The Goddess Of Small Things

Within his dream, Mulder was aware he was dreaming. He wanted to stay in the dream forever. He walked a path through tall trees. It was an ancient place where gods played. He caught glimpses of a boulder-strewn stream bed to his right as he walked along the path. He walked in the cool shadows of the forest and felt the solid ground beneath his feet, the soft breeze on his cheek. It was so real, so peaceful. The sunlight glittered on the shallow pools of water in the rocky stream, but he had no desire to stray from his path. The land beyond the stream was treeless. The sun beat upon the flat, parched earth. A far distant horizon etched in blue mountains could be seen through the shimmer of heat haze. Numberless, small, black rocks cut through the ground like rows of rotting teeth. It was a desolate place. He felt the pain of the land's torment as if it were a living soul and he turned his face from it.

He kept to his chosen path. The filtered light of the forest a cool blessing. The landscape remained unchanging during a passage of time that Mulder cared little to measure. He only knew that the shadows lengthened and the breeze became cooler until full night was upon him. Lightning bugs blinked in front of him, guiding him along the path, their tiny lights winking at him, teasing him to keep up and follow their little dance. The land across the stream lay beneath a sky full of stars. The blessed night concealed the torment of the land's sun-scorched days and clothed it in a stark, alien beauty. When the full moon rose it shone so brightly Mulder could have read a newspaper by its light. He no longer needed the assistance of the lightning bugs. His path lay clear ahead of him.

He would have been content to walk till he came to the end of the world, but what he discovered at the end of his path was as wondrous as any mystery he had ever encountered.

The forest of trees opened onto a small clearing, just large enough to contain the form of a man lying on the moss-covered ground as if deeply asleep. The moonlight shone fully on his naked flesh and Mulder knew it to be the man he had known as Alex Krycek. It seemed years ago in another life, a place full of cares and worries that were already slipping from his memory, but what he felt for this man upon seeing him was never to be forgotten. The memories placed themselves within him like the cuts from a knife. Wounds that would never heal.

He stood there at the edge of the clearing and remembered. He built within himself all the moments of their meetings. The words they said to one another, the looks, the trust, the betrayals, the fights, the kiss. It all culminated in their last encounter in Mulder's backyard. An extraordinary encounter in a place so ordinary. One that had left Mulder physically satisfied and yet filled with questions that only Alex could answer. Mulder had not slept a night since their brief encounter without dreaming of it, waking with the physical evidence sticking to his hands and the knowledge he would do it willingly the next night and the next. He could not deny even to himself that knowledge and the truth of it was a great pain. Alex had given the ache within Mulder a name. It was only partially a physical ache. That he could assuage for temporary relief, but the loneliness within him was a pain most constant.

He had become obsessed with finding Alex in whatever form he now possessed. There were no thoughts of afterwards, of what he would do to the man who had opened doors Mulder could not close ever again. Thus, Mulder found himself, within his dream, confronting the man at last; but, a man in possession of his full height. There were no missing limbs, no bruises or scars, only white flesh and dark hair in the moonlight. Mulder had a vision of Alex lying in another forest horribly mutilated. He didn't know where this vision came from. He had hardly dwelled on the circumstances surrounding the loss of Alex's arm, how it was done, how he survived. Alex was scum. Bad things happened to scum. He had thought those things at the time, when he was at his angriest, consumed with the treachery surrounding him, struggling to survive himself. But still...he couldn't help but be horrified at what that must have been like for any human being to endure. He still struggled to admit, even to himself, any feelings of sympathy for the man lying before him.

Alex lay exposed, vulnerable, apparently completely oblivious to his surroundings. Mulder perhaps could walk up to him and kill him easily, pick up a rock and bash his skull in, but the thought of doing such a violent act repulsed Mulder. He was weary of violence, at least in his dream state.

Instead, he closely contemplated the sleeping man. There was a glint of something on Alex's face. Mulder stepped closer. His shadow fell across Alex's body in the moonlight. He was startled to see tears seeping from Alex's eyes. His face was peaceful and still, but the flow of tears grew as Mulder watched, they traveled down the side of his face, dripping into his ears.

Something small brushed past Mulder, lighting on Alex's face like a dark smudge. Its wings fluttered and Mulder realized it was a moth. Its small body furry soft and sooty black in the moonlight. It settled at the corner of Alex's eye like a beauty spot.

Mulder stood there in his dream and realized the moth was drinking Alex's tears. He watched as another joined the first and then another. They flew in softly from the surrounding forest like silent little mourners, drinkers of sorrows. They gathered slowly, inexorably like the falling of ash, drifting down till they covered every inch of Alex's flesh with a living blanket. Wings moving languidly as if in time to a symphony only for moth's to appreciate.

Mulder took a step back and then another until he was once again fully inside the embrace of the forest. One single moth separated itself from the rest and flew directly to him. It alighted on his lips. The feel of it was a mere breath of softness, a tickle. He raised his hand to brush it aside, but then he felt the salty taste of Alex's tears. He was overwhelmed with sorrow. It filled him with the same stark pain as that of the land beyond the stream and there was no respite, no solace for this sorrow. It became his world and with a sudden horror he realized he was no longer standing within the comforting embrace of the forest, but beyond the stream, amid the sharp rocks and pain of the barren land, staring back at something he knew with a complete certainty he would never experience again. The loss of it engulfed him.

He woke then, with a jolt, chest heaving, tears streaming down his face, pooling in his ears. He still felt the remnants of his dream so vividly. Despite the feeling of dread, he was hard and aching with the need for release, but he lay in bed and refused the relief his hand could bring him. He cursed at Alex, threw off the sheet which covered him and walked unsteadily into his bathroom, where he splashed water on his face. He drank some of it from his cupped hands that were still shaking a bit and then gazed numbly at himself in the mirror. There were dark circles under his eyes from too many restless nights. He had a dreadful case of bed head. "You look like shit," he told himself. There was nothing for it but to clean himself up and get on with his day.

Mulder padded barefoot across his back porch, down the steps and across the newly laid, herringbone pattern, brick patio to the grill. It was a new grill with proportions and accouterments that produced the sort of culinary lust only men seemed to fully appreciate. It had the look of an alien spacecraft, all gleaming metal, powered to the max, ready to cook a full course meal for a hoard of Cecil B. Demille proportions or in lieu of that launch itself into orbit.

It was something he'd fallen into after the purchase of his home in suburbia. This grilling subculture. It had started out simply enough. Just the occasional hamburger grilled on the weekend with a simple, basics-only grill, perfectly adequate for his needs. And then he'd had the opportunity to see the other grills on his cul-de-sac and the men who owned them. Men who, to Mulder's eyes, flipped their burgers with an excessively jaunty and smirking sort of manner, as if they knew in their smugness what Mulder had shamefully tucked away in his backyard, like a bit of cheesy porn. It had become a circle-jerk of grills amongst the neighborhood men and his had been found wanting. Old Spooky and his joke of a grill.

He had returned home after each outing and looked with a gimlet eye at his own, rather pathetic and yes, totally inadequate, grill, with a growing sense of purpose. It had become a thing to rectify and he set his focus upon it with all the intensity he could muster, which was considerable.

The result was the grill of his dreams. The Rolls-Royce of grills. It had the special added bonus of The Lone Gunmen's attention. They added a GDP satellite tracking system, which served absolutely no useful purpose, it was after all, a grill, but it looked cool as hell. Something a man could be truly proud to show off to his fellows.

Mulder practiced his flip and found he had a talent for it. No one in the neighborhood could flip a burger with the prodigious degree of insouciant smugness, the arrogant nonchalance of Fox Mulder. He had noted with considerable satisfaction the acknowledgment in the other men's eyes for his attainment of grilling supremacy in their particular little pecking order.

It was, therefore, with a comfortable sense of certainty in his own abilities that Mulder launched himself into his holiday preparations for the Fourth of July. He had found that upon acquisition of the new and satisfyingly formidable grill his backyard had suffered in comparison. It was rather like setting a diamond in something out of a Cracker Jack box. Therefore, the patio had been built upon which it could sit and an arbor overhead constructed of redwood, which cast lovely shadows across its sleek surface. Mulder thought, upon reflection, that this was possibly more an effort on the part of his subconscious to recreate that shadowy atmosphere which had permeated his old apartment, but which his new suburban setting seemed to lack. He missed that shadowy ambiance.

And then, of course, there was the area of his backyard where he'd found the egg to consider. He'd cleaned up the mess of broken shells and chocolately substance long ago. He'd taken samples first. Put bits of shell and chocolatey pudding and yellow whatever into Ziploc baggies and sent them off to the Lone Gunmen with vague references to their origin and a request for a speedy response on the lab results and off-the-radar subterfuge in the whole matter as per usual.

His friends had gotten back to him speedily and with results that only compounded the entire mystery. He had searched for the truth that day and for weeks and weeks afterwards. He had been forced to file it away until some new evidence surfaced or his little demon Alex decided to make a reappearance. He had kept a close eye and ear to the local gossip, just on the off chance that the little fellow would be spotted in the neighborhood. That had actually been his purpose in accepting the invitations of his neighbors for their get-togethers. The only thing he had acquired was the habit of a grilling junkie and the invitations from an impressively high number of his female as well as male neighbors for rendevoux that had nothing to do with grilling, but quite a lot to do with appetites.

There would be times when he would step out into his backyard and look at that spot where his little demon Alex had first appeared and wonder at his sanity, but then he would check the baggies in his freezer with the evidence he had saved and it would all come back to him in vivid detail to the point where he would get hard. He couldn't help it. The feeling would wash over him of that morning in the wet grass with that devilish little body writhing on him, biting and nipping and sending him into a bliss so profound he had never been able to re-create it. It was worse than any habit he ever had, and he had acquired quite a few of them, but this was one which seemed to grow in strength over time.

It had become quite a source of frustration for him, this obsession. This quest of almost religious proportions for the unholy creature that held the key to his sexual satisfaction and ultimately his peace of mind. He had taken to checking the spot every morning and evening and quite often more frequently throughout the night, as if little demon Alex would be lying around with an evil, wicked, lustful twinkle in his eye, just waiting to be discovered. Mulder's cock would twitch with the mere thought.

He had no idea what he would do if he did, indeed, discover the little demon, but he did know his cock was hoping like hell to get a replay.

He had even contemplated building a small water feature at the spot in order to change it, to lessen its power over him somehow, but each time he considered it he knew he wouldn't do it, just as he knew he wouldn't repair the hole in the fence where his little demon Alex had made his escape. Hope was such a hard thing to acknowledge in this instance. For if he was hoping for Alex's return then he had to acknowledge his own desire and he tried very hard not to do that. It was insane, but comforting. He had grown so used to chronic frustration and the shifting sands on which his mental health had taken up residence that he was more than a little flustered when these parameters were breached with any hint of normalcy.

Sometimes he would step out into his backyard and he'd hear Mrs. Burnside's own little demon masquerading as a chihuahua barking its head off and he'd remember Alex and go over to the fence and check out his neighbor's yard, but it was always nothing. Just Tippy in a snit.

There had also been the time he'd put a live animal trap against the hole in the fence. He'd set it so the opening of the trap was facing the hole and he'd even put grass clippings around to hide the wire at the bottom of the cage. The cage was baited with a bit of bread at the very back, dangling from a string. But, the only thing he'd caught was one of the neighbor's cats and then a skunk.

He gave up on the live trap after that.

The Fourth of July celebration was a big deal for him. He carefully set down the platter of burgers and hot dogs, ready for grilling. It was the first party he was hosting in his new home and he'd invited Scully and Doggett and William, of course. Skinner and the Lone Gunmen were included as well as Reyes. He wasn't admitting it to himself, but it was a way to prove to everyone that he was getting on with his life. In fact, things couldn't be any more normal for him, aside from the occasional visit by vertically challenged supernatural entities.

He had a couple of ice chests full of beer and soda. There was plenty of chips and pretzels. He was primed and ready to go. He had just flipped the first burger when Skinner came through his back door carrying a plastic sack and a case of his favorite beverage. Mulder frowned. Obviously Skinner didn't trust him to have it on hand. The man found it so hard to count on him to do anything right.

Mulder raised his favorite turner in the air with a nod of greeting and motioned to where the food was set up. Skinner was looking good in his casual clothes. Remarkable how the man became just another guy when you got him out of his suit. A really well built guy.

Mulder's realization that he was going down a path with his superior that he had never taken before sent a shock wave through him that froze him to the spot, turner poised over sizzling burger, his mouth slack and eyes unfocused, lost in horrified self-revelation.

He closed his mouth, swallowed and lowered his gaze to the burger, which he prodded at absently, and then he focused his attention once again on Skinner, who had bent down over one of the ice chests. The fabric of his shorts was pulled tight. There wasn't an ounce of fat on the man. It was all muscle and bone and tendon and man with a capital M. M as in Mulder's going fucking insane, he thought.

The back door opened and Mulder's attention was drawn to Scully's little family. Doggett waved to Mulder and went over to join Skinner. Mulder sighed in relief. He was a bit premature in the enjoyment of his solitude, however, because Scully was soon standing close beside him, giving his grill a very condescending look with one delicately arched brow.

But if there was anything Mulder could do well it was condescending. He equaled her look and raised it one. "You know, Scully, a man's grill is a sacred thing."

Scully remained unimpressed. "I didn't realize you had become so religious, Mulder."

Mulder flipped his burger and muttered, "I guess you could say I had my day of revelation." He was thinking of his transportation into the heavenly realms thanks to his little Alex.

Scully got a quizzically determined look on her face. The one that told him he had better stop thinking with his dick. But, that's all it seemed he could think about lately. Sex. And more specifically sex with men.

Damn that little demon Alex. He had opened a Pandora's box of lascivious delights that left Mulder reeling in the great, echoing, black hole of his loss. How the hell was he supposed to get over something like that?

"Mulder?" He felt Scully's small, delicate and extremely capable hand cover his.

"Here," she said as she relieved him of his turner and began to efficiently flip the meat. "You're burning it." Her eyes when they looked up at him were soft with concern. "What's wrong Mulder? You look terrible."

Damn, he thought. This was supposed to be his occasion to show how together he was and he was screwing it up royally before the evening had even begun.

He shrugged and scooped up William, who was growing into a healthy little boy who hated to be carried. "Nothing's wrong, Scully." He set William down and watched as he ran like a little bowlegged cowboy, arms upraised, down the length of the yard to the very spot where the egg had been. Mulder's internal paranoia meter went pinging into the red zone.

"Watch those for me will you Scully?" He flung the request over his shoulder as he hurried after William. The boy had disappeared into the bushes at the back of the yard. Mulder could see the movement of branches as William crawled under them and then there was a loud squeal of excited joy.

Mulder began to panic at the thought of the sorts of creatures that could illicit such a euphoric response from a little boy and they were not all cuddly. He reached out and parted the branches till he spotted the top of William's bright red head and then the little boy turned his face up, blue eyes wide and wondering and worshipful as he pointed at a bird's nest.

Mulder followed where the chubby little finger was pointing and held his breath. He didn't dare move. He managed to whisper to William to stay perfectly still . The little boy frowned up at him and gave him a look that was profoundly aware and grumpy in a professorial sort of way. It sent goose bumps along the surface of Mulder's skin and then the look vanished, replaced with a simple yearning for the unattainable and thoroughly fascinating object within William's focus.

It was a bird's nest constructed so that it rested on a couple of close-spaced branches snugly against one of the main trunks of the shrub. It was a substantial nest, perhaps a robin's, definitely not as small as a wren's. There were no eggs within it or any sign of the original builders, but it did have an occupant.

Little demon Alex slumped with his butt in the cup of the nest, his legs dangling outside and his back resting against the trunk. There was a great deal of blood covering his torso, some of it dripping with the tinniest of drops from his limp hand onto the branches below.

Mulder felt his hands clench tightly around the branches of the shrub. It was as if he desperately needed to hold onto something solid at that moment, something real and normal and of this world. William began an opening and closing action with his pudgy little fists, reaching out in a yearning demand for Alex that was like any little boy's need for his favorite toy.

"No," Mulder said in an offhand manner, not really concentrating on William now, but on the unmoving Alex in the bird's nest.

Mulder stepped back, allowing the branches to close together, blotting out any sight of Alex. He heard William make a loud, demanding plea for his return, but he ignored it. Instead, he removed his retro-50s sport shirt, pulled his undershirt over his head, then quickly replaced his shirt. He pushed the branches aside again, carefully this time, reached out and took the limp body in his hands. It was so like the feel he remembered. The perfect little body, hard and so impossibly real. But now the heat and energy he recalled so vividly had fled, replaced by cool, lifeless limbs. Its chocolate flavored birthing fluid replaced with blood. The dark little head lolled exactly like a bird he had found once with a broken neck. It dangled, obscenely loose. Mulder couldn't bear it; he quickly put his fingers under it, supporting it, and noted its features, so like the Alex he had known. Except this creature was far more helpless than he had ever seen Alex Krycek.

He wrapped his undershirt around it, loosely and with an opening for air, if he was still breathing. Mulder found himself desperately hoping he was still breathing. He told himself it was because the answers to all his questions would forever die with this creature and he had lived far too long with unanswered questions ruling his life. Krycek, no matter what form he was currently inhabiting, wasn't going to sneak away once again, leaving behind one more damn mystery. He cradled the stained bundle against himself and stepped back into the open. William quickly followed, having watched the procedure with the unnaturally aware look that seemed his habit these days. Mulder was grateful, as he took the little boy's hand, that William was content to come with him without any further fuss.

Mulder wanted to run back to the house. He wanted to be alone with his newly discovered mystery. He wanted to see Alex's eyes open. And he wanted to do it alone. He realized he should ask for help, but it was a fleeting thought. He didn't want anyone else to know this secret. Not even Scully. It had become intensely personal, as if by simply looking at the little creature people would be able to see what had happened that day between them. Mulder couldn't explain it and he didn't waste time trying. He just wanted, in a frantic sort of way, to be alone with it. He was wishing like hell everyone would just go away.

He had to measure his stride to that of William's and it was agony. He noted with a mixture of anxiety and relief that all of his guests were ignoring them, all save one.

Mulder pressed his bloody bundle close to his stomach and tightened his grip on William's hand. Scully didn't wait for them to reach her; she began to stride purposefully towards them with a concerned look on her face.

Mulder stopped and focused intently on William, who gazed solemnly up at him as if William were the grownup in this situation. "This is our secret, okay? Just between us guys. Solemn vow of secrecy. Promise?"

He didn't believe that the little boy would be able to keep such a secret for long, but if he could buy just a little time, maybe it would be enough, enough for what, he didn't know precisely. He couldn't think past the burning desire to be alone with his little creature.

William nodded his head, slowly and with huge eyes, full of all the mighty weight of childhood's promises.

As Scully reached them she immediately bent down for William's hand. Mulder only then realizing that he had gotten blood all over it with his own bloody hand.

"Mulder, what?" Scully began examining her son closely as Mulder explained in the sort of soothing voice that he hoped was reassuring rather than infuriating. "It's nothing. He's fine, Scully. I'm sorry. That's not his. It's not his."

She looked up and her eyes locked onto the bundle. Mulder didn't look at it. He tried to project an air of unconcern, but his reaction was instinctive as he turned his body to put as much of himself between her eyes and what he carried as he possibly could. It was a reaction guaranteed to increase Scully's curiosity. She was in the process of reaching out for it when Mulder stepped back, shaking his head. "Don't Scully. You don't want William to see this." He did step forward this time to whisper quickly in her ear, "Dead kitten. Dog must have mauled it. He'll have nightmares for a week. I'm just going to get rid of it and clean up. You can use the guest bathroom to clean William."

And once again he left Scully and his party at a run, but this time into his home. He knew Scully would run interference for him. They had worked together as a team long enough for that sort of thing to become instinctual, a natural rhythm between partners. They took each other for granted that way.

He raised a hand in greeting at the group by the food table. He waved, smiled and yelled in a loudly cheerful way, "Enjoy the food, back in a minute!" He noted their collectively bemused looks as he rushed past them and into his house, but they were soon off his radar.

He took the steps to his bedroom two at a time. The guest bathroom was downstairs next to the kitchen and the back door. Scully would be busy with William for a few minutes there, he hoped. He didn't think anyone else would follow right away. He ran through his bedroom with the newly sanded and varnished wooden floors and tried not to skid on the rug Monica Reyes had given him as a housewarming gift. He made a mental note to put something under it so it didn't slide around so much and then he was in the bathroom.

He stood in front of the mirror at the sink for a moment, frozen at the reflection of himself, chest heaving, blood splattered, leaves and twigs sticking out of his hair, wild eyed. He didn't realize he looked quite so insane.

And then he looked down at the bundle he carried. Gently, he lowered it to the countertop and carefully unwrapped it as if he were defusing a bomb. The bloody cloth of his undershirt folded back, nestling its occupant like the swaddling clothes of a fallen angel's child.

Alex was still unresponsive and so covered in blood that Mulder couldn't see precisely what damage had been inflicted. He filled the sink with warm water. Using both hands he lowered the miniature body into the water, careful to keep its head above water. It was a tricky procedure as he had to support it with one hand and with the other squirt some liquid soap into his palm.

The water soon turned so pink and soapy that, even though Alex's body was clean of blood, Mulder still couldn't see anything properly. He drained the water and waited impatiently as it receded until a small puncture wound was revealed just under the left armpit and then another just below his ribcage on his right side. They were still seeping blood. There were minor scratches covering the body, but none of them looked life threatening.

There was no way he could tell how much blood had been lost or how deeply the puncture wounds were. He couldn't very well take the creature to an emergency room. Even if he could get anyone to treat Alex, they simply wouldn't be able to do anything with such a small body. The best place he could think of was a vet clinic. They, at least, might be equipped to treat a body as small as Alex's, but he would still encounter the same problem of presenting them with a creature as strange as Alex.

Mulder was on the verge of giving it a try anyway when he realized something was different. Little green eyes were staring up at him in full defiant glory. Mulder didn't know precisely what the little fool had to be defiant about or why he would decide to exercise it when he was in such a case of obvious helplessness.

Little arms and legs began to flail about. The right side much more actively than the left. Mulder had to squeeze tightly simply to hold on to the slippery body. He noted the wounds were bleeding more freely once again and blood was starting to collect in the palm of his hands as they were cupped under the struggling body.

He hissed loudly, angry and frustrated, "Will you be still!" He noticed the little face scrunched up as the noise echoed painfully against tiny eardrums. Mulder took a deep breath and lowered his voice to a near whisper. "I'm trying to help." He ended the sentence silently in his head with, 'you crazy little fuck'.

The weak struggles ceased. Mulder wasn't sure if it was because reason had somehow found its way inside the miniscule brain or Alex had simply grown so weak his exertions had worn him out.

Mulder maintained his grip on the small body and with his left hand he reached out for the hand towel and spread it out onto the counter. He then carefully laid the little body out onto the terry cloth. He began rummaging about in his medicine cabinet for antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids. He had learned long ago to keep his medical aid supplies well stocked.

He looked down at the miniature body lying so still on his countertop and was reminded of an action figure that he had played with as a child that had a nasty encounter with a neighbor's dog. Only this action figure was anatomically correct. He unscrewed the top off the ointment and smirked down at Alex, feeling all of 12-years-old at that moment.

He remembered to keep his voice low as he whispered, "So, how's it feel to have a dick the size of a tick turd, Krycek?"

Mulder thought the look in Krycek's eyes was priceless as he bent lower to squirt some of the ointment on the wounds. Of course, Alex had been waiting for this moment as his right hand went to his much maligned cock and held it with great accuracy while a stream of hot piss shot into Mulder's face.

It was truly amazing the amount of piss which could come out of such a small bladder.

Mulder made the very unfortunate mistake of opening his mouth in surprise as he jerked upright and stepped back. He brought his forearm up and wiped it across his mouth and then bent over the sink, running water and splashing it into his face and his mouth. He grabbed up a bottle of mouthwash and began to swish it around furiously. There was the sound of laughter beside him, at least he deciphered it as laughter because the effect was more like the enraged squirrel he had first heard when he encountered the little Alex creature. Only this time it was hooting and snickering in a way that no self-respecting squirrel would ever do.

Mulder jerked a bath towel off its rack and scrubbed at his face. Then he glared down at Alex, who was still snickering in that high-pitched voice, but doing so while clutching at his sides. It probably hurt like hell to laugh. At least, Mulder hoped so.

"One more stunt like that and you're going to end up as Tippy's new chew toy."

Mulder doubted Alex could know who Tippy was, but he should get the threat in what Mulder was saying. The tiny lips only lessened their smirk by a fraction of a degree, but it was enough for Mulder. He took considerable delight in slathering an abundance of ointment all over Alex's body. A smirk to equal Alex's appeared on Mulder's face as he noted the cock which had been so maliciously maligned only moments ago was now producing a prodigious boner, albeit still pathetic by human standards, it was nonetheless impressive by lilliputian ones.

Alex's face turned pink. Mulder tsked as he put the tip of his finger on Alex's forehead. "Not getting a fever are you Alex? Or are you just happy to see me, big fella?" Mulder used the tone of voice that would normally be described as jeeringly juvenile in anyone Mulder's age, but coming out of Mulder's mouth it was elevated to a realm of droll insult that few men could ever even hope of achieving.

He was delighted to see Alex roll his head away and squirm in embarrassment. But the delight quickly turned to an uncomfortable feeling as he remembered what that hot little bundle of joy could do to him in an intensely personal, highly satisfactory and much-dreamed-about way. He felt his own face grow warm, which brought up all sorts of unpleasant self-evident truths.

He straightened up and began ripping open a sterile package containing a length of gauze. He used it to wrap around Alex's upper body. It was made possible only by Alex's increasing embarrassment at the state of his tumescence and his weakness. Mulder thought Alex must not have lost a great deal of blood or his body wouldn't be so warm or able to flush so strongly. He brought both of Alex's arms close to his sides and wrapped the gauze around them until Alex resembled a partially wrapped toy mummy.

Mulder tucked in the end of the length of gauze and stepped back to survey his work. Alex was still lying flat, mummified to the waist; his legs moving about in an angry sort of way as if he were trying to sit up. He still had a boner.

Mulder didn't know what to do about that, but he did worry about waste elimination. He didn't want the little devil peeing over everything or taking a tiny dump on something like his toothbrush. He was going to have to contain him somehow.

"Mulder?"

He knew that voice. And that determined tread of small feet up his stairs. It sent a thrill of panicked discovery through him. It was uncomfortably like the way he had felt as a young boy when he heard the unexpected voice of his mother outside his bedroom door. She always seemed to have an uncanny feel for when he was looking at porn magazines.

He simply reacted by gathering up the towel around Alex and bundling him up with just enough of an opening for air. You could barely see his glittering green eyes in the darkness of the overhanging folds around his head.

Mulder inadvertently squeezed too tightly. Alex produced a sound very similar to a squeak from a squeeze toy.

Mulder caught himself before automatically saying he was sorry. He didn't want to give Alex the impression his rough treatment was anything but intentional. "Just remember, Alex. I get trouble from you and it's new chew toy for Tippy."

"What have you got there Mulder?" Scully stood in his bedroom doorway looking directly at the bundle in his upraised hands. He had been staring intently at Alex's eyes. He lowered his arms immediately and nestled it to his chest as if he were going to nurse it. He could just detect the faintest of muffled protests and a squirming of legs.

"You've been gone so long." She moved closer, her eyes moving from Mulder's face to the bundle he was clutching. A look of mild distaste crossed her features. "I thought you were going to dispose of that."

Mulder nodded his head, agreeing as he stepped forward and past her, aiming for the doorway. "It's alive Scully." He glanced back over his shoulder as he made his way down the hallway. She was close behind him, a frown on her face. "Can you believe it?" he said and then turned to face forward as he mumbled, "I know I can't."

"What's that Mulder?"

"Oh, nothing! I'm just concerned that William's going to see me with it and want to keep it." He started down the stairs and began to pat Alex's bottom through the terry cloth. "He's really a wild little fellow and I'm not sure William would be safe around him."

"He could have rabies, Mulder. What are you..."

Mulder halted suddenly in the middle of descending his staircase. So suddenly that Scully nearly collided into him and had to brace herself with one hand on his shoulder. Mulder turned around, "Sorry, Scully," he barely gave it any conviction at all. He was far more intent on something else she had said. Scully thought to herself that Mulder hadn't been this excited since his early days in the X-Files. "Rabies! Of course! He could have rabies. We've got to get him checked out right away don't we."

Scully was beginning to lose patience with her ex-partner. "It's a holiday, Mulder. They're closed. Why don't you..."

Totally ignoring Scully, Mulder dashed down the remaining stairs and across the kitchen to the back door where he came to an abrupt halt partially in the house and partially on the back porch, one hand holding the door open and the other clutching his bundle to him.

"William," Mulder intoned while looking down at the little boy, who was standing looking up at him, arms reaching upwards, little fists opening and closing in a 'gimme, gimme' fashion and a bright look of appeal in his eyes.

"No, William." Mulder said and raised the bundle over his head as if he were fearful that William would somehow have been able to reach it where Mulder was clutching it to his chest, as if it were a favorite toy and not to be shared...ever. There was a muffled squeak from overhead and then a more recognizable sound as if a cat were meowing in outrage.

Mulder jerked his bundle back down and gazed searchingly into the dark interior of its opening. There was just the hint of green and then a loud, hissing spitting sound with a yowl on the end of it as if for good measure.

Mulder narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. "Bad kitty," he said between gritted teeth. "Bad, bad kitty. We may have to get you neutered while we're at the vets."

There was a low bit of hissing after that, but softly and then that faded away entirely. Mulder smiled and patted Alex's bottom. "Good kitty. Such a quick learner you are."

Scully stepped around Mulder and took William by the hand. "Really, Mulder. You don't know what he could be infected with. Why don't you borrow Mrs. Burnside's pet carrier and isolate him until you can take him in for testing."

She pulled a very reluctant William off the porch and onto the new patio. Mulder followed as if he were a rather confused older brother of William's, only much larger.

"Mrs. Burnside?" he whispered as if the very mention of his neighbor would invoke her presence, like that of a demon conjured from the lowest pit of hell.

"Yes, Mulder," Scully replied in a very reasonable voice as she settled William onto a chair and provided him with paper plate and hot dog, which Mulder was grateful to see became the new object of the little boy's attention.

Scully looked up at Mulder. "I'm sure she'll let you borrow it. She seems like a perfectly reasonable woman."

Mulder was saved from commenting as Doggett approached with a beer bottle in each hand, one of which he offered to Mulder. Mulder smiled in a way that was probably just a little too forced, raised the bottle with a quick, "thanks," and downed half of it in one long drink. As he lowered the bottle he noticed Doggett's hawk eyes piercing him with an obvious hunger to interrogate him. The subjects about which he could be interrogated were growing too numerous to keep track of.

Mulder raised his bottle in a toast and moved away as speedily as possible with a, "Got to check on things." He clutched his little bundle of joy with one arm and nestled the beer bottle with the other, taking frequent sips as he scanned his backyard with all the strategy he would normally employ for a major reconnaissance on an X-File. Which, if he admitted it to himself, this was about the strangest X-File he had ever worked.

He felt exposed, as if all eyes were upon him, but in reality most of his guests were doing quite well amusing themselves. It seemed they had grown quite used to Mulder's admittedly odd social behavior at times over the years.

Skinner was busy investigating the contents of an ice chest. Reyes was standing by him looking down into the chest pointing. Which reminded Mulder that he had forgotten to buy the wine coolers that Reyes had requested. Mulder's eyes locked onto Skinner's thighs. The man was squatting and his shorts were stretched tight around his meaty thighs and...

A sharply feline yowl came from within the folds of terry cloth and Mulder jerked back to reality. He also loosened his grip on Alex with a murmured, "Sorry, kitty."

He pivoted and walked towards the side of his house. There was a gate there through which he could make his way to his front yard and then to his neighbor Mrs. Burnside's house.

He walked quickly by Langly, Byers and Frohike who were clustered around the grill happily tinkering with the GDP satellite system and munching on an assortment of heavily salted and preservative laden food. They never raised their heads, just called out a greeting to Mulder as he walked by. He answered it as a warm feeling of camaraderie enveloped him. It was always a comforting feeling that no matter how far out there Mulder found himself at times, he still had friends that had traveled there before him or were at least willing to follow him on his strange trips into the unknown. He had a fleeting thought that perhaps he should ask for their help now, but shied away from it. That strange, private, overwhelmingly possessive feeling keeping him from reaching out and including others in this mystery. At least for now.

He made it through the side gate and to Mrs. Burnside's front door. He raised his hand to push the door bell and noticed he was still holding the beer bottle. Cursing softly under his breath he looked around for a place to stash it. There was nothing to do but toss it behind the large foundation shrub by the front door. He had read somewhere or possibly Langly had informed him that slugs were attracted to beer. They would crawl to it, drink it and die happy.

Mulder punched the door bell and thought about hundreds of slugs filling up the beer bottle during the night. It led him to thoughts about how Alex had survived all these nights in such a hostile environment for someone so small. There was an ambivalence about his thoughts, as there always was in any dealings he had with Krycek. He still couldn't quite get over the fact that it was Krycek he was holding in his arms. And the thought that Krycek had had an obviously rough time of it seemed like a just retribution for the man's many sins and yet he couldn't help but grudgingly admire the man's ability to survive. It was something he very seldom admitted, even to himself.

And, of course, there was Alex's ability to cause Mulder great emotional distress when it came to sexual matters. The most recent encounter by far the most disturbing. He, thus, found it equally satisfying and disturbing that Alex had had a rough time of it. It seemed the man was capable of driving him crazy no matter what size he came in.

He absentmindedly began to rock his bundle gently as if he were holding an infant and began humming, "Rock 'a bye baby in the tree tops..." In an ironic sort of way, of course. He was rather hoping that Alex was irritated beyond all measure by it.

He could hear the tapping of Mrs. Burnside's high heals across her highly polished wood floors. There was the counterpoint click tapping of tiny toenails as Tippy set a frantic pace to keep abreast of his mistress. Mulder raised his free hand to his hair and combed his fingers through it. The result was a twig and a leaf. He grimaced and reached up to straighten an imaginary tie, which since it was imaginary he didn't have; so, he straightened his shoulders instead.

The door opened inwards and there was a hush upon the land.

Mrs. Burnside stood within the frame of her doorway and took in his appearance from top to toe in a gaze that was regal and menacing. Darth Vader in Ralph Lauren, without the sound effects. There was no other way to describe it. Mulder felt like a young boy caught out taking a short cut through her rose bed and thought of the tossed beer bottle. It was all he could do not to cast a guilt laden eye in its direction, just to make sure it wasn't visible.

He cleared his throat and recalled with some difficulty that his parents had spent a considerable amount of expense on his education and some effort in instilling the finer points of social etiquette. He generally used the first, but had found the later more of an amusing game in which he became sole custodian of the rules.

Those rules had been burned away now. Scorched and blackened ashes, all that was left of his pathetic hubris drifting down to pile up at his feet as he stood confronting the true face of ...

"And to what do I owe the honor of this visit, Mr. Mulder?" It was the voice of Demeter. Demanding her daughter Persephone's return from the hated God of the Underworld.

Mulder's first reaction was to flip open his F.B.I. identification, but decided it wasn't warranted in this case, unfortunately. Still, it would have been nice to have the layers of an official visit to buffer him. He let his eyes drift down to Tippy, who was standing beside Mrs. Burnside's left foot and growling in that lip rippling way more usually associated with Rottweiler's or a Warner Bros. cartoon.

He inched back a step and pressed his bundle more closely to him. He could feel a slight movement from within its folds. It gave him an odd desire to open the bundle up so he could inspect its occupant. He probably should have thought to give Alex an aspirin, at least.

"What is that you're clutching Mr. Mulder?"

Mulder jerked his eyes down to the object in question, then up to confront Mrs. Burnside's imperious gaze with a reckless, jumping from the airplane now feeling, and a mad rush of words. "It's a cat, Mrs. Burnside. More like a kitten. Attacked by a dog I think." Although, to be honest it could have as easily been a bird or a raccoon or a cat, any myriad of animals that frequented the area. He tried not to look too accusingly at Tippy, but like the incident with the beer bottle it was a hard fete to accomplish. He began to long desperately for another beer. And some great sex. Preferably without having to do much himself.

"Attacked? It's not dead is it Mr. Mulder? I certainly hope you haven't brought it..." Mrs. Burnside was clearly aghast at the thought Mulder had brought a dead animal onto the premises. It was probably the sort of thing she imagined Mulder spent a great deal of his time thinking about doing. Bringing bloody, mangled animals and depositing them at her front door.

Mulder shook his head and held his free hand up. "Oh no, no, nonononooooo I assure you it's not dead. Just...wounded. And in need of a vet. I was hoping I could borrow your pet carrier."

"Well," Mrs. Burnside seemed to pause a moment and then briefly glanced down at Tippy. The look was considering. Mulder didn't want to consider exactly what it was she was considering. After the recent events in his life he wouldn't be surprised if she were in telepathic communication with the chihuahua. She seemed to come to a decision of sorts. "Well," she repeated. "As long as you promise to return it in the same condition you receive it. I suppose it's all right."

"Thank you," Mulder began, but she interrupted him before he could go further. She stepped back and impatiently motioned him inside as she commented, "Come in, come in. All the cold air is rushing out while you stand out there."

Mulder stepped gingerly around Tippy, who seemed to be eyeing his ankles with a hungry look, and around Mrs. Burnside, who seemed to be eyeing him for the Ebola virus.

Mulder had just stepped out of the entrance hallway into the living room when she gave him a curt, "Wait here." There was no 'make yourself at home'; so, he didn't. He stood and waited, listening as the clicking of her heels receded into the nether regions of her lair, rocking a bit on his feet and letting his eyes roam over the furnishings. Ignoring Tippy, who unaccountably had remained behind. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement between Tippy and his mistress. She would leave and he would remain behind to intimidate any guest hapless enough to be granted an entrance.

Mulder took the opportunity to adjust the folds around the opening in the bundle he carried. He knew Alex was still alive from the small movements he would occasionally make, but it was also delightfully startling to see those green eyes glittering back at him.

The delight soon turned to extreme irritation, however, when a loud, Alex-accented meow issued forth from the terry cloth folds. Tippy immediately stopped growling and began a high pitched yapping. He also leapt into the air on spring loaded feet. Mulder was forced to raise his bundle high over his head to avoid Tippy snagging it. Unfortunately Tippy had not had a manicure recently as his toenails raked furrows down Mulder's body after each leap in a very painful sort of way. Especially, when they encountered vulnerably soft portions of Mulder's anatomy.

As a matter of self protection Mulder leapt onto a couch, which didn't help a whit as Tippy simply jumped onto it with him. In fact, the cushions added a certain buoyancy to his jumps. One particularly painful encounter with Tippy's toenails and Mulder's vulnerable bits lead to a scream on Mulder's part which rivaled the high range that Tippy was able to produce. It also lead to Mulder leaping over the back of the couch and onto an oriental rug.

Unfortunately, he wasn't as lucky with this rug as he had been with his own. He went down hard on his back. The back of his head thudded against the floor hard enough to snap his teeth together, luckily his tongue wasn't between them at the time. Tippy leaped off the back of the couch and onto his stomach. It was by far the most painful experience yet.

It hurt so much Mulder couldn't even spare a breath for a good curse. The small dog sank his incredibly sharp and well-maintained teeth into the folds of the terry cloth and dashed off with a speed that was equaled only by animated characters in cartoons. Mulder's grip on his bundle had slackened just enough for the dog to abscond with it. And now he was left to struggle to his hands and knees and then to his feet. All the time feeling as if he were in one of those nightmares where you desperately wanted to speedily get somewhere, but the thick molasses around your legs prevented you from doing it.

He didn't hear Tippy barking, which was bad for a couple of reasons. For one it meant he couldn't tell where the dog was and for the other it meant Tippy could have a mouthful of Alex. Which sent Mulder into a near blind panic. He didn't stop to analyze why it bothered him to such an extreme. It was, after all, the normal reaction of one human being for another in a horrible circumstance. Only this was Alex Krycek or possibly something inhuman using Alex's features as a disguise. Whatever it was, Mulder didn't want to stumble upon its half-eaten remains.

He ran after the dog, heading in the direction he had last seen him disappear. There were sounds ahead of toenails clicking rapidly over a hard surface. Mulder dashed in that direction through what appeared to be a dining area and then into a kitchen. There was a large island in the center. It obscured most of his view of the floor, but he heard a noise at the kitchen door. He skidded around the corner of the island and saw the flap of the pet door swinging.

He took the door knob in his hand and yanked. Nothing happened. Locked. He rattled the door like a crazed maniac for half a minute and then he realized he was being a crazed maniac and fumbled with the lock, turning it, hearing the bolt slide back. He jerked the door wide and ran through to the back yard.

Somehow, he expected it because it was Mrs. Burnside's backyard after all. There were brick pathways bordered by low, clipped boxwood hedges that formed a pattern. He didn't focus on it for his full attention was on scanning for a small dog. He spotted a flash of something just ahead, rounding a curve behind a much taller hedge.

He took off, yelling the dog's name, certain it wouldn't pay the least bit of attention and would, in fact, most likely run even faster in the opposite direction, but he felt compelled to try. He flew past a large flowering shrub. Its branches hanging low with watermelon colored blooms, crinkled like crepe paper. They covered the ground and now added to the assortment of botanical stuff in his hair as he flung out an arm to sweep the branches aside.

The further away from the house he got, the less formal it became with more trees and understory growth. The paths were no longer brick, but gravel. It was more difficult going but he would catch a glimpse of the dog just ahead, always disappearing around a curve in the path or a shrub. The yard seemed endless. He couldn't believe they were still in Mrs. Burnside's back yard. They must have stumbled out somehow, but he hadn't encountered a fence.

The trees became larger. The path no longer gravel, but simply a trail and one not traveled frequently. There were no flowering shrubs or clipped hedges, only woodland plants like ferns glimmering in the filtered light beneath the towering trees. The temperature was much cooler than it had been in his own bright, sun filled backyard. It filled him with dread because he knew he was in an otherworldly place.

It was not an unfamiliar feeling for him. He had experienced so many encounters with the strange and otherworldly over the years that it no longer held the same degree of curiosity that it had once produced. He had a feeling of deja vue, and then he realized it was like being in his dream.

He slowed down his pace, partly because he was getting tired and partly because the footing was growing uncertain. There was no longer any trace of a path at all. He heard nothing to give him any bearing as to where the little dog had gone. The only sound was what he assumed was the occasional bird high in the canopy of the trees and his own breathing.

He stopped entirely, bending at the waist to rest his hands on his knees and catch his breath. It was a moment, also, to try and control the sense of panic he felt. Knowing that with each passing moment he was losing any chance of retrieving Alex. There were nightmare images going through his head of what the dog's teeth could be doing to such a small and defenseless body. One that he had made even more defenseless by wrapping Alex's arms in the gauze so tightly. Perhaps Alex's luck had finally run out. If that were the case, Mulder didn't want to see the results.

He looked up and spotted a glimmer of white. As he moved closer he could see that it lay over the fallen trunk of a tree, which looked to have been there for years as its decomposing body was the host for numerous ferns and fungi. The white terry cloth seemed completely foreign in this place. Mulder reached down and retrieved it with hands that were shaking only slightly. There were spots of blood on it the size of peas, but nothing else.

He quickly glanced around, clutching the cloth tightly in one hand and with the other reaching down to closely inspect the ground for any signs of the dog's passing. He stepped over the tree trunk and spotted the disturbance in the soil right away.

It was one of those moments where he knew what he would find, hoping to find it and yet desperately hoping that he wouldn't. He fell to his knees in the soft loam of the forest and began to dig with both hands at the pile of dirt beside the fallen tree trunk. It only took a few seconds to reveal the end of the gauze wrapping poking out of the black dirt like a bony finger. Mulder's fingers followed it down until he exposed more of the gauze covering a tiny chest and then he frantically brushed aside the dirt, revealing a tiny face, eyes partially closed, white as the gauze binding.

Mulder bent close, his lips blowing aside the last bits of dirt from fragile eyelids and lips. The dirt had gotten into every tiny opening and crease of skin. He discarded any sense of caution and yanked the small body from its grave. It was truly like some discarded toy. There was no sense of life about it at all. No spark of warmth or awareness; it could have been made of plastic.

Mulder thought it was obscene, this awful deadness. This creature that had been so vibrantly alive such a short time previously, that had been the focus of his every waking thought and every dream and nightmare for days on end was reduced to a horribly empty bit of flesh and bone. A puppet with its strings cut and tossed aside like a bit of wadded up trash. Mocking him with all the unanswered questions he had stored up for years it seemed and were now to remain unanswered forever. The small head flopped about and Mulder was filled with rage. It wouldn't end this way. He wasn't going to let it.

He tugged at the bindings he had wrapped the small body in himself a short eternity ago and now he couldn't get them off fast enough. He got them as loose as he could without taking the time to unwind them completely and then placed the body on the moss covered ground. He used the tip of his thumb and index finger to press gently against the jaws and open the mouth as fully as he could. It was filled with dirt.

He sat back; the heels of his hands digging into his eye sockets. He fought the wave of hopelessness that washed over him. I can't do anything! He wanted to scream it. But he couldn't believe it was the end. He couldn't accept it.

He brought his hands back down to the tiny face and turned it and the small body to the side. He worked out as much of the dirt as he could and then turned the body face up again. He straightened the neck and began to press gently on the chest with his fingertips. Trying to get a rhythm going.

It was hopeless.

He worked for an unendurable length of time. Afraid he was crushing the little chest with each depression and there was nothing for all his efforts, no sign of life. He kept at it well past the time it had become horribly obvious there was never going to be life in the small body again. He kept ignoring the obvious the way people do. He knew there had to be something he could do, that he wasn't doing, something he was missing. If only he could figure out what it was, he could bring the small body to life again.

He sat back on his heels, shaking with exhaustion as if he'd run a marathon, every muscle in his shoulders, back and arms tense and painful. Every thought shut down except for a numb awareness of the silence.

The great trees surrounding him loomed over him as if peering over his shoulder. A suppression of silence settled in a hush around him, like leaves drifting in the fall, gathering in a heavy solitude upon his soul. It touched him, this death of one so small, with bony fingers. Poking at him. Whispering the truth with each jab. He could have done something. He could have run faster. He could have held on tighter.

He could have saved him if only he had tried harder.

He reached out and scooped up the body, its bindings trailing loosely, intertwining with the dangling arms and legs as if the body was reaching back for the earth it had died in. He pressed it to his chest, looking for the terry cloth. He had dropped it somewhere close to hand. He blinked his eyes; his vision blurring wetly.

He spotted it at last and grabbed it up, wrapping it around the body hastily at first, roughly, angrily. Then he slowed, his touch gentling as he made sure arms were neatly snugged against the body and the head rested securely as if it could see out of the opening he left.

He began to plod back in the direction he thought he had come. He hadn't been paying attention at the time and now he had to blink his eyes frequently to clear them. There was a tightness in his chest, almost painful, and he kept having to clear his throat. Something was growing inside him. A pressure. He needed to let it out, but he desperately didn't want to, but it was so painful. He wanted to scream with it.

Finally, he stopped. He stared straight ahead at all the greenness. It blurred together like a view through a rain drenched window. He really couldn't take the pain that was growing in his chest. He threw his head back and tried to breathe, to release it, to take in air, but the pain had moved into his throat now.

He groaned, which felt better, but it allowed the sob to escape. He didn't want it to. It was hard to let it go. It broke the silence around him in a startling and shameful way. He could hear himself sobbing and it was uncontrollable. His body had taken over. He shook his head and closed his eyes as tightly as he could, trying to deny it, the death, his reaction; but he couldn't.

He sank to his knees on the moss covered ground and sobbed out his hurt and guilt. Too late again.

It didn't last long. It certainly didn't last as long as his efforts to bring the dead to life. It never lasts as long when you have no hope.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He could feel the grit from the dirt that covered his hands and packed under his fingernails. He whispered a soft, "oh, god," and struggled to his feet.

He didn't stop to think about why he was taking the body back with him. It was something he had set out to retrieve. He couldn't leave it behind.

The forest watched over him in silence as he made his way back. The spot between his shoulder blades felt tender from all the watchful eyes he could sense, but couldn't see. His imagination, born out of stress and an unfamiliar place, but it haunted him, this feeling that he was not alone. He would glance now and then from the path directly in front of him, trying to catch a glimpse of a shadow's fleeting movement, but there was nothing save the sound of his own movement through the forest.

He had no notion of the passage of time, only the heaviness in his legs to match the heaviness in his heart. It felt as if he had been walking for hours when he came upon a gravel path. His footsteps crunched in the loose gravel. The sound unusually loud in the quiet.

Time began to pass at a normal rate for he came to the brick path he had followed out of Mrs. Burnside's yard in what he thought was a reasonable amount of time. There was the flowering tree he had passed under earlier and the clipped hedges.

It was just as he recalled it except for Mrs. Burnside. She stood in the middle of her garden where the pathway divided and made its way around a circular design crafted with carefully clipped boxwood. It was an intricate pattern. A winding rope of green which twined back on itself in an overly complicated knotted pattern. He hadn't taken note of it during his initially swift passage through the garden. The sun had warmed the boxwood. It had always smelled like dog piss to him.

Mrs. Burnside could easily have been mistaken for a garden statue of Athena. Except, of course, for the fact she was alive and wearing modern clothes and holding a small, pet carrier.

Mulder walked up to her. An acolyte bearing sacrifice to his goddess.

There was a scent in the air. Something ancient and dry, burned ash and incense. Blood, freshly spilt. Songs of praise amidst the pleading screams. They filled his ears. It was the rushing of his blood, he thought, he imagined, he rationalized.

She held out the carrier. Its wire door open. "The dead are not lost to us, Mr. Mulder."

He stared into her eyes for a moment. Clutching his dirty bundle to him, not willing to part with it. It had become something he needed in order to feel normal, like his clothes. A necessary thing to have and once it was gone he would feel naked. In spite of this he felt compelled to carefully place his burden inside the hard shell of the carrier and close the door. Mrs. Burnside released the carrier into his hands and stepped back a pace. The movement released him. He blinked and felt the weight of the carrier in his hands. He didn't think beyond the moment. It was simply a matter of taking action. The action of walking out of Mrs. Burnside's yard and back to his own home.

He could easily hear the voices of his guests. They drew him with their familiarity and warmth. But when he walked through his gate into his backyard and was amongst his friends there was a disconnect as if he were walking in a dream.

They would walk up to him, heads bobbing strangely, looming so close he could see the pores on the end of Byer's nose and then receding till their heads seemed the size of golf balls. Their faces reflecting curiosity and concern. He wanted to reassure them that everything was okay, but he somehow had forgotten how to speak. He could see their lips move, but the sounds were as intelligible as Tippy's barking.

The thought of the dog sent his heart racing. He clutched the carrier close and began to frantically search for Tippy. He knew that it must be close by, ready to rush out and grab Alex again. He began to whirl about, so fast he lost his balance.

He fell hard onto the pavement. The carrier making a loud clatter as it hit the hard surface with him. He winced at the thought of its occupant getting jostled about so disrespectfully. He reached out to it, but there were other arms and hands in the way. They helped him to his feet, so kind and warm and concerned. He looked back over his shoulder, trying to see the carrier, but there were people in the way.

They pushed and pulled him into his house. He felt as if he were in a nightmare. He couldn't see the carrier at all now. He needed to see it. He got up from the chair they had pushed him in and started for his back door, but someone big, Skinner, got in his way. He struggled to get around him, to get out his own back door, but it was impossible. His shoulders were firmly held. He was forced up his stairs and into his bedroom and onto his bed by a group of people who had suddenly transformed from his friends to his captors.

It had become terribly important to speak, to get someone to understand and finally, finally he was able to focus on Scully's worried eyes. He pushed the words out with a great effort, "Carrier, please Scully, please." He couldn't explain. It was beyond him. All he could do was pray she would understand. She had always understood when others hadn't.

She brought her cool hand to his forehead and he closed his eyes and sighed. He hadn't realized he was feeling so hot. She soothed his hair back and he heard her say something. It was soft and caring. A question that he couldn't answer. He sank back into the bed, feeling completely drained and yet he struggled internally with a desperate desire to get up, to find that carrier and what it contained, to make sure it was safe. There was such a feeling of loss not having it beside him. But the sleep that overwhelmed him was stronger than any strange desire.

He awoke in the night to the sound of muffled booms. He rose from his bed and made his way in the darkened room to the nearest window. He was still woozy from his sleep, still tired and feeling as if he had woken from an afternoon nap, completely discombobulated with the world. There were distant fireworks going off and he remembered the holiday. His bedroom window looked out over his backyard. There were no lights or any sign of activity. Everyone must have gone home long ago. He scrubbed his face with his hands. It would have been nice to have accomplished something normal, but it appeared to be a lost cause.

He looked again at the fireworks and watched the display for some minutes, letting his mind drift lazily along in the slow currents, not wanting to delve further, for he wasn't up to handling the white water just yet.

The house was softly humming in the dark. The air-conditioning unit working hard for the night was hot and humid. The cool shadows of the forest were a pleasantly troubling memory. He remembered how cool and moist the black earth had felt.

He gasped at the full realization of that thought and jerked back from the window, suddenly overwhelmed with the memory of that horrible moment of discovery. His eyes began to dart about the room, straining to see into the shadows. He had done this a lot as a young boy, waking from a nightmare or simply trying to go to sleep after watching a horror movie. If you stared long enough into the shadows and didn't look away, whatever was lurking there couldn't come out and get you. Of course, he always had to blink and that was when the monsters could move towards the bed. The blink of an eye could be a fatal thing.

He kept imagining the carrier was sitting alone on the brick patio. He wanted to go down and check it out. He remembered asking Scully about it. But the feeling there was something in the room with him was growing. There was some light coming in from the window. With each burst of fireworks the shadows would flicker for a moment. Strange how brightly their light flared into his window.

It was during one of these moments that he saw it.

The light from the window cast a blue, watery shimmer over the carrier for a heartbeat and then it disappeared into the shadows again. He was sure it was the carrier. Scully, he thought. She must have brought it up for him after all. It sat on the stool beside his closet door. The wire door of the carrier had been facing him. He kept staring at the spot, not daring to blink, waiting for the next kaleidoscope bloom of light.

When the muffled boom came and the lights shimmered in the dark like Christmas in July they revealed an image that burned itself in his brain. Even as the light faded and the room was plunged into the near-dark once again, he was left with the shock of it. A fleeting image, so swift and so violent in its reality that it was a full body slam to his awareness. It stilled his breath and froze him in place. There was something inside the carrier, something alive. He had felt rather than seen the eyes. But what he recalled most vividly were the two tiny fists clenching around the wire of the door.

He kept staring at the darkness which hid the carrier as he made his way to the lamp on the end table beside the bed. He tried not to blink, knowing he was acting crazy and not giving a damn. He wasn't about to look away or turn his back on it. As he made his way, he kept imagining the carrier door swinging open in the darkness and whatever was in there was making its way across the floor to him. Its movements cloaked in the darkness, made all the more horrible for the imagining.

He fumbled with the lamp switch, clumsy in a way that he never was, almost knocking it over. When the light finally clicked on, it cast a golden pool of soft light across the side of the bed. It didn't quite reach to the carrier, but it was enough to see that the door was still tightly closed. He sank to the bed, trembling slightly, and scrubbed at his face. He laughed quietly, mockingly into the palms of his hands. He felt incredibly foolish, as if he had just experienced a bad nightmare. He certainly felt as frightened as a kid. He couldn't believe he was reacting this way after all that he'd been through in the past, to be so juvenile now was really laughable.

Although, he thought wryly, Skinner could have told him on several previous occasions that his juvenile actions weren't restricted to the present.

He sighed and dropped his hands and looked at the carrier. It was just a carrier again. A small, hard-shelled pet carrier with a wire door and holes in the side. It had lost all its aura of menace and had become once again simply what it was.

Sadness filled him, replacing the fear. There was a small body in there. He wondered if Scully or whoever had retrieved it had investigated what it contained. Most likely they hadn't or they would still be here asking questions.

Still, there was an uncertainty, a need to check on it. He got up and walked over to the carrier and brought it back to the bed. He sat down beside it and opened the door. He could see the bundle inside, just as he had placed it earlier. He reached in and brought it out. There was a subtle difference in the weight of it. The feel of it was wrong.

His heart began to beat faster. He froze for a moment, looking at it, not wanting to open the cloth wrapping it, but knowing he was going to do it. He pushed the carrier aside with one hand and laid the bundle fully in the light from the lamp. He gently began to fold back the cloth until he revealed the tiny form of Alex.

It wasn't the same Alex. The small body was still covered in bits of dirt and blood, but it had gone gray. The legs seemed fused together to the point they had lost all distinction from one another and were profoundly altered. The skin was hard to the touch, especially over what had once been Alex's legs. There was a crust-like coating working its way up from where the feet would have been and diminishing just past the knees. It was a darker gray in color than the rest of the skin and heavily wrinkled.

The body appeared to be undergoing some sort of transformation.

Mulder sat back and closed his mouth. He expelled a softly awed, "I'll be damned." He was less awed when he muttered, "You son of a bitch. What the hell?"

He got up and walked away, leaving the grotesque little body on his bed, lying in the golden light like some large, hideous insect that should have stayed in the shadows.

Mulder couldn't get to the kitchen fast enough. He yanked open the refrigerator door and nearly went to his knees in relief when he saw the beer bottles left over from the party. He grabbed up one, opened it and drank nearly the entire contents. Then he walked out onto his back porch and stared out at his back yard. He never for a minute lost the awareness that he had a dead Alex the size of a toy upstairs undergoing some sort of weird-ass transformation. He had just about had his fill of weird-ass transformations by an inordinately high number of weird-ass creatures.

He let his mind focus on his surroundings and thought it really was a magically beautiful summer night. He could still see the fireworks going off in the distance. It was like a giant television screen with the dark silhouette of the trees acting as the frame. The display was too far away for the full benefit of the sound effects. He didn't look too closely at the trees in Mrs. Burnside's back yard. He was aware that the house was dark and quiet, but he avoided any thoughts in that direction entirely.

There were still some trappings of the party about. His friends had been great about cleaning up for him. He should probably call and apologize and offer some sort of explanation tomorrow, but that was tomorrow and right now all he wanted to do was forget for a few hours, to stop his mind running about in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. He needed to take a break. But the back yard looked abandoned. It looked lonely and sad and it made him lonely and even sadder.

He went back inside and grabbed up more beer from the refrigerator and then back outside again to gather up a couple of cushions from the lawn chairs. He made his way out onto the lawn until he was at the spot where he had first discovered the egg. He threw down the cushions, placed the beer conveniently close and made himself comfortable. He looked up at the night sky and realized his mistake immediately.

He felt humbled, which for him was a rare and unwelcome experience. The isolation he carried inside himself for most of his life was made profoundly manifest. The great expanse above him, surrounding him, was in the most simple and awe-inspiring way the face of eternity. He felt such a burden of himself, an isolation made profound because there were no ordinary barriers he could throw himself against. He was forced to face himself and in that act he realized the depth of his solitude.

He sighed and went back inside the house, up the stairs and into his bedroom. He half expected Alex to be gone. When he discovered that Alex was still lying on the bed in the pool of light exactly as he had left him, Mulder wasn't sure if he was relieved or not. He gazed down at what was left of Alex and was filled with a sense of loss that was truly of the mind as well as the heart. The shock of Alex's death had in some way numbed him. He had experienced the emotions of grief. He acknowledged that now even to himself, but he was left with the aching hollowness that was not buffered in any way. It dwelled inside him as great and endless as the night sky.

He gathered the lifeless form into his arms. It felt uncomfortably strange. The hardness of the lower limbs was especially disturbing as was the rough texture of their covering. It was similar to the exoskeleton on a lobster.

He desperately needed more beer.

When he had made his way back to his preferred spot on the lawn with his newly acquired drinking buddy, he settled the little body carefully beside him, its eyes fixed behind half-closed lids. Alex wasn't in any position to appreciate the fireworks or the face of eternity. Mulder thought Alex probably had a more up-close appreciation at the moment, anyway.

He drank his beer with a serious determination as he had a goal in mind and once he had achieved the desired disconnect into that place where the ache in the center of his chest had been muted enough, he began a conversation with Alex.

He rolled over onto his side facing Alex, his beer in one hand and his head resting in his other. The conversation was only partially satisfying as this Alex wasn't lying or feeding him cryptic information or preparing to betray him. What he missed most was the glint of intelligence in Alex's eyes. It was one of Alex's attributes which had pleased him most in the early days of their partnership. Alex's eyes practically glinted with life and purpose. Sometimes they gave Mulder a push when he needed it. They were the eyes of someone who could survive, who he expected to survive, like a cockroach. It was oddly reassuring and frustrating. When he allowed himself to ponder why this was so, he knew it was because the world needs survivors even if they are cockroaches because they give hope. Only now, when he had the evidence before him that Alex was indeed, mortal, did he realize how much he had depended on that hope.

He took a swig of his beer and commented lazily, "Didn't make it this time, did you."

Alex didn't answer, of course. Mulder had half-expected that he would. The state of Mulder's mind was beginning to quickly lose any notion of what he could reasonably expect after the recent occurrences in his life.

"Must have been rough, getting buried like that." Mulder dramatically shuddered in sympathetic reaction.

He took another long swallow from his bottle. With a small, ironic grin on his lips, which with Mulder's generous mouth, produced irony in spades, he said, "Been there done that. Of course I got the casket, the memorial service, an actual hole in a graveyard, marker, the works. You get a dog scratching dirt in your eyes and maybe some squirrel tries to dig you up later and chews your nuts off."

Mulder reached over with the hand holding the beer bottle and poked Alex's tiny shoulder with his finger. He delivered his next line with all the glee of a teenage boy, "Bet you never thought your nuts would be the size of an English pea! A very small, shriveled, English pea!"

He leaned over Alex as if he were really expecting an answer, his lips spreading into a slightly loopy grin. Had they not been hidden by the night his eyes would have shown as wetly as his beer-slicked lips.

Alex lay as still as a little pharaoh. Mute and silent beneath the fireworks in the sky, ready to be wrapped in linen, laid in his sarcophagus, resplendent in death, facing the journey through the dark underworld...with Tippy yapping at his heels.

Oh, good god, Mulder thought as he shook his head and snorted with only a moderate amount of inebriety. He had been completely caught up in the vision of Alex as dead pharaoh, but somehow his mind always supplied the non-sequiter.

The fireworks reached a crescendo of activity as the show flared to its climax. The light played out over the little body beside him revealing something in a flickering moment which even his beer-dulled brain was able to comprehend as different and strange, awful and compelling.

He dropped the beer bottle somewhere as he struggled to his feet. He couldn't bear to pick Alex up, to bring that creature close to his unprotected body, not after he had seen...but he needed to see him clearly. He ran back into the house, jerked open the drawer in the kitchen where he kept the flashlight, all in a semi-drunken state that alternately made it seem as if he were struggling with things too slowly and then he felt out of control because he was moving too fast as he slammed out of the back door and across the porch. He completely forgot that he had security lights mounted at the back of the house, which he could have greatly benefited from; but the flashlight had been a tool as familiar to him as his weapon for many years.

It played a dancing, bouncing beam of light ahead of him as he jogged back to Alex. When he got to the spot he shone the light fully on the little body and held it there for a full minute, then he dropped to his knees and brought his face close. The lower portion of Alex's body was completely encased in a thick, gray, heavily wrinkled covering. Mulder touched it with a finger tip. It was hard and rough, so much more than it had been in his bedroom. He really was changing into something else.

If he hadn't been more than half-drunk he would have paced around the yard, thought furiously, then gathered Alex up and made his way to Langly, Byers and Frohike. As it was he simply imploded. He dropped the flashlight on the ground, making sure it was still aimed at Alex and rolled onto his side in a fetal position, keeping his eyes on Alex, watching. It was the nightmare game again, not looking away for fear Alex would change even further and grow into something even more monstrous, wriggling closer, using his arms to propel himself forward like some hideous grub. Mulder shuddered and chuckled at the same time while he contemplated this image. He wasn't sure if it frightened him or repulsed him or amused him. All of the above, he thought.

He wanted to smack Alex. He wanted to pound him into the ground and stomp on him like the little indestructible cockroach he was for putting him through this fucked-up hell. But, unlike the fully adult-size Alex he could hardly punch an Alex who was the size of a Ken doll and get much satisfaction. However, his proclivity for punching Alex and the inordinate amount of satisfaction he received from that action was not an area of his psyche he wanted to delve into at that particular moment.

When his eyelids finally closed in sleep after long hours of drooping shut and then flaring open again, the last image he held was of Alex, completely encased in the hard, gray shell. Its thick covering wrinkled as elephant skin.

He felt the summer night surround him in his slumber. It wrapped itself around him in a shimmer of firefly twinkle and midsummer magic, all delicious warmth that eased his tense muscles, causing him to murmur in pleasure and stretch his legs out, his arms reaching overhead, his back arching as the stretching sensation pulled enjoyably all along the length of his body. He sighed and wriggled. He was still reclining on his cushions.

Without opening his eyes he knew that it was still night. The morning sun had yet to rise, but he thought lazily in that half-formed way, as he made his way slowly to complete awareness, that it must be getting close to dawn. He opened his eyes slowly, looking directly overhead at the night sky. He noted the glow cast by the flashlight, but refused to look over at Alex, or what Alex was becoming.

His thoughts began to turn to what he should do with Alex when he heard the snap of a twig. It startled him. He sat up and faced in the direction from which the sound had issued. It was straight ahead. The sound came again, there was most assuredly the sensation of a living presence close by, something large walking about.

He reached out for the flashlight just as a human-shaped figure separated itself from the black on blacker silhouette of bushes. Mulder brought the full beam of light onto the figure and gasped in complete astonishment. The shock was so great it drained any strength he had for movement. He simply sat where he was, keeping the light trained on Krycek as he walked towards him with all the old self-assurance; a force that once set in motion did not stop easily. It was the Alex Krycek Mulder had not seen in years. The one who had knocked him on his ass, handed him his gun, kissed him and called him friend. The one who always left Mulder feeling slightly poleaxed.

When Krycek had gotten to within a couple of feet he stopped and squatted on his heals beside Mulder, his hands dangling between his knees, but then he quickly brought one hand up to shield his eyes.

"Do you mind, Mulder?"

Mulder automatically lowered the light from shining directly in Krycek's face and stopped himself just in time from another automatic response of, 'sorry'. Instead he slipped back into old habits with, "You're slinking around out of your usual gutter aren't you Krycek?"

Krycek's contemplative look didn't change much except for a softening as of someone lost in reminisce. He ignored Mulder's words and instead reached out toward his face in an open handed gesture almost as if to caress. Mulder jerked back, bringing the flashlight up again, but this time in a motion to knock Krycek's hand aside.

Krycek's face did change with this action. It grew intense, completely focused on Mulder in a hard, professional and familiar way. Mulder felt the thrill of that. It had always given him an intense high to get Krycek's full attention. It fed his ego on many levels. But this time Krycek's hard gaze slid away, focused instead on what lay beside Mulder.

A small smile pressed his lips together and his eyes glinted with a teasing light. "You're keeping interesting company these days, Mulder." The joyful leer in Krycek's eyes and voice heavily coated his words with their subtext, which was that Mulder was sexually warped in ways that only Mulder could twist them. It fed Mulder's irritation. He hadn't felt this alive in months. The high of it surged through him and he was growing hard with it. His fists clenched and he actually physically ached with the need to strike Krycek, to throw his body full length against the other man and pin him to the ground, force him to submit. Of course, Mulder didn't think of the submission in a sexual way. It was the act of dominating a man he hated. Getting a hard on was simply his body's physical reaction to the adrenaline and rush of excitement at the physical contact. At least he hadn't thought about it in a sexual way until now. Now, his body was taking him back to that morning on the grass on this very spot when the little demon form of Alex had literally jumped on him and taken him to the very depths of pleasure.

He had been dragged down into that pit of depravity and never really been able to climb back out. And now, now he was faced with a full sized version of that demon. His cock was only too happy about it. Each passing second seemed to make it happier and harder. He would have grabbed the wretched, betraying part of him and squeezed it into submission while his mind obediently supplied a myriad of unpleasant thoughts to cool his lust.

Unfortunately, he couldn't grab himself in front of Krycek and he seemed to be confusing the unpleasant with the highly erotic these days in his fascination with Krycek.

As for Krycek himself, he seemed to be enjoying Mulder's internal struggle as if he could read his mind. The smug, arrogant, smirking bastard. If anyone was going to be smug, arrogant, and smirking, Mulder thought, it was going to be him.

"You died. The dog buried your sorry ass and I dug you up. I should have left you there in the woods with the rest of the animals." Mulder thought his response lacked that certain intellectually elevated disdain he had been striving for and instead fell into the juvenile insult category, but then he wasn't exactly feeling at the top of his form. The growing tightness in his groin was a constant distraction. It made him peevish and stinted access to his normally vast vocabulary.

Krycek kept his smug look, plus he added the equally irritating let's-placate-the-obviously-insane tone. "You do realize you're not making any sense, Mulder? You sound like a crazy person. How can I have died? I'm right here." As a follow up, he reached out to Mulder's vast shock and disbelief and took Mulder's clenched fist in his hand, brought it up to his cheek and let it rest there against his flesh in an audacious, brazen way, totally out of all bounds and rules of the known universe. Mulder could feel the bristle of whiskers against his fingers and the warmth of Krycek's hand as it held his in place. Their eyes locked and for a brief span of time, perhaps a full second, Mulder felt the urge to kiss that cheek, to feel those bristles against his lips, to rub his own cheek against the other man's. It was a sudden, painful upswelling in his chest, rather like the time in the forest as he made his way back with his small burden, only this time the feeling was even more difficult to describe. He hesitated to call it tenderness, but it was as close as he could get to analyzing it.

It frightened him so much he jerked his hand back.

The urge to strike out was overwhelming. He cracked when he heard Krycek's low chuckle. A siren's song to violence it was and one that went directly to his traitorous cock. He struck out with his fist.

Krycek jerked back and in doing so lost his balance. He fell onto his back with Mulder straddling him. Mulder grabbed fistfuls of Krycek's leather jacket, hauling his head up and then letting it drop. The result wasn't quite as satisfying as he wanted; so he took Krycek's head between his hands and started pounding it against the ground. At least he attempted to do this. Krycek thrust his locked hands between Mulder's wrists and broke their grip then arched his body, trying to dislodge Mulder. It didn't work. Mulder grabbed Krycek's wrists and pinned them to the ground. The adrenaline sang through his system in a glorious surge of physical contact, replete with all the dominance-fueled high of besting his enemy. Chests were heaving, bodies were flushed, muscles straining to their utmost. It was intensely satisfying. His vanquished foe lying between his thighs, struggling mightily to no advantage.

The gloating smile on Mulder's face suddenly disappeared, burned away like the morning mist as the full glare of reality made itself known.

Krycek wasn't trying to dislodge him so much as rub against him in a decidedly lascivious way. There was a glint in his eye and a look on his face like that of a lewd choir boy ascending to the heavens, carried away on a blissful cloud of sexual ecstasy.

Mulder made a thoroughly disgusted noise and almost released his grip on Krycek's wrists except that would mean losing close, intimate, oh-god- the-press-of-flesh contact with Krycek and he couldn't manage to get his body to obey any command that would sever this glorious connection. He closed his eyes and groaned, then swallowed, hard. The breath shuddered out of him. He stopped just short of mewling in a pathetic way. Instead he whimpered quietly, so quietly he prayed that Krycek didn't hear. From the look on Krycek's face he doubted that he did. The man was seriously concentrating on getting off and Mulder found himself trying to further that goal.

He tightened his thighs. It was easy because his body naturally wanted to do that, tighten and thrust, thrust against something. That something happened to be Krycek's body. Its preternatural ability to rub against Mulder had a way guaranteed to ratchet his desire up to further heights without actually getting him off. Mulder released a wrist and used his freed hand in a worthier endeavor. The moment his fist wrapped around his cock it was only a matter of a few urgent pulls and he got that release that had become so very important to him.

The relief flowed through him as delicious as the urgent need which had spawned it. It seeped into his awareness gradually that there was no longer a hard, writhing male body between his legs. There was only the cool air of dawn and the dampness of dew covered grass beneath him. He opened his eyes and blinked. He was on his hands and knees, or rather on one hand. He had one still fully engaged in holding his cock. He slowly lowered his head to the ground, resting it on his forearm. He still cradled his cock as if it had been threatened with castration or injured in some particularly embarrassing way instead of dripping in the aftermath of a deeply satisfying orgasm. He muttered quietly to himself, mostly pleas for a universal deity to show mercy. They lacked sufficient conviction. Mulder had yet to see any evidence that said deity was interested in anything other than a sadistic glee in its cat and mouse antics with the mortals. Thus, the pleas quickly turned to curses of a dull, general nature and with a distinct lack of wit due to the earliness of the hour. There was a special emphasis, however, when a certain Alex Krycek's name was used.

Finally, he sat back on his heels and pulled his hand away from the sticky, cold mess that was inside his shorts. He had apparently unzipped himself during the early hours of the morning and had himself a beer-induced, wet dream of monumental proportions.

The exposed position he found himself in finally presented itself to him. Even though there was a fence surrounding his backyard he was out in the open. Dawn was breaking. Dogs were barking. Cars were going by on the street. He felt thoroughly embarrassed.

He glanced around and noted the scattered cushions, the crushed grass, the beer bottles strewn about. He felt even more embarrassed. He hoped none of his neighbors had access to night vision goggles.

He hoped he hadn't screamed like a girl.

Still on his hands and knees he pushed his way through the beer bottles and cushions as dawn's light began a faint orange glow along the horizon. He didn't see his flashlight anywhere, but he didn't need it at this point. He could make out the gray shell which encapsulated Alex's body like a butterfly's chrysalis.

It was rough to the touch, veins running in ropy strands across its surface. It infused Mulder with a childlike wonder, a magic he could feel as surely as he felt the throb of sexual desire earlier. It thrilled him beyond his understanding. It was no longer a creature of nightmares to be feared. His only desire was to keep this mystery close to him, to study it, to watch it, to solve it.

He placed his hands around it in preparation of lifting it, but its weight surprised him. It was far heavier than its size indicated. Nevertheless, he gathered it up and carried it into his house where he placed it on his kitchen table.

If he hadn't needed a shower so desperately he would have studied it further. He dashed upstairs and into the shower, scrubbing away the evidence of his early morning activities with a vengeance. He jerked on comfortable sweatpants and T-shirt, his thoughts completely on the strange and marvelous thing in his kitchen.

He jogged back down the stairs and immediately over to the microwave. He had the instant coffee handy and made himself a large mug of it before going back over to stare at his prize.

He thought of it that way, now. His prize. Only his. His so very special treasure.

The early morning light was coming in through his back door, which were French doors that opened onto the porch, and the window over the sink, but it wasn't sufficient. He switched on the overhead lights and marveled at the change in the chrysalis. It seemed much larger than he remembered it being the last time he had looked at it during the night while it was still forming around Alex's body. It also seemed much thicker and there were indeed numerous veins running over its surface, but in the light he could see the subtle movement of fluid as it coursed through them with a distinctive pulse as if they were connected to a living heart.

He stepped closer and touched one of them. Indeed! Whatever it was pulsed with life. He was unpleasantly reminded of the aliens' apparently endless transmutations. He feared that perhaps this was yet again simply another, but as soon as this thought formed he knew it wasn't the case. He hadn't a logical explanation other than a feeling that this was not connected with the aliens in any way. Their touch had left an indelible mark within him, like the lingering stench of shit after being cleaned away. It did, however, give him something of a gift about sensing such things and whatever strange thing he possessed it wasn't connected to the aliens.

He idly traced his finger in intellectual foreplay along an especially large vein as he sipped his coffee. His stomach growled and he became aware he hadn't eaten anything of substance since yesterday morning. The party seemed as if it had taken place years ago. He barely spared a thought for it or his friends as he patted his treasure and moved over to his stove where he prepared scrambled eggs and toast.

He kept glancing over at the chrysalis. Each time he did so half expecting, half hoping to find some remarkable change having taken place, but it remained quiescent. He ate his meal on the table beside it. The food went in his mouth, but it was only nominally acknowledged as he chewed and swallowed. Almost all his entire focus was on the chrysalis.

The pulsing veins seemed to wink at him in a tantalizing way as if they were coyly enticing him to play along their length again. He pushed his plate aside and pulled the chrysalis closer. The shape of it was altering. There was a pronounced assemblage of grooves and swirls at one end which culminated in an enlarged knotted structure. It was still hard and impenetrable with the only relief in its grayness the pink which he could see now as some of the larger veins thinned almost to transparency. Whatever flowed through them was red in color, though paler than the dark heart's blood of humanity.

Holding it in place with both hands he put his ear against it and held his breath as he strained to hear inside. There was the slightest whisper of a regular thumping, but he couldn't be sure if it was real or just his imagination. He greatly desired a stethoscope. They should be required in every kitchen's utility drawer, he thought wryly. And then he remembered the magnifying glass he had somewhere. He began scrounging about downstairs. While he was about his search he turned the radio on to his favorite station. His search was in vain and he continued it upstairs. Finally, empty-handed and irritable, he returned; but this mood quickly changed as he noted with excitement that his chrysalis was rocking back and forth on top of his kitchen table.

Fearing that it would roll off and damage itself, he reached down to take it into his arms, but once again it had grown much heavier, so heavy that he had to exert considerable effort to heave it off and onto the floor. Mulder thought at this rate of growth it would be crashing through the floor into the basement.

He opened the French doors wide and rolled it onto the porch. It wasn't easy to keep it going in a straight line through the doorway as it was so uneven; it kept wanting to pivot wide using the larger, heavier end as an anchor. But, he managed with a last loud thump to get it settled. At least if it kept growing or if it started to produce dangerous attributes, such as combustibility, he could get it away from the house faster. He hoped.

He stood frowning at it thoughtfully for a moment, lost in his ruminations when the phone rang. It jarred him so unexpectedly that it sent his heart racing and he jerked as if someone had poked him in the back with a sharp stick.

"Shit," he mumbled to himself, the empty house and whatever sentient creature dwelled within his chrysalis.

He answered the wall phone in the kitchen. His greeting was curt and preoccupied as he maneuvered himself to stand so he could see the chrysalis through the window at his sink.

Scully's voice answered him and he immediately dropped his gaze and focused on what she was saying. He had completely forgotten that she would naturally want to check on him after his strange behavior of yesterday.

It wasn't easy to convince her not to come over in the afternoon and personally check on him. He turned his back to the window and braced himself against the sink, using every bit of his persuasiveness on her, panicked at the thought that anyone would find out about his chrysalis, especially Scully. She'd convince him to do the reasonable thing and he didn't want to do the reasonable thing at all. He very rarely, if ever, in fact, wanted to do that.

He could hear William's excited voice in the background and Doggett's much lower one answering him. Mulder had completely forgotten it was the weekend. He rubbed his temple and repressed a sigh. He wondered where he had left his coffee. He was growing impatient with how long this was taking.

Scully's voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper with an undercurrent of muted amusement as she asked him if he'd noticed Skinner and Reyes at the party. He struggled to coalesce his memories of that day into some coherency and all he could remember was seeing Skinner retrieving a soda from the ice chest for Reyes. And then there was the truly unforgettable stretch of cloth across Skinner's chest and groin. He had no trouble whatsoever retrieving that image.

It was rather a jarring moment when Scully's voice broke through this reverie.

He was struggling to answer her at the same time as he turned back around to the window. His eyes landed on the chrysalis and his mouth fell open in astonishment. He stood mute as Scully's voice echoed in his ear. He automatically began to turn and walk to the porch, but realized he was still on the line. He paced back and forth, glancing out the window each time he passed it, itching to get out there. He heard himself say 'yes' more than once, but he wasn't sure what he was responding to exactly. He was simply trying to get off the phone as fast as he could and he couldn't think past that. He didn't know what he said to her, finally. He made his excuses and dashed out onto the porch.

What greeted him there sent a thrill through him of treasure discovered, or perhaps the chest containing the treasure.

The damn thing had increased in size yet again. Mulder could easily fit inside it if the idea didn't completely repulse him. It lay on his porch like a silent, dark monolith. It's surface was no longer dull, battleship gray, rather it was now gleaming black, oppressively, ominously black. The veins were still there, but they no longer pulsed with life and Mulder had no inclination with this chrysalis to lay his ear against its surface.

The whorls and grooves still crawled across its surface. They were predominately on the larger end, which had become so intricately deformed by them it looked similar to a celtic knot.

It lay there. Taunting him with its silence, its outrageous appearance. It was almost obscene the way it seemed to flaunt itself and yet refused to give him what he truly desired. A peek at the inside. He hadn't felt so wondrously lost in an obsession in a long time. Since this adventure began with the mysterious appearance of the egg, he felt as if he'd been fucked both in body and mind. Damn it felt good.

Mulder was tempted to kick it, but he was barefoot. Instead, he mumbled, "Hard and crusty on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside, aren't you?"

It lay there in all its dark glory and mocked him with its silence.

Mulder gritted his teeth, grabbed the wicker rocking chair out of its place in the corner of his porch and set it down closer to the Chrysalis of Doom. He plopped his butt in the chair and began to rock anxiously back and forth, his fingers drumming on the armrests. He could hear the muted sounds of the radio playing in the house. His coffee was probably cold somewhere in the kitchen. There were lawn mowers operating in the neighborhood. There were always lawnmowers and hedge clippers and blowers operating in the neighborhood. He missed the quiet of the city.

Mrs. Burnside's house remained quiet. He hadn't heard Tippy barking once this morning. For that he was grateful. He still felt tender and vulnerable from that entire incident.

The Chrysalis of Doom winked at him. A glint of sunlight must have gotten caught in its magnetic field and been sucked under the porch roof to strike and die against its surface. Poor sunlight, Mulder thought. It didn't have a chance. The thing was a black hole.

The day was developing into a warm one. Under the porch it was nice and cool in the shade. Mulder was determined to stay awake during the next transformation of the chrysalis, but he found the rocking motion of the chair and the muted chacophony of suburbia surrounding him didn't distract him as much as it soothed him as gently as a lullaby. Numerous times his head would drop forward and he'd jerk it back only to do it again a minute later. Finally, he fell so soundly asleep that he drooled out of the corner of his mouth. When he awoke he wiped it away with the back of his hand and anxiously gauged the chrysalis for any change, but it was as dark and silent as the interior of a pyramid.

Mulder sighed and got up. He needed to get something to eat and drink, plus he needed to pee. He ignored the dirty breakfast dishes on the kitchen table as he passed by to the downstairs guest bathroom. He wanted to make his time away from his observation post as brief as possible. He slapped together a sandwich with some stale bread and peanut butter and a large bottle of water with a couple of aspirin, but upon reflection put them back and got some analgesic capsules instead. The night outside had not been kind to his sinuses.

Fortified with an empty bladder, food and drink, he returned to his chair. He was vastly pleased to see that no change had taken place while he was gone. He was also disappointed because he did want something to happen; he just wanted to be there when it did.

It was a long afternoon. He hesitantly brought the radio out because he wasn't sure if the chrysalis had been reacting to the music when he had first turned it on that morning or if it had simply been going through its own transformation regardless of the music. Whatever the case now, it appeared to be unaffected by the music.

There were periodic bathroom breaks and he answered the phone three times. Each time he was careful to keep an eye on the chrysalis through the kitchen window. Once it had been Scully checking up on him again. He was better able to converse with her and felt he made significant inroads into repairing any damage he had inadvertently done to her opinion of his mental condition.

The day wore on without any change in the chrysalis. His familiarity with its imposing presence did not lessen its affect on him. It remained profoundly compelling. He found himself walking around it periodically and studying the patterns the veins and other protuberances made as they wound their way along the shiny, black surface. He couldn't resist the temptation for long and did touch it. It was cool and hard, much smoother than the initial substance which covered Alex's body.

As the afternoon wore on, Mulder's patience, which was a thing of atrophied muscles under normal circumstances, disintegrated into pitiful fragments. He found himself talking to it. At first it was with half-whispered thoughts and then he began to address it as if it were Alex Krycek himself. Most of the one-sided conversation consisted of questions, which, of course, weren't answered. So, Mulder answered them himself and because he was frustrated they tended to be of the short, pungent sort. He mocked Alex and cursed him, but it wasn't nearly as invigorating as actually having the man in his presence, standing close.

Mulder fell into his chair and began to rock irritably for a few minutes, then he simply stopped and stared at the chrysalis until the afternoon became early evening and long shadows now covered his backyard.

The moment the sun was nothing more than a hint of picturesque orange along the horizon the chrysalis began its next metamorphosis. Mulder had succeeded in putting himself into something of a trancelike state during the long wait. It took a minute for him to actually accept the fact that the change was occurring, but when he did he jumped up and turned the porch light on.

The light separated him from the outside world. It set up distinct boundaries between the light and the dark. He was alone in the light with his dark chrysalis and it shone in high relief, a living monolith on the verge of giving birth. There was a rift forming along the length of it on the side facing Mulder. It deepened into a valley and looked like a slice made in fresh dough before baking. It was fascinating to watch this substance, which appeared to be so hard, transforming itself with such a fluid undulation. The lips on either side of the depression puffed up, enlarging and at the same time spreading the depression, opening it and deepening it as Mulder watched.

He had rarely been so excited. It was a moment replete with anticipation and fear, all outside stimuli faded. His world became the black chrysalis. Too late he thought of protection against whatever the chrysalis was about to give birth to. He had been focusing on the unraveling of the mystery and now that it was at hand he became aware of his extreme vulnerability. But, aside from a haz mat suit or a high caliber automatic weapon, he didn't know what would be a viable option at this point.

There was a cracking sound and in almost the same moment a hissing as if air was escaping confinement. It was the sigh of a dragon or the rush of angel's wings. It was a sound not heard on the earth until this moment and Mulder felt the rapture of it flood his being. He was transported.

In that glorious moment he heard the sound of movement from inside the chrysalis. Wet sounds. Squishy, juicy sounds. Mulder grimaced, but didn't step back. He waited, agonizing over each second that kept him from revelation.

Finally, after eons of time the first sign of life emerged. Fingers covered in a thick mucous issued through the crack, wriggling as if they were feeling their way. Their appearance was very human.

The crack through which they emerged widened with a groan. Mulder felt like echoing it. Eventually, just as Mulder feared he was about to rupture a vital organ from the anxiety of waiting, the entire hand emerged, followed at a much swifter rate by a forearm. So far, it was all human in appearance. Mulder felt energized and drained at the same time. He felt as if he were going through the birthing process himself.

Once the entire arm appeared up to the shoulder, the process took on a much more rapid rate. The opening widened with a loud cracking sound that made Mulder jump. The body attached to the arm slipped out suddenly as if expelled from a birth canal. It fell onto the wooden planks of the porch like a heavy, wet sack. It was covered in an opaque, viscous substance, obscuring much of it from Mulder's vision.

He immediately went to it and knelt beside it as it lay in a fetal position. There were small movements, stirrings of arms and legs. Mulder reached out and began to wipe away some of the mucous-like substance from the face. As he did so, he noted the human features as they were revealed. There was a sweep of dark lashes, spikey from the wetness, a short nose. Mulder paused and breathed, "Alex?" He had hoped. It hit him for the first time that he really had been hoping it was Alex. He just hadn't realized how much until now.

He made a mad dash into the guest bathroom and grabbed up a hand towel. It helped with the cleaning process. Alex did not respond except to continue squirming about as if he were trying to stretch out of his fetal position with muscles that were stiff and slow. He made no sound.

Mulder continued to wipe Alex's head, revealing dark hair slicked close to the skin. Alex's head jerked forward and he began to cough up his lungs. When he caught his breath, mucous was dripping in slimey ropes out of his nose and the corners of his mouth. "Here," Mulder said as he brought a clean edge of his towel up to Alex's nose. "Blow into this." He didn't know if Alex could understand him, but he continued to hold the towel to his nose with one hand and the back of Alex's head with his other. Whether Alex heard him or not he did blow his nose in between gasps for breath. Mulder noted the stuff was in Alex's ears as well.

He threw the sodden mess that was the towel onto the floor and tried to grasp Alex about the shoulders and help him onto his feet. He wanted to get him into a shower, but it was upstairs. The slimey, slippery stuff covering Alex made it extremely difficult to get a good grip on him, especially since Alex seemed unable to even sit up.

Mulder ran back inside the house, this time to retrieve a bucket with some warm, soapy water, washcloths and towels. When he returned with his cleaning supplies he noted that Alex had been able to stretch his legs out and seemed to be a little better coordinated. At least he could hold his head up without it seeming to be too heavy. Mulder noted that he had yet to open his eyes.

He began to wipe Alex down. Sloughing off a big glob of the stuff, rinsing and repeating. Alex seemed unaffected by the process, intent on his stretching exercises, but Mulder was able to work with him. As he slowly cleaned Alex's upper body of the main bulk of its slime, he noted the left arm; the fact that it was actually there, just as it had been while Alex was in his 'little demon' guise. Of course, Mulder had other more pressing matters happening at the time of Alex's 'little demon' reincarnation to fully appreciate Alex's good fortune...or his. Mulder had to give himself a wry twist of the lips with that acknowledgment.

Mulder's hand paused in its wiping as he remembered that sexual encounter, how Alex had jumped on him and Mulder had so thoroughly enjoyed it. The details were forever etched along his nerve endings, especially in his groin area. He glanced down at Alex's groin. It was perfectly normal, just as the rest of the man appeared to be. Mulder continued his cleaning, but his mind was continually struggling to maintain a neutral balance about the body under his hands. The body that kept squirming and stretching. He watched his own hand as it moved over Alex's shoulder. There was a tenderness in the action, a caress that spoke of feelings more than the simple function he thought he was performing would indicate.

Mulder, disgusted with himself, had enough. Alex was only partially cleaned, but Mulder had definitely reached his fill of such close, personal contact, especially such solicitous contact. Why should he care? It was just Alex fucking Krycek after all. Even if he was reborn with a brand new arm. His soul was still the same. He was still the father-killing assassin he had loathed. He threw his cloth into the bucket, splashing water everywhere and went back inside. His clothes were a soppy, slimey mess. He needed a shower himself. He went to the refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of water.

He drank it sitting at the kitchen table, staring out at the lighted porch through the French doors. Brooding. He excelled at brooding. He cultivated brooding. Brooding was his middle name. Spooky Brooding Mulder. He hadn't turned on any lights in the kitchen as the porch light was illuminating the room sufficiently. He couldn't see Alex, but found that to be a relief. Before, he couldn't be out of sight of the chrysalis without feeling frantic to get back to it and now all he could think about was how to avoid the man who had been inside.

He took a long swallow of water and found himself listening to the small sounds Alex's body continued to make as it moved about on the porch floor. The man still hadn't opened his mouth and uttered a single word, which Mulder found odd. He hadn't opened his eyes, either.

Bottle in hand, he walked back out onto the porch. Alex was struggling to sit up, one arm supporting his upper body and the other holding his head, covering his eyes. Mulder thought he was probably sensitive to light after being so long in complete darkness.

He turned off the porch light and turned on the kitchen light, which spilled a nice, soft glow onto the porch through the doorway and the window over the sink. It was quite sufficient to see by, but not nearly as glaring. Alex lowered his hand almost immediately and blinked rapidly, opening his eyes slowly. He straightened to a full sitting position, his back resting against the chrysalis, his hands bracing himself on either side of his body. He still looked quite shaky. There were lingering bits of the slimey stuff still covering his body, of which he appeared completely oblivious.

It was Mulder that he was interested in. Mulder that his eyes focused on as if Alex were a chick hatching and fixing on its 'mother'. The image of Mulder seemed to imbed itself into his apparently newly hatched brain with a command piggybacked to it, which was to get as physically close to 'mother' as soon as possible. Alex fell onto shaky forearms and began a heartbreakingly pathetic crawl towards the object of his longing, which stood on two, very tall legs at the far, far end of the porch.

Mulder reacted in a completely instinctual way. He stepped back. He had no wish to come into close contact with a naked, slimey Alex. Alex mewled pathetically. The sound of it wrenched at Mulder's chest in a sickening way. It was like ignoring a baby's cry. The genetically programmed response kicked in and made him want to do something about it. His eyes fell on the pile of towels he had brought in. Unfortunately, Alex had crawled between Mulder and the towels. Mulder inched behind a chair and against the wall, edging his way as quickly as he could while still maintaining as much distance between himself and Alex as he could manage.

Alex stopped his crawling, his head turning to follow Mulder, eyes growing in size to huge, wet proportions. It reminded Mulder of William using his most dangerously irresistible, imploring look. The mewling increased in pitch, inciting Mulder to greater speed. He picked up one of the larger towels, holding it before him as if it were a shield and Alex a dangerous viper, he inched forward. Alex ceased his mewling sounds and instead watched Mulder's approach with a look that Mulder could only interpret as hopeful in the extreme.

Mulder noted, just as he hurled the towel over Alex's back and shoulders, that the look quickly changed from hopeful to wounded shock at his actions. It gave him a momentary pang of guilty remorse. But, not enough to slow him down as he quickly set about trying to haul Alex to his feet. The mewling started up again almost immediately. Mulder answered it with softly worded reassurances, as if he were speaking to an upset child, which judging by Alex's reactions he wasn't far off the mark in assuming was the case. If he had stopped to think about any of his actions he would have been very conflicted, but he didn't stop to chew over any inner qualms. Instead, Mulder struggled mightily to help a full-grown man with all the muscle control of a soft-boiled egg gain his feet.

Alex seemed to appreciate the help. He gave Mulder a quick look, similar to that which an acolyte might give his most favored god. Mulder found it disturbing while at the same time it stroked his ego in an intellectually orgasmic way. Apparently, Mulder thought, he was as susceptible to this Alex as he had been in Alex's previously shrunken version.

The effort Alex expended to reach his feet was laudable and heartbreaking because he was trying so hard. He would have fallen more than once if it were not for Mulder's steadying hands and arms. Alex would give him an inquiring look after each of his efforts, just to make sure he was doing what his god/mother deemed appropriate. When Mulder would nod and murmur something encouraging, Alex's face would literally beam at him.

After one such particularly intense laser beam of hopeful acceptance for his efforts, Mulder said, "Proud of yourself aren't you?"

Alex stared in fascination at Mulder's lips as if trying to decipher the strange movements and then, smiling in blissful incomprehension, shifted his gaze back onto Mulder's face.

Mulder frowned and tightened his hold around Alex's shoulders. "Okay, I think it's time you took a few steps and we got you up to the shower." When Alex simply blinked and looked hopeful, Mulder remained stern, his countenance stoic as he took a step forward, holding tightly to Alex. "Here, like this, see?" Alex's feet shuffled forward. It was extremely slow and tiring, but they managed to make it to the kitchen table before Alex collapsed into one of the chairs. His limbs were shaking with fine tremors and his head hung nearly to his chest as if he hadn't the strength to hold it upright.

Mulder settled the towel firmly about Alex's shoulder's, bunching it up around his neck. Awkwardly, he patted Alex's shoulder and said, "Good boy," by way of encouragement and then grimaced at the sound of it. It was as if he were praising a pet dog. Alex reinforced the notion by raising his head at the sound of Mulder's voice. The difference in tone Mulder had used must have clued him in that somehow this was a good thing he had done. He reached out for Mulder's nearest hand, cradling it between his own, and gazing up at Mulder with eyes so tired they were drooping half closed, yet he managed to tug Mulder's hand to his cheek. He pressed it there, closed his eyes and heaved out a sigh that seemed to travel from the soles of his feet.

The shock of the gesture gave Alex more time with Mulder's hand than he would normally have gotten, but Mulder did soon recover and jerked his hand away from Alex's tender ministrations with a sharp, "Stop it!"

Alex had been cradling Mulder's hand as if it had been a favored toy, one needed to fall comfortably and safely to sleep. Mulder's sharp, angry exclamation sent Alex's head jerking up, his eyes brim full of wounded bemusement.

Mulder ignored the look. He was on much more familiar emotional terrain now that anger was coursing through his system. Irrational anger, but it satisfied his purpose. He was practically gleeful with it. How dare Alex Krycek cradle his hand! Anything to stop having warm and fuzzy feelings about Alex Krycek of all people. He seemed to be slipping into that mode far too easily. He had a great horror of it becoming a permanent state of being for him if this new and improved Alex kept stroking his ego with such adoring looks and worshipful touches.

However, the look he was getting now was far from adoring. Alex still had a world of hurt swirling around deep in his eyes, but he was frowning now, the wrinkle over his nose pronounced. There was about Alex's face a sense of an imminent collapse, but Mulder turned his back on it and then paused long enough to throw an order over his shoulder that he doubted Alex would even understand, "Stay here." There was no sense of understanding in Alex's expression, obviously he had lost all knowledge of the English language or he had suffered some trauma to his memory or he was faking it. Mulder sighed, under his breath he murmured, "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He kept repeating the word with a growing depth of feeling as he trudged up the stairs to his bedroom. He was going to have to get Alex up the stairs if he was going to clean him up, otherwise he was going to be leaving slime all over his house. It was better to deal with the mundane details than to dwell on the deeper issues. It didn't help Mulder's mood that he couldn't rid himself of the look on Alex's face. The hurt and rejection were so clearly on the surface and so clearly Mulder was the responsible party for putting them there. He just didn't know precisely why Alex had latched so emotionally onto him. Perhaps it was simply some mother bonding process he was going through.

Mulder ruminated over these thoughts as he automatically turned on lights and made sure the bathroom had plenty of towels. He was going to have to wash a load after this. As he was making his way downstairs, still deep in thought, he became aware that Alex had folded his arms on the tabletop, his head resting on them, face hidden. The towel was still draped across his shoulders, which were shaking because he was obviously sobbing his heart out. Mulder could easily hear the pathetic, muffed sounds. He rolled his eyes, rested his hands on his hips and looked towards the heavens in supplication. He couldn't imagine what on Earth was wrong, now. He was never going to get Alex up those stairs and cleaned up.

"Hey!" He shook Alex's shoulder to get his attention, but the man stubbornly buried his head deeper into his folded arms. Mulder shook harder. Alex became more intransigent, but the noises he had been making stopped. At least the louder sobs stopped, replaced by soggy sniffles. Mulder spoke to him to no effect: cajoling, authoritative commands, abject pleading, threats, nothing worked. Finally, he placed a hand on either side of Alex's head and physically lifted it up. Alex produced the loud mewling sound, which seemed to be his chosen method of communication. He refused to look at Mulder's face directly. He stubbornly averted his eyes downwards and then off to the side each time Mulder tried to get his attention. His face was a complete mess. Great, heavy tears pooled in his eyes until their very weight sent them rolling down his cheeks. Mulder didn't know if the substance running out of Alex's nose was leftover slime or just plain snot. Either way it was disgusting. Mulder brought the edge of Alex's towel up to his nose, wiping the stuff away. As he did so, he murmured, "When you get some semblance of a mind back, Krycek, and you will, you're going to be extremely humiliated about this little episode and if you don't happen to remember it, I'll be sure and remind you."

Alex sat very still as Mulder continued wiping his face, he even tilted his head up a tiny bit as if to help Mulder's cleaning process. Alex pressed his lips together, humming happily. Mulder commented as he continued to clean the exhausted and yet tragically happy face, "Is that really necessary?"

Alex stopped humming, opened his eyes as wide as he could given how puffy from crying they were and gazed at Mulder intently. It was disturbingly similar to the way William looked at him at times. Mulder paused in his ministrations, caught in a stare that was the very epitome of childhood innocence coupled with a profound, ancient knowledge. He held his breath, not knowing what to expect and yet he would not have been surprised if Alex opened his mouth and began explaining the inner workings of the universe. It disturbed Mulder to the core of his being, but the look was quickly replaced by the complete adoration he was growing accustomed to receiving from Alex in his new form.

He decided to take advantage of Alex's good humor and placed his arm about the man's shoulders, encouraging him to stand. Their journey across the kitchen and up the stairs seemed to take most of the night. They had to pause frequently so Alex could lean against the wall as they ascended the stairs and Mulder had to be watchful that Alex didn't sink down to sit on the steps. Alex seemed content with Mulder so close to hand, but he would much rather have simply gone to sleep wherever he could have found a spot to settle. He kept looking to Mulder for approval as they climbed and Mulder found himself giving it with a nod or an encouraging sound, maybe even a tightening of his arm that held Alex pressed so closely to his side. Alex basked in all the encouragement, his face brightening for a while until he would list towards the wall or his knees would try and buckle under him.

Once they attained the bedroom, Mulder was sorely tempted to let Alex slide to the floor and go to sleep, but he kept reminding himself of the slime and the fact they had made it as far as they had; they might as well finish.

The bathroom light was much brighter than in the other rooms. It bounced off the mirrors and the white, newly popular subway tiles, which the realtor had made a point of highlighting repeatedly for Mulder. Alex mewled in pain and raised a hand to cover his eyes. There wasn't much Mulder could do about it; so, he simply maneuvered Alex over to the toilet and firmly guided him to sit. Alex sat, both hands over his face, elbows resting on his knees, thoroughly miserable. Mulder clumsily patted his shoulder, opened the shower door, turned on the water and adjusted the temperature. He was thankful he didn't have a shower/tub combination. Getting Alex over the side of the tub would have been an added effort and they were both tired.

When Alex heard the rushing sound of the water, he turned his head and peaked at it through his fingers. The water seemed to hold a great fascination for him. Mulder watched with interest as Alex struggled to stand on his own. The towel slid from his shoulders as he stood upright and Mulder suddenly, embarrassingly was conscious of the fact Alex was naked. He had been hugging the man to him for hours it seemed, but now that they were in close quarters without that bit of terry cloth between them and no stairs to climb it made a world of difference. Alex, however, was completely oblivious to Mulder's discomfiture. He reached out a hand to the water, letting it cascade over it while Mulder avoided looking at Alex's naked backside. Mulder wanted to push Alex into the shower and hand him the soap, but apparently it wasn't going to be that simple.

Alex reached out both hands and began to splash the water about, making happy sounds that were uncomfortably like giggles. Mulder thought he preferred the mewling. He placed his hands on Alex's shoulders in preparation to guiding, translation: shoving him gently, but fully into the shower. However, the touch startled Alex. He turned his head sharply to look over his shoulder at Mulder. It was such a look of fear that Mulder was caught up in it; he felt guilty as if he had been about to push Alex off a cliff instead of simply into a shower. He let his grip loosen, his fingers stroking the cup of Alex's shoulders until the look melted and Alex gave him a hesitant, little-boy smile. Mulder found himself smiling back and that's when the realization hit him that once again he was falling into the trap of caring about this creature, who might or might not be the Alex Krycek he had known. He knew that his face must be reflecting his emotions, the anger, the confusion, the frustration with himself he was feeling. Because, Alex's face had transformed itself completely from fearful to fully concerned and focused on Mulder, which only irritated Mulder further.

For so long Mulder had simply reacted with aggression and antipathy towards Alex. He constantly found himself reacting to the obvious physical appearance which showed him Alex Krycek, but at the same time he couldn't connect those feelings with the man he was handling now, if that is what he truly was, a man. A man who was standing so quietly, so trustingly, adoringly under his hands now. Mulder was extremely uncomfortable with the adoring look because it was too intimate, brought up too many feelings of a sexual nature and any feelings of a sexual nature he might entertain were for the adult Alex and whatever this man was, he hadn't progressed to an adult state no matter how mature his physical form. Having sex with such an innocent, such a childlike creature would be tantamount to having sex with a child. He could no sooner do it than he could have sex with his own child. The thought of which sent cold shivers through him.

"In you go," Mulder said as he pushed Alex inexorably forward. Alex moved under the shower of water. His first reaction was to gasp, naturally he sucked in water and began to cough and sputter. He immediately tried to exit the shower stall, but Mulder stood in his way. Alex's face was a picture in wide-eyed distress, as if he'd been betrayed by the water, which had seemed so appealing and harmless only moments ago, but now had showed itself to be entirely untrustworthy. He tried pushing at Mulder, wanting out and away from the water, but in his weakened state he simply crumbled to the floor of the shower when escape was denied him. Helpless and unable to defend himself from the water's onslaught, he began to cry, coughing and struggling to breathe.

Mulder cursed quietly to himself. He was already so wet and tired, he just stepped into the shower stall with his sweat pants and T-shirt still on and turned the water off. Alex blinked up at him in worshipful admiration, a smile blooming over his face. It was such a thing of beauty that it took Mulder a moment to gather his thoughts, when he did he felt like punishing Alex for being so damn attractive.

He reached down and hauled Alex to his feet with the last of his waning strength. He used his residual anger to fuel his energy level as he maneuvered Alex so that he was holding him, partially supporting him from behind, once again under the shower head. He tried to ignore the way the man's wet, naked body felt in his arms, so vulnerable and exposed and trusting. It was a feeling born not of sexual desire, but from some place far more tender. A place Mulder had not visited in a long time. It felt horrifyingly right. The way his arms seemed to tighten reflexively, as if cherishing a highly treasured, fragile object. The almost unbearable need to rest his head against Alex's and feel the warmth of his cheek. The slick wetness of Alex's hair. The water dripping off the tip of a short nose. It was a moment he was to remember for the rest of his life.

In a mentally numb state, Mulder held onto Alex, but before he turned the water on once again he turned them so their backs were to the shower head. Alex had begun his happy, tuneless humming. Mulder gritted his teeth as he twisted himself a bit to reach behind them and turn on the water. When it hit it was cold. Mulder heard Alex's gasp, but tightened his grip, adjusting the temperature of the water until it was at a comfortable level. At least, Mulder thought, Alex had stopped the humming. Instead, he was shivering.

"Okay," Mulder said as he patted Alex's stomach with what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. He not only had to clean Alex, but himself, as well, and he was damned tired. Things would go so much more smoothly and quickly if Alex would just cooperate a little.

"Such a brave boy," Mulder couldn't resist saying it. He had to smile as he squirted a dollop of soap into the palm of his hand. Alex was still standing placidly between his arms. Most of the water's spray was hitting Mulder's back. He rubbed his hands together, lathering them up good as Alex watched. Suddenly, Alex laughed and made a sound which could only be described as burbling with joy as he clasped both his hands around Mulder's. Mulder disentangled their hands and retrieved the soap bottle. Holding Alex's hand palm up with his own, Mulder squirted a huge glob of the stuff into Alex's waiting hand. He didn't have time for any further instructions because Alex immediately slapped his hands together, excess soft soap spraying everywhere, and began to rub his hands together in glee.

Mulder eased Alex around while he was preoccupied so that Alex was facing him and pushed him against the shower wall. "Here," he said and waited for Alex's full attention. Mulder didn't quite get all of Alex's attention, but he got enough. "Like this," Mulder said as he began to rub the lather all over his chest and arms. Alex watched raptly, his hands slowly beginning to imitate Mulder's. Mulder watched as the play of emotions effortlessly crossed Alex's face, so open for the world to view. It was a rare experience for Mulder, this openness, both observing it in others and expressing it himself. He knew the precise moment when Alex became fully aware of the delightful new sensation of the soap as it slid across his body.

Mulder began to soap his own body, even going over his sweat pants, but Alex only spared him a fleeting glance now and then, more to make sure Mulder wasn't about to leave rather than any real interest in what Mulder was doing. Alex had found a new love.

Mulder rinsed himself quickly, then gently maneuvered Alex fully under the water. Alex never once stopped rubbing the lather over himself, there were great waves of suds sluicing off his body. Mulder began squirting the soap at Alex, hitting him in various spots, keeping him fully occupied. Alex was in heaven. It was a huge game to him as he laughed and tried to keep up with all the squirts of soap before they slid down his body into the drain. Mulder squeezed out a glob onto the top of Alex's head. The sensation of Mulder's fingers rubbing along Alex's scalp sent him to humming louder than ever, but as soon as the suds began to run into Alex's eyes and ears the humming changed to mewling.

"Ah, no you don't, you big cry baby!" Mulder held Alex's head so that the full force of the water hit it, his hand cupping over Alex's eyes, the other sluicing the suds quickly away. "Keep your eyes closed," he ordered, not sure if Alex understood, but grateful that he stood quietly as Mulder finished rinsing the suds away from his eyes. The implicit trust which Alex gifted him was almost as euphoric a feeling as the adoring look Alex frequently lavished on him.

When Alex was sufficiently rinsed, Mulder shut off the water, stepped out of the shower and retrieved towels for both of them. Alex waited in the shower, blinking at him through the dripping water. Taking his cue from the soap incident, Mulder began to rub himself down with the towel in an exaggerated way, sighing in contentment to make sure Alex understood what a nice experience he was having. Alex watched him intently and when Mulder tossed him a towel, he caught it eagerly, wiping at himself in an exact imitation of Mulder complete with sighing sounds of pleasure.

Mulder gave him words of encouragement while he pulled him gradually out of the shower stall and into the bedroom. He left Alex standing beside the bed, still busily engaged in towel worship. Taking advantage of his moment, Mulder retrieved a pair of dry sweat pants. When he tugged at Alex's towel, trying to replace it with the sweat pants, Alex held firm, a frown appearing on his face along with a severely determined look. Mulder sighed in exasperation. "Like this," he said as he dropped his sopping wet pants onto the hardwood floor and then proceeded to pull on his dry ones. "Uhmmm, nice and warm." He looked up at Alex expectantly as he finished pulling up his pants, then looked pointedly at the pants still dangling in Alex's hands. The light of understanding came on in Alex's eyes, but when he tried to emulate Mulder's actions he was frustrated with the complicated procedure. He sucked in his lower lip and chewed on it while he struggled with the offending, demon possessed pants. Mulder watched in not inconsiderable amusement while Alex grew increasingly frustrated, culminating in his tossing the pants to the floor in abject disgust. Alex was close enough to the bed that he simply fell on it in a fetal position, grabbed a fistful of the bed cover and buried his face in it.

Mulder stood beside the bed, hands on hips, looking down at Alex as if he were a puzzle he was damned well going to solve. Had Mulder realized he was chewing on his own bottom lip in exactly the same way as Alex had been only moments ago, he would have been mortified.

Deciding he was too tired to deal with it any more and seeing as he had accomplished the act of getting Alex clean, he decided to call it a night. He flipped the bed cover over Alex. He was too wired to sleep himself; although, he was desperately tired. The hours of waiting for the chrysalis to crack and the emotional drama of the past day were taking their toll on him. He grabbed a T-shirt and put it on as he walked out of the bedroom, flipping the light switch off as he went.

In the kitchen, he found a beer, which he nursed as he walked back out onto the porch, where he stared at the chrysalis for several minutes. He let his fingers play along its shiny, black surface, smooth and cold. Strings of slime still dripped in ropes from its opening. He decided he was too tired to investigate more closely and made his way upstairs, wanting to check on Alex a final time before he crashed in his spare bedroom. Which he was dreading, because he was going to have to clean off the bed. He had piled files, magazines and books on top of it in anticipation of making the room into his office, but hadn't gotten around to completing the project. He was seriously thinking about crashing on the couch in the living room as he walked through his bedroom doorway.

The moment he entered the darkened room he thought that he was seriously loosing his mind. There was a bit of light coming into the room from the bathroom, but it paled in comparison to the glorious panoply playing out on his bed. Mulder was not aware of walking to stand by the side of the bed, his entire attention focused on its occupant. Alex had obviously thrown the bed cover aside as he lay spread-eagled. The sight he presented to Mulder was completely alien, otherworldly, supernatural, breathlessly, mind-fuckingly beautiful. Alex was a living, breathing aurora borealis, only better. Alex defied such a natural phenomenon. His skin was the black of a moonless night, but Mulder could see beneath it as if he were looking into a lighted pool. Dark swirls of cobalt blue mixed with dragon's blood red in a lava flow just beneath the surface of his skin, glowing with luminescence. The glowing currents of living color brightened as they rose closer to the surface and disappeared completely as they dived deeper within Alex's body, sometimes leaving behind a sparkly bubble of sunflower yellow or spring green to burst in a mini-fireworks of color. The display beneath Alex's skin was in constant motion, sensuous, hypnotic, but Alex lay as if in a deep coma.

Mulder sat heavily on the bed, his knees having collapsed beneath him. He staid as he was, watching for an indeterminate time until his body finally gave way, falling to lie on the bed beside Alex. It was as if Mulder could see the birth and the death of the universe play out beneath Alex's skin. The colors traveled in long river currents from the top of Alex's head to the soles of his feet. The eyelids were incredible. The colors flowing there were brighter; a sea of endless tiny fireworks. The ears were the same bedazzling array of colors as were the lips, Alex's nipples and his cock and balls. All the erogenous zones were doing their best to out-dazzle the other.

After the shock had worn off and Mulder had become somewhat acclimated to the latest bizarre change in Alex, Mulder lay stretched out on the bed with his head resting on his hand. He murmured softly, "You make one hell of a night-light, Krycek."

Mulder had no idea how much time he spent studying Alex, but sometime during the night he dozed off, sparkles of lights swimming behind his eyelids. He woke to mundane, early morning light filling his bedroom. It was like a rude slap in the face that sent him swiftly if not coherently back into the real world.

He blinked up at his ceiling trying to focus his thoughts when he realized that something was going on beside him. He turned his head to find Alex , a non-illuminated Alex, tossing about on the bed beside him as if he were in the throes of a nightmare. Mulder would have loved to have taken a piss, but he was afraid to leave the room. It seemed every time he left Alex alone there was a new transformation. Apparently, Mulder's leaving was the catalyst. However, this time Mulder's stubborn streak was fully in effect. He was at his most stubborn in the mornings.

He scooted himself up the bed until he was sitting with his back to the headboard. He loved his headboard. It was padded and allowed him to sit with pillows at his back, comfortably resting his head while he watched Alex. It was a thoroughly engrossing site. Alex's physical appearance was back to normal, but whatever he was dreaming was definitely disturbing him because he kept rolling his head from side to side while his legs were constantly moving about. Mulder could easily see the rapid eye movement beneath Alex's closed lids. He kept moaning, nothing intelligible, just sounds of distress that were beginning to grate on Mulder's nerves, but Mulder felt no inclination to wake him. He wanted whatever process Alex was going through to come to its natural completion.

Finally, Mulder's bladder protested too much and he made a dash into the bathroom. All the while he was alert for any change in the sounds issuing from his bed. He dashed back into the bedroom and wasn't surprised in the least to see that Alex was awake. He was staring up at the ceiling, his body still, but then he brought both his hands up to his face and rubbed it.

Mulder walked to the side of the bed and looked down at Alex, waiting for the other man to become aware of his presence. It took only a moment for Alex to clue into the fact he was being watched. His hands slowly slid down his face, his eyes opening, focusing on Mulder. The moment they did Mulder saw the spark of recognition in them. There was no hiding the fact this was a different Alex than the one who had fallen asleep on his bed last night. The innocence which had broadcast itself so blatantly from his eyes was gone, replaced with an adult's awareness. It was the classic moment; sometime during the night Alex ate of the apple and the knowledge of good and evil was forever his, all innocence fled.

Alex smiled. A smile of lost innocence and eyes that played with evil as though it were a long familiar friend.

"Krycek," Mulder said it as fact. He didn't need or expect an affirmation.

There was about Alex a sense of assimilation, a gathering of forces to barricade himself for battle.

He sat up in bed, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time, scooting across the bed as he did so to swing long legs over the side as far from Mulder as he could get.

Mulder felt the other man's retreat from him, both physically and mentally. After the previous day's frustrating adventures his patience, ever slim, broke. Mulder strode around the end of the bed, a force brewing in him that came far too easily; it was fueled by an addiction he hardly acknowledged. The name of his addiction being Alex Krycek.

Mulder grabbed the man by his shoulders, throwing him bodily against the wall at the head of the bed. Alex's body impacted with such force that the headboard rattled and the lamp on the end table did a wild dance. Mulder shoved a forearm under Alex's throat and pressed himself so close there was barely any space between them. Mulder felt the thrill of it, not sexual, but more a feeling of coming home. At last he was on familiar ground. The hated face, so well known to him. They were both reacting in expected patterns. Mulder could follow this path.

"What the hell are you doing Krycek? What sort of game is this?" He practically spit the words in Alex's face.

The powerful jab to Mulder's stomach halted any further words he would have uttered. It was followed in swift succession by other blows, which landed Mulder face down on his bed, one arm bent excruciatingly high behind his back. Alex's other hand, occupied with the back of Mulder's neck, kept his face pressed into the bed while a knee dug painfully into the small of his back.

"I told you once before not to touch me again, Mulder." The voice which carried the words so intimately close to Mulder's ear was the same distinctive near-whisper. Floating deep inside its darkness were threats and cold places. A voice created for lying.

Mulder would have struggled if he could have, but he was held in a tight, immovable grip. The sharp knee dug in deeper with a pain that made him want to scream and plead. He was grateful his face was pressed so firmly into the bed. It muffled his curses that were too close to cries of pain.

The bed heaved as Alex reached out and grabbed a handful of the bed coverings, hauling the sheet and blanket up and over Mulder. By the time Mulder realized his arm was released and the knee gone from his back he was rolled into the bed coverings like a caterpillar in a cocoon, with just his head poking free. Mulder lay face up with Alex sitting on his legs, his arms pinning Mulder's upper body to the bed. The look on Alex's face was very similar to the one he had worn while in his lilliputian form just before he pounced on Mulder. Mulder frantically tried to quell all thoughts of that activity. He desperately didn't want this Alex to know how much he had enjoyed that encounter. Unless, he thought with a horrifying realization, this Alex already recalled it in all its embarrassing detail.

"Get off me, Krycek!" Mulder threw out the command as if he fully expected Alex to comply with it. It was incredibly arrogant, audacious and ludicrous all at the same time. It was obvious from the look on Alex's face what he thought of it.

Alex bounced on the bed and thus on Mulder, tilted his head slightly to the side as if he were seriously considering Mulder's request and then answered it with a sharp and definitive, "No." His eyes glinted down at Mulder, obviously enjoying himself, relishing denying Mulder. "I don't think I want to do that just yet, Mulder. I thought we could talk." Buried under a wealth of sarcasm, Alex actually seemed sincere in his desire for communication.

"Talk?" The word exploded out of Mulder and he began a renewed frenzy of struggles, which amounted to nothing more than futile wriggles which Alex easily repressed. In fact, it was perfectly obvious to Mulder that Alex was enjoying this all far too much and it irritated the hell out of him. "Why should I listen to you, Krycek? Don't waste your breath lying to me." Mulder couldn't resist asking, "Just how much do you remember Alex?" Mulder ignored the incongruity of his question. In one breath he accused Alex of lying and then in the next he was wanting answers he would refuse to believe.

Alex quickly lost the slightly amused look which had formed on his face while Mulder struggled. It was replaced with an intense look that he focused solely on Mulder. "I remember you handing Scully off to me for safe keeping, Mulder. I remember saving both your asses."

Mulder could feel Alex pressing him harder into the bed as Alex leaned more of his weight forward, staring straight into Mulder's eyes as if daring him to look away or deny what he said. "I remember waking up the size of a fucking rat, with you right the fuck there, Mulder!" Alex's eyes were ablaze, now. Suspicion there to equal Mulder's. Alex leaned even closer and growled, "What the hell did you do to me, Mulder?" There was accusation in Alex's voice that Mulder had, somehow, been involved in Alex's transformation. Alex couldn't hide the fear in his voice that was there, as well, even though he was obviously trying.

"Me?" Mulder squeaked up at Alex, shocked that he would be accused of this. Then he laughed at Alex, mocking him. "I hate to be the one to lead you off your well-worn path of self-delusion, Krycek, but if you need to look for the responsible party all you have to do is look in the mirror. But, I suppose you don't like to do that too much, do you Krycek. Must get pretty crowded with all those ghosts staring back at you. You murdering son-of-a-bitch."

Mulder would have gone on. Verbally attacking Alex was the only weapon left to him and he found it as satisfying as a physical punch, but the look on Alex's face stopped him. Something inside himself shriveled away from that look. It was naked and raw, totally unexpected. Mulder realized in that moment he had inadvertently struck upon some truth of humanity within Alex. A humanity Mulder had stubbornly denied until this moment. But, Alex recovered quickly. His fists tightened in the bed clothes wrapped around Mulder's chest as he hauled him up a few inches from the bed. Every line in Alex's face and body was stiff with anger. It poured off him. His voice dripped with disgust, but it seemed directed at himself as much as Mulder. "I don't know why the fuck I even try. You sanctimonious bastard." He threw Mulder back to the bed as if he were a piece of trash, but it was too late for Alex to completely recover his earlier self-assurance. There was too much hurt in the way he got off the bed and Mulder as quickly as he could, ignoring Mulder's frantic rolls as he tried to untangle himself .

Alex walked over to a chest of drawers and began to pull out items of clothing, boxers, socks. Mulder shot him a look of disgust that carried over into his shouted, "Get your filthy hands out of my unmentionables, Krycek!" Mulder continued to twist and turn so viciously across the bed that he over extended himself and rolled off completely, thudding onto the floor with a loud grunt, followed by muffled cursing.

Alex barely spared him a glance as he pulled on a pair of sweat pants and then a T-shirt. Mulder managed to hop upright, the sheets falling about his waist as he continued his intense struggle with the bedding from hell. He would alternately lose his balance and fall to the bed, struggle to his feet only to fall back again. It all barely raised a blip on Alex's radar as he walked to Mulder's closet and began searching for a pair of sneakers.

He retrieved a pair that looked like they would fit and sat on the stool on which the carrier had rested earlier to put them on. Mulder's attention was divided between Alex and his futile efforts to free himself. He would alternately glance up to see at what stage of dress Alex had attained and then renew his struggles with added vigor. By the time Alex walked through the bedroom door and made his way downstairs, Mulder had freed himself except for a tail of a sheet, which seemed to be possessed with a life of its own, for it had wrapped itself around his ankle, apparently for life. Mulder had gained enough speed and momentum as he made his way to the door that when he got to Reyes' rug, the tricky combination of slippery rug and treacherous sheet tripped him up so badly he fell flat on his face, hard. As he lay on the floor, hot cheek pressed to the cool hardwood surface, he noted dispassionately the numerous dust bunnies under his bed. The sound of Alex whistling drifted up to him from his kitchen.

Enraged, Mulder struggled to his feet, hopped on one foot while he ripped the sheet from his foot with a triumphant yell and bounded down the stairs. He skidded to a halt at the site of Alex in his kitchen. It was such a site of ordinary domesticity that it shocked Mulder into momentary immobility. Alex stood at the stove, moving something around in a pan with a turner. The smell of coffee filled the air. Alex deigned to give Mulder his full attention as he turned to face him, turner in hand. Mulder was quite ready to concede that in Alex's hands it was a lethal weapon. A yellow glob fell off it onto the floor. Both men ignored it.

Alex repeated what he had said earlier in the bedroom, "Don't touch me, Mulder." He looked like he meant it.

Mulder took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart. His thoughts were so scattered. He tried to sort out exactly what it was he wanted. He wanted answers and the only way to get them was by talking. He was going to have to talk to Alex without giving in to the urge, no matter how appealing it might be, to hit him or insult him. He was going to have the added difficulty of trying to ignore their last sexual encounter. Mulder wasn't counting the kiss or the many times he had gotten hard while fighting with Alex while throwing him over the hoods of cars or against walls or stacks of luggage. Those didn't count no matter how satisfying they had been at the time. The one that counted was the one where he ejaculated so hard he thought he had shot his brains out his dick. That was going to be even more difficult to ignore with the instigator of said mind-blowing pleasure standing before him dripping egg product on his floor.

Mulder let his deep breath out slowly and was aware of Alex's intense focus on him; the way Alex held the kitchen implement like a weapon, his body so obviously ready for a fight. Mulder spread his hands out and tried to project calm and reason. It was extremely difficult because he was neither. "Okay, Krycek...Alex." He took a step forward and Alex visibly tensed. Mulder waved his hands, making it obvious they weren't forming into fists, as he took a step back and then another. He kept saying, "Okay, okay," until he backed up to the kitchen table and sat down at a chair on the end, his hands lying palm down on the table top. "See. Backing off. You were right." Alex quirked a cynical eyebrow. Mulder ignored it, forging ahead with, "We do need to talk." Alex grunted and Mulder felt the tingle start in his gut. The one that carried all the way to his fists, making them physically ache with the need to hit Alex. Everything that Alex did was like a direct line pulling on some physical response from him. His hands closed and formed into fists on the table top. Of course, Alex noted it and smirked. He even jounced his turner lazily in his hand, sending tiny bits of yellow goop and grease everywhere. Mulder tried not to dig his fingernails too hard into the palms of his hands.

"Questions, always asking the questions." The unique timbre of Alex's voice carried easily across the short distance of the few feet separating them. It had the disturbing quality, at least for Mulder, of intimacy, no matter the subject matter. Mulder imagined Alex sounded the same whether he was killing someone or having sex with them, both highly intimate moments, but hardly similar results. Although, Mulder certainly thought he had died when... Mulder immediately regretted following that train of thought. He couldn't seem to get the idea of having sex again with Alex out of his mind; it was eating his brain. He knew his face rarely betrayed what he was thinking, but Alex seemed to be able to read him better than anyone except Scully. Alex began walking toward him. Self-confidence, Mulder thought, thy name is Alex Krycek. Mulder sat up straighter in his chair and concentrated on projecting his own unflappability.

"You know, Mulder," Alex reached out for the back of one of the chairs at the side of the table, dragged it toward himself, twirled it around and sat down, arms resting easily on its back, turner dangling dangerously from his fingers, "I think I know what it is you really want to know."

The two men stared at each other like two male tigers that had stumbled into the other's hunting territory. One with wildly rumpled hair and a repressed hunger that vibrated the very air around him. The other so cooly pulled together and locked up a master safe cracker would have despaired of getting inside.

"Really," Mulder's voice couldn't have been more obviously certain Alex knew dipshit about what he was thinking.

Alex just smiled in return and had the unmitigated gall to chuckle in a condescending way as if he was the one who had the upper hand in this situation. It gave Mulder the wretchedly uncomfortable feeling of wanting to get into close physical contact with Alex once again. He just kept having conflicting feelings if he wanted to wrap his hands around the man's neck to strangle him or to kiss him. Alex had the confoundingly disturbing ability to be attractive in far too many situations.

"Why don't you clue me in Krycek." Mulder was the condescending professor who was letting the arrogant smart ass student hang himself.

"You want to know if I remember you screaming like a girl while you spread your legs wide and I rode your hard dick like a bucking bronco." Alex's eyes glittered. Mulder thought Alex had possibly never been more physically alluring than he was at that moment. There was such a youthful relish to his pronouncement that it only enhanced his looks with a vitality that was infectious. However, it only added fuel to Mulder's murderous compunction upon hearing Alex's taunting words. Mulder feared for long moments he would be unable to restrain himself from lurching out of his chair and tackling Alex, throttling him while bashing his head repeatedly against the kitchen floor. The vision was almost orgasmically good. But, Mulder closed his eyes and took in a long, shuddering breath. It was a very close call, but he finally reigned himself in sufficiently to reply, "You enjoy riding cocks, do you Krycek?" Mulder simply couldn't help it. He knew he was playing into Alex's game of snark. They weren't getting anywhere useful, not really. Alex seemed hell bent on avoiding all the really pertinent issues, but Mulder felt as if he'd already fallen down the rabbit hole and he was only human. He still wasn't sure about Alex on that score.

Alex didn't seem to be surprised by Mulder's response. He simply dropped his chin to rest on his folded arms and pinned Mulder with one of his typically intense looks. Mulder wondered briefly how Alex felt about having both his arms back. He seemed to be taking so much in stride. It infuriated the hell out of Mulder.

"Yeah," Alex waited till Mulder's eyes rose from their contemplation of Alex's arms to meet his gaze directly. "I enjoy riding cocks."

Mulder thought the frisson that traveled through his entire body in that moment was quite possibly sufficient to levitate him a good foot off the seat of his chair. He swallowed as unobtrusively as possible and waited nervously for Alex to continue. It was obvious Alex was enjoying this and Mulder simply didn't have the strength to reply the way that he normally would; the way that he could so easily. The words were there on the tip of his tongue, ready to be used, but he suddenly felt helpless and trapped...drained. His eyes slid to the French doors and thought of simply getting up and running as far away as he could.

Alex's voice soon brought him back to reality. A far too intimate reality created by Alex's devilishly seductive voice, a hint of a smile in his words as he continued, "Though I wasn't exactly of a size to fully appreciate it at the time we last got together."

Mulder simply couldn't maintain the directness of Alex's gaze, he dropped his eyes and tried to find something else in the room on which to focus his attention, but Alex was relentless. Alex seemed to gather some inner force about himself, an inner energy building within him. Alex straightened in his chair, standing away from it, and to Mulder's utter astonishment, falling to his knees in front of Mulder's chair. Mulder would have jerked away, but Alex's hand on his knee seemed to have the power to paralyze him.

Alex looked up into Mulder's face and said simply, "Like I am now."

Such quietly spoken words to make such an electrifying impact on Mulder. He couldn't quite grasp it. He kept wanting to mentally skitter away from the awful intimacy that seemed to be swirling so ominously, with such hurricane force, about the both of them. And all of it generated by the force that was Alex.

Alex seemed to have shed a great deal of his previous attitude. The intensity was still there, the willingness to confront, but there was a wealth of sincerity behind his words, as if they carried more import than would seem the case given a superficial interpretation.

Both Alex's hands came into play on Mulder's knees, pinning him solidly in place as Alex's body leaned forward, as if yearning for a touch that would bring them fully together; but daring not to go so far.

"I remember so much, Mulder." Mulder could hardly bear the intensity that throbbed in Alex's voice. It wove a spell around him, pulling him inside. He was extremely close to panicking and Alex sensed it, but kept after him, never faltering in his compelling gaze. Always, Mulder's furtive looks would be drawn back inexorably to Alex and what he was saying.

Alex used his hands to push Mulder's knees apart enough that he could bring his body in closer. Mulder had thought he was going to levitate from his chair previously. He was doing it now.

"Easy," Alex said, soothing Mulder but never letting go of the urgency, as if they had some magical time granted to them in which these things could be said and the moments were ticking relentlessly forward, pushing them towards a harsher reality.

"Don't...it's okay." Alex whispered the words close beside Mulder's ear. Somehow he had gotten so close, so terribly close. Mulder could easily feel the warmth of his body. He raised a hand and dared to press it against Alex's side, feeling the firm flesh beneath the thin fabric. "I remember," Alex said and Mulder closed his eyes. "I remember how you took care of me." Mulder's head fell forward, almost, almost he rested it against the side of Alex's. "You were so good to me, Mulder." Alex utterly devastated him with his relentlessness. All the walls were crumbling and he slid his hand to the small of Alex's back. It was the only real thing in his universe.

"Be good to me again, Mulder." This time Mulder could hear the deep-seated yearning in Alex's voice. The need was raw and exposed. It was a need more than physical. Mulder had the power in this moment to destroy Alex. They both knew it. But, Mulder found he no longer had the desire to hurt. He realized he would only succeed in destroying them both.

He sighed and with it the fear left his body. In its place was a great joy and a driving hunger. He opened his eyes, drew his head back and not only met Alex's direct stare, but matched it. He kept their eyes locked together until their lips met.

It was a touch they had not shared before. At first the intimacy of it was shockingly unfamiliar, but this feeling lasted only seconds. They soon discovered shared hungers. Their needs fed upon each other, arms wrapping around the other, pressing bodies together as closely as possible, yearning for more. It became a struggle between them.

Mulder felt consumed with a desperate need to get closer to the man he held so tightly in his arms. It felt so wonderful to share in this need. He relished the way Alex kissed his face, rough and harsh from a desperate kind of hunger and yet it was tender. Mulder loved the way Alex couldn't seem to get enough of it, because Mulder couldn't imagine ever getting enough of the taste and feel of Alex in his arms, against his lips. The warm, hard, alive feel of him. So much of him. He licked the hollow of Alex's throat and thought he would come when Alex threw his head back, wanting more. He grew even more excited at the thought of never getting enough.

Mulder pushed and Alex fell. They struggled on the floor, pushing and pulling at each other and tugging at clothing. Alex pulled on Mulder's lower lip with his teeth while Mulder tried to push Alex's sweatpants down his hips. The tug on his lip was like a direct line to his cock. He groaned and tried to shove his tongue down Alex's throat while Alex let him. Mulder's hands moved over so much hot flesh, great, amazingly soft expanses of it. Sometimes he got handfuls of it and kneaded it. Alex tended to moan when he did that. But, the flesh was always moving, sometimes out of his reach entirely. He always tried to grab it back and frequently he was grabbed in return. There were hands roaming his body, too. Wonderful hands. Maddening hands.

Long, bare legs wrapped themselves around the naked flesh of Mulder's hips and he nearly sang a hosannah of joy as the flesh of their groins came together with a dose of cold, hard reality in the form of hot, male flesh. There had been so many teasing touches. Mulder had been only too aware of just how hard he was and he could easily tell from his frequent, but all too fleeting contacts with Alex's cock that it was as hard as his own. But, the moment they came together it was more than any mere touching. It was a frightening intimacy. It was exhilarating. It was a moment they could not take back. Mulder felt as if he were going to explode. He forgot to breathe.

Alex rolled him onto his back and rested bare bottom on his belly. Alex still retained his T-shirt despite Mulder's most diligent efforts to remove it. He ran his palms hungrily up Alex's thighs, his hips and under the T-shirt, aiming in a determined way for Alex's nipples. He could see them poking against the thin material and wanted to touch them. Alex lent down as if to aid Mulder's efforts; but as he did so, he rucked up Mulder's T-shirt under his armpits, forcing Mulder's arms up and away. He lay sprawled while Alex bent over him, licking and sucking at one nipple and then the next, flicking each with his tongue until Mulder's toes were curling.

Mulder brought his arms up, sweeping his hands down Alex's back, his fingers trailing luxuriously in the valley of Alex's spine all the way to the crack in his butt. He let his fingers stay there, his hands cupping as much of the soft flesh as they could. Alex straightened, arching his back into a stretch, letting his head fall back a bit then lazily he looked down at Mulder, his eyelids at half-mast. Mulder realized that part of the thrill of having Alex this way was the excitement of playing with something very dangerous, but he didn't feel simply as if he were playing. It felt like something much deeper and if he were to judge from the way Alex was looking at him, it was more for him, too.

Alex was giving him a look that could burn holes through steel plating. It was possessive. Mulder's instinctive reaction was to feel possessive right back. He tightened his grip on Alex's butt. Alex was practically growling at him now.

Mulder closed his eyes tightly and prayed he wouldn't come. He raised his knees, pressing his aching cock against Alex's spread cheeks and whimpered. He would have been humping like a mad, fucking rabbit if Alex weren't holding him down with his thighs. Those damn, gorgeous thighs, spread so open and inviting. He whimpered again; although, he preferred to think of it as the sort of sound James Bond would make were he in the same position had he not been a rabid heterosexual. A James Bond whimper would be suavely cool, retaining no pathetic qualities whatsoever. Mulder's brain was working frantically, trying to take his mind off coming, but thoughts of James Bond weren't helping in the least. They all had Alex's face. Alex in a tux. Alex in a tux sitting impaled on his hard, aching cock. Mulder emitted a very long, pathetic whimper.

Alex chuckled above him and Mulder thought he heard a whispered, "Like a bronco," but he wasn't sure. His brain was occupied almost completely with thoughts of sliding his aching cock into Alex as fast as he could. It had become the most important thing in his life.

And then it was happening. Oh, god, it was happening. He was inside. He was inside. He was inside! He still had his eyes tightly closed, but he could feel it all, oh god how he could feel it all. Every blessed inch was encased in the most incredibly soft... and it was moving! It was moving so good, pulling him and then sliding down, faster now. Oh god. He tried to thrust. He wanted to thrust up into all that goodness, but he couldn't. He didn't have any control. The mad fiend over him had all the control and his brains were being slowly pulled out through his dick.

"Open your eyes, Mulder."

Oh fuck, Mulder thought. How could he possibly think about opening his fucking eyes! He was going to come for crissakes! He must have said something to that effect because Alex repeated his delightful little request.

Mulder's eyes flew open and he croaked out a loud, resoundingly hoarse, "No!"

But then Mulder saw Alex and he was so glad he opened his eyes.

Alex was so damn beautiful.

There wasn't anything alien about Alex. No freaky colors. He was all too human. Every line of his body straining so hard, flushed with desire and the need, god the need, for him , it was shining out of his eyes directly down at Mulder and that was what did it. Mulder lost it then. Alex had been pulling his insides out and now Mulder just had to let it all go. He shot it all up into heaven, into Alex.

Mulder rolled his head against the kitchen floor, turning it slowly to look at the man lying beside him. Alex lay on his back, sprawled out. They were both getting their breath back, their bodies cooling quickly as the tiles seemed to soak up their body heat greedily. Mulder was growing terribly uncomfortable. He rolled onto his side and then decided to rest most of himself on Alex, who only made a slightly less uncomfortable resting place than the floor.

Mulder's thigh rubbed against Alex's soft cock and he was suddenly ashamed of himself. He hadn't given Alex's satisfaction much thought at all in their love making.

Alex must have read his mind because he snorted and shoved Mulder off him, but then drew him back again so that they were wrapped tightly together, rocking for a bit on the floor. Alex was smiling when he said, "I'm a big boy. I know how to take care of myself."

Mulder stopped their rocking and pinned Alex to the floor, capturing Alex's face between his hands. "I thought you wanted me to do that?" Mulder hadn't intended to say that and he certainly hadn't intended to put so much feeling into the words.

Alex looked up at him and Mulder decided right then and there he wasn't going to be sorry about admitting his feelings to Alex ever again.

"Yeah?" Alex asked. Hope leaking out all over the place.

"Yeah," Mulder admitted even though the lump in his throat was about to get the better of him.

Alex literally tried to crush the breath out of him then. Which was okay with Mulder, because he wasn't about to let go of what he had either.

Epilogue

"Would you like some more of the Earl Grey, Mr. Mulder?" Mrs. Burnside asked as she lifted the teapot in the shape of a very fat black cat. It's upraised paw the pouring spout. Mulder shook his head and set his full cup onto the patio table. They were in Mrs. Burnside's backyard. It had been something of a royal summons for an afternoon visit.

Mrs. Burnside took a delicate sip of her tea and gazed out over her immaculate garden at her other guest. Alex was playing with Tippy. Mulder watched also, though more in horrified amazement than anything else. He repressed a shudder. He still couldn't quite reconcile himself to Tippy taking off with Alex the way he had, but it somehow seemed to fit into the grand scheme of things and he was just going to go with the flow, especially since Alex seemed to have forgiven the little dog completely.

Alex was throwing a stick, which Tippy was bounding happily after and retrieving. Of course he was having to leap over quite a few of the boxwoods and into several of the flower beds, but Mrs. Burnside didn't seem to mind. Even when Alex inadvertently threw it into the Koi pond and Tippy leaped in after it only to bring out one of the Koi instead of the stick. Alex rolled about on the grass clutching his stomach, laughing.

"Your Alex is doing quite well now, I see." Mrs. Burnside indulged the antics in her garden as those of well-loved, but spoiled children. She turned her smile on Mulder and he returned it, nodding.

"Yes," he said. "He's fully recovered. Except for a few bad dreams." Mulder giggled and couldn't help adding, "He makes a great night light."

Mrs. Burnside beamed at him and literally purred as she said, "I'm sure he does."

Mulder glanced at her, suddenly a bit embarrassed, and cleared his throat, "Yes, well, I'm certainly grateful for all your help..."

Mrs. Burnside held up her hand, "Please think nothing of it, Mr. Mulder." She took a sip of her tea and continued to happily watch Alex and Tippy's ongoing destruction of her garden.

Mulder had given up any notion of a rational explanation for his adventures which began with Alex hatching out of the egg in his back yard. He had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Burnside would probably be more comfortable on Mount Olympus, but for whatever reason she was his next-door neighbor and there resided in her back yard a portal into another time and space. It all made perfect sense to Mulder.

Mrs. Burnside reached out and patted Mulder's knee indulgently. "Just remember, my dear, the Goddess is in the details."