by Anna
The air was thick with jak smoke and fire-whiskey fumes and several dozen
types of sweat or chemical effusions, each of which added another miasmic
layer to the sweltering grey haze that hung over the place. Alex inhaled
carefully, gauging a host of subtleties. Memory flexed inside its ossuary,
yawned.
The nervous Andorian maitre d' watched his customer closely, not daring to
offer a table until he was sure he wouldn't be killed for his impertinence.
Give him a party of drunken Klingons any day, or even humans. This—this
obviously wasn't human, and whatever it was made the Andorian very nervous.
The lithe body was as still as a burning taper when unstirred by wind, but
hard and unmalleable. Sleek dark hair was painted with green light from the
security bars; the pale skin had the even, bloodless pallor of an android,
and the face on which that skin was smoothly stretched held not much beyond
an android's nominal expression.
The man turned his head and gazed coldly at the maitre d'. "Table," he
said, his voice low and unexpectedly husky, as if a raven's wing stirred in
his throat. In his eyes, black holes eclipsed enigmatic circuitries of
iris; the impersonal menace of the vision mesmerized the Andorian until the
man raised his pale hand and snapped his fingers. In the shielded
semi-quiet of the entryway, the sound carried a whip's crack. The maitre d'
jumped, gave a helpless squeak like a hiccup, and nodded, managing finally
to break his gaze. He looked beyond the man, to realize for the first time
that his customer had a companion.
"Table for two?" the Andorian said in a sibilant quiver. At the other's
answering nod, he led the way in.
"A hell of a place," Alex said in toneless satisfaction.
"It does remind me of home," agreed his captain.
Alex heard with approval the note of ease and humor in his companion's deep
voice. About time the man surfaced from the gloom that had claimed him for
these past several months. He'd been damned poor company since their
mission to Siodohm last month. Alex suspected himself of being too
impatient with other people's processing and recovery times, but he'd still
found it hard to put up with Skinner's grim funk. He supposed it was some
kind of regret. Alex couldn't tell for sure; couldn't read Skinner in that
area. He personally never felt regret, or for that matter, guilt,
compassion, or empathy. He viewed all of these feelings as various strains
of a virus he'd been lucky never to acquire. Alex thought it was
particularly pointless to regret the killings on Siodohm. Some of them had
really been rather fun.
But now Skinner's tones held a timber of old—a quiet control and warmth
that suggested spring thaw. This probably had something to do with the fact
that they were taking shoreleave at long last, even if it were only on
Dyll, the cesspit of sector seven.
Skinner kept his eyes open as they moved through the crowded room, but the
rowdy babble, with its undercurrent of anticipated violence, was expected.
The communal bloodlust stirred him; the tension and anger of the past month
were already being diffused in the mix. His collection of ghosts, cold and
ugly, would be exorcised tonight, he hoped. Ritual battle, some good
sport—these would do the trick. Skinner didn't mind killing, even enjoyed
it now and then, if not quite in the way Alex did. But recent events had
wearied and sickened him. He needed a recharge.
They settled in at their table and Skinner eyed his surroundings,
cataloguing the other patrons and their weaponry. At some battle clubs an
attempt was made to present "scientifically" arranged bouts between
fighters, in which the abilities and strengths of racially diverse
opponents were balanced with carefully chosen weapons and exoticized pit
conditions. From the look of things they were not in one of those gaudy
tourist gladiatoriums. No surprise there. Alex had definite preferences.
Some of those preferences Skinner didn't want to know about. Their
relationship was founded on bone-deep loyalty and understandings of
silence. They respected each other's privacy; even the intimacy of their
living arrangement had not eroded their mutual isolation. They fucked in
Skinner's cabin, in his bed, but rarely slept together. Alex had squirreled
out a nest down on the lower deck, by the buffered systems room, whose
vibrating frequencies seemed to keep him soothed. Solitude, sonic music,
computer solitaire—whatever kept Alex sane—well, as sane as he could
be—was by definition a good thing. Alex handled boredom pretty well, but
long periods without any kind of socializing influence led him down paths
that no creature should travel. For a year they'd taken on a partner in
their endeavors, but then a ship malfunction left them adrift and awaiting
rescue. By the time help arrived the man, Spender, had been just a
collection of entrails and broken bones, the culmination of Alex's
psychological and then anatomical experiments. Skinner had learned from
this episode to monitor Alex more closely—and to install a cryogenic bed.
Putting Alex down for a nap seemed the easiest way to forestall his
homicidal impulses if it came to that.
"What kind of fighting you say they do here?" Skinner keyed in a drink
order as he spoke.
"Slaves, captives, criminals," Alex said in his quiet, smoke-tarnished
voice. His gaze was drifting around the club's interior. "Different types
of combat. You're supposed to get your freedom if you survive through
twenty-one fights." He paused. "Doesn't happen often."
Sweet Christos, that was probably an understatement, Skinner thought dryly.
He shook his head once, almost sighed. He should have known; the place
wouldn't have been called Bloodpit without good reason. Raw fare. Captives
fighting for their lives and freedom, desperate, bloody, vicious, with only
the crudest balances set. No wonder Krycek had wanted to revisit his old
haunt. Skinner could already see the half-blooded erection outlined against
the other man's leather trousers.
The waiter arrived with their drinks and Skinner took a sip, rolled the ale
on his tongue, and relaxed a notch. He set his glass down, then began
turning it meditatively as he scanned the room. Alex made a few comments on
the upcoming fights, entered a bet in the computer.
"You making a bet?" Alex asked.
Skinner glanced at him. The other man lounged in his chair. He wore a
fitted combat suit whose black synthetic leathers stretched and molded to
his long slim form, and overtop the skin-tight jacket had donned a loose,
knitted sweater the color of gunmetal. He was a beautiful man, with an
ageless, fine-boned face, and eyes like seawater. But in the drawn skein of
his brows there was a small, perpetual frown, a knot that couldn't be
undone, and from this the fabric of his features had been subtly pulled
askew. Skinner reasonably trusted him—this man whose life he'd saved so
long ago, who'd pledged to serve him; unreasonably, he also loved him with
a fierce, unquestionable passion, the way a man loves a dangerous animal he
has half-tamed and branded.
"You know I don't bet," Skinner said.
Alex tilted his head, accenting the blunted angles of his face, so that he
seemed to be presenting a many-sided die that always came up snake eyes.
"Someday you will," he said, sounding almost too certain.
Skinner grunted and made a show of turning his own study to the computer
roster, ignoring Alex, and ignoring the speculative looks he was receiving
from a table of giggling night ladies. A largely muscled man, Skinner
carried an air of discipline about him, a soldier's self-possession. He
didn't try to hide his training, didn't need to. There were a variety of
forces in operation along the border, and nothing in particular stamped him
for Federation military. He rarely worried about being discovered. His
documentation had gone through several gens of creation and change, and
Lieutenant Sergei Andropovich was a dead man in the eyes of the law, while
Walter Skinner, a man with different fingerprints, retinal patterns, and
expensively redecorated DNA (he'd kept the face, stubborn and willing to
take the vanishingly small chance of meeting someone who knew him), was
just another licensed pilot with an innocuous groundside history on a small
colonial planet, and the luck to inherit a junker whose hyperdrive had been
rendered newly salvageable by technological developments.
This new man, Walter Skinner, liked his life. Most days were good. Now and
then memories struck with jagged depth, bringing flashes of pain and shame
for all that he'd lost. He'd had so much, it was hard not to compare then
to now. A man who has once reached the promise of Starfleet only to lose
it... well, life after the fall can be a hard one. Skinner's new patron
saint was Lucifer, and if nothing else he could at least say that the
light-bringer had yet to fail him.
Skinner, having found nothing of interest in the fight roster, tipped the
screen down and sat back, taking another pull of ale. Like his companion he
wore dark roughwear, deceptively plain leathers with certain enhancements
that repelled blade and stunner alike. His long, hard body was cast back
casually in its chair, corded muscles straining the flexmail leathers; his
rough face held an untouchable calm. Despite his pose, he remained ever
watchful.
He frowned, catching a word, something Alex had said. "What did you say?"
Alex blinked. "Vulcan." He reached out a slim, metal-tipped finger and
tapped the table screen. "The extraordinary savagery of a Vulcan roused,"
he quoted, reading from the glowing text, "an ancient bloodlust finally
given rein—" He broke off, snorted skeptically. "It says he's been
racially verified, but I wouldn't bet my knife on it. Everyone passes off
Rom for Vulc in this business."
Skinner made a small noncommital sound, then said, "You ever meet a Vulcan,
Alex?"
Alex perked up, alert and curious. "No. Have you?"
"Once. He was... a good man." He looked over at Alex's face, which was
alive, eyes gleaming. Alex was fascinated by other races, rarely in a
comfortably acceptable way. He was always pestering Skinner to let him keep
a pet on board the ship. By "pet" he meant whatever passing, unguarded
specimen caught his eye—some hulking brute in a bar, a crying child, a
particularly attractive night lady. He wanted things to play with;
preferably sentient things that would put up an interesting struggle.
"I'd like to mind-meld with a Vulcan," Alex said, looking intense, the way
he did when fired up by a favorite theory or plan.
Sure you would, Alex. Skinner almost smiled. "I don't think that would be
too much fun. You may as well interface with a computer."
Alex frowned. "I'd like to do that too," he said seriously.
Skinner raised a brow. Interface software was available on the market that
could give them both access to the Rose of Sharon's computer. But the
prospect of a sociopathic personality tapping into the operational system
of a hyperdriven spacecraft was the stuff of nightmares. "Maybe someday,"
he said vaguely to Alex.
Alex shrugged, but gave him also a sharp, knowing look which told Skinner
that he was aware of the evasion, and probably the reason behind it.
Skinner wondered if he would start to sulk now. Well, the fights should
distract him.
The room had been darkening gradually during their talk, leaving the bright
white circle of the pit in sharp relief in the middle of the room. The
announcer, in a small box on one side of the gallery, began a spiel in
Orion that the table boxes translated to a language of choice. Skinner and
Alex looked up with everyone else in the arena to watch the captives being
lowered from the ceiling on his chain. Skinner tried to pierce the haze
with his sharp eyes, wondering idly if he could tell Vulcan from Romulan by
sight. For several long seconds, as the captives passed into the pit, they
were level with the gallery, and Skinner was close enough to stare into the
tortured eyes of the nearest man, whose own eyes were probably rendered
sightless to anything in the darkness beyond by the glare of the lights.
"Pitting human against Romulan—or even a Vulcan—isn't much of a
match-up," Alex observed in an irritable tone. He squinted across the pit.
"Even if the Rom does only have one arm."
Skinner wasn't listening. The sight of the nearer man had arrested his
gaze. The man bore cruel stripes across his ivory flesh, the work of some
determined torturer, a palimpsest of old wounds and new. But more
disturbing than those dark furrows was the wild panic visible on his face,
probably the result of a cocktail of preparatory drugs, often used to
transform reluctant or weary combatants into demons who would give the
crowd a good show. Despite his abused condition, the man was stunningly
attractive, a lanky-limbed angel with pale, fine skin and the kind of lips
Skinner would have paid a hundred credits an hour to make use of.
"I know that man," Skinner said. The words left him before he knew they
were spoken. His gut clenched with dismay.
Alex peered at the human, who was fast being lowered out of sight. "Really?
Is he much of a fighter? I still have time to change my bet."
Skinner's head jerked around, his face flaring with useless anger. He bit
back the lashing response he would have made. There was no point; Alex was
impervious to moral rebukes; and any rebuke Skinner might give would only
be hollow. He wasn't angry at Alex, or even at what had been done to the
man in the pit. The sight of Fox Mulder, a man he'd known as a kind and
peaceful member of Starfleet's finest—the spectacle of such a man reduced
to animal savagery made Skinner's skin crawl, but it didn't anger him. What
angered him was that he must now do something about it, because otherwise
that face would haunt him. By all rights it shouldn't, but in the long
stretches of space he had too much time to reflect. In space, bones of
contention were articulated into full-bodied feuds, and trivial slights
metastatized until they ate away at the soul. And for Skinner, the palling
inaction of space travel led him to dwell on everything left undone:
opportunities missed, passivity indulged. The sport of the evening was
soured now; the carnage on Siodohm would have to be answered for in other
ways.
Even as Skinner's shock passed off and his mind began working again, Mulder
was being prepped for battle. The announcer continued his spiel. The
revolving clock above the pit counted down the time left before the fight
began, the remaining period for bets to be placed.
"Isn't this an open challenge club?" he asked Alex.
Alex turned his head, eyes narrowing to warily regard his captain's set
face. When he spoke, his voice had taken on a note of protective sharpness.
"You don't know what they drug these gutter rats with, Walter, and you
don't know what kind of diseases they might have. They won't let you wear
armor, you know."
"I know." Skinner's jaw set.
Alex stared at his friend silently. He didn't ask what Skinner's intentions
were in fighting, didn't really care. Maybe Skinner wanted to kill the man
he'd once known, maybe he wanted to defeat and claim him as a prize.
Whatever his interest, he would be putting himself at risk for no good
reason, and as the older man's self-appointed shield, Alex didn't like it.
But he didn't consider it his place to object, either. He obeyed Skinner
not because of any legal enforcement, but because to Walter Skinner he'd
made the single binding pledge of his existence, the one obligation of his
cultural upbringing that he'd never questioned: when a man saves your life,
you are his until he releases you. Or, of course, unless and until you
catch the ill luck of having your life saved again by someone else. Alex
was quite glad that hadn't happened yet.
"You'd better challenge soon," he observed coolly. "You only have thirty
seconds left."
Their eyes met for a moment, and suddenly then exchanged brief, familiar
smiles. Shoreleave. They always did have a hell of a good time.
Skinner stood, knocking back his chair, raising his full height like a
battle tower, and roared out his challenge in the traditional klingonaase
manner common to all border-zone battle clubs. Alex, to ensure that Skinner
beat the clock, discreetly pushed the table button that would register his
play. Applause and howls of approval rang out through the crowd.
The Orion announcer held up his hand for a silence that was several minutes
in coming. "Challenge has been declared," he finally managed to cry over
the furor, a redundant statement that set off another round of cacophonic
alien cheers.
Skinner, stalking to the edge of the pit after having accepted his due
acclaim, could only hear a few snatches of the Orion's accompanying
bombast. "...our privilege... all the fury and majesty of grand high
combat... mighty warrior... battle of the century..."
Get on with it, Skinner thought in exasperation. He stood impatiently at
the edge of the pit, chose his foe, and waited as Mulder's reprieved
opponent was drawn back up on his chains to await another bout with death.
He himself would be allowed to enter the pit down a temporary set of steps
that thrust out from the sheer rounded wall. He watched another Orion,
ill-dressed in a sequined Terran tux, approach. The Orion helped him strip
off his jacket and boots, scanned his trousers for weapons, his body for
wetware, then unlocked and opened the pit gate.
To the ovation—hoots, warbles, whistles, banshee wails, and all other
manner of applause—of the bloody-minded crowd, Skinner descended into the
pit. He barely heard the background roar now; his own focus was centered on
Mulder, whose tense whipcord body and dangerously blank eyes held a rising
threat.
Skinner stepped warily from the steps, which slid back into the wall behind
him. Across the circle of the pit, Mulder drew back slightly. Skinner
approached with care. Did any memory of him stir in the other man's
drug-laden mind? It was hard to tell, but seemed unlikely. The other man's
breath came raggedly, and the bunching movement of his muscles signaled his
attack to Skinner before he launched.
Skinner easily blocked Mulder's first, wild blow. The other man jumped back
and skittered off. Skinner followed, trying to gauge the best and safest
way to take the other man down. But no fancy footwork was necessary.
Whatever drugs they'd pumped into Mulder's system didn't seem to have lent
much juice to his fighting skills. He'd always been more of an academic,
anyway; now, erratic and desperate, he would have been fodder for any other
opponent. It was ridiculously easy for Skinner to trip him up. On the
ground, Mulder did the next part of the job himself, rolling over onto his
stomach in order to snake away, rather than staying wisely on his back.
Skinner pounced, locked him in a choke hold, and outwaited Mulder's
frenzied struggles until the other man sank into unconsciousness. Skinner's
only passing thought on this abbreviated excuse for a fight was how
disappointed Alex would be that no blood had been drawn.
For Mulder, lost in the haze of his suffering, Skinner's attack seemed to
guarantee the certainty of death and as blackness dropped he felt all fight
drain out of him. He almost relaxed into the arm that was crooked around
his throat, cutting off his breath. He could hear cries of savage glee far
above the pit, could feel the strong embrace of his captor, and it all
seemed right, as he slipped away from the triumphant sounds and the
terrible circle of light and the long pain, and as he did he felt only
relief and a curious gratitude... and then dark nothingness.
"What—you're going to keep him?" Alex asked in surprise. He stared at the
slung length of Mulder's body, trying to figure out this puzzling new turn
of events.
Skinner rubbed a hand across the bridge of his nose. He'd claimed his
prize, had it sedated, and before even leaving the club had made some
fast-and-dirty arrangements to transport his new property off Dyll,
bypassing the lengthy bureaucratic redtape that was necessary even for
slave export. He'd just met up with Alex again by plan, having sent the
other man off to arrange their uplift shipment of biostock and other
supplies. Alex obviously had not expected to see Skinner with his winnings
still in tow.
"What else am I going to do with him?"
Alex raised a brow. "I thought you might sell him. Get some extra money."
"I'm not selling him. Local market on this rockdrop is mostly for organ
harvesting. Besides, you said you wanted a pet." Though his face stayed
undemonstrative, Skinner hauled Alex close with a hand on the back of his
neck, pressed an unaccustomed kiss to his forehead that smacked of irony
but in truth expressed his reserved affection. "Happy birthday."
Alex gasped softly, stunned and not hiding the avaricious, appreciative
light in his eyes. "But it's not my birthday."
"How do you know?" Skinner smiled wryly, stroked back a wing of Alex's dark
hair.
An arrowing tongue stroked across lips, wetting them. "You aren't joking?"
So hopeful, so hungry.
"There are some rules."
The light in Alex's eyes sparked, hinting of an electrical storm in the
darkly hidden brain beyond. "Why do you always have to have rules?"
"Don't worry about why, just accept them," Skinner said tersely. "You don't
have any idea how many rules I've tossed out the airlock since... ." He
stopped.
"Since meeting me?" Alex asked gently in his rough-husked voice.
Skinner forced out a small smile. "No, actually. Long before that." He
rubbed the back of Alex's neck again, looked at Mulder. "I was Federation
born and raised. You know how they strongly feel about slavery—most of the
inner Terran powers, at least, and they've established policy."
"Thriiaechk," Alex said with distaste, using the collective klingonaase
term for a certain type of two-headed rodent.
Once, long ago, Lieutenant Sergei Andropovich would have taken this
personally, and correctly, as an anti-Federation insult. Now he tended to
agree. Federation indoctrination had never taken as deeply as it should
have in him, anyway. His homeworld, New Russia, had been close to the
Romulan border, and had been a cultural melange of odd, alien influences.
His family had been an of the old lines, and had always held a respectable
number of serfs. Now the world, his family, nearly the entire population,
was gone, sacrificed to an alien race that the Federation had first fought
and then treated with, sacrificed to expediency. Within three short years
of New Russia's apocalypse, the Federation government had established a
treaty with the Withliki, whose forces had destroyed one of the
Federation's member worlds. Certain key field members of Starfleet had been
instrumental in building the peace treaty, had played advocate for the
Withliki, asking that allowances be made for cultural difference, for
biological imperatives.
There were times when memory cut like a scythe.
Skinner tapped his fingers on the antigrav unit. "I haven't seen another
member—ex-member—of Starfleet in years." The level in his voice was low,
the currents dark.
"I thought you hated them." Alex pressed close and fast, leaning his flat
body into Skinner's like a cobra; he stared into the older man's face as he
tried to read it, his own sharp features neutral and studious even when
presented with deep emotion.
"I never said I hated them. I don't... hate them." Skinner's mouth
tightened as he struggled with long-buried conflicts of feeling. "I despise
some, I admire others. But they're all culpable."
"You despise him?" Alex nudged the antigrav stretcher with his hip.
"I liked him. I served with him for a while. But I don't owe him anything.
. .not now. I'm paid up in full for a long time to come. And more. They owe
me. And he's one of them." Skinner's face was a gelid mask, his eyes stone,
as he recited the terms of the very basic equation he'd worked out. "He'll
make a good valet, I think. We've got a seven-week voyage to Taurus.
Training him should be diverting. And you can do as you please with him, up
to a point." He pushed the stretcher toward a lift. Alex followed, face
creased by a tiny frown, absorbed by a new question.
"What's a valet?" he asked.
The lift deposited them at shuttle dock and Skinner pushed the unit out.
Mulder's right arm rolled slackly off the side. "Could you grab his arm,
Alex?"
Alex picked up Mulder's arm, examined it, then dropped it on top of the
unconscious man's chest. Alex's eyes were speculative. "Is he hurt?"
"Not too bad. I've got him sedated for now."
The off-schedule flight to the ship was no more than an hour. Most of the
way, Alex idly mused on the things he might like to do to Mulder, while
Skinner methodically negated the more lurid scenarios and laid out his
rules for the care and treatment of human pets. Eventually, Alex fell
silent, obviously brooding on the parameters of handling his new toy,
contemplating collar designs perhaps, or trying to remember where he'd
stored his stim whip.
Am I making a mistake? Skinner wondered, looking out the shuttle window
at the dwindling surface of Dyll.
He couldn't tell himself the answer.
Skinner gave a muted sigh as he shut down the medichamber. The field
snapped off almost in the same moment that Mulder opened his eyes. They
were olive-colored, with tints of umber, a bit like Alex's eyes, but there
was too much grey in the green. After a second or two of bemused blinking,
the eyes closed again and Mulder slept, giving in to the undertow of long-
standing exhaustion. He probably would not even remember having woken so
briefly.
For a minute, Skinner debated leaving the man in the tiny automated
sickbay, asleep on the table, but he wanted to be around when his
acquisition woke to consciousness. With care, Skinner lifted the man and
carried him to his own cabin. Earlier, Alex had been lurking in the
corridor outside sickbay, but he must have grown bored, for there was no
sign of him now. They weren't scheduled to leave orbit for another two
days; port authority kept track of arrivals and departures and didn't like
to make changes, often demanding a credit transfer for an altered departure
time. For now, Skinner could relax and finish out leave on board.
Having reached his cabin, he dropped Mulder onto the small bed, then folded
his arms and regarded him. Mulder shifted in his sleep, his drawn and tired
face turning to display itself. The edge of his cheek and one ear were
brushed by the ruddy light of the nearest lumen panel. One delicately
whorled ear visible. Ivory skin, lush silk spilling off the skull.
Sculpture of bones, torqued gently by light muscles, shadowed in places
with fine ribbons of hair. He looked like a shorn leopard; even something
of the cheekbones and sloped nose brought the animal to mind.
But he was called Fox.
Skinner lifted a hand to the base of his own skull, rubbed at the tension
gathering there. He was tired, would like a massage. He thought about
finding Alex, submitting to his talented fingers, then let the urge drift
off. Instead, he stripped off his shirt and boots and stretched out on his
bed, nudging Mulder to the far edge. For a while Skinner lay on his side,
staring at the wall, feeling the heat of the man behind him. Then he gave
up and turned. He ran a hand through Mulder's hair, rubbed the ribboned
edge of an ear between his fingers, leaned down and tongued the rosy
cartilage. He sniffed around his hairline, jawline. It had been a while
since he'd had another person's scent here, in his private space—other
than Alex's.
It was a long time befor e he slept that night.
Fox Mulder woke gradually to a welcome clarity. He knew himself. Knew
himself by name. Reality seemed remarkably stable for the first time in a
long while. He lay still, exhausted, emptied of will to move, but taking in
his surroundings with clear eyes. Everything in the range of his senses was
cast in sharp relief. A synesthesia of silence and definite lines, of heat
and light and bodily presence, began slowly to be untangled into its
component parts.
Vision picked out the edges of shelves set into a wall. The wall was filled
with flame. A lumen panel of mutable orange hues—it took him a moment to
understand this was the wall itself. On its sublighted matte surface hung
two swords, an axe, and an arrayed collection of daggers and ancient
pistols. Beneath the chief display a claw-footed brazier had been
installed, and from its embers uncurled the scent of spices and musk. The
shelves to either side of the brazier were filled with... books. Real
books, archaic text, their spines limned by shadow, gilt letters outlined
in low gleams. Despite the nearly familiar aspect each element held, they
did not form a recognizable whole. Fox could not fathom where he was,
except... that somehow, despite appearances, he was on a ship.
In the room's quiet his ears picked up (yes) the faint vibrations of
engines, and something else... breathing. Not his own. That was when he
realized, rather belatedly, that he lay enclosed within someone's
protective grasp. The length of his—decidedly his—body was fitted to
his own, front to his own back, so that he could see nothing of his
companion but a heavily muscled arm that had slung itself around his waist.
His own arm, oddly, had twined itself into the intruder's as if by
instinct, and their fingers had laced together tightly.
Stranger than any of this was the comfort he took from his position. He
attempted to free himself and was unable to gather the will or energy to
move even a fraction of an inch. Muscles flexed, weakly, and relaxed again
immediately in the buttery warmth of total surrender.
Well, it had been an ill-considered idea anyway, since where he lay was to
all appearances safe, and extraordinarily warm. Battered and exhausted, it
was such an exquisite alteration of previous circumstance that it seemed
absurd not to take advantage of it.
Had he once been cold? Had he been alone? Or had that been only a nightmare
from which he had now wakened into the comfort of the real? It felt... quite... real.
Accepting this observation, Fox slid back under the dark surface of sleep.
He awoke, groaning in terror, to the return of a nightmare: weak and
helpless, he struggled against the foe who had crept up behind him. He felt
its arms lock around him and knew in a burst of panic that he had let his
guard down, it was too late—he had lost, he would fall—
Mulder lashed out with a surge of force that woke Skinner to full alertness
in a half second. Growling in annoyance at his rough awakening, he met the
attack, but immediately recognized that Mulder's abused body held no
strength. The other man writhed, trying to free himself from Skinner, but
already his breath came in ragged gasps and his flailing was diminishing to
uncertain trembling.
"Easy, now," Skinner grunted as he pinned Mulder to the bed and waited for
the man's panic— and his own racing heartbeat—to abate.
Fox stared up at him, still shivering, then wrenched away in confusion.
Skinner let him go. Fox sat up slowly, with effort and care, pushing
himself on trembling arms until he rested on the edge of the bed. His legs
lacked feeling and his stomach was stiff with hunger and the pain of old
cramps. His entire body seemed to bear an almost cellular ache of some long
ordeal that he could not quite remember. His head was heavy and empty both,
his ears ringing.
He began to stand and then revised his decision. The edge of the bed came
up to meet him.
"What do you think you're doing?" Skinner asked dryly. Sighing, he slid off
the bed to kneel at Mulder's feet. "You're too weak to go wandering." He
took one of Mulder's legs in his hands and began to knead its stiff
muscles. When his remarks were met only with silence, he looked up and
considered the pale face, the troubled eyes that stared openly into his
own. The younger man's eyes were like discs of cut agate, one moment
opaque, muddy, and cool, the next opening to discs of clear sun-fire in a
trick of light.
"Do you remember me?" Skinner asked, drawn despite his best intentions to
remain aloof.
Mulder cleared his throat. "I think... are you... Commander Andropovich.
. .been a while, sir." His voice skipped like a stone over flat water,
catching now and then on its own rough edges. Underneath the surface, a
surprised hint of humor flashed.
"New name, now," Skinner said, voice shorn flat of emphasis. "Skinner.
Walter Skinner."
Mulder nodded distractedly, placed an unsteady hand to his temple and
flinched. "I don't know—god, did I try to kill you?" He sounded alarmed,
dazed.
Skinner hesitated, eyes narrowing. "You were drugged," he said flatly.
"Something to induce violence."
Fox lifted his hands and stared at them, an expression of muted anguish
skating across the surface of his face. Within moments he began to tremble,
as the memory of his recent past flooded back over him like a nightmare
tide. Hands falling slackly to his thighs, he stared across the small cabin
to the wall of knives and swords that glowed dull gold and copper in the
light, as if he were seeing into the very blades. They nearly sang with
their sharp and dedicated utility.
Skinner caught his look. "Don't even think about it," he said, his voice
charged with grim warning.
Fox's bleak eyes shifted to Skinner's. He could read the hard determination
in the older man's gaze, but wasn't sure how to attribute it. It might have
been simple moral refusal to let another man take his life, but Fox
couldn't say for sure yet what Skinner's interest was. Was it a vested
interest? The man had saved his life, after all.
He looked away from Skinner then shifted uncomfortably, realizing abruptly
and with a sense of tingling embarrassment that he was naked. No point in
being embarrassed under normal circumstances, but these weren't normal.
Skinner, at least, was half-dressed. Skinner. Fox blinked as his mind
cleared further and the oddity of the situation struck him. What was the
man doing here? Where was here?
"What is all this?" Fox asked, feeling uneasiness waken belatedly to pluck
at his nerves. He reached out one hand to stroke the furred bed-covering on
which he sat. "Last time I woke up like this I'd passed out in an Orion
brothel."
"No such luck."
Fox blinked several more times, easing grit from his lashes and still
looking slowly around the room. It was just a prefab deck-hutch, the kind
common to nearly every spacecraft other than a luxury yacht; just a
six-paneled box with the typical outfit of bunk, shelves, head,
servo-vents; every unit modular, every fitting utilitarian. But whoever
lived in this enclosure, Skinner presumably, had rendered it distinctively
personal. Fox wondered if Skinner's old Enterprise stateroom had held
this assortment of tapestries, lacquerware, weaponry, and ikons. A wooden
bedframe set in red leather, along with a vermilion canopy and gold-corded
silk valences, had been fitted around the plain bunk to transform it into a
raft of oriental dishabille, and slung across its expanse were several
layers of bedding more suitable to arctic climes: linen sheets, woolen
blankets, and a type of fur coverlet from some animal Fox couldn't
identify. Along the bottom half of the cabin's walls were inset shelves in
which polished boxes, carvings, bowls of beaten gold, jewel-embedded
crucifixes were chock-a-block stored. Above them shelves the walls glowed
ruddily, where they weren't hung with woven rugs and tiny gold-framed gesso
paintings of obvious antiquity. Three of the walls were densely elaborated
with such items; the weapons wall had a sparser, more lethal aspect. The
brazier glowed, smoke rising to disappear along the invisible airpath of an
intake vent.
"Yo ho ho and a bottle of Saurian brandy," Fox said along with a slow
exhalation of breath, rather surfeited with this display of private wealth.
He stared down to where his feet (toes twitching to life) rested on what
appeared to be an authentic Persian rug. At first glance it seemed to cover
the entire cabin floor, but then Fox realized from the feel of thickness
and depth that there were several rugs layered around the room, in a manner
similar to the bed's weight of cloth.
"It's probably not what you think," Skinner said expressionlessly.
"You haven't been carving out a niche for yourself in the expanding and
lucrative field of space piratry?" Fox nodded. "Well, that's good. The
editors of the Academy alumni newsletter would have been pretty
disappointed."
"I'd forgotten what a smart-ass you are, Mulder." Skinner shook his head
once.
The other man's face opened in mild surprise, then relaxed a notch. "Don't
call me 'Mulder'. Nobody calls me that if I have anything to say about it.
If I'd known that joining Starfleet would require me to lop off the only
half of my name I care for, I'd have thought twice about joining. You're
not even in the service any more. Old habits die hard, I guess."
Skinner chose not to address the direction of the other man's remarks.
"Fox, isn't it." His lips pulled into a dry, not exactly friendly smile. "I
can make do with that. You can still call me sir, though."
Fox's face changed slightly, setting into unreadable lines. "Where am I?"
he said after a moment, facile with curiosity, but edging toward a
dangerous sign of suspicion.
"My ship." Skinner stood, drawing Fox's gaze up with him. He pretended a
sudden recollection to the business of a host. "Are you hungry?"
Fox hesitated warily, then nodded, forced out a brief, "Yes."
"Food first—or shower?"
"I think I'd like to... get clean." Fox stood up, with more success this
time, and after getting his bearings followed Skinner to the head. Skinner
reached in and palmed a switch, then let him enter.
"Robe on the back of the door," Skinner said. He watched with sly amusement
as Fox blushed faintly.
Drawing the door shut behind him, Fox entered the sonic shower and stood
there with his eyes closed, bracing his weight on his arms. He had a
hundred questions, some vague, others specific, and needed to figure out
just how to ask them. Something about Andropovich—Skinner, he reminded
himself—was setting off warning bells, despite their old acquaintance. The
man was ex-Starfleet, but Fox had only the barest idea of the events
surrounding his resignation—or had it been resignation? He recalled
something about criminal charges, for unspecified subversive activities,
but the exact nature of the man's transgressions had remained shrouded in
judicial sacrament. For all he knew, Andropovich—Skinner—had skipped out,
might still be wanted by the authorities to this day. The name change
certainly suggested that. It was a sobering thought, for if true Skinner
would surely lack any incentive to return Fox to the Federation, or even to
one of its civilized outposts. He wouldn't dare get that close: Starfleet's
arms reached as far as they wanted to reach, and attracting the force's
notice would just about guarantee capture.
I'm probably going overboard here, Fox thought. He probably just retired
and went into business for himself. Then again, not even an officer could
hope to save enough money to buy his own ship. No one came by that kind of
money on a Starfleet salary. Don't worry about it, Fox thought. None of
your business, so don't ask too many questions and maybe if you're lucky
he'll drop you someplace along the way. Someplace with a subspace radio and
red-cross provisions for stranded travelers.
Fox opened his eyes and switched off the sonic. He should have been more
worried than he was, probably, but fatigue lingered and fuzzed the edges of
his mind. He left the bath and re-entered the cabin wrapped in Skinner's
robe.
When Skinner looked up to see his newly groomed guest (captive, pet) his
gut tightened. Seeing Fox enfolded in the dark heavy material of his own
robe gave a spurred kick-start to Skinner's dormant arousal. The soft
burgundy material was nearly the same color as his hair. He looked like a
foundling child, or a cat rescued from the ignominy of a midden, newly
groomed and engaged in the process of slowly renewing its natural dignity.
He gestured Fox to sit and eat the tray he'd laid out, then sat back to
watch. Fox ate without speaking, attention fixed upon his plate. Skinner
hadn't understood how deprived the other man had been until now. The
evidence of long-standing hunger was deep and painful to witness, and it
amazed Skinner that he'd been so coherent given his condition. A few times
Fox stopped and stared grimly at one spot on his plate as if finding the
will to eat more without being sick. Though he had little pity to spare,
Skinner's lips tightened once or twice in reluctant empathy.
At last Fox finished, raising his head to look at Skinner, blinking heavy
lashes upon shadow- smudged eyes.
"Wow. Think I was hungry." He slumped in his chair, looking stunned, tired.
He hadn't bothered to depiliate his face, and the fanned stubble across his
jaw gave him a rough and rakish aspect furthered by the tumbled mop of his
hair. There was something delicate about him, all the same; underneath his
resilient front was a shade of weary resignation, and the scent of deep
wounding.
Skinner wondered about the extent of his abuse, and how he'd come to his
present state. They were a good way out from Federation space. "So what
brought you to Dyll, Fox? Not the wisest place to take your shore leave."
Fox frowned and drew his hands into his lap, fingering the ends of the robe
tie. "It's been a while. I was overseeing a refit on—on one of the
scientific outposts." He was carefully vague. "They'd dropped me off. We
were raided." He shrugged, trying not to show the depth of his rage and
regret. "Shit happens in this universe."
"No kidding."
"There were only four of us—eighteen assigned to the outpost. I don't know
what happened to any of the others since—since they broke us up. Sold us.
Orions, of course, at first. But they didn't care much for me."
He sounded almost piqued as he related this, but Skinner found it perfectly
understandable. If the Orions had kept him, he'd have been well provided
for, probably installed as an exotic human toyboy in some ruaan's harem,
instead of ending up slated for certain death in a grotty battle pit.
"I guess I was too tall and too old for them. Bony. Not androgynous enough.
That's what they go for, isn't it?" Fox shifted in his chair, frowning
absently.
"More or less."
"They dumped me somewhere. I suppose it was the same place you found me. I
got shuffled around a bit—market traders—but I didn't seem to be a hot
commodity." Bland humor resurged for a moment.
Showed how little they knew, Skinner thought, eyeing the other man's
elegant features from an unobtrusive sidelong angle. Aloud, he said, "One
hell of a coincidence I came into the club when I did. If I hadn't—" He
broke off, tapped his fingers on the table, unable to finish the remark. It
hardly made sense to cast his actions as a 'rescue' to Fox's benefit. He
stared at his blunt fingernails and discovered that he couldn't look the
other man in the eye.
"Yeah," Fox said. "I don't know... how to thank you."
Skinner, increasingly discomforted, continued to gaze at the table in
downcast avoidance of Fox's eyes. The younger man had sounded awkwardly
grateful, and his roughened voice had nearly broken in the middle of his
last sentence.
"Don't thank me," Skinner said, measuring out his words in cold bullets. He
finally looked up, met the swirl of feeling in Fox's green-grey eyes.
"Sorry to disillusion you, but I don't do anything that's not to my own
personal benefit."
Fox swallowed, nodded. "Okay. What do you want?" Fox's kept his voice even,
his gaze steady.
It gave Skinner pause, that unemotional, unsurprised response after the
lapse of the previous minute. "What do you think?"
Unexpectedly, Fox flared up, as if this question had been the final straw,
a burning straw tossed into a dry pyre that now kindled and raged to flame.
"Don't fuck with me," he said with savage disgust. Both his hands slammed
out to the table edge and trembled there, white-knuckled. "Just tell me
what you want, or take what you want, but get on with it. I don't need your
games. I've had enough, I don't have any more patience for this, do you
understand?"
Skinner's brows rose carefully, but the curt rebuke he'd fashioned didn't
make it to his throat. He just nodded with watchful stillness, cataloguing
the signs of Fox's distress: the shaking hands, the tremor in lips and
chin, the high color in his cheeks.
"Were you raped?" he asked bluntly, letting attack serve as defense, unsure
what he'd feel if Fox had been, wanting to retreat into someplace where he
didn't really care what had happened to the other man.
"Son of a bitch," Fox said, sagging slightly and releasing a harsh breath.
"No. No, I wasn't. Sorry I'm not spoiled for you. You'll have to do the job
yourself." He glared with hot contempt at Skinner, lifted his chin an inch
or so with unconscious bravado.
Too bad you look so delicious when you're outraged, Skinner thought,
feeling a few more scraps of his conscience burn off as he basked in that
fiery gaze. Now that his worst fear had been allayed, he was almost amused
at the other man's show of temper.
"All right," he said, standing up from his seat and stretching, watching in
humor as Fox's eyes widened and his body curled defensively back into his
chair. "Come on, get up."
"You're going to rape me?" Fox said, disbelief and offended rebellion
troubling his eyes.
"Well, yes, but if you cooperate you'll probably enjoy it."
Fox opened his mouth, closed it, looked wildly around the cabin, brought
his sharp gaze back to Skinner with a snapping turn of his head, assumed a
mask of trapped calculation that clearly signaled his intention to do
battle to the death in defense of his honor, tensed once more, opened his
mouth again, closed it again, ran a hand through his hair so that it stood
up in manic disarray, and then threw himself back again in his chair,
collapsing in a boneless sprawl of utter exhaustion. "Oh what the hell," he
muttered, closing his heavy-lidded eyes. "It's been way too long since I
got laid. Though I have to tell you I'm probably going to fall asleep again
during the festivities."
"We'll try to—" Skinner broke off his reply as the door behind him slid
open. He glanced over his shoulder and watched Alex slip gracefully in.
"Oh, um," Fox said, lifting his head off the back of the chair and staring.
"I see. Nice little yacht party you've shanghaied me into."
"He's awake," Alex said, guilelessly pleased. He snaked over to Fox's side,
eased a hip onto the table and stared down at the prize. His brows drew
together studiously, and his mouth held a grave quietude of interest. "He's
prettier than I thought."
Fox stared at Alex, then at Skinner, then at Alex once again. Taking on the
air of a man who has decided that there is nothing quite appropriate to say
under the circumstances, he submitted to Alex's inspection with glum
resignation.
Alex reached out and tilted Fox's chin and turned his face here and there
as if to catch the light; when finished with this, he fingered a lock of
his hair, then casually leaned forward and undid his robe.
"Hey," Fox said in weak protest. His attempt to fend off Alex's hand earned
him a quick, hard slap to one side of his jaw and he gasped in reflexive
response and then went motionless in the chair.
Skinner frowned. "Is that how you plan to train him?"
"I'm not sure yet," Alex said absently, eyeing the length of Fox's exposed
body. "You said to keep it simple."
"Maybe a whip," Skinner suggested rather evilly. He'd relaxed considerably
with Alex's arrival. His companion's dark depths threw his own lesser
failings into positive relief. It was one of the benefits of their
relationship: being with Alex Krycek guaranteed Skinner the moral high
ground and made him look good.
"Oh, shit," Fox muttered, then swallowed as Alex pushed the robe off his
shoulders.
"Get up," Alex said, moving away from Fox's chair.
When Fox didn't comply quickly enough, Alex grabbed him by the hair and
drew him upright, ignoring Fox's yelp. The robe slid down Fox's back and
then dropped off completely to lie heaped at his feet in a crumple of
velvet. Keeping one hand on the back of Fox's neck, Alex held the other man
in place, bent over and off-balance. He reached out with his free hand and
traced the scars on Fox's back. "Someone's already been training him," he
observed. He shifted and cupped the other man's ass. "Have you had him
yet?" he asked Skinner.
Skinner moved off toward the bed. "No."
"I want to watch." Alex suddenly shoved Fox so that he stumbled clumsily
into the nearest bedpost. The cabin was small and its fittings close; Fox
grabbed the end of the bed to steady himself and then jumped aside when
Alex followed on his heels.
"Look, I," Fox began to say.
Alex cuffed him again, hard. Fox jerked away and backed around the bed. He
looked over his shoulder. "Are you just going to let him keep hitting me?"
he asked Skinner desperately.
"Probably."
Fox felt himself backed up against Skinner's hard body and bit his tongue
against complaint, busily keeping his gaze on the other, dark-haired man
whose green eyes seemed dangerously empty of expression. He felt Skinner's
hands come up to steady his hips, and then he realized that Skinner was
holding him in place for whatever Alex wanted to do. He tried to bolt, but
Skinner's hands bit down on his hipbones and held him tight, and when he
struggled he felt the big arms come around up under his shoulder blades and
lock behind his neck, effectively hindering the movement of his arms and
binding him to the sturdy post of Skinner's body. Fox was certain that Alex
would hit him again then, punch him perhaps in someplace undefended, but
the other man touched him instead, fingering his collarbone with startling
gentleness.
"Let's brand him now," Alex said.
"No!" Fox leapt in place, pushing back and up into Skinner's unmoving flesh
as he instinctively tried to evade Alex's touch.
"Not now," Skinner said. "You want him healthy, you need to give him some
time to recuperate."
Alex didn't look as the state of Fox's health would keep him up nights
worrying, but he nodded in acceptance. "I made a collar," he said, drawing
a circlet of thick metal links from his pocket. He looped it around Fox's
neck and fastened it; it fit snugly and locked with a final-sounding click.
The flat gold plates ran in double rows and alternated with square, plain
green gemstones for an attractive effect. Alex, at least, looked satisfied.
Fox groaned and tossed his head back in frustration, punching the curve of
his skull into Skinner's throat.
Skinner made a choking sound, and before he could gather his voice back he
felt the body he was holding begin to jerk against him. Skinner blinked his
eyes clear to see Alex silently, but with a veiled hint of anger, working
his way across Fox's helpless body. He was favoring a method of deep, hard
probes to carefully placed nerve clusters and moderate blows that would
cause no serious damage, but everything he did was obviously delivering
pain. On the other hand, in a perverse fashion, every transmitted impact
was giving Skinner a great deal of vicarious pleasure, as the twisting
spasms of Fox's body drove him back again and again, with corkscrews of
ineffective escape.
It was only when Fox began to moan and sway against him that Skinner halted
Alex's session of questionable discipline. He eased his grip down from his
captive's arms and set him down on the bed. "There won't be any bruises, I
hope."
"No," Alex said succinctly, climbing over Fox to take a curled-up seated
position on the bed. "No bruises." He reached out and touched a fingertip
to the soft frame of Fox's abdomen, earning a little moan from the outflung
body. "You told me to try and do things that wouldn't leave marks." He
sounded sulky, reminding Skinner of this.
"You told me I'd enjoy this," Mulder whispered almost to himself. Skinner
pushed him further onto the bed and sat down next to him.
"Well... we'll get to the fun part next." Skinner glanced at Alex with
stern silent warning, but then said uncompromisingly to Fox, "You're going
to have to try not to irritate Alex. He's going to be in charge of your
obedience training."
"Oh fuck." Fox came alert at this and looked imploringly up at Skinner. "I
think if I have a choice—"
"You don't," Skinner said firmly. "So don't act up."
"I think I must have been very naughty in a previous life," Fox said
through difficult, uneven breaths. He closed his eyes again, tried to get
in touch with his inner monk, someone who would lead him to a place of
great peace and calm, and... .
He opened his eyes and groaned when he saw Skinner removing his trousers.
"Relax," Skinner said, lips twitching as he caught Fox's wild expression.
"Just how long has it been since you've been laid, anyway?"
"Can't remember," Fox mumbled. He looked from Skinner to Alex. "Is he just
going to sit there and take notes?"
"Don't provoke him." Skinner leaned down. "Be a good boy, hmm?"
Fox reluctantly nodded, a bit clumsily given his position, which was flat
on his back on a heap of fur. Skinner's question reminded him that he'd
meant to play along and see whether he could get even a tiny jolly or two
out of the situation, and damn it, he deserved to get his rocks off. When a
man gets captured by slavers, beaten, drugged, put on a diet little better
than starvation rations, passed off from buyer to buyer like a two-headed
lorath that nobody can quite reconcile himself to owning, and finally
dumped into a foul-smelling pit to battle a one-armed alien to the
death—when a man is reduced to these straits and then suddenly finds
himself lying well-fed and clean on a furred bedspread, he might find it
hard to work up deep resentment for his new circumstances. Even Alex's
twisted attack had at least been... creative.
He felt Skinner's hand lift against his face, a finger trace itself along
the edge of his skull, that mere touch like a razor slicing him open to the
bone. He quivered, wondered for the first time in his life if maybe there
wasn't something to be said for violence as foreplay. His body was
exquisitely sensitized now, throbbing all over from Alex's cruel artistry.
When Skinner continued to touch him, every impression brushed itself across
nerves that felt laid bare for the first time. His senses felt turned up to
their highest levels, and Skinner's nearness became like a brand in itself,
stroking him a thousand ways across hypersensitive flesh. He swallowed,
stared up at the other man, half hypnotized.
He wasn't bad looking, after all, Fox noticed through hazing, loosening
feathers of vision. He was a knight of dense muscle, gleaming smooth skin,
rough edges. Crystals sewn into the underside of the bed's canopy refracted
gold light from the bedside cubes; the pattern danced across his flesh as
he moved. Dreamily, Fox decided he could grow accustomed to Walter
Skinner's face, the austere, rudely moulded features, the piratical nuances
of expression, the sparsely bared scalp and sensual mouth. He relaxed
further, forgetting about Alex as Skinner loomed close like a lowering
storm-front. Fox's skin prickled before it was even touched. The other man
was a wall of rising heat, ignited and dangerous. His gaze drifted to the
pulse beating in Skinner's throat, down the slick field of his skin and its
expanse of muscle. Across his chest, a light, barely visible field of
bronze hair caught the light, so that it seemed scribbled across his
breastplate like some faint, hieratic script.
Not really noticing his own initiative, Fox reached out and rested his
fingers there, indifferent to the soft intake of breath his touch provoked.
Muscles rippled everywhere in his field of vision, up along the other man's
sternum, into his neck and jaw. He slid his palm slowly across Skinner's
chest, intent on the wash of sensation and the blazing heat flowing from
his hand. His fingers felt as if they slid across burning sand.
Skinner's jaw clenched and he worked to master his cruder instincts, to
take immediately and with unnecessary force what was tentatively being
offered. His body strained within its carefully leashed need. Fox's ivory
skin glittered with moisture at the temples and was beginning to take on a
sheen elsewhere. Skinner brushed a path across its surface that stroked
from hair to neck, then snuck back up to trace one whorled ear. His fingers
grew damp, laden with a salted arousal redolent of musk. He leaned down,
demanded a kiss.
Fox fought the invasion briefly, then suddenly yielded. He tasted the hot
bulk and slippery tang of Skinner's tongue. It snaked its way between hard
teeth and forced his own mouth to mold itself to the intruder, to stretch
and submit to its demands. He did so, hunger rising.
Skinner, taunted by this greedy submission and all it implied, slid his
hands roughly down Fox's lean body and settled down onto him, letting their
bodies fully touch for the first time. He gasped in harsh lust as he felt
the mirroring hardness of arousal at his hips. Drawing free of the kiss, he
saw that the curve of Fox's eyelids had softened and taken on a gravid
flush; the eyes themselves were lit like expanding stars. Parted lips were
swollen and bleeding from two splits and the fall of tawny hair was mussed
in an electrical tangle. As Skinner watched, Fox licked across his lower
lip and smiled.
"I always suspected you were an easy lay, Fox," Skinner murmured. His heavy
cock strained upright and nudged the younger man's own swollen flesh. Fox's
eyes glittered with indecisive feeling, but his body lifted and swelled
like a wave. Skinner shifted and ran a fingertip down the other man's body,
toward the hard organ which had risen like a serpent from sleep. Its
elegant length twitched and a thread of pearlish arousal slid from the head
and wound a lazy descent around the shaft.
Fox's eyelids lowered and his body gave another responsive arch of pleasure.
Abruptly Skinner flipped him over. Fox struggled a moment, then went still,
hands fisting the coverlet, forehead bowed to rest against a pillow as he
breathed loudly and raggedly. Skinner manhandled Fox into a receptive
position, a somewhat more awkward task than he'd expected it to be without
any actual help from the object of his maneuverings, but after a minute he
had an arrangement he liked, in which the other man was splayed open to his
view, thighs nicely arrowing out from his upraised ass, chest pressed flat,
arms bracketing his head, which rested on its pillow with face tilted to
display a peculiarly contented expression.
Slut, Skinner thought, bemused. He glanced at Alex, who still sat
cross-legged to one side. He'd undone his trousers and was lazily stroking
himself.
"Don't move," Skinner said to Fox, whacking him gently on his ass to
emphasize the order.
Fox murmured something sleepy and incoherent.
Satisfied that the prize was going nowhere, Skinner turned back to Alex and
shoved him gently onto his back. Alex untied the bow of his legs and let
them fall open in broad welcome. The familiarity of his companion's body
sent a thrilling furl of lust through Skinner. He stretched out and ground
himself against the tight, hard wishbone of Alex's hips, working the
impeding trousers further down, easing their cocks together. "Ah," he said
in stunned pleasure, as their shafts rubbed with a lingering touch not
unlike a kiss. He buried his face in Alex's neck and then nipped around his
jaw and ear, working up to his waiting lips. The man smelled and tasted
like nothing else Skinner had ever known. Rocks. Aromatic smoke. Lightning.
The giant wave in which one finally drowns. His body tasted of enzymes
unreplicated in any other creature's flesh; strange spicy metals, as if
under the layers of epidermis spun gears of minute intricacy. Under
bioanalysis Alex passed for human, but Skinner retained doubts about the
ability of computers to fathom the measure of difference in the strange
being lying underneath him.
He levered himself up, divested Alex of his clothes, stroked the canvas of
faded scars that stretched across his bones, residual traces of a time long
ago when he'd had to fight daily for his survival, one of the gutter-rat
youths abandoned on an inhospitable colony world, left behind when most had
fled, forced to scrabble and claw through its nearly-deserted buildings and
compete for what little food remained. Once, he'd been even more feral, and
less human, but in accepting Skinner he'd accepted also some of the
constraints of civility. If his behavior was any indicator, he'd always
understood intuitively the nature of their relationship—vassal to liege;
he seemed to expect nothing; accepted everything he was given but took
nothing for granted. Maybe because of this, it had pleased Skinner to
please him; and still did.
Of course, giving Alex pleasure was a uniquely strange matter. Even now, it
was sometimes a difficult task to give him the blend of pain of ecstasy
that he'd been miswired for. Skinner took his time with Alex, caressing
him, flicking nails roughly over his skin, administering the pinches and
searing twists across his flesh that made Alex arch up and emit stifled
sobs of delight, then soothing him all over with his tongue before mapping
him again with ruthless bites of his teeth. Alex was apt to grow restive if
Skinner failed to draw blood.
"Want to watch," Alex sighed a while later, when he'd been given his first
release and was stretching out contentedly in the afterglow. "Want to see
what you do to him."
"Nothing you haven't seen before on holovids," Skinner said, suspecting
that Alex would be disappointed.
"They don't have any smell," Alex noted. "It's not the same."
Skinner gave a vague grunt in response and rolled away, back to Fox, who
had apparently fallen asleep. He'd slid out of the position Skinner had
left him in, so that his hips now lay flat against the bed; still, he had
to be incredibly limber to have drifted off in such a position, with both
legs drawn loosely up. Once, Skinner felt that he'd seen a young child
sleeping in just such a way, but he couldn't remember where or when.
He leaned in and kissed the small of Fox's back. Fox sighed, moved his body
as if trying to swim away. He half-wakened as Skinner lifted his hips up
and began preparing him for use with blunt, thick fingers. When Skinner
felt he'd done enough, he settled behind the younger man, snubbed his cock
in place and began pushing forward against the tight ring of muscle. The
slight resistance his organ met was eased by oil and the readying he'd
given. He worked one hand under Fox's body to cup a silken mass of
testicles that tightened responsively at his touch. Muscles that had been
gripped in momentary refusal suddenly slackened and Skinner's spine
softened in sympathetic pleasure as his cock slid in to its hilt. For a
small eternity he balanced on the edge of his blade, unable to move. Then
he drew out almost to the tip—as Fox wakened fully and cried out with
inarticulate desperation—before thrusting forward again and beginning in
earnest.
Fox jerked savagely, trying to twist away from the unexpected invasion, but
it was not long before he showed signs of giving in, tossing his head and
making sounds like whimpers, attempting to arch back against Skinner's
body. Skinner rode him mercilessly, withdrawing his hand from between
Mulder's legs to rest in the small of his back, keeping him on hands and
knees, unable to serve his own aching cock. He wondered if he could make
Fox come from this alone, and drove faster as he felt strong internal
muscles escape the rhythm he'd set and flex urgently around his cock,
drawing him deeper.
The younger man had an incredibly well-defined ass, smooth and hard as a
melon; it rolled back against Skinner's hips, cheeks spreading wide to take
him, growing rosy and strained with the challenge. Skinner nearly came when
the other's warm, fine rump slid up a notch, its rift rubbing almost
against his belly; its grip working visibly at the base of his shaft where
Skinner's balls swung. Independently focused in need, the flushed globe
tightened in its pursuit of pleasure, trying to split itself on Skinner's
shaft, squeezing greedily around its length as if it possessed an inherent
ache to be speared and used.
A tide of violent lust washed across Skinner's brain. He grasped one hand
to catch hold of Fox's collar and lifted him upright, pulling their bodies
together to kiss full length along every blazing inch, hips and cock
welding them together in a rhythm that became one long pulse, and one
unending crying out as Fox's body seized and leapt, as bolt after bolt of
fire was ripped free.
It was good, very good, but Skinner didn't let himself come. When Fox was
spent, Skinner let the man's sleek, panting body drop forward and drew his
still-swollen length from its sheathe. Fox groaned and slumped down into
the bedcovers, but said nothing when Skinner turned him over and began
ravishing him with a generous mouth. Thorned nipples prickled heatedly
against his tongue as he sucked them, one then the other. He sucked until
Fox was groaning, then gasping, then nearly screaming, and then finally,
soundlessly, bucking against him. He felt a slippery sensation between
their pressed bellies and pulled back, impressed with his own effect.
"You come like a woman, Fox. I don't even have to touch you." Skinner
smiled rudely as he stroked thick seed over burning skin. It seemed to
evaporate into steam even as he watched. He leaned over to kiss its skeined
silk, avoiding the angry head of Fox's still-straining erection. He licked
stray drops of seed that had sprayed across the other's neck and up under
his chin. "Twice within the half-hour."
"Not exactly a record, yet. . .my tutors were thorough," Fox said between
heaved breaths. He'd flung one arm over his face. "Dad thought it took too
much time from fencing and polo, but Mom believed a boy should have a
well-rounded liberal arts education. I did three years of Kama Sutra.
Multiple orgasms... not a problem."
"And you were raised... where?" Skinner said dryly.
"Thought you knew. Mother Terra. Our secondary schools lead the known
galaxy in their diversity of electives." He seemed to be smirking, though
his face was smoothly lax and his eyes half-closed.
"At least there's that to be said."
With renewed interest, Skinner returned his attentions to the other man's
body and let his tongue rove from neck to ear, from ear to lips, to chest
and hips and thighs, up the carelessly outstretched arms, into each slick
declivity. He retraced paths with no final goal, tasting again the
knifelike curve of jaw, the ears and brows, the sculpted neck. Salt and
musk saturated his tongue; he pushed at overload and couldn't take his
fill. His work left Fox whimpering from an orchestration of contrasts—the
teasing lightness of his tongue, the itching, frictive rasp of his jaw, the
unrestrained suction of his open mouth, and the blood-raising nips of his
teeth. He laid himself across Fox and returned to his sensitized nipples,
sucking until his partner was choking back sobs and squirming in place as
pleasure deepened into chafing pain. With tears streaking his face, Fox
allowed himself to be driven to the edge, until his body began to thrust
mindlessly against Skinner's once more.
When Skinner felt Fox's erection rubbing against his chest, he lifted and
pressed the length of their bodies together, hip to hip, forcing his tongue
back into the hot mouth, which opened to him. Slim hips twisted, lifting
and pushing awkwardly into burgeoning pleasure. Their organs brushed and
struck sparks. They groaned together, mouths locking and unlocking with
wild urgency. Skinner slipped a hand down to Fox's hip, then lower. Fox's
body arched instinctively to fit his hand's path, rubbing soft flesh into
his palm, leaving it hot and aching.
Fox unfolded like a flower into his own pleasured body. Stripped, loosened,
undone to sensation, he surged into Skinner's roving mouth, into the
rhythmic squeeze and release of hands that moved up his sides, over his
ribs and nipples and arms. Every touch left a trail of fire, drove him to
lift his hips, spread his thighs, twist and arch his body off the sheets in
synch with Skinner's hands and beg for release. When Skinner slid away from
him, he was briefly bereft, before he felt a hard, skillful mouth sucking
him into its furnace, sliding onto his cock for the first time. His hands
dropped immediately to the other man's sculpted head and urged him on. It
was amazing, blessed, and when Fox recklessly opened his eyes to imprint
the picture on his brain, he discovered himself flayed open to Alex's
close, interested gaze, which hung mere inches from his own.
He yelped and stiffened in fear, as if he'd just awoken to discover himself
lying underneath a panther. Alex leaned in, sniffed him curiously, nuzzled
his neck and jaw.
"Oh... ah, help... sir," Fox said weakly, moving his head from side to
side, unable to escape Alex's attentions. His eyes began to glaze when Alex
chewed gently on one earlobe, and then went glassy when sharp teeth sank
hard into that soft flesh. "Oh yeah," he said, the words torn from his
throat; forgetting that terror was probably the better part of wisdom here.
He whimpered as two pairs of lips worked him over, one pair centered like a
godly vortex around the coal-hot expanse of his shaft, the other pair
nipping across his face, up the aching arcs of his cheeks, across his brow,
down his nose to his own lips.
Chewing on me again, Fox thought dizzily, feeling Alex's teeth fret
around the soft door of his mouth. God, I hope he's well-fed. When Alex's
tongue snaked inside his mouth and thrust deep, Fox moaned in a strangely
compelling mix of fear and relief. He loosened one hand's grip from
Skinner's head and drew it up to hold Alex in place. Luckily, Alex didn't
seem to consider this an infraction of any kind, and carried on his sensual
lapping until Fox thought he would implode. And then he must have done so,
for his entire body unexpectedly lashed itself against the bed, surging
into twinned, demonic mouths as it emptied itself of a ribboning, endless
bliss.
And then his mouth was freed, his cock gently uncaptured, and his body left
sprawled like the hieroglyph for perfect satiety on the bedcovers. And
despite himself, Fox slept.
t hasn't changed," muttered Alex. His eyes narrowed in a frown, then
gradually re-opened, lids flaring, pupils dilating, as he acclimated to the
dim light of the cavernous room. A fair-sized cruiser could have docked
within. The tiers of common-table seating and the gallery of choice,
high-price booths around the edge of the pit were filled to capacity with a
glittering multitude of many and varied races. Here, human dilithium
prospectors sat cheek-to-jowl with Klingon bureaucrats and fleshy Orion
businessmen; and smugglers, mercenaries, pirates, and minor tyrants of all
stripes consorted affably together, at least until someone got killed.
