The Willing Victim Mulder rested his head back against the seat and saw the lights of
gaudy, cheerful Christmas decorations outside smear together from
the movement of the minivan and spinning in his head. He knew it
was a bad sign that his captors let him, no matter how
incapacitated, see where they were going. They would probably
kill him when they didn't need anything else from him.
Considering how he felt right now, he couldn't quite bring himself
to care.
Krycek had joked about a "never-ending interrogation." Now
Mulder couldn't pull himself free of the cycle.
Krycek. Only this morning Mulder's former partner had dropped
him off after the last interrogation. Now another group wanted to
know what Mulder had told the first group.
//I should have taken up Scully's offer to stay with her until I was
well, but I was too damned busy being noble. "Oh, no, I don't
want to impose." Stupid.//
But they might have taken Scully too if he'd stayed with her. Then
again, they wouldn't have been able to incapacitate Scully as
quickly as they had him just by bouncing her head against the
floor a few times. And maybe she would have been harder to
disarm than he had been. He'd barely had time to use the gun he'd
hidden under his pillow.
With all the times in the past he'd already gotten his head knocked
around, he was surprised he hadn't sustained permanent damage
already. These bastards had taken advantage of an injury sustained
only a few days again to bring him down. Combine that with the
drugs Mulder still hadn't worked his way out from under yet, and
he might as well as have handed himself over to these people with
a bow tied around his neck, a Christmas present five days early.
His head spun. //And all the king's horses (and what would the
horses do?) and all the king's men couldn't put his head back
together again. So they scooped it up, cooked it, and made an
omelette.//
All the lights—glowing, plastic figures and flashing, multi-colored
bulbs—just outside the window stabbed his brain. Pretty as they
were, they only reminded him that They were always accompanied
by light when They came to get you. You could hide in the dark at
least.
"There's someone standing in the road in front of us," the driver
said.
"Keep going. He'll get out of the way or get run down!"
"He has a gun!"
Mulder heard shattering glass and grunts of pain, accompanied by
a rush of winter air. As the minivan started to swerve, his guard let
go of his arm. Mulder threw himself at the door, opened it, and
flung himself into the night, hopefully toward a lawn.
His arms had gone up to protect his head, but he still hit so hard he
felt a shock throughout his body. He rolled on cold, icy ground
until something stopped him. Air returned to his lungs in a painful
rush. He heard more gunshots and opened his eyes to a
surprisingly bright world. Once his vision cleared, he looked
around to make sure he was in one piece, then saw his
surroundings.
A manger—flanked by glowing, plastic Mary and Joseph figures—
had stopped his progress. But instead of being attended by the
Three Wise Men, Jesus' birth was being witnessed by Mickey and
Minnie Mouse, a Santa-suited Winnie the Pooh and Snoopy, a
teddy bear, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus himself. And
Mulder, lying in his worn-out sweats and bare feet, stretched out
on the unforgiving, frozen ground like a human sacrifice in front of
the radiant child.
He started to laugh. It hurt like hell, but he couldn't help himself.
He would feel like shit later, but for now he felt energized, no
doubt from the adrenaline rush, and everything seemed funny.
Then the night exploded with sound, and Mulder saw Krycek
walking toward him. //He just saved my life again?// The
events of the last day came rushing back, and he tried to figure out
exactly what it was that he felt.
Four days of oblivion prior to last night for Mulder, but it seemed
that Krycek had been there through it all and knew everything that
had happened. Mulder needed to know what had been done to
him. He had to find a way to get Krycek to tell him, and he had an
idea...
It was doable, and so was Krycek... Mulder tried to ignore the
sudden heat that suffused him, but even that seemed funny at the
moment. //And so my sanity goes...//
Still shooting, Alex stepped out of the minivan's path at the last
second and grinned as it overturned and hit a parked car with a
loud crunch of metal and shattering of glass. The car's alarm went
off, wailing, seconds later. He didn't need the noise, but he
couldn't help his glee at the destruction.
Alex ran to where Mulder had thrown himself clear. It couldn't
have gone better if they'd planned it. Then Alex saw Mulder.
Alex had no time to appreciate the sight at that moment, but he
burned it into his mind to enjoy later. The cheap, glowing figures
were set in an innocently profane manner with Mulder lying in
front of them, the only one who couldn't light up. The agent
writhed with laughter and looked more demented than Alex had
ever seen him. His thin, worn-out sweatpants had pulled down a
bit while his cut-off sweatshirt had pulled up during his roll to
safety, revealing an expanse of pale, shivering skin occasionally
marked with bruises. The original head wound had broken open
and started to bleed again, either from rough handling during his
pick-up or his risky escape. He looked delicious and insane and so
damned available for the taking...
But Alex fought down the temptation to take Mulder right there,
outside, in the open, among the lighted Christmas decorations,
since he heard neighbors starting to come out from all the noise.
Alex helped Mulder—who, for once, didn't fight him—up off the
icy ground and over to his SUV. "Get in, and ask questions later!"
Alex yelled as he slammed the door.
Alex got in and hit the accelerator. When they had gotten far
enough away that they could no longer hear the car alarm, Mulder
said, "It's later. You knew this would happen and stuck around to
prevent them from interrogating me, didn't you?" Mulder's voice
sounded warm and husky and different somehow.
Alex tried to figure out what it meant, but who knew what went on
in that cracked head? "Yeah, but since I'm just one person I had to
wait until I head an opportunity to take them all down at once."
Mulder nodded. "So where are we going now? Back to the
cabin?"
When he noticed Mulder shivering, Alex turned up the heat.
"You'll find out."
Mulder rested his head back against the seat and shuddered in
silence the rest of the way to the motel. Alex got out first and
handed his leather jacket over to the agent, who certainly needed it
more. As Mulder walked gingerly and with a limp, Alex finally
noticed his bare feet and sighed at the thought of bruises and cuts
slowing him down. Surprisingly, he hadn't said a word in
complaint.
With the chill cutting through his dark blue sweater, Alex unlocked
the door and got them inside as quickly as possible. Mulder said,
"I'm surprised you didn't want to have your gun ready walking
in."
"I have a few tell-tales on the door. Simple things. None of them
were disturbed, and I didn't hear anything inside."
Mulder put his hand to his head and sighed as it came away
reddened with flakes of blood. "It could have been worse, I guess.
I could have hit a mailbox, or the ground could have been icy
mud..."
Alex was about to suggest that Mulder go into the bathroom to
soak the dirt from those bare feet and the scrapes he'd seen on the
agent's arms, but his throat closed up at a sudden trill of lust. He
smelled a sharp tang of winter cold, the darkness of earth, the iron
richness of blood, the faint salt of sleep-sweat, and his own leather,
all combined with Mulder's own scent. Did he want that
obliterated by soap? No, not at all.
Mulder turned to look at Alex suddenly, catching him staring, and
it felt like some rope binding them together drew taut. Mulder's
dilated pupils looked like darkness devouring the pine and amber
of his eyes. The crimson of dried blood at the side of his head
seemed to accent the slightly blue-tinged cold-pallor of his face.
He licked purple lips, and everything in his posture seemed to be
an invitation. Alex had never seen the man look so damned
hungry.
They'd each, instinctively, come one step closer to one another, so
near that they each breathed the other's air. Mulder moved closer
still and paralyzed Alex in an assault of cold skin and lips paired
with a hot tongue. They met mouth to mouth and hip to hip,
embracing with an almost harsh grip, stroking against one another
for contact and friction and warmth...
Alex desperately pulled his mouth away for breath and a moment
to think. He had the Mulder he wanted, and that made him
suspicious. Mulder made a soft, low sound of disappointment and
gasped, "Alex..."
//"Call me 'Alex,'" I'd whispered to him as he'd struggled under
the weight of the drugs...//
Alex looked Mulder over for signs of major head trauma and found
none. He didn't seem to be one of those alien shapeshifters. But
he'd thrown himself to the floor and been willing to spend the
night there, out in the cold, to avoid this just last night.
As much as Alex wanted to believe and take advantage of this
sudden change of heart, he couldn't accept it unchallenged. "Why
are you doing this, Mulder?"
Mulder breathed hard against him, so close that each shudder
rippled through him as well. "I had time to think today..." Mulder
made thinking sound like an intensely sensual activity.
Thinking and talking were two things Alex really didn't want to do
at the moment, but he wanted to be sure about Mulder. "And?"
"It got me nowhere." Mulder rubbed his spiky hair against Alex's
neck. "I wanted you last night, but the drugs... I didn't know if it
was me, can you understand that?"
Alex remembered something dark and alien slithering through his
own veins and mind, forcing him down and letting him watch
helplessly as it gave away all his advantages and left him in that
silo to die... He tried to keep all that terror and horror locked down
where Mulder wouldn't notice, but he wasn't sure if he succeeded,
not with the other man all but draped on him, able to feel the
slightest tremor...
"Yes," Alex said, with no trace in his voice of how well he
understood, "and I wouldn't want you that way. I didn't do
anything to you while you were under that would make you throw
yourself at me." Of course not. That kind of cheating took all the
fun out of it. While it would let him have Mulder, he wouldn't
truly have Mulder, and that violated the whole point.
Mulder shivered. "That's such a relief." Then he grinned and
rubbed his nose against Alex's in an Eskimo kiss. "You have no
idea how long I've wanted to do that. You have such a strangely
cute nose..."
Displays of hot, almost mindless passion Alex could deal with.
Lunatic gestures of affection gave him an odd but far from
unpleasant feeling in his stomach. Something to guard against.
Alex still wasn't quite satisfied with Mulder's motives. Alex
pinned the agent up against the wall and recited the last four days'
drug-induced confessions: the truths, the half-truths, and the
outright lies. That Alex revealed these things in a hot torrent,
breathing against his neck and grinding him into the wall at the
same time, could surely provide only a little incentive to go
further...
Alex found it hard to gather the will to move back and away, but
he did so. "What now?" The litany had left his voice sounding
even hoarser, smokier, than usual, but he felt it only added to his
appeal.
Dazed, breathing hard, his eyes like devouring black holes, Mulder
stared for a moment before sliding down to his knees. Mulder
pulled up Alex's sweater and tongued his navel before unfastening
his jeans and going lower. The combination of chilled Mulder and
hot tongue against his skin drove him insane. The agent lavished
long, slow strokes of that tongue down his cock, making him
whimper, before taking it in deep, sucking and nipping. Alex
groaned as he felt long fingers stroke his balls as well.
"Yes..." Alex couldn't help hissing. "No. No, you don't get to
stroke yourself." Mulder had slid his thin sweatpants down to
reveal nothing on beneath them...
Mulder stopped everything he was doing and looked up. He let
Alex's shaft fall from his mouth with a wet pop, let it slide down
his swollen bottom lip... "No?"
"I'll take care of that later."
Eyes burning with an unholy fire, Mulder deep-throated him again,
sucking and stroking. //Mulder, on his knees, wanton and
servicing me.// Alex didn't last very long, but, in a way, he felt
that the foreplay for this had started four days ago when he'd found
Mulder lying, bloody and near death, in the snow. By that
standard...
Mulder continued to suckle for a while longer then took Alex's
legs out from under him at the knees, dropping him to the bed.
The agent, still kneeling on the floor, regarded him with almost
feral eyes. Healthy color had come back to Mulder's face and lips.
//I brought him back to life,// Alex thought, then smirked. Not that
corpsely Mulder hadn't been a kick too...
"You said you'd take care of me, Alex."
//That wasn't quite what I promised.// Alex grinned. "I will. Get
up here. I want you to fuck me."
Mulder looked surprised. "You want—"
"Yeah."
Alex had his reasons. Mulder, being his rationalizing self and a
government employee, might manage to slither away from
culpability for that blowjob. But this would be hard to disavow
and would provide an irrevocable link between them.
//And I want this.//
Mulder kicked off his sweatpants before divesting Alex of boots,
jeans, and underwear. The agent pulled up Alex's sweater just far
enough to leave his nipples bare and fetter his arm and prosthesis a
bit.
Alex struggled at that. "What the hell are you—"
Mulder nibbled one hard, rosy nipple with his teeth while pinching
the other. He finally let them go and moved further up, covering
Alex entirely. Alex hissed as leather, warm metal tabs, and worn
cotton slid against his skin and gasped when their cocks kissed.
Mulder's wide-eyed face engulfed his vision. The agent loomed
over him and blocked the light.
"Don't worry. You can still move them. A bit. I just thought you
might like to feel your jacket against your skin."
To prove Mulder's assertion to himself, Alex took off his right
glove with his teeth, then let his fingers drift along Mulder's jaw to
feel warming skin, bruises, evening stubble, and a stubborn chin,
before sighing when Mulder's tongue flickered out to touch his
fingers. They trailed down until they clenched in the leather of his
own jacket, worn now by his lover.
"Do you have—" Mulder asked, so softly.
"In the jacket."
Mulder sheathed himself but set the slick aside. He slowly started
to slide back off the bed, stroking whatever flesh he could reach as
he went, before disappearing from Alex's easy view. He could
still be felt though, and suddenly in a place Alex had never
expected. His tongue circled and teased seemingly for an eternity
before thrusting in.
Even as Alex drowned under the sensations, he expected to wake
up at any second. This couldn't be his Mulder or his life. But he
had no problems with reveling in it while it lasted, especially as
slick fingers stroked in. He encouraged Mulder by spreading his
legs further and moving to draw the fingers in as deeply as
possible.
Then they pulled out before Mulder came up and slowly thrust in
one inch at a time, obviously struggling not to lose it too soon.
Pleasure and pain burned through Alex, making him gasp, "Just
give it to me!" The next stroke just about made his teeth rattle, and
it felt so damned good. He wrapped himself tight around Mulder
and gloried in every hard thrust, every rasp of the zipper over his
bare skin, and every glide of Mulder's ribs over his aching cock.
Once in a while he lapped at the dried blood on the agent's temple
until the wound reopened. When Alex's tongue hit the raw, open
spot, Mulder exploded into him with a scream that brought him
over too.
Tangled together and trembling, they just breathed for a while.
"You're sick," Mulder gasped.
Alex smiled. "I'm sick? Who got off on it?" Mulder shuddered a
little harder. "Regrets?" //Here's where the dream ends. Damned
shame.// Alex ignored the tightness in his chest.
"Lots. About so many different things." But Mulder rubbed the
side of his face against Alex's sweater before fading out.
It scared the hell out of Alex until he realized the kind of
exhaustion Mulder had to have been working under, recovering
from the last, heavily drugged, four days and being dragged from
his sleep by thugs intent on making him relive them. It had been
so hard watching those four days unfold, witnessing the abuse and
interrogation. //But he would have died if I hadn't found him, and
those bastards would have been so much harder on him if I hadn't
been there. I saved him again tonight.//
Mulder's eyelids fluttered, and he smiled in his sleep as Alex
stroked his hair. //You're still here. I keep expecting that piano to
come plunging out of the sky to hit me, just so I don't get
overconfident in my luck, but you're still here.// Alex got up and
cleaned them both up before getting a blanket from the other twin
bed in the room and draping it over them. Warm and secure, Alex
turned off the light and followed Mulder into sleep.
Mulder floated back up to consciousness with the scent of sex and
Alex, two far from dissimilar things, surrounding him. //I really
did that. And enjoyed it thoroughly. The way he felt as I—
//But I got what I wanted; he told me what I wanted to know. I
think. I don't have to be here anymore.//
Something knotted in his gut. //How can I know it's the truth? I
can't. Maybe I should stick around a while longer, see what else I
can get from him. I mean, see what else I can get him to say.//
Alex stirred against him and murmured something into his neck.
Mulder smiled at the usually wary killer lying so trusting next to
him. //I can't go. I'm not done with him yet.//
THE END
"I carved my initials into your heart
Against your will,
And handed the knife to you..."
Paradox II
by Viridian5
"How did you dare to become so real..."
—"Out of My Mind" by Duran Duran
—"Where Our Weakness Lies" by Human Drama
