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Title: Resignation, Resuscitation
Archive: Gossamer, yes. Everyone else, ask.
Category: VA. Very vague MK, questionable MSR UST. *
afureru namida no naka *
It's a big corner lot in Georgetown, with a deep, even lawn and a neatly scrubbed brick walk leading up to the heavy black walnut door. It's probably steel reinforced; the peephole is probably made out of fiberglass, and there're probably six cameras watching you right now, but for all purposes, it looks like a traditional old-money yuppie entryway to hell. In fact, the brass knocker is absolutely charming, vintage hunting gentry at its best -- a fox's head, done in marvelous detail. The ears, which cleverly hide the hinges, are pricked and attentive. The eyes, wide open, looking down at you with something like mischief in those lightly reliefed pupils. You take this as a good sign. So you take a good firm grip of the fox's collar and bang it against the door. It's heavier than it looks and gives a good, solid boom against the door; it sounds like a temple drum, really, but it needs to be loud. You certainly haven't called ahead, and even though you're probably expected, you'd like for him to know that you've *arrived*, dammit. * The butler says that the master will receive you in the tea room. You wonder if they painted the ceiling or the roses: the massed yellow tea roses floating their bowl is the same color as the ceiling, the most marvelous blonde, intended to convey the sense of open spaces and radiant sunshine, and there are little plaster clusters of flying swallows tastefully swooping amidst the moldings. And a trompe l'oeil of the afternoon sky, at the top, the cultured version of a skylight. . . The sunlight coming down through that is just a little lighter than the lemon-silk wallpaper which, in turn, is subtly textured to emphasize the height of the room. That's also underscored by the length of the curtains fluttering from the huge French windows opening to the patio, and the only non-yellow things in the room is the Sheffield tea set, but that's encrusted with silver roses. Thankfully, Krycek's not in yellow. In fact, he looks rather tanned and healthy in a green Polo shirt that matches the color of his eyes and khakis cut to emphasize his legs. The last time you saw him, he was scruffy and underfed and decidedly poorly dressed. And missing an arm. He seems to have both of them again, and if you look very, very closely, the skin on his left arm is just a shade lighter than his right. All in all, though, he looks so good you almost wish that he'd clash with the wallpaper. He strolls over to the tea set, picks up the coffeepot and quirks a small, immaculately shaped eyebrow at you. "Cream or sugar?" Neither. You're not in a very sweet or placid mood, so you say, "Where's Mulder?" He pours you a cup anyway and adds just the right amount of cream and sugar, then hands it to you, all while keeping his face perfectly neutral. Then, he pours himself a cup, and you notice that he takes his with a thick dollop of cream, no sugar. Then he says, sipping with that same gently bland look that melds into congenial amusement as he figures out just how he should respond to convey the right amount of amused, genteel condescension. "I thought he was with you; he always goes to you whenever we have a fight." "Funny, I was just about to say that about you." He pauses, then looks over the exquisite array of sandwiches on the tray. The crusts have been cut off, and the bread has been sliced triangularly, and little bits of filling ooze out in perfect artistry. It's a full blown tea, you notice, with at least six different varieties of sandwiches, five types of cakes, two kinds of pound cake, four different kinds of sliced fruit and scones big and thick enough to brain somebody person. "Sandwich?" You haven't even touched your coffee. It's still sitting in its exquisite little Wedgwood cup on its exquisite little Wedgwood saucer on the exquisite honey-colored table to your right, and you slit your eyes at him, and he smiles back, smooth as smooth. You resist the urge to shoot him. "You know, I'm surprised that you didn't come in here with guns and ATF blazing." "I'm not Mulder." "That's fairly obvious." Silence while he sips his coffee again; it's a dull milky tan color, you saw the giant dollop of cream he put in. And then, after a moment, he says to you over the lightly stained rim, "You have no idea where Mulder is." It occurs to you, for the first time, that Krycek doesn't know either, and you spit, "Like you do." "You don't or you wouldn't be talking to me. He's not with Skinner?" "You'd know if he were." "I gave him the keys to a hotel suite at the Carlton that I've got, and he checked in, but he hasn't been there for a week, a week and a half now. . . I left him some money at the counter, so he could be anywhere." "Anywhere." "He hasn't left the country. He would've sent me something by now." Krycek says, then takes a sip with those smoothly bland eyes looking at you, and it's all you can do to stare out the window at the yellow roses swaying in the brilliant sunshine. * Eventually you head down to the Carlton because some lead is better than none. The suite hasn't been occupied for a week and a half, and he also cleaned out Krycek's standing account at the hotel, a good two thousand-some dollars. . . Mulder could live for months on that kind of money. Hell, for all of Krycek's assurances (or lack thereof) notwithstanding, he could've left the country and be living the high life in Tijuana or something. It's started raining, and since you can't afford valet parking, you run/walk/jog/sprint the three city blocks to the municipal parking lot where you left your car. When you get in the car, you close the door on your coat, and after twenty or thirty seconds of futile tugging, you slam your hand against the steering wheel, then spend another hour and a half driving around, nursing your aching palm and your frustration. You're about ready to call it quits when you find yourself in the worse section of town, if there is a "worse section" in Georgetown, and the motels are getting progressively cheaper and uglier. And there's this motel, the logo --a little splotch of plaid for MacIntosh's Inn, and it somehow reminds you of the texture in Krycek's wallpaper, though Krycek would rather *die* than use something so *tacky* in his gorgeous *antique* house. . . So. * The door sounds hollow to your ears and feels cheap to your knuckles, but nevertheless, your knock provokes an encouraging response. After a dead silence of fifteen seconds, there's a rustling and clanking (of bottles?), and then, you distinctly hear Mulder's voice snarling, "Go away, Alex: I'm not fucking interested." You knock again, and Mulder screams something unintelligible and profanity laced back, and you're in the middle of knocking a third time and trying to announce yourself when the door practically jumps out of it's frame, and Mulder's glaring at you like he really does have a gun in his hands instead of a nasty, unfiltered cigarette and a mostly-empty bottle of cut-rate grain liquor. And he really does look awful, his hair sticking up all over the place and at a particularly nasty shade of unshaveness, between stubble and beard, but too patchy for either, and he's pale, too, the same color as a four day-old bruise, and his eyes are that strange blue-black of a two day bruise and fresh, spanking new ones circling his eyes. "I didn't know you smoked." you say as he takes a long drag on the cigarette that's interrupted by a spasm of coughing, and when he can speak again, he takes another drag, much calmer this time, and says, "A bad habit I picked up." Behind him, the TV and the radio and the heater are all turned on and wreathed with smoke to boot, even though the window's open, and the damp, storm wind's pulled the curtains out through the window. Every once in a while, the wind will let up enough so the curtains droop back towards the windowsill, and then, with a sudden chill, the wind will start up again, and the curtains will bell taut with an audible snap. It does, just now, and with a little snort of irritation, Mulder turns around; you notice that his back is well defined enough for all the dissipation going around the room, the muscles moving underneath smooth skin, and you're surprised, because you'd somehow expected him to have scars. Or something. He looks like he's gotten less sleep than you have these past few weeks, but underneath the t-shirt, you can see the muscles moving smooth and sleek, and there's even a little more definition than there used to be. You wonder whether Krycek has a swimming pool in that gargantuan house of his. When Mulder drops on top of a cluttered dresser, the clink of glass against cheap wood somehow gives you the guts to say the words and pick the right attitude. "If you're not going to show up to work for have the decency to tell Skinner so I can get a replacement. Doing the paperwork for two people is as fun as having a double hernia." With a wrench of the waist, Mulder turns back around and blinks at you, for a little moment, and you give a tight, little nonchalant smile that makes him blink at you again, like a man coming out of the dark. You keep the smile up, and then, with a twisted smile of his own, he finally says, "Gimme twenty minutes. I need to shower and pack." * Turns out that he hasn't eaten a regular meal for two or three days, not that he ever ate regularly, but he hasn't had anything halfway in the way of regular, Mulderish nutrition aside from a few Cokes he mixed with his rum in the beginning, so he tears into the grilled cheese you order like a wolf, and when he's done, he eats half of your corned beef and a plate of scrambled eggs to boot. He smiles at you, looking half-normal already. Amazing what a shower and a shave and clean clothes will do, not to mention an entire canteen of black coffee laced with twenty two sugars, and two-thirds of a jar of ketchup. He likes ketchup on his eggs. And salt and pepper and an obscene amount Tabasco sauce, and when you blanch at how much he's dumping on, he says around an orange-y mouthful, "I've been dreaming about the way this would taste all week. chews and rolls his eyes with bliss, then takes a sip of his tooth-achingly sweet coffee before jamming down another mouthful, swallowing, and polishing off the plate to signal the waitress. "What now, Scully? What sayeth the doctor?" "Why didn't you come? I'm sure they would've served you." He shrugs, a flicker of that bruise-colored paranoia, pausing momentarily to speak before shoveling more tangerine colored egg substitute into his mouth. "I wish I could give you good reason." Then after a moment of chewing, Mulder pauses again, but this time, his hand holds still, and his eyes drift out onto the highway, where it's started to rain. The storm clouds haven't quite reached the diner yet, but you can hear the rumble of the clouds mixing with the rumble of trucks over the Interstate as well as the rumble of Mulder's stomach before he stabs himself another mouthful of food. "The money. I didn't have enough for the motel room, likker *and* whatever the hell they're calling food over here." He then gives a you a big, open-mouthed ketchup and mashed egg smile. But even so, you can't help but notice that he leaves the waitress a crisp hundred dollar tip. * After the lunch-dinner-snack, Mulder's so tired that he falls asleep in the passenger's seat, legs tucked up to his chest and head pillowed on the window. You drive home listening to his soft snoring and the wipers and the rain, mingled with splashes from other cars and the way colors are always more intense during rain -- it's a sweet, especially when he wakes up with eyes the color of the clouded-over sky, as still and quiet and rational as you've ever seen him, not that the first two ever combine to make the third in Mulder, but he perks up, even makes a vaguely salacious comment about how a policeman who eyes you as he waves your car through an intersection, and by the time you pull up to your apartment building, the two of you are bantering like old times. Surprisingly enough, Mulder takes another shower at your apartment, this one long and wasteful and using enough hot water to make the pipes bang and steam to seep from underneath. When you rap on the door to make sure he hasn't passed out or something, he yells that he's looking for his rubber ducky. Afterwards, he curls up on your sofa, hair fine and staticky from two showers, and the rest of him bleary eyed and drowsy with the need for more sleep. You notice that even in the soft light of your evening room lamp, the circles underneath his eyes are a brilliant blue and purple, washing his eyes out to an even lighter gray that catches all the reflection of your TV set. He's channel surfing. "Geez. What happened to your cable?" You drop onto the sofa next to him, take the remote control from his hand, and turn to the local news."I stopped it. I'm never in town to watch it, so what's the point of paying an extra fifteen bucks a month?" Mulder fishes the remote from *your* lack hand, then simultaneously rolls his eyes and flicks it back to a D-level scifi flick on TBS. "So what the hell do you *do* in your free time, Scully?" He pauses, then leers, wiggling his eyebrows. "And yeah, I'd like you to answer that." "In your dreams." you mutter and reach for the remote control, but with his superior arm length, he keeps it dangling it temptingly it out of reach. "No, in my dreams, you're showing me." You lunge for the remote control, and he yanks out of reach so that you fall over and end up lying across his knees, and then he stretches his arm and dangles it just *up* and out of your reach. "Mulder, I spend all my spare time doing the paperwork that I got stuck with after you ditched me." You push yourself upright again, elbow digging into his thigh and making him yelp, but your bones creak heartily too as you struggle and finally stand up, then glare down at him from your (for once) superior height. "Get some sleep, buster, because come tomorrow, there's going to be hell to pay." You start back towards your bedroom and leave the living room and remote with him. "Or Accounting." He grins again. You can't actually see his smile, but there's something about the tilt of his head over the back of the sofa and the mocking lilt of his voice as he calls, "Night, St. Scully. Sweet dreams." You don't have any dreams, or at least you don't remember them, just sink deep into bed and drift away with Mulder's TV habit playing in the background. Eventually, you wake up to silence and moonlight falling across your face. You strain and strain, but there's just silence, just the burbling of your adopted aquarium, the low-pitched whine of your refrigerator, and the more annoying background buzz of your alarm clock. You pad out to the living room, not exactly sure what you're hoping to find or what you will find, but the TV's are off, and Mulder's not on the couch. In fact, his little carryall and his shoes are gone from by the door, and instead, propped up against the desktop lamp, is an envelope, and your hands tremble slightly as you lift the flap, but it's just a resignation note addressed to Skinner. It was dated several weeks ago, and it's a little wrinkled from being folded away, but Mulder slipped it inside one of your envelopes. The edges are very crisp, and your stationary drawer's not closed all the way. You can see the edge of the envelope box sticking out over the edge. The phone rings. You pick it up and press the green "talk" with the pad of your thumb, and there's a moment of heavy, breathless silence where you wonder and wish that it's Mulder, but as expected, it's Krycek's voice that comes across the line. "Mulder there?" You finger the cheap loose leaf paper, then slide it back into the envelope and prop it back against the lamp, still keeping your other hand on the phone. It's a little awkward with only one hand, but you manage, and then you say, "He left me a resignation letter." You can hear him smiling through the phone line. "You too?" There's silence, breathing, and distantly, the sound of traffic -- his traffic, not yours. The street lies quiet and blue when you part the curtains. The rain's stopped, so the puddles lie still. In the rush of trees moving underneath a sudden breeze, the damp leaves flash silver in the streetlight. "So he's resigned from life." Krycek's laughter is scratchy with static and distance; there's a clink of crystal on wood. You wonder if he's drinking, but his words and his voice are perfectly steady, even a little amused as he says, "No. Just us." * end * Quote at the beginning is from "Forever Love" by X Japan, quite possibly the best bloody JROCK band of all time. I _like_ Toshi's scratchy voice, damn you. Romanized lyrics by Japanlyrics.com at http://mail.cyberhost.net/japanlyr/ .
Feedback to anasile@aol.com
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