Part Eleven

"Am I dead?" Mulder whimpered. Then, careful not to open his eyes just in case, he shook his head desperately in an effort to recapture some of the brain cells he'd lost when the top of his head had exploded.

"Hmmfphuh?" Alex mumbled.

"I said…" Mulder repeated in a louder croak, "I think I'm dead."

"Hmmffh," Alex agreed, and wriggled happily on his warm Mulder-mattress.

As Alex's weight shifted, Mulder's stomach was ground into a distinctly unpleasant wet puddle. Accepting that the discomfort proved that he was alive after all, Mulder sighed dramatically, tried to squirm out from under Alex's insensate form to escape the damp patch, then gave up with a groan as he realized there was no way to escape the crushing pressure of Alex's body without dislodging the cock that was buried hilt-deep in his ass.

Despite Alex's breathy snores, and belying Mulder's memory of the last four hours or so, Alex was still hard inside him and presumably ready for yet another round.

Mulder clenched his ass slowly to make sure, figuring that even an ex-FBI agent shouldn't take things on face value.

Oh yeah. Definitely still hard.

Still. That didn't prove it was still functional, Mulder reasoned and decided he had an obligation to investigate more thoroughly.

He rocked up against Alex's weight, until the body on top of him began to rock back. For a few minutes he wasn't sure whether Alex was simply being tilted back and forth by his own movements, but then a low growl into his neck sent a shiver of excitement through his spine.

He gasped as he felt Alex slowly rise off his back, then whimpered slightly at the feeling of emptiness as Alex began to withdraw.

"Please," he begged, beyond pride or self-deceit, thrusting his ass high in the air and wriggling it expectantly.

"Shush, baby," Alex purred. "It's yours. All yours. Only yours." And he slammed himself back into the silken heat hard enough to wrench a scream of satisfaction from Mulder's raw throat.

"Mine," Mulder crowed, as Alex began to thrust inside him, as the cock that had just hours ago seemed too monstrously large proved yet again that it was perfectly homed within him.

"Yours," Alex agreed, and Mulder howled with glee at Alex's admission that the demonic flesh that was turning him inside out and burning a path of fire through his synapses was *his*.

It no longer mattered to him whether the road to hell was paved with good demonic fucks. It didn't even matter that he understood how much their relationship had been changed by the last few hours, that he didn't think he'd ever want to return to the fast thrill of fucking Alex with his own too mortal cock when his demonic lover had so ably proven that an immortal's hard-on lasted longer than the Duracell bunny and could carry Mulder along for the ride.

It didn't matter because even in this, even as Alex pounded into him with a violence that would have been as terrifying as wonderful if Mulder hadn't known that Alex could effortlessly repair any damage accidentally caused, Mulder was still in no doubt that *he* was in control.

He had power over Alex because Alex loved him.

Loved *him*.

Finally he understood what an immense thing it was that a creature as powerful as Alex loved him, that a being so fantastical would freely admit that he was willing to belong to him. To be owned by him. To be subject to his desires and wish only to offer him pleasure.

He had captured a demon, not by tricks or traps or snares but simply by snagging its dark little heart. It was wonderful, empowering and yet at the same time terrifying.

It was a two-edged sword.

Because now he had Alex, Mulder knew he'd never be able to let him go.

Yet even as that slightly sobering thought caught him, Alex deepened and lengthened his assault, powering into Mulder with hard, relentless strokes that made the bed-frame groan and shudder beneath them.

"FUCK," Alex screamed, eyes closed, sweat pouring down his forehead and spilling off his lashes like tears onto Mulder's spasming back.

"YES," Mulder agreed, his fingers clawing at the mattress for balance as he thrust back to capture and claim Alex's flesh as his own. "Give it to me, Alex," he yelled, grinding and squeezing his ass so tight around its invader that Alex screamed in his ear.

"Mine," he crowed, as Alex howled and shot an explosion of hot semen into Mulder's ass. "Mine," he repeated deliriously. "My own personal demon."

And then Alex crashed down on top of him, his body limp and sprawling yet heavy enough to crush Mulder's face into the bed.

"Mmmnfghfagh…" Mulder spat into a mouthful of pillow. "Grahff meubgoaf."

"Huh?" Alex slurred.

Mulder's elbow powered upwards. Alex coughed, swore and rolled off Mulder, collapsing breathlessly on his back at Mulder's side.

"I said," Mulder repeated clearly, "Get off me you big oaf."

Then he sniggered at Alex's look of astonished hurt, rose up on his elbows and leaned over to gently kiss Alex's pouting lips.

"I couldn't breathe," he explained, more gently. "You fucked the air out of my lungs and then pinned me face down into the pillow."

"Sorry," Alex mumbled.

"S'okay," Mulder grinned, and then sniggered. "I just had a flashback to something a guy said to me once about autoerotic asphyxiation."

"Best way to go," Alex replied seriously.

"But kind of embarrassing, don't you think?" Mulder pointed out.

"Why worry?" Alex replied, with a shrug. "In the scheme of things it hardly matters how some insignificant soul chooses to leave their mortal life so they may as well enjoy process of leaving it."

"I was thinking about the embarrassment suffered by friends and family," Mulder snarled, as the word 'insignificant' knifed through his guts and woke a familiar fury. "Though I suppose that the concept of 'friends' is beyond a Demon."

"I'll have you know, Mr. Popularity, that *I* have lots of friends," Alex sniffed. "And I really wish you'd stop calling me a demon. Quite apart from the whole demon mythology crap that you load on my head when you do it, it's kind of rude under the circumstances."

"Rude?" Mulder demanded, with a bark of laughter. "At least I didn't call you 'insignificant'."

"I wasn't being rude. Humans *are* insignificant on the whole. It's not my fault you don't like facing reality and, besides, I didn't say *you* were insignificant, did I?"

"But you *are* a demon, Alex."

"No, I'm not," Alex mumbled sulkily. "Not really. That's a huge misconception of my role and I'm really getting pissed off with the way you keep rubbing my nose in it."

"You told me you were a Demon," Mulder pointed out reasonably.

"I was caught off guard and I improvised. Besides, that was before I realized you'd get such a cheap thrill out of ramming the word back down my throat at every opportunity."

"So it's the word you don't like? The connotations behind it?" Mulder queried softly, his right hand creeping over Alex's chest then down to rest on the hard, sculptured stomach.

"Yeah," Alex agreed quietly, raising his own right hand to rest over Mulder's and squeezing gently.

Mulder sighed happily then closed his eyes and nuzzled up against Alex's shoulder, wondering why he'd even started the conversation. He should just lie here, he decided, and drink in Alex's scent. He should just enjoy the way their bodies seemed to be molded as two perfect halves of a whole. In silence they were compatible. Without words, they fit seamlessly together. It was only in conversation that their worlds clashed into violence.

So he'd just keep quiet and enjoy the moment, he decided. Without words between them there would be peace.

He sighed with contentment.

He applauded his common sense.

He praised his self-control.

This *was* the best way to handle their relationship. Keep it to no more than hot sex and silence.

Definitely.

"Okay," he blurted. "So what 'word' would you prefer me to use?"

"Seraphim," Alex muttered after a long pause, and then rolled over onto his stomach to hide his sudden blush.

"You're claiming to be an *Angel*?" Mulder sniggered.

"I'm a 'sort' of Angel," Alex admitted cautiously.

"Exactly what 'sort'?"

"I told you. I'm a Seraphim. That's my designation. My allegiances are irrelevant to my rank."

"The non-flying kind, I take it," Mulder chuckled, running his hand pointedly over the smooth muscles of Alex's back. He felt Alex stiffen under his touch and he sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. I take it you're trying to point out that you're not just some demonic grunt. You're high in the Hellish hierarchy."

"Just drop it, Mulder. You won't understand. It's complicated," Alex replied, with a brave attempt at a nonchalant shrug.

"Try me."

"I'm not a 'demon' and I'm not from Hell, though I admit I've sent a lot of souls there but, believe it or not, I sent more souls to Hell when I worked for the big 'G' than I have since I joined Luke."

"Luke as in 'Lucifer'?" Mulder asked cautiously.

"That's the guy," Alex admitted, turning his head to gift Mulder with a sheepish smile.

"So you work for the Devil? Sounds distinctly demonic to me," Mulder pointed out.

"I told you that you wouldn't understand," Alex sighed. "It's impossible to have this conversation unless you accept that your definition of words like Devil and Demon are intrinsically flawed. Luke's a nice guy. You'll like him."

"I'll take your word for that, if you don't mind," Mulder drawled, "since I have no intention of being in a position to meet him."

"You *will* meet him," Alex said confidently.

"You're saying I'm already damned? That I'm going to Hell?" Mulder demanded, glaring at Alex accusingly.

"You *can't* be damned, Mulder. That's the whole fucking point of all this. Best case scenario is I get you into Purgatory."

"What's the worst case scenario?"

"That you go to Heaven instead," Alex said, and shivered with such obvious misery that Mulder bit back his automatic sarcastic response.

"And that's bad because?" he asked cautiously.

"Apart from the fact that you'd hate it there and *they'd* hate you and that the whole human race will probably get wiped out?" Alex replied. "Well, if that's not enough reason…there's always the fact that I'd…well, I'd miss you. I can't go there any more."

"Misplaced your front door key, huh?" Mulder snorted nastily, to cover up the icy shiver that had trickled down his spine at the thought of spending eternity with only the memory of Alex's touch.

"They're just petty about it," Alex snorted. "Fucking hypocrites. Everyone swans down to Luke's and takes advantage of his 'open-door' policy, but then they refuse to return the invitation. Still, no one actually *wants* to go there except Luke, and no one can stop *him* going anywhere he likes."

"You're telling me that Lucifer can just walk in and out of Heaven whenever he likes?" Mulder demanded incredulously.

"Of course. He's a Sarim."

Mulder checked his phenomenal memory for the reference then shook his head, deciding that there was no way Alex was calling Lucifer a Thai dessert noodle.

"What's a Sarim?"

"I suppose the nearest translation would be Angelic Prince. It's a common Hebrew misconception that our Hierarchy contains a number of Sarim, but it's not true. Until Elias, Luke was the only prince created."

"I thought Elias was a prophet," Mulder argued.

"He was," Alex sighed. "Long, unpleasant tale. Let's not go there. The point is that Luke, being a Sarim, is so much more powerful than an Archangel that no one dares openly challenge him. Even Michael gives him a wide berth when he goes over to chat with the big 'G'."

"Chat?" Mulder repeated with a disbelieving laugh.

"Think about it, Mulder. I know you've read the bible. Didn't you ever wonder how come the so-called Devil managed to have so many recorded conversations with HIM, if he really *was* persona non grata in Heaven? Truth is, Luke frequently pops into the big 'G's house and discusses things with him."

"House?"

Krycek turned onto his side and waived a hand nonchalantly, "I'm trying to explain this in a way you can understand. No point in spouting a load of metaphysical crap, is there? Of course the big G doesn't *really* live in a 'house', but he occupies a certain place in the space-time continuum that 'looks' like a house for the sake of convenience and Luke's the only one who has a spare key."

"Have you been watching Start Trek reruns again?" Mulder mocked.

"They don't play where I come from."

"No Star Trek in Hell? That explains a lot."

"I told you, I don't live in Hell."

"Of course, I forgot. You're an angel."

"An archangel actually," Alex corrected, with an embarrassed shrug.

"Whatever."

"And you've left your wings where again?"

"You're seriously missing the point here, Mulder."

"No I'm not. It's okay, Alex. I get it. You're an angel…excuse me, an 'archangel', who was sent to Earth to save humanity from the nasty aliens."

"Well, among other things," Krycek replied. "My primary role was to keep an eye out for you."

"So you are *my* Guardian Angel. Jeez, I'm living my very own episode of 'Highway to Heaven'. I'm touched."

"I'm not your fucking Guardian Angel," Alex snarled. "I haven't pissed that many of the other seraphim off."

"So who is?"

"What?"

"If you're not my Guardian Angel, where is he…or she? Do Angels come in she's?"

"No, we're hermaphrodites and no, you don't have one."

"Hermaphrodites? Could have fooled me," Mulder snorted, fisting Alex's ample cock and squeezing it possessively. "Why don't I have one? Does everyone else have one?" Mulder's lower lip quivered into a pout.

"This isn't my *real* body, Mulder, and before you get that look in your eyes, yes, I *do* really have a cock. As for Guardian Angels, yes, everyone has one but not individually. Most angels have a few thousand or so souls to look after. Staffing shortages, that kind of thing. Besides, there are other issues. Freewill and all that. Anyway, it means no-one's got the time to hang around any individual client permanently. They just pop in and out when necessary until the human runs out of lives. Most humans get nine chances and then they get thrown off the books."

"Like cats, huh?" Mulder snorted.

"I don't think cats *have* Guardian Angels. Never thought about it. I'll ask their union if you really want to know."

"So which angel has me on their books?"

"I told you. Humans only get nine lives. You ran out a good ten years ago. No-one will touch you with a barge pole. You've become infamous, actually. Threatening to add you to their books is the best way to keep a junior angel in line."

"Okay, I'll bite. Let's pretend I'm high on whatever it is you're smoking, Alex. Tell me why *you* were looking out for me if I'm such a lost cause?"

"The Job effect. It's like the Doppler effect but not always as noisy."

"Run that one by me again."

"Luke's pissed with the big G over all this alien crap. Seems the big G fucked up big time and is trying to cover it up with a bit of misdirection. Hence your involvement in all this."

Mulder thought about it, then shook his head. "Nope, your particular brand of insanity is still beyond my comprehension."

"Listen. The big G made the universe, okay? Then he decided he was lonely and made himself some Angels to keep him company. With me so far? So they spent a few dozen millennia crawling around, kissing his feet, and then he got bored and decided to make some new Angels. Seraphim like me. Ones that could actually hold a conversation with him. Of course, the downside of that is that we finally decided that we wanted *more*.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, it wasn't that we were unhappy exactly but we finally figured out that a life where kissing his butt was the highlight of our existence was pretty unfulfilling. So, we started wandering off and doing our own thing. We got away with it at first, since there were enough of us to take turns at doing the worshipping thing, but finally he figured out that we weren't *really* paying attention.

"He wasn't *too* shitty about it at first. I mean even *he* gets bored sometimes, so he knew how we felt, but then he had a bad day, Luke blew him out or something, and he got pissed with the lot of us. So he decided to make humans. He figured a bit of competition would make us all tow the party line.

"But Luke played it cool and pretended he didn't care. He figured the big G would wise up, get bored with his new toys and come back to him. Instead, the big G got *really* pissed at what he perceived as Luke's rejection and declared that Humans were now his favorite toy and that, from then on, even Luke was lower in rank than the lowest human. Which is a bit like some guy bringing home a new wife and telling his old one that from now on she's the maid. Of course, Luke reacted like any other jilted lover. He and the big G fell out big time and the big G realized he'd fucked up.

"Only he couldn't admit it, since he's supposed to be omnipotent and all that crap, so he made out that the whole human experiment was really just an elaborate game and that his *real* intention in creating humans was just because he sympathized with the fact we were all bored and so he'd come up with the idea to keep us occupied.

"He gave humans freewill, split the firmament in two, gave half to Luke and said that the rules of the 'game' were simple. There's a bank of souls that enter a new human body in a state of 'balance'. Then, depending on how the human lives its life, the soul can either stay balanced and survive to play again or the scale can tip and the soul then becomes a point. Good human souls go up, bad souls go down. Luke and the big G keep a scorecard and see which one of them wins in the end."

"So where do the aliens come into this?" Mulder demanded.

"They don't. Or at least they shouldn't. The big G is cheating."

"You know something, Alex? Forget a thesis, I could write a whole library based on your particular brand of psychosis."

"Yeah, well whatever gets your rocks off, Mulder."

"Not a very angelic response."

"What the fuck do you know about Angels?" Alex countered.

"I'm just saying you sound more like a gutter rat than a messenger of God to me."

"You mean you'd prefer a burning bush?"

"A burning Krycek has distinct possibilities."

"Bastard."

"See what I mean? You just don't *talk* like an angel," Mulder sniggered.

"I never said I was *that* kind of Angel. I don't work for the big G."

"Aha. I knew it. You *are* a demon."

"You know how much I hate that term," Alex sighed. "I am *not* a demon. I'm an archangel. I just happen to be on Luke's payroll rather than the big G's."

"Semantics," Mulder laughed. "So you're a fallen angel."

"I didn't fall."

"You were pushed?"

"I jumped," Krycek snarled. "And if you had any damn sense you'd be glad I did."

"Why?"

"Because out of the two players in this game, Luke's the only one who has a vested interest in saving humanity."

"Come again?"

"Think about it, Mulder. Who made the aliens?"

"God?" Mulder asked, with a careless shrug.

"Exactly," Krycek announced, then waited expectantly. When Mulder just continued to look at him blankly, he gave a long-suffering sigh. "What do you think colonization means? It means the end of the game. Humanity dies. End of story."

"Why does Lucifer care?"

"He likes humans. Things were pretty boring before you lot were created. He enjoys the game and doesn't want it to end. That's why he let me save someone recently who was destined to be a point for *our* side. He doesn't want to lose the game, but he doesn't want to win it either. These days, he spends more time 'accidentally' letting souls escape damnation than kicking their butts into hell."

"Why?"

"Think about it. This game's been going on for millennia. Slowly, *very* slowly, Luke is winning regardless of his own intentions. Every generation more humans fall from grace. The proportion of damned souls versus saved souls is moving like a slow pendulum in his direction. In a few more centuries, Luke will probably win whether he wants to or not."

"Or not," Mulder pointed out. "Civilizations rise and fall. Morals and behavior change. Just because there are proportionally more potentially 'fallen' souls at the moment doesn't mean the trend will continue that way indefinitely."

"True," Alex agreed easily. "That's why it's a game. Parry and thrust. It *could* continue indefinitely. Only it won't if the big G has his way. He's bottled it. He sees potential failure and has decided to cheat. Colonization now, complete genocide while the balance is still slightly in his favor, and that's it; Judgment Day."

"Why would God cheat?"

"Because if he loses, if he sits back and takes the chance that Luke might win, then *everyone* dies."

"You've lost me again."

"If the big G loses, then he *isn't* what he claims to be."

"You're saying that if God loses, it proves he's not really God?"

"In a nutshell."

"And then what?"

"We assume he just dissipates back wherever he came from and everything he created, namely *us*, dissolves with him. Which is why HIS angels have a vested interest in avoiding Judgment Day too. It's a delicate situation, Mulder. We spend more time negotiating temporary truces than fighting these days. Neither side wants to risk losing, but neither does anyone want to win. That's why it's reached a point where it's practically impossible to identify who's wearing a white hat in this conflict. Hell, Gabriel's responsible for more human suffering over the last four generations than all of Luke's angels combined. Yet he's *supposedly* one of the 'good guys'.

"The one thing *both* sides are agreed on is that the alien invasion is a bad thing, but Luke wants to stop it completely while Gabriel is trying to sit on the fence. He doesn't dare openly defy the big 'G' in case he gets kicked out of Heaven. So he's come up with his own plan. He says the answer is alien-human hybrids."

"Why?"

"Because after nearly sixty years of fuck-ups, Gabriel's finally managed to create a hybrid that has a soul. The colonization goes ahead, humanity gets wiped out, but the game doesn't end as long as the alien-human hybrids breed. It's actually a damn good idea, really. Well, unless you like humans the way they are."

"And I suppose I'm supposed to believe that 'Luke' is the one who likes humans the way they are."

"Oh, yes," Alex assured him. "Luke *loves* humans, or at least he loves the way that souls behave when they've *been* human. Gabriel doesn't, but then if you met the kind of souls who end up in heaven it's hardly surprising that he has such a low opinion of humanity in general. The really 'interesting' humans all end up in Purgatory."

"So who ends up in Hell?"

"Not as many souls as you'd imagine," Alex admitted. "But then not that many make it to Heaven either so it never used to be a problem. Unfortunately, the Game's been going on for a hell of a long time, there's a finite number of souls, and in every generation there's a proportion of truly evil people just as there are some truly good ones, so the game *is* slowly grinding towards its end. Without the alien factor we figure you've got maybe another thousand years or so, tops. It's not *that* long in real terms but it would give us time to come up with a different solution."

"What kind of solution?"

"Fuck knows," Alex admitted with a desolate shrug. "We were kind of hoping that *you* might think of something."

"I'm glad to see that there *is* a point at which this psychotic fantasy falls apart."

"You're hopeless, Mulder. You've spent your whole life looking for 'the truth' and when you finally find it you can't see it in front of your face."

"I can't?" Mulder asked, bending down and flicking his tongue across Alex's mouth until Alex groaned and opened his lips in invitation. "Seems to me I can see *one* truth in front of my face, Alex."

He plundered Alex's mouth with his tongue, sweeping his flesh through the unresisting sweetness and drinking in the taste of his lover before pulling back with a satisfied sigh.

"What truth?" Alex gasped, arching his hips until their cocks met and began an eager dance, hot flesh sliding and bumping against hot flesh.

"That regardless of who, what or why you are, Alex, or whether I believe that 'Luke' is on humanity's side, there is *one* thing I do want to believe," Mulder announced, bending his elbows until his weight dropped onto Alex's stomach, crushing their erections between their bodies so that they both whimpered with pained pleasure and mindlessly squirmed against each other to increase the sensation. "That you *do* have a vested interest in saving at least *one* human, so maybe it makes sense that you want to save the others too."

"Oh, yes," Alex agreed, with a happy moan, but then stiffened slightly as his conscience pricked him. He wondered whether Mulder would be so sanguine about his own possible motives if he knew the whole truth.

"What?" Mulder demanded, as he felt the sudden tension in Alex's body. "What's wrong?"

"Um…I think maybe it's time I told you about your dad."

Go to Part Twelve