"I don't wan---"
Mulder stopped in mid-sentence, shuddering into silence as Skinner unceremoniously pressed the homemade icepack to his cheekbone.
"Hold it there."
He did as he was told, too exhausted to start an argument over a few chunks of ice. Besides, it felt good. He sat quietly instead and let Skinner stalk back into the kitchen. The sounds of ice being manhandled started up again and his right kneecap flared up, the bright, anticipatory pain making him bite back a wince. This led to a renewed acquaintance with his split lip, which in turn, sent a rusty trickle of blood down his swollen throat, forcing it to tighten and swallow against its will. Great, he thought, breathing carefully, mindful of the threat of a coughing fit. Dominoes, the hard way. Maybe he could end by chewing his arms off. One giant walking party trick.
Skinner interrupted his comfortably sullen reverie, coming back into the room with another icepack, this one wrapped in a long, cotton strip. Mulder recognized the pattern from the bed sheets. Skinner must have broken into the million and one spare sets of bed linen in the hallway closet. He remembered the evening they had first arrived at the house and the moment of mutual bewilderment when Skinner, inadvertently knocking his knee against the hall closet door, had sent a country of linen crashing down around them. The sight of him glowering at Mulder from behind a face towel arranged in angles of exquisite hilarity on his bare skull, had been more than Mulder was able to bear.
Bent over laughing, he had mumbled something lame, something he couldn't remember any more. It had sounded even worse out loud than in his head, he remembered that much. Yet, in another systematic break with logic, Skinner had, after a second of knitted brow and steel glare, suddenly grinned right at him, all dark eyes and white, even teeth. Startled, Mulder had raised an eyebrow and skittered off into random conversation, averting his eyes until Skinner had swept the towel from his head.
The other man had said nothing, only fixing him with one of his oblique gazes until Mulder, hackles rising, had stopped in the middle of a sentence and said flatly, "You're laughing at me."
Back had come the amused reply. "With you. Not at you. Mostly."
Even later, Mulder couldn't justify the mollifying effect of that bare boned statement. Nor the answering smile it had evoked, making his jaw ache with the effort to take it off his face, fooling no one. Now it set his teeth on edge to think of that strange camaraderie, unable to fit it to this man who had forfeited his usual fastidiousness to rip up linen for him. The same man who had looked at him just a few minutes ago like he wanted to break him open and feed what he found inside, to the nearest and most voracious receptacle. What was both worse and better, was that Skinner had looked capable of it for one lengthy moment when they'd first stared at each other. Unthinking, he put a hand to his stomach as it turned over, only to still his movements when he saw Skinner track them. Too late.
"Do you need to see a doctor?"
He blinked at him, considering the question. The effort it took to shape his tongue to words almost defeated him. From the window he could see the dark, dripping leaves of an oak tree illuminated by the soft porch light, its boughs swaying gently in the wind. He could hear the rain falling. It steadied him, keeping him from nonsensical statements of health.
He managed an impatient look instead and said, "Need some painkillers, that's all. Don't fuss."
Skinner said nothing but the look he gave Mulder spoke volumes. He flushed, feeling heated and overripe, wanting to get the tallying of misdeeds over with.
"About all this," he said, his voice sounding unmodulated, even to him. Then stopped, unsure where to go from there, mad as hell at having to be there at all, having to provide reassurances and guided tours.
"We'll celebrate your shortcomings in due time." Skinner's eyes met Mulder's gaze for a brief, empty moment. "Right now you can concentrate on telling me where it hurts."
It seemed like any other string of angry words, holding no more than the usual animosity. Yet, twisting beneath every movement and every word was an utter lack of distance, a claustrophobic intent. Skinner was so furious that he was made to appear nearly serene by it. The air in the small room seemed to Mulder to come and go, erratic and undependable, and all the while Skinner kept on, assembling bowls of hot water and sterile dressings.He walked in and out of the room more than once, sometimes as far as Mulder could see, just for the sake of leaving. Mulder sat just as he was, occasionally closing his eyes against the tilting room. The warning, when it came, jerked him out of himself.
"I'm nearly ready here. Take off your shirt so we can deal with this."
Refusing to feel grateful for having been included at last, Mulder began unbuttoning his shirt, his eyes on Skinner's able hands as they neatly cut and snipped at gauze and surgical tape. Bed linen and medical supplies. There were plenty of both in the safe house, waiting for them. Christ. He wondered who had prepared this place for them and on what sort of instructions. He must have made some sound he wasn't aware of. Skinner looked up as he slid the shirt off himself carefully and saw the bruises and welts. He saw the cuts. They met eyes over Mulder's hands, paused over his chest, in mid-fumble.
Skinner's mouth unwound itself for just a second, long enough for Mulder to see both regret and disgust chase each other across his face, folding in upon themselves gracelessly. He felt a doleful satisfaction settle upon him. Not so tolerant now, Walter. He leaned back a little and closed his eyes and nodded in Skinner's direction.
"Come and get me." A barbed invitation, almost coquettish.
"You're an asshole, you know that?"
He gave a short laugh which ended as a wheeze. "I know you," he said, his eyes still closed.
"You don't know anything about me."
Mulder languidly raised one hand up, palm extended, insolence personified. "If you say so."
He felt the insult vibrating from one to the other and was very nearly satisfied to hear Skinner say tightly, "I say so."
He heard him move closer and opened his eyes. He'd seen Skinner on better days and this wasn't one of them. The lines on his face were deeper than usual and his shirt looked rumpled enough to have been worn for days. One half of it was hanging out of jeans that looked at best, serviceable, worn nearly bare in places that were no longer able to house the long, powerful muscles of thigh and knee. He noted the athletic ease with which Skinner was kneeling before the coffee table. It didn't take much to imagine the man moving on his feet, eating up the ground under him. So he imagined it, even as another part of him flinched away from such cheap, inappropriate voyeurism.
In his mind's eye, he saw the routing of nerves and sinew that lay just beneath Skinner's bones and muscle. He could see them working to modulate those frank movements, tempering them with grace. Not that Skinner seemed particularly graceful right now. He just looked tired. Maybe it was the smudges under his eyes, turning a darker shade of black by the minute. Then again, maybe the shadow was only cast by the late hour and the wire rims of Skinner's glasses. He could feel a tic stretching the skin at the corner of his right eye, beating an insistent tattoo as he tried to focus on the expressionless planes of Skinner's face. He wondered uncomfortably whether he had slept at all. Knew he shouldn't ask.
"Your eyes look like roadmaps," he said anyway, watching Skinner roll up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows, exposing capable forearms.
"Look like you've been burning that candle from both ends," he continued.
Getting no response, he elaborated edgily. "Getting any? Sleep, Walter. I'm talking about sleep."
Heard himself all brat and bullshit and wished inconsequentially for some relief. A laughtrack could do it maybe or some punchy moment like in the movies when the guy looks at the girl just like so. Then mistakes are revoked and all is forgiven. Everyone understands that sometimes things just go right off the tracks. And that's all there is to it. But here he was and there was no one to tip his hat to or smile a specially redeeming smile at. Instead he pressed onwards, doing it his way. Hell or high water.
"Cat got your tongue? Or just too much time spent contemplating the mysteries of the universe? Which is it Walter? Or is there something more - I can't go on guessing indefinitely, you know."
Awed at the ease with which his fuck ups gathered momentum, Mulder sourly cheered himself when Skinner finally turned his flat, weighted stare on him. It took just that to shut him up. Faintly disgusted to find the hair rising on the back of his neck, he was, nevertheless, not game enough to keep twisting the same knife. He closed his eyes again as Skinner drew nearer, unwanted and unwelcome.
"Keep still," Skinner said, immersing cotton swabs into a bowl of diluted antibacterial wash.
Bracing himself for vengeful hands, Mulder snapped his head upright a moment later, eyes raging at Skinner who was layering gentle caress upon caress over Mulder's ribs, cleaning out debris from the open, bloodied cuts. He kept one palm pressed lightly, against the unmarked part of Mulder's chest. Mulder felt himself trembling with anger and pressed his lips together, refusing to give Skinner the satisfaction of speaking. Fuck him. By whose right. By whose goddamned right did he think he could touch him like this?
Skinner watched Mulder warily, ready to slam the brakes on any ideas of flight or fight. He'd had enough of Mulder's bruises to last him a lifetime or longer. Damned if he was going to contribute. After a moment or two, he was satisfied that the baleful looks being directed at him were the sum of Mulder's revolutionary ambitions. Putting the dirty pinked swabs down, he ran his hands gently over the upper half of Mulder's body, trying to see if anything was cracked or broken. Feeling like a horny teenager getting his first real thrill, his fingers stuttered for a second as they reached Mulder's nipples, bitten and flushed. He forced himself to keep going, ignoring the surge of possessiveness to which he had no right. The rational part of his brain was relieved to note that though his bruises were hot and swollen, his bones seemed to be intact.
"Can you breathe okay?"
Mulder nodded, his eyes shut once more and, remarkably, Skinner thought, motionless behind his eyelids.
He persisted. "Breathe in and out for me a couple of times."
Mulder sat up a little and inhaled and exhaled two deep breaths without wincing. Then said, "All right? Christ. I can do all of this for myself, Walter. Gimme something for the fucking pain, if you want to help."
Skinner stared at him again, harder this time, until he subsided back into his apathy. Grateful for the props that still worked, he said, "In a minute, you can have some aspirin and go to bed."
Mulder grimaced but sat still while Skinner finished cleaning him up, trying to ignore the unnatural warmth coming off his bruises. He allowed himself the necessary evil of shifting away when Mulder put the shirt back on and drew his pants down by way of recompense. Running an eye over Mulder's thighs, he caught himself looking for answers in the livid handprints he saw there and looked away, painfully unsure whether he was angry at Mulder or himself. At least the swelling in Mulder's kneecaps had subsided a little since he had put his legs up on the coffee table. He applied more ice to them and finally sat back on his haunches, feeling his quads twinge in protest at the long overdue change of position.
Skinner gave him some aspirin and a glass of water and stood over him while he drank it, more out of convention than necessity. Mulder's belligerence had faded to a silence born of genuine exhaustion. He could barely keep his eyes open.
"Mulder, get up. You can go to bed now."
"Are you coming too?" Mulder asked, his voice leaving no doubt as to what he thought of that idea.
His eyes settled of their own accord on the elegant, alien curve of Mulder's skull. Familiar, ill-advised forces bore down on him, repelling and attracting him in the same suffocating moment.
More sharply than he had intended, he said, "No, I don't think so."
Mulder opened his mouth, then shut it again. Good, Skinner thought fiercely. Good. Keep it shut. He flexed his right hand a little, saw Mulder's eyes following his movements and stopped himself abruptly.
Holding onto his temper, he waited for him to get up and take a few tentative steps before asking, "Can you manage?"
Mulder shrugged. "I've done it before."
There was nothing worth saying back to that. He followed him down the hallway and into the bedroom. Only at the doorway did Mulder show the first signs of hesitancy.
"Do you - should I go to the other room?" he asked, not turning around to hear Skinner's response from behind him.
"No, don't. It'll be easier this way, if you need anything," Skinner replied, watching the faint movement of acquiescence in Mulder's shoulders.
Mulder nodded and walked into the room, the sigh he gave when he sat down on the bed, clearly audible. Skinner didn't turn his head, knowing Mulder would prefer him not to have heard that. Instead he sat down on the other side of the bed, his back to Mulder and took off his glasses. Letting his hand find its way up to the bridge of his nose, he indulged in a moment of fatigue that he didn't think a man like him should be entitled to. On the other hand, he wondered how many men like him knew someone like Mulder. He wondered only for a second and then turned away from the thought, knowing what lay under its sharp and pure surface.
"Do you need my help getting into bed?" he asked over his shoulder, without turning around to look at Mulder.
Relieved by the sharp negative he got in response to that, he grabbed a towel and made his way to the shower.The water was hot and pounding and he stayed under the showerhead longer than he meant to. When he came back out, Mulder was already under the covers, asleep, his socks, shoes and watch in a heap by the side of the bed. One hand was flung up over his head, the palm open and facing outwards and the other was resting lightly on his chest, on top of the covers.
Skinner watched him from the foot of the bed for a moment and to his dismay, it took no more than that one injudicious look. Blood, hot and furious, gathered at his groin. A voyeur's calm led him to lay one comforting hand over his cock, massaging himself through his shorts. The emotional charge was, as always when he had his hands on his cock and Mulder's name behind his teeth, astounding. It was also completely unacceptable right now. That was his view. What Mulder might or might not think, should those uncanny eyes blink open then to see his boss standing there in the dark, cradling his crotch, was another matter altogether. One that he had no desire to pursue.
With a measure of discipline that hurt him, he made himself think of the handprints on Mulder's thighs, each one standing out in yellow relief. He stood there forcing his arousal away, his bare skin chilling in the night air, and thought that he could find all of this amusing if that would make him into a different man. Instead he remained where he was, arms folded across his chest, his cock standing guard, like some ridiculous sentry. Only after a very long time, he slid into his side of the bed and fell asleep degree by degree, facing away from Mulder.
He woke to find the morning sun had marched in while they slept, spilling golden puddles of heat over the covers and leaving its handprints against the wall. Mulder was still sound asleep, turned away from Skinner a little, sleeping on his side. The covers had slid off him and the sun was soaking into his shoulders and belly, turning them a soft, tawny color. Even the marks on his body looked decorative instead of the mean, ugly things they really were. He had remained the way he was but in waking, had turned over to face Mulder.
For one amnesiac moment he was shockingly happy, his throat closing up over the uncomplicated force of the feeling. Putting out a hand, he cupped the side of Mulder's skull and gently tangled his fingers into the warm, toasted hair. Mulder made an indecipherable sound and turned his head a little so he leant into Skinner's palm, his face creasing into a thoughtful frown. Just for a moment he looked as though he might wake up but it passed and the expression on his face unmade itself and left. It was enough to jolt him back into his own skin.
He removed his hand carefully and swinging himself out of bed, headed for a shower, making as little noise as he could. This time he didn't linger, coming back out after a short five minutes. He dressed without looking at Mulder, only slowing down his movements when his collar seemed in danger of being yanked right off his shirt. He was feeling only slightly calmer when Mulder found him an hour later leaning against the kitchen table, spooning sugar into his second cup of coffee.
Even though he knew he was never going to get that lucky, Mulder had a brief moment of hope that Skinner might not want to talk about last night. He suspected that it was wishful thinking. He found Skinner in the kitchen, standing at the counter, completely at ease in a crisp, white shirt and the bottom half of a navy suit. The jacket hung neatly on a chair and a silk navy tie with impossibly intricate patterns of blue and gold lay next to it. All the armor neatly assembled. He could almost feel the irritation rising in the other man, the longer he looked at him.
He raised an eyebrow pleasantly, knowing it had been a good move to come out in his boxers, bruises or no bruises. Skinner's eyes helplessly slid down past his face and burnt a path over his throat, his chest and belly, stopping short at the waistband of his boxers. Barefoot, Mulder had to consciously stop his toes from curling under him as Skinner's gaze rested on his boxers for a long, endless moment before coming back up to his face. A stranger happening upon them would have felt at least a little sympathy for Mulder. If Skinner's face wore any expression at all, it was displeasure. But the slightly taut look to his mouth gave him away to Mulder who had, after all was said and done, learnt to look for the right signs. He stood perfectly still, making his point and savoring the slight regaining of ground.
Skinner was the first to turn away, going over to the sink to empty out his half-full cup.
"Is there any more coffee?" he asked after a moment when it became apparent Skinner wasn't about to offer him any. One day an invalid and the next day a leper. Typical of his luck.
Skinner threw him a cool look and said, "I’ll make you some more."
Mulder bristled, unable to stop himself from rising to the edge in Skinner’s voice even though he knew it was put there especially for him.
"I can do it."
Skinner sighed and pulled the rug out from under Mulder’s feet, saying, "Stop being such an asshole and go sit down."
Mulder felt his hubris dropping away from him and said awkwardly, feeling the color rise in his face, "Yeah, okay."
He made his way stiffly over to a chair and eased himself into it, aware of Skinner’s brooding gaze following him. Never a dull moment at the ranch. He knew he was being ungracious but it was the only way to steel himself for whatever Skinner had in store for him. At the same time he was aware that the amount of time he could spend not talking, not anticipating the other man, was limited. While the water was boiling, Skinner brought him over a glass of water and aspirin. He downed the aspirin and silently drank the whole glass before handing it back.
"Thanks," he muttered, feeling something was due.
Skinner snorted and said wryly, "Don’t trouble yourself over it," making Mulder feel like ten different kinds of asshole.
He sat there looking at the table, his brain still half-asleep due to the hot blaze of sunshine he had woken up in. Realized he had no new lines to deliver when Skinner came over with a bowl of cereal and pulled out a chair across from him and sat down.
"How do you feel?" Skinner asked him, sliding the bowl of cereal over to him.
Mulder eyed the bowl doubtfully and then looked at Skinner, "Not bad enough obviously. I think I’m hungry."
"Good. You can eat while we talk," Skinner replied, his eyes steady on Mulder’s face.
"Great," Mulder said, trying to keep his hands steady as he reached for the cereal, "More talk. My favorite past time."
"Don’t," Skinner said softly, shocking him into unblinking attention, the hairs rising along his arms.
"Don’t what?" he asked, making his face impatient to compensate for the uncertainty Skinner's touch brought him.
"Don’t avoid me."
Mulder rasped out a laugh and said bitterly, "You’re a hard man to avoid."
Skinner looked at him sternly. "Then talk to me Mulder. I see all this happening and I don’t understand why or what you’re doing. You disappear after work and come back...like this. We have an investigation. People are dying. There’s a psycho after you. What the hell are you playing at?"
"You think I don’t know?"
Mulder heard himself, all shaky menace and empty fist.
"Look, Walter," he said slowly, hearing himself say the other man’s name for the first time in a while. Caught himself coveting the minute softening of Skinner’s mouth, all harsh snarl up till then. I did that, he thought, finding the warmth of that knowledge a thousand times more crazy than the worst of Skinner’s imaginings.
"It felt familiar, okay? That’s all."
He wasn't entirely prepared for it when Skinner's hand slapped down on the table between them. "Goddamn it, Mulder. You sit there looking like someone took a hammer to you and you’re telling me you went looking for it cause it’s familiar?"
Mulder scowled back at Skinner, treating the question as rhetorical.
Skinner kept on, his voice firming with resolve. "I don’t know how familiarity works in your case but it’s threatening lives. I’m not going to tolerate that from you."
Defenceless and bruised with the cumulative guilt of each body that bore his face, Mulder shrugged helplessly.
"What’re you going to do, Walter? Ground me?"
Skinner’s reply was short and sure. "You bet your ass I am."
"What?"
"You make another move without me around, Mulder, and I’ll personally suspend you on charges of hindering the course of justice and any other fucking thing I can drum up. Got it?"
"You can’t do that to me. You said-"
Skinner shook his head at him slowly, like a remedial student who doesn’t get the first and most basic of lessons.
"Let me explain this to you, Mulder. You lied to me, you endangered lives - yours and those of other people. You broke all kinds of investigation parameters and never stopped for a minute to consider the fact that you were putting everything in jeopardy."
"So," Mulder said flatly, watching Skinner’s eyes narrow in both regret and anger.
"Goddamn it, Mulder. If you can be this clever now, why couldn’t you last night?"
"I. Don’t. Know." Mulder said clearly, through clenched teeth.
"Not good enough." Skinner leant back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
Mulder recognized it for the gesture of finality it was. It dawned on him that Skinner had decided on this course of action well before this moment. Worse still, he knew that he had given him no other choice. He wondered uneasily whether there had always been a choice to be made and he had chosen not to see it. As always, he shied away from turning the profiler’s third eye inwards on this one part of himself. Surely it was enough that whatever it was that drove him to commit breaches of faith like last night, loosed its grip on him when the next day came? Why did he have to give it a name? He was entitled not to.
The thought warmed him but nowhere as satisfactorily as it used to do. Seated there, he could feel the hope the other man held out to him and not for the first time felt the mysterious pull of its intimacy. The desire to know Skinner came over him, strong and sweet. He felt it bringing a light sweat to his skin. Never mind theories. Never mind rules. He wanted to see how Skinner could be moved. How he could be known. Whether allowing him to twist his way into Mulder could give rise to a right of entry in return.
He looked back up from an impromptu survey of hand over hand, fingers over knuckles, to find Skinner watching him.
"So, that's that, then," he said, appalled to hear the regret in his own voice.
Putting out a strong, warm hand to grip Mulder’s forearm, Skinner said emphatically, “I don’t want to do this to you. Give me a reason not to. You and I could deal together better than this.”
Mulder sat there, frozen by the knowledge that he could want something else for himself; that the desire to give way to himself without question could be seriously threatened by a competing desire. He found himself contemplating Skinner as a point of entry; a place to beach himself safely. He opened his mouth, willing for the first time in a long time to hear himself think out loud, without calculation or preparation.
Skinner’s cell phone rang shrilly, abruptly.
Mulder stared at him for an unbelieving, accusing second before looking away, resigning himself to being on the losing end of shitty timing, as usual. He said nothing to bring Skinner's attention to the fact that his grip on Mulder’s forearm had tightened to something close to unbearable.
Skinner reached for his phone, wondering what kind of asshole he’d been in a previous life or this one for that matter, to deserve this. He snapped a terse ‘Skinner’ into the phone, watching Mulder’s face close down again. Great. Whatever he had been going to say to Skinner wasn’t going to get said any time in the near future. Just fucking great.
"Walter. We have a problem."
Join the club, Sherlock. Skinner couldn’t place the voice right away and snapped, "Who the fuck’s this?"
A pause. Then, "It’s Simon Gill, Walter. Is everything all right?"
Skinner’s jaw worked against itself for a slack, furious second and then he said dangerously, "No, Simon. As a matter of fact, everything is not all right. This had better be important. If it's not, don't think Manning won't cut your balls off personally and feed them to you, if I tell him it's germane to this goddamned investigation. Do you understand?"
Silence from the other end of the phone. Another big pause. Mulder gently dislodged his grip from his forearm and getting up, took his bowl over to the sink where he began washing it noisily. When he was done there, he poured himself some coffee and sat back down at the table. Skinner noted his movements were a little less stiff now and felt a little bit better for it. Gills was still silent on the other end. Sanctimonious little shit was probably sweating up a storm - no, cancel that - Gills was no doubt only capable of perspiring.
When he thought he'd let the silence grow ominous enough, he growled down the line, "Spit it out, Simon. And make it good."
The answer he got, in careful malicious detail, over the next ten minutes, made him sit back down heavily into his chair. He motioned Mulder, who looked like he was going to leave the room, to sit back down. Whatever Mulder saw in his face was enough to keep his ass in a chair. After Gills had finished telling a story he clearly expected Skinner to be hearing for the first time, came the demands.
He reacted immediately and from the gut. "Tell your owner to keep your nose out of my investigation."
Gills' reply was soft and confident. "Your agent has compromised himself, Walter. John has the authority to take over this investigation if he wants or to even put one of your superiors - for instance, me - onto it. All he's making are some simple requests. He's leaving the rest of it to you. He trusts you to turn this investigation around. You should be very grateful to John. There are other people, Walter, other people who...who would question your ability to fix this mess."
Who would be able to close this case, Simon? You? Skinner didn't state the obvious, saying instead, "I won't throw him off the case. You know he's integral to the whole investigation."
By way of reply, Gills reiterated Manning's other requests. Without intending to, Skinner found himself snarling again, causing Gill's voice to jump an octave or two, doing nothing for his personal charm. These games. These stupid fucking games. Of course the assholes had never intended him to give in to the first and most natural of demands. Did they think he didn't know that? It was these purportedly subsidiary demands that were the crux of this phone call and he had no choice but to agree. He could threaten and intimadate Gills into next week but the fact remained that he had lost control of the investigation and they both knew it. Hotly came the thought that he had managed to put away from himself last night, after Mulder had finally returned to the house. Mulder did this to me.
He closed his eyes for a moment and then said quietly, "Tell Manning to back off. I'll do what needs to be done. And Simon?"
He waited for the infuriatingly docile response before speaking. "Tell Manning next time to do his own dirty work. If I have to speak to you again, I'll give you nightmares."
Without waiting to hear what Gill had to say to that, he ended the call. For a moment, he had to sit silently, just to keep from punching anything that wasn't Mulder. When he finally looked at the other man, he was met with a neutral expression, hazel eyes cautiously watching him. Skinner looked back at him gravely, wondering if he looked half as angry as he felt.
"Are you going to try and tell me you didn't know about the surveillance?"
From the sudden pallor of Mulder's face and the painful care he took to keep his eyes on Skinner, the answer to his question was loud and clear. Which begged the next question.
"Why didn't you know, Mulder? You're a fucking FBI agent - you don't know to look both ways before you cross the road and enter a club where you masturbate against the goddamned wall, for chrissakes?"
"You said there wouldn't be any surveillance," Mulder flared back.
"Oh for fuck's sake, what are you, five years old?"
Mulder regarded him silently, his expression mutating from stony to miserable and then back again. He said nothing. It took Skinner a moment to realize the ugly taste in his mouth was the sight of himself staring Mulder down. He looked away, trying to give himself some perspective, to put some gentleness to his rage. When he spoke again, he tried to be kind, the import of his words, anything but.
"Mulder, they think you're a liability. They want me to throw you off the case and suspend you."
"And are you?" Mulder asked, in much the same voice as he'd use to ask the time.
"No, goddamn it. Didn't you hear me say I wasn't?"
"Ah. The bit about my integral importance to this investigation. Where would you be without your bait, huh, Walter?"
Skinner refused to look away though he could feel the color rising in his neck. "You've taken away any choice I had."
That shut Mulder up because it was, as they both recognized, indefensible. But it gave Skinner no pleasure to do it. He took a steadying breath before making Manning's demands known.
"You should know that even before this phone call, I was going to pull an investigation team together for this one. You and I dealing with this by ourselves is not going to work."
Mulder made an indistinct sound and Skinner looked at his face. From the fleeting expression he surprised there, he knew that Mulder was also thinking of the kiss they'd shared. He couldn't understand why that was the image in both their heads instead of the ones that Gill had reported, the ones that Mulder's bruises had announced. The pain, he felt sure, was sharper here.
Mulder said softly, his face unreadable, "It's your choice to make."
Skinner wanted to ask which choice he was talking about. The suddenly translucent quality to Mulder's face and the body count that hung between them like a curse waiting to be lifted, kept his mouth shut.
Instead he said in a harder voice than he wanted to use, "Kroeger and Bagnio will be on the team."
Mulder showed the first real signs of agitation, his hands folding up against each other before drumming a speedy little tattoo against the table.
"Why?"
"They want the case closed, Mulder. ASAP. They want more pressure put on the two prime suspects. Anything that will push this case to a conclusion."
Mulder supplied the connecting dots with a wry smile. "Either the case or me, right?"
Skinner nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Mulder shrugged. "Like you said, there's no choice. He continued, splitting his words up with another smile. "And let me guess, we have to play loverboy and his stuffed toy in front of them, right?"
Skinner winced at the description but didn't quibble. "Yeah. That's about it."
"Is that all of it then?"
"Agent Scully will also be part of the investigatory team."
Mulder gave him a good look at a lunatic little grin and said, "No fucking way, Walter. You tell them no. You tell them they haven't seen what damage I can do if they fight me on this."
Skinner sighed, wishing himself a million miles away. Why the fuck did it have to be Mulder? There were supposed to be a million goddamned stories in the naked city weren't there? Why was it Mulder's story he got to star in? Nothing but questions. Games and questions and words. A surfeit of words. Soft, useless cliches, making a whore out of him.
"Bringing Agent Scully onto the team was my decision. You want to fight me on this, Mulder, you go ahead. I'll suspend you, kick your ass in public and the X-Files will learn to get along with or without you. Am I making myself clear?"
Mulder's smile remained on his face, coy and crazy. "I never learn."
"Don't," Skinner said, despairingly. "Don't turn this into one of your superstitious omens. This changes nothing. You know you're better off with Scully by your side, Mulder. You know it. Don't make this about us."
"I don't want anything to be about us," Mulder said, stiffly. He paused and then asked, "How much does Scully know?"
"I told her that you weren't handling the investigation well."
"Think to talk to me about it first, Walter?"
Mulder's deceptively mild inquiry had Skinner about-faced and furious.
"There was NO talking to you, Mulder. I've been taking punches for you all this time and you've been walking around with your hands behind your back, full of secrets. You can deal with Scully. I know you trust her. All she knows about all of this is that you're having trouble coping. Make up whatever you want to fill the gaps. I don't care."
"I didn't ask you to do that for me."
"No you didn't but you could have the decency to be grateful I did it."
"Grateful for favors I didn't solicit? What the hell for?"
"Grateful for favors you need, Mulder. Don't you understand the difference?"
They glared at each other, furious and at an impasse. Skinner stood up suddenly. The need to get up and move had turned into an imperative. Something, anything was better than sitting around with Mulder, being made more claustrophobic by his pathos, by the minute.
"We'd better get into the office. We've got a lot to do. The team has to be assembled and briefed. We can talk about this later." Abruptly changing tack, concern making him clip his words, he asked, "Can you make it? How do you feel?"
Mulder shrugged off his question. "I'll get by. I'll take more aspirin before we go."
Skinner stood there watching his smooth, bare back leave the room, realizing that he had forgotten Mulder was in no more than his boxers. The thought was somehow comforting.
Mulder drove and Skinner sat in the passenger seat for a change. They rode together in silence nearly all the way there until Mulder suddenly spoke up.
"You're wrong, you know. It changes everything."
Skinner struggled to place the comment in context and Mulder repeated himself absently, his voice bitter with relief. "It changes everything."
Only three hours away from them, as the crow flew, a man hummed as he dragged a body out of the trunk of his car, the gloves on his hands at odds with the sunshiny day. Mindful of that fact, he took them off before getting into the car again, beating a little tattoo against the wheel, along to the song in his head.
END OF PART 6
