Title: Nightfalling II
By: Jessica Harris
Disclaimer: they are still not mine.

Rating: M/K, NC-17. 1/1 *WARNING!!* Same warnings, actually - some dark and
bloody stuff.

Thanks to Nonie and Rachel for encouragement and beta and good stuff like that.

Feedback: Craved like a drug. lumpj@hotmail.com
===================
Nightfalling II
Jessica Harris
07/07/00
====================

Scully is distracted. She'd made a point of getting to the lab early this
morning, but to her surprise Mulder had been there already, waiting for her. And
he'd followed her into the morgue, where the first of the corpses from the
nursing home awaited her. There he'd prowled restlessly as she'd prepared,
picking things up, putting them down, looking at the various pieces of equipment
like he'd never seen them before.

That had stopped when she began the actual autopsy, though, and now as she
completes the y-incision down the front of the corpse she looks up to find
Mulder watching her hands with a disturbing intensity. She has a sudden queasy
memory of the wounds he was found with, all the places where his own flesh had
been cut and torn, and she looks at him with concern. He's holding his torso a
little stiffly, one arm folded across his chest, and his cheeks are strangely
flushed.

"Are you OK, Mulder?" she asks. "You don't have to be here, you know."

"I'm fine," he says. "I've watched you do autopsies before."

//Sure,// she thinks. //But not since you nearly ended up on the table.// She
looks at him a moment longer, and he smiles a smile that doesn't quite reach his
eyes. Nothing seems to, these days. She hates to admit it, but Mulder has
started to give her the creeps.

She'd expected him to be changed by his ordeal, but not like this. He's started
doing his paperwork. Showing up on time for meetings. Following almost all of
Skinner's directives with almost no complaint. He'd even requested some holiday
time without urging, took a week and gone out, he'd told her, to the vineyard.

She casts another quick look at him from the corner of her eye. He's not staring
at the scalpel anymore, but rather at the open chest of the corpse before her,
and she doesn't think she can stand his expressionless eyes.

"Mulder," she says, "go get us some coffee, and danishes or something - I didn't
have time for breakfast this morning." After a moment he goes. Without protest.
Without asking for money. Without a crack about what had kept her in bed so
late. She shakes her head. The jokes he used to make about pod people don't seem
so funny anymore.

She's at the morgue until late that night, finishing up the nursing home
autopsies, and the next day they're sent out of town on a case that keeps them
away for nearly a week. When she gets back, the lab is sealed.

*		*		*

"This is ridiculous!" Scully storms at Skinner, faintly surprised to hear
herself shouting. "They can't just seize the entire lab!"

"They can, and they have, Agent Scully," says Skinner tiredly. "You're familiar
with the Radiobiology Tissue Depository, aren't you?"

"Of course," says Scully. "They keep samples of human tissue contaminated with
various forms of radioactivity - it's a research facility. But they can't - "

"Did you know that they're officially a program of the Department of Defense?
Which gives them certain police powers. They're automatically notified of any
anomalous energy readings in human tissue, and they have the power to step in
and seize anything they feel may pose a danger if handled without the proper
expertise."

"But it doesn't make sense!" Scully insists. "The nursing home bodies weren't
radioactive - "

"Your test results showed unknown isotopes - " Skinner begins.

"- and in any case," interrupts Scully, "Their report is saying now that it was
equipment contamination that accounted for the anomalous readings. But what kind
of contamination could account for those results? And if that's really the case,
why can't we have the bodies back? There were other oddities about my findings
that I haven't been able to account for. What are they trying to hide?"

Skinner just shakes his head. Scully can feel the blood pounding in her temples.
It's not just the case itself that's bothering her, though it's suspicious
enough. It's her awareness that something else here is wrong, very wrong. It's
Mulder who should be reacting like this, Mulder who should be shouting at
Skinner and pounding the table. But after a few initial protests he's fallen
silent, and she can feel her anger increasing in direct proportion to his
lengthening silence. And under the anger there's a picture emerging in the back
of her mind, an image just beyond recognition that fills her with strange
unease.

"It's no use, Agent Scully," Skinner says. "We're never going to see those
bodies again."

Scully glares at him.

Then there's movement beside her. Mulder is standing up, reaching for his
briefcase. "Come on, Scully," he says. "It's clear there's nothing more we can
accomplish here." This time even Skinner looks taken aback. In the moment of
silence that follows, Mulder turns and walks out the door.

*		*		*

That night Scully drives by Mulder's apartment, stops for a moment and looks up
at his window. It's dark, without even the blue flicker of the television, and
somehow she can tell he's not there. There's no reason for this to make her
nervous; there are any number of reasons why he might not be home. Nevertheless
it does. She picks up her cell-phone, dials the first three numbers. Stops. The
image that was flickering in her mind this afternoon can no longer be denied:
Mulder behaving so oddly in the lab, the morning of that first autopsy - 
picking things up and putting them down, touching all the equipment, piece by
piece.

And without her ever naming what she's doing, this checking up on him becomes a
habit. And over the weeks she begins to notice more and more of these evenings
when he doesn’t return home. And then she starts to notice other things as well.

A pattern of certain cases where evidence mysteriously disappears, where
witnesses' stories subtly change, where the suspects always seem to be one step
ahead of them. A series of small mishaps that begin to plague Mulder himself; a
wrenched shoulder that he blames on falling during a run. A laceration she
glimpses on his arm that he explains away as a gym mishap. A reported
fender-bender that leaves him with an odd bruise across his throat.
And almost despite herself she begins to quietly look a little deeper into some
of his work - double-checking his reports, contacting witnesses independently,
following up on certain leads on her own. The things she finds are tenuous
enough individually - a pharmaceutical company whose name recurs a couple of
times in the cases they couldn't solve, witnesses who seem to be ill-at-ease
with her questioning, an instance or two where Mulder wasn't exactly where he
said he was, or his source of information proves impossible to trace. Not enough
to merit any official investigation. But more than enough to disturb her to make
her keep looking.

And there's something else, less tangible, something she's having trouble
putting into words. On the mornings after the nights he doesn't go home, Mulder
seems strangely … absent. He's always had a strong presence, always made himself
felt, one way or another. But on those mornings, she can stand right next to
him, and if she shuts her eyes she'd swear she was alone in the room.

*		*		*
Krycek lies awake in the darkness. He's been dreaming, lately, of falling; he
steps off a curb, or through a doorway, and the ground drops away beneath his
feet, leaving him tumbling, slow and relentless, through what feels like endless
space.

They're not precisely nightmares, these dreams; after the first vertiginous drop
he falls calmly enough. What does disturb him, though, is the way their
sensations have begun to follow him out of sleep.  He wakes with a feeling of
weightless dizziness, a rising hollowness in his gut that makes it feel like
things which seem solid might suddenly cease to be, dropping him into
nothingness.

So tonight he can't quite bring himself to sleep. He's been summoned to bring
Mulder to meet with the smoker tomorrow, and anxiety flutters in his stomach. He
wonders if it's finally happened, if he's told Mulder too many secrets and
something has leaked.

He'd never meant to tell Mulder as much as he had. When Mulder had first started
asking questions, he'd tried to dodge them, pleading ignorance or giving
grudging half-truths. He'd been afraid of triggering Mulder's outrage, breaking
whatever strange spell binds them together, afraid of his answers ending up back
in Bureau hands. But Mulder doesn't seem to have any outrage anymore. He doesn't
get angry when Krycek refuses to answer. And when Krycek does answer, none of
the information seems to faze him - he sits quiet for a moment, digesting, then
moves on to the next detail, the next question, gentle and ruthless.

And gradually Krycek has found himself telling him more and more. The disastrous
experiments at the nursing homes, the work with the clones, all of it - letting
Mulder in on almost everything he knows about the plans for the hybrids. Even
now, when he knows how foolish it is, when incidents like the Russian's
unexpected attempt on his life make it clear how precarious his position is, he
finds himself pouring out detail after detail during their night-time meetings.
It makes him feel strange, hearing the plans from his own lips, as though
somehow they hadn't been quite real before. And he finds Mulder's lack of
reaction first unsettling, and then provoking. *Mulder* is the one with the
conscience, isn't he? How can he be so calm in the face of this, when Krycek
himself can no longer sleep through the night?

And that provocation turns up the pulse inside Krycek's head, makes it even
harder to stay careful, to stop himself from taking out his frustration on
Mulder's willing flesh. And the effort of that restraint in turn feeds back into
his frustration. And Mulder-

Mulder eats it up. Mulder submits to the anger, surrenders his flesh, gives up a
little more of himself each time, giving and giving and giving until Krycek
doesn't think he can take any more.

Their meetings have grown more frequent, less discreet, and in the back of his
mind Krycek wonders why his masters haven't reined him in before this. He knows
this is endangering Mulder's usefulness to the consortium - his surface of
normality is growing thinner and thinner, and it's only a matter of time before
someone notices and they're forced to pull him out, or simply dispose of him.
The small flicker of panic Krycek had felt that night at the motel has grown
inside of him, and he can *see* disaster looming.

But he can't seem to stop himself. One night he'd been fucking Mulder from
behind, his arm cocked round his throat so that Mulder could see the razor
clenched in his fist. And Mulder had bucked too fiercely, or he'd squeezed a
little too hard, and Mulder had collapsed bonelessly into unconsciousness.

The feel of that sudden limpness beneath him had made Krycek howl incoherently
and come so hard that it was long minutes before he could roll off the unmoving
body beneath him and check Mulder's pulse with shaking hands. That night he'd
covered Mulder carefully and sat tensely in a chair at the end of the motel bed
until Mulder had finally stirred and opened his eyes. "I didn't mean -" Krycek
had begun, but the words had died in his throat when he'd seen the expression on
Mulder's face, seen the strange triumph, strange *discovery* in it.

The next time, Mulder had knelt before him and slid the belt from Krycek's
pants, wrapping it around his own neck. Krycek had protested, had said it was
too dangerous, but Mulder had simply begun tightening the belt himself, keeping
his eyes fixed on Krycek's, pulling it tighter and tighter until he swayed
forward and pressed his face against Krycek's thigh with a whimper.

And there was something about the sound, the gesture…  he'd pulled Mulder up by
the belt so hard it was a wonder his neck hadn't broken and …

… And that time he hadn't even stayed to check his breathing. He doesn't
remember leaving, but he'd found himself blocks away, shirt on inside out, pants
still half undone, and the image of what he had left behind him burned into the
backs of his eyelids. Mulder, naked, sprawled limply on the floor, belt only
barely loosened around his throat. Eyes closed.


*		*		*

Tonight the pick-up point is a bus-stop downtown, and as Krycek pulls around the
corner, half an hour early, he sees that Mulder is there already, waiting for
him. He sits staring out towards the street, but if Krycek didn't know better he
might take him for blind; his eyes have a flat unfocussed sheen to them, and
it's clear that he's not really seeing what's in front of him.

The bench beside him is empty, though several people stand nearby, waiting. He's
not doing anything overtly crazy, but something about him is … strange. He's
clearly waiting for something - the anticipation is visible in every line of his
body. But there's an oddly animal patience to him as well. He doesn't fidget, or
look impatient. He just sits there, as if boredom, discomfort, even time itself
has ceased to matter, as if all that's left in the world is the thing that he's
waiting for.

Krycek swallows, and drives one more time around the block.

*		*		*

There's a message waiting on Scully's answering machine when she gets in that
night. "Agent Scully," says Skinner's gruff voice on the tape, "Sorry to bother
you at home, but I wanted to discuss something with you confidentially. You
signed off on Mulder's last two medical exams, and I wondered…"

The rest of his words fade to garble in her ears, and she sits down heavily on
the couch, icy coldness in her stomach. She's never signed off on any of
Mulder's check-ups since the accident. He told her he was going to another
doctor at the Bureau, told her he felt more comfortable with a stranger.

She catches the end of Skinner's message now, "- some concern about his recent
behaviour, and I thought you might be able to answer some questions for me.
Please feel free to call me at home to discuss this."

She rewinds the message and listens to it again, then dials Skinner's number.
"Sir," she says when he picks up, "Regarding Mulder. I've never signed off on
any of his medicals." She doesn't know what to say next, so she says nothing,
listening to the silence on the other end of the line.

Finally Skinner says, "I think we should meet, and discuss this."

Scully feels tears prickle at her eyes. "I think you're right, sir," she says
unsteadily. "I think that you'd better look at some material I've collected.
Give me time to collect my files, and I'll be over in an hour."

*		*		*
At the lab, Krycek's conviction that something is wrong grows steadily stronger.
Two men with vaguely military bearings were waiting for them at the entrance,
and though the request that he surrender his weapon was routine, they stayed
just a little too close as they guided he and Mulder through the halls, watched
them a little too alertly. And now the smoking bastard is smiling a thin-lipped
smile at him across the table with a look in his eyes that Krycek knows means
very bad news indeed.

They're meeting in one of the tank rooms, which makes him even edgier. He's
never liked them, never gotten used to the green glow and the ranks of curled,
motionless figures. He wonders if the smoker has noticed, it that's why he was
waiting here, sitting at the desk where one of the lab-techs usually monitored
the room. Some of the tanks in this room are empty, Krycek notices, which is
unusual enough to make him worry even more.

"Quite the vacancy rate you've got here," he jokes uneasily.

The smoker smiles wider. "As a matter of fact," he says, smoke trailing from his
nostrils, "We're closing this facility."

Krycek blinks. "Closing it? I wasn't informed. Why?"

"I was disappointed at first, you know," muses the smoker, "after all, it seemed
like such a promising set-up. And we'd put such work into it." With a chill,
Krycek knows it's not the cloning facility he's talking about.

"But really, it works out almost perfectly. Not our original plan, and it *is*
inconvenient having to move the facility, but it gains us other advantages." The
smile abruptly vanished. "You should never have underestimated Scully, you
know."

And there it was again, the feeling that the ground had dropped away beneath his
feet.

"Scully?" he says.

"Your little friend there has been careless. You've *both* been careless. You've
proven yourself unreliable, Alex. Don't think we haven't realised that you have
your own agenda here. She's been checking up on him, you know. We've been
fortunate so far, she hasn't found anything important, but she's been getting
just a little too close, and we need to remedy the situation."

He stubs his cigarette out, and lights another immediately, blowing the smoke up
at Krycek's face. Krycek feels Mulder standing frozen beside him, only his
quickened breathing showing that he understands what's being said here.

"So at some point in the next few days," the smoker continues, "she'll be
allowed to 'stumble' on some information that will lead her to a certain
carefully chosen location. And there she'll find," he smiles again, "the two of
you. Your bodies, to be precise. And along with them, enough material to
convince her that Mulder has been leading her deliberately astray, that anything
she might have learned through him is false. And in the meantime we'll simply
erase the trails she's stumbled on. Like I said, almost perfect."

Krycek tries to keep his face still, his mind frantically seeking possibilities
of escape. He still has his knife, but the men who escorted them here are still
standing close behind, and he knows he'd be dead before he could use it. And
Mulder, he sees at a glance, will be no use at all. He's got that flat look in
his eyes that says that he's *gone*, vanished somewhere inside his head where
it's useless to try and follow him.

The smoker is talking as though Mulder isn't there at all. "We never wanted to
kill Mulder, for fear he'd become a martyr. But this should discredit him
effectively enough. Not a hero or a martyr, but a sick man, consorting with a
known assassin, whose own depraved appetites finally killed him. And we’ll be
sure word gets out. If they attempt to cover it up, well - " he pulls an
envelope from his briefcase, fans a series of photos from it out on the desktop
before him. "These are stills from a certain video we possess, which we'll
arrange to have found in your possessions, Alex. If we need to, we'll have one
of our FBI contacts 'leak' it to the media."

Krycek looks down, then looks away again in a hurry. The stills are dark and
grainy, the colour muted, but they show him and Mulder clearly enough. He's
familiar with Mulder's face like this, his contorted pain/pleasure rictus. But
he'd never seen his own at such times, and the expression on it makes him avert
his gaze.

The smoking man laughs. "It's almost a shame, really. You would probably have
killed him yourself, eventually, and I would have been… intrigued to see how
this progressed. But time is of the essence here. And as much as I'd like to
stay and watch, I have other business to attend to."

He shuts his briefcase again, and gestures at the men. Seeing one last chance,
Krycek throws himself at the smoker, but the desk is in the way and the men are
too close, and he finds himself pinned to the floor after only a short scuffle.
The smoker doesn't even look back as he leaves. Glancing desperately around,
Krycek sees Mulder, being held by the other man, over closer to the tanks.

"Pretty pictures," says the one holding Krycek, peering at a few of them where
they've fallen to the ground. "I think we can have a little fun with this
assignment." He pulls Krycek to his feet.

The other man has Mulder pressed up against the tank, is frisking him with a
leer on his face. "I know you like it rougher than this," he says, "but I have
certain professional standards." The two men laugh.

Then Mulder speaks for the first time since they got here. "Look, Alex," he
says, something strange in his voice as he stares into the tank. "It's me."

They all turn to look at the tank where he stands, and sure enough, the profile
of the figure floating there is eerily familiar.

"Holy shit!" the man holding Krycek says, and the moment of distraction is just
enough. The man's grip slackens, and with the jolt of horrified adrenaline that
the sight of the clone has given him, Krycek breaks free and elbows the man hard
in the gut, knocking him over. When he's down, he kicks his head as hard as he
can, and there's a sickening crunch of bone.

A bullet whangs past his head and he spins to see Mulder grappling with the
other man. He leaps forward and pulls him off Mulder, shoves him away with all
the force he can muster. The man goes flying, and collides with the tank holding
the Mulder clone. It teeters for a moment, then goes over on it side, pinning
the man and sending the clone inside spilling out on the floor in a wave of
thick, viscous liquid. The clone's eyes are still shut, but its limbs are
twitching spastically now. When Krycek turns to look at Mulder, Mulder looks
pale and panicky.

"Alex!" he says, "Alex - have you got the - we can't - "

Krycek turns back to man who'd held him, and fumbles in his jacket. Sure enough,
there's one of the picks in an inside pocket, and he turns back to the clone.
Mulder is there first, though, and he plucks the pick from Krycek's hand and in
one fierce blow drives it into the neck of thing with his face. Green liquid
flows out, and Krycek can't look away as the familiar features start to
dissolve.

Then Mulder falls to his knees in the thick liquid from the tank and presses his
face against Krycek's thigh. Krycek feels slightly sick. "Jesus, Mulder! Not
now! We have to get out of here!"

Mulder murmurs something nearly inaudible, and nuzzles against him, his breath
hot through the denim of Krycek's jeans.

"No!" Krycek says again, and pushes Mulder's face away. But Mulder won't let go
of his legs, and with rising panic Krycek backhands him hard enough that Mulder
is sent sprawling to the ground.

"Don't you understand?" he says, "If we don't get out of here, we're going to
die." Mulder doesn't move. "Get up!" says Krycek, and kicks him lightly.

Mulder just lies there, and looks up at him with an expression that makes
Krycek's stomach tighten and drop. Mulder's lip is split, and he sticks his
tongue out, licks at the blood welling there, smearing it, and Krycek feels the
hot pulse start up in the back of his brain.

"Is that what you want?" he hears himself say, and his voice sounds strange to
him, grating. He drops down so that he's straddling Mulder's hips. Looks into
his face. "Is that really what you want from me? You want to die?"

He scrabbles on the ground for one of the shards from the tank, holds it with a
fold of his leather jacket's cuff, waves it in front of Mulder's face. Mulder's
pupils dilate.

"What is it? You can't handle seeing what I see? Knowing what I know?"

He presses the tip of the shard into the hollow of Mulder's throat, denting the
flesh without breaking the skin, and despite himself his breath comes faster,
the pulse inside his head grows a little stronger. His voice grows louder as he
tries to speak over it.

"Is that what's become of Fox Mulder's precious search for truth? Come on,
Mulder, get up!"

He slides the shard further down, between the knobs of Mulder's collar-bone, and
it's cutting the skin now, leaving a shallow bleeding scratch behind it.
Mulder's breath catches in his throat.

"I'll do it if I have to, Mulder! This isn't a game! I could cut you right open
and leave you here. But I don't think that's what you really want. Not really."

There's an edge of something he doesn't want to think is pleading to his voice.

The inside of his head is deafening now, hot and chaotic, his cock undeniably
hard in spite of the danger. The edge of the shard is sharp, but not quite sharp
enough, and when it hits the collar of Mulder's T-shirt it catches and snags,
and Krycek grabs the hem of the shirt impatiently and pushes it up, revealing
Mulder's chest and its network of scars. "I could do it," he says again, and
squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, because he knows it's no more than the
truth.

Without his willing it he's grinding his crotch into Mulder's, his body beyond
his control now. "Don't do this to me," he whispers, and doesn't know if it's
Mulder or his own body he's talking to. He presses the glass down again, draws a
slow jagged red line down the centre of Mulder's torso. Mulder cries out.

"Is this what you want?" he says again. And when Mulder gives no answer he
presses down harder, cuts deeper. "Tell me, Mulder. Tell me. Tell me to do it.
Or tell me to stop."

He swings one leg off Mulder, hauls at him until he's on his front, then yanks
him up onto his hands and knees and grinds against his ass. "I could slit your
throat. Slit it and fuck you while you bleed out. Is that what you want?"

He knows he should get out. Leave Mulder if he has to, let him die if that's
what he wants. But he can't. This is it. The ground has dropped away beneath him
and he's freefalling, nothing to grab onto, in the grip of a force as strong as
gravity.

He's still thrusting against Mulder's ass. The shard of glass is gone, dropped
somewhere when he was flipping Mulder over, and he doesn't bother searching for
it, just hooks his arm around Mulder's throat like the first time and starts to
squeeze.

"Come on, Mulder," he says, panting now. "Come on, you have to tell me. You want
me to stop?" He bites at Mulder's shoulder, then bites harder, worrying a little
at the flesh, feeling his teeth break the skin. Mulder still doesn't resist, and
he thinks dizzily that he could take a bite right out of him and swallow it. He
jerks his arm against Mulder's throat again, releases his teeth's grip. "Come
on!" he says.

But Mulder is arching his head, pushing his throat forward against Krycek's
choking arm, and the obliterating pulse of pleasure is making Krycek forget,
forget where they are, why they must leave, forget what he's doing here.
Mulder's breath is choked and rattly, his body starting to twitch and droop, and
Krycek suspects that he's actually physically incapable of speech, but he still
says it again. "Tell me. Make me stop."

Then something makes him look up. And he sees it. Sees the room around them, the
glowing tanks and their fetally curled inhabitants. Sees their reflection in the
side of one of the tanks. Sees Mulder's face, slack and gape-mouthed, nothing
left in it of the man he once was. Sees himself, the vision he hadn't wanted to
see in the photos -  his face gaunt and hollowed, his lips pulled back in a
snarl like an animal, his eyes blank black holes beneath his brows.

And he stops. Lets Mulder go.

Mulder falls limply to the ground, and only now does a cracked cry of protest
come from his throat. He stretches one arm out weakly, as though he's reaching
for Krycek, his mouth still open, and Krycek grabs him by the hair and raises
his head, twisting it. Then he slams the side of it down on the concrete floor,
hard enough to knock Mulder unconscious.

He falls to the ground himself then, rolling away from Mulder. He can't catch
his breath, his vision is blurring, he feels like he's choking, and he wonders
for a panicked moment if he's going to die after all. Then he feels hot liquid
drip down his face, pool in his ear. He's crying.

*		*		*
Skinner is alone in his apartment when the knock sounds at his door, and,
expecting Scully, he goes to answer it unarmed.

And curses himself for it when he opens the door. Krycek is standing there, a
wild look in his eyes, and he is supporting against his body an apparently
unconscious Mulder.

"Krycek!" Skinner barks, "What the hell?"

At the sound Mulder stirs and moans, mutters, "Alex?"

Krycek pushes Mulder up against the doorframe, then cups his hand around his
face like a lover. The sight is so shocking to Skinner that it takes him a
second to realise that Krycek has pulled Mulder's head forward, and now appears
to be preparing to slam it against the wall, a look of panic on his face.

"Stop!" he orders, and Krycek turns to him with a snarl that frightens Skinner
as much as anything has in a long time, there's so little that's human left in
it. Then it vanishes and Krycek looks frightened. He shoves Mulder at Skinner,
and Skinner finds himself staggering under his limp and bloody weight.

"Take him!" says Krycek vehemently. Then, as Skinner steadies Mulder's body
against his own, Krycek pulls a small envelope out of his jacket. "Take this
too. It opens a safety-deposit box at the First National. What's in there should
be enough for a start - details about the labs, locations, a few concrete leads.
Then ask him. He knows as much as I do now. Just - just keep him here for a
while before you let anyone know. Don't let anyone near him. I'm getting out. If
you see me again, you should probably shoot me. Though I can't promise to make
it easy." He's speaking rapidly, almost babbling, and Skinner sees that his
hands are shaking.

"What the hell is going on?" says Skinner.

Mulder's eyes are flickering open, and he's moving in Skinner's grip. "Alex?" he
slurs again, "Alex!" Krycek flinches at each word, and starts backing away from
the door in a strange crabbed manner as though resisting the pull of some
powerful force.

"Shut the door!" he growls at Skinner, "Shut the fucking door and *lock* it!"
Then he turns and runs, shoulders hunched and heels pounding down the hallway.

Skinner shuts the door quickly, before the neighbours start emerging at the
noise. Locks it, the back of his neck prickling. Then he hoists Mulder in his
arms and carries him over to the couch, lying him down gently and checking for
serious injury.

The man is a mess. Skinner catches his breath as he strips his clothes off.
There's a lump on the back of his head, dark bruises on his throat, livid
bite-marks on neck and shoulders. His chest and back are runneled and furrowed
with cuts old and new, and they disappear beneath his waist-band. With dread
Skinner gently slides his pants off, and sees the damage continue down his
belly. The sight makes him feel sick and breathless. He turns away, then hurries
to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub for a moment before getting
bandages and disinfectant from the cabinet.

Mulder moans as Skinner cleans his chest, then cries out as Skinner passes the
disinfectant-soaked pad over the deepest of his cuts, a messy vertical gash
running nearly the whole length of his torso. Skinner pulls away at the sound of
pain, but Mulder reaches up and catches his hand, draws it back to his chest.
For the first time his eyes open fully, and stare directly into Skinner's.

Skinner sways. Mulder's eyes are wide and dark and so very very empty that he
feels as though he's teetering on the edge of a void, and he has a sudden memory
of the jungle, of looking down into the eyes of his own dead body on the ground.
The phone is ringing in the background and he thinks it must be Scully, but the
noise seems strangely distant in his ears. Then Mulder opens his mouth. The
voice that comes from his ruined throat is hoarse and pleading and strangely
powerful as he presses Skinner's hand down *hard* on his bleeding belly and
says, "Sir? Please, Sir?"

And Skinner sinks slowly to his knees beside him. "I'm here," he says, and hears
his own voice come out a hoarse whisper. "What is it, Mulder? Tell me what you
need..."

End.