A story for Mishka, who wheedled so needfully. I was going to call this "Potaaayto", which of course stands for "Portrait of the artist as a young transsexual onanist", but that was too weird. Besides, it was mostly irrelevant.

*

The Natural

*

"Mulder. I'm really glad I'm comfortable in my masculinity because I think we're breaking several of the more respectable laws of nature. Well, you are, anyway."

"And a few of Miss Manners'. God, that really looks good, doesn't it?"

"What if I don't agree?"

"No nooky tonight."

"It looks fabulous on you."

Mulder looked over at Skinner gravely. "Don't do faggot accents with me, Walter." Then he smiled. "Be honest."

Skinner leaned back in the chair, regretting his flippant words, their not quite lisping lilt, but unable to relax completely into Mulder's realm of bizarrity. The man was his *own* law of nature, true, but it was one of the quarkier working laws, on a par with particle-wave duality. Unlike most people, Mulder could be two disparate things at once. Two? Two billion. Each of his particles spun on its own kicky axis. He was a cosmos of happy madness.

Skinner was just a man. He had spent a lifetime trying hard to inhabit a nice, old-fashioned steady-state universe of rationality. And then Mulder came along. Mulder was big bang and chaos theory. Skinner didn't understand him in the least. And he was the sexiest mystery the world had put forth.

Aloud, after a long minute, he said uncomfortably, "It looks. . .Christ, I don't know, Mulder."

Mulder's face was open, amused. "Your dick knows."

Face flushing, Skinner shifted in his chair, wanted vaguely to cross his legs but didn't.

"We're alone, you know." Mulder turned to look back in the mirror, studying himself, pulling at his face, running hands down his body. "I know you've got that fine old Protestant ethic going, angel on one shoulder, devil on the other. Angels hovering invisible around you, writing down notes on their little pads, reporting back to the head honcho. . ." His voice rambled idly. "Telling the big guy every time you pick your nose and run red lights on empty streets." He turned back to contemplate Skinner. "But if you don't believe, you might as well stop going through the motions in your head. It only makes you unhappy."

Skinner frowned irritably. He hated trying to follow the thread of logic through Mulder's labyrinthine thought processes. Religion, morality? What did any of that have to do with this? This was just. . .well, okay. What was he worrying about, anyway? Skinner sighed inwardly. "It doesn't have to do with morality. Just with--" He gestured at Mulder's outfit. "Taste."

Mulder looked hurt. "Are you saying I have bad taste?"

"No. . .actually, no. I mean, if it were a woman. . ." He trailed off, discomforted again. "It's just the incongruity."

"Oh, fashion." Mulder sounded cheerful again. "It's all relative--it's all in your head, Walter. Except for bell-bottoms and platform shoes. Those are just as bad as you think." He struck a pose in the mirror, giving himself a moue over his right shoulder, then abandoned the reflection to move over to Skinner. He dropped to his knees in front of Skinner's chair, looked up at him, trusting, undefended.

Skinner's body flared at his lover's nearness. His dick knew. Yes, it did. He was a goner. Warm hands rested on his knees, and Skinner unhesitatingly tangled his fingers into that touch.

"If it really disgusted you, you wouldn't have let me talk you into this. You like it. You're just afraid you're fulfilling somebody's stereotype. Why worry about that? No one's going to find out."

"You hope," Skinner said dryly. He reached up and touched Mulder's hair, cupped and stroked there. "I worry about *you*," he said, before he thought through the words.

"Why?"

"Just. . .thinking." Skinner stroked careless arcs around Mulder as he spoke, tracing the other man's natural curves of neck and face and shoulder. "If you had been. . .less normal when you were a kid. Less smart. How they would have gone for you. I grew up hard. I was the guy on the football team who stood by when his buddies crammed some runt in his locker. Or maybe I helped, once or twice. I've seen ugly shit go down you hope you only see on police reports, second hand."

"Ooh," Mulder said quietly, gentling his face into Skinner's hand. "You were a brute." He didn't smile, was subtly pushing at something as he held Skinner's eyes with his own steady ones.

"I unlearned it, but I didn't grow up an angel."

"You know what's really worrying you?" Mulder smiled, but his eyes were still half serious, mesmerizing.

"What?" Skinner said, hearing his voice come out shortly, knowing, hoping, as always that Mulder heard beyond the surface as others hadn't.

"You're worried the boys will get me on the cell-block someday and I'll end up a bitch for some guy named Bubba."

"Jesus, Mul--"

"Maybe not like that. But you think I'm a pussy, don't you, Walter. What is it, three years now, I've stopped carrying a gun and if I'm late back from jogging you look like you've been chewing broken glass."

Skinner smoldered angrily, angry because Mulder was too right and it pissed him off. But they'd had similar discussions before, so he didn't get as worked up as once might have. Nor was Mulder as accusatory as he'd been a few times in the past. He merely sounded analytical. Skinner, who had idly speculated whether Mulder's new job would turn him into a jargon-spouting desk shrink, wondered if this was a sign.

"I worry about you. But I don't worry that you can't take care of yourself. In most situations." He scowled. He couldn't explain to Mulder the cause of his vague, sometimes urgent worry. It came without warning, sprung from a box he had long kept locked, loosened by violent news stories and the reports that slid almost daily across his desk--there was always at least one graphic case folder sent to him for study. It was something to live with, worry. A coiled spring of dark fear, to keep tight inside.

"Good," Mulder said. He caught hold of Skinner's wandering thumb, whose touch had unconsciously increased to a rough pressure, and brushed his lips there.

Lipstick smeared across his skin. Skinner felt himself harden in direct response to the sensation. He caught his breath, ran the ball of his thumb deliberately across Mulder's full lips, which opened as he did. It was indecent that a man so masculine could be so beautiful like this. Lipstick and a long red gown. No lace, no flowers, just pure red silk, a fall like flame or blood along a slim, angled body. And two lush lips red as an autumn leaf.

Christ, he was rock hard. Skinner tried to find his breath, caught at it with a rough intake of air.

Mulder smiled. His eyelids had dropped down to their lowest degree, barely showing his eyes, lashes hiding their sleepy-looking gleam. He slid backwards away from Skinner, slithering onto the patterned rug which covered most of the hardwood floor, stretching out, body shaved clean and close and glowing in the room's dimmed light. "This feels good," he murmured to himself. "Do I look too ridiculous?"

Skinner managed a husked, "No." Breathing had been easier a minute ago.

"You said you'd paint my toenails. I'm holding you too that."

"Ah, Christ--you aren't going to make me wait, are you?"

"Can't handle it?"

"I want you to," Skinner said bluntly.

"Mm, you've got to go with the plan, Walter."

"Oh hell." Skinner stood, trying to rein in his agitation. "Get on the couch."

Mulder stood, stretched, made a sensual fool of himself as Skinner sat on the couch and watched silently. He ambled a bit, struck a few poses, pulled at his gown and let the material drop again. Skinner made a harsh sound, then swore. He looked away, looked back, drawn to the view. "Hurry up," he muttered, undoing another of his own shirt buttons, feeling the room's rising heat.

"Nope. I'm going to change." And while Skinner fumed, Mulder slid out of the gown. He seemed to enjoy unfastening the thick, plain straps and watching himself in the mirror as the slinky stuff dropped down his body, caught on his semi-erect cock, then descended to a puddle around his feet.

Skinner leaned back on the couch and let his eyes slide down to mere slits. He could not watch too closely; he was afraid it would provoke him to action. Perhaps it was meant to.

Mulder, ignoring his audience, put on a short, simple negligee of black silk and a matching peignoir. "Okay, I'm ready," he said blithely, at last making his way over to the couch and easing onto its length. He settled himself, stretching out with lazy, self-indulgent movements, lithe, graceful, devastatingly loopy.

Skinner sat on the end of the couch, at his lover's feet, and held their boned elegance in his hand and marveled, seriously, expressionlessly at the wealth of his beloved. When they made men like this--a creature so rare--did they know what risk of splendor they loosed upon the world?

"Fox." Skinner stretched out, let their legs twine together, let his trousers rub the other man's lean flesh. He began painting.

"Mmm. . ."

"Fox," he murmured, painting with careful attention.

"Mm."

"Fox. . ."

Soft breezy answer of a man with his eyes closed, his face gilded in lamp light, his body given over, abandoned to trust: "I'm *lounging*."

Skinner accepted, his cock hard and ignored. Not too much longer and then he imagined himself pushing his way up between those silk-draped legs, burying his head under that nearly transparent canopy, taking his lover's ready hardness in his mouth. Worship.

Worship where nature made her needs most known. She could be clear in her demands, and she didn't seem to think herself at all unnatural.

*

Good morning.