More Than You Think You Are ch.18

The drive home was full of pats and tender looks, one too many ‘are you okay’s and a radio that kept spewing crap like “Time of Your Life” and “Flagpole Sitta” until Skinner snapped it off with a look of disgust.

We pulled up to the house and parked and I could already see in my mind’s eye how this was going to play out. From the moment we got out of the car, Skinner was going to be ‘hand on the arm’ solicitous. He’d make sure I had everything I needed—or at least everything that he thought I needed. If I chose the couch I’d have a blanket and the television remote. The kitchen, and I’d be facing a million food choices, from junk to cuisine. I could have a drink poured, a bath drawn, hell, I bet if I summoned up one tear I’d earn a month’s worth of foot rubs. It would be sweet and kind and undemanding…and absolutely *not* what I needed.

I let Skinner take my hand as we walked up the drive to the house. I let him take my coat once we were inside and hang it up in the closet. I let him fuss with the stereo until something soothing and vaguely guitar based was playing softly. I even let him ask me if I was hungry. That’s when I decided that I had *let* him do quite enough, for now.

I had been staying just far enough away from Skinner that I was off his radar but not setting off any avoidance alarms in him. But now I stepped boldly into his personal space, wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my mouth to his.

It apparently took a lot more than that to surprise Walter Skinner. I heard half my name come tumbling out of him—“Mul—!”—and then his mouth opened under mine and his tongue was soon mapping out the inside of my mouth. I was kissing him hard, almost desperately, needing to feel warm and alive and in control. Somehow I think that he understood and was more than happy to assist me. His mouth was gentler on mine than I wanted, but he refused to escalate. Instead, he met my hungry nips with soothing sweeps of his tongue and held my head still when I tried forcing myself deeper into him. For only a moment I felt frustrated, but then realized that there was no hesitancy to his actions, no teasing. He was being relentless, but in his own way, and it was growing to be more satisfying than my own headstrong, bullying technique might have been, had he applied it to me.

He didn’t argue or block or try to deter me in any way as I pushed him back towards the couch. Instead he managed to dance us gracefully around the coffee table and past the television until I had him sitting down.

He brought his own strength into play then, dragging his fingers through my hair and down my neck, then holding tight to my shoulders for more leverage, he managed to squirm around on the couch, all the while peppering my face with small hungry kisses until he was lying across the long sofa. It didn’t take much in the way of encouragement to get me down on top of him. He shifted his legs so that one bent up at the knee and pressed hard to the back of the sofa, and the other came off the furniture completely, with his foot resting on the floor. This allowed me to slip between his legs effortlessly and although we didn’t cause any actual sparks when the zippers on our pants dragged against one another, it sure felt like it to me. 

If it felt like we were moving at breakneck speed, then that was obviously okay with him. His cock was rock hard and I could feel it straining against the material of his pants, and when I rocked my hips, my own aching dick clashed with his and a deep throaty growl escaped him.

I had closed my eyes, or maybe Skinner had kissed them closed, but I opened them at the sound he made. Only then did I realize that he still had his glasses on. They were a little fogged, and I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that bubbled up out of me at the sight. Skinner grinned back. He reached for his glasses but I beat him to it, carefully pulled them off of his face and then not so carefully tossed them onto the coffee table. 

His dark eyes sparkled with lust and good humour, but I could also see concern, and some confusion in them. I decided I didn’t like those last two at all, and I was determined to make sure he wanted me as much as I wanted him. A quick kiss on the lips and then I was slithering down his body, both of us groaning in tandem as I came face to crotch with the evidence of his desire. I attacked the button fly with hands that were suddenly shaking, making me fumble with the buttons. My breath gusted out of me in frustrated little pants.

“Mulder…Fox….”

I could feel his hands in my hair and his voice in my ear, both tugging gently but insistently. I tried to ignore the subtle protest and wondered if I should try using my teeth on his stubborn pants. The hard heat under the khaki material was like a siren call, and I opted to listen to what Walter’s body was saying as opposed to his mouth. Or at least, I tried to.

His hand caught both my wrists and he held me still. The squawk of protest I made got swallowed up in a kiss as his other hand snaked around my neck and he hauled me up the length of his body until I found myself almost completely immobilized against him. After a long while, he released my mouth and pressed his forehead to mine.

“Mulder…” His breath was warm with want, with need. “Mulder…are you with me?”

I pulled back and he let me, returning my puzzled frown with a frank and lustful smile.

“I’m right here,” I said, not sure who I was talking to.

He squeezed my wrists almost painfully.

“I know that,” he said, closing the distance I had put between his face and mine. “I feel you here.” He slipped tiny kisses in between his words. “But are you just ‘here’? Or are you with me?”

Of all the times to quibble semantics, I thought, almost angrily. A look at the very intense expression on his face, though, and I managed to turn down the heat under my simmering emotions and think about what he was asking.

I knew a part of me was responding to my all-new and fresh grief for Scully. Knew it, owned it, hated it, and half-hated myself for trying to use Walter to fight it.

But that was far from all that was going on here, and I could feel myself responding to that, as well.

I tried pulling my hands free and was reminded again of my lover’s strength. We played tug ‘o’ war for a minute and for some reason the struggle made me ache for him all the more.

“Mulder!” Walter stopped kissing me and that pissed me off. He also released my hands, but only so he could rest both of his on my shoulders. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, my cock throbbing in my pants and my breath whistling through my lungs.

“Walter…” It came out as a choked whisper and I tried again, louder. “Walter, I—I don’t want to use you.”

“I know that, Mulder—“

“I want—“ I cut him off, lunging forward desperately. “I want to—“ I rained sloppy, heartfelt kisses down on his face, his ears, his neck. “I *need* to—to *love* you.”

“Oh, Fox…” His grip on my shoulders increased to the point of pain and then he was pushing me away again. Both actions made me groan. But he was standing now, and making no protest as I continued trying to devour him an inch at a time. In fact, he gave back as good as he was getting, catching my tongue with his, meeting my quick nips and bites with soothing licks while not so subtly steering me towards the bedroom. 

At the threshold of the room, he paused and I looked up from my hands, which were busy undoing buttons and stroking the silken hair on his torso.

“This is better,” he sighed—not the sound of a melancholy man, but the warm whisper of a man for whom breathing was becoming something of a losing battle with growing desire. He shoved me into the bedroom. 

“Much better,” he continued, now letting me lead as we performed a clumsy waltz to the bed and he pulled his own shirt off, then managed to divest me of mine. “If we’re going to love each other, it’s not going to be some teen quickie on the couch,” he informed me. I thought about telling him that it was a little too late for that—we’d done nearly everything imaginable on our couch, not to mention the shower…

Walter fell back on the bed and I followed him down, targeting his mouth again as I straddled his hips. I was still thinking about his words in a half assed way, more intent on the kissing and the rubbing than the higher thought processes. But then I realized that I had just moments ago given up the dreaded ‘L’ word, and I suddenly understood; not just what he wanted, but more importantly, what I needed.

Yes, some small part of me—and growing smaller—simply wanted sex—hell, any act of affection, really—just to feel alive. To know that I was right here, right now and that was just fine; that I could grieve for Scully, miss and love my friend, and not have to lie down in the grave beside her. And of course, not feel like guilty shit for the act of living.

I tore open the front of Skinner’s pants and pressed down harder when he tried to lift me off his legs.

There were no memories, good bad or indifferent. At least, none that came before that first conscious moment in New Mexico, and that was just fine by me. The post-hospital memories I’d made with Walter were plenty, and I let them jostle playfully around in my head while I pulled Skinner’s pants right off and kissed and licked my way up his legs, happy and unsurprised to find his cock hard and wet and straining at his cotton briefs.

“Fox…” My name, quietly growled, and I abandoned him abruptly to tug my own pants off before I made a mess of them. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t loathe the sound of my own name. But now I could easily place every time that Skinner had disregarded my requests for him to just use “Mulder”…and I liked it. A lot. Fox. I was Walter’s Fox…

I was back on Walter before he had a chance to bemoan the loss of body heat. His arms came around me in a loose embrace, allowing me room to maneuver over the wide expanse of his chest. I let my thumbs stroke over his nipples, then paused simply to enjoy the way they hardened under my touch. I kept my mouth pretty much glued to his while enjoying the shift and play of that great muscled chest, the rough scrub of his chest hair under my hands and the warmth being generated between the two of us, making me feel a little like I was snuggling up to a radiator…a very sexy radiator….

I pulled off his mouth with a lick and a gasp and grinned at him.

“You’re right,” I told him, “This is better.”

Skinner’s response was a mad roll across the expanse of the bed, taking me with him.

“I love you,” he informed me as he rolled us on our sides.

“The rolling helps,” I supplied insensibly.

He laughed breathlessly and told me again, “I love you.”

“Yes, Walter.”

I squirmed and he groaned and he kissed me hard and reached into my boxer shorts, sliding his big hand right in there to fondle my balls with an almost not there touch.

“God, yes!” I shifted and his hand slipped lower and some stroke of his fingers caused my hips to buck involuntarily with another shout. “Yes! Oh, yeah, right there!”

“I love you.”

I could barely hear him past the roaring in my ears. He was licking and biting my stomach now, quite purposely ignoring my cock, while his hands stayed busy, stroking my thighs, tickling and tugging at my balls, endless stroking, fingers dipping into the cleft of my ass, circling, rubbing, teasing, never penetrating, driving me right out of my mind.

Which, I suppose, had been my intention all along.

The best I could do was paw at his head and neck and shoulders and alternate between cursing and begging.

“Fox, I love you,” he insisted before pulling away. I groaned in protest, got “Shhh, I’m not going anywhere,” in reply, and managed to hold on tight to one arm while he found lube and condoms in his bedside table.

He was back with me mere moments later, kissing me onto my back and slipping my boxers off and then stripping off his own briefs before climbing in between my legs with his body sliding further down the bed so that he could love me with his mouth while his hands got busy warming lube and tearing foil.

We hadn’t fucked since I’d woken that first morning all virginal and bleeding, although we’d managed to find lots of other just as satisfying forms of release. But now…now I wanted it. I wanted Walter Skinner to pound me into the mattress. I was feeling a great void—an emptiness in me somewhere, and I knew it was partly Scully and partly myself and I wanted—needed Skinner to fill it for me. And if that sounded like a trashy romance novel, I didn’t give a shit. This was too important to me. Something was shifting inside my brain, inside my heart. There was a truth here; I was facing it and I knew—for once—finally—just where the answers were.

Skinner drove his slick warm fingers into me with no forewarning. His earlier teasing had already loosened me up enough that it didn’t hurt, just surprised a gasp out of me. Seconds later I was pushing back and crying out his name when his fingers slid deeper and rubbed over that sweet spot inside me.

I opened eyes I didn’t remember closing when he pulled his hand away and moaned at the returning emptiness.

“Shhh, I love you,” he said, pressing delicate kisses to my stomach and chest as he pushed my legs up higher, his hands warm and strong on the backs of my thighs.

“Please, Walter, now,” I implored him.

I could feel the head of his cock nudging at my relaxed entrance and I tried to lunge forward, to impale myself on him, to fill myself with him. He held me still, teasing me with tiny shifts of hips and legs.

“Please, oh please!” I felt almost delirious with need, like having the flu when I was five and seeing fire and demons and—I didn’t know where that thought came from, and didn’t care. It was gone in a heartbeat and then nothing else mattered but being here now, with Walter Skinner…Walter…my lover…my love…

“Walter, God! I love you!” I groaned.

He jerked then, a startled grunt issuing from his mouth and then drove forward almost by accident. I felt a stretch and a burn (and not a good burn, I wasn’t feeling quite that Harlequin) and then a steady throb as my body strove to accommodate half of his length.

“Fox?” It was more sigh than word as he held himself so still that his muscles were fairly vibrating under his skin with the need to move.

“God, don’t stop!’ I exclaimed, feeling trapped in our current position and wishing I could move more…move at all, beyond a desperate wriggling. He didn’t seem to notice the strain, though. He just stared down at me, an expression on his sweaty face somewhere between religious rapture and a sixteen year old getting some for the first time.

“Say it again,” he begged in a whisper.

“What?”

“Please.” His control slipped and he drove a little deeper into me, and then, with a gasp, he started pulling back and I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow it. I found what he was looking for in the midst of my own desires, discovered it was what I was looking for too and gave voice to it, surprised and relieved to find out how easy it was.

“Walter, I love you.”

I struggled hugely then while he loomed over me, frozen. I managed to hook one leg around him, unclench my hands from the bed sheets to clamp onto his shoulders, and with a mighty groan I dragged him forward and down. It felt a little like chopping down a redwood and a little like drowning and I was sweating and snarling and saying it again and again: “I love you, Walter;” chanting it almost; “I love you, love you, love…”

He thrust into me fully then, cutting off my words as I gasped and tried to catch the breath that I had forced him to force out of me.

“I love you,” I insisted in a strangled whisper.

He made some sort of noise then, part shout of triumph, part sob of gratitude and then, as he found an intense pounding rhythm with his hips, he buried his face in the space between my shoulder and neck and I could hear him, his voice rough and shaking, “I love you so much. Always, Fox, always love you…” His words were punctuated with kisses, accentuated by the lunging of his hips as he drove his cock deep inside me again and again and again.

I encouraged him, bucked up against him, stroked my own aching erection across his stomach, found my own rhythm. Only to lose it completely as he pressed deeper, nudged my prostate, and I saw stars. And then I could only cling to him with arms and legs, and our coupling lost its frenzied in and out motion and became rocking—no less intense, but I wasn’t letting go and neither was he and as our bodies struggled for completion, he sucked and bit at my neck and my chest and then arched his back with another one of those desperate sobbing noises. I felt my fingernails, even short as they were, rake across the skin of his back as my hips were jerked up that much higher, spreading me that much wider and the panting breaths I’d been managing rushed right out of me again.

I felt him swell and twitch inside me and just that was enough to make me cum with a shout, my dick pulsing wildly between us as he fell forward again, wrapped his arms around me like chains and swallowed my cry with a kiss. He pushed air that I’d forgotten I needed into my lungs and came deep inside me, shuddering and groaning out my name.

I didn’t faint, precisely. But I wallowed in some kind of weird after glowing place that felt warm and safe, kind of spaceshippy only without the spikes in my face. Like that kiddie illness moment, I wasn’t sure where that last thought had come from, but it was there and gone so fast that I couldn’t be bothered to pursue it.

Slowly I came back to myself and my first coherent thought after, ‘ugh, sticky,’ was ‘I think my legs are broken.’

I shifted a little and a groan spilled out of me as I gently uncrossed my legs from their current death grip around Skinner’s waist. As a result of that smooth move, my hips dropped further down on the bed and an even more pained sound slipped out of me exactly the way that Skinner did.

I wondered if this part had been easier before, wondered if it was going to get easier in the future, decided that the pleasure was totally worth the discomfort, and then discovered that Skinner was crying.

Not crying, precisely. Just holding me tight, face pressed to my chest, some kind of harsh sobbing sighing noises coming out of him.

“Hey.” I petted his head, feeling suddenly awkward.

His head came up so abruptly that I startled and my quick jerk back was the only thing that kept me from getting clipped on the chin by his forehead.

His eyes were wet and dark and for a moment I railed against the forces of nature that turned me into a snotty, swollen-eyed four year old when I cried and yet managed to make Walter Skinner look even more handsome.

The moment passed and I wondered how serious this was going to get. And then I thought about the fact that I was a sticky, warm, well-used mess, and I didn’t feel very serious at all.

I touched his cheek briefly, brushed away the lone tear that had escaped him and gave him a grin that I suspected was more self-deprecating than I’d planned.

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“What?”

“Maybe I should try some of those kegeling exercises. Or yoga. Or, I know! I could get us a copy of the Kama Sutra—“

“Oh, shit.” He smiled, though his voice sounded rough.

“We could install a trapeze,” I offered, glancing up at the ceiling before letting another smile slide from my face to his. “Maybe a dance pole in the corner—how would you like me in a sequined g-string, Walter?” I touched my chest lightly. “Maybe pasties?”

He almost laughed and turned over, bringing me with him so that I was comfortably on my side, one leg resting on his, and my head pillowed on a bicep. Tenderly, he brushed the damp hair from my eyes and kissed me softly on the mouth.

“You love me,” I said, setting my wise-ass tendencies aside for the moment.

“You love me…?” I was sure he meant it to be a statement of fact, but I was saved from having to answer the inquisitive tone when he kissed me again, replaced his arm with a pillow under my head and slipped out of the bed. I watched with no small pleasure as he walked his naked self towards the bathroom. And when the door closed, I easily answered his question.

“Yes, Walter, I love you.”