Chapter 4—Ordinary Day

Mulder pushed open the door and couldn’t hide his relieved smile.

Skinner was sitting up, looking large and awkward in a hospital gown, his bare legs hanging over the side of the bed. He was staring down at his hands, which were folded neatly in his lap.

His head came up when he heard the door open, and the grin he gave Mulder was equally relieved, with just a hint of apology around the corners of his lips.

“Hey,” said Mulder.

“Puppy,” Skinner replied.

Mulder crossed the room in a handful of quick long strides, hopped up onto the bed next to Skinner and let a hand rest on the other man’s knee. This close, Skinner saw that Mulder’s lower lip was trembling, and his eyes were shiny.

“Cry baby,” he chided with a smile.

“Drama queen,” Mulder shot back with a quick kiss to the cheek.

Skinner covered Mulder’s hand with his own, larger one, and their fingers entwined like ivy and iron trellis.

“Sorry,” he muttered, looking almost ashamed.

“You don’t need to apologize to me, but I’m guessing the cat’s going to be pissed off at you for at least a week.” More shifting of fingers, more clutching.

“I’ll apologize to him when we get home.” Skinner promised. “You talked to the doctor?”

The sudden shift in topic caused Mulder to look up from their clasped hands to his lover’s face. Skinner didn’t have his glasses on, and Mulder was struck again by how young and vulnerable the man looked without them.

“I did,” he replied lightly. “I told him the baby wasn’t mine, but I’d do right by you just the same.”

The laugh he forced out of Skinner held a trace of a sob behind it, and he had to take a moment to swallow the lump in his own throat at the sound.

Skinner tried to compose himself in that moment too, and then, his voice thick, he said, “Ah, Puppy, what are we going to do?”

“Well, I don’t know about ‘we’, but you are going to come home with me and then do nothing more strenuous than change channels on the television.”

He saw Skinner getting ready to protest, and he pressed the fingers of the hand not currently held in a death grip over the other man’s lips.

“The less stress the better. So says Dr. Homophobe, and so say I.”

“You got that too, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. In spades.” Another combination grin-kiss-squeeze. “Scully’s coming.”

“Oh, no. Mulder, you shouldn’t have—“

“Walter,” Mulder’s voice held a no-nonsense tone. “Scully was there the first time, when—and I—I think she’s our best bet.” Both of them ignored the telltale skip in his voice, and he continued. “In the meantime, I’ve got us a car, and despite how adorable this look is for you—“ He leered comically at Skinner’s hospital gown. “I’ve got something a little less revealing for you to wear outta here.” In a lower voice he said, “it might not be Armani, but it beats letting the nurses around here get a look at your junk. That’s just for me.”

Again he caused Skinner to laugh, and the older man watched his lover with something like awe as Mulder rallied in the face of adversity, again, and he thought for just a moment that there might not be anything in the world that could keep Mulder down for long. Like one of those clown punching bags from his childhood, Mulder just kept coming up for more. And no matter how hard the blows, there was nothing that he couldn’t handle.

“What?” Mulder asked, giving him a quizzical frown.

“Just thinking. Why?”

“Because you were looking at me funny.”

“Funny ha-ha? Or funny weird?”

“Funny like you were Tom Hanks and I was a volleyball.”

Skinner pulled Mulder into his arms with a smile by way of reply, and the younger man came willingly—almost too eagerly, and nuzzled the side of his neck.

They stayed that way until a nurse came in with Skinner’s release papers.

***

Skinner spent most of the trip home asleep, occasionally rising out of his doze to mutter something incomprehensible. Mulder would pat him and answer questions that he couldn’t understand, and after a time they were home.

“Hey, big guy,” he whispered, giving Skinner a nudge. When he got no response, he tried louder, “Honey, we’re home.”

Skinner mumbled something that might have been “and I’ve had a hard day.” Or could have just as easily been “I’m glad to be gay,” and then he opened his eyes and squinted into the afternoon sun.

“I’m hot,” he complained, fumbling with the seat belt.

Mulder undid it for him. “Modest, too.” He stepped out of the car and saw that Skinner was doing the same unaided, and he felt a surge of pride for the other man that didn’t fade even when he had to steady him on the porch steps.

Skinner let himself be guided to the couch, trying to remember when he’d ever felt this tired.

“’Nam,” he told Mulder, “and when you were lost.”

Mulder wasn’t sure what Skinner was talking about, but he made some soft noise of agreement and pulled the throw off the back of the couch to drape over the other man, then bent down and untied his shoes.

Skinner was asleep before his shoes hit the floor, and stayed that way through various Mulder pats, some quick Mulderhousework (which mostly consisted of stacking everything neatly, then tossing it into the closet), and surfaced only briefly at the sound of the television being turned on.

Mulder flopped gracefully to the floor in front of the couch, setting a cold beer down on the coffee table with more care than he had set his own ass down, and found the remote control.

When Skinner’s hand settled on him, he didn’t speak, just continued to surf channels, but he was far more aware of the warm weight on his shoulder than of anything currently broadcasting on the hundred or so channels they had courtesy of the satellite dish he’d insisted on having installed.

Another hand, the other shoulder, and then lips pressed close to his ear.

“Let’s go to bed.” More growl than words, but perfectly understandable, and Mulder dropped the remote control and forgot about his beer. He tried to remember everything the doctor had told him about what was happening in his lover, and what he should and shouldn’t be doing, but Skinner nuzzling and licking at his ear was making it almost impossible to think at all. A few more minutes of shiver inducing kisses and then Skinner was nibbling on his neck, and he jumped to his feet, shaking and half hard.

Skinner didn’t give him a chance to recover. He stood almost as quickly himself, pulled Mulder into his arms and captured his mouth in a deep almost brutal kiss. He pushed his tongue between Mulder’s lips and tasted him fully, aggressively.

Mulder wrapped strong arms around Skinner and opened himself to the older man’s probing, licking and biting back with equal fervor, letting his tongue trace slick patterns over Skinner’s cheeks and chin, then opening his mouth again to more intense kisses. There was incredible strength and passion in Skinner’s every movement, from the delicate swipes of his tongue across Mulder’s palate to the almost painful stroke and squeeze movements of his big hands over Mulder’s lean long body. But beneath the love and lust that he fairly radiated like an aura, Mulder could sense something else. Something almost desperate, and frightened.

He recognized his own feelings, like looking in a mirror.

Instead of calling Skinner on the mix of emotions, Mulder opted to go with it instead, feeding his own needs off of his lover’s desire.

Skinner’s strength never failed to surprise Mulder, despite his numerous encounters with it; never failed to excite him as well. He backpedaled and stumbled, and Skinner pushed forward and held him upright and his hands were everywhere, tugging at his clothes.

And then they were in the bedroom and he was falling back onto the bed, gulping air and looking up at Skinner through half closed eyes. His mouth felt swollen and sore and his erection was throbbing insistently against the buttons of his jeans. He struggled to sit up and Skinner pressed him back down to the mattress with one big hand on his chest, then moved forward until he was straddling his legs, rubbing their groins together, creating explosive friction, and he moaned out something that was trying to be Skinner's name.

Mulder was shirtless before he knew it, and just had time to watch his shirt sail off the side of the bed, and then sharp teeth were nipping at his chest, making him groan and jerk and he saw that Skinner had lost his shirt somewhere along the way as well. Moments later, his nipples were hard and his mouth was being devoured again. He twisted his body and turned his head, his breath puffing out of him in harsh gasps between kisses.

“Please, oh, please…” More, or no more, Mulder didn’t know what he was begging for, and it didn’t seem to matter. Skinner cut the words off with his mouth, and then Mulder could taste them being directed back at him, and he wasn’t sure what Skinner was pleading for either.

Hands moved over his body with rough abandon and he felt himself surging forward, falling back, his muscles seeming to follow Skinner’s touch and instinctively ask for more. A breathless keening noise came from him as those hands seem to be everywhere at once, first rough, then soft, demanding, then retreating, and then finally, finally, finding his cock through his opened jeans and stroking him firmly, nearly bringing him right off the bed.

Skinner slipped away from his lover and stripped off the rest of his clothes, fairly panting as he did it, his heartbeat a roar in his ears that drowned out the sounds Mulder was making. Fully naked, he thrust himself back onto the other man, wrapping one hand into his hair and reclaiming his mouth for more desperate kisses. Their bodies, now slick with sweat, rocked and bucked against one another, and he felt Mulder’s hands on his buttocks, kneading almost compulsively as their motion shoved them across the bed.

Never letting loose of Mulder, he reached out one arm, slapping his hand across the bed stand until he found what he was looking for. Clutching at the supplies greedily, he bit at Mulder’s lower lip, provoking a small cry, then reared up so he was sitting astride the other man’s hips.

He took no time at all to sheath himself, barely wetting the latex with lubricant, every cell in his body on fire; dimly, he realized that Mulder was shifting beneath him, watching him through lust-glazed eyes and struggling to move his legs, whimpering every time their cocks brushed against one another.

‘Oh, God, I love you,’ the words seemed to echo in his brain, but he had no idea if he’d spoken them aloud or not. He only knew that he was moving and Mulder was moving and then the other man was reaching for him and he was pushing forward and there was resistance at first, and a hiss of pain that could have come from either one of them. And still he pushed on, and then there was tightness and heat and he felt vital and alive and—

Mulder bit his lip and tasted blood at Skinner’s initial entry. He found muscles to shift and open and then Skinner was moving again, pressing forward and he felt something give inside himself, something that sparked and opened wide and sent a renewed throbbing through his cock, something that wasn’t pain and wasn’t pleasure but might have been a little of both. And when Skinner’s hands descended on him again, stroking and pulling even as he stroked and pushed inside him, he called out his lover’s name, feeling every part of himself becoming one with that initial spark, multiplying it into embers and into flames and he was boiling over with life, with lust, with an inferno of love until he could only rock himself on his lover, crying his name over and over beseechingly.

When Mulder tipped over the edge and his muscles clamped ferociously down on Skinner’s cock, the older man groaned and bucked wildly, held deep within his lover’s body; there was no urge to escape, only the need to go further, to lock himself into Mulder’s very core, where nothing else could exist but this moment, this man, these feelings. His orgasm poured out of him uncontrollably and he found himself falling into willing arms, held tight between locked thighs. Air sobbed out of him in great gusts, and his body shuddered with every breath.

Mulder felt Skinner’s tears wetting his chest and he held him tighter, arms locked around the other man’s shoulders, the tremors from Skinner’s body transferring into his own. But he kept his grip firm, and whispered his name, and dropped soft kisses on his head without complaint. He winced once, when Skinner’s cock slipped from his body, but didn’t begrudge his lover the pain for a moment. Instead, he simply rocked him, kissed him, loved him with all his heart, and swore to himself that he was going to find a way to make it all right.

End 4/19