Pendrell Talks III:
Alex's Story

Of course you want to know why. Hell, some days *I* still want to know why. If you have to wonder what a nice guy like Pendrell saw in a scumbag like me, you also have to wonder what a player like me saw in a naive virgin like Pendrell.

Stop there. Back up. Better yet, move your tile back to square one, and let's roll the dice again.

Nobody is completely bad. Nobody is completely good. Life isn't either/or, black and white, right or wrong. Just because I kill people when I have to--and often enjoy it-- doesn't mean I'm incapable of caring. Yet. One reason I clung to Jamie was that he reminded me I still had a heart. I liked him, cared about him. Cared for him.

I lied to him that night I broke into the lab. I'd been planning to meet with Mulder, but I hadn't counted on Scully being there, too. I had to run when I found out she was in the X-Files office, or God knows what the bitch would have done to me, and somehow I wound up in the lab. I recognized Jamie, though I'd never met him; I knew him by reputation--the redhaired lab geek, incredibly smart and incredibly shy and awkward. It was right after Christmas, for Chrissake, and there were all these workaholics running around the Hoover building--Mulder and Scully in the office, Pendrell in the lab, guards everywhere. Why weren't these people home getting soused on eggnog, packing away the fruitcake? That's what I'd have been doing if I'd had a home. At least, I'd like to think so.

So I lied, told him I'd broken in to steal something. He was such a harmless-looking doof, with that bright red hair and sleepy blue eyes, I didn't expect him to try to disarm me, or to come damned close to succeeding. He surprised me, and that doesn't happen often. If I hadn't kissed him, he might have turned my gun on me and then called for backup. And God, what I would have missed if he'd done that. Not to mention that jail would have been a real bitch.

Why did I kiss him? Well, I figured it would startle him, throw him off balance psychologically, so that I could then throw him off balance physically, too. And, well, those lips. Full, firm lips. Bright determination in those sleepy baby-blue eyes. Heavy weight of him, short and stocky, on my chest. Aw, hell, my hormones were already flowing in anticipation of seeing Mulder, and I just went with the moment. And so did Pendrell.

I figured he'd probably never come near to kissing a guy. I found out later on how very right I was. But he took to it like a baby takes to sucking. I didn't have it in mind to do more than smooch him, press my lips to his just enough to mess with his mind, but I found myself giving him my best, searching out his mouth with my tongue and tasting the bubblegum sweetness of him. In about nothing flat, I was hard, *he* was hard, and we were grinding our hips together and well on the way to a big mess.

I got out of there as fast as I could. Jingled my lucky charms, lit candles before the icon of St. Nicholas, and hoped Lab-boy wouldn't rat on me. Then after New Year's I went to this gay bar to meet an informer--not to meet Mulder, this time--and saw him again.

He was sitting back in the corner, that red hair standing out against the dark wall, unmistakable, with the fair face and light eyes. Large, scared eyes that watched the action around him, the flirting, the pick-ups, couples greeting one another. Well, I'll be damned, I thought. Looks like I gave Lab-boy a really good time a few days ago. I watched him for a while; he didn't see me. Blue oxford-cloth shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up. Ginger-colored fuzz on his arms. The flush on his face. Excited and, well, beautiful.

He was going to do something reckless, I knew it. Let himself be picked up by some heartless opportunist who'd use him hard and then tell all his friends how he got to pop some straight boy's cherry. So I figured that opportunist might as well be me. If he wanted what I thought he wanted, I could give it to him, and I'd go easy on him and not gossip to every queer in DC later on. He was beautiful, really, and so completely unlike Mulder that maybe I'd forget about that hazel-eyed bastard for a while.

After I'd talked to my informant, I got myself a fresh beer and a bowl of snack mix and went over to Pendrell's corner table. I started out with a smart-ass line, he came back with a snotty retort, and then somehow we were carrying on a decent conversation. I couldn't remember the last time somebody asked me innocuous questions like, "Do you like football?" and, "What kind of music do you listen to?" Questions without life or death answers, questions you wouldn't get beat up or killed for answering the wrong way. It made me feel like a normal human being again, and damn, I'd missed feeling like that.

I went home with him and... I made love to him. I guess you'd have to call it that. It was his first time having sex, period; it was my first time being someone's first. I could hardly believe a man had made it to his early twenties without losing his virginity, but when I got to know him better, I understood it. Jamie couldn't give his body without giving the rest of himself. He couldn't give his body and withhold his heart. And that's what made me fall for him. After so many fucks that were just mutual masturbation, an agreement to a certain number of orgasms, and too many more that were political maneuvers, calculated seductions, moves in an endless game of chess, to be with someone who gave of himself and opened himself up to whatever I'd give--it was just incredible. He was self-conscious but completely spontaneous. He was inexperienced, but he didn't seem to have any inhibitions. I mean, he didn't try to hide what he was feeling. It was all right out there. Completely honest.

All I did, that first time, was suck him off twice, and he only jerked me off, but that was more fun than I'd had in bed in a very long time. I liked it--and him--so much that I did something completely out of character when I had to leave early. I left him a note promising him I'd be back.

Three weeks went by, and I couldn't get the Lab-boy out of my mind. It wasn't the same as this thing I had with Mulder. Mulder and I... I can't explain it. In Mulder's world, everything *is* black and white. He's the good guy and I'm the bad guy. If I come near him, he has to hit me. I took away his Scully, I betrayed, etc.--all of which is true--so it's some kind of moral failing for him to also have the hots for me. He doesn't want to see how much alike we are, both of us conflicted, both of us backed into a corner, both of us living a bizarrely limited life that we couldn't have imagined ten years ago. If anyone was really different from me, it was Jamie, not Mulder, the redhaired middle child with the sunny personality. Neither Mulder nor I was innocent any more.

I didn't stop wanting Mulder. I also wanted Jamie. So I went with what I could get, took the risk, and just showed up at his apartment one night. And he was just as glad to see me as if I weren't--what I am. No fucking good for him, that is.

I went to see him as often as I could. I tried to spend enough time with him that there was time to talk, before or after the sex. Sometimes I thought he really needed that more than the fucking, though he kept on being fun in bed--and elsewhere. I don't think anybody listened to him if he wasn't talking about lab results.

I have known some dangerously intelligent people in my life, and Jamie Pendrell is definitely one of them. "Geek" and "nerd" and so on are words that mean, "You're so smart, you scare me, so I'm gonna make fun of you to make myself feel better." He was probably born with a pocket protector, but he was nearly as intuitive as Mulder, with an eye for detail and pattern and theory that would satisfy the most rigid scientist. He was one of those people who doesn't just know a lot about one thing; he knew a lot about the sciences, and a little about everything else. It never took much to get him talking, and there was so much I couldn't tell him; I'd let him talk, I'd listen, and then I'd fuck him senseless. It seemed to work for both of us.

He never complained about the way I came and went. He was always happy to see me and never mentioned how long it had been since the last time. He had friends, and was close to his family in a way I couldn't even imagine, but he had no other lovers. He did have this thing for Scully, who only had eyes for Mulder, if anybody, but I was it in the romance department. His life, like mine, went on in between the times we spent together, and we enjoyed those times. I felt so damned guilty about the way I was using him as a safety valve, and so fucking unworthy of the way he loved me, that I was nicer to him than I probably have ever been to anybody in my whole life. He was incredibly nice to me, and I sure as hell didn't deserve it. He loved me.

Yeah, Jamie loved me. He only said it once--I think he didn't ever want me to feel he was trying to blackmail me into saying it--but he meant it. He could bend the truth if the situation called for it, but Jamie was incapable of outright lying, so when he said it, I knew he meant it.

It was the last time we were together. Curled up in his bed, again, so many hours spent there, making love, talking, sleeping. His head on my chest and his arms around me, and all around us the smell of sex, heavy and wet-smelling, like patchouli, like a garden after rain. We'd been at it for hours. I'd come twice and he'd come three times, and we were both just completely wrung out. If I hadn't felt so tired, tired in a good way, a happy way, I never would have mentioned my work to him. God, I've regretted it ever since.

All I said was that something big was coming down, that I wouldn't see him for a while. I needed to keep out of his way, for his protection, but I'd be back as soon as I could. I wanted to reassure him because I expected to be away from him longer than I ever had before. I wouldn't have done that for anybody but Jamie, tried to reassure them. I needed to do it more than he needed to hear it, I think, because he turned his head and kissed my chest, and his voice was so distorted with sleepiness I could barely understand it. But I heard him. "'S okay, Alex, I love you, I know you'll be back."

I guess he wouldn't have said it if he hadn't been as sleepy as he was. I lay awake for hours, holding him, stroking that amazing red hair, treasuring those sleepy, uncensored words. He snored even worse than I do. I left before he awoke, my eyes so raw with wakefulness that the morning light was like knives. For once, I had kissed him good-bye.

I never saw him again.

I know, in my mind, that they didn't take him out because of me. That he really just stepped in front of a bullet meant for somebody else. I wasn't even in the country when that happened. I was running through the woods in some sick Grimms' fairy tale and finding that the helpful woodcutter was really the monster in disguise. I came back to an empty house for sale, the friggin' cat gone who knew where, and nobody could or would tell me anything.

I agonized over it for more than a week, but I finally decided I had to know what had happened, and I had to hear it from someone I could trust. That meant his family. I knew he was close to his older sister, Janet. I'd stayed with him for a week while he was housesitting for her, one time when the heat was on and I needed to hide. Nobody would look for me in a cute suburban house with a pool. I helped him clean that pool, swam with him after dark, gave him a blowjob one night when it was almost eleven o'clock and there was nobody around to hear us, him sitting on the ladder and me hanging on to it, floating, anchored by one hand on the ladder and his cock in my mouth.

I dressed like somebody who might have an academic or artistic job. No leather. A respectable, middle-class queer. Disguised the missing arm the best I could. Went to the house one evening on a weeknight and just rang the doorbell. The man who came to the door, Jamie's brother-in-law, what was his name, Marty, was a tall, husky guy, beerdrinker's belly, friendly eyes, completely unsuspicious. I'd never seen a grown man that unguarded, not even Jamie, he had that little edge, being FBI. Marty let me in and went to get Janet. The two kids were playing on the rug in front of the tv, half-watching some family sitcom, and I never felt so evil in all my life.

She came down the steps and stopped for a moment, then smiled politely and gave me her hand. She was taller and thinner than Jamie, with an almost horsy face, but the same red hair, the same sleepy blue eyes. I introduced myself as Alex Krycek, and then her face changed, so drastically that all my instincts said turn and run. But somehow I didn't. I had to know.

She glanced at her husband, and something flew between them, some telegraphic thing that reminded me of Mulder and Scully. Then she said, in a very normal tone, "Why don't you come into the kitchen with me, Alex, and we'll have some coffee."

I followed her into the kitchen. It was just as I remembered it, only with a few things out of place, a few dirty dishes in the sink, typical late-evening clutter for a family. I sat at the little table where I'd eaten with Jamie and watched, silent, while she made fresh coffee and put cream and sugar and mugs on the table. A Star Wars mug, and a Lost in Space mug. Christ, what was I doing here? I was sweating bullets despite the chill of the day, and the arm was aching and itching and killing me, phantom pain and real pain together. Janet sipped her coffee, looking at me over the rim of the mug with eyes as pale and sleepy as Jamie's. Deceptively sleepy. "You're Jamie's lover, aren't you," she said at last.

Stunned, I just nodded.

Janet stirred her coffee. "Jamie and I were very close." *Were?* I thought. Oh, God.... "He told me about you. Said he was seeing a man named Alex. That you weren't around all the time, he could never bring you to the family barbecue, but that you were a good guy--" Christ! "--and he was happy. Oh, Alex, you made him so happy...."

She sniffed hard and jumped up from the table, grabbed a paper towel to wipe her face. I stared at her, blinking like a gerbil. "Were. Made. *What happened*?"

Jamie's sister blew her nose thunderously into the paper towel. "He's dead, Alex."

She started crying, and I started crying, too. I couldn't help myself. It came out of her between sobs, how he stepped in front of a bullet in a bar, a bullet that was probably meant for that bitch Scully.... I couldn't even see my coffee. I couldn't think. I guess Marty must have known what was going on. He stayed out of the kitchen and kept the kids away, and we just sat there sobbing for I don't know how long. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe he was gone. I couldn't believe I was crying. I hadn't cried over my parents' deaths, I hadn't cried in years and years, I didn't think I could cry any more... but I cried with this wife and mother from the 'burbs who hadn't a clue how dangerous the world could be or what kind of man her beloved little brother had loved.

When we sort of ran out of crying, for the moment, she put her hand on mine. "He really loved you, Alex. And he was really happy. He would want you to know that."

I snorted. "I know. And I fucking don't deserve it--excuse me."

Janet smiled weakly. "Don't apologize. I've used language worse than that over his death." She sighed, a broken noise like she was about to cry again. "It's just so pointless--"

I actually put my arm around her.

I met with her the next morning and we went to the cemetery together. I cried a good bit more and left flowers, roses, red and white. Then we drove back to her house, where I'd left my car, had some more coffee, talked about Jamie. She hugged me before I left. It's the only time I've been to his grave.

Life goes on, I guess. I still have my job to do. I still have that thing with Mulder. I still have to cover my ass, day in and day out. Life goes on, whether you lose a lover or lose an arm. But I think my left arm isn't the only part of me that's missing. I think I lost something else when Jamie died. I think it was what was left of my heart.

I only wish I'd told him I loved him.