Chapter Eight

It had felt strange to leave Mulder behind at Tobias Wechsler's.
Krycek had always worked alone, and hadn't expected the constant
presence of someone else to be anything but an irritant. But it
didn't seem to have taken him long to get used to Mulder, to the
fluid intelligence and concentration he brought to their task, to his
company, to his touch... Setting out alone again made him feel oddly
*itchy*, his nerves tight and oversensitive like the skin on his arm
when it had first begun to heal.

There were things he had to do, though, things that Mulder couldn't
witness. He had left them too long already. This strange feeling was
a liability, and he noted it grimly.

Work helped. The drug company was laughably easy to get into, and Dr.
Boddington's office, for all its heavy door and gleaming plaque
reading "Head of Research", was child's play. As Krycek settled in
the darkened office to wait, he felt his usual confidence return. He
was used to this kind of suspended waiting, sitting quiet in the dark.

Half an hour, an hour, the clock on the polished desk ticked the
minutes away. When the door finally opened and a gray-haired man
walked in, Krycek flicked the desk-lamp on and watched in
satisfaction as the complacent planes of the man's face suddenly
fragmented in panic.

"Jesus Christ! What are *you* doing here? Why didn't my secretary - "

"He didn't know I was here," said Krycek. He sat sprawled in the
man's own chair, legs spread slightly, head cocked to one side,
perfectly, contemptuously relaxed. He sensed the doctor bridle at
this disrespect, and smiled a small inward smile at the thought.

He let his legs fall open a little wider now, let the smile change to
one he knew was all gleaming slitted eyes and sharp wet teeth.

"What's wrong, Doc? You don't look happy to see me. You looked much
more enthusiastic in those photos, with your cock in my - "

"Just tell me what you *want*," interrupted the old man heavily. "We
both know why I'll say yes."

Krycek pulled the flat box from his pocket and tossed it on the
table. The doctor opened it and peered at the contents, a plastic
baggie holding a few hairs, some slides with anonymous smears on
them.

"I need an analysis on those," said Krycek.

The doctor looked genuinely puzzled. "Your people have their own
labs. Why are you bringing this to me?"

Krycek glowered at him. "A little healthy paranoia's not a bad thing,
Doc. It's kept my bosses where they are. And where they are is a very
powerful place, a place where they don't expect to be questioned when
they tell you to do something."

The doctor's heavy face flushed, but his voice was meek when he asked
"What should I be looking for?"

"I don't know."

"But how-"

Krycek fixed him with a hard stare. "That's *your* job. I need to
know everything there is to know about these samples - you do
whatever you have to do."

The doctor tried again. "If I could just talk to one of your
scientists - "

A measured slam of the prosthesis on the desk, making the doctor
jump. "No. I don't think you've been listening to me. *I'm* your only
contact on this.  How long will you need to run the tests?'

"A-about a week" stammered the doctor, and Krycek gave a curt nod.

"I'll come back for the results," he said, and rose fluidly from the
chair.

He could see the room faintly reflected in the long window that took
up most of one wall, a pale image of the heavy desk, the book-cases,
the walls with their certificates and diplomas and photos of the
doctor shaking important hands. Boddington matched his surroundings;
plush, well-upholstered, and self-satisfied. Next to the snowy
expanse of the man's expensive shirt, Krycek's own reflection was
dark and narrow, a blacked-out blade, a lightless crack in the room's
perfect surface.

He was used to the waiting and used to this as well, to being an
interloper in the sanctums of power, an unwelcome reminder to
ambitious men of just what their empires were built on.

And the way the doctor looked at him, eyes full of fear and
fascination, outrage and disgust and a sharp edge of uneasy desire,
well, he was used to that too.

The doctor shifted nervously at his nearness, and Krycek was suddenly
sick to death of thick carpets and glassed-in views and the deadening
hum of white noise.

He leaned deliberately close and growled "Remember - Don't talk to
anyone but me about this." Then he pushed by him and swaggered out
the door. The strange unfocussed mental itch of earlier was back in
full force.

Krycek had known he was different young and had put a name to that
difference not long after. But it had been the way that his father
and other men started to look at him, the dawning suspicion and
contempt in their eyes, that taught him what this difference really
*meant*.

He was a pragmatist, like his grandfather before him. His
grandfather's clear- sighted practicality had raised him from
immigrant mill-hand to mill-owner in under two decades; Krycek's own
taught him to conceal his difference, to keep it to himself as long
as he had to stay in this small logging town. He had already seen
what happened to those who broke with its unstated rules.

His father hadn't understood. He had brought a court case against one
of the oldest and most powerful mills in the region. The case had
dragged on for years, and as more and more of the family's money was
poured into it and endless petty economies narrowed their lives,
Krycek watched and learned. A resentful anger grew in him at his
father's refusal to see what was so clear to his son: that it was
hopeless.

Their small operation had been relatively successful, but to the big
mills, and the families that had been running them for generations,
they were mere upstarts, dubious foreigners. They were allowed to
thrive only as long as they inconvenienced no one and didn't step on
the toes of the industry's old-boy networks.

And those networks, Krycek could see, were where the real decisions
were made. Real power lay in the currency of connections, favours
owed and granted, clandestine deals sealed with cigar smoke and old
men's complicit smiles. Real power was negotiated not in the courts,
but in meetings at clubs and lodges and boozy business lunches, in
plush private offices like the one he had just left.

He was careful as he left the building. Retribution could descend on
him from any number of directions if what he had just done was
discovered. And if Mulder knew -

He quelled a flutter of anxiety at the thought, replaced it with the
image of the doctor's face folding in panic. The familiar bite of
angry pleasure was metallic in the back of his throat; he had done it
again, left another old boy sweating in his custom-tailored suit. He
never tired of that feeling...

His father had lost his court case. Then he lost the mill. His
parents had never recovered, withdrawing into a brooding private
world of bitterness. They continued to live in the large and
increasingly decrepit house that his grandfather had built, but it
fooled no one. Krycek had watched the eyes of the townspeople change
after that, respect replaced with caution, distaste, rejection, as if
failure were contagious and the displeasure of the powerful would rub
off on anyone who came too close.

He had watched and learned from that too. He swore to himself that he
would never become the pathetic wreck his father had, that he would
never let the town get the better of him.

It wasn't easy. His looks and his family made him a natural target in
the school-yard, and he was forced to fight back against the
particular viciousness of children who sense a victim even adults
think is fair game. It had stunned him at first, but he learned to
respond to the cruelty in their eyes with a rapid, supple violence
that left his opponents as shocked as they were injured. Gradually,
he earned a reputation for strength and aggression in spite of his
slender build, and his classmates came to regard him with wary
respect.

His foot caught on the pavement now and he realized he was moving
conspicuously fast. He forced himself to slow down. He had other
tasks to perform today and he couldn't afford to be rattled. The game
he was playing was getting more complicated, and he had to be
careful, quick and careful and fast on his feet.

The instructions that had been left for him were in anonymous
typescript on cheap paper, but he could still sense in them the touch
of the man he worked for, the pleasure he took in small cruelties.

"Krycek- " the note had read "I trust our plans are on schedule and
your treasure is still safe with your banker friend. Himmelman's team
is scheduled to pick up a survivor from the last batch of subjects. I
need you to find him first, collect samples, clean up, and return
samples to me at the old plant. Subject should be easily located -
you'll know where to look."

He'd know where to look. A hustler, then. He'd have pegged the choice
as another of the man's small jabs, but he was familiar with
Himmelman's methods and this was typical. They always chose subjects
who no one would miss.

No one who mattered, anyway, he thought sourly. It wasn't his
problem, though. He had worked his way off the streetcorners long
ago, and if this boy hadn't been smart enough to do the same, he had
no one but himself to blame.

A picture was clipped to the note and he glanced at it. The boy was
unremarkable, could have been any boy, sandy hair, dark eyes, a cocky
grin starting to wobble just a little around the edges. Krycek
wondered just when the photo had been taken, if they had started work
on him yet.

It was unsettling that the boy had lasted this long. Was Himmelman's
work so close to success? That was a danger he had never even
considered. But no, he wouldn't have been sent out on clean-up if
there was any chance of the boy being a successful subject. And since
he wasn't... he'd be sick by now, probably, and scared. He might not
be so easy to find after all.

The car was waiting at the prearranged place, and as he drove it down
a familiar street he saw that he needn't have worried. At some point
since the picture the boy had dyed his hair a flat and artificial
black, and he was thinner, paler, but Krycek barely needed to see his
face to pick him out. He knew him by the way he leaned against the
lamppost, not lounging like the others, but as if he genuinely needed
its support to stay upright, and the way he clutched his jacket to a
chest heaving with coughs Krycek knew would be thick and liquid.

As Krycek slowed the car a small swarm of boys moved towards it,
materialising from alleys and benches and walls along the block, but
he waved them away and gestured to the leaning boy.

His walk was slow and unsteady but he still managed that tilt of the
hips that showed off the low-slung jeans and flat stomach (almost
concave, now), still hooked his thumb in his belt and let his hand
frame the tightly packed crotch of his jeans.

Without a word Krycek threw the door open and the boy lowered himself
to the seat carefully, as if his spine hurt. Two spots of hectic
colour burned high on his cheeks, and a fine sweat dampened his
forehead and hairline. He turned his head a fraction, stiffly, and
said, "What's up?" placing his hand on Krycek's thigh.

"Not here," said Krycek. "I've got a place."

The boy slumped back into the seat. From the corner of his eye,
Krycek caught a glimpse of jerky movement, the boy's head and torso
twitching oddly, and realized that he was trying to suppress further
coughing. Well, at least the boy had learned one thing - anything
that decreased your market value was best kept hidden. He couldn't be
making much in the state he was in now.

They drove in silence and the boy didn't blink an eye when Krycek
pulled in at a cheap motel off the old freeway. He stood shivering as
Krycek got his case from the trunk of the car, then passively
followed him to the room at the end of the row. Krycek locked the
door behind them and when he turned saw the boy face-on for the first
time. What he saw gave him an unwelcome twinge. The boy's eyes,
anonymously dark in the photo, were an unusual deep blue, much like
his own. The similarity disturbed Krycek more than he knew it should.

They stared at each other for a moment, then Krycek said "strip!" and
the boy listlessly obeyed. With his clothing off he was painfully
thin, and Krycek noted the purple bruises and punctures marking his
inner arms. Well, that would make the clean-up easier. He had a
couple of cheap tattoos on his chest and shoulders, a crude barb-wire
band, a dagger, a banner with an unreadable name in it. Krycek could
also see the unhealthy sag of his skin, the first faint
discolourations on the sides of his neck, around groin and arm-pit.

The boy couldn't restrain his coughing any more and his body jerked
and shook with the force of them until he got himself back under
control. Krycek wondered what the hell he was still doing on the
street. He knew that what ate away at the boy couldn't be passed on,
but the ravaged body before him still made his flesh crawl nervously.

"On the bed," he said, and the boy stretched out limply. He didn't
resist when Krycek taped his ankles together and bound his wrists to
the bedposts, leaving him half sitting against the headboard. All he
said was "I charge extra for this shit."

"No problem," said Krycek grimly, and efficiently stripped down to
his underwear. This part could get messy.

Impersonally he straddled the boy's thighs and pumped his cock to
some semblance of hardness. The boy was too sick for this, really,
the small whimpers he gave sounded more like pain than arousal and
his cock never got more than half-hard, but Krycek persisted until a
small slick of pre-cum gathered at its tip. It might not be enough
but it would have to do; he didn't have the stomach to keep on with
this. He opened the case, grabbed a swab, and ran it neatly over the
tip of the boy's cock.

At this the boy displayed his first sign of real nervousness. "We
playing doctor or something?" he asked, voice tight.

"Something like that," said Krycek, and took a tourniquet, needle and
blood vial from the case.

"What the fuck!?" the boy protested now, as Krycek tied off his arm
and probed for a usable vein. The shout made him cough and his body
shook helplessly while Krycek held his arm still. By the time the
bout was finished he had drawn two more vials.

The boy was truly scared now, trying to twist his body free, blinking
his eyes convulsively, shaking his head as though to jar something
loose. "Doctors," he whispered "there were doctors."

Krycek had seen this before. No matter how hard Himmelman's team
tried to eliminate all memories of the experiments, they seemed to
surface as the body broke down, inexplicable nightmare fragments that
only made the suffering worse.

It was on the tip of his tongue to offer false reassurance. He could
tell the boy it was just another game, bought and paid for. He could
quiet him, get him to close his eyes so he wouldn't see what came
next. It would make the end easier for both of them.

But somehow he couldn't quite summon the will to do so. There had
been lies enough in this boy's life already, lies from those who
planted this death in his body, and lies before that too, the false
promises of love and hope and belonging that had led him to the
moment when one of Himmelman's errand boys had scooped him from the
streetcorner. The least Krycek could do was let him die with his eyes
open and take whatever he could from his last moments.

He met the boy's frightened gaze and pulled the filled syringe from
the case, letting him see it. "You probably don't believe me," he
said "but I'm doing you a favour. It only gets worse from here on in."

The boy struggled with an unexpected last burst of strength, yelling,
kicking with his taped legs, yanking at the ties that held him until
he managed to loosen his arms a little. Krycek had to lean in on him
to pin him down, syringe poised awkwardly in his good hand. Their
faces were close together like this and the boy looked desperately
into Krycek's eyes. Krycek grabbed for the boy's arm, bracing himself
for further struggle, but the boy just stared at him silently now
while a look of broken resignation filled his eyes and spilled out
slowly across his features. All the fight went out of him and his
body was suddenly limp beneath Krycek. The laboured catch and wheeze
of his breathing was loud in the silence of the room.

It was Krycek's turn to stare now. "Maybe you believe me after all,"
he said, and in one smooth movement inserted the needle and pushed
the plunger home. The boy's body jerked and he made a wordless
keening sound, but instead of pulling away he pushed his head into
the crook of Krycek's neck, rubbed his face against him. Krycek felt
wet eyelashes, chapped dry lips and shallow breath against his skin,
heard a jerky sound come from his own mouth. Blindly obeying some
half-understood impulse, he cupped his hand round the back of the
boy's skull and cradled his head there as it lolled more and more
heavily, as he felt the breath against his throat slow, stutter,
stop.

He held the inert weight against him until his legs were suddenly
soaked by the boy's bladder giving way in death. Then he pulled away.
The boy's eyes were still open. Without thinking he slid the lids
shut over the flat blue gaze.

The rest was routine. Fix the death-scene - sex for sale, an
accidental overdose, a cigarette left burning on the bed... clean
himself up, dress. Pack samples neatly into case, case into car, one
quick glance back at the room where the bed-clothes were smouldering
already. Switch plates, drive to lab, deliver case to one of the
whitecoats who waited there. Switch plates again, drive back to the
city.

All in a day's work, really, nothing he hadn't done before. And it
wasn't until the lab was out of sight that he realized he was going
to be sick.

He swerved to the side of the road, rolled from the car just in time,
and retched violently onto the rough asphalt surface until nothing
but spit and bile dribbled from his lips.

The feel of the boy's body going limp beneath him, the surrender to
an oblivion he'd spent years seeing wished on him in other people's
eyes. That search for one last lying touch.

That dead blue gaze.

***

Krycek knew what it was to see oblivion wished on you. He had lied
and fought his way out from under such looks, but he had never
forgotten them. He knew they lay in wait if he let down his guard. He
might even have come to believe what they told him, if he hadn't
stumbled on what those looks sometimes concealed.

And it was the worst of the bullies, the one with the most hate in
his eyes, who showed him that secret.

Sean was a mill-hand's son, tall and raw-boned, red-haired, Irish,
his pink skin so thickly stippled with freckles that he had a
strange, dappled, pointillist appearance, as though he might dissolve
into dots if you looked at him too closely.

Tall, raw-boned, red-haired and intensely angry. Sean's anger wasn't
the usual red-head temper but something deeper, a constant steady
rage that ran just beneath his freckled skin. And inexplicably the
very sight of Krycek seemed to trigger Sean's rage. He'd stare at the
younger boy and fury would flare in his eyes, his face darkening as
his whole body clenched tight like a fist. His anger had a force to
it that frightened Krycek in a way the casual bullying of the other
boys never had, and Sean seemed to both know and relish this.

What happened in the school-yard wasn't the worst of it. What
frightened Krycek more was the way Sean invaded other parts of his
life, appearing as if out of nowhere on the wooded road home, the lot
behind the library, anywhere Krycek ventured alone. He would suddenly
just *be* there, and with no preamble would deliver a clout to the
head, a kick to the knees, some short sharp burst of violence that
landed Krycek quickly on the ground. Once Krycek was down Sean would
deliberately choose some vulnerable spot and attack it, until Krycek
writhed at his feet, aching and gasping for breath. Then Sean would
simply walk away. Krycek learned quickly it was best not to resist.
The quicker he gave in, the quicker Sean would leave him alone.

There was no one he could tell about this. He had given up on his
parents, those ghostly husks who looked at him sometimes as if they
couldn't quite remember who he was. And though he had school friends,
he wasn't really intimate with any of them. His own secret sense of
difference made him keep a certain distance.

His secret ate at him sometimes, but he had also learned to draw from
it a private sense of power. He took pride in the fact that he was
smarter, swifter, and more vigilant than the class-mates and adults
he conned so easily  into thinking he was just like them. It was only
on the bad days that he wanted to crawl away somewhere and scream his
throat raw.

On the bad days he'd hike out to a spot in the back of his family's
acreage, where the woods were slowly encroaching on two warped and
moss-covered old outbuildings. He'd sit there in the green not-quite-
silence of the woods and slowly, carefully, let himself relax.

Until one late summer afternoon when Sean appeared there, too. Krycek
was jarred from his reverie by a sudden rustling, a crackle of twigs,
and then Sean came round the corner of one of the sheds with a
defiant swagger, hands clenched at his sides and eyes hot with rage.

The answering anger that rose in Krycek was sudden and complete. This
was his own place, and Sean had no right to violate it like this.
When Sean lashed out, Krycek ducked and swung his foot at the other
boy's ankle, snarling. The kick unbalanced them both and sent them
crashing against the slanted wall of one of the buildings. Sean,
teeth bared in an ugly grin, grabbed the sides of Krycek's head and
knocked it back hard against the wall.

Ears ringing and stars swirling before his eyes, Krycek reached out
and, with an instinct whose origin he still sometimes wondered at,
grabbed the other boy between the legs. Shock drove the air from his
lungs in a gasp as he realized that Sean's cock was hard.

And the smouldering light in Sean's eyes exploded in panic, fury and
fear.

Krycek remembered that moment still. To this day he was sure those
few seconds could have been his last, that Sean in his shame and
anger could easily have pounded his head in.

Krycek knew he had taken a step he couldn't retreat from now, and he
closed his eyes and arched his pelvis forward against Sean, pressing
their groins together. He felt Sean's breath catch and he did it
again, more slowly and firmly this time, letting his eyes fall half-
open, seeing Sean's jaw go slack, his face suddenly younger with lust
and uncertainty.

Sean thrust back at him clumsily, hard enough to hurt, but Krycek
didn't have to fake his own arousal. He was young and this was the
first time he had felt another man's body hard against his own.
Besides, there was something exciting in seeing the effect he was
having on Sean, his breathing heavy now, sweat on his forehead,
violence and contempt replaced by confused need.

He wasn't sure the danger was past and when Sean grabbed his collar
he expected a fist to the face or worse. He was more shocked when
Sean kissed him, a peck on the lips first, nervous, then harder,
hungrily, crushing Krycek's lips against his teeth until they parted
and the wetness of Sean's mouth mixed with his own, the taste salt-
tinged and strange. Sean's fingers scrabbled at his waist, sliding
beneath his shirt to feel smooth skin, and Krycek felt a sudden rush
of triumph.

He moved his hand back to the hard outline of Sean's cock, and the
older boy's knees actually quivered, his loss of balance tipping them
over until they lay on the ground. Hands shaking slightly, Krycek
opened Sean's fly and seized his cock, not entirely sure what to do
but watching Sean's reactions carefully. "Hey" said Sean weakly, but
didn't protest further, fingers digging into Krycek's upper arms,
eyes closed now, defenceless.

Krycek pulled on Sean's cock as he had so many times on his own,
first nervously and then with more assurance. He was hard himself but
felt detached with amazement, watching Sean's body flush, strain and
twitch, his face screwed up as if in pain. Krycek could smell both
nervousness and excitement coming off his body in waves. Sean gave a
pained whimper and Krycek stopped for a moment, suddenly scared, but
Sean grabbed at his hand and urged him on.

It didn't take long. A few moments later Sean cried out and came over
Krycek's hand and his own chest, marking his already grubby T-shirt.
He lay limply for a moment, then opened his eyes and stared at Krycek
as if seeing him for the first time.

"You can't tell!" he hissed, aiming for threat but sounding desperate
"You can't tell anyone or I'll kill you!"

"What do you think I am, crazy?" said Krycek dismissively. He rubbed
his hand across Sean's flat stomach and watched the boy shudder,
goosebumps rising on his skin. Then suddenly a sharp elbow drove into
Krycek's ribs and he was rolled to the ground, arms twisted painfully
behind him, held firmly in the other boy's grasp. Sean was staring
down at him, face confused, dark ideas swirling just behind his eyes.
Krycek let his lips part slightly, his eyes half close as he looked
up through his lashes at Sean, and shifted so that his own erection
pressed against Sean's hip. Then he began to move lightly,
rhythmically against him. Sean gave a gasp, eyelids fluttering, and
let his face fall forward against Krycek's. In a moment he was
kissing him again, hard and wet and demanding.

Looking back at that time Krycek wondered at his own mix of knowledge
and naivete. They continued to meet secretly, and he made some rapid
discoveries, exulting in the way he could make Sean break out in
goosebumps with just a look, in the discovery of sensitive places on
his body that, touched properly, turned his pale skin rosy and made
him sweat, tremble, cry out loud for more. He felt a sense of
triumphant power in the way he could make Sean shake, his hips buck
helplessly, animal cries spill from his mouth. Sean always came hard,
and recovered as if returning from a long journey, slowly, shaky,
disoriented, cock hypersensitive to touch.

In those moments when Sean lay vanquished, still except for his
panting chest, Krycek would study him carefully, examining in his
mind the difference between the sprawled and vulnerable form before
him and the boy he had been so afraid of. So this, he thought, was
what lay behind the anger and fear: this want, this unspoken need,
this weakness.

Krycek considered these discoveries, but gave little thought to what
Sean felt about it all. He sensed there was a struggle going on
inside of the other boy, but thought of it, when he thought of it at
all, as part of the anger that ran so close beneath his freckled
skin. As far as he was concerned, the problem had been solved, and he
was too clearly aware of his own desires to fully understand the
confused self-deception of others.

Sean dated girls, waitresses from the tavern and pool hall, girls
with heavy make-up and sad tough eyes. He kept up a show of public
dislike for Krycek, afraid that any change in behaviour would expose
their secret. Sometimes he would apologise when they met again, near
tears, burrowing his face into Krycek's neck and inhaling deeply as
if to carry his scent away with him. Other times he would be sullen,
flipping Krycek over and taking him roughly, as if he blamed the
younger boy for the pain his own behaviour caused him.

Krycek, meanwhile, put his new understanding to work. He wasn't the
only one with secrets, he realized, and those with the most to lose
would pay the most to have them kept. He watched the men who held the
reins of the town, and learned to spot in their eyes the dark flicker
of things kept hidden. He grew adept at ferreting out secrets and
making them pay. Sometimes it was easy -  the seduction of the
manager at his father's old mill and the vice-principal at the high
school guaranteed him an easy job and some freedom. Others were less
obvious - he noticed that the bank manager lived a little too well,
found some interesting records in the house whose back door didn't
lock nearly well enough, and made his family's debt disappear.

It became a game to him, figuring out what he wanted, who had it, and
if he had what he needed to get it from them. It built on the sense
of secret power that he wielded against the town and all the subtle
ways it told him that he didn't belong. If sex was involved he always
enjoyed it but it was the game that really excited him.

He never mentioned the others to Sean. He saw no reason to - Sean was
getting what he wanted from him, he figured, and it was a price he
was willing to pay for a little safety, a little power, the little
pleasures he could take for himself along the way. Besides, secrets
shared were lessened in power. And Sean had his girls, after all.

When Sean found out, through a careless slip of Krycek's own, he was
amazed at his reaction. One moment they were lying together on the
floor of the old shed, and the next Krycek was pinned to the ground,
Sean's hands around his throat.

"I should have known! I love you, you bastard," Sean shouted. "I
risked everything to be with you, and you run off and fuck that
manicured pansy! And who else? How many others?"

Now, years later, on hands and knees in his own vomit by the side of
the road, he remembered the vertigo of that moment, the realization
that he'd miscalculated, that things were spinning out of control.

If he had been smart he would have cried and apologized and said
whatever Sean wanted to hear, but instead he had lost his temper and
yelled back, "Love? Bullshit! This is about you not kicking the shit
out of me every time I turn around! At least this way you only touch
me when you work up the guts to come out here! And what have you
risked, I mean *really* - you still have your buddies at the pool-
hall and you'll marry that waitress and you're still just one of the
guys, aren't you? And don't worry, you'll find someone else to sneak
out and fuck when your taste for cock gets too strong for you to
ignore, and you're tired of knocking your wife around! Of course I'm
fucking other people! Why wouldn't I?"

Sean's face had darkened during this speech and it was with a feeling
of inevitability that Krycek watched fists come flying towards him.
He curled himself into a ball, unresisting. He remembered this lesson
too well.

He didn't know exactly when the beating became something only
slightly less ugly, but he took his chance, turned all his skills to
placating Sean, mouth and clever fingers busy as he tried to block
out the stabs of pain from the rib he thought might be broken, the
ache in his kidney that told him he'd be pissing blood for days.

He woke the next morning stiff and sore. Yesterday felt like it had
happened a very long time ago to an entirely different person.

Yesterday had happened to someone who hadn't understood how people
could lie to themselves, how afraid they were of not belonging, and
how far they would go to protect the illusion that they did. The
person he was yesterday hadn't been able to see that he could
struggle all he wanted to be like the others, and they would hate him
still.

Yesterday he hadn't realized that it was *not* belonging that gave
him his power. He had no illusions. He could use his differences
against them, against the people who saw in him everything they
feared, who would destroy him for it if they could. He owed them
nothing. Their rules didn't apply to him.

The person he was today knew it was time to think about moving on.

As it turned out, the decision wasn't even his to make. The next day,
as he limped into town to run some errands, he saw Sean and his
buddies spill out of the tavern and, feigning casualness, move
towards him, spreading out across the sidewalk. On the other side of
the street the Greyhound bus to the city sat idling, making its daily
stop. He looked at the set faces of the men approaching him, then
back at the bus. He had the grocery money in his pocket, enough to
take him to the city, away from this place forever. At the last
moment he ducked across the street and leapt up the bus stairs. The
fare took most of his cash but he was past caring. He was getting out
and he would survive somehow, he knew he would.

He never went back. He was sixteen years old.

And he *had* survived, unlike the boy today. He'd remembered what
he'd learned and made a place for himself in the world that awaited
him when he got off the bus, a boy still in spite of everything and
not nearly as clever as he thought.

He'd learned new lessons too, learned to be biddable when submission
was useful and to fight back when it was not, learned to trust no
one, to ride the coat-tails of power and still watch his own back. He
learned to sell himself but to never sell himself short, to always
take his pound of flesh along with the careless cocks shoved up his
asshole.

He learned that there were always jobs for someone of his skills, his
willingness to get the job done, and his growing indifference to what
the job actually was. He got himself noticed by people who recognized
the cool distance in his eyes, who knew uses for someone whose only
belief was in himself. He built for himself a still, dark, ruthless
place where no one else seemed quite real, where nothing touched him.

And now here he was, puking his guts out over some blue-eyed junkie
rent boy, a boy too sick and stupid to come in out of the rain, a boy
who would never get any smarter now and, oh, fuck, those were tears
in his eyes, and when his stomach heaved again it was with a ragged
sobbing breath and then another, and another, shaking his whole body,
making his nose stream and his throat burn. What the fuck was *wrong*
with him?

He dragged himself into the car, and dropped his head onto the
steering wheel, breath still hitching in his throat. He'd have to
stop and clean up somewhere, he still had to drop the car off and it
wouldn't do to turn up like this, stinking of vomit, eyes red and
face swollen. The old bastard would be waiting to hear from his
contact, and he was uncomfortably certain that this delay would be
noted, along with the meagre samples, and that involuntary flinch
from the lab techs when they reached for the case in his hand. He
hadn't been able to help himself. Even after his time on the streets,
the worst things he had ever seen had been attended by white coats
and clip-boards, and he couldn't stand their touch.

He sat up, wiping his face on his sleeve and his hands on the thighs
of his jeans. He needed to drop the car off, report, and get back to
Mulder. His hands stayed limp at his sides, though, didn't turn the
key in the ignition. The skin on his neck crawled with the breath of
the dying boy still and the itching buzz of agitation was strong
behind his eyes.

An approaching vehicle shocked him into activity. Shakily he started
the car, heading for the nearest gas station to wash up. He tried to
slip back into routine, dropped the car off at the deceptively run-
down garage where his contact waited, reported briefly on the clean-
up of the boy. The day's tasks accomplished, more or less.

It was evening now, the blue of twilight settling over the city
streets, air cool and damp and strangely hushed. He set himself a
fast pace back towards Wechsler's apartment, hoping to walk off his
unaccustomed mood.

He walked as evening darkened into night, and when darkness gave way
once more to day he was still walking, and had come no nearer the
apartment where Mulder waited.

He walked and walked and tried to find his bearings, to remind
himself of his original plan, the one that had grown slowly in his
mind as he went about the old men's work. He'd caught brief glimpses
of their plans, and thought that he might just be able to
outmanoeuvre them all, come in small and fast under the radar, from a
direction they'd never expect.

His plan required Mulder, though, a Mulder free of the Agency's
clutches. He'd have done anything to draw him in. If he'd thought
that the offer of his body might tempt Mulder he would have made it
long ago, regardless of his own desires. But he'd never thought that
Mulder might be susceptible, not after all that had happened, not
with this ruined arm. Even his own fantasies had never conceived of
such a thing.

But then, as he'd discovered, there was so much his fantasies had
never conceived of. The reality was not like his fantasies at all.
The reality was sweeter and hotter and fiercer and infinitely more
difficult.

The reality was explosive. Krycek could almost see it; the blast of
passion that silently concussed the air when they touched each other,
the blinding flashes of tenderness, the flying shrapnel shards of
rage and fear and pain, razor edges they tried to duck as their bones
were rattled by a longing that neither would put into words. It was a
never-ending struggle to maintain that precarious balance of holding
back and letting loose, to close the distance between them without
coming to harm on the spikes and chasms they both concealed.

He walked and tried to remind himself of all the reasons it was both
lunatic and dangerous to let Mulder get under his skin, but he knew
it was no use. He couldn't leave him alone.

He'd see Mulder's face set in those hard judgmental lines and it
would make his trigger-finger itch, he'd snarl poison until the older
man turned on him and Krycek would duck, expecting a blow, only to
find hands honey velvet soft on his skin. He'd see withdrawal in
Mulder's eyes and he'd come after him, sniping, mocking, goading, out
of control but unable to stop, moving in on him until there was no
space left between them, no air, and then somehow his legs would be
wrapped round Mulder's waist  as they rolled together in something
that was half union, half battle, all heat and hardness and a
ferocious living *connection* from which neither one could back away.

No, his fantasies had never included the possibility of their own
fulfillment, and he'd known that even the fantasies were dangerous.
Now that he had what he'd dreamt of he didn't know what to do with
it, whether to take what he could before it all went sour or to run
away as fast as he was able.

The plan required that he stay, and he clung to that, but the plan
kept blurring in the heat of Mulder's embrace, and the way through
this no longer seemed so clear.

The sun was high overhead now and he was at the edge of the ravine.
Looking down the steep wooded slope he suddenly felt his own
exhaustion. He sank onto one of the park benches, back protesting and
the muscles in his legs beginning to twitch and burn. He knew this
ravine. The corner where he had picked up the boy was at the crest of
the opposite slope, and the paths that ran through the trees were
popular with men cruising, as well as with those on more malign
errands, teenage boys with heavy boots and baseball bats. He toyed
with the idea of descending the slope in search of trouble, wondering
how such boys would fare against someone whose violence was a
profession, not a hobby. His long hike hadn't lessened the anxious
buzz behind his eyes, and it might feel good to vent it in pure
physical aggression. But his gritty eyes and throbbing feet reminded
him that he was in no shape for such sport. Besides, it was early in
the day yet. The bashers wouldn't be out yet, even if the hustlers
were.

He spat, mouth still sour with a taste he couldn't wash away, and a
well-dressed couple passing gave him a dirty look. He stared them
down brazenly, but it upped his inner tension a notch and drove him
to his feet again, muscles complaining.

He kept walking. He didn't know how long he might have kept
wandering, thinking in tightening spirals and getting nowhere, if he
hadn't suddenly realized he was being followed.

He cursed his own wandering attention. How long had they been on his
tail, and how had they picked him up? He didn't think his own boss
was suspicious enough to have him followed, so it had to be
Himmelman's people. And if  Himmelman's people had known where to
pick him up it might mean a leak, and a leak might mean that they
knew where Mulder was hiding. And at that thought the crackle of
trapped energy inside of him burst into a blazing blue-white urge for
pure flight.

It took physical effort not to take off at a run, but he schooled
himself strictly, stumbling only a little. Mulder was still half a
city away, and he had to choose wisely here, speed or caution. And
even as adrenaline burnt away exhaustion and routes and plans hurtled
through his mind, he realized that another choice had just been made,
the irrevocable choice to go back to something he didn't know if he
could handle.

The way that Mulder looked at him... that first night in the bomb
shelter, Mulder had watched him so intently, eyes silently asking
"This? Like this? Is this what you want?"

When he had looked down to see Mulder's mouth swollen with his cock,
those changeable eyes still searching out his pleasure, he had come
in a way he hadn't in a long time, hard and out of control, shocking
himself with his own cries.

It had been a long time since someone had paid such attention to
*his* pleasure as well as their own. Mulder might still not fully
trust him, but when he gave himself to something he gave with his own
unique single-minded intensity, and he seemed to have given himself
to this volatile thing between them, this thing that Krycek had never
planned.

Krycek was used to learning other's bodies as a tool or a weapon.
Having that same focus turned on *him*, with no apparent goal but
pleasure itself, was disorienting, compelling, and extraordinarily
disturbing. And he couldn't stay away.

He started a circuitous route back towards Wechsler's apartment,
gradually increasing his pace as he grew more certain that he'd lost
his pursuers. He arrived at the apartment building with his palms wet
and heart racing.

Everything looked quiet, and he took a moment to steel himself
against whatever he might find inside. Then he ducked inside and
raced breathlessly up the stairs, slammed into the apartment, and,
relief making his head swim, shook Mulder from a restless muttering
sleep and hurried them both out the door, trying to force more speed
from a body that felt like it was moving in weightless slow motion as
they ran.

He hadn't even seen their attacker move out of the alley-way, but he
had turned at Mulder's cry and seen the change in his face as he
grabbed the thug, watched Mulder blanch as he felt the possibilities
within himself. A gleam of sweat on his upper lip and brow, eyes
flaring green in realization, and clearly written in them the fact
that Mulder could do it, could take this man's life.

But Krycek couldn't let him. In spite of the queasy rush of seeing
Mulder open to his own darkness, Krycek found himself reaching out,
as if to shelter that flickering core of light, and knocking the man
unconscious before Mulder could act.

Knocking him unconscious but leaving him alive. It hadn't been a
decision, just a fragmenting moment in his mind, a brief disorienting
glimpse of possible *change*, and his hand faltered, tapped their
attacker's temple almost gently.

Mulder's eyes looked at him lost and stunned and Krycek felt himself
twist inside with an emotion he chose to call lust. He dragged Mulder
away and took his cock down his throat so fast he nearly choked
himself, wet ground cold beneath his knees, glass and gravel biting
into him with a pain that he accepted gratefully, a reminder that
weakness was something he could ill afford.

And then more running, a frantic dash to one of his own personal bolt-
holes. Krycek could feel the last of his reserves burn away as they
circled towards it, his breathing harsh and his legs weak and rubbery
as they finally staggered into the room. He opened his mouth to speak
but he barely got a word out before Mulder pressed him up against the
wall and kissed him.

He tried to pull away, it was too much, he was too tired, too dirty,
too full of death and chaos and memory. But Mulder had caught him by
the balls and held him there, licked a warm stripe up his neck that
wiped away the dying boy's breath, and Krycek, feeling his body
helplessly respond, moaned "I've created a monster!" not sure himself
which one of them he meant.

God, he *lost* himself with Mulder in a way he never had with anyone,
and it frightened him. The self he came back to was less and less
familiar, and as days went by in the attic room he grew unsure of
what he could rely on in this unfamiliar self.

Mulder's story tonight had made him think about his own adolescence.
He had never felt pity for the boy that he had been, that fierce and
desperate little creature. No pity and no shame either, though he
knew that many might wish it on him. He had learned what he had been
taught, after all, and everything he had done had kept him alive,
hadn't it?

It might have been the light at Mulder's core that lit his way into
this struggle, but he had a solid centre of his own, a spirit that
had seen what the world wished on him and had refused to submit. He
had fought back with the weapons left to him, the ability to lie,
dissemble, use, and most of all to see that it all came down to us
against them, and that he had no "us" beyond himself. This angry
spirit had given him strength, had saved him from the fate of that
lost boy on the corner, and now it was protecting Mulder too.

That had to be his focus for now. The plan required Mulder, and to
keep Mulder safe he had to be able to call on that strength.

Which he didn't know if he could do anymore. The only person he had
never lied to was himself, and to himself he had to admit that the
power of that angry spirit didn't come so readily these days.

He hadn't realized how the thrill of working towards nothing but his
own vindication had worn off, how tired and empty he had become in
his solitary flight toward a destination he'd lost sight of long ago.
Over the past weeks he had watched Mulder struggle and change,
watched him face frustration and betrayal and the loss of what had
been his world, watched him seem to *expand* somehow as he fought
through the pain. And as he watched, Krycek found himself feeling
*for* Mulder, feeling the other man's pain and confusion in a way he
had never even allowed himself to feel his own.

The pain twisted through him now, at the thought of what Bill Mulder
had done to this man in his arms. And the information about Matthew
Degan added a complication whose dimensions he couldn't even guess at.

He might wear his past without shame, but tonight his belly twisted
with unfamiliar compunction for all he had done and had still to do
before this was over. He thought about the information he had kept
from Mulder, all the ways in which Mulder didn't even know he was
being used, and he shifted restlessly. He had lived off secrets all
his life, but the weight of these secrets made him wonder if keeping
them was strength, or the biggest weakness of all so far.

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Continued in Chapter 9. Cheap Wedding Invitations | Death Rain Chips | Connecticut Bank Foreclosures | Funny T-Shirts | Anniversary Invitations