TITLE: CHICAGO STORIES: D.C. TIRED
AUTHOR: WPAdmirer@aol.com 
ARCHIVE: Yes, but please write me and tell me where.
CATEGORY: Slash Crossover (XF-ER) Skinner/John Carter
SPOILERS: SR 819 (X-Files), None (ER)
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Walter reflects on life, his body and other things after SR 819.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I got tired of waiting for some good John Carter slash, and there's never enough Skinner fic to suit me. The full set of stories (thus far) can be found at the ER nfic site: http://www.oocities.org/TelevisionCity/Studio/5437/wpadmirer.htm   and
my own site can be found at:
http://chateauke.simplenet.com/chimerical/chicago/index.htm
DISCLAIMER: It's not the author's intention to infringe upon or profit from the characters created and owned by Chris Carter, 1013 Productions or the Fox Network, nor Warner Brothers and NBC. Skinner and Carter were borrowed temporarily and returned almost immediately. Mulder is visiting.
SPECIAL THANKS: To KiMeriKal and ewade for beta reading and friendship.

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D.C. TIRED

by WPAdmirer


Walter dropped his keys on his desk. He still wore his coat. The chill of winter settled on him, seeming to seep into his flesh, into his bones.  He ached. Walter closed his eyes and pictured John Carter. Saw him sitting on the floor by the coffee table, his head bent over his book. He smiled, and felt the chill recede a little. He sighed, shrugged off his coat and laid it across his desk chair.

He walked into the living room and sat down on the couch. He didn't turn on any lights. He wanted the dark. Wanted to pretend for a moment that it was before, when he could feel his need for John in the hardness of his penis, the heat in his groin. He clenched his fists, forcing back the pain.

Three times today he'd died again. Not painless deaths where he closed his eyes and was gone. These deaths were the kind that killed the soul. First the doctor had given him seven printed pages on treatment of impotence, and had said in that calm, clinical, oh-so-detached voice, "If we don't see substantial change in the next month, we believe the last thing on the list may be your best option." Even he couldn't say it. Penile implant. A pump that would allow him to have an erection again. Another device in his body. One to join the thousands of tiny ones that had caused the damage in the first place.

Then there had been the looks on Mulder and Scully's faces when he'd closed the investigation. He knew she would never forgive him. Not after what he'd said to her when he was dying. This was his last betrayal as far as she was concerned. Mulder just looked puzzled, a little angry. He could not allow himself to care.

The final blow had been getting into his car and finding the bastard there, his toy in hand. "All in good time," he'd said. It took every ounce of his will not to take out his gun and simply blow out his brains after Krycek left the car. He had lost all hope of ever being free at that moment.

But when he'd reached beneath his jacket for his gun, the coldness of it against his hand had reminded him. 'Do you always carry a gun?' John Carter's voice. He had responded, yes. 'I don't like it. It makes me remember how easily you could be gone.' John Carter's brown eyes had been so serious. He'd reached out and touched the gun, then pulled Walter into an embrace. 'I don't want you to be gone.'

Walter covered his face with his hands. God, this was so hard.

After a few minutes he got up from the couch, loosened his tie, removed his jacket. He hung jacket and coat up in the hall closet, draped the tie across the back of the chair. He went into the kitchen, made himself a sandwich and grabbed a soda. Setting food and drink on his desk, he sat down and pulled out pen and paper.

He'd started writing to John Carter, wanting to tell him what had happened. He'd finished the first letter never finding a way to say the words. So there'd be a second, then a third. And now time had passed, and he found himself compelled to keep writing the letters. Found himself opening up his heart to the man who'd captured it. Walter still hadn't found the words to tell John Carter that he'd died. Couldn't find the words to tell him that their relationship had been changed, probably irrevocably, though none of their doing.

How do you tell the man you love that your body cannot respond to him anymore? How do you tell the man you love that you're terrified, not knowing if the things that lie dormant in your body might not be passed to him through your kiss? That for all you know a simple touch could infect him with something that enslaves you?

Worst of all, that your enslavement may force you to choose to die? If he was strong enough to make that choice.

He started the letter, 'Dear John Carter....'

******

It was late when he finished the letter. He addressed the envelope, put a stamp on it and set it with his keys. He would mail it in the morning. It had become his routine. Something that kept him connected and human.  Except for the time he spent writing, he kept himself as closed off as possible. Feeling anything was a luxury he could not afford.

They hadn't talked by telephone since that night in the hospital. It wasn't all that unusual for their schedules not jive. John had accepted that Walter would be in and out of town. Next week John would be back on nights for three weeks, which would give Walter a little more time to escape the inevitable.

Eventually John Carter was going to demand phone contact. Or even a visit. Walter smiled. People would probably be surprised to know just how demanding and aggressive John Carter could be in bed. Or in the living room, or the kitchen, or the shower for that matter. He liked sex, and he really worked at being good at it. Walter had never known anyone who actually studied it. But then, John Carter was the exception to a lot of rules.

Walter stripped off his clothes in the bedroom, draping his pants across the valet, taking his shirt and underwear into the bathroom and dropping them into the hamper. The bruising that had appeared with the infection was almost gone. He brushed his hand across his flat stomach, reaching down to touch his penis. It was still dark, a little swollen. It no longer hurt all the time. His testicles and penis had throbbed with pain when he'd come home from the hospital. With the swelling, urination had been an adventure in new kinds of torture for more than a week after he'd been released. Painful enough that he'd almost considered going back and asking them for the catheter, that discomfort being preferable to the agony of going on his own.

He'd asked the doctor about drugs, but his problem couldn't be solved with medication. Unless the vessels healed....it was a piece of meat used only for the elimination of waste.

He let go of it. That was how he'd come to think of his penis. It. Something over which he had no control. A thing that didn't respond to the orders his brain gave out. No matter how horny he was in his head, no matter what level of arousal he could attain mentally, nothing happened.  He stepped into the shower and let the water beat on his head and neck.

He rolled his shoulders trying to release some of the tension in his muscles. He wished he could go to the gym and work out. Lift some heavy weight.

Feel his body being strong.

But the doctors had vetoed anything that would raise blood pressure or increase blood flow. He was off aspirin for the rest of his life.  They were even limiting his intake of caffeine and alcohol. Until they could see how his body healed, he was on a tight leash.

He snorted. Almost as tight a leash as the one he was on to that electronic death Krycek held.

He blanked his mind and washed himself quickly. He was tired. Tired of thinking about things. Tired of worrying about things. Tired of wondering what he was going to do. What he was going to be asked to do.

He was just fucking tired.

Walter dried off, hung the towel on the rack and headed back into his bedroom. He pulled back the blankets and comforter and crawled underneath them. The sheets were cold. The bed seemed huge. He took the second pillow and pulled it up against his arm. It warmed with his body heat, felt soft against him. Gave the illusion of having someone there. 

Illusions might be all he was allowed anymore.


The End