Work Text:
Au Naturel
by JiM
The water steamed around him, so hot it was nearly painful. But he could feel the muscles of his back slowly unkinking, one fiber after another slowly succumbing to the warm seduction of the swirling waters.
"Mulder."
"Hmm?" Mulder sat on the edge of the pool, taking another sip of bottled water but turned one red-rimmed hazel eye to look at him.
"This was a good idea. You were right."
Skinner closed his eyes to avoid that same flash of quicksilver triumph that Mulder could never suppress each time Skinner finally capitulated and admitted that his lover's ideas were better than his own -- at least in the romance department. This was probably the only area of his life in which losing made him a winner, he reflected, and tipped his head back to rest it on the stone lip of the pool.
The hot springs were theirs alone, this early in the morning. After three weeks of hellish cases, for once entirely terrestrial in their evil, they had barely made their red-eye flight and arrived here at this hideous hour of the morning. Dawn was still a purple promise when they staggered in. The night manager had clucked sympathetically at their dishevelment and allowed them to remove a swimsuit apiece from their luggage before pointing them firmly in the direction of the rock-lined spring behind the lodge. Her promise of a hot breakfast waiting on their balcony in half an hour was the only thing that forestalled Skinner's automatic refusal. That, and Mulder placing him in a very discreet and completely unbreakable wristlock. So here he was, soaking in a hot mineral spring at 5 am on a misty morning somewhere deep in Yosemite.
And now his lover, his odd, eccentric, bizarre, frequently mistaken for insane, his endlessly creative lover, was leaning over him with sensual purpose limned in every line of him.
Skinner's head was drawn back by gentle, firm hands and Mulder's mouth moved over his. His lips were gently pried open and a flood of shockingly cool water spilled into his mouth from Mulder's. He drank it down eagerly, tongue searching after Mulder's, the stale tasted and cramped air of the airport fading from his memory.
Always. It was always like this, away from the insanity that called the tunes of their working world. He drank from Mulder, laughter, fun, affection, the goofy, painless insanities of life. In his more metaphorical moods, he saw himself as dried earth, just waiting for a gentle spring rain to awaken him.
Instead, he had to grin even as Mulder pulled away, he had gotten a flash flood. Fox Mulder, force of nature, had descended on his life.
And he wouldn't have it any other way.
"What are you smiling about?" Mulder asked, slipping into the warm water beside him.
"I'm still thirsty," Skinner smiled, reaching for him.
end