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A Boy and His Ratby C.M. DecarninPart 9 |
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He couldn't say Krycek's name in the privacy of his own home. For fear it might not be so private.
He took to gagging himself with cloth and elaborate devices from his porn shop when he beat off, so no one would understand if he called out his lover's name with need or ecstasy. The way it restricted his breathing made it feel dangerous, like Krycek. The beautiful agony of his cock and groin pulled him hard into his lover's blind crazed need, he thought he would die of not having him, and imagining having him, inadequate as it was, was all that kept him from screaming.
Finally he clutched the phone with feverish hands and dialled the number, feeling Krycek's dripping tongue squelch softly in his ear, the point tickling deep.
"Jasper," he husked when the messageless beep came on; and hung up instantly.
"Superfreak..."
The tape ran out again. Scully popped the audio cassette out of the player, and slid it into an evidence bag. Not that she expected to find any prints.
Technically, she didn't know it was Mulder's voice till it was analyzed.
It was him.
She'd never heard some of those exact tones come from him before, but that voice she would know anywhere, that light bitter delivery, that drag in the timbre, just short of a depressive's drone, the constant accusatory edge of sharpness ready to break through.
Of course most of the tape had been that other voice.
So that was what it took to reduce Mulder to only getting a word in edgewise...
She recognized the other voice too.
A lab might tell her if splicing had concocted the thing.
No lab was ever going to get this tape.
In fact...
She jammed the tape back in the machine and erased it. Then she breathed easier.
There was no way of knowing who had sent it. But her money was on a guy whose name began and ended with "K", and/or their own homegrown Marlboro Man.
Or someone trying to warn her.
She was going to have to take what Mulder told her with reservations, now. That might be what the sender wanted, to split them apart.
But what she felt was a protectiveness for her partner. If only it had been anyone but Krycek! She had waited a long time to see if Mulder would ever slew off the beaten track, so to speak, if any real, actual person could even get his hormones' attention. The fact that it took Krycek to do it screamed of deceit, treachery, diabolical machinations.
She wondered who else had a copy of the tape.
Oh...poor Mulder. Poor Mulder.
"What is it you couldn't tell me over the phone?"
Mulder looked around at the shadows of the empty parking structure. "Put your foot up here."
"What for?"
Mulder gestured impatiently, still looking around, and Krycek put his foot up on the edge of a ramp curve. Mulder reached down and pulled the shoelace loose. "Take it off."
"What?"
"Hurry up!"
Bafflement slowing him, Krycek pushed the shoe off his foot.
"The other one."
Did Mulder think he carried a microphone in his shoes?
"Come on, come on!" He pushed the other shoe off. Mulder made a knee and patted his angled thigh. "Come on." Krycek slowly raised his foot to Mulder's thigh, and Mulder peeled off the sock. He leaned over and put Krycek's bare foot down on the cold concrete, and tugged the other foot up. He unfastened the leg holster up under the trouser leg. When the sock rolled off Krycek was left with naked feet as Mulder picked up the shoes and gun and socks, and opened the car door and set them inside and closed the door again.
"Mulder, what --"
"Shh!" sharply. Then, "Put your head up."
He felt Mulder's fingers at his throat, then his tie loosened, pulled free, and off. He leaned in and with both hands pushed the suit jacket off Krycek's shoulders, turned him and pulled the coat down and off. He slid the shoulder holster back off and down the left arm stump without unbuckling it, and over Krycek's head. "Mulder, I'm not wearing a damn wire --"
"Keep quiet!" Mulder folded the coat and chucked the things in the car.
"Turn around." With quick hands he opened the trousers and pushed them
with their underlying boxers to Krycek's knees. "Step out," Mulder said,
lifting Krycek's knee with one hand while he worked the trousers down and Krycek
tried not to fall. The other leg came off easier and Mulder threw the
clothes into the car after the others. Mulder put his hands to the shirt
buttons and at that moment Krycek drew in a slow gasp. Mulder looked up
and met his eyes, but his fingers continued down the buttons. He was up
close, and very personal. Krycek's mouth hung open as the shirt quickly
slid and pulled off him and was thrown in the car.
Mulder's hands alighted on his naked flanks. Krycek gasped and arched
back, pure reflex. The hands played a bit over his skin there, before
Mulder stepped into him, pressed him, the material of his clothes pushing into
him, rubbing on his flesh, between his thighs, against his belly, around his
shoulders as Mulder embraced him and forced him back into an abutment as he
took his mouth, opened it with hard lips and jaw and then soft wet Muldertongue
piercing him to the throat. Mulder in his little gray suit and
dark Bureau tie twisted to the side, he could feel against his chest every button
of the pristine white shirt and every zippertooth on his loins as Mulder tried
to climb through him. He moaned, and what had not, a moment before, been
an erection humped once into the midst of the textured assault.
His skin felt so cold, tender, unprotected. A palm held Krycek's flank again, where his breath went in and out under his ribs, the fingers moved to lightly trace the hollowing lower down and Krycek squirmed and whimpered and lunged within Mulder's onslaught, trying to clothe himself in Mulder. He'd lost his mother tongue and his English in seconds, much less than the one and a half minutes it had taken Mulder to get him dick-naked among the looming pillars and crouched autos in the chill Washington night.
Mulder was struggling to pin him and he was struggling to engulf Mulder and they staggered from one unhelpful object to another till Mulder suddenly jerked and turned and shoved him. His naked butt hit the paint job of a Rolls, and he let himself fall back across the bonnet and raised his legs and hugged them around Mulder's thrusting body.
Mulder went mad on him, snorting and lunging and grabbing while Krycek's eyes glazed with need. Finally finding it impossible to get a hand between them at the same time he tried to pump Krycek through the hood of the car, he jumped back and off. Krycek let his legs fall down over the fender and rolled up on his elbow. Mulder stood panting and staring at him. He stared back. From out of the plethora of clothing was produced a cock so darkened and long it made a moan just hum at the very bottom of Krycek's throat. Mulder had out and opened and was rolling on a long, extra long it had to be, lube-slick condom.
The sight paralyzed Krycek with want.
Perhaps in response to what must have shown in his face, Mulder pressed up to the car. He reached and with thumb and forefinger pulled down the foreskin of Alex's cock. Precum leaked out over his fingers. Alex stared at him helplessly. Mulder leaned forward and kissed the tip; he licked his tongue over it, once. He raised up and looked again into Alex's eyes. He laid his hands on either side of Alex's groin, taking possession; then ran his fingers down along the insides of his boy's thighs.
Krycek's legs raised.
Mulder pushed him further onto the hood of the car, and climbed up after him.
Krycek was sure it would hurt but it didn't, even though Mulder didn't know to touch him open or lube him but just put the huge blunt implement to him and pushed. Pushed harder and then gripped Krycek by the shoulders and rammed, hard and in. It slid fast and deeper, and deeper, and deeper, till Krycek thought he would scream in possession. He cleaved to Mulder with his whole body. At the first withdrawal and quick thrusting in he thought he would die. At the second, he turned his head aside, washed and soaked in shame at how open he was, soul and body, to the man who now owned him.
"Alex." The voice went out on a tide of moaned breath, that mirrored
the slow, slow ebb of the cock's length out of him, and presaged the rush and
force of the return plundering and filling him anew. "Alex..." His
back slid on the car's finish and Mulder held him down. He heard Mulder's voice
low and shaken, take him: "You're mine." and answered only, "Yes."
He slowly, each inch an anguish of pouring submission, raised his legs along
the inside of Mulder's arms, and finally crossed them across the back of
Mulder's shoulders. Mulder, groaning unbelievingly, rocked, rocked, rocked in
the cradle he made, rocked forward onto him and kissed his mouth, holding him
down; his body shuddered and bucked as Krycek offered his soft warm tongue into
Mulder's mouth.
Twisting and moaning on him Mulder finally had to arch back, inhaling on a
crying note. "Alex!" A stroking thrust took Krycek in, to a place
in himself he'd never been, where everything was still except his own heartbeat
and the presence of Mulder within his body. And when Mulder started to withdraw
it was as if Krycek felt himself through that long, long penis, felt the friction
of his own inner body on Mulder's skin, felt the sexual joy as his hot tube
sucked Mulder all the way out, then gloved him as he came plunging back. He
felt Mulder shimmy it in and knew his lover's body had taken complete control
at last, and Mulder would come in him for the first time. The lube had begun
to dry out a little and he started to ache from the slide-slide in and out,
but he squeezed and released in rapid rhythm on Mulder's next stroke and felt
Mulder jerk and snort. Then Mulder ramped down on him, working him like a pistoning
machine and rattling his bones on the hood of this car that jigged and swayed
and squeaked and shimmied with him till Krycek was almost shaken to pieces between
them. And then it hurt bad and Krycek arched up and pulled Mulder to him and
cried out with love and pleading, and Mulder came, skewering into the pain with
perfect aim, pinning him down with muscles of steel and forcing Krycek again,
and again, and again, and again, as Alex arched to him and gave, and gave, and
gave. Mulder finished, twisting and thrashing, and crumpled onto him, panting,
trembling. Alex lowered his legs slowly, resting them on Mulder's sweet ass,
which brought last little shudders out of him. Alex let his legs slide
gently down to lie on the car.
Mulder stirred. He levered up, which pulled his cock out of Krycek. Alex's unpinned knee jerked up and he tightened.
Mulder looked at his face. His warm, damp hand touched Krycek's cheek. After a moment he said, "I hurt you."
Krycek started to shake his head. Mulder's hand covered his mouth a moment. He murmurred, "Don't lie."
They stared at each other, Krycek with wide eyes.
"A little," he said. "Toward the end. No big thing." He smiled and looked down. "Actually, a fucking big thing. More lube next time."
Mulder looked down too. "Oh my god." Krycek still had his comparatively modest and unassuming hard-on. Mulder made a move down toward it, lips already reaching. He looked up at Krycek. "Is it okay? Can I try it?"
"Got any more condoms?"
Mulder wrinkled his nose a little.
"I know. But you don't want that thing in your mouth. I shouldn't have let you lick it." He smiled a little. "You don't want to know where it's been."
"You sucked me without one."
"Getting sucked off is almost zero risk."
"How do you know I haven't got AIDS?"
Krycek just looked at him, compassionately. Then he gestured. "Show me what brand you got."
Mulder fished the packet out and Krycek glanced at the label. "These don't taste bad. You can wipe the lube off."
Propped on his elbow he watched -- and felt -- Mulder roll the condom down over his suddenly throbbing and kicking penis. Mulder took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped it, and then he went down to tentatively lick and suck at it. Among the swipes of pleasure Alex felt like the parent bird watching an eaglet tackle its first live prey.
Mulder backed off a moment and Krycek could feel his disappointment. It just wasn't the same when you couldn't have what your lover tasted like, couldn't feel the skin under your tongue. He looked up wryly and Krycek smiled at him. Warmth answered in Mulder's eyes. Then he sat up, his palm on Krycek's shivering belly. "Jesus, Alex, you're freezing."
"Don't change the subject."
"At least put this on." Mulder slipped his suit coat off, lifted Krycek and wrapped him in it.
Krycek whispered, "Suck my dick, Agent Mulder."
Mulder pushed him gently down flat on his back, and wrapped in the Mulder-warm,
Mulder-vanilla jacket, he closed his eyes and breathed with pleasure as fingers
held his shaft and balls and warm -- hot -- hot! --
mouth engulfed the top, taking him to a direct connection with Mulder's gentleness
that moved and overwhelmed him. Mulder's tongue prodded and stroked around his
shrink-wrapped cock, extra warmth wherever it touched, Mulder's fingers gently
straying onto his inner thigh, back to ball-stroking and then
a knuckle went back to nudge his hole and he arched into hot soft tonguing and
his pleasure in Mulder shot through and out of his genitals, then backwashed
throughout his whole body, sweeping back to the little spurts of his penis into
Mulder's moving mouth and fingers, and again lighting his body with happiness.
Not, not, not his usual banging and snarling orgasm into prostrated rival, mark, target... He was so in love...
He stroked Mulder's hair and Mulder gave a few final flicks of his tongue around the cock as it softened. He gently rolled the condom off and handkerchiefed gently the remaining drops of moisture. "Come on." He pulled Krycek up into his arms. "Come on." He tugged and edged him off the hood of the car. The concrete on his naked soles was ice, Mulder's arms around him heaven. "Come on."
Mulder dressed him, much faster than he could have done it himself. The clothes felt new and strange put on by Mulder's hands, like vestments. He felt in the role of priest.
Or sacrifice.
He rested his hand on Fox's bent head as his lover put on his shoes for him.
"This must be impossible one-handed," Mulder said, tying the laces.
"You don't know," Krycek agreed.
"Why don't you just wear loafers?"
Alex looked at him in surprise as he stood up and started working Krycek's tie into position beneath his collar. "I can't let it beat me." Mulder met and held his gaze a moment, before he finished tying Krycek's tie.
"How'd you get here?"
"Cab."
"I'll drive you home."
Krycek shook his head and smiled. "But you can take me to a hotel with a cabstand."
Krycek settled into the passenger seat and dealt wrong-handed with the seatbelt. Before Mulder could start the car the parking structure's elevator door opened. Krycek's gun was in his hand when the occupants stepped out -- an ethereally elegant lady in a straight fall of sequinned gown, escorted by her uniformed chauffeur. The chauffeur opened the door of the Rolls Royce for her.
Krycek watched as the sumptuous automobile was started. "My marriage bed," he thought, and an instant later embarrassment reddened his cheeks. God. But he memorized the license plate as the Rolls pulled away and down the Out ramp.
Mulder slid his own gun back into its holster, and started the car.
Mulder pulled over a half-block before the hotel. He looked at Alex, who was looking back at him. In the shadowy night, his eyes were black, his face mysterious. Mulder had driven deep in his body, but could not begin to fathom the man, his otherness, his elemental mystery; as if night were his real lover, the darkness that caressed him and clung to him, breathing seductions and trying to take him from Mulder.
He reached out to touch him, proving to himself that Alex was real; and realized his hand was resting on the false arm. He felt a chill little shock at the thought, but kept his hand there, and showed nothing outwardly. He looked over at the marquee of the hotel and back at Krycek. Krycek darted a glance and understood. He smiled, tantalizing. But said, "I can't tonight. Somewhere I gotta be."
Before Mulder could answer, he'd opened the car door, looking around him in all directions as he slid out. He shut the door, and touched his knuckles to the window in farewell. Mulder watched him walk away, to be swallowed up by the shadows of an alley.
Krycek watched from the edge of blackness. Mulder had pulled away, and no other car pulled out to follow him. Why should they. They knew where Mulder lived. He merged into the light again and went to get a taxi.
He had the cab drop him at a bus stop, and caught a late night line. Sitting near the back, he wedged his gun between his thighs, retrieved the silencer from its hidden trouser pocket, affixed it meticulously, and slipped on his glove. The gun was in his coat pocket when he got off the bus in a neighborhood of shabby old brick apartment buildings shut tight for the night.
This was the risky part. He tried not to present a clear line of sight, while not seeming to hurry. Heart racing, he turned in at a walkway of dark shrubbery and trees amid a cluster of buildings, and a moment later heard light footfalls. He moved onto the sparse remains of lawn, doubled back, and ducked quickly around the darkest building corner. He waited, mouth open to silence his breathing.
The footsteps faltered; he could hear the man listening. Then he saw the shadow move into silhouette. In the tensed right hand, slightly lifted away from the body, the outline of a gun.
Krycek fired three times.
The silhouette dropped without a sound.
Sweat breaking, breath coming hard, Alex ghosted to the spot. He didn't recognize the man's face. Patting quickly, he found the wallet and took it.There was no cell phone. Pausing only to put a last bullet for certainty through the body's head, he loped again between the buildings and by a circuitous route back to the street.
A car waited, engine running but lights out, in the full-parked street of resident vehicles.
Crouched, he made his way up the line of parked cars behind it. The silhouetted driver was craning toward the walkway where Krycek had just been, instead of looking into his rear-view mirrors. It was his last mistake.
Krycek dragged the body out and dropped it between parked cars. On the front seat he found the cell phone. Carefully, he pushed the recall button.
The last call out had been made before he and Mulder met at the parking garage. The last incoming call was earlier in the day.
Idiots, he thought, and let all his breath out like a prayer of fathomless thankfulness. It still couldn't be known if it was him they'd been following or Mulder, but -- it had been a very, very long time since anyone had successfully tailed Alex Krycek. Time to debug Mulder's car.
He dreamed that night that the phantom arm that pained him became a visible, ghostly appendage, magical in its power to touch and feel, hold and manipulate. In his happiness he went to Mulder, embraced and held him, imprisoned him within the real and the mystic arms. Mulder pulled back with an expression of questioning wonder and delight to look. The limb was all but transparent, smooth in outline, with a hand slimmer than his flesh one had been. Mulder caught hold of the arm, and Krycek was infused with sudden knowledge from that touch. Mulder took the spirit hand in both his own. He proved that he too could see it, by tenderly kissing him on each fingernail, before he drew away, further, leaving him with a look of sadness and regret in his eyes, that made Krycek understand it was forever. He started sobbing, running after Mulder like a little boy, sobbing, "No! No!"; alone in the road under the structures of a great and deserted city.
He woke with grief in his heart and tears wetting his face. It took long moments before memory of reality could repair and soothe his torn awareness, and he clutched with pitiful gratitude at the knowledge that Mulder hadn't left him. Mulder had entered his body, pleasured in him, thrust in ecstasy and come in him.
Mulder was just starting to learn what their bodies could be together.
Mulder wasn't going anywhere.
But...
What he wanted with Mulder was so much more. He wanted to know and experience Mulder, he wanted Mulder to know and experience him. Never had he thought of himself as something to be opened, before. His life had been about self-protection and shielding. Emotionally virginal, he wanted Fox to take him, all the way, fuck his heart open, initiate him into oneness of the soul, into that adulthood. His passion, Mulder had seen. Even looked to be addicted to. But could he love what Krycek was? A cold wash of fear numbed him as he remembered what he had done that night.
He wasn't going to tell Mulder. There was no use in subjecting him to a sense of responsibility for something he had had no part in. But if Mulder did know... would he say there had been some other way? Would he have chosen to sacrifice what they were together to some credo, the sanctity of life and law? Even if their own lives would almost certainly have been forfeit? He thought Mulder would at least have hesitated, and in that hesitation, lost. Whereas Krycek had had no doubts as to what must be done, the moment he had known they were being followed.
He understood the difference between them. It was a practical matter. He could deal with it. But if it had to be always a barrier of secrets between them... He wanted nothing holding them apart. And from hard experience he knew how fast a secret could blow up in your face.
Desperation had always been the deepest current of his life. He clutched onto everything as if he were being swept downstream, away. Certainty the most desperate of his desperate needs. For something that was true and would never change. Mulder.
The desperation to know for certain what was real had led him to the Consortium. So much truth lay in that nest of lies. It had seemed as if he had reached the heart of things. But the knowledge, and then the final bitter proof, that any or all of them would sacrifice him, like one of their lab rats, for victory or only a momentary advantage... What certainty could there be in them? As he struggled to keep alive in their riptides and whirlpools only one thing ever seemed to stay the same, a rock and a beacon by which he could know what way he was heading, and where lay the greatest danger. Without being aware, he had started to look to Mulder to keep his bearings. It was only a matter of time after that.
The man seemed born sure. His walk -- as if he always knew exactly where he was going, where Krycek could only follow with baffled anxiety. His voice -- certain, scornful, at least toward him -- rapping out short clues, instructions, evasions -- koans pointing to some hidden absolute. His mind, that could marshal scraps and wisps of nothing into a ghost array of what would turn out to be truths -- truths that even then, no one else could see. His case files Krycek had read first with derision, then fascination; finally dumbfounded at the alchemy Mulder's presence seemed to work on facts other people had gathered haphazardly. He continued to read long after their "partnership" ended, gradually becoming aware of all he hadn't understood when it was right in front of him. Mulder had opened his eyes to things even the Consortium didn't know. His solve rate, on cases no one else could get anywhere with, was a simple, stark one hundred percent; though with an arrest record precipitously less sterling.
Then Mulder had started hitting him.
It had come as a complete shock. That personal connection. The intuitive leap Mulder had instantly made between his father's murder and Krycek's reappearance had taken Krycek time to catch up with, and despite his first report to the Consortium he hadn't yet really understood about Scully and Mulder. The pure, personal hatred in Mulder's eyes, his whole body, as he bashed Krycek's face in -- Krycek had never dreamed he was so important to the man. Living and vital in Mulder's world -- he had suddenly felt as if another dimension of his own life had unfolded. He existed, in a way he had never suspected.
Inside Mulder.
The astonishment of the reflection coming back at him stayed bright as he escaped.
The very painful lesson that he was real to Mulder made his world seem bigger, yet more intimate.
It took him some time to recognize the sensation.
All he felt was that little gnawing, niggling, scraping need to be with him again. When it happened, so unexpectedly, in Hong Kong, the sudden swollen, irrational jealousy of Jerry Kallenchuk had almost choked him. He shuddered, now, at how he had left Mulder to devise his own narrow escape from the French assassins. But he hadn't known, then, why the sight of someone else -- and a woman -- chained on Mulder's wrist, had made him suicidal. Leaving Mulder -- with his jealous, spiteful "Looks like she's your partner now" -- had been a tremendous act of self-destruction. The few frightening moments he had with Mulder at the airport, before the Black Oil took him, had left him no wiser.
It was not till the solitude of the missile silo that he understood. At least, understood that, of all the people on earth, there was only one he truly wanted to see again, or would have wanted with him when he died. And when he was salvaged by the militia, it was within minutes of understanding who had rescued him, that they became, in his eyes, Mulder's meat. To bring the god down to the altar, you needed an offering.
Still not naming the need. Not when Mulder hit him, not when Mulder gave him to Skinner, not when Mulder looked at him knowing that weaponless and chained he had still killed an armed agent on Skinner's balcony. Not in Tunguska -- he had other things to think about. Not even, in Mulder's apartment, when he had given him the kiss of a brother, and -- still more inexplicably -- a free shot.
Not till Mulder sought and found him. Held him down. Licked his mouth. Had the dysjunction between his being and his life all so suddenly jarred closed, and he felt whole, coming under Mulder like the first crack in the earth of a newborn volcano.
Conjoined.
Mulder, his instincts told him, didn't feel it. Not that completeness, the -- Krycek still shied away from the word, even in his own mind. It was so grandiose. But if Mulder didn't -- wasn't -- hadn't the same depth of feeling, the same certainty... it didn't matter. Nothing Mulder could do would make him leave; so they were together. That was settled.
He turned over determinedly and went back to sleep, and this time when he dreamed it was of being a very little boy on a beach, trying to build something out of sand.
End of Part 9
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