M/Sk slash. NC-17. I began writing this on a raft of whimsy, but the current carried me elsewhere. I think the compost of my unconscious was digesting an old challenge: someone once said that Mulder-as-hustler was such a distortion of his character that writing a convincing story around such an idea would be difficult if not impossible. Tra la la. Nb, I would place this late in the day--season five? No spoilers, though. This will make my third and entirely distinct scenario for how Mulder and Skinner get together, but consistency is a hobgoblin. This is dedicated to Iain, who gave me the prompting jab to write it. And with much thanks to Kat for reading over my fumbling drafts and dipping her oar in at my request; I'm not sure I would have ever finished it otherwise. :) Archive MSSS; elsewhere by request. I am always happy to send story attachment files if email versions arrive poorly formatted (yadda yadda). Email can be send to me at: eliade@drizzle.com

*****

"Are you sure this is the right neighborhood," he says, his voice a small murmur.

Most likely, it isn't really a question, rather an awed, oblique comment on the state of the street, but the cab driver looks into his mirror. "Comin' up on it," he says back laconically.

The man stares out the window of the cab at the tidy, stretching lawns, the well- established trees, the bedded flowers and painted shutters, all of which show signs of regular maintenance. Roofs hold all their shingles; windows gleam; gutters are clean. No wooden geese pinwheel their wings in the yards of these houses; no clotheslines wag their wash to the view of casual passers-by.

It's not as if he's never been to nice neighborhoods. But such trips as this would usually be made at night, when details were obscured by darkness. It's odd for him to be driving up to one of these nice houses in broad daylight, on an autumnal Saturday afternoon--isn't it? He can see, here and there, a few men pruning bushes and raking leaves, a few women carrying groceries from their cars. The people appear to be home- owners, rather than servants; they have the casual but well-dressed bearing of executives in their off-hours.

The man's face reveals very little, but if one had been given a vantage into his inward workings one might be feeling along with him a tightening pull in the gut, a coiling sensation of nervous energy, the kind that draws the breath from one's lungs. *You're fine*, he might be telling himself, in the private chamber of this thoughts. *You wouldn't look out of place here. . .it would be great to live here. He's probably a real nice guy. . ."* There is no way, however, of being sure what he is thinking. Still, perhaps now he is swallowing down a small groan and tasting the familiar bitters of pessimism, and now he might be saying to himself: *Yeah, he could be a real swell fellow. And the South might rise again. But it's safer not to bank on it.*

"This is it," the cabbie says, pulling up in front of a house and halting the car. He grabs a clipboard, makes a few marks, then turns a bit in his seat. "Fourteen-fifty." The cabbie studies his fare with expressionless, knowing eyes as the man pulls a wallet from his jeans, and he--the cabbie--totes up the score with a casual, familiar reckoning. Thirtyish, well-kept, tidy clothes. Too good-looking to be a regular guy. Plus there is the earring. The man removes a twenty-dollar bill and passes it across the seat with quiet dignity, but the cabbie can tell there had been nothing keeping it company in the wallet. If he hadn't been sure before, he is now. There is only one way this pretty boy is earning his return fare, and that's on his knees.

The man is ignoring the cabbie's blank cool stare, and the way he fingers the twenty with the wordless resentment of one who'd prefer to be wearing gloves. He considers not tipping--there are plenty of good reasons not to--but habit and good manners get the better of him and after a moment's hesitation he presents a carefully calculated two dollars, which earns him an unpleasant scowl nonetheless.

*God, I hope I'm not going to be walking back to the city*--this is perhaps what he's thinking now, as he steps out of the cab. He might be wondering if he could even find his way back out of the maze of winding streets they'd driven in on. His leather jacket is soft and thin, chosen more for style than comfort. If he has to walk back when the chill of the evening has set in, he'll be hurting. Of course, he could probably make it to a convenience store and a phone, call up a friend and bum a ride--which is what he should have done to get out here, rather than spending his last twenty dollars feeding a cabbie's Wild Turkey weekend. But he was told to take a cab, it was specified. And just what was up with that, anyway?

"Breathe. Calm. Look perky," the man mutters. If this is an attempt to fend off paranoia and put himself at ease, it seems to work. Smiling wryly, the man walks up the drive. His eyes roam everywhere as he nears the front porch, taking in the spiffy BMW, the bland bright face of the house, the lawn bag of leaves that sit open on the grass under a sprawling oak tree. Nice. Very nice. He could indeed get used to living in a place like this--he might even learn to feel at home here--who wouldn't? Unfortunately, he can get along with the *house* all he wants, but the man waiting inside, whoever he is, is another matter.

He reaches the porch; he rings the bell. He waits. A long minute passes during which his nerves resurge. He runs a hand through his hair and then could kick himself, for he has no way to check the results. He might have a huge alfalfa-lick sprouting from his head now. Self-consciously he touches his hair again, patting it, while his throat grows dryer and a vise slowly tightens upon his chest.

When the door opens with an abrupt whoosh of air he nearly jumps. His eyes widen at the specimen of hulking manhood in front of him. *Jesus*, he thinks dizzily, feeling his knees go a bit weak. (Wouldn't any man's knees go weak?) He smiles at the man who stands framed in the entrance, who is frowning at him. What a face. What a frown. You could drop a deer in mid-leap with that scowl.

And the man in the house says, "Mulder. What are you doing here?"

*****

"Mulder. What are you doing here?" the man in the house said, his voice a mix of what sounded like annoyance and simple puzzlement.

The man on the porch blinked. "Um. . .sorry?"

"What--do--you--want?" the man inside enunciated, biting off the words with terse precision.

The man on the porch opened his mouth, then closed it. Panicked to momentary silence, he yanked a small scrap of paper from his coat pocket and studied it. "Um. . .is this 1342 Barkleaf Avenue?"

Walter Skinner stared at his most lunatic of subordinates. Fox Mulder, flush to the gills with his own special brand of madness, turning up on his porch. On a Saturday. What had he done to deserve this?

"Get in here," Skinner said with curt disgust. He held open the door and let Mulder in, staring out behind him as he passed, scanning the street with instinctive care. "Where's your car?"

"I don't, uh, have a car," Mulder said.

"Car bomb?" Skinner said dryly. Despite his facetious tone, he felt a jolt of concern. Mulder was giving off a weirder vibe than usual, a kind of blank, soft strangeness that made Skinner itch to belt him. Just once or twice, and with moderate force, but still. . . .

"Ha-ha," Mulder said clearly, staring at him with wide, startled eyes.

They stood regarding one another, until it became clear to Skinner that Mulder was bent on having the purpose of his visit pried from him by force. "I assume you have some good reason for showing up on my doorstep on a Saturday afternoon, Agent Mulder, and let me just say that a rousing game of Twenty Questions is not on my agenda."

"I'm sorry," Mulder said, clearing his throat. "I think--I think you were expecting someone else."

"I wasn't expecting anyone, least of all you." Skinner eyed the other man with escalating impatience.

"Oh, god--I'm sorry. Damn. Aaron said he called--" Mulder was flushing and nearly stammering.

"Aaron?" Skinner paused, mentally scrolling through a roster of bureau employees and agents. "Ted Aaron, from support services?"

*Support services*, the younger man thought. He hadn't heard that one before. "Aaron Moody. . .and it's called Fleur de Lis--?" For some reason the statement came out high, like a question.

They stared at one another some more, mutually bewildered, then Skinner wiped a hand over his face as if trying to brush off some annoying cobweb. "Mulder, I'm always ready to catch the clue bus, but you're going to have to sell me a fare for this one. I haven't gotten any phone calls."

"Oh." Mulder blinked, his face working in a show of thought. "God. No call. I guess." His words came out in brief bursts that were not sentences but sounded as if they wanted to be. "I guess this was supposed to be a surprise or something. Except. Except Aaron said that you--that you, um--"

"That I what?" Skinner said coldly. He had already run a quick date check and confirmed, to his immense relief, that it was *not* his birthday. Off the hook for that, he could not think of another reason for anyone to surprise him with anything. Walter Skinner didn't like surprises, and most people knew that by instinct, rumor, or hard experience.

"Well, he said you were looking for. . ." Mulder trailed off, cheeks high with color. He was looking down, off to the side, at anywhere but Skinner.

"For *what*?" Skinner growled, exasperated.

"A houseboy?" Mulder said, nearly whispering.

In one quick step Skinner was in the other man's face, forcing his gaze up to meet his own. "Agent Mulder, I am not in the mood for whatever game you're playing." He watched Mulder swallow, his lips part, his eyes widen even further.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" Mulder blurted.

"Calling you what," Skinner said evenly.

"Mulder--I mean, I'm not--my name's Wilson. Cat Wilson."

Skinner's eyes narrowed. "Very cute, *Fox*. I, however, am not the Queen of England, just a man who is quickly losing his temper. A man with a *gun*, need I remind you."

Mulder jerked back. "Jesus! I'm sorry--listen, never mind. I, uh, I'll just go now, okay? I'm sorry, really. I guess there was a mix-up, wires crossed, no call. But listen, it's okay--" He backed away and began edging around Skinner toward the door.

"Shut up," Skinner said, frowning. He was feeling a frisson of something he couldn't put his finger on. With one blunt swipe he scrapped his mental preconceptions and examined his visitor. Mulder. His gaze flew across the other man's features, taking inventory of the tousled hair, the green eyes, the lean length of his body, the distinctive mole that marked a spot slightly westerly of his mouth. Skinner's assessment took less than a half dozen seconds. He'd heard more than one weird tale about clones and shape-changers since taking over supervision of the X-Files--but no lookalike could have looked so bang on target. This was definitely Mulder, from lips to fingertips--or Skinner would eat his own nameplate, brass and all.

And yet--still--the situation was making Skinner's nape tingle with unease. His gaze drifted, fixed on a tiny gleam of gold. Fox Mulder was wearing an earring. On his own time, true, but this was a sign of something not good. Wasn't it? Skinner chewed on the thought. It was hard for him to know for sure. More than a few male agents bore signs of a pierced ear--or two. Skinner usually assumed these were remnants of wild youth, collegiate experiments in style, but of course it was impossible to know what people did in their off hours. And, then too, this *was* the nineties. If a man wanted to wear an earring, it didn't necessarily mean anything. . .right?

"Can I get by--?" Mulder was standing next to the door, shifting from one foot to the other, but Skinner's body blocked him from opening it and leaving.

"No," Skinner said bluntly. "I think I'm due an explanation for this bizarre little escapade of yours." He folded his arms, pinning Mulder with a gaze until he squirmed.

"Oh shit." The younger man breathed the curse out softly. He had been attempting for several minutes to wrestle down his uprising nerves, but now a renewed stab of panic cleaved his gut. But panic would be a reasonable response, if you were trapped in some anonymous suburban house with a veritable giant of a man who had pretty clearly just threatened you with a gun, who was probably the victim, along with yourself, of a poor practical joke, not to mention very likely a raging testosterone- poisoned homophobe if your own rotten luck ran true.

He took a shaky breath, then released it in a sigh. "Listen. I think someone must have set this up. It--it happens sometimes. I was just told to come here. If you let me leave now, you don't have anything to worry about. Not that you would anyway," he added quickly. "I'm sure it's just. . .a joke. Or something."

"Or something," the other man agreed with a stony face.

The younger man smiled weakly. "Your wife will probably be home soon," he said, as one probing hopefully for the possibility that another human being inhabited this private silence. Given a wife, there seemed far less likelihood that he'd end up as freezer-wrapped body parts in this guy's basement. Then again--he gulped down fear on seeing raw anger flash in his host's eyes. Apparently his had been a poor choice of words.

Skinner stared at Mulder, fighting down aching pangs of violence that blended and stirred with disbelief. "No. She won't be." He unknotted his arms and pressed the flat of one palm against the door. It was a gesture and signal not lost on the younger man.

"You. . .you want me to stay," he said carefully. He tried to read the older man's hard, cool eyes, feeling as if he were negotiating a highly sensitive diplomatic agreement. "I can stay," he offered, managing a slight smile.

"I want you to tell me why you came here. It's a simple request. But the answer to this question has taken on a great deal of importance to me." Skinner let a quick, tight smile flicker through his lips, a mere thinning that held no humor. "If you value your job, your future, and your health--you'll state the point of your visit. Now."

After a suspenseful half second's debate, the younger man said quickly, "I work for an escort agency and I was told to come here. They said you wanted a houseboy. I mean, for a long-term deal. They gave me this address--they told me what you were looking for--"

Skinner's right hand curled into a fist. "Mulder. This is beneath you. This is--" Throat closing, he lost the ability, then, to speak. His jaw clenched with rage, but also with the sick tension of disappointment, and with a dismay that masked deeper concern. He looked away, a quick sharp movement that was his instinctive attempt to negate what was happening.

"They said--Aaron said--you wanted someone to do cooking, cleaning. And to-- um--"

"You're on paper-thin ice, Agent Mulder. I suggest you drop this charade right now."

Skinner's guest would have been quite happy to drop *everything* and bolt like a rabbit, but at that moment a thought struck him. A man who'd been around the block a few times in a stretch limo would not be without a resume of 'stage roles' to his credit. Might this whole scenario have been scripted? Maybe Aaron could simply have blundered on briefing him--maybe this 'misunderstanding' was the client's personal thrill trip, his way of kicking the guilt. ("You're a *hustler*, and you want to do *what* to me?") Now there was an old and familiar piece of Vaudeville.

It clicked. The way this guy called him 'Agent' and 'Mulder' with such odd familiarity. The combination of ambivalence and intense scrutiny he gave off. His reluctance to let his guest leave, this weird interrogation routine he'd devised. The younger man relaxed a little. It wouldn't do to let his guard drop entirely, but he suddenly felt on more familiar ground.

*The charade*, he thought, trying to get a feel for just what he should do. What would be his next best move? Unfortunately he didn't have any details on the matter, now did he. *Damn Aaron, anyway*, he thought ironically. He didn't even know this guy's name. And asking would surely irritate him. Though on the other hand, clients usually had their scripts down pretty well, and knew how to compensate for flubs and missteps--right?

Sure. Right. Why not.

"You're really tense," he said aloud, changing tack. He tentatively reached out to touch the other man's chest, but his hand was knocked away.

"I want you to know that you are one small step away from being written up for a psych evaluation."

*Now what?* the younger man wondered to himself. *When in doubt, stick to what you know. . .*

Carefully, unthreateningly, he moved a little closer to his host. *One small step*, he thought dryly. He made his posture as submissive as possible, and pulled his face open to express all the candor he possessed. He heard the other man catch his breath, and thought: *Gotcha*. He stood a few short inches away from his client, close enough to appreciate--for the first time since his arrival--the older man's height and sheer wealth of muscle. He could smell cologne, clean and spicy, not too heavy, and could feel the edged envelope of body heat.

The hustler immersed himself in this warm aura of masculinity and finally found the right words. They rose to his tongue as naturally as if he'd always known what this particular client needed to hear.

"I *am* just a hustler, you know," he said. "Not this Mulder person." He looked up, letting his eyelids lower and his lips curve into a sensual smile. "So whatever you want to do to him, you can do to me. No guilt. He'll never know."

He'd hooked the man: he could actually *see* the man's flesh jerk in response as the lure embedded itself. Promise, reassurance, and permission had apparently been just what he'd needed to receive.

Even so, he didn't expect the immediacy of reaction. He would never have guessed from the man's tight control how ready he was to spring. Within bare seconds, immensely strong hands were gripping his arms, and the man was kissing him harshly, with raw power. He tried to ease fully into the man's arms. After a moment--just *for* a moment--the other man allowed it, drawing him greedily close, hands everywhere, roaming roughly, expressing clearly the astonishment of sudden license. Then just as roughly he drew back, with a sharp sudden break.

"You want this? Is this what you want?" the man rasped out after pulling his mouth away.

"Yes," the other agreed.

Skinner stared down at the man he held, trying to decide if he were about to make a fatal mistake--or if he just had. He couldn't believe Mulder was offering himself like this--and how much he welcomed it. "You're a hustler," he said, feeling a brief sinful thrill at the idea. When Mulder nodded, he said silkily, "Did you know, then, that I'm an officer of the law?"

It was just a jab of dry sarcasm, but Mulder stiffened against him. "I. . .no. I didn't know that." He swallowed, and his clear eyes studied Skinner, as if trying to discern his intentions from the mask of his face. Quite suddenly his own face fell. "You're going to arrest me," he said morosely. "This *was* a set-up."

"Oh, I'm not going to arrest you. Not yet, anyway."

Mulder looked sulky. "Ha-ha. Very funny. It might interest you to know that I don't perform well under duress." His eyes narrowed. "And if you're not going to arrest me, then I *do* expect to be paid for this."

Skinner's breath pulled like a rough file along his throat. Mulder's statement, delivered in his flat matter-of-fact voice, sent a jolt of fire straight to Skinner's aching cock. "How much?" he asked, fascinated despite himself at the frills of imagination that were packed into this man's well-barbered head like so much mental excelsior.

"For a night, two hundred. For the weekend three-fifty. If you decide you want to try this houseboy thing, we'll talk about it."

Skinner's lips moved ambiguously. "Houseboy, huh," he said in a toneless tone, but with a flicker of dangerous interest. "I'm beginning to like the sound of that."

"I can tell," Mulder said, smiling and fitting his hips more closely to Skinner's own.

"And you're not Mulder?" Skinner said, his jaw twitching with an incompletely suppressed smirk. Interest warred with unshakeable unease. He was still waiting for the other man to drop out of character--he couldn't help but expect this ride to come to a jerking stop sooner or later, probably with a jarring squeal of over-stressed brakes.

"You want me to be Mulder, I'll be Mulder," Mulder said blandly but amiably. "We do whatever you want, big guy, as long as you show me the money."

Skinner shook his head slightly in mingled dismay and amazement. He couldn't decide what worried him more: that Mulder had been harboring this weird fantasy about him, that he'd acted on it, or that he'd somehow pegged Skinner's own half-conscious fascination for his subordinate. It made Skinner wonder if he'd betrayed himself with glances. Looking at Mulder's face, he had to admit the truth. He had--they both had. They'd traded their share of significant, speculative looks, danced together in breathtaking proximity to word and deed, but neither one of them had ever dared voice his interest or make the gesture that would have resolved itself into touch. Skinner had never expected Mulder to commit--at least not like this.

Holding Mulder's eyes, Skinner saw himself in their opaque mirrors. He was almost impressed by the other man's dedication to his role. It might not have been perfect, but there were no visible seams at which to pick and unravel the mystery. If there was a moment when Mulder's gaze flickered and his resolve wavered, Skinner was not able to pinpoint it, and even if he had seen anything, it could be attributed to nerves--the nervousness of this body-snatching 'hustler', of course.

"You think I won't go through with this," Skinner said. He made a tight, small waving movement with his hand. "This houseboy game of yours," he added, to clarify. "But if we're going to do this, we're going to do it all the way. You want to stay, you stay the weekend, and give me a full taste of your services."

Unexpectedly this threat, which Skinner had hoped to deliver with the effect of moderate sadism and which he'd thought might dissuade the other from his seduction, seemed to perk Mulder's spirits up. He looked relieved, pleased.

"Great!" he said, grinning with disarming enthusiasm and wriggling-- *wriggling*--like an eager puppy. "I can cook, clean--I used to work for an apartment-cleaning service. Oh, and I have references, if you need them. I mean, this would be a legitimate job--housekeeper--" As he said this, he gave Skinner a searching, worried look. "I mean, I'll do whatever you want, but I need to try and keep my taxes straight. I've had a few problems, in the past, you know."

"Yeah. Fine. Whatever." Whether it was Mulder's scrupulous adherence to the scenario, or his own long-bottled desire, Skinner was beginning to feel the full flush of blossoming arousal. Two in the afternoon on a Saturday, and he had an armful of Fox Mulder, nutty as a fruitcake and luscious as a tree full of peaches. Mulder--posing as a hustler, interviewing for the position of houseboy. It was a cheeky and ridiculous liason for two men in their positions to engage in, and if they were caught in such a tawdry episode they'd be punted from the bureau in two seconds' flat. Both of them.

But though Skinner knew he was no less certifiable than Mulder for going along with this, his dick was so full it hurt, and his mind was already calculating how many condoms he had on hand. No way was *he* backing out now.

"Listen," Mulder said. "Don't get angry, but--what's your name?" He added quickly, "You don't have to give me your real name. I'll call you whatever you want."

"Skinner," Skinner said in his blandest manner, after resigning himself to this minor absurdity.

Mulder made a strange wincing face. "Oh. Yeah. *Skinner.* You don't, like, do tricks with knives or anything--ha--tricks with knives. That came out kind of like a joke. Get it?"

Skinner could feel nervous energy pouring off the other man. "Your sense of so-called humor is even weirder than usual, Mulder. And you can call me *sir*."

At that silky statement, so clearly a command, Mulder grinned. "Oh, no problem, *sir*. You give the orders. I'm very obedient."

"There's a first."

"But, um, I need to give you my ground rules."

"Is that so."

Mulder cleared his throat. "Yeah, I mean, there are some things I don't do. Things you, uh, probably wouldn't be interested in anyway, but--well, no scat, no bloodletting. I'm kind of squeamish. I'm clean, by the way. But if you want to do it without a rubber, it's extra."

Skinner stared at Mulder, idly trying to discern the depth of his madness. "Yeah, right. I'll bear that in mind."

Mulder shrugged, gave a quirk of a smile. "Sorry. I don't want to spoil the mood." One hand massaged Skinner's shoulder and neck gently, a touch both familiar and somehow professional. A hustler's touch: professionally familiar, practiced. "What now, sir?"

Breath quickening, Skinner said rather gruffly, "Upstairs."

"Great--" Mulder began backing away, pulling Skinner along with him.

"No--*you* go upstairs. I'll be up in a minute. I'm on-line."

"Oh. Okay. I wouldn't mind a chance to get ready. I didn't bring anything with me. Should have, I guess, but I didn't really expect. . .I don't suppose you have any--" Mulder paused, looked at Skinner's blank but waiting face. "Never mind. I'll find my way around."

Skinner's eyes narrowed, but he could find no polite and reasonable way of telling the other man not to go poking about, so he dismissed the niggle of discomfort raised by the prospect of Mulder roaming loose. He watched the other man climb the stairs. It was an excellent view, and he almost decided to forego shutting down his system in favor of following, but he had an almost superstitious reverence for proper computer procedure.

Being separated from Mulder allowed a brief respite from his charismatic influence, and Skinner's head cleared slightly as he went through the routines of logging off. *Pure craziness*, his rational mind was crying. Common sense was knocking furiously at his skull, demanding to be let in, and along with his conscience that same good sense was providing a host of reasons for kicking Mulder out now, before matters progressed any further. Skinner didn't believe for the smallest fraction of a second that Fox Mulder was setting him up for blackmail. However mad Mulder was in the pursuit of his passions, there was not a particle of premeditated meanness or ruthless calculation in his entire body. Aside from which, blackmail was hardly feasible given Mulder's own position in the bureau.

More real a worry to Skinner was that this sudden, importunate behavior of Mulder's was the warning sign of some greater strangeness. Playing along with his game, feeding his fantasy--wasn't that precisely what you *weren't* supposed to do with a delusional man? What if he started showing up at any and all hours, throwing rocks at Skinner's window and howling out cheerful obscenities for all the neighbors to hear--or worse. ("Hey, wake up, you owe me money for that last blow job, big guy!") The blood chilled at such a thought. What if this wasn't a warped seduction-- what if Mulder really believed he was a hustler? Maybe he'd been knocked on the head last night and woken up this morning to embrace his inner slut with farcical enthusiasm.

Okay, unlikely. But still.

*I can't do this*, Skinner thought, mild panic poking him in the chest. *Monday morning he's going to come into my office, dressed to the nines and wearing a face so blank you could use it to bounce laser beams.* Sometimes, when he looked up from a report to find Mulder's pellucid gaze on him, Skinner felt as if he'd just inhaled a mouthful of fresh mint. It was a sensation that tended to clear the head and lungs and slap him awake with bracing pleasure. But facing Mulder after this little carnival of carnality would be a task to strain even the strongest of men. And though Skinner didn't write off his own acting talents, he knew he would pay for such efforts in other ways. With a gut full of biting snakes and a headache built for keeps.

It just wasn't right. It wasn't right to mix business with pleasure, to muck around with their working rapport, such as it was. Wasn't right to compromise themselves, to chance discovery and disclosure of something that could send Skinner's reputation crashing onto very hard ground, and drive the last coffin-nail into Mulder's own. It wasn't right, and Skinner wasn't possessed of the nuclear enthusiasm that would obliterate all concerns from his mind. At least not yet. Despite Mulder's lush appeal--the sudden, unexpected gift of pleasure he represented--Skinner was still ambivalent.

After all, it was Mulder. You could depend on him to be unpredictable if not actually undependable. You could count on him to say the unexpected, and to say it loudly, without any censor of moderation. Thus while vocal, lover-like quarrels in the Hoover hallways might seem an unimaginable breach of protocol even for Mulder, it was impossible to be *sure* he wouldn't go so far, because Mulder was a force of nature who even himself could not foresee the ferocity of his weather. He simply could not be counted on not to go too far.

Returning to the foyer, Skinner stood and cocked an ear, listening for sounds of movement above. He heard nothing. Gathering determination, he began ascending the stairs. He would tell Mulder to go. He would tell Mulder to forget this incident, and never to mention it, if he valued--well, everything that he did value. This, Skinner would tell him, was over the top behavior, not to be repeated. A man in his position--men in *their* position. . .

Nearing his own bedroom, Skinner rehearsed his words and honed his will. But what could Mulder do? Pout? Sulk? Tough. He'd deal with it, he'd have to, that's all there was to it.

He entered the room speaking, his voice firming to duty. "Mulder--" Inside the door he stopped. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to see--Mulder unclothed and sprawled lazily on the bed, or maybe going through his sock drawer in search of joy toys--but the other man had merely undressed down to his jeans and was perched on the bed's edge, obviously waiting for him. A bedside lamp had been turned on, lube and condoms discovered and laid out, and--this last detail held an oddly poignant note- -the covers on the bed had been folded back neatly to show an elongated triangle of sheet. When Mulder saw him, he stood immediately, and his face switched on, dropping its blank, grave expression so quickly that Skinner wasn't sure he'd really seen it, and taking on an accomodating smile instead.

"I thought you might be getting cold feet," Mulder said, moving to him and then reaching to unbutton his shirt.

Skinner caught the other's hands in his own and frowned. "Hold it," he said brusquely. "This isn't going to happen."

Mulder's smile ironed itself flat. "Oh." He searched Skinner's face. "Did I do something wrong? If you give me a chance, I bet I can make it better--"

"Cut it out. I need you to drop this--this play-acting." Skinner could feel tension gathering in his shoulders, like iron twisting itself into aching knots. He resisted the intimacy of real talk almost more than sex itself, but this wasn't entirely personal. He needed to determine just how far off the beam Mulder had walked, whether he was psychologically dangling in mid-air like some cartoon coyote, ready at any moment to fall, and fall hard.

"I need you to talk to me. Fox." He took a breath. The other man's blankness had returned; his face was an unsettling moon of full mystery. What was going on behind those eyes? "Your interest and inventiveness are very flattering, but the fact is I don't want to play trick to your treat. Tell me what the hell's going on in your head, Mulder. I need to know."

Mulder swallowed; his eyes were wider than normal again and he gave the impression that he was holding himself very steady. "Listen. This is. . .weird. I just-- I'm sorry. This is too weird for me. If you don't want to fuck, then I'll go, and actually I think I should, that's what's going through my head, if you want to know."

He drew back, smiling like a wince, and made for his clothes. Skinner scowled, his blood pressure nudging up a notch. "What's your badge number," he asked, from some sudden inner prompt he couldn't identify.

"I don't know," Mulder said bluntly, face tightening with what might have been irritation. He grabbed his shirt and began to draw it on.

Skinner yanked the shirt out of his hands and tossed it off to one side like a wadded bullet of cloth. "What's your badge number, Special Agent Mulder?" He heard his own voice issue with terse anger, but even given his temper the other man's response was disproportionately exaggerated. The fear that leapt into his eyes could not be mistaken for anything else, and he jerked back from Skinner, nearly tripping over his own feet to get out of reach.

It was pure instinct that made Skinner lift his hands, palms turned out, in a settling gesture. "All right. Relax, Mulder. Just relax. Okay?"

"God, I *really* wish you'd stop calling me that," Mulder said shakily, his eyes almost wild. "I don't want to do this, okay? I'm not this guy Mulder."

"Fine. You're not Mulder."

"You know, I could call Aaron--why don't you let me call him real quick. I bet he could find you someone much better for you."

"Why don't you do that," Skinner agreed coolly.

Mulder sat down and picked up the phone at the end of the bed. He dialled a number and listened, plucking at the knee of his jeans the while. After a minute he glanced up at Skinner, who stood waiting with arms folded. "There's no answer. He should have his machine on. . ."

He continued to listen, growing more visibly nervous as he did. Skinner could hear the ongoing rings from the phone receiver.

"He should *have* his machine on," Mulder muttered again.

"Hang up."

Mulder remained sitting dejectedly on the edge of the bed after complying.

"I'm going to call Scully," Skinner said, moving to the phone, his words an indeterminate mix of truth and bluff.

"Who's he," Mulder said, jerking a wary look up at Skinner.

Hand resting on the phone, Skinner gazed down at Mulder's upturned face, whose open, unguarded expression seemed suddenly not crazy, but rather a sham version of its usual honesty, subtly goading. There was no way Mulder could have flipped so thoroughly in so brief an interval--he'd seen the man at the office yesterday afternoon, damn it; had debriefed him on a case report, with Scully in the very room. Skinner withdrew his hand from the phone, and reached out instead to cup Mulder's chin. The other man shivered once, but didn't pull away.

"You want to do this, then?" Skinner asked. "Fine. We can do this."

Mulder sighed and--before Skinner even realized he'd begun to move--his hand was unzipping Skinner's trousers with skillful expeditiousness.

"Hey!" Skinner growled, startled.He batted the hand away and then returned his own to Mulder's face, lifting him gently but bodily by that grip on his jaw. "Slow down, boy," he said deliberately. His choice of address didn't seem to faze the other man.

"Whatever you want," Mulder said, then added as an afterthought, "sir."

He didn't sound very enthused, but neither did he sound particularly mocking. More than anything else, he seemed resigned, and it irked Skinner, who wondered what the point of Mulder's visit had been, if not enjoyment. "Are you a masochist, Mul--" He paused mid-sentence, grimacing. "What are you calling yourself again?"

"*Cat*," Mulder said, glaring. "And I'm not a masochist. But feel free to do whatever you want--just no serious injuries, all right? I'd like to be able to walk out of here and not have to go straight to the hospital."

Skinner shook his head but curtailed the first words that came to his tongue. He removed his glasses, laid them on the table, keeping one hand on Mulder as he did, then pulled Mulder closer, the curve of his palm laid to the nape of his neck, a firm but easy haul. When their mouths met again, only then did Skinner realize how hungry he'd remained despite all his wavering intentions, how greedily ready he was to taste the younger man's mouth once more. He tasted different now, though--like toothpaste. Skinner's own brand. This further evidence of preparation moved him with unexpected force, and he twined his fingers into Mulder's hair and kissed him deeper.

He felt a pressing need to connect, to waken *Mulder* from the shell of himself, to see him surface in all his edgy, paranoid glory. His gaze would sharpen and deepen to reveal every strange and amazing passion that bloomed within, his flesh would stir with vivid, brimming life. . .but it wasn't happening. From the other man's mouth and body Skinner felt only the mechanical response of one who has been trained--or who has trained himself--to deliver pleasure without joy.

And what did it mean? Under other circumstances Skinner would have said to hell with it, but he kept on. He felt sure he was being challenged. Maybe there was a reason for this scenario--other than the twisted thrill it was presumably intended to deliver. Maybe it was serving as an acted-out metaphor for some shortcoming of Mulder's, some sense of sexual alienation or impersonality.

It was an offbeat idea, one Skinner barely considered consciously, but it nudged him into a certain approach. "Lie down," he said, pushing Mulder gently back onto the bed. Mulder dropped and bounced on the mattress, then slid himself further toward the center and stretched out.

"Want me to take these off?" he asked, running a hand across the fly of his jeans--an area noticeably lacking in convexity.

"Just lie there." Skinner stripped out of his shirt and kicked off his loafers. Joining Mulder on the bed, he settled alongside him and began a determined assault on the other man's sedate indifference. It was new territory. Fox Mulder. More fragile than expected; more enticing, even only half-stripped, than Skinner had realized. He lay passive, accepting Skinner's touch, his face and entire body placid but tense. If there was any furor of feeling in him, it was buried deep and didn't show itself on the skin or in the eyes, which moved their gaze back and forth across Skinner's face, restless and brooding, their color dimmed to a muddied blend of dark green and grey in the shadow of Skinner's body.

He was quiet. Fox Mulder was never quiet, but now he was playing some foxing game, he was someone else; someone, apparently, who wanted to submit and be still, to relinquish argument and effort. Or perhaps this was simply another kind of effort. It was difficult to imagine him this stranger, this hustler, Cat. However changeable his moods, Mulder was Mulder, a man made uniquely coherent by his obsessions and his will. But that was work. This--this was something else entirely, despite the disguise of commerce in which Mulder had cloaked the assignation.

Skinner traced the other man's face with his fingers and tried to follow Mulder to the place where he'd gone, but tried also to accept the alteration of identity he'd made. Transformation. A new name, a new soul. Who didn't want that, now and then. But who achieved it--almost no one, Skinner would have said.

Watchful eyes held Skinner's own, then dropped their gaze slightly. Skinner pressed his thumb to the curve of one brow. The orbital ridge was a hard furl under the skin, and the softness below--the rich thick fold of eyelid--flickered with movement under his touch as it closed. The muscles of the eye rode back and forth beneath their cover, still restless, pulsing with sightedness and a secreted wealth of power.

Cat Wilson--doppleganger, submerged brother--who the hell was he to Mulder, Skinner wondered. Some creation born of a hated self. . .maybe. Split personality seemed too definitive a term; he could not be anything but the gamepiece for an engagement of desire that Mulder would never have dared on his own, but which he'd wanted too badly to resist. The thought made Skinner's breath tighten in his chest, made his heart fist in small shame at not having guessed the degree of Mulder's need before now.

Skinner leaned closer and laid a light kiss on Mulder's forehead, then spread its drifting wake around one eye, across cheek and bone, across the tiny wayside of his mole, down to full lips. The other man was breathing with a steadiness that suggested carefully monitored control, but he let his lips part as Skinner's arrived there. When Skinner pulled away almost at once, he said nothing, just remained gravely watchful, if perhaps more interested, more curious.

He was so still, so disciplined in his motionlessness, that Skinner privately marveled. If any one thing characterized Mulder, it was his kinetic energy, that vital force which betrayed itself in near-constant motion, however muted. Even wedged into an office chair for the duration of a meeting, he could not help but twitch, grimace, paddle his fingers on his trousers, tug at his lapels and his tie like a sulky male model. Now, he was in complete repose, a boneless drape of flesh across bone, unmoving but not exactly easy. Not at ease, but at the ready.

Ruffling through the younger man's hair, Skinner shaped his hand to the blurred planes of his head, an examination that felt so good he lost himself in it for several minutes. He relished the feel of that silken weight rubbing across his palm, sliding through his fingers. It delivered a sensual satisfaction fierce and thrilling, calling up memories of other such contacts, of cupping his wife's head as she gave him pleasure. He wanted that from Mulder, wanted it with the arrival of desperate hunger, a rough rush of fire in his cock, but he didn't force the event, simply took the younger man in another kiss.

The sliding duel of their tongues was better now; for Skinner, anyway. It was hard to tell what Mulder--the soi-disant Cat--was feeling. Skinner drew his hand from the furred warmth of skull he stroked and slid it down between Mulder's legs, molding his grip to the juncture of his jeans. Nothing of great moment filled the measure of his hand. Nothing yet. He let his hand rest there casually, let his thumb ride gently up and down the curve of the fly. Mulder surged a bit, a wave's slow unrolling motion that began with a small lift at his hips and ended like a sigh in his mouth.

Encouraged, Skinner let his hand travel elsewhere, over the light hill of one hip, then up along the other's bared torso. His fingers ran lightly along a scale of ribs, counting those finely-boned ribbons, feeling the pull of skin under his touch as Mulder shifted and stretched. Their kiss--an easy, unhurried series of smaller kisses and licks--deepened. Force was gathering in the lines and junctions of Mulder's body, showing itself here and there in the flex of muscles and the subterranean strain of nerves as they took fire.

Sensing change, Skinner moved, sliding his body to cover more of the other man's. Hips shifted and legs spread themselves to accomodate him; and it felt good. Skinner gave a soft groan into his partner's mouth, let his tongue speak for him with rough flickers of approval. Mulder's arms slid around his waist, explored the deeply cut furrow of his back, held his hips and then his ass, moving back and forth, urging without pressure, offering a rhythm. Skinner didn't want to take that purposeful rhythm yet, though. Unsuccumbing, he broke their kiss and let his attention sink downward by degrees.

"You don't have to--"

"Shut up," Skinner said quietly. He focused on one nipple, studied it, and watched it tighten under his attention. Just a look, but the other man was drawing a ragged breath already, anticipating what he might do. He laid his lips there, heard a surprised, stifled gasp. Skinner smiled lazily, and let his poised touch proceed further. It takes time for the wind to work every dried leaf from an autumn tree. There may be a first deluge of release, but it's a slow stripping after that initial rush, a matter of worrying each scrap free. The wind's teeth and tongue are endlessly patient; its lips are persistent to the last, and thorough.

After several minutes of attention, Mulder finally began to show the first urgent signs of life. Skinner could feel the hard upward arrowing of flesh between the other man's legs, a definite pressure against his own chest.

"Why--what--" Mulder gasped harshly, thrusting his head to one side against the pillows.

"Hmm?"

"Why don't you let me do this--for you--"

"You like this."

"I--of course--yes--yes--"

"Just keep saying that."

Mulder did. A minute later, Skinner frowned and interrupted the bite he'd been about to deliver to his partner's left nipple. "Mulder--Muld--damn it--*Cat*!"

"Yes--?"

"You can stop the soundtrack. You don't have to keep saying 'yes'."

"Oh. Sorry. I thought you wanted me to."

Skinner sighed and pressed his forehead between the hard warm planes of Mulder's chest. "Just say what you want, when you want to say it. Not when you think *I* want you to say it--got that?"

"Yes, sir."

Skinner's face heated. "Don't call me sir," he grated out, revising his earlier order.

"Okay," Mulder said softly, touching the side of Skinner's face.

He was looking up at the ceiling as he spoke, but Skinner imagined he could feel the transmission of gratitude through the contact of their skin. He swallowed and with an impulse too quick to censor caught hold of Mulder's hand and impressed the seal of his mouth there, then laced their twinned fingers together and moved his head lower. Mulder's body laid itself out for him, undefended and accepting. He kissed the firm drum of abs, the small wound of the navel, then freed both his hands and began undoing the zipper on his jeans.

Mulder was quiet again, almost unnervingly so. He remained unmoving, eyes closed, arms loosely at his sides, as Skinner slid his jeans and briefs off. Blue briefs, with white elastic--Jockeys. These were somehow significantly boyish (or maybe it was just Mulder), and Skinner's face flushed again, not unpleasantly. The undressed length of Mulder's body was not exactly what he'd expected, but it was easy on the eyes. He was a little softer than Skinner had believed, lacking hard edges or sharp cuts. His muscles were gently defined; their braided, sculpted lengths slim but lush. He looked. . .nice. Clean, athletic, mature but still retaining the essence of a youthful form. His face was familiar, but wedded now to his unclothed body, like blossom to stem, it seemed to sum him up as an exotic presence: what the hell was Fox Mulder doing naked in his bed?

Skinner smiled to himself and absently shoved the jeans to one side. His gaze fastened on the other man's cock, a curve of blushing flesh, lifted and holding at half-mast as if still unready to commit itself to full arousal. He reached out and held the organ's ripe head in the cup of his hand, thumbing its swelling cap, feeling it vibrate with brimful life. Mulder made a small plaintive sound and opened his eyes to slits.

"I could do that for you," he offered in a rather desperate whisper, his face conveying a plea.

"Thanks. But I'll wait." Skinner smiled smugly. Certain benefits of Mulder's fantasy scenario were becoming clearer now: the client has full privileges. "You like that, kitten?" he asked, the endearment a dry poke at the other man's persona.

"*Cat*," Mulder said with a scowl, then recalled himself to a semblance of manners and form and smoothed his face out into friendlier lines. "Yes. Thanks. It's great." He hesitated, then pushed himself on with a visible show of effort, his voice a soft, practiced sing-song. "You're really good--God, that's good--that's it, that's--"

"Stop it," Skinner said, feeling a flare of anger. "Jesus Christ, I don't--" He broke off, biting his tongue hard, forcing reminders on himself. Maybe Mulder needed this. Maybe he had trouble expressing himself under such circumstances.

Then again, maybe he was a total nut case, and an asshole to boot.

"I don't need your amateur theatrics," Skinner said tightly. "I intend to make you scream when you come."

Mulder swallowed. "Great, thanks," he said shakily. "Amateur. Ha. I still expect to get paid."

"Don't worry. Christ, you earn forty-five thousand dollars a year and don't have any alimony. You could pay me."

"I wish," the hustler muttered, snorting softly and eyeing Skinner. He was hard put to figure out this particular trick. The other man had to be round the bend, given the progression of events so far, but he'd grown gentler once in bed, and more than a little generous. It felt nice to have someone rub his feet (as the other was presently doing), and it didn't hurt that the man in question was a well-buffed hunk of muscle-- with a well-padded wallet besides. Mulder (*Cat*, he recited to himself in a constant, reprimanding mantra, enforcing his chosen identity: *Cat, Cat, Cat*) only hoped he'd spring the proper number of bills free when all was said and done. His rent was a week overdue on Monday. It certainly wouldn't hurt. . . .

Yes, but. . .this was nice. All of it. The bed was nice--big, clean, comfortable. The house was nice, the man's touch was nice--for a guy who spent the better part of his waking life in a suit, he had good hands, strong and hard. Getting fucked by this stud wouldn't be so bad, assuming he didn't flip out at the sticking point. He was surely and without question hung like a bull, the hustler thought, surreptitiously eyeing the hefty package tucked into the guy's expensively-trousered crotch.

He squirmed a few times as Skinner's hands found ticklish spots on his feet, then gasped when the older man kissed the ball of one foot. Tricks did all sorts of weird things, but there was something indecently sweet about this gesture. His lips were a bow of heat; his breath a plume of steam--and then the hustler's foot was dropped, and he was being pulled down the bed, split apart like a wishbone until his ass bumped the other's knees.

"Wow. Hello," the hustler said, blinking and offering a hesitant curl of smile. The other man didn't answer him, and the hustler immediately shut up. Talk when they tell you to talk. Stay quiet otherwise, if you can manage it. He lay, legs drawn up and unfolded like those of a grasshopper, while Skinner began playing with him. It was a casual but purposeful play that sent touches skittering from his nipples to his cock, and lower. Big hands cupped his ass, lifted and stroked his balls, brushed across his anus without yet entering. The hustler bit his lip, unable to remember the last time he'd felt this peculiar degree of vulnerability.

A little while later, even such a simple thought was beyond his ability to address. He was losing coherence, unable to gather wit or words to reroute the present course of action. With the direct scorch of Skinner's concentrated touch, pretense gradually burned off. The drama Mulder had cultivated shrivelled and died, smoking as it went, leaving only its shadow behind. It didn't happen at once, but there came a point when he could only submit to the death and the journey back. To hell with Cat. Let him find residence elsewhere. His mind spun on an axis of wild silent laughter: the Cat was skinned, finished. And left behind, underneath that shorn hide, was another creature of raw, bloody nerve, a ghost of the self.

Mulder.

He wanted this for himself. *Mulder.*

Skinner's head was between Mulder's legs now, his tongue buried in the aching cut of his ass. Mulder had already begun sobbing his pleasure; his feet drummed at the other man's shoulders and back, while his hands dug into the back of his neck. The pleasure was endless; Skinner endlessly patient. Another man in such a position might have seemed ridiculous, this one still retained his innate dignity. He was indisputably in control and in command, and was taking exactly what he wanted, how he wanted.

And he was sexy. Brutally sexy, with a piquant erotic ugliness that masked an underground force so powerful it could melt and reform rock. Just the sight of that granite, determined face between his legs was making Mulder harder by the second, and he realized with dazed shock that he needed to come, *wanted* to come, with that cruelly hot mouth stripping the flesh from his bones. His body clenched with the drive to climax even as he struggled to stave the moment off.

"Why don't you come now," the other man suggested, his breath a hot feather along the length of Mulder's cock.

Mulder whimpered, struggled further, felt a thick tongue slide across the head of his swollen organ. "Oh god!" His body was leaking, its tissues melting and pearling out from his cock like sap or the perfume of crushed white flowers. He needed to come, but feared the necessity of surrender.

And then necessity departed, along with the kissing torment of the other's mouth. Mulder opened his eyes, feeling threaded tears sticky in their lashes. Skinner was looking at him, his crudely carved face flushed. Blood pinked its surface, upwelling brushstrokes that followed the planes of his cheeks and defined the edge of his mouth. To Mulder's eyes he looked fiercely masculine, one of a well-known type, cut from the same cloth as the bullet-head Marines who'd swarmed the city he'd once made his wayward, wandering home in. Riding into Jacksonville on leave from Camp Lejeune--dangerous, intimidating, often rude--they had fascinated Mulder, and he'd had his share like this, framed between his outspread legs, taking their pleasure--but the differences were many. Defensively drunk, committed to the obscurity of unlit lamps and well-draped hotel rooms, and usually in a hurry--that had been his typical Friday night date, for a certain period of his wanton youth. And most times they *had* left money on the bed, afterwards.

The memories were a mixed lot, but the unforgettable adolescent thrill of being taken with brute rutting force by a Real Man was still burned into Mulder's cerebral cortex with distinction. He could feel the brands of the past itching at him now, excited awake by the man in front of him.

"Fuck me," he whispered, the words thick in his mouth. He watched through slitted eyes as the other man's lips parted, and the flared heat on his cheeks deepened; lust was written on his face in a graphic, undeniable blaze.

"You want that?" Skinner said, pressing a thumb to his anus.

Mulder's muscles jumped. "Yes--god, yes--I want you in me--" He rubbed himself shamelessly against the other man's hand, trying to work his ass further onto that hard curve of thumb--and thought of his mother reciting "Little Jack Horner" to him--an intrusive thought that he quickly drop-kicked away.

"Stay right there," Skinner muttered, and left him briefly. He returned with lube and a condom. He was shaky-fingered putting both on, but not so much so that Mulder felt prompted to offer help. Frankly, he was too distracted by the sight of the other man to act in such a constructive fashion. The thick length of Skinner's cock jutted now from his open trousers, and though Mulder had seen plenty--though he'd seen bigger and badder--he liked the look of it.

"Jesus," he said aloud, voicing his impressed appreciation. He smiled up at Skinner, eyelids lowering, and made a show of spreading his legs wider. "That's a hell of a ride," he purred.

Skinner blinked, then gave a sound that was something between a throat- clearing and a deep breath. "I--it's been a while." *A hell of a long while*, he thought dryly. With another man.

"No problem," Mulder said, letting himself be recalled to what passed for a more technical matter of business. "We can do this anyway you like. Any position. I could get on top. You don't have to worry about hurting me. . .you want me somewhere else? We could do this standing--against the dresser--"

Skinner's face was beginning to express exasperation, which seemed to burn off his momentary nerves. "Quiet," he said. "Just stay like that."

Mulder's body tingled with a fresh wave of desire. "I already put some lube in," he said in a by-the-way manner, as Skinner's fingers moved to the entrance of his body.

Oddly, Skinner seemed startled by this information. His fingers paused. "You did," he said flatly. His tongue had not gone far enough in its earlier travels to verify or refute this, but he seemed disbelieving.

Mulder squirmed, disappointed by the halt of the other's hand. He tried to read the meaning behind the other man's disconcerted frown. "It's no big deal. . .I usually do, after I clean up."

"Clean up," Skinner repeated.

Frustrated, Mulder looked up at him. It's hard for a man lying flat on his back with his legs in the air to shrug, but he rubbed his shoulders on the sheets a bit in a similar gesture.

Skinner shook his head once as if to clear it, then returned to his preparations. Mulder groaned in approval. God, this man's fingers could do more for him than most men's dinky pricks--within seconds Mulder was twisting off the bed and trying to climb the prodding heat of Skinner's hand. He heard small whimpering sounds--his own--and disjointedly wondered how long it had been since he'd made such noises. He couldn't remember. It had been a while since anyone had driven the mercury in his dick up to boiling point.

When Skinner's fingers were deep in him, jammed up past the knuckles, coring the heart of him out with skillful thrusts--when Mulder was arched back and undone on the bed, his need so hurtful he could have wept--this was when Skinner struck.

"You in there, Mulder?" he said quietly, leaning forward.

Mulder's eyes snapped open as the rest of his body froze. "No--don't--"

"I've implemented a revised policy on physical relations--I don't fuck strangers these days. So tell me who you are."

"I can tell you I'm Mulder," Mulder said, ripping off the words savagely, eyes damply laden with effort of scaling his desire back from the edge. Hot fingers jabbed cruelly inside him and he gasped; his head fell back on the pillow as the gravity in the room suddenly doubled.

"No. Not like that. Tell me who you *are*. Just tell me the truth."

"I thought truth was relative," Mulder said, twisting his face on the pillow, muffling the words there.

"Not to you."

"Oh, yes, to *me*," Mulder asserted, bitterness welling up. "You've got your goddamned fingers up my ass--don't make me do this--I won't--you want me to be Mulder, I'll be Mulder--"

Skinner could have released a stream of angry oaths, but he didn't dare let them loose. The other man's voice was cracked, half-taunting, desperate--and maybe there was some kind of truth in his words, even if it was not what Skinner wanted to hear.

"I want you to be Mulder," he said, moving his fingers deep, like the twist of a key in a lock, punctuating his words.

"*Oh, god, I want you*!" Mulder cried out, the words breaking from him, the tenor of his voice strident, newly wild with the release of pent, true desire. "God, I want you in me--Jesus God, Walter, please--"

A giddying furl of triumph lifted through Skinner's chest, and then his own weight of desperation crashed over him. Their eyes met, Mulder's wild and shamed, shadowed with a feeling Skinner couldn't read but which resembled despair.

"Is it so hard, Mulder--" He slid his fingers out of the other man's body, cupped his hip while leaning down. His other hand took a handful of Mulder's soft hair and gripped there for emphasis, holding him captive. "Why like this?"

Bitter again, still shamed, Mulder said in a forced voice, "You need to ask? F-fuck." His voice shook with rare incontinence. "You would never have--never--" His jaw tightened, cutting off speech.

"You took a hell of a chance," Skinner said softly. "What if I'd sent you up for a psych evaluation?"

"I probably deserve one."

"Me without my tape recorder," Skinner muttered.

"Finish me--please." Mulder begged with his eyes; the swell between his legs ached, bone-hard and humiliating. He was so ready for it, for the feel of Skinner sliding in and splitting him down the middle, a knife sliding up to its pommel in a melon, until it could go no further--that everything else seemed extraneous--his reasons, his artifice, the history of their acquaintance lying uneasy between them.

"In a hurry?" Skinner said with smooth interest and a cool twitch of brows. "I thought we had all weekend."

Mulder could not rebut this. He simply closed his eyes and gave up. As he did he felt Skinner draw back. Broad hands cupped and stroked him again, working his flesh, teasing from balls to the strobing involute ring below, and then the entry began: expected, unexpected, completing their desires even as it fragmented pieces of feeling through Mulder's body like a detonating grenade. He opened his eyes, he confirmed it was Skinner who kneeled against him, whose face loomed and hung above him, whose cock was disappearing into his ass--but even though he saw, believing came hard.

*I can't believe I really did this*, Mulder thought in a moment's flare of sick, panicky astonishment. He had devestated his life on the febrile whim of a long-tended fantasy, laid waste to future peace of mind and violated the sanctity of his independence all in one fell swoop, just to have this man's cock up his ass. And when it was over, Skinner would be no different than any other grunt of his stripe--he would finish and the glow would fade and his eyes would open to fix Mulder's face in a shutter-snap of contempt.

Then Skinner's half-furled eyes did open and fix Mulder in their sights. In a reflex of response, Mulder's muscles tightened. He watched Skinner flush and gasp in pleasure, felt his own deep tsunami lifting over him, dark and unfathomable. Feeling was true. It moved, it could not be flattened back out into the unnatural social fabric they'd tended. The sea would not be ironed. To Mulder, it felt as right as all the things he'd ever wanted in his life, as perfect as being swung upward into the air as a child, riding a rope up into the sky behind his home, as good as jerking off for the first time he could remember and feeling his sister's fingers curl around his own as she watched in close fascination, as excruciatingly correct as the belt strap he'd once tried to hang himself with, that had not held him through to the end but had nonetheless punished him in the precise way he'd needed, which was a truth he could only ever have learned by living.

He arched, opening his entire body to what was fitting. He could feel Skinner's hands moving--moving as if trying to find some ideal position that would hold them both fast, that would take him deeper. Evidence of the other man's need, his rising arousal, drove into Mulder and opened him further. He was happy. Surely he was happy. He felt himself smiling, or making some expression at the absurd wonder of it all that was not unlike a smile. He heard himself laughing, or making sounds not too far down the scale from laughter. Skinner's thighs lifted and propped Mulder up; the inclines of their bodies inverted and pressed flush, so that the hairs woven into the other man's skin pulled like tiny threads across the blazing surface of Mulder's ass. This feeling alone, it seemed, was delight enough to spill him over the brink, but he was distracted by too many others for it to achieve that success: the feel of stretched full flesh forcing him open, of balls rubbing patterns circular and then vertical at the private mouth of him, the feel of hands sliding givingly up his chest, touching him, teasing him, then breaking apart and splitting their intentions, so that one remained stitching at his nipples while the other took his aching cock in hand and polished it with care, the way a man might rosin a wooden flute. The touch was too light, and that was good--and then it was briefly too rough, and that was perfect.

The rhythms came and went, the touches, thrusts and pulls, all of them swinging around one another's orbits like the parts of some complex kinetic device, like a machine whose elements always seem about to collide but never quite do, and yet something was being accomplished. Some point was nearing.

"Harder," Mulder whispered.

Skinner's throat ached with swallowed cries of pleasure, sounds that seeped out only as tiny fractions of the withheld bellow inside him, tiny grunts and gasps: that was all he could bear to give. Mulder lay below him, and against him, legs clamping around him with so much intimacy that Skinner knew he would never after today be able to see the man without remembering this: the combination lock of their bodies, the feel of the younger man's ass gripping and flexing around his embedded cock, trying to squeeze the pleasure from him, determinedly. In this moment Mulder's entire body was working to please Skinner, working for him, doing him, and this was no illusion of perspective, but a realization of truth that made Skinner frantic. It made him harden further, it made him burn inside out--he could feel his ears and scalp blazing with that fiery evidence of feeling which is either shame or a pure, inexorable lust. Or both.

But he didn't want to feel shame. He wanted to drive harder, and he did, and twisted his hips and pulled Mulder again and again toward him, toward where they were both going--and then they were there: Mulder, with sudden acceleration, arching several times off the bed to new heights, over and over giving half-stifled sobs that contained no words, then gripping Skinner with the shuddering implosion of his guts as his seed spilled from him, up along his body, striking his nipples and chin, coming hard enough to impress Skinner and stroke his pride, and then the length of him was swallowed one last sweet time and his own body was emptying itself with just that same force, in brutal but measured jabs whose delivery exploded around the head of his cock and bathed it in hot oil, a globe of fire held by the miracle of latex.

And though he didn't voice it aloud, his mind cried: *Mulder*, and it was impossible for him to know in that moment if he felt happiness or the savage, bone-deep triumph of seizing something he'd never thought he'd have.

The moment descended from its peak slowly. They were joined deeply and Skinner's aching flesh was not quick to ease. He shifted, remembered to breathe again, and waited for the pulsing beat of ecstasy in his cock to quieten, but it still raced along with his thudding heart. Flesh still gripped him, heat and pressure held him as if not wanting to let him go. He didn't want to be let go. The problem with release is that a second release always follows, eventually and of necessity.

After a minute though, realities began to kick in and strained aching muscles gave Skinner up to collapse. He withdrew, not quite looking at Mulder, then lanced a quick assessment at him. The younger man's eyes were closed, his head turned away, his cock settling, but still heavy and flushed. Skinner slid off his condom with an economical gesture and dropped it in the bedside wastebasket, then moved to stretch out again next to Mulder. He cupped the other man's cock and rubbed his balls for a minute and then palmed the crown, rotating his thumb across its hot bloom and across Mulder's abdomen, smearing his hand and everything it touched with the results of pleasure.

Breath unsnapped itself from Mulder's throat with a small but startled sound. Mulder's head turned to face him, his eyes yet closed.

"Oh," he said clearly, when Skinner's mouth moved to his right nipple. "What--oh. . ."

Skinner bit down and felt flesh rise in response, thrusting erect between his teeth. A fresh surge of blood swept back into his cock and elsewhere--into his trunk like rising sap that had been set aflame, up his flushed face and across his scalp again. The small razorback verge of his nape prickled at the fire and the thin arc around each of his ears became once more a scalding ribbon of heat.

When he had Mulder's attention, he rolled onto him, resting his body there slightly off-kilter, at calculated half-weight. Mulder opened his eyes finally and looked up at him. In his face was the pathos of a man who expected far less. Skinner recognized the look from other likenesses, by laying over Mulder's face the ghostly memory of Sharon's when he'd surprised her with a kindness she hadn't expected and which she was, to his shame, grateful for.

Mulder swallowed, his jaw working once, then rasped quietly: "You want more."

Hard to tell if it was question, challenge, entreaty. The bones in Skinner's own face seemed suddenly heavy, pressing their weight on the mask he wore. He felt that if he'd looked in a mirror at that moment he would have seen something distorted, unrecognizable. "We stopped playing that game, Mulder. Did you think I was going to roll off and reach for my wallet?"

The pink heat-flush in Mulder's cheeks seemed responsive to Skinner's words. "I thought--I don't know. Maybe. I wouldn't have blamed you. I gave you every reason."

"You were what my first supervising SAC would have called a right asshole."

Mulder blinked, smiled a little. "That's ambiguous, given the context."

Skinner's eyes narrowed. "Let's talk ambiguous, shall we?"

"Mm. . .no?"

"Mm, yes."

Mulder stared up at Skinner, half idly, half purposefully thinking of ways to distract him. The other man's face had never been so close, a hard looming visage in his immediate horizon. "Without your glasses you're almost approachable," he mused aloud, speaking without thinking. Glibness was easy when required.

"I think we're *beyond* approach here, Mulder."

"Moot point. Okay. But this is worthy of study. I might never be in this position again. How can I let the opportunity pass?"

"You can put yourself wherever you want to be--" Skinner broke off, not for avoidance of the point, but because he'd almost said *Agent Mulder*. Jesus, talk about a new and different faux pas--here was one Walter Skinner hadn't tripped into before. He wondered how he could avoid it--how often he'd *need* to avoid it.

"Really?" Mulder said, staring opaquely up at him. "I'd say it's your call."

"I'd say I just did," Skinner returned tersely.

Mulder sighed, and Skinner felt the body under his relax as if slightly deflated.

"I'm not used to this--pillow talk after the fact," Mulder said. "I mean, not with-- " Pause. Careful continuance. "Not with men, anyway." Smaller pause. "Well, not many men."

"This isn't pillow talk. This is an interrogation." Skinner looked down at Mulder. Mulder looked up at him. Skinner gave up first, feeling his mouth twitch.

"You'd need cuffs for that," Mulder said slyly.

"Let's not go there."

"Not on the first date, anyway."

Despite the lightness of Mulder's words, there was something weighted and forced under the pattering surface. Skinner, focused on the novel nearness of the other man's mouth, surprised himself by taking it in a hard kiss, working his tongue roughly around its warm chambered depth. Mulder kissed back with a burst of urgency, soft greedy sounds vibrating against Skinner's open mouth. These sounds excited Skinner more, breaking hotly in the wells of his ears as if tunneling up from inside him, through his own aching flesh, and he felt grip him that narrowing, specific need which sometimes comes to a lover, to put one's partner on the rack of desire and strike forth every possible nuance of music from the body. And with uncanny rapport, he knew that Mulder was ripe and spilling over for him, ready to sing for him.

He attacked. If this had been videotaped it might have looked incomprehensible, unchoreographed and clumsy, but every touch met its target. When he drew back, Mulder's arms rose to hold him; Skinner knocked them away, lifted Mulder up with a strong hand under his arching back, bit his throat, collarbones, nipples, heard him wail, cry, hiccup--yell, and rant softly, and beg--and then his sounds dwindled and he purred and gasped, and then his voice became a series of yeses that would not stop, each yes distinct and signficant, even when they slurred and blended, it went on and on, an unending river of yeses as Skinner grabbed his hair, kissed his mouth, carved out the other man's ears with the blade of his tongue, grabbed his cock, stripped it three times hard and fast (*yes, yes--oh god yes--!*), released it, cupped his balls, rolled them, then slid his hand below again, where Mulder was ripest and hottest. Skinner plunged his fingers in, felt them slide deep, slickly taken in one swallow. He made a harsh, desperate sound of his own and drove his hand brutally, roughly, thinking there was no way he could put his cock there again without giving pain, unable to stop imagining the pleasure.

"Please," Mulder gasped out. "God--fuck me--do it--now!"

Skinner, barely able to move, forced himself to effort and reached for another condom. Mulder intercepted his arm, grabbing his hand and drawing it down between his legs. "In me, now," he said.

"I can't--"

"*Now*," Mulder hissed, lifting his body up higher off the bed. His legs spread wide and twined themselves around Skinner's hips, his entire body offering, demanding, and before he could help himself Skinner was driving in, it could not be helped--the flesh arced to complete the current of its own accord, pulling him forward, and then he was embedded again, Mulder laid out sprawling before him with arms bent back above his head and striking at the air, and sweet Jesus it felt good. Skinner rode hard, lunging into the cadence, forgetting his hesitation. Every shove of his hips carried a twist that screwed him deeper.

Feelings and stray thoughts picked up in Skinner's mind and wound themselves confusingly together like scrapped leaves in a minor whirlwind. He might never be in this position again. Mulder looked like he was running a marathon or a fever. Flushed. Lips full. The feeling of leaning forward to kiss him, the feeling of lifting back upright and driving his cock deeper on the far curve of the movement. His head lifting back, his hips shoving forward. How Sharon's voice used to rise a full octave when she came, to high soft cries. How it was going to feel to shoot his load into the warmth kissing him. Mulder in the office. Mulder staring out his office window. Green eyes. Green endless eyes. Heels digging into the small of his back. Mulder now, lips parted, eyes nearly shut, hair tousled on the pillow, bereft of gun and badge, submissive. More lube would be good. . . .

He drew out a few inches and found the tube still on the bed; the few strokes he took to apply it felt strange, the air on his swollen flesh unnaturally cool. His own hand--no. He pushed back in, watching his dick slide through the tight stretched skin of the body's most private invitation, then lifted his gaze. Act and vision blended and the sight of Mulder's face contorting in helpless ecstasy made him harder, made the rejoining tighter, and Skinner briefly seemed a cork swelling to fit the throat of a wine bottle, but he was all of it--bottleneck, bottle, the pressure rising within. The wine was dark and strong.

Skinner felt himself floating toward a deliberation of desire. Tranced by his resumed rhythm, he cupped Mulder in both hands, Mulder's ass, two handfuls of Mulder's surrendered body in which he could feel himself moving--and some clock inside him slowed into an attenuated adaggio in which the moment registered endlessly, and he was contemplating the nearness of perfection--

--and then he came like a shotgun, bursting into Mulder's guts. Mulder's hand was on himself, and as Skinner filled his depths, Mulder jerked his cock frantically with the deft, thrift skill of a man who knows his own needs, then stiffened, gasped, lifted his chin and peaked, his ass milking Skinner's throbbing length, every interior muscle kneading him ruthlessly in concert for his own pleasure as he spilled it.

Skinner's face pulled into a snarl, ecstasy masked as rage. Beneath him, Mulder thrashed and made the sounds of a man whipped and loving it. Mulder. Dry sobs, anguished. Skinner felt them even as he heard them; flesh still shuddered around his cock, stroking it. He couldn't bear to leave this, but eventually he did.

"Fuck, fuck," Mulder mumbled as Skinner folded down to join him. A fully prone position seemed like a good idea to Skinner; he doubted he could have stayed upright any longer. More from exhaustion than intimacy Skinner heaped himself next to Mulder, and there they lay tossed together, a mingled wreckage of flesh, marionettes whose strings had been cut.

"God, it's true--I'm *not* twenty anymore," Mulder groaned.

"*You're* not the one to be talking," Skinner groused in return.

"Umph," Mulder said. "Mama said there'd be days like this."

"I don't think she meant days like this."

"Are there any other words to that song," Mulder said in a voice like the distant whine of a radio, tiny and mostly absorbed by the pillow on which his cheek rested.

"I don't remember. I don't think so." Skinner shifted to rest his chest against Mulder's back, his forehead to a wall of soft hair. Even this small movement drained him. He groaned, grunted. "Don't make me talk."

"Don't then. . ."

"Stop talking."

"I'm not talking."

The silence slept for a while that neither of them noticed. The sun moved slowly from the foot of the bed to their hips until it lay across them like a blanket. And then the silence broke itself, the phone rang, and Skinner pulled himself awake and reached across Mulder to the bedside table.

Mulder lay and woke, gliding upward eye-blink by blink toward the conscious recognition that he'd screwed his boss and his life. The phone conversation was short, cryptic, uninteresting. When Skinner reached back across him to hang up, Mulder sighed and made as if to get up. Skinner, however, grabbed at him and held him fast.

"Stay," he said succinctly.

"Gotta go," Mulder said. He felt the body behind his still. There was a brief silence in which Skinner did not release him.

"Just to the bathroom," Mulder finally said, caving in to some unspoken but compelling request. Or perhaps command.

Skinner's arm withdrew. Mulder sat up on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through his hair. He tried not to be too obvious about glancing at the alarm clock, but sensed Skinner's pinning stare on him. Helpless to melancholy, Mulder glanced over his shoulder and met the other man's contemplative eyes.

"You want me to go?"

"Don't be a prick, Mulder."

Mulder grimaced. "Whatever."

"We planned for the weekned," Skinner said, unemotionally.

A smile could not be helped. Mulder looked at the other man with dry amusement, almost affectionately. "You hiring for naked houseboys, sir?" he said, adopting the earnestly facetious tone of an aspiring job applicant.

"I have someone under contract already."

Mulder raised both brows, his face broadening into uncertain amazement. "I know you're not serious." He turned a bit more clockwise on the bed. "I'm not as twisted as you might think."

"Oh, I think you are."

Still smiling dryly, Mulder shook his head. "You've had my best shot."

With expressionless regard, Skinner's gaze slid down Mulder's sticky chest to the softened crux of his body. "Is that what that was."

Mulder flushed, his smile edging away, but it was impossible to discern the exact tone of Skinner's words, even more impossible to take offense. He felt more shame than anger--he almost welcomed any slur. A kick in the head would have been even finer. "Thanks," he said quietly.

Skinner seemed to regret the implication of his words. He sighed, shifted to sit. Mulder at once stood, instinctively retreating, but Skinner was up in nearly the same instant, latching onto him, turning him.

"Don't."

Mulder waited, but that was apparently it. "Don't what?"

"Just don't," Skinner said bluntly.

"What--"

"Why did you come here, Mulder?" Skinner said, overriding him. "Just to fuck with my head?"

"I don't think I should answer that ques--"

"Because if that's all this is, you'd better start thinking about how you're going to screw your next supervisor because I'm going to hand you off so fast you'll think you have wheels on your wingtips, and I doubt anyone else in the bureau is going to be as understanding about your occult religion as I've been. You'll be playing left field alone, because I'm not going to sit looking across my desk at you day after day and wondering when you're going to toss the next curve ball in my face."

"I see--"

"No, you don't see. You either stay here and fulfill your commitment or you dig out your kneepads for the next guy. Now do you see *that*, Agent Mulder?"

Mulder stared stunned at Skinner, whose face was deadly close to his own, and who was holding him frozen in place without even a finger's touch. He could feel his nipples hardening painfully and an intolerable, nearly insupportable resurgence of fire in his dick. "I need you," he breathed, when he could breathe. "Let me--"

He dropped to his knees, unable to stand it, unable to stand. The hardness he'd sensed lifting toward him as their bodies stood in swaying proximity rose now in front of his face, richly thickening even as he watched.

He heard Skinner catch his breath, but as he reached out, the other man took a step back. "I won't--I don't--" In the space of a few seconds the balance had shifted again; Mulder could hear the discomfort in Skinner's voice. "Let me clean up," he said, with a gruff display of fastidiousness that amused Mulder.

"Oh, god, way to kill the moment," Mulder groaned and laughed together, looking up at Skinner, grinning at him suddenly with a deep sense of satisfaction that had renewed itself from nothingness.

Skinner blinked, frowned, his face dancing with the small shifty evidences of his uncertainty. "We could take a shower," he offered almost diffidently.

"We could," Mulder agreed.

"You look ridiculously cheerful for a man in your position."

"Oh come on, this is a good position."

"Mm." Skinner moved off to the bathroom, paused in the door. "You coming?"

"I'm biting my tongue." Mulder stood, waggled his brows. He was still a bit breathless and could feel the heaviness of his eyelids. "I'd rather bite yours, of course."

"Get in here," Skinner said, before disappearing into the other room.

*****

Later.

"I can't believe you have no cheese. That's deeply unnatural."

"I haven't been to the store lately."

"And yet you have milk."

"I'd advise against that."

"Yeah. No kidding. It's been a while since February, Walter."

"I've been told to avoid dairy."

"Which leaves--what? The olive and onion food group? Bran? Celery?"

"Just get out of there. The food will be here soon."

"You did order extra cheese on mine, right?" Pause. "Right?" Pause. "I can feel you looking at my ass."

"I'll bet you can."

"You like this pose? How about this one?" Pause. "What are you thinking?"

"Somehow, naked in my kitchen, you look not at all out of place."

"I get that a lot."

*****

They lay on the couch--or rather, Mulder lay. Skinner sat, but his legs disputed the matter of placement, one angling to rest foot on floor, the other bent indecisively on the couch. It was the inexperienced position of a man who finds few poses that give him comfort, even in the off hours, who if not in motion is most usually sitting in a desk chair.

Skinner eyed the nearly empty pizza box on the coffee table then winced at what he'd been contemplating. *No more*. He felt a foot rub itself casually against his thigh and turned his gaze on Mulder, who sprawled comfortably across the length of Skinner's couch, a bizzare rendition of naked pizza-chewing beauty, a parodic pose of classical dissolution. *Man Inhaling Cheese*, Skinner thought, putting a title to his mental marble statue.

The foot continued to rub his thigh. Skinner shifted, pulled it between his legs, having degenerated to a point where he was unwilling to pass up any indulgence. It was all to be savored, without discrimination or judgment of suitability. He grew hard, though not enough to follow through. Not immediately, anyway. He'd surpassed an acceptable quota for a man ten years younger; not much more was likely to happen tonight.

But it still felt damn good.

The final bite of crust slid into Mulder's mouth. "Bhr izh def'n't'ly culled frr," Mulder remarked, chewing.

"Uh-huh," Skinner said agreeably. No idea, but what did it matter. Sated, he studied his artwork through sleepy eyes. He could feel the blood seeping downward from his brain as his digestive system succumbed to the burden of pizza he'd fed it. This couldn't last, but while it did. . . .