Oxford psychology be damned, in Mulder's opinion. Denial was a great thing.
As long as he didn't acknowledge the existence of that vodka he didn't have
to acknowledge the fact that Alex Krycek was beautiful. There was a lot more
to it than that, but beautiful was a good way to sum it up. He was beautiful
when he was in his cheap suits and hair gel, trying to be helpful. He was
beautiful when he was in blue jeans and a t-shirt, laughing at the horribly
fake alien autopsy video the Gunmen had emailed. He was beautiful when he
was in nothing at all and gasping for breath as his hips bucked and he
pleaded for mercy.
Actually, 'beautiful' didn't do him justice when he was naked and begging.
Breathtaking, gorgeous, perfect, and hypnotic couldn't quite do it, either.
As intoxicating as the vodka that wasn't in the refrigerator, as smooth and
strong and as addictive. Absolut Sex. Everything you could ever want
distilled and bottled and there for your pleasure.
All of that, Mulder could handle. There was a special corner in his mind
that he used when he finished a profile and it was time to flip the switch
on his brain from 'serial killer' back to 'FBI agent.' All of the rage and
fear and desire that burned through him while he was the murderer was boxed
up, labelled and stored away in that corner while the rest of him moved on.
He could separate his memories of Alex like that because Alex had never
existed, so Mulder hadn't left a trail of hickeys down Alex's neck any more
than he'd left a trail of bodies across Texas. He'd known where the next
victim would be found, just like he could know that biting Alex hard on the
shoulder would drive him over the edge. But that didn't make him the
killer.
The problem was that the neatly packaged thoughts of Alex wouldn't stay
buried like they were supposed to. Krycek just couldn't let it lie. Other
murderers got caught and sent to prison, or got away and faded from memory,
but Krycek showed up again, killed someone else, and pulled all those
thoughts back out for another trip down memory lane. Like introducing a date
to your parents, and everything goes fine until they haul out the baby
photos and embarrassing stories. Mulder could punch Krycek and throw him
against the wall, but the feel of leather would remind him of what Alex had
looked like one night when he was swearing at the cheese that had melted off
his pizza and onto his chest. Eventually he'd given up, shrugged out of the
jacket, and kicked his jeans off for good measure as he pointed out that he
wasn't interested in food anymore. It made it hard for Mulder to
concentrate; to recall if he was pressed against Krycek or Alex, to remember
why they were both breathing hard and sweating, to know if he was supposed
to be hitting or kissing the too-beautiful face in front of him.
It was easy to ignore the bottle of vodka in the back of the refrigerator.
Mulder told himself that as he poured a shot and pushed the bottle back to
the back of the shelf next to something that used to be an onion. It
belonged to Alex, and Alex was a fantasy. Mulder had a lot of fantasies.
That this one was in a bottle instead of on a tape made no difference.
Absolut Alex
by Jayde
It was easy for Mulder to ignore the bottle of vodka in the back of the
refrigerator. It didn't really exist. It was there because Alex had brought
it, for one of their infrequent meetings outside the office. Alex would show
up at his front door and they'd eat takeout and maybe discuss whatever their
current case was before they had sex on the couch and finally slept when
they were too exhausted to move. But Alex had only been an act put on by
Krycek-The-Bastard, no more real than the characters in Mulder's video
collection. He hadn't existed. Therefore, he had never brought anything over
and there was no almost-empty bottle of Absolut on the top shelf of his
refrigerator.
