Title: Rain - a gospels vignette
By: Jessica Harris, inspired by Spike

Rating: Mild R, K/B, 1/1

Notes: This is a little vignette that takes place in Spike's 
wonderful Krycek/Byers universe of 'John', 'Gospels: John 1:23' 
and 'Gospels: Acts 4:6'. They are lovely stories and you should go 
read them *right now* at http://avalon.net/~nonie/spike/xfiles.htm 
if you haven't already. And thanks to Spike for letting me play in 
her universe, and to Nonie as well for pushing me to post this.

Disclaimer: I am a copyright nightmare. But it earns me no cash.

Feedback: I crave it like a drug. lumpj@hotmail.com

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Rain
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John lay cramped in the back-seat of the car for what seemed like 
a long time, Alex naked and asleep in his arms. The rain drummed 
hollowly on the roof and streaked heavily down the windows, reducing 
the woods outside to a green-black blur in the twilight. Alex slept 
deeply, snoring a little, and John thought to himself that he could 
count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Alex do this, let 
himself fall so far into defenceless sleep. Then he felt vaguely 
guilty for the one-hand thought, as though it somehow slighted the 
man in his arms.

This particular guilt added its own thin strand to the tangle of 
emotions that kept him from sleep in spite of the road-weary buzz 
behind his eyes. It joined his guilt at keeping such a secret from 
his friends and comrades, his guilt at doing this at all, loving a 
man who they all knew as a traitor; joined his anger at himself that 
he'd come so willingly at Alex's midnight call, had driven all night 
and all day to bail him out of jail with no explanation but Alex's 
strained "Please!"; joined his worry at what had happened to Alex to 
land him exhausted and dirty in a small-town jail, and the faint warm 
glow that Alex had called *him* to the rescue, and the edgy thought 
of just how long it had been since Alex last called him, or contacted 
him, or appeared at his window in the dead of night with those 
mismatched reaching hands that stripped away his clothes and all his 
defences...

He was sick of himself these days, sick of all the complicated 
feelings that tied him in knots inside, making his head noisier 
and noisier, while outwardly he grew more and more quiet and still 
until even the guys noticed it. Langley had taken to teasing him 
mercilessly, prodding and poking and trying to get a rise out of him, 
while Frohike was suddenly paternal, cuffing him gently on the side of 
the head and gruffly saying "everything all right in there, John-boy?"

And he had sniped back half-heartedly at Langley, and reassured 
Frohike that he was, in fact, all right, and begun to dread the 
mirror in the bathroom for the bambi-in-the-headlights stare it 
reflected back at him. He wished he could feel just one way about it 
all, happy or miserable, angry or excited or appalled or indifferent, 
just not all of them, not all at once, each feeling cancelling the 
others out until all that was left was a kind of frozen paralysis.

And Mulder... Mulder has started looking at him curiously too these 
days, something that could be either sympathy or suspicion in his 
eyes as he works obvious openings into the conversation, openings 
which John ignores. John has begun to hate him a little, a dark and 
unfamiliar feeling tensing in him when Mulder is near. John can't say 
any of the things he wants to. He wants to say to Mulder "Whatever 
you've done to him, that he can't forget you, undo it please, let me 
have him, I love him."; wants to ask just what it was he *did* do to 
him, and if he could show John how to do it too; wants to ask him how 
it's possible, how he can refuse to love Alex. And if this too is a 
secret he could share, for John is beginning to experience his own 
love for the dark-haired man as an anxiety, a weight, something slowly 
crushing the life out of him.

And as if following the thought Alex jerked into sudden panicked 
wakefulness, throwing off John's gentle embrace and pinning him 
roughly to the seat with a growl.

"Alex!" cried John, "Alex, it's me! John! It's all right!"

"Where are my clothes?!" demanded Alex, face fierce even through the 
puffiness of sleep, and John gulped, and said:

"You - you left them outside."

He had made John pull over as soon as they were free of the small 
backwoods town, throwing his door open before they were entirely 
stopped and hurling himself out into the downpour where he furiously 
stripped off his grubby clothes and threw them out into the rain and 
mud and dim woods around them. John had struggled out after him, 
helplessly saying "Alex - ", and Krycek had spun and grabbed him and 
pushed him into the back seat of the car, followed him with his own 
compact muscular weight, burrowing in alongside John, twining his wet 
limbs in with John's now hardly drier ones. And John had felt himself 
begin his usual inevitable surrender, but after thoroughly entangling 
them Alex had simply mashed his face against John's chest and fallen 
almost instantly asleep.

Now, as the confusion of sleep cleared from his face, he stopped 
fighting against John and began a more deliberate movement. John felt 
himself begin to stir against the thigh that nudged itself between 
his own and the hands that were now stripping his clothing from him. 
But the worry and the noise in his head were too strong for him to 
just give in, and he caught Alex's hands and said "What happened, 
Alex? Can you - won't you - *please* tell me."

And at that Alex rolled off and flung himself as far as he could to 
the other side of the seat, where he stared sullenly out the window 
at the rain. John felt his dread increase - he'd never seen Alex like 
this, and he wondered what they'd done to him, deliverance-fueled 
visions of backwoods depravity sending goosebumps down his spine. He 
touched Alex's arm lightly, and Alex shook him off, face darkening, 
then burst out:

"Goddam redneck motherfucking backwoods hicktown sheriff caught me 
trying to steal his fucking car."

"What!?" said John incredulously.

"I didn't *know* it was his fucking car, all right? It wasn't marked. 
And I didn't know that the hillbilly shack he'd parked it outside was 
his mother's house, or that she sits in the front window with a pair 
of goddam binoculars to watch the neighbours. I just needed a fucking 
car, all right? I'd been going full-out for two days to get across 
the state line on the back-roads, and my car threw a piston in the 
hills. So I've just got the car open and I'm climbing in when suddenly 
I'm surrounded by all these angry *geese*, and when I look up from 
nearly having my eyes pecked out, there's this toothless old hag with 
a shotgun pointed right at me. And she makes me get down on the 
ground, and shouts until her equally ancient and toothless hired help 
comes over and ties my wrists with an *apron*. And then they march me 
down the road to the jail, along with the goddam geese, and they haul 
the sheriff out of the bar across the street and he arrests me, once 
he stops laughing long enough. And the jail is just two tiny cells, 
and it smells like the last thing that had been in it was a *goat*. 
And then I find out it *was* a goat - they put the redneck sheriff's 
hillbilly mother's fucking *billygoat* in the other cell at night so 
it doesn't get out and eat the neighbour's vegetable patch. So I spent 
the whole night with some crazed stinking *farm animal* trying to get 
at me through the bars, and - and what is *your* problem?!!"

And John couldn't help it. After all the driving, and the worrying, 
and the chasing around inside his own head, the picture of his dark 
and dangerous Alex locked in a cell with the sheriff's mother's 
billygoat was too much for him. And he laughed.

And kept laughing, relief and hilarity sweeping through him in one 
unstoppable tide, wiping out everything else. And Alex, after one 
truly murderous glare, smiled a little, then a lot, and then he was 
laughing too, they were both laughing, choking and gasping and howling 
together in the back of the car while the rain just kept coming down.

Finally Alex stopped laughing and leaned in against John's neck, 
giving a little groan that had enough real pain in it that John 
sobered too. "I'm getting too old for all of this," said Alex softly, 
and John kissed him gently, and squirmed out of the rest of his own 
clothes and pressed Alex down on the seat again, moving in as close 
as he could, belly to belly and cock to cock, feeling Alex's pulse 
speed and his own answer it. And there they rocked gently and then 
not so gently against each other, kissing the whole time, sweet and 
messy and slow, until Alex arched and cried out helplessly beneath 
John. And at the sound of what might just have been his name buried 
somewhere in the middle of that cry, John blushed and shuddered and 
added his own cry to the sound of the rain. And after that they both 
slept, in the pellucid half-light of the rainy evening.

***