… and soon, before the alcohol wore off and he started remembering. Spender couldn’t risk him waking up to remember his face… He’d made sure no one had followed him so that their little reunion could remain a secret. Spender doubted Agent Mulder would remember a single second of the night, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

A snore pierced through the stillness of the alleyway as Mulder shifted in his sleep. Spender looked down at his face and couldn’t hold back a weary smile. He hadn’t seen Fox’s face look that peaceful since he was a child playing in the backyard of the Mulders' house in Quonochontaug. It hurt his heart to see the young man in so much pain. He felt nearly as helpless as he had the night everything had happened with his sister, when the boy’s world fell apart. Something in his heart urged him to stay with Mulder through the rest night and into the morning, so he could tell him everything. For once, he wanted to just be the boy’s father. He wanted to be there for him, but he knew he couldn’t.

What I would give to take it all away, to make things right…

Suddenly, the grown man laying on the ground in front of him was gone and in his place was a little boy dressed in a pirate costume, jumping up and down and laughing in the waning light of an October sky… Spender caught his breath and shook away the ghosts that filled his head.

Mulder was a grown man, Spender knew that, and with Mulder’s intelligence, drive, ambition, and strange obsession with the paranormal, there was a great chance that they might find themselves working against each other one day in the near future. There was no way, no scenario, no strategy that allowed him to reveal himself to Mulder for who he truly was. Something wet ran down his face, and Spender realized he was crying. He quickly stood and wiped his face. 

“My my,” he cleared his throat and collected himself, “how the times have changed.” He sighed and walked back inside to enlist the bartender’s help.

The cigarette smoking man had to make sure his son made it home safe.

—The Next Morning—

Okay…if you don’t move, and don’t open your eyes, you won’t puke. 

Mulder had woken up to the sound of a small explosion from a neighboring apartment a few minutes before. He figured since the fire alarm wasn’t going off, he couldn’t hear any screams, and he couldn’t smell smoke, that it was safe to stay firmly planted facedown on the couch. Probably drugs… He thought about reporting the explosion—which he reasoned was probably more likely to have been simply a loud bang from an action movie on TV than an actual, real-life explosion—for a moment, and then decided against it. Reporting a disturbance like that would require moving, and speaking, and thinking. He moaned, not my division. So, there he laid, with the worst hangover he’d had in his entire life. 

“For the love of god why couldn’t I have just died from alcohol poisoning,” he groaned and felt the room start to spin as he shifted his weight on the couch. 

Maybe this is my penance…I’m not allowed to die, but instead I’m forced to suffer from what could only be described as the most painful out of body experience imaginable. 

He laid there for a moment, contemplating his wish for death. It wasn’t that he wanted to die as much as he just wanted to stop existing for a little while. Just a little while, he reasoned. He tried to roll himself over and screamed as a burning pain raced up his leg from the third toe on his left foot. His stomach lurched and he leaned over the side of the couch to puke…into a trashcan?

After his dry heaves subsided, Mulder surveyed his apartment. Someone’s been here… He could tell because, well, it was kind of clean. Not spotless by any means, but the trash had been picked up off the floor and there weren’t any dishes in the sink. He wasn’t sure, but the trash might’ve been taken out as well. All that, and someone had had the foresight to put the trashcan next to him on the couch. He looked down at himself and let out a sigh of relief to find that all of his clothes were on, except that his jacket and tie had been neatly folded and placed on top of the kitchen table and his shoes were waiting for him next to the front door. 

“The only thing worse than a one night stand who leaves before you wake up,” he struggled to sit himself up on the couch, what with his throbbing foot and the room spinning and all. He felt a burp rise in his throat and paused—he swallowed it back down. His body went limp and he leaned against the couch, “is a one night stand who leaves a trail…” His hand searched under the arm of the couch for where he kept his bag of sunflower seeds only to find that they’d been moved. His brow furrowed, as he realized the extent to which his visitor had taken it upon themselves to tidy up, “…a trail of cleanliness.”

Mulder pressed his fingers into his eyes and tried to remember the night before. After about the seventh vodka tonic, everything stopped making sense in his head. There’d been that surly bartender, and a lot of Bruce Springsteen on the jukebox, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember getting home or who had helped him. His bladder ached, and he shifted his weight to stand up but was quickly reminded of his toe.

“God fucking dammit…” he swore under his breath and reached down to inspect his left foot, hoping it was just a toe. 

Good to know it wasn’t just my tolerance that broke under pressure last night… 

He couldn’t tell how swollen the toe was because of the splint someone had fashioned to hold it steady, but the discoloration of his foot told him something was definitely broken. Who the fuck helped me home last night?.. Whoever it was, he sure owed them a word of thanks. 

He caught a whiff of something in the air and couldn’t place it. Suddenly, he sat upright and forced himself to hobble into the kitchen. His apartment wasn’t big by any standard—in fact, he had to admit, it was the smallest studio in the building, but at least it had a kitchen he could stack take-out boxes and bags of sunflower seeds in. 

Once he was in the kitchen, he recognized it. Cigarette smoke… he hadn’t been able to place the faint odor that blanketed the apartment when he woke up, but it was more concentrated in the kitchen. It really would be his luck that a smoker with a clean streak would have helped him get home on the drunkest night of his life. Couldn’t have been a hot blonde with a penchant for breath play? He dejectedly tossed a now empty box of trash bags into the corner of the kitchen with a snort. Figures. Mulder started rifling through the cabinets in search of his bag of sunflower seeds, and was depressed to see that there wasn’t a single scrap of edible food in his pantry besides a can of mushroom soup and a bag of sugar. 

He swung open the fridge in exasperation, and there they sat—original flavor David’s sunflower seeds—right next to an expired jug of Sunny Delight. He leaned his body against the door of the fridge. The cold felt good against his too warm, dehydrated skin, but he also knew he had to pee. It was a tough decision: stay standing in front of the fridge for the rest of the day and pretend he’d turned into a statue, or admit to himself that he’d actually woken up and his life was as sad and pathetic as it truly seemed to be. Mulder grabbed the bag, tossed a handful of seeds into his mouth, and shut the door again before starting to limp towards the bathroom. 

His head was throbbing, and there was a chance he was still little drunk, but it felt good to wash his face after he’d relieved himself. He stared at his face in the mirror. There were lines he didn’t fully recognize, and he wondered if that’s what happened when you approached the event horizon of life people his age liked to call 30. You just…stopped recognizing the person staring back at you. 

There was a spot on the side of his head that was throbbing a touch more than the rest of his upper body, and he gingerly pressed a finger against it only to wince as he felt a decent sized lump that had formed beneath the skin. He withdrew his fingers and inspected them. At least there was no blood. No blood, no stitches, no hospital necessary. With the realization that he’d spent the night before beating his body to hell and back and had somehow managed to avoid a seriously broken limb or a concussion, Mulder let out a heavy sigh and ran hot water in the sink so he could shave and brush his teeth. 

As the steam rose around him, in the blackness behind his eyelids, there was a face…one more deeply worn than the bartender from the night before and more mature than the faces of the men he worked with. He looked into the mirror and saw the same lines reflected in his own face. Did I have some kind of fucked up dream about aging that I can’t manage to remember? He gripped the sink and tried to focus, but the throbbing in his head only got worse. For Christ’s sake if I had to stop remembering my nightmares it had to be now, of all nights? 

But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind, and it wasn’t his hangover or an undiscovered lump. It was a pair of eyes, brown eyes, ones he couldn’t shake from his memory. His stomach dropped, and he knew he hadn’t dreamed those eyes.

Ignoring the pain in his foot, Fox Mulder turned off the sink and threw open his bathroom door, running and limping towards the closet where he kept all the photos from his childhood. He grabbed the black, leather-bound book and flipped through the pages until he found it. There she was—his sister—smiling at the camera, laughing, full of life. 

Samantha… The photo had been taken a week before she was abducted. He let the back of his thumb trace across her cheek and felt the ghost of a hand brush across his own. He walked across the apartment and sunk down into the couch, entranced with the picture before him. It was as if his cheek burned with the touch of some invisible force, and he resisted the urge to cradle the side of his face with a hand as his eyes filled with tears. He pressed his eyes shut and took in a deep and ragged breath. He knew the brown eyes that had burned themselves into the back of his eyelids, and when he opened his own to look at the picture of his sister he held in his hands, those same eyes were staring straight back at him. 

Mulder knew he may never learn who had made sure he made it home safely the night of his 28th birthday, the night he’d decided to wash away his pain at Barnett’s botched arrest, the night he’d tried to drink himself into oblivion. Sure, he would probably never be able to prove what his heart told him was true—but Fox was certain of something for a change. For once, and just this once, he didn’t care to learn the truth. The pain in his chest held him frozen to the couch as his mind raced with memories of a young, brown eyed Samantha Mulder. For once, he thought, the truth might end up being more painful than fantasy.

It’s true that Mulder felt at peace for the first time in months as he worked up the nerve to change the splint on his toe. It was because he knew one thing: he hadn’t been alone on the night of his birthday. No, he hadn’t been alone at all… Whoever had taken him home had made sure of that. They’d made sure he was cared for.

He stood in the shower half an hour later and cradled his face in the palm of one of his hands… one side still burned, and he couldn’t figure out why. 

Yeah, Mulder decided he didn’t care to know who it had actually been. Probably just some middle-aged electrician who thought I reminded him of his son. 

He rubbed body wash onto his sore shoulders and up onto the burning side of his face. He felt a lump rise in his throat as he washed the smell of cigarette smoke from his skin.

Whatever had happened, he decided, the important thing was that he’d made it home safe.