by brawlite
Fandom: The X-Files
Pairing: Alex Krycek/Fox Mulder
Rating: Mature
Wordcount: 5,520
Description: “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
It’s the oldest line in the book. Krycek says it anyway.
Tags: canon-typical violence, blood and injury, whump, disabled character, handcuffs, torture, pining, unrequited love, head injuries, the black oil
Published: 2024-09-01
The door opens.
For a moment, nothing happens. Krycek holds his breath. Half in anticipation, half because every heave of his lungs aches like he’s breathing in tear gas. The seconds stretch long, pulling thin as the air grows heavier by the heartbeat and more charged — before something yields and the tension snaps.
The tell-tale click of a gun. The safety going off.
The sound echoes in Krycek’s ears, loud and jarring. It makes him dizzy. Or maybe he was dizzy already and just forgot.
The hallway is bright, too bright for the pounding in his head. All the colors feel washed-out, overexposed. At least the space is empty at this hour, barren of people and their usual comings and goings. With the state of him, Krycek isn’t sure his presence wouldn’t have someone calling emergency services after just one look. Whether it be for the police or an ambulance or both, depending on how kind the universe was feeling at that given moment. Either way, it would be unideal. Even with the blood dripping onto the carpet. Krycek can’t run again, not now.
From the doorway, Fox Mulder stares at him down the barrel of a gun.
Just like old times.
Krycek isn’t sure he wants to hear the immediate accusation he knows is primed and ready on Mulder’s tongue, nor does he want that gun getting cozy with his temple, as Mulder looks so keen and ready to do. Krycek has had enough of that for one night. For a lifetime, really.
He can still taste the gunpowder at the back of his throat. It makes him want to gag, to heave, but he doesn’t have the energy for that.
So, before Fox Mulder can open his mouth or decide to move that gun any closer, Krycek speaks first.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
It’s the oldest line in the book. Krycek says it anyway.
Of course, Mulder’s expression doesn’t falter. His face is closed off, eyes hard and angry. Krycek has seen that look before, knows that, like a dark storm on the horizon, it promises violence. Mulder is predictable in his unpredictability — at any moment, he might lash out and clock Krycek clean in the face, he might aim lower and get Krycek in the gut and make him heave for real. Krycek doesn’t have it in him to brace himself this time, but he does flinch when Mulder shifts his weight, he can’t help it.
Mulder stares at him with those stormy eyes narrowed, his shape an ominous shadow in the doorway, backlit by the dim yellow light Krycek knows comes from the overhead in his kitchen.
Is it true? Did Krycek really have nowhere else to go? He doesn’t know. He can’t think past the pounding in his head, past whatever magnetic force brought him here in the first place.
The truth is, he hadn’t thought about it. He had been dizzy and aching, head spinning, in enough pain that every breath felt like it could be his last. He isn’t dying, he knows — it just feels like he might be, his brain and body playing cruel tricks on him. Krycek isn’t allowed to die. He hasn’t been allowed to die for a very long time.
When Mulder grabs him, it’s mean but expected. Rough and impersonal, like someone might handle a feral animal. Mulder doesn’t know how to be gentle, Krycek thinks. No, that’s not right — it’s just that no one knows how to be gentle with Alex Krycek. That thought draws a laugh out of him, an absurd little giggle that hurts worse than breathing, because even that’s not quite it, either. It’s that Krycek doesn’t deserve gentleness, he wasn’t built for it, wasn’t made for it. The space for it was cut clean out of him, leaving him with nothing in its place — a void he can’t fill, an emptiness he can never appease.
Something nice like that would pour right out of him like water through a sieve.
Mudler says something as he hauls Krycek into the apartment by the lapels of his torn and battered jacket, but Krycek doesn’t catch it over the acute rush of pain in his head. He just gets the tone: scathing, scalding. Like always.
He hurts, he hurts. His whole body aches, but his head feels like a monster most of all, something gnashing with teeth and claws — his vision is spinning with pain, with the memory of taking too many blows to the skull. He feels chewed up, spit out.
While Krycek reels, going wherever Mulder puts him like a ragdoll, a puppet with its strings cut, Mulder closes the door and slams Krycek’s body against the wood.
More pain shoots through him like a lightning bolt, high voltage and cruel. It would knock his feet clean out from underneath him if Mulder weren’t holding him up with an arm to his throat.
Mulder hisses something in Krycek’s face, but Krycek can only stare at Mulder’s mouth. His teeth. The way his lips turn up into a cruel snarl, bearing those pearly whites like a beast, a wolf with prey caught. Pain has narrowed his focus, sharpened it down to something honed, something instinctual. Mulder’s words don’t matter, they never really do. Mulder spews words like mantras, litanies of his own beliefs. Unimportant words, in the end — but still nice to listen to. A familiar cadence, a comforting refrain. But Krycek has never believed in anything other than survival. And even that’s starting to wear thin.
Krycek doesn’t need to hear Mulder tell him he’s a traitor, that he’s a rat; he knows that he’s scum of the earth first hand. Still, all that attention, all that animosity focused right on Krycek, target locked and missiles firing? There’s no feeling more exhilarating in the universe. Krycek eats it up, a starving man. Even through the pain, through the dizziness and the unceasing ache, it’s a drug. An opiate, a balm for his wounds. Mulder’s attention: it’s the addiction Krycek’s never been able to kick.
The edges of Krycek’s vision are starting to go black, spotting with familiar bits of darkness that have been threatening him for hours now. He’s had to keep a concerted hold on his own consciousness, digging his fingers into fresh wounds and slamming bruises against anything hard just to stay awake.
Except now, with the door closed and with Mulder’s attention and hands on him, Krycek can finally lower his defenses, his guard. No one can get to him now other than Mulder — and if Mulder wants to come for his throat and bleed him dry, then that’s his prerogative. He’s earned it.
Here, Krycek is as safe as he’ll ever be.
So, Krycek lets himself go and folds himself into the waiting, hungry darkness.
—
He wakes up to throbbing, full-body pain and the familiar sensation of metal digging into his wrist. Handcuffed. Of course he is. He’s always handcuffed. Somehow even more often so now that he’s only got the one wrist.
Sometimes, it feels like life is just one big, cruel joke at Krycek’s expense.
With a kind of desperate, childish stubbornness, Krycek wants to keep his eyes closed, to fight against the pull of consciousness and stay in the blank nothingness that cradled him before — a place where he didn’t hurt, where he wasn’t scared, where he didn’t even exist — but instincts take hold too quickly, jolting adrenaline straight into his system.
Krycek doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t remember. He needs to assess his situation, to keep continued survival on the forefront of his mind.
He’s so tired, but everything in him screams for survival, to keep breathing, to keep moving forward.
It never stops. It never fucking stops.
Before he can even open his eyes, though, it’s the smell that gives it away: a faint musk and a bit of mildew. Dust and paper. An underlying aroma of fish food and Irish Spring soap. Krycek has spent enough time snooping around in Fox Mulder’s apartment to know the smell like the home he never had: a safe space, relatively speaking. Safer than any other, at least.
Krycek feels himself relax ever so slightly. If he’s at Mulder’s apartment — even if he doesn’t remember getting here — then he doesn’t need to come up with an immediate plan for escape or survival. Mulder might hurt him, sure, but the man is too curious for the truth to kill him or to immediately turn him over to the authorities before using Krycek for information gathering of his own. And what’s a little more pain, at the end of the day, if death isn’t on his immediate horizon, if he gets to breathe in the closest thing to home he has in this world?
At least the radiator is warm against his side. He’s so cold. Maybe it’s the blood loss.
Krycek keeps his eyes closed for a little while longer, taking a moment to assess his injuries to the best of his ability: A split lip that he wants to tongue but doesn’t. Bruises across his midsection that he can feel on every heartbeat, but likely no immediate organ damage. A number of cuts littering his body — not deep enough to need stitches but enough to smart. His ribs — every breath hurts, with a pain both aching and acute — which means they are either bruised or broken. And to top it off, his head aches with a ferocity that promises a concussion on top of at least one black eye.
There go his immediate good looks. Maybe he can leverage the kicked dog look, instead.
Something nudges him in the leg. Or, more accurately: someone kicks him. It hurts because Krycek’s whole body hurts, so he flinches away from the pain and finally snaps his eyes open and blinks into the thankfully dim light of the room.
Mulder stands above him, towering tall as ever, glaring down at Krycek with nothing other than contempt.
There’s a gun in his hand and a frown on his face. Krycek isn’t sure he’s ever seen Mulder smile. At least not since his early days playing pretend at the Bureau — eons and ages ago, memories so distant they’re foggy with time and the haze of nostalgia.
“Good morning sleeping beauty,” Mulder says. It isn’t kind.
Krycek grunts out something that sounds appropriately annoyed. He didn’t realize that his throat hurt so much, too. Mentally, he adds a bruised windpipe to his tally of injuries.
But he won’t let himself look too weak to Fox Mulder. He can’t, or his pride will smart for days. So, Krycek pretends that his whole body isn’t screaming in pain and pushes himself up to the best of his ability, bracing himself against the radiator to look Mulder clean in the eyes.
“Mulder,” Krycek says. There. A proper greeting, even if his throat is complaining about it.
Maybe Krycek can maintain a small shred of dignity.
“I see you left something in Krasnoyarsk,” Mulder says, nodding at Krycek’s side.
Ah. That’s why he’s so cold. While he was unconscious, Mulder clearly stripped Krycek of his jacket. The empty sleeve to his threadbare and bloody tee shirt leaves nothing to the imagination in terms of what Krycek is lacking, to what was taken from him after Krycek followed Mulder to Russia.
He’s not sure where his prosthetic went. He lost it some time before he arrived at Mulder’s door.
Above him, Mulder’s lips are turned up in a mean little smile, like they’re sharing a joke. Like they’re the worst of friends.
Maybe they are, in a way. Maybe Mulder really is the closest thing that Krycek’s got to a friend these days.
“Funny,” Krycek replies.
He tries a smile, isn’t sure he quite manages it right. Perhaps it is better to just bare his teeth in a snarl like the animal Mulder thinks of him. To not pretend he’s something he’s not.
The phantom ache from where his left arm had been held down against freezing ground has never quite gone away. He still feels the brand-hot press of those strangers’ fingers on his skin, can still feel their weight on him as they all had held him down against the cold, damp soil of the forest. The jagged wound healed badly, painfully, and while the butchered scar tissue aches constantly, nothing hurts more than feeling something that is no longer there, the press of so many hands, the reminder of his agency being stripped away by dirty outcasts in the forests of a country that could have been home but never was.
Mulder drops into a crouch in front of him. The gun is still in his hand like he might need it, and it’s laughable to think Krycek could hurt him right now, like he could tear himself out of the cuff and off the radiator and hurl his broken body at Mulder when the effort of just keeping his eyes open is almost too much to bear. Maybe it’s like a security blanket, Krycek thinks. A tangible reminder of Mulder’s power in this situation.
Krycek wants to laugh, to explain that Mulder’s always been the one with all the power.
He yearns for unconsciousness like a drug. But he knows better and fights against it, fearing that when he next opens his eyes he might be in an anonymous jail cell, or in a ditch at the side of the road, or, worse yet, in a familiar, smoke-filled apartment. He fears that this moment he must have worked so hard for will be ripped away from him like everything else.
And isn’t that a little funny, too, that Krycek worked so hard for this — being cuffed to Fox Mulder’s radiator by his one remaining arm, beaten to a bloody pulp and staring down the barrel of a top-familiar gun.
Still, it’s better than the alternative.
“What are you doing here, Krycek?” Mulder asks.
Up close, Mulder’s harder to look at. Krycek can see the beginnings of crows feet by his eyes, can count the faint freckles dotting his face from time in the sun. Even in the dim light of the living room, Krycek can get lost in just how deep that gaze really is, especially when it’s carved out so darkly in anger. It hurts to look at him for too long, but Krycek can’t bear to look away.
Maybe he’ll just go blind, instead. Maybe then, Mulder might —
Krycek definitely has a concussion. His thoughts swirl and ooze together.
“I told you,” Krycek says. “Didn’t have anywhere else t—”
Mulder hits him with the gun. Just slaps him across the face with it like one might backhand a whore. It’s a little funny, almost, given Krycek’s sordid history. Not that Mulder knows anything about him at all.
“Ouch,” Krycek says.
He spits a mouthful of bloody saliva at the ground. It would be aimed at Mulder, but he doesn’t have that kind of coordination right now, nor the reach.
Mulder makes a face.
“I’d say I wasn’t expecting to see you again, but that’d be a lie.” Mulder says. “We just can’t get rid of you, can we, Krycek? You’re like a cockroach. You just won’t die.”
Mulder’s teeth are really white. It looks like he hasn’t shaved soft a little while, stubble peppering his cheeks and jaw.
“I thought I was a rat,” Krycek replies. The words slur together in his sore mouth.
When he swallows, it aches. He tries to take a deep breath in, but his lungs hurt. Everything hurts. So fucking much.
Before Mulder can reply, Krycek asks, “Do you have any ibuprofen?” He swallows again, feeling faintly sick with pain. “Or vodka. Whatever works.” He already knows the answer, but hope is a powerful thing.
“Not for you,” Mulder tells him. He touches the barrel of the gun to Krycek’s cheek, right over a blooming bruise. Presses metal into the pain. Krycek tries not to gasp and fails.
“Why are you here, Krycek? Don’t make me ask again.”
How Krycek got here is in bits in pieces, but Krycek remembers showing up. Remembers the way his stomach had swooped the second Mulder had opened his door.
“Wasn’t fucking lying to you, Mulder,” Krycek says, voice tight. “I needed a pitstop. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Is it sad that Krycek’s best bet right now is Fox Mulder?
The truth is, all of his safe houses and bolt holes have been compromised. The safest place for him is here, or maybe in an alley, tucked behind a cardboard box like trash. But right now Krycek isn’t even in fighting shape to be able to defend himself from a back-alley pickpocket, much less anyone from the Syndicate. Not that a pickpocket could get much from him. At this point, selling his organs might be a better deal than anything else.
It’s not the worst idea, either: if someone found the right bidder, they could probably make quite the buck; Krycek hasn’t been quite the same since Hong Kong, since North Dakota.
“Just give me a breather,” Krycek begs. “An hour, tops. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
Mulder snorts. “You’re delusional, Krycek. There’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight for a second. You belong behind bars.”
If Krycek ends up behind bars, he’ll be dead within the hour.
His thoughts reel. Desperate and delusional, scrambles for a solution.
“You gonna keep me here like a pet?” Krycek says, planting the idea in Mulder’s head like an obvious seed. It’s certainly a better bet than being turned over to the authorities. But Mulder will only take it if he thinks it’s his idea, if he thinks Krycek would want nothing less. “I didn’t think you were that kinda guy.”
Mulder frowns. Even as a joke the idea is clearly too revolting to fathom.
“I don’t like you like that, Krycek,” Mulder says.
Krycek manages a smirk.
“I’m hurt,” he says.
Mulder’s eyes drop down to Krycek’s cheek, likely where a bruise is beginning to deepen. He looks deep in thought for a moment before he speaks again.
“Did you really sour all of your ties? Have all of your contacts dropped you?” Mulder asks, not bothering to hide his curiosity. “You’re really selling this double agent thing, Krycek. Seems very glamorous.”
He pokes at one of Krycek’s bruises again with the barrel of the gun and again, Krycek flinches. He can’t go anywhere, can barely even lean his head back. The only thing he can do is take it.
“There’s a great vacation package,” Krycek mumbles, eyes closed to the rising pain. His head throbs with every word and he suddenly feels a little bit like he’s going to hurl.
“I have so many questions for you,” Mulder says. It sounds a hell of a lot like I’m not alerting the authorities to your presence, yet.
“Great,” Krycek says. “Can’t wait.”
And promptly passes out.
—
Krycek’s next bout of consciousness is a painful one. His bruises have had time to mature, to deepen and bloom. Acute pain is one animal, something Krycek has learned to deal with in his line of work, but the ache of a worsening injury is a different one entirely.
This time when he wakes, Mulder is not there waiting for him with his gun. Krycek isn’t sure if he’s relieved or disappointed.
He closes his eyes again, allowing himself a moment of dark reprieve before opening them again. After a second, it becomes apparent that Mulder is puttering in his kitchen.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” Mulder says when he drifts back in.
Krycek thinks that might be overstating his state of consciousness a little too much, but he doesn’t bother arguing. His tongue feels too big for his own mouth and his throat feels far too small to breathe properly.
“You got any painkillers?” Krycek croaks.
“How about I’ll give you one for every question you answer.”
Krycek laughs weakly. His chest clenches against the pain and he stops. “That could end with me ODing on your living room floor,” he says.
“Given your history of being unhelpful, I have a feeling it’ll end with you still in pain,” Mulder says, dropping down into a crouch next to Krycek. “But let’s hear some truth, Krycek.”
He’s got a cold beer in one of his hands, something cheap and American and watered down. It’s wet with condensation. Krycek’s mouth waters at the sight. He’d do many an illegal thing for even just a taste; his mouth tastes like hell, like blood and bile, coppery and astringent and sour.
Mulder’s right, though. Krycek doubts there’s much he could or would tell Mulder that would earn him any relief in the form of a painkiller. Some of it Mulder’s already tracked down himself and some of it would lead to certain torture for Krycek, the likes of which Mulder could never even begin to put him through. The rest of it is all twisted up, turned around and convoluted. Truths that double over themselves and blur into something wholly unrecognizable in the end.
The rest, Krycek doesn’t know.
“There’s no fucking truth, Mulder,” Krycek spits. “I’ve told you that.”
“You can give me details. Where to find these labs, where to find these men behind it all,” Mulder says. “You know it. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
Krycek is so fucking tired of this conversation. There’s only so many times you can beat a dead horse. And there’s only so many times you can get your feet knocked out from underneath you before you simply cannot continue to stand.
Krycek lets out an exhausted breath. “I know some of it, enough to do whatever job I’m given. Even if I gave you a location, Mulder, they’d be gone before you got there.”
That isn’t enough for Mulder, though. Like a spoiled child, he doesn’t like being told no.
Krycek’s fatigue has sunk straight down to the bone, right into the marrow. He closes his eyes for a long time, takes a painful, steadying breath, and then opens them again. It’s a struggle, though. He’s so fucking tired.
“Fucking talk to me, Krycek. Give me something, work with me,” Mulder’s face has gone red with anger, with frustration. Krycek can’t blame him — he frustrated, too. Or he would be, if he had the energy for anything other than pain. “You came here, so make some use of it. Make the trouble worth my while.”
Krycek came here because it was safe. Not because he felt like he owed Mulder information. He owes Mulder many things after all they’ve been through together, but the information Mulder seeks isn’t a gift and it isn’t as valuable as Mulder thinks it is.
“You just don’t quit, do you, Mulder?” Krycek asks. His eyes have fallen closed again, exhaustion threatening to drag him under.
“I could say the same about you, Krycek.”
—
When Krycek wakes up again, he thinks he’s drowning.
Mulder has hauled him into the shower and has turned the damned thing on to a full, icy blast.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” Mulder says, as Krycek flails.
It doesn’t take long — just an aborted and painful jerk — to realize that Mulder has cuffed Krycek’s hand to his ankle, leaving him kneeling in the shower at an angle that his aching back and neck hate. But obviously worse than the pain is the stream of water in his face, frigid and sharp like a thousand needles.
Krycek curses. And flails, trying to get away from the spray of water, out of the horrifically uncomfortable position Mulder has put him in.
He only manages to scrape himself up even more, whacking his head and elbow and knees against the tile of Mulder’s shower before he realizes his efforts are largely futile, though he can breathe easily again. It takes him a while to realize that Mulder’s even there, standing just outside the shower and watching the spectacle, the fool Krycek makes of himself. Mulder doesn’t even bother to intervene, just lets it all play out.
“Careful, Krycek, you wouldn’t want to make your concussion even worse.”
Krycek curses him in Russian.
Mulder reaches into the shower, grabs Krycek by his wet shirt, and hauls him back under the spray.
Krycek sputters. He fights it until his muscles ache and he eventually goes easy. When he does, Mulder lets him go. Krycek pulls himself back and takes in some heaving, painful breaths.
“You’d make a good Russian interrogator, Mulder,” Krycek tells him after he catches his breath, looking up at Mulder while resting his head against the unforgiving, freezing tile.
All of his clothes cling wetly to his body. He’s shivering and cold.
“This? This isn’t interrogation, Krycek, this is self preservation. You were stinking up my living room and staining my carpet.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Krycek says.
A shiver overtakes him and he tries to curl his body into a tight ball, as much as the cuffs will allow. It’s not much.
“So,” Mulder says, “is your tongue feeling any looser now, or do you want to wash your hair again?”
Mulder clearly thinks he’s funny. He thinks he’s good, too. Luckily, Krycek just came from much worse and the reminders dance right on the periphery of his thoughts. The parallels aren’t very direct, not that he’d tell Mulder that. It might help if Mulder thinks he’s just as monstrous as Krycek’s previous captors; Mulder hates to be the villain.
“Oh fuck you,” Krycek tells him.
He gets another trip under the cold spray for that, but has enough warning to take a large breath first.
This time, though, when Mulder lets him go, he slaps Krycek across the face for good measure.
Krycek’s getting real tired of being hit. But if Mulder doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to keep him around, he might turn Krycek in. And Krycek can’t handle that right now. He needs to heal up first, at least slightly, so that he has even a remote chance of making an escape. And for that, he needs to give Mulder something. Or a promise of something. Mulder needs to get something out of this, even if it’s a sense of control.
“I don’t have anything for you,” Krycek says, pitching his voice toward plaintive, desperate. It’s not difficult; his throat hurts so fucking much. But when Mulder winds up to hit him again just like Krycek thought he might, Krycek makes himself flinch again, violently this time, and makes himself cower even though he hates the way it makes him feel. It makes him look even more pitiful than he already feels and he hates it, but he knows Mulder feels differently.
“Wait, wait,” Krycek pleads.
“Oh, did you finally remember something useful?”
Krycek looks up at Mulder with big, scared eyes.
“I just –” he swallows, making his throat work. He looks at Mulder’s raised hand, then at his face. “They’ll kill me, Mulder,” Krycek says in a voice that’s almost a whisper.
He hopes he makes it sound appealing, a little glimmering hook in the water, and not like he’s trying too hard. It’s difficult to think, to act, around the pain. Maybe some of it isn’t even acting — they will kill him, Krycek knows.
Mulder’s eyes stay hard. “And you think I won’t?”
Krycek knows he would. He knows that Mulder will, very likely, be the one to kill Krycek at some point down the line, and it would be a very different death than at the hands of the smoker. Krycek has accepted that. And he has accepted, too, that he will never let himself be killed by the smoker. No — he has to live long enough to kill that man.
He thinks about it, about wrapping his hand around that old fucker’s wrinkled neck, about feeling his last breaths stuttering out against the palm of his hand, desperate and hitched against his own steady pulse. The idea makes him feel warm, safe, powerful. He slips into the fantasy and drifts in that feeling for a little while, falling into it like a hot bath in the dead of winter.
Suddenly, Krycek’s head is spinning. His cheek stings. Mulder must have hit him again. Krycek feels feverish, cold and hot all at once. The pain burns but his body is freezing.
“Krycek,” Mulder snaps. He looks desperate. “Come on, stay with me. You were going to tell me something.”
“Was I?” Krycek asks. He can’t remember.
“You said they’d kill you.”
They will kill him. Krycek probably did say that, but he doesn’t remember why.
He’s dizzy, tired.
“Get me out of here,” Krycek pleads. He tries to reach out, but finds his hand cuffed to his ankle. He slips on the slippery wet tile.
He doesn’t think that Mulder hits him again, but his thoughts are looser after that, harder to keep track of. He’s distantly aware of Mulder hauling him around, out of the tub and onto the bathroom floor. He falls and his knees hurt. His head aches.
—
Krycek wakes up in dry clothes.
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Mulder says.
Judging by the light in the apartment, it’s late afternoon. It hurts to blink. Krycek wonders if it’s head trauma or deja vu that reverberates the phrase through his skull like a drumroll, an echo. Maybe a little bit of both.
“A little birdy told me you were thinking of sharing something with the class.”
When Krycek laughs, his whole body aches. Mulder has him cuffed to the radiator again, but it’s warmer than the shower and he can stretch his aching legs out.
“Was I?” Krycek asks, but the thought sounds familiar, haunting. He’d share a lot with Mulder, if he thought it would help, if he thought it might save him. Most of what Krycek could share, though, would hinder, would doom them both.
Probably, Krycek decided to string Mulder along with the tantalizing taste of conspiracy just to make it to the next hour, to get out from under the spray of cold water and away from Mulder’s wild fists. Maybe some lie had been close to the surface, ready to be shared — but it’s long gone now. Faded back into the background.
Krycek isn’t sure if he feels better or worse, now. He certainly feels different than he had when he showed up at Mulder’s door in the first place.
But Krycek is so fucking tired. He wants to close his eyes again, so he does.
“It’s you, Mulder,” he says, and it feels like a relief.
He rests his head against the warm radiator and it feels almost like an embrace.
“What?” Mulder says.
When Krycek doesn’t answer, Mulder slaps his cheek. But it’s not hard, barely even enough to sting. Kind of like how he might try and wake up Scully if she ever fell unconscious and Mulder needed to rouse her quickly. Krycek can’t even begin to guess at the origin of that gentleness, its source. Maybe Krycek’s face looks as rough as it feels. Maybe Mulder’s hand hurts from punching him.
It’s that gentleness that makes Krycek open his eyes, though. It’s more startling than an electric shock.
“What the fuck do you mean, it’s me?” Mulder asks. His eyes are so big, so inquisitive. He’s always searching for some kind of truth.
Krycek smiles. He can’t stop himself, even as it pulls at his split lip.
It’s all Mulder.
Everything in the world revolves around Mulder. Krycek learned that one the hard way.
And then, slowly and without his recognition, Krycek’s world had begun to revolve around Mulder, too. That, somehow, was an easier pill to swallow.
“Selden Island,” Krycek tells him.
It’s an hour away and a pain in the ass to get to. Nothing has been kept there for years, and any future plans for it have stalled out, but it’ll get Mulder out of his hair for a little while. Give Krycek a fighting chance. Or a reprieve.
Mulder checks the handcuffs, hot skin brushing against raw wrists, and unfolds himself to stand above Krycek, towering. He sets his jaw and looks over Krycek once more, assessing. Krycek can picture the way he looks in Mulder’s eyes — too thin, too bruised, a fraction of a whole. It’s not a pretty picture, but Mulder never did think he was pretty.
“I’ll deal with you when I get back,” Mulder says.
You won’t, Krycek thinks. He’ll be long gone by then.
But maybe, first, he’ll take a nap. Just close his eyes for a little bit. He’s so fucking tired, and this is the only place Kyrcek is even remotely close to safe, even if Mulder’s ghost is the only thing that remains to watch over him.
Mulder’s front door clicks as it closes. The sound of a key turning in the lock is as good as a lullaby.
“Bye, Mulder,” Krycek tells the closed door, long after the sound of Mulder’s footsteps has faded.