TITLE: Bentropy Six
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 Six
by Mik
"No."
Just a soft whisper of protest, like a leaking balloon. Only instead of air, I was full of feeling and that feeling was hissing out into the room.
Peyton was leaning against me, his hand on my wrist. "Is that him?"
I looked at the page again. There were all sorts of lurid promises, comments that suggested that this vintage video was so intense it had been repressed for twenty years, that hinted the purveyor of these prints could be arrested if caught selling them. But it was his face that I couldn't take my eyes from, and his expression hurt. He looked dead. Not in the physical sense, but as if his soul had been constituted and extracted, leaving only a husk of a boy, a boy who didn't care what was done to his body. "Yeah," I said with a painful sigh, "that was him."
Peyton turned the page to study it. "I don't think he looks like me."
I smiled sadly. No, Peyton, you're alive, I thought. "He's changed a little," I answered, closing the folder and dropping it on the bed.
Peyton picked up the folder and flipped through it. "I guess that explains his interest in organizations that are fighting child pornography."
"Huh?" I looked over his shoulder. "Where?"
"This article. There were a couple of other ones, now that I think about it." He pulled a sheet free and handed it to me. "One of them was about an organization here in Los Angeles."
Something clicked. Didn't he tell me he 'knew' people in Los Angeles? Didn't he tell me he once had a 'connection', some agency that investigated child abuse in Los Angeles? I scanned the article. "Can you find the name of that organization?" I nodded toward Mich's computer. "Here?"
Peyton shook his head. "I have all the identifying ISPs at home. But I could go..." he didn't look as if he wanted to go.
"No." I patted his shoulder. "It's okay. Tomorrow, maybe?"
Peyton gave his assent in a jerky nod, something faintly disturbed and disappointed.
I took the folder back, and pulled him into an almost chaste hug. "That would be great. Thanks." I tried to smile encouragingly but it was hard. My overactive imagination was writing Krycek's childhood and it wasn't nice.
I couldn't even explain why it hurt so much. After all, Alex Krycek had driven me away, spilled blood over my heart, become my sworn enemy. But there had once been a man whom I had held, kissed, loved. And it hurt that he had been hurt. He brought his broken soul to me and I ground it into the broken glass of pleasure-tinged pain; the power I needed, the control he sought. I was as much his murderer as he was my father's - Bill Mulder's killer.
I took the file downstairs a little reluctantly. I knew that Skinner was going to be waiting for an explanation, and there was no way he'd accept that this was my quest - mine alone. He had never respected those boundaries before. Why should he start now?
He was still in the booth, two fresh Coronas in front of him. He sat up straighter as I returned and I swear that, for a moment, I thought he was going to rise from his seat, as he always did when women came into his presence. I would have laughed if it had been anyone else but me. "Feel better?" he murmured, his eyes going anywhere but the file tucked under my arm.
I slid in across from him and he pushed one of the bottles to me. Son of a bitch expected me to come back. I took a thirsty drag and put the bottle down with a rattle. "What do you know about Krycek's background - and I don't mean the official one."
He met my eyes. "What do you know?"
I shook my head. "No, we aren't going to play that game. Tell me." I patted the table firmly, because I wanted to slap him. Or slug him. Or put my fist through a wall. "You know why I'm asking, so damn it, don't play games with me."
Skinner scowled at me. "Not here.
"Where?"
He reached for his beer, tossed back a good portion, and stood, without swaying. "Let's go. Can you get a cab?"
"I rented a car -"
"No. We've been drinking." He held out a hand.
"A few beers," I protested, but I knew he was right, damn him. I brushed his hand away and slid out of the booth. "Out front."
There was no discussion about where we were going. He gave the driver the name of my hotel and didn't even have the decency to give me a 'you don't mind, do you?' look. But that was typical of him. He had never waffled in his duty, no matter which side of the right he found himself.
He did actually pause at my hotel door and look at me expectantly. I returned the look. "Go ahead. You got in once before."
He gave me a very tired sigh. "Don't be an asshole, Mulder." He held out his hand. "The key."
I dug for my wallet but did not surrender the card. "Sorry, but I'm not your prom date. I open my own doors."
He stayed my hand just as I started to slide the card through the reader and produced his gun from a holster at the back of his waist. "You used to be more careful, Mulder."
I sure didn't remember that gun when I was up close and personal. "I used to have a reason to be," I retorted, flustered, and pushed the door open. I didn't wait for amenities. The moment he crossed the threshold, I shoved the door shut. "Give."
"How 'bout a coffee, Mulder?" he offered, moving to the service tray on the counter by the sink.
"How 'bout you stop stalling and open up?" I dropped onto one of the beds.
"How 'bout you tell me about that folder you've been hugging like a lover?" he countered, filling the carafe from the tap. "Just what have you and your little pet come up with? Nothing classified, I trust?"
"Me? Break the law?" I watched him. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"
He opened the coffee packet and spilt it into the filter. "For your own sake, Mulder -"
"Damn it, don't give me that for my own sake crap. I've heard that all my life." I bounced off the bed and charged him angrily. "Just tell me, don't fuck around with me anymore."
He eased me off, far more gently than I expected or even deserved. "For your own sake, you should learn to control some of your impulses and let a man finish a sentence." He flicked the switch on the pot. "What I was about to say was, for your own sake I should tell you to forget it, and him, but I can see that's pointless." He sighed heavily, backed me up to the bed and pushed me down. Drawing up a chair, he straddled it and looked down at me sadly.
I fidgeted. His look reminded me of all the times when my dad - when Bill Mulder sat me down to scold me for some misdeed or other. "Well?"
"The unofficial biography of Alexei Krycek," he paused, making sure I noted the faint emphasis, "indicates he was born in the former Soviet Union but came to this country at a very young age. There are suggestions, unproven, that his parents were agents themselves, but it is known that at one time, custody of the child went to a relative in Russian Georgia. During that time, his whereabouts and activities are unknown, but there has been suggestions that he worked in...ah..."
I swallowed tightly.
Skinner was quiet for a moment, his lips pursed up tightly. "His parents sought to regain his custody when he was in his teens, and he was returned to the United States, and the family relocated to the West Coast. It was here in Los Angeles, after a certain ... encounter where he showed remarkable aptitude and resourcefulness, he was recruited into the organization you know as the Consortium. From there he was maneuvered into Quantico, and then into the Bureau." Skinner shrugged. "Much of this was known to the Bureau at that time, but he did possess certain skills and training that was considered potentially useful. Unfortunately, the nature of his personality was such that he was unmanageable and his talent went wasted."
"In other words, the Bureau wanted to use him as an assassin."
Skinner arched a brow at me. "That's not exactly our job."
"Not exactly," I repeated dryly. I felt cold inside. "Okay, let me see if I can distill the suggestions and delicate pauses. He worked in a brothel as a kid, and came back to the States and was put out on the streets for his parents. He killed someone and caught the attention of the black lunged bastard." I eyed him. "How am I doing?"
Skinner drew a deep breath. "Fine." He stood. "How 'bout that coffee?"
I sat there, on fire inside and at the same time numbed to the bone.
He brought a cup back to me, sighed and pressed it into my hands. "You knew all this, Mulder. I know you knew it, somewhere inside you."
Did I? I must have known...something. "I didn't know details."
"I'm sorry. It still hurts."
I looked up at him over the coffee. The genuine remorse in his voice was unexpected. "Yeah," I agreed morosely, "it does."
He resumed his seat, resting his chin on the back of the chair, resting his cup on his thigh. "Now that you know, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know." I took a sip. Hotel coffee sucks. "He was looking for me. I'd still like to know why." I looked up. "I don't suppose you know that, do you? Even a...suggestion?" I mocked.
He shook his head. "No, Mulder, I don't know. I'm not sure I'd tell you if I did, but since I don't, I don't have to strain my conscience not to tell you."
I considered him in bitter admiration. "Well, that's a nifty little routine. Can you do the Riverdance?"
He smiled at me. Well, his mouth smiled. His eyes were full of regret. "I'm sorry. I know that's not what you wanted to hear."
"To tell you the truth, I don't know what I wanted to hear." I stood up. "Yes, I do." I took the nearly untouched coffee to the sink and poured it out. "I wanted to hear where he was. I wanted to find him and ... and ..." I couldn't say it. Not aloud to him, not even silently to my soul. I sighed heavily. "I don't know." I came back to the bed and settled opposite him. I didn't look at him. I just sat there.
"Can I ask you something?" he said after a moment.
"I bet you can," I smirked.
He wiped the smirk off my face with eight words. "When did you find out you were gay?"
I looked at him then. I felt my face ignite into a million shades of shame. "I don't ... I'm ..." When did I? Did I ever? I don't believe there was ever a moment when a little pink light went on in my head. There was just a moment when the only thing I wanted was to have him in my arms. "I don't know," I confessed. "Maybe the night Scully regained consciousness."
He knew exactly which night I was talking about. "That long ago?" He actually sounded disappointed in me. "I have to congratulate you. You've been very discreet. I would have thought living all those years under the microscope, someone would have found out and used it to destroy your career."
I snorted derisively. "Somebody did a damned fine job without finding out about that, don't you think?"
He gave a single nod in concession. "True." He sipped coffee. He seemed to be enjoying it. "Still...it is remarkable."
I wanted to hit him. I hated the tone, that damned condescending, slightly titillated tone. "Are you trying to find out if I was spending my Friday nights cruising, Skinner? Just ask me, huh?"
"Fair enough. Were you?"
"What is it with you?" I bounced off the bed. "Shit, no. As a matter of fact, he was the only one I ever ... no. No, I wasn't."
"What about this kid in the bar tonight?"
I shrugged, my back to him. "We've ... Why do you care? Does it amuse you that my life is so empty and void that I went eight years between lovers?" I jerked around to look at him again. "There was no one, Skinner. No one. Krycek walked out on me and there was no one else. Even Scully was a mistake. It was an act of desperation between two lonely people." I felt the tears in my chest and I stopped and swallowed hard. "Peyton's just a nice, mixed up, uncertain kid. I'm an...experiment for him. We've...played around. He's not ready for the big event."
Skinner was watching me with such intensity I wondered if he was keeping his face rigidly impassive for fear of breaking up and laughing out right at me. "You're not having sex with him," he concluded finally.
"Oh, yeah, we've had sex. Just not...that. We haven't..." I paused before I sneered the words, "...made love."
He absorbed this. "But you made love with Krycek."
"Oh, no." I turned back to the sink and turned on the tap. "Krycek and I never made love." I cupped water and drank from my hand. "We just fucked," I told the mirror.
I didn't hear him move. I didn't see it in the mirror. I turned around just as he was there. He moved me against the wall without touching me, and then his arms were sliding around me. One hand moved up my back to my hair and his fingers curled tight. He kissed me again.
This was different. This was a connection. There was feeling in it. His body was hard against mine. His heart was pounding against my chest. His lips against me were not cruel or demanding, just hungry. His face felt hot against mine as he shifted, to breathe against my ear. "All this time," he whispered, "I never knew." He kissed me again. "You didn't have to be alone."
My brain was screaming murder. What was he saying to me? More than I could comprehend, I know that. I struggled a little in his embrace. It was one thing to dance with him when the beer and the music offered a good time for one and all, but this was different. This was my former boss with me in a hotel room, attempting to intubate me with his tongue.
When his hand moved to my crotch I shoved. "Get off! What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I danced back from him. "Look, being gay doesn't automatically make you easy." I glared at him. "What makes you think ... how could you..." I was spluttering and I gulped air and tried to get my thoughts and tongue aligned.
Then I looked at him. That was a mistake. All my righteous indignation and wounded pride evaporated. He looked...hurt. It's not fair that someone that big, that mean, that intimidating could look...hurt. He was just standing there, hands hanging limp at his sides, sort of deflated, but it was his eyes...the eyes of someone who had just lost the most important thing in the world...that's what got me.
For a moment I flattered myself into believing that I was that important to him, after all, he did come three thousand miles to find out why I didn't end up where everyone expected me to be. But then, this was the man who just expected to get his own way, and he didn't this time. It was bound to be a shock.
I wiped my mouth with the hem of my shirt and moved farther away from him and the wall. "What were you thinking? That I'd be an easy lay just because I slept with a guy?" I gestured around the room. "For the record, we're no longer in Rome."
"Yes."
That's all he said. I'm not sure what he was responding to, but it didn't really matter. He sounded as deflated as he looked. He moved past me, pausing a moment when I flinched, and poured the last of the coffee into his cup. He drank it, standing there an arm's reach from me, not looking at me, or the mirror or the wall. He looked into his cup, took a drink, and looked into it again. He repeated the process 'til the cup was empty. Then he put the cup down and stepped into the bathroom. I heard him empty his bladder, and he came out, washed his hands methodically, and then, without even looking at me, replaced the chair he had drawn out, and sat down at the foot of the bed. He bent and unlaced his shoes.
I watched as he undressed to the basics and pulled back the bedclothes. He didn't once meet my eyes, didn't once steal a glance in my direction. I know, because I was watching. Once he settled himself just so among pillows and blankets, he announced to the room, "I'll be leaving in the morning," and rolled onto his side, his back to me. Just like that.
Well, no one's going to show more ce ne fait rein than Fox William Mulder. I've become the Emperor of It Don't Matter. I dropped onto the edge of the other bed, kicked off my shoes, fell back on the bed, my back to his back.
*******************************************
"Mulder."
I opened my eyes with a full body jerk. I was bathed in sweat, and my heart was pounding in my chest. I felt just a little bit wild, ready to fight the world. A nightmare, I knew that fast enough, but unlike my usual nocturnal wrestling with the world at large, this one didn't rush back at me in a 56 kbps replay in my first seconds of consciousness. I just felt frantic.
"Mulder."
I turned toward the voice, fists curled against my chest, ready to fight.
It was Skinner kneeling next to me, one hand tentatively on my shoulder. "A nightmare, Mulder," he was saying quietly. "It's over. All over."
I shook my head. No, it was just beginning. Now I had indelible images of Krycek in my heart. I would never be free of them.
"Shhh...it's over." He reached for and gathered me against him. And much to our mutual surprise, I rolled into his embrace and stayed still. I know he was a bit nonplused by it, because for a moment, his hands just hovered over me, but then slowly, gently, they came around my back, and touched, lightly. I think he was waiting to see if I would react, and when I didn't, they moved, slow and firm up and down my spine. "It's over."
My face was up against his undershirt. I was getting a brainful of soap and sweat and cotton. Very heady stuff, especially since my brain was still swirling with the now receding images of Krycek in the hands of sadists. My mind was at war with some other part of me. I'm not sure where, and I'm not sure which side was winning. I tried not to think about it. I was being still, letting him touch me, and smelling his shirt.
"Better?" he asked softly.
I felt it more than heard it. It was a deep rumble against my cheek. I nodded slightly. I didn't want to encourage conversation. I didn't want him to think about letting go.
One hand moved up into my hair. His fingers moved through it very gently, as if he'd never felt such stuff before. "I know it hurts. But you can't undo it. You know that better than anyone. The past can't be undone." His palm settled, warm and strong, at the back of my neck. "You just have to make yourself go forward."
"I...have no forward to go to," I confessed. Damn it, that was it. My life, my quest, my truth ... it was all gone. I had nothing anymore. I didn't even have the fuel to hate Krycek anymore. Scully was more fully removed from me than she had been when she'd been abducted. Our one night of stupidity was a wall neither of us could ever break down, neither of us even wanted to. Samantha was dead, Bill Mulder was dead, my mother was dead, even the man who gave me life and a brother, he, too, was gone. There was nothing left. Except these hands, this cotton shirt, this darkness.
He pulled away then. Just enough to look at me. His smile was sad. "No? What about the boy at the bar?"
Was Peyton the future? No. He was a sweet kid who reminded me of everything I wanted Alex to be and couldn't transform him. "No, not really. He's not even right now."
There was silence in the darkness. A soft silence. And then his sigh. "Do you want right now?"
The question shouldn't have surprised me. He had kissed me. He had held me close when we danced. He had opened up and talked to me which was even more intimate. Still, I was surprised. "Have you ..." I didn't even know how to ask.
"Oh, yes," he said. "For a very long time, now." He eased me back on the bed, and with one hand still on my back, brought his other hand around and let it slip up under my shirt.
I remained still, except for some unexpected trembling. This was Walter S. Skinner stroking my belly, pushing my shirt up, flicking a fingertip over my nipples. His face was a mask of concentration. He didn't meet my eyes, he remained focused on my chest and stomach, and the point where my jeans left a gap between fabric and flesh. One finger trailed along underneath, just missing vital organs, tickling, warming, arousing.
I had to move, I know more was required of me. I put a tentative hand on the warm cap of his scalp, smoothed my fingers back to a fringe of hair. I felt him work the buttons of my jeans. I let my hand fall to cup his cheek. I felt sure, steady fingers cup me. Stroke me. I made some sound, some keening that he heard and I didn't, because he looked at me at last.
There was something warm in his eyes, and just a hint of a smile at his mouth. Not an amused smile, more of a wistful one. "Not just right now, Mulder. It can't be just right now."
What was I supposed to say to that? He had my dick in his hand, and I wanted him to do something about it. Where was the guy who made the big speeches about not being easy? I felt trapped and I think he knew it, because he felt the reaction in my erection...or rapidly failing one. I pulled back from him and scooted up to sit at the head of the bed.
He looked at his empty hands and moved over to the other bed. He sighed. Deeply.
The silence was back and this time it wasn't so soft. I found myself hunching up, pulling my knees up, hugging them, protecting myself from a body blow I knew was coming. I waited.
It came. And even prepared, the force of it was unexpected. "I've wanted you for a very long time," he said at last.
I swallowed, dry. "W - wanted me?" Damn it, why did he always make me stammer? "You mean ... s - sexually?"
He lifted his eyes to mine. "No." He shrugged slightly in concession. "Well, yes, that. And more." There was no shame in his expression. Just resolve. "I have been attracted to you for years."
"No way." Okay, it wasn't the wittiest riposte, but it was all I could come up with at the moment. "After the way you've treated me all these years?"
"I was still your boss, Mulder," he reminded me. As if I could forget it. "And I treated you as was appropriate for my position and your behavior."
Well, that was a low blow. "And now...what? You think you can waltz in here and expect me to feel the same about you just because I'm gay?"
"No." He didn't sound the slightest bit chagrined now. So matter of fact and calm. We might as well have been sitting in his office with that big desk between us. "I was hoping, however, to find you willing to discuss the situation. See if we couldn't find some mutually satisfying...position."
"You mean, like sixty nine?" I blurted. And giggled. Two traits I have got to give up. "Sorry."
He glared at me. Just like old times. "I can see you're not serious about this." He pushed the blankets back on his bed and swung his legs up. "Don't worry about it, Mulder. Your secret will be safe with me." He smoothed the bedclothes out and settled deeply into the bed. "Good night."
I sat there, still hunched up, arms wrapped around my knees, looking at his bed, barely making out the shape of him in the dark. I think I was shaking again. No one could ever say I was in control of my life. In fact, take a poll and ninety nine point nine percent of the respondents would say the phrase that best described my life was Out of Control (with an error margin of plus or minus five percent). But few people could ever describe me as speechless. Oh, no. I could usually bluff or blather my way through any situation. At that moment I could not draw on one single word to express myself or respond to him. At that moment, I'd taken a roundhouse to my reality.
Yet, that didn't stop me from trying. "I don't know how to explain," I began numbly.
He was still for a moment, and then, without turning back to me, said, "You don't have to."
"No. Well, yeah, I do." I lowered my legs slowly and shifted to the side of the bed.
"No." He fisted his pillow and settled against it with determination. "You don't."
That sounded very much like an order. It helped. I was always brilliant at defying orders. "It's not about you, Sir ... um, Walter. It's about -"
"Go to sleep, Mulder." His voice was tired and full of threat.
"Going to sleep, Sir." But I didn't move. I sat there a very long time, looking at his back, his shoulder, the glow in the dark whiteness of his shirt. "I've only loved three people in my life. I used to think I loved my parents, but I only feared them, and they weren't really my parents, anyway, were they. But I loved my sister. I loved Scully. And for a cataclysmic moment in time, I loved the person I knew as Alex Krycek. Since then I've hated him, despised him, hunted him, accused him, turned my back on him, watched him die, but there has never been a moment in all that time when, if he had come to me and shown me that person I once loved that I wouldn't love him again with everything in me."
I looked down at my fists, pressing into the side of the bed at my hips, surprised to see my knuckles were glow in the dark white as well. "I know it doesn't make any sense. It is just what it is. And I can't let go of it yet. And no matter how much you feel about me, how good you might be to me or for me, I could never give it back to you. It would always be right now with me."
He remained still and quiet. Realizing that he may have actually managed to fall asleep during my rambling, I turned and began to climb back under the bedclothes.
Just as my head found the pillow, his deep, quiet voice cut the dark silence once again. "Are you willing to be alone, while you wait for someone who will probably never come back?"
I closed my eyes. "No. I don't want to be alone. But I also know that if he did come back, I'd leave you in a heartbeat. Is that what you want?"
- END Six -