Oringal author's note: Rating: NC-17, M/Sk slash. More or less a PWP. No spoilers. No copyright infringement intended; actually the originals of these characters exist in a parallel dimension to those in the series and are renditions of completely real persons lucky enough to do all the fun things you can't show on TV, and if you don't likethat theory, tough whips. Archive MSSS; archive elsewhere by request. I crave feedback like a junky craves crack.

It was a beautiful Sunday--sunny, lightly windy, with heavy white clouds drifting lazily across the stretching sky. Despite the bitter chill in the air it was a day to be outdoors, sailing perhaps, on a wintry white-capped ocean. Walter Skinner would have been pleased enough to be out mowing a four-acre lawn or cleaning gutters on a day like this, unseasonal though the tasks might be.

But instead he was on his way to the airport, to catch a flight and attend yet another law enforcement conference, his third in as many weeks. Midwinter, perversely enough, always seemed to be a peak time for such events. He wasn't exactly required to attend, of course. Just like he wasn't required to work weekends, or stay late most nights until after seven. Nobody came right out and mentioned it. Nobody said he had to work three-hundred and sixty-five days a year--it was just impossible not to and still stay on top of an assistant directorship. That's what they didn't tell you beforehand, along with  the likelihood of becoming a full-time desk jockey, and your increased risk for heart attack, alcoholism, and divorce. And so he was not at home today cleaning the gutters of his empty house, and the crushing workload was a mixed blessing, under the circumstances.

As Skinner worked his way through heavy weekend metro traffic toward the National airport he now and then observed the pedestrians and passengers of other cars. Citizens. Ordinary citizens, filing to and from their homes and jobs. Most of them had power, to one degree or another, but not the kind of powers he juggled every day. Sometimes he envied their ignorance, their less stressful lives, but the envy was usually fleeting. He liked his job. . .more or less; though it wasn't precisely what he'd expected or planned on. Before taking over the CJIS division, he'd spent most of his career working his way up the ladder in the criminal investigations division in D.C. Then, five years ago, he'd been asked to serve as SAC of the Philadelphia field office. It wasn't the kind of opportunity a man could afford to turn down, and so he'd packed up his life and left D.C., not knowing whether he'd ever return. Hoping, but not knowing.

Now here he was again, back at headquarters. Neither his time in CID or his stint in Philadelphia had really prepared him for information services, in his own opinion, but higher powers had apparently thought otherwise. And what man shared doubts of his own competency with his superiors? Skinner sighed and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as waited at an inordinately long light. His mind was busy turning over details of all the projects on his agenda. A hundred hot sheets and cases and memos were heaped on his desk awaiting immediate attention--and a hundred more made up another layer of work, only slightly less pressing. And he was on his way out of town.

He almost smiled: the thought of leaving his desk behind for a few days was undeniably satisfying; but he knew its glossy wood surface would only be piled higher when he returned. *I'm a popular guy*, he thought dryly, then grimaced sourly to himself. *Now if only I could get them to slice another ten million or so out of the budgetary pie. Obviously I haven't figured out whose ass to kiss yet.*

Skinner's cellular rang, breaking into his thoughts. "Skinner," he said shortly, answering it.

"Sir, Bob Charles. I'm sorry to bother you--"

"Erase the apologies and spit it out, Bob."

"I need your approval to expedite a fingerprint search for Kidder. He just called, bitched about lag time on this bombing case of theirs."

"Who's working it now?"

"I've got twelve people on it already--"

"Jesus Chri--" Skinner cut himself off irritably. "And he wants more?"

"He likes to quote the numbers, sir. Twenty-eight hundred people--yadda yadda--thinks it should be like pulling scarves out a clown's ass--why twelve? Why not twenty? Why twenty, why not--"

"I get the picture," Skinner interrupted tersely. He sighed. "It is a hot case. I've had justice breathing down my neck all week. Put twelve more people on it. Don't use up all my experts though. Take them from where they can be spared. If you're using less experienced examiners they can set up a cross-check system--have them pull likelies and submit them to senior analysts."

"That should shut him up for a bit," Charles said with relief. "Thank you, sir. Uh, while I have you on the phone--"

Ten minutes and ten semi-solved problems later, Skinner hung up and absently rubbed a hand across his forehead. He always felt halfway to a headache these days. *And I've got another headache just waiting for me.* He sighed and tried not to think about the next three days. Chicago in midwinter. Hotel food, incessant glad-handing, politicking and beery bloody anecdotes that went overtime into the small hours--it wouldn't have been such a dire prospect, really, if it weren't for one little detail.

Mulder.

What on earth had prompted him to invite Mulder to this affair was beyond Skinner's comprehension. It was an unaccountable, mysterious lapse in sense. He had dozens of good people in his division, men and women much higher than Mulder on the ladder, more deserving of a few days scarfing up free food and making useful connections with defense department types. And yet he'd invited Fox Mulder--a titanic intellect, to be sure, but in a world full of icebergs. Skinner couldn't decide if Mulder was lightning just waiting to strike, or the spot where it had struck once too often. To hear some people tell it, the man was half psychic, half Sherlock Holmes, but definitely one hundred percent fruitcake. His marginal, offbeat department really had no place in Skinner's section--had no place in the bureau probably--but Skinner had recently been saddled with the "X-Files" and their eccentric basement curator during a reorganization. Blevins had positively smirked during the hand-off.

Skinner had first heard about Mulder years ago. Mulder's career had been tracked by a lot of people in the bureau from the first day he hit the academy, including, it was rumored, by the director himself. He was commonly believed to be a psychologist, though in truth he held no doctoral degree as such. Nonetheless he'd distinguished himself while earning his bachelor's at Oxford by authoring a series of articles on serial killers, and had vaulted into the international spotlight by assisting Scotland Yard on the Yorkshire Slasher case. His profile had led directly to Wield's capture--moreover, it had been a profile in direct opposition to that of the FBI's own assisting analyst. It was said that both Douglas and Teten had angled for Mulder, wooing him into the bureau with the aim of bringing him into the ISU at Quantico. Words such as 'prodigy' and 'genius' were bandied about and gradually attached themselves to Mulder's name, the implication generally being that the man was some sort of intuitive profiler, naturally gifted with insight into the criminal mind.

And for a time, the growing legend seemed borne out. He had lent himself to a number of cases, and had several high-profile successes. His star had risen steadily and he had seemed destined to ascend all the way to the top. Then, inexplicably, he'd dropped out of the race. Mentors subtly disavowed him; friends and coworkers slunk away one by one. His name lost its patina of genius and began to be associated with other words. Crackpot. Lunatic. Flake. 'Spooky', people still called him, but the nickname had lost its positive overtones, and referred not to his intuitive genius but to his eccentricity. It became not praise but derision.

Skinner had been in Philadelphia for a while during this period, and after returning to D.C. he'd been unable to find out just what had happened to Mulder--not that he'd really been trying. He had met the man once during his time in Philly, not long after his arrival, and he'd spent the rest of his time there trying hard to blot the incident from memory. Since Skinner's return, the younger man's name had come up once or twice in the exchange of casual gossip, but no one had been sure what had caused his early, unexpected burn out. Consensus tended to suggest it was just one of those things that happened sometimes. "Prodigies never last the long haul," Skinner had once heard someone say cynically.

And now Mulder was his star burn-out, another problem for his full plate. And he was turning out to be a handful. The first few times Skinner had met up with Mulder again, the other man had been carefully neutral, polite but all eyes: intense, green and almost disturbingly steady eyes. Their previous contact was not mentioned by either man right away, but eventually they'd shared the requisite uncomfortable conversation on the matter. They'd got through it quickly, agreed to a tabula rasa, and the subject had never come up again.

Meeting Mulder on a purely professional level had been a far different experience than Skinner had expected. He'd felt he was encountering a strikingly different mind, and it had uncharacteristically intimidated him at first. Mulder was not quite of his surroundings. He did not fit in, and did not try to--not as far as Skinner could tell. He sat in meetings, observing proceedings as if he were in some way just a spectator among his bureau peers, a movie star taking notes for his role, a doctor analyzing his patients. Or an alien studying the natives.

Though initially Mulder had appeared to be taking great care not to press himself on Skinner in any way, it wasn't long before he'd shaken off his initial reserve and revealed to Skinner his full panoply of butterfly colors. Skinner suspected that Mulder was simply incapable of repressing himself; Skinner's own experience with him, though fleeting, backed this up. The man was an eccentric, all right. The man was a bizarrity of nature. He quickly took to dropping by Skinner's office and requesting case approval for investigations. Some of them--*most* of them--smelled to Skinner like things grabbed directly off the front page of a supermarket tabloid. And yet somehow Mulder always had a plausible rationale for investigating. This business, the routine of cases (even though the cases themselves were far from routine) Skinner could deal with. But Mulder, like some bright and hyperactive child, had apparently found in Skinner a hard but tolerant sounding board for his enthusiasm. He collared Skinner after meetings and cheerfully tossed out statistics on flesh-eating parasites and reports of cryptozoological sightings. He turned up late at night in front of the vending machines on the fourth floor, warning Skinner against carcinogenic additives in the crackers. He lurked in his basement, but was constantly popping out and snagging Skinner as he went to or from his car, chatting him up about expense accounts and critiquing his ties.

If Skinner had thought for one minute that Mulder was playing upon their previous brief acquaintance, he would have cut the man off without a moment's hesitation. But despite his naturally wary disposition, Skinner had decided, after much private debate, that Mulder was not in fact working that old angle. Mulder wanted something, yes. He always wanted something. He was consistently begging or arguing one point or another, whether it was something as concrete as an extra laser printer or as abstract as Skinner's acknowledgment that 'life on Mars really is more likely than not, sir.' But his weirdly bright-eyed interest in Skinner seemed to be something else entirely. It struck Skinner as an unexpectedly impersonal attachment, the simple gravitation of a man who really had no one else to turn to in the bureau. There was his partner, Scully, of course, but a crisis in lab personnel had her shuttling back and forth between HQ and Quantico in recent weeks, as she was called on to perform autopsies for various non 'X-File' cases.

Skinner hoped she'd be back on full-time soon to distract Mulder and keep his energies engaged; in her absence the man seemed to be underfoot even more than usual. He indisputably habituated Skinner's office more often than any other half dozen agents put together. On the other hand, he was also wittier, more diverting and more interesting than any half dozen agents put together, so as yet Skinner had not brought himself to discourage his appearances, even when they seemed only tangentially relevant to a case.

Riding his train of thought, it was a few minutes before Skinner realized he was trying to anticipate what he'd let himself in for, but he couldn't quite decide if it was going to be hell or only a close, lunatic approximation. *Did I pack enough antacids*, he wondered idly. Reaching the airport a few minutes later he pulled into a rated parking space. He unloaded his luggage, hefted it up, and walked to the terminal. After he'd checked his luggage he found his departure lounge and showed his ticket at the desk, then looked around warily.

Seeing no sign of Mulder, he wandered over to the nearest bar. He ordered a scotch and rested a hip on a barstool, lapsing into a casual watch that divided itself between football highlights on the TV and the wide corridor outside. A woman down the bar caught his eye and smiled faintly, then abruptly looked away. Taken off guard, Skinner realized that he must have been frowning at her. For a few moments he contemplated apologizing, perhaps even rising and going over to do so, then sighed inwardly at the pointlessness of striking up even the briefest of bar flirtations.

He thought about calling Sharon, just to let her know he'd be out of town in case she tried to reach him. *What are the odds.* He downed his scotch and had just lowered his glass when a face appeared reflected in the bar mirror, behind his right shoulder. Despite nerves of steel Skinner twitched and felt his hand tense on chilled glass. Fingers lightly brushed his sleeve.

"Sir."

Skinner turned, face tensing into another frown. He flicked a glance up and down Mulder, unconsciously trying to find something to pick on that would firmly cement his annoyance with the other man for the trip ahead. His touchy mood itched at him and he felt an instinctive need to ensure that Mulder recognized his place.

"Why aren't you wearing a suit?" he said, boring a hard, challenging gaze into the younger man's. But Mulder just gave a small, tolerant smile.

"Conference doesn't start until tomorrow. . .I hate wearing suits on planes." He glanced across the counter as the bar maid approached. "Heineken--"

"We need to be getting on board," Skinner interrupted.

"We have twenty minutes," Mulder said mildly, sliding onto a stool. He nodded at the bar maid and settled back, swivelling to and fro on the stool a few times as if testing its rotative measure, then turning to face Skinner. Green eyes gave him an unwavering catlike contemplation until Skinner was forced to drag his own gaze away from the television and meet them.

"Something on your mind, Agent?"

"I just wanted to thank you for inviting me, sir. I don't often get to go to these things."

Skinner cleared his throat, disliking the expression of gratitude without quite knowing why. "Thanks aren't necessary, Agent Mulder."

Mulder tilted his head, then busied himself paying for his beer and sipping at it. Attempting to concentrate on the television, Skinner stared out across the bar above Mulder's head, then caught himself watching the other man without meaning to. Even just staring into his beer, Mulder somehow suggested a man so utterly absorbed in his own world that it seemed unlikely he could be aware of his surroundings. Skinner knew this couldn't really be true, but he found himself carelessly studying the other man's abstracted profile, the heavily lidded eyes and full lips, the short molded hair which curved closely around a small neat ear. He looked younger than his actual age; sometimes, like now, he seemed a good decade younger--a college or grad student, travelling home for the holidays perhaps. His bulky outdoors jacket and jeans only added to the image. How many years had it been, exactly. . .

Mulder turned his head to look at him. Feeling his jaw tighten, Skinner looked resolutely back at the TV.

"I heard they caught the Route-One Ripper," Mulder said after a moment. "Feathers will be distributed soon, I imagine. Congratulations."

Mulder sounded sincere enough, but Skinner shook his head. "It's not my success," he said flatly. "My contribution to the ISU is nominal." He focused a narrow-eyed gaze on Mulder. "Actually, I heard Bohannen asked for *your* input on the profile. . .there wouldn't be any substance to that rumor, would there, Agent?"

Mulder smiled dryly. "How could there be, you didn't see my name on the apprehension report, did you."

It was not a question, and Skinner felt a stab of irritation. "Mulder, if you don't speak up--"

"Oh, like I care," Mulder said impatiently, shrugging it off. "He got caught, that's all that matters."

"If anyone needs feathers in his cap, it's you," Skinner said bluntly. He picked up his glass again and swirled it to see if any liquor remained. Ice clinked gently. "Every feather counts," he added, almost muttering.

"I'm not on the fast track anymore, sir."

"That's not the point--"

"Besides, I like my hidey-hole. Where else would I get away with that triple-X cable feed?"

"If I thought for one minute you were serious--"

Mulder laughed and Skinner made a face that camouflaged a temporary disposition to smile. Then there was a small inexplicably awkward silence, in which Mulder glanced at his watch and Skinner looked out into the concourse.

"I know you don't need to hear this--" Mulder began.

Skinner cut him short. "Then whatever it is don't say it."

"Walter--"

"*Agent* Mulder."

They stared at each other, and then Mulder smiled with sudden impishness. "I was just going to reassure you that I'll be a good boy."

Skinner tried not to wince, and failed. He gave the other man an iron hard glare. He'd been told often enough by Sharon that he looked like a flat-out mean bulldog when he 'got that look on his face'. The one he could feel himself directing at Mulder now. "Agent Mulder, this is not a topic of conversation."

"We're both adults," Mulder observed reasonably.

Skinner hated pointed reasonableness, particularly when offered by someone as essentially unreasonable as Fox Mulder. He stood and gathered his coat.

"I just didn't want you to think that I thought. . .anything," Mulder went on, rising also.

"Drop it," Skinner said, almost snarling with irritation. Suddenly he became aware of the chance proximity of their bodies as they stood next to their abandoned barstools, and that he was the focus of Mulder's gleaming eyes. He felt an angry, helpless flush of emotion that spilled up from the past without warning.

"On the other hand, I wasn't sure I should assume. . .that there was nothing to assume," Mulder finished blandly.

Pinned and compelled by the other man's strong, steady eyes, and the silent question they asked, Skinner could only stare back. He swallowed once and worked his jaw to ease the tension that was a perpetual ache in his flesh. "There is nothing to assume," he replied finally, very deliberately.

Mulder studied him a second, then nodded. "Okay. I'm going to the shop across the way. Do you want anything?"

"No--just hurry up." Privately agitated--more than he cared to admit--Skinner walked to the departure gate and looked out over the runway. A grey front of clouds was visible to the north, gradually encroaching and laying a deeper chill on the clear day. The tarmac stretched endlessly; as he watched, a small aircraft wheeled across its surface in the far distance. Their own plane
filled the foreground, a dull silver carrier that seemed to represent perfectly the miracle of modern aviation.

*Why did I invite him along. . .this was a mistake, pure and simple. The only way I could have screwed it up further is if the conference had been in Philadelphia. It if had been, though, I would never have asked him. . .would I?*

Mulder reappeared when it was time to board, carrying a largish brown paper bag in the crook of his arm, and a smaller bag in his hand, from which he winkled out a steady feed of sunflower seeds. As they stood in line Skinner watched with reluctant fascination as Mulder followed this repetitive routine: cracking open a seed, chewing it meditatively a moment, then removing the empty seed from his mouth and tucking it in a pocket. Seed to hand, hand to mouth--*crack*--chew, seed back to hand, hand to pocket, hand to bag. . .

Skinner forced himself to look away before he said anything rude. Besides, discussion of Mulder's oral fixations might well lead into dangerous territory. Sprung from the granite keep of the Hoover building and leaving his empty home behind, even if only for the prospect of three business-oriented days, Skinner was feeling restless. It was an unsafe feeling, and he resisted it strongly.

Once aboard the plane, Skinner's distractions were translated into a more mundane variety of irritants; the densely crowded realm of coach was fitted out and complete with whining babies and jostling bodies attempting to load their luggage in overhead racks. After navigating the aisle he and Mulder settled themselves in their seats, next to a silent businessman who was staring out the window and eyeing the ground as if he wanted to commit its solid surface to  memory.

Mulder took the middle seat with equanimity and relaxed into it as best he could given his length of leg. He shrugged out of his jacket but ensconced himself within its bulky embrace, sinking into its depths and nearly disappearing there. From this cocoon Skinner could hear the steady cracking of seeds recommence, and from the corner of his eye he saw Mulder pull a handful of tabloid magazines from his bag. He closed his eyes and listened, rather than saw, the crackling of bag and pages; felt the nudging shifts as Mulder maneuvered himself and his prizes, apparently trying to find a stash for them and a place for his legs and a way to read comfortably.

Mulder's small movements and noises wove into the background noise of the plane and were somehow oddly lulling rather than annoying. Skinner felt some of the tension begin to seep from his shoulders as he reclined in his seat. This, perhaps, was one of the reasons he'd asked Mulder along instead of some other agent. He was high-maintenance, yes, but he could also be blissfully self-absorbed, and if there was any social duty Skinner hated more than having to match someone in idle chit-chat he hadn't discovered it yet. Mulder's own brand of conversation was more idle than not, but on the other hand he rarely seemed to expect any response.

As if reading Skinner's mind and determined to test the limits of his patience, Mulder announced gravely, "I didn't realize we'd caught the Bat Baby, sir."

Skinner refused to open his eyes. His laconic "What?" was more a rote sound of acknowledgment than a real response.

"*Weekly World News* has photos of the secret FBI operation that led to his capture. . .why didn't you let me in on the bust, sir? I've put in a lot of time on the Bat Baby."

Opening his eyes and turning a gritty look on Mulder, Skinner said dryly, "I thought you were going to behave." He regretted his choice of words almost instantly; they sounded more like familiar teasing than like the admonishment he'd intended. But Mulder just peered out over the collar of his jacket with eyes whose cool, smooth jade expressed only a curious interest.

"Isn't this you inspecting the Bat Baby's wing, sir? Not the best picture of you I've seen. . ." He pulled another seed from his bag and cracked it lightly as he turned a page.

Skinner sighed. It was looking to be a long flight.

They were still talking.

"You're right," the man was saying when Skinner returned to his seat. "New Jersey *is* a wilderness. It's a jungle. Atlantic City's the worst. Every time I go there I know I'm taking my life in my hands. But I can't stop--love to gamble. Not an addict, not like some a' those guys, but still--" The man leaned in close to Mulder, gave him a knowing look. "Some of those guys at the slot machines? Phew." He shook his head, made a face of disgust. "Lemme tell ya, these guys do *not* stop to bathe, they don't even stop to take a piss. You know what they do? Some a' them, they wear those adult diapers; some a' them don't even bother with that, they just whip it out and piss in their token cup--or on the fuckin' *floor*, 'scuse my language."

"'S'all right," Mulder said mildly. He tossed Skinner an amused glance as the other man slid back into his seat, then resumed his conversation. "You get to Atlantic City often, then?" At the man's nod, he asked, "Ever see any odd people there--really odd, I mean--naked, Neanderthal, not too picky about where their dinner comes from?"

Skinner didn't quite groan aloud but he came close. He stared straight ahead a moment, counted to three, then looked out down the aisle and beckoned the stewardess his way. *Time for another scotch, I think.*

"'Scuse me?" the man said.

"There were some reported sightings several months ago of feral, aboriginal persons who lived in the woodland on the city's environs and would enter the city itself to feed--usually from dumpsters. One particular sighting was of a female, large, wild, with brachiating characteristics--an unusual acrobatic dexterity, you might say."

Mulder reported this calmly, as if it were the most natural anecdote imaginable, rather than the fermented fruit of his own quirky brain stem. It was the kind of colorful drivel that Skinner could hardly bear to listen to at first, but which  insinuated itself into his ear despite his attempts to block it out; Mulder's voice and words had a way of twisting into his aural canal like a corkscrew or a carnivorous worm, until his defenses were breached and his resistance was eroded and it all began to sound perfectly reasonable.

"Sounds like a woman I dated once," the man said, snickering complacently.

Mulder gave a tiny, dry chuckle in return that sounded polite and pro forma.

"So is that what you guys do there in the FBI?" the man asked with sardonic interest. "Chase after these strange reports people are always givin' ya?"

*No*, Skinner wanted to yell. As the stewardess set down his drink, he slewed a sidelong glare on the man that cut a line neatly past Mulder's oblivious nose.

"Sometimes," Mulder said, but his voice was musing and absent, as if he were still tracking his own train of thought. "Macromutation," he said, almost to himself.

The man released a small "Huh?"

"Macromutation--it's a hypothesis suggesting that a significant mutation or adaptation can occur in sudden leaps, that change doesn't necessarily have to take place gradually through Darwinian evolution. A man named Goldschmidt was its chief proponent earlier in the century. Though sudden drastic mutations would be most likely to produce maladapted creatures incapable of survival, he believed that occasional miracles were possible. 'Hopeful monsters' was the term he liked to use--that's a good one, isn't it?"

The man by the window nodded blankly and glanced across Mulder to Skinner, who stared determinedly into his open laptop and pretended not to notice the look. *You're on your own, buddy.*

Trying to absorb himself in his work, Skinner nonetheless found himself more than half listening to the conversation next to him as it continued. Mulder, without ever quite revealing confidential case details, still covered a lot of relevant ground, at least from Skinner's perspective. How Mulder managed to segue from contortionist homicidal liver-eating maniacs to psychokinetic ghosts to prehistoric arboreal flesh-eating mites to reincarnating criminals--without ever quite admitting to the man that he'd actually worked on such cases--was something Skinner couldn't follow, but the flights of speculative fancy he took with every subject sounded disarmingly plausible.

*I should be taking notes*, Skinner thought. *This is exactly how he convinces me to sign those damn 302s--the trick is there somewhere.* If he could figure out what it was, maybe he wouldn't be so susceptible to Mulder's ingenuous patter.

"We only have access to those aspects of reality for which we possess neural receptors and transducers," Skinner heard Mulder say, apropos to something or other. "There are many aspects of the world, the universe, that we don't have natural transducers for--a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, just for starters. It's a kind of anthropocentrism to believe that our limited human perceptions constitute reality."

"Sure, yeah," the man said uncertainly, beginning to look bored and trapped.

After a little while longer, the conversation in the seats next to him dwindled off, and Skinner worked in relative silence--apart from the crying baby down the aisle. Mulder reabsorbed himself in his tabloid literature for a few minutes and then seemed to fall asleep. As they began their landing approach, Skinner looked over and nudged him.

A single green eye worked itself open and squinted at him.

"Sit up and put on your seatbelt," Skinner said, fighting off an annoyingly paternal urge to straighten the other's rumpled clothes.

Mulder pulled out of his slouch with the graceful ease of a younger, more limber man, stretching as best he could in the cramped seat and blinking into alertness like a wakened cat. "We there?"

"We're landing."

Mulder leaned slightly into the space of the man by the window and glanced out. "Wow. Some sky."

"Looks like a blizzard coming," said the man by the window.

Skinner felt a thrill of alarm at the very thought. Snowed in with Mulder? Could even nature be so cruel? Visions of moody confinement overlaid themselves with possibilities of sensual temptation and blended confusingly together, until he wasn't sure if the weather was cause for optimism or pessimism.

*Pessimism. Stick with it, Walter*, he told himself. *Soldier through this. You've been in the jungles of Vietnam, slogging through mud and bullets, eating rancid chipped beef, clawing at your rotten, itching feet until they bled. You can resist this temptation. . .oh hell.* He sighed and shut down his laptop; folded up his tray; glanced across the seats to the window and tried to discern the temper of the sky. The man in the far seat had leaned forward to similar purpose, and his head partially blocked Skinner's view. He had big flat salmon-colored ears, brown hair that looked somehow both waxed and dusty, and wore a drab pinstripe suit the shade of a shark's skin, but a red silk power tie screamed with stoplight intensity from between his lapels.

"Great weather to be coming home to," the man groused, turning suddenly to meet Skinner's eyes. His own were a watery shade of pale blue.

Skinner, caught off-guard, grunted once in a noncommital response.

"You in the F-B-I, too, huh?" the man said, voicing the question with an almost mechanical boredom as if it were ritual and required: you sat next to a man on a plane, you asked his business.

"Yes," Skinner said shortly, pulling back fully into his seat and staring straight ahead.

Deterred from pursuit, the man turned his attention back to Mulder as the plane began its final descent. "You guys--they let you bring guns on the plane, don't they?"

"We're packing heat," Mulder agreed solemnly, but with a small thread of mischief.

"Case of terrorists, right?" the man said with a knowing wink.

"No, just to keep up our image," Mulder replied in bland tones, closing his eyes and sinking back into himself again for the duration of the landing.

Skinner resolutely foiled the impulse to grin.

"Don't you think we should have gotten a rental car?" Mulder muttered, staring out into the bleak Chicago landscape. Buildings blurred into one another, a collage of dun, black, grey; stone and concrete; steel and brick. The sky seemed lower; cloud cover blanketed the rooftops and snowflakes had begun to swirl out of the sky like fat wet almond blossoms cast into the grim darkness. Streetlights were not yet on, but business lights struck the eye, swathes of neon and fluorescence limning the storefronts along dank strips of street.

"We won't need one," Skinner said, without rancor. His voice seemed quiet to his own ears, its usual unconscious force muted by the thick, stuffy air of the taxi's heated interior.

Mulder, as if his normal argumentative tendencies were muffled by the same cottony torpor, didn't respond, continuing to look out the window as they slid slowly through downtown traffic. After a few minutes, he said, "How long do you think it takes a place like this to kill the soul?"

Skinner grimaced instinctively at such a ponderous, depressive question. "Do me a favor and try not to jump the track for the next few days, okay, Mulder?" he said irritably.

"I'm fine," Mulder said.

It was an oddly flat statement, Skinner thought, but it carried the flavor of assurance, as if Mulder were constantly gauging just this--the simple measure of his being, his sanity as it were; as if he had his eye always on the needle and were ready to offer a reading at any given moment. How many people questioned him on the matter, Skinner wondered. Scully? Friends and family? Co-workers? Skinner had spoken half facetiously; Mulder, however, had spoken with casual yet complete seriousness.

Skinner could not help but find this disturbing.

They reached the hotel after what seemed an unconscionably long drive; Skinner, despite himself, ended up confronting the cabbie with his suspicions and helping a pair of sullen-looking bellhops unload the luggage, a procedure that in itself dragged on far longer than seemed necessary, until Skinner felt himself to be towering like an impatient foreign giant amidst a milling, slow-moving handful of indifferent urban natives. He could only assume Mulder had gone ahead to check in and had not, for instance, spotted a half-human tentacle dragging a child into a sewer great and abandoned him for the chase.

Mulder entered the lobby and blinked at the crowds of suited men clumped around its contours, talking and laughing with raucous good-humor.

*God, this is going to be a short trip to hell*, he thought immediately.

He came up on the counter, stretching like a gleaming altar, fortuitously empty of guests. At the center, on the service side, a young man stood with amiable patience watching Mulder approach.

"I'm checking in. Two rooms. Reservations for Skinner and Mulder."

The young man at once commenced the necessary instrumentation of the postmodern age, lighting into his computer terminal with a speed and frequency of keystroke that suggested he was calculating vectors for the next moon landing. "Oh oh," he said after a short moment, more to himself than Mulder.

"Oh oh?" Mulder echoed warily. He waited for a comment, but the clerk had perfected that peculiar ability of service personnel to concentrate utterly on a task at hand while ignoring--or perhaps utterly forgetting--the customer who stood mere inches away.

"What's wrong?" Mulder finally prodded.

"Nothing," the man said, frowning. He looked up. "You're fine. Lucky, though. Your reservations are here."

From the clerk's tone this matter of fact was an accomplishment he himself had pulled off despite great odds--or a trick not unlike withdrawing a large rabbit from a small hat--and Mulder wondered if he should express gratitude.

"We're full up. You got the last two rooms," the man said suddenly, shaking his head as if impressed by this coincidence.

"No kidding." Mulder focused on this statement with thoughtful, unexpected attention. He glanced over his shoulder, then at the man's name tag. "Listen--Mark--are you a romantic?"

Mark blinked, then replied gamely, "Sure. I think so." He gave the tiny, uncertain smile of a man who is chronically beset by odd requests from eccentric strangers.

Mulder smiled, drew a twenty from his wallet, paused to consider, then added another. He slid the bills across the counter to Mark, who raised his brows and gave them an appreciative look.

"Listen, those two rooms--I don't suppose you could have miscounted--? You sure there isn't just one room left--?"

Mark caught on with admirable immediacy. "Why, I think you're right," he said with a pleased animation quite unlike his previous facade of professionalism. He made a fine show of rereading his computer screen and punching a few keys. "I'm sorry, sir, we have *one* room left." He cocked his
head and pulled a moue of facile sympathy.

Mulder gave a tiny smirk. "Damn," he said calmly, just as Skinner appeared at his shoulder. He met the A.D.'s cool eyes with a face wiped clean of duplicity. "There's been a problem with our reservations," he reported, and watched Skinner turn a sedate, dangerous scowl on the clerk. *Hang in there*, he silently communicated to the increasingly unnerved Mark, who had straightened his posture perceptibly and was shooting small glances Mulder's way. He did not however seem at all surprised that the object of his affectionate machinations had turned out to be a king-sized, not to say hulking, man with a gun on his hip.

"What's the problem?" Skinner asked, his voice the brooding, foreboding rumble of thunder before a storm.

"Um, there's only one room left in the hotel--sir?" Mark's voice rose slightly as he delivered this information.

"I made reservations for two rooms," Skinner said in a flawlessly toneless voice. "Find another."

Mulder, stepping back to stand slightly behind Skinner's right shoulder, shook his head at Mark and winked. Mark gave him a strident wide-eyed look in return that would never have escaped Skinner's notice if someone from across the lobby hadn't suddenly yelled "Bulldog!"

Skinner, turning to face the address, presented the appearance of one who is about to be gut-punched. Braced, face chiseled, he scanned the crowd and observed as a man detached himself at headed his way. *Oh great.*

"Walter S. Skinner!" the fellow enthused as he arrived by the desk. He sketched off a salute to Skinner, then pumped the A.D.'s hand with a manic bonhomie rarely seen outside the walled enclaves of Elks and Shriners meeting halls.
 
Skinner smiled briefly. "Rich," he said, by way of greeting. "Good to see you."

"You're looking buff, old man," Rich said, beginning a gesture to punch the other man in the shoulder, which under Skinner's sharp gaze transformed itself a bit awkwardly into a pinching examination of his suit material. "Coming up in the world," he said with a wide grin.

Skinner winced, aware of Mulder's bright eye on them. "Yeah, thanks," he said, distracted by notice of a room key appearing in the clerk's hand. As it was being surreptitiously slid across the counter to Mulder, Skinner cleared his throat and excused himself from Rich. "What is that?" he said, glaring pointedly at the key, then at the clerk.

"Sir," Mulder said, scooping the key out of sight into a pocket. He was trying to draw Skinner's fire, and succeeded, earning his own baleful glare.

Skinner paused abruptly, taking stock of the situation: the clerk's nervous facade, Mulder's carefully neutral gaze, Rich Joyce's interested study.

"Problem with your room?" Rich asked.

"No," Skinner said immediately, without thinking. Denial was automatic; it was as if a spark arced through his wiring to make a familiar connection. When in doubt, deny everything--or at least admit to nothing. Though he liked to think himself an honest man, these small denials had become second nature to him, and their origin wasn't professional but personal. *No, the coffee's fine. No, I'm not angry. No, I'm just tired. No, you look great, Sharon. No. No. No.*

When combined with an innate tendency not to create a fuss, this familiar gesture of denial defused Skinner's attack; his adopted persona of hard-nosed government executive subsided into stoic resignation.

Rather naturally enough, Rich had by this time turned his attention to Mulder, who himself was not quite leaning on the counter, in a loose, lanky pose like that of a jaded GQ model. The two men were sizing each other up, Mulder with a kind of feline skepticism, Rich with a more canine, predatory gleam.

"This is one of my subordinate agents--" *My insubordinate agents.* "--Fox Mulder." His moved his hand in a brief, careless wave between the men. "Rich Joyce, ASAC out of Dallas."

"Violent Crimes," Joyce offered, as if it were a menu choice or a personal talent.

Straightening, Mulder shook Joyce's hand and nodded: aloof but polite. Joyce, on the other hand, radiated the gawkish fascination of a man who has just shook hands or fins with a particularly grotesque carnival geek. He flicked Skinner a sardonic, sympathetic look that raised the A.D.'s hackles.

"We need to finish checking in," Skinner said brusquely. Almost at once he regretted the not-so-subtle snub, but years of experience prevented him from over-compensating with a suggestion that they catch up later over drinks.

"Sure, sure, we'll catch up later over drinks," Joyce said with disheartening telepathy.

By the time Skinner and Mulder had made it to the elevator they had passed through a gauntlet of glad-handers, all of whom seemed to know one or the other of them. Skinner's several acquaintances tended to be older, with eyes that had seen too much, guts that obscured their belts, and voices that carried in a crowd. Those who greeted Mulder, on the other hand, were an eclectic bunch that included one of the most beautiful women Skinner had ever seen outside the pages of a fashion rag; an untidy and uneasy man who seemed to have just dug himself up out of a bunker and who greeted Mulder with what appeared to be a secret hand signal; a man Skinner recognized as Ronald Biggs, a distinguished black agent still avidly pursuing the Green River Killer; and a small gaggle of bureau accountants whose connection with Mulder seemed destined to remain forever an enigma until Skinner noted their collective height and guessed that it had something to do with league basketball.

It truly surprised Skinner that Mulder was on speaking terms with so many other bureau personnel--from all points of the compass, no less. He himself knew most everyone in the higher strata of bureau bureaucracy, of course, but Mulder--that was another story.

Their room was good-sized, but under the circumstances far too small for Skinner's comfort. Moving out of the bellhop's way, he stood staring at the beds, unaware of his characteristic scowl in the same way a lion is unselfconscious of his menace. He did finally notice both Mulder and the bellhop watching him, which provoked him to announce that he was going to take a shower. Let Mulder tip the creep, he thought, grabbing his smaller overnight case and abandoning them to their arrangements.

When he had showered and finally returned from that exquisite indulgence of steam and lather, Mulder was lying on one of the beds.

Skinner paused in the doorway, the steam-freighted air rolling richly out from behind him. The room should have been cooler, but from the feel of things Mulder must have turned up the heat. He was face-down now, coat and sweater and boots off, his worn jeans dismayingly form-fitting. He was, to all appearances, asleep, and he was, in the bluntest possible terms, looking incredibly fuckable. Skinner ground his teeth in his tensed jaw, staring through narrowed eyes.

The unexpectedness of the display threw him. Short thick hair as tangible a pleasure as cat's fur curled around the amazingly-shaped head; it was almost a leopard's pelt, a leopard's sleeping profile, a leopard's casually slung length of body. The body itself was creamily light and slim, unflawed by its minor points of age, bearing a sparse, artlessly perfect distribution of moles and freckles; a masculine but natural physique, unstressed by calculated over-maintenance or the brutal design of a fitness regime like Skinner's own. He liked his own body; he relished Mulder's in a different, more thrilling way--relished its *difference*--the small hollow of back, the ripely curved ass--with a raw simple appreciation that made him want to plant his dick there as far inside as nature could bear.

*Christ, this won't work.* Skinner sweated and fumed, tearing his eyes away from Mulder's pillowed profile. He went to the desk and picked up the phone, preparing to hunt down an official of hotel management and restate his demands. Behind him he heard movement on the bed, and his mind supplied an image of Mulder rolling over. He punched finger to phone button grimly.

"Who are you calling?" Mulder asked sleepily.

"Desk," Skinner made the mistake of saying.

"If it bothers you so much, sharing a room, I'll go to another hotel," Mulder said. His voice was low, unconcerned. . .sensual.

Skinner's lips thinned and his finger stabbed the hook switch just as a voice said *Hello, front desk.* He paused, debating. "The conference is *here*," he said gloomily. It would be inconvenient for Mulder to shuttle between hotels--and though Skinner didn't mind inconveniencing Mulder, under the current circumstances he balked at forcing such an event, which seemed to him the equivalent of tossing a cat out in the snow.

"I'm sure there's something else around here. . .the Hilton's down the street, I think. We wouldn't get conference rates, but still. . ."

Skinner turned to see the agent smiling with needling insouciance. "Drop it," he growled, following suit by dropping the receiver back into its cradle.

"I'm perfectly capable of keeping my hands to myself, you know," Mulder said dryly. Despite his words, he lay sprawled in a devastatingly appealing pose, one arm slung over his head, the other draped across his torso, long fingers fiddling lightly across his ribs. "Where I got this reputation as a federally-funded Lothario, I'd really like to know."

When their gazes met, Skinner flushed at the edges. "I don't know about everyone else but I'm basing my assessment on past experience," he said in a voice of cold, silken warning.

Mulder didn't appear to be angry, but the easy warmth in his face dropped a notch and he took on a broody aspect, as if he were turning inward. "You haven't written anything about me on a bathroom wall, have you?" he said.

Skinner's eyes narrowed. Mulder's tone was becoming too familiar for his liking, and his voice carried other flavors of feeling that mixed poorly and made in whole for an unpleasant taste: mockery, self-mockery, resentment, and underneath it all a basic unhappiness that tugged at Skinner's concern despite his resistance.

"Don't get cute," Skinner said bluntly. Though he half expected Mulder to twist himself up into a sulk, the younger man just stared at him searchingly with his restless eyes until Skinner was forced to his feet. *You said you'd behave*, he felt like saying aloud--again--but couldn't bring himself to express his grievance so clearly. Particularly when he wasn't sure that he didn't appreciate the other man's flirtatious attention.

"Can't help myself," Mulder said after several long moments, at a point when Skinner had almost forgotten what this remark was in response to.

*I'm already exhausted. On the run and cornered*, Skinner thought. *And god help me, I think this is what I came for.* He avoided looking at Mulder as he finished dressing, but knew from the corner of his eye when the younger man sat up. His peripheral vision presented a shot of Mulder pulling upright on the hotel bed, bare torso gleaming in the lamplight, jean-clad legs swinging to one side. He
looked like a hustler who'd been readying himself for service only to be disappointed.

Pulling his gaze away entirely, Walter Skinner concentrated on the familiar mundane details of dressing. Slide on the belt. Snap on the cufflinks. Knot the tie. Behind him were mattressy sounds as Mulder--what?--bounced off the bed? Evidence of further movement came more as a displacement of air than any sound on the plush carpet. And then the drapes slid across their track quietly; even from across the room Skinner felt the small touch of coolness from the uncovered window glass.

"It's snowing harder," Mulder said quietly. "I think this is going to be a real northern blizzard."

"Great," Skinner muttered. He turned, studied Mulder's form against the window, beyond which the sudden evening lay, broken by a few visible winking lights of the Chicago skyline. Snow swirled thickly, obscuring most of the city's detail. Mulder's darkly translucent reflection was visible in the glass; only belatedly, as it often happened, did Skinner recognize his own reflection and know that he too was being watched.

The opening night mixer was more or less optional and Mulder wasn't exactly the mixing type. The idea of manhandling him into attendance didn't appeal to Skinner. He cleared his throat. "You coming down?"

Mulder turned, smiled his usual unreadable smile. "Of course."

Thirty minutes later they were both in the thick of it, surrounded by bureau agents and representatives, criminological academics, and a host of product-development types handing out their business cards, all pleasantly buoyed by selections from the hotel bar. The crowd was dense and damp and Skinner was quickly immersed in a sea of semi-acquaintances and strangers bent on networking themselves straight to the top. Between conversations, he looked around for Mulder, but didn't see him.

*Probably slunk off to take in a movie*, Skinner thought sourly. He didn't really believe it, but something about Mulder always stirred the suspicion of insider information and easy outs. If you were given the usual cafeteria hotplate, you could bet Mulder knew the cook and had dibs on prime rib; if you were stuck in business class on a junket, Mulder would be bumped to first class; if there was a boring meeting to be sat through, Mulder would slip out to gossip with a pretty secretary and still be able to parrot back everything he'd missed.

Such were merely envious anecdotes Skinner had heard from other agents, but given a few observations of his own, they had the flavor of verity.

"What we're talking about, Mr Skinner, is a pressing mandate to establish a dialogue between the law enforcement communities and technologists. Industry, academia, government laboratories. New laboratory procedures aren't being taken advantage of, purely because of a lack of awareness of their existence. Now, I know you don't want to talk 'budget-planning', but the procurement fellows are the blah blah blah blah. . ."

Skinner blinked, swallowed a yawn, and tried to focus on the man speaking to him, whose vocal cords emitted the same unvarying, unnerving drone of a dentist's drill. Escaping from him on the pretext of refreshing his drink, Skinner by chance fell in with a far more incisive and coherent group that was gathered at one end of the bar discussing applications and evidentiary viability of DNA forensic technologies. It was a mixed bunch that included one of the more inoffensive  industry shills he'd met, and several bureau heads of SAC and ASAC rank. Familiar with most of their number, he felt comfortable joining in and ended up with them at a table, talking shop for the better part of an hour.

When the crowd began to thin and its members drift toward the dining room, Skinner looked for Mulder again, and found him ensconced in a dimly lit booth with a handful of mixed nuts, one of whom was expounding passionately on the government archival of alien artifacts when Skinner walked up.

Mulder caught Skinner's gaze; his own was amused, pleased--if Skinner had to choose one word, actually, he might have said content. He had the comfortable look of a man in his element; but then, Mulder often had that look, even in the midst of hostile cops or derisive fellow agents. The man thrived in shark-infested waters and Skinner, who handed admiration out sparingly, had to admire him for it.

"Agent Mulder, I'm having dinner." Skinner swept a look across their seated audience, whose faces bore polite respect but no particular worship, despite the legend 'A.D. Walter Skinner' scrawled on his adhesive lapel badge.

"I'll join you," Mulder said immediately. The man next to him slid out to release him from the booth, while Skinner stood by in discomfort, wondering if he should find a way to refuse the self-made invitation. While he was still pondering the question, Mulder fell into step beside him with a rare, restful silence. Given this, Skinner found himself unable to detach from Mulder's company without blatant rudeness.

The line winding out from the dining room was a different kind of deterrent. Both men stopped across the lobby and considered it.

"It's the weather," Mulder said. "No one's going anywhere else. They're all staying in."

Skinner sighed and looked around frowningly as if another restaurant might appear to his view like a miraculous visitation. "*We* could go out," he suggested half-heartedly. He deserved the  disbelieving glance Mulder gave him, knew it and gave up the idea.

"Room service," Mulder said simply. He gave Skinner an open, innocent look.

"Feel free to indulge your anti-social impulses, Agent Mulder. I'll wait in line, thank you."

"Room service is one of the few likely manifestations of first-hand evidence for a provident God."

Skinner blinked, but refused to let his mouth curve. "Is that a quote?"

"Well, mine." Mulder smiled with engaging charm.

Skinner worked his jaw thoughtfully and judged the appealing prospect of taking dinner with Mulder in the seclusion of a hotel room far too dangerous. "I'll be up later," he said, heading off toward the dining room. He did not look back, but thought he felt Mulder's eyes follow him nonetheless.
 

An hour and a half later, Walter Skinner entered the room upon a scene of spent decadence rivalling that of a small but thorough Roman orgy. In an instant it made him as sorry as he'd ever been that he'd skipped out on an invitation, particularly given the veal cutlet and vacuous conversation he'd just sat through.

The TV was on; the far bedspread littered with newsprint; the floor around that bed deluged with rumpled clothes that trailed bathward. A tray lay among the papers, strewn with expensive-looking chicken bones. Three empty bottles of imported beer stood on the bedside table. Skinner took it all in, the flickering film noir, the gold wrapper scraps of a three-dollar chocolate bar, the sounds of shower and off-key singing, and in a rush memory came back, bursting the dam, recalling him to three mind-stunning days of unalloyed pleasure with a truly demented young man who had used his own cuffs on him and cried out with uncensored passion as he came.

The desire to push into the bathroom, fling back the curtain of the shower and grab its naked occupant with lascivious intent made Skinner light-headed. He'd had just one screwdriver. This was not a drunken urge he could write off or repress. It occurred to him that his newly keening desire for Mulder, given his own current marital circumstances, suggested a willingness to use him that was not at all nice, to use one of Sharon's all-occasion terms.

Except that he wasn't willing. He hadn't plotted this. It was just a miscalculation of his own libido, his own banked desires. He'd thought this hunger was safely shut up in the past, like a memento in a desk drawer. And if he'd used Mulder in an occasional jack-off fantasy--well, *occasional* was the key word.

The sound of rushing water in the bathroom stopped, and the singing dwindled to semi-lyrical peeps in a minor key. Skinner stood, thoughts unresolved, in the center of the room, and was still standing there immobile and pensive when Mulder walked out towelling his hair. He was wet and naked and looked less distressed than he should have when he noticed Skinner's presence.

"How was the dinner down below?"

"Undercooked, overseasoned, and overpriced."

Mulder raised a brow. "Mine was good."

Helpless to the provocation, Skinner's gaze drifted down the other man's body, then slowly ascended. Mulder stood, arms raised and a towel end in each hand. He was watchful and patient; illusively Zen-like qualities that could segue in an instant to reveal an interior wildness, darker and in no way calm. Skinner had seen the transformation before; such memories teased at him now, again.

Three days of past pleasure. Three-day conference. The sudden unbidden parallel struck Skinner like an accusatory hammer blow. He met Mulder's eyes guiltily, feeling as if every inch of his body betrayed evidence of his lust rather than the pointed hardness between his legs.

"I didn't plan this," he grated out, hating himself for saying the words, unable to stop them.

Mulder nodded. His face was wiped of expression: *he* betrayed nothing. It made Skinner envious, though he knew it was an unpredictable gift. As often as not, Mulder's face revealed everything, every fleeting thought and feeling. Now, though, when Skinner craved some sign of what he felt, he was cryptic as stone.

"I did," he said, unexpectedly.

Skinner did not feel up to speed. "What?"

"I planned this." Mulder tossed the towel aside and walked over to him. "Conference. Overbooking. Snowstorm."

Giving himself leave at last, Skinner managed a tense, tentative smile. "Such attention to detail. I wish your case reports had the same."

"We can do this or not do this," Mulder said. "But we can't take it back to the office."

Startled, Skinner blinked, feeling as if the other man had stolen his lines. "When did you become rational?" he asked.

"Developmental psychologists tend to concur it happens around the age of seven."

"Did they have you up for study?" Skinner stared at Mulder, who looked back at him, grave, beautiful. Sphinxish eyelids lowered to blink over grey-green eyes. Stubble had already begun to appear along the planes of his jaws, lending a rough shadow to his face like the rub of graphite across paper. Skinner realized he was still hard, and that he'd started to breath audibly. He had a focal goal in mind, of getting a pair of exquisitely formed lips wrapped around his cock--as soon as possible--but what moves and machinations were necessary to this end suddenly eluded him.

"It's been a while," Mulder said absently, gaze descending down Skinner's shirt front and then lower.

The conversation, Skinner noted, was beginning to jump around in a non-sequential fashion, and yet it seemed to be nearing the point. He forced himself to speech. It hurt to speak. "You shouldn't do this--not because--" The words lew out like dry leaves on a gust of wind. "If you feel any coercion at all. . ."

"I'm not going to file sexual harassment charges," Mulder said, moving at last the final inches between them to initiate touch, pressing his lips to Skinner's neck, just above the loop of his tie.

Skinner closed his eyes as sensual lips focused on the hard, aching knot in his throat. Soft hair brushed against the underside of his chin and jaw; he sucked in his breath, fighting to keep from grabbing Mulder with the bruising strength of his desire. He could feel his tie being worked loose with fingers and teeth. Funny how Mulder went right for the throat; surely most people would have started their seduction somewhere near the ear, or the lips. More inrushing memories of their first time together swept over Skinner with terrible vividness, lucid tactile memories of the other man's body, sprawled across a hotel bed like living sculpture, warm flesh working greedily against his own.

"Wait--wait--" Walter said, with faint desperation.

Pulling back, Mulder favored him with a look suited to someone who has just taken a mouthful of cold coffee when expecting hot.

"Stop? Stop?" Mulder mimicked mildly.

"God, no."

Mulder's mouth twitched at the fervor of Skinner's rebuttal. He studied the older man's face, reached up as if to remove his glasses, then merely touched the promontory of his cheek with a tracing finger. "Nerves? Marital guilt?" When Skinner looked immediately to one side, face closing up, Mulder shook his head. "You jump when I poke you there," he observed, not ungently, but with
a kind of clinical detachment.

"So leave it alone." Skinner swallowed, cleared his throat, looked back at Mulder plainly. "I don't have condoms or--anything," he said brusquely. "I need to go down to the giftshop."

Looking interested, Mulder said, "Do you really think they have them there? Right next to the stuffed bears and the gourmet jelly-beans?"

"I think it's a drugstore, too."

"You didn't ask if I had any," Fox noted, eyes gleaming.

"If you did. . ." Skinner's eyes narrowed. "Do you?"

Mulder grinned. "Of course."

Face tingling with a fire ignited beneath the surface by both Mulder's touch and his words, Skinner almost shook his head. "I'm beginning to wonder how much you *did* plan this."

"You invited me," Mulder pointed out. "I did some wondering myself."

"Touche," Skinner said without force.

"Mm, swordplay," Mulder said, smiling. He pushed his hips into Skinner's. "Touche."

"No more fencing," Skinner said, a low, teasing drawl escaping his usually guarded tongue. "Just fucking."

"How well do you remember last time?" Mulder asked lightly, resuming a show of unknotting Skinner's tie with a few careless, desultory plucks.

Skinner's ragged exhalation of breath was a clear enough answer.

"You were crazy," Mulder said, drawing back and smiling up into the other's face, eyelids sinking dreamily down across his sparking eyes. "Three days. What was it you told everyone--some flu-bug story--"

"You are a flu-bug," Skinner growled. "And if I was crazy I caught it from you--"

"You had to ride the fever out," Mulder interrupted, smirking. "You actually *said* that--your secretary? Hard to believe, looking at you now. What happened to your wild side, Walter?"

*You were it*, Skinner thought.

"Butch, too. Ripped the buttons off my shirt," Mulder mused dryly. "I could have penned quite a raunchy 'True Confessions' story about that visit. . .a serialized story. Only my indomitable will kept me from sitting on my hip during the plane ride home."

Skinner felt a flush slide up from his collar to his face. "I didn't hear you complaining then."

"You don't hear me complaining now," Mulder said gently.
 
Skinner stared into Mulder's open face. Green-grey eyes held and bestowed their characteristic, unlikely warmth on him, an embered glow usually found only in brown eyes. Desire punched Skinner in the gut again with brutal suddenness.

"I want you," he heard himself say. Incredulous at his admission, he waited to regret it, but felt only the flaring burn of lust rise higher. Less than a handful of other men had ever stirred his desire; none had roused this kind of senseless, lunatic passion. It was almost pure rut; the need to drive his cock as hard as he could, as deep as he could, into a body that was capable of offering itself in complete welcome.

"Um, I know, Walter." Mulder slid a hand down to cup Skinner between his legs and gave a small, breathless laugh that carried a note of triumph. The sound and sight of Mulder laughing melted something in Skinner; he could feel it going, a piece of himself softening like butter in boiling water. The other man didn't laugh enough; no great investigative work was needed to know that. Skinner couldn't begrudge him this small happiness, this seductive victory. Instead he drew him forward and kissed him and let the force of his embrace communicate a command to pliancy. When Mulder's body relaxed into his with obedient, sudden submission, he was nearly driven off balance by the silken weight of that pleasure.

Mulder's mouth played against his with tantalizing skill, his tongue skipping inside Skinner's own mouth with the fluidity of fire. Skinner could already feel the bruising beginning on both their lips; for a time, all sensation in his body seemed gathered in his mouth. He was a feeding animal and barely felt when Mulder pulled off his glasses for him and tossed them somewhere aside; he was concentrated on the ravishment below, the burn and brush of the other man's face and tongue and lips. What whore or houri had tutored him to kiss like this? It was not a newly learned talent--Skinner was recalled to past pleasures more sharply with every passing second. The whip of Mulder's tongue and the obsessive, repetitive pressure of his teeth on Skinner's lips nearly made him howl with furious approval. The likelihood of that mouth rediscovering and mapping his entire body sent a frantic burst of need through bone and sinew.

As if on cue, Mulder drew away from his mouth with a lingering stroke of his tongue and began roughly nipping at his neck.

*No marks*, Skinner almost said, then swallowed the rebuke so hard he almost choked on it. To hell with that. Now was no time for discouraging words. *Is he going to chew my tie off? Damn it, how long is this going to take. . .*

"Let me--" Skinner began in a husky, half-strangled voice.

"I'll do it," Mulder said with grave stubbornness, and nuzzled him seriously while finally working the loop loose. The feel of it sliding free was like the first note in a glissade of other loosenings that Skinner could feel all through his body. A breath escaped him like a sigh. Mulder pulled the silk from his shirt collar so slowly and deliberately that Skinner eventually opened his eyes and studied him, eyes glinting.

"Do I have to pay for these frills, or are they free?"

Mulder allowed his thick lashes to lower and smoldered at him, posing with the stylized artifice of seduction, yet somehow, underneath the mask, glowing with a far more innocent happiness. "All included in our one low price," he said in a rough but cheeky voice.

"We didn't agree to any price," Skinner said, adopting a pretense of irritation and faint menace.

"Mmm. . .a thousand?"

"A *thousand*?" Even in fun, Skinner felt rather outraged. Inflation everywhere. He scowled with brooding intensity at Mulder. "Just how do you intend to earn that?"

"Well, you know. . .anything goes." Mulder gazed up at him dreamily.

Skinner had licked his lips before realizing it. Mulder's eyes lit up further as amusement blended there with arousal.

"Any special requests--any commands for me, *sir*?"

"Don't 'sir' me--or I'll 'Fox' you back," Skinner said.

Mulder made a small wincing face. "Fair enough. . .Walter."

Skinner half-closed his eyes and concentrated on remembering to breathe as Mulder began undoing his shirt buttons. His hands rested on the other man's hips, and the feel of their lightly-padded warmth, small and neat as a wishbone under his large palms, made him ache. As skimming gifted fingertips teased downward along his body, Skinner slid his own hands around to cup Mulder's ass. Nakedness pressed itself to his clothed body, then rubbed itself hedonistically against him. He could see Mulder's face flush at the contact, his head dip back as his nipples and cock were chafed against Skinner's shirt and trousers. Skinner might have been a lamppost, the way the other man pleasured himself; it was instinctive and self-absorbed, the movement of a cat scratching an itch, and it was the most arousing thing Skinner had seen in so long he had no comparison.

He grabbed Mulder's ass more roughly and pulled him rhythmically forward, watching his lips part and the burning heat in his face flare higher. A kick-started pulse leapt visibly in his arching throat.

"Oh god, Walter--"

Hearing his first name on Mulder's lips was strange, lending an uncomfortable intimacy to their togetherness, and in response Skinner set to obliterate any conscious thought either of them might have. He moved his hand, placing it with deliberate aim, targeting the swollen curve of shaft that nudged his own. Mulder bucked at the touch, rolled his head as if he were searching for the support of a pillow that wasn't there. Nakedness. The feel of him, the sight of him, divested of suit and authority, stripped to a silken wealth of muscle and skin, ripe as a cut peach--it was an effort for Skinner not to tear into him, and then--in the  flashpoint of a moment--it was impossible not to.

He pushed Mulder toward the nearest bed and sent him tumbling back on the spread, where he lay, laughing rather breathlessly while Skinner kicked off his shoes and shoved off his jacket and shirt and then losing his breath entirely when Skinner shoved him further up the bed with the driving weight of his body, a force that rucked up the bedspread and rolled across Mulder's flesh with ruthless pressure.

Skinner ground his hips on the man beneath him, and managed to avoid inflicting serious injury with his belt buckle more from chance than design. When he could bring himself to focus, he undid belt and zipper--without halting his thrusts. It felt too good to stop. Beneath him, pinned on his back, Mulder rolled and surged with movements not unlike those of a tickled puppy, and then his hand intersected with Skinner's and found his erection as it was released. Skinner hissed between his teeth. Fingers closed around his cock's jutting heft; a thumb teased the underlying vein with small, circular strokes.

Stunned speechless, Skinner allowed himself to be rolled over; if he'd been able to keep his eyes from falling shut he would have seen the look of greedy intent on Mulder's face, but he was sinking into the mattress, deeper every moment. He felt the twist of Mulder's body as he slithered down between his legs, and then heard a muted thud. Opening his eyes to a slit, raising his head a few inches, he saw nothing. "Where the hell are you?"

"I'm here. . ." Strong hands tugged Skinner down the bed. "Can you sit up?"

Skinner groaned. "No way."

"Why don't you get in the chair," Mulder suggested, his voice floating up from the direction of the carpet.

*Chair, what chair*, Skinner thought, trying do decide if he was annoyed or not.

"It'll be worth it," Mulder promised.

The younger man's voice was so huskily inflaming that Skinner's imagination supplied an image of whiskey poured over his cock and its length set on fire. He sat up immediately, stood, and managed to stay upright long enough to stagger to the chair by the end of the bed. Mulder followed him across the short distance on his knees, a sight which in itself repaid all of Skinner's effort.

Dreamy-eyed again, Mulder moved to kneel between his legs and then stroked the muscles of his thighs; the woolen trouser material scrubbed across his legs, back-stroking a thousand light hairs. It was so quiet in the room that Skinner could hear the sound of heated air pouring in from the ceiling vents, could hear his own shallow breathing as he attempted to regulate his body's escalating arousal. He dug his feet into the carpet when Mulder's head moved closer, and irrationally felt a sharp urge to stop everything and remove his socks. He wasn't sure if this were an nagging itch of self-image or an instinct for better purchase on the rug, but it was too distracting to ignore, and he bent in obedience to the whim.

"Mm," Mulder said, taking a nipple in his mouth. Skinner's eyes glazed in simple pleasure; catching the back of Mulder's head in one hand, he held him in place while he snagged the other sock and tossed it off. When he began to straighten, Mulder latched on to his shoulders. His teeth were cruelly tormenting the ring of stiff flesh they'd found. Skinner could not really bear it. He leaned back and still grasping Mulder's head pushed it lower, between his legs.

The incredible heat of his mouth was a gift with no more preliminaries. His tongue worked like a velvet-clad spinning top, twirling around the head of his cock, striking now and then with serpentine precision on its weeping eye, flicking again and again--and the combined sensation was nearly the equivalent of a splinter in the eyeball, a sharp pain that drove one to screaming and tears, but which even as it occurred was being dissolved into pleasure by someone's merciful tongue.

He was so good--Skinner had thought he'd remembered, but he hadn't. If he'd truly remembered *this*, he could not have let months go by without demanding it, this service, this unselfconscious worship. He was already thrusting, forced to movement by the drumming command of his heart, but Mulder's caresses subtly dissuaded him from orgasm. Some skillful touch of hand or pressure of mouth always eased him from the brink when he neared, breaking his rhythm, cradling him in a prolonged succession of strokes--slower now, softer now--that made him want to linger a while longer before letting go.

Just this--just the feeding of his warm mouth--would have been exquisite, even if disembodied by darkness or partition; his mouth could have been a glory-hole in its own right, but there was more--the weight of his finely-sculpted head as it moved around him, the curved hard wing of his jawbone and its scratching surface that rubbed Skinner's palm, the lush thickness of his hair, dry already in the room's heat, the unutterable beauty of his face, so earnestly boyish, so lost in itself that Skinner was freed just to gaze. He could touch Mulder's cheek, stroke a thumb down to the edge of his lips where they burned his own swollen flesh, and the man merely tilted his head back, accepting, unceasing, eyes closed, expressionless of anything other than this act.

It meant Skinner could fuck the other man's mouth if he wished, and when the desire struck him he did, holding Mulder's head in the vised grip of his hand and thrusting so hard his body lifted from the chair. He felt Mulder's left hand tighten on his hip, felt his right hand initiate a quickening squeezing stroke on his balls. He'd known from experience that Mulder would let him do anything, would accept anything--but he had forgotten the impact of that knowledge, how it unhinged his chest and sprung his maddened heart free, as it was doing now. Wild, frenzied, he was tethered by nothing; nothing civilized restrained him from taking what he wanted. He cupped Mulder's head in his hands; burning ears curled against his palms, pressed flat. He heard his own harsh grunts, distant savage sounds that beat from his throat like a tattoo of bird-flight breaking onto the sky. He was riding his pleasure to its height, and the final escalation was rapid and sudden as gunfire, a streaming explosion of heat from the core of himself, hot and salty as blood.

He fell back gasping when he finished, odd scraps of pornography snagging in his brain, whose every branch coursed with the sudden bolt of energy it had received, electrically defined down to its last synaptic twig. *Meat*, he thought, in an almost aphasic daze. *Tool.* *Chicken.* The words were disarticulated, meaningless. He tended to deride pornography, but was in a state of bliss where words floated free of their unsavory significance, to drift mote-like through his thoughts, amoral and sensual. *Like that, boy?*

Mulder was lying back on the carpet, sprawled and coughing softly. Leaning forward, Skinner eyed him. He seemed well enough; still hard, but not entirely unsated. He was running a hand up and down one side of his body with aimless self-gratification, not touching his cock, just stroking chest, hip, and thigh, as if biding his time during the interval.

"Enjoying yourself?" Skinner said, and was somewhat surprised to hear his own voice sounding throaty and comfortable. How long had it been since he'd come with that much abandon? Years.

Mulder's eyes opened a fraction. Their green depths seemed gilded by the lamp light. He smiled, lips stretching in a tight but still lazy line. "I really hope that was just an appetizer."

Skinner exhaled his offense with a chuff of breath. "*Boy*, I am going to fuck you until you need crutches to walk from this room."

Mulder gazed up at him smirkily, one arm stretching as if to tie a bow around his head. "You're cute when you go butch. You look like a bull pawing turf."

Coming down off the chair, Skinner loosely straddled Mulder's body. "What do you want?" he asked, feeling both generous and grateful. Ready to please. "Tell me what you like."

"You've forgotten?"

Skinner hesitated, wondering if this was just teasing, or if he was supposed to know something that, right now, he frankly didn't. His uncertainty must have shown in his eyes, because Mulder took his one hand in his own and gave him a small, crooked smile.

"Everything. I'm easy."

"That's blatant provocation."

"There you are," Mulder murmured pleasantly.

Skinner began exploring the other man's face and form with his hands, the way a sculptor might work clay. Bones, their scaffolding shape, fascinated him, and the smooth, warmly blanketing surface, the feel of Mulder himself: muscled but not overly so, slim but somehow lush. Warm, vital, he radiated a vibrant awareness in the way some cats do who are described as having their motors always running. Even now, as Skinner stroked him, Mulder was turning under his touch, lifting and purring. It should have been difficult to reconcile this aspect of Mulder with the cool, glossy facade he wore for the public, but in truth it wasn't. The warmth was never far below the surface; that was what made working with him so hard, such an exercise in self-discipline. Drill down a millimeter and he brimmed passion.

*Drill. . .*

Skinner's body flushed with a suddenly revivified need. He leaned down and kissed Mulder's mouth, which blossomed at once under his. Letting his knees unbend, he spilled the length of his body down across Mulder's; trousers, still clinging half-mast at his hips, brushed naked skin; Mulder wrapped a leg around him, muttered something undecipherable into his mouth.

"Hmm?"

"You ever taking these off?"

"Not now. Quiet."

Mulder sighed, stretched. Skinner caught hold of his upper arms and nuzzled down his chest. For a while, then, there was nothing else in his world except the body he ministered to; its responses were so pure, so uncensored, Skinner felt as if he were playing some perfectly tuned instrument that would give music even in the hands of the clumsiest, most unskilled student, and felt again he was learning what he'd forgotten. Restless under him, Mulder shifted: one knee drew up, an arm flung itself away with a spasm of pleasure, hips rolled back and forth, muscles flexed and relaxed with alternations of urgency.

Skinner learned it all again. The taste of his inner thigh. The small odd crease defining one side of his belly. The placement of light, nearly invisible freckles that zig-zagged his body like a broken necklace of grain-sized pearls. Where he was sensitive, where he wanted to be licked: inside of the elbows, feet, ears. He was whimpering within ten seconds when Skinner pushed his head to one side and slid his tongue into the whorled ear he'd exposed. Skinner kept his head pinned sideways and continued the assault mercilessly until Mulder's guttural moans became the gasps of a man nearing climax, and then he withdrew.

"Fucker--"

For a moment Mulder tried to shove him off, but Skinner reclaimed his mouth and distracted him. He suspected Mulder enjoyed being pinned to the carpet. *On the carpet*--the phrase tickled Skinner's fancy. He drew up, pulling Mulder with him, not letting the latch of their mouths come undone. A coordinated if careless effort resulted in Mulder sitting on Skinner's lap, chest to chest; their two sets of legs were stacked like reversed pretzels, Mulder's wrapped around Skinner, heels nudging his ass. For a tall man, Skinner thought, Mulder was remarkably limber.

"Mm. . ." Suddenly Mulder began to laugh; laughter bubbled into Skinner's mouth.

Skinner pulled away reluctantly, unaware that he was smiling."What?"

"I was just remembering when we pulled the drapes down. It was the middle of the afternoon. You didn't even know what was happening at first--I thought you were going to go for your gun."

"Why don't you concentrate on the here and now," Skinner suggested, narrowing his eyes.

"It's not quite the same, is it?" Mulder smiled ruefully, a quirk of lips. "We're not total strangers now."

"We weren't then," Skinner said shortly.

"Close enough."

They looked at one another a moment, then Mulder said, "Some things are the same." His ass rubbed a deliberate, screwing curl against Skinner's lap as he spoke.

They didn't quite make it to a bed that first time; though Mulder was bent over the edge of the nearest one, hands tangled in the spread, knees planted in the rough nap of the carpet. Kneeling behind him, Skinner was trying to rip open a condom with lubed fingers. After glancing back once to observe Skinner's progress, Mulder, perhaps mindful of avoiding a spank, had been noticeably silent on this display of ineptitude, though a tiny muffled sound not unlike a snort did make itself heard from the rucked bedspread where he'd pressed his face.

Face flushed, Skinner finally managed to achieve his object and was rolling the condom on when he realized, to his disgust, that it had ripped. "Fuck!" he said, nearly shouting his frustration. It was a good thing he'd already come once, or the farcical nature of the endeavor probably would have demoralized him completely.

He glanced at Mulder's ass. Well, maybe not completely.

"Problems?" Mulder asked in a remarkably restrained tone.

"No."

Mulder's body pressed searchingly backwards until his ass nudged Skinner's shoulder. "You don't have to use a condom," he said.

Skinner, already reaching for another, paused. "You're staking a lot on the chance I haven't been engaging in any risky business. How do you know I don't spend my lunch money interrogating suspects in dark alleys?"

"Keen intuition, honed by years of investigative experience." Mulder's voice was beginning to sound rather strained. "Could you, like, hurry?"

"I could."

Swearing between soft groans (*fuck, fuck, fuck*) , Mulder slid one hand down to his cock and began stroking himself. Diverted, Skinner altered his position slightly and thrust his tongue between the cheeks of Mulder's ass, forcing it past the tight ring of muscle there. A sticky null sheen of lube coated his tongue but under this was the clean, somewhat soapy taste of Mulder, a taste that turned to musk further in. He switched explorations between tongue and fingers, working two and then three fingers in up to the knuckles and then farther, using the rough knots of his knuckles to rub teasingly against the other man's prostate.

It was clear Mulder was bent on coming whether he got fucked or not, and quickly nearing that release; Skinner withdrew his fingers and kissed his way up the other man's spine. "Stop playing with yourself," he growled in Mulder's ear, pressing his cock against his rump. "Want that?"

"Do it," Mulder gasped. His body was writhing; his hair was slick again from heat and exertion.

Mind and body warred in Skinner: he was within a bare inch of ecstasy, but *bare* was the questionable point of the matter. After an agonizing moment that seemed to capsulize the very crux of sex in the nineties, he groaned and reached for another condom. His hands were quicker this time; he had the sheathe on within seconds and was pushing greedily against Mulder an instant later.

It was then that the phone rang--not either of their cellulars, but the hotel phone.

"Ignore it," Mulder snarled breathlessly into the bedspread, as if Skinner might actually stop what he was doing.

*Not a chance.* Skinner was utterly focused on the feel of his cock sliding home, inch by inch. Mulder was so perfectly tight it struck Skinner as entirely possible that he hadn't had another man since their previous encounter, an idea that sent a fresh surge of blood through his thickening organ. His hips jerked spasmodically once, twice, then he caught hold of himself and shuddered to stillness, fighting for control.

Beneath him, Mulder pounded the mattress and sobbed into the coverlet. "God, oh god--don't stop, please *please*--"

Skinner choked back his own sharp cry as internal muscles squeezed violently around his cock. He throbbed all over, from his temples to his balls. He had to thrust, could not stop himself. Ignored, the phone rang a few final times and then silenced itself abruptly. Skinner drove forward, fitting himself
fully at that moment. The timing unnerved him for a second or two, and he hesitated, resting against Mulder's back, breathing laboriously, ears alert for some sign or sound--steps in the hallway, voices, key in the lock.

Paranoia passed. He drew Mulder against him, slid a hand around to his cock. Mulder fell back against him thankfully, the length of his body gleaming with heat, his ass gripping and easing around his cock like a sucking mouth. Dizzied by sensation, Skinner lost track of his actions, a series of small rearrangements that was no more than a blur of pleasure. He stroked Mulder, shoved him forward, skewered him a half dozen times, pulled him back, nudged his legs further apart, repeated the sequence with variations, sawing his hips back and forth, driving his cock across the other man's swollen prostate with measured precision--again, again--feeling the slick leak of pre-ejaculate begin to flow from Mulder's cockhead across his fingers, feeling the velvety sack of his balls draw up, hearing his gasps give up into high, tiny cries of ecstatic joy indistinguishable from those of pain, and then he was at once everywhere in Skinner's arms, rolling and thrusting, striking out blindly with all his limbs like a child in a tantrum, challenging Skinner's ability to keep his grip.

The wild kinetic burst, the feel of Mulder's ass clamping down on his cock,  drove Skinner over the edge along with him. He shouted himself hoarse without knowing it, caught up in his own fierce urgency of release.
 

"You all right now?" Skinner said after a while, turning on his side to stroke Mulder's back. He laid his hand in its small hollow and gently traced its shallow bowl of muscles, pulling his knuckles along its arc, then turned his hand over and slid his palm down over the curve of one ass cheek.

"I'm. . .all right," Mulder said, turning his head on the pillow, looking his way but not quite meeting his eyes. Skinner thought he was truly upset, but Mulder was impossible to gauge, quicksilver embodied: a second later he was smiling, saying wryly, "Tomorrow, maybe an enema first."

Skinner made a face before he could stop himself; Mulder chose that moment to lift his gaze. Even as Skinner's guilt flared, Mulder's face tightened with anger and something that might have been embarrassment.

"Too plain for your sensibilities, Walter? Christ. You weren't always so squeamish--or maybe you just hid it better."

"I'm squeamish? Give your contentious grandstanding a rest, why don't you. I've seen the same things you have--more. When a little shit bothers me, I'll let you know."

Mulder quieted. "Fine. What's your problem. You don't want to do this again tomorrow? If it's back to business, just say so."

"I will." Skinner's hand was still resting on Mulder's ass. He molded it there deliberately. "And I'm not saying so. Yet."

At last, Mulder managed to smile again, albeit rather ironically. "Good. Great. I've still got some experiments I want to perform."

Skinner's breath released itself in a small whoosh; he hadn't realized he'd been holding it. "Yeah. I've got a few in mind myself."

"Mm. What's up for tomorrow. . ." Mulder grabbed a pamphlet off the bedside table, read aloud. "Nine a.m. Multimedia and Interactive Technologies for Law Enforcement. One p.m. Buffet Lunch. Three p.m. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Technologies: Forensic and Research Applications. . .I can definitely think of better ways to kill an afternoon."

"Don't get any funny ideas about skipping out on the seminars. The bureau's not footing the bill for us to fool around between the sheets for three days."

"We haven't made it between the sheets yet," Mulder said silkily. "But then again there's nothing like a bone-dry lecture to whet your appetite for a night of boning. I can't wait to see how you bear up under the pressure."

Skinner gave him a look. "If you start playing footsie during the slide shows I'll make sure you pay for your fun."

"I like the sound of that."

"I thought you might."

"Ready for your nightcap, Walter?"

"I need to sleep."

"A man your age really should get his ten hours in."

"Let's backtrack a moment here. . .smart remarks will definitely earn you a whack."

"I'm sensing a potential reappraisal of office disciplinary procedures."

"Dream on, Agent Mulder."

"I may just do that."