No Return Policy

I feel like a shithead because I hate lying to her.

But here I am standing in the middle of a deserted four lane bridge in the middle of the night - and what a night - it's a cold bitch out here - like some Kojak with hair, waiting for my mysterious caller to show his face. I want to put flesh to that voice on the phone.

He, whoever the hell he is, called me at work, and then faxed over some photos, telling me how interested I'd be if I just took my time and looked at them real close. He sounded like a salesman for a food freezer plan, that kind of salesman, the kind you want to say go fuck yourself to, and then slam the phone down on.

But like a good little investigator, I didn't. I looked at the photos and here I am.

Standing in the middle of a condemned bridge in the middle of a D.C. night hoping the prick brings me a hot cup of coffee.

He'd better or I'm not buying, I don't care what he's selling.

I didn't have to lie to Scully but I did.

When she asked me about the phone call and the fax machine I panicked. I don't know why, really. Maybe because she's been so more Scullyish than usual.

I don't even know what I mean by that. She's been watching me a lot since I lost my head a couple months back and well, I've been watching her a lot since she sort of lost hers a month before _that_.

I still get these cold aches in my belly when I think o her sitting on the bed with that Pagette guy.

Furniture or no furniture, a woman doesn't sit on a bed with a guy unless they're at least thinking about getting raw and rowdy.

They could have sat crossed legged on the living room floor.

I digress. Scully asked about the phone call and the only lie I could think up was that I was thinking about buying a house and the call was from a real estate agent.

You should have seen Scully's eyes. Scared me pee-less. She looked like she was wondering if it was two or three bedrooms and would there be room for her dining suite.

Don't misunderstand me, it's a fantasy I've indulged in now and then - I mean Scully and me, a house, (her furniture, not mine), Scully in a bathrobe, Scully in our bedroom...

Yeah, I've thought a lot about stuff like that but the thing is, I'm not quite ready for it yet. So now I'll have to make up another lie to cover this one. What do I tell her after she's flashed pretty hopeful eyes like that? - "Sorry, changed my mind, I think I'll stick with my tacky circa 1969 decor bachelor's paradise for another decade."

The fucker had to call me at work!

Even my mother doesn't call me at work.

I'm about to call it a no-show when a hand grabs my gun from my holster, places it behind my right ear and stops my pacing dead on the spot.

"Sorry I'm breaking our agreement of a non confrontational meeting, but you never know how a man is going to react when his worst enemy shows up, even if it is to offer him his heart's desire."

FuckfuckFUCK!!! "Krycek." I said it like I always do - a curse.

"Hey, Mulder, how ya' doin'?"

Don't ask me how the son-of-a-bitch snuck up on me. There's nowhere to hide out here except behind the damned girders and I checked behind those.

Paranoid to the last.

"I'm fine," I answer him with a sneer. "But you must have me mixed up with Doctor Kimball." I try to get in at least one "one-armed man" reference every time we meet. Don't want to disappoint him.

"Did you look at the photos?"

"What, no rejoinder? Yeah, I looked. They could be fakes."

"Then why did you come?"

Touche'. The bastard really isn't stupid at all, no matter how much I'd like to think he is.

"Turn around." He says and I do.

Same haircut, clothes, pinched expression, little turned up nose that must have driven the girls crazy in high school but makes me think of a wild pig. A rooter-upper of things. One that gets itself into where it doesn't belong. Other than that, it isn't ugly I suppose.

"What do you want, Krycek?"

"Why, you of course."

Ah. He wants to play "mind". Fuck him! "I mean, for the photos. Specifically the location of the person in the photos?"

"First I like to assure you that the photos are real. It's her, in the flesh, alive and as healthy as the proverbial horse."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

That's when the car drove up containing two of his delightful companions with the real thick necks and biceps. I hate those kind.

Krycek, that smirk I've grown to loath pasted all over his traitorous face, jerked the gun toward the car's rear door.

We both got in, me sitting on one side and Krycek and my gun on the other.

"You don't." He said.

I've learned not to trust Krycek as far as I could throw his mechanical left arm.

But didn't the son-of-a-bitch tell the truth for the first time in his life and actually drive me directly to see the subject in the photographs over which we had yet to haggle a price.

Up until that point, I'd been playing cocky asshole right back to is cocky asshole because, quite frankly, I didn't believe him. When you get lied to as much as I do, you start not believe in a whole lot, not even when the truth is staring you right in your face.

That's what I came face to face with.

I didn't know where I was (I knew it was a house in little suburbia), but they'd blindfolded me on the way so I spent a queasy forty minutes counting right and left turns and mile estimates until I was so completely fucking lost I probably would have guessed Toronto, if asked.

But soon I was being escorted up steps, across a porch and into the warmth of a living room. Living rooms smell like wood oil and carpet, that's how I knew it was someone's home and not just a warehouse that they took people to perform whatever was still on the "To Do" list for that day. I'd imagined "beat living shit out of Mulder" written on scrap in someone's pocket.

But, no, this was a house.

When my blindfold was removed, I wasn't even given a second to adjust my eyes when she walked up to me.

I stared at her. Squinting stupid eyes over nostrils flaring with doubt and a sloppy, gaping jaw.

Maybe it was shock.

When I was twelve, my mind, heart, and every goddamn part of my soul outside and in, had frozen to a mass of frightful images of her being taken from me in all manner of grotesque and violent ways. I'd never believed those images.

They had come mostly in my dreams when I lay trying to sleep in my bed or when in the middle of the night I'd go crawling into hers and lay there, sleepless, wondering and hurting so badly inside I thought I was sick.

Those images had barely moved in twenty-six years.

But this petite woman with the brown, short cropped hair, upturned nose and sad expression walked right up to me, took my head between her hands and cried into my shoulder, saying: "Fox, oh Fox. Fox, Fox, I thought I'd never see you again. I thought you were dead. Fox, Fox...."

And at first, for just a few seconds, I thought: No. no, it isn't her. Samantha had long hair, forgetting that people do change. They grow, they marry, they cut their hair...

And then I thought: Could it be? Samantha is alive? Really?

I was hurting, so afraid to believe, so terrified that it was a lie all over again. My heart just wasn't up to it. Not again. Never again, I think.

And then this woman speaking my name over and over, crying into my shoulder, kissing my cheek, took two slim fingers and began twisting them in the hair at the back of my neck.

Just like Samantha used to.

This woman didn't look like Samantha as much as I thought Samantha should have looked like as an adult. She had short hair.

But she sounded like her and her face was the same simple prettiness like Samantha and she twirled her little fingers in my hair just like Sam used to do when she couldn't sleep and would come crawling into my bed....

And I fucking cried.

I don't think I've ever cried that hard in front of anyone.

Especially not in front of those gorilla sized thumb-breakers who's expression held nothing but contempt for the Fed' pussy bawling his eyes out over a woman. I didn't give a half shit what they thought. Twenty-six years ago my life had ended, I thought. I soon figured out it had just taken one bad turn. And then another and another.

How could they know what I was feeling right that second when my baby sister was touching my hair the way I hadn't felt in more than two decades and I knew she was the real thing?

Samantha had disappeared and I know that though I'd repeated by rote that I believed she was alive all those years and that one day I would find her, I was lying.

My lie to myself to keep it together one more day. To keep from going crazy. 'Cause when I was a kid, as odd as it may seem for a brother to say this about his dumb kid sister, Sam was my life.

Dad had his work and mom had her social clubs and I had Sam.

So how would Krycek's ugly hulks fucking know how it feels to lose your life and then get it back?

"Sam." I said. That was all I said. It came out a pathetic screaming sob of joy balled up in a grief-filled whine.

"Oh Sam." I said. Just that and that was all.

It wasn't long of course, before I was again escorted via blindfold and neanderthals back to the waiting car. They'd left the motor running for Christ's sake.

"When can I see her again?" I demanded.

"All in good time."

Krycek loves this cloak and dagger shit. Keep the prisoner guessing at his future, spoonful by spoonful.

"Where are we going?" Politeness was something I always left at home whenever, while wearing a blindfold, I was seated beside a one-armed man (with my own gun trained on my eyeball) without knowing my destination. Call it a personality quirk, but I figure, what the hell good is "please" and "thank-you" going to do me in those situations? I mean, it was pretty fucking plain we weren't going clubbing.

"The Bargain Basement." Humor, Krycek style.

Ah. A warehouse, I thought.

Turns out a cozy little apartment was what surrounded me when the blindfold came off for the second time.

Dark green couch and easy chair; that "man-made material" fabric. Poor man's leather.

Coffee table. Lamps. Fireplace too. Real fire.

Krycek still had my gun turned on me. Guess he didn't much trust me either. But he was dismissing the big thick humans. Though, after closing the door behind them, I could tell they were going to hang around outside just in case.

"When can I see Samantha again?" I was sick of this shadowy rendezvous in the night crap.

"First we discuss my price."

"_Your_ price? I thought Cancer Stick was running the show?"

"Not this gig."

Krycek walked toward me and I had the distinct image flash across my mind of a large cat strolling across the linoleum to its food dish.

He stopped in front of me with eyes green like a cats, his pink tongue darted out from between thin lips and it laid out his bargain.

"You're the price."

Yes, of course I stupidly didn't get it at first. "What?"

"You're the price. You. You become mine when I say and how I say."

Blunt. Still a bit obscure for my dozing senses, (I'd really used up a great deal of my reserve tanks coping with the events of the evening thus far), but blunt.

It should have been easy to understand but I was not practised in the arts of being loved, desired or even tolerated. The files were pretty dusty down there.

The "machinery" hadn't been primed in a long time either.

But I got it eventually.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"In one or two ways, probably. That's the price. Or we kill your sister."

I almost fucking dropped to the floor with that. Krycek actually had to steady me with his plastic lump for a hand and guide me over to the couch. "You're...you're fucking crazy." I whispered. "Why show her to me only to threaten to take her away?"

I swear Krycek's face actually registered something besides that "I love myself" veneer when I looked up at a him with those questions.

I must have looked pretty bad, pretty damn devastated to have evoked an actual emotion from the prick.

"There was no other way."

"No other way? For what? What the fuck-?"

"No other way to get you willingly." Krycek was nothing if not cryptic. He walked to the chair and sat down. It didn't suite him. None of the furniture here did. I clued into the fact at that moment that this wasn't _his_ place, it was just A place. Rented by the hour maybe. ("Yes, I'd like to rent one of your condominiums for the purpose of dark Conspiracy heavy meetings with mysterious visitors. Um, do you have take-out?")

All this fucked up shit went through my aching head as I watched him watch me from his green poor man's leather chair across the coffee table. It reflected our two likenesses in its surface. A second Krycek and Mulder, flat and distorted.

"Oh, Christ." I whispered when I realized what he was saying.

I, as in _I_, me, myself, my body and flesh, etc, etc,.. was the price. For him. For the one armed bandit who stole my dad with a bullet.

Who had assisted the Wrinkled Cigarette Sucker with stealing Scully and my sanity for those horrible weeks. Who stood beside me saying almost all the right things when I was falling apart before his eyes because I loved her, and he turning out to be just another dirty on the inside squeaky on the outside Smoke-Boy.

I hated Krycek then, when I found out what he was. I hated Skinner, too, for not seeing him.

I hated myself most of all.

"I don't understand. You spent years trying to kill me. Why this? Why now?"

"Because I'm in love with you." Krycek immediately snorted at his own lie. "Well, in lust for years. Maybe it's more, I don't know. But I've known where Samantha was for years, it's just CancerMan who thinks it's best you two be kept apart."

"Why?..."

"Don't you get it, Mulder? To keep that fire under your ass lit and burning. She was taken for a similar reason. I mean, he had to find out what kind of fighter you are. What would have happened if she'd been returned to you? The fire would have been snuffed out before it got going really good."

"When can I see her again?!" I was tired now. Really tired. Ready to kill him tired and the neanderthals could then feel free go to town on my corpse, I didn't care.

Krycek came over, crouched beside me and, though not putting the weapon down, he didn't point it at my head either.

What a gentleman.

"Tomorrow. Tonight you stay here with me."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then she dies. I promised the "C-Man" that you'd go along with this and cooperate in order to see your sister on a regular basis. He agreed but with the condition that if you refuse or balk anywhere along the way, she dies."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

Krycek uncocked the weapon and placed it on the table beside me. "Go for the gun, Mulder. You can kill me, kill those goons outside,...but Samantha dies if I don't report in tomorrow morning with a good word."

"This is insane, I,..I don't feel well. I don't know if I can go through with it."

"I'll help you and maybe it won't be so bad as you imagine."

I don't know. I can imagine a whole lot of bad.

Don't think I'd ever had a fantasy about Krycek (beyond murdering the double-crossing little shit), because I'm not into men. I'm into hairless, curvy pretty females that feel good and smell good.

Krycek had shown me my sister, Samantha, and I knew beyond the smallest grain of question that she was the genuine article.

Krycek had told me the truth and I, stupid idiot that I am, had agreed to this transaction without first checking the price-tag.

"I need to be drunk." I told him. "Preferably brain-soaked smashed."

Krycek blinked a few times. It was always hard to know what he was thinking. I'd never, even when we were partners, been able to figure him out, but he seemed a bit hurt. (Good, I thought, let him know the thought of his greasy hands all over me makes me sick to my stomach).

Back then, I hadn't trusted him at all and let him know it right off. Later, through his very convincing acting and well thought-out bullshitting, I'd grown to believe that he was not the sleazy spy I'd pegged him for, just a fresh-faced kid with an attitude.

I was wrong and in retrospect I wondered whatever the hell had I been thinking? Trust No One. Fuck! Trust _NO_ one, and I'd trusted him. Stupid Mulder! Stupid Mulder!

I was gullible. Someone had come along and ripped Scully and my heart away from me and I needed someone I suppose. Maybe that's what I had been thinking. Maybe I was so fucking lonely anyone at all would have done.

Like I said - stupid Mulder.

Krycek left me sitting on the fake leather couch and went thorough a doorway. I heard rummaging around and cupboards being opened and closed. He returned with a bottle of Barcardi and two plastic cups.

He poured me out a respectable measure - six ounces at least - of rum.

And then another.

He had a drink or two. Maybe he was losing his nerve or maybe he couldn't get it up without a few snorts. That thought made me chuckle but I didn't tell him why when he asked because there was that other thing playing through my head at the same moment: I was drinking straight rum from a plastic cup so I could get drunk enough so I wouldn't have to later remember that Krycek fucked me.

I wanted to wake up with this night wiped from my mind: A naked Krycek fucking naked me.

After finishing off the bottle together (me downing 3/4's of it), I was so drunk I couldn't stand.

Krycek took my left arm with his right arm and lead me to the bedroom door but at the threshold, I came to my senses and started struggling. I tried to hit him and pull away but, hell, the booze had done its job and I was too drunk to even walk by myself never mind beat up the slut next to me.

So instead I stared crying like a fucking baby.

I did not want that man's hands on me.

I suppose I hoped that if I appeared wimpy enough, he might get so disgusted he'd lose interest and I could go home and forget all this insanity.

But then Samantha would die. That's most likely the other reason I was crying.

Krycek was going to do whatever he wanted with me because, as he'd informed me, he'd had a perpetual hard-on for me for years and if I didn't go along with the double-crossing, lying, murdering, faggot he would have my sister killed.

So I had no goddamn choice.

I figured it would be a quick fuck. Krycek strikes me that way, considering the way he dresses and his stupid hair cut - like he never looks in a mirror.

It certainly seemed to start out that way. He pushed me, staggering backwards, into the darkened bedroom, over to the edge of a king-sized bed with, of all things, someone's grandmother's old patchwork quilt thrown over it, until the backs of my knees jammed up against the mattress and I had to sit down.

He leaned over, took my chin in his one working arm and kissed me hard on the mouth.

I wasn't a long kiss but I could smell the alcohol on his breath and could sense the telltale glee of control the sensation was giving him.

Me? I was feeling like I'd just stepped off the twentieth floor into an elevator shaft. Maybe you've felt that? That plunging out of control sensation you get when your stomach drops out of sight and you know your body is about to follow it down and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

They say that's how cocaine addicts feel when they're coming off a high.

It's bound to sober you up a bit, like being kissed by your worst enemy did for me.

Fuck I was terrified. More scared than I'd ever been in my life. I made a bargain with Satan and it was too late to back out. I was will-less and weak, drunk and frightened.

All because of a kiss.

Krycek's mouth on mine.

I don't know how in this Hell he has made for me that I'm going to tell you the details of the working out of that bargain, but I'm going to try.

It's eating me alive, you see. I need to get it out my system somehow, even for a while, so I can feel normal for a day or two.

One thing I will never be again is clean, I know that, but there's a funny thing about getting dirty, something I didn't expect.

You get used to it.

A quick in and out fuck it was not.

Krycek, through the haze of my drunken mind and blurred vision, transformed from the dangerous, morally bankrupt killer for hire to Mister Hallmark.

Sitting there before him in the dark with his right fingers removing my shirt one button at a time (Despite my hatred for him, I was impressed. He must have had to practice that one), perched on my neck- bones that felt like rubber, I kept rolling my head back and forth looking around in the dark for the magician who had accomplished this miracle.

No other explanation seemed possible.

Krycek wasn't ripping at my buttons and throwing me around like a rapist, he was taking his time, undoing buttons and pushing the material off my shoulders. He slid my shirt down my back and then his hand softly rubbed up and down my skin like he was grooming a favorite steed.

It made me shiver a little. It might have been for the very clear sexual intent behind the touch of those five finger pads, but I think it was more so because I was seeing a part of him I'd never even considered before; not once; never; no reason to.

Krycek a tender lover? Ludicrous.

Perhaps I shivered too because we'd reached a point of no return and I knew this was going to happen and the shiver was actually a tremble.

Fear.

Yes.

I was afraid of him and I had been for a long time. He was a dangerous fuck and he had total control this time.

There were times I'd happily beaten the son-of-a-prick hoping that maybe one of the blows just might kill him. I wasn't a murderer. Occasionally I wanted revenge and always I wanted justice but I really wouldn't murder anyone in cold blood to get either no matter how much I hated them or what they had done to me. (A picture of my dad bleeding from his brain flashed across my mind and along with it fresh loathing for this dangerous man who was taking off my clothes).

I had beaten on Krycek (Skinner, too, bless his heart), but in reality this man terrified me. Anyone who could do the things he had did and not feel remorse was one scary individual. Someone who would stop at nothing to get his way.

Gee, listen to me. I'm about to let him fuck me and it's my own goddamn fault. I was afraid of this man but it was him standing over me in a dark room and my decision had brought us to this.

I had gotten myself totally wasted and what an incredibly stupid thing that was for me to have done. Even if I'd decided to change my mind ("Screw him and his lies - she was a clone!" kept playing in my head), and pull out of this while I was still a virgin, I was no longer able to physically.

Can we talk irony?

Irony is a funny thing, too.

While all this fear and hatred and loathing for his touch on me washed over me again and again, my body began a betrayal and responded to him. My own flesh sided with the enemy and tiny trembles, like mini earthquakes rippled under my skin again and again. Nerve endings tingled, awakening from sleep. Sexual excitement.

Hormone induced, I kept telling myself. I can't help it, I privately lied.

When my shirt was off, his hand, so gently - god! - sooo gently and slowly, explored in the half dark until he located the front of my jeans.

I gasped when that killer's hand touched me down there, from fear, hate, sex, curiosity,...

All of the above.

He cupped my penis that so far hadn't woken up with the rest of me. Mercifully it laid like a sleeping worm.

Until he pulled my zipper down in one perfect motion. It didn't snag on my underwear, I don't know how, because it always had whenever I went into the can to take a piss.

Guess he must have practiced that one too.

"I've waited so long for this."

I didn't want him to talk. I didn't want to hear his voice _telling_ me what he wanted and that it was me, had been me, from the start always me.

I didn't want to know those things. I hated him and he hated me and that was the way it was supposed to be.

He wasn't supposed to want me. It wasn't right that Krycek wanted to touch me, kiss me, fuck me - it didn't make sense!

"Don't." I said it but it came out like a moan. I had wanted to yell it but I was so drunk, it was pathetic attempt at protest.

Because I didn't want Alex Krycek to shove his cock into my body.

But, at that juncture, with my drunken mind and flopping muscles, I didn't really mind the touching.

In fact, when he lay me back on the bed to pull my jeans down, it was so comfortable, I started to drift off to the Nappy Kingdom.

But Krycek had other plans and he laid them out for me and on to me one by one until I was begging him and saying things implying for him to stop. From what have been the hundreds of sexual manipulations he performed on me that night I cried out in protest of each one.

But in truth, the words came out from a place so deeply hidden in my soul, they meant nothing at all when finally spoken.

My own out of control psyche distorted them so badly, they had no language.

Krycek removed my underwear and I was nude.

He reached over to the bedside lamp and switched it on.

It was to get a rush, I know that now, to see me totally vulnerable.

And...

And maybe, because he wanted to get a good look at me.

No one in had ever looked at me the way he looked at me that night.

Have you ever lay on a beach in Hawaii and let the incoming tide wash over you from toe to top?

Well, I was on that beach. I was in that bedroom, lying on grandma's patchwork-quilt but I was also on that hot beach sand and his eyes,...his eyes were the fucking ocean.

Toe to top. Underneath his gaze and my terror of Alex Krycek, I felt like the sexiest creature in all the universe. I was a thing to be appreciated.

Sought after.

Desired like I hadn't been in years. Like I'd never been, actually.

I was delirious. It had to be the booze.

Krycek switched off the bedside lamp and there was now no light in the room except for the crack coming through from the distant kitchen stove bulb.

He removed his own clothing in what must have been some kind of record speed and lay down on top of me full length. He "poured" his body onto mine until, I swear, our pores sucked face.

I felt Alex cock, hard as a rock, against my penis and poking at my balls and before I had time to formulate an indignant remark against this foreign interloper, he spoke again:

"You are so _fucking_ beautiful!" He buried his face in my shoulder skin and went right on telling me those things I did not want to hear.

"I've wanted this so long, oooooh god, I don't know how I made it this far without this, without you under me, willing, waiting..."

Yeah, I was still scared and I still didn't want this to happen, not really, but I listened, I listened...

"Fox. Sweet-beautiful-lovely-sexy-naked-fuckable-suckable- Mulder." Alex said.

I was shaking like a crippled fawn in the snow. "Stop." I said weakly, not recognizing my own voice. "Please..."

I don't know if he heard me or not but he started kissing me. Not rough and domineering this time, not at all, but softly, luxuriously, and deeply, deeply!, until I could hardly breath.

No, of course I didn't respond. I had never kissed a man and I didn't want to now.

It was Alex who did the kissing.

I tasted his sweetened saliva, the alcohol molecules having returned to their basics of starch and sugar a while back.

I felt his tongue invade my mouth. He ran it over my teeth and under my lips and deep throated me until I could no longer take in air. Just before I would begin fighting for it, he would stop and suck on my throat for a moment until I'd managed a few lung fulls, then he'd come back to my mouth and reclaim it and he did this over and over. I wonder now as I did then if it was simply an underlying element to Alex's personality that said he _must_ have a percentage of control even when he's being nice.

Stupid question, then and now. Alex fucked me that night only for himself. It was his pleasure, not mine, that was the only purpose of our little transaction.

Not mine.

His arm hurt me. Not his human one, the other metal and plastic contraption stuck on the end of the stump I'd never seen, that kept poking my side.

I'd forgotten about that false arm of his. In the dark, I couldn't see it and his other hand traveled over my naked body with such skill and range of motion, I haven't noticed any missing appendage. What skill he had lost on the one side, the other had obviously gained.

A case of his right hand not worrying about what his left could no longer do.

He must have sensed my discomfort because he pushed himself up off of me to unstrap it, tossing it aside.

In the silhouette of the door-crack light I saw the lumpy, ragged edges of his upper arm. The painful looking result of his encounter in the Russian forest with those men who had so much wanted to lend him a hand, so-to-speak.

Even in the dim light, it looked painful.

He lay back on me and because the room was chilly, I felt the briefest twinge of gratitude no matter that I hated myself for feeling such a generous emotion toward Alex Krycek.

But it did feel good being warm.

And it did feel good being touched the way he was touching me in that way no one else ever had.

No one had ever looked at me like he had and no one had ever kissed me like he had just done and no one ever touched me like the way he was touching me now.

Oh my dear god that I don't believe in I was shaking so badly because of the way he was making me feel (all against my will), that I had to close my eyes when his lips found mine again and he captured my tongue.

And that hand that had explored my sides and ass now clenched itself in my hair, in it's gentle claws, and made me go on kissing him.

Fucking son-of-a-bitch!

So far, I've been leading up to the hardest part of this.

You think it's easy talking about it? You're wrong.

Remembering is easy. Admitting is harder, talking about it even on paper, approaches the impossible.

And ever telling anyone, well that's tantamount to sprouting wings and sailing over the green cheesy smiling man in the moon.

I can't.

I use humor to counterbalance the pain it causes me to think Krycek could have maneuvered me into selling my body to him in exchange for Samantha's life.

That my search for her is finally over and it was me holding my ass up to my father's murderer that ended it.

Not that she wasn't worth it, of course she was. I would have done anything in this world to protect her.

And Scully. My relationship with her, the way it's grown and matured, the way she looks at me and the way I feel about her - it hurts me so bad to think I've betrayed her for another woman by fucking a man who just happens to be my worst enemy...

You see how it is?

It may appear to you that I have no moral ceiling and my center of reason is so cockeyed that when I walk down the street I list to starboard, but never-the-less and not-with- standing, I do have a conscience.

And right now it's killing me.

Krycek kissed my lips in every way and position humanly possible, sliding that forked tongue back and forth, in and out, hinting at what he might do with other parts of his anatomy without and within parts of mine.

I clutched at the bed sheets with both hands (he hadn't tied me up or anything, this was an exchange of services rendered between two men of good faith. Isn't that funny?), because Krycek's mouth finally left my mouth and moved down the front of my body, licking me.

That was weird.

I had been licked before. Though most women seemed focused on either getting my cock in their mouths or in their vaginas as quickly as possible, one or two _had_ taken the time to lick me; tease me a little. Some men do like that, you know.

But no man knows how to kiss, touch, tease and lick a man better than another man because men know what feels good on their own bodies (and where it feels good and when and how much as well).

The last year has taught me this very basic fact, a truth that should have been part of the vast knowledge stored in the brain of a guy who is suppose to be as smart as me.

Added to this, who better than a male to know how to suck another male?

Krycek taught me that and it was a lesson I'll never forget.

I was no virgin in the art of making love but for the experience of being made love _to_.

Alex was my first.

For two long, incredible hours, he did that - made love to me.

A million kisses, a thousand licks, a hundred nibbles, dozens of fingers digging and leaving tiny scratches (extraordinary considering he only had five), three cock sucks, two ass fucks and every goodman time he touched that prick of mine, the even bigger prick named Alex Krycek made me come.

But back to the first time and lesson number one:

Looking up at groaning, hip gyrating Krycek from underneath was a new one on me.

Watching him slide down my body until his face lined up with my cock was...

..was like sprouting wings and flying over the green, cheesy man in the moon...

..if the man in the moon sucked cock.

My penis had remained, even under Krycek's octopus like sucking of my lips and kneading of my muscles and skin, limp.

But not now.

I tried to forgive myself when it hardened and rose high and mighty. He smiled, I could tell, just a flash of white teeth in the dark.

Then he all but swallowed my penis right down into his throat in one incredible gulp before pulling back, sucking and rolling his tongue on its underside, and nipping at the head before taking me in again.

When his hand cupped my balls and started rolling them too, my hips bucked off the mattress, nearly throwing him to floor.

Had I had any other working parts besides my dick, I would have taken that opportunity to run.

He laughed.

Climbing back on top of me, he wriggled on me and then maneuvered us around until we were both lying lengthwise on the bed.

The sweat was pouring off him and Krycek seemed to delight in sliding up and down, back and forth, rubbing our stiff cocks together, spreading the slickness around. He must be one of those guys who uses oils and shit, I was thinking.

Krycek had gotten me hard again until my cock and all related parts had acquired that particular kind of pain only a man can understand. "You like it when I suck you, don't you Fox?"

My cock surged skyward, trying to poke a hole right through his hip.

He kissed me as he spoke, moving from neck to shoulder and back to mouth whenever I tied to deny that being made love to the way he was making love to me was the sexiest feeling I'd had in years and the sexiest I'd felt in about a decade, the sick, manipulating fucking fucker!

Voices in my head tortured me for my betrayal of self.

The only other things making noise in that room were his sucking mouth, his ragged breath (and mine), his heartbeat that banged like a native drum in my ear (and my own that thumped in responding multi fold terror) and his words that kept coming like taunts and teases and sweet nothings mixing in with my terrible torturing voices of guiltguiltguilt.

Everything I thought I was inside told me that this was wrong and I should die for my betrayals of Scully and how I was lying naked and open under Alex Krycek, letting him rape my identity. Screw my body and mind fuck me too.

But Krycek kept convincing me otherwise and the arguments he used no man could resist, and I don't care if Hetero' or Bi or Gay or Alien-morphing-green-blooded-square-headed Terminator.

It just felt so good.

"Fox." He said it as if he'd been my lover for life, as if we'd gone to school together; as if somewhere around the time the first sexual hormones started pumping through us, we took one look across the gym floor and started pumping each other that very night.

As if we were created to fit into one another. And fit and fit.

"Fox. You like it when I suck your cock wet and deep, don't you baby?" He slid down me again until he was in that special position over me and I felt his teeth against my head (that was wet for him. It was. _I_ was. The seducing, dirty bastard! - I was wet with pre cum for _him_), and he slid them back and forth across it before sucking me in whole again, right to the base and back up.

Krycek sucked my cock until I bucked and cried and swore at him, exploding like a cannon into his mouth.

He swallowed it all before snaking back up to kiss me.

He said:

"You liked that, didn't you, gorgeous." It wasn't even a question. He knew.

I would have to say now, thinking back over it, that he knew _me_, in more than just the biblical sense. I wonder what it was he had seen in my eyes back when we were partners that led him to conclude that he would eventually, one day, suck my cock and kiss me?

I really can't say.

"Shut up." I said but it wasn't convincing and I (real and for true wimp that I sometimes am) started crying a bit, just tears, because Krycek had the control and used it like a pro'.

Always, he'd gained the control in the end, even if it was just getting his own way with lunch back when we were partners, flipping that Boy next door haircut around and flashing eyes at me with looks that, at the time, I couldn't fathom. Even back then, his eyes saw me even better than I saw myself.

Krycek had just sucked me off and it was in fact one of the best blow jobs I'd ever experienced.

He kissed me again. "No. You're beautiful and I'm going to suck you again and after that I'm going to fuck you."

The words, under different circumstances might have sounded arrogant and power mad but they weren't.

They were the statements of fact.

They came true.

In some things even the criminally insane are expert.

Krycek's lovemaking was as relentless as his passion for lying. He was good at both.

Coming from Alex, a man driven to tell a tale and then make a run for it, you'd think his bedroom techniques would perform the same way. Bang, bang you with my gun and run.

Not hardly. He didn't fuck like anyone I'd ever met or even read about in those sleazy magazines I buy.

In between his incredible blow jobs, we didn't do any of that roll off onto your back, catch your breath, make small talk (what did we have to say to each other anyway?), and then start again business.

From the first kiss to the last, it was kiss, suck, kiss, clutch and knead and rub, kiss, fuck, suck. Kiss some more.

There were no intermissions at all.

Maybe he thought I'd try to make a hundred meter dash for it if he gave me even one inch.

Confronted by his nine inches, I might have.

But that was before, not now. Now I was too caught up in his spellbinding little universe where the sun rose and set on his philosophies.

I'd felt like he had exposed me to some ancient Eastern religion and its truths were steam rolling me.

"I love doing shit to you." He said. Alex was no poet but he knew the right words at precisely the right time.

"Do you?" I asked, not really wanting an answer. It was my first real sentence in over an hour.

"Yeah. I'm not such a bad guy, Mulder. I'm insane over you, aren't I?"

"Or maybe just insane."

"You let a man drill holes in your head and _I'm_ crazy?"

He kissed me, rendering plenty of slippery tongue and it was minutes before I could speak again. "Okay, you're not a double-crossing, mindfucking, crazy rat fink. You just think, talk and act like one."

He laughed softly (like the Devil might laugh after fooling someone's soul out from under them) and kept right on kissing me until I was dizzy.

I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The first time he fucked me, I didn't say a word at first.

He began kissing me in that way of his that left me breathless and hungry for air, and I have to admit it, for more of him.

I was so lost in the all consuming exchange of saliva mouth fucking, I didn't even notice when he, using his good right arm and somehow, his not so good left one, lifted my legs one by one and pushed them up and forward until my knees were resting on either side of my head. I always was a bendable kid in school and hadn't lost that loose limbs-ness.

I wasn't a bit uncomfortable.

I was correct when I said the place must have been rented earlier just for this occasion because from somewhere (under the mattress, pillow, who knows?) Krycek had gotten hold of a bottle of Lightening Lube, greased up a finger and with no warning to me, stuck it up my butt.

That wasn't a bit comfortable and I told him so with curses you can Insert Here if you care to.

Figuratively square Krycek was positioned over figuratively round me and he held the metaphorical hammer in his right hand, ready to strike. Enough blows and it'd fit, his smokin' eyes said.

But one thing Krycek wasn't was impatient. He lay his chest on mine and made me stay still, kissing me all the while as he worked that one finger around slowly and after a moment or two, I did relax a little.

Enough for two fingers, then three. Working them in circles, occassinally spreading them, until I loose enough for him.

By the feel of his iron cock nestled on my testicle sac, right between the little guys, I knew what was coming next and a bit of the panic returned.

He could tell though and never left off kissing me.

Having Krycek make love to you is like being rooted in soft dirt under a black sky. It looks like rain and you know your going to get wet and ragged under it but for all that, you are where you are and nothing can move you from that spot.

Except the storm.

But I have to admit this to you as I have done all else, he was being so gentle, when the thunder finally struck, all that fear just washed away just like that top soil in the storm.

With a soft groan he entered me and though it burned a little, by the time he'd plunged full length to the deepest part of me, resistance was futile.

"Oooooooooohhhh - fuck!" He groaned into my ear. "You're tasty."

Still Krycek held me tight and whispered things I couldn't hear, so focused was I on how he was slowly rocking up and down on me, little moans of pleasure on his mouth and that mouth on mine.

Slowly at first, he fucked me, like a test driving a new model. Then accelerating, faster and faster, he stick-shifted until his naked dink was licking and tickling my prostate, making me jerk and buck not from pain but from a mind blowing pleasure that good ol' Doctor Jones and his Vaseline glove had never produced.

I couldn't help moaning and groaning back in his ear things I don't even remember now, he made me feel so erotic. Sexy and alive.

He fucked me until I hardened and from that moment on my body must have been in agreement because it obeyed him without question.

When he slammed home harder, that thick stiff shaft making me so slick and so insanely horny, my legs made up their own mind and wrapped around his hips, pulling him in again and again.

"I love you." He said but his cock in my ass, his round balls slapping my cheeks, my legs wrapped unmoving around him, unyielding, and the trillion butterflies' swarming in my stomach carried me to the purest state of pleasure you can imagine only if you try really hard. I didn't hear his words.

Krycek looked down on me and I looked up to his clenched jaw, and his wide open eyes watching mine for the reactions that must have been there. Anticipation. I was reveling in the amazing fuck he was giving me, rolling with it, rocking with him. Because of my noises and writhing under him because of this incredible ass-pumping, (my first), he must have seen what I was thinking:

Krycek was beautiful. Young still, with a hard, nearly hairless body. Muscular and masculine. Better than mine.

Not that mine was bad, but I'd always thought of myself as average in the physical department...

"Oh! You fucking hot, goddamn sweet ass slut! Take it! Take me, Fox. Take my hard cock!" Krycek shouted, interrupting my thoughts.

He was going over the edge by that time, jerking up and down on of me, puling out, pushing in, over and over and harder until I whimpered. The arrogant Son-of-a-bitch took that moment, when I was at my weakest to grab my hair, pump even harder, and growl in my ear: "Say my name, Mulder. Say "Alex," say you love me, say my name, say you love my cock. Say it!"

When I didn't he stopped. Dead halt.

I wanted to scream at him, beg him to continue (I was fresh out of pride), but all I could manage was "Alex, pl-e-e-a-s-e!"

I guess the compromise was enough and he began pumping again, ramming full length into me, like he was driving a stake through and out the other side. Hot, thick long and wet, he rode me like any would a virgin.

Then his best move.

He grabbed my hard and aching cock in his right hand and stroked me in time with his own rhythm and no words can describe that sensation. None. I've used every dirty, sexy term I can think of here and they don't come close, not even ball park. I don't know what else to say, you know? Check the dictionary for yourselves.

He pumped me madly, hand fucking my cock and ass-ramming me until I shuddered and came all over myself, him and the bed.

And he, as I sprayed cum between us, came hard inside me, shooting me full with, not the Krycek poisoned worms I'd always imagined it to be, but the hot, delicious fluid of his sex and desire.

"I am going to pump you so obscenely full!" He growled, continuing to pump furiously until even he was exhausted and slumped against me, the tanks empty.

Krycek moaned and then laughed softly, petting my hair:

"You're mine now, you sweet slut. You're filled with me. Can you feel my taint, Fox? I know you liked it as much as I did. And this relationship isn't over by as long shot."

At the time, I heard the words, but my mind was still flying without direction and didn't understand.

I was thinking my own thoughts and the stupidest sounding one to cross my mind in many, many years, came to me at that moment, (just post being fucked the best I'd ever been fucked):

Holy shit! No wonder women like cocks!

And my feeling at the time?:

It was by far, bar none, the most thrilling experience of my life.

Krycek let me settled down a bit because I was trembling. A weird all over body shiver that wasn't going away. My mind was zapping and popping like frayed electrical wire and my flesh was like mush overlaying shattered bones.

Close to my ear, he spoke to me. Statements needing no answer and questions that he answered himself:

"Your sweet, hot cavern is mine now. _You're_ mine. Give what you like to Scully, whatever she asks, I don't care, but when you're with me, from now on, it's all mine. Your mouth, your cock, your perfect ass that you just happily handed over to me? Mine, all of them. You're my Fuck-baby. My Cum-honey. My Cock-sucker, a little lesson I'll teach you eventually. I know you liked this..." He caressed my shoulder skin and down each arm one at a time, still laying on top of me full weight. "...You liked it as much as I did."

He kissed me on the cheek, scrambled off the bed and started getting dressed.

I just lay there, still shaking and reeling like a top losing it's spin.

I was dumbfounded by what had just happened to me. I was lying at the bottom of that elevator shaft looking up, amazed that I'd survivded the plunge. I'd tight roped the ragged edge of disaster all my life with my arms out for balance, ready to act, to react, to save Samantha, Scully, my mother's sanity, mine,...

But this time, for once, I'd pulled my arms in, and let myself fall. And fell into Krycek's shaft, his particular circle of hell.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

When it was over, Krycek handed me my hat, if you know what I mean.

He was the one who was dressed and physically ready to go but it was I who was actually being dismissed.

And instead of fifty bucks I had in my hand the smell of Krycek and the knowledge that Samantha was going to continue living. Two things I've kept secretly locked away since.

"Get out of here, Mulder."

Fucking's over, he was saying, and sweet talk is done. Suddenly it was "Mulder," not "Fox," making me feel like a cheap bar pick-up.

That pissed me off. "What about seeing my sister tomorrow?"

"You will."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

While we had this strange conversation, Krycek had finished dressing. As he zipped up his leather jacket, "You don't."

Then he came over to me. I was sitting on the edge of the bed by that time, still weak, still trying to recover my own mind and common sense, still trying to get the taste of his saliva out of my mouth and the musky smell of his skin out of my nostrils...

...when Krycek leaned over and kissed me very tenderly, his hand cupping my jaw as before, like that very first kiss when I was terrified and drunk, wanting to throw up all over him.

I didn't now. For some reason, I was panicking and couldn't figure out why or where the sensation had come from.

I was free. I could go. He was leaving me.

"But I keep my word. You'll see her tomorrow. Maybe I'll send a taxi for you." He joked.

I think I understood and it woke me up to a fact that I'd somehow bleeped over before. "What are you talking about?" My heart fluttered in my chest and I silently argued with it.

"Well, you want to see her more than just the one time, don't you?"

"This was a one shot deal!"

Krycek smiled at my, I guess, gullibility and my stupidity in having trusted him. "You should know me better than that, Mulder." He kissed me again. "I knew you'd never go for this if you knew every detail and unless you had a taste of what you were getting in return. This was,.."

Kissed me again.

"..a non-.."

Kissed me.

"..refundable..."

Kissed my lips softly. Sweetly.

"..purchase."

He straightened. "No Returns. It's policy. As long as you keep giving me what I want, you get to see your sister as much as you want, whenever you want. "

The door closed behind him.

The next thing I knew I was lying back on the bed, still naked, my drying cum all over my chest, his smell of rut filling the room.

Mingling with mine.

And I noticed a telephone that I hadn't before right there on the bedside table.

I dialed. "Scully?" I had no idea what time it was.

"Mulder?! Where are you? It's five A.M.."

"I don't know." I wanted to bawl and confess the whole thing, I was so sorry for what I had done. She didn't know. But I knew and I felt shitty to be lying to her all over again yet I was so messed up in my head right that second, it terrified me. And I needed her help because I didn't think I could make it home on my own.

I don't know why.

Scully would come. I love her so much but I can never tell her what went on here. I still can't believe it myself.

Scully came and rescued my sorry ass, wondering at the condition of my clothing and hair and the rumpled bed and how I smelled because no one can disguise the smell of sex.

But I didn't say anything or do anything except stare out the passenger window the whole forty minute ride home.

She was scared for me.

I was scared too.

The one-armed Magician wasn't kidding.

Every few days or every other week, a cab pulls up to my apartment building and beeps twice. That's my signal to panic and feel excited all at the same time.

He said it was non returnable. Deal made, contract signed and now to be carried out. Samantha would live.

I go out, get in that taxi and go to whatever hotel or mystery house he tells me to that particular day or week.

If I'd backed out of this contract on that bridge that night, his bargaining chip (my sister) sight unseen, I could have lived with my conscience. Ignorance is bliss remember.

But instead I went with him, saw her, and the hand was played. And is still being played.

Maybe someday I'll be able to turn it all around. Refuse him one day (he's as addicted to me as I am to Samantha), and see if he calls my bluff; leaves me alone and lets her live too.

But I'm no ready to risk her life yet. I love her. I love Scully and I want them both in my life, happy and safe.

However for that to continue, I have to take that taxi when it comes. Some nights are easier than others conscience-wise.

I've come to associate taxi and car horns with my penis and visits to Krycek.

Somebody on the street toots and I'm hard.

I've even taken to belting my trench coat. Horns. Hard-on's...

...So far Scully hasn't made the connection.

I'm so fucked up and full of lies, they're eating me full of holes. I'm turning into Swiss cheese and terrified that one day I'll crumble and spill the whole thing to her.

I'm not ready for that.

Just one more thing to tell you...

It's been a year now that this has been happening. One year since that night on the closed down bridge and Alex Krycek stuck my own gun to my head and started a deal the implications of which I had at the time no fucking inkling.

A deal with a no return clause.

I'm scared of Alex Krycek.

I'm scared of myself because I liked the way he touches me yet I know he'd kill me without a second thought. Or kill Samantha.

And the deal, no matter it has taken over my life and screwed with my head to the point where I loathe myself, is one I can't back out of. Samantha would die. It would cure me. Kill her.

I wake up each morning and go to work and say nothing. Scully and I, we're even closer than before.

In fact, that first night back at her apartment after she'd brought me home and I'd jumped into her shower, trying in vain to scrub Alex's odor from my body, I'd dried off and located Scully in her bedroom curled up on her bed reading a book.

She'd made up the couch for me but I ignored it, walked straight up to her, naked as the day I was born, lay down on top of her and fucked her until I passed out.

Must have surprised the hell out of her but she didn't refuse on that account. I think she thought it was about goddamn time I took the step she'd been hinting at (and me!) for years.

By fucking Scully, I supposed I was attempting to expunge the memory of Alex Krycek from my body and say sorry to Scully all at once.

The next day, we talked a little, her eyes never leaving me.

She still watches me, even when we're making love. Maybe because she was scared for me - for what happened that night a year ago when she picked me up from an old house with no number on the door. I have no idea how she ever got there, but it wasn't the first time she'd found me all fucked up in a strange room with no clear memory and mumbling nonsense.

This deal, this contract, this no return policy between Krycek and me had done all this. Brought Scully and me closer than ever.

I love her, she loves me. I'm doing my job. Samantha is alive and I visit with her once a month and sometimes more, for me life is, too all outside appearances, proceeding normally...even better than a year ago.

Weird isn't it? I want Scully, I want Samantha, _and_ I have them I also want to be like I was before I ever heard the name Alex Krycek, before I ever felt his mouth on mine and liked it. I want Alex. I want to be free from Alex. I want to be me...

Except I don't know who that is anymore.

But do you want to know the oddest, most unexpected part about this no return policy?

Even if I could, right now, give it back and be free with no consequences to myself, Sam or Scully, I don't think I can.

I don't think I really want to.