Only when you leave,
By Mort

Written for the ’fairy tale’ M/K lyric wheel.



~~~~


The moment he climbed into the car he smelled it, faint but unmistakable, and he frowned with confusion. Alex didn’t smoke. So why the hell did his car smell like an old ashtray?

His first thought was that his squeaky-clean junior agent obviously had a secret vice and that idea was oddly comforting, considering the fact he had a few secret vices himself. But then his profiling instincts flipped into gear. Alex’s clothes and hair never smelt of smoke. Neither did he have the constant minty breath that indicated careful concealment of a nicotine habit. So there was no way Alex was creeping off for clandestine smokes whenever Mulder’s back was turned.

Of course, maybe Alex had a *girlfriend* who smoked….

Something unidentifiable churned uncomfortably in his stomach at the thought. He’d never questioned Alex about his private life. It was only now, sitting in Alex’s car, wondering about the possible existence of a significant other in Alex’s life that it occurred to him that he knew just about nothing about his new partner.

Because he hadn’t asked, had he?

Hell, the truth was that he’d gone out of his way to make it clear to his unwanted new partner that he had absolutely *no* interest in his private life. Or professional life. Or anything else, for that matter.

Mulder rubbed his face a little guiltily and sighed, remembering an incident a few days previously when they’d been driving back to DC late at night and Alex, who had been increasingly subdued all day, had asked him for perhaps the fourth time that day whether Mulder could stop somewhere for food. His initial inclination had been to say no, just as he had at breakfast, lunch and dinner time. It wasn’t that Mulder had anything against eating in principle, but he’d been far too keyed up to eat himself and hadn’t seen why he should hang around a restaurant watching his partner stuff his face. So over the course of the day, whenever they’d stopped for gas or whatever, he’d idly noticed Alex making a desperate break for any visible vending machines and had just shrugged to himself and carried on.

But on the fourth request, when he’d turned to face his partner with a quip on the edge of his tongue that Alex could stand to lose a pound or two anyway, he’d guiltily noticed that Alex looked ill. Pale, slightly sweating and, hell, if Mulder hadn’t known better, he’d have said Alex was on the verge of fainting. Something had clicked into place then, as he’d cast his mind rapidly back over their short acquaintance. Alex *never* went more than a few hours without food.

“You got a problem?” he’d asked, wincing internally when even to his own ears the question had sounded more like a taunt than genuine concern.

Alex had flushed, two spots of high color on his cheeks that had appeared as garish as rouge against his over-pale face, and had mumbled something under his breath. Mulder hadn’t heard most of it, but two of the reluctant words, ‘blood sugar’, had hit him like a physical slap.

He’d slammed his foot on the brake, turned to Alex with a barely constrained violence that had made Alex flinch slightly, and had grabbed hold of Alex’s left hand.

Even looking for the signs, it had taken him a moment to clearly see the tiny indentations on the pad of Alex’s thumb. And then he’d felt like a sick, selfish, self-centered bastard. But he still hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the realization out loud. Bad enough that he felt like a total prick without him actually naming the affliction Alex had and thereby acknowledging the fact that he’d never even bothered to read far enough into Alex’s jacket to have checked his medical history

How the hell could he be partners with the man and *not* know something so crucial and potentially life-threatening?

But he’d known the answer even as he’d berated himself with the question. Because they’d never talked. Because Mulder had made a point of cutting Alex off mid-sentence if he ever let his conversation slide away from purely professional matters towards the taboo subject of ‘personal’ details.

So all he’d said, as he put the car back into drive and began looking for a late-night diner was, ‘Check yourself now and tell me whether I should be driving you to an ER. The last thing I need is you collapsing in my car.”

Again, he’d flinched internally at his own impatient and apparently heartless words. He’d been staring through the windscreen, unable to look at Alex, but aware peripherally of Alex’s intense humiliation as he’d pulled a small, pen-like glucose monitor out of the inner pocket of his jacket, and hearing the slight intake of breath from the passenger seat as the tiny needle burst through the skin of Alex’s thumb.

“I’m okay,” Alex had muttered after checking, his voice tight with anger and embarrassment. “I just need something to eat.” At Mulder’s continued silence, which had no doubt seemed like unspoken accusation to him, he’d defensively added that he still had a candy bar in his pocket in case of emergency but that it would be far better for his health if Mulder would stop the damned car and let him eat some *real* food..

Mulder hadn’t said anything to that. He’d just driven silently to a Denny’s and then had played half-heartedly with a cup of coffee while Alex had wolfed down an all-day-breakfast and two large glasses of orange juice.

The silence of that meal had been painful. Alex had clearly been both humiliated and resentful, obviously hating the fact that Mulder had pushed him into a situation where he’d been forced to visibly reveal a serious vulnerability. A vulnerability that Alex had every reason to believe Mulder was already well aware of.

Mulder’s silence had been one of shame. How the hell hadn’t he known Alex was diabetic?

So, a few days later, sitting in Alex’s car, when it occurred to him that he *still* didn’t know anything about his partner, Mulder felt doubly shamed.

Why hadn’t he learned his lesson? Why, after the blood sugar incident, hadn’t he taken Alex aside for a few moments and talked to him like he was a human being instead of an unwanted albatross hung around his neck?

The answer was pretty obvious really.

And in the wake of Scully’s abduction it even made sense to him.

He’d let *one* partner get under his skin. He’d allowed himself to care for Scully and he’d lost her. First by a transfer and then by her complete disappearance. He felt adrift without her. Completely rudderless. And that made him angry.

He’d never needed anyone before. He’d coped perfectly well with being a lone pariah. But he’d let Scully creep her way past his defences and now, with her absence, he felt incomplete.

It wasn’t worth it, he’d decided. If caring about someone made you vulnerable then it was better to remain a loner.

And that was why he had no idea whether Alex had a girlfriend. Why he hadn’t known Alex was a diabetic. It was even the reason he was sitting alone in Alex’s car in the first place. Because he never even spent working hours with his new partner if he could possibly help it.

He felt a little sick and guilty, as though he was rifling through Alex’s private underwear drawers or something, but he suddenly *had* to know why Alex’s car smelled of cigarette smoke.

So he pulled on the plastic tab on the dashboard and pulled open the concealed ashtray.

For a split-second he smirked triumphantly at the small pile of cigarette butts. Then he faltered and felt *really* nauseous. With slightly shaking fingers, he reached in to the ashtray, gingerly extracted one of the stubs and stared at it with an increasingly painful knot in his stomach.

A Morley.

And not a trace of lipstick on it.

In itself it was proof of nothing. It was a regular brand. The stubs could have ended up in Alex’s ashtray from any of a million people. Whoever had smoked in Alex’s car could still just be a girlfriend. Not all women wore lipstick. Hell, it could even be a boyfriend. Alex was sure as hell pretty enough to play either side of the fence.

He had a momentary sensation of vertigo, as he reeled in shock at his own thought. How the hell could he give so little attention to Alex that he hadn’t even noticed him sliding gradually towards a potential diabetic coma in front of his own eyes and yet still have subconsciously noticed he was ‘pretty’?

But he didn’t even have time to follow the thought before his guts churned. He barely had time to throw open the car door and stumble out onto the sidewalk before he vomited. And, even as he spewed his breakfast onto the paving slabs beneath his feet, he *knew* that the person who had left the butts in Alex’s car was the same shadowy figure who hung around Skinner’s office like a bad stench.

He knew.

He couldn’t prove it. He had no evidence. Even DNA wouldn’t help him since he had no way of comparing the saliva on the butts to that of the mysterious smoker.

And yet he *knew*.

Half an hour later, when he’d recovered enough, he climbed back into the car and headed towards Alex’s apartment. There was no point in doing anything else. The only way to prove his suspicions would be to confront Alex face-to-face and force a confession out of him. And he didn’t necessarily mean verbally. His fingers were already fisting around the steering wheel in anticipation.

The moment he’d decided Alex was guilty, a myriad of corroborative evidence had lined up inside his head to add to his arsenal of accusations. The disappearance of X’s file during the Grissom case. Scully’s abduction. The mysterious vanishing of the tram driver at Skyland Mountain. Duane Barry’s death. All those things had happened since he’d been assigned a new ‘partner’.

Now he thought about it, he wasn’t even surprised. Scully had been assigned to him initially to debunk his work. Why the hell would her replacement be anything other than *another* plant?

He felt like physically slapping himself across the head.

He’d fallen hook, line and sinker for Alex Krycek’s innocent puppy routine. He’d treated having Alex as a partner as a necessary evil and had frequently felt smug that it was so easy to run hoops around such an irritatingly naïve young Agent.

But it now seemed that it hadn’t been *he* who had been running hoops.

“I’m going to kill him,” he muttered to himself, over and over, as he drove towards Alex’s home. And though he didn’t mean it literally, the adrenaline surging through his body suggested that he *might* give it a damned good try.

He reached the road where Alex lived without difficulty but it took him another twenty minutes or so to identify the right apartment block. Although he refused to dwell on it, he *did* feel vaguely uneasy that he’d never visited Alex’s home before. Whenever it had been necessary for the pair of them to meet up outside of the Bureau for a field trip, he’d always either insisted that Alex collected him or made arrangements to meet him at some public point en route to their destination. And on their return to DC Mulder had always either driven him back to where his car was parked or had dropped him off at the Bureau to make his own way home. He’d never once, even on the night when Alex had become ill, driven Alex *home*.

“Because he lives in the wrong direction,” he reminded himself furiously. “It would have wasted time.”

And that was true, but it still made him slightly uneasy because it was *also* a lie. It had never bothered him if *Alex* had driven half-an-hour out of his way to pick him up in the morning or drop him home at night.

So even in his self-righteous fury that his ‘partner’ was apparently at least a spy and possibly a hell of a lot worse, he couldn’t help wondering whether *he* was responsible for Scully’s abduction.

Because if Alex had been instrumental in that abduction, and Mulder was beginning to strongly suspect he might have been, then the only thing that *might* have prevented what had happened at Skyland Mountain was if Alex had decided not to go through with his orders.

And the only possible reason Alex would have had to change his loyalties, would have been if he’d transferred his loyalty to *Mulder* like Scully had done. But why the hell would Alex give a damn about Mulder? Mulder sure as hell had never given a damn about *him*.

If Mulder had still had anything in his stomach, he would have vomited again.

Was that it?

Was Scully’s abduction *his* fault?

Of course it was. He’d been told to stay away from her. But he hadn’t. He’d even called her in to assist on the Grissom case and had not only let Alex witness that assistance but he’d practically thrown her expertise in Alex’s face as proof that no subsequent partner could *ever* measure up to her.

And Alex, the little bastard, had betrayed him. He’d told person or persons unknown that Mulder was still working with Scully and *that’s* why she’d been abducted.

But a niggling, irritating, unwanted voice in the back of Mulder’s head still wouldn’t stop asking whether he could have prevented Alex’s ‘betrayal’ if only he’d treated Alex better.

He couldn’t stop thinking of all the times he’d childishly refused to let Alex drive, even when he himself had been falling asleep at the wheel. The times he’d refused to stop for food, no matter how politely Alex had asked him to do so. And, okay, he hadn’t *known* regular food was such a crucial issue to Alex but he *should* have known. Alex would have had every reason to believe his direct supervisor would at least have bothered to read the entry in his jacket that proclaimed him a diabetic.

So, every time that Mulder had sneered at his requests to stop for lunch, Alex must have seen Mulder’s behavior as deliberate cruelty.

Empty stomach or not, Mulder staggered to the edge of the sidewalk and heaved again until his throat burned with bile.

He got no answer at Alex’s apartment but since it was likely that Alex hadn’t even made his way home yet – since Mulder had abandoned him at the Bureau without a car – Mulder used his badge and a little friendly persuasion with the building supervisor who had a master key to all the apartments. He liked the idea of already being in place when his unsuspecting partner walked through his front door.

But the moment he stepped into Alex’s apartment he knew he was too late.

There wasn’t a personal item in sight. Every shelf, nook and cranny was bare. The closet was empty. The phone, when he checked it, had been disconnected.

It had been little over an hour since he’d appropriated Alex’s car keys but Alex’s apartment was already abandoned. Cleared and cleaned so thoroughly that it seemed as though a team of professional cleaners had swept through it.

Hell, there wasn’t even any dust on the furniture and Mulder had the oddest feeling that a complete forensic examination wouldn’t pick up even a single fingerprint, hair or skincell to prove the identity of the apartment’s former occupant.

The supervisor looked vaguely surprised but unconcerned by his tenant’s disappearance. “He paid six months rent and a security deposit up front,” he explained with a shrug. “It’s no skin off my nose if he’s left without giving notice.”

Mulder drove home to his own apartment in a near haze.

Why had Alex run?

The only possible reason he would have had to flee the moment Mulder had left him in the Bureau was if he’d expected Mulder not only to find the cigarette butts in his car but to then put two and two together and make five. Even then he could have bluffed his way out of the situation. Even if Mulder had dragged him in front of Skinner and yelled out his accusations, Alex could have just rolled his eyes and pointed out that DC was *full* of people who smoked Morleys.

Come to think of it, the smoker of the Morleys himself might well have been in Skinner’s office at the time, laughing his ass off at Mulder’s attempt to blow Alex’s cover.

Besides, why the hell had Alex given him the car keys in the first place?

It wasn’t a pool car. It was Alex’s own vehicle. Alex could simply have told him to go to hell when he’d demanded the keys. If the situation had been reversed, Mulder definitely would have refused to lend Alex his car.

It didn’t make sense.

None of it made sense.

And what sure as hell *definitely* didn’t make sense was the fact that he let himself into his apartment and discovered that Alex Krycek was sitting on his couch with a rucksack at his feet.

He didn’t stop to think.

He charged over, grabbed Alex by his lapels, dragged him to his feet and slammed his fist into Alex’s guts.

It gave him a sense of momentary satisfaction when Alex doubled over and looked likely to throw up. Having thrown up himself twice over the past hour, it seemed like karmic retribution. But Alex managed to catch his breath and straighten again without actually vomiting, so Mulder found himself automatically swinging his fist again.

Only for it to be caught mid-swing by a surprisingly strong hand around his wrist.

“The first one’s free, Mulder,” Alex snarled, his already husky voice strained and breathy from the effects of the first punch. “I reckon I owe you *one*. Hit me again and I *will* hit you back.”

Although Mulder was still almost too angry to care whether they ended up in a free-for-all, there was something in the way Alex said it, combined with the unexpected speed of Alex’s reflexes in stopping the second blow, that gave Mulder the sudden, sobering impression that Alex’s inoffensive puppy act had been concealing a well-trained and dangerous wolf. Even the way Alex had adjusted his stance since straightening up suggested he was more than capable of inflicting some serious physical harm if he wanted to.

So Mulder jerked his arm free and stepped backwards a pace, forcing himself to bank his fury and use his mind instead.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded tightly.

Alex shrugged slightly. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’s pretty stupid really. I can’t figure out why I give a shit, under the circumstances, but I… I still didn’t want to just leave without… hell, I don’t know. What’s the fucking point? I’m out of here.”

As Alex pushed past him, heading for the door, Mulder made a half-hearted reach for his weapon but then stopped. What the hell was he going to do? Shoot Alex? As tempting as the thought was, right at that moment, how the hell would he justify drawing a weapon on his ‘partner’? All he had were suspicions and circumstantial evidence. Shooting Alex would just get *him* arrested.

“Wait,” he cried out, moving swiftly to block the doorway with his body. “The fact you’re here proves you want to talk. So talk. Don’t run away. Talk to me, Alex. Tell me what the hell is going on here.”

Alex met his eyes and Mulder almost flinched at the bitter hurt reflected in the younger man’s expression.

“What’s the point?” Alex snapped. “You’ve never wanted to listen to me before. Why the hell do you care now? I made a mistake coming here. I should have just left.”

Mulder’s anger, already wavering under confusion, deflated suddenly and he spread his arms in a gesture of reconciliation. “You’re right,” he agreed quietly. “I never have listened to you, Alex. I’ve never given you any reason to trust me and although I’m beginning to suspect I’ve had a damned good reason for not trusting you, I think I at least deserve an explanation before you leave. And that’s why you’re here. Because you *know* I deserve one.”

“I can’t give you any damned ‘explanation’,” Alex replied defensively. “If I’d known what the hell I was getting into, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place. But I’ve wised up and I’m getting the hell out of Dodge before *I* end up like Scully too.”

Mulder’s temper flared again and, forgetting any self-protective instincts, he grabbed hold of Alex’s jacket once more. “Then you *do* know what happened to her, you bastard. Tell me where she is or by God I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” Alex snarled, pulling free again. “I don’t fucking *know* what’s happened to her, but I sure as hell know she wasn’t abducted by *aliens*. She fucked up. She sided with you and they let her get away with *that*. She should have kept her head low and been grateful. But, no, the stupid cow still kept helping you and so she ‘disappeared’. Well, I’m not going to be another Scully, Mulder. I’m not that damned suicidal.”

“What do you mean?” Mulder asked carefully.

“I told you. I was stupid and gullible, but I wised up. I figured out who’s wearing the black hat in this game and it’s *not* you, after all. I’m not going to help them bury you. But… but I’m sure as hell not going to put myself on the line for you, either. So I’m out of here. I don’t know enough for them to bother coming after me.” He paused and looked a little confused. “I meant to just run. I don’t know why the hell I came here.”

Mulder closed his eyes for a brief moment, thinking furiously, and then he met Alex’s eyes and gave him a small, understanding nod. “Sit down, Alex. Let me fetch us a couple of beers and we’ll talk this through properly.”

Alex looked both stunned and panicked. “You’re not going to talk me out of leaving,” he blurted.

“Just sit down and have a beer,” Mulder replied calmly.

He waited until Alex seated himself warily then fetched the beer and a bag of pretzels. “I don’t want your blood sugar dropping and I’d guess you’ve been running around in too much of a panic to eat,” he said, throwing the pretzels in Alex’s lap and then handing him the beer.

Alex’s look of surprise would have been comical if it hadn’t made Mulder’s stomach clench. It actually *hurt* him to see how bemused Alex was by such a tiny gesture of consideration on his own part. Had he really been *that* much of a self-centered asshole?

“You deliberately left those butts in your car. You wanted me to find them, so that I’d know *why* you left,” he said, surprisingly calmly. “You’ve been planning to run for a while now. You couldn’t possibly have gotten home, packed up and cleared out of your apartment in less than an hour, so your cases were already packed. You were just waiting for the right moment, and when I asked for your car keys you figured that today was as good a day as any.”

Alex looked stunned but nodded a silent agreement.

“You were too scared of the smoker to leave me any actual evidence,” Mulder continued. “You couldn’t risk pissing him off by leaving a written confession or anything. But you knew the cigarette butts would be enough of a clue to tell me who you’ve been working for, while in themselves they’re inadmissible as evidence of any wrongdoing on your part.”

Alex steepled his fingers and dropped his head towards his lap. “I… I didn’t want it to happen again,” he mumbled quietly.

Mulder frowned in confusion for a moment, then blushed slightly. “You mean you didn’t want me to be so goddamned gullible a third time. By pointing the finger at yourself, you were warning me off trusting any *more* partners?”

Alex shook his head. “I… I didn’t want you to think I’d been… Hell, I don’t know why I thought you’d even care.”

Mulder took a sudden deep breath and stared at Alex in complete shock. Of course. If he hadn’t found the butts and Alex had simply ‘vanished’ then he’d have assumed Alex had been ‘abducted’ too. The idea that *both* of his partners had been taken to control him would have pushed him over the edge.

“I would have cared,” he said quietly, “I would have kept looking for you, Alex. I wouldn’t have given up on you.”

He flinched minutely at Alex’s look of disbelief.

“What part did you play in Scully’s abduction?” he asked quietly, deliberately keeping his tone non-accusing.

Alex’s eyes flashed with offence. “I had nothing to do with it. I already told you why she was taken. I didn’t even know that was the solution they’d decided on until after Duane Barry had abducted her. My orders then were just to make sure that *you* didn’t catch up with her on Skyland Mountain. They didn’t want to be put in a position where they’d have to take *you* too.”

“Did you kill Duane Barry?”

“Did you?” Alex snapped back. “It wasn’t *me* in that room, trying to choke him to death.”

“Answer me.”

“No, I didn’t. There was something in his water. And, again, I only found out about that when they tried to frame you. That’s when I lost it, Mulder. That’s when I figured out everything I’d been told was a lie. The Government doesn’t sanction murder. So there’s no way in hell that Spender…” Alex came to an abrupt, choking halt, his eyes widening with terror.

“Who’s Spender, Alex?” Mulder asked gently.

Alex shook his head, rising to his feet with the clear intention of bolting. “I’ve already said too much. Enough to get me killed already, maybe.”

“Alex,” Mulder crooned softly. “I can help you. Get you some kind of protective custody or something.”

“I won’t die for you, Mulder,” Alex snarled. “I don’t fucking owe you *anything*.”

And, oddly, Mulder suddenly realized that Alex was right. If he *had* just been an innocent dupe, reporting to someone he believed was a member of a legitimate government organization, and the only ‘crime’ he’d committed was to prevent Mulder’s own abduction along with Scully, then Alex had already given Mulder more information than he deserved.

In fact, looking at it from *that* point of view, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why Alex had come to his apartment at all. They weren’t friends. To be totally honest, Mulder had been a complete bastard to Alex since day one. He’d never done anything to deserve even the small amount of consideration Alex had shown him by deciding he couldn’t leave without ‘confessing’.

“You don’t have to run away at all, Alex,” he said, his brow creased in thought. “It would probably be safer for you if you *didn’t* leave.”

“Safe like Agent Scully?” Alex mocked.

“Is she dead?” Mulder asked bluntly.

Alex flinched. “I don’t know,” he confessed, “but they *said* she’s still alive. They said she might still be useful to them so she’s just being held somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t fucking *know*.”

Mulder took a deep breath and nodded. Strangely enough, every time that Alex got rattled enough to swear, his words gained an unmistakable ring of truth.

“If you stay, Alex. If you work with me while still appearing to report to Spender, we could get her back,” he suggested.

Alex looked at him as though he’d gone insane. “Why the hell should I? It’s not *my* damned fault she was taken. Maybe I’ve been naïve, but I’m not stupid, Mulder. I’m not throwing my life away to try and save a woman who dislikes me for the sake of a man who despises me. Save your own fucking girlfriend and leave me out of it.”

Mulder blinked rapidly as his mind suddenly leapt to a conclusion that even *he* struggled to believe. Was it really as simple as that? Was *that* why Alex had found it impossible to leave without saying ‘goodbye’, even though he was convinced that Mulder despised him?

“She’s not my ‘girlfriend’, Alex. She’s my partner,” he corrected softly.

Instead of soothing Alex, it was like lighting a fuse.

“I’m supposed to be your goddamned partner, Mulder,” Alex howled, his face twisting with hurt fury.

Mulder opened his mouth to retort that Alex was *actually* supposed to be spying on him, but then he bit back the words unspoken. The same accusation could have been made at one time to Scully, he reminded himself. The essential difference between Scully and Alex wasn’t their behavior towards him but his behavior towards them.

“You’re right,” he admitted quietly. “I never gave you a chance, Alex. I shut you out from the first day we met. I never gave you a single opportunity to see the situation from my perspective. If I’d worked with you, instead of against you, you might have realized that Spender was using you sooner. Maybe even soon enough to prevent Scully being taken. You had no reason to see me as the ‘good guy’ because I went out of my way to be a total bastard to you. But appearances to the contrary, I *don’t* despise you. In fact… well, the fact you came here today and laid it on the line has actually impressed the hell out of me. It took a lot of bravery to face me, Alex. I respect you for that.”

Alex sat down abruptly, breathing heavily, his face a picture of shock.

“Because of that bravery, I *know* you’ve got the guts to stay here and help me, Alex. And I swear that if you *do* stay, everything will be different from now on. No more ditching you like a bad date. No more stupid macho mind-games. We’ll work together as real partners. I’ll even let you drive,” he added, with a sheepish smile. “And…and I swear to you that from now on when we’re on a case we’ll eat proper meals and I’ll show real consideration for you, instead of acting like your needs are an inconvenience.”

A look of genuine longing flickered over Alex’s face as though all he’d ever dreamed of was being treated like a *real* partner by Mulder. But he still shook his head negatively. “It’s too late,” he replied sadly. “I’ve already told Spender that I’m leaving.”

“And he’s just letting you go?” Mulder asked, stunned by the idea.

Alex blushed a little. “He’s not happy with me,” he agreed, “but I gave him an explanation he could understand. One that… well, put it this way, he’s not sure he *wants* me working for him anyway. And he sure as hell doesn’t see me as a threat to him now. He’s kind of…old-fashioned, you could say.”

Looking at Alex’s embarrassed posture and incorporating his earlier conclusion into what Alex had just said, Mulder made one of his intuitive leaps.

“You told him you were gay, didn’t you?”

Alex flinched slightly and seemed unable to look Mulder in the face, but he still inclined his head in agreement.

“And he’s stupid and bigoted enough to think that being gay makes you somehow less than a ‘real’ man?” he asked gently.

“It was like a switch flicking inside his head,” Alex agreed, his tone a mixture of relief and resentment. “One minute I was a well-trained operative with a golden future and the next he was looking at me like he thought I might put on a dress and start mincing around his office like a drag queen.”

Mulder snorted with a combination of humor and disgust. “Let me guess, he’s never going to dare turn his back on you either? He’s one of those straight assholes who think every gay man they meet wants to jump his bones?”

Alex shivered with disgust. “Have you *seen* him, Mulder? I’d rather fuck a reticulan.”

“Stick with me and you might get a chance,” Mulder chuckled lightly.

“You…you don’t have a problem with me…um… with me…”

“Being gay?” Mulder interrupted. “I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I’m an equal opportunity porn voyeur.”

“It still doesn’t make any difference,” Alex sighed. “The fact I’m gay was enough reason for Spender to decide he doesn’t need to kill me. It isn’t the *reason* he’s agreed to let me go.”

“No,” Mulder agreed quietly. “I imagine the reason he agreed it was impossible for you to keep working with me is that you told him you’d fallen in love with me.”

Wide-eyed, Alex shot to his feet, spilling the pretzels onto the floor.

“Sit down, Alex,” Mulder sighed. “I can see why that makes it difficult for you to stay. But it’s not impossible. Like you admitted yourself, they didn’t act against Scully simply because she changed her loyalties to me. They only got worried about her when she and I proved too effective a team against them. Well, I’ve learned my lesson. We have to be a little more covert than Scully and I were. Be less *obviously* effective against them. They won’t try to separate us unless they see us as a real threat, so we’ll dance under the radar for a bit.”

Alex shook his head. “It still won’t work,” he argued. “Spender’s never going to believe I changed my mind. I…” he paused and blushed furiously. “I laid it on too thick. I gave him the whole broken-hearted faggot routine. He was so disgusted he was almost sick. He couldn’t let me get out of his office fast enough.”

“Don’t you *ever* call yourself a faggot,” Mulder snapped. “That’s my partner you’re talking about.”

Then, while Alex was still blinking in bemusement, he continued, “Don’t you see, Alex? It’s perfect. If he’s *that* goddamned bigoted then the answer’s obvious. You call him tomorrow, tell him you’re staying after all, and when he asks why, you tell him that when you came here to give me a last, tearful goodbye *I* suddenly jumped out of the closet and proclaimed I was in love with you too. That way he writes *both* of us off as a couple of pansy-queers and, while he’s looking the other way, we get Scully back and find the evidence we need to implicate him in her abduction. Like I said, perfect.”

He thought Alex would be pleased with the idea. He didn’t anticipate the look of complete hurt and loathing that Alex threw at him.

His guts churned. Alex *was* in love with him. He’d half-suspected an attraction but had assumed that Alex’s performance to Spender had been a wild exaggeration. Alex turning a minor semi-crush into a full-blown heartbreak as an excuse to run away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely. “I didn’t realize how insensitive I was being. I’m not mocking your feelings, Alex. I’m just saying there’s a way to use them to our advantage to get Scully back.”

“You want me to pretend you’re my boyfriend?” Alex demanded, his voice suddenly cold. “You want me to kiss and cuddle you and act like I’ve just found the man of my dreams in public, just so that you can get Scully back?”

Mulder swallowed heavily. Shit, even to *him* it sounded like he just wanted to use Alex. He wouldn’t blame him for storming out of the door. Something that seemed liable to happen any moment unless he did something drastic. The question was how far *was* he willing to go? What was he prepared to sacrifice to get Scully back? And what would it take to convince Alex to put *his* life on the line to help Mulder get what he wanted?

Could he do this? Did he even *want* to do this?

He ignored the pounding of his heart and the panic that every second ticking was another second to the moment that Alex would lose his temper and leave forever, and he just looked at Alex. Really looked. Drinking him in. Not only his almost too-pretty face and his well-formed body but the surprising look of vulnerability in Alex’s eyes.

“What…” he began, then stopped and cleared his throat. “What if I said it wouldn’t just be in public, Alex?”

For a brief moment, Alex’s face lit up like a child’s at Christmas. Hope, joy and disbelief chased across his features and, for a split-second, he looked so beautiful in his happiness that Mulder swallowed heavily.

But, just as quickly, Alex’s face shuttered again and his whole body stiffened with offence. “You offering to whore yourself to me, Mulder?” he drawled, his voice dripping venom.

Mulder winced slightly but met Alex’s eyes firmly, praying that his sincerity would somehow penetrate Alex’s understandable cynicism.

“I don’t love you, Alex. I can’t promise I ever will. I’ve never done relationships well. Every woman I’ve ever dated has ended up telling me that getting involved with me was the biggest mistake she ever made. So I gave up on dating years ago. The advantages of porn tapes, dial-up sex lines and my right hand are that none of them ever tell me I’m a disappointment to them.

“I also admit I’ve never been with a man before, though I’ve watched more than a few gay videos and gotten off on them so I think it’s safe to say I approve of the idea in principle.

“Am I offering to whore myself to you? No. Am I saying I’m willing and open to the possibility that a relationship between us *might* work? Yes. Yes I am. You’re beautiful, Alex. I might not have acknowledged that previously, but I’ve never been immune to your aesthetic appearance. Do I find you sexually desirable? I don’t know. Do I find you sexually *interesting*? Definitely yes. You tempt me to at least explore the possibility that I *might* find you sexually desirable.

“So when I say that I’m willing to be your ‘boyfriend’ in private too, I’m saying I’m open to the possibility you might seduce me. The ball’s still in your court. I want you to move in here with me. Share my apartment and my life. I want us to be partners at work and at home. I want us to watch TV together on an evening. I want us to be friends. The kind of friends who find it easy to touch each other, so that in public we find it easy and natural to display physical affection. Nothing less than that will convince Spender that we’re a real couple.

“I want you to eat at my table and sleep in my bed. And if… if somewhere along the way you convince me that I’d rather sleep in the bed with you than spend the night on the couch, then maybe we’ll end up *more* than friends. That’s it, Alex. That’s my offer. I guess the question is whether you’ve got the courage to take me up on it and fight for what you want. I can’t promise you’ll win, but you sure as hell won’t win anything by running away.”

Alex was silent for a long time, his face a blank expressionless mask. It was only his eyes that gave away the emotions surging inside his head. They narrowed and widened, darkened and lightened, flickered between terrified, furious and hopeful and’ all the time Alex was thinking, Mulder remained patiently silent. He’d made his argument. He’d laid all his cards on the table. He’d been totally, completely and almost brutally honest. Now he could only wait to see whether Alex picked up the gauntlet or walked away without looking back.

Mulder found he was so tense he could barely breathe.

A tiny panicked part of him *was* hoping that Alex would turn him down. A much larger part was terrified that Alex would leave and take with him Mulder’s best chance of rescuing Scully.

But oddly enough, above those two terrors, a far greater one rose its head. That Alex would leave and take away the possibility of Mulder finally finding someone who *wouldn’t* one day turn around and say that their relationship had been a terrible mistake.

Was it possible that Alex was ‘the one’? The person that Mulder had given up even trying to find. The person who would finally fill up the gaping hole of loneliness inside his heart.

The idea seemed ludicrous. Two hours previously, Mulder had been ready to put a bullet into Alex. How the hell could he now be seriously wondering whether Alex might be what Scully’s sister, Melissa, romantically referred to as a perfect soul mate?

“Please, Alex,” he blurted, unable to take the tension any longer. “Surely I’m at least a more attractive prospect than a reticulan.”

It was a poor joke, but the fact he’d made the effort to make it seemed to shatter the fragile tension in the room and Alex’s face finally relaxed into a tentative smile.

“If you put it that way,” he said dryly. “I guess I could do worse.”

Mulder breathed a huge sigh of relief, then took his courage in his hands, crossed over to Alex and pressed his lips gently against Alex’s in a tentative kiss.

It was more a friendly buzz than anything else. Neither of them attempted to push the gesture into anything passionate. But when Mulder stepped away, he was eying Alex with a look of deep thought. Kissing another man hadn’t felt weird, after all. Actually, he was already feeling a little disappointed that Alex *hadn’t* tried to press an advantage.

But then he shook his head slightly, gave Alex a wicked grin and said, “I should warn you, Alex. I’m a romantic. I like flowers, chocolates and moonlight serenades.”

Alex blinked for a moment but then matched Mulder’s smirk with one that was decidedly more evil.

“Well, that’s good to know, Mulder. I’ll look forward to receiving them.”

Then he picked up his rucksack and carried it into Mulder’s bedroom.



The End


~~~~

This was the fairy tale fragment that Ursula provided for me:

"Be still and stop crying," answered the frog. I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring back your plaything?"
"Whatever you want, dear frog," she said, "my clothes, my pearls and precious stones, and even the golden crown that I am wearing."
The frog answered, "I do not want your clothes, your pearls and precious stones, nor your golden crown, but if you will love me and accept me as a companion and playmate, and let me sit next to you at your table and eat from your golden plate and drink from your cup and sleep in your bed, if you will promise this to me, then I'll dive down and bring your golden ball back to you."

Naturally, I substituted a Rat for a Frog, a Mulder for the ‘she’ and a Scully for the ‘golden ball’<g>