TITLE: Choices Cost - Chapter 03 - Hot or Cold

NAME: Mik

E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: SRA

RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing – STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.

SUMMARY: You only hurt the one you love. Or...breaking up is hard to do.

ARCHIVE: Anywhere as long as my name and addy stay attached.

FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is an AU, very vague spoilers for multiple episodes, nothing current.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Skinner Mulder NC-17

DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything.

Author's notes: To my beta … who really knows her bones.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Choices Cost – Chapter 03 – Hot or Cold

by Mik

Coming through that thick, muzzy darkness was like trying to surface from a shipwreck, and getting the bends in my head. My first thought was that my head hurt. My second was to wonder if I had succeeded injuring myself enough to warrant going home. My third was to try and determine what position I was in and to identify the warm, fuzzy thing my face was pressed against. I shifted slightly to look.

That got an answer almost instantly. I heard a deep, low groan, rumbling in my ear. I didn't have to think to know that a) it was a groan of pain and b) it belonged to my boss. I managed to lift myself up and scoot backwards enough to look around. Just what I feared. I was lying atop my boss, at the bottom of the ravine. Shit.

Another movement or two and I was pretty certain that I had somehow managed to make that spectacular tumble without accruing any more damage than a couple of tears in my jeans, a flailed elbow and cheek, and a spot on my thigh that was certain to be Technicolor by morning. But nothing was broken. Shit again.

I scrambled to my feet, eliciting another groan and I knew immediately why. A jagged piece of something eerily white was jutting through the dark cloth of his jeans, and set off by the darker stain of blood around it. For a moment, I struggled with the bile that rushed to my mouth. I had managed to break Walter's leg. Shit, shit, shitshitshit.

"S - sir?" I knelt next to him. "Walter?" Oh, God, make him speak to me, please? Oh, God, don't let him say a word.

"I think..." He was gasping. "I think my leg is broken."

I almost giggled. I'm attributing that to shock. "N - no shit."

He lifted his head slightly and turned to look at me. Oh, damn it, his glasses were broken and hanging dizzily from his nose.

"Sir, don't move," I instructed.

He moved.

The bone did a little dance against the bloody fabric of his jeans.

He let out a roar.

I staggered away, struggling not to retch in front of him. When I returned I know my face was as white as the bone, waving at us from the ragged denim. He had somehow managed to move himself enough to lean against a tree, and he was frowning down at the injury the way one might frown at a flat tire. I suppose, with his glasses broken, maybe he couldn't see how bad it was. Surely he could feel it.

He looked toward me again. "Are you all right?" So much concern for me and none of my bones were in unauthorized places.

Because, again, he was seeing me as weak. I swallowed against the bitterness in my mouth and in my memory. "Yeah...fine." I flicked a hand limply toward him. "Sorry about that."

He looked at the grotesque wound. "We'll have to immobilize it somehow."

I stared at him. How calm. How matter of fact. He might as well have been instructing me to get a tire and jack from the back of the truck. "Yes, sir," I agreed quietly.

He didn't look up this time. "Can you do it?" he asked.

I had seen it done in hospital emergency rooms. Never in the wilderness. Well, in movies, perhaps. "I think so."

He leaned forward. For a moment, I thought he was going to faint and I took an almost desperate lunge toward him.

He was merely inspecting the bone. "We'll need to pack it with something to protect it from dirt and leaves." He sent a glance over me. "Your undershirt should do."

I didn't have to be told twice. I tugged both shirts over my head without bothering to unzip the sweat jacket, surrendered the cotton tee and then tugged the jacket back into place.

I watched him work the shirt into an artful fold and lay it gingerly over the protruding bone. I winced before he did when the cloth brushed over exposed flesh and nerve endings. Why were the words to Gunga Din going through my head at that moment?

Having arranged the lopsided square the way he wanted it, he continued to frown at it. I was amazed he was thinking coherently, but there he was, tilting his head to one side as if trying to decide on a wine to go with supper. Then he nodded, and said with a sigh, "It's going to need a splint."

I nodded with him, as if I agreed completely. "Yes, sir."

He glanced around and I could tell by the way his eyes narrowed he was having difficulty remaining focused. "We'll need … ah … two sticks," he said with effort. "About …." He lifted his hands and held them apart approximately two feet. "About … this long." He looked at the distance between his hands and increased the distance another foot. "This long." He looked up at me. That is, he raised his head in my direction, but his eyes were closed. "Thick," he insisted. "Sssssturdy."

"Oh, shit," I muttered, with a gulp. He's going into shock. Suddenly, every moment of my Advanced Life Support Training abandoned me. I tried to think. Keep him warm. Don't let him sleep. Stop the bleeding. Don't move him for risk of back injury. Clear airways. Tilt head back...fifteen compressions, two breaths...

"Mulder?"

I looked down at him. He was folding his broken glasses into his pocket neatly. "Sticks."

"Right." I nodded sharply and began to look around. It was a flat dry stream bed, pretty much empty of everything but stagnant water, rocks and dried leaves. No sticks in sight. How could we be in the middle of a fucking forest and not have any sticks?

I took a step toward the bushes where I'd left my breakfast. Lots of twigs and bushes and foliage. I wandered a bit in another direction. Found one possibility. My elbow was starting to sting. I was feeling the chill in the air, despite my sweatshirt. Scuttled around, poking under branches and bracken, mumbling and grunting.

It must have taken me half an hour to find two sticks of similar length and diameter, smooth and straight enough to brace and immobilize his leg. When I returned with my triumph, his head was back against the tree, his face pale, his eyes closed. My moment of panic would have been heart-stopping except he lifted his head and blinked at me. "What did you do, Mulder? Plant the tree and wait for it to grow?"

If I hadn't just broken the man's leg, I would have told him to fuck off. Instead, I smiled politely and held the sticks out. "Will these do?"

I'll be damned if he didn't inspect them like a backdated 302. "We'll need something to tie them into place," he said, at length, looking up at me speculatively.

I shook my head. "I've already given you the shirt off my back. You don't get my jacket, too."

"I had some twine in my backpack," he said, and only then I realized he was looking over my shoulder, up the hill we'd tumbled down. "Any idea where it went?"

"I'll go see if I can find it."

"Sun's going down in four hours, Mulder," he said dryly.

I did turn around and do the unthinkable. I extended one digit above the rest of my hand. He didn't see that eloquent finger. He had his head back against the tree.

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

I think he lied about when the sun went down. It seemed to get dark very quickly. And it got cold. We had immobilized his leg with sticks and twine, and kept the wound covered with my tee shirt without making him scream too loud. (In truth, he locked his jaw and did little more than grunt, even though I must have jerked that bone every direction but loose.) We had elevated his leg to stem the blood loss with a thick pile of leaves and his sweatshirt. Under his watchful, albeit blurry eyes, I built a small fire ring and got a nice little blaze going. For supper we had very squished sandwiches he had planned for our lunch and water from our canteens.

We didn't fill the time with any chatter. It was probably the longest period of silence I had spent with another human being since I left home. He spoke only when absolutely necessary, and when he did there was no sign of pain, only irritation, growling at me to do this this way, or get that done right. I took it. After all, a dying man can't growl, right?

The forest decided to start making interesting and faintly threatening sounds once the sun left us. As they were not sounds I am ordinarily exposed to, I found them unnerving. So, despite his evident pain, he seemed to find my nervous twitches and jerks amusing, sitting there, grinning at me every time. And he nearly filled the darkness with roaring laughter when I produced my personal weapon out of the holster at my ankle. "You'll appreciate this when we're set upon by wolves," I snarled at him, tucking it into my pocket.

That only made him laugh louder.

It got darker.

It got quieter, making the snaps and rustles of small footfalls beyond us all the more alarming.

And it got colder. Despite my zipped up sweatshirt I was shivering. He had to be even colder. All he had was that light, flannel shirt, since we'd used his tee shirt as additional padding between the sticks and the wound. But occasionally I flicked him glances over the fire and he seemed to be oblivious to the chill. Well, I suppose when half your tibia is sticking outside your leg, cold isn't that big a deal.

I couldn't sit still. I was cold, it was dark, I was stuck God knows where, with my boss whom I very nearly did a spectacular job of murdering. How could life get any worse? But, I should have known better than to ask. Not me. I asked it, silently, shifting uncomfortably in front of the fire.

Okay, maybe worse is an exaggeration. But it wasn't much comfort to me that he noticed how uncomfortable I was, and decided to try being kind again.

"Mulder," he said quietly, when I got up to pace, rubbing my arms, distractedly. "That won't keep you any warmer."

"No?" I looked down at him. "Makes me think it will."

He shook his head. "I spent a lot of nights in the rain and cold. I know all about this. You need body heat. Come here."

I stood there, knowing a bowel movement was imminent. He was unbuttoning his shirt, exposing his broad, muscular...bare chest. Okay. Maybe an orgasm was imminent. "Wh - what do you have in mind, sir?"

He saw something in my expression. I know it. "Relax, Mulder," he growled. "Your virtue is safe with me. Unzip your jacket."

I dry swallowed and moved toward him.

He shifted carefully, moving the - as yet - unbroken leg far away from the damaged one. Then he patted his chest. "Come here. Skin to skin. We'll stay warmer that way."

Did he say warm? I think I went up in flames at that point. I didn't even try to argue or protest. I settled down on my knees, carefully, between his spread legs, my mind spinning in six different directions; terror, thrill, pain, pleasure, longing and dread. Not to mention intense arousal. He reached up to help me take my jacket off, and then encouraged me down against him, drawing the jacket over me like a blanket.

It was a moment so intense, so pure it was almost holy. There I was, in his arms, between his legs, against his flesh. On one hip, my legs were tucked under his, my cheek was against his collarbone. His arms lay lightly around my shoulders. I struggled with a desire to shift a fraction of an inch and kiss his bared body, to taste him, lick, suck, consume him. I felt a tremble run through me. A tremble of need, and fear that he would sense my need.

"It's okay, Mulder," he said quietly. "We'll get through this." And I swear he kissed the top of my head.

- END chapter 03 -