TITLE: Bentropy Five
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: mik_dok@yahoo.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 20th 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:
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 Five
by Mik
"No."
I wrenched away, sucker punched. Not this, not like this, not now. I dragged my hand over my mouth to wipe his kiss away. "What the hell was that?" I hissed.
He stepped back from me, betraying no sort of emotion. "Just trying to get the conversation started," he answered evenly.
"Try that again and you'll get the bleeding started," I snarled before training kicked in and I added lamely, "...Sir."
The threat was ineffective. "What are you doing here, Mulder?" he repeated, just as a tall, lithe blonde which reminded me, with a sickening jolt, of Sean Seals, slithered up and draped himself over Skinner's shoulder.
"Hi, Daddy," he purred. "Cody wants to dance."
I had expected Skinner to smear the kid off like something slimy on his sleeve. But Skinner turned slightly, eyes moving over him, and eased him off gently. "Later, Cody," he said with a kinder voice than I have ever known him to use, "Daddy's busy."
I looked around. No, this was still Bois Town. I could still feel the irritation of my ankle holster, and taste the chili from Fantastic's. I was not dreaming. I was not having an out of body experience. Everything was accounted for ... except for the alien wearing my former A.D.'s bald head and buttoned down shirt. I forced an insolent grin and nodded toward the retreating Cody. "Friend of yours...Daddy?"
Skinner glanced over his shoulder. "Not likely." He looked back to me. "What are you doing here?"
Then I remembered why I was angry. "Let's take this outside." I jerked a hand toward the hall that led to the head and the back door. At the bottom of the stairs, I looked up and saw Michele unlocking the door to that room where I had carried Krycek after he paid that kid to beat him up, the room where I had cowered from my own rage and stupidity after I'd assaulted Krycek when I learned the truth. I felt something in my chest clench at the memory of that night. And now she was taking Peyton up there to share thirty year old scotch while I went out to the parking lot to contemplate taking a swing at my boss. God, I need a cigarette.
Skinner bumped me from behind. "Mulder?"
I jerked away from my memories and pushed the back door open savagely, bouncing down the stairs and away from him. "How dare you follow me?" I demanded, pacing the asphalt at the bottom of the steps restlessly.
"What are you doing here?" he responded, following me from the top of the steps.
"How dare you question me?" I shouted.
He moved in front of me and parked. "What are you doing here?"
I lost it. I shoved him. "None of your fucking business."
He caught my wrists easily and held my hands against his chest. He looked down into my eyes and repeated with a maddening evenness to his tone, "What are you doing here?"
He was doing what he always did; playing calm, patient father waiting for his child to rage himself into exhaustion. And I was close to it at that point. I gave up with a sigh and pulled away. "Meeting a friend."
He inclined his head toward the door. "That kid you were with?" he asked with the first note of emotion, a faint emphasis on the word 'kid'.
"Peyton's helping me find someone," I hedged.
"In a notorious pick up bar," he said doubtfully.
"Notorious? Who says it's notorious?"
His expression was complacent and yet somehow knowing. "Just the fact that I know about it makes it more than just a local hangout, don't you think?"
"That's another matter, entirely...Daddy," I mocked him. "The point is what I'm doing here and with whom is none of your business."
"You're looking for Krycek." It wasn't a question.
"Wh - what..." I knew I blew it. I just stared at him. "What makes you think that?"
He gave me his famous 'Now, really, Mulder' expression and asked, "Why are you looking for him here?"
"I'm not," I denied quickly. "I met Peyton here."
"Which brings us back to the original question, what are you doing here?"
I wanted to hit him so badly at that point. "Which brings us back to the inescapable fact that it is none of your business." I glanced around, huffing irritably. One of the guys who washed dishes for the bar was sitting on a box of bottle crates at the far corner of the building, pretending he wasn't watching us. I walked over to him. "Cigarette?" I asked, and held two fingers to my mouth, the universal sign for 'gimme a smoke before I hurt someone'.
He hitched a pack out of his shirt pocket and held them out. Generic, but at that moment I would have smoked rope. "Thanks." I nodded and turned away.
Skinner was right there, with a lighter.
Startled, I looked up at him...his face looked almost demonic in the shadows of streetlamps and glow of an old Zippo. I let him light the cigarette and twisted away, inhaling deeply, letting the smoke burn a path all the way down to my gut. I coughed and expelled smoke, feeling tears. Hurt sooooo good.
Skinner stood there watching me reintroduce tar and nicotine to my lungs, and try to remember how to get oxygen in at the same time. "I guess we do know who your father was," he said at length.
"Oh, fuck you," I retorted. It really was the only appropriate response to his observation.
He took a moment to process my witty repartee before starting again. "Why are you here, Mulder?"
I shook my head. "You never give up, do you?"
His expression broke into a fragment of a smile. "Do you?"
Ah, the sixty four million dollar question, and the answer was...sometimes. I sighed and started to walk. He followed. I wasn't going far. Just to the other side of the building to look down the alley. It hadn't changed. I could almost smell him...leather coat and sweat...hear him grunt, trying not to acknowledge that I was hurting him inside and out...taste him...blood and tears. I sighed again. Something was nagging at me. Something wasn't right. Something I needed to put together, and I couldn't find it. It was playing hide and seek among all the sensations of the moment. "I was looking for ghosts," I told Skinner flatly.
Skinner said nothing. But I could feel him struggling to contain a hundred questions.
I pointed with the cigarette to a spot against the brick wall. "He was right there when he was abducted."
"Krycek?"
I nodded.
It took him a moment. I could almost hear his brain flipping through dusty case files, looking for a match. "The case eight years ago," he said finally. "The serial killer. The one who was killing young men."
I nodded again, still staring at the wall. Young men. Young men...what was it about young men that I was supposed to know?
"I remember that now. You were asked to cooperate with the local police." His voice made it clear that he remembered exactly why I was 'asked'. "You caught him. You killed him. You saved Krycek's life."
I shook my head. "I didn't kill him. I wanted to," I admitted matter of factly, "but I didn't get my gun out in time."
"All the reports said that you fired the kill shot," Skinner said as if facts didn't matter, the report said so therefore it was so. "Krycek's statement said you did."
"No." I took another hit on the cigarette. Gloried in that rush. "I'm flattered that everyone said so, but I was there. I didn't fire a round."
I could feel him turn his head to look at me. I could feel the frown on his face. "Your gun was fired, Mulder."
"I don't think so," I said around the cigarette dangling from my lip. "Not by me." I was starting to feel lightheaded.
"The ballistics report said so," he insisted.
"Reports can be wrong," I countered, remembering how helpless I felt when that maniac put a knife to Krycek's throat. How helpless and angry.
"Every one of the witness accounts says the perp was threatening Krycek with a knife, that you tried talking him into dropping the weapon, and then fired the first and fatal shot before he could kill Krycek. Why wouldn't you remember a thing like that?" Skinner mused. "You, who remember things no one else ever sees?"
What is it I remember now? What am I seeing that I don't see? "I don't know," I answered. I didn't have to see him to know he wasn't buying it. I dropped the cigarette to the dirt and ground it with my foot. "I was personally involved on this one, okay?"
Skinner was quiet for a moment. "Krycek?"
I nodded slowly, my eyes fixed on the wall. I couldn't look at him now. Now he knew. Now everyone knew. I had been personally involved with-big surprise-my partner and-bigger surprise-it wasn't Scully. And-biggest fucking surprise ever-it was someone who I came to hate, someone who came to represent everything that was corrupt and dirty about the government whose badge I wore.
But what he said to me was more than surprising. It was astounding. It was inconceivable. "You must hate me."
I jerked a look at him. "What?"
"I shot him right in front of you." I think if there had been an ounce of remorse in his voice, genuine or otherwise, it might not have had any effect on me, but the flat statement, the way he accepted it as fact, not even regrettable fact, hit me hard. He shot my former lover. He knew it. He didn't apologize for it, but he expected and accepted my acrimony for it.
I shook it off. I had no acrimony left. "You're forgiven." I stepped back from the wall, from my memories, from sounds and tastes and facts and statements, and looked at him. "Come on. I'll buy you a beer."
He remained where he was, looking at that place on the brick wall. For a moment, it was as if he could see what had happened there. Something in his posture shifted, something in his voice changed. "Do you still love him?"
Love. Shit. Was it so obvious? I didn't want to answer, but the words, the confusion, the uncertainty seemed to leak out of my mouth. "I don't know," I confessed. I looked at the wall. I looked out to the street. "I kept telling myself I didn't. But...I...there was this song..." I stopped. Surrendered. "I don't know."
He put a hand on my shoulder, and there was kindness in his eyes when he looked at me. "Come on, you can buy me a beer."
*******************************************
Walter S. Skinner, A.D. and I had our first man-to-man talk in a gay bar. Okay, it wasn't in-depth, heart and soul shit, but it was sports, and cars and the war, and that was good enough. It was about a sideshow in Florida, and a pizza delivery boy in Texas. He was open, willing to listen, keeping his skepticism to a minimum. We lined up Coronas across the table like a little glass fence to protect us from the reality of men dancing with men just an arm's reach away. He'd loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves. I had settled back against the wall, one foot on the seat, my arm draped around my knee. It was the most human he'd ever been with me, and the only time I'd felt human around him.
We avoided Krycek and Peyton and the fact that he knew about Bois Town and that he'd kissed me. It wasn't deliberate, and if it was, it wasn't obvious. It was like ... yeah, it's on the agenda, if we get to it. He even made me laugh a couple of times. He bought me a pack of cigarettes, and even though I couldn't smoke them in the bar, I kept the pack in my hand, turning it in slow rotations, taking comfort in the smell, the crinkling feeling of the wrap, the squishiness of fresh tobacco inside.
Cody came back, more than once, trying to coax him out onto the floor. I wanted to laugh at the kid, tell him how much he was wasting his time, but Skinner was always gently firm. I had to be impressed. He didn't need to use his seventh floor manners on a twink who was probably under age and over sexed, but he did. Treated him like someone who mattered. Which is probably why Cody kept coming back.
By the time he made his fifth trip to the booth, I was high enough to laugh at Skinner's helpless exasperation. He shot me a look when I snickered. "Oh, go on," I said, reaching for my beer. "I dare you."
"Think I won't?" He stood up, and took Cody's hand.
I put the bottle down and stared.
The music changed just as they stepped onto the dance floor, from something kind of slow to something very up-tempo. I lowered my feet and sat up, watching, grinning, waiting for him to turn around with an apologetic smile and beat it back to the booth. But I'll be damned if he didn't get out there and shake it. And shake it good. My former boss could really move that tight Marine ass. I admit I stared. A pair of Brooks Brothers dress slacks isn't the best way to get a good look at the merchandise, but the way he was moving, I had a pretty good idea that there was nothing soft or saggy about his situpon.
At the end of the song, he detached himself from a breathless Cody and came back to the booth. I'll give him credit; he wasn't panting or limping. But he did slide in and reached for his beer, knocking half of it back in a gulp.
I whistled appreciatively. "Talk about living in la vida Skinner. How long have you been Ricky Martin?"
He chuckled at me. "Years of living alone with MTV in the background, son," he returned with a sort of knowing ruefulness. "There's no one to laugh if you break into dance in the middle of the ironing."
"You're shitting me. You want your MTV?" The visual of old Mr. Wirerims playing the air guitar to Aerosmith in the middle of ironing his tightie-whities was almost enough to give my nasal passages a Corona enema.
He frowned at me in time to save my sinuses. "Mulder, I hate to break this to you, but I'm not that far into my dotage." The frown dissipated into a barely contained smile. "In point of fact, I'm only a few years older than you."
I'd never thought about that. He was so far above me in the Bureau food chain that I guess I saw him as a father figure, with a father's age. The fact that he would insist on calling me 'son' whenever he wanted to put me in my place just added to that illusion of disparity. But he really wasn't that much older than me. A few years, and being about to hit forty at full speed seemed to make those few years almost immaterial.
"What about you, Mulder?" he asked, amusement still quirking around his mouth. "Do you dance?"
"Oh, hell, no. Not like that!" I nodded toward the spot on the dance floor where he had so recently been tripping lights, fantastic and otherwise. "I prefer other forms of public humiliation, thank you." I reached for my own beer, but put it down to add, "Besides, I might be harmful to others if I attempted it."
"Come on, I'll take full responsibility for any bloodshed." He stood up and held out a hand in a way that said it wasn't a suggestion.
I looked up at him. "Why?"
He shrugged negligently. "I'm in the mood. The music's good, and I haven't been able to dance with someone else since Sharon left."
"Umm ..." I glanced around. "I don't know if you've noticed, but this is a gay bar, and I'm not Sharon."
"My powers of observation are still functioning, Agent," he answered in a firm voice. "Have you never heard the expression when in Rome...?"
"...um...beware of Greeks bearing Trojans?" I finished, and let him pull me up from the booth.
Tim McGraw came on, a slow, twangy lament, and he held my hand tighter. "I suppose you want to lead," I said, letting him pull me closer.
"Always," he said, laughing silently. He held me close, adjusting his embrace and led me around the floor, keeping me from tripping every time my feet wanted to go forward while his were guiding me backward. Despite the warring messages to my motor center and my struggle to accept that I was in my boss's arms, it was kind of fun. He was a good dancer. Not sensuous as Krycek had been, nor sweet as Peyton was. He was just skilled, and managed to make me feel the same. He kept one hand on the small of my back, holding me close, but there was nothing erotic about the embrace. He wasn't trying to seduce me. He wasn't even going for a cheap feel. He was just in Rome, and I was the nearest Roman.
The pace slowed even more, down to one of those cling and shuffle slow dances from the seventies. Cody decided he wanted another shot and moved up to us hopefully. Skinner shook his head and tugged me closer. Just to be spiteful, I let my cheek rest against his shoulder and sent a smug smile in Cody's direction. The boy backed away, and slunk to a chair, and I felt Skinner chuckle.
The music was warm and familiar, and his embrace was firm and oddly comforting. He was a surprisingly good dancer and I had had just enough beer to let myself relax against him. I think this was the first time I'd been this close to him without threats being involved and I decided I was going to enjoy it. He seemed content to keep me close and move around the floor; he also seemed oblivious to the sexual aspects of our situation. We could have been playing basketball to the music.
But suddenly, he stopped moving, and looked down at me. "Something wrong?"
I lifted my head. "Hmm?"
"You sighed, just now."
I realized I had been thinking of the way it felt to hold Peyton the way he was holding me, remembering the way passion flared whenever Krycek was in my arms. I backed up, breaking his hold. "Sorry. Tired, I guess." I turned back to our booth, and reached for the pack of cigarettes. "I'm going out for a smoke. Uh...thanks for the dance." I left him standing there and dragged myself outside.
Michele was outside, ubiquitous cigarette in hand, looking up at the night sky. She somehow knew it was me coming up behind her, because she said, "Do you think there's really anyone out there, Jon?"
"Yes," I answered flatly. It wasn't a conversation I wanted to get into at that moment. "Where's Peyton?"
"Upstairs." She exhaled smoke. "Looking at the computer." She twisted and looked at me. "He's a nice kid."
"Yeah." I unwrapped the packet of cigarettes and coaxed one out. "Gotta' light?"
She handed me her lighter, warm from her palm. "What's the story, Jon? Are you playing him? He's too nice a kid to be wheeled."
"Not me," I promised, cupping the flame around the end of my cigarette. I inhaled deeply and sighed. "I think he's a nice kid. A very nice kid."
"So what's the story with tall, bald and starched?" She took the lighter back, frowned at it and then at me. "I thought you quit?"
"Yeah, so did I." I rested a hip against the stair rail. "That guy's my ex boss. And the guy who shot Alex."
She jerked around. "And he's still breathing? Have you lost your touch?"
I shook my head, folding my arms over my chest. "Unfortunately, it was a good call. I told you, I saw it. Alex went dirty."
"No." She shook her head vehemently. "Not Alex." She jabbed me with an inch long glitter sparkled fingernail. "I'm a good judge of character, Jon. You don't stay in this business for as long as I have and not become almost psychic. He's not dirty."
"He's also not dead," I agreed, nodding toward the door. "He confirmed it for me tonight."
"I told you." She wasn't even smug about it.
"I know. I apologize for not believing you, but it did seem pretty incredible at the time." I took another hit. "Is Peyton okay? I feel bad -"
"He's fine." There was something peculiar about her reaction. It was almost protective, but not exactly maternal. "He's just fixing a little problem on my computer for me."
"I'm glad you looked after him, Mich," I told her. "Skinner would have torn him apart looking for evidence, and I didn't want him put through that."
"Evidence? Of what?"
I shrugged. "Not necessarily anything. He's just that way."
"You two looked pretty cozy out on the floor," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe ..."
"No maybes," I countered. "He's just in Rome."
"Huh?"
I started to explain, but the door banged open and Buddy Holly Boy looked around the corner. "Mich, phone. And the missus is here so I'm off."
Mich nodded and dropped her cigarette to the ground. "On my way."
"Missus?" I repeated, incredulous.
She smiled at me. "Not all the good ones are gay, Jon. Some of them are married."
I turned to look up at the night sky. And some of us are neither. Well ... that would imply I was good, wouldn't it? I laughed to myself grimly. I'm good, but not necessarily good for anyone else. The laughter faded. C'mon, Mulder, think. Do what you do best. What is it you're trying to remember?
I turned and looked out at the parking lot, going over the events of the night, one by one. The screen grabs, Skinner, the dishwasher, the cigarettes, the alley, Cody, the dance. There was something I wasn't seeing. Peyton, the screen grabs, Skinner, the kiss, the dishwasher, the fight, the cigarettes, the serial killer, the alley, the young men, Cody...Sean...young men...Krycek...young men...shit!
I threw my cigarette down and ran back up the stairs. Inside, I made a sharp right and kept going up. I pushed the door open and burst into the little room, and there was Peyton, at a computer desk, a bottle of scotch and two glasses on a tray. "Peyton, where's that file?"
He turned, smiled, then looked down, crestfallen. "I...it's over there. I thought you said it wasn't any use?"
"I was wrong. It was incredible. You're incredible." I scooped it up and dropped onto the bed, the same bed where I'd put Krycek down that night. I opened the folder and began to flip through the pages. Airline schedules. Rosaries. Porn sites.
Peyton came over to me and sat down. "What is it? What did you find?"
There it was. There he was. Staring back at me. It was an old photo. Had to be twenty years old, but there he was. Those green eyes, that mouth...unmistakable. I turned impulsively and kissed Peyton. Then it hit me, hard. Krycek had been used for Russian porn. Kiddie porn. "Oh, God, Alex."
- END Five -