Standard Disclaimer
Summary:  Angst, schmoop and conspiracy
Rating:  Probably R
Warning:  Carter may own 'em, but the concept here is mine.
Dedication:  To Alicia, better late than never, Happy Birthday

Shock the Monkey 5/8


'Too much at stake
 Ground beneath me shake
 And the news is breaking-'

	Shock the Monkey, Peter Gabriel

January 2nd

The smoker is dead.  Heart attack.  I doubt it.  Lots of unexpected deaths. 
And federal prosecutors are like sharks:  throw a little chum in, put a little
blood in the water and they go into a frenzy.  All kinds of indictments coming
down, some military courts martial.

Major changes.  Like the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times.

Mulder is depressed, I swear he is.  Even Scully noticed, when she showed back
up after Christmas.

Hell, Christmas is depressing.  *I'm* depressed.

For all I know, Skinner's depressed.  Which is in itself, depressing.  I don't
see him much anymore, now that I'm supposedly as safe as houses which is
probably okay, but I admit that I wouldn't mind seeing him, just to make sure
*he* hasn't changed.  Maybe he would be depressed, damned if I know.  Maybe I
don't want to know that.

Scully had a brief, intense, and very private conversation with Mulder at noon,
down in the canteen.  I don't know what it was about and I'm not sure I want to
know.  She looked at me once, seated at the table reading, I could feel her
eyes on me and glanced up.

Mulder had Scully pick me up a book in exchange for the sweatshirt.  His
mother's training, no doubt.

He'd noticed me reading Blood Sucking Fiends and Practical Demon Keeping, got
me the guy's next one.

Which was pretty damned nice of him, if you think about it. 

I have to admit, it made me feel some hope that he really has stopped thinking
of me as some fucking monster.

He did play cards with me the other night, condescended to teach me canasta. 
Apparently, it was something his mother had taught him when he was a kid, he
hadn't played in years, but that goddamn memory retrieved all the rules.  It
was actually kind of enjoyable, a little competitive, and I think both of us
actually laughed.  I know I did.  He at least cracked a smile a couple of
times.

It was nice to see.  And to feel.

Tomorrow, we have more hearings.  When these are done, basically I'm done. 
They asked me if I wanted to enter the Witness Program and I told them fuck no.
 I'm better off running on my own.  They have other witness, more important
fish ready for breading and frying.  


January 15th

I'm tired as hell and I'm cut loose.  I signed papers until my fingers had
cramp.  Mulder resigned last week and I've had some wet behind the ears kid
staying with me in my room.

The bastard never said a word, just said he was going home to get a change of
clothes.

So in spite of everything, I'm pissed and I feel-like he must have felt when I
disappeared and he knew what I'd done.

Which makes me sick.  Scully says she wasn't sure where he was going, but that
he might have gone to back to the Vineyard.  

It surprised me that she answered me when I asked.  I'm not sure why she did.

But I'm grateful.

Maybe she does see me as human after all.  She's gone through a lot of changes
in the last few months.  Everything she believed was partly true, and most of
what Mulder believed was wholly true.  She's always seemed pretty rigid to me,
but she's softened or changed, hell if I know how to describe it.

She says she's going back to teach at Quantico.  At least for a while.  And
then maybe on to practice real medicine.  Her gaze is distant when she says
that, but it's not unhappy.

At least she has a plan.  I have no fucking clue.

No, fuck that, fuck lying to myself.   I'm going to find Mulder.

And then I can decide what else I'm doing with the rest of my life.

For however long that is.

January 18th

Mulder really is depressed.  I'm worried, I put in a call to Scully, who
recommended dragging him to the doctor, but can't get free for a few days to
come up here. 

At this point, I'm not sure she'd have any more luck than I am.

I got up here two days ago, late in the afternoon, having made a side trip to
pick up my things from West Virginia.  I did a little financial transacting and
caught a flight up to Boston, took the ferry over again-dj vu.

It was getting toward dusk when I got here, and Mulder wasn't at home, although
his car was there.  So I picked the lock again.  The house had a musty, disused
smell that I didn't remember from before and the heat was cranked way down.  I
cranked it up and went into the kitchen.  Nothing in the refrigerator except
sour milk.

So typical of Mulder.  But it jarred me to remember that he'd supposedly been
up here for nearly a week.

I wondered if I could get anything delivered and called.  With enough of a
gratuity, it appeared I could coax someone to do exactly that.

While I was waiting, I built a fire in the fireplace, cleaned up the bedroom
and put on fresh sheets.  Cleaned up assorted bits of detritus-Mulder appeared
to have been living like a bear in the livingroom.  Eating out of cans, maybe,
from the look of the trash in the kitchen.

It worried me.

It worried me more when the groceries arrived, when I'd put them away, and
there was no sign of him.

And it had started to do this sort of snow/sleet thing right after I'd gotten
there.

I started something for dinner and tried to decide if the asshole had gotten
himself into some really memorable trouble.  About this time, the front door
banged open and there were voices, a lot of racket.

I went out to the foyer and stopped dead to see Mulder, drenched and icy, with
a cop behind him.

"You sure you're all right, Fox?"  

"I'm fine."  His teeth were chattering.

The cop saw me and put a hand on his gun, eyes narrowing.  "And who might you
be?"

"A friend of Mulder's from the Bureau," I lied, "Jesus, Mulder, have you lost
your mind?"

Mulder nearly fell over when he turned toward me.  Put both hands on the wall,
supported himself.  ""S okay, Danny, I know him."  More teeth chattering.  "I
forgot he was coming up tonight, sorry to put you out."

"No trouble t'all, Fox."  Danny looked at me assessingly.  "Get out of those
wet clothes and into a bath.  A good hot toddy in front of the fire."

"Sure." 

I couldn't say anything else, I was staring in shock.  He looked haggard, way
too thin, and he was goddamned chalk white.

I think my shock eased Danny's mind about leaving him.  He nodded at me and
went back out.

I was already moving, getting Mulder more or less dragged down the hall to the
bathroom, stripping away outer layers of sweats, swearing under my breath.  And
above it.  "Goddammit it, you have lost your fucking mind, haven't you!  Jesus
Christ, you're into full hypofuckingthermia, Mulder."  

I turned the shower on, got in and basically hauled him in clothes and all. 
Both of us.  Held him upright in the hot spray against me.  Christ, he could
hardly stand.  I kept stripping those goddamned layers off him.  He wasn't even
fucking wearing neoprene in any of those layers.

I finally got him down to t-shirt and jockstrap and he couldn't stand any more.
 I eased him down, sitting behind him in the tub, glad I'd taken my goddamned
shoes off.  He finally sank back against me, his head in the hollow of my
shoulder, too exhausted to hold himself up.  

We stayed there until the hot water began to cool. 

I don't know how I got him out of the tub, I rubbed him down hard, checking his
feet and hands for signs of frostbite.  And his nose.  None, thank God.  Got
him to the bedroom and wrapped him in the bedclothes.

I let him sit there while I went through the linen closet and hauled out some
of those cotton thermal blankets, an old electric blanket back in the back,
complete with control, and a number of quilts.  I took the quilts out near the
fire, made a pallet, connected and turned on the electric blanket and put the
thermal blankets inside all that.  

Went back in and stripped out of my own wet clothes and pulled on sweats of my
own.  Got him into sweats, warm socks and half steadied, half dragged him out
to the livingroom.

Got him settled and went back for pillows.  

Cursing a blue streak in every language I knew.

By the time I had him swaddled like a papoose on a cradleboard, he was nearly
asleep.  Soup.  He wasn't going to be up to anything solid.

So I made soup and tea and dosed the tea with brandy.  Woke him back up and
made him drink both.  Scowling at him.

It took him a while.  Finally, lying back on pillows, wrapped up snugly, he
waved the second cup away.  "Krycek, what the fuck are you doing here?" 
Hoarsely.

"You didn't say goodbye, you know how that pisses me off, Mulder, it hurts my
feelings."  Flippantly and I saw something flicker behind his eyes.  Not anger,
not humour, just acknowledgement.

"Sorry."  He looked back at the fire.  

"Why the hell did you do this to yourself?"

A weak gesture.  "It helps to run.  I don't have to think, I can just lose
myself in it."  Almost a whisper.

My throat hurt.  "Is that why you look like a goddamn famine victim?"

He just looked at me briefly.  Closed his eyes again.

I let him sleep, but I made a bed on the couch and I kept the fire built up all
night long.  I ate some of what I'd cooked and put the rest away.  With any
luck, the bastard wouldn't end up with pneumonia.

Somewhere around two in the morning, I woke up and realized that he was awake. 
He'd pushed a lot of the blankets away, was lying there with his eyes open.  

I called his name softly and his head turned.  "Go back to sleep."

"Can't."  Still hoarse.  

Naturally.  I got up, went and crouched beside him.  "Mulder, why the hell are
you doing this to yourself?"  

He blinked, looked back at the fire.  "If I think about it, I'll lose my mind."


"The hell, you're one of the strongest bastards I know."  I reached out to
touch his arm, he suddenly flailed out at me, I grabbed his wrist and he came
up.  I grabbed the other one thinking, dammit, when can we stop this shit, and
he suddenly just crumpled, head bowed.  Still resisting me, but not fighting. 
"Mulder, it's over.  It's finally over.  You've got your life back."

He shivered.  "I never had a life.  I'm a lab animal."

Ah.  That made some sense.  I eased my grip on his wrists.  "No, you're a human
being who had some really bad shit happen to him."  Evenly.  Not gently, not
kindly, I knew he'd hate it from me.  "So pull yourself together, you've got a
helluva lot of time to make up for.  And dammit, Mulder, you had it right all
along.  Little tiny pieces, and you figured it out.  Doesn't that count for
something."

He laughed rustily, bitterly.  "The Krycek version of Tough Love?"

I shook his wrists gently.  "Yeah.  Am I any good at it?  I need a new life
too."

His head came up, his mouth twisted.  "I hadn't thought of that."

"Go to sleep, or I'll drug you."  I let go of his wrists.   We stared at each
other for a moment and he lay back down, still with that twisted smile.  Pulled
one of the blankets over himself and closed his eyes.

I went back to the couch, but I couldn't sleep until I heard his breathing,
slow and regular, and knew he was really asleep.

Since then, he's been really subdued, but he doesn't seem as crushed.  More
thoughtful.

God help me, he's doing it to me, too.  I mean, what the hell am I doing here? 
During the last three days I've busied myself with small household repairs, I
closed off the unused upstairs, after digging a twin mattress out of the attic
and dragging it down to the first floor.  Mulder gave me an odd look, but said
nothing when I dragged it down the hall to the bedroom.  One bedroom on the
main floor, old fashioned house, and I made up a bed for myself on it.  I
closed off the heating vents upstairs after weather-stripping the windows. 
Naturally, the storm windows weren't on.  

Put some kind of fancy weather-stripping around the door to the upstairs,
keeping the cold draughts out and the heat where it belonged.  

Yesterday was surprisingly warm, after the snow storm, and I managed to unearth
the storm windows from the cellar and put them on the first floor.   I fixed
the lock on the back door and installed a new deadbolt on the front door.  God
knows if I could pick it, it wouldn't be any trouble for any other assassin the
Syndicate decided to send. 

I've been a veritable jack of all trades the last couple of days and I have no
fucking clue why.  Except that I don't have anywhere else to be at the moment,
I'm probably set for life financially, and I'm still worried about goddamned
pigheaded Fox Mulder.

I hate being introspective.  So I'm going to bed.


January 20th

The dizzy bastard got sick after all.   He got up yesterday morning bitching
and moaning that it was my fault for the electric blanket trick.  I nearly hit
him with the poker.

But he was flushed and he had this nasty fucking cough.  I asked him if he had
a doctor on the Vineyard and he sneered at me, so I called around from the
Yellow Pages and found a Family Practice doc who had, in fact, some memory of a
gangly teenaged Mulder.

The next step was getting him there.  I coaxed, I chivvied, I argued, and I
finally just told him that if I had to take him at gunpoint, he was going.

"Oh, right, you're going to *shoot* me if I don't go?"  Sneering.  Mulder
sneer.  It was almost comforting.

I didn't let it soften my stance.  "No, I'm going to pistol whip you.  And
after I get you back, I'm going to kneecap you."  

Bitching and moaning and coughing, he finally agreed to go, probably just to
get me off his case.  Asshole.

The doctor diagnosed a nasty case of bronchitis, gave him high-powered
antibiotics and orders to rest, lots of liquids, yadda yadda.   

So now he's lying on the couch, still bitching and grumbling under his breath. 
But I think it's pro forma, I think he really feels like shit.  He's sleeping a
lot.

Christ, the idiot probably needs, it, I forgot to write about what bad shape
his goddamned feet were in.

What a putz.

He's got this flushed face, it's the fever, but it almost looks erotic and with
those heavy-lidded eyes--I may end up taking cold showers a couple of times a
day.

He's still sexy as hell, that dark and brooding look, but when he occasionally
smiles--God only knows why, he's probably laughing at me worrying about
me--it's all I can do not to grab him.

We've managed to avoid punching each other for, Jesus, a couple of months now,
I think I'm getting used to it.  I'd like to continue the trend.

So it's either cold shower, or hot showers and my hand.  

I think I'll take a shower.

January 23rd

Another goddamned birthday.  God, thirty-four.  I'm thirty-four.  Made it that
long.  I didn't expect to.

I don't necessarily expect to make it much longer if the Syndicate goes for the
Sicilian ethic, but they might just cut their losses.  More hearings down in
Washington DC.  Skinner and Matheson and some of the others are really putting
it to them, the British Ambassador has flown back to London to share the data
on British nationals involved with the Home office and the international news
is getting interesting.

Some of the scary stuff is starting to leak out.  It's strange, there's a sort
of public calm, but I wonder if it's not deceptive.  Sooner or later people are
going to start asking how this got started, which leads back to the real
governments.  I don't think people are as sheeplike as the smoker always
believed.  

I hope he's frying in hell.

Mulder is much better, he's still sleeping a lot, but he's not running himself
into the ground.  When I caught him today looking out the window, as if
assessing the weather, I threatened to break one of his ankles.

Or legs.

It got one of those grins.  "Krycek, you are such an asshole."

"Takes one," I commented and went on out to the porch. The clouds were
iron-grey and I shook my head at him through the window.

Got another grin.

Just when you think Mulder's out, he shows you differently.

He's back at his computer now and I'm writing this from bed.  Well, such as it
is, the mattress on the floor.  He's the one with bronchitis, and I'm the one
who is tired.  Of course, splitting wood all afternoon might have played a part
in this.

I'm pleasantly sore.  And tired.  So, I'm going to sleep.


January 24th

Something strange happened last night.  

I'm not sure what time it was.   I woke up slowly, not even sure that I was all
the way awake and felt someone touching my hair.  

I was still sort of in that halfway state, I turned my face into a warm hand,
just relishing the touch.  It's been a long time since anyone touched me like
that.

I don't know how long I stayed like that.  My eyes opened after a while and I
blinked.  I can't believe I didn't leap for my gun or swing on him--Mulder was
crouched beside the mattress, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, holding his palm
against my cheek.

We stared at each other.  The moonlight though the thin curtains was enough to
let me see the gleam of his eyes.  I wasn't sure it was enough for him to see
mine.  

"Come on."  His voice was very quiet.  "It's cold down on the floor.  Get in
bed."

I couldn't move for a moment.  Finally nodded, still against his palm and got
out of the blankets.  Followed him stupidly to the bed and stripped off the
sweatshirt and sweatpants, left on my shorts and t-shirt.  And got into bed
with Fox Mulder.

He wrapped himself around the pillows and went to sleep.  The electric blanket
was warm, but not hot, the sheets weren't chilled, and after a very little
time, I went back to sleep myself.

I wonder if he's gaslighting me.


January 28th

I don't know if he's gaslighting me or if he's just being Mulder.  I'm sitting
here in bed with a bottle of Stoli and a soundly sleeping Mulder after-

After what happened today.  

I went down to check the furnace filter.  I'm becoming quite the repairman, and
since Mulder was clueless about storm windows, I figured the furnace filters
were probably a health hazard by now, I'd stopped and gotten some new after
checking the furnace model number.

I was right, they were horrendous.  Nearly dying of radiation sickness should
probably have cured me of squeamishness, but thinking about breathing some of
the gunk on the filters was pretty disgusting.

Okay, so I replace the filters, carefully put the old ones into a trash bag and
then straighten up.  And for the first time, I notice something funny about the
basement walls.

Concrete, most of them, except for behind the furnace, where grey painted
cinderblock was hidden by the shadows

This isn't a fancy basement, I reach up for the hanging light and turn it to
shine on the cinderblock.  Painted a dark grey, hidden by the furnace, and
rather sloppily done.  Done hurriedly.  

Secretively.

Suddenly, my skin prickled.  "Hey, Mulder!"

Sound of footsteps overhead.  "What the hell are you doing down there?" 
Curiosity, nothing more.

"Changing the furnace filters.  C'mere a second."

Thump, the sound of his running shoes on the stairs.  He came to stand beside
me.  "Yeah?"

"Look at that wall.  Does it line up with the back of the house?"  Not
according to my calculations.

After a few moments, I could tell he agreed.  He moved forward into the shadows
and stood, his hands on it.  Then turned to me, his expression peculiar. 
"Hardware store."

I was game.

Sledgehammer, mallet and chisel.  

We worked on that fucking wall a great deal of the afternoon.  Sloppily done,
maybe, but with enough mortar to hold the bits of the universe together.

Hollow space behind with dead air.  Stale and flat.  Crates standing in the
narrow space.

Crates containing a variety of materials, memos, shit like that.  Nothing new. 
Nothing upsetting.  Except for one crate, containing the documentation of what
they did to his sister.  

A small metal container that held the ashes of flesh and bone of one small
human being.  A child's nightgown.  Slippers.  Small barrettes for a little
girl's hair.

That's what did him in.  That's what did me in.

Sitting in the basement amidst the debris, he picked up the nightgown, smoothed
the fabric.  "She was wearing this."  Rusty voice.

"Mulder, don't," I reached out to take it from him, honestly scared of that
surface calm.

He flared out, slapped my hand away.  "Keep your hands off it, you bastard."  

We stared at each other for a minute, or he glared and I stared.

"I was eight years old when they took her," I reminded him softly.

Some of the tension dissipated.   He let me carry the crate up without protest,
sat by the fire reading the documentation as if he had to know.  Had to drink
the poison.

He started drinking when he'd finished.  Morose.  Silent.  

I tried to get him to eat something, but didn't have a lot of success.  He
picked at his food.  I tried to get him to put the bottle of scotch away
without success.  Finally found a bottle of Stoli in the back of his father's
liquor cabinet and put it in to chill.  Figured I might as well get
foul-tempered and drunk myself.

He didn't get foul-tempered, but he was sitting in front of the fire, crying
when I came out of the kitchen after having stuffed the remains of dinner back
into the refrigerator.  Soundlessly.  That stupid goddamned nightgown in his
hands.

Jesus, only William Mulder would give them his daughter and then create a
shrine in a crate behind a false wall.  Only William Mulder would leave it
there for his son to find. 

But I blamed myself.  Curiosity killed the cat, as the nursery rhyme goes, and
somehow I didn't think there was any satisfaction available to bring him back
in this instance.

I finally sat down beside him with the Stoli. Took a drink.

"I guess I should be grateful," Mulder slurred.  "My name was on the file
first."

I glanced at him, wondering.  "What file?" I finally asked.

"West Virginia.  There were files in this mine."

Oh, Jesus.  Those.  Mulder had even found those.  I was caught between
admiration and total fucking hilarity.  God, he had driven the bastards crazy
in his day.   But I suddenly realized what he was saying and felt a chill.

It could have been Mulder's clothes in that crate, which meant I never would
have known him, wouldn't be sitting up here drinking with him in his late
father's house in front of the fire, would never have been his partner, would
not have been suborned, might even now have made my bones in the Bureau and
climbing up the ladder of success.

It was one of those situations that makes your head spin, trying to imagine
where you'd be if your parents hadn't met, or something.

But Mulder-I shivered, imagining him dead, imagining the kid whose pictures
hung in the hallway, imagining the terror, the pain-and couldn't stand it. 
Samantha was just a photograph in a file to me, he was real, flesh and bone,
not ashes.  

I put my arm around his shoulders.   "Mulder, there's nothing you can do now."

"I know.  She's been dead for twenty-six years."  His face started to crumple. 
"He knew, all this time.  He knew when the clone came.  He knew, damn his soul
to hell."

What could I say?  He was right.  The bastard had known.  He might have built a
complex of lies to protect himself from remembering that he was responsible, he
might have blamed his twelve year old son, but he'd known.

Tears came again, Mulder folded in on himself and I just held him.  Nothing
more.  No complexity of desire and anger, just an ache.

He was exhausted after that, I got him to bed and he sank into a sodden sleep. 


I went back out and cleaned up the mess from the crate.  The basement would
have to wait until tomorrow.  And I didn't try to hide the crate, just pushed
it against the bookcase in the livingroom.  Out of the way, but not hidden
again.

And then I showered and got in bed beside him.

Where I am now.

People genuinely amaze me.  We'll have to get the stuff in the other crates
together and ship 'em to Skinner.  Just in case there really is something
useful in them.

I have no regrets over killing William Mulder.  I only wish someone had done it
earlier.


Standard Disclaimer
Summary:  Angst, schmoop and conspiracy
Rating:  Probably R
Warning:  Carter may own 'em, but the concept here is mine.
Dedication:  To Alicia, better late than never, Happy Birthday

Shock the Monkey 6/8


'Shock! - watch the monkey get hurt, monkey
 Shock the monkey
 Shock the monkey-''

	Shock the Monkey, Peter Gabriel

January 30th

Two miserable days of Mulder being a morose, angry, sarcastic son of a bitch. 
If this is how getting hung over affects him, I'm locking up the booze.

Well, now it's the Dad thing.  I killed his Dad.  We've had several exchanges
on that matter.  But no punches thrown yet.  Yet.

He went running today.  I didn't try to stop him, but did keep an eye on the
clock.  He returned at a reasonable time, so maybe he has pulled out of that
funk a bit.

He'd better.  Or I'm going to take up running.  If he's strong enough to be
this much of an asshole, I don't need to be here.

At least for him.


February 2nd

I packed my duffel today.  Got as far as the hallway before Mulder happened to
see me and went berserk.  No other way to say it, to see it.

We ended up in a huge fucking argument where I called him every name in the
book and he called me a fucking liar, fatherkiller, psychopath, yadda yadda.

I ended up slamming him against the wall, my hands on each side of his head,
wanting to hit him with such a sweet, savage yearning that I could taste it,
coppery on my tongue.  

I don't even know what I snarled at him.

I grabbed his hair, frankly, and kissed him hard, grinding myself against him. 
Brief abortive struggle, although he didn't close his mouth or bite me.  And
then he went still.  Completely passive.

I backed away, breathing hard.  Ashamed of myself.  "Mulder, I had the files, I
knew what he knew, I knew what he'd done, they gave me a choice.  I chose him,
and I'll never regret that choice.  I can't regret that choice.   For god's
sake, you know what he did to you, what he did to your sister, how the fuck can
you grieve for that?"

His face twisted, I thought he was going to hit me, but he whirled and slammed
his fist into the wall.  "He was my *father*!"

After a minute, I moved close, put my hands on his shoulders.  "Okay."  Almost
understanding.  Not quite.  Leaned against him.  He was trembling.   "I'm
sorry, Mulder.  It's cheap to say I was doing my job, but I was.  And I didn't
care about him, I cared about you."  An admission he could twist however he
wanted.  What the fuck.

But he didn't.  He just leaned against the wall.

Eventually, I convinced him to put some ice on the hand.  Doesn't look like he
broke anything.

And we're having a very quiet sort of evening.  Morose.  Both of us.

It didn't hit me until tonight that he'd gone berserk when he thought I was
leaving.

Everyone leaves Mulder.  That's what I thought when I read what I'd written. 
Poor bastard.

He hasn't heard much from his mother since it all started coming out, nor has
he called her.  Everyone leaves him or betrays him.

It makes my throat hurt to think about that.  Not because of his pain, but
because I was one of them.

So I'm not leaving yet.

God only knows why.


February 3rd

Quiet morning this morning.  Last night, we both just crashed.  Mulder was down
again, very quiet, although we watched a basketball game and had a couple of
beers each.  I let him alone, left my bag in the bedroom and worked on fixing
some little things around the house.  Loose doorknobs, the running toilet, etc.

I think he tried to work on whatever the fuck he's been working on at his
computer, but he couldn't focus.  Embarrassed, a little.  Depressed.  Upset.  

This morning, I woke up with an arm wrapped around him, yanked it back like I'd
been burned.  But he was asleep.  Face pressed into the pillow.  

I was just glad I hadn't spooned up behind him, he'd definitely have noticed my
cock pressed against his ass.   

But I realized he was asleep, I leaned up on one elbow, touched his hair.  He's
getting little flicks of silver in it, right along the temples.  Well, he's
thirty-eight, I suppose my turn will come next.

He sort of muttered something. 

I leaned over, studied his profile.  "You okay?"

"Mmmhmmm."  Back down into the depths of sleep.  

So I let him sleep, got up, showered, did the morning thing, made coffee and
pancakes.  He got up as I finished the second batch, his face still puffy with
sleep, wearing some ancient bathrobe over sweatpants and his T-shirt.

"Coffee," he croaked and I pointed, grinned.

He stumbled to the cupboard, got a cup, poured it full and wrapped both hands
around it, drinking it gratefully.  Or rather sipping.

Inhaling.  I steered him toward the kitchen table, sat him down.  Put a plate
of pancakes in front of him already buttered and poured syrup over them.  He
peered over the rim of the cup, set the coffee down and considered them for a
moment before picking up his fork.  "So what *do* you have planned for the rest
of your life, Alex?"

Alex.  

I nearly fell down.  "I have no fucking clue," I told him, startled.  "What
about you?"

"Me either."  He sounded oddly cheerful.  "I suppose I could just live off my
father's legacy and my own investments.  Not exactly filthy rich, but I don't
have a lot of need for suits any more.  I could just sort of live here and buy
groceries.  Maybe write."

I blinked at that.  "Right.  Well, hell, I'll be your housekeeper then, God
knows you don't know enough to put the storm windows on."

He flipped me off.   Took a sip of coffee.  "Where'd you learn all that stuff."
 

I sat down with my own cup of coffee and my own plate.  "My dad died when I was
young.  We had a neighbor taught me some of this stuff, so I could help my
mother."

He nodded.   Took a bite of his pancakes.  Nodded again.   "'S good."

"Thanks."  I felt completely at sea and then between one breath and another, on
the verge of laughter.  Jesus, have I gotten so used to him brooding or
behaving like an asshole that I can't deal with a good-natured Mulder?

I hope not.  I think I like this Mulder.

I wonder how'd he react if I called him Fox?  Probably an experiment best left
unperformed.  At least at this point.

We actually went into town to replenish the groceries again, together, and
argued amiably over who was going to pay for them, ended up splitting the cost.
 He said I'd paid for the last two batches, but hell, I can't take it with me.

After that, we had an early dinner at some place he swore had great chowder,
and he was right.  Then a movie, and back to the house.  I checked my traps and
made sure no one had been in, unobtrusively, of course, and decided that
installing a security system was my next project.  Something customized.

He still won't play poker, but we each had a beer and played some canasta
before going to bed. 

God only knows how long this apparent peace is going to last, but I'm going to
enjoy it while it's here.


February 4th

Mulder is a prickly son of a bitch.  Somehow, hell, I don't know how, we got
talking about birthdays--oh, yeah, Scully's birthday is coming up, he was
talking a little wistfully about getting her something nice.  

Naturally, I asked him if she'd gotten him anything nice in October, he rolled
his eyes and made some more or less harmless crack about my knowing his
personal statistics and him not knowing much about mine, at which point I
mentioned him reading the only personal statistics that counted.  He gave me a
very Mulder grin and said, "Yeah?  When's your birthday and how old are you,
Alex?  I thought you looked about twenty-four when I first met you."

I flipped him off.  "Twenty-eight, asshole.  And I just turned thirty-four, old
man."

He grinned briefly, then frowned.  "Just?"

"Yeah, in January."

Full fledged scowl.  He went back to his computer.

I mean, Jesus.  What did he want me to do, shyly confide in him that I was
getting older?  

Then, a little while later, he took off without so much as a head's up. 
Fortunately, I'd already been out and gotten the stuff for the security system,
I turned the power off long enough to get the wiring set up--thereby avoiding
his screams of outrage over not being able to use his computer or watch
television.  The man needs a goddamned laptop.   The computer he's got is three
years older than God, it's so antiquated he'd have to give it away, and the
only takers would want it as an anchor.

So, I brooded over that, over his changeable temper, and didn't hear him come
in.   Damned near had a heart attack over that, I've gotten sloppy since last
fall, I need to get my reflexes sharpened back up.

So we were staring at each other in the hallway, me with a screwdriver in my
hand, him still in his jacket, both of us startled and a little irritable.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

I told him.  Tapped the panel I'd just wired into the wall, right above the
foyer lightswitch.

He stared at it, clearly perplexed.  "You think any of 'em still give a shit
about me?"

"You're walking evidence," I told him, as I'd told Scully in the fall.  "Where
the hell have you been?"

He turned toward the hall closet. "Sorry, Mom, I forgot to sign out." 
Flippantly.

"Asshole."  I wondered if I could knock him out with the handle of the
screwdriver if I threw it right.

But he threw a grin over his shoulder, which moderated my temper.  "Just into
town for a few things."

I rolled my eyes and turned back to finish the job.  Went back down to the
basement to turn the electricity back on and came up to find the digital
display on the panel working just fine.   Good.  If someone broke in, the
police department was going to receive a goddamned alarm that would make them
think half of West Tisbury was being burglarized.

Then, I went into the livingroom to find him sitting there with the goofiest
looking cupcake I'd ever seen, one candle stuck in the ornate clown that was
the top half, and a small flat box. 

Smug smile.  "Happy birthday.  That's about as nice as I got Scully last year."

I had no fucking clue what to say.  I'm sure my mouth hung open.  

Mulder snickered and lit the candle.  "I had a sparkler for Scully's, but I
couldn't find any up here today.  Had to make do with a candle."

I finally found my voice.  "If you sing, I may have to kill you."

He grinned.  "You're safe.  Make a wish."

Make a wish.  When he's like this, I can't decide whether to just enjoy it, or
stab him in the thumb and see if he bleeds red.

I sat down cross-legged by the coffee table and considered.  Blew out the
candle.   "We have to split it, Mulder."  It really looked almost nauseating,
with the orange and green frosting.

"I don't think we're actually meant to eat it," he told me thoughtfully. 
"Better not." He pushed the small box toward me.

Leather gloves.  Nice black leather gloves.   I stared at them.

"You don't have any gloves," Mulder said carelessly and put his feet on the
other end of the coffee table.  "It's winter up here."

"You're right, these are great."  Both of us pretending it was as careless, as
thoughtless as his voice.

Two gloves, two hands--I don't think anything has hit me this hard since I lost
the arm to begin with.  But I pulled them on, flexed my hands.  "Well, they
fit, dammit, I guess when I murder you, they'll figure it out."

"Sick, sick."  But his eyes glinted in good humour.  "Just for that, I'm
cooking tonight."

"Thank God, I'm getting sick of my own cooking."

"You haven't had mine yet.  I'm making the Mulder version of chili."

I gave him a suspicious look.  "It doesn't involve tofu, does it?"

"Jesus, no, this is New England chili, not nouveau vegetarian cuisine chili."

"Good, I think I can handle it."

Evil chuckle and he was off to the kitchen.

I sat and stared at those gloves for a very long time.


February 9th

I'm not sure why I'm writing this down.  Maybe to prove it to myself. 
Although, if I'm delusional, writing down my delusions still won't make them
true.

And Mulder is so goddamned weird.

Well, no, he's not.  Maybe he's shy.  Or uncomfortable.  Or nervous.

Or all of the above.

Okay.  Details, Alyosha.  Write down the details.  Because if it never happens
again, at least you have this.

We've had a kind of pleasant week.  Mulder really is working on a book, it
seems to have taken over his brain, and he's not hesitant at all about
bothering me with questions.  Which is okay, I'm fast running out of projects
on the first floor, and I'm starting to itch about the upstairs.  Maybe if we
have a thaw, I could get the upstairs storm windows on.

Back to the point.  We've had a pleasant week.  Companionable.  Friendly. 
Talking basketball, the book, what Russia is like, my parents--he's decided
it's unfair I've got all the cards about his family and he knows nothing about
mine--what Oxford was like.

The man has the most incredible collection of weird or arcane information in
his head, sometimes he just floors me.

He told me about Skinner committing him in Chicago.  I wanted to flay Skinner
alive immediately.  He told me about Scully saving his ass.  I wanted to have
her made Director.

It's been very pleasant, very peaceful, and then yesterday, Scully called.

She mentioned I'd called her back when I first got up here.  I'd love to get my
hands around her throat, now.

He came fucking unglued, but not until he got off the phone.  "You called
Scully to find out where I was?" he asked, truculently.

"Yeah."  What point was there in denying it?  Besides, while I hadn't told him,
I hadn't taken any pains to hide the fact from him, either.  And why the hell
he was so pissed at me for doing it, instead of her for telling me--I have no
clue.

Bam.  That was it.  A full fledged Mulder temper tantrum, right down to kicking
over the coffee table, all about how I had no fucking right to bring Scully
into his troubles, yadda yadda.

I finally just turned and started to walk away.

He caught up with me and slammed me up against the wall.  His eyes were too
bright.  "Why?"

It was really hard not to shove him, not to hit him, but I somehow kept my
cool.  "Because I was worried and you took off, didn't say a goddamned word,
not goodbye, not fuck you, Krycek, not anything.  Jesus, Mulder, I had to know
you were all right."

It took the wind out of him.  He stood there, holding my shoulders against the
wall, blinking hard.  Let go of me.  "I'm sorry."  Very rustily.  

We stared at each other and then I did what seems to be turning into a habit. 
I leaned forward and grabbed his shoulder, pulled him toward me and kissed him
again.

Hard.  Hungry.  Christ, all of a sudden, it was like I'd jumped into the middle
of a bonfire.  And he was kissing me back.  Which shut down whatever part of my
brain was still working.  

Completely.  I remember pulling him closer, grinding our bodies together, and
hearing the little sounds in his throat.

Somehow, we made it to the bedroom, shedding clothes on the way--hey, you want
someone for six years, moral questions don't arise and neatness doesn't count.

And then we were in bed, I was lying over him, kissing and licking and tasting
every goddamned bit of bare skin.  Teaching him things about himself that I
think he'd forgotten.

Nothing fancy the first time, we both were too mindless to worry about anything
fancy, it was the plain old Princeton Rub, as someone explained it to me early
on in my sexual career.  At least for the first time.

We stayed in bed the rest of the afternoon.  Trying a lot of things.  Wonderful
things.  The man is living up here like a monk and has condoms and lube.  When
I first sank into him, I thought I was simply going to short circuit and blow
up.  When he sank into me, I thought I'd died and despite my sins, gone to
heaven.

We kept going until neither one of us could have gotten it up with Viagra.  And
then slept, wound around each other.

But when I woke up this morning, he'd gone for a run, leaving me no fucking cue
as to how to handle it, and by the time he'd gotten back, I'd showered and had
breakfast and he was very quiet.

I don't know if he sees it as a brief regrettable burst of carnality, if it was
a mercy fuck for poor old Krycek, mooning about his house and rebuilding it,
brick by brick, or if, as I wrote earlier, he's shy, uncomfortable, or
whatever.

But I'm damned well sure going to figure it out.

Somehow.


February 10th

Well, I think it's safe to safe that he doesn't completely regret it.  

Most of the day was genuinely weird, but last night was hot.

I think he's having some trouble coming to terms with his own responses.  He
was definitely hands off most of the day.  

I let that pass until he came in while I was making potato soup. 
Experimenting, mostly.  Bacon, onions, potatoes, nice and thick.  A touch of
cayenne.  

He leaned over the pot and inhaled.  "Smells good."  Dubious tone, as if he
were wondering.

"It is."  I rinsed my hands off, dried them, watching him take the spoon and
dip up just a little bit.  Taste it.  

He nodded, pleasantly surprised.  "Hey, it is."  Turned to look at me, licking
his lips.

I'm only human, I leaned in and kissed him hard, curving my hand around the
back of his neck.  He froze for a minute, thawed long enough to kiss me back,
and then pulled away, the brightest red I've ever seen him.  Muttered something
unintelligible under his breath and went back to his desk in the livingroom.

So I stood in the kitchen and thought about it.

Hell, maybe he was embarrassed at having to face the morning.  Mulder's forays
into the carnal have been largely one night stands, not that he made it through
the night.

So waking up to someone might be somewhat unnerving.

Especially for him.  Especially when that someone is me.

So, I let be for the rest of the evening.

He worked late, I went to bed earlier.  But I woke up when he got into bed and
just plain didn't take no for an answer, not that he was saying no.

In fact, when I rolled over to spoon up behind him, he turned to face me.  
Although that may have been worry about me lying behind him.  Maybe.  I had to
seduce him slowly this time, no hardship at all.

He's so amazingly sensual for a man who seemed to rely more on porn film and
his hand than anything else.  On the other hand, I haven't had many lovers in
the last few years, either.   And this is just incredible, being able to touch
him, to hold him.

Maybe waking up in the morning and remembering that I'd killed his father. 
Maybe not.  He hasn't said and I haven't asked him, but he did admit to not
being sure how it would change things.  About what he felt.  

I can live with that.  I've been feeling it for eight years and I'm *still* not
sure what I feel. 

I like to watch him sleep.  And I like to sleep next to him.

Get that.  Alex Krycek, cold blooded killer. 

It's one helluva lot of fun waking up with Mulder snuggled against me instead
of sleeping chastely side by side.

It's one helluva lot warmer.

So I guess we just take it day by day.


February 14th

For the first time in, Jesus, twenty something years,  I realized yesterday
that a) today was Valentine's Day and b) that this was my opportunity to do
something really, really wicked to Mulder.

Really wicked.

Well, I'm inclined to think he deserves it a little, all this pretending during
the day that we aren't fucking each other raw at night.

It's isn't denial, it's some sort of weird propriety, I think.  Or maybe it is.
 Maybe he can pretend he's not fucking the guy who killed his father after
dark.  Maybe the house is too brightly lit during the day, summoning his
father's ghost.

I'm going to buy incense and candles and hold a goddamned seance.

That's my temper again.

He's not exactly turning a cold shoulder to me during the daylight hours, but
he keeps himself pretty busy.  Out of reach.

So, yesterday afternoon, I borrowed his car and went into the city.  Even in
Boston, it's not hard to find the places I wanted.  Really good dark chocolate
truffles.  Silk boxers.  Cock ring.  Massage oil.  Candles.  Laughing my ass
off the whole time.  A variety of condoms.  Large bottle of lube.   I hesitated
between the most incredibly vile Valentine card and a simple one with no
message before I finally took the latter.

I was back by seven, and he was irritable.

"Where the hell have you been?"  Frowning at me from the couch.

"Out picking up a few things I needed."  Hard not to grin at him.   "What, you
thought I was stealing your car?"

He muttered something, turned back to the stack of paper in front of him.  He'd
been printing his work out from the look of it.

So I leaned over the back of the couch, kissed the back of his neck and went
into the bedroom to hide the things I'd gotten.

He seemed more cheerful when I came out, followed me into the kitchen where
there was stew simmering in a pot.  "So where were you."

"Went into Boston," I told him cheerfully and leaned in to kiss him again, this
time on the mouth.  

Well, maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder.  I not only got kissed
back, but a kind of an awkward embrace.  I took advantage of that, naturally.

He tasted like coffee.  Too much.  Good thing I mixed the regular with decaf,
no wonder the poor bastard never could sleep.  I left his mouth and nipped at
his jaw.  "So, you missed me a little?"

"I thought you stole the car," he muttered and recaptured my mouth.

Right.  That's why he was kissing me like he'd been afraid I really had.

I let him have that victory.  But tonight, oh, yeah, tonight.  I'm looking
forward to it.


Standard Disclaimer
Summary:  Angst, schmoop and conspiracy
Rating:  Probably R
Warning:  Carter may own 'em, but the concept here is mine.
Dedication:  To Alicia, better late than never, Happy Birthday

Shock the Monkey 7/8


'Monkey, monkey, monkey
 Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey-'

	Shock the Monkey, Peter Gabriel

February 15th

It's still very early.  Mulder is sleeping next to me.  I can see the suck
marks on his throat from here and Jesus, I should be feeling great. 
Victorious.  As if I'd lived out my wildest fantasy.

And I did, last night.  

When he came to bed, I had the candles lit.  Grinned at him wickedly, lying
naked on clean sheets.

He blinked.  Flushed.  "What are you up to now?"

"Happy Valentine's Day," I told him and patted the bed.  "Ever have a
Valentine's Day date, Mulder?"

"On occasion."  He tugged his sweater off, eyed me.  "Aren't you cold?"

"My thoughts keep me warm,"  I told him placidly.

He flushed again, took off his jeans and sat down on the edge of the bed, only
then noticing the small gold box.  "Alex," as if he were going to chide me.  "I
mean, it's not exactly--"

I arched an eyebrow.

He stopped, bit his lip, shrugged and opened the small box.  "Chocolate?" 
Looked up at me, his eyes glinting.

"One for each of us.  Chocolate was considered to be the food of the gods once,
wasn't it?"

"Neither of us is god," he told me sardonically, but picked up a truffle. 
Looked at me diffidently and held it to my lips.

Better and better.  I leaned forward, picked up the second and gave him his. 
Felt the tip of his tongue sweep the edge of my thumb and shivered.

And then suddenly, we were wrapped around each other, bodies straining for
maximum contact.  No massage, no gentle seduction.

Maybe that's my problem.  There was more of violence in it than anything else,
as if we given up using our fists and were using our cocks instead to punish
each other.

I can see the marks of my teeth on his flesh.  The marks of his on mine.

It was hot and hard and Jesus, we couldn't seem to stop, either of us, and now
I wonder what the hell it meant.

It wasn't about romance, it was about power.  I should have seen that one
coming.  As usual, I didn't.  I didn't see it coming when my feelings for him
blindsided me six years ago.

I think it's time for me to leave before I do him any more damage.


Feb 16

Of course, he caught me as I was leaving.  I was finishing a note to him, and
he came in, processed the situation and fucking flamed out completely.  No, not
completely.  He stuffed his hands into his bathrobe pockets instead of hitting
me.

"I thought last night meant something." Harsh voice.

I looked away, looked down at the note.  "It did."  

That only pissed him off more.  "Then what the fuck is this?"  He kicked my
bag.

How the fuck could I explain something to him when I wasn't sure what it meant
myself?  How could I explain that what I'd wanted to do to him last night was
so fucking different from what I did to him. With him.  "This isn't good for
you."  I sank back into the chair.  "And if I wasn't such a bastard, I might
have seen it earlier. "What the hell are you talking about?"

I spread my hands out, and yeah, I have to admit that my heart was going like a
trip hammer.  "Last night.  It wasn't supposed to be like that."

I expected us to go back to the same old same old, he looked that fucking
pissed, and there was no way I was going to hit him back this time, no way I
could even stop him.  

Instead, he sat down in the chair beside me.  "Let me get this straight.  You
think this is bad for me?  Jesus, how fucking fragile do you think I am?"

Indignant, but not furious any more.  I couldn't help it, my mouth twitched. 
"I didn't want it to be about whose balls clang, Mulder.  And that's what it
seems to be."

He scowled at me.  Turned his head away.  

And I had a fucking lump in my throat.  Maybe it was me that was screwed up.

But he shook his head.  "Don't leave."   Painful to be this honest.  "I want
you to stay."

I felt a flicker of something like hope, then weariness again.  The patterns,
the baggage, Jesus.....be careful what you wish for, said the old adage, you
might get it.  "Too much baggage between us, Mulder.  I can't--"

Anger again.  "Shut up!"  He licked his lips, closed his eyes and shook his
head.  "I don't want to hear about the baggage, Christ, it's over, it's all in
the past, why the hell can't we start fresh?  Is it that hard, Alex?  You can't
let go of your guilt, so I can't let go of my anger?"

I stood up so fast the chair fell over.  "Guilt? I did my fucking job!"

"So did the Nazis." 

It hit hard.  Too hard, and I felt short of breath suddenly.  "You bastard!"

He grinned, not humourously.  "So we've got baggage.  Everyfucking body has
baggage, Alex."

I wanted to be sick.  He was right.  He was wrong.  

Nazis. 

My belly hurt like I'd been swallowing broken glass, I had to walk around the
table, holding on to my control by a thread.  "I did my fucking job, I told you
I was a patriot."  

I hate being introspective, but I'm not stupid.  If I didn't feel guilt, why
did it hit me on the raw?  And he was watching me with that catlike expression,
waiting for me to figure it out.

Deep breath in and out and I let it go.  Turned back to him, saw that look
shift to....hope?  "What the hell--what are you going to do, hunt me down if I
leave?"

Feral smile.  "And kill you."  

I wasn't sure he wasn't serious.  No, I was.  

And I knew what he meant.  I hate it, but he's right, and goddammit, I admit
here that I'm scared shitless.  Be careful what you wish for.

You might get it.

Bastard.

I looked at him for a long moment.  "Kill me."  Assessing him.

His mouth twitched like mine had.  "Well, maybe only maim you a little."

And then we were both laughing and the danger had passed.  At least for the
moment.

Went into the kitchen companionably and made breakfast together, ragging on
each other nonstop.

Until after we ate.

Oh, God, it was good, it was scary as hell, no buried rage, no roughness.  Just
the two of us, skin to skin, belly to belly, making out like horny teenagers
until we couldn't wait any longer.

No brutality between us this time.  Just skin, touch, sensation, and I was
terrified.  I hate being terrified.  Especially when I'm on top.  

But I made love to him slow and gentle and Christ, it was hot.   More explosive
and frightening than the rage between us.  

Be careful what you wish for.  You may not know what to do with it when you get
it.

The only thing I do know is that I care too much about him to destroy him.  And
right now, I'm not sure what to do.  Except, for the moment, to stay.


Feb 19

It's strange.  We've both been pretty quiet lately.  I've been concentrating on
the daily household things, the usual mundane shit.  Keeping the fire going.  I
don't know why, it makes me feel safe somehow.  Some atavistic urge to keep the
animals beyond the shadows warded away.

Who knows.

Mulder looks up now and then as I move through the house, sometimes over the
top of his glasses, sometimes smiling, sometimes still so lost in what he's
doing that he looks like he's not sure where and when he is.  Who I am.  I
smile at him at those moments, nod and go back to whatever I'm doing.

I'm going to knock out a wall in the bathroom and redo it.  This shower stall
sucks, the bathtub isn't really big enough for one grown man, let alone two,
and the pedestal sink dates back to when I was toddling.

Mulder looked at me the other day, baffled.  "Alex Krycek, home contractor."

I blinked at him.  "What?"

"I never knew you could replace Bob Vila."

"Who's Bob Vila?"  I was stacking wood near the fireplace--the weather has been
really shitty and I'm convinced that we're going to lose power one of these
days.  I found a camp stove in the garage and an old Coleman lantern that I
brought in and cleaned up, stopped by and got refills for both.  Mulder looked
at me like *I'm* a shapechanger over that.

"He's the guy on this old house," he told me.  Then again, with clear uppercase
intonation, "The show, This Old House."

I gazed back at him, baffled.  

He started to laugh, leaned back in his chair. "Never mind, I guess you didn't
watch much PBS the last several years."

"I didn't watch much television period the last several years."  I thought
about that, back in the bathroom, where I was taking measurements.  I'd picked
up a lot of the supplies and they were in the half of the garage that wasn't
occupied by the car. I figured if we got snowed in, I could keep from
strangling Mulder for those little sounds and mutters he makes at his computer.

What am I going to do for the rest of my life?  

I'm only thirty-four.   I've had enough of undercover work, even if any of the
intelligence agencies would have me.  I find working on the house soothing, in
a weird way.

I'm not the cocky ambitious bastard I was eight, nine years ago.  I don't want
to get ahead.

But trying to figure out what I do want, at least beyond the moment, scares the
fuck out of me.  It scares the fuck out of me to look at the back of Mulder's
neck and feel this weird tenderness for him.  It scares the fuck out of me when
I wake up and find we're nestled together in bed.  It scares the fuck out of me
to need him.

Or for him to need me.

I never thought past getting in bed with him.

Sometimes, when I've gone to pick up supplies, I see him look out the window
when I pull back in.  And there's this weird feeling in my chest.  I can't
describe it. I'm not sure what it is.  Anticipation, exasperation, affection.

It's nothing I can identify.  And if I could, I think I'd be afraid to.  

He was lying on the couch brooding at the fire this morning while I started
dismantling the downstairs bathroom.  Not writing.  He's having a bad day.  I
expect my way of coping is to do home repair and remodeling, and his way is to
write or brood.

I came out at noon and found him still brooding.  Went over to the couch and
hunkered down.  "You okay?"

"Fine," he snapped, "Just resting."

Well, I can probably list several of Alyosha's sins, but stupidity has never
been one of them. 

"Yeah?"  I raised my  hand, traced his cheekbone with one fingertip.  "As long
as you're just resting."   Faint smile.  "No running."

He swallowed hard, blinked several times.  "Yeah." Huskily.  Then,  "How do you
manage it?"

I could feel my mouth twist.  "I rebuild."

He swallowed again.  "So why here?"

Too much honesty for one day.  I looked away, forced myself to hold to it.  "I
had to know you were okay." 

"And I'm not?"

I looked back, smiled at him gently.  "You're moderately okay."

"Why did you stay?"

I shrugged.  "You asked me to."

He reached out to touch my face, I turned my face into it.  Kissed his palm. 
Aching.  

He tugged me closer to him, and we damned well sat there and nuzzled until my
legs got cramped and my knees started to ache.  So I kissed him, got up and
added wood to the fire, and went back in for more destructive work in the
bathroom.

And when I took a break from tearing the wall down, I heard the click of that
antiquated fucking keyboard. 

I turned the heat on upstairs.  If we're going to have to use the upstairs
bathroom, I'm not freezing my balls off.


Feb 20

Woke up freezing in the middle and the night to find another winter storm had
taken out the power.  Great.  I hate being right sometimes.

You don't realize how dependent you are on the amenities of civilization until
you're freezing your ass off at two in the morning.

Thank God, I'd not only gotten more firewood laid in outside, I'd split enough
to keep us warm for a week.  I woke Mulder up when I got cold and chivvied his
ass out of bed, made him help me drag the mattress and a ton of blankets out
into the livingroom, got the fire going. 

It took a while for the room to get warm, and I have no idea how long the power
was out.   I finally stripped out of two of the three layers of clothing I had
on and wrapped myself around Mulder.

His hair is getting long, it was soft against my cheek, ridiculously soft--I
went to sleep that way and woke up to find cold fingers in my thermal
underwear.   I came awake yelping and making Whazzit sounds until his mouth
closed over mine.  

All I can say is wow.  I mean, really.

And it made me realize that until now, I'm the one who makes the first move.  

Which realization could have made me feel like shit except that he was all but
purring.  So I resolved not to and just used one of my discarded shirts for
cleanup before settling back with him.

I don't know what to call it.  Why I need him.  Why I want him.  But I do.

We all have to find our own redemption, I read somewhere.  Sometimes I wonder
if he's mine.  

Maybe feeling this way is a way of becoming human again.  Fuck if I know.  

He scares me with his willingness to drop what he calls baggage.  To fight his
way past it.  I scare myself with my need to do the same.

Anyway, when I made coffee and breakfast on the campstove, he admitted to
appreciating my weather paranoia, and even more so for the stew I simmered all
day, and I hope the power will be on again tomorrow, because we got fuck all
done but fucking for the rest of the day.  

I'm worried about the pipes freezing and I've been wandering around the house
between bouts turning faucets on to a trickle.

There, the power just went on.

I went downstairs and reset the hot water heater, came back up to find him
still reading. Hey, we aren't kids any more, we have to rest sometimes.   
"Give it about an hour, and a hot shower will be yours."

He looked at me over the tops of his glasses, smiling slyly.  "Shower?" 

I grinned.  

And that shower was definitely damned hot.

Mar 1

The new bathtub is big enough to play Submarine in.  

The bathroom is still a mess, with one wall knocked out and the half
dismembered den on the open end.    The shower stall is big enough to have an
orgy in, this bathtub, a fairly good sized double sink bathroom counter
arrangement and a new floor.  

Mulder hasn't even asked how I'm financing it, but did get enthused enough to
come down and picked out the new tub and shower.   All those years, that
monastic exterior, and he's a hedonist after all.

I'm not even objecting.  He gets this little kid look in his eyes.  Maybe it's
good for him to deconstruct his father's house.

Scully calls now and again to see how we're doing, it's strange, I wouldn't
have expected her to be so blase about me being up here.

Maybe she figured it out before I did.  She sure as hell figured it out before
Mulder did. Heh.

I've got the new wall framed in.  It shouldn't be long before it's up and
finished.  I had to pick up a few books, and get some advice from the guys at
the lumber yard, but it seems to be going pretty well.  There's a certain
satisfaction in doing something with my hands that doesn't involve blood.

Well, except my own.

We soaked in the tub together tonight, celebrating having the bathroom mostly
back together.  Among other things.

Candles, because I called an electrician to rewire the bathroom, and that
wasn't done yet.  

Mulder was soap slick and wet and goddamned fucking beautiful, and I don't
think there was a single ghost in the room.  Not his sister, not his father, he
didn't hold back, he drove me wild.

Maybe we're each other's redemption.  I'd like to think that, vain and
self-centered as it is.

Mar 3

I think I'm going to take up pornography for a living.  I could write for hours
about sex.  For a man who didn't take much time for that side of life--I mean,
in some ways, Mulder and I were alike in that, he because of his quest and me
because of the quest for survival--maybe I'm going through a midlife crisis.
But I'm only thirty-four.

Suddenly, I'm obsessed.

And so is he.

I was standing there in a t-shirt and jeans, leaning up to smooth that pasty
shit over one of the nail holes in the new wall.  Plasterboard.

That was it.  No posing or posturing, he came in to use the bathroom and I
swear, I could feel the heat of his eyes, turned to look and he pounced on me.

He was in a real hurry this time, which didn't seem as bad, and I had to find
the necessities because he was in a hurry, and wouldn't let me take my time,
and Jesus, I thought we were both going to combust spontaneously.

He's hot when he's impulsive. He was always impulsive.  Maybe that's why I
thought he was so hot, so fucking ripe I wanted to jump his bones from the
first moment he gave me that sulky look.

Even though he ditched me.

He feels it, too. He stops typing when I enter the room, even when he doesn't
look up.  He gets turned on in the kitchen for Christ's sake.   Or when we're
laughing over something.

Midlife crisis.  Gotta be.  For both of us.

He just walked through again, ostensibly to see if I needed help..

And I can't turn him down, no matter where or when or what the position.  That
look on his face, that hunger and delight, it undoes whatever good resolutions
I have for the moment, for the day, for the year.


Mar 7

I'm so sick of winter.  It snowed again.  No power outage, damn the luck, but
lots of dirty slush after.

The bathroom is finished.  I've never seen anyone that happy about a bathroom
before.  Although I confess to a degree of enjoyment myself.  My libido and my
lurid imagination are inflamed by both the shower stall and the tub and I
immediately coaxed him into the shower once I'd unveiled the finished room.

Christ, Mulder on his knees, seal wet and sleek, and Jesus, I'm getting hard
just thinking about it.

I think I'm going to have to replace the water heater.

Mar 12

I'm feeling low again.  I can't think why.  Christ, I hate giving in to this
mood.  I sat and played solitaire for a while and Mulder turned around after
awhile, came over to sit beside me.

"You could cheat that ace out."

I scowled at him.  "What's the point in that, I'd know I cheated!"

He cracked up.  And it flicked me on the raw again, I thought about the past,
shook my head.  Went back to the cards.

He grabbed me, pulled me close and his expression was.....appalled.  "Hey, it
was funny, your expression.  That's all."  

I studied him.  Wary.  Sure, the guy who betrayed him, betrayed his partner,
and killed his father and he tells me he's laughing because my expression was
funny.  "Yeah, right."  And I tossed the cards on the table.  I didn't shake
him off, though.  "What is it, Mulder?"  Wearily.

I saw his throat work.  "Alex, have you thought about what you're going to do
now?"

I turned my head away.  "Yeah."  Wearily again.  "I've thought about it.  Let's
say I'm good at putting an end to my career options, I have no fucking clue."

He blinked.  "Yeah, I guess I hadn't thought of that.  Me, too.  In a way."

I eyed him again.  "You mean your search for Truth hasn't gotten you anywhere
you want to be?"

"Not particularly."  Bitterly.

Fuck, I was feeling sorry for myself.  He deserved a little of the pity I was
doling out for myself.

I leaned into him, though, and he rubbed his face in my hair comfortingly. 
"Hell, maybe I'll just learn a trade."  Held my hands out, fairly battered from
the work in the bathroom.  "I seem to have some skill with building."  Drily.

"In more ways than one," he told me humorously.

Nothing in his eyes but relief.  So I sighed and put my face into his neck. 
Really, it's not such a bad idea, except I have a lot of catching up to do. 
"Well," rather muffled, "It would be a living.  Sort of."

His leg went over my lap and he nuzzled me.  I can't believe this Mulder. 
Well, I can, but I marvel at it.  "Plenty of work on the island, I'd think." 
Whispered in my ear.

He really is an asshole.  Bait the trap, Fox, and put just the right thing out
there and poor Alyosha will walk right in.  Which is absolutely true.  So I
did.  "Yeah, I would imagine."  Leaned back again to study his face.  "I'm
okay, Mulder."

He was one of the best profilers.  He studied me back.  Then glanced away.  "I
want you to stay."   With some difficulty.  Despite the fact that he was
maintaining that limpet like hold on me.

It made my chest feel tight.  As simple as that.

What, aside from being molested at regular intervals, does he get out of it?
Damned if I know.  I'm not the a nice guy, I know that, I was an ambitious son
of a bitch who got sucked in over my head, I've killed in cold blood, human or
Other, and I don't delude myself that I'm capable of altruism.

But in spite of all that, I'm human.  I care about him.  Maybe he made me human
again, Christ, I don't know.  Trying to survive bled out everything but
survival, until I woke up sick and shaking and with two arms again.

Maybe all of it made me less than human.   Wheeling and dealing and trying to
stay alive, while also trying to find the chinks in the Others armor, their
defenses, trying to figure out how to stop them with only a few of the powers
that were in favor of it.  

That wasn't altruism, that was just more survival.

Maybe getting my arm back and having it all end made me real again.

I feel real when he touches me.  Or vice versa.

I think I'm going to work on renovating the kitchen, maybe rebuilding the
basement so that we can use it for something else, so that it isn't that shrine
to the dead in his mind.

I hope.


Standard Disclaimer
Summary:  Angst, schmoop and conspiracy
Rating:  Probably R
Warning:  Carter may own 'em, but the concept here is mine.
Dedication:  To Alicia, better late than never, Happy Birthday

Shock the Monkey 8/8


'Shock the monkey to life
 Shock the monkey to life-.'

	Shock the Monkey, Peter Gabriel

Mar 15

I went to the grocery store this morning, and when I got back--I could tell
Mulder was spoiling for a fight.  Probably because I didn't tell him I was
going.  I thought about it.  He needs to know that when I said I wouldn't
leave, I meant it, and I'm not going to feed his neurosis by advising him every
time I walk out the door.

That way lies madness.

I didn't feel like fighting, so I went back out to the car to get another load
of grocery sacks.  He grabbed his jacket and followed me out, and I could feel
the muscles in my shoulders tightening.  But he just helped me unload the car. 

He was doing better, he was trying so goddamned hard, I bumped him with my hip
against the door and kissed him, the paper tickling my chin.  "Hi."

He looked startled, but pleased.  "Hi.  I didn't realize how low we were
getting on everything."

"We were down to starvation rations," I told him drily, having been there a
couple of times.  

We put away the groceries, and he was quiet, but not sullen, not sulky.

That quiet--he was having a bad day again.  I made us some roast beef
sandwiches, creamy horseradish and cheddar cheese slices, kosher dills--we at
on the couch, and his mood was still quiet.  So once we'd finished, I tipped
him back on the couch.  "Bad day?"

His breath was warm on my throat.  I managed to squirm down enough to kiss him,
tasting roast beef and brown mustard and the garlic of the pickles.  

He seemed less interested sexually than just wanting to touch.  So we did a lot
of nuzzling, a *lot* of nuzzling and he finally muttered.  "Yeah, bad day."

I sighed.  "We're going to have 'em."

He nodded.  Sighed.  "Post traumatic stress?"

I chuckled.  "I don't give it a name, Mulder, I just know it's there."  Kissed
him gently again.  

So we lay there for quite a while, not talking, just.....being there with each
other.

I think I dozed for a while.  He's sleeping too much and I've caught his
insomnia, I get up at night and case the house, making sure the system is on,
that there are no unfamiliar shadows outside of the house.

He suddenly asked me, "Do you have a middle name?"

I gave him a brief grin.  "I have several."

"No shit?"  He leaned up, arched one eyebrow.  "I only have the one.  What are
yours?"

I shook my head, amused.  "Not important, Mulder."

His mouth curved and he was laughing then.  "Classified, huh?"

I grimaced.  "All right, all right, it's not like it's a state secret.  
Alexander Peter Nicholas John Krycek.  In English."

"Pyetr?"

I pinched him.  "Don't go there."

"Ivan," he guessed.

"Ivanovich.  When my mother was really pissed, she'd called me Alexander
Ivanovich Krycek.  My father's name was Ivan."

"John," he agreed.  Nuzzled me again.

"Actually, the John came from Janos, her father."  I leaned up on one elbow,
surveying him.  "How did you end up with Fox?"

He grimaced.  "I thought you'd read all my records."

"They didn't include why your parents named you what they named you."  Drily. 
"Although, I assume William was for your father."

"Fox was for one of the WASP ancestors." He sighed.  "Surname.  Or so they told
me."

"It suits you," I told him gravely.  "Like the Protestant martyr."

For some reason, that lit his fire, Christ, I don't know why.  Maybe because
he'd almost certainly heard, "It suits you, you're a real fox," that he pulled
my head down and dove in, running his tongue between my lips.

My dick cooperated nicely, thank you, and I'm pleased to say his did the same. 
We ended up naked and sweaty and sticky from nothing more than the old
Princeton rub, since both of us were too lazy to get up and get the
necessities.

But Christ, for an instant, held about one breath away from coming by his grip,
I forgot all of it, all the past, all the problems, all the pain.  I just felt
this terrible, ravening joy, I wanted to eat him up, to consume him.

Makes the anthropological theories on cannibalism a lot more sensible.

Except it wasn't, strictly speak, wanting to eat him up.  I don't know how to
describe it, not even to myself.

We're two halves of a whole, mirror images in some ways.  Not in others, but we
were trapped so long by that mirror....

I think we're free.

I hope we are.


Mar 16

Well, I got the kitchen started and we have a new state of the art range
installed already.  

There's an old guy on the island who comes over to give me a hand with, shall
we say, the tasks that require a little more skill and experience than I have. 
He gave me some good ideas on opening up that fucking sixties style kitchen and
pronounced the wall between it and the dining room a nonloadbearing wall, which
means I can tear that sucker out.

We're going for the great room approach.  

This house won't have any ghosts when I'm done.  I hope.  Although the upstairs
is still an issue.  And I think that I'm going to see about new furniture.  I
mean, he moved his stuff up here, but still, it's mostly his father's house.  
I'm going to make it his.

Maybe mine.

I guess my internal jury is still out on that one.  When I'm thinking about
myself, who I am, what I am, I get shit scared and think I should leave.  When
I'm thinking about him, I think I'll wait until he's better before leaving. 
And when I'm not thinking at all, I just seem to accept that I'm staying here.

I don't think it's for lack of plans.  I think I want to be here.  

How fair is that to either of us?  Sure, it's a Brave New World, but who the
hell knows what could happen tomorrow?  On one hand, if they were going to come
after me, they would have by now.  If they were still planning on coming after
him, they should have by now.  

I like working with my hands.  It's mindless work, in one sense, it doesn't
require cunning or stealth or manipulation.  It requires some practice and some
skill and it's something I've accomplished myself, no cold trading, no using
other people, no worrying about whether or not the next contact is going to
sell me out or kill me.

Or be killed.

It's restful, somehow.

Mulder watches me as if I've mutated, more than just adding an arm.  

He told me this morning that Scully was coming up.  

I just looked at him, thinking that over.  

He fidgeted in his desk chair. "You okay with that?" he finally asked.

I scratched my chin, leaned back on the arm of the couch.  "Why shouldn't I be?
 It's not my house."  Small wry smile.  "I'll sleep upstairs while she's here."

For no reason I could define, that made him angry.  "The hell you will."  

I stared, blinked, "Okay, I won't."  I lifted my leg up, stretched it out to
rest my ankle on his knee.
"I thought you'd want to be discreet."

"What for?"  He looked disgruntled and disconcerted, wrapped his hand around my
ankle, slipped it inside the leg of my jeans and rubbed my calf.  

I couldn't keep from grinning. "Well, to keep Scully from finding out. "

His fingers were cool, but it felt good.  He shrugged.  "So what?  She and I
weren't an item, and she's not my mother.  Besides, what do you imagine the
neighbors are thinking?"

I grinned, lifted my other leg into his lap.  "I hadn't thought about it."

He slid the other hand into the other leg of my jeans.  "They're thinking, that
nice Bill Mulder, poor man, wouldn't he just be spinning in his grave if he
knew his son was a fag."

I stiffened.  "Stop that."  Sharply.

Mulder arched an eyebrow.  "Alex, that was my dad.  That's how he was.  If he
knew I was sucking cock, he'd blow my brains out."

"Jesus."  I felt faintly ill all of a sudden.  "Is that was this is, spiting
your old man?"

He stared at me, his expression horrified.  "Fuck no!  I can't believe-" 
Pushed my legs off his lap and turned the chair around, went back to work.

Nice work, Alyosha, I thought and got up, put my hands on his shoulders.  He
wouldn't look up.  "Hey," softly, "I'm sorry.  Big mouth and both feet in it, I
guess I jumped when you poked me, jumped the wrong way."  

We have to stop doing this to each other.  I wish I knew if it were pretty
ordinary, or a symptom of a fucked up relationship.

He sat stiffly until I bent, until my mouth touched the nape of his neck, made
him shiver.  "Jesus, Alex."  Softly.

"I know, it was a shitty thing to say."  I worked at the tension in his
shoulders.

He didn't answer, but he let his head fall backward, rested it on my belly,
rubbed against the muscle there.  I let go of his shoulders, cupped his face,
my thumbs brushing thumbs brushing over my cheekbones.  He closed his eyes.  

We stayed like that for a few moments.  And then I bent and kissed his
forehead, released him and went back to work in the kitchen.

Apology and tacit forgiveness.

After a few minutes, he followed me out.  "Alex, it's okay.  I jumped the wrong
way, too."  Tentatively.

I turned.  "S'okay, Mulder." 

My reward was this incredible smile.  "Okay."

I haven't stopped smiling myself since.


April 3

Scully might have more or less accepted that I'm up here, but I can't say we'll
ever be friends.   Still, we played very nice and Mulder was more or less happy
about that.

They chatted about his book, he let her read some of it, which stung, since I
haven't seen a single page.  But fuck it, maybe because he doesn't have to
prove it to her any more, I don't know.  

We had to give her the grand tour, and I swear to God, he almost seemed to be
showing me off to her.  Not in any obvious way, just making it clear to her
that he had trouble changing lightbulbs.  Which isn't quite true, he's given me
a hand on a couple of things, but he seems to think he's fairly inept at this
stuff.  

She certainly seemed to think he was showing me off, she kept commenting
politely about everything, and I saw her expression get a little perplexed.  

Maybe Alex Krycek, Syndicate thug was easier for her to accept than Alex
Krycek, handyman.  Who knows.

I went to bed early, took a book.  I thought they'd like some time to talk
privately.

Eventually, I heard Mulder walk Scully upstairs to the guestroom, showed her
the upstairs bathroom and came back down to bed.

I was reading, lying on my belly, glanced over my shoulder to check his
expression.  "How'd it go?"

A shrug.  "She's okay with it, I guess."  He stripped and got into bed next to
me.  Kissed my shoulder and put his head on the pillow.

I looked at him for a long moment.  "Are you?"

He closed my eyes.  "Don't start, okay?"  Edged.

We always seem to end up here.  God knows why.  Testosterone, our past, who the
fuck knows.

But there was no point in letting us stay there.  I leaned over and kissed his
eyelids.  "Go to sleep."  Rolled over and turned off the light, dropped my book
on the floor.  

A hand reached out and touched my hair.  Full moon night, and he hadn't pulled
the blinds, it fell across the bed, silvering everything it touched, I could
see his eyes were still closed.  "Alex?"

So I leaned over him again, blotting out the moonlight, turned his face to a
pale smudge in the darkness.  Didn't matter, I found his mouth without needing
it, kissed him hard.  

And there we went again.

God, his cock down my throat, mine down his, both of us trying to be quiet and
still drive each other crazy, and the taste of him on my tongue.

Sometimes it's like dying and being reborn.

Not quite the little death.  More like the phoenix in the fire.

Lying together and tangled in a sweaty heap.   The room smelling of sex.

I don't know how I lived the way I did so long.  

I spooned behind him to sleep, woke with him still in my arms.

Did I want him this badly years ago?  I don't know.  I always prided myself on
not lying to myself, but I've come to understand one thing:  We all lie to
ourselves.  Everyone lies.  Everyone has an agenda.

What's mine?  To keep him sane?   Just to keep him?  Am I hiding out from the
world here?  Trying to keep from dealing with other things?  I don't know.  I
don't know any more at all.

What's his?  I don't know, beyond keeping me here.  He needs me, for some
goddamned reason.  And getting laid, I can't say that's not a big part of it,
we can't stop touching each other.  

But before we went to sleep last night, before we settled in, I kissed his
face, a drift of kisses across the cheekbone, murmuring in Russian.  Things I
can't say in English.

He says he's going to have to get a crash course in Russian.   That scares me
worse than the fucking Syndicate, that he cares enough to know what I'm saying.

God knows, I'm shit-scared.  Of everything.

Maybe.

Maybe everything but him.


April 14

I have to say with some pride that I really have learned a lot.  Walk in the
front door and it doesn't even look like the same house.  John McPhail came out
to help, I paid him, of course, although I do need to get down to New York and
liquidate some of my assets and pick up a few of my other assets.

Mulder even helped, although he bitched a lot later.  Mostly about sore
muscles.  I told him it was because he was a computer jockey and we ended up
wrestling on the floor.  But not hitting each other.  Some kind of miracle, I
think.

He's going to New York tomorrow.  I'm thinking of going along.  I need to
liquidate some assets, I've used up quite a bit in my search for the perfect
home.

God.

Home.  There's a frightening thought.

But then, so is he.


April 15

I wonder how you file an income tax return on ill-gotten gains.

Ah, well.

New York, New York, how the hell did that stupid song go? 

Beats the fuck out of me.   Mulder is out doing whatever one does when visiting
a literary agent, and the goddamned book of his is sold, although I'm damned if
I know what good he thinks it's going to do if the Others decide to show up
again.

Hell, maybe I'm being too cynical.

With due care, I made it in and out of the bank, the safe deposit box, and
thence to some of my private contacts who were delighted to cash in some
gemstones for me.   

It was only by chance that I showed up early at the restaurant where I was to
meet Mulder and saw Skinner sitting at a table with him, talking earnestly at
him.

To him.

Whatever.

Was I pissed?

Hell yes, I was pissed.  Mulder had that cat ate the canary look, I swear, and
Skinner had his hand over Mulder's wrist.

So I lurked, watched them.

Skinner got up and left, leaving Mulder alone and I sauntered over and sat
down.

He gave me this innocent smile.  "Hey.  You're early."

"You don't know how early."  I looked at him.  "Was it any good?  It's been a
while since I did Skinner."

I swear, his jaw dropped.  "Alex--"

"Fuck that," I told him quietly, viciously.  "Have fun.  Just don't fucking lie
to me."

And got up and left.

So there I am in the hotel room packing my stuff up when naturally he appears.

Only this time, I do have the urge to hit him.

"Goddammit, listen to me," he snarled.  "I didn't fuck Skinner."

Skinner must not have been trying.  I straightened and stared at him.  Trying
to determine if he was telling me the truth.  "What was the tete a tete about?"

A shaky grin.  I decided he was telling the truth.  "Trying to tell me you were
up to no good."

I looked away, sighed.  "Well, he has his reasons."

"So he said."  He took a step closer.  "Are you going to hit me?"  Quirky grin.

"Do you want me too?"  I looked at him, narrowing my eyes.

"Not particularly."

I couldn't help it, I grinned.  "The danger has passed."  Narrowed my eyes
again.  "You didn't fuck him?"

God help us both, he blushed.  "No, I didn't fuck him, Jesus, when did I have
time?"

I rolled my eyes.  "Believe me, it wouldn't have to take long."

He narrowed his eyes back at me.  "Oh, really?  I'm not sure I want to know."

"Oh, yeah, you would."  Getting a little of my own back, I guess.

He didn't seem to like it, studied me.  "Really."  Coolly.

I suddenly cracked up.  I was jealous.  He was jealous.  Christ, the world is
ending, Alyosha, you have a real relationship.  

A home.

We ended up rolling around on the bed like crazed weasels, tearing at each
other's clothes.  He finds laughter an aphrodisiac, the crazy bastard.

I find *him* an aphrodisiac.

And tomorrow we're going home.

I never thought that would be the case, that I'd have a home, a lover.  A
partner.

Funny, that morph gave me back more than my arm.  He gave me back more than my
life.  He gave me a life I didn't have to begin with.

Now I just have to make it worth all the rest of it.  If I can learn to rebuild
a bathroom, I think I can learn that.

I know I'm going to try.  


Finis