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I come back to consciousness cautiously, not willing to open my eyes just yet. I have a pretty good idea of where I am since I completely remember the snake under my bed and calling 9-1-1 and that idiot woman telling me that she couldn’t trace my call, and then Fox Mulder bursting through my front door like the cavalry to make sure I got help…after that, things get foggy. I think I may have told him something that made him happy, because I distinctly remember a look of satisfaction in those hazel eyes boring down into mine from above my hospital bed. I wish that I could remember what I’d said for several reasons…the primary one being why he would look so happy after I’d told him to buzz off and go home.

I think for a few moments more before I realize what has taken place here…oh GOD! I told him it was okay for him to be here…I…I…oh FUCK, I let him make bodily contact and then I passed out. Okay Walter, think…THINK! You were under the influence of any number of drugs when you agreed to him staying around…you can just as easily send him away once you’ve reached wakefulness. Okay, so this is my plan – good. I think it’s safe for me to open my eyes now – I’m sure it’s been a while since anyone has seen me conscious and I think now would be an opportune time for me to alert whomever to my still-alive condition. Maybe Fox isn’t still here, and maybe he hasn’t noticed that my eyeballs aren’t rolling in dreamland beneath their lids, and maybe the nurse will just be watching my monitor like she’s supposed to and know that I’m entering back into the land of the living without telling anyone else.

I allow my eyelids to flicker a few times before I finally let the daylight in. Silence greets my wakening, and just as I’m ready to press the call button beneath where my fingers rest on the mattress, two things happen simultaneously; the nurse does pop in with an overly delighted expression on her face – eagerly clutching my chart to her chest and proclaiming her happiness that all semblance of danger due to my injury has passed. That is all well and good…it is, however, the second occurrence that gives me pause. “Hey, Walter,” that familiar near-monotone voice gives me a split-moment’s denial before I gather my bearings once more and prepare to meet its owner’s gaze, “Welcome back.” So much for that idea...FUCK!

“Mulder,” I whisper more out of shock that he’s still here than the surprise of waking at all, “What are you doing here?”

“That’s some thanks for being here for you, Walter,” he replies dryly, reaching for the water pitcher and pouring some into the blue plastic cup with a straw that’s sitting harmlessly on my food tray. I take a sip from the cup he holds up near my face, closing my eyes in satisfaction as the liquid makes its way down my gullet and into my stomach…unfortunately, I’m not sure my stomach is quite ready for the shock of fluids obtained orally. I gag a bit and find myself further unsettled when Mulder grabs a plastic bedpan from the floor beneath my bed and holds it under my chin, all-too-anxiously awaiting the expulsion of my guts.

“Get that thing out of here,” I hiss at him, turning my head away in some weak one-upmanship of my ability to hold in my nausea, “and you should get the hell out of here as well,” I tell him matter-of-factly, hoping that even in my weakened state he will take it to heart and evacuate immediately.

“No Sir, I am not leaving you…not like this, Walt. I am here for the duration of your recuperation and beyond…since you gave me permission.”

“When did I give you permission Mulder, huh? You can hardly call my so-called agreement while I was under the influence of God-only-knows-what drugs PROOF that I want you to remain here,” I spit out, “Especially since I’ve never told you to call me ‘Walt’…” THERE. That should do the trick…right? RIGHT?

“You gave me permission just before you allowed me to bite your left earlobe, Walter…and with all due respect, you seemed to enjoy it despite whatever drugs you may have been on at the time. Additionally,” he says cockily with his hazel eyes slanted at me to exacerbate his sarcasm as he crosses his arms over his chest and clenches his fists defiantly as he sits in that godforsaken orange plastic chair pulled as close to my bed as he can get it, “You told me to stay, no matter how much you tried to curse me at the same time. And I’ve stayed despite your charming demeanor in this situation. It’s been four days now, Skinner…you had a bad reaction to the antivenin – probably because of those fucking nanocytes. This pseudo-beard I’m sporting isn’t for my own good, okay? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere…not without you anyway,” he finishes. Finally he finishes. I want to tell him to go to Hell once and for all. I want to rant and rave and scream at him to just fucking leave me be, get lost, go away, go home and get out of my existence. Those are the very things that they have wanted me to do, the terms I agreed to so long ago, the no-contact clause I believed I could always stick to…until now.

I want all of those same things they wanted for me…at least I thought I did…at the same fucking time that I want him to lean over my bed and hold me in his arms and proclaim his love for me one final time so that I can claim complete and total insanity due to meds or nanocytes or antivenin or whatever. There is no such escape forthcoming when I roll over a bit and open my arms to him, allowing Fox to bend bodily over me and enfold him to my chest, soaking up his tears as I clutch him physically to me from that cheap orange plastic chair and bring him closer to me than he’s ever been, allowing my once-errant and now-defunct agent – and myself – the closeness that we’ve both been craving for years now, truth be told, soaking up the feeling of his arms around my body, our legs entwined, our very beings melded together as one…FINALLY.

I’d be ignorant if I didn’t notice the hitch in his breathing, the very release of his muscles as he folded his body into mine, squishing us both into this tiny hospital bed…my foot seizes and throbs, the pain making its way up my ankle, through my calf and up into my thigh. There’s nothing but pure pain as the lightning fires up to my groin, killing the erection Mulder’s closeness has afforded me. I try to focus on our proximity, breathe in his scent and relax all my other senses…no such luck. “Muh…muh…Fox,” I manage, and I watch his face light up from where it rests on my chest, that maniacal grin practically enough to suck me in…practically but not completely.

“Sssshhh, it’s okay,” he tells me as he kisses my forehead and nuzzles closer to me, that prickly pain dying away instantly, “just relax, Walter. I promise I’m here and I’m not going to leave you alone,” his voice trailing off almost visibly in a cloud, the final word swallowed up by the blackness of my once more unconscious mind. Why can’t I remember inviting him to be here…and why in the world is it so comforting to my soul that he is here, anyway?

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THE NEXT DAY…

Jesus. I feel like I have the worst hangover in the universe; I couldn’t have had that much to drink…after that…oh God…that fucking snake. Great, just fucking great. It all comes rushing back to me as I breach consciousness once again, refusing to open my eyes while I play back the past few days’ events in my mind silently, willing Fox Mulder to be gone once and for all when I do manage to blink my eyes open. I take a deep breath, coughing a bit on the tube still supplying oxygen through my nose, and then allow my eyelids to flutter briefly – and quite blurrily – while I let my eyes open and slowly focus on my hospital room. So far, so…

“You’re awake,” he says, his tone void of any emotion but still managing to make me cringe where I lie in my bed beneath his ever-hovering figure, “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up once and for all, Sir. I wanted to make sure you were-”

I manage to cut him off with a harsh rasp, the only vocalization I’m able to utter at this moment, “I’m fine, Mulder. Please go now,” I attempt to order him, ignoring the pained expression my words cause. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this bed, but I am completely ready to go back to my ranch and my perimeter fence and the new life I’ve been trying to build for myself since he disappeared…hoping and praying he’ll do nothing less than follow this final order; of course I’m a total and complete fool for thinking that he’d just leave me now.

“I can’t leave you, Walter. I promised you I’d take care of you no matter what…this is all just a little bump in the road, right? I can’t just up and drive off in my bureau-issued and completely traceable sedan with you out of commission – after all, I didn’t make the same promises to them that you did. That horrible fucking car is at your house, nearly an hour away from here and even if they do trace it they’ll find nothing more than a ghost’s name and number. I’m free, Walter; I’m finally free, just like you, and I refuse to let them rope me in any longer…so how long is it going to take us to finish that fucking perimeter fence, anyway?”

Oh no. There was never any room in my retirement plan for Fox Mulder retiring alongside me on my ranch…was there? Does he even like ranches? Does he like the desert? It’s quite obvious he’s taken with me, if the gleam in his eyes is any indication – oh fuck – I did pull him into my bed yesterday…it’s all coming back to me now. Goddamn hospitals and their drugs…goddamn nanocytes and ex-agents and consortiums…it’s all making me dizzy and I clamp my eyes shut against the barrage of images assaulting my newfound wakefulness.

“You can leave me, Mulder. You can and you have to, the sooner the better. They’ll track you down and they’ll come after us…they’ll–” oh goodie, we’re back to the cut-you-off game…

“Who is going to come after us, Walter, huh? Who exactly is out to get us now, ‘eh? Cancer man is dead. His British counterparts have all either been killed or disappeared, and that Russian skunk-haired fuck is long gone. Krycek is six-feet under with a bullet that you administered, and the Lone Gunmen are a distant memory thanks to all of those fuckers…so just who is still interested in the likes of us? Scully? Nope, she’s busy playing Mommy and past that, Doggett and Reyes are probably buried in enough X-Files to never be seen out of the basement again. So…” he finishes cryptically as always, “Just who is after us now?”

I think about it for several seconds before grinding out a breathy, “I don’t know Mulder, you tell me.”

“Great comeback, Walt. The doctors say you’ll be out of here by midday tomorrow. I’m here until they release you. I’ll drive us back to your ranch, and then you can make up your mind what you want to do with me,” he finishes with a smirk and a waggle of his eyebrows. Bastard.

“Swell,” I rasp, wincing at the laugh that he lets out, flinching a bit when he reaches down and takes my left hand in both of his own before bringing my knuckles up to kiss the flesh, making me blush against my will. I’m weak and that is my excuse…for now. Goddamn Fox Mulder; he never did know how to follow orders. For some reason, at this moment – I’m inordinately glad.

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…AND THE DAY AFTER THAT

Great. I’m settled into Mulder’s severance-earned sedan and we’re making our way back to my ranch. MY ranch. MY home. Allow me to recap just how in the hell I’ve managed to end up in Fox Mulder’s passenger seat…oh fuck it. It doesn’t matter; none of it matters. The agreements, the years of distrust and conspiracies and smoking bastards in the corner of my office…none of it holds one iota of water at this point. Christ, I might as well just bend over for Mulder now. Of course, I’d be remiss if I said that that very thought didn’t give me a semi…but I digress.

The nurses have shown both he and I how to change the dressings on my foot, and we have pages of instructions for keeping me hydrated and fed properly, despite the distance that I live from all the stores and medical facilities. Mulder has become my pariah, ready to do the smallest thing that he can in order to preserve my well-being – as well as ensure what I can only assume will become his retirement alongside mine. Idiot. Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone? I decide to verbalize that thought. It’s one of my first waking mistakes; there are going to be at least a few, I can already tell.

“So Fox, why don’t you just drop me off and then you can go back to your hotel and relax a little…shower…shave (I add extra emphasis on that idea)…you know, take the edge off these last few days. I’ll be fine alone, I have plenty of food and stuff. Really.” I toss that out there and allow a moment to pass, watching his face for his reaction – of course he doesn’t disappoint. His cheery grin and erect posture do nothing less then assure me that he is, indeed, along for the long haul. FUCK. And then he speaks.

“Walter, I understand that you want to get back to your solitary existence out here in the midst of nowhere. And I appreciate that, I just want you to know that.” DOUBLE fuck. “But you did tell me that you wanted me near, and you did pull me into your hospital bed and proclaim, no matter how unspoken, your desire to have me close to you. And I would be remiss if I ignored that, no matter how inadvertently you might have meant it.”

“Precisely Fox, which is why –”

“Which is precisely why I am not going to leave you, Walter. You need me. Admit it…you need me – no, you WANT me near you. You’ve wanted me near you for years, and this little exercise is nothing less than the culmination of said years of wanton desire coming to a head.” Oh no. No. NO.

“Are you quite finished, Mulder? Because there are a few things I’d like to discuss with you before you attempt to settle into my life…”

“Sir, I’ve been giving this all a lot of thought, and I really think that there is only one thing that you can do in order to repay me for this favor. And I’m not even going to mention all the other favors I’ve done for you over the years…no, those no longer hold any water whatsoever, but there is one thing I want from you.”

“What favors are you referring to, Mulder? Would it be the ones that pitted me against you and some unseen force in an office building? Would that favor include the fact that I got my ass kicked from here to serendipity in the JEH stairwell over some fucking tapes? How about having to sign off on countless 302’s claiming aliens, mutants, smart bugs, lake monsters and God only knows WHAT else? Little green men–”

oh no, here it comes, I thought – and was not disappointed in the least when he replied…

“…Gray, Sir. They’re little gray men but that isn’t even what I was thinking about.”

“Really, Agent Mulder. What were you thinking about?” I can barely wait for it, but I manage to bite my tongue until I hear his reply. Thank God we’re nearly back to my ranch and I won’t have to listen to this shit for very much longer.

“Will you buy me a pony? I’ve always wanted a pony, Sir.” Somehow, by some stretch of the imagination, he manages to keep a completely straight face as he meets my eyes, steering the car into my driveway and only dragging his eyes away from mine in order to park in front of my house. Car in gear, he drops his hands to his lap and looks at me, earnestly awaiting my reply.

“You’re too fucking big for a pony Mulder,” I grouse at him, biting my tongue in order to keep from busting out laughing as I reach for my door handle. He truly has learned all my buttons in our years together. He lets loose a huge sigh of disappointment, eyes dancing with laughter that he too is fighting off – successfully.

“Awww, come on Skinner! I saved your life! I want a pony,” he insists, beginning to laugh as the last word escape his lips. I open my car door and attempt to step out, unable to do so due to my bandaging and need for the crutches the hospital has issued. He hops out immediately and runs to my side of the car, throwing open the door of the sedan behind me to fetch said crutches, handing them to me and ignoring my grunt of discomfort as he helps me to stand up from the seat of the car.

It doesn’t escape his attention that I am stifling guffaws at his childish insistence, and his eyes gleam ever moreso in the thankfully fading sunlight as he looks directly at me, a bright smile painted over his features; he looks happier now than I think I’ve ever seen him in all the years I’ve known him and all I want to do is…no, I won’t allow myself to go there.

“No ponies, Mulder. The barn isn’t even finished yet,” I tell him as I yank the crutches from his grasp and gear myself towards the steps leading up to my house.

“What about a puppy, huh,” he yells from behind me, getting my suitcase out of the trunk. I bite my bottom lip to stifle what could only be classified as a giggle; I’ve been thinking about getting a dog for some time now, but I won’t let him know that. “I’ve always wanted a puppy,” his voice trails off as I make my way stubbornly and precariously up the steps of my deck.

Once I’ve made my way pretty much safely onto my deck, I turn and watch him mock-frowning as he follows my path up the steps. He stops directly behind me since I’ve frozen at the front door, waiting for him to hand me my keys. He’s standing so close, breathing just a little heavily with the effort of carrying my bag from the car in the evening heat. Propped on the crutches as I am, I have the perfect opportunity to press my lips to his…so I do. Mulder’s eyes open wide once he realizes what I’m doing, and I take one extra second to flick my tongue out across his lips – and then I pull away.

He drops the keys into my waiting hand, shock and what I can only assume is wanton desire – if the flickering in those evil hazel orbs is any indication – pasted across his entire face. “We’ll talk about the dog,” I tell him before turning to open the front door and hobbling over the threshold of what could now only be described as…our house. He silently followed me inside and shut the door behind us. Us. Now there’s something I can get behind…as far as retirement is – and any myriad of other things – concerned, anyway.

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