Wild for to Hold

Disclaimer:The movie "The Lazarus Bowl" and its characters and situations belong to Wayne Federman. Pleas don't sue me.

A/N: The movie doesn't give them first names so I'm calling them Skye Mulder, Gerald Skinner and Chandra Scully. Aren't those great names?

Agent Skye Mulder lay flat on his back on the bed, on top of the scratchy hotel coverlet, still wearing the muddy suit he'd been tussling zombies in earlier that evening.

He was playing with his flashlight. Sure, he thought resentfully, maybe it wasn't as big as some peoples', but didn't technique count for anything? He pulled himself up against the headboard, taking a certain vicious pleasure in the loud way it banged against the wall when he leaned on it, and propped his flashlight between his knees, so it shone a circle of light on the ceiling. He could make a really good Bat Signal with two hands.

He was making shadow puppets because he enjoyed it. He wasn't trying not to stare at the connecting door to the other room where Scully and Skinner were staying. He wasn't trying not to think about what they must be doing in there.

To think that right this moment he could be ruling the world with an army of Undead minions behind him. If only he hadn't been so boringly noble. "Better to serve in Heaven than to rule in Hell"-- bah. Better to serve in Hell than this Godawful purgatory of trying not to resent the fact that his boss and best friends was probably, at this very moment, having sex with his partner. The woman he loved. Or at least lusted after rather desperately.

There was noise in the other room now. Although he wasn't, of course, listening for it. Scully walking barefoot across the floor. Water running in the bathroom. More footsteps, some muffled quiet noises. Someone knocking on the connecting door.

"Mulder? Are you asleep?"

"Yes!" he shouted back.

He could practically feel her rolling her eyes at him through the door. "Sure. Fine. Whatever. I'm coming in. You had better not be doing anything I don't want to see."

"What, like playing with my flashlight?" he asked, switching it off and rearranging himself with his arms crossed.

"Well, I don't know, Mulder," she said as she walked in, carefully closing the door behind her. She was wearing neat, elegant blue satin pajamas with flattered her tall, slender figure and brought out the deep red of her hair. "Playing with your flashlight? I might like watching that. Can you do puppets?"

"Scully!" he said.

She sat down delicately on the edge of the bed beside him. "One of my boyfriends in college did puppets. He had these little cloth heads he'd put on--" she demonstrated with her hands, "They had the cutest little noses and ears and he'd do these voices." She twitched her fingers and put on a falsetto. "`My, what a big trunk you have, Mr. Elephant. The better to suck with, my dear--'"

"Scully!" he repeated, smiling a little despite himself.

"What? I was talking about shadow puppets. What did you think I was talking about?" She scooted over closer and tugged at his tie. "Mulder, why are you still in these muddy old clothes? It smells like something died in here."

It did, he thought, and irritably swatted her hands away. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting company."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Mulder, get yourself out of these things."

He jerked aside and glared at her. "Won't Skinner be missing you?"

"Gerry?" She shrugged. "He knows I'm here." She pulled her long legs up to her chest and leaned back against the headboard beside him. "We had a long talk tonight, and some things became clear." She considered for a second, then leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. It was nothing but promise.

He was too much in shock to react until she'd pulled back, smiling a bit smugly to herself. "But-- but--" he spluttered. "You love Skinner! You said you did!"

"Well, yes," she replied. "I do love Skinner. I love you, too, you dimwit. It really is possible to love more than one person at once."

"But--"

"No ifs, ands, or bees, remember? Mulder, from the way you're protesting, I'd almost think you don't want this. That certainly isn't the impression I got from the way your flashlight lit up when we were locked in that coffin together."

"Of course I want this, Scully! But--"

"Well, you want it, I want it, we're both consenting adults and mentally competent-- more or less--" she gave him a crooked grin. "So where's the problem? I've been thinking about what that zombie said, about how much he wanted to have food and drink and love again. We alive, Mulder. There's no reason good enough not to enjoy it while we can."

He opened his mouth to protest one more time and she pounced, lighting-quick, and caught it in another kiss, open and wanton and hot and brain-frying, and she twisted her fingers in his hair and he reached around and held her against him and this time they only stopped to come up for air.

She was breathing heavily, her eyes dilated almost black, her nipples pulling the satin pajamas into interesting patterns. She licked her lips and said breathlessly, "Get those clothes off *now*, Mulder," and without bothering to think up an argument he did.

Rolled off the bed, yanked the mud-caked shoes off with almost desperate haste, pulled off the jacket and tie and flung them aside, started work on his shirt buttons. She was unbuttoning her own shirt, fumbling at the snaps with both hands while staring hungrily at him. She finally shrugged it off and nudged it off the other side of the bed, then got up on her knees to hook one hand in the wasteband of her pyjama bottoms and slide them over her perfectly curved hips, and she wasn't wearing anything under them, he thought as he finished undressing, thought about the blue satin sliding cool over smooth slick flesh and he was glad he was undressed now because he had to touch her, to be touching her, lean full-length over the bed and feel the miracle of the skin of her shoulder and her breast, and it was as soft and as good as he'd spent seven years imagining, and she moaned softly into his touch and moved closer, and god this was really happening.

"God, Scully, I love you, I love you so much--"

"Mmm," she said, concentrating, then "Condom."

"What?"

"Condom," she repeated. "In my shirt pocket--" she pulled her attention away from his chest enough to wave vaguely at the floor with one hand.

Well. That killed his mood. "Don't you trust me, Scully?"

She groaned melodramatically and rolled over onto her back, spreadeagled. "Yes, Mulder, of course I trust you. Frankly I'm willing to believe you haven't gotten any since 1976, but our everyday job involves everything from spaceborn viruses to popcorn impregnated with mind-control drugs, it would be a stretch to call either of us clean. I mean, who knows what I could be carrying, I got bit by a zombie this afternoon--" she touched the ring of toothmarks on her shoulder, and grinned wryly at his indrawn breath and intent stare. "What, did you think it was Skinner?"

Actually he'd been thinking about white skin and slender fingers and mouths and touching and marking and thinking that maybe it wouldn't be any trouble staying in the mood after all.

By the time the condom was on he was sure of it.

****

"Mmm," Scully said into his neck, utterly content. "I can't believe I just slept with a guy who still smells like graveyard dirt."

He looked at her face to make sure she was still smiling before turing his attentions back to the hand which was drawing soft circles around her bellybutton. "Actually," he said, "Graveyard mould is a traditional ingredient in the most powerful Europeamn and American love spells. It enhances the powers of libido as a counterpart to Death--"

She snuggled more securely up against his shoulder."So tell me. Do you always enjoy being trapped in a coffin that much?"

He kissed her forehead, then her hair, gently. "Scully, I could be trapped in a coffin for months, *dead*, and I would be happy, as long as I knew this was wating for me afterwards."

A/N: SO what do you think? Should I write more?