Work Text:
Long Road
by JiM
There was a scuffing sound in the hallway, then silence. Mulder cocked an ear, wondering if he had the energy to go for the gun he had left on the coffee table. There was a furtive rattle of metal, two quick taps, like keys or lockpicks being sorted through, then something slid into the lock and the doorknob began to turn. Mulder didn't move; the scuff-then-two-taps signal told him whom to expect.
His partner stumbled through the door, shutting it by the simple expedient of falling back against it.
"Hi, honey, hard day at the office?"
"Jesus, Mulder, even your jokes are tired."
The FBI agent was sprawled on the couch, a seated puppet whose strings had been cut. He hadn't even bothered to take off his overcoat and was still in the same suit he had been wearing for three days. Head back, eyes closed, he said softly,
"Come over here."
He heard his partner cross the room and stand beside him for a moment. Mulder could almost feel the weight of that measuring green gaze on him and smiled slowly.
"I don't smell as bad as I look. I think," he added from a desire for scientific accuracy. There was a whisper of sound, then Alex Krycek was kneeling beside him and his head was a warm and welcome weight in Mulder's lap.
Mulder's hand found its way into Krycek's hair and he began slowly stroking, a soothing petting motion. Alex made a quiet murmuring sound and his arms came up to clasp Mulder. One was a warm weight against Mulder's left thigh; the other was cool and unforgivingly hard as it lay on the couch beside them. They remained like that for a long time.
Alex was often like this when he came home from an assignment. Mulder was used to it now, although it had bothered him in the past. He had seen the kneeling and the bent head as that of the penitent craving absolution, an absolution that no one but the dead and betrayed could give. Now he knew it for what it was; weariness of spirit so deep that it threatened to drag the body down with it. He knew it well and Krycek came back again and again to the one person who understood it better than anyone else.
The hair under his fingers was oily and gritty, as if Krycek had spent some time rolling around under trucks. Mulder smiled grimly -- he probably had. His assignments on the front lines of their Shadow War often took him into the dirtiest and darkest places, places where he fought against other nameless operatives with every ounce of animal cunning and viciousness he had ever possessed. And then he came home to Mulder.
Mulder, who could hold up a mirror for Alex, so that he could see that he was still human, still capable of doing more than fighting and killing. Mulder, who had always been able to make him feel something, even when they were sworn enemies.
There was silver in among the oiled silk of Alex's hair now. Mulder smiled again, even more grimly. None of them had truly expected to last very long in this war -- certainly not long enough to actually show any signs of aging. But it had been four years of struggle and stealth and careful planning and risk and, somehow, they had all managed to stay alive. He and Scully and Skinner and the Lone Gunmen. Others had fallen, were mourned, but they lived on to direct the fight.
Krycek burrowed his head more closely into Mulder's lap and sighed. Mulder thought his knees must be getting sore, so he pushed and tugged doggedly until Krycek gave in and slid onto the couch beside him. He kept his face pressed against Mulder's abdomen, though, not letting his lover see any of the things that must be swirling in his eyes. Faces, memories, horrors and joys -- they were all too sharp at moments like these, all too able to rend and gash the fragile peace they had built between them. Mulder had his own memories to fight off.
"Sleep now, Alex. We'll talk later."
end