"Jesus Christ," he whispered, standing astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the half-open door, staring at the vision before him.
"Not quite," Fox said wryly. "Can I come in?"
Bryan stepped back, speechless. Everything was the same; hair, skin tone, hazel eyes. His neighbor was too thin, though, and the atmosphere around him dangerous. The fading marks on his cheeks did nothing to lessen his beauty.
Fox looked around the living room, the slightest smile on his lips. "So, how are you doing?"
"Uh, okay, I guess," Bryan answered, forcing himself to blink. "Jesus Christ."
"This is the part where I'm supposed to say that the reports of my death have been exaggerated, but in all honesty, I've always thought that line belonged to the movies and badly written tv shows. I, um..." Fox frowned and glanced down, picked at his cuticles.
"You want a quickie?"
"Uh, yeah. That would be great."
Bryan motioned towards his new leather couch. "Get comfy. I'll be back in a flash."
In the bedroom, Bryan practically dumped the contents of the dresser onto the floor in the haste to open the top drawer. Where the hell was it? He always kept Fox's stuff separate from everything else, in that little suede bag.
"There you are," he muttered, pushing aside a couple of Jesse's scarves. Bag in hand, he shut the drawer, did a double-take as he caught a glimpse of himself in the dresser's mirror. He didn't think he'd ever seen himself looking quite so...mind-boggled.
Fox Mulder.
Holy fucking shit.
"I like your couch," Fox said as Bryan strode back into the living room. "You've got good taste."
"Thanks," Bryan sat on the coffee table and opened the bag. He removed a pair of nail scissors, an emery board, an orange stick, and a buffing stick. "I should really soak your hands first - "
Fox shook his head. "Don't have the time today. Scully's coming over for dinner."
"Of course," Bryan said, inspecting Fox's hands. The man's nails were a mess. The cuticles were dry and cracked, peeling around the edges, while the nail beds themselves were ridged, split unevenly at the ends, and spotted with white flecks.
Death didn't generally mean a person got their full complement of vitamins and minerals.
"You still dating Vijay?"
Bryan snorted, clipped a hangnail close on Fox's right thumb. "We broke up. I won't go into all the horrible details, but let's just say that a sugar daddy was involved. Now I'm not a prude by any means, but even I have to draw a line in the sand somewhere."
"So I haven't missed too much then."
Define 'much'. "I've got a new man in my life now, though, and he is fan-tastic. My god, his name alone is priceless: Ulysses Grant Washington," he nodded at Fox for emphasis, then said, "the fourth."
Fox's mouth twisted. "He must be grateful he's not having kids."
Bryan could feel his imaginary second pair of arms wanting to flap. Danger, Will Robinson! He didn't dare look up. The bitterness in the other man's tone spoke volumes, but he wasn't quite sure which volumes they were. Was it a 'my partner's having a baby and I'll be left alone' panic, which he highly doubted, considering Dana's nearly daily trips to the apartment across the hall, or a 'I've missed so damned much' kind of thing? Maybe it was simply jealousy.
Dana hadn't told him who the father was, but he assumed it was Fox and not that big bald guy she'd brought around a few weeks back. And he didn't think it was her new partner either. Mistah New Yawk was too bland, too Dudley Do-Right compared to Fox.
"He is, but his brother's determined to pass along the horror. They both work at Gallaudet," Bryan leaned back and judged his work. Not bad. Not bad at all. "Did I tell you his brother's named Andrew Jackson Washington?"
"And I thought Fox was bad."
"I like your name," he said mildly, reaching for the orange stick. "When Eliza was born, Jesse wanted to call her Amanda Lynn, but I refused to name our daughter after a musical instrument. Thankfully we both agreed that Baird was perfect for our baby boy."
Fox didn't answer, and for a few minutes only their breathing and the rasp of the emery board against keratin broke the silence.
"Coming out was the second scariest thing I've ever done," offered Bryan, continuing when he felt the heat of Fox's gaze. "My parents haven't spoken to me since. If it hadn't been for Jesse and the kids, I don't know if I'd be here today."
The grandfather clock in the hallway rang, the hundred year old bell chimes mellow and soothing. Outside, several car horns beeped angrily at one another, and Scrooge mewed at the bird trilling lovesongs on the telephone cable attached to the building.
"What...what was the first scariest thing?"
"Becoming a father. I don't regret it now, but at the time I was terrified. I mean, how could I, an eighteen year-old man, be responsible for a defenseless human being? I couldn't even keep my own room clean! Coupled with how unsure I felt about my own sexual orientation, well. . ." he began buffing Fox's nails, wondering if he had gone too far. Perhaps he was presuming too much. Maybe Fox didn't want to have anything to do with Dana or her baby.
He could understand the feeling, he hadn't wanted anything to do with Jesse or Eliza in the beginning, either. Ultimately he'd felt too guilty to stay away, especially after her grandmother died and she'd been all on her own. On their wedding day the only one who was sure he wasn't doing the right thing had been him.
"Bryan?"
"Hmm?"
"I think I'm done."
"Oh, sorry," he blew any remaining dust off of Fox's fingers, put his tools in the bag. He followed Fox to the door, desperate to break this ridiculous appearance of normality. It wasn't every year you met someone you liked, mourned their passing, and then had them show up at your door a few months later.
Fox put one hand on the doorknob, hesitated, and turned back towards him, eyeing something fascinating on the floor. "Um, thanks for keeping an eye on Scully."
Bryan shook his head. Enough of this macho bullshit. He reached out and swept the other man into tight hug. "Welcome back. Next time, leave a note, okay?"
Fox returned his embrace equally firmly, drew in a couple of deep breaths before stepping back. He sniffed and nodded, managed a shaky, "See you later," and was gone.
While waiting for the water for his tea to boil, Bryan wandered over to the big bookshelf. Running his hand along the shelf, he searched until he found Les Miserables, reminded of a passage in Book Three. Now, if only he could remember which page it was on...ah.
'He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes.'
Bryan shook his head. The irony of it was terrible to contemplate. Children might be innocent, but the truth always came out, regardless of who might be hurt.
He went to his desk and flipped open his address book, scanned for the name, punched the number on the dial, waited the requisite number of rings, hung up, redialed.
"What."
"Louis, it's Bryan."
"So it's true."
He let out a long sigh. "Yeah. What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing. If he shows any signs of changing - "
"It's too late for that. I don't know what Dana did, but so far he's the only normal survivor out of everyone who's been returned."
There was a long pause.
"It could be that his previous exposure to the black oil gave him some kind of immunity," he said, toying with a Loonie from his last trip to Montreal. "That's my best guess. I think out of everyone, he and Dana have the best chance of figuring out our best defense. Spender did us a huge favor when he took her."
"Maybe. You got anything else for me?"
"Nope."
"Call me if something happens."
Bryan put the phone back in its cradle. He gathered the bag left on the coffee table and brought it back into the bedroom, tossed it on top of the dresser. He fingered the MUFON cap hanging off the top-left corner of the mirror. Softly, he said to himself, "'One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child.'"
Fox Mulder.
Holy fucking shit.
Author's note: Originally written for the X Files Literary Wheel, archived on Gossamer under 'Dryad'
I've always wondered who did Mulder's nails. I mean, they always look so nice, y'know? Hugs seem to be the thing in my fics, lately. Hmm.
Summary translation from Juvenal's Satires 'But who will guard the guards themselves?'
Bryan was first introduced in Country of the Crepescule: Do You Like Our Owl?
Gallaudet is, I believe, the only university for the deaf in the United States.
The Loonie(y?) is Canada's one dollar coin.
Feedback: I like it. hekateris at gmail dot com
Suggested listening: Loop Guru/Bangdad/Duniya
Thanks to Silent Kid for the quote.
From Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Volume V. Book Third.-Mud but the Soul. Chapter XII. The Grandfather
At the physician's orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. The doctor examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that they were undressing Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber.
The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet, deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth, and consequently, not dangerous. The long, underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. Not a single scar disfigured his face; but his head was fairly covered with cuts; what would be the result of these wounds on the head? Would they stop short at the hairy cuticle, or would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave symptom was that they had caused a swoon, and that people do not always recover from such swoons. Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted by hemorrhage. From the waist down, the barricade had protected the lower part of the body from injury.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette sewed them, Basque rolled them. As lint was lacking, the doctor, for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. Beside the bed, three candles burned on a table where the case of surgical instruments lay spread out. The doctor bathed Marius' face and hair with cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted them.
The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some question which he had inwardly addressed to himself.
A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself.
At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius' face, and lightly touching his still closed eyes with his finger, a door opened at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance.
This was the grandfather.
The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and engrossed the mind of M. Gillenormand. He had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. In the evening, he had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything in the house should be well barred, and he had fallen into a doze through sheer fatigue.
Old men sleep lightly; M. Gillenormand's chamber adjoined the drawing-room, and in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the noise had awakened him. Surprised at the rift of light which he saw under his door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither.
He stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressing-gown, which was straight and as destitute of folds as a winding-sheet; and he had the air of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb.
He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless and brilliantly lighted up.
The grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose corneae were yellow on account of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter, his whole face assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull, his arms fell pendent, as though a spring had broken, and his amazement was betrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his two aged hands, which quivered all over, his knees formed an angle in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressing-gown, a view of his poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs, and he murmured:
"Marius!"
"Sir," said Basque, "Monsieur has just been brought back. He went to the barricade, and . . ."
"He is dead!" cried the old man in a terrible voice. "Ah! The rascal!"
Then a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man.
"Sir," said he, "you are the doctor. Begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?"
The doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent.
M. Gillenormand wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter.
"He is dead! He is dead! He is dead! He has got himself killed on the barricades! Out of hatred to me! He did that to spite me! Ah! You blood-drinker! This is the way he returns to me! Misery of my life, he is dead!"
He went to the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling, and, erect before the darkness, he began to talk into the street, to the night:
"Pierced, sabred, exterminated, slashed, hacked in pieces! Just look at that, the villain! He knew well that I was waiting for him, and that I had had his room arranged, and that I had placed at the head of my bed his portrait taken when he was a little child! He knew well that he had only to come back, and that I had been recalling him for years, and that I remained by my fireside, with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was mad over it! You knew well, that you had but to return and to say: `It is I,' and you would have been the master of the house, and that I should have obeyed you, and that you could have done whatever you pleased with your old numskull of a grandfather! you knew that well, and you said:
"No, he is a Royalist, I will not go! And you went to the barricades, and you got yourself killed out of malice! To revenge yourself for what I said to you about Monsieur le Duc de Berry. It is infamous! Go to bed then and sleep tranquilly! he is dead, and this is my awakening."
The doctor, who was beginning to be uneasy in both quarters, quitted Marius for a moment, went to M. Gillenormand, and took his arm. The grandfather turned round, gazed at him with eyes which seemed exaggerated in size and bloodshot, and said to him calmly:
"I thank you, sir. I am composed, I am a man, I witnessed the death of Louis XVI., I know how to bear events. One thing is terrible and that is to think that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You will have scribblers, chatterers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty of the press, and this is the way that your children will be brought home to you. Ah! Marius! It is abominable! Killed! Dead before me! A barricade! Ah, the scamp! Doctor, you live in this quarter, I believe? Oh! I know you well. I see your cabriolet pass my window. I am going to tell you. You are wrong to think that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against a dead man. That would be stupid. This is a child whom I have reared. I was already old while he was very young. He played in the Tuileries garden with his little shovel and his little chair, and in order that the inspectors might not grumble, I stopped up the holes that he made in the earth with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down with Louis XVIII.! and off he went. It was no fault of mine. He was all rosy and blond. His mother is dead. Have you ever noticed that all little children are blond? Why is it so? He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes. I remember when he was no higher than that. He could not manage to pronounce his Ds. He had a way of talking that was so sweet and indistinct that you would have thought it was a bird chirping. I remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a circle to admire him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that child! He had a head such as you see in pictures. I talked in a deep voice, and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it was only to make him laugh. In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child. Now, what can you say for your Lafayettes, your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him? This cannot be allowed to pass in this fashion."
He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom the physician had returned, and began once more to wring his hands. The old man's pallid lips moved as though mechanically, and permitted the passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death agony:
"Ah! heartless lad! Ah! clubbist! Ah! wretch! Ah! Septembrist!"
Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.
Little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of words returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his voice was so weak, and extinct, that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:
"It is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am. And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have been delighted to make this wretch happy! A scamp who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself shot down like a brute! And for whom? Why? For the Republic! Instead of going to dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young folks to do! What's the use of being twenty years old? The Republic, a cursed pretty folly! Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do! Come, he is dead. That will make two funerals under the same carriage gate. So you have got yourself arranged like this for the sake of General Lamarque's handsome eyes! What had that General Lamarque done to you? A slasher! A chatter-box! To get oneself killed for a dead man! If that isn't enough to drive any one mad! Just think of it! At twenty! And without so much as turning his head to see whether he was not leaving something behind him! That's the way poor, good old fellows are forced to die alone, now-adays. Perish in your corner, owl! Well, after all, so much the better, that is what I was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot. I am too old, I am a hundred years old, I am a hundred thousand years old, I ought, by rights, to have been dead long ago. This blow puts an end to it. So all is over, what happiness! What is the good of making him inhale ammonia and all that parcel of drugs? You are wasting your trouble, you fool of a doctor! Come, he's dead, completely dead. I know all about it, I am dead myself too. He hasn't done things by half. Yes, this age is infamous, infamous and that's what I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scape-graces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the revolutions which, for the last sixty years, have been frightening the flocks of crows in the Tuileries! But you were pitiless in getting yourself killed like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand, you assassin?"
At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Gillenormand.
"Marius!" cried the old man. "Marius! My little Marius! my child! my well-beloved son! You open your eyes, you gaze upon me, you are alive, thanks!"
And he fell fainting.