It's been over for years when I find him. Only then, before I walk up
to him, do I acknowledge to myself that I have been looking. I've had
access to all their records and several long conversations with Mr.
Jeremiah Smith, before he too perished. So, I knew he wasn't dead. At
least he hadn't been dead at the end of it all, but that was years
ago. When I saw him in that billowy, loose, dark blue shirt,
clutching a grocery bag in one arm, I knew I'd been seeking him all
along.
It wasn't as if we'd ever made peace or even had a truce. It wasn't
as if he hadn't murdered Bill Mulder, or sold Scully down the river
for advancement in that fetid group of megalomaniacs, none of that
had changed. It wasn't as if I believed that the help he gave during
the war, hadn't saved the day and helped us win war wasn't true
either. It was. But, we, he and I, had never hashed it out and
something in me was still waiting.
He was curiously unsurprised and surprisingly nonviolent when I
tapped the shoulder of his empty sleeve and he turned around. His
face was clear, although there were lines at the corners of his eyes
and around his mouth. He was thinner than I'd ever seen him, the
bones of his face pushing sharply against the taut pale skin. He
looked the forty I thought he had to be by now, and somehow, that did
surprise me. I hadn't aged him in the intervening years.
I suppose I was staring, because his "What do you want, Mulder?" woke
me up, recalled me to the moment at hand and almost surprised a laugh
out of me because it sounded as if I'd seen him an hour ago and not
after a gap of four years.
We were on a street corner in Carlisle, Vermont. It was one of those
small New England towns that stubbornly resisted invasions by
McDonalds, Walmarts, Interstate exits and Aliens. The Green
Mountains were growing back, new green fuzz covering the acid burns
and napalm fire lines.
We'd stopped the ships here, in New England, but almost every country
on Earth had its own scorch marks. There were no defeated enemies
left to make reparations, the Earth would have to renew itself or die
trying, just as it always had.
I realized, except for him, my own recovery had been sufficiently
underway, as well.
He began to walk, not away, just toward wherever he'd been going
before I stopped him. I took a quick double step and caught
up. "Skinner's dead. Scully's dead." I said.
He shifted the bag against his side. "A lot of people are dead." He
replied.
"You're not," I said. I could see him tighten his lips and it made
the side view of the groves by his mouth deepen.
"Neither are you," he said shortly and we walked on.
"Has it always been that simple for you?" I ask as we walk, "Dead,
not dead, I made it happen or it was out of my control? Don't you
feel anything, Krycek?" He sighs impatiently and with a small huff,
shifts the package again, and turns into a pitted driveway. We walk
to a small cottage, which survived intact, behind what must have been
a larger, grander home. The ruins of the big house are a tumble of
brick, concrete and new vegetation. Thorny wild roses climb around
the uppermost piles; they have a sharp sweet scent.
He puts the bag down by the door on a long, flat plank supported by a
couple of sawhorses. I realize the table is the right height for a
one armed man to relieve a burden, open the door, and retrieve it. I
don't help him, just watch, as he does exactly this. Inside, he
repeats the exercise. The table here is a scarred, but still a lovely
antique buffet. The top half, which once held fine china and silver
in its glass front, is missing. He pulls the door shut behind us;
picks up the bag and goes to the small kitchen. "You want a cup of
coffee?" He asks me and thumbs the on-button. The coffeemaker is an
early eighty's model and the first drips hiss as they land in the
bottom of the Pyrex pot.
The aroma of coffee masks the scent of the roses while I watch him
put away the groceries. There is no meat, of course, there is no meat
to had for less than a hundred dollars a pound, but there is a piece
of filleted fish. He unwraps this right away and puts it in a bowl,
covers it with a variety of spices and a small amount of clear oil.
He puts the bowl in the refrigerator. It too is an old relic, a
rather hideous green. I remember they used to call it avocado in the
seventies. I can hear a generator in the background and wonder where
he gets the precious gas to run it.
I wander around the small rooms as he finishes in the kitchen. There
isn't much in them and the furnishings are a hodge-podge of styles
from a variety of decades. All of them would have been at home in a
yard sale or a thrift store a few years ago. Now, their presence is
testament to either his ingenuity as a thief or that he had a lot of
ready cash at the end of the war. The bedroom door is closed and I
don't open it.
In the living room, there is no couch, but there are three chairs,
each with a lamp on a side table. One chair is a stiff wingback,
upholstered in a muddy brown. It would have been very elegant, once
upon a time, in a Vermonter's law practice. The second is another
wingback, covered in pale gold with faded green leaves. It is softer
and has a matching hassock. A pair of old running shoes, with no
laces, is on the floor, half hidden under the hassock's ruffle. The
reading lamp on the end table is incongruously modern and a small
pile of books is scattered on the tabletop.
The last chair is, well, I think a joke of some kind. It is a lime
green, molded plastic, low backed half-length chaise lounge. I think
I even remember the blonde model in a 1995 Purrfection magazine
displaying herself on a similar one, and another picture of another
blonde going down on the first, since the arms of the thing were
conveniently spaced for a wide spread of open thighs. In fact, the
chair had been used throughout that issue and at least once in every
issue for sometime.
I hear him pouring coffee in the kitchen. The last drops of the brew
hisses loudly as they hit the bare hotplate. I remember thinking that
the models should have been redheads against that green. I snort
softly to myself. I really hadn't known Scully very well at all, back
then.
He comes out of the kitchen. Two cups and a pile of cookies are on
the small tray he carries balanced in his hand.
I think, Marita is dead too, and I wonder if he ever knew I slept
with her while he must have been in agony and despair to find himself
a cripple in a cold, cold land.
I want to ask him why he stopped wearing the prosthesis, but I don't.
He lays the tray on the small dining room table. It only has two
mismatched chairs. He sits down in one of them and tilts his head at
me in invitation to join him there. I go to the table. What had I
asked him as we walked? I snort again and he looks at me with one
raised eyebrow. Oh yes, I asked him if he ever felt anything.
The coffee is exactly how I like it. His is black. The cookies are
simple sweetened baked dough. They are irregular in shape and some
are crisper than others. I wonder if he baked them himself. I smile.
I don't think I'll waste a question asking Alex Krycek if he bakes
cookies.
"This is a comfortable place," I say. The walls of the dining room
are lined with shelves of canned goods, boxes of nonperishable foods
and gallons of water. A lot of them are meal-in-a-box type stuff. I
remember the brands well; they were what I usually ate, when I
bothered to 'cook' at all, back when I lived at Hegal Place.
Krycek nods, "It's fine. The strange part is not being on the move
all the time. I've been here for almost three years, never been in
one place that long before."
"Even when you were a kid?" I ask. He blinks is surprise and seems to
think.
"Yeah," he answers, "lived in Florida for, umm, five years, yeah five
years," he says almost musingly, "but at three different Air Force
Bases, one of them twice because we moved away and then back again."
"Your dad was in the military?" I ask.
"No," he answers, "My uncle, my mother's brother. In the late
fifties, she and my dad were Soviet scientists doing fieldwork in
East Germany. They made it out and into the West. Her brother, half-
brother, was born here is the US. He was a lot younger. Her father
was still alive at the time. He'd gotten out soon after she was born,
right after the 'war to end all wars'." He says this with great
irony. "Her mother had a hard time with the regime after he left, but
my mother was a brilliant student and they educated her anyway, at an
institute and not at home. She was born in forty-four. Her brother,
born in '56 to a new wife, was twelve years younger. After her father
and second wife died in a car accident, she took him in. I was born
in the US in nineteen seventy. He joined up when he graduated high
school, did a tour in a few hot spots and decided to stay in."
Krycek got up and brought the rest of the coffee to the table. It was
lukewarm. I sipped the cup he poured for me anyway. He'd forgotten
the milk this time. "My mom and dad worked for them." I knew
who 'them' was without him needing to elaborate. "We moved around
back then too. Born in the US, I learned Russian and German in Europe
and French in Tunisia. Spanish I learned in American high schools
after I went to live with my uncle. He was not one of them."
I bit into a particularly crisp cookie. It crumbled into my
hand. "Why'd you go live with him?" I asked, but I was pretty sure I
knew the answer. The Syndicate had killed off a whole team of
scientists, along with a diseased batch of clones at a European
facility in eighty-one.
Krycek would have been eleven, his uncle twenty-five and his mother
and father still young and in their thirties. The same age he was
now, not forty yet as I had presumed, but thirty-five.
I would have been twenty, at Oxford, pissed at my dad and thankful to
be far away from my mom, who blew hot and cold, possessive and
distant since I'd reached adolescence. I would have been in the midst
of young love and its all-consuming anxieties with Phoebe.
Krycek looks at me knowingly, but obliges me with an explanation
anyway. "I went with them to a post in West Germany. I was in the
local boarding school, you know? The kind they have in Europe where
the kids go home on weekends and holidays, or sometimes just for
dinner. It was that nearby. One afternoon she came to the school
unexpectedly. She was worried, scared, and made me pack my favorite
things in a hurry. She had another case already in the car. She took
me to a private airfield. She was shot in the head as she was leading
me to the plane. I was putting up a fight. I wanted to know what was
happening. It slowed her down."
They left her in the dirt and grabbed me, shoving me up the steps of
the loading ladder. I flew to the US on the same plane as her
assassin. When I got back to the states, my uncle was waiting. He'd
only heard that the lab my parents worked in had been the target of a
terrorist bombing. The man who killed my mother didn't have to warn
me not to tell him anything different." Krycek rubbed his forehead
and took a sip of coffee.
"When I finally opened the second suitcase, it was also full of my
stuff. I realized she never intended to leave or knew she was not
going to get to come with me."
He got up and brought back a small cardboard and felt picture album.
Inside were pictures of turn-of-the-century Russians, a lost looking
woman with her arm around a thin teenage girl circa the 1960's,
university graduation pictures of the same thin girl, a few years
older, and a very handsome, laughing young man.
There were two baby shots of a fair chubby boy with curly hair and
freckles. They were the first of the color pictures. The baby had
large green eyes. One picture was the baby, just able to stand, on a
couch next to the young woman. She was smiling. The other was the
baby on the same couch being bounced on the laughing young man's
knee. There were a few others, the baby, now a toddler, then on a
trike and again, front tooth missing, by a crouching, serious seeming
teenager. A couple of grade school pictures of the boy ended the
collection.
Folded under the felt flap were university degree certificates and
one American birth certificate, a few yellowing Pravda articles and,
in a small velvet bag, two plain gold wedding rings, one for a
slender woman's finger and one for a larger man's hand.
The cookie crumbs on the table looked like golden-brown ashes. What
was it that I had asked him on the walk to his house? Oh yes, I
remember, I asked him if he ever felt anything.
I put everything in the small book and closed it. He got up and put
it back in the drawer of the end table by the pale yellow chair.
"William Mulder shot my mother," he said from the distance, half a
room and a lifetime away. Krycek was in the shadow of the sunlight
that streamed from the window by the chair. In this light, the green
leaves on the upholstery looked black.
I dug deep and kept my voice steady, "An eye for an eye?" I asked my
father's murderer.
He turned to face me and the bones in his face gleamed starkly white
in the sunlight. "He said, 'it's your turn, boy'. And it was, Mulder,
my turn, and I took it."
I carefully brushed all traces of the cookie crumbs from my fingers
and stood up. I asked him, "Did you bake the cookies yourself?"
"Yeah," he answered his face once more in shadow.
"They were good," I said, "sweet."
He didn't call me back as I left.
End—Over and Done
(2) One Step Forward—Two Steps Back
The sharp sweet smell of the roses made my throat ache as I walked
back up the rutted driveway to the street. There was a lilac bush by
the stone fence as I got to the end of the lane, I paused and leaned
on the fence. It was in full bloom and the lavender-blue clusters
gave off a heady scent of their own.
My grandmother sent Samantha a large bottle of lavender cologne for
her eighth birthday. Samantha sprayed the stuff everywhere, including
my baseball shoes and jersey. I'd been furious, but she'd been
unrepentant. She'd thought she was doing a good thing because my
stuff was stinky. She'd pinched her nose, miming a bad smell, and
giggled. I'd gone to practice in that jersey and hoped for rain. My
mother had made me wash them when, still complaining, I got home. I
left them in the dryer too long. The rubber shoes melted and the
jersey shrunk.
My mom gave the jersey to Samantha after that. I was still mad at
them both about it when Samantha disappeared.
I studied psychology to find the answers for my continuing sadness
and guilt over Samantha's loss and my family's disintegration. Even
at twenty, I had known, intellectually, that I was not responsible
for what had happened. I knew I'd been a kid and things happen to
kids that they cannot possibly control. My mistake was thinking that
adults could control everything.
When that myth had been destroyed, I went into law enforcement. I
thought I could compel someone, somehow, to take responsibility for
their actions. That conceit was soon ameliorated in the deals that
were made and justice denied for all sorts of reasons, including
career enhancement or actual subversion.
At that point, I became interested in what was behind the crimes. I
found my real place in the murky, less-defined arena of insanity,
crimes of passion or mistaken recompense for pain or past suffering.
The miasma of the mind and its ways of acting out or coping by
committing crimes was fascinating and my successes as a profiler,
undeniable.
The lure of the paranormal, seemingly present too many times not to
have some small possible validity came next. The FBI and the law
enforcement community were not amused when I began to insist these
elements were present in otherwise defined criminal activity. I used
the cache my success had gifted me with, and a few connections in
academia and the political arena to get the X Files assigned to me.
The 'new age' influence went a long way, as well.
The evidence that a conspiracy existed and possibly had proof of
alien visitations came last and with it, the faint ache in my heart
over Samantha's loss began to burn brightly again. It's hard for me
to think, now, how long I really suspected my parents were part of
it. Certainly, my father's ill-defined role in the State Department
was a clue I ignored for a long time. I was an employee of a similar
governmental institution and I knew his 'job' had been like nothing
I'd ever heard of, or witnessed.
Our estrangement didn't help me. The few times we spoke and I asked
questions, he either answered with more double-National Security-
speak or not answered at all. He'd said he'd taken early retirement,
his years in the military counting up as a full career, but I once
opened his mail, by mistake, and found a large current pay statement
long after that date.
I know now, of course, what he'd been and what his role had been, as
well. Along with most of the Americans in the Syndicate, they'd held
protected 'jobs' all their lives. These jobs gave them virtually
unlimited access to all government concerns and immense power to
order Special Forces when they needed visible muscle. The others had
held similar positions in their own countries of origin. Moreover, no
one ever simply retired. I had inherited a hell of a lot of dirty
money, gold and other negotiable materials after my mother's death,
in ninety-seven, at the beginning of the war.
It had served the Resistance well, and that money had gone a long way
to making sure I was accepted. My previous work and attempts at
revealing the truth were less important once the actual invasion
began. The guerilla fighters, including Krycek who'd been one of the
bad guys, cared little for who had known what or suspected what in
the 'Before'. The 'Now' was all-important and you put up and shut up
and got a weapon or did Intel and busted ass.
Scully had been horrified. She'd wanted us recognized, I think, and
lauded for being right. It never happened.
Skinner was less surprised and knew this is what happens in war. God,
he'd been tough. He'd gone with Krycek and a force of former Viet Nam
Vets, Gulf Vets, a few former prison inmates and various other
brigands on an early raid and destroyed four downed, but not out,
ships. It wasn't until I saw them returning that I realized almost
all of them were gimps of one sort or another.
Later, over whiskey and an increasingly rare cigar, he and the men
had laughed at my observation. Skinner had qualified, they joked,
because he was bald and that was a real handicap. Their missing
pieces hardly compared. Krycek, who'd been on the fringe of the group
with a few other of the younger men, had not laughed.
Later, Krycek and a slender, sort of fey, but fierce young fighter,
left the company and went out into the night. It was the first time I
realized he was gay or bi or simply expedient. The other young man
was missing his right arm. Skinner met my eyes and held them
steadily for a long time. My impulse to go find Krycek and continue
our private war, however, continued to simmer.
I remember wondering about Krycek and that young man. I wanted to
know what they were doing. Did they fuck? Did they talk to each
other? Did they bare their wounds and their souls? The sum total of
what I knew about homosexual sex whizzed through my brain, but I
couldn't imagine Krycek sucking cock or being fucked by another man.
If he did, it changed our private war in ways I didn't want to think
about.
I gulped two whiskeys down way too fast and felt sick.
Skinner told me to get up. It snapped me out of my half drunk
half-
sick misery and I followed him into the canteen. I was surprised that
he was angry. "Don't you dare," he started and stopped, rubbed at a
burn on his cheek and scowled at me.
I got pissed. He wasn't my boss anymore and I wasn't a Private to his
Sergeant. "Don't tell me what to think!" I yelled at him.
He grabbed my shirtfront and pushed me up against a cabinet. It was
no contest. I was woozy and he was stronger and it was too ingrained
in me that he was AD Skinner. I didn't hit him and calmed down.
He let go and stepped back. "Listen to me, Mulder. Whatever the
bastard did, or was, can matter again later, if there is a 'Later'."
He said it like people were saying Before and Now. Like they
whispered After. "There are only two sides now. Them and Us. Do you
understand?" I nodded sullenly. "You will not ignore this for the
sake of your personal grievances or anything else."
I glared at him. "My father was murdered. He murdered my father!" I
said it imperatively.
"Thorne committed perjury in a bank scandal. Bellamy killed his wife.
Parker raped a fourteen-year-old girl. Simmons was a Priest and
Johnson was an English teacher. Giorgio was part of the Mafia and
Jones was a dentist. You and I were Federal Agents. We all 'were'
something. Now we 'are' part of this unit. Later, when law and order
are restored, the survivors will decide how to deal with criminals.
Now, we keep watch and keep little girls away from Parker if the need
arises. If and when someone commits a 'crime' as part of this unit,
we will probably kill him. There are no brigs in this war, no Geneva
Convention, no trials and no juries and, Mulder, no one appointed you
judge over Krycek or anyone else. Today he fought as we all fought.
Could've died like any one of us and be just as dead as Morse and
Henley. So you take your anger and your righteousness and use them
against the Enemy."
I slumped against the cabinet. He was so wrong and so right. I hated
him, Krycek, and myself. I nodded and he nodded back. I went to my
cot in the Communications tent.
Two things came of that evening. I insisted on being with the unit on
raids and on the front line and I began to watch Krycek for more than
a possible double-cross. We seldom spoke, Krycek and I, but I watched
him closely and he knew it.
Sometimes, on nights when the unit fought a bloody battle and took
casualties, one or another of the younger men would sit beside him
and eventually get impatient. He would meet my eyes. Most of the time
the other man would wander off, but once in a while, Krycek would go
too. In those moments before he came to a decision, I could see
despair tauten his features and make the bones in his face sharpen.
I would go to bed sick with a queasy, victorious feeling if he
stayed. If he left, I couldn't sleep at all and paced the length of
the tent until dawn. There were no women in our unit or in any of the
small units manned with former mental patients or criminals. In our
way, we tried to preserve some small measure of civilized norms.
We came across women willing to sleep with anyone for clean water,
rations or medicines. Sometimes camp followers attached themselves to
our unit for a few days or a week or two, until we got too close to
the front or they found a better-supplied contingent.
Krycek never seemed to sleep with any of them, although they all came
on to him. A fewer number came on to me, but I didn't go with them
into their makeshift dwellings either.
On a temporary reprieve at Central Command, after we'd suffered a
large number of causalities and need to rearm, recruit and replenish
our supplies, I bunked with Scully and we became intimate. She'd
evolved into an even stronger, more committed woman than before.
Action seemed to suit her. By the time I saw her again, almost seven
months later, she'd found a steady companion and I slept in my
sleeping bag with the rest of the troops.
Those three weeks were the only time Krycek and I shared close
quarters during the entire war, and although there were hundreds of
troops in those tents, I bunked next to him and he never ventured
off.
Less than a month after that bivouac, Central Command was hit and
Scully died. Krycek and I were on different teams that week and he
returned to the unit, with his men, several days later. I never told
him about Scully and never knew if he'd been informed of her death.
All I did know was that for remainder of the time we spent on the
front lines, he never went off with anyone again.
In ninety-nine, he told me, just after he returned from a Recon
mission, that Marita was dead. It was the only time in the entire war
he got drunk. He threw his prosthesis into the campfire, but a quick-
witted soldier fished it out before it burned.
Skinner made it to one of the final battles and died in an acid
barrage. His bones, indistinguishable from all the others, were
buried in a mass grave near Lake Placid. It's a memorial now, the
names of the dead etched on red-veined white marble.
For almost three years, Krycek and I fought as part of the same unit.
We ate the same food, shared the same latrines and the smells of
death, heard the same screams, sweated, and froze as the seasons
changed and changed again. We never made peace and never declared a
personal truce. Nevertheless, as long as I knew he was alive, I hoped
for a Future when I could have my vengeance and make him pay for what
he'd done in the Before.
As the afternoon became dusk, I remained stopped by the lilac bush.
Night-blooming jasmine seeped into the scented sweetness of the
coming evening. It was dangerous to walk about at night, but I
lingered anyway. I saw a small light come on, back down the lane,
inside his cottage. I imagined I could smell cooking fish and pungent
herbs, could see him bring a plate to the table and slowly eat his
dinner.
There was no one left. The Syndicate was gone, Skinner, Scully, my
parents and friends. The Gunmen had survived and were rebuilding
Silicon Valley. Mail was infrequent, but Byers had married, Frohike
had a hot prospect in the wings, and Langly lived in a commune. I was
a professor in the Modern History department at Harvard. My students
were much more interested in my early research and cases into the
paranormal than the recent history that shaped the world community
and their lives. I was constantly being taken to task for filling
their heads with nonsense.
Finally, I allowed myself to answer the question for Krycek and for
me. "Yes", I said aloud to the night, to the stars that were clear in
the sky once more, "yes, Krycek, you felt something, maybe too much
and you couldn't bear it, didn't bear it any better than I did."
I made my way carefully through the night to the train station, by
noon I was back in Boston at my desk.
END One Step Forward—Two Steps Back
(3) Past is Prologue
On October 13th, two-thousand-five, my forty-fourth birthday, I went
to the finest restaurant in Boston and ordered a steak. It'd been so
long since I eaten meat that I felt overfull and the blood seemed to
rush to head and stay there.
I watched the satellite feed on the large screen at the bar in the
restaurant. Few of us owned electronics anymore, electricity was
still iffy, and batteries were precious and expensive. Most of the
Earth's satellite systems had been destroyed and while the dregs of a
new program was forming; as yet no successful launch of new ones had
taken place. Public places and the very wealthy were the only ones
to be able to receive broadcasts.
As a testament to human spirit, theater, concerts and performances of
all sorts, happened everywhere and at all hours of the day and at
night in the safer districts. Soapbox orators and other assorted
crazies made their presence known too.
I left the restaurant and watched a young violinist play in the
square. His left hand, as it fingered the notes, was so dexterous
tears came to my eyes.
I'd thought and I'd hoped the odd encounter with Krycek, last summer,
was the end of my obsession. True, I'd reread files and transcripts
from the thousands of Syndicate documents. True, I'd looked up and
listened to endless war-stories from surviving members of our units.
Also true that I'd found the other one-armed man.
We'd met in an outdoor cafeteria off Malcolm Street in Cambridge. He
worked in a food distribution center and the only time he had to
spare was lunch hour. We talked about the war and laughed about how
Skinner kept harassing all of us about foot rot and the need for
clean socks. When he'd finished his frugal meal, the man looked at me
wisely and rubbed the part of his arm where the stump ended. "You
wanna talk about Alex now?" He asked me boldly and with no small
amount of scorn in his voice.
I flinched at his tone and my transparency. "Yes," I answered
gruffly.
He relented, marginally, and looked around at the ruined buildings,
which lined the square. I looked at him. He was heavier than during
the war, his hair mostly gray instead of light brown, and like
Krycek, his face was set in deep groves around his mouth. "It hurts
all the time, you know?" He began to speak softly. I leaned in to
hear him. "The arm," he elucidated. "I had state of the art surgery
and it hurts. Alex was butchered. It drove him crazy sometimes,
especially after a long stretch without the ability to remove the
prosthetic or when he had been crawling on his belly and dragging it
along. I used to watch you watching him. I always wondered if you
hated him or loved him, certainly you were obsessed with him. He
never said anything about you, but he was always so aware of you,
attuned in some special way." He laughed to himself. "I was hot back
then, you know? Arm or no arm, war or no war. Alex, well, he was
hotter. Every queer-boy and a lot straight guys came on to him. You
probably won't understand this or more likely, pretend you don't, but
Alex was beautiful. I always wondered what he would've looked like
dressed GQ style. I spent a lot of time imagining getting him out of
a tux."
He smiled ruefully and stopped talking. "Please go on," I said.
He looked away, "His first choice wasn't guys, but the pain, you
know? Not just his arm, all of it, the blood, filth, and the screams.
Sometimes he just needed to be touched so bad, so bad, and I was
willing to do anything, be anything he wanted, just to be the one
with him. He was kind. I know that'll sound strange to you, but he
was kind. We'd sit afterward, I'd lean against his chest and pretend
his good arm was my own and I could wrap myself in them again,
scratch my chest and head at the same goddamned time. He would let me
use him like that, you see? But Alex, he never pretended anything,
and quickly, too soon, he get just as crazy being touched as he'd
been needing it so badly before. After some chick he knew died, he
never went walk-about again. He shut down and stopped needing
anyone."
He ran his hand down the material of his pant's leg, wiping the sweat
off. "He still watched you all the time. About a year after it was
over, I got a delivery. It was a huge box of chocolates and a pair of
silk pajamas." He laughed a little, near tears, "There was a note
that said he hoped I would find a real lover, one who'd appreciate
me. But he was, you know? A real lover. 'Cause I loved him." The man
stood up and drew a packet from his coat pocket. "He wrote that if
you ever came looking for me, it would mean he was dead or if I heard
he was dead, I should give you this." He stuffed the packet in my
hands. "Fuck you!" He said angrily as he began to walk away. Then, he
stopped and faced me. "What were you to him anyway? That no matter
what, the pain, the blood, the impossible loneliness, you never had a
kind word, never smiled. How the fuck much would that have cost you?"
He glared at me and I had no answer. He stalked off.
The packet contained documents I'd seen before. Copies of DNA
records, William Mulder's signature on many test and death orders and
a list of abducted who had been confirmed dead in eighty-three,
Samantha's name among them. The only item I'd never seen before, was
a picture of Sam and my mother, in seventy-nine, on a garden bench.
Sam looked weak and thin, but she and my mom were smiling. Taped to
the back of the picture was a note from Krycek, it read: Found this
in Tunisia/02. Was in Strughold's office. Thought you'd want to know,
AK.
I watched the violinist play seemingly impossible numbers of notes,
very fast.
The war had lasted from late '96 to nearly the end of 2000. I saw
Krycek at a meeting a few months later and not again until last
summer, a period of almost four years. He'd sent this to his friend
in November of 2002. Like his mother, so many years before, he'd
expected to die before he saw me again. I didn't find it at all
ironic for him to know me so well or trust his friend so much that he
was sure I would see it eventually.
I remember my mother telling me at a concert, a year after Sam was
gone, that when a soloist played a rapid number of notes in a
brilliant flurry, it was called pyrotechnics because the audience
could imagine the instrument bursting into flames.
I thought again how my mother had known all along. The rich dinner
burned in my stomach and I reached an alley just in time to lose it.
I retched unceasingly, until weakly; I came back to my surroundings
to find myself on my knees in the muck.
For the first time I was entirely hollowed out. There was no more for
me to discover about the depths betrayal can reach, no more grief to
spend on the hope that I'd held so long. The hope that my mother had
been spared my father's infamy, Samantha's fate and had been unable
to tell me the truths I'd spent my life searching for. She'd known
all along.
After all my animosity and vengeful punishment to Alex Krycek, how he
must have known I begrudged him any human comfort or companionship,
even fucked the woman with whom he'd been involved, when I couldn't
punish him directly. And still, in the end, he'd wanted me to know
the real truth so I could find a lasting peace.
What 'was' Alex Krycek to me? What is he still?
I walk back to my apartment. The sweet clusters of musical notes
gently fade the farther I go. The night smells of the ruined city are
complex and varied. Here—decay, there—fresh sawed lumber,
but
nowhere do I get a hint of roses, lilacs or jasmine.
END—Past is Prologue
(4) For Every Season
The snow was white and piled high. It covered the small town of
Carlisle and made the narrow lane to his house hard to find. How well
could a one armed man shovel snow anyway? And why bother when he had
supplies enough to last to first thaw.
I tramped up his driveway hoping I wouldn't break a leg in some rut
or trip over some random brick. The very tops of the naked rose vines
stuck out of the big mound of snow-covered ruins. Against the snow,
the shadows of their plentiful thorns loomed larger than life.
I had a pack full of perishables on my back. They would keep in the
snow if he had no power, but I was sure he wouldn't want to freeze
the beer no matter what.
The door opened before I made it to the first, freshly shoveled,
step. "I stopped believing in Santa a long time ago, Mulder," was how
he greeted me.
"Get real, Krycek," I answered. "I'm Jewish and it's February."
"There's coffee," he said.
"There's beer," I replied.
"If there's a steak in there, you're Hanukkah Harry for sure," he
said, reaching for my back as I knelt to remove my boots.
"The last steak I ate made me sick. There's fresh fruit, today's
bread and chocolate," I enumerated, as he dug each item out. He held
the six-pack to the light as if savoring the taste by just looking at
it. When he found the pretzels and peanuts, he began to grin.
"Fuck, Mulder," he said in mock disappointment, "there's no game on
TV today."
I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the peg. "Today's lineup,
playing center field for the YankeesŠ" He laughed and signaled me
to
keep going. I did, I knew every play by heart. I was hot and heavy
into the bottom of the third inning by the time he had veggie burgers
frying and was dubiously trying to read the expiration date on some
old packets of fastfood relish, mustard and ketchup.
"Those never expire," I broke into my reiteration of the game to tell
him. "By definition, anything in packages from take-out restaurants
last a minimum of a thousand years. The roaches know this and collect
them in vast underground warehouses."
"Okay," he said and with a totally deadpan expression, dumped a huge
bag full of everything from soy sauce to motel-sized freebies of hair
conditioner on the table. Some of these products had been
old 'before' the war. It was like Christmas as I happily sorted
through the pile of stuff: shampoo, hand lotion, perfumes and
colognes, mouthwash, ketchup, mustard, duck sauce,
tampons, "Tampons?" I questioned and he shrugged. I grabbed some
bowls from the shelf and tossed edible products into one of them and
personal care stuff into another.
"God, you're so easily amused, Mulder," he said and returned to the
burgers, they almost smelled like meat.
There were little packets of nails, screws and curtain hooks. I began
to understand that this wasn't just some kind of weird survivalist's
bounty, but that he must have collected them all along. Had he
planned a crime that depended on having a supply of day-glow orange
fish tank rocks handy? Had the secret to alien resistance been in
tube of cheddar-flavored processed spread all along?
He startled me by reaching, over my shoulder, for the
tube. "Cheeseburgers!" He said happily.
"Not on your life!" I yelled and grabbed for the tube. He danced away
holding the tube to his mouth and attempting to twist off the cap
with his teeth.
I managed to get hold of it just as the cap came off and it spurted
in a slimy, chunky, truly repugnant smelling mess down the front of
his shirt.
We both stared at the bright yellow goop in stunned amazement.
He recovered first, swiped his hand across the lumpy spillage, and
collected it in his fingers. He stared at his hand and began to
smile again, evilly. I backed away. He advanced. I backed away some
more. "It's cold out there, Mulder," he intoned. "Very cold and you
have no shoes on."
"The food is burning," I tried as an opening gambit.
"Fuck the food," he said and raised his hand.
"I brought the beer!" I implored.
He wiped a line of the stuff across my forehead. I gagged, piteously.
He was unmoved.
"I brought chocolates!" He paused, considering, and then wiped
another line down my right cheek.
"I brought condoms that haven't reached their expiration date," this
was my final plea.
"What for?" He asked softly and painted my other cheek.
I thought fast, but he was smearing the stuff on my nose and it
tickled. Stank too. It distracted me. His mouth was damp and slightly
open and he was breathing rather heavily. That distracted me
more. "So you could show me?" I said stupidly.
"Show you what, Mulder?" He breathed. I dropped the tube I didn't
know I was still holding.
"You." I said even more dumbly.
"You want me to demonstrate how to use a rubber?" He laughed very low
in his throat. "You haven't learned how to do that yet?"
"No. Yes. Krycek!" It was all I could manage to say.
Very calmly, he rubbed the goop on my neck, wiped the remainder off
his fingers onto my shirt and stepped back. "My name is Alex and the
burgers are done." He went into the kitchen and left me standing
there stunned, aroused and painfully bereft. And smelling vile, as
well.
I took off my shirt and scrubbed my face and neck with it. I went to
the kitchen door to ask where the john was and he was standing there
with his back towards me. He'd taken off the long sleeved thermal and
was washing it in the sink. A broad expanse of bare, pale skin,
stretched over powerful shoulders and tapering to a compact waistline
filled my eyes. I'd never found a man's back sexy before. I'd admired
good physiques on athletes and actors, but I'd never wanted to touch
them.
"Alex," I said, lost in discovery.
He shut the water off and turned to face me. He leaned arrogantly
against the cabinet. He waited.
"This isn't a game," I said more to myself than to him. "I'm not
playing a game," I said a little louder.
He waited.
"How could I know?" I asked him. It was a stab in the dark, but I was
sure he understood.
I gathered myself together. "Where's the john?" I asked.
"Through the bedroom," he answered and led the way.
He opened the bedroom door and turned on the light, walked to another
door and opened it. He tossed his damp shirt over the shower curtain
rod and stepped out. I went in and washed my face and neck,
halfheartedly scrubbed at my shirt and flung it next to his.
Dinner was on the table. The beers were in a tarnished silver ice
bucket, filled with snow. We ate companionably and had two beers
apiece. I cleared the table and while he washed the few dishes and
the frying pan, I got the package of condoms and the new tube of KY
from my pack and laid them on the bare table.
He came out of the kitchen and saw the display. He nodded, raised an
eyebrow questioningly and sat at the table. "What do you want,
Mulder?" He asked, handed me a third beer and took the last one for
himself.
The beers had given me a pleasant buzz, it'd been a long time since
the last time I'd had any, but I wasn't in the least drunk. Neither
was he. "I think you've asked me that question a thousand times," I
said.
"Maybe not a thousand," he answered seriously.
"I've wanted a lot of things from you. I wanted you to be a
supportive fellow agent, someone young and strong and on my side. I
wanted to kill you for what you did to Scully. I wanted to know why
you did it. I wanted to torture you and kill you for the murder of my
father and for being a traitor. I was sure you were evil. I wanted
you to suffer, Alex. I wanted you to suffer a thousand deaths and rot
in hell each time." He did not look away and I remembered he hadn't
looked away in the firelight of a hundred campfires no matter what
he'd suffered in action, or how hungry he was or how tired.
"I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to know how you dared to find solace
by fucking men. I wanted you to be alone and ostracized and spat on."
The words came faster and faster, spewing out ten years of hate,
anger and denial. He did not flinch and he did not look away.
"I wanted, no, I needed you to be a coward, a liar and beneath
contempt by all. I wanted to hate you for having a soft mouth and big
eyes that dared to show pain. I needed to hate you for the feelings I
had when I watched you walk, when I saw you swallow, when I watched
you sleep." I broke off just as my voice broke.
We sat in silence. I finished my beer to ease my sore throat.
He turned off the light and the house settled into evening. I thought
I could smell the very faint scent of roses, as if it came from the
cottage walls themselves.
"When you fuck a man, Mulder," he began quietly.
I made a move, to stop him, in discomfort, or fear. I didn't know
which.
"Shut up," he said, although I hadn't made a sound.
He talked it out, explaining about preparation and penetration. He
explained positions and reciprocity. His voice was amber honey, but
it was passionless and cool. He finished his lecture and drank the
remains of his beer. "We're not going to do it, Mulder," he
said. "We're not going to fuck, you are not going to fuck me and I'm
not going to fuck you. Not tonight and not anytime soon, maybe not
ever." He got up and collected the bottles, took the ice bucket and
dumped the melted water in the sink. He returned, locked the door and
stood behind my chair.
"Sshhh," he said, although I hadn't made a sound.
He touched my hair, smoothing it back from my forehead and stroked
his fingers down the back of my neck. I shivered. "Sshhh," he
whispered. He caressed my face and neck, pulled off my undershirt and
massaged my shoulders, one at a time. He stroked my chest, ran his
fingers through the hair on there, and rubbed my stomach, soothingly.
I missed his hand when he pulled off his own undershirt, but the
warmth of his belly against my shoulders more than made up for the
brief absence. He ran his hand down my arm and took my hand, tugging
it gently and I stood and went with him into his bedroom.
He drew the quilt back and removed his shoes, socks, pants and
underwear. He was only half-hard and breathing easily. His body was
smooth, firm, and powerful. I tugged off my socks, pants and
underwear. He smiled, pleased, and got on the bed. He motioned for me
to follow, but when I headed for the opposite side, he shook his
head. I crawled over his leg and sat in front of him, my back against
his chest.
He did everything over again: my hair and face, neck and shoulders.
He fondled my stomach and smoothed his hand down my arm. He took my
hand and put it on my erection. Keeping his hand over mine, he began
to move it. I jerked hard into my hand and against his chest. He
moaned softly and I felt him harden next to my butt. He kept the pace
slow and I panted, but let him lead. He was teaching me something
important. Whether it was about him, or me I didn't know, just that
it was important.
I reached the edge too fast. He squeezed my hand hard and I panted,
but did not come. He took my hand and we caressed my balls. My
fingers, his fingers, it was bliss and oh, so intimate. "Keep
touching," he whispered. He adjusted himself against my lower back. I
felt him stroke himself and my mouth watered as if I was about to
take a bite of a ripe fruit. He pulled me closer, he was very hot and
hard, and the head of his erection was damp against my back.
The scent of his skin and mine, of sex and roses made me dizzy. He
brought his hand back to mine and to my penis. This time we stroked
to get there. He undulated against my back. We panted in unison. I
started to come and he came first, hot against my back. He cupped my
chin with his hand sticky from me and, as I hit that perfect moment,
and I came hard, he turned my chin and kissed me.
I opened my mouth and moaned into his. He kissed me wildly, gently,
and fiercely. He kissed me, moaned, kissed me, and whispered wet,
slurred words into my mouth. He kissed me, I was lying on the bed, he
was on top of me, and still he kissed me. He kissed me until I
stopped panting and he kissed me until I wrapped my arms around him
and turned us over and I was kissing him.
Finally, he laughed and I pulled up and looked down at him.
He was entirely beautiful. His face flushed, his eyes lazy, his chest
moving quickly as he took rapid breaths and chuckled. I smoothed my
fingers across his eyelids, his cheeks and dipped into his red, red
mouth. I kissed his neck and rested my face in the ruin of his
shoulder. He shuddered. "Hush," I whispered into neck.
I sat on my knees, between his legs and feasted my eyes. I touched
him everywhere: the soft hair of his armpits and the curly hair on
his groin. I licked his flat nipples and didn't find any lack by
comparison. I cupped his sex in both hands. I touched him gently as
if I were a child with a butterfly on my palm. He hardened and I
encouraged him. I ran my thumbs more strongly up and down his penis
and he began to burn, to fill and flush a deeper hue of
red. "Mulder!" He exclaimed, but softly.
"Hush," I said again.
I was learning something and it was for both of us.
I bent to lick him, "No," he said, but I understood it wasn't to stop
me for himself, but to protect me, to allow me to pretend this wasn't
real when tomorrow dawned.
"Shut up," I growled, and he shivered and his cock was hot in my
hands. It was hotter under my tongue and scorching in my mouth. I
dared more. I cupped his sac and found the stretch of smooth tight
skin beneath. He cried out and I tasted his fluid in my mouth. I
didn't stop and he thrashed about, raising his knees and I fingered
his small opening.
"Oh, God! Mulder!" he cried, "Don't hurt me." And, I was lost, burned
to ash, vaporized. I sucked harder and he came in my mouth, into me,
and fucking Christ, I finally understood.
END—For Every Season
(5) When the War Is Over
We had the remains of yesterday's bread, dipped in egg and fried for
breakfast. He was up and dressed long before I awoke. The steps were
freshly shoveled and the house warm.
"How long are you staying?" He asked me.
"The school is shut down until better weather," I replied. Energy was
too precious to use in old drafty buildings like the few that
remained on the Harvard campus. He went into the bedroom and began to
change the bed linens. I helped and asked quietly, "May I stay?" He
didn't reply immediately.
He brought out another set of sheets from a small cubbyhole closet;
they smelled of lilacs and roses. "This whole place smells like
flowers," I said hurriedly.
He smiled and tucked in the bottom sheet. They were very old
fashioned without an elastic edge. "These are original to the house,"
he said, "and the cottage is over 100 years old. There are sashes
tucked and hidden everywhere. At first, I threw out the ones I found.
After a while, I realized they suited the place. If it continues to
survive, I won't be the final occupant. I found these sheets too and
on the bottom shelf, dozens of little bags for more petals. All the
supplies were there; threads, needles, rose-oil and bits of lace and
velvet bows. Everything but the petals." He smoothed the sheet, "I
can't sew, of course," he fluttered his one hand, "and I doubt it
would've ever been my kind of thing, but I like to think the next
tenant will someday." We shook out the quilt and laid it on the
bed. "Yes, you may stay, Mulder. I'd never thought this could happen,
you and me, at the end of the war."
He sat on the freshly made bed. I sat beside him. "You were surprised
last night," he said. I nodded. "I think, you thought that sex with
me or maybe with another man had to be less that this was. Perhaps
something more aggressive or less intimate? You're right, of course.
Sex with anyone can be intimate or not, emotionally, I mean." I
nodded again. "But Mulder, we have a long history between us. We've
been intimate all along."
My throat hurt again.
"It was just combative. Now, it's become something that I truly hope
isn't combative at all. There is no need to define it. I don't
particular feel an overwhelming need to do that. If you stay, we'll
take it as it comes. Just know Mulder, you can still hurt me. Maybe I
could still hurt you too. I would like very much for us not to, not
any more."
He got up and left the room. I thought about what he'd said. I could
stay, I would stay, and we would take it as it came. I got to my feet
and from under the corner of the sheet I had so poorly tucked in, I
saw a little, plump bag fall to the floor. I picked it up and walked
to the cubbyhole closet to return it, but thought better of it and
tucked it back under the edge of the bed between the mattress and the
box springs. I would know where this one was hidden and it would be
my talisman.
We spent the day rather quietly; I looked through his books and was
delighted to find he had an old IBM Selectric typewriter, round font-
ball intact. He had a journal, of sorts, and a large expanding folder
beneath it. He made a self-deprecating shrug when I held it up, but
he said I could read it.
I was absolutely fascinated. I mean, how much did I really know about
Alex Krycek anyway? None of the pages were bound. He had handwritten
dates on them at some point. Since the war, I thought. Many pages
were computer-generated printouts and some were written by hand.
There were magazine articles, newspaper clips and other small flat
mementos in between the pages.
He'd run track in high school, a couple of letters, never sewn onto a
sweater, fell out of a stack when I picked them up. His high school
and undergraduate transcripts were there. He was a good student, only
an occasional 'C'. There were no yearbooks from any of the schools
he'd attended.
He had a Master's Degree in Political Science and I saved his thesis
to read later, more interested in his personal notes. I was amused
and a little sad to see he addressed himself as Hey JA, when he wrote
actual journal entries. JA, when I asked him, stood for Jack Ass. He
did get a laugh when he said for every alias he'd used; he chose
names starting with J or A.
He wrote to JA about many topics. Some of them clearly showed that
the nerd side of the young 'agent' I'd first met was real. He'd liked
or disliked professors and other students in completely normal
adolescent ways, taking small slights and incidences too personally
and way too seriously.
He mentioned Troi and Riker as fantasy material until Riker got fat
and ruined the delightful ménage-et-trois he'd enjoyed. His
description of a car ride back from watching a field and track event
with the first boy he'd succumbed to was riveting. He would have been
nineteen and here in this long, furiously written entry, he'd
attempted to come to terms with himself and the possible reaction of
the only person he loved and trusted, his young and extremely
homophobic uncle.
His first heterosexual encounter had been, a few years earlier, in
fact, due to the uncle's lifestyle. The man would bring home parties
of young officers and their wives after a few drinks at the Officer's
Club. More liquor would flow and coming home late one night from a
friend's house, he'd found a woozy young wife in his room, in tears
because her husband had gone off with someone else. He'd gotten the
woman coffee and a washcloth and tried to find his uncle. The man was
occupied in his own room, the rest of the party continuing without
its host.
She'd seemed to sober up and calm down and they talked, in the
intimacy of his room, for a long time. She convinced him he would be
more comfortable talking while sitting on the bed, with her, instead
of the distance he'd kept by sitting on the floor. Ruthlessly, he
noted in the journal that he'd hoped for a better view of her body in
her low cut party dress. He was fifteen and very easy to seduce. She
was gone when he awoke in the morning and simply never acknowledged
him again when they passed on the base.
He'd told his uncle who'd laughed, took him to the PX, bought him a
variety of condoms and let him hang around when his buddies came over
and watched porn.
His journal entry made passing reference to two other experiences of
intercourse and a few more, more age appropriate attempts at
girlfriends and dating. Oral sex was a revelation to him and he
enjoyed it, finding the girls willing to do that, and avoid the
complications of full intimacy and think the date was successful.
The boy, in the car ride home, set a scene, like the wife of a few
years earlier, that Alex hadn't resisted too strongly. The boy talked
about how horny he was and no chance, this late of hitting up one of
the girls in his dorm. He talked about his successes with girls and
Alex had been thoroughly aroused. The boy parked the car, a few miles
from campus, on a private road. They both got out taking a piss, in
the undergrowth, and the boy kept talking. He made his move when they
got back in the car. Convincing Alex that a hand job was desperately
needed. Alex admits he knew the boy didn't mean jerking off by
himself.
He let the boy touch him and touched back. It had been brief and hot.
His teenage angst, written so emphatically on that long ago night,
was partly fear of disappointing his uncle and part understanding,
that for him, an important kind of innocence was lost.
He handed me a cup of coffee and glanced at the pages I was
reading. "Trust you to read about the sex, Mulder." He said wryly.
I shrugged, "You had a dossier on me, no doubt, back when." I said.
"True," he replied and after a moment smiled. It was that irritating
smirk he used to do.
"What?" I asked, quickly trying to remember if anything particularly
salacious could've been in that file.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." He answered and went back to sanding the chair leg
he had in a vice on the table.
Thoroughly engaged and amused, I put down the journal and followed
him to the table. Making the first overture, I touched the back of
his neck. We hadn't touched since I'd fallen asleep the previous
night.
He laughed. It was a carefree laugh and one I'd never heard him make
before. "Wouldn't you like to know?" He baited me.
"I can convince you," I murmured into his ear and his bit neck
lightly. He laughed again, but I heard the small gasp he made. He
leaned his head against my abdomen, "You can try." He invited.
I did to him what he had done to me the previous night. Taking off
his shirt and batting his hand away as he reached for me, "splinters,
Alex," I chided and he laughed.
I wanted to touch him more than I wanted to get off. I had a moment
of disorientation when I realized I was lightheartedly fondling the
man who'd been my adversary for so long. I must've clutched him
somehow and he turned, rubbing his face on my stomach in a comforting
manner.
"They knew, Spender and the rest. They read all my stuff and had been
watching me for a long time. There is nothing about them, written
down, until after the war started and I was sure they were dead." I
continued rubbing his shoulder, forgetting in his speech, the
truncated arm and caressing it as well. "They sent people to seduce
us both. That was in your file and mine too, when I found it. Not the
Syndicate's official files, Mulder. Not the ones you saw. These were
the private ones and we weren't the only young people they tracked.
They were very thorough." He sighed in resignation. "You know, when I
found those files, after everything I already knew about their
corruption, I was surprised. I was still so young, I guess never saw
them as Peeping Toms getting off on watching." He laughed bitterly
now. I kept rubbing.
For a brief moment, I thought how little I'd known about my father. I
waited for the flash of anger, pain, or sorrow. There was none. The
old adage every child flings at their parents, at one time or another
that they hadn't asked to be born, and the truism that you can't
chose your relatives, did run through my brain. I hadn't chosen my
enemies either, but I could chose my friends and did chose this man
for more than that.
"Did they want you to seduce me, Alex?" I asked him.
'No, they never indicated that. What they wanted was for me to let
you know I was in the closet, they thought it would make you more
sympathetic and bond over being at odds with the establishment."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Outcasts and all that." I replied. He nodded
against my belly.
Very quietly, he said, "I didn't have relations with anyone for ages.
You think you lived by a 'Trust No One' maxim, shit Mulder, you have
no idea. Marita set me straight, made me understand that whatever
they thought or saw, it was beyond our control. Perversely, it did
give me a sense of freedom and a fuck-them attitude."
"You had a real relationship with her then?" I asked. "Something you
counted on and meant something to you?"
"Yeah. She got by my defenses and I think it was the same for her. We
never talked about feelings. She was as solitary as me," he
paused, "or you, for that matter. She wanted to know if I was
attracted to you or Scully."
"Were you?" I had to ask.
He laughed, less bitterly and with real humor is his tone. "I was so
paranoid, Mulder, that I didn't even jack off for weeks after I found
out. After I was assigned to you, I saw Marita a few times and made
sure we got into bed. I hid it well enough from her and Spender's
notes have nothing in them to indicate I wasn't successful there
too."
He slid off his chair and was on his knees before I could take a
breath and when he unzipped me, I couldn't breathe at all. "Was I
attracted to you?" He pulled down my pants; I looked down at his head
as he rubbed his cheek against my erection. "Yeah," he said and took
me in his mouth.
Forty-four. I was gonna die of a stroke at forty-four. Nothing had
ever compared. I lost the power to stand, the power to think and I
heard him chuckle as I collapsed. He followed me down and never let
up. Now, he'd come for a second time last night when I did this to
him, but the difference between that 'this' and this 'this' was a lot
like saying a hurricane was a spring shower.
I came with a roar. I reached down to see if I still had a dick and
he laughed until tears ran down his face. "Oh my god," I said
wonderingly.
"Well, duh, Mulder," he said and chuckled some more, "that's just the
beginning."
I struggled to my feet, went in the bedroom, kicked off my pants and
fell on the bed. It was dinnertime before he came to wake me up.
I stayed and began to join him in rebuilding and refinishing the
furniture in his house. I noticed he never sat in the lime green
monstrosity. I almost did once, but thought better of it. We played
cards and chess and I learned how to caulk tile. We got radio
reception once in a while and we listened to records on a stereo.
We didn't fuck and there was no penetration at all. I learned, inch
by inch, what pleased him and he reciprocated.
I finally asked him about the chair. He looked at it and shrugged, "I
got it cheap," he said. "I couldn't manage to drag a couch and I had
this idea that only two chairs was weird, like, what if people really
visited, where would they sit? So, I bought it."
I looked at him and tried to discern if he was putting me on.
"It's not comfortable at all," he said in answer to my stare.
I got up and straddled his lap. I'd never done that and I didn't do
it now to be sexy. I wanted to get right in his face and try to know
if he was putting me on.
He frowned at me and tried to adjust to the weight and pressure of my
body. Finally, he got irritated, "What?" He asked angrily.
"You," I said and poked my finger in his chest, "are putting me on!"
He was totally puzzled, thought for a second and asked, "Is this
about the damn chair?"
"Damn chair, my ass," I said and poked him again. He tried to shove
me off his lap.
"What about the fucking chair," he yelled in my face.
"Exactly!" I yelled triumphantly and poked him again.
He made a mighty effort and spilled me on the floor. "You are
certifiable," he said and prodded me, hard, with his foot. "It's an
ugly green chair. From a teenager's Saturday Night Fever fantasy or
something. I agree," he said, "it's tasteless and all that, but what
the fuck bothers you so much about the chair?"
He wasn't kidding. He wasn't kidding, I said it to myself a second
time. "You 'are' a queer," I said.
He looked startled. "Did you hit your head, Mulder?" He asked in
genuine concern.
I began to laugh. "Alex, the chair is famous for being in a 1995
issue of Purrfection Magazine. It was commonly called the 'Fucking
Chair" and had women displaying themselves, with abandon,
throughout."
"No way," he said and eyed the chair askance.
"Way," I replied laughingly.
"You thought I bought an old pussy chair?" He asked indignantly.
"Purrfection," I gasped.
"Whatever," he said and looked more closely at the chair. When he
began to move his hand and tilt his head as if positioning the view,
I really lost it. I got up and grabbed his shoulders trying to get
him to sit in the chair. We tussled. He won, and I was on the floor
again. He kneed me in the thigh, "Listen to me, Mulder." When I
didn't answer he kneed me a little harder.
"What?" I asked.
"We, as in neither of us, is ever gonna use that chair. Not to sit
in, not to 'display' in and not to fuck in. You understand?"
"Can I blow you in it?" He nudged me hard. "Once?" I begged
facetiously.
"No sex in that chair," he said flatly.
He got up once more and walked around the chair, turned and addressed
me, "If I'm a queer, what does that make you, boyfriend?" He sneered
and left the room.
I had to acknowledge it was a great exit line. He didn't touch me for
two days and moved away when I reached for him. I sanded a lot of
furniture and bided my time.
After lunch on the third day, I cleared the table and removed his
unfinished coffee. "Hey, I wasn't done," he exclaimed. "Shut up," I
said.
I sat opposite him and put my right arm on the table in arm wrestling
position. "You've got to be kidding," he sneered and made to get up.
"Sit down," I said softly, but imperatively. "Add your arm, Alex."
His face closed and that blank look from yesteryear was back. He
maneuvered his stump onto the table and put up his right arm,
grabbing my hand. I put my left arm on the table, for leverage, and
grasped his hand. "On three and two out of three wins," I said
tonelessly.
He nodded, his lips flattening into a tight line.
He was strong and got me easily the first time. I eked out a victory
on the second try. We were both sweating and I was panting for the
third round. This is what I wanted, what I hoped for when I'd thought
it through. All or nothing, an equal match. I'd learned a lot of
lessons from him over the days I'd been here as his friend, lover,
and companion, from this time of truce. But, a truce was only a
temporary halt in a conflict, not a stopping place.
It was time to end the war forever; we could both win or lose. It
wasn't possible for one of us to be more than the other, or less.
This was something I had to teach him. I had to make him see he had
to stop protecting me from him and from myself. We each had to pull
on through for each other and ourselves.
He'd been ashamed of his parting shot the other day. I knew at great
cost the terrible, painful price of shame. It had to end or we would
never be at peace.
The third round lasted a long time. I got stronger as I realized he
wasn't going to cave in, wasn't going to give away his own hard
fought autonomy. He'd paid too much for it too, along the way. It was
time he knew it, for the last time.
The sweat poured off us and he was panting now. My arm was trembling
from the strain and I saw a small trail of blood course down his chin
from biting his lip. "Yes, yes," I whispered breathlessly, not even
realizing I'd spoken aloud until I heard my own voice. I had him; his
hand was two inches from the tabletop, at most.
He groaned, hissed "bastard," and with a concentrated, teeth grinding
push, laid my hand down.
He cried then, his face in the crook of his good arm. He cried
silently and motionlessly. I let him, making no move or sound of
comfort or intrusion.
When I could stand, I went to the bathroom and washed up. I brought
back a towel and wiped the sweat from his hair and off the back of
his neck. I left the towel hanging there.
I finished our evening chores, took a long shower and went to bed. I
waited.
A long while later after his own long shower, he joined me. "Why'd
you force the contest, Mulder?"
"It seemed to be the right thing to do," I gathered my thoughts, "the
greatest gift you've ever given me, I'm calling it a gift because I
can't think of another word that encompasses so much. Was the gift
of an equal adversary. Sure, you were on the inside and I thought you
knew more about the secrets I wanted to uncover. Sure, you seemed to
appear here and there, now and again, having done some kind of
spectacular action. But, Alex, face-to-face we met and fought as
equals, or at least I have always seen it that way. Basically, I
beat you up and you bled. You offered me possible chances at getting
to them and I ended up screwed. I was unrepentant about what I did to
you and I always thought you were the same regarding me." I turned on
my side to watch him in the moonlight. I fancied I could smell my
sachet. "It took me a long time; way into the war, to realize your
continued survival meant a lot more than that. You, Alex, well; you
were my talisman. If you could keep going even though you were a
cripple, then, for god's sake, I could keep going under the weight of
my anger, pain and guilt. I could keep going no matter what, if only
to even the score with you someday."
Alex sighed heavily and rubbed his head. I took his hand and held it
to my chest, "Once the war started, I felt confident and superior.
Surely I would be the better fighter, the better strategist, and
recognized for all the work I'd done in the Before. It didn't turn
out that way. What I'd done in the Before hardly mattered and what
really pissed me off was that what you had done in the Before didn't
seem to matter at all. I missed the personal connection. With you to
be able to hate and blame personally, I could keep my guilt and shame
at a distance because you knew, you Alex, knew and were part of it.
If we both survived I could, and would prove I was the better man,
once and for all." I laughed sadly. "But you broke the rules I'd
made. You fought bravely and without special consideration. You never
overstepped your position or insinuated yourself into anyone's graces
for favor, least of all mine. I had to face it; you were a fine
soldier and very possibly, a man of equal standing to me." Alex shook
his head and I squeezed his hand tightly. He winced slightly and I
realized his hand must be bruised from our contest and held it more
gently.
"Yes," I said, "and Skinner was only the first to insist I
understand. He confronted me the first time you went walkabout with
the other one-armed young man. I was furious you know. How dare you
be able to find companionship and solace? How dare the other guy
trust you? How dare you be gay? It changed everything. I thought
about the times I beat you up and you held me off, defensively, but
never harming me in return. I thought of you lying down for another
man and was furiously jealous. You were mine. I owned the right to
make you 'take' it, no one else." I rubbed my face against his
shoulder; he was holding himself very stiffly.
"It took me a long time to realize my jealousy was also about desire
and the hurt was also about my need to be all important to someone,
just once, for once, in my life. It took even longer for me to
understand you did put me in that position. I was so important to you
that you stopped having even the vestiges of physical comfort with
anyone. I was so important to you that you never transferred out of
the unit or took a promotion to stay near me. It took me a long, long
time to understand I held so much power to hurt you. Alex," I
whispered, "Alex, it took me the lifetimes of almost everyone I'd
known, cared about, or depended upon to realize whatever had happened
in the Before and everything that was happening in the Now that the
connection between us wasn't hate or based on reciprocal vengeance.
We needed each other to be whole. After the war and without you in my
life, I couldn't settle. I was left incomplete."
"Mulder, Mulder," Alex turned and wrapped his arm around me.
We slept, my best and last enemy and me, together.
END—When the War Is Over
(6) Pull on Through—EPILOGUE
I stayed. Eventually we got a couch, but we never got rid of the ugly
green chair. The neighborhood grew up around us and children visited
and played on that chair, but we never sat in it. We managed to
purchase the large lot, including the ruins. The wild roses grew into
an encompassing mass and became a small mountain of rich, sweet
fragrance. The prolific thorns prevented anyone from cutting it back,
lots of small animals and birds found safety under those vines, safe
from human interference.
We became lovers in all ways and friends; it seemed to me, even more.
Eventually society rebuilt and both of us became footnotes in the
history texts. My early work into the paranormal garnered me more
fame and, from time to time, there was a resurgence of interest and
reporters or students would come and talk to me about it. Alex would
let them in, smack my back and say, "I did see Cole with a gun," and
go make coffee.
The sachets, my talisman, never lost their faint smell and I often
thought, blessed the house. Alex was right, we were only temporary
occupants, and the next people would be welcomed as well.
The End
Apocalypse Please
Declare this an emergency
And this is the end end
And it's time we saw a miracle
And this is the end, the end
Proclaim eternal victory
And this is the end the end
And Pull Us Through
by Flutesong
(1) Over and Done
by Muse
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through
And pull us through
This is the end
Of the World
Come on it's time for something biblical
To pull us through
And pull us through
This is the end
Of the World
Come on and change the course of history
And pull us through
And pull us through
This is the end
Of the world
