"Got My Mojo Working" by MJ

So anyway, at least the air conditioning at the Regional Office in Saint Louis worked. That didn't keep the local agents from sweating. I was reviewing their investigation of that blasted possessed ventriloquist's dummy and raking them over the coals with a lot of help from Scully and a little reinforcement from the big guy. He was spending most of his time there raking the upper echelon over the coals as a little kind assistance in their restructuring, so I didn't see much of him that morning, and what little I did see of him involved his baring fangs at lesser mortals. I'd been on the receiving end of those fangs more than once, and I thanked God I wasn't there now. Where I wanted to be instead was back in his bed, going for a repeat performance of the previous night and that morning.

Scully and I were tearing through files on the case and issuing marching orders to the regional boys when Walter suddenly interrupted us. "You've been working hard enough, you two. I'm buying you lunch. Contrary to popular opinion around here, I'm not having skewered ASAC for an appetizer. Let's get out of here and get some Chinese."

We headed around the corner to a really nice Chinese place with no discernable FBI agents other than ourselves in it, and ordered up a storm. Scully and I were explaining the local agents' fuckups on the dummy case when I suddenly realized that there was another leg under the table making really friendly with one of mine, and it belonged to the hunk sitting directly across from me who was asking Scully about any precedent she recalled from her adventure in Maine with the demonic baby doll and who was looking totally innocent. I didn't know about his condition, but I was getting harder than the chair I was sitting on from the contact. Scully looked down momentarily to root through her handbag, and Mr. Totally Innocent Assistant Director suddenly gave me a look that could have melted both of our pairs of glasses. By the time Scully was done bottom fishing in her purse, Walter was calmly detailing the heads rolling on the upper floor of the Regional Office while one of his hands was playing with my knee. He's got a flair, that's all I can say. I was this close to coming in my pants before the pan-fried noodles and shrimp in garlic sauce arrived.

Scully headed for the ladies' room briefly during lunch. He looked over at me, smoldering, again. "I presume you and Scully have dinner plans." Neutral, not upset. He'd done the life on the road with the partner himself; he knew the routine.

"Nothing specific, but it'd look bad if I ditched her and left her to fend for herself. Care to join us?" This time I counted on an acceptance of the invitation.

"If you don't mind, yes. I'd love to." Husky voice that made me think I might come in my pants again. Dark eyes looking me over as if my clothes were a fortune cookie and I was the paper inside. God, I wanted him. I was going to be distracted all afternoon replaying what we'd been doing the night before and imagining doing most of what we hadn't done. "Would you like to go out after dinner?"

I looked back at him hoping I was mustering up a smoldering look of my own rather than my usual goofy stare. "If you mean just us…only if Scully wants to call it an evening early. She's used to hanging with me on the road. But whenever she crashes…I'm all yours."

More smolder from the hunk staring at me. "I wouldn't settle for anything less." Somehow, I thought he just might mean that.

I took a mid-afternoon coffee break to run out to the drugstore for condoms and lube. The more I thought about what we hadn't done the night before, the more I wanted to go there. A lot of guys seemed to like being on bottom; I could only figure that meant it was a lot more fun than visiting the proctologist -as if Walter's rimming me the night before hadn't proven as much. I was having severely distracting fantasies of a hot, naked Walter Skinner ravishing my body completely, imagining feeling him inside me, that huge chest and those incredibly muscular arms of his surrounding me the way they had on the previous night. Scully had been wondering what the problem with me was; I couldn't think of how to tell her that I was having some kind of Harlequin Romance fantasy involving Walter Skinner sweeping me off my feet and riding my ass into euphoric oblivion.

Then I started looking around the store and my fantasy suddenly got a lot more complex. There were way too many choices to make. All I really knew about was Trojans and K-Y. The matter of brands, lubed and nonlubed, spermicidal and nonspermicidal, ribbed and nonribbed, and, oh Lord, sized condoms for guys who thought they were hung like stallions was really too much to contemplate. Top that with the problem of gel or liquid K-Y, Astroglide, the store brand lube, and about a dozen others on the shelves—which didn't include any of the weird flavored ones you see in the porn shops—and the whole subject of sex was becoming monumentally overwhelming. I really wanted to run back to the office and ask Scully for help, but I knew she'd die laughing at me. I took a deep breath, flipped a coin mentally, and went for the Trojans and the Astroglide. There is such a thing in this world as too much freedom of choice.

The three of us went out for ribs and a couple of pitchers of beer for dinner. Scully proposed a cheerful evening of reviewing more files from the case in her room while she and I watched a "Star Trek" marathon on some independent channel. Since I would normally find an offer like that too good to pass up, I couldn't refuse. I pointed out to her that I'd been tired at breakfast, I was a bit wiped out now; would she mind if we only worked together after dinner for an hour and a half or so? I gave Walter a "look, I have to" look, and he nodded back quickly. "If you two are doing that," he mused aloud, "I think I'll catch CNN and check my e-mail this evening. I have a bottle of Scotch with me if you feel like a nightcap before you crash, Mulder." I figured that all sounded innocuous enough for Scully's benefit. What was I going to do -tell her we couldn't do any work that night because I wanted to keep the boss's bed warm?

Scully and I did make some headway on the notes of interviews the local boys had conducted while we snickered our way through "I, Mudd," one of my favorite classic Trek episodes. If I ever have a firstborn son, I might have to name him Harcourt Fenton Mudd Mulder. He can call himself "HFM Mulder" and sound distinguished. Anyway, we wrapped things up, I pleaded exhaustion, and I crawled back to my room. A few minutes later, shopping bag in hand, I was slipping into Walter's bedroom. He was watching CNN, all right, sitting in bed naked and nursing a Scotch on the rocks. I tossed the bag on a corner of the bed and myself on the bed's occupant. Well into a soul-searing kiss, Walter looked up at me and grinned. "I presume you want something, Agent Mulder?"

"Yeah." Wriggling against him, thrusting myself against his hip. "I want you to fuck me until I scream."

Bigger smile, laughing brown eyes. "Oh, I think I can arrange that…" Another kiss from the sexiest hunk in the FBI. "But I think you're a little overdressed, Agent. You're going to have to take all that off."

"Is that an order, sir?"

"Absolutely, Mulder." I wasn't going to wreck a budding relationship through willful disobedience to my immediate supervisor, was I? I pulled myself up and slowly peeled myself out of my clothing, taking my time, knowing he was watching every move I was making. I'd never stripped for anyone before; the idea of doing it, knowing that Walter was scrutinizing every inch of my body, realizing I was arousing him with the act, and feeling just a little bit kinky at playing with following orders, was proving to be a really powerful turn-on. By the time I was sliding out of my shorts, I was sporting an erection about as emphatic as the one he'd teased me into at lunch, and Walter was looking at it with a degree of possessiveness that was nearly enough to send me over the edge just watching the way he was looking at me.

I sat back down on the bed, and reached for the bag, waving it in front of him. He reached over for it, and I pulled it out of the way. "I hope I got the right ones," I teased, moving the bag back into his reach.

He felt inside and pulled out the contents, looked at them, and looked up at me again. "Mmmm…I think they'll be just fine." He looked at the purchases again. "Went for the extra large box, Mulder?"

A three-pack had seemed pointless, and a twelve-pack…well…"Call me an optimist, sir. I figured adequate preparation was a worthwhile investment."

Walter laughed. And laughed. And fucking started chuckling his damned guts out there in the sack. For some reason, that had gone over nearly as well as my brilliantly planned elf routine the prior night. What had I done? "Mulder," he finally gasped when he came up for air, "I always wondered what it was going to take for you to prepare for something for once in your life. If I'd known this was it, I'd have dragged you off five years ago."

I grinned at him cheerfully as I slid into his bed. "Dragged me off, huh? I always wanted a caveman of my very own."

"Don't ask for what you want," he admonished me according to the old proverb. "You might get it." Hell, I'd already gotten it, hadn't I, and its name was Walter Skinner. Everything else, all that we could do with each other, was merely a matter of time if I managed not to fuck things up with this man. I was determined not to fuck up now, even if it meant obeying job orders back at the office when we got home.

"I'll chance it," I offered to him, sliding an arm behind his back and pulling him closer to me—or, really, me closer to him; he's a pretty large dead weight lying down compared to me. He grabbed me and pulled me into a kiss that threatened to cut off the oxygen to my brain long enough to do some serious damage. His tongue was doing some serious damage of its own—it might have looked as if he were only probing my mouth, but I could feel him probing parts of me that you couldn't reach physically, including a few that I hadn't let anyone near since Phoebe fucked me over years before. I wasn't sure I was ready to have him reach some of those places yet. I backed out of the kiss as gently as I could, not wanting him to realize how much he'd just scared me—or I'd scared myself, whichever. I pulled myself up against his chest and started exploring his body the way I had the night before. If I threw myself into the sex, maybe I could keep away from dealing with the parts of me I didn't want touched yet.

Walter, as I'd hoped, figured it was completely stark, raving lust on my part that had my mouth on every part of his body I could reach. I do have to admit, there was a highly significant lust component there anyway—at least, oh, say, ninety per cent by the time I'd reached his nipples, and I'd pretty much forgotten anything else at all by the time I'd found his erection. Walter Skinner is one significantly gorgeous piece of beef in the first place, but I'd never seen anything in my life I'd wanted more than his cock. I've still never seen anything I've wanted more.

He finally reached down, patting my head. "You'd better stop if you don't want me to come like this. I'm an old man, Mulder; I don't guarantee I'm good for a second one tonight, so I don't want to waste it."

I relinquished my prize grudgingly, but with a grin. "So…what's your suggestion instead?" I slid back up along the length of his body, trailing a hand behind to make sure my new toy wasn't going anywhere without me.

"Mmmm…well, you're the one who brought the lube…you feel like you're ready for it?" If he had been any more solicitous, he'd have wound up going back where I didn't want to go. I wasn't ready to feel anything like that, not yet; I just wanted to feel him, preferably deep in me. I looked right into those two Hershey's Kisses he called eyes and nodded. "Mulder…you know…it's going to hurt this time, if you've never done this."

"I know," I told him. It's going to happen sometime, right? So it might as well be now. I trust you; I told you that."

"You're sure." A statement from him, not a question. He believed me, but I think he was afraid I'd wind up being sorry, at least that night. I had no intention of ever being sorry, no matter how much it hurt this time. The obvious fact that guys kept going back for more meant it had to improve, and no matter how much I didn't want to let him any further inside my feelings right now, I wanted to keep this thing between us, whatever it was, going. I counted on having plenty of opportunity to see how much better having Walter fuck the living daylights out of me could get.

"Yeah. I'm sure. I'm all yours, big guy."

"Remember you said that," he growled. God, Walter growling was like—oh, shit, I can't describe it. That growl of his—I could feel it playing with my ears, I could feel it rumbling in my chest, I could feel it going straight to my cock. Then I felt him reaching over to where he'd left the Astroglide, and then, again, cool, slick fingers reaching down, behind, in. It wasn't better than the rimming, just different, hitting different nerves; when that first finger made it inside me, it felt incredibly right being there. Oh yeah, I was all his, no problem. He started working it in me, and I started seeing stars. Seriously. If the doctor did his exam the way Walter was working me, I'd beg to go for physicals anytime. Walter's fingers, my prostate…heaven just might exist, I decided, and Walter was the man in charge of admission.

After an eternity, or maybe thirty seconds, since it all felt alike right then, Walter decided I was far enough out of my body to be ready. He started pulling his fingers out slowly, to the accompaniment of my moaning in hitherto unknown languages. It wasn't fair—he was stopping with those fingers. I barely felt him moving my body, pushing my legs apart. What I was finally aware of was Walter's erection working into me as he thrust slowly, waiting to see if I was handling it. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded. And yeah, it hurt, despite the prepping, but it was okay -actually, it was more than okay. I'd asked him for this, and here it was, me turning into part of him. He'd told me to remember I was all his? Hell, at the moment there wasn't any possible way to forget that. The pain started easing a little, and I must have started breathing again, though I hadn't realized I'd stopped. That seemed to be Walter's signal to start working on serious thrusting.

Finally I really started to relax, and then I could tell that it didn't hurt that badly; in fact, I was starting to work into some kind of rhythm with him, and it was actually feeling not that bad at all; it would probably have felt really good if I hadn't already been hurting. I could see there was some serious potential for getting way into this, and the whole trip of having Walter Skinner literally riding roughshod all over me was feeling pretty incredible all by itself. I moved my hand down and started working on myself, letting go as much as I could into what he was doing with me. I came before he did, splattering over my hand and both of our chests, and I'd never felt anything like it before. I have to have screamed; I know it. I'm surprised I didn't break his eardrums when I think back to it.

Then I made my mistake. Once I sort of came back down, while Walter was still screwing me to pieces for his own benefit, I looked straight up into his face. I'm supposed to be on this huge Quest for the Truth, right? You know, sometimes the truth is something you really don't want to see. Sometimes it's too much to handle. I certainly couldn't handle what I saw in those eyes, not then at any rate. I knew what it looked like, I could tell what it felt like, and it was way, way too close to home for me, especially coming down off of that cloud I'd been on. Even as Walter was growling and coming like the proverbial freight train, I could feel myself starting to cry, which my mind was telling me was a bad thing. It wasn't a loud bawl or anything stupid like that, but it was a lot more than just damp eyes.

Walter was down on me, his weight barely supported by his forearms, as he withdrew from me, and he looked…well, pretty scared, actually. He reached a hand up to my face, strong, gentle fingers wiping tears away from my cheek. "Mulder…are you all right? You should have said something…"

"I'm fine. I'm okay." I looked up at his face again. Incredibly intense concern, and, I was afraid, maybe a lot more than that. Shit. Sex—sex, I could handle. Sex was a great way to get away from problems for me; it had been for years. As long as it didn't come with a cargo hold's worth of baggage. I hoped to hell that the look I was getting wasn't baggage. Phoebe and Diana had left me with more than enough for an eternity. "It was…just…pretty intense, you know?"

He nodded down at me. "Yeah. Yeah, I know." More wiping my face with those fingers, and then a kiss that could have sucked out my guts. Another one of those mind-blowing kisses of his. Shit.

This was all my idea, wasn't it?

I woke up around three in the morning. Walter was sleeping the sleep of the just, so I decided to do what was obviously the best thing. I slid out of bed and headed back to my room to get a few more hours' sleep and maybe sort out what was going on, see if I could get away from the unpleasantness and messiness of feelings.

He knocked on the connecting door around seven, looked in on me. I had just gotten out of the shower. "Mulder…are you okay? I woke up, you weren't there." I looked over at him as I toweled my hair. "I'm—look, I don't know. You said something about not asking for what I want because I might get it?"

"And?" He stared at me over his glasses rims.

"I don't know. I just don't know. I need some space this morning." I needed a whole lot of space, was what I needed. What I needed was for one of us to get called back to DC this morning so I could get the hell away from him. All I'd wanted was some nice, uncomplicated, hot sex for a few nights during a miserable business trip, and what I'd wound up with instead was a man who was threatening to push every button I had just by being there. Damn it, couldn't he have just wanted a free fuck? But no, I had to go yank his emotional chain. The damn videos were a hell of a lot safer, even if they had gotten boring.

I spent the day up to my neck in the damned heat tracking down witnesses. I shouldn't have had to reinvent the wheel, but I'd gotten so frustrated between the morons from hell investigating the case and my having to avoid Walter Skinner that I needed to get out and do something. Unfortunately, what this did was make the case that much worse. No, I didn't fuck anything up, but the witness from the mall toy store had also been involved in the sighting of a huge furry thing—like a Teletubby, she said—that she connected to a murder in one of the 'burbs. Dummies. Teletubbies. What else was there in this town—marauding Barbies with miniature handguns and knives running loose in a gang? If I ever go back to Saint Louis, it'll be too soon, trust me.

I even missed dinner, which meant I didn't have to deal with Walter or with Scully wondering why I was bummed. I didn't want pressure and I didn't want solicitous. I wanted a cold shower, a cold beer, and a hot beef barbecue sandwich. I managed all three before I crashed early and slept poorly. I told Scully I would be out tracking a lead. I headed instead to a dive that came strongly recommended by one of the saner agents in the Regional Office the day before. It had been a decent enough place, as promised—cold beer, hot food, hotter waitresses, and some fairly colorful local characters that strongly bore watching. One of the local girls—the term "lady" might be more accurate in her case—had been making pretty friendly with me, but I wasn't interested in pay-for-play action. Really, I wasn't interested in action, period. I didn't have that much to drink, either, so I couldn't figure why I slept so badly that night.

Breakfast the next morning was interesting. I met Scully in the coffee shop, ravenously hungry despite having stuffed three barbecue sandwiches, a plate of slaw, and a small pitcher of beer down my face the night before, and ordered a "heart attack special," as Scully termed it. I wish she'd get off me about my eating. My cholesterol's plenty low, always has been. No Skinner. Half an hour later, still no Skinner. Finally, while I was working on coffee, in stumbled our esteemed supervisor, looking vaguely like he'd survived a Reticulan attack. Scully thought he was sick. So did I, at first. Then I realized what had kept me awake. Three a.m.—that was when I'd heard his door slam. He'd been out until three. Then—shit, he'd been out on a bender, hadn't he? Walter Skinner had a hangover? That had to be a first for him in years. The man was just too tightly controlled to do things like that on a work night—or at all, really, I supposed. But hell, we were out of town, and I wasn't the only agent who'd done incredibly stupid things on the road.

I mean…the only other thing I could think of was that he was upset about something. And it couldn't be me—I mean, what had I done? Just because I wanted some breathing room? No, that didn't make too much sense. The Great Stone Face didn't do that kind of thing. Besides, this was the man who'd head locked me twice and had me put in five-point restraints; why the hell would he have gotten smashed just because I didn't want a capital-R Relationship? He should have been happy about that, I figured. So I realized that he'd been on a bored-and-out-of-town bender. Perfectly reasonable.

I spent the rest of the week, what little there was of it, working my ass off and embarrassing the regional boys totally. There was gonna be one hell of a report to the Director about ineptitude if I had any say in the matter—and this time, I did. Skinner was producing a report of his own that basically recommended execution for the agents he wasn't mad at. Scully thought he was coming down a little hard on these guys, but I thought they deserved it. Hell, he was working pretty damn hard too since he'd worn off that hangover. Almost like he had something to prove. I was just glad he wasn't proving it to me.

I sat beside Scully on the flight home on Friday. Skinner was across the aisle from us, beating on his laptop like he was writing the Great American Novel—I figured it was the third draft of "Why I Recommend the Death Penalty for the Regional Office." He'd been fighting off a stew who really had it bad for him—she kept coming around persistently to practically beg him to drink. At one point I thought she was gonna throw herself across the laptop and force a miniature down his throat. It was too damn much to contemplate, so I headed back to the lavatory. Airplane restrooms are a phenomenon unto themselves; about the only thing they're really good for is making sure that making sure that your initiation into the Mile High Club will throw your back out no matter what position you're in. Don't ask me what I know about the Mile High Club. I missed out on enrolling Alex Krycek in it, that's all I'll say.

I got back and saw that Skinner had gone for the booze, finally. I guess the stew had made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I was sort of worried after that hangover he'd acquired the morning before so I took a good look over to make sure he was okay. He looked back over at me. I pulled back pretty much like an ostrich, hoping he hadn't seen me. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea, whatever that was; I wasn't all that sure of what the right idea was myself. I didn't say anything to him; in fact, I don't think I spoke to Scully for most of the flight either. She'd gotten it into her head that something was wrong with me, kept asking if I was okay, if something had been on my mind for the past couple of days. I really didn't want to talk about it—what was I gonna say, I'd been boffing Skinner and I was feeling Way Too Much Pressure from him?

So we landed at what used to be National Airport and will never be Ronald Reagan International Airport to me. On a Friday night. Which is sort of like trying to get across Times Square at rush hour, if you get my drift. The whole fucking universe is there and they all think that your suitcase is theirs. We got through the usual stupid landing and luggage hurdles pretty well—there are certain advantages to a badge, I admit—and then I had to get home. I really didn't want either to fight for or to pay for a cab, but Scully had some kind of lame excuse about her mother. Why she was staring dead on at Skinner when she told me loudly that she had to color her mom's hair in ten minutes beat the hell out of me, but unfortunately he heard her and decided to offer me a ride. I tried to duck out of the offer. It was the last thing I wanted. "Mulder. I said, *I will give you a lift*." Shit.

The last thing I wanted was to be alone in the front seat of Skinner's Buick with Walter Skinner. All right, his Roadmaster was the most comfortable thing on four wheels—hell, it would have made a perfectly good efficiency apartment—but if I had to be in the damn thing alone with Skinner, God only knew what was going to happen. Probably a homicide. Oh, yeah, homicide was coming right up—he'd just passed the exit for my place and was heading towards Arlington. "Uh, sir? That was the turn-off for my place."

"I know." Smug. He knew damn well what he was doing, didn't he? Goddamn bastard.

"Then, what…?"

"You're coming home with me."

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Skinner just smiled, watching the traffic. One more time—goddamn bastard.

"I thought I'd made it pretty clear that I didn't want this." My teeth were clenched to the point of dealing with a nice case of TMJ. Just like Skinner's lockjaw, it struck me. Fuck.

"You did," Skinner said to me. "I just don't happen to care what you want."

"They have a name for this in the Commonwealth of Virginia, sir. They call it 'kidnapping'."

Skinner pulled his cell-phone out of his trench coat and threw it at me. "You wanna report a crime, Agent Mulder? Go ahead." Shit, he was pushing this one all the way, wasn't he? Wasn't Saint Louis enough, damn it? What the hell else did he want to get from me? I figured I'd pushed my luck with my mouth already; if this was how he reacted to the kidnapping line, I'd better try keeping my mouth shut now. Why the hell did there have to be so much traffic out that night? It must have taken the better part of an hour from the time he threw his phone at me to his pulling in at his condo, and I had to sit there biting my lip the whole time to keep from putting my foot into things even deeper.

************

His building. I really must have wanted to see what was playing out here, because I went right along like a sheep. Hell, I was still carrying Skinner's damned cell phone. I'd have started an argument on the elevator, only it was nearly as crowded as the fucking airport.

Skinner opened the door, let me in ahead of him, closed and locked the door. Okay, time to have this shit out, now. "Look you son-of-a-bitch, I don't know what you think you're doing, but…"

Skinner dumped our suitcases beside his coat rack and took off his coat. "Why did you dump me?"

That I hadn't quite expected. Dumped? Oh, hell, I should have known it. I'd been right to get upset at how he'd been looking at me. I should have known, should have thought about this. Now he was projecting, wasn't he? "What the hell are you thinking? It was one night and you're making it a federal case…"

"Two nights," Skinner said. "Was it just some kind of weird impulse gratification for you?" All I could do was shake my head. Of course it hadn't been…but, shit, two nights, what'd he want from me? A fucking proposal? Jesus…Skinner crossed his arms, pinned me down with his patented glare. "I'd really like to know. You go to a hell of a lot of trouble to get me into your bed, make me want…," he stopped, shook his head, then continued. "Then you pull this disappearing act on me."

"I was right there all the time, working the case." Well, I had been, hadn't I? I did my job the whole fucking time I was there…all I'd wanted was some space, some time to myself. Wasn't that fair? What was the problem with that? Just because he'd been leaning on me for…oh, fuck. He hadn't, had he? I'd been so damned busy being scared of how I thought he'd been feeling…because I didn't want to follow where that line of thinking went if I'd picked it up. Yeah, I did know where it'd take me if I thought about it.

"You might has well have been in the Antarctic. I wake up, you're gone. You won't talk to me; Scully gives all your reports. You even changed your damned room…what the hell had I done to make you suddenly treat me like a stalker?"

I couldn't look at Skinner. "It wasn't you." No, it was me. Like I was gonna admit that, though.

"Then what was it, Mulder? Just a one-night stand? Clearing up a little boredom on the road?"

"No."

"Then what? I didn't come after you, Mulder. You made it very plain what you wanted and you got it. Was that what it was all about? You wanted something, you got it, end of story?"

"No, dammit!".

"Then what was it, Mulder? Tell me, because I really need a clue here."

"I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. It wasn't supposed to happen at all, I guess. I'm sorry," I must have been whispering by then. I could barely hear myself. I didn't really want to; I felt pretty much like shit. Which was fair, I suppose. I tried to step around Skinner and get to the door; slinking out with my tail between my legs would have been just about the right effect, I thought.

Shit, I'd really ticked him off. He grabbed me by my jacket and slammed me back against the door. "Oh no. This isn't how it goes, Mulder. You don't screw me, then fuck with my mind and then just go home."

What's that old psych litany—mad, sad, or glad? I was sad for about half a second that he felt hurt, that I'd done it—then I realized that he really had just slammed me into a wall. Mad set right back in. I grabbed Skinner's wrists as hard as I could. "What the hell do you want, Skinner?! An apology? OK. I'm sorry you fucked me. Is that good enough?"

Skinner's hands were shaking; he was still holding on to my suit jacket, but he was nearly pounding my chest. "No. Why did you leave?"

"I don't know! Is that what you want to hear?! I don't fucking know!"

He loosened his grip on me; I let up on his wrists, quit cutting off the circulation to his hands. He was looking at me like he was really worried about something. "You're afraid. Tell me what you're afraid of." I couldn't handle looking at him. It was getting too fucking intense again. And for some obscure reason, something was nagging me into feeling guilty. Hell, maybe I'd been feeling everything I said. That still didn't give me the right to abuse him the way I had been doing. "Tell me."

I couldn't, maybe I was a fucking coward about this. I just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to say. What was I afraid of? At the moment, damn near everything. Of Skinner wanting more than I could give him. Of me needing more than I wanted to have to need from him. Of—shit. "All right then, I'll tell *you*," Skinner whispered to me, shaking his wrists out of what little grip I had left on them. "This," he continued, releasing my lapels and running his hands gently over my shoulders. "You're afraid of this."

"And this…," he continued again, moving up to my face. He had my head anchored to face him, and he was giving me that pinned-in-place stare again. I should have known better than to look; I should have kept my eyes closed, but I didn't. He had me stuck there like a deer in a pair of headlights. I reached up, grabbed his wrists again, but didn't have the strength left to pull him away from my face. Fuck. I could feel all of my energy draining into my feet. I couldn't have moved if the building was on fire. Why the hell did he have to do this to me?

"You're afraid I might do this." He leaned forward and started nibbling at my ear. He'd found out about that a few nights before in bed. Between the actual event right then and my remembering the previous events, I was pretty much on my way to turning into a puddle on the floor. "And that I might say…," Skinner whispered into my neck. I knew what was coming. Oh, fuck, no…anything but having to deal with it…"I love you," right into my mouth, no more than a whisper again, just before he kissed me.

Three words like a knife in my gut. Skinner just didn't get it, did he? They'd taken my sister, my parents had split up, Phoebe had knocked me flat into the ground, Diana had stomped on my bones that were lying there, and Alex, even though I'd never touched him, had managed to drag the remains of my heart off to whatever rathole he was skulking around in now. If you really wanted to hurt me, all you had to do was tell me that. That phrase was the usual announcement that you were going to do that to me. I'd trusted Skinner, I'd wanted him, still did, as badly as anything, but see, I'd known since the other night in bed that he was gonna do this to me if I didn't get away…and I didn't want this from him, of all people. I mean, the others had been bad enough, but fuck it, I lo—oh, crap. Oh, Jesus. I had to stop before I actually thought the whole thing out loud to myself.

I must have started to turn to that damn puddle for real; I must have crumpled. With my luck, I probably actually passed out for a second because I don't remember doing it, but I obviously started to collapse, because I suddenly realized that Skinner wasn't holding my face any more; he was holding me up against his chest, rocking me back and forth. I wondered where he had the knife. He could reach my back easily enough.

I finally realized that he was whispering something in my ear, that he had been. "I've got you now, it's OK. It's all gonna be OK. You're mine, I've got you. Shh…" Over and over. I could feel both of his hands. Maybe he didn't have a knife after all? Wouldn't that be a switch.

My head was tucked up against his neck. I kissed it, kissed him for the first time in days. Hell, I'd been crazy enough to let myself get kicked when I knew they were gonna do it to me; at least this time it wasn't clear from the start that that's what was gonna happen. Maybe I was safer this time. "What the hell do we do now?"

I didn't even realize I'd thought that one out loud.

"Now, " Skinner whispered, kissing me on the forehead, "we eat." The bastard let go of me. He actually let go. What the hell did he think he was doing, huh? I'd just put on my "kick me" sign, and the man was willing to pass up taking advantage of me—whether by ravishing me or by wrecking my life—for a meal? He had to be the devil incarnate, that was all I could figure.

"You're hungry?!"

"If you had any sense, you would be, too."

"I thought we'd already established that I don't have any," I told him. I tailed him into the kitchen, where I discovered surprise number two: Walter Skinner could cook, and quite well at that. Lentil soup, which I usually don't like because I suspect it's good for me, but was really delicious in this case—especially after airplane food—and homemade biscuits, made from real ingredients that he actually measured out of a canister. I'd been kidnapped before by less attractive people, and they didn't usually either sweep me off my feet or cook for me. This was a real improvement over the usual line of being made off with. I could deal with this type—oh, yeah, could I ever. I had to ask. "So I shouldn't plan on being kidnapped on a regular basis?"

"No, I don't plan to make a habit of it. I'm no one's Daddy and I won't be a one night stand. I want something more from this."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. That word a while back there had been bad enough. The "L" one. Now here he was throwing the "R" one at me. The one with a bunch of syllables. The one that's even worse because I'd been therewith Phoebe and Diana. If love meant "hurt me," relationship meant "torture me, suck me dry, and throw my carcass to the jackals." Diana had done that quite thoroughly enough for any two lesser mortals. I remembered what Scully had said to me once about panic. When in doubt, remember to keep breathing. Oxygen is good. I took a deep breath, and then a few deliberate breaths. My head cleared slightly. I chanted to myself, "This is not Diana. This is not Diana. This is not Diana," while he just kept on eating and occasionally checking me out of the corner of his eye. No, he certainly wasn't Diana. And, to face facts, I was the one who'd come full tilt after him in the first place. I hadn't started the panicking until I remembered that sometimes it's not all just about sex. And Walter Skinner was, for whatever it was worth, worth a hell of a lot more than a quick fuck. I'd trusted him all that time until I'd panicked, hadn't I? God, I can be stupid sometimes. "So do I."

"Let's go to bed." That from Skinner, and it sounded like a fine idea to me at this stage. So I was surprised as hell when making our way to the bedroom wound up lacking something in the "ripping off each other's clothing and flinging ourselves bodily on each other" department. In fact, it resembled nothing so much as my days at Philips Exeter getting ready for bed with the roommates. Clothes off, hung up so we wouldn't get nailed by the housemasters for messiness, teeth brushed, everything, in fact, but my roomie Steve Winthrop's insistence on mumbling Compline to himself from his Book of Common Prayer before bed. Last I saw Steve, he was graduating from Yale Divinity School. If Skinner had pulled out a prayer book—well, I did have my gun.

Back to the bedroom. King-sized bed again, looking really comfortable, with important things like lots of pillows on it. I was pretty damned tired, but I was still having visions of Skinner picking me up, throwing me on the bed, and having at me. Really pleasant visions, full of seriously hot and heavy potential. When he kissed me and started rubbing my neck, I could feel my switches getting flipped everywhere in my body. That was a lot more than old Stevie ever did for me. So I nearly went back for the gun when I started leaning into him and groaning and he pushed me off of him, even though he was still working on my neck. What the hell was I doing wrong? "What…?"

"Tonight, we just sleep." At least he was smiling. "We need time, Mulder. There'll be time for everything, but let's take it a little slower than we have, OK? Besides, I really do have a headache."

I had to be honest. It had been a hell of a trip, thank God it had ended on a Friday so I could recover, and my sinuses go crazy on airplanes from the cabin pressure and the air circulation. "Me, too." He pulled me over to the bed -one part of my visions realized, anyway—and I slid in beside him, curled up against him, and pulled the sheet up over me to combat the air conditioning. He slid an arm around me and pulled me all the way against him, so I abandoned the pillow idea in favor of settling down where my head quite naturally belonged, right on his shoulder with my face up against his neck. Somewhere along the line I fell asleep—not very far along the line, I imagine. I'd only shared a bed with a snorer two other times—the other two nights I'd been with him -but I was starting to get used to it.

Three a.m., and I was awake. No idea why, I just was. At least I hadn't had a nightmare—and I hadn't had one on either of the other nights I'd slept with Walter Skinner, either. Hell, I could read that message when I thought about it. I turned around, watched him sleeping in the dark, one arm still around me, his head turned slightly away from me. Amazing planes on his face, with the light, what there was of it, highlighting features weirdly. I felt…I don't know…pretty much overcome, sort of by everything, I suppose. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know how to say, would still be afraid to tell him even if I did know how say it. I was glad he was still asleep; it was easier to tell him that way. So I reached over, up, started running fingers over those planes, picking out features, learning him by touch. It was just that one little bit too firm, I suppose, because my stroking did wake him up.

"Mulder?"

"Shh. Let me," I told him. He was semi-awake now, and he was accepting what I'd been giving him so far; no reason not to proceed, even if he didn't know quite what it was about. I wasn't quite sure I understood everything about this myself, but I wanted to do it. I knew he'd enjoy it. So I shushed him, kept on stroking, and watched him close his eyes and relax again.

I'd already mapped his face, learned it by touch just now, would know it if I felt it again, anywhere. That was how I wanted to learn the rest of him. I wanted to know as much about his body as I knew about my own, to be able to reach out, touch him, and say, "That's Walter; I'd know him anywhere," even blindfolded and holding my breath. All of him—not just his mouth, not just that gorgeous piece of muscle and erectile tissue he called a cock. His chest, his navel, lots of other interesting places. All over his body. Bodies like his don't come around very often; it would have been a major sin not to make a study of it for future reference. Especially when everyone concerned thought the job was so pleasant.

Down to Skinner's hips, back up his sides, down his arms; there were acres of Walter to explore, sort of like a mountain range. I wondered if I could really learn all of him at one time. Kissed him , then back down, down to his feet. He was getting hard, no surprise, but no need to bother with that quite yet. I wanted to have some more fun playing with my new toys first.

"Mulder…," he was groaning at me. I liked it. I liked it. Any moment now, he'd be getting me and Jesus confused, and that was just fine with me; it meant I was accomplishing this mission. When was I first taught that actions speak louder than words, anyway?

"Shh." Why waste energy talking? I was down between his legs, had to reach up now to take hold of his cock. I must have been doing something right with it; Walter was moaning like there was no tomorrow, and knotting up the sheets in his fists trying to stay anchored. That's always a nice place to be for a while. The next thing to do, while I had him where I wanted him, was to learn to recognize him by taste. There could be an emergency sometime, all the power out, and I'd have to be able to find Walter even if he couldn't yell for help. This could be a very useful identification tool.

I'd only done this once before, really, a few nights before with Walter, but I didn't think I needed a refresher course to figure out what I was doing by the time my mouth made it over to his erection. I'd had blowjobs in my life; I had a good idea of the usual drill. And, as I'd found out the other night, my head seemed to have a weakness for gravitating right towards this spot. Again, I was obviously doing something right. He had his hands in my hair now, groaning under me; thank God he didn't do that thing they do in the movies where the guy grabs your head and jams your mouth further on down him, but I really didn't think he'd be that kind of jerk anyway, now did I? Hell, if I'd thought that, I'd never have put the moves on him in the first place.

I'd figured out this time how to avoid some of the challenges from earlier in the week. I managed not to act like a surprised idiot when he came this time. Oh, I almost forgot—one thing I'd learned from having being blown by Phoebe, besides the "no teeth" rule? Don't spit. Actually, I can't figure out why she or Diana did that. I could live on the stuff.

I slid back up to find the rest of the big hunk I'd been entertaining just then. Pulled myself atop him, and kissed him as hard as I could. Walter was damp with sweat, salty like his come. I could taste both when I kissed his face.

Walter was trying to recover faster than he was ready to, worrying about me. "Give me a minute here, and I'll make you feel just as good as I do now."

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine." No lie. I was.

Walter moved a hand down to take hold of me. Yeah, I was hard, I knew it. But you know, that really wasn't the point here. Enough about me, you know? "Feels like you're better than 'fine'," he told me. He purred it, I swear he purred it.

I had to reach down and disengage him from me. I hated to do it, but it was what, after three in the morning, and I'd accomplished my mission; time to go back to sleep, just like he'd suggested last night. I could figure he'd sleep pretty darn well after that. "This time was just for you. Like you said, we have time." I wriggled back against him, pressed against his hip, curling around him.

Walter squeezed an arm back around me. "I love you, too." I guess he got my message.