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Title: November Eleventh For Xanthe and Marlene. Happy birthday, Sammy. It's not quite a full-blown spanky fic, but it's close enough for government work. Summary: Mulder finds himself welcome after his return from the stars. Today is Tuesday, November 11, 2003. It's 9:33 P.M. I know the day, the time, and the year. These facts hold me to Earth, keep me in this dark living room, with only a television flickering. They think I'm asleep. At Scully's soft urging, Walt rises from his fortress of relaxation, his "ass-print easy chair," to tuck the white cotton blanket up around my shoulders. Scully's got this thing, now, with me and the color white. She surrounds me in it. My pajamas are white, my boxers, my bedding, the towels. It isn't because white goes with my pasty skin. She knows what it's like to be stripped and degraded, if only subliminally. She's trying to convince me, and herself, that we're still pure. Walter sits down on the floor by the couch where I rest. I view him through the fringe of my eyelashes, not letting on that I'm aware. He rests his big, warm hand on mine and pretends to watch television. After a few moments, the baby makes a little high-pitched sound like a dolphin. These noises have lent her the nickname "Flipper." Her real name is Annette, and she's so damned tiny and looks so much like Walter. I was returned four days after her premature birth. The first time I saw Scully she was wild-eyed and pale and her shirt was wet from leaking breast milk. "Mulder," she said. "Oh my god. Mulder." We haven't talked about our own child yet. We will someday, when Scully's ready. She'll choke out what I already know, what I learned when I was up there: Scully was pregnant when they took me; there was a miscarriage at twenty-three weeks. She won't tell me that the fetus was malformed or that she nearly died of a strange septicemia. And I won't let on that I already know. I hear the faint swoosh of the rocker over carpet, the repeated tiny crack of a loose wood joint. Annette chirps again and Scully sighs. I want to turn on my side, but I don't. I know I can, but another part of me is still a prisoner, perpetually restrained. Besides, Walt will know I'm awake. I don't want to talk now, just surreptitiously watch. I'm still getting used to this new place, still trying to believe that I'm here, in Walter and Scully's four-bedroom Prince William County, Virginia, home with their wedding pictures in Waterford crystal frames on the mantel. She's a teacher at Quantico now; he's director of security at some Silicon Commonwealth company out by Dulles. I've been gone three years. To me, it's either been three minutes or three centuries. Time wasn't the same up there. Neither was reality. Everything was surreal, unreal, except the pain and the loneliness. These sensations and feelings made me hope that I was yet human. Now that I don't feel them, I wonder if my transformation is complete. No. I am still a human. The bronze needle-thing piercing my brain, the implants in my sinuses and glands, and all the weird gene therapy aside, I think I'm still me...can still be me. They don't need me now, won't need me for another fifteen years. They said I can have this time for myself, and if I help them when it all begins, neither I nor anyone I love will be lost. They say they're coming to raise us up, not enslave us. I have to believe that. I do. For all that they did to me, I'm pretty sure they told no lies. The television is selling a feminine hygiene product and Walter looks away, looks at me. Walt doesn't need glasses now. He had laser surgery while I was gone. He wears polo shirts to work and soft, ragged sweats at home. There's not a single suit in his closet. I feel Walt kneading a nub of scar tissue on the side of my wrist. The nerves there spark. I haven't told him how I gained these marks of crucifixion. He really wants more fuel for the fire of his self-recrimination. Like he could've stopped them from taking me...Uh-huh, sure. Now I can accept I'm not the center of the universe. He needs to learn that lesson, too. Walt's thumb goes around and around my ugly little scar, and the nerve shocks almost make me twitch. I'm not ready to discuss their clever method of restraint and deterrence: the long thick needles through my flesh. I quickly learned to hold still or to beg for straps, admitting I was a weak inferior who needed help to cooperate. But there were still times when I had to fight. I remember the spikes rubbing my bones and ligaments as I struggled, the jangle of nerves, the leaking blood. Finally I can't take the sparkles of pain and the memories any longer and I withdraw my hand. "Hey, Mulder," I hear Walt whisper. Next, he'll touch the scars on my face. He wants to know about those, too. It was the same deal: They pierced my cheeks to restrain my head. Painful and effective. I should just tell him, but instead I make the shift to my side and bury my face in the cushion with feigned sleepy innocence. "Mulder?" "Hey, Walt," I'm forced to reply into the padding. My jig is up. "You should be in bed." I hear Scully. "He's been up too long today. I'm going to put Annette down, then we'll take him up." Scully talks about me in the third person a lot these days. I don't blame her. She can't quite believe I'm real or that I had the Mulder Luck (or the Mulder Audacity) to return just when she'd finally accepted my loss, when she'd moved on and was happy. Every time Walter says we're now a threesome, I see the deer-headlight disbelief in her eyes. She wants to believe that he's serious. I think I already do. They have to help me shower. I'm still very wobbly. This morning Walt got in the stall with me and I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the tile while he soaped me. His hands felt good on my back, on my ass. "Looks like you aren't the only one who's returned," Walt's voice was low in my ear. I laughed. A real human laugh. It made Scully hurry in from the bedroom to find us both with hard-ons. She stood there with her red bed hair and her mouth hanging open. "There's room for three," Walt waggled an eyebrow. Scully pretended to hear Annette and dashed away. "Your wife doesn't believe you." I leaned back into Walter's arms, let him support me. "She's your wife, too, Mulder. In spirit, if not in the eyes of the law. Besides, she believes in little green men now, right? A menage a trois isn't half as strange." "They're only green when they're pissed," I murmured in monotone. "That's when you know it's really going to hurt." Walter kissed the top of my head. "This isn't going to hurt, Mulder. I promise." ** Walt and Scully have been married for a more than a year. A donor egg, his sperm, and embryo transplantation yielded Annette. He's pulling in a huge salary working in the private sector. The Skinners now have everything a normal American family dreams of. But he wants me in the mix, too, despite the FUBAR potential. He's not just sharing his toy with a pitiful kid, or forcing the issue for Scully who could never do it for herself. He really needs us both. He says he always loved us. And we always loved him, too, despite our mutual obsession. Since Walt told us what he wants-- not just Scully as his wife, but as my wife, and me as his-- well, whatever (society hasn't come up with a title yet but it's going to have to do so soon), my heart feels connected to Walt's by an invisible chord. It hangs loose and easy as he helps me up the stairs. My leg muscles ache like hell when I try to boost my own weight. I let Walt do most of the work for me, lifting me beneath the armpits. Scully thinks I am so weak because of extended weightlessness, but it's regular atrophy earned in normal gravity. I rarely ever stood on my own feet, but was floated from place to place and kept prone for the treatments and punishments or recoveries. The Grays levitate themselves everywhere. They're skinny little wimps and they've made me one, too. I can walk down the hall to the bedroom with minimum support. We pass the nursery and see Scully leaning over Annette's crib. Her pale profile and copper hair are dimly illuminated by the pink rabbit nightlight and dozens of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the walls. I'm surprised that she chose this particular decor, but the shrink in me knows she's just facing her fears. I need to tell her that they aren't interested in Annette. Its our baby whom they would've stolen. When we're all in the bedroom, I decide to push the envelope, a sure sign that I'm really recovering. "I want you both to make love to me." I present this as a fact, mimicking my dust-dry captors, remembering the threats of pain if I couldn't stop infusing my communication with human emotion. The way I speak now bothers Walt and Scully. I think it will change as I become less-- I guess brainwashed is as good as any term. Brain-speared, maybe. I don't think that the thing in my head lets the Grays hear my thoughts, but it's definitely up to something. I hope the frequent ripples of color and sound are just test signals. Scully can't respond to me. She sits down on the edge of the bed and fingers the cloth of her green nightgown. But Walt is right on top of my request, a big grin breaking across his face. I can still count the number of times I've seen him smile like this. I want to see so many, many more. He embraces me and his lips trace my ear, then move down my neck. My skin stipples as I let him suck a nipple. "I need you both," I tell Walt when he's done making me writhe, then look toward Scully. "Top me." "Mulder, you're not ready for physical exertion," Scully replies, soft and scared. "What happens when you have to admit that I am?" I ask without inflection. "Will you run out of the room?" She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it. After a moment she opens it again. "How can you trust us?" Her eyes are so blue. And bloodshot. They're almost feverish from her work as a new mother, as a doting doctor. She frowns as she ponders our previous sexual history. B.A: Before Abduction. She can't reconcile then and now. My inculcated monotone doesn't help. I try for tone and pitch, for the romantic crack of the raw emotion that I _do_ feel, "Scully, I love you. I loved what you did with me before they took me and I want it still. Nothing has changed." "I am not going to top you, Mulder. Not now. Not until you're well." "Then stay and watch while Walter does. Let it prove that I'm okay with this. That I don't see it as rape." Scully's lips purse as she looks at the floor. I turn to Walt. "Talk to her." My robotic timbre surprises even me. Maybe I should add "humanoid" or "insignificant mortal." His eyes widen, then narrow. I don't wait for what happens next. I go into the bathroom and shut the door, then stare at myself in the mirror. There's a neat quarter of moon of dots along each cheek. They mock me like sideways smiles. I hate them. Scully has been looking for a discreet plastic surgeon. I want the scars gone, and the other marks, too-- but she's convinced me to retain those as "evidence." Perhaps, if they're erased, she'll forget they were there and deny again. I use the marks of my torture as a focusing aid, let them pull me into my dark hiding place. Sure, the Grays could yank me out of catatonia whenever they needed to, but they were good natured about me hanging out there in the off-times. My ass settles on the cold toilet lid. It's the last thing I feel for awhile. "Mulder? C'mon, buddy. Come back to us." That's Walt. He's shaking me gently. My forays into behavior judged insane by other humans don't phase him at all. He's a huge 'P' on the Myers-Briggs Scale. My darling 'J' Scully is right behind him, looking like an owl flew up her nose and is staring at me through her eyes. Walt is rubbing my back now, moving the white cotton of my pajamas around in a circle with his hand. "I'm here," I finally mutter. Now Scully takes my hands. She kisses me softly and pulls me to my feet. I follow her willingly; I'd follow her anywhere. We go back toward the bed where she strips me of my pajamas and pulls herself up on tip-toe to order me to clasp my hands behind my neck. I do it. Next she tells me to spread my legs. I do that, too, feeling my balls pull up through a frisson of fear. Walt is behind me. He's naked, now, too, judging by the feel of Uncle Wally poking my hip. His arm encircles my waist and Scully commands me to close my eyes. This dark isn't like my private world. It isn't like the isolation tank where I floated in slime with an umbilical chord down my throat. This darkness is, in fact, warm red, the color of my thin eye lids blocking the cheerful bedroom lamp. This dark is full of body heat and sudden wet suction around the head of my cock. When Walt's big hand strikes my buttock I hiss and jerk a little forward, right into Scully's waiting mouth. I feel his arm muscles tighten around me as he prepares to spank me again. My skin is still burning when the second strike comes. Again, I go reflexively forward into Scully's mouth and Walt lets me, just enough. This time I hold my breath to keep back the sound. Again and again Walter spanks me until my bottom is on fire and my cock is ready to explode. I want to scream and beg, but I'll be punished by the Grays or by my imaginary masters who are in truth my dearest lovers; I want to come but I need another slap. And I want to be my old self again who'll laugh like a snake when I've shot into her mouth, then purr like a kitten when they caress me and lead me to the bed for sleep. I do shout when I come, guttural and sweet with liberation. The Grays punished me for making noises when they milked me. It made them purple with disgust. If I moaned enough, their purple turned green around the edges. I don't care now. I know Walt and Scully won't turn on the fire for doing what a human must at the moment of climax. No, Walt and Scully don't send the inner fire. They caress me and call me "Beloved" and I want to plunge into her and let him spear into me, but I'm so tired. We lie in bed and tonight Scully gets the middle, not me. Her two men on are either side, holding hands across her abdomen. Today is November eleventh and I am alive. I am on Earth. I'm with my family. I'm okay. The rest of Lisby's fic can be found at Lisby's Limited Oeuvre, http://home.earthlink.net/~iwonder/lisby.htm
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