by Anna
Alex's gaze latched to the luggage then lifted to consider the other man.
"What's up?" he asked indifferently, turning back to the TV but remaining
attuned to Skinner's movements. His peripheral vision tingled with
hyperactive awareness.
"What's it look like," Skinner said, voice bland, as he hung his coat up.
He made an absent grunting noise, perhaps of disgust, as he brushed snow
off the coat and shook it off his bags. From the couch, Alex could not quite
see Skinner run a hand over his uncovered head, but he could imagine that
familiar action too easily.
Alex would have preferred to ignore Skinner's rejoinder—the implications
were obvious enough—but after a fidgeting minute of listening to Skinner
enter the bedroom and then return to futz around the living area, he found
it impossible to hold his tongue. "Looks like you're going to make a night
of it," he said flatly, reaching for his beer, still not looking at the
other man, who moved somewhere behind him, unseen but palpably present.
"I'm having some rooms painted this weekend," Skinner said.
Alex blinked thoughtfully at the television screen. "You desk jockeys—that
cushy lifestyle really takes its toll on you, doesn't it. Can't even pick up
a paint-roller... I'm surprised you're not worried about plants."
"That's why I'm doing it," Skinner said, and Alex heard the dry edge of
satisfaction. The voice behind him continued speaking in a low register,
almost to itself. "I've got the house monitored, and I've got someone lined
up to do a sweep afterwards. Thought I'd give them the opportunity, see what
comes of it. Find out how closely they're watching these days."
"Not a bad plan," Alex admitted, turning on the couch to rest his chin on
the back and stare at Skinner. Mildly surprised at the other man's
initiative, he dug his chinbone against the couch and considered him. He
looked, as always, very much the ex-Marine, neat, trim, and exhibiting in
the controlled trajectories of his movements a subdued, brooding vigor. A
full charge of energy coiled in those abundant muscles; the advancing years
hadn't advanced all that far. Tonight instead of his usual suit he was
wearing a denim shirt and jeans, and looked too butch for words.
Alex raised his hand to the couchback and rubbed his chin against it. He
felt more expressionless than usual, as if gravity pulled more strongly at
the muscles of his face, tugging its masked surface flat. He was already
half hard; it bugged him. How dare his body betray anticipation, hunger,
need—Alex was inclined to brutalize his rebellious flesh into submission,
but hopping on the exercise bike seemed too blatant a provocation.
Meanwhile, showing no sign he was aware of Alex's look, Skinner was opening
his briefcase on the dinner table, setting up his laptop and stacking files.
During his actions, his face, downturned in studious habit, reflected an
absorption that suggested his thoughts were elsewhere, as if their arrival
lagged behind his body, and yet it was a safe bet he was fully conscious of
his solitary audience.
"I'm surprised you trust me not to pry," Alex said, staring at the array of
business materials on the table.
"When I'm done with this it all locks back up—and then I'm going to keep
you busy."
"Great," Alex said, but in contrast to his toneless voice his cock
evidenced a more honest show of interest, stiffening a little further at the
words. Luckily the couch hid this vital enthusiasm. Faintly disgusted with
himself, Alex turned back to watching TV. He spent the next hour or so in a
blank display of involvement with competitive gymnastics, his mind turning
on a wheel which carried him through a continuous flow of restless thoughts:
could he find someone to teach a one-armed, thirtysomething man how to
backflip, should he get up and have another beer, what innovative demands
would Skinner make on his body tonight, were there subliminal messages in
that fast-food commercial, a backflip after all didn't involve arms, yes he
definitely wanted another beer.
Alex got up and went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer, then, after a moment's
thought, another. He popped the caps on the lower edge of a cabinet, whose
abraded wood already showed signs of regular service, then returned to the
other room. He came up behind Skinner and let his hand slide down over the
other man's shoulder, then made a small gesture of competency by rolling one
gripped bottle to the forefront, in an offering. Alex's eyes flicked across
the computer screen automatically while Skinner took the beer.
"It's nothing that would interest you."
"You're welcome," Alex said irritably.
"You're predictable."
Indeed, Skinner sounded unbothered, unsurprised. Alex glared at the back of
his head, tempted to stick out his tongue, but merely made a face instead,
before taking a pull on his beer.
Skinner turned in his chair to stare up at Alex. His eyes performed a
casual, habitual survey, as if he were assessing Alex's fashion choices or
seeking evidence of a lapse in his exercise regimen—or perhaps just
inspecting the well-marked districts of his territory. Alex was momentarily
aware of the contrast between Skinner's expensive tidiness and his own more
careless dress—recognized the difference and dismissed it. Irrelevant. He'd
been wearing the same sweatpants and cut-off sweatjacket all day, even while
working out. Clothes were a hassle these days.
When Skinner stood, Alex had to forcibly command himself not to take a step
back; his body twitched, live wire, then stilled. The forceful greeting of
Skinner's mouth was not unexpected, but the force of his own body's
response was. He wanted to chuck aside the beer, hated having one hand in
such circumstances, wanted to feel something, anything, with what touch he
had left. Skinner, unconstrained for his part, cupped Alex's ass with one
hand, and his head with the other, fingers digging into his hair. Alex's
face pulled into the resemblance of a snarl as he deepened the kiss despite
himself. But they were both driven to this; their tongues skipped and jabbed
like rapiers, sliding back and forth together, blades that mimicked intimacy
as they dueled. Breath quickening, harshening, Alex accepted what would
devour him, the strokes of fire spilling across the aching vaulted premises
of his mouth, invasive and excruciating.
He was harder than he'd realized; the pull of Skinner's body made him
aware of himself, where his cock pressed rigidly into the other man taut
belly. God, how long a week could be; the waiting that he refused to call by
its name; the savagery of relief when it arrived. Mouth to mouth, he had to
acknowledge that the connection was lifesaving, or near enough that it made
no difference.
"How much longer you gonna work?" he said after detaching his mouth to
let his breath catch up. He could feel a broad hand still cupping and
working his ass; his lust was humiliating and exhilarating. Feelings were
not just mixed but melted together, inseparable in their cauldron.
"I'm done. Or I can be. But I want dinner."
"Ah, shit ," Alex said, grimacing. He met the other man's gaze, letting the
look rise from beneath his lashes, tilting his head a little so that his
rakishly unmannered hair caught at his eyes, knifing across their green
smolder.
Skinner's hand rested proprietorially against the back of Alex's neck, and
his thumb moved up under one ear, rubbing with a slow rhythm that suggested
an unconscious sensual attention. His face showed no involvement, though; it
might have been hacked from a slab of volcanic pumice, stiff and unsmooth
though he worked to keep it smoothed flat of expression. "I was thinking
that Chinese place."
"Mexican."
"Never again... pizza?" Skinner's voice was half-hearted.
"Thai."
"I knew you'd say that," Skinner said, eyes narrowing. "You've been through
their menu twice over already. Aren't you sick of it yet?"
"Never. I could go for Greek, though."
"Mm. I don't suppose there's any reason we couldn't order both."
"Both what?"
"Greek. Chinese. Whatever."
Impatiently, Alex said, "Jesus. Chinese, then."
Skinner frowned, said abruptly, "Have you always been so hung up on Thai
food?"
"What—no, why—" But Alex was not slow on the uptake; and then, too, it
was likely he had come to subliminally recognize that manner of frown, some
peculiar tenor in the voice that indicated a particular train of thought.
"You think they'd bother to canvass Thai restaurants all over the country,
putting the word out to look for the nefarious one- armed man? Well, I guess
it would be possible. But even I'm not that paranoid."
"Maybe you should be."
"Doesn't matter—it's a recent addiction." Alex smiled fractionally, almost
unaware of his curving lips. Charm was bred in the bones, offhand, steeped
in acid. "Worrying again, Walter? Seeing headlines? Bureau VIP and Toyboy
Found Slain in Gay Love Nest—"
"When I'm slain I won't be around to worry about something like that."
Alex's eyelids lowered a notch. "Mm. Tough guy." He nudged his head in and
carefully nipped at Skinner's lower lip, then opened him up with the wet
point of his tongue. Down at hip-level, his cock throbbed in sympathetic
greed. They kissed some more, lazily and then roughly, sparring and goading
each other. Who would break first? Moving his hand, Alex brought the beer
bottle down between their bodies and rubbed it against Skinner's crotch.
Skinner deftly plucked away the bottle and put it on the table behind him.
Hand free at last, Alex took advantage of its placement and began kneading
the hard bulge in Skinner's jeans. Immediately, Skinner's mouth grew hotter,
more strenuously demanding. The stretch of his body tightened further
against Alex, straining muscles rolling like burls of magma under the
surface. When had they started kissing like this? Alex couldn't put his
finger on just when the shift from simple rutting to elaborate, unfettered
pleasuring had taken place. There were times now when the ignition of lust
was strong enough to send them tumbling to the ground, desperate, driven to
grind their bodies together with an uncivilized lust that would not let them
wait. Disturbing and unlikely, it knitted them more closely with the
passing weeks, entangling them together with desire if nothing else—except
that the more entwined their needs grew, the more difficult it was for them
to pull apart afterwards and return to their separate cells of wary solitude.
"I need to eat," Skinner muttered against Alex's mouth, but then his
tongue carved back into the scrim, with plundering force.
"Eat me," Alex offered, after drawing back for his own breath, his voice no
more than a thin exhalation.
"Not yet. God." Skinner made a face of bemusement and what looked like
pain, then knifed the haze apart and scowled at Alex. "Keep doing that and
I'll make you finish it."
"Make me," Alex said now, his eyes shooting diamond- sharp sparks. His
voice husked the words out. "What else are you here for, anyway—right?"
Skinner's face adjusted itself slightly toward a cooler unreadability. "I
guess that's right." He pulled Alex with him as he moved to the table, and
when he sat back down in the chair, Alex submitted to the curved pressing
weight of hand under which his neck burned, which drew him floorward to his
knees.
Already, his breath labored and his eyes drifted free of focus. His mouth
felt wet with readiness for the particular lust evoked. And he could not
decide if he wanted it merely as a kindling foreplay or for its own brute
sake. Whatever, whatever, what did it matter. Kneeling, he rubbed his face
against the arrowing rise of denim that was bracketed by Skinner's muscled
thighs. The other man's hand busied itself unzipping what his jeans cruelly
trapped, and in seconds the fly was open and the briefs shoved down, and
then the length of him was free, pushing erect with almost pugnacious force,
lifting with familiar tropism toward Alex's mouth. The waking monster was
already deeply flushed, the swollen head pearled thickly with pre-ejaculate.
Alex could have teased; sometimes did. But other times, as now, he could
bear no prelude to plunging his mouth onto the other man's organ. Could not
wait, could not. He shoved his open mouth forward and down, wrapping his
hand around the base of the shaft. His head lowered and rose; with sure
force he lifted up and worked on the head, sucking its upwelling juice and
then letting the padded knob drag across the roof of his mouth toward the
back of his throat. Above him, he heard Skinner draw in his breath—not
once, but over and over again, a jagged crescendo of lust, pulling like a
serrated blade from the throat. Strong hands held his head loosely in place,
but never stayed still; carelessly, bluntly, but intimately they explored
him, carding Alex's hair, cradling his jaw, rubbing across his ears.
It was inevitable that the rhythm should escalate; within a few short
minutes, Alex felt the other man's balls tighten and hug upward against the
pulsing shaft; felt the throbbing prominence of vein stab more wildly
beneath the skin. He did a few tricks with teeth and lips he knew would be
welcome, then repeated them more gently. Now he was teasing, withdrawing his
mouth and playing casually, eloquently with the brimming weight of flesh he
held.
He could not stand to ask outright what he wanted, so instead, when he
could take it no more, he simply let go, abruptly cutting short the torment.
He sat back, ass to heels, face upturned and waiting.
Skinner breathed heavily through his nostrils, lips pressed shut. His cock
jutted from his jeans, slick, dark, and rudely hard. "You want it now?" he
asked, voice abraded into a shadowed half-tone of itself.
"Yeah." Alex licked his lips thoughtlessly and then made a sound like an
embryonic laugh that refused full birth. "You taste like soap, Walter. You
shower just for me?"
Skinner blinked, not quite pulled from his haze, despite the hooked barb of
Alex's voice. "I had to wash the office off," he said.
Alex felt a pleasant flush spill through his body, blood stirred to life by
the dark currents within Skinner's voice. Crazy to think they were alike in
anything, and yet at times— at times the resonance told itself this
clearly, in the drop of one small phrase, and often they both recognized the
moments. They shared the bitterness of having bitten too deeply into the
offered apple. There was that, at least.
Rising, Alex gave Skinner a brief look that conveyed invitation. He
stretched his arm behind his head and pulled off his top rather than
unzipping it, then entered the bedroom without looking back. The bedroom was
clean and showed only sparse signs of habitation—a few books, and the flung
clothes of a single man with the luxury of simplicity and no one to chide
him for his minor messes. The room faced west and was filled with light.
Outside the window the winter sky was lit with strands of fire that should
have melted the snow which lined ledges and rooftops and blew erratically
off in the wind. But the blazing strata, like an illuminated fire opal,
might have been as cold. In a tree across the street the light tangled in
the branches and was immeasurably painted on the sky behind.
Alex moved to a window and stared out; he'd known Skinner was early this
evening, but his mental clock had failed him—it could be, now, no more than
half past five. He shifted when Skinner appeared next to him. Remaining to
one side, out of line of sight from the street, Skinner turned the stick on
the blinds, angling their slats to obscure the view.
"You came earlier than I thought."
Skinner made a slight, almost facetious face, but never susceptible to easy
puns he merely said, "I left early. Or on time, depending on who's judging
the measure of my work day."
"Who does?"
With a dry twitch of lips, Skinner squinted abstractedly through the blinds
into the piercing sun, and said, "No one, actually. But if I don't do the
time, the shit gets hip-deep fast. Anything less than seventy hours and I
might as well be a slacker." He paused as if contemplating the wisdom of
voicing such remarks, then added after a moment, "Probably wouldn't last six
months before they'd ease me out, or I'd walk in one day and find a cushion
on my chair."
Alex spoke while pushing out of his sweats. "Cushion? What's that,
executive equivalent of finding a pencil taped to your locker?"
"I expect so... pencils? That's no bureau tradition." Skinner unbuttoned
his shirt. Still heavily erect he looked indecent to Alex's appreciative
eyes.
"NYPD," he said absently, speaking with automatic finesse the lines of a
scripted self whose lies and truth folded into one another. "When you're no
good on the street anymore they let you know. Time to ride a desk, push the
pencils. Vroom, vroom." Alex, naked now, touched Skinner's collarbone and
the flesh below, tracing small scars that threaded whitely across the
surface. It was like touching polished wood, marked by use. "I don't think
you're ready for pasture yet, even if you do drive a desk, Walt." His voice,
though low and lightly mocking, paid a certain degree of respect; yet it was
best his regard should always remain less than earnest. In more brooding
moments, Alex was apt to regret warm words as forfeited advantages. Any
point yielded might tote up to his later downfall.
"Mm." Skinner nudged off his jeans, kicked them away. "Desktops make for
some of the ugliest battlefields I've seen."
"That's saying a lot, I bet." Alex ran his hand down the other man's chest,
scratching lines not unlike the residual scars, fresh red to their white.
Nipples hardened and he traced a circle around one, watching it tighten, not
missing the action below, where Skinner's resurging arousal made a similar,
more potent display of the body's ability to erect its tissues.
After another moment, they both moved simultaneously, stepping as if into
one another, their chests and hips pressing close, angles of their bodies
bumping here and there, mouths locking even as their hips rubbed together,
lance to lance in a familiar battle. This simulation of intimacy lasted not
long before Skinner twisted Alex around and gave him a rough shove onto the
bed. The roughness was what Alex had been waiting for, that sudden
breath-stealing loss of balance as the storm picked him up and tossed him.
In seconds, they were wrapped together on the bed, a braid of flesh whose
elements were difficult to distinguish, equally convolute and lost. Now a
knot of limbs, now a snarl. They hurt each other, biting without restraint,
peppering each other's skin with bruises. Skinner had the advantage,
however, and eventually used it, flipping Alex face down in the disarray of
sheets and pinning him there while readying himself. When he was sheathed,
lubed, he pulled Alex up and let him feel the edge of that blunt force he
would be taking in.
Alex, balanced precariously, shuddered his need; the tightly pocketed
entrance to his body blazed with the raw, nerved prescience of a recognized
sensation, while in the depths of himself he felt only the dull lack of
fulfillment. Just the weight of Skinner's cock resting along his ass made
him seethe and twist; getting that much meat inside would split him apart,
gut him like a fish sliding to halved pieces on the length of a bowie knife.
Not getting it would drive him mad.
He pushed his ass back, and in doing so thought, helpless to the thrall of
memory, of Mulder. It sent a savage furl of irony and amusement through his
wired being to picture a greedy Fox caught and impaled on the same spear of
flesh that was pushing its way into Alex now. Would he throw back his head,
would his eyes glaze as he surrendered, would he gasp, fight, howl his
gratitude, pass out?
And then Alex could only think of himself. It was nearly too much, always
precisely a hair short of too much; he had never given himself up for
fisting, but imagined it would compare poorly to this. He spent his breath
in short, helpless gasps, refusing to sing his approval, and then with one
final jab the invader was fully embedded, the pressure of balls signalling
it could go no further. Skinner's cock. Sometimes, alone, loosely thralled
in fantasy, Alex tried to puncture his own swelling lust by thinking of it
in derisive terms: Walter Skinner's Mighty Dick. But ridicule could not
break the addiction, and size alone was not the full measure of Alex's
fascination.
Groaning, Alex felt himself pulled upright. "Ah—God—yes, you
fucker—bastard—oh sweet fucking Jesus yes—" Driven out of himself, past
articulation, Alex might have been sixteen again, rendered tongue-tied and
stupid by the novelty of rut.
"You like that—"
"Yes—harder—yes—"
"Harder—you like this—"
Hands pulled Alex back into a fitted arch, touched him everywhere, casually
and familiarly, grabbing a slippery palmful of his hair and yanking his head
back, stroking up and down his abs, sliding behind to grip his ass, to open
him up further. He sobbed as rude fingers chafed his nipples, as they
pinched and fondled him and rose to his throat to collar him briefly but
emphatically.
"Ah, god—don't—don't stop that—" Alex rotated his ass with a deft
screwing maneuver that brought from Skinner a quiet yell—a vocalizing trick
that Alex never in his life had heard from anyone else. The piercing bulk
inside him pumped harder, pulling Alex back with dragging motions that made
him feel insubstantial, as if his ass—his entire body—were a plug of cork
stabbed and riding on a fish-hook; all the power and volition of their act
was behind him, in the other man's hard curve of cock.
He was a man without a name, without history, past or future, given over to
this—just a fuck, but essential, necessary as food to him. What did words
matter, banter and skirmish, if this clash of flesh was possible. It honed
something in the soul, kept life lit. To shove back against another man and
feel each bone in the body matched, nearly, angle to angle, strike to strike
like wielded staffs, to feel a man's cock staking its claim, confirmed one's
most basic existence. Alex was there. Staked to the dirty ground of the
earth, twisting on what tethered him, breathing as keen as fire. And the
keening was in his throat as well, rising, primal, desperate; his head shook
itself wildly on Skinner's shoulder, he thought of Mulder, his lust stabbed
higher and higher, but it was Skinner who was there with him, big and solid
as a wall behind him, impossible to push down, safe as houses, dangerous as
a grizzly, a near stranger in all things but this, and so not a stranger at
all.
Roughness of their cheeks scratching, a fine, aching hurt, abetted with
other sensations toward a killing intensity—a bladed fire that pushed
through his ass and carved Alex senseless, carved him relentlessly onto a
single point that he could feel high inside him like a knob of
diamond—this, and the building strain of countless muscles, a tremelo
stress in his architecture, a wild chafe of back to chest, ass to hips, the
trembling widespread sprawl of his thighs against a buffer of heavier
muscle. He rode and was ridden. It was a simple repetition of tiny, subtle
actions, small twists, little grinds of ecstasy—hips, ass,
shoulderblades—and then deeper, harder movements, the exquisitely forced,
almost painful effort toward a shared achievement, sustained and stretched
to that nearly unbearable tension that seeks to break itself.
Alex's head ground itself round and around on Skinner's shoulder, lifted
and dropped itself. He parted his lips and breathed a moan of assent when
blunt fingers stroked his sensitized nipples, when broad hands flowed down
his body like waves of lava toward his pelvis to weld there, to hold him,
and then he choked off a half-formed curse, or a yes that could not be
spoken, as one hand moved further, to grip his swollen, blazing cock the way
a man might grip a fire-heated knife. No fancy favors, the hand just took
him and squeezed, but did so over and over, not leaving him, moving faster
and gripping harder as it proved it knew exactly what he needed, unyielding
even when Alex's own hand closed over its clasp and meshed their fingers
together—the feeling was impossible, shaming, too much to bear. It felt
like his father's hand, not the twist of incest but the simple interlocked
catch of key to lock, breath-taking, beautiful, and completely unacceptable.
Alex came with poorly stifled screams that he would have hated if he were
able—high-pitched sounds that stripped his throat raw and revealed a
pleasure that branded him, that even as his half-closed eyes rolled like wet
pearls back in his head, in the ripped timeless ecstasy of climax, defined
and betrayed him as... .
But no part of his pleasure-stormed mind finished the thought, never did.
Skinner's own sounds of pleasure broke low and near in Alex's ears, grunts
and groans of a man whose inhibitions are momentarily loosened, who perhaps
is not aware of how deeply his throat offers up his ecstasy. He cried out
"Oh god, oh Christ!" in a hoarsened voice that made Alex's skin sweep with a
rippling sheer of brazen fire and sent a final spasm of iced jism through
his blurting cock. He beat his skull one last time on the bouldering pillow
of muscle behind him and then fell back into his body, gasping for breath,
brought to a sudden sharp awareness of his aching, thorn-sharp nipples, his
depleted cock, and a body blissed on the perfection of being fucked to
pieces by a man who knew how to fuck a man.
Alex slumped forward, melting onto the bed. His ass felt like a swollen
bowl of seed, spilling itself—this even though skinner had used a condom.
He liked the aftermath, the sense of mess that was its own kind of bliss, a
wallowing in base essences. But it wasn't to be lingered over. After this
nod to animalism, Alex usually felt compelled to rinse clean—shower or
shit, whatever would break the spell of that brief, post- coital
contentment. The physical mistake of happiness was not to be treasured; it
was weakness, a window of vulnerability. This was as true now as any time,
and so when Skinner rolled away and stretched out on the bed, Alex's first
thought was to seek the solitude of the bath.
But as he moved, Skinner snagged his arm and held him, and then wordlessly
drew him back. Alex, grudging, dark eyes cooling back to steel, said nothing
either for a minute, then grew restless.
"Don't get warm and cuddly on me, Walter," he said with irritable venom.
"I don't like it when you race from the bed to wash me off," Skinner said,
voice sliding toward a menace Alex hadn't expected. Perhaps thinking of his
own earlier remark about washing off the office, Skinner added, "If this is
just a job to you, you can resign. I'm not payrolling your services."
Alex's eyes narrowed speculatively. "So what do you care if I want to
shower?" he said, turning the question into a hard challenge. Implications
and unspoken terms lay between them like spilled petals on the sheets, their
scent distracting, thin and bruised.
Skinner's jaw tensed; the bafflement of their uneasy arrangement written
into his face. "Do as you like," he said. His detachment was abrupt,
seemingly absolute. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, but
seemed less hurt than piqued. Walter Skinner was inviolable, of course. No
one could chisel down to a heart through such a thickness of stone as he
fronted.
Alex stared at the other man in the semi-darkness that had come into the
room while they fucked. "What exactly am I doing here ?"
Skinner reached and turned on the light, then looked over at Alex as if he
had needed to see something clearly before answering. " You're doing
wonders for my peace of mind ."
"Yeah? How's that? " Alex husked dryly, stretching in the covers
alongside Skinner, deferring his intent to leave . The rumpled bed draped
blue folds of coverlet around their legs like irregular ocean fringes.
"You know well enough. I don't want you loose."
Alex snorted; a mere crumb of a laugh. His eyes glinted darkly, more truly
amused. "Hey, Walt: I am loose. If I want to go, I'm going. I don't need
the Skinner pension plan."
"When did your options start arriving?"
Mouth twisting briefly, Alex said, "If nothing else, I've got my gun hand."
Skinner's eyes darkened without a blink; even the spilling lamplight could
not penetrate their pooled depths. "You want to reconsider that line of
work, son. It's not... healthy." Something in his voice made clear that ill
health, whatever form it might take, was not a distant or abstract
possibility but a presence in the very room, near as the dark cat-curl of
the silent telephone, sitting less than eighteen inches from Skinner's
pillow-rested head.
Alex loathed feeling the collar tighten, the leash pull. It made him surly,
but he hid the full extent of his distaste. "You're so sexy when you're
ethical," he jibed nastily. "It's such an exotic look for you."
In the jeer was strange truth; it turned Alex on to see Skinner in full
executive regalia, in his sedate Brooks Brothers suit, solid tie and tiebar,
polished and unobtrusive leather shoes. Gun on hip, badge over heart: these
were the icons of a desire whose purity could not be tarnished or tainted by
anything Alex might do. The clean white shirts of justice and government had
always held an ineluctable appeal for him, and now recalled him also to
better times, when the future seemed to beckon on high, promising rewards
for his right actions. He had once believed that to earn the approval of
those in power would bring that power within his own grasp, at which time he
would be... inviolable. As Skinner was, damn him. Unfair—it was so
utterly, bitterly unfair. Had he been less unwitting, less easily led—if
only he had kept his head, he could have kept his place.
If a thousand impossible things.
"If ethical purity turns you on," Skinner said uncannily, "you must have
ridden from cold shower to shower working with Mulder."
Alex's breath caught. It was a blade slipped between the ribs, unerringly
striking him where he ached the most. In his soul he flinched and bled; his
face showed hard indifference. He knew—had known for some time,
intuitively—that it would never do to tell Skinner what he and Mulder had
once had. That they had slept together, that he had fucked that sweet, pure
ass and made Mulder scream with joy and worked his hands around that impure
throat until his bright, twisted fox, the Fox of unbearable dark need and
fire, was undone to a different, less comfortable pleasure. To tell Skinner
that would be to hand the man a weapon he could not help but fire. At
himself, at Alex—maybe, worst of all, at Mulder.
Out loud, he said only, "Mulder's a saint." Then, with a fine dry nuance of
sneer, "An absolute angel, Walter. You should try it on with that foxy ass
sometime—I bet he'd go for it. I bet he'd go for a new daddy." It was too
much. Alex had gone over the invisible line they kept taut between them, and
knew it as soon as he spoke. He did not aggravate the matter by displaying
regret.
Skinner stared at Krycek from an angle and proximity that made him feel he
had suddenly awakened to look up into the face of an intimate demon. The man
who lay propped next to him seemed suddenly more than merely human, more
significant. Dark currents, darker waters farther out. Beyond the cruelly
bladed words, behind the carved stone face and impenetrable targets of his
eyes was an unreachable fathom of otherness, the throne room of a lost soul.
And—beyond belief—it called to something in him. Skinner hated the
attraction, tried with every particle of himself to link evil with evil, to
tell himself Krycek was simply enseamed in the pure black fabric of horror,
threaded fast with the monstrosities of bloody battlefields, with the
dripping entrails left by serial killers, with the venal snakes of
corruption—men like the unnameable Morley and others Skinner had known.
That was what he wished to believe, that there was a veil of darkness
unalleviated by light and that it hung apart from all good things, and that
on its perimeter was a grey front of ill weather into which a man could
drift—but that if lucky could escape again. This was his imagining, the
perception he used to maneuver his own self: he would steer his boat from
the storm. He would reach safe harbor, and the skies would be clear.
But it was not like that; not here and now. The dark spell of weather was
in himself, and it was not all dark, but was instead blazed with lightning.
In places, luminous.
Just fucking, just an arrangement, he told himself; with a man who, if
justice were served, would be locked away to serve hard time.
And coming in his body was like coming alive. Locking with him, body to
body, was like feeling an opposing equal, a sparring partner, struggle not
to master him but to reach him, to grapple his flesh purposefully toward
some vaguely sensed understanding. Would it be like this with anyone else
(with Mulder)? He couldn't imagine, couldn't compare. He had only this to go
on; with no one else had sex and power been so fraught with cryptic
meaning—so difficult to slough off once the grappling had ended.
These feelings, like an epiphany, arrived in him in the space of an
instant, and slid like a dark spoon of medicine through him. He blinked,
studied Krycek, tried to fathom the knotted problem. At the heart of a knot
was an emptiness.
"I've never asked if you killed him," he said, surprised to hear his own
words. Krycek's face looked anticipatory, watchful. "Mulder thinks you did."
"I know," Krycek said. He said no more.
Skinner looked away, eyed the bedside clock, then rubbed a hand across his
scalp, which tingled with settling fervor. His body was descending—still,
now—from the height of pleasure, coming down slowly from the scaled peak.
There were things he should not attempt to know, dark spots of shadow not to
be poked lest they turn into tigers and bite.
"I'm hungry... hungrier," he said. Krycek, moving a little, gave a tiny
sound that suggested agreement.
"Thai," Krycek said then, grinning as suddenly and widely as a jack-knife
springs open. "Wasn't that what we decided on?"
Another abrupt End.
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
—Robert Frost
lumped into the crook of the couch and semi-absorbed in watching
television, Alex still glanced up with the immediacy of old instinct when he
heard footsteps near the apartment door. When the door began to open, his
hand moved to the space between couch arm and cushion, where he had secreted
a street-bought 9 mm, but then his dipped hand rose again—it was just
Walter Skinner, carrying an overnight bag and a large briefcase. 
