Ebb Tide
Jessica Harris <lumpj@hotmail.com>
13/03/99
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The glowing red digits on the alarm clock flicked over to 3:00 am and 
Krycek was wide awake.

Of course it was 3:00 in the morning. Drowning hour. Ebb tide. Moment 
of death in the night. It was three in the morning and he wondered if 
he'd ever sleep again.

He glanced over at Mulder. The pale glow from the streetlight outside 
highlighted the knobs of his spine, drew arcs of shadow over the 
vaulted arch of his rib-cage, shaded the tidy ball-and-socket roll of 
his shoulder as he shifted in his sleep, dreaming. 

Krycek looked away. It filled him with horror sometimes, the terrible 
vulnerability of the human body. He had seen life stolen from so many 
of them, watched them shattered, savaged, destroyed in unimaginable 
ways. It had become far too easy to look at them and see only the 
ways in which they could be taken apart. 

In moods like this he looked at Mulder and saw his body *demolished*. 
Column of spine shattered; vault of rib-cage crushed and flattened; 
ball ripped from socket as the perfect architecture of bone was 
reduced to rubble. He looked, and saw all his weight and substance 
and firm touchable flesh rendered mere meat as his essence drained 
away in the viscous seep of blood.

He stretched a hand towards Mulder's chest to reassure himself that 
it still rose and fell. His fingers shook perceptibly, and with a 
grunt of self-disgust he threw off the bed-clothes and padded softly 
from the room. 

He didn't like scotch, but it was the one thing Mulder had in his 
cupboards, and tonight all that mattered was the warmth in his belly. 
He clutched the bottle against his side with his ruined arm and 
settled on the couch, pulling the blanket around him. There was a 
video in the machine and he grabbed the remote and clicked it on, 
hoping for distraction. But the soulless pistonings and calculated 
writhe that appeared on the screen only sent his thoughts spiralling 
downwards again. The actors' eyes looked dead and empty, and if he 
closed his eyes their cries...

He turned it off, leaned his head back against the couch and hauled 
deep breaths into his lungs. God, they had trained him too well, sex 
and death and sex and death until neither could touch him without the 
other at its shoulder.

Another desperate swallow of scotch and he felt the silence of the 
room take on a different quality.  He raised his eyes to the window 
and saw the reflection of Mulder standing behind him, leaning in the 
doorway. Mulder met his eyes in the glass and lifted his eyebrows, 
dryly asked "Thirsty?"

Krycek was in no mood for banter. He rose unsteadily to his feet and 
said "I should go. My clothes..."

He tried not to touch Mulder on his way back into the bedroom, but 
his hand brushed against his belly as he passed him, and without his 
willing it his fingers clutched at the handle of Mulder's hip-bone, 
and then the rest of him followed, until he stood pressed tight 
against Mulder's body, feeling his heartbeat, his body sweet and his 
breath slightly stale with sleep. He pressed an ear to Mulder's 
throat, heard the muffed glottal of a swallow.

"I should go," he said again. 

But Mulder wrapped warm arms around him and held him there. "Jesus, 
Alex," he said, voice worried. "What's wrong?"

End.