by Griffin Grimes

SUMMARY: Mulder and Skinner find that love can heal old wounds.

**WARNING: this is a slash story including detailed descriptions of male/male consensual sex. If you are under the age of 18, or if you don't enjoy this type of story, please go no further.**

To anyone looking for lots of graphic sex scenes: this turned out more romantic-erotic than graphic-erotic, but I like it that way. Just letting you know.

This is my first fanfic with a rating greater than PG-13, so constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to my revolving supply of Beta readers/editors, who took turns holding my hand through this virgin experience with slash: Shalimar, A.D. (my future drug pusher), M.M. (my porn supplier), and D.P. (my two-night stand), as well as individuals from the XSlash and XFF lists (J.H., Eliz, J.McW., and others) who supported me on this. You were all incredible! Was it good for you, too?

George Washington University Hospital
Washington, D.C.
April 26, 1996

The man hurried to the nurses' station; the doctor assigned to his wife's case was waiting there for him.

"Doctor, what is this about? Has her condition worsened?" he asked in a low, tensely-controlled voice. The doctor led him into a nearby empty waiting room, closing the door behind them.

This was not a good sign, the man knew.

They sat down, the doctor preparing to perform the most difficult task in his profession. He knew that the man would want nothing but the direct, honest truth. Still, the doctor would do what he could to lessen the blow. In the weeks he had known him, he had come to respect the man a great deal.

"Mr. Skinner, I'm sorry, but your wife had a sudden massive cerebral hemorrhage. She passed away peacefully less than an hour ago."

A long moment of silence passed between them. The doctor got up to leave. "I'll be available if you need me for anything," he said sincerely, closing the door softly behind him to give the husband privacy.

Skinner's gaze fixed on the blank white surface of the closed door. He thought hatefully of the bastards who had run her off the road, the ones who had never been caught for what they had done. Then he lowered his face into his hands, silently weeping for the end of a marriage of 17 years. And for the end of a life.

Hoover Building
Office of Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner
Friday, September 20, 1996

It had been five months since Sharon Skinner had died, but Dana Scully could tell that her boss was still deeply disturbed by the loss of his estranged wife. Five months was not an unusually long time to grieve, Scully knew. Sometimes you never got completely over the death of someone important in your life. The regrets you have over what you did or did not do while they were alive can stick with you forever.

Scully became particularly aware of a change in Skinner the last time she and Mulder had been called in to go over their latest case reports. Normally stern and businesslike, he had surprised them both when he hadn't called them on the carpet for the way they handled the situation, which was up to par with their typically non-traditional investigative approach. However, what Mulder had done was more serious than usual.

"When you left with Mr. Smith to go see your mother in the hospital, you left Scully at the site with the wounded assassin?" Skinner asked to confirm what he had read in Mulder's report of the incident.

"Yes, Sir," Mulder replied, looking regretfully at his boss, then at Scully. "I thought he was dead, and Smith was leaving without me. It was very important that I got to the hospital as soon as I could."

"Sir, as you know, Mulder's mother was in a coma, and in critical condition," Scully cut in, defending her partner's hasty decision to leave her behind. "Mulder believed very strongly that Mr. Smith was the only one who could --"

It was Skinner's turn to cut in. "Thank you, Agent Scully; I'm sure Agent Mulder will think twice the next time he stabs an assailant in the neck and doesn't bother to check if he's actually dead. Agent Mulder," Skinner said, glancing up from the report to address the younger man. "In the future, don't forget that Agent Scully *is* your partner. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir, I won't," Mulder answered sheepishly. He couldn't imagine what he would have done if the alien bounty hunter had killed her because of him.

"That will be all," Skinner curtly announced, going back to the other work that was on his desk. The agents paused in disbelief before they turned to leave their supervisor's office.

"That's it?" Mulder exclaimed as soon as the door was shut. He glanced over at the A.D.'s assistant seated behind her desk and lowered his voice, taking Scully's arm and hurrying her down the hall. "What, no royal reaming for leaving you there like that? Scully, you could have been killed because of me."

Scully smiled at her partner and raised a brow knowingly. "Why, Mulder, you sound disappointed. Is a 'royal reaming' from Skinner what you really want?"

Mulder didn't want to try answering that one.

Scully pushed the button to go down to the basement. She looked over at her partner, hoping to make light of the situation and divert him from his self-imposed guilt trip. Mulder deserved Skinner's ire for all the other times he had gone off and left her behind, but she understood his haste in wanting to save his mother.

Mulder hesitated before responding to her question. Not an easy task to catch Mulder off guard, Scully thought as they stepped inside the elevator.

"Well, I would have expected him to at least yell at me a *little*," Mulder explained, finally putting on a playful grin to match Scully's. "I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_...and it's started right there in Skinner's office."

"Mulder, you watch *way* too much television."

The elevator door closed silently in front of them. As the elevator began to descend, Scully thought again of how to broach the subject she had been contemplating.

"I get the feeling something's going on with Skinner, and it has nothing to do with an alien takeover," Scully began.

Mulder glanced down at his partner, not sure what perfectly reasonable rationale she could have come up with to explain Skinner's distracted state. He liked the "alien pod person" idea quite well. Maybe he *did* watch too much of the SciFi Channel. But, Hell, he thought, there's a lot of good stuff on there.

"Think about it, Mulder," Scully continued. "Skinner hasn't been the same ever since Sharon died. He's always been a little aloof, but never like this. He doesn't even notice us when we pass him in the halls. And his behavior today at what should have been your 'reaming' -- he never would have let that kind of thing get by so easily. Not from either of us."

"And you think this is all because of his wife?" Mulder asked as the elevator door opened to the basement. They headed back to their office. "Scully, they hadn't been close for eight months; Sharon told us that herself. We didn't even know he *had* a wife. They had been living apart for months, and the divorce papers had been ready to sign just before the 'accident'."

Mulder stopped suddenly outside their office door and leaned a shoulder against the wall. It suddenly dawned on him. "Do you think Skinner is feeling guilty about that? About the attempt to frame him being related to Sharon's death? It wasn't his fault..."

"Easy for us to say, Mulder, but harder to accept when you're the one whose wife died. I think one of us needs to talk to him about this; after all he's done for us, for the X-files, we owe it to him to try to help him through this."

"So, what are you going to say to him?" Mulder asked.

"Me? Mulder, why do you assume I'm the one to talk to him about this? You're the psychologist. *You're* going to do the talking," she stressed, poking him on his chest with a finger to let him know she meant business. "One guy to another. Besides, I don't think it would be a good idea for me to approach him with this; he might think I was coming on to him...trying to get him on the rebound."

"Scully! I never thought you had the hots for Skinner!" Mulder exclaimed teasingly.

Scully cast him The Look.

Mulder parried with his Lost Puppy face, and threw in The Whine. "Come on, Scully, I'm not good at this 'heart to heart' crap. I'm not even sure if Skinner *likes* me; it's not like we've ever socialized together. Half the time, he looks like he wants to zap me with a stare and reduce me to a pile of ashes. Now you want me to play 'buddy' with him and talk to him about his feelings? Scully, I can't even do that with guys I *am* friends with."

"I thought *I* was your only friend, Mulder," Scully retorted with a smile, resolved not to give in on this. "It'll be good practice for you. Who knows, you might decide to leave the F.B.I. to become a radio talk show psychologist. You have the degree for it. Now you just need the personality."

"Well, my mother always said I should have something to fall back on," Mulder responded, continuing the joke. He was resigned to the fact that Scully was not going to let him squirm out of this.

He finally opened the office door, now that his sentence as Skinner's new confidant had been carved in stone by Saint Scully herself.

No, she was right, he thought; he was the one who should talk to Skinner.

"Do you think I have the voice for radio?" Mulder asked. He lowered his voice in his smoothest Frasier Crane imitation. "Good evening, listeners; I'm doctor Fox Mulder, and I'm here to talk to *you*."

Mulder grinned down at Scully, who shook her head and smiled.

"I know," Mulder answered for her, nodding. " 'Don't quit your day job.' "

That night
Mulder's apartment

Well, Scully had done it, Mulder thought as he toweled himself off from a rare evening shower. Cornered him into playing the pal with Skinner to find out what was bothering him so much and, somehow, do something to help him through it.

"And here you are, Mulder, making yourself Zest-fully clean like you're going out on some kind of date," he said to his hazy reflection in the fogged-up mirror.

/Date. Hah. You haven't been on a date since...shit, you can't really call what happened with Kristen Kilar a 'date',/ he mused, quickly sinking into melancholy at the memory.

Then he remembered how this meeting had been arranged.

Mulder had called Skinner's office after Scully had doggedly insisted that he talk to the A.D. *now*, not later that weekend or Monday morning.

Under Scully's watchful glare, Mulder was patched through to Skinner and awkwardly invited him to go out for a couple of drinks after work. "I thought it would be a good idea for us to get to know each other a little outside of the office," Mulder had offered as his reason for the invitation. He had immediately wished he had practiced some other excuse.

Apparently, Skinner had planned to run some errands right after work. For a moment Mulder thought he was off the hook for at least one night. Then Skinner surprised him, destroying his hope for a 72-hour reprieve.

"Come over to my place at nine," Skinner had said gruffly. "I'll be able to talk to you then. There's something I've been wanting to talk with you about privately, as well."

Getting ready to leave, Mulder wished he had never been to Skinner's apartment before, so he could pretend to have gotten lost on the way over and postpone their little chat.

Continuing to rub the towel over his head and chest, Mulder strode from the bathroom to the bedroom -- which was really more of a storage room, since he never actually slept there. But it did have a big closet, so he also used it as a dressing room. A dressing room with a lot of junk strewn around. Dirty clothes overflowing the laundry basket in one corner, a basketball and gym bag in another, a rowing machine peeking out from under the bed, that damned big Hefty bag full of cans he kept meaning to take for recycling, piles of books and papers all over the bed and floor. No neater than his office at work, he considered, but a lot smellier. A *lot* smellier. And those pine-scented air fresheners worked great for cars, but didn't quite do the job on a bachelor's apartment. Not *this* bachelor's, at least.

He chose his favorite gray T-shirt and his best jeans from the closet and made sure to get a new pair of red satin boxers and white socks that didn't have holes in them out of the top dresser drawers. Mulder wondered why he was worrying about what his underwear looked like, since he was only going to Skinner's house for a couple of hours.

For some reason, the fact that Skinner had suggested he come over rather than going to a bar to talk made Mulder even more uneasy than he had been when Scully first cornered him into this. "Scully, I'm going to kill you if Skinner starts crying on my shoulder," he muttered threateningly at his new white Reebok half-tops as he laced them up.

However, the image of Skinner nuzzling at his neck suddenly did not seem so unpleasant to Mulder, after all. He set the thought aside, as was his habit in such moments.

Fifteen minutes later he had donned his black leather jacket, stepped out the door, and was on his way to Skinner's apartment -- and to who knew what.

Continued in Chapter 2