TITLE: Str8 Seven
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.
SUMMARY: The case in California that Chris didn't tell you about.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist .
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is right after 3.
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. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I become king ... Hey, wait a minute, I am the king. Mik, the Wikked, King of the Cliffhangers. Bow before me and beg for resolution ... oh, yeah, and a happy ending.

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.

Str8 Seven
by Mik

The smell and the noise of the bar hit me hard as I staggered back inside. I thought I was numb, but I wasn't. I was the opposite of numb. If there is an anti-numb, I was it. I was hyper aware of the way my ears throbbed in the restless rhythm from the dance floor, and my skin was an entity in its own right, itchy and squirming. My stomach rolled and lurched dangerously. My brain pounded. The lights were too harsh. The crowd was too happy. I resented them all. I hated myself.

I muscled my way to the bar, not caring who I pushed aside. I nearly knocked Denise off her stool, as I leaned over to get Mich's attention. "I need the room and a scotch. Now."

She must have seen the whole history of events on my face. She dug into a pocket, and handed me keys. "You know where it is."

I left the room dark and sank down on the cot where last night I had been watching anxiously while Krycek role-played his way under my defenses. Stupid asshole. Stupid dumb shit. I held my head in my hands, my fingers curling down to grip into my hair. I can't believe it. I can't believe what I did. Oh, God, I'm losing my mind.

She turned the light on as she brought me a glass and a bottle.

I groaned loudly in protest.

"Don't take it so hard, Jon," she advised, coming to the side of the bed. "I could have told you that one was up to something."

What's happening to me? I let her pour two fingers into a glass and took it from her. "I can't believe I did that," I moaned. I wanted to go back downstairs and beat him to a pulp, and at the same time I wanted to sit right here in the dark and permanently pickle myself.

"Hey, everyone is entitled to one walk on the dark side," she said, with a fake smile in her voice. "And he's a cute little trick. It's not so surprising that you were attracted to him. He has eyes like a prom princess."

Prom princess ... oh, fuck. I lunged for the bottle. She would manage to reach into my head and pick out one good sexual memory and permanently meld it to the worst thing I ever did in my life. I poured another healthy portion and dumped it, trying to wash back bile.

"Easy, easy, Jon." She patted my head, and not so discreetly pulled the bottle just beyond my grasp. "So you swapped a little spit with another guy. You aren't going to die from that. Even with AIDS."

"It was more than that." I was shaking. Trauma. Shock. I looked up. "Is there a bathroom up here?"

She crossed to a plywood door. "Yeah ... here ... the door sticks ... oh, damn it, not again." She smiled at me ruefully. "I'm always breaking these stupid acrylic nails here. I think I'm just going to have to live with short nails like every other woman in my family. It's a curse."

I tried to be sympathetic, but breaking a nail just didn't seem to be in the same scope with breaking every moral code in your being. "Yeah, I'll bet." I pushed into the tiny bathroom. "I'll be right back." I stepped inside, barely got the door shut and threw up. Violently. Spectacularly. I haven't hurled like that since high school. Oh, God, Scully ... not only did I force him into nonconsensual sex, I got off thinking about you.

"Hey, Jon!" She was knocking on the door. "Jon, you okay in there?"

I crawled up to the sink and splashed tepid water in my face. "Yeah, but I think I lost my spleen somewhere."

She pushed the door open and handed me a fresh bar towel. "I need to get back downstairs. Are you going to be okay?"

I'm never going to be okay again in my life. "Oh, yeah, fine."

Something seemed to click in her eyes. "Oh, my God ... Jon. What did you do?"

I pulled myself to my feet. "Think of the worst thing in the world possible, and magnify it to the hundredth power." I dragged the towel over my face.

"Where is he?" she demanded.

I shook my head. "I don't ... I told him to ... I just left him there." I was going to cry. Shit.

She left the room on a run. I groped to the bed and sat down again. I felt the tears in my eyes and I let them come, despising myself for being so weak. Weak enough to give into my rage. Weak enough to give into my despair.

She was back up the stairs in what seemed like a minute but could have been an hour, looking a little wild eyed. "Jon, he's gone."

I nodded into the towel. "I sent him home."

"No. Jon. Someone --"

"Oh, let me guess," I sneered, looking up. "Someone saw him being beaten up again. I fell for that one last time." Do you really think I'm that dumb, Krycek? You've cried wolf once already ... or maybe it was Fox. I lowered my head to the towel again. "I sent him back home. Believe me, he'll be fine."

"But, Jon --"

"Leave me alone. I don't care who did what to him, all right?" I glared at her. She didn't deserve it, but she got every ounce of my pain and anger and blame. "Little bastard deserves it."

"I'm calling the police," she announced.

"Oh, yeah. Great idea." I mopped my face. "I'll be right here, waiting for them." I turned and eased myself down on the bed, and covered my eyes with my arm. Uh, gee, A.D. Skinner, Sir, could you come bail me out? I've been arrested for raping that little shit you sent out to spy on me. Yeah, any time this decade would be fine. "Just ask them not to make too much noise, please? I've got a raging headache."

She gave me a moment of silence. Silence filled with agitation. I could hear her pace, I could hear her sigh. I could feel the energy of some internal battle. A battle she ultimately lost. She touched my shoulder. "Listen to me."

I lifted my arm and tried not to glare anymore. "Look, Mich, don't try to console me. I know what I did. Just call the cops, and I promise to go quietly."

"That's really helpful," she snapped. "Nothing like a little martyrdom in crisis."

I shrugged. "My stock in trade. Ask anyone."

"Yeah, well ... try this on for size ..." She paused, sighed, and began again. "We've been having a little ... problem. We've had some --"

Holy shit! I jerked upright, tossing the towel aside. "Someone took him? Did you see the van? The driver?"

She blinked at me. "You know? But how --"

"Call the Santa Monica PD, tell them Agent Mulder said to get here, now." I pushed past her roughly, and took the stairs two and three at a time, swearing hotly. I pulled my mag light from my pocket, and at the back door scrambled for the gun at my ankle. I vaulted the step rail and whipped around the corner, sweeping the narrow beam of light over the darkness. My heart was up in my throat, making it impossible to catch my breath. You asshole. You sat up there and felt sorry for yourself while he was being dragged off by our unsub. Stupid, stupid, dumb fuck.

I tried to remember everything I'd learned about crime scene procedures but at that moment all I could remember was what Sean Seals looked like when they fished him out of the water, and I didn't want Krycek looking that way in the morning. I spotted the place where I'd left Krycek. There were definite signs of struggle, but it might have been between he and I.

I found my cast aside condom, and my gut rolled, threatening to come up again, and I had to look away. As I did, I saw something scrawled in the dirt. "h ... e ... r ... l? What the hell does that mean?" I could hear sirens not too far away. Thank God. This bastard wasn't going to get too far this time.

Standing still, I rotated my torso from side to side, looking for tire tracks. And I found them ... wide rims ... consistent with our vehicle. And something else ...

I moved carefully to the place where the tracks stopped. There were drag marks wherever dirt or dust covered the asphalt, so it was a pretty good guess that the van had been backed up to this point and Krycek, somehow rendered powerless, had been dragged to it, and tossed in. In that place where the doors should have been, there was something in the dirt, among the bits of paper, cigarettes and condom packages that had settled against a tuft of grass forcing its way through the blacktop. Shit.

I bent, lifted it carefully at the tips and went back inside, fury rushing over me hotter than the devil winds.

Mich was on the phone but she got off quickly and came to the bar as I worked my way back up to her. "Well? Anything?"

"Where is he?" I demanded. I opened my fingers and let it fall to the counter with a little rattle.

She looked at it. She looked at me. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't bullshit me, lady," I said. "I just found this out in the alley." I was beyond the protocol of Bureau interrogation. I was, at that point, just sick and fucking tired of people abducting my lovers. Okay, Scully had never, technically been my lover, but not because I didn't want her to be. And, okay, I'd just as soon beat the crap out of Krycek as ever look at him again, but I had just had a carnal union with him, and that made him a lover. I lifted the garishly curved claw. "Didn't you just lose one of these upstairs?"

She was gaping at me. "Jon ... are you ... you're kidding, right?" She moved down to the gate and stepped from behind the bar, spreading her hands out in front of me.

"Look." I grabbed her hand and shook it in her face. "Two of them are broken. You broke one upstairs on the door and the other one when you helped throw him in the back of the truck." I slammed it back on the counter.

She jerked her hand free, looking like she was going to slap me into an alternate universe. Then her brow wrinkled up in comprehension. "You're color blind, aren't you?" She held up both hands. "That is red. My nails are green."

Well, she might as well have hit me. I slumped against the wall. "God, I'm ... I'm so sorry ... I just ..." Color blind. One for black, two for navy ... h ... e ... r ... ONE! Black. "Where is he? She?" I pointed at the stool at the end of the bar. "It ..." I shook my hands in frustration. "They ... them ..."

Mich turned around. "You mean, Denise?"

"Whatever. Is it a she or a he?"

Mich frowned and picked up the broken fingernail. "I think she's a transvestite, not a transgender." She held it up. "I mean, look at this. This isn't an acrylic nail. This is just one of those pop on POSs you buy in the drug store."

I scowled at her. "What is that ... some weird female snobbery?"

She smiled tolerantly. "No, you wouldn't understand. If she was transgendering, she'd be required to go out and live as a woman before she took that final step. If she was living as a woman twenty four hours a day, she'd either grow her own nails, since she'd be taking hormones for that anyway, or she'd wear acrylics, like mine." She held up her hand again. "No, these are just pop on/pop off, temporary nails, which means most of the time she's living as a male."

Okay, I knew that. "So ... she's ... um ... a drag queen?"

"Maybe. Maybe she just likes silky panties."

I rubbed my aching head. "This has got to be the thinnest bit of profiling I've ever done." Thin? It was transparent. I'd been wrong all the way around. "Do you know anything about her ... when she's him?"

She shook her head apologetically. "No ... but, wait a minute...I think Glenn dated her for a while." She lifted her gaze and scanned the bar. "Yeah. Glenn." She leaned over the gate and called over the din. "Hey, Glenn, get down here. I'll buy you a beer."

The guy at the end of the bar looked as if he'd wandered in accidentally to get out of the rain. He was as Brooks Brothers as my A.D. back in DC, balding and looking about a year shy of paunchy. He was grinning like he'd won a jackpot as he lifted himself off a stool and moseyed (yeah, moseyed) toward us. "Glenn, this is Jon. He's interested in Denise. Glenn likes CDs and TVs."

"Oh," I said, bewildered. Why should his entertainment choices be at issue in this conversation? "Who is he? Bachelor number one?"

Mich and Glenn both laughed. "Cross dressers and transvestites," she explained. She stepped inside the gate. "I'll get you a beer."

Glenn gave me a serious look. "You don't look the type. Besides, didn't I see you with some toy in leather pants earlier?"

I shrugged at him, resisting an urge to look at my watch. Where the hell were the cops? "I'm trying to broaden my experience," I said with what I hoped was a believable smile.

"So you're interested in Denise?" He laughed. One of those loud haw-haw-haw's that make you flinch inwardly. "That's a good one. `Broaden'." He slapped my shoulder. "Denise isn't the one for you ... she's a newbie. You need someone a little more experienced." He looked around, his arm sliding over my shoulder in an avuncular manner. "Now, Rachel, over there ... she's a beaut ... a real lady. I can --"

"No, I ..." I stopped. I could really feel myself blush. "I talked to Denise once. We sort of ... clicked."

"Really? Well you're the only one she's ever warmed to. I tried to take her out a half a dozen times. I don't know anyone who actually got anywhere with her. She's a real egghead. Wanted to talk about string theories and particle physics and stuff." He took his beer from Mich. "Hey, did you hear him? He wants to `broaden' his experience with Denise." He nudged her. "Get it? Broaden?"

Mich gave him a smile, shot me a look, and went back to the bar.

"So, she's a physicist?" I prompted.

"Oh, hell, no. She's assistant coach for USC's woman's basketball team. She gets off on these theories about the way our lives overlap and repeat. I think it's that show ... you know ... something Leaps."

"I'll be fucking damned," I muttered. Who knew the one thing I would get right would be the wildest guess I made. "Yeah, yeah, Quantum Leap. Hey, listen, Glenn ... thanks for the info." I slid out from under his arm. "You're probably right. She's not the girl for me."

*******************************************

The cops did finally show up, and one of them was actually someone I recognized from my work with the department. When I told him the latest possible victim was my own partner, he found that immeasurably funny, and kept teasing me about it in that twisting gallows humor cops have. I was just one heartbeat short of kneecapping him. The only thing that kept me from taking him down was the fact that I knew who our perp was. It didn't take very long to get them on the horn and find out the name of the assistant coach for USC's woman's basketball team.

Dennis Dewayne. Forty-two. Single. Had been the assistant coach for eleven years. At the same time he was still a grad student, eighteen years after finishing his undergrad. No priors. He lived over in the valley. They dispatched a car to the address.

I was still pacing the parking lot. It wasn't right. It didn't fit. What did I miss? I talked to the guy myself. Twice. What did he tell me that I didn't hear? Oh ... mother, what have you done?

"No one at the address," a young uniform told me, trotting over from the unit. "Where do we go from here?"

"Bates Motel," I muttered.

The kid arched a brow. "I'm sorry?"

I shook my head. "Before your time." I brushed wind whipped hair from my eyes. "He didn't take him home. He's got a place with easy access to the water. Otherwise he'd have to transport the body too far to dump it. Check and see if Coach Dewayne has a boat." I glanced at my watch. Two hours since I walked away from him. Two hours. What might have happened to him?

Mich came out the back door, for the first time looking frazzled. Evidently having a half dozen uniformed officers on the premises was bringing the party down. "Would you like to tell me what's going on, now, Jon?" she asked me, pulling a package of cigarettes from her pocket.

I lifted my shirt and let her see my badge. Then I took the cigarette she offered.

"You're a cop?" She could have just as easily asked me if I was pond scum or a Republican.

I lit a match and held it out, blocking it with my free hand from the wind. "Federal, yeah."

"What are you doing on this?" She turned her head enough to let the wind blow her hair back from her face, and let smoke trail away with it. "Isn't this for the locals? I know they're in on it, I've talked to enough of them."

I lit my own cigarette. "Were they getting the job done?" I let the burn fill my lungs. "I happened to be out here on ... personal business, and they asked for a little help."

"And Skippy?"

I laughed. I had to. God alone knew what was happening to him, but I couldn't help but find the name funny. "He's my partner." I was stunned at how easily that slipped out of my mouth.

She arched a brow, and damn it if it wasn't just like Scully. "Boy, you guys really believe in going under the covers, don't you?"

I looked down. She looked as if she was seeing something inside me I didn't know I had. "Well ... I'm not usually quite so ... diligent," I answered carefully.

"He should file charges, you know," she told me frankly.

I nodded. "I hope he does." I hope he lives to at least think about it, anyway.

She gestured toward my waist. "Did I read that right? Your name is really Fox?"

I nodded. The uniform was coming back toward us.

"Then why were you using Jon?"

"It was Kry -- Alex's idea. He thought Fox was a little too ... obvious." The kid looked as if he had news.

"Yeah, it does have that certain porn star flavor to it," she agreed, with a twitch of amusement around very tired eyes.

"Thanks, I'll tell my mother you thought so." I looked at the kid. "What have you got?"

"No boats in his name, but there's a charter company in Marina Del Rey that says a guy who could match our guy returned a boat the other night and they found blood in it. Oh." He looked at his notebook. "One other thing. They've been canvassing his neighborhood, and one of his neighbors said he hasn't been around there in a while."

"Not since his mother died," I prompted.

The kid looked at me as if I was mystic. I looked at Mich and shrugged. "It was his mother who molested him, not his father. I had it wrong. He was punishing himself for being too weak to fight his mother."

"So, why did he go after Skippy? I mean, Alex?" Mich asked.

"Because he's such a fucking Skippy," I answered miserably. I set him up for it the minute I shoved him out there on the dance floor.

"Hey!" The detective waved his arms. "We've got a stolen boat out of Marina Del Rey."

I flicked the cigarette away. "Coming." I held out a hand to Mich. "No hard feelings?"

She laughed. "Come around once you get the bastard, and I'll buy you a carbonated cum bubble."

"Uhhh, pass." I let go of her hand, and started to trot toward the patrol car.

"If he hurts Skippy, give him an extra kick for me!" she called.

I waved as I climbed into the unit. "Let's go."

I'd forgotten what it was like to ride along in an urban marked unit, and the uniform behind the wheel was excited and eager to show off for a Fed. We barely stayed off the sidewalks. My anxiety to get to Krycek before he became a statistic was only slightly greater than my fear of becoming one myself. We bossed so many intersections, I was certain I was going to end up becoming a hood ornament on a Mack truck before we got down to the Marina. But I couldn't ask the kid to slow down. I needed to get down there, get that much closer.

I know I wanted to catch the bastard. I know that I didn't want to give him the chance to take one more life, but what I didn't know then, or perhaps just didn't understand then, was this really had become personal. Damn it, that was Alex Krycek he had, Alex whom I used and handed over, gratis. Alex, whose body I'd taken, whose breath I'd felt, whose protests I'd exulted in.

We soared down into the high rent district of Marina Del Rey, past trendy bars, expensive apartment and powerhouse office buildings, winding in and out of local pedestrians closing the bars with late night pizza, and the constant flow through traffic coming out of the airport. Tall masts of pleasure boats listed in the wild, hot winds, and the black waters of the bay rippled and capped around the hulls. It didn't feel right.

"He's not on the boat yet," I blurted, as we forced our way down a dock, lights cutting through the dark. "He can't man the boat and do what he needs to do to Krycek. He's got the boat nearby ... are there places where you store boats ... when they're being repaired or something?"

The officer's eyes screwed up thoughtfully. He wanted to appear the expert but I don't think he'd ever been this close to the water. At last he sighed and got on his radio. "Hey, Batman ... you on?"

`Batman'? I looked at him, laughing helplessly.

He took his finger off the button. "Private channel. Hey, Batman ... I'm in MDR. Looking for a place where they drydock boats. Got a local?"

I heard some cheery rasp come through. Didn't understand a word.

"That's a roger, Batman. How's the cave?"

More static that ended with a hearty proclamation that the officer behind the wheel was of dubious parentage. "Roger that." The kid dropped the mic back into place. "I think I know what you're looking for." He kicked it into reverse, swung an arm over the back of the seat and began moving the cruiser back up the dock. "Boat repair docks up about six blocks. I think one of the companies just went bankrupt. Might be empty."

Well, roger that, you bastard, I thought. "Let's get backup."

*******************************************

They were just big wooden sheds built over slips in the water. But they would do. They were far enough away from the commercial area that it would be easy to move around down there without being observed. We moved in: four units and one harbor patrol. The Boy Wonder and I got out and met with the OIC. We were all down on the gangway below the slips, shrugging into Kevlar, loading guns, mounting night scopes. I showed my badge around, and reminded them the hostage was a fellow officer and if that sonofabitch even sneezed in Krycek's direction to take him out. Shit, it had become personal.

We crept back up along the dock, slow and stealthy, finding places to hide behind barrels, and coils of ropes and stacks of canvas. The sounds of the traffic were muted out over the water. But the night was alive with other sounds, hollow and eerie. There were the dull ringing of lines banging against masts in the wind, the distant flapping of a loose sheet, the water slapping against the hull of a boat, the creaking of vessels and wooden docks rubbing against one another in the shifting tide, the low cry of someone in pain.

"Krycek!" I looked at the two officers crouching next to me and I signaled for a pair of binoculars. They were handed down to me, and I sent them scanning over the wooden sheds. I could see no sign of lights, in any of them. He couldn't be working in the dark. I looked down to the end of the dock ... saw a flicker of light reflected on the water underneath. I tapped Boy Wonder's shoulder and pointed. He started whispering into his shoulder mic, and I could see dark figures moving in a low crouch out into the darkness.

I pulled my S and W into my hand, tight, and started to follow. I had a terrible feeling about what those officers were going to find, and I wanted to be there. For them. For him.

There was another cry, higher, more strident, and we forgot about stealth. We scrambled up the decks with a dozen pairs of thudding feet and hit every doorway and window.

It was a sight. A horrible one. Krycek, naked, was bent back over a wooden rail, wrists bound to ankles in a painful imitation of the letter `O'. He had rope around his throat, pulling his head back, and wire looped around his penis tugging it down toward the floor. Between his legs it was obvious that foreign objects had brutalized him; blood and feces dripped down his legs.

Denise, sans wig, but still in drag, was shoving a rag into Krycek's mouth as we burst in. He was a parody of humanity, garish make-up, short-cropped black hair, wild eyes, and an outfit that he must have borrowed from one hell of a tall cheerleader. The scary thing was ... if he'd washed his face and put on jeans he'd look a lot like ... me.

He whipped around, looking for a knife he'd left lying on a post, and brought it to Krycek's throat as he ducked behind him. "Get away from me!"

"Kill the fucker," Krycek croaked. "Kill `im now."

"Denise," I started, feeling way out of my element and almost too terrified for Krycek to be effective.

"Dennis, you asshole," he snarled. "I'm not one of those freaks."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. The man was crouching on the floor of the dry dock in stockings, high heels, a pleated skirt and two pale purple sweaters, with pearls still in his ear lobes and around his neck, holding a large Applegate Fairborn to the throat of a trussed and naked man, and he was telling me he wasn't a freak. "Okay, Dennis, what kind of freak are you?"

"I'm not a freak, I never was. I don't care what she -- I don't care what anyone said."

"Don't waste your psychology on this one," Krycek rasped. "He's a freak and he deserves to die."

"Is that true, Dennis?" I asked. "I always thought that no one deserved to die. What about you? What do you think? Did all those boys you killed deserve to die?"

It was weird to see a mouth smeared with that bright red lipstick smile. "You don't know anything. I didn't kill anyone. You can't blame me for anything. It's just the inevitable, the way the universe moves. Death touches death. It's a circle."

"Yeah, I know. What goes around comes around, is that it, Dennis?"

"He did kill them," Krycek countered, struggling. "He told me. He bragged to me. I'll testify against him, I'll --"

The smile turned into a bared teeth snarl. "Shut up. I'll shut you the fuck up."

The hand with the knife moved. Four guns went off before I even raised mine. Four loud pops. There was a shrill cry, a thud, and then a splash. I saw none of it. I only saw the ribbon of blood at Krycek's throat.

- END Seven -

Back to story page