Jogging had always been Mulder's preferred method of defying reality.
Ignore Scully's voice in his head saying, Is that so? How do you explain
your career, then?
Ignore a lot of things about Scully, particularly her sense of humor, which
just seemed to get fucking wittier every time Mulder felt good about
himself.
Bad Mulder. He pushed himself a little faster, bones impacting a little
harder on the pavement, pain settling pleasantly right between his chest and
stomach. Head directly home, say five Our Conspiracies and twenty Hail
Scullys.
One foot, then the other, faster than Mulder felt like bothering to count,
drill ankle through heel, break concrete, sink underground, die die die,
burn in hell. The purity of aching muscles, the science of shock and pain
and physical fucking rational sensory reality. Slam part of your body with
all your weight behind it on the cement sidewalk and hell, yes, it's going
to hurt, what, didn't you take physics in high school?
And it felt so damn good. Like flying. Like life after death. So fuck
you, Freshman Physical Sciences. It ain't heavy, it's my fucking fucking
fucking life.
For whatever reason, Mulder had never been suicidal. Not yet. Life was
good, jogging was good, hell, he didn't even feel the pain anymore, not like
he used to. One foot, then the other, and the light was fading; even with
the gun holstered under his baggy windbreaker, Mulder didn't feel like being
out here much after dark, and he took the corner hard and headed home. One
foot, then the other. It was all good, and they would never hurt him worse
than he could hurt himself; hell, most of the time he hurt worse from
jogging than he did at the job they were trying to make difficult for him.
Put that in your Marley and smoke it.
Above it all, sweating hard and breathing harder and, Jesus, he was inside
it now, in his body, in the zone, the way he felt with his girl—shit, how
many deaths would he die, what surgical tools would she use to peel the skin
from his body, above what Washington edifice would she mount his severed
head on a stake if he called her that out loud?—his girl's head on his
shoulder. The way he felt with Alex-
Don't continue it. Don't bother. The way he felt with Alex. Enough
already.
Too much already.
One foot, then the other. Let them both slough off, too slow to keep up,
too sweet in the back of his throat to be in the crunch and grind of his
bones, the stress and quiver of his muscles.
Too much, too slow, too real, too
One foot, then the other, and the evening breeze was cool enough now to lift
the sweat off his neck and face with a pleasant chill. He stopped under his
own building, resting his hands on his thighs, ignoring proper cooling-down
procedure. This was part of the fun, his ribcage barely able to contain his
breathing, his perplexed leg muscles twinging as they prepared to stiffen
up, his heart going loud like a chainsaw. Next would come the shower, hot
enough to make gumbo out of him, and then some television, which God knew
was its own brand of torture.
He was thinking about macaroni and cheese—a major cooking project, what
with involving both milk and butter out of his very own refrigerator— when Mulder glanced up and saw Alex looking down at him from his own window.
Slowly, Mulder straightened, squinting back up at him.
Alex, and the color of Mulder's kisses was still staining his lips. Alex,
and he laid his palm on the windowpane as if inviting Mulder to touch his
own to it, nothing but sharp, lethal glass separating them. Alex, and he
looked like he'd missed Mulder badly; wishful thinking, possibly, but there
he was, close to the window, waiting and watching for him, and the sound of
his eyes carried all the way down here, saying, get up here, Mulder, what
the hell are you waiting for?
Far from domestic, nothing like Leave It to Beaver. No hi, honey, I'm
home, just if you'd promise to wait forever, I'd promise not to make you.
Holy Christ. Not healthy, not when the thoughts came attached to
Alex-fucking-Krycek, and when did that become an endearment, when did he
learn to forget the ghost-and-guns Alex and remember the one wrapped like a
noose around him, whispering brokenly into his ear?
Alex-fucking-Krycek, and Mulder took the elevator up to him, the fox to the
coop, ready to tangle with the meanest bird in town, to tear the place apart
in a riot of flesh and feathers and shreds of real life. Things were going
to happen that shouldn't, that should have no explanation at all, but that
was fine, that was Mulder's life, and Alex's touch and Alex's kiss made
perfect sense in context.
Mulder had always liked it hard.
Alex opened the door for him, and even though Mulder was expecting it,
counting on it, there was a small sensation of shock when their mouths met,
seared together, softer and warmer than they should be, gentler and needier
than it was okay to be. Heedless of the sweat he was smearing all over
Alex, Mulder pulled him in closer, wrapped an arm around his neck and
touched his cheek with the other hand as they kissed. There was no reason
for this, every reason to stay the hell away from the man who shot his
father, the man who, the man who. Yadda yadda.
The man who had gone so far and then come back. Mulder felt Alex's hands
resting lightly on his waist, one light and flesh-padded, the other made of
weightier, motionless plastic. His own hands drove hard down Alex's back,
forcing him even closer, until Alex pulled away with a strained little
laugh. "Take it easy, stud."
"Please tell me you didn't come here to give me more disturbing information
about my past."
"Not today. I came to get some decent fucking food, for one thing. This
city has more goddamn Chinese food than China." He knocked Mulder's
shoulder back as Mulder tried advancing on him again. "Take a shower."
"What's the matter? Tough guy in the leather jacket can't take a little
sweat?"
He gave Mulder a puzzled look, as if he really wasn't sure how Mulder could
be so oblivious. "How long have you known me?"
"Don't go there."
"Have you ever known me to get off on dirt?"
The sheer insanity of Krycek believing that Mulder knew him, knew his habits
and his preferences—did he still expect Mulder to trust the months they'd
spent as partners? Until a few days ago, Krycek had been nothing more in
his mind than a beautiful blank, something unknown and almost nonexistent,
except in the form of a certain sensation, a certain ache lodged in Mulder
that wouldn't go away. Until a few days ago, he'd been a piece of Mulder,
and suddenly he was a person in and of himself, coming here for his own
reasons, and shit, but that was scary.
So. Shower.
Tonight, for obvious reasons, Mulder couldn't really settle into the shower.
Usually it was his own special brand of meditation, scalding out the filth
of each day's lies, letting the water sluice off him, and with it the sticky
film of shame that always seemed to cling to Mulder, the omnipresent memory
of every single time he'd ever had to get down on his belly and crawl for
the powers that be. It made the smoke and dirt and the smell of disease
melt right off of him, and when Mulder stepped out, he felt taller, lighter,
practically clean and practically sane.
Tonight, he came out of the shower feeling oddly defenseless. What was
there that held him back from Alex, if not the silt and scum he'd been
accumulating over the years? If not for all that shit, all the history that
swamped him under and made him unclean, there would be nothing on the other
side of that door except a guy named Alex who was crazy about him, who could
kiss him down to bare bones and talk him to death about Radiohead and the
Laws of Robotics afterward. Mulder was ridiculously unprepared to open the
door and cross the line back into Alex Krycek's world—which, not so damn
long ago, was Mulder's apartment—and he knew it.
Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't Krycek in his kitchen, busily
cooking and stirring. "What the hell is this?"
"Tortellini. I told you, I came here to eat."
"You're making tortellini?"
"Mulder, they have these things now called supermarkets. Might be of
interest to you. Somebody cooks a bunch of food, freezes it, and then you
buy it and throw it in a pot of boiling water. Even you can do it,
tovarish."
They were going to play it that way, then. As though they were lovers—as
though they were friends. He wondered if the idea hit Krycek the same way
it hit him, a sickly-sweet blend of nerves, guilt, grudging desire, and
irresistible curiosity. What would it have been like to be Alex Krycek's
lover? Before, during, after the betrayal—would it ever have mattered to
either of them?
Questions to keep you awake all night long. Thoughts to occupy your mind
while you stood against the wall in your own kitchen, waiting for a man you
theoretically hated to be done boiling pasta.
If you promised to wait forever
Maybe it should have been a domestic scene—except that even if he could
cook like Emeril, instead of defrosting like a bachelor, no power on earth
could make Krycek seem like a homebody. There was something even a little
Gahan Wilson-y about Alex Krycek, with his hard, high cheekbones and his
sharp, resentful eyes, with one prosthetic arm and the outline of a gun
showing through the dark blue fisherman's sweater, doing anything with a
stovetop other than shoving someone's face down on it. A prejudice, maybe.
After all, for all Krycek's faults—and their name was Legion; Mulder
wasn't too smitten yet to remember that—he'd never appeared to have any
real cruelty to him, or any madness.
He was much worse than that—he was a hired gun, a rat who had turned
against everyone who'd ever been fool enough to take him into their
confidences. Mulder understood madmen and murderers; no urge to violence
was so deeply felt or so brutally fulfilled that the profiler in him
couldn't recognize and interpret it, discover its shape and pattern and
predict how and where it would flare up next. There were times, in the dead
of night, when Mulder couldn't run from looking into his own heart any
longer, and he knew there was a madman crouched there, and a murderer, too.
He felt a guilty tenderness for the psychos he pursued in the course of his
work, something he'd never admitted to anyone, inspired by a sense of there
but for the grace of God.... Madness he got; hate, rage, the will to power,
the need to shove someone down and make them suffer, all of that Mulder
could understand.
Alex Krycek he could not understand. Try as he might, Mulder couldn't
imagine being so divorced from the rest of humanity that even killing
couldn't fill up the hollow of your heart with...something. And yet, as
hard as Mulder scrutinized him, there was very little in Krycek's manner
that gave Mulder an angle to work. He could be angry or tender or
frightened or content, just like any other human being, but those were just
moods; none of them seemed to run deeper than a response to some immediate
stimulus. Alex was what he felt, and underneath all of that he was—what?
Nothing? Stubborn yet adaptable, proud yet needy, deceitful yet blunt,
passionate yet remote. Nothing defined him, nothing enabled Mulder to fix
him to any one thought or idea. He was a profiling nightmare.
As bad as Scully for secrecy and ambiguity. Oh, a pattern was being
detected, all right, but it had everything to do with Mulder himself and
nothing to do with Krycek. Either he loved a challenge, or he was setting
himself up to fail. Take your pick.
But if total, crash-and-burn, black-box, identified-by-dental-casts failure
was in Mulder's future, then he might as well go down—going down. Yuk
yuk.
He settled his hands slowly on Krycek's hips—the last thing you wanted to
do to a trained killer who was colluding with the federal government to
bring down his ruthless employer was startle him. Mulder didn't remember
ever reading that anywhere, much less testing out the theory himself, but it
seemed so reasonable that he thought he might just treat it as a known fact.
Things always started that way between them—one touch, one honest word, a
brief crossing of paths or a crossing of swords—then somehow never ended
with one of anything. So quickly that Mulder couldn't break it down into
steps, Krycek was in his arms, kissing him roughly with his real hand in
Mulder's hair and his other arm hooked around Mulder's waist.
One way or another, one of them—possibly Alex—got them over to the
couch, and one of them—possibly Mulder—remembered to bring a plate of
tortellini, and if the walls of Number 42 could talk, they'd be confused and
frightened, because all at once, with Mulder on top of Alex, burrowing under
his sweater and arching as Alex ran his hand slowly up Mulder's bare back,
there was suddenly more rich, golden, erotic energy crammed into this room
than in the whole fourteen years of Mulder's tenancy here.
Those deep green eyes stayed steady on him as Mulder settled himself and the
plate on top of Krycek. There was something unaccountably trusting in the
way Krycek ate off the fork Mulder offered without looking at it, silently
accepting the rhythm Mulder set—cut, stab, lift, pull back, cut, stab,
lift, pull back. He spilled very little alfredo sauce, and nipped hardly at
all at Krycek's warm, stubbled chin as he kissed it off.
So this is what it would have been like, being Alex Krycek's lover. His
good arm was flung casually up over his head, and Mulder worked his left
hand slowly up it, feeling the lean muscle under the heavy cable-knit as he
fed Alex with his other hand, the plate balanced precariously on Alex's
slow-moving chest. When his palm crossed Krycek's, Krycek pressed his eyes
closed, the only notable change in expression Mulder had wrung from his
erstwhile partner yet.
It was impossible to blame him. There was something, something about the
way the thin skin of their hands brushed together, slickened by a fine sheen
of sweat—intimate, painfully soft, scored with the rough touch of knuckles
and callused fingertips, shocks of hard sensation in counterpoint to the
gentle way their hands were tangling, seeking each other. "Jesus...."
"Mulder...." Alex responded, in exactly the same tone.
This was not Krycek's usual kiss, the kind that melted them both into a
dazed dreamscape of submission and long-denied release. This
was...something else. Something more deliberate, something that aimed
squarely toward a goal that Mulder suspected he hadn't even started to
understand.
Alex was full of goals, always had been. He The plate made a hell of a
noise as Alex pitched it over the back of the sofa, and he sat up into
Mulder's kiss like a striking snake, and—snakebit—Mulder froze. was
going somewhere, chasing something, asking and offering, wheeling and
dealing. Mulder didn't have a clue what the ultimate purpose of it all was.
Do you like a challenge, or do you just set yourself up to fail?
Are you up to this? Do you want to know where he's taking you this time?
Do you really?
He was still paying for losing that dare in Hong Kong. Finish it.... Damn
Krycek for knowing that he couldn't finish it. Not until he knew the truth.
I want to know I want to know I want to know who the fuck you are I want to
know what you want from me I want to know I want to believe I want to know
what this is I want to know what you know why you're here who you are I want
to know I want you
They hit the ground together, and before Mulder had time to feel stupid and
clumsy he was off his back and up on his knees, and the kiss had dissolved
into something full-bodied. Their knees touched, their hands and wrists and
forearms played each other in arcane patterns. The heat of their groins and
chests radiated doubled in the narrow breath of space between them, and
Mulder could smell his mouth, taste it in the air, as their chins nudged
against each other and their eyes bored into each other, making out,
marveling in the way the kiss had fanned out to crackle up and down the
surface of their skin where their skins touched, where they half-touched,
where they ached to touch.
It was unbearable, unsustainable, and Mulder croaked out something that
should have been a word and grabbed Krycek's hair where it had grown long on
top and pulled the kiss back up to their lips where it belonged, where it
was—if such a thing was anything less than absurd under the circumstances
- a little safer. Krycek's hand got hold of Mulder's t-shirt at the tail
and pulled it up in a careless, rough sort of caress that made Mulder
shiver, made him not at all hate to draw away from Krycek's mouth long
enough to let Krycek strip it off of him. Krycek didn't make him give up
the kiss for long; he swooped right back into it, and the shock of his mouth
on Mulder's was every bit as cruel and wanted as the casual twist Krycek's
strong fingers gave to Mulder's nipple. He groaned into Alex's mouth, felt
himself losing ground under the force of Krycek's barely leashed desire. He
was weakening, leaning back as Krycek came in deeper and deeper for more and
more.
And soon he was laid out like an altar waiting for the sacrifice, his body a
clean arch from knees to thighs to ribs back down to chest and shoulders and
throat. Who's that trip-trapping across my bridge? Mulder had become
architecture, something designed and arranged by the strangely fierce and
focused man whose teeth were worrying the skin at the side of Mulder's neck,
who was straddling him and creeping up, crossing. Perched like a carrion
bird, and there was no mistaking the way his dick was trying on its own to
press down through the undefended skin of Mulder's stomach. If anyone could
fuck him straight through....
"Let's talk."
Mulder played it once again through his mind. Twice. Three times. Nahh.
Couldn't.... The hell ? Talk? Krycek never wanted to talk, let
alone.... "Now?" he croaked in disbelief.
His fingernails were scraping up and down Mulder's body, the strip of skin
that wasn't quite his side and not quite his back. Mulder's inner
psychologist latched onto the repetitive gesture: nervous? Maybe. But if
so, it wasn't showing at all in Krycek's steady, sea-dark eyes. "Now works
for me."
"How long do these Mickey Finns you keep slipping your guards last,
anyway?"
"Shut up, Mulder," he said good-naturedly, and kissed him once more. It was
a borderland kiss, not entirely in Krycek's old, desperately tender style,
but not quite devoid of it either. "Now. This is what's called
negotiation."
"That's a big word." Mulder faked the overly serious tones of the worst
nightmare of a kindergarten teacher he could dredge up. "Can you say
'negotiation'?"
"I knew you could," Alex murmured silkily, copying his inflections, brushing
a fingertip playfully down Mulder's cheek. "I am going to fuck you,
tovarish. I'm going to make you come, my cock up your ass—so hard you
change your religion. On one condition."
Mulder swallowed, waiting for his voice to steady out. "And that condition
is?"
"You have to ask me for it."
"Fuck me."
Too fast; it made Mulder flush uncomfortably, his own eagerness, even
though, face it, nobody here was unaware that Mulder was eager for this.
Just because Mulder spent his entire adult life chasing down other people's
secrets didn't mean he was much good at keeping them himself.
But Krycek's smile wasn't triumphant; it was almost wistful, a little
impatient, still hungry. A complicated smile—which meant a genuine
smile, probably. For whatever that was worth. "Not yet."
"You gonna give me some kind of sign when you're ready, Krycek?" he asked
tartly.
"Oh. You won't need one."
There was something about Krycek's voice—some unsettling commonality
between the rough, quiet sounds buzzing near Mulder's ear right now and the
voice Mulder remembered from the days of their partnership. Not the same
voice, exactly—Krycek's voice now sounded like he'd been through a fire
and all the scars had settled inside his throat, while the old Alex Krycek
had possessed an entire repertoire of evasive noises, mutters and fake
postures of formality and reluctant unease. But with his eyes closed,
Mulder could hear the past—I want out. There's so much I never told you.
Mulder.... You.—
He shook it off, tried to focus on what Krycek was saying to him.
"—knew what to make of it when you quit Behavioral Sciences to head your
own...unit? Are you a unit, technically? Well, to be your own alien task
force of one. A lot of people figured it had to do with your marriage
falling apart. Actually, for a long time, no one in the Bureau knew what
they found sadder—your bizarre obsession with alien abductions, wasted
potential, etcetera etcetera, or the fact that you clung to your marriage so
desperately that your wife was nine months pregnant with someone else's baby
before you finally agreed to the divorce."
"Yeah, everyone was very concerned about me," he said tightly. "What does
this have to do with anything?"
"Well, it has to do with everything. It has to do with you, and I'm sure
you'd be the first person to agree that everything is about you. I mean,
come on, Mulder. I've spent the last three years of my life trying to map
out what makes you tick. It's a bullshit job, you know that, Mulder? I'm
not a fucking profiler; I should never have gotten stuck with this."
"Maybe someone thought it was a promotion from assassin."
"Well, maybe someone wasn't thinking. Christ, I'm a courier, Mulder. I
transport information and evidence through some of the tightest security in
the world. I've worked for the FBI and the NSA, Communist and
post-Communist Russia, the Syndicate and —forget that; we'll come back to
that some other day. The point is that I am a highly skilled professional,
I'm very good at what I do, and being your partner was just one stupid
assignment that was supposed to last six months, max, and it's been three
years, and my head is still crammed with your fucking life story." Krycek
caught his breath noisily, and when Mulder opened his eyes, the look on
Krycek's face was half frustration and half confusion, as though he wasn't
sure why this was all bursting out of him now. "You and your fucking father
and your fucking sister -" Krycek's fist pounded against Mulder's chest to
emphasize each curse—"and your fucking ex-wife and your fucking partner
and your fucking ill-conceived job. You're somehow behind every fucked-up
thing that ever happened to me. I lost my job because of you, I lost my
arm because of you, Jesus, there aren't even words for some of the
things I lost because of you. And I still. Don't. Understand. You."
The momentary silence was welcome; Krycek was usually silent, watchful.
This had the comfort of familiarity. Mulder's legs were beginning to ache,
and he touched a hand gently to Krycek's hip. "Look, Alex. Why don't you
get up for a second?"
His eyes flashed, a sharp and dangerous look that was also—less
comfortably—familiar. "You backing out, Mulder?"
"I'm just—you don't exactly seem in the mood right now. I'm talking
retreat and regroup."
Slowly enough that Mulder had plenty of time to decide he should be stopping
this, Krycek slid his hand up Mulder's chest and settled it across his
throat, his grip heavy but without much pressure. "I'm completely in the
mood. You're still not getting what I'm saying to you—what I came here to
tell you."
Guilt swam up so fast and so dizzying that Mulder forgot to be afraid at
all. He knew—he did know. How could he not? He'd been studying Mulder
for years, he must have—somehow—Sam would never have told anyone, but
Phoebe, Diana.... Mulder shut his eyes, hard. It could be just a threat,
Krycek's usual ruthless style.... God, he'd sunk to the bottom, now that
he was hoping Krycek was threatening him with death rather than trying to
arouse him. Mulder didn't have the breath or the will to prompt Krycek; he
could only wait.
"I came to tell you that you owe me my life back, you son of a bitch. But
since it's painfully obvious that you're not up to giving anyone a life,
or you'd have one yourself, I'm going to have to take what I can get." His
hand tightened once, and Mulder gagged on his yell of pain, and then relaxed
again. "You really ought to be thanking me, you know? I don't see anyone
else banging down your door to get much of anything from you. I mean, look
at you. You're a violent, self-punishing, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive
frustrated control freak. You completely distrust happiness, don't you,
Mulder? Is that why you're attracted to me now? Because you know how
really fucking miserable I'm going to make you? Like I said, I'm not a
shrink, but it seems to me that a guy whose idea of a solid career move is
to get a hole drilled in his head is really cruising for some major
cathartic pain." His voice shifted so far and so fast that it might have
been someone else completely; a silky, milky tone without any of Krycek's
usual strain. "You want to get hurt, Mulder? I can take care of that for
you."
"Get off me."
"Make me."
In his position, Mulder actually had quite a lot of leverage, and just by
pushing himself up he could dislodge Alex. He launched himself right back
at Mulder, of course, and they both went down to the floor in a clumsy
grapple. He'd expected Alex to be strong, and he was, but he was also
startlingly light, and maybe jogging had given Mulder a fresh surge of
energy for the evening, or maybe his anger was something particularly
berserk and dangerous tonight, because as their struggle lapsed into
stillness, Mulder realized that he had a knee planted firmly in Alex's chest
and Alex's good arm twisted around, his hand trapped under his slightly
arched back. The fake arm lay docilely out beside him on Mulder's carpet,
its angle not quite natural. Somehow, Mulder didn't feel any triumph at
all; he just stood up and backed away, feeling like this evening was shaking
down wrong. Like something didn't fit, even though he knew full well that
it made a hell of a lot more rational sense than the last time had.
Without looking at it, Krycek made a quick adjustment to his prosthetic as
he got to his knees, and it started to look a little more like an arm should
look. "Come on, Mulder, don't tell me that's all you've got. I had bruises
that looked like Skinner's knuckles for three weeks after the first time I
was alone with him. "
"Is there any chance you're projecting when you accuse me of being
self-punishing, Krycek? Because that's not the first time you've implied
that you kinda like it when I beat you up."
"Maybe. Maybe it just makes it that much easier for me to fuck you over.
Tovarish."
"I thought you'd defected."
"Not for the first time. Or the last, probably."
And even though he knew Krycek was just taunting him, just trying to get
some kind of reaction, the perverse rat bastard, and that the thing really
to do was just to ignore him, which would suck the wind right out of his
sails, the truth was that Mulder had been waiting for so long, looking for
something, anything he could react to. Something real and present and
somehow connected to his frustration and hopelessness, some way to use the
pain he'd been stockpiling for, oh, ever now, it felt like. So when he
brought his knee up hard to clip Krycek under the jaw, he knew it wasn't
really because of anything Krycek had said. Just because he was there, and
refusing to let Mulder lie dormant under his routines and his few hard-won
certainties.
He made a satisfying grunt of surprise as his head snapped back—very
satisfying. That's for breaking into my apartment, asshole.
It wasn't exactly his intention to kick Krycek in the stomach, too...but
that sound was really great. He didn't make it exactly the same, though,
more like a growl, and he was looking up at Mulder with a gleam of pure
pleasure in his eyes, even though his face was set hard against the pain.
That's for touching my throat without permission, you sick fucker. And
this is for making me dinner before you tried to screw with my mind....
Even before his knee connected with Krycek's nose, Mulder sort of felt bad.
It seemed like too much. He wasn't—he didn't really want to be the kind
of person who would just beat the shit out of someone to feel better,
regardless of how much that person probably deserved it. But it was too
late to pull out, and Krycek was perfectly silent this time, so the crunch
of impact resounded like a gunshot in the room, making Mulder jump
skittishly away. Krycek's head was down, and there was a small dark blot on
the knee of Mulder's jeans.
"Alex...." His voice died away. Krycek wasn't much for making apologies,
and Mulder got the distinct impression that he wouldn't be much for
listening to them, either.
When Krycek raised his head, the pleasure was gone; he looked a little
tired, but mostly just steady, businesslike, the same old Alex Krycek who'd
sat across the desk from him at the Bureau, making endless phone calls and
filling out endless requisition forms. "Help me up," he said simply, and
for a moment there was no pretense and no subtext between them. Krycek
could've been down on his knees with black blood dripping down his lip for
any one of a million reasons, and all he wanted was a hand getting to his
feet. Mulder reached out, and they gripped each other by the wrist so
Krycek could pull himself up more easily.
Standing again, face to face, Krycek gave him a brief, wry smile, something
that it was easy to imagine could stand in for an apology. "More like it,"
he said approvingly, wiping at the blood on his mouth with his prosthetic
arm so that the sleeve of his sweater came away smeared with the same
nondescript dark color that was on Mulder's jeans. "You really shouldn't
keep your feelings bottled up so much. You're going to give yourself an
ulcer—or kill someone."
"Keep your head tilted back. I'll get you some paper towels."
"Nah. I'm just gonna let it bleed a while." Krycek lowered his thick
lashes and gave Mulder a razor-sharp, appraising look out from behind them.
"What do you think, partner? Does it make me look more like Scully?"
Before he had any time to think about such niceties as what kind of person
he wanted to be, Mulder moved, backhanding Krycek across the mouth so hard
that it almost sent him back down to the floor. He could see Krycek
stumbling, trying to regain his stability, but it was just visual input; it
didn't work the slightest wedge of pity, triumph, or any other emotion into
the featureless walls of anger that had slammed down all around him. He
threw a punch, and a second, and he was vaguely aware that they'd both
connected with something, but for the most part Mulder was locked so deeply
inside those horribly twinned images—Alex's blood on his clothes, Scully's
blood smeared across the paperwork on his desk—that he might as well have
been back out on the street, shoving his abuse randomly on his own body, the
ground, science, and nature.
It was blood that broke through, the red color popping unexpectedly vivid
from its white background, making Mulder's attention lock onto it, slowly
resolving itself into a small oval tear in the pale skin of Alex's sharp
cheek. Mulder stepped back, shaking his head, and when he raised his hand
to keep Alex's subtle following motion in check, there was blood on his
knuckles.
Roughly, Alex pulled up on the collar of his sweater and hastily wiped the
sticky mess his face was quickly becoming on its inside. "Say something,"
Mulder demanded.
"I dunno," Alex grumbled with a hint of his old prissiness. "That was my
big finale. If you're not done yet, you'll have to think up your own
reasons to hit me."
"Don't make me do this."
Alex laughed sharply, unconsciously straightening out his sweater. "Yeah,
Mulder, I make you do this. I make you do everything. I'm a mean son of a
bitch. You're catching on. You finished or not?"
"Finished hitting you?"
"Yeah."
" What in the fuck is wrong with you? "
The question actually seemed to make Krycek pause for a minute, and then he
shrugged. "Hell if I know, Mulder, but I promise, if I ever figure it out,
you'll be the first to know."
"You promise. Well, if you promise ...."
"Yeah, Mulder. I promise."
It sounded so serious. From anyone else, in anyone else's life, in any
other world, it would have been Alex Krycek making a promise to him. For
just a few seconds, Mulder closed his eyes and played the words over again
in his head, thinking this is what it would've been like, being Alex
Krycek's lover.
Unable to see the decision being made in Krycek's eyes, Mulder had no time
to react before Krycek's arm was resting along his chest, fingers closed
lightly on his neck. When he kissed Mulder, his lips were still sticky and
iron-tangy with blood. The kiss lasted as long as it took for Mulder's
hands to find Alex's waist, but when he carelessly nudged a cut he hadn't
realized was on Alex's lower lip with his tongue, Krycek hissed and pulled
his head away. Mulder leaned forward for more of the gory kiss, but Krycek
pushed him away by the shoulder. "Why are you doing this?" Mulder murmured.
"Just need to know what kind of man I'm getting mixed up with."
"Am I failing your test?"
"You're no coward."
"Why do I feel like one?"
"Don't let the liberal guilt get to you, Mulder. If I really wanted to, I
could kick your ass even with two fake arms."
"I can't trust you. I don't even know why I'd want to."
"Because you're lonely, Mulder. Believe me, I know how that is." Mulder
raised a skeptical eyebrow and Krycek shrugged. "What? I'm human. You
know, the kind of life I live...there's just not a lot of consistency, let
alone people you can count on. It sucks."
Gently, Mulder dabbed blood off Krycek's cheek with his thumb, fighting back
a lopsided grin. "Sucks, huh, Shakespeare?"
At first Krycek looked startled, and then the glitter in his eyes turned to
that sly amusement that Mulder so rarely saw. "'I am myself indifferent
honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my
mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more
offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do
crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none
of us.' Suck on that, Mr. Oxford."
"Okay, I'm impressed."
"I did go to college, you know. I have an English degree from Columbia
University."
"No kidding? Your classified file says Criminal Justice from NYU."
"My file says a lot of things."
"Was that Macbeth?"
"Hamlet."
"Right, right, right. Get thee to a nunnery. You know, that was
Elizabethan slang for a whorehouse."
"I know, Mulder. Christ." He sounded exasperated, but there was a smile
at the corner of his lips as he leaned in and brushed them very lightly down
Mulder's neck. The sudden teasing contact sent a brief, violent shudder
through Mulder's body. "You just stick to the psychology, okay?"
Damn, it was too hard to sit stoically under the burden of all this
intensity; the urge to shake it off with dumb humor was overwhelming.
Mulder waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "I was hoping to play pre-med."
He was getting the hang of kissing Alex without hurting his lip, and his
fingers found a position against Krycek's face that didn't press against
anything sore. "Alex—hey, Alex?"
"What?" he mumbled obediently, but he didn't seem very keen to let Mulder
get out of kissing him.
"Do you like Hamlet?"
"Do I—? Fuck, Mulder. Are we going to have sex or what?"
"Yeah, yeah, don't worry, I'm mentally rehearsing my begging and pleading
for you to fuck me even as we speak. I'm just—I'd like to—this is
something I want to know about you, all right? Do you get that? Out of all
the things I don't know, I would just like you to be fucking honest with me
for two seconds and tell me, do you like Hamlet?"
"Technically speaking, the man's finest play. I'm a big fan. Does that
make you happy, sweet prince?"
"Overjoyed. Your favorite?"
"Nah. I like Julius Caesar."
"Figures."
Alex snorted, but he obviously wasn't feeling cynical enough to resist as
Mulder pushed him back toward the sofa and down on his back. Stripping off
the worse-for-wear sweater, Mulder put his mouth against Alex's stomach,
ignoring the faint yellow bruise there. Alex groaned softly, but not,
Mulder was pretty sure, in pain. "God. God, you're so sexy. Whoever the
fuck you are—FBI agent, courier, assassin, fucking Shakespeare scholar—whoever the fuck you are."
"Yeah, Mulder. Oh, yeah. Let me fuck you, please. Please."
You, Mulder. Are we okay?
Mulder—please—don't trust me. I don't want to hurt you again. Don't
let me.
We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.
Don't believe me. This is all the help I can give you, Fox.
Mulder froze. Like all insights, this one had come down on him like a semi,
and now it seemed so fucking ridiculous that he'd struggled this long with
it. Jesus, he could be stupid sometimes. "I'm your—I'm your goddamn
Ophelia."
"What?"
"That speech—Hamlet is trying to convince Ophelia—fuck, I'm such an
idiot, it's so obvious—trying to convince Ophelia to stay away from him,
because he knows he's into this revenge thing over his head and he's afraid
she's going to end up going down with him. That's why he tells her he's
dishonest and ambitious and all the rest of it." He pointed a finger
between Krycek's eyes, and Krycek batted it away impatiently. "That's why
you came here. You thought that after—after last time—I might be
thinking about getting involved with your little kamikaze mission."
"You're a piece of work, Mulder. Does it never occur to you that I might
just be dishonest and ambitious?"
"Every damn day, Krycek. But you didn't come here to twist the knife in me,
and you didn't come here to make it easier on yourself in case you should
need to fuck me over again. You love me-"
"Fuck you! Get off of me."
"Yes, you do! You're in love with me, you bastard, and it scares the hell
out of you that the one person in your life that you give a shit about might
get hurt because you let him care about you. You came here to make me hate
you again, knowing I'd let you fuck me anyway, figuring that in the harsh
light of the morning after, I'd feel too guilty and generally nauseous about
what I let you do to me that I'd never want to be anywhere near you again.
This is part of your half-assed making amends program."
" Half-assed ? My half-assed making amends program is going to break the
Syndicate's back for you."
"For me?"
Krycek's eyes widened in surprise as his own words sunk in on him, then
narrowed. " Instead of you. Since you obviously can't or won't. Some
arch-nemesis you are. And I am not making amends. Does this look like
Black Ops Anonymous to you?"
"Call me Fox."
" What? "
"The other night—you kept calling me Fox. What made you stop?"
"You're complaining?"
"I'm making a point!"
"Which is...?"
"That this -" Mulder waved his hand vaguely, indicating Krycek's body lying
tense beneath him—"this isn't you. This is just another performance."
"Or the last time was."
"No."
Mulder was a stubborn man, and he packed all the stubbornness at his command
into that one word, pinning Krycek down with it. His eyes didn't flicker as
they held Krycek's, watching him cycle through anger, frustration, fear,
anger again, confusion, respect, another flavor of fear. He'd never seen
emotion lit up so plainly behind Krycek's witchy green eyes; it made him
exquisitely human, brought him right here and right now no matter how hard
he tried to be somewhere else. Softly, Mulder kissed his jaw. "I'm getting
better at this game, Alex. I'm going to get into your head yet."
"Did anyone ever tell you that you have this way of making up theories that
strike you as attractive, then interpreting all the evidence to support your
theory without duly considering a sufficient range of alternative
explanations?"
"Yeah. Call me crazy, but that speech turns me on every time, too."
"You're crazy. "
"You promised to fuck me if I asked. Alex, I'm asking. I want it."
Krycek's jaw twitched slightly. "A lot's changed since I promised that."
"I won't let you hurt me."
"You can't stop me. You never could."
"How long?"
It didn't look as though he really wanted to, but Krycek smiled anyway.
"How soon they forget...."
Mulder made a post-punchline rimshot noise. "How long have you been in love
with me?"
"This is your psycho theory, Mulder. It's not healthy for me to play into
your delusions."
"Don't you dare honesty-containment-conciliation me, Alex Krycek. How long
have you been in love with me?"
"Ask me again."
"How long?"
"No. Ask me to fuck you."
"I want you. Christ, Alex. I'm begging you." He dropped his head, resting
his forehead lightly on Krycek's shoulder as Krycek's fingers hesitated,
just brushing the skin of his back. "I'm so fucking lonely."
Between their three fully functional hands, they managed to get rid of the
last of their clothes without letting go of each other's mouths long enough
to say anything else that couldn't ever be taken back again.
Already, the scars and marks on Krycek's body had a strangely nostalgic
familiarity to them—the knife wound in his chest, the brace that strapped
his silicone arm to the remains of his real one, the tattoo on his leg.
Souvenirs of a rough life, with few protectors and no unbreakable rules.
Mulder touched each of them in quick recognition—found the tattoo and the
scar behind his shoulder with his fingers, kissed the scar that had been the
proximate, if not the ultimate, cause of his father's death, let his chin
rest briefly on Krycek's left shoulder, his prosthetic arm pressed between
their bodies. Alex fucking Krycek, with all his failures seared permanently
into his body, exactly the way it sometimes seemed that all Mulder's
failures were seared permanently into his mind. They could both run
forever, and the truth would never be purged out of them by pain or sweat,
not by any amount of effort, defiance, ambition, stubbornness. Krycek's
body, Mulder's life—monuments and martyrs to things, truths, they never
should have messed around with at all.
Too soon old, too late wise, as the saying went. Too late to back out now.
Far from being handicapped by the massive migration of blood to his dick,
Mulder's thoughts seemed crisper and more orderly than it had since he got
home from his run—wait until he could tell Scully that his best thinking
really did happen in his pants. Out of them. Whatever. Now it seemed
even more ridiculously obvious than ever before: somewhere on his way up the
bad side of the ladder, Alex fucking Krycek had fallen in love with him.
Him. Fox Mulder, the FBI's redheaded stepchild, inept arch-nemesis of big
government gone horribly awry, America's alien task force of one.
When you fuck up, you fuck up for keeps, don't you, Alex-whoever-you-are?
Only this time, Alex seemed determined to sear his biggest mistake into
Mulder's body. Every time his rough-chewed fingernails dug into Mulder's
back or his teeth snapped sharp and quick at the top of Mulder's ear, Mulder
got his intent just as clearly as if Krycek's low growls had been words:
feel this pay attention to this how deep can I touch you? let me in where
you're bloodiest
"Feel this?" Mulder murmured, half-convinced he was repeating real words
that had escaped from Alex's lips as the heel of his hand massaged heavily
down Alex's chest, pressing into his nipple and making his back arch
suddenly.
"Fuck," he gasped softly, and caught Mulder's mouth in a short, clumsy,
perfect kiss. "Fuck. I like that. No—no, quit it. I can't—"
"Sure you can." Mulder sealed his lips around the warm, darkening nipple.
The agonized, erotic sound that escaped Krycek was, on reflection, much more
appealing than his earlier stifled pain noises. That was nice to know for
sure. Mulder fought to keep from breaking the suction by twisting his lips
into a wide grin.
"I can't—Mulder, for fuck's sake, quit. You're gonna make me-"
"I wanna make you."
His voice was low, and humid like the most unbearable Virginia summer
nights. "Not like this. In you."
In me. In me. In me.
As gently as he could while his body wanted to push roughly, over and over
again, against Krycek's hard hipbone and muscled thigh, Mulder brushed two
fingers over Krycek's face, observing the way the clean, handsome features
were settling into bruises and scabs. "Did you ever wonder—what it
would've been-"
"No. And you shouldn't either."
"Liar."
" Now you don't trust me," Alex snorted.
"I never trusted you."
"Liar."
"I still don't."
"Fucking liar. "
"In fact, I hate you. I'm plotting my elaborate revenge against you, but no
revenge will ever be sufficient, and when I die, I'm having 'I Still Hate
Your Guts, Alex K.' carved on my tombstone. I'm putting up with you because
you're under federal protection, but once your sting is over, all bets are
off. I'll probably try to push you out of a window before you ever get out
of the Hoover Building. My final thoughts before I shuffle off this mortal
coil will be about what a worthless, vile, morally bankrupt and spiritually
diseased, bottom-feeding rodent you are—or were, since I will have killed
you long since by that time—and how glad I am that I never, ever, ever
fell victim to one of your insane, labyrinthine, Shakespearean schemes."
In spite of a few snorts of unwilling laughter, by the time Mulder had run
out of breath for his ramble, Alex was looking at him with unexpectedly
grave eyes. "Got it all figured out, do you?"
"You bet."
"No revenge will ever be sufficient, huh?"
Unwillingly, Mulder thought of the ashes in his hand, a friend erased as
though he'd never existed—because he hadn't. The dark shadow of sadness
that had warped his Scully, made her someone he didn't know, someone he was
constantly losing even while he was constantly waiting to lose her. He
thought of the way he always had to obey the most frightening, least
humanized chunks of himself when Krycek turned those eyes, eerily level and
thoroughly haunted at the same time, on him. "No. I guess not."
They would never be even.
In me. In me. In me.
"Well, I guess someone's going to do me sooner or later. I'd just as soon
it was you."
"Alex, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Probably."
With a grace that was controlled and precise, not showy, Krycek rolled them
both to their sides, and Mulder instinctively draped his arm over the back
of the couch, holding himself tensely against the fabric so he couldn't see
anything else. When Alex's fingers cupped his balls, the knuckle of his
thumb stroking Mulder's perineum, it seemed like his whole hand was warm and
slippery—obviously the dislike of lubricant that Alex had been so vocal
about last time didn't extend to fucks where he was on top. I can't believe
you called me self-punishing. You're a fucking lousy psychologist,
Krycek.
One finger, two fingers—hell, Mulder had only done this once before, but
he couldn't shake the feeling that this was absurdly...normal. That this
was how almost anyone would take it up the ass on his living room couch from
a one-armed man who had a thing for him, whether or not they were supposed
to be mortal enemies, whether or not the living room in question was under
constant illegal surveillance, whether or not they'd both exceeded their
life expectancies by a couple of years apiece already. It was just a couple
of fingers, living and mobile. The right amount of body heat for two naked
men in fairly good shape, suffering no especially debilitating wounds or
ailments at the moment. The ring of muscle opening to a little gentle
pressure, tightening down as the relevant tissues swelled and sensitized
with blood. Breathing, laborious and carefully controlled. A kiss, a brush
of cheek on Mulder's back, too artless to be anything less than desire.
So normal. This is how it would've felt. Being Alex Krycek's lover.
Taking a shower, eating some pasta, talking, fucking on the sofa. Sleeping
deep in the center of Alex's scent. Alex in him, Alex tasting him, Alex
teaching him new definitions of the word longing.
Fuck it. Fuck it. This is how it did feel. Because he was sure as hell
Alex Krycek's lover. It couldn't have been seared deeper into either of
their lives. It was a goddamn brand. Yippie ki yi yo.
"Mulder," he breathed, his chin resting in the hollow low between Mulder's
shoulder blades. "You're...I missed you. I fucking missed you."
"I know."
Mulder hadn't known he had a streak in him, part Kama Sutra and part
supermarket romance novel, that would allow him to feel so different in
the split second after he'd had Alex Krycek's dick inside him than he had
the split second before. Even when Mulder had lost his virginity, he'd been
vaguely surprised at how he was pretty much the same gangly egghead teenager
he'd always been. But with Alex lying flush against his back, real arm
wrapped around Mulder's ribs and plastic arm resting on the arm of his
couch, his chin tucked into the curve of Mulder's neck becoming his shoulder—like it or not, he was...pretty much...totally different.
Pretty much totally Alex's.
In me. In me.
Jesus, Mulder. Still a romantic, after all these years? After all the
fucked-up-beyond-all-repair romances? This must be what they call
hopeless. You're fucking hopeless.
You're fucking doomed.
The way he moved when Alex rocked against him, the way he cried out when
Alex's strong fingers found his cock and closed around it, just under the
crown, the way each stab of pleasure came as its own little unexpected world
of new sensation—it was all just past normal. It was fucking
archetypal. It was how every single person on the face of the earth
probably felt, from toes to lungs to cock to eyeballs, with the one man who
could turn him into mental origami with one accidental flutter of his
eyelashes buried in him and fucking him like neither of them had a doubt in
the world. Mulder hated to be a cliche. How bizarre to finally realize
that the tackiest Top 40 cliche ever invented was actually about two steps
to the left of—of those stupid auto fatality statistics Krycek used to
rattle off. Hard facts, true things, carved in stone, humankind's simple
but amazingly accurate attempt to turn the complexity of real life into ten
digits and sixty seconds per minute.
And each of those seconds was beating through Mulder, time a long, slow
vibration from each deep thrust toward the moment when statistics started to
lie and truth became incalculable. Alex kept time with his fingers tugging
on Mulder's cock, fucked him to the relentless count of their harmonizing
pleasure. "I'm begging," Mulder informed him hoarsely, his hands curled
into a claw that was probably permanent around the top of the sofa. "I've
got to come. Can't you-?"
"I've got you." He sounded strangely calm, his breath ruffling Mulder's
hair as he spoke. "Go ahead—go ahead."
Whether it was the minor shift in the angle of Krycek's thrusts, the
permission, or the complicated twist his hand did, palm and inner fingers
and round knuckles dancing artistically across the tender skin of Mulder's
cock, Mulder came. By the time his attention had returned, he could feel
the final twitches of Krycek's dick inside him, leaking the last of his
semen. Mulder reached back and cupped the back of Krycek's skull, holding
his hand in Krycek's thick hair through the final throes of his pleasure.
"You never answered my question," Mulder finally commented, speaking to the
back of his couch.
"Which?" Krycek mumbled, or something like that; it wasn't entirely
intelligible.
"How long?"
He didn't say anything for a moment, and when he did speak, it wasn't an
answer, just a lazily annoyed, "This again?"
"Hey, last time you were bitching because I didn't ask enough questions."
"That's not exactly why I was bitching," he grumbled. "Christ, you made
up this whole stupid Ophelia theory. Why don't you answer your question?
I mean, you jury-rig facts to your own liking for a living, Mulder. You're
a fucking professional. I'm not going to compete."
"Have you always been this much of a caustic bastard, deep down underneath
all that strong, silent crap?"
Mulder could feel the shape of Krycek's grin along the nape of his neck.
"Wouldn't need the strong, silent crap if I weren't."
"Camouflage. So the people you're infiltrating don't wring your neck before
they even get to the part where you're a professional double agent."
"No flies on you."
"Your preferred method of defying reality," Mulder murmured, almost to
himself. "Deflection. Verbal defense. Jesus, an English major."
"What the hell are you babbling about?"
"You."
"Quit."
Too little, too late, Alex. I'm starting to get this. I'm starting to
see.
"Tell me something, Krycek."
"What?"
"Something. Anything. Something I don't know."
Krycek snorted. "Figures. The only two people in the world whose idea of
afterplay is trading secrets." Mulder chuckled, and under the influence of
the laugh rumbling through his body, Krycek's bitter sound trailed off into
amusement, too. "Okay, okay. Something you don't know."
"I know, this is a tough one."
"Right."
"Try, though."
"If you shut up, I will. You don't know...that there's a war on. That my
real job isn't carrying information—it's concealing it. Where the weapons
are. What the weapons are."
He hadn't expected—business. Real information, pieces of the puzzle.
Mulder's heart began to bang loudly and slowly. "You're protecting a
weapon."
"The only weapon. The only method of meaningful resistance we have."
"We?"
"We."
It was supposed to be We? as in You and who else knows about this? But
Alex seemed to have read We? as You and me?
You and me.
You in me.
Yes.
"We," Mulder repeated. "I need to-"
"Not right now, you don't. I'll tell you when you need to move on this.
I'll tell you what you need to know."
The question hung unspoken in the air: And will you trust me when I tell
you?
Yes. No. Maybe. Probably. Foolishly. Yes. Statistically speaking, I
trust you 48.6% more often than I should. "There are three kinds of lies,"
Mulder heard himself say under his breath. "Lies, damned lies, and
statistics."
"Believe me, Mulder, I may be a damned liar, but I'm not playing this by the
numbers," Krycek said, and he sounded distant somehow. "This is a war that
I'm very likely to lose."
"You don't seem the...losing type."
"I didn't use to be."
One more digit falling into place, one more piece of the puzzle. Somehow,
somewhere, something had changed for Alex Krycek. Something that made him
fight to lose; he had the ravaged life and the pretty face smeared with
traces of drying blood to prove it.
I want to know I want to know who you are
I want to know what you want from
me I want to know I want to believe I want to know what this is I want to
know why you're here who you are
I'm starting to get this, Krycek. Just give me a little more time.
Dogs of War
by Hth
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction....
—Julius Caesar, 3:1
And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge....
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war.
—Julius Caesar
