42 - 2 years later.

By Mort

A sequel to 42, written especially for Amazon X's birthday.

“Well, I guess we’re pretty backward in this neck of the woods, Agent Mulder,” Sheriff Johnson drawled, leaning back in his chair and scratching his substantial belly. “Thing is, we still believe in this old fashioned thing called due process. Now maybe in Washington you boys can just charge into folks’ places based on nothing more than a hunch, but in Hardel County we need this weird little thing called a warrant.”

Mulder managed to suppress his instinctive urge to physically wipe the smug grin off Johnson’s portly face. “I’m well aware of the need for a warrant,” he said. “That’s why I’m talking to you. I’ve already been to see Judge Parks, and he’s insisting the request comes directly from your office.”

“That’s the problem with you city boys. Always trying to cut corners. You’re here to assist this investigation, not take it over.”

“What investigation?” Mulder snarled. “Sixteen missing people over nine months and you classified each and every case as a ‘runaway’. If Mrs. Barker hadn’t contacted the FBI directly and requested our assistance, you’d still be insisting that nothing strange is going on here.”

“Nothing strange *is* going on, Agent Mulder. Norma Barker is a hysterical trailer-trash alcoholic. The only strange thing about her husband’s disappearance is the fact he didn’t leave her years ago.”

“Actually,” Alex interrupted, turning away from the window he’d been staring out of during the argument and meeting Johnson’s eyes, “Mrs Barker’s doctor and neighbors confirm that her current drinking problem is a direct result of her husband’s disappearance rather than its cause.”

Johnson snorted rudely. “Doc Hardy has had his own head in a bottle for the last twenty years, and the ‘neighbors’ you mention are the same drunken white trash as Norma. They wouldn’t know sober if it stood up and bit their asses. So why don’t you leave the investigating to the adults, son? Go buy yourself a popsicle or something.”

Seeing the fury sparking in Alex’s eyes, Mulder swiftly rose to his feet and grabbed his partner by the arm. “Come on, Alex. We’re wasting our time here.”

“You boys have a good day,” Johnson chuckled, as the two FBI agents left his office.

“What if they’re right?” John Saul, one of Johnson’s deputies, asked, once the door had closed. He’d kept silent during the argument, wanting to show solidarity with his boss, but he had his own doubts. “All the disappearances have happened since Vardeman Industries moved here.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s happened since the Vardeman food-processing factory opened. This dead one-horse town has come alive. They’ve created over 200 jobs, the local economy is booming, shops that have been closed for five years have begun to open their doors again. Hell, Judge Parks called me yesterday and said he’d received a planning request for a major chain drive-thru. Things are changing here, John, and they’re good changes. But some folks don’t like change, so they’re simply moving on.”

“I guess,” Saul agreed. “But if the Feds are worried...”

“Remember that bullshit in the papers a couple of years back about an alien colonization being thwarted?” Johnson said. “Well, turns out Agent Fox Mulder was one of the Feds who bought into that crap. The guy believes in little green men, John.” He twirled his finger at his forehead significantly. “And that wet-behind-the-ears puppy he’s dragging around with him barely looks old enough to be out of college. I don’t think either of their opinions are worth a shit.”

“But the President himself confirmed the aliens existed,” Saul protested.

“You’re so goddamned gullible, John. *Everyone* knows that alien crap was just a smokescreen to cover up an attempt to slide some budget amendment or other through without anyone noticing.”

***

“I hate this,” Alex snarled, as they climbed into their rental car. “Did you hear that bastard? ‘Go buy yourself a popsicle.’ I’m thirty-fucking-eight, Mulder.”

“Awww. It’s that cute baby face of yours,” Mulder snickered, as he put the car into drive and pulled out in the direction of their motel.

“It’s not funny,” Alex pouted.

“No,” Mulder agreed, “but you can have the last laugh, Alex. When Johnson’s staggering around on a Zimmer-frame, you can waltz up to him and stick a popsicle up his ass.”

Alex’s mouth twitched into a faint smile, but his eyes only changed from angry to sorrowful. “I don’t want to think about that far into the future,” he muttered.

Mulder sighed internally. He understood that every time someone made a comment about Alex’s now eternally youthful appearance, Alex inevitably thought about Walter’s mortality.

“Well,” he said, swiftly changing the subject, “at least that’s taught you a lesson about trying to co-operate with the local cops. Next time I say we should just break into a facility maybe you’ll listen to me.”

“I promised Walter I wouldn’t let you get into trouble this time,” Alex countered. “He’s still pissed as hell about what happened in Chicago.”

“We caught the bad guys, saved the good guys, you regenerated, I only wrote off *two* rentals and I didn’t lose my gun or my cell phone. What the hell’s his problem?” Mulder snickered.

“Fuck *his* problem. I’m talking about *my* problem. He was so mad with me, he made me sleep in the spare room for three days when I got home,” Alex groaned.

“Poor Alex. Denied your conjugal rights, huh? What a punishment.”

“Fuck you.”

“I keep telling you you’re not my type,” Mulder snorted. “Even if I was into guys, I don’t have the energy to keep up with a Superslut…oops, I meant Supersoldier.”

Alex resisted the urge to clip Mulder across the back of the head. He’d learned the hard way that sometimes it was difficult to judge his own strength, so he settled for just rolling his eyes at his irritating partner and reaching inside his jacket for his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” Mulder asked suspiciously.

“Who do you think? Maybe he can pull some strings and…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Alex. Stop being such a fucking boy scout. If we had enough evidence for a warrant, we’d already *have* a warrant.”

“Exactly,” Alex said dryly, beginning to punch the speed dial.

“Where’s your sense of adventure? We’re two hundred miles from Washington and I can still see a fucking leash around your neck… or should I say your balls? Never thought I’d see the day when Alex Krycek lets himself get yanked around like a puppy-dog. You let him call *all* the shots, Alex? Bet you do. Bet you crawl around on your hands and knees for him, promising you’ve been a ‘good boy’ and begging him to fuck you as a reward.”

“I’m not biting, Mulder,” Alex replied calmly. “This is *exactly* how you got me to go along with you in Chicago and we both know how *that* turned out.”

“Damn,” Mulder sighed. “And you used to be so easy to provoke.”

“Shit. I can’t get a signal,” Alex snarled, slamming the phone back into his jacket pocket.

“Serendipity,” Mulder smirked. “You might as well go along with my plan, since you can’t ask Big Daddy’s opinion.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Alex snarled. “I don’t see what the hell point there is to your plan anyway. So, okay, I agree it’s a weird co-incidence that all the people went missing after the food-processing factory opened, but what the hell are you suggesting? That Vardeman is supplementing their meat pies with a bit of long pig?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Mulder countered. “Never heard of Sweeny Todd?”

“Sweeny who?”

“Your lack of general knowledge constantly amazes me, Alex,” Mulder sighed.

“I refuse to believe the people of this town are being cannibalized. Quite apart from anything else, it doesn’t make sense. Vardeman is producing 50 truck loads of meat pies a week. I hardly think throwing the odd person into the meat grinder would significantly increase their profit figures.”

“Could be a black magic ritual. There was this chicken factory Scully and I once…”

“Forget it, Mulder. We are *not* breaking into the factory.”

“Oh, come on,” Mulder wheedled. “Just a *mini* break-in.”

“What the fuck’s a ‘mini’ break-in?”

Mulder pulled the car over to the side of the road, reached into the glove compartment and produced a blueprint of the factory site.

“I’m not even going to ask where you got that,” Alex muttered.

Mulder unfolded the blueprint until it was spread over both their laps. “What do you see?” he asked.

“I see a fuck-load of security. Perimeter fences patrolled by armed guards with attack dogs. A top-range alarm system controlling internal doors as well as external. Key-card access to general areas and biotech locks into secure areas. Even if we could get past the external security, the only way into the lower levels is with the optical print of someone with full clearance. You want me to go steal someone’s eyeball?”

“It’s an option,” Mulder retorted dryly. “But I was actually referring to this.” He pointed at the portion of the map that indicated where the factory’s waste emptied into the local sewerage system. “According to this plan, the sewer runs right into the lowest level of the factory, bypassing all the security.”

“If that’s obvious to you, it’s obvious to them too. There’s no way they’ve left an unprotected back door open.”

“I didn’t say it was unprotected. But it *is* breachable. There are welded metal gates here, here and here. And, of course, the fact the sewer is only two feet in circumference at the point it branches into the lower level means it's physically impossible for someone to swim through it with any form of breathing apparatus on and, let’s face it, no human being can swim five hundred feet through sewage, stopping long enough to break through three iron gates, without drowning.”

“I don’t fucking believe this. You want me to swim through a half-mile of SHIT?”

“Well, I agree it’s a pretty unpleasant idea,” Mulder agreed, “but you would be holding your breath, Alex, and I’m sure once you adjusted to the smell you’d…”

“Putting aside the shit for a moment, I’m claustrophobic, Mulder, in case you’d forgotten,” Alex pointed out dryly.

“Well, yeah,” Mulder admitted, “but the way I figure it you could get through the tunnel in what, say eight minutes? And when we went into those caves looking for those werewolves in the Appalachian Mountains, you didn’t start hyperventilating for a good *fifteen* minutes, so I’m sure you can handle an itsy-bitsy *eight* minutes. So what’s it going to be, Alex? Supersoldier or superwimp?”

“You’re such a fucking bastard, Mulder.”

“Am I hearing a ‘yes’ lurking somewhere inside that insult, Alex?” Mulder chuckled smugly.

***

“Um…I don’t think holding your breath like that is good for your blood-pressure, Sir,” Mulder mumbled.

Walter Skinner’s face was not only flushed almost purple but a vein was throbbing so prominently on his forehead that he looked as though he was going to have an aneurysm.

“The important thing, Sir,” Mulder continued hurriedly, “is that we managed to prove that the Vardeman food-processing factory was actually the cover for an illegal organ-trafficking ring, and five of the sixteen victims were still alive when we obtained the warrant. According to the computer records we recovered, if we’d waited another couple of days the rescued vics would have been body parts too.”

Still Walter said nothing, and the vein on his head continued to pulse with almost hypnotic regularity.

Mulder risked a glance at his partner, but Alex was cowering in his chair like a naughty schoolboy and refusing to look at either of them.

“So, okay, I lied to get the warrant. I told the judge an anonymous whistleblower had slipped the disk with the computer records under our motel room door,” Mulder admitted. “But I could hardly tell him the truth, could I? And it’s not like Vardeman’s lawyers can prove otherwise. I didn’t even *have* to tell you the truth in my report,” he pointed out virtuously.

At his side, Alex gave a choking moan and cringed.

“Alright,” Mulder snapped. “It was Alex who made me tell the truth,” he admitted, adding a muttered “stupid bastard” at his miserable partner.

“And Judge Parks didn’t wonder why the computer disk had a pervading scent of shit?” Walter rumbled dangerously. “Or why your partner had suddenly decided to sport a skin-head haircut?”

Mulder flinched slightly and decided he’d preferred Walter’s previous silence.

Alex miserably rubbed the short, soft regrowth on his head and whimpered slightly.

“Shampoo just didn’t seem to do the trick,” Mulder admitted reluctantly. “But it’ll grow back quickly. Two days ago he was as bald as you, Sir.”

“Agent Krycek,” Walter barked.

“Yes, Sir?” Alex mumbled.

“Go home. We’ll discuss your part in this later.” Walter sniffed the air pointedly, “And I suggest you have a long bath.”

“It’s just the last trace seeping out of his pores because he’s sweating, Sir,” Mulder interrupted helpfully.

“I’m sor…” Alex began.

“Go home,” Walter interrupted him, his voice suddenly gentle. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Alex rose to his feet, risked a resentful glare towards Mulder and shuffled unhappily out of Walter’s office.

Walter turned his full attention on Mulder. Any trace of gentleness or understanding had been wiped off his face with Alex’s exit.

“You are, beyond doubt, a total self-centered, selfish bastard, Mulder,” he announced bluntly.

“I…”

“Shut up,” Walter barked. “You got the result. You saved five people and closed down a dangerous and evil operation. Based on your *official* report, I have no option except to recommend both of you for a commendation. The only reason I’m going to let the official report stand is that not only is the truth impossible to believe but Alex damned well deserves *something* for that shit you put him through. No pun intended.”

“I understand you’re angry with me,” Mulder replied. “And I don’t blame you. I don’t apologize for asking Alex to do it, because it was the only way to get inside that factory, and we saved lives by doing it which *is* our job. But don’t imagine I don’t feel like a total bastard. I was the one who spent three hours trying to scrape that crap off him. I’m the one who had to hold him while he cried his eyes out about having to come home to you with his head shaved. And I’m the one who promised him, over and over, that you wouldn’t punish him by making him sleep in the spare room, when the whole damned thing was *my* fault.”

“The spare room?” Walter rumbled dangerously.

“He told me about Chicago,” Mulder mumbled into his lap.

“I see.”

Mulder raised his head and stared Walter in the eyes. “It’s not fair, Sir. You can’t hold Alex responsible for my behavior. Scully could never control me. *You* could never control me. So it sure as hell isn’t fair for you to treat Alex like my whipping boy.”

“I don’t, Mulder,” Walter replied, surprisingly softly. “For the last two years I’ve watched you use him like your own personal wind-up toy. I’ve watched you use and abuse his abilities in the furtherance of your own agenda and, except for a little temporary resentment now and then, Alex still thinks the sun shines out of your ass. The only possible way I can rein in his enthusiasm to do your bidding is to deprive him of the only thing he cares about more than your approval. And that’s *my* approval.”

“I’m not using him,” Mulder argued, pouting resentfully. “He’s my partner. I lo…like him. I care about him. He’s my friend. He’s my *partner*.”

Walter sighed heavily. “I didn’t say you didn’t care about him. You don’t care for many people, Mulder, but when you love you love unconditionally. You love both Scully and Alex. I know that. And they both love you. Both of them would walk through fire for you. The problem is that you frequently let them do it. Two nights ago I found Scully working in the morgue at 3 in the morning, despite the fact she’d only just finished pulling a double shift at Quantico. She’d had maybe four hours sleep in 48 and she still climbed out of bed and drove back to work just because *you* asked her to.”

“She didn’t tell me she was exhausted,” Mulder protested, “and I didn’t trust anyone else to process the body parts we retrieved from Vardeman.”

“You didn’t ask,” Walter countered. “You never do.”

Mulder flushed and a look of guilty self-loathing crossed his features.

Walter sighed again. “You’re driven, Mulder. I understand that. The people who care about you understand that. You think nothing of working 48 hours without sleep, and so Scully and Alex and even myself, on occasion, find ourselves striving to keep pace with you. We don’t want to disappoint you. We don’t want to let you down. But it’s time you considered the cost you demand people pay for your love.”

“I don’t demand…”

“Yes you do. Maybe you don’t realize you do it. But, nevertheless, you *do*.”

“Fuck,” Mulder groaned, burying his head in his hands.

“And that brings me back to Alex. I haven’t said anything before, because I wanted a final agreement from the President before I mentioned it and I only received that while the two of you were in Hardel, but Alex has finally been granted his unconditional freedom.”

Mulder’s head jerked up in surprise. “He has?”

“Between the work the pair of you have done over the last two years, and the fact that the military now know Alex has done all that work without being under threat of the nanos, the President agrees that Alex is no more of a potential security threat than anyone else. Alex may be a walking weapon, but *anyone* is potentially capable of killing someone else. We allow the citizens of this country the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Alex has now been granted that same right.”

“Hang on a minute. The military know about Alex removing his anklet and stealing the nano controller?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I told them,” Walter replied bluntly. “When I presented Alex’s record over the last two years as evidence he’s now a ‘model citizen’, the military attempted to convince the President that he was only behaving because they had him on a leash. I successfully proved that the leash had been severed within a week of Alex’s release.”

“Do I want to know how?”

“I produced the anklet,” Walter replied. “Still attached to his somewhat mummified leg. After a short bathroom break, it was unanimously decided that Alex was obviously no direct threat to society. I have no doubt that they’ll continue to keep an eye on him, and obviously they *want* him to continue working for the FBI, but they no longer have the legal power to force him to work here.”

The color drained out of Mulder’s face. “What are you saying, Walter?”

“That if I have my way, Alex is going to walk in here tomorrow morning and hand in his resignation.”

“You can’t…”

Walter waved him silent. “I’m not going to tell him what to do. I’m well aware of my responsibility not to abuse his trust in me in that way. But I intend to make it clear to him that I’d *prefer* him to find a different career. One where his *partner* doesn’t abuse his abilities.”

“You aren’t being fair, Sir. Alex *is* a Supersoldier. Ignoring the abilities he has would be as stupid and irresponsible as me refusing to draw my gun or ‘forgetting’ that Scully is a doctor. I know you still haven’t forgiven me for the way Alex ‘died’ in Chicago. I understand that. But using him to draw the gunmen’s fire that way enabled me to free the hostages and defuse the bomb. Twelve civilians walked out of that building alive.”

“And Alex took over a hundred bullets,” Skinner snarled. “You think he didn’t *feel* them? You think he didn’t scream as his insides were shredded by that machine gun? You think he needed *another* goddamned scenario to fuel his nightmares?”

Mulder blushed slightly and dropped his eyes, but his voice was steady when he replied.

“It’s what we do, Sir. It’s the job. We all take bullets sometimes. And, yes, Alex was hurt and if you think that didn’t hurt *me* you’re wrong, but what you *didn’t* see, Sir, was the look on Alex’s face afterwards when I told him we’d gotten the hostages out without any casualties. If you’d seen that, you’d know that *Alex* believed the pain he suffered was worthwhile. And, despite the fact he’s still sulking about his hair and has nearly bankrupted me the last couple of days with the insistence I buy him an endless supply of chocolate to take the ‘taste’ out of his mouth, he’s genuinely happy that we saved the lives of those five people in Hardel.

“He’s *proud* of the work he’s doing, Walter. Don’t take that away from him. Punish me, if you have to punish anyone, but don’t make Alex feel he’s wrong to want to do this. Remember the life he lived before he became a Supersoldier. Alex feels he has to make up for the things he did, and not because he’s trying to impress *us*. He’s doing this for his own soul. Don’t take the opportunity for redemption away from him.”

“He doesn’t need any more damned redemption,” Walter growled. “He’s paid his dues a thousand times over.”

“Then just accept he *wants* to be a ‘good guy’ now. I’ll agree I’ve been a selfish bastard and promise to treat him with more consideration if you’ll agree that he’s an adult capable of making his own decisions about what he wants to do with his life.”

Walter blinked a couple of times, then sighed in saddened acceptance of Mulder’s point.

Mulder risked a conciliatory smile.

It was a mistake.

“If you ever make him swallow shit again, I’ll turn you upside down and put *your* head down a toilet bowl,” Walter snarled, his expression deadly serious.

Mulder blushed furiously. “Um… you’re too late, Sir. Alex already did that when we got back to our motel,” he admitted sheepishly.

Walter continued to glare at him for a moment, but then his lips twitched into a smile. “Then maybe I’m not giving Alex enough credit for good sense, after all,” he allowed.

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed ruefully. “I know you think I manipulate him, and maybe I *do*, but every now and then he turns around and bites me hard enough to remind me to show him some respect. We *are* partners, Sir. In his own way he’s as good as Scully at reining me in if I step too far out of line.”

“It’s more a case of ‘when’ than ‘if’,” Walter retorted gruffly.

Mulder attempted a pouting ‘who me?’ expression.

Walter ignored it. “Both Alex and I are taking a long weekend,” he announced. “We won’t be in until Tuesday.”

“But Alex and I have a stack of cases we need to get started on together. What am I supposed to do tomorrow and Monday?”

“If you had any sense, you’d ask a certain Deputy Director to authorize leave for yourself and Scully. You owe her a couple of days at a nice hotel,” Walter replied dryly. “But, alternatively, I happen to know they’re pretty understaffed at the moment in the wire-tapping division.”

“How weird,” Mulder muttered wryly. “I suddenly feel the urgent need for a short vacation.”

***

When Walter returned home, Alex was still sitting in a by then luke-warm bath. Judging from the musky scent in the air and the thick white scum on top of the water, Alex had clearly used a whole container of expensive men’s bubble bath in his attempt to erase the final lingering traces of his ‘swim’.

Walter had no sooner taken a single step in the room than Alex frantically began to apologize.

“Shushh,” Walter said gently, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the tub. “It’s done. Little point in us arguing about it now. I think it’s safe to say you’ve learned your lesson about blindly following Mulder.”

“If I’d stuck to ‘following’ him, I wouldn’t have ended up looking like a shit covered version of the Swamp Thing,” Alex muttered miserably.

Walter bit back a smile. Now he’d calmed down, he *could* see the funny side of the situation but he was wise enough to know it would be a long time before Alex would be capable of seeing any humor in what had happened.

“I missed you,” Alex mumbled. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“I missed you too. And I’m not mad at you,” Walter assured him. “But I miss your hair.”

Alex’s lower lip quivered and his eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” he gulped.

“Did you really need to shave your head?” Walter asked sorrowfully, gently stroking the painfully short stubble.

“I tried washing it. But it was taking forever and I *needed* to feel clean. I thought… I thought it would just regenerate but it didn’t,” Alex sobbed.

“Well, at least it’s growing back. But I wonder why it *didn’t* simply regenerate?”

“Mulder said… um… said I’d probably need to cut off my head, or at least scalp myself to trigger the regeneration process.”

“Really?” Walter growled. “Let me guess, this was during your conversation about how to prevent me finding out what you’d done?”

Alex cringed slightly, sinking further down in the bathwater as though it was a protective shield. “He…he said if you didn’t *ask*, then not telling you wouldn’t be lying.”

“And he wanted you to fucking mutilate yourself to cover his tracks?” Walter roared.

“NO. Honestly, Walter. It was when he realized I’d *have* to hurt myself to support his original report that he agreed it would be better to tell the truth. He knew I couldn’t come home without any hair without you demanding to know why, and he knows I can’t lie to you.”

Walter smiled sadly. In so many ways Alex had shown remarkable courage in overcoming his experiences at Penzbech. Except for a pathological fear of fire that meant Alex flinched if someone so much as lit a cigarette in his vicinity, Alex no longer suffered from debilitating flashbacks. But the scars of his experiences in that place still ran deep and, despite their ever strengthening relationship, Alex unfortunately remained convinced that lying to Walter would result in a dire, unspeakable punishment.

Not that being unable to lie was a fault exactly, but Alex’s inability to tell even white lies sometimes made for a somewhat strained relationship. Alex was honest to the point of brutality. Walter sometimes thought it was a damned good job that Alex was gay, because he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a relationship with a woman.

As though to prove the point to himself, he rubbed his face with his hands and said, “If I still had hair, you and Mulder would have driven me gray by now. I looked in the mirror this morning and I could see a new wrinkle for every time you’ve both scared the life out of me recently.”

“Well, wrinkles show character, Walter. *I* still think you’re gorgeous,” Alex assured him solemnly, rather than telling him he was imagining the wrinkles.

Walter decided it was a damned good job he didn’t ever feel the urge to ask Alex whether something he was wearing made his butt look fat.

“If you stay in that bath any longer, you’ll be more wrinkled than me, Alex,” he said, reaching for a towel.

Alex obediently pulled the plug, stood up in the tub and held his hand out for the towel but, instead of handing it over, Walter began to dry Alex himself. Alex looked startled, then pleased, and by the time Walter was rubbing his back dry he was purring as loudly as a contented wild-cat.

Walter was particularly gentle as he patted the top of Alex’s neck dry. He’d learned that the slight protrusions of Alex’s two alien vertebrae weren’t simply the sole outward evidence that Alex was a Replicant but were actually an incredibly sensitive erogenous zone. Usually Alex wore his hair long enough to conceal the bumps on his neck, but with his hair shorn so closely to his head the vertebrae were so prominent that Walter couldn’t resist the urge to lean forward and press a soft kiss against them.

“Oh FUCK,” Alex groaned, sagging slightly as his knees partly gave way beneath him.

Walter exchanged his lips for his tongue and swiped a wet path over and around the two bumps. Using his left arm to support Alex around the waist, he cupped Alex’s balls in the fingers of his right hand and flicked his thumb up against the underside of Alex’s now rigid cock in a matching rhythm to the sweeping of his tongue.

“Oh God, oh fuck, oh Walt,” Alex gasped, becoming so boneless under Walter’s assault that his entire weight was resting on Walter's left arm.

Walter grinned to himself, closed his hand tightly over Alex’s balls, and then pursed his lips over the back of Alex’s neck and began to suck hard enough to burst the tiny blood vessels under the surface of Alex’s skin.

Alex went crazy. His hips began a frantic dance against Walter’s groin and he alternated between trying to brace himself against the wall as his feet slipped in the wet tub and trying to grab his cock.

Walter released Alex’s balls long enough to move his right hand from around Alex’s waist to between Alex’s legs, and then caught firm hold of him again. Without stopping the suctioning on Alex’s neck, he lifted Alex up and out of the bathtub. He took most of Alex’s weight in his left arm but left just enough of the strain of the lift in the hand clutching Alex’s balls for Alex to wail and begin kicking his legs wildly.

Ignoring the twinge in his own back, Walter carried Alex into the bedroom and dropped him onto the bed without releasing either his neck or his balls. Now he was on his hands and knees, Alex’s dancing hips took on a wilder, more frantic rhythm. His ass muscles were visibly flexing and contracting in a clear sluttish invitation and he was groaning into the bedcovers in obvious desperation as Walter sucked on his neck and squeezed his balls.

With his now free left hand, Walter reached over and fumbled for one of the items he’d placed on the bed before entering the bathroom. One handed, he flipped open the tube of lubrication, and squeezed a generous dollop directly onto Alex’s hole.

Alex squealed in shock at the sudden cold of the gel on his sensitive skin, but Walter never paused his constant sucking and squeezing and, as his fingers began to gently press the lube into the tight ring of flesh, Alex’s protests turned back into deep groans of pleasure.

As a Replicant, whose body regenerated itself constantly, Alex was permanently as tight as a virgin. That had bothered Walter at first, but in time he’d begun to accept it as a gift. Although it always took a little more thought and effort to open Alex adequately to prevent penetration being painful, the pleasure of always sliding into such a tight, hot hole was inarguably exquisite. The only downside was that when he wanted to play with Alex for an extended period, he either had to reopen him every ten minutes or sometimes resort to a little ‘assistance’ to keep him open.

The super-human strength of Alex’s involuntary ass contractions had destroyed a number of toys before Walter had tracked down more sturdy items on the internet. He now had a full range of metal dildos, butt plugs, cock rings and vibrators which could withstand Alex’s considerable enthusiasm.

He reached for one of the vibrators, a thick, ridged eight-inches of titanium, and began to carefully work it inside his lover. Alex whimpered and gasped as Walter pushed the hard unforgiving metal deep inside his ass and then turned it on to full power. It took all of Walter’s strength to maintain his hold on Alex’s neck and balls as Alex began to buck and twist like a crazed bronco, but the more Alex’s ass danced, the harder Walter sucked, until he could taste the copper of Alex’s blood on his lips, and all the time he continued his assault on Alex’s scrotum, squeezing the flesh so tightly that he would have been risking permanent damage if Alex had still been human.

It took only a minute or so more before Alex threw back his head and wailed his release as his untouched cock erupted onto the bed sheets.

Alex collapsed beneath him, gasping for breath, and Walter rose up enough to admire the deep red bruising now spreading around Alex’s neck. Although he knew the bruise would disappear within minutes, he always enjoyed the temporary pleasure of marking Alex as his own. He gave Alex’s abused balls a final affectionate twist, then turned off the vibrator and eased it out of Alex’s ass.

He climbed off the bed, quickly undressed and lay on his back next to his apparently insensate lover.

“My turn,” he said cheerfully, reaching over and smacking one of Alex’s ass cheeks.

Alex gave a dramatic groan, but clearly decided he’d played possum enough because he then rolled over and grinned widely as he saw Walter’s cock rearing invitingly towards the ceiling. Aware it would only take minutes for him to start closing again unless there was something buried in his ass, he forewent the urge to swallow Walter and instead straddled him and slowly began to ease himself down onto Walter’s considerable girth.

“How do you want it?” Alex asked, although Walter’s decision to quickly bring him off first made him pretty sure what the answer would be.

“Slow,” Walter replied. “Real slow, baby.”

Alex smirked. Although, overall, he was still struggling with the fact he was no longer ‘human’, there were times when he saw his transformation as a gift. What he was about to do with Walter was humanly impossible. No human being had sufficient physical endurance and muscular control. Admittedly, not many humans were as capable as Walter of maintaining an erection for so long under constant assault, but then that just proved to Alex that they were made for each other. Every time he did this thing for Walter, knowing he was the *only* one who could do it for him, it gave him a little more self-confidence that Walter would truly never leave him.

In a smooth, steady but painfully slow motion, he began to ease himself up off Walter’s cock. His thighs burned with the strain of such minute, controlled movement but the dull pain remained constant, his body repairing his muscles as fast as he strained them. It took him almost a full minute to raise himself the full length of Walter’s cock in a glide so gradual that only the tightness of his own ass assured a steady trickle of sensation into Walter’s groin. Then, without pause at the top, he began to lower himself again. Another full minute. Walter’s eyes were closed and he was breathing so lightly and steadily that he could have been sleeping. But his lips were set in a small contented smile, and each time that Alex changed direction during his torturously slow rocking, the side of Walter’s mouth twitched.

As he rose up and down, the sensation in Alex’s ass gradually changed from a barely noticeable tickle to a slow burning fire. By the time he’d been riding Walter for an hour, his own cock was so hard and heavy again that he knew it would take barely the touch of his fingers to set him off. But he resisted the urge, knowing there was no way of releasing the pressure in his balls without breaking his rhythm and there was no way he’d *ever* stop moving until Walter was completely satisfied.

Another hour and tears of frustration were pouring down Alex’s cheeks. He was so turned on he wanted to explode. And still Walter just lay there, breathing softly as Alex’s ass gently massaged his cock, looking so goddamned gorgeous that it took all of Alex’s self-control not to beg for mercy.

It never even once occurred to him to try and *take* what he wanted. Right at the beginning of their relationship, before they’d learned better, Alex had ridden Walter so hard he’d inadvertently given him a hernia. From that day on, Walter always controlled the pace if Alex was on top. Making love face to face also had to be done with extreme caution. If Alex became over excited he could accidentally squeeze Walter too hard with his legs. So when Alex wanted a good hard fuck he always took it on his hands and knees so that Walter was safe and completely in control.

After another twenty minutes, Alex completely lost any concept of what self-control was or any reason he should try to exercise it.

“Please. Please, Walter. Oh, please,” he whimpered.

Walter’s eyes snapped open and he offered the sobbing man a gentle smile. “Please what, baby?”

“Fuck me, Walter. Please. Oh, please fuck me. I’m going crazy.”

Walter turned his head enough to check the time on the bedside clock. “You usually manage a little longer than this, Alex,” he said.

Alex flushed at the gentle reminder that he *always* eventually ended up in this position, crying his eyes out and begging Walter to finish him off properly.

“Ten more minutes, Alex. Just ten more. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

Fresh tears welled in Alex’s eyes, but he gulped back his automatic sob of disappointment, nodded miserably and began five last excruciatingly slow descents onto Walter’s cock.

When he reached the final ascent, Alex immediately pulled completely off and rolled onto his face next to Walter, sticking his ass up high in the air and whimpering with excitement. “Please, Walter. Please. NOW. Do me NOW.”

Walter chuckled indulgently and moved to comply. He knew his own ability to remain so controlled under the delicious assault of Alex’s ass was simply that *nothing* compared with the moment when Alex was finally begging him like this. Despite his knowledge that Alex loved him, every time he did this for Alex, knowing he was the *only* one whom Alex would ever trust enough to beg for what he really wanted, it gave him a little more self-confidence that Alex would truly never leave him.

“Okay, baby,” he soothed, as he moved into position and slid his cock easily into Alex’s welcoming heat.

“NOW!” Alex screamed.

Walter grabbed firm hold of Alex’s waist, pulled back and slammed back inside with his full body weight. Alex threw back his head and howled with pleasure. Again and again, Walter drove into him, his hips bruising against Alex’s ass with the force of his assault, and all the time Alex continued to wail his satisfaction so loudly that Walter had the brief thought he was damned grateful he’d fitted an extra layer of insulation on the ceiling for sound-proofing. But then he became so lost in the moment that he forgot about ceilings and neighbors or anything other than the sensation in his cock and the gratification of knowing he was capable of making the man he loved scream in ecstasy.

Although they tried to come together, Alex came first as always, driven out of his mind by the pounding pressure in his ass. Walter followed seconds later, pulling out just before Alex’s already tight hole closed like a vice to trap him in place, pressed his cock against Alex's crack and used the contractions of Alex's flexing ass muscles to drive him over the edge.

And then they both collapsed together, Walter managing to twist his body enough to land on his back rather than on top of his lover and Alex crawling just far enough to drop his exhausted head onto Walter’s chest before his knees gave out. A little shifting and adjusting and Walter managed to wrap his arms around Alex so they were clinging to each other in a sweat-drenched hug.

Walter’s last thought, just before he drifted off, was that Sharon had been wrong when she’d accused him of never wanting to cuddle after sex. He just hadn’t wanted to cuddle *her*. And, on that slightly uncharitable thought, he fell asleep.

***

“Oh shit,” Alex yelped, scrambling out of bed in a state of obvious panic.

“What’s wrong?” Walter asked, blurrily.

“We’re late. The fucking alarm didn’t go off. We should have left for work half-an-hour ago and I’m fucking *starving*,” Alex growled, hopping inelegantly around the room as he tried to simultaneously pull his pants up while fastening his shirt.

Walter blinked rapidly and then groaned. “Sorry, babe. I forgot to tell you. We’re both on leave today.”

“Leave?” Alex demanded, frowning suspiciously. “How the hell could you forget to tell me that?”

“You had me pretty distracted last night,” Walter chuckled. “You were pretty distracted yourself as I recall. *You* didn’t even remember to eat dinner, which has to be a first.”

Alex’s stomach rumbled loudly in agreement. “I *told* you I was starving,” he announced sulkily, glaring at Walter as though it was all *his* fault.

“God, you’re a grumpy little bastard in the morning,” Walter snickered. “Get your ass back into bed and *I’ll* make breakfast.”

Alex’s pout immediately transformed into a sly smile. “Um…Walt?”

“What?”

“I’ve still got a really nasty taste in my mouth,” Alex said, all big mournful eyes. “I think I need at least *six* pancakes and lots of maple syrup and some toast and chocolate spread and maybe…”

“I get the picture,” Walter snorted. “I hope to hell you put Mulder through this much grief yesterday morning.”

“Oh, I was definitely worse,” Alex replied sweetly.

Still chuckling, Walter walked out of the door. He was half-way down the stairs when Alex yelled after him. “And don’t burn the fucking toast!”

Walter just smiled to himself and continued to the kitchen. Alex was always a brat after they’d had a fight and made-up again. It was, according to Mulder, his way of testing the water to be absolutely certain he’d been forgiven. If Walter tolerated his brattish behavior, Alex soon settled down and began to truly believe that their relationship was still strong. So Walter was pretty sure that by lunchtime Alex would have stabilized enough to start acting ‘normally’ again as long as *he* didn’t lose his temper.

Two years of living with Alex’s unpredictable temperament had taught Walter a lot of patience. Regardless of provocation, Walter only ever raised his voice to Alex if he was worried about Alex’s safety and he let any minor rudeness or childishness on Alex’s part wash harmlessly over the top of his head. In his opinion, Alex had more than sufficient excuse to occasionally need a lot of reassurance that he was loved.

So he cheerfully made the pancakes Alex had requested and carefully ensured the toast didn’t burn, and he added a plate of sausage and eggs to the tray knowing that Alex might emotionally want sweet food but the super-charged metabolism of his body required protein too. He took it upstairs, waited until Alex’s eyes lit up in excited pleasure, and then returned downstairs to collect two mugs of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs on toast for himself.

They ate in silence, punctuated only by Alex’s occasional groans of contentment.

“So, what do you want to do, Alex? We’re off work until Tuesday,” Walter said, when Alex had finally cleared his tray and uttered a satisfied burp.

“Four whole days?” Alex gasped in surprise. It was rare they even spent a whole weekend together between Walter’s habit of going into the office on a Saturday and Mulder’s habit of dragging Alex half-way across the country at a moment’s notice.

“Four whole days,” Walter agreed, with an indulgent smile. “I even made Mulder take a long weekend to make sure he didn’t suddenly turn up on the doorstep insisting an abominable snowman had been spotted on Miami beach.”

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“Let’s fuck *lots*,” Alex smirked.

“Well, I’m sure we'll manage that,” Walter agreed tolerantly. “But I was thinking more along the lines of us going somewhere together.”

Alex blinked uncertainly. “Going somewhere?”

“We’ve never been on holiday together, Alex. I know that’s my fault. I never seem to make the time to get away from work. And I know four days is hardly the same as a two-week vacation to Hawaii, but…well… it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t been on holiday since I was a kid,” Alex replied thoughtfully. “I’ve traveled a lot. Been to a lot of places. But it was always work.”

“So where would you like to go?”

Alex bit his lower lip uncertainly, searching Walter’s face for clues, but finally gave in to his normal impulse to just tell the truth. “Nowhere,” he mumbled.

“Nowhere?”

“I just want to be with you, Walter. I don’t care *where*. It’s enough just to have you to myself for a few days.”

Alex’s simple honesty made Walter’s heart ache. He decided, then and there, that regardless of the pressure of their jobs he was damned well going to make an effort to spend a lot more time with his lover. It was so easy, given their busy lives, to forget to share quality time together. He also decided that if Alex didn’t care where they spent that time together, it was up to *him* to make sure this weekend was something particularly memorable.

“Get up, get dressed, throw some clothes in your overnight bag and find your passport, Alex. We’re going on vacation.”

***

It was incredible, Walter decided a couple of hours later, that a man who spent most of his working life being dragged on and off planes by Mulder could look so much like an excited kid just because he was standing in an airport.

“Where we going, Walt?” he asked constantly, bouncing up and down on his toes as he scanned the departure board for clues.

Walter refused to tell him, even confiscating Alex’s passport and taking advantage of their FBI credentials to get the pair of them checked into a flight while Alex was sitting obediently (if sulkily) well out of sight of the check-in desk. Just as well, he decided, as he flicked idly to look at Alex’s passport photo. The shaven-headed punk in the black jeans and leather jacket currently looked absolutely nothing like the smart, suited FBI Agent in Alex’s passport.

It was only as he was closing the passport again that his eyes skipped idly over Alex’s date of birth and then froze.

He suddenly felt sick.

In the back of his head, he clearly heard an echo of Sharon’s voice. “You never remember the little things, Walter, and it’s the *little* things that really count.”

He and Alex had been together a little over two years. And, according to the passport, the following day was Alex’s birthday. That meant he’d already totally ignored *two* of Alex’s birthdays, and only pure fate had prevented him missing a third.

It was no wonder that Alex sometimes doubted his love.

Okay, maybe Alex hadn’t made a point of *his* birthdays either, but *he* was the one who set the tone and tempo of their relationship. Alex followed *his* lead. Never having been in a committed relationship before, Alex relied on *him* for clues of how to behave.

And he’d fucked up.

Big time.

He quickly reached for his cell phone and dialed Mulder’s number. “Where are you?” he demanded, as soon as Mulder answered.

“Well, I… um…” Mulder stuttered.

“I take it you ignored my advice to take Scully away?”

“No,” Mulder yelped. “I just…um… haven’t… um…”

“Good,” Walter snapped. He quickly explained the situation, and his idea for remedying it, to Mulder who, fortunately, jumped on board without hesitation.

“I’ll call Scully straight away, then sort us out a flight and hotel reservation.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, I told you, Walter. He’s my *partner*,” Mulder answered.

Next, Walter called Sharon. He knew it probably would seem like a strange choice to invite his ex-wife to a birthday celebration for his new lover, but Sharon and Alex had become surprisingly close in the past two years. Walter often suspected it was just that Alex occasionally needed someone safe to gripe to about Walter’s behavior.

***

Walter glanced worriedly at Alex as the plane began its descent. Alex had probably landed at JFK airport enough times to feel completely jaded about New York. When Walter had booked the tickets, he’d been thinking that unless Alex had gone there as a child, he didn’t imagine that Alex had ever simply been a ‘tourist’ in New York, and as a destination for a short-break it had seemed ideal. Now though, after Alex’s excitement in the airport, Walter regretted not choosing a more exotic destination. He was sure that Alex would be disappointed.

To his considerable relief, however, Alex was eagerly staring through the small window, craning his head in an obvious attempt to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, just like all the other tourists on the plane.

He turned to Walter with a bright boyish grin. “We going to go up there?” he asked, pointing at the Empire State Building.

“If you want to,” Walter agreed easily.

“Always wanted to,” Alex replied. “Never had the time, you know?”

Walter nodded understandingly.

“And I want to take the ferry, and go on one of those horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, and…”

Walter finally relaxed and sighed contentedly as Alex reeled off a ‘shopping list’ of things he wanted to do in New York. For someone who’d claimed only a few hours earlier that he didn’t want to go anywhere on vacation, Alex was doing an impressive impersonation of an over-excited teenager.

“Anything you want, baby,” Walter said, taking Alex’s hand and squeezing it gently.

“But I still want to fuck lots,” Alex added, with a smirk.

***


Walter had been relieved that morning that he’d been able to get a room in a top class hotel at such short notice. He hadn’t managed to book a suite, but he’d gotten them an Executive King at the Marriott. He’d been determined to make the short vacation a memorable one and that had, in his opinion, demanded a five-star hotel.

It was only as they were standing at  the reception desk of the hotel that Walter began to wonder whether he’d done the right thing.

He and Alex stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other guests. His own casual attire wasn’t the problem. He was wearing perfectly respectable tan chinos and a soft Ben Sherman polo-neck. Alex’s black jeans, white tee and black leather jacket weren’t necessarily a problem either. Alex looked good in anything and anyone with any taste would see that his jeans and jacket were designer clothing if they actually looked at them.

The problem was that no-one in the hotel seemed willing to look at Alex at all. One brief glance at Alex’s shaven head and aggressive stance and their eyes were quickly sliding away from him. And, naturally, the more uncomfortable the averted glances made him, the more Alex reacted by bristling, sneering, and sending out invisible but unmistakable waves of barely suppressed violence.

The situation wasn’t helped when the uniformed, slightly acne-scarred, desk clerk decided it would be a good idea to meet Alex’s sneer with one of his own.

He’d already made his feelings clear with the sniffy way he’d processed Walter’s credit card. With no more than a wrinkle of his nose, he’d made it perfectly obvious what he thought of two men booking in to a room with a single king-sized bed. But as he handed Walter the keycards to the room, he couldn’t resist a dirty look in Alex’s direction and a loud, “Here’s the keys for yourself and your…*son*.”

Since Walter had given the clerk both their full names, there was no doubt in his mind that the clerk was being sarcastic rather than making a genuine ‘mistake’. But it wasn’t the first time he and Alex had come across a bigot and, to be honest, he didn’t give a shit whether the desk clerk approved of their relationship or not. The only person who had any power to make his and Alex’s life difficult was the Director himself (since it was against the rules for an Agent of the FBI to report directly to a superior they were in an intimate relationship with), but the fact their relationship was the only reason Alex was back in the FBI at all was more than enough reason for the Director to turn a blind eye.

So Walter didn’t care that the clerk was rude enough to make his homophobia obvious. Neither did he imagine Alex cared. On numerous occasions during their relationship they’d come across similar scenarios and Alex had always been more likely to laugh in someone’s face than lose his temper.

What Walter *did* care about was the ‘son’ comment. He was well aware that Alex had an issue about the apparent huge difference in their ages. Not just because Alex now looked young enough to *be* his son, but because the subject of  his mortality and Alex’s potential immortality was the one conversational topic which Alex point-blank refused to discuss, and that alone proved just how much Alex was struggling with the concept.

“Alex,” he breathed softly, reaching for his lover’s arm with the idea of towing him rapidly out of the vicinity.

Alex ignored him, leaned over the desk, and took hold of the solid brass reception bell. “I’m not his son,” he hissed into the desk clerk’s face.

The clerk went white as a sheet, swallowed rapidly and began to visibly quake. Not just because of the expression on Alex’s face but because, as he spoke, Alex crushed the bell like paper between his fingers until it was a tight, crumpled wad of scrap metal.

Then Alex smiled, turned to Walter and, loudly enough for his voice to carry through the entire lobby, said, “You gonna stand there all day, big boy? Or are you gonna take me upstairs and give me the damned good fucking you promised me?”

***

Walter wasn’t sure who was more red-faced, himself or the bell-hop who dropped their bags in their room and raced off without waiting for a tip, but, as the door slammed shut, Alex just collapsed on the king-sized bed and roared.

“Did you see their faces?” he snickered, between gales of laughter.

Walter decided his own embarrassment was irrelevant in the face of Alex’s sudden good humor and began to chuckle too. “Big boy?” he demanded.

“Well you are,” Alex announced, sobering enough to lick his lips provocatively. “How about coming over here and reminding me exactly how big you are?”

Walter rubbed his suddenly excited groin, and watched Alex’s eyes darken with obvious arousal. “You want it, come get it, boy,” he growled playfully, unzipping his pants and reaching inside his y-fronts to release his hard cock.

Alex rolled off the bed, landing on his hands and knees, and moved towards him. He didn’t crawl as much as prowl, his eyes so firmly fixed on Walter’s cock that he resembled a cat preparing to pounce on its prey.

When he reached Walter’s feet, he raised his head just enough to swipe his tongue along the full length of Walter’s cock, from root to glistening tip, and then, while Walter was still gasping at the sensation, Alex rose up on his knees, opened his mouth wide and deep-throated the quivering flesh in one smooth gulp.

Walter groaned, opened his feet a little for better balance, rested his hands on Alex’s shoulders and pushed himself as deep as possible inside the wet, velvet heat of Alex’s mouth. Because of the phenomenal capacity of Alex’s Supersoldier lungs, there was no need for Walter to fuck Alex’s mouth. He simply stood there and let his lover’s throat squeeze and release his length.

“Oh that’s good,” Walter groaned, as Alex’s busy tongue laved and licked around the top of his shaft. “That’s so fucking good.”

Alex purred in pleased contentment, and the purr throbbed through his throat, tickling and massaging Walter’s cock until the older man was clutching Alex tightly enough to bruise.

Walter let the sensations rush over and through him for a few minutes, until his balls were so tight they were aching for relief, and then he pulled back slightly, so that the head of his cock was nesting in Alex’s mouth.

“Suck me, baby,” he gasped.

Eyes heavy-lidded with pleasure, Alex closed his lips around Walter’s shaft and began sucking so hard he seemed determined to siphon Walter’s brains out along with his semen. It took only seconds of the intense, suctioning pressure for Walter to lose any semblance of self-control. He came almost noiselessly, his mouth opening wide in a silent scream and his hips jerking so wildly against Alex’s face that a trickle of blood dripped from Alex’s nose.

Then it was only Alex’s hands swiftly grabbing his waist and taking his weight that allowed Walter to slip gracefully to the floor rather than simply crashing down onto his knees. He rested his head on Alex’s right shoulder, gulping for breath as his hammering heart gradually returned to a more normal pace. He felt too fuck-drunk to ever move again.

Alex solved the problem of Walter’s cotton-candy legs by simply sweeping him up in his arms and effortlessly carrying him to the bed. He carefully lay Walter down, then kicked off his boots, crawled on top of his almost insensate lover, snuggled his face into Walter’s neck and immediately fell asleep.

Walter just lay there holding him, too tired to move but too wired to sleep, and concentrated on re-catching his breath (which was particularly hard to do with Alex sprawled on top of his chest) while gently nuzzling the top of Alex’s head. Although he hated the look of Alex’s brutally short hair, he found the feel of it incredibly erotic. The soft downy re-growth felt like velvet against his lips.

He had maybe ten minutes to regain his strength and composure before Alex abruptly jerked awake and gave him a bright-eyed grin. “Let’s go make like tourists, Walt!”

“You’re like a damned cat, Alex,” Walter grumbled good-naturedly. “You can fall asleep on a dime, take just a few minutes to nap and then wake up raring to go.”

“Mulder thinks it’s a deliberate design spec,” Alex replied easily, rolling off the bed and reaching for his boots. “He doesn’t sleep much himself, but he sure gets pissed as hell when I drag him out of bed.”

“Just as long as you aren’t dragging him *into* bed,” Walter growled, but smiled to show he was joking.

“You know I don’t want anyone but you. Not even Mulder. Well, not anymore,” Alex replied. “I’m still attracted to him, but I don’t *want* him. Besides, since he definitely doesn’t want me, it isn’t even a possibility.”

Walter winced slightly. As he’d already admitted to himself, sometimes Alex’s honesty was pretty brutal.

“Anyway, even if I still wanted him to fuck me, I’d be too damned scared of Scully to do anything about it,” Alex continued seriously.

Walter blinked several times and cleared his throat. “Are you saying they…”

“Nah,” Alex interrupted with a shrug. “I don’t get it. They’re so in love with each other, they’re practically joined at the hip and I know for a *fact* they often sleep in the same room but they *still* haven’t done it. They say it might ‘ruin their relationship’. It’s a fucking farce.”

“It’s definitely a damned shame,” Walter agreed. “It’s way past time someone knocked their heads together and made them see sense.”

“I tried that. Scully pulled her weapon on me and threatened to shoot my balls off if I didn’t butt out.”

“She WHAT?”

Alex quickly changed the subject. “Are you getting up or what? I’m hungry.”

“You’re *always* hungry,” Walter retorted.

“You *make* me hungry,” Alex smirked, licking his lips suggestively. “If you don’t feed me, I’ll just have to eat you again.”

Walter’s cock gave a tiny twitch of interest, but his depleted balls reacted with panic and pointedly tried to bury themselves between his thighs. “Let’s go get some food,” he agreed hastily.

***

They ate lunch at an ‘all-you-can-eat’ restaurant in Lower Manhattan, with Alex depleting the buffet so thoroughly that Walter almost died of embarrassment at the ogling disbelieving stares of the other customers.

Then they took the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty.

Alex’s only comment was, “It’s kind of smaller than I expected.”

But since he then spent a small fortune in the gift shop buying various gifts and souvenirs (giving the excuse that Mulder liked tacky things) Walter was satisfied that Alex was thoroughly enjoying himself and merely ‘pretending’ to be cool.

They took the subway up to Times Square and Alex insisted that they *had* to eat at Planet Hollywood, even though it had been barely two hours since they’d nearly bankrupted the ‘all-you-can-eat’ place. So Walter sipped at a cup of coffee, while Alex cheerfully worked his way through the menu.

As they exited, Alex looked with obvious longing at the tee-shirts and bomber-jackets for sale in the lobby and paused at one rack long enough to caress the sleeve of a black jacket with a discrete gold-embroidered logo on its lapel. But, when Walter asked him if he wanted to buy it, he sniffed loudly and dismissively said he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing that kind of tourist crap.

Walter made a mental note to call Sharon later that evening and add the jacket to the shopping list he’d already given her.

Finally, they went to the Empire State Building.

They had to stand in line for almost an hour for their tickets, and then they had a minor confrontation with the security guards who were reluctant to allow them through with their weapons despite their ID.

“*He* doesn’t look like an FBI Agent,” one of them said to Walter, while Alex simply stood there and glowered so dangerously that he looked like anything *but* an FBI Agent.

“He’s been working undercover,” Walter replied smoothly.

Alex was still sulking when they were finally allowed to enter, so when Alex suddenly came to an abrupt halt and said he’d changed his mind about wanting to go to the roof, Walter assumed that the faint tremor of Alex’s shoulders was suppressed anger.

“Come on, baby. Don’t let those assholes ruin our vacation. You really wanted to…”

“Well, I don’t fucking want to do it now,” Alex snarled. “It’s a fucking stupid idea. Who the fuck wants to dangle off the top of some stupid fucking building just to look at the top of a bunch of other fucking stupid buildings, anyway?”

Walter blinked at him uncertainly. While Alex’s language was frequently peppered with the occasional profanity, five ‘fucks’ in a row indicated he was seriously upset.

“Okay, Alex. What’s the real problem here?”

“There’s no fucking…” Alex began, then gulped heavily and whimpered low in his throat as he realized he had almost told Walter a lie.

Walter grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the corridor out of earshot of the rest of the queue. “It’s okay, Alex. I’m not angry with you. I promise everything’s fine. But I need you to tell me what the problem is. I love you, Alex. I need to know what’s upset you.”

Alex closed his eyes and took a deep steadying breath.

“I didn’t fucking think, Walter. I… I thought…thought I’d be okay. But… but I can’t do it. I just fucking *can’t*. I’m so fucking STUPID.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Walter growled, as he suddenly understood. Alex was claustrophobic. He had enough of a problem using the elevator to their condo. He almost always took the stairs and met Walter at their front door. Of course the idea of entering an elevator to rise the 86 floors to the observatory would terrify him.

“It takes less than a minute to the 80th floor, Alex. That’s all. I promise. It might be a hell of a long way up, but you’ll barely have time to even think about panicking before you’re already there. Then,” he added, not willing to mislead Alex in any way, “we have to get in a second elevator to get to the observatory. But that’s just 6 floors, far less than the elevator at home, and a hell of a lot faster. We’ll be right at the top in less than two minutes.”

Alex frowned at him, his eyes glimmering with the threat of tears and the skin between his eyebrows furrowing into a deep crease. “You promise?” he whispered uncertainly, his lower lip trembling.

Walter took his hand and squeezed it gently. In moments like these, when Alex was as vulnerable as a child, it was almost impossible to remember he was a virtually indestructible Supersoldier. “I promise, Alex. I swear to you, on my life, that I’m telling you the truth.”

Alex swallowed heavily. “I trust you, Walter” he whispered softly, but his eyes were still doubtful even as they begged Walter to be worthy of that trust.

Uncaring of any stares, Walter held on to Alex’s hand as he led him to the elevators and he continued to hold on tightly as they stepped inside and the doors closed even though Alex was unwittingly squeezing his fingers tightly enough to cause Walter genuine pain.

As he’d promised, the elevator ascended so quickly that Alex barely had time to even think about panicking before the doors opened again and they were at the 80th floor.

“Want to go right to the top?” Walter asked gently.

Alex grinned. “Yeah. Right to the top, Walter,” he agreed and, although he continued to hold Walter’s hand, he entered the second elevator without any significant hesitation and, fortunately for Walter’s sore fingers, he stopped clutching Walter’s hand like it was a safety rope.

When the doors opened, Alex tugged Walter out towards the observatory platform with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old. His grin was so wide and infectious that several of the other tourists automatically smiled back at him. Which just proved to Walter that it wasn’t actually Alex’s clothes and haircut which had made the people in the hotel avoid him, but rather his attitude. Despite his boyish and indisputably attractive face, Alex usually emitted a palpable impression of barely-contained violence. Walter thought it had less to do with the fact he was a Supersoldier than a throwback to his years as a consortium operative.

Of course, when Alex *wanted* to appear harmless, he could effortlessly achieve the illusion. When he went out in the field with Mulder he often played the naïve young junior partner against Mulder’s air of arrogant superiority. It was an effective form of good cop/bad cop that often produced significant results. But it was a role-play, an act, and one that he never played in Walter’s company. It was as though his verbal need to be totally honest with Walter applied as strongly to his behavior. When he was with Walter, he was always the *real* Alex.

The real Alex was a dangerous and broodingly quiet man.

But he was also, on rare occasions, playful and almost child-like in his enthusiasm for life.

And always, whether brooding or boisterous, Alex exuded an unmistakable aura of sensuality.

Walter loved Alex in all his incarnations. He was attracted to him whether he was sulky or furious, or relaxed and content. He found him beautiful whether he was pouting, smiling or frowning. But when, as now, Alex cast aside all his usual masks and instead showed a glimmer of the boy he must once have been, Walter found him completely irresistible.

So he found himself trailing around the Observatory with a soft, tolerant smile on his face as Alex dragged him from one view-point to another, found himself digging endlessly in his pocket for change as Alex insisted on checking the view from each and every telescope, and despite the chilly wind he felt increasingly warm as both his groin and heart throbbed with affection for his lover.

Alex finally sighed and agreed he’d seen all there was to possibly see, but then insisted on visiting the gift shop and buying another eclectic collection of memorabilia, again mumbling under his breath that Mulder liked such things.

Walter pretended interest as Alex rummaged through the shelves of souvenirs but finally lost his patience when Alex spent over ten minutes agonizing over whether to buy a snow-globe of Manhattan or one of Hudson Bay.

“I can see Mulder might like a King Kong, but do you really think he wants all those fridge magnets?” Walter asked carefully. “I don’t even think he *uses* his kitchen. And as for the globe, if you buy him any *more* ornaments I’ll have to build him a cabinet to display them on.”

Alex paused, put down the snow-globe he was holding, shuffled awkwardly and dipped his head to hide his face from Walter’s eyes.

“They’re not for Mulder,” he whispered miserably. Then he reached into his basket and began replacing the items he’d chosen back onto the shelves.

Walter silently cursed himself and caught hold of Alex’s wrist gently. “They’re for *us*? Well, damn, I always wanted an excuse to put a new display cabinet in the hall.”

“You did?” Alex asked uncertainly.

Walter’s heart ached. Although he had too much respect for Alex’s pride to make an issue of it, he’d suddenly understood *exactly* why Alex wanted the souvenirs of their vacation. Alex didn’t have *any* memorabilia of his past. Whatever few items might have survived his life on the run had been irrevocably lost during his incarceration at Penzbech. Alex had entered their relationship with nothing but the clothes on his back. He had no photos of his family, no possessions to remind him of his childhood, he didn’t even retain the scars on his body that had at least proven he’d *had* a past before his transformation into a Supersoldier.

Alex returned from every field-trip with Mulder clutching *something*. A paperback, a tattered magazine, sometimes an interesting stone or shell he’d found, and *always* a bag full of complimentary items from whatever motel he’d stayed in. Of course Walter had noticed the fact that their bathroom cabinet was now filled to overflowing with miniature soaps, shampoos and plastic combs, but he’d always simply assumed Alex to be a magpie.

Now, with a sinking heart, he realized that what Alex was *really* trying to do was surround himself with mementos of his new life to fill the aching void of his missing past.

Walter wanted a display cabinet full of tourist trash like he wanted a hole in the head. But he understood why *Alex* would want them. Maybe a statue of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building was a poor substitute for a family photograph album but it was sure as hell better than *nothing*.

The walls of their condo were lined with *his* past. Photos of himself in ‘nam. The framed certificates of his various qualifications. The picture of himself accepting a medal from the President himself.

And all Alex had was an ever growing pile of items in the bottom of his closet that Walter had privately been calling ‘trash’.

Now Walter felt ashamed of himself.

“Well, if they’re for *us*,” he said, “let’s have *both* globes.”

Alex risked a suspicious glance from under his lashes.

“One for either end of the top shelf,” Walter continued smoothly. “And then we can put the statue of the Empire State Building in the middle. What do you think?”

Alex’s face was split by a sudden, relieved smile and he hurriedly added both snow-globes to his basket with such enthusiasm that Walter decided that maybe a display cabinet in the hall *would* be nice, after all.

They returned to street level, Alex so busy guarding his ‘prizes’ from the jostling of the other occupants of the elevator that he didn’t have time to worry about the descent, and took a taxi back to the hotel to drop off their purchases.

“You hungry?” Walter asked, as Alex packed the souvenirs into his suitcase.

“I’m always hungry,” Alex purred, turning to meet his gaze, and from the look in his eyes it was obvious he wasn’t referring to food.

Walter chuckled and checked his watch. “Hold that thought. I don’t want you getting up in the middle of the night and accusing me of neglecting your stomach. We can…”

“I checked, Walter. There’s 24-hour room service,” Alex interrupted, with a smirk. He removed his jacket, started unfastening his jeans and bluntly stated, “I want to fuck.”

Walter’s cock sprang to attention inside his own pants and he met Alex’s smirk with one of his own.

“Well, you’ll have to ‘want’, Alex. Because *I* don’t want to fuck. I want to…” He paused until Alex’s mouth twisted into a miserable pout before adding, “play.”

Alex’s eyes immediately darkened and he moaned low in his throat. “Play?” he husked. “What kind of play?”

“Guess,” Walter chuckled.

Alex’s eyes flickered uncertainly. He swallowed audibly, licked his lower lip and began to breathe audibly. However, he also ripped the remainder of his clothes off with Supersoldier speed, threw himself face-down onto the bed so enthusiastically that the whole frame shook with the impact and spread his legs invitingly.

Walter snickered, rummaged through his suitcase, carefully chose a few items and then joined Alex on the bed.

He began, as always, with a careful application of lube into Alex’s tight ass. It took several minutes and three fingers to open him sufficiently for the insertion of the vibrator Walter had chosen. It was only five inches long, but almost two inches in circumference and, most importantly, had a series of different settings that could be changed by a remote control.

“Oh fuck,” Alex groaned, as Walter began easing the considerable girth into his ass.

“This feel familiar, Alex?” Walter snorted. He only ever used *this* particular vibrator to play one particular game, and it was obvious from the tremors rippling down Alex’s back and ass that Alex was pretty damned sure what Walter was planning to do to him.

“Sadist,” Alex agreed, though it didn’t sound anything like a complaint.

When the vibrator was firmly embedded, Walter told Alex to roll over onto his back. Alex not only complied but automatically spread his arms and legs into a spread-eagled position.

“Good boy,” Walter whispered approvingly.

Except for a slight whimper and an involuntary shudder, Alex remained silent and passive as Walter carefully worked three interlocked heavy metal rings onto his genitals. With a little manipulation, Walter managed to pass the top ring over Alex’s cock head and down to nestle tightly at the root of his rigid shaft, and then eased each of his balls into the lower two rings.

“Tight?” he asked, as Alex’s flesh strained against the rings.

“Fucking evil,” Alex groaned.

“That’s not evil,” Walter corrected, flicking the remote to send a low constant pulse into Alex’s ass. “*This* is evil.” He picked up a second vibrator, turned it to its highest setting and pressed it against Alex’s trapped balls.

“FUCK,” Alex screamed, arching his back and bucking his hips.

“And *this*,” Walter continued pleasantly, switching the remote to a faster pulse and reaching for a third vibrator, “is *truly* evil.”

Still holding the second vibrator firmly against Alex’s balls, Walter turned the third vibrator on and touched it to Alex’s cockhead.

Alex threw his head back and howled.

“Too intense?” Walter asked, watching Alex’s face carefully.

“Fucking EVIL,” Alex gasped through clenched teeth but, despite his grimace and the wild gyrations of his hips, he made no attempt to escape the sensations.

Walter ceased his assault on Alex’s cock just long enough to turn the first vibrator up to its maximum setting, then reapplied the third vibrator.

“Oh Jesus, Oh FUCK, I need to come, Walter. Let me come,” Alex wailed.

“I’m not going to stop until you *do* come, Alex,” Walter promised him, with a sly chuckle.

Alex howled something unintelligible, although Walter was pretty sure it was something along the lines of “fucking sadistic bastard.”

Walter kept his promise, although it took all his weight and strength to keep the vibrators against Alex’s flesh as he bucked and twisted in a near delirium. He continued his merciless assault until the pressure in Alex’s groin was sufficient to defy the tight clamping of the cock ring.

Alex came with such a blood-curdling scream that Walter was damned glad it was early enough in the evening that the people in the neighboring rooms were more likely to be in the restaurant than dialing hotel security to report a murder.

He put the two vibrators down, turned the vibrator in Alex’s ass down to a low pulse again, worked the rings off Alex’s depleted balls and limp, sticky cock and smiled at Alex’s sweat-drenched features and tightly closed eyes.

“You still with me?” he laughed.

“No,” Alex groaned.

Walter smiled to himself, rose off the bed long enough to remove his own clothing, piled the pillows under Alex’s head and shoulders to raise him to a half-sitting position (while Alex continued to play possum) then climbed back on to the mattress, straddled Alex with his face facing Alex’s trembling legs and leaned over to lick the spilled semen off Alex’s belly.

Alex’s dormant cock sprang immediately back to life and waved at him cheerfully from its nest of dark hair.

Walter eased backwards until he was at a comfortable angle to take Alex into his mouth, which ‘co-incidentally’ pushed his butt directly against Alex’s face, lowered himself to take Alex’s cockhead into his mouth and let the hot flesh muffle his moan of pleasure as Alex’s tongue accepted his ‘invitation’ by pressing against his ass.

His mouth bobbed gently, his tongue swirling into and around Alex’s slit and his teeth gently scraping Alex’s shaft, while simultaneously Alex’s tongue licked and laved at the tight flesh of Walter’s pucker, probing hungrily for entrance.

Walter lost his rhythm when Alex’s tongue breached him. He sat back heavily on Alex’s face as his hole was penetrated, and all he could manage then was to simply keep the tip of Alex’s cock inside his mouth and gently squeeze Alex’s rapidly filling balls, as the tongue flicked and licked its way impossibly deeply into Walter’s sensitive passage.

As the sensations trickled through his ass, Walter’s balls tightened and his cock filled with blood and slapped hungrily against his belly. But he ignored the desperate urge to touch himself. Unlike Alex, *he* wasn’t physically capable of multiple orgasms and it was still early in the evening. He intended to play with Alex a lot more before he gave in and gave Alex the fucking he was begging for. (Or, at least, *would* have been begging for if Walter wasn’t currently sitting on his face and making speech impossible.) So, with difficulty, he ignored the ache in his own groin and the spikes of pleasure coursing through his ass, and concentrated again on Alex’s cock.

It took only a few swipes of his tongue and a slight suctioning of his lips, combined with a concerted squeezing of Alex’s balls, to bring Alex to another shattering orgasm. And then he reluctantly rose up off Alex’s face so that Alex could regain his breath while Walter lovingly licked the last traces of semen off the again limp cock.

Then he scrambled off the bed, paused long enough to smirk at the expression of sex-hazed stupidity on Alex’s face, and crossed over to the closet.

“Come on,” he said, as he reached for a change of clothes.

“Huh?” Alex moaned, his eyes blinking with confusion.

“It’s still early, Alex. We’re going out,” he announced, selecting an outfit for Alex and throwing it at the almost insensate body on the bed.

“Out?”

“Yeah, out. Get your ass in gear, Alex.”

Alex continued to blink at him in total disbelief for a moment but then, as though someone had flicked a switch, he transformed instantaneously from shattered to wide-awake as his regenerative abilities sent a surge of strength into his limbs. He rose off the bed with such controlled grace that only the pervading scent of sex in the air remained as proof he’d just been forced into two debilitating orgasms.

“Speaking of asses,” Alex groaned, reaching around himself to remove the still throbbing vibrator out of his butt.

“Uh uh,” Walter said, shaking his head firmly. “That stays in, Alex.”

Two huge green eyes stared at him in complete disbelief. Walter had never played *that* game with him before.

“You…uh…you want me to go out with…with this thing in…in my ass?” Alex stuttered.

Walter grinned evilly. “Can’t take the pace, boy?”

Alex gulped heavily, but his eyes darkened significantly. “In…in *public*, Walter?”

“No one’s going to know,” Walter pointed out blandly. He finished dressing and placed the remote into his jacket pocket. “Well, not if you’re quiet about it,” he added, slipping his hand into his pocket and adjusting the remote slightly so that Alex yelped with surprise. “I said *quiet*,” he chuckled.

“Who are you, and what have you done to Walter?” Alex grumbled, dancing a little as he attempted to drag his jeans up over his again engorged cock while Walter continued to play idly with the remote.

When Alex had finally managed to dress himself, Walter smirked with possessive satisfaction. Alex’s cock was a prominent bulge inside the tight jeans and his nipples were taut and visible under the thin material of his black tee-shirt. His eyes were dilated with lust and his hips were jerking minutely with each low pulse of the vibrator against his prostate.

Walter threw him his jacket and said, "Let’s go".

Instead of putting the jacket on, Alex cradled it in his arms so that it obscured his obscenely prominent crotch, and he walked with careful steps as he followed Walter to the door.

When they entered the elevator to descend the mere four floors to the lobby, Walter decided to distract Alex from any possible feeling of claustrophobia by changing the setting on the remote. Alex yelped with surprise and began to pant heavily.

“That sciatica playing you up again?” Walter asked sweetly, for the benefit of the couple who had been in the car when they’d entered.

Alex mumbled something obscene under his breath and shifted awkwardly, spreading his legs slightly in an obvious, though hopeless, attempt to relieve the pulsing pressure inside his ass.

“You’re pretty quiet there, Alex,” Walter said, as they rode to Greenwich Village in a yellow cab.

Alex just glared at him and continued his desperate urge to keep his breathing steady as Walter continued to randomly play with the remote.

Walter hadn’t had time to research gay bars in New York, but he knew about Stonewall so he took Alex there, bought them both a drink, and told him the history of the Stonewall riot as they perched on a couple of bar stools. Alex pretended to listen, and genuinely seemed pleased to be, for once, in a bar full of gay men where his and Walter’s relationship garnered little interest, but the fact that Walter continued to endlessly tease him by regularly changing the setting on the remote made conversation impossible.

It took little more than half-an-hour of the incessant teasing before Alex was audibly whimpering, clutching his beer bottle so tightly he was threatening to break it, and quietly but insistently begging Walter to stop playing with him and ‘just fuck him already’.

“Here?” Walter asked innocently. “I don’t think this is *that* kind of place, Alex.”

Alex clearly didn’t care. “Please,” he gasped. “Oh please, Walter. I’m going to fucking explode.”

“You do seem pretty flushed. I’ll buy you another beer,” Walter suggested kindly.

“I don’t want a fucking beer, I want a FUCK,” Alex screamed.

The barman fumbled the bottle he was opening, looked over at them with a wide smirk on his face, gave Walter a deliberate wink and mouthed ‘hot’ at him.

Walter flushed slightly but returned the grin.

“I wouldn’t make a pretty thing like *him* beg,” one of the other patrons said loudly.

“Fuck the twink,” his companion replied. “I wanna know what ‘Big Daddy’ has in his pants to *make* him beg like that.”

“Waaalter,” Alex whined.

The barman shifted up the bar until he was level with Walter and quietly murmured, “The rest rooms here are pretty private, you know?” and winked again.

“Please,” Alex groaned, as his augmented hearing clearly picked up the comment that had been only intended for Walter’s ears.

Walter raised an eyebrow and frowned at Alex with a pretense of shock. “I can’t believe you seriously want me to make love to you in a public toilet, Alex.”

“You can fuck me over the bar for all I care,” Alex retorted, loudly enough for several of the other customers to wolf whistle encouragement.

Walter met the barman’s suddenly panicked expression with a wink of his own, grabbed Alex by the hand and steered him firmly towards the back of the bar.

By the time they’d reached the door of the men’s room, Alex was in front and practically dragging Walter in his wake. He burst through the door so forcefully that he almost took it off its hinges and headed straight for one of the stalls.

“Not a lot of room to maneuver in here,” Walter commented idly, as they shut themselves in the stall.

Instead of answering, Alex simply dropped his pants, yanked the vibrator out of his ass, spread his legs either side of the toilet seat, braced his hands on the low cistern and lowered his head until it was resting on his wrists.

Which was answer enough, really, Walter decided. He freed his cock, stepped between Alex’s open legs and pressed against Alex’s still stretched and lubricated hole.

“NOW,” Alex demanded, with a low, dangerous growl.

“I think we have an audience,” Walter replied quietly, as he heard the outer door open and the distinct sound of tip-toeing footsteps and whispered ‘hushes’.

“You can sell fucking tickets for all I care. If you don’t fuck me now, I’ll rip your fucking head off and stuff it up your ass, Walt.”

Walter chuckled to himself and decided the embarrassment of knowing they had an ‘audience’ was a hell of a lot less worrying than the idea of leaving Alex unsatisfied. Although he *knew* Alex wouldn’t hurt him, he wouldn’t put it past the younger man to completely trash the men’s room in temper if Walter didn’t stop teasing him.

So he pushed into Alex’s ass. His groan of fulfillment, as he was enveloped by Alex’s wet heat, was drowned by Alex’s own happy moans.

“Do me hard,” Alex snarled. “Do me so damned hard I howl, Walter.”

“You always howl,” Walter snickered, but responded to Alex’s demand by pulling back a little and then slamming back inside with his full weight.

A standing position always allowed him to fuck Alex deeper and harder than he could achieve from a prone position, and Alex’s resultant grunts of approval were an incredible aphrodisiac. Besides, despite a certain level of natural reticence, he found the idea they were performing for a crowd an unexpected turn-on. As each thrust of his hips dragged moans of satisfaction from Alex’s throat, Walter could hear similar muted sounds from the other side of the stall door. Before long, he was damned certain that every guy listening had their own dicks in their hands and were fantasizing they were either himself or Alex.

“Harder,” Alex gasped, as Walter rammed against his prostate. “Please, Walter. Fuck me so hard I can taste you in my mouth when you come.”

There was a thud and a muffled groan from the other side of the door.

Until that point, Walter would have sworn he was fucking Alex as hard and fast as was physically possible. But between Alex’s husky voice and the obvious effect of the scenario on their audience, Walter suddenly found the energy to dramatically increase his pace. Mulder’s favorite ‘joke’ was to call Alex a superslut. A comment that always pissed the hell out of Walter (mainly because it was so evidently true). But standing in that toilet stall, fucking his gorgeous insatiable lover to the groans of appreciative strangers, Walter suddenly felt like a super *stud*.

He began fucking Alex so hard that his cock and balls ached with the impact, and all the while Alex’s groans were deepening into near-roars of approval. He continued until he knew that there was no way he could hold back his own release even a moment longer, then grabbed Alex’s cock and gave it a couple of hard pulls. Alex reacted so quickly to the additional sensation that Walter barely managed to pull out of Alex’s ass before it clenched tight enough to potentially castrate him, and he erupted against Alex’s flexing ass cheeks as Alex roared a primal scream and came against the cistern so hard that his semen chipped the enamel.

“Jesus,” Walter gasped guiltily, as he saw the now slightly pitted porcelain. Although he knew from experience that a sufficiently frustrated Alex could come so hard that his semen spurted out with full Supersoldier energy, it had been months since Walter had driven Alex crazy enough for his cock to become a weapon.

He’d become a little lax, he decided. If he wanted to play this game again (and he *definitely* wanted to play it again) he’d have to remember to bring Alex’s steel cock-sheath along on subsequent vacations.

It took both of them several minutes to recover. Minutes during which their audience slunk quietly out of the men’s room, leaving them alone. So Walter managed to wet a wad of toilet paper at one of the sinks and clean both of them up before they re-dressed.

Now satiated, Alex had transformed into one of his lesser-known incarnations. A sweet, silent, well-fucked and coy Alex, who burrowed into the safety of Walter’s arms and peppered him with a series of shy, soft, nuzzling kisses.

They emerged back into the bar with Walter’s arm around Alex’s waist and Alex purring contentedly into his neck, to find fresh drinks waiting for them at the bar – paid for by one of the anonymous peeping-toms – and a mixture of awe and envy on the faces of the other customers.

Not that Alex noticed. The former assassin, who usually had eyes in the back of his head, had temporarily been replaced by a sex-hazed, deeply satisfied, clawless pussycat.

This particular incarnation was, Walter decided, even cuter than Alex in excited child-mode. Particularly when Alex, head bowed shyly, silently dragged Walter away from the bar into one of the booths and insisted on sitting on his lap while they drank their complimentary beers.

Alex remained silent and passive even during the cab ride back to the hotel. Sleepy and satiated, he cuddled Walter in the back of the cab apparently totally unaware they were being watched through the driver’s mirror by the slightly shocked but seemingly appreciative cab driver.

Unwilling to disturb Alex’s aura of complete, peaceful contentment, Walter decided to wait until Alex was asleep before calling room service for the food he knew Alex would wake up hungry for in the middle of the night. He simply lay down on the bed and let Alex cuddle in his embrace until the drowsy green eyes closed and Alex’s breath steadied into the soft rhythm of sleep.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his ability to regenerate, Alex required as much, if not more, sleep as a normal human. The energy his body used in the regeneration process was a serious drain on his resources. He was capable of performing at full capacity for an inhuman length of time but, eventually, Alex still had to replenish his energy. By choice or, if Mulder was right, by design, Alex preferred to replenish himself with short cat-naps, but after the evening they’d shared nothing less than *real* sleep would do.

Which Walter had counted on. There were things he needed to do while Alex wasn’t listening and coming up with an excuse to disappear on his own for a while would have negated the whole point of the weekend.

Walter waited an hour, struggling against the urge to join Alex in his dreams, then he carefully slipped out of bed and rang room service for a cold buffet. After he’d checked to be sure that Alex was still fast asleep, he took his cell phone into the bathroom and called Sharon to check the arrangements for the following evening. He also told her about the jacket in Planet Hollywood and she promised to send her current flame, Elijah, to buy it on Walter’s behalf while she shopped for the items he’d previously requested. Next, he called Mulder to double-check that he and Scully had arrived safely at the Marriott. Then he phoned the restaurant he’d booked earlier that morning, while Alex was packing, and changed his reservation from a party of two to a party of six.

Finally, he went to the door, opened it slightly and waited for the food so that Alex wouldn’t be disturbed by its arrival.

And only then, when everything he needed to do had been done, did Walter return to the bed, crawl into Alex’s embrace, and allow himself to give in to his own considerable exhaustion.

***

More tired than he’d realized, Walter slept through until gone nine the next morning. He only woke *then* because of the combination of the sun streaming onto his face from the window and the peculiar, itchy sensation at his groin.

He stared down at himself, blinked rapidly, took a couple of deep breaths and finally managed a reasonably polite, “What *are* you doing?”

“Finishing my breakfast,” Alex replied smugly, keeping his eyes fixed on Walter’s cock but waving vaguely in the direction of a stack of empty plates piled on a tray near the door.

Walter briefly glanced over to the table where he’d left the cold buffet. It, too, was now no more than a tower of empty plates.

“Did you leave me *anything*?” he chuckled.

“Nope,” Alex replied, licking delicately at Walter’s cock. “You were asleep,” he pointed out unrepentantly. “I thought, when you got up, we could go out for breakfast.”

“*More* breakfast,” Walter pointed out.

Alex just shrugged and sucked lightly against the skin of Walter’s scrotum.

Walter shivered with pleasure. “Not that I’m complaining. But why is there half a jug of maple syrup on my groin?”

“Not enough pancakes,” Alex replied reasonably, then slurped his tongue up the length of Walter’s shaft.

“It itches. It’s all over my pubes.”

“Not for long, it's not,” Alex retorted, taking a mouthful of dark, syrup-encrusted hair in his mouth and sucking rapturously.

“God,” Walter gasped, arching his back and thrusting his hips against Alex’s face. “That feels so fucking good, Alex.”

“Tastes good too,” Alex grinned, then took the next section in his mouth and used his teeth to scrape the syrup off the hair.

Walter yelped and kicked his feet wildly. It felt like Alex was pulling his pubes out from the root.

But he didn’t ask Alex to stop.

It took almost an hour before Alex decided Walter was clean, by which time his own face was smeared and sticky with the syrup. So, of course, when he decided to reward Walter for playing ‘plate’ for him by deep-throating him without warning, he transferred most of that syrup back onto Walter’s groin and, after swallowing the last traces of Walter’s come, announced he’d just *have* to lick Walter clean again.

Walter made the reluctant decision that his heart wouldn’t take any more excitement before breakfast and instead suggested they took a shower together.

Alex greeted the suggestion with less than his usual enthusiasm (since he’d just swallowed his chance of using the shower as an opportunity for a good fuck).

Since it was Alex’s birthday (not that he was admitting his knowledge of that fact yet), Walter solved the problem by collecting a dildo en route to the shower and using *that* to put the smile back on Alex’s face.

So it was nearly half-past ten when they finally left the hotel. They stopped for breakfast at a Starbucks, where Alex devoured enough pastries to make Walter wonder whether he’d imagined the stack of empty plates in their room, and then took the subway to Central Park.

It didn’t take Walter long to realize that Alex was far more interested in petting the carriage horses than taking an actual ride around the park. The way Alex handled the animals, scratching them softly behind their ears and blowing gently into their nostrils, made it obvious that he both knew and loved horses.

It surprised Walter, since he knew Alex had grown up in a city and had never mentioned any childhood vacations into the countryside.

“There was this mounted cop in my neighborhood,” Alex explained, with a soft smile of remembrance. “He used to let all us kids pet his horse. I always wanted a pet, but our lease wouldn’t allow them. So I made a kind of pet out of that police horse. Sometimes my mom would give me carrots and I’d spend half the morning running around the streets to find Officer Murphy so I could give them to Duke. He was so damned big, Walter. But gentle. He’d take those treats out of my hand and all I’d feel was this tickle of velvety lips against my palm. I loved that damned horse. Reckon that was what made me first think about a career in law enforcement. I wanted a Duke of my own.”

Then Alex sighed heavily. “Things didn’t quite turn out the way I expected.”

Walter frowned thoughtfully. “There’s a rule against pets at the condo too. But if… well, if you *still* want a pet, we could move. Get a house with a yard. Buy a dog. Or a cat. Or whatever. Hell, you could even have a horse if you like.”

“It’d have to be a damned big yard,” Alex laughed, but his eyes glistened suspiciously at Walter’s obviously serious offer.

“Well I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the horse at a livery yard,” Walter chuckled. “I can’t really see us living in the country, Alex.”

“Let’s be honest, Walter. We don’t live the kind of lives that would allow for *any* pet and, anyway, I’m not a kid anymore. But… but, well, thanks. Maybe someday.”

“Yeah,” Walter agreed sadly. “Maybe someday.”

“I’m hungry,” Alex announced suddenly.

Walter accepted it was a deliberate change of subject and so resisted the urge to point out that Alex couldn’t *possibly* be hungry.

“Let’s go back to Planet Hollywood,” Alex continued. “You didn’t eat anything there yesterday and that cheesecake was to die for.”

So they returned to Times Square and, again, Alex browsed through the restaurant’s store. Walter held his breath slightly but, although he fondled the black bomber jacket again, Alex just bought a couple of logo’d travel mugs, virtuously pointing out they’d be useful for their early morning journeys to work.

After lunch, they went to Greenwich Village and wandered around the streets. Alex dragged Walter into every adult store they passed and they giggled, like naughty schoolboys, at the prominent displays of whips, paddles and leather harnesses. They bought a few innocuous toys to supplement their already extensive collection, though Alex was the one who had to make the purchases because Walter found himself surprisingly embarrassed by the whole process.

“I think I prefer the anonymity of buying off the web,” he admitted ruefully.

“You didn’t seem that interested in anonymity last night,” Alex snickered.

Walter laughed and agreed. It *did* seem pretty ridiculous to be self-conscious about buying a few sex toys after they’d virtually performed a public sex show in a gay bar the night before.

“This is fun,” he suddenly announced, looking somewhat surprised.

“Buying sex toys?”

“Being here with you. Having a vacation with you. Spending time with the man I love. If I’d known how much fun a vacation was, I’d probably still be a field agent because I sure as hell wouldn’t have wasted half my life working every goddamned hour instead of having a *life*. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for coming into my life and making it….” He paused and searched for the right word. “Making it *wonderful*.”

Alex blushed slightly and dipped his head shyly. He was clearly uncomfortable with the comment, but he still reached for Walter’s hand and squeezed it softly as though trying to say with touch what he couldn’t say with words.

They returned to the hotel to shower and change, a process which took almost three hours since, the moment Walter removed his clothes, Alex pounced on him and demanded the *real* fucking he’d been deprived of earlier.

So it was a somewhat exhausted Walter who finally managed to drag Alex back out of their room at seven-thirty. Alex hadn’t questioned Walter’s insistence he should dress in smart black pants and a teal silk shirt, quietly accepting Walter’s comment that he wanted to eat in a *nice* restaurant for a change, but had seemed somewhat disappointed that Walter hadn’t produced the remote-controlled vibrator again.

They caught a cab to the restaurant. Walter had booked a table at The Water Club, choosing it for its breathtaking views of the East River and the fact that the website he’d checked had raved about its excellent American menu. As a gourmet cook himself, Alex wouldn’t be impressed by anything other than a seriously good meal, but Alex *hated* nouveau cuisine. Alex wanted a substantial quantity of good food on his plate rather than a piece of culinary art. He and Walter had once eaten at a highly recommended French restaurant in DC. They’d enjoyed themselves but, on the way home, Alex had still been hungry enough to pull into a drive-thru and order himself a cheeseburger and fries.

“What do you think?” Walter asked, as they climbed out of the cab. As it was twilight, they already had a good view of the elegant interior, since the walls of the restaurant were practically all glass to augment the diners’ view of the river.

“It’s great,” Alex answered enthusiastically. “And I’m *really* hungry.”

Walter chuckled to himself and he let Alex lead the way into the restaurant. Only to bump into his back as Alex halted abruptly in the doorway and uttered an embarrassingly loud, “SHIT!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re not going to fucking believe this, Walter, but Mulder’s here.”

“What?” Walter demanded, in his best DD voice. “Where?”

“Over in that corner. He’s with Scully. They’re *both* here.”

“Are you sure?” Walter asked, adjusting his glasses. “They’re right the other side of the room. Maybe they just *look* like Mulder and Scully.”

“If it looks like a duck, it fucks like a duck,” Alex muttered darkly.

Walter struggled to keep a straight face. Alex had a quite original way with words.

“Well, I *did* tell him to take a vacation,” he pointed out. “Maybe it’s just co-incidence.”

“It’s a fucking X-file,” Alex groaned. “We both take a long weekend and *he* turns up in the same place as us. Unless… hell, you don’t think he’s here *looking* for us do you?”

“Let’s find out,” Walter said, his tone decisive, and led the way to Mulder and Scully’s table.

Mulder managed such a convincing double-take at their entrance that Walter made a mental note to remember his Oscar-winning acting ability the next time Mulder was trying to get a 302 signed.

“What are you two doing here?” Mulder demanded. “Is there a case you need us for?”

“I told you we should have brought our cell phones on vacation,” Scully scolded, with a nod of welcome to Walter and Alex and a frown in Mulder’s direction.

“No, we’re here on vacation here ourselves,” Walter replied.

“And you just turned up at the same restaurant as us?” Mulder demanded. “Spooky.”

“Well,” Walter said awkwardly. “We’ll leave you to it. I’m sure our table is ready for us.”

“Why don’t you join us?” Scully asked, gesturing at the four empty place settings at their table. “We haven’t ordered yet and there’s plenty of room.”

Walter looked deliberately uncertain and glanced at Alex as though for his opinion.

As he’d hoped, Alex just shrugged and sat down in the seat next to Mulder. He still looked slightly confused and suspicious, but when Scully solemnly told him they’d come to New York because it was the only destination worth visiting for such a short vacation, Alex nodded his acceptance and visibly relaxed.

Walter called for the wine-menu and spent several minutes perusing it while Alex and Mulder exchanged stories of the two days they’d spent so far in New York, occasionally whispering in each other’s ears and snickering like a pair of naughty schoolboys. Watching the two of them together, Walter wondered how they’d turned out to be such effective partners. Unlike Scully, who grounded Mulder with her practicality and common sense, Alex was like touch-paper to Mulder’s flame. On the job, Alex’s continuing hero-worship of the older man simply encouraged Mulder to be even more outrageously outspoken about his beliefs. And, in a casual setting like this, both Alex and Mulder were almost obnoxiously juvenile. Having exhausted the topic of their vacation, Mulder was now showing Alex how to turn his napkin into a model of a UFO.

“I’m hungry,” Alex growled quietly, when another ten minutes passed without a waiter bringing them their food menus.

“I’ll go find out what the delay is,” Walter agreed, rising to his feet and marching off in apparent search of the maitre d’.

“So what did you think of the Empire State Building, Alex?” Scully asked hurriedly, as Alex followed Walter with his eyes.

The distraction partially worked. Alex began enthusiastically describing not only the view from the observatory but every statistic he’d memorized about the building’s construction. But he still kept a close eye on his lover.

Scully pretended to be enthralled. Mulder just rolled his eyes fondly and then decided to see whether his ‘UFO’ could fly.

Alex abruptly stiffened when a tall, muscular blond man, with a wide Californian smile and matching tan, walked up to the table and asked whether the two spare seats were taken. “They’re overbooked,” he said, “and I promised my girlfriend we’d eat here while we’re in New York. We haven’t been going out long and I don’t want to blow it with her.”

“No you can’t fucking sit with us,” Alex growled, when the man attempted to sit down in the chair to Walter’s left.

“Don’t be mean, Alex,” Scully chided. “Where’s your sense of romance? The poor man’s just trying to impress his girlfriend.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” the man said. “My name’s Elijah.”

“Your name’s going to be eunuch if you sit in that fucking seat,” Alex snarled.

“For god’s sake, Alex. What’s your problem?” Mulder demanded.

“He’s *not* sitting next to Walter,” Alex spat, his eyes sparking angrily at the handsome stranger.

“He’s trying to impress his *girlfriend*. I think that means it’s safe to assume he isn’t gay,” Mulder pointed out quietly. “You’re really going to have to get a handle on this green-eyed monster routine. Not *every* good-looking guy is trying to get in Walter’s pants.”

Alex gave Elijah his best ‘I’m seriously considering ripping your balls off’ glare. When Elijah’s tanned face immediately turned a slightly greenish-white, he nodded with satisfaction. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But you sit *here*.”

He rose to his feet and swapped chairs, so that *he* would be sitting next to Walter and Elijah and his girlfriend would sit together.

Mulder and Scully hid smiles. Again Walter had accurately predicted Alex’s reaction to having a ‘stranger’ join their table and so, despite his usual preference to sit with his back to a wall,  Alex was now sitting with his back to the entrance door and no longer able to watch Walter ‘talking’ to the Maitre d’.

As soon as Alex had his back to the door, Walter frantically gestured out into the parking lot that it was safe for Sharon to enter. Two of the waiters stepped forward to relieve her of the parcels she was carrying and whisked them out of sight into the kitchen, as had been previously arranged with the restaurant. Another waiter returned with Sharon to her car and helped her retrieve the birthday cake from out of her trunk and that too was taken into the kitchen.

“Don’t forget,” Walter warned the maitre d’. “No candles. Not even *one* for show.”

Then he led Sharon over to the others.

“You aren’t going to believe who’s here,” he said, as he approached the table.

Alex swung around and almost fell off his seat. “Sharon?”

“Hello, sweetie,” she said, bending down to kiss his cheek. “I can’t believe you and Walter are in New York too. Isn’t this great, us bumping into each other like this?”

“You know these people, Sharon?” Elijah asked. His acting skills were far more wooden than Mulder’s but he was still shaken up enough from meeting Alex to appear surprised that she’d affectionately kissed the cheek of a man who’d almost made him wet his pants with a single stare.

“This is Walter, my ex-husband,” she said. “And this sweetheart is Alex, his mid-life crisis.”

Mulder and Scully both paled considerably but, to their surprise, Alex responded to the comment with a genuine laugh. Although they were aware Alex and Sharon knew each other, it was only when Alex reacted well to the teasing that they realized Alex and Walter’s ex-wife were ‘friends’.

“So, this is your girlfriend?” Scully asked Elijah.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“It’s an X-file,” Mulder quipped.

Alex looked genuinely pleased to see Sharon, but not enough to prevent him glowering suspiciously around the table. He was no fool and he was sure that *nobody* would believe in two such dramatic ‘co-incidences’ in one evening.

“What the fuck’s going on here, Walter?” he demanded bluntly.

Walter proved his own acting ability with a shocked, repressive glare. “There are two ladies at the table, Alex. At least *pretend* you’ve got some manners.”

Alex swallowed heavily and looked instantly miserable.

“Anyone would think you didn’t *want* to share a meal with our friends,” Walter continued. “Is that the problem? Would you rather I asked for a separate table?”

Alex shook his head quickly. “I… I just…” he mumbled, looking suddenly confused.

“He’s just surprised, Walter,” Sharon interrupted.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed hurriedly.

“Well, of course you’re surprised,” Walter said. “Walking in here and seeing Mulder and Scully, and then me bumping into Sharon. Who wouldn’t be surprised? That’s the whole point.”

“Point?” Alex echoed suspiciously.

“Jeez, Alex,” Mulder drawled. “Maybe you *were* hatched. You’ve never heard of a birthday surprise?”

For a moment, Alex just stared at him blankly and then his mouth fell open and his eyes darted around the table in obvious disbelief. “Birthday surprise?” he whispered.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Walter said, with a broad, beaming smile.

“Happy birthday, Alex,” the other four chimed in, all grinning widely.

Alex just continued to gape at them wordlessly for second or two, but then his eyes began to glisten and he hurriedly dropped his gaze to the table cloth.

Deciding Alex needed a moment to compose himself, Walter signaled for the waiter to bring their menus over.

As he’d hoped, the crucial need to choose his food allowed Alex to restore his equilibrium. Although at first he remained silent, except to give the waiter his order, Alex managed to offer all the other occupants of the table a shy, awkward smile and by the time they were half-way through their starters Alex began to join in their casual conversation.

“You don’t seriously expect me to believe you found real, honest-to-god, werewolves?” Elijah demanded incredulously.

“That was exactly my reaction when I read their expenses claim,” Walter laughed.

“They weren’t werewolves,” Scully stated firmly. “The whole family was simply suffering from an extreme genetic strain of hirsuitism. A lot of similar cases have been documented.”

“Like the dog-faced boy in carnivals?” Sharon asked.

“Exactly,” Scully agreed.

“Bullshit,” Mulder retorted. “Whoever heard of genetic hirsuitism that only happens during a full moon?”

“Well, to be fair, Mulder, since it *was* a full moon when we were there, we can’t actually prove they don’t have hair when it *isn’t* a full moon,” Alex pointed out reluctantly.

Normally, Mulder would have taken the comment as a challenge and risen to meet it. Under the circumstances, he was so relieved that Alex was finally participating in the conversation that he just chuckled, “You’re corrupting him, Scully,” and moved the subject on to giant flukeworms.

Elijah stared in amazement as Alex quickly devoured a main course of Steak and Lobster, then announced it was so good he wanted a second plate.

“He’s got one of those metabolisms,” Scully sighed, as she nibbled at her own plate of salad. “Makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

“Just wait until you see him attack the dessert trolley,” Sharon agreed ruefully.

Alex blushed but accepted the good-hearted nature of the teasing and rapidly made inroads into his second helping, (Which appeared so quickly only because Walter had already warned the kitchen that Alex would inevitably order *two* of his chosen main course).

“Having fun, Alex?” he asked, when Alex finally pushed away his empty plate with a contented smile.

“It’s the best birthday ever,” he agreed happily. “Thanks, Walter.”

The others all exchanged faint frowns. Alex’s enthusiasm for what, so far, had simply been a meal with friends, suggested that none of Alex’s previous birthdays had ever been anything to write home about. Walter smiled sadly. From what he’d learned of Alex’s childhood, he was pretty sure that Alex’s mother *had* celebrated her son’s birthday, but twenty years of solitary, unloved adulthood had most likely wiped those memories from Alex’s head.

The waiter cleared the table and they continued to chat amongst themselves for several minutes until Alex leaned into Walter’s ear and mournfully whispered, “Isn’t anyone having dessert, Walter?”

“You’re still hungry?”

Alex managed to look completely shocked and offended. “I’m not talking about being hungry. I’m talking about *dessert*!”

“Absolutely,” Mulder agreed firmly. “The necessity to eat dessert has absolutely nothing to do with hunger, Walter. A meal isn’t a meal if you don’t have dessert.”

“So speaks *another* person with an obscenely efficient metabolism,” Scully grumbled.

Walter turned in his seat slightly and discretely signaled a waiter.

Alex relaxed happily and decided to test the aerodynamics of his own napkin UFO as they waited for the dessert trolley to arrive. His own creation flew half way across the table before dive bombing into Elijah’s wineglass, which sparked a heated discussion between Alex and Mulder over whether triangular shaped UFO’s were ‘allowed’.

Alex was so distracted that Walter had to nudge him in the ribs with his elbow to bring his attention to the waiter’s return. Alex swung around excitedly, expecting to see a normal array of desserts, and his mouth dropped open in comical surprise as he instead saw the huge, chocolate-frosted cake in the man’s hands.

A second waiter rapidly cleared a space in the middle of their table, and the first waiter placed the cake down and stepped back with a wide grin on his face.

“Happy Birthday,” Walter announced, and his words were echoed not only by the rest of the table but the two waiters and even some of the other diners who were sitting close enough to witness the celebration.

Alex ogled the cake through huge, definitely teary, eyes and gulped silently several times.

When he *did* finally find his voice, his first words were, “You’re such a bastard, Walter.”

Walter blinked at him in total surprise.

“You all are,” Alex continued accusingly, glaring at each person at the table in turn. “’Co-incidence’. ‘X-file.’ ‘We just happened to be in New York’. You all lied to me, and *you* Walter, are a nasty, devious, dishonest person.”

Walter paled slightly and kicked himself. Maybe he’d made a terrible mistake. Alex was so excruciatingly honest himself these days, no longer capable of even white lies, so Walter could suddenly see that rather than enjoying the surprise party, Alex was possibly wounded by the well-intentioned deception.

Alex glowered and nodded at each culprit solemnly until everyone looked thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Then he smirked suddenly and reached for the cake. “So none of you deserve any of this,” he announced smugly. “I’m gonna eat it ALL.”

Walter was so stunned by the sudden change in Alex’s demeanor that he almost choked. Scully and Sharon both laughed with relief, and Mulder raised himself to his full height, pointed at the river, and announced that, if Alex didn’t offer him a share of his cake, Alex was going to be taking a head-dive through the window and swimming home.

“You and what army?” Alex snickered.

Mulder retaliated by picking up a fork and making a stabbing assault on the frosting of Alex’s cake.

Alex swiftly pulled the cake back out of range. “You want some?” he taunted, then grabbed his own fork, scooped up a small piece of the frosting and flicked it at Mulder’s face.

Walter quickly confiscated Alex’s fork and glowered repressively at Mulder who was clearly planning to retaliate until he noticed Walter’s glare. “This is *not* the place for a food fight.”

“But it’s my birthday, Walter,” Alex whined, with a deliberately innocent smile.

Walter shook his head and chuckled ruefully. Together, Mulder and Alex were occasionally worse, he decided, than a couple of five-year-olds.

“Are you seriously planning to eat the whole thing by yourself, Alex?”

Alex nodded firmly, tightening his hold around the base of the cake.

Walter was speechless for a moment, but then shrugged his acceptance of Alex’s decision. It was, after all, *Alex’s* birthday cake. He didn’t actually *have* to share it. “Then I guess I’d better ask for a dessert menu for the rest of us,” he said.

Alex roared with laughter. “I’m just kidding,” he eventually snickered.

Mulder threw his ‘UFO’ at Alex’s head.

“Brat,” Walter growled, meeting Alex’s smile with one of his own.

Privately, Walter wasn’t sure whether to feel worried that Alex had managed to tell the ‘white lie’ necessary to play his joke. But, then, as Alex had said, he and the others had lied numerous times in their attempt to keep the party secret, so maybe Alex had just finally understood that it was okay for him to lighten up a little and stop expecting punishment for simply behaving like any normal human being.

Under Alex’s careful supervision, Walter cut generous slices of the cake for himself, Mulder and Elijah, and smaller portions (at their insistence) for Scully and Sharon. When he’d finished, there was still more than half the cake remaining on the platter and Alex immediately dragged the remainder onto his own place setting, retrieved the fork Walter had confiscated earlier and began eagerly devouring the entire thing, to the amusement of his friends and the clear shock of nearby diners.

It took Alex longer to eat his half-cake portion than for the rest of them to empty their plates, but not *much* longer. So within fifteen minutes the table had been cleared right down to the table cloth by the efficient waiters, Mulder was asking whether anyone wanted coffee, and Alex was sitting quietly in a happy well-stuffed daze.

“You look like a Buddha,” Sharon chuckled.

Alex just contentedly patted his over-filled stomach and belched loudly.

“Men are foul,” Scully told Sharon, as Elijah, Mulder and Walter all reacted to Alex’s belch with muted snickers.

Walter discretely caught a waiter’s attention and nodded at him. The waiter grinned his understanding, disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a colleague, both of them nearly buried by the gaily wrapped parcels in their arms. They carefully deposited the gifts on the table and backed away.

Alex woke up from his haze of contentment and stared wide-eyed at the presents. Everyone stayed silent and watched his reaction with tolerant, slightly-amused grins.

“For me?” he eventually whispered disbelievingly.

Walter pretended to look carefully around the room at the other diners, then shrugged. “Well, I can’t see anyone *else* celebrating a birthday here, so I guess they *must* be all for you.”

“You can open them, Alex,” Sharon suggested softly.

Alex continued to look doubtful.

“Come on, Alex,” Walter encouraged. “I think the whole restaurant wants to know what we’ve given you by now.”

Alex reached cautiously for the nearest, smallest parcel and carefully read the gift tag. The gift was maybe eight inches long, three inches wide and no more than a quarter inch thick. The only thing Alex could imagine it to be was a folded tie, and a tie chosen by Mulder wasn’t exactly something Alex was looking forward to.

“It’s from me,” Mulder said, somewhat unnecessarily, and nodded at Alex to hurry up and open his gift. He looked considerably more excited than Alex did.

Alex hesitated for a moment more, then suddenly took a firm grip of the parcel and violently ripped the paper off it.

Then he blinked in confusion.

He was holding what appeared to be a checking book in his hands.

“Open it up,” Mulder insisted, practically hopping in his chair with frustration at Alex’s hesitation.

Alex flipped open the cover and stared in total disbelief. The book was filled with authentic looking checks, each one professionally printed with the legend ‘I, Fox Mulder, promise to...” and then two empty lines for Alex to fill in his own ending.

The first check had already been filled in. It said, ‘I, Fox Mulder, promise to let Alex drive the rental car next time we’re away on a case.’

“You never let *me* drive,” Scully pointed out, snatching the book out of Alex’s hands and staring in total disbelief at what Mulder had written.

“I kinda owe Alex,” Mulder admitted sheepishly, though decided not to mention the specific details of Alex’s ‘swim’.

“I don’t understand,” Alex admitted.

“They’re ‘penalty’ checks,” Mulder explained. “From now on, every time I’m an unthinking bastard to you, you can make me pay a penalty. You can ask for anything you want, within reason, and I promise to honor the check.”

“If I were Alex, I’d want a hell of a lot more than control of the rental car in exchange for what happened in Handel,” Walter rumbled, but then he smiled and nodded his approval. “It’s a surprisingly thoughtful gift, Mulder.”

Mulder looked pleased, then yelped as Scully kicked him under the table and smiled sheepishly. “It was Scully’s idea,” he admitted.

“It was,” she agreed. “Though I never expected him to voluntarily relinquish his car keys.”

Alex flipped through the check-book, then smiled slyly. “There are only fifty checks, Mulder. What happens next month, when I’ve used them all up?”

Mulder loudly protested he wasn’t *that* inconsiderate a partner. Walter and Scully echoed Alex’s snort of disbelief.

Alex reached for the next gift, which was far larger and, according to the gift tag, from Walter. He tore eagerly at the paper, only to freeze in confusion as he revealed the black jacket he’d twice admired in Planet Hollywood.

“How?” he asked, his expression perplexed.

Walter just grinned smugly.

Despite the warmth of the restaurant, Alex insisted on putting the jacket on immediately and he continued to wear it as he opened the remainder of his presents.

He had some expensive cologne from Sharon. “I know you don’t need to shave,” she explained. “But, let’s face it, Alex. That’s *not* why men wear after-shave.” Alex opened the bottle, sniffed it cautiously, then grinned widely and splashed a little on his neck and then insisted Walter should nuzzle into his neck and ‘smell’ him.

There were a couple of best-selling paperbacks from Elijah. “Sharon told me you like reading,” he said, a little awkwardly. “Not sure if these are your kind of taste though.”

Alex was more than a little perplexed at receiving a present from a virtual stranger, but he made an effort to be particularly polite as he thanked Sharon’s boyfriend. He decided to take Mulder’s advice that saying nothing wasn’t actually a lie, so he settled for saying how grateful he was for the gift (which was true) and chose simply not to mention that he already *had* one of the books.

Walter surreptitiously squeezed Alex’s leg in silent approval of the surprising display of tact.

Alex reached for the biggest present on the table next, assuming