by Anna
He woke and discovered himself bundled utterly in the quilted cocoon of
bedcovers. It was a stunning and strange awakening. Sunlight lay across him
in buttery squares, and the thin oatmeal–colored weave of the curtains made
liquescent patterns across his body that shifted with the hot air wafting
upward from the room's heating vent. It was so warm. He blinked, smiled
sleepily to himself, though it was a faltering smile, rather cautious.
Despite the previous night, he felt sure that at any moment he would be torn
from his resting place, kicked out like a cat into the winter snow that had
fallen in the night to drift and heap the suburban landscape outside the
window. He could see, through a crack in the curtains, a huge drooping tree
of snow. Tall tree—he was on the second floor, and yet its tangled
branch-work filled his line of sight.
Breakfasty sounds and smells were drifting up from below: bacon and butter,
clinks and mutters—or, wait—perhaps that was a radio. He sat up awkwardly,
swaddled in plaid flannel and the dark blue wealth of the bed's comforter,
then slithered out of its wrap to stand upright on the carpeted floor. He
had been uncannily quiet, but even so from the floor below he heard an
answering pause. When the sound of movement resumed, he went to the
bathroom, pissed, and then looked at himself in the mirror. His dark hair
stuck up freakishly around his head and he scowled while fingering it back
into a show of submission. This small act of grooming performed, he was left
with the decision of whether or not to dress. But his clothes were nowhere
to be seen, and borrowing from his host's closet without asking might earn
him the kind of curt reprimand that would strain their fragile truce.
He went downstairs naked, wondering if his favorite jeans had been
washed or burned, and strolled into the kitchen with only a moment's
selfconsciousness, which had more to do with a sense of being a lopsided
Venus de Milo than any worry about his bare genitals. But it was late to be
worrying about that now. The man at the stove looked up, looked him over,
and then looked expressionlessly back to his frying pan, in which he was
stirring scrambled eggs.
Alex Krycek smiled dryly. Skinner's aplomb was enviable; the man could take
a stairwell gangbang like a pro—how much would a naked punk in his kitchen
faze him? Answer: not damn much.
"You didn't ask if I liked scrambled," he said, moving to lean over the
stove, which was set into a countertop kitchen-island. He wondered idly if
Skinner had installed it to reduce his likelihood of having his back to a
door when cooking. That was how Alex's mind worked—tactically. The look
Skinner gave him was not easily readable. His opaque, somehow flatly-set
eyes traced their gaze over Alex again.
"You seem to have avoided infection," he said.
Alex absently touched the bandaged bullet graze on his cruelly abrupted
left shoulder. Wish they'd hit a bit lower, he had remarked dryly to
Skinner last night. What else good an artificial arm if not to take the odd,
stray gunshot wound or two.
"I have an excellent constitution."
"Fortunate for you—since you seem to have no respect for anyone else's."
It was an offhand dig, and Alex smirked. "Politics over breakfast, Walter?
How gauche."
"Get dressed," Skinner said shortly.
At the order, which came without elaboration, Alex looked around. He
disliked being forced to ask questions, so chose instead the route of
first-hand investigation, which led him to the small laundry room off the
kitchen, where his clothes lay strewn, clean and hot, across the top of the
dryer. He slid into his jeans, but merely held on to his sweater. A small
window looked out over the yard and he pushed the curtain aside to stare out
across the snow; a chill came off the window and his nipples tightened in
response, and then a sudden spill of gooseflesh rushed across his exposed
skin. Outside the sun glared over the fresh snow, riding its elaborate
cursive up to buried fence-posts and drift-clad tree trunks. In the next
yard children were building a snowman.
Alex returned to the kitchen. "You want me to leave in daylight?" he said
in a casual voice, as he moved toward Skinner. The other man was ladling
food onto two plates; when Alex rounded the edge of the counter, he
moved—just slightly, but in a way that suggested a wariness of proximity.
Alex halted, then moved closer. Their eyes flickered with glances that
darted back and forth around each other's faces. Skinner put the back pan
down on a burner with a tiny bang that shot a thrill along Alex's always
wired nerves.
"Did I say I wanted you to leave?" Skinner said coldly, jerking his chin a
little in a characteristically alpha-male way that made Alex want to smile,
but now was not the time to tempt the other man's readiness to cuff him.
"My mistake," Alex said easily, tossing his sweater off to one side and
sliding a footstep closer.
"What do you think you're doing?" Skinner asked with dispassionate interest.
"Nothing." Alex ducked his head and fastened his lips at the pulse-point of
Skinner's throat. The other man, unmoving, sighed and said nothing, but the
pulse under Alex's lips jerked hard. Alex, nuzzling, could feel his hair
brushing underneath the other man's unshaven chin. Intimacy? Not exactly.
But he took what he could get, when those rare chances came.
"I don't like cold eggs," Skinner said, pushing him away finally after a
long minute, looking not at all distracted by Alex's maneuvers.
They ate in silence, Alex not wishing to annoy Skinner and thus choosing
the safest course, Skinner wordless by nature. It was not a brooding
breakfast, though, just a quiet one, and after the details of clearing and
cleaning, it was not too surprising when Alex felt hard hands grab him and
twist him around for kissing. They both tasted of strong coffee; their
mouths were still hot from it. It grew more difficult to tell from which
source Alex's tongue burned—scorching drink or kiss. He felt warm, replete
with sleep and food, sated but ready to give pleasure if it was demanded. It
was demanded. No problem. He remained grateful for Skinner's reprieve,
temporary though it might be. Last night, he'd only meant to break in, to
take what he could find in the way of cash, portables, and first aid, and
leave before his ex-boss and long-ago lover returned. A stupid move,
perhaps, but it had been stupider getting caught, enough so that he wondered
if he'd wanted to—and Alex Krycek was not a man normally given to such
incisive self-analysis.
Danger—wasn't that was nine-tenths the kick? His body said yes. Walter
Skinner wasn't his usual type. Alex preferred a prettier and more sexually
ambiguous sort of animal. A Fox, actually. But muscle and machismo had its
occasional brute appeal, even when combined with a testy bureaucratic
temperament and a soul of chipped ice. 'Lovers' was a strong, sweet word for
what they had actually been, for their numbered handful of secret ruttings,
accidental, banal, impersonal. But what they'd had had been enough to forge
a bond—a thin, strained one, to be sure, but for now it was holding.
"You're not getting enough, Walter," Alex murmured against the other man's
mouth. Skinner's trouser-clad cock was jutting so stiffly against Alex's
belly he might have been the original inspiration for the
pistol-in-the-pocket joke.
Skinner's mouth removed itself and his thumb dug cruelly into the soft
flesh beneath Alex's chin. "Don't call me Walter."
Alex half-laughed. "Christ, you sound just like—"
"Don't say it."
His order was equivocal, but his meaning clear. Surprised into annoyance,
Alex said, "Why the hell not?"
With a voice bruising in its coolness, Skinner replied, "If I think about
what I'm doing, you'll regret it."
"You mean if I invoke Mulder's name—Mulder, Mulder—you'll have a crisis
of conscience—hey—" Alex jerked out a gasp as Skinner slammed him into the
counter and slapped him hard. He was already regretting his reckless,
unthinking taunts, but not sure how to appease the other man. Besides the
obvious.
Danger. Nine-tenths the charge.
"Fuck—cut it out," he said as Skinner's hand moved to impact again, this
time in a backslap. He could not quite pull his face from the blow's path.
Rough knuckles seemed to drag directly across his cheekbone as if cutting
the intervening flesh free, then the right side of his face exploded in
pain. Familiar pain, but still distressing. He tasted blood.
"Go for it, killer," Alex rasped out when Skinner's hand rose again.
Skinner stopped. His face was darkly lit, taut but writhing with suppressed
anger. Alex could read the struggle taking place within. Would the lust be
subsumed into the violence, or the violence into lust? Alex, hoping to help
the other man make his decision, deliberately stretched his right arm out
along the counter and presented his body as an offering. A punch in the gut
might have been forthcoming; it was a chance he took. But Skinner grabbed
him and shoved him into movement, pushing him out of the kitchen, then up
the stairs. There were a few times when Alex was tempted to kick out and
send the other man bouncing down the carpeted steps, but he held the dark
fire of his soul in check.
Last night had been quick, rough—need meeting need—Skinner astride him on
the enveloping softness of the bed, Alex falling nearly asleep even as he
was impaled and ridden thoroughly into an orgasm that had drained away his
last reserves of energy and sent him sinking at last into blissful darkness.
Now, Alex suspected Skinner would exact a fuller measure of payment for
debts incurred.
"Why didn't you get a Christmas tree," he asked idly, glancing down off the
landing as they moved toward Skinner's room.
"Cut the small talk," Skinner said tonelessly, close on Alex's heels.
"Christ, you're a hard ass—hey, okay—don't push me." The injunction was
literal—Skinner's large hand had just impacted in the small of his
back—but the words, bitten off with terse anger, also carried another level
of warning.
In the bedroom they squared off. "You came to me," Skinner said coolly.
"Don't get uppity."
Alex stared at the other man a moment, his jaw twitching askew and lips
parting slightly as mild laughter caught in his throat. "Yeah, okay."
It had been a concession, but Skinner's eyes narrowed at something, the
grudge perhaps, in Alex's tone of voice. "You're wanted on assault charges,
and for questioning in relation to possible charges of conspiracy and
kidnapping, not to mention a host of other likely infractions of the federal
code and local laws. And if I don't include murder on your roster of harm,
it's only for lack of evidence, not plausibility. You want me to pick up
that phone?" A small movement of Skinner's head indicated the machine on the
bedside table.
"What do you think?" Alex said coldly.
"Hard on a one-armed man in prison, I'd think. Hard to keep your balance
when the boys on the cell-block have you bent over a toilet and are taking
turns using you for one."
"What a prize fucker you are." Alex shook his head, still more amused—even
admiring—than perturbed. His eyes glinted and gleamed. "Does Mulder have
any idea what species of shark lurks under that button-down facade of yours?"
"Don't push me," Skinner said in a toneless replay of Alex's earlier words.
"You've got a hard-on for him, always have." Alex's chin nudged upward in a
tiny jerk of defiant emphasis. "Saint Mulder the Credulous. You can admit it
to me, sir." The 'sir' was mocking, the observation a jibe whose point was
dipped in acid. But Skinner wasn't playing.
Instead he said unexpectedly, "That extra punch of yours—that time you
and your associates jumped me. I've been waiting a while to thank you for
that."
"Well, you know... I was missing you." Alex's lips thinned and his eyes
flattened. His voice pushed so hard to make a lie of the statement that the
words were inverted back into what might have been nearly truth.
Walter Skinner stared at the cheeky dark-souled phantom who stood before
him. Clear-eyed, he had no illusions about Alex Krycek, didn't shroud him in
mists of inappropriate glamour. He had no glamour, no authority, no sway on
Skinner, and he was ethically irremediable. And yet he was far more than a
machine made flesh, an amoral automaton set into action by a higher power.
What creed or need motivated Krycek, Skinner didn't know, but despite his
apparent rootlessness and violent bent, he was no sociopath. Nor was he a
fool; Skinner would bet on it. Had.
After Krycek's disappearance, implicating him in evens that were very
likely government-sponsored illegalities, Skinner had adjusted into a hard
period of anticipation. He had waited for the letter, the envelope and
inevitable videocassette—had waited, gut coiling, for the remark that would
one day be dropped oh so casually by the man who had first been introduced
to Skinner with the disingenuous appellation "Mr Morley". And it never came.
Instead, much later—after Krycek's brief but brutal reappearance in his
life—he had received during a solitary restaurant lunch one day a
handwritten note, delivered by his waiter. Brief, neat, it had read: "I
pulled that punch. You've been expecting to hear from me. This is it. I
never recorded anything. I never told. We cheated the bastards of that.
Thought you'd like to know."
The relief, the ambivalence, still twined in Skinner's gut with less
equivocal and disturbing feelings—simple anger, among others. But he
himself had been pushed down a path that was perhaps not very different from
the one Krycek traveled now. He could have been—well, if not another
Krycek, then an equally damaged and tainted product. Public disgrace,
perhaps a suicide that no amount of planning could render dignified—these
could have been his reward for recklessness, for playing fast and loose in a
muddy field he'd had no business entering.
Now here was Krycek, standing in front of him, bearing the ugly evidence of
reaped justice, however informal and extreme. Irregular in probity, he was
now irregular in the flesh, and looked like the botched remnant of a
methodical dissection, the kind of thorough dismantling and disappearing
that puppet-masters liked to inflict when their toys had outlived
usefulness. He knew the real reason for Krycek's crudely broken body, but it
still jarred Skinner's resolve not to re-entrench himself in matters
sinister. Krycek was firmly on the left side of the fence, but even so
Skinner had harbored him and fed him eggs and buried his cock up that fine
ass, unable to resist exacting his own measure of private recompense.
And he wanted more. Needed more. One pounding of flesh was proving... not
enough.
He's right, Skinner thought abruptly. I need to get laid more often.
"So—what? We on for it? You want me on my knees?" Krycek shrugged a bit
with impatience. "On my hand and knees," he added with dark sarcasm,
rather as an afterthought.
"We can try that," Skinner said. He crossed his arms and drew off his
navy-blue tee shirt with one fluid move, then tossed it on the dresser. He
stripped off jeans as well, then considered Krycek. It had been disturbing
to watch him work into his sweater in the kitchen—a loose woolen item
designed like a jacket, zippered for convenience, it suggested a uniform
that necessity had made too familiar, and even so Skinner had had to resist
the instinctive urge to help Krycek dress.
Undressing him, however, would be expedient. He moved toward Krycek, who
flinched back a hair then stilled watchfully. But when Skinner's hand lifted
to the sweater's zipper, Krycek said in an arctic voice, "I can do that."
"Beside the point. Shut up." Skinner unzipped him, shoved the garment off
excruciatingly asymmetrical shoulders—one ongoing, one abridged—and stared
at Krycek's body in the light of day. A few scars, but no scales, no bolts
or hinges on the other man's emphatically human flesh. The ordinariness of
torso warred with the severed arm, the absence that remained like the
stubborn presence of what should have been.
"You're frowning," Krycek said quietly, almost breathing the words
somewhere in the vicinity of Skinner's jaw. Though jaded, his voice always
seemed on the verge of expressing interest; this tension of opposites always
unresolved.
"Mm," Skinner grunted abstractedly. He handled the nape of Krycek's neck,
ran his thumb up a line of tendon behind one ear. Dark hair, too soft for
such a hard man, filled Skinner's hand as he lifted it to the curve of skull
in which this creature resided, his life's fire coiled like a nest of
restless snakes within. What were his thoughts like? Like generations of
vipers, short-lived but breeding and replicating themselves in the way of
cells and habits? Knotted, unknowable, a serpentine entwinement of drives
and dreams. It was perhaps too susceptible of him to wonder, too close to
caring- -Skinner knew this, and yet curiosity itched at him. It was as if he
possessed a psychic nose that sniffed the scent of disappointed need, of the
bitter ash left behind after a thorough betrayal. Whatever the powers that
be had done to their tool, Alex Krycek, Skinner suspected it could have been
avoided, if only. And this was the rotten heart of the truth.
He caught Krycek's—Alex's—gaze and their eyes locked in grave mutual
contemplation, the kind of look men give each other who are unsure how far
to trust. But trust wasn't an issue here. There couldn't possibly be any
trust left between them. Too much had happened. But the younger man's face
was close and fascinating, dark and sharp and strangely formed, both
fiendish and angelic, if by angels one imagined something fallen and
conflicted, impure and fierce. One of the sword-wielding angels, with a
score to settle and an excess of zeal. Not unlike Mulder, if one followed
through on the likeness, and perhaps that had been part of the appeal.
Skinner kissed his fugitive, and immediately half regretted the impulse and
its fulfillment. His earlier kisses had been less deliberate, more furious.
Just another kind of feeding. This was too much, too much intimacy. And yet
if he gave into his opposing desires he would do no better, would likely do
more harm. Brutality was easy, but the pleasure was too fast and facile, and
the aftermath would yield no satisfaction.
Krycek's mouth tasted of mingled, not unpleasant flavors, and offered to
Skinner the uniqueness of itself, of a distinctive shape and method
recollected by this kiss. He kissed as if he wanted to be fucking with his
tongue. Impersonal in so much else, he was rawly present in his kisses,
which was why Skinner had rarely allowed the indulgence during their handful
of hotel-room liaisons.
A limber-fingered hand came up behind Skinner's own neck, to rest on the
curve of bone and muscle where his remaining hair lay close to the skin in a
short, rough pelt. Skinner sighed into Krycek's mouth. Regret. Dark regrets.
"It's been a while for you too, hasn't it," he said without forethought,
intuitive enough to decode the text of Krycek's tensed body, the meaning of
its fresh, sharp arousal.
"A while," Krycek said in his naturally husked, brooding tenor, that
incongruous bedroom voice which had been of the hooks to catch Skinner's
original interest. "I'm not the lay I used to be," he said, self-mockingly.
Voice still low, dark and stretched as leather or velvet; metaphors more
suitable to the wet soft fabric of his tongue, which could be like the
lapping of suede across Skinner's body.
Skinner's flesh prickled with renascent interest. "You'll do," he said
briefly. In answer, Krycek just breathed out a tiny ironic snort, while
Skinner freed the mental tethers on his hands and let them roam across the
younger man's body. Why not do as he pleased; there was no one watching, no
reckoning. He had long ago accepted the indifference of an abstract god, and
Justice wore a blindfold, didn't she. Good thing; if not, she might see more
than she bargained for.
He touched the sharp blades of collarbones, traced the line of hair
bisecting the chest, thumbed nipples as small and perfect as new pennies.
Krycek had the lean and hungry look of a skulking alley cat, but it suited
him. Now he was descending into that perpetual erotic breathlessness that
Skinner remembered so well. From this point on, if true to form, he would
play a symphony of small, grudging gasps, until orgasm approached, when he
would curse and then scream, fighting surrender every step of the way. Last
night he'd been too tired to vocalize. A pity, but today should make up for
that.
"Get on the bed," Skinner said quietly, pulling away and moving off to
ensure the readiness of accessories. The lube was old, the stock of condoms
generic, but both were usable. When he looked up from his night-table,
Krycek had shucked back out of his jeans and climbed onto the rumpled bed.
It was impossible not to reassess him with every gaze: the shock of seeing
his mutilated body had a surprising resiliency, still stunned and distracted
Skinner, catching him off guard each time he reviewed the absence from a
different angle.
Krycek noticed Skinner's examination. "You ever hear some guys getting
turned on by amputees? Think they have clubs for that? Big and beautiful,
they got—how about, I dunno, 'Chopped and Charming'? How's that sound."
"Ugly."
"Well, no fucking kidding."
"Are you fishing for compliments?" Skinner asked, incredulity striking him.
Krycek, who had turned to stare out the window, good arm wrapped around his
folded knees, looked up at him askance. Derision colored his words. "Oh
please. Give me a break."
Had there actually been a tiny crack in that brittle voice? Skinner didn't
trust his own judgment; Krycek was a hell of an actor—and he was always
working some angle.
"I've seen worse," Skinner said. The words were blunt, laconic, but Krycek
nodded once in acknowledgment.
"Part of the trade, or so I've been told." Krycek picked lightly at a scab
on his knee, face wiped clean of expression. "They just don't tell you all
that you'll have to trade... for the trade."
"I can't feel sorry for you."
"Who asked you to." Still erased of facial expression, Krycek stretched
back out on the bed. "Come fuck me. I could use a good fuck. Last night
didn't count. I was out of it."
"You're in no position to make demands," Skinner said, but he sat down on
the bed. The words were empty, not even the ghosts of old teasing. They had
never teased each other during their times together, rarely spoken, even.
They had hooked up, fucked, and then gone their separate ways, a minimalist
masculine ritual.
Krycek's head turned on the heap of pillows. He looked decadent, darkly
impish, a Beardsley catamite scrawled across the sheets. Skinner lay down
next to him and fingered the plane of Krycek's unshaven jaw. "I can't kiss
you any more like this," he said, half to himself. "Someone might wonder
about the rash."
"I'd love to see you explain that to Kimberly," Krycek snickered.
Her name on this outlaw's lips gave Skinner a jolt and he frowned. "I'm
thinking seriously of gagging you. So you might want to shut up."
"I might, I might not. You ever contemplated the benefits of a one-handed
man in handcuffs? Easy to turn." Krycek's smile was dangerous, feral.
"Oh, I'm contemplating that." Eschewing further talk, Skinner bent and
turned his attention to the younger man's outstretched body. He
contemplated—through action—the benefits of fucking a man who expected
little or no consideration: every gift was a favor and a surprise. Krycek
seemed intrigued, amused, that Skinner wanted to lick his nipples, tongue
his belly, embroider his flesh with the roses and bruises of pleasure.
Amused, and then encouraging.
"Fuck, yes," he groaned, when Skinner sucked in the lifting length of his
cock. Alex cupped Skinner's face and felt the amazing evidence of what was
occurring—incredible, the feel of the other man's mouth stretched around
his swelling flesh, lips welding to his flushed skin and leaving it damp but
burning with aggressive suction. One hand only to grip and guide his
tormentor, but it was nearly enough. Lips slid up his shaft, and then the
furnace of Skinner's mouth became a focused enclosure on his cockhead, which
leaked and pearled with the juices rising within.
Alex's hips trembled, already straining to shove. Who could have guessed
that Walter Skinner would condescend to blow him? In their half dozen times
together, he'd only lowered himself to the job—literally and
figuratively—no more than twice. After so much passed time and dirty water
under the bridge, it was extraordinary that he'd accepted Alex's visit at
all, let alone joined him for an old-times-sake buddy fuck.
Thank you, Jesus, thought Alex dizzily. It felt so damn good, rich water
upwelling inside him after a shriveling, soul-scorching drought, when he had
felt so bone-dry of feeling and humanity that only stubbornness had stayed
his gun hand from the final act of self-obliteration. So fucking sweet to
have a man go down on you, to want to.
"Ah, Christ—don't—yes, don't—"
"Don't stop?" Skinner asked goadingly, after removing his mouth.
"Oh, shit." Alex groaned. Skinner's hand moved deftly on his shaft,
fingering the thick vein along the underside, tapping his pulse and working
the taut, blushing skin around in small circles that traveled up and then
down into his balls, where they became a concentrated storm of slow,
rotative pressure, stroking around and around, building an inexorable ache.
"Who've you been practicing on?" he grated out, desperate need making his
voice harsh and thick, though laughter jagged beneath the surface.
"Myself."
"Good work."
Skinner responded by sliding his hand lower; Alex could feel those strong,
blunt fingers seeking the entrance to his body, and then felt their prodding
measure slide home, into the ringed heat of him, where he was still slippery
and stretched from the previous night. He lifted his legs to accommodate the
readying. Hard fingers burrowed deeper, found his prostate—another
surprise—and began rubbing a kindling fire there.
"All this foreplay—you'll spoil me," Alex said, his tone falling somewhere
between sarcasm and breathless gratitude.
Too late, Skinner might have said, but something held his tongue even
from this most minor of jeers. "You could probably use some spoiling," he
said instead, much to his bewildered dismay. To cover for his lapse into a
tolerance too generous for his own comfort, he jabbed his fingers deep and
simultaneously drew himself up between Krycek's legs.
Kneeling there, he withdrew his hand and reached for lube and condom.
Krycek lay staring at him, his one arm raised now to loosely parenthesize
his head. Lips parted, eyes heavily lidded with lust, he was still capable
of projecting an interiorized brooding. He might have been plotting, might
merely have been composing a mental shopping list, but he looked like a
devil meditating on his next work of mischief.
After rolling on the condom, Skinner rubbed a thick smear of lube inside
the younger man's body. The dryer, the tighter—it would have been a
ball-swelling rush to ram home and watch the younger man's face battle the
admission of pain—Skinner suspected that Krycek's Achilles' heel was a
pride in his own endurance. But he hadn't felt the hots to make a sparring
partner cry 'Uncle' since he was a rude adolescent. Regression was to be
avoided.
Yet if Skinner wasn't cruel, he wasn't particularly considerate either. He
entered with a driving, powerful thrust whose impetus wanted to split the
other man's tight ass apart, and the full length of his cock filled that hot
channel with a throbbing demand not to be resisted. Krycek arched against
the splitting force, pushing into it with perverse greed. His ass gripped
Skinner's cock and milked it: short, stabbing muscular contractions that
were like to make short work of them both. Skinner wrestled the other man's
hips and rammed deeper, abandoning caution entirely. Krycek's good hand
stripped his own shaft with a frantic rhythm that Skinner matched until he
felt the first orgasmic spasms begin, clamping down on his swollen organ. At
that point, his own hips lost their tempo and his movements devolved into
primitive, irregular thrusts, arrows shot wildly through his cock to spill
their flaming burden out the far screaming mouth of him. That small
exploding point seemed a wound jetting blood if not seed: it was that keen,
that sharply bladed.
And when it was over, it left Skinner cut to ribbons. He drew out of
Krycek's body with selfish carefulness, disposed of the mess clinging to his
aching cock, then dropped heavily back onto the bed, from which position he
stared at the ceiling and considered the implications of his act and the
undiscovered future of his compromised life.
A mess of complicated shadows, a house of smoke and mirrors—this was what
his world had become.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Krycek, by all appearances,
slept. He himself could not sleep, but lay instead on one side, gaze
cradling the other man with what should have been an impersonal form of
witness. When Krycek finally woke it was like a cat, with simply opened eyes
that were immediate clear and watchfully conscious. They stared at each other.
"So where are you going from here?" Skinner asked almost flatly, but with a
slight, accusatory emphasis on the 'are' that he hadn't meant to allow.
"I don't know. I don't make many long-term plans these days." The words
were implicitly evasive, but then again, what else would they be.
"It amazes me that you had no one else in D.C. to turn to," Skinner said, a
subdued taunting.
"Says a lot, doesn't it."
"You have an agenda. You always have." Skinner knew he was probing further
than he should. There were things he should not know, questions he should
not risk the answers to.
"I'm a bit short on options... these days."
Something passed unspoken between their mutually watchful faces that
resulted in a mildly incredulous look appearing on Krycek's face.
"You have one for offer?"
"How could I," Skinner returned curtly, but he felt a frisson of urgency in
his flesh that was not so much sexual as fearful. He was precariously closer
to the edge of rashness than he could have believed possible. Events of the
past day had been the catalyst for long buried energies to rise to the
burning surface. He wanted things, many of them not very nice, and not
appropriate for a man in his position. And yet he wanted them fiercely, with
an unexpected lust. Pleasures, secrets—power. His own power, not the
poisoned residual gifts of someone else's venomous fangs. Power acquired
like that was dangerous; those fangs could not be loosened from the soul
once they'd bitten deep.
Krycek was studying him, his dark eyes radiantly detached like those of a
jungle cat, but curious. "You'd like to stay on the side of the angels," he
said, voice smooth, rolling out his observation. "But you and me, we're not
getting our wings. In case you were still wondering."
"Speak for yourself."
"Why do you even try to keep your hands clean anymore—because you think
you work for Justice, or because you think that one day you'll get your dick
in his ass and won't be able to keep it up unless you're pure."
"Don't go there." Skinner spoke without rancor, and his calm seemed to halt
Krycek's desire to bait.
"You know where I've come from—you know who I worked for. The fucking
U.S. government." Krycek's voice remained equally calm and steady, unraised.
"Legality, morality, justice—sing it all you want, but there are always
going to be men who have to decide what has to be done, what the people need
to know and what they can't handle."
"Don't try and sell me on the cause, Krycek. I'm not buying and I'm not
playing."
"Yet."
"There's always a yet," Skinner said, not in concession but in familiar
resignation that carried a whiff of bitterness. He paused, caught up in a
moody gyre of conflicted thoughts, then raised his restless, ambivalently
shadowed eyes again to consider Krycek. "I want to know where you're going."
"Why."
"To know whether or not I should let you go."
Alex, rendered momentarily slack-jawed, stared at Skinner, then shook
himself scoffingly free of the brief, gripping sense of—of what? Some
feeling he hadn't had in half a lifetime, but which was delusional. Skinner
had certainly not meant to imply concern; he'd meant the obvious, that he
was contemplating turning Alex in to the authorities and needed some reason
not to, however strained and mendacious. And Alex, always ready with a
breezy lie, felt speech dry up on his tongue.
Finally, after a long minute, he said, "I can't tell you where I'm going
because I don't know. The only contacts I have right now are people I don't
want to contact. Someone I was supposed to meet in Maryland never showed up,
but some ugly fuckers did. I think there's a contract out on me—besides the
'official' one, I mean. You know, don't you, that I'd never stand trial? I
wouldn't last a week in any prison."
He was so dryly matter of fact that Skinner's gut clenched with anger
against the machinery of power that could enact such events with casual
rote. It wasn't sentimentality that made him angry on Krycek's behalf, but
he felt again that knotty, twisting regret for a man who had been used and
mangled by the system, and though it were playing right into Krycek's own
best interests, he'd be damned if he gave the man over to certain death at
the long-reaching hands of their shared shadow government.
"I know," he said, giving Krycek's rhetorical question his own phatic
reply. "I'm not turning you in. I wouldn't have fucked you if I were."
"Yeah, that would be a tricky one." Krycek's lips turned up in fleeting
impishness.
"Do you have money?"
"If I did—"
"You wouldn't be here," Skinner finished for him, grimacing.
"Mm. I don't have a stash anywhere here in the States. My resources have
dried up. I entered the country with one knapsack and now even that's gone."
"Why don't you call up Mother Russia and see if she'll fly you home."
"Yeah, well, that's the problem. I don't think my foster mom's feeling too
friendly right now."
"Tell me you're not really a traitor. I'll feel so much better about this."
Skinner's double-bladed sarcasm escaped him without warning, and after the
brief lull that followed they both shared an equally abrupt release of
humor—small winces and snorts that didn't quite pass for laughter but which
defused the sparking tension.
"We could swap philosophies on nationalism versus globalism, but I don't
particularly want to go there right now, do you?"
"Later," Skinner said.
It took a moment for the implications of that single word to sink into
Alex's pooling thoughts. He blinked. "How much later?" he asked despite
himself, hoping there was not the slightest hint of wist in his voice,
suspecting there was. "Like, later later, or... later."
"I think it would be a good idea to keep you around. No one would expect
you to be here in the D.C. area."
"What, in Walter Skinner's new Alexandria colonial? Yeah, that would spin
their compasses all to hell." Alex snorted again.
"You can't stay here," Skinner said bluntly. "But the city is full of
discreet apartments for those... close encounters."
"You can't crack a joke," Alex said ruefully.
"I wasn't trying," Skinner lied.
"You really want a rentboy? I'm touched. Impressed. Walter Skinner
cultivates his image as suave government exec—what's your next status
symbol—cottage on the Eastern shore, yacht for hosting those get-friendly
DEA parties—"
"Don't make me reconsider my offer."
"Do it now if you're going to. You think I'm going to change my stripes
once I'm shackled to a waterbed for your weekend pleasure?"
"Jesus, you're an asshole."
"No shit, Walter."
They glared at each other, but more mildly than their words warranted.
Neither was up to more than a negotiational skirmish, and that fact was
clearer to them both with every passing instant.
"I'm going to be bored as shit," Alex groused.
"You'll get over it."
"You're gonna be followed sooner or later."
Skinner rolled over onto his back, unkinking cramped muscles. "Let me worry
about that." He felt rather than saw Alex sidelong gleaming darkly at him.
"I don't think so, stud. It's my throat up for cutting."
"Then just let me worry about it for now—and I'll update you when I think
of what the hell I'm going to do about it—all right?" His tone was flat,
subliminally impatient.
Alex sat up, ran a hand through his tousled hair. From this position he
locked gazes with Skinner again. "Did I ever tell you I don't go for butch
daddies?" he asked with bland, conversational snarkiness.
"You're not my type either."
"As long as that's settled... what's for lunch?"
"It's Christmas, what do you think?" Skinner watched with bemused intrigue
as Alex's jade-green eyes nearly betrayed their owner by lighting him up
from the inside.
"Turkey? Ham—duck?"
"Duck? Christ, where did you grow up."
"That's classified." Alex smirked.
"There's a turkey in the oven."
"God, I thought I was imagining that smell." He cocked his head at Skinner,
lips parting slightly. "You always cook a turkey for one?"
Skinner stood and pulled on his jeans, then moved to the bedroom door,
where he stood with his shirt in his hand and his eyebrows moderately
raised. "Depends. Sometimes guests drop in unexpectedly over the holidays."
He left the room, and Alex heard his muted descent on the carpeted stairs.
He sat on the dishevelled bed, on his pleasantly sore ass, and attuned
himself to the awkward disbalance of his body, and watched the play of
curtained light turn small windings of fire in the dresser mirror. Funny,
how life clung to the body and would not be shaken off. Merry Christmas. He
might not need that gun yet after all.
t was dark and depthlessly warm; he couldn't move, and didn't want to. For
a moment the man's mind blended the current sensations surrounding him with
the sense of hanging high above a cold dark forest, among whose trees hung
the thick webbing of swarming insects, and then he was on the forest floor,
having fallen hard to land on his arm. In the dream he was a phantom, but
real pain lanced through him. He still could not move, but remained bound by
paralysis, which seemed to hold him in invisible tiny threads, which
stretched and tightened... tightened...
