TITLE: Sad Lovers and Giants 08/? - Return to Clocktower Lodge
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 20^th 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.

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 08/? – Return to Clocktower Lodge

by Mik

I ran away from him. It galls me still to admit it, but it was true. Looking at his battered face, his desperate eyes, looking into a mirror to see the frantic lengths he would go to in order to get away from me, listening to him try to explain away all that had happened; it was all more than I could cope with. Even though I knew I should – must – stay and resolve this disaster that our association had become, I still made transparent excuses and fled.

I've never considered myself a stupid man. Oh, perhaps I'd never be in the rare strata of genius where Mulder routinely resides, but I am not a fool. At least, not under usual circumstances. And these were not usual circumstances. There's nothing usual about falling in love with someone as beautiful and as frighteningly flawed as the man who was in the next room. There's nothing usual about releasing emotions and needs so long pent up that they take on violent proportions.

The simple and terrifying truth was that I wanted him so much that it scared me. I didn't run away from him so much, as I ran away from me.

But I truly believed, after having run away from what had happened, and what had almost happened, that I wouldn't have to face him, that he would not want to face me. I was wrong.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, performing the comfortably familiar ritual of dressing when he burst into my room. He wasn't exactly wild eyed, but he did appear as if he might not be dissuaded from any goal. And he had one. Without preamble, without idle chatter, without so much as a 'May I?' he launched a performance that was almost elegant in its simplicity; direct, unrelenting and effective. All of that and I never even got out of what little clothing I had gotten into.

When he was through, he looked up at me, eyes hot, mouth wet with saliva and whatever semen he had collected through the barrier of my shorts, and asked me if I wanted him.

Just like that. Did I want him? There were no quantifiers, no outriding conditions or facts. Just the simple question. Just a simple quest for truth.

I reached for him, drew him up, pulled him close to me as I eased back on the bed. I was shaking and drained, and exhausted and exhilarated. He felt incredible in my arms; warm, pliant ... real. And for the moment, at least, happy to be where he was. I didn't want to think about what had happened the night before. I wanted this moment to go on, without ever looking back.

"We'll have to be very careful," I said when I had a voice again.

I felt him start to pull away from me, but I held on. "There is no other option for us, Mulder. I can't let you go, and I don't think you want me to. But it's not as if we can tango in the lobby of a federal building, either."

I felt him mumble something. For a moment, adrenaline shot through me, as I was forced to remember the night before. Then I realized whatever he said amused him. He was laughing. I relaxed and continued. "Both our homes are out of bounds. We'll have to find a neutral and safe place to be together."

He tipped his head back and looked up at me. Then he ducked his head under my chin. "I suppose," he said with a sigh, "that our respective homes might not be the wisest choice for an assignation."

"No," I said regretfully. And it was regret. I'd often envisioned him in my house, sitting comfortably, feeling at home while I prepared some feast suitable for the two of us. In those daydreams, I had never even dared define who we would be to one another. I think at that point I would have been satisfied with friend. Not anymore. "But we'll find a place."

"Yeah." He remained still, and let me stroke his hair for a moment before he jerked away. "You must be freezing." He rolled off the bed and glanced around, in search of the jeans and sweatshirt I had put out to wear. "Here." He thrust the clothing into my hands. "Is this ..." he bit down on that voluptuous lower lip, "okay with you?"

I was touched and, yes, even still, a bit frightened by his uncertainty. I wasn't accustomed to shyness from this man. I took my jeans from his hands, deliberately touching his hands as I did. "I'm okay. You?" Of course the question I was actually asking was, 'Please don't let me have seen what I think I saw last night. Please tell me it was just a joke, or a dream. And if I did see what I thought I saw, what the hell are you doing in here with me now? Doing what you just did?'

He smiled. It wasn't a big toothy grin, but that would look out of place on his face. It was just a reapportioning of his mouth. And it didn't go all the way to his eyes. In his eyes I still saw the greyness of fog, veiling something he didn't want to see, either. "I'm fine," he said, with just a little too much conviction.

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Six hours later we were miraculously on a plane, getting ready to go home.

I can't say that the time waiting for that moment had been awkward. We spent most of it together, talking. Nothing deep. No confessions, no childhood memories, no lovers' vows. We were very practical. We discussed the whens and hows of our private meetings. We discussed and abandoned a dozen venues before agreeing upon a small motel just outside DC that we both knew. We even worked out what we thought was a discreet email code in case we needed to contact each other. Mulder seemed to enjoy the whole 'cloak and dagger' aspect of the planning. I thought it was a bit silly, but unfortunately, necessary.

From the moment we emerged from our rooms to check out of the hotel and check in at the airport, we engendered a lot of curious looks, with our matching and somewhat spectacular injuries. Mulder countered queries with answers that ranged from the simple (tripped in the dark) to the ludicrous (shark attack), and once in a while threw in 'lovers' spat' with a grin just to see if I'd choke. I responded in an appropriate manner, as befitting my position and relationship to an underling. I said, "Mulder," quite sternly, for anything more outrageous than a spider bite, and then cuffed him in the back of the head when no one was looking.

Through it all, however, I watched him closely, looking for some sign of damage from the night before. Was it actually possible that he did not remember? I had to know. "Mulder," I began as we settled into our seats on the plane, "what is it called when you can't remember events that just happened to you?"

"In the case of anyone who works with me...lucky." He wasn't looking at me so I could watch him closely for any hesitation or guilty behavior. But there was none. "You mean...like short term memory loss?" he asked, working a kink out of his seatbelt and snapping it into place. "Why? Do you keep losing your keys, Sir?"

"No, that's not what I meant." I paused to choose words carefully. "Like...when something bad happens to you, but you don't remember it."

"Like a car accident? That's amnesia, usually brought on -"

"No, I don't mean because of an injury," I interrupted. "For instance, suppose you have a fight with someone and you harm them, but ten minutes later you don't remember it because it's as if you weren't actually there."

"Evil twin?" he suggested with a smirk. "Clone?"

"I'm serious, Mulder."

He scratched the back of his neck. "You mean something like a disassociative disorder?"

"What is that, exactly?"

"Well," he settled back in his seat, and drew a deep breath. "Disassociative disorders, also known in some cases as Multiple Personality Disorders, are conditions wherein when a person encounters something too traumatic for him to deal with, another distinct personality emerges to cope for him. The personalities are really fractions of the original ego that were damaged at some point, most commonly in childhood. Disassociative disorders are really like a whole subset of symptoms of PTSD."

"Distinct personality?" I didn't believe I had witnessed a distinct personality. Just someone or some ... thing not Mulder.

He shrugged lazily. "These personalities are defenders of the innocent, you know. That's a dramatic way of saying that they are the child's way of protecting himself. Depending upon his age at the time of the original trauma, a personality will form which embodies the characteristics the child knows to be safe or strong or nurturing or even vengeful. Sort of an..." he smiled again, "in house superhero."

"Do you believe in them?"

"Them?" He turned and cocked a brow at me. "You mean, the disorder? Are you asking me what my personal beliefs are? Or what the psychological society at large believes?"

"Both."

"Well, I've seen it used both successfully and unsuccessfully as a defense in criminal proceedings. It's always a battle of the expert witnesses in cases like that. There is DSM-IV criteria for it, but you can always make a case for or against someone meeting it." He shifted his attention to the flight attendant's last minute instructions for a moment. "Personally? Yes, I am open to it." He made a sound that might have been laughter. "I've been through a few things I wished some other personality could have handled for me."

Amazing. He was so calm, so unaffected. Surely he couldn't have faked what happened the night before without betraying some guilt. But surely, he couldn't not know that I was asking for that very reason. "Can a person suffer from it and not realize?"

He laughed outright at that. "Disassociation, by definition, means being disassociated from the events taking place ... not being there." The laughter faded. "Actually, eventually, the 'host' or 'original' personality has to notice there is something going on. Sometimes it's a sense of something extraordinary within, sometimes it's the inability to account for lost time, or the changes in relationships with others."

"You've claimed to have lost time before," I reminded him.

He turned to me in mock seriousness. "Mr. Skinner, Sir. You've just solved the mystery of Disassociation. It's not multiple personalities at all. It's alien presence."

I might have censured him for that comment, but the plane lurched forward and we both grabbed for the armrest between us. Our hands came together and we looked at each other just a moment longer than we would have done a week before. I think I saw a little color in his face. Then we adjusted our respective grips and looked away, settling back in our seats. The past didn't seem so important now. The future was the only thing that mattered.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was not exactly five diamonds on the Automotive Club's scale, but the motel room I let myself into was clean, freshly painted and private. It had a decent sized bath, in room movies, a coffeemaker and that most important of all amenities; a bed. I sat down on it, testing it for buoyancy and silence, and checked my watch against the clock radio at my side. If Mulder was on time, he would arrive in twenty minutes.

I was hoping he would be early. To my admittedly not psychologically trained mind, being early would indicate that he was as eager to see me as I was to see him.

It had been twelve days since we'd landed at Ronald Reagan airport, gave each other a quick handclasp and parted ways. We'd both heard about one another's injuries through the gossip network. Mulder had evidently spread a very humorous tale involving sounds in hallways, thoughts of burglars, mistaken identities and Greco-Roman wrestling. He must have done a remarkable job of relating the incident because I had not heard one sneer of disbelief from anyone.

I hadn't seen the author of the adventure, though. We were usually scheduled to attend departmental meetings on Monday mornings, but on the Monday following our return, our department was in the middle of annual audits, so the meetings were postponed. And then he and his partner took another field assignment before the ink was even dry on his last report.

Agent Scully had brought the report up for my review a few days later, and I tried to gauge from her behavior and attitude toward me whether he had confessed all. But her behavior and attitude toward me was respectful and reserved. As usual. She didn't linger a fraction longer than necessary. She didn't utter a sound beyond her usual perfunctory and polite responses. She didn't even let her eyes meet mine any longer than was appropriate. I didn't have a clue whether or not she knew. I would have to ask Mulder.

When I saw him.

He wasn't early.

He wasn't even on time.

In fact he was sixteen minutes late. I could hear his car door slam outside. I could hear his trainers on the wet pavement. I could hear him pause outside checking room numbers, and shifted what sounded like a paper bag in his arms. It took him nearly a minute to knock. I wondered if he was thinking about changing his mind. I went to the door and opened it, and stepped back to let him enter.

He held out the paper bag. "It seemed appropriate," he murmured, and let his rucksack slide off his shoulder.

I pushed the door shut and leaned in for a kiss. He seemed startled by my approach, but he didn't resist. In fact, he put his hand on my shoulder encouragingly. "It's good to see you," he said.

"It's good to see you, as well." I carried the bag to the tiny table in the corner. "Sit down," I tossed over my shoulder as I opened the bag. "How was Kentucky?"

"Right where I'd left it," he answered with a grunt, bending over to untie his shoes.

I laughed. Not at his comment, but at the contents of the bag. Milk, sunflower seeds, slim jims, magazines, gum, chocolates, apples, bagels, meat paste, beer, candles, matches and Vaseline. Everything I had gotten that day in an attempt to ensure our survival. And one more item that had not been in my basket. Condoms.

I looked at them, lying innocently at the bottom of the bag, and I wondered if he could see me going up in flames from there. "Mulder, you're..." I didn't have the words to express my feelings.

"Yeah." He let himself flop backward on the bed. "Everyone says that."

I turned around and came back to the bed, sitting beside him, looking down. "Are you okay?"

He shook his head, very slowly. "I'm so incredibly not okay." He rolled onto his side and put his hand on my thigh. "It's been a nightmare the last two weeks. All I could think about was..." he fumbled for words.

I held my breath. I knew what he had been thinking about. I had just been pretending it hadn't happened.

"... was how good it felt sleeping with you," he finished on a rush of breath. He lifted his hand and wrapped it around my neck, drawing me down on my side next to him. His eyes were hot green sparks all over my face. He reached for and slipped my glasses away from my face. "You look pretty hot without your glasses," he allowed. He twisted them around and settled them on the bridge of his nose. He blinked a couple of times. "Wow."

"Not a word, Mister," I warned, took them from him, and arched up to leave them on the bedside table. Then I gathered him into my arms and held on. "It's been a nightmare for me as well," I whispered fiercely into his hair. "I want to sleep with you every night." I kissed him.

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I looked back at the bed one last time before I shut the door. He was curled up, hugging the pillow, shivering. I left the light by the door on, and left.

It had been moving like wildfire. From that first real kiss, we'd been scrabbling desperately to get skin to skin, mouth to mouth, cock to cock. We'd bitten, licked, sucked, fondled, rubbed every part of one another we could reach. I'd had fantasies about that first time being romantic, but we were too in need to waste time with romance. Romance could come later, after we came.

I tried to be careful at first, to watch his reactions to each thing I did, but his reactions just served to fire me up, make me want more. There was no hesitation in his actions. He was rocking and rubbing against me like a cat in heat, muttering incendiary things like 'I need you so much' and 'please, just do it'.

He didn't flinch or even look alarmed when I broke away to get the Vaseline and condoms. I brought them back to the bed and he just grinned up at me, flushed and sweating, his panting breath making his body seem to undulate before me. "How do you want me?" he asked in a cracked voice.

I didn't waste any time getting that condom on. I gestured impatiently for him to roll over, and climbed up over him. It wasn't until I actually tried to part his legs that he had the reaction I'd feared; stiffening, trying to keep his legs together. He was up on his elbows, with his head ducked down, and for the moment, still and quiet. But something rather like a whimper escaped him as I reached for his cheeks and attempted to open him.

I should have stopped at that moment. I know it now. I knew it then. But I was too far into my own needs to give in to his. I tried to keep my voice calm and non-threatening as I pressed against him. "Just relax," I whispered into his neck. "It will be all right if you just relax." He answered with a jerky move of his head, too quick and small to discern if it was assent or denial. But the minute the reservoir tip of that condom made contact with his anus he went wild, bucking and moaning and thrashing and begging. I backed off fast and started scrambling for my clothes. He twisted around in the bedding so much that he ended up on the floor, completely enfolded in the coverlet.

I let him stay there, on the floor between the wall and the bed, while I hastily finished dressing and gathered my things. I was getting out of there. Compassion and responsibility would demand that I stay with him, comfort him, see him through whatever trauma he was reliving, but I'd seen him get through well enough on his own, and I wasn't all that sure that I wasn't more of the problem than a solution. I certainly didn't want to risk confirmation of that suspicion, so I chose to flee and live to fight another day.

The pathetic sounds seemed to abate finally, while I was writing a terse note on the cheap motel letterhead. I would have walked out at that moment, but I happened to glance down at him, and I was wrenched with guilt.

Approaching him gently, speaking softly, I managed to gather him up and settle him back on the bed. He rolled away from me, and jerked at my touch, when I reached over him to turn off the light. But his words, or those words, because they didn't sound as if they came from him, pierced me through. "I was being good. I was trying. I tried to be good. I'm sorry, Sir."

End 08