Tchotchke
Fandom: The X-Files
Category/Rated: T for slashy ideas.
Year/Length: ~828 words
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek
Disclaimer: I don't own them or they'd be happily making love now.
Warning: Not a comfortable read.
Author's Notes: This is the result of the word that was sent to me for this turn of the Lyric Wheel. chachka or tchotchke: n. Slang A cheap showy trinket. A toy, A trifle.
Beta: By Pic, who rocks.
He was a bauble a plaything.
Weve all had one at some time or another a bright, shiny thing that promised everything, and then fell short.
I guess we can all remember unwrapping an intriguing package to find a toy wed dreamed of owning. When I was eight, I wanted a microscope so badly that I sold my services up and down the street, washing cars, cutting grass, walking dogs and polishing silverware for pretty much anyone who would stand for it.
When Id finally amassed the cash I needed, mom drove me downtown, and I felt like a prince when I gave the money to the woman behind the counter in the toy store, receiving in return a large box.
Weak with excitement, I carried my hearts desire home, refusing to allow the burden to be placed in the trunk of the car for the drive home, choosing instead to keep it on my knee.
Trembling, I took it to my room and carefully peeled off the wrapper to reveal the instrument within shining steel, black plastic and glass cocooned in Styrofoam and nestling snugly in its box. For the rest of that day I gave myself over wholly to exploring the limits of the world in microcosm, exclaiming and marveling at every new discovery.
Disappointment came quickly. I suddenly realized that although it looked real enough, when I began to test its capabilities, they were shallow and few.
With my dawning realization came a feeling of betrayal, and then chasing that, grief for lost innocence. Id dreamed of so much and found the reality to be a pale and empty thing a chimera, all style and no substance.
It was just a toy, and nothing more.
I never touched it again, and its still somewhere at my mothers house, lying forgotten with the refuse of yesterdays dreams.
The day I met Alex Krycek was similar. There he stood before me, bright and shiny and altogether desirable. I wanted him almost at once and set out to earn him.
The promise of him was overwhelming. His huge eyes, softly veiled with thick, black lashes; his secret smile, the merest quirk at the corner of his mouth; his smoky, seductive voice all offered intimacy that made my blood pound in my ears and sent hot spurts of lust to flood my belly and make my knees shake.
The day that I finally took him to bed and made him mine was a miracle of hot, sticky kisses, fast beating hearts and slick sweat. As we lay entwined, I thought that he was my everything.
He wasnt.
He too was just a bauble a toy a plaything. Alex was a mere glamour, sent to beguile, bemuse, and finally betray.
Each time that I saw him, the memory of the way hed used me would fuel red rage, my only defense against his beauty, which as often as not would blossom in bright blood shed by him at my behest. Always, I emerged from our encounters feeling empty, knowing that the glamour was all, and that my Alex had never existed outside the glittering shape within my imagination.
He was only a toy.
And now hes broken.
The red blood sang once too often, spilled too freely. Alex fell victim to a vandal with no thought outside his own, dark agenda. I watched in silence as my gaudy toy was smashed into pieces. That dark, intimate voice whispered brother to me for the last time and was silenced forever, leaving me to mourn the passing of a bright being that never truly existed; to feel the pain of loss for a man that I only dreamed Id known.
Hes packed away now, my beautiful, maimed toy. There are no more secret smiles left in him, and his brilliant eyes are forever dimmed by the scum of death as they stare sightlessly from his box. Theyve covered him with dirt, and he is gone.
There is only one thing left to do before I join him.
Dana Scully no longer needs me. She has her own shiny plaything now, kicking within his crib. I can see clearly now, the way that I never could before, that he and I were the same. I understand why he called me brother, and my feeling of hopeless despair is as strong now as his ever was, for what were the two of us but pawns that were used and then cast aside?
Ive seen the future, tasted the truth, and there is only one mystery left for me to solve.
Hes waiting for me as I write this. I can sense him standing beside me as I wrap the plastic over my face and pull the tie tight before taking myself in hand. One last ride, and Ill go out. Its fitting that it should be him that waits to pull me through to where hes gone.
For I, too, was just a toy.
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