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Language:
English
Series:
Part 2 of Dance
Collections:
Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-05
Words:
1,284
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
6
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1,013

Lobster Quadrille

Summary:

Summary: What kind of dance is this?

Work Text:

Dance 2 - Lobster Quadrille
by JiM

 

The trapezoid of light was still there, in the middle of his foyer floor, when Mulder staggered back through his door. There was nothing lurking in it this time and he found himself vaguely disappointed. This deep in the night, there was a silted feel to the darkness, as if it were a river composed of rotting corpses and decayed summers. He dropped his head back against the door with a hollow thunk. Then remembered the last time he had heard that sound and quickly moved away.

Suddenly, there was too much darkness, he was choking with it. The after-images of the night's work burned at him from the shadows. Mulder switched on lamps as he moved through the apartment, banishing both the murk and the memory of too much light. But it did nothing for the scents that clung to him.

Smoke. Cordite. Roasted meat. Death. Ozone.

He ran the water in the shower as hot as he could stand it and stood beneath the spray for a long time, until the campfire and charnel house scent was gone from all but his memory. He soaped and rinsed himself with mechanical precision three times. Eventually, the water ran tepid. He rinsed the shampoo out of his hair a last time and turned the water off.

He stepped out of the shower onto the gritty ruin of his clothes. The silence billowed and crackled at him. The memory of other sounds tonight shrieked and gibbered, begged and screamed at him. He closed his eyes and concentrated very hard on not dropping to the floor in howling anguish.

The towel stroked over his chest four or five times before he truly felt it. When it moved purposefully down his abdomen, he felt enough animal curiosity to open his eyes. Some small part of his mind was able to tabulate the data, analyze it and present a rough working theory for testing. Alex Krycek appeared to be kneeling at his feet, painstakingly drying off his left leg. Most of Mulder's mind rejected the theory and demanded that the data be rechecked. By the time Krycek had carefully dried most of Mulder's right leg and flank, he was convinced. Alex Krycek, who ought to be a charred lump of smoking meat on some railway platform in rural Virginia, was kneeling in Mulder's bathroom, toweling him off.

"You're alive."

"Looks that way," Krycek said absently. His hand pressed on Mulder's hip until he turned. Mulder felt Krycek lurch to his feet, then his back twitched like a horse's skin as Krycek patted the water away with gentle thoroughness. The toweled hand slid over his buttocks with impersonal care, then trailed up his spine to wipe away the water that dripped from the hair at the nape of his neck.

The world shuddered and slipped from side to side as his hair was scrubbed damp-dry. He leaned back against the shoulder he knew would be there, eyes closed and brain in that same curious state of neutral that he seemed to have entered from the first moment he had come home this evening and disarmed himself in the whispering darkness.

The steaming damp of the bathroom brought Krycek's scent to him. No longer the simple and seductive perfume of earth and leather, instead he was slick with the ashy scents of hatred and fear, diesel and gunpowder, and the stink of garbage and rivermud. Mulder turned his head away, holding his breath to deny the truth of what he had seen and done this night for one more moment. Krycek seemed to understand, and the towel rubbed across his face, swathing him again in the clean scents of soap and normalcy. Then he stepped back, leaving Mulder without even the dubious support of his shoulder.

Mulder stood for a moment, the air chilling around him, except for the heated mystery at his back. He could feel the tremors begin even as he steadied himself with a hand on the wall. Shock, he wondered, or terror? Either was embarrassing in an agent of his tenure and a man with his own peculiar track record but he couldn't seem to work up enough fire to care what the hell Krycek thought of him now.

Krycek took hold of his shoulder and he was being steered into the unsolved mystery of his bedroom and its waterbed of unknown origin. Then he was being gently pushed and prodded into bed, the sheets warm and welcoming as he slid between them. He lay back, closed his eyes and let the world undulate around him for a moment. Then asked for the second time that night, "What do you want?"

"A shower." Krycek's smoky voice hung in the air for long moments after the man himself had left the room. Mulder heard the water turn on and he lay and shivered and wondered about the ties that bound him to Krycek, to Scully, to the smoking dead who littered a rail-yard in rural Virginia tonight. He hummed a see-sawing nonsense tune from his childhood and wondered what they were going to do to stop what he had seen tonight.

The bed dipped beside him, the motion rocking him slowly, comfortingly. "What is that tune? You've been humming it all night," Krycek grumbled.

Mulder opened his eyes to see him seated on the side of the bed, looking newly minted. Everything about him, from his damp slicked back hair, to the forgotten beads of water slipping down his abdomen to soak into the towel knotted about his waist, to the scent of rain and green grass that rolled out from him, seemed fresh and simple -- except for the look in his eyes. His eyes were red-rimmed and smoke-tinged and still horrified. The truncated remnant of Krycek's left arm was far easier to face than the look in his eyes.

"I had to sing it back in high school chorus. 'The Lobster Quadrille' from Alice in Wonderland." Krycek blinked once, but his expression didn't change.

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you come and join the dance?

Krycek blinked again, then a sharp laugh was startled out of him. "Perfect," he said. "Come and join the dance, Mulder. It's heating up and I need a partner."

After what he'd seen tonight, after what Krycek had shown him, there was nothing to say. Mulder nodded, eyes closing again as the tremors came back stronger than before. He tried to hum the chorus again, but his breath came in jerky gasps and he fell silent. There was no other sound in the room except for Krycek's breath and the crackling shriek of blazingly fresh memories.

The waters beneath him rolled and swirled as Krycek insinuated himself beneath the covers. He lay unmoving beside Mulder, not touching him. When Mulder opened his eyes and stared straight up, he met Krycek's gaze in the mirrored mystery of his ceiling. When he closed his eyes, he still saw those eyes, agate hard, but no less horrified than his own.

When Mulder looked again, Krycek was asleep, silent and remote beside him. Mulder's tremors rocked Krycek's sleeping body. Alone again in the night, Mulder murmured over and over again,

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you come and join the dance?

But he knew the truth even as he reached over and curled one hand around Krycek's warm forearm. He already had.

 

 end

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