Date: 12 Apr 1999 16:41:10 -0400

This is for Drovar, 'cause I said I would and I meant it.

Spoilers: up to Season Six, including S.R. 819, Two Fathers, One Son
Archive: Archive/X, Gossamer, Ferret Cage

---

I'm drinking in my office, which I shouldn't, and grieving, which I have
even less call to do. It wasn't love between us, and I shouldn't feel
like this. He wasn't the one I thought I wanted, but perhaps I was
wrong.

Certainly he was attractive: wry mouth, sulky eyes, the faintest hint of
aftershave. But he was not Mulder, although they were alike enough to
be cousins. Or brothers.

Agent Jeffrey Spender, who once drove me to madness on a cool autumn
evening.

I find I am already thinking of him as dead, although he was alive when
the ambulance got here.

I knew he was working with that smoking bastard. I didn't know until
recently--when Mulder told me--that he was the smoking bastard's son.
The kid never had a chance, and my anger--my anger was, perhaps,
misplaced.

But I was angry, make no mistake, when I went down to his office late
one night in November. Diana Fowley had gone home hours ago; the
building was quiet. He was alone, and he had gotten Mulder in
trouble--again--with A.D. Kersh.

I stood in the door of the office, watching him as he worked. He looked
tired, and very young, his sleeves rolled up, his tie untied and the
first two buttons of his shirt undone. The computer screen cast an
eerie glow over him in the dark office, and I felt the first stirrings
of lust within my anger. I squelched them ruthlessly, telling myself it
was only because he looked so much like Mulder just then--

And he turned and saw me, and frowned slightly. "Sir?"

"Agent Spender."

He stood, flexed his shoulders and walked towards me. "You want to see
me, sir?"

I watched him until he stood just within my reach. "Let me be perfectly
clear, Agent Spender. You will not have any contact with Agents Mulder
or Scully, and you will stop your little vendetta--"

"Sir, with all due respect, Agent Mulder was--"

I threw him into the wall, pressed him into it with my body. He
was almost exactly my height, but slender. I tangled my fingers into
his hair and bounced his head on the wall--not too hard, just enough to
hurt--and whispered "Am I clear, Agent?"

He struggled, and I captured his hands between our bodies. "Am I clear,
Agent?"

"Crystal," he hissed, and twisted in my grasp. I slammed into him with
a hip and held him tightly against the wall, waiting. I
wanted--needed--him to submit to me. I was sick of the games everyone
was playing, sick of walking on the edge of death because these
motherfuckers wanted God knows what--

He was still fighting me, and I thought of the times Mulder had fought
me. There was one important difference. Mulder had never been aroused
by the struggle. Spender was hard and I could feel it and knew I could
have him if I wanted--and I wanted. His erection was not the only one
trapped between us.

I released his hands and stroked his cock through the fabric. He
gasped, a sharp sound, sharp as his hiss against my ear, but with a
different meaning. I bounced his head again, but more gently, and
loosened my fingers slightly. Backed off a little, so that he was
leaning against the wall but not pressed into it.

He didn't move. I continued to stroke him, felt his cock twitch, felt
him press harder against my hand. And he moaned, softly, a
heartwrenching sound. I pulled him to me and kissed him, fury and
desire and tenderness compressing my chest until he wrapped an arm
around my waist and answered the kiss passionately.

I stepped back and looked at him. Those hooded eyes were clear, the
pupils dilated with lust; that mouth swollen. He was trembling slightly
but his voice was very steady when he spoke. "Please. It's been so
long." He reached out and hooked a finger in one of my belt loops.
"Just one good hard fuck, Skinner. That's all I want."

One good hard fuck. That's all it was, all there was between us.
Except that now I find I'm staring out my window remembering how he felt
beneath me, his skin slick with sweat, his fingers digging into my
back.

We'd gone to his apartment, a tiny place not far from work. I think,
now, that his father must have wanted him close by. I didn't know then
what I do now.

It was clean, and he had a tank full of fish. Like Mulder, I thought,
only these were damn expensive fish--and well-cared for, it seemed.
Mulder's fish were cheap and always looked as though they'd just come
off a bender.

He offered me a drink, which I declined, and then he wound himself
around me, his cock pressing into my side, his mouth fierce against
mine. There was no fear in him, no uneasiness--just simple need.

Need can be the most erotic thing in the world.

We stumbled to the bedroom, stripped, tangled our bodies together on the
bed. He took lube and condoms from a drawer and handed them to me.
There was little of love in this, and I prepared him quickly, scarcely
remembering to care for his pleasure. He didn't seem to mind, and when
I began to fuck him he rocked against me, locked his legs around me and
begged softly for more.

I kissed him to shut him up and he came, covering both of us in his
semen. I followed him over that edge a few seconds later.

Then I cleaned us both up and left. He was asleep before I finished
dressing.

We never spoke of it.

I'm still staring out the window, thinking Walt, you idiot, you thought
it was Mulder you wanted, and it wasn't.

The phone rings, and I answer it. "Skinner."

"Sir, it's me."

"Yes, Agent Mulder?"

"I thought you'd like to know, sir, that Agent Spender will live."

----

The End.