"…I found out long ago, it's a long way down to holiday road…"

"Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" The ten-year old whine that Mulder lent to his words nearly drowned out the radio, and Skinner suspected there were dogs barking somewhere at the sound.

Mulder bounced in his seat, barely restrained by his seatbelt, and grinned madly at Skinner, who sighed and tried to ignore the adorable smart-ass riding shotgun in the Blazer with him.

When Skinner didn't take the bait, Mulder pouted briefly, arms crossed, lower lip protruding even more that usual.  Skinner sighed again, and resisted the urge to reach over and pinch that thrust out lip, an act of punishment that he remembered from his own childhood.

When neither exuberance nor full pout mode achieved the desired effect, Mulder knew he had to pull out the big guns.  He unclasped his seat belt and moved closer to Skinner, who gave him a quick, curious glance, but remained mute and turned his eyes back to the road.  Mulder scooted closer still and now just the stick shift of the vehicle separated them.  Mulder turned towards the passenger side door so his legs were away from the gears, and nudged his head against Skinner's shoulder. He was ignored, so he did it again, harder. Skinner reached out one hand towards him…

…and shifted gears.  Mulder made a thoroughly disgusted noise, and Skinner, although he didn't look over, couldn't help but smile. It made his face ache a little, and he realized it was probably the first one all day. And while this wasn't a particularly new thing, he realized he was being a little unfair to Mulder, who hadn't voiced any complaint or query since they had left Crystal City behind several hours ago.  He had been content to simply go along for the ride, playing with maps but not asking, playing with the radio, but deferring to Walter whenever he changed the station.  He'd washed bugs off the windshield and pumped gas, offered to drive if Walter got tired, and bought drinks and snacks out of his own pocket, including sunflower seeds, which he carefully shelled into a separate bag so as not to mess up the truck's interior.

Okay, so maybe he was being a lot unfair. But Mulder did these things, and many more, with such simple ease and so naturally, that it never even occurred to Skinner that he didn't want to do them, or, even if he did, that he might want to know why the hell he was doing them.

Mulder's voice interrupted his dark reverie.

"Okay, Walter, about this romantic getaway—" As he spoke, he pulled Skinner's arm away from the wheel and draped it across his shoulders, shifting a little to rest his head in the pocket between his arm and his chest. "Let me help you with the romantic part."

Another sigh, another smile, and he squeezed Mulder tight. A moment later, he had to loosen his grip to gear down as the lights of the next small town came into view, and the speed limit dropped.

"What about stopping for the night?" Mulder asked, sitting up again as they entered yet another town that he'd missed the name of on the way in, despite having read it on a map at some point earlier.

Skinner gave him an inscrutable look. Mulder couldn't decide if he was thinking it was a good idea, or if he was thinking at all, but he blundered on regardless, feeling uncomfortably adrift in this situation.

The idea of running off with Walter Skinner had at first sounded like one hell of an idea. After the rapid and near deadly events of the last few months since his apparent return from the dead, Mulder felt like he hadn't had time to breathe most days, let alone come to grips with the world and his place in it. The only time he felt truly safe and sound, sane and sure, was the time he spent in his lover's embrace. And so when Walter had suggested a road trip, he'd jumped at the invitation, more fearful than he could say at the thought that Skinner might be abandoning him.

"I just mean that, I think we have a long drive ahead of us—" He paused and saw Skinner nod nearly imperceptibly, although he didn't even think his lover was aware he had done so. "And this place looks clean, safe—no aliens, no succubi, no back stabbing deputy directors—"

"No children of indeterminate parentage," suggested Skinner. There was enough dryness in his tone to suggest that he was trying to tease Mulder, and not make a judgement call.

"See," replied Mulder. "We're both tired. Come on, Walter, look, there's bound to be a hotel around here somewhere. Think about it—a hot shower—I'll wash your back—we can order room service—no corn chips—a nice warm bed—I promise not to hog all the covers—" He couldn't think of anything else to add to the argument, so he just offered Skinner his best pair of puppy dog eyes, and a small grin.

It all sounded wonderful to Skinner, but more than that, he thought that by offering this to him, Mulder was in fact deflecting his own needs, and if he had learned nothing else in the time that he'd been with the spookiest profiler in the FBI, it was how to do a little—scratch that--a lot—of reading between the lines.

Without replying, Skinner slowed the vehicle a little more, and peered out into the rapidly fading daylight to search for a place to stay for the night.

The town was neither big nor small, just a typical American small town in most respects, and it didn't take long to find that the tallest building on main street, if you didn't count the steeple on the church at the end of the block, was the Plains Hotel.

Skinner pulled into one of the slant parking spaces out front and shut off the truck. He turned to Mulder, who was looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and suspicion, and took his face in his hands, stroking his thumbs over the rough stubble on his cheeks and chin, then brushing over his lips with same.

"Bring the maps," he suggested. "After supper, we can go over the route."

The huge smile he got at that was like coming out of the dark and into a well lighted home.