TITLE: Under It All
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL:
ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not
suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.
SUMMARY: Case file with schmoop filling.
ARCHIVE: This story belongs to Maria.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: none
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 personally
think Chris Carter, et al, should just give them to me, since they're
not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat them much, much better,
but there you are.
Author's notes: This story was commissioned by Maria, who made a donation to the Red Cross Katrina Disaster Relief Fund. Thank you.
Under It All by Mik
He muttered something as he left the room. I didn't exactly hear what he said, but the scowl on his face and the tone of his voice were enough to convince me it was disrespectful. "Agent Mulder," I called sharply, "do I need to remind you that I am the senior agent on this case? Do I need to remind you that there are families of these victims and we must show a little sensitivity dealing with them, and not charge in and systematically accuse them of murder?"
He turned and cocked his head at me. "Just how heavy is that mantle of self righteousness you wear? Does it chafe?" He spun on his heel and marched out of the room.
Every other agent in the room turned as one to see how I would take that.
Agent Scully rose from her seat, looking both responsible and guilty. "I'll go and-"
"No." I cut her down with a word. "I'll go."
He hadn't gone far. He was at the end of the corridor, pacing, fuming, pounding the elevator call button with his fist. I could almost see steam rising from the top of his head. I had to establish that I was in control quickly, so I called his name sharply and began a speech. "Agent Mulder, listen to me. There are certain protocols which must be-"
"No, you listen to me." He was coming toward me, fire in his eyes, his hand still a white knuckled fist. "Don't you ever accuse me of being insensitive to a family's loss. I know they're suffering, but they're suffering because someone took their child away. I can only ease that suffering by finding out who did it. And I think-"
I caught his arm as he got within reach. "I know what you think, Agent Mulder. Thanks to the Internet aspect and the fact that bloggers all over are watching this case, I expect the whole world knows what you think by now." I forced his arm down between us, not letting go. "But there is such a thing as evidentiary procedure. Habeas corpus. You can't call a man a murderer without proof of a murder. Without a body."
"We will find a body, and there is evidence-"
"Circumstantial at best." My voice softened somewhat. I couldn't help it when he was this close. "Let's do this right. We will find a body. And we will build a case, but in the meantime, don't destroy the case going off half cocked making libelous accusations." I gave him a moment to absorb my warning, and then shook his arm a little. "Come on, Mulder, you know I'm right."
The fire in his eyes did not dim. "He's dirty. He stinks."
"And if anyone will find a way to prove it, you will."
The expression on his face made it clear he felt the remark was patronizing, but he didn't launch a retort. That wasn't extraordinary and I didn't take it as a testament to my superior debating skills. It was just Mulder's preservation mechanism kicking in. There were words he would not let pass between us, and those words must have been part of his argument, so he stepped back.
But he did not step down. He waited a moment, to let the temperature drop a little, then he said, calmly and deliberately, "I want to call him a POI."
"But on what grounds-"
"We don't need grounds," he cut me off. "Calling someone a person of interest allows us to look for grounds, doesn't it?"
"And if we don't find any," I countered, "we could potentially damage his reputation."
Mulder's face went slack in what appeared to be astonishment. "He just lost his son, for God's sake. What does his reputation matter right now?"
"Mulder," I said, flabbergasted by his logic, "you can't have it both ways. "Either he-"
"The hell I can't. Either let me call him a murder suspect and treat him as such or designate him a person of interest and let me find what I need to outright accuse him."
"And how will you do that? The rack and red hot pokers?"
"Only if necessary," he snarled.
When it came to missing or exploited children Mulder tended to count civil liberties as suggestions. When he got this way, it was best to defuse him carefully. "I'll...I'll take it under advisement."
"What is there to advise?" He was not defused. "He was the last person to see his son. That makes him suspect in all fifty states - ask any beat cop. The initial investigation was badly botched; they let him send his other son out of the jurisdiction without questioning him." He jerked his hand free. "Three of the other five victims had some connection to Galloway or his son. Isn't this starting to sound a little suspicious? Even to you?"
I sighed. Tackling the Galloways without something more concrete than suspicions was not only career suicide, it was also unproductive. Modern day Hollywood royalty, Richard, his wife Lisette, and three of their four children, Hannah, Jonah, and Dinah, were box office draws of the highest magnitude. Their eldest son, Noah, had not had the same success and had recently shifted his attention to music, with a similar lack of success. There were rumors of drug and sex scandals, but the Galloways had media handlers which made sure nothing ever became more than rumor. But all the handlers in the world couldn't stop the fact that Noah Galloway's nude body and battered face had been shown all over the World Wide Web for the last week.
It was now apparent Noah was dead. Brutally murdered. One of six young men who had been mutilated and strangled and dumped in the Angeles National Forest in California. The reason the case had come east to land in our laps was that the killer had boasted of his deeds on the Internet. Pictures and graphic descriptions of the tortures and killings had been posted on several bulletin boards. Three of the bodies had been recovered, and even as we stood glowering at one another in that corridor, canine teams were scouring the parklands looking for the other three. Mulder had been taken off another case and assigned to this one based on a personal request. He'd been out to Los Angeles once to interview the Galloways, and all but accused Richard of killing his son right there in front of the family and the press. He'd been jerked back to DC fast and hard.
And he was glaring at me as if I'd been the one who did the jerking. "Go downstairs," I instructed firmly. "Cool off a little. We'll talk about it later."
I was surprised he consented. He stepped back from me, and nodded.
"Hey," I called softly. "I had nothing to do with you being pulled, but…" I lowered my voice even more, "selfishly speaking, I'm glad you're back. I missed you."
He was going to say something. I saw a lot of emotions collide in his eyes, but the door opened behind us, and I didn't need to turn around to know it was Agent Scully. He nodded, and turned away, punching the elevator button with his closed fist.
I turned away as well. "Yes, Agent?"
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He was quiet that night. Nothing I could do or say could coax him out of his dark mood. Well, that wasn't entirely true. I'm sure if we discussed the Galloway case, he'd be more animated, at the very least. But we had a rule that we did not bring the Bureau into our bedroom. It was hard. Sometimes I think it was harder on him than me. I could feel he was fairly bursting with feeling and opinion but it was a line we would religiously avoid crossing.
From the beginning of our personal relationship we'd acknowledged that we didn't always agree when it came to how my department was run, and that I had an unfair advantage as he was one of my direct reports. We both struggled to leave the Assistant Director at the door. Well, sometimes it was even easier for me than he realized. I tended to melt when he was close to me.
The trouble with the rule was that when he got like this I couldn't get near him when he had work on his mind and couldn't talk about it. He evaded every caress, brushed off every embrace, absolutely refused overtures of any kind of physical affection. Oftentimes he wouldn't even sleep in our bed.
Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I grabbed his arm and hustled him toward the door. "Get your coat," I commanded, pulling mine from the closet.
"What the-"
"Just get it," I barked, pushing him.
I kept pushing him. I pushed him all the way down to the car, and ignored him all the way down to Eads Street, and a local bar, ironically known as The FoxHole. Once inside, I shoved him into a chair, roughly, and shrugged out of my coat. "Okay," I rasped, dropping into a chair opposite him, "let's have it."
He glared at me for a full minute before it cracked and the smallest smile slipped across his lips. He stood and pulled his own coat off, draping it over mine, on the back of an extra chair. Then he sat, hitched his feet back in the rungs of the chair, lacing his fingers together, composing his words.
I felt a tingle at the base of my spine. I knew what was coming. Something so brilliant I'd wish I had my sunglasses.
He started to speak, and pulled the brake as a pretty girl came around to take our order. "The Galloways are too perfect to be believed," he said once she had done her duty and gone away. "Politically liberal, always in the spotlight, yet their kids have never put a foot wrong, except Noah. They've had every advantage, seem to wallow in familial affection. No one's that perfect."
"So, he's guilty by virtue of having raised a loving, healthy family?"
Mulder waggled a finger at me. "Richard Galloway killed his son. He couldn't stand producing a failure. In his eyes, Noah was a failure. The sexual mutilation was very personal. He was cutting off the kid's chances of continuing the Galloway name in such a flawed form."
"And the other five victims? What had they done to him?"
"ABC murders."
"I beg your pardon?"
He looked at me as if he couldn't believe I didn't know the reference. "An old Agatha Christie book. Did you never read it?" He settled back in his chair when our drinks arrived.
"No, I missed that one," I said wryly, digging out cash.
He took a sip. "A wants to murder C." He put the glass down and held up three fingers. "But he has a motive to murder C so he murders a random B first, and in the same way so it will look like a serial killing. He has no motive to murder B, so why would suspicion fall on him for killing C?" He shook his head. "Only in this case, A wanted to murder G and there were the unfortunate B, C, D, E & F in between."
"Isn't that something of overkill?" I asked doubtfully.
"Exactly." He rocked forward. "Overkill. Galloway's an overachiever. Does nothing by half measures. B probably presented himself as an easy target...but then C saw something that made him a target as well." He was ticking things off on his fingers again. "He didn't get a chance to move on to G as quickly as he wanted to because G was out of town during the critical period. So, he picked off D and E while he waited for G to get back in his grasp, and then went back and got F just to make sure no one would be suspicious when everything stopped after G was murdered."
I laughed, an incredulous response. "You're going to base your-"
"It takes a sociopath to destroy so many innocent lives to get what he wants," Mulder interrupted me. "Richard Galloway is a sociopath. He runs his house like a martinet, even though he wants the world to think he's so liberal and easygoing." He reached for his glass. "His son crossed the line so far as he was concerned, and in his universe, someone who crosses the line gets crossed off."
"And you think he was capable of killing five other people just to-"
Mulder was in the middle of a sip, but he put the glass down sharply. "Capable? Absolutely. And he probably feels totally justified in his actions. They were necessary to protect his universe."
"I don't know, Mulder, that's pretty far fetched. And how would you prove it?"
"A man doesn't walk through that much blood without tracking some of it home. I want a forensic investigation of their house, their cars, his office at the studio, anywhere he's been in the last twenty five days. But start with his house and car. Somewhere, under all that glitter and good will you're going to find the evidence we need to charge him."
"And you're not willing to concede it was some other sociopath?"
"I will once the evidence tells me I've got the wrong sociopath." He reached for the glass and completed the sip I'd interrupted. "I want to know what he's hiding. You think he's cooperated with the investigation, I say he's orchestrated it. The police didn't even ask about alibis for the other killings. He sat in on and controlled the interviews with his wife and daughters. He didn't even allow his other son to be questioned. And he's done it all with a slick, photo op smile. I don't want him to get away with it, do you?"
"If I agree to make the call in the morning, will you come home tonight and relax?"
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Are you agreeing with me just to get into my pants?"
"Nope." I emptied my glass. "That's just a bonus. What do you say?"
He didn't smile. His eyes remained half shut and dark. "You promise me you'll get a federal team out there? None of the local PD?"
"LAPD has one of the best crime scene-"
His expression tightened. "Federal team or it's nothing doing."
I glanced around the pub and slid a hand across the table to lock fingers with him. "Mulder, have I ever given you my word and not followed through?"
I felt his fingers tighten around mine. "Okay. Let's go home."
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I won't say he totally relaxed after I promised to follow through with the investigation, but he certainly seemed more cooperative...downright encouraging. At the front door, he let his body press against mine, and as we crossed the threshold he slid past me to push the door shut with my body, and met my mouth with a hungry, open kiss.
I know I should have just kept quiet and accepted it, but I held him off. "Wait a minute. Before we go any farther...is this gratitude or a bribe?"
He backed off, his face darkening dangerously. "Asshole. It was I've been gone four nights and I missed you as well."
I smiled, feeling foolish. "Oh." I reached for him, but he danced out of my reach. "Mulder, come here." I scrambled awkwardly after him. "Mulder."
He waved me off. "Fuck you."
"No, I'd rather fuck you," I answered, trying to make a joke of it. That only made it worse.
He moved into the kitchen. I heard cupboard doors slamming. I winced. "Stupid," I muttered. I knew better than to question his motives. He never offered unless he really wanted it. It wasn't that he wasn't willingly affectionate; he was just more comfortable waiting for me to initiate physical contact.
I put my coat away and stalled for a moment or two in the foyer before going into the kitchen. He was sitting at the breakfast table, still in his overcoat, still in his scowl, drinking a glass of water. The expression on his face was one of anger and disappointment. "Oh, baby." I reached for him.
"Don't." He raised a hand to deflect my caress. "Don't call me that. I hate that."
I looked down at my hand, hanging between us. "But I've always called you that."
"And I've always hated it." He gulped water.
"Fox."
He looked up at me, murderously.
"Mulder," I conceded. The look remained. "Mister Mulder. Doctor Mulder," my voiced raised in irritation, "Agent Mulder. Pick one." When he didn't respond, I looked down at him, scowling. "You know, when you act like this, childishly, I am always tempted to turn you over my knee and give you the spanking you're just aching for."
He didn't rise to the bait. He emptied his glass and looked down into the emptiness. "I've never used sex to bribe you," he said flatly, "or to express my gratitude."
"No." I sighed heavily.
"Then why did you-"
I finally let the hand flutter away and fall to the chair opposite him. "You called it. I'm an asshole, sometimes." I started to draw out the chair.
I was startled when his foot locked around the leg of the chair, effectively preventing me from pulling it out far enough to sit. "No. No analysis. No discussion. No...communication," he sneered the word around the glass. "Not tonight."
"Mulder, all I meant was-"
"I know what you meant." He glared into the glass. "Go to bed." When I didn't respond immediately, he jerked his head toward the door. "Go on."
I hovered for a moment. "Is there nothing I can-"
"No," he said flatly.
When I came downstairs the next morning, he was already gone.
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It was the first time I'd seen him in three days. I knew he'd gone to lick his wounds, real and imaginary, at Agent Scully's, but I hadn't gone to see him there or in his office. We couldn't say the things we needed to say to one another in either place. Consequently, I'd been avoiding him. But now...
Oh, I suppose I could have sent the forensic results down with a messenger, but it was as good an excuse as any to initiate contact, it would make me look like a hero for having kept my promise despite his childish behavior, although I doubted the results would make me look very heroic in his eyes. "These were just preliminary results," I began, although we both knew it was not going to make him feel any better or give him hope of proving his point.
"Bastard!" Mulder flung the file away and papers fluttered gently to the floor, mitigating the violence of his outburst. He looked at me and his eyes were filled with an almost dangerous fire. I've only seen that fire in his eyes once or twice. "He's not going to get away with this." He flung a hand out, toward the report. "Now we have a body. Now we can charge him with murder."
"Based on what evidence?" I argued, unaware I had positioned myself to keep him from flying out of the office on his own personal vendetta. "Mulder, no judge in the world is going to issue a warrant based on forensic psychology and an old Agatha Christie novel. You have to have some immutable evidence. Something concrete, something-"
"I want Scully to autopsy him."
"You can't," I told him regretfully. "They are already demanding the body. They want to cremate him."
"They want to destroy evidence, you mean."
"Mulder..."
He pointed a finger at me. "Question? How many of their family members have been cremated? How many have been buried? I bet, if you look, you'll find out Noah will be the first. Why? To destroy evidence that his father killed him."
"Mulder, you're starting to lose your objectivity."
Scully, who had been sitting quietly through the entire conversation, not even flinching when he threw the file, not uttering the tiniest demurrer when he demanded she perform yet another autopsy for him, finally let out a sound, a small, wry laugh. "I think we're way beyond that, Sir." She knelt and began to gather paperwork. "But he does raise a relevant point about cremation."
I sighed. That same heavy sigh he always pulled out of me. "Okay." I knelt to help her collect the pages of the report. "I'll make a call. I make no promises."
As it happened, I didn't have quite the fight I expected to find a judge who would issue a hold on the body. The media attention stirred up by outraged internet journalists and the electronic vox populi was higher than comfortable for most judges on the bench in Los Angeles. Already, the seemingly untarnishable Richard Galloway was being tried and convicted in the court of pixel opinion. Our own good doctor was expected to provide proof and would be afforded every courtesy.
Mulder wasn't as welcome, however. There was a lot of pressure on our end to keep him where he could keep his opinions to himself until the investigation was complete. He had stepped on too many toes in the LAPD to be turned loose on that dance floor again. So he remained in DC, glowering and champing and reviewing evidence.
I made one half hearted attempt to distract him, by inviting him out for lunch late on the afternoon Scully was to perform the autopsy. He didn't even pretend to eat. He just sat hunched in his chair, grinding his teeth and burning holes in the tabletop with his stare.
"Mulder." He didn't look up. "Mulder, why is this one bothering you so much? Why has this guy gotten under your skin so deep you won't even consider other options?"
He didn't answer right away, but when he did speak, there was such reined in feeling in his voice I began to fear he was going to blow apart all over the restaurant. "Because this man not only killed his own son, which is..." he choked, and had to force the word out, "egregious beyond the pale, he took away five other men's sons just to get away with it." His fist had tightened and was trembling on the tabletop.
I leaned forward and put my hand over his. "You're sure it's him." It wasn't a question.
"I know it." It wasn't an answer.
"Then we'll find a way to nail the bastard."
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Scully sounded tired, and the connection wasn't good, but there was still no misunderstanding what she said. "He was alive in captivity longer than the others. He sustained more bruises and broken bones. There was no indication of any sedative in his body, so, unlike the others he was not drugged during the torture. And," she paused in such a way as if to say 'listen to this, Mulder', "the sexual mutilation was not post mortem in this case."
"You see?" Mulder said, bouncing up from his chair. "I told you. It was personal."
I held up a hand for one moment of quiet. "I'm sorry, Agent Scully, could you repeat that? Are you saying the others were mutilated after death, but not Noah Galloway?"
"Well, of the five bodies we've recovered, four were castrated post mortem, but Noah Galloway was still alive." There was a shrug in her voice. "Obviously, I can't speak to the sixth victim, but my guess would be he was mutilated after death, as well."
"What did I tell you?" He pounded my desk with his hand. "What did I tell you?"
I pressed my hand over his, to still him...or to try. "Thank you, Agent Scully. I'll review your report when you get back into DC. Goodnight." I pushed a button to end the call and looked at Mulder. "I'm more convinced." I watched Mulder almost skip around my desk to his chair. "What next?"
He dropped into his chair, and tugged at his lower lip distractedly. "Well, if I was writing a wish list, the first item would be I wish we could find and interview his brother, Jonah." He stopped tugging to point into a place in space that represented Jonah's whereabouts. "That kid knows something. Otherwise he wouldn't have been shipped off before the cops arrived."
I looked where he was pointing. "Anyone know where he is?"
"Inside the belly of a whale, for all we know," Mulder muttered.
I didn't have to think about it this time. I didn't have to take it under advisement. All I had to do was reach for my phone. "I'll get someone on it."
He looked up at me, and the fire that I had feared and been avoiding was softer now. Warm. Yes, there was triumph, there was gratitude, there was even a tinge of affection. But there was also respect. Something I didn't get to see too often there. And seeing all of that made me feel warm. And heroic. I was suddenly Superman, because I could pick up a phone and make things happen.
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In the end it was a drop of blood the size of a pin head found on the lever which adjusted the driver's seat of a hired car in El Monte, California that did him in. Finding Jonah, which was easier than we expected, got a different alibi for Richard Galloway than the one he'd put forth to the police. Jonah knew his father couldn't have had anything to do with his brother's disappearance because he was having his Jaguar serviced in West Covina. He knew this was true because he'd seen the receipt for the rental car in his father's papers the next day.
At first he denied it, and then, like all sociopaths tried to divert attention to others, and finally tried to work it to his benefit, tried to make himself the sympathetic character, the true victim. Mulder wanted to do a closing interview with him, but that request was denied. The Bureau felt he was already getting too much press with several internet sites praising him for his tenacity, and lauding his refusal to back down under the pressure of celebrity and politics. Mulder just shrugged it off. He hadn't done it for fame and glory. He'd done it for six sons.
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It was good to have him home, at last. He was sprawled, shirtless, on the terrace, enjoying one of the first warm days of the year. And I was enjoying the sight of him. I brought a bottle of beer out to him. "How does it feel?" I asked, rolling the cold glass over his perspiration dappled back.
"Cold!" he protested, shifting away from me with a jerk.
"No." I pulled the bottle away and opened it with a twist of my wrist. "I meant being right?"
"Oh, that's not a new feeling." He took the bottle and settled back down. "What's new and different is having other people believe I was right." He took a long sip. "I kinda like it."
"It's not new, Mulder." I slid down slowly to sit beside him. "I've believed in you a long time."
"Not this time."
"You know...that's not entirely true." I reached over and slid an arm across his bare shoulder. "If I hadn't believed you, the conversations would have stopped long before, and you wouldn't have gotten the forensic team, or Scully, or Jonah Galloway." I stroked the nape of his neck. "It's hard to explain, it's hard to appreciate, but I have to exercise due diligence as well, you know. Just because I know you and your skills doesn't mean I can just turn you loose like a mad Rottweiler whenever you tug on the lead."
"Stop," he said, affecting a breathy voice as he tipped his head back. "You're getting me all excited."
"Mulder, we knew a long time ago this was going to be hard. We knew there were going to be conflicts, disagreement, outright battles. We knew there would be days when we would think we couldn't stand the other person. We knew me being your boss and you being my loose cannon were going to make our days and some of our nights unbearable. But we both thought we were strong enough to face it, so long as we faced it together, because under all the differences and conflicts and problems, we love each other, and that would be enough." My fingers slipped up to tangle in his hair, damp from sweat, and just starting to curl up. "We were wrong?"
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "No."
"No more running away from me, please? I know I'm an idiot, but I'm a really lucky idiot when you're here."
His eyes stayed closed, but he whispered, almost on a sigh, "No more running away."
He looked so tired at that moment. Almost defeated by his own victory. "This one was hard on you, wasn't it?"
He didn't open his eyes, but his mouth tightened a little. "None of them are ever easy."
"But a father castrating his own son for not living up to his-" I stopped because his mouth was so tight it was starting to quiver. "Sorry," I said guiltily, stilling my caress, pulling my hand away. "I guess I went too far."
He reached out blindly and caught my hand and held it to his face. "You're a good man, Walter Skinner. People think it's easy to do things by the book. But that's not true. Sometimes…sometimes my way is easier. To go by my gut, and to know I'm right and to push and to bully and scream 'til someone else knows I'm right." He opened his eyes and looked up toward me. "It takes strength, strength of character, personal strength to hold out and do things the right way. So...I guess you can be an idiot sometimes, as well."
I pulled his hand to my face. Kissed the back of it, loving the warmth of his skin on my lips. "Thank you, ba-Mulder."
I felt him chuckle. I kissed his hand again. "Thank you."