Halrloprillalar prillalar@gmail.com http://prillalar.com/ April 28, 1999 RATING: PG13. FANDOM/SPOILERS: X-Files. No spoilers. SUMMARY: Mulder/Skinner. Two first kiss scenarios. DISTRIBUTION: Archive by permission. Email forwarding allowed. DISCLAIMER: CC, 1013, Fox, not me. MISC. KISSES by Halrloprillalar - prillalar@gmail.com & Sergeeva - http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/7155/ OVERTIME part one by Sergeeva, part two by Hal He circled his aching shoulders and bent to the circle of lamplight again. Last casefile. Scanning down the first page of notes, he heard a soft sound from the outer office and looked up. Mulder in the open doorway, rumpled and dark-eyed. His shirt looked as if he'd slept in it and his jaw was shaded with evening stubble. Skinner registered the familiar reflex of weariness and a skewering stab of something else... Mulder sloped up to the corner of the desk, his mouth masked with a long-fingered hand, looking... shy? Skinner capped his pen and straightened, "Was there something you wanted, Mulder?" The hand dropped, revealed a flickering smile. Wistful, almost. "I saw your light. Don't let me disturb you..." He padded to the window at Skinner's back and began fiddling with the slats of the louvered blind. Skinner sighed and bent over his file again. Rustling from behind him. He ignored it and turned a page. A thump and a clink. Skinner made notations in the margin and turned another page. Breathing. Sighing. An indrawn breath and then silence. He was holding his own breath, waiting for... No good. He slapped the buff folder closed and spun his chair round. Mulder was just watching him. One hand fingered the books and carafe on the lamp table, the other rubbed across curving lips. Distracting. Skinner frowned and turned back to duty. Bony hands on his shoulders, trying to... Shocked, he braced his legs and resisted the lure. Shrugged off the warm palms. "What are you playing at, Mulder?" Column of heat at his back, long body stepping up close. Panic like dry leaves rattling over his skin. Fate's low voice: "No game, sir." That mouth, on his bare scalp. Slow, warm, settling soft. Changing all the rules. *** That bare scalp, under his mouth. Smooth, warm, curving hard. Something came loose in Mulder, a bird let out of a cage to fly dizzily around the house. Only a matter of time before it slammed into something. The point of contact was hard to break, but a kiss on the top of the head has a natural length and in the end Mulder's mouth came free. He straightened up, took a step back. Wondered how fast he could raise the blinds, open the window, and jump out. Mulder passed his fingers over his lips again, erasing, savouring -- he couldn't tell. He waited. For a moment, Skinner didn't move, except to tense the muscles in his back. Then he set down his pen, put his arms on the rests of the chair, and slowly began to turn around. The silent tension brought a sudden flash of Darth Vader, helmet lowering over his scarred head as his seat turned him to face his subordinate. The reality was more unnerving. Eyes dark, Skinner looked at him for a grave moment before speaking. "Why did you do that?" Why? Mulder searched for the appropriate flip answer, the one that would let him leave alive. All that came to him was the truth, that body and subconscious mind had pulled him in here, spurred him to act, and now left him to face the consequences alone. So, the truth. "I don't know." Skinner continued to stare. Mulder wondered if he'd end up twitching on the ground, the last sound in his ears Skinner's "Apology accepted." Then he blinked and Skinner stood in front of him, gripping his shoulders painfully. "I do," Skinner said. And kissed him. Somewhere in the crazy corners of Mulder's mind, Darth Vader opened the window and the bird flew out. The kiss found its natural length. All night. F I N I S *** TWIST part one by Hal, part two by Sergeeva "I thought you were going to back me up." Mulder came out from behind his desk as Skinner walked in. "It's not as simple as that, Agent Mulder." Skinner stopped, folded his arms over his chest, leaned onto one hip. In the dim light, his face was shadowed, grim. "It's not?" Sitting on the edge of his desk, Mulder crossed his own arms. "You know it's not." Skinner looked away for a moment, then fixed his eyes on Mulder. "You want everything to be black and white. Right and wrong. Hero and villain." Standing, Mulder stepped closer. "And which are you?" Skinner moved in too, hands on his hips now. "I am on your side, Mulder. Can't you believe that?" "That doesn't do me any good if you don't *do* anything," Mulder hissed into Skinner's face. "You don't know what I do." The words had a dangerous edge to them and Mulder wondered if he'd regret this later. But he was too far gone now to stop. "Exactly. I don't know. So how can I trust you?" "Mulder--" "So far as I know, you do nothing." "Mulder--" "Do nothing, reveal nothing, tell me you're on my side, and leave me to twist in the wind." He saw the hand rising in his peripheral vision, knew he was going to take it on the chin, he could take it, not like some... Skinner grabbed Mulder's jaw, yanked him closer, and kissed him. Fierce, probing, inescapable. Mulder pulled back, but Skinner's other hand gripped his shoulder. Blackness came up and swallowed him and he realised that he had closed his eyes. The hands dropped. Mulder opened his eyes. Skinner spun on his heel and walked out, turning at the door. "It didn't happen," he growled. The door slammed and he was gone. *** A moment of stunned hesitation, missing the press of Skinner's fingers against his jawbone, then he was barrelling out into the corridor, listening for the retreating tread. A few yards along a door was closing its last pneumatic inch and he was through it and hearing his own breath in the echoing stairwell before he'd made a conscious decision. Someone was climbing and he prayed it wasn't just one of the filing clerks as he took the first flight two at a time. Peering upwards he saw heavy polished shoes first, then long legs, finally, hauling himself round the intervening turn in the stair, the whole critical mass of Walter Skinner. Critical, suddenly, to his being able to breathe, or think, or function. His nemesis turned and waited for him, one hip against the rail, resigned to a rematch. Mulder climbed level and halted, a Christian before the lion. Then he rushed at Skinner, pushing his full height against thighs and pelvis and chest. Skinner spread his arms, prepared for anything and Mulder forestalled the headlock with a bearhug. Hard body but ambushed by unlooked-for passion. In the angle of the rail he bent Skinner back, hipbones bruising together, feet scuffling for purchase on the tiles. His mouth undisciplined, inept, insatiable, *his* mouth hard, then soft, then melting. He was being *allowed* this kiss. That muscle could have upended him into the void with a flex of biceps. Instead, while he feasted on a shaven cheek and a stretched throat, pencils slid from his pocket and ricocheted back to the basement, while he licked at firm lips and tender earlobes, caution and willpower followed the pencils into oblivion. Smugly, he pulled back long enough to breath: "Deny that." F I N I S Halrloprillalar prillalar@gmail.com http://prillalar.com/