JiM :: The Weekenders

The sunflower seeds were unsalted. Skinner couldn't remember the last time he saw Agent Mulder eat a meal, but the loose pile of semi-chewed husks on the man's desk were testament to some sort of appetite.

//Oral fixation.//

Mulder wasn't the only one who'd ever taken a psychology course.

There was a twisted cellophane bag beside the empty seed cases; Greer's Organic, it read, Unsalted Sunflower Seeds.

Organic. Well.

Not that Skinner had wondered. Wondered feverishly. Thought about it nightly. About what Mulder might taste like.

Walter Skinner eased his frown into a thoughtful pursing of the lips and drew a seed out of the bag.

He was sure he'd read somewhere about their healthy properties. No doubt they lowered cholesterol. Walter already knew he liked them on salads.

He pressed the kernel past his parted lips. It was smooth, a pleasant shape against his tongue, not salty but…something. Dusty?

Placing it between the crushing force of two molars, Skinner heard it give a resounding little snap as the shell cracked. A surprisingly satisfying sound. He maneuvered the seed with his tongue, sorted the sweet meat from the woody splintered hull.

He tucked the seed against his cheek, spat the shell into the wastepaper basket.

A sliver of almost-almond…a mild flavor, not sweet, no, but…

Was this what Mulder tasted like?

Skinner crunched the sliver twice, swallowed, nearly ashamed.

He wanted to know what Mulder tasted like. He could admit that much. Two more seeds lay on his palm, mottled and pale as old bone. One of Mulder's reports had described a cult of Valkyries; they'd thrown bones to glimpse the future.

What could a handful of sunflower seeds tell you?

Skinner cracked a second seed between his teeth.

---

The flex of the older man's shoulders temporarily fascinated him.

This was why Fox Mulder failed to make his presence known as he watched his boss shake a few sunflower seeds into his palm. He wanted very much to see the man eat them. He didn't want to dwell on the reason why.

However, he let his shoe tap the floor, leaned in his office, one hand gripping the door jamb.

"Did you skip lunch today, sir?" Whatever was left of the 12 year old in him hoped Puckishly for a blush. Skinner seemed unruffled.

"Actually, Mulder, I'd stopped in to see if you'd eaten yet."

"Um, not yet, no."

"Waiting on Scully?"

"She went up to Saginaw to visit her college roommate. Didn't you sign off on her leave?"

Perhaps a slight flush this time.

"I did. I'm just used to her being here."

Mulder grinned.

"Me, too. I try not to take it for granted, though."

Skinner gave him a long, searching look. He felt himself begin to blush himself under the scrutiny.

"I don't want to forget how much I…" Depend on her. Owe her. Love her.

"I understand, Agent Mulder. But the question was about lunch." The older man's mouth relaxed into something like a smile.

"I'm starving. Did you want to…" Skinner nodded. "There's a cart on the corner of 12th and Corcoran, they make a killer Cheese Steak, sir."

He did smile now.

"I was thinking of someplace with chairs, Agent Mulder."

---

The waitress arrived.

Skinner had folded his own menu, and the girl, lashes stiff with mascara, glanced at him from the corner of her eye as he ordered.

"Two New York Strips, medium rare."

She nodded and padded away.

Mulder felt his eyebrows climb.

"Is there a problem, Agent Mulder?"

"Are you gonna cut it up for me, too?"

"Excuse me?" The brows had knotted above his nose.

"The last time someone ordered for me I was sitting on a stack of telephone books."

Skinner looked confused for a moment, then faintly embarrassed.

"It was rude, Mulder. I apologize. We can change the order—" He pushed his chair back, and Mulder shook his head.

"The Strip is fine. In fact, it's a good sign."

"A good sign?"

"Red meat. Staying power. Manly rapport. Am I getting a raise? Let me know, so I can behave accordingly."

Skinner found himself massaging the bridge of his nose. "Agent Mulder, I'm, afraid you've lost me, here."

"If I'm being promoted, then I should be polite, and meekly eat my meal as I nod and smile at the boss with obsequious sincerity."

"You're not being promoted, Agent Mulder," Skinner supplied, briefly.

Mulder, a faint dolphin smile on his lips, dropped his eyes to his folded hands.

"No surprise there, sir. But if I'm being let go, your guilt would probably have spurred you to order the lobster," he lifted his head again, caught Skinner's eyes with his own.

"Agent Mulder, you're not being promoted, and neither are you being 'let go'."

"Well, that's a relief. I wouldn't want to mess with this streak of mediocrity."

Skinner didn't comment, and Mulder's smile widened.

---

The waitress was handing them dessert menus and Mulder was dabbing at a glob of steaksauce on his lapel with a cocktail napkin damp with the condensation from his water glass.

"I guess I should have ordered the Lobster after all," he said gravely. "It comes with a bib."

"I think I finally understand your taste in ties."

"Are you mocking my fashion sense, sir?"

"Mulder, " he said. Mulder thought his face was like a mask hammered out of bronze, like the depiction of a god. "If you continue to call me sir, you'll have to take a cab home. If you're joining me for dessert, you'd better start calling me Walter."

"Walter. Walter." Mulder repeated it as if he liked the sound of it. Or the taste. "I'll have the strawberry cheesecake."

This was directed at the waitress who had reappeared at their table as if conjured from a bottle.

"To go," he added, eyes on Skinner, and bright as brass coins.

Mulder and Skinner did little else but stare at one another until the check came. It took three years to bring Skinner's credit card back, and six just to walk to the door.

Never had a parking lot seemed so endless.

It was a strange, heightened time. Mulder's shoulder's itched beneath his linen shirt; he could hear the whisper of his clothes as he made his way toward the gray silhouette of Skinner's somehow…muscular, car.

Mostly, Mulder marveled that he could walk at all. The glint in Skinner's eye had promised many things, and an erection was near the top of that list. He attributed his body's restraint to a rigid discipline of canned porn and a "no jerking off before 1 AM" rule.

Making a conscious effort not to shift his weight from foot to foot like a kid who needed to pee, Mulder endured the 3.78 million years it took Skinner to unlock the passenger door and hold it open.

Clearly, Mulder would be collecting Social Security before they got back to Skinner's place.

//I'm never gonna make it.//

Once in the car, Mulder knew that he'd left his reason in his other pants. He hadn't even closed the door of Skinner's car yet, Skinner was still walking around to the other side, and his dick was suddenly very much alive.

//The car. Smells. Like. Him.//

The cab of the car was warm, as glassed enclosures will be, even on a cool fall day. There was a heavy golden quality to the sunlight as it neared 4 PM, and it made the air feel thick and velvety in his lungs. Gilded motes of dust hung in the air, still, as if trapped in a moment.

A moment of anticipation that was never going to end.

Skinner slammed the door and Mulder snapped back to himself.

Turning the key, Skinner backed out of the parking space and turned on to the highway. They hadn't actually spoken about where they were going, but Mulder was fairly confident he'd be seeing the inside of that 17th floor condo again sometime soon. Skinner kept his eyes on the road, and made no attempt at small talk.

Mulder found himself trying not to fidget, actively not readjusting the angle of the passenger seat, not fiddling with the locks, not tugging at the seatbelt strapped across his chest.

His palms itched, and something told him that the fabric that was currently stretched across Skinner's thigh would soothe that itch.

While Mulder had been at Oxford, he'd made a trip to Paris to see the Rodin exhibit.

Ignoring the posted signs, he'd reached past the red velvet ropes and groped The Thinker.

This was better.

Living muscle, tensing beneath his hand, scalding even beneath a layer of cloth. //How the hell have I kept my hands off him?// Mulder squirmed a bit in his own seat, astonishingly close to coming in his just paid for Armani suit.

"Mulder," the other man gritted. Swallowed. Tried again. "You'll have to move your hand. I can't keep us on the road if you're going to touch me."

Mulder drew his hand away, letting it drag across the taut expanse of Skinner's trouserleg and primly steepled his fingers in his own lap, trying to camouflage his own arousal and keep his eyes away from his boss's crotch.

//Stick shift// he thought disjointedly. If Skinner hadn't driven an automatic, he surely would have driven Mulder insane; the constant crush of his jacket clad elbow would have eroded what little control he had left.

Mulder leaned his cheek on the window, it was blessedly cool, and watched the city slide past.

Finally. The apartment.

Mulder had to reign in the impulse to sprint up the seven flights, and matched his steps to his companion's. Together, they strode down the hallway to the elevator.

//Seventeen floors.// Mulder tucked his hands into his pockets. Skinner, he noted, kept flexing and relaxing his hands. Fist. White knuckles. Uncurl. Fist again. Mulder had a powerful and weirdly arousing image of Skinner crushing a tennis ball in that hand, nothing but a raveling spoil of rubber bands and torn felt.

//Seventeen fucking floors.//

This was going to make him go gray.

But this eon, too, passed, and the stale air of 6 by 8 metal box exhaled the rising note of anxiety and anticipated sex on the seventeenth floor with a cheerful idiot ding.

Skinner closed a hand on Mulder's forearm, and Mulder almost forgot who he was. Walter Sergei Skinner, Assistant Director was dragging him bodily toward an afternoon of heretofore undreamt of sexual activity like a caveman with a girl by the hair.

And Mulder was going to beat him to the door.

They nearly ran down the hallway.

Skinner, hand never leaving the cloth that covered Mulder's wrist, smoothly unlocked the door.

And drew Mulder in behind him.

He couldn't seem to let go of the other man's arm, or maybe he forget he was holding it at all, because Mulder was sure that he could read open Holy Shit terror in the older man's brown eyes.

They were both panting hard, exactly as if they had sprinted up the seven flights, and Mulder was afraid they'd miss their window. That the flight attendant that was sanity was going to wheel the juice cart down the long, narrow aisle of his mind and offer him a reality check with his honey roasted peanuts.

He couldn't let that happen. Mulder suddenly knew that it was his job to keep ideas like "responsibility" and "job security" and "reputation" at bay.

"Don't think," Mulder blurted. Then, balancing on the balls of his feet, Mulder leaned in towards the solid man before him, and inhaled.

There. Like paper and ink. Like a hot iron, fresh laundry. Like a fading shower, and blooming lust. Old Spice? No. Irish Spring? Uh uh. Coast. The Eye Opener.

Mulder let his eyes slip shut, mouth half open as he almost grazed his companion's face, hovering, breath close, to the other man, drinking in every note of the citrus bite in the man's aftershave, the hint of steaksauce on his breath.

Jesus.

Jesus!

//Yup, there's the steaksauce.//

It had been nearly three years since Mulder had had what he would call a good kiss.

Kissing Skinner was…was like sticking your tongue in a socket. For all his gentleness, there was a hot electric tang to the man's mouth that made Mulder feel like the blood was vibrating in his veins.

Moaning, he felt Skinner's hands tighten in his hair. Mulder could feel his scalp tighten, feel the burn as strands started to part from the skin.

"Ow," he murmured, and Skinner loosed his grip, stroking now, apologizing in low, narcotic whispers in Mulder's ear.

"Shut up," Mulder suggested, and opened his mouth to the other man, the hard wall of his teeth, the wet carpet of his tongue.

"Jesus, Mulder, you taste like—"

"Don't think," Mulder reminded.

Mulder, eyes closed, drifted. Paralyzed by pleasure and a kind of greed, he stood stock still and tried to memorize every fingerprint, wished Skinner would crush him, leave him at least a mark to treasure for a few days before the blue bruises yellowed and faded like late light.

"Mulder, are you still with me?"

Mulder wanted to laugh at that, but he didn't want to break his concentration.

"Don't stop. Keep going, Walter. Please."

Skinner obliged him, and the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt popped as the man yanked them over his clenching hands, and then his shirt followed his jacket to what Mulder hoped would be its final resting place for at least three days.

The other man gaped at him, breath harsh and irregular.

//Don't stroke out on me. Don't die before you touch me, Walter.//

Skinner's hands closed heavy and hot on his shoulders. They skimmed down Mulder's arms and curved around his wrists. Then Skinner dragged his fingertips back up the inside of Mulder's forearms, his touch light and gentle and just shy of the killing stroke as far as Mulder was concerned. He knew, suddenly, that bruises and welts would be far less permanent than the results of this tender stroking.

Up over the points of his shoulders, then down his chest, Skinner's broad fingers spread wide as they skimmed down over his heaving chest. Calloused fingertips brushed past his nipples and he felt himself twist into that touch.

Skinner was grinning now, a hungry edge sharpening the wide-eyed pleasure. Then those burning hands were sliding down his flanks, thumbs stroking through the light hair of his belly. They came to rest on his hips, perched on his belt-line but those thumbs kept stroking, lightly, maddening.

Mulder's eyelids fluttered, he felt almost as if he was Skinner's hands—

Mulder felt Skinner's hands tighten fractionally on the muscle of his upper arms.

And he was being turned gently, and walked forward—he turned his burning cheek to the smooth wall. Skinner's hands swept the bow of his shoulders, palmed the slope of his back. Chafing his cheek at the tender nape of Mulder's neck, Skinner murmured Mulder's name, and the younger man spread his arms, embracing the wall, the cool, nearly slick surface of flat latex paint against the insides of his wrists…He shivered, and Skinner paused, motionless, his weight leaned against Mulder's back, his temple to the space between Mulder's shoulder blades.

"Mulder," he rumbled, his chest full of steaming breath and low vibration, "Mulder I—" and Mulder shook his head, or rather, rocked the bones of his skull against the wall.

"Walter." And he knew there was enough in that word to rekindle Skinner's carnal focus, because he sounded wanton and broken and hoarse and so ready that he was hyperventilating—

Skinner's mouth counted every knuckle of his spine, and those hands, like—like—god, he didn't know what they were like, he'd never known, he'd never have believed—The other man's hands drew his zipper down, eased the button open, and urged the cloth of trousers and boxers both to sidle down his hips and fall around his ankles.

All the blood was draining from Mulder's head, and he wondered if that was the reason his vision seemed to be failing—It was like black thumbs pressing on his eyeballs from inside his skull, but blindness was nothing to pay for this sensation, this warmth, those hands…

Mulder closed his eyes. Who needed them? He had Skinner's hands…

Skinner's breath was hot against the small of his back, and Mulder moaned, hoped Skinner's wall was washable, because he was staining it with his thick, leaking cock, mashing his nose, lips against the satiny feel of the wall—and then he opened his eyes, panicked.

He craned his neck, Skinner motionless again, apparently hypnotized by the softness of Mulder's skin beneath the frizzle of fine down against his cheek. He was on one knee, hands curled at Mulders hip, head inclined.

"Walter—"

Even with Walter's hands on him he managed to scrabble around to face the older man.

"Walter, don't—"

And the kneeling man lifted his eyes to his; wide and dark with a tender focus that made Mulder lose the lock on his knees.

He slid down the wall, the skin over his spine rucking up and rubbing the paint nearly hard enough to burn.

Loose jointed and panting hard, Mulder could do little more than try to smile at his companion.

The heavy legs flexed, and Skinner was kneeling fully, but it was no submission. The man's spine was straight; hands curving on his bulging thighs, unconsciously bracketing his straining erection. Mulder was fenced by the strong V of the other man's spread thighs. Skinner, resting those curved palms on the caps of Mulder's knees, splayed his fingers and caressed the long path of Mulder's inner thighs, forcing the younger man's knees apart and lowering his head…

"What—"

But this time, Walter ignored him, and that stern mouth parted, and took him in.

Mulder was shuddering at the assault, but he couldn't get a purchase on Skinner's smooth skull, and where he would have knotted his fingers in his lover's hair and fucked them both unconscious, the heels of his hands skidded over Skinner's skin, fingers rigid, palms smoothing restlessly over and over the shining pate, Skinner's shoulders bright with sweat, and Mulder's moans plaintive and delirious in his own burning ears.

Screwing his eyes shut, Mulder chose to imagine the slick thrust of his dick disappearing into his boss's mouth, fairly sure that the reality of such a view would only short out the few neurons still functioning.

Two more strokes and he'd be done for…

And then a felt a blunt fingertip stab into him, cram it's way toward his prostate, and he yelped, bucked and shot into the flexing warmth of Walter Skinner's throat.

"O my god," he groaned, as he tried to lever himself up on his elbows. He could hardly hold his head up; he certainly wasn't in any condition to reciprocate, but an effort had to be made…

Skinner was sitting tailor fashion before him, panting and dazed-looking. Mulder noticed a darkening patch at the fly of his companion's trousers.

"You came in your pants," he reported unsteadily.

Skinner blushed.

"I blame you," the older man replied. "God. Mulder! Do you have any idea what you look like when you come?"

Mulder let out a breathless chuckle. "How the hell could you see anything? Jesus. I think you sucked my soul right out of my body."

"Come here," Skinner murmured, and Mulder held up his hands to ward his companion off.

"Let me regroup, here, Walter. I told you, I'm a little out of it."

Skinner crossed the carpet on his knees and settled beside the still puffing Mulder.

"My eyes don't seem to focus anymore…"

"It'll be dark soon, anyway," Skinner replied, a trace of humor underlying the heavy contentment in his voice.

"We'll have to turn the lights on, then," he smiled. "I want to get a good look at you next time."

"Next time," his companion murmured, as if he liked the sound of it.

"And the time after that…I'm pretty visual, Walter. And you haven't even taken your clothes off yet."

"Guess we'll have to do something about that."

"Yup."

"Later."

"Later's good," Mulder agreed, and he leaned against Skinner's shoulder.

"Later," a promise repeated against his ear, as Skinner nuzzled his hair.