Ball and Chain

Ball & Chain
By Mort

Written for the M/K ‘married or buried’ lyric wheel. Lyrics courtesy of Laura.

NC-17

Warnings: Well, for one - Walter Skinner is het. If you can get over *that* total improbability and waste of a hunk of good man-flesh, I don’t see that you’ll be shocked by anything else in the story. But I suppose I should mention there’s the odd fist-fight, a fair bit of angst, some *really* hot sex and a bit of spanky fun. Oh and it’s miles too long for a lyric wheel story, but what can I say? I felt inspired.

Summary: After 10 wasted years, Mulder finally wises up. But is he too late to put things right?

Part One : The Wedding Planner

“What the hell’s wrong with white?” the groom’s father demanded, his florid face twisted into an irritated sneer.

“It’s ivory. Colin says it’s more flattering and he *is* the expert,” his wife replied, patting his arm soothingly and giving me an apologetic look.

He shook her hand off and snorted.

“She’ll look like a cream puff.”

“Better than looking like a meringue,” she countered, then dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “And don’t say ‘puff’.”

He snorted again. Rudely. Then they both cast sideways glances in my direction. Her look was a combination of fascination and mild New England disgust. His was pure scorn. He was a typical Navy type who’d clearly wanted to wipe the floor with me since the moment he first set eyes on me. He was just *itching* to get his hands on me. And not in a good way.

Sometimes I hated my job. Being a wedding planner wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Particularly when the bride was the daughter of a virtually penniless single mother. The wedding was being paid for by the groom’s family who were clearly torn between wanting to spend a fortune to show off and resenting the fact that *they* were footing the bill. Speaking of bills, I’d rapidly come to the conclusion that Bill Scully was a number-one asshole and I felt sorry for the bride. She had to be desperate to accept *him* as a father-in-law.

“White’s passé,” I interrupted smoothly. “Besides, the ivory will work much better with the emerald.”

“Emerald,” he huffed. He turned back to his wife. “The rest of the world calls it *green*. But no, you have to hire a faggot so now I’m wearing an *emerald* waistcoat.”

“Be nice, Bill. Colin’s costing us a fortune. And he’s right. With your family’s coloring, the emerald’s perfect.”

“I still don’t see why I can’t wear my uniform.”

“Because it’s not a military function. It’s our son’s wedding.”

I left them to argue and slipped back to the changing rooms to check on the others.

“I love the dress, but I’m not sure about the hat.”

It was the grandmother, though she honestly didn’t look old enough. Good bone structure. Good figure. Kind of woman who aged like a fine wine. No wonder she’d snagged herself a younger husband.

“I believe it’s obligatory, Maggie,” said husband answered gruffly.

Another military asshole, I told myself.

But then he surprised me by twitching his stern features into a soft smile. “And you look beautiful. As always.”

My heart did a little leap in my chest. It wasn’t the only part of my anatomy that thudded to attention. Not my type but *hot damn* he was a good-looking guy when he smiled.

“Why, Walter Skinner. You old charmer. You look rather magnificent yourself in that suit.”

He did. Must have been pushing sixty, but he had the kind of body that made a tailor think he’d died and gone to heaven. Shoulders like a gladiator, a trim waist, and glutes so firm they could twist a guy’s cock off.

I backed away from them, surreptitiously wiping my brow and adjusting my pants, and just avoided colliding with the maid of honor.

“So? What do you think?” she was asking, doing a twirl.

“You look beautiful, Scully,” her husband replied. “As always.”

That was the moment a little voice in the back of my head started a crazed rendition of ‘there may be trouble ahead’.

It wasn’t the flat, lifeless way he parroted his father-in-law’s comments. He had one of those atonal New England accents which probably would have sounded no more enthusiastic if he’d been saying we were about to be invaded by aliens. Which was rather ironic, since I’d recognized Fox Mulder the moment he’d first walked through the door. Well, who wouldn’t? It’s not often a national hero looks like a Hollywood star, is it? Anyway, the things that rang alarm bells in my head were the defeated slouch of his shoulders and the careful hooding of his eyes as he looked at his wife.

Now, I’ve arranged enough weddings in my time to say with certainty that *most* men are like fish out of water at a clothes fitting. They either bluster, like Bill Scully, or look stoic, like Walter Skinner, or they look like they want a hole to open up and swallow them, which was a pretty good description of Fox Mulder’s demeanor that day.

So he *could* have just been having one of those ‘real men don’t dress up like a Ken-doll’ moments.

But something told me he wasn’t.

For one thing, he’d arrived at the fitting already looking like a million dollars. I hadn’t seen the label in his suit, but I know designer when I see it. A guy that tall and slim looks like Ichabod Crane in an off-the-peg suit. And in his wedding outfit? Well, confession time. It hadn’t been the Scully family’s predilection for red hair that had inspired me to suggest emerald. It had been Fox Mulder’s eyes.

Weird eyes. I’d have sworn they were petrol blue when he was wearing a charcoal suit, but put him in an emerald waistcoat and cravat and his eyes were definitely green.

He looked edible. Not that he’d have looked twice at me even if he’d been gay. Tall, handsome strangers don’t tend to make a beeline for fat little guys like me.

He was especially gorgeous when he pouted. Sullen’s a good look for a guy with lips like that.

It didn’t bode well for his wife though.

He was clearly unhappy, with a capital U, and despite some clear tension I’d witnessed between Mulder and his asshole brother-in-law, my gut told me the trouble had a lot less to do with his wife’s family than his wife herself.

She was a pretty little thing. Red hair, blue eyes, cute smile. But, believe me, that shade of red came out of a bottle and those eyes were *cold* and middle-age and gravity had hit what had probably once been a good figure. That’s the problem with short people like us. We have a tendency to get dumpy as we get older.

“I think the bustle makes my butt look fat,” she said, peering over her shoulder into the full-length mirror.

Fat?

She looked like someone had stuck a cabbage on her ass.

For a moment, my eyes met Mulder’s in the mirror and I saw it. A spark flashing across his eyes and a tightening of his jaw.

‘Go on. Say it,’ I dared him silently. ‘It doesn’t make your ass *look* fat. Your ass *is* fat.”

He swallowed heavily.

“You look gorgeous, Scully. The color really suits you.”

‘Coward,’ my eyes said.

He looked away.

Pussy-whipped *wasn’t* a good look for a guy like him.

I didn’t see him again until the wedding rehearsal.

The church looked fantastic, if I say so myself. I’d successfully overridden every over-the-top tasteless suggestion from the groom’s family and aimed for subtle. Simple elegant flower displays. White orchids and roses, with ferns and trailing ivy.

The bridesmaids all looked gorgeous in their emerald taffeta gowns. Even the maid of honor looked less like lime jello wobbling down the aisle than I’d feared. The grandmother was in a soft, chiffon green, with an ivory hat and shawl. One mother-in-law was in an ivory suit, with emerald accessories. The other was in emerald with ivory accessories. Looked like a pair of bookends, but in a classy way.

But, my own preferences aside, I have to say the guys put all the women to shame.

Walter Skinner, he of the endless shoulders, looked like a Greek god. Zeus rather than Apollo, admittedly, but I’d have bent over the alter for him.

Matthew, the groom, looked fidgety and impossibly young but was definitely cute. Even the father-in-law looked good. Though a little pancake on his florid cheeks wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Not that I was going to suggest it. I like my balls where they are, thank you very much.

As for Fox Mulder…

Well, I decided he was more a Greek tragedy than a Greek god.

I just couldn’t work out how the hell anyone who looked so drop-dead-gorgeous could simultaneously look so forlorn and out-of-place.

It wasn’t until the day of the wedding that the pieces began to fall into place and I finally figured out what was going on.

The wedding itself went like a dream. Of course it did. I’m a professional. And the reception was, at my insistence again, understated and elegant. A large,but not ostentatious affair held inside a marquis, with a sit-down silver service meal, followed by dancing into the evening and an opulent finger-buffet.

Champagne flowed and the father-in-law must have taken out a second mortgage judging by the amount of money he put behind the bar.

The speeches went well. Even the best man restricted himself to no more than a couple of dirty jokes. And, between the copious alcohol he consumed and the undoubted success of the wedding, even Bill Asshole Scully came over to shake my hand and congratulate me. It seemed that hunting season on faggots had been temporarily suspended.

I finally relaxed and decided to help myself to something from the buffet.

And that’s where I bumped into Dana Scully Mulder.

She was grazing her way up and down the buffet table, devouring food like she was convinced a world-wide famine was imminent.

Or maybe just in the sad hope that the elusive thing known as happiness might possibly be lurking inside a finger-roll or a vol-au-vent.

“Lovely wedding, wasn’t it?” I said, not caring if it sounded like I was singing my own praises.

“Lovely,” she agreed. She barely glanced at me, but she met my eyes long enough that I could see she’d been crying. I could also see she’d swallowed more than her fair share of champagne.

“Of course, the wedding’s the easy bit,” I said gently.

She sniffed loudly and then savagely bit the head off a prawn roll. She chewed for a moment, then discarded the rest of the roll with a sigh. “It doesn’t taste as good as it looks,” she said, and it was obvious she wasn’t just talking about the snack.

“Things rarely do,” I said sympathetically, though personally I thought she was crazy. Hell, even if Fox Mulder had turned out to be a mass murderer I wouldn’t ever have regretted the decision to take him into *my* bed.

She looked towards the newly-wed couple who were dancing together. “I hope they never regret it,” she sighed wistfully.

She looked so lost, so sad, that I just *had* to lend her a sympathetic shoulder.

Besides, what’s life without a bit of gossip?

I’m camp, cuddly Colin, the gossip queen. Women tell me things they’d never tell their husbands or boyfriends. Hell, they confide in me about things they wouldn’t tell their *girlfriends*. Especially if they’ve been drinking.

“Why don’t you tell me all about it, honey?” I purred, and steered her towards an empty table.

“He loves me,” she began, with an unshakeable certainty. “He’d die for me,” she added, and, though it should have sounded like dramatic hyperbole, it had the unmistakable ring of truth. “But he doesn’t *love* me.”

“Ahh,” I said, nodding wisely, as though I knew what the hell she was talking about.

“And he won’t leave me. Because he’s… faithful, you know? Faithful.”

“Like a dog?” I sniped, under my breath.

“It was just a stupid mistake.”

“Your marriage?”

“Amongst other things,” she agreed. “It’s like we both got on a train heading in the wrong direction and neither of us wants to be the first to jump off.”

“So you don’t *love* him either?” I asked gently, though I was picturing Mulder in my head and thinking ‘what a fucking waste.’

“We’d been together so long. Shared so much of our lives,” she explained. “Even had a son. Then we were on the run together…”

I nodded. The details of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder’s lives had been splashed across the tabloids when the alien threat had finally been averted and the new Government had reluctantly come clean about how close mankind had come to obliteration.

“Our getting married seemed… well it seemed inevitable. Like putting on a pair of comfortable old shoes.”

Hardly the language of great romance, was it? But I felt sorry for her nevertheless. “Sometimes love isn’t bells and whistles, Mrs Mulder, and marriage is often a state of comfort and familiarity rather than romance. In time, *most* marriages feel like that.”

“Do they?” she challenged, and her eyes sparked with irritation. “Look at them!”

She pointed at her mother and Walter Skinner. Although they had eschewed the dance floor and were standing together at the rear of the marquis, with identical bland expressions on their faces, they were holding hands. It was a discrete, barely noticeable, gesture but it spoke huge volumes about their relationship.

“They’ve been married almost eight years,” Dana said. “But they still adore each other.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“He was in love with me once,” she said, her tone wistful. “But I couldn’t see past his public persona to the warm, loving man he truly is.”

“You regret turning him down?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t love him and he’s made my mother happy. How could I regret that? But I do regret my nature.”

“Your nature?”

“I’ve never been able to take a leap of faith,” she explained. “I always wanted to see evidence with my own eyes. If I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t believe it. Two men fell in love with me. Both of them proud, undemonstrative men who found it virtually impossible to talk about their feelings. Two macho men who reminded me greatly of my father. Whom I adored, of course, but I wanted *more*. I wanted someone who wore his heart on his sleeve. A man who wasn’t ashamed to show his emotions in public. ”

“Like your husband?”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“He sounds perfect to me, girlfriend.”

“Well, that depends on the emotions he’s showing, doesn’t it?” she said, smiling sadly. “I was wrong about Walter and I was wrong about Fox. So I find myself constantly wondering if I was wrong about…” Her voice trailed off, but her eyes flickered across the dance floor.

I followed the direction of her gaze and saw him. Tall, craggy-faced, prominent ears, eyes like two blue lasers – and they were fixed relentlessly on the diminutive red-head at my side. Hell, he might as well have had a neon-sign hanging over his head saying “I’m in love with Fox Mulder’s wife.”

“So the truth is, *you’re* in love with someone else,” I said, and couldn’t prevent a note of accusation slipping into my voice.

Dana flinched slightly but raised her chin proudly in my direction. “I’m not the only one.”

Owch, I thought.

“So let me get this right, you *both* were in love with other people but you married each other instead?”

She nodded.

“And you’re actually *surprised* you’re both unhappy?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is, honey,” I sighed.

“You don’t understand. The….the *person* Fox loves….well, he had reason to believe they’d died. And by that time he wasn’t even sure whether he *did* love them. It’s complicated.”

My gaydar twanged at her careful choice of pronouns.

“So Foxy fell out with his boyfriend, then thought the boyfriend died and so married you? Wasn’t the fact he was gay a clue?”

She flinched and blushed. “He’s bi,” she said, defensively.

And pigs fly, I thought, and wished I was a foot taller and fifty pounds lighter.

“So this boyfriend’s alive?”

She nodded miserably.

“He got a name?”

“Alex.”

I blinked rapidly. “Not Alex Krycek?”

“The one and same,” she said, somewhat bitterly.

I whistled. I’d seen photos of him. Who hadn’t? The gorgeous hero NSA agent who’d been so deep undercover that by the time it was over he’d made more enemies than I’d had hot dinners. The UN thought he was KGB. The KGB thought he was CIA. The CIA thought he was FBI. The FBI thought he was either KGB or Consortium, the Consortium thought he was working for the rebel aliens, the rebel aliens thought he was working for the *other* aliens. Krycek had ended up having to fake his own death and hadn’t come in from the cold until the new Government’s decision to come clean had vindicated him.

The media had been all over him, naturally, and he’d appeared on the odd talk-show or two. But he hadn’t seemed comfortable with the publicity. He’d accepted his five minutes of fame and then had disappeared back into obscurity. Presumably with a fat government pension, and maybe even a new identity.

But that wasn’t why I’d whistled. I’d had a sudden blinding image of those two gorgeous men, Fox Mulder and Alex Krycek, in bed together and, believe me, that five second flash of imagination had been hotter than any porn video I’d ever hired.

I looked at Dana Scully. Looked over at her tall admirer. Thought about it for about 2 seconds and came to a decision.

“Now *that’s* what I call a hunk, girlfriend. His wife’s one lucky woman.”

She realized who I was talking about and blushed. “He’s not married,” she whispered.

I smirked.

“Still waiting for you to wise up, huh?”

“It’s not like that. He’s never said…”

“Said what? He’s been waiting for you for ten years, girlfriend. You need him to carve it into his heart or something? What the hell you waiting for?”

“I’m married,” she said weakly.

“And your husband’s in love with another man,” I retorted bluntly. “Don’t you think it’s time you both ended the misery?”

“I told you, it’s not that easy. You think Alex Krycek is sitting waiting for him like John’s waiting for me? Well he’s not. When he met Fox, after the truth came out, he cut him dead. Fox tried to apologize and Alex told him to…. Well, it wasn’t polite. He basically said he’d take as much pleasure dancing on Fox’s grave as Fox had clearly taken over his faked death.”

“Then Krycek’s still in love with him,” I stated firmly.

She blinked at me stupidly.

“If he’s still angry at your husband, rather than indifferent, he’s clearly still got feelings for him. The four of you owe it to yourselves to sort this mess out.”

For a moment she continued to stare at me in an agony of indecision. Then, like a shutter lifting, the confused misery in her eyes cleared and, for the first time, I saw an echo of the legendary decisive Dana Scully as her expression filled with sudden determination.

“I do believe you’re right, Colin. Thank you,” she said, with dignity. She rose to her feet and walked across the dance floor towards John Doggett.

Feeling I’d successfully played ‘good fairy’ enough for one night, I headed towards the bar for a much needed stiff drink. I was on my fifth, or possibly sixth, when the trouble began.

I blame myself, in a way. Admittedly, if Dana hadn’t already been half-cut when we started talking, I doubt she would have confided in me like she had. On the other hand, because she *was* a little the worse for drink it didn’t occur to her to speak to her husband before she charged over to Doggett and told him his long wait was over.

So Mulder came back into the room, from wherever he’d been sulking, and found his wife waltzing with her would-be-suitor ( who’d turned out to be a surprisingly accomplished dancer for such a taciturn man).

Like I said, I don’t know where Mulder had been lurking, but wherever it was had definitely had a bar. He wasn’t drunk, but neither was he sober enough to worry about consequences.

He stormed over into the middle of the dance floor, grabbed Doggett by the shoulder, spun him around and loudly demanded to know what the hell Doggett thought he was doing with his wife. And they both squared off like a couple of angry dogs.

I saw a lot of confused and disapproving looks on the faces of the other onlookers. Dancing with another man’s wife at a wedding isn’t usually a criminal offence. But it is if you’re planning on stealing that wife. And, let’s face it, Doggett hadn’t hung around ten years for a *waltz*.

To be fair to both Mulder and Doggett, I don’t think *either* man truly intended to hurt each other. There was a kind of weary look of inevitability on Mulder’s face, like he’d known the moment was coming for years, and Doggett’s expression was as much shamed as triumphant. He wasn’t taking any pleasure out of ‘winning’ and Mulder obviously knew it.

I was expecting Mulder to throw a punch for show, and Doggett to ‘accidentally’ let it connect before someone like Walter Skinner ‘broke up’ the fight. That way, Mulder could keep his pride and Doggett could keep the girl.

But there’s always an asshole at a wedding, and that wedding’s prime asshole was Bill Scully, Dana’s brother.

Instead of letting things play out, Scully charged across the dance floor and loudly announced he was pleased his sister had ‘finally come to her senses’.

Dana, bless her, immediately jumped to Mulder’s defense, taking all the blame on herself, and Doggett echoed her sentiments with a sincere apology towards the man he was hoping to cuckold.

It was pretty bizarre, but I think it would have ended at that. It was obvious Mulder was heart-broken but, like Dana had said, he clearly *did* love her since all he said was, “I hope you’re happy together,” and “I’ll call a lawyer in the morning.”

“You fucking bastard,” Bill Scully screamed. “She’s leaving you and you don’t even give a shit!”

Then he punched Mulder in the face.

It’s amazing how much blood comes out of a broken nose. Women started screaming. Men started throwing punches. Within seconds, my elegant wedding reception resembled an old West saloon with flying glasses, chairs upended over people’s heads and Walter Skinner charging like a bull into the middle of the fray to grab Mulder by the shoulder and haul him to safety.

I slipped out of the room myself, narrowly avoiding more than one flying fist, and found the two men sitting on the grass next to the parking lot. Skinner was trying to staunch Mulder’s nosebleed with a handkerchief (men like him *always* have handkerchiefs in their pockets) and Mulder was making these weird gulping noises as he both sobbed and laughed while trying not to choke on his own blood.

“You want me to call an ambulance?” I asked, feeling both guilty and queasy at all the blood.

“Mulder?” Skinner asked.

He shook his head and mumbled something unintelligible.

“He just wants to leave,” Skinner interpreted. “But his car’s boxed in. Mine is too, or I’d lend it to him. The valet says it’ll take at least 30 minutes to get to either of them.”

I looked over doubtfully at my own old rusty Chevrolet. I’d been too embarrassed to hand the keys over to the valet so I’d parked it illicitly in the hotel’s staff parking lot. I doubted it was the kind of vehicle Fox Mulder was used to driving. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and I *had* just wrecked the guy’s marriage.

So I offered my keys.

Mulder looked up long enough to meet my eyes, reached over, took the keys and handed me his own set.

I looked at them in surprise.

“Swap,” he mumbled.

I blinked uncertainly, then realized I’d need his car to get home myself. I was still feeling guilty about the situation, of course, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited. In Mulder’s brand new Mercedes convertible even *I* had a chance of pulling someone.

“Is it okay if I drop it off in the morning?” I asked hopefully, calculating that it was still early enough to call in at my favorite club.

He looked at me strangely, rose to his feet, told Skinner to go back and check Dana and Maggie were okay, then headed towards my car.

“Keep it,” he said, over his shoulder.

And I was still blinking at the keys in my hands in stunned disbelief when he drove away.

Part Two: The Gay Divorcee

I don’t remember much about the forty-eight hours after the wedding. All I know is I eventually woke up in a dingy motel with a migraine, a broken nose and an empty gin bottle.

I don’t even *like* gin.

I had a vague recollection of giving away my car and, when I eventually gained enough energy to drag myself to the window, I was greeted by the sight of a broken down Chevrolet in the parking lot. Judging from the occasional fleck of paint remaining on its rust covered frame, I guessed the car had once been sky blue.

I checked the key fob.

No house keys.

Most people give towels at weddings. Me? I’d given away my car and my house keys.

And my wife.

Let’s not forget *that* little free Doggett-gift.

I should have felt like shit. In a way, I did.

But I was relieved too.

I’d spent ten years knowing I’d made a mistake and vaguely wishing I could free myself from the ball and chain I’d voluntarily, and stupidly, hung around my neck. I’d spent the last four of those ten years in an ever increasing state of self-pity.

Ever since I found out Alex was alive.

That’s not to say I jumped up and sang the hallelujah chorus when I first found out he’d faked his death. For one thing, I’d hated him at the time he ‘died’. For another I hated him for not letting me know he was still alive.

Can anyone say conflicted?

And as the convoluted truth came out about his motivations and loyalties, I hated him for letting me believe the worst about him for all those years. Yes, I *know* he was just doing his job. He was hardly going to walk around wearing a jacket with ‘I’m actually a good guy, believe it or not.’ emblazoned on the back, was he? But he could have told *me*. I loved him. Didn’t that count for anything?

Why the hell didn’t he trust me?

Why didn’t I trust *him*?

Why did I never give him the benefit of the doubt?

But then, to be fair, there’s ‘good guys’ and ‘good guys’. He *did* kill people. He did lie and steal and cheat. He *did* kill my father – albeit that, by the time I’d read the full unabridged version of my father’s Consortium activities, I’d lost the ability to mourn his passing. The fact a man kills under the orders of a legitimate government doesn’t make him any less a killer, does it?

So there I was, six years into a marriage with a woman whom I didn’t actually love but who was still my best friend in the whole world, and then Alex Krycek ‘came back to life’.

He was a self-confessed killer. So what if he was immune from prosecution and being hailed as a hero? In the morality stakes, he couldn’t hold a candle to my wife. Scully *was* a ‘good guy’. So was I. I had no room in my life for a man like Alex Krycek.

I told myself I was a married man. End of story. Alex and I were old history that couldn’t and shouldn’t be revisited.

Then I called him.

He refused to take my calls.

I wrote to him.

He returned my letters unread.

I went to his hotel.

He told the desk clerk to call Security and throw me out.

I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I heard he was appearing on a talk show and wrangled myself an invitation as a fellow guest. The TV station jumped at the chance. We were both media darlings at the time – though Alex, the bastard, was a hell of a lot more popular. He came across as dangerous, mysterious and sexy, while I came across more like a mildly insane John-Boy Walton.

On the show, in public, we were perfectly cordial to each other. He even laughed at a couple of my jokes.

Afterwards he told me he’d as soon see me dead as back in his bed.

And then he walked away without looking back.

Time was I would have chased after him, forced him to forgive me, bullied and cajoled and even begged my way back into his heart.

But it was years too late.

I was married. Committed.

Trapped.

So I went back to my life with Scully. Sullen, sad, a little shaken, but determined to put Alex out of my mind for ever.

And I did.

Well, for the most part.

I called in a few favors at the FBI – as far as they were concerned I was the prodigal son who might even be lured back into their fold if they played their cards right – and discovered Alex was living in Canada. Within a couple of hours I had his phone number and zipcode. I’d always thought of Alex as a city rat, but he’d bought a house with land, on the edge of the Banff National Park, bought himself a couple of horses and a dog and, according to satellite surveillance, was living a quiet life with only the minimal amount of contact with his neighbors.

I never did anything with the information.

Not just because of Scully, though that *should* have been reason enough.

The main reason I left Alex alone was because he *wasn’t* alone.

According to my contacts at the FBI, a couple of weeks after he bought the house, Marita Covarrubias moved in with him. It surprised the hell out of me, since I thought they hated each other’s guts. But then, I used to think *I* hated Alex’s guts so what the hell did I know?

So four more years passed and then I found myself at the wedding of Bill’s son Matthew and John Doggett stole my wife.

It broke my heart.

But not for the reasons it should have.

It broke my heart because all I could think was ‘why didn’t she leave me four years ago when Alex and I still had a chance?’

I called a lawyer on the third day and set up a meeting. He didn’t say anything about my broken nose, even though the bruising had spread to give me two spectacular black eyes.

“She can have everything,” I said. “The house. The money in the joint account. Just make it easy and fast.”

I wasn’t being as generous as it sounded. I had more than sufficient money in my personal checking account for the foreseeable future. I just wanted the divorce over and done with, with the minimal amount of fuss.

I contemplated retrieving my Mercedes from the wedding planner guy, then shrugged, decided what the hell, and posted him the pink slip.

I called Walter and let him know I was okay.

I owed him that much, I figured, and I owed Maggie too. My marriage to Scully had been a mistake from the start, but I would never regret my relationship with Maggie and Walter. In a weird way, they were more like parents to me than my own parents had been. I said that to Walter once, and he cuffed me across the head and pointed out he wasn’t *that* old. ‘It’s not my fault Maggie married a toy boy,’ I replied. Two seconds later I was in a half-nelson, crying uncle at the top of my voice, and that was the last time I said anything either soppy or sassy to Walter Skinner without checking out my escape routes before hand.

I got in the car and drove.

I had no particular destination in mind. I just couldn’t sit still in one place for more than one night. I stayed at one flea-pit motel after another, drank too much, got into the odd bar fight, and nearly landed my ass in jail on more than one occasion.

I slept with anything with a pulse.

Ten years of common sense, decency and faithfulness went out of the window and I bedded anyone half-decent-looking that showed an interest. Boys, girls, it didn’t matter. Hell, I even fucked a guy who was far enough along a sex-change operation to call himself Martha. Martha had tits to die for, but s/he still had Martin’s cock. Interesting night.

I swear I must have put several cents on the stock price of condoms in those crazy weeks.

But despite, or perhaps even because of, the endless sexual encounters, I was feeling increasingly lonely. No matter whom I went to sleep with, I woke up alone. I missed Scully. I missed the life I’d left behind. I missed Walter and Maggie. And, most of all, I missed Alex.

I started picking up hitch-hikers. At least that way I had someone to talk to. There was something sad and dehumanizing about only ever conversing with someone in the attempt or act of seduction. So I started pulling into gas stations and truck stops in deliberate search of people needing a ride.

Most of them looked pretty askance at my rusty Chevrolet. Every morning, as I topped up the oil it had bled into a motel’s parking lot overnight, I told myself today was the day I’d buy myself a new car. But I never did. Somehow the battered old car had become the visible representation of my battered life, and buying a brand new model would have been like saying it was time to pull myself together and go home. Since I didn’t have a home to go to, I didn’t change the car.

Up until that point, I’d just get in the car on a morning and drive in any random direction until I got tired. But because of my new habit of picking up hitchhikers, I found myself going where *they* wanted to go. I’d even turn the car around if I saw someone hitching in the opposite direction. Anything for a little anonymous company.

And that’s how I ended up in Canada.

Honestly.

Well, okay, maybe *subconsciously* I was looking for an excuse to get my ass over the border, but the actual physics of it happened because I picked up a teenaged blonde in Seattle , one of those pony-tailed girls with endless legs and a California smile, and my gut told me that the *next* guy who drove along would probably rape her and leave her dead in a ditch. I didn’t spend all that time in the VCU without seeing first-hand the things that could happen to pretty hitch-hiking college girls.

I was a perfect gentleman with her, of course. I was old enough to be her father and, even though I’d been fucking my way across the country like a desperate Don Juan, there was a line even *I* wouldn’t cross.

So I found myself in Vancouver, and the old car was beginning to choke its death knell. It was starting to billow out so much black oil on a morning that I was half-expecting to be lynched by environmental activists. So again, *subconsciously*, I think I was beginning to mentally prepare myself for the end of my road-trip.

But I only admitted to myself that I was heading towards Alex on the morning I picked up a hitchhiker who was heading for Calgary.

“Sorry. I’m heading for Banff,” I heard myself say, and then froze in shock.

“That’d be fine,” the kid said, swinging his backpack into my car. “I’ll catch another ride from there.”

A couple of minutes later, when I still hadn’t moved, he gave me a nervous look. “Hey, you okay, Mister?”

I blinked at him and then offered him an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” I said, and put the car into gear.

I found a nice tourist hotel in Banff and holed up for a couple of days while I shopped for some new clothes and had my hair cut and my beard shaved. I didn’t want to turn up at Alex’s door looking like Grizzly Adams. Quite apart from anything else, I didn’t want to look less than my best in front of Marita. Hell, she might have stolen my man but I was damned if I was going to give him up without a fight.

I might have spent ten years with Scully pretending I’d been tamed and neutered, but I still had enough of my old arrogance to believe that if I threw myself in Alex’s face and refused to back off he might eventually crumble. Maybe he’d never let me back into his heart, but I still thought I had a damned good chance of getting back into his bed.

I *knew* Alex. Blonde ball-breaker or not, Covarrubias simply didn’t have the right equipment to give Alex what he really wanted from a lover.

So, deciding faint heart never won fair ratbastard, I restocked my depleted supply of condoms and lube.

Then I bought a couple of bottles of malt and some cigars since I figured the *least* Alex and I could do was sit down and discuss the past like a couple of adults.

Last, but not least, I bought a packet of beef jerky. I’m not a dog person but I’ve broken into enough places in my time to know that a man with beef jerky is a dog’s best friend. It was bad enough I was going to have to fight Marita for Alex’s attention. I sure as shit wasn’t planning to argue with his damned dog too.

When I finally arrived at his place, I decided that Alex had really landed on his feet.

It was beautiful. At good forty acres at least of pasture and woodland, with a backdrop of mountains, and a stream bubbling through it in which I could literally see trout leaping. Strangely, my first thought was that if Walter and Alex hadn’t ‘killed’ each other, I was sure Walter would have jumped at the chance to spend a week or two fishing in that stream.

Things had changed since I’d checked up on Alex. There were four horses now, plus a foal running at the side of its dam. I didn’t know enough about horses to guess the breed, but I knew class when I saw it and Alex’s horses had the shiny fur and sleek muscles of quality animals. There were also a couple of cows. Doe eyed, golden-pelted Jerseys, like I remembered from my time in England. They were a welcome, if incongruous, sight.

I had the weirdest feeling of ‘coming home’. Which was ludicrous since I’d not only never been there before; but I was also damned certain I wasn’t welcome.

Oddly enough though, my Chevrolet seemed convinced it had finally arrive home too because half-way up the long driveway it gave a rattling groan, juddered and bucked its final death throes, and then a column of steam exploded out of its radiator.

So I left its steaming corpse behind me, threw my back-pack over my shoulder, and trudged up to the house on foot, clutching the bag of beef jerky in my hand and looking around nervously for Alex’s dog. Knowing him, I was sure it was going to be a Rottweiller or German Shepherd.

I’d been expecting a glorified cabin, but I discovered a real house with two floors and an extended porch on which an empty hammock was swinging in the breeze. I also discovered Alex’s dog. Instead of the snarling guard dog I was expecting, it turned out to be a huge hairy mutt of indeterminate breed. Although it was the size of a small pony, the only guarding it was doing was the fact it was so damned fat its body blocked the top of the stairs to the porch. It was too busy sun-bathing to do more than greet me with a lazy canine smile and a half-hearted thudding of its tail.

I contemplated stepping over it and determined I’d probably give myself a hernia. Besides, I had this horrid suspicion the dog would suddenly come to life as I was straddling it and make a meal of my balls. So I sat down on the bottom step and tried to entice it down with the jerky.

Half-an-hour later, dusty, worn-out, and becoming increasingly irritated, I decided it was no wonder the damned thing was so fat. Any dog that turned its nose up at free beef jerky was *clearly* being overfed by its master.

I gave up on the dog and took a circuit around the house to look for another way in.

A small flower-filled yard enclosed by low picket fences led me to Alex’s backdoor. It was open, giving me a clear view of a large, homey kitchen with an antique oak table in its centre. Alex was sitting at the table, sipping a mug of coffee. There was another mug in front of an empty chair, so I assumed Marita had just stepped out of the room.

He looked great. More than great. A little heavier, but it suited him. A little greyer, but that suited him too. And though his eyes were cold as they acknowledged my presence, his posture was relaxed as though my visit was the most natural thing in the world. He’d lost that desperate feral edge that had always reminded me of the movie ‘Cat people.’ Maybe it still lurked under his skin, but it seemed that time, and peace, had at least calmed the beast inside him.

Still, I remembered the old adage about waking sleeping tigers, so I deliberately opened my hands to show I was unarmed and offered him a tentative, hopeful smile.

“It’s probably cold by now,” he said blandly, gesturing at the other coffee.

I startled. He not only seemed unsurprised to see me, but his words suggested he’d poured the second mug for me.

“I met the dog mountain,” I said, stepping inside and sinking gratefully into a chair. He was right. The coffee *was* cold. And somewhat bitter. I thought it still tasted good, though I admit momentarily hoping the bitterness wasn’t due to it being laced with arsenic.

He took a mouthful of his own coffee, and I couldn’t help noticing he was using his left hand to lift his mug. I had a flash of near horror when I saw the dexterity of his fingers as they curled around the mug’s handle, and was suddenly convinced he was either a shape-shifter or a clone. I was half-way out of my seat again before it occurred to me he’d simply finally gotten around to buying himself a top-of-the-range prosthetic.

As I sank back into my chair, he gave me a sardonic, sneering smile as though he’d read my mind.

“I called someone to haul your car,” he said, his expression unreadable. “But the nearest garage with a tow-truck is a couple of hours away so you may as well make yourself comfortable until they get here. If you’re lucky, they’ll get you back to town in time to find a motel.”

Trust Alex to lay it on the line. Despite the coffee, I wasn’t welcome. He was just showing necessary ‘hospitality’ until someone arrived to remove me.

Silence descended.

I hate silence.

I began to fidget.

“It’s a nice place you’ve got,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

End of *that* conversation.

I fished for something else to say.

“So how are you?”

“Fine.”

I checked his expression. Not a crack. Not even a spark of annoyance in his eyes at my presence. Nothing. Nada. Zip. He was *fine*.

“I’m fine too,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

He just shrugged.

“And how’s Marita?” I asked, when it was clear he wasn’t going to speak.

He just blinked.

“How’s Marita?” I repeated.

“Dead.”

My mouth dropped open. He’d said it in the same cold tone as he’d said ‘yeah’ and ‘fine’, but that *wasn’t* the kind of answer you could give in one word.

“Dead? How? Why?”

“Cancer.”

Another one word answer. Another closed door in my face. But I couldn’t accept it. I needed to push the door open again. For four years I’d pictured Marita in his bed and I had to *know*.

“When did she die?”

“Three years ago, give or take. She was ill for a long time. The Consortium’s final revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“They removed her chip.”

The penny dropped.

“She only came here to die, didn’t she?”

Alex shrugged.

“But why here?” I demanded.

“She had nowhere else to go. A sad indictment of her life, don’t you think?”

“But why did you take her in? Did you still love her?”

I expected him to tell me it was none of my damned business. Instead he just shrugged again.

“She meant something to me once.”

I wanted to yell ‘I meant something to you once, too.’ Instead, I fell back on sarcasm.

“So what is this place? Alex Krycek’s open house for homeless ex-lovers?”

Anger finally sparked in his eyes.

“Why?” he snapped. “You looking for a room?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Took a deep breath.

“Yes.”

So much for letting sleeping tigers lie.

His eyes flashed and he sprang to his feet, knocking over his coffee mug. I wasn’t sure whether he was going to punch me or kiss me.

Instead, he spat, “Fuck off and die,” and charged out of the room like he was being chased by the hounds of hell.

“Well that went well,” I told my cold cup of coffee.

I didn’t see him again until the mechanic drove up in the tow-truck a couple of hours later. Dusk was falling rapidly and I was arguing with the guy, trying to get him to agree to take my credit card details since I didn’t have enough cash on me.

“He can drop you at an ATM,” Alex said, materializing on the front porch behind us. I guess he just snuck up from the shadows of the front door, but his ability to move so silently still creeped me out. Particularly since his dog had woken up and looked more like Cujo now than the bearskin rug it had previously resembled. It was looking at me as though its favorite evening meal was a rare Fox Mulder steak.

“I’m staying the night,” I told him.

The dog growled. No more wagging tail and doggy grin. Just two rows of teeth that gave it an eerie similarity to a great white shark. I began to wonder whether it was a full moon that night and Alex Krycek had a pet werewolf.

“You’re not staying.”

It was Alex who growled that time. And his teeth looked pretty sharp in the twilight too.

“Yes I am,” I said. “Live with it.”

And I shrugged and walked into the house, leaving Alex to sort things out with the mechanic.

It was the start of the weirdest week of my life and, believe me, I have the franchise on weird.

Part Three : The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. Spy; assassin; murder; traitor; whore; liar; thief; even hero. They’re just words and most of them were spoken by people who knew nothing about me, so they didn’t even hurt. You can’t label people. People are complex. Motivations are never cut and dried. But if I *had* to give myself a label, it would be *patriot*.

Everything I did, everything I am, was shaped by the one great and enduring love affair of my life.

I had a harsh and unforgiving mistress. I killed for her, I eschewed any personal happiness for her, I lost my arm for her, I even ‘died’ for her. But, when it was all over, she cast me away like trash.

My whole life has been dedicated to America, and I’m living in fucking Banff. What does that tell you about the ungrateful bitch?

But, even though she doesn’t want me anymore, I still love her.

I blame my parents. They bought the American dream lock, stock and barrel. They became ‘Americans’. No matter that my mother never truly grasped the language and spoke, always, in an awkward mix of Russian and English.

I grew up in a two-room apartment in Brooklyn. My parents considered it paradise and spent my entire childhood telling me dire tales of the old country and emphasizing how lucky I was to be an American boy.

It was a tough neighborhood, with gangs and drug wars, but I never had the opportunity to ‘run wild’. I learned to fight, had a reputation for being ‘tough’, but my father died when I was fourteen and my mother’s job as a cleaner wasn’t enough to keep food on the table, so I didn’t have time to run with the gangs.

The ghetto I grew up in was a polyglot of different nationalities and I found I had an affinity for languages. I could speak and write five languages fluently and several more adequately before I was even ten years old. So in addition to being my mother’s primary translator, I earned extra money for our family as the local ‘interpreter’ after my father died. I wrote letters, translated official documents, even attended meetings with lawyers and union representatives on behalf of people for whom the American language was still a mystery.

I was sixteen when I came to the attention of the ‘authorities’. I was working part-time for a local loan shark named Charlie Lee. Rumor had it that Lee had Triad connections, but all I was interested in was the money he was paying me as a ‘collector’. No. Believe it or not, I *wasn’t* one of the guys who went around threatening people with broken arms. I was sixteen, for christsakes. I was the ‘soft-touch’. Lee only sent in the heavy mob when people skipped their payments. The reason he employed me was simply my fluency at languages. Lee didn’t want to knee-cap a customer just because of a ‘misunderstanding’.

But one night, when I was at home with my mom, these two suits knocked on the door. They scared ten years off my mom’s life. In the old country, there was no such thing as a ‘good’ visit from the authorities. The minute she realized who they were, she clipped me around the ear and started screaming at me at the top of her voice. It took over an hour for them to convince her that I wasn’t ‘in trouble’.

Or maybe I *was* in trouble, considering the way my life turned out.

I was only sixteen, so the ‘deal’ they offered was probably illegal. It was definitely immoral. They wanted me to worm my way deeper into Lee’s confidence and get the dirt on his Triad activities. “He’ll never suspect a kid,” they said.

And I loved America. I was a patriot. And, like all boys, I wanted to be a ‘hero’. So I agreed.

By eighteen, I was well and truly snagged in the NSA’s web. My ability to speak various languages without any discernable accent was a talent they didn’t want to waste. Not to mention the advantages of my ‘baby-face’.

I was having the time of my life, imagining myself to be the American James Bond. I did anything they told me to do. I was a *patriot*. Sleep with this woman for the sake of National Security? Sure. Become the boy toy of this diplomat? Well, if my country *needs* me to do it.

I was so fucking naïve.

But it wasn’t all sordid. They paid for me to have the kind of education I would have never dreamed possible. I was probably the only kid at my University who graduated debt-free.

And my mom was so *proud* of me.

Sure, she’d have been horrified, maybe even disgusted, if she’d known the actual details of what I was doing. But all she knew was I was working for the American Government and that made me her pride and joy.

I never killed anyone. I was a snoop, a spy, a whore maybe, but not an assassin. First time I ever took a life was when I shot Augustus Cole and I spent the whole night throwing up. Well, not the *whole* night. I spent a good portion of that night being fucked out of my brains by my then partner, Fox Mulder.

His solution to my near-hysteria was to spank my ass raw, until I was crying too hard to even remember *why* I was upset, and then fuck me into oblivion.

It worked.

The weird thing about Mulder was he knew nothing about me and yet, somehow, he still knew me better than I knew myself.

Mulder.

The spanner in the works.

The one and only person who ever tempted me to be unfaithful to my mistress.

I fell in love with him.

And when I say *love*, I mean the whole kit and caboodle. I actually considered throwing away everything, coming clean with him about who I really was, and telling the NSA to go fuck themselves.

I made the mistake of saying as much to my partner. I don’t mean Fox. I mean my *real* partner at the Agency.

That was the day I was hauled in to finally meet the big-guns in the NSA. That was the first time anyone looked me in the eye and called me a ‘traitor’ to my country. They laid it on the line. They told me *everything*. The aliens, the real agenda of the Consortium, the identity of the smoking man, the planned colonization. Everything.

But, worst of all, they told me about Bill Mulder.

They showed me photos, records, incontrovertible evidence, that the father of my ‘lover’ was one of the men who had sold my beloved country out to the aliens.

“You think Fox Mulder loves you?” they mocked. “He’s using you, you stupid prick. He’s not only fucking you, he’s fucking you over. He’s one of them, Alex. Why do you think he’s in control of the X-files? It’s so he can *bury* evidence.”

Looking back, I hate myself for believing them. I loved Fox. Why the fuck didn’t I give him the benefit of the doubt?

But I was hurt. Heartbroken. I felt used and dirty and so fucking *stupid*. I hadn’t just let Mulder fuck me. I’d literally crawled at his feet. I’d played the submissive insatiable slut for him so many times that being told it was all a lie made me literally stagger out of my bosses’ office and puke my guts up.

And, let’s face it, he didn’t give *me* the benefit of the doubt either, did he?

He was all too willing to believe I’d been using *him*.

And so, with as much passion as we’d loved each other, we learned to hate each other.

Maybe if we’d *talked*, things would have been different. But every time he saw me he went crazy, and all it would take was one swing of his fists to remind *me* that he’d screwed me over, so any urge I might have had to put things right between us was lost in my own hurt fury.

I never hit him back. But it wasn’t because I didn’t *want* to. It was because I was afraid that if I started punching him I wouldn’t stop until he was dead.

By that time I *was* a killer.

I didn’t care. Nothing meant anything to me anymore. My mom had died of ovarian cancer two days before the smoker tried to blow me up in a car bomb and the only other person I’d ever loved, Fox Mulder, had been laughing at me. Using me.

I hated the whole goddamned world.

The only thing I had left, the only thing worth living for, was my duty to my country and so when my bosses told me to jump, the only question I asked was ‘how high?’

The rest of it is public history. Everyone knows what I did, and on whose instructions I did it. Some people call me a hero. They accept that the American Government had no choice except to fight fire with fire. Other people think the truth, and me, should have been buried six foot under to maintain the illusion that Democracies don’t order people to do the things I did.

Certainly, I’m not welcome in America anymore.

I had a choice. Three choices, actually. A new identity, a new country or a permanent ‘accident’.

I moved to Canada.

I refused to give up my name. It’s who I am. I’m a Krycek and proud of it. And though I regret many things that I did, I’m not *ashamed*. I was, and always will be, a patriot.

Anyway, at least by moving to Canada there was a damned good chance I’d never see Fox Mulder again.

I’d never stopped loving him. When you love someone, I mean *really* love someone, I don’t think you ever get over it. But when it goes bad, it becomes something warped and bitter and dark. It consumes you, like cancer, and eats away at your soul, and you become nothing more than an empty husk with a *memory* of what it was to be in love.

They say ‘hope springs eternal’ and, despite everything that had happened between us, despite the hate and the lies and the all pervading violence of our encounters, there must have been a secret, desperate hope somewhere in my heart that someday, somehow, Fox and I would become lovers once more.

That hope was crushed, obliterated, the day the rebel alien took my face and orchestrated my ‘death’ in that parking lot. I stole and watched the CCTV record of my ‘death’. I replayed it endlessly, pointlessly, looking for something, anything, in Fox’s expression as I ‘died’. But there was nothing. Not even hate. Just…nothing.

I sat in my motel room, watching that tape, and I cried until I could barely breathe.

The next morning I wiped my eyes, put on my game face, boarded a plane and left the country.

I shacked up with some long forgotten relatives in the old country and didn’t return to America until it was all over.

The NSA were pissed as hell to discover I wasn’t really dead. They apparently were planning to kill me, but I still had ‘friends’ inside the Agency and one of them leaked my story to the press. My old bosses tried denial, then gave up and confirmed I was ‘one of theirs’. I was *safe*. Except they took me aside and told me in no uncertain terms that I was to do a couple of careful interviews to satisfy the public demand for knowledge, then disappear into the woodwork forever.

I was pissed. It had been one thing to be treated like scum when I was deep undercover, but to find out my own bosses didn’t want to be associated with me really hurt.

I’m not saying I expected a medal but, hell, I deserved *something*.

I decided I wasn’t going to go quietly. Fuck ‘em all. I was a patriot, not a dirty little secret to be swept under the carpet. I *was* a hero. I was going to sit tight, ride it out and insist on being treated properly by the Government who had used me so cruelly.

But then, as always, Fox Mulder fucked up my life.

He started calling me, writing to me, and turning up at my hotel and insisting on seeing me. He even turned up at a fucking TV interview I was doing and acted like he was my number one fan. On live television he laughed and joked with me and acted like he’d known all along that I was a ‘good guy’ and that we’d both just been playing our roles like good little Government agents.

He was sitting next to me smiling, joking, he even patted me on the fucking leg at one point, and all the time his eyes were *begging* me for another chance.

I looked at him and all I could see was that tape. He smiled at me, and all I could see was the cold sneer on his face when Skinner ‘killed’ me. He touched me, and all I could feel was the dozens of times his fist had struck me in the face.

For years, all I’d wanted was a second chance. All I’d ever dreamed of was Fox Mulder looking at me again with love in his eyes. My only impossible fantasy had been his forgiveness.

And when the chance came, I found myself telling him to drop dead.

It was too late. Years too late. And the part of my heart that had been reserved for him for so long had become a cold, empty, barren place with a huge ‘No Vacancy’ sign.

I moved to Canada. Bought an old farmhouse and just enough land to fulfill an old childhood dream of having horses. I couldn’t ride, but that wasn’t the point. I’d lost all my adult dreams. They’d all turned bitter and hurtful. So I reclaimed an earlier time in my life, dreams from when I was young and innocent and still capable of hope. As a kid, in that two-room apartment, watching Westerns on our black and white TV, I’d dreamed that happiness was having a Palomino called Champion and a German Shepherd called Rebel.

In the event, I ended up with two black Morgans and a pound-dog that looked like a cross between a Newfoundland and a grizzly. I bought the horses because they came with the land. I bought the dog because no one else wanted him.

“He’s too big for a normal house, too much maintenance for a normal family, and eats so much not many people could afford him even if they wanted to give him a home,” the woman at the local dog’s home explained. “Tell the truth, much as I hate to say it, we can’t afford to feed him ourselves. He’s scheduled for termination.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “I’ve been ‘scheduled for termination’ a few times myself.”

So that’s how I ended up with Lump.

It’s short for Useless Lump, but that isn’t really true. He sleeps all day and is too lazy to even bark at the postman, but at night he prowls around like the Hound of the Baskervilles, howling at the moon and scaring the bejesus out of any would-be burglars. Truth is he’s more likely to lick someone to death than bite them, but he *looks* the part.

Marita liked him.

Animals sense when people are ill.

She was still in the first stages of her cancer when she arrived at my doorstep. Still looked beautiful, if a little on the thin side. We went out to restaurants a few times, in those first couple of months, and I swear no-one we met realized she was dying.

But Lump knew from the first time he met her. He shadowed her around the house, even deigning to follow her up the stairs – which, for a dog the size of Lump, was like the doggy equivalent of climbing Everest - and as she became weaker, and spent most of her days sleeping in the hammock on the porch, he permanently lay at her side and watched over her like a huge, hulking protector.

The day she died, he sat on his haunches and howled for hours.

I bought another couple of Morgans and a couple of cows. I had a vague idea of getting milk from the cows but, when I spoke to a neighbor about it, I changed my mind. Turned out cows only produced milk if they produced baby cows. When I said I didn’t want any *more* cows, he laughed and said ‘No, you sell the calves for meat.’ So that was the end of that.

I now have two fat happy useless cows eating their heads off in my pasture. I call them Lump2 and Lump3.

I’m breeding the mares though. I love looking out and seeing the foals running at their feet. Considering I didn’t know what I was doing, I was surprised to discover I’d bought myself some quality horseflesh. My neighbor, the calf-killer, has a prize-winning stallion, so he takes care of the mechanics and we split the profit between us.

I still haven’t learned how to ride.

I’d been living in Banff for four years when Fox Mulder arrived back in my life.

I had well-hidden perimeter alarms, so I knew *someone* was coming but I’d gotten a little lax and lazy about security. I figured that if someone had still been intending to kill me, they’d already have done so by then and , although I wasn’t what you could describe as ‘friendly’, I’d reached a point of familiarity with the natives. They occasionally dropped by for coffee or to chew the fat.

And, somehow, my house had become a kind of drop-in centre for the local teenagers. There isn’t a hell of a lot for kids to do in a rural location, and they sometimes fall foul of the local cops. It’s mischief and boredom, rather than criminal tendencies. You’d think I’d be the last person in the world that parents would trust their kids with but, since the kids think I’m ‘cool’, even the hardest-headed teenager seems to listen to me with a certain amount of respect.

So, even when Fox’s car came into view, I didn’t have a clue. He was driving an ancient old junker that committed suicide half-way up the drive and I naturally assumed it was one of the local kids coming over to moan and groan about their folks.

I put a pot of coffee on and called the garage for a tow-truck before I even looked out of the window to see who was walking up to the house.

Then, I nearly died.

Literally.

My heart was hammering so hard it nearly jumped out of my chest and I had to sit down and catch my breath.

I’d spent four years deliberately trying to forget he even existed. And, suddenly, there he was in my front yard, talking to Lump, still looking more fucking gorgeous than any man had a right to look, and all I wanted to do was jump in my jeep and drive off as fast as physically possible so I wouldn’t have to speak to him.

But it was *my* house, I reminded myself angrily, so I played it cool.

I pretended I didn’t care.

I pretended he meant nothing to me.

I told him, point blank, that as soon as the tow-truck arrived he was leaving.

And, all the time, I was angrily reminding myself of the look on his face when Skinner ‘killed’ me.

But when he mentioned Marita, I felt my defenses crumbling. He was right. I’d forgiven *her*. I’d taken her in and nursed her through her illness, despite the hate and mutual betrayals in our history, and I’d never even loved *her*.

How could I have found room in my heart for Marita and yet still have no vacancy for Fox?

And then it hit me.

It was *because* I’d never loved her, so her betrayals had never truly hurt me.

I couldn’t stay in the same room with him.

I was frightened I’d kill him.

I was even more frightened I’d fall at his feet and beg him for another chance.

So, too cowardly to deal with my own conflicted emotions, I ran out of the room and hid from him until the tow-truck arrived.

‘He’ll go away,’ I told myself. ‘He’ll get in that tow-truck and you’ll never see him again. Please god, you’ll never see him again.’

But I should have known better.

It was Fox Mulder, after all. The man who’d never understood the meaning of ‘no’.

He refused to leave.

“I’m staying the night,” he said.

I had two options. I could either punch his lights out and throw him in the truck, or I could give in.

I was still trying to make my mind up, when he walked into my house and shut the door behind him.

Part Four: Echoes Of The Past

Leaving Alex to sort out my car, I made my way upstairs. I was buzzing with a feeling of relieved triumph. I’d taken the gamble that Alex wouldn’t actually punch me in the teeth in front of the mechanic, and I’d won.

The way I’d figured it, he was attempting to live a quiet life in a small community and the last thing he needed was a rumor spreading that he’d pulverized a guy on his front porch.

There were four bedrooms. The first one on the left of the stairs was clearly his, so I chose the room opposite. It was a logical choice for any visitor, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to walk in and sense Marita’s presence.

It’s not that there was any actual physical trace of her in there. It was a barren, if pleasant room. A single bed. A chest of drawers. A small closet. A dressing table and chair. There was an empty vase on the windowsill, an echo of the past. I could almost visualize a spray of yellow roses once bringing a sunshine warmth into the otherwise colorless room.

But there was a faint scent in the air. A musky, almost cloying perfume. It was ‘Poison’, I think, appropriately enough. And, after three years, there was no way the perfume was truly still physically present.

“You’re still here, then?” I asked quietly.

A silence, followed by low laughter, and then she was sitting at the dressing table, looking as beautiful and frail as the day she’d attended my trial.

An illusion of undying beauty, of course, since I was damned certain she hadn’t still looked like that after the cancer had ravaged her. Still, who was I to deny a ghost a certain amount of vanity?

“I’m still here,” she agreed.

“Does he know?”

“How would he?” she countered.

It pissed the hell out of me. The idea of her haunting Alex while he remained unaware of her spectral presence. It seemed like the ultimate betrayal of the man’s privacy. Sure, maybe I was an unwelcome guest in his house too, but at least he *knew* I was there.

“You still got nowhere else to go?” I snapped angrily. “How many people *did* you piss off in your life, Miss Covarrubias?”

She just shook her head and gave me a gentle smile and it occurred to me that maybe ghosts didn’t have feelings left to hurt.

“Unfinished business then?” I demanded.

“A debt to pay,” she agreed.

I thought about it and nodded. It made sense. Alex had taken her in, despite having no reason to do so, and so she owed him.

“You have to pay the debt before you can move on?” I asked, more gently.

“That’s how it works,” she agreed. “For people like me, anyway.”

“And how do you intend to pay?”

“He gave me the only thing I wanted in the world. A peaceful death. I owe him the same.”

“A peaceful death?” I gasped.

She laughed softly. “The only thing he wants in the world, you silly man.”

I took a deep, relieved, breath. “And that is?”

“You.”

I shook my head. “Maybe once. But not now. It’s too late.”

She arched an eyebrow. “So why are you here?”

“Selfishness. Because I'm lonely and I'm tired and I can't take any more pain in my life. I can’t live without him anymore. I’d rather stay here, knowing he hates me, than live with Scully’s kind indifference. Even if I spend the rest of my life suffering his hate, it’s still better than being apart from him.”

“So you’ve come here to offer yourself as his whipping boy?”

“If that’s the only way he’ll have me.”

“Then you’re right,” she said. “You are selfish.”

I pouted. I’d just thrown away my pride, laid my heart on my sleeve, and her only response was to mock me.

“The role of penitent doesn’t suit you, Mulder. Where’s *your* anger? Where’s *your* hate? Alex wasn’t an innocent party in your relationship. You *both* fucked up.”

I shook my head.

“I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“About the silo,” I whispered, cringing with long-remembered shame. “I knew, and I left him in there.”

She said nothing. There was nothing to say, was there? When I looked back, when I considered all I’d done, all *he’d* done, all the pettiness and betrayals and lies and hate, everything paled into insignificance against my one truly inexcusable act.

I wouldn’t have left a dog to die like that. Hell, I wouldn’t have left *Spender* to die like that. But I left the only man I’d ever loved to die like that just because he’d broken my heart. What did that make me?

“There’s no hope for us, even if he *did* decide to give me another chance, because that would take total honesty between us and I could never look him in the face and admit what I did. How can I explain it to him, if I can’t explain it to myself?”

“He’s still terrified of the dark,” Marita said. “He dreams of that time constantly. He spends nights screaming to be released from that silo.”

“Don’t you think I already feel guilty enough?” I snarled.

“He calls out for *you*, Mulder. He begs you not to leave him there to die. He pleads for your forgiveness.”

“Oh, God,” I gasped, feeling sick.

“He knows you left him there,” she clarified unnecessarily.

Bitter regret filled me. “Then I’m fucked, aren’t I? He hates me.”

She shook her head prettily. “Yes,” she said. “But *that’s* not the reason he hates you.”

“He hates me because of what happened in Tunguska?”

She shook her head again.

“He hates me because I let Skinner kill him?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head again.

“Then why?”

“Talk to him, and you’ll figure it out,” she said, and faded from sight.

I yelled and cursed at her for a while, but she failed to re-appear. Alex didn’t appear either, though I heard him slam enough doors downstairs to convey in no uncertain terms what he thought about having me in his house. So, with nothing else to do, I went to bed.

I didn’t sleep.

Between my guilt and Marita’s words and the knowledge Alex was in the next room it was pretty damned impossible. Besides, that damned dog of his kept howling like a banshee every time I *did* close my eyes.

By four I was sitting in the family room downstairs, watching crappy TV - he didn’t have cable – and praying desperately for dawn.

At seven I cooked breakfast for us both. Contrary to popular opinion, I *do* know my way around a kitchen. I just never could be bothered when I lived on my own. When I was married to Scully, my ability to cook was the only thing that prevented *both* of us from starving to death. Scully can’t cook to save her life.

Alex had a well-stocked larder. By seven-thirty, I’d made French toast, home fries, scrambled eggs, and a huge pot of coffee. I heard Alex walking down the stairs, grabbed his plate from the oven, and poured his coffee.

He didn’t come into the kitchen. I heard the front door slam and, two minutes later, his jeep was kicking a sand-storm as he drove off down the drive.

I gave both breakfasts to the dog, instead downed half of one of my bottles of malt, and fell asleep at the kitchen table.

“Well, that’s going to help,” Marita drawled.

I looked up groggily. It was late afternoon, I had the hang-over from hell and my back was killing me.

“I thought you were going to talk to him,” she continued.

“That would involve us at least being in the same house,” I snapped back. “His solution to the problem was to run away.”

“Well, at least you’ve both still got something in common.”

“Bitch,” I said.

She just smirked and faded.

I muttered, cursed, threw a mug at the wall, then decided what the hell and cooked dinner for us both.

At eight I ate alone, put Alex’s dinner in the oven to keep warm, fed the dog with the leftovers, and curled up on the couch to watch more TV.

Alex came home about midnight, pointedly avoided the family room, stomped around the kitchen for a while, then went up to his bedroom, slammed the door shut and locked it.

But at least, when I checked, he’d eaten the dinner I’d left him.

The next day he did it again. Fucked off before I had a chance to talk to him and came home in the middle of the night.

Again, he ate the dinner I left him but this time he left me a note.

“I hope you’re not feeding this crap to Lump. He’s fat enough already.”

I decided not to take the ‘crap’ comment to heart and concentrated on the important thing. We were finally ‘talking’.

And at least I knew the name of the damned dog.

Lump and I were actually getting on like a house on fire. After a mutually suspicious start, he seemed to take to me and when he discovered I was the temporary source of all things tasty in his dog bowl we became firm friends. I found myself confiding in him a lot. The advantage of talking to Lump, rather than Marita, was that he was far less likely to make sarcastic, sniping comments about my general ineptitude as a lovable human being.

I also met half-a-dozen of the local kids. One of them drove up looking for Alex, and recognized me as *the* Fox Mulder. He grabbed his cell phone, made a couple of calls, and within the hour there were six teenagers lolling about on Alex’s patio wanting to know all about the aliens and Alex’s part in saving the human race.

It was obvious Alex had a firm fan club going with the kids, so I did my best to confirm his hero image. Admittedly, I wasn’t totally certain that Alex’s role in the whole affair had been something kids should be impressed by. A necessary role, certainly, but not exactly admirable. Still, these were the kids of Alex’s neighbors and since they obviously wanted to believe he was Superman it would have been a bit churlish of me to say he wasn’t.

When it became clear they were expecting to hang around, I started up a bar-b-cue in the backyard and fed them all.

When Alex got back at ten-thirty ( and, yes, I *did* note the fact he’d come home relatively early ) the kids were still there. He had no choice except to be civil to me in front of them. So okay, his eyes were shooting daggers, even as he laughed and joked with me for the benefit of his fan club, but after three days of being in Krycek-Siberia it still felt good to have more of his attention than a handwritten note.

The next morning, he came down for breakfast.

He was gruff and terse, snapping one word answers to any attempt I made at conversation, but he ate his food and drank his coffee and spent the day on his computer instead of driving off in a sulk. We even ate dinner together that night. Silently, since every time I opened my mouth he made as if he was going to get up and storm out, but we *did* share the meal.

I counted it a victory. As I said to Marita, when she appeared in my bedroom later that evening, he didn’t have to be *nice* to me. He just had to let me keep hanging around.

“You’re so full of shit,” she replied, and vanished again.

The next morning, I went downstairs to start breakfast and found him already in the kitchen, drinking coffee. He hadn’t made enough for us both. Instead of commenting, I just calmly began to make a full pot.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” he demanded.

“I don’t want anything, Alex. I haven’t the right,” I answered sadly.

“Who the fuck ARE you?” he roared.

I just blinked at him stupidly.

He jumped to his feet and punched me in the face. One punch and I dropped like a felled ox. I was on the floor, clutching what felt like a rapidly swelling dislocated jaw, convinced my brains had been completely scrambled and aware, for the first time, of just how fucking *lucky* I’d been that he’d never hit me before. I suddenly felt so damned *ashamed* of my past behavior toward him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I meant it. I was so fucking sorry for *everything*.

From the look on his face, you would have thought I’d hit *him*.

“I want you to get the fuck out of my house,” he spat, and slammed out of the room.

“What did I do wrong?” I choked, struggling to sit up, struggling not to cry. “What the hell did I do?”

“For God’s sake, Mulder,” Marita answered, materializing in the kitchen next to me. “Get off your ass and go after him.”

I shook my head miserably. “There’s no point. He really hates me.”

“Well then, at least ONE of you gives a shit!”

It took a moment, and then it hit me.

“Shit,” I groaned.

Marita rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “So, the penny finally drops, huh?”

“That’s why he hates me, isn’t it? Because I *stopped* hating him.”

“He forgave you everything you did to him in anger,” she agreed. “But he could never deal with the fact that by the time Skinner ‘killed’ him you didn’t even give a damn one way or the other.”

“Don’t give a damn? I LOVE him.”

“He doesn’t KNOW you, Mulder. The man he feel in love with, the man he *still* loves, isn’t YOU. The man he loves doesn’t calmly take his shit and then beg for more. The man he loves doesn’t cook and clean for him. The man he loves is a dominant, bad-tempered, arrogant bastard who hits first and asks questions later. Alex would NEVER have struck the man he loves. But that man isn’t you.”

“I don’t understand,” I wailed.

Marita shrugged. “I told you he didn’t want a penitent, Mulder. He equates your refusal to get angry with him as proof you don’t love him anymore. So either give him what he wants, or get the hell out of his life.”

“I’m not that man anymore. I don’t *want* to be that man anymore,” I sobbed wearily. “I didn’t come here to *hurt* him.”

“I thought ‘hurting’ him was always a part of your relationship,” she laughed.

I flushed darkly. “That was sex, fun,” I argued. “It had nothing to do with anger. It’s not a game I’d ever play in temper. Not with *anyone*.”

“I know,” she agreed, her voice a lot softer. “And that’s not what Alex needs, either. But what he *does* need is to see that man, Mulder. You’ve got to make him want the man he lost, before he accepts the man you’ve become. He doesn’t recognize this *new* gentle you. He doesn’t *want* this new you.”

I hated her for saying it. I hated her more for being right.

He’d locked himself in his bedroom again.

I knocked on the door.

He told me to fuck off and die.

I kicked the door in.

He was so damned shocked he just sat there on his bed, with his mouth hanging open, as I charged through the splintered door-frame.

He swallowed once, twice, and then said, “I told you I wanted you out of my house.”

“And Alex Krycek always gets what he wants?” I snarled. “What about what *I* fucking want, you selfish bastard?”

He flinched and looked lost and confused for a moment, but then he rallied and sneered at me. “I don’t give a fuck what you want, Mulder.”

“That’s too bad,” I told him. “Because what I want is *you*, and I’m not asking your opinion.”

He nearly fell off his bed in shock. But, to give him credit, he then rose to his feet and dipped into a fighting crouch. “You think you can take me, Mulder? You never could, and you never will.”

“Oh, I’m going to take you,” I replied calmly, though my heart was beating so hard I was sure he could hear it. “I’m going to take you so hard they’ll hear you screaming in the next county.”

He gulped audibly and something flashed in his eyes. It *wasn’t* anger. “Fuck you,” he said.

I laughed, low and hard. “Oh, no, Alex. That’s not the way it goes in our relationship.”

“We don’t HAVE a fucking relationship,” he howled.

“Did I say it was over?” I demanded. “Did I *ever* say we were finished? Did I *ever* say your ass wasn’t mine anymore? DID I?”

His body sagged and he stumbled backwards, sitting heavily on his bed once more, his eyes wide and confused. I could see him running our history through his head. The hate, the violence, the vicious biting words, but I knew he wouldn’t remember me saying *those* words, because I never had. Okay, I admit it was because it was so fucking obvious we were over that the words didn’t need to be spoken, but the point was I now had him confused, stumbling, clearly wondering whether it was *he* who had ended our relationship rather than me.

“I hate you,” he gasped.

“I don’t care,” I told him. “You’re still mine.”

“You married Scully.”

“You fucked Marita,” I countered.

It obviously wasn’t the same but he still flushed and flinched guiltily, unable to look me in the eye, and that was the moment I *knew* he still loved me.

“You didn’t give a shit that I was ‘dead’,” he spat, his expression agonized.

“You didn’t give a shit about making me ‘think’ you were dead.”

“You left me in that fucking silo.”

“You sold me out in Tunguska.”

“You cost me my fucking ARM!”

“You let Spender cut a chunk out of my brain!”

“I spent six months in a Tunisian prison for trying to stop him.”

“You let me get abducted and buried alive.”

“I gave you the fucking vaccine.”

“You killed my father.”

“I killed *both* your fucking fathers. And I’d do it again.”

“Once a killer, always a killer, huh, Alex?”

“I fucking HATE you,” he screamed.

“And I fucking LOVE you, you bastard. Deal with it,” I yelled back, then I leaned down, grabbed him by the teeshirt, hauled him toward me and kissed him.

He bit me.

I back-handed him across the face.

“A girly-slap, Mulder? Scully chew *all* your balls off?” he sneered.

I wiped the blood off my lower lip, and then punched him in the jaw.

His eyes blazed with fury, his lips curled back in a snarl that made Lump look like a poodle, and I saw him bunch his right fist.

‘I’m dead’, I told myself, as he took a pace towards me.

For a moment, we just stared at each other, danger crackling in the air around us, and then his fist connected with my nose.

He must have pulled his punch, otherwise my nose would have ended up embedded in my brain, but his fist still landed on exactly the same spot as Bill Scully had struck me. There was this sickening crunch and then blood began spurting out of my nose like the Niagara Falls.

Alex stared at me in frozen horror for a moment, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done, but eventually – probably a few seconds but it sure felt like eternity - he pulled himself together enough to race into his en-suite for a damp towel.

I winced and yelped as I pressed the wet material against my face but, despite the pain and the copious blood-flow, I was pretty damned certain Alex hadn’t re-broken my nose. For one thing, having only recently suffered such a scintillating experience, I still had a clear enough memory of Bill Scully hitting me to know the difference.

“Shit, Fox. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” Alex garbled, his eyes so huge he looked like an owl suffering from PTSD. “I broke your nose.”

It was so clear that his violence towards me had shocked the hell out of him that I wasn’t even tempted to let him wallow in his misery. Well, okay, I was *tempted*, but I reminded myself of all the occasions I’d struck him and never even imagined an apology for my behavior was necessary.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “You didn’t break it. Bill Scully did.”

I didn’t realize how garbled my words sounded through the wadded towel until Alex’s eyes grew impossibly larger.

“Scully broke your nose? Scully?”

And suddenly I was laughing so hard that my sides ached.

“You hysterical, Mulder?” Alex asked, backing away slightly as though convinced I’d finally cracked.

It just made me laugh all the more. By the time I’d regained control of myself, the nose bleed had stopped and Alex was half-crouching in the broken door-frame clearly torn between fighting and fleeing.

“You okay?” he asked tentatively, still looking tempted to call the men in the white coats.

I mopped up the last specks of blood, gently felt my cartilage with my thumb and forefinger, then offered him a wide, reassuring smile. “Think you did me a favor, Alex. You’ve knocked it straight again. Thought I was going to spend the rest of my life looking like Cyrano de Bergerac.”

It took him a moment to get it, and then he grinned with obvious relief.

I dragged myself less than gracefully off the floor and took a step towards him. “Is it safe to try kissing you again, or are you going to re-arrange my balls this time?”

He stiffened momentarily, but then relaxed and smirked. “I like your balls where they are, Mulder.”

“You called me Fox once,” I reminded him.

“You called me a invertebrate scum-sucker once,” he retorted nastily.

“What can I say? I’ve always been orally fixated,” I quipped.

Then I held my breath as he stepped toward me with an indecipherable look on his face, grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me into a violent kiss.

“I’ve fucking missed you, Fox,” he gasped, when lack of oxygen forced us to part. “I’ve missed you so fucking much.”

My only answer was to grab his waist and start unzipping his pants.

“I didn’t say I…” he began.

I reached inside the open zipper, grabbed his cock and squeezed. “Shut the fuck up and drop your pants, Alex.”

“I…” he started, his eyes wide and wary.

Still holding his cock with my left hand, I reached around and smacked his ass with my right. Hard.

“I said drop the pants, slut.”

Then I held my breath again. Countless years and a thousand tears separated us from the time when I could say something like that to him and be met with a sexy, cheeky grin and a wriggle of his hips rather than a fist in my face.

The seconds ticked past in agonizing slowness as I saw a myriad of emotions crossing his features. Shock, outrage and anger chased by confusion, then a gradual dawning of memory and a darkening of his eyes as his expression turned smoky.

And then, with teasing slowness, he unbuttoned his waistband and dropped his pants.

“Still going commando, huh?” I teased, moving my hands to cradle his balls. “Still my bad sexy slut.”

This time, the word made him purr and he pressed his hips forward, encouraging further contact.

Instead, I smacked his ass again, spun him around, and used the fact his ankles were tangled in his pants to force him to bend face-down over the bed.

“This ass still mine, Alex?” I demanded, smacking him again. Hard enough, this time, to leave a clear hand-print on his firm white flesh.

“Yeah,” he gasped, wriggling as I continued to rain a series of almost brutal blows on his butt.

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

My palm was really starting to sting, so I unfastened my belt, looped it in half, and brought it down on his ass cheeks so hard he yelped in shock.

“Really sure?” I asked, striking him again.

“Really SURE,” he yelled.

“Let me see,” I demanded.

He sobbed loudly into the comforter.

“I *said* let me see,” I repeated, bringing the belt down again on his already scarlet buttocks.

I’d temporarily forgotten about his prosthetic, but fortunately his latest version was dexterous enough that he managed to use both hands to pull his ass cheeks apart and reveal his hole to me.

He’d been telling the truth. It was tight, almost virginal tight, and my cock swelled uncomfortably at the thought of burying itself inside that unstretched heat.

I also felt a fleeting sense of shame at my own sluttish weeks on the road when I’d fucked anything that moved. But I pushed the guilt aside. It wasn’t what Alex needed. Wasn’t what either of us needed. He didn’t want my apologies. He wanted *me*. The old me. The me who had once won his heart by dominating his ass.

Though at least the memory of my road-trip reminded me to put on a condom before I breached him.

But I took my time.

I wanted to drive him crazy for me. I wanted him to *beg* me to put my cock in the place where I knew I no longer had any fucking right to ask admission.

So buried my face in his hot ass and licked and sucked and thrust my tongue against that tight little entrance, until he was squirming and squealing beneath me. I hadn’t heard the noise of Alex driven out of his mind with passion for over fifteen years.

Want to know a secret?

I never called Alex a rat-bastard because I thought he belonged in a sewer. The rodent connection came from our time as lovers. When Alex is in slut-mode, he squeaks like a mouse on speed.

In between squeals, he was moaning into the bedcovers. “Fuck me, Fox. Fuck. Oh fuck, Fox. Fuck me.”

Despite my busy tongue, he wasn’t stretched enough. But he was begging me, and I was selfish enough to want to bury myself inside such a tight hot hole. Besides, I wanted him to *know* he’d damned well been fucked. Whenever he sat down, for the next week, I wanted him squirming so he never forgot his ass was mine again.

Hell, far as I was concerned, I wanted Alex to spend the rest of his life having to eat standing up.

So I grabbed his hips and started to work my cock into him.

He went rigid as I sank my full length into him, clearly holding his breath against the burn of my entry. So I paused and waited for him to relax, even though my whole body was thrumming with the need to move inside him.

“Okay,” he gasped finally. “Fuck me, Fox.”

I didn’t need a second invitation. I started long and hard and slow, driving him out of his mind with the teasingly leisurely friction of my flesh inside his. It was driving *me* out of my mind too, but all those years of torturing myself with porn-film-length jerk-off sessions paid off. I decided that if I could fuck my *hand* for sixty minutes, I could sure as hell fuck Alex for that long too.

Like I said, I wanted to write this lovemaking into his brain so deep he’d never again forget that his ass belonged to me and if that meant burning it into his ass with my cock, then all the better.

He was throwing his head around like a wild mustang, sobbing and cursing and desperate to come. But every time the already almost unbearable pressure on my cock tightened, I grabbed the root of his cock and squeezed until he gasped in defeat and quietened under me once more.

By the time I was ready to get serious, he was sweat-sheened and exhausted. He’d long since lost the capacity for coherent speech and was just grunting and groaning as I drove in and out of his ass.

I decided it was time to make him squeal again.

I increased my pace until I was slamming into him so hard that he was desperately clutching the duvet for purchase and his hips were bouncing up and down on the bed in a wild dance. I carefully angled myself to start hitting his prostate and he started to squeak and squeal and squirm under the assault.

This time, as he tightened around me, I left his cock alone and instead squeezed his balls encouragingly.

He came with a wild, high-pitched scream and then went so limp beneath me that I knew he’d passed out. I rode my own completion into his insensate body, letting the involuntary contractions of his ass drain me completely, then I collapsed on top of him, completely exhausted, and let myself join him in sleep.

Something I regretted a little later, when I woke up with a desperate need to piss and realized my condom-covered cock was still wedged in his ass. But Alex was so out of it that he barely mumbled a protest as I extricated myself.

I slept the night in his bed and rose early the next morning to make breakfast.

We ate together in silence, just as we had the previous morning.

But it was a different kind of silence.

Alex was clearly finding it difficult to sit still, and every time he shifted in his seat he blushed scarlet and dipped his eyes like a shy, newly-deflowered virgin. I’d forgotten how fucking sexy I found it when he could only bring himself to look up at me through the safety curtain of his eyelashes.

We spent most of the day in the family room watching TV, me sitting on the couch, Alex lying face down with his head in my lap.

Time to test the water, I decided.

“We need to get cable,” I told him, stroking my hand through his hair.

“’kay,” he mumbled.

“And a cat. I like cats.”

I waited for him to point out Lump would probably eat it. Instead, he just sleepily said
“’kay,” again.

“And I want turn one of the spare bedrooms into my office,” I said, holding my breath slightly.

All he said was “‘kay,” a third time, then he snuggled into my lap and started to snore peacefully.

I just sat there. I wasn’t watching the TV. I was too fascinated by the way his dark silk-soft hair shone chestnut in the afternoon sun. As my fingers carded through the strands, lifting and separating them, the glints of red made me think, inevitably, of Scully.

I’d have to call her, I decided. Let her know I was okay. That *we* were okay. That, better late than never, we’d *both* made the right choice. I had no sense of regret. The only regrets in my heart began and ended with my relationship with the man in my arms.

A couple of hours later the sun had set and the room was dark except for the flickering blue light of the TV screen. I still hadn’t woken Alex up. It had been fifteen years since I’d stroked a sleeping Alex Krycek, while he purred on my lap like a pussycat, and I was afraid to break the spell. Some eerie sense of superstition was telling me it wasn’t *Alex* who was dreaming, but myself, and I’d wake up and find myself alone once more.

Maybe it was just that I knew I didn’t *deserve* the second chance he’d given me.

But, then again, maybe Alex didn’t deserve a second chance either.

Maybe Marita had been right. Perhaps both Alex and I were equally to blame for what had happened between us. Love can’t survive without trust, and trust was a gift that neither of us had been prepared to offer.

And yet, part of me was sure that Alex’s failure to trust me *had* been my fault.

He’d offered me trust in the bedroom. In sexual matters, he’d always let me take the lead and, although my marriage with Scully had – of necessity – been somewhat vanilla, my true preferences had always needed a partner who was willing to take a leap of faith.

I chuckled sadly, deep in my throat, as I remembered the look on Scully’s face the one and only time I’d ever produced my handcuffs in our bedroom.

But Alex had never said ‘no’. Alex had never looked at me like I was some kind of sex-craved pervert when I suggested something new. Alex had never accused me of ‘watching too much porn’. Alex had trusted me. Had *seemed* to trust me.

What the hell had gone wrong?

I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud, until he sighed a sleepy ‘Huh?’ and stirred enough to rub his eyes.

I quickly marshaled my thoughts.

“I was thinking about that weekend,” I admitted.

He squirmed on my lap and turned over to face me. Even in the semi-darkness I could see the dark blush on his cheeks. So it was clear he knew exactly which weekend I was referring to. He’d followed me home from the Bureau one Friday night and had spent the entire weekend handcuffed to my bed. The *entire* weekend. I’d even made him piss into a bottle. I’d taunted and teased him and played with him to my heart’s content. My own personal sex toy. And I hadn’t let *him* come until late that Sunday evening.

“You want to do that again?” he whispered huskily.

My dick hardened so quickly that it’s a miracle I didn’t bust my zipper. But I shook my head firmly.

“You *don’t* want to do that again?” he asked, with both hurt and surprise in his voice.

“Of course I want to do it again,” I said, my voice gruff as I struggled to control my breathing. “But not until I know why you let me do it to you, back then.”

He shrugged.

I decided if he just said it was because ‘he’d loved me’, I’d hit him.

Maybe he saw the threat of violence on my face, or maybe the semi-darkness gave him the courage for honesty or, just maybe, he knew as well as I did that even a single white lie would be enough to shatter the fragile new peace between us.

“I trusted you. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, and I knew you’d make it good for me,” he admitted. Then he chuckled and added, “Well, eventually.”

I choked back a sob. “Then why, Alex? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? How could you trust me enough to do *that*, but not trust me with your truth?”

“Because it wasn’t you.”

“What?”

He jumped off my lap and began pacing furiously up and down the room as though if he stood still a moment longer he’d explode.

“I didn’t know who the real you was,” he spat. “The Mulder who used to beat my ass scarlet and fuck my brains out, or the Mulder in the suit who used to look at me all day like I wasn’t fit to lick Scully’s shoes. You ‘loved’ me in your bedroom, Mulder. You ‘loved’ me when you had your dick up my ass. You ‘loved’ me when I was on my knees sucking you off. But on the job I was nothing more than your dirty little secret and a fuck-up of a partner to boot.”

“That’s not true. We couldn’t take it to work,” I argued. “I was your senior agent. I’d have been kicked out of the Bureau if anyone had found out about us. What the fuck did you want me to do? Walk into the Bureau holding your damned hand?”

“I wanted some fucking *respect*,” he screamed. “I wanted you to at least treat me like I was your *partner*. Like I mattered to you.”

“I was trying to be professional,” I snapped.

“Yeah? And all those times you punched me, were you being ‘professional’ then?” he snarled. “Seems to me you had no problem showing you *hated* me when you were on the job. Funny you were so fucking *cold* when you were supposed to be in love with me.”

“Funny you were supposed to be in love with me and never told me you were an NSA plant,” I pointed out.

“Exactly which Mulder was I supposed to tell?” he countered. “The one fucking my ass, or the one fucking with my head?”

I groaned and buried my head in my hands. “I didn’t realize, Alex. I honestly didn’t realize that was what I was doing.”

He moved over to where I was sitting, sank to his knees and dropped his forehead onto my thighs.

“I know,” he whispered softly.

“We really fucked our past up, Alex.

“I know,” he repeated sadly.

“But I refuse to fuck *this* up,” I said, with sudden determination. I dropped my hands to his head and stroked his hair. He lifted his chin and looked at me. Like mine, his eyes were wet with unshed tears. “There’s no job now. No FBI. No NSA. No lies. No pretense. There’s just us.”

He nodded silently.

“And *we* always worked, didn’t we?” I demanded. “Take away the rest of the shit and *we* never had a problem.”

“We had good sex,” he said.

I shook my head. “We had *great* sex. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about *us*. About trust. Whatever happened in the rest of our lives, we had trust inside our relationship.”

“I guess,” he said, his eyes still a little wary and confused.

“Don’t guess, Alex. Remember. Remember how we used to be together. Remember how you used to feel when… when I’d tell you to strip for me.”

His eyes darkened and he shuffled awkwardly on his knees.

“Remember?” I said. “Remember when we’d get into my apartment and I’d never let you get more than two feet inside the door without getting naked? Remember how sometimes I made you *crawl* to the bedroom and then beg me to take you?”

He didn’t answer, but his eyes dilated until they were almost black and I saw his tongue slide nervously across his upper lip.

“You trusted *me*,” I whispered. “Forget that asshole Mulder in the suit. It was *me* you loved. Me. And I’m sitting here now, and I still love you. And *I* won’t ever make you feel like you aren’t fit to lick Scully’s boots. I chose *you*, Alex. That’s who I am. The man who chose *you*. Not Scully. Not anyone else. I chose *you*.”

He looked up at me. Opened his mouth. Closed it again. Then he gave a deep, gut-wrenching sob, buried his face in my thighs and cried.

I patted his heaving back awkwardly until he pulled himself together enough to rock back on his heels and offer me an awkward, slightly shamed smile.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Really okay?”

He thought about it a moment and nodded. “I will be. It’s just….just weird.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Do something for me?”

He looked momentarily wary but then nodded an okay.

“Go fetch the lube.”

His eyes flared, then dipped from my face.

“What?” I said.

“I’m sore,” he whispered.

“I know,” I replied easily, as though my request wasn’t practically a demand that he should trust me. “Get the lube, Alex. Oh, and lose the clothes while you’re at it.”

For a moment I wondered whether he’d tell me to go to hell. Then, silently, he rose to his feet and left the room. He was gone a long time, long enough for me to start cursing myself for being so stupid as to push him so far, so quickly. But after about twenty minutes he padded into the room carrying the lube and wearing nothing but a nervous smile and a half-hard cock.

I’d turned on one of the table-lamps in his absence so that the room, while not bright, was no longer shadowed and dark, and I’d moved to sit in the centre of the couch.

I patted my lap pointedly.

He gulped silently, but draped himself over my thighs without protest.

The earlier spanking had faded, but there were still a few dark lines from where I’d struck him with my belt. I was careful to avoid that already swollen flesh as I brought my hand down on his ass in a couple of brisk slaps.

“What was that for?” I asked him mildly.

“Saying I was too sore,” he sniffed.

“Not for saying it, Alex. For not trusting me enough to know I’d never hurt you.”

To an onlooker it would have seemed a ludicrous comment. This was a man I’d spent years beating up at all and every opportunity. A man I’d left for dead. A man I’d *wanted* dead. But if Alex and I were to have any chance of a future together, we had to put that behind us. He had to see me as the man I’d *once* been to him. The man who might smack his ass and fuck his butt, but who would never had deliberately *hurt* him.”

And somehow Alex understood what I was trying to say because, instead of laughing in my face, he just sobbed, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “You’re forgiven.”

I gently tapped the inside of his thighs to encourage him to open his legs a little, then I squeezed out a generous dollop of lube, warmed it up in my hands, and slathered it carefully across the entrance of his hot little hole. Its flesh was reddened and puffy and he flinched when the lube touched it, but I stroked the middle of his back with my left hand until he settled down.

Then carefully, gently, I eased my index finger into his ass and began to stroke his passage.

He shuddered, whimpered slightly, then deliberately relaxed his whole body and trusted himself to my touch.

Maybe an hour passed as I petted him. My left hand drawing circles on his lower back, my right index finger slipping in and out of his hole, and all the time I was whispering, “You’re mine, Alex. Mine. Always mine. Forever mine,” as though I was trying to weave a spell around both of us that would bind him to me forever.

When I eventually stopped and rolled him over onto his back he was almost asleep again. His eyes were hooded and heavy and although his cock was hard and weeping he seemed too dazed to care.

Well, until I leaned over and swallowed him whole.

He came awake pretty suddenly *then*.

It took only a few swirls of my tongue and dips of my head before he gave a sharp cry and my mouth filled with his bitter-sweet taste. Licking my lips, I looked up just in time to see his eyes roll back in his head and I grinned triumphantly that, for the second time in under 24-hours, I’d made him pass out.

I managed to extricate myself from under his boneless body, kissed the furrow between his brows, and left him sleeping while I went to prepare dinner for us both.

Marita was sitting at the kitchen table.

“It’s okay,” she laughed, before I could say anything. “I’m only here to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I repeated stupidly.

“My debt’s paid,” she explained simply.

“You think it’s going to be that easy?” I asked, looking over my shoulder towards the open door. Even *I* wasn’t fool enough to think that I could keep Alex in a haze of fuck-drunk happiness forever. One day we were going to have to sit down and really thrash out the dark details of our mutual history together. My only hope was that it would be later, rather than sooner, and that by that time I would have convinced him he couldn’t live without me.

“If you ever hurt him, I’ll have to come back and hurt *you*,” she said, and though she was smiling I was damned sure she wasn’t joking. “But something tells me I’ll never see you again.”

She was right.

I never saw Marita’s ghost again.

The End

Return to X files Menu

Return to Mulder/Krycek Menu

Ball And Chain
by Social Distortion

Well it's been ten years and a thousand tears
And look at the mess I'm in-
A broken nose and a broken heart,
An empty bottle of gin
Well I sit and I pray
In my broken down Chevrolet-
While I'm singin' to myself
There's got to be another way

Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
I'm lonely and I'm tired
And I can't take any more pain
Take away, take away
Never to return again
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain

Well I've searched and I've searched
To find the perfect life-
A brand new car and a brand new suit
I even got me a little wife-
But wherever I have gone
I was sure to find myself there-
You can run all your life
But not go anywhere

Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
I'm lonely and I'm tired
And I can't take any more pain
Take away, take away
Never to return again
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain

Well I'll pass the bar on the way
To my dingy hotel room-
I spent all my money
Been drinkin' since half past noon-
I'll wake there in the mornin'
Or maybe in the county jail-
Times are hard getting harder
I'm born to lose and destined to fail-

Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
I'm lonely and I'm tired
And I can't take any more pain
Take away, take away
Never to return again
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain