TITLE: The Last Worthless Evening
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/K
RATING: R. M/K. This story contains hints of slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.
SUMMARY: On a summer night, light grows dim, shadows grow tall, wind blows hot, stars will fall ... before the innocence ended.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is an AU, very vague spoilers for multiple episodes, nothing current.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Krycek R
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Alex Krycek, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything.
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If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.
The Last Worthless Evening
It isn't accurate for me to say I was somewhere I didn't belong. It isn't accurate to say it was a mistake. There are some unmistakable facts. It was a hot night, I was looking for a cold beer, and there was a sign in the window that promised one.
It isn't accurate to say I was careless, although I admit I didn't give the place my usual paranoid play. It wasn't crowded, but it was noisy. And it was cool.
I slid into a booth, my tee shirt sticking to my back, and mopped sweat from my face before signaling for a beer. I was tired, I was hot, and I was alone.
How many nights had I spent like this? Hard to say. I think they started before the divorce. But hot nights remind me that I sleep alone.
I emptied the beer in a couple of swallows. The cold liquid was a momentary respite from heat and loneliness. I put the emptied bottle down, let a little carbonation escape and sent my eyes around the bar. Why do the customers in every bar look the same? Aging blondes in too short skirts, trying to be coquettes. Thin, disinterested brunettes who have a 'fuck me' stance and a 'get fucked' expression. One or two bottled redheads in tight tees and pink lipstick. A couple of girls at the end of the bar...pretty faces, darting eyes, laughing a bit too loud for the sake of the boys in the white tee shirts and tight jeans, too young for me.
What the hell, I decided, another beer and I head for home. What a waste. Before I could catch someone's eye, another bottle arrived. A good beer. German brew. I gave the label a glance, looked up and around, wondering who was being so nice to the mopey geek with the sticky tee shirt and permanent bed hair.
For a moment, I couldn't believe my eyes. Firstly, how did I walk right by without seeing him? Secondly, what was he doing here? Thirdly, why did he buy me a beer? And fourthly...oh, skip fourthly. I tipped the bottle in his direction. He gave me a look. With a sigh, I nodded, and took about half the bottle in a gulp as he came across the room.
There has always been something dangerously graceful about the way he moves. It was like watching a snake gliding toward me. He settled into the booth looking slick and scary, white tee, black jeans, black jacket. His eyes half closed. A hooded cobra.
"Isn't it a little hot for leather, Krycek?" I asked. He ignored me so I added, "Thanks for the beer."
That he acknowledged. "What are you doing down here, Mulder? This isn't exactly your neighborhood."
"I was getting bored with the beer in my neighborhood."
He nodded. His eyes were so very green in the neon-enhanced light. "Can't have you bored, can we?"
"I'm never bored around you, Krycek. Around you I'm usually fighting for my life." I emptied the bottle just as someone put something on the jukebox that was a little louder than the television. The pretty girls at the end of the bar managed to coax the pretty boys out onto the floor. I was aware that we were both watching the couples swaying. I was watching the girls, but I had this epiphany that Krycek was watching the boys. I had two reactions, disbelief and a little zing in my balls. Neither was expected.
He caught me staring at him. "It's like having sex in public, isn't it?" he asked with an oddly wistful smile.
"I don't know." I lowered my eyes to the bottle. "I'm not that great a dancer."
I felt him shift under the table, and his leg brushed mine. "Maybe you just never had a good partner."
"Uh...Krycek..."
He pulled his foot back. "Serious, what are you doing here, following me? For once, I'm not up to anything, not that you'd believe me."
I believed him. "I wasn't following you, not that you'd believe me."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he tossed me a wink. "How 'bout a truce, just for tonight?"
I flicked a glance at the neon clock over the bar. Nine fifty two. "Two hours?"
He held out his hand. "Just for tonight, we believe each other, no matter what."
My narrowing eyes fixed on his hand. "That could be dangerous."
He grinned at me. "You have no idea, Mulder."
I took his head. "For two hours."
He held it just a little bit longer than he should. "For two hours."
I expected him to make a move, something to lure me out of there. I really did have visions of him coercing me to walk into a trap, a warehouse full of dynamite, an alley full of his cronies, the backseat of the Cancer Man's car. Be he didn't budge. We sat. We talked. We had another beer. We tried to remember lyrics to horrible disco songs (the Bay City Rollers, Krycek? Who would have guessed?), we watched the boys and girls dance. I admit it, I wanted to dance. At least ... I wanted to move. I was tired of wasting my nights on a bar stool, talking in my head, fucking in my mind. I wanted something to happen...to change.
It was nearly eleven when he ordered coffee for us. It tasted like shit, and was too damned hot for a night like this, but I sat there and drank it because I liked the sound of his voice when he hummed along, his neon green eyes scrunched up thoughtfully, making up occasionally raunchy lyrics to bad songs. I was actually having fun. He was making me laugh. No one had made me laugh in so long...
At eleven twenty, he stopped humming and smiled at me. A different smile, warm ... but warm like a summer night on the Cape, warm like a desert at sunrise, warm like...like a lover's smile. "Shall I walk you home?" he offered.
I was disappointed. I admit that, as well. For an hour and a half, a blissful ninety minutes, I'd forgotten all the reasons I hated my life, hated the emptiness, the pointlessness, the waste. Ninety minutes wasn't enough to change my world, just give me a taste of what it was like to exist in someone else's. I looked at the clock again and pushed the coffee away. "Yeah, I suppose."
"Come on." He was putting money on the table. "It's a nice night, live a little."
"Nice? It's ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity out there." I looked at him again. "And you're wearing a leather jacket, for God's sake."
He held the door open for me and the air hit me like a wall. I actually staggered.
His hand was there on my back, keeping me up. "Ever been to Siberia, Mulder? Nights that last forever, where heat is only a memory. This..." He held his hand skyward. "This is Heaven."
"You must read a different Bible than the one I had growing up," I growled, mopping my face with the hem of my tee shirt. "This is more like the other place."
He twisted to look at me. "That's interesting, Mulder. We've never discussed religion. Do you believe in Heaven?"
I shot him a slightly panicked look. That was an opening line to a cold-blooded murder if I'd ever heard one. "Yeah, and I'd like to live long enough to see it."
He smiled again. "We had a deal, Mulder. My time's not up."
I sighed, and fell in step with him. "I'm not sure I can accept all those organized concepts of Heaven and Hell."
"What about Redemption?" He flicked a curious, perhaps even hopeful glance at me. "Do you believe redemption is possible?"
"Are we talking hypothetically, Krycek, or about you in particular?"
"Oh ..." He chuckled. The sound went south on me. "In the global sense."
"Maybe." I looked at him. He looked...somewhat less ratlike when he smiled. And I resented noticing that. "Although, I'm too vengeful to appreciate it."
"Sometimes the only redemption comes at the end of the barrel of a Sig Sauer?"
Another great opening line...or perhaps that was a perfect closing line.
He was amused by my silence. "You're conflicted about me, I see. Good." He turned a corner and flipped around, walking backwards, smiled at me yet again. He was growing less ratlike by the moment. "Gives me hope."
"What do you want from me, Krycek?" I tugged my watch from my pocket. It had been too damned hot to wear it. "I've still got twenty minutes on the deal."
"Want from you? Not from you, Mulder. For you. I want you to find redemption." He stopped.
I froze. We were standing in front of a blind alley. Any moment gunfire was going to erupt and I was going to be dead, on the sidewalk, my last thought being that I never got to dance with him.
He moved.
I flinched.
What the hell, we were dancing.
He leaned up against me, and pressed his lips ... not to my cheek, not a Judas kiss this time, but full on my opened mouth. His kiss was bitter coffee and German beer. He opened his eyes and those green neon beams were beckoning me in. I groaned, gathered him against me and kissed back, sucking the life from him, molding his body against me so that our sweat blended and our DNA became the same, bubbling in our blood.
I swallowed weakly as he backed away. "Come up?" I whispered hoarsely.
"Love to."
"I've got beer," I offered as we climbed the stairs.
"Got any vodka?" he asked as I unlocked my door.
"I'll see," I promised, throwing my keys on the table.
I could hear music as I hunted down clean glasses and an ancient bottle of Absolut. When I came out into the living room, he had shed the jacket, and was humming to a Don Henley song on the radio. "I love this guy's lyrics, don't you? He really WAS the Eagles."
I put the glasses and bottle down on the table and came to him, yanking him back into an embrace, devouring his lips. I don't know what it was I wanted ... no, I wanted him. I know that. I didn't just want him, some primordial ooze pumping in the back of my brain, the thing that made me crawl out of the slime and walk erect and learn to talk and fly and love....that thing told me I needed him. He was the next step in my evolution.
He wrapped his arms around me, his body swaying softly to the sad, evocative music. "My last bit of absolute truth before the clock ticks midnight, Cinderella," he whispered. "I'm every bit the scumbag, rat bastard you think I am. But," he paused to lick my lips, "I'm the only one who knows your soul."
My fingers tangled in his hair possessively. "Show me," I demanded roughly. "Do I have one?"
"Yes, and it's ripe for redemption. It's time for you to stop wasting yourself, your life, start living again." His eyes locked in mine. "If you'll let me...if you'll have me....I promise you this will be your last worthless evening."
- END -