by jordan
The first dull rumble of thunder had warned Skinner of the coming storm as he had walked June Star, the girl he met in the Nightcrawler Bar and Grill, back to his motel. Now, as Mulder, Skinner, and the girl walked back to Mulder's room to get the keys to the rental car, rain began to fall with a muted roar they could hear through the thin walls of the building.
Skinner's mood was unaccountably foul. He had knocked on Scully's door and found Mulder sitting on the rumpled bed putting on his shoes. Of course nothing had happened, so logic dictated, but that little smirk Mulder wore was reminiscent of a teenaged boy caught feeling up his girlfriend. And Scully had looked guilty as sin. Well, so what if they had been fooling around in there? What business of it was his?
Mulder was looking at him. Skinner met the younger man's eyes with a cool, steady gaze. Although Mulder seemed a little taken aback, he said, "Sir, could I speak to you for a moment?"
They had paused at the door to Mulder's room. June said, "If you don't mind, I need to use the ladies room. I'll just be a minute."
She went down the hall to the public restroom near the front entrance of the building.
Mulder began speaking in the low fast monotone he used when he was thinking and talking at the same time. "Sir, considering the situation we're in, don't you think it's wise to be cautious about any supposedly chance meeting any of us might have in this town? And don't you think it might be unwise for the three of us to split up for any reason until we know what's going on?"
Grim faced, Skinner was nonetheless listening. "What's on your mind, Agent Mulder?" he asked.
"Well, the whole thing seems a little odd to me. You say you just met this woman in a bar and her car wouldn't start and she did what? Asked you for help? You, on foot?"
"No, it wasn't like that. She was trying to start the car and she was upset, and I offered to help."
"Why didn't she just get someone in the bar to give her a jump start?"
"She tried. No one in the bar had cables."
Mulder leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiritorial whisper.
"Sir, no one in the bar had cables?"
Skinner looked at him. "Shit," he said. "You're right. I didn't go in, she did. And she said there weren't any wreckers that worked late nights in town."
"And you didn't think that was a little...implausible?"
Both men turned to look down the hall in the direction of the public restroom. Skinner sighed. "Well, what do you suggest, Agent Mulder?"
Mulder pulled the keys to his room from his pocket and stared down at the broad piece of plastic attached to the ring that said White Horse Motor Inn. He had a way of studying objects that made him look a little vague and absent minded, when inside his head the gears were whirring.
He said, "It's raining too hard to jump a car, so let's forget that. Why don't you let me drive her home, and scope out the situation. You stay here with Scully. I think that Scully and I are as dispensible as Smith and Barlow-- and maybe Young. Anyone who had anything to do with Antoine Baxter seems to be a target. It's as if he's being erased from living memory as well as from all databases. But you never met him, never saw him, right?"
"That's true."
"And even if you had, your position in the bureau is a bit high up to not cause a lot of outcry if anything happened to you."
Skinner nodded. "So I should stay with you or Scully at all times."
"Ideally the three of us should stay together. But there's just something about this girl that doesn't sit right with me. For one thing, did you notice she knew exactly where the ladies room was? Did you pass it on your way in?"
"As a matter of fact, no. We came in through the rear entrance, from the back parking lot."
Mulder shrugged as if to say, See? "It's a lead we can't afford to pass up."
"All right," Skinner conceded. "I'll tell Scully what's going on, and you see where this girl leads you. But Mulder--I don't have to tell you to be extremely careful, right?"
"Careful's my middle name," Mulder said. "I'll call you as soon as I find out what's going on. I mean, hell, there's always a chance she is what she appears to be, right?"
He went into his room and got the keys to the car, and brought them back out just as June Star was coming back down the hall. She had washed her face, and most of her makeup had come off, so she looked younger, more innocent. It was hard for Skinner to believe she was acting; she seemed so nervous around them both. If Mulder brushed against her, she moved out of his reach, and there was an edge in her voice that seemed normal caution for a woman who had just met two strange men from out of town and was now about to get into a car with one of them. But Mulder was right. Was there no one she could call? In a town as small as Winslow, didn't she have family or friends? However sincere she looked and sounded, there were a lot of unanswered questions surrounding her story.
He was annoyed that he had not thought to ask any of these questions earlier, that his head had been so full of thoughts of Scully that his professional judgment had been suspended. Mistakes like that could cost lives.
He watched as Mulder and the girl burst out of the door and raced through the drenching rain towards the rental car, then he turned and went back to Scully's room. Lifting his hand to knock, he hesitated. For one thing, he was in such a bad mood it would be the wrong time to bring up their encounter. On the other hand, he felt angry at her and at himself for putting it off for this long. Maybe if they cleared the air, he'd be able to think rationally again.
All he had to do was keep his temper, and try not to think of wanting her.
Nooo problem. He knocked four times, two fast, two slow; their prearranged signal.
Scully came to the door and opened it a foot or so, peering out into the hallway. "Where's Mulder?"
"He's taking the girl home. Scully, can I come in? I need to talk to you."
Her eyes were guarded. "It's late," she said. "Can it wait until morning?"
Something broke in Skinner. Fuck this. "No, it cannot," he said. He pushed the door open and entered the room, closing it behind him a little harder than necessary. Scully stepped back quickly, all alarm systems on.
"Mulder thinks the girl is part of some kind of setup," Skinner began. He told her briefly of the conversation in the hallway. Then he said, "You and I are going to have to get through this, Scully."
Don't look at the tee shirt, don't look at the way the light gets in her eyes like the light in an aquarium, shimmering blue depths, don't look down at those hands, rubbing each other nervously, don't look at the soft curve of— well, don't look at any soft curves. He stared at the wall over her head. "Agent Scully, we can't pretend that nothing happened when Mulder was missing."
The panic in his voice made him look down at her despite himself. "There's nothing to talk about," she said.
"Of course there is. And we need to get it out in the open and deal with it, because this is a critical situation we're in, and it's important that we clear the air and get on with our professional lives."
"Look, Skinner, it's been a long day, and I'm very tired. I just want to go to bed."
"God DAMMIT, Scully!" his voice was not quite a shout, but it made her jump and wrap her arms around herself. "I am your boss, and I am not begging for some kind of lover's talk between us. I am TELLING you that we are going to talk, and we are going to talk right NOW."
There was a certain angry satisfaction at the look of fear that came into her eyes then. He knew she wasn't afraid of him physically. But he felt in a bullying mood anyway. He wanted to back her down, make her give up this icy attitude, and if all he could make her feel was fear, then it was gratifying that he could at least make her feel something.
He advanced on her, and she backed up, and his anger grew with every step she took away from him. When her back hit the wall, she said, "I think you should leave, Skinner."
She was trembling, the way she had been trembling the night—
"Get out of my room," she said.
Skinner realized his own hands were shaking. He stepped into her personal space and slammed his hands against the wall on either side of her with a loud, stinging slap. His head flooded with memories of that night, when he had been in this same position, only above her, horizontal. He remembered a detail he had forgotten: holding her wrist, his fingers wrapped all the way around the fine delicate bones, massaging her pulse with his thumb in small circular motions.
Scully seemed to make the same connection. Her eyes were bright, and there were high points of color in her cheekbones, though the rest of her face was pale. Her hair fell across her forehead, and she was breathing through her mouth in short shallow gasps.
"We slept together, Scully. You and I had sex. LOOK at me, dammit!"
She jumped, but tucked her chin down, staring at the front of his shirt, mouth set in a mulish line.
Skinner's voice dropped a decibel as he spoke from the heart. "I am entirely to blame for what happened, Agent Scully. I am your superior, your boss, and I should have had better sense, more self control than to have taken advantage of you. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for what happened. I cannot tell you how much I wish I could undo what happened. Scully--"
She jumped again at the sound of her name.
"Scully, you were at a weak moment, in shock, probably still full of whatever that doctor in Winslow shot you full of. I know you didn't mean to do it. I know you didn't want it. There's absolutely no excuse in the world for what I did, and I want you to know that if you chose to file rape charges against me, you'd not only be within your rights, but I would offer no defense. What I did was beyond reprehensible, and there is no way in the world to make it up to you."
"No!" She bit down on the cry of protest, as if regretting the word as soon as it was out of her mouth.
There was a moment of eerie silence, as if the universe was waiting to see what would happen next.
Scully raised her eyes to his, and they were full of unshed tears. "No," she whispered.
Time swung by like a pendulum, slowing. Skinner could no longer hear the rain at the window, or feel his own heart beating. His dark eyes narrowed, staring into her light blue ones, and what he saw there kicked him as hard as a boot in the stomach. He actually bent forward a little, knees buckling under the weight of this sudden knowledge.
Every instinct, every ounce of resolve he had in him, echoed NO. No, no, no. Pull up, soldier. Use that iron discipline. No to the urge to turn off the alarm clock after a sleepless night. No to the second drink after lunch. No to the flirty smile of the secretary on the fourth floor. No to the hope bursting in his chest at the look of raw need in Scully's eyes.
His long fingers were sliding through her hair past her ears, forming themselves in the shape of her skull, a silken pleasure than ran up the veins in his forearms like hot blood, up his shoulders and mainlining to his heart. She swayed a little towards him, making a sound of pure pain, closing her eyes and turning her head to the right at the exact instant he leaned down, turning his head to the left, in a motion as smooth as choreography, as practiced as if they had done it a thousand times.
The moment their lips met, time came back with a roar, compensating for its previous pause by speeding everything up to an insane fever pitch. She had not kissed him like this even in bed. This was the kiss of a fully aroused woman.
He was touching her somehow; her heart beat against his palm like the pulse of a rabbit, impossibly fast. He drew back, panting, and took her hands in his. She looked past his shoulder to the bed.
"Turn off the light," she told him.
He pulled her to the bed and they both stumbled a little, like drunks. The room rolled beneath him like the unsteady deck of a ship on a high sea.
This time make it good for her make it sweet show her with your hands and mouth and cock what you feel what you can make her feel this could be the only chance you ever get to make it happen to show her slow and sweet slow and sweet
Two minutes later he was buried in her as deep as he could go, his pants around his ankles, briefs tangling his knees. As fast as he was pumping, she was meeting him stroke for stroke, her arms under his, hands on his shoulders, both of them making inarticulate sounds that a passing stranger might mistake for crying.
Within ten minutes she convulsed, and he fought hard to keep her from bucking him off; the struggle causing his own orgasm to shoot through him like a bottle rocket—
DAMN!
As he fell away from her, he grabbed her hand, the way a man falling off a ship would grab a lifeline; this time he would not let her go so easily.
