It wasn't completely unheard-of that things happened to Fox
Mulder that he didn't understand. The theory of relativity, while
almost childlike in its simplicity, somehow empirically didn't unfold
itself in his brain. The reason that his toaster, whether set on light
taupe or dark black nevertheless insisted on popping up small
chunks of charcoal, was a complete mystery. The Loch Ness
monster he could grasp; UFOs, serial killers, and the reason that his
partner didn't find the Three Stooges funny were within his
consciousness. What stared at him from the screen of his computer
went far beyond simple unexplained phenomena, however—it was
downright strange.
It was an e-mail. On the surface, a harmless and relatively
normal occurrence in the daily life of an FBI agent. This particular
e-mail, however, was from Alex Krycek.
Alex Krycek. The bad-haircut boy wonder patricidal ratboy,
sent him an e-mail. And not just any e-mail. It was an invitation to
meet; and it was one that he didn't think his curiosity would let him
ignore.
He found himself tapping in a reply before his brain had even
begun to weave through possible set-ups, conspiracies, and the
really, really bad feeling he was getting from this. He could
practically hear Scully's voice in his ear: "Since when has the
possibility of your own death ever stopped you from doing anything,
Mulder?"
"Never," he said aloud, as he clicked the 'Send' key, and
watched his e-mail disappear into cyberspace—straight to his worst
enemy.
Scully turned off her computer with a sigh. "Did you finish your half
of the report? Mulder?"
He looked at her, absently. "What?"
"Hello. You've been in outer space for the better part of a
week, now. What's going on?" She leaned against his desk. "Is it
your mother? She's not worse, is she?"
"No, she's fine. I'm just—trying to figure something out.
I'll be fine, really." He glanced at his watch. "You should go home."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah. I should." She pulled
her coat on. "Don't stay here all night, okay?"
"Sure. See you tomorrow."
She nodded at him, and left the office. That was one of the
things that he really liked about her—she knew when to pick her
battles, and when to just leave it alone.
He stared at the unfinished case report on his desk for another
half-hour, reading the same sentence over and over again even
though it had permanently etched itself into his brain the first time he
looked at it. It had been six days since he'd received the e-mail from
Krycek, and he hadn't heard a word. He didn't even know if his
return message had been received. Hell, he didn't even know if it
was really Alex who sent the message in the first place.
"Hard at work?"
He whirled around, the dim light from the hallway shining
through the partially-open door. It, and the light from his computer
screen, was affording the only illumination in the place. It was
enough, though, to glint off the dull leather jacket on the personage
of his worst enemy in the world. It took him bare seconds to raise
the gun off of his desk and aim it at the calm, unruffled face of Alex
Krycek.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't shoot you where you
stand."
Alex stood there immobile, hands raised. "A reason, or a good
reason?" There was no humour in his voice.
Mulder released the safety on his gun. "You think you don't
deserve it? After what you did to Scully, and her sister? After what
you did to my father?"
"If you think I deserve it, why haven't you shot me already?"
Alex took a tentative step forward, hands still skyward. "Why didn't
you do it before, any of the other times you had the chance? Why
have you never done it, Mulder?"
Mulder's eyes shifted. "Don't come any closer."
"It's because you know, don't you? You know that I wasn't the
one who killed your father. You know that I didn't kill Scully's sister,
either. And as for what happened to your partner," he shook his
head, he was almost close enough to touch the gun, "it would have
happened whether I was in the picture or not." He reached his hand
out and pulled the gun out of Mulder's hand, clicked the safety back
into place, and set it down on the desk in between them.
Mulder stared at it for a minute, but didn't make a move to pick
it up. "I don't know anything," he said, finally. "Least of all, why
you're here."
"Don't you?" Alex asked, his voice soft. Something in it make
Mulder look up at him, quickly, hoping to catch a clue as to what was
happening here, but any answers vanished behind the cold veil of his
eyes. Instead, Alex said, "We have to get out of here."
"We?"
"Listen, Mulder, neither one of us has any time for this. If you
didn't want to talk to me, you wouldn't even have acknowledged my
message. I can't stay here—you know that."
"Afraid you'll get caught?"
"No—I'm afraid that we're both going to get killed, and then
nobody will ever know what that bastard's gotten away with."
It was the first sliver of a clue that Mulder had been given, and
he ran with it. "Cancerman?"
"I didn't mean the tooth fairy. Look, I'm leaving, whether you
come with me or not." He turned in the doorway, carefully shielding
himself as he scanned the hall. He looked back over his shoulder.
"Coming?"
Questioning his sanity every step of the way, Mulder picked up
his jacket and went to the door, motioning Krycek behind him, and
providing cover for him until they'd managed to get out of the
building entirely.
It wasn't until they were in Mulder's car and twenty minutes away
from the Hoover building that either of them spoke again.
"So, who killed my father, Krycek? I saw you there, and the
funny thing is, I didn't see anyone else."
"There wasn't anyone else."
"So you did kill him."
"I didn't say that."
Mulder's heart skipped a beat, and he pulled off the highway
onto the shoulder, and stopped the car. "What the hell are you
talking about? Why are you here? What is going on?"
Alex was silent for a moment, staring straight ahead. When he
spoke again, it wasn't about Bill Mulder, and once again, there was
no emotion in his voice. "I knew they were going to take Scully, and I
also knew that there wasn't anything that I could do about it. They
would have taken her whether I was there or not. But because I was
there, they didn't get the chance to kill you." He looked at Mulder, his
eyes distraught. "You were never supposed to reach the top,
Mulder. The car was supposed to crash before you reached it. Why
do you think that Duane Barry ended up there in the first place, just
after the cables had been installed, but before they'd been tested?"
"And the operator?"
"I hit him, he was unconscious, and then I went to find you.
When they told me that he'd disappeared, I knew it was just another
notch against me. They'd set me up so perfectly that I couldn't
move without their say-so. They don't care about me, Mulder. I'm
supposed to be dead ten times over by now. I don't really know why
I'm not. You're the only thing that he cares about. Keeping you
alive, and keeping you away from the truth. We have to stop him."
"Why now? Why not before?"
"Because I didn't have any proof before. We have to get out
of here," he said, tiredly. "We can't go to your place. They keep you
under almost constant surveillance."
"My mother's place—"
"No, they'll look there, too. We have to go somewhere
anonymous."
"What do you suggest?"
"Pick a motel, any motel, and wake me up when we get there."
Mulder stared at him for a moment, then started the car up and
pulled smoothly off the shoulder. Alex was asleep before they'd
even gotten back into traffic.
He drove steadily for an hour, remembrances of Alex's safe driving
tips ringing through his mind. "Do you know how many traffic
fatalities are caused by lack of sleep?" he muttered to himself.
It was all too unbelievable. He didn't dare even let himself
hope that Alex was telling him the truth, and this mystery evidence
would surely lead him down the same dead-end that he'd faced
every single time before. But if it didn't—
"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," he said, shaking Alex's shoulder.
"We're here."
"Great." He looked around before exiting the car, then headed
straight into the room.
"I hope this is all right."
"Believe me, Mulder, compared to where I've been the last
year, this is paradise." He turned with a half-smile on his face, which
faded almost instantly when he was faced with the barrel of Mulder's
gun, pointed straight at him. He shook his head, raising his hands.
"Hands behind your back," Mulder said, turning him around.
He handcuffed the man and threw him against the bed, straddling
him and patting him down.
"Why Mulder, I didn't know you cared," Alex said, his voice flat.
"It's in my left breast pocket."
Mulder pulled out an envelope containing a computer disk and
a small gold key.
"The key's for a safety deposit box. You bring your laptop?"
Mulder nodded. "It's in the car."
"Good. Boot it up, but don't connect the modem. They've
probably got you wired that way, too. We may have a jump of an
hour or two on them before they find us." He shifted on the bed until
he was lying on his side, and curled up slightly.
Mulder went to his car and brought out his laptop computer,
plugging it in to the table by the window. He slid the disk in and
prayed that it didn't short the thing out completely. Alex was once
again asleep, despite his uncomfortable position on the bed.
To his great surprise, there was no explosion from the
computer. After a few minutes, encrypted files started to show up
from the directory. The code was a simple enough one, not that it
would really have mattered. If the information had gotten into
anyone's hands but his, it would have been destroyed, not
de-coded. He rubbed the back of his neck, put on his glasses, and
started to work.
"Scully?"
"Mulder, where are you?"
"I can't tell you that. I need you to listen to me. You have to
meet me. It's important. I think I've got him."
"Who? Mulder, what's going on? We're supposed to be in a
meeting with Skinner in twenty minutes."
"Cancel it and get in your car. Meet me in an hour." He gave
her directions. "It's a coffee shop. Sit down somewhere and order
yourself some coffee. I've got to get another car, so I may be a little
longer. If I haven't shown up within half an hour, that means that you
were followed."
"What are you talking about? What's happened?"
"I've got them Scully. I'll see you in an hour."
He hung up the payphone and carefully wiped his fingerprints
from it. Damn, Alex is making me more paranoid. We should
have a contest. He got back into his car and took a circuitous route
back to the motel, doubling back several times to make sure no one
was following him. When he returned, Alex was still asleep. He'd
slept the night through—Mulder had even checked on him a couple
of times, just to make sure he was still breathing.
He patted his coat pocket, fingering the disk there again. He'd
held it so often that it should have his fingerprints permanently
etched on it. After the first stunned realization of what he had, he'd
copied it several times and mailed the copies out to a couple of
dead-end addresses, where he'd be able to retrieve it, if necessary.
He'd even sent a copy to the Lone Gunmen—sort of an early
Christmas present, so to speak. They'd definitely be breaking out
the imported beer over this one.
Names, dates, times, places, people—everything was there,
from the moment it had all started, until the day he'd received Alex's
e-mail. How he managed to get the information on the run, he'd
never know. Scully's "abduction" by the Department of Defense and
a foreign conglomerate conducting covert tests of a biological
warfare; Melissa Scully's assassination, which hadn't been as much
of a case of mistaken identity as they'd thought; his mother's stroke
and subsequent healing; several of the X-Files cases that had been
mysteriously pulled; everything, everything he could have hoped for
was there, and more. And less.
There wasn't one word on the entire thing about Samantha Ann
Mulder.
"The key is to a safety deposit box in Montreal." Alex's voice
was tired and shallow, and he startled Mulder by speaking. "I can
give you the directions."
"You aren't coming with me."
"Mulder, do you honestly think that they're going to let me leave
the country? At best, I'll provide a bit of diversion for you."
"Why are you doing this?"
Alex looked at him, and stretched his neck back. "I'm tired. I
can't run forever. I did a good job of it for a couple of years, but I
can't do it anymore. Everyone involved with this ends up dead." He
shrugged. "I guess I'm ready."
"I'll protect you. I need you to testify."
Alex smiled. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you say."
Mulder sat down on the edge of the bed, and took the handcuff
key out of his pocket. "I swear to god, Krycek, if you run—"
"Where am I going to run, Mulder?" He winced as the cuffs
came off, and rubbed his wrists gingerly, as the circulation returned
to his hands. "Thanks."
"I have to go and get Scully. Do you want any food or
anything?"
"No, I think I'll just have a shower."
"I should be back in about two hours. Keep the door locked,
and don't run."
"Believe me, I don't have anywhere left to go." He went into
the bathroom and shut the door. Mulder heard the shower turning on
before he left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.
He realized how conspicuous he looked only after he'd made it to
the coffeeshop—rumpled FBI-type suit on a man who obviously
hadn't slept in the last two days. He accounted for every car in the
area, driving around the place ten times before he pulled into a lot a
block away and walked up. She was sitting in a booth in the corner,
drinking her coffee.
"You look like hell," she said, as he sat down. "What's going
on?"
"We've got them, Scully," he said, the glee finally starting to
register in his voice. "Hard evidence of the government conspiracy,
with Cancerman at the head of it."
"Where have you been all night?"
"I've got a witness who came forward. He's in a motel room
about forty-five minutes away from here. He's got documentation on
him that will bring the entire thing down."
"And you left him alone there?"
"That's why we have to get back, before anyone finds him.
Come on." He got up, swaying a little.
"Whoa," she put a hand on his back. "When was the last time
you slept?"
He shook his head. "Two days ago. I'm fine, really."
"Right. I'm driving."
He looked willing to protest for only a few minutes, then
shrugged. "Fine, but we take my car."
He filled her in as she drove, and the depth of his information
just started to sink in to him as he talked. When they reached the
motel and she shut off the car, they sat there in silence for a few
minutes.
"If this is true—" she said, then broke off.
"It has to be," he said, and opened his door. "It has to be." He
tossed her the motel room key and grabbed the take-out food he'd
ordered from the diner. He'd almost forgotten about Alex until she'd
unlocked the door and had quickly pulled her gun out of her purse.
He came in and kicked the door closed behind them. Alex was
sitting on the couch, his hands raised, a magazine on the floor in
front of him, where it had fallen from his hands.
"What the hell is he doing here?" She made no move to lower
her gun.
"Scully, put the gun down."
"Mulder," she glanced at him, "handcuff him."
"Scully, it's okay, really. You can put the gun down." He
moved over to her. Alex hadn't made a move off of the couch.
Smart guy, he thought. "He's not going to do anything."
"Of course he isn't. We're going to take him in." He made no
move towards Alex. "You can't mean to say that he's your
witness? Mulder, you can't believe anything that he says! We have
to call the Bureau. We have to take him in."
"We can't do that, Scully. They'll kill him. Look, just put the
gun down, and sit and listen to me for a minute. If you don't believe
me, you have my permission to shoot him." He glanced over at Alex,
who gave him a 'very funny' look.
Cautiously, she lowered the gun, but refused to put it down.
Not taking her eyes off of Alex for a second, she sat down on the
chair closest to the door, as if expecting him to make a run for it.
"Okay," she said. "Talk."
"You don't seriously expect me to believe any of this, do you?" She
was sitting in exactly the same spot, three hours later. She'd put the
gun down on the table beside her after half an hour, and shed her
coat after an hour. A completely untouched cup of coffee was
beside her.
Alex, unneeded through Mulder's narrative, had fallen asleep
again, after having eaten a few bites of the food he'd brought with
them. He had the strength of a newborn puppy, all of a sudden.
Mulder couldn't help but think how young he looked—the kid wasn't
even thirty, for god's sake, and he had half of Washington on his bad
side.
"Scully, we have evidence. Documents, photos, videotape,
wiretap, everything. It's all spread out here, just waiting for us to do
something with it. What more do you want?"
"I want to know why you trust him, Mulder. He killed your
father!"
"No," Mulder said, shaking his head. "He didn't."
Scully turned her head, and Mulder did, too, reflexively. Alex's
eyes were open; he was staring at Mulder, but he didn't say a word.
After a moment, Scully went over to him. She held a wrist up and
checked his pulse. "Mulder, what did you do to him?"
"Nothing. I—"
"His pulse is thready." His eyes had closed again. "Has he
done anything since you picked him up?"
"No. He's just been sleeping, almost all of the time."
She carefully pulled his shirt up, revealing dark bruising over
his abdomen and chest. "Somebody did this to him. He's probably
got internal injuries."
"Dammit! Why didn't he say anything?"
"We have to get him to a hospital, Mulder."
"If we take him anywhere, he'll probably end up dead."
"If we don't, he's going to end up dead anyway. He may need
surgery." She turned to him. "If this evidence is real, that means that
we have them now. Nothing that they do to Krycek will change the
fact that we know, and we can expose them. Listen to me, Mulder,"
she took his arm, "we have to open this up."
Mulder was staring at Alex's still form on the bed. "If we do, I
might never find her."
"Do you want to sit on this? Sweep it all under the rug and
pretend that it never happened? You have to make a decision, and
you have to make it soon. If we don't act right now, and they find you
and Krycek here with this information, then you're as good as dead,
too."
He nodded. "I know." He looked at her, searching her eyes.
"Let's do it."
"We have got to make this as big and public as possible. That
where we went wrong in the past. We need police, ambulances,
FBI, media, everything."
Mulder snorted. "You want to Oswald him?"
She rolled her eyes. "Without Jack Ruby, I hope. Get on the
phone and call Skinner. I'll get the ambulance."
It was as flashy and public as they could manage it on such short
notice—there were television cameras and newspapermen at the
motel before the ambulance even arrived, all proclaiming the capture
of a wanted fugitive who was in possession of evidence which would
rock the highest levels of government. Skinner had shown up,
breathing fire, until Scully took him aside and showed him a few
pieces of their evidence. Afterwards, he took over like a pro, issuing
a press release and coordinating the efforts of his agents to track
down the missing pieces and start rounding up their suspects.
Mulder and Scully rode with Alex in the ambulance, trusting
no-one else to ensure the safety of their prime witness. Scully even
scrubbed and accompanied the surgical team, observing the
operation from inside the O.R. There were armed guards at every
entrance to the hospital, but Mulder didn't trust any of them not to be
on Cancerman's payroll, and stood guard himself, not ten feet from
where his ex-partner, ex-nemesis was being cut open.
Alex did have internal injuries and bleeding, but they managed
to patch him up and get him into a private, guarded room in ICU
within a couple of hours. The doctors gave him a fifty-fifty chance of
surviving the surgery; afterwards, they were giving him the first
twenty-four hours in recovery before they made any long-term
predictions. If he survived that, he'd probably be all right, but if he
didn't, they'd lose their best witness.
Skinner himself had assigned the guards to watch over his
room, but even so, Mulder didn't leave him alone for four days. He
slept in a plastic chair beside his bed for the first night, until Alex
woke up and they knew he was going to survive. After that, Scully
persuaded some hospital staff to bring in a cot for him, knowing that
he'd never agree to leave until Alex went with him. It was as if Alex
Krycek was Mulder's own personal odyssey, now, and he never once
spoke of Samantha.
The three men around the table looked at each other, seeing
nothing. They'd come to this plain office away from the hub of
governmental activity early that morning, before the first reports had
surfaced on television, before any of them could be named.
"You were supposed to take care of him," the first one said.
"I did," said the second, striking a match. The room shortly
filled with a blue haze of tobacco smoke.
"Apparently not well enough."
The third man said nothing, just folded and re-folded the single
piece of paper on the desk in front of him.
The cigarette-smoking man pressed a button underneath the
table. A younger man in a gray suit came into the room. The older
man gave him a thick manila envelope. "For this morning's mail," he
said. The younger man took it and exited the room.
There was a pause of silence for a few moments, then the man
dropped his cigarette to the cheap carpeting on the floor. He
removed a gun from his right suit pocket and paused.
From outside the room, the younger man heard the report of
three gunshots, and then nothing.
"You still here?"
Mulder shifted, waking from the half-doze he'd fallen into, and
pulled his chair closer to the bed. "Yeah. You okay?"
Alex nodded, stiffly. "You should go home."
Mulder stretched out his arms. "And leave all this?"
Alex grimaced. "Don't make me laugh. What day is it?"
"Friday."
"How long have I been here?"
"Only three days. Are you in pain? Do you want me to get the
nurse?"
"No, I'm okay. Did you get him?"
Mulder nodded. "It's over," he said, only lying slightly. Better
to let Alex get his rest, and tell him everything when he was out of
the hospital.
"Good." His eyes fluttered shut again, and he was asleep.
They'd rushed the offices immediately after de-crypting the final
parts of the disk, and sending fifteen armed guards along with the
courier to the safety deposit box in Montreal. The final links of the
puzzle had fallen into place then—more names, even more specific
and high-level than before. The consortium, of course, knew
everything hours before anyone else, but this time, there was
nowhere left to run. One final meeting of the minds responsible for
more governmental policy in the last thirty years than anyone else,
three shots fired, and it was all over.
The nondescript government office was ablaze almost
immediately; one of the firemen who responded to the call
remarked that it looked as if it had been napalmed; later, they would
find the culprit to be the combination of a simple household chemical
spray used on the carpets, and a 'carelessly' dropped cigarette. The
fire destroyed everything inside, including the bodies of the three
men, all consortium members, who'd taken their lives inside the
room where they had conducted the most heinous of their crimes.
All were eventually identified through dental records. Mulder didn't
even have to be told that Cancerman was one of them; he'd known,
somehow, that the cigarette-smoking bastard would find a way to
escape, in the end.
The remaining consortium members were indicted and tried
individually; high-ranking men in business, industry, government,
and military, they were passed around from group to group, refusing
to accept blame or provide any sort of answers when questioned.
Eventually, the prosecutors gave up trying to question them and
presented their cases and witnesses without any opposition from
defense counsel. All were given life sentences; two died
mysteriously in jail awaiting trial, three would be pardoned after
serving a minimal amount of their prison sentence.
The only answers he would get would be the ones provided by
the evidence brought to him by Alex Krycek.
"Discharged already?" The nurse came into the room, smiling.
"One of our best patients, too."
"I bet you say that to all of your unconscious patients," Alex
said.
"Only the important ones."
Mulder rolled his eyes at the exchange. All of Alex's nurses
somehow managed to be young and pretty, and they spent an
inordinate amount of time in his room, or so it seemed.
There was a knock at the door, and Scully poked her head in.
"Are you decent?"
"Is that a loaded question?"
Alex glared at him. "Come on in."
There was still only a tenuous truce between Mulder's current
and former partners, but the air was clearing, day by day. "We've
nearly got you ready to leave," Scully said. "We're just waiting for
your transportation to show up, and then you're on your way to the
safe house."
"Wait," Mulder said, stopping her. "Can I talk to you for a
moment?"
"Sure," she said. They flashed their badges to the guard at the
door on the way out. "What is it?"
"I want him to stay with me."
"Mulder, notwithstanding the fact that you swept your
apartment and found enough equipment in there to start your own
electronics company, your place is too small and too well-known."
"I'm not letting him out of my sight, Scully. Tell Skinner if he
stays with me he'll be saving the American taxpayers untold
thousands of dollars."
"Why is this so important to you?"
"I owe him, Scully. He's my responsibility."
"Not any more. There are people whose job it is to take care
of governmental witnesses."
"He saved my life, Scully, on more than one occasion. He put
himself on the line for me, not anyone else. I could have shot him
on sight—"
"No, you couldn't. He knew that."
"Maybe. But I had very little reason—or thought that I did—not
to want him dead. He trusted me with his life, too. I've got to follow
up on this."
She shook her head. "Fine. But you get to talk to Skinner
about it."
"Home sweet home."
Mulder held the door open, fighting the urge to have Alex lean
on him for the final walk over to the couch. He'd been hovering over
the man for so long, he was starting to wonder if having him stay
here was such a good idea. But he also knew that he couldn't have
him stay anywhere else, with anyone else, until this whole thing was
over. What he'd told Scully was the truth, or most of it: Alex Krycek
was his responsibility. "You want something to drink? Or eat? Are
you tired? I made the bed up—"
"Mulder, I'm fine, really. Just relax, okay?" Those green eyes
smiled at him, amused.
He nodded his head and closed the apartment door, bringing
Alex's single bag into the bedroom. He checked the window there
and saw, to his relief, the two unmarked cars of their babysitters out
there. That, and the double guards posted on the door, would make
sure that no-one touched either of them before they were able to
testify.
As if there was anyone left to be worried about, he thought,
and dropped the bag. Life on the run hadn't treated Alex very well—
all he owned in the world were the clothes he'd been wearing when
he met Mulder that night—was it only six days ago? It hardly
seemed possible that the world could have changed so quickly.
He'd brought him some of his own clothes to wear home from the
hospital. Home. He threw his own jacket into the closet and went
back into the living room.
Alex was standing beside the window, peering out of the blinds.
"That might not be the safest place in the world."
He turned, and smiled. "Yeah, I know. Just looking for the
backup."
Once an FBI agent, always an FBI agent. "You want some
dinner? 'cause I'm famished."
"Sure. You cooking?"
"Are you crazy?" He opened the desk drawer closest to his
phone and pulled out a handful of flyers. "Chinese, Italian, pizza?"
"You choose."
He grabbed the flyer from the best Chinese place he knew and
went to phone in an order. As Alex turned away from the window,
they brushed past each other, a move which seemed to Mulder to be
electrically charged. Alex glanced at him, then went back to the
couch and sat, turning on the television. He stood there with the
phone in his hand for a good three minutes before he remembered
what he was doing and dialled the number. Even as he spoke, a
single thought was running through his mind—What the hell was
that?
The government inquest, including their testimony, was broadcast
live on cable, although not many people probably watched it outside
of Washington insiders, interested conspiracy theorists, and those
directly involved. In a suit and with his hair cut short again, Alex
looked even younger than he had when Mulder first met him,
everywhere except for his eyes. He testified for five days in a row,
refuting all attempts to discredit him, taking the blame on himself at
times, and proving to be an impeccable witness. The chief counsel
personally congratulated him when he'd finished.
They spent days and nights together, almost inseparable. It
became a running joke in the Bureau that Mulder and Krycek were
joined at the hip—nobody saw one without the other for weeks.
There was speculation on lower levels about their relationship, but
most people agreed that "Spooky" Mulder was too obsessed with
his job to even acknowledge sex as a form of physical gratification—
unless there was an alien involved, of course.
Their lives revolved between the office of the X-Files, the room that
the inquest was held in, and Mulder's apartment. They'd offered
Alex witness relocation, but he'd turned it down, much to Mulder's
relief. Small things like that were continuing to play on his mind—
why this man, more than anyone else, had come to mean so much to
him in such a short amount of time. He realized how closely they
were connected, but there didn't seem any way around it—Alex could
help him find out what he needed to know, and he was helping him,
every day. He never wanted it to end.
But there were other things, too, beyond the work. There were
looks that Alex gave him that he couldn't decipher, and the pleasure
that he seemed to afford from things that shouldn't even have
concerned him. They became more and more comfortable around
each other, unconsciously; but consciously, it was starting to bug the
hell out of him.
Finally, one night, after a long day testifying, he had to ask.
They were back home, and had polished off most of a lasagna and a
couple of bottles of beer. Mulder looked over at Alex, curled up
against the corner of the couch, and asked, "What's going on here?"
"What do you mean?" Alex said, but his tone gave Mulder the
idea he probably knew exactly what he meant.
"Between us. What is it? I can feel something between us,
but I don't know what it is. Talk to me."
"I'm in love with you," he said, not looking at him. He put the
beer down on the table in front on him and stared at it.
"Alex—"
"Look, you don't have to say anything. I wouldn't even have
told you, except you asked me directly." He sighed. "I guess I just
wanted you to know before I left."
"Left?"
He nodded. "I got an apartment today. We're more than
halfway through the inquiry. If they wanted to do something to me,
they've have more than enough chance already. You don't need to
babysit me anymore."
Mulder nodded, mutely. It was true, there wasn't any good
reason for Alex to stay there any longer. So why did the fact that
Alex didn't need him any more bother him so much?
"I really appreciate you letting me stay here, Mulder. I've
enjoyed it. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable just now—"
"It's okay. You didn't."
Alex nodded. "Good. I've got my stuff packed up, and I can
go in the morning. They've assigned a guard to me, and he and I will
be moving into my new place then." He rolled his eyes. "I'm sure
you'll be glad to have this place to yourself again." He stood up and
took his empty bottle into the kitchen, then walked over to the
bedroom. "Goodnight."
"Alex—"
He turned, leaning against the doorway. Mulder couldn't
remember how many times he'd seen Alex there, just as he was,
smiling that half-smile at him. What was worse, he couldn't
remember not seeing him there, or somewhere in the small
apartment. He found the thought of not seeing him there again very
unsettling, but all he said was, "Goodnight."
Alex smiled. "Goodnight," he said again, and turned back
towards the bedroom, then stopped himself, and looked back at
Mulder, with an indecipherable look on his face. Then, seeming to
make up his mind about something, he walked over to where Mulder
was sitting, bent his head, and kissed him.
The brush of his lips was soft and warm, and Mulder found
himself opening his mouth to deepen the kiss almost automatically.
Alex tasted good, the slightest tang of the beer still in his mouth,
along with the sweeter taste of himself underneath. Their tongues
touched almost shyly, then retreated, and Alex broke the kiss. He
smiled at Mulder, his lips wet and slightly reddened, and went into
the bedroom.
Mulder stayed awake all that night on the couch, staring
unseeing at the television, feeling the touch of those lips for hours
after Alex had fallen asleep.
Unknown
by Mona Ramsey
Things were happening he didn't understand.
