TITLE: Bentropy Sixteen

NAME: Mik

E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: M/K

RATING: NC-17. M/K/? This story contains 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, or perhaps lend one to Krycek.

SUMMARY: Entropy - chaos. Bent - not straight. 'nuff said.

ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.

FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is after everything, the season in the shower notwithstanding.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Krycek NC-17

DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Alex Krycek, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use...unless you count cheap thrills. Other characters belong to me...or someone else but they left them at my house so I'm playing with them.

Author's NOtes: I happen to think I have a great beta. I happen to think everyone knows who my great beta is. But I am dreadful about giving her credit for all her hard work. Shame on me. Thank you, Susan...the greatest beta in all betadom.

More NOtes: Much thanks to those of you who rode with me to the end of this journey. I knew it would be a bumpy road for everyone. After all, those of you who prefer to see Mulder with Krycek must have chafed at all the time Mulder spent with that bald guy. And I know a whole lot of Skinner fans just gave the whole thing a miss because, even if Krycek wasn't actually in the story, it was essentially about him, and how he affected Mulder. And then there were those of you actually cheering for that little weas - I mean, 'possum, Peyton.

Most NOtes: Stay tuned at the end of this chapter. The playlist for the double CD soundtrack to Bentropy appears.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Bentropy Sixteen

by Mik

"No."

I shouldn't have been surprised. But I was.

He was waiting in my hotel room when I finally limped in, more battered emotionally than physically.

He'd made a rather pathetic attempt at cutting his hair, but it reminded me of the way he used to wear it, back when he was the 'Skippy' I both loathed and loved. He had rifled what was left of my clean laundry for a long sleeved dress shirt and a pair of jeans. Between the normal difference in our height and the weight he'd lost living on the run, he'd been forced to cuff my jeans in order not to trip on them.

I leaned back against the door, and looked at him sitting on my bed, looking at me. I didn't know whether to fuck him or force-feed him. "Have you ever tried just knocking on my door?" I asked conversationally.

"I've considered it." He moved and the way the left sleeve of my shirt fluttered, I realized he wasn't wearing his prosthetic arm. "But how do I know you'd let me in?" He stood and moved toward me. "Did he go?"

I pulled myself away from the door and moved closer to him. "Yeah." I resisted an urge to reach for him.

He made a face. "Stupid."

I shrugged. "He said I'd be stupid not to resolve this...us, one way or another."

"Well ..." he didn't reach for me, either, "the choice is yours."

A derisive little laugh escaped me. "Since when? I've never had a choice in this. You decided to start this, you made all the rules about when we could see each other and what we could do. You decided ..." my throat ached for a moment, "when to end this."

"That wasn't my choice either," he said quietly.

"Eight years, Alex."

His eyes were on mine. "I know."

"Two thousand, nine hundred twenty days, give or take a couple of leap years."

His eyes darkened. "It's been hell for me, too, you know."

"Seventy thousand eighty hours."

His mouth twisted up. "I'm glad to see you're not bitter."

"Four million, two hundred four thousand, eight -"

He cut me off with a kiss. A savage, hungry kiss that forced me to hold onto his shoulders, dig my fingers in, bruise him. When he broke the kiss, his eyes burnt into mine. "No more rules. I just want you. Now."

"I know," I said against his mouth.

He forced his tongue into my mouth. "Want me?" he asked around the invasion.

I could only grunt in reply.

His fingers gripped the back of my shirt - the one I was wearing - and jerked me around hard, so that I tumbled backward on the nearest bed. And he landed on top of me, forcing a surprised laugh out of each of us. His fingers scrabbled at the front of my shirt, his mouth fixed at my throat.

For moment I remained still under him, wondering what the hell he expected of me after all this time, and at the same time, wondering what the hell I expected of him. Then he mumbled, "Help me," and I wrapped my unslung arm around his back and rolled, keeping him cradled against me while I worked his buttons, awkwardly with my limp hand, and then my own. His skin was still warm and firm, the way I remembered it, but it was marred in places that weren't there in my memories. I felt a flash of jealous anger that someone else had touched this body, that someone else had been the one to give him the pain he craved.

I let my fingers play over his belly and around his waist to his back and the rise of his ass at the waistband of my jeans. I didn't move another muscle, unwilling to break this beautiful stillness, this unexpected intimacy. I had spent years remembering his smell, his taste, his heat, and trying to forget his taunts and his tears. Now I had all the good and none of the bad and I did not want to let it go.

I could feel him growing impatient for more, though, his body starting to push against mine, searching for groin-to-groin contact. I brought my hand back to the front of his ... my ... his jeans and worked my fingers into the top of the fly. Some things never change. I once read a book that referred to a young lady being innocent of lingerie. Now there has never been anything innocent about Alex Krycek, but he certainly was lacking in lingerie, just as I remembered. And his cock was poking up impatiently.

I circled that warm, spongy head with my fingers and squeezed lightly, eliciting both a low moan of pleasure and a warm trickle of pre cum. I pulled my hand free and smeared the sticky fluid over his mouth before throwing a leg over both of his, to hold him in place so I could tease and pinch and pull while I ravaged his mouth.

I was surprised how easily he was able to flip me over, but in a heartbeat he had me on my back, and kneeling precariously over me, began tugging at my fly. "Come on," he rasped impatiently, "get 'em off."

I conceded because a) I wanted them off as much as he did and b) there was a look in his eyes I'd never seen there; a new sort of passion, determined and dangerous. I felt no fear, I did not feel threatened by this new role he was playing, but more ... thrilled. It was a chance for us to be equal partners in bed.

Lying naked under him, I slid my hands up under the shirt he wore, stroking the definition of bone beneath flesh, flicking his nipples, which always stood up like twin micro silos when he was aroused, making him make all the sounds that always went directly to my balls and jerked them up tight.

He pushed my knees up and rested his body against my shin so that he could engage in similar pursuits with his one hand.

My cock was starting to lift up off my belly as if in search of any welcoming portal to his body, and his touch was sending electrical surges all through me, making me thrust toward him with growing urgency.

In the half-light of that hotel room his eyes were two bottle green glass beads above me, his teeth white in the midst of a wicked smile. He shifted against me, leaning forward to slide his tongue along my lips tauntingly before, eyes boring into mine, he slowly and deliberately pushed two of his fingers into his mouth, moving them in and out obscenely, grinning even as he did, because he could hear, see, feel and smell my reaction to his display.

"Come on, Alex," I begged, pushing up against his hip. "Now. I want you now."

"And you will have me," he promised, positioning himself along my leg yet again. Those two wet fingers were suddenly stroking back from my balls and exploring truly virgin territory.

At the first sign of pressure, I jerked my legs, as if to dislodge him, but he wasn't moving. He was frowning though. "Shit, you're tight. I would have thought Skinner would have loosened you up a little."

I grabbed for his arm and gave him an almost angry push. "What would ever make you think that?"

He rocked back on his haunches and I straightened my legs as if to shut him out. "I didn't think there was any way Skinner would have let you top him," he mused.

The urgency started to fade. Why did he have to bring Skinner back into it? Didn't he just walk out of my life? "He didn't. I didn't try." I moved my hand to shield my flagging erection. "And he didn't top me, either. No one has."

He gaped. I believe that's the word for when one's eyes go glassy and one's mouth falls slack. "Mulder? Are you still..."

Nothing like a full body blush. "Yeah." I rolled onto my side and reached across the bed for my jeans. "And I like it that way."

He was quiet while I shifted into a position where I could tug my jeans on and button up my shirt. I was halfway to the bathroom before I heard him say...almost heard him say, "Let me."

I froze midstep. I didn't look back. I wanted him. It shouldn't matter how I had him. And yet it did. "No."

"Mulder." I could hear him get off the bed. "Let me be the one." He moved behind me, his body superheated against mine. "It should be me. It should be us." He wrapped his arm around my middle, and pressed his face against my neck. "Let me."

I dragged in air like a man in danger of drowning. I had had fantasies about this moment for eight years. I had dreams and visions and nightmares of this time, this place, of being in his arms, of him wanting me as much as I wanted him. But I never had a fantasy where he made love to me. Who knows, maybe it would be different this way. Maybe this time it wouldn't be about domination and abuse. Maybe this time it could be about two lovers. I'd be willing to do anything for that. I let my head fall back onto his shoulder. "Yes."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I have to say I wasn't aware of any particular pain or discomfort initially. From the moment I accepted that I was going to accept him into my body, my mind decided to abandon reality and stay in the abstract. I stayed focused on his face over mine, the warmth of his skin, the pleasure of finally having him back in my life.

I will give him credit for patience. He didn't go at me the way I had first had him. He took time making sure that I was ready, or at least making sure that I was pretending I was ready. There was a puppy-like eagerness about him, and at the same time a hyperbolic tenderness. That's all I wanted to feel, all I wanted to think about. I didn't want to make room in my brain for what I was making room for elsewhere. I just wanted to hold on to the moment.

My head and heart might have been all right with that position, but other parts of my anatomy weren't. Aside from the burn and fullness I was attempting to ignore, my cock had left the party, lying limp and leaky on my stomach. I felt myself blushing when he and I both looked at it, and then he looked up at me again.

Even his smile was tender then. He kissed my chest. "Don't worry about it," he soothed. "Most men can't sustain an erection when they're being penetrated."

"You did," I protested, my voice hitching as he moved a little deeper. "You always stayed hard, no mat -" I had to stop a moment, and remember things. "No matter what I did."

He lifted his head, and his smile was just a shadow, and his eyes were melancholic. "Yes, but I was trained to," he said, and then it was his eyes that couldn't meet mine.

That was the first time, the only time we ever acknowledged what he'd been through as a child. I wanted to pull him down on top of me and hold him, but when I reached up to touch his face he twisted his head away, as if to evade my caress. He moved again and, resting against my upraised knee again, reached down to hold the condom in place as he backed away from me.

"Wh - what are you -" I tried to lock my legs around him. We'd gotten this far. Now was no time for retreat.

"Shh, it's okay." He slid down beside me. "Come on...turn on your side." He stroked my hip. "It will be better this way for you."

I rolled over reluctantly. I needed to keep my eyes on him to let go of the mental image of bending over and taking it from another man. I shut my eyes and tried not to feel him push my leg up, or his fingers working back inside me. But it wasn't working. Somehow this was more ... more gay than I was prepared for. "Alex," I began as I felt him move into position. "I don't think I -"

"Shh," he repeated, and I felt him start to enter me again. "Deep breath. It will feel better this way, I promise."

He was right about that. From that angle he couldn't achieve the depth that kept cutting off my breath. Once in, he draped his arm around me, and groped for my sullen cock, stroking and pulling in a counter rhythm to his shallow thrusts.

After what seemed like forever, I realized it wasn't hurting so much, and I was gradually experiencing that sensation of swelling, heat, blessed aching in my balls. I caught myself groaning and pushing into his hand. "Alex...oh, fuck, please."

"Yeah, that's good," he was muttering against my shoulder. "That's it. Just a...little...bit..." he thrust and hit some switch in there that sent rockets through my eyes, "more. Yeah," he grunted, and shoved hard. "That's got it."

I don't know what 'it' it got. All I know is my muscles locked, a groan of unadulterated pain and pleasure was ripped from the soles of my feet, and cum splattered my chest, my cheek, the pillow, hell, possibly the people in the next room. "Ohhhh fuckkkkkk, Skinnnnnnner!"

Silence. Complete, horrifying, embarrassing and familiar silence. Except for the residual creaking of the bed, and my gasping, desperate breath. While I gathered my heart, lungs and brains up from the bed and tried to replace them appropriately, he giggled behind me. "Do you ever get your lover's name right, Mulder?"

Bless you, Alex Krycek. I rolled back, pinning him to the bed. "I always get my lover's name right, Joe."

He laughed and slapped at my shoulder. "Get off. Get off. You're not exactly waif-like, you know."

I was still gasping. "I can't move. Shit, Krycek, I always knew you wanted to kill me. I had no idea you were going to do it with sex." I turned my head enough to see his face. "That was...beyond words."

He wriggled under me. "Yeah." His arm slid around me. "It was." He nuzzled against my ear. "Ya tyebya Lyublyu."

And that made it all right. I held his hand against my pounding heart, feeling myself slipping into that smooth, deep, black warmth of post coital sleep. "Yeah." I pulled his hand to my lips. "Same here."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When I woke, I was naked, clean, tucked into my bed almost lovingly, and alone.

Why was I surprised? What right did I have to be hurt? Did I expect anything less? Damn it, I was surprised, I did hurt and I had expected him to at least stay long enough for us to decide together it wasn't going to work.

Hell, I'm not stupid. I knew from the moment I turned around and found him in my hotel room that there was no hope for us to make a life together. No hope of even being occasional lovers. No hope of managing to stay in the same hemisphere. No hope, period. But I did hope to at least be a part of the decision making process. Shit bloody hell. First Skinner flew off without even a backward glance, and Krycek had done a classic fuck and run. Didn't I matter to either of these guys? Didn't I matter to anyone?

I fought my way out of the bedclothes with the same fury of a man fighting his way out of any other morass. My ass ached, my bladder was full, my eyes were burning. I felt cheated, used, abandoned...lost. I didn't know whether to kick the table, bang my head against the wall, or fire one round right into my brain.

So I did what made the most sense. I went into the bathroom to take a leak.

The note was pinned to the bathroom window.

Okay. I cried.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I sat outside the structure for a long time. I'd been here once before. A lifetime ago. We were both different men, then. But now I was someone else, someone without a clue, someone who sat there and wondered what I should do. I wasn't sure if I was going to heed Krycek's advice or get the hell out before anyone knew I was back in my old stomping grounds.

I knew he was home. I'd seen him pull into the parking structure almost an hour before. I didn't want to get out of the car. In fact, I wanted to start the rental and get on the road to someplace where I had no history. But I just kept sitting there, drinking an Americano that had long since gone cold.

What could I say? What could he say? Did he want me? Did I want him? Would he turn me away? Would he welcome me in? Was I crazy? Was Alex right? Or was Alex just letting me down easy by pointing out the pony while he slipped out the door?

Alex Krycek. I let my head fall back on the headrest and tried to hold onto the warmth of thinking his name. It only lasted a moment, as usual, before the heat of humiliation, and the hurt of loss flared up to burn it away. If I shut my eyes, I could see his face, darkening and curling at the edges like a photograph tossed into the hearth.

I opened my eyes. I hated the triteness of it all. For eight years I'd been able to hate him enough not to want him back. And now the hatred had burnt away in that same fire. Now I was just a sad man, sitting in a car, staring up at a window, hoping to see a hero in a bright red cape, chest thrust forward, that once forgotten beacon in the night. Like a beacon, he'd led me here.

Finally I pushed the door open, stepped out into an unseasonably cool Virginia night. Even my old home had changed into something else, making me feel alien, alone. I pulled my jacket together, and tugged the zipper up. I shut and locked the door and looked up again. His light was on. Shine on, beacon.

Shoving my fists into my pockets, I checked traffic and crossed the street. I walked up and down the block, checking the entrances. I didn't want to press the bell at the gate and reveal myself too soon. I wanted to retain the option to back out and run away right up to the last possible moment. But people had been coming and going from the parking garage all night. It was fairly simple, in fact frighteningly simple to wait in the shadows 'til someone pulled out, and then dart in before the gates pulled shut again.

The elevator was one of those that required that same key card that got residents into the parking structure, so there was no chance of getting into it without pulling a gun on the next person who appeared, but someone had failed to properly shut the fire exit door, and I was able to get into the stairwell pretty easily from there.

I accept that life outside the Bureau has caused me to lose some of my physical agility and endurance, but I don't think at my career best, I could have mounted seventeen flights of stairs without emerging into his corridor completely winded. I had to lean against the stairwell door for a moment, trying to wheeze silently before I pulled myself up, dragged my fingers through my hair, straightened my collar, and started down the hall.

And there I was. At his door. According to Krycek, this was Nirvana, this was my seat of wisdom, the vortex of my rebirth. My hand hovered over the doorbell, but I couldn't make my finger extend just that fraction of an inch to depress it.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I thought, wheeling away from the door. He doesn't want me. He left me. He walked out on me. He ... escaped me. If he wanted me, if he...loved me he would have stayed.

I pushed my way back into the stairwell, feeling tears stinging my eyes, anger burning my face. He left me. He said I could depend on him, that he'd be there for me, and then he left me. He lied to me. Bastard.

I started down the steps, stomping all the way.

At floor fifteen, I paused. Rested a hand on the wall. Looked upward as if I could see through steel reinforced concrete and see him pining for me. He left because I didn't give him any other options. I as much as told him I wanted Krycek, not him. How could he stay? The man was entitled to some dignity. If I went up there ... what could he do?

I turned and started up the steps tentatively and stalled at the landing to the sixteenth floor. "Kick my ass all the way down to the basement," I decided aloud. "Why the hell should he let me in? I turned my back on him, if I go back now, I'm just saying he's second best." I jerked around and kept going.

"He's not second best," I muttered somewhere between the fourteenth and thirteenth. "Great big, fucking superhero with a stigmatism. He could never be second best. To anyone. He deserves so much better than me."

I pressed my cheek to the cool wall of the thirteenth floor landing. "And what do I deserve? What do I need?"

I could hear Alex's voice reading the letter he'd left me, just like some damned movie of the week. 'You need a hero.'

I straightened, and with monumental resolve, reached for the rail. "Yes, Fox William Mulder, you do."

I couldn't ring the doorbell. I knocked.

I could hear the knock echo through the flat. I held my breath.

I could hear the sound of locks turning in their channels.

The door opened.

He was standing there, in nothing less than blue jeans and a red pullover. The only thing missing was the big 'S' emblazoned on his chest.

He blinked at me, probably fighting an urge to pull off his glasses and rub his eyes in disbelief. "Mulder?"

He made my name into a million questions; simple ones like 'is it really you?' and intricate ones like 'can you stay the rest of your life?'

I made myself meet his eyes.

I made myself smile.

"Yes."

Fini

And now, the soundtrack to Bentropy. To me, each song tells a part of the story. If you'd like an explanation, drop me a line, and I'll try to share the story with you.

1. The Way You Look Tonight - Phil Collins

2. Leaving On a Jet Plane - Sister Hazel

3. Five Hundred Miles - Proclaimers

4. More Than Words - Extreme

5. Spanish Guitar - Sting

6. Take a Chance On Me - Erasure

7. Smokin' In the Boys Room - Brownsville Station

8. Gone - N'sync

9. I Want You to Want Me - Cheap Trick

10. My Heart Belongs to Daddy - Marilyn Monroe

11. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing - Aerosmith

12. Black Coffee - Seatbelts

13. Just Between You and Me - Lou Graham

14. You Don't Own Me - Blow Monkeys

15. Livin' La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin

16. Here Come Those Tears Again - Jackson Browne

17. It's Me I'm Runnin' From - Eddie Rabbitt

18. Almost Paradise - Eric Carmen

19. Night Has a Thousand Eyes - Bobby Vee

20. Crash and Burn - Savage Garden

21. I Wanna' Come Over - Melissa Etheridge

22. Hell Is For Children - Pat Benatar

23. I'm Sorry Now - Jude

24. Hotcakes - Carly Simon

25. I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen

26. Buddy Holly - Weezer

27. They Can't Take That Away From Me - Rosemary Clooney

28. My Girl (Gone Gone Gone) - Chilliwack

29. Sleep Somehow - Wolfsheim

30. I Drove All Night - John Waite

31. Everybody Hurts - REM

32. Runaway - Del Shannon

33. Runaway Train - Traveling Wilburys

34. Heartbreak Highway - D. W. Garrett *

35. Photograph - Blue Rodeo

36. My Boyfriend's Back - Lesley Gore

37. Blaze of Glory - Bon Jovi

38. Winner Takes It All - Abba

39. I'll Say Goodbye For the Two of Us - Expose

40. She Came in Through the Bathroom Window - Beatles

41. Should I Stay Or Should I Go - Clash

42. You've Made Me So Very Happy - Blood, Sweat and Tears

43. It Is You - Dana Glover

44. City of Heroes - David Allen Baker **

45. The Way You Look Tonight - Rod Stewart

46. No No Song - Ringo Star

* You're not going to find this one online or in the local CD store, folks. This is a great guy whose music I was introduced to on a gay internet radio station. You can order his CD at DWGarrett.com. Check out his photography while you're there.

** I don't think this one can be found online or in stores, either. I got it from his site at Davidallenbaker.com. This was a theme song for Third Watch.

  Back to story page