"...make you come three ways to Sunday," said the gnarled little short one
called Frohike.
"A four hour tantric pleasure cruise," chimed in the blonde retro slacker,
Langly.
"Orgasm," said Byers, the neatly bearded Radio Shack manager wannabe.
Byers! The one he'd thought might be marginally sane. Up until this moment.
Orgasm. They wanted to give him an orgasm. And now they were staring at
him, clearly waiting for some kind of response. As if there were any kind
of appropriate response. He boggled silently. Byers suddenly frowned.
"You do know what an orgasm is," he asked looking faintly alarmed. "I mean
we just assumed you—"
"Unicorn bait?" said Langly. "No way."
"Although technically," said Frohike. "Even if he is a virgin there's no
reason he wouldn't know—"
Krycek broke.
"Enough," he shouted. The room fell silent. I know what an orgasm is. I'm
not a virgin."
"Does that mean you'll let us—"
"I didn't say that," said Krycek.
"You didn't say 'no', either," said Byers. "So can I infer that you're
willing to listen to our proposal?"
"Proposal?"
"Proposition," Byers amended.
Proposition, Krycek thought. Man, there was weird and then there was Byers,
Langly and Frohike. Weird didn't come close. But al least they weren't
talking computers and conspiracies for the moment. And well, hell—wasn't
exactly going anywhere for the next 12 hours.
And that kind of interactivity meant the possibility of manipulation and
even... dare he think it? Escape.
"Okay," said Krycek. "I'll listen."
Three pairs of eyes flicked back and forth like lantern code and settled
back on him. Byers nodded. Frohike and Langly grinned. Hungry little grins
that set up an odd little flutter in Krycek's gut. He shifted uncomfortably
in his chains. "Well?"
"Well," said Byers. "Basically the problem is this. We have, each of us,
in our researches have run across various theories of sexual technique of
bringing a human male to orgasm. Now we've had the chance to practice those
techniques on ourselves and on each other—to the point where we've gotten
quite expert. But the one thing we've never been able to agree on is which
technique is actually best.
"And it occurred to us that what we needed was an unbiased observer."
"Yeah, someone none of us knows."
"So no girlfriends or boyfriends."
"Even a casual pick up might be biased toward the person who picked them up."
"Or against them," Frohike said, looking pointedly at Langly who just as
pointedly did not look back. And still the babble never ceased:
"And we tried using hookers..."
"But professional sex trade workers have too many issues—"
"Power and control issues and it's an inequitable setup."
"—which adds too many variables to the pot."
"Only as inequitable as you make it."
"But that, with you here, this produces an almost ideal testing situation."
"Once in a lifetime really."
"Of course double blind would be better."
"Not to mention the increasing difficulty of producing three consecutive
orgasms within a given time period.
"Which can be factored in."
"Given that you fill out our little survey."
"Survey," said Krycek, blandly.
"Uh huh," said Langly. "Before AND after."
"Like we said, to weed out bias."
"Increase objectivity."
"Account for variables."
"Okay."
"And codify data for eventual publication in the Lone—excuse me," Byers
cut himself off mid-pitch. "Did you just say 'okay'?"
Krycek sighed.
"Look," he said. "Is there any chance in hell that during the actual, um,
testing part the three of you might actually shut the hell up for a few
minutes?"
Three pairs of eyes turned to him. Byers raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Is that...important...to you?" The force of the focused stares in the
sudden silence was almost palpable; uncanny enough to raise a crop of
goosebumps across his back and shoulders but Krycek held firm:
"I'd say it's the deal-breaker," he said, shrugging as off-handedly as he
could manage.
More beady little glances danced around the room. Whatever telepathic
geek-to-geek communication system the three Gunmen had developed over the
years, it was certainly smoking now. Krycek could almost hear the hum in
the air. He shivered involuntarily at the strangeness prickling his skin—
And then suddenly everything seemed—normal—again: there were smiles
all around and Byers was leaning forward, to shake his cuffed and tingling
hand.
"Okay, Mr. Krycek," Byers said, beaming widely. "I'd say we have a deal."
Three Ways to Sunday
Prologue
by The Spike
"You want to what?" Krycek asked again. He'd heard the answer the first
time only it didn't seem to have sunk into resident memory. It was just too
weird. Bad enough Mulder had stashed him with these little trolls for
safekeeping. Worse yet that Mulder's cuffs had prevented him from either
escaping or driving shrimp forks into his ears and thus putting an end to
the constant whine of their paranoid techno-geek bickering. But now they
wanted to...
