by C. M. Decarnin

16.
 

He got a call from Canada.  His friend had a long hunting story to tell him,
about following the blood trail of a bull moose.  Mulder felt his heart
start beating painfully.  It could only mean one thing.

Then nothing.

A week went by.  Another.  His own DNA sample had been routed by Scully to a
different lab, and the results smuggled to Krycek so he could obtain a
comparison.  He wasn't sure why he was doing this.  Without Krycek's own DNA
for comparison, they only had the opinion of aliens and a lot of
circumstantial evidence to say that William Mulder had fathered Alex.

But that evidence had mounted.  He had found Krycek's mother's driver's
license and the Gunmen had even hacked into her tax returns.  There was no
doubt that she had been in the right place at the right time.

The man he knew as his father was the father of his lover.  Could any mere
change of his own biological paternity alter the emotional impact that had
on him?  The sinking feeling he kept having told him it couldn't.  What did
one sperm cell have to do with it?

All sorts of strange thoughts came to him.  He wondered what it did to his
legal position as his father's heir.  Not that anyone was ever going to
know.  Nothing, probably.  Most of the estate had gone to his mother through
divorce settlements, and he would inherit through her.  But some of that,
morally if not legally, surely belonged to Alex?

He wondered what the Smoking Man's assets were.  And though he had never
before thought of himself as weak-stomached, he ended up in the bathroom
again, puking at the mere idea.

Jesus.

He stood hunched and trembling.  The paroxysms stopped.  He had felt the
Smoking Man's touch on him, dry, possessive, sick.  Bill Mulder had at least
wanted to take the most courageous path through the conspiracy.  And -- oh
god -- if Krycek wasn't his half-brother, then poor Jeffrey Spender had
been.  Murdered by their warped psychotic father in cold blood.  The father
neither of them had known.  Something they both had in common with Krycek.
Hidden fathers...

The secrets of the family replicating globally.  Horrors magnified by power,
acted out en large and still not named.  Genetic manipulation of the human
race trying to scream out those old, wicked, undead lies.  These men such
pawns of their own unfaced truths!

Mulder bent and trembled, not sure if he was done, but finally dragged
himself to the sink and rinsed the taste away.  He had tried, thought
himself a good man, made the truth his beacon, and this was his reward.

The sins of the fricking fathers.

Wasn't it always the way.

Whapping you completely from out of left field.  From out of another fucking
dimension.

You just had to deal.

He felt himself not wanting to.

Wanting to just... leave.

Shut down, start over.

Abandon everything he had or wanted.

He was old enough to know no matter how much you wanted to, you never left
yourself behind.  No matter where you go... there you are.  His mouth didn't
move, but he felt the sensation of a painful smile inwardly.  That was
Krycek's favorite movie.  He had told him once.  He'd been surprised, that
Krycek should love something so light and playful.

His eyes focussed, in the mirror, and oh god, wasn't his baffled, pained
expression the exact duplicate of Jeffrey Spender's perpetual anxiety?

He washed his face, as if he could scrub away the awful resemblance.  And in
fact it was gone, when he looked again in the mirror.  Had it been his
imagination...?

Mulder trailed into the living room.

Was Krycek ultimately the braver of the two?  Or was it just his psychotic
lack of connection, that let him not care...  Mulder might be autonomous,
but Krycek so thoroughly didn't care what people thought that it was not
even an issue.  He conformed only to be able to pass.  Shed his skin and
moved on.

Except with Mulder.

Mulder had given him a weak spot.  A conduit to humanity.

It would be nice to think that would grow to be Krycek's greatest strength.
Instead of a fatal flaw in the armor that shielded him.

He lay down in his old nest on the couch, which he hadn't used much since he
started getting laid regularly.  Hello, insomnia, my old friend.  As usual,
getting horizontal with the tv on let him drift off immediately.

He woke up to the sound of the hall door closing.

He clicked the tv off with the remote.  Scully wouldn't come at this hour,
it must be almost morning; yet usually he never heard Alex approaching...

Krycek materialized at the living room door, out of the darkness of the
entryway.  He was looking at Mulder with the old, desperate, painfully
starved expression Mulder knew so well, hesitating there at the door in a
way that made Mulder get to his feet unconsciously.  Ready for trouble.

"Alex?"

It was as if Krycek couldn't speak.  He hovered there like a dark ghost.
Mulder saw him force himself to move his artificial arm forward, and then
follow with the rest of his body, becoming a creature of the world again.

In his right hand was an envelope.

In the light, he could see that Krycek's face was incredibly pale.

"What's wrong?"

Alex had stopped only a few feet into the room.  His eyes looked dark and
sunken; his mouth opened, but nothing came out.  His haunted stare moved
down from Mulder's face to the envelope.

"The results came."

The voice was a velvetty whisper.

The DNA testing.  Comparison of his genes with Cancerman's.  It must be bad
news.  Though what, exactly, in this case, would good news be?

"What does it say?"

Alex looked up at him again, his eyes anguished and wraith-ridden.  He
looked as if he were freezing.

"I don't know."  At Mulder's puzzled frown, he dropped his eyes again to the
envelope.  After a long pause, he confessed in a voice of utter humility, "I
can't read it."

For a moment Mulder thought he meant the technical language was too much for
him, or the handwriting.  Till Krycek looked up at him and said even more
humbly, "I can't open it."  Mulder's heart was stabbed with pity.  Alex, who
dared anything!  "It came yesterday," Krycek continued haltingly.  "I've
just -- been staring at it.  I --"

He didn't seem able to take another step forward, or say more.  Slowly he
lifted the envelope and held it out.

Mulder reached for it.  He could see it trembling in Krycek's hand, and as
his own hand closed over it he could feel it vibrate against his palm like a
moth's wings.  Krycek went visibly shades paler as Mulder pulled the
envelope from his fingers.

Krycek looked as if his whole fate, his life or death, were in that
envelope.

It was.  In it could be the answer to whether Mulder would ever touch Krycek
again, hold him as he so clearly needed to be held right now, love him, kiss
him.

It had taken Mulder nearly forty years to find the person he was fit for,
suited to, in love with, and never, never would he find his like again.
Krycek was all he would ever have, or ever want, and the paper in this
envelope could confirm his right to him... or leave him in eternal,
unresolved doubt.  That his mother could have had more than one extramarital
lover he could not believe; if indeed she had had even one.  But what the
Consortium breeding program might have meddled in, or how -- who could say?
What would he really learn, even if his biological father's identity could
be proved?  Krycek's DNA still could not be matched, and that surely had to
be some machination of the Consortium?  Something they had done to William
Mulder's genes?  Or to Krycek's mother?

All these questions had carouselled through his mind before, but now he saw,
in Krycek's fear, a mirror where his own fate, and his lover's, stood like a
reflected spectre.

Mulder lifted the envelope.

He turned, and put it into his desk drawer, and locked it.

"I'm done with it."

Krycek looked at him with dumb incomprehension.

"I'm finished with letting what traitors to the human race did half a
century ago decide my life.

"There is no fate, Alex.  There is no destiny.  Only what we make our
lives."

Alex still looked pathetically uncomprehending.

"Their program ends here.  We're not going to work for them, we're certainly
not going to breed for them.  I'm not what they planned on, and neither are
you.  They can't know the outcome of their actions, no one can, it's
what's always been wrong with their philosophy and always will be.  The end
can never justify the means.  Because you can never know what the end of any
act may be.  God knows what they wanted.  What they got, is us."

His own limbs felt as cold and trembling as Krycek looked.  He probably
looked as desperate.

He and Krycek did not even remotely resemble one another.  Whereas Jeff
Spender... their bodies both tall and lanky, like...

And Krycek...

...Krycek looked like his sister.

Half-sister?

Samantha's dark hair, more open facial features, broader cheeks --

God, anything was possible.  But none of them were stamped clearly enough
with the paternal features to make it a certainty.  Prepotency.  He'd read
that in one of the "Flicka" books when he was a kid.  The sire reliably
passing on his characteristics to his offspring.

"Their whole legacy is tragedy," he said softly.  And made himself take a
step toward Alex.  It felt like an out-of-body experience.  Another step.

If he vomited every time he touched his lover their sex-life would take on
some bizarre overtones.

He raised his hand to Alex's cheek.  His fingertips trembled and Alex's skin
was cold.  Those theoretically green eyes searching his, ransacking his
actions for their meaning.  He moved his touch back, onto Alex's neck, and
brought him close... enough... to kiss.

Their lips met as if for the first time.

He opened Alex's mouth and the taste gently suffused him.

Alex...

Alex...

Krycek had still not dared to reach for him.  As if he thought it was some
weird farewell.  Mulder insinuated his other arm inside Krycek's open
leather jacket and around his body, pulled him close, and made himself
absolutely clear.

Krycek uttered a kiss-muffled sound and clamped himself around Mulder
impassionedly.

Reality rushed back.  Warmth and contact and connection.

Alex.

He had never felt so tender, so purely loving, toward the man in his arms.
For weeks his thoughts had been in such turmoil, the fantastic relief of
Alex's survival flooded with roiling distrust, horror, revulsion, anger, and
the anguish of new loss.  Now he thought only of the one he loved, the
happiness he could give him.  Alex had never asked him for anything.
Because life had never taught him there was any point in wanting, let alone
asking.  Mulder felt the moorings that had held him to the expectations of
the man who was no longer his father, the confused, incomprehensible needs
of his mother, part, release him.  Forsaking all others...  Childhood fell
away from him like the rubble from around a finished sculpture.  Krycek's
breath against his mouth, Krycek moving urgently against him all down his
body.  He would never have a child of his own, but for a moment he thought
he knew what it would feel like, the total desire to shelter, to fulfill.

But Krycek was no child.  He would never be able to make up for the
everything that had been denied Alex all his life.  They could both only go
on from here, make what they could of what they had at last been given.  And
that -- that was so much!  He thrust himself against Alex's thrusting body.
Oh god -- so much.
 
 

Mulder...  Mulder...

The warmth and movement.  The love in every touch.  He was wordless with
what it did to him.  A cold, white universe warming into verdant, humid
life.  His lover moving against him like a river, an anaconda, a sinuous
funnel-cloud that took his breath away.  Mulder...  So much more of him than
he had expected.

Fearless.

It was the last word that came to him before consciousness became all sweet
lust, and he didn't even know if it referred to Mulder or himself.
 
 

He had never seen a human body so converted to complete want.  Krycek
writhed into him.  Mindless.   Mulder held him protectively, surging with
his own total need against the denim-covered loins and thighs.  The jeans.
His hand flew to get Krycek's pants down before turning him like a tango
dancer and overbalancing him down onto the couch.  Jeans around his ankles,
Krycek spread his knees, and Mulder settled between his thighs like a bird
into its nest.
 

Krycek gave little gasps at every new touch of Mulder's body.  He managed to
get his false arm over Mulder's back, and held it down with his real arm.
Mulder pushed up through the circle they formed, licking and lapping
frantically over the hollow of Krycek's collarbone and up his throat as
Krycek stretched and turned under him, moaning and crying out.  That
part-numb, part-itch, part-bruise, part-warm, all-want sexual flooding
spread under his skin along the inside of his thighs and deep, bone-deep, in
his loins, his hip muscles contracted, pushed up, his body begging, Fox's
weight, rhythm, making him swerve, arch and whimper.  Fox's arms were around
him, one hand cradling his head, and he could feel in the soft lips, the
gentle slowness of the pelvic thrusts into his crotch, how much, despite the
pain, the misery they had caused one another, Fox loved and forgave him.
Sweet flame encompassed his groin, he humped hard up into Fox's cooperative
thrusting, the sweetness spasmed in his penis and out through his body, like
electric syrup every millimeter of him could taste, honeyed lightning from
his toes to his brain, muscles tightening to hold on, hold on, keep and
catch again the exquisite orgasm, Fox's gift to him.  As the beautiful
surges at length began to die away, they transformed into peace, warmth, and
gratitude, his happy body damp and perfect.

Fox was letting him rest, but wasn't done with him.  He was unbuttoning
Krycek's shirt, and when he got inside, unbuckling the straps of his
prosthetic, and of the shoulder-holster under it.  He sighed a little,
inwardly, thinking of getting them rebuckled and buttoned correctly again,
but Fox was kissing every spot where he removed anything, and it felt so
sweet and patient, as if he were seducing him out of his clothing, quite
unnecessarily.  He lifted at Fox's gentle signals and let him pull it all
off his stump, up behind his neck, and down and off his good arm.  He
surreptitiously meanwhile pushed off his own shoes and socks -- and then
regretted it, thinking of Fox kissing his toes.  Still, naked felt good.  He
trampled his jeans the rest of the way off and kicked them away.

Oh, man.  It seemed like years.  Fox's body against him.  Sweet vanilla
scent threaded through the bread-dough smell of sweat and his own semen
smell.  Hard weight between his thighs --  Mulder's tongue patient at his
lips --  With a little sound he felt himself opening again, psychologically
and physically, ready for whatever Fox wanted.  Mulder stretched over him,
reaching up to the end-table drawer, one of their old condom caches, and
before he would have thought it possible Alex felt long slicked fingers
pushing between his buttocks, and into him.  Deep.  His mouth opened, his
hips slid to one side.  He started to breathe harder, and Mulder was there
with him, panting, getting his fly open, his cock sheathed and slicked, and
slicked again, it was so long, so big, Krycek always forgot how huge and
hard to take it was, till the moment it opened him so wide, and kept him
open and slowly thrust in and in and in -- Fox had him, Fox owned him, Fox's
hands under his naked buttocks lifting to him strongly, as the final inches
sank deeper and deeper and deeper, rending a high moan out of his open
mouth.  A tremor shuddered up through him as Mulder's balls and groin butted
up against him but then didn't move, just held him impaled on the terrible
thickness while he slowly kissed and licked his mouth.  Krycek's upper body
writhed but he could scarcely move from the waist down.  Mulder was sucking
and summoning, demanding his tongue.  As he obediently let it be carried
into the fearful heat, he felt Mulder's hips shift and pull the cock out in
a long, long withdrawal.  He wanted to scream, his loins cleaved straight up
to Mulder's and his tongue reflexively pulled back.  The cock immediately
started pushing back into him again and he squirmed helplessly as it sank
deep, to the root.  It took him a while to notice Mulder's tongue was again
caressing his, beckoning.  Impatiently, under stress, he extended it in
between Fox's lips -- and felt the huge iron-hard cock moving out of him
again.

Oh god.

Oh Fox --

He pulled back his tongue slowly and felt himself being fucked full again,
by the cock that now felt about the size of a nuclear sub.

Oh god.  Oh god.

Fox had given him a strange, frightening control, through the one thing he
feared, sexually.  He turned his face aside, eyes closed, breathing heavily,
Mulder buried to the hilt in him.  His own cock again hard as pig-iron, if
he came without getting Mulder out of him things could get painful, very
fast.  Leave it to Mulder to make sex some kind of rite of passage.  With a
hard pang of loving pain all through him, he turned his mouth back to
Mulder's.  He whimpered as his tongue moving cautiously in, then out, made
Mulder withdraw and thrust at the same speed.  Oh god -- his legs were
clamped around Mulder's back, his hand moved up to hold Mulder's head to
him, and he darted his tongue in and out of the wet heat, making Mulder moan
into his mouth and start fucking him, quick hard strokes that Krycek then
cruelly slowed, just to see if he could, his tongue deep in Mulder's mouth
as he held him, held him, trembling and weaving from side to side, ready,
crying out in his throat with the need to thrust, but still letting Alex
hold him back -- till he finally, teasingly, hesitatingly, pulled in his
tongue and let Mulder take him -- but agonizingly slowly.  He laughed
exultingly into Mulder's mouth, and then whispered, "Take me, baby.  Take me
where I want to go."  When Mulder hesitated, he looked up into the
glistening hazel eyes, and crooned, "Come on.  Hurt me good."

He rolled his hips and Mulder's eyes closed.  With a wild moaning cry Mulder
started to fill him again, moving in a slow writhe that transformed to a
rhythm, shaking with lust, that began to pound him to a jelly of sweet,
utter need under Mulder's ownership, the strokes thrilling over his prostate
at such a rate he couldn't handle it, orgasmic spasms jerked his whole body
without his control, as if the great cock itself were touching every nerve,
puppet-strings singing electrically into pleasure-stretched muscles,
thrashing him with whips of ecstasy.  Mulder was making him come, and the
coming went on, on, on -- like being electrocuted by love.  Till he suddenly
became aware of Mulder arching back.  Alex opened his eyes, to see the
rictus of need on Mulder's face blank to open-mouthed fulfillment and felt
the tremors in the stillness as Mulder came in him, and the last, precious
thrusts of their pleasure pulled Alex's voice out into moans that mingled
with Mulder's like a kind of vocal lovemaking. We sound like wolves, was
his first, and last, coherent thought for a very long time.
 
 

Mulder felt his cock come out of Alex.  He should probably try to move.
 
 

Months, or moments, later, he woke.  He wanted to groan, but put the energy
into moving off the body under him.  Alex.  He slitted his eyes open.  The
way the body sprawled there, laid waste, devastated, sent a sweep of
adrenaline into his blood, till he saw the breathing.  Bad memories tried to
claim him.  He pushed them off.

And with an unconscious physical movement, he fell off the couch.

Gasping and flailing -- he was on the floor, right ankle and elbow still up
on the couch cushions.  He burst out laughing -- but quietly, wheezing and
giggling under his breath, not to wake Alex -- but saw Alex's eyes fly open
in alarm, and saw Alex grab for him with a look of distress at having only
his least-free arm to reach with.  He laughed harder, but also felt a liquid
pang of love; he crawled up half onto the couch, and kissed him.  Then he
put his forehead down and giggled some more.  "I fell off the couch," he
explained, apologetically, his diaphragm starting to hurt because he still
couldn't stop laughing.  He stroked over Alex's ribs, kissing his arm and
neck between breaths.  But he finally had to let himself slide again off the
couch and lie on the floor, hands and knees raised as if someone were
tickling him, not helped by Alex rolling up on his one elbow to peer down
over the edge of the couch at him.

At last his limbs fell limply, the tide of giggles receding unevenly.

"Goofball," Alex pronounced.

Mulder reached up and pulled Alex off the couch on top of him.  "Ha ha," he
gloated.  "Now I've got you where I want you, my pretty."

Krycek let his full weight settle on Mulder, immobilizing him.

"Ha ha," Mulder repeated, with slightly less certainty.  Then, slowly, he
smiled, with huge happiness, and pulled Alex's mouth down to lingering
kissing, that strayed over his face in love of every part.  His arms
tightened convulsively as horrible memory attacked him, and he moaned in
pain.  Alex lifted up a little, holding him as best he could.

"Oh god, Alex, why didn't you just throw that thing, instead of running with
it?"  It had tormented him, minute by minute, after Alex had... died... day
after day... how he might have survived instead of...  "How could you do
that to me!" he burst out in pain and shame and rage, the torture of weeks
of horror, guilt, denial searing his voice.

"Oh, baby...  They're programmed to take out only the last person who
touched them.  Once they're triggered, there's nothing you can do."  Mulder
covered his eyes.  "If you throw it it will just come back to you."

"How could I have been so stupid."  That moment when he had pushed down the
top of the little saucer-toy...  He felt Alex lift up further off him, and
heard the smoky voice comforting.

"I should have thought to tell you more about their weapons.  It turned out
okay, baby."

"No."  Mulder shuddered, remembering Krycek's agony.  "Nothing about that
was okay."

"Okay, it sucked.  But it was only about, like, ten seconds.  I think you
suffered from it a lot more than I did.  I wish... I wish that hadn't
happened.  I didn't want to do that to you, but... I had to choose."

Mulder stroked his hands over Krycek's skin.

Krycek's voice was low.  "It was the saddest thing I ever did.  Leaving
you."

Mulder pulled him down and held his cheek against Alex's.  They said nothing
for a long time.

Mulder spoke softly.  "When you -- while you were gone... I kept thinking,
how I never got to find out what it would be like to... have you fuck me."
Krycek lay completely still in his embrace.  "I'd thought about it.  I'd
thought if we... I mean, eventually, if...  But then you were gone, and we'd
never done it.  We'd never done a lot of things, but that was... so..."  He
couldn't find the word.  "I was so selfish."

Krycek lifted up, and looked down at him with eyes that were drugged with
love.  Mulder's breath caught.

"I thought about it too," Krycek whispered.  "Before the bomb went off.  My
virgin top.  I hoped whoever did it... would..."  He swallowed, unable to
finish.

Mulder clutched Krycek's shoulders.  "I didn't want anybody else.  Ever."
His voice sounded breathy and passionate as if he were arguing.  "Nothing
mattered without you."

He felt an infinitesimal shiver go through Krycek, and saw his face swept
with wonder that was close to fear.  Mulder pulled him close again, and Alex
kissed him as softly and gently as if he might break under the assassin's
sweet lips.

Mulder's cock hardened.
 
 

Alex felt Mulder gasp under him, and every nerve in his body responded to
the sexual signal.  Protective possessiveness flooded him.  He wanted his
left arm as never before, to hold and comfort Mulder in what was to come.

Panic began to struggle for him.  God knew, he knew how to do this, but --
it was Fox.  He might hurt him.  He would hurt him, just a little, almost
certainly, he couldn't, he couldn't --

But at the same time his flesh had readied itself, flushing with holy fire
on the altar of his lover's body.

He knew what he wanted, and it was identical to what he feared.

He pushed himself up to his knees.  Mulder's eyes were dark and shining
looking up at him.  He quickly fumbled for the lube that Mulder had dropped
behind the couch cushions.

"You want to turn over, baby?  It will be easier."

Mulder shook his head.  His voice was all breath.  "I want to be with you."

Oh, god.

He set the uncapped lube jar on the floor, reached behind him and found his
jeans snagged over the couch arm, and pulled a couple of condoms from the
pocket.  He tore one open with his teeth, extracted it, and one-handed
rolled it onto his erection.

Oh, god.  God.

He tore open the second condom and rolled it on over the first.  He was
taking no chances.  And maybe it would cut sensation enough that he could
last for once --

Oh god oh god --

The way Fox was looking at him...  The way Fox's huge, naked cock had raised
up toward him --

He stuck his fingers into the lube and slowly coated Mulder's secret weapon,
feeling it twitch and tremble all down its length in his hand, and Mulder
groaned long and hard.  He leaned down and took the big tip of it into his
lips, laving over it with his wet tongue.  Mulder wrenched and plunged,
under him, but he would only take the top of the cock.  With his hand he was
spreading lube on his sheathed hard-on.  He dipped his fingers back in the
jar and carried lube unerringly to Mulder's opening.  After massaging the
slipperiness over the little ridges to sharp tremors of Mulder's whole body,
he finally slipped his long middle finger through the tight hole and all the
way in.

Mulder reared up, and cried out aloud.

This much he had done before.  This much Mulder would remember, groaning at
his tongue's play on the tip of the huge cock, counterpointed by the slide
and thrust of the finger within him, the hard shocks of the prostate's
sensation.

Krycek raised up and looked down at Mulder's writhing, wanting body.

Oh... yes...

His forefinger slipped in alongside the other on his next thrust, and Mulder
only tried to make him lower his head again to the pleading cock.  He
complied, though what he really wanted to do was watch, the way his body
moved, the gasping breathing, the ecstatic terror in his eyes.  He nudged
Mulder's thigh wider with his forearm, got three fingers into him, and
rotated his wrist.  Mulder's hips jerked right and then left, and Krycek's
tongue pressed hard along the best spot under the crown of the moving cock.
The sounds Mulder was making were anxious and needy.  He had gentled him
open as much as he could; wishing to God he had another hand to stroke and
reassure with.  He knelt up again, gently withdrew from Mulder, and pulled a
pillow down off the couch to situate under Mulder's hips.  He slathered more
lube on them both.

"I need you to hold on with your legs around me, Fox."

As he felt the soft inner skin of the thighs close around him, he heard
Mulder's breath catching at the unbelievable open vulnerability of the
position.  And at the touch of the head of Krycek's cock against him.

Alex closed his eyes.

He didn't know if he could do this.

Sweat dripped down his cheeks and his breath shook.  Mulder's thigh muscles
moved against his sides, shocking an impulse to thrust from his trained
hips.  He held himself to only a desperately small increment of increased
pressure.  Another.  He knew he needed to penetrate soon, or the tiny
passageway would tighten up again.  "I love you," he said helplessly, and
pressed inward.  Mulder gave a small cry of unmeaning protest and Krycek
froze.  He knew better.  Just keep easing it inward, steady, firm,
irresistible, until the virgin was no more.  But his whole body started
trembling.  He stroked his fingers up Mulder's cock to keep him roused and
wanting.

He tried to push slowly, but stopped again.

Hurting, violating Fox Mulder.

His one and only love.

Oh god, what would happen to him?

But Mulder needed him to do it.

No one else ever would or could.  Mulder had been bereft, the knowledge lost
to him of what it would be like to have his lover sunk deep in him, be
opened, like a gift that could never been seen from just the outside, have
his inmost being racked with the contact, the alien touch, burn and
revelation, that only that violation could bestow.  Mulder, who never had
been broken, and needed to abjectly surrender if he would ever be whole; as
Mulder had conquered, and shown him, his own deep sacred heart.

He pushed forward.  Mulder cried again, and again, as the head of the cock
stretched him, opened and entered him.  The hot flesh surrounded Krycek, but
he pressed on, sliding well through the lubricated pressure, till he could
let go of his own cock and use his hand to surround Mulder's organ, and stop
Mulder's half-attempt to pull back from him, by brushing the whole phallus
with the heat of his touch.  Mulder's cries begged more, he tried to thrust
up, and Krycek's hand closed tighter, sliding to the tip and down again, up
to thumb across the crown, all the while entering deeper through the slick
silkiness of Mulder's hot core.  He caught one of Mulder's hands and placed
it on the massive erection, so he could lean forward onto his own arm, as he
put more force behind his penetration, and turned it into thrusting.

In, to the hilt, he hung his head, gasping with effort, pleasure, restraint,
and fear.  Beneath him Fox gasped to a different rhythm, alternately pushing
and clutching at him, moving to achieve pleasure on his own cock, only to
freeze at the feel of Krycek's within him, unable to take the sensation.
"It's okay, baby, it's okay," Krycek whispered.  "It's okay, I'm gonna take
you there, baby, it's okay," as he started slowly withdrawing.

He reentered immediately and Fox nearly clawed him apart.  He rubbed back
and forth on Fox's organ between them, and Mulder cried out, "I can't!"

"Yes you can, baby, yes you can."  Krycek's cock wanted more, and he slid it
into Mulder harder, and harder again, and faster.  He took one nipple
between his teeth and suddenly felt Mulder's hips rising up against him, and
bit.

Mulder's legs locked on him, his loins rocked up into him as he pushed long
and hard and strong into Mulder's helpless need, fucking the anguish and
loneliness and beautiful hate that was Mulder with his iron-hard love.  A
deep jab and Mulder started shaking hard against him, then he felt the hot
cum against his skin.  He squeezed in twice more, again, Mulder's whole body
hot and wet against him, himself long and deeply buried, searching deeper,
deeper, deeper -- gold flowed up his cock, into his balls, through every
nerve out to his toes and fingertips, orgasming between his shoulder-blades
and through his cock again and over and over, obliterating him in thrusting,
domineering pleasure.

"Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ," Mulder was sobbing under him breathlessly.

Must have touched some of the old prostate magic there.  Thank God, because
I totally lost it, so much for the thoughtful and gentle initiation into
male love.  He realized he had collapsed half on top of Mulder.

Exhaustedly, he pushed himself off, leaving the arm across him.  He might
need comforting or soothing.  Mulder's eyes were open but his face was
vacant as if he'd been hit by a plank, limbs splayed at random angles.
Finally Krycek couldn't stand it any more.  "Baby?"

He didn't feel movement, exactly, yet there was a sense of breath gathering
for an effort, as Mulder blinked.  He didn't turn his eyes to look at
Krycek; but his lips moved.  On the second try the whisper reached him:

"Defragged."

Okay.  Krycek could accept that.  Just have to wait.  Minute or two.  Not
fall asleep.

So beautiful.  This.  Mulder.  The breath rising and falling under his arm,.
That perfect face of strange planes and softnesses, mouth and eyes swept of
all pain, all thought now -- the beautiful times so few, so precious, the
months of prison, misery, his faithfulness and death and truth at last had
all led here, through so much suffering to a perfection beyond his dreams, a
trust he knew he would never betray, but had never expected to receive --
coming here, so wracked with fear... his heart wrenched by the knowledge
that he might be breaking in for the last time... Mulder's door always so
peculiarly easy to open.  As if the lock only halfheartedly wanted to keep
you out.  Like some playfully resisting lover.  Or maybe it was only that
the very act of entering Mulder's space excited him, the lock communicating
through the sensitive picks to his fingers an essence that made the act as
sensual, fulfilling, as arousing a lover, the pop of the latch and the first
crack of the door like the start of an insertion.

He slipped in quickly.

He'd stopped inside, then, terrified of the truth he was carrying to Mulder
in his hand, like a gift of myrrh.

But Mulder had set it aside, as if the gift itself meant nothing, and Krycek
knew, now, that all that really mattered had been his willingness to bring
that final sacrifice of truth to the lover's altar, whatever the cost might
be.

Though the envelope did contain information...  The stuff Alex Krycek
thought of the way other people thought of stock options or sunken gold
doubloons.

The desk drawer lock might keep out an unimaginative five-year-old... Alex
didn't even think of it as locked.  Though whether it was locked or not
wasn't the point of course, it would be wrong...  But if someday when it
was a bit forgotten he were to... find it... it might naturally get lost...
if it turned out to contain unpleasant... ambiguities...  The sides of the
envelope spread gently by his fingers, inside... instead of paper, the sides
were being pushed apart by iridescent... wings -- the most exquisite
butterfly, in peacock colors shimmering, blue, green, black, silver-gold --
parting -- his sex heated.  He shouldn't be here yet felt welcome...
loved... so strange because...

...the Smoking Man and some of the things he'd had to do to get the DNA
sample. CSM safeguarded his fallen hair and fluids as if he believed in
voodoo.  He didn't even leave his cigaret-butts around any more.  And Alex
hadn't slept since the results came back and he had hunched impotently over
the envelope, unable to open it all night, and now, the wings welcomed and
beckoned him gently blue and undulating as the sea...

He dreamed he was on a beach, and there was a bigger boy helping him build a
beautiful sand-castle, the most breathtaking sand-castle in the history of
summer; he showed Alexei how to carve the damp sand blocks with plastic
shovels, how to make Gaudi-gothic towers with liquid sand drips, and make
banners out of drift-twigs and kelp leaves.  He loved that sand-castle and
he loved that boy.  His mother came up with the man he hardly ever saw, and
the Smoking Man, who was working to extract a blood sample from his arm, to
color one of the outer passageways.  They all stood watching the boys, and
Alexei knew they were going to take it all away.

He woke up crying.

Fox was gone.

Oh, shit!

He scrambled to his feet and looked around panic-stricken.  The room was
empty.  The foyer.  The kitchen -- den -- bedroom --  At the closed door of
the bathroom he heard a click and the buzz of an electric shaver.

At least he'd never heard of anyone cutting their wrists with electric
razors.

He wiped the dream-tears off his face.

He was still wondering if he should go back to the livingroom or dress or
make coffee instead of hovering in front of the bathroom door naked like a
moron, when the sound of the razor shut off and a few splashes and silences
later the door swung open.  Fox started back, focussed on his face, and
asked, "What's wrong?"

Alex absorbed him wordlessly.  Towel wrapped around his waist, he was clean,
wet-haired, alive.  Freshly shaven.

Alex's heart beat pathetically.

"Nothing," he said.

Mulder smiled.  He stepped close and put his clean arms over Alex's
shoulders.  Krycek put his hand on the naked waist and could hardly stand
it, it felt so soft and warm and real and lithe.  He shuddered, remembering
being inside Mulder.  His breath rushed out, and drew in.  He had forgotten
how to speak, and meeting Mulder's eyes while touching him, while
remembering, made him feel more completely naked than he ever had before in
his life.  He hadn't seen how Mulder had looked, if he needed help, if he
had undergone the transcendent pain of surrender only to be abandoned by his
conqueror when he needed him most, hadn't seen if Mulder had even really
gotten off deeply, in what Krycek had wanted to make the most shattering
sexual experience of his lover's life.

Mulder put his hands on either side of Krycek's face.

"What are you thinking?" he asked seriously.

"I didn't mean to leave you all alone.  Fall asleep like a dickhead."  His
tongue overtook his most basic thought.  "I'm supposed to take care of you!"

The look in Mulder's eyes transformed profoundly.  His lips parted
speechlessly.

"What do you mean?" he asked finally.

Krycek didn't know, any more than he knew how he breathed.

"Alex..."

He leaned forward and kissed Mulder's soft mouth, a fount of suffering where
he could drink away the pain.  His skin heated, a tiny sound of eternal
discovery caught in his throat.  Mulder...

Fox's lips kissed back gently, but then pulled away, and the question was
still there in his brown-gold gaze.  "Alex...?"

"I'm...  You're..."  He didn't think Mulder would like either thought.
"It's what I do."

It looked as if Mulder were pausing at at least three different senses in
which "taking care of" someone might be something Krycek did.  His head
tilted a little to the side.

"You feel responsible for me?"

Alex just looked back at him.

"You're just a kid."

Alex whispered, "I am so old, Mulder.  You don't know."  His soul trembled
at the look of acceptance and love on Mulder's face.  The purity made him
feel as if he were under attack, it was hard, so hard, to keep himself open,
and, unwavering, let Mulder penetrate to every corner of his hiddenness.
Maybe with time it would get easier, but now, after only a few seconds, he
had to look down, and channel the topic into its easiest aspect.  "It should
have been perfect, your first time.  I'm the professional," Alex mumbled.
"I'm the one who's supposed to be good at this."

"But Alex, I love you!" Mulder blurted.  It might not have been the
logical response, but they both understood it.  A seep of happiness
somewhere in Krycek's soul threatened to swell to a flash flood.  "You know
that," Mulder added.

"Yes," Krycek admitted, and blushed.

"Though you never actually said it before," he added, as if in self-defense.

"Sure I did," Mulder said.

Krycek shook his head.

"I know I've said it, Alex."

"It doesn't count," Krycek explained, "if you say it while you're having
sex.  Trust me on this one babe."  Despite the sadness of the words, a smile
he was helpless to stop was spreading all over his face.

Mulder's hands stroked back into his hair.  "With you," he said, low, "it
always counts."

And Krycek's beating heart had to believe him, because Mulder always told
the truth.

God he was pathetic.  It was a good thing there was no one else like Mulder
in the world, or he would be completely screwed.

"How are we going to do this?" he asked.

"We'll figure something out," Mulder said.  "You wouldn't believe the
cooperation I'm getting.  They're talking about putting me in charge of an
agency."

"Hoover had a live-in."

Mulder wrinkled his nose and said, "Eeww."

Those were more innocent, even goofy, days.  Still sometimes the old simple
ploys worked the best.  No one suspected what was just too dumb to be true.

Did the Rebels know the whole game had changed?  He couldn't move in with
Mulder while he was still on their hit-list, or even while the colonists
were still after his fucked-up DNA, unless the Rebels could keep the
colonists off the planet.  He needed to set up conduits to their councils,
find out who was still in touch with them.  Humans had managed to bag a
couple of major bases the colonists had been too slow to move, on tips
Krycek had planted the night he crashed the ship.  If they could just get a
few years to grasp the technology, maybe they wouldn't need the Rebels to
run the colonists out of the solar system for them.  A big "if".  He knew he
had taken a massive gamble with the fate of the world.

He licked his lower lip and shut his eyes, remembering what it had felt like
being inside Mulder.

The universe... all his.

Brilliant terror and wonder and Mulder going mad on him, him mad in
Mulder...  Utterly unbelievable.

He felt his shivering only when Mulder's arms closed around him, and rocked
him, a little, side to side.  He turned his face in against Mulder's.

"What was it like for you?" Krycek blurted out.

Mulder continued the slight rocking.

"Seismic," he answered, and licked the angle of Krycek's jaw, and tightened
his arms.  "Tectonic."  He licked on Krycek's neck.  "Your cock gave me a
whole new perspective on life."

"Yinyang," Krycek muttered, and tried to get his mouth on Mulder's.

"I'm serious," Mulder said mildly, evading him.  "You hit a toggle in there
that turned the whole universe inside out for me.  Like seeing the stars
from the inside."  Krycek held still, returning his embrace.  "You know...
you're amazing."  Krycek's face started to burn.  "Now I know why you let
me... do it to you; but... how you got there, after all the rape and torture
of your life..."

"I let you because it was you, Fox."  His voice was trembly and gentle.
"You were the... the thing I'd always wanted.  You were... true.  You were
the truth.  I could no more say no to you than I could say no to my next
breath."

"Nnnnmmmmm."  A gratified purr in his ear.

He could have stood there forever, with his happy Fox held in his arm, all
peace inside, peace all around them.

But to get this for his very own, there were a couple more tasks to do.
Getting himself ensconced in the Rebels' good graces.  Finding out what was
going on colonization-wise.  Saving the world.

Nothing to it.

If he could have Fox Mulder for himself, afterward.

A piece of cake.

A piece of very sweet, sweet cake.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He realized he'd been making weird little sounds of contentment and nibbling
on wet strands of Fox's hair.

Mulder pulled back and looked at him suspiciously.  "Are you losing it,
Krycek?  Because neither of us can afford to do that."  The hazel eyes
searched him.  "Especially you."

Maybe.  Maybe this was what losing it felt like.  This sense of no longer
being alone, being joined to another, in the heart of the truth.  He pulled
Mulder roughly back to him, needing him against his whole body, and laid his
lips along the hollow of Mulder's cheek.  Mulder finally turned his mouth to
him and they kissed, mouth on mouth, for a long time.  Possessiveness
flooded him and he held Mulder still closer, needs he could not name except
with his body welding him to his lover.

"Maybe we need a little honeymoon time," Mulder murmurred finally.  But they
both knew there was nowhere they could go, now, where they could really be
alone, be safe together, walk on beaches, eat in restaurants, go to a show.
Alex clung on.  Mulder's arms around him held but could not ease him.  He
needed...

He needed.

His independence had been broken, the yearning Fox had seeded in him had
borne the need; he was no longer free, and his chains were the breath of his
life.  Pain, pleasure, danger, joy had a single name:  Love.  The need was
his strength, his reason; the sense of helpless love and surrender he felt
whenever Fox touched him hard -- never had he felt such wholeness, such
trust in both himself and another, till the first time he gave up everything
to kneel at Mulder's feet, never had he felt such certainty as he'd known in
the throes of ecstasy with this man.  The answer came to him and he
whispered it like a secret.

"I'm not losing it, Mulder.  I'm getting it.  For the first time."  He
rubbed his face across Mulder's.  "In fact, I've got it.  I've got it all."

And his lover, in his embrace, pulled him even closer, and made it the
absolute truth.

The End of "A Boy and His Rat".  May 1, 2001
 

The fine print:  If you're still hungry, you might want to read my
*Highlander* stories in the order their handy links appear on my page here
at the Homeless Shelter:  "And Hades Followed Him", "Seeds" and "The Deep".
"The Deep" isn't finished yet, but it has a bit of a mystery to it, and by
the time you get to it, more of it should be up, maybe enough to make it
seem like a real X-File...

Feedback? houseofslack@hos.slashcity.com