Title: Waking

Author: Basingstoke  

Homepage: http://www.ravenswing.com/bas/slash/

Archive: yes to DITB

Pairing: Skinner/Mulder.

Rated R.

Notes: Inspired by the season 8 premiere but sans spoilers.
Written for Mama Deb's birthday.

Feedback: all comments, positive and negative, are extremely
welcome.  bas@yosa.com

*****

Skinner lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and although his
body is too tired to move, his mind is keeping him awake.

They drove all day.  They only stopped when neither of them could
keep their eyes open.  Now Scully's in the room next door and
Skinner's lying on his bed in this cheap motel and they're both
thinking of Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.

Maybe even the same thoughts of Mulder.  Skinner didn't know. 
He's pretty sure that Scully never fucked Mulder against the
clean white wall of her apartment, one hand on Mulder's loosened
tie and the other on his long thigh--Scully's apartment doesn't
have white walls, and--Skinner desperately needs sleep.

He rolls onto his side and slowly, painfully sits up.  He leans
over and unties his shoes and pries them off.  He's wearing dark
socks.  Dark socks.  Mulder told him once, "if you ever wear red
socks to the office I'll suck you off in the fourth floor south
wing handicapped stall."  He's not sure if Mulder meant it--he
probably did--he's never worn red socks to test it.  

Jesus, Mulder.  It's only been two days.  He's sorry he ever
wished for some peace and quiet.  He's sorry he ever wanted
Mulder to act normal for a change.  He would give anything for a
gleefully perverted whisper in his ear or a strange fact about
the salivary glands of an Amazonian frog that proved the
existence of ancient astronauts on Mars.

He's tired and feeling sorry for himself.  He takes off his socks
and lies back on the bed, unzipping his trousers.  He does a
horizontal shimmy to pull them from under his hips.

Mulder would laugh and have something cheeky to say.  He tries to
stop thinking of Mulder.  Mulder and his quick smile, Mulder and
his bad ties, Mulder's low voice, Mulder's soft hair, Mulder's
strong hands--it's like trying not to think of pink elephants. 
He can't do it.  He wishes he had some whiskey to knock himself
out.  It wouldn't take much more than a shot.

Skinner unbuttons his shirt as his eyes drift close.  His glasses
are on the nightstand already next to his gun and badge.  It
seems metaphorical somehow.  Add a tie and there's his uniform;
without it he's just a man, a man who can't sleep.  Can't sleep. 
Can't stop thinking of Mulder.

Skinner thinks of Mulder as he shrugs out of his shirt, still
horizontal, eyes closed, his shoulders rotating off the bed in
sequence.  He drops it over the side and now he's just in his
boxers.

Mulder storming into his office armed with rumor and his
righteous indignation.  Mulder shouting, Mulder snarling.  Mulder
hunting.  Mulder finding.  Mulder pinning him to a wall, Mulder
wrestling.  

Mulder above him, Mulder below him, Mulder beside him, Mulder at
his side.  Mulder calling him in the middle of the night just to
hear him growl his name.  Now he's crying again, just one tear
from each eye.  He rubs his hands across his face and sits up.

He sits on the side of his bed, elbows on knees, face in his
hands, feeling the tracks of two tears evaporate from the sides
of his head.  The salt trails leave tight-feeling lines on his
temples.  

He's forty-eight years old.  Too old to be sitting alone in a
hotel room crying over a man abducted by aliens and pursued by
fellow FBI agents and shadow creepers.  This was a young man's
game.  He believes now but he doesn't want to.

He believes for Mulder's sake.  Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.  

Skinner creeps under the musty covers.  The light is off.  The
door is locked.  He can't sleep.  He can't sleep.  Thinking of
Mulder--

He gives in and it feels like a snap in his chest, like a
shoulder back into its socket, like a dam bursting.  He tosses
the covers back and runs one hand down his chest.  If this were
Mulder's hand--then--it would stop somewhere not at all
erogenous, like the rise of his rib cage over his stomach, and
two fingers would rub a circle into his flesh around the spot
where Mulder stared.  Circle, gaze, circle, gaze, until the spot
is hot and reddened from the attention and Skinner is growling
Mulder's name through his teeth in arousal.  

He doesn't have the gaze but he does have the fingers.  He's
rubbing, rubbing--then when Skinner growls enough, Mulder will
raise his head and give him that enormous smile, his eyes dilated
and full of wonder.  "I never get tired of looking at you," he
said once, and "I sometimes can't believe I'm here," he said
another time; words that make Skinner's heart beat faster for the
absolute sincerity of them.  

Mulder never lies to him.  Not about anything important.  

He'll lean down for a kiss--and Mulder's lips aren't here but
Skinner's hands are, so he touches his lips, soft and light as
Mulder's touch.  Then he'd shift down Skinner's body--and he
doesn't have Mulder's mouth but he does have his hands, and he
slides them both under the waistband of his boxer shorts,
touching himself and feeling that first electric crackle of skin
against sensitive skin.

Mulder's mouth--incredibly, Mulder's mouth is the only one that's
ever been there, wrapped around Skinner's cock.  In Vietnam it
was hand jobs and the occasional quick fuck, and then Sharon, she
was a nice girl and didn't do that.  And that was it.  Until
Mulder.  

Granted he had imagined Krycek's mouth wrapped around his cock,
with the improbability of Skinner's hands simultaneously wrapped
around Krycek's throat, but that was a product of a dark night's
shameful anger and not something likely ever to happen.

So it was just Mulder's mouth, Mulder's tongue, the vibrations of
Mulder's voice against delicate skin.  Mulder rose clear as
moonlight against the blackness of eyelid and night.  Skinner
reminded himself with his hands.  

And that was enough--that was enough--that was enough.  He came
inside his boxers and collapsed against the bed.

Skinner opened his eyes and Mulder was still there.  The midnight
contours of the room gave him nothing to distract himself from
memory.  Mulder grinning down at him; Mulder kissing him
intently; Mulder rubbing against him, Mulder shouting his name. 
Mulder always called him "Skinner" unless he was being a
smartass; then he was "Walt." 

Dammit.  Skinner pulled off the boxers and tried to towel himself
off.  He tossed them in a random direction away from his shirt
and trousers and stretched out between the sheets, uncomfortably
naked and sticky.  He crossed his forearms over his eyes and
relaxed into the bed.  

Mulder, Mulder, Mulder; he had to sleep, and then hunt for
Mulder.  

He had to sleep, and then--

He had to sleep.

He slept finally.

end.
-- 
bas@yosa.com