Sea Change

Thunder rolls up from the ocean like a giant's drum solo. Heartbeat rhythms echoing the boom and crash, Alex Krycek leaps from his bed, mad with fear in a manner not uncommon to him. He spins on his agile legs, seeking the source of the unexpected sound. The thunder is played out for the moment, however, and he only hears the mesmeric cadence of rain.

Until a quiet monotone comes from the chair at the side of his bed.

"Many peoples have considered those lost at sea during storms as sacrifices to the god of the ocean."

Instantly a semblance of calm falls upon Alex, though he'd never pass as easy to someone who could listen to his heartbeat or touch the dampness of his palm. His bedroom is filled with the fuzzy pale light of moonbeams passing through white gauze curtains. Shadows of raindrops on the wall, the rest of the room empty and bright, there must be only the one intruder.

Only the one. Mulder.

Always dark, dim, low-toned, dressed in gloomy splendour. Insistent, persistent, invisible until commanding all attention. Always demanding Alex's time, trust, energy, effort, expense until Alex had thought he'd escaped. Partner, victim, enemy, companion, compatriot, and now intruder.

"What are you doing here, Mulder?" All attempts to sound threatening are destroyed by the genuine, high-pitched tone of curiosity in his words.

Mulder's response is indirect, and oddly unsurprising.

"I wondered if I was in love with you for awhile."

Alex smiles and finally relaxes. He is inappropriately comfortable in this surreal setting. Perhaps it is the relief of honesty.

"It occurred to me to wonder about myself as well. I spent so much time obsessing on you."

"You swing that way?" Mulder's voice sounds atypically vibrant.

"Well, yeah. Both ways. You knew that, right?" but Mulder doesn't answer Alex's question. Instead he replies to his own.

"I don't. Never did, not even as a kid. Women, you know, always it was all about women."

"But you just said-"

"Except you."

Silence weaves a web of moonlight and sticky shadow raindrops in the room.

It is comfortable, the air is soft with water, and Alex's heart murmurs steadily though it feels swollen.

When he breaks the silence, he can only whisper.

"What did you decide?"

"I am. I do." Monotonous again, Mulder's words slam into Alex's solar plexus and leave him winded, gasping. Mulder laughs softly and with great bitterness. Alex still can't see his face, just a shadowy human shape in the comfortable chair by his bed in which Alex never sits.

The lack of an answer seems not to bother Mulder, who continues relentlessly.

"I thought at first I just wanted to fuck you. I thought about it a lot, though, and that alone wouldn't be enough. I want to crawl inside your skin, Alex. You have or are or understand something I need. I want to get inside you and find it. "

Alex still can't speak, just stands while a human kind of storm floods and tides in his body. He won't name the feelings now. He just listens to the compelling drone as Mulder continues.

"I once studied a serial killer who did that to his objects of affection. He'd fall hard for someone, obsess on them, stalking, fantasizing, the usual story. Then he would kidnap them and tie them up. He'd rape them, through every orifice he could find. Then it wouldn't be enough, he make more ways into them with a knife. Eventually even that wouldn't be enough and he'd skin them alive and crawl into the skin. He never got close enough, though. He was still weeping about his loneliness when I brought him in.

I understand that man, that feeling. If I didn't know it wouldn't work, I'd try that with you. I don't have to fuck you to find out it won't be close enough."

"What-" he is rasping as the tide of words from Mulder has choked off his air. "Why are you telling me this?'

Mulder stands, and the air between them is suddenly taut. Alex is sweating, feels little ripples of tension running between his eyes and Mulder's shadowed ones. He wonders briefly if Mulder is going to kill him or kiss him. All of his normal reflexes seem to have deserted him, and he wonders at the source of his weakness.

"Mulder..." he is whispering still, and the sound of the ocean rising and crashing nearly drowns his words.

Mulder moves subtly from shadow to watery moonlight, and there are strange markings upon his face. Swirling wave patterns might be blue or black, covering and transforming his features in a way the dark never could. Alex thinks he may be smiling as he moves closer, because his white teeth flash. A queer murmuring noise, some kind of rhythmic chant, issues from his mouth, and Alex can see a chaotic hunger in the glittering eyes. They are closer, now.

Cold trickle down his spine, warm melting sensation in his belly, and Alex still cannot move.

The chant emerges more loudly, a song such as might be sung by islanders stroking their great canoes across vast uncharted seas. Seamlessly, it merges into words as Mulder is speaking again.

"Will you let me in, Alex?" And there is no more monotone, and there are no more esoteric references. The voice is all madness and smoky blues. Deep and echoing in Alex' head and he is sure this must be a dream, so he answers.

"I have nothing you need, Mulder." Because he knows that inside him is all the barren landscape of the sealess desert. Pitted and rocky and showing only the marks and chasms of past oceans. But Mulder does not listen, and only asks again.

"Will you let me in?" before he reaches for Alex and the tension between them winds about Alex's limbs and imprisons him in air. Before Fox Mulder's lips meld against his and the glittering, mad eyes are closed. Before Alex sighs hard enough to knock them in a tangle onto his bed and lets his lips drift open.

Because he cannot answer with words, he lets his limbs be wrenched apart like the beams of a sinking ship and lets the sea in.