Title: "In Dreams"
Author: JiM
Pairing: Skinner/Doggett
Rating: PG for language
Series: No
Date: 5/01
Archive: Yes
Feedback: jimpage363@aol.com
Notes: Thanks to rac, Dawn, Karen, Ness, Leila, Kass. You are all 
wonderful friends!
Summary: After the episode "Via Negativa", Doggett's insomnia 
blurs the lines between Real Life and the world of dreams.

* * * 

"In Dreams"
by JiM

* * * 

 

He is dreaming again. He realizes it with a kind of despair, 
because sleep has been nothing but pain and fear for a week now.
He has slept no more than half an hour at a time since the night 
an entire cult was murdered in their sleep by their leader.

It wasn't the sight of the dead, all lying there, neatly 
butchered in their beds, that keeps him from closing his eyes 
until he must. It wasn't finding the body of his friend, or even 
seeing his partner's severed head in his hands. It is the sudden 
reawakening of something the child in him knew and which the man 
had forgotten. 

The monsters can get you when you sleep.

It is no more profound than that. He is a strong man. He is a 
person with few vulnerabilities and he has worked hard to become 
that man. But when he sleeps, nothing he has ever learned can 
protect him. No martial arts, no firearms, no determination can 
save him from the shadowy things in his head.

He wants to sigh. One moment, he was turning the corner and 
heading for the stairs down to his office. The next, he's 
walking down that damned telescoping hallway again, the one that 
just keeps stretching away from him, dwindling into shadows from 
which some pretty rotten things have emerged all week.

The world tilts sickeningly and something strikes him high on 
his forehead. There is a voice shouting and, when he opens his 
eyes, the hallway is gone. He is lying on his side, concrete 
cold and harsh beneath his right cheek and hand. Assistant 
Director Skinner is kneeling beside him, and the papers from 
the files he had been carrying are scattered all down the 
staircase.

"Agent Doggett? Are you all right?" 

He can't help it; he stares at his boss and knows that his 
expression mirrors the stupidity of the question. After a 
moment, Skinner's lip quirks, acknowledging his own idiocy and 
surprising Doggett.

"I'm OK," Doggett rasps and slowly sits up. Skinner's big hand 
is helping him to lean back against the wall and he is 
grateful. It is the first real human contact he has had in a 
week. He puts his hand up to the numb spot on his forehead and 
his fingers come away bloody. He stares at them dully until 
Skinner puts a white handkerchief in his hand and pushes that 
hand back to rest against the wound. That formerly numb spot 
now hurts like hell. Why does he always wind up getting hurt 
in his dreams? Other people get to dream about sex with 
supermodels or having to recite "Jabberwocky" naked in front 
of the whole school; he gets his ass kicked, again and again.

"Look at me," Skinner says and hard fingers are under his jaw, 
bringing his head up. Doggett squints at the fluorescent lights 
that stab into his eyes, then forces himself to look straight 
at his boss. Skinner stares intently for a moment, dark eyes 
flickering back and forth minutely as he studies Doggett. "I 
don't think you have a concussion, but I'd like Agent Scully to 
have a look at you. Any idea why you suddenly took a header off 
the landing?"

Doggett shakes his head, then realizes that is a bad mistake. 
"I guess I just slipped." The stairs are damp in the middle
from snow melting off people's shoes. The steel treads have 
been slick beneath his feet all day.

"No, I saw you, Agent Doggett. You stepped right off the top 
stair."

Doggett pulls the handkerchief away from his head and is 
irritated at how much blood is soaking into the linen. Head 
wounds always bleed like stuck pigs, he reminds himself. His 
hand has started to hurt now, too. When he pulls the 
handkerchief away, he sees the raw scrapes across his palm. 
Skinner is still looking at him strangely, but slides a hand 
under his arm and helps Doggett clamber to his feet. The world 
grays out a little, then snaps back into focus when he presses 
a firm thumb into his own temple, short-circuiting the pain for 
a moment.

Skinner helps him gather his spilled files silently, for which 
he is grateful. If he were less tired, if his head hurt just a 
little less, he suspects he'd be mortified. Instead, he's just 
happy that he doesn't have to bend over as much and feel that 
throbbing intensify.

"Get your partner to check you over, Agent," Skinner says, then 
he makes his way up the stairs, moving silently for such a large 
man.

* * * 

Scully seizes him immediately when he comes back to their office. 
She pokes and prods and shines a penlight into his eyes. He tries 
to endure it with patience because she is being kind to him, a 
welcome change from her cool courtesy or her derisive pity for his 
inability to see the insane tangle of lies and conspiracy which 
she insists tightens around them all; Scully, Skinner and 
especially the vanished Mulder.

He doesn't want to think about that now, not as she cleans and 
bandages his scrapes. The stinging burn of the alcohol wipe is a 
nice distraction. He would like to think that it means he is not 
still dreaming, but he knows now that it means nothing. He has 
awakened in his bed too many times this week, patting himself down 
looking for nightmare injuries. His subconscious, which he has 
gotten to know all too well this week, is more than capable of 
throwing him down the stairs to land at his boss' feet in a 
bloody heap.

She is crumpling up the gauze wrappers and repacking the first 
aid kit when he hears himself say suddenly, "I haven't been 
sleeping too well."

This triggers a stream of questions from her, in what he has 
come to know as her investigative mode. He regrets saying 
anything at all, not the least of which reason is because she 
is no longer speaking to him in that low, kind voice that goes 
so well with her smile. He focuses on her mouth as she speaks 
and manages to make most of the right replies, he thinks.

"Go home, Agent Doggett. Get some rest. It's a long weekend. 
I'll see you Tuesday." Before he can even protest properly, 
she is bundling him into his coat and pushing him gently out 
the door. He would like to ask her if he is still dreaming, 
but realizes that she couldn't tell him. She hasn't been able 
to in any of the other dreams he has had about her, the ones 
where she still had her head.

He is a man who learns from his mistakes; this time, he takes 
the elevator. The other agents and Bureau personnel seem to 
look at him strangely as he makes his way toward the parking 
garage. His head throbs in time with each step he takes. He 
stops to rest for a moment, closing his eyes and leaning with 
his uninjured hand on someone else's car.

"Agent Doggett? Are you all right?"

It's Skinner again. Hell, can this dream or this day get any
worse? Whichever it is, it sucks. He wishes he'd never heard 
of the X Files. He wonders briefly if Mulder ever had trouble 
discerning between his nightmares and reality. 

"No, sir, I don't think so." Which is not what he intended to 
say at all.

"You are not all right to drive, Agent Doggett."

"I'm fine, sir." He straightens himself and pitches forward 
one step as his brain seems to rattle loosely in his skull.

"Just get in the car," Skinner says with more patience than 
Doggett would have expected. He watches bemused as Skinner 
pulls his keyring from his pocket and unlocks the doors of the 
car Doggett is leaning against. OK, that settles it. He is 
relieved to know he is still dreaming. Despite the minor head 
wound, this dream isn't too horrible actually. The only blood 
so far has been his own. 

It isn't until he reaches to fasten his seatbelt that he 
realizes that he is still clutching the bloodied handkerchief 
in his hand. He stares at it, wondering what it is supposed 
to mean.

* * * 

The snow has turned to ice and Doggett is marginally convinced 
this isn't a dream anymore. Skinner is swearing under his 
breath as the car fish-tails yet again. They creep forward 
another block and Skinner is beginning to repeat himself. It 
would take Doggett an hour to get home on a good day; on a 
night like this, it will be two or three hours. He feels 
abraded by the knowledge that Skinner lives much closer to 
work than that, that he is doing this merely because Doggett 
is such a fucking mess that he can't get home on his own.

"Look, there's a Metro stop on the next block. Just let me out 
there and ..."

"No, Agent Doggett." A calm-sounding clump of words in the 
middle of that viciously quiet stream of curses.

"Sir, I appreciate..."

"No."

His head throbs from where it hit the concrete landing. He 
leans back, suddenly too tired to fight it out. If Skinner 
wants to be a fucking martyr, let him. Doggett knows he is 
being unreasonable; knows that he isn't in any kind of state 
to get himself home; knows that Skinner is just doing the 
right thing, the kind of thing Doggett himself would do without 
a second thought, if the positions were reversed. He lets his 
head rest against the cool glass of the window and watches the 
sleet run down the outside.

It is warm inside the car now. The windshield wipers make a 
regular squeak-thump that he finds lulling. Even Skinner's 
whispered imprecations at the stupidity of other drivers is 
soothing, in a weird sort of way. He dimly registers Skinner 
talking to him, explaining something, giving him a choice. 
He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to decide.

The next thing he is really conscious of is that the car has 
stopped. Everything is gray and dim. The sound of Skinner's 
door opening echoes strangely, as do his footsteps on the 
concrete.

"You coming?" His supervisor's voice sounds tired, not 
irritable, just beat.

Doggett fumbles with the seatbelt for a moment, blinking 
quickly to try to clear away the fog. It doesn't work, but 
he manages to get the belt to release, then to drag himself 
out of the car. The parking garage is cold, the air damp and 
still. He stands for a moment, one hand on the trunk again, 
trying to get his bearings.

"Where are we?"

"Freezing our asses off in the garage under my building. You 
coming?" Skinner says again, a touch of annoyance creeping in. 
He turns on his heel and starts walking, footsteps sounding 
hollow. Doggett follows him, trying not to stumble. A little 
sleep has been worse than none at all. Gravity drags at him 
in the empty elevator. He flexes his knees a little and is 
shocked at how hard it is to straighten up again. They reach 
Skinner's floor in silence and Doggett concentrates on 
walking steadily after him, down the hallway to the last 
apartment on the floor.

Skinner's apartment is dark and cold. Doggett stands in the 
middle of the living room, watching Skinner's bulk move in 
the dimness. He is taller than the other man, but somehow, 
Skinner radiates a kind of solidity that Doggett has never 
felt. He was always a slender boy, tall and god help him, 
willowy. He worked hard to change that, lifting weights, 
playing soccer, gradually laying muscle on over his gawky 
frame. He knows he still isn't all that impressive in a suit. 
He misses the Corps for a moment; at least fatigues didn't 
disguise the strength in his chest or arms.

Sleet hisses against the windows, lashed by the wind, and 
Doggett shakes his head, trying to clear it. Skinner switches 
on a lamp and the light stabs into Doggett's tired eyes again. 
He blinks stupidly until Skinner's hands start working at the 
shoulders of his overcoat. Then he shrugs out of it and fumbles 
it as he tries to hand it to his host.

"When was the last time you slept, Agent Doggett?" Skinner asks 
as he turns to hang both their coats in a closet near the door.

Damn Scully. He feels like she has tattled on him and he knows 
that is stupid, but he feels it anyway. "I slept last night," 
he says and even he can hear how defensive his hoarse voice 
sounds.

"How much? An hour? Two?" Skinner's voice tells him that he 
already knows the answer.

"Enough," he says shortly, staring at Skinner's tie. Hadn't it 
been blue before? He blinks and rubs the back of his neck.

Skinner yanks his tie off and hangs it on the back of a chair 
in the kitchenette. Doggett keeps staring at it, waiting for 
it to turn into a cobra or whatever damned thing his 
subconscious can come up with. He figures he is still asleep 
in the car, stuck somewhere in traffic with Skinner still 
swearing at all the idiot tourists who don't know how to drive 
in snow.

A fanged tie that changed colors wasn't really much weirder 
than standing in the middle of his boss' apartment as he 
boiled rotini and heated a jar of sauce and the wind kept 
muttering and shaking the windows. Or listening to Skinner 
talk haltingly about his own sleep disorder and offer 
suggestions and strategies for coping. Doggett grunts at what 
he hopes are the right intervals and tries to eat. Spearing a 
piece of pasta seems to take most of his coordination at this 
point and he realizes that he simply isn't hungry enough to put 
up with the sheer annoyance of trying to feed himself.

Skinner doesn't push him to eat. Eventually, he stops talking 
and sends Doggett into the living room to watch TV. On the 
way out, Doggett stumbles a little against a chair and puts a 
hand out to steady himself. His fingers touch the cool silk of
Skinner's tie and it is blue again. He shakes his head at the 
expected weirdness, then realizes that his own tie is now 
exactly the same color as Skinner's. With a sigh, he slips it 
off and lays it on the back of the chair, figuring that like 
ought to be with like.

The cable is out and the TV screen is filled with nothing but 
white snow. He finds it soothing but knows that it would be 
undeniably strange behavior to be found staring at a blank 
television, so he turns it off again. He has been trying so 
hard to keep his balance this week, to stay rational, to stay 
calm and not give into the desperate strangeness that he doesn't 
want to fail now.

When Skinner comes into the room, his sleeves rolled up and 
hands still damp, Doggett is sitting on the couch, carefully 
cataloging the room as he has been trained to do, looking for 
the details that would tell him about the occupant. Bachelor 
decor, he thinks, most of it bought around the same time, 
probably right after a divorce or widowing. No photos and a 
telling lack of knickknacks or plants. Relatively expensive 
entertainment system but no clutter of CD's or DVD's. A pile of 
what he tends to think of as middle class coffee table 
magazines - Smithsonian, National Geographic, The Atlantic 
Monthly. A bookmarked hardcover on an end table, titled, "And 
One Was a Soldier: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Robert E. Lee".

"What's your theory, Agent Doggett? Am I the perp?" Skinner's 
voice is flat, but there is something that might be a spark of 
humor in his eyes.

"It's hard to say at this juncture, sir. It's a little early 
for theories," Doggett says and is surprised as his tight smile 
is split by a yawn.

Skinner drops heavily into the recliner which is placed to share 
a reading lamp with the couch. Doggett finds himself strangely 
intrigued by Skinner's dark-socked feet and stares at them until 
Skinner says, "Make yourself at home, stretch out if you want."

Because there is no good answer to that, Doggett slips off his 
jacket and lays it over the back of the couch. Beyond the 
windows, he can hear the snow hissing and whispering. It is a 
cold sound and makes him a little gladder to be sitting in 
this pool of golden light. Part of him wishes he were home on 
the familiar battlefield of his own bed, but the rest of him is 
pitifully glad to focus on the distraction of another living 
person. Even Skinner's breathing and the creaks of his leather 
chair are enough to remind Doggett that he is not alone.

Skinner begins a halting conversation about hockey, which is 
Doggett's favorite sport. But Doggett's eyes keep drooping and 
the words eventually dribble to a stop and Skinner picks up his 
book. Doggett closes his eyes and waits for sleep to wash over 
him. Perversely, he is now more awake. Wind. Snow. Skinner's 
breath. The whisper of a page turning. The murmur of leather 
beneath him as he shifts restlessly and debates asking for a 
drink. He has been strong all this week and not reached for a 
bottle once -- and what has it gotten him?

Suddenly, he is aware of Skinner's gaze upon him. It is nearly a 
physical thing and he flinches from meeting it. He doesn't open 
his eyes, tries to breathe regularly, as a man asleep might. 
Skinner's voice, when it comes, is somehow gentler than he would 
have expected. "It's OK, John. I know how this goes." Then he 
begins reading aloud.

It is some odd musing excerpt from Robert E. Lee's diary and 
it's boring as hell. Doggett wants to laugh aloud. It is the 
best joke he's heard in a long time. An Assistant Director of the 
FBI reading aloud a bedtime story to one of his insomniac agents.

He is asleep before Skinner can turn the page.

* * * 

When he wakes, it is dark. The wind is still gusting outside, 
the snow still ticking against the windows. It is late, one of 
those dark hours deep in the night in which anything can happen 
and usually does. Skinner is gone, the shadowy oblong of his 
book left on the end table. A comforter has been draped over 
Doggett and he wants to be mortified at the thought of Skinner 
*tucking* him in.

Instead, he sits up and wipes the sweat away from his face, 
salt stinging his abraded palms. He has had the worst nightmare 
of his life, one so bad that he could make no sound. No screams, 
no groans, not even the harsh sound of breathing to awaken him. 
His hands are shaking and he curls his fingers over the arch of 
his cheekbones, and it is the desperate grip of a man sliding 
over the edge of a cliff.

It was a dream, he tells himself. Now, after a few hours of 
sleep, sitting in Skinner's intensely practical apartment, 
reality and dreams ought to be farther apart than this. He 
should be able to sort memory and phantasm, like grain from 
chaff. He shouldn't be sitting on this cool leather and 
wondering if he felt his son's neck snap between his hands, 
shouldn't remember the heavy chill of his small body as he 
carried it into the woods.

"It didn't happen," he whispers, pleading with the shadows to 
show some mercy. But the dreams are as pitiless as they are 
random and he wonders if 
his mind has begun to flake away in tiny granite-edged shards. 
For the first time in days, he thinks that he would actually 
welcome one of the dreams in which he and Scully are shredded 
by the giant bat thing.

He clambers stiffly to his feet and stumbles into the coffee 
table, then goes looking for the bathroom. The cool tile feels 
good under his sock-clad feet and he stares into the mirror, 
seeing a murky fracture of himself reflected in the silver 
shadow of the mirror. That man, he thinks, that man there, the 
one in the mirror, he looks like he could kill a child. 

The only warning he has is a weird flash of heat all over his 
body, then he is vomiting out his grief and rage as he has done 
so many times in the past. His nose is running, tears are 
streaming down his face, bile is a helpless, bitter taste in 
his mouth. His knees ache from hitting the floor so quickly 
and he braces his elbows on the toilet seat and presses the 
scraped heels of his hands against the throbbing in his temples. 

After a while, he flushes the toilet to take away the sour 
stench of what he carries inside him all the time now. He gets 
himself back to his feet and lets the water run cool over his 
bruised hands. Then he cups them and splashes water over his 
face again and again, washing away the taint of dreams, the 
slick sweat of his fear of madness. He squeezes some toothpaste 
onto his finger and scrubs away at the bitter film on his teeth, 
then strips away the soaked bandages.

No, he thinks, as he drinks water from his hands, I'm not mad. 
I'm only tired and sad and alone. Alone. Cold and alone.

Water has run up his forearms and soaked into the sleeves of 
his crumpled dress shirt. He shivers and unbuttons it, watching 
himself in the dim rectangle of the mirror. His undershirt is 
mostly dry, so he leaves it. His slacks are wrinkled and itchy 
and damp from his splashing, so he takes those off. He has 
taken off his socks before he even registers how stupid he feels 
standing there in only his briefs and socks.

The tile beneath his bare feet leeches any warmth that might 
have been left in him. The carpet in the hallway is rough and 
snickers as he stumbles back toward the living room. The wind 
is muttering against the windows as he lays back down. The 
leather sticks to the bare skin of his legs and arms and he 
stares at the ceiling and prays for sleep, but his body is 
too tense, waiting for the return of the nightmares.

He doesn't know how long he lays there; it could be an hour, it 
could be ten minutes. It is long enough that his self-respect is 
gone and there can be nothing worse tonight than being alone. He 
is on his feet, then he is moving down the hall and finally 
standing at the door to Skinner's bedroom before the sting of 
bare flesh pulled too quickly from leather has faded.

Skinner has left the door half open. It swings noiselessly 
when Doggett's hand touches it. The shadows seem deeper here; 
there is less ambient light from outside to show him the shapes 
of things. He must rely instead on his mind to trace out the 
room's features in the dark. There is a long, low bureau to his 
right, just inside the door. It is bare except for the dull 
gleam of a watch and maybe a ring or some coins beside it. A 
tall dresser stands sentry to his left. An armchair across the 
room, pictures framed on the wall. Two small bedside chests 
flank a king-sized bed. Lamps on the tables, an alarm clock 
hissing, its face glowing ichor green to his nightmare tangled 
senses.

The room is dominated by the bed. In this efficiently sized 
apartment, the bed captures his attention as something vaguely 
out of place. It is too large, too sprawling, too empty to 
belong to the lone man who sleeps here. Skinner is not a small 
man, yet his large body at rest cannot fill even half the space. 
A pang of something that can only be called pity stabs at 
Doggett. Even all alone in his own house, three bedrooms empty 
of all but furniture and a family room without a family, even 
that house is not as echoingly empty as this bed with its one 
man sleeping neatly on his apportioned side of it.

Skinner's breathing is deep and regular and Doggett latches 
onto it again as a reminder that he is not alone. Time slips 
past him; he has no idea of how long it takes for him to grow 
cold and still, just watching. Even his shivering is without 
motion, just a suggestion of unreliability deep inside. His 
own breath sounds suspiciously like a small boy's tears might 
burst forth from beneath it at any moment. It comes to him 
that Skinner is still waiting for someone to sleep beside him 
again. He knows without doubt that Skinner lays down every night 
on the same side that he did throughout his marriage and that 
his wife will never sleep there again and he is saddened by the 
thought that Skinner knows even a fraction of Doggett's own 
longing for someone who will never come again.

"John?" The quiet rumble of Skinner's voice startles him and 
seems to trigger the shivering. He doesn't answer. There is a 
deep sigh, then a rustle of bedclothes. "Come here."

In time to come, when he remembers this night, Doggett hopes 
he can convince himself that he hesitated. But now, with the 
appalling honesty that darkness brings, he knows that he was 
in shuddering motion before Skinner ever spoke. 

The space Skinner has left for him is blessedly warm and 
smells wonderfully unlike his own bed. A strong arm reaches 
across him and pulls the covers up to his neck, tucking the 
cold air firmly away. He can hear his own quivering breath, 
fast and shallow and loud, a syncopated beat out of rhythm with 
the storm outside.

"A bad one?" Skinner's voice is calm, steady and so damned normal 
that it startles him.

"The worst," he whispers, the shivering growing worse. He can 
feel the warmth of the down comforter over him, the imprint of 
Skinner's body on the mattress below him, but nothing seems to be 
able to touch the chilled space within. "I'm cold." His teeth want 
to chatter but he grits them instead.

Skinner sighs again, but it sounds more like recognition than 
impatience, and Doggett remembers that Skinner also fought a 
war, so he keeps staring up at a ceiling he can't see and 
shivers. Then there is a warm hand on his shoulder, pushing at 
him until he rolls onto his left side. Skinner pulls him back 
to rest against his chest, his arm a warm band around 
Doggett's ribs. The heat of Skinner's bare chest seems to burn 
through the thin cotton tee shirt. Skinner's thighs are hard 
and hot against his own and he unselfishly tucks his bare feet 
against Doggett's icy ones. They are sharing a pillow, Doggett 
realizes, as he feels Skinner's breath against the back of his 
neck. He wonders if he is dreaming again, but it doesn't seem 
likely.

The shivering is dying down finally. He is being cradled in 
someone's arms, kept safe and warm as he has not been in years. 
Doggett stares at the shadows reflected in the mirror on the 
bureau and wonders whether a man can die from mortification. 
"Fucking nightmares," he whispers weakly and wishes he had drunk 
himself into oblivion. Going on a bender and waking up in the 
DC drunk tank would have been so much less humiliating than 
crawling into his boss' bed in the middle of the night, like a 
child begging for a cuddle. 

The arm around him tightens a fraction and Skinner pulls him 
closer. "Amen to that." There is a dark kind of self-mocking 
humor in Skinner's voice that reminds Doggett that he is not 
alone, that Skinner knows exactly what has been happening to him, 
how it feels, what he is thinking and what he will do tomorrow 
in the cold light of day. And the idea that someone will finally 
understand him is more bizarre than anything else that has 
happened to him today. But he has gotten more sleep here, in 
Skinner's cold, lonely apartment than anywhere else in the past 
week. Maybe it means something. Or maybe it's nothing, just 
another random thread in the fraying rope that is his life now.

"Am I dreaming?" Too late, he remembers the last time he asked 
that question; the answer had left his dream hands stained with 
his partner's blood, holding her severed head and watching a dead 
man float in the air.

"What - you want me to pinch you?" Skinner's voice, warmer this 
time than in his dream. He wonders when reality snapped back 
into focus for him. Maybe it is found somewhere in the drowsy 
timbre of Skinner's voice. "John, go to sleep." Maybe it is the 
soap-sweet scent of the sheets tucked around him, or the 
undeniable solidity of the body that lay next to him. He is so 
fucking grateful that he wants to shout aloud, but all he can 
manage is a sleepy, "Thank you."

Skinner merely grunts this time and his fingers rub a drowsy 
acknowledgment against Doggett's stomach. And John Doggett falls 
asleep, unafraid for the first time in a week.

 

* * * 

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