The Rules

by Shannon

Pairing:  M/K

Rating:  NC-17

Spoilers:  thru Tunguska

Summary:  Everything changes within the space of a game.

Disclaimer:  No copyright infringement intended.  Just good, unclean fun.

Date of First Posting:  February 22, 2005

Notes:  Yep, it's a Truth or Dare fic!   And it's my beloved Satina's belated Happy Birthday fic!!  At least it's not as late as two years ago (four months, ACK!)    

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Glutton for punishment.  That's exactly what I am and exactly what I was thinking when he popped me one in the car.  I knew he was gonna do it, too.  Felt my lip splitting of its own accord, stinging before his knuckles made contact.  Before he'd so much as lifted his hand.  I goaded him.  Played all innocent and injusticed.  Works almost as good as cocky and nonchalant.  I'm keeping a mental tally.

What's really weird is that calling him a sadistic mother fucking cocktease in Russian only earned me a boyish grin.  Hell, I even spat at him.  He has a tendency to be a little fucked in the head.

"You speak Russian, Krycek?"

And though my hook was in his gill like I'd wanted, I found myself inwardly pouting that my rant wasn't scoring me another round with Mulder's right hook.

I was surprised when he didn't check me into baggage claim.  I sat right next to him on the flight.  More cumulative hours spent in his presence than when we were partnered together, probably.   

I stoked the fires a few times on the way there.  Ordered a beer and watched him compress his lips before abruptly changing my order with the flight attendant.  Then he kicked me in the shin rather childishly.  I swallowed a grunt and a smile.

I bugged him about what article he was reading in Business Air.  

"Shut the fuck up, Krycek," he sneered, not even bothering to look at me.  Apparently, if he can't hit, he'll cuss.

I picked up my own magazine and held it like a poker hand, just out of reach of his questing sideways glances.  I stared at an ad for Preparation H and glowered as though engrossed.  After a bit, he snatched it away from me, stuffing it into his seat pouch angrily.  Fifteen minutes later, he got it out and started thumbing through it as if he wasn't trying to figure out what I'd been studying so raptly.

I've known for a long time that Mulder's interest in me exceeds the rabid hatred he'd like to think is at the top of his list of feelings for me.  Hate is an emotion too afraid to seek more out of the target of its pain than justification for its existence.  So it's more than hate.  I'm his greatest frustration.  I'm his favorite damn disease, as the song says.  It's the only reason he hasn't killed me yet.  Well, that and the fact that he'd be breaking the very laws he's sworn to protect.  He wants to know me.  That, more than the fact that I speak fluent Russian, was the reason he brought me along.  I think.

What I find fascinating is that Mulder knew I knew something more about this whole situation to begin with.  I knew the man with the pouch was coming from Russia via a Turkish airline;  I told him so.  My little rant in the mother tongue was a see-through concoction, yet Mulder swallowed it down eagerly.  He fucking knew I was manipulating him, but he allowed it because he wanted me along.  Mulder's manipulation of himself, his own contorted motivation, was much more convincing than my own was ever intended to be.

And that's why Mulder's so much fun.  He'll fuck himself over just for the chance to find out something more about me.  It's a good thing I don't want him dead.  Or even badly injured for that matter.  I could get the job done so easily.

We caught a train from St. Petersburg, and then from there, hitched a ride in the back of some guy's truck.  It was freezing.  We sat facing one another, and I watched my breath mingle with the fog of his between us.  

It was kind of amusing to watch Mulder forget to pull his foot away when he'd accidentally relax too much and his boot would come to rest again my own.  When he'd realize it, he'd jerk away like I had cooties.  He did that a few times.  Then once he just...stayed.  The truck jostled us along a dirt road, and our feet vibrated against one another.  

He never once asked me what I knew about the rock.  Asking would mean *I* knew that *he* knew that *I* knew...  Either that or he was in some serious denial that I might know more than I was letting on.  Mulder's not stupid.  But he can be had, and usually by himself.  Maybe he wanted to believe I was telling him all I knew, if only so that when he found out otherwise, he could hate me even more.

I stared at him across the musty back-end of the truck.  It smelled like it had recently hauled manure and/or sheep.  I stretched my leg out more, grunting a little and looking away from him.  My foot slid along his ankle until we were shin to shin.  I watched the wet trees fly backward away from us.  My leg got steadily warmer and warmer where it touched his.  He never moved.  We continued to pretend we were miles apart.

"They give you that haircut?" he asked suddenly.  It was the first thing he'd said to me since he yelled, 'Hurry up, Krycek,' through the bathroom door on the train.

I frowned at him.  I knew what he meant, but his insistence on my near-buzzcut, while formerly endearing in a psychotic way, was now bordering on just plain rude.

"What do you care?" I asked him.

He pulled his foot away and broke eye contact stubbornly.

I sighed.  "Yeah," I told him, watching for his eyes to find mine again.  They did.  "Standard militia issue," I confirmed.  "I told you, Mulder..."

"Yeah.  Underground.  Rats.  I heard you," he answered tersely.  We stared at each other for long, cold moments.

I decided that since he hadn't hit me in hours, I'd try for a concession.  I lifted my bound hands.  "This metal's freezing," I told him, shivering for good measure.  "Mind breaking me outta these, Mulder?"

He huffed out a cloud of breath, eyes drowsy though he was anything but.  He sat forward, digging in his pocket for the key.  I offered him my wrists, leaning forward as well.  He took the handcuffs off and I rubbed my wrists, the right one gingerly, before shoving my hands into my jacket pockets and leaning back once more.  

"Thanks," I murmured.  Chew on that, paranoia boy.

He just frowned, settling in again as well.  Our legs were touching again.  I smiled triumphantly to myself.

A few miles down the road, the truck squealed to a stop.  I recognized the metal structure just off the road in the woods, saying nothing about it to Mulder, of course.  Half the fun was the mystery, after all.  He'd go along when he found out where we were headed.  He'd want to.

The man told me how far to go and I told Mulder what he said.  No need to lie.  It was our mutual destination.  We took off at a jog through the trees.  It was raining.  I was cold and wet and should have been miserable.  Mulder, too.  But I know he wasn't.  I ran after him like we were children playing in the woods behind the house.  I had the insane urge to call after him, "King's X!"  or "Last one immunized is a rotten egg!" In Russian, of course.  Wouldn't want to end the suspense so quickly.

We got to a barbed wire fence and sank down in the damp dirt.  We dug with our hands.  I felt the mud wedging deep under my nails.  The fir trees smelled ripe in the new rain.  We were both panting quietly.  My hand brushed Mulder's as we dug.

I decided to inject some indignant ire and see what I could get out of him.  "You're really going to keep me in the dark, aren't you?" I asked, hoping maybe for an identical sucker punch.  Nothing of the sort.  Nothing at all, actually.  "What are we doing here, Mulder?" I tried.

It was ballsy, that's for sure.  It would be the perfect time for him to play his hand.  'You know perfectly well why we're here, don't you, you scum sucking freak of nature with an utterly disgusting haircut I'm strangely obsessed with?!'  Maybe he'd even draw his gun and raise the stakes.

What he actually did...was start to explain it to me.  I watched him digging in the dirt, alternately turning to look back at me, telling me the story of the Tunguskan meteor event.  It was work not to let my jaw drop.  He wasn't just grudgingly telling me.  Not telling me just so I'd shut up about it already.  It was as though he'd wanted to talk about it all along.  

I was mystified.  I was confused.  I felt something happen to me as he spoke.  Even though I knew the story, maybe knew it better than he did, I found myself listening.  Really listening to him.  And not just to the words, but to the easy cadence of his voice, the even timber, without anger, without suspicion.  Mulder was *talking* to me.

"No real definitive evidence has ever been found to provide a satisfying explanation of what it was," he told me.  And it was just exactly the way he used to speak to me when we were partners.  Before I left him.  Before anything.  I watched him crawl under the fence, slithering close to the ground.  He turned toward me again, wet hair dripping onto his face.  "I think somebody found that evidence.  And the explanation is something that nobody ever dreamed of."

He was gone before I could reconcile any of it.  That he thought I really didn't know about the rock, about the history of a country he now knew my parents grew up in.    That Mulder might really, truly believe better of me than I could ever be capable of.  That, to a greater extent than I would have ever thought possible or wise, Mulder trusted me.

I swallowed hard, feeling less and less smug by the moment, less and less myself.  I had no choice but to follow him through, so I snaked beneath the wire and took off at a run in his wake.

I came to a skidding stop and fell to the dirt beside Mulder, who was already laid out flat in the mud.  We were already there.  We were there and I had no idea what I was going to do.  Everything had somehow changed without any warning.  I found myself irrationally angry at Mulder for being so fucking naive.  Our relationship only worked if he despised me utterly and didn't trust me at all!  This would only work as long as he played by the fucking rules!  How could I use him if he honestly wasn't expecting it?

"What are they doing?" I asked him for lack of anything better to say.  Only now, I knew he wasn't lying there smugly aware I could answer my own question better than he could ever hope to with a pair of binoculars and an unnaturally keen intuition.  He really thought I didn't *know*.  The asshole!

It wasn't long before my plan was shot to hell.  We heard hoofbeats, and I knew we were caught.  We'd be thrown in the goddamned gulag now.   I'd be lucky to get out of the testing myself, much less protect Mulder.  My credibility would be seriously compromised if I was caught.  Not to mention the fucking claustrophobia.

And here was Mulder, actually expecting me to do the right thing!  It made it infinitely more difficult to keep him in the dark.  Like kicking a puppy.  I may be a manipulative prick, but I'm not a goddamned puppy kicker!

Mulder yelled at me to run and I swear I nearly kicked *him* I was so pissed.  How dare he look out for *me*?  I cursed him even as I ran like hell.

I was so pissed at Mulder, I almost botched everything while they questioned me.  But when the gaurd got in my face, grabbing my T-shirt and yanking me into his stale breath, I gritted my teeth and stuck to my story.  Stupid Americans lost in the woods.  He wasn't the one I had to convince.  

They manhandled me down to the cell, billy club to my throat, arm twisted behind my back.  It even smelled like the silo: old, thick oil reeking pungent in the dank air.  

Mulder looked like shit, but not as bad as me.  He still had his sweater.  I had almost decided to say to hell with it and get Mulder up to speed -- 'I'm a fucking *rat*, Mulder. I know *more* than you.  I brought *you* here, mother fucker.  You never should have trusted me, but now you have to because I'm the only one who can get you out of here and, silly me, I actually intend to.'  

But just looking at him in that J. Crew bullshit, hair all soft and mussed, eyes inquisitive as ever, I found myself giving in to my own fear.  I hadn't told him, and now not only had we not infiltrated the installation together, but Mulder knew nothing of what was really happening and was, in fact, looking at me like he remained hopeful I was here to tell him it had all been one big misunderstanding and they'd be reserving us rooms in the near-by Tunguska Marriott post-haste.

"We gotta get out of here," I told him.  "They're gonna torture us."  The remembered feel of that thing sliding up my nose... in through my damned piss slit and burning up my cock for God's sake...was enough to spark more than a touch of panic in me.  And just then I didn't really feel like giving Mulder anything more than a strong dose of my own rising fear.  He didn't deserve different if he still thought I might not be a lying piece of shit.

It wasn't long before he had me assume the position:  back to the wall with him pressing in on me angrily.  I felt a little better.  At least this made sense.  This was my Mulder.  And the immediacy of him in my face took my mind off another possible run-in with It.

"What did you tell them?"

So I told him the truth.  "That we were stupid Americans.  Lost in the woods."  His arm was strong against my throat.  I held his biceps but didn't try to pull him away.  "Mulder...you're gonna need me in here," I told him.  And I was gonna need a shit-hot piece of intel to secure my release, let alone Mulder's.  It was a good thing I didn't ever even walk out of the house without knowing what shit I could sell to who and for what price.  My mind was already racing through the possibilities.

Until I felt Mulder press in a little more.  I let him settle in against my body for a moment but then pushed him back, immediately missing his heat.  I put all the conviction I could into my next words.  "Don't touch me again."

His look was priceless.  It told me everything I needed to know:  that he suspected I liked it.  My dirty little secret.  Though I doubt he knew *why* I liked it.  Probably just thought I was a masochist rather than perversely and irrevocably hot for him.  I straightened up, chest expanding, daring him to give me what I wanted.  He rolled his eyes and moved away.

I went back to the window and pulled at the bars again. At least there was light.  And Mulder.  I wasn't alone in the pitch dark waiting to die.  

But I had to figure out what to do.  My options seemed to be a) tell Mulder everything and risk a fatal beating, b) dole out some half-truths and see if he'd go along with me long enough to at least let me get out of the cell to work over the Commandant, c) not tell him anything and just quietly hope I had the resources to get at least one of us out alive, if not untested.

I paced the cell, watching Mulder do the same on the other side, until I was getting more wired than was healthy and finally slid down the wall, banging my head back against it for good measure.

I continued to watch Mulder wear a rut in the floor, a, b, and c tumbling through my head incessantly.  Brutal beating, half-truths, or let him fend for himself.  Beating, half-truth, fend.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Finally, I opened my mouth to speak.

"Wanna play truth or dare?"

He looked as shocked at my words as I felt.

"What?" he hissed.  But it stopped him in his tracks.  

"Truth or Dare," I repeated.  "You know.  The game?"

I rationalized that it would be a good way to find out just how much he trusted me and just how much he'd be willing to believe of my story if I decided to tell him the truth.  But I think really I just wanted to play.  It had all felt like play before.  Him hitting me, me leading him on, him hitting me some more, making comments about my hair...  I thought we'd been playing the same game.  I wanted to be playing the same game again.

"I know what it is," he groused.  "Krycek, we're in a gulag or hadn't you noticed?"

I blew on my hands.  The sun was going down and it was taking the meager heat with it.  "I noticed," I assured him.  "There's no way out of here," I told him, though I was willing to sell out God to find a way.  Maybe Mulder, maybe not.  But God was a goner.   "Might as well pass the time," I offered.

He scowled at me.

"Come on, Mulder.  Isn't there stuff you wanna know about me?"  I needled.  Then I prodded.  "Stuff you'd like to make me do?"  I raised my eyebrows and saw him inhale deeply, slowly.

"You're a liar, Krycek," he mumbled, pacing away again.

"Why'd you bring me?" I challenged.  "Can't I lie all the better in Russian?"

He was facing away from me.  I watched his back as he sighed.  I felt some dangerous thing rise up inside me.  I held my breath and set it loose.  "I promise, Mulder.  I won't lie to you."  

And there it was.  My first and only promise to him and he knew it.  What's more, I knew it, and I meant it.  I *really* meant it.  If he wanted the truth, I'd risk the fatal beating.  I was tired of trying to decide how much to tell him.  The problem with playing mind games is that they never end with a winner.  They never end at all.

"Strict rule play,"  I added softly.  "One question per person per round.  No rapid-fire interrogation.  And I won't lie to you.  I'll tell you anything you want to know."  I swallowed.  "Deal?"

I waited, softly panting, as he just stood there silent.  Then he turned back around and stared at me.  He looked tired of it, too.  Slowly, he slid down the opposing wall, eyes fixed on me.  "You first," he said, seriously, and it stole my breath for a second.  "Truth or dare, Krycek."

I swallowed, unable not to blink.  His gaze was steady and electric and honest.  "Truth," I ventured, though my voice was barely anything.

He was completely still and unblinking as he asked, "Did you kill my father?"

It was, of course, the first thing he would have to ask me, and so it came as no surprise.  Still, every other time he'd asked me that, I'd come up with a way to avoid the full extent of the truth.  Plausible denial is something I've had beaten into me.  I felt a kind of sick exhilaration with the idea of consciously and consistently practicing a policy of truth with him here.

And even with the exhilaration, it was like walking on burning coals to look into his eyes.  "Yes," I whispered and saw him inhale measuredly.  No other reaction.  Just that.

"Your turn," he said, and it was quiet, funereal.

"Truth or dare," I said, again a whisper.

"Truth," he said calmly.  

I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with how he was staring at me.  I cleared my throat.  I hadn't yet thought what I would ask him, only what it would be possible for him to ask me.  I opened my mind quite suddenly to the idea of knowing Mulder.  Not from file folders and surveillence.  Not gossip and heresay.  Knowing Mulder.  Knowing what he knew of himself.  It was completely different.

"Do you want to kill me?" I asked.  It tumbled from my lips in a way that let me know it was something I'd been unconsciously wondering about for some time.

He blinked once and answered quickly.  "Not right now, no."

I squinted, trying to see how glib he was being.  He met my look openly.  "Truth or dare?" he asked me.

I frowned.  "Truth."

He pulled his leg in and rested his elbow on it.  "Do you want to kill *me*?"

Good.  An easy one.  I even smiled a little.  "No," I told him.  By his frown, I could tell he wondered if I'd already started stretching the truth.  Maybe it was hard for him to conceive that he, the good guy, would have murderous thoughts about me, but I, his resident bad guy, wouldn't just by virtue of my badness return them.  I licked my lips.  "Truth or dare, Mulder."

He sighed.  "Truth."

"Sick of the game?" I asked.

"No," he insisted, frowning.

"All right," I allowed.  "Do you...?"

"My turn."

"What?"

"You asked your question, Krycek.  I'm not sick of the game, so it's my turn.  Strict rule play," he replied.  "Truth or dare."

I rolled my eyes, adjusting my position on the floor.  It was hard concrete and turning very cold, very fast.  Mulder was waiting for my answer, eyes drowsy again.

"Truth," I answered.

"Do you know anything about what happened to my sister?"  He was serious again, though calm.

I figured anything other than a succinct answer on this one would get me beaten bloody.  If I didn't think it would tear open a wound even *I* considered sacred taboo, I might have pushed him just to get a fight going.  "No," I told him.  Then added before I could stop myself, "I'm sorry."

He scoffed coldly.  "Fuck you," he sneered, balling his hand into a fist.

I swallowed and met his eyes, giving a small shrug.  It was true.  I was sorry.  He and I had our history, but it wasn't as though I just had it out for him and his entire family.  It wasn't a personal vendetta for me.  If I had information on Samantha, I would have been more than happy to provide it.  For a price, but hey, what did you expect?

"Truth or dare?" I asked him softly.

He sighed again and loosened his fist.  I dropped my gaze to it just for a moment.  "Truth," he said.

"Where'd you get that sweater?"  I felt the need for a downshift.

"Catalogue.  Why?" he asked, obviously prepared to be insulted.

"Can't ask why," I told him, rubbing my hands together for warmth.

"Why not?" he pursued.

"'sthe rules," I told him.  "What catalogue?"

He frowned.  "I don't have to tell you what catalogue."

"This isn't half-truth or dare, Mulder," I chided.  

"You son of a bitch," he hissed, pulling his feet in to stand so he could come rough me up, which I was more than ready for, but I held up a hand to stop him.

"Nevermind.  All right?  It was two questions.  My bad.  Your turn."

He slowly relaxed back down then huffed out, "Truth or fucking dare."

I smiled.  "Truth."

"What did you call me before?"

Oh, shit.  "What are you talking about?" I asked, scowling.  When in doubt, try to make Mulder think he's crazy.

"In Russian," he clarified for me helpfully.  "Back in New York." He raised his eyebrows.  "The bad names."

I sighed heavily.  I was sorely tempted to lie on this one.  I felt all the heat in my body settle on my cheeks in a nice, embarrassing blush.  For the first time, I realized this wasn't negotiable.  I wasn't going to fuck him over with veiled lies.  We'd struck a deal.  A real one, in the guise of this game.

I muttered the answer between clenched teeth.  "Sadistic..."

"And?" he prodded.

"Mother fucking..."

"Yeah?"

I huffed and rolled my eyes, looking away.  "Cocktease," I finished.

There was a long pause.  I didn't look at him.  To my utter shock his next words were simply, "Your turn."

If I'd been thinking, I wouldn't have turned my head so sharply, my eyes wouldn't have been so wide, I wouldn't have looked so stupified.  But I did.  All of those things.  Only to be met by the very slightest little smile hovering at the corner of Mulder's mouth.

"This is where you say, 'Truth or dare, Mulder,'" he provided.

I closed my mouth and swallowed.  "Truth or dare," I croaked.

"Good," he had the nerve to congratulate me.  I frowned deeply at him.  "Truth," he finished.

I probably shouldn't have said it.  It wasn't time yet.  He wasn't primed.  I was the one caught off-guard.  Maybe I just wanted to drag him off balance with me, forcibly if I had to.  At any rate, it got out there.  "Do you realize you always get a hard-on when you hit me, Mulder?"

He took a breath, recovered too quickly, and shrugged.  "Adrenaline," he replied.

I shook my head.  "Not what I asked you."  I was leaning forward now.  Adrenaline my ass.

His next breath was deeper, his eyes trying to stay on mine, not to concede.  He bit the inside of his lip and answered nonchalantly...quietly, "Yeah."  Somehow his look managed to dare *me*.  His overly long pause seemed like a deliberate attempt to divert the tension my way.  It worked.  "Truth or dare...Krycek," he said lowly.

I made a mental note never to use erections as an intimidation tool when my own was sprouting up quickly and without the aid of another body rubbing it hard.  I cleared my throat.  "Truth."

"What's your favorite song?"

I squinted at him.  Fucking profiler.  Apparently I took too long to answer.

"I could come up with another question if that one's too hard," he told me.  I had to wonder if he used the word hard instead of difficult on purpose.

"George Thorogood," I replied.  "'Who Do You Love?'"

He nodded a few times thoughtfully, considering.

"Truth or dare," I asked him.

"Dare," he answered, looking me square in the eye.

I didn't hesitate.  "Take off that J. Crew sweater."

He actually smirked.  Then he reached down, took the sweater by the hem, and began to tug it over his head.  No words.  No complaints or objections.  He pulled it off his arms and set it aside, now only in a white T-shirt and jeans like me.  He stared at me again across the small space.  "Truth or dare," he said as I covertly watched his nipples get tight.  

My voice came out tellingly hoarse.  "Truth."

"Chicken," he said.

"Maybe," I allowed.

He smiled.  Then he licked his lips.  His eyes narrowed.  He sobered.  "You have a way out of here, don't you?  You know this place.  Don't you?"

I tried to keep a studied countenance, tried not to just show my hand, but then I realized it's what I knew he might get around to...why I started this in the first place.  And he'd surprised me yet again.  "I may have a way out...yeah," I told him.  

His jaw tightened.  "And you know them."

"That's two questions, Muh-"

"Screw you, Krycek -" he started.

"No," I said simply, stopping him.  I held his sparking gaze.  "The rules, Mulder.  One question at a time, and I don't lie to you."

He made that compulsive fist again.  Could he feel it impacting with my flesh?  The satisfaction of that?  Was his dick tingling?  

He nodded, exhaling with care.  His words were controlled with visible effort.  "Your turn."

I shifted on the floor but my ass was essentially frozen to the ground now.  Him looking at me, that hand still loosely curled into a fist, made me want to crawl out of my skin.

"Truth or dare,"  I said with feigned ease.

His teeth were gritted.  "Truth."

I swallowed and jumped into a freefall I wasn't sure either one of us would survive. "What would have happened after my three minutes were up?" I asked.  I knew he'd know what I was referring to and the subtle change in his expression didn't disappoint.  

He stared at me for a moment.  "I would have come in there and dragged your sorry ass out, Krycek," he said.  

Too late, I realized I'd asked the wrong question.  I opened my mouth to amend it, but a tilt of his head discouraged me.

"Truth or dare," he nearly growled.

I blinked and tried to regain some measure of readiness, although no amount of that would keep him from hating the answer to his question.

Inspiration struck.  "Dare."

His eyes narrowed.  He studied me.  I tried to mask my quickening breath.  After another tense moment, he spoke.  "Hit me," he said.  And I waited to hear the real instructions.  

"What?"  I snarled.  I was surprised to feel not just fear but anger boiling up in my chest.  *Hit* him?  What the fuck was that about?  He had to be testing me somehow.  There was really no good option here if he was serious.

"You heard me," he stated calmly.  "I want you to come over here and hit me."  He stood up, squaring his shoulders.  "Come on, Krycek.  It's an easy one.  Don't tell me you're gonna renege."

I stared at him warily, not even attempting to hide my shock.

"Come on," he said again, voice falling into a seductive whisper.  "Hit me, Krycek."  Then, "You know you want to."

He was serious.  I let my deep inhale propel me up and then forward toward his side of the cell.  He waited for me, chin lifting, eyes dark and gleaming.

I blinked at him.  I pulled my fist back.  He didn't flinch.  I faltered.  My hand loosened some as I stared at him and he at me.  I firmed my jaw and drew back further, fist so tight it was trembling.  

But I couldn't.  For no reason I could rationally conceive, I couldn't hit him.  It wasn't fear I was feeling.  It wasn't malice.  It was simply...resentment.  That he'd asked me to do it.  That I thought all I wanted was a chance.  One chance.  And that I'd take it.  He was giving it up.  And still I couldn't.  I found myself reacting so violently I had tears in my eyes.

Mulder still looked at me.  He'd never stopped.

"You sick son of a bitch," I hissed at him, dropping my arm.

He just smiled.  "You know, Krycek.  The way we played...when someone reneged on a dare, the other person got to slap him on the arm with two fingers."

I frowned.  It wasn't that I didn't know about the rule;  we'd played the same way when I was a kid.  Two fingers, licked, and a slap on the arm as hard as you could.  But this was Mulder.  This was me.  He could hit me for real and often did.  

"Are you familiar with the rule?" he asked.

I swallowed and he tilted his head, blinking at me.  I frowned further.  Before I could gather my wits, to discern his deceit, if indeed he was being somehow deceitful, he licked the first two fingers on his right hand and slapped my upper arm.

I could do nothing but stare down at the spot, still frowning.  Mulder had slapped my arm.  It didn't hurt.  Not in the least.  It tingled a little.  And...it was moist from his spit.  I blinked.  

He sighed, "All right.  Your turn."  Then as he turned, "Pussy."  And he sat back down against the wall, leaving me to return to my side.  Which I did, still feeling the licked slap high up on my left arm.  I couldn't even retort.  He was right.  I hadn't been able to hit him.  Why the fuck hadn't I been able to hit him?  

"Truth or dare," I murmured distractedly.

"Truth," he uttered, the smile on his face not quite smug.  Somewhere between smug and excited.  

I was looking down, unable to rejoin him in the game, reeling.  My lips remained parted, my breath uneven.

"Krycek," he called arrogantly.  "I said truth."

I gulped down my revulsion at myself, the stunned realization.  I thought about what I could possibly ask that wouldn't just crucify *me*.  Sex was out.  Work was an unfunny joke.  Anything else was useless.  Maybe.

 This was the arena of truth, after all.   I could ask anything, be granted brutal honsety without earning so much of a fraction of the right to it.  
 
 Knowing Mulder...  It tugged on me relentlessly, the desire strong, almost a need.

"What's your favorite memory as a child?" I asked.  Because knowing Mulder must have to start there, I thought.

"You assume I have one," he muttered under his breath, barely audible, not meant for me.  But I heard it.

I narrowed my eyes and he sighed again.  Then he looked at me.  "'Mystery Notes' on Quanaquatogue," he said.  He took a deep breath, then.  Both unwilling and eager to tell me, I think.  

"It's a game we used to play.  Sam, my two cousins, and me.  James and Phillip were older, so one of them always made up the notes."  Mulder resituated on the floor. "They'd write out about ten notes and hide them around the property.  You had to find the first one and it would give you a clue as to where the next one was.  Sometimes it was a riddle.  Sometimes just like... 'Where the water flows, your mystery goes.'  And the next note would be someplace like under a loose rock at the foot of the birdbath or tied to a tree down by the lake.  Not rocket science, but...  We were kids.  The goal was to follow the notes until you found the treasure at the end.  Usually something like a cheesy figurine or costume jewelry...something like that."  

He looked down at the floor, biting the inside of his cheek.  Like I'd disappeared.  I stared at him, transfixed, stuck there in the etched beauty of his soft expression, a fly in honey.

"I loved it," he said.  He shook his head, deep in the remembering.  "I loved following the clues.   I loved the trail of evidence.  I almost hated solving a piece because that meant we were that much closer to the end."  He laughed shortly.  "I loved that I always won."  Then he looked back up at me, tired eyes with a distant smile in them, fading.  He cleared his throat.  "Truth or dare, Krycek."  Saying my name again.  Chastizing himself.  Reminding me.

I didn't think.  I said, "Truth."

He looked at me with piercing eyes, the veil of his memories gone.  "You know them," he enunciated.  "Don't you."

I sipped in my breath, uncharacteristically caught off-guard.  Again.  Maybe it wasn't so anathema to my character after all.  Maybe I was going soft.  Maybe he'd infected me.

"Yes," I answered.  Then stronger, more composed, "Yes."  He continued to look at me.  I knew I wasn't done.  Full disclosure was what he was asking for.  I knew the extent to which I had to reveal myself.  "They're a competitor of the American syndicate.  Both working on the same Project.  Both vying for position at the top...for bargaining power.  I heard of this project through my former dealings with the U.S. group and I wanted to come here to..."  I paused, gauging if he'd give me an inch.  "Assess their position," I finally said.  His eyebrows rose, demanding the last admission.  "To steal what they have," I confessed.  At his reluctant nod, I added, "Truth or dare."

He shifted, itching to get his turn back.  "Truth."

Feeling somewhat relieved and stupidly cocky after I wasn't killed outright for that last round, I found my thoughts turning once again to sex.  To the Hong Kong bathroom in particular.  I'm not ashamed to admit that it's spawned many a dirty fantasy.  Not the part where I was taken over by the alien oil.  That was suitably horrifying;  I'm not *that* kinky.  But before...  Those fateful three minutes when I thought...what if?    

Some may call what I've done with the minutes following those three rescripting, and that's just fine with me.  It takes something purely animal, primal, and perverted and makes it a legitimate, beneficial...hell, even necessary psychological experiment.  

At any rate, I've rewritten that scene starring Mulder's fat, hungry cock sliding up my whore ass more times than is probably strictly in the interest of my mental health.

I looked at Mulder across the cell, fashion conscious even in a Hanes T.  He was ripe from underuse, sexy as all shit, and I had to know if he'd rescripted that one, too.

"What did you *want* to do if I hadn't come out in three minutes?"  I looked at him from under my lashes.  "The sick shit," I elaborated.  "No PG-13."  Then I waited.  And watched him burn.

"You were expecting something other than a good beating?" he asked icily.  Alas, he had *not* promised his utter faithfulness to Truth as I had.  I sighed.  Yet, the cool exterior did really nothing to shield his growing heat from me.  I'm infrared, baby.

I had to do nothing more than raise my eyebrows and scoot down, gently and subtly thrusting my crotch in his direction.  

He swallowed, growling quietly,  "Fuck you."

I was ready to protest when I realized I'd gotten my answer.  The only way Mulder was willing to give it.  He was beet-red...guilty-fuck-red.  And at long last, I had my curiosity satisfied.  I should have been triumphant.  I was breathless.

"Truth or dare," he gritted out.  He couldn't look at me.

"Truth," I breathed...awed and shocked to my bones.

He spat his question.  "What are they doing here, Krycek?  What project is this?"

I swallowed down my speechlessness, trying to switch gears, though my cock was glaringly, perversely erect as I answered.  "They're experimenting with an extraterrestrial biological entity.  That's what's in that rock," I told him.  

"Experimenting how?" he asked, sitting forward again, intent on my answers.  And it was so completely married to the first question I couldn't deny it.

"By injecting the prisoners with different versions of a vaccine and then infecting them with the virus."

"Virus?"

"The alien.  It *is* the virus."

He frowned...thought for a moment.  "And you..." he started, ready rage building behind dark eyes.  Then he realized his time was up.  He stopped himself, compressing his lips.  "Your fucking turn," he muttered.

I nodded, almost wishing I could ignore the rules and keep going.  I was quickly realizing this was sacred...beyond law.  An unbreakable trust.  And it only worked if we both obeyed, even if it worked against our best interests.

"Truth or dare," I recited.

His sigh was heavy with frustration at having to wait.  "Dare," he huffed, as if the choice would be quicker and buy him precious seconds.

I smirked.  My cock was still informing my brain how to procede after all.  "Unbutton your jeans," I said.  "Open your fly."

He looked at me like I was the most vile thing to crawl out of the primordial ooze.  But he did it.  His graceful hands with their fuck-you-so-deep fingers undid the button on his fly.  It was hurried, the most asexual thing I've ever seen, like a hustler readying for the rushed trick.  But then, perhaps realizing the power he could take back from me in the gesture, he slowed, glancing up at me consideringly, and then took his zipper down, one scant centimeter at a time.  

And I bought his tease, the calculated thrust upward of his packed fly.  The zipper drooled open, unfolding in front of my eyes, a black magic trick, a seduction of every cell in my body.  I saw him turning the tables and went willingly where he dained to take me.

The denim relaxed like an inebriated lover, his underwear plainly visible, stark white.  The bulge beneath remained cotton-covered mystery.  Mulder raised his knee further and let it fall to the side.  His inseams were rubbed pale, friction burns I'd have been more than happy to soothe with the flat of my tongue.  

I realized then that the perversion in me had nothing to do with wanting to see his soft, dangling prick.  It was that I was actually denying myself.  I had the power to order him to whip it out.  Hell, I could make him bend over so I could lick his butthole for an hour. Well, actually I was pretty sure he'd take the arm slap rather than do that.  But the point is, I'm a freak.  Glutton for punishment.  Totally.

I sighed and raised my gaze, giving him a small grin, acknowledging his advantage, acknowledging all that could have been between us had weather conditions proven suitable, primed for a flight of sanity and good intentions.  

"Your turn," I husked, getting more comfortable, or trying to, around my saluting cock.

"Truth or dare," he said, and the mere quiet of his voice should have clued me in to the infernal backdraft of anger waiting behind it.

But it didn't, and I wouldn't have changed my answer if it had.  "Truth," I blurted, ready, even as his perpetual hatred of me flooded back into the space between us.

"You were going to leave me here to be tested."  And though it wasn't a question, I was just as answerable to it.

I hesitated, fear enveloping me.  He stood up.  I did, too, in response.  He was on my side of the cell fast, pushing me hard against the cold wall.  His hand was around my throat this time, choking me.  I had this fleeting and insane thought that if he kept strangling me, I couldn't look down and see his jeans struggling to falling off his hips.

"You were gonna leave me here, you son of a bitch?" he hissed.  The inflection, the use of a question, didn't escape my notice and became a twin swollen bruise resting in my throat, unspoken.

I shook my head as much as he would let me.  I couldn't speak.  He squeezed hard.  My eyes rolled back.  His body ground mine into the wall.  He let off enough for me to cough.

"You fucking bastard," he spat.

"No-" I tried.  "Not...leave you..."

"Bullshit," he gritted.

"No, Mulder."  His fingers tightened reflexively, ready to choke the life out of me if I answered wrong.  "Truth," I gasped.  "Promise.  Get you out...  Get vaccine...  Both...out..."

He let go of me abruptly, turning away.  I tried to get my breath.  He let me cough for about a minute before he turned back around.

"But you were going to let them experiment on me," he said. The space he'd put between us hurt more than the violence of his hand around my neck.

"Vaccinate you...Mulder," I replied, still trying to catch the breath he stole.

"Then what?  Steal the vaccine and *rescue* me?"  He rolled the word in his mouth like arsenic.  "Why not leave me here?" he asked tightly.

"I told you," I said, rubbing my throat and panting.  "I don't want to kill you...don't want you dead."

He put his hands on his hips, turning half away from me again.  Like if he looked at me he'd see the beauty of his hands around my neck, the rightness of that photograph in time, his revenge realized perfectly in a moment.

"Why play this game, Krycek?" he asked.  "What the fuck was this about?"

I waited until he looked at me again, eyes bright and green and alive.  "Is that your next question?"

Murder flared in his eyes once more.

"Truth?" I went on, trying to get him to understand.  If it was the game, I wouldn't lie.  I'd made him a promise.  If it was truth, it was truth.

He took a deep breath, but the word was hard.  "Yes."

But it was his turn.  "You have to go," I told him, panting.  "It's your turn, you have to go."

He took his head in his hands.  He stayed like that, potent rage brimming and receding, shallow under the skin.  Then he stood again.  "Ask me," he spat, impatient.

"Truth or dare, Mulder."

"Truth," he ground out.

I thought about throwing the turn, asking something insipid, but I knew that would render the game meaningless.  The whole thing was contingent on the power of real, raw truth.  His and mine.

"Do you ever think of me when you beat off?" I asked, knowing that it had more power than so many things I could have asked that might have seemed worse.  Just this would cost him so much.  If I was right and it was yes.  I needed this question to be a big pay off.  Strangely, he needed that, too.  The weight of my own truth hung in the balance.

His answer was quick and hard, his eyes sparking with the fuel of despising me.  "Yes."  Then, "Truth or dare."

"Truth," I could only whisper.  Time had sped up and my heart was keeping pace.

"Why play this game?" he repeated, trembling just slightly, his eyes moist.

I blinked at him.  "I wanted to tell you."

He frowned, suspicious.  "Tell me what?"

I took a step toward him.  "The truth, Mulder."  I was fairly pleading with him now.  "I'm a fucking coward, all right?  But I knew if you asked...if you asked me outright...I'd tell you."

He laughed humorlessly.  "Great system you got there, Krycek."

I was silent, but my eyes continued to implore him.  He sighed.  He ran his hand through his hair.  "Your turn, then," he muttered.  Time slowed back down.  He turned to me, expression urgent and serious, and said it again.  "Your turn."

I swallowed thickly.  "Truth or dare?"

He breathed it out.  "Truth."  I felt how funny it was to say that word, so powerful and inflammatory for the both of us, over and over again.  It should have become jibberish by then.

I took a few calming breaths, feeling my throat tight and bruised around every one.  The game was going on and it was high stakes.  I looked him in the eye.  "If you knew I might be keeping things from you..."  I fought for the right words.  "Then why did you trust me enough to bring me?"  I took a tentative step toward him again.  "Why did you talk to me the way you did?  At the fence."

He blinked, his eyes going tired and sad.  His whole body reacted to my words.  He sagged and leaned against the wall behind him.  I watched his eyes darken, too intent on the shifting emotions on his face to enjoy the slipping jeans.  He took a breath that shuddered through his body.  He shook his head.  He looked at me.  "I want to believe in you, Alex.  Don't you know that?"

I blinked in response.  Nothing could have fucked with my head more.  To my horror, I felt my eyes filling with tears.  In all of the years I'd spent in opposition to him, in all the time since we'd been partners, with everything that I'd done, I never would have thought he'd have even one cell in his body left capable of believing in me.  The fact that he'd want to...  Still.  Even now.  I dropped my gaze, unwilling to let him see what he'd done with that painful honesty.

His voice strengthened.  "Truth or dare."

I swallowed, staring at the floor through my quickly blurring vision.  "Mulder..."

"Take dare," he provided for me.

"Fine, Jesus.  Dare."  I was on the verge of just giving up and asking for him to beat me unconscious.  

"Look at me."

Was that my dare?  To look at him?  I lifted my chin, finding his gaze even as a fat tear slid down my cheek and my lip trembled.

"Now tell me," he said.  "Tell me, Alex, that there's nothing left in you...not one little piece of you left to believe in."

I stood stunned.  The words unstoppable, unthinkable, yet I couldn't steer away from the sheer impact.  Mulder wanting to believe in me.  

I opened my mouth.  I had to tell him that he'd had the right idea before, that there wasn't, in fact, one piece left that was good and honorable in me.  It was all true.  All the filthy, harsh facts.  I was damned and I'd bring him down, too, if he let me.  

He wanted to believe in me.  He'd said it.  I wanted to dash his hope for me.  Dash it against the unyielding wall and watch it bleed down the stone.  But I couldn't speak.  The desire was there, the pull to just end his faith in me, this misplaced, naive, masochistic faith that only hurt and hurt some more.  For some insane reason there was one little piece in *him* that could still believe in me... I had to kill it.  Any second now, I'd say it.  'No, Mulder.  Don't believe in me.  There *is* nothing left.  Nothing for you.  Nothing at all.'  

I was going to say it.  Ready to say it.  But his voice gently broke the quiet.

"I knew it."  And I saw in his eyes...I saw the thing I'd been about to kill.  

He walked toward me and my eyes widened in terror.  Not of physical violence.  That would have been a balm.  No.  This thing in his eyes...the belief.  He'd judged my silence for the answer he wanted.  No! my mind screamed, even as he came in close.

He came nearly chest to chest with me  I stared into his eyes, too afraid to speak.  I could smell his every breath, puffed out like a goaded bull as my own were scared and shallow.  My gaze shifted between his changing eyes.  No, Mulder...  You stupid gullible prick...  My eyes filled and I blinked compulsively.

He gasped as footsteps fell heavy in the corridor outside our cell, approaching fast.  I stepped back abruptly, wide eyes on Mulder's face, his gaze still seeking the truth within me.  I broke eye contact, and he fastened his jeans with shaking hands.  He looked at the door.  So did I.  His gaze shot back to me, piercing.  "Don't let them take me," he hissed.

 I opened my mouth.  Before I could answer, a key scraped the lock and the door flew open.  I held onto his panicked look as long as I could when the guard grabbed me, but I had to turn to him finally, breaking the connection with Mulder. I spoke quickly and forcfully in Russian, "I want to see your supervisor."

He took the front of my shirt.  "Why would my supervisor want to see you?"

I could feel Mulder's gathering panic beside me.  I forced myself not to look at him.  "He'll want to see me," I told the guard.

He let me go and backed away.  "I don't know...I don't know..."

Mulder interrupted desperately, "What are you saying?"

I looked at him calmly.  "That I want to see his supervisor."  Who I had to be then was someone Mulder couldn't trust...someone he'd know to be his enemy.  I saw it register in his face, even as his hope to have found something good in me battled the crushing weight of betrayal.  The fact that he still valiantly fought to believe in me...

The guard brought my attention back. "Okay, but if he doesn't want to see you, you'll be accountable."

I nodded aquiescence.  "I'll be accountable, I'll be accountable."  Not to him, I thought, feeling sick, but to Mulder.

The guard started to lead me away.  I turned back to Mulder.  His face was full of every fear I'd ever corroborated for him.  I swallowed and wondered if I could follow through.  His words reverberated through me.  *I want to believe in you, Alex.*  I looked him in the eye.  "Da svidanya," I said before the door closed between us.


XXXXXXXX


I saw him dragged onto the concrete bed, pinned under chicken wire.  I could make out his screams over the others.  I'd heard it in dreams while I penetrated him forcefully, in nightmares where the aliens took him while I watched, impotent.  Hearing it in reality, I decided my imagination was remarkably accurate.

They drew the wire tight over his face, rendering him immobile, finally.  "Don't."  My voice came out a strained whisper to the man next to me.  Gone was my laughter, my easy, arrogant pride with him to prove my equality.

He smirked, unable to look away from his work.  I took his arm and he shook me off, whirling on me, scowling.  

"I'll give you his physical address," I tried.  I didn't have to clarify of whom I spoke.  I'd been offering up the Smoker's soul for about an hour.  

The Commandant shook his head, suddenly filled with good humor.  He lifted his chin to his assistant and I held my breath.

"Give over testing to Gudinov," he drawled.  

The assistant, a man too young to have such leathery skin and muddy eyes, came to stand at the Commandant's side, hands behind his back dutifully.

"Comrade Krycek would like to spare the American," Commandant Pavlova said conversationally to the younger man.  "What do you think, Uri?"

Uri licked thin lips, eyeing me up and down.  He nodded shortly at his boss.

Pavlova yelled back to Gudinov, "Hold testing."  His eyes remained on me.  "I need some time to come to an understanding with our new friend."

I was led away through a heavy iron door.  I resisted the urge to look back over my shoulder, through the tight rectangular window where lines of bodies lay in wait.

..........

His groan was long and loud, his head thrown back.  I grimaced, choking, and when he pulled out, I spat his semen to the side on the floor.

Pavlova chuckled from his vantage point against the far wall.  Uri's red face above me split into an intoxicated smile.  I got up off my knees, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth.

"Now will you release him?" I asked, panting, eyes hard on the Commandant even as I deferred like I knew he wanted.  It was the only way he might respond favorably.  

He shrugged.  "He'll be kept out of the tests for now.  As for his release...well, I have to sleep on that, Comrade Krycek.  But rest assured, your outstanding performance will be taken into consideration."

He waited for me to react.  I controlled my breath, the instinct to retch, and batted my eyelashes.  "Yes, Commandant Pavlova.  I appreciate your kind-heartedness."

He smiled, then, showing proudly the gap in his yellow teeth...the snarl of amusement that stood for happiness.  "Good," he declared.  He nodded at Uri.  "Show Comrade Krycek to his new accommodations."

As he left the room, I had no choice but to turn to the man whose cock I'd just sucked off.  I met his smug expression with chill, and when he tried to take my arm, I pulled free violently.  I spoke to him using the language of a superior.  "Don't touch me."

He looked as though he might ignore the order, licking his lips once more.  I really had no power and we both knew it.  But he also knew if he tried anything, he'd be risking his life, or at least his mottled grey balls, on the assumption that I'd rather secure Mulder's release than protect my 'cherry' ass.

He walked behind me, giving directions down mildewed corridors, billy club pointing at my back like a surrogate cock, warning me with every step.

He opened a door and nodded for me to enter.  He spat in after me, "If you want to see the American alive, you'll stay put until Commandant Pavlova sends for you."  Then he slammed the door.

I turned to see my new room.  Not much better than the cell I'd so briefly shared with Mulder.  But it had a bed and  a toilet, dirty with God know's what, and a small basin with foggy water.  And I wasn't locked in.  I went to the little sink with questionable water and vigorously rinsed out my mouth.

..........

I'd overheard their meeting times and knew I had a chance to walk the halls relatively unnoticed from ten to ten-thirty.  I stood tall and walked with the solidity of purpose, uncaring of the loud stomp of my boots throughout the prison.  I went unquestioned by the few guards I saw loitering in shoddy break rooms and at empty cell thresholds.  I spoke to them all with careful disdain or not at all.  My heart was beating in its own race against the blood pumping through it.

I was on my way to Mulder's cell, stopped at a crossroads of identical hallways, looking both ways and trying to remember the labrynth I'd been led away through when first I was brought to the Commandant.  I had made up my mind to turn left when I heard voices drifting down the echoing stone from the right.  

I took a breath and stuck close to the wall as I neared the conversation that I soon discerned to be between Pavlova and two others.

It didn't take long to understand the subject.

"He has no bargaining power," Pavlova bragged.  "He's a dog.  A pup," he amended.  "We can test the American all we want until he's dead and this one will just have to eat whatever we feed him out of the palms of our hands."

I felt sick, yet even still, I'd known he was capable of such easy betrayal.  Except for his lacking stature and penchant for cigars over Morley's, he was too much like his American counterpart.  

I swallowed around the bile-tinted remains of Uri's cum, realizing Mulder had probably already been tested on.  That the call for a testing hold had most likely been false.  That they had no reason to observe any agreements with me, bought with any number of sexual favors or not.  They had all the power and I had none.  Any power they let me think I had was only to serve them during my short stay and soon I'd find myself held down by wire with that abomination slithering into my brain just like the others.

I was a plaything, just like Mulder, and as long as they had him, I was playable.

I backed down the wall the way I came, mind tripping over the possibilities, and made my way quickly to Mulder's quiet cell.  I knelt on the stone floor and lifted the metal flap over the food slot.   Its rusted hinges held it open.

He was curled in the corner, knees drawn in like an abused child.  Still, I could see the gauze taped awkwardly to his neck and the blood soaked through.  I felt my stomach drop into my gut and knew I'd still been holding out a hope that they hadn't yet used him.  But the real sickness I felt was in knowing I might have let him undergo the test purely out of my own emittable cruelty...my own vast darkness.

They were me, and I was them.  And the pervading thought was simply, how could I?

Mulder stirred, groaning.  I looked back down the hall and could still hear the low, indistinguishable murmur of the Commandant.  I whispered urgently through the flap, "Mulder...  Mulder, wake up."

A louder moan and he rolled onto his back, waking more fully with a hiss.

"Mulder!"  

I saw his eyes pop open, rolling for a moment.  Then he sat slowly, squinting in my direction.  He blinked a few times, and then he growled, "Krycek, you..." trying to curse me I had no doubt.

There was no time.  "Listen to me," I demanded in a whisper.

"Go away," he snarled weakly, falling against the cell wall in his effort to sit up.

"No, Mulder," I replied.  "Listen.  I know they've tested on you.  I tried to stop them.  I tried, Mulder."  I heard a raucous laugh down the hall and jumped.  

Mulder was muttering under his breath, "Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup..."

"Listen to me!" I pleaded, feeling like for once I'd have *him* around the throat if I could reach him.   "I'm going to get you out of here.  I have to go before they see me.  I'll get a message to you," I told him, watching his unfocused eyes avoid me.  "Mulder," I tried again.

He buried his face in his pulled up legs.  I saw the oil residue in his hair.  He shook his head no, slowly, incessantly.

"I'll get you out," I hissed just before the door down the hall swung open.  I had no time to make it down the hall and into the adjoining corridor.  Their shadows were already preceding them out of the room.  I backed hurriedly into the slim alcove across the hall, pressing hard up against the opposing cell door.  I could still see Mulder through the food slot.  He lifted his head.  His eyes found me, saw my fear, and lit.

Loud voices in celebration of their own power strode in my direction.  I watched Mulder, pleading silently with my eyes for him not to call out and reveal me.  I saw him want to and the companion desire for me to think he would.  But then, as he closed his parched lips and swallowed and his eyes went dull as slate, I realized he wouldn't or couldn't turn me in.   He dropped his gaze once more, and I exhaled in gratitude.

"Hey!" a guard suddenly yelled, and Mulder's head jerked to attention the same as mine.  The guard yelled in Russian, "Has the food been delivered yet?"

The slot.  Mulder's food slot, standing open.  Fuck!  And they were too close for me to even whisper now.  I saw Mulder frown.  I jerked my chin at the flap, feeling like it was hopelessly in vain.  He didn't understand Russian, I couldn't explain a goddamned thing, and even if I could, it might be worth everything he'd just gone through to see me sizzle and fry in my own panic sweat.

I mouthed, very carefully, just in case, 'Close the flap.'  Then added as their agitated voices neared, 'Please.'

I saw the knowledge dawn across his brow.  I saw his poor, abused body lurch across the small space.  And I saw his red-rimmed eyes for but a fraction of a second more before he tapped the metal and it went down over the slot.

I heard the boots halt on the stone floor and a muttered, "Just the stupid prisoner."  

And the Commandant's answer, "No dinner for him tonight for that."

I closed my eyes in sick frustration, but it was tainted with a great wash of relief as I heard the three men's steps taking them away from me, from Mulder's cell and the place where I hid.  

And I felt gratitude.  The man on the other side of that door, now no longer visible and so quiet he could be dead, had made that sacrifice.  And for what?  For me.  Even if it had only been in the meager hope that if I stayed alive and free I could rescue him, he had to know, or at least to believe, that I was no longer capable of such chivalry.  That everything I was was a lie.  And still he made the choice to save me.

I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, sending him promises in my head, vainly trying to communicate them silently through the thick door.

*I will get you out.  I won't let you suffer here anymore.  I promise you.*

Then I slipped from the dark alcove and made my circuitous way back to my quarters to plan Mulder's and my escape.

..........

There was a lavish dinner being held in the Commandant's own personal dining room that night.  I was to attend and sit at Uri's right hand, ready to 'serve' at any moment.  That was the message I got quite clearly.  

When they found me retching over the grotesque toilet upon arriving to escort me, they conveniently changed their minds.  I was left to vomit in peace, with a jibe at my weak pseudo-American stomach.

When they left, I got up, washed my mouth out again, and waited until the hall was clear to make my exit.

As much as I abhored throwing up, the memories of puking black oil came in handy and my little bulemic episode, though highly unrecommended, bought me some measure of privacy.

In the back kitchen, I nodded to the cook, rudely grabbing up a roll and tearing into it.  He scoffed, but turned his back to finish cutting up rotting carrots with a murmured slur.  When he wasn't looking, I ditched my roll and grabbed up the extra apron I saw tossed over the back of a chair. I ducked back out into the hall and made my way to the front area, donning the stained garment.  

The bowls of yellow gruel were just coming out on dirty tin trays.  I took one and left with it, avoiding the other carriers as I made my way out of the kitchen area and into the prison halls.

As I walked, I slipped the piece of paper out of my pocket and slid it underneath the bowl on my tray.  I nodded dismissively to the few guards I saw posted along the way, one of which was stationed at the entrance to the hall where Mulder's cell was.  He frowned at me as I passed.

I kept my stride easy and purposeful.  I was leaning down and reaching for Mulder's slot flap when the guard called out roughly, "Hey!  That one's to get no dinner, didn't you hear?"

I sighed and then turned, lifting my eyebrows innocently.  "I heard the fast was lifted," I tried.  

He scowled at me.  "No," he said, shaking his head.  "You do not feed that prisoner!  Give it to number 368."

I looked up at the cell numbers.  Mulder's was 369.  I was being ordered to give Mulder's food, and his note, to his neighbor.  I swallowed, thinking fast.  I turned my body and, as I bent to lift the flap, I went to extract the note.  I'd have to get it to him a different way.  My heart fell as I realized not only would Mulder go hungry for however long they saw fit, he wouldn't know I had a plan.  

"Put it through!" the guard shouted, now starting to come down the hall.  I had no choice.  I couldn't get the note.  If he saw me, it would all be over.  I shoved the tray through the slot, note and all, and stood to face the irrate guard.  "You follow orders quickly or you'll be sent to the Commandant for a reprimand," he said, lip curling.

I nodded demurely, dropping my eyes.  "I'm sorry," I muttered, then squeezed past him and quickly down the hall, cursing under my breath.

..........

    M,
    
    Truth.
    
    They don't have guns.  At mining duty, 10 am, break from the line.  Run for the green truck.  I'll take care of the Commandant.
    
    Truth, Mulder.  Please.
    
    A.
    
I had just finished another note, identical to the first.  I had no plan to get it to him yet.  I only knew it had to be tonight because tomorrow morning was as good a chance, and maybe the only one we'd have.

I heard scuffing boots and stashed the note under my mattress.

The door erupted open.  "You're needed," the guard said.

"For what?" I tried, knowing full well.  I could only hope it wouldn't take too long.

The guard smirked at me, something vile going unsaid as he merely held the door open wider for me and I saw out into the hall where Uri stood, his back leaned against the stone, arms crossed, cigarette perched between stretched lips.

I sighed and stood.

..........


All night.  They had me there all night.  My knees were bruised, the copper-green spreading under the skin like poison.  The only thing that kept me down there, gagging on it, was the utter knowing that Mulder had no one else but me.  And if I was breathing, I could be fighting, but I'd be dead if I fought them right then.  So I took it.  I took it deep, took it repeatedly.  Took it and took it and took it, knowing they had no intention of giving anything they promised, knowing I could take them, both of them, so easily, but that there'd be no way out then.  Maybe for me if I was fast enough.  But not for Mulder.

They knew I'd tried to sneak him food, so when they were done with me, I wasn't sent back to my room but kept close to the Commandant with a pair of bludgeon-wielding guards waiting outside.  I waited for morning under Pavlova's soft blankets, dejection warring with the last, miniscule grain of hope I held that something would give and I could do this.  

I dined with Pavlova.  Poached eggs and buttered toast.  Exotic fruits, waffles, croissants, and a sprig of parsley.  I spent the time eyeing the gun at his hip as he bent to his plate.  Somehow their budget allowed for his gourmet taste but nothing else.  Not even guns for the guards.  Though I'd seen how laughable was the idea that they even needed them.  This was a death camp.  These prisoners were no longer healthy enough to fight, and their resolve...their spirits were as drained as their bodies.  A whip to the back, club to the head, a snarled threat from high above on their horses...  Nothing more was needed.

Only *he* had a gun, and I took good stock of it as we ate.  I noted the model, the year, the holster, if it had been cleaned recently, if he ever touched it without thinking, if it was an appendage to him as mine was to me.  But he wore it like a shiny badge.  Its real power meant nothing to him.  I doubted he had the know-how to aim properly.  It was a testament to his status only.

I could take him out.  But Mulder didn't know that.  And now I couldn't tell him.

I glared at the man across the table from me as he belched and used a cloth napkin to wipe his wide, chapped mouth.

"Alexei," he announced jovially, as if the rape of my mouth had been but rough play.  "I want you to oversee the work with me."

And I knew he just wanted me to see Mulder.  See the one I was working so diligently to release beaten down like the others.  I knew it was his pleasure to parade Mulder before me, sick and sallow, and know I could do nothing about it.

I put on a tight smile.  "Gladly," I told him.

His eyes twinkled and he pushed back his chair.

We stood in the bed of the green truck I never got to tell Mulder about.  The futility and tragedy of the situation became abundantly fucking clear.  Seeing Mulder shuffle out in the line of walking dead men didn't help.  Each step he took reiterated my powerlessness.  He was walking to the grave.

I watched his feet sink into the mud that seemed to suction out everything left in him.  He stuck close to the man in line in front of him, as if needing the support were he to stumble.  His eyes were dropped, his posture crooked like an old man's.

The Commandant cleared his throat next to me and lifted his cigar to his lips.  He handed me a lighter and I obediantly lifted it, flicking it on.  I watched Mulder out of the corner of my eye.  I saw him lift his pale face, though I couldn't tell if he was looking my way or not, seeing this betrayal or seeing only the space he had to walk to get from one hell to the other.

I lowered the lighter to my side, suddenly feeling the urgency I've come to recognize as instinct signalling me as surely as a hand closing around my heart and giving it a healthy squeeze.

I flicked the lighter on again at my side, out of the Commandant's view.  I held it there as it singed my fingers, biting my own lip, letting it burn for him, lighting the way.

I called to him silently.  I tried to bend space and time with thought alone.  'Keep the guards' attention pulled away,' I said.  'Pull Mulder's eyes here.  Bring him here.  HERE!' I screamed in my head.  'For fuck's sake HERE, MULDER!

Truth.

TRUTH.

TRUTH!!!!!'

I saw him lean to the side, the weariness dropped like a cloak.  I questioned my eye sight as I watched his lithe body curl like a leopard at the cusp of the spring.  I held my breath, and then he burst from the line, and a twin flame glinted in his tight fist, catching the sun breaking through the clouds like flint to fire.  The sudden light shone in my eyes for but a moment, and then he was running.  Running to me.  Fast, full-tilt.  Running.

I took the Commandant around the throat and relieved him of his gun.  I pushed him off the truck and held him in my sights as Mulder ran up the bed, vaulted over the side and scrambled into the driver's seat.  I jumped down and backed to the passenger side quickly, firing blindly into the guards just to back them off.  Pavlova's indignant shouts followed me into the truck where Mulder was gunning the engine.  He was driving before I'd closed my door.

I turned to look behind as the guards took to their horses.

"Hold on!" Mulder yelled, and I turned back with just enough time to brace as we hit the fence.  It fell beneath the crunching wheels of the truck, and Mulder gripped the wheel tightly barreling down the dirt road as the guards followed.

I turned back around, breathing hard, and watched the horses slow, then whinney as they side-stepped to a stop, unable to keep pace with us.  I let my breath out hard, turning forward again.

"We're clear," I gasped out.

Mulder said nothing and his foot didn't come off the gas.  I leaned my head back and tried to catch my breath.  I looked back once more to make sure they hadn't found a way to follow yet.  I gulped back the taste of copper blood, the sting in an already fucked up throat.

"You saw the lighter," I said, glancing at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

He frowned, gaze still riveted to the curving road.  "No," he said simply.  Then he reached into the waistband of his work pants and withdrew a piece of paper.  He threw it in my direction.  I opened it.  It was my writing.  My note.  He'd gotten it.

"How...?"  I started.  But he was pumping the brakes and nothing was happening.  We were heading for a drastic curve.

"Hold on!" he shouted again.

"Fuck," I cursed, locking both arms against the dash.  I held my breath and Mulder ducked his head as we went over.  

The truck's top-heavy weight tipped to the right and Mulder's weight pinned me against my door as we hit hard and skidded the rest of the way down the hill.

"Shit," I hissed, my right arm burning with the sharp pain.  When the truck came to a stop, Mulder pushed on me and grabbed for his window, rolling it open and then pulling himself up with a grunt.  He reached back in for me.

"You hurt?" he asked, palm extended.  There was blood dripping down his temple.

I shook my head.  "Arm's cut.  It's nothing."  I took his wrist and he took mine and he helped me crawl out of the overturned truck.

"Gotta hurry," he panted, jumping down to the ground.  I followed.  "Which way?" he asked, looking around the clearing.

"There," I said, indicating the thick wood ahead of us.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He nodded, still not looking at me, and we both took off at a run for the cover of the forest.

We ran until day was poised on dark, then we slowed to a fast trot.  I held my right arm at the elbow.  The fabric of my jacket was wet and warm.

"We need shelter," Mulder said quietly, just a step ahead of me.

"There used to be a village close to here," I told him, trying to remember the research I'd done before any of this happened.  "It's been deserted.  Most of the residents were taken for the test or fled."

He glanced back at me, and even in the growing dark, I could sense his anger.  But all he said was, "Where?"

"Maybe three more miles in this direction," I replied.

All he did was nod and keep going.  I followed close, listening to the sound of our breath, then watching it rise up like smoke signals.

"Do you think they're going to follow?" I asked him.

"How the hell should I know, Krycek?" he replied.

It wasn't long before we saw a vacant shack partially hidden behind trees.  Mulder headed toward it.  I took his arm.  "Not that one," I said.  "We need something farther off the main road."

He hesitated, then nodded.  He followed me then, deeper into a thicker wood.  I passed up two more dark shelters, and we walked so long after the last one, I feared I'd made a mistake in not stopping.  But Mulder followed without complaint, and soon we came upon a small cabin, this one completely hidden from view until we were almost right on top of it.  

I nodded at Mulder.  "This one."  He nodded back curtly.

Inside, he helped me barricade the door with left-behind furnature.  "Do you want to get a fire going?" I asked him, not sure if I'd rather freeze to death or risk a search party seeing the smoke.  I turned, slightly breathless, to meet his gaze squarely for the first time since I left the cell.

All was quiet.  His stillness was haunting, his momentum stopped, his priorities changed.  His chin was low, making him appear more animal than human, a strange and beautiful hybrid species, all too sexual.  I drew my breath in sharply.  He was close...close enough for me to smell.  Oil-taint, fresh and old, the slippery residue streaked over his body.  I remembered the feel, how when I showered, it seemed as though it would never come off.  

Dirt and fear-sweat stuck to Mulder's greased skin.  The aroma of his unwashed body, half stink, half aphrodisiac.  Same half, I realized in the violent drought of words.  

I swallowed, uncomfortable under his measured look and calm silence.  

"There's...uh, firewood.  Over there," I tried, but I had no strength or will to point the way.  The words dropped uselessly between us, fallen, a shroud with nothing left to cling to.  Lip service to a scene that would never take place, a partnership flimsy with distrust.

In the cold dark Mulder's hands went to his workshirt and rended the frail fabric.  The sound rang like a warning bell in my ears.  He bared his torso to me, indigo-bled bruises marking the way from breastbone to ribs.  He stripped the shirt off his arms.  It was cold so that I could see his every breath.  

There was no struggle when he grabbed me, only a tensing of my tired muscles.  Defense but no offense.  He dragged me across the room by my hair and my coat, fingers slipping in the short bristles on my head.  He stood me before a long dining table of thick, gnarled oak.  Behind me, he ripped my coat down my arms.  It scraped over the torn flesh of my right biceps and I hissed but didn't fight him.  

His movements were trembling-angry, his breath a hot thing smearing a wet rhythm on the back of my neck.  He stripped my shirt off, uncaring of the blood dripping down my arm.  I think I said his name.  Not to stop him.  To orient him.  To pull him more fully into this in case it was some demon moving his limbs and working his mind.  I know about demons.  I know about utter reaction, thoughtless, cold, maniacal need.  I know you question whether it's still in you.

I never resisted, even when he grabbed my hair again, hard, and walked me in close to the table, butting my ass with his pelvis and then wrestling me onto the table top, bent over at the waist.  Didn't resist when his hand reached around and fumbled with the fly of my jeans.  Not when he took the back of the waistband and hauled the denim down over my butt, dragging my underwear with it on a grunt.

His hand made a vice around the back of my neck, thumb strong in the ropey tendon, and I felt him move off enough to unfasten his own pants.  His breath caught and released, a long flow of cool air over my bare back.  He put his foot in my jeans and stomped down, getting them around my calves.  I held on to whatever I could.

This could have been punishment, could have been rage.  He could have been about to rape me.  He could have been about to forgive me.  It didn't matter.  The terms of the agreement were irrelevant.  His cock sliding up my ass was the goal I was sure we were both set on.  In the chilled, lonely cabin, with the remains of the oil slicking his body, reminding me of darkness and the thought of resurrection dying moment by moment on my dry lips, I felt red-hot clarity.  I was, in that moment, no longer surviving.  I was dreadfully, brilliantly alive.

Mulder moved in close behind me, slapping his cock down between the cheeks of my ass.  It was wet with oil-sludge.  He slid it through the crack, his hard, greased pipe soft as a new rose bleeding its syrup onto the bud of my anus.  His breath shivered, though his body pressed fevered and tight to my own, sealing skin to skin.

I felt him taking his cock and finding my entrance clumsily.  He widened his stance.  The tapered cockhead whispered on my flesh, found the clenched prize, and he moaned.

"God bless immunity," he ground out, poking at my asshole insistently.  "I haven't fucked bare-back in years."

Then his dick started to swell me open, pushed into the ring and no further.  It hurt, but Mulder was the one who gasped.  It hurt, even as I welcomed the heat of his prick keeping me warm from the inside out.  It hurt.  But I was breathless with wanting it.  More of it.  As much if it as I could take and then some.  I pictured him forcing his balls inside me as well, burdening the bursting hole with more of his flesh.  I yearned for the impossible.  But this was already impossible.  And still it was so.  I closed my eyes and felt his cock sheath inside me slowly, fought the desire to expel it, to grip it hard and let it tear me up.

I opened for him, stinging, and felt it push in to the root.  My own cock had flagged with the pain, but remained heavy with potential lust, swollen and ready to rear up once again with just the right thrust.  Which he gave.  Pulling out first, he granted me a relief that translated to absence in the next breath.  

I sacrificed everything to the pain I knew was coming when he pumped me full again.  But it wasn't pain.  It was grace.  It was muted torture.  The ripping inside became like an itch, one I wanted him to scratch with his steadily driving prick.  I longed for a forceful fuck.  I moaned as Mulder took his time, parting my asscheeks in his hands, scewering me one excruciating inch at a time, his dripping cock molding my rectum, my guts, around itself.

Everything became that.  The past rose up with a power like grief but then fused its memories with Mulder's miopic intent to fuck me new.  The future rejoiced, each methodical thrust inside me creating a brand new color:  burnt-sex, blood-spark, hope-cast green, diamond-hard yellow pain opening to azure novas and weightless violet.  I realized I was squeezing my eyes closed, trying not to see what he was demanding to show me.

He pulled out, tickling the loosened ring of muscle with the luridly soaked head of his dick.  I realized he had to be pre-cumming or it was my blood.  Blood as lube.  It was fitting between us and, in fact, I hoped it was true.  I wanted him to drown his aching prick in my life's blood.  

A strangled breath behind me broke into the vision of his shiny pink-headed cock streaked scarlet.  He parted the way of me again, settling deep, cock burrowing against warm rectal tissue, and then he ground there.  I felt his hips circling, striving to conquer something already surrendered.

Then he leaned over, laying out on me, and breathed in my ear, "Truth or dare, Krycek," all the while stroking in and out of me in short, frictional thrusts, his hands flat on my sides, gripping the ribs.

His hot body on mine was so heavenly a surprise, and this new rhythm hitting the delicate spot inside me just right, curing the itch and building on a new one, was so gratifying and agonizing both, that I almost didn't catch that he'd spoken.  But when I did, and I heard the words, I let out a shuddering sigh, an acknowledgement that we were back there, in the energy of that, and that I finally knew what he wanted and could give him something in return besides this cold, quivering back pebbling his nipples hard and this greasy hole to fuck himself raw inside.

I took a breath.  "Truth," I replied, the sound of the word broken in two from the vigor of Mulder's hips screwing me to the table.

His hands slid up into my armpits, into the damp tufts hair.  He gripped me there.  His cock found home in me over and over.  His breathing was alive, a tight, whispering song in my ear.  He held my arms down over my head.  I could hear his feet shuffling on the wood floor.  He was deep inside me, all over me.

"Are you going to fuck me over again?" he asked, his voice so close it could have been one of many inside my head.  The force of the question stirred the hairs standing at attention behind my left ear where his lips rested against me, open and panting.

Even as I started to judge the price of my answer, I realized there was no decision to make;  only one answer was the truth.

"No," I croaked, full of him, rocking under the assault of him.

"Truth!" he snarled at me, the slam of his fuck a punctuation.

I waited four thrusts more, infatuated with the silent question and answer of his body and mine, the steady build in my balls, my cock going violently stiff and ready.  I think I was willing to sacrifice his trust for one priceless, mind-altering orgasm with his cock lodged inside me;  it was that good.

But when it pulsed through the shaft of my cock and I began to loose hot ribbons of cum as though it might never end, I heard myself saying it, whining and groaning it.  "TruthGodtruth, Mulder.  Nnnnnooo-ooh-ooohhh."  And his cock never stopped.  He battered my seizing hole and forced the confession out of me.  "Not again," I gasped, seeing all the new shades of reality coalesing under the on-slaught of world-ripping sex.  "Never again," I pleaded.  "Truth-truth-truth-truth-truth..."

He had me.  I was pinned beneath him, coming my brains out, giving him not just a truth but a vow, fucking crying tears of joy and pain, unable to wipe them away or call back the words he fucked out of me.  I lost everything and all in the time it took to cream the floor at his feet.

But then he followed me.  His desperate cock rammed into me as his breathing stopped.  He bit the back of my neck.  He grunted.  And then he came, shuddering against me as he shoved his dick deep and I cradled it there while it wept.  Mulder barely made a sound, but his teeth broke the skin, and his lips were shivering like an animal freezing in the snow.  And he filled me with his cum until I felt it leaking down my legs.  

His whole body sagged on top of me then, a heap of loose muscles and sweat trickling onto me, cooling fast.  His mouth unlatched from my neck and I hissed.  His breathing slowed.  His penis softened inside me, caressing all my abused tissues as it retracked, a brutal lover turned tender.  He pushed off the table and pulled it out with care.  I felt a vast, wet ache that was both physical and something other, untouchable, unsoothable.

He slid his open hand over my slick back like someone leaving his mark, finger trails in unset paint.  I didn't know if I could move from my postion slung over the table.  I sensed Mulder move away, his steady, pensive silence.  Then he started piling wood in the stove.  On cue, I began to shiver.  I pushed gingerly at the table top, shaking like a foal.  I bent to pull my pants up and froze, my torn insides hot and sore.  I sipped my breath in as the abrasions he gave me screamed.

"See if there's running water in the bathroom," he said without turning his head to look at me.  "Hot running water," he corrected, throwing another log on.

I fastened my jeans, unable to catch up.  I was standing on shifting sands while Mulder walked surely on without me.  I shook my head, ass clenching still around an already vacated cock, seeping his semenal fluid, half-naked in the middle of nowhere.  I called on all my training and background, put the best game face on that I could, and did as he had asked.  I put one bare foot in front of the other and found the small bathroom, walking slowly.  A bathtub.  No faucet.  I returned and told him so.

He still didn't look at me, but he nodded.  He was crouched to light the fire.  His body was a collection of angles bent into a round shape, seductive and innocent-looking.   When the wood took the flame, his skin, where the oil didn't mar it, glowed amber like good beer.  His spine sloped down to the low cut of his pants, still on.  Fine, golden hairs on the flat of his lower back shone, and the beginning curve of his buttocks peeking out, white as waterfall foam, seduced what was left of me unmoved by him.

"See if there are any pots and pans left behind," he said, closing the stove door and standing.  When I didn't budge, he turned to me.  "I'm not the only one who needs a bath now," he added.

Countless big pots of hot water later, Mulder was submerging himself in the steaming bath and motioning for me to join him.  "I'm not filling this thing again," he complained.  Even though it had been me that carried most of the water in.  "C'mon."

Despite the size of the tub, I squeezed in.  I lowered myself slowly, but ripped tissues stretching still pleaded with me to stop.  I avoided Mulder's gaze, not knowing if it was on me or not.  Not knowing if I'd find him prideful of his work, chagrined, or just see whatever mask he wore to guard against me and what had happened.

I wasn't sure what to expect.  Maybe some part of me was ready for anything, some antiquated romantic gesture to wash my back perhaps.  It didn't come.  Mulder washed himself matter-of-factly and after a moment's hesitation, I did the same. The awkwardness of reaching between my legs to clean off my sticky asshole went unnoticed as Mulder worked on dispelling the rest of the black oil.  I brushed cautious fingers over my opening, swallowing a hiss of pain.

The soap was an old yellow bar, curling at the corners and smelling of grandmothers.  I caught glimpses of it slicing through the muddy streaks on Mulder's arms and chest as I rinsed the blood off my arm.

I got out and dried off as Mulder worked on his hair.  He didn't seem to even notice the careful way I had to move, the evidence of pain he gave me in the most intimate way possible.  

He rose from the now-opaque water and shook his head like a dog.  "Do you think it's safe to stay the night?" he asked, stepping out and reaching for the damp towel I still held.  His eyebrows rose.  "It's the only one, right?"

I handed it over quickly.  "Yeah,"  I said.  "The smoke from the stove is..."

"But we'll freeze otherwise," Mulder interrupted, toweling his hair.  It gave me a chance to look at him unchecked.  Free of the oil, his skin shone a healthy tan, unlike my own palor which quite closely resembled something out of Bram Stoker at times.  Mulder advertised perfection.  I hated him.  And I wanted him.  My cock twitched against my thigh, growing fat and strong again.  I turned my gaze away.

"We're staying," Mulder declared, passing me and dropping the towel at my feet.  

With no other choice, we donned our clothes again.  I watched Mulder pull the work shirt on, half its buttons missing.  I hadn't meant to, hadn't thought to, but I reached my hand out to him, offering my coat wordlessly.

He frowned at me, but I shook it at him once.  "Take it," I insisted.  The full ache of cold was settling in and his shivering had become more pronounced, more a quake.  He took my coat and slid his arms inside.  As I watched it engulf him, I felt something too deep and subtle to be arousal.  Something unapproachable, unreconciled.  

The bed was in the corner, close to the stove.  Mulder moved toward it, sitting on the edge.  "How far are we from...anywhere?" he asked.

I wrapped my arms around myself, my shirt too thin to provide much in the way of heat.  "On foot, a day's hike," I told him.

He nodded.  "Better get some rest then."  He crawled under the one blanket which seemed more holes than fabric and reeked of camphor and mold even from where I stood watching him.

Mulder moved against the wall, pulling the blanket up.  He was still shaking and I realized belatedly that I was, too.

"Get in here, Krycek, I'm not dealing with your frozen carcus in the morning," he muttered around the chattering of teeth.

I paused at the side of the double bed.  Eyes closed, he spoke again.  "Strip, dammit," he growled.  And I saw him removing his own clothes again under the blanket.  "Fucking get in here and keep me warm," he snarled quietly.

I blinked but then did as he asked, realizing we would be warmer if we slept together nude rather than clothed.  I took it all off again, shuddering with the advancing cold, and joined him, hardly able to believe my own actions and the fact that they were sanctioned by Mulder.  I held my breath and pressed into his side under the thin blanket.  His arms came around me and pulled me closer.  I pulled the coat I'd given him to wear under the blanket and over both of us.  Mulder grunted around chattering teeth, eyes still tightly closed against me even as our bodies touched, aligning perfectly for maximum contact.

I slipped my hand around his torso, under the coat we now both wore, and when he didn't protest, I moved again, palm flat to his ribs, wedging under his back, anchored beneath his exhausted weight.  My head came to rest on his shoulder as if it were natural.  I felt my shrunken cock nestled in the baby-smooth crevice of his hip, safe.  His breathing lifted his belly and my arm with it.  His hands made a show of not clutching me even as his fingers tightened and held me close.

I don't know who fell asleep first.

I woke to the, at first, familiar Russian whispered close by.  I almost didn't open my eyes.  By the time I did, they were on top of me.  It was a blur of arms...hands trying to hold me down.  I fought, growling, heart hammering, as I kicked.  But someone had my legs.  Their faces over me, strange and intent, foreign.  I tried to focus, to find my tongue, my own unpracticed Russian.  But it didn't come.  Fear came.  Wordless, violent fear as they pinned me and I first saw the point of the knife.  My eyes went wide and my fight intensified.  

"Nooo!" I managed to scream at them, half-mad.  It was his face that I knew would haunt me in years to come.  That young serious face, jaw tight as he brought the knife to my arm.  That ugly grimace as he first bore down.

The fact that he then slumped over me, knocked unconscious or dead, his weight a grossly ephemeral thing, took long, strange seconds to register.  I had guessed his age, a slender eighteen, before I saw that it was Mulder now holding the knife.

I had a moment of pure terror before I saw him wield it out away from me, his stance protective, primally naked, his loud voice shaking as he waved the knife like a crazed man.  I scrambled up, kicking the unconscious boy off my lap.  He slid to the floor and I watched the others flee.  Five of them, backing off as Mulder shouted.

"Get away from him!" he yelled, trembling.  "Get out of here!"  He waved the knife again.  It split the cold air, and they ran out of the cabin.  

Mulder went to the door, following, still yelling.  He watched them go.  I could do nothing but convulsively flex my left hand.

When he turned back to me, the knife was at his side.  Still, I flinched.  

"I was taking a piss," he murmured, almost more to himself than to me.  But he must have seen my stricken expression because he hurriedly set the knife down.  He walked over to the bed.  His face was calm, but he was still trembling.  I wondered if it was all cold.  I wondered if the need for revenge lay dormant in him now or if he'd acted only on instinct to save me as he would save anyone.  Or if the loss of my limb was too gruesome a punishment for him to allow even with the admitted murder of his father.

He walked in close.  I waited for what he would say.  He said nothing.  Instead his arms came around me.  He pulled me in hard and slow...like he had glimpsed something precious being lost and I was that thing.  I hesitated, fearful, and then let my own arms come up and hold him back.  I think that's why he did it...to give me something to hold on to.

I kept waiting for him to say something.  Anything.  There was only his hot, stale breath, the press of wiry pubic hair into my thigh, his flaccid cock meeting mine.  There was nothing but the warmth of him, the intimacy of bare comfort.  When he pulled away, all he said was, "Let's go."

He dressed and I did the same, speechless.  He turned to the door.  I stood quickly from tying the laces of my boots, my lips parting, though I didn't know what to say, who to be.

"Mulder," I called.  He stopped and turned.  I couldn't even breathe then for a moment, but when I could I had to ask, "Why?"

He looked down, a frown settling on his brow.  "Don't ask me that," he said softly.

"I --"

"How could you ask me that?" he interrupted, eyes finding mine.  

I couldn't answer and he saw it.  He stomped over to me.  His hands were on my face, palms warm and clammy.  He tilted his head and I didn't know he was going to kiss me or I would have closed my eyes like people do.

Before I could react, Mulder was pulling me in hard and pushing his tongue into my mouth.    

My thoughts were only, 'Mulder is kissing me.  Mulder's tongue is inside my mouth.'  Stupid thoughts.  Useless thoughts.  But my body raced ahead, meeting the force of his with my own, grabbing him and pulling him even closer to me.  Instinct and years-long desire pushed my tongue against his and forced him to kiss me harder.  He did.  He moaned.  His teeth bit down on my tongue and drew blood.  I grunted and licked between his lips, feeding him the taste of it, not even knowing why this was happening but needing it to.

He held me hard then, almost angry.  Definitely angry.  But warm.  And so tight. "Fucking punk," he whispered into my mouth.  Then he sucked on my tongue until I moaned.

He released me quickly.  He was panting, his face close to mine.  I could taste the blood he'd drawn, could still feel how his tongue had slipped in and out of my willing mouth.  

"Someday..." he said around a thickness in his throat.  "I'm going to trust you with my life, Alex."   I caught my breath.  I stared into his eyes, gone grey like gravestone.  "I hope I don't lose it," he whispered.  His thumb stroked over my cheekbone, light as mist.  I waivered under it, but he took my arm in his hand.  "Come on," he urged.  "Let's get home."

I blinked at him, confused.  I watched his eyes try to conceal what he hadn't already given me, watched him not look at me.  I waited until his gaze met mine again.  Then I nodded.  I nodded and the relief burst in my chest like bliss.  I saw something similar, fraternal, mirror my hope on Mulder's face.  He nodded back, and I followed him out into the birthing dawn.  I kept following.  I never want to stop.


End

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