~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Third Side of the Triangle
Daniel Reilly

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Ah, the wonderful life of the third wheel. Or is that fifth
wheel?

Doesn't matter.

I never meant to end up this way. I wound up here accidentally,
because I didn't know that the man I had fallen in love with had
already given away the lion's share of his heart and soul.

What goes around comes around. I'm living proof.

Since I'm the latecomer to this little group, I suppose I
should introduce myself. I'm Daniel Reilly; or, more formally,
Lieutenant Commander Daniel Anthony Reilly, Medical Corps,
United States Navy. I'm divorced, no kids, and I'm a deeply
closeted gay man.

My lover is almost as deep in the closet as I am. He's Fox
Mulder, an FBI agent, and he's quite possibly the most
intelligent human being I've ever known. He's witty, he's sharp,
he's affectionate and passionate. He's truly beautiful, inside
and out.

In fact, just about the only thing that's wrong with our
relationship is that he's not quite as much in love with me as I
am with him.

I do think he's as much in love with me as he can be, and
that's no small thing. He's never had a long-term relationship
before, which I suppose makes loving him a huge risk for someone
like me. I've had my wild days, God knows, but overall, I prefer
stable, monogamous relationships. I have a strong tendency to
fall in love: not always wisely, I'll grant you, but always with
men.

Well ... not always. There's an exception to every rule. For
me, it was Jill: my friend, my ally, my lover and my wife. We
were high school sweethearts, and she was with me through
college, medical school, two residencies and all those difficult
early years as a junior officer.

And then I betrayed her; although in all honesty, the betrayal
came years before, in high school, the first time I lied to her
about who I was and what I really wanted. It was a lie of
omission, but I doubt that was much comfort to her when she
learned the truth.

I was unfaithful to Jill for most of our marriage. At first, it
was just physical and just once in a while; later, my heart
strayed as far as my body had.

But for all those years, I always came home to Jill. I loved
her and I needed her. I wanted to stay with her.

It took me 12 years to gather the courage to give her up. I
didn't want to hurt her; I didn't want to live without her; but
I couldn't stand to go on cheating on her. When we divorced, I
lost everything: all the emotional support of being married, all
the friends we'd made together, all the things we'd accumulated
and -- the gravest loss of all -- her love and her friendship.

I did love her. I still do. But no matter how much I loved her,
I was never even half as attracted to her sexually as I was to
almost any man I ever met. Sex with Jill was loving and
pleasant, but infrequent and never truly passionate; not on my
part, anyway. She, of course, blamed herself.

She never knew the real reason; not until I told her, on the
day our marriage ended.

I don't think I've ever handled anything as badly as I did that
night. I've never seen another human being in that much
emotional pain. I still hear her sobbing and screaming and
pleading with me not to leave. I can still feel the warm, soft
weight of her in my arms as I carried her into the bedroom after
she cried herself to sleep.

And I can still hear the click of the door latch as I left her
forever.

Every night when I say my prayers, I ask God to forgive me for
what I did to Jill. I ask Him to forgive me for all the things I
took from her, all the years I fed her boundless love on the
leftover scraps of my own, all the passion I forced her to hold
inside while I -- well, I went elsewhere.

You can never undo that kind of damage.

Fox, unlike me, has never had any kind of sexual relationship
with a woman. He has, best I can tell, absolutely no sexual
interest in women at all, not even enough to try it just once.
He says he's always known he was gay, and he learned to live
with that and be happy with it early in his life.

That's good. It's good to know who you are, and what you are,
and to be able to accept that. I couldn't, for a long time. I'm
still not entirely at peace with it.

What's not good is when you fool yourself into believing that
if you don't sleep with a woman, you can't possibly be guilty of
monopolizing her life or breaking her heart.

You can. I know -- a woman who falls in love with a gay man is
going to get hurt. Fox didn't believe me for a long time, but I
think he does now.

That brings me to the second side of this triangle: his FBI
partner, Dana Scully.

Dana is a bit of an enigma, even to me. I don't know why: She's
a physician, an Irish Catholic, and comes from a Navy family.
All that should make her easy for me to know, but it doesn't.
There's that one fact that I can never really comprehend: She
knows what Fox is, and yet she is in love with him and has been
for years. Nothing that's ever happened between them has made
any dent in that.

Dana is not Fox's 'fish,' to use the crude vernacular, or his
fag hag. She's his partner, and his friend, and his better half
at work; sometimes, outside of work.

In fact, Dana is very much his equal and I believe she's got
her eyes wide open where he's concerned. She's not trying to
turn him, nor, do I think, does she use him as a barrier against
other men. I know, although it's none of my business, that Dana
has an active sex life.

I strongly suspect Fox would rather not think about that.

He keeps telling me he's got no interest whatsoever in her
sexually, and I believe him, but I also know that it's more of a
possibility than he's willing to admit.

I'm not saying that Fox has been unfaithful to me, with Dana or
anyone else. His body, his desire, his romantic inclinations all
belong to me, yet there is a large part of his heart and soul
that rests forever in Dana's hands.

Let me tell you how this mess got started.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I met Fox on a Sunday morning at a pick-up basketball game. I
was jogging around my neighborhood, as I usually do -- I haven't
set foot in a church for years, and I had made up my mind that I
wouldn't as long as the Church maintains that my sex life is
"intrinsically disordered."

Missing Mass is part of my ongoing project to rid myself of as
much homophobia as possible, even though I have to stay in the
closet. I still have a long way to go, but not as far as I did
back then. I didn't even know then just how bad my problem was.

Anyway, I saw him on the court, leaping up with the grace of a
dancer to sink a three-point shot. He was tall and lean,
muscular without being beefy, and the self-assured, easy way he
moved really caught my eye. He seemed so perfectly in control of
himself; so much at home in his own body.

I had no idea, no hope, even, that he was gay; I'm ashamed now
to admit it, but I thought he was just too masculine to be gay.
So I wasn't planning to hit on him when I joined the game; I
just wanted to get a closer look at him.

Right away, I noticed that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring. No
kids hanging around, either, which meant he probably wasn't
divorced. Sunday is usually Daddy time for divorced parents.

All right -- my age and, maybe, never married. I began to hope,
just a little.

When one of the other players dropped out, I got in on the game.

He was even more attractive up close. Hazel eyes, the kind that
seem to change color, and longish dark hair. Kind of a big nose,
but it worked -- it kept him from being too much of a pretty boy.

And that mouth -- I could create an entire library out of the
fantasies that mouth was inspiring in me. It was full, lush and
soft, and I was reasonably certain he knew how to use it just as
well as he used the rest of his body.

Then I noticed that he was looking at me, and I felt my breath
stop. You see, he wasn't just looking; he was scoping me out, in
a way that only gay men do. I'm not sure I can really describe
it, but like the judge said about pornography, I know it when I
see it.

I wanted to introduce myself, but the game was getting intense,
and I was just a little out of breath.

Then, as luck would have it, he got fouled by another player,
twisted his ankle and fell, landing hard on the blacktop court.
Thank you, God -- such a gift to a horny, lonely orthopedist.

When he limped over to the sidelines, I left the game,
introduced myself and asked if I could check out his ankle.

He said yes. He continued to size me up with those beautiful
eyes the whole time. When I was finished, and satisfied that he
had no serious injuries, I gathered my courage and just sort of
stroked his calf. Not overtly; I wanted to leave him room to
believe that it was an inadvertent touch, just in case I really
was mistaken about him.

But that touch was an invitation, and when I looked up at him,
I knew he'd gotten the message; not only that, he'd accepted the
invitation.

It was almost too much to believe. My entire adult life was
spent trying to repress just this kind of feeling in public,
indulging in it furtively, allowing myself to express it only in
secret. Now, here I was on a beautiful Sunday morning out in the
open, looking up at this beautiful man who was letting me know
that he found me attractive, too.

It took me about 15 minutes to get up the nerve to make another
move. I asked him to go for coffee. He accepted so quickly that
I wondered why the hell I had hesitated so long.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Of all the things that happened that day, the one that made the
biggest impression on me was when Fox took out his badge and
showed it to me.

Fox William Mulder, it said; special agent, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

I was impressed. Actually, I suppose I was star-struck. And I
felt that way even though I knew how immature it was, not to
mention ridiculous for a man who's gone along as excess baggage
in just about every plane the Navy flies, including the F-14
Tomcat.

But I still couldn't stop myself from hero-worshipping. I knew
better, but I sometimes wonder if that will ever make much
difference in my life.

I remember years ago treating a shore patrolman who'd been shot
in the leg by a jealous wife. He was cheating on her, and she
didn't like it, to say the least. The chaplain came by to see
the SP, and on the way out he told me, with a sad shake of his
head, just how common this kind of thing was among police
officers.

"It's the badge and the gun," the chaplain said. "Women are
attracted to those symbols of authority, and they tend to target
the men who carry them. They're powerful signals that say `this
is an alpha male, worth pursuing.'"

The chaplain was right, it seemed. Knowing that Fox carried a
badge and a gun did nothing to lessen his desirability in my
eyes; if anything, it increased it. He was tough. He had
authority. He was even a little bit dangerous.

And I definitely found him worth pursuing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

We spent about two hours in a coffee shop near my apartment. He
was easy to talk to: I told him about the Navy and med school;
eventually, I even told him about Jill. He told me about his
Oxford education and his years as a profiler, and that he was
now involved in some rather secret investigations.

I was even more impressed. A profiler: I'd read about that, and
it intrigued me. And he was a secret agent, too, just like the
movies. He just kept getting more interesting by the moment.

I was just working up my nerve to ask him to come home with me
when his cell phone rang.

"Mulder," he said as he answered it. "Oh, hey, Scully -- you
ready to leave?"

There was a brief pause while he listened.

"Yeah, I can be there in 10 minutes. Wait for me outside." And
he hung up.

"You have to go?" I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

"Yeah, I have to get my partner," he said, so off-handedly that
I was shocked. He'd told me not 30 minutes earlier that he
wasn't in a relationship. So what was this about his partner?

He must have read my thoughts because he shook his head firmly.
"My law-enforcement partner," he said. "Dana Scully. She had a
family gathering to attend and her car's on the fritz."

Oh. That was a relief. A woman wasn't going to be a problem.
There was still hope that something would happen; it just wasn't
going to happen right now.

I stood up and offered him my hand, but he smiled and shook his
head, just slightly. He took my hand, all right, but then he
leaned across the table and kissed me.

It wasn't much of a kiss, but coming from him, with that mouth,
under those circumstances, it was more than enough. I told him I
wanted to see him again, which was a huge understatement.

I gave him my number and went home, hoping like hell that he
would actually call.

Which he did. We talked for hours. By the end of the week, I
was falling for him at near terminal velocity.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The following Saturday, Fox called me early in the morning and
invited me to his place for dinner.

I would have said he was nervous, if I thought it was possible
for him. But of course, I accepted.

His apartment wasn't anything like what I had expected. No
cliche' decorating -- no track lighting, no beige carpet, no
statuary -- just your basic D.C. bachelor pad, and that pleased
me.

I know, it's more of my internalized, closet-case homophobia,
but I can't stand to be around gay men who camp it up, swish
around and act faggy. I know it stems from all my years in the
closet -- hell, I'm still in the closet -- but that kind of
stuff just makes me cringe.

When dinner was over, we moved back to the couch, and I was
nervous as hell. Fortunately for me, Fox was as sure of what he
wanted from me as he was of everything else in his life. He
moved next to me, put his arm around my shoulders and then that
beautiful mouth was on mine, and his tongue was in my mouth; my
head started spinning, and I got so hard I thought I might break.

We were in bed in less than two minutes, and it was ... well,
it was perfect. I think I'll leave it at that -- except to say
that I was right about what he could do with that mouth of his.
God ...

I stayed there until early Monday morning, when we both had to
go to work. In between, we spent a lot of time making love and
almost as much time talking.

There was one thing that Fox decided for us, without any
hesitation. He wanted us both to be tested for HIV.

"Don't you believe me when I tell you I'm negative?" I asked him, a
little hurt. OK, so it's dumb for a doctor to think that way, but I
couldn't help it; I thought he meant he didn't trust me.

He looked at me curiously. "Of course I believe you," he said,
almost dismissing me. "But six months from now, if we still test
negative, then we can stop using condoms. And I really want
that."

And then it hit me -- six months from now? He was talking about
an exclusive relationship -- for the next six months? Longer?

"Oh, you think you'll still want to be with me in six months?"
I asked him. I was trying to be nonchalant, but really, I was
stunned. I couldn't have heard him right -- could I?

"Oh, God, Daniel," he said, laughing and shaking his head. "Six
months -- six years -- forever. I don't know. Whatever time
we've got." He stopped laughing then, and took my hand. "Yeah, I
want to be with you. Is that okay with you?"

"I can't begin to tell you how okay it is," I said, and then I
was laughing too, and he hugged me, hard. I could almost believe
there were tears in his eyes -- almost.

We weren't kidding ourselves about the harsh realities of our
relationship. We couldn't live together, no matter how much we
both wanted it. We'd both lose our jobs if I were outed.

I really wasn't sure he knew what he was getting into. As I
reminded him, he'd never tried keeping a relationship in the
closet before.

"I haven't wanted that kind of relationship before, Daniel," he
said, and he held me close. "I want it now."

I couldn't think of a thing to say. I kissed him, plundering
that gorgeous mouth with my tongue until we were both hard as
hell and breathing way too fast. We made love more gently this
time; I held him as close as I could, letting my hands touch him
everywhere I could reach, whispering his name in his ear.

I think he understood what I was trying to say.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Those first weeks together were like nothing I'd ever
experienced before.

I was absolutely intoxicated with Fox, with everything about
him --his face, his body, his humor -- everything. There was so
little time for us to be together, but when we were, it was
heaven.

Sometimes I'd see him walking across the room, maybe wearing
those athletic shorts he sometimes wore, and I'd look at that
gorgeous body of his and I just had to have it.

I remember one time when we were watching a basketball game. It
was the Knicks, and I must love him if I was watching that,
because of course everyone knows that the Celtics are God's
chosen team. Anyway, he got up to get another beer. When he came
back, I reached out for him, put my arm around his waist and
pulled him closer to me, then pulled down his zipper and went
for him without so much as a by your leave.

I'm glad he understands how overwhelming all this still is to
me. Some men would have been annoyed at being grabbed that way
in the middle of the game; he just stood there, running his
hands through my hair, and let me do it.

All that sounds as though I'm the boss in all of this, but
really, it's the other way around. Fox is calling the shots
here; it's always been up to him what I do with him and when. He
could say no, but he never does. He lets me treat him as though
he's my personal, private boy toy, but the truth is that I'm a
complete slave to his beautiful body. I can't take my eyes off
him. I can barely keep my hands off him. I still can't believe
that he lets me play with him the way I do.

I would do anything to keep him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After a couple of months with Fox, I was convinced that coming
out to Jill, painful as it was for both of us, had been the
right decision. I had all the love, and the friendship, and the
emotional support I'd had with her -- although not the social
respectability, of course --together with all the passion and
excitement I can only feel for another man. I was living, as
much as I could, the way I was made to live.

And he felt the same way about me. It was almost too much to
believe.

Gradually, though, I began to notice a distinct gap in our
conversations. When we were together, or just talking on the
phone --which was pretty often, since he had to travel a lot --
we talked about the day's news, what was happening in the
community, how our favorite teams were doing, what we were
reading or what I was doing at work. We even talked about his
partner.

But he never made more than vague references to the cases they
were working.

At first, I put that down to the secrecy of his assignment.
Later, I began to realize that he wouldn't even talk much about
the ordinary aspects of his job -- who his friends were, what
crazy thing happened in the break room, what his chances were
for a promotion, all the commonplace stuff that goes with any job.

I tried asking him about his day. No go.

"It was okay," he'd say, or, "Another day like that and I may
shoot somebody," but never anything specific. He was always more
interested in what I'd been doing, or what the Knicks or the
Yankees were doing.

I tried not to let it bother me, but after a while it just
became painful. He obviously didn't trust me enough to talk to me.

He could discuss my work fairly intelligently, which, I soon
learned, was at least partly due to his partner, the as-yet-
unseen Dr. Scully. He was obviously fond of her, and I knew that
they spent a lot of time talking to each other. They were
frequently out of town together, and some evenings when they
were in town, he would go over to her apartment.

What they did there, or said there, he never told me. But I
could see that they were close: extremely close. I began to
believe that Fox might actually have some physical attraction to
her.

I believed that right up until I finally met her.

Not that she wasn't attractive. She was -- and is -- stunningly
beautiful: red hair, blue eyes, pale Irish skin, and slender as
a fleeting hope.

She's brilliant, too, with a quick, incisive mind and an
admirable scientific skepticism. She's the kind of woman any
straight man could fall in love with and count himself the
luckiest guy on earth.

I met her when she walked in on us one day in Fox's office. I'd
gone there to meet him for lunch; I wasn't on duty that day, so
I wasn't in uniform and I figured once wouldn't hurt.

Lesson learned: Once can always hurt.

We were being foolish, I admit it. We were alone in his office
and I wasn't on my guard. I can only imagine what my facial
expression was, but his was the usual combination of love and
lust that he gets when we're alone.

When that door opened, I was scared shitless. I'd never seen
this woman before and didn't have a clue who she was, but I
could see her ID tag and I knew she was FBI.

Then I noticed Fox's smile; he wasn't worried. That's when I
realized this lovely redhead was the partner about whom I'd
heard so much.

Fox started to introduce us, but she interrupted him; she
called me by name.

"Oh, come on, Mulder," she said. "Did you think I didn't know?"

He hadn't told her about me. To all appearances, he hadn't said
a single word. That bothered me, because she was perfectly calm
about the whole matter. Clearly, Fox's sexual orientation was
not an issue with her, so why hadn't he told her about me?

I wanted to know more, so I asked her to go with us to lunch.

That's when I knew.

She looked at Fox, and he looked back at her, and a whole
conversation flew back and forth between them, yet neither of
them ever said one word. Not until they'd finished their little
psychic chat did she accept the invitation. Somehow, they'd
checked it out with each other and reached an agreement.

Without a doubt, they were connected deeply and powerfully on a
level from which I was excluded.

I decided that must be what was behind Fox's reluctance to
discuss his work with me. Work was to Fox and Dana what sex was
to Fox and me: the glue that bound the relationship together. He
would no more share his work life with me than he would take her
to bed.

That realization didn't exactly make me feel better about her.

Lunch made me feel a little better. She was very polite; no
more than that at first, but she seemed to warm up to me as the
meal went on. Turned out I knew her brothers, too, or had met
them, anyway. I even served with the younger one, Charles. The
Navy can be a small world.

But after lunch, when Fox went to get the car, she gracefully
offered to step away and let me and Fox have more time together.
She told me that she thought he'd been coming to her place
lately just to keep up appearances.

He wanted to be with me, she said. And he should be.

I knew then that what she felt for him was the real thing;
hell, she'd actually told me she loved him. But now I thought I
knew just exactly how much, and in what way, she meant it.

She was honestly, deeply in love with him.

I should have been jealous, I guess, but she was trying so hard
to be brave, and to do what she thought would make him happy,
that my heart went out to her. I couldn't help it. There was so
much pain in her eyes, so much impossible longing.

She looked so much like Jill used to toward the end of our
marriage.

I could have cried. Dana looked as though she was about to cry,
too; I could see the tears in her eyes. So I hugged her, and she
hugged me back.

Fox drove up right at that moment and saw us, and he looked
happier than I've ever seen him.

I thought at the time that it was because he was glad that I
liked her. Of course, it was exactly the other way around.

It was because she had approved of me.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Over the next few weeks, Dana and I got to know each other a
little better, and a real friendship began to develop between
us. We were the two most important people in Fox's life, and he
wanted us to be friends; more than that, Dana and I had a great
deal in common. From growing up Navy to struggling through med
school, we could almost have been the same person.

It was as good as it gets for two closeted gay men who are
deeply committed to one another. I thought it was absolutely
perfect.

Such a dope. I mean, I was such a dope.

I found out the truth one afternoon not long before Christmas.
I had just finished making my rounds when a nurse told me there
was a hostage situation at Fairfax Mercy Hospital. The TV news
folks were carrying it live.

And the FBI, they said, was on the scene.

We all rushed into the break room -- a situation like that at
any hospital is guaranteed to keep the house staff riveted, and
my heart was pounding for another reason altogether. Somehow, I
just knew that Fox was there, and that he was in danger.

About 20 minutes after I started watching the televised
reports, the anchors began solemnly announcing that it was over,
and that SWAT officers had shot and killed the criminal.

Not exactly killed, as it turned out, and definitely not by
SWAT --but I didn't find out for sure who it was until later.

But I found out almost immediately afterward that my intuition
was right; Fox was involved. In fact, he was in it up to his
neck. I saw him. The TV cameras caught him walking out of the
hospital, wearing a blood-spattered T-shirt and a face like death.

I gasped, and everyone turned to stare at me. Then I realized
he wasn't hurt, and that I had just made a major boo-boo.

"I know him," I offered, lamely. "We play basketball."

Uh-huh, their expressions said. Nobody gets that upset over a
point guard.

But fortunately for me, the cameras also caught Dana walking
out right behind him.

"There," I said, pointing at the screen. "That's his partner,
Dana Scully." I paused, just long enough to seem a little
bashful. "We're seeing each other," I said, in what I hoped was
an off-handed manner.

Thank God, the announcers had Fox and Dana's names pretty damn
quickly, because my credibility got a boost when people realized
I wasn't making up her name. Everyone seemed to accept that it
was Dana I was seeing.

Oh, my God, that was a close call.

What the announcers didn't say, of course, was that Fox had
shot the guy. But I suspected that he had.

I was supposed to be on call that night, but I managed to argue
persuasively that I should go see my "girlfriend," and I got
Dave McDermott to take my shift.

I could tell from the look in his eyes that Fox would need
comfort tonight.

And he did.

Just not from me.

~*~*~*~*~*~

We had an argument, which I don't care to revisit. Suffice it
to say, it began when Fox and I were getting ready to go out for
a nice dinner when he got a call from Dana.

She was crying, and he dumped me.

We had words. Not many, because I, as usual, walked away from
any real confrontation. I was in the bedroom when I heard the
front door slam.

Fox was gone, and he didn't come back that night, either. I was
pretty sure I knew where he was, too.

I just couldn't believe it. To me, this relationship was a
marriage, in fact if not in law, and you just don't dump your
spouse on the grounds that your friend needs you more.

Of course, I realized as I was brooding in my apartment that
night that this was just more evidence that Fox was never going
to be more than half committed to me, and that Dana's rights in
his life were at least equal to mine.

I wasn't thrilled. I thought seriously about getting away from
him, finding someone else. I did. I just knew that someone else
was not what I wanted. What I wanted was for him to love me
exclusively; I wanted the love he gave to her. I couldn't
understand why I had to share him with her.

I was pretty sure Dana was thinking the same thing about me.

In the morning, I gathered my courage and went over to Dana's
place. I was relieved -- actually relieved -- to see that he had
slept on the couch. I was honestly afraid that he hadn't.

We talked for a few minutes, and things were better after that.
Fox went to take a shower and then Dana came out of her bedroom.
She seemed a bit surprised to see me, but she was, as before,
polite and kind.

She and I talked for quite a while, and I was touched all over
again at her concern for me. It was genuine, very considerate,
even loving. She seemed shocked to find out that Fox hadn't told
me what happened, and she very kindly offered to fill me in.

I declined. If he wouldn't or couldn't tell me himself, finding
out from someone else wasn't going to fix things.

I think I was beginning to fall a little bit in love with her
myself. I know I could have cried when she told me that, no
matter how difficult it was, she wasn't going to leave him.

I understood. I'm not going to leave him, either, although I
think he could do a lot better than to be with me.

But he doesn't think so, and that is the greatest treasure of
my life -- although a treasure I don't deserve.

Fox and I went home not long after that, and we spent most of
the day in bed. It was good, and I have to admit it -- the idea
that he'd practically killed a man the day before excited me at
first. He seemed so cool about it, still so self-assured.

And I was still star-struck.

But I didn't know that then, just as I didn't know that he was
suffering a hell of a lot over the whole mess, even over
shooting that guy, Modell.

Well, I found out. We were lying in bed, savoring the afterglow
-- I thought -- when I realized that Fox was crying. It was the
first time he'd cried in my presence, and it came as a huge
surprise; no, actually, it was a tremendous shock. I never would
have imagined it, ever.

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think of a damn thing to
say. I lay there for the longest time, at a complete loss as to
what to do next. Finally, I gathered my nerve and put my arms
around him, acting more out of instinct than anything else, and
he wrapped his arms around me and held onto me with something
very much like desperation.

And then it all came out. Fox talked more that afternoon than
he'd talked in all the time we'd been together, and he told me
things he'd never even come close to telling me before.

He told me about how Modell, how he'd followed him into Fairfax
Mercy, leaving his gun with Dana so he couldn't use it on
anyone. Dana didn't want him to go, he said; she was pretty
frightened.

I couldn't blame her. It was frightening to me just to hear
about it, and he'd already come out uninjured, although
certainly not unscathed.

He told me how Modell had "pushed" him to aim the gun at Dana,
how he'd felt his finger pressing back on the trigger, against
his will, and about that single, silent tear that rolled down
her cheek.

I didn't know quite what to make of that, but that didn't
really seem important at that moment. What was important was
that he needed me to listen and not to judge him.

And then he told me how she'd run from him, and pulled the fire
alarm, and how he'd shot Modell, and then handed Dana the gun,
and how she'd taken his hand later and held it briefly and never
spoken a single word of blame.

"But I almost killed her, Daniel," he whispered. "I had that
gun aimed at her head, and I was pulling the trigger. I almost
killed my partner."

And he cried again, overcome with guilt at what he'd been
forced to do.

He'd gone over to Dana's place last night to comfort _her_, sure.

But he still wanted _me_ to comfort him.

I stroked his hair, and I kissed him, and told him I loved him -
-which, God knows, I do.

And at last, I began to understand. He went to her that night
even though he knew he had hurt my feelings by going. He knew
exactly how upset she was, and how bad she was feeling, and what
she had been through that day.

He had to know. He was the one who'd put her through it.

And yet she forgave him, and loved him, and she needed him. She
loved him just as much when he failed as when he succeeded.

But he was afraid that I wouldn't.

And I knew, to my everlasting shame, that he had good reason to
be afraid.

I don't know if he knew it consciously; I rather think he
didn't. But he was always deeply perceptive and insightful; he
felt, if he didn't know, that I needed to believe that he was
perfectly strong, perfectly capable, and far, far above such
petty human failings as fear, indecision or confusion.

And God help him, he tried to live up to that image for my sake.

That's why he wouldn't tell me about his work: He couldn't bear
the possibility that I would be disappointed in him or, worse,
ashamed. He couldn't bring himself to risk falling short of the
glamorized, unrealistic picture I had created of him.

I had done just what the chaplain had described; I had seen the
badge, and the gun, and in my mind I had made Fox into some kind
of super-cool, super-macho James Bond type, had indulged myself
in adolescent "licensed to kill" fantasies.

And it was Dana, the straight, innocent, almost virginal-
seeming Dana, who gave me the key to understanding that, to
understanding Fox -- and myself.

"You can be proud of him, Daniel," she'd said when we talked
that morning.

I thought she was just being kind, and she was, but she was
being far kinder to me than I knew.

As I held Fox that day and listened to him -- really listened
to him, for the first time -- it was as though I could finally
hear what Dana was really trying to say to me.

He's just a man, Daniel, she was saying. He's strong and he's
brave and he's committed, and he will risk anything for what he
thinks is right, but he fails sometimes. Love him anyway. For
all his intelligence, all his beauty, and all his courage, he's
just a man, after all.

Just a man. That was the one thing I had never let him be.

Somehow, Dana knew it. But being Dana, she didn't condemn me,
just reached out to me with that same self-sacrificing love
she'd always given Fox.

You take risks when you give that much of yourself to someone.
Dana had taken a tremendous risk with me, but a much bigger one
with Fox --and she lost. By letting herself see him as a man,
she made herself vulnerable to him -- because if he's a man,
she's also a woman.

And so she fell in love with him, and I, even though I liked
her very much, couldn't stop seeing her as a threat.

I found out better when Fox told me more about that night.

When he got there, he said, she was still crying. He told me
he'd held her until she calmed down a little and then he kissed
her, just to comfort her, and she'd responded as though that
kiss were the first step in a seduction. And that's when he
realized how she really felt about him.

It was, I imagine, a horridly painful moment for them both.

Fox said she was terribly ashamed of what she saw as her own
weakness and foolishness, and terribly afraid of losing his
friendship forever. He, on the other hand, was in agony because
he loves her but he can never feel for her what she feels for him.

But I think that for the first and maybe the only time in his
life, he wished that he could.

I cannot find it in me to dislike Dana or be jealous over this.
I really doubt that she ever meant to tell him, let alone try to
do anything about it. I think her guard was down because of the
stress and fatigue of their day, and she was desperately lonely -
- Fox was her only friend, and he'd stopped coming around.

Because of me.

But he stayed with her that night instead of coming home to me.
On her couch. Daniel the Dumb-ass finally got the message.

I did everything I could to reassure him. I told him that if he
needed to spend more time with her, he should. I told him that a
kiss or a hug from him would mean a lot to her, and it wouldn't
threaten our relationship at all.

I told him I would understand if they wanted to share a bed
sometimes, just for comfort.

And I do, at last, understand. I understand that the odds are
overwhelmingly against anything sexual happening between them. I
also understand that, if it did happen, it would be brief,
awkward, incomplete, never repeated and born not of desire, but
of the purest and best love I have ever seen between two friends.

And I know that Dana would guard that memory like a treasure
for the rest of her life. I could almost bring myself to hope
that it happens.

Because I know now that I have the better half of Fox.

The sad thing is, I know that Dana thinks so, too.

I remember the last thing she and I said to one another on that
morning after the Modell shooting. She asked me if Fox is
beautiful when we make love.

Yes, I told her; very beautiful. And I thought she might cry. I
thought I might, too.

As God is my witness, if I could think of a way that she could
see that for herself, I would make it happen, but I know it's
not possible. And she knows it. She always did. That was why she
asked.

It wasn't long after the Modell shooting, I think, that Dana
began her active sexual pursuits. Neither she nor Fox ever
mentioned it to me, but I'm not that stupid. I knew she was out
there targeting men who looked a little like Fox -- a little
being the operative phrase, because there is no one as beautiful
as he is.

Dana is possibly the most loving and understanding woman on
earth, and she is truly pure-hearted, but she is also a woman
who wants and needs what Fox can't give her.

So he accepts her one-night-stand lovers and he tries, as best
he can, to fill her emotional needs. He needs her too much to
risk letting her fall in love with any of those Fox-like men she
sleeps with.

I don't want her to, either: I have begun to love her, too, in
my own way.

They touch each other more now, I think, than they used to.
They embrace more, hold hands more, and they kiss sometimes, and
if it's not quite the passionate kiss of lovers, it's not the
kind of kiss you'd give your sister, either.

And he kisses and touches and embraces me in her presence,
which, strange as it seems, appears to reassure them both.

I know it reassures me.

He seems happier with me now; more open about work, less tense,
less guarded. I am still trying to deal with the guilt of having
put such a huge, unbearable burden on him.

And I am still trying to deal with the final understanding I
have gained from all this -- the understanding that had eluded
me for years: why Jill was so deeply hurt, why she cried so much
when I left, even though she knew by then, and had known for a
long time, that I was never really hers anyway.

Sometimes, I'm more than a little afraid that I may find myself
crying someday for exactly the same reason.

And if that day ever comes, I know what I'll do. I'll go find
Dana, wherever she is, because I know she will hold me and
comfort me -- and that she will understand, as no one else on
earth ever could, all the reasons that I cry.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~