Fire And Ice

~#~#~#~#~

In asking for their help he’d be selling the last tattered remnants of his pride. He’d be casting himself at their feet just to keep his miserable hide alive. Sinking even further into their debt, just because it seemed less terrifying to live with their loathing than face death alone.

The alternative was to do nothing. To let the infection spread. To die alone here, in this damp cesspit of an apartment, and since his rent was prepaid for the next three months not even his landlord would come looking for him until his neighbors complained about the stench of his corpse.

There was something vaguely horrifying about that idea.

The problem was he realized it was considerably less horrifying than the idea of facing Mulder’s disgust, after all.

~#~#~#~

He woke into panic, sure he was trapped in the silo again, and for a moment his fear was so overwhelming he thought his heart might burst before it remembered to beat again. But gradually a little reason crept through the terror as he realized the shudders racking his body were spasms of hellish heat rather than intense, unbearable cold and, although his coughs were familiarly wet, the mucous fluid that choked out of his throat with each miserable, pain-wracked heave was pale as death not oily black and the shrill ringing in his ears wasn’t the hum of an awakening alien spacecraft but the sharp tones of…of…

Shit.

His cell phone.

Eyes closed, hand pressed protectively over his stomach, he knee-crawled in the direction of the incessant ring tone. 

“Tonight.”

He gaped blearily at the handset, his mind so fogged by the effort of crossing the room that the single, sharp word could barely cut through the haze of his confusion. He gulped several times, desperately trying to unclench his teeth enough to reply without releasing one of the cries of pain that were milling impatiently in his throat for the chance to escape.

Disturbed by his long, unexpected silence, she spoke again with barely disguised impatience. “Did you hear me, Krycek? He needs you tonight.”

He took a shuddering breath, hating the wet gargle in his throat that confirmed a secondary infection had spread to his lungs, and hoped his hoarse whisper sounded less pathetic over the phone than it did to his own ears.

“Can’t…can’t make it tonight.”

The shocked silence that met his remark was almost funny. He resisted the urge to chuckle, knowing it would probably make him cough again. The skin of his swollen belly was so taut now that one more cough would probably rupture his stitches. He visualized his stomach bursting open, his intestines bursting out of his flesh like a birthing alien, and picturing the look on Mulder’s face at witnessing such a thing left him fighting a fresh wave of impending hysteria.

“I’m not asking, Krycek. He needs you now,” she snapped.

And he heard the unspoken ‘or never’, the silent warning that if he fucked this up there wouldn’t be a second chance, the unnecessary addendum that if he failed to live up to their bargain there’d be no further second chances. 

Panic shuddered through him and he winced aloud as the resultant tremors rippled through his belly. He tried to calm himself, tried to remind himself that he was dying anyway so what the hell did it matter if she never dialed his cell phone again, if she never even knew he wouldn’t be alive to answer it if she did?

But it mattered. Somehow, in all his fever-dreams of suffering his lone, painful demise, he must have secretly been clinging to the idea that they would need him, and ring him, and worry enough about his failure to answer that they would at least come over and find his corpse, because the idea of the phone never ringing again terrified him even more than the idea of letting them see him like this, finally broken and defenseless in a way they’d never achieved with their own petty tortures.

“Sick,” he gasped, in a wet, flem-filled gurgle.

“Typical,” she said, her tone icy with contempt. “I should have known you’d revert to type, Krycek. So much for your word, huh? You promised you’d always come when I called, whenever I said he needed you. You said you didn’t care how much it hurt, that the more you suffered the better, that you *needed* us to do this to you as much as we needed to do it, and now you don’t want to play anymore? You think you can offer yourself to Mulder, swear to come whenever he needs you, let him believe you won’t let us down, and then cry off because you’ve got some damned head cold? Was it all just a perverted game to you, Krycek? You don’t want to come if you’re feeling too ill to enjoy it yourself?”

“No,” he choked, staring at the phone in horror as her bitter accusations whipped through him, as the hate in her voice made his already throbbing forehead pound with fresh spikes of pain.

“No?” she mocked. “Seems to me that’s *exactly* what it’s been. What the hell else am I supposed to think if you won’t come just because you’re feeling ‘sick’?”

He flinched at the sarcastic way she drawled the word, like he was a child complaining of a stomach-bug, like he wasn’t clutching the said stomach as it threatened to burst his stitches. He trembled in horror at the thought of her telling Mulder it had all been a lie, that he’d never truly meant his repentance, that it had all been a game.

He couldn’t bear it, the thought that despite all the pain he’d suffered at their hands they could still hate him with such intensity, and if he thought there was any way he could crawl down the stairs and flag down a cab he’d tell her he was coming after all.

“Can’t,” he wheezed. “Want to. Can’t...Sick... Please.” 

/Please understand. Please don’t hate me any more. Please don’t twist the only honest thing I’ve ever done into something sick and selfish./

He held the phone away from his face as though it were a poisonous snake, blinking as it faded in and out of his vision, no longer hearing her voice even as its tone shifted from anger to bewilderment to reluctant concern. “Krycek? Krycek? Are you there? Speak to me. Alex? ALEX?”

~#~#~#~

“Stupid fucking selfish bastard.”

Mulder’s face loomed over him, scarlet with fury, and he flinched, whimpering, trying to curl his legs up to protect his stomach from the fists that invariably accompanied Mulder’s wrath.

“Don’t…” he gasped. 

The words tumbled into his throat. ‘Don’t hit me. Don’t hurt me. Not now. Please. I can’t bear it. Not now.’ 

And died unspoken. 

Useless to waste his breath on pleas that Mulder would probably choose not to hear. Better to save the air in his congested lungs for screaming, in the hope that his howls of pain would satisfy Mulder’s anger before his stomach burst under the impact of those vengeful fists.

He couldn’t do that to Mulder. Hard enough to die now, with the debts between them still unpaid, without his death itself becoming one more shadow of needless guilt in Mulder’s eyes. 

“STUPID BASTARD,” Mulder roared, his eyes so brilliant with fury that they glistened. “Why the fuck didn’t you call for help?”

Alex blinked stupidly. Call? Call whom? Why? Oh. OH…Why hadn’t he? 

And then he remembered. Shame flushed his already heat-scorched cheeks.

“No money,” he whispered and, despite every instinct screaming that he shouldn’t say it, some devilish suicidal impulse made him twist his mouth into a smirk and add, “Well, no *legal* money.”

Direct hit. 

Evidenced by the dark stain of outrage that spread over Mulder’s face like a bruise.

“Fucker,” Mulder growled. “It’s my fault, huh? That what you’re saying? That this is my fault?”

The glistening fury in Mulder’s eyes seemed to grow and expand and then somehow break free and tumble down Mulder’s cheeks, and suddenly Alex realized the glistening wasn’t fury at all but hot, angry tears and Mulder was crying. 

Crying. 

Over him.

“I….I…I’m sorry,” he gasped, reaching his trembling hand in bewildered wonderment towards the wetness on Mulder’s cheeks.

Only to have it angrily knocked away.

“You fucking will be,” Mulder snarled, sniffing loudly and rubbing an angry sleeve over his face. “Why the hell didn’t you call *us*?”

The look of stunned disbelief on Alex’s face at the comment tore a gasp of outraged hurt out of Mulder’s throat. He clenched his fists, as though physically struggling not to slap the expression off Alex’s face, then sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the room in increasing agitation.

“Look at him, Scully. He doesn’t give a shit, does he? He doesn’t fucking care. He was just going to do this. He was just going to fucking DIE on me. Selfish, fucking rat bastard.”

Cool, poised, she stepped between them, dropping to her knees next to Alex with practiced grace, one hand delving with surety within her black bag, the other gently probing Alex’s swollen flesh, and all the time her eyes never left Mulder’s face.

“Mulder, stop pacing. If you want to help, get out of my way. Why don’t you go wait in the lobby for the paramedics?”

She checked Alex’s pulse, inserted a digital thermometer in his right ear and, glancing at the reading, audibly sucked her breath.

“He’s going to die, isn’t he?” 

Alex half-closed his eyes, less caring of her answer than the feeling of warmth that flooded him at the unexpected depth of fear he heard in Mulder’s blunt question. 

“I won’t lie to you, Mulder. It doesn’t look good. His temperature’s 104.3. The septicemia from his wound is bad enough, but I’m more worried about the pneumonia. What idiot hospital stitched him up and threw him out without any antibiotics?”

Perhaps it was just the way his vision was blurring but, for a moment, Alex imagined he saw a shadow of pain and guilt flicker over Mulder's features before they twisted back into fury.

“Maybe he stitched himself up,” Mulder snarled. “So much for going straight, huh, Krycek? I should have known you’d be getting up to your old tricks. Who’d you piss off this time, huh?”

“Leave him alone, Mulder. He can’t answer you. He can barely breathe and, even if he could, I doubt he'd make much sense anyway. He’s practically delirious. Besides, the stitches are professional. Whatever happened to him, he *did* have the sense to get proper treatment at the time and knife wounds are reportable. So the fact he’s here rather than in a jail cell suggests he didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. Even her low muttered addition of “This time,” couldn’t stop a slow smile spreading over Alex’s face.

Fair, clinical, emotionless Scully actually leaping to his defense.  He appreciated her ability to set her own feelings aside and accept that the evidence suggested his innocence. 

This time.

He thought it was vaguely ironic that it had taken witnessing his death to finally shatter her glacial perception of him as the personification of all evil.

“Bet that hurt,” he gasped, his eyelashes fluttering as he struggled against the black waves that were crashing through his head.

“What?” she demanded, leaning her ear nearer his mouth until he could smell the flowery scent of her freshly washed hair.

“The idea I’m not…not a total shit.”

“That’s not what I said,” she snapped back, but her hand was peculiarly gentle as she pushed the sweat-drenched hair back off his forehead and she frowned with what seemed like genuine concern at the heat radiating off his skin.

Alex, deciding that heaven couldn’t look any better than this, closed his eyes and let himself tumble into the beckoning darkness.

~#~#~#~

“So,” Scully said, as they stood together and stared through the glass panel at the row of blinking monitors, oxygen tubes, drips, catheters and sterile bed sheets that obscured everything except the dark shock of Krycek’s hair.

“So,” Mulder agreed, with a sigh.

“Now his fever's broken, they’ll keep him in IC for 48 hours then transfer him to a ward. If everything goes okay and he doesn’t pick up any more secondary infections he’ll be ready to be discharged next weekend. But he’ll take weeks to recuperate completely. He’s in bad shape. Underweight. Malnourished. He hasn’t been taking care of himself for a long time and he’s not as young as he used to be.”

“None of us are,” Mulder reminded her sourly.

Her fingers tapped a nervous tune on the glass as her expression turned thoughtful.

“He can’t go back to that apartment. Did you see the damp on those walls? It’s no wonder he caught an infection.”

Mulder frowned uncertainly and nibbled slowly on his lower lip.

“What are you saying, Scully?”

She shrugged self-consciously.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Just…I don’t know,” she repeated, barely more than a whisper.

He nodded slowly. “You hate him,” he reminded her cautiously.

“We both do.”

He flinched at her defensive tone, patting her tense shoulder in an awkward acknowledgement, but he knew his whispered “Yeah” didn’t carry conviction when Scully’s only response was a heavy sigh. 

They stared through the glass for a long time before Mulder broke the silence again.

“I mean it wouldn’t be fair, would it? To give him the wrong impression. To let him think…”

“He would.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s not the kind of rat you could keep as a pet, Mulder,” she said, trying to keep her tone light, trying to make her words a joke. Failing dismally.

“I know that,” he snapped, but his eyes were so wounded she might as well have kicked him.

/No, Fox. You can’t have a puppy./

She sighed, wondering when everything had become so fucked up that trying to do the right thing made her feel like she was being a selfish bitch “Besides, you were right. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Mulder’s expression twisted into a thwarted pout.

“But it’s obviously what he wants…”

Scully shook her head sadly, her eyes soft and apologetic. “No.”

“But you said…”

“I was wrong. We were both wrong. We told ourselves what we wanted to hear.”

"It wasn't *our* idea, Scully. He came to us, remember? He always came. No one ever held a gun to his head. Why the hell did he come if he didn’t want it, need it, as much as we do?”

She reached for his hand and squeezed it gently. “He didn’t phone us, Mulder.”

“I know.”

“He was dying, and he didn’t think we’d even care.”

“I know," Mulder admitted miserably.

“So we’ve hurt him enough. Too much. It was supposed to be a kind of catharsis for *all* of us, Mulder. Not just an excuse for you and I to beat the hell out of him. So it stops. Now. Before we do him any more harm.”

Mulder shook his head. “It’s too late to walk away. We should have thrown him out on his ass the day he first turned up on our doorstep, but we didn't. We knew what he offered us was wrong but we still opened Pandora's box.”

“I know,” she sighed. "All I could think about was *you*. Your needs. I didn't let myself think or care about *why* he was doing it or what it was doing to him. It's like he's addicted to you, Mulder. You pretend you want him to get the hell out of our lives, but every time you let him in the door you're just feeding his obsession. You use his guilt  to bind him to us and you use your anger as an excuse to keep calling him over for 'punishment'. So I don't think he's the only one with the addiction."

Mulder’s face twisted with guilty misery.

“I *do* hate him, Scully.”

She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“You love to hate him. That’s not the same thing.”

He dropped his head onto her shoulder, both stealing comfort and offering apology.

“I know.”

They both sighed heavily and lapsed into silence again, communicating only through the squeezing of their linked fingers, as they pondered the conundrum of their feelings toward the patient beyond the glass.

~#~#~#~

Alex’s stomach lurched as the smiling clone wearing Mulder’s face breezed back into his hospital room and he fought to resist the increasingly familiar urge to leap to his feet and power his fist into Mulder’s mouth just to see whether it bled red or green. He settled for offering his visitor a wan smile and silence.

The Mulder-clone seemed to prefer it when he stayed silent.

“Okay, that’s it. You’re free,” Mulder announced, waving the discharge form in his face. “So get your ass out of that bed and into the chair so we can escape this place.”

“I can walk,” Alex offered warily.

He flinched at the glimmer of anger in Mulder’s eyes and wished he hadn’t spoken.

Then Mulder’s face twisted back into that all too-unnerving expression of joviality and Alex’s stomach lurched again.

“Not an option. Hospital insurance and all that crap. You don’t get back on your own feet until they’re sure you can’t sue ‘em when you fall down again.”

The metallic arms of the wheelchair glinted malevolently, and Alex shuddered at the idea of climbing into what suddenly looked like a cage.

“I’d rather walk,” Alex protested bravely.

And Mulder’s happy-clone mask abruptly disappeared.

“I don’t give a shit what you’d rather do. You owe me. In more ways than one.” Mulder threw the hospital bill down on Alex’s bed for emphasis and Alex blanched both at the total and the fact that it was stamped ‘paid in full’.

He flushed and ducked his eyes from Mulder’s gaze. “You know I can’t pay you back.”

Mulder smirked nastily. “Don’t worry about it, Krycek. My father left me lots of money. I may as well spend some of it on you. After all, I wouldn’t have it if you hadn’t murdered him.”

Alex cringed under the bedclothes, his body going rigid in expectation of a blow.

He understood now. The only reason Mulder and Scully had saved his life was that they hadn’t yet punished him enough. They’d only dragged him back from the brink of death so they could make him suffer more. They’d paid for him to have the best medical treatment simply so he’d be healthy enough to survive more torture at their hands.

It was so fucking cruel it was almost funny.

Suddenly the rumor that half of Mulder’s DNA had been provided by the smoker seemed easy to believe.

And if the twitch in his cock was as much from excitement as fear at the thought that he’d soon be the helpless recipient of Mulder’s wrath once more, it just proved that he was a sad and pathetic bastard who deserved everything that was going to happen to him.

Mulder continued to glare at him for a moment, then his face relaxed into a grin. “You’re so easy, Krycek. You’ve got so many buttons to push that I just can’t resist the temptation to do it.”

Alex’s mouth gaped open in disbelief. “I don’t understand,” he whispered finally, when Mulder just smirked at his confusion.

Mulder continued to taunt him with a silent smirk, until Alex’s heart began to hammer so wildly with panic that he was sure its frantic beat was throbbing audibly through the hospital room. He started to slowly edge his body sideward under the sheets, his eyes furtively searching for the shortest route to the door. Then, just as Alex prepared to throw back the bedcovers and make his desperate attempt to flee, Mulder sighed heavily and spread his arms wide in a deliberate gesture of appeasement.

“My father was a bastard, Krycek. He was as guilty of atrocities against humanity as every other member of the syndicate. If he were still alive, he’d be sitting on death row waiting to pay the price of his crimes. I’d have supplied the evidence to convict him myself. What kind of fool do you think I am? My capacity to grieve for that asshole died the moment I realized he was the monster who handed over my sister to her death and allowed me to spend my life blaming myself for her abduction.”

“But you…you….” Alex’s voice trailed off, his head shaking in bewilderment.

“What? Punish you for his death? Regularly beat your ass bloody for what you did? Make you scream your apologies to me until your throat’s so raw you can’t speak?” Mulder asked.

Stunned by Mulder’s casual tone, Alex could only nod in agreement.

“You need it,” Mulder explained bluntly. “I might have come to terms with his death but you’ve never forgiven yourself for pulling the trigger, have you?” He shrugged carelessly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, this last week. Not a lot else to do in a hospital waiting room. I’ve decided my reasons for wanting to punish you don’t always coincide with your reasons for wanting me to do it. Sometimes my only reason for wanting to punish you *is* the fact that you want me to do it.” His face twisted into a wry grin. “That and the strange fact that I seem to have acquired an unhealthy fascination with the way your ass turns red when I paddle it.”

Alex’s face flamed, but mingled with his intense embarrassment was a first dawning spark of cautious hope. “You have?” 

Mulder nodded thoughtfully. “Scully and I have discussed it, ad nauseum,” he admitted finally. “She seems to think the fact I couldn’t see you without wanting to punch the smug grin off your face was probably the manifestation of some long-standing, repressed homosexual attraction towards you.”

Alex swallowed dryly, then forced himself to ask. “Was it?”

“Damned if I know. I haven’t figured it out yet. I can’t work out whether I fuck your ass as a power trip, like Scully does, or whether that’s just an excuse for doing what I subconsciously want to do anyway. It’s a moot point, since the only reason you let me touch you at all is your masochistic desire to be punished. Even if I wanted it to be something else, and not necessarily saying I do, but even if I *did* I suspect you’d  run a mile.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, but his eyes shifted downwards and he became inexplicably fascinated with his bed sheet.

Mulder stared at him, sighed, rubbed his hands over his face and sank down in the visitor’s chair with a heartfelt, “Shit.”

Alex risked a curious glance sideways through his lashes.

“No,” Mulder said, shaking his head emphatically. “It won’t work, Alex. Not like that. There’s too much past between us. I can’t forgive you and, even if I could, I can’t forget. Scully can’t forget. And anyway you couldn’t bear it if we could. Could you?”

“No,” Alex admitted reluctantly.

“So let’s not go there. We’re okay as we are. What it is, whatever we have between us, it works, Alex. It works for all of us, doesn’t it?”

When Alex pointedly didn’t answer, Mulder sighed again and spread his hands out in a gesture of reconciliation.

“So, okay, it needs work. I can see that. You need to understand you’re important to us, that you can’t just fucking die on us. We need you, Alex. We both do. I do.”

“You need someone to blame, to punish. You need a whipping boy. Yeah, I understand that,” Alex muttered bitterly. “You’ve made it perfectly clear.”

“Oh fuck off, Krycek. That pathetic, poor-little-me act won’t wash. You’re practically drooling whenever you come around. You cream your pants whenever either of us lay hands on you and don’t even pretend you don’t get off on being hurt. If I videoed the look on your face whenever I hit you I could go into the porn business.”

Alex flushed deeply, his eyes flashing with humiliation. “Yeah, well you’d know all about porn, wouldn’t you?” he spat.

“It’s just as well, isn’t it? Since one of my lovers is so fucking frigid she can’t let go of her inhibitions without strapping on a dildo and pretending to be a man and my other lover only comes around if he’s sure I’m in a bad enough temper to whip his ass raw. Between the pair of you, I get laid so infrequently that if I didn’t have my tapes I’d be walking around with a permanent case of blue balls.”

“Lover?” Alex gasped.

Mulder allowed himself to enjoy the look of bewildered hope on Alex’s face for a moment.

“Well what the hell else are Scully and I supposed to call you, Krycek? You think we just stick our dicks in anyone? Hell, Scully went out and bought that strap-on just for you. I swear it was the first time I ever saw her face turn scarlet. Do you think she’d have gone through that kind of embarrassment for just anyone?”

“You think of me as your *lover*?” Alex repeated, shaking his head incredulously.

Mulder chuckled. “Well, most of the time I think of you as a low-life, scum-sucking, slut rat who deserves to spend the rest of his life chained naked in our apartment with a beaten ass and a well-used hole.”

Alex groaned deep in his throat and shifted awkwardly as his cock swelled to life under the bed sheets.

Mulder’s hand shot out and clenched around his groin, squeezing his betraying flesh hard enough to wrench a squeal out of Alex’s throat.

“You like that, don’t you? It turns you on. The thought of us using you, hurting you, humiliating you like that. It’s what you want. Admit it, Alex. Tell me it’s what you want and maybe, just maybe, I’ll take you home and give it to you right now.”

Alex whimpered with need, pushing up against the cruel fingers, embracing the pain, but even as he bucked into Mulder’s hand his eyes filled with tears and he turned his head away, burying his face in the pillow so deep that Mulder barely heard his muffled cry of “No.”

Mulder released Alex’s groin as though the flesh had burned his fingers and the smug grin on his face transformed into a look of self-loathing horror.

“Shit,” he snarled. “Shit…I…oh fuck…I’m sorry…I…”

He sprang to his feet and slammed his fist against the wall hard enough to split the skin of his knuckles but the intense wave of pain that shot up his arm barely registered against the unbearable weight of his own disappointment at Alex’s denial.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, the words sounding awkward and stilted as he forced them through his suddenly tight throat. “My mistake. I thought you…shit; I really thought you wanted it, Alex. I thought…oh, what the fuck does it matter what I thought?”

“I do,” Alex whispered, turning his head enough to reveal a face haggard with despair.

“I don’t understand,” Mulder admitted unnecessarily.

“I want it too much,” Alex admitted reluctantly. “I want it all. I need it. I live for it, Mulder. I just sit in my apartment, day after day, forgetting to eat, not able to sleep, just waiting for Scully to call, for you to need me, want me. And it doesn’t matter how much it hurts sometimes, even when you both go too far and I’m so broken I can barely get myself home again, because it’s everything. You’re everything. You always were.”

He began to sob, deep wrenching cries from his soul.

“Don’t you see, Mulder? I’m trying to make things right and all I’m doing is making it worse.”

“How? How is it worse, Alex? Why’s it worse if you’re giving us what we want?” Mulder asked, moving to the side of the bed and covering Alex’s reluctant hand with his own bruised fingers.

“Because it’s not revenge if I like it, is it?” Alex asked, his tear-filled eyes wide and defenseless.

“Maybe it’s not about revenge at all,” Mulder suggested gently. “Maybe it’s just about slaying demons. Not just ours but yours, Alex. Maybe, if its what we all want it can just be what it is and nothing more.”

“No,” Alex denied, shaking his head in confusion. “It’s not…not right.”

“There’s no rulebook here. There’s no perfect template for relationships, Alex. This is what it is. I need it, you need it and Scully…well, to be honest you’re the glue that’s holding Scully and me together. Maybe our mutual loathing of you was a shitty way to try and hold on to our own relationship but somehow it worked and if it became something else, if it gained a life of its own so we can’t picture our lives now without you in it, well who’s to say that something good can’t come of something that started so bad?”

“But you hate me,” Alex pointed out.

“I do,” Mulder admitted and felt a brief tinge of grief at the way Alex winced at the admission, “but I think, in some weird, fucked-up way, I love you too and hate’s such a fucking exhausting emotion, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Alex mumbled.

Mulder sighed heavily. “No, I don’t suppose you do. If you were capable of hate you wouldn’t still love me, would you?”

He laughed bitterly at the guilty fear that flashed in Alex’s eyes.

“It’s not a secret, Alex. Even Scully’s figured out the way you feel about me. The only question left is how you feel about her.”

“What difference does it make? She hates me.”

Mulder sighed again.

“I think hate’s too strong a word, Alex. It suggests a level of feeling that frankly isn’t there. On the whole she’s indifferent to you, except where your existence has an impact on mine. She enjoys punishing you, but that’s just because it fits in with her catholic beliefs of the kind of penance required before there’s any possibility of redemption. As long as she believes you’re sincerely repentant, she’s got no problem with giving you the punishment you want.

“You owe her an apology, Alex. Last week, when you didn’t ring us for help, she had a crisis of conscience. She couldn’t believe that you would trust her enough to help mend your soul but wouldn’t trust her to heal your body, so she started to look at our whole relationship in a different light. She’s convinced now that she’s guilty of abusing you. If you don’t come home with me now, she’s probably going to spend the next six months in confession over this whole damned situation and I’ll *never* get laid again.”

Alex shook his head incredulously, trying and failing to prevent a grin of amusement spreading over his face.

“You’re crazy.”

“It’s been said,” Mulder agreed dryly.

“No, really. You are crazy. You’re sitting here asking me to go home with you and ask Scully to whip my ass again, just so you can get your leg over?”

“Essentially.”

“And what’s in this for me?”

Mulder shrugged. “Well, there’s the distinct possibility that seeing you red-assed and bawling on our floor will give me an insatiable desire to fuck you senseless.”

“Ah,” Alex replied thoughtfully.

“And, since the hospital says it’ll be several weeks before you’re completely healed, I was looking forward to taking full advantage of your vulnerable state, so it would be pretty spiteful of you to refuse, wouldn’t it?”

Alex muttered something under his breath.

“What?” Mulder asked gently.

“No fists,” Alex whispered. 

“Never?” Mulder asked dubiously, his eyebrow rising in surprise.

Alex gave a low laugh, finally raising his eyes to meet Mulder’s in a clear, bright gaze.

“Never’s a long time, Mulder. Relax. I just meant until I’m better. Then…well, how would I know it was you if you *never* punched me?”

“Masochistic little pervert, aren’t you?” Mulder teased.

“Must be,” Alex agreed.

“In that case, are you going to get your ass in that chair so I can get you home? Scully’s sitting there holding a paddle with your name on it.”

He saw a shiver of fear tremble through Alex’s body and he squeezed his hand a final time.

“Don’t worry about it. She’s not *really* angry with you. You just scared the crap out of her last week so she’s going to return the favor.”

~#~#~#~

“I imagine you’re confused.”

Alex took the risk of raising his eyes from their study of the carpet. The cold expression in her eyes reassured him that despite the gentle tone of her words, at least Scully’s behavior was consistent with his memory.

“You either think Christmas has come early or you’re wondering whether Mulder’s a replicant.”

She nodded in satisfaction at his immediate guilty flush.

“So I’m going to let you in on a few home truths, Alex, and if when I’m finished you want to put your clothes back on and get the hell out of here, nobody’s going to stop you. On the other hand, no one’s going to come after you this time either. This is a once and only deal, so you’d best be damned sure you’re making the right decision.

“First things first. I don’t like you, Alex. I never did and I doubt I ever will. That being said, I’m shallow enough to appreciate your looks, regardless of my feelings, and you excite me sexually in a way that Mulder never has. The fact that I’m saying that behind his back doesn’t mean it’s a secret. There are no secrets between Mulder and I. 

“I love Mulder and he loves me, and if it’s not a conventional love then so what? At least, in this one thing, you and I have something in common. We both love him, regardless of whether it’s in our best interests to do so.”

They both flinched as a thud in the next room was swiftly followed by colorful curses. Alex chewed his lower lip fretfully, tempted to offer a nervous grin but afraid his expression would be misinterpreted. Scully, however, seemed to sense his ambivalent feelings over Mulder’s behavior.

“Just so there’s no misunderstandings here, the man who’s running around getting the spare room ready for you with the excitement of a boy who’s just gotten a new puppy hasn’t just had some evangelical experience that’s left him a born-again believer in Alex Krycek. The two of you have been butting heads and fists for so many years that you’ve probably forgotten the *real* Mulder. This is how he is 90% of the time, Alex. He’s simply not capable of sustaining a 24/7 hatred for anyone, even you. It doesn’t mean he won’t wake up tomorrow and remember how many valid reasons he has to hate you.

“Staying here, living here with us, is going to be a living hell for you, Alex. You won’t know from one day to the next whether he’s going to wake up wanting to kiss you or feeling an uncontrollable need to put your face through the nearest wall. Can you live like that? Can you see it through? Can you ride the storm you created until he finally gets it out of his system or are you just going to cut and run the minute it gets too much for you to handle?”

“I…”

“Just shut up and listen, Alex.”

Alex ducked his head submissively, forcing himself to relax and accept the words that were cutting into him more deeply than any strike of cane or paddle.

“Mulder’s in love with you. He has been for years. It’s not something I’m happy about but it’s something I’ve learned to accept. Somehow you fill a gap for him that I can’t. Maybe it’s simply that his vision of me is so screwed up. His affection for me is too routed in his need for a replacement of both his mother and Samantha, and that tends to interfere with his ability to see me as a satisfying sexual partner.”

She laughed a little bitterly at the surprise in his face.

“What? You thought I didn’t know? I’m guilty of a lot of self-deception, Alex, but not about my relationship with Mulder. I know what I represent to him, and maybe it’s not turned into the romance I always thought I wanted but, as it turned out, I’m not the person I thought I was after all.

“I spent years wailing about the fact that I couldn’t have a child. I used my barrenness like a scourge to whip Mulder’s conscience, as though he ever needed any help to feel guilty, and then I had a child, Mulder’s child, and I simply gave him away when the going got tough. What kind of mother did that make me? What kind of woman? No, don’t try and answer, Alex. The sordid truth is that the only person I discovered I couldn’t live without is Mulder himself.

“And I’m going to keep him. At any cost. Even if the price I have to pay is sharing this appartment with you.”

He flinched at her feet and she sighed heavily.

“Don’t look so damned scared, Alex. I’ve got my own reasons for hating you. This isn’t one of them. If it weren’t you, it would be someone else. God knows I’ve seen Skinner make cow eyes at him enough times to know that you’re not the only man who wants to share his bed and there’s a hurt, a need, inside Mulder that can’t find expression with any woman. I don’t think it’s a gay thing, really. It’s more to do with him being too much of a gentleman to let go around anyone physically weaker than himself. In the eight years I was his partner, the only woman I know he screwed was a vampire.

“So I don’t like you, but I’m willing to set that aside because he needs you and, from a purely selfish point of view, because your presence seems to break down Mulder’s inhibitions where I’m concerned too. Which brings me to *our* relationship, Alex. I’m not a fool. I know perfectly well that the only reason you approached me and offered yourself for punishment was to find a way to Mulder. You were prepared to accept anything I did to you as the price you needed to pay to get near him.

“I accepted your offer for two reasons. Firstly, because I agreed with you that it was something Mulder needed but, secondly, because it was something I needed too. The only thing you crave is Mulder’s attention, in any form. The only way I could justify letting a rat like you get that kind of pleasure was if I was sure you damned well appreciated the fact that you didn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t,” Alex whispered at her feet, and something softened slightly in her icy eyes.

“Mulder thinks I’ll only agree to let you stay if you continue to submit to my discipline. He hasn’t even dared to suggest otherwise. He’s lost everyone he ever cared about except you and I. He wants us both, but the difference is that he trusts me to stay with him, while he can’t trust you as far as he can throw you. He’s not willing to take the chance of losing a sure thing like me over an unknown entity like you. But I don’t want to spend my life playing games with you, Alex. So here’s the bottom line. I refuse to make Mulder choose between us. So if you want to stay, you have a choice. You can live here as Mulder’s pet and I won’t interfere between you or you can join our relationship and accept both the pain and protection that being in that relationship gives you.”

Alex stared at the paddle in her hand, clearly weighing his options in his head.

“If I say I want to belong just to Mulder, you won’t paddle me?”

“No,” she agreed, her face expressionless. “The only reason I want to beat some sense into your ass is because you were too stupid to call me for help. If you make it clear that you don’t care what I think of you, then spanking you for scaring me is pretty pointless.”

“So if Mulder loses his temper and starts punching the shit out of me, you won’t interfere?”

“It wouldn’t be anything to do with me.”

Alex weighed the options in his head and came to the surprising conclusion that he trusted Scully’s temper considerably more than he trusted Mulder’s. 

Except…

“What about sex? If I agree to your discipline, are you still going to…um…”

“Fuck you?” 

Alex’s cheeks burned at her matter-of-fact tone and he ducked his head from her cool gaze.

“You offered yourself to me in a sexual way, Alex, and I accepted.”

He nodded miserably.

“But I shouldn’t have.”

Alex looked up in surprise.

“You don’t have to whore yourself to me in order to have Mulder. If that’s the only reason you let me fuck you, then we take that part of our relationship out of the equation.”

He felt uncomfortably guilty at the hint of pain in her tone.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Scully,” he whispered.

“And you’re gay.”

He nodded slowly, apologetically.

“Besides, I don’t think I like using sex as a weapon, Alex. I much prefer a more straightforward approach to punishment.” 

“I don’t like it when you cane me.”

“You aren’t supposed to like it, Alex. That’s why it’s called punishment.”

“You’re a cold bitch,” he muttered.

“I can be.”

“And you don’t like me,” he reminded her, with a defensive sniff.

“I haven’t seen much to like, Alex.”

He sniffed again. “I do, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Like it,” Alex whispered. “I tried to tell Mulder, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He doesn’t understand.”

“We both understand, Alex. We both know you better than you think. You like being punished. It makes you feel better. Then you feel guilty because you don’t think you should feel good about feeling bad. You think it negates the feelings of guilt that make you want to suffer in the first place.”

“Doesn’t it?” Alex asked, his eyes sad and confused.

“Nobody does penance to feel bad, Alex. As long as your feelings of remorse are honest, any happiness you gain from the punishment is okay. It’s expected. It’s what makes the idea of redemption so attractive. Why do you think Catholics go to confession? We don’t do it because we want to spend an hour on our knees saying ‘Hail Mary’s’. It the way our souls feel light when we finally leave. I understand your dilemma more than you think, Alex.”

“You do?” he asked doubtfully.

“Bend over that table and I’ll prove it,” she offered, the corner of her mouth twisting into a wry smile. “I guarantee you won’t enjoy one second of this paddling. I also guarantee that once it’s over you’re going to feel a hell of a lot better.”

“My ass won’t,” Alex muttered.

“Ah, but that’s the price you pay, isn’t it?”

Alex climbed awkwardly to his feet and swayed uncertainly for a moment, his eyes torn between his pile of clothes and the coffee table he was already so painfully acquainted with. Then he took a deep breath and took a step towards the table. 

“Here,” she said, offering him a cushion from the sofa. “I don’t want you tearing your stitches.”

The incongruous kindness of her gesture undid him. He felt tears welling behind his eyes and blinked frantically to keep them from spilling over his cheeks.

“You scare the shit out of me, Scully. You always did,” he confessed, when he finally found his voice.

And for the first time ever, he saw her face break into a genuine smile.

“Why, Alex,” she laughed. “Maybe we’re going to get along fine after all.”