We Dream Salvation
By Logan
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex, violence, language
Genre: Angst, Mulder/Krycek slash
Website: http://www.hegalplace.com/logan
Author's notes: This is NOT my usual reasonably happy fic. Proceed with caution. The plot idea came from Flutesong. I borrowed her idea and took it in another direction. Don't blame her for this. Many thanks to her for plot bunnies and beta.
We Dream Salvation
By Logan
It was almost quiet on the floor. She heard the tap tap tap of fingers on a keyboard as the unit clerk went about her work, and the faint scratch of a fountain pen on paper as Dr. Metz filled out a report.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. The antiseptic smells of iodine and cleaning fluids had given her a headache. She should have gotten used to them, but there was something about the smell of Iodine that she never grew accustomed to.
Scratch scratch scratch, the sound of Dr. Metz's scribbling was boring into her skull like an ice pick. One day she was going to lose it and stab the man through the ear with his fancy fountain pen. What was wrong with using a ballpoint pen like a normal person?
Tap tap tap
Scratch scratch scratch.
She hated her job. She sighed and reached for another chart.
"Janet?" The voice was roughened by exhaustion.
She looked up into dark-rimmed, bloodshot hazel eyes. He had probably been attractive in the past, before a bullet had turned his boyfriend into a vegetable.
"Hello Richard. How's our patient this evening?" she asked.
"I finished his tube feeding and got him shaved. His IV needs to be changed, and his catheter bag
needs to be emptied. Oh, and I need to use those clippers to cut his hair again."
The man's skin was ashen, and he had passed underweight about 15 pounds ago.
"I'll be in to take care of everything in a few minutes. When was the last time you ate, Richard?"
"I'll eat later. Thanks, Janet." He turned and walked away. His shoes scuffed on the polished floor as he trudged back down the hall.
Dr. Metz looked up from his notes. "What's with him? Is he ever not here?"
Janet shook her head. "Nope. Ever since they brought his boyfriend here about six months ago he's been here 12 to 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. They were both cops or something. The boyfriend took a bullet in the head about a year ago."
"Is he going to recover?"
She shook her head again and stood. "No. Chronic vegetative state. They should have let the poor guy die."
//////////////////////////////////////
Mulder sat back down in the chair next to the hospital bed. Either the chair was now contoured to
conform to his body, or his ass was now molded to the shape of the chair. Regardless, he had almost forgotten that there had once been a life beyond that room, that green plastic chair, the monitors and machines.
Once he'd had been a life beyond the man in the hospital bed.
He took the hand of the man in the bed and chafed his thumb gently over the knuckles. The hand was soft now. No more calluses. It was a hand that felt as though it had never held a gun.
He closed his eyes and let his mind stretch, reaching instinctively for the green and golden hues that were Alex. He found them easily, and nearly recoiled when he found the colors stained with the black sheen of oily nightmares.
//So quickly, Alex? I was only gone five minutes. One day, I swear to God, I'm going to get you out of that silo and keep you out.//
He forced himself to relax. He wrapped his blues and browns around the other colors, insinuated them between Alex and the oil, carefully drew Alex's mind from the silo.
In his mind, in the dreamscape that Mulder had worked so hard to craft into reality, Alex Krycek bolted awake.
"Fox? I had that damned dream again," he panted.
Mulder rolled over and took Alex in his arms. "C'mere, let me kiss it and make it go away," he said huskily, bringing his mouth down on Alex's.
Mulder was still amazed at how sweet that mouth was. If only it had been like that in reality, instead of only here in Alex's mind. Is this who Alex wished he could have been for Mulder?
Eventually Alex slept again. Mulder withdrew from Alex's mind and oriented himself to his
surroundings.
Beep beep. Beep beep. Janet had not yet come to replace the IV, and now the bag was empty. He unfolded his frame from the chair and shut the machine off himself.
He looked down at Alex Krycek. Alex Krycek's body. The mind was still alive, usually lost in its own horrors, but was utterly disconnected from the body.
Mulder had often thought he should have let Alex die after Skinner shot him. It would have been the unselfish thing to do.
But Mulder was selfish. After Scully gave birth to her child, Alex Krycek was the only thing left in the world for Mulder to save. Scully no longer needed rescuing, and the baby was not in danger.
Mulder didn't have the courage to save himself.
The telepathy he'd experience before had returned with renewed force when Scully gave birth to her child. Mulder didn't know how or why, but William Scully had been a catalyst to reawaken something deep in Mulder's mind. The telepathy had been so strong in the child's presence that Mulder couldn't stand to be in the same room with him.
It had been a convenient excuse to leave after Mulder realize he couldn't stay.
Mulder had used the telepathy to scan Alex for brain activity after the doctors had ruled him hopeless. For months there had been nothing, and then finally a glimmer of gold, wrapped in oily darkness. Alex was lost, but not in death. Alex's mind was in a silo, dying and dying and dying.
Alex's mind had proven to be a fertile playing field. Mulder had experimented with his powers, flipping through Alex's fragmented and tortured memories, finally finding answers to all his questions, until one day the gold had flared bright and vibrant and threaded with the green of spring.
//It was the same green as Alex's eyes.//
Alex had heard Mulder's call, and answered with the last bit of consciousness left to him.
It was the last thing Fox Mulder could save, if only in Alex's mind.
But no matter how often he rewrote history for Alex Krycek, no matter how many times he asked
"Why?" instead of throwing a punch, no matter when or where he eventually called the man lover
instead of enemy, he ultimately had to disengage to sleep or eat. He always returned to find Alex in the silo, dying.
"Good evening, Mr. Cameron. Sorry about the delay, I got held up with another patient," Janet said as she entered the room.
"Please," Mulder said. "Call him Alex. It's good for him to hear his name."
Mulder didn't have to read her mind to know she didn't believe Alex could hear. Alex Cameron was just another body for her to wash, another ass for her to wipe.
Mulder hated her for it.
/////////////////////////////////
"Mr. Andrews, with Mr. Cameron's prognosis we cannot justify keeping him here any longer. It would be best for you to find an extended care facility in which to place him, or if you feel that you are capable of caring for him, you may do so at home," the doctor said. His eyes were not unkind.
"Thank you," Mulder said. "I'll make arrangements."
The doctor nodded and left the room.
Mulder looked at the wasted body on the bed. He absently reached to wipe drool from Alex's chin.
He should have let Alex die.
He was out of money. The spy and assassins union hadn't coughed up Alex's health insurance policy, and the FBI hadn't paid *that* well. He had no idea how he would take care of Alex now.
He let his mind go, touched on the green and gold, the new leaves and sunshine that were Alex.
"Mulder, you're home. Sorry, I don't have dinner ready yet," Alex said, stirring something boiling in a saucepan with his left hand.
Mulder came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Alex's waist, pressing a kiss to the top of his spine. "S'okay. I missed you today."
The green glowed and pulsed. "I missed you too. Go change and I'll have dinner on the table in a little while."
After dinner Mulder went into the bedroom. He lit candles and changed the sheets on the bed, then poured two glasses of wine and placed them on the nightstand.
Alex came in. The candlelight caught in his eyes and they glowed and danced green and gold.
//I'm so fucking sorry Alex, so fucking sorry...//
"Mulder, what's all this?"
Mulder smiled and moved to pull Alex close. "Did you forget it was our anniversary?"
Alex frowned. "Shit, I'm sorry babe."
Mulder kissed him, slow and deep, pushed his tongue between Alex's pliant lips and lazily explored the contours of his mouth, his arched palate and the sharp points of his teeth. Kissed him and kissed him as he worked to unfasten his clothes, until the warm supple body was naked beneath him on the bed.
He kissed him as he pushed his cock into him, kissed him as they rocked together on the bed, kissed him as he swallowed down the musical cries of Alex's orgasm.
He hoped it would be enough.
///////////////////////////////////
He went out the next day to check his email at the public library. He found a message from Scully, telling him the time had come for him to return. The baby was in danger.
The last humane act Alex had committed had been to protect the baby. Alex had thought William was worth dying for.
Mulder replied that he understood, and would see her soon.
/////////////////////////////////
Janet looked up when the elevator doors opened.
"Richard, I'm glad you decided to get out for a while. I think this is the longest you've ever been away since Alex came here."
"I had things to take care of," he replied, continuing to walk down the hall.
He closed the door to Alex's room and put the green plastic chair in front of the door. He put the bed rail down, then got a clean white cloth and wiped the drool from Alex's chin. He leaned over, pressed his lips to the slack mouth, then pulled away.
Mulder lay down beside Alex and carefully arranged the man's boneless limbs until he and Alex were entwined together on the narrow bed. He reached for Alex's mind and could barely see the gold encased in the thick, black death.
He walked into the Silo. Alex smelled of piss and fear. There was oil in his hair, clumped in his
eyelashes. His hands were bloody and his fingernails torn away. There was no sanity in his eyes.
Mulder removed his gun from the holster and placed it at Alex's feet.
"This is the only way out of here, Krycek," he said. "There's no other means of escape."
"Thank you," Alex rasped.
He crouched down and took the gun in his hand. He looked up at Mulder. The gold in his eyes was gone.
//////////////////////////////////////////
"Heard you had a busy afternoon," Dr. Metz said as Janet sat down at the front desk.
"Alex Cameron coded out of the clear fucking blue," she replied. "Probably the best thing that could have happened to him, frankly. You doctors think you're God sometimes, preserving life at all costs. Sometimes there is just nothing left to save."
END