TITLE: Undone
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/K
RATING: NC-17. M/K. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not
suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.
SUMMARY: The story that raises the burning question can popsicles get
stale?
ARCHIVE: This story belongs to Credo.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING:
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Krycek NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, 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 personally think Chris Carter, et al, should just give
them to me, since they're not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat
them much, much better, but there you are.
Author's notes: This story was commissioned by Credo, who made a donation to the Red Cross Katrina Disaster Relief Fund. Thank you.
Undone, by Mik
"How the hell did you do this?" The bastard was laughing at me.
I struggled against the collapsed scaffolding. "Stop laughing. Just help me."
"Wait, wait..." he was fumbling into the hip pocket of his jeans, "I need a picture of this. It will make a great addition to the Bureau's monthly newsletter."
"You know I'm going to kill you as soon as I get out of this," I warned.
He lifted his mobile and aimed the camera at me. "You'll have to get out of it, first." He almost giggled as he took at least a dozen photos.
"I will kill you," I promised him, trying to push the metal frame away, only to wrench my leg back in a direction it was never intended to go. "Shit. Put that phone down and help me."
He laughed again, but pocketed the phone and bent to push the frame toward me. "Move your foot. No, this way."
"You know that hurts, don't you?"
He was unmoved by this revelation. "How did you do this?"
"Do I owe you explanations?" I howled as he pushed my foot through a rung in the ladder.
He looked down at me, almost sternly. "You'd think you'd be a little more respectful of the means of your salvation."
"Fine," I grunted, gingerly drawing my knee somewhere near my ear, "turn water into wine and you'll get all the respect you can handle."
"You know you're going to hell, don't you?" He tugged at the frame.
"Oh, yes? And you're the conductor on that train, aren't you? Hey! That hurts!"
"It won't...oh...hold still, it's caught on your jeans. I said hold still!'
"That hurts. You try holding still when someone's wrenching your leg off at the knee."
"You're such a baby." He gave the frame another yank. There was a sort of sickening pop, and a moment later the pain registered in my brain. I screamed. I didn't intend to scream. I don't truly think he intended me to scream. But there was no stopping that sound.
The expression on his face was almost as painful as what he had done. "Are...you...all...right?"
I couldn't answer. I was gasping and trying to work my hands through the rungs of the frame to get to my knee. I knew it wouldn't help, but instinct said I had to put my hands on the place that was throbbing
He knelt close to my face, his own somewhat ashen in concern. "Are you all right?"
"No," I grunted, "you dislocated my knee. Oh, shit, it hurts."
"I...don't move...I'll get someone." He was backing up and away from me.
"Don't move, there's sound advice," I snarled, pressing my palm against the place where my leg took a sharp turn to the right, "where am I going to go."
He looked around. "I meant be still. I'll call 911."
Just for a moment there was something more pressing than the pain in my leg and my awkward flirtation with a multi function ladder. "You can't. Don't be stupid." I bit my lip. "Get out of here."
"I can' just leave you. Don't you be stupid." He slid his arm under my knee and lifted it away from the frame. "What were you doing on this thing, anyway?"
"Not important," I said through clenched teeth. "Don't...no, the other way."
He managed to turn the ladder under me just enough to get my other leg through. "By the way, you're bleeding. I have told you before, it's not attractive."
I cursed at him softly. He wriggled my arm a little and found a way to de wedge it so that my head, neck and right shoulder could rest on the floor. Having accomplished that, he left me to grab a pillow from the sofa and bring it back to me. "There. Try not to bleed to death while I get the rest of you loose." He wriggled and tested each inch of the ladder. "Once I get you out of this, I'll leave, and you will call 911."
"If you get me...oh, fuck, easy, will ya...if you get me out of this why should I call 911?"
He sat up and looked down at me. "Where did that reputation for blazing intellect come from? A gumball machine? You're bleeding and you have a dislocated knee, and that's just the damage we know about. You need medical care."
"I'll call Scully," I promised him. "What are you doing here, anyway? You said you'd be gone a week."
"You're going to argue with me about this right now?"
"No, see, an argument involves contention. That was just a question. You frequently get the two confused-shit!" He had jerked the ladder away from my leg savagely.
"There, all fixed." He rocked back on his haunches, pushing the wreckage of the ladder aside. "I came back early, you asshole," he said, crawling back toward me, "because I missed you." He hovered over my face. "Why did I miss you? Why do I put up with this?" His face softened a little as he leaned in and kissed me. "I missed you."
I couldn't maintain the pretense any longer. I kissed him back. Hungrily. It had been a long four days. "I missed you," I answered. "Do you have to go?"
"Only if you don't want to die in a manner that will get you nominated for a Darwin Award," he answered, and gauged the distance to the sofa. "Do you think you could get over there if I helped you?"
I didn't want to try. But the other option was for him to vanish again to that place, wherever it was, that he went when any attention was sent my way. "Yeah," I lied, "sure."
He slid both hands under me and lifted my shoulders from the floor. "Careful," he whispered, just that close to my ear.
His breath made me shiver. I don't deny it. I always resolved to hate him for everything he'd done, and seen done and done nothing about. But when he was near me, all that resolve was undone as easily as the fly on a pair of 501's.
He mistook the shiver for a response to pain, and he pressed his cheek against mine. "I know." He lifted a little more. "How do you do this to yourself?"
"It's a gift," I snapped. If I hadn't sharpened the edge in my voice he would have heard all feeling sloshing around inside me. "Why do you put up with it, if it's such an inconvenience?"
"Oh, Mulder." His voice was soft, and half chuckle, half sigh. "You wouldn't be you if you had a drop of self preservation in you." He paused, and brought one hand to the back of my head, where he ruffled my hair. "Maybe that's what I'm so crazy about." He lifted again, and with much mutual swearing and grunting he got me upright, and with his arms around me, we hopped, limped and sort of dragged our way to the sofa. "Don't move. I'll get some ice."
As if I could move. Did he just say he was crazy about me? That wasn't the Alex Krycek I knew. The one I knew was a punk with a great ass and kisses as sweet as they were brutal. The one I knew snuck in through my window in the dead of night, stayed a day or two, and vanished while I was out getting Chinese, or while I was in the shower. He never gave me warning that he was coming, and he never said goodbye.
I heard him bang around in my kitchen. "That is, if you have any ice."
"In the freezer," I shouted at him.
He appeared over me, holding something red and sticky…like frozen blood on a stick. "The only thing in your freezer is this…this…what is it?"
"A cherry popsicle," I told him, closing my eyes. "I bought them for you when you had bronchitis."
He gaped at me. I felt it. "Mulder, that was two years ago!"
"Then it's probably no longer edible."
He reached across the coffee table and snatched up my keys. "I'll go get some ice. Do you want some food?"
I opened my eyes. "You're going to waltz around Alexandria in broad daylight? You, the fount of self preservation?"
"I do not waltz anywhere," he said, licking melting cherry syrup from his fingertips. "I would be more likely to do the korobushka." He wrinkled his nose. "You were right about this." He disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear him lift the lid of the trash can, and wash his hands after. "I'll go get some ice." He leaned over the end of the sofa and kissed my brow. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."
I turned my face toward the wall. If I hadn't done, I would have blurted out a pathetic 'don't go!' "All right. Just bring my car back in one piece."
I don't know why, but he didn't move right away. I could hear him, feel him standing above me. I'm not certain what he was doing, but I closed my eyes and willed him to leave. Finally, I heard him turn away and a moment later the door closed.
Damn it. Why didn't I say something?
I tried sitting up. My knee was already starting to swell to a point where the denim of my jeans was too restrictive. I unbuttoned my jeans and, by inches and grunts, managed to wriggle them down as far as my swollen knee. Putting all my weight on one foot and the delicately placed three fingertips that rested on the arm of the sofa, I hopped, twisted and writhed, in an effort to force the jeans down over my knee.
Sometimes I'm just too obsessive for my own good. Lying on this sofa that morning, reliving my life in sixty second soundbytes, the memory of a camera peeking through my ceiling poked at me, filling me with curiosity and dread. Was it still there? Was it still active? What had it recorded recently? Any of those late night acrobatics on my sofa? I had ripped out the wiring that night before I dragged a faceless body down to my place, but I had never pulled the camera out of the bulkhead. Could it have been reconnected? Unlikely, but I had to know.
That was how I came to borrow a neighbor's Little Giant. It was gratifying to know I'm not the only one watching those late night infomercials. Unfortunately, I must not have paid enough attention to the demonstrations because I obviously did not lock it into place, and when I heard my front door open unexpectedly, and I jerked around to see who was making an unauthorized entry, the Little Giant shifted, gave way, and became the Little Deathtrap.
Why didn't I just tell him that when he asked me what I'd been doing on the ladder? Petulance? Fear? Stubbornness? Probably for all of those reasons, I could let him into my body but not into my head or my heart. Probably for all those reasons, one day he'd leave and never return. Would I spend the rest of my life wrestling with my regrets? Probably.
I finally got my jeans down, but couldn't get them past my shoes. I gave up at that point and returned to the sofa. My leg, from the knee down, hung limply, refusing to straighten out, so I sprawled like a spider, smashed against a table, arms and legs stretched in awkward directions, feet still tangled in my jeans, feeling vulnerable.
I hated that feeling. It had been my boon companion most of my life, following me through bad relationships, family breakdown, my career, my loneliness. But the vulnerability that came from wanting someone who was the antithesis of everything I sought, needed, believed in was more painful than any injury I'd ever had inflicted on me. And yet, I craved the pain.
The light was falling, the room was getting dim. The throbbing in my knee was getting worse. Where was he? Was he gone for good this time? Did he tell me how he felt just to torture me before he vanished from my life? In my car? I tried to be angry. I could only be sad. And scared. I knew I was being irrational, I had no evidence to support the belief he'd gone for good, but it was so easy to believe.
I was reaching for my mobile, finally ready to concede I needed help and call Scully, when I heard an alien sound; a key in my lock. I twisted around to see a large brown sack and a pair of jeans move into my kitchen. "That's a hell of a look, Mulder," he called. "Not that I'm complaining." He came into the living room a moment later, folding a towel around a handful of ice cubes. "How bad is it, babe?" He lifted my legs gingerly, and pushed the ice under my knee. "I scored some Percocet." He brushed something from my face...sweat? Tears? "Want to try it?"
I shook my head. I needed my wits now. "No, I'll be okay. Hey," I caught his hand as he withdrew it, "thanks."
He smiled. It wasn't his usual smug smirk or wicked grin. Just a smile, maybe colored with a little surprise. "For?"
I struggled with words. I couldn't tell him. But I couldn't not tell him. "Coming back."
That really surprised him. "You think I could just leave you like this?"
"No, I meant..." the words were stalling on my tongue. I sighed. "I meant...I meant..." No, there weren't any other words that would do. "You came back."
His fingers curled around mine. "Did you think I could just leave you?"
"You do." Damn it. Tears again. Maybe he'd think it was the pain in my knee.
"Yeah." He slid to the floor beside me. His eyes were very bright. "But I always come home."
End