Baccarat Piece: MY OLD USMC
By Sean Spencer
seans13@hotmail.com

CATEGORY:  VRH

RATING:  PG

SPOILERS:  None

KEYWORDS:  Skinner/Mulder Slash

SUMMARY:  Sometimes, you just can't stand the one you love.

DISCLAIMER:  Walter Skinner and Fox Mulder are the
properties of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox
Television.  No copyright infringement is intended or
implied in their use in this work of fiction.

Thanks to Kiyoko again.

...................

                              
I am sitting on the couch with my legs up.  Boy, this had
been a killer week.  It seemed as though everything that
could go wrong in the Bureau did go wrong.

Kim was thin-skinned, but I don't know what about.  I'm sure
that her birthday was three weeks ago and I did give her a
present.  I just told her to retype one report and she gave
me the cold shoulder the whole week.

The meetings didn't go very well, and the Congressional
fraud hearings were more than I can take.  Everyone says
that politicians are the lowest forms of creatures with
their self-important preenings, and they're right.

Then the toilet in my office bathroom got stopped up for
some strange reason and the building plumbers took more than
three days trying to get it fixed.  You sure learn how to
appreciate your own executive bathroom when you're forced to
use the regular ones.  It's been years since I had to pee
beside junior agents and I know that they sort of recoil
when I'm there at a urinal.  I don't want to cause burst
bladders more than I have to.  AND meetings in my office had
to be held within earshot of the plumbers' tools and Spanish
phrases.

Then there's Taylor's ear infection.  Trips to the vet were
never his favorites and I just don't know how he can tell
when we're going there.  I literally had to carry him into
the car, both ways.  He's not a heavy dog but he is an
awkward bundle to carry.  He's better now but he stares at
me accusingly from time to time, especially after I put in
those ear drops.  I think those drops sting his ears.

To top it all off, on the way to the cabin, I had a flat
tire.  AND the Rover's jack was broken.  If it hadn't been
for some good Samaritan lawyer in his pick up, there was no
telling how long I'd have waited on that deserted stretch of
road.

So here I am on the couch in the cabin, just staring into
space.  I don't even have the radio or television on.  I
want some peace and quiet for once.  Of course, it is too
much to ask.

He comes in from his run.  I hear the kitchen door slam shut
and the refrigerator hums as it opens then shuts.  A bottle
cap is twisted, followed later by the sound of the bottle
being thrown in the trash.  We're supposed to be recycling
and I distinctly hear the bottle in the regular wet trash
bin, not the dry, bottle receptacle.

Taylor perks up his just disinfected ear and goes to the
kitchen.  I hear his voice greeting the dog, followed by
Taylor's laughing bark.  Yes, a dog has a laughing bark.

He later walks in the living room and I see him in MY shirt.
It's my old USMC T-shirt and he knows that he's not supposed
to wear it.  I'd let him wear anything in my closet down to
my socks and underwear if he wanted to, but he's never
supposed to wear MY T-shirt!

Besides, he has stacks of T-shirts.  Of all the shirts to
grab out of the closet, why does it get into his head that
he has to wear MY USMC shirt?  I know I could get another
one, but, hell, I've had that shirt since I was nineteen!  I
know it doesn't fit me anymore.  I'm far from the scrawny
teenager I once was.

I was the one who survived boot camp, lemon grass, drill
sergeants, being scared out of my wits.  Who does he think
he is?  He won't even last a day in boot camp! He'll get
1000 push ups within an hour of arrival with his insolent
drawl and side comments

I glare at him, but he ignores me.  Instead, he plunks his
sweaty self onto the couch, oblivious of the fact that I was
there first.  I have to pull up my legs because he just sat
on them.  Then the peace and quiet is shattered the moment
his busy hand reaches for the remote.  I lightly kick him in
annoyance but he's absorbed in the documentary.

There.  The moment he settles on a program he likes, I see
him bend to the side table and the crinkle of the plastic
bag almost drives me bananas.  He settles the bag on his
lap, gets a seed, pops it into his mouth and...crunch...then
pops out the shell, which he tosses onto the side table.
The process is repeated innumerable times as his eyes are
transfixed on the Jacques Costeau documentary.  If it's fish
on TV, he watches it.  All the while, his mouth is moving
up, down, side to side.  His oral fixation continues to
amaze me sometimes.  Sure, I like his oral fixation; I'm the
ecstatic recipient frequently enough.  But those SEEDS!!!
Within a span of five minutes, the pile of shells on the
side table is too large.

So here he is, smearing his sweat onto the couch from his
bare arms and legs and through MY USMC shirt, eating his
damned seeds where we previously agreed he's not supposed
to, virtually ignoring my legs which used to be comfortably
stretched out before me but are presently folded awkwardly
on the couch.  I don't know if he's ignoring my glares at
the shirt or is oblivious to it.

Then he shifts on the couch and CRUNCH!

"MY GLASSES!"

It's my only pair in the cabin!  I groan in exasperation.
The spares are in Crystal City.

He hunts for it under his butt and comes up with two totally
separate pieces.  The pair just split in two right between
the lenses.  Totally useless.  And I know for a fact that
there are no Lenscrafters within a thirty mile radius.

"Oops," he says.  "Sorry."  He has that apologetic, wide-
eyed look that I like most days, but right now I can't
stand.

"Great!" I'm furious.  "This is just great!"

"I didn't mean it! And you shouldn't have left it on the
couch where someone could sit on it."  His voice starts to
rise up in defense.

"Okay," I sit up on the couch.  "And it wasn't left on the
couch.  It was on my lap before someone just marched in and
plunked himself down  without thought or consideration that
someone else was already on the couch in the first place.
But, yes, it wasn't your fault.  I shouldn't have left it on
my lap."

I am just too furious with this last straw. I get up and
leave.  I go to the bedroom, intending to wallow in
television up there.  But once I turn it on, I realize that
everything's all blurry.  Even when I squint, an old trick I
used to do as a kid before everyone found out I needed
glasses, I can't make out what's happening on the screen.
Instead, I angrily grab the remote of the stereo and lie
back on the bed and listen to some jazz.

Again, it was too much to ask.  A few minutes later, in
comes the twerp, peels off my shirt and DROPS it on the
floor as he undresses then heads to the bathroom for a
shower.  I mean, the fabric of MY shirt is paper thin; it's
so worn that you could see through it if you hold it up
against the light.  I breathe deeply to calm down, counting
up to twenty very slowly.

Okay, okay, he might remember to pick it up after his
shower.  I give him the benefit of the doubt.

He emerges from the bathroom rubbing the towel over his
hair, then steps on IT!

"Fox!" I bark at him.  He freezes and his head ducks out
from under the  towel.  In the process, he turns while his
big feet are on it!  "That's my shirt!  I told you before
that I didn't want you to wear that.  I don't even wear that
anymore!  And now you're stepping on it.  If that gets
ripped..."

It FINALLY gets through the thick skull of this dense person
that I'm referring to the USMC shirt.  He jumps from it and
picks it up.

"I'm going to put it in the wash, Walter," he says
nonchalantly and tosses it into the hamper.

I am seeing red now.  I get up from the bed, push past him
and go to the bathroom where I retrieve the shirt from the
hamper.

"You just don't toss it in the wash with the rest of the
laundry," I say.  "It's too old for that."

"All right, I'll handwash it and even use Ivory Snow on it,"
he sneers at me.

If he were someone else, if he weren't someone I've lived
with for six years already, I would have slugged him one.  I
am that angry.  It's as if he trivialized all those months I
spent in the corps.

My facial expression finally sinks in and he mutters and
apologizes.  I just don't know why we fight about clothes.
The last serious fight we had was about my tuxedo.  Now it's
my USMC shirt.  So it is about formal wear to the rattiest,
oldest piece of clothing I have.  Does this mean we are
going to fight about his new, outrageously expensive never-
to-be-worn-to-the-field Armani next?  Then his New York
Knicks T-shirt with the hole cut out of it?

"I'm sorry, Walter," he says again.  "I just grabbed
whatever was on top of the pile.  I didn't even know it was
your lucky shirt until I was out running already."

A likely story.  How can anyone miss the huge blue letters?
I mean he doesn't even wear glasses except for reading fine
print. The more likely scenario is that he grabbed the first
thing he could and was too lazy to grab the second shirt
from the pile, even if he saw it's my forbidden T-shirt.

Of course I nod and try to fix my face to a more neutral
one.  After all, he is apologizing with nary a stitch of
clothing on him except for a towel over his shoulders.  But
I'm still pissed off, very pissed off.

I mutter something and lie back on the bed.  I listen to the
music, which calms me down somewhat.  He gets dressed after
his shower and leaves the room.  Without my glasses, I can't
read or watch TV.

I see his glasses on his nightstand, beneath the pile of
aspirin, Tylenol and other prescription medications, his
strange books and for the life of me, I can't figure out,
rubber bands.  And not just a few rubber bands, a whole big
bunch.  I try on the glasses and squint slightly and
discover that I could see better.

I turn on the TV on the room and, to my satisfaction, I find
that I can see the figures on the screen clearly.  It was
strange discovering that he has almost the same degree of
error of refraction that I do.  After looking at the TV, I
then check if I could read with the glasses.  I search for a
book and do find that the words are clear on the page.

Shrugging to myself, I settle with the book and read on
until my head starts to ache.  Hey, this book "UFO
Sightings" is pretty convincing with entertaining pictures.
Meanwhile, I hear sounds of activity from the kitchen.
After a few minutes, I smell something good but
unidentifiable wafting from downstairs.  He sometimes gets
into these moods of experimenting with food on Saturday
afternoons.

He's a good cook.  I once was astounded to find out that
he's been cooking since he was twelve.  I could only manage
scrambled eggs when I was that age, but he said it was more
by necessity that he learned how to cook.  He said he found
a Betty Crocker recipe book on the bookshelf and read it
over before launching into the world of cookery.

He's gone beyond Betty Crocker.  His latest kick is Gourmet
magazines and he would go through it with the same zeal as
he would read his weird Lonegunmen tracts.  Of course, I'm
the lucky recipient of these experiments and what with Mrs.
Jackson's cooking in DC and his sporadic bouts of cooking
here in the cabin, I sometimes find myself extending my
exercise time to an hour. He goes on these cooking binges
maybe once or twice a month.  That's often enough for me or
else I'd be spending two hours daily on the Nordic Track,
time I didn't have to spare.  It also makes me hard pressed
to cook better when it's my turn.

Sometimes, I get the impression that when he's eating
something I made, he's very profuse and polite with the
praises.  I don't know if he doesn't want to make me feel
bad or if he's encouraging me to cook more in the hopes that
practice will make me improve.  But I do have to admit that
it's been a long time since I've actually seen him gagging
at the table.

I put down the book and go downstairs.  He's busy at the
stove and he nods tightly at me when I enter the kitchen.  I
cringe at the mess on the counters.  One big drawback of his
creative efforts is the kitchen looking like a disaster
area.  Flour is everywhere, even on the floor.  Vegetable
peelings are scattered on the sink and over the coffeemaker
(why?).  Those tiny spice bottles are all open and one is
even on its side with its contents far and wide.  Taylor is
crouched in a corner with a worried look on his face.

I guess the reason he cooks here in the cabin is to have his
mess in peace and quiet in the kitchen.  If he does this in
Crystal City, Mrs. Jackson will have more than a rude shock.

But despite the disarray and the chaos in the kitchen,
something sure smells good here.  I sniff appreciatively and
venture a peace offering.

"Smells good, Fox," I said.  The tight expression on his
face disappears and he smiles ruefully at me.  I relax and
know that everything's okay.

Even without my glasses, with him blurred like that, I like
what I see.  His hair is still damp, and although I can't
see it, I know there are beads of sweat on his upper lip.
His T-shirt is old and faded and very loose so his body's
lean lines are all but hidden.  But the shorts show off that
cute butt and those long legs with just the right amount of
hair for me.

"Need some help?" Again I offer an olive branch.  I approach
tentatively and kiss the back of his neck.  God, there's
nothing like the smell of his just-washed skin.  He responds
with a sigh but impatiently waves me away.

"I'm okay here, just set the table."  Ah, the master at
work.

Normally, we eat in the kitchen on weekends.  It's nearer
the sink and less of a hassle to clean up.  But I see the
effort he's putting into this and I even manage to figure
out the menu after seeing the magazine at the end of the
counter, open face up on the pictures of a delectable meal.
It seems that he's preparing the following:

     Marinated Lamb Chops
     Mixed Baby Greens with Aniseed Vinaigrette and Goat
     Cheese Crostini
     Pencil-Thin Asparagus and Scallions
     
My mouth waters at the prospect and I decide to set the
places at the dining room instead of the kitchen table.
Then I hunt in the china cabinet and find the candlesticks.
After a few more seconds of rummaging, I find the long white
tapers.

It suddenly strikes me, like a blow to my chest.  How we're
both apologizing to each other in our own way.  Him making a
fantastic meal and me trying pathetically to give justice to
it by making it a candlelit dinner.

Yes, he is lazy at home, chaotic in the kitchen, persistent
in his refusal to cooperate with recycling, forgetful,
slovenly a lot of the time.  Essentially spoiled.
Exasperating.  But he's also intelligent, with a sense of
humor no one could beat, occasionally child-like,
insightful, thoughtful, sweet.  Forthright especially with
his work.  And always honest with me.  And the love of my
life.

I go back to the kitchen with a clearer head, the week's
events forgotten.  I kiss him, he kisses me, we murmur to
each other.  The lamb chops with all the trimmings are
placed on a platter and I head to the dining room with it.

I don't see the upturned edge of the rug.  Not without my
glasses.  All I remember is I am sailing through the air in
slow motion, the lamb chops along with me.  I land on the
floor with a groan and watch with dismay as Taylor pounces
on the chops.  He's one happy dog.

Silence for a moment then there's a sharp burst of laughter
behind me.  I say I'm sorry, but he keeps laughing.  Then he
can't stop and is pretty soon rolling on the floor, gasping
with mirth.  I join him at the absurdity of it all.  It's
good to laugh together, a balm for this week that's been
like a thorn in my side.

Everything subsides after a few minutes as we continue to
watch Taylor licking his chops.  We stand up, clean
everything, the dining room floor and the kitchen.

I pop a frozen pizza into the microwave and bring it out to
the dining room after three minutes.  He lights the candles
and pours the wine and we have dinner.

Heaven.


END OF BACCARAT PIECE: MY OLD USMC


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"A beacon in the night."
               Mulder in reference to Skinner
                  Nisei
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