TITLE: Sad Lovers and Giants 05/? - Tightrope Touch
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.
SUMMARY: A blizzard. A power cut. Finding their way in darkness.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Nnnnnnnnnope.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I become king...

Author's notes: Sad Lovers and Giants, the two things hardest to conceal.

I happen to think I have a great beta. I happen to think everyone knows who my great beta is. But I am dreadful about giving her credit for all her hard work. Shame on me. Thank you, Susan … the greatest beta in all of betadom.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Sad Lovers and Giants 05/? – Tightrope Touch

by Mik

He didn't look back at me before he pushed into his room. He didn't have to. We'd both gotten a good dose of snow-covered reality. We nearly fucked up ... literally. The rigid line of his shoulders as he left ahead of me told me he was pulling himself back inside, tucking up all the unexpected and magnificent emotions he had spread open for me to view, like a jeweler laying out diamond rings before a nervous groom to be and then snatching them up and shoving them back in the vault before anyone could accept the precious offering.

I can't say I was surprised. That behavior was much more in keeping with the Walter Skinner, A.D. that I knew. The tender, passionate man I'd met this weekend was a stranger, a stranger who left me off balance and bewildered. But I hated to see the back of him so soon.

I also can't say I blamed him for packing it in so quickly. We were embarking on something unprecedented and dangerous. Not so much for what we would encounter out there, but what we might find within ourselves. I was already alarmed to find out there was a part of me still capable of being open to romantic love, and to being wounded by it. Romantic love. Now there's a notion. What's romantic about being so hot you're ready to give it up without even thinking that you were about to become Saturday matinee? Shame has never been a driver for me. Guilt, yes, but rarely shame. I was ashamed of myself. I slunk past his door without even glancing at it.

My room was colder than the corridor, and the sweat of arousal was now just a cloak of clamminess wrapped around my body. I felt a shiver run through me and I dived for the rumpled bed and rolled up in a blanket. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I strained to hear sounds from his room, tried to imagine I heard his footsteps coming to the door between us. No sounds came. It was as if he no longer existed.

I'm not really sure how long I sat there. I even have some vague impression of getting up and pacing around the room. But I know I didn't actually do anything. I didn't even turn my mind loose to chase the trails of logic that had put me in that gym, gyrating and sweating for another guy. I just know time passed and nothing mattered. And I sank another stone into the wall of my own self-loathing.

A girl came. She offered food in the restaurant. For a moment I was ready to leap at the chance to see him, even in public. But no. If anyone had seen us, if anyone revealed our stupidity with an ill concealed smirk or outright laugh, then he'd turn on me. His silence was better than that. I stayed in my room.

My watch told me it was evening. I had consumed the last of the sunflower seeds and scooped icy water from the tap up to my lips, more for the shock of the cold than to quench my thirst. I paced the room. I checked my mobile to see if it was still receiving a signal. I looked out the window and even imagined that the storm was lessening. But I kept coming back to the bed. I kept coming back to him.

I would have liked to think I was about more than sex to him. It was more than sex with him. I wanted him. I wanted his strength, his ability to be so open, so honest. I wanted his approval. I wanted his history, his present, his future. I wanted his truth. But I couldn't deny that I also wanted sex with him. Even thinking about his hand on me made my cock snap to attention. Without even consciously giving my hand the order, it was working its way under my sweats to relieve the swelling.

My fingers were cold and stiff but it didn't dampen the fire between my legs. No pornography had ever inflamed me like the memory of Skinner's mouth, or smell or touch. I took my time, letting the heat of my genitals warm my fingers and letting my fingers retrace the familiar path there. Shutting my eyes, I sought images of Skinner and found hundreds; all of them in crisp white shirts pulled taut over his chest. I could even imagine him fucking me, the cool cotton of his shirt rubbing over my skin with every thrust. The idea made me groan and I turned my face into the pillow.

My fingers began to work a little faster. I knew what his body felt like on mine. I knew his kisses, I knew the power of his body. I knew the skill of his hands. I wanted to know so much more.

I let my hands be his hands. Shut my eyes and gave myself over to the idea of him touching me possessively. I let myself slide under his body, be held down by his weight, claimed almost brutally by his mouth and hands. I even spread my legs as if inviting him to take everything.

I was sweating and rocking my hips, thrusting into my hand as if it was his mouth. I couldn't stop my body any more than I could silence those sounds of desperation. I needed this. Needed him.

I could imagine him tearing my clothes off, not caring about the cold. Not caring whether or not I was willing. I could feel his body pin mine to the bed. His impatient hands, demanding mouth, determined...determined...ohhhh, fuck...

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My cheek hurt. Felt bruised. I must have banged my head against the bedside table in the course of thrashing around like a man possessed. It had been a long time since I'd come so hard I passed out. Sweat had again cooled on my skin. I felt sticky and chilled and my thighs were twitchy and plaintive. I'd given myself quite a workout.

The front of my sweats were wet and I eased my hand out of them, grimacing. I must have been out more than a few seconds because the semen was cold on my hand and groin. I wiped my hand against the roughness of the blanket I had been tangled in, and struggled to sit up. Something felt wrong, strange, out of place. I couldn't see anything in the complete blackness of the room, but I could feel it.

I rubbed my tender cheek for a moment, and managed to make it to my feet. It wasn't 'til I was rearranging my sweats and pulling the blanket around my shoulders that I found what was so out of place. The door between us was slightly ajar. He had heard me. He had watched me. I felt myself go so hot all over that I dropped the blanket and stood still, letting effects of embarrassment wash over me.

"Are you all right?"

I jerked toward the sound of that quiet concern. He was leaning against the wall. I could barely make him out in the darkness. His arms were folded over his chest. His posture was one of calm power. "Yeah," I answered in a strangely weak voice. That irritated me and the irritation rescued me. "You might have told me you were into watching." I bent and gathered the blanket around me. "I'd have given you a better performance."

"That one was fine." He moved then. I flinched, thinking he was coming toward me, but he just shifted position. "You hit your head. Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Fine." I touched it gingerly. It was going to be an interesting bruise. "What the hell are you doing in here?"

"I heard you. You sounded as if you were in pain. I..." his confidence dipped. "I was concerned."

"You were there long enough to figure out I wasn't," I snarled, fumbling around for the box of tissues I could swear were somewhere nearby.

"Yes." He turned away from me and went into the bathroom.

I heard a metallic crash and he returned, having ripped the box out of the holder next to the sink. He dropped the box on the end of the bed.

I grabbed them and put distance between us again before I started wiping stickiness off my hand. "So, why didn't you do the decent thing and sneak out again, instead of sneaking further in?"

"I didn't want to."

"Oh, of course." I pulled the blanket together around me and held it with my teeth, so I could wipe my cock with some measure of privacy.

"In fact, I wanted to join you," he added quietly.

I looked up sharply. "You made your position very clear," I hissed around the blanket.

"Did I?" He sounded as bewildered as I had felt. "Could you enlighten me?" He felt for and sat on the end of the bed. "Because I sure as hell don't know what it is."

"Okay, I'll tell you." I wadded up the tissue, and glanced around for a wastebasket. "You used me to experiment. You liked it. Your generation believes if you fuck with a girl you tell her you love her. So you felt you had to -"

"My generation?" he protested.

"Peddle the wounded vanity somewhere else," I snapped, clenching my fist around the tissue. "So you got a little taste of manlove, but the first time you thought about the consequences that go with it, you went all delicate about it and shoved me off as if I was...was..." I threw the tissue at him. I must have thrown hard, because it hit him in the face, "...garbage."

"Mulder, I..." He stopped so I didn't have to tell him to shut up.

I maneuvered around him and pulled the door open. "Get out of here." I waited a beat. "Now."

He did that moving without being seen thing again, and suddenly I was slammed up against the door, his fingers in knots in my hair. "Listen to me," he rasped. "I want you. Damn it, I do. But we can't do this. Not here. Not ever." He jerked his hands and my head banged against the door. "Do you understand me?"

I nodded slightly. "Which is why I just asked you to leave my room," I reminded him in a whisper. Damn it...he was all over me and the smell of sex was so strong. I had to bite my lip and twist my face away from his before I lost it completely and kissed him. "So, if you'll just -"

He twisted my face back roughly, and he did the kissing. A very thorough job. By the time he was through he was holding me up because my knees were giving up under me. "God, Mulder," he groaned and moved his mouth to my neck. Oh, no, not there.

"Ssssssir, we've got to...oh, shit, that tickles...we've got to stop. Now." I was squirming under him. I couldn't help it. I was even starting to feel arousal again.

"I don't want to stop," he told me, his hands starting to move down my body. "We've only got one more night. Let's use it." He was pushing my sweats down roughly. "Just this once. No regrets."

I wanted to. God help me, I wanted to. But I couldn't. The idea that he'd turn his back on me down in Washington the way he'd turned his back on me out in the corridor was sufficient to reinstate reason in my fevered brain. I put my hands on his wrists as he tried to pull my hips to his. "No." I pushed. "No regrets."

He misunderstood me. His grip tightened on my flesh and he ground himself against me.

I was breathing funny...my breath kept hitching up in my chest. I could feel the heaviness in my balls again. I was giving in. I had to stop it before I got any further out on that tightrope and tumbled off. I moved my hands between us and shoved. "I said, no."

He staggered back a little. Not far, just enough for me to get my sweats back into place. There was something disturbing about his stance. I couldn't read his eyes in that impossible lack of light, but I could see the ragged way his shoulders rose and fell, and the slightly disbelieving tip of his head. His hands came up sharply, and the next thing I knew I was twisted away from the door and tumbling back to the bed. "And I said yes," he growled.

I wasn't sure if he was going to hit me or jump on me, but I didn't plan to lie there and find out. I rolled to my side and off the bed. I got to my feet and started for the door but my foot caught in the blanket I'd left on the floor and down I went, my cheek hitting the carpet over concrete and, for a moment, white lights glittered in my eyes, and then the darkness was back, and complete.

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I was out a little longer this time. Long enough to wake up back in the bed, with my head on a pillow, and a few candles lit on the bedside table casting a shrine-like glow over me. He was sitting on the side of the bed looking grim and washing my face with water so cold I knew the Geneva Convention was being violated.

I flinched at the cloth being held against my cheek, and brushed it away. "What the..."

"Easy. Easy." He put a hand on my shoulder. "Lie still."

My head hurt too much to argue with him. But I gave him a good glare. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" I demanded thickly.

He looked mildly indignant, even as he continued to torture me with that wet cloth. "I was going to ask you the same thing." When I jerked away from his ministrations, he sat back. "Can you sit still for a minute? I want to go down to the front desk. You were out at least four minutes. Please don't try walking unassisted."

Wait a minute...you just assaulted me and you're acting as if this is my fault? I didn't voice my opinion, however. I just gave him a very small nod. For some reason my body didn't seem to agree with any inclination I might have to get vertical.

"I'll be right back." He stood and looked down at me. "I want to make one thing very clear."

"You've made things clear enough," I answered. My mouth felt wrong, as if my lip or tongue was swollen.

"I did not hit you," he said.

I just looked back at him. I didn't think he had. I had a feeling he might though.

"I wanted to," he added. "I might have done, even. But I didn't." He turned away and slipped into the darkness beyond the candle glow.

What a comforting thought. My boss had a momentary urge to hit me...and I think he would have done even more. There was something beyond disturbing about that. I'm used to inspiring violence in people...hell, even Scully's been moved to shoot me. But sexual violence? Yet, it didn't surprise me. Skinner, king of the buttoned down people, was even more repressed than I was. If someone pushed him hard enough, he was going to explode. I pushed him almost hard enough.

He was back, cradling a small metal bowl in his hands. I could see steam rising. I turned my head quizzically, but received a warning shot from my brain to lie still, so I just watched warily as he drew back the blanket over me, and reached again for my sweats. "Be still," he commanded as I moved my hands in protest. "I told them you had tripped and might have sprained your ankle, so they heated water for me to make a hot compress," he explained, unfolding another white, hotel towel and dipping it into the water. "I thought you'd rest more comfortably if you cleaned up." He began to dab around my genitals.

I don't know which embarrassed me more; that he was washing my dick, or that he seemed so disinterested while he did it. Or maybe it was the fact that my dick, without permission from me, was responding to his clinical touch.

He dipped the towel in water again and worked between my legs. "It's a complicated situation, Mulder," he mused. "Reason tells me to leave you alone. It flies in the face of everything we know to be right."

I had my eyes shut tight, but I opened them again. "Right?"

He shrugged. "All right, practical." He glanced my way for approval. I gave it with a very tentative nod. "But the fact that I am attracted to you on so many levels is undeniable. I don't just want your s-sex..." he paused.

I opened my eyes again. He was blushing. I could see it, even in candlelight.

He overcame it. "I want a relationship with you." He shook his head, and worked my sweats down further. "I don't see how we could possibly arrange it, or if you are even open to it, but it's what I want." He put the towel down, and sighed. "It's impossible." He worked the sweats off my feet and tossed them on the floor. "I'm sorry I've behaved badly." He pulled the blanket back over me. "I'm sorry that I hurt you."

He rose and reached for the bowl. "I'm going to take this back to the kitchen. They were boiling coffee, I'll see if I can get you some."

Son of a bitch! No wonder he was an Assistant Director. He just laid out all the facts, and was leaving me to make the decision without any overt pressure. There was pressure all right, but it was between my legs.

I drew a deep breath and tipped my head back into the pillows. Okay, Dr. Mulder. Think. Think your brain instead of your balls. You can do it. You've been doing it for years. That's the problem...it has been years. Okay...so we fuck tonight...what's the worst that could happen? We'll be embarrassed in the morning. If we both get into this bed knowing it will never happen again then it will be all right, won't it?

No. Because we both have expressed a desire for something more, and crossing this line is just going to make the rest of it unbearable. We will get to the point where the disappointment will turn to bitterness and we won't be able to stand the sight of one another. And if he can't stand the sight of me, he's got the power to find me an office even deeper than the basement. Not a good career move.

I heard him come through the outer door, and a moment later he was bringing two paper cups to the bedside. "Can you sit up?" he asked, setting them down.

"Yeah. I'm okay...I just hit...that floor's hard." I laughed weakly while he arranged pillows and helped me move upward.

"You hit it hard," he agreed, arranging the blanket around me. "Maybe we should take you to see a doctor as soon as possible."

I watched him pry the lid off one cup and hand it to me carefully. "Yeah," I agreed under my breath. "I need my head examined." I made a face. "Shit, who made this? Me?"

He chuckled and reached for his own up. "You're going to be fine."

I licked burnt coffee from my lips. "Ummm...why did you say that there was only tonight?"

He was gathering trash together and putting it in the wastebasket I couldn't find. "Didn't I tell you? Two state troopers made it through while I was in the restaurant. The storm should be moving through tonight, and despite my earlier assessment about how long it would take to dig us out, they believe they'll have roads cleared tomorrow."

"Hmm..." I looked down into the coffee. "I do need my head examined." I pushed the blanket back and looked at him. "Then spend this night with me."

End 05