I won't bother to change the names in it—'cause no one involved was exactly
innocent—but as for the rest... well, let's just say some of the involved
parties are awful damn good liars and some kinda outright lousy at it, and
the rest don't know what the hell to believe, so what does it really matter
to them?
There's this guy, see, and he works for the FBI. And this other guy and he
used to work for the FBI. Kinda sorta. You see, he really worked for this
other guy on the side, a real mean old sucker, and was just pretending to be
an honest and upright man of the law. He'd never ever really been on the
side of angels, I figure, but he musta been pretty good at pulling it off,
'cause he certainly fooled the first guy. And that guy he got really pissed
off for being screwed over and lied to like that. Really pissed off.
And this second guy, well, he got a hold of some super secret tape that
everybody seemed to want and got on the outs with his old boss over it and
then he kinda disappeared for a while. Can't blame em. Everyone wanted a
piece of him, and I don't mean in a nice way. Well, mostly.
Anyway... the water too hot for ya? Want me to turn it down some? No?
Okay, then.
Anyway, that's when it gets kinda weird. Weird in a good way. Well, I'd
say anyhow. But, then, I like weird. Weird's what makes the world go
round. Well, that and Calvin Klein and Bill Gates and Coca Cola. Classic,
not new Coke, anyways. And money can certainly grease the wheel up for you,
always has, but... where was I? Oh, yeah, this guy. See, funny thing is, he
looked just like me. I know. Pretty weird, huh? And you'd always thought
I was one of a kind. Probably hoped I was, too. Right up there with
wishing sometimes that I'd fuck up and lose my head one of these days.
No? Well, that's real magnanimous of you. Even if you're just saying it to
keep me off guard, that kinda thing, and don't really mean a bit of it.
Which, incidentally, was what I got when the first guy—the real FBI
guy—mistook me for the one who'd fucked him over so bad. Oh, not at first,
of course. He was kinda nasty, at first. Beat me around a little, stuck
his gun in my face. Kept me in handcuffs and in constant fear of my life.
Not that he could know how insignificant a threat that really was. And,
well, you know me... I played along with it. Had nothing better to do that
day, after all.
And then I realized that he had a thing for my better half... yeah, you heard
me. I'm not the only pervert around, mortal or Immortal. Though mister
I-don't-know-if-I-should-kill-em-or-fuck-em ranks right up there with the
best. In more ways than one. And I went with it. Or got him to go with it.
Which amounted to the same thing in the end.
No snide comments, please.
I've already heard em all.
So, let's just say I certainly got my rocks off that night. And he got his.
Even if I wasn't really what he wanted. Or who he wanted, for that matter.
Which he figured out soon after the glow had melted off the after. So I
gave him a kind of post-coital confession. At gun point, I have to tell
you. No, I'm not your buddy and never heard of em and, oh by the way, yeah,
you're really one hot ticket and you can punch me any...
What? Okay. Yeah, I did tell him more than I shoulda. Can't resist a man
who's just fucked me through the sheets. And, yeah, I did tell em about
that little quirk of ours, okay? I know I'm not supposed to, but since he
didn't much believe me anyway who gives a shit. Fuck, he'd already figured
out I wasn't just your everyday ordinary kind of guy. Did I mention how
smart he was? Still, my confession kinda tossed him a bit further off the
deep end. And not being who he thought I was really toasted his banana.
Went completely no fun. All of which made me decide to ditch his ass at the
next best opportunity.
Which I did.
And that woulda been that, if I hadn't decided to check out the merchandise
at an old time car show while passing through Virginia. See, they were
having a kind of gun collector/survivalist convention thing at the same time
one town over and the motels and bars were full of em both all around and I
happened to wander into this one bar late one night and...
Yeah, go ahead. Pour yourself a glass. I'll take one, too, while you're at
it. Might not be cold enough, yet, but if you're thirsty enough...
I wasn't drinking champagne that night, that's for sure. The only wine they
had was the kind in big jugs and the whiskey all came with names like Old
Dog and clearly tasted of what they were named after and I've always hated
beer, so I was having some of what they were selling under the table, if you
know what I mean. Clear and sharp as glass and makes you feel just about as
brittle come the next morning.
Now, he was drinking beer.
They were back at a table in one of the darker corners—not that the whole
damn place wasn't darker and tighter than a miser's purse—and he was
sitting with his back to the wall and looking around over his glass with
such a nonchalant air that most folks probably never knew he was looking at
em, let alone watching them. Watching all the doors, too. And everyone who
came in through em.
It was a nine-days-wonder that he hadn't noticed me right off. But then I'd
situated myself at another small corner table and had a rather nice-looking
redhead between us and I think he was looking around for trouble, not
titillation. His buddies, on the other hand, were trouble. They were
either in jeans and t-shirts or pseudo military gear, with odd bits of camo
scattered here and there, and were drinking too hard and scowling too much
and generally and obviously not there to soak up the atmosphere. It was a
full moon tonight, though, so I guess it takes all kinds.
He was wearing jeans, too. Black, with a matching black leather jacket and
a white t-shirt that seemed to almost be floating between the two. His hair
was short. Too damn short to be flattering, and made me wonder who'd sold
him on the convenience of a buzzcut. Probably one of his no-neck
beer-swilling friends. The kind that still thought that war was a fun game
to get into and can anyone play. Rah, rah, wave the flag and all that.
Though, considering the crew around here, that was probably rah, rah, and
blow up ye old federal tax collector's office and all six surrounding
stories while you're at it. In-between, digging your bunker a new rumpus
room and loading up on all those dehydrated little goodies for the day the
world ends or the government falls or they come and try to pry your guns
free of your cold dead fingers.
Buncha damn fools, if you ask me. If you really believe in all that shit,
why not make sure of having a good time before the proverbial final bell?
Before Judgment Day arrives with all its bells and whistles and God thins
out the herd. Far better checking out in a blaze of glory, than hiding in
some hole in the ground and thinking canned beans and Tang will get you
through a nuclear winter or the rapture or some such thing.
Mortals. Gotta love em.
As much and as many as possible.
Well, there he was and there I was and I figured this was a chance to get to
know myself in a way that I just couldn't pass up.
Oh, shut up, and either hand that bottle over or pour me out another glass.
It's not like it's any surprise to you. I've never been exactly bashful
about anything, let alone my depravity. And I sincerely doubt anything I
could do could actually surprise you after all this time. Appall and
disgust, maybe, but not surprise. And, okay, that's a lie, but it sure
sounded nice, didn't it? Keeps you in your good light.
So, anyway, when he finally put that beer down and nodded at his buds and
began heading towards the gent's room at the back, I set my own glass down
and made my apologies to my lady friend. And I followed him inside.
Suspicious bastard that he was, though, he copped on to that fact just a few
seconds after I walked into the room. Even before he'd got a chance to see
my face. His face. Whatever.
He had me slammed up against the nearest wall and a snub-nosed little gun
pressed under my chin quicker than you could skin a sword. Even yours,
boyo. Not that I had my sword with me. Couldn't exactly hide it under what
I was wearing. Did I mention it had been a hot day and the bar was jammed
and he was sweating damn near as much as me—more, maybe, with that jacket
on—and the first thought I had as he held me there and almost killed me was
how much I wanted to lick those droplets right up off of him. See if he
tasted the same as well as looked the same. Well, get my first taste,
anyway.
I started to say something—didn't know what, but it would have been good,
you can imagine—but something in his eyes flickered and then he eased up on
me minutely, before slamming me back again. Harder than before. Holding me
there with the gun alone now, as he fumbled in his pocket of his jacket and
withdrew something silvery and thin. Something that he held up in front of
me and that abruptly grew even more silvery and thin as a long narrow blade
popped out the other end. Making it look like a futuristic kinda ice pick.
Though, I doubted you could pick this baby up in even the most hip of
department stores.
I don't know what he expected from me about then, but certainly not the
smile that he got. Not that he stayed confused for very long. Gotta give
him that, even if he did have the worst haircut on the planet and a
hankering for cheap beer.
"What the fuck do you want?" he asked me.
"What does anybody want," I replied. I would have shrugged, if I didn't
think it would have gotten me instantly shot or stabbed. "A great stock
portfolio? World peace? A good time?"
He ignored my brilliant repartee. If anything, his expression hardened even
further.
"Who sent you?" he added. "Did he send you?"
I could say some vicious little imp almost the same exact shade as his eyes
and mine made me do it, but it'd be a lie. "Who he? The man with the
smokes and no sense of humor or your own furious little Fed, Fox William
Mulder."
You see, I'd done some research since I'd first met up with FBI in our
romantic little trysting place, some local morgue, all of which had made me
more curious about both him and my friendly double. Not that I don't know
what curiosity did to the cat, but I figure I have more lives than sense
anyway.
Or so, you're always telling me. What, did you think I was deaf? Fuck, I'm
just selective. In a lot of ways.
A characteristic that the guy facing me seemed to share. The only word he
reacted to in that last was the name "Mulder." For which, I couldn't
exactly blame him. I had reacted to the man, myself. In a big way.
"Mulder," he said softly, though his tone wasn't gentle in the least. A
little breathy and a bit husky, but not gentle. "What the fuck do you have
to do with him?"
I raised an eyebrow. "You expect me to kiss and tell? C'mon. You know
better than that. Or you should."
Those green eyes just glittered and he brought the ice pick up closer to my
face. Rather too uncomfortably near my own left eye. "Fine. You tell the
old man I've still got what he wants. You tell him to leave me the fuck
alone or I won't be the only one who has it, though. It'll make headlines
all over the world. Every last one of their secrets on talk shows across
America. All his fucking secrets. And yours."
"Mine?" I couldn't help but ask. "You think you really know my secrets?"
"I know what you want here from us, you hybrid shits," he grated out. "And
I know how to kill you. I will kill you."
For a moment, I almost believed him. That it was Immortals he was talking
about, rather than something else entirely. Rather than more of that
off-the-wall shit that his FBI ex-partner had been going on about when I'd
first met him. I wouldn't put it past FBI to have relayed to him some
bizarre story—cooked up half from the little I'd told him and half from the
insanely tangled threads of his own brain—but, somehow, I doubted that
Mulder had even seen this guy since we'd last met, let alone spilled the
beans about what had happened. I got the strong and strange feeling these
two didn't talk all that much. Whether they did anything else together,
well, that was still to be tested.
But the point of that ice pick had settled fractionally harder on the
fragile skin of my upper cheek, a tiny sharp prick of pain. "If you think
wearing my face will stop me..." He hissed, then faded off.
I held myself perfectly still. Not even blinking. "I'm not a shapeshifter,
if that's what you think. Or a clone or a hybrid or anything else like
that. And I certainly don't work for your 'old man.' Though I think I've
met him. Hell, he pretty much tried to off me in your name. Which, maybe,
makes it that you owe me. An explanation, if nothing else. Our mutual Feeb
friend, Mulder, was a bit short on that regard. But, then, he thought I was
you, too. For a while. And, somehow, he just didn't take kindly to that."
He studied me—not believing, but not disbelieving, either. Wary. Hard.
On edge. I could see it would be no big deal for him to kill me, that's for
sure. It made me wonder if there was anything even approximating a sense of
humor left buried in there, at all. Of curiosity or kindness or
consideration. A sense of anything other than desperation. He fairly
reeked of it. Just like this small room reeked of beer and other even less
savory things. Kinda reminded me of the public houses of old.
"What are you then?" he finally demanded, then snorted slightly. "My long
lost brother? Shit."
I risked the sensitive skin under my eye with a slight smile. "Long lost
ancestor, maybe. But no, I..."
The bathroom door abruptly opened and he immediately backed away from me,
both gun and ice pick vanishing from sight at the same exact time. A big
guy with a greying beard and a scruffy pair of jeans and an even scruffier
red Harley Davidson t-shirt walked past him and, somehow, he managed to keep
an eye on both of us at the same time. The new guy just ignored us,
however, as he unzipped in front of the nearest urinal and let fly. Belched
a half second later, adding to the less than pleasant miasma in the room.
Quite deliberately, as if it were no big deal, I turned my back on my dark
twin and went to the closest sink. I began washing my hands thoroughly and
dedicatedly, treating it as if it were the most important thing in the
world. Keeping my head bowed. Making myself less of a threat. Though, I
doubted he'd take the bait, no matter how lovely the packaging.
Scruffy guy seemed to take a long time, but he finally finished up, shook
himself off, and wandered out again. Not stopping to wash his own hands.
Hardly even glancing up. As if completely oblivious to the tension in the
room, to the tension between the two of us.
The two of us...
I looked up and into the mirror and saw reflections there within
reflections. Saw what, even with my forewarning of the fact, I still could
hardly believe existed, let alone was right there in front of me. The same
shade and texture of dark hair, of skin. The same general build, though he
looked slightly heavier around the shoulders and waist. He looked a few
years older than me, too, and rather less tan, or maybe just more tired.
'Coulda used a shave a couple of days back, which added to the general
impression of weariness.
Modern fluorescent lights aren't exactly kind under the best of conditions.
And these weren't the best of conditions.
Still, the eyes were almost exactly the same. An electric and nearly
depthless green. Dangerous and compelling at the same time, if I have to
say so myself. I'd never seen that exact shade anywhere before, even
counting my three hundred years, except in my own shaving mirror. Almost
incandescent at this moment, they caught the harsh light like a couple of
expensive cut emeralds, betraying the very emotions that his face worked so
hard to deny.
I stared deeply into them and was held, as he seemed almost equally held.
Felt something slow and warm start to uncurl itself inside me. Calmly, I
shut off the water and scrubbed my own hands dry on the thighs of my pants.
Not caring, in that instant, if it would leave water marks. I had worn a
pair of stone-washed blue jeans tonight for comfort, tight as his black ones
seemed to be, but still I suddenly found myself wishing I'd worn one of my
even tighter black leather ones.
It seemed to be right up his alley, much more than the loose long-sleeved
ivory silk shirt I'd also put on to go out. Despite the fact that I'd
unbent enough by the heat to actually roll up the sleeves a little. Still,
much as I actually had come to like and even appreciate jeans, I hated the
bland and casual nature of t-shirts almost to distraction. Though, in this
one case, the plain cotton one he was wearing was so threadbare in spots
that I would have sworn I could see the tiny shadows of his nipples beneath.
Could freely imagine how little effort it would take to tear the thin stuff
away completely. To bare him for further comparison.
Part of me was pleased his eyes followed my every movement, followed me, as
I pivoted back around to stare directly at him. Directly into those eyes so
very like my own.
"Kinda takes your breath away, don't it?" I commented quietly. "And, to
think, we come by it naturally."
His face didn't change, but something flashed in his eyes. So fast, I
couldn't tell what it was before it was gone again.
"You wanta blow this popsickle joint?" I asked, even more quietly. "Go
somewhere a little more private and talk. I'm game if you are. Unless you
just wanta kill me right here, right now, that is. And never find out... the
truth."
"Mulder's truth," he said, so softly I almost didn't hear him. Maybe, I
hadn't been meant to.
"Is it?" I answered anyway. Brightly and innocently.
He caught on instantly and his eyes narrowed. "Yeah," he said, at last. "I
guess we do need to talk..." He cocked his head at me slightly and I knew
instantly what he was fishing for. Not that he would ever believe it was my
real name, even if it had been.
"Cory," I replied. "Cory Raines. At your service."
He didn't rise to the occasion. I was going to have to work on that.
Still, he got us out of there with a minimum of fuss, on either the part of
my dollbaby or his para-friends. Seems he had no qualms about leaving them
in the lurch. About just walking us outa there without a word to either.
Without us being seen either. I could imagine that might have proved
awkward otherwise; it wasn't as if we were a pair you could exactly miss or
easily explain.
He grabbed me by the arm once we hit the parking lot and swung me around,
right into that gun again. At least, he'd left the ice pick in his pocket,
this time, for which I was mutely grateful. I'd rather be shot than stabbed
any day. For more reasons than I'm going to get into right this minute.
Though you probably could come up with a few. And some of them might even
be right. Or I'd admit to them, anyway, just to keep things interesting.
"My car's over there." I said, nodding across the asphalt. "The
burgundy-red Charger convertible. 1969. Mint. Four hundred plus horses,
not that I've gotten the chance to try them all out yet. I'll even let you
drive, if you want. If you ask me real nice."
He didn't answer, but his fingers tightened past the bruising point and he
began hauling me in the indicated direction, so I figured that was answer
enough.
That warm place inside me uncurled even more when we got into range of my
newest acquisition where she was parked under the far streetlight. Not that
I don't still love my Packard, and likely always will. It was a reminder of
some of my best days. My best decade. Days of bathtub gin and bullets. Of
fast money and faster fame and excitement and danger and, most of all,
Amanda. Looking and acting like a young girl in her beaded dresses and
bright feathers and brighter still lipstick, then taking me to places I'd
never known before existed with all the expertise her nearly eight hundred
years could give her.
Not that I haven't loved other years, other centuries, too. It's just that
that all too brief time really shone. More than most. More than I can
almost bear remembering, sometimes. And I shone with it. So much so, I'd
seriously consider trading in a good hundred years of life just to get it
back.
But you must know what that's like. You have to. Or you're not really an
Immortal, are you? We all have our regrets. Our bittersweet secrets. Some
more than most.
Mortals, too. As this guy so obviously demonstrated. He wasn't overly
rough, but he searched me, taking both my wallet and keys, before pushing me
into the driver's seat of my own car. He kept his weapon trained on me the
whole time he walked around and got into the other side. As if expecting me
to jump him at any moment, and I don't mean in a good way. As if treachery
was as ingrained a habit as breathing. Both enacting some, himself, and
expecting it from others.
I put my hands up on the steering wheel and relaxed back into the seat,
enjoying the freshness of the night after the cramped heat of the bar. From
out of the corner of my eye, I saw him going through my wallet. Wasn't much
there. I tend to travel light. Just a Wisconsin driver's license—not the
name I'd just given him, but I doubted he'd really care or expect
otherwise—and a couple of credit cards in the same name and a few hundred
dollars in assorted bills.
He took the driver's license out from behind the plastic and held it up,
turned and compared it to me. I turned my head and smiled at his
speculative look.
"If you want it, go ahead and keep it," I said. "I have more at home, and I
never really liked that name much, anyway. No matter how useful it's been."
Expressionless now, he tucked it back away, then stuck the whole wallet in
the pocket of his jacket. "No, thanks."
I went back to looking at the steering wheel. "So, where you wanta go?
Your place or mine?"
"You got a place here?" he asked in lieu of an answer.
I shrugged. "Been staying at a friend's cabin back in the woods. Kinda
quiet. If that's what you like. She's outa town right now. Could go there.
It's about an hour's drive, though, so if yours is closer..."
He tossed the car keys at me abruptly and I caught them out of the air
without even bothering to look. Wasn't sure if he was the type to be
impressed by that, but I'd take what I could get. With this guy, it seemed
that's what you'd have to do to get anywhere or anything. He wasn't exactly
giving it away.
"Just drive," he said, settling back in his own seat. The gun now held
crossways over his stomach, aimed directly at my side.
"Whatever you say," I replied and stuck the keys into the ignition. Started
her up. He didn't react to the throaty roar that followed, or to the speed
at which I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Just a
quick sharp flicker of his eyes, when I raised my left arm up and
nonchalantly let it come to rest on the top of the door.
We passed a pickup coming in the other direction—probably heading towards
the bar we'd just left—and then a '78 or '79 ghost-white Trans Am. The guy
driving it raised a hand in greeting and I raised mine back, getting another
threatening glance from my passenger in response. Probably had seen me at
the car show earlier. Or was just letting me know how much he admired my
own wheels.
I turned left when we came to the center of the small town, barely stopping
for the flashing red light hanging in the middle of the intersection, and
then began picking up speed as the buildings thinned out. Darkness and
trees closing in, livened up with only the occasional gravel side road or
mailbox, a flash of a distant yard or house light. Didn't take much to be
back out in the boonies around here. If you'd ever really left it to begin
with.
The road dipped down and the trees grew thicker as we entered a hollow, the
road winding gently alongside the darker line of a stream, and I let us
drift upwards on the speedometer again. The rush of cooling air over my
face and arm was soothing and sweet. The full moon glowing high in the sky
making silver light glance off the polished chrome of the Charger. I
wondered if he was enjoying any of it. If I dared to try a little innocuous
conversation. Or if he would just hit me for it like FBI had, responding
with an amazing amount of abuse for what little'd actually been said. As if
what was writ between the lines was so much more important and damning.
"So," I finally said, deciding to take the risk, make the experiment. "Just
what did you do to our mutual friend? That he hates you so much? Give away
his favorite suit to Good Will or something?" Okay, I guess, that wasn't
exactly innocuous, but it was more certain to get a reaction.
I shot him a glance, but his eyes were shuttered now, utterly
expressionless. They looked darker, too, as if something had closed down in
them. Locking out color and light. If I hadn't already known he was a
killer, I would have known it then. And I should have been instantly and
unforgivably afraid—for life and limb and continuing ease of comfort—but,
somehow, I wasn't. Instead, I felt a heat rush up through me, only to sink
back down again a couple of seconds later, consolidating and pooling in my
lower stomach and groin.
Maybe, I was going to be happy not to have worn those leather pants, after
all.
"What did he tell you?" the other man responded. Again, a question for a
question. It was starting to get a bit annoying, not to mention
discouraging.
"Oh, not much," I replied. Keeping my tone light. "Just that you killed
his daddy. Spied on him. Made his life a sheer and living hell and so on.
That's all." Mulder hadn't actually told me all that—hadn't had the time,
let alone the inclination—but I could speculate. Read between the lines a
little, myself.
His jaw tightened a notch, but that was the only reaction. Outwardly,
anyway. "Anything else?"
I shrugged slightly. "The rest of the evening was kinda taken up with other
things. If you know what I mean."
Definitely a tightening. A forced casualness. "No. Why don't you tell
me."
I glanced at him. At the gun still focused on my side. If I was lucky it
would shatter a rib in passing and be deflected a little; gut wounds were so
damn painful. Quite often took a long time for you to die, too. Not my
favorite place to get shot, but beggars can't be choosers.
Not even these days.
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. "Alex," I said. There was a
small narrowing of eyes at the use of his name, but that was to be expected.
Anticipated. "Why don't you let me clarify a few things for you. One—I'm
no threat to you. In any fashion. Two—whatever your Agent Mulder did to
me, he did under the assumption that I was you. With whatever that
connotates. Three—if you pull that trigger right now, well, let's just say
I've taken a car like this for a roll before at this speed and it's not a
pretty sight. If there's anyone left to see it..." I took in a soft
breath, then let it out again, hesitating.
He caught the movement, as he'd been meant to. "And four?" he asked. His
voice was husky, cutting under the sound of the wind and engine despite its
quiet tone.
I eased off on the gas a fraction as we approached a sharp turn. Taking it
half on the other side of the road so as to not have to slow down any more
than was absolutely necessary. A fresh stretch of road opened up before us,
the light of the moon making it look almost like a strip of water. With not
even a mailbox, let alone another car in sight to mar the perfection of it.
As if we were the last two people left alive on the earth.
"Four," I said, then smiled a little. It was a private smile, but I wanted
him to see it anyway. To wonder. "I've actually been wanting to meet you,
strange as that may sound. Which is the reason why I followed you into that
bathroom in the first place. And why I'm letting you get away with
kidnapping me now."
A slight line appeared between his eyes. "You wanted to meet me? You mean
you tracked me down? You knew I was going to be there?"
Jesus, the man was almost as paranoid as a certain perverse and rather
petulant FBI agent. "No," I replied. "That was just pleasant happenstance.
The universe cutting me a deal. It's part of my standard contract, you
see, with Lady Luck. Right up there with never getting a parking ticket and
always getting my share of sugar. You oughta look into a little
arrangement, yourself. Seems to me you could use some serendipity."
"I don't believe in luck," he replied. But the line had eased a little.
I laughed, gave him a quick glance. Just a partial dose of my best smile.
"Now, there's your problem. If you don't believe in Lady Luck, then how can
she believe in you? No wonder your life's so damn fucked up."
He was trying to keep his face blank, but his eyes gave away his confusion.
No matter that the gun never wavered. Never even twitched. I wasn't acting
like a man should act in my situation and it was obviously bothering him.
Bothering him more and more, probably right up to the point of wanting to
just go ahead and blow me away just in case. Just to make sure.
I was right; the man had a limited appreciation for curiosity. At least,
when it impacted on his continued well-being, the safety of his small and
probably quite bleak world. When it didn't involve a certain Fox William
Mulder.
"Pull over," was all he said, though. It was more than enough.
There was a small rundown dirt road a little ways ahead and I slowed down
and turned off into it. Pulled us in under the tattered overhang of the
trees, their leaves blocking out all but the tiniest flecks of moonlight,
and carefully brought the car to rest amongst tall grass and even taller
bushes, hoping the closest ones wouldn't scratch the paintjob too much. It
was much darker here and the light from the dashboard glowed on his face, on
the hard edge of his knuckles as he reached out and pressed the barrel of
that gun into me. Right on that rib that I'd already decided was going to
perform a heroic sacrifice if need be.
And it looked more and more like need may be.
A damn shame and not entirely my own fault and blood was such a bitch to get
out of upholstery.
"Now," he said. Breathed, more like. "You're gonna give me some answers.
And if they're good enough, I just may let you walk away from here. And if
they're not, if I'm not entirely satisfied, then I'm gonna kill you. Who or
whatever you are."
I looked back into eyes so like and unlike my own. And that heat returned,
stronger and more liquid than before, running through my veins like
moonlight over water. Explosive and potent as a jar full of shine. As
under-the-counter, too. At least, for as long as my jeans and the shadows
could hide the evidence.
"Okay," I replied, almost as quietly. My voice didn't quite have that
precise and smoky edge that his did, but I figured it was husky enough in
that moment. That he would be able to hear what I was feeling, even if my
actual words didn't give away the game. "I wouldn't want you to
be... unsatisfied. Alex."
The gun pressed in a shade harder. "Don't call me that," he said, his voice
flattening out. Growing, if possible, even softer.
"And why shouldn't I?" I asked, reasonably enough. "He did."
That shook him, shattered his composure, even if he somehow managed to
recapture it a scant second later. It immediately sent my thoughts
spiraling into other pleasantries; control like that could be a blessing in
disguise. As could convincing him to lose it, if it was done in just the
right fashion.
Maybe, he couldn't see it yet, but I could—a moonlit night, the top down on
the convertible, just the two of us parked all alone on some secluded side
road with only the sound of the crickets in the grass and our whispered
encouragements for company. All it would take was an old song playing
softly on the radio to bring the moment to seductive completion. I guess I
really am rather a romantic at heart. And an optimist, considering the gun
still pressing hard into my side and the way he was looking at me. As if he
couldn't decide whether it would be better to shoot me right here and dump
the body out in the woods, or cram it into the trunk for a quick trip to the
nearest landfill. Or river. Or... well, you get the picture.
I'm sure you've had similar situations spelled out for you often enough.
"Who are you?" he asked again. "Really?"
I turned off the engine—even the faint light from the dashboard fading
away—and turned to meet his eyes calmly. Tried to find within myself a
hint of the seriousness that he was demanding. "I already told you. My
name is Cory Raines, despite what it said on my license, and I first found
out about you and our... extreme resemblance... about three or four months
ago." Actually, I knew the exact date, but I wasn't letting on to that.
Somehow, I got the feeling that my lookalike would be royally pissed if he
knew how much I'd thought about that night. About what I and FBI had gotten
up to that night. About how much I'd like to do it again.
"And...?" He didn't let up, not on the gun or his gaze.
I let my own gaze slide off into the middle distance. At the tiny shards of
wayward moonlight that made it through the trees and down to where we were
sitting. "Not much to say. Your friend with the smokes had me picked up
off the streets and tried to... convince me, shall we say, to give him some
kinda tape or something he was in bad need of. When I kept telling him that
I had no clue about what he was talking about, he got fed up with me
eventually and had me removed. They were trying for permanently, but I'm
harder to kill than some might imagine."
I half-way expected some response to that, but the other man said nothing.
Just waited, so quietly and so very contained that, if I didn't have the gun
as a reminder, I almost would have thought he wasn't there at all. Like an
absence. Less, even, than a shadow. A shadow is always cast from
something. From some light, no matter how distant.
"So," I went on, my words falling into that void, that silence, like stones
into a deep still pond. Making me wonder if they would ever hit bottom.
"That's when your FBI man entered the picture."
"He's not mine," a rough voice commented. A ripple. An indication that
that pond wasn't quite as still as I'd imagined.
I looked back over at him, but he was just a dark shape within greater
darkness. Only form, no definition. "He thought I was you, as well," I
said, softening my tone a touch. "And he wanted the same thing from me—the
tape. And, unlike the other, he wasn't taking no or I don't know as an
answer." The corner of my mouth twitched up before I could stop it.
"Persistent little bugger. Smart, too. He figured out eventually that I
wasn't who he thought I was, no matter that I'd been telling him that all
along, and that I couldn't help him."
"So he just let you go?" Utter disbelief.
I shook my head. "No, he didn't just let me go. The so-called resolution
of my 'identity crisis' only seemed to open up a new ball of wax." I let
out a sharp little breath, suddenly perturbed, but not really sure why.
"Shit, why can't some things just be simple, obvious, easy on the eye. No
matter how unlikely they may seem. That's how I see things, anyway. But
him? Shapeshifters and clones and aliens and conspiracy up the
wazoo... doesn't the man ever take anything at face value? Can't he ever
just let it go? Take it for what it is?"
Rhetorical questions, but they were answered anyway. A crack in the dark
armor of the man sitting next to me. A glimpse of the depths it protected.
"No," Alex Krycek replied. "He can't. Or he won't."
There was a slight bitterness there, but I knew it would be chancing a
bullet to pursue it. And my rib was already pleading for a reprieve.
"Well," I commented. "Maybe, it's a good thing, then, that I didn't hang
around too long. Likely he would have wanted to dissect me. And been damn
disappointed when I bled red and said 'ouch' just like everyone else around
these parts."
It was a rather neat sidestep of the truth, but this guy didn't need to know
that. That if FBI had actually worked hard enough to convince himself to
believe in my little story, then he might have actually tried just that.
Taken me in for a slightly different kind of examination than he'd already
given me. But he hadn't—and I hadn't obliged him with a quick and
dramatically clarifying death scene—so there it was. Not that we hadn't
been busy for part of our time together with other things. Things far more
personally distracting than the possibility of immortality. More
immediately pleasurable, as well.
"Will you?" he asked.
I caught myself back, a reluctant maneuver. "What?"
"Bleed red."
Despite the gun, I slid down slightly in my seat. Let my legs sprawl out in
front of me. "Fuck, yeah. What do you think?"
"I think..." he said thoughtfully, suddenly moving that gun up along my
side, up until it had reached the juncture of shoulder and neck. Was
grinding into an entirely different length of bone. "I think you're a liar.
Cory. And a danger. And that I should just kill you."
I raised my head slightly and licked my lips. Let my eyes slide half-shut.
"Go on," I said and, in this precise moment, my voice was as husky as his.
"Do it, then." The words, the plea, seemed to come up out of some deep
place inside me, one that wanted him so bad to pull that trigger, to spill
my blood all over my new baby car and all over him. Most of all, all over
him. A slick tide on his skin, soaking in under short-clipped nails and
through the worn fabric of his t-shirt, blackening already black jeans.
Usually it's waking up from death that tends to turn me on—and that's a big
time, boyo, foot loose and fancy free and ready to pound a nail with the
damn thing if I can't get nothin' else kinda turn-on—but this time, this
one evening and with this one man, I was finding that the thought of the
actual dying was having much the same effect. At least, my cock was
certainly digging it. Sitting up and taking notice. Shit, if it got much
harder there was no way he wouldn't be noticing it himself, despite the lack
of ambient light.
The gun shifted again, the tip of the barrel following the line of my
throat, tipping my head further to one side. As if he was studying my face
by a slender patch of moonlight. I wondered if the expression on my face
made us look more alike or more fundamentally different. If he really
wanted to kill me as much as I wanted him to.
As much as I wanted him.
Without warning, he gave a dry and almost painful sounding chuckle. Then
the weapon was falling away and he was falling as well, sliding back and
down in his own seat until he was as slumped and boneless as I was. Just
from knowing him this short length of time, though, it was probably only
appearance. Still, the gun had come to rest in his lap, pointing at nothing
and nowhere in particular. At least, for the time being.
I sucked in a deep breath, tried to ease myself around the tightness of my
jeans a little. As circumspectly as possible. I should have known better
then to try and put one over on him. Shadowed eyes did a strip search on me
and I stopped and raised an eyebrow at him. He just shook his head, hardly
a gesture at all, then looked away again. Still, I never did know when to
let well enough alone.
"What?"
He just shook his head again, a little harder this time. Then something
seemed to give in him, a tiny trickle of real emotion escaping through the
crack in his composure. A sadness born half of resignation and half of
muted anger.
"He fucked you, didn't he?"
My stomach turned over and I almost snapped back an instant and unequivocal
baby-am-I-lying-through-my-teeth "no." Instinctive denial is a fine impulse
as far as that goes, and it has gotten me out of a lot of scrapes and into
some as well, but still I had the oddest feeling that it wasn't called for
here, that it wouldn't be a good idea. Despite how prudent it seemed to be
considering who was holding the gun around here.
"It wasn't entirely his own idea," I said at last. He closed his eyes
and his jaw tightened, then loosened again.
"Besides," I forged on, not sure if that was an encouraging or discouraging
reaction. "He didn't know me from Adam. It was you he thought he was
fucking. Like he'd wanted you for a long time."
Another jump of the jaw. "Thanks. I really needed to hear that." Deathly
dry.
I shrugged, even though he couldn't see it. It hadn't been kind, but it was
true. And the truth was rarely kind, no matter how much FBI went about
drooling after it. Desperately wanting to find it waiting for him
gift-wrapped and glittering under his Christmas tree. "No problem.
Question is—you gonna kill me for it? Or just make me pay... in kind, if
you will?"
His eyes snapped back open at that, though no other expression, surprise or
otherwise, made it to his face. "Sure of yourself, aren't you?" he asked, a
dark sarcasm mixing with the dryness.
I could have told him three hundred years could do that for you, but let it
ride.
"Yep," I replied instead. "Beats staying home on a Saturday night, don't ya
think?"
"It's Friday," he commented, almost totally desert now. Sun-baked and
gritty and prickly with cactus and thirsty cowboys, one step away from
eating their own boots.
"All the better. We can have all weekend then if you like. A couple of
days for you to make me make it up to you. If that's what you want. If
that's what you'd like. Alex."
This time, he didn't correct me. "Why?" he asked instead, an equally
frustrating question. Always has been.
"Why not?" I responded, unable to head off the quip this time. I relented a
moment later, however, answered in a far softer tone. "Why? 'Cause I want
you. That's all. That's why. It's one of those simple, obvious, easy on
the eye things I was talking about. The kind that FBI don't believe in.
Can't deal with. But I do. I live there. You wanta know why,
babydoll... well, I just want you, and have ever since a kinda confused FBI
man took both a pounding and a liking to my face. Ever since he fucked me
blind because of it. Because of you."
He straightened back up a little in his seat. "You're fucking nuts, you
know that?"
I stood no chance against the next quip. Just had to let it go. "As long
as I'm fucking something..."
He shook his head again. "Shit." The sudden drop, the deep huskiness of
his voice made the swear word almost beautiful. About as beautiful as his
face as he leaned towards me again, hard eyes scanning my face. His face.
The face that had gotten me what he'd likely always wanted. "I can't
fucking believe this."
I gave him a commiseratingly sad little smile. "Didn't mean to freak you
out. I just sometimes get carried away, that's all. By the moment. Can't
pass things up. Even the ones I really should."
So that was an understatement, but what can you do? It's hard to change the
habits of a single lifetime, let alone a whole horde of em.
"You really expect me to..." He trailed off, as if darkness and dust had
finally swallowed the last of his voice. Eaten it up entirely.
"I don't expect anything," I replied. "I just hope."
And maybe that had been a swear word to him, a curse, a threat, because he
flinched a little, almost as if I'd struck him. He restrained himself,
though—that control coming in handy again—and, instead, leaned a shade
closer to me. A tiny patch of moonlight shifted and caught at his eyes, was
caught in them, and they were black and green and impossible and deadly all
at once. I stared back into them, not letting go of them either, even as I
sensed the gun coming back up between us again. Felt it brush briefly
across the ivory silk of my shirt, light as air, soft as a stolen breath.
"I don't," he said, a brutal and heartwrenching confession. One that his
eyes matched. Surrendered to. Was abruptly sundered by.
So he killed me.
What did ya expect he would do? Kiss me? No matter how irresistible I
am—or even think I am—that just wasn't in the cards. Not after what I'd
just admitted to. What I'd stolen from him. No matter that he'd never
bothered to try and take it himself. But, then, logic doesn't usually
figure in very well in affairs of the heart. You know that.
And it's not like that's not your first impulse, too, dang near every time
you run into me. To kill me, I mean. Oh, not in that I challenge you and
I'm gonna take your fucking head now kinda way, but just... to kill me.
'Cause I annoy you, I guess. Or my life style does. Or some such thing.
Don't bother to try and lie to me about it; I'm better at it, anyway, and I
can still spot a bogus deal a half mile away.
More champagne...? Thanks. I have another bottle if we run through this
one. Actually, more than one. Never leave home without it.
Anyway, I came to an unknown length of time later, stuffed in the trunk of
my new burgundy-red Charger. The roar of the engine rampaging through my
head like it was trying to jumpstart each neuron all by its lonesome, and
the rough road we were on shimmying and shaking me between spare tire and
the case of champagne I'd picked up to bring back to the cabin for Monday's
sweet and tear-stained reunion with my latest girldoll. She'd cried when
she'd had leave me to go away for the weekend and she was sure to cry when
she came back. A sensitive thing, younger even than her years would give
her. But oh so uninhibited in the nicest of ways, at the same time. Having
hippies rather than Puritans for parents has its advantages, I must say.
It's disillusionments, too. Rather more sad to say.
At least her parents had left her with more than just a hankering for a
nonconformist lifestyle. It's so much better to suffer for your art when
you're rich. Especially if ya gotta eat. And take care of new boyfriends
with certain old and rather expensive tastes.
I wasn't pissed off, mind you. Far from it. At being killed, I mean.
Though I was about ready to strangle my own damn jeans about this time. Or
be strangled by them. And I'd thought I'd been hard before. But this was
real agony, one that I simply adored and that my "murderer" most definitely
was going to have to do something about. If I had any say in the matter.
Carefully, I unwound myself and reached up to touch the side of my head.
There was dried blood there, matted into the hair. That much of it I
remembered. How fast he'd moved and how hard he'd hit me with that gun. The
familiar crunch of metal and bone meeting and bone losing out, as it tended
to do. The rest of it was less clear, but had been even quicker—how he'd
reached out a bare half-second later and hit me just below my right ear, one
sharp and brutal thrust of his fingers. Giving me over to blackness, sudden
and overwhelming and edged with a green and need and hurt as hard and jagged
as his eyes had been in that last moment.
The eyes of a stranger and of a friend. Not that he knew that yet. Or
would have admitted to it.
To how the needs of another had bound us together.
The car bumped through a deeper pothole or rut in the road and I cursed
silently and fluently; if he wrecked it, even put one damn fool scratch in
it, then he was going to have to pay. In more ways than one.
In all the ways I could think of to enjoy.
I don't know how long it was before the car skewed abruptly to the right and
came to a halt. He let the engine run for a few moments, then shut it off.
In the sudden silence I could hear the sound of water. Close by. So, it
was the river then. Washing away all sin and inconvenient evidence. Like
freshly killed bodies. Not that this freshly killed body didn't have a
little surprise in mind for its killer. A little surprise and then a much
bigger surprise, one that was already throbbing slightly with each beat of
my heart.
I heard the car door open and closed my eyes, readying myself. Making
myself go as limp as possible, hard-on not withstanding. I figured I'd let
him go through the trouble and effort of wrestling my corpse out of the
trunk and then I'd take control of the situation.
The key slid in the lock and then air came rushing in and the sound of water
grew even louder. We must have been parked right up near the bank. Smart
of the boy. The better not to have to drag my sorry carcass too far; folks
seemed to grow heavier once they were dead and I'd lugged enough of them to
know. Had myself lugged, too.
Not by you, of course. But then I'd expect you to leave me face down in the
dirt given half a chance these days. And no hard feelings about it, so
don't go getting all guilt-stricken and redemptive about it. Everybody's
got their cross to bear. Their crimes to consider in the long hours before
morning, when you can't sleep and all those damn ghosts come out to play,
rattling their chains and trying like hell to scare you straight. Like you
were ever more than a crooked fence post to begin with. And don't go
thinking of that as any kind of confession or regret on my part. I have
none. No guilt and no shame.
And neither, it seemed, did he, my humorless twin. He handled me as
matter-of-factly and impersonally as a sack of rotten grain, shifting me
over to get the best grip on my lax form. He was strong, too; just a slight
exhalation of breath, of effort, as he lifted me and swung me out. As he
shifted his grip and started to put me up and over his shoulder in a
fireman's carry.
That's when I—matter-of-factly, but far less impersonally—slugged him in
the stomach. It wasn't a particularly powerful blow, lacking a bit in
leverage, but it caught him unawares and made him buckle. I immediately
twisted in his grip and threw him the rest of the way off balance and hit
him again, clipping him high on the cheekbone as we both went down. We
landed nearly at the same time on the rough grass and dirt. Or, rather, he
landed on the ground and I landed half on top of him, knocking what was left
of his breath clean out of him.
Gotta give it to em, though. He recovered fast. And he was fast. Fast and
ruthless and well-trained.
Which isn't to say that I can't be fast, ruthless when need be, and haven't
had training of my own. Just a couple of hundred years off and on.
Actually, I've always preferred hand-to-hand when you come right down to it,
rather than involving all those big nasty swords. Guy could get killed that
way.
Guy could get killed trying to subdue the slippery devil I was rolling
around with, too. I blocked several punches, one of which skated just past
my right eye and might have blinded me if it had hit me straight on. Plus
acouple of even more blatant attempts to slam my nasal cavity up into my
brain and one particularly vicious blow to that same vulnerable point just
below my ear that had knocked me for a loop before. At the last, when he
realized that he was losing despite all his efforts, he even aimed a knee to
the groin that would have really hurt if it had connected. Especially at
the moment.
Through it all, I didn't hit back, though it would have made the fight less
lengthy and more comfortable. For me, at least. It was a bitch, but I
finally ended up just where I wanted to be—right on top of him, with his
own gun in my hand, the barrel pressed in-between us like a curious doubling
effect of my own erection, and my finger hard on the trigger. He'd tried to
break my wrist when I'd first gotten a hold the weapon in its holster, but I
hadn't been having any of it. Not twice in one night. Getting murdered, I
mean. Everything else was fair game.
So I'd just taken it from him with a move I'd learned sometime about the
mid-19th century from a mercenary in a Viennese tavern and slammed him back
into the dirt and held him there with my legs, my left arm across his
shoulder. My right jamming the gun down between a pair of ribs as if I would
try and pry the two apart slowly if he didn't desist.
He did. Again, a smart lad. He was breathing hard by this time, much
harder than me, and his eyes were almost a weapon onto themselves, glaring
up at me with all the finesse of a wrecking ball. Obviously, he hated
losing almost more than he hated living through it. And he hated himself
most of all for having to make that decision, as if he'd only been battling
with himself in the end. Which, maybe, in a way, he had.
I looked down into those eyes and fought off a smile that I knew would only
infuriate him further. The fingers of his right hand were still digging
down into my arm, twisting at my skin through the silky slick material as it
he could pull it clean off the bone. Pushing upwards on it as if he thought
he could actually force the gun away from his chest. Force it back on me.
I resisted the pull and just pressed the barrel in harder, grinding deeper
between his ribs, and shook my head. Pressed my erection down into one
tense thigh nearly as forcefully. He blinked up at me and for a second,
those fingers tightened down even more desperately, then abruptly relaxed
their grip. Not releasing me, but no longer fighting. Choosing instead to
bide their time.
"Now," I said. The soft intimate-seeming purr of my voice made his eyes
narrow a touch, but their intensity never let up. Neither did the tension
in his body. It felt like I was holding down a tightly-wound spring. "I
suggest we have another little talk. Or something, anyway. What do you
say?"
"I have a choice?" he asked. His voice was equally soft, but it was a false
sweetness. Like a candy-coating over some bitter pill. The taste of
almonds in your espresso that turned out to be cyanide, after all.
"Of course," I replied. Leaning down a little closer. The full moon was
just sliding into the right corner of his eyes, reflecting back brilliant
little shards of light. Masking as much as they illuminated. God, I wanted
to kiss the bastard. But he'd only bite me if I tried, and not in a nice
way. "There's always a choice."
"Is there?" A skeptical sound more than a question. "You have the gun."
"So did he," I replied.
He swallowed and I felt the movement shiver all through him. As if he'd
been the one to be ditched in that river, no doubt spring-fed and cold as
all get out despite the warmth of the last couple of days. I seemed to be
running more than a bit hot, myself. Though the current weather had little
to nothing to do with it. The fabric of my shirt felt plastered to my back.
No doubt, it was grimy as well and ruined and I knew who was going to have
to pay for that.
He gave no warning—not in his eyes or in his body—but I knew he was going
to try anyway, then. Despite what it would cost him. I forced my own face
to a stillness that felt almost alien to me, but was no doubt familiar as
all hell to him, and slid the gun along the edge of one of those ribs.
Scraping along the bone. Knowing it had to hurt.
"Don't," I said.
He got the point. Didn't even bother to argue. A few others in the past
haven't proved nearly as perceptive, or maybe they just couldn't bring
themselves to believe that I was capable of serving any serious harm on
their earthly forms. What? Did you think I'd never killed? Just 'cause I
don't get off on it or go around looking for it doesn't mean that I'm some
kind of wimp. I do what I have to do, just like most folks... just with a bit
more innate flare, I suspect.
I let out a quiet breath and showed him the bare edge of my teeth. Not a
smile, but something near enough. "Good boy. Now, I'm gonna get up and
you're gonna behave yourself. Unless you really wanta find out how well you
can swim with a couple of rounds in you?"
"Not particularly, no, " he replied.
"Your choice," I answered. More softly, but I knew he'd hear it. Hate it.
Resent me for it.
I watched him carefully as I prized myself up and off of him. Knelt back in
my own pocket of dust and held the gun pointed directly and firmly at his
midsection. His eyes fell momentarily to my crotch, as if he couldn't quite
help himself, but returned almost immediately back to my face.
"Your turn," I said. "Get up. On your knees. Hands well away from your
body."
He did as I asked, moving as slowly and cautiously as I had. Keeping his
arms out from his sides, his hands open and loose. His eyes, if anything,
were turning even colder. They were watchful and self-possessed and wickedly
sharp. Keen as the sound of a blade slicing full tilt towards the back of
your neck. You know the feeling. Terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
The last thing you'd ever know.
"It was red," he said in a hint of the same soft and sibilant voice. A
non-sequitor normally, but I understood what he meant.
"Last time I checked, yeah," I replied. "But I didn't have time to say
'ouch.' For which, I have you to thank."
"Sorry."
"Sure, you are," I said, my tone full of the same false sorrow. "Sorry you
didn't get away with it."
His eyes flickered over me once again and maybe I imagined that they rested
a shade longer on what the tight lines of my jeans could barely bother to
hide anymore. "Looking pretty good for a dead man," he commented.
I allowed myself more of a smile, this time. "Thanks. I've put in a rather
lot of practice, you might say. Speaking of which, that was a nice neat
trick of yours. Very effective."
"One would think," he replied, not quite the Sahara this time, but close.
I tilted my head slightly. "I could give you the gun back, of course, and
let you have another go at it. But I'm not feeling overly kind this
evening, so let's just say that the first one was free. The rest you'll
have to earn. And I'm not a cheap date. Easy, maybe, but never cheap."
He let out a little sound that could hardly be mistaken for a laugh. "What
do you want from me?" he asked. "Really?"
I shrugged. A tiny shrug, just enough for him to get the picture. "Not
much. And everything." I raised the gun minutely. "For you to get on your
face, Alex. Right now. And put your hands behind your back. You probably
know the drill, being in the FBI once. If you haven't forgotten. And
then... well, you can probably imagine as well as I can. Maybe even better,
but we'll see. I've got a few years on you, after all."
His eyes flashed and it wasn't the moonlight this time. "If you're going to
kill me," he hissed. "Then just fucking kill me, okay?"
"I'll see if I can work it in," I replied, then gestured with the gun again.
"Now."
He hesitated one long moment, then did as I told him. Lowering himself to
the ground and then sliding his arms back, his face turned to one side as
far as it could go as he continued to watch me. Only the quick rise and
fall of his back betraying how much he resented being made helpless like
this. How much he was hoping I would slip up.
I got to my own feet without ever taking my eyes off him and then backed up
until I ran into the bumper of the Charger. I reached back with my free
hand into the left side of the trunk and fished around until I found the
handle of my roadside emergency kit. I may not have a handy dandy set of
those metal bracelets his ex-partner had—at least, not on me—but I did
have the next best thing. A nearly-full roll of duct tape. The sticky and
silver magic of the 20th century with a thousand and one uses, some of which
they actually feel free to advertise. This wasn't going to be one of them.
I almost expected him to try something again when I approached him and knelt
down to one side. His eyes just tracked me, though. Tracked the gun in my
other hand.
"Put your wrists together," I said. "Tight, if you please."
He didn't move. Not even his eyes changed.
I lowered my voice. "Or, if you don't please, I could always shoot some
non-essential part of you beforehand. I may even let you pick. How's that
for being a nice guy?"
Still, he didn't react. Not until I slipped that gun in under his jaw and
used it to tilt his head further back. Making his neck strain. His lips
were pressed tightly together—an indignant line of mute refusal—and I
wanted suddenly to lick them, to nudge them apart with my own tongue and
taste that resentment and dust-dry anger. At this angle, his eyes looked
more black than green again, but, despite the current situation, they were
not the same killer's eyes of before. They were suddenly full of deeper
shadows than that.
I had the strange suspicion I knew what one of those shadows was named.
I moved the gun again, sliding it closer to his chin, to that compressed and
silent mouth. Wondered if I could get him to open up for it. If he would
like it as much as I did. If we had that, too, in common.
"I sucked his gun, you know," I abruptly admitted, before I really knew I
was going to. An almost involuntary confession. "He seemed to get off on
it as much as I did. Go figure."
He didn't much like what I'd just said—not that he'd given himself away,
not by a single flick of an eyelash or a bare pause of breath—but that
knowledge was like an instinctive thing to me all the same. A little
creature burrowing away deep in my guts, butting its blunt head towards more
sensitive areas. It made me want to go on, to tell him in grand and
glorious detail what FBI had sucked on for my behalf, what confessions he
had wrung out of me. But it wasn't likely to win me any cooperation at the
moment. There was a time and place for everything, isn't that how the quote
goes? A season for seduction and a season for... more seduction?
Still, when he closed his eyes at the last and pressed his wrists together
as I'd asked, I knew that I'd won this battle, if not the war. Quickly, I
straddled him and put one knee hard to the middle of his back, before daring
to give the gun a temporary home in the tight waistband of my jeans. Before
beginning to tape those proffered wrists together.
He didn't fight at all, but those hands were clenched almost too tightly for
blood and the steady clarity of his breathing told me how very much he hated
this and me for doing it to him. For making him vulnerable to the images
I'd called up in his mind, if not the weapon I'd been holding on him. The
tape I was wrapping him up with. He was a prisoner to it all. A prisoner
of a man with the more than apropos name of Fox Mulder. And of his own trap
of memory, of need and want and desire. One he likely hadn't even seen
until it was too late or couldn't have avoided even if he had seen it in
time. As if the bait had been just too damn tempting.
I could believe that. I'd seen it. Touched it. Tasted it. Felt it come
hard into my ass as if to turn me inside out with the sheer force of his
emissions.
Oh, sorry. Got a little carried away there. Fill up my glass again, would
you, and please ignore my more over enthusiastic color commentary. Which
were a strange kind of silvery grey, by the way, when they weren't being
brown or blue or green. Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you FBI had eyes kinda like
those mood rings popular a few years back, displaying every change, every
emotion. Every desire, wanted or unwanted. As if they were mutable and
constant at the same time, all the tides of the ocean.
A guy could become addicted to eyes like that. To what they held and what
they denied, which were sometimes one and the same thing.
I suspected more than one had.
When I finally had the duct tape layered and knotted up around his wrists as
tightly as I dared make it, I pulled the gun out again and held it loosely
in my hand. Glancing back and forth between the weapon and the man on the
ground beneath me. It was a .38, compact enough to make it easy to carry
and big enough to have some stopping power. Much like the man who wore it,
I imagined.
In a way, I've become an connoisseur of guns and bullets, having dodged and
been taken down by them often enough since they've come into vogue.
Sometimes, I swear I can tell the exact caliber of the bullet from the way
it hit me, from the flying sting of a .22 all the way up to the shattering
impact of a .357. Shotguns were the worst—or the best, as the case may
be—sending you into a curious state of shock where everything becomes both
crystal-clear and fuzzy at the same time. Where you can hear every separate
and distinct beat of your heart as it pumps your blood clear of your body,
like the slow tick of a cooling car engine.
I wondered if my dark twin had ever been shot. Likely, he had. Though not
by a .357 or a shotgun or he wouldn't have been around for me to spot him in
the back of some seedy bar. Unless, he was very very lucky, and I already
knew his opinion on that score.
I pressed down briefly with my knee, grinding his ribcage firmly into the
dirt, then let up. I took a stronger grip of the gun and rose back to my
feet. Backed slowly away from him.
"Get up," I said when I saw his eyes come to rest on me once more.
This time, he didn't hesitate, didn't resist. He instantly rolled to his
side and got his feet back under him. Continued the motion and rose almost
as gracefully as I had, even more so considering that his hands were bound
behind his back. I hadn't noticed until now, but he did seem to be slightly
taller than me. Of course, the longer I lived the more this was true, and
I'd been considered a rather tall man once, myself. Though there were
decided benefits to having women of the same height now, though most of them
were much too thin for my tastes. Even Amanda had been more than a bit on
the skinny side, but she'd just been so much fun I hadn't minded at all.
I guess, in some ways, we're all products—or victims—of our times. No
matter how long we live or how far we come from them. From the mortals who
raised us.
But this one. He was no skirt to be wooed and won and easily abandoned. He
was a dangerous man, mortal or not. And danger always required a special
touch, careful handling. Sometimes even a sacrifice or two. Certainly, far
more than a single silk shirt, no matter how expensive it had been.
The moonlight suited him as the florescent lights hadn't. It made his shirt
nearly glow, traced well-worn and slender ridges along the black leather of
his jacket. His dark hair emphasizing how very pale his skin was. All the
lines smoothed over to a firm and marble clarity, making him look years
younger. Young as he probably was. His calm gaze just lended to the effect,
made it seem as if he could just stand there all night. Waiting for me to
make up my mind about what to do with him.
What a fine liar he was turning out to be; I could see what FBI saw in him,
though the qualities that I knew to appreciate were most probably the very
ones he despaired of. The ones that drove him to such extremes of anger and
of passion.
No doubt, he wouldn't have been able to stand the so serene green eyes I was
facing right now. Not and try to break them. I thought it rather a shame,
myself, but I was going to have to do the same. I was going to have to
shatter that composure, sully that perfect and distant shade. I wouldn't be
able to trust him, otherwise.
So I met his eyes with a placid gaze of my own. "Go on and ask me," I said.
"I know you're just dying to know. To hear all the... exquisite details."
For a second or two, I thought he wasn't going to respond, that he'd already
gone too far away inside himself, but then he lifted his head slightly.
"Why would you think that?" As serene and dispassionate as his eyes. Two
lies in one. Precisely matched. "Just because Mulder's got a couple of
screws loose, you think I don't up from down? That I really care what he
gets up to in his free time, let alone who he... fucks."
That last word came out rather more dark, but it still didn't touch him.
"Yes," I said simply. "Yes, I think you do." I took a small step
forward—the better to watch his eyes I told myself, but then I was a grand
little liar as well. "I think that's why you killed me. Or part of why,
anyway. You just couldn't stand it. That I'd had what you hadn't, what you
couldn't. Or what you told yourself that you couldn't. Such a shame, since
it turns out that you could. That the only thing stopping you was... you.
Not him. Not at all."
"Fuck you," he said softly, a shadow given voice.
"Like he fucks you night after night?" I asked nearly as softly. "Makes you
wake up from your dreams with all the frustration and embarrassment of a
pimple-faced adolescent boy. Why did you betray him?"
My sudden switch caught him momentarily flat-footed, but he reclaimed
himself quickly. "I had no choice."
I shook my head slightly. "So you keep saying. But that's just your
excuse, isn't it? I think the real reason was that you were afraid, Alex.
Afraid of him and of yourself. Of an uncertain future. Or of giving up too
much. Giving yourself away. And so you risked nothing and won nothing.
Surprise. Surprise. What kinda fucking life is that?"
"You don't know anything about it or me," he protested, but those green eyes
so like my own were no longer quite as detached.
"I beg to differ. In fact, I believe I begged for more than that by the
time he was done with me."
If he could have murdered me with his eyes right then he would have
cheerfully done so. So much for that illusion he had been subsisting on.
Hoping that it would save him. I gave him a small smile and an "A" for
effort, but didn't relent.
"You don't get it, do you?" I went on. "But then why should I expect you
to. You all think time is so very precious when time is nothing. A snap of
the fingers, a pull of a trigger. One wrong turn. One blown tire. And
it's gone, just like that." I gestured with the gun, but he didn't react.
Didn't even flinch. "But what does it matter, I ask you... mister Alex
Krycek. If you weren't doing anything with it to begin with? If you
weren't making the most of it, taking what you can take and savoring the
best. Choosing to take that gamble, because the only way you can
lose—really lose—is if you hadn't the guts to take it at all."
I stopped, because his eyes had gone an even more dangerous color. He was
angry. Angry and controlling it, holding it inside as tightly as he could.
"Nice speech," was all he said, though. "Got any other advice or has my
quarter run out?"
"No," I said quietly. "But I think maybe your options are. It doesn't seem
to me that things have been going exactly swimmingly lately, have they? Not
from the current state of your clothes or from the company you were
keeping."
"I get by." Antarctica now, instead of the Sahara. Just another desert,
though.
"Ah," I said, pushing some more, unable to stop myself. "A glowing
recommendation. How far the mighty can fall when they put their minds to
it."
He shifted on his feet, straightening slightly, and I raised the gun a hair.
Warning him back to stillness. His voice dropped another few degrees as a
result, a jagged whisper of ice. "I'm so glad you find my life amusing. Is
that why you really wanted to see me—to tell me what a fuck-up I am?"
"I already gave you the answer to that," I replied, not cold, but just as
softly. "He's the one who told me you were a 'fuck-up,' as you put it. Or,
at least, how bad you fucked him up. Did you have something against him
personally, or was it just a job, after all? He sure seems to have taken it
personally."
He stared back at me a long hard moment, then something seemed to break in
him again—just a slender crack, but it was enough—and he looked away. It
wasn't an admission of guilt, but it was an admission of something. I got
that melting sensation again. So hard and yet so forlorn at the same time;
I could see where FBI couldn't make up his mind over whether to shoot him or
screw him.
"Get in the car," I said then. "We're gonna go for a little ride. And,
this time, it's my quarter."
He shot me a look even I couldn't read, but began to move around to the
passenger side of the Charger. I watched him until he was standing right
next to the door, then slammed the trunk shut and reclaimed my keys. I
tossed the roll of duct tape into the back seat—never know when it might
come in handy—and slid back into my baby, before popping the other door
open for him. He settled in as best he could and I pressed the gun lightly
into his side as I leaned over him to close the door behind him. It only
took a few seconds, but I was entirely too aware of what a risk I was
taking. Much as I was aware of his breathing, just a bit on the quick side,
and of his heat and a strange subtle prickling sensation from where our
bodies met. Like an electrical spark jumping home.
I leaned back and looked at him, but he was pointedly not looking at me, so
I just slipped the keys into the ignition and the gun into my lap. Cool
metal impacting against hot. God, I hadn't been this hard in ages. It was
almost more painful than pleasurable.
I kept my hand on the keys as I turned again and looked at him, but he was
just sitting there stiffly, obviously uncomfortable, and I realized that he
was expecting me to kill him. Despite what I'd said to him, what I'd
admitted to him. Despite the evidence of my erection. Though, maybe, that
just made him think I was an even greater pervert—that I was planning on
giving it to him first before giving it to him last. It was probably all he
really knew anymore. A reaping of what he had sown, dark seeds all.
With FBI a particularly delicious, angry and erotic blossom. Eccentric as
all get out, too. In my time, it wouldn't have taken much and he'd have
ended up in the stocks or worse. If he hadn't been the one to go gadding
about doing the accusing and the hanging, of course. Obsession can go so
many different ways.
Look what it was doing to this guy.
I looked away again and started the Charger. The steady roar was a poem to
me, as lovely as the moon and the sway of stars overhead. The cry of the
crickets it had drowned out. I turned on the headlights, illuminating dense
woods and the silver flow of the water as it rushed past us at the bottom of
the bank we were parked on. I backed us up slowly, then, not sure of
whether there might be a drop-off of some kind in the tall grass. It made
me a little pissed; the man sitting next to me could have so easily landed
us in some ditch or racked up the bottom of the car with a rock or tree
stump by what he'd done, the disrespectful son-of-a-bitch. I'd just put in
two months solid work on this baby and he could have undone it all in a
moment's inattention or misadventure. And he'd said he didn't believe in
luck. I wondered how he felt about retribution.
Grass scraped along the bottom of the car as I slowly got it turned around
and heading away from the river, stirring up a crowd of lightning bugs in
the process. Luckily, the ground beneath seemed pretty hard and dry. As
did the trail that opened up in front of the headlights at the last—so
faint you couldn't really hardly call it a road, more of a track. It was
full of loose rock and ruts and fallen branches and leaves. Narrowed even
further by sprays of thorny-looking bushes and scrubby trees. It made me
wonder how he'd found it in the first place, let alone known it would take
him down to the river. Though it did kind of have the look of a place local
teenagers might come to on the sly to neck and drink beer.
Another little mystery. I pondered it—and what I was doing and going to do
with the man next to me—as I slowly drove down the track, wincing a bit
everytime we slid down into a deeper rut or a bigger rock or branch was
thrown up under the wheels. It was dark here, under the trees, out past the
cut of the headlights. An older piece of forest, I imagined. Perhaps even
one that had been here hundreds of years ago, one that had witnessed the
passing of settlers and the drums and guns of the Civil War. I had stayed
well out of that one; I'm not a fool for all those grand and glorious
gestures of patriotism like some are, mortals and Immortals alike. I just
do my bit for others and get on with it.
Bad enough the widows and orphans I had seen on both sides the Mason Dixon
Line during those long years. Men bled and died and left folks hungry and
homeless just the same whether they whistled "Dixie" or marched off to "John
Brown's Body," better known today as a battle hymn that promised the North
that God was on their side. I didn't trust any God who would take sides.
Or any who would believe that He did.
Come to think of it, I didn't much believe in God anymore period. Belief
has always seemed a quandary to me. Things change so very much over time
and we either change with em or we don't. Either way, we lose out. We lose
pieces of ourselves in the tides of Quickening after Quickening and we still
lose those we come to care about, mortal and Immortal, to eventual and
inevitable death.
Sorry about the sudden sad kick, but you know what I'm taking about. You've
been around far longer than me. And are likely to be around a good while
after I'm gone. I have no delusions about that. My fighting style sucks
and always has, at least when it comes to swords. I'm a lover, not a
fighter and don't give me that look. Just fill up my glass and let me get
on telling you about it.
By the time we bumped up that last hill and over a railroad track, I could
see the main road again and I could also see I was being a short-sighted
idiot. First time for everything, you might say, even if you won't. There
was no way I could trust my evil twin—tied up or no—and there was nothing
I could say that would make him trust me. At least, not without coming
clean. Putting him back in control. Taking that risk and that gamble I'd
been talking about. That I'd been encouraging him to take.
So I was going to have to eat my own words. Live up to—or go down with—my
own philosophy. Which was no prob, as long as I got something else
to... um... eat because of it. I think it there was a "Conan" movie a few
years back where one of the good guys said "you wanna live forever?" and
then jumped off a building or something. Straight into the pit, as it were.
Where there's always a big fucking snake guarding the gold and you gotta
chop off its head before you can get away clean and... well, that metaphor
seems kinda ass backwards, but you get the idea.
But first I was going to have to find us a playing ground. One where we
wouldn't be disturbed. The road in front of us didn't look familiar, but I
doubted asking Mr. Silent would help. I could still ask and then, if he
answered, do the opposite, but I wasn't in the mood for that kinda game. I
was in a hurry. The night wasn't going to last forever.
Finally, I just turned left and let the car swing out and back onto
pavement. Let us pick up speed, heading straight towards that rising moon.
A few desperate clouds had crept out by now and were trying to cover it, but
it was shrugging them off no biggie, giving the sky and the road ahead of us
a faint ghostly hue. Despite the situation, I got a kick out of it—it sure
was a night for driving, the air having finally turned cool, almost crisp,
and the sky so still you could almost feel the earth moving beneath you. I
wished he could see it the way I did, could enjoy it as much as I did, but
might has well ask for that old earth to stop turning.
The Charger obediently moved up another notch in speed without me really
thinking about it and I opened my mouth briefly to taste the wind washing
over my face. Sweet and silver and shit was it good to be alive. Again.
Forever.
I glanced over at my companion, but he was staring straight out the
windshield and the glow from the dashboard was making him look older again.
Or maybe it was his complete lack of expression. Of anything. And that was
another neat trick of his, albeit a little disturbing—to turn so completely
nothing. I wished he'd stop showing it off to me, though. I'd gotten the
idea the first time.
"Aren't you going to ask?" I said, easing up a bit on the gas. The road
ahead of us curved and then curved again, sharp corners that I took with all
the grace the Charger was capable of. The headlights skewed across dark
trunks and slippery shadows. "Why I didn't stay dead?"
"Maybe," the nothingness next to me replied. "I don't want to know."
The road straightened out again and there was a bridge, possibly going over
the same river he'd wanted to throw me into. We crossed it and came to a
stopsign. I slowed the car and stopped and to my delight saw a roadsign that
I recognized. I knew where we were now, at least when it came to simple
geography.
"Then you're not like him," I said. "Mulder, I mean. He wanted to know."
I turned right onto the new road and let the car go. This one was wider and
smoother and I took us up to close to eighty before easing back again. The
speed made conversation nearly impossible, but I didn't think he was
interested in it much anyway. At least, he hadn't bothered replying to my
last comment. And I was too busy grooving on the rush both the passing night
and the vibrating engine were giving me. Too busy trying not the cream my
own jeans. God, I really need to fuck and fuck bad. And like Ruffles I
didn't think just once was going to be enough.
Even if I was lucky enough to get it.
We blew through another intersection—I didn't even pretend to stop this
time—and I figured we were about half an hour from my skirt's place.
Twenty minutes if I didn't let the speed drop much. Or if we didn't hit
something or get pulled over. So I made my plea to Lady Luck and she came
through like I knew she would. She knows I'm good for it.
Unfortunately, I still didn't have a plan worth squat. One that would get
me what I wanted and get him what he needed—even if he didn't know it—and
end up with us parting... well, if not friends, then at least not mortal
enemies and pardon the expression, would you. Besides, despite having him
at my mercy right now, I must admit that I'd much prefer to be at his. I'm
just built that way. There's a word for it, but I'm not going to enlighten
you if you don't already know it. And, besides, I've never forced myself on
anyone in my life ever and I wasn't about to start now, no matter how
tempting both sin and sinner were looking.
I'd let Mulder be in command and look what it'd gotten me. On the other
hand, I was pretty damn sure if I had forced the issue with him at the time
it would have likely turned as sour as a pail of witched milk. I'd figured
that out right quick. You see, you gotta play it careful. Play it just
right with someone like that. You just point him in the general direction
and give him a little judicious encouragement and let nature take its
course, trusting that it'll go straight to his... well, let's just say, more
than ample endowments.
This guy might be the same but, then again, he might not and I didn't want
to turn up dead twice in one night. No matter how cute my killer may be.
And how much I wanted him. And I didn't think my Charger could take much
more abuse. Well, it could, but I didn't want it to. So there.
So I'd mulled it around about six ways from Sunday by the time we got to our
turn-off. As I paused to grab the mail from the mailbox standing next to
the main road, tossed it in the back to share the seat with the duct tape,
and then eased us gently down the winding lane. Luckily, my own special
endowment had subsided a little by then, and was no longer straining the
seams of my favorite pair of jeans, and so I could think a little more
clearly.
Or as clearly as I ever thought, which you wouldn't say was much.
My guy still said nothing—big surprise, eh?—as I pulled up in front of the
big A-frame and switched off the engine. The motion-sensitive lights had
come up and they cast a warm glow over the cedar logs and the stone
foundation. The windows were blind, though, reflecting only darkness. I
should have left a light on, except that I hadn't known how long I would be.
If, despite the case of champagne in the trunk, I'd be coming back at all.
One never knew when one would be finding a better deal. Or have to take a
quick skeedaddle out of town.
I snatched the gun back outa my lap and got out and stood next to the car,
watching as my twin glanced around, checking out the area in quick little
flicks of those sharp eyes. The house stood all alone—the three-car garage
was tucked around out back—in the midst of thick woods. Woods as thick, or
thicker, than the one he'd took me to dump the evidence. I could have told
him just how secluded we were, especially since my girldoll and I had tested
the limits of the property in just about every way imaginable. The nearest
neighbor was more than five miles away and never heard the screams. Even
the ones I'd made. So she was a hot babe when she wanted to be. With some
of that extra special encouragement I was talking about.
I doubted this guy was much of a screamer, though. Even if it was pleasure
instead of pain slam-dunking his little self into an adjoining universe.
"Home, sweet home," I commented. "So glad you could make it."
He shot me a sour look, then banished even that, sinking back into the car
seat as if he expected moss to grow on him at any second. Oh yeah, return
of the deadly non-responsive man. Sitting there in the car like some great
lump as if expecting me to all the work of hauling his ass outa there. Or
make the gun do it for me, anyway. But I was tired of threatening him.
Tired of the whole cruel scene to be honest.
Right now, I just wanted to get fucked half to death and curl up in a nice
soft bed around something warm and cuddleable and watch the stars go out one
by one. Watch the sun come up slowly over the trees. Hope he could make
better coffee than I could. That he wouldn't hog all the hot water or
expect me to loan him my toothbrush.
Told you I'm a romantic at heart. Hell, right about now I'd probably
forgive this guy the toothbrush and the hot water, and even the fucking
coffee, as long as he got my rocks off. To see if I could see some part of
myself in those eyes of his. Even if his own hard-on came with Special
Agent Fox Mulder written all over it.
I walked around to his side of the car and opened the door for him,
gentleman that I was. Swung it wide and stepped back. Then gestured at him
with the deadly end of the gun, gentleman that I wasn't.
"C'mon," I said. "We're both not getting any younger." And I'm not getting
any older, but I won't tattle if you won't.
His head turned slowly towards me. His eyes came up at the same time,
steady, burning from beneath smoky black lashes. "So, why didn't you?" he
asked, picking up from where we'd left off with the nonchalance of someone
who didn't give a fuck. "Die, I mean."
I looked back at him, keeping my own gaze just as direct. "Because I
can't," I answered. So it wasn't precisely true, but I wasn't going to give
every last secret away no matter how nicely he asked. Not even if it would
help satisfy a particularly tempting narcissistic fantasy of mine, one that
would put most folks to shame. That would give a whole new meaning to
playing with yourself.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice hushed—not giving away whether he felt
sorry for me or for himself.
I gave him a tight-lipped little grin. "I'm not."
He held my eyes for a moment longer, then deliberately looked away and
worked his way up and out of the car seat. He stood there and looked up at
the house, as if he didn't care to look anywhere else—particularly at
me—right now. As if he was too busy sorting puzzle pieces in his head,
trying to form some kind of picture he could live with. Maybe even one that
I could die with.
"Go on up," I said, rather more gently. "I'll be right behind you."
He shot me a look, one that fell to the gun still in my hand, and then
started walking towards the front porch of the cabin. I watched him for a
second or two, then turned away and reclaimed the day's mail from the
backseat. I thought about taking the duct tape with me, too, but decided in
the end to let it lie. The case of champagne in the trunk could wait, too.
My guest was not a man of boundless patience and he'd likely try and take
advantage if I came staggering up to the front door with a case of the stuff
in my arms. And it'd cost me too much to go and get it smashed up along
with various parts of my own anatomy.
Still, maybe I was misjudging him, since he was just standing there next to
the front door like a reluctant salesman when I came up the steps. Without
even being asked, he moved back as I approached and let me at the door.
Keeping half an eye on him, I unlocked it and went part way inside. I hit
the switch for the big overhead light and then disarmed the alarm system
from the box right next to it. He came in just as the alarm went to green
and I caught him giving it a sideways glance, before he slowly walked out
into the middle of the room.
I closed the door and leaned back against it, watching him take it in.
It was a lovely place, kind of like one I'd had myself a few years back, but
much bigger and with scads more windows, all the better for its owner to
paint by.
She had decorated it in rustic and earth tones for the most part. Old
copper pots and cooking utensils hung from the huge stone fireplace that
graced one wall of the great room. Plants in various baskets and porcelain
pots lined the other walls, including one miniature orange tree. All the
furniture was comfortable, oak carved pieces upholstered in reds and greens
and golds with matching antique embroidered footstools. A white wicker
rocking chair sat by the stairs that led to the second floor, right next to
a big oak cupboard that hid the downstairs t.v. and the stereo system. The
couple of paintings scattered about were all her own, including her latest
finished piece. It was larger than any other she had so far attempted and
was displayed on a stand just beyond the rocker, well away from the light.
It, too, was all in earth tones—a woman standing on a lakeshore at dusk, a
white swan swimming just before her. Both of them were mirrored in the
water, the arch of her hands almost perfectly mimicking the arch of the
swans' neck. At this distance, it almost looked like a photograph, the
strokes were so fine. She'd spent most of the last year working on it and
it was going to be the centerpiece of a show she had planned for next month
in a small New York gallery.
If I was still here, I would probably end up going with her. Do the dutiful
boyfriend thing. Drink moderately expensive wine and carry around one of
those little plates of finicky food and try and make nicey nice conversation
with folks who had more money than sense.
"Nice place," my companion finally commented. Second nature by now, I
checked his tone for sarcasm and found none. Amazing.
I looked at him, but he was crossing the room to stand in front of the
painting, close enough to check out the technique and yet far enough away to
still catch the effect. He knew what he was doing and it made his
disheveled look and bound hands all the more incongruous.
I tossed the mail on the coffee table in front of the couch and walked over
towards him. But not too close. Not holding the gun on him, but not
pointing it away either.
"Yeah," I said. "It is that. Nice."
He looked at me from beneath those lowered lashes again and suddenly he
looked cold and weary and rather ragged around the edges, like an expensive
silk rug that someone hadn't bothered much with and mistreated all to hell.
Like he'd been stepped on and used and wrung out time and again until all
the threads had started to come undone. Maybe, it was just the contrast
with the warmth and simple comfort of the room we were standing in, but I
didn't think he'd had much of the like lately. If ever. Possibly, it was
something going around—FBI had looked tired, too. Tired and sad and down
on his luck and I guess I was always a sucker for shit like that. For the
needy. The charity case.
Not that either of them would likely appreciate that particular sentiment.
Still, the warmth inside me abruptly changed and I let out a soft breath.
One that immediately caught his attention, though he hid it well.
Carefully, he looked back at the painting and studied it as if he had all
the time in the world, not a care to his name.
"Go sit down," I said, gesturing with hand holding the gun at one of the
antique footstools.
He shot me another dark and subtle look, then did as I asked, settling down
stiffly on the indicated seat. His back straight and his head raised. I
came up behind him and watched him tense up and then, quite deliberately,
release that same tension. Like I said, an admirable talent.
Still, I felt him trembling a little as I pressed the barrel of the gun into
his back and then trailed it slowly down the length of his spine. Sliding
the metal over slick leather. Leaning in even closer as I reached the
bottom and it dropped into the small of his back. Up this close, I could
see just all too clearly how that black jacket that suited him so well was
as worn and thin around the edges as his t-shirt and jeans. I could smell
him, too—day's old sweat and the even muskier scent of desperation, the
faint tang of something I easily identified as gun oil. Dank scents all,
like something left for too long in the dark.
"Hold still," I whispered.
I felt more than heard him swallow. "Whatever."
His shoulders slumped a little when I pulled the gun away. I stuffed it
back into my own jeans, then grabbed his hands and began working on the
tape, unwinding what I had wound up before. He didn't fight me, but he
didn't help me either and I could only imagine what might be going through
his head right now. Probably right at the top of the list was how he could
turn this to his advantage. How he could take me down.
I could have told him precisely how I'd like it.
When his hands were finally clear, though, I just dropped the tangle of
silver tape on the floor and stepped back, pulled the gun out again. He got
up slowly and turned to face me, then made an abortive move towards raising
his hands. One that died as I shook my head at him. His eyes flashed as I
slipped the safety back on the gun. Flashed even brighter as I abruptly
tossed the .38 directly at him.
"Here," I said.
He snatched it out of mid-air cleanly and neatly. Brought it up directly,
aimed and ready again, a half second later. Smooth and quick. Nice and
deadly reflexes, almost as good as some Immortals I've met. Present company
not excluded.
"Go on then, if your heart's really set on it, I said quietly. "Gwen'll
freak, but I'll explain the blood away somehow." I stared directly into
those eyes and gave them a little smile, sad but sweet. One of my best
martyr looks if I have to say so myself and I usually have to. "Oh yeah,
just to let you know—there's a keyring with a little silver heart on it by
the back door and a matching BMW in the garage. Feel free. Just don't take
the Charger, okay? And leave the lights on when you go. I hate like hell to
wake up in the dark."
The gun didn't waver, but I could see a hint of confusion in his eyes now.
Poor boy—obviously he wasn't used to trusting anyone, let alone strangers.
Even ones who wore his own face. Maybe, especially ones who wore his own
face and had already shown him they knew some of his secrets. Had a rather
intimate and salacious knowledge of one of his secrets.
I let my smile fade; it seemed to be one of the things disturbing him.
"Or," I said slowly. "There is a spare bedroom upstairs. You can stay if
you want, and either take the car or have me drop you off somewhere
tomorrow. Your choice. But it is awful fucking late..."
I shrugged, but he just stood there, the gun still held on me and his face
so utterly expressionless it was almost eerie. Like part of him had been
stolen away while I wasn't looking. Only his eyes gave away the game. And
they weren't much better. I could see how they were hurting, how very tired
they were and how sad and I wished...
Well, I fucking wish for a lot of things and some of them I actually have
the audacity to get, but I wasn't sure about this one. Despite the promise
of the night and the madness that a full moon usually engendered. Maybe, I
would be lucky just to emerge unscathed once the dawn came. Unscathed and
with a cup of freshly-brewed coffee to look forward to.
He was still standing there—uncertain as all hell and twice as
dangerous—when I took my chance and turned away, turned my back on him and
his gun and headed towards the stairs. "Well... whatever," I said,
mimicking his tone almost exactly. "I'm going up to bed. Do whatever you
like, Alex Krycek. Just keep it down to a dull roar if you please."
I was tensed to feel the familiar and fatal impact of a bullet almost the
whole way up the stairs and only felt myself relax inside as I turned on the
upper landing to go down the darkened hall beyond. I was tired, too—though
not as tired as my guest, if appearances weren't deceiving—and, right now,
the thought of pouring myself down between a clean set of sheets, with or
without company, was a siren's call of comfort.
I turned on the light in the hall, just in case he actually took me up on my
offer, and opened the door to the guest bedroom and invitingly left the
light on there as well. Then I took a short pitstop in the bathroom to
piss and brush my teeth and went on down to the master bedroom at the far
end of the hall. Shucking my clothes off with only the sparse light from
the hall to guide me. Grimacing as I saw the dirt on them, the blood, the
scattering of holes and rips. They stank, too, of my own sweat and of other
less savory things and I pitched both jeans and shirt in the far corner.
The jeans could likely be washed and reclaimed, but the silk shirt was a
total ruin.
Almost as bad as my pair of leopard-print briefs. They were soggy in the
front and looked rather lonesome and forlorn as I stripped them off and
tossed them after the rest of my clothes. My friend had gone about half-way
back down by now, making him look rather lonesome as well, but I shook my
head at both him and myself and just closed the door to the bedroom and
finally turned down the bed and slipped inside. And, shit, it felt good,
but I knew what would have felt better.
Not that I would be getting it tonight unless I gave it to myself and, after
all my long hopes and dreams to the opposite, I just wasn't in the mood for
making do.
So I turned to my side and tried to relax, to let myself—and it—go.
Thinking of nothing, but soon realizing that part of me was, in fact,
listening. Straining to hear the sound of footsteps in the hall or the
muffled roar of a car starting out back, but there was nothing and nothing.
Just the usual quiet that surrounded and filled this house. That and the
silver moonlight coming in softly through the wide bank of windows along the
left side of the bed. It made me feel adrift in it, in a sea of white
sheets and silence. So far from home...
So far...
I must have slept a little, because I suddenly found myself wide-awake,
starting up in the bed, staring out into darkness. Or at a figure standing
in the darkness. Standing silent as sin at the foot of Gwen's king size
bed.
The moon must have finally succumbed to the clouds, because I couldn't see
anything about him, not even a flash of that pale skin. Just an outline and
a presence, breathing so softly I might have thought I was imagining it.
Imagining him.
But I couldn't have imagined that voice, not even in my dearest fantasies.
"Cory," it said, a broken husk of a voice. "Tell me... Mulder... he..."
"Yes," I breathed as it wound down to an even greater nothingness. To a
pain so sharp it could have eviscerated you before you had even chance to
notice. Not until it was too late, when your guts were already hanging out
for everyone to see.
"Yes," I repeated again as the shadow moved even closer, sliding around the
corner of the bed, heading towards me with a glide that soon turned to a
stutter, to a stumble, to a fall. I caught him as he fell onto the bed,
onto me, and held him and he was naked and cold to the touch and trembling.
Trembling so hard I wondered if he was crying, except that his face was dry
when I touched it. When I lifted his face to mine.
I was going to kiss him, but he beat me to the punch. And that was
definitely the word for it.
He kissed me hard, with all the subtlety of a machine gun, quick staccato
kisses that bruised my lips and jaw and cheekbones. As if he'd made a
weapon of seduction, or had it made for him. His hands came up and pressed
me down into the sheets, holding me for his mouth, for the teeth that skated
down the arch of my neck and across the bone and muscle of my shoulders. He
wasn't drawing blood, but it was close.
Close enough as nearly made no difference.
And maybe I should have slowed it down, asked questions, pondered this
sudden change of heart, but fuck since when has that been my style. Time
enough for recriminations in the morning, at the very least you should have
something worthwhile to recriminate about. Gotta have sins for the Almighty
to forgive in the first damn place or what kind of redemption is it anyway?
A fucking piss poor one, that's all I gotta say.
So I gave myself over to it—to him—as if I hadn't been scheming and
moaning for it all night. Since even before I'd first seen him in that bar,
all hard-eyed and hard-assed and in sad need of some new friends. If not a
whole new life.
I let him restrain me, hold me beneath strong arms and strong fingers as he
moved down to lick at the planes of my chest, circling first one nipple and
then the other. Alternating a rough tongue with sharp teeth, all lick and
bite and little flicks up and down and around and back over each sensitive
nub. Sending burning bits of pain and pleasure both all through me, like hot
ash swirling on the wind. Spiraling up and then dropping down, betraying
the still-smoking embers of the banked fire below.
I could feel his own cock against my thigh and it was hard as mine had been
half the night. Hot as he was cold. And though he wasn't sweating right
now, I could still smell it on him and it sent an even deeper jangle of need
and want through me, one that had me pushing my own cock up into his flesh.
His fingers tightened and then his breath was brushing across my face. I
opened my mouth and he went down on it, his tongue sliding in like a blade
to the sheath, all edge and slick metal. It was a possessive little
bastard, touching and stroking and claiming every last bit of me, all but
choking off my air. Making my head spin with both lack and excess.
A little whimper escaped me, stealing the last of my breath away and he
pulled back a touch. Regarding me with eyes I could feel even if I couldn't
see them. His grip loosened and I reached up, reached out to him, and
brought him back down. And I kissed him this time, making it just as
possessive, but far more gentle. A long slow tasting of every available
surface. A drinking of the dark cup being offered me, broken edges and all.
I let one hand creep out and across his back, stroking over smooth skin and
the occasional faint ridge of a scar. My fingers found and followed the
line of his spine and he shivered against me and I drank down the sound he
made as well. The half-mumbled curse as my hand sank into the small of his
back and began a slow circling motion there, just there.
He pulled his mouth away from mine and buried his face into my neck and,
after a moment or two—as if resisting the motion or maybe just his need for
it—he began thrusting down against my leg, slowly, but all the more
desperately because of it. I moved my other hand up and threaded fingers
through his hair, short as it was, feeling the fragile strength of the skull
beneath. Holding his head to me as he pushed against me, as I began pushing
my fingers into his back on each downstroke, urging him on. Urging him to
completion, if that's what he wanted. What he had to have.
It need go no more than this, if that's all he could take. If that was all
he dared give me, to trust me with—a stranger, an enigma. If I was simply
to be a warm and welcoming body in the night. Someone he wouldn't have to
look at, wouldn't have to see, yet who would know the face and form of the
man he was really fucking. In his mind. In his heart. As if by fucking
the man who'd fucked him once, it might be just enough to afford him some
relief. Especially since it might be the closest he might ever get to the
real thing, considering what a cold and impartial universe he lived in.
That they both lived in, the beautiful fools...
But he was already winding down, gasping against my throat, losing the
rhythm he had managed to build to something that sounded suspiciously like
sobs. Dry racking sounds that brought tears to my own eyes, if not to his.
"Shhhh..." I whispered. Not daring any other sound, but wanting to give him
something. Wanting to let him know it was okay. Not all right, but okay.
He was limp to the touch, unresisting, as I closed my arms around him and
slowly rolled us up in the sheets. I covered that cold body with my own
warmth and smiled a little as I felt his cock tuck up against mine, my own
hardening even further in an instant, as if a spark had jumped between the
two, a contagion.
I lowered my head and licked at that jawline, tasting unshaven flesh and
unwashed skin. Tasting the darkness he was hidden in. The darkness he kept
so closely inside him. I followed it down to his throat—feeling the pulse
of his life, sure and heavy with blood, beneath my lips—and then moved on
again as he shifted slightly against me, obviously uncomfortable. Uneasy.
I used those tiny abortive movements as a guide as I proceeded down and
down, never pausing too long, but pausing all the same. Mouthing each
nipple in turn, pressing the tip of my tongue into the clever little whirl
of his navel. Sweat had gathered there as well and I licked it all up,
licked it clean.
His movements became choppier, more uncertain, as I moved on, running my
face through crisp dark hair, licking at the tender skin of his inner
thighs. As if he couldn't make up his mind whether to pull away or push
back, whether he could or couldn't stand it—my touch, my gentleness, my
demand. But part of him knew better, knew what it wanted, and it bobbed
towards me as I rose up to my elbows over it. As I breathed on it, a long
slow exhalation. Even in this dim light I could see a glistening drop of
moisture on the very tip.
He was cut as FBI had been cut—as most men were these days—and it proved
my suspicions that the two of them had never been familiar in any fashion,
no matter their desires to the contrary. Otherwise, our mutual
hazel-eyed-boy would have known right from the start that I wasn't his man.
Even blindsided by lust, you couldn't miss something like that. As possibly
the only real and incriminating way to differentiate us, though, it had its
advantages; you already might be in rather... ahem, intimate circumstances
before you discovered your faux pas and, by then, it might prove to be
beyond rectification.
The sound he made when I went down on him was one of both relief and
negation and his hands came down and tried to push me away at almost the
same time that he thrust up into my mouth. But, whereas one was a weak
effort, easily shrugged off, the other was not. It was uncontrollable.
Steel and fire all at once, the blood swelling into thick veins as sure and
heavy as the pulse I'd felt at his throat. Heavier, maybe.
He tasted of the bitter dark and of salt. Like slow-moving river water
meeting and mingling with the quick wash of the ocean, all browns and deep
blue and gritty with little bits of life and decay. I took it all in,
feeling the head butt against the back of my throat, then slipped slowly
back upwards and brought my tongue into play down one of those straining
veins. Up under that bare ridge of flesh. So exposed, so vulnerable, and
so very responsive.
His hips rose and fell. Not a rhythm—it was too erratic for that—but,
this time, when his hands settled on me, they pushed me to take him in
again. To suck him all the way back down.
I did as he asked. Just my easy-going nature, I guess. I spread my hand
down around the root of his cock and pressed down, holding him in place, as
I lowered my head until I could feel the blunt head hit the back of my
throat again, until my face was all but buried in that thick patch of hair.
As I started a rhythm this time, slow and sure and steady. Moving up and
down on his length, letting the tip of his cock rub over and over the ridges
on the top of my mouth as I took it from lips to throat and back again,
using the edges of my teeth and tongue to keep things interesting at odd
intervals.
He had gone silent now, but if anything that was even more revealing. One
of his hands had fallen to my shoulder and was digging in, as if he was
forcing himself not to try and grasp my head, to take back control of the
situation. To make me do what I was already doing to him.
His cock was growing even hotter and harder under my attentions and I could
taste him again, flecks of darkness on my tongue that created a matching
spots of blindness in my head. That made my own cock twitch and dance.
And I would have let him go all the way right then and there. Would have
let him come and been... well, if not content with that, at least satisfied.
But he obviously wasn't content with it, because that hand abruptly left my
shoulder and brushed through my hair. And he pulled back from my mouth as
far as he could. Enough to give me the hint.
I gave that silky-hard cock one last lick and then released him. Raised my
head to look at him. And I could swear I saw him looking down at me, that I
could see the hard glitter of his eyes. Could even see their color, green
as moss. Almost the exact shade that FBI's had gone when he'd slammed me
down and stuck my cock in-between those sweet killer-vicious lips of his
like some kinda all-night sucker and stuck a couple of those long fingers up
my...
Oh, sorry. Got a little carried away again there.
Hey, you can always leave if you wanta, or tell me to stop. But... if you
wanta stay, why don't you pop the top on that second bottle over there and
refresh this baby and I'll just ignore anything that might present itself in
the meantime that you don't exactly wanta admit to. I'm good at that. You
don't tell me. I won't tell you. Besides, we're all just friends here.
Well, sorta. All right, so we're not exactly friends, but what the hey?
Don't have to be best buds to share some bubbly and a whirl in the pool.
Doesn't hurt, though.
Thanks, and where was I? Oh, yeah.
He still wasn't talking, but I knew what he was saying, anyway. What he
wanted.
The same thing I did.
I rolled up and off the bed and opened the drawer of the night stand,
rummaging around inside mostly by feel until I chanced across the right
slender tube among all the other toys—one or two of my own and the rest my
girldoll's—and turned back.
He had pushed himself to a sitting position and was leaning back against the
headboard, one knee slightly raised and his hands spread loosely out to
either side of him. He was mostly line and shadow, but I could see the
faint glimmer of his eyes and knew he was watching me. Could hear the
slight rasp of his breath, quickened but still under control. More under
control than when he'd first appeared in my bedroom. Maybe, under enough
control to be reconsidering. To change his mind.
Still, he didn't move, didn't react at all, as I climbed back up onto the bed. Not
approaching him, not touching him. Just in case.
"Alex...?" I asked, my voice hardly more than a whisper.
For a long moment or two, there was nothing. More of that absence of self
he was so damn good at. Then, finally, his head lifted a little and the
fingers on his right hand moved, shifted. Opened.
"It was my job," he said, a hollow sound. Hollow words. "I didn't
want... I..."
"Yeah," I said and now it was a whisper. A comfort that I knew he wouldn't
take even as I offered it. "I know."
"But he..." That rigid control cracked once more, shattering up and down a
certain fault line. "Mulder, he... I didn't do it. I couldn't... but he... oh
God, he fucking hates me."
"Maybe," I breathed. "Maybe not. Alex..."
I moved towards him, slowly and gently, and he didn't pull away, but he
didn't respond either as I pulled him up and into my arms and held him.
Just held him. His head tucked into the side of my neck and my cheek to his
hair, silky smooth no matter how it had been butchered so obscenely short.
Despite the evidence of his hard-on, his skin was chilled, almost icy to the
touch. As if the cold had somehow gotten into his bones and was freezing
him up from the inside out.
"C'mon," I said. "Let's get under the covers."
I imagine you've heard the phrase about all cats being grey in the dark.
Well, darkness is also the time and place for confessions, both to self and
to others. Sometimes of things you'd never in a million years admit to in
the light. Even to those who most need to hear it.
I shifted him and, once more, he didn't resist. And I wrapped him up again,
tightly as I could, this time in sheets and blankets and my own warm flesh,
pulling him half on top of me and twisting my legs around his. The result
was pretty much the same as when I'd restrained him with the duct tape,
though—he was silent and unresponsive, tense as a wire pulled nearly to the
breaking point.
When I just ran a hand experimentally down his arm—deliberately staying
away from other more potentially volatile areas—he flinched away from even
that slight attempt to soothe him, and I was almost sure I could feel
goosebumps rising in the wake of my fingers. So I let my hand go still and
just laid there with him. His head had come to rest on my chest and I could
feel the occasional flutter of his eyelashes against my own skin as he
blinked, the soft brush of his breath over the hollow where neck met
shoulder. A vulnerable spot on mortal and Immortal alike and it gave me my
own goosebumps. My own internal shivers.
I don't know how long we just laid there, before I felt him shift a little.
Before I felt his hand slide in under a fold of blanket and between us and
come to rest on my upper leg. Felt it pause there and then, slowly and
carefully as the tread of a thief, creep inwards and upwards until a couple
of fingers brushed across the length of my cock in passing.
I held perfectly still, even as those same fingers came back a few seconds
later, as if only then realizing what they'd found, and closed on it. Not a
bruising grip, but nothing like a gentle one either. As if they weren't
about to let it get away. They squeezed down and then relaxed and then
squeezed again, harder this time.
At least one layer of sheets had ended up between his own cock and me, but I
could still feel the solid weight of it beginning to stir against my thigh
even as I was stirring. Rising up beneath his fingers, filling them.
"Cory...?" I heard him whisper. Felt the words and the need against the
line of my neck. "Would you... can I...?"
"Sure, babydoll," I whispered back. "Whatever you want. Whatever you
need."
I thought about telling him about the cats and about how I understood.
Really understood. But I guess it wasn't my night to confess. Besides,
once I opened that door there might be a few other things jumping to line up
for their fifteen minutes of fame—like the fact that I kinda liked the
bastard and more than kinda felt sorry for him. And, worst of all, that I
even felt there could be, maybe and maybe and if given its own slender
chance at stardom, more than that between us. Certainly more than the fact
that we happened to share the same face. That, due to that same face, I had
already fallen into his life and been doomed to his death once upon a time
like Alice gone full-tilt down the rabbit hole.
Though, luckily, Mr. Smokes hadn't thought to try the Red Queen's remedy on
me at the time or it would have been a truly fatal case of mistaken
identity.
Narcissistic, yeah. But familiar and appealing outer package not
withstanding, I had admit to a certain intrigue of the inner, a desire to
see more of just what made my lookalike tick. Call it a quirk of the full
moon tonight or just the fact that I can't seem to live too long in some
place without eventually getting bored enough to bring trouble down around
my ears. Or maybe—to be altruistic—you could even say it has something to
do with the fact that I never could stand to see someone in pain without
trying to do something about it, no matter how much it might end up costing
me in the long run.
Not that I thought a guy like this would ever stand for, let alone
appreciate, a pity fuck.
And not that that's what I wanted to give him. Oh sure, I pitied him a
little. Even if he had dug himself into the hole he was currently in mostly
on his own initiative. But that's not why I wanted to fuck him. Or,
rather, have him fuck me, all things considered.
Because the simple, obvious, easy on the eye truth—if that's what you wanta
hear—is that I guess I've just always been attracted to the bad boys. Even
more so than those damn upstanding self-righteous types who need taking down
a peg or two. Who pretend towards that white-hat when they're really as
grey as the rest of us. And I'm not gonna name any names so get that
expectant look off your face.
But this bad boy had my bad boy well in hand, quite literally. He had
turned his head and was kissing my chest now, as well—half-kisses,
half-licks—and it made me wonder if he could taste my own heart beating.
Was savoring its quickening, the betrayal of my own increasing need. As if
the cock teasing with his fingers wasn't already giving me away. Big time.
This time, he was the one who shifted, who slid further over on top of me.
And that mouth slowly traveled higher, leaving a moist and tingling trail up
my neck and along the line of my jaw. Kissing cheekbone and the ridge of
first one eye and then the other. Even the tip of my nose, the one that
Amanda had always called "cute." Well, since the word was first invented,
anyway.
They were thorough kisses, almost as much tongue as lips, but they seemed to
be deliberately avoiding the one place that had already parted for them.
The blatant invitation of my own mouth.
Yeah, quite the bastard, but I'd forgive him the one slight if he never
stopped with those clever-cruel fingers of his. At least, not for a century
or two. Hard and relentless, they worked unceasingly at me, long slow
strokes that rubbed from tip to root, not missing an inch of skin. Taking
advantage of the juices that he had already milked clean out of me.
A couple of small moans seemed to catch his attention and he raised his head
and looked down at me. Not that I was the culprit. Oh no, I didn't know
who the hell was making those noises, but whoever it was they sure sounded
tormented.
Even in the dark, his eyes seemed to glitter as he abruptly lowered his head
again and sealed my mouth shut with his own in one quick, almost feral
gesture. Plunging his tongue in completely at the same time, sliding it down
over my own and deep as it could go. And pure sugar had never been half as
sweet, or given me such a rush. His mouth was soft and hard at the same
time and it made my head spin like a drum majorette. Or was that, in fact,
my cock spinning? Being twirled around demanding, yet forgiving, nimble and
practiced fingers?
I couldn't resist it; I let my own tongue slink up and into his mouth, sly
thing that it was, and steal some of that sugar directly. The taste and
texture racing through my blood, starting to boil in my veins. And it was
fire, he was fire, but a fire that masqueraded itself as much as ice. So
damn fucking cold it seared and smoked as much as burnt and... shit, but I
had to get away from those fingers or it was going to be over before it'd
even begun.
I pushed him away slightly, unlocking our mouths from each other, and just
settled back beneath his weight, gasping for air. He raised his head again
and I could feel his own rapid breathing giving him away. That and the
insistent pressure of his cock against my leg.
Abruptly, he gave up that tight grip on my own cock and struggled to sit up,
pulling himself free of both me and the bedclothes. He climbed to his knees
near the end of the bed and roughly yanked on the sheets and blankets,
tipping me out of them almost nonchalantly in the process, before turning to
one side and throwing it all off the bed with a somewhat impatient gesture.
Leaving me naked and alone in the sudden expanse of an empty bed. Alone,
except for him.
The moon took that moment to lift her veil of clouds and it made the single
remaining white sheet beneath us almost glow. It gave his skin a soft and
silver nimbus as well, a false patina that highlighted the shadows cast by
the tilt of his head, the angle of his knees. The arch of his back and
throat.
The one hand that had come to rest on his upper leg, tight-fisted, the
knuckles pressed inward in a hard line to the skin.
And, despite the moon, I could still only see part of him. As if he
couldn't quite help himself. Couldn't help but keep back pieces of himself.
To stay in the shadows. As if it had long become a habit. Perhaps, even
an addiction. Not that he didn't belong to it, that it didn't suit him—the
darkness, that certain watchful stillness he seemed so capable of wrapping
himself up inside, the walls that masked him, devouring anything that
remotely might be considered vulnerable. All that which might make him seem
human.
Strange isn't it? How some mortals can seem more alien to their own kind
than those of us who share this world with them. Who aren't even sure just
how human we ourselves are, despite having been born of mortal parents.
Strange and almost sad.
Not that I hadn't seen even this unnatural control crack once or twice
already tonight, hadn't seen a hint of what it hid, of the anguish and the
longing that it covered, but now he seemed to have himself well in hand once
more. As if he were to some extent aware of his earlier lapses, he had
turned away slightly from the windows and the moonlight, masking both
expression and intent. Oddly, the angle at which he was kneeling even
managed to disguise the space between his spread thighs, where it hid
everything except for the precise tip of his arched and stiffened cock.
And it was as beautiful seeming a pose as it was deadly; he looked like a
statue, all white stone and carved calculation, cool and eminently
unapproachable. An illusion that was only marred slightly as he glanced
down, as his shoulders slumped a little, just a shade. Then he bent down
even further a half second later and picked up that tiny tube I'd scrounged
out of the nightstand, palming it with a quick gesture that made me wonder
if he didn't have some experience as a thief himself. Or, at least, the
natural talent for it.
The tube must have fallen out of the tumble of sheets and blankets, but I
suppose you could forgive me for not noticing it until after he did. For
not being able to see much of anything else right now. No matter how
important it might prove to be. And, maybe, I was more than a bit blinded,
especially when he looked up again and his eyes caught at me. Held me.
Luminous with the moon and with something else I couldn't quite define.
And I found myself holding my breath as he put his hands down to the bed and
crawled back up to me, smooth and sinuous movements that made my heart jump
and skitter inside my chest like some small and terrified creature.
He didn't touch me, though. Only turned and stretched himself out just a
few inches away from me, his head pillowed on the curve of arm. And he was
all white limbs against white sheets. All sleek hair and unshaven skin.
Hollow-eyed and unsmiling and a bit damp about the edges. Musky-dark. Like
black ice and gnawed bones and things better left alone.
Better left untouched.
"Cory..." he said, not a question, but not exactly a demand either.
I turned to my own side and faced him. Then found myself smiling just a
little, despite or maybe because of my own sense of his danger, of what I
was about to let him do to me; it was absurd, but laid out like this we must
have looked like a pair of almost perfectly matched bookends. A set of art
deco or art nouveau nudes, perfect for propping up that rather large,
dog-eared and entirely too risque collection of erotic paperbacks that you'd
otherwise never admit to owning.
Not that we were perfectly alike. Oh, no. But the differences were so
minor that they were almost indistinguishable, at least by this light. And
I found myself suddenly amazed, almost dazzled by it, even after having a
few hours to adjust, a few months to consider. What I didn't want to admit
to was that I also was finding it to be a trifle unnerving as well. At how
we could be so very similar on the outside, yet so dissimilar within.
They say that God is in the details. But that holds true for classic cars,
as well, so what does that say?
I wasn't going to ask and he wasn't likely to tell.
So instead, I just looked deeply into a pair of eyes so like my own, and so
unlike at the same time, and then slowly and quite deliberately turned over.
Lowered myself down on my stomach on that vast and empty bed and laid my
hands up by my face, palms downwards. I spread my legs slightly, cool air
sliding between them, and waited, listening to nothing more than the sound
of my own heart beating. Listening to the silence.
The bed didn't hardly shift at all as the man next to me finally came
towards me. As he moved to straddle me, hard thighs coming down and
surrounding my own. His weight settling on top of me. There was even less
warning as one hand drifted down to touch first my neck and then my shoulder
blade, to trail the tips of just two fingers lightly as a falling leaf over
my spine. Less than a caress, but more than simple curiosity, it left me
shivering.
I closed my eyes and drifted with the sensation. As they moved lower and
lower, never slowing, never stopping, until they reached the small of my
back. I didn't even move as they left and then returned a few moments later,
this time even cooler, slicked with gel and intent. Sliding between easily
parted flesh towards the greater shadows. Gliding down into the depths of
my heat, over even more sensitive and shivering skin, until they'd found
what they'd known was there. What was waiting for them.
One finger entered me easily, going in almost all the way to the knuckle on
one sure stroke. My heart skipped a beat in response and I bit back a gasp.
He immediately withdrew it a little and then pressed in again, slowly
turning it inside me. Reaching for something he knew was there. That I
knew was there. And, despite that, despite myself, I still jumped and choked
as he caught it. As the tip of that finger circled and stroked and then
abruptly pressed full down on it, driving a bright line of heat up along the
ridge of my spine. It impacted a second later at the back of my head,
sending showers of sparks off in all directions behind my eyelids, and
distantly I heard myself moan.
I wasn't sure if it was a name or a request. Maybe, a bit of both.
Either way, he pressed again, harder this time, and the sparks turned to a
full-fledged explosion, to a shower of stars. One that cascaded through my
nerves, making me thrust my cock involuntarily down into the embrace of the
bed, that turned that moan into an actual cry this time. Though whether it
was more pain or pleasure, who can tell? That's also as may be in the
details.
When I settled back at last, panting a little, I realized that he'd slid a
second finger into me. That I hadn't even hardly noticed. They weren't
going as deep, this time, but they were steadily and surely opening me up.
Spreading heated slickness all through me.
Making me want even more. All of it. As much as I could get.
I pushed back onto them as hard as I could, only to have them snatched away
from me. To have his weight shift and come down on me fully, pressing my
cock almost painfully tight against my stomach. One hand moved up and slid
along the line of my arm, until it reached my wrist. His fingers circling
it, digging in, imprisoning me.
Then I felt him lift up a little and knew he had grasped his cock, was
guiding it towards me. Instead of just shoving it right in, though, he
began rubbing the head up and down over that tender skin as if intent on
simply letting me feel just how hard he was, how very hot. The head,
especially—a liquid heat, marking me with his own slick juices. As he
would soon fill me with the rest of it, with an even greater warmth.
Just when I didn't think I could take anymore, he suddenly stopped and held
it, held himself there, poised and ready. And I could hear his own harsh
breathing, could feel the strain in all his limbs, as he fought with his
control. With himself. And I could only imagine the battle raging inside
him, inside that desperate control—between anger and self-pity, disgust and
hurt and hopeless desire. He didn't really want me, but he couldn't have
what he wanted, and that made him angry. And the fact that it made him
angry, that it could get to him like that, made him disgusted and sorry for
himself at the same time. Made him want to break down and cry. To scream.
To hurt someone or something. Anything. Even himself.
And you may ask how I knew this, but in that bright and sparkling moment I
knew everything. Even as his fingers dug into the bones of my wrist, as he
lowered his head that last little distance between us to let it rest on my
back. As I heard his own gasps and felt his trembling all through me. His
uncertainty and his need. His hatred of giving in to it.
So, maybe, my silk shirt hadn't been enough of a sacrifice.
"What's the matter?" I whispered. "You think he's gonna care if you save
yourself for him? Let me tell you... undying devotion's not all it's cracked
up to be."
His next breath came out a little ragged, as if it'd gotten caught on his
teeth. "You shit," I heard him say and that too was ragged, half angry and
half rueful.
I turned my head a little, but couldn't see him. "Takes one to know one."
So it was a juvenile response, yeah, but sometimes that's for the best.
Cuts right to that snot-nosed and hopelessly insecure inner child they're
always talking about these days.
The next breath was even more ragged, but in a whole new way. Abruptly, his
head turned and I felt first his lips and then his teeth. And, this time, I
think he did draw blood with those suckers. They scored across my back,
then tried for my exposed ear. I turned my head away before they could sink
home and he let out a long hiss of air.
"Shit," he said again and then his hand tightened down on my wrist and he
pushed himself against me, not roughly, but certainly hard. Forcefully.
And, despite the lube, it burned a little as he sank in several inches. As
he pulled back just a hair and shoved in again, not giving me time to
adjust. Going in more than just a few inches, this time. Going in far
enough that I felt a brief brush of the prickly hair at the base of his
cock, before he pulled back out again and shoved home once more.
Holding himself there as he bent his head again and bit at me, as his other
hand came up and slid beneath me, slid around my waist. "Up," he snarled.
"Get up."
Before I could begin to do as he asked, though, he was already pulling at
me, lifting me to a semi-crouched position. Knocking my legs wider apart
beneath him and letting more of his weight land on me. I turned my head
again, knowing what it would do to my neck but not caring, having to see
him. To watch him.
And I wasn't disappointed—his face was almost savage in that light, his
lips drawn back and his eyes narrowed slightly, more dark now than luminous.
As if to put the moon out. They caught me looking at him and turned even
more fierce in that moment, fierce as the thrust he made inside me without
warning. One that wrung a gasp out of me, that made my own eyes go
half-closed.
I don't know if it was the new angle, but I could feel him even deeper
inside me at that point and I felt completely helpless beneath the sheer
size and depth of the sensation, helpless to do anything but squirm beneath
my impalement. To dig my own hands down into the bedsheet, twisting it up
and away from the mattress. His was a bleak and profound need and I could
feel every inch of it, every contradiction—his cock still and hot and pure
even as the man himself was cool, distant and trembling and ghostlike. As
if there was only one real thing about him right now and he had chosen to
give it to me. To use it against me. Against himself.
I felt tears gathering at the back of my own eyes, closing up my throat, and
I hurriedly swallowed them down even as he pulled back and pushed in again.
Not as deeply, this time, but harder. And then, as if he couldn't hold
himself back any more, couldn't make himself wait, he tightened his arm
around my waist, lifted me up a little higher, and began thrusting in
earnest.
And each shove inward was a blow, a hurt in the making, quick and rough and
desperate, but one that drove a spike of pleasure through me as much as
pain. That seemed to be pounding right down into the root of my own
erection, making each subsequent impact of the tender and naked head of my
cock across the bedsheet a razor-sweet and deadly pink candy explosion in
the making.
He quickened and slowed and then quickened again and I could feel sweat
dripping down on me now, dark sweat, and the trembling in his body
increasing even as his cock seemed to grow hotter inside me. More rigid.
Impossibly hard. Pounding down into me with such force I could only imagine
that he was pouring more into it than simple desire. Sharing with me,
instead, all the twisted pressure of his internal conflicts, of a want too
long unanswered. Unacknowledged.
As if it truly was a civil war he was fighting these days, need against
need, brother to brother. A war that left him all black and blue and grey,
bruised and drained and dreaming of death. Denied by God and country, and
even more so denying of his own heart and desire. A war he must know he
could never survive, win or lose. That, maybe, just maybe, he didn't want
to survive.
I pushed back against him and let him pull me into the battle with him, let
him tear me as he was torn. My whole groin hot with blood, my skin
stretched near to the breaking point. My legs trembling against his and a
deep hollowness and shaking inside me growing stronger with each stroke.
And I could see, could almost taste the place he seemed to be trying to
reach and it was full of a darkness that was perhaps mute cousin to my own
emptiness. One that longed to be touched, to be filled as much as it feared
it as well. And I couldn't stop the gasps anymore, couldn't stop one or two
tears escaping as he slammed into me over and over again, sliding in
transparent slickness and wet salt and white pearling hunger.
Pushing me close and closer to my own fears and need.
My own cock was fire now too and when his hand moved down to grasp it, to
cage it, I almost lost it right then and there. Only his cool fingers held
me back, knotting themselves ruthlessly around the base of my cock and
denying me my release, trading the sudden surge of pleasure for one of an
agony almost as intense.
And as if he hadn't proved himself enough of a bastard already, he shifted
himself on top of me and the next thrust slid right across that magic button
inside me. His fingers tightening at almost the same damn time, as if to
contain the impact where it would do the most good. Or the most damage,
considering. And it wasn't fireworks, this time, or a scattering of stars,
but a full-fledged artillery shell. A canon ball slamming into me and
knocking me clean off my feet. Clean out of my mind.
"Fuck! Shit!" I heard someone swear on some distant other battlefield.
Then knew it was me when he did it again and again. Hitting me smack-dab
and pop-goes-the-weasel every last time. And if he hadn't gotten me pinned
down so damn effectively, I would have turned around and popped him a good
one just to make him stop. Or to make him finish it forthwith, to finish me
before the top of my head blew clean off and that was that, Immortal or not.
I was on the verge of pleading with him—if only I could find my voice, let
alone figure out how the hell to use it—when he seemed to get caught up in
it himself. He arched his entire body up over the top of me and lost both
rhythm and precision at the same time. The next few strokes going deep,
going hard, going fast, his hips slam-jamming into me, all bone and sweat
and straining tendon. His breathing turning just as chaotic, the fingers
clenched around my wrist digging in to the point of cutting off every last
bit of circulation.
But he must have been aware enough to realize that his time was near,
because he abruptly let go of the base of my cock and pumped me instead,
just a few strokes but merciless in their exactness. A knowing touch, one
that send me right up to the edge almost instantly, frighteningly quickly...
And then, hardly before I could draw another breath, I was beyond it and
that same lightning, that same choking-black powder and explosive
compression was flooding me and my face was wet and I couldn't breathe,
couldn't see, couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but push downwards into
that rough grip and feel him slam himself full down into the depths of me
one last time, doing the same.
Filling me with another explosion, one that smoothed out the edges of my
own. That sent bright little tingles of light and heat all through me and
made my cock twitch one last time. Then I collapsed down into the mattress
and he collapsed on top of me, damp and heavy and struggling for air of his
own. No longer cold, but nearly as heated as the cock still buried inside
me.
I pulled on my bound wrist and, almost reluctantly, or as if only now
realizing he was still holding it, he let go of it. Started to withdraw his
hand. But I turned my own hand and grasped it, clasped those fingers and
intertwined them with my own. And was rewarded by a kiss dropped down onto
my shoulder, butterfly-soft and just as tentative, before he laid his head
down once more. Before he gave my cock another couple of strokes with his
other hand, gentler now, but still wringing a couple of more surges of
spastic pleasure out of me. A tiny buck of my hips that he answered with one
of his own.
We laid like that for a long time, or at least long enough for the moon to
pass behind the clouds once more. It's going seemed to draw the night back
close about us and it was a lonely feeling as much as it was a comforting
one. It was then that I heard his breathing changing, catching and
quickening slightly, and felt his cock hardening again inside me. Not like
it had been before, but hard enough.
"Alex...?" I whispered his name, and he answered with another. Not mine,
but I didn't mind.
And then he started moving again and this piercing was, if anything, sweeter
still. My skin was still so tender, so sensitive to the touch that I felt
as if I could feel every bit of him, every last inch, as he slid in and out
on the strength of his own emissions. It was a warm and almost tender
possession this time, slow and deep and dreamy, and it soon brought an
answering heat rising back up inside me. Made me close my fingers tight
around his and pull myself up to meet those strokes. To meet him.
And more so than before, I knew this wasn't for me. Wasn't about me. But I
didn't care. Couldn't care.
Or, at least, wouldn't allow myself to. I knew the deal before I cut the
cards and I couldn't quit now, no matter that I could see how much it might
hurt in the long run. And when you're an Immortal the long run is a very
long time, indeed.
So I ignored the kisses he set into the back of my neck, the soft and
shuddering gasp of the name that followed, a jewel for those self-same
kisses. Ignored the first faint flush of my own regrets and concentrated,
instead, on my own slowly reviving cock. On the pure and liquid pleasure he
was giving me with the grace of each long thrust into my body. Relaxing
into this one moment locked up tight in the night and into each other and on
my search, once more, for that glorious point of ecstasy.
Golden and sunlit as a pair of hazel eyes. Or green.
Though not as breathtakingly elusive.
It didn't take as long this time, but then I didn't think I could have stood
it anyway. When he clasped me hard to him, I knew it was over and I met the
last few thrusts with a sigh and a submission. A quicksilver heat spreading
all through me as I deliberately tightened my inner muscles around him and
felt him jump and push one more time in response. As I felt a soft surge
deep inside me, rippling out like wind across still water. Filling me once
more. Making my own cock tighten and swell a little more in response.
He held himself there for a long moment afterwards, before finally raising
himself up off the top of me. I had to bite back a sound of protest as he
slid himself free at the last, burying my face deeper into the sheet beneath
me as I felt the emptiness he'd left behind. One that had come to fit him
so perfectly.
Ah, shit... this I hated...
I closed my eyes a second, then opened them and forced myself to let go of
his hand, to start to move away from him, but he caught me and guided me to
turn over instead. To lay back flat on the bed and face him, even though he
was hardly more than a shadow in the dark. I felt his seed trickling down
and out of me even as he bent to kiss me. Once on the space just between my
eyes and once on my mouth, a chaste kiss almost, not hard, but not much more
than that.
He sat back then, leaving one hand curved lightly across my collar bone, and
shook his head slightly.
"You play a dangerous game," he said, his tone flat. Reclaimed. Utterly
expressionless.
I found a shrug somewhere within me. "There's any other kind?"
A long silence followed, during which that hand moved, fingers smoothing
over the bone, an almost forgotten gesture. "You have a point," he replied
at last. "Though, I suppose if you can't die..."
He trailed off. I thought about reminding him that there were other—maybe,
even worse—things to be lost than life. That death, itself, could
sometimes be the easier choice. But I said nothing. This night and this
coupling had been my idea and I had no one to blame but myself if I'd ended
up shooting myself in the foot over it. If I'd added one more sorrow to my
long dreams of grief.
And you thought I had none? That nothing could touch me, let alone come to
haunt my nights? Those I don't manage to fill with enough light or booze or
acclaim to deceive myself. Well, that's as may be... but if you did then
you're just another fool, as much a fool maybe as the two of them. Life
hurts us all. I just party a little harder to try and forget about it. And
who the hell can fault me for that?
Not you, my boy. Not you.
And not him, my darkest twin. Though not by much, if one really wants
honesty. The unflattering little thing that it is.
"No," I said. "I can't die—not by a bullet anyway. By rope or by fire or
water or even a sudden deadly blow to the neck."
Those fingers stilled and I realized they had come to rest on just that
exact spot. "No?" he echoed, his voice turning suddenly soft. Sibilant.
"There's other ways to kill, you know. Or to die..."
My pulse sounded in my ears as he pressed in slightly, then slid his hand
away once more. Skimming down over the length of my body until he found
another pulsepoint. One that had grown back to nearly its full state.
"Did you think I would leave you...?" he asked, and there was an unspoken
"like this" at the end of his sentence.
"I don't expect anything," I said, repeating my earlier words. That ones
that had already gotten me killed once tonight. "I just hope."
"Fucking idiot," he said this time instead of offing me, and then he closed
his hand on my cock and moved down to take it into his mouth. No fooling.
No hesitation. Just one gulp and there it was, down his throat as far as it
could go. As a talent, I much preferred this one to his habit of turning
himself off, but then maybe it was just an extension of not caring, after
all. In this case, about the simple task of breathing.
My cock didn't care about suffocating him, though. And after a few long,
slow and exceedingly hard pulls that felt like he was trying to suck it
clean off, I didn't much care, either. His mouth was so hot, so deep, so
very determined. As if he was applying his greatest concentration to it, to
what he was doing. Sparing only an afterthought for the icing on the cake—a
slip of the other hand down below to cup and fondle my balls with a grip
hardly less gentle and altogether possessive.
Ah, let me tell you, there is a kind of sultry sweetness to a good blowjob,
especially with someone who knows what to do with their tongue. I had to
fight to keep my hips on the mattress as he began to lick me up and down,
pausing a few times to polish the exposed head of my cock. To nibble
lightly at the turtleneck it usually wore. But that was just a brief
interlude of play and, pleasurable as it was, he soon settled back down to
business.
He pushed my legs wider apart and dug his fingers into my thighs, pinning me
to the bed. Holding me immobile. Helpless. Working me with an
increasingly wicked tongue, stealing every single drop of liquid he could
tease out of me. Like he'd been starving for a long time.
And I swear it'd been the same for me. Though, of course, it hadn't. But
as I watched that dark head bobbing on me and couldn't keep myself from
surrendering farther and farther to the wet heat it was generating, it was
as if it had been decades. Ages, even. Forever, or as near to it as I'd
ever come.
I felt like I was being wound up like a spring as well, tighter and tighter,
or like one of those toys with the key in its back and a foolish grin on its
broad painted face. And, this time, I couldn't speak at all, couldn't make
a sound. Even though I could feel it backing up in my chest, at my throat,
all those little sounds of pleasure gathering themselves up into one solid
knot. Making it increasingly hard to breathe.
I let my head fall back and looked up at the ceiling, at the long fingers of
moonlight as they began to creep back into the room. There were patterns
there, interlocking and beautiful, but I couldn't make them make sense.
Though, some part of me felt as if I should. As if I could. But then even
that thought fell to pieces as he rolled the head of my cock between his
lips and stuck an insolent tip of tongue into the slit along the top, as if
what I was already giving him wasn't proving to be enough. As if he wanted
to devour it more directly, to consume me right down to the core.
I tried to rise to the occasion, but he pressed me back down hard into the
bed. Forcing me to take it on his terms. Forcing his control on me. And my
cock was sweltering and swollen in his mouth, the pleasure almost
incandescent now, the flush spreading rapidly up from my groin. Making it
almost impossible to feel anything else, let alone to care.
My hips bucked again before I could remember why I should stop them and,
this time, he almost couldn't keep them down. The head of my cock skidded
loose across the top of his mouth and he caught it at the last second with
the bare edge of his teeth. It hurt and an honest-to-goodness gasp escaped
me before my throat closed up again. As if in apology, he immediately
swallowed the entire length of me back down, then shifted up a bit and began
moving up and down on me—throat to lips and back to throat, quick and hard,
his tongue rubbing up along first one side and then the other. And I could
feel that spring about to go and I didn't want it to go and I couldn't stand
for it not to and I somehow managed to raise my head yet again and wasn't
surprised to see the hard glint in his eyes as he looked back at me in that
same exact instant. Something seemed to pass between us in that moment—I'm
still not sure exactly what—and then those eyes narrowed, turning even
harder, almost metallic they were so flat, and he lowered his head once more
and took me down deep a couple of more times and now it was more than going.
It was gone and I was gone and the moonlight was clawing at my eyes, far
too bright, far too silent, and that great knot had finally come undone and
I was screaming. Screaming as that pent-up heat surged up and began pouring
out of me, pouring into him, and I could dimly feel him drinking it down and
that made it all the better, each compulsive gulp sending another jagged
spike of light searing back through me.
Then, as I thought I was going to just damn well melt right away right
there, it released me as swiftly as it had captured me. And I fell and fell
hard, my whole body tingling, feeling torn at the seams and washed out deep
down inside and almost wincing away from the last couple of laps of the
other man's tongue as he collected a few drops that must have dared to try
and escape him.
I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh of air, took in some that wasn't
quite so rarefied.
"You're welcome," came a soft voice still hovering in the region of my
groin. Fingers peeled themselves slowly off the skin of my thighs, but I
found I hadn't the strength, let alone the pretense towards modesty to
bother closing them again.
But it didn't seem to matter; he simply climbed back up me and settled down
on my full length and looked into my eyes from just a few inches away. He
was warm all over now, almost as hot as I felt, as if sucking me off had
done as much for him as it had for me. Maybe more.
"That was..." I said between gulps of my own. "A bit of... all right."
His expression didn't change, but his eyes sparkled a little, I swear. Or
maybe it was just the lingering after effects making me hallucinate.
"Does that mean I still get the car?" he asked.
"Fuck," I replied. "I'd give you the house... if it was mine to give. The
keys... to the liquor cabinet."
"Didn't need em," he replied, his tone bland.
"The Chivas?" I asked.
"The Chivas."
"Good taste."
He ran a quite deliberate lick of tongue across his lips. "Yeah."
A little stitch of amusement unraveled inside me. I lifted a hand and ran
it down his side, slicking across smooth skin and drying sweat. He raised
his head slightly in response and one of his own hands slowly moved to cup
the back of my neck. I was forced to suppress a shiver at the feel of those
hard fingers resting there, even though there was no way he could have
realized. That he could know it was the only truly vulnerable point on an
Immortal.
It made the moment when he bent down those last inches and kissed me
immeasurably tender, a fragile and reckless thing. And it was a warm kiss,
too, one that belied the nature of the man on top of me, that denied his
reserve and his ruthless nature. Not an affectionate kiss—I wouldn't go so
far and doubted he would either—but... warm.
When he finally pulled back again, I knew it was over, though, that he was
about to pull back all the way. To roll off of me and away. To close up
again. To leave. So I tightened my own grip and said something really
stupid.
"You should tell him, Alex. Life is short. Don't waste it."
He didn't blink, though he paused in his retreat.
"I didn't ask for your advice." Husky, but cold. So cold.
I kept my own tone light somehow, the only way I could ask for a modicum of
forgiveness. "No. But you should take it. I have been around the block a
few times, after all."
"Yeah?" The ice melting a little, at least around the edges. "How many
times?"
"That would be telling." Not that I wasn't tempted, but information is
power, isn't that what they say. "But why don't you go right ahead. Ask
Agent Mulder. When you see him."
Frost-bite city again. "Before or after he tosses my ass in jail?"
"Oh, I don't know," I replied. "I think he has something far better in mind
for your ass than that."
For a long moment—almost uncomfortable, even for me—he searched my eyes.
And his own eyes were no longer opaque, but liquid, clear and bottomless as
a pool of still water. It was an effort not to simply fall right down into
them. To be lost and drowned by their depths, by their coolness and their
promise, a soft and subtle and dreamless death. Finally, though those eyes
shuttered themselves again and he raised himself up and away from me. I let
him go, this time, since I could all but feel the tension returning to his
form. Knowing it to be only one short step away from violence. But he
didn't leave, just laid back on the bed next to me and let out a long breath
of his own. Not quite a sigh, but close.
Slowly, I rolled to my side and elbow. He wasn't looking at me, but I
looked at him, running an approving eye up and down his body, lingering the
longest on the cock lying so peaceably now across one hard thigh. Sated and
still faintly flushed, I had an almost irrepressible urge to pet it, not
that it wouldn't likely get my hand bitten clean off in the process.
"Not that I can blame the man," I commented softly. "It is a fine specimen
as asses go. Much like my own, you might even say."
I swear his mouth twitched a little.
"Still," I went on, taking it as encouragement. "I think he'd prefer yours
to mine any day. If given the chance."
"The one you think I should give him." Rough and yet so tranquil at the
same time, but which one was the lie?
"Yeah," I answered, then rolled over to my own back, looked back up at the
ceiling and mutely wished Gwen had gotten around to installing that mirror
we'd talked about once. Not that I had to see the man next to me in order
to feel the space between us expanding, those few inches growing ever more
distant, turning into a minefield. "But then what do I know? Better safe
than sorry, isn't that the philosophy you believe in? Isn't that what keeps
you alive? Just doing what you have to. Just saving your skin."
"And what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing," I replied. "Nothing at all."
I felt him shift on the bed and knew he was sitting up. Perhaps even
sitting on the edge of the bed, on the verge of walking out. Still, I could
sense his eyes on me. Could feel the weight of an appraisal as frank as the
one I'd just given him.
"Mulder must be losing his touch," he said quietly, almost as if to himself.
"If he actually thought you were me, if even for a little while."
I closed my eyes, then opened them again and turned my head to look at him.
His eyes came up and met mine and they were subdued now, neither masked nor
open, but something caught in-between. Betraying an honest hint of
puzzlement, even of hurt. A hurt I doubted he was entirely aware of.
"I didn't..." I said, then swallowed back the rest. "I'm sorry. Maybe I
should have tried harder to dissuade him of the notion."
I was half expecting him to be angry, but he just lowered his eyes and shook
his head. "I'm not surprised. It's hard to convince Agent Mulder of
anything he's already made up his mind about."
"The voice of experience?"
Something unsettled flickered across his face and then was gone. "Let's
just say we've gone around the block a few times, too."
I thought about apologizing—both for the current situation and for the
earlier one with FBI—but could find neither the words nor the energy inside
me to do it. It'd been a long day and an even longer night and getting my
rocks off twice in such a short period of time was making me increasingly
sleepy.
He must have been tired, too, but I wasn't going to bring that up either.
Instead, I went back to gazing up at the ceiling, as if it were the most
fascinating thing in the room. "Well, Alex," I said, and could hear that
same sleepiness creeping in. "Like I said, you're welcome to stay or go as
you please. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever." There was no response, so I
forged on, hearing my voice getting softer and softer. "Gwen'll be back
Monday, but I'm sure she won't mind. Whether you swing that way or if you
don't. Oh yeah, we got a hot tub out back. Room enough for six, so that's
okay, too."
There was no answer for a long time—so long I thought there wasn't going to
be—and if he was still breathing I certainly couldn't hear it, so I
gradually felt myself surrendering to the drift of my eyelids. Undoubtedly,
it was a dangerous act to contemplate, even after what had just happened
between us. Maybe even because of it. If he hadn't figured out the trick to
killing me, he could still inconvenience me; I didn't relish the thought of
waking up in some sodden grave in the woods or as hearty man's entree in the
chest freezer in the basement or even locked in the trunk of my faithful
Charger. No matter the case of champagne that still remained there to
comfort me while I waited for my girl to get home and get around to
releasing me.
But he did none of those things.
Instead, I finally half-heard, half-sensed him finally get up and leave the
room. Listened to the faint and increasingly dreamy sound of running water
starting up a little while later. And I must have fallen asleep at some
point before he was done, because when I woke again it was to sunlight
pouring into the room rather than moonlight and I could remember bits and
flashes of the strangest assortment of dreams. One of which involved a
shower and the nutcase from "Psycho," only he hadn't come after me with a
knife and when I'd opened my mouth to scream he'd kissed me and it hadn't
been Norman Bates at all, just a guy wearing a mask to look like him, and I
couldn't mistake those green eyes, not in a million years, and he'd pushed
me down to my knees in the tub and...
What do you know, my glass needs a refill again. Would you mind? Thanks so
much. 'S good, isn't it? So good.
Well, he was gone, of course, I have to tell you. Long gone. And if the
other bed had been slept in at all, I certainly couldn't tell. It had been
made up perfectly, as if he wanted me to bounce quarters off of it or
something, and even the still faintly damp towels he'd left behind in the
bathroom were neatly folded and hung to within an inch of their lives.
I stared at them for a time, then stared at myself in the mirror, and
wondered that it didn't show. The acute disappointment I was feeling. And
the relief. But then my eyes weren't nearly so bottomless as his, let alone
half as hard. We may have looked alike—closer even than brothers—but I was
an Immortal and he... wasn't. That was all. One incontrovertible difference
that made all the difference in the world. If I'd gotten to him, gotten him
to stay, I would have to watch him die whether it was tomorrow or fifty
years from tomorrow. Knowing the whole time that I really had no say in
which it would be. That I couldn't. No matter that I wanted to.
Wanted him.
But let's haul out that brutal honesty one last time, shall we? Let the
champagne go straight to my head. Loosen my tongue, as if it needed any
encouragement. Maybe, if you want the truth, it was more like part of me
wanted to be him. Whether just for tomorrow or for those fifty short fucking
years. And that's why I wanted to take him home and fuck him so very badly.
And maybe that's why I don't stay with mortals or let myself get too
attached to them, any of them—not because they end up dying, but because I
envy them so damn much. Their bright and bitter lives. Like a moth to the
flame, burnt up by the very attraction of the thing. By their love for it.
Oh, I've touched that fire a few times, but damned if I can keep hold of it.
Maybe, no Immortal can. Not really. But since you're a guest, I'll be
considerate and just speak for myself, okay? I'll be the one to admit that,
much as I'm drawn to that fire, I fear it just as much. And that's it's a
right bitch sometimes, swinging back and forth that way, caught between
running head-on and hurdy gurdy straight to it and... simply running away.
My own personal pendulum, you could say. Not that walking that edge
sometimes can't be fun. A riot even.
A real kick in the balls...
But, hell, who understands that but me? Mac certainly doesn't. Not to
mention that Mac would just about hate this guy. Maybe even more than he
dislikes me and my lifestyle choices and that's saying a lot. Fuck, at
least Amanda would consider the poor boy and I an embarrassment of riches,
and one that she more than wickedly deserved. She'd have had somebody in to
install a mirror over the bed first thing. Well, maybe, second thing. Or
third or fourth—there is the hot tub to consider.
Anyway, I took a shower of my own before I wandered downstairs. Used the
same towels he used and hung them back up not near as neatly. And found
he'd not only somehow managed to leave the security system activated behind
him, but a full pot of fresh brewed coffee as well, the delicious devil.
Just the smell alone was enough to make my eyes unpeel those last couple of
centimeters, to make me half-way able to convince myself that I really was
flirting with consciousness.
I poured myself a cup, compromising it with lots of sugar and a dash of
cream and cinnamon, and took a long sip before wandering back out into the
main room. Nothing else had changed or been altered; I could see the Charger
as I paused in front of one of the windows, glowing like a cup of spilled
wine in the late morning sunlight. It made me wonder if he'd actually taken
the BMW, but I didn't feel like even going back out to the kitchen to check
and see if the keys were gone. Not that a man like that would actually need
them.
That he would actually admit to needing much of anything. At least, by the
light of day. To a total stranger. Even one who wore his face, or a
reasonable facsimile thereof.
Or even that of another.
In the dark.
Finally, I moved away from the window and sat on the same stool I'd forced
him to sit on. Drank my coffee and contemplated Gwen's painting—the woman
and the swan and the swan and the woman—and the mirror of water that lay
between them. Contemplated the thought that he hadn't bothered to kill me
again and that I'd gone to sleep in a stripped bed and had woken up bundled
under sheets and blankets as if nothing of what happened between us had
really happened. Except maybe in my dreams. Or in his.
But, most of all, I contemplated the almost painful loveliness of a pair of
hazel eyes and of green, and whether or not they would ever come to see that
self-same loveliness in each other. Rather than just the pain. 'Cause,
even I gotta admit, odds are that they won't ever figure it out. That
they'd much rather stay in where it's safe, each in their paranoid little
world, than to take that bonzo risk and go for the gold, for the big payoff.
The flashing lights and screaming sirens and all your cherries lined up in
row.
But you play it safe like that and you end up with nothing, except being
fucked up...
You see, I know. 'Cause much as Lady Luck's in my back pocket and much as
I've jumped in front of countless guns, without a thought, without a care,
that's me, boyo. Playing it safe. In all the ways that really count,
anyhow.
And that's him, all fire and ice, my poor little mortal bad boy self. And
that's even mister sharper-than-sharp-hazel-eyes-no-sense-of-humor-FBI-guy
too, for ya.
All. Fucked. Up.
But, hey, don't let me get you down. That's not what we're here for and,
yeah, you heard me right and that's an innuendo that'll definitely bite you
in the ass if you're not careful. Not that I figure you've got much use for
what other people think anymore than I do. I may not have as much time
under my belt—just a flash in the pants, you might say, compared to
you—but even I know morals change almost as much as hemlines. One year,
what's out is in and the next what's in is out... and can I set that glass
aside for you? Just for a moment or two. While we get a shade more
comfortable here.
Wouldn't do to spill it by accident after all. Not a good vintage like
that. If you can say that champagne actually has a vintage. Champagne, or
other things.
And, yeah, I know you really don't like me much—if at all—but just let me
hit this switch here and put out those big nasty lights and then we'll be in
the dark at last, all warm and cozy and proper, just us cats here. Grey as
all get out.
Hmmm...? Oh yeah, Alex. Well, I guess that's pretty much the end of the
story. And, no, I haven't seen him since. But then I haven't exactly been
straining myself with looking. After all, I figure he deserves that chance
even if he doesn't end up taking it, or if he ends up blowing it. Rather
than blowing him. Whatever. I mean, fuck, the world could end before they
get it on like they really should. Or one or both turn up dead. Tomorrow
or anytime in those fifty remaining years getting doled out to them.
Not that he doesn't owe me. A car, at the very least. And not that I
wouldn't consider another turn in the sack in lieu of actual cash payment on
said car. Or in addition to. Being a greedy bastard on rare occasion.
I guess, if you really wanta hear it, I'm running, too. And only time will
tell in which direction. Or whose face I'll end up wearing next. Blue or
grey, what does it really matter? One's as good as the other.
Isn't it?
Adam?
Stars and Garters
by Garnet
Come on in, will ya? Close the door. You can strip off right over there,
if you like. There's lots of extra towels and even some spare suits if
that's what you'd prefer. Whatever you're comfortable with. I don't mind
if you don't mind. Just climb on in when you're ready and get yourself
comfy and let me tell you a little story while the champagne is cooling.
