RATING: PG-13 for het-schmoop, (Yes schmoopy hetfic from drovar - stop laughing!) CATEGORY: SFR (Spender/Fowley Romance) SPOILERS: none; takes place in some vague season six future. SUMMARY: I don't "really" hate Fowley, honest. THANKS TO: Jennifer Stoy who provided the spark for this snippet. And to Coolcat350 who started this whole thing gyrating in my poor little slashly brain. Also thanks to the folks on xfc who gave me some excellent advice. As always any faults are mine alone. Under My Skin by Drovar drovar@alltel.net Diana Fowley knew she was in 'trouble' the moment she spotted her partner Jeffrey Spender standing in the doorway of their cheap-ass motel room. Four agents two rooms, four beds. Crisscrossing lines of suspicion and mistrust between them forced this boy/girl boy/girl arrangement. Not that she was shy around men, and especially not around Spender, not anymore. It was six months since they'd been given the X-files division, four months since they'd fallen into an easy, uncomplicated affair. Actually 'walked' wasn't exactly the right word for the way his body moved, Fowley realized, 'sauntered' was closer. However, that lacked the fine edge of need that Spender exhibited. Jacket hooked over his shoulder by a single finger, he leaned in the doorway, grinning crookedly. She flashed back for an instant, to another room, another doorway, another man, taller, more haunted. "It's late," she said pulling the covers up, just slightly less than required by modesty. Spender kicked the door closed with his heel. "Mulder, wanted to talk," he said, turning to the dresser, taking in his own reflection, contemplative, critical. Fowley watched as Spender seemed to catalog his own features. Slightly hooded eyes, sharp classic nose, not Mulder's matinee idol good looks perhaps, but appealing in their own way. A slight frown crossed Spender's lips as he pushed and worried at a droopy out of place curl, and for a moment Fowley felt the same weird duality. She'd seen that frown before, many times, late nights, metaphysics, Mulder, and a bottle of some nameless sweet wine, a point made, and that frown. They were so much alike and so starkly contrasted it was more the difference of two shades of brilliance than of light and darkness. Both men were searchers for truth though they walked different paths. Mulder and Spender were both recalcitrant, flawed, alternately sulky, needy and effusive. They sparked when together, like flint and steel, both hard, dark, with fire locked inside, tense, coiled and waiting for the strike. She wondered, not for the first time, if the tension between them wasn't sexual in some way. She ran a hand through the tangled ends of her hair and considered the possibilities that particular thought conjured up. She had tried to broach the subject with Scully once, and only once. The mingled look of shock, mirth and incredulity had silenced any further conversation along that line. Still she wondered. Mulder had a history, and a life, before the X-files and Dana Scully. Diana Fowley had been a part that life. She knew at least some of Mulder's deep unspoken things, his secret and hidden thoughts, things that Dana Scully would never comprehend, not if she lived forever. "What did he want to talk about?" she asked, sliding over in the bed, making room, inviting. "Oh, you know, guy stuff, girls, cars, baseball, aliens, post- anal-probe trauma, that sort of thing." "Really, and since when do you know anything about girls?" she teased. "Oh you bitch." Spender laughed and tossed his suit coat over the bed poster. "You are going to pay for that, I promise you." Spender unbuttoned one shirt sleeve then the other. He leered at her, tight grin, eyes slitted in menace. She realized, tensing slightly, that he had picked up her hairbrush from the dresser. "Jeffrey Spender," she said in mock horror, pulling the blanket up to her neck and scooting further across the bed. "What's going on in that sad little head of yours?" Spender dropped into a half crouch, flipped the brush, caught it by the handle, and held it like a microphone. "I've got you under my skin" Fowley did her best but failed to suppress a guffaw. He was singing . . . again. He wasn't half-bad really. His singing voice was full, deep, suffused with a sad growl that lacked the whine of his normal speaking voice. A songbird, or maybe a howler monkey, trapped in the body of a ferret, she'd never have suspected it, never believed it. Yet there he was, Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, uber-geek, protocol-wonk, warbling like an old-time lounge lizard. "I've got you deep in the heart of me" "Please, Oh God stop. Harry Connick Jr. You're not." "You wound me," Spender said, putting his hand on his heart. "That was classic Sinatra," the familiar thin edge of whine, and gravel creeping back into his voice. "That wasn't even good Englebert, sweets." "So deep in my heart" Spender slid up to the bed, tossed the brush back onto the dresser with a clatter, and continued unbuttoning his shirt, still singing. His voice rose louder, filling the small motel room. "You're nearly a part of me" Spender let the top of his shirt fall open, jigging his shoulders to let the stiff, officious material fall away. Fowley admired the fair skin contrasted against the dark FBI issue shirt. Delicate skin, pale almost pallid, clean. She had rated, categorized, and filed Spender away as a scrawny geek from the moment they'd been introduced in that subterranean office. She'd been wrong. Spender was compact, taut, thinly muscled perhaps, but sleek rather than bony. She'd learned soon enough that Spender could be quite the wolf in geek's clothing. "I've got you under my skin" A loud banging erupted from the common wall they shared with Mulder and Scully. Spender flashed her a sheepish grin, tossed his shirt atop his jacket and toppled over backward onto the bed still singing, but lower. "I have tried so not to give in" "Shh. You're disturbing the neighbors. Can't let Mulder think we're *not* having sex." That got her a smile, a real one. Spender's smile was as unusual as the rest of him, it began as a tight lipped grin, that skittered into the surreal when the corners of his mouth turned up in long straight slants. It looked like the painted on smile of a toy soldier more than anything. "I have said to myself this affair" Fowley touched the fair skin of Spender's chest feeling it leaping, like a startled animal, with each breath. She loved the feel of his chest, its sparseness, its firmness, the essential maleness of it. His copper colored nipples were surprisingly small, compact as the rest of him, standing out stark and hard against the pale skin. Before he could guard against it she pinched the nearest hard nub, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger, squeezing a little roughly. This won her a startled, laughing gasp as Spender tried to roll away. His voice faltered then recovered as she relented. Spender rubbed the sore nub, giving her his best leer. Her hand slid lower, down the nearly hairless abdomen to where a thin dusting of fine hairs gathered just above his navel. Her hand lingered there a moment pulling and teasing before lighting on the waistband of his suit pants. She shifted and moved, bringing his head into her lap. Spender's voice slipped lower, became softer, more breathy as her hand gently traced the long hard impression below his belt. "Is never gonna go somewhere" Slowly her hands slid back up his solid body, finally cradling his head, her fingers deep in his tight curls. Looking down at him, she could almost feel his eagerness, that wonderfully desperate need that filled all the boundaries of their relationship. Slowly her lips dipped to his, stilling his voice. She thought she could almost feel the last bit of song quivering on his lips as they touched. It might not be love, it might never be, but for now it would suffice. After long moments she lifted her head again and pressed a single finger to his lips. Then she sang to him, softly. "But why should I try to resist" "When baby I know so well" "That I've got you under my skin" [END]