West Virginia
Mulder sprawled on his motel bed with the utter bonelessness only the truly
exhausted can achieve. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his top
shirt button undone. Today's tie, which Alex personally considered one of his
best, was loosely knotted around the collar. The tie was cobalt blue, and showed
Homer Simpson being forcibly expelled from a neon-pink flying saucer by bug-eyed,
borgia- green aliens. Several of Mulder's most successfully offensive items of
neckwear featured the classic little green men motif; they appeared to be a
necessary component for irredeemable hideousness. Alex idly wondered if Mulder
wore the monstrosities for some twisted personal satisfaction, or if his colour
blindness made him truly ignorant of their amazing awfulness. On second
thoughts, even total blindness wouldn't be enough excuse for inflicting those
sartorial nightmares on an unsuspecting and undeserving world. It had to be
deliberate. The conclusion was redundant; he'd all ready discovered that
Mulder took an unhealthy joy in indiscriminately annoying anyone within a 50-mile
radius.
Alex sighed and stretched out lazily on his own supposedly queen sized
bed. The space might have been easier to appreciate if the bed didn't sink so
badly in the middle that moving to the edge required an effort similar to that of
a wasp trying to escape flypaper. He bowed to the inevitable and settled face
up, cradled gently in passive softness. His brain was quietly humming,
fuelled with too much food, too much caffeine and way too much alcohol. He
wondered if Mulder could hear it. He grinned. Mulder had been totally
wired when they'd checked into the motel, cheerfully manic and devastatingly
charming in equal turns. The pretty blonde receptionist had alternated
between incipient Mulder-worship and hovering over the 911 speed-dial button,
much to Alex's amusement. However, it seemed as soon as Mulder lay down his brain
had eloped along with his skeletal structure, leaving his body to recover from
the night's excesses without their interference.
"At least no-one died this time."
Alex jerked upright, nearly giving himself a terminal case of whiplash.
"Jesus, Mulder! Give a guy some warning!" He re-settled himself on his
side, facing Mulder, his head propped awkwardly on his right hand. Mulder hadn't
shifted from his lazy sprawl, the pose flattening his stomach and highlighting
those long, lean thighs... Alex quickly dropped his gaze before he could be
caught staring, determinedly ignoring the tight heat that had suddenly ignited to
curl restlessly in his belly. A distraction was needed, and if nothing else,
`distracting' was part of Mulder's unique definition of a conversation. "If
no-one died, it wasn't through lack of trying. I mean, a cult of chicken
worshipping weirdoes `baptising' people in an old power plant? The fact that
none of them expired has got to be proof their God exists. I can't think of any
other reason they weren't all southern fried chicken by the time we got there."
"Hey! We are now living in the age of PC. Kindly remember that us
weirdoes prefer the term `normally challenged'." Mulder admonished severely,
completely ruining the effect with the makings of a truly evil grin. "When the
Lord High Rooster thanked me on behalf of he- who-crows-with-the-dawn" He trailed
off, laughter consigning the remainder of the sentence to the twilight realm of
verbal might-have- beens.
"Challenged is right." Alex replied snidely. The memory made him smile
though; Mulder had looked like he was on the verge of a coronary. The Lord High
Rooster had apparently thought he was overwhelmed by the gravity of the
situation, and had thankfully allowed Alex to escort him away, after expressing
his sincerest apologies for overtaxing him. They'd only just made it out of the
door before they both exploded into helpless laughter, restraint eroded away by
several glasses of a suprisingly good local beer. He sighed. It had been that
kind of case. Rumours of flashing lights at night at an old power station had
sent Mulder haring off to West Virginia of all places, junior agent Krycek
reluctantly in tow. The stress of playing the gormless Boy Wonder to Mulder's
Batman was really beginning to get to him, not to mention the god-awful mess his
hair and wardrobe were in. He would almost have preferred a Robin outfit, and
privately suspected that the seemingly limitless quantity of hair gunk his
employers supplied him with could be the explanation for a good few oil-tanker
disappearances in Bermuda.
The alleged X-file was a total wash out from the paranormal perspective. A
band of local yokels had commandeered the abandoned plant as a temple to their
avian deity; the lights had been nothing more than their torches and the
occasional arcing of broken cables. It was Mulder's behaviour that had been a
revelation. Since Alex had been assigned to Mulder, his actions had only
confirmed the profile his employers had given him; a driven man, on the edge of
society and sanity. He'd built up a healthy respect for Mulder's
intelligence; the amount of information the man could extract from the seemingly
most inconsequential of details was truly impressive, and the wry humour that
occasionally slipped out past the barricades appealed to his own twisted
world-view, but he wasn't going to lose any sleep about giving him up to the
Smoker. In and out, business as usual, right?
Wrong. As soon as it had become apparent that the case was a dud, Mulder's
whole attitude had changed. Instead of the cursing and drive to get back to
his Work (since it had reached the proportions of a holy quest, Alex felt it
deserved the capitalisation) that Alex expected, Mulder had undergone a character
transformation worthy of an X-file all on its own. It seemed Mulder had
decided that this was as good an excuse as any for a long-overdue vacation, and
they'd stayed for the entire two weeks they'd been allotted. The sardonic
comments, instead of being directed at Alex, began to be aimed at others, brief
sideways glances inviting him to share the joke. Alex found that Mulder's
unique brand of humour was definitely easier to appreciate when it came at
another's expense.
Lately, other aspects of Mulder than just his sense of humour had come to
Alex's attention. Usually he would have acted on the attraction straight away.
However, a total lack of information on where exactly Mulder's preferences lay,
not to mention the necessity of keeping his cover as innocent young agent Krycek,
meant he was getting to know someone that he wanted much better than he ever had
before. In return, Mulder was seeing much more of the `real' Alex than anyone
else had seen for a long time, even if he couldn't appreciate the fact. In the
consortium, looking too clever made you dangerous, too dumb and you were
relegated to grunt-work for the rest of your life. His cover as an agent let
him use his native intelligence, and it felt so incredibly good, like finally
stretching out and using the muscles of a broken arm when the cast came off. He
was no longer sure if he was going to be able to stuff the genie back in the
bottle once this assignment was over.
Sometimes, the situation amused him. Other times, when he lay alone in bed
and his libido was reminding him that it hadn't vanished just because he was on a
case, the dark fantasies whispering through his brain were anything but funny.
Mulder's drawl halted the introspective moment "The Native Americans
believed that the eggs of the West Virginia River Chicken contained the power to
communicate with the dead."
"Was that an episode of Jerry Springer that I missed?" Alex replied
easily. "I can see it now; `river chickens, their eggs, and the cultures who
love them'."
"I actually researched the case. Sometimes, it helps." There was a smile
hovering in Mulder's voice. Alex wanted to defend himself, but since all his
in-depth research had been on the subject of a certain Fox William Mulder, Esq.,
he conceded the point.
"Uh-huh, because that is such a necessary thing to know. Not only can you
see the future in your breakfast tea leaves, but now you can commune with your
dead relatives through the omelette."
There was a subtle pause before Mulder answered. "I guess that only works if
you know they're dead." If he hadn't been trained to listen for such things,
the bitterness in Mulder's voice would have gone unnoticed. What the..? Alex
frantically wracked his brain. Oh shit. Samantha. Alex mentally kicked
himself soundly in the rear. "Mulder, I'm sorry, I should have..." He sat up,
swinging his legs off the side of the bed.
"Jesus, Alex, don't apologise." Mulder twisted upright until he was
sitting on the edge of his matress, but his head dipped so he wasn't meeting
Alex's gaze. He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. "Look,
you didn't do anything wrong. I'm tired, I'm drunk..." he took a deep breath,
released it, then looked up at Alex. "Basically, I'm being a jerk." His
mouth twisted ruefully. "I don't know if you've noticed, but sometimes I have
trouble remembering everything isn't about me. At least, that's what Scully
tells me."
"Mulder..."
"Forget it."
The response only missed out on being a command by the smallest margin.
Alex decided to heed the warning, and left it. Awkward silence filled the room
like a creeping fog. Alex decided to break the quiet before it choked him.
"Umm... I think I'm going to turn in. You want the bathroom first?"
"Go for it", Mulder said, lying back down on the faded pink bedcover. He was
looking up at the ceiling, but Alex knew it wasn't the cracked plaster he was
seeing.
When he re-emerged form the bathroom, Mulder was curled up foetally under the
bedclothes, his back to the room. Alex got silently into bed, and turned out the
light.
revenant@conspiracy-theory.co.uk
part two to follow when I convince Alex that sex really is more fun than
shooting people.
In Darkness
by Revenant
