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He had been staring as the ambulance doors closed on Duane Barry's body, shutting
it inside like a
sacrifice into a traveling oven, headed on its way to a medical feast. He managed to
turn his head, and
found her large, clear eyes on him. She was focused on him with an indescribable
Scully expression: was
this look she'd hung on her face now, so familiar to him, a Catholic look? It
soundedon the face of
itlike a reduction to type, but he'd always wondered. Certainly not one of the
glamour shots, not
guilt, martyrdom, or a Madonna's adoration, not a mask of saintly compassion, just
a graceful openness
to sorrows that could not be put to words. Her question was not meant to be
answered deeply; it was
just a ritual of touch that passed for touch itself.
He said, simply and shortly, "Yeah." He knew his face held nothing of what he was
feeling. He cared for
Scully, but he'd just come out the far end of a grinder, and hers had been one of the
hands pushing him
through. She continued to look at him, andit was funny, how things struck one
suddenlylooking back
at her, even with a fraction of his attention, in the aftermath of madness, he realized
she'd put on
weight. He hadn't been seeing much of her lately. Her face was full. To him, it only
looked more full of
life, as if her very flesh were ripe with some swell of inner feeling. She'd been under
nearly the same
stresses as he'd been since the department had shut down. Understandable, really,
that she'd show
the strain in some way; comforting, somehow, that it was through so mundane and
endearing a
reaction as a little overeating.
Thoughts passed through his head swiftly, a river of sweeping irrelevancies that
distracted him from all
that had just passed but didn't distract him enough. He'd drifted a bit; when he
heard her speaking it
took him a moment to translate her words.
"Whatever you're feeling... you did the right thing."
He looked at her. For a moment heit was terrible, but he just wanted to walk
away, a snub that would
represent the futility of human communication. Of theirs. It was a measure of his
respect for her that he
did not wish to slap her, though his frustration was violent and vast, seemingly
imbricating him on a
cellular level. She was Dana Scully. For her, endless patient allowances would be
made.
"Yeah, it's just that, uh, I believe him." Despite the bland tenor of the words, they
held no real humor.
Scully's eyes dropped slightly; in her own face was reflected a similar resignation,
patience translated
into acceptanceof him, though, not of his belief.
"Sometimes when you want to believe so badly you end up" She paused for
breath, and a tiny search
for words. "Looking too hard," she finished.
The ambulance's lights went on and it pulled away. Mulder turned, unable to speak
further. He knew
she searched with all her professional training and even with her heart, to explain
away all his findings
as feelings, as something less than what they were. He could not listen to this now.
He'd betrayed
Duane Barry, turned him right over into the hands of those least suited to care for
him. He'd caved to
protocolwasn't that called doing the right thing?
He stared out across the plaza parking lot, hardly seeing the messy scrum of cars
and people. The
nearby fountain plashed water quietly and steadily onto itself. Around them the
rotating lights of the
barricading police cars still flashed and whirled. They made a kind of blue-orange
smear across the dark
and picked out the blurred presences of the officers who stood clumped by the sides
of their vehicles,
talking and drinking the ubiquitous post-crisis coffee. In his line of sight, far across
the scene, was an
open doughnut box that sat on the hood of one patrol car. It seemed to gather in the
light of the scene
and tie it like a bright knot. He could see the pink and white cardboard, the dipping
hands, but...
"Mulder." Scully was touching his sleeve.
Mulder cut a look back her way, noticing the tendrils of hair that framed her face.
Noticing these allowed
him to avoid her eyes.
"You should get some rest"
"Not likely." His blank faced turned again, and his skull felt as if it were floating on
his neck. The waxing
and waning of the moon. He had a smell in his nostrils he didn't immediately
recognize, that jarred with
the unexpectedly chill night air and hint of rain to come. It took him a moment to
place it: simple sweat,
but incredibly strong. In his current state of dislocation he couldn't decide if the
vinegar was rising from
within his own body and cooling on his skinor if it were Barry's, somehow
transferred in their intimacy.
The other man's tortured face loomed over his. He blinked.
"They'll want to do a preliminary debriefing tonight; gather statements." Mulder's
voice was a bored
monotone. "I doubt Kazdin's going to want to commandeer the insurance office for
much longer. They'll
probably clear out and move to one of the Ramada conference rooms."
"With the journalists?" Scully said dryly. "Anything that close has probably been
overrun." It hardly
seemed worthwhile to set up shop again a few streets over, just for another five or
six hours, and she
said so, wondering aloud why they didn't just return to the field office.
"You didn't hear?" Pulled briefly from himself, he looked at her. At another time, a
gleam would have
touched his eyes, some sign of surprise or amusement, but now he was simply
informative. "Bomb
threat, day before yesterday. Probably just a hoax, but they've still got most of the
building cleared.
They're keeping it quiet."
"Do they think there's a link to New York?" She didn't have to say: World Trade
Center.
Mulder shrugged, expressionless. Unhurried beats passed while he processed some
internal reverie.
Scully, standing with hands in pockets, watched him with calm reflective eyes and
felt a touch of deja vu:
so many times had she stood next to him just like this, waiting for him to answer a
question or speak
his gathering thoughts, expecting despite all experience that he would act like other
people, follow
minimal orthodoxies of manners and behavior. Sometimes she felt herself to be no
more than an
accessory to him. Sounding board? Convenient block of wood, more like. Other
times she felt so
differently she could not reconcile her own schismsfelt that with Mulder, as with
no one else, she was
herself, stripped of attraction and social artifice. They'd had just one year of
partnership but it seemed in
its cool way a marriage that outside forces had divorced. The severance was still
new, and he still cut to
the chase of her... and yet... . Impossible to dissect the living, to find their measure.
He made no
sense to her, he resisted incision. First glanceessence of Mulderwas his simple
need for truth. But
nothing was that simple. His quest was bound up in the complex net of the world, in
which other people
were inevitably entangled. And so here she was. But here he wasn't.
Why did I come down here tonight? Because he had called. Because just by existing
he begged to be
rescued, even as he kicked further into deep water and away from land, lighthouse,
lifeboat, hand. He
was a man who so well embodied contradiction that she could never say decidedly
of him: he expects
too much of me, or in converse, No, he expects nothing at all.
"You want to hear something funny?" Mulder's train of thought had pulled into the
station with an
abrupt jar.
Startled, Scully drew in a breath and collected herself; but Mulder continued without
waiting for answer.
"A lot of the agents on scene aren't even from the Richmond office." His voice was
on a subdued
autopilot, his eyes stones. "If they're even agents... Kazdin is supposed to be some
kind of hostage
negotiation specialist ferried down from Quantico. Rich, his HRT crewmost of the
technicians are local
boys. But they also had a good ton of nameless dead weight, just sittin' back and
watchin' the show."
Scully's face radiated composed incomprehension. "What are you getting at,
Mulder? What do you think
that means?"
"II don't know." Mulder felt tiredness kick in. He wasn't in shock; couldn't be; but
his sustained
endorphin high was subsiding and beginning to wash away his grip on events.
"None of them knew
Barry personally, which seemed strange once I found out who he was. You'd think
they'd have trolled
for auld acquaintance in the bureau, brought in someone he knew who might have
been able to reach
him. And look who they brought in instead." He made a faint sour face, glanced
with dissatisfaction
across the plaza toward the insurance office, whose doors were in almost constant
motion. "I should
have taken some names but events got ahead of me."
"Understandable." Scully's tone had dropped a note, to a rather cool drawl. "You'll
pull an award for
volunteer goat of the month, Mulder. I wouldn't be surprised if they roped you in
just so they could
tether you there right next to Barry."
Mulder blinked at her. "That was my idea."
"So they say. Interesting how it worked out." Her voice remained frosty and
skepticalwas she actually
offended on his behalf for the possibility that he'd been used?
Abruptly Mulder grinned and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I've taught you well,
grasshopper. You
have learned the wisdom of deep paranoia."
With just a glance they exchanged a warm, silent resurgence of their old
companionable whimsy. It had
been a good partnership while it lasted, Mulder thought. He let his hand drop from
her shoulder
awkwardly. Better than good.
Scully studied Mulder's facerecognized, in a brief elasticity of self-consciousness,
that she was doing
so, making a study, her impressions coming in thick and strong tonight. The drama,
winding up, would
reconverge on them at any moment. But this moment she was struck afresh, a
match flare of sight: Fox
Mulder, cold bedrock one minute and nearly as ungiving, the next as open as she'd
ever known a man.
He respected and liked her, but nothing between them had been uncomplicated.
She'd felt from him
almost the entire range of human sentience: disgust and longing, anger and
tenderness, joy and grief.
Even had his feelings risen from no greater reason than her proximity, they'd taken
a toll on her.
Partnership with Mulder had been unnerving, unsettling, and extremely tiringand
the most addictive
high she'd ever known. She could hardly bear to stand here now, mute statue
looking on a living man,
knowing she would never again work with him, never fully enter into the chase. All
of this was just
another ending; a part of her life was over that would not recur. It seemed a cause
for regret.
"Mulder!"
Both of them were drawn as one from their shared, silent brooding. Scully glanced
up past Mulder, and
despite herself felt her face change its dress to something more formal, less
revealing.
Alex Krycek loped up.
Why the hell was he always running around full tilt, Scully wondered, eyeing him as
if she could, by
searching, find the cause for her dislike somewhere on his person, clearly visible to
her cool gaze.
"Mulder," he said breathlessly. He glanced sidelong at Scully but didn't quite
acknowledge her. "Agent
Kazdin is relocating, cutting over to the Marriott"
"Ooh, Marriott," Mulder interrupted, surprising the other two with a sudden,
luminous grin.
Krycek ducked his head, cut Scully another tiny glance, and then cleared his throat.
"She wanted to
make sure you were coming."
"She doesn't waste any time... wanted you to make sure?" Mulder smiled, not
unpleasantly.
"Uh, I said I'd get you there." A small, cheeky smile danced around Krycek's lips as if
he were sharing a
private joke with Mulder.
Scully's face became, if possible, more gelid. She could feel its surface icing over, a
self-defensive layer of
distance building up. The men were looking at each other. Exclusively, and with a
communion that went
deeper than their casual words. She envisioned a fuzzy halo of robins and butterflies
flapping around
their heads, and was quite sure neither man would have noticed such an apparition
had it appeared.
Butterflies, she thought to herself. God, I'm hungry. Her gaze traveled across their
faces, painted itself
across Mulder's profile. Mulder was saying something about getting a room. He
didn't notice her close
attention though she stood less than two feet from him. She hadn't believed her
own suspicions, had
thought them ridiculous. Now she was less sure.
"Yeah?" Krycek was saying. "Skinner's probably gonna want us to check in
tomorrow, isn't he?"
"I'll pay a full day's rates and take it for however long I can get," Mulder said. His
face looked wiped of
expression again. "A few hours sleep before we drive back up... "
"Mmm, yeah," Krycek said, his face a very shield of sympathy. "You look done in."
"You're getting a room?" Scully said. Mulder blinked owlishly at her as if just
noticing her presence.
"Uh, yeah. Thought I'd take a nap, shower." He blinked grittily, stared at her with
his green alien eyes
and smooth boyish face. "You don't need to hang around, you know. They can take
your 302 by fax." He
seemed to hear the possible tinge of rejection in his words even as he spoke them
and added gently,
focusing on her that formidable attentiveness he could so easily summon: "You
probably shouldn't be
trying to drive back tonight, though, if you've been up all day yourself." He smiled.
"Beautiful downtown
Richmond, Scully. Where through a hail of bullets you can see forever."
She acknowledged his attempt at levity with her own tiny smile.
"I probably won't get much sleep," he continued. "They'll be pushing to get most of
the fieldwork cleared
up tonight."
Scully stitched an apparently emotionless glance into Krycek. "I think I'll head out.
I'm really not that
tired but I do have two autopsies scheduled for seven a.m."
Krycek, who had been studying her (she felt) as if she were a novel specimen of
bug, spoke directly to
her for the first time. His voice, while not exactly self-effacing, was husky and
almost intimately low. To
Scully he often seemed brusque; now he sounded genuinely concerned. "You want
me to see if anyone
else is heading back up? You could pace each other. Probably be good to have
someone keeping a
watch."
Listening to him Scully could almost let her ears trick her into believing he actually
gave a rat's ass
whether she got home safely. Her face betrayed none of her suspicion or
ambivalence; betrayed
nothing at all. "No. Thanks." She dismissed his offer with these few words, knowing
from long practice
that the less said, the less yielded.
"I'll call you tomorrow," she said to Mulder, who simply nodded, and then touched
her arm again. A
Mulder farewell. Short and unsweetened. Balancing regret and relief she left,
deliberately dropping them
from her mind, energies turned to the business of escaping the notice of the news
crews and navigating
a safe drive home.
Mulder, brows drawn together, watched her go, letting her pass from sight within
the dense littoral of
cars edging the plaza. He felt a light touch on the side of his neck, turned back to
Alex, surprise written
on his features. They never risked such touches in public. There were media vans on
the far side of the
plaza. It could only be hoped they had their long-range cams directed elsewhere.
"Just straightening your collar, partner." Alex's eyes held his with dark unreadable
force. His hand
teased gently at the collar of Mulder's adopted EMT uniform, which was of course
already quite straight,
and then brushed upwards along his neck again, a tantalizing shadow of a caress.
Mulder shook his head warningly, but did not move to evade the other man's
fingers, which after
another moment dropped casually away.
"You could have been killed tonight," Alex said. His voice was calm and matter of
fact, his faceso
impossible to readnot unlike a shark's.
"Blown to bits," Mulder agreed blithely, but with a faint raw edge that suggested
nerves still honed and
drawing blood. Their eyes, glittering at each other in the lurid police light,
exchanged unspoken
messages that bounced between them like telegraph arcs.
"I'm not getting a room," Alex said. "I might borrow your shower though." He could
have been speaking
in front of a roomful of witnesses, his tone was that offhand, that innocuous.
Mulder smiled. "Okay, partner."
Though the numbers had thinned, many agents were still gathered here and there,
packing up
equipment, chewing the fat. Several looked Mulder's way as he entered; one or two
nodded, their faces
neutral, but he could feel the general air of mixed feelingsrelief that this had not
been another Waco
even in miniature, restrained derision toward the default hero of the hour. Tension
was still running high
even now after Barry had been brought down and the hostages safely removed.
"How's Bobwhat's his nameFrickie?" Mulder asked Alex sotto voce, feeling a
pang for his belated
question.
"Last I heard he was out of the operating room and in the critical care ward."
Mulder held Alex's eye a moment. "Will you do me a favor?" At the other's tiny nod,
he said, "Will you call
and find out?" He walked away, leaving Alex dialing the hospital, and stood in the
middle of the room, at
sea until he noticed the pizza boxes. He walked over, lifted a lid, stared down into an
abattoir of bloody
cheese and mushroom heads. He swallowed down queasiness, let the lid drop.
"Hey, Snowflake," someone said at his shoulder.
Mulder turned and met the small dry smile of John Tripp, the liaison officer between
HRT and the
negotiating team. He'd been the first to mention the idea of a microcamera feed;
he'd also been
vociferously opposed to Mulder going into the travel agency in any guise, but had
been overruled.
"Snowflake, huh?" Mulder gratefully took the cup of hot coffee Tripp handed him
and managed to pull off
a functional smile in return before sipping.
"Your new moniker," Tripp said, jerking his head back over his shoulder to indicate
the mill of busy
agents responsible for his rechristening. "Flaky but frosty, that's you."
It was a mixed compliment, to be sure, but Tripp was an agent's agent, the kind
whose casual
camaraderie and attention to the job could almost make Mulder believe he'd been
part of a team, rather
thanto use Scully's implicationits scapegoat.
"Thanks," Mulder said awkwardly, then tilted the coffee cup a little to deflect his
meaning from what he
was really thanking the man for. He had a sneaking feeling Tripp had wanted to
pass on word of his
new appellation before Mulder heard it from one of the other agents in less than
complimentary tones.
"Where's Kazdin?" he asked, looking around. "Rich?"
"Marriott," Tripp said. With the single word he managed to communicate a subtle
disapproval.
Something in the other man's tone snagged Mulder's attention. "You're here in
Richmond, aren't you?"
Tripp nodded once. "You ever worked with Kazdin before?"
"No, sir." The 'sir' signified no difference in rank, but was the unnoticed punctuation
of an exmilitary man.
"Never met the lady before now."
More ambiguities of tonemore disapproval? Mulder wasn't sure; Agent Rich was
surely Tripp's section
chief. Maybe Tripp had a loyal objection to outside help on what should have been a
local matter, to
seeing a Quantico chalkboard-jockey brought in over Rich's head.
"So what did you think of the show, Tripp?" Mulder let his eyes bore into the other
man's, invited
confidences that he hoped would come. "SOP?"
"Shit." Tripp lips curled and he looked as if he instinctively wanted to spit. He
glanced around, mapping
the vicinity to see who might be listening, then met Mulder's eyes again. "You want
my opinion, this was
a freakshowno offense." He blinked. "I see why they brought you in. This is your
stuff. You knew
what you were doing, too." His eyes held Mulder's with a powerful lock, as if
sending deeper messages
than his words alone carried. "But something's not smellin' right. All these out-of
town suits. And Kazdin... they were rushing it." His voice dropped so low he was nearly whispering.
"Rushing you. No way
you're supposed to rush a negotiation. We learned that, didn't we?" The allusion to
the Waco debacle
was so commonplace in the bureau these days that the word itself went unsaid.
"It did seem... strange," Mulder said cautiously. "I don't really have any negotiation
field experience,
but there was a lot here that got my bells ringing. I didn't say anything. Maybe I
should have."
"You get caught upthis one, hell, this was over before it started. I got the call
yesterday, first thing I
thought was, if they got kids in there we're in the shit nowand was I gonna be
spending the next
eight weeks of my life on a cot eating fucking Domino's."
They exchanged a wonky pair of grins, nerves jangling as humor reemerged and
braided with the strain.
"Pissing Folgers until your balls shrivel up like coffee beans," Mulder said.
"Fuckin' Domino's," Tripp repeated, shaking his head. "We'd've passed the ten-day
mark you can bet
your ass I'd've been on the phone beggin' my wife to bring me down a nice tuna
casserole."
"Benefits of a local boom economy," Mulder said, with a smile. He wanted to grill
Tripp further about his
impressions of the situation, but as he was framing another question, Alex
approached.
"Hey" He dipped an easy nod to Tripp, addressed them both inclusively. "Talked to
someone at the
hospitalFrickie's stabilized. Barry just pulled up in the ambulance a few minutes
ago; they couldn't tell
me anything on him yet."
"Barry. Jesus." Tripp studied Alex, looking unsurprised he'd mentioned the name,
but wearing a resigned
grimace.
"Hard to believe he was one of our own," Alex said seriously, skipping a quick
glance between Tripp and
Mulder.
Tripp refused to take the bait. He shifted in place, raising a thin scraping sound in
the blue windbreaker
he wore. "I gotta touch base with the metro boys, see if I can clear a path to get the
A/V van back in.
You stick around, Mulder, I'll buy ya a six-pack." He tipped a wink and strode off,
passing on his way out
a young man in a sharply-pressed suit and a stunning red-and-orange silk tie. He
had a sharp thin face,
looked eighteen years old, and radiated the glossy, offensive appearance of being a
dozen dermal
layers fresher than anyone else in the room. His tie was so loud it had the effect of
overriding all
ambient sound. A lull in general conversation was punctuated by many speculative
looks before most
present made a show of turning their shoulders and going back to whatever they'd
been doing.
The man stood indecisively inside the door for a minute before he caught sight of
Mulder's uniform and
came over.
"Oh oh," Mulder said beneath his breath.
"Hi," the man said brightly, coming up on them and sticking out his hand. Stunned
by the whiteness of
the other man's teeth, Mulder automatically transferred his coffee cup and took the
man's grip.
"Ben Franklin," the man said, then waited a beat.
Mulder blinked, searched his fried mind for the context of a joke he might once have
heard. "Sorry?"
"Ben Franklin, Media Coordinator. You're Mulder?"
"I'm afraid so." Mulder glanced at Alex, inviting a shared bond of humor. Alex
missed the look, busy
scoping the other man's top-drawer duds, his face reflecting signs of dislike and an
inclination to snub
the competition for best-dressed. Or at least most expensively dressed, Mulder
thought. He rather liked
to watch Alex bristle; on the job he often showed so little emotion that he might
have been a
mannequin.
"We need to get you out in front of the cameras as soon as possible," Franklin said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"HQ sent me down. They want you on display. Show off the star talent, help
counterbalance the
negative perception of the bureau by the public. I'm afraid recent polls haven't
demonstrated a
significant improvement in the numbers. People still have the burnt smell of Waco
in their noses, Agent
Mulder. They need to see the results of a successful negotiation. They want a hero
and you're the man."
"Piss off," said Alex.
Franklin gave him a startled look, then tucked in his chin and bullishly resumed his
focus. "I've already
set an interview up with Kathy DiMotta, she's the CNN correspondent covering the
incident and she's
got a live feed. The networks can have you when she's through and you should
probably give local
coverage a few minutes"
Mulder, noticing Alex's lips part with a feral readiness to bite down and rip out
Franklin's throat, hastily
moved to interrupt the man first. "Okayjustgive me a minute, all right? I want to
get out of these
clothes."
Franklin stepped back a pace, gave sharp assessment. "Keep them on, it'sno, wait-
probably better
not to confuse the viewers. Ninety percent would think you're a real EMT. But... it
does give you that
just-stepped-out-of-the-fray look. More dramatic." He paused for thought; blink and
you missed it. "Well,
I'll make sure they keep an identifying caption running. Leave the uniform. A suit-
you don't want to look
too suave. We want to show how cleanly we pulled this off, but at the same time we
want to play up
the human element. You knowspecial agent goes one-on-one with a killer."
Mulder, his blood pressure rising, rolled a number of possible responses over his
tongue before saying
with self-restraint, "I'd rather get back into my suit, thanks."
"Agent Mulder"
"Hey," Alex said softly to Franklin. Franklin broke off warily, eyeing him. "Why
don't you go back outside
and get some air."
"I don't"
"Go outside and breathe," Alex said without raising his voice. His eyes were
uncompromising.
Franklin took a deep breath, reconsidered whatever he'd been about to say, stroked
his tie, and went
back outside to wait.
Alex touched Mulder's back, a fleeting gesture that directed the agent toward the
bath where he'd left
his clothes. Mulder, throwing only a single bemused look back at Alex, wound
through the maze of
disrupted chairs and empty tables. Alex watched him go until he was out of sight
then hunted down the
cup of coffee he'd abandoned over an hour ago. He found it among a litter of
others, its froth dissolved
into the muddied liquid. He tasted, made a face, sipped, and with his free hand idly
rummaged through
the tabled mess, stacking empty cups and dropping torn sugar packets into their
mouths; this he did
without thinking, his mind busy elsewhere trying to articulate the scattered
elements of the day into a
coherent body of thought.
Since their arrival, he'd been watchful and busy, though not with any obvious
action. During the
situation, when everyone's focus was on the activity across the plaza and on its
stars, Barry and Mulder,
he'd been called twice, asked to deliver updates and reports to the chairman.
Morley, he called himself,
though Alex didn't buy that one for a second. What specific interest Morley had in
the Duane Barry
matter Alex didn't yet know, but he'd very likely engineered Mulder's presence.
Every day it just gets more interesting, he thought, sipping his cold coffee. He'd
been shoehorned
through the bureau academy and into full agent status at an unprecedented pace; his
background
reinvented for his bureau file, his bureau 'career' established in a quick and devious
shuffle from field
office to field office until he was brought into HQ. Less than a month ago, Alex had
been able to tell
himself that he did have a career in the FBI, anomalous and patronized though it
was. He'd nearly
convinced himself he was acting in the best interest of justice, and that he was finally
on a path to
success. But recent events had drained him of his optimismof his hopes, even,
small and private
though they were.
Morley. He wondered if Morley had any idea how transparent his machinations
were; how much he
revealed even when ostensibly saying nothing; not to Mulder of course, who was
clueless, but to Alex,
who collected clues the way other men collect stamps or belt-notches. For weeks
now, as his
bright-eyed enthusiasm for the job waned, he had consoled himself by pouring his
energies into his own
more personal job, and had been riding an escalating, intuitive high that was
bringing him ever closer to
a particular secret. He could feel the secret; its contours in the vague darkness; sense
it coming clearer.
It was a vast shape and it enthralled him, for he was a man with more romantic
imagination than most
people suspected.
Agent Rich appeared at Alex's shoulder. A standard-issue field jacket had taken the
place of his suit
coat. His lined face laboring under a constant drag of gravity. Alex didn't like the
man's pale eyes, and
could have picked up a pencil and poked them out without a moment's regret. He
wondered what Rich
was doing back here, but didn't bother to ask.
"How's your partner?"
Graceful as a dancer, Alex stepped back slightly, adopting the deliberate posturing
of a man who prefers
distance. "As well as can be expected considering he's been locked up with a fucking
trigger-happy
lunatic for seven hours."
Rich eyeballed him some more. His face had no muscle tension. It was like a slack
cloth bag holding his
unmoved features. "Case like this, right on our doorstepkind of funny they
brought him in."
"He did the job," Alex said coolly; it was standard partner defense, no more than
anyone would expect,
but he was not beyond feeling a flicker of real resentment. After the better part of a
day spent
cheek-to-jowl with Kazdin, Rich, and the negotiation crew, sent for coffee and pizza
and otherwise
treated as if he were invisible, he was feeling more than slightly pissed. Rich hadn't
been above making
a few snide remarks about Mulder either, during periods of dragging inertia when
Barry rambled and
Mulder patiently strove for rapport. A man goes in and lets himself be tied up by a
mental case and talks
him into taking his bulletand does he get any thanks for it? No, just gets thrown to
the
bottom-feeders. Alex knew Mulder would take no joy in playing hero for the
cameras when his fellow
agents thought he was a fuck-up who'd gotten lucky.
"He did some kinda job," Rich said tonelessly.
Heat flared in Alex's face. "Your people couldn't have talked a cat down from a tree."
He made a small
chuffing sound of exasperation, pushed a bit into Rich's personal space. "You bring a
man in and don't
even give him a proper briefing, don't even tell him your perp's backgroundex
bureau, for Christ's
sake." Alex's voice was scathing; Rich just looked at him. "Leading him like a prize
pony through his
stepshonesty, containmentwhat the hell was the point of that bullshit?"
"Build up any more steam, son, and you can do your own dry-cleaning without
even taking that suit off,"
Rich observed.
"Thanks for the tip." Alex smiled. It was a smile of a different species and it changed
his face,
illuminating like a strobic flare the expanse of a surrounding darkness, the glittering
of animal eyes that
lurked there. Alex didn't drop his bright, clean, blue-flamer facade too often, and
when he did most
people were too obtuse to know what they were seeing. Rich saw though, and his
own eyes narrowed.
Before he could say anything, Mulder returned, taking them both off guard with his
materializing
presence.
Back in suit and tie, Mulder resumed the weight of a decade's rough years, dropping
the appearance of
a fresh-faced medico and looking instead like Dorian Gray on the wane. Alex could
always tell when
Mulder was particularly tired; he had a way of settling into exhaustion that gave him
a preternaturally
blank and waiting expression; a man who has put some crucial part of himself on
hold.
"Thanks for your help," Mulder said to Rich, without sarcasm or apparent awareness
of his own casual
brass. From anyone else it would have been a blatant, even pointed, role reversal of
authority; Mulder
made it seem natural that a subordinate field agent should thank an SACthe man
nominally in
command of the negotiation processfor his help.
Rich's face twisted up slightly and he gave Mulder a lacerating lookit was the first
real irritation Alex
had seen on his face all nightand walked away without replying.
"What's his problem?" Mulder wondered idly, then pulled a sour face of his own that
indicated he knew.
"I wish they'd just get it over with."
"What?"
"Chewing me out. I can just feel it, hanging over my head. I hate anticipation." He
turned his grave
attention to the plate glass windows, through which the official chaos could be seen
slowly dispersing.
The media vans still sat on the far perimeter, and Franklin waited outside, arms
folded behind his back,
ferretlike and impatient.
"Come on," Alex said, touching his arm. "Kazdin's gonna hafta to wait to chew on
you. I get first dibs"
He broke off, paused to consider the thronging reporters. "Well, after the piranhas
strip you clean,
anyway."
Mulder managed a smile. "Lay on, MacDuff. Into the feeding frenzy."
"I think someone gave you a mickey," Alex said, watching him for a minute before
reaching to grab his
seatbelt and snap him in (ignoring Mulder's pained look). "You didn't take one those
horse tranquilizers
they were pushing on youdid you?" An ambulance crew had caught them en route
to the car after the
media session wound up; one of the EMT's had latched onto Mulder with all the
tentacles and
pharmaceutical enthusiasm of her profession. Alex had been ready to pull his gun to
get Mulder out of
the plaza sometime before daybreak.
Mulder muttered something with a sour grunt, then said, "Just catching up with me.
All these late nights..."
Alex had just turned on the ignition when he felt the other man's hand slither across
the car seat and
stroke his thigh. He jumped before he could stop himself. There was a Richmond
metro cop less than six
feet from their front bumper, looking their way as the headlights bloomed. "Down
boy," he said, lacing
his fingers with Mulder's (stroking them a moment) and easing them away from his
leg. "Let's pull out of
copland first."
"Look who's" Mulder yawned, cutting himself short. "Mmm... close encounters
with the angel of death
always burn a hole in my shorts."
Alex attempted to trace the figurative logic of that one, wasn't sure he'd succeeded,
but got the
essential gist. "Yeah, I want to fuck you too, Mulder."
They pulled out of the plaza and Mulder's hand crept back to massage the inner
curve of Alex's thigh
with the warm rhythm of a man rocking a cradle. Alex didn't push him away this
time. His dick was
already getting hard. Long day, but he was edging into rut nonetheless. Mulder had
very talented
fingers... and the smell of him... thick, overripe, acrid. It made Alex's mouth water;
a learned response.
His jaw ached with the strain of not letting himself fall into a wolfish howl; his eyes
kept up a constant
motion between mirrors and street. The ride would be short, but the temptation to
let Mulder bring him
off now pulled at his flesh. He could feel fingertips brushing the ache of his balls,
tracing the lift of his
shaft
"Take it out or knock it off," Alex said roughly.
"We're almost there, aren't we?"
"Unless I drive the car into that storefront."
Mulder unzipped him.
"Oh Jesus," Alex said, bracing against the seat and accidentally accelerating as his foot
mashed the gas.
The car zagged slightly before Alex pulled it back into its lane.
"Oops," Mulder said sleepily. His clever fingers stroked bare, throbbing skin.
Without warning his grip
tightened and he jerked Alex roughly.
"Oh fucklet mewait, let me pull overfuck, Mulderthese streets are crawling
with heat" A squad
car passed by them at a fast clip, lights flashing but sirens off.
"Just drive."
"Oh god." Alex's voice had dropped to a husked, earnest prayer. He could feel the
brimming approach of
orgasm already, could barely see the street he was driving on through the sugared
glaze on his eyes.
I must be insane, he thought, as his head jerked back, as he cried out and slammed
his cock through
the fierce seizure of Mulder's hand. He felt as if he were fisting the eye of a needle,
and then he felt
himself coming into the cup of Mulder's palm. When he opened his eyes they were
still alive; the car was
moving slowly down the street, straddling lanes and drifting leftward. Alex carefully
forced his muscles to
unclench and his foot to steady on the gas pedal; he pulled the car into the proper
lane; he tried to
recall to breathe. All of this took a good minute, during which Mulder withdrew his
hand and licked it
clean, saying nothing, a silent cat cleaning his paw.
"I'm not the one who needed that," Alex muttered, finding his voice with difficulty,
lying from simple
habit.
"Yeah, but I needed to replenish my protein stores," Mulder commented, before
laying his head back on
the seat again and shutting his eyes.
"I don't see any media," Alex said, pulling the car up under the awning of the drive
by and glancing
around the vicinity of the entrance to see if they'd been followed or preceded by the
press. "You want to
check in, I'll park."
Mulder nodded and slipped out quietly; Alex popped the trunk for him and watched
in the mirror as
Mulder grabbed his overnight and then glided into the hotel: a lanky clothes-horse
with no thought on
his mind but a soft bed, or so one might think at first glance. Alex pulled out and
finding no space on the
street slewed through into the garage, where he parked and sat for a minute after
turning the car off.
Just as he was gathering himself to decamp his cellular rang.
"Yeah," he said shortly into the phone, glancing around the garage by instinct,
knowing he'd see
nothing. The oily voice that entered his ear was not unexpected.
"Good work tonight, Alex."
"I did nothing," Alex said dismissively, frowning at this.
"You kept us apprised of developments. That's always a help." Snakily smooth, that
voice, almost
hypnotic.
"I could have gone out for coffee and stayed gone and you still would have gotten
your information,"
Alex said dryly. "I saw those monkey-suits hanging around the scrimmage."
"Good help is so hard to find."
Alex contemplated the car-clock on the dash and mentally schooled himself to
patience. Morley always
had a hidden point, a concealed dagger within his most casual suit of words. "What
do you want me to
do now?" he asked blandly.
"Exactly what you were going to do."
Alex's nerves tweaked a bit, and to ease them he reminded himself of how careful
they'd been, he and
Mulder, a few semipublic flirtations aside. It was ironic, actually; Mulder's current
state of heightened
paranoia made secrecy a given, but he had no idea of the protection afforded them
by Alex's vantage
point. Mulder worried about simple workplace gossip and how it might be used
against him; Krycek,
meanwhile, was deftly steering their rendezvouses away from key areas of
surveillance, like Mulder's
apartment (easily enough accomplished by playing on Mulder's nerves). His own
apartment he'd gone to
great lengths to keep clean, having no trust in "official" assurances on the question.
The regular sweeps
were tedious but useful. There was always the possibility of an outside drop, but
Alex kept an eye out
for odd vehicles and his fingers crossed when he scanned the rooftops.
Morley's voice was insinuating, but it was his usual tone; he likely didn't know how
personally Alex was
taking his assignment. Not yet anyway.
"He's getting a room here at the Marriott," Alex said. "Kazdin's setting up a
debriefing post in one of the
conference rooms."
"I know. Keep an eye on her."
Oh great, Alex thought tiredly. "Have you seen her eyes? She's as snappy as a
satellite cam; you
ought to payroll her. That bitch doesn't miss much." Within his casual patter a
question wove, and he
waited to see how Morley would address it.
"She's no one," the other man said coldly, writing her off with those few terse
words. "But I have
information that she's scrupulous to her duties, above and beyond. What she knows
I want to know."
"What's there to know?" Alex wondered, feelingtypicallyas if the two of them
were reading off some
of the woodener lines in a Mamet play.
"Don't worry about it."
Alex seethed, clamping tongue between teeth to keep from barking his frustration.
He was glad the man
on the phone could not see his face right now, he probably looked about as rudely
insubordinate as Fox
Mulder on a tearmore. He needed to keep in character, despite that his character
had taken on a few
twists lately. I'm a pawn, just a pawn, Alex told himself, just a gigolo, because this
was the appearance
he needed to project, if he didn't want to find himself cut out of the loop.
"Yeah, buthow will I know what's important?" Alex almost ruined the effect of his
own act by
snickering. To ingrain the critical importance of keeping a straight face he pulled
down the mirrored visor
of the car and stared at himself coolly. In character, he told his reflection. His green
eyes looked back at
him like someone else's.
"Tell me everything," Morley suggested with smug unctuous inflections. "Then you
won't have a
problem, will you?" He hung up before Alex could reply.
Alex slid the phone back into his pocket and stretched in place, rolling his head
around on his neck. Still
tense, he felt better than he had an hour ago; nothing like a friendly hand-job to
help work out the
kinks. When would he ever find another partner like Mulder, he wondered with
true appreciation. Too
bad they were slating him for the junk-heap.
He unbuckled his seat belt, had his hand on the door-handle. His phone rang again.
He swore, and
while reaching for it automatically began making up plausible stories in his head to
Mulder for why he
was late.
"Yeah," he said.
"Alex... " The man paused, perhaps to give Alex time to process the cool intrusion of
his voice. "How is
he?"
"Where are you calling from?"
"A safe line." The man's voice was frigid but somehow fragile, like frost on glass.
"How is he?" he
repeated.
"He's fine. Couldn't be better." Alex loosened his tie, making himself forget about
Mulder and relax into
the waiting game. Here was a source he didn't want to antagonize, a man to be
handled with care. This
one was valuable, but also edgy and brittle.
There was a silence. "I just saw on the news... I saw him but I wasn't sure... the man
was shot. This
Duane Barry."
"Yeah," said Alex. The single word a drop in the pond. Tease the water. Let the fish
come to you. Empty
hook, but no matter. The angler is always fishing. Always. He fishes simply to fish,
for the act itself.
"He's not what he seems," the other man said with clipped precision. "Keep an eye
on him."
Alex shut his eyes deliberately, his face empty of expression. "Barry?"
"Yes, Barry," the other man said irritably. "He's a subject."
Alex opened his eyes. "Why did they want Mulder here then? Why bring them
together?"
"Then they did arrange this?" The man sounded harsh, angry, his fears realized.
"From what I can tellhis being here, anyway."
"I don'tI don't know." The man's voice slid away from the phone, wavered a bit,
mixing with muffled
clinks of ice. "I don't like it. Can't follow their... makes no... sons of bitches... "
Alex, riding his own train of thought, let the other man ramble for a minute, then
said, "I have to go.
He's waiting. I need more information from you. Can you meet me this weekend?"
"I can't," his caller said immediately, but it was an automatic refusal, a nervous, pro
forma response Alex
had come to expect.
"Saturday," Alex said. "You want me to protect him, don't you? There are things I
need to know."
A deep breath gusted into the phone, a sigh of resignation. "Saturday, Alex."
"You shouldn't use my name when you call," Alex said quietly, hiding his annoyance
at having to give the
caution. He'd become careless, Bill Mulder, and if he wasn't careful it would get
someone killed.
Mulder was already out of the shower when Alex arrived, but instead of tucking
between the sheets
he'd settled at the end of one bed to watch a CNN update on what was now being
called the resolved
hostage crisis. His own face was broadcast across the screen. Drained to a pallor by
the cold quartz
lights of the media, his skin appeared waxen and almost vampiric above the
shadowy stalk of his suit.
The real Mulder sat cross-legged in his boxers, looking only slightly fresher than his
hour-old image, his
eyes heavy with unadmitted sleep.
"Hey," Alex said. He dropped on the floor the flight bag in which he kept his travel
kit, pocketed his
keycard, and walked over in front of Mulder, cutting off his view of the television.
Mulder looked up. His
short hair was damply spiked and his face had the creamy feel of skin freshly
washed and shaved. His
cheeks felt like the petals of a gardenia under Alex's hands. Fleur de lumiere. He
closed his eyes at
Alex's touch. With the ripe furled drop of his eyelids he was a man sinking into
prayer or trance. It felt
good to touch him, the softness of his lips, the hard slope of his nose. Alex tugged an
earlobe and
Mulder opened his eyes. They were grey and alien and clear.
"I'm taking a shower," Alex said. "If we wait until six or so before going down we
can probably get some
breakfast while we're working up our statements." He looked at his watch. "That's... joy, all of three
hours."
"Sounds good." Low voice arriving from a distance. Man in a hotel room,
transitional. "I left my cellular in
the bathroom. Leave yours there and maybe we'll be safe. I've already told them to
hold calls on the
room phoneI doubt anyone even knows we're here. I managed to miss seeing any
of the team. You
didn't tell Kazdin or anyone we were checking in, did you?"
"Nope." Alex scraped his knuckles gently along one of Mulder's temples, then
disappeared into the bath.
When he returned a few minutes later, sluiced clean of a day's grime and wearing
only his trousers,
Mulder was sprawled across his bed, head curled to one side, face reposed,
breathing with the quiet
regularity of sleep. Alex shut off the TV and grabbed the spread from the other bed.
Mulder didn't move
when the blanket was slung over him, and Alex gazed down at him in a grudging
way, needled into brief
fondness. The other man earned more of Alex's respectreluctant, problematical-
with every passing
day; but the difficulty of detachment was born in the curve of his jaw, the arc of his
cheek.
Very much a male animal was Fox, with a rough, cranky self-absorption that didn't
contradict his
essential indifference to personal comfort; even as he lay now on the bed, one arm
outflung, legs longer
than a list of wickedness, he took up less space than he should. He even breathed
quietly.
"Hey, Mulder," Alex said. But he didn't wake, and Alex didn't want him to. Asleep he
was fathoms down,
buried safely in himself. Awake... companionable; somewhat high maintenance;
removed; but despite
all this a walking talisman of unconscious charm, a creature possessed of odd,
ungendered habits,
freakish whims, enigmatic distractions. Fox Mulder, an alien studying the aliens. Too
much charisma,
Alex thought rather sourly. More life than most. Honesty, integrity, braverybut
Alex was no boy scout,
no platonic lover, to fall for such abstractions, qualities to him like those of a classical
painting whose
symbolism held no sway. He saw the brush strokes, the light and shadow, and the
brilliant hues. The
shape of desire was but some new color of red.
Yet the impersonality of desire made itself personal. Alex could have stood here for
an hour looking
down at his charge, the problem he'd been assigned. He was drawn, but he found
his own romanticizing
tendencies inconvenient, not to mention puzzling. He wished it were an empty tile
in the mosaic of his
personality. He was trying hard to keep his heada good screw, a pretty face, a
charming lunacyhe
acknowledged all these only in the most reductive of terms; they weren't things he
could let trip him up.
And most times he didn't. But small things would have their way with him. Gifts
unasked for,
unexpected, hard to dismiss: the sunflower seeds that Mulder, grinning, tossed at
him; his offerings of
esoteric pirate legends and Bigfoot folklore; the way his head pushed desperately
into the curve of
Alex's neck as he rocked himself into ecstasy; his absent-minded workday caresses-
fleeting and
unnoticed, thank god (even by Mulder himself), which feathered a warmth through
Alex he couldn't
entirely dismiss. Mulder's inquisitive curiosity about Alex's past went beyond the
hodge-podge of
carefully fabricated data in his FBI records, and was another kind of intimacy. Had it
been anyone else,
Alex would have taken this digging for granted, but Mulder's questions were
ludicrously irrelevanthow
did Alex lose his virginity, what kind of music did he listen to when he was young,
what was the first
book he remembered reading, had he been a boy scout, what was the worst prank
he'd ever
pulledand so on.
In the quiet hotel room an almost regretful shadow slid across Alex's face. He stood,
a slim half-dressed
man, barefoot and dark-haired. Even in a mirror no man sees his own face. He
doesn't notice how his
lips move, not speaking words, the muscles sketching one or two lines that don't
realize to a smile. His
eyes are dark but light emblades them. A man thinking.
He knew Mulder had few friends. No wonder they'd pegged him for an easy mark.
No matter how
paranoid he was, he couldn't enter completely into a solitude that might have saved
him. It didn't occur
to Alex that solitude might have been even more dangerous for a man like Mulder.
Alex was used to
living in the lockbox of his head; not a word passed his lips that did not first travel
through his mind's
censoring machinery, and so he found Mulder's confidences startling in their
recklessness, but all the
more fascinating for that.
Leaving Mulder to his sleep, Alex grabbed a battle-scarred laptop from his
overnight bag and set himself
up at the room's dining table. He'd bought this deceptively battered unit recently
from a wizard who'd
built up a nice package to his custom specs and encased it in some cyberpunk
cracker's cast-off. Alex
doubted that the Nine-Inch Nails stickers and nail-polish mottos (Hack the Power,
LLAP) would fool
anyone for long if they took a good look at the system, but the garbaged-up
exterior didn't hurt; it
would take a shrewd eye to penetrate its cruddy face and guess that one of the new
Pentium
processors lurked within.
He was no hacker, his talents lay elsewhere, but he needed no great skill to take
advantage of bought
and stolen passwords. A CIA acquaintance he'd been cultivating for several years
had finally come
through with a handful of MILNET-2 privileged-user code cards, wallet-style ID's
that had been issued
not to real individuals but to invented military "generals". Alex hadn't inquired too
closely as to how his
source had filched these or what their original purpose had been, though he
gathered it had something
to do with interagency systems security testing. The ID password keys were
essentially backdoor logins
to the databases of various military sites, carte-blanc letters of transit unaltered by
any of the sweeping
security upgrades made during the past several years. The basic MILNET was an
unclassified military
network (supposedly) carrying only low-level datasupply requisitions, base
memos, shift schedules.
The innocuously named MILNET-2 was, on the other hand, the sleeper sister system
of ranking military
command, working a level above its prosaic sibling. Civilian hackers had been
speculating for years over
the existence of such a network, but security was tight enough that no confirmatory
information had
ever been leaked or access grantedno more than the thinnest rumors floated
through the ether about
this mythical realm.
And he was about to crack in with no more than a passcard and a modem. Alex felt
anticipation
gathering up his nerves and strumming them. It wouldn't be the first time he'd
broken in, but it still gave
him a thrilling kick. This was new territory for him; he was stepping outside the
boundaries of persona
he'd tended for the past several months. Special Agent Alex Krycek had beenwas
stilla work of art,
his ingenuous front a mask so well crafted it had become his own face. But the man
in the iron mask
wasn't quite the sum of his personnel file notes. The mask was cracking; on the
inside. Alex was a bit
tired of Agent Krycek, whose prospects for advancement and reward were looking
every day less
bright.
With one eye tuning in now and then to Mulder's sleeping form, Alex spent a hour
or so blowing cleanly
through the systems of military air bases and downloading anything that caught his
eye, mostly the
stored typed copy of secretaries responsible for drawing up memos and other
documents. There were
plenty of plums to be shaken from the trees but most were not the ones he was
searching for. Those
few he did find made him sit up straight on the edge of his chair, particularly a draft
of a memo that read
in full: "Effective immediately all shipments of XCC and XCC2 materiel and
merchandise will no longer to be
documented through MACROSYSCOM as per AFO(x) P5510.18. Controls over
manual records from creation
to disposition now prescribe elimination of checkpoint hard copy. Deliveries must
route through DirSplProj
proxies only. TAD/TDY assignments for disposal deliveries have been suspended
until further notice. Special
air transports not authorized within project parameters will be acted upon with
fixed measures."
He kept his breathing even; it was a kind of discipline to do so. But the verbose,
obscurant scroll of
information on his screen was tantalizing in a way that a more innocent reader
would have found
incomprehensible. The project. That one bare word, not even capitalized to
prominence, was the chief
object of Alex's hunt. He'd grown more skillful in tracking its data spoor, but it
eluded keyword searching
by immersing itself in a herd of its kind. Everything was a project, but the project
was utterly opaque,
never defined, the mother of all tautologies. Correspondence assumed that its
readers knew what the
project representedor knew enoughand referred vaguely to project acquisitions
and timelines,
project merchandise. Teasing bullets of information were so elaborately cross
referenced and oblique
(Re new EBE-X and EBE-Xx biological containment protocols see MJ1014.02) that the
memos were no
better than alphabet soup, an endlessly reticulating labyrinth of documents, none of
which he could
track down on line. The more he learned, the more certain he was that Bill Mulder
was presenting only a
thin gloss of what he knew. To Alex it felt as if he were looking into the observation
mirror of an
interrogation room, seeing first the bright surface that gave back only a calculated
reflection, then
pushing vision through to glimpse the shadowy truth beyond.
It made no difference to Alex's fierce pursuit of knowledge that he did not really
believe in a single,
explicable thing called truth. (To believe any one story was to surrender, a kind of
death.) If you could
find the man behind the mirror he would only tell yet another story; the Project was
a goal for Alex to
reach because it held currencyhe could sense its importance, its timelinessbut it
was not his final
destination, not his grail. He was no Fox Mulder, to fall prey to the shimmering
chimeras of absolute
truth and absolution. Mulder sought one thingthe key which would decrypt the
mystery of his life. Alex
knew any such key would only translate the gibberish of code to an arbitrary
approximation of... of
whatever decaying matter the crypts hid. The code didn't decode to truth; just
questionable data. He
wondered if Mulder would be happy with mere data, if he even knew that those
fleeting, useless bits of
information he'd rigged himself up to lunge for were empty tin rabbits that would
lead him in circles. Of
course, he did want to find his sister. Nothing occult in that; just the enigma of his
very human heart.
Alex forced his gaze away from the glowing magnetism of the screen and rubbed
his aching eyelids. A
dull tension ebbed and flowed between his temples andstabbed with the needling
reminder of his own
humanityhe shut down the computer with a single flick of his finger and relished
its death. Time to get
off anyway; he preferred not to linger in the small hours when user traffic was low.
Grumpy and tired he
wandered over to the bed and impatiently eyed Mulder. He didn't want to hang
around Richmond longer
than necessary; they could have been on their way back to D.C. by now. Well,
maybe not quite gone,
but far closer than they were getting by holing up here and deferring their
paperwork.
He considered going downstairs alone to get a head start, except that it wouldn't
hasten a departure
which hinged on Mulder finishing his own shitwork. He sat on the edge of the bed,
checked his watch,
almost shook the other man's shoulder, then thought to hell with it, a half hour
more won't hurt, and
shucked his trousers off to crawl in next to his partner's slack length. Mistake, his
mind informed him
immediately. The bed's sunken warmth pulled at his tired bones and drew him
inescapably into proximity
with Mulder's lush heat. He locked to him and came alive, nipples stiffening to rub
against the other
man's shoulderblades, arm belting his waist, one leg carving up between his lightly
furred thighs to
nudge his balls.
Mulder grumbled in his sleep.
"Hey bitch," Alex said to Mulder's ear, knowing that if he heard he'd roll over
punching.
In a slurred low voice, Mulder said, "What?" The pillow absorbed the question.
Right now, in the wee strange hours after an enervating hostage drama, Alex
thought this almost the
funniest thing he'd ever heard. He grabbed one of Mulder's nipples and tweaked it
while nuzzling a
laugh into the brooched curl of his ear.
"Ow," Mulder complained, strengthening into awakeness. "Cut it out."
"Thought you wanted to get fucked," Alex murmured.
"If that's your gun in my ass you're gonna blow my balls off," Mulder said, irritable
as a dormouse. He
was edging into coherency, but still sounded heavily logged with tiredness.
Alex poked him with the object in question, then nudged his briefs down and
allowed the head of his
cock to drag up the cleft of Mulder's ass. Mulder jabbed his arm back, connecting
with instinct and rude
force into Alex's ribs; he was half awake but fighting consciousness with deep
loathing.
Knowing what the other man liked made it easy for Alex. He shoved Mulder over
and drove him flat and
hard against the mattress, grabbing and turning his head to force his face into a
pillow, braceleting one
wrist and dragging it high up his back. Mulder began struggling at oncereal
struggles, without
question. Alex kept his grip on the back of Mulder's neck but allowed his head up
far enough for him to
breathe around the suffocating bulk of the pillow. He wedged his body between
Mulder's thighs and
levered him up until he could rub his cock back into the folded warmth of him.
Mulder groaned and
clawed at the bedcovers.
They fucked silently these days, as much as not. Their weeks together had eased
Mulder's early nervous
volubility, and though he could still be dismayingly talkative given right
circumstances (weekend,
Chinese food, Alex's apartment) he was less apt to distraction during rough fucks.
He hadn't stopped
wanting it rough, which pleased Alex fine, but since their New York case he'd only
once again asked for
what he called (with razoring self-mockery) the 'full throttle'. Instead he begged
lesser garrottes as he
neared release, constrictions that would tip him over the edge. Alex knew the exact
degree of
feathering pressure that wouldafter a certain pointmake Mulder shoot almost at
once. He usually
accommodated the other man's quirk; though oddly the act was doing less and less
for himthe
generous strangleras time went on.
"Hold still," Alex suggested callously, forcing Mulder's arm further up his back,
freeing his own thickened
cock completely from his briefs at the same time. He jerked Mulder's boxers off his
ass and then let the
gentler stroking presence of his hand encourage the other man's thighs further
apart. They widened of
their own volition, trembling and flushed with heat but supporting the balance of
his body.
Mulder whispered unintelligibly into his pillow. Coitus, Jupiter, chestnuts. His
fingers flexed on a ribbon
of sheet.
Alex wet his thumb and nudged it flush into the heart of Mulder's ass, pressing until
it struck through. He
repeated this a few more times until the passage had eased enough it could admit
him without causing
pain. Not much anyway. He spat in his hand, quietly, and rubbed himself to
slickness, palming the
stranded pre-ejaculate at the tip of his cock and drawing it down his length. He
touched Mulder again,
felt the ringed tightness jump and contract snugly on his fingers. He kissed the wet
reddened swell of
his cockhead there and began to shove.
"Hey," Mulder protested, jerking up from the pillow and trying in vain to twist his
head around. "Fuck,
Alexyou"
"Shut up," Alex advised, loosening his hand from its clasp on Mulder's hip and
grabbing a palmful of his
furred head again. Mulder, outraged, continued his mouthing as Alex forced his face
back into the pillow
and held it there. When the muffled complaints and twisting attempts to dislodge
him had ceased, he
drew his hand away and returned to focus.
"If you've been fucking around, I'll saw your slut-fucking dick off," Mulder said
raspily into his nest of
feathers. His face burned pinkly.
That deserved a response, Alex decided. He let Mulder's arm ease down until their
grip became an
interlocking of fingers. Mulder didn't move, but Alex heard his breathing quicken.
"You think I'd do this
with other boys," Alex murmured, sliding down to rest on his arms, relinquishing
Mulder's hand, kissing
his way down the cleft of Mulder's body. Mulder's hand, though freed, remained
curled in the small of his
back. He was a man with incredible self-control, at the oddest of times. Alex kissed
him open, felt
muscles pull at his tongue, made a point of flesh to flesh with wet stabbings until
Mulder broke, said oh
my god desperately into his pillow, began to capitulate into a frenzy.
Alex rose, retook Mulder's wrist, shoved inside him with one hard pulse and earned
in reply a stifled,
helpless howl. The warmth of the other man's ass was like a tight leather glove; Alex
said nothing as he
worked himself ruthlessly into its gripping depth, but his gasps began to carry
threads of keening, high
and sharp. Mulder was already struggling to maneuver his free hand between his
legs, but lost his
precarious balance doing so; his breath jagged once and was eclipsed in a mouthful
of rumpled cloth.
Alex could feel the violent jerking rhythm of Mulder's hand drawing his hips down;
his ass flexed,
muscular spasms that buttered Alex's own cock with unerring skill.
When Alex felt he'd gained command of the engagement he released Mulder's arm
and began stroking
his back. A soft grateful growl issued from the head of the bed as Mulder readjusted
himself. He shifted
and arched up more deliberately, hands bracketing his pillow, his forehead butting
into this prop. His
feet slid and hooked behind Alex's ass to urge him forward with a contortionist's
talent.
"Son of a" Alex breathed deeply and steadied himself, then raked his fingernails
down Mulder's spine,
just to watch the bump of ass this produced and feel the responsive squeeze around
his dick. Good
pony. He dipped his head forward; a lock of dark hair fell free and tickled Mulder's
skin while he kissed
his way around that vellum nape and the graceful blades of architecture buried
under its surface. Ridges
and frets. Watching him as he moved ecstatically within his flesh was like watching a
complex trope play
out: elements of sand, driftwood, wave. He was not equivalent to his body, but
within his body, a
Mulder beneath the skin that could not escape its host but wanted to break free and
fly. Alex pulled
them both upright, settling himself back ass to heels and draping the silken length of
Mulder across his
front like a salesman showing off a mink coat. Mulder let his head drop onto Alex's
shoulder. His breath
was close and hot, his noises shaved out thinly from his throat. Such fine
embroideries of sound from
one his size. He was cupping his own balls and working his shaft, the strokes
urgent.
Alex's heavily lashed eyes were angled to the view: Mulder's pale elegant hand, the
fiery cock that
stretched up from his tightly clinging nuts. Cockhead pearled from the inside out;
thumb lifted and
rubbed, forcing more fluid from the eye. He chafed himself mercilessly as if seeking
pain, like a child
worsening the source of his tears or relishing a rash of splinters. His body was
heavy against Alex, a
deep wealth of bone and muscle, so sumptuous that even a blind man would have
known how costly he
was, how extravagant a package.
Alex twisted Mulder's nipples, felt his rump jerk and swallow its hard plug and then
twist itself
desperately on him, an apple trying to core itself. He could have said things to
Mulder, could have called
him pretty boy, hot little punk, but Mulder didn't always like that and could turn
irritable and sulky when
he got uncomfortable. Their occasional bedroom spats tended to fizzle out and snuff
themselves in
further sex; but there was always a later to worry about. Buttoned up in his Armani
armor, Mulder was
invulnerable and capable of such extremes of impersonal malevolence that
sometimes Alex was
scared of him, which was not a feeling he enjoyed entertaining. Mulder was a
perfect bitch in the
bedroom; on the job he morphed into a suit of bone-cold arrogancehe could have
frozen lakes, even
small oceans with his absolute zeroing eyes. When he tucked his dick away his brain
rebooted and that
was when he was at his most dangerous to Alex.
"Godyes, Alex" Mulder whispered, his voice husking and catching on the inner
sleeve of his throat.
His near ear burned as if dipped in scarlet wax, blushing where Alex's lips and
tongue sketchedthe
other pressed like a medallion to Alex's shoulder, warm, its delicacy evident by
touch alone. Alex blew a
soundless cloud of heat into the well at his lips and heard Mulder whimper. He
traced the inner circuitry
with his tongue, soldering the coils with his heat.
Mulder struggled against him: a mink coat coming to life. There's an X-File for you,
babe.
"Do it, Alex." Not quite request, not quite command. A soft begging tone, so natural
that its
deceptiveness was not obvious unless you knew him well. When Fox did stoop to
plead you had to drag
your thrall from those sensual, Borgia eyes and lips and look for the dagger he
surely somewhere held.
Alex felt unreasonably annoyed, distracted from his own pleasure, then suddenly
brazen with an anger
that swept in from the void. "No," he hissed, resentfully, sliding his hand down to
Mulder's dick instead
of up to his neck. Mulder, not repeating his request, corkscrewed his ass against
Alex's cock, a move
with the immediate effect of stripping fifty IQ points from Alex's blood-starved
brain. He groaned and
grabbed Mulder's dick tighter, pumping him and forcing his writhing tail onto his
own swollen organ. Lust
inebriated him toward a demented, deeply focused state of worship. "You are such a
sick slut," Alex
muttered, covering Mulder's mouth with his own and sucking the wine-ripe flame
of his tongue. Mulder
made a tiny satisfied sound against his mouth that might have been laughter.
That sound gathered in Alex's mouth and rolled and teased there and he knew
abruptly that he would
oblige his partner, his wish, this hot pouring passion of a man who rested against
him, Jesus to his
Judas, and so he raised his hand and, as they kissed, closed his hand over the
strained bow of Mulder's
neck and squeezed.
Mulder came instantly, his mouth blossoming impossibly wide and wet under
Alex's, his body arching,
every inch of him expansive with gratitude. Alex took his hand away at once, heard
a cry of grief and
raw beatification as if too large a pleasure were being grappled out through a
constricting
tunnel"AlexAlex!" Impossible to score the music of this aria; he could not tell if
word and notes
wedded in feeling or if Mulder's emotions floated free and used his name only as a
convenient vehicle.
Driven, he grabbed Mulder's cock again, pumping it roughly, feeling the jerks
transmit straight to his own
aching monster, the buried devil's pike. Unapologetic triumph; his eyes flashed
lightning; then came the
terrible stretch of himself on the rack of feeling. He was being pulled out of form;
beyond the bearable
shape he inhabited.
"Oh fuck" Speech was savage, breaths that ripped from him. "Fuckyou fucker-
Foxoh Jesus" His
cock swelled in the smothering heat of Mulder's ass, surging and pearling, its size
doubling and tripling
in his imagination but the cascade of feeling a thousand orders beyondand then he
shot thickly into
the depths, leaving his brand. And right there it would stay, Alex hoped. A morning
under Kazdin's evil
eye would be redeemed if he could sit across from Mulder and look at him with the
secure knowledge
that he had a load of come still dribbling a musky perfume down his fine haunches.
They fell apart after a minute, collapsing back into their separate bodies. Alex rolled
off and headed to
the bath to clean up; Mulder lay like a stripped empty fur on the surface of the bed,
face ceilingwards,
arms and legs carelessly akimbo. By the time Alex returned from his showerno
more than five
minutesthe other agent was up and mostly dressed. Alex caught his eye and raised
a brow at him;
Mulder just looked back, face smooth, eyes cool. He was fully awake now and had
the sleek, predatory
composition of a feline meditating on geometry and death. No doubt about it, he
was going to be a real
fun pal to hang with today. He apparently had no intention of washing up, which
both pleased Alex and
stirred in him a faint sense of worry. Pointless to worry; no one was going to
depants him and probe for
evidence. But still. He reeked splendidly of their fucking and looked as if he'd nearly
had his lips gnawed
off by a pack of weasels.
"You aren't going to shower again?" Alex asked, keeping his tone indifferent.
"Fuck off," Mulder said pleasantly. His tone was friendly, but his smile was non
existent, a sun still
laboring below the horizon.
Alex decided now would be a good time to find coffee, but then having excused
himself he paused with
his hand on the door and felt an odd moment of disjointedness: he wasn't sure
which instinct to
trustthe one to walk away, or the one that said turn back, go to him, and...
He turned, a timeless pirouette on the crux of decision that could not be taken back,
and saw from the
mirror of Mulder's face that his own must be revealing a measure of uncertainty,
reluctance. Mulder
winced.
"Alexno, don't" He tried to push Alex away. "I'm not ready to get touchy-feely
this early in theoh
fuck" He gave a soft sigh as Alex nuzzled into his collar. "You're asking for it," he
said, almost sadly, his
arms sliding around Alex's waist, hands pressing down between belted trousers and
shirt tail.
"What am I asking for?"
"That's what I want to know," Mulder said wryly.
"Just saying good mornin'," Alex breathed against his lips.
"Thought we did that already."
"Mm, but I hadn't brushed yet."
Mulder's mouth shied away from Alex's. "I still haven't," he muttered.
"You are pretty funky," Alex said, smiling saucily. "Lucky for you I like that in a
man."
Mulder's eyes darted a speculative look at him from under furred ledges of lash.
"What are you up to?"
"You really want to know?" Alex smiled. "I'm just taking the moment as it comes,
Mulder."
"Where the hell have you been?" Acid that sharp and strong would have dissolved
the bones of a lesser
man. She looked over his shoulder, failed to see Mulder, then returned her
measuring and strangely
colorless gaze to Alex as if she were readingfrom the most privileged cache of his
personthe secrets
of him.
Alex quirked a brow, thought of saying heavy traffic, then discarded the retort. "We
had to run the
media gauntlet," he said coolly, then added for the hell of it, "And then some EMT
tranked him uphe
was out of it, they were taking his blood pressure, I was talking to him. He just ate it
like a candy,
swallowed it down with his coffee. I didn't even know what she'd handed him until
it was too late."
"Shit," Kazdin said succinctly, looking slightly ameliorated but still cranky. She
wouldn't have cursed even
so mildly six hours ago. In the thick of chaos she'd been frost; now, swamped with
minutiae of
documentation and fielding endless phone calls from her superiors, she was
obviously reaching her
threshold of civility. "Where is he?"
"He's coming down. Be here in a minute." Alex let his wide eyes appease her, smiled
briefly, then slid
away, coffee in hand, to find a seat. He made a quick cell-to-cell call to warn Mulder
he shouldn't be
operating heavy machinery, which was answered only by a brief silence and a small
beep as the
connection was severed. By the time Mulder ambled in to join them Alex was deeply
engaged in
dictating his incident report to one of the Richmond office's support staff, a
ponytailed young woman
with rural antecedents whose keen, scarcely hidden fascination for his eyewitness
account betrayed her
relative newness to the job.
"Agent Mulder, good of you to join us," Kazdin said. She eyed him, then in a lower
voice said more
amiablyand with slightly more honest concern: "How are you feeling?"
"Fine." Mulder nodded. "Where do you want me?"
Kazdin pulled off a synchronicity of gesturesbrow lift, lip moue, chin tuckas one
to eloquently
communicate that she was tempted to tell him but would refrain. "Have a seat. I'll
find someone to take
your statement."
"I type with more than two fingers," Mulder said, glancing down the long
conference table's feasting
board of laptops and laser printers. Three or four junior field agents and secretarial
staff typed diligently
to fill the red and blue folders which were stacking up next to them.
"Call me a traditionalist, Agent Mulder. We don't payroll eleven-hundred typists to
twiddle their thumbs
and make coffee."
"Well, actually we do pay them to twiddle their thumbs." Mulder's sudden lopsided
grin was sunny but
Kazdin stared at him, unthawed, as if reassessing his mens sana.
"Right," she drawled blandly. "Have a seat, Agent Mulder. I'll have someone with
you momentarily."
Dismissively she turned away and resumed speaking to one of her techs about A/V
footage and
security-stamped copies. As Mulder drifted off he heard her saying, "The director's
cut should be
packaged up as soon as possibleFedEx it to him by this afternoon if you can. And
make sure the
Attorney General gets her copy. If she calls back, I'm not here, please, but tell her..."
In temporary limbo, Mulder paused and glanced around the room, half-consciously
searching for the
coffee machine he knew had to be somewhere in the vicinity. Outside, the sun was
up; in this room the
window shades remained drawn, leaving its interior defined by the strong, cold
luminosity of fluorescent
ceiling tiles. A handful of the FBI's hostage rescue team were grouped in a corner of
the room; a tight
clutch of ninjas, the kind of men who are never happier than when they are driving
a tank through
compound gates or letting the tear-gas cannisters fly. Looking at them one couldn't
help but feel
grateful they were on the side of the law; more or less leashed by its authority. Men
like this could have
taken the White House down, had they put their minds to it.
Mulder knew that one of them had to be the sniper who'd brought Barry down, and
guessed it was the
moustached young man who was doing his best to look as if all this was exactly
what he'd expected. He
didn't appear quite as hard-eyed as his fellows, and something in the kinetics of the
group established
him as the subtle center, an authority figure not by rank but by custom. His recent
performance had
earned him fifteen minutes of professional fame and a pedestal, however short.
Mulder found the conference room's small hospitality station (half hidden behind a
pile of flak jackets);
its coffee machine exuded the aroma of a fresh pot, and rather than powdered
creamer there was a
bowl of real half-and-half caddies. "All the bells and whistles," Mulder murmured to
himself with
approval, dumping several into his brew. He turned back to survey the room; a few
glances had aligned
to his presence now, filings of sight succumbing to the pull of a magnet. A reluctant
recollection to duty
nagged at him. He felt his shoulders hunch a bit. Sighing inwardly, he
circumnavigated the room and
closed in on the HRT crew, who fell silent and watchful at his arrival.
"Good work," he said to the man he'd pegged for his shooter. The man nodded,
cleared his throat, and
looked as pleased as the rough mask of his face allowed. He unmistakably relaxed at
Mulder's words, a
strain of lines easing around his eyes. With a tickle of some astonishment Mulder
found himself the
recipient of respect rather than contempt. HRT ninjas were notorious for having an
invariably low opinion
of hostage negotiators; they preferred direct offensive actions. Even during the past
year, when they
were in the spotlight, at the center of hostile public opinion and professional fire,
they'd maintained a
cliquish aloofness and a certainty of their methods.
"Thank you, sir," the man said, eschewing any overt sign of pride but somehow
conveying a buoyed
acknowledgment of the recognition. He touched his moustache self-consciously,
stroking one of its
wings. "Didn't get that first shot. Sorry about that."
Heat unfurled in Mulder's cheeks, unseen. "You did your best," he said quietly.
"Didn't take him down for good," the sniper added, sounding disappointed. This was
obviously a repeat,
for Mulder's benefit, of remarks he'd been making to his fellows, who shifted in
place with minimal but
apparent restlessness. "Should have stuck with the head shot."
"He was down," Mulder said, flat and dry, and then blinked as he began to process
the other man's
offhand words.
"Yeah." The sniper's dissatisfaction was evident despite Mulder's assurance. "Alpha
team got in before
the bird hit, but he could've been riding the trigger still. They pillbug on you, you
never know what to
expect." A faint jitter of residual nervous energy animated the man's body and
drove his words into a
tight spiral of compressive jargon that made no concessions to the ignorance of
anyone outside his
professional clique. The other men around them were silent, heads cocked as they
listened, an
unkindness of ravens. Two of them still wore their heavy Kevlar vests even now,
with a defiant
masochism: armored hairshirts.
"What's your name?" Mulder asked casually.
"Revellsorry, sirJack Revell."
"Did someone change the orders for a kill shot, Jacktell you to aim lowtake out
his gun arm?"
Revell drew himself up slightly. The other team members exchanged a glance. "Sir"
He broke off at a
loss, obviously stumped as to the degree of Mulder's authority and whether he
should answer.
"You'd have to talk to the team leader, sir," another man said noncommitally. His
face, unlike Revell's,
was cold and openly antagonistic.
"Where is he?"
The men's hard faces knitted among themselves a collective query, then another
man gave out
reluctantly, "HQ."
"Washington?"
"Greencourt."
Richmond office. Mulder's lips were just parting to express something his mind
hadn't yet put to words
when he was snagged away by an earnest clerk-typist and expertly relocated to the
conference table.
He spent the next few hours of his life slumped laxly in the boxed confines of a grey
chair, describing his
tete-a-tete with Duane Barry. The process was lengthened by his own chronic
appetite for detail and a
discursive tendency to slide off into tangents. Jennifer, his clerk-typist, failed to
discourage him from
embellishment, either from a shared interest in the characteristic profiles of alien
abductees, or perhaps
because she was too shy to interrupt his diversions. By the time they were winding
up she was almost
convinced of having been abducted herself.
"But all those things," she said stubbornly when Mulder tried to reassure her of its
unlikelihood. "I'm
afraid of snakes, and sometimes I feel like I'm being watched at nightand
sometimes when I touch
radios they just go all crazy with static"
"Jennifer"
"And I get really bad insomnia"
Mulder laughed, startling her to silence, though the sound was neither loud nor
unkind. He was torn
between true amusement and exasperated dismay at himself for having led this nice
girl, however
unwittingly, down a garden path of fancy.
"If you're afraid of snakes, it's probably because they're snakes," he said gently. "The
fears abductees
have tend to be paralyzingphobias that interfere with normal routines of living.
Forget about the radio,
but if you feel like you're being watched at night you may be rightyou might have
a peeping tom in
your neighborhood. You should call for a drive-by if you think someone might be
outside your apartment.
As for insomnia, if every insomniac was an abductee half the bedrooms in the world
would be empty at
night." Jennifer continued to stare at him with a misplaced, calf-eyed trust that made
Mulder's skin itch.
"Of all those things I told you about you've mentioned only the most innocuousthe
most common. Now
if you'd seen beams of light come through your window" He sensed the passage
of a body behind him,
paused. "Or had missing time, or scars you can't account for, or a marker memory
of some
kindneedles, exam table, an alien facethen you might have more to be concerned
about."
"What was that you said about sinus-is" She tripped over the word.
"Chronic sinusitis," Mulder said.
"My sister has that."
Mulder cleared his throat, looked down to his hands which had twisted a coffee
stirrer into a heart. He
dropped the mangled plastic. "It's not all that uncommon."
Jennifer contemplated him as if arriving at feminine insights older than time, and
then with unexpected
grace gave full focus to the laptop at her fingers, altering her attention without any
hint of artifice. She
simply had to type now.
"Hey partner," Alex said, appearing at his shoulder and sliding into the chair next to
him. "Almost done?"
"To a crisp," Mulder said glumly, and then added to Jennifer, "Am I done?"
"Yes, sir. I just need to print this out and have you sign it."
Alex buttonholed Mulder and drew him away into a clinch by the windows.
Someone during the last few
hours had pulled up the blinds to let in the light. Mulder realized he hadn't even
noticed.
"Skinner called me while you were making your statement. I offered to get you on
the phone but he said
not to interrupt. You left your cellular in the room, huh?"
"Oops." Mulder smiled.
Alex gave him a sere, knowing look. "Oops, all right. Scully called me too. Checking
in. Wanted to know
how you were. I feel like your fucking secretary."
Mulder took the mild grumble in stride, nodding as if he didn't quite hear the
content of the remark, his
eyes vaguing out as some inner thought-process commenced. "Anyone mentioned
news on Barry's
condition?"
"I haven't heard anything."
"Where's Kazdin?"
"She took off. Hospital I think. They've got Barry over at Jefferson Memorial."
Mulder looked absently out
the window and said nothing. Alex gave him the hairy eyeball. "We're not going
there," he said curtly,
correctly reading the drift of his partner's thoughts. "Skinner wants us back home."
"I don't wanna mow the lawn, Dad," Mulder murmured, faintly mocking. He
automatically glanced around
after the comment, as if expecting Skinner to turn up by his side and thump him
with a glare.
"Yeah." Alex gave him an odd look. "You know, I really think he can't stand to have
you out of his sight,
Mulder. I'll bet his balls crawl up his crack every time you slip the leash and run off
somewhere to troll
sewers or hunt Yeti tracks. Probably thinks, God knows what freak of nature the
cat's going to drag back
and dump on the rug."
Mulder's eyes lightened and he laughed. "I think you're wrong. I'll bet his blood
pressure drops to nearly
normal once I pass beyond D.C. city limits."
"The outer limits," Alex said, quirking one side of his lips up.
"The Mulder zone," Mulder joked back easily. He glanced around the room. "I guess
they don't need us
anymore." With that unsignaled shift from mood to mood that characterized him,
he dropped altitude a
few thousand feet and leveled out somewhere in the middle of a cloudbank. "I
should have walked out
as soon as I saw that damn script. Why they roped me into this clusterfuck surpasses
all knowledge."
"You're the resident ghostbuster," Alex said, not ungently.
"That was no ghost," Mulder said, turning his head. The sun lit into the room and
spun the wheat of his
eyes into gold. The greyish-green of his irises had gilded spokes.
"You think he was... for real?"
They eyed one other wordlessly, each man waiting for something he couldn't name.
"When are you going to trust me?" Alex asked, lifting his chin, his thin lips
compressing with anger that
almost might have been unfeigned.
"Just because we" Mulder broke off, stunned at what he'd been so near to saying.
He sucked in a
breath, hissed, "This isn't the best venue, Alex."
"Agent Mulder"
"What?" Mulder said sharply. He jerked his gaze from Alex and caught sight of
Jennifer standing across
the conference table, peeling a fluster of surprised expressions from her round face
like leaves from a
cabbage. But if she'd expected more courtesy from him, she was nonetheless
accustomed to the
uncertain tempers of field agents.
"Your report is ready for you to sign," she said, stretching to pass it across the table
to him. Without
further speech she left the room.
"My neighbor has this small yapping dog I'd like to see kicked," Alex said
conversationally. "Remind me
to sic you on the animal next time you're over."
After signing his name with an irritable scribble, Mulder shoved the folder back
across the table and said,
"Let's just check out and go before I shoot anyone."
Mulder was talking. Alex had his mental microphone on the whole way. After
weeks of acquaintance he
had finally attuned himself to Mulder's frequency, though this was a development
he kept to himself.
Now he listened clearly as Mulder talked his shtick about aliens, about government
conspiracies,
abductions, the possibility of archived ET technology and related research, and a
catalogue of other
nuttery that Alex had at first given only the most nominal credence tofor while he
accepted
government conspiracy as a fact of life, the rest of it was (he'd believed) simply
Mulder's flawed
translation of those few pieces of ambiguous data he'd managed to gather. Yes,
there were
conspiracies, and they reached wide and dark; but aliens? The man was a loon. He
hunted and pecked
for scattered seeds among ash, read his own cracked meaning in their broken
glyphs, but he didn't
see what he saw. Alex's assignment had been set out clearly for him: here was a
man who, through
his own skewed logic and idiosyncratic hobbyhorsing, was nosing surprisingly close
to sensitive areas of
government security. And until recently Alex had taken this at face value.
He'd met several times with Morley and his cronies. The word treason was tossed
around pretty
casuallymore in respect to Mulder's attitude than any of his actions, and with no
concern for adhering
to a strict legal definition; the understanding being that in matters like this
jurisprudence wasn't an
option. Oh, they'd mouthed the words of justice at first, but it wasn't long before
Alex caught the gist,
and recognized that responsescountermeasureshad to be more innovative. He
should have
suspected that his job would not be a simple one; he'd been chosen for a reason.
After the Augustus
Cole case wound up, this became even more clear. Alex had been asked to analyze
the extent of
leakage pertaining to classified materials, in particular the documents file that the
good Doctor Scully
had apparently passed on to Mulder. Asked to analyze. And with that request, he'd
known. Hadn't he
always known? They didn't want a long-term mole in the bureau; his days were
numbered. Not unlike
Doctor Dana Scully's. Scully. Whether she had deeper sources in the government
than intelligence had
suggested or whether she was merely a courier, she was a far greater problem than
anyone had
realized.
Alex had performed the analysis requested of him, sitting at the dining room table
in his apartment for
one long evening, deliberately ignoring the shadowy phantom Mulder who
caressed his flesh and
nuzzled the ache in his balls. He was a man with a job. He did it. Butas in all things
-Alex Krycek acted
from a calculated blend of self-interest and suitability. He'd taken more care than
usual in drawing up his
report, choosing from among risks with a cold eye. If Morley had thought it odd his
hired gun had
relegated terminal force to the absolute bottom of the suggested options list he'd
shown no sign.
Alex's countermeasures had made for a thorough menu despite how little
background information he'd
been given, most of them microvariations on standard destabilizing techniques;
Morley had actually
seemed very impressed. Alex's mental notes on that occasion had read: likes
creativity; weakness for
the baroque; cold war dinosaur; still dangerous.
Though Alex knew a few snap analyses couldn't come close to summing up the man
behind the smokey
nom-de-plume, he knew one thing, which was that Mr Three-Packs-a-Day was not
long for this world
and it wasn't his lungs he needed to worry about.
Still, pegging Mulder too soonaside from the figurativehad been Alex's initial
mistake, and now he
was scrambling to regroup and revise. He'd made the mistake, an understandable
one, because the
premise on which Fox Mulder was based was so hugely ludicrous at first glance that
nearly anyone
would have dismissed itand him. In like wise, another operative might have taken
for granted his
assignment, accepted everything Morley and his cronies told him. But Alex rarely
settled for what he was
given. He suspected that if he had anything in common with Morley it was a
persuasion toward life not
as something one read but something one wroteand revised when needed.
Abiding by this unformulated philosophy, Alex hadn't let the Mulder matter rest on
its premises, cute
though they were; instead, he'd applied himself assiduously to answer the questions
his mind raisedit
was like picking the knots and snarls from a tangled skein of yarn, attempting to
follow lines of
information back to their source. Where were the correspondences and overlaps
between Mulder's
suspicions and actuality? How seriously did they take him? What exactly was this
Roswell thing all
about, anyway?
A man who seeks and cultivates covert sources has an edge into secrets that others
may lack. Alex, like
Mulder, had begun trolling the waters. They fished in deep waters, he and Mulder,
with a strange
parallel focus: they were like two men in a boat, backs turned to one another, their
lines dropped at
opposing points but carried and pulled by currents below until, perhaps, they
twined. Alex never felt
closer to Mulder than when he'd just discovered some new secretthat, ironically,
he could not speak of
to the other man.
His most recent searches were pointing him down the most obvious, yet most
unexpected path: toward
Mulder's truth, that erratic gleam of light in a dark forest of terrestrial mundanity.
His alien will-o-wisp
might have more substance than the shadowy trees through which it wove. Crazy,
crazy, I'm picking up
the mark's mindset, that's all. So he told himselftried towary of such a danger
even as he turned a
more open ear Mulder's way and encouraged his confidences. Mulder's squirrelly
chatter and Alex's
sketchy agenda had begun to mesh and merge, in tandem with the interlocking
intimacy of their bodies.
So intense was Alex's rising interest in otherworldly matters he risked
overcompensating for his earlier
skepticism with too keen a show of excitement.
Mulder had been talking morbidly about harvested fetuses, body cavity
examinations, ORION brain
scrubs, and an ilk of other miseries both speculative and real, for forty miles.
"Anything that involves anal probes can't be all bad," Alex said gravely during a
pause, not taking his
eyes from the road.
"For the sake of pax automobila I'll forget you stooped that low," Mulder said easily.
Despite the grim weirdness of his conversation it was obvious Mulder had jimmied
himself up into a fairly
good mood; Alex didn't like to let such an advantage pass.
"I was reading the incident transcripts while you made your report," Alex said. A
Sade song came on the
radio's jazz station (a genre of music he believed kept him in character);
unthinkingly he reached to
punch up the volume, then changed the move to lower the air conditioner instead.
He chanced a look at
Mulder, who appeared not to have noticed anything. No distractions. "I'd zoned out
some of the stuff
about implantsthat whole long time before Scully got there"
Mulder turned his head abruptly to the window, stared out.
"What?" Alex said, catching the movement. He inwardly cursed himself for bringing
up his expartner's
name. That was all it took: there he went, zipping out into the solar system,
mooning over a woman
who without a doubt thought he was god's curse to the scientific community.
"Nothing," Mulder said. "I'm just ruing the dayyesterday. Couldn't find my
favorite socks, the
commissary was out of sprinkled doughnuts, and my reputation ratcheted down
another sharp notch on
the loco scaleI think I'm past 'spooky' territory now, bottoming out somewhere
around 'crackbrained'.
On the flip side, it wasn't a total write-off, I can take heart that I helped bring down a
'brain damaged
psychopath' who shall no longer menace the peaceful citizens of our community."
"Whoa," said Alex, shooting another sidelong glance at him, marveling at the sudden
blossom of
sarcasm. "Is that a little Scully-backlash I hear?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Mulder said bitterly, and then, mere seconds later,
burst roughly. "I am
such a fuck-up!" He slammed his hand against the dash, kicked out and impacted his
expensive leather
shoe with the car's padded footwell: a six-foot tall man trying to have a tantrum in a
confined space.
Alex bit his tongue, began to speak with husky earnestness that covered for
laughter. "Mulder, you are
not"
"Don't even start your pep talk," Mulder snarled. He fell broodily silent, ran a hand
over his hair and
adjusted his tie. After a minute he spoke again in a quieter, more subdued tone,
words issuing flatly
from an almost immobile face, something in him indicating that this was speech
tunneling out from a
prison yard. "She's intelligent, brilliant. She picks through people's guts and finds the
logic in their
deaths when no one else can. But there are times when logic only distracts me." He
twisted out a small
smile. "Literally, this time."
Alex risked, and breathed out a careful, almost inaudible, "How so?"
"She was right there in my fucking ear!" Mulder almost shouted.
Alex's hands jerked slightly on the wheel, swerving them closer to the shoulder of
the highway. Mulder
didn't appear to notice.
"I had Barry right in my face. I was this close. He wasis, I hope to goda classic
case. There is no
doubt in my mind he's an abductee. I... I let it get away from me." Switch of gears
again. "I was
supposed to get those hostages out of there, get him into the firing line. I fucked up.
I must have.
They're not saying it in so many words but it's got to catch up with me. I can't
believe Kazdin didn't rake
my balls over the coals. Maybe she'll just call Skinner and pass the honor on to him... Barry... he was
pliable. I had him, could have had him sooner. I was afraid to rush him. I wasn't
supposed to rush him.
But there's Scully prompting me, pushing me... "
"You don't know that he would have conceded anything sooner," Alex stated flatly.
"You spent seven
fucking hours in there, Mulder, before the good doctor rode in on her white
charger. You could have
been in there days. Give yourself credit. You brought him right to the edge. You
would have brought
him over without her helpyou were talking him along all the way. You tried to get
the hostages out of
there fifty timesa hundred. I heard you. We all did. And it's on transcripts. They
can't ignore the job
you did."
Mulder said nothing, but Alex could peripherally see the tight, attentive set of his
head. He was
listening, all taut nerves, aching for reassurance. Alex felt a knife of renewed,
impersonal dislike for
Scully. He doubted that given the chance she would have found the right words to
say. Ball-breaking
bitch.
"Tossing you to the media," he went on, shaking his head once with absent
impatience. "I don't get off
on that shit either, but maybe it wasn't a bad idea. Let you collect some laurels for a
change."
Mulder grimaced. "They'll wither before I wear them."
"When are you gonna wise up and put your foot on the career ladder out of that
basement?"
"I'm not in the basement any more." Mulder leaned his head back on the seat.
"You just keep telling yourself that." Alex caught a glimpse of Mulder's head turning,
felt rather than saw
the faint easing of expression that fell shy of a smile but held its traces.
"You can buck this harness any time, you know," Mulder said mildly. "Your career is
just beginning."
"Yeah. But we're talking about you."
Mulder rolled his head away again on the seat rest and returned to brooding,
obviously chewing over
recent events with a mind to digest them. "Once I got in there I wished I had the
chance to rip that
shit-sucking transmitter out of my ear. Did you hear Kazdindon't identify with
him? Don't feed into his
psychosis? I wasn't giving him therapy, damn itI was riding right along with him,
bang on cue.
Empathyrapporttrust. So maybe a little more detachment wouldn't have hurt,
but... " He trailed off,
sounding tired, unable to sustain the certainty of himself. A man contemplating
dead ends. "I let her
spook me," Mulder said, not without a tiny pin-prick of humor.
"Scully?"
"Kazdin. I overcompensated. Boy rebel trying to show he can play nice, not bite the
authority figures... "
"She had that black woman thing going for her," Alex said matter of factly.
Mulder cleared his throat. "You may be right," he admitted, discomforted. "If Rich
had been in charge I
don't think I would have taken all that bullshit so, uh, gracefully."
Alex choked on a laugh. "Oh, yeah."
"You know I looked at that damn chalkboard and I wanted to tell her I worked in
the BSU with Webster
when he was writing that damn four-step protocol, and that it was outdated and did
she mind if I used
Noesner's instead."
"Oh fuck," Alex said, slewing his gaze over to Mulder, still laughing. "Why didn't
you?"
"Oh... hell. I don't know. They wanted me to walk through their paces. I was trying
to behave."
"I thought you didn't have hostage negotiation training."
"Well, not formally." Mulder smiled.
"Mulder, can I be you when I grow up?"
Mulder laughed, the first real laugh Alex had heard in over twenty-four long hours.
(Had it really been no
longer than that?)
"I don't know. Do you eat your spinach?"
"You know, I think I'm hungry," Alex said thoughtfully. "Isn't there a Denny's at this
turn-off?"
Their detour was brief, and while in the restaurant and again in the car Alex had
steered the
conversation to talk of Duane Barry and the question of his abduction. He'd heard
from Mulder about
scoop-mark scars, the perils of federal dentistry, the genre of abductee literature,
and several
interesting details of past cases. (Some Alex had already gleaned through a covert
perusal of files in the
abandoned basement office, but Mulder wove them into a more coherent and
compelling narrative.) The
only thing he did not discuss that Alex wished to hear was his sister's abduction. On
that subject he
remained evasive; he had a way of quietly erasing expression from his face and
watchful eyes
whenever Alex circled near the matter.
Alex held a snapshot memory of Mulder sitting in the restaurant booth, greyed by
the rainlight from a
large plate-glass window. The restaurant lights were so dim they sat in shadows and
viewed the pale
wash of the earth. His face too seemed rinsed, shell-like. There was a period
between orders and coffee
when he stared out the window, a clockface that had gone still. Not waiting. The
sweep of time
suspended, unnoticed. Alex, though, remained established in an observation both
temporal and
personal, and he had stared, not meaning to commit sight to memory, unable not
to. Sex at that
moment was beside the point, and Alex felt a desire to carve himself into the other
man's existence that
had nothing to do with the muted knife of flesh between his legs. Mulder, trance
eyed, watched the
rhizomatic descent of rain on the window glass. Alex watched Mulder.
And then time had resumed and Mulder had picked apart his napkin and absently
talked about Elvis and
Hitler and the madness of crowds, all the while with a marginal, troubled air that
had no certain
relationship to the things he spoke of. His sister had dematerialized long ago, but
she might have been
there with them in the booth, with Mulder. She was like a keyhole in the door that
led to him, the figure
of absence within his closure.
Alex himself didn't find driving into the metro area a particularly religious
experience; more like trying to
navigate through a boiler room in which the pipes had burst. He grew increasingly
tense as he worked
his way slowly through midday traffic; the air conditioner was running full-blast but
didn't entirely
compensate for the humidity outside. The car was a gastropod: inching along and
confining as all hell.
Mulder looked relaxed, perfectly happy to be curled up in its clasp, bound in a
nutshell as it were, but
this was excruciating for Alex. He'd loosened his tie and had a moist sense of himself
as something
large, ungainly, and beset by the elements. He longed to get free of his suitor at
least of the car. He
didn't particularly want to return to the office; the remains of the day stretched
ahead of him, a
triple-feature matinee that would likely include meetings, bullpen clock-watching,
and the spectacle of
Mulder and Skinner bumping chests over events in Richmond. Alex had been
through one debriefing with
Mulder, on the Cole case, and had been grilled thoroughly by Skinner on Cole's
shooting. With Mulder's
statement as back-up he'd avoided an OPC inquiry, but had there been holes in their
report Skinner
would unerringly have found them. Alex viewed Skinner warily; the man was one
of the few top dogs
whose teeth hadn't been pulled yet and he fit a type Alex distrusted on principle.
The ones you wanted
to watch the mostwhose own eagle eye it was best to avoidwere those looking
for distractions from
their family woes; men without children; without enough hobbies; men pushing the
sevensseven a.m.
in, seven p.m. out, seven days a week if they could stand it. He'd drop of a heart
attack sooner or later,
but until then Alex would tread carefully in his presence, in his lair. Mulder, on the
other hand, bothered
with few such restraints on his behavior; with Skinner he walked a razor's edge
between grudging
respect and heckling insubordination that awed Alexat least when Alex was deeply
sunk into his role
as bright new agent and skippy sidekick.
Mulder leaned lazily in his seat and divided his time between zoning out into the
rain's meditation and
watching Alex from the corner of his eye. The younger man was withdrawn in
thought and driving, a
perfect target for study. Alex's face altered when his attention lapsedas did nearly
everyone's, of
course, but Mulder found the contrast in Alex's features more marked than most.
On the job Alex's
demeanor rarely slipped from the frame of his 'well-scrubbed special-agent mug' (as
Mulder thought of
it), which might have reflected real anxiety and eagerness to get ahead; he did seem
primed for duty.
Focused, earnest. Stick him in the midst of a roomful of seasoned agents and he
looked like nothing so
much as a Mormon tadpole, still wet behind the ears. Such times as now, though, his
face was different,
like bone from which all soft flesh has dropped. He was at his most serious when he
wore nothing on
the surface: no feelings, no focus, no social gaze. It was then Mulder felt himself
unlocking to the other
man, and seeking to unlock him; open doors rarely tempted him; he sought secrets;
when looking at
something impassable, closed, he was drawn.
At their most private times, relaxedafter sex, for instancehe could look down into
Alex's face and see
such a well of hunger and humor that he felt he was catching his own reflection in a
smoke-dark glass.
By chance, a few weekends ago, he'd met Scully for lunch not long after leaving
Alex's bed, his body still
thrumming and aching with pleasure, and he'd stared across the table and searched
her face (she with
head tilted down, reading her menu) and tried to imagine seeing her through
bedroom eyes: would that
opaque, soap-pale face soften and give way? Would they ever be so near in heart
that she could smile
at him in a way not pitying, resigned, clouded with qualifiers?
Not a chance now, Mulder thought, turning his gaze into the rain. It was hard to
keep up a friendship
when one partner was off chasing shadows in some distant state, and the other
clocked twelve-hour
days in the company of corpses.
"I should call in," Mulder said, as they stopped at a light. He watched a conga line of
slickered schoolkids
parade in front of their bumper. "See if Skinner wants a meeting."
"Surprised he hasn't had his secretary call you."
"She crosses herself every time she sees me, did you know?" Mulder said idly. "Now
there's a believer."
"What does she think you are, the antichrist?"
"Probably just a minor demon."
"I'm checking you later for horns."
"Sounds like a plan." Something in the other man's tone made Mulder feel mildly
frisky. He smiled, flipped
through a mental dayplanner, said, "What are you doing tonight?"
"I've got an appointment," Alex said absently.
Mulder blinked, nodded, and tried to assess this without giving any clues away; the
sudden pang of his
heart startled and undid him; and then he caught Alex's eye: head turning, lock of
dark hair falling,
those jades gleaming under his lashes. The smirky cut of his lips was cherubic and
wicked. Mulder's own
lips partedjust a movement without sound. He couldn't recall the last time he'd
had anyone to play
with like this. He was becoming more sensitized to the novelty; the sex he could
compartmentalize; the
flirting made him touchy, shy, awkward, made him feel old, made him want to
work out and buff up. Buy
new boxers. It was ridiculous, and very distracting, but it made a hell of a change
from carnivorous
lightning bugs and homicidal girl scouts; there was actually something else to his
days now, and nights.
It was hard not to fall.
"I should make you pay for the take-out, for stringing me along," Mulder mused.
"No way. I'm jonesing for pasta primavera."
"You wanna go out?" Mulder affected a tough-guy accent. "Like onna date, or
somethin'?"
"No, conehead, I'm going to cook for you." Alex grinned.
"Hold on, I think I have a checklist for this stage of the relationship."
"What's it say?"
"Cookingcooking" Mulder's tone suggested the consultation of an invisible
guidebook. "Mm, I think I
get to leave my toothbrush now. And a change of briefs."
"That's a big step."
"I could keep using your toothbrush. Germ sharing: now there's a big step. We
didn't even mark the
day. Another anniversary down the tube."
Alex shot him a pained wince, then said dryly, "You think you get more germs from
toothbrushes than
tongue-wrestling?"
"You've got a point." Mulder was casually drumming his palms on his thighs. "I
know I'm not doing
anything tonightuh, what is tonightThursday?"
"Friday," Alex said, his tone conveying faint irony and then a thready breath of
relief: "One weekend,
coming up."
"A weekend. I knew those little blank blocks on my calender were for something."
"You wanna watch a movie?" Alex said in a casual plan-making tone, tilting his head
Mulder's way before
returning his focus to the road; they were pulling into the Hoover building parking
garage at last.
"Does it have three X's in the title?"
"Give it a rest. I need to jumpstart my brain."
"Oh, then let's seeover forty years old, black and white, subtitled, preferably with
symbolist skeletons
boogying across the landscape."
"Asshole. Just because I like foreign films"
Mulder laughed. "You choose dinner, I get to choose the film."
"Not choose, Mulder. I make dinner," Alex said, feigning pique.
"Potato, potahto."
"You want to call it off?" Alex turned off the car's ignition, and in the resultant silence
surprised Mulder
by realigning his body in the seat, stretching his arm out along the seatback and
enacting a
contemplative tete-a-tete.
Mulder glanced through the car windows automatically; the Hoover parking
garage, for Christ's sake,
Alex. But he didn't say this aloud. He took note, though, of the other man's too
casual tone; it caught
him off-guard; his small, stuttering laugh was self-defensive. "Whatare youwhat's
this about?"
"Nothing. I" Flick of lashes, expressionless eyes. "I just thought I'd give you the
out."
"Take advantage of our free one-time offer?"
They held each other's eyes.
"Something like that," Alex said after a minute.
Mulder sensed that the other man wanted him to take the question seriously; it
addressed more than
just the night ahead; and yet he had no answer, except of course not. All that came
to mind were the
usual relationshipping two-steps: What do you want, Alex? Do you want out? He
loathed entering into
such a trite little dialogue, particularly while the bureau loomed over them in all its
literalness. It wasn't
Alex's usual chat form either. Anything that smacked of faggot made Alex's lip curl;
and yet this
somewhat ironic response had been muted of late; as if he were, at heart, far less
worried about his
sexuality than reflex would have it. In faggotry was intimacy, thought Mulder, and
that was the real
danger, wasn't it.
"I'm not ready to bail just yet," Mulder said.
Alex cut his eyes away, took a deep breath. "Well, okay, then."
Kim was at her desk and raised her head as he entered. He smiled gamely. Her
nostrils flared as if she
scented brimstone, and he noted her hand casually dip beneath the edge of her desk
where she was
no doubt warding off his fiendish presence, practicing her born-again juju. He
wasn't sure if she were
just operating on some cootie principle or taboo of contaminationpurging herself
of the unclean spirits
whose traces he held and transferred as a spooky intermediaryor if she believed
him, Fox Mulder, to
be possessed. The woman was strange. You had to respect that.
"Is he in?"
Kim pursed her lips, on pause as if measuring out what could be spared from her
hoard of information.
"The Assistant Director is out, Agent Mulder. The Attorney General" (she spoke in
caps) "requested a
meeting with him that he expects to take up most of the afternoon. He wanted me
to reschedule a
preliminary debriefing with you when you checked in. He expected you sooner."
"Sorry" Mulder made a vague gesture of apology. "I had to pick up some dry
cleaning, return some
videos."
She took his remarks with unfortunate seriousness, or the semblance of same.
"Personal errands on
bureau time waste the taxpayers' money."
"I'll send them a little extra in my return next year." She didn't bend an inch to the
influence of his
practiced, wonky smile. But this is my most charming smile, Mulder thought,
facetiously forlorn. It goes
with all my suits.
"The Assistant Director will be available tomorrow at two-thirty," Kim noted, coolly
inspecting her
schedule book.
"That's Saturday," Mulder pointed out, beginning to feel irked.
Kim actually looked down at her book again with a show of punctiliousness, as if
this required
verification. "Yes."
"I have a doctor's appointment," Mulder said solemnly.
She raised her brown eyes to him with the placid, seething antagonism of a goaded
farm animal. Mulder
shifted his feet, cleared his throat. "Uh, I can cancel."
"I'll pencil you in."
"He's out." Mulder ran a hand through his hair and looked around the white-shirt
and-gun bullpen with
an expression of distaste and ennui under his heavy eyelids. Alex was leaning back
in a chair at the
desk he'd staked claim on; jacket off; hands clasped loosely behind his head. Mulder
looked down at
him. "You up for hooky?" he murmured.
"Thought you'd never ask." Alex stood, grabbed his jacket, darted a glance around,
not so much worried
as cautious. "You think they'll notice?" he murmured.
"Three-forty-five on a Friday. Agent Fiore is on the phone with her daughter's
nanny; Blankenship is
running an illegal background check on his weekend date; Mauritz is emailing his
wife at her office; and
Dirks is way too interested in his state-of-the-art monitor to be doing anything
except a public service
investigation of internet obscenity content."
"You don't know any of that for sure though," Alex said, hiding a sneaky Watson-to
Holmes admiration
within a skeptical tone.
Mulder smiled. "Oh, no. Me, I'm just a cynic."
Alex's answering smile was as wicked and smooth as brandy. "Let's go do some
sinning then."
"Do you want some help?" Mulder asked, resting his chin on the windowsill and
staring out with no
inclination to get up from his chair and follow through if his offer was accepted. The
breeze felt good on
his face and arms; cooling him; he'd picked up jeans at home, wore them now with
nothing else but an
ancient navy tee-shirt whose holes Alex had given a derisive eye.
"Too many cooks."
Mulder contemplated the wisdom of this. "Did your mother cross-stitch, Alex, or do
you have a little
pocket maximizer for all occasions?"
"I knew there had to be a reason why people don't invite you over for dinner."
It was hard to decide whether to feel hurt. No, Mulder decided lazily. "I say what I
think." The mildest
of protests.
"No kidding, friend."
"You think I should observe more of the niceties?"
Alex looked over at him, stirring something in a pot. "Nah. Then you'd lose that
elusive Mulder charm."
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Mulder's eyes dropped another notch. He watched a
grey cat, its back a
stripe of fire, walk along the fence bordering this unit of condos from the next. The
sunset was clinging
to all things. Landscape. Strange how the shape of one place was so often like
another; the boxes and
angles of different states comprised by a country that was written the same across
its length. "You
know, I... " He stopped speech almost as it started, for he'd been thinking of a time
so long ago that it
dried and disappeared even as he brought it to his tongue. Alex didn't inquire; didn't
press; was silent,
stirring.
Too many things overlaid each other in his mind; too many places and persons.
Missing persons; places
left. Why was he thinking of abductions now, god damn the word, it tasted like
medicine in his mouth,
something cherried and unwelcome. Restless with spirits of violence, he stood up
from the chair, walked
around the kitchen, Alex's eyes following him. Refrigerator, beer. He took a bottle
just for something to
do, because it was there; when it was open he held it, nothing more, transferring it
around, hand to
hand, hand to counter, tipping it and studying it, forgetting it. Life props. Without
these, what order did
a life have. Boredom, rage, grief. Where would he be without his cellular, his VCR,
his credit card.
Pencils. Paper clips. This file, that case. This life.
He flipped the bottlecap on the counter, several times, with intense and brooding
concentration, until
Alex took it away and flung it casually off to one side with the air of a man
absolutely uncaring where it
landed.
Their glances edged into mutual territory but didn't quite meet; Alex working his
pots and pans; Mulder
raising his beer to his lips then letting it lower again, untasted. He leaned over the
counter on his
elbows, watched the steam rising from the stove top.
"I get thesethese intense flashbacks sometimes. In the kitchen. Memories and
kitchens." Mulder
paused. "Research suggests that a person's primary olfactory memory is set in the
first ten minutes of
life. I think they were making chimichangas at the next birthing table when I slid
out."
Alex gave him a frank look as his lips rewrote themselves in cursive. "You know,
Muldersomeday your
brilliant brain is going to finish processing that university library you've got stored
up there and instead
of your freaky factoids something profound is actually going to pop out of your
mouth. Call me if you feel
it coming, promise?"
"You're such a bitch," Mulder said warmly. He tipped his beer bottle into Alex's
sauce.
"Hey!"
"Flavor."
"I could really get off keeping you tied to a chair while I cook your dinner."
"Only for a three-minute egg." Mulder, still bent to counter level, rocked up and
down on the balls of his
feet, back and forth, flexing idly: the signs of something building inside, betrayed by
his body's edgy
kinetics. Trust, talk, trust, talk, his mind jeered and whispered. What else were
relationships for. God,
the R word. He listened to the shouts of children outside the open window, a dog
barking, the indolent
inflections of Billie Holiday, starting to drift in from the living room, segueing from
the finalities of Spanish
guitar.
"My mother didn't like to cook," Alex said. He made this remark seem almost
normal; though it
wassurely wasthe first time he'd mentioned family except in the most fleeting,
abstract terms.
Mulder said nothing, pressed his lips to the mouth of his beer, blew there absently, a
background
musician attentive only to his piece.
"She didn't like to be in the kitchen. They make me think of morgues. Kitchens."
Jesus, thought Mulder, wondering where that had come from. Even I'm not that
morbid. "That's an
association of memories a psychologist would do a lot with," he said
conversationally. "Lucky for you I
traded the couch for a badge."
"Lucky for me," Alex said, almost coldly.
Mulder straightened up and wished briefly he could juggle, wished that he had a
report to write in the
next three hours, obligation, distraction. Wondered if married people felt like this; at
odds with domestic
occasions; and then flashed on a scrap of flickering home movie in which his father
mowed the lawn, his
mother fixed dinner, he and Samantha rode their bikes down the streetlife or
fiction?
"We all have our pasts, Alex."
"Go on, Mulder, bare your soul." Alex's eyes enforced the words with a hard, green
challenge.
They viewed one another from an inherent distance that had nothing to do with
space. Two bodies, two
minds, two thorns of irritability within their separately hung suits of flesh.
"I don't think you can double-dare someone into intimacy." A map of tension in
Mulder's face eased
slightly, amusement fanning his eyes.
"Why not."
Why not? Mulder blinked, fidgeted.
Alex, letting this sit between them, continued gathering and adding his ingredients.
He pulled a box of
frozen peas from the freezer and whacked it onto the countertop; chopped carrots
rather grimly;
dumped a handful of cashews on the cutting board, then menaced Mulder's
wandering fingers with his
knife.
"You don't need all those nuts," Mulder said cheekily.
"You don't need all those fingers," Alex said softly and dangerously.
Mulder waited until his back was turned again before depleting his cashew
resources. The other man
ignored this theft, though his sharp dark eyes missed nothing. Something in the
way his gaze flicked
itself across the nuts suggested he'd had an exact count and had toted up Mulder's
depredations as
debts to be settled in one form or anotherperhaps he would take it out in trade.
Trading my ass for peanuts, Mulder thought breezily. And loving it.
The television implored, growled, cried, while they sat silently chewing and viewing;
their earlier trip to
the video store had brought them to this static tableau: lounging together in front of
Casablanca with
true, datelike indifference. (Alex: I'm picking the films. Mulder: Fine, I'm just
appealing to your
patriotismrent American. Alex: Thumb voteLawrence of Arabia, Doctor
Zhivago? Mulder: If I kill you
now will they let me use your rental card? Alex: Humphrey Bogart it is.) Alex gave
the appearance of
being intensely fixated on the screen's thin drama but Mulder refused to believe his
absorption was
real; meanwhile Mulder himself scrutinized the effect of light and shadow on
Ingrid's pale skin and
stored up a cache of Bogart's lines just in case he ever needed some conversational
filler.
"I've seen this part," Mulder observed, squinting at the screen as Rick demanded the
song again from
Sam.
Alex grunted.
The movie ended; another was begun. Mulder tried, for a while, to enter the boxcar
succession of
scenesa city dump, a crowded ballroom, a socialite's boudoir, a parlorbut they
blinked by, a removed
and blurry world that had been reduced to scriptor built up from nothing but. The
rich shades of grey
were mesmerizing, though. About forty-five minutes into the film he turned to Alex
and said, "Is this a
comedy?"
Alex turned his head and gave him a lips-parted masque of incredulity that didn't
ebb when he realized
Mulder was serious. "Jesus, Mulder. Were you raised by wolves?"
Mulder stared back, hurt, and then spoofing the hurt with increasingly deeper and
more doleful eyes,
until suddenly they were both laughing madly and Alex had wrestled him into a lap
blanket. He lay
sprawled across the length of the couch, feet hooked across the far arm, head
pillowed in Alex's lap,
where he rolled and nudged its weight across the bolsters of Alex's thighs and into
the gift of his hands.
So good would have been the words he gave his wordless pleasure.
Alex carded and played with his hair, stroked his neck, went back to watching the
movie with split
attention. Mulder dozed without entirely losing consciousness; not wanting to miss
the rare feel of his
cheek folded into the heated cup of a man's jeans; the sense of placing his neck on a
chopping block of
trust; the mundane bliss of touch. The most unhurried of fires was licking itself up
under his skin,
focused in his face and neck but gathering up heat from far shores of himself,
dragging it along his flesh,
pulling and threading his pieces together, all so languidly it might be eons before the
arrival of the blaze
forced him to move.
"Don't get up," Alex said, dropping something hard and cool against his ear.
"Wha" Mulder started to lift a hand, but found it caught in Alex's intercepting
fingers. Sleepy-eyed,
amused of mouth, he shifted his head and spoke into the curved press of the phone.
"Mulder... hello?"
"Mulder. It's me."
"Of course... what time is it?" He fumbled, swatted away Alex's crablike,
deliberately impeding hands,
managed to get a lock on his cellular. He looked up along the cliff of Alex's chest
where a buttoned seam
of shirt invited cleavage. He began working the buttons loose with his free hand,
uncovering bare chest.
There, that's better... .
"Eight fifteen."
"OhI thought it was later." Mulder's fingers found a round nub and tweaked it stiff.
Immediately, a
hand not his own began rubbing the cottoned contours of his right nipple, a miming
touch. His mouth
went dry. Something passed rapidly through his ear uncaptured; he floundered to
recollect it. "What"
The word wanted to become a husky groan. He bit his lip; normalized his voice.
"What did you say?"
"I wanted to see how you were doing," Scully said.
Her cool voice. How incredibly cool in his burning ear. He muffled a raw cry as his
nipple was twisted
violently, tried not to notice how hard his cock suddenly was, straining at the tight
crotch of his jeans.
"I'm doing pretty good," he said, dazed. "Where are you?" He tried to focus.
There was a pause from the phone. "I'm at home, Mulder." Her voice, reduced by
weak transmission,
still pressed itself emphatically into his own ear; a slow convolution. A snail shell of a
voice. Little and
unheated, coiling back on itself. Scully always had a center. "Where are you?"
"Oh" Mulder gazed up at the underside of Alex's chin; the other man was watching
the television
again, eyes front and center, leveled to a higher horizon than Mulder inhabited. "I'm
at Alex's." He heard
her silence more clearly now, an attenuated thing. "Hangin' out, watchin' the tube."
Pause. "Doin' a little
coke, some ludes, a little grassgot some hookers, some snake handlers, some
circus midgets. You
wanna come over?"
The eloquent silence said: Very funny. Scully said: "No thanks. That sounds like a
crowd." All flat couth,
her voice.
Mulder began to ride the rhythmic sensation produced by Alex's unceasing fingers,
his own teasing
touches abandoned; there were only so many distractions he could handle at once. "I
uh" What was I
going to say? "can hardly hear you over the belly dancers, Scully. All their little
bells are jingling." Had
he been less distracted it was unlikely he'd have been so dopey, so carelessly blase.
He hardly knew
what he was saying; his pleasures tangled and it seemed, at this moment, an
incredibly right
satisfaction to have Scully's alpine tones blowing into his ear while his heated body
strove against Alex's
hand. That hand had moved itself now between his legs to rest its barely moving
palm like a signifying
benediction, counterpoint to somethingthe phone call, Scullyoh fuck yes. He
pushed dreamily into
the touch, eyes glazing, lips parting even as his eyelids drooped. His voice found
itself againits pause
unnoticeable. "I could introduce you to one of the midgets. I hear women find short
men a real turn
onyou could do a research project, Scullytestosterone levels in the, uh, vertically
challenged"
"Mulder, are you drunk?"
"No... no... " His face was a stalled rapture of hilarity, ecstasy, his voice rather thick,
to be sure, but
"Drunk?" He began to laugh, then heard a faint sound and an empty hiss in his ear
that went on
inhumanly long. "Scully?" He slowly lowered the phone. "She hung up on me."
"Maybe you shouldn't have offered her the midget."
"You think she took it personally?" Mulder struggled up and out of Alex's grasp to
sit on the far end of
the couch. "Shit." Freed from the more ticklish of his erotic distractions he glowered
at the phone with
frowning embarrassment, reverting to common sense and common courtesy,
discomforted as he
reviewed the last few minutes and realized he had no clue how he'd sounded-
whether he'd revealed
himself a depraved skunk or come off merely as a garden-variety male jerk. He hit
the call code for
Scully's apartment. She picked up almost immediately, said Hello?
"Hey, it's me." He swiped a hand over his face sheepishly. "I'm sorry... I wasn't
entirely awake."
Oopshell. "I drifted off during the movie. Long day... you there?"
"I'm here, Mulder. And I think it would be better if I didn't speak to you right now."
"Scullywait, don't hang up." With a quick glance at Alex, he got up from the couch,
went into the
bedroom and sat on the bed. "I'm alone, Scully." Silence. "Are you mad at me?" He
tried on his steadiest
voice, ready to please, negotiate, offer himself up with humility; unselfconscious of
the boyishly anxious
plaint he fell into.
"Am I mad at you? No, I'm not mad at you, Mulder. I wanted to see how you were.
Now I have."
"You don't sound too pleased."
"On the contrary. I'm happy to note that you've come out of recent events
completely untraumatized,
and that you're already back to your old self."
"My old self." Mulder's voice caught on a hard edge, jarring oddly against the
smooth plank of her
words. "I think I'll pass on that one."
"Fine. You do that."
Mulder's jaw tightened; he defied his own tendency to anger. "I sense that I'm in the
wrong here."
Silence. "Is admitting that you're angry so hard for you?"
"Not at all."
"Then why don't you stop being such a polite, frigid bitch, Scully, and ream me out
the way you're itching
too?"
There was a soft sound of breath being taken, but no storm came; it was always a
presentiment of
elements, never arrival. Seemingly unwinded by feeling, Scully could muster an
endless front of air no
more extreme than frost. "If you want to be reamed out, Mulder, I think you'd
better look elsewhere." It
could have been medical advice, the words were that impersonal, and yet
somewhere, surely, lurked
venom?
Christ. Mulder sucked in air, let it out again carefully. "What"
"I have to go."
And she hung up again. Mulder turned off the phone, stared at it, then threw it with
damaging violence
against the wall. As if directly summoned, Alex appeared in the doorway. He didn't
bother to examine
the wall or the phone, just stood leaning against the frame with one arm up, his
unbuttoned shirt lifting
with the pose. Approximately dissolute, or halfway. He looked a halfling, jeans
below, white bureau shirt
above; he had a pixie's face and slim body; one of the wickeder pixies, full of
mischief even when most
calm.
He came to Mulder on the bed, stood in front of him where he'd folded himself over
to press head into
hands. He kicked Mulder with his knee, knocking at the half-open door of his
thighs. When ignored he
dived and surfaced from below like a porpoise, shoving Mulder back flat along the
bed with the force of
his push.
"Damn it" Mulder began, but within seconds his body shuddered its need and stole
his words. He clung
greedily to the length of Alex, letting their legs tangle, his breath coming in ragged
spikes. The
grounding application of weight was exactly what he'd craved; literal securitythe
other man's body
was a deadbolt sliding home. Their mouths were equal in hunger, demanding; their
tongues made
speechless speech; wet, rough, and then frantic. Alex began to work his hips across
Mulder's.
"Need a jump-start?" he breathed between kisses. In his low voice laughter always
seemed possible, if
not present.
"Don't stop..." Mulder arched, ground himself upward, begging, primed to implode
into the cruel trap of
his jeans. He heard himself whispering, Oh god Alex, oh god, with pitiful anguish,
and as Alex reached
between their legs and wrenched open Mulder's zipper, offering simultaneous
pressure and release,
Mulder came.
Alex kissed his nose and lips, bit his neck, and descended to lick him clean; such a
very polite lover,
when it came to essentials. His tongue glided over the blazing cap of Mulder's glans
and raised a
whimper of relief in Mulder's throat; he felt he'd been waiting for this to complete
his pleasure. He could
feel himself being licked up, swallowed, nibbled.
"Sorry... so fast," he muttered, cheeks flushed.
"I've been waiting for four fucking hours," Alex said in a scorched voice that made
Mulder's toes curl.
"Four fuckless hours." A laugh escaped him, and then another as Alex darted up to
bite the moving knob
of his adam's apple.
Alex stretched against him and did a number of undulant, undemanding things to
Mulder's body that
rocked him into a sea of lazy feeling, until they were lying equally naked across the
rough wool blanket,
overheated and disinclined to do more than nuzzle. Alex, still erect, seemed to
consider Mulder a perfect
fuck toy in his current state, and rubbed against him from various angles while
Mulder lay passively
sprawled, even going so far as to pick up Mulder's limp-fingered hand and draw it
between his legs.
Mulder gave his cock a desultory squeeze but could tell Alex was getting off just fine
by jerking across
the calm cup of his palm. Exalted over him was the other man's visage: locked in by
dark messy hair,
cheeks caustic, lips hanging open heavy with breath. Jaguar eyes. A panting cat.
"Have your way with me," he murmured to Alex, rolling over into his body and
twining there.
"Oh, I am," Alex said with sly amiability.
Their bodies kindled together, chests and legs rubbing and shifting, light fur
catching. Animal, animal.
All the rest of the room, peripheral to bed and vision, seemed a geometry of doors,
windows, dressers,
lampshades. Rectangles and triangles that gathered shadow in the twilight; and
within them their bed
was a boat, adrift. On the bed they made softer math, algebra and fire.
Mulder resisted inclinations, he wanted to stay flat on the bed, in a heap without a
spine. He pushed
Alex lightly onto his back and settled upon him, a long damp weld. Alex's
expression was self-involved;
his tongue flicked against his own teeth with snakelike vigor, as if he were licking to
trace any last jism.
Mulder avoided his mouth and reconnoitered some other areas. Thoughts curled
and drifted in his skull,
scraps of detail he wanted to articulate to Alex and pull across him like a crazy-quilt,
and yet already
around the other man he'd grown more shy. The careless flirts and frivols he'd
tossed out during their
first, new weeks together now were undone to uncertainty. It felt somehow
necessary to balance
carefully with Alexand so now he decided half-consciously against relating the
impertinent details of
Osirian revival spells and Shinto harvest rituals and Eleusinian mysteries, and a
hundred other things
that flew into his open mind as he nuzzled his lover's flesh.
But he was thinking about the machinery of the masculine body. Alex. The lightly
roped insides of his
arms; collarbone like an embedded wingnut, to which his spine would be a long
corded bolt; copper
nipples. Navel like a wounding; legs... .
Positioned between the clamp of Alex's knees, Mulder pushed up onto his hands
and stared gravely
down at Alex's legs. "How many cases have you worked, Alex?"
"Ohh... shit... six or seven... "
"You worked long enough in New York, though, to see some serious craziness."
"Yeah," Alex said vaguely, torquing his head a notch to look down at him.
"You ever just look at someone and picture them chopped up?"
"Before now?" His smirk was bone-dry, casual. "Nah."
"When I was profiling they used to keep me boxed up in a cubicle going through file
after file of VICAP
reports and crime-scene photos. We used to joke we could make a fortune
compiling them and selling
torso porno to our death row pals. Playperp Magazine we were going to call it."
"That's sick," Alex said, calling up shades of skippy indignation, though the effect
was considerably
filtered through the jaded shadows of his eyes.
"Yeah," Mulder said simply. He touched Alex's thigh, rubbed a kneecap.
"Should I wonder what you're thinking about when you look at my dick?"
"You don't need to wonder." Mulder slid back down atop him, thrust his hips for
emphasis.
"Mmm. God knows what's got your mercury rising, buey."
"What'd you call me?" Mulder said faux roughly, biting his chin, tasting sandpaper
and salt. Alex, like a
drifting opium eater, didn't bother to answer.
"Getting castration anxiety?" Mulder jibed, twisting down to inspect Alex's semi
erect lift of flesh.
"Maybe you're just not doing anything interesting enough."
"So what do you want me to do?" Mulder breathed gently into his ear.
A thumb dug into Mulder's cheek and forced him wider, then slid down between his
lips, stroking
alongside the moving bow of cock. His own neglected dick smoked, ached. He
moaned, tried to move his
hands to touch himself, heard a whispery laugh from Alex even as his wrists
rediscovered the braceleted
infinity of his handcuffs. Cool metal; breeze from the window; what a life. The flesh
in his mouth drew
back, thrust, he was spiraling up into ecstasy like a feather in a spark-filled draft. His
thighs strained, his
hips pushed forward into nothingness, his cock into thin air. He was a spill of flame
trying to escape
itself. He began an incessant but near silent moaning, striving to find a pressure that
would lick his
swollen skinlonged to have Alex's hard foot settle against him, imagined his own
upthrust organ
pumping into the smooth given curvature of heatball of foot, arch, heelhe would
slam into itbut it
would move with him so that he was barely rubbing, a smothering, elusive
pressure.
The sound he made nearly choked him. Hard hands grabbed his face to hold and
steady it. Nothing but
air, and yet it would be all he needed. Enough, they moved closer. Shadows. A low
car horn. A faint
social shriek from the street that made their own silence seem huge as the song
finished itself, replaced
by nothing but their working, ragged breaths. Things still gathered, lifting. Upward,
a spring uncoiled,
giving itself outhe gasped into his mouthful of cock and sucked desperatelyblunt
head nudging
inside, a snake coaxed into a pocket, wet, a pull of shaft that drew out his lips, rolled
them back in, and
he could feel its thrumming weight on his tongue, its blood-thick readiness to shoot.
His own dick
embedded a heat that pushed up its clenched length, a cascade that would not be
stopped. They came
togetherso in synch that Mulder felt in prayer to the bone, and yet he didn't bite,
he was an animal
disciplined to its trick even in extremity, an open mouth around the trainer's hand, a
jaw that gentled its
prey.
Mulder woke in a smooth twist of sheets, found the clock face and focused. Its plain
red strokes read
not long after two a.m. Down in the street someone was talking in audible tones,
some collegiate
parting taking place in the aftermath of the bars' closing.
It felt early, and he felt rested, fucked to a relaxation he'd nearly begun taking for
granted. What would
it be like to return to solitude, Chinese cartons and silence, the indefinably different
and familiar smells
of his apartment, the noxious blue-grey flicker of the television greeting him as he
wokelike nowfrom
sleep. Uneasy sleep, at home on his couch; easier sleep, here.
He propped himself up, rubbed grit from his eyes and blinked a number of times,
turning his head as he
did so to study Alex, whose profile made a raked hieroglyph of shadow on the
pillow. The room was
darkish, but ribbons of subdued light lay across the surface of the bed. Mulder, who
had never stayed
over a full night, thought about going home.
Why.
Instead he pushed himself up into the crook of Alex's arm, lay his head there and
absently hoped the
other man wouldn't waken and make too much of this gesture. Not that he'd say
anything. A quiet man,
Alex Krycek, about the important things.
But weren't they both.
Alex rolled over on his back, accidentally flinging his arm across Mulder's throat.
Mulder shoved it off and
burrowed into his side.
"I think" Alex cleared his throat; his voice low and rusty. "Think there's a bird in
here," he muttered
with sleepy uninterest.
"Mmm."
"Flew in," Alex said huskily without opening his eyes.
The phone stopped ringing, then began again. Mulder tumbled from the bed,
determined to find the bird
but finding instead his abandoned phone on the floor by the doorway, a curl of
plastic pathetically
croaking for attention. "Hello?" he muttered warily, very much hoping this was not
Scully.
"Agent Mulder. This is Lucy Kazdin."
Mulder scrubbed a hand over his bedstruck hair, vigorously trying to scratch up
some consciousness.
"Yeahyes. Agent Kazdin." He looked at his watch except that he wasn't wearing
one, but he knew it
was damn early. "What can I do for you?"
"I was wondering if I could speak to you. I'm still down here in Richmond, wrapping
up some details of
the case." Her voice was level and cool, almost familiar; but unlike Scully's cool,
which often seemed
reactive and enforced with pure will, Kazdin's had a quality that suggested a
composure of much
lengthier vintage. "I'd appreciate having a chance to say a few things to you. Can
you drive down?"
Just that simple a question, with no careful maneuvering around issues of schedule,
weekend,
convenienceit was one of the bureau attitudes toward work Mulder best identified
with, and even if
she was setting him up just to dress him down, he appreciated her
straightforwardness. He almost
asked if she wanted him to bring a silver platter for his head. But what the hell;
whatever she wanted,
he still had unfinished business in Richmond, and it looked to be a good day for
driving.
"I'll come down. Where do you want to meet?"
"Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Is there a good time?"
"Um... " Mulder calculated the trip down and back, recalled his afternoon meeting
with Skinner. "Just
what time is it anyway?"
Kazdin's voice was dry, precise, "Six twenty."
"I'll need to be back on the road no later than eleven-thirty... say, ten?"
"Fine."
They rung off and Mulder rapidly showered and dressed, moving between bath and
bedroom, his gaze
now and then resting on Alex's lazing form beneath the sheets. He was blinking
himself more awake by
the time Mulder dropped onto the bed to lace up his sneakers.
"Where you off to?"
"Richmond, by way of my apartment. Meeting with Kazdin." He blinked at the
other man, gears in his
mind meshing belatedly. "You want to come?"
"Did she ask for me?" Alex said, with a smoothness that said he already knew the
answer.
"I think she probably just wants me in striking range."
"Not likely to call you all the way down there just to dance with you."
"Yeah." Mulder hitched a bit further onto the bed, slid a ruffling hand through Alex's
hair. "Stop wearing
gel," he said casually.
"Gives me that sleek, top-weasel-on-the-heap look I'm aiming for."
"I have that meeting with Skinner, which you definitely do want to miss, but I'm
sure he'll be pushing to
wind that up. I should be out by four, at the latest... I can take my bag with me... "
They exchanged the mutually measuring looks of new lovers edging into
contractual issues. Something
troubled lurked under the surface of Alex's face, but he said, "Leave it. If I'm not
here... " He paused.
"I'll leave the door unlocked."
"You're too trusting, Mr FBI Agent."
"Yeah, well. I've got connections." Alex's smile was small, ironic. "Who's going to
steal my stuff, when
I've the strong arm of the law on my side?" He made a point of stroking Mulder's
bare arm as he spoke,
raking up the gilt hairs with gentle fingernails.
Mulder smiled down, unaware of the faint surprise that had surfaced in his face: not
specific surprise,
just the general wondermentstill wary, tentative, but strengtheningat what he'd
long ago given up
as a lost cause. More than just a place to put his dick, or the relief of someone who
understood keeping
a gun under the bed's edge. The possibility of something good, for a change.
And what, Alex wondered, glancing around the cafe, trying to figure outonce
againwhat involved the
members of a generation so near to his own and yet so removed from his
experience. He'd studied them
before, the species of youth, and liked a certain type of ripe male, puppyish and
dumb, that belonged to
the group. But their unfocused softness increduled him; other than the MBA's and
pre-law
proto-yuppies, the young seemed to him a discrete and endangered subdivision of
the human flock,
passive, easygoing, spiked only by the whims of a hormonal brew whose recipe
was essentially
common. They were easily preyed on, and Alex could not entirely free himself of a
Darwinian persuasion
toward seeing this as fit and useful.
Despite this, he was less an elitist than a survivalist, and was apt to see gold where
others saw dross.
The cyber geeks, the rural deerhunters, the street punksthese were soldiers in the
cradle, advanced
beyond their middle-class coevals in sense if not in years. Alex liked to fuck the
preppies, the kind whose
fathers were key to advancement in the world, but he wouldn't want to put guns in
their clumsy hands.
Look what happened when you did.
By the time he'd returned to the counter for another coffee and then back to his
table, Bill Mulder had
arrived. They saw each other; the elder Mulder in the doorway, Alex standing at his
table in the act of
removing his plaid shirt and tying it around his waist. Alex's eyes immediately
traveled beyond the other
man, panning across the glass front of the store. If they were there, he might see
them, he might not,
but looking for them was an instinct you didn't want to lose.
He sat and sipped coffee while watching Mulderfunny, thatmake a show of
purchasing something at
the counter. Bill, he thought to himself. Call him Bill; he'll understand. Maybe he'll
slip a bit on the
familiarity.
The other's back showed the length of a tall slim man and in build he resembled his
offspring, but it was
hard to find much other likeness to the son's lanky, cervine grace. Bill Mulder's
hunched shoulders and
tense, torticollar neck fixed him as a man who'd retreated into himself as if shunning
the press of the
human race. Tired and grim-lipped, he wore the air of one who is put upon and has
resigned himself to
take itwho is put upon because he takes it. Perhaps from this knowledge had
developed the spiteful,
childish cast to his face. Some old anger, though justifiable, had festered until it
softened and weakened
his entire person; chronic pain, rather than tempering him, had made him selfish,
short-sighted, cruel.
Alex folded down a bit into his chair, and settled himself to motionless patience as
Bill Mulder came over.
His steps were deliberate and he carried a coffee cup like one who is unused to
china, whose hand
wants a tumbler. He sat down across from Alex, back to the door, but his eyes
bounced around a few
times within their orbits, tracking movement off the cafe mirrors.
Good. He wasn't a complete write-off.
"Did you take precautions against being followed?" Alex asked, keeping his tones
casual and curious, as
if recalling the cloak-and-dagger necessities with faint irony. In truth, he held a keen
interest in the
answer. He let his lashes lower, afraid the other man would see the dark sharp
glitter of his eyes.
"Of course I did," Bill said, twisting out the words with harsh disgust. "I'm twice your
age, and I've been
in the game far longer than you have, Alex." He said Alex's name with a cold
emphasis in which
mockery lurked, as if not really crediting its veracity.
Alex, feeling the other man's bristling suspicions, slipped into full gear, into a
persona designed to allay
fears and nerves. Let the eyes be guileless. Let him tuck a strand of hair behind his
ear, clear his throat,
and smilesmile with quick, small grace as if embarrassed for a faux pas in front of a
man deserving the
full amenities of respect. The gestures would be unconscious and constanthow he
held his head, how
he sipped his coffee, how he hooked left ankle over right knee and fiddled his
fingers with gentle
restlessness there. A young man, he must seem younger; a keen man, he needed to
be indefinably
keener, open to Bill Mulder's suborning influence as if it were the single lure for his
loyalty, as if he only
needed things explained to him in order to act precisely as required, to protect the
Fox from the
hunters. Let him appear tinged with grey but not so tainted yet that he was beyond
such a call to
loyalty. He must embody several contradictions at once, this Alex Krycek, this rising
agent in a field of
ambiguity; he must simultaneously appear to take Bill Mulder very seriously and
not quite seriously
enough; must show respect but also the faintest goad of contempt; must seem
sharpdouble-edged, of
coursebut not lethal. At the heart of it he must be impure but not corrupt and he
must appear to be
the perfect tool for the job, the means suited to Bill Mulder's ends.
What matter that he could not help the man in the least, nor his son.
"Sorry," Alex said, ducking his head slightly, rotating his espresso cup on its saucer.
"I'm just nervous."
Frank tone, frank eyes, frank face.
"You should be nervous."
You should be more nervous, thought Alex. He couldn't ask careless Bill for too
many details without
giving himself away, so he crossed fingers and hoped that the older man's counter
surveillance skills
had held true. Nonetheless, he was going to need a multi-layered story ready for
Morley for why he'd
met with Mulder's father and why he hadn't reported it. Stories were the basic
currency of life.
"I came because you asked me to," Bill said churlishly. Almost immediately he
appeared to regret his
words, evincing a dactylic nervousness around the edges of his coffee cup. His thin
lips twitched to one
side, a small tic, as if he were belatedly tugging a zipper. "You said he was all right.
The other night"
"He's fine. But that's what I want to talk to you about. Barry."
"Barry," the older man said brusquely. His eyelids drooped and he meditated as if
turning over a
question.
"You said he was one of the subjects." Alex had hunched forward over the table so
that his crow-dark
hair slid forward on his head: an oblique invitation to confidences, a pose that
invited its likeness. "He
thought he was abducted by aliens."
"Yes." Bill's eyes assessed him shiftily. "Of course he would." A note of something
ineluctable slithered
in his voicehis very tongue moved as if tasting old secrets.
"Of course there are no such things as aliens," Alex said, speaking to the hint with
edged, subtle
mockery. He wore his challenge in the amusement of his parted lips.
Bill Mulder straightened and then sat back in his chair, putting distance between
them in order to study
Alex. "You sound like my son when you say that," he said blandly. "Don't tell me
he's making you a
believer."
"Funny, you know" Alex tossed off a faint laugh. "How Fox Mulder's beliefs are so
much easier to
believe, if you know the right people."
Bill frowned, realigning his gaze down from Alex's and toying with his spoon. His
voice was both bored
and frosty. "The disinformation surrounding experimental aircraft is one of the
oldest traditions in
military force."
"Yeahyou say that so convincingly, and you should know, shouldn't you. Funny
then, that your own
son thinks otherwise."
"He's" Bill took a deep breath. "He's an imaginative man."
"Is that what you tell people?" Alex asked, allowing a touch of irked contempt to
show in his schooled
facade. "Is that what you told them when he was growing up and pinning UFO
posters to his
wallstalking about the theoretical dietary requirements of Reticulans?" Alex almost
snorted.
Bill Mulder's hand sketched a tiny wave across the surface of the table. "It wasn't like
that," he said,
impatient but abstracted to memory. "He didn't" A pause.
"He didn't know," Alex finished quietly. "Not then." His eyes gleamed.
"You'd be mad to think any of this is true," Bill said drylyor perhaps, thought Alex,
slyly.
"Why are they watching him? Why am I? If he's crazymy god, do you know how
easy it would be to
discredit him?"
"Of course."
"He's right, isn't he?"
There was a silence. Bill Mulder took a sip of coffee as if to drag the time out, to
render silence all the
more meaningful. Around them in the cafe were strangers that neither of them
would ever meet, blithe
civilians in a war they knew nothing about, inhabiting a world where security and
intelligence were just
dramatic fantasies given fictional medium in the novels they read, the movies they
watched. Though Alex
had never been in this particular cafe before, he had a sense of deja vu that came of
frequenting similar
places: in the artificially cooled air blended the scent of freshly ground coffee beans,
thumping jazz, the
hoarse wheeze of the espresso machine, and the careless babble of people who do
not need to watch
their words.
"Jesus." Alex sat back in his chair with a bump, allowing his face to radiate an uneasy
disbelief that
contrarily would indicate his very credulity. Within the core of himself he didn't
believe yet; he didn't
disbelieve; he played the line.
But Bill smiled at him, almost kindly for the first time. "You don't believe," he said.
"You can't. Nobody can
believe until they see with their own eyes."
Alex swallowed down his first half dozen impulses to reply, felt around for the right
words but found
nothing that suited him. And then Bill began to talk. Alex, listening, barely breathed
he was so
fearfulfearfulthe other man might collect himself and stop. He rambled like a
man who has sought to
testify, to give witness, and has been forbidden speech. He gave out more than Alex
had hoped for,
though nothing of himself, no motives, no reasons for his own history. That didn't
matter; Alex cared
nothing for Bill Mulder's wasted life. But he talked in his cryptic, absent, and often
hypothetical way
about aspects of the project Alex hadn't even begun to touch on in his covert
investigations. Things,
yes, from science fiction novels, and sometimes from horror, but... real. Perhaps. If
the man wasn't mad;
if he hadn't soaked up his son's lunacy and begun to burn with delusion.
He spoke until he came to a stop. Stopped, then, for no reason Alex could fathom.
Bill Mulder inspected
his cold coffee, gazed off into the back environs of the cafe. Didn't sigh, didn't
express even the faintest
affect in his empty face. A dead man walking.
"You can't" Alex gathered himself, ran a hand through his hair, felt like jumping up
and yelling his
frustration. The puzzle stretched out immeasurably around him, and for the first
time he knew just how
much he didn't know. He looked at Bill Mulder and saw a man who had burned
down almost to pure ash,
locked around secretsfar beyond what he'd told todaythat would die with him.
For Alex realized only
now, with a kind of awe, just how precarious the other man's existence was.
How had he kept silence all these years?
"Can't what?" Bill said ironically, knowingly. "Can't be serious?" Having delivered
himself of his
revelations, he was a man briefly savoring his position, and had regained the upper
hand. His tone was
supercilious. Not yet had the enormity of what he'd revealed hit home.
Alex stared at the older man, privately rather aghastnearly as much by his bland
indiscretions as by
their contents. Alex wasn't a man to worry overmuch about national security in the
abstract, but right in
front of him was a leak that would sooner or later have to be plugged. No matter
what truth lay behind
the smoke and mirrors, behind the many funhouse doors, Alex didn't for a moment
contemplate the
possibility of disclosure. There would always be thingssecrets, knowledge, even
rulesbest kept from
the public, whose blind cattlelike stampede into the forum could trample flat every
edifice of civilization, if
allowed.
Not that Alex worried much about civilization, to be sure. To do that would be... naive. And yet...
Aliens?
The implications would take a while to sink in; and he could not bank on Bill
Mulder's story just yet. Not
without evidence.
"You've never told him," Alex said suddenly.
"He's lucky not to know for sure," Bill said, drawing the lines of his mouth in with a
touch of bitterness.
"He's searching for signs of government conspiracy and extraterrestrial lifeand he
doesn't have the
first clue about you, does he?" Alex shook his head; it was a respectful gesture.
"He mustn't know."
"He thinks aliens took his sister." Alex paused pointedly. "Am I supposed to believe
he's right?"
Bill Mulder frowned as if the subject were one he'd heard mention, but far removed
from his ken; and
yet his eyes within their deep folds were like gelid unspoken grief. "That's notthat's
not important
now. He's all I have left."
"And you want me to protect him," Alex said silkily.
"Yes." Bill responded to the tone immediately, sitting back like a poker player, eyes
narrowing. His gaze
flicked across Alex, the fine stinging touch of whip-ends. "You care for him."
"I beg your" Alex laughed.
"If you can keep them from knowing you're fucking him you'll be lucky."
Alex's face smoothed into watchful expressionlessness.
"Did you think I wouldn't know?" Bill Mulder asked mildly. His malicious
satisfaction seemed inhibited not
so much by manners as by some essential indifference to the topic. He was too
jaded to care much.
"If you know they know," Alex said tonelessly.
"Not necessarily... I have him watched."
"They have him watched."
"But you're the watcher, Alex."
Alex frowned, jerked his intense face to one side, calculating. "There could be
others." He dragged his
cool eyes back to Bill. "Anyway. What makes you think it's not in my job
description?"
Bill smiled crookedly to himself, didn't answer directly. "He's an attractive man, isn't
he, Alex? Compelling.
Not quite an innocent, but as close as you'll ever come to one." The last remark
delivered its double
meaning with cutting clarity.
Alex slewed his jaw once and bit his tongue, literally, to keep from saying anything
too provocative; he
didn't want to antagonize the man. Certainly not now. He spread one hand on the
table top,
contemplated his own fingernails. "What's going on with Barry?" he asked, drawing
a conversational full
circle. "Kazdin called Mulder down to Richmond."
Bill blinked, processing this somewhere within himself, behind that stretched
death's-head face. "That
means nothing to me... Kazdin is the hostage negotiator. I saw her on the news."
Those few words,
crisply offhand, bespoke a man whose mental acuity had not entirely dissipated in
drink and melancholy.
A man who took note of details. "She's not involved in any aspect of the project that
I know of."
"Why did they want Mulder in on the Barry case?"
Bill Mulder studied his cup, then abruptly pushed it away, tipping his chin up and
lifting his cold eyes to
pierce Alex's own. "I have no idea." His voice raked the words out over gravel.
"That's what worries
me."
He thought back to the morning; Mulder in his bed. He hoped he hadn't signaled his
gutting wrench of
fear when he realized the other man had slept over the entire night, that he himself
had overslept and
failed to nudge his guest homeward. Previously Alex had made sure, one way or
the other, that Mulder
understood where the line was drawn. Now it was too late, the line was washed
away.
No. Alex's face tightened. He would just have to redraw it; he couldn't allow the
familiarity to progress.
He'd been acting on dangerous assumptions about the scope of his assignment-
taking too many risks.
He'd surmised from his own position in the scheme of things that Mulder must be a
relatively low-priority
case. There had obviously been the luxury of time in setting Alex up for the job, and
he'd believed
himself to be the only agent working close to his target, the only one accountable
for surveillancelive
surveillance, that is; one took for granted the possibility of bugs.
Now he was less certain about everything, including himself. He could sit here and
stare out the cafe
window as long as he liked, into the bright street beyond. He still would not be sure
where he was
going after he left. Or who he might be. Funnywhen he'd first accepted this job,
he'd been soso keen
for the drama of it, what he saw as his chance for a star turn. Role, mole, rigamarole.
He'd thought
here was his big breakthe bureau was his futurea cleaner, brighter future than he
would have had
under previous circumstances. He'd scrabbled ruthlessly to get as far as he had in
life, and yet he'd
harbored, before this, the certainty of his entitlement to succeed. And in a way he'd
thought he'd been
chosen for that reason: to play himself, only more so, to Mulder's audience of one.
But in duplicity he'd
been bent and refracted. Krycek, Alex Krycek. He felt faceless; he was an arrow
cocked and ready in its
bow, but without direction; he needed more than this.
Aliens. Mulder. Morley... chairman of smoke and secrets. Nobody tells me anything
and all of a sudden
they're telling me every damn thingwhat am I sayingthese Mulders talk plenty.
But if I want a better
bedtime story I need to go to the real source. Too bad I'm in no position to do so... maybe I should bring
him a box of chocolates. Baccarat ashtray... but why not a Mulder, served with
garnish.
"I hope you had good reason to request this meeting, Alex." His voice was ironed
flat. "I'm a busy man."
They sat at a small table in an enclosed back patio of an Alexandria restaurant; the
walls were high grey
stone, the cobblestones cool, the sun elided by trees and scraped through the
confining walls of
neighboring houses. It was chilly, like sitting in a damp shoebox, ratlike at the
bottom. The place had
the benefit of privacy, though, and stockaded protection. A small wooden door was
set into one wall.
Alex wondered if that was how the elusive one entered and left, away from the
mundane eyes of other
patrons.
Alex flicked a glance over Morley's folded newspaper, cellphone, water glass, full
ashtray. There was an
empty dessert plate at his setting, which he pushed peevishly to one side when he
caught Alex looking
at it.
Affected or involuntary? Alex wondered of the gesture. "I had some information I
thought you'd be
interested in."
"So you said." Morley's eyes held his in a bond of steel. Not speculative or expectant,
his eyes delivered
the utterance of boredom, if they gave anything away. He'd heard his fill in a
lifetime of intelligence
where petty divulgences were the rule and even the smallest had its price.
"It's about Mulder." Alex's tongue danced lightly within his mouth; he held his sly
amusement within,
tried not to let the words trip out too hastily. "Bill Mulder." Morley blinked, and that
tiny, ungiving
response delivered to Alex a surge of satisfaction, for he knew he'd scored a hit in an
unexpected field.
"Bill Mulder," the other man said, leaning back in his chair. A man waiting for more.
"He called me and asked to meet. I met with himtwice."
Morley's eyes narrowed. "I don't reward initiative on your level, Alex," he said in a
clipped voicenot yet
dismissive, but close enough for warning.
Alex felt a feather of nerves along his ribcage, and to counter the discomfort leaned
back in his chair,
adopted a tiny frown. "I thought you'd be pleased."
"What did he want." Morley lit a cigarette, puffed to himself as if deeply involved in
the act, eyes
dropped from Alex's presence as if he were no more animate than a tape recorder.
"Wanted me to protect his son." Alex paused, ran his thumb along the table's curve.
"Wanted to talk
about aliens." His eyes rose gently.
"Bill Mulder is a doddering fool with no reliable attachment to the real world and no
idea of how to look
after his family."
"Mm... but he's in the game. Deeply so." Alex husked the words out with care. "A
little fact you
neglected to mention."
Morley's lips dropped open slightly. "I neglected. I tell you what I decide to tell you."
"I just want to do my job." Alex realigned his features into a faintly sulky look,
wondered not for the first
time if the old man was queer and whether batting his lashes would cut any ice.
Morley tapped out a fraction of ash, expression given over to thought, dropping
into the carved lines of
a watchful god. "I'm sure you do... what did he have to say about... " He waved his
cigarette, lifted it
to his mouth.
"About what?" Alex wondered aloud, brows knitting.
"Don't try that on with me," Morley hissed, suddenly leaning forward in a way that
took Alex off guard.
He sat back, stared some more, took another drag.
During this, Alex said nothing. He could see through the other man's attempt to
intimidate him, but
knowing this didn't negate the effect as much as he would have liked.
"What do you want to know?" Morley said abruptly as if in their shared silence
they'd reached an
agreement. Which, of course, they had.
"What don't I want to know?" Alex said, barking out a laugh. "Aliens?" His eyes
gleamed. "Why don't
you try your disinformation tactics out on me, see how they float."
Dry-lipped, Morley smiled. "Do you think you are somehow beyond basic human
susceptibility to our
techniques, Alex?"
The question was a needle designed to deliver fresh paranoia, but Alex had expected
it. Every fact he
might grudge to Alex, Morley would match with a doubt. A true master of the
game could cast doubt on
everything, anything; could convince a man he was dead, mad, that he was a dog, a
rat, a woman
named Irene, could cast into uncertainty the blueness of the sky or the law of
gravity. But of course Alex
didn't need truth; just more of this. More stories. More currency into the currents of
power.
"No more than you," Alex said mildly, smiling back, watching the faint irritability
blossom in the other's
face.
"Tell me what you came to tell me or leave," Morley said coldly. "I have a great
many things to do."
And you don't like to work the long seductions, Alex noted. A bit lazy these days,
old man? Or am I just
not your type? Too much a punk, too crude a tool? What would you do if I really up
and left you gaping
here? Mm, I'm not sure I want to find out.
Alex mentioned a few things, while Morley listened, eyes shuttered, lips pursed.
"So," Morley said at last. "Now you consider yourself a player." His face was
superficially condescending
but his eyes were not warm.
"I just want in," Alex said, letting a touch of his hunger show. Real hunger; there was
no falsifying that.
"Of course," Morley said. "Of course you do." And his new, sudden smile was
different, nearly
affectionate, as if an expected disappointment had been reversed to his delight. The
wrinkled map of his
face softened.
Was he soft? Alex couldn't tellcouldn't decide whether the older man's inverted
craziness was the
curse of his labyrinth, a genuine fault to be exploited, or if it was just... acting. If the
latter, he was a
consummate actor, for Alex couldn't help but harbor a feeling of success at the
natural lines of that
smile.
"You want a mentor," Morley said jauntily.
(Holy Christ, he's lighting up again, Alex thought with fascinated distaste, watching
the cigarette rise to
his small, smiling lips.)
"It's only to be expected," Morley continued. "Doesn't every young man, on the rise
in his chosen
profession?" He lit, puffed.
Alex eyeballed the other man warily, distrusting his sudden perkiness. "Well, I" He
cleared his throat,
assumed diffidence. "I wasn't sure how things worked... but it's obvious now that
I'm not going to be
collecting a bureau pension." Or retiring to Key West with Fox Mulder.
"No," Morley agreed. Pause, puff. "The bureau is... just the bureau. Advancement
there counts for very
little. It's all in who you know, Alex. No different than in your previous experience.
This was a lateral
move for you, but I've been tracking your career with a more personal interest than
I've yet mentioned.
You've done some remarkable work. Kosovo, Sarajevo, Abkhazianof course,
these are merely CIA
training groundsone might say playgrounds" He waved his cigarette. "Small
fishponds in which even
the most limited militia-style exercises can create significant ripples. Nothing like
what we do."
"Maybe not on the same order"
"Nothing," Morley repeated evenly, "like what we do." He held Alex's eyes, his
gravity-dragged face
expressionless and still.
"Space," Alex said, his lips parted in the faint approximation of a smile. "The final
frontier." He paused.
"You're not NSC."
"Were you led to believe that?" Morley asked incuriously.
"All I want is a chance to work my way up the ladder. I've paid my dues," Alex said,
hesitated. "Enough
for the chance."
Stubbing out his cigarette, Morley gave no sign that he recognized the appeal, but
then his face
upturned itself with a light, fine-lipped smile and a clear gaze that was like an open
door, beyond
whichlady, tiger. Truth and lies, promises and broken faiths, the chance to succeed
or die.
"Welcome to the Consortium, Alex."
Mulder, squatting in front of the fridge, made a humming sound. "You're going to
have to feed me better
than this if you want to keep me."
"Need to get you a collar too," Alex said amiably. His eyes glinted. "Bell the fox." He
kept a casual pose
at the counter, watching Mulder futz around among his meager leftovers. He didn't
repeat his question,
and eventually Mulder stood up, empty-handed, and let the fridge door shut.
Meeting Alex's eyes, he
gave him a quizzical look that said, Do I know you?
Alex folded his arms and quirked a brow back.
"She wanted to apprise me of Barry's condition." Mulder paused. "And to give me
some metal the
surgeons found implanted in his body while operating."
"What?" said Alex. "Shrapnel?"
"Implanted, Alex."
Alex stammered his astonishment. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
Mulder shook his head, face both troubled and alive with keen pleasure. "Even just
at a glance they're
obviously devices designed with a purposeto be embedded subdermally." Then he
cocked his head,
admitted, "Okay, so I polled a few doctors and asked for their first impressions."
"What did youwhat did you do withthe devices?"
Mulder pulled a vial out of his suit pocket, handed it over just like that. Alex took it
and studied it blankly.
What the fuck? So much for my inaugural briefing.
"What are you going to do with this?"
Mulder took it back, pocketed it. "II don't know yet."
"Why don't you show it to Scullymaybe she could figure out what it is."
"That's probably a good idea." But Mulder's voice was dull, toneless.
"You're going to patch things up, aren't you?"
Mulder said nothing. Alex moved a step closer to bring their bodies together, slid his
hands around
Mulder's waist. He looked unhappywhich he probably wasand sleepy, which was
probably
misleading. Those weighted, luscious eyelids had a will of their own.
"Hey," Alex said. Mulder's face lifted an inch and gave his eyes direct regard. Alex
pressed his lips on the
other man's, felt them part. "I need to say something. I don't want you to get
angry."
Mulder blinked his surprise. "Okay."
"You can't sleep over any more. I don't think it's a good idea. It's not safe." Alex
brushed a kiss across
Mulder's lips.
"You know what I like about you, Alex?" Mulder smiled. "You're more paranoid
than I am. It's an
endearing quality I don't find in many people."
"I work hard at it," Alex said easily, relieved that his terms had been accepted,
wondering if they'd have
gone over with any other man than Fox Mulder, lone ranger of the remote control.
He had a needy
streak, but his habits were safely monkish and had not yet been exchanged in
pursuit of this hot new
fad of intimacy. By the time he was likely to get clingy, Alex was likely to be gone;
and if not... well,
then I'm up shit creek, aren't I. Unless his enigmatic new patron could be convinced
of the value of
creative overtime.
They nuzzled a minute and then their mouths opened simultaneously with ripening
greed to let their
tongues dance and spar.
"Um," Mulder said after a minute. His hands stroked up and down Alex's back.
"What are our plans for
tonight then?"
"Mm." Alex shrugged. "I haven't thought that far aheadheyyou didn't tell me
how your meeting with
Skinner went."
"Oh, that... well, you know he has that Marine paddle in his drawerand he bent me
over the desk"
"Idiot."
"Whatyou don't get that? Maybe it's just me."
"You're very special to him," Alex agreed sardonically.
"He's so by-the-book macho he makes my balls itch," Mulder said dryly. "Of course,
he's a hunka hunka
burnin' man all the same."
"You can't deny it, Mulderhe wants to bone ya."
"You think?"
"Hey, why don't we take Scully out to dinner?" Alex let his voice rise with bright
offering as if the thought
had just occurred to him.
Mulder drew back a bit. "I don't think I'm up for that."
"Come on, you two can kiss and make upwe'll take her to someplace nice. Feed
her chocolate mousse
and let her get tipsy on two glasses of white wine. We can drive her home after."
"Some other time."
"Mulder"
"I'm not out to her, Alex, and I don't feel like playing footsie with you under the
table while she's sitting
there giving me her Doctor Scully eye. Neither do you. So drop it."
Alex swallowed, nodded casually. "Fine. What do you want to do then?"
"Buy the most expensive food we can find and let you cook it. Alternately, I was
thinking Il Portothen
wander around old town after and drop by some"
"Bookstores." Alex's face twisted around the mouth with a pained, knowing look.
"I like to shop for books," Mulder said mildly, amused.
"Not that I've seen. You go in, you meander around"
Mulder laughed. "Meander"
"around the stacks until you find the ufology bullshit section"
"I don't think they call it that" Their voices overlapped.
"and then you pretzel up until you have about six stacks of books around you and
you've gone
through all of themand then" Alex's voice rose an accusing notch. "then, because
you've read
them all while you were sitting there, you decide you don't want to buy any."
"Well, I don't really have a lot of room in my apartment."
"If I hadn't seen what you spend on suits I'd think you were cheap."
"You don't know what I spend on suits."
"I'm lookin' at you right now, Mr Armani." Alex grabbed his lapel and stroked it
suggestively.
"I'm old money," Mulder joked. "What can I say?" His tongue spoke for him then,
teasing into Alex's
mouth.
When the kiss broke again they were both breathless. "Let me tell you what I'm
going to do to you
tonight, Mulder."
"Oh shi" Mulder's voice caught raggedly on a hitch.
Alex ran a tongue lightly along the inside of his lips, then transferred the lick to
Mulder's mouth. "Why
are you so fucked up, Mulder?" he asked between kisses, the question popping up
unexpectedly from
lower fathoms to bump aside his recitation of pleasures. He cupped Mulder's nape
and his kiss cut off
the other man's uncertain sound, what might have been answer or merely groan.
Another kiss broken. "Why are you?" Mulder, hedonistically stunned, had begun to
purr; the slim length
of his body rubbed against Alex's with thoughtless rhythmswith rhythms that
didn't need thought.
"Hey, I'm just your run-of-the-mill leather loveryou're the one with an anti
oxygen fetishyou aren't
going to get touchy now are you?" A hurt look was shooting greenly into Mulder's
eyes.
"I've told you I don't want to talk about it. If I did I'd go back into analysis, I
wouldn't tell you."
"Teach me to profile, Mulder." Alex's eyes sparked.
"What?" Mulder was beginning to get distracted by the eddies of their conversation.
"You can't just"
"Oh, like it's such a science," Alex said.
"Something more than astrology, but less determinate than quantum physics."
Mulder paused. "That
was a joke."
"I'll take your word on that."
Shifting in place, Mulderhelicoid but ficklefrowned and said, "I don't want to talk
shop."
"Mulder, you never stop."
"I'm stopping now."
Great timing, Alex thought with exasperation. Aloud, he said, "Don't get too warm
and cuddly on me,
Mulder. I don't want you just for your body."
Mulder looked sneakily pleased, as Alex had suspected he would: his face gathered
up a boyish
seriousness, the kind of earnest intensity brought to bear when invited to show off
magic tricks. "Well, I
suppose we could combine Profiling 101 with a trip to the supermarketbuy
groceries, sherlock our
fellow shoppers."
"It's a deal." Alex's smile curved with mischief. "But first we get you out of this suit
and I fuck you until
you can't sit straighthow's that for a plan?"
"I'll let you know in about thirty seconds."
Mulder was both sated and restless. The heat made him wild, kept him in a
perpetual state of
semi-arousal; fever blossomed at inopportune moments and drove him to the coke
machines, the coffee
hutch, the cool basement levels, his abandoned X-Files burrowanywhere,
everywherethe stacks, the
video library, the microfiche bayseven Skinner's office when he needed some ice
water in his veins.
(Skinner: You know I can't approve any of these cases, Agent Mulder. And if I find
an unnatural homicide for
you to investigate it's likely to be your own, unless you settle on somewhere other
than my office to spend
your afternoons. Mulder: I'd have to come back as a ghost to look into that, sir.
Skinner: I'm sure you'd
give it your best shot.)
But this prolonged, voluptuous burning he felt was eased every night; every night
they flew together,
flaming moths beating at one another in a wild febrile ache. Grappling with Alex,
skin to chafed skin,
their bodies each one long wing, peeled from their suits and paler than they should
be, but that ivory
was nearly burnt by the time they finished. If days were pallid, devoided, tedious,
the evenings were
wild and dark, muttering of thunderstorms, stretching out across Alexandria like a
carny top. The
Potomac uncharacteristically churned in its nightly sleep; the parks dripped and
blew with rain; at Jones
Point, under the Wilson Bridge, the blue herons paired and huddled while the
muskrats resigned to
brave the weathering and went out hunting en famille.
Mulder was coming undone from his usual self. Hollow armor dropped off in
pieces, chrysalis shorn,
himself a mellower syncopation than usual; he eased into a minor rebirth. His suits
felt extraneous; his
movements fluid. His tallowed length of body held its residual pleasure. They had
no pressing case of
their own, he and Alex, and in typical default mode ended up assisting Rich and his
office on the Barry
matter, compiling 302s for the assigned Justice attorney and preparing defendant
background. (Alex:
Are you sure you don't want to say 'alleged abduction'?) They left on the dot of five
every day, with
atypical punctuality. Monday after work, Muldera tasmanian devil in the car,
whirling them free of suits
and into sweatsdragged Alex to Rock Creek to hike its wet trails until the sun set;
Tuesday they
stripped no further than shirt sleeves and went, errant altar boys, to slump together
in the cool confines
of a movie theatre, making a dinner of popcorn. Wednesday, lethargic but charged,
they dispensed with
social foreplay and went straight to Alex's apartment, where they shed their clothes
and with a fresh
thunderstorm as accompaniment screwed mercilesslyon the floor, in the bed, in
the showeruntil they
collapsed raw and depleted and naked on the couch and watched the stupefying
screen; and then
Mulder had gone home.
Now it was Thursday and Mulder was sitting at his desk, hunched with forehead to
hands, staring down
at the vial which lay on the plain grey blotter, next to his ballpoint doodle of a
Reticulan Starship
Trooper. Alex had left the building to gopher some video evidence over to Justice.
Around him in the
bullpen his fellow agents worked and chatted. Phones rang. A gust of rain-laden
wind clattered the
window glass. He sat up straight and attempted a casual, loose-limbed pose in his
chair as if to convey
he were thinking deeply on something relevant to federal law enforcement,
something that required him
to sit here, like this, just like this.
He rolled the vial back and forth, glanced at the clock.
After another minute, when he'd caught the curious eye of Agent Fiore from her
corner workstation, he
resolutely leaned forward and picked up the phone. Didn't she know he'd had to
wait until exactly now,
one forty-seven p.m., to make this call?
"Scully," said the far end of the line.
"Scully... it's me." He paused, swallowed and with his free hand drummed a faint
erratic pulse on the
desktop. "Iuhlisten, about the other night"
"Don't worry about it, Mulder." Scully's voice, wry and kinder than expected,
touched his ear. "I'm glad
that you've finally broken the shrinkwrap on your social calendar."
Startled into laughter, Mulder said, "Yes, but"
"I'll just have to remember I'm taking my chances when I call you in the evenings-
gone are the days
when even your most pressing engagements carried you no further than your
couch."
"Oh, I don't knowTiffany's Erotic Safaris carried me a lot farther than that some
nights." Mulder was
grinning into the phone.
"I hope real life is shaping up better than adventures in video, Mulder."
Mulder made a tiny choking sound, then swallowed this new astonishment,
deciding not to think about
the implications. "Um... I don't think I'm going to pursue that remark, Scully."
"Chicken," Scully drawled.
Mulder cleared his throat, rather glad she couldn't see his sheepish face or halfling
grin. "Listen, I've got
something to show you. Can you get free for a few minutes if I come down that
funky, corpse-ridden
laboratory of yours?"
"I suppose. What is it?"
"I'd rather not say on the phone."
"Of course not," Scully said dryly.
"I'll drive right downcan I bring you anything? Lunch?"
"Sesame chicken and I'm yours, Mulder."
He said nothing but there was a strained, uncomfortable air between them; he
disliked the discomfort,
resented what he saw as her small manipulations, evenvaguelyresented her calm,
that cool
competence of hers which was somehow both womanly and blandly asexual.
She walked ahead of him down the hall, in a manner that assumed he followed, and
entered her office
with a proprietorial airshe had a private office now; whereas he had been forced
out of his basement
and behind an appropriated, standard-issue desk in a common third-floor bullpen.
He closed the door
behind them, and caught a look on her face that seemed to him ironic. He wanted to
say, You saw a
man killed, you know we can't take any chances. But he said nothing, just took the
seat in front of the
desk, while she took the seat behind. He might have been in a teacher's officethat
was how she sat
behind her desk, he thought. He felt puerile, disgruntled. The face he could feel
forming was what Alex
called his sulky look... his mother called it that, too. Funny.
They exchanged pleasantries as strangers might have and Mulder found himself
increasingly reluctant to
hand over the evidence he'd brought. He'd taken a few of the metal pieces from the
sample vial and
transferred them to a safe place, butbut what the hell, he thought, drawing the
item from his pocket.
"Here's one of the implants from Barry," he said, passing her the vial, watching how
she took it. She
held it carefully, turned it over and eyeballed it with little expression. He passed on
Kazdin's words and
the tentative speculations of the hospital physicians he'd spoken to, then said, "What
do you think?"
She paused for a long moment. "This could just be a piece of shrapnel. Duane Barry
did a tour of duty in
Vietnam."
"It was right where he said it would be, Scully, along with the ones in his gums and
his sinus."
"And you think that this was implanted?"
"Well if it was ... that would mean Duane Barry's telling the truth."
"Or some version of the truth."
Mulder's jaw tightened fractionally. There it was again; the immutable wall of Scully
doubt. He said
nothing.
After a moment, she sighed. "Look, I'll... I'll take this down to Ballistics. We can have
this cleared up in a
second."
Mulder grudged a nod. He'd come down her with more than one purpose; in the
back of his mind had
been the intention of inviting her to dinner as Alex had suggested, something to
ease her into an
acquaintance with him, even if presenting the man as his lover wasn't in the cards at
such a stage. Now,
given the Dana Scully treatment, he was distracted into muted anger, and left
without further speech.
It was only as he exited the building that he regretted, for a moment, his moodiness,
his readiness to
succumb to tension and perpetuate it. His abrupt departure weighed on him and he
almost turned
backstood, hand on car handle, looking up at the brick of her building. They were
still close, but were
they close enough, now, that he could leave without even a word of farewell,
without it seeming,
somehow, too final?
He came to no sure decision, but he did not return to her. It would be too awkward;
such replays
always were. She would already be busy again, doctored up in her lab coat, her
neutral professional
face resumed. And he wasn't without his own business to attend to. His hand was
moving to unlock the
car. Let her call him this time. When she did, he would right things, or they'd right
themselves. Things
always did.
Alex looked up from his plate, smiled in a perfunctory fashion. "This weather isn't
letting up," he noted,
as if this answered the question.
Mulder pushed his plate away, gazed across the table at the window-block of grey
sky. Dark early
tonight; he could see a thin reflection of himself, overlaid on the clear glass, but his
expression was
illegible, blurred by the scene beyond, the dun neighboring rooftop. He cleared the
view from his eyes,
turned to look at Alex, brightly lit by the ceiling lamp, his head down, his lashes
dark as burnt paper, of a
finger's width, fanned ash to eyes that gleamed below. A strange face he had,
though, a thing of blunt,
unlikely angles, snubbed and oblique, caught up now in the ordinariness of eating.
"What?" Alex said, catching Mulder's eye, fork halfway to his mouth.
"Just waiting for you to finish," Mulder said with civility and a faint, sly smile.
Alex tossed his fork into the remains of his meal. "I'm finished."
Mulder stood and walked to the bedroom, stripping as he went, feeling the other
man's eyes on him. By
the time he turned, Alex had followed him the length of the apartment and come up
behind him. They
stood close then, chest to chest, hips to hips. His hands rested on Mulder's bare
waist, eased the loose
silk of his boxers off, then cupped his assgently, and then with hard, kneading
strokes.
Mulder pressed his forehead to Alex's shoulder, shuddered.
"What can you do for me tonight?" he muttered.
"What do you want?" Alex's hands didn't cease their cupped rubbing. His breath
warmed Mulder's ear.
"A sore ass and a clean conscience."
Alex stroked the length of his spine. "You want to talk about it?"
Mulder lifted his head. "What do you think?"
Their eyes sparked the shadows and corresponded beyond speech. Alex raised one
hand and brushed
his thumb along Mulder's jaw, stroking the rough blade. Mulder closed his eyes and
felt stifled, needy,
densely clayed. His body held the entire day's sheen of salt and sweat; he could feel
it gathered thickly
under his arms, feel the cauldron of his balls and thighs and the strip of silted heat
that led to the
earthy core of himself. He felt dirty and he wanted to be fucked like this, wanted
Alex rutting on him,
primate to primate.
Mulder leaned and sipped a kiss from Alex's mouth, drew out his tongue and played
his own into that
wet clasp. He angled his body and pressed his nakedness to a clothed form that was
the essence of a
man. Cloth and flesh and bones; suited masculine authority. His cock rose, heavy as
an arm between his
legs, knobbed like a clenched fist, aching. He thrust against the stretching fabric of
Alex's groin, across
his belt. Alex played with him, hands casual. Their jaws brushed, rough to rough,
stubbled planes
scratching with the faint sound of sandpaper. Already, Mulder was stoked, lifting.
His body arched
against cotton and linen and the muscles underneath. The kiss refused to end itself,
wasn't
accelerating, wasn't easing; its separate cadence attached their bodies but their hands
kept other
sweeps of time until Alex broke the connection, finally. He had the steady,
measured breath of a
long-distance swimmer who will not lag soon. He pushed Mulder to the bed and
then down; stood over
himbetween the folded vee of Mulder's legsand stripped off his tie, his shirt,
kicked off shoes and
socks, and finally undid his trousers and let them slide free. Naked manbare and
long and finehe
looked so natural, a man at a beach, coming just this way from the sea. He settled
on Mulder, nudging
him fully onto the bed's surface. Their cocks pressed flush and Mulder rocked
unthinkingly, up into Alex.
Hot weight, the complete full stretch of him. Unerring rightness.
Mulder gasped. Need licked him from inside out, and then Alex licked him outside
in, moving up and
down his body, his mouth wielding a wet brush that marked Mulder everywhere.
He came several times
to Mulder's chest and finally focused there, biting and worrying its nubs until they
stiffened and
hardened like circlets of copper ore; he seemed oblivious to Mulder's sway, the arch
of his lower back
and rhythmic upward grind of hips. The relentless seizure of pleasure drove
through Mulder, and then
he rolled over and pinned Alex lightly to the bed and reciprocated the moves of
their dance.
He was lean and shaded in all the right places, embodying a menagerie of elements:
smokily furred
along the stem of his chest, but scaled of rib, with a light feathering at the groin
where an ophidian jut
defined his shaft, there where he was cobralike and alert. Mutable. A man who
dreamed he was a
panther that dreamed it was a snake that dreamed it was a hawk; and all shades of
animal gathered
and shifted en masse in the leather pouch of his skin and whetted Mulder's senses
for the human.
All the places where he was soft seemed rare: the folds of his arms and legs, the
upper crease of his
thigh, neck hollow and scrotum. Soft places on a hard carapace, fissures between
bones and muscle.
Eyes looking darkly down at him, pools both soft and hard.
Mulder, loosely astride Alex, drew up the other man's hands and let their sets of
fingers tangle, then
guided those hands to his hips, his breath quickening. Alex held him, stroked his
hipbones with strong
thumbs. For a minute Mulder let their cocks brush, pressed his balls onto Alex's
rigid shaft and rubbed
himself there. It was still new, in its way; it had been so long since he'd been lovers
with a man, so long
since he'd sustained a liaison with anyone past a week. To come back to this again
and againthe
friction, the naked intimacy, the cooperative ride to pleasurefrightened him,
almost. Almost. The solidity
of himself, looming over Alex; the solidity of Alex, grounding him; this made his life
a thing of flesh once
again, for the first time in... too long. Too long he'd been a creature of habit,
inhabiting his jack-off
solitude, tilting at the frayed windmill of his heart. His obsessionsgod, how deep
they went and how
little they had to do with the here and now.
He bent, slid from the net of Alex's hands, gave his mouth to the other man's
swollen cock. Alex gasped
when Mulder took the raw, leaking head onto his tongue. Gaspa word that didn't
convey the hitch of
breath, the sounded tongue-curl of lust, the vibration his entire body gavesatisfied,
concentrated
down into the grooved arrow of need. Mulder relished the corporeal heft of a man's
dick in his mouth. It
took him back two decades in memory to his first sexual rebellions, a time when
school and trauma and
father were influences eroding him away to nothing. A good boy he'd been, playing
basketball, getting
straight A's; with a pint of Canadian Mist in his backpack and a way of finding
himself, evenings, on the
far chilly edge of the park, past the picnic tables, in the trees, sucking cock.
Those had been the good memories.
The wet burl of flesh in his mouth pulsed and beads of salt slid free, advanced by the
pressure of his
tongue. He began to lose himself in the tasking rhythm of his mouth. Good practice;
builds the jaw
muscles; untrains the gag reflex; comes in handy. A glaze of pleasure, this. His hand
was growing sticky,
below, and he dropped his touch to knead Alex's balls, then to investigate lower,
stroking one finger
back until it sank into a grip of heat. Alex arched and his hands skimmed around
Mulder's head as in a
manic butterfly whirlwind.
When Mulder's mouth reached a high pitch of aching, wet and raw, carved open, he
withdrew, lips full,
head buzzing, leaving Alex's erection glistening. He lifted, poised above him, let
their eyes latch,
watched Alex's lips part and felt his breath rise up in erratic eddies. His exhalation
carried a croak of
speech.
"You justyou want"
Mulder nudged his ass against the wet edge of Alex's cock and let his weight sink
enough to blend and
solder their flesh. Alex tossed his head back, grabbed at Mulder's hips again,
steadied him. The descent
was excruciating, different than the usual slickly eased joining; it pushed and pulled
at his insides. He
rocked onto the intrusion, its rude fullness, until he embedded it completely, then
rocked further,
seeking the keen, stroking angle he craved. Using Alex's cock like a divining rod-
thick, pulsing,
livingMulder worked his hips, twisting, and then he found itthe sharp ascent and
descentand
pushed himself into itthere. The blossoming fire whiplashed the breath from his
lungs and blinded
him.
"Oh my god," he said aloud, not recognizing the thick harsh crack of his voice. His
body rolled drunkenly
on its axis; the arc of his lower back tucked in as his ass pronounced itself further. He
was sawing
himself in two, working up toward the heart.
Under him, Alex surged and grappled, and then reached for Mulder's cock, and
Mulder could only
surrender then to the cyclone of himself. He began coming. It was a conscious thing
in which he looked
at himself and watched the spill and felt the fusion of everything in his range-
release, fullness, a full
skin of shattering nerves, ears catching the roar of the world, blood spiraling
through him, his ass
clenching with cruel force, and Alex inside him, coming equally undone.
After dismantling themselves from one another they lay in a stunned, supine heap,
catching their
breaths, and then Mulder, in a slurred murmur, regaled Alex with his detailed,
convoluted theory about
the Batman and Robin relationship, which led him to contemplate the paraphiliac
attractions of rubber,
and segue into profiles of sexual sadism, the significance of high church poetry and
ritual to a certain
type of serial killer, Joan of Arc, grail legends, and then
"Are you asleep?" Mulder asked, lifting his head from the crook of Alex's arm where
he'd idly laid it.
"Close as I can be without actually losing consciousness," Alex muttered.
"Guess I'll go... " Mulder shifted and sat up. "Gettin' late."
"You all right?"
Mulder blinked, assessing himself. The shadowed bedroom seemed a larger
chamber for his thoughts,
which fucked and shifted inside him, mixing dark and bright. "I think I'm good," he
said. He smiled at
Alexit would have to be called that, his faint, crooked, quick movement of lipsbut
when the smile slid
away it left his face quiet.
He stroked Alex's chest, felt his hand held for a moment. He couldn't quite make
out Alex's
expressionsleepy, watchful in his usual way, as if he himself couldn't quite make
Mulder out, but kept
trying.
"Scully calls this my social life," Mulder said, rising to dress. The remark had risen up
to break
unexpectedly.
"What else would you call it." Alex's voice husked out to him across the expanse of
shadow.
Love life? Sex life? Mulder pulled on his shirt and trousers, redressing into the suit of
the day. "There
was a time in my life when I had no idea what I wanted to do," he said. "What I was
supposed to do."
The words spoke themselves. "I didn't think I'd be carrying a badge, wearing a gun.
Mr Authority
Figure."
Alex said nothing.
"This is kind of a surprise too... " Mulder buckled his belt, found his keys. His voice
was low, his
movements unhurried. "I could get used to this."
There was a shift of sheet and body on the bed. "Yeah... me too."
"You go along with the craziness pretty well."
There was the nuance of a smile in the darkness. "Just keep up those left-handed
compliments. No one
will ever accuse you of sappiness, partner."
"You want hearts and flowers?" Mulder said, coming back to the side of the bed,
looking down at the
grey contours of the man there.
"Want... I want a lot of things... "
After a pause, Mulder sat down on the edge of the bed. "Want me to stay?"
"... You'd better go."
Mulder reached out, touched Alex's hair, which spilled free like pitch. "You make it
so easy for me," he
said.
Quiet, cryptic, eventhat voiceblending untold tones into a complex pattern of
vibration. Faintly
grating; mocking; kind; troubled; warm. Speaker of truth in darkness, oracle of
shaded meanings.
And Alex had held that mouth against his own: their two breaths had conspired
together. There would
always be that, at least.
"Well, that's the plan," Alex said to Mulder, shadow to shadow. "We aim to please."
"As long as it's easy on you, too," came Mulder's voice to him.
"Me... oh... I lead a charmed life."
In the building's vestibule he stood a minute and checked his mail, discarding a
handful of take-out
flyers and sweepstakes offerings in a small copper trash can that one of his
neighbors had placed by
the boxes. When he'd whittled down his take and was holding nothing but bills, he
returned them to his
box and shut the door with an irritable clank.
The elevator was quick and quiet; the building quiet. He was later than he'd
thought, and tireder than
he'd thought. Should have finished my dinner, he reckoned, but felt only
indifference to that matter of
bodily maintenance. Making a priority of fucking had its price. Besides, he had some
pizza in his fridge
that was no more than a week old, certainly less than two.
He let himself into his apartment, struck as he'd been more often lately by its
impersonal emptiness. The
furniture itself was growing more removed, less familiar; how that could be, he
wasn't sure. There
seemed no reason to turn on the light and inspect the progress of the phenomenon.
It was all wood
and backdrop. The props for an ennui of small hours, his showers and shaves, a
meal or two, his
occasional sleep.
Incuriously, with rote necessity, he pressed the button on his answering machine
and then crossed to
drop onto his couch. After the rewind and beep, Scully spoke into the room.
"Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen. This piece of metal
that they took out
of Duane Barry, it has some kind of a code on it. I ran it through a scanner and some
kind of a serial
number came up. What the hell is this thing, Mulder? It's almost as if... it's almost as
if somebody was
using it to catalogue him."
Mulder, stirring to life, thought, yes, that's
Scully gasped. There was a sound of breaking glass. Barry's voice, surely. And her
voice, again.
"MulderI need your helpMulder!"
He went to her, he took flight. He knew that what was done could not be undone.
All the way, he sank
deeper into the knowing and it all seemed to have led to this. He'd known she
would call.
|
M/K slash. NC-17. Spoilers for second season. Insert boilerplate disclaimer here, but
with warm, mushy
gratitude to Chris Carter & Co., particularly for certain Recent Events. I don't really
use beta-readers, I'm
too easily spooked, so all goofs are my own, and I can only hope there won't be as
many as in the first
IDT story. Many thanks to torch, though, for maintaining my web page. O bright
torchlong may she
burn! This continues IDT: Sleepless, but though I've skipped Duane Barry, I've tried to bridge the gap with backstory, a gradual segue into Ascension material. It's all a darkish descent though, isn't it, so don't expect epic romance until we reach IDT:2000, in which Alex and Fox are resistance fighters passionately dedicated to saving the earth from the alien invaders, when not snuggling together with tender warmth in their bunkers. On the show, the date at the beginning of the Barry hostage crisis is given as Aug 7th 1994, but I have to consider this a typo, relative to my own chronology of events in part one (IDT:S). Either that or revise all dates in part one. That shuffle you just heard is me avoiding the task. Feedback always very much welcome, but I'm slightly more snail-like these days in replying, so please bear with me if you don't hear back immediately! eliade@drizzle.com Note: last revised April 16th. [I have tried to tighten up a continuity lapse I felt I'd perpetrated in writing Alex's character.] |
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