Rumi and Shams VII: Both Wishes Are Foolish by Merri-Todd Webster (16 April 1999) If you want what visible reality can give, you're an employee. If you want the unseen world, you're not living your truth. Both wishes are foolish, but you'll be forgiven for forgetting that what you really want is love's confusing joy. *** It's the happiest he's ever been, and he knows it. How frightening. Lying here with Fox Mulder tangled up in his sheets, Mulder's head a leaden weight on his chest--this is the summit of happiness? Apparently so. Walter kisses the younger man's forehead. Abruptly, Mulder sits up, startled as if someone has stuck a pin in him. The lean shoulder on which Walter lays his hand is tight and tense and untrusting, but when Mulder focuses on who is with him, his muscles relax, and a joyous smile lights up his face. It's the most radiant smile Walter has ever seen. Now I know what I'm dealing with, he thinks. Memories of Mulder, last night, yielding, letting himself be touched, be fucked, goad Walter's lingering natural tendency to a morning erection. As Mulder kisses him enthusiastically, his tongue counting each of the other man's teeth, Walter realizes he wants to be the one to yield, wants to be touched and fucked. He spreads out his arms and legs and offers himself up like a plain to be conquered. Mulder wanders across the terrain like a desert nomad with no place to go, then gallops in like a conquering chieftain and takes all the plunder he can carry. Walter, who has not been fucked in twenty years, hears himself screaming with joy as his younger lover ravishes him--Mulder is impressively well-hung--but has not the wit remaining to be surprised. He comes once for Mulder's twice but is not inclined to complain. Later, at the office, the hazel eyes that request the signing of another ridiculous 302 are as inscrutable as ever. Mulder has rolled his feelings up in himself like a cat who leaves the lap where it has purred to be petted and sits alone in the sun, silent and self-sufficient. Walter dare not reach out and touch his lover, not with Scully's eyes upon them, but as he drives home, he wonders if, indeed, he has any clue what he is dealing with. Maybe it *is* a bad move to have sex with a subordinate. Or to have sex with Mulder. Or maybe it's just that joy and truth can't coexist in the same person. ***