Morning came, undistinguishable from night but for the fact that things were visible in the shack, barely, without the light of the candle, which had burned down to a puddle of wax shaped vaguely like New England. The aftereffects of the previous forty eight hours or so were visible on both Skinner and Scully as they crawled out of the sleeping bag, bleary eyed and bad tempered, every muscle stiff and aching from yesterday's overexertion and last night's cramped quarters.

It was still snowing, swirling white, but it hadn't piled up quite to the sill of the broken window yet. They crawled out the window and moved around experimentally. Outside, the snow was up to Skinner's thighs and Scully's waist, but it was on the lee side of the shack and not packed down, and without too much strain they could crunch through it. By tacit consent he went left and she went right, staying within visual range of the shack, to make their own outdoor toilets. Skinner found an area sheltered, if dangerously so, by firss, their branches laden with ice that could snap them at any second and crush him like a bug, though he was more concerned about the greater dangers of exposing himself to the elements, something no man wanted to risk for even a few seconds. It put him in an even worse mood than his headache and sore back and the edginess he felt being trapped in this place with someone out there who wanted to kill them.

They breakfasted, courtesy of the late David Hollister, on cereal and dried fruit and powdered milk reconstituted with melted snow. Afterwards Skinner busied himself trying to make a fire, going around breaking up wood while Scully cleared an area just outside the front door to create a natural updraft to serve as a flue.

They chipped. They splintered. They fanned. The draft created between the open door and the open window wouldn't even let them keep a match going. Scully found a rolled up painting on black velvet of dogs playing pool, and stuffed the top of it behind the upper part of the window frame to make a curtain. As insulation it left much to be desired, but it did stop the crossdraft and made the room surprisingly warmer. The overhang from the front door kept snow from falling on their firewood, but the air was damp and miserable and the wood simply would not ignite.

With the promise of a hot cup of coffee fading from her immediate future, Scully said, "We're going to die here, aren't we?"

"No, we're not going to die," Skinner said. "Here, take this." He handed her his pocket knife with the blade extended. "See if you can make some shavings from that table leg. If we can just get something to get this fire started, we'll be all right."

She shaved the wood. Skinner broke big pieces into small pieces. They blew, they coaxed, they cursed the pile of wood, and still two hours later the most they could achieve was an occasional flash of flame and puff of foul smelling smoke. Scully was finally at the point of lighting the last candle to get some heat in the room, but Skinner only looked at her and shook his head.

At one point a wood dove suddenly fluttered in through the open door. It skittered around the room in a panic, banging into the walls, and then flapped back out the door and disappeared again into the icy skies. Scully watched it bleakly until it was out of sight.

Of mutual accord, they stopped what they were doing and took a break, sitting with their backs against the wall, knees up, their spirits as damp and disconsolate as everything else in the shack.

Skinner said, "This idiot comes all the way up here to hike or mountain climb or whatever, and doesn't even bring any kerosene. Didn't he realize he could freeze to death?"

"Well, he's learned his lesson now," Scully said.

Skinner looked at her, his face closed, eyes just dark places in his head. Unshaven, clearly in a very bad mood, he looked dark and unfamiliar and dangerous. Scully hugged her knees and rocked back and forth a little.

"Who was he, Scully?"

"I told you, I don't know."

He kept looking at her. Staring at the opposite wall, Scully said, "You know, in Norse mythology, the whole pre- Christian view of life was based on the metaphor of a bird flying into a mead hall during a snowstorm. The bird blunders in by accident, flaps around awhile, confused by all t he noise and color and warmth, and then eventually i t blunders its way back out into the storm. That's what we do, we're born and then we die; we just have that little time of stumbling around this life in confusion in between." She glanced at him. "Did you ever read Beowulf?"

In a low voice that made the hairs stand up on her arms, Skinner said, "Who was he, Scully?"

She tucked her chin down to her chest for a moment and then sighed. Reaching inside the parka, she pulled out the note and passed it over to him. "The waitress at the diner gave this to me when you were in the bathroom. She said he'd been in looking for...for me."

Skinner unfolded the long rectangle of yellow paper, which had been torn from a legal pad, and read it several times. He turned it over to see if anything was on the back and then got up, his face clouded over with anger.

"Dammit, Scully, why didn't you show me this before?"

"I thought..."

Without waiting for an answer, Skinner crumbled the paper into a ball and went to the woodpile, where he tucked it in among the shavings and then struck a match. The dry paper ignited instantly and set the tinder ablaze. For a few seconds there was only black smoke, rushing up the valley in the snow Scully had dug out and swallowed up by the sky. Then the flames rose, and a cheerful little fire blazed up.

Scully said, "Oh."

Skinner came to sit beside her again. "Now you get to make the coffee," he said.

No protest there. Using Dave's one small pot and his one tin cup, Scully got water boiling and added two of the little packets of coffee from the backpack. The aroma flooded the room instantly, and Skinner closed his eyes and let the crackle of the fire and the smell of the coffee soothe his nerves. But when he opened his eyes again, nothing had really changed. They were rats in a trap, and Scully was not going to be forthcoming with any information that might get them out of there, or at least let him know what enemy to expect.

They shared the coffee like well brought up children, sipping a little, trading the warm cup, which gave as much pleasure as the coffee itself, back and forth for a few minutes. Then, as she handed it to him, Skinner said, "What else did the waitress say?"

"Well, she thought you were pretty cute."

Skinner only looked at her as he sipped, his eyes unamused. "Why was he looking for you?"

"He wasn't looking for me. He was looking for someone who looked like me."

"What else did the waitress say?" he repeated.

"I don't remember. Oh. She said he'd tried to get the sheriff to help him, but the sheriff just ignored him."

He gave up trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Because I thought you'd react just the way you're reacting now," she said. "You have questions, and I don't have the right answers. Then you don't believe me. You can't make me tell you what I don't know, Skinner."

"You knew about Dave but you didn't tell me. Is there anything about that shooter you aren't telling me?"

"I only knew about the note. I was going to tell you all along and now I have told you and that's all I know." Her own voice was increasingly tense, and when he offered her the cup she shook her head and got to her feet. "You finish it."

"What are you doing?"

She was going to the window. "I've got to get out of this place for awhile. I need to clear my head."

Skinner set the cup down and came after her. "Dammit, Scully, don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

She gave him a disdainful look, her hand already on the pool-playing dog curtain. "You're making me crazy," she said. "I need to be alone for awhile."

He was right behind her, and he seized her arm. "I said, stop."

She jerked, trying to free herself, but he held on. His grip was too tight, but when she winced he only loosened it without letting her go.

"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded. "Get your hand off me, Skinner."

All the ill humor of the morning seemed to be coming to a head, all the soreness, the aggravation, the frustration and depression that had left both of them spoiling for a fight.

"You're not going out there, Scully. You could freeze to death if you wandered away from the shack for even a few minutes."

"And you think I'm too stupid to know that?"

"I didn't say that. But I'm not going to let you risk your life over something as childish as a temper tantrum."

"A temper tantrum?" She gave a bitter laugh. "Come on, Skinner. Admit it, at least to yourself. You just can't stand to think of someone doing something against your command. You're such a goddamn control freak it just kills you when you can't make me do what you want me to do, doesn't it? You're so scared you'll be blamed if anything goes wrong, you've got to be in control of everything every second of every minute of the day, don't you?"

Skinner would have thought his feelings were beyond being hurt, but her words struck a nerve, and stung, and he raised a quick blister of anger to protect himself. "Well, someone's got to take care of you, don't they, since you've done such a lousy job of taking care of your own life-- or what's left of it."

That was cruel. He saw it in her eyes and he was sorry but there was just too much anger and frustration in him to offer up an apology. The thought he'd tried to keep from thinking all last night and all today exploded in his head and ignited his rage: she knew damn well who Dave was. Dave had been her lover. That note was a lover's note, and what the hell else wasn't she telling him about it?

"You cold son of a bitch." Furious, Scully struggled to get away from him, then struck at him with her free hand, though she might as well have sent him a telegram telling him the blow was coming. For one quick instant he considered just letting her hit him; maybe it would make them both feel better. But instead he caught her hand as it came at him and pulled her away from the window and shoved her up against the wall with his body, using it to hold her still, and without any anticipation of what he was going to do, he lowered his head and brought his mouth down on hers.

His immediate intent was to humiliate, to hurt her the way she'd been hurting him. A pointless demonstration of physical power. She knew it, and fought him, her mouth cold, muscles tensed with fury. Skinner only rubbed his lips against hers with unnecessary roughness, and then he thrust his tongue between them, forcing her mouth open and she stopped struggling and stood there while he kissed her.

In the space of a few heartbeats all violence faded from his kiss, brutality turning to persuasion, and he let her wrists go and slid his hands down her body, determined to make her respond to him. Bending forward, he gripped the backs of her thighs and lifted slightly, forcing them apart. Her hands free, Scully gripped the front of his coat, and turned her head a little, and opened her mouth willingly, hungrily, under his, making a small broken sound as she returned the kiss.

Thoughts flitted around Skinner's head like moths, but he banished them, no thinking allowed now, only sensation. Only her sweet, soft mouth letting him do whatever he wanted, kissing him back, the feel of her tongue, of her small living body pressed to his, and the fine tremor of desire he felt running through her. He could feel the faraway motion of her passion, like a falling star, and he wanted to stroke it, coax it, love it out of her, bring it to a meteoric explosion that would rock the planet if only he could somehow get to her, get inside her. Inside her. His mind reeled at the image. His hands fumbled at her parka, found the zipper and pulled it down, reached inside to the rough fabric of the thermal shirt, and closed over her breasts, and she gave a convulsive shudder and lifted herself up to him.

Skinner raised his head and tried to look down at her but she was too close and the room was too dim and he was too blind to see anything anyway. He tried to kiss all those places he'd been wanting to kiss for so long without even realizing it, her nose, her cheeks, her eyelids, her chin. Then back to her mouth, where she was eager for his return. The act of touching her breasts even through the shirt was so intimate they were both dumbstruck, shy; they stood for a moment rocking back and forth, swaying to no music but that in their heads, while he stroked her, running his thumbs over her nipples, the whole world narrowed to nothing but this, his hands on her breasts, her body trembling at his touch.

Skinner had never felt so real, so alive, so connected to another human being. But almost as soon as he realized this, he felt a change coming over her, a slow sort of withdrawal.

Gradually he became aware of her hands on him, flat against the front of his coat as if to slow the pounding of his heart, pushing backwards very slightly, not fighting him, but..."Wait," she whispered. "Wait."

He stopped. She turned her face away from his and he leaned forward and kissed the side of her neck. For a moment it seemed she would respond again, but the pressure of her hands increased and she said, "No. Stop."

Skinner paused, uncertain, then gripped her arms again and pulled her against him fiercely. She said in a small voice, "Please. Not like this." She was breathing hard and he could feel the heat from the flush of her skin, but he had to listen to what her words were telling him and not what he thought her body wanted.

Then they were not touching at all. The separation was like a tearing apart of some living thing, and he stood in front of her with his fingers still curled in the shape of her breasts and the taste of her still in his mouth, the ache and throb of her still in every cell of his being. But when she moved away further, he knew he'd lost her, if he'd ever had her to begin with. Worse, he knew in that instant that he'd never be able to look at her again without feeling some of the ache of desire and loss he was feeling right now.

They couldn't look at each other. Skinner was dizzy, offset somehow, a man coming out of a very realistic, very intense dream; what the hell had just happened? He had absolutely no idea what to do next.

Scully repeated into the still air, her voice the voice of a ghost, "Not like this," and turned away from him.

Standing there, suddenly alone, Skinner remembered something his grandfather had told him eons ago, something long forgotten until just now. "The worst thing that can happen to a man is when he finally figures out what it is he wants and knows it's too late to get it."

There was a beginning and an end to his life here somewhere but no fanfare and no sense of closure, and he stood paralyzed and helpless without any context. The voice that had always sustained him, whispering, be a man, Walter, stand fast, be strong, hang tough, was curiously silent.

Scully pushed back the makeshift curtain, swung her legs over the windowsill, and vanished into the snow. He let her go, staring at the ludicrous image of dogs holding cue sticks and smoking cigars, trying not to think at all because he knew that when he thought about what had happened it was going to hurt, like moving a sleeping limb and knowing that the pins and needles of returning circulation were going to be unbearably painful. He didn't want to face that pain. He didn't want to wake up anything ever again. And he didn't want to be in love with Dana Scully.

But like the bird of the Norse myth, he had stumbled in and out of paradise, and now he had to somehow come to terms with the fact that it was over before it had ever really begun.

*******************

Chapter Nine: Heat