By jordan
Disclaimers and such in Chapter One
(Note: the conclusion to oyster is NC-17 and may be offensive to those with a sensitivity to graphic sexual scenes and/or shellfish.)
*****
They plunge from the steaming night, which is quiet but for the rush of cars and the chirping of crickets, into the carnival atmosphere of the Luxor hotel, where Skinner's room is on the sixteenth floor. Scully clings to his arm--it's like holding onto an arm made of wood, he's so rigid--and steers him through the confusion of ringing, clanging, whistling machines, the cacophony of tokens clattering down into the wells, and sirens going off, and people shouting to each other and shrieking with laughter. The room swirls around them but Scully finds her way.
Could it possibly BE any colder in this place? Scully half expects to see her breath in the air, and still the gamers shouldering each other at the tables are sweating freely. On the other hand, the air on the ground floor, infused with pure oxygen to keep the players from wearing out, clears her head in a few minutes. She is worried about Skinner. Beyond that, she refuses to think of anything else.
He has not spoken a word since they left the hospital, just stared straight ahead with that squinting glare, moving on autopilot, his jaw clenched until she can see the muscles standing out under his ears. In response to her anxious questions he only shakes his head, and when a barmaid comes breast-first around a corner and cuts them off, he almost runs over her.
A group of party-goers gets into the elevator with them. They laugh and talk in loud voices, a little drunk; their brightly colored clothes hurt Scully's eyes. It seems to take forever to get to the right floor, get him to his room, card the door, and get safely inside.
Once there, he only stands motionless, but she can tell there's plenty going on behind those fiercely narrowed eyes. She knows from experience how hard it is to get him to talk about his pain, so she'll have to just play it by ear.
"Sir, maybe you should lie down for awhile," she suggests.
"Scully." He bites the word out of the air, and she jumps a little at the unexpected sound of his voice. "Don't let me go to sleep."
She shakes her head. "No, sir, I won't."
He stretches out on the bed, loosening his tie, nudging off his shoes so they fall with muted thumps to the carpet. He turns out the bedside lamp and then there's only the light from the open door of the bathroom, which is enough to illuminate the room fairly well. He takes a deep breath and sighs it out again, staring at the overhead light fixture.
Scully goes into the bathroom and gets him a tumbler of water. It takes her approximately thirty seconds, because she rinses out the glass first and wipes it down with toilet paper before she fills it. When she comes back into the room, Skinner is gone.
********
The Dark Man rises up before Skinner in the hellish heat of the alien desert and hangs over the waves of sand. Scully is there, too, although almost translucent, like a painting on a silk screen held up to a window. She stands looking down at an empty bed, and there is something significant and elusive and terribly poignant about that tableau. Colors flicker rapidly in and out, as if the light itself is forming into the shape of a body there on the bed. It's Mulder. But it isn’t Mulder. Just a shimmering image. The Dark Man floats on the heat waves like a great black crow, just beyond him. Mulder is moving his mouth as if trying to tell Skinner something, though there's no sound. He gestures at Scully. He spreads his arms in the air. His lips are forming two words, over and over, as clearly as he can, and Skinner can just barely make them out:
Let go.
******
Scully hesitates, thinking he's just gotten up and gone somewhere else in the room, and looks around, and then she hurries to the bed and puts the glass down on the nightstand. It makes a sharp clinking sound, and at that instant, Skinner is there again, in a flash like sunlight off the edge of a knife, looking up at her.
With a frightened little cry, Scully jumps back, and he sits up quickly, swinging his feet to the floor, and reaches out to catch her wrist to keep her from falling.
And there they are. The big man on the bed holding onto the pretty, red haired woman gaping down at him, the two of them connected by that touch. And even if they can't see the molecules sparkling in the air around them, they are there, physically impacting everything, changing everything.
What's happening now? I have no idea. It's Mulder's puppet show, and I am only his audience. He doesn't have much power, but that's like saying he doesn't have much vision compared to someone totally blind.
"Let go," Scully whispers, her voice a throaty little rush of air.
She can see his face clearly in the dim light, his shining eyes. His strange, shining eyes.
Let go, Skinner. He sees her breathing a little too fast through her parted lips, feels the slight pull of her muscles against his and the rapid pulse under his fingertips. He knows that if he lets go he will lose the world but gain entry into Paradise. All he has to do now is release that which grounds him, and believe he can fly.
Inside Scully all the math is running together into fluttering notes of music. He loosens his grip, but only so he can run his hands up her wrists to her forearms, all the way past the elbows to her shoulders, in a sensual caress that can't be mistaken for anything in the world other than a raw hunger to give and to take pleasure from her body.
She must know, or at least suspect. She must know who it is. She must realize it's not Skinner, though it is, and it isn't, and then again, it is. Come on, Scully. Let go and see what’s there in front of you.
The parallax view. What is Skinner fighting? Mulder? Himself? He doesn't care if he's only the vessel delivering to her what she wants; that's what his love is about. He just wants the chance to give her pleasure, the most intense pleasure of her life, and all he has to do is quit struggling so damn hard and just
let
go.
*****
Scully stares at Skinner with such a look of utter consternation it would be funny under any other circumstances. It's not like she hasn't seen cadres of not-Mulders in her career as his partner. It's not that difficult to accept him as someone else, but it is astonishingly difficult to accept Skinner as anyone but the man she's come to know these past few days, the man for whom she's grown such slow deepening trust, a respect bordering on admiration. To imagine him seeing her naked, feeling his hands pulling her panties down to her knees, even to realize that in a few seconds he’s going to put his hard mouth against her soft one, and push his hands under her shirt and feel her breasts, is too much for her. She shivers all over and backs away, and he rises and moves with her until she feels her shoulders touch the wall. He never takes his hands from her arms, and she thinks she might cry with shame or sorrow or helplessness to stop what’s going to happen, wanting him to, wanting him to stop, and afraid to look into his eyes again for fear of seeing what she wants to see there. And the fact is, she has never been so sexually excited in her entire life.
Her mind rabbits around in terrified circles. Did she shave her legs last night or the night before? She meant to wash her hair this morning but there wasn’t time. She’s got on the bra with the safety-pinned strap. Actually, it's a little surprising that Scully can think at all, considering that a good deal of the blood supply to her brain has been shunted in other directions. Profound biochemical changes are occurring in her as each moment passes. Her body is altering in small secret ways that totally ignore the chattering in her head.
Her skin flushes and changes subtly, takes on a musky scent; and every time he breathes it in, his penis grows harder and his balls tighter and his tenderness recedes in the roughness of increasing desire. Her skin is hot where his hands touch her, and when his mouth finally comes down on hers, all thinking stops. His tongue forces her lips apart and there’s no gentle coaxing, but she doesn’t seem to need it. She returns the kiss with a hunger that matches his, and he holds her head in both hands and moves his body into hers, his hips not touching her hips because he has to bend his knees to reach her when they stand. That’s easily fixed; he takes her to the bed, and they lie down, still kissing feverishly.
This is how they make love: he begins to rub her breasts through her blouse, and her nipples stiffen under his big hands, inviting his mouth, and he has to uncover them layer by layer, and then when he does, he sucks at them, and she moans and squeezes her eyes shut with a look of pure agony; their facial expressions for unbearable pleasure are the same as they are for unbearable pain. Really, I don’t know how they keep from killing each other. His hands are under her skirt, sliding up and down between her closed legs, and with each stroke her thigh muscles are loosening and then she lets him do what he wants; it’s just token resistance, but overcoming it seems to be part of their arousal. He finds her clitoris through the silky panties and she raises her hips up each time he moves his fingers there. He puts his hand down the front of the satiny material and then pushes them down so that they roll off neatly when she arches up again, and then she really is exposed. He kisses her all the way down her stomach and pushes her legs open and puts his mouth on her sex and licks her, first like a warm, wet washrag, and then faster and harder, and Scully grasps the cloth of his shirt, which for some reason he has only unbuttoned and not removed, and drags him up to her, and pushes it from his shoulders. And fine shoulders they are, too. Then they are two naked people, with a fine sweat of sheen making their bodies slippery and perfectly contoured against together. And even naked like this, for the first time in days, Scully isn’t cold anymore.
There’s not much foreplay beyond that; he wants to fuck her and she wants to feel him inside her body. The first thrust is a little rough and she tightens up; he’s too big to be at all careless, and he gets control and tries it a little easier the second time, although it all happens so fast that in just a few seconds she can accommodate his size and he is thrusting as hard and fast as he can and then he doesn’t seem too big at all, but perfect, absolutely perfect, and Scully feels all the world rushing up to a single focus of sensation, a moment when she cries out and puts her teeth in the skin just over his collarbone, but doesn’t bite down, just tries to muffle her deep groan before she loses control altogether, which she does, and she cries out Mulder! just once, and hears the echo shudder all through his body. He feels her orgasm in every place where he is flesh, in every place where he is spirit, and both Skinner and Mulder know every aching second of being buried inside her wet, pulsing flesh before the body human does what it was created to do, in a white rush of life and a cry wrenched from his heart. Their hearts. All of their hearts together.
Scully’s climax lasts a long time, coming down from the height of pleasure by slow degrees. Mulder is lucky to have lasted as long as he did, and he slides out of her and slides out of Skinner and slips away, wanting to hold on, but finding it impossible to continue. At the very moment Mulder fades away, he hears a sound that might be the flapping of wings.
Then it’s just Skinner holding her, rolling her over and cuddling her back against his chest, one hand around her body to reach between her legs and sustain her pleasure as long as he possibly can. Spooning her protectively, possessively, so she won’t turn around and look at him again. Fingering her, holding her, kissing the smooth skin on the back of her neck and shoulders, feeling his balls tingling where they have slapped against her so hard. His battered old heart aches with love and loss and happiness and sorrow all at the same time.
And at that moment, miles away, the earth moves.
