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Title: My Blushing Bride
Category: VAO During the partnership days.
- Possum Kingdom, the Toadies . There's nothing very violent tonight, though: Mulder, in his boxers and shirt, knees dangling propped up on the bed, staring up into the blossom-cup lights over the bed, catching shadows over the ceiling. Krycek comes out of the bathroom in the pink of domesticity, shirt unbuttoned, dangling around his boxers, ribbed thermal undershirt dipping across his collarbones and flecks of toothpaste dabbling his jaw before he swipes them away with the pad of his thumb. No socks, padding barefoot across the rumpled orange motel carpeting, and Mulder saying, "You're going to catch something walking around like that. Hell, who knows what kinds of fungus are in this carpet--you know that 90% of all streptococcus are penicillin resistant." No answer, just the flick of muscles under cloth, taut legs crossing Mulder's line of vision and the snap of the on-switch. Fuzzy picture coalescing into sententious reporter underneath black umbrella, pointing towards a clearing of the woods, then a few quick shots of policemen in blue and two solitary figures in black with white paramedic bodies poking their way through the thicket of naked bodies and naked trees. Krycek's finger suddenly stabs into the middle of the screen, picking out a figure in black. "I told you had a chili stain on your pants." A little pause. "Streptococcus is a kind of a bacteria, not a fungus." Mulder snorts. "I swear to God, Krycek, I've *never* met someone as anal about clothing as you are. One fucking dribble and you're telling me I look like a fucking grease puddle." Green eyes slit at a lithe form. "I'm not the one wearing the thousand dollar Armanis." Green eyes ignore green eyes. "And I've never seen anyone as fucking retentive about dental hygiene as you. How many fucking times a day do you brush your goddamn teeth? Once before breakfast, brush after dinner, now, probably again before bed. Wear the damn enamel off--what the hell are you trying to do, blind the suspects with your smile?" Another shrug: the young man is turning something over in his mind, and in a charmingly practiced turn of his head Krycek's eyes swing up to Mulder, who notices that they're not green at all, but a funky shade between blue and green and brown, with a huge pupil in the middle. Mulder's read that the pupil is really a hollow in the eye: you can run a needle into it without causing any pain, and that definitely seems to be the case. There's this whole melange of colors bursting, swirling, undulating *mass of things outside, and a solid void core in the middle, holding steady amidst emotion. "Are you and Scully sleeping together?" Sleeping together: not lovers, not going out. The act itself. Mulder turns pinkish. "I. . ." He seems to hover on the edge of 'none-of-your-goddamn-business', but changes his mind and answers, "No." Krycek smiles, all suddenlike--pretty, really, like on the cover of those red-and-white Closeup toothpaste packages, faintly plastic to the touch. Says nothing though, while Mulder weighs the idea that Krycek's got a thing for Scully: he can paint the image all clear in his mind. Red-head ensconced in her office chair, white lab coat and those glasses that make her look like a techie on her nose, hair yanked back with a rubber band and that cold little moue as scrubbed Krycek brings her flowers--I love you, darling, will you marry me? Then, see Scully sniff and tell him to get the goddamn flowers out of her autopsy bay: they're spreading pollen and contaminating the results. "That's good." Krycek grins and leans back into the pillow. "Good." . All of a sudden, rising out of the darkness and across the aisle: It startles Mulder out of a wakeful half-sleep, and at first, he thrashes out, instinctively reaching out for the gun he keeps on the night table, then realizes, that not only is his gun in its holster on the other side of the room, it's Krycek asking another one of his stupid rookie-blue flamer questions. "Mulder, you think this guy does the mutilations?" the boy says, and Mulder collapses back into bed, heart hurling against his chest. "Gee, Krycek. And to think, I was right on the verge of falling asleep at two o'clock in the morning." "It's only one thirty two." "Same difference." A little snort of irritation to show the grammar boy was not pleased. "But. . . How can you sleep? I mean. . .How can you sleep, knowing that the killer's out there?" "Well, I don't know. Because I'm tired. Because I've put in a sixteen hour day, and I'm probably going to put in a twenty hour one tomorrow?" There was silence while Krycek processed this bit of grumpiness. "But like, don't you see the bodies? When you close your eyes?" With a riff of shock, Mulder remembers this is Krycek's first real case, that this is the first time the kid's been out on a *real* case. . . Augustus Cole wasn't worth shit. Nothing's like serials. "Vivisections are stock in trade, my friend. Same goes for the clamp on the nipples, the rope, the bondage." Mulder yawns, tucks his arms behind his head. "The only thing special about this's that he's stabbing, rather than strangulation. Sick twisted bastards have no fucking imagination at all; you've seen one, you've seen the whole lot. All pathetic little bastards who want to knock Mommy off but can't get up the balls to do it." "I know that." Krycek is condescending towards Mulder's condescension. "But, why does he hate his 'Mommy' so much? What did she do to him?" "Hell, if I knew, do you think we'd still be here in this ratshit hick of a town? Naw, Krycek, I *enjoy* the fact that half the upstanding citizens of this town can trace their lineage to founding members of the Ku Klux Klan." "I'm sure a. . .What did he call you today?" "Which one? The one who threw eggs or the one who screamed nigger-loving Jew?" "'Nigger-lovin' *kike*, Alex. Let's get our racial ephitets right: I'm a kike, and you're a Commie spy, and together, we're bent on allowing the subhuman darkies continue their attack on the Aryan Master Race by polluting the flower of Southern womanhood. " "Such womanhood as there is." "Oh, they don't meet your fancy? You Commie bastards sure are picky, though ah could've sworn that yuh fahncied that McClellan gurl. Them buck-teeth sure ahr sexy, tha' you'd spent most of yer tahm havin' a covuhsassion with 'er chest." "WHAT?" Sputtering noies mixed with the occaisional squeak of outrage. "I was not!" Turning his pillow over, Mulder laughs. "Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me, Commie, I won't tell Scully, and she won't circumcise you *too*." Mulder falls asleep to the sounds of Krycek blushing in the dark. . The next words Mulder remembers are: "See, I'm all together now." The joke makes no sense even to him, he's forgotten already, some small quick dream of dismemberment that ended in his tendons peeling back and snapping. . . Now, though, it's all about trying to maintain his balance on suddenly wobbly knees, making sure that he doesn't fall head first into the vomit filled basin. He nearly does, but then Krycek reaches out a hand to steady him at the elbow and a crooked smile that really doesn't do much for his face at all too. He fills a Dixie cup and hands it down. Mulder rinses his mouth, spits the water against the interior walls of the toilet. Of course he's not going to ask how he ended up on his knees in the bathroom, head aching, mouth dry-he knows, he knows. This is a re-run. He leans his head against the bathroom door, and the wood is blessedly steady underneath his cheek. If he pushes hard enough, he can feel the blood vessel in his forehead pressing against it. "The stress?" Mulder shakes his head. "The case." "Ah." Krycek looks curiously old in the light when he flicks a glance out the open bathroom door, but when he slides his face back to Mulder, it's young and tired and faintly sleepily around the edges. Very soft, very innocent, and the way he squinches his noise when he yawns is very young and very charming. The sharp green eyes are lowered to a dull, congenial kind of moss. "The famous Spooky dreams." "The few and the proud." A little silence as Mulder wonders if he can get up the mental stamina to ask for some more water, but Alex hands him another Dixie cup before Mulder makes up his mind. "Here, lemme get that." A gentle, careful little swipe of the wet towel at the corner of his mouth, an impersonal dab. "You eat anything at that bullshit catered dinner, Mulder?" Mulder can still feel the aftertaste of the vomit lingering around the back of his throat, a sudden wave of nausea knocks him off his feet. "Hey, when'd God die and name you in his place?" Was that coherent? Mulder turns the sentence over and over in his head, trying to dissect it, trying to find if there was any intended humor because Krycek's laughing. "Ah, but God and I haven't been on speaking terms for ever so long." Krycek laughs again, takes him by the elbow and lets Mulder lean on him as they stand up. "I doubt he'd will me the world." "Eh. Who else would he want to leave it to?" "Hell if I know. Mulder bangs his head idly against the wall, and then winces when the backflow lights his eyes with Roman candles. "C'mon, boy. Let's go get something to eat." . Krycek looks tired and old--he definitely he looks old in these yellow florescent diner lights. There are little lines streaking downwards from his mouth, and the area around his eyes are no longer blandly smooth; they crinkle up when he laughs, sags down when he frowns, and draw tight when does that staring off into the middle distance thing he's doing right now. How old is he? Mulder wonders. There's an impossible tiredness about him. "Whatchyou thinking about?" Mulder's aware that he's being completely ungrammatical, but he can't muster the personal initiative to restate the question. "Home." Krycek says very quietly, more to himself and the distance than to Mulder and the diner and the sticky Formica table with the fan beating through greasy air. "Oh?" Mulder had been under the impression that Krycek sprang out of the earth fully formed, like a frog after a warm rain. "Mother, father, brat of a little sister." Little tic of a smile that settles down as quickly as it curves into existance. It's a little too bright to be entirely comfortable. "Miss them?" For a minute, Krycek looks shocked at the thought, then shrugs and looks down into his cup of coffee and says in a careful voice, "I've gotten over it." Mulder feels something twist inside him. . At the door, as if Krycek was merely walking him back to his apartment and they weren't sharing a bedroom: a kiss. Not particularly passionate or skillful or even anything remarkable at all except for the fact that it exists, that Krycek is lining a chaste little kiss on the edge of Mulder's lower lip, the corner of his mouth wanders with just a hint of tongue and Mulder finds himself dipping a kiss back. Partially out of sexual response, partially out of sympathy, partially out of gr-- So. Not lustful, not passionate, but passable sex. Comfortable, mild amount of pleasure involved, nothing earthshaking, but there's something wonderful about how warm Krycek's body is through the sheets, the smoothness of his muscles underneath skin and the warmth hiding behind his knees is sweet on Mulder's tongue. And afterwards, when the room is still, the alarm clock buzzes over the rumble of traffic and thrum of air conditioner, and Mulder wraps his arms around Krycek's shoulders, pulls the bare flesh to his shoulders, and rests a head against Alex's collarbone, thinking, pondering, dredging bits of his dreams out of the deep recesses of the back brain. They're little bits, but they're big enough so that he can piece them together in rational framework, that it doesn't send him running and puking again because he can hold on to Krycek. The tomato soup and grilled cheese inside his stomach purrs: surprisingly good food. Comfortable, very comfortable, and wonderful Krycek, all warmth and comfort and a soft mouth all gone to relaxing Long sigh, and Mulder can feel Krycek's lungs expanding, pushing against his arms, then settle back down, and when Krycek moves, his skin drags over Mulder's, and Mulder runs long fingers across over Krycek's hip to ground him into the present, and at the end, a little flutter of a caress over Krycek's jawbone. It's an open gesture that he would never have permitted himself if Krycek was conscious, and Mulder's completely unaware that through all this, Krycek is completely awake, that it's only pretend. .end
Yeah, I know the quality's a little uneven, but this's been sitting on my hard drive for about two years now. I decided what the hell, so give me hell at anasile@aol.com
anasile@aol.com
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