By Michele (starshine24mc@yahoo.com)
Rating: NC17
Fandom: X-Files
Pairing: M/Sk
Date: February 10, 2002
Beta: none
Spoilers: War of the Coprophages, various and sundry...
Boring but necessary disclaimer: C.C., Fox and 1013 own them, I’m just borrowing them for fun, not profit, and I promise to return them only slightly bruised
Archive: put it wherever you like, just leave my name on it
Feedback: Yes, PLEASE!
Summary:  This is the Mighty Mouse chapter. For Neige and the rest who tried to give me that darned cliffhanger title!

***

Skinner burst into the room gun first, had a moment of shock over the lurid scene displayed before him, and then had to duck back out when McCormick fired at him. He felt the heat of the bullet as it roared past him and embedded itself into the wall, and then he was pressing himself to the hallway wall just to the right of the doorway.  He took several deep breaths, and then risked a peek into the room.

The little girl on the floor was thin and pale and quite obviously dead, as evidenced by the large hole in her chest. Skinner recognized the signature gaping of an exit wound, and he realized that whomever had killed her had shot her in the back.

‘Sneaky fucking coward’ he thought angrily. He had a moment of black hate sweep over him like night, like death itself, and then it was gone, and it was all the time he had for the little dead girl. His focus was on Mulder.

When he’d entered the room, his gaze had been immediately drawn to his lover, and his first horrified impression was that he was dead.  Mulder was slumped over to one side, his arms tied behind his back, his eyes closed. It looked like the man was bare from the waist up, but when Skinner looked back in, he realized that what he had mistaken for red shorts of some kind was in fact blood. Lots of blood.

McCormick’s next shot nearly took the top of Skinner’s head off, and he felt splinters of wood prick at his scalp as the bullet splintered the doorframe. Skinner regrouped again, muttering dark curses. He couldn’t stay in the door way long enough to aim his weapon, and he couldn’t risk firing blind and hitting Mulder. ‘Wouldn’t matter anyway, he’s dead’, some malicious part of his mind told him, and he sent a dire warning to it, shutting out the thought entirely, although he couldn’t contain that part of him that was almost throwing up from worry.

“Skinner!”

He startled at the sound of McCormick calling his name. At first he was too surprised to respond, and then too suspicious. When the man called out a second time, he peeked his head into the doorway.

McCormick was holding Mulder by his bound hands. Mulder was kneeling, barely, at the man’s feet, head tipped forward senselessly, and Skinner felt his heart clench. When McCormick saw him, he jerked hard on Mulder’s arms, pulling them up behind the man’s back cruelly. A barely audible moan escaped the imprisoned man, a sound that simultaneously horrified and relieved Skinner. Alive, Mulder might be, but there was still all that blood, and…he had to look away as his legs wanted to suddenly cross themselves.

“Let it go, Skinner,” said McCormick. “This is no longer your concern. You just walk away now, and let me do the same, and maybe you’ll live to fight another day.” When Skinner didn’t respond, he wrenched Mulder’s arms up again, got another pained sound. “And maybe ‘your boy’ here won’t wind up like this little do-gooder clone!” He kicked at the little girl’s body.

“What the hell are you doing, McCormick?” Skinner growled through teeth clenched so hard his jaw was aching, though it was the least of his concerns. He struggled to find all the rules of negotiation that the bureau had pounded into him as an agent, and realized that said rules went right out the window when it was someone you loved, someone who was so important to you that the sight of that person in danger, in need, blotted out everything but the desire to rush right in and take him in your arms, to comfort him and protect him. And of course, to tear a new asshole out of anyone who threatened to harm him. His thoughts were tinged red with hatred and black with fury, and he found himself breathing hard through his nose, almost hyperventilating.

“I told you Skinner. This operation is on a need to know basis, and it’s not something you need to know. Now just get your old balding ass outta here, and maybe I won’t put a bullet in this stupid bastard’s head!”

Skinner could hear the anger in McCormick’s voice, but he thought he could sense panic there, too, and he hoped like hell he could keep the man from doing something rash.

“What do you need my agent for, McCormick?” he called out. When no answer came, he tried it differently. “Listen to me. Leave him, and I’ll let you go. I can’t guarantee your safety otherwise!”

“Mulder’s too important to the equation,” McCormick replied. “You know that.”

Part of him did. While Skinner had never completely convinced himself that all of his lover’s theories on the powers that be, or, in this case, the powers that be bad, were sound, or at least half-way provable, he did know that there was something going on. Something that kept his office smelling like smoke. Something that gave him files, and employees that he didn’t recognize. Something that had threatened his lover before. He sometimes thought that the fact that Mulder hadn’t been killed outright long before this was nothing short of amazing…

*amazing, Mulder…

*You apparently bring out the best in me…or at least the horniest!

*You feel incredible…

*I love your post-sex hazy compliments, Walter; they’re great for my ego!

*I’m serious, Mulder. What you do to me…

*…is still illegal in seventeen states! But I won’t tell if you won’t!

*L* My lips are sealed.

*Now…not for long, though…I hope.

*You’re incorrigible, Mulder. I think you love me just for the sex.

*Of course I do, Walter. I mean, isn’t that why you love me?

*Smart ass—hey! Mulder, you’re not serious? Shit! Get your ass over here! My God, hon, do you really think that?

*I don’t know.  I guess I just don’t see what appeal a neurotic anti-social maverick with serious self-destructive tendencies can have for you…except for that thing I do with my tongue…

*Well, I’m not going to complain about that, but…but Mulder…Fox…If I could never touch you again, or you never touched me…well, that wouldn’t change the way I feel about you.

*Aw, jeez, Walter—

*I mean it! I love you, you neurotic, self-destructive, anti-social maverick!

*L* Thanks Walter.  Hey, what the hell are you doing *L*?

What the hell am I doing? Walter realized he’d almost been daydreaming. The desire to have his lover whole, safe and in his arms had nearly overwhelmed him to the point where he’d started drifting off into a memory. There’d been no reply from McCormick, and no sound either. Walter thought he could risk one more look into the room, and was just about to do so when all hell broke loose.  From the room came a coughing boom of breaking glass, Different voices yelling in different octaves: Scully’s clear and furious rising above McCormick’s gruff and equally mad. More glass shattering, and the thud of a body falling onto the floor. Gunshots, and then a distinctive yell that could only have come from his lover.

This last caused Skinner to chuck all his cautious ways, shake off all the memories, and leap into the room.

***

Oh God it hurts, it hurts, Walter, it hurts, so much, I can’t-no-no-oh, uhhh…Shit, now I know why they call it hardwood. Oh, jeez, I can feel the blood…head so heavy…just want to sleep…it’s time to sleep, now, Walter will wake me soon…just a nightmare and oh, my arms, oh, OH! No, don’t please don’t, please…ohhh…no pleasepleaseplease…oh, Walter, this is a bad one, please wake me up, I can’t, I can’t feel-no, don’t—oh god! What the hell was that? Scully? What are you doing in my dream? Hey, no, not the gun! Shit, gotta wake up, come on Mulder you can do this—just open your eyes, boy, and Walter will take care of this—Scully? Scully are you okay? More blood—I’m not liking this dream at all! Oh, look, here’s the floor again. My arms..ugh, my balls…okay, I can’t do this…fine, shoot me…oh, Walter--