Bad Seed

Fandom: Featuring Anson Green, the shifty character from 'Moloney.'

Category/Rated: PG13 for weirdness

Year/Length: ~42,700 words

Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, only having fun.

Summary: Anson Green had a dream. This is a response to The Spike's 'Dream Challenge' and is unbetad.

1: Hit Me Again

The room is full of smoke when I walk in, and the players are sitting at the table. They all wear black and it's really hard to see their features under the hoods. Someone shoves a chair at me and I hook it towards me with a hand, turn it and straddle it, leaning on the back as I study the table.

Chips in piles, a stack in the middle and as one man curses and folds, another gives a yell of triumph and scoops the pot towards himself. I feel in my pocket for my gun, and tell the sucker to deal me in.

He flips me two cards, and I take a peek. Aces. I got aces and my face tries to move, but there's no way I'm gonna give this up. I put a chip on the table and look around. They're all watching, and two of them fold, tossing the cards in with disgust. Me again. I buy a card and let it sit on the table for a minute or two before I pick it up.

It's an ace...a diamond this time. Girl's best friend. Hah...the girls I know will do it for less than diamonds. Just call me the King of Cubic Zirconia! Hit me again dealer! Tossing chips on the table and getting another card, I keep the old face schooled, but when I pick up my card it's the ace of hearts. Hearts are not my strong suit, but I've got four aces and I'm sitting pretty. The guy next to me folds and gets up to leave. I don't care much for his attitude so I shoot the bastard and he falls to the ground. The last card is flicked across to me and hey, it's an ace. Five aces. Good cards. I knew I couldn't lose today but what am I playing for?

I stall, lighting up my cigarette and dragging the smoke down into my lungs while I watch the players react. They are tossing chips onto the table and muttering behind the dark shadows of their hoods. I put down the rest of my chips and call them. Mine, it's my pot...

They give me the chips. My cards are shining blue and the light is compelling. I win because my cards glow blue. Stacking them up, they tower above me, the pretty colours sparkling. The dealer puts back his hood and says something in a voice that is hollow, distant as an old nightmare, but real as a threat.

"You can afford it now, Anson. All it will cost is everything you own. What's it to be?" I feel confused. I'm looking around at the others, trying to get some kind of idea about what he means. They lower their heads and only the dealer turns to me...his skull head gleaming white as bone through the smoke. "She's waiting for you, but it's a one time thing. No second chances here. What's it to be?"

I push the stack of chips to him, and stand up, my gun forgotten. They point to the curtain in back of the room and I pull it to one side and stride through it before my nerve fails.

She comes up out of the gloom. She's wearing white, like a bride, though when I look closely they are winding sheets. I pull the fabric from her shoulder and bury my mouth in the creamy ivory of her breast. She puts her hand on me gently, and the faint whisper of her well-loved voice says "Anson."

My hand traces down from her waist to her hip, molding the rich curve of her as I lean in.

"Mom, I'm grown. I'm a big boy now. They say I'm good looking. Do you want me?" My hand fumbles between her legs and the moisture there is all for me. She loves me. She's mine.

I lift my head and take her face in my hand, placing my lips over hers, tenderly at first, and then more brutally as I shove my tongue into her. She sighs and snuggles against me, pressing her hips to me, stirring up the feelings I can't control, and suddenly her mouth is urgent, and her tongue is hard in my mouth. Hard and hollow, smooth, and it tastes of gun oil...

2: Treble chance

The green-eyed man was he-bopping down the sidewalk on a hot and heavy New York day. Hips slid and cat feet danced as he prowled along. He was dressed in lumberjack chic, check shirt loose over white T-shirt, topping washed out denims that fit wherever they touched. He was smiling a little smile because he knew something you don't know.

He'd just got off the bus and he was carrying all his worldly goods in a bag slung over his shoulder. He was here, and he was free, and he'd got 10,000 big ones in his bag.

It would have been more of course, but he was cheated again, gypped out of his share and he had to hit the road fast, real fast. He didn't mean to come here but here was where the bus was heading, and it would do.

He eyed up the girls on the sidewalk with their tanned legs and their slit skirts and thought it would do very nicely indeed. Shuffling through his pockets in search of change he sat down at a table on the sidewalk and orders himself a coffee. He was going to have to think about this.

He didn't know New York. It was far enough from LA that they wouldn't be looking for him. He'd got time, surely he'd got time, and yet... He's a killer sure enough, but he didn't mean it. Like everything else in his life it just seemed to happen to him and he was sorry, dammit! Life wasn't kind to him, really not kind at all.

They had told him he was bad seed, and he guessed he had to go along with that. Everyone had called him bad right since he was 9 years old, and if he had the name, he might just as well have the game.

Sometimes he wondered if things could have been different if he'd been allowed to see his little girl. If the bitch he had married hadn't taken up with someone more steady - fir steady, read well off - If he'd been able to find work nearby, if he hadn't shot that cop. If. If. If.

But here he was, and he had money now so maybe he'd be able to get back to where he ought to be, and then maybe he'd just go get his daughter right away and to hell with them all.

He fumbled open a pack of Camels and lit one up, sucking in the smoke and feeling tired but mellow. The sun was hot, and after a while he took off his shirt, sitting in his T-shirt to feel the heat on his brawny arms. This was good.

The whoop-whoop-whoop of a police car had him looking uneasily around. The sooner he found somewhere to crash the better. He was in plain sight here, and that made him nervous, very nervous.

Another cop car went screaming by and his initial elation at getting off the bus at last began to fade. Drinking his coffee down fast enough to burn his mouth, he tossed a few coins on the table and began to re-trace his footsteps.

He had begun to feel like a turtle, or a snail or something. He was like one of those animals that carried their house on their back. He stumbled off the bus again and into the warm, sticky, rapidly approaching Washington evening. He needed a room. He needed a bath, and he needed a drink.

He found himself a liquor store and a small hotel close to the bus station. Once in the safety of his room, he gratefully divested himself of his travel stained clothing, poured himself a half a tumbler full of whisky, and took a swallow before stepping gratefully under the shower. By the time he had washed away the grime of 8 days on the road he was singing. He jumped out of the shower, toweling himself briskly and sipping his scotch from time to time.

Shaving was next, and he did it carefully, his chin jutting as he scraped away the dark bristle. Opening his bag, he found himself a clean set of clothes and donned them quickly, nodding to himself as he toasted himself in the mirror.

If the Prez can do it, so can I. First, let's get laid. Then we'll look for something a little more rewarding to get involved with.

He peeled a few bills off one of the rolls in his bag, covered the rest with his dirty laundry and let himself out of the room carefully locking the door behind him.

He had decided against renting a car. He had no credit card anyway and it would have been pretty close to impossible for him to get one. He could always 'borrow' one later if he needed it, but for tonight he would stay on foot, close to the motel.

He found a bar that advertised non-stop girls, and went inside. The dark room boasted cages suspended from the ceiling in which girls were dancing. The three he could see were practically nude, their bodies coated with paint in imitation of animals. Here was a leopard, there a tiger, over at the back a zebra. All wore collars, linked to their cages by golden chains that were attached. Each wore a shaven pubis and through the labia of each was a gold ring, attached to yet another gold chain. They danced, and appeared bored, each in her own private world. He didn't care. He nodded. This would do.

He ordered a beer and parked himself on a tall stool by the bar. He barely registered when the bartender, a tall, very striking black girl, passed him his change and called him Alex.

Kicking back and watching the dancers shake their soft-porn stuff, he allowed his feelings to wash over him. He was no longer on the road at last. He was gonna sleep in a bed tonight. Nobody there knew his name, and he was maybe gonna get laid tonight. He studied the leopard woman in the cage to his left. She had claws all right, long metal sheaths on her fingers. He imagined the scratch of them on his chest, on his back, on his dick.

Fuck! That would be good. That would feel dangerous and exciting. Maybe she would stick one up inside his ass. He wanted that really badly. He idly raised the bottle to his lips and swigged the beer, throwing his head back and examining his own arousal with relish. He felt as if he had been let out of school for the summer.

The leopard had small breasts ... with spots of course. Her nipples were gilded, and that turned him on. It turned him on big time as he examined the mental feel of them on his tongue, how his teeth would explore the rubbery flesh, and how she would like it. She was thin, and he could count her ribs. Ordinarily this would be a turn off. He liked his women zaftig, well upholstered, but this thin brunette was mesmerizing. She moved like a snake, boneless. He wanted to climb in with her and show her a few moves of his own.

She arched over backwards, dropping over onto her hands in a sinuous, controlled movement that displayed her pussy to him. She was hairless, and her labia were pierced. The gold ring that passed through it also connected to a chain that anchored her to the bars of the cage. He studied her cunt, wishing he could use his tongue to learn the glistening folds of it. His mouth itched to slide over the clearly visible clit that protruded from her cleft.

He was hot and hard. He needed another beer and he felt lucky. Taking his eyes away from his leopard-prey, he signaled with his empty bottle for another beer. As he did so, he became aware of the man in the grey silk suit who had come to rest on the stool next to him.

Ordinarily he would not have bothered even checking him out, but the man's eyes were on him in a manner that weirded him out. He suddenly stopped feeling like a mighty white hunter.

He began to feel like prey.

His beer arrived and the girl eyed him oddly, looking from him to the man beside him with a curious expression.

"Hey, Fox, your usual?" The man beside him nodded and tossed her a 20, indicating that he would pay for Anson's beer too. Anson, confused and uneasy, turned to the rangy man in the expensive suit and opened his mouth to question his generosity. He suddenly found himself swept into a liplock that dazed him.

Spluttering, the heady warmth of this pervert's kiss causing tremors of illicit excitement to prickle through him from lights to loins, he tried to decide whether he was dreaming, and if so whether he wanted to wake up.

Anson was not a novice. Sometimes you do what you gotta do to turn a buck, right? And men seemed to like his sleazy green eyes. He was always getting hit on, and frankly, what did it matter who sucked his dick as long as he got off.

This was some kind of a first for him though. He was being kissed in a public place by a man who obviously could afford designer fashion, next to a delectable leopard-chick whose pussy looked so good he was just about wriggling in his seat with the need to take out his cock and slide it home in her.

The combination was so erotic he could feel himself losing it. Moaning, he opened his mouth to the kiss and let the whole thing wash him away to a place where there was only heat and touch, and friction.

Thinking his way into this, he made his decision. This man obviously had money, as deranged as he was, and the chick was probably on heroin.

He forgot the chick and melted into Armani-boy's arms, sliding his own around him and giving back moisture for moisture, tongue for tongue in a breath-catching, heart-thumping excitement that caught him on fire.

When finally Suit-boy released him, he was finally able to get a good look at him. Tall, dark, and carefully tousled, the man had eyes the color of summer, half-lidded, sleepy and shrewd. A generously fleshy nose, wonder if it's really related to the size of his dick? miraculously well-shaped, sinful lips, and a strand of hair falling over a high forehead made him look wanton, as if he were begging for it. The after effects of the kiss they had just shared gave him just the kind of expression he liked to see, need and lust frightening away sanity. This was going to be good.

"Alex, come home with me tonight, please." The voice held all of desire in it, and nothing of sanity.

"Call me Anson, not Alex." His husky voice was low, suggestive, carrying somehow through the frenetic barrage of sounds in the bar. "I'll come home with you, but you gotta lose the tie."

The offending article was slowly removed from the other man's neck. It was black, and covered all over with yellow, smiley faces. Anson shuddered as he saw it disappear into the other man's pocket.

"Arntzen? Why Arntzen? Come on Alex. Don't play games. I've missed you so much." Anson shrugged. The guy was clearly certifiable, but hot, very hot. Anson stood up and moved in for a killer clinch, lips and tongue providing counterpoint to the rhythm of grinding hips and deepening breath. When he pulled away, the other man was breathless, flushed, and gasping, eyes glazed over.

"God! Come on! Let's get out of here." The voice was strained and the man was clearly in need. His loose silk pants did little to hide a burgeoning erection. Suitboy grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the bar.

On the street with the night coming down like molasses, the hot, sticky day deliquescing into something infinitely tenderer, a big moon silvered the sidewalk and turned Suitboy's lust-stupefied expression into idol-like inscrutability. Anson's heart thumped once in his chest, a sudden reminder that he should breathe.

He smiled, and the smile felt to him as though it had sharp edges, and he swayed a little towards that exquisitely cruel face that was cataloguing him. The spell was broken then and another spun in its place as Suitboy seized him roughly and plastered mouth to mouth, chest to chest and pelvis to pelvis in a harsh, sweet grind of the hips.

He was not going to fuck in an alley for anyone. Not even for this sultry beauty that was offering him anything he wanted to take. He wasn't used to the expression he could see on Suitboy's face. He was used to justifying himself, but it seemed as if Suitboy was doing all the justifying. He was also stroking, petting, touching, running his hands all over him and moaning as he did so.

Anson allowed the touches, offering back subtleties of his own. He might not be the world's best bank robber, but he was definitely a world class fuck, and Suitboy here better believe it. His hand strolled along the curve of the ass he was feeling, and brief pressure here and there elicited groans as sensation bred sensation.

"I'm not gonna drop my pants for you in some back alley, Armani-boy. Let's go back to your place. It will be more relaxed." Suitboy gulped and nodded, eyes crinkling and pretty lips spreading in a dazzling smile.

"Where's your car?" The voice was flat, and Anson had to flick his gaze down fast to verify the lust he had seen at the start. There was a subtext here he didn't understand.

"No car, I walked. We can go in yours. What do you want me to call you tonight? Anson's hand was still on Suitboy's ass, way down, stroking as deep and as firm as he could with the pants in the way. Suitboy appreciated it he could tell as moaned and pressed back into the hand that clung to his butt.

"You called me Fox before." Longing was in the voice as Suitboy took his hand and led him off along the sidewalk.

"Do you want me to call you Fox again?" snuggling in as Suitboy..no..Fox's arm snaked around him, tuning in to bury his face in the fragrant neck, sucking up cologne and reaction in powerful, mind-dizzying gulps.

"No. Yes. Yes, I guess... I like when you say it, Alex." Anson nodded, moving out again, and they resumed their walk.

"Anything you want, Fox. Tonight is your night. As they arrived at the car, Anson smiled. This was gonna be a slice. Suitboy-Fox was totally dazed by his desire, and it was gonna be a blast.

Stopping by a nondescript beige saloon, the man called Fox fumbled in his pocket for the keys, spilling loose change, breath mints, and his horrible tie in his urgency. Anson put out a hand, restraining the other man with his touch.

"Slow down, Fox. It's no big deal. I'm not going anywhere else tonight." He wondered what it could be that was making the other man so nervous. He was sure he didn't get that way over any old piece of ass, however pretty. It might be worth probing a little.

He moved in close, gently taking the keys from the other man's hand and unlocking the car door. Then he removed the key and pressed Armani-boy back against it, feeling up and down his body. He froze for a minute when he realized that Suitboy was packing a weapon.

He was half tempted to relieve him of it, but in the end he just left it, saying nothing, and pressed himself in against the other's mouth, avid and greedy as their tongues collided, eliciting groans and tingles of arousal.

When finally he pulled away, he spoke with his lips still against Fox's. "Get in the car, I don't feel like giving a public display right now."

Fox's hands were sliding up under Anson's T-shirt, tracing muscle patterns. He grunted and turned to climb in behind the wheel. Flipping the lock on the passenger's door he gunned the engine as Anson stalked gracefully around the car to slide in beside the strange man who he hoped was about to become his lover.

As they pulled away from the parking lot, a man in black emerged from the bar. He saw the car pulling away, and as it passed them he saw the face of the passenger illuminated by the flare of a match.

He stood gazing after them for a very long time, a look of utter incredulity on his face. Finally he shook his head and made for his own vehicle.

The man called Fox was trembling again. They were in the elevator, and Anson could see his shaky hands. An elderly woman had entered with them and had greeted him as Mr. Mulder. Anson had watched him smile sweetly at her as they exchanged idle small talk.

They left the elevator at the fourth floor and headed for number 42. Neither had spoken since they had stepped into Mulder's car, and Anson was busy thinking things through, trying to make sense of them. He knew why he was here. He was looking to get laid. He was hoping for a good fuck with no strings attached, and had thought that was what Suitboy wanted too. Now he was beginning to think that there was maybe something more to it than he had first perceived. He had not thought that his ass was that exciting!

Fox dropped his key again, and Anson laughed shortly, placing his hand on Fox's arm to hold him back. Then he stooped and retrieved the keychain. He opened the door for Fox, still grinning in a faintly malicious way, and stood back to let him go in. As he followed him through the door, he was grabbed and shoved back against it. The man called Fox dove into his mouth, lips pliant and moist as he mapped out the interior, learning his tongue, learning the join of tooth and gum and the whole slippery motion of him as he gave him back slick for slick in heady delight.

Fox cupped Anson's face, fingers splayed around the back of his head, thumbs gently stroking the corners of his mouth as he kissed him. His eyes were closed, and his heart was pounding loud enough for Anson to hear it. When finally he drew back and opened his eyes, grey blue met green in a connection that made static fly. Anson's hands moved to unbutton Fox's shirt as Fox buried his face in Anson's neck, moaning.

"God, Alex, I missed you. Six months is too long to wait." Anson pulled Fox's head up for a single pregnant moment, and the look he gave was honest, if Fox would have seen it and if his mind could have processed it for him.

"I'm not Alex. I'm Anson." and his voice was sincere. He was trying, oh god, for once in his sorry life to do the noble thing. Fox didn't hear, or maybe didn't listen because he kept on fumbling with Anson's belt buckle, unfastening it, and dropping the zipper to lay Anson bare. He dropped to his knees and enveloped Anson in hot, sweet moisture as he sucked him down to the root. Anson gazed down at him, bemused, watching the chestnut hair rising and falling, feeling the velvet heat of suction all through his body as the mouth working on him turned his spine into a conduit of molten silver through which spikes of sharp sensation flickered ands flashed. He could only place his hands on that wonderfully sucking head and hang on, leaning on the door to spasm, and spasm, and spasm.

Looking down he saw eyes, misted with crazy joy, fixed on his as if he were wonderful. Anson felt himself leaving his safe place. He felt himself connecting to this beautiful man who so obviously loved him. He wished it were really for him, this love.

He wished he could be this Alex. He wished he could be Alex just for one day and know what it felt like to be really loved, and the tightness in his balls was telling him 'enough thinking, enough wishing, just be, for fuck's sake.' He couldn't hold still, and he couldn't hold back, and he couldn't stop babbling stupid words as his spine finally flowed down, his balls tightened up and his entire cock spat fire, and joy, and jism. His knees buckled and he banged his head back on the door. The man on his knees was holding him around his hips and his miraculous tongue was still working on him. Anson needed very badly, desperately in fact, to lie down. He felt shaky and tired, and wonderful but wondered what now? Suitboy had worked him over but good, and he was now a total wreck, but the other man hadn't come yet, and probably wanted Anson to fuck him.

Anson was so utterly tired he didn't believe he could even raise a smile. Fox stood up and pulled him in for another clinch, and once again the two of them shared breath and explored each others mouths as they kissed, long and luscious, sharing the taste of Anson's come.

"Fox, I really need to lie down. That was nice, it really was, but I need to lie down. Help me out here." Fox, clothes in disarray, smiled at his lover and led him through to a bedroom where a waterbed was the most welcome sight Anson had beheld that day.

Standing behind Fox, Anson nuzzled the silky hair at the back of his neck, slipping jacket and shirt both off his shoulders and letting them fall where they landed, Armani or no. For a short while he held the other man, fingers wandering over his chest to tweak a nipple, tug at the sprinkling of hair on his upper body, and stroke lean muscles while he nibbled into the man's neck. The man arched his head back to lean into Anson's shoulder, hands reaching back to pull his hips in against his buttocks, his silk clad behind rubbing against Anson's exposed, depleted penis. Anson reached around to unfasten Fox's pants, then slid his hands down inside them down his belly, and sent them slipping down to join the rest of his clothes on the floor.

He stroked along the man's cock, marveling at the apparent size of it. He was huge, and Anson wondered how it would feel... Well he guessed he would soon find out. As the thought passed through his mind, his own cock began to sit up and take note of its surroundings once again. He laughed softly and sat down on the edge of the bed to remove his own clothing. Finally naked, strong body exposed, Anson leaned back on his elbows, waiting for Fox to lie down with him. Fox stood awkwardly in front of him, penis throbbing forgotten as he gaped.

"Alex, your arm... How?" His jaw sagged, and he remained, frozen in place, bewildered until Anson snagged his hand and pulled him down to sit beside him on the edge of the bed, laying the palms of his hands on either side of the puzzled face.

"Listen, Fox, for the last time, I'm not your Alex. I wish I were, but I'm not." Anson gazed into the hazy eyes, trying to read the other man's expression and wanting, hoping against hope that it would not matter that he was not Alex.

Fox shook his head slightly, mumbled his lack of comprehension and leaned forward to claim Anson's mouth in a kiss that was gentle at first, and then desperate as they both got down to business, tongues twining, hands clutching and breath quickening.

Anson laid Fox back gently, hand sliding up and down from belly to knee, occasionally skimming the penis that bobbed there, but usually avoiding it by fractions of an inch. He was losing himself in the other man's kisses, thrills coursing through him as he nibbled and sucked on lips and tongue, reveling in the fact that he was wanted, needed. He was prepared to be fucked. He was looking forward to it as he played with the slim, supple body that was stretched out so invitingly for him. He was not prepared, even though his cock was stiff and drooling again, for the man he was kissing to spread his legs wide and beg to be fucked himself.

Fox appeared to be nearly out of his mind with desire. He was whimpering with need now, and Anson wanted him, he really did.

"Lube, Foxbaby, need some lube, or it will hurt you." He watched his words sink in through the desire to a plane where conscious thought still existed.

"Bathroom, in the cabinet." The words grated out as Fox tried to get himself together. Anson kissed him again, stroked the stiffness at Fox's groin once, twice, and then hopped off the bed and went to search out the lube. Returning to the bed he stood for a minute, and gazed down at the body that lay waiting for him.

"God, Fox, you're beautiful." He was opening the tube of KY, and filling his hand as he spoke. He climbed onto the bed and positioned himself between the other man's knees. Stroking his hand around he located the cleft between the other man's buttocks. Anson began to circle the small, tight opening there with his slicked up fingers, dipping his head to tongue the length of Fox's sturdy cock as he did so. Sounds of ecstasy came from Fox when his probing tongue reached the slit, and then swirled round and around the head as his probing finger slipped inside his ass sliding in and out. As he stroked and teased, Fox screwed his hands into the comforter and cried out.

Anson added more and more gel to the writhing man's anus, pressing his finger ever deeper before slipping in a second digit to stretch the passageway and delving to find the hard little gland that would escalate Fox's pleasure. His mouth descended onto Fox's cock and he sucked sharply. Fox cried out at that, burying his hands in Anson's hair as he thrashed his head wildly from side to side.

As his movements grew wilder and more spasmodic, Anson pulled away, using the gel to coat his own cock, which was by now sending out its own messages of need. He gently placed the head of it against Fox's loosened passage and leaned in, feeling the tip slide home past the tight circle of muscle. Gradually, as he rocked back and forth, the shaft followed until the whole tingling length of him was buried as deep and as tight in the other man's sweetness as it was possible for him to go. He pushed in, rocked back and pushed in once more, watching the man he was fucking bite down on his lower lip and throw his head back, exposing his throat. Anson leaned down to suck on that inviting throat, and elicited a choked response from Fox, who appeared now to be at the point of explosion.

"Come on Foxbaby, come for me. Come for me. Feel it going in deep. Oh, Christ you feel so good." Anson was babbling again, his hand, slippery with gel, circling Fox's dick, pumping it again and again as he thrust in and out of his ass. Fox was looking up at him with glazed eyes, whispering incoherently as he approached his climax.

When Fox came, Anson felt the whole of his body stiffen, clamping down tight on the cock that was embedded deep inside him. Sticky white ropes of semen sprang from his cock to splatter them both, and the sight of Fox in extremis, coupled with the rippling, pulsing channel that gripped him tight sent Anson driving in hard as his own orgasm hit him. He felt himself flowing out, sparkles and prickles of exquisite feeling funneling through from the base of his spine to spurt wildly into the spasming Fox.

Fox reached to pull him down, pressing their mouths together while he held him tightly. As they relaxed into each other's embrace, Anson was probably as happy as he'd ever been in his life.

Fox finally dragged himself up from the bed and stumbled off to the bathroom, returning with a warm, damp clothe and a towel with which he began to clean away the sticky after effects of their lovemaking. Anson lay sprawled and sated as Fox tended to him, unable to do much more than pant as his lover gently toweled him dry.

I really wish I were your Alex, Fox. You're quite the guy. He's lucky." Fox had dumped the washcloth and towel down beside the bed, and now he pulled back the covers, climbing inside. He gestured for Anson to do the same.

After a minute or two wrestling with his conscience, he scrambled into the bed next to Fox, who immediately took him in his arms, briefly pressing his lips to Anson's ear before snuggling up against him.

"I don't know about that," Fox said wryly. "I do know that I'm damn lucky." He studied the man lying in his bed. "So," he smiled, "who the hell are you?"

Anson flinched at the question, choosing to ignore the smile. He'd seen too many just like it not to know that it didn't mean a damn thing. He hurriedly got out of the bed, figuring it was just matter of moments before he was told to get his clothes on and hit the streets.

"Where're you going?" Fox asked, surprised.

"You don't want me here." He avoided Fox's eyes as he cast about for his clothing.

Fox sat up. "I never said that. I only want to know who you are."

"Just a guy." Anson decided that was all Fox needed to know. No one had ever cared who the hell he was, anyway.

"A guy who goes home with strangers who think he's someone else? You do that often?" There was a laugh in Fox's voice, though Anson elected not to hear it.

"Look," Anson said, defensively. "I tried to tell you from the beginning who I was. If you didn't hear me, that's your problem." His hands were clenched into fists and he bit back the urge to hurt this guy for his rejection. Here was another in a long line of fuckers who'd used him and tossed him aside. He had been used, abused and cheated so many times that he had accepted it as the norm now.

"I don't need you to love me."

Fox frowned at the last statement and for the first time was aware of the tense, self-protective posture the other man possessed. As he looked into wide, angry green eyes, he saw something else there. It was almost as if Anson was in another place, reliving some past experience, fighting to maintain control.

"Anson," Fox tentatively reached out to touch the other man's arm, but was quickly rebuffed. "I don't know you. Tell me who you are. What happened to you?"

"I...I'm nobody...I'm not Alex...just some guy for you to fuck." His voice started to shake and Fox could see tears clinging to his thick, dark lashes. "No one's ever wanted me...I don't need anyone to hurt me...I never meant to..." The tears fell and Fox quickly moved to put his arms around the trembling man. Awkwardly stroking his hair and muttering words of comfort, Fox felt Anson relax slightly in his embrace. He had no idea what had happened to this stranger, but he felt the need to protect him, to save him from himself.

He rocked the man gently from side to side as he listened to him. The man was in obvious distress. Fox slowly moved him around to the bed, and with many soothings and promptings, managed to get him back under the covers. There, he rolled over to take him in his arms, murmuring gentle words that Anson could not quite make out, didn't want to listen too closely to. He slowly relaxed against the other man's slim body, feeling his tension draining away in spite of himself.

"Tell me about your Alex. He must be a terrific guy to make you love him like that." He was feeling sleepy and relaxed, and wasn't sure if he would be able to stay awake to listen but he wanted to be able to keep a connection between them for just a minute or two longer, knowing that, come morning he would be out of there. Knowing that he would likely never see this angst-ridden beauty again however tightly he was being held right now.

"He looks just like you. He sounds just like you, but he's lost his left arm. He used to be my partner until... " The unmistakable sound of a door being opened and then closed again made Fox curse and dive for his gun. Anson lay astonished, as Fox knelt, gun in both hands to steady it, and waited.

A man dressed all in black appeared in the doorway and surveyed the scene before him with a sardonic smile on his face. Anson, who was now fully awake, eyed up the newcomer.

"Well, I guess you must be Alex." He was smiling too. Just his shitty luck. He had really hoped to stay warm and cuddled up with Fox tonight. Now it looked as if it was all over and he'd better head back to his cold bed in the motel. Wasn't it always the way? Even love got fucked up when he became involved. Bad seed, now and forever!

The man in black stepped forward, his gun dangling negligently off his index finger. Fox, kneeling, still naked, tracked him with his gun as he moved.

"Yeah, I'm Alex," the man in black was speaking now, in Anson's own voice. It weirded him out to look at himself, to hear himself speaking. "Who the hell are you?"

Anson started to laugh. The whole thing was inexpressibly funny. Maybe he should have stayed with that leopard woman he had abandoned in the club. Alex tossed his gun down onto the bed and raised his right, leather clad hand, fingers spread in a placatory fashion. The left remained in his pocket. Fox gestured to him with his gun and he sank down onto the edge of the bed turning to Fox who still had his gun trained on him.

"Fox, who the hell is he?" Mulder's hands began to shake a little, and finally he lowered his gun, subsiding into a sitting position once again and turning to Alex.

"His name is Anson. HE kept trying to tell me he wasn't you but I didn't believe him. Can you blame me?" The two of them surveyed the still laughing duplicate who lay in the bed, his nakedness concealed only by the comforter. Alex turned to Fox.

"I thought you told me to leave. You told me that you didn't want me in your life. Now I find you fucking me by proxy. What the hell is wrong with you, Mulder? Make up your goddamned mind." He whispered his words, but they were so intense that Anson sat up, preparing to get out of the bed and find his clothes.

"Listen you, Alex. I didn't know he was taken. You're a lucky man. He's a knockout. In another world I'd stay and fight you for him, but it's you he loves. He couldn't stop talking about you. I'll go now." He threw back the comforter and swung his legs over to the side in preparation for getting out of the bed. Fox rolled over to him and caught hold of his arm.

"Anson, please don't go," his hand seized Anson's, bringing it back to his lips, and Alex looked from one to the other, his face inscrutable.

"Fox?" It was all he said, but it was enough. Mulder let go the hand he was holding, and sat, indecisive, between the two identical men.

"I don't know how to choose. I don't know what to do," he whispered helplessly. At that point it seemed that Alex came to a decision. He stood up, unfastening his coat. He let it fall carelessly while Fox gaped, and Anson gaped, and the two of them sat wide eyed watching, for all the world like two bunnies on a log.

Alex was unfastening his jeans now. Anson, staring, could see the man had mannerisms that set him apart and made him separate, doubles though they might be, physically. Alex had an arrogance that Anson could see shine through every move he made. He could discern it in the tilt of his chin, the way he held his head, every move he made. Alex, naked now, was unfastening his prosthetic arm, and every action he made was a dare.

He moved like a jungle cat, deliberate and graceful. Each move he made was as "In your face" as it could possibly be. Anson flicked eyes sideways to check Fox's reaction, and could see that the man was in total thrall as Alex walked around the bed.

Anson couldn't decide what was likely to happen. He was afraid that there would be a murder here tonight.

He was terrified there wouldn't be.

As Alex climbed into the bed, neatly sandwiching Fox between the two of them, Anson found his voice at last.

"I should be going. I need... " Alex raised a wicked eyebrow.

"Stay. Fox wants you to stay. I want you to stay. Let's help Fox find true awareness shall we?" The smile Alex had on his face was pure evil., and as Anson watched, he threaded his right hand through Fox's hair, pulling the still wide eyed man in and devouring his mouth, bending his head back as he kissed the full lips. Anson watched, fascinated. He could see how the man named Alex would be at a disadvantage for lovemaking, one armed as he was. He deliberated for a minute, then reached out to circle and pluck at the nipple closest to him as he watched Alex lay Fox back amongst the pillows, continuing his assault on his mouth.

The kiss continued, and now Alex's hand groped and found Anson's, prompting it to slide down Fox's belly, inviting him to play too, urging contact with the cock that was now stirring, rising up with little, jerking pulses as the two of them touched and stroked him.

Alex's hand coaxed Fox's legs apart but it was Anson who ducked down to begin licking and suckling there. He licked the testicles that were slowly changing from loose, hanging sacs to ridged and fuzzy nuts. He took one into his mouth, gently, flicking his tongue over it, and then switched, alternating between the two, and feeling Fox's excitement mount.

Alex had taken one of Fox's legs and pulled it back over his hip, and Anson could see the little pucker of his ass still gleaming with the lubrication they had used earlier, leaking droplets of semen. Alex now lay behind Fox, long body pressed against him as he suckled on his mouth while his hand wandered over Fox's chest and his stiff, glistening prick pressed up against the cleft between the cheeks of Fox's ass.

Anson drew back from his position between Fox's thighs, reaching for the tube of slick and stroking it liberally onto Alex's hard-on. When he was satisfied that he had covered it completely, he took hold of it, guiding it to the opening there, pressing until Alex began to sink inside. Fascinated, he watched Alex's cock disappear inside Fox's body, then he stooped again and took Fox's now rock hard erection into his mouth. First he licked the head, and then as Alex reached the deepest penetration possible, he sucked the whole of the cock into his mouth, groaning as it filled his throat.

Alex was moving now, fucking Fox, first gently, but getting harder with each thrust. Anson was holding Fox's hips steady, denying him movement while he sucked steadily at him. His tongue fluttered against him. He could feel the little spasms running up and down the shaft that suggested imminent orgasm, and pulled off, laying a hand on Alex's hip.

"Stop!"

Alex gave a snort of laughter and ceased his rocking movements, stroking Fox's cheek and neck over and over, still maintaining the kiss which he hadn't broken once yet. Fox was moaning, clutching at Alex's thigh with one hand buried in Anson's hair. And as they paused, waiting for his excitement to subside, he began to whimper.

Alex finally broke away from the kiss, nibbling around Fox's mouth as he did so, and then transferring his attention to the shaded hollow between neck and collarbone.. His tongue began to flick over the tender spot and Fox, head thrown way back, began to whimper again.

Please, please, please... " He was begging now, gasping out his need as the two of them watched him, four green eyes enjoying his agony. Alex gave Anson a grin and a wink, and then mumbled into Fox's ear.

"You want us, baby? What do you want us to do to you?" Fox was finding it really hard to get his thoughts together, but eventually succeeded in finding his voice.

"God, Alex, please, I want..... I need.. oh... fuck me, please."Alex bit sharply into his lover's neck as he sank back inside him. Anson, took his cue from the one armed man, licked the length of Fox's cock, then nibbled delicately at the crown, tonguing the slit, licking around the ridge there, and driving down onto it to swallow it whole.

Fox was making little mewling sounds, and Alex's eyes had glazed over as he moved faster and faster inside him. Anson reached down between his legs and began to probe Alex's ass, all the while sucking on the sturdy length of the cock in his mouth.

Fox broke first, pumping into Anson's mouth as he came, and gasping out who knew what words. Anson's finger was now inside Alex, stroking that little gland repeatedly, as he watched his double ram into Fox again and again. It was the work of only a few more seconds before Alex cried out. Anson watched his balls contract, felt the clamping of tight muscle around his finger, and heard Alex yell something in a foreign language as he convulsed. Anson rested his head on Fox's belly, idly stroking Alex's back and behind as the three of them finally collapsed into satiation.

After another minute, Alex tugged on his double's arm.

"Come on up here, I can't reach you." Anson slid up to lie alongside Fox, who was looking flushed and completely depraved. Alex reached over to stroke Anson's cheek.

"I guess tomorrow we have to talk, but for now I gotta say that was a truly amazing experience." Alex leaned over Fox, who appeared to be completely comatose, and kissed his double gently before the three of them crashed, and sleep claimed them.

The dream came, as it always did, and he woke in a sweat, tears on his face, crying out as the image of the gun in his mouth and he just a little kid scared him for the thousandth time. He knew the dream so well, but this time there was comfort.

He felt the warmth of arms slipping around him, and hands soothing on his skin.

"Hush now, it's okay. We're here. You're safe now," and it was the man named Alex who moved until Anson lay between the two of them. When he drifted back into sleep again it was for the most part, dreamless.

He woke in the morning to the feel of lazy hands wandering over his body, and recalled awakening in the night. The man called Fox was snuggled up against his side, drowsily caressing him while Alex lay to his right, idly tracing his features with a forefinger, bending from time to time to brush him with his lips or taste him with a flick of his tongue.

He opened his eyes to see his own face hovering over him, his own face, sleep-softened and wondering, dipping down to kiss, or nip, or lick. He felt as though he were still dreaming, though if that were the case, please God may he never wake up.

Warm and languid, Anson felt the two men he was with exploring his body, and sighed. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this good. He tried to turn himself a little, and Alex's husky voice floated through layers of velvet to him.

"Don't move. Let us do it. I promise it will be worth it." He suddenly felt a thousand times more awake, glass daggerpoints of visceral excitement suddenly pricking him as he thought back to how he and Alex had played with Fox. He wondered what they were going to do to him. His cock was tingling and he felt Fox and Alex join their hands together as they slipped down to find his erection and then, their fingers entwined, to clasp it carefully, pumping slow and warm on him. The slow stroking spun sensation through the length of him as they moved deliberately up and down. Anson moaned, eyes fluttering, closed with pleasure. He moaned again as mouths fastened on his nipples, sucking them in between sharp teeth and then lashing them with supple tongues. His hips were beginning to move back and forth as the things they were doing to him took a hold. He was in heaven.

Anson lifted his head again to study Alex's face, so like him, and then Alex swooped in to kiss him, tongue slipping in neatly to explore, the taste of him sweet and urgent as Anson began to learn the crevices and secret places of him. Anson gave himself up to the mouth that was intent on mapping his contours, stroking against the tongue that was exploring his mouth. He felt Fox slip down to his groin with a small chuckle, and then a shiver went through him as Fox blew on the head of his cock.

"Payback is a bitch, baby. It's your turn now," and wet velvet engulfed his cock, making him convulse, bucking his hips helplessly as the heated, slippery mouth drew him in.

The spiral of time stretched out, and Anson lost himself in the wild sensation of slithering, quicksilver hands on his sensitive skin. He gave himself up to searching mouths and fingers and lay back. When Alex raised him and scooted in close to press his cock home inside of him, he permitted it with delight, feeling the sting and burn of the stretch as the other man slid home. When Alex heaved him up to lie on him, spreadeagled like a sacrifice on an altar of flesh, Anson went gladly, legs parted to allow the man beneath him as deep an access to his ass as he could take.

When Fox climbed astride him and sank down on his distended prick, Anson tried to take Fox in his hands, but was so uncoordinated by then that Fox merely chuckled. He swatted his hand to one side as he began to pump his own cock, throwing his head back as he rose and fell on Anson.

All he had to do was lie there and respond. All he was capable of doing was feeling the rapid build up of pleasure as the two men made love to him. It suddenly came home to him just how tired he was, and just how much he wished he could find love like this for himself.

A vision of his mother standing behind his hated stepfather while he ranted and raved at him, floated up and he sobbed, knowing he was bad seed. Knowing that he didn't deserve love. Knowing he should expect only punishment and hatred. He sobbed, and Alex, who had released his mouth only so he could suck on his neck and funnel a knowing tongue into Anson's ear, tightened the arm he had draped around him.

"Come on, baby, you're so close now. Fox wants you to come. I want you to come. Let it go for us. Let it all go." The sound of his voice, sensual as fur on Anson's desperate ears made the tingling in his skin more intense, and he sobbed a third time as he came. Fire ran down through his nerves to build in his balls until his cock exploded in a white flash. Alex was tight within him, filling him, and Fox, astride him, surrounded him, both contributing to the sensations within him that were a pleasure so intense it was almost pain.

In slow motion, he watched Fox milking his own cock as his come spurted over the two of them, and then Alex, who had been cramming himself ever tighter into Anson, finally groaned and came, arm tight around Anson as he pumped his semen deep inside him.

He lay limp and sated as Fox slumped down to one side of him. Alex was not moving although Anson could feel the pounding of his heart as he recovered from his exertions.

"Jesus, guys, you make me wish I could stay here forever." Anson spoke wistfully, mind roaming back to the hotel room and the loneliness he would be returning to once the night was over.

"Why don't you?" The question came from Alex, and at first Anson thought he had misheard.

"Why don't I what? Go fuck myself? You guys were meant to be together, I can see that. I don't want to be in the way. I'll go." Alex summoned enough energy from somewhere to roll Anson off him, he and Fox turned in towards him, cuddling up to him as he lay in the middle.

"I don't want you to go. Fox wants you to stay too. You're outvoted, baby." The voice was surprisingly tender.

"I'm bad. I've always been bad. If you knew the things I'd done... " he left the sentence half finished as Alex started to laugh and Fox put a hand over his mouth, spluttering with laughter himself.

"Jeez, you can't imagine. You're talking to Alex Krycek here. There's nobody in the universe badder than Alex." Fox's smile was the kind that would light up a Christmas tree all on its own.

"So you'll stay with us?" Alex had stopped laughing and his voice was in deadly earnest now.

"Oh, God, yeah, I want to. I don't see how it's gonna work but I'm willing to give it a try." Anson's eyes were damp, and he blinked repeatedly in his effort to stay apparently unconcerned. Fox, however, his own eyes bright, gave a lost little moan and flung himself onto Anson. The three of them clung together, happy, each lost in his own thoughts. Alex suddenly got a grin on his face that appeared to go round his head twice.

"Hey, Anson, can you cook?" Anson considered the question before replying.

"Yeah, some, why?" Alex grinned maliciously and tousled Fox's hair.

"Because Fox here can't boil water without burning it, and I'm starving."

3: The Fuck-up Fairy

Waking up in Fox's bed, snugly sandwiched between two, count them, two gorgeous guys was more than Anson had ever dreamed of. These two men he had found were not just fuck-fantasy materials. They were amazing people, and what's more they wanted him. That astonished him.

He had it all. Didn't he? Money, the best sex ever, and acceptance, even something that seemed to be rapidly approaching love.

So why was he scared shitless? Why did he awake every night in a screaming panic? Why did the night press around him like a pillow on his face? It gave Fox a bad temper and caused Alex to grumble that they needed a bigger apartment, one with two bedrooms. The two of them had tried to alleviate the nightmares for him, but nothing had worked. His lovers cared, but their nerves were fraying, and he was scared. What was it that caused his bad dreams?

He didn't know: didn't want it to happen: was just plain miserable when all too frequently it did.

By day he was working. He'd recently got himself a job on a construction site and was bringing in good money. Fox and Alex both seemed to want him around, and he was... He was...

Happy?

Afraid to say the word to himself and that was the problem. Happiness was not his favorite word. His life had dealt him a lot of blows, and he was afraid. Whenever he'd given love to anyone in the past, the person to whom he'd given it had betrayed him, leaving him alone, bereft and hopeless. His mother had been the first in a long line of betrayals, and he was still hopelessly confused about that night - the night when it had all started, and he had begun to slide towards hell.

Taste of cold steel, oily and rancid on his tongue as the voice played over and over in his mind. You did it to her, Anson. You did it, and you're just plain bad. You have to pay, Anson. Bad kid! Bad seed!

He'd gone through his childhood in misery, dislocated from a - family who knew he was bad, eternally hovering, shy and truculent, on the fringes of where he had longed to be.

Anger and hostility were so easy, so simple. They were old friends, tested and true, and they never let him down. Actually, they always let him down but he had lived with them for so long that even though they hurt, they were comfortable because they were familiar

From a big-eyed waif he had grown into a sullen teen. They had all turned their backs on him, one by one, the counselors, the teachers and the Sunday school ladies. They had all faded away as their initial interest died. They discovered one after another that his looks were a stereotype, and that beneath them lay depths of fury that would have taken far too much effort to disperse. Eventually they left him alone, and Anson dragged himself up learning petty thievery as a means of punishing the fuckers who had hung him out to dry.

The world didn't care, didn't give a flying fuck, and you'd better believe that, baby. The hazy blanket that covered the thoughts of his past became a shield behind which he never looked. He never tried to flip it back and see the extent of the damage that had been done to him: he was afraid of what he might find. His confusion was all encompassing. He didn't know who he was, or from whence he sprang. He felt like a puppy, given for Christmas and turned out to fend for itself when it grew too large, too hungry for the convenience of its owners.

He had been sexually aware for as long as he could recall. The things that had been done to him lurked like serpents beneath the cold calm of his conscious thoughts, and he learned to please. Every hot shaft that drove into his mouth afforded him temporary relief from the cold of that gun and the fear that it brought. He understood fear. It had been his companion through all the days of his childhood, even though he had suppressed it as he had come to maturity. His recall was hazy. He had been a child, but he knew, if you asked him, that his life had once been held at the point of a gun.

Small and helpless, he learned to pleasure others when they came to him. Desperate, he had found ways to stop them from hurting him. In the course of time, growing big, he learned to take pleasure for himself. It wasn't long before he discovered the easy tingle of casual sex and because he was beautiful and didn't care, he found out how to break hearts.

He was in juvenile court before he was 12 years old and learned little from the experience, only that there was no justice. His first visit to a jail, later, taught him how to pick a lock and gave him contacts to which he could sell his ill-gotten items once he was out on the street again.

He turned twenty-one, sullen and hating. There were no parties for him, no presents, and no coming of age. His rite of passage was the transfer between juvenile court and the full thing. Nobody was going to grant him the key to the city.

Don't need a key; there isn't a lock anywhere I can't unfasten. No need to invite me. I'll come by myself.

Then, in a tangle of sweat soaked sheets, anonymous as always, he gave himself his birthday present. Two sisters, willing to do anything, made him feel good for just the one night, made him feel wanted perhaps, just long enough to get him to sleep.

Of course, when he had the dream again the girls were quick to fade, taking his wallet full of stolen credit cards with them.

He told himself that he didn't care. Why should he? Easy come easy go, but he carried every grievance, and somewhere, in the dark time when he lay awake he cared too much, and it made him bitter.

He joined the Marines. He lost himself in the routine, and the brutality was nothing after some of the things he'd lived through, but he found it hard to make friends. He ended up in the stockade after a drunken brawl, once, twice and finally he was out. They didn't want him back.

Then he met her, and for a while, things were different. He thought he thought she was beautiful - pretty and blonde and very, very young, and wanting him. He began to relax in her presence. She wasn't just an easy fuck, and he found himself wanting to be gallant towards her.

He let her inside his defenses, just a little way, and knew, just knew that this was not like anything he'd ever known. She was kind to him, kind and interested in his dreams. His parched soul blossomed.

They married late in the year. Her family welcomed him cautiously, and he pretended that he didn't care when they slighted him. He didn't need them.

Their wedding night was something out of time. Outside was cold, biting, bitter wind, while inside, the two of them were warm as he held her at last. He'd been gentle for her, calm and loving as he tried to coax joy from her body. Sexually sophisticated, he was a novice in love, hanging on her breathy sighs, and losing himself at last inside her when finally he pierced her, loved her, and gave himself completely to her.

He did, he really did. He gave himself utterly and completely. The walls came down to expose the soft center that was Anson at the core of him, and it was wonderful.

He went, dazed, each morning to a job that was his gift to her, joining the mainstream of humanity as he worked to build a home, just as if he were the same as everyone else.

For a while they were content. He wanted nothing more than this feeling of belonging he had found. He began to think he had been redeemed. He was jealous of her, wanting to hear nobody speak her name, nobody but him. He even fought for her, punching the lights out from boys he thought might want her the way that he did. For a while she found that charming in him.

"You take such good care of me, Anson. I'll always belong to you."

Their first Christmas together found them in their own house. By spring, she was pregnant. Anson was a little scared at first, but he soon saw that she wasn't suddenly more fragile. He struggled manfully to deal with his beautiful girl growing puffy and stout as she whined her way though pregnancy, not wanting him, neglecting him even before the baby was born. He couldn't bear for her to be out of the house, in case someone else might come along and take her from him. If he had brought home a report card at that time it would have said 'does not share well."

He began to retreat into himself, not sure how to handle this rejection, believing that it would pass and that he would once more find his sweet lover. He had no knowledge of pregnancy, and couldn't understand the things that were happening to her. Everything she did seemed to him to be a deliberate rejection of him, and he was confused and hurt. He railed at her, demanding, unsuccessfully that she be his love once again. When she couldn't, or wouldn't, his moods grew dark, and sometimes he could see that she was afraid.

On the day that his daughter was born, he had spent the night on the couch. She couldn't stand him pressing up to her. It made her too hot. She didn't want his kisses. She was tired. Her back ached...

And finally he had taken himself out of her way, a beaten puppy, unsure of how he'd offended, but nevertheless relegated to the doghouse.

Waking in the brightness of a July morning at 5am, he had heard shrieks and raced upstairs to their bedroom to find her cowering amidst a welter of water, mucus and blood.

He'd held it all together long enough to make the drive over to the hospital where he had handed her over to obstetricians with white coats and attitudes.

Childbirth was a horror for him. Because of him, his beautiful angel was lying shrieking, sweat-soaked, bloody and bloated in this place. He almost vomited, but then rose to her need, sponging her face, murmuring encouragement while inside he cringed, afraid of what was happening and fearing it would never be the way he wanted it, ever again.

He thought that he might have ruined things forever.

At last the baby cried, and the sound set off something new, something primeval inside him. The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled and when at last they laid her in her mother's arms he was transfixed, stunned.

This was his. He was a part of her. Tears began to fall, unnoticed as he gazed at the crumpled little red face with its dark hair matted by the bloody reminder of the fight to enter the world.

He was entranced.

Meaningless speech flowed over him, through him, past him until at last they held out the baby to him. As he took his baby

my daughter

in his arms, he felt a surge of adoration that turned him weak at the knees. Nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing else existed. Not time, not his past. Nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the new family left the hospital to go home, things already wrong began to get worse.

His wife, his golden girl kept on whining. She didn't want him, wouldn't share her body, wouldn't offer him the comfort that he increasingly needed. He thought that there must be someone else, and that made him angry. Always confused, he became more so, more jealous, and more morose.

She accused him of not caring, of being inconsiderate, and he retreated into himself, believing her when she told him he was causing her pain. He learned to accept the crumbs of physical relief that were tossed his way, but he grew bitter, and many of his old habits returned. The old ways were harmful, but they were familiar to him. They were his retreating place when hurt.

Rather than face her accusations he stayed out more and more, returning sullen, smelling of cigarettes and booze. The only thing that kept him sane was his baby girl. With her he was gentle and caring, pouring out the love he needed to offer someone. He relished the games he played with her, his face lighting up when she threw plump little arms around his neck and pressed moist baby kisses to his stubbly chin.

She watched, disapproving as he and his daughter romped, deploring the games as unsuitable but failing to offer alternatives. She was always afraid of him. His potential for destruction sang beneath the thin surface of his barely civilized behavior. She never knew when he would snap, and the daughter he appeared to love might pay the penalty.

He took her out, lavishing attention, affection, all that he could on this girlchild who had become his unsuspected treasure.

Things were bound to break eventually. All his eggs were in one basket. He was too vulnerable. He began to get into fights, and there were phone calls to the house that ended abruptly if she answered the phone. A couple of times he failed to return home at all, and appeared late the following day, bruised and blood-sticky.

His loss came the following afternoon. He had returned home from work sweaty and dirty from an afternoon spent in the heat of the sun digging up the highway. He was looking forward to a bath and a shave, because he was due to take Annabel to a birthday party. Her best friend was turning four and she had a new dress with puppies embroidered on it.

Anson desperately wanted her to have a dog. He and his wife had fought long battles about it, the latest of them that very morning, and each time he had been vanquished by the bitter intensity of her refusal to entertain anything that he might want.

You know who'd end up taking care of the thing? I would. Who'd clean up after it? That's what I want to know.

and all he'd been able to offer had been but she wants one. Not enough, knowing that he would end up, dumb as a post, allowing her to have her way and feeling as if he was letting his little girl down.

So he came home, tired, a little dispirited, but on the whole in reasonable good humor until he reached the door of his house. That's where they got him. The man stepped off the porch as he arrived, handed him and envelope, thanked him and went on his way.

He turned it over in his hand, shrugged and opened it up. Then he stood numbly. Forsaken, bereft, devastated.

It was divorce. She was divorcing him. He was ordered away from his home. He was not to bother them without a judge's say so. He was to go, to leave, and to begone.

He stepped up onto the porch, and found three suitcases along with an old catcher's mitt that he'd been using to show his daughter how to play.

Opening up the suitcases he found his clothes, the odd book, videotapes and cassettes but nothing of his little girl. There was not so much as a photograph.

The scream he uttered began in his balls and wailed its way up through his gut. His soul was lost to him then. Raising his fist, he punched through the glass of the front door, laying open his fist amidst spurting blood. The two of them, mother and daughter, watched, big-eyed as he bled, and cried, and tried with shocked and fuddled brain to open the door and be a part of his family again. He was still there when the cops showed up and took him away. He was not to see them; not to think of them. They were gone.

As they led him away to the hospital 'for assessment'. He thought his life had finished. In a way, perhaps it had.

Anson went a little crazy then. He didn't care any more so he became reckless. The dreams he had held at bay for the last couple of years returned to plague him, and he tried it all in his efforts to forget.

He had almost been caught, had ended up in the stupidest standoff of his life. He had been arrested, and ended up holed up in a hospital with a bunch of loony-tunes. He would have been facing trial for murder even now if it hadn't been for the Beast. When the Beast had run amok, he'd seized his chance and gotten away. Nobody had noticed the young man hurrying through the corridors away from the hue and cry. Since then, he'd been running.

He'd stolen. He'd slept rough, he'd lied and he'd cheated. He'd fucked, and been fucked to make a dollar, and every stroke was a stab at the heart of the bastards who'd never given him a chance.

He was cunning. He was wild, and he was hopelessly broken, numb from the lash of fate on his back. There was nothing more to live for. The dream came every night 'til he no longer slept. Then, somehow, he'd found Fox, or rather, Fox had found him and brought him home.

The first days had been spent in a blur of sensuality and warmth as he got to know the other two. Fox was witty and sarcastic with his honest, yearning need for love and his crazy quest. Alex was a different beast altogether, brooding and quiet, with rare flashes of a mordant humor that made him double-take from time to time.

They were all damaged. It was impossible for him to tell which of them had been wounded most on their slide down the razor blade of life, but they seemed to want him, so for now, he stayed, having nowhere else to go.

Sex with the two of them was just about as much as his heart could stand. He was warm and dry, and his life was about as good as it could be without the little girl he knew he could never see again.

So what was it that made him so afraid? Why was he so shit-scared every time he opened his eyes? Could it be? Was he falling again? No! Not possible. He was dead inside and there was nothing left for him to give.

He had no trust left in him, and yet the days spun themselves by one by one, rich in comic relief as he and Alex bobbed in their orbit around Fox, Phoebos and Deimos, the dogs of war, united in their distrust of the world.

Fox would sit between them, one arm around each of them, telling them his hopes and aspirations, sharing all the complexities of his thoughts while he and Alex basked in the glow of his attention. Neither of them would say very much, but warmed to him as though they were sunflowers, following the light.

As he had promised, Anson cooked for them. Meals were simple and workmanlike at first, but as they praised him and cleaned their plates. He began to experiment, branching out into a host of cuisines, knowing that the other two would eat whatever he put before them.

It all worked perfectly well, so why, why, why did he wake up shrieking and sweating, night after night. They tried, his lovers, they both did. They tried to soothe, to comfort, and finally to probe. It was no good. He couldn't have shared, even if he had wanted to. He didn't know the answers to their questions himself.

There came a night when it all threatened to spill over, burst the bonds and explode. Alex had just returned from somewhere after a four-day absence. He never said where he was going, and they never knew when he would return. As a rule he would stumble in, exhausted, and crash for a day before taking his place in their strange triumvirate.

This time he reappeared just as Anson and Fox were finishing dinner. He was very bright eyed and talkative, not a state in which they were used to seeing him. Naturally they had clustered around him, trying to get him to talk about his mission. He had turned to Anson.

"Do you have a birth certificate?" The other man shook his head in denial. It had been left behind with all his other things when he had been forced out of the home that had been ripped from him.

Alex had smiled then, a much less malevolent smile than people usual saw from him, and reached to produce a number of papers, along with a couple of photos that he laid on the table.

Intent on slicing up cheese for the sandwich that he was making for Alex, Anson didn't turn around at first. It was only when he heard Fox exclaim that he came over, placing the food in front of Alex and glancing over to where Fox was frowning down at the pictures.

"How did you get these, Alex?" Alex shook his head at Fox, smiling as he took a huge bite out of the sandwich. His interest piqued, Anson moved to read over Fox's shoulder.

The paperwork was interesting, though to begin with he couldn't see what it had to do with him. It was the early history of twin babies, and chronicled their lives up to the age of five months, at which age the pair of them had simply vanished. Anson felt disquiet loom within him. He was uneasy, though he couldn't have said why. He wanted to push the papers away and retreat.

"We have to get you blood tests, Anson." Alex had stopped smiling and now leaned forward, suddenly serious as Anson shook his head dubiously. They were not going to let him retreat. They were going to take him with them, and he was afraid.

"What are you saying, Alex? That you think I'm one of these... these rugrats?" Alex stood, placing his half finished sandwich back onto the plate, and then stalked over to where Anson was standing.

Placing his hand on Anson's hip, Alex pulled him into a thorough, hard embrace, his lips moist and parted as he sought, then explored Anson's mouth. Anson, breath quickening, slid his arms around his double's shoulders, permitting the contact and opening access to his body in hopes of more.

The kiss continued, escalating until both men were moaning and writhing against each other. Alex's hand stroked up and down the length of the crevice between his two ass-cheeks, and Anson shoved his hips forward, grinding against Alex as the two of them embraced.

When at last they broke the kiss, Alex placed his nose to Anson's, and in a soft voice he said, "I think we both are."

Fox had been watching his two identical lovers as they kissed and nuzzled. Now he stood up and ran his fingers through their hair, one hand to each of them. As one, their heads turned towards him, and four speculative eyes studied him minutely, making his cock twitch and sending his blood pressure sky high at one and the same time.

"Alex, are you saying what I think you're saying? That you think that you and Anson may be brothers?" Mulder was pensive, sucking on his sinful lower lip in a manner that Anson found extremely sexy. It was plain that the prospect was intriguing to him.

It took a minute for the implications of what Fox had just said to sink in, then Anson felt the cold claws of panic sink into his shoulders.

Brothers? That would mean that he was not alone, but it would also mean that he and Alex were... Deliberately he inched forward and glued his mouth to Alex's, inviting the angry gods to smite him if they wanted.

As happened increasingly often these days, Alex and Anson got the same idea at the same time, and both of them turned to Fox, Anson dropping to his knees to slide thumbs inside Fox's sweat pants and hook them down to expose his rapidly thickening cock. Nuzzling in to lick and suck at Fox's balls, he put all thoughts of brotherhood gratefully from him as he sought anonymity in sexual activity. He knew without looking, that Alex would have his mouth fixed on Fox's, and he would be giving Fox one of those deep, intense, soul-shattering kisses that had always made him, Anson, weak at the knees.

Caught between them, victim of their double-teaming, Fox rapidly gave it up, moaning as Alex moved behind him to open his ass cheeks, slick him up and slide inside him. As Alex gave the long, shuddering sigh that told Anson he was inside Fox, Anson took hold of Fox's cock and swallowed it down, sucking him in past his gullet until he was down to the fuzz that sprang around the base.

Caught between the two, Fox shuddered and jerked helplessly. Anson sucked busily while Alex impaled their victim. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long before Fox came, pumping bitter fluid into Anson's mouth while he sucked, swallowed, and sucked again.

Alex's groan, and involuntary thrust forward came mere moments afterwards as he spent himself inside the man he had loved for years.

Standing quickly Anson caught Fox in his arms, supporting both of the two men as they recovered, kissing Fox's neck and then his rough cheek, finally covering lush lips and driving his tongue in to share the taste of Fox's semen.

The three of them stood for a few minutes longer as they recovered, and then gradually they began to turn to Anson, Mulder moving behind him to encircle his waist, and to trace small circles on the back of his neck with a hot, wet tongue.

"Guy's, hey, guys, it's okay. You don't need to..." The rest of Anson's words were muffled as Alex began a long, intimate exploration of his mouth, his hand buried in Anson's hair.

Sandwiched this way, Mulder carefully walked the three of them backwards until they were level with the couch, and once there he sat himself down, unfastening Anson's jeans to slide them over his hips and down his thighs. Leaning forward, he began to kiss and lick the tightly rounded, muscular ass, as he grew hard once more.

Reaching for the lube that was tucked down the side of the cushion, he began to stroke it into Anson, fingers probing deeper and deeper until his lover began to buck his hips sharply.

Alex lowered him down then, smiling at the expression of closed-eyed ecstasy on Anson's face, while Fox, half sitting, half lying on the couch, gradually slipped his cock inside Anson until he was pressed tight against Anson's back. His hands moved to pull Anson back until he was lying secure in Fox's arms, and then he began to fuck him, small movements of his hips at first.

Alex dropped to his knees between their widely spread legs and began to explore their inner thighs, their balls, and the site of their joining. A sudden gasp from Anson caused him to move to the tip of the dick that loomed before him, first licking, and then parting moist, pink lips to suck him inside.

Spread-eagled on Fox, Anson turned his head. Fox immediately began to explore his mouth with little licks and nibbles at his lips while his hands slid under the t-shirt to circle and pluck at his nipples.

Stimulated almost beyond bearing, he gave himself up to the slide and plunge of movement, feeling the hot swirl of Alex's mouth on his cock while Fox filled him deep and tight. He moaned as the building sensation glowed white hot in his balls, and he lost himself as the shocking sweetness of his orgasm exploded through him.

Alex's feral rumble as he drew the essence from him sent ripples of ecstatic electricity through him to bathe from the outside in with uneasy pleasure.

When it was done, and he was spent, Fox, always very oral, continued to kiss and suck on his mouth, his own movements getting sharper and stronger until Anson felt him discharge himself, his arms convulsing tightly around him as he sobbed out little words of love against Anson's neck.

Anson froze. This was something new. Fox loved him? That couldn't be right. Fox loved Alex, and Alex

was his brother.

Alex thought that they were possibly related. Anson's body flushed cold, and the blood pounded behind his eyes, beating hollow at his temples.

Too much. It was too much. He didn't deserve this closeness and he was afraid. He felt the fear like a living thing, stealing his breath and climbing with sharp claws the length of his spine. He thought of the photograph he had seen, of the twin babies side by side, and a sensation of panic descended over him. He could not...

With great astonishment, he heard a roaring in his ears, and blackness enveloped him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he came to, it was to find Fox cradling him in his arms while Alex hovered. He could dizzily hear them discussing him, but try as they might, he could make no sense of their conversation.

His head ached. Somewhere inside him he could hear the voice telling him "Bad seed, you'll never amount to anything." He had a queasy desire to vomit and his head ached.

Fox was still holding him close, and his expression was concerned. Anson put out a hand to touch the other man's face.

"Jeez, Fox, you care. How is that?"

Mulder's eyes darkened. Alex, who had been pacing restlessly, came to sit on the floor beside them.

"You asshole," he gritted, "We both care. Don't you?" and the voice in his head was whispering again. Don't believe them. Why would they love you? You're bad.

Helpless, he lay shivering in Fox's arms until Fox had finally turned to Alex.

"We have to get him help. There's something wrong. I think it's buried in his past. Something he can't even bear to face, much less deal with." Alex had nodded, pursing his lips in thought.

"It's something to do with the photo I brought. For some reason it's scared him. What can we do?"

The tenderness in Alex's voice was real, not imagined, and Anson lay still, part of him terrified, and part of him wondering why. Why would they love me?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Breakfast next day was quiet. Anson felt strangely dislocated from time, and had slept very poorly. The dream had returned again and again until he had risen and gone out to walk the night rather than keep his lovers awake. All three men were heavy eyed, and Alex was showing an alarming tendency to snap at anything and everything.

Fox was thoughtful, and Anson himself had retreated to somewhere inside himself where he didn't have to think, he could just be. None of them ate very much.

"I made us an appointment. It's the first stage." Fox's voice was almost apologetic, and at first Anson took no notice, sure that Fox hated him, but then Alex had reached over to take his hand, stirring him out of his waking sleep.

"We'll get you mended, baby." Anson darted wild eyes around, seeking shelter from the compassion he could see shining from the other two.

"Fuck off and leave me alone. I'm not broken." His anger, flaring out of nowhere, startled even him as he scooted his chair backwards thinking to make a run for it. The other two exchanged looks but said nothing further until their meal was over and the dishes put away.

Anson tried to fade away as the other two cleaned up, but somehow one or the other of them was always on hand to foil his 'melting' behavior. As the last item was stowed and the counter top washed, the two of them closed in on him while he froze, darting fearful glances at them.

"Time to go, baby." Again, it was Alex, normally silent unless he had something to say, who broke the ominous quiet. His voice was gentle, but to Anson's frayed nerves it was infuriating. He turned to deck the bothersome man, and before he had done more than make a fist, he found himself on the ground, Alex sitting atop him like Patience on a monument, a grin on his face.

"One day I'll teach you how to stop jerks like me from fucking with you, but not right now. Right now, we have places to go, people to see."

Anson glared up at him for a minute, and then relaxed, spreading his hands, palms up, in a gesture of defeat.

"Okay, you win, I'll try to play nice." Anson tried a weak smile on for size as Alex released him, standing up with the sinuous wriggle of his hips that was his trademark.

Nervous and disoriented, Anson allowed the other two to lead him out of the apartment and down to the car.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seated on the couch in Dr. Heitz Werber's office, Anson felt a cold sweat break out over him despite the mild sedative he had been given. The words Dr. Werber was saying to him flowed over him like rushing water, and he felt sick.

"I want you to think of a place where you feel safe, in a time where you were happy." Anson frowned, racking his brain in his attempt to recall a situation such as the doctor had just described.

He couldn't. After much prompting, he settled on Fox's apartment in the present day as the nearest thing to a safe place he had ever known.

He was feeling more and more disoriented. Though he could hear Fox speaking to him, he couldn't make out the words through the nausea that crashed over him in waves. Dr, Werber's voice boomed, hollow and slow, and Anson felt a strange dislocation.

Then he was suddenly back there. He was right back there with his fear, and his dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He heard a shot and then another, and sat up in bed. He was afraid, though he couldn't have said why. It was today that Mom was going with him to buy some new baseball duds, wasn't it? Only it wasn't morning yet and he didn't know what the bangs were all about.

He threw aside the bedclothes and climbed onto the floor. It was cold against his sleep-warmed feet, and he groped for slippers before moving to the door to listen.

There were sounds, a soft laugh and then a tinkling as though someone had broken a glass and was now sweeping up the debris. He headed for Mom. He had been forbidden her room in the couple of weeks since she had remarried, and heaven knows, he hated his step-dad for that. So he stood, uncertain at the threshold before deciding that he had to push it open and go in.

Standing at the head of the bed, he could see his Mom and his unpleasant new Dad too, but in the shadows, everything didn't seem to be quite right. His Mom had her eyes open, but there was no smile for him. She was unmoving.

Gerard, his newfound dad, of whom he was very jealous, lay beside her, and he wasn't moving either. Anson wanted to make him take his arm from around his Mom, but he couldn't quite get up the nerve to speak. He whimpered, his voice high and young.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in the room where the four of them sat, the doctor leaned forward.

"What can you see, Anson?"

It was enough.

"It's my Mommy, and Gerard. Mommy won't close her eyes. I think she's dead." The words came in a rushed, high pitched whine that made both Fox and Alex start towards him, intent on soothing him, helping him, anything to bring him back from this.

Anson whimpered again, locked in his vision, one hand rising to cup his ear, and the other to place a thumb inside his mouth as he shrank into himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He stepped forward to go and touch his Mom, to make her sit up and tell him that it was all a joke, a splendid funny joke and he should laugh. 'Look this is tomato sauce, not blood,' but now he could see, and he didn't want to...did not want to, that there was a hole in Mommy's head, right in back, and the bright curls were all gone and...and...

A hand fell on his shoulder, making him jump and then shiver. A quiet, deadly voice cut through the panic.

"Well now, this is a bonus."

A hand with a gun."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the room where Anson sat with his lovers, a thin wail of distress keened out, making the three men listening, sit up, and Dr. Werber say, "Anson, listen to me. It's all over and done with now. You need not be there any longer. Watch it only from your safe place."

He seemed to relax a little at that. Tears had streaked his cheeks, and were still flowing, but he made no move to wipe them away. Fox took his hand, stroking the palm gently as he tried to keep himself from breaking Anson out of this toxic memory. Only Alex prevented him, sitting behind Fox with his arm around Anson, soothing him with light touches.

"Anson, you're safe, safe in a place where no-one can harm you, and everyone loves you. You're safe, but now you can see what happened to you. Look through the window and tell us what you see.

Anson gave a hitch of breath and gulped. Then he nodded.

"What can you see, Anson?" Insistent, irresistible, demanding, the voice prodded him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The boy...he's afraid. He's so afraid. He knows his mom won't help him. He's seen this man before. He's the one... He gets the boy by the back of the neck and he... and he... " Anson choked suddenly, and sat, shaking visibly.

"Tell us, Anson. What does the man do?" Implacable, the voice came, battering Anson, who rolled his head from side to side against the couch where he half sat, half lay. Fox soothed, while Alex murmured encouragement.

"The... the boy is very scared. He wants to run but the man holds him, and he drags him to where his Mommy is, and he shows the boy the hole in her head, and... " Alex, normally stoical, blinked from suspiciously bright eyes as his brother continued, the tears running from his eyes as he spoke.

"He puts... puts th-the gun in the boy's mouth and... and he says to the boy, "You did it to her because you're bad, Anson. You're bad seed. She couldn't take you any more. It's your fault." And the boy, he's afraid. He didn't want to kill Mommy. He didn't, and he knows he's bad. The gun goes into his mouth and it tastes really bad, and when the man pushes it right into his mouth he's scared that it will make a hole in his head too."

Anson stopped speaking, and broke into deep, hiccuping sobs. Alex, his face set, moved silently around to sit beside him, and drew him into a firm embrace, holding him while he cried.

Dr. Werber's voice slammed into them like a juggernaut. "Let the poison out, Anson. Tell us what you see."

Anson's face was wet and shiny. His nose had begun to run now, and Alex, his face masklike and impenetrable was visibly restraining himself from putting an end to this.

Fox, head bowed, still clung onto Anson's hand.

Inside his dream, Anson watched his former self abused and intimidated; told them all in that scared, little-boy voice that he had been forced to stand there, looking at the bloody ruins of his whole life. The soft words had clogged his ears, and the gun in his mouth had caused him to lose it. He had wet himself, all control gone, and still the voice kept on. "You did it to her, Anson, you did it, you're bad seed, bad."

He told them of how, after the man had taken the gun away at last, and finally vanished back to the nether hell from which he came, he had stood, rooted to the spot, afraid to move while the urine pooled around him.

Through the remainder of that long night, he had stood holding his position, unmoving, and when the morning came they'd discovered him, small and defeated, his face set in a rictus of terror and his pajamas now merely damp.

They had tried to move him, tried to take him away from the charnel house where his Mom lay dead, and then he had fought them, his stiff limbs flailing.

All he'd been able to say when they came for him, and asked him what had happened, was "I did it to them. I did it. I'm bad."

Anson sat quietly, held close by Alex, while Mulder, tears rolling down his own cheeks, fumbled around, finally emerging with a tissue with which to wipe Anson's face. Nobody spoke. At that moment, nobody could think of anything to say.

They waited as the doctor gave Anson a check up and wrote out a prescription for the anti depressants and sedatives that he felt would be needed by the sad man-child he had just seen manifested. He attempted to persuade the other two to admit Anson into the hospital for further observation, but Fox was adamant that he should go home with them. He and Alex would take care of Anson themselves.

Dr. Werber, unhappy though he was, finally permitted them to leave. Medication seemed to have calmed Anson down a little, and he was now sitting, dull eyed but conscious, while the doctor discussed implications for his future. Fox was nodding, anxious to be off, while Alex, silent as was his nature, appeared to be listening to Dr. Werber.

Quiet at last, they took him home. He seemed to need Alex at that moment and they tacitly agreed that Fox would drive while Alex held Anson, soothing him and stroking him throughout the short ride.

Both Fox and Alex were appalled at the things that they had heard. Fox wanted to quiz him, find out who the hell it was that had killed the promise of the boy that he had been and crippled his life to come.

Alex held him, soothing, kissing, whispering soft and affectionate words in his ears, but from time to time he would catch Fox's impatient diatribe, catch his eye in the rear view mirror and nod.

If he could be found, the fucker would be punished.

Anson showed signs of sleepiness, and once home, Alex made him take the sedative Dr. Werber had prescribed for him. Then Alex led him back to bed, where the two of them undressed him, laid him down, and held him between them, stroking and soothing him as he sucked his thumb like the terrified child he had been.

Then he slept, unmoving, for the next 20 hours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waking the next day was a new experience for Anson. It was a gradual awareness of warmth and soft breathing, consciousness floating lazily upwards as he came to, and stretched luxuriously, cat-like in his enjoyment of the moment.

The other two were still sleeping, one to either side of him. Alex was on his right, buried under the blankets until all that could be seen were the short, feathery fronds of his hair above the white pillow. He lay with his back pressed against Anson in comforting warmth.

Fox, as usual, was wrapped around him. One arm was around his chest, and he had a leg loosely hooked into Anson's. Anson could see his face as he slept, his eyes flickering under their lids as he dreamed, his moist lips parted to reveal white teeth.

The happenings of the previous day rushed into overwhelm him. He could see the whole thing unfold now. How could something like that have happened to him and he not remember it? He couldn't comprehend. It had happened to him, and he had forgotten it somehow, that much was plain. He shuddered, eliciting a sleepy protest from Fox.

His first instinct was to banish it all from his mind completely, but then he thought for a moment.

That's what I've been doing all these years, putting it off, and meanwhile, somewhere out there is a man who killed my Mom... killed me too, to all intents and purposes. Wonder who I could have been...

A slight noise from his left made him turn his head, and he found himself gazing into grey eyes from which sleep was slowly clearing. Fox smiled lazily at him and tightened his grip over Anson's chest, pulling him forward until their mouths met in a kiss that was sweet, gentle, and promised things that Anson couldn't name, but wanted with all his heart.

Anson lifted a hand to cradle Fox's face, his lover's skin scratchy on his palm as he drew it softly over the rough skin.

Drawing back to gaze into sleep-soaked, tender eyes, Anson felt a thump in his gut that cranked his breathing up. Another kiss seemed necessary. He leaned forward and took it, morning breath and all, and then another, as he explored this strange new feeling that curled in his gut, seeming to squeeze his heart.

This man loved him, and scared as he was, he could live like this. He deepened the kiss, reveling in Fox's tongue as it slid and dragged against his own, while nimble fingers found sensitive spots to caress along his side, then his nipple, and then down...ohgodyes...down.

"Good morning, baby. Feel better?" All he could do was nod, feeling the crisp scratch of cotton sheets against his skin, counterpoint to the tweak and tingle of Fox's busy fingers as they danced over him. Fox's ministrations were rapidly inducing a spiraling rush of building pleasure that collected and pulsed in his body sending signals of the greater sensation yet to come flashing along neural pathways to suffuse him.

"F-feel good, really good, " he stammered out, and shivered as Fox rolled him over to lie on his side and slicked up his own penis. When he felt Fox's cock butting up against the tender bud of his asshole, he moaned, stretching out along Alex's strong back and bracing himself to push backwards. He gasped as the ready slide of Fox's erection impaled him, stretching him and filling him.

Alex, in front of him, squirmed back against his own hard and eager length, and Fox reached a slick hand around to play with Anson's cock, oiling it, pulling steadily on it until he could no longer hold back his moans of excitement. Alex, waking up to the feel of Anson's hand on his own shaft, wriggled into position, allowing Fox to center the dripping, throbbing length of Anson, and ease him into Alex.

He was heat. He was light. He was quicksilver, bursting through his skin with his every nerve on fire. He was a force that could not be contained as slick heat stroked the lightning in and out of him, tightening him, winding him higher and higher until he was helpless. He felt a gathering, and then at last an explosion on a rippling bright tide that streamed through him, flooding him while it made him believe that his heart was going to burst.

His hand on Alex flew. Scant seconds later, Alex moaned and spurted warm stickiness onto Anson's knowing fingers as Fox tightened his grip on Anson's hips and drove in hard, grunting as he came.

Lying limp and breathless as Alex rolled over to face him, Anson wondered how it had happened that he had finally had a lucky break. He didn't want to think about it in case it proved to be a dream.

He'd take it. He'd take it and run. Alex chose that moment to kiss him long, and hard, and oh, yeah, loving. He gave himself up to the moment.

Later in the day, the three of them sat together on the couch, digesting breakfast, and Alex - practical Alex - brought out the reports he had shown them previously. Anson felt his guts roil as he glanced through the papers.

"You think this is where I came from? Where we came from?" He asked, directing his wide-eyed stare at Alex, who seemed to be fascinated by the documents in his hand.

"Don't you see, baby? It all ties in. We're doubles. That doesn't just happen. There has to be some underlying cause. I found these in a search for my own identity. I've never known where I came from, only what was done to me. I want to know, even if you don't. I... I need to have somewhere to belong. I need explanations."

Anson's gaze met the eyes that were so like his. He read the soul that looked out from them and knew then that they were brothers, if not by birth, then by nature of the things that they had survived. Alex was as heartsick and battered as he was himself. He cupped the side of Alex's face with a gentle hand, and leaned in to kiss him, giving comfort rather than asking for it for the first time he could ever recall.

"It's okay, Alex. I'll help. I promise." The two of them sat, forehead to forehead, sharing a pact, lost in the resonance between their two souls as Anson saw loss, regret, hurt and hope in his lover's eyes, and understood.

Fox had stood back, taking no part in this communion, but he too understood. His face was full of sympathy and more, a keen and desperate desire to make things better.

Another soft kiss, and then they drew apart, returning to the study of the documents with more determination than ever.

"Where did you find this stuff, Alex?" Mulder's voice was the one that pulled them back to their task. Alex picked up the photo of the twin babies, appearing to be fascinated by it.

"I... uh.. borrowed it from the Consortium records. There were more, but I didn't have the time to get them. I may go back in sometime this weekend to try for the rest." Alex leafed his way through the stack, searching for only he knew what.

"The Consortium? What's the Consortium?" Anson's mild inquiry cut through the air, and Mulder began to explain the circumstances of his quest, his job, and how he had met Alex. At length, Fox led him over to his computer, sat him down, and booted up the files he had stored, leaving him to leaf through as he wished, while he, Mulder wandered back to collect the coffee mugs and go to make a refill.

Upon his return from the kitchen, mugs full of the fragrant stimulant in his hand, he placed one at Alex's side. He was as usual, sprawled on the floor, while he pored over his documents. Dumping his own mug on the coffee table, he brought the last mug to Anson, who still sat at the computer.

A quick look at his face made Fox forget the coffee and hurry over to see what the problem was. Anson seemed stricken, his face white and his breath coming in short, harsh pants.

"What is it, baby? Alex?" Fox was concerned. He placed a gentle hand on Anson's shoulder, and as he felt the tension in it, he stooped to encircle him, snuggling in beside his face.

On the screen was a picture of C.G.B. Spender himself, the Cancerman, and Anson appeared to be frozen, transfixed by the sight. Even as Fox began to talk, Anson was losing his fight to stay in control. He shivered violently and slowly curled up into a ball from which Fox found it impossible to arouse him.

Alex had seen what was happening, and run for the medication. His approach to Anson was brusque. With a quickly uttered 'Come on, Bud.' He took charge of the panicked man, and swiftly had him swallow the sedative. Finally, the pair of them sat beside Anson, one on each side, and held him. It was much later that he relaxed a little and lifted his head to fix his eyes on the screen once again.

"Cancerman... That's the Smoker I keep on telling you about, love. He's... " Fox's voice dwindled away.

"Him. It's him." The strangled croak from Anson had the other two exchanging worried looks. They knew that the Smoker was an evil man, but at this point they had no idea how he could have had any effect on Anson's life.

"What do you mean, 'him', babe?" Alex spoke softly, but there was that in his voice that made him sound dangerous even so,

"He..he's older here, but I know him. He speaks to me at night in my dreams. He was there that night. The one who... " Anson hunched down, hugging himself while the other two swapped speaking glances, subconsciously moving closer to him as he radiated distress.

For a while they made no further move, and then Fox said, "I think we'd better go and see him."

Alex nodded, a very sinister smile creeping over his face.

Fox turned off his computer, consigning the image of Cancerman to wherever such things go when the power is cut. Between the two of them, they managed to get the passive frame of their lover over to the couch, and sat with him for a minute or two more, while the pills that Alex had given him took effect. As he dozed off, they left him there and moved away out of earshot.

"The twisted bastard can't be allowed to get away with this, Alex. He's fucked up the lives of children. We have to do something." Mulder's eyes were flinty, and Alex nodded, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

"We'll do something, baby. The bastard's dead, he just doesn't know it yet. We need to get more information though. I only scratched the surface. There's so much more there that I couldn't get. I didn't have time. We need to go back." Mulder was nodding, his lips pursed and his hands on his hips as he planned.

"We'll do what we have to do, but you know what? I think that the Cancerman is going to meet up with our baby over there, and this time Anson will get the last word in." Mulder's smile could not under any circumstances have been called nice. The single word that Alex spat in response was not nice either.

They settled down to wait for the sedative Anson had taken to wear off.

A couple of hours later, Anson sighed, stretched, and then sat bolt upright on the couch. He seemed confused as he looked around him nervously, relaxing when his glance came to rest on Fox, who sat in the chair close by.

"Hey, lover, Alex and I are going to go visit with the Consortium types and maybe fetch home a little more information to help us get to the Smoker. I really need for you to stay here." Mulder's words were gentle, but Anson reared up.

"Hell, no! You aren't gonna leave me out? I've had a bum hand for all of my life, and I just found an ace. You gotta let me play it, Fox." Anson was twitching now with a sick energy that made his eyes gleam and gave Mulder shivers down his spine. He could feel the blood rush to his groin as he took in the sheer craziness that was being displayed before him.

"I don't know, baby. You might get hurt or something. Alex and I are trained..." Anson's face grew stormy, and then morphed into a grin that owed nothing at all to good humor.

"I was a fucking Marine, Fox. I can be as self-preserving as the next man. I took a course in exterminating civilians for fun and profit. You think I'm gonna let you down?" His posture was bristling with new, brightly minted anger, and he was obviously not going to stay at home. Mulder looked over to where Alex was lounging in the doorway, listening. Alex nodded and Mulder sighed.

"Anson? You gonna come with us and maybe lay these demons of yours to rest?" Fox asked. Even as he spoke, Alex had already gone to find his gun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some time later, the three of them stole into the Consortium's DC offices, courtesy of one time employee Alex Krycek. They had gone over routes and entry. They had each been assigned their role in the venture, and they were ready.

Alex's briefing had generated the basis of a plan, and now they were going to get the information that Alex had not previously had the time to collect the last time he had been here. The three of them were armed to the teeth, and there was a determination about them that they were not going to leave without the information that they had come to find.

Alex had drawn out floor plans, and timetables for the security guards. Then he had devised a means of admitting them to the building, using Alex's pass to admit them at a time when the place would be quiet. Now it was showtime.

Anson, who had been feeling almost euphoric since his emergence from the Fugue State, was now on a downswing. This wasn't going to be just an ordinary robbery. This was about his life. He didn't know if he could handle it or not. All he knew was that he had to do something or burst. Someone needed to pay. Someone needed to pay in blood. He was the taxman, and it was time to collect. He and his brother-he could almost say that now-were coming to claim back what was theirs. He was going to demand a reckoning, and payment would be bright red, spattered far and wide before he would feel it was enough. When he was finished with The Nightmare Man, the Cancerman, that bastard was gonna look like he had been juggling chainsaws. Anson could see it, smell the blood, he was jittering inside with the need to enact his vision. 'He had to do this, he had to do this, he had to do this... ' Was the mantra in his head now

The three of them arrived together, and Alex inserted a card with a magnetic strip into the door, keyed in a number, and then as the door slipped open, stood aside to beckon the others through.

Once inside the suite of offices, Alex held up one finger for silence, and listened for a minute before turning to lead the others down a corridor and through to another room that was lined with filing cabinets, and contained a workstation.

Following Alex, Anson had time to study and appreciate their different strengths. Alex, lean and graceful, walked on silent cat-feet, body sinuous as he prowled, black light in a negative world. Behind him came Fox, elegant and tall, looking as though he were striding through a political meeting, a half-smile on his face as he drank in his surroundings, gun held as casually as a bouquet. Fox wore jeans and jacket as if they were high fashion, his well made body lending a cachet to the simple clothing.

He, Anson, came last in the line. Last and, he thought, least, in his own eyes anyway. Sturdy, and quivering with barely controlled violence, each foot planted squarely as he moved, borrowing from his military experience for this wild ride on which he had embarked.

The last in, Anson closed the door behind him, and stood, head back, leaning against it.

"Now what?" His husky whisper seemed to roll like thunder through the tension charged air.

Fox took his seat at the computer, and Alex led Anson back through the room to where a cabinet was marked "Projects"

"Look under 'K' and 'G' for us in the personal files, or for references to "Project Tandem." You might find more about that over in that cabinet over there. It has all the project files in it." Alex glided quietly away, leaving the room and closing the door behind him just as the noisy dot-matrix printer commenced it's angry buzzing. Fox had evidently found something useful. The printer spat a skein of paper from the top.

Anson, spooked by the sudden noise, had dropped into a crouch with his gun extended. Now he relaxed and began to poke through the personnel files. A bulky file labeled 'Green/Anson #146b' was his first find, followed by another shortly afterwards that was labeled 'Krycek/Alex #146a'. A hunch made him check for Mulder's name, and he was rewarded with a large file designated 'Mulder/Fox #13a'. Did this mean he had a twin? What? He laid the file with his earlier discoveries, and moved to the place Alex had indicated earlier.

Try as he might, and he was certainly trying, he could find no reference to anything called 'Project Tandem', and he grew angry, throwing files down onto the floor and shaking with rage. As he was about to slam the cabinet through the wall, Fox materialized at his side, murmuring gentle words and reaching out to pet him, then drawing him close for a kiss while gentle fingers stroked and soothed him.

"Hush now, we're getting there. No need to worry, baby."

Anson growled, taking hold of Fox by the throat and bracing himself to shake him. Alex, who had been about to leave the room to go in search of something he had determined necessary moved back swiftly to Anson's side.

"Come on, baby. You don't want to hurt Fox. You love Fox. Let's get some stuff together, shall we?"

All of a sudden Anson found himself focusing again, really seeing Fox for what seemed to be the first time. He relaxed, still ruffled, allowing Fox to pull him in and hold him, finally whispering 'sorry' into Fox's mouth as their lips slid together in a kiss that curled his toes and made him moan. Alex left then, and silently closed the door on the two men as they held each other, kissing as though there was nobody else in the world.

Anson clung to Mulder as though the man were his last hope and when Mulder began to pull away, to go back and retrieve his printouts, Anson clung to him convulsively.

"Need you, Fox. Need you... Don't... don't let me go." Mulder sighed, pulled him even closer, waiting until the other man was back on an even keel, or at least as even as was possible for his poor, confused lover under the circumstances.

When Alex opened the door and ghosted in a minute or two later, it seemed as though Anson was now able to function once again, and Fox released him to go and collect his printouts.

As Anson quickly bundled spilled files back into the cabinet he caught sight of Alex's name on one of the files that he had strewn on the floor. Swiftly he gathered the leaves together and added it to his stash, before signaling readiness to the other two.

Finally, they were ready.

"The Smoker isn't here right now, but I know where he's gonna be later tonight. Let's take these and go through them. We can go and ask him about anything we don't understand later." Alex spoke mildly, but the other two could sense his deadly purpose, and the smiles they exchanged were not exactly nice.

Finally, as Alex checked the room and then his watch, he nodded to the others, opened the door, and they swiftly vacated the room, traversed the corridor, and left the building.

Once they were back in Fox's kitchen Alex collected together all the information they had gathered, spreading it out over the table. Fox had positioned himself behind Alex, and the two of them were carefully studying what they'd found.

Anson found himself drawn back to the computer and the Cigarette Smoking Man. The other two watched him covertly as he sat reading through the files again and again. It seemed as though he had somehow been entranced. The picture of the blandly smiling man had captured his thoughts entirely. He couldn't begin to guess why, only that he somehow needed this.

They left him to it then, allowing him to process what he had been experiencing during the past day or so. They appeared to be far more interested in the stuff that they had liberated from the consortium headquarters than they were in the behavior of their very disturbed love, but it seemed even so that there was always one of them at hand if he appeared distressed. He was paramount in their thoughts, and that was something that he was just beginning to realize.

"Alex, how come you never looked for this stuff before?" Mulder's voice was as ever mild and flat in tone, and Alex, who rarely took anything at face value, turned the question over in his mind before he addressed it.

"I don't know. I never cared before. It's just that now he's here." The chin indicated Anson, who sat brooding before the screen, locked in his own dark thoughts. "I've realized that they stole more than just my childhood from me. They stole a whole family, maybe even crippled us both forever. I need to know just why they fucked us up so badly."

Fox sat gazing at Alex, processing this speech. Alex had just bared his soul; something Fox didn't recall him ever doing before. Gently he put out his hand and stroked Alex's face. He had no words for Alex, but his love for him shone in his eyes.

Pieced together, the stolen documents told of a sad and cynical manipulation of two young lives. Selected for their genetic heritage, the two babies had been separated, placed in their individual, isolated programs, and taught, more or less from birth, to kill.

All had gone well for Anson until at the age of 8, the people he had thought to be his parents, had moved. His mother had not liked the turn being taken by his latest set of programming, and had run away from it, taking the boy Anson with her.

Half wild, possessing a number of skills that would be disastrous if beyond the control of the Consortium, it had reluctantly been decided to render Anson 'safe'. The enforcer who had been assigned to the case had applied a number of post hypnotic suggestions, arbitrarily separating the boy he had been from the man he would become. Then he had walked away. Reading the black and white of the things that had been done to Anson, the two of them sat aghast.

Turning to the files on Alex, they traced his story up until that same enforcer had issued a termination warrant.

Alex had been deemed too dangerous to live.

When Fox finally read the names of those who were responsible for the atrocities that had been perpetrated on the two boys, he broke down at last and sat with his face buried in his hands.

There had been many people involved in the crafting of what were to be two young killing machines, but there were two names that occurred over and over again.

One was the Smoker. That was no surprise. Mulder had always known him to be vicious.

The other name rattled in his head like wind in the bones of a hanged man.

Bill Mulder.

His father. His father had done this and Fox was ashamed now, ashamed of his genes. He was afraid to meet their eyes for fear of what they might read in them.

Alex waited patiently. Anson continued to stare at the screen, entranced. At long last, Fox lifted haunted eyes to Alex. The image of his father loomed like a rotting tooth in the face of his past.

"Did you kill him?" They sat, gazes locked for long seconds until finally, Alex nodded, yes.

"Alex, my love. Alex, what have I done to you? To Anson? You must hate me."

Alex stood, moving around the table with predatory grace to stand next to Fox. Stunned grey met burning green as eyes still clung. Alex seized Fox's shoulders, digging long fingers into them in an almost painful grip.

"This is not about you, Mulder." He was close to shouting, and for a brief second, Anson made as if to rise and come to his assistance. Both Alex and Fox paused, trying to radiate confidence that neither of them felt. Anson seemed reassured and returned to his contemplation of the screen.

"The sins of the father's... Is that what you believe, Fox? Are you to blame for the person your father was?" Fox sat unmoving. "Well, ARE you? Alex's voice was louder, and he shook Mulder.

There was another pause and then Alex forced Fox up out of his chair, pulling him into a fierce, tight embrace and clashing teeth at first, so eager was he to kiss him. He finally succeeded in sealing his mouth to Fox's, and bruised their lips with the intensity of their kisses.

When Alex finally released him, Fox stood for another minute more before pulling him back to hold him tight, laying his cheek against Alex's while he whispered over and over, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, baby, me too. Now, enough with the talk, I'm ready to do some damage." Alex was curt, and Fox made a face as he released that he was going to have a pair of wild creatures to control should they find the CSM.

Alex's response was to kiss Fox again, hard and bruising, until he could feel shudders running through Fox's body, and knew that he had, temporarily at least, allayed Fox's fears.

A thought occurred to him and he gestured with his chin, indicating Anson who was still strangely immobile in front of Fox's monitor.

"Are we gonna tell him?" He waited for Fox to consider, brows together as he thought the effects that their new knowledge might have on their disturbed lover.

"He's fragile at the moment, poor baby, he's been through so much. I think we have to though. It might help him come to terms with things, and besides, how would you feel if we kept this from you, love?" Alex nodded and then kissed Fox, softly this time, as he attempted to show through his actions, feelings he didn't feel capable of putting into words. Finally breaking apart, they turned as one to go to Anson.

Anson wasn't sure how he felt. The urbane smile on the face of the Smoker held him in thrall and he couldn't look away as he remembered.

He sat, muscles locked, every breath an effort as the nails on his fingers broke the skin on the palms of his hands and blood trickled, unnoticed, onto his jeans. The snake had mesmerized him. He knew that he would die. He sat, making small sounds of distress, the boy within him unable to get away from this image he had always known would someday return to claim him. Twice, Fox called his name but failed to register with him. It was only when Alex reached over his shoulder to turn off the monitor that Anson came up out of his seat, poised to fight until at last he noticed that it was Fox and Alex standing beside him.

"Come on, Anson. We need to go over some stuff with you." Nodding after a moment's thought, he allowed them to lead him over to the table and sit him down. As they laid the facts before him he found himself silent, brittle as anything, crackling with an unseen but still menacing energy as he nodded and smiled by rote. Alex nodded approvingly at his brother. He appeared to be doing well for a man who had seemed so incapacitated only minutes before. It was time he learned the truth at last.

The truth... He had been separated from his brother as an infant. The woman he had thought of as his mom had been a Syndicate psychologist, and the father he hardly recalled, who had put him through so many harsh and daunting lessons in his infancy, and who he had seen so rarely had apparently been Bill Mulder. The lessons he had been forced to learn as a baby were only now beginning to return to him as his tortured brain attempted to make sense of what he believed his life had been. His mind was reeling. It was too much. He would process this later, if he could. For now, he would wait, and his emotions would wait with him.

The mother had had some difference of opinion with Mulder senior about the reinforcement schedule they were using for her project, the boy that was believed to be her son. She had distracted the attention of the people in charge of the project and vanished from the DC area when Anson had been only 5 years old. She had taken Anson with her as insurance.

She hadn't known until the day that a bullet blew her head apart that the Syndicate didn't tolerate those who said no to them.

Anson had been terrorized into madness, or as the papers spread out before him said 'Project Anson had been satisfactorily wound up.' Then he had been cut loose to swim - or sink - on his own. The enforcement arm of the Syndicate had reached out and crushed him, and it had worn the face of C.G.B. Spender.

He received the news quietly, sitting at the table, while his brother...

His brother!

...Watched him carefully. He reached out for Fox when his lover began to murmur apologies and attempted a smile. He didn't know if it worked or not. He couldn't tell from Fox's face. He groped desperately for something to say that would make Fox stop, leave him alone. He was losing himself inside the morass of emotions that were looming, large and scary. He was sinking. He couldn't cope.

" I love you..." He was suddenly quiet, round eyed at his own words as he realized what he'd said. When he lapsed back into silence, the others weren't even slightly surprised.

They had moved on then to talk of a visit to Spender later in the evening, and Anson, though a little quiet, seemed fine.

At some stage, Anson had made dinner and after they'd finished, Fox had gone out for a run.

Alex fished his Stoli out of the freezer and poured a couple of hefty slugs, carrying them through to the living room and parking himself on the couch. He and Anson sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, then Alex turned to Anson.

"I'm... I'm glad I have a brother. I've always been so alone." He fell silent again.

"It's all different. I don't even know who I am." Anson sat, hunched in on himself as he spoke. His eyes were black, and inside him chaos roiled.

Alex turned to him, suddenly fierce. "You're mine. Hear me? My brother, that's who you are." And he reached out to pull the other man against him, distress evident in the jerky movements that he made.

Feeling Alex pressing his face against his shoulder, Anson gathered him into his arms and they sat together, silent, sharing comfort as each drew something from the other.

Feeling Alex's shoulders quiver Anson was suddenly amazed. Alex was so strong as a rule. Alex had always been unbeatable, unflappable. It hurt to see him vulnerable in this way. Anson dropped a kiss into his hair.

"God, Alex, they fucked us up. They fucked us up so badly," he said, and then he cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Fox returned from his run it was to find the two of them sleeping, their arms about each other.

Noting the reddened eyes, and looking at the picture they made, Fox's heart went out to them. He checked his watch, and then took a seat in the chair opposite the pair of them, admiring the picture they made while he thought the whole thing out.

As always, Alex seemed to know that he was under observation, and Fox saw the cautious way he opened his eyes, checking through luxurious lashes first, before he revealed his awareness. Fox smiled.

"You are who you are, baby, and I love you. That won't change. It can't." Alex gave him a wan smile and stroked Anson's shoulder.

"I've got a family. I never knew I needed one 'til now." At that point, Anson woke up, grumbling a little until he realized where he was, then his attention changed.

"Are we going after him now?"

The three exchanged looks that were meaningful, feral as they chewed over their hatred. Alex was the one who voiced things for them all at last.

"Yeah. Let's go and ask him some questions."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was close to 11:30, and M Street was deserted as Alex led the three of them to the door of CSM's in-town residence.

They'd watched from the shadows and seen the man return a scant 20 minutes earlier

It had taken the two of them to hold Anson back from diving on him even as he stepped out of his chauffeur driven limousine. Anson, his face set and mutinous, was dancing like a boxer, and even now, Fox was holding his arm in an effort to get him to stay calm.

The lock yielded to Alex's ministrations, and the door swung open to reveal a dark staircase. Pulling the others inside, Alex gently re-closed the door and they stood, listening for any sounds from above.

The CSM's voice reached them as they stood silent, and Alex laid a finger on his lips to caution their silence, and then indicated the 5^th stair. That one was the one that carried the alarm. They had already been told not to step on it.

At the head of the stairs, the three of them composed themselves, readying weapons that they had checked and rechecked repeatedly in the last hour. At last, taking a deep breath, Fox placed a hand on the doorknob and turned it quietly.

As he pushed the door open, the three of them burst through, guns bristling angrily. As they looked around to locate their adversary, all three of them wore such expressions of hatred on their faces that it seemed as though the object of their hate might spontaneously combust when he finally saw them.

He had shed his jacket and loosened his tie, and was sitting in an overstuffed armchair, in the act of removing his shoes as he spoke to someone on the phone. He raised his head at their entrance, and for the first time Fox could recall, his face showed consternation as he looked beyond Fox to the two that stood behind him.

"I'll discuss it at a later date. It seems I have visitors." There was no perceptible fear in his voice as he wound up his phone call and replaced the receiver, but it could be seen if you knew what to look for. It was evident in the sudden sheen of sweat that beaded his upper lip, and in the flicker as his eyes darted between Alex and Anson.

Fox still held him at gunpoint, while Alex had dropped his hand to his side and stood, his face closed and watchful, to Fox's left. On his right, Anson's face wore a shit-eating grin as he idly spun his gun around and around on his index finger, his every inch radiating malicious amusement, his eyes holes in the fabric of rational thought.

The seated man was wide eyed for a lengthy moment before pulling himself together and smiling urbanely.

"I see we have a family re-union happening here. Is there something I can help you with, gentlemen?" The voice was calm as ever, and he reached over to the coffee table to gather cigarettes and lighter, pausing to tap on out of the pack.

"I'm sure you're really happy to see us together after all these years." Mulder's tone was diamond hard, and he stepped forward intimidatingly. The Cancerman jumped a little as the menacing triumvirate moved in closer, his eyes resting more and more often on the sniggering figure of Anson.

The other two were menacing. Mulder's face showed anger, and Alex's a stone-cold, implacable hatred. These two he studied and passed over quickly. He had seen their like before.

Anson was different.

True, he was smiling. True, he appeared casual. That was until you looked, really looked at him, and then you could see past the grin to the depths behind his eyes where there was evidence of a boiling emptiness that had no seeming boundaries, an emptiness that threatened to rise to the surface, devouring any humanity that might have been within him.

His body seemingly stood at ease. His weight canted loosely over onto his left hip as he twirled his weapon on long, loose fingers. For all his apparent nonchalance, he was coiled tightly, and his left fist was clenched. Mulder had one hand behind him, laid on Anson's arm as if to hold him back, but made no real attempt to stop him as he took a step forward.

"Hello, Uncle Charles, it is you, isn't it? Amazing that we should meet after all this time." Alex's head snapped to his right to gaze at Anson, his expression unreadable even now.

"Anson, how interesting to see you. You've surprised me." The Smoker's face betrayed nothing as he spoke, but as Anson stepped forward to stand over him, a flicker of something diseased, something uneasy, something that never should have been gleamed in his eyes, and was abruptly quelled.

Anson, who had until now been playing with the gun he was holding, allowed it to nestle into a suddenly steady right hand while his left hand rose to brace it. The grin had left his face, and his eyes, wide and set, glowed like twin gateways into hell. He had somehow transformed himself into a creature from elsewhere, and somehow, it was apparent that they weren't in Kansas anymore.

His face, white and drawn, no longer appeared human in the lamplight. The Smoker cringed back into his seat, cigarette temporarily forgotten as he peered from side to side.

"What did you do to us? Why?" It was Alex who spoke, and heads whipped around in unison to face him. Strain had begun to tell at last, and now he, like his brother, appeared to have come from some other dimension, one where pain and misery were old friends.

The Smoker licked his lips and a shudder passed through him as he raised his cigarette to his lips with a shaking hand.

"You must understand, both of you, that you were part of a plan to save the world. Your lives were nothing next to the needs of humanity. We only did what we had to do."

"You son of a bitch." It was Alex again, voice low and menacing. He glanced to the side, taking in the sight of his brother as he stood, gun trained and implacable, on the man in the chair. "What right did you have to play God? You stole my life. You stole his life as well."

The Smoker smiled somewhat sadly, and gestured at the three men.

"Please sit down. Let's discuss this like gentlemen. You were bred to be weapons, both of you, and raised as such. You too, Mr. Mulder, a weapon of a different kind. You must see, all of you, that you couldn't be allowed to run loose for the good of society. We had to have some controls or there could have been terrible repercussions for us all.

"You talk as if we were dogs or something." Anson spoke harshly, and there was a fury in his tone that seemed more deadly every second. "Who gave you the right to... to fuck us up like this? Are you God? Is that who you are?" The Smoker opened his lips to reply, but Anson didn't wait. Raising his gun with great care, he shot the old man in the left arm, part way between elbow and shoulder. "Well, I'm God too, and I say it's payback time for all the shit you've done to us. Alex lost his arm because of you. Let's start with that."

The old man had slumped back in his chair and was now raising a hand to the bullet wound, as blood quickly turned the sleeve of the white shirt to bright red.

Mulder had turned to Anson and now put his hand up to Anson's face, turning him to meet somber eyes.

"Don't kill him yet, love. I'm afraid we might still need him." Anson smiled savagely, putting another bullet into the smoker's arm before finally relaxing his fingers, twirling the gun once, and then thumbing the safety catch back on.

"I won't kill him this minute, Fox. I can wait. Ask your questions, love." Anson leaned forward, eyes glittering fever-bright, and reached out to cup the back of Fox's head, bringing their mouths together fiercely, sucking Fox's lower lip into his mouth to nibble as he slipped the gun back into his pocket.

Alex stepped forward then, hand out to dig his thumb into the wound that bloomed on the smoker's biceps.

"Where are our parents?"

Ragged voice and burning eyes filled the smoker's vision. Alex Krycek could have been a demon as he twisted his nails against the bleeding flesh. The Smoker screamed once, turned pale, and passed out.

Fox, who had been gentling Anson, turned to try and soothe Alex, who was now slapping the unconscious man's face, leaving bloody smears on the chalk-white skin.

Alex, love," Fox's voice cut into Alex's trance and he turned his head to look at Fox, his expression softening a little as their eyes met. "He's an old man and he's in shock. He'll die if we don't stop the bleeding. Then we'll never know the answers." Alex nodded curtly, and went to find something to bind over the wound, while Anson stood watching.

Leaving the brothers to try and staunch the flow of blood, Fox moved over to the old man's PC, and began to leaf through files, finally exclaiming and then delving beneath the desk to open the computer case and remove the hard drive in its entirety.

Alex had a bandage over the damaged arm now, while Anson had scooped him and taken him to lie full length on the couch with his feet elevated. Stepping into the adjoining bedroom, Anson brought back the quilt that had adorned the old man's bed, and tucked it around the old man's body before sitting back to await his return to consciousness.

As time passed, Mulder began to worry. He was about to reach for his cell phone to call Scully, when the elderly Mr. Spender moaned and opened his eyes, to find himself face to face with Anson.

"We've got plenty of time, but you haven't. If you don't get treatment pretty soon for that arm I expect you'll lose it. Amazing how single arms run in families, isn't it, Uncle Charles?" Anson seemed almost gleeful as he murmured, his husky voice caressing in a dreadful parody of solicitude.

"You know everything. Your birth parents are both dead, and you should both have been dead as well. We failed in what we planned. We had a weak link in Bill Mulder. He failed to follow through. When we sent you to kill him, Alex, it was because he had failed in the programming of the two of you. I suppose it's fitting that you think you can kill me too now, but because of me you two are still alive now, aren't you?" The old man gasped, his lips bloodless as he looked up at twin pairs of frozen jade eyes. "Your parents are buried together. They died not long after the two of you were taken from them, but they knew that you were never theirs. They knew that your genes were all that mattered. They were put together for the sole purpose of creating you. I never could see what their problem was."

Mulder had by this time removed the hard drive from the computer and strolled over to listen to what the Smoker was saying. As he did so, the brothers turned to him, identical stricken looks on their faces.

"What did you do to them?" Fox's voice teased tension to new heights.

"I did nothing. Why would I? They killed themselves. I should have known that they were weak, and that their weakness would be passed on. We should have aborted the program right then and there, but we'd sunk so many of our resources into it." The Smoker paused, coughing a little, and then cringed as he saw the expression on Anson's face.

Anson was fumbling for his gun once again, murderous rage on his features. As he brought it up to point at the Smoker's forehead, the old man started to speak again, this time to Alex.

"Your arm, Krycek. I know how we could give you... "

The noise of the gunshot punctuated this last, harsh attempt to buy time, and then a bloom of red appeared between the Smoker's eyes as the oily voice was stilled forever. Shot after shot, he fired, only stopping when the ammunition was all gone, and the Smoker's face was a bloody ruin. This was more than revenge, this was his vision, his dream, and he had to play it out. Turning to Fox, Anson reached for the gun that he carried.

"No! Oh, fuck, Anson... " Fox's voice was anguished as he fended off the man at his side. The other two turned to look at him. "He might have helped Alex. He was going to tell him... "

Anson's face went from bright anger to anguish in the ticking of a second. As it suddenly came home to him what he had done, he crumpled in on himself and slowly sank down to his knees beside Alex.

Alex grinned, diamond hard pain shining like new knives in the white of his teeth and the gleam of his eyes. He put out a hand to turn Anson's bowed head up until his face shone in the muted lamplight.

"Enough, Fox. He did what should have been done years ago. The old bastard's caused enough misery. He was only stalling for time. Now it's done. He won't cause any new grief." He turned to Anson. "Come on, baby, you did what you had to do." This last speech of Alex's had Anson slowly climbing to his feet to stand, as he surveyed the results of his mad blood lust.

He had no regrets. None. He'd done what he had to do. He'd killed the Nightmare man, and Alex still loved him. He tried to resist the whirling of chaos that surrounded him, but slowly sank back into a trance-like state. The level of emotion he had just experienced was proving too much, and he needed to rest. He turned to Fox, and allowed himself to be petted and stroked into calmness.

Fox checked his watch yet again, and grimly suggested that they search the place thoroughly. There would never be another opportunity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was 6 am by the time Byers had cracked open the hard drive and divested it of all its secrets. Anson and Alex had finally succumbed to fatigue, and lay sleeping, heads together as they slumped back on the old couch in the gunmen's office. Fox, as ever, had been unable to sleep, and prowled restlessly while Byers worked, until the bearded man threatened to evict him from the room. After that he had parked himself in a chair beside the computer and sat, eyes metallic as he stared with hypnotic intensity at every move that Byers made.

When at last the drive began to disgorge its secrets, Fox said nothing, merely leaning forward to scan each document as it began to flicker over the screen, curtly requesting printouts of certain pages as they passed.

By the time the two brothers began to stir, Fox had a sizeable sheaf of documents in front of him, and Byers, red eyed, was just returning from the kitchen with coffee.

Alex, being Alex, had come awake in an instant, and moved to fetch his own reviving drink before taking the stack of papers Fox had already perused and starting to leaf through them. Now, as Anson stirred, he was fetching yet more coffee, virtually hopping in his need to share the information they had discovered.

Byers, who had never been exactly comfortable in Alex's company, was now quite obviously terrified of him - a fact that Alex might have had fun with in another time and place, but which now merely served to irritate him.

As the last vestiges of information about the brothers finally spewed from the hard drive, Byers moved on to Mulder's files, and page upon page of facts and figures about Fox began to spin out. He had never understood the way his parents had behaved to him, or why he had been treated as he had during his childhood. He had not realized that Bill and Teena were not his parents. He hadn't understood - why should he? - that Sam, his beloved sister had not been related to him at all, and that they had been the unknowing subjects of experimentation in much the same way as Alex and Anson.

Alex was the one who found it in the end, the final link in a chain so badly tangled it was virtually impossible to find a way though the knots. They had all been programmed. They had all been enhanced, and they had all been driven like cattle towards a destiny that they would probably have embraced quite willingly, had they been given the choice.

Now they saw what their destiny was to have been. Quite simply, they were to have taken over the Consortium, and then to have used their skill and intelligence to drive out the alien colonists.

A few more hoops remained for them to jump through, these manufactured young men who had already known tragedy on every level of their lives. It seemed as though they might be able to set things right at last. The details were all there. It had all been laid out for them. The last few treatments that would activate special DNA, everything that had been intended for them, it was all right here, and available for them.

Wordlessly the three men nodded. It was not going to be all for nothing after all. They would finish the job and find peace at last.

4: Musings

I don't remember how old I was when I first realized I was different. When I say different, you have no idea what I mean. How could you? You probably think I mean physically different, but that's not it. I look much the same as you.

You could sit beside me and never know that I was not as you are. You could sit beside me and never know it was the time of your death.

Until you died.

I suppose that's the ultimate difference between us, right there. I'm a killer, and you're not.

It sounds simple, and horrifying when put bluntly. I don't kill indiscriminately. I don't lure innocents to my room and torment them.

I only kill monsters.

I only kill the evil. If I kill them, they deserve to be killed. It's my whole purpose.

Don't think I've got a God complex either; nothing could be further from the truth. I don't believe I'm God...because I know there is no God.

Let me tell you more, and then maybe you'll understand.

I am as I was made. I'm a weapon, a finely crafted weapon. A blade, honed for just one purpose. I'm the protector, the defender if you like, of all that's human.

I'm the only one there is, and in order to be true to my purpose, they've dehumanized me. My life has been carefully constructed by men who denied me my humanity. Humanity had nothing to do with my upbringing, although in some ways I believe I'm more than human.

You had parents. I'll bet you went to summer camp and toasted marshmallows around the fire. I bet you attended kindergarten and played in a sandpit and that when you fell down and grazed your knees, your mother comforted you.

I don't recall my parents. I must have had at least one of each sex but they are a mystery now, mere numbers on a genetic chart. I like to imagine that they loved each other, and that I was created out of passion that couldn't be denied, but I know the truth.

I'm much more likely to have been made in a test tube, and planted into a brood mare who bore me for money, and gave me up for more of the same, to be grown. I was merely a poor little scrap of DNA, destined never to belong, always to crave belonging, but never, never to actually find a place. I was a tool, a brilliant tool, and nothing more.

I remember when they started their program. It must have begun at my birth, or maybe even before that, but my first real memory of it is when they sat me down at a little table and showed me what they wanted me to learn that day. The rules were simple. They would show me how, and then it would be my turn. I would complete the task in the time allotted me, or I would be hurt.

The task was difficult for my baby fingers. I assembled the gun as my teacher had shown me, but the seconds clicked by inexorably and it was not loaded properly when the buzzer sounded and the electric current passed through my small body. I cried because it hurt, and my teacher shook his head at me and smiled.

"Now, Alexei, you will stop crying and try again. This time you will not dawdle." And he dismantled my hard work, spreading the pieces over the table again.

Three times that day the excruciating electricity passed through me. Once, and only once, I cried. Then, I succeeded and my teacher smiled at me warmly. He told me I was clever and would be rewarded. Then a nurse came at his summons to give me a drink of juice and read me a story.

I was three years old.

Throughout my childhood I was set tasks such as this, and the price of my failure was always pain. What human contact I had came from my successes, and I learned to crave success. I learned to run faster, jump higher, and be more informed than any should ever have to be. I learned to gauge my companion's responses and judge what he would most want to hear. I learned to provide it, so that the pain would stop.

All this had happened before I even reached the age of 12. By the time I reached puberty, I'd learned to drop my eyes and smile. I knew how to give just the right kind of touch and lingering look to someone who might respond to one.

I'd learned about the way that men and women are made, and how they are put together. I learned their differences. I became familiar with their similarities, and began to know by instinct how to become whatever they wanted of me until they had become mine.

It seemed I always understood sex. I'd been shown various caresses from when I was quite tiny, and learned to deliver them with skill and apparent sincerity. My lips and tongue, my hands and fingertips were programmed along with the rest of me, and I became an expert at the arousal of my subject. I loved the power it gave me to have someone beg me for release. I grew increasingly fascinated with the degrees of desperation to which I could drive another human being.

The first time I experienced orgasm was at once terrifying and exhilarating. It was a nocturnal emission, and I'd dreamed a vague, shadowy dream about another boy, the boy whose face was in the photograph that sat on my teacher's desk. He and I were together, fighting, I think, or wrestling, and I felt friction against my suddenly hard penis that suddenly turned into a flash of wonderful, sticky-sweet bliss as the feelings shook me awake. I lay in terror as the thought came to me that all of a sudden I too was susceptible to this kind of manipulation. I was cold and afraid. I'd thought myself immune and now I was vulnerable. I resolved that despite this new vulnerability I wouldn't become dependent on my senses. I would remain in control.

It had felt so good, so wonderful I could now understand completely what before had been merely an exercise in control. I wanted to feel it again. I wanted someone to place their hands on me, to touch me with their lips, and make me beg. I was afraid that it was going to happen to me, that they would make me lose control the way I had learned to do to others.

I was terrified that they would not.

I needn't have worried. My teacher brought in more people to instruct me, and my training continued along ever more esoteric lines. I began a series of exercises that were designed to teach me the ultimate in control over my own body. I learned how to stay in command, both of myself, and of anyone with whom I was paired.

I became invulnerable.

I learned, painfully, to delay ejaculation. I learned to get it up, keep it up, and use it to the fullest. I learned not to care who I was fucking, or who might be fucking me. I learned to make them want me, and then want me more.

On my own I learned to keep myself isolated in a little capsule of consciousness while my body was invaded.

I learned to detect vulnerability, and then strike.

Physically, mentally, sexually, I was programmed and honed, a blade made sharp.

The day I killed my first man I was 14 years old. I had been shown film footage of the man. He was a gross pig of a man with small, endlessly moving pink hands and cold eyes. My teacher told me what he had done. They showed me pictures that sickened me until I walled myself off from the horror, as I entered that private space where nothing could reach me. It fortified me as I studied an array of photographs of young men who had been ripped open from groin to chest, their insides strewn like so much litter for me to see.

My teacher put his hand on my shoulder and told me I had been selected to rid the world of this monster. I remember that I asked him why the police would not do it, and he pinched my earlobe, hard.

"Alexei, you're questioning. This isn't a good thing. However, because you're a good pupil on the whole, I'll tell you what you want to know. This man is the head of the local police force. Because of that, he has free rein to do whatever he wishes without let or hindrance. You will be justice, my Alexei. You will make the world safe for all the young men who may come after you." I nodded. It all seemed so simple. I would kill this monster and save the boys. Maybe then some of them would be permitted to keep me company. I asked my teacher, and he smiled grimly.

"Alexei, you need nobody. It's dangerous and wrong for you to want companionship. Where have I failed?" This was a bad thing. I hung my head, numbly. There would be pain shortly. I knew I would be punished for my failure. Electrodes would be attached to my testicles and I would suffer, sweating and grim in my isolation.

Then strangely, my teacher said something to me that raised my hopes and made me almost love him.

"Alexei, you're a good boy at heart. You have a task to perform now," He indicated the photograph of the pig that lay on the table beside me. "And you should prepare yourself for it. Once you have completed it successfully, we'll have time enough to talk about your reward."

He wasn't going to punish me. I unclenched my muscles.

This would be fine. I would kill this bastard who tormented boys like me, and then I would have my reward. It all sounds so simplistic when I tell it now, but back then it felt like a truth so profound that it made me breathless. My mind flashed images of the boy in the picture frame on teacher's desk. Maybe I would be allowed to meet him. Maybe we could become.I didn't know the word, and the concept scared me. I felt a flood of cold in my stomach, and my penis swelled as I tried to think what he and I could become.

Maybe we could become important to each other.

I nodded quietly, and began to sharpen my stiletto.

They told me how to handle the monster I had been sent to kill. I dressed myself in tight jeans and T-shirt, and took a package to deliver to the devil in the hotel room where he was staying.

I knocked on the door of his room and he opened it to me. His piggy eyes gleamed as he saw me. I had used kohl to darken my lashes still more and my hair was clean and shiny. It fell over one eye as I shook my head.

At the age of 14, I had reached the height of 6 feet, but was still very slender, and thanks to the gymnastic and dance training I was still receiving, I was not a gawky, teenaged boy. I was graceful, and my body was becoming muscular. The animal licked his lips when he saw me standing on his very threshold. I smiled at him through veiled lashes, and heard him grunt a little. My voice was breaking, but I knew that if I pitched it low it would remain sultry as I announced the package I was carrying. As he surveyed me, I affected nervousness, screwing my foot into the floor in feigned embarrassment while he eyed me up and down.

He invited me in on the pretext of rewarding me, and closed the door behind me as I sauntered into the bedroom. Close to, the pig smelled of sweat and sour milk. I hadn't experienced this before, this stench of corruption I could sense from him, and my stomach clenched as he approached me, putting out a hand to grab the ass I had wagged so provocatively at him. When he held the hand out, it contained a 5-dollar bill, and though I had no use for the money I allowed my face to flush and my eyes to sparkle as I glanced up at him.

He smiled, telling me I was a good boy or some such nonsense, and leaned in towards me.

I slashed his throat with my knife right then, and cursed because he had sprayed blood over my shiny hair and my nice new jeans. As the life drained out of him along with the blood, I watched, and tried to decide what exactly it was that I had done.

The animal would certainly never harm children again. This was my contribution.

Calmly, I showered, and left him lying in a pool of coppery blood.

When I returned to my teacher, he asked me what I had learned, and smiled as I told him earnestly of my desire to keep the blood off myself in the future. He praised me then, telling me how well I'd done. I wondered then if I'd have the reward he'd promised. The teacher placed an arm around my shoulders then, and walked beside me into his office, where he invited me to sit in the chair beside his desk. Then he took the photograph I'd stared at so often, and handed it to me.

"Alexei, this is my son. His name is Fox. One day, you and he together will rescue the world. You are both special children, and we've been preparing you throughout your whole lives for the day when we will need you to save us. Once the two of you are ready, you'll be unbeatable together." He leaned forward, trying to enthuse me about the idea of saving humanity, but truth to tell it was the photo that excited me.

The subject of the picture was tall and slim like me. The photo showed him stepping from a swimming pool, naked save for his small, black swimsuit. He was sleek as a seal, and beautiful in a dark, brooding way, with full lips that almost smiled, promising secrets I longed to share.

"Just as you're learning to carry out your part in the war we are fighting, so too is Fox. While you're learning to act, Alexei, Fox is being taught to plan. When finally the two of you are ready to work together, you'll become the weapon we need to ensure our race's survival."

"When will I meet him, teacher?" I had never been told his name, and at that time I hadn't learned how to access the data banks that held the information I needed. How much easier it is now to hack into a computer system than it was then to break into a strongroom. These days any 14-year-old worth his salt would be able to succeed, but not I, then.

"Alexei, you're not ready yet. You're progressing well, and are learning fast, but your education is not yet complete.

So my training continued. I was fed careful proteins that nourished my growing body, though they afforded me no pleasure. A regime of weight training was added to the exercises I was put through each day. I began to gain muscle, layer upon layer, filling out my chest, shoulders, thighs and calves.

By the time I was 17 they were showing me films of Fox on a regular basis. I learned to look forward to the interludes. They became a reward I craved. I asked my teacher many times when I would meet him, and was told I was not yet ready.

They sent me out to kill several times after that, and I was good at it. I felt proud that I was ridding the world of evil, and making it a safe place for Fox.

At the age of 18, I was sent away from the center where I had grown up for the very first time. I was dumped into a training camp with a number of faceless nonentities of my own age. We were all solitary, suspicious, and completely unable to bond. They worked us hard, allowing us little or no sleep as they force marched us, put us through endless drills and exercises, and fed us on slops. They told me it was to teach me teamwork, but I felt that it was merely to humiliate me.

They made me wear a uniform of coarse wool, and they cut off my hair. They turned me into a nonentity. I hated them for that.

I believe that was the first time I really hated what they were doing to me. I had been special, and suddenly I was a nothing, and all for a whim, it seemed. That was the day that I vowed I would one day be free of them all.

After 6 months at the camp, I was collected by a man I had never met before. He was old, and smoked continuously, making me cough and gag. At that time I had never really been exposed to the smell of cigarettes and it disgusted me, as did the man. I was taken to a place I hadn't seen before, and wondered why I'd been brought there until the familiar figure of my teacher entered and greeted the smoking man. He nodded to me, unsmiling, and began to talk to the smoking man in quiet tones. I waited, and sure enough, the instructions came. Uneasy as I felt, I was special once again, and prepared to shine at whatever task I was bidden to perform.

They had me strip for him and show off my strength and grace. They made me demonstrate my ability with weapons and my aptitude for languages. They had me speak to him in Russian and German. Throughout the entire performance, he smoked one cigarette after another.

Finally, it became clear that I was to seduce him, and I moved to him, sincerity shining from me, to begin my task, the core of me safe within the dark place inside my head.

I was spared. After a few minutes he placed a hand on my chest and pushed me away, very gently.

"Good." He smiled then and I felt a chill. Then he put out a single finger, which he drew down the length of my face, over my lips, to pause on my chin, and stood there, considering. "Very good."

He turned to my teacher and I overheard him. "You're to be commended, Bill. He's perfect."

Bill. His name was Bill, and he suddenly lost stature. I hugged this illicit knowledge to me as I went through my days. I had determined to break loose. I wanted to become my own master. It didn't seem as though that would ever happen if I stayed there, in that place, but I'd so rarely been permitted outside. I was all set to break free, make a run for it, when the teacher - Bill, came to tell me that I was finally going to be sent out on my own into the real world. He used the words, 'the real world'.

I was thrilled. All my planning had become unnecessary. I was to be released. The things they had planned for me excited me. They were going to send me to a university and I would start in the next few weeks. Tests, some of the many I had taken through my life, had been entrance exams for admission to Harvard. I was to obtain a degree at Harvard. I knew what Harvard was from my reading, and my classes. I was aware that this was indeed a testament to my abilities, and though I was afraid, I was also proud, and ready.

I would of course be supervised. Their investment must never be left to chance. They had me practice socializing. I was taught to interact until I could follow the scripts they gave me so well it appeared that I was spontaneous.

When the day finally came for me to register for my courses, I found myself for the first time in the midst of a pushing, shoving, cursing, frankly ill-smelling mass of people, ugly people who were uncaring as they elbowed, and smoked, and yelled. Even the military training camp I'd been in recently didn't match up to this abundance of undisciplined, screeching louts. Nothing in my training had prepared me for this reality, and I found myself retreating to my safe place, there to wonder whether, if this was humanity, did I want to be its savior?

Did I want this? I finally decided I did. They hadn't bargained for my delicate perceptions to be on overload, but I'd get used to it. I slipped into the relaxed breathing pattern I'd been taught by the martial artist who had trained me.

It took me many months to learn how to handle the sensory overload that the crowd induced in me. I have never become used to crowds. The hive mind scares me. Do you know how easy it is to make a crowd do something? Do you know how impossible it is to stop them once you've set them in motion?

If I'm afraid of one thing in the world, it's getting caught up in a crowd of people.

I don't go to ball games.

The couple of years in school taught me more than just the academics. I learned I was essentially different. I learned too, how to pass myself off as the same, and thus became a sleeping wolf amid the herd of sheep.

I killed for them several more times, and during the Christmas break of that first year I was given a crash course in the aliens and their invasion. They showed me film footage and then sent me out to dispose of an alien. When the green fluid bubbled out of it and it began to disintegrate, slumping into a featureless puddle, I knew that I was indeed the savior of humanity. This would be my life.

From Harvard, I moved on to Quantico. They told me that they intended me to become an FBI agent, and began again to show me movie footage of the boy named Fox, now a man, but just as interesting to me as he ever had been. I'd dreamed of Fox for more years than I could remember, and of course, now I understand why. Back then I had no idea how I was being programmed to bond with Fox.

All I knew was that he and I were destined to become a weapon, and be together.

"He'll aim you, Alexei. He'll fire you, and you'll destroy them. Together you will be unbeatable."

They told me his name at last. Fox Mulder. Fox Mulder and his father, Bill. Fox Mulder, like me, but unlike. We were partners in pain. I wondered if he too had lived in seclusion, waiting for the day when he would be set in motion and sent out to change the world.

Fox William Mulder. I repeated it to myself like a mantra, saying it a dozen times a day as I raced through the Quantico training, knowing that at the other end of it would be Fox.

Finally the day came. The man who smoked was in my room when I returned from a run, and he lay at his ease on my bed, smoking his inevitable cigarette, and smiling his detestable smile.

"Hello, Alex. You are transferring to Washington on Monday, and you are now to have your final briefing. I'm pleased with you. You've done well." Words are inadequate to describe the thrill that shot through me at that. I asked him where my teacher was, and he considered me for several minutes before responding.

"You don't need a teacher any more, my boy. Your education is complete. Now you're ready to take your place." I knew better than to argue, so I veiled my eyes and acquiesced. He gave me another of his slow smiles and removed himself from my bed.

"On Monday you'll be given a case file. You'll take the file to Fox Mulder, and it'll serve as your introduction to him. You'll become his partner and work alongside him. I'll have further tasks for you at a later date. Make sure you're available when I require you." I nodded, praying that he would go away and leave me to my bubbling, seething excitement.

Fox! I'm coming! We'll be together at last.

The smoking man left at last and I was alone. I was still sweat soaked and dripping form my run, but happy, incredibly happy, and so aroused I thought I might burst.

As I showered, I took hold of my hard-on, pumping it with my soapy hands until it shot white pearls against the tiles within the shower. The picture in my mind was Fox, smiling to me, and only me, as he emerged from the waters of the swimming pool. I knew that he was smiling for me, and that he would fall to his knees and suck me into that full, voluptuous mouth.

The orgasm that ripped through me drove me to my own knees. I was in complete meltdown, as it came home to me that he was mine. He'd always been mine, and I was about to claim him at last.

My erection barely diminished. For the rest of that weekend I remained in a state of barely controlled lust, unable to think of anything but the fact that I was to have Fox at last.

There was no doubt in my mind. We'd been made to be together. I would have him. He would know me as I knew him, and he would have been waiting for me as long as I had waited for him.

I dreamed about him that night, coming in a shuddering haze of desire. Sex had been something that was mine to use, but now it was my master and I was constantly half-entranced, and half sick with horror that I should be ruled like this by someone I didn't know.

They came to drive me, along with my small store of belongings down to Washington on the Sunday morning, and I said goodbye to Quantico. They'd taken an apartment for me. They showed me my clothes and put me through all the little details of items like bank account, identity and lifestyle.

I was to dress badly and appear gauche for my meeting with Fox. They wanted an ingenue who would become the foil for Mulder's cutting brilliance. They told me that he would not respond to anyone who appeared to be too smart, too cynical. I thought about the forthcoming meeting, and worried about how he would perceive me, but I knew he would recognize me. I couldn't sleep on the Sunday night, and the thoughts that ran through my mind were muddy, lust-clouded and yearning.

Dressed in a suit that was too large for me, I stood before my mirror, slicking back my hair. It was 5:30am, and I was ready for him.

I was uncomfortable in the suit and tie, but my skin fizzed and tingled anyway at the thought of meeting Fox at last. I couldn't eat, couldn't even swallow, and the protein drink I was supposed to be consuming to assist my muscle development lay in my stomach like lead, making me nauseous.

Finally, I could wait no longer, and by 7:30 I was in the Hoover building, collecting my badge, my gun and my assignment from the man who smoked. He summoned a secretary to hustle me down the hallway to where my assignment would begin, and then I saw him.

My mouth went dry. My autonomic nervous system went into overdrive, and I thought, I really thought I was going to faint. He was sitting at a desk, transcribing a phone call, and as I approached him I wondered how I was ever going to utter the words I had been given. I approached him, and drew in a deep breath. He didn't look up. It took me more than one try to open my mouth, but finally, the words came.

"Agent Mulder?" I was tentative, gentle. I wanted him to be surprised.

"That's right." He was apparently engrossed in his transcription and didn't look up. I held out the folder.

"It's your 302. Assistant Director Skinner just approved it." I willed him to look at me, see me, realize that I was here at last, worthy of him.

"There's a mistake here. Another agent's been attached to the case." I frowned a little, unsure what he meant. Surely he was waiting for me. Surely he. apparently not. He didn't know I was coming. It took a minute to sink in. He didn't know me, and that thought rocked me to my core. Too shocked to give myself away, I shrugged and changed my strategy. I had to react, and fast. If this were how it was, I would give him an introduction.

"That would be me. Krycek, Alex Krycek." I opened my eyes wide, licked my lips, and held out my hand to him, waiting for him to meet my gaze and recognize me for his missing half. I stood as my hand remained untaken, and my smile withered and died.

I was confused. I didn't understand why this was happening. Didn't he care who I was? I would make him care.

He looked up at me then. The scorn and disinterest on his face enough were to make my balls shrivel. "Skinner didn't say anything about taking on a partner." Well, I thought, fuck you too. I retracted my hand, feeling a little foolish. The bastard had ignored it totally, leaving me standing foolishly.

"It wasn't Skinner. Actually, I opened the file two hours before your request - so technically, it's my case." I relished the words as they came from my mouth. Ignore me as a nonentity would you, you shit? I'll be where I want to be, whatever you think. I don't believe I'd ever felt this irritated by anyone in my life before. I was astonished at the depths of my own annoyance. It had to be the feelings he was arousing in me. This man was going to be my lover, otherwise the world would end, and I with it.

"Then you've already spoken to the police?" I could see the gleam in his eye. Distrust was written all over his face. I knew what he was trying to do, and I dove in to try and disabuse him of the idea that he would be able to just take my case and run.

"I just hung up on the officer in charge a few minutes ago." I felt in my pocket and found a notebook, leafing through it with great conviction as I spoke. "Detective named Horton. Turns out Grissom called 911 to report a fire--" Good thing I'd glanced through the file on my way to this meeting. He would not, could not dislodge me from his side. He was mine.

"I heard the tape." He was half way interested now, but there was still that dreadful disinterest to overcome.

"Did you hear that forensics found a spent fire extinguisher on the floor? Grissom's prints were all over it." I opened the file and scattered photos onto his desk, pointing to the item under question. "The walls and floor just outside his bedroom were covered with ammonium phosphate."

"But no trace of fire." He was interested then, I knew he was. My whole body ached for him.

"Not even a burnt match." I searched his face for signs of sarcasm, but there didn't seem to be any.

"That's all you know?"

"So far. What do you think it means?" I invited complicity, lowering my lashes and leaning in to him. How could he resist me? He was mine.

"Listen," He stood up. "I appreciate the show and tell, and I don't want you to take it personally...but I work alone." He grabbed the file from me and began to turn away. "I'll straighten things out with Skinner." I was damned if he was going to take himself out of my life like this. I had never failed. Failure meant pain, and to lose Fox in this way would mean pain far beyond the physical for me. I couldn't bear that. I cleared my throat.

"It's my case, Agent Mulder." I was tentative, deferential. I had met his kind many times, and always I had brought them to my will. This man would be mine. I would have him. He was mine.

"I may be green...but I had the case first. And I'm not giving it away so quickly." He turned to look at me, really look at me. My stomach fluttered and I wanted to take his face between my hands and kiss him breathless.

"Tell you what. I need to finish up here. So why don't you go requisition a car for us...and I'll meet you down at the motor pool?" He smiled then, just a little, and I began to relax. I would be able to win him over, paranoid as he seemed.

"That's all? I mean, you don't have a problem with us working together?" The words were barely spoken before I regretted them, but he didn't seem to register my neediness. He smiled, a little condescendingly I thought.

"Hey, it's your party."

"Great. I'll just..." My belly did its flip-flops again. We were going to work together. It was all going to be as my teacher had promised. We would work together, and soon, he would love me. How could he not? "I'll get the car.""

I turned and headed for the vehicle-requisitioning department. Booking out the car took a good half-hour, a half-hour that I spent inwardly chafing as I waited for Fox to come to me. When the keys were at last in my hand, I drove round to pick Fox up, musing about how he had made it under my defenses in so short a time, and thrilling at the thought that we were together at last. I pulled up expecting to find him waiting, knowing that I would charm him.

The bastard had gone.

I'm sure you all know how I caught up with Fox. You have heard how he and I found Augustus Cole, and how I ended up shooting him dead. I swear to you that I saw a gun in Cole's hand. I couldn't let him shoot my Fox. His death would have ended my life. I had no choice. When the man fell dead, Fox told me that I'd done the right thing. I know I seemed bemused, but at that time all I could think of was how close he had come to death, and how life without him would be nothing. For a moment I was overcome.

The plus side of that was that he became convinced that I hadn't ever killed a man before, and began to offer me comfort. I was so happy I almost broke my character, but instinct took over, and I gave myself up to the act of innocence.

There was a brief period of milling and confusion as police and railway officials trampled evidence underfoot. We each made our statements to the cop du jour, and finally were free to go. I sat, huddled in on myself and allowed him to sit beside me, feed me coffee, and murmur comfort as I shuddered.

He finally rose, and told me that he would take me home. I went, walking quietly beside him, head hanging, my posture defensive and forlorn. He was unused to offering sympathy, I could tell it didn't come easy to him, but he was trying, and I melted as he spoke his soft words of encouragement.

Reaching the car, he assisted me in as if I were a precious thing, and drove me home with a care and attention to the road that made me want to ask who he was, and what had he done with the real Agent Mulder. Outwardly I appeared shattered by the death I had caused. Inside I was triumphant. Fox cared. He was with me now, and I was inside those defenses of his at last.

On reaching my apartment, he stopped the car and moved round to the door to help me out. By this time I was enjoying all his solicitude far too much to want him to stop, so I murmured my thanks, and permitted the assistance. Once inside the apartment, I threw off my charcoal suit jacket - detestable thing - and sank down theatrically onto my couch. I closed my eyes in a brief attempt at mind over matter. He would sit down beside me.

He must.

He did. He lowered himself carefully next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel the heat of it drawing my skin into gooseflesh through the thin cotton of the white shirt I wore. I realized that this was the first time I had really felt his touch, and as the thought flashed through me, I felt sick and dizzy with anticipation and lust. Now! It had to be now. I couldn't wait any longer.

Have you ever contemplated the act of kissing? A kiss can mean so many things. A mother can kiss her baby, and the touch of lips becomes a benison that the child can take with him through life. Judas betrayed the Christ with his kiss, and sent ripples down the corridors of time that echo to this day. Rodin sculpted a kiss, and I like to think of those two lovers fused together in perfect joy until time finally shatters them and turns them to dust.

I sat on my nondescript, uncomfortable couch with my senses full of Fox Mulder, willing, longing, desperate. I turned my face up to his, lips moist, I made sure of that, and blinked a little. He had to know that we were meant to be together. I peeped at him from below my eyelashes, and sent out thoughts to compel him.

Mine! You are mine!

The realization, when it came, that it was going to happen, that he was mine at long last, made me feel faint.

I gazed up at him, drowning in his eyes as he moved closer to me, a look on his face that was almost, but not quite comforting. My eyes were fixed on his, sinking into the space that seemed only to exist for as long as I would be there. He came nearer, and I was drawn to his lips, full and tempting. They drew me. I was lost, incoherent as I drank him in through parched eyes.

When he moved, it was sudden and decisive. Plan A had been for me slowly to lean forwards and invite his lips onto mine. What actually happened was that he slid his hand up from my shoulder to the back of my head without warning, and pulled me to him just enough so that those lips of his, moist and warm, suddenly made contact with mine.

It was so sudden that I was astonished. Frozen into immobility, terrified that I was merely imagining this and that in an instant I would awake to find it all as real as Cole's gun, I froze, and after a second, he pulled away, his eyes inquiring down at me.

For a moment, a moment that I can still place myself into even now after all this time, I was unsure what would be the way forward and sat very still.

I saw the tortuous trail of my life leading me here, to Fox.

In my vision was a boy in a black swimsuit, who shook water from his eyes as he smiled artlessly. In my mouth was dry cotton. In my heart was sick desire.

As his lips touched mine at last, my heart surged and then sank, obliterated by the need for the man beside me. He was mine. I would have him. It began now.

NOW.

His lips were soft and warm and. all the other platitudes. A clich‚ is only a clich‚ because it's a truth repeated ad nauseam. When his lips touched mine, my belly flooded with sudden heat and I knew beyond a doubt that my life had meaning. My life's meaning held me in his arms. I moaned.

I'd kissed before, and avoided it when I could. The intimacy of it all seemed obscene to me. I'd never wanted another's tongue in my mouth. that was, until now. It came as a surprise to me that those lips on mine were subtly demanding my response, and that I could do nothing but give it. Of their own accord my lips parted, and as he turned his head to lock his mouth more firmly to mine, my own tongue probed tentatively. Within my chest a melting began that gathered everything of me, heated it and sent it trickling down through my belly to swell my cock.

My heart pounded. Maybe you think that's a clich‚ as well, but I'm here to tell you that it's never a clich‚ when it happens to you. It was the first time it had ever happened to anyone. I was the first, and Fox was my lover at last. All I could hear was my own heart as it thud-thudded and beneath it, my own ragged breathing as he kissed my soul from my body.

I was home. He was mine, and this was how the world must be.

His mouth brought with it a velvet heat and his tongue against mine was liquid fire. He was strong, and his arms moved around me, holding me steadily against his chest. I shuddered.

He moved back at last, just far enough for him to gaze down on me through heavy lidded eyes.

"This is a very bad idea, Krycek." I opened and closed my mouth helplessly, until finally I found my voice.

"It's the way it has to be. The only way it could be."

The words were surprised out of me, and I bit my lip as his brow furrowed. Don't think, Fox, just be. I parted my lips again, tongue tip flicking over them in invitation. He smiled a little wryly, and his mouth descended on mine again while I moaned.

As he leant over me, I learned at last the omnipotent power of love.

He was everything I ever wanted, and I couldn't think of anything but him, couldn't see anything but him. He was there, in my arms, and I needed more. I needed to feel him naked against me. I needed to feel his breath on my neck as he lost his own ability to stay in control. I needed to hear his voice crack with passion as he called my name, and all I could do was hang on tight to him as I poured my entire soul into the kiss I was sharing with him.

My fingers burrowed under his shirt, pulling insistently at the fabric until it was no longer tucked into his trousers, and I could slide my hands over smooth flesh. I could feel him shudder as my hands roamed over the satin skin of his sides, and then I made a decision, moving to unbutton the offending shirt so that I could access more of him.

My mouth was so greedy, I couldn't let go of him. I leaned forward, my lips avid against his as my fingers began to pluck and tickle at his nipples. I heard him whimper, and froze.

Was this love, this bright and cutting blade that was separating me from my survival instincts? I needed to go softly. I was a neophyte for him, and he mustn't know the need I had right then, only the faintest ghost of that need could escape, or it would all be for nothing.

Still, he was mine now, he had to be, and I clumsily rolled onto the top of him, moving in such a way that the pair of us fell from the couch. We landed with me beneath him, breath huffing from my body as he took me over, kissing and holding and fondling, and oh!

Control was a word I'd only heard spoken as I tore loose from his mouth to beg him please. His response was a short laugh, and an urgent fumbling as the pair of us attempted to find the skin beneath restrictive clothing, and got in each other's way as often as not.

Laughter took us both, and as clothing flew we found ourselves howling with amusement, until at last I saw him naked for me.

The laughter died, and I could no longer find my breath. He was tall and straight, and the glow of health shone like a lamp beneath his skin. He was slim, and his muscles stood firm below the gold of his tan. A light scattering of crisp hair covered his chest, and curled over the center of his body, trailing down to surround the proud flesh that jutted from between his thighs.

I gasped as I looked at him, and gasped again as he knelt to kiss my neck, my throat, my chin. I threw my head back, baring my throat to him as I held myself remorselessly in check. Enough that he should make love to me. I couldn't do what I really wanted to do, which was throw him down and devour him. I had to let him seduce me. It wouldn't be a hardship, but I had to keep tight rein on myself. I couldn't permit him to see me as I really was, so I moaned, and closed my eyes, and pulled him down to press against my skin as I murmured broken pleas for him to touch me, hold me, love me. If Fox thought me innocent, then for him I would become innocent. I was in bliss.

He had pulled a cushion from the couch and placed it beneath my head, smiling down at me as he did so. I lost myself in that smile, belly fluttering as I reached to trace it with a fingertip. I wasn't prepared for the growl he gave, or the force with which he dove down to cover my mouth with his lips, seeking to taste, as he drew my tongue with his.

I lost myself inside a darkness made from red velvet, as he sucked on my lips, teasing and slippery. All I could do is cling and whimper, holding him as I arched to his touch. He's mine. He's mine now forever, and I ran my hand down his sleek back to cup taut buttocks, pulling him close and writhing as I whimpered out my need.

He shushed me, mouth busy against mine in a caress that demanded my compliance. I gave it. I was drunk with him, drowning in the lap of his tongue. Fighting free of his lips for a minute all I could do was whisper.

"If you don't hurry up and touch me I'm going to explode." My hand had found the sweet, hard length of his cock, and was stroking it, long, squeezing strokes that made his eyes darken and the muscles around his mouth slacken until he looked like a little boy. He moved to reciprocate, and for a minute I permitted it, feeling the lurch and throb of my balls as he slid his hand over my dick. It was too much. I couldn't concentrate and I wanted to see him come for me. This was the first time, and because of that, it had to be perfect. It had to be the way I pictured it down the long years. I smacked his hand away, and breathed his name.

"Let me." I was holding him, stroking him with maddening precision as I watched his face lose form. I could tell when he approached the point of no return. I saw the flush creep over his skin and watched the whiteness of teeth biting into his lip as pleasure grew in him. Truth to tell it was almost too much for me to take. I felt my own prick tingling even though I made sure that nothing was touching it, and I was scared that it was going to go off half cocked. It took all the energy I possessed to ensure that I fought off my own orgasm. I was concentrating now, watching him lose his own identity as he got closer and closer to climax.

God, but he's beautiful. I drank him down, fixing this moment in my mind for review at a later date, when the sun didn't shine as warmly and life was less easy to live. His eyes were closed now, and the finely carved lips were apart and gasping as he panted out his pleasure. I felt the telltale bubbling of pre-ejaculate as it wormed its way along his cock, and I wanted to engulf him.

"I have to." I whispered, and squirmed down to his groin, inhaling the smell of fresh musk as I went, and feeling it hit home in the pit of my stomach. Then I was there, and eye to eye with his cock. First I licked it, and he choked. Then I opened my willing lips to taste it. I can hear him now, as he chanted a litany of "Please, please, please."

Looking up at him, I laughed gently, seeing how completely he was mine at that moment. I needed to have him, needed to make him give it all up for me, and when I opened my mouth to suck him down, I knew that he was mine for that moment. I heard his voice, and somewhere in the back of my mind I catalogued the fact that he was swearing gently. I loved the sound of his voice.

He was close, so close. Pulling off for a minute I reared back to look at him. He was lying flat, his knees up and spread for me like a wanton, and his head was thrown back. I spread saliva over my forefinger and sent it to slide into his rectum, circling it around to nudge the little node of nerve endings I know lurk inside. As he moaned out his pleasure, I drew him back into my mouth, sucking hard, swallowing against him until I heard his cry and feel the spurt and splash of his essence as he spilled it.

Mine. He was mine. My forgotten erection was bobbing loosely, but my mind was in ecstasy because I'd made him mine. He lay groaning and I moved up his body to lie against his shoulder, my arm trailing across his chest.

"Did the earth move?" I quipped, and he opened one eye peering down at me in a sardonic manner.

"It's still moving. Wanna nail me to the floor?" My heart stuttered, and then stopped. I mentally replayed his words. Did I want to? Oh God!

I rolled to cover him, pressing him down into the carpet, and devouring his mouth as I slid my finger in and out of his ass. He spread his legs a little wider if that were possible, and raised that butt of his. Once again I felt the imminent approach of orgasm, and bit the inside of my cheek to try and hold it back.

I needed lube, and didn't know what I can use. I needed him, but I didn't want to hurt him. I lay, my face buried in his neck, and panted. He writhed until I was lying squarely over him and then fixed soft, fine lips against my mouth. I couldn't fight back. Fuck, why would I want to?

I groped for the cushion on the couch, fumbling until I found the small bottle of Astroglide that I kept for moments of high fantasy.

Have you ever found your hands shaking so much that you couldn't co-ordinate?

In the whole of my sorry life, I'd never felt the way I did at that moment. He was mine, and I knew it. He'd always been mine, and yet.

The air around me shimmered, and his skin sang need beneath my lips. The word in my blissful brain was hungry. I was hungry, and this man in my arms was food for me. He was food for my fantasies, here at last to make them all real for me.

I bit the inside of my cheek sharply to try and keep control as I looked at him laid out for me, all heavy lidded eyes and wanton pout. Mine! He was mine.

Hot and shuddery, the head of my cock nudged the entrance to his body and he bucked, winced, a sharp intake of breath showing his discomfort as I popped through the sphincter and inside.

Crying out and thrusting deeper in, deeper in I went. He was hot and delicious and I pushed, couldn't hold back, no control left, and then I was home.

Home was warmth and snug suction, the tight enclosure of slick satin that clung and drew me as I moved. It was the tension in my inner thighs as I burrowed into him, knowing that this was my place, and that it had been destined since I was born.

It was a slippery, creeping tide of pleasure that suffused me, beginning as a dull sweetness at the base of my spine as I pushed and relaxed then pushed in again. The pleasure sprang through me, putting out tendrils to snake through my belly, winding me higher each time I moved, each time he moved with me.

Drowning, I looked down at him and gasped. His head was flung back and his eyes were closed as sensation took hold of him. He held his cock, yanking it hard and fast as we fucked, and his teeth were biting into his lower lip, his face drawn and stunning.

The sight of him made me weak. I held onto his thighs and pounded in and out of him, feeling everything build until I couldn't move harder, couldn't get deeper, needed to pour myself out.

Supernova sunburst and I was carried along helpless by a tidal rip that tore words from me, words I shouldn't say.

"I love you. You're mine, Fox. You've always been mine."

I filled him, straining with the molten heat of my ejaculate, and pushed into him while the aftershocks rocked me.

He was groaning, and looking down at him, I saw him lying limp and panting, the sticky evidence of his orgasm spattered over his belly and chest.

Wrecked, I fell forward to lie against his chest, feeling his warmth seep through as I covered him. If this wasn't heaven, it was somewhere very close.

Strange thing, as I tell you about this now, I can still feel him against my skin. I can remember how it felt when he circled me with his arms and let me know that I was safe.

Safety? What is that? It was all an illusion of course, and I should have known that everything would change. I should have expected that the Smoker would find some way to come between us. I was told to deliver him, my Fox to the ones up on the mountain that night when they took Scully.

I held him back, and for that I was cast out, damned.

I knew that the time had come the moment that he asked for my car keys. There was nowhere left for me to go. He would know, and he would hate me. Still, I fantasized that I maybe could go to him and tell him everything, then maybe he would come with me, somewhere safe. Maybe he would even love me still. Even as I thought it, I realized that I was fooling myself. Fox was devoted to Scully, and Fox would never forgive.

It wasn't to be. They were waiting for me when I got home.

Re-education is what they called it. It was agony.

Pretty soon I had learned to keep the memory of my sweet lover buried deep in order to stop the pain.

They didn't win. I never stopped loving him. Instead, I finally felt myself harden. I felt the tempering of my bladeself and knew that I had resolved to free myself. Fox would be mine again somehow. I'd make it happen.

I've grown up with pain. I understand pain. I am pain.

Pain is not the way to go when you're trying to bind me to your will. The old man missed a trick there. Instead of homing in on the one thing that could have contained me, and using its promise to hold me, he attempted to take my memory of Fox away. That was foolish. They might just as well have tried to rip away my own identity, for he and I are one.

There was only one thing that could have made me obey them, and they didn't use it. Even then I wondered if they ever realized what Bill Mulder had done to me. It certainly didn't seem that they were aware that he had imprinted me on Fox. Now, when I look back, I can see that they had no idea how he had programmed me. I wonder why he did it. I've never understood.

I wanted Fox because he belonged to me. He and I had finally been together. We'd made love and I knew with a certainty that came from beyond me that it had been perfect. Nobody takes what's mine.

Throughout weeks of painful 're-direction' I held close to me the image of Fox - my Fox - lying in my arms as I gave him my soul to take and use, his for all time. I could believe myself immune to the pain just so long as Fox remained in my mental vision and smiled at me with his eyes half-closed in bliss the way he had. I hugged his memory to me in secret and at the times when I was permitted to sleep, his face, rapt with concentration born of lost control would float before me. Fox was my lifeline throughout the ordeal. He was a path of shining silver that would guide me back towards the light.

I suffered, and slowly gave them the responses that they desired from me as I waited for them to allow me freedom once again. Eventually the foul-smelling Spender came to see me and I knew that things were going to change for me at last.

He chose to come on a day when I was being conditioned. I had been permitted to sleep, and even given a shot of some drug that had ensured my continued unconsciousness during the time they had needed to set things up.

I'd awoken to find myself naked and prone over a padded vaulting horse, my ankles and wrists tethered to the ground by unforgiving links of chain. I was held in that position so that I could not straighten up, and my ass was high in the air for all to see if they came my way. I was experiencing a lassitude that was pleasant, even though my position was humiliating. I knew that I was suffering from the drug they had pumped into my veins, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

There was a collar around my neck, and the leash that attached to it trailed along the floor. I don't know how long I'd been there like that. Time had ceased to mean anything to me, and I had retreated to the secret life that I lived inside my head, a life where Fox was mine again and we could hold each other with tenderness as well as with passion.

I had been replaying the first kiss he ever gave me, when I became aware that I was no longer alone.

I couldn't see him, but I knew who it was of course. I could smell the tobacco smoke, and my belly jolted, folding in on itself in anticipation as I waited for whatever he might choose to inflict on me. My senses were at once heightened and distorted by the stuff they'd given me, and I felt sensuous and full of desire even though the thought of the old fuck disgusted me.

He laid his foul old hands on me, squeezing my buttocks in a filthy parody of playfulness, and there was nowhere I could move that would discourage him. I suffered quietly in the hope that he would lose interest. He pried my ass cheeks apart, and I felt fingers invade me, probing and fondling me while I lay captive, repeating to myself that this would not change who I was. I was Alex, and Alex would remain after the torture was done.

It was my only defense.

I could feel my cock fill and lengthen, and I told myself that it meant nothing at all. I had not had sex since Fox had loved me last, and they made sure that I was never permitted to touch myself. That might have given me comfort so it was denied me. At any time when I was left alone my hands had been fastened into cuffs behind my back, and my cock had left to fend for itself. It had been excruciating to grow erect and yet remain unable to give myself release.

Small wonder that I quickened for this man now who was touching me as intimately as I had ever been touched. My cock grew hard in moments, and I could feel the trickle of moisture as it oozed and dripped from the slit in the crown of it. My balls were full, and I could feel them crawl up to sit below the shaft of my cock, tight and ripe, flash-flickers of pleasure throbbing through them, through me, along my cock and through my ass.

He began to talk then, and as he groped me, he told me how much he wanted me. I didn't want to hear it. He told me that he wanted to possess me, make me scream for him, make me love him. It was almost funny.

All I had to do was outlast this. I wouldn't lose.

When his hand reached to take hold of my heavy cock I almost screamed it felt so disgustingly good. I closed my eyes and imagined Fox slipping his hands into my ass to glide over my prostate, and Fox with his fingers curled around the shaft of my penis, stroking and squeezing as he whispered words of love to me. I moaned.

Held spread and pinned down like a hide on a drying rack there was nothing that I could do to prevent his attentions, so I merely waited, feeling the sickening approach of an orgasm that I didn't want.

He stopped at one point, took his hand away from my cock, although his fingers continued to stroke in and out of my ass, and at each inward thrust he found the little node of nerve endings that made me gasp. He began to tell me how beautiful I was, and to tell me how much he wanted to fuck me. I started to wonder if he was going to do it. It would have been a worse torture for me at that point to leave me the way I was. I was rapidly arriving at a state where I would have begged to be fucked. Whatever the drug in my system was, it seemed to be enhancing the sensations that were being drawn from me, and amplifying them.

I found myself starting to sob 'Please.' as the fingers slid to and fro. When the other hand, slick and cunning, returned to grasp my penis, I cried out. He knew just how to drag me almost to the brink and then pause while I thrashed and howled.

He did this again and again, stopping each time I felt the upsurge of jism begin to boil. I was sweating and writhing now as I tried to get off, tried so hard to tip myself over the brink, that he laughed at me. I was completely at his mercy, and I hated him so much I felt sick. I needed to come, but he kept me from it. I was beginning to panic at the thought that I might be left in that state, balls and cock full and no release in sight. The bastard strapped something onto me to keep me hard and then hit me with more drugs, jabbing the needle into my ass with vindictive joviality. Then he went away, leaving me alone for an hour or so, hard and desperate, until I was hoarse from screaming and crying, and in pain from cramped muscles and delayed ejaculation. When he returned, it was as much as I could do to keep from spitting into his face. Pathetic, I bowed my head, and allowed him to denigrate me.

"See how I can control you, Alex? You're nothing more than a pretty toy. You're flawed. I may keep you if you please me sexually, but there's no other possible use for you." I heard the words, and called up Fox one last time, whimpering as I saw him in my mind's eye.

At some stage the old man must have tired of the game, or maybe he wanted to see if I was capable of coming, because he gripped my cock hard and began to work it firmly at last, tugging and squeezing as he bent to lick my balls. His finger pressed home hard and found my prostate again, circling over it as he told me again how useless I was. Then at last, he released the constriction around my cock.

I came, screaming for a mother I had never known as he berated me, and the orgasm was almost enough to turn me inside out it was so intense. I felt as though I was burning, and the delicious sensations that shot through me were so strong that I could hear my joints crack as everything locked solid. Couldn't stop as my body went into meltdown, and all that I was poured out of my cock in scalding pulses, sending wild pleasure through me.

After it, I could only hang there and sob.

He said nothing more then, merely left the room, but not before he told me that we would be leaving together the following day.

The day after Spender had humiliated me, I found myself, drugged and heavy. I'd been washed, shaved, dressed in plain dark clothing, and made to sit on a couch in a room that gave away nothing. It was as though I were a doll.

I'm not sure what it was that they'd injected me with, but I was numb, void of any will to run, although I could see that the door was standing open. Vaguely I wondered what was going to happen to me now. I didn't care any more. The realization that I would never escape, and that even my body would betray me whenever they required it, was a horror that snapped and giggled behind the paper-thin walls of my sanity. I had believed I was special, and that was a lie. I was owned, and could be made to do things despite my prized 'free will.' What use was it to fight? I was alone and it seemed that I was destined to remain that way forever more. I didn't belong to myself. I was merely a thing. I would have cried, but I couldn't.

I merely sat and waited, feeling hollow, and wondering if I would ever be filled again.

After a while, the smoke-pickled old bastard appeared, and stood looking at me, his lip curled in derision as he surveyed me. What he saw I have no way of knowing, but he obviously felt it worth his time because he nodded, pursing his mouth judiciously, and told me coldly to follow him.

I did, of course.

I went, outwardly all compliance. I admit to feeling some trepidation, but inside, my heart was beating arhythmically, and Fox was there, as ever, smiling to me behind my eyes, and calling out 'soon, Alex, soon'. It seemed that all I had was this fantasy, and I would never get free. I couldn't fight the chemicals. I could only withdraw to the perfect inner room where my dream Fox waited for me.

Smokey had me sit with him in the back of the car as we drove away from the low concrete building in which I'd been housed. I was mildly curious to see where it was, and what it looked like, but somehow my neck wouldn't obey me and my head wouldn't turn to look.

I was no longer my own master. This seemed very sad and hot prickles stabbed the back of my eyes as I considered the implications. The old man at my side missed nothing. He was quick to take advantage of my weakness.

"Really, Alex, you were reared to be a weapon of the finest caliber, and here you are, weeping like a little girl. What a pity you're flawed, my dear. I don't know what's to be done with you now." I shivered. I was flawed indeed, but there was no way I would permit them to find out how badly. I vowed mentally that one day I would see him dead at my feet, although physically I was unable to do anything but comply with whatever instructions I was given..

As we began to hit the suburbs once more, I recognized the outskirts of DC and within my chest I felt a fluttering. My heart pounded, I was coming back home, back to Fox. Maybe I would see him again. My mind began to clear.

I would see Fox again. Soon. It would be soon.

In the days that followed, the old fucker teamed me up with a Hispanic asshole. What can I tell you about Cardinale? He was stupid, very, very stupid, and worse, he was self indulgent, emotionally sloppy in his viciousness. He had bad skin, a worse attitude, and his breath stank. All in all, it wasn't the most fortunate of pairings.

I bore it even though I wanted to kill him. I put up with it because I needed to stay close to Spender. I knew that old Spender had plans for Fox, and Fox was mine.

Yes, I could have killed him, wanted to in fact, but if I had, who would have countered the alien threat? I wasn't ready. I didn't have the information I would need. Maddening though it was, I just had to wait. Any premature act on my part would have put Fox in danger, and that was just not an option. To save Fox, I waited. To save Fox, I endured.

Spender took every opportunity to humiliate me. I'd always hated him, but now my hatred was a living thing coiled in the pit of my stomach, and I knew that one day it would be stronger than I. For now I could resist it when it gibbered. I could put up with the cigarette smoke and the abuse. I wasn't allowed outside, and at night I was still held in cuffs, strapped securely to a bed in which I could find little rest, and Cardinale had been given the keys to my cuffs.

I gritted my teeth and sublimated a lot, and was able to tolerate Cardinale holding the keys to my freedom. Gradually, after weeks of overt vigilance, they began to relax their guard a little, giving me jobs to do on my own, though I knew that they never stopped watching me for a moment.

The day came when Cardinale was out on a job and I had remained behind to study a target that was being readied for sterilization. I'd been playing and replaying video footage of the exterior, and was beginning to formulate our method of entry, when I smelled the telltale scent that told me Spender was in the vicinity.

Turning away from the screen of the monitor, I lifted my head to see the old man, cigarette in hand as usual, surveying me with what seemed to be a good humored smile, although with him, it was always an act unless he was squashing someone under his heel.

"Ah, Alex. As industrious as ever? Good, good. I have a job for you. Come." I followed him back to his office, good little slave that I was.

It was a simple task, and I wondered why he was sending me of all people to do it. All it involved was the connection into the water supply of a certain canister of substance. He explained that it was a hallucinogenic, and that it was important that the entire building get the effects.

He passed me the information, arranged for me to collect tools and a van, and bade me go. I was soon ready to leave, engine ticking over, and reveling the solitude. Finally I was to do something without Cardinale riding herd on me. It was only when I was in the van, that I checked the address where I was bound.

With a flash of excitement I realized that I'd been there many times. It was Mulder's apartment block.

The job was embarrassing in its simplicity. Grinning to myself, I patched into the drinking water supply. The thought of Mulder as he began to hallucinate was deliciously funny. Would he see naked Kryceks? I made a note to ask for the surveillance tapes. I screwed the cylinder that contained the hallucinogen into the water supply and turned on the small pump that would infuse tiny quantities of the drug into it with each pressure change.

The temptation, being in the building, to slip up the stairs and pay him a visit, or at least to share the same air, was overwhelming. I felt reckless and crazy. My stomach appeared to be home to a million fluttering creatures, and somewhere along the line, a metal band had tightened around my chest, constricting my breathing.

Pulling my cap down as far as possible, to cast a shade over my face, in case I was spotted, and taking up my toolbox, I stumbled to the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor.

Standing outside apartment 42 I paused to get my breath back under control.

In my mind I could see myself in my boxy suit, shaking in my eagerness as my beloved Fox kissed me breathless against this very door. I'd known then that we'd be together, naked within the next few minutes, and trying to control the spurt of precome as it stained the front of my pants had been impossible. In the end I'd put a hand against myself to conceal it in the unlikely event of there suddenly being passers by while Fox fumbled with the key.

I stole towards the door, slipped my skeleton key into the lock, and paused while the door opened softly. I paused for a moment, listening for signs that the apartment's occupant might be in residence.

All was silent save for the faint bubbling of the fishtank oxygenation system, and I slipped into the gloom with desperate satisfaction. The air smelled of him. The disarray and clutter was a sharp reminder of times we had spent together. I ghosted through the rooms, touching things that I remembered; examining things that were new.

In the bedroom his bed was unmade of course, the covers littered with magazines and books. On the floor lay discarded clothing, evidence that he had been exercising. I picked up the T-shirt and buried my nose in it, inhaling the scent of Fox.

Too much! I rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into one of my pockets, then turned and left as silently and quickly as I had arrived.

That T-shirt became my focus over the next few days. I wore it at night, imagining him wrapped around me, thrilling when the scent of him mingled with my own arousal. Now more than ever, he was all I could think about.

Twice more that week I was dispatched to change the canister that was releasing its contents into his water supply, and each time I stole up to visit him, the phantom of circumstance, caught pressed between two worlds and without any world of my own. I became bolder, switching the T-shirt I'd purloined for another, one that was still faintly damp when first I found it.

Sitting on his couch I thumbed his remote and watched the videos he'd been watching. The last time, there were crumpled tissues on the coffee table and I knew what he'd been doing.

I started the video, rewinding it through so I could see what had got him off. The video was poorly made, and began with an intimate examination of two large, suspiciously firm breasted women to the tune of grunts and groans that were ludicrously unsexy and insincere, but the part just before it had stopped showed a pair of men tangled together fucking hard. The younger man was facing the camera as he jerked himself off, coming for the audience in an amazing spray of white.

I watched it over and over again, imagining. remembering. I loved him so much. In my mind it was the two of us. It was me that made him come. It was me he gave it up for. Me.

The axe fell on a Thursday

This particular day I was irritable. Cardinale had spent the last several days being as annoying as he dared, brushing dirty hands over my crotch, leering at me and making off color jokes. When I had finally snapped, and moved to break his wrist, the rage as bitter as bile against my tongue, the Smoker himself had snarled at me through the intercom, and I was furiously reminded that I was still under constant observation.

Miserably I'd returned to my computer terminal to punch in data, when what I really wanted to punch was the smug grin on the face of that pockmarked son of a bitch Cardinale. Moments later, the Smoker had come into the room in the company of the Englishman I'd seen around from time to time. Cardinale had been dispatched to perform some act of nastiness, and then the two men had proceeded to argue. Either they had forgotten my existence, or I was of too little consequence for them to care.

Listening hard, betraying nothing, hoping against hope that I wouldn't be noticed, I heard them begin to discuss my Fox. He, like me, had been led by the nose for years, pushed and pulled into a shape that was someone else's concept of how he should be, but now it was deemed that his usefulness was at an end. What I heard them discussing, these two evil old men who felt that they should rule the world, was my beloved Fox's death at the hands of Bill Mulder. So arrogant they were that it never occurred to them that I would rise against them and defy them. It didn't cross their minds that I might be loyal to Fox and not to them and their cause. It didn't occur to them that torture wouldn't deter me.

Fox was to be steered to his own murder by his own father. I was horrified. I'd been assisting in the murder of my only love. Not only that, I'd been reveling in the job. I didn't know what I could do. They would have stopped me if I had leapt to my feet and raced off to his side. I continued to plug away on my data entry until finally they took themselves off, and left me alone.

An hour later I was detailed off by the returning Cardinale to change the cylinder at Hegel Place again, and I took my chance.

I carried out the assignment I'd been given. Then I headed out towards Martha's Vineyard, and Bill Mulder's place, my whole body shaking with the hope that I'd be in time.

Arriving, I breathed a sigh of relief. Fox wasn't here, yet. His car was nowhere to be seen. I circled the building rapidly, wondering how I would enter it when I needed to. I found a couple of windows that looked accessible, and when I tried the back door, it opened smoothly. This would be easy.

I was about to return to the van to wait when his car drew up. Watching him walk to that door was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I wanted to leap out and stop him. I wanted to hold him in my arms and let him know that he was loved. Instead, I sighed, returned to the back of the house and opened the back door, stepping into Bill Mulder's house with the full intention of killing anyone who would harm my Fox.

He would pay tonight for all of the pain he had caused me. He'd regret making me what I was now that I was no longer in his power to control. I was going to kill him, and save Fox. It was too late for me, but it wasn't too late for the man I loved. He could break free. He would never need to know the extent to which he'd been enslaved.

This was the gift I could and would give to my love.

Moving through the house, I could hear the muffled chatter of voices; his voice, so dear to me, and then the one that I hated beyond everything else in the world. It still had the power to conjure images of electrodes and pain, interspersed with nursery rhymes. It cause me to break into a sick sweat.

Now, Alexei, you haven't been good at all. Let's see if you can do better this time. Perhaps the pain will help you focus, hmmmm?

Oh, but I had been good. I'd been great, and my reward for that good behavior was right here, right now.

Bill Mulder was going to die.

I stepped into the bathroom to wait. It gave me a great vantagepoint. The door was ajar and I could clearly hear what was being said out in the living room. My brain kept screaming at me to do it now, or it would be too late, but I didn't want Fox to see me. I didn't want him to know. If I gave my Fox the gift of life it would be something I wouldn't take the credit for.

I'd never been nervous before, but now my palms were damp and slippery. I was afraid.

I tried the Hatha Yoga breathing but my mind wouldn't stop racing. Fox's life was in pawn here, and my creator was close to him. Facing my terror, I realized that though I knew that I had been taught things that Bill Mulder had never mastered, psychologically he was still my superior. He'd dominated me all through my life, and setting that aside wasn't easy.

I took a deep breath and made up my mind. I was going to burst into the room and shoot him down without further thought, Fox or no Fox. It would be final, and though it wouldn't put me out of my misery, it would save my lover's life. I took my gun and cocked it, and was about to move when the bathroom door pushed open.

He came to me.

The swinging mirror of the medicine cabinet revealed me to him. I was a devil from the ninth pit with my tortured eyes, and all the hate that ever there was set out like a death mask on my white face, and I was there for him.

He froze. His hour had come and he knew it. He bowed his head to me and stood, waiting. He knew he couldn't escape me. He'd made me too well.

We were alone, Bill Mulder and I, and my hard, cold malice.

Look, teacher, no shaking, no hesitation, Alex the killing machine is making the perfect kill.

With pleasure I saw the bright blood blossom on his face, and then I was away, squirming up through the window and out, trusting that Fox wouldn't see me.

Once back in my own room I showered, and then took Fox's T-shirt, wrapped it around my cock and masturbated, each stroke bringing me closer to the knowledge that I was truly alone forever more, and that Fox would never forgive me now.

Bill Mulder, my creator, had been as much of a father to me as anyone. I'd just killed him. Fox was safe for now, he still lived, but I.

I was not sure if I would ever be free from nightmares again.

I lay, trying to sleep, but sleep eluded me. My brain still buzzed with hatred, and death, and lies, and desperate, needy love.

Pulling on my clothes again, I returned to the van and drove the couple of miles back to Hegel Place.

I had keys to the building of course, but I had to check whether or not Fox's car was in the lot before I could risk going inside. I kept in the shadows as I hugged the building close and moved around to the front. The shock that followed when Mulder and his poison dwarf came face to face with me as we rounded the corner was enough to shorten my life by 10 years, indeed it almost curtailed it right then and there.

He was furious. I knew that the drug he'd been ingesting was partly to blame, but that wouldn't bring me back to life once he'd blown my brains out, and I couldn't hurt him. If this was the way I was meant to die, then so be it. I'd let Fox kill me before I'd hurt him.

No one was more surprised than I to hear the shot. I was lying over the hood of a car looking down the barrel of my own gun. I could feel Fox pressed up against me, taut and real as he strained to hold me. When the shot burst on my ears I was stunned for a second, trying to decide whether I lived or died. Then his weight left me suddenly and I realized what had happened. She had shot him.

The bitch had shot my Fox.

Quick as a thought, I turned and ran.

Out of sight again, swallowed by the comforting darkness, I stopped, leant against the wall of the building, and allowed myself to give in to a moment's horrified panic. My head swam.

She'd shot him. He was hurt. He could be dead. Oh, God, Fox, I'm so sorry.

Now, what the hell could I do? I turned to climb into the van and start the engine, but it was no use. There wasn't a hope in hell that I could leave, knowing that he was hurt. I stumbled back out of the van and moved silently back around to the front of the building, just in time to see them drive away.

She must be taking him to the hospital. I had two choices. I could follow, or I could wait. I followed, even though they were long gone by the time I pulled the van around to face the direction that they had left in. Somehow there was a skein of silver connecting the two of us, and I knew in which direction he'd gone. I knew that should he ever die, I'd feel his death as a physical blow. He was mine and if he needed me, I'd be there.

Scully's car was nowhere in sight, but I didn't falter as I sped to the George Washington University Hospital and the Accident and Emergency ward there. Pulling into the parking garage a couple of blocks away, I nodded, grinning with relief as I ranged the van in the same row as Scully's little car. I knew he was here, my body could feel his proximity.

I made my way cautiously into the waiting area. There were very few people waiting. An old man who looked a little the worse for alcohol slumped over several of the seats. The inevitable young woman with screaming baby fidgeted and fussed, and a couple holding a sleepy looking child with a bandage on its hand sat in the corner.

Of Scully or Fox there was no sign.

Making straight for the reception desk, and assuming a confidence I was far from feeling, I sauntered over to the woman behind the counter. She looked up, unsmiling, and I smiled at her, radiating confusion and helpless maleness.

"I got here as soon as I could. How. how is he?" I allowed my desperation to shine out from my eyes as I spoke and she looked at me for a minute before returning my tremulous smile.

"I'm sorry, who are you looking for?" I gazed at her, willing her to see me as I wanted her to, and not as I was.

"My. my brother. They shot him. I know she brought him here. She called me and told me. His name is Fox. Fox Mulder. I'm his brother, Sam." I fixed her with an anguished stare.

She leaned forward, patting my hand as she succumbed to my charm.

"It's okay, Mr. Mulder. He's not seriously hurt. He's gone into surgery to have a bullet removed from his shoulder but he's not in mortal danger." I flashed her a look that spoke of relief along with a subtext of sensuality. She licked her lips and then pulled a scrap of paper to her and began to draw me a little map that described where I needed to go to find Fox.

"Here. If he isn't there already he'll be along in no time at all. If you go along now you'll be able to see him as soon as they bring him out of surgery." She gave me a smile that was worth at least a hundred watts, and I grabbed her hand, placing heartfelt kiss on the back of it before heading off in the direction I'd been shown.

It was rash. I know it. The only mitigating circumstance I can offer in my defense is that I was half-crazy with grief, rage and hatred. I was on a killing high, adrenaline coursing through me still as I stumbled along. I knew that Scully would still be around, and that the next bullet she fired would likely have my name on it, but even so, how could I keep away?

I couldn't.

When I'd reached the ward that the receptionist had designated, I snagged a white coat and a stethoscope that were lying handy, leaving my leather jacket hanging on a hook in one of the side rooms.

Once I was garbed in white I strode purposefully, zeroing in on the nursing station at the center of the ward. The nurse there barely glanced at me, and didn't look up any further, preferring to concentrate on her report. I peered at the sheaf hanging on the hook behind her that read "Admissions."

"Have they brought the new patient back from surgery, Nurse Wallace?" I asked, grateful for the button she wore on her lapel.

"He's still in recovery, Doctor. They just rang to say that he was on his way down. He'll be here shortly." She handed me a clipboard on which Fox's admission information was neatly typed. She still hadn't looked at me.

Studying the paperwork intently, I nodded thanks to the busily writing nurse and then moved away to the room where the nurse had indicated he would be brought. The ward was long and narrow with a number of rooms for individual patients each opening onto the corridor. The person at the nursing station could monitor people entering and laving the ward, but wouldn't be able to see what was happening in the individual rooms without getting up to go and investigate. Perfect!

I waited in the room opposite. Fifteen minutes dripped slowly into the bucket of time, and are gone without ripples. I began to chafe under the silence. Where was he? Had there been complications?

The clack of the fire door at the end of the corridor swinging back, followed by the tap and patter of quickly moving feet, reassured me. I was behind the door of the darkened room I'd been waiting in, and as the stretcher that bore my lover was wheeled past me I could have reached out and touched him. He was being wheeled along by a couple of nurses in white, and following behind, hot on his tail as ever was Scully. I wondered if she'd settle him down and then leave, or whether she'd want to stay with him. I hoped against hope that she'd go home. I didn't want to repay the saving of my life by killing her.

I waited, and I believe I prayed. Prayer had always seemed so pointless to me, and yet I did it, not understanding why. It must have been at least an hour later when Scully emerged from the room and tap-tapped her way down the corridor, finally leaving the ward and earning my undying gratitude.

I waited, and slowly the hospital settled down to quiescence, a sleeping behemoth that rested uneasily. Somewhere close by, someone coughed, a staccato bark in the semi-silence. I checked my watch. It was one am, and it was time. I emerged from my room and approached the nursing station yet again.

Nurse Wallace wasn't there. I looked around for her, and then made my way quickly to the room where my Fox was lying hurt.

He lay on his back, his shoulder swathed in bandages, a waxy pallor to his face, and I stood for long moments just drinking him in. I could feel my proximity to him surging like honey through my veins, and finally I approached him, unable to hold off any longer. I bent and took his face between the palms of my hands and kissed him, allowing my lips to part his and tasting once again the sweetness of his mouth. My head began to swim with the intoxicating proximity of him. My heart beat a sharp tattoo against my chest.

He moaned, and I jumped back a little, stroking his cheek with my thumbs. He was going to be okay. Sense dictated that I leave there and then, fade back into the woodwork and leave him to heal. That's what anybody with a modicum of sense would have done, but I'd fully reached that place I feared so long ago. I was in thrall to this man, he was my real owner.

I'm intelligent. I know that, but I lack common sense, that's obvious. I couldn't go. I couldn't just leave him when I wanted to fill myself with his scent, hold him and kiss away all of his pain. I didn't understand how to stop this feeling I had for him. I didn't know how I could turn and walk away from him, when he was here, beneath my hands, and my heart was beating so hard. It hurt to look at him, and the thought of leaving him cut and stabbed at me.

So it was that I was still leaning over him, still touching him, still cradling his face and dusting his features with kisses. I was murmuring endearments that I would never had uttered to the conscious man, but which I had held inside myself for what seemed like the whole of my life. He didn't move or otherwise signal his consciousness, but suddenly I became aware that he had opened his eyes and looked at me.

There was no way I could resist him, once he fixed his gaze on me. My will to resist him was gone, and my heart with it. I found myself shaking all over again, prepared to give myself up to him if that was his will. His eyes were glazed and feverish. His face was set in a cold, despising rage as he looked me up and down.

I shivered.

"Fox, please listen to me." I spoke rapidly, trying to express my feelings fast, before he screamed for assistance. "He was going to kill you. I saved your life.. " He made an angry, impatient sound, licking at lips that were dry and cracked.

"Why don't you run back to your disgusting employer, you contemptible little lackey? Scully should have let me shoot you. The world would be a cleaner place if she had." Venom dripped from his words and shook me, rocked me back with the force of his loathing. I moaned. His words sliced at me like razor wire.

"Fox, my heart, I love you. You have no idea how much I love you. The things I've done are for you. There's no way you could ever know just how much I've done for you." He shook his head in a furious negation of my words. I touched his cheek.

"Do you really think that I would leave you to that.that bastard? One day I'll tell you the things I've done for you, prove what I've suffered for you." I fumbled, taking off my white coat, peeling off the T-shirt beneath it to stand exposed to his angry eyes.

My skin's always been white, and the angry red welts I wore from the Smoker's most recent games showed stark on my torso, products of the electrodes and clamps that he had used on me during my most recent "redirection." Some of the scars were fading now, but others glowed angry red or gleamed white on white as I showed him.

"Look at me. I've suffered for you. It's always been for you. Don't turn away from me now." I yanked his face around towards me as he attempted to do just that. When his eyelids drooped closed immediately after, I slapped him once, hard.

"Look at me." I hissed again. "You aren't the only one who is on intimate terms with pain."

He did. He looked, his face an expression compounded of distaste and boredom. Had I not been preternaturally tuned in to him, I might have missed the imperceptible widening of his eyes as he took in the half healed burn marks around my nipples. His expression was fleeting, a ripple on still water, but his pupils had dilated with shock, and he was no longer wearing the mask of disinterest that had made them pinpoints a moment ago.

"What are you trying to tell me, Krycek?" His voice was a thread.

"I'm trying to show you a tiny portion of what they've done to me because of you. It's all for the love of you, Fox. Do you know why I'm here? I exist only to keep you safe, I breathe only to love you. You're my life. I've been tortured for loving you, but I couldn't stop. I've always loved you. I'm trying to make you realize that I killed William Mulder to save you, not to spite you. I need you to know how much I love you even though they'll kill me for saving you." I spoke rapidly, trying to make my emotions flesh, trying to win his heart with my desperately uttered words and knowing that no matter how eloquent I was, whatever I said would never be enough.

I loved him. That was the only message that I had to give, and once given, I was merely a husk, waiting for him to burn me or fill me.

His facial expression had altered from one of disgust to bland impassivity. I couldn't tell if I was making any impression on him. I had to make him see. I needed his. Approval? His understanding? No matter what one called it, I needed something from his lips that would absolve me, and make me whole again.

I received nothing.

"We're pawns, Fox. Free will is an illusion for us both. We were programmed from birth to aim and fire wherever they point us, and if they think we've outlived our usefulness, they'll kill us and have no compassion for us. He was going to kill you tonight, Fox. I heard the order given, and couldn't let it happen."

Nothing.

The shrewd eyes glittered like marbles and his face was clamped into stony indifference.

I turned away, replacing my shirt as I did so. I'd come to save him. I'd never expected to reclaim his love and it was time for me to leave.

"Fox, I came to see you because I needed you to know that I did it for you, all of it. I killed him for you." My voice dragged at me and I knew as I spoke that the sweet, drowned days of paradise I'd known with him were all I would ever get. Too late now, I knew. I could see the immutable certainty in his eyes. There was nothing more I could give him except.

I swallowed. My tongue felt thick in my mouth and I tried to speak, tried again, and finally heard my voice, a strange, harsh croak that seemed fitting to bid farewell to my dreams once and for all.

"There's one last thing I can do for you, Mulder." I used the patronymic purposefully, and was rewarded by the glimmer of some emotion, deeply felt, and painfully suppressed, as it flickered in the depths of my love's eyes. "I can give myself to you, to do as you see fit. I belong to you anyway, so it's fitting you should decide my fate."

He gave a brief sneer, and I nodded to myself. Why should he believe me?

"Here's the deal. When we meet again, you may kill me. You will, won't you, Mulder? You'll do it and give us both peace at last?" My eyes bored into his, willing him to believe, willing him to accept what I offered, and finally he looked away, licking his lips.

"I trusted you." Low and desolate.

"Trust me now?" All of my soul was in those three words.

There was a pause, and then he nodded, unsmiling.

I died in that moment, or at least it seemed as though I no longer lived. I existed, but I'd forever lost all I'd ever wanted. The only reason I continued breathing was because he lived on. Someday, he might need me to save him again, and after I had, he would kill me. Such is life.

Eyes glistening, I bent and caught his lips with mine. One last touch and then done. I turned away, and as I left him, knowing that I'd never see him again, I murmured my benediction, softly wishing him all the good fortune in the world.

"Otashi tebya, tovarisch."

The End

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