THE NAKED TRUTH
by Avalon (avalon99@telusplanet.net)
http://members.dencity.com/avalon_online
From an idea by Sharon Nuttycombe and Linda Campbell
Skinner, Scully, R, 1/5
NOTES: This was written a couple of years back, before recent
events on the show. It would probably fit in at any point in season
2-5.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: To Linda Campbell, brilliant Beta Reader and HTML heroine.
DISCLAIMER: Skinner and Scully aren't mine. The handcuffs aren't mine. Skinner's skivvies aren't...well, you get the idea.
THE NAKED TRUTH I
Scully rolled over...and groaned. Pain stabbed at her temples and it felt as if someone were playing the 1812 Overture inside her head...complete with cannons. She groaned again. Everything hurt. Her body hurt, her brain hurt...even her eyelashes hurt. Slowly, tentatively, she opened one eye then closed it again hastily as light stabbed at her. For several moments, dizziness and nausea warred within her body for dominance. Both won.
All in all, she felt rather like she was going down on the Titanic...while the band played on.
And on.
Whimpering softly, she opened her eyes again, then frowned. There was a large, naked chest at eye level. At least she thought it was a chest...it took several moments of concerted effort to bring her eyes into focus. Finally though, the picture swam back into view. Yes, it was definitely a chest. With hair, dipping into a V that vanished beneath the blankets...and muscles. Lots of them. Miles and miles of... Her mind was rambling. Scully shook her head slightly to clear it.
Mistake.
Big one.
The pain that washed over Scully dissipated a little more quickly this time, and the conviction that she was about to die faded...slowly. After a long moment, she blinked again, stared at the chest in the bed, then tilted her head upward to look at the shoulders, neck, and head attached to it...and suddenly wished that she had died after all.
It was Skinner. An unmoving, silent, un-bespectacled, and somewhat bruised Skinner. And, from what she could see, a naked Skinner. A shaft of horror went through her. Scully gasped, winced, then closed her eyes. "Please God," she thought desperately. "Make the world go away."
It didn't. Shuddering inwardly, she cracked her eyes open again. He was still there. Larger than life, and twice as naked.
Naked. Scully's eyes wandered down toward the bedsheets, lying loosely over his hips. He was lying on his back, one hand under the covers, the other resting across his ribs. Scully stared at them with morbid fascination. There was a crumpled white mass of material around his right arm...a bandage? No, it was his shirt, she realized distantly, but it was definitely not in it's usual place. Instead she could see...all those muscles. Biceps, pectorals... Unconsciously she began to list them, her eyes roving slowly downward...
Scully suddenly realized what she was doing and hastily looked away. The rest of her surroundings swam into view. Walls, ceiling, clothes-strewn floor... It looked like a hotel room. And definitely not the Ritz. More like one of the cheap and fairly nasty hotels that tended to figure distressingly often in her investigations with Mulder...
...Wait a minute. Her befuddled brain clicked into gear. Clothes-strewn floor. And unless the Assistant Director of the FBI had taken to wearing pale pink women's underwear... Scully stiffened then slowly, very slowly, glanced down at herself...and whimpered again softly. She was naked. Of course. A thin sheet covered her body, the same sheet that was (barely) covering Skinner. She shot him another furtive look. Still asleep. Or unconscious. Or dead. A quiver went through her and she peered more closely at him, then sighed with relief at the sight of his chest rising and falling, slowly but steadily. Of course, the sight of his chest caused another wave of emotion to go through her, an emotion which Scully determinedly ignored.
No. First things first. For one thing, the segment of the sheet that was covering her own body was in definite peril of falling aside and baring all. And she had done more than enough of that lately. Moving as quickly as the pounding in her head would allow, Scully pulled her left hand out from beneath the covers to grab at the edge of the sheet.
Unfortunately, Skinner's hand came with it, coming to rest on her left breast. Scully froze, not seeing at first the thin metal rings of the handcuffs that bound them together. She let out a muffled squeak...
...And Skinner woke up.
Skinner found himself staring into a very surprised pair of blue eyes. He blinked once...twice...and then slowly glanced around, wincing slightly. His gaze took in the hotel room, the bed, their two bodies and came to rest on his hand...and what was beneath it. Shock poured through him, followed by...something else...and then he met her gaze again. An uncomfortable silence ensued.
It felt like a lifetime, but was probably only a matter of seconds before Skinner managed to pull himself together. It had been staggering enough to wake up in a strange hotel room, stark naked, but to find a naked Dana Scully beside him... Maybe he was dreaming. He moved his head slightly, and became suddenly convinced that it was going to fall off. Pain lanced through him. All right --definitely not a dream. In that case...he looked down again at his right hand. He should move it. Soon.
Any time now...
Some nerve-end must have tried to obey the disjointed commands of his brain, because his fingers twitched. And Scully squeaked again, her blue eyes widening as she stared, unmoving, at him.
All right. It was no dream. He was definitely awake. And he was definitely naked, lying next to a similarly unclothed FBI agent. This was certainly a new experience. Then again, perhaps it wasn't. He seemed to have spent more time this week in various states of undress with the woman, than not. Perhaps it was Fate, trying to tell him something...
With an effort, Skinner removed his hand, frowning as he noticed that her left hand moved with his. He held his arm up, his frown deepening. Handcuffs. He was handcuffed to Dana Scully.
Oh my.
What the hell had happened last night? Skinner struggled desperately to remember but the memories eluded him. Vague impressions of a bar, a motorcycle and, of all things, pink underwear, flickered briefly through his mind, then were gone, replaced by a confused fog. His head hurt, he realized distantly, as if a wall or three had fallen on him, and there were various twinges all over his body. His ribs ached whenever he inhaled, his right knee throbbed, and his back felt as if it had been clawed by a wildcat.
Clawed. Wildcat.
Naked.
Oh god.
Stunned, Skinner turned back to Scully, who hadn't moved or breathed since he had awakened. She was staring at him like she had seen a ghost, shock and denial in her eyes. Skinner swallowed. "Uh...Agent Scully... er...Dana..." Just what was the correct form of address in situations like this? "I...er...are you...?" Silently he cursed himself. He hadn't been this tongue-tied since he was fourteen... Scully took a sharp breath and Skinner found his gaze dropping to her breasts, which were on the verge of escaping the confines of the sheet. His mouth went dry. "Uh, Scully...you're about to lose your sheet." Damn. That was inane.
Scully inhaled sharply, made an abortive movement with her left hand, then grabbed the sheet with her right, rescuing it just in time. She pulled it higher, holding it securely with white-knuckled fingers. Unfortunately that still left a *lot* of skin visible. Too much. One part of Skinner's body was obviously still in excellent working order and made its presence suddenly and clamorously known. Unobtrusively (at least he hoped it was unobtrusively), he raised his knees slightly, the covers forming a concealing tent around him, then he clenched his teeth. Time to take charge of the situation. Skinner swallowed deeply, looked at the woman in the bed with him, and said: "What happened, Scully?" He shot another disbelieving look at her naked shoulders and arms.
"I was hoping you could tell me. Sir," she added belatedly.
Skinner's mouth curved into a reluctant smile. "I think, given the circumstances, we could forego the 'Sir', don't you...ah...Dana?" There. He was handling this quite well. Logical...mature... Right. And little green men were going to burst out of the closet and do the Lambada.
"I don't remember," Scully was saying. He regrouped his wandering thoughts and met her eyes. "That is, I remember some things, but others are a blank."
"Me too." Another awkward silence fell.
* * *
Scully was having difficulties with the situation on several levels. One -- she was naked in a bed and chained to Walter Skinner. Two -- actually, number one was enough to worry about right now. More than enough. She'd deal with the rest later. If there was a later. She might just die of embarrassment first.
He was waiting for her to say something, she realized. All right. "You can handle this," she told herself. "After all, you've been in worse situations than this." Although she couldn't think of a single one. With an effort she gathered her thoughts.
"We...um...we seem to be handcuffed together." She cringed inwardly. Nothing like stating the obvious. Hurriedly she continued. "Do you...happen to know how we got that way?"
Skinner paused in his examination of the metal link around his wrist, and frowned. "No. Not exactly. That is...it's all a blur."
Scully nodded, then winced. "What happened? And how did we get here?"
Skinner shot her a sidelong look. "Well, the obvious deduction for what happened would be that we...that is...uh, we..."
"Checked into a seedy hotel, handcuffed ourselves together and made mad, passionate love all night long?" Scully froze in horror. Had she really just said that? Unconsciously her eyes dipped lower, down the length of his chest to the edge of the covers, and lower still... then she hastily dragged them upwards again. There was a time and place for ogling one's boss, and this was neither...
"Well, yes. That would seem to fit the evidence," Skinner was saying, not meeting her eyes and looking exceedingly uncomfortable. A pause. "Uh...Dana, would you mind looking at my back?"
"I beg your pardon?" She really had to find a way to control her voice and stop this asinine squeaking. She was beginning to sound like Minnie Mouse.
"My back," he repeated. "It...ah...seems to be... scratched." He shifted slightly, as far as he could given the handcuffs, and afforded her a view of even more muscles...and long thin scratches that trailed from his shoulder blades all the way down to...
"That's quite enough of that," she told herself firmly. "You're a doctor. Act like one." She reached out a tentative finger and he flinched. Scully snatched her hand away as if it had been burned, then hastily looked at her own fingernails.
"Why do I feel like I should be apologizing?" she said aloud to the ceiling, as Skinner rolled back into the prone position, wincing slightly. She took a deep, calming breath, then continued. "You're right. The evidence would seem to suggest that we..." Her voice trailed off.
"Made mad passionate love all night long?" he supplied for her, his voice dry.
"Well, yes."
"I don't believe it."
Scully blinked and turned her head toward him. "Excuse me?"
"I said 'I don't believe it.'"
"But...why not?"
He levered himself up onto his side and stared down at her. "Because," he said intensely, "if I had made love to you Dana Scully, I would have remembered every second." And then he leaned closer.
END OF PART ONE