Believe
Author: Shannon
Pairing: M/K
Rating: NC-17 for taboo sexual content.
WARNING: This story contains necrophilia. But under the circumstances I don't believe it to be gratuitous. It's not there strictly for shock value but because I believe in its realism. It's done with care for both the characters and the reader. But if you're already deeply offended, please DON'T READ! Titillated? Go ahead! ;)
Spoilers: Tis post-Requiem and kind of an AU DeadAlive.
Summary: What if the things we have been taught to fear the most are the keys to our freedom?
Archive: Yes, to the lists it's posted to. Others just ask.
Date of First Posting: February 26, 2005 to the M/K Lyric Wheel.
Notes: Thanks to Tarlan for the awesome fairy tale.
From 'The Great Sea-Serpent'
"Many a night have I lain upon a wet stone and looked far into the country, miles away from here: there are crafty creatures called in their speech men-folk. They plot against us, but usually we slip away from them; that I know well, and the sea-eel too, that you are asking about, he knows it. He has been under their sway, up there on earth, time out of mind, and it was from there that they were carrying him off on a ship to a distant land. I saw what a trouble they had, sure they could manage him, because he had become weak on the earth. They laid him in coils and circles. I heard how he ringled and rangled when they laid him down and when he slipped away from them out here. They held onto him with all their might -- ever so many hands had hold of him, but he kept slipping away from them down to the bottom; there he is lying now -- till further notice, I rather think."
High above the earth, its spark a tiny pinpoint at the bottom of a deep well, it almost felt like drowning. All those impossible light-years away, and he felt like he was being buffeted by salt-warm waves, face down, the earth he watched down there a tiny, insignificant fish shimmering and electric, out of his reach, unknowing.
His ears echoed the haunting lullaby of the conch shell, even as he watched the worm-hole fluctuate below his floating body, funneling down to that most harmless of planets, his speck-fish, his blue dot, everything he'd once known and his destiny soon again. He floated, watching it flicker, imagining how it spun on its axis, imagining someone was down there looking up at him, some distant constellation, a collection of atoms into the pathetic form of his body. He felt as big as a star and still he was invisible to them.
Not for long, he thought, shifting on the endless black sea. I will return.
...
Even the chair didn't hurt anymore. The hands grabbed him, pulled him out of the place where they let him float, and anchored him back into a frail, small body. Strapped him down and cut him up, drilled his teeth and stretched his skin. He knew how to remain in the vat when they did this now. He knew how to stretch his *real* body, the ephemeral one, the one they couldn't touch, couldn't abuse and mar. He'd stretch, taking his mind, too, taking the thing they wanted when they sliced open his chest. He'd go back to his place, watching. Back to the dense soup of formless space where he could focus everything he had on the stillness, the quiet. They would send him back soon. He was their failed experiment. He was his own new being.
...
The worm-hole was beautiful on its own. A swirling birth canal of new stars, old gases, a corridor of energy into form. And Mulder floated on top of it, over it, sprawled naked on nothing, at the pit of a bottomless ship, its physical body only an idea planted in his mind, believed in, made real. Scully had seen Japanese scientists. He, aliens, shape shifters. Both, the descending drill.
He was timeless, without moments. He was vast, open, and perfect. They couldn't make him otherwise. Not with lasers or scalpels or thoughts or lies.
He'd learned their language. Like a foreign tongue he'd known as a child, forgotten, and then remembered as if no time had passed. They never spoke or thought in words. They were only ideas, lacking sensation, lacking emotion. And their idea was that he was a god. The idea following that was that they could extract his godliness, quantify it, inject it into themselves, rob him of what he had that they didn't, strip him for parts and leave him fragmented. They thought they could make him forget, make him lack, control him. They thought his gift was in his biology, some organ or tissue he possessed. They had no concept of anything more.
And everything they tried only brought him more of himself. Until finally, he'd risen above them, into a fullness of realization, of what he really was, that he could no longer go back even if they tortured him to death. Their only recourse, they're only hope, was to send him back.
...
Mulder floated over the earth for what he knew to be the last time. He blinked at its perpetual optimism, its blue spark, its abundant life. He would be small again, in this broken body. He wouldn't survive long. It ultimately didn't matter. But there was one person who'd want to know. There was one person down there lying so small and so cold. And Mulder wanted, longed, to give him something real and glorious. Something to bring him back to himself, too.
He sent thoughts. He ordered them into light and sent the light down the funnel bridge. He sent ideas, as they did, but his own were filled with feeling, a rich flood, overflowing from his heart, his third eye, his solar plexus, his cock, his spine... He used his physical body to fuel the thoughts, the sensations gathering in his cells, and he called to him from every atom of consciousness and beyond.
He called his name, his throat opening to waves of soothing blue. He sent a map without lines, without countries...bodies of water with no names. He sent it down into the man in his sleep, bursting with recognition. He sent it into the man's chest, beneath his ribs, coiled up tight and burning below his heart so that he would wake with the urgent need, the knowing of where to go. He sent violet light straight into his skull and said to him, 'Believe...'
He felt them coming to take him away, to send his body hurtling down and down and down into the third dimensional bulk. Send him into a fleeting, meaningless life in the hopes that his inborn divinity would die on his choked breath, released to the vast grave of ocean, never to be realized again. They still didn't understand.
Mulder got very still again, letting them wrestle with his body. He ignored them and focused his thought once again. He gathered all the brilliance in his heart, all the knowing he had and all the peace, and he sent it deep into the belly of the woman to the small one who curled snugly asleep. And this one answered back, this one lying above the veil with him. It floated, too, and new thoughts were returned: gratitude, wonderment, wholeness. It sent that it was blended, taking the form of one sex and then the other. It wanted to be physical and change there, too. It said Mulder's return would make such a thing possible. It transmitted enormous love. It wished him well on his journey home.
Mulder ended the transmission and turned his energy to the mother, to Scully. He sent wave after wave of emerald gratitude and felt them absorbed but unacknowledged. She slept on, not knowing what she carried, what she held, her own power, her own part...bringer of the dawn.
And then he let himself be ripped from the waves, everything around him shaking and violent. Everything chaos and pain. Everything dense and dark. And he was thrown, forced through layers of gravity and screaming sound until he landed in his body with a splash and his lungs filled with water and he sank down, down, down into the depths of cold, wet black, physical again, suffering again, and dying.
Krycek disliked the water. More than that, he despised it. He'd almost drowned as a young child, and the mark of that experience had scarred him enough that he'd managed to avoid getting in pools, lakes, rivers and the like his whole life.
And now he was on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, gripping the railing and trying not to vomit. And all for what? They'd found nothing. No sign of anything. No crafts, no bodies, no wreckage. Just roiling waters and a nearing storm. Just murky depths over other murky depths. Questions unanswered and hopes unfulfilled. Krycek felt empty.
And he was pissed. He wasn't usually wrong. Not when he felt something this strongly, when he woke with that feeling in his gut like everything was different. He'd even known just where to go. He'd already been packing when the news story came on CNN. He'd stopped and stared at the screen, punching the volume up.
A meteor, possibly an airplane, possibly anything but the impossible had crashed in the Atlantic ocean in the middle of the night. The falling object had been spotted off the coast of the Azores Islands. Scientists speculated, news reporters hyped, governments denied.
Krycek stood at the stern peering over the side, wondering what insanity had driven him to such lengths. He'd felt so sure.
The native islanders had believed it was the return of the serpent. That he'd fallen from the sky where he'd been held in a constellation. Krycek remembered the old maps: 'Here Be Monsters.' He remembered tales from the Bible about the snake in the garden, about Lucifer. If something vile had fallen from the heavens, surely he should be the one to find it. Surely that is why he'd been called. He was kin.
Yet there was nothing. Nothing at all. No UFO, no Greys, no monsters... Not that those were what he'd expected to find. And expectation is too strong a word.
He remembered standing at an FBI conference table, Chinese food cartons fallen over like slain soldiers, littering the maps spread out in front of them. He remembered under the table, their feet touching, that simple violation he'd been allowed. The last.
Why had he come here? The waves were gathering rage, slapping at the sides of the boat. He'd felt so sure. He'd never felt so sure. He fingered the vial in his pocket as he watched the sun disappear behind the hard, grey clouds.
Then the sailors were yelling in Portuguese. "They've got something! They've got something!"
Krycek stumbled over, grabbing for purchase. "What?" he husked. "What is it?"
He watched over the side, at the taut ropes and divers emerging from the jade surface. And then a body, nude and male, was lifted up between them, a limp offering. The shouting, even from his own mouth, to hurry, grab him, get him over the side, all filtered down to ringing silence in his head. He only saw, and what he saw overwhelmed his every other sense.
...
The man in the bed didn't breathe; his heart was not beating. His skin was faded green and grey, the color of the ocean he'd been pulled from, lifeless. Krycek had demanded the body not be bagged. He'd paid an enormous amount for the unspeakableness of his perversion, and with furrowed brow and full pockets, they'd let him have the corpse. Three days to get back to shore, and he kept Mulder's body in his own bed, locked away from the others as their tongues wagged. He didn't care. He knew what they didn't.
He'd given him the injection of the vaccine, and now he waited. There was nothing to see but Mulder lying there, completely silent. He was thin, colorless, and scarred. Krycek stood over the bed, the body naked before him. His first perversion was in not covering it up.
It was beautiful. Krycek stared at Mulder's dead body and felt his own surge alive. It was a sick feeling, a wrong feeling, but he couldn't seem to stop it. Hours went by as he sat next to it, and still no breath drew into it, filling its lungs. It remained: peaceful, familiar, looking almost sated.
Krycek lay down with the body, stretched out next to it, side by side, staring up at the ceiling as the boat rocked, the storm passed already without his even knowing. He lay next to Mulder and didn't look at him. He just breathed, feeling the strange motionlessness beside him...this beautiful thing that looked like Mulder.
He rolled over, looking at Mulder's profile: the lashes content on the grey cheeks, the marks down his face, the bloodless pillows of his lips, the throat... Krycek's breath was short and quiet, almost as if he didn't want to disturb the man next to him, like he was merely in a deep sleep.
He reached out tentatively. His hand hovered, shaking with fear and excitement, over Mulder's body. He swallowed and let it come down, skirting just barely over the sallow skin of his torso, so light. He let out a nervous breath and rested his hand on Mulder's belly. The muscles were still supple, the skin tender and elastic. God. He felt good.
Krycek closed his eyes, arm protective over Mulder's corpse, and he slept.
...
From, 'The Great Sea-Serpent'
"He is quite thin," said the small fishes.
"They have starved him," said the seal, "But he will soon come to himself and get his old size and corpulence again. I suppose he is the great sea-serpent that men are so afraid of and talk so much about. I never saw him before, and never believed in a sea-serpent; now I do. I believe he is the sea-serpent," and with that, down went the seal.
...
Krycek paid them more because they were questioning his wisdom, his sanity, even though he had lied and told them he was a doctor and meant the body no harm or disrespect. They were suspicious and angry. He gave them so much money their eyes shone gold. They left him alone for another day.
He locked the door. He had covered Mulder up in case they forced their way in. He uncovered him now. The body had not decayed, had not changed in any way. But still the vaccine seemed to be having no effect. Mulder was as lifeless as ever, making it harder for Krycek to entertain his own thoughts and desires without guilt and shame.
He touched the body...touched it all day. He was immersed in it, enthralled with it. He lay along side Mulder and ran his hand over his arms one at a time. The hairs were coarse and tickled Krycek's palm and fingers. He held the shoulders, soft and fleshy in his grip, not rigored, but cool. He touched the scars, reverently stroking the rough skin.
Before he knew to stop himself, he'd bent and pressed his lips to one, a large round one on the inside of Mulder's forearm. Krycek gasped, his lips parting on the silky flesh. Tears formed in his eyes. He tasted seawater on his tongue. He held Mulder's arm to his mouth and kissed gently down to the inside of his wrist where the pulse would have beaten. There was nothing, and Krycek lifted his gaze to Mulder's vacant face even as he licked and sucked the thin skin over the fine bones. He found himself grunting softly, his cock rising up and stroking Mulder's cold thigh.
His pulse quickened as he shifted, kneeling, and dropped wet lips to Mulder's legs, feasting along the pliant muscles, now stroking with his hand in earnest, no longer hesitant, gripping the flesh of Mulder's hip as he tasted the lifeless body under him.
He was lost inside each long lick he took up Mulder's thigh, the body's salt gathering and drying out his lips, making them tingle. His eyes were closed in utter bliss. His cockhead was peeking out from the sleeve of his foreskin, glistening. He hated himself, he loved Mulder, he wanted to be the one to die instead. His tears fell on dead skin, the body under his mouth unaffected, unresisting, powerless, existing for the slaking of Krycek's guilt, to be a vessel for his sin.
Krycek wept silently into Mulder's inner thigh. He collapsed under the wealth of unworthiness he felt. It wasn't working. The vaccine wasn't working, and this was all one big lie, one final rape of Mulder's belief. And his own. He lay useless in the crook of Mulder's slack knee, breathing in the scent of the undying dead.
...
It was the third day, the day they would finally touch land and Mulder would be put in a box and then in the ground. Krycek had alerted the crew to Mulder's identity and had them notify the proper authorities and the FBI back in the States. Scully was too far along in her pregnancy to fly, but she was sending Doggett and Skinner to retrieve the body. Krycek felt a sick wave of possession, a renewed, perverse desire to hold on, to keep him, to salvage what he could and work out his grief in unspeakable ways. Alone with him. He would no longer be alone with him. He would no longer be with him at all.
He sank down beside the bed, face buried in the bedclothes near Mulder's hip. He gripped the bedding, shaken with the enormity of his loss and the depravity of his actions. "Why?" he said aloud around the moist lump in his throat, into the side of the bed. "Why was I led here?" he sobbed. Obviously it had been to find him. Why had he been too late? "What the hell was the purpose of finding you if I couldn't bring you back?" he whispered brokenly.
Feeling sick and hopeless to recover from it, he thought about what he had not yet done. What he so wanted and feared and hated and ached for. He lifted his gaze, his tired, red eyes, and stared at Mulder's unbreathing body. So easy, to just take him, to use him, to finally damn himself deep inside that unresisting body before he gave it back. Nobody had to know. Not even Mulder. Only *he* had to know. He'd die knowing.
Krycek stood slowly and silently, like a thief, like a disciple. He crawled onto the bed, over Mulder's slack body, his dead cock. Revulsion enveloped him, but so did arousal. Arousal so fierce he was already rock hard, the blushing tip of his cock peeking out again, fire-lick red. He felt the end nearing, everything so inevitable and he so powerless to all of it. Except this.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes. He breathed back the fear and the judgment and he found Mulder's quiescent cock with his cheek. Krycek shuddered at the feel of it caressing him, soft and gentle. He nuzzled it, gentle in return. He turned his lips to it, opened his mouth over it, and took the head inside. He groaned rapturously. Mulder's penis was utterly silken lying on Krycek's hot tongue. He sucked on it hesitantly, as though Mulder could awaken any moment. Realizing he wouldn't clogged Krycek's throat. How could something so perfect be so horrible, so reviled?
He nursed at Mulder's cock, tugging at the supple flesh. He lifted off only long enough to undress, his shaking fingers slipping as he tore the clothes from his fevered body. By the time he was nude, his mouth had grown to feel empty without Mulder's penis to fill it. He was salivating, hungry. He dropped back down into Mulder's waiting lap, taking the heavy length back between his lips, groaning louder. He worked it for a long time, rampaging guilt set aside for the undeniable pleasure of it, the sweet texture in his mouth, innocent. His own cock thrust out from his tingling balls, stiff and untouched.
He started to imagine that Mulder's dick was reacting to his avid sucking. He felt it grow within the dank cavern of his mouth. He felt it start to get erect. He cursed his mind playing tricks on him. He spit it out, covering his face in dismay. He felt crazy, monstrous, like he'd gone farther than he should have and it would drive him over the edge into psychosis.
He removed his hand from his eyes and looked down at the still, misused body. He blinked. It wasn't true. Wasn't possible. He checked for breath and found none. He felt for a pulse and got no rhythm. But Mulder's cock was hard. Krycek peered down at it in disbelief. It was standing straight up from Mulder's dark bush of pubic hair, sturdy and swollen well past its original size.
Krycek blinked and moved closer. He reached out for it and hesitated. He whimpered, the idea of not touching it now unacceptable. Mulder's body had answered him. Mulder's body, devoid of all those human things like guilt and shame and doubt, had expressed its own desire, its own need, a surreal form of consent. Or so Krycek told himself as he closed his sweating hand around its girth and brought the flared head inside his mouth again, lashes fluttering closed.
He moved up and down the stiffening length, laving the flesh that reacted mindlessly, that assuaged Krycek's haunting guilt if even just for however long it took him to come and then retreat into the inevitable shame.
But when Krycek pulled off the now towering erection, and still Mulder lay pale and grey and pliant below him, he knew he couldn't stop. He knew he'd gone too far to stop or to be content with less.
He wedged his prosthetic under Mulder's leg awkwardly, keeping it opened up for him, and spit on his fingers, finding the little hole nestled betwixt the twin creamy mounds of Mulder's buttocks. He was shivering with guilt, breathless with arousal when he tickled the ring of muscle, framed in fine, dark hair. He worked his forefinger in and moaned. It was still warm inside...still firm and squeezing and soft. Krycek withdrew and spit again, forcing two of his fingers in the second time. He knew he didn't have to prep a dead body; it was his own pleasure he sought, his perversion he was indulging, as he poked and prodded inside Mulder's ass.
He began to finger-fuck him, watching in wonder as his face never betrayed the slightest hint of anything left, even as his penis swayed as his body was rocked on Krycek's fingers. Krycek split Mulder's little asshole open over and over and realized he was crying. They were tears of recognition of all that he was doing, all the wrong he'd *ever* done, all the sadness he'd held in and poured all over Mulder now. He'd fucking missed him, and he had to let go now all over again. It was too much for one already-damaged man to take.
He was practically sobbing when he knelt between Mulder's lifeless legs, extracted his fingers, and took his own cock in his hand. He had trouble finding the entrance. His vision was too blurry. But he did find it. He pulled the foreskin back off the head of his cock. He was oozing a non-stop stream of thick pre-cum. He started to push his way inside slowly. He felt the resistance, but when he looked down at Mulder's face, there was nothing there. No pain, no desire, no life.
Krycek shook as he inserted his cock. He went slow, stretching the flesh with care, not wanting to abuse the body any more than was necessary. He was already bent on defiling it, the least he could do was to try to do it without leaving his own scars for it to carry into the grave.
He folded Mulder's legs up to his torso; the body bent eerily, easily, and Krycek had to work at not letting the legs slip back down to the bed. But finally, he was buried inside to the balls. He felt Mulder's body hug his entire length, compliant, at peace. Krycek felt that peace wind around his heart. His tears fell silently now. His body tingled with imminent release. He felt so good he almost had to believe he was dying, too. His whole paradigm shifted as he settled inside his dead lover. He felt, overwhelmingly, exquisitely, that he was somehow loved. It shook him to his core.
He began to move. He closed his eyes, thrusting in the residual heat of Mulder's asshole. Krycek groaned, sliding his cock in and out. His own pre-ejaculate, fallen tears, and sweat eased the way. He wanted to lean down and kiss the unresponsive lips. He felt alive and beautiful. Cursed and renewed. He bent, still fucking, and traced the full mouth with his tongue. His arms shook, even the stronger left shoulder with its aborted appendage. He was hurtling toward the edge, hot balls slapping Mulder's ass as he strove to climax inside it.
He felt it building, the unstoppable eruption of a hard orgasm. His toes curled and his ass clenched as his cock bore down and he slammed himself hard into the tight orifice over and over. He heard the violent, ragged inhale and for a moment thought it was his own last breath. He opened his eyes, wide, and saw the formerly unmoving chest expanding with a full, deep breath. Krycek gasped, stilling. He watched Mulder's eyes flit open, his whole body shifting, reclaiming life. Krycek watched, disbelieving. It was just an anomaly. It was muscles reacting, like his phantom arm, a phantom *life*. It was his own mind slipping into different realities. It wasn't real.
It wasn't real.
But then the eyes came more fully open even as the warm, wet asshole clamped down on his aching cock, unknowing. Mulder groaned weakly, and Krycek started to pull out, too shocked yet to be horrified that the dead body he was fucking just came back to life, too shocked to find the joy in his resurrection.
"N--" came the barest of whispers.
He was hallucinating. Even as Mulder blinked up at him, dazed but focusing, he couldn't believe. He began to pull his cock out again.
"No," came the small voice again. Just the head of his cock rested inside Mulder's reawakened body now. "Don't...leave..." Mulder gasped, tired eyes blinking up at Krycek benignly.
Krycek frowned, his wide eyes not ready to relinquish the nagging shame at having been caught in the most wretched of acts. Even as Mulder breathed beneath him, wonderful, deep, rattling breaths, unending, real. Even as his words seemed only to mean one distinct thing. One unthinkable thing.
"Not...un-thinkable," Mulder whispered, echoing his very thoughts. "Brought...me...back," he finished.
Krycek closed his eyes. He knew the only explanation was that he'd gone completely insane. That his own sinful creation had pushed him past the realm of truth. But the corpse spoke to him again, wringing a whimper from his tight throat. "Open...eyes," it gasped.
Krycek obeyed, peeling swollen lids open and facing what couldn't be real.
Yet when he gazed down at the man beneath him, it was to behold something so beautiful it couldn't not be. A tear slid down Krycek's face.
"Do it," Mulder whispered, unable yet to speak fully. And yet he wanted Krycek to finish what he'd started. Krycek swallowed, frowning down at the newly alive Mulder. His cock hurt to be back inside. His lashes fluttered and he sighed, his chest aching, as he pressed forward and gave Mulder what he wanted, what they both wanted, sinking his cock back into the warm, tight sheath, grimacing.
Mulder's eyes closed, and he moaned softly, but his lips curled up in a weak smile. Krycek saw it, felt the silken flesh seize even tighter around him, and he decided it didn't matter if he'd lost his grip on reality. He no longer cared. He decided to believe. He started to thrust.
It didn't take long. Almost no time at all. He pushed and ground deep inside Mulder's ass, feeling the new breath hit his neck, soft moans floating up to meet him. His body gave up. The cum spurted from his cock and his whole body shivered in ecstasy. He groaned Mulder's name as he came. He stayed deep as he finished. "Oh God..." he moaned, eyes unable to stay open. He spilled his last deep in the body beneath him. Before he could pull out, he felt a weak touch to his arm, holding him there. He looked down at the other man.
Mulder's face had regained a slight tinge of flesh color, no longer dead grey. His eyes were clear and bright. He was staring up at Krycek. Even after the fact, he was still there; it hadn't been illusion.
"Very...real," Mulder whispered up to him.
Krycek, no longer beholden to his body's urge for release, looked at Mulder under him, felt the body still embracing him from the inside, the limbs too weak to move, and whispered, awe-struck, "How? The vaccine?"
Mulder blinked, an exhausted but mischievous smile on his generous lips. "No. You," he clarified.
Krycek couldn't hold his body weight off of Mulder any longer. He withdrew his cock and laid cautiously by his side. "Are you...cold?" he asked tentatively, not knowing how to talk to him, what to say, what was needed now, what to believe.
Mulder shook his head slowly. "I'm...good," he replied.
Krycek could only frown. How could this be? Mulder...alive. Mulder, not filled with hate and revulsion for what Krycek had done. Mulder. Changed.
"Thinking...too much," Mulder told him quietly.
Krycek opened his mouth to protest. "I..." 'Raped you.' 'Violated you.' 'Used you.' He could say none of it. It all got stuck beneath his breath.
"Feel...good...Alex," Mulder said, and the quiet voice was still a command. "Let go," he admonished with that same beatific smile. "Was here...the whole time." He took a ragged breath. "Was wondering...what took you...so long."
Krycek looked between the glittering eyes, the life there, the easy trust. He'd earned none of it. Deserved none of it.
"You...wrong," Mulder gasped.
Krycek frowned again. "You're...reading my mind?" he asked.
Mulder smirked exhaustedly. "Pretty...cool...huh?"
For the first time, Krycek felt the urge to smile back at him. It was painful, letting go enough to feel even that fraction of happiness. Of relief instead of self-loathing.
"Good...start," Mulder croaked, and Krycek felt fresh tears begin, building, and then spilling over his lashes, rolling down his temple and onto the pillow between them.
The body had been made to disappear. Doggett and Skinner had to return without it, and Mulder was sorry Scully would have to suffer that loss as well. He would go to her soon and let her know why it had to be that way. He would see the baby born.
He left with Alex. Disappeared. It wasn't time to resurface yet. It was time to heal things. Deep personal things. Things only between the two of them. It had to be done. Everything hinged on their connection. The one person he'd held himself away from, denied his forgiveness, his tender, broken heart, was the one he was destined for. The man with the deepest running scars, a stain of darkness hiding the goodness of his soul, was the one who would help him spread the truth, the one he'd love beyond all others.
Mulder woke in their hotel room, paid for with cash. It overlooked a hillside vista, volcanic rock, fat, neon flowers, the ocean beyond. He blinked and sat up. Alex was across the room, covered in shadows, watching him. Mulder smiled. He knew the question that was coming, the one Alex had asked the three mornings now that they'd woken up to one another.
"Why?" It was a hoarse whisper, one that let Mulder know the other man had been crying again.
"Because I can't do it without you," he answered again.
He was met with silence, with disbelief. And he said once more that one word he hoped would become the focal point of Alex's every waking thought, the one he'd sent so strongly before he'd returned to find Alex making love to him in a fit of despair, "Believe."
Alex rose from where he sat alone. Mulder watched him come to the side of the bed. He looked up at him, the endearing frown. "Believe with me, Alex," he murmured, reaching his hand up. The other man hesitated and then took it in his own. He climbed back into the bed they shared. Mulder coaxed his frown away with tender thumb strokes. 'Believe,' he thought as Alex moved over him, touching him, coming alive as he lost his fear in the strong sweep of sexual arousal. 'Believe,' he continued to think as he, too, was carried forward on the momentum of heat and ferocity and deep, wet kisses.
And he heard, 'I believe. I want to believe,' as Alex pushed inside him. And it was going to be all right. Better than all right. Better than anything that had come before. He wrapped his arms around him and closed his eyes, smiling.
End
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