Rating: PG

Summary: Oh no...it's the Monday that won't die.

Spoilers: None.
 

MICHAEL:

God, it's been a long day...and it's not getting any shorter.

Now I promised Ally I'd run her stats...like I don't have enough to do already.

I'm sure Dad has stuff for me to do, particularly since Langly is sort of out of the running tonight.

I nuke my mac and cheese-Ally's is good, although plainer than Dad's-and take my dinner and her diskette out to the offices. I bang on the door, since I don't have a free hand for the keys.

Mulder answers the door.

I'd ask what he's doing here, but I don't really want to know. Mulder gets us into some real weird shit...most of the time, my dad doesn't let me near it.

Don't know if I'm insulted or relieved. Maybe both.

Anyway, both Dad and the prof are looking real grim, and Mulder's not looking too happy himself. Not that this is unusual for Mulder; usually when he's here, it's because he's got problems.

I'm also real surprised to see this great big guy sitting there as well. He's bald, got glasses, and could probably flip me over his shoulder with one hand.

I've seen him before...where?

"Michael, this is Walter Skinner," my dad tells me.

Looks like a fed.

"You met him at Langly and Allison's wedding," he explains.

Okay. Him and about a thousand other people.

What the fuck are the Fibbies doing out here?

Shit. We're screwed.

Turns out, Mulder and Skinner are ex-Fibbies tonight.

"What took 'em so long?" I ask Mulder, I'm sort of teasing, but my dad glares at me. Hard.

Mulder keeps his sense of humor, though. "Guess they finally came to their senses. Question is, why Skinner here?"

Skinner shakes his head. "Must've finally caught up with me."

"Like what?" I ask. Skinner looks like he is so straight up.

"Backing up the people who work for me." He takes his glasses off, cleans them on his tie.

"But it's strange. No explanation, no official exit, nothing...we get there, and our stuff is basically waiting at the front door...almost as if our wives are kicking us out, not our employer."

Skinner gives this grimace. Maybe his wife did kick him out.

I think I guessed right, because Byers says in this warning voice, "Mulder..."

Mulder looks like, oops.

"So we're thinking we'll let you boys do a little research into this."

"What's to research? It's political, Mulder, and you know it," Skinner's got a real harsh voice.

I'm glad he's not my dad. I'd be scared of him.

"Yeah, but how?" Mulder leans back in Langly's chair, puts his feet up on the desk. Guy acts like he owns the place. "Or who?"

Skinner doesn't look too impressed. "I guess my beach house is going on the market."

Must be nice to have a beach house to put on the market.

Mulder closes his eyes, rubs his nose. "I mean, I've been thinking about bailing out...but right now, this is sort of...inconvenient, shall we say?"

Skinner snorts. "Inconvenient for Dana, I'd say, having you hanging around."

Mulder pretends like he doesn't get it. "How come everybody says that about me?"

"Because it's true?" Byers is sort of smiling, but he loses it quick. "Seriously, we'll do what we can...quietly, of course."

"Of course." I don't know that Skinner's convinced, but then again, he is here. "Mulder, go home to your wife before she shoots you. And remember that she still knows how."

"You coming?" Mulder motions to him.

"Yeah." The big guy gets up, and Jesus, he is huge.

"Skinner, this is my son, Michael," my dad finally reveals who I am.

He looks me over. "I think I could have guessed that. Looks just like you."

Oh God.

I must look like Dopey in the Seven Dwarfs to him.

"We'll be in touch," Byers tells the dudes as they bail.
 

I do some of the stuff my dad asks me to do...it's not real exciting. It's legwork.

I get all the glamour jobs. The joy of being the scut puppy around here.

There's a knock on the door. Soft. Probably not Ally, she's got keys, and she bangs harder anyway.

It's Kelly on the monitor.

"Can I let her in?" I ask my dad. I know he's picky about who comes in here...

Hey, she's my girlfriend. She should be able to come in.

My dad looks at Byers. Byers shrugs.

"Can she be trusted to be discreet?" Byers asks.

"She doesn't even know what we do here!"

"We never told Miranda, either, and she figured it out," Dad reminds him. And me.

Dad looks kind of annoyed. "Go ahead. Let her in."

I open the door. She smiles at me, and I close the door behind us.

I'm not sharing my kissing her, thank you very much.

"Ally said you were out here," she says to me. She yawns a big one. She's tired. "You busy?"

"Kind of. I got a few. What's up?"

"I went to the place Mulder recommended in Georgetown...they seem okay. I think I'm going to go there for a while."

"Cool."

"I'd have asked you to come, but I know you work till 7 on Monday, and they said I could come in, so I went ahead."

"That's good."

"You still going to come with me?"

"When?"

"Friday. At six."

Friday at six. Not my idea of a hot date, but I can do it. And I tell her I will.

Just add it to the pile of things I have to get done. I hope I get some sleep sometime.

But this is for Kelly, and I'd even rearrange my schedule to do it.

She's so pretty tonight. She looks a little calmer, and she's got her hair in two pretty clips. And she's smiling.

I love it when she smiles.

We just stand outside the offices for a while, snuggling each other...

And then I remember the video monitors are on.

Shit. Dad and Byers saw the whole thing.

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
 

ALLY:

Shit.   Langly's awake.

I'm in the kitchen studying, and at some point I become conscious of the figure in the doorway. It's wearing sweats, has long, mussed blonde hair, and doesn't look happy.

Big shock on that one.

It really is the Monday that wouldn't die.

I close my textbook, go over to him, and wrap my arms around him.

I'm not going to ask him if he's okay. He's obviously not.

We walk into the living room together, I sit down on the sofa, and he puts his head in my lap and stretches out.

"I'm really sorry about Sheridan, babe," I tell him gently as I play with the long creamy strands of hair.

"I don't get this. What the fuck? I mean, Sheridan...I'm sorry, Ally, he wouldn't do that. No fucking way. Sheridan's tough. I mean, he may be gay and all, but he's like the toughest guy since that Skinner dude." He looks utterly disconsolate. Nothing I say or do is going to make him feel better.

"Byers says there was a note...but not handwritten. Not signed."

"Yeah, well, doesn't mean shit. Somebody did him." He blinks his eyes. "Shit, Ally, what am I gonna do? I'm not good at working for lots of people out there...I mean, I could work for Sheridan 'cause he was totally cool...now who'm I working for? I mean, do I even have a job anymore? Shit."

I didn't think of that one. Oh boy.

"Speaking of which, your partners in crime have left you a ton of messages. I saved them in the voice mail." Four alone from one guy with the improbable name of Bryce Boyd, whom I met at our wedding...if I recall, the guy's WASPish name has nothing to do with his appearance.

"Oh, fuck, I gotta call them. Where's the fucking phone, Ally?"

"I need to hit the locator button." We've got a bunch of phones, and we can never find any of them. I move him gently off my lap.

I hand him the phone, and he says, "You don't mind, Ally, this sorta might be private...shit, I shouldn't call on the house line..."

"So go out back. Except I think everyone's still there."

"Ah, should be okay...anyway, let me talk to these guys for a while."

The phone lines in our house, unbeknownst to Bell Atlantic, have a series of special 'modifications'...plus we only pay for two lines, and we've got six, just coming into the house.

There are advantages to living with a computer felon.

Especially when he's really good in the sack.
 

I go back to studying my physics text-this is not a subject I do well with. I'm not very visual, and physics requires visualization in a lot of different dimensions.

I've so far maintained my 90, but barely...I'm dangerously squeaking by.

Why am I worrying about this shit right now?

Because it's safe to worry about it. It's something you don't have to go in deep for. It doesn't raise weird questions, arouse suspicion.

I mean, I do suspect my instructor is an alien, but for physics teachers, this is the norm. I express this thought to Langly one time, and he laughs and says for a truly otherworldy experience, he'd had a professor for algebraic topology that was rumored to have had his brain replaced with computer chips.

"Hey, he had scars on his head, too," Langly adds. "Like somebody dug around in his brain. Guy was like totally strange. Fucking genius, though. Like all he could do was teach math...but man, he could do that."

"And I assume you aced the class?"

"Pretty close."

Jesus. And I'm struggling with an elementary physics class.

I feel pretty stupid in this crowd sometimes.
 

MICHAEL:

Jesus, Ally didn't say she had THIS much data...I was thinking, twenty-minute job.

Well, it's an hour and a half later, and I'm just finishing the prelims.

She's gonna have to take that. I doubt she'd have gotten this far.

Not that Ally's a dope or anything. She's not. It's just, this isn't quite as easy for her...and I wouldn't exactly have called it easy for me.

Plus, I'm distracted because Dad and the prof are talking about their day...and it sounds a little weird, to say the least.

I'm glad I didn't see the dead guy, and I might've gotten creeped out being in his house and all, but I'm sort of bummed I didn't get to go.

My dad wouldn't have let me, anyway, probably. He's sort of weird that way. Like I'm still his little guy, and he thinks I never did anything illegal in my life...I mean, he knows I did, but I think he likes to think I'm like this innocent little kid...

And it's a shit deal for Langly. I only met Sheridan a few times, but he seemed like a cool dude.

Apparently they got a lot of stuff from his computers, which they're going to look over, and they're gonna let me do some of it...but not tonight. It's late, I'm tired, we're all gonna call it quits for now.

And I have the most important thing to take care of today.

I got to say goodnight to Kelly.
 

ALLY:

Byers, Frohike and Michael are in; they must be shutting up for the night. Michael races downstairs, no doubt to spend a few more minutes with his ladylove.

"I assume you haven't heard the news," Frohike tells me.

"What news?" I don't need any more bad news today. I'm still shaking from this afternoon's little foray.

"Mulder and Skinner...they're out." Frohike shakes his head.

"Mulder...that's not a big surprise, is it? And he's been playing with the idea of leaving for a while. But Skinner? Weird. Unless it's guilt by association."

"It's probably that, but I'm certain it's not all of it," Byers goes on to explain. "We're going to be looking into it."

Have fun, I think miserably.

Mostly I feel sorry for Dana. In addition to being extremely pregnant and having a toddler racing around, now she's going to have Mulder in her hair.

If she shoots him, I figure, it's utterly justifiable. No jury in the world would convict her.

"Where's our boy?" Frohike looks around. "Asleep?"

"No, on the phone with some of his colleagues...has been for a while."

"See if he's still up," Byers urges.

Langly has moved to the bedroom, and I pound on the door.

"I'm on the phone!" I hear the voice bark petulantly.

"Byers and Frohike want to talk to you."

"Oh, Jesus-give me a minute, okay?"

He appears a few moments later, and you can tell, he's in a VERY bad mood. "What?" He barks at Byers and Frohike.

"It's about Mulder and Skinner," Frohike tells him.

"What about them?"

"They're no longer employed by our government, shall we say," Byers says.

"Say what?"

"They're out. Cut loose. Adios." Frohike makes a chopping gesture.

"When?"

"Today."

"What'd Mulder do this time?"

Byers shrugs. "Who knows? I don't think it's specifically anything he did, though...I think it's something else."

"So? Sooner or later, somebody was gonna get fed up with him. You knew it had to happen."

"Yeah, but why Skinner? And why on the same day? And no explanation? Basically, they were thrown out like a couple of philandering spouses." Frohike looks mystified. "Talk about a black Monday. Totally weird."

"Yeah, well, whatever. I got a couple problems of my own right now."

"Like what?" I ask, and I feel my stomach knot.

"Yeah, well, like, I don't show my ass up tomorrow, I probably don't have a job. So if you guys don't mind, I'm going to sleep." He stalks down the hall-well, as much as a person with a sore side can stalk. I hear him call, "Hey, Ally, you coming or you gonna spend the night talking to these losers? C'mon, I gotta go to bed."

Frohike rolls his eyes in a gesture of extreme long suffering, and Byers just smiles ruefully. "Go take care of your boy, my dear."
 

MICHAEL:

I knock on her door, and I'm surprised she doesn't answer right off, but when I call her, real quietly, I find out she fell asleep while she was studying. Her hair's kind of messy, she took all the clips out, and she looks...

Like an angel.

I put my arm around her and we sit on the bed for a few minutes, just kissing some. God, she is yummy.

This is truly the best part of the day.

I wish I didn't have to leave her. I'd tuck her in next to me and just hold her...

And she falls asleep on my shoulder. She really has to be beat.

So I pull off her shoes, put the covers over her, and tell her I love her.

This is the most relaxed she's been in a long while.

It looks good on her. She is so beautiful I think I'm gonna burst.

Sweet dreams, Kelly.
 

ALLY:

I make one last call to check on Joan's condition. She's apparently resting comfortably, although no real change.

At least she hasn't gotten worse.

I tell Langly this, and it's about the only measure of relief he's getting right now.

He's sitting up on the pillow, arms wrapped over his knees and his chin settled on them, looking like the lost five-year-old he probably feels like.

For a while, he doesn't respond to any of my gestures; he's just lost in his own misery.

But when I get up to take my lenses out and brush my teeth, he reaches out and grabs onto me.

"Don't go."

"Sweetheart, I'm going as far as the bathroom."

"Not yet." He stretches out, buries his face in my chest.

And stays there for a long time.

He finally says, in a small voice, "How come everybody I meet goes away?"

"Not everybody does, babe. You've got Frohike, and Byers. And me."

"You won't ever go away, will you?"

"Jesus, Langly, I married you, it's part of the deal! Of course I won't." I stroke the hair gently.

Every now and then I get a reminder that this is a guy with abandonment issues.

Well, I'm not feeding the monster.

I'll hold him for as long as he needs me to.

God, I love him. And I ache for him so badly tonight, it's as if I can't tell where his pain ends and mine starts.

And he's got it in spades right now.

I hope tomorrow is better.

END OF PART 61