Prone

prone \'pron\adj [ME, fr. L pronus bent forward, tending; akin to L pro forward - more at FOR] 1. Having a tendency or inclination; disposed (man is ~ to error) (is ~ to overlook such things) 2. Having the front or ventral surface downward - prone adv - pronely adj - proneness \'pron-nes\ n syn PRONE, SUPINE, PROSTRATE, RECUMBENT shared meaning element: lying down (entry from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary)

Mulder drops his gun.

Scully will do anything to protect her partner.

I'm good at playing an advantage to survive.

It was just a matter of time before all of our natural tendencies serendipitously occurred in one another's presence.

And, being me, I couldn't help taking advantage of them. It was so easy, really. And I owe Mulder for all the crap I've taken off him in the past, for all the beatings he's given me, for all the times he was nasty when he really didn't have to be, just to show me how much he despises me.

He's so small sometimes. So petty. It makes me wonder why everyone considers him such a hero, a crusader, when he's really a lot more like that guy from Ivanhoe. You know, the Knight Templar, who everyone in the story thought was so pious, so proud and heroic when all he really wanted to do was fuck the little Jewish girl. What was his name again? Yeah, Brian de Bois Gilbert. And I guess seeing all Mulder wants is to kill me, that would make me the little Jewish girl.

And outside of betray him every chance I get, letting him get experimented on in Russia and double-crossing him every time he's trusted me, I really haven't done enough to make him want to do that. It was professional every time. I was doing a job for the people I work for. He should understand. But Mulder's made it personal. I guess it's because he's so sure I'm the guy who shot his father. He should actually give out a medal for that action. I mean, the old man was jerking him around so bad the day it happened you could tell it was the way it had always gone. All that guilt, all that weight, on someone who's your kid. It made me sick to listen to him. I couldn't stand to watch what he was doing to Mulder.

The old man was pathetic. Who could believe that anyone would even be like that? I mean, anyone who was supposed to be decent. Blaming someone for your own shortcomings, for your own fucking decisions. Consciously torturing someone else out of your own self-loathing. Letting him think he's guilty when you're really the one who is. And doing all of that to your own kid. Who you're supposed to protect and take care of, and love.

At least that's what they say on TV.

But Mulder doesn't know anything about that. And neither do I.

But he still blames me for offing the old man. I guess it helps alleviate the guilt at being glad he's dead.

And the funny thing about it is, that it really should be Scully who wants to kill me. I mean, she still thinks I had something to do with planning her abduction, when again, I was just doing my job with orders from higher up. She knows I was her replacement. She knows I've fucked Mulder over every time I've seen him. And he's the only thing that she really cares about in the world. I mean, she lives like a fucking nun just for the privilege of following him around.

Even when he abandons her every chance he gets.

Even when she gets hurt, kidnapped, experimented on, sterilized, is given cancer and then a child only to have it be murdered by the men who made it, too. Christ, she should be in a fucking mental hospital after all that. But she's not. She's here. With me. In the front seat of their departmental Ford Taurus, handcuffed and with her feet tied together with the belt from her trenchcoat.

Mulder's in the backseat, cuffed and unconscious. Pistol-whipped with the butt of his own gun. With a lump on his head the size of Rhode Island, which is where we're heading, incidentally. But I fucking owed him that for all the time's he's taken pleasure in beating the shit out of me just because he's crazier than I am and really likes hurting me. When I take great care not to do anything to hurt him.

At least nothing that doesn't need doing.

But it's Scully that should hate me, really. She's the one who should want to hurt me, even if only as the symbol, the minion of the people who did what they did to her. But I don't think she does. She's even saved me from him. More than once.

I appreciate that. I really do. It's not often anyone is kind to me. Especially when I know they don't want anything from it. And all that Scully wants is for me to go away and never show up again. That's all she wanted from the moment she first laid eyes on me, Mulder's new partner, her replacement.

I remember watching them as they talked down in the lab at Quantico, how they stood so close together, looking at one another, excluding everything else. It was like they fucking froze time so that they could stay longer that way. And they'd only known one another a year then. And it was so obvious to anyone with eyes. It was obvious to me.

And I hated them both, because no one has ever - no one will ever look at me like that. Especially not now. Not after what happened in Russia. Not with this fucking prosthetic arm that turns me into an object of pity, or scorn, depending on your point of view, instead of a man like any other. I know that Scully pities me. And I know that Mulder only lets himself feel hate.

Because he liked me before he knew what I was. He needed someone, and he was looking for that in me after Scully was taken away. He had become dependent. He couldn't do it alone any more. And he knows that I saw that - that I was willing to fill the void for him, for as long as it lasted.

And, for the record, here in my own head, I would have. I would have been his partner as sincerely as Scully ever was. It was my job to report on him, too. But I would have backed him up. I would have taken a bullet for him and expected him to do the same for me if it had been necessary. And I did fucking shoot Preacher down because I truly believed he had a gun and was going to kill Mulder. I wasn't under orders on that one. It did it all myself, like a big, big boy.

That's probably the one thing I hate the most. No one ever gives me credit for making my own decisions about things. I'm always a pawn of someone else. While I admit, I'm usually working for someone, it's the same as the way Mulder and Scully work for the FBI. You have a general mandate, but the rest is up to you. If they only knew how much of this stuff was my own idea, thinking on my feet, or pulling one out of my ass at the last second, they'd be totally amazed.

Like the bastards I work for actually got me out of that silo in North Dakota once the oil left me to phone home or whatever the hell it was doing. I did it myself. I fooled the stupid-ass anarchists. I used my contacts and found out about the courier and the rock. I busted those redneck fools to Mulder before they blew something up and killed a lot of innocent people. I got myself the hell out of the whole situation. Still intact, thank you very much.

I just wasn't as lucky once we got to Russia.

Damn Mulder for sucking up all the luck karma in the general Tunguska area.

If it had been him instead of me with that roving band of machete-wielding lunatics, we'd see how strong their partnership was then. We'd see how long Scully would hang around waiting for him to put the moves on her.

Scully's watching me as I drive the car. Lucky these big, American boats are all alike - automatics. She's watching me while I drive, like she watches him. Like I am him, her face turned toward me to map the changes in mine as we head down the road. She's also watching where we're going. Like it's going to help or something.

At first I really wasn't sure what I had in mind, just take 'em in to the bosses and see what we could do with them. But before I'd even gotten Mulder stowed away in the car I realized I wanted more than that. That it was payback time in a strange way. That I had to find a way to let them know what it feels like to other people to be around them - to people on the outside of them. That I wanted to let Scully know that the things I've done that have helped to hurt her really weren't personal, though Mulder insists on viewing them that way. That I've had enough of Mulder's contempt for me, when I really don't deserve it.

What I wanted was complicated and it was all tied up with a lot of things that make me uncomfortable to think about - even though I think about them all the time. I just really wanted to let them know what it feels like sometimes. And I wanted them to see me - me, Alex Krycek, not Mulder's vision of me which is as screwed up as anything else that comes out of his head. I want them to know they're wrong, even though they're probably the last two people on the earth who will ever admit as much.

I also had to find a way to make them look at themselves - to provide them the benefit of an outside observer, an interested observer, to teach them a few things. It was too good an opportunity to miss. And what they have is something too perfect for me not to want to mess with it - or to share it.

But that's not something I'll readily admit. Not even to myself. So I just let that thought slide on past and glance again at Scully watching me even as she watches the highway.

I brace my prosthetic arm against the steering wheel, fingers gripping to hold it steady. I reach my right arm out to touch the side of her face as she looks at the road ahead, just the lightest graze of my fingers across the soft skin of her cheek.

She jerks her head away, like she's been burned. "Hey, Scully, are you OK?" I ask, pretending it hadn't happened, placing my right hand back on the wheel with the fake one. "I mean, we've been driving a long time. Do you have to go to the bathroom or anything?"

She looks at me and I can see the wheels turning behind her blue eyes. She's calculating how easy it might be to try to escape me if we should stop. If she thinks she has a hope in hell, she doesn't really know me very well. But underestimating me is characteristic of most people. Which in a lot of ways ends up being another advantage for one Alex Krycek. But still, there's no reason for her to be uncomfortable. I'm not here to torture her. Really I'm not.

At least, not like that.

"I'm fine, Krycek," she says.

"How about Alex," I smile winningly at her. I know it's winningly because it's worked on a lot of other people before. And I can be pretty winning when I have a reason to be. And right now, I want to win her over. Oh, yeah, I definitely want to do that. "I'm not a "Special Agent" any more and I'm not Mulder. I don't have a problem using my first name."

"But maybe I do," Scully says. Just to be contrary, really. There's no reason she shouldn't call me Alex. She knows me better than a lot of people.

"Suit yourself, Dana," I say, just to make sure she's paying attention.

She gives me a dirty look. A patented, bona fide Scully dirty look. One that she usually reserves just for Mulder, so I'm perversely pleased. In fact, this whole thing I've got planned is pretty perverse when you get down to it.

But it's the only way I really have of showing them just how much I care.

No, really.

Whether they know it or not, Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of the FBI are the closest thing I have on earth to friends. Scary, huh?

Because, well because of a lot of reasons, like, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and "a worthy enemy is as good as a friend" and "the true opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference". Because of all those things and a lot more that are more subtle and complex than I can really line up and look at. They're all so loaded up with memories and feelings and other things that cloud the judgment. All I know is how I feel about them. And it's not indifference.

And they don't feel that way about me, either.

I mean, if Mulder was really indifferent, he wouldn't be trying to kill me all the time.

If he really hated me, he would just shoot me and not have to try to beat the shit out of me every time he sees me. He's a fucking psychologist and supposedly a brilliant one and he doesn't realize the reason he's got to put his hands on me? Even I can see it, and I don't have a degree.

He does it, well, because he wants to. And it's the only way he can allow himself to touch me. It's the only thing he can look at or live with in his own head.

The complex way the two of them make adjustments to not deal with how they feel never ceases to amaze me. Whether it's the way they juggle their feelings for one another, or for me, it's all part and parcel of the same thing. They can't let themselves look there, or go there, because they think it will make everything they've built come down like a house of cards.

Because, and this is the really beautiful part - their biggest weakness - no matter how much they talk and promise and vow to one another that they have the other's trust, is that they can't trust one another in the most intimate part of their lives. So they really did take the Informant's words to heart - Trust No One. Not even each other. How sad for them. How great for me. Because it gives me my in. Gets me on the inside like I had a pass, or in this case a Get Into Jail Free card.

And I mean to play that card today. Oh, you better believe I'm going to play it.

"Mmmmrrpph," a Mulder moan from the back seat. Scully turns immediately, of course. And I take my cue to find us a nondescript motel, and quick, before he wakes up enough to give me trouble.

I know Mulder's dad's place is nearby. But I won't go there. I don't want things to get cluttered. I want this to be about us.

Fortunately it's a resort area, and motels are thick as fleas on the sand. And, better still, a lot of them are pretty ratty and underutilized at this off-season. I select one that's middle of the road ratty and pull in.

I get two rooms, at the end of the second totally empty building of the motel so the proprietor won't be suspicious when he sees three of us. I claim my brother is sick from overindulgence in gambling and drinking up in Atlantic City. That explains the selection of this motel - we're broke. That explains Mulder's condition, and our need for isolation at the end of the building. Scully's my sister-in-law, of course. We're on our way home, from a long weekend, I claim, in case he notices the car has DC plates.

Mulder's still totally out of it, so I untie Scully's feet and usher her in to the last room of the motel, the end one. Then even if the other rooms fill up, my empty one will provide us with a sound barrier.

I can also hardly believe my luck. The room is furnished with two queen-size beds with heavy wooden headboards of the pukey Italianate style so over-used in the Seventies. They have big chunky spindles on their edges. Oh so perfect to tie someone to. I wonder at how much of exactly that has been done in this room since the headboard was put here. It seems chipped and worn enough about the spindles for me to imagine quite a lot.

Scully is staring at me and I realize I'm grinning like an idiot.

"I'm going to ask you again, do you need to use the bathroom?" I say. "We're going to be here a while, and you probably should."

"So it will take them a while to pick us up?" she asks, thinking this is about my bosses. If only she knew.

"Go on, I won't watch," I promise, uncuffing one of her hands and recuffing it to my own live wrist. I lead her to the bathroom.

Scully's not stupid and while it's a trick and embarrassing to use the toilet while handcuffed to a guy a foot taller than you, she does it anyway. And I don't watch. Not even a peek. There will be plenty of time for that later, and I don't want my first glimpse of her naked to be while she's taking a piss.

She washes her hands - with soap, and then I take her over to the bed and cuff her to it, both wrists, through the headboard that has to weigh as much as she does. While I'm at it, I tie her legs back together as well. I don't want her worming out of anything while I go back to the car for Mulder.

He is still a groggy mess in the backseat when I get there.

"Hey, Mulder," I tell him. "Put your arm around me, man. I 've got to get you inside."

"Fuuuuh, Krycek," he mumbles, his battered head dangling forward against my chest as I haul him toward the door of the Taurus. Totally fucked up and he can still manage my name. Exactly what I was saying before.

"Yeah, right," I say, hoisting him under the armpits as best I can with one stiff, fake arm. It feels a lot like it's going to break off, supporting as much of his weight as it is. Then I get a good grip on him with my real one and it's better. "Come on, I've got you."

He makes it up on his feet, still leaning heavily against me, his whole weight against my body. But then I get my good arm around him and he's ok. I shift him to the side and he's able to help me a little as I get him into the room.

He's too screwed up to be much trouble as I go back to the car, shut the rear door and go into the trunk for my bag.

Once I get back into the hotel room I'm almost at a loss. It's almost too much. Them and me, all here together, with no one the wiser and endless amounts of time and privacy.

My stomach growls, we haven't eaten since D.C.

"Chinese OK, Scully?" I ask, causing her blue eyes to widen in surprise. I guess she was expecting me to get Medieval on her ass, but then, there's always time for that later, isn't there? And I'd prefer to eat first. Got to keep up my strength, you know.

"Uh, yeah," she says. "But I'd really like to take a look at Mulder, if you don't mind. You hit him awfully hard."

"I know I did, but he'll be OK," I say, getting out the phone book from the crappy press-board bedside table. "Hard head, you know."

Mulder takes this opportunity to moan again and sort of flail around on the bed a little like a stranded fish, but with his arms cuffed behind him, he's not going to be any trouble for a while yet. Scully looks real concerned. She loves him.

I put down the open phone book and go over to the bed he's on - the one by the window. I really gently push back the hair that's flopped over his forehead and look at the bruise that's there. It's a dandy. Rapidly turning reddish-purple and with a really nice solid knot on the top, where the butt of the gun struck him just above the temple.

"I'll get some ice as soon as I order the food," I tell her. "He'll be all right."

I go back to the phone book and open it to restaurants. I flip through until I find the name of the restaurant I'd spotted just after we turned off the main highway a few miles back - Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant.

"Have a preference, Scully?" I ask.

"Nothing sweet," she says, hitching herself backward to rest more comfortably against the headboard. "And I tend to stay away from the pork."

"That's too bad, it's the best part," I say, hoping she gets the not-too-subtle innuendo and knows it for the ironic Mulder-ism that it is. "What does he like?"

"Things that give you heartburn," Scully tells me.

"Good. Man after my own heart," I reply, whacking myself in the solar plexus with my fist in the universal symbol for acid indigestion and then dial the phone.

I placed the order for a nice mix of Szechwan and Hunan - no pork - some chicken fried rice and vegetarian delight. I really like Chinese food and can't get enough of the nice, crisp vegetables, actually. Scully seemed surprised by the order. I guess she figured me for an eggroll and sweet and sour pork man or something. Yeah, the only people I know who eat that stuff are old ladies in their nineties.

I was promised delivery in twenty minutes to the empty room next door. Now all I had to do was kill time until it got here. I got the crappy plastic ice bucket and went out to get some ice and sodas so we wouldn't burn to death with the Chinese food.

Before I left the room I went through Scully's pockets to make sure she had no way to pick her cuffs or untie her feet and fastened Mulder to the headboard of his bed. I tied his legs to the Hollywood frame the mattress rested on. He was actually pretty comfortable that way, I think. At least his arms weren't still locked behind his back and he could get a little real rest.

I drove a couple of blocks away to a party store I'd also seen on the way in and bought us a couple of bottles of alcohol. I knew Mulder fancied Vodka like I did and I remember him telling me once that Scully didn't like it that much. So I got one bottle of Vodka for Mulder and me and another of Jack Daniels because I also like that and figured that since Scully was Irish she'd have to at least tolerate whiskey. I guess the choice also reflects the dual nature of my cultural background. The quintessential Russian and American liquors combined in tickling my palate.

I also grabbed some OJ and a twelve pack of Coke from the cooler. It doesn't mix great with Vodka, but it does with Jack and I figured that's how I could get it into Scully. I have no illusions about her cooperation, of course, but as I've mentioned I didn't want this to be torture. At least not physically.

I made it back to the ice machine and the room with the groceries and ice just in time to meet the guy from the Chinese restaurant. I paid for the food, gave him a nice tip and brought the whole haul in to the supine Special Agents.

I was proud to see Scully had gotten her feet free in the time I'd been gone. Her wrists were looking pretty sore as well, from trying to slip out of the cuffs. I'd have to do something about that.

"Thinking of going somewhere?" I ask. She just looks at me.

"I'm not mad at you, Scully," I say. "I would have been disappointed if you hadn't tried."

I went over to the little round table by the window that the management had thought to provide. It was wobbly, of course, but it did give me somewhere to unpack the food. It smelled good, and my stomach growled. This was a pretty decent restaurant. They'd provided Styrofoam plates and plastic utensils along with the usual cartons and chopsticks. Impressive.

Then Mulder mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like "Yeah, baby, I'll show you my eggroll," and reminds me that I'd promised Scully to take care of his head. Rich fantasy life, that guy has.

I take one of the plastic bags the restaurant had wrapped around the entree and rinse it out in the motel sink. Then I fill it with some of the ice I'd gotten from the machine and tie the end shut. I go over to the bed where Mulder is laying and put it on his head.

"I don't think it's going to stay on like that, Krycek," Scully tells me.

"It will for a while, so we can eat first," I tell her. I get out a Coke and pour part of it and a stiff shot of whiskey into a cup for her - ice and everything. And then get myself one of the same. I'm not in the mood for vodka, it turns out. I fix up a plate of Chinese food and get the plastic fork out of the little plastic bag it was in. I can't begin to explain what a pain in the ass it is to do all those things with a prosthetic arm - even one that can move the hand. Things that used to take me seconds are now minute-long ordeals. Of course I've developed more patience, but I really wish the Universe had found another way to give me that lesson, you know?

So I take the plate of food over to the bed and sit down next to Scully, with my back up against the headboard. She's kind of reclining against the pillows next to me, her arms fastened securely to the headboard, but mostly in a sitting position. She could eat without much trouble, except she can't use her hands.

I'll have to feed her.

It's difficult to contain myself and put on the appropriate hard-ass demeanor when I really want to gleefully clap my hands, hand? whatever and giggle like a teenager who just got a sight of his best friend's older sister taking off her bra. It was a moment like that. A momentous, developmental moment in my life, and whether Scully knew it or not, in hers, too. She'd have to accept help from me. That, or go hungry. I really hoped she didn't plan on the latter.

"What are you doing, Krycek?" she asks, in her typical, cold, Scully way. Just the kind of opening that she usually reserved for asking Mulder to explain one of his insane theories while he got off on trying to convince her to believe it. It was like Pavlov's bell, a question like that. It was for me, too.

"Well, I don't plan on untying you, and you've gotta eat, we're going to be here a while," I say mildly. "So, seeing I'm sure you don't want to put your head down in the Vegetarian Delight, you'll have to let me help."

"Are you suggesting that I let you feed me, Krycek?" Scully asks. She's quick. I love that about her.

"I don't have cooties," I say with a shrug. "And you saw the food delivered. It's not drugged. And to prove it," I pick up a piece of broccoli on the fork and eat it. I try to look thoughtful.

"Not bad," is the verdict. "I like it a little crisper, but the sauce is decent."

I stab a mushroom and a piece of water chestnut with the fork and offer it to Scully. She frowns, but when I slowly move the fork closer to her lips she opens up her mouth and takes it in.

I manage to maintain the presence of mind to remove the fork and go after more vegetables even while assimilating the visual details of Scully's pink tongue neatly capturing the vegetables while her full lips close around the body of the plastic fork. Lucky, lucky plastic fork.

I get down a carrot and piece of mushroom, myself, and then offer some broccoli to Scully. To say I was fascinated by watching her eat; her strong, white teeth biting down, her lips parting and then pressing together, her tongue capturing the dripping sauce, her eyes watching my face the entire time I carefully wield the fork so I wouldn't inadvertently spill anything or stab her, to say I was fascinated was the understatement of the century. I love Chinese food, but I've never found it particularly erotic. Watching Scully eat it.... I was glad I had the plate so I could cover up how hard I'd gotten.

I put the plate down in my lap and reach over to give Scully a sip of her drink.

"What is this, Krycek?" she asks after she drinks some.

"Coke," I tell her.

"And what else?"

"Jack," I say.

"Why?"

"I figure if I get you tanked, you'll fight less and sleep more," I tell her. "One arm is a fucking handicap, Scully. And I've got two of you to watch. When Mulder comes to, he's going to be a shit-load of trouble."

"So you think you can get me plastered and then, what? I won't help Mulder if it comes down to it?" she asks.

"I think it will just be a whole lot less trouble for both of us if I get you plastered," I tell her. "And it might even be fun. I've never had the opportunity to get drunk with you, Scully. And I've known you what, now, five years?"

"You make it sound like we're friends, Krycek," she says.

"Regardless of what you might think, we're not enemies," I tell her. "We're just on different sides. Sides doesn't mean it's personal, Scully."

"You killed Mulder's father, that's pretty personal." She says frowning.

"I didn't kill Mulder's father, Scully," I tell her. "But I was there. It was a total fuck-up. But Mulder's Dad got what he had coming to him. He played the game way too long to suddenly decide he wanted out. You just can't stop, Scully. You know that. Take another sip."

She looked at me a long time, and then she did. She couldn't know what was coming, but I think somewhere deep down she realized she'd need it. She already had things she didn't really want to remember all the way. It kind of hurts me to think I might be one more. It hurts, but it won't stop me.

I feed her some more Chinese food in easy silence for a while a bite for me and then one for her, rice as well as entree. She'll need those carbs to keep up her strength if things go as planned. She has a few more sips of her Jack and Coke, enough to finish the little motel glass. I'm only halfway through with mine.

I get up to renew our food and get her another drink. I come back with spicier dishes and a larger Jack to Coke ratio. She cocks an eyebrow at me when she has her first sip, but I just shrug and try to look innocent. I know she sees through it. That's the beauty of the whole thing, of course.

She knows what I am.

She knows, and she's still ok with eating food from my hand and sitting shoulder to shoulder with me on a motel bed. Because I say it isn't poison. Because I proved it. Because she and I, Mulder's partners, have suffered more shit from this whole damned thing than anyone else. We have an understanding born of suffering, Scully and I. It brings us close, no matter how much she'd like to set us apart. But even she can acknowledge it when it really counts.

I hope she'll continue to remember that later.

"I really can't eat any more, Krycek," she says finally, as I hold another forkful of the really very decent Szechwan chicken to her lips.

"That's hardly enough to keep a bird alive," I say, echoing the woman I'd been told was my Grandmother, until I'd learned different. "I know you're tiny, but you can't really eat that little?"

"I really haven't had a lot of appetite since..." Scully stopped abruptly and I knew what she meant.

"Since the cancer," I finished. "Those fuckers." I say.

"You work for them," she says, looking at me sideways from under her hair.

"Yeah, but I don't have to like them," I reply.

"But you're part of it."

"Only one kind of part," I say. "And, believe me, I don't get involved in that kind of fucked-up shit. And I don't like to see it done to people I know, either. But I don't have a say."

"Why not?"

"I'm just a soldier," I smile icily. "Ve ver only followink orders." I do my best German accent. It's actually pretty fucking good. I speak German, too, after a fashion.

"If you don't believe in it, why do you do it?" Scully asks.

"Because..." She makes me smile. "What else is there once you know? It's either one side or the other. I'm on the one I think has the best chance of winning, and, I'd remember that if I were you for later."

Scully doesn't look impressed. She licks her lips. They're dry.

"Here, have some more of your drink," I tell her and raise the plastic cup for her to take some. She moves her head forward a little fast and I miss a bit. She gets a good swallow, but some of the liquid drips out of the corner of her mouth to run down her chin and onto her neck. It pools up in the hollow right above her collarbone. The temptation of that proves way too much for me. I'm only a mortal man, after all.

I put down the glass on the nightstand and lean over to get rid of the mess I've made on Scully - the fun way.

Starting at the corner of her mouth, I suck up the spilled Jack and Coke, the sweet flavor totally obscured by the even sweeter one that is Scully. She tastes a bit like vanilla and a little like peaches underneath the sweetness of the Coke. She turns her head away immediately, but that only gives me better access to the flesh of her throat and the small pool of liquid on her collarbone. I take my time. I don't mark her, not yet, but I want her to get used to my touch.

She holds her body very stiffly, but she isn't cringing away and she isn't trembling. Decent. Not great, but decent.

"Krycek," she says. She has to clear her throat first to do it. "You're licking me."

"Yeah, I am," I mumble into the softness where her neck meets her shoulder.

"Stop it."

"Why?" I ask. I really want to know what she's going to say.

"Because I don't want you to."

She said, "I don't want you to", not "I don't like it" or "You're disgusting" or any number of other things she could have said. It's significant, I think.

"Why not? It's good clean fun," I say, giving her another of my winning smiles.

"Look, Krycek," Scully says, blue eyes narrowing like the eyes of a Siamese cat when affronted by a human sitting in its favorite chair, "Just because I ate with you, just because I let you feed me off the same plate, doesn't mean we're going steady. It just made sure you didn't slip me a Mickey or poison me, that's all."

"Aw," I say in mock hurt. "And just when I was going to give you my Secret Double Agent class ring and everything."

Scully tries really hard not to smile.

"It's OK if you laugh, you know," I tell her, grinning myself. "I won't tell. And it was funny. If you laugh it doesn't mean you like me or anything."

Scully smiles. And it's a smile she usually saves for Mulder, too. It's the, "You're a total lunatic, and I shouldn't be smiling, but you amuse the hell out of me" smile. I like it. I'll take it.

I pick up the plastic glass from the nightstand and offer her another sip. She takes a small one, and I offer another, but she shakes her head.

"What's this all about, anyway?" she asks, nodding at the Jack and Coke.

"I told you before," I say. "I need the help." I shrug my prosthetic arm, next to Scully on the bed.

"I don't believe you, Krycek," she says after looking at me for a long time. "What do you have planned? Where are you taking us? What's really going on?"

"I'm taking you here. There are a number of things planned. That's what's really going on," I say. "Have some more of your drink."

"I don't want it. I'm not thirsty," she says, after clearing her throat again. The Szechwan was pretty spicy.

"I know you are. So why not drink it?"

"You know why," she says.

"It's not like you have that much of a choice," I tell her. "I can give it to you in straight shots if you'd prefer. But you're getting good and drunk, so you might as well do it the easy way as the hard."

"Why?" she asks again. Damn her for knowing I'm lying. "Why, really, Krycek?"

This hedging is bullshit. I look her in the eye.

"I'm going to get you liquored up and take advantage of you, Scully."

Then she does laugh, a low, chuckling Scully-laugh, until she looks back at my eyes and realizes I wasn't joking. I offer her the glass again. She hesitates, and then she takes a sip. But now there's tension in her body that wasn't there a few seconds ago. And I know she's using what she knows of abduction psychology to try to prevent me from hurting her. Like that's what I had planned. Like I was some psycho serial-rapist and she was my 39th victim or something.

It makes me a little angry, I'll admit. But she's been brainwashed by the system she's a part of. By having to see those sickos time and time again doing their perverted things. What I do is clean by comparison. I don't know how Mulder can take it, getting into their heads. I don't want to know what people like that think. I just want to kill them. It's better for everyone that way. And they damn well can't do it again. No recidivism from the dead.

I open up the fingers of my prosthetic hand and put Scully's cup there, wedged in tight so it won't spill. Then I take my real hand and brush the hair away from her face, gently. She watches me all the time, like I'm a coiled snake ready to strike. Like I might hit her at any minute.

Maybe that's what she thinks right now. But she'll learn better. I need for her to know me better than that. Mulder already does.

"Don't be afraid, Scully," I tell her. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You just said you were going to."

"No, I said I was going to take advantage of you when you were drunk, that's totally different," I explain.

"Really?" she says. "Both of them are called "rape" where I come from, Krycek."

"And where is that?" I snap, I'll admit the "r" word makes me pissy. That's the last thing I have in mind. "Land of perpetual virginity? Where every sexual act is a violation? Is that your problem, Scully? Because I know you haven't been fucking Mulder, and you would be in any normal universe."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" she asks with a haughty outrage that's almost laughable to anyone who's ever watched them together.

"Oh come on," I say. "The first time I ever saw you in that autopsy bay down at Quantico I thought you two were going to go at it right there on the table, you were all over each other so much. But I know you haven't done anything about it. What is up with that? You don't have sexual "issues" do you, Scully? Or is Mulder the one with the problem?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Krycek," Scully says. She was being deliberately dense. Everyone who ever saw them knew what I was talking about.

"When was the last time you got laid, then?" I ask.

"That's none of your business."

"Too bad because I already know," I tell her. "It was March 1992, with your boyfriend Ethan, the week before you started on the X-Files. Totally uninspiring vanilla sex. You didn't come."

Scully looked really shocked. I felt kind of bad.

"I know because I was the guy assigned to keep you under surveillance at the time. To make sure you were the right one for the job," I tell her. "I don't usually go peeking in people's bedrooms, but I thought it was a total fucking waste, if you don't mind my saying. Same thing with Mulder. If I was your partner I'd have been fucking you silly since, well, since I'd gotten you to trust me. Do you have the slightest clue how hot you are?"

"You... you sound like Frohike..." Scully began and then stopped, licking her lips again which only drew my attention to them.

"Yeah, well I, too, can look past all those brains," I smiled at her again. I can't help it. Scully makes me smile. "Frohike's a man with a clue. Though don't ever tell him I say that."

I offered her some more to drink.

"No," she says.

"OK," I tell her, and put the drink down on the nightstand. "Then we'll just have to find another way to make you relax."

Scully's eyes get really wide as I take off my leather jacket. I was wearing a black T-shirt under it, the sleeve just long enough to cover the join of the prosthesis. I choose the T-shirts to be a little tight, so the sleeves don't ride up and show the join to what's left of my arm.

Then I unlock the handcuffs where they hold her to the headboard. Her arms are all saggy and asleep from being above her head for so long, so she can't do much to fight me. I'm able to get her blazer off without much trouble. She starts fighting in earnest when I go to work on the buttons of her blouse, thrashing left and right to get away from me. I just rehook her cuffs above her head and to the headboard, more toward the middle of the bed this time.

"You know, Dana," I say as I settle her in place, propping her up a little on the pillows as I had before. "I didn't want to have to cut your clothes off, but I guess it's going to have to be that way, isn't it?"

"Why are you doing this, Krycek? What do you want?" she says. Her voice holds a mixture of emotions. Anger, frustration, fear, and a few I don't really understand. But I hear the sadness there, too. I know why she's upset. The only guy who's wanted to fuck her for five years is me.

I don't let it hurt me much. I'll make it worth her while. I know that much about myself. And she'd come away with a different opinion when I was through. No matter what she wanted.

I go to my bag and get out my knife.

Some guys prefer switchblades and some like a good old-fashioned Swiss Army, but I prefer a long-blade hunting knife. The kind you use for skinning deer. I don't know why. It just seems like a knife to me.

Anyway, I get it out and I see Scully's eyes go wide again.

I smile. But I'm not happy.

I go over to the bed and use the knife to cut through the sleeves of her white pseudo-silk blouse. Then I unbutton it the rest of the way and it's off in next to no time. She has on a white silk bra with underwires cut rather low on the top to make her look like she has more cleavage than she does. It's not like Scully really needs underwires for support or anything. She's really rather dainty. Small busted, like the rest of her, but the French say that anything bigger than what can fit in a champagne glass is too much, and I'd bet that Scully would be just about perfect by that measure.

She was watching me warily.

I hear a groan from the next bed over. Mulder is waking up. I go over and check his restraints. They're fine. So I have nothing to worry about.

I go back over to the other bed and unbutton the top of Scully's slacks. Then I undo the zipper to reveal that she isn't wearing nylons. Only navy blue silk panties to match the color of her slacks. Very Scully, underwear matching outerwear, everything perfectly coordinated. It's easy enough to get them off her hips and down to her bound feet, even with the bum arm. Scully's tiny and I can lift her easily enough. With her feet tied together I can keep her from kicking me and also lift her up enough to remove the slacks. I was planning to cut the panties off.

"Krycek, you really don't want to do this," Scully says, glancing over at Mulder like he was going to be able to stop me or something.

"Oh, yeah, Scully, I'm afraid I really do," I tell her and then go over to Mulder and take off his tie. That, along with the one from her trenchcoat will be enough to take care of her legs. I don't want to use rope, too uncomfortable her wrists are already chafing from the cuffs. I want her to enjoy this as much as I'm planning to. Or at least as much as she'll allow herself.

I fastened Mulder's tie to the leg of the bed and then tied a good slip knot in the other end. Scully knew what I was planning, I could see it in how wide her eyes had gotten. She swallowed hard.

"I also told you I wasn't planning to hurt you, and I mean that, too," I say, moving over, sitting on her shins and untying the knot in the belt around her ankles.

"Then what's all this about?" she continued, trying to keep me talking.

"I explained it a minute ago. I know you were listening," I tell her. "Do you want me to go over it again for Mulder?"

He was really starting to wake up. Probably from me moving him to take off his tie. I could hear him shuffling on the other bed and mumbling to himself. "Why do you want to do this, Krycek? What have I ever done to you that you'd want to do this to me?" Scully asks. She still looked scared and hurt, too. She hated being helpless. She never allowed it, even with people she trusted, and I was the last on that list.

"Do what, Scully?" I ask giving her my best boyish innocent look. "Do you really know what I'm doing? Are you sure? Can you look inside my soul and see my true motivations?"

"And what could they be other than to hurt and humiliate me?" she asks.

"I'll show you," I say, freeing her feet only to remove the slacks, shoes, and those stupid knee high nylon things she was wearing instead of nylons and hooking her right foot into its new tie. Then I do the left one with her trenchcoat belt and survey my handiwork. A very bound Dana Scully clad only in underwear wearing a look on her face that mixed hatred, fear and despair. Not quite right. Too vulnerable to be the ass-kicking Agent Scully. I put her shoes back on. Navy blue leather sensible pumps with one and a half inch heels. I never thought I'd find them sexy, but they are really very Scully and Scully is pretty much sex on two legs if you know how to appreciate her. And I do. I like her wearing the shoes. I was going to like her wearing only the shoes even better. "I know you don't believe anything I say, so I'll show you instead."

I sit down next to her on the bed, facing her this time, to her right so I can lean on my good arm. I bend down and kiss her gently on the forehead, right where the cancer used to be. I wish I had been there to do it then, when she needed it and Mulder just ran around yelling at everybody instead of being there for her. Oh, I know I wasn't around, but I have my sources, too and I know what went on.

Scully tries to jerk away, but she's already propped up by the pillows and has nowhere to go. So she turns her head to the side, and I just turn my attentions to her exposed cheek and hairline, and the part of her neck just below her ear. I like that. I'm careful, gentle. I run my hand up under her neck to cradle her head in my hand and suck gently on her small earlobe.

"Stop it, Krycek," she says, but her voice has grown much softer and less vehement, more suited to the intimacy of the moment, really.

"Why should I? It feels good," I say into the softness of her neck. She turns her head again, trying to move my lips away, but the turn of her head allows me to capture her mouth briefly. I'm careful, again. I don't bruise or pounce on her. I let her get away when she jerks her head once more. But I don't stop. Wherever she turns, I find some other good place to turn my attentions, lavishing every bit of exposed flesh above her neck with kisses or tiny bites. I'm in no hurry. It will take as long as it takes.

Scully realizes that her attempts to move away aren't succeeding, so she takes the opposite tack and tries to lie completely still. That's even better for my purpose, however, and I begin working my way down her body with my mouth, trailing hot, serious kisses on her cool skin. Over her collarbones I go until my mouth reaches the swell of her breast where it emerges from the satin of her bra. It's time for that to go. I get my knife out again and make short work of the straps.

"You look better without it," I say, and I mean it. Scully really does have terrific breasts, to go with her lithe little body. Most of the time you don't notice what a great body Scully has because she's got it buried under some dowdy FBI-appropriate pantsuit. Often one cut way too big for her. But naked, she's really something. I'm planning on showing her exactly what.

I lower my head to her neck again showering her with kisses while running my hand up her naked side from the curve of her hip to her shoulder. She starts to squirm again, trying to get away from me, but she can't. I keep it up because I know it feels good, and that's what she's really trying to get away from. I move lower and take one perfect nipple into my mouth. I suck hard, then lick, then suck again.

Scully starts to moan, then stops herself immediately. I smile as I suck her other nipple, cupping her right breast in my hand, flicking my thumb over the one I'd already made hard. I keep my mouth on her breasts as I allow my hand to explore the rest of her, smoothing over her soft body, tracing its contours. I can feel Scully relaxing against my touch.

"Krycek!" Mulder shrieks from the next bed, totally breaking the mood and causing Scully to tense right back up. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"What the fuck does it look like?" I ask angrily, turning to watch him take in the scene in its entirety through pain-muddled hazel eyes. He stares blatantly at the revealed flesh of his partner. Even I am embarrassed for her the way his gaze locks right on her breasts.

"Let go of her!" he orders. Like he always does. Like he can order me.

"Not a chance," I say, and turn my attention back to Scully's body. She was all tense again, now, and locking eyes frantically with Mulder.

"He can't help you," I tell her, kissing her gently on the cheek. "It's OK. I promise. Just ignore him."

"Fight him! Fight him, Scully!" Mulder roots from the other bed.

"She can't, you idiot, now shut up!" I tell him, trying to make Scully relax again.

"Krycek, I'm going to fucking kill you!" Mulder rattles the hell out of the headboard of his bed, rattling Scully at the same time. I can feel her trembling now, under my hand.

Mulder is really pissing me off. I get up from Scully's bed and go over to him, taking my knife along with me. I hold it down in front of his face to show him I'm serious.

"Shut up, Mulder," I tell him very quietly, very seriously. "The only person you're upsetting here is Scully. You know that I don't give a fuck what you think. Do you really want to make this difficult for her? Do you want to make her feel guilty, 'cause she's not?"

"I'm gonna kill you, Krycek," he spits out, eyes narrowed and wild like those of a trapped animal.

"That's what you keep telling me, but I'm still here, aren't I?" I tell him. "Maybe you'll kill me someday, Mulder, but not today. Today I win, and you get to live with the knowledge for a while. But I'm telling you now, lay the fuck off Scully. Or I'll make you very sorry."

"You lay off her, Krycek, and we won't have anything to worry about," Mulder tells me.

"Not an option," I say. "I've waited a long time for this. Now shut up, or I'll shut you up."

Mulder looks me in the eye. He sees I'm serious. To his credit, he shuts up. And I go back to business.

I start us off again, just as slowly, just as carefully, winning Scully's trust, her relaxation against me over inch by inch of her flesh. Mulder watches us balefully the whole time, or at least he's watching, whenever I steal a glance his way. He was really mad, but his watching us was turning me on, well, way less than Scully was, but it was awfully satisfying to have this audience. And that's why I'd put him there, of course. Or at least one of the reasons.

I think it was actually turning Scully on, too. I haven't touched her below the waist yet, she is still wearing those stupid blue satin panties, but I can smell her arousal. And I'm sure Mulder can as well. Even over the stench of the rapidly cooling Chinese food.

I run my hand down her hip and up again inside her left thigh, just brushing the back of my hand lightly over her crotch and then down again inside the thigh. She was wet as hell. I get out my knife and cut through the sides of the panties.

"God damn it, Krycek!" Mulder cries, flailing against the headboard once more so hard that I'm afraid he's going to crack it in half, or pull it off the bed. He'd twisted himself around to face us so he could yell better despite my restraints and I can see that he's as hard as I am.

I don't feel sorry for him.

"What the fuck did I say before, Mulder? Are you deaf?" I snap, balling the panties in my fist. "Now you shut the fuck up, or I'll gag you to make sure you stay quiet."

And if he makes me gag him, I know just what I'll use to do it. I'll jam Scully's blue satin panties right down his throat. It would serve him right. Let him choke on them seeing he's neglected them for so fucking long.

I go over and check the ropes I have around his legs. I shorten them, fastening him firmly to the bed. I don't want him getting in my way as I begin the main event.

On my way back to the bed, I take off my T-shirt. The prosthesis is ugly as hell, but I'm not about to miss the feel of Scully against my chest just for vanity's sake. I take off my shoes and jeans as well. I almost leave my boxers on, but then I drop them. I don't want either of them to have any doubt what I'm intending.

Scully's eyes get really wide. I don't know why, really. I'm a realist, I know I'm not that impressive. A little impressive, but not that impressive. Maybe it's just so long since she's seen an erection that she doesn't remember what it looks like. But she's a doctor. Maybe it's just seeing an erection on me that surprises her.

I don't know why she should be surprised by any man who wants her. I bet she's got old AD Skinner playing with himself during staff meetings and he's about the hardest ass I know. I'm surprised she doesn't make the corpses hard when she's doing an autopsy. OK, maybe that's a little much, but she's really that hot.

I don't say anything, but I get back on the bed with her and start kissing her all over again. She relaxes almost right away this time and I enjoy the way our skin feels rubbing against one another. I know she does too. But there'll be more of that later. Right now I plan on making Agent Dana Scully of the FBI moan. I really want to hear that voice let out a good throaty one. I know she'll make the most fantastic sounds as she comes.

I move my mouth lower, down to the soft flesh beneath her breasts, following a trail blazed by the fingertips of my right hand. As I pay attention to the flat plane of her belly, I slip those fingertips up the inside of her thigh for the second time. Scully trembles, but not from fear, I know. It makes me smile against her stomach.

I move my fingers down her thigh again, teasing. Coming just so close, and then away once more. I dart my tongue in and out of Scully's navel at the same time running the back of one finger over the tiny tip of her swollen clitoris as it peeks out from the lips of her labia. Scully gasps, but no moan yet. Well, I can wait for it. I'm a patient man.

I move my mouth lower, trailing my tongue down her belly to stop just above her pubic bone while lightly slipping one finger inside her to stroke the ready nub of nerve endings that connect directly to her brain. It's always amazing to see a normally composed woman totally lose it when you do that. And Scully's no exception, though she tries her best to hide it. She didn't writhe like she really wanted, but she did make a little squirmy motion that increased the contact, while pretending that she was trying to do just the opposite.

Let her play her games with me. She'd been doing it with Mulder for years, but I wasn't like him. I wasn't about to take an insincere "no" for an answer. I wasn't going to accept it when she said "no" when she really meant "yes". I was going to listen not to her words, but to her body. That was the truth. The mental games were games she'd been taught to play, to rationalize her Catholic guilt to begin with, I suppose, and then to maintain some false notion of dignity that she had in her head. The dignity due her as a "serious" person.

Like coming wantonly in a man's arms and crying out his name could be anything but serious, anything but beautiful. Like it could do anything but make him feel like a god. There's the fucking truth. It's out there all right. It's just all the bullshit we do to ourselves afterward, all the rationalizations, all the fears that we've revealed too much of what we are, that hide the truth.

But sometimes you get to a point, or some of us do, when there's nothing more to hide. When it doesn't matter what you show or what you hide because, well, because no one believes either one. I've seen some people lose themselves entirely at that point, when the act becomes what they are, instead of what they do. But no matter what I do I know who I am. I know what I am. And it's OK if I show me to certain people. Scully's one. And it's not that I trust her, or rather, it's not like she won't bust me if she can, I mean, Scully is another one of the people who knows who she is. No matter what the mental games are that she plays with herself. She doesn't really care what other people think. She really knows Scully, even if there are things she puts aside. Things that she feels are too scary or inconvenient to look at. Those are just things. She's Scully and she knows Scully. Even if she doesn't want to admit it sometimes.

I watched her with her boyfriend Ethan, shortly after her birthday almost six years ago. I watched her play a head game with herself. The, "he won't ask me to marry him if he thinks I'm a slut" game. The "he won't take me seriously if I fuck him like an animal" game. And that asshole was so self-absorbed in getting off, he couldn't even tell that she was holding back, much less guess that it was for a reason. He used her like she was, well, like she was his hand, because it was like she wasn't even there.

After he was done, after he took his nap and went home to whatever pathetic hole he'd crawled out of, I'd wanted to go to her. I'd wanted to make love to her like she deserved, until she screamed and rode me like the mechanical bull at a cowboy bar in West Texas. I'd wanted to fuck the hell out of her and tell her that it was OK, that I still did respect her, that I still did take her seriously. After all the surveillance I'd done, I knew enough about her even then for it to be true. It's much truer now. But at that time we hadn't even been introduced. And I haven't spent more than a few hours around her in the past five years, either. But she's loomed large in my consciousness, and I think the feeling has been somewhat mutual. But mostly because of Mulder, I guess.

I met her because of him. She's loyal to only him. He's waiting for god knows what because of her, but he has to get his hands on me every chance he gets. To bury his fists in my flesh, to give himself some kind of release.

Oddly, that's always the way it's been for us. I was the one that came between them at the beginning of our relationship, Mulder has always worked as hard as he could to keep Scully and me apart. Maybe he's afraid we're going to compare notes, dish to one another about the little cruelties he inflicts with his indifference, or with his attention. But she means much more to me than just some appendage of Mulder. It makes me hope that he does it out of fear of what we might reveal to each other, not because he's really so narcissistic that he imagines everything is about him.

But right now, this is about Scully and me. Mulder's there. He should be, to watch and to learn, but he's not really part of it. Even if he wants to be. And I've already seen that he does.

He can't be part of it because I'm the one slipping one, then two fingers inside her tight vagina and pumping in and out. I'm the one running my tongue over the hot pink flesh of her clitoris. I'm the one making her squirm and gasp, even as she tries to fight the pleasure of it. I'm the one who can taste her sweetness, feel her heat, bury my face in pure heaven.

And Scully doesn't mind. Not really. She doesn't mind that it's me. And it doesn't have to be him. I think she was getting close to convincing herself of the last part. That's her lesson in all of this. Mulder's not the only game in town and there are plenty of other people out there ready, willing and able to play along. If she'll only let them.

I don't really mind that she keeps sneaking glances over at Mulder whenever she thinks I'm not looking. It's really part of it for me, too. Part of the reason I'm doing it the way I am. With both of them here. I mean, I could have taken her in the other room. I could even have taken her in the other room and left the door open so he could hear what was happening but couldn't see anything. But that wouldn't have been enough. He had to be there, or it just wasn't complete. Not for her, or for me, either. The lesson would be lost if he couldn't share. 'Cause in a strange way this is also about all three of us.

And I will admit it's also about power. That's one thing I have always lacked in my relationship with Mulder and Scully. Unless I have some information they don't or am actively jerking Mulder around, they have it all and I'm at their mercy. I don't like that. Mulder abuses the privilege.

That's another thing I have to show them. I don't. I know how to use power. I don't just fumble around with it like he does. Right now, I'm proving a couple of things.

One, that it doesn't have to be Mulder for Scully to feel good, and two, that in a lot of ways I'm a better man than he is for her. At least I can admit and express what I feel. And Scully can reap the benefit of that. What does she get with him? Fooling around with the shower massager and wishing it was Mulder? Touching herself on the other side of a hotel wall while listening to him watching porn next door? How sad. How pathetic. She deserves so much more, so much better. Hell, she deserves better than me, but I'm what she's got - a living human man who wants her.

And the fact is, she doesn't mind. She thinks she should mind a lot more than she actually does. It's a problem Scully has. She thinks she should do a lot of things when she really wants to do something else. It's her problem with Mulder. She thinks she shouldn't do Mulder, when in fact, she should. And he'd be totally willing - but here's the part that's impossible for Scully - he'd be totally willing if she admitted she wanted it. I don't know if she can admit she wants it ever but admitting she wanted Mulder to do her like Catherine the Great and her barnyard friend would mean she'd have to admit all sorts of other things that she's afraid to look at.

But the fact is, she's relaxed and has realized I'm not about to do anything kinky. OK, nothing kinkier than tying her to a hotel bed wearing nothing but sensible leather pumps and fucking her in front of her partner. And, because I do know what I'm doing, she's enjoying things way more than she would have liked. It's almost funny to watch her trying not to come, locked in some weird battle of will with me and with herself. But I'm not about to let her win. She has to come to remember what it feels like to be more than wanted. She has to come in front of him, and more than once, or I just won't be satisfied the lesson is going to take.

She's close, trying to keep her breathing even and tensing herself up so that what I'm doing won't feel as good as it does. It isn't working of course, and it only takes some minor adjustments to my technique and a hard suck on her swollen clitoris to send her over the edge. She keeps herself from screaming, just gasping loudly, but I would have known what was happening even if I wasn't feeling her contracting against my fingers or writhing against my mouth.

As Scully comes, Mulder moans on the next bed over. I can hardly keep myself from laughing at the mournful sound of it. But I wasn't done yet. Not by a longshot. It wasn't enough just to make her want me. I had to have her, too. So he'd have to remember that every time he thought of her this way. Every time. I'd be there, too. It's the ultimate revenge for all he's done to me, now that I let myself admit it. It's almost worth the arm because it cripples Mulder's ideal vision of his St. Scully Madonna in the same way. An intrusive fact to leave the perfect vision forever incomplete. His perfect Saint coming wildly underneath someone Mulder views as a lower life form and me missing my left arm - not quite a fair trade, but it goes a little way toward alleviating my pain, anyway.

I work my way slowly up Scully's body. Kissing her damp flesh with the attention it deserves. She is tiny, but God, she is perfect. I really could do this every day for the rest of my life and not be bored.

"Krycek..." she begins, but I stop her with a kiss, rubbing my very erect cock against her warm belly. I can hear Mulder hiss from the next bed, but he knows better than to say anything. Scully doesn't kiss me back, that would be too much to hope for, but she doesn't stop me this time, and I take full advantage, tasting her full lips at length. I would very much like to put my tongue in her mouth, but I know that would be really pushing it, and I don't much fancy the idea of her biting me. I wouldn't put it past her, even after she'd come like that.

But it is definitely time for some colossal fucking. And she's more than ready for me, I know that already. I kiss her neck and watch her look over at Mulder again. I know he's watching. It was absolutely the ideal moment. I change my position and lower myself between her perfect thighs.

I'll just say right now that it has been quite a while since I've had unprotected sex with anybody. But I know that Scully is clean, and I sure as hell am. You don't get infected with the black oil and not come out of it with a physical exam that makes some forms of torture look really good by comparison. Nobody was going to catch anything, and I couldn't make her pregnant. No consequences. You'd think it was the Seventies or something.

I bring us together slowly, allowing her time to accommodate me. I'm not the hugest guy on earth, but I'm definitely above average in the cock department. And Scully is small. And she hasn't been getting any for a good long while. I wanted to be very careful. She'll undoubtedly know she's had sex tomorrow, but there's no way I want to hurt her.

God it is good. Better than I'd imagined even with my fingers inside her. It's like burying myself in a fist full of warm honey. She'd been that sweet when I'd tasted her. It's the best thing I can think of, I can't keep myself from moaning.

Mulder swears into his pillow.

I begin slowly thrusting into Scully. The unfortunate necessity of having had to tie her up diminishes the pleasure of it, really, because she can't wrap her thighs around me and the sensation is necessarily localized, but it's still awfully damned good. And she thinks so, too, locking those blue eyes to mine and totally ignoring the small whimpers coming from the next bed over. Just like he was a lonely puppy separated from his mother instead of the guy she's supposed to be in love with.

I'm touching her and kissing her everywhere I can reach while I move inside her. And she's enjoying it as much as I am, though she tries to stifle her moans and gasps as she had the first time. Poor Scully, I really want her to let herself yell just once. I know she really wants to, but she fights all the while for control. Not of me, but of herself, like it matters to anyone. Mulder and I love her no matter what she does.

I establish a pretty firm rhythm and Scully responds in kind, lifting her hips mindlessly to meet my thrusts, not aware any more that she's supposed to be trying to get away. She's close again, and that's good because so am I.

I begin ramming into her harder and harder, our bodies connecting wetly in a primordial union, like we were the first man and woman on the earth to ever make love. Or the last. Or maybe we were simply the last people on earth who ever should have had this moment. But I'd made it happen. Not because it was inevitable, but because it was barely possible, and the hope of doing the impossible is something that I really need. I can admit that. Because I know myself.

I know it isn't going to take much more, so I merely adjust the angle of impact somewhat, like a ballistics officer cranking the howitzer up another notch and Scully comes again, this time moaning low in her chest in animal desire.

The contractions against my cock are also too much for me, I'm afraid. I was hoping to bring her off more than once before I was through, but I'd let myself get a little too into it. A little too into her. I can't maintain the detachment I usually cultivate when I'm doing it to prove something or to achieve some goal.

I moan again, matching her, my orgasm crashing on the end of hers, my body filling her just as it should. I let myself lose consciousness, not passing out, but losing awareness of everything but the sensation of her, of me, of us together. Together in the moment, with him on the outside for once.

I come back to myself to hear Mulder sobbing and cursing under his breath. Writhing in agony, or something, on the next bed over.

Scully was simply quiet, calm as she cradled me inside her. Her eyes meeting mine with understanding, or at least that's what I think it is. I raise myself up and kiss her again, while we are still joined like that, in the aftermath of passion. She doesn't kiss me back, but again, she doesn't stop me. I think she knows how much I need to do it, how much I need to show her what it really is, so that she'll understand me and the lesson. I think she knows it's not empty for me now, like it so often is.

You have to get good at a lot of things to do what I do. Sometimes your life depends on what you know how to do, and you never know exactly what kind of knowledge you'll need at any time, or what you'll have to do to get what you need to survive or complete your assignment. It's one of the things I like best about it, actually. I like having to be resourceful, to live by my wits. It's put me in a bad position or two, OK, a lot more than two, but I've really lived my life, you know? How many people can honestly say that?

And you also have to be willing to do things that most people wouldn't. Whether it's pulling the trigger, or going down on someone to get some information, you have to be willing to do it, and you have to be good at it, or you won't get what you need. And sometimes, if you're a pro, if you're really suited to the life, you even get to enjoy it. The doing things you wouldn't part. It becomes something a lot like art.

I mean, I've done things in my life that I never could have imagined even five years ago. It's mind expanding. Like a college education, or traveling the world, which is another benefit of the job, of course. I know a lot of stuff. I've done a lot. I have a lot to bring to the party. It makes partying with me more fun. It makes a lot of things more fun, actually.

And I was planning to make sure that both Scully and Mulder, no matter how reluctant they might be, benefited from my expanded horizons, my worldly education. They were responsible for a lot of it, weren't they? I mean, five years ago I had a cozy little job at the FBI, doing the same things they do only reporting to different superiors. Now? Well now I am what I am and I have them to thank for a lot of it.

Might as well share the love.

Of course that was really fucking flip. But it's also true.

Reluctantly, I withdraw from Scully's body. But I can't sever the connection just yet. Carefully, I pull myself up next to her and rest against the pillows by her side. I slip my good arm around her back so she can rest her head against my shoulder if she wants. Gently I kiss her forehead, and then her cheek and then run my lips over her jawline.

She just looks at me with those cool, blue eyes of hers. Like pools of glacial ice, really, unless you know where to look inside them to find the tiny, hot flame of her soul. She licks her full lips and I wait for her to say something snide. She has that look about her, the Scully waiting to pounce with a good one look.

But then Mulder whimpers again from the next bed over and totally wrecks it. That little whiny sound robs me of my just reward, and Scully of the smart ass thing she was planning to say to preserve what she feels is her lost dignity. To prove to us both just how little it had meant. When it actually had been fan-fucking-tastic.

Scully glances over at Mulder, trying to assess his state, I guess. I would rate it right around homicidal or maybe suicidal by now, if the guilt over not being able to spare her the desecration of my cock has taken him over. I just can't bring myself to look at him yet, not wanting that pathetic sight to wreck my closure with Scully. She's apparently satisfied with what she sees, though, and she turns back and looks at me again, blue eyes locking tight with mine.

Not wanting to upset him further, she doesn't say anything more, placing me in collusion with her like the parents of a sensitive child who had to be spared the knowledge that his favorite pet has just gone to hamster heaven. Apparently we are going to have to bury it in the backyard after he's gone to sleep and tell him it ran away. I don't want to do that. I want to tell him the little bastard exploded from eating too many hamster pellets, but Scully's eyes keep me silent. She has that kind of power.

The power to cloud men's minds, apparently. And right now I don't think there's anything I wouldn't do for her.

I pull her closer to my body and rest my head beside hers on the pillow, on top of her arm, still cuffed to the headboard. I shut my eyes.

I just want to see how long she'll let me lay there like that, reveling in the feel of her naked against my body, the warmth and scent of her. The comfort of another human presence.

She actually leaves me alone long enough for me to fall asleep, and it isn't until Mulder gives his headboard a good rattle that I wake up again. A quick glance at the clock informs me that I'd slept for about forty minutes. Not too bad, and now I'm ready for the next portion of the afternoon's entertainment.

Providing I have the stomach for it.

He's being such a whining sack of shit that I can hardly stand the thought of touching him. When the shoe is on the other foot, and I'm doing my best "Oh, big Mulder, please don't hurt me!" act, he's actually pretty damned hot. Even his slapping me around is enjoyable, providing he doesn't hit me too hard. But right now?

I have to admit, I don't like weaklings. And while I had been playing right into Mulder's biggest weakness, I hadn't expected him to turn into a quivering mass of Jell-O over it. Rather I had expected him to lay in wait for me like a trapped wolf, ready to gnaw off its own foot so it could take a chunk out of the one responsible for its pain.

Instead, whiner boy.

I give Scully a parting kiss and get up to see what I'm going to do with Mulder.

I walk over to the other bed and do a quick check on his restraints again. They are holding. And the headboard is still firmly attached to the bed, despite all of his rattling.

Mulder looks bad. The bruise on his head where I'd hit him with the pistol has begun to come out in earnest, dark against the smooth skin of his forehead. But the worst part is the partly dried tear streaks all down his face. He quite literally looks like he's lost his best friends, when actually all that had happened was that two of them had just fucked one another.

I actually feel sorry for the bastard.

And at least pity isn't disgust.

I go to the bathroom get a washcloth and wet it with cool water from the tap. Then I go over to Mulder's bed, sitting down on the floor about level with his chest, so I can reach him and we can talk.

His eyes are closed, but he isn't sleeping. I just think he can't bring himself to look at us any more. Very occasionally another tear spills out from beneath his closed eyelids. This man has quite a capacity for feeling sorry for himself, that's for damned sure. I know a lot of people think it's compassion, but he's a lot more sorry for himself than for Scully. He would have to be blind and deaf to not know she'd enjoyed it. He's sorry for his failure as a man. His failure to protect her.

That's what drove him so frantically after Duane Barry. It was guilt. He hadn't realized how much Scully really meant to him until she'd been gone a while. In their case, absence had indeed made the heart grow fonder.

But it still hadn't stopped Mulder from fucking that Kristin chick out in California. But, of course, I think that was as much about getting himself killed out of guilt as anything. But he'd still fucked her.

Oh, yeah, I know. My spies are everywhere.

It was the same old thing again, here. He was feeling sorry for himself because he'd failed again. Because he's not invincible. Because he can't stop people from taking away the things that matter to him.

But what he doesn't realize is none of us can. Hell, if we could, I'd still have a left arm that wasn't made of plastic.

I take the cool, wet washcloth and carefully touch it to the bruise on his forehead letting the coolness seep into his skin. Mulder grunts but doesn't open his eyes. Carefully, I smooth the washcloth over his face, erasing the stains of his tears.

He looks at me, just as I brush the rough terrycloth over the corner of his mouth. I watch as his full lips twist in something a lot like hate.

"For God's sake, Krycek, would you put some clothes on?" he says, taking a good long look at my naked body, as I sit on the floor next to his bed.

I smile at him winningly in best doe-eyed Jr. FBI butt-boy fashion.

A light dawns and he has the wherewithal to drop some of the self-pity for a bit of fear.

"What's the matter, Mulder?" I say, pitching my voice low, putting my face right near his. "See something you like?"

Mulder actually cringes at the suggestion. This is going to be more of a challenge than I'd thought. He has apparently converted all of his repressed feelings for me into rage. Quite a dandy job of sublimation. Sometimes you can tell he has that psychology degree seeing he can work himself into such interesting states of mind.

"There's nothing I like about you, Krycek," he manages after a long pause to gather his scattered wits. But he isn't looking at my face when he says it.

As I figured it would, his gaze and sharp words are doing wonders for making me forget the whining from earlier. I loll back against the side of the bed, stretching out my legs and resting the back of my head on the edge of the mattress somewhere around Mulder's ribs, so I can still watch the expression on his face as he surreptitiously eyes my body.

I'm being pretty fucking obvious and I can see Scully's eyes go wide where she is laying on the other bed. I wink at her when Mulder won't see and am rewarded with those glorious eyes going wider still.

She knows I'm not going to hurt him. And I sort of want her to be in on it.

It wasn't like I had any big vision of the three of us passing around a Morley after a round of cosmic orgasms or anything, but my point had never been to upset Scully. And she's incredibly protective of Mulder. She knows she can take it herself, but she worries about him. With none of the irritating self-pitying bullshit that's so wrapped up in her partner's equally real concern for her.

However, she also has first-hand knowledge, no, even better, first-hand carnal knowledge of me, and she knows I'm not in it to hurt anybody. Humble, maybe, when it comes to Mulder, but hurt? No.

"I really think that the problem is that you've got too many clothes on, Mulder," I say lightly. "You're just jealous that Scully and I are more comfortable than you are."

"Yeah, I really expect to be more comfortable when tied to a bed in a cheap motel," Mulder replies. "You're just not very good at this, are you, Krycek?"

"You could ask Scully about that," I say mildly.

I'm rewarded by new thrashing from Mulder and a string of creatively hooked-together expletives that make him sound like an ABD in Literature that somehow wound up in the Merchant Marine.

Mulder threw himself sideways toward me again, hands grasping the air in a vain attempt to reach me. I just used the opportunity to get ahold of his belt, bracing with my prosthesis and unbuckling with my good hand.

"What the fuck are you doing, Krycek?" Mulder rages, thrashing as I hold him in place by the front of his trousers.

"What I said, Mulder," I tell him. "It's time for you to join the party and you've got way too many clothes on."

"Stop it, Krycek!" Mulder says, setting up a pretty steady stream of protest as I tug his shirt out of his pants and unbutton while he thrashes around, popping only two of the buttons as he pulls himself away from my grip.

"Look I can cut that suit off you if you want, but you won't have anything to wear later," I tell him. "So I'd calm down if I were you. You're gonna have to play and you're gonna have to do it by the rules I set. So you might as well give it up now, Mulder, because you are gonna give it up."

"So I guess we get to add "perverted" to the lying, cowardly, scum-sucking, traitorous, murdering, son of a bitch, then, huh?" Mulder says quietly, stopping some of his thrashing. That's one of the things I really love about him, you never lack for decent conversation, or clever comebacks.

"It does take one to know one, Mulder," I say, with my good little boy smile that I used so often when I first worked with him at the Bureau. Then I one-up him. "And that's perverted, lying, cowardly, *cock-sucking*, traitorous, murdering, son of a bitch, thank you very much."

He was so shocked he actually lay still long enough for me to climb onto the bed and plant a knee firmly in his back. I uncuff his hands from the headboard and set his left hand free. I peel his suit jacket and dress shirt off his lifeless, blood-deprived arm, before turning around and doing the same thing on the right.

Of course the bastard is also wearing an undershirt. Like he'd planned it just to thwart me.

I don't know what it is about Mulder. He's really got an absolutely fantastic body and he insists on covering it up at all times with as many layers of clothing as possible. Unless you give him drugs, from what I understand. Then he drops trou in no time flat.

But, I mean, he buries himself under three or four layers of fabric, acts like a spooky geek and he still has the gall to wonder why he never gets laid. It's kind of incredible when you think about it. I mean, who does he think he is, Cinderella? That someone's going to come along and pluck him out of his little pile of ashes and carry him off somewhere to a golden palace in the sky to fuck his brains out for all eternity?

No one in the world wants to work that hard.

Except Scully, and that's just because she's the same way, herself.

If they both weren't so god-damned repressed they'd probably have incredible sex-lives because they're both fucking gorgeous. Which is really quite an amazingly stupid observation even for me. Repression equals no sex, duh, Alex.

Anyway, the fact that I can appreciate Mulder's looks and even look forward to getting myself a piece of his tight, muscular ass, does not mean that I'm gay. I'm not. If I go into a room and am scoping it for a possible bed-mate, I still find myself checking out all of the women present first.

But, and this is the beautiful and mind-expanding part of the whole deal of doing what I do, if I don't find a woman I like, I move right on to checking out the guys. Because, boys and girls, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't really matter a whole hell of a lot whose mouth is on the other end of the head you're getting, or what bodily orifice you're ramming yourself into until you come. You still come. It's physiological as much as anything else, or masturbation wouldn't work. And when everybody's on your dance card, you spend a lot fewer lonely nights.

OK, so actually you don't. Or at least I don't, because I can't ever tell anyone anything about me, no one really knows me and a body is just a body. You get off, but you get no real connection with anyone. But this wasn't like that, because Mulder knows me. He might not like me, but he knows me. And that's what really does make a difference.

It might not be love, but it isn't indifference, either. And I want to feel something for once. Scully had given me the first hit of that, and like a junkie who's been clean for years, all I could think about was wanting more. More connection, with people who know me, I'm greedy for it. And what Mulder and I feel for one another is intense. And it is connection, no matter what else it is.

Ruthlessly, I hook Mulder's hands back up to the headboard. Then I go over to the nightstand to get my knife.

Mulder just looks at me calmly. Like he isn't frightened at all. He's good at that. I've seen him face down madmen in my time. He's a cool customer. But it sort of pisses me off that he is treating me like I'm Duane Barry or someone like him. He knows better than that. He knows I'm not a nutcase. I might be unreliable. I might double cross him, but it's always for a reason. I don't deserve this kind of contempt. Maybe other kinds, but not this kind.

I pull the undershirt out of Mulder's unbelted trousers and cut it open from hem to neck, taking care to draw the cold blunt edge of the blade along Mulder's flesh as I do. I want to fuck him. I don't want him to try to fuck with me, so the threat is necessary. Two short flicks of the blade at the shoulder seams and Mulder's undershirt goes the way of Scully's bra and panties.

Mulder glares at me, trying to stare me down as best he can face down on the bed with his arms tied above him.

"What do you think you're doing, Krycek?" he asks.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked," he says.

"Oh, you know," I tell him. "You just don't want to look at it too closely yet. But you'll come around. Honestly, you will. You just need the right kind of lesson."

"Like you could teach me anything, Krycek," Mulder says bitterly.

"You'd be surprised who you learn things from in this world, Mulder," I tell him, grabbing onto his trousers again and half flipping him over so I can work on the zipper. "For instance, I've learned one hell of a lot from you."

This time he fights me, but he's in a very awkward position, with his legs still fastened to the frame of the bed. And the fact is, he has a messed up head, even more than usual for Mulder. A simple knee to the chest allows me to get the trousers undone. I let him flop back face down in an attempt to protect himself, but I soon have the trousers and his boxers over his hips and down to his knees, causing another round of thrashing and cursing.

I let himself wear himself out again, and then do the same thing I did to Scully, I sit on his legs and untie his feet enough to get the pants and boxers off him and onto the floor. Then I change my mind about what I'm planning and flip Mulder over onto his back. It's important that we are very clear about what is happening here, and I need to be able to see his face. At least at first.

The first thing I notice, is that Mulder is hung. I mentioned that I'm no slouch, but Jesus H. Christ! I'm actually really glad that I had no intention of letting him fuck me because that would take some getting used to to say the very least. The second thing I notice, causing a corresponding twitch in my own groin, is that he isn't entirely opposed to the idea of what I have planned no matter what sorts of names he calls me. Although maybe it was my definition of myself as a cocksucker that piqued his interest.

I bet it has been a while since anybody has had Mulder's cock in their mouth, and he, hetero-prejudices aside, is not minding the idea. Even if it's me. Or maybe because it's me.

Yeah, I know about where I rate in Mulder's grand vision of the universe. It's right around the same level as pond scum, but that isn't how it should be. It isn't really even where I rate in reality, just in the weirdo cosmology he's created for himself to - Put Things In Perspective. I want him to figure that out. I want to show him different and to know that he knows.

OK, now I had actually been afraid to stick my own dick into Scully's mouth because I couldn't be assured of her goodwill. But this is where I get the opportunity to show Mulder mine.

He'd have to trust that I wasn't planning to bite him. Just like he'd had to trust me to translate when we'd gone to Russia together after he and Skinner had taken great pleasure in insulting me and using me for a punching bag. And if he hadn't fucking gotten us caught at the Tunguska gulag, he would have found his trust not to be misplaced, either. But when it came right down to getting my ass out of there, or rotting in comradely torture with Mulder, it was no choice at all. My ass is the most important thing on earth. All else is secondary. Even Mulder.

I blatantly look right at Mulder's semi-erect cock and shake my head.

"Denial," is the only thing I say, and then I sit down on the bed next to him and look at his face for a while.

He is watching me warily. Waiting to see what I'll do. And he doesn't say anything, which is always significant for Mulder, because he's a talker. Talks fucking non-stop sometimes, maybe just to fill up the emptiness of his life with something, even if it's as ephemeral as words. I know. I've been there, myself.

I let him watch me for a while. We stare into one another's eyes, almost like lovers. Or maybe just like the cobra and the mouse, waiting for the movement that forces the strike.

Mulder lies very still and we just look at one another, but he gradually gets harder, and I'll admit I do too. Maybe it's the anticipation alone, but I really don't think so. Maybe it's just that it's been so long since anyone else has touched him, almost five years since Kristen, and she was the last. But if it only was that, there wouldn't be the intensity in his look. Mulder's an intense guy, but only about what he cares about. And he was looking at me like he was the cobra and I was the mouse, instead of the other way around.

Maybe he's thinking about what he would be doing to me, if our situations were reversed. Admittedly, the thought kind of turns me on, but I know he'd be kicking the shit out of me, whether he intended to fuck me later or not. Violence is a part of it for him, maybe because he hates the fact that he feels what he does.

And not because he's a homophobe. Mulder's pretty much not prejudiced against anything or anyone, especially not sexually. I mean, I've been in his apartment. I've waited there. I've seen his porno mags, and they contain all sorts of interesting things, some of them way wilder than anything I've actually done. I wonder how many of them he's actually tried, or if he simply contents himself with looking? Looking seemed to interest him enough with me and Scully. So his prejudice isn't sexual. Again, like Scully's it's a mind-game that he plays with himself. The good guys versus the bad guys. And I'm on the bad guy side, so he is compromising his loyalty if he has any truck with me. If he touches me. If he lets me touch him.

And the worst part of all, is if he actually wants me to do it. For any reason.

And he does.

And it's created the stalemate of the cobra and the mouse.

But it's my game. I'm making the rules. And the rules say that I get to be the cobra, no matter what else happens in the rest of our lives.

I reach out my right hand and touch his shoulder. The left one, and I let my fingers trace the star-shaped mark there left by Scully's bullet. The one she fired to save us both from Mulder's blind, drug-addled rage.

Mulder's head twitches and he looks infuriated.

"God damn you, Krycek!" he says quietly - with feeling.

"She was right to do it, you know," I tell him, still lightly running my fingers over his skin. "It would have wrecked your life to kill me. You've got to wait to do it somewhere where it won't make a difference. Somewhere you can get rid of my body without anyone the wiser."

Mulder actually looks affronted at the suggestion, though he's done nothing but threaten me since he woke up.

"Oh, excuse me for making a professional observation," I say sarcastically, with a not winning smile, but a genuine one.

Mulder relaxes slightly, and I let my hand move a little farther in its stroking, upward to the long muscles of his neck and back down to the shoulder again.

He gives me a rather shrewd look.

"If you think you're winning me over with this, Krycek, you're nuts," he says. "I'm just waiting for my opportunity."

"Yeah, tell yourself that, Mulder," I say. But it has worked, he's relaxed and isn't expecting me to hurt him. I grin, then. Subtlety is obviously not the way to go here.

Looks like Fox Mulder, Porno-boy, requires more of the direct approach.

Before he knows what hit him, I have my fist wrapped around his hard, thick cock and my mouth around it like a kid with one of those jumbo Pixy Stix things guys my age used to get when we were little. You know the ones with the stuff like crystallized Sweet Tarts or sugary Kool-Aid mix inside that you used to try to get down in one, big suck before the powdery nature of it made you choke in front of your friends and the cloying sweetness made you cough.

I keep my eyes glued on his face the whole time and the first thing that I see run over it is absolute panic. He probably figures I'm going to bite it off or something. But instead I slowly lower myself down on him as far as I can go. But as I mentioned, even though I've learned to suppress my gag reflex like a master, he's hung, so I have to wrap my hand around the base and apply some pressure there as well.

Mulder's eyes go wide. I think he's even more shocked to be doing this than I am. But what I like best about it is the way he keeps his eyes glued on me. Not a glance for Scully now, though I shoot one her way and find that she's paying close attention. Maybe taking notes for later, I don't know.

As I lower myself down, I apply some firm pressure to the underside of his cock, pressing my tongue against the ridge there and then licking upward like a guy with serious intentions on a popcicle. Mulder gives a gratifying gasp, much as Scully had when I was doing the equivalent to her. I run my tongue around the head of his penis and then very slowly take him down inside my mouth again, sucking hard as his eyes begin to close at the pleasure of it. He moans this time. Better and better.

His body is tense again, but this time in pleasure and anticipation, not in apprehension. I don't mind watching the ropy muscles in his arms pop as he pulls against the handcuffs, or the tension in his long thighs as he stiffens and fights against the things I'm doing to his sex. His vocalizations are in rhythm with my ministrations to his cock, and I really like the sound of his voice all husky with lust.

Unbidden, that scene in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" where Dr. Frank N. Furter seduces first Janet then Brad using exactly the same techniques and exactly the same script pops into my mind. I nearly laugh and drop Mulder out of my mouth. But I get control over my wayward sense of humor and buckle back down to the work ahead.

Or the work of giving head, whichever you prefer.

And usually it is work too, you know. Part of the job. Blow some guy to get what you want. I like it better when I let them blow me, but usually they want it. They like the looks of themselves with some guy young enough to be their son sucking on their cock like it was a Tootsie-pop. Makes 'em feel powerful. Makes 'em feel young.

Same reason some guys go after thirteen year-old girls, I guess.

I'll never be into that.

I just want to be with someone who gives a shit, you know? I guess it's what we all want when we're not doing it for the job. Or for the power. Or playing sick little head-games with ourselves.

And Mulder cares - I'll give him that. Even though he doesn't want to. Even though his every moan is wrenched from him unwillingly, every thrust of his hips into my mouth is a betrayal of his self-control still he has to give it to me. It's my due. And that's what makes this not just another blow job for me, too.

I can hardly wait to fuck him.

I actually wish he wasn't quite so big, or that I had my other hand back. Like there's a second that goes by that I don't wish the latter, but I'm not really able to give his balls the attention they deserve without taking my hand off the base of his cock. I spare him a thumb, though, and look up to gauge the reaction.

Mulder opens his ever-shifting green-brown eyes and looks at me with my mouth wrapped around him. He's getting really close, I can tell by the way his stomach muscles are tensing and his breath is coming in rapid pants.

"So I see why it's always been so easy to kick your ass, Krycek," Mulder gasps out, a smart ass even when he's this close to coming.

It was a second-long debate whether to give him a scare with the teeth or to suck him off and make him come. But I could tell he was in a bad way, conflicted by how much he really was enjoying it, and I decided to go easy on him. Or to go down hard on him, actually, which is what I did.

To say that it didn't take long after that is a gross understatement. With the insult, Mulder blew his wad in more ways than one. And I, in much more politeness than the man ever showed to me or deserved from me, swallow.

With one more long lick, I slip my mouth up his length and crawl quickly up his body, still tensed and wracked by the force of his orgasm, to place a long, sweet kiss on his full lips - a completion of sorts for us. It's what I'd wanted to do the first time I kissed him, but I'd chickened out at the last second, fearing he'd grow too angry to actually listen to what I had to say and had gone for the cheek instead. I'd let him rationalize it as some sort of Eastern European thing to prove I was telling the truth. From me. Who was born and raised in America just as much as he was.

Like he doesn't know what's hit him, Mulder begins to kiss me back. Several long, wonderful seconds of real contact before he feels my cock brushing at his hip and freaks out. But I'm satisfied. It was a lot more than I'd gotten from Scully.

Mulder jerks his head to the side, severing the contact of our mouths.

"God damn it, Krycek!" he pants. "I can't do anything about your sick rape fantasies, but let's not pretend it's true love, OK?"

"You can pretend if you want to, Mulder," I say with a smile. He'd kissed me back and no amount of swearing or calling me names was going to erase the fact that we both knew it.

So I did what I'd done to Scully. I don't try again for his lips, but I certainly do pay a lot of attention to the sensitive skin of his neck, his earlobe, and the star-shaped scar on his shoulder that he'd gotten because of me. I touch his upper body with my lips and as much of the rest of him as I can reach with my hand. Running it over the hard planes of his chest and stomach, tickling the hairs that grow lightly over his body, I touch him the way he wants to touch me and can only sublimate into violence.

And, because Mulder is a human being with more than his share of sexuality, he just can't keep up the tension or the disgust at someone doing something to him that feels so good. Something that he likes. He does what I want him to. He relaxes.

But because I've taken my time, as I did with his partner, he was already hardening again against my thigh as I ran my own body over his on the cheap motel bed. My turn now.

And for the same reasons I didn't trust Scully, I sure as hell had no intention of letting Mulder get anywhere near me with his teeth. And, I'd come prepared. I wasn't here to hurt anybody, after all.

I look over at the other bed as I figure the best way to get Mulder into the proper position for what I want. Scully's frowning, but I can see her hips twitch slightly as I run my tongue over Mulder's nipple, and my hand over the washboard muscles of his abdomen. I idly wonder which one of us she's imagining fucking, or if she's hoping for a Scully sandwich of some sort. God knows, it's something to hope for, all right.

If only we could get Mulder to go for it.

But I don't want to let myself get distracted. Not before I'm done. There's plenty of time for more Scully later.

Trailing wet kisses down Mulder's body, I move back toward the foot of the bed. He's watching me, but calmly, openly. He has no idea what I'm going to do, you can tell. I think he's hoping I'll suck him off again.

But it's my turn now. Only fair, you know.

I leave the bed and get out my bottle of vodka.

"What are we going to do now, Krycek, flaming shots?" Mulder cocks an eyebrow at me sardonically.

"Just you," I say, pouring some into one of the remaining little, plastic cups. "Want it straight or with some OJ?"

"What's this about?" he asks.

"Krycek!" Scully says sharply from the other bed. She knows exactly what I'm doing. She looks frightened and glances nervously at her partner, who remains utterly calm, to his credit. But then, he remained calm with Duane Barry, too. I still can't shake the comparison. It's way too fucking unflattering, and so completely off the mark.

"Let him have a few, Scully," I say. "Really, it's better for everyone."

She looks angry but she doesn't argue. She knows it's better, especially for Mulder.

"Why?" Mulder asks.

"Because, you idiot, it makes you easier to control," I tell him, holding the cup to his lips. "Now you can drink it like a good boy, or I can make you drink it, and that will get messy. It's good vodka, the kind you like. Why not enjoy?"

"Because I don't enjoy anything that has anything to do with you, Krycek," Mulder replies.

"Could have fooled me," I say, cocking my head to indicate his once more prominent erection.

"It's a mouth on a cock, it's not love," Mulder says. "You could be anyone."

"Oh, hurt me some more, baby," I say, and put the vodka to his lips, about a double shot and begin to pour. Mulder drinks. It is good vodka, after all, and he knows he can take a lot more than that before he needs to worry. Why argue at the beginning? There's always time for it later.

I pour him another glass as soon as the first is gone and add an oh, so slight amount of orange juice. Mulder frowns as I hold it to his lips, but in true macho man fashion drinks it down without protest. Stupid.

I pour a third glass, adding a bit more OJ this time. I don't want him puking it all back up from alcohol poisoning, after all. I want it to hit his nervous system like a hammer so the only screaming I'll hear out of him is my name when he comes.

OK, so we all can dream.

I take a sip of it first, this time. Want to get the taste of him out of my mouth, I guess. Then I give the rest of it to Mulder, a little at a time. And then I get a fourth glass going. His eyes are starting to glaze a bit, but he keeps trying to stare me down. What an idiot. No, what a beautiful idiot.

He is beautiful, you know. I'm over the point where I can't admit that I find another man to be beautiful. It's aesthetic, really, looking at someone like Mulder naked, with that beautiful muscled body of his. Like looking at Michelangelo's David. If you call that beautiful, people don't look at you funny or call you a faggot.

Now if David was a real guy and you blew him or fucked him up the ass in the middle of the Galleria dell'Academia you'd probably get yourself in some trouble. Or maybe not. But I guess life really can imitate art, because Mulder has an even better body than Michelangelo's statue does. His head is in proportion, for one thing. Oh yeah, I realize Michelangelo did it on purpose because he knew the statue was going to be on a pedestal and he wanted it to look normal from the floor of the room, but it's still weird as all hell and it's something I notice. Another thing Mulder has all over on David, besides the fact that he doesn't stand like a transvestite hooker trying to pick up a trick, is that he has a much better unit. And while that's not the first thing I notice about a guy, Mulder's is nice to say the least.

But musing about fine art doesn't get you any, so I give Mulder another drink, and can see his head is really swimming now.

To test my theory, I move back up to the head of the bed and kiss him again. And damn me if he doesn't kiss back until he remembers he's supposed to hate me. But I had him for longer this time. The vodka really was a good idea.

So I head right back down to the foot of the bed and sit back down on his shins.

"Wha?" he says, intelligently. "What are you doing, Krycek?"

"Making adjustments," I answer. I get both his feet free. That's when I notice that Mulder has really big feet. I guess it is true what they say about the correlation. At least in his case.

Before he realizes what I'm up to, I get him flipped over on his stomach and his left foot tied back down. It isn't until I take his right foot and try to secure it to the other leg of the bed, leaving him quite nicely spread-eagled on his stomach and his pretty serious erection that he realizes what a dangerous situation he's in. He thrashes around a little bit and curses at me again for a while, but I wait him out and get the other leg tied down nice and tight.

Then I go back up to the head of the bed to see how he's doing. He just glares at me balefully.

"Krycek, are you fucking serious?" is all he asks. He looks a little scared. I wonder if it this is going to be his first time. It hadn't seemed to be when I was giving him head, but maybe that's as far as he's ever gone with another guy before. The idea of popping Mulder's cherry is appealing, to say the very least. I was planning to be a very good boy anyway and who knows where that might lead? Might make the next time we run into one another even more interesting than usual.

Unless he sublimates even more, 'cause then I might just wind up dead.

"Yeah, but it'll be OK, Mulder. I promise," I say, and brush the hair that's always falling in his eyes back out of them.

"It will not be OK, Krycek," Mulder says very seriously. He's very upset. He's shaking. I mean, you'd think I was threatening him with an uzi or something. I'm starting to get worried that this isn't going to work out like I've been planning.

"Hey man, calm down," I tell him, rubbing my hand over his shoulders reassuringly. "It's just my cock, OK? It's not, I don't know. It's not the end of the world or anything. You're gonna be fine. Really."

I can see the whites of Mulder's eyes. He's freaking.

"Look, there is no reason for you to lose it over this, Mulder," I tell him. "I always thought you were a lot more secure than that."

"Leave him alone, Krycek!" Scully says from the other bed. "Look at him. You don't want to do this."

"Yeah, Scully, I really, really do," I say, still running my hand over Mulder to try to ease some of the tension building into knots in his back and shoulders. What is going on here?

Mulder's looking frantically at me, and then back at Scully and then back to me again. Maybe that's it. He doesn't want me to do him in front of Scully. He's afraid she'll lose respect for him or something. I know she means everything to him. And the thought of the loss of that, of a chance with her, that would be probably the most devastating thing that I could imagine. That's probably what his problem is. Or maybe not. I hope I'm not stepping in something here. You never know what might have happened with people, and he does have that hang up about the way he feels about me. There could be more of a reason for that than his opinion that I'm a rat bastard. But I couldn't exactly ask him in front of Scully, and he probably wouldn't tell me anyway.

What I mean to do is rub his nose in the way he treats me a little, not fuck him up for all time. And the way he's reacting, or rather, overreacting is starting to get me really worried.

"Krycek, stop!" Scully says, looking rapidly from Mulder's face to my own, obviously nearly as upset as he is. It brought the weird Rocky Horror Show thing popping back into my mind for the second time already, the scene in the movie where everyone says everyone's name in shock over and over again... "Brad", "Janet", "Dr. Scott", "Rocky", "Ugh". It was like "Mulder", "Krycek", "Scully", "Mulder", "Scully", "Krycek", "Ugh".

"You can't do this to him," she tells me, when of course I can do whatever I want to him. "If you," Scully licks her full lips. "If you... if you need to... well, you can..."

Was this happening? Was she really offering what I think she's offering?

"No, Scully!" Mulder says, snapping right back to himself at what he viewed as a threat to her.

"Do you need to leave the room, Scully?" I ask, not liking the look on her face at all. She hadn't looked like that when it was happening to her. And her suggestion to, I don't know, sacrifice herself for him, it almost makes me sick. She knows better. She knows I'm not going to hurt him. She knows that's not what it's about.

Scully immediately looks at Mulder for her cue. To do what he wants her to do. I use my good hand to turn his face away.

"Don't look at him," I say. "You decide. You do what you want, not what he wants."

"Are you going to hurt him?"

"Did I hurt you?" I ask. I watch her closely and she gives a barely perceptible shake of her head. She still can't admit it out loud, but it is an admission nonetheless. She's doing better. "Then you have your answer already."

"Yeah, right, you're not going to hurt me," Mulder says bitterly into the bedspread.

"Only if you make me," I tell him. Like that was even part of the plan. Hurting him would screw the whole thing up. I want to do the opposite of hurt him. I want to fuck him and make him enjoy it, like Scully did. That's what this whole thing's all about. "Are you OK?"

"Right now, I'm OK," Mulder says. "Who knows what I'll be when you're done doing whatever your fucking sick twisted mind can come up with."

"Glad to hear it," I say and go over to my bag again. I unzip it slowly, letting him sweat a bit. He deserves it for trusting me so little. I could have fucked him ninety times over when we were in Russia, but I didn't. It wasn't appropriate. He was injured. I would have hurt him, when it should have been comfort. I waited for him to come to me, but then things just plain got out of hand. They always seem to do that when I'm with Mulder.

I mean, one minute we're digging under a fence side by side like two kids trying to get into the school ball field after hours and the next we're running away from a bunch of fucking cossacks bent on dragging us off to slavery. I mean, who else does stuff like that happen to?

I rummage a little and find what I'm after, my handy tube of lubricant. Gets you out of any number of sticky situations. Whether you're picking a rusty lock, silencing a door hinge, or fucking an FBI agent who's madder than a wet cat, you really need to keep the stuff on hand for unexpected events.

I squeeze some out of the tube and let it warm up on my hand. I was going to be extra careful with him, just to make him angrier. It would be worse if he had to endure me and be none the worse for wear. He couldn't put all the blame on me, then. The worst would be if I could get him to come again. And I knew I could.

Straddling his waist, I lean up and plant a big, wet kiss on the back of his neck. He writhes beneath me, but that only serves to rub my balls and erection against the middle of his back, so he quits it pretty quick.

"God damn you, Krycek," he pants over and over until it's nearly a mantra.

I move slowly. I want him to be ready. But I dearly wish for my other hand, so I could stroke his cock while I got him ready for me. Gay sex is an even bigger handicap with one hand than straight. Just for the record.

Rubbing my erect cock down over his tight buttocks, I carefully slip one well-lubed finger inside his anus. Mulder swears even harder and clenches down on me. Safe to say the boy is indeed a virgin at this. Or maybe just as out of practice as he is at everything not involving his right hand and a bottle of Jergens.

"Hey, now, it's OK," I say, and set up my own muttering of reassurance in time with Mulder's stream of profanity. It must have been quite a show from Scully's angle.

But God he was tight. God he had a fine ass, and damn if he didn't relax when he realized there was no getting away from me. Carefully and slowly, just as I would have if he had been one of those thirteen year-old girls the old men favored, I place a second finger inside him, moving gently, setting a careful pace, waiting for him to relax and open for me. More lube, carefully warmed, and then a third finger.

Mulder has obviously decided to endure and make the best of it. He squirms a little now and then, probably because he minds way less than he thinks he should, and is still looking to goad me into hurting him. But he calms down, relaxes and finally I remove my fingers and replace them with my lubed-up cock.

I don't think it's until I take his balls into my hand, stroking gently, that he realizes what he has inside him. He clenches down again then, sending a wave of pleasure straight into my brain. But I manage to stop all motion and whisper calming words to him until he's past the danger of my hurting him.

Then it's just a matter of time and motion. The feel of his tight ass around me, the feel of my hand on him as he envelops me inside his warmth. It's almost too good. It's what we should have done from the beginning instead of hitting one another. I mean fucking's a hell of a better way to solve disputes than by beating the shit out of someone. Hard to argue with a man with your cock in his mouth. Hard to fight with one that fucks you until you don't remember your own name let alone what you were fighting about in the first place.

It reminds me of bonobos.

There's a lesson for Mulder. He ought to stop watching so much porn and start watching the Discovery channel, because he could learn a few things. Like about bonobos.

Everyone's taught that chimpanzees are the closest things human beings have to kin on this earth. Well, that's wrong. Because if we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we share even more of it than that with bonobos, which are slightly bigger, slightly blacker primates that look, well, a lot like chimpanzees actually.

Well bonobos are not only a lot like human beings, they're also generally considered to be the perpetually randy horndogs of the animal kingdom. They don't just engage in sport fucking, like humans and dolphins. They don't just embrace homosexuality, bisexuality and about every kind of sexuality you can possibly imagine - they use it to settle conflicts.

Unlike humans and chimpanzees, bonobos are utterly peaceful creatures. They never kill anybody. They just fuck them into submission. If somebody gets upset, several of their friends, male or female, it doesn't really matter, will screw them until they forget all about whatever was pissing them off and everybody's happy again. If there's not enough food, they fuck whoever didn't get enough and then go to find them some. If someone wants to be dominant, they let them be on top. It's really that simple. Mulder could take a lesson from them. I mean, I'd let him be on top if it really means that much to him. All he has to do is ask.

And not hit me.

Mulder is a chimpanzee that way. I'm a bonobo.

Ok, I'm not. But I can admire the philosophy.

And the thing about "penis dueling" still cracks me up every time I think about it.

But I must admit, I'd much rather fuck Mulder than fight with him.

And not just because I usually let him win. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't lose like that if I wasn't letting him. I'm a professional assassin, remember? I could kick his ass if I wasn't always trying not to hurt him. It puts me at a serious disadvantage.

But I would much rather fuck his ass than kick it, especially the way he's pressing it back against me now, to meet my every thrust. And if he'd reciprocate, I bet he'd think the same thing about me. But I'm not getting my hopes up there. He's way too repressed for that.

But not too repressed, apparently, to refuse to enjoy what's happening right now. Not too repressed to have changed his angry cursing to moans of pleasure, still with my name attached, and definitely not too repressed to come again all over my hand, the bedspread and his own belly. That's about it for me, as well. My orgasm follows Mulder's, and he gasps again as I spill myself inside him, collapsing on top of his sweaty, muscular back with us still united.

Mulder's panting. I'm panting. It's just a matter of seeing who'll recover first.

"Get the fuck off of me, Krycek!" he manages. Apparently, it's going to be Mulder. But then, I've been the one doing all the work.

"OK, OK," I say, and drag myself out and off of him.

Now, I really hate the nasty wet feel of spent lube and semen drying all over my crotch. It's bad enough with natural lubricant and a woman, but the KY thing just does nothing for me. I'm willing to endure if my lover is being a good boy, but Mulder was glaring at me again and being anything but.

I really want to kiss him, but there is absolutely no way he will ever go for it at this point, so I know better than to try.

But then, there's always an alternative.

I look over at Scully for the first time since getting a piece of Mulder's hot, tight ass. To use an old, and very hackneyed phrase, she looks like she's been rode hard and put away wet. Obviously the action on the other bed has not been lost on her. I wonder how she'd react to the words "live sex show". Hell, at this point I was almost ready to say the word "threesome" but I just knew Mulder would spoil it. No way was he ever going to share her with anyone else the first time he had her himself. And I didn't blame him there one bit. She is more than worth someone's undivided attention.

And I think it's about time she has mine for a while again. She looks like she could use it. And while I know Mulder takes care of himself, I wonder what Scully does in those pretty purple pajamas she wears. I don't recall ever seeing her masturbate on the surveillance tapes, and after what she's just witnessed she has to be ready to fuck the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers.

I wanted a shower. And there was no question as to who was going to join me there.

I go back over to the other bed and untie her feet. Then I take the cuff off her left wrist and cuff her securely to my right one.

"Come on, baby," I say, and kiss her deeply. She kisses back this time. I don't know if she is grateful that I hadn't hurt him and was trying to show me, or if she tasted Mulder on me and wanted to know what he was like by proxy, or if she'd just decided that it didn't matter any more, I don't know. But I sure will take it.

Scully's lips are as warm and soft as Mulder's, but she's sweeter. And her tiny body pressing against mine is quite literally the closest I'll ever come to heaven. I know it in my heart. I'm not quite at the point of being able to do much in the way of fucking again. Mulder has pretty much worn me out for the moment, but there are a great many other things one can do short of that that are eminently satisfying and downright fun.

It was time to give Scully a bath.

Mulder freaks again when I take her by the hand and lead her to the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" he shrieks, writhing against his bonds. "Where are you taking Scully?"

"It's just the bathroom, Mulder, for God's sake," I say. "I want a shower. I'm taking Scully with me. She's fine. She'll be fine."

"What are you going to do to her?"

"Nothing I haven't already done, and to you, too," I say. "Calm down, man. Do you need some more vodka?"

"I'm gonna kill you," he says.

"Back to that again, huh?" I shake my head and turn my back on him to see what the bathroom has to offer.

It's small and dumpy, like the rest of the motel. And because it's so old, it doesn't come equipped with all of the extra handicapped bars in the tub stall. Just the plumbing, a shower-curtain rod, and two towel bars along the back wall away from the showerhead and fixtures.

That doesn't leave me a whole hell of a lot of choice as to where to attach Scully's cuffs. I can't leave her attached to my wrist because I need that hand for the soap among other things. Figuring it's the sturdiest, I cuff her to the shower-curtain rod at about the center of the tub. Then I turn on the water and let it get good and warm.

"You actually weren't kidding about the shower, were you," Scully says.

"Gus Van Sant already remade Psycho, Scully," I tell her. "And it sucked. I have no intention of doing anything that redundant anytime soon."

"I haven't seen it, but Mulder and I watched the original just a little while ago when we were on a case out in nowhere Ohio. Nothing else to do."

"And, of course, you don't get enough maladjusted weirdos in your everyday life, so you have to watch them on TV," I smile and soap up a thin hotel washcloth.

Scully was smirking at me.

"What?" I ask, rubbing the washcloth over my face and then rinsing in the stream of water. Then I step backward and let it hit her full in the chest. She gasps, because I have it on pretty hard, but I love the way it makes her nipples harden after just a second or so of contact.

"I was just trying to think of the appropriate smart-ass comment to make, you left yourself so wide open," she tells me.

"Why not make them all?" I tell her, taking the soapy washcloth and running it slowly down her front. "It's been quite the afternoon of excess, anyway, hasn't it?"

"Do you want the whole list, or just the ones I thought of offhand," she asks, pretending to ignore the soapy circles I'm drawing over her breasts, her belly and her thighs.

"Oh, just the good ones," I say, moving closer to her and reaching around her to run the washcloth over her back now, her soapy front sliding slickly across my wet body.

If it felt half as good to her as it does to me, she isn't going to get very far on that list.

"OK," she says, her voice husky and somewhat breathless. I think it feels as good to her. "It takes one to know one."

"Obviously," I reply, dropping the washcloth to continue the circling washing motions with my bare hand.

"Maladjusted weirdos are my obsession, I just can't get enough," she says.

"Very nice."

"I've always got Mulder," she continues.

"Let's not go there right now," I tell her.

"Talk about art imitating life," she goes on.

"You're not that amusing," I tell her, and lower my lips to hers. She freezes up for a few seconds, but then I feel her little arm going around my neck and my heart nearly stops from the shock of it. Dana Scully was kissing me back, was she trying to work me? I open my eyes to get a look at her face, as much as I can with it attached to mine.

Her eyes are closed, she's pressing her hot wet body up against me, and incredibly despite the horrible pounding I've been giving it over the past several hours, my cock is springing to attention. I kiss her back, hard, and open her mouth with mine. I decide to chance it, but before I can plunge my tongue inside her, she's shoved hers into me instead.

Holy shit.

This is getting better and better.

I kiss her back hungrily and she actually moans into my mouth, the sound undoubtedly muffled by the pouring water running down us both. And then I realize that that is part of it. She can do this now because he can't see her, and probably can't hear her, either.

Poor Scully. Wants to get fucked by her partner, but is willing to take a substitute if he's persistent enough and her partner doesn't know. She's so lonely even with him around all the time. It makes me sad. But not enough to stop.

Because in a sick way we both are doing that. We can like each other because of him. We know each other because of him. We are isolated because of him. Our lives have been fucked six ways to Sunday because of him. We take comfort where we can. From each other.

But we have a serious problem and it's the height difference. I am at least nine inches taller than Scully, and both of us with no shoes, the parts are never going to fit.

Now if I still had my left arm, I would simply have lifted her up against the wall, but that's not happening in this lifetime - never again. I wished I'd enjoyed it more the last time I did it like that. And laying her down in the bottom of the icky old tub with most of the enamel worn away is not exactly the most appealing prospect.

She's rubbing herself against me in a way surely designed to make me completely lose my mind. And I would have, if I wasn't desperately seeking a solution to the height dilemma. And then the sex-addled wheels in the Krycek brain began to slowly grind forward again and I took a good look at the towel bars on the back wall - one on top of the other, the last one about a foot above the edge of the tub. Perfect.

I undo Scully's cuff and move it from the shower curtain rod to the bottom towel rack. "Krycek, what are you doing?" she says, somewhat disturbed that I seem not as interested in her as I might have been. The rod is low enough on the wall that even Scully has to bend her knees to keep the cuff from pulling her arm off.

"Trust me, you're going to like it," I assure her. You'd think the erection would clue her in that I'm still interested. But maybe she's seen so much of that today already that she needs further reassurance of my interest. I plant a hard kiss on her soft, full lips. "Assume the position," I say in my best hard-ass way. "On your knees, facing the wall." Of course the goofy grin spreading across my whole face sort of minimizes the impact, but what the hell?

Scully's eyes grow really wide at the suggestion, but then she does it. She doesn't say anything, but she simply does what I said, grabbing onto the towel rack with her other hand at the same time.

Oh. My. God.

I'm on my knees behind her so fast I actually crack my kneecap painfully against the grungy enamel of the bottom of the tub. I can not be sorry for it.

I slip my good arm around her waist and kiss the white nape of her elegant neck. Scully arches her back up against me and presses her bottom hard into my crotch, moaning low in her throat like a lioness in heat.

I didn't even bother to see if she's ready. It's so damned obvious. It was obvious before we'd entered the bathroom. The hotel room smelled like her. L'eau d'chaude mouille Scully. I can't think of a better perfume.

I thrust inside her, feeling her tight and sweet against me. She cries out a little at the initial penetration, more in triumph I think, than in any sort of pain. She's almost desperate for it, I think. After having to watch us, with her hands tied up, and no one to touch her.

I'm being careful, though. Scully's small, and no matter how much she wants it, I didn't want to hurt her. And this way the penetration is a lot more serious and deep than it had been on the bed with her legs tied down. I'm burying myself in her up to the hilt and each time she's pressing back against me, practically begging for more.

I thrust carefully in and out a few more times. Then I lean down over her again, and place my hand between her thighs, rubbing her clitoris gently.

"Is this all right?" I ask. "Is this what you want?"

"No," Scully pants, and thrusts her bottom against me hard.

"What is it? Tell me what you want?" I ask, nearly losing my mind with the pleasure of it.

"Harder," she breathes, the word seeming to be wrenched out of her despite herself. More self-mind-fucking bullshit, of course. But she'd still managed to get it out. And I'm more than happy to oblige.

I slam into her mindlessly for a good, long time. Bringing our bodies together, hard, just like she said she wanted it, the warm water beating down on our backs and no sound other than that and the accompaniment of our breathing and small grunts and moans as we pleasure each other.

I hold out a long while. The activity of the afternoon has taken its toll and I am able to last a good deal longer than usual for me. And I have decent stamina by anyone's standard, normally. But I'm able to make Scully come twice more before I just can't take it any more myself and come at last into the fading contractions of her final orgasm.

I grab onto the towel bar myself at that. I am really beat, actually. That's a lot of activity for anyone with no rest. And I still have to make my getaway. I really don't want to get picked up by some podunk Rhode Island vice squad sleeping it off after fucking two of the FBI's finest.

I hate the thought of leaving, though.

Especially when Scully and I seem to have come to such an interesting understanding.

I wonder if there will be any carryover from the events of this day. I know that Mulder will try to kill me. But then, he was always doing that, but Scully...would Scully shoot me or fuck me the next time we met? It was something interesting to think about. But I'd have plenty of time to do that later. Right now I had to make a clean getaway.

I remove myself from Scully's little body and let the water hit her full force for a minute so she'd feel clean again. As if water would help, really. Then I shut the water off and bring one of the not-so-fluffy white towels over and begin to dry her off. Touching her briskly, non-sexually now, making sure she's quite dry so she won't get cold.

Because I intend to leave her just where she is.

I figure it will take her at least a half an hour to work the towel bar free from the wall. It's anchored quite securely. And then she'll be able to free Mulder and they'll be able to go home, none the worse for wear, and maybe a little wiser.

Sadder, but wiser. Like me.

"Krycek, what are you doing?" she asks.

I dry myself off, unhurriedly. Then I hand the towel to her.

"Here, you might want this for your hair. It's not that wet," I say.

"You're leaving, aren't you?"

"Yeah," I say. There was no point in saying anything else, really.

"And you're leaving us here, like this," she says.

"You'll get out in a bit. And there's leftover Chinese food for Mulder," I tell her. "I doubt he'll mind that it's cold. I've seen his refrigerator. I'll bring the other towels over from the other room before I go."

She just looks at me, sitting with her legs drawn up in front of her and looking like a six year-old girl who's just lost her puppy.

I bend down and kiss her on the forehead.

"See ya," I tell her, and I go out into the other room to face the Wrath of Mulder.

"What were you doing to her in there, you fucking pervert!" he spat as soon as he saw me coming toward him.

I went to my bag, got out fresh underwear and put it on.

"And what would you have been doing with a naked, wet Dana Scully in a hotel bathroom?" I ask as I put my jeans back on. At his baleful look I continue. "We were playing mahjongg, of course."

"I'm going to kill you, Krycek," Mulder says, his voice low and filled with anger.

"Give it up, man," I say. "Go read about bonobos, and you might just get it."

"What is this, the fucking Planet of the Apes?" Mulder asks.

"Maybe," I say, as I pull my T-shirt back on and shove all of my junk back into my bag. "But somehow I don't think Dr. Zaius would exactly approve of what went on in here today. He's too militaristic, even though he was an orangutan. No, you really need to check out the bonobos, Mulder."

"The next time I see you, your ass is mine," he hisses.

"See, maybe you'll come around yet," I tell him and give him an exaggerated wink. "I can always hope."

I go into the other hotel room and get the towels like I'd told Scully. I return to the bathroom and smile at her as I set them down on the toilet. She has my towel wrapped around her wet hair and is diligently working on getting the towel bar out of the wall. She just smiles at me, but doesn't bother to stop when I come in.

I smile back and walk back into the other room.

"Goodbye Mulder," I say, and run my hand over his shoulders and down the muscles of his back. He really is beautiful, even when he's hating me.

"Fuck you!" he says glaring at me over his shoulder.

I smile at him and squeeze the shoulder. I understand, Mulder, I really do. I understand your need to distance yourself from me, it's just the kind of rationalization for their own actions human beings are prone to make, because if things had been different you so easily could be me.

It really just takes the right circumstances and the desire to stay alive to make a man what I am. Mulder has one, but not the other. And he likes to think that even if he had both, he'd have made different choices. But you can never know that until it really happens. Until you have to make the choices that bring you to where you end up.

Neither of us knows where that's going to be, or what side it's going to be on.

Mulder likes to think he's on the side of the Angels. Whose angels is what I want to know? It's not just black and white. Not just good and evil. Sometimes it's both and you just have to do what you can and try to make it so no one you care about gets hurt in the process.

So, I shut the door behind me and walk out into the Rhode Island night. I get back into the official FBI car and drive away down the highway, popping open the Coke I'd taken with me to make sure that I don't fall asleep.

Yeah, it seems a little harsh to leave them there like that, doesn't it? Scully wet and cuffed to the bar in the bathroom. Mulder, covered in his own semen and mine tied spread eagled on the ratty bed.

But, remember, at the end of the day they still have each other.

And I have Alex Krycek.