Knife's Edge

I'm supposed to kill Duane Barry now. I have the dose in my pocket, my sweaty fingers reflexively curling around it, loosening, curling again, rolling it against my palm. It's freezing outside, late on a November night at the summit of Skyland Mountain. The wind is picking up and making the window panes groan. The lights outside the lodge, reflecting on the glass, look like a Christmas party.

Mulder is slumped into an uncomfortable conference chair, long legs spread, eyes glazed and staring at nothing. It's the first time I've seen him sit down since the car. I don't know if he's giving up or just reworking things in his head, going over the facts, the hunches, the loss, one more time.

I roll the vial in my fingers again and swallow. I walk over, stand close. "C'mon," I get out around the lump in my throat.

He blinks up at me, expression unchanged. "What is it?" He's stopped saying my name. I think I'm one of those hunches he's trying not to have.

"Just come with me," I tell him, not knowing where I want to take him or if I can ever come back from it.

He stands, resisting the urge to stretch his long body out of its funk. I smell it on him: car exhaust, mint, grief. I jerk my head to the side and he follows me down the hall, into an empty, dark room.

I turn and look into the shadows masking his face. My stomach flips as I open my mouth to confess, to lie, I really don't know which. His sigh is loud in the quiet, breaking across the foot of distance between us. I sink to my knees, hand relinquishing the vial in my pocket, coming out to grasp his belt buckle. He gasps. I feel his body tense, thigh muscles hard and ready to stumble away. In a desperate attempt to keep him there, I lurch forward and wrap my mouth around his slacks-covered cock, sucking hard.

His hands come up and shove me away from him with a force I wouldn't have expected under his exhaustion. I swallow, prepare an apology, some excuse. But he rips open his belt, his fly. Reaches into dark underwear and pulls out his stiff dick with one hand, wraps his other around the back of my head and pulls me back in. I barely have time to take a breath and then his cockhead mashes against my lips.

And he's slick. It smears across my lips, my chin, before I open my mouth and taste it full on my tongue. Mulder shoves himself in to the hilt, shakes as he holds my head in close. As if I'm going to be taken from him, too. He starts fucking in my mouth, and his slick coats my tongue and throat. Tears creep down my face silently, and Mulder's cock plunges all the way in, drags all the way out, letting me taste it every time. His hands are hot in my hair.

It's not long before he comes, gritting his teeth, the barest sound escaping into the room. I swallow, not wanting a mess to clean up. Not wanting to lose this pungent piece of him, this evidence, this dirty deed that has cleansed me of the shit for just a little while.

He slides out of me on an aborted groan, and I realize I'm gripping his hips so hard my hands are shaking. I let him go, and he steps back, breathing hard and uneven as he refastens his pants and his belt, turned slightly away from me, still on my knees.

If it weren't dark, if he would turn back around, he'd see that I'm glistening with his spunk. He'd see me supplicant before him, tear-stained and on the verge of breaking. He'd see the raw potential: to fall for him, to fuck him over. He'd see us both on that knife's edge. But he doesn't turn. He makes his way to the closed door, turns the knob with a trembling hand, and walks out, closing it behind him.

I put my hand back in my pocket. I finger the vial once more.

I have to kill Duane Barry now. There's no getting around that, transformational blow-job or not. But when I swallow, and I feel the last of his hot slick lubing the bruised throat he gave me, I know I'm going to have to find her, to bring her back. There'll be no confessions, no forgiveness. But I can undo a little of that grief. I can soothe that raw bruise I gave him when I let them take her.

I lick my lips and stand up. I smooth my hair back, getting my breath under control, and I open the door.