He scans the sophisticated equipment too. Nothing, nada, zip, all is
quiet and serene. The birds' flutter, the leaves wave, the occasional
column of dust gathers and dissipates in the winds. "Goddamn mother-
fucking son-of-a-bitch", he lets the familiar string of profanity out
in a rushed breath, pauses and says, "goddamn mother-fucking cock-
sucking son-of-a-bitch, who'd'a thought I would miss the bloody
mess!" He says this quite loudly and startles himself with the echo
that comes back off the clear expanses of glass.
He runs his hand across his unshaven jaw, down his bare chest and
fingers the loose, raggedy ends of his sloppy cutoffs. "Pathetic,
Alex, old boy," he says aloud, and finally admits to himself that
he 'is' tired of the silence. He spins madly about on the stool for
emphasis. He jars his knee and jumps off the stool. He kicks the
offending furniture and sends it crashing into the side of the metal
desk. The resulting clang is somewhat satisfying.
He thinks briefly about trashing the whole place and shooting holes
into the unbreakable glass. Then he remembers it is his place and his
glass, and thinks better of the impulse. He checks the dials once
more, although there is nobody around who could've changed the
settings since his last check. He stomps down the circular stairway,
goes through the living area and defiantly turns on the hot tub in
the glass-enclosed bath, full blast. He shucks the shorts, pauses,
and goes back into the living area. He switches on the CD unit, grabs
a copy of the Stones Greatest Hits and shoves it in the player. He
turns the volume up to ear splitting and the bass to jet-engine
intensity and stomps back to the bath.
For a few minutes, in the middle of the crashing, blasting, wall
vibrating, scalding water imbued environment, he feels comfortable.
It sounds like something is happening, even if nothing really
is. "I'm not a monk," he says inaudibly. "I've read one hundred and
thirty-seven books, watched two hundred and twelve movies, explored
the entire Internet and learned how to shoot squirrels with the new
prosthetic arm. I've eaten everything 'but' the squirrels and I'm
talking to myself. I gotta get the hell outta this place!" He
splashes water over the side of the tub just to watch it run down the
drain in the center of the room and soak the dark blue rugs a darker
blue along the way. "Or at least I gotta get out long enough to find
something to drink and someone to fuck before I come back."
Thus said, he shuts off the tub, decides to get a shave and a haircut
in town and dresses. The top button of his jeans is tight. He decides
it's because he's still damp from the bath or the workouts on his abs
has built up a strong layer of muscle. The waistband cuts into his
air supply and he huffs a bit bending over and dragging on his boots.
His jacket is reassuringly large, he stuffs the various pockets with
guns, money, condoms, and his favorite bone handled switchblade. He
looks in the mirror on the way out and decides maybe he doesn't need
the shave and haircut after all. "Lookin' good," he says to the tough
guy in the reflection, turns on all the `away' alarm devices
and shuts the door behind him.
Mulder careens on his new, wheeled office chair from light table to
computer monitor and back again. It's quiet for once and there are
only a few workaholics hanging around this evening. Almost a third of
the entire basement of the Hoover has been transformed into the X-
Files Division. He knows the names of all his staff, but only because
of his handy-dandy retentive memory. Scully is in her element. They
are co-heads. He thinks this is funny as hell; and says 'Cone Heads'
in his mind every time and 'We are from France'.
She has her own staff of scientists with iron stomachs, who don't get
queasy during X-File autopsies. From his 'head' office, he can look
through a wide expansion of glass, across the vast berth of other
agent's desks and equipment, right into her expanse of glass and her
office. She never draws the ubiquitous beige blinds for privacy. He
knows she enjoys the view of busy, dedicated worker-bees.
He hates all of it. Their staffs roam from case to case, write up
meticulous reports, and take a large number of pictures, samples and
readings. Everything is coached in official Fibbie-speak and most of
the findings are finalized and tagged as non-paranormal. Once in a
while, the reports are serialized and appear in the various medical,
scientific and para-science journals. They have a ninety-seven
percent case closure rate.
The MUFON, alien believers and conspiracy theorists rave at him and
the X-Files division. They have now become the official 'enemy' of
revealing the 'Truth'.
He longs for the days when he was reviled by Officialdom and
respected by the fringe elements. The fucking basement, no matter how
vast, still has no windows to the outside that one can see without
standing on a chair.
He rides his chair, at a fast clip, by the gleaming rows of
technology and into his office. He yanks the blinds and they fall
with a clatter, enclosing him in familiar and comfortable dimness. He
has posters and pictures on the wall that he refuses to let the staff
frame. He has the best in round trashcans for his basketball shooting
practice, but the ceiling is some kind of new, healthier material and
it doesn't hold pencils. Everything gleams, even in the dimness.
There are hardly any dust motes rising and falling mysteriously in
the half-light.
"I'm going home," he mutters to himself very quietly, less the eager-
beaver ears, of some staff member or other, thinks he is asking them
a question. Home is a clean three-year-old condominium built over
what was once interesting turn of the century ruins. He hates the
place and wonders why the hell he let himself be talked into buying
it after the quiet dirty war was over, and he got the big fat raise
in lieu of the public disclosure he really wanted.
Scully got the raise too and bought an actual house with a garden,
sunroom and gazebo. She holds Sunday afternoon sessions with her
staff there, although they are thinly disguised professorial 'teas',
like the ones he remembers attending with Phoebe at Oxford. He
doesn't attend and Scully has given up bitching at him for his lack
of niceties and getting to know the staff on a social basis.
In fact, she has given up on almost everything they once shared. The
intimacy engendered by the secrecy and paranoia of their
investigations is gone. The heightened awareness of each other's
state of mind and physical safety is gone too. With these things
gone, the passionate, if chaste, bond between them is gone as well.
He missed it terribly at first. Other than the occasional one-
nighter's, when she was elsewhere and did little to satisfy his
stifled personal needs, that simmering, sexy connection had gone a
long way to help him feel as if he were still potent and desired.
"Goddamned sorry son-of-a-bitch", he mutters a little louder. He
viciously switches off his equipment, leaves the blinds down and
turns off the light. He kicks the chair into the desk as he leaves.
It makes a mild thunking sound when it connects. Dissatisfied, he
leaves, locking the door, and doesn't say goodnight on his way out.
At home he slams the most outrageous orgy video into his new DVD
player and the writhing mass of bodies quickly appears on his wide-
screen TV. He turns the sound of their grunts, groans, 'yeah, baby's'
and screams way up. He leaves the lights off and the doors to the
bedroom and bath open. He undresses quickly, tossing the whole pile
into the bottom of his walk-in closet.
He has a once-a-week maid who'll sort it out and get it to the
cleaners. He'll find it all neatly put away in a few days. He showers
and shaves quickly, dresses in his favorite gray T-shirt and finds
the zipper on his well washed, perfectly pressed jeans is somewhat
difficult of close. "Motherfucker!" He yells at the noisy TV.
"I've got to stop eating the morning array of donuts and swilling
enchiladas with Frohike twice a week" He kicks over the neat row
of shoes on the left side of his closet floor and bends, with a
groan, to fetch his favorite sneakers.
He deliberately tries to make his mind go blank. He eats those greasy
messes with Frohike because the other two friends died along the way
to this end. Skinner is gone too, alive, but bitterly not seeing him
or anyone. He took a bullet that sentenced him to a wheelchair,
garbled speech, and constant nursing care. He's in a fabulous care
facility on the banks of a beautiful river. Mulder knows he hates it,
hates the rushing water he can't fish in and hates the forced
inactivity. The FBI retired him as a Deputy Director with a lush
package. Mulder knows it means nothing to Skinner.
Mulder turns on the security devices, grabs his leather jacket, and
gets in his car. It's a brand new sport-utility vehicle with
computerized navigation standard. He slams the door shut and revs the
engine. He thinks when he turns forty, nineteen months hence; he'll
have a real middle-aged crisis and get a red Jag to celebrate it. The
thought, that he'd take the thing and drive it over the Fourteenth
Street Bridge and into the Potomac River, whispers seductively.
For now, he backs out of the narrow garage and carefully onto the
busy street. He's cautious as he drives over the Fourteenth Street
Bridge and refuses to note the steel pylon supports. Once he gets on
Interstate, he shifts into gear and lets go. It's Friday night and
he's heading south toward Richmond or beyond and if he's late on
Monday morning, no one will give a damn.
By two A.M. Mulder has had enough of driving through the dark at
eighty miles an hour. He sees a disreputable bar with a ratty motel
behind it off the next exit. "Just the thing!" He crows to himself as
he takes the turn, and opens the widows to get a blast of cold night
air in his face. With the cool air comes his own second wind and
strong feeling that tonight 'something' will happen to relieve the
dangerous boredom and heft him out of the civilized rut he's fallen
into.
He sees the faces that have haunted him for so long flash by in the
exit light's reflections on the hood of his car. He sighs and lets
them go, go, go into the darkness behind him. The dust settles, like
his unanswered questions, back into the pot-holed parking lot. He
hears the country guitars twang, with an oddly sophisticated bass
line beneath, catching the beat of his heart and firing the blood in
his veins, as he approaches the entrance to the bar.
The place is packed. The country boys in flannel plaid or open necked
polyester shirts and their too tightly, brightly garbed women are
mingled among the better-dressed yuppies and a few 'others', dressed
in black leather or with visible tattoos on bare muscled masculine
arms or curvaceous feminine legs barely covered in tight denim
miniskirts. The asses and backs he sees at the bar are equally clad
in various class-conscious materials too.
He likes the feel of the place immediately and gets it that everyone
is here to listen to the music, the mysteriously jazzy bass player,
to drink away their weekly concerns, dance and, if lucky, get laid.
It's exactly what he wants.
He sees an empty, small, dime sized, round table in the far back. He
snags a chair from a dancing party's table and holds it over his head
as he makes his way to the back. 'Let them try to get it back,' he
thinks and his teeth show as he smiles, almost anticipating a fight.
"No way," Alex says aloud from his position at the bar and the view
in the mirror reflecting the action on the floor. No one actually
hears him, the music is too loud or they're talking to someone else.
He watches Mulder snatch the chair and head toward the small empty
table in the darkened corner. Mulder's hips momentarily distract him
as he bumps his way through the crowd. "Well, well, well," he murmurs
softly. "Who would'a thought it? This gin joint and all that?" He
notes that Mulder's jeans are so tight they look like they're painted
on, or maybe he just hopes so.
Alex stares down at the foam in his beer mug. He's only just gotten
to his second drink and was enjoying being among the multitude so
much, he hadn't even begun to prowl for fuckable material. He smiles
to himself ruefully, `The most fuck-worthy material I've ever
seen is a scant thirty feet away and, most assuredly, as uninterested
as ever.' Alex sighs, 'Screw this!' He thinks of his defeatism. 'It's
a brave new world and all bets are off. Nothing ventured, nothing
gained, and when the hell did he ever really get to have a chance
with Mulder before? A chance at anything?' He gulps down the rest
of his beer and orders two bottles. He pays the barkeep and, snagging
his own chair from a nearby table, makes his way toward the dark
corner, Mulder, and maybe even a kill shot in the gut with the small
caliber he knows the man carries strapped to his shin.
His even white smile fools no one, as he stalks his quarry in the
corner. The crowd makes room as he ambles through. No one touches him
or bumps into him along the way and the smarter ones make sure their
eyes don't take note, in case of official inquiry later in the
evening.
Mulder hardly has time to process the strange sight of the black
gloved, stiff hand as it lays two bottles on the table in front of
him, before he registers to whom the hand must belong. He starts to
rise, but "Now, now, Mulder," is hissed in his left ear and he sits
down.
Alex plops his chair close enough to Mulder so, when he sits, their
thighs are jammed together. Mulder tries to make space, but the table
leg prevents it. He compensates by shifting his ass and spreading his
legs wider, attempting to make Krycek move over. Alex refuses to
accommodate him and they hunker down, plastered together from hip to
knee.
Alex abruptly stops the mano-et-mano bullshit and gestures toward the
beers. "Drink it while it's cold," he says in a normal voice, loud
enough to be heard above the noise. Mulder almost begins a litany of
objections, realizes he hasn't ordered a drink of his own, nods
ungraciously and grabs the beer.
Alex drinks too.
After a long taste and a few sips, Mulder relaxes and shrugs, as if
Fate was once again giving him a homerun hit to sit up and take
notice of her. "I get it, I get it," he says aloud to Fate, but only
Alex hears him. "Get what?" He asks, "You want another beer?" Mulder
laughs and Alex smiles, uncertain what Mulder finds funny, but glad
suddenly, that he hasn't been shot. Glad, suddenly, that he's alive.
When Mulder is finished laughing, they are relaxed against one
another from shoulder to knee. Krycek makes a point of not moving an
inch, fully aware that, if he makes anything of their nearness Mulder
might realize it and get skittish again.
Mulder orders the next beer. Krycek drinks this one very slowly. Six
months dry, a fourth beer may be pushing his reflexes. "Of all the
gin joints." Mulder toasts him. Krycek nods and toasts back. He
dares, now, to lay his hand on Mulder's thigh.
Mulder laughs again, deeper in his throat. Alex can feel the
reverberations from Mulder's body in his own. He's hard as stone and
the damn waistband of his jeans is biting into him. "If you kiss me
in here," Mulder says, "I'll shoot you."
"If you don't kiss me as soon as we're outta here," Alex says, "I'll
leave you gutted in the parking lot." Mulder nods and lets his hand
drift under the table and onto Krycek's lap. He feels Krycek almost
jump out of the chair and he laughs. "So, 'Alex'," he says slyly, and
with emphasis on Krycek's seldom used first name, into his ear, "how
long has it been?" Alex retaliates with a thumb pressed along
Mulder's erection, but he says, with bleak honesty, "Forever and a
day."
Mulder is taken aback by the poetic words and the desolate tone of
Alex's voice. 'Oh god,' he thinks, `what am I doing?'Krycek has
always been a deep, murky pool he's never been able to navigate. He
begins to back off, tries to think, but his head is swimming with the
music, the beer and Alex's knowing hand on his dick. He wants this.
He wants back into the risky unknown, back into the taut stretch of
extreme emotions and dangerous demands. His hips jerk into Alex's
hand uncontrollably and he feels Alex's answering shudder. 'Yes,' he
thinks to himself and "Yes," he says aloud and deliberately pushes
himself hard into that hot, large, firm hand and grasps Alex's hard,
hot cock firmly.
"Yes, oh god! Yes, Mulder!" He hears Alex say, gasping into his ear.
They leave the bar and kiss as soon as they're in the shadows of
dilapidated building.
Mulder follows Alex's black pick-up truck higher and higher into the
Southern Virginian mountains.
He thinks he might even call in Monday morning and let them know he's
taking a long and extremely over due vacation.
Mohammed's Mount
by Flutesong
Alex sits in his aerie. Impatient with the silence, when he'd said to
himself not five minutes ago, that no news was 'good' news. That his
peace was well earned. He spins on the wheeled stool, quickly
scanning the panoramic view through all five windowpanes.
