by jordan
Skinner put his hands on his desk, fingers spread
flat, and sighed, looking across at his recalcitrant charges.
They sat in their usual places, Mulder to the left, Scully to
the right, looking down at their hands like guilty children.
With Mulder it was because he automatically reacted with
shame and defensiveness when he felt a father figure was
putting him on the spot. No amount of maturity seemed
to be able to undo that early conditioning. Besides which,
he was still a bit dazed from his last scrape, and had only
been out of the hospital since that morning.
Scully had her own reasons for not looking into
his eyes very often, but when she did, her chin came
up, and her gaze was direct and fearless, and Skinner
was always the one to look away first.
"I've called you in here to tell you there've been
some problems with your story in Winslow, Agent Mulder.
I know it isn't your fault. Actually, the responsibility is mine.
I sent the two of you up there off the record, when I
should have filed the proper paperwork. Now the three
of us are going to have to fly up this afternoon and
straighten things out."
He adjusted his glasses and looked at Scully. "Agent Scully, your report was excellent, and normally your deposition would be acceptable, but I'd like you to come along to support Mulder's testimony, and to double check the medical work done at the Winslow hospital before they release the bodies for burial."
Mulder nodded, his eyes, as usual, distracted with
whatever Mulder-thoughts he was having at the moment.
He glanced at Scully, who gave him a stricken look, and
his lips curved briefly into a sympathetic smile. Skinner
tensed; what was that about? Probably some of their
almost telepathic shorthand, that ability to communicate
that made them so excellent together in the field. But
for once, Skinner was more paranoid than either of them,
and his skin prickled with a combination of guilt and dread.
After he dismissed them, he got up and walked around
his office nervously. Three hours on a plane with those
two was not something he anticipated with pleasure.
A movement outside the window caught his attention,
and he looked down to see the agents crossing the parking
lot, Mulder's careless grace perfectly juxtaposed against
Scully's quick determined stride. The sun caught Scully's
hair like burnished copper, and as they paused at the
curb Mulder reached out and put his hand on the small
of her back, his fingertips just where she was probably
carrying her gun under her trenchcoat. Not for the first
time, Skinner allowed himself the surge of pride and
affection a father feels for two particularly beautiful and
gifted children.
For once his eyes lingered on Mulder instead of Scully.
Mulder, who had been missing for two days, presumed
dead. It was not really his fault that Mulder had almost
been killed, had nothing to do with his not filing the right
paperwork or Mulder's carelessness or Scully's skepticism.
It had been just plain bad luck, a thing that sometimes
happened like lightning striking a heavy branch totally
at random, causing it to break and fall and kill the campers
sheltering beneath it.
He had been missing two agents, Barlow and Smith,
in the field since Tuesday. Had not received their
regular calls; two reliable agents, not mavericks or
self-willed. If they hadn't called in, something was
very wrong. They had last been headed for a small
town in upstate New York called Winslow. Mulder and
Scully had been driving back from a case in Buffalo,
and he asked them to stop in Winslow and check it out.
The two missing agents had been on the trail of
Antoine Baxter, a particularly nasty character who
fancied himself a mercenary and advertised as such
in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine, wanted for a kidnapping
in which the victim had been found murdered, and on
several charges of arson and assault. Mulder and Scully
had checked into a motel in Winslow and learned that
Barlow and Smith had stayed in the same motel. They
then proceeded with a routine investigation, going door
to door in the surrounding area. Never suspecting that
in one of the houses the real owners lay dead in the
dining room over their morning coffee while Baxter,
after calmly wiping the blood from his hands on a dishrag,
slouched in the doorway and answered their questions
with sleepy indifference.
And then had slipped out the back door while Scully
and Mulder moved on to the next house, and had driven
to their motel, and had wired a crude bomb to the door of
their room.
Exactly what happened next was a bit confusing. These
were questions that would have to be answered to
everyone's satisfaction before the case could be
officially closed. Apparently, Scully and Mulder had
had some sort of argument in the car outside the motel.
It was probably one of those few thousand
disagreements they had had over the years, a
tension releaser, and Mulder, as he often did, got
out and walked away in the middle of it. A few
seconds later, there was the sound of a huge explosion,
and Scully had run to the building to find the flaming
ruins of their room, and a dead body fragmented
just inside the doorway.
In the plane terminal now, Skinner reached
automatically for Scully's extra bag, the one containing
her laptop, probably, but she shook her head and
picked it up, shouldering it beside her carry-on.
Her face was composed, but tense. He thought
he knew why, and backed off. Her way was to shut
herself off from feeling; he knew exactly how that
worked, since he had done it so many times himself
in the past. Thinking back to that terrible afternoon,
he remembered the series of phone calls he had
received from her:
Call one: Mulder was dead, had been killed in an
explosion.
Call two: It wasn't Mulder's body after all, but the
body of a maid who had been going into the room to clean.
Call three: Another body had been found in the room,
this one burned beyond recognition, but carrying an
FBI issued weapon in his holster, and charred remains
of an official ID.
Mulder.
Skinner had flown up quickly and found a frozen,
tearless Scully, convinced that Mulder had been killed
because of whatever it was she said to him that made
him walk away from her. Skinner had no time for his
own grief; when he saw the state she was in, he did
the one thing he was really good at. He took command
of the situation, barking orders at everyone, even the
local police, and had a doctor sedate Scully. On the
flight home she was zoned out, almost in twilight sleep.
It had broken his heart to see her like that, and his
was a heart long past breaking. After Sharon's death,
the most he had ever allowed himself to feel was a fond
indulgence for his two wayward agents. But the
emotional thaw that began when he sat with her on
that plane less than a week ago was coming to
completion now, on this plane headed for Winslow,
with a kind of circular perfection.
They sat together now with Mulder on the aisle
seat, Scully in the middle, and Skinner by the window.
Nothing like on that other journey, when she had been
so out of it, so vulnerable, going obediently where
he guided her, her gaze locked in that thousand yard
stare. He wished she would cry, though he was
secretly grateful and even a little proud that she
didn't. Every protective instinct in him was blazing
up; he wanted to slaughter every enemy, protect
her from every injury. But he himself was the enemy
in her eyes, or had been in the past.
He had taken her home from the airport in a cab.
Took her purse from her, found the key, led her into
her apartment. She had stood in the living room,
looking around as if not quite sure of where she was.
He made her a cup of tea, his big hands clumsy and
unfamiliar with her personal possessions, her china cups,
her spoons, the things somehow charged with intimacy.
She drank the scalding liquid without flinching, staring
into space with those scary vacant eyes.
Although his conscience had tugged at him, he had
to leave her there to take a cab back to the office.
An Assistant Director with three dead agents had a
lot of explaining to do. He took all but two of her
prescription pills with him; she already seemed
oversedated. She waved vaguely when he said
goodbye, and his uneasiness grew by the minute.
At exactly five o'clock he screeched out of the
parking lot on the way back to her apartment. It
had taken her forever to answer the door, and he
was on the point of demanding a key from her
manager when she finally appeared, and let him in.
She was exactly as he had left her. She hadn't even
taken off her coat. It was shadowy in the living room,
and the heat was still off, so the November chill
penetrated to the bone. Skinner lit a fire, switched
on lamps, made her stand up so he could unbutton
her coat, his hands sliding down her arms as he
pulled it off. It was then that he felt the chill of her
flesh, and realized she was in shock.
He knelt before her and took her shoes off, lifting
each foot while she steadied herself with a hand on
his shoulder, unmoved by the deeply intimate act.
When Skinner rose again he took his jacket off and
wrapped her in it. It was ridiculously large; he
could not have thought she could be any cuter than
she already was, but his jacket made her look about
five years old. He led her back to the sofa and
made her sit down, then drew an ottoman up and
sat across from her, his hands on his knees. Afraid
to leave, afraid to stay, carefully composing words
of comfort.
He began with, "Agent Scully, what happened was
in no way your fault."
Her eyes moved to his dully. "How would you know?
You weren't there."
Her voice was rusty from not speaking for so long,
but the sound of it gave him a surge of hope and
reassurance. "You did not wire that bomb," he said
firmly. "You did not have any description of the suspect.
There was no way you could have known what you
were walking into."
She was looking at him, those soft blue eyes almost
black because of the size of her pupils, and then the
color began to come back as her pupils contracted.
He watched, fascinated; it was like watching a cat
waking up. One minute she was not really there, and
then SNAP! her eyes sharpened and he could literally
feel her presence return to the room as she glared at
him.
"How the hell would you know what happened up
there?" she demanded. "You sit up there in your office
while we go out in the field and do your dirty work, and
you have no idea what we go through."
As AD, he should have replied with something curt and
harsh, but as a man trying to help her, he had no idea
how to respond. She was like a wounded animal,
normally shy, but now wild with pain and striking
out at anything. Her eyes glowed; even her hair
seemed to take on an extra richness. Her face flushed
down to where her collarbone was revealed by her
blouse, where a man with his fingertip might gently
prod downwards to see how far down that flush
extended.
He said quietly, "I do have an idea."
"The hell you do." She jumped to her feet, shedding
his jacket with a contemptuous shrug, and began pacing
the room. "All you ever do is sit there and give orders.
Go here, Agent Mulder. Go there, Agent Mulder. Go
get yourself blown to bits, Agent Mulder."
Her small, smoothly muscled frame charged with
energy as she paced, as if she were picking up static
from the carpet; he imagined that if he touched her
then, she would spark. The room was still cold, but
he could feel the heat radiating from her, and he longed
to touch her. Skinner had liked Mulder with an affection
he tried to cover with his brusque, hard- ass attitude,
liked both of them way too much for his own good.
She had touched a secret nerve; maybe it WAS his
fault Mulder was dead.
"I did not intend for--"
"Oh, go to hell, AD Skinner," she snapped. "You
know damn well you're glad he's dead."
Skinner rose angrily. "That's not true."
"Bullshit! You always hated the X-Files. You ever
wanted us to find the truth. You wanted me to spy on
Mulder and ruin him, from the very beginning."
Skinner said softly, "Scully, that's not true. I have
always been your friend."
Now, on the plane, taxiing down the runway for
takeoff, Skinner looked out the window to hide his smile
at the memory of her next move. Oh, Scully. She had
moved so exquisitely, grace beyond words, spinning on
one foot like a dancer, and had smacked him in the jaw
with her diamond hard little fist.
Packed a hell of a punch, too. Raised a blue mark
that was only now fading. He had staggered back,
raising a hand defensively, and stared at her in utter
astonishment.
"You son of a bitch!" she shouted, coming at him.
He had moved away from her, his arms fending off
the rain of blows she aimed at him, though without skill
or real intent to harm, he suspected. Just pounding
fists, beating at him, railing against fate the only way
she could.
After a few minutes, he moved in and restrained
her, holding her arms. "Agent Scully, stop this at
once!" he commanded.
She stopped abruptly, which surprised him, and then
began to cry, which surprised him even more.
There was a huge rocker recliner by the fireplace.
Skinner knelt slightly and scooped an arm under her
knees, lifted her like a child, and carried her there,
sitting down with her in his lap.
In the airplane, shooting up into the boundless sky,
Skinner had to wipe condensation from his window;
his flush at the memory had fogged the cool glass.
Her face against his starched shirt, hot and wet, the
sobbing of her frail shoulders, and the sound of her
weeping. His hand spread on her back, rubbing,
soothing, as he rocked her back and forth in the chair.
Not fatherly, not the kind of feelings a boss should
have for his employee at that moment. God. No
weight at all across his thighs, as she cried against him.
He could only rock her and hold her, staring out the
window as the last of the day faded from the pane and
they were lit only by the fire and the one small lamp
burning in the living room by the sofa.
After a long time, she was quiet, but she had begun
to tremble, and he rubbed her arms, her shoulders,
the back of her neck, his other arm tight around her,
thinking she was cold. The tremble was like a vibration,
and it only made a bad problem worse; he was rock
hard, a normal response to this living, warm, trembling
woman in his arms, her breasts fuller than he would
have guessed pressing against his chest, her hair
tickling his chin. He buried his face in it, his eyes
squeezed shut, inhaling her scent, rubbing his cheek
against her forehead.
At this moment, in real time, Scully was sitting in
the middle seat with her hands folded primly in her lap
She had never in word or glance or act betrayed herself,
or him, afterwards. It was literally as if that night had
never happened. Had she managed to forget the
events that followed, the way a drunk blanks out sins
done under the cover of whiskey fumes?
Skinner opened his eyes now as he had that night,
reliving for the millionth time the incredible magica
instant when he had looked down at her, saw her twist
her body slightly and lift her face to his, her drowsy
blue eyes focussed on his mouth just before their
lips came together. He had not meant to kiss her.
Had he? Or had she kissed him? But it was still all
right. He would be comforting and kindly and --
--then she opened her mouth under his, and the
shock of sensation made the hairs stand up on the
back of his neck. And even if all the things he had ever
tried not to feel for her had not suddenly exploded
like fireworks in his heart and mind and groin, what
man could have resisted a kiss like that?
He stole a secret, amused glance at Mulder, drowsing
in the aisle seat. You poor stupid son of a bitch, he
thought, not unkindly. Any idiot could see that with
just a little nudging that girl would come to your bed.
If Mulder had any inkling of what he was missing, he
would have moved heaven and earth long ago to do
some heavy nudging.
Skinner had talked to the latest bureau shrink,
Raul Lopez, about it, under the guise of dealing with
the dead agent's family. Lopez had said, "Well, it's a
pretty well documented phenomenon, well known and
well exploited by funeral directors, or it used to be.
The grieving widow will often sleep with the first man
she finds, men she wouldn't dream of at any other
time. It's as if when people suffer a terrible loss that
draws them close to death, the body rebels, and goes
for life as hard as it can. People lose control of their
higher moral center, and roll and wallow in the one
thing that feels good in the midst of so much pain.
People report it's the most intense orgasm of their
lives. But it's usually short lived, and often followed by deep
regret."
As was this, of course. On her part, certainly. Not
that she had anything to be ashamed of. Not one
damn thing.
He had not seen much of her in the dark bedroom.
Most of what he remembered was tactile and emotional.
The incredible swell of feeling when he mounted her,
like a heavy rain suddenly bursting from the clouds
over ground he had thought long dead, so powerful
he thought for a horrible second that he was going to
burst into tears.
He had held her fragile wrists on either side of her
head, looking down at the faint gleam of her teeth, her
half closed eyes watching his face as he entered her.
That grip, almost virginal, the enclosing of flesh by
flesh, the heat inside her, the unspeakable sweetness.
No madness of lust could ever cause him to be less
than gentle with her. He'd had his share of women,
God knew, but this was Scully. This was one human
being who had lived up to the ideas he had cherished
since boyhood, of honor and dignity and courage, when
one by one all the others had disappointed him. He
knew that Scully had never really liked him, never
trusted him. Knew she once believed that he was the
mole who had betrayed her to her abductors and ruined
her life. And he knew that part of what she was
doing was giving herself up to the enemy in an act
of pure self hatred. She had wanted to be fucked
by the enemy, violated, punished. He knew she
was steeled for pain, and that he was an instrument
of the devil, and that she was expecting him to be
brutal and triumphant in his victory over her.
But she'd picked the wrong man for that. He could
not help but make love to her, in the truest sense of
the phrase. And she could not have helped but feel
the reverence, the tenderness in his touch as he
prolonged the act, leading her to a climax that
would explode in her like salvation, like the joyful
shouting of angels that would redeem them both
from fear and pain and death.
He had followed the signals of her hips to speed
up or slow down, and she had come with him inside
her, with soft cries that burned themselves into his
brain, her own hands on his back and shoulders
clutching and kneading with an urgency tempered
by innate gentleness. She had kissed his neck, his
jaw, his lips, as she might have kissed anyone then,
he supposed, with gratitude. He had thrust his
tongue into her mouth and she had met it with her
own, licking, sucking, but not desperately, not like
a woman wanting a man so much as a woman
accepting one. Some women clawed, bit,
disregarded everything but their own sensation,
but Scully was a generous lover, aware that it was
a mutual act, and was never so lost in herself that
she forgot the give and take of pleasure.
Pleasure. He'd had no more than a few seconds
himself, a rush of intensity, a locomotive roaring
through his head and a groan wrenched out of him.
He fell away from her, his blood singing, and lay
panting beside her. She was not trembling now.
He put his hand between her legs and worked his
fingers, sustaining her pleasure as long as he could.
And even though her hips moved against his hand,
and her breath still came in gasps, he knew he was
already losing her, that regret was filling her like
poison, and that she was slipping away from him,
smoke whirling away into the night, and there was
no word on earth he could use to call her back to him.
Mulder, Mulder, Mulder. Found alive, heroically
freeing himself and another agent from a hostage
situation with Baxter, killing the son of a bitch in the
process in what was obviously self defense to
everyone but the local police, who were still having
problems identifying that other body.
Scully, scolding Mulder furiously for frightening her
so badly, until he hung his head like a dog, and then
throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him
as hard as she could, and then finally letting him go
and cuffing him on the back of the head, promising him
bitter death if he ever EVER did something like that
again. Dazed Mulder, whose very brilliance made him
blind to the things going on right under his nose, his
partner's obvious adoration, and her sudden quiet spells
when she had to deal with
their boss.
For Skinner there would always be that one
moment he would carry with him forever, one light
against all the lonely darkness to come; he had touched
her. He had made Scully come. In that instant of
crying out against his throat and arching so powerfully
she lifted him from the bed, he had given her a release
from fear and anguish, and in return she had given him
back his soul.
Of course she had avoided him after that. There had
been that brief period of insanity that followed, when he
could not think of anything but her, of sending her
flowers...No, taking them to her apartment. She
would hesitate, then let him in, shy and ashamed.
He would sit in her kitchen and drink tea and listen
to the liquid gold of her voice, and then later somehow
he would bring his lips to hers, and she would stiffen
in shame and fear, and then she would remember
how he had made her feel, and her mouth would
open again under his. And this time he would do
it right. He would make her feel such pleasure she
would mistake it for love, and then--
No.
And so now here they sat, and he breathed her
fragrance, a scent so imprinted on him that his
stomach would tighten when he smelled her in the
hallway where she had passed, unseen, moments
before. It never failed to fill his head with dizzy longing.
But no.
Fucking her was the biggest mistake of his life. He
would give his right arm to take it back. He would give
both arms to do it again.
A bump of turbulence made him open his eyes;
he had nearly been asleep.
Mulder was out of it, headphones on, his head tilted
slightly towards his partner, eyelashes fluttering a
little in a dream. He opened them sleepily, and
murmured to Scully, "You know how I hate bugs."
"Yes," she said absently. "I know." And comforted,
he went back to sleep.
But then Skinner saw Scully shift, clutching the
armrest with the classic white-knuckled grip, and all
the tense looks, Mulder's sympathy, her hesitations,
suddenly made sense. It had nothing to do with him.
He leaned towards her a little. "You okay,
Agent Scully?"
Her jaw was clenched, her face pale, but she gave
a tight little nod and said, "Fine, sir."
Call me sir when I am thrusting into you, and I
won't be able to keep myself from coming, Agent
Scully. He looked down at her hand, afraid of what
his eyes might show, and said, "Not a good
flyer?"
Another lurch, this time sharp enough to make a
child somewhere behind them cry out. Scully was
tight-lipped, silent.
Skinner moved in a little closer, keeping his voice
soft so as not to disturb Mulder. "When you were small,
did you ever go on a long car trip with your parents?"
She flicked a glance at him. Those eyes, those
cold angel eyes, the secret color of the vault of heaven.
She said, "Why do you ask?"
"Did you?"
She nodded. "I guess so. Sure."
"Did you ever go to sleep in the back seat when
they were driving for hours and hours?"
"When I was a boy, my parents used to make a
once a year trip to visit my grandparents in Florida.
I loved that long ride down, and I always fell asleep
in the back seat at some point. There's nothing safer,
no more secure warmer feeling in the world than being
a small child, tucked in the backseat of a car, lulled by
the bouncing of the road and the sound of the engine,
and knowing you're totally protected by the two people
who love you more than anything in the world."
He hesitated for a split second, glancing at Mulder, and
added, "Your parents. That's what turbulence reminds me
of."
Her eyes softened. "That's a nice thought."
"Hang onto it."
She kept looking at him until he said, "What?"
"I was just trying to imagine what you were like when you were a little boy."
He ran a hand over his scalp ruefully and said, "Lots more hair."
Scully smiled. It was a real smile, the kind that had melted sterner hearts than his. He dropped his eyes quickly, his heart stumbling on an aching beat.
Making her smile was not as good as making her come, but it was good, good, good.
And for now that would have to do.