I don't have to think Would you like to hear my voice I can't see the end of me Oh, Me It's totally dark. There's a smell of rotting garbage and wet concrete. I'm
hurting, it hurts to breathe , there's a bubbling whistling sound every
time I try. And I'm cold. This isn't good. I try to move and I can't even
scrabble any. Not good at all. There's too much liquid in my mouth, too
salty and thick for saliva. I need to move, move now and find a way out,
must find the light—
Whoa. If I panic I'm going to do the wrong thing. And I don't think I'm
allowed another mistake at this point. The first one obviously landed me
here, wherever that is... It'll come to me in a minute... And I idly
remember reading somewhere that "a sucking chest wound is Nature's way of
telling you to stay out of a firefight." Too true. I thought it was a witty
line, at the time.
Wait. Wait a minute. Dark. Cold. Badly hurt. Alone. Afraid.
This is a dream . It's the Black Hole dream, one of the many variations of
it. I was about due for that one. In a minute I'm gonna wake up with my
shoulder killing me. I go limp with relief. Just a dream. What do you want
this time, dream? It's gonna be bad: there's lots of blood—damn I'm cold.
It must've stuck me in the basement at the camp when I was sixteen. Or maybe
it's that silo doozie with the black oil bit. Just a dream, just a wintry
dream. Please...
"Who cares", I mutter. Blood rills hot down my cheek and into my ear,
cooling as it goes. My voice puffs brief warmth on my lips. And if
breathing's painful, just try to talk out loud. Ouch.
Okay, I've had it with the denial. I'm not dreaming and I do give a shit.
I'm lying in an alley somewhere in the DC area with a big hole in my chest
and a few minutes to go. Just a few minutes is how long I relaxed, dammit.
Just a moment with my guard down, and look. Just look at that. Fuck.
I don't know how long I've been out, how long since I crawled in here and
hid behind the dumpster. Long enough that it's too late. I lost too much
blood.
They got the drop on me because there were three of them, I got 'em back
because I'm quick... But that doesn't help now. I obviously can't go
anywhere. I wriggled back here headfirst and now I'm stuck— even if I
could move a little, which I can't, what then? I'm dying. And I can't think
very straight anyway. Shit. And it hurts to breathe, but I've said that. So
if I stop—when I do—it won't hurt anymore. I'll just close my eyes and
never open them again. What a plan. Damn I'm good.
I'm cold. I've said that. Okay, I'm babbling. Wait until it happens to you
and see if you make more sense...
And my eyes do close, all by themselves they close, and it feels mellow, not
good but mellow, letting go, sinking, numbing. I'll just rest a bit and see
how deep the black is, unfolding around me... There's a golden glow
suffusing it and a breathy windy voice calling—calling—
Then this awful jolt of pain rakes my chest and I try to scream through a
huge mouthful of congealed blood and there's light, dancing on me like
tendrils of breathing sunshine in the dark, flickering on my chest, snaking
into me and a murmuring voice like small bells ringing, saying,
"Alexei... Alexei..." If I'm far enough gone for hallucinations like these
how can it hurt so fucking much? It's not fair. I yell on and on in perfect
choking silence, and a detached, sarcastic part of me is listening with a
smirk...
//I thought you could take pain, tough guy?//
// Yeah, yeah, I'm taking it, I'll argue with you in a minute when my
internal organs are done rupturing, OK? It's gonna stop one way or another,
nothing can hurt this much for this long...//
//Is that right? Remember Tunguska, dicknose. Remember growing up, remember
the rest of your life. Remember Mulder.//
//Oh, shut up.//
The pain does subside, gradually, leaving me flat and panting and chilled
with sweat against the damp concrete. I take one deep breath, then a second
one. Then I blink in the flickering gold-and-black.
I roll experimentally on my side, my prosthesis scraping loudly on the
ground.
There's no pain, I'm breathing fine and the fist-sized hole in my chest is
just—gone.
The snakelets of light slide along my body,flowing up to my face like water,
like worms... like, oh no , like oil, golden oil... The windchiming whisper
wraps words around and inside me.
" Come now, Alexei.Come to us. Be ours."
I grab for my gun before I can think, push back, roll, lean on elbow, sit
up, grip... Two whole seconds. Too slow. No good anyway. The very air
tinkles, laughing at me. The terrible, bright dazzle devils my eyes and
climbs, caressing, awful, between my lips, up my nose, liquid probe to my
brain no NO not again no
//what the//
gold warm quiet bright
calm soft strong clean
Be at peace. We are not sick children like those you know of. We will not
inflict distress on you. This is not "mindrape".
"Wh—wh—whuff. Wha'?"
We regret that you little beings have to contend with them but we did not
guess they would create your species. We did not know they would let you
evolve to self-awareness, or we would have stopped it. It was a cruel thing
for them to do.
Voice shining unbearable into all my shadows, knowing me, knowing me and
nowhere to hide from the lucent agreement inside...
They made your kind badly indeed. So twisted into suffering. We are looking
for the ones who took you once. We felt their mark in you. We regret. Had
any choice been given us, we would not achieve rapport with you. We are
aware of your discomfort. But the ones we are searching for were spawned by
us and are our [charge? burden? destiny?] and only you were reachable of
those who know where they are. We regret that rebuilding you further is not
feasible. The ensuing physical stress would terminate your bodily functions.
We hope this is sufficient repayment.
A parent? A parent visiting a real sick kid in a—mental hospital.
Holy hell.
Last I knew, but that's a while back, your boy/girl/whatever was in room
1013 at level minus-eight of our North Dakota facility, sirs and/or ma'ams,
and you will notice we let him/her/it/them keep their little red wagon to
live in...
Oh, God. God screamed and ran.
Shit. The whole thing—all of our history, the whole hopeless struggle,
fifty-plus fucking years of merciless moves and countermoves, the maneating
future staring us in the face, the whole motherfucking shebang...
Sick children put away safe where they can't hurt others, and we aren't
anything except their badly made, soon-to-be broken toys...
The cosmic joke to end them all, and no one will believe me. Not in the
hundred years we don't have. I want to laugh and cry. I want to get shitface
drunk and blow my head off. I want to go see Mulder and—
Hey, no way. Where did that come from? Mulder is the last person to go to
with this, Mulder wouldn't believe me if I told him sugar is sweet, and I
sure don't need a broken nose to go with the rest of today's festivities.
What ails you, Alex? Mulder. Right. I need Mulder like a hole in the head.
I want this shiny shit outta me yesterday is what I want. Dear
hive-critter: now that you have your wayward offspring's addy, will you
kindly get the fuck out of my system and let me be. Thanks a ton for saving
my insignificant pointless life, but your kiddo left me with this serious
phobia of possession by oiliens of any color, race or persuasion. Nice
meeting you. Bye bye.
When extant in this, our proper state, we do not possess, but share. Your
bitterness is unwarranted, its source not of us but of yourself. You have
been existing at unnatural levels of pain even for one of your species.
Those have damaged you.
Well, no shit. Thanks for telling me, Goldie. Now out.
This other of your kind that you are thinking of, that you are linked to—
he would talk to us. You think of him as being eager for contact with other
intelligences.
I wobble back up to my feet, subtly supported by ways and means I don't want
to think about. There's a taste in my mouth like old blood and electricity
and a pulsing bright film on everything. I'll ignore that crap about links.
I'll ignore the whole damn nightmare until it goes away. Go 'way.
"Fuck off, damn you!"
That came out in words, unguarded and vicious. Then I realize the whole
thing—conversation, exchange, whatever—hasn't been spoken, hasn't
taken any time at all, has used only thoughts... And the triple-damned alien
is having none of it. It cradles my mind, its mental voice firm, reasonable,
imparting to me that throwing a tantrum won't do me any good, but once I've
taken it where it wants to be it will let me go. Hoo boy, have I heard that
line before, from human and oilien both. The difference being, this is
happening in my brain , with me still in it, and the thing is telling the
truth. I can feel it.
All right, then. Let's walk. I discover I collapsed not too far from Hegal
to get there, even if twenty minutes on foot is kind of a tall order for me
just now. I only see two people, who don't look into the right shadows to
see me , lucky them. And there's the blue cathodic flicker at that corner
window...
Limp across street; pick lock & enter; hobble up elevator and down hallway.
I lean winded against the door where the golden 42 catches faints glints of
light, making me shudder hard, once. I'm sore all through and still
freezing cold. The alien wasn't just talking about my arm when it said
further reconstruction was impossible. It meant blood loss too. I'm dizzy.
Of all places, I don't want to be here.
I use the barrel of my gun to tap "shave and a haircut" on the fake wood
paneling. Whimsy never hurts. I hear faint sounds over the muffled mutter of
the television, and almost fall into the apartment when the door swings
open. I catch myself on the jamb, working hard not to lose the gun.
Mulder is wearing sweatpants, a grey Georgetown Hoyas tee with the sleeves
ripped off, a SIG Sauer and a priceless look on his face. For three whole
seconds his mouth sags open and his eyes jump all over me, taking in the
bullet-shredded leather of my jacket and the three or four pints of fresh
blood on my clothes and face. Something like fear glitters briefly in his
eyes and I smirk at him as insolently as I know how. He looks really good
like that. Then his patented deadpan clicks into place and he says flatly:
"Pick some other doorstep to die on, Krycek. Go to the ER."
"IV feeds are too easy to spike, makes hospitals as dangerous as jails. I'm
not dying, Mulder—I'm not even hurt, just a bit weak. Let me in. You
won't believe what I have to show you."
I giggle, and blink hard against the brief doubling of my vision. Twice the
Mulder for the prism, I mean "price", dammit... The giggle devolves into
something strangled and mercifully silent. I gotta be more fucked up than I
thought, because next I know I'm being supported by a strong arm across my
shoulders and dumped on Mulder's old saggy couch. Long, nimble hands explore
my chest with surprising gentleness, snagging on the torn edges of the hole
in my shirt. The touch goes through me for some reason, like those fingers
are trailing under my skin, inside me... I very slowly blink and sigh and
lose my bones somewhere. I can't help it.
"Don't pass out on me, Krycek. Were you in these clothes when this happened
to them?"
"Cleverly put. Yeah, I was. But I'm fine now."
He frowns at me, distractedly wiping his hand on his shirt with a fleeting
twist of his mouth. There's something in his eyes I've never seen there.
Fear? Something. Maybe awe.
"There's a dip under there like someone took a chunk out with an ice-cream
scoop. But it could've happened years ago by the looks of the scar."
"Happened earlier tonight. 45-caliber ice-cream scoop, lots of strawberry
sauce. I'm fine. Got an X-file for you 'cause you're cute."
He snorts at that.
"If you're pulling my chain with cheap FX and dime-store blood, I'll have
you notice that Halloween is two months away, and you're a bit old for
trick-or-treats."
"Like I have time for games? What happened to 'I Want to Believe'? Get real,
Mulder. This is trick and treat. Well, it's show and tell, really. Do you
believe in the possible existence of extraterrestrial life?"
I giggle again. This is too funny, in a horrible kind of way. Got a little
gold for you Mulder, buy you the stars maybe.
Do your thing, Bright-Eyes.
I brace myself for the burning, gruesome discomfort I remember from that
other time, nausea in every cell, a weapon pulling out. But it's a silky
flow, considerate and gentle.
Mulder flinches and gives a drawnout breath, staring with all he has at the
bright dribbles exiting my body to gather between us and pulse there...
"It wants to talk to you."
"I can hear... I can hear them," he whispers, the way a child on Christmas
morning would say, "a puppy..." Stupidly, I want to cry. I don't hear a
thing now, and am I sorry ?
And he drops to his knees, hands empty and upturned, loose and yearning,
saying in a breath, "Yes... come..." I watch in a storm of tearing things as
he invites them in, his open lips flashing treasure, the glows meeting on
his face, sliding in, painting his pupils in swirls of goldleaf... He laughs
out loud, and I never heard him do that, is that what it takes to make
Mulder happy? Sitting on his heels with his head thrown back, shining in the
embrace of a mystery resolved, smiling to himself and at the things sharing
his mind....
A sharp pain in my eyes reminds me to blink.
I need to get out of here and go to ground. If I don't find out who sent
those guys, they might as well have succeeded, and there'll be no alien to
save my ass next time. I drag myself up out of the couch and back to
business as usual. All the heavy stuff, the lead bones of what I am.
But Mulder is up off the floor in a flash, standing in my way, his eyes
flickering back from inhuman gold to dark hazel, grabbing my shoulders,
holding me there. Rooted there. What the hell?
"Don't go."
"Mulder, I have to go. I'm not safe, in every meaning of the phrase. And
I've got things to do. Pressing things."
He gives me a tiny, wiseass grin, that I blink at stupidly. His hands weigh
me down, seeping warmth into me.
"One of them being to clean yourself up and find fresh clothes ASAP,
wouldn't you say? That's something you can do here."
Oh. I'm speaking to Goldie. Well, duh. Mulder wouldn't—well, he wouldn't
give me a light if we met in the middle of a forest fire.
"You know, that's an offer your host wouldn't extend to me. We're not
friends, and he'd resent you like hell for inviting me. And strangle me
for accepting it. Thanks but no thanks. Let go."
And Mulder chuckles.
"It's not the alien speaking, Krycek, and I am extending the offer. It's
the least I can do after this. After you brought me—this is—do you
know what this could mean?"
"No I don't," I snap. "I'm too fucking dumb. But they won't save us, I know
that much... Maybe they know the question to your apartment number, though.
Ah, screw this. I can use a shower. Just don't open the door to anyone. And
don't call Scully either, you hear? I'm not looking for another gunshot
wound today, or a flying kick to the nuts. And she'd arrest me."
"Scully's in California," he answers absently, already turned inwards again
as I step back and aim myself at the bathroom.
By the way, I always knew that the answer to life, the universe and
everything was at number 42. But I won't admit it. And Mulder didn't
smile. So he's probably heard that one a million times. So I'm an idiot, so
what's new?
If you've never washed off a lot of dried blood and muscle pains with a lot
of soap and hot water, you don't know bliss. I love it. Still alive, and I
love it. The whole thing is a dream in steam and scalding rain. Did I really
almost die and meet Goldie, and can I possibly be sluicing off in Mulder's
shower stall? "This definitely rates a nine on my weird-shit-o-meter." The
bathroom door clicks open, and I don't even tense. Going soft, Alex. Well, I
do have a switchblade in the soap-dish.
"I'm leaving some clothes for you out here."
"Thanks," I call back, not intending to be out of here until I used up all
the hot water. I sigh, considering Mulder. Remembering the edgy tension and
barely concealed storms that have come to define the man for me. Remembering
them as utterly gone as that deadly wound of mine, him kneeling on the
floor, his eyes gilded in an otherworld ecstasy of communication, the line
of the tendons in the long throat, and that spot where the jawbone attaches
to it, a perfect turning flow.
Whoa.
I'm sporting a boner over the shape of the guy's jawbone?
//You're sick, chelovek.//
//I have known that for a while. Now hush your mouth and pass me the soap.//
A dozen slow strokes to my dick with my mind over the way his hands were
resting palms-up on his thighs, over the long, strong muscles there,
shifting oh-so-slightly and the way his lips opened over light-painted
teeth, and I squeeze hard and come outright.
//gone gone gone into you, into all, flying—oh good oh god//
That went so fast it was almost humiliating. Well, I needed it. I was all
worked up. Close brushes with death make me horny. Means nothing.
//Fool yourself, you're not fooling me. That's a heartache there, that pull
in your chest.//
//It's a pulled muscle, dolboyeb. You got yours, now shut up.//
I hate trying to dry my back with an undersize towel, the logistics are all
wrong. "How's the arm?" "Either too stiff or not there at all." Ha. I've no
complaint with the clothes, though. Black jeans, black turtleneck, black
socks—black boxers ? MiB specials, wow. I leave my own there in a pile,
they're a loss, even the jacket. I just reclaim my wallet and sundry
hardware out of it and pat it goodbye before I leave the room. My boots are
squishy. That was a lot of blood.
"You look a lot better," Mulder tells me. I don't answer. I'm too busy
staring. Mulder's a looker, he always was, but—talk about gilding refined
gold and painting the lily. He's sprawled on that sofa like humankind's
answer to dozing cats and he shines. The alien's pulsing glow turns him to
living artwork, tiny threads flowing all over him, caging him in some
star-given freedom from pain... That incredible, gorgeous mouth like a
goldsmith's furnace, ajar on blinding knowledge...
"You look so damn happy," I try to say, not recognizing my voice for the
wobble and croak in it.
He smiles up at me and doesn't stop, now it's a grin and I'm basking in it,
it radiates—well, literally. I've never seen him do that, and it
transfigures him. It fucking hurts .
"Does it show? It doesn't seem fair to you, does it?"
And somehow I've walked straight up to that sofa, I'm standing right next to
it, I'm looking straight down at him and he's glowing up at me, glowing,
god. Then he very simply, smoothly, scarily grabs my hand and pulls me
down . I go like water.
And he's holding me against him, we're kissing and I don't know how it—I
didn't try to—but it's all liquid sunshiny lips feeding thirst and
slaking hunger, it's my own starstruck laughter and he's hushing me and
whispering and peeling clothes, he's freeing my arm and touching me to the
soul, to the bone, with the alien glowslowflowing around and within for
eternities welded together, inside and between us, skin and blood and his
hands and mouth on me... All over me, all over my life, remaking it,
smoothing my skin and my past and the rest of me, firing nerves I didn't
know I had and I'm remolding the whitegold lava of him barehanded,
baremouthed, to satinfinish perfection... We are both screaming, pushing
into each other with everything we are, fusing into hardcore flashpoint
alloy and I don't even know who's inside who when we come but it's golden
ribbons braiding, mating, flashing on and on and on and it never stops, it
was always waiting there for us at this point in endless time we call now,
now, now. Starbright. Golden. Whisper. Fade to black.
I drop out of the black into consciousness like a thrown pebble. My head's
in his lap, his hand in my hair, the other one on my chest holding mine and
he's still smiling. I try a word made all of silent air.
"You fainted on me, you idiot."
"I," licking dry lips with a parched tongue, "am not surprised. Mulder?"
"Yes, Alex?"
"Was this Goldie's, uh, the alien's idea?"
His smile disapppears down into this very grave, tender expression; he gives
a minute headshake and tightens his grip on my hand.
"No. No, it wasn't. It was my idea—and yours. The alien—the alien
just told me enough about you that I'd know what I've been missing all this
time."
A flash of pure terror goes through me. There's stuff about me I don't want
anybody to know ever . Things I've done. Things I am. But if Mulder knew
those, he wouldn't hold me like he does. He's still talking. God, he's got a
great voice.
"The alien just let me know how much you loved me and for how long you had.
And in how much pain you are. And that some people are even lonelier than I
am. And it helped us to touch each other right. That's all."
I grin feebly into his eyes.
"Does that make what happened the first interplanetary threesome in human
history?"
He grins back and I blink. But the light there is just Mulder minus some
shadows. There's no jeweled dazzle in it anymore. It's beautiful for all
that... Beautiful. Yeah.
"It's gone now, right?"
But I don't need Mulder's nod of confirmation. It's gone to have a talk with
its damaged spawn—with a little luck, it will mention to it in passing
that breaking toys is wasteful... Right now? I can't care about the planet.
I'll get up tomorrow and go back out into the dark and do what I must. I'll
tell Mulder some of the facts about me and this moment will be like a
dream...
But tonight there is light and I flow into it the way I only just learned to
do. We don't live long. We're not much at all in the grand scheme of things.
The only thing that ever gives us value is what others feel about us. And
no, it does not last. That's why it matters.
That's why tonight is golden.
Nothing Gold Can Stay—Love Story With Alien
by Wildy
If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
But that's old news
sweetened with emotion
Invented at your birth?
My whole expanse I cannot see
I formulate infinity
And store it deep inside of me
by the Meat Puppets
