This title photo manipulation by the wonderfully talented Mrs Fish 

As the flashing lights pull onto the highway behind me and a banshee wail of sirens cuts through the early evening mist that is rolling in from the coast, I feel my heart leaping to begin a wild, frantic tattoo against my leather-clad chest. My blood heats and rushes throughout my body with a zinging burn, as I twist my fingers to squeeze the throttle until the metallic beast between my thighs roars with such fury that it almost drowns the sound of eager pursuit.

I know this road so well that I could navigate it blindfold. Which is just as well, since the wind is whipping my face so savagely that it is ripping tears from my eyes. They blur my vision until it feels that I am riding through a storm. Instinct and memory, along with a slight muffling of the sirens as the patrol car slows behind me in self-preservation, warns me that I'm approaching a bad bend in the road.  I swing the bike sideways, until the rear tyre scrabbles for purchase in the loose gravel that is the only barrier between the tarmac and a sheer, suicidal drop towards the rocky coastline. Then, instead of slowing, I speed into the bend.

With a scream, the bike responds to my overthrottling by rearing up like an untamed mustang and I power across the road,  trusting my angle will carry me through.  

It's  close, almost too close. I escape the hungry cavernous mouth of the sea but am almost swallowed by the greedy, jagged jaws of the cliff instead. It takes all my strength to haul the bike back to the left once more. It struggles with me, resisting my control,  as though it is as maddened by my actions as I myself feel.

I am laughing as I wrest the beast back under my dominance and, although the sound is as lost in the wind as the sirens that I am now leaving behind me, the width of my grin is so broad that I can feel my cheek muscles aching beneath the wind-slapped skin of my face.  Yet again, I have successfully defeated the speed cop who surely dreams of finally capturing the phantom who taunts him so regularly.  

It's a game I play with him. Just frequently enough that he never tires of lurking around bends in hope, yet rarely enough that he can never anticipate my passing and so arrange a more subtle trap. 

He was cunning tonight, waiting for me so close to the treacherous curve. It was a gamble he played, knowing I would be hard-pressed to take the corner at speed, yet accepting undoubtedly that if I survived the bend I would have put enough distance between us to escape his snare completely.  For days he has probably dreamt of this moment, has jacked off to the fantasy of my bike and I tumbling to shatter on the rocks below the cliff face, only for me to instead become nothing more than a taunting, shrinking tail-light in the distance.

Is he sad, bitter, angry? Or, like me, is he pleased to imagine our next encounter? Is the thrill of the chase enough for him, just as the risk of a falling death is like an opiate to me? I think it must be, or he would have brought in the state troopers by now to change the odds against me.

He's a man of honor, I think. Preferring to tilt alone at this two-wheeled windmill than stack the odds unfairly against me.

I respect that. 

It would be honorable to die at his hands.

That's important to me, honor, although most people would probably raise their eyebrows in disbelief at even the idea of Alex Krycek knowing the meaning of the word.

I notice my shadow as soon as I enter the airport. He's only on the periphery of my vision as I check in and accept my ticket and he merges almost seamlessly into the crowd as I wander around the airport shops, waiting until the absolute last minute to pass through the departure gate.

I want to go home.

It's like a burning pain, this need inside me. I want to leave this place of death and destruction behind me like a bad dream.  Only death isn't really the dream. Death is my life. Home is my dream but I need to wallow in the fantasy again, if only for a short while.

And all that stands between me and my home is a two hour flight, a four hour bike ride, a vengeful speed cop and this new insidious shadow who is lurking amidst my fellow travelers, his plain innocuous face masking murderous intention.

He's good, but not good enough. 

I allow him to think that his pursuit has gone unnoticed. I deliberately dawdle around the news stands, picking up and putting down a series of garishly covered paperbacks while he busies himself at the confectionary stand.  I can't resist playing with him a little, pretending to carefully scrutinize all the dustcovers until he has no choice except to make a purchase from the suspicious eyed clerk who has patently decided that no honest man spends twenty minutes choosing between Hershey's Kisses and Mars Bars. Since I put  my prosthetic arm in my check-in luggage, the looks I am receiving for my own dawdling are simply sympathetic.

I wait until he's pre-occupied with buying a small selection of chocolate, stretch casually, replace the books on the shelf and saunter slowly out of the airport shop.  It's hard not to smile at the frantic sounds of scrabbling feet. I can see his reflection in the shop window as he practically throws a bill at the surprised clerk, snatches his purchases, and scurries after me.

Amateur.

A crowd of tourists piles out of the arrivals hall like milling cattle, dragging suitcases and children in their wake with the same impatient haste.  I slow down, not wanting to lose my shadow in the crowd. I see him from the corner of my eye, practically hopping with impatience as a series of baggage carts separate him from his prize. Me.

What the hell did I mean he was good?

Fucking amateur.

It's kind of insulting, to tell the truth.  There was a time they would have taken me more seriously.  These days the goons that they send after me are more of an embarrassment than a danger. It's enough to make an assassin weep. I have been relegated from the ranks of primary perceived dangers to little more than an annoyance in their eyes. I'm no more to them now than a buzzing gnat to be swatted if my sting becomes too irritating.

It pisses me off to be so underestimated, but it makes it far easier for me to stay alive so I suppose I should be grateful.

Only I'm not. 

I know the men's room will be full of balding business men and fat-gutted tourists at this time of day. There's an actual queue forming outside the women's toilets. Poor bitches. I am a great believer in the fact that all women have balls. They're simply tucked away inside their bodies out of harms way. That way they can claw you with impunity. Having an internal dick, on the other hand, is far less convenient for them.

So I just give them a grin of sympathy as I swan past them straight through the door marked 'disabled'.

It's pretty much a rule of thumb that able-bodied people would rather piss themselves in public than brazenly walk into a vacant disabled toilet. I knew that years before I lost my arm, and frequently took advantage of the facilities. Now, of course,  I am not even challenged by resentful stares.

I saunter over to the toilet and relieve myself with a loud sigh of enjoyment. It's a little bit tricky to hold my dick steady with a stiletto in my hands, but practice has made perfect. I am just shaking the last stubborn drops into the water below when I not so much hear the door open as feel a change of air pressure at my back. The hairs on the nape of my neck prickle before the brief sound of external chatter echoes into the room.

I spin so quickly that he barely has time to register the movement before his eyes widen in surprise and he sinks slowly to the floor, his eyes seemingly fixated on my still exposed cock. I'd like to imagine his expression is envy, but since the hilt of my knife is protruding out of his forehead like a third eye, I have to admit that it's improbable.

It only takes seconds to retrieve the blade and snap it inside the internal lock of the door so that once I have closed it behind me it will take the airport janitor several hours to break in, even after some poor wheelchair-bound bastard finally reports the jammed door. Then, hearing the last call for my flight, I tuck myself back into my jeans, take a quick look in the mirror to check that the sparkling excitement in my eyes is not too evident, decide that I really *must* shave as soon as the plane lands at my destination, and pausing only long enough to rifle the body for its hidden stash of chocolate, I head for the departure lounge.

God, I've missed this.

The feel of the purring beast that throbs between my thighs as it eats up the miles. The almost savage caress of the wind against my cheeks. 

They feel raw where the razor scraped away the beard that had crept over my features during my two weeks away. Already as shiny and pink as new-born skin, my face is now stinging in the cold evening air. It's a revitalizing feeling, not pain so much as the buzzing sensation of life returning as I eat up the miles that separate me from the only person who has the ability to make me feel clean again.  

My need is beginning to gnaw at me like a voracious internal predator. It's a hunger, a drug, an addiction that demands to be fed. 

I scarcely notice that my speed cop is absent tonight. When I pass the last of his possible hideouts I feel a slight ache of sorrow that he has seemingly abandoned his hunt,  yet my overall feeling is relief. I have temporarily assuaged my need for violence and danger, my blood surges with a different need, a different hunger.

Tonight there is no desire to spill through the night air, tumbling like a broken rag-doll onto the jagged rocks that line the shoreline like the teeth of a carnivorous beast. Tonight the trembling rage of my limbs needs a different  benediction, my body needs a sharper deadlier caress.

I think he's left the light on for me.

Does he know that I am out here?

Surely he must.

Why else would he leave the light on? 

From my vantage point in the dark doorway opposite his apartment building, I can see him outlined in the window and I shiver at his carelessness. My fear for him is so intense that I can almost see the unwavering red light of an assassin's rifle targeting itself over his courageous, naive heart.

Why does it never occur to him that eyes less adoring than mine might be watching him as he preens unselfconsciously in the window?  I can imagine his expression, a little dazed, a little bewildered as he gazes blindly out at a world in which he simply doesn't belong. He's too good, too honest to live in the cess-pit of depravity that surrounds him. Always set apart from the rest of us by the shining, inner-light of his soul. Wounded and battered by the darkness around him, yet never sullied by its cruel clawing touch, he remains bloody but unbroken like a beacon of hope.

He wants to believe.

Sometimes I think he falters and stumbles over the trail of broken evidence. His repeated head-long rushes into walls of illusion and defeat have, on occasion, dented his spirit, caused him to doubt himself, his mission and even sometimes his own sanity.

No matter.

He's made a believer out of me. 

He's sad. I can tell that from his profile alone, the way his head is slightly bowed, the way his shoulders are slumped with fresh defeat.  Yet again he has tasted the forbidden fruit, has almost closed his mouth around the taste of success only for it to have been snatched out of his grasp once more. 

All his painstaking work, his brilliant deductive reasoning, his instinctive ferreting for the truth with the indomitable spirit of a terrier, all gone. One small, expertly placed explosive within the heating ducts of the laboratory and evidence, scientists and proof all eradicated so completely that only billowing smoke was left as witness.  

Standing in that dark doorway, with only the shadows for company, I ache for his sorrow, grieve for his loss, cry for his pain.

I wipe my eyes furtively. They sting uncomfortably and I imagine that I still have traces of the nitrate on my finger tips, but I know that it is merely guilt that burns me, because I wore gloves on the job as always.

"Hi, honey, I'm home," I whisper, an attempt at levity that is ruined by my own choking sob of contrition and his own motionless back.

He's still staring moodily out of the window, pretending he didn't hear my key in the lock or the sound of my footsteps across the thinly-carpeted floor.

"I wish you wouldn't stand there. How many times have I told you it's not safe?" I whisper.

He turns then, his hazel eyes so dark with sorrow that they are almost as black as my own guilty heart.

"Maybe I'd rather be shot in the head, than stabbed in the back," he says quietly, his face expressionless. It's only his eyes that bleed in sympathy with his shattered heart.

As always, my only defense against his pain is anger.  I spin away from him, clenching my right fist, struggling for some semblance of control as my blood surges with a rage born of pure fear. My terror that he will finally leave me wars with an insane urge to strike him for making me feel this way. I am still struggling for self-control when he creeps up behind me, wraps his arms around my waist and buries his face into my jacket.  Muffled by the leather, his soft words are barely audible.

"I know," he mumbles. "You were just doing your job."

His forgiveness, so undeserved, so prayed for, works its typical spell over me. My legs lose their struggle to keep me upright and I sink down to my knees in helpless submission.

"Punish me," I beg.  I want him to rage against me, take his frustration out on my flesh, bruise his knuckles on my body to assuage the pain that my masters have inflicted on his soul.

He should kill me for my betrayal, and perhaps I'd even let him do it, but he won't.

Because somehow he believes in me too. 

He knows that I only obeyed my Masters to save him, that the price of his evidence would have been paid for with his own life, that we are both just pawns being pushed around a chessboard played by people who would have no compunction about taking either of our lives.

Just as he is the only pure, good and right thing in my life, just as he is the only light that shines in the darkness of my existence like a beacon of hope, for Mulder I am his one, dark inescapable addiction. Perhaps in the same way that my love for him reminds me constantly of the evil that I otherwise am, maybe his love for me reminds him that he is, in all other things, a good man.

"Strip," he says, his voice emerging huskily from a throat raw with pain.

I am trembling too much to obey. My fingers are shaking so much with relief that he still wants me that they betray the surging need of my body.

His palm connects with the side of my face, a blow so sharp that my head reels and the rushing noise inside my ears reminds me oddly of the surging waves that lap hungrily below that treacherous cliff face. The pain is so sharp, so welcome that my already half-erect cock swells excitedly within the confines of my jeans, and it is that pressure rather than the blow that brings new purpose to my fingers as I rip my jacket and t-shirt off so that my chest is exposed to the bitter chill of Mulder's apartment.

I pause then, knowing what he wants, what I need.

His hands creep around my waist again and slide up my chest until his fingers find my nipples. They are already prominent, not so much from the cold as from the way I can feel his angry erection grinding against my backbone, but now as I look down in a daze of need I see my aureolae darkening with anticipation before his fingers even close in a brutal, bruising vice.

As his thumbs and forefingers tighten with exquisite viciousness, I have to bite my lower lip to prevent myself from screaming out my pleasure. I know from experience that he doesn't want to hear that yet. He wants to hear me cry, plead a little, beg his forgiveness before I voice my pleasure.

Or perhaps that's simply what I need to be able to do. It's meant to be an act of penance, this delicious pain, so it seems wrong to me that I always enjoy it so much.

With infinite gentleness, that somehow hurts more intensely than the burning fire in my bruised nipples, he carefully unstraps my prosthesis. His sure, experienced fingers rub soothing circles over the chaffed skin where the vibrations from my bike have rubbed me almost raw. And, as his fingers weave their magic, easing the tension from my truncated arm, his soft voice flails the armor from around my heart.

"Bastard," he whispers. "You shit. You fucking shit, Alex."

I groan my agreement as my cock pulses greedily against the taut fabric of my jeans and I squirm with excitement as his hands return to their cruel squeezing of my swollen tits.

"I was so close. So fucking close," he snarls and bites the back of my neck.

My whole body is shuddering under his touch and I know that I can't hold on. With a squeal of combined pain and relief I erupt inside my pants, soaking my crotch. He stops nuzzling into the back of my neck and takes a loud appreciating sniff of the musky scent of my submission.

"Bed," he hisses into my ear, then lingers long enough to bite savagely at my ear-lobe.

I stagger to my feet, my knees no longer weak with fear but with the after affects of my orgasm.  When he's in this mood, the wronged righteous angel of vengeance, there's no guarantee that he'll let me find my own pleasure in being fucked. So that, I think, is why I always come first. It's a self-protective, instinctive reaction to grab satisfaction wherever I can.

Or maybe I just flash for him.

He certainly seems to believe that's the case because no matter how angry he is with me, he always smirks when I lose control like this.

He's smirking now as he leads the way into the bedroom, but his back is still taut with anger so I know there'll be no kissing tonight, no hugs, no cuddles, no welcomes home, just the grunting sound of his breath into my neck as he punches my ass with his cock. In some ways, we've come a long way since he would punish my betrayals with the application of his fists into my guts. In other ways, this is simply more of the same old, same old.

Or maybe not, because as I drop my pants, climb onto the bed and instinctively adopt a position on my hands and knees, spreading myself as a silent penitent offering, I hear Mulder give a choking sob that has less to do with anger than with desire.

The mattress creaks and gives slightly under our weight as he climbs behind me and slides between my legs. Either I have been swaying here, head dangling in submission, for longer than I imagine, or Mulder has just broken the land speed record in getting undressed, because my inner thighs are slapped with the unmistakable feel of his own bare legs, and the heat from his bare chest is almost scalding my ass as he sways behind me, adjusting his angle for entry.

A finger touches lightly against my slick hole and I gasp in excitement, then give a squeal of surprised protest as it is replaced by a palm slapping sharply against my ass cheeks.

"Slut," he growls, in reference no doubt to the fact that I hadn't only stopped en route to shave.

Still, he takes immediate advantage of my preparation by abandoning his own half-hearted attempt at stretching me and instead simply pushes his broad, blunt cock-head between my ass-cheeks. His fingers clutch my hips and drag them backwards, while he drives forward in one savage, ceaseless thrust and skewers me. The pain of his violent entry is so intense that I scream and before I have drawn breath again, or even begun to adjust to the invader that feels as though it might cleave me in two, he begins to move inside me.

He begins with short, sharp jabs of his thick cock against the still taut walls of my ass then, just as I start to relax into his rhythm, he changes his pace to deep thrusts that punch into my bowels with merciless anger.

"Oh, god, yeah," I manage to gasp between the guttural cries that are ripped from my throat with each pounding thrust. "Punish me," I beg. "Hurt me baby. That's it."

My encouragement is like a whip that flails him into renewed violence. He starts to throw his whole body weight behind each lunge, twisting his hips to corkscrew into me as though he is determined to choke the words in my mouth by ramming his dick all the way up to my throat.

It hurts so good that I could die at this moment and they'd need an extra coffin just to fit my grin inside.

"Tell me about the body" he whispers into my ear, as we lie spooned together, our limbs tangled in the sticky aftermath.

I stiffen in his arms, my body rigid with tension.

"Body?" I ask innocently.

"Miami airport, one-armed man, disabled toilet, body with stiletto in head?" he prompts.

"Oh, *that* body," I reply casually, as though it has completely slipped my mind. Which, to a certain extent, it had.

"The local guys ran his prints. He's wanted for murder and has a drug-dealing rap as long as his arm. No one's looking too hard for his killer, but I guess you counted on that. So he's one of your *own* guys?" Mulder asks, his voice still amazingly calm.

"Well, you know what they say, 'can't get the staff'," I quip.

His arms tighten around my rib cage and squeeze painfully. I'm uncertain whether it's meant as a punishment for my levity or simply due to his need to reassure himself that I'm really here, rather than lying dead in Miami myself.

"Why?" he asks.

I twist in his embrace until our noses rub together and I give him an incredulous stare. 

"Why the fuck do you think? He had a bullet with my name on, Mulder."

Bright hazel eyes rake me knowingly and a small grin twitches at the corner of his mouth.

"Why?" he repeats, and I swallow nervously. How the hell did I ever let a guy this smart get so under my skin that he understands me better than myself?

"Insurance, I guess," I admit. "You know how they are. They probably figured I helped myself to a little data before I blew the lab and decided to be safe rather than sorry."

"You? Surely not," he replies in a teasing voice, but his whole body has begun to tremble with excited hope.

"Yeah, as if I'd be so stupid," I say dismissively, then I shrug and yawn pointedly.

He narrows his eyes thoughtfully. Like I said, he knows me better than I know myself, sometimes.

"I'm tired," I say. "Shut up and let me sleep."

He nods reluctantly, knowing me well enough not to push. He tries to settle down with me, but tiny quivers are running through his muscles as though he is struggling not to leap to his feet and rummage through my scattered clothing.

"I...um...I need to go...um...get a drink," he finally whispers.

I open a lazy eye and regard his innocent expression. For a moment we are locked there together, both separated and yet strangely connected by our secrets. Then I release my hand from his waist.

"Sure," I agree.

I wait until he is almost out of bed before casually saying: "Oh, Mulder. When you've finished going through the pockets, hang my jacket up, would you? I hate it when the leather creases."

The End