TITLE: Bentropy Nine
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/K
RATING: NC-17. M/K/? This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind, or perhaps lend one to Krycek.
SUMMARY: Entropy - chaos. Bent - not straight. 'nuff said.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is after everything, the season in the shower notwithstanding.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Krycek NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Alex Krycek, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use...unless you count cheap thrills. Other characters belong to me...or someone else but they left them at my house so I'm playing with them.
Author's notes: I happen to think I have a great beta. I happen to think everyone knows who my great beta is. But I am dreadful about giving her credit for all her hard work. Shame on me. Thank you, Susan...the greatest beta in all betadom.
If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop
If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.
Bentropy Nine
by Mik
"No."
He caught my waist before I could wriggle away from him. "Easy, Mulder. Easy." His voice was too soothing to reconcile with the threat he'd issued. When his arms locked around my hips, and he shifted his weight over me to pin me to the bed, he brushed his cheek against mine. "I think," he murmured over my sounds of struggle and protest, "you misunderstand me."
"No," I assured him. "I understand hurt clearly." I tried to pull my hands free so I could push him away. "I know I'm a hypocrite, but just because I could hand it out, doesn't mean I can take it myself."
"Be still."
The command was quietly spoken, but the meaning spoke volumes. I stilled in his hold. And looked up at him, trying to remind myself that I deserved what was coming to me. Trying to be a man about it.
He looked down at me, nose to nose. I could feel his glasses slip down enough to touch my brow. "Not that kind of pain, Mulder. I'm not like you." He shifted enough to pull one of his hands from under me, and he brushed my hair back. "I can't deliberately cause pain to someone I love. Not physical pain."
He lifted his head, his eyes closed. "But I know that no matter what I can offer you, no matter what you would accept from me, there is going to be a moment when you're going to need to go back to him. And he'll hurt you more than you ever hurt him." He opened his eyes and his expression was mournful but fervent. "I know you will be destroyed, but," he sighed and rolled off me, "I'll let you go."
He moved away, leaving me squashed, physically and emotionally, to the bed. "Let's go. We've got some files to review."
I tried to speak, tried to deny, to protest, even to agree, but no words came. I shifted and dropped my feet to the floor, running my hands through my hair. I had a feeling he was watching me, even though he was going through the motions of shoes and tie and gun and keys. I fumbled around, looking for things, not exactly certain what. My hands fell upon items with a familiar touch and habit shoved them into pockets. I rinsed my mouth in the sink, and the water tasted coppery and I spat it out. When I turned back, he had opened the door, and he was silhouetted in the California setting sun, a black monolith in blinding glory. It looked like an invitation into hell.
It was.
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I'm not sure how I managed to keep back tears as we went through the two-inch file. I think I would have wept for a stranger who had endured the physical and emotional degradation Krycek had known as a child, but to learn these things about my one time lover was almost too much for me. And yet, I turned pages, stone faced, making notes, seeing long held questions answered with a click as piece after piece of the Alexei puzzle were forced into place. Every fist I ever applied to his body was merely an echo of a thousand that had come before. Every cruel word a recitation of his own perverse nursery rhymes. I hadn't inflicted torture, I had given him the blessed familiarity of possession in the only way he could recognize. And I hated myself a little more.
I felt Skinner shift beside me, pushing away photographs that disturbed even a heart hardened in the kilns of the Mekong Delta. "How are you holding up?" he asked quietly.
I answered with a sharp nod. Now was no time for him to see how deeply I had been affected. He had to see the great profiler at work now. I pretended to consider my notes, scribbled mindlessly over some of my yellow paper.
"I don't really understand why we're looking at this," he added, working himself out of the metal-framed chair. He stretched, arching that vast back, and moving toward the coffeemaker on the counter of the conference room. "It's twenty years old."
I tapped my pencil against the file. "It's also all he knows. He's in here. Somewhere." I turned a page.
"And he's waiting for you to rescue him." I heard the sound of glass against glass as he poured coffee for us.
Me? Rescue him? Hell, I thought it was the other way 'round. "Maybe." I nodded thanks as he brought a cup back to the table. "And maybe he just wants to see if I will try." I lifted the cup. Grimaced. It smelled burnt.
He made a similar face. "There's a Starbucks on the corner." He put his cup down. "I'll go."
I nodded. I wanted him gone.
He put a hand on the back of mine, for just a moment, and left.
When the door closed, I turned pages. Who the hell pimps their kid at eleven, twelve? Who the hell wants an eleven year old? And how many worms do you have to have in your brain to want to do this kind of shit to a little kid? I pushed the file away. That wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was the way eleven, twelve, thirteen-year-old Alexei seemed to believe it was the way things should be. His testimony was so flat, unaffected, with no rage, no blame launched at parents and pimps and users. He seemed surprised, even annoyed that people had intervened on his behalf, attempted to rescue him. And he went back again and again. Foster care at twelve, back on the street at thirteen. Foster care at fourteen, back on the street in weeks. Juvenile detention at fifteen, back on the streets at sixteen. Murder at seventeen.
Murder. Slit a john's throat. In front of witnesses. Completely detached from the crime. The perfect assassin. And the government of the United States began pimping him. And that was when he began to market himself, to the highest bidder.
I closed the file and sat back. Remembered. His eyes, his smile, his laugh, his body. The way his erection got harder the more abuse I inflicted on him. And even those nights when I just wanted to hold him, he got his way, he got the pain, he got to win by making me despise myself. He once told me that bottoms were really the ones in control, and I thought he was crazy. After all, I was the one hitting him, the one fucking him. But all the while I was fucking his body, he was fucking my head.
"Why?" I asked the room. "Why am I doing this?"
I got up, pushing the chair back hard so it skittered across the floor with a teeth-jarring screech. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I paced. Why? Just tell me why I am so driven to finding him, then I can. Then I will.
I was still pacing when Skinner returned, with coffees and more of his oat bricks. He set the paper cups on the table and set out packets of sugar and cups of plastic flavored cream. He put the cakes on napkins. All of this without speaking or even directing a glance at me. He went to the wall and brought my chair back to the table. It didn't take a great profiler to see that I was in turmoil. That I was swirling in all the rage Krycek should have felt. He sat down and eased the lid from his cup. He pulled one of the pastries toward him. He sat quiet and listened to me pace.
But the answer wasn't in that airless room. I returned to the table eventually, and slugged down half the now lukewarm coffee. "I don't know why," I muttered and settled back into my chair.
He looked at me a long moment. Then he reached for the file and flipped it open to show me a photo of a thirteen-year-old Krycek, with cigarette burns on his chest, and emptiness in his eyes. "Is that your answer?"
I flicked him a look. How did he know? How could he? I nodded, slowly.
He pushed the other scone at me. "What now?"
"Well, I have an idea ... there was a guy in these parts a few years ago...they called him the butcher. He ran an underaged meat market." I shut my eyes. "Clayton. I don't know his last name. Maybe he's got a jacket here. I want to talk to him."
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Clayton had a jacket. A handful of pops for pandering, one allegation of domestic abuse, a DUI, but he always managed to get off with probation or time served. He did his nickel for tax evasion of all things.
We tracked him down at a coffee shop off Santa Monica. He was working on a stack of pancakes for supper. They were a work of art, though. I sat and watched him slather butter on each one with strokes as precise and loving as Monet, as I began my introduction. My breath was wasted. "I remember you," he said, scooping the last of the butter from the paper cup. "Seven...eight years ago. You had a cute little trick...leather pants, green eyes. A little long in the tooth but..." he licked a streak of butter from his fingers, "...passable."
I nodded, conceding. He'd changed in the ensuing years; the black cowboy hat had given way to a dirty do-rag, the black clothes were replaced by a not so clean utilitarian khaki jumpsuit. The chains and rings were gone. I'd been a little uncertain I had the right guy but he'd clinched it for me by remembering Krycek.
He reached over me for a basket of assorted jam packets. "That's why I wanted to talk -"
"He was the one who got cut up, right?" he interrupted, examining his haul. "That asshole who was chopping up chickens. Right?" He selected four packets, four flavors. "Yeah, I remember him. I lost one of my best pieces because of him." He pulled open one of the packets and lifted the stack of pancakes as delicately as a surgeon probing organs. "Bastard." He dumped the contents on the bottom pancake and dropped the rest into place.
"Yes, he was -"
"You shot him, didn't you?" He was repeating the processes with the next pancake. "Word was around you was a cop." He stilled the operation and met my eyes for the first time. "You a cop?"
I shook my head. "Retired." I was aware of Skinner at the next table, straining to hear every word. "You remember Kry - Alex, then?"
He was on the next to last pancake, and he was smiling at me. An amused, private smile. "I remember." He knew something I didn't know. And he wanted me to know he knew.
"Do you remember him from before or after he was with me?"
"As I said, a little long in the tooth." He let his eyes move over me for a moment, and returned to his food. "I knew you had to be on the job. You didn't seem like the type to want ..." he paused, choosing words like a pro, "his unique services."
I didn't feel like playing anymore. "Did you pimp him?"
He never lost the smile. Just shook his head and licked his fingers. Thoroughly. Obscenely. "I'm out of that business."
"Yeah, yeah," I answered impatiently. "But when you were, did you pimp him?"
He didn't answer. Just kept working on his pancakes.
"Look, Clayton, I'm not out to entrap you," I assured him. "I'm not a cop anymore. This is personal. When you were in that business, did you pimp him?"
"No. Never did." He put down his knife and fork and reached for his coffee cup. Took his time emptying it, signaling for a refill. "He was a specialty."
"Specialty?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "For people with special tastes." His eyes glittered. "Very special tastes."
I swallowed. "Could you define special?"
He shook his head, but he picked up his knife again, and looked at it. Thoroughly. Obscenely.
I swallowed again. This time tasting bile. "Is he..." I had to swallow again. "Is he working again?"
He shrugged, used the knife to slice expertly through the stack, and then used the knife to nudge everything neatly onto his fork. He conveyed the stuff to his mouth and chewed. "He's been in touch with some people."
"You?" I prompted.
He chewed some more. "Not me."
I signaled for the check, and pulled my wallet out. "How do I get in touch with him?"
He shrugged and prepared another bite.
The bill came, greasy and improperly added, but even with the mistake it was only four dollars and change. I put a twenty over it. "How do I get in touch with him?"
He considered the twenty, then looked up at me again. "I really never took you for the type who liked the rough stuff."
I wanted to hit him, hard. Teach him my definition of 'rough stuff'. Instead, I told him in a low, strained voice, "I told you this was personal, didn't I? Well, not personal the way you thought. He was my partner back then. And something's come up about an old case, and I need to get in touch with him."
That surprised him. I guess some of us look like cops and always will, and some of us don't and never will. "The club. Eleven tonight. Someone will ask for you."
I didn't waste breath asking what club. It wasn't as if there weren't dozens, hundreds in Los Angeles, but we had only one club in common. "Right." I stood. "I'll see you then."
"Not me." He took another bite. "My wife don't like me going around there since I'm out of the trade."
At the next table, Skinner nearly choked on his coffee.
"You - your wife?" I repeated.
"Sure." He reached for his own cup. "What'd you think? That I was gay?" He laughed. Loud. "I just sold the shit, I didn't play in it."
I wanted ... needed to respond, to retaliate, but I had no weapon at hand. All I could do was pull myself upright, square my shoulders and try to walk out with some suggestion of dignity.
Outside I headed around the corner, my face as hot as the late afternoon pavement. I patted pockets restless until I located the packet of cigarettes Skinner had bought for me the night before. I held them a moment, wondering why that simple act had affected me as it had done. Then I tapped out four inches of cancer and jammed it between my lips. I flicked a glance up to the corner, waiting for Skinner to appear, found matches, and lit up.
I was on my second smoke when Skinner finally appeared. The shadows had grown long across the streets and traffic was getting thick and impatient. I waited until he was a few steps away from me before I turned and went back to the rental car, flicking my cigarette away just as I reached for the door handle.
Skinner slid into the passenger seat as I turned the ignition. "Did he call anyone?" I asked, trying to keep the anticipation from my voice.
Skinner shook his head.
"Should we follow him?"
Again he shook his head. We had rolled to a stop sign intersection, and it looked pretty unlikely we were going to be able to get into westbound traffic on Santa Monica. He glanced at his watch. "What do you want to do now? We've got four and a half hours to -"
"Nope." I glanced at my watch. "I'm meeting Peyton at eight thirty." I wormed my way into eastbound traffic and looked for a break to make an illegal U turn. "I want to get back to the hotel and shower and change."
"Peyton." Skinner said his name flatly. "Where does he fit into all of this?"
"I've already told you." I admit my voice was a little shaky. I felt almost as if I was lying to a lover. Not that he could be considered one, not really. And yet, try as I might to separate myself from the extraordinary confessions and emotions of the last twenty-four hours, there had been both feelings and fluids exchanged. That did imply a relationship that required some level of honesty and trust. "He...he's gathering some information for me. Us."
He gave me a sidelong look. He didn't say it, but I could hear him saying 'us'?
I evaded the silent question by whipping sharply into oncoming traffic and jerking the wheel to get the sedan to complete the U turn before we were hit. He braced both hands on the console and I could almost feel his foot pumping an imaginary brake. "That was unnecessarily risky, Agent," he said lethally quiet.
It wasn't the familiar, albeit frightening tone that wounded. It was calling me 'agent'. I turned my head away, and for one moment closed my eyes. Then, with a deep breath of resolution, opened them and put my mind on traffic. It was the safest thing to think about.
I think he must have been thinking about what he had heard in the diner. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the SUV ahead of us. His body was rigid. His expression was pinched, his brows drawn down. His jaw flexed and shifted. Finally, at a light, he said, not necessarily to me, "I should have read that file more carefully."
"Which file is that, Sir?" I asked politely.
His voice was strained: the one that was just below his political voice, the one where he's searching for a political way to say 'fuck you'. "From your last case in California."
"I think you have all the pertinent facts, Sir," I told him meaningfully.
He turned enough that I could see his eyes from the corner of mine. "What were you doing in that bar, Mulder? What was he doing there?"
The light changed, and I shifted my foot, waiting to creep forward in the traffic. "I was on a stakeout. I never knew what he was doing."
"Was he ..." he paused. Who knew Walter Skinner could get delicate about something. "Was he working?"
I nodded, my mouth pulling into a grim line. "I just never knew for whom." I pulled the car forward into the intersection even though the light was turning from amber to red and I wasn't going to make it all the way through. But I needed to move. I was starting to feel trapped.
His brow furrowed up quizzically. "I don't know what you mean?" Then he looked forward. "Mulder, blocking intersections is illegal in this state."
"Yeah." Impulsively, I looked over my shoulder and across three lanes of traffic, and jerked the car right. The maneuver got me honked horns and impolite gestures, and at least one death threat, but it also got me out of traffic.
Skinner, who, despite the urge of every muscle in his body, managed to make the ride without putting his hands on the dash, shifted and looked at me. "Mulder, what the hell are you doing?"
I tried a cocky smile. "Shortcut."
He looked ahead for a moment. "Pull over."
"Huh?"
He pointed. "There. Pull over. Now."
Hoping against hope that he had a sudden rush of self-preservation and was planning to get a cab back to the hotel, or better still, back to Washington, I brought the car to the curb, and looked at him.
He held out his hand.
I looked at it.
"Give me the keys."
I shook my head. "I've driven with you...we'll never get anywhere in this traffic with you behind the wheel."
"And with you behind the wheel, we'll only get to the morgue," he countered, jerking his hand at me. "Give me the keys."
"That's harsh," I protested. Then seeing there wasn't going to be any way to win this battle, I pushed the car into Park, and pulled the keys from the ignition. Even so, it took me a moment to actually put them in his hand. I hated having someone else drive.
He folded his fingers over them as they fell into his palm. "Now...what did you mean when you said you didn't know who he was working for?"
Damn it. I settled back in the seat with a sigh. "I know you sent him out there to spy on -"
"I did not."
I shot him a disbelieving look. He didn't sound indignant. He just sounded convicted. "Someone did."
He nodded. "But it wasn't me."
"I meant you..." I gestured faintly, "...in the global sense." He conceded this and continued to look at me as if he knew what I was going to say, and expected me to just get it over with. So I did. "But sometimes it did seem he had his own agenda." I shook my head again. "Sometimes it felt as if he was trying to undo everything I did. Sometimes it felt as if he was really on my side." I rubbed my eyes because that damned sting was back.
He reached across the car and caught my chin, turning me to face him. "Mulder, despite all we've been through, despite all you believe, this one thing is true. I am on your side. Then. Now. Always." And there, one block off Santa Monica Blvd., in front of God and everyone, he pulled forward, and kissed me.
Oh, God, I want to believe.
- END Nine -