Standard Disclaimer: The following story contains scenes of a graphic sexual nature between two persons of the male persuasion. If you are under 18 or that thought offends you, please do not continue any further.

The characters do not belong to me and I make no claim on them. Everything else is © Jane Mortimer.

"I'm not eating that."

"Come on, Mulder. Two cockroaches -- twice the protein."

Mulder looked at him in disbelief, then put the soup bowl down and and pushed it away.

"You're going to have to eat something some time."

Mulder ignored him.

"It's going to be a long, cold night. You need your calories."

Alex Krycek: traitorous enigma or Jewish mother? Mulder said, "They didn't tell you anything else?"

"Mulder, I have shared everything with you. They're going to let me talk to somebody in authority the morning. Meanwhile, we have all night -- we can watch vids, order pizza, see if there are any games on cable..."

"Race the roaches," he interjected, and regretted it. Ever since Krycek had gotten out of the militia truck he'd been doing this, talking to Mulder in that easy rhythm that suggested they were both still working at the FBI, that of course Mulder should listen to him, that everything was, in some bizarre way, normal.

He didn't dare let Krycek think he was making an inch of psychological headway. He was too dangerous; already Mulder had found himself explaining to Scully that maybe an alliance wasn't out of the question, and how fucked up did he have to be to be thinking that? Unfortunately, smacking the man after any presumptuous comment lacked the same meta-text when you were stuck in a Siberian prison and dependent on the highly debatable honesty of his translations.

Whose idea had it been to come to Russia, anyway? Mulder was aware of the remarkable convenience of his companion's sudden new language skills, and he knew that Krycek had to know that he was wondering if he was being manipulated yet again.

Krycek peered over the edge of the soup bowl speculatively. "Dead cockroaches don't run," he remarked, with the air of one announcing a new philosophical premise.

Neither do dead Americans. No, he wasn't going to get sucked into this. Maybe he couldn't hit the man, but he could always fall back on that old Mulder stand-by, the truth.

"Krycek, I don't know why you suddenly want to communicate, when my IQ has dropped below the temperature of an ice cube, but -- "

"See, I knew you were getting cold. The ice cube reference is a giveaway. You need to get your mind off the weather."

He let that hang, pointedly destroying any friendly social rhythm. After a cool moment he met Krycek's eyes and spoke quietly. "If you're trying to change reality on me into something where I shouldn't hate your guts, let's just return to the one we know, where you are what you are and you did what you did."

"Maybe I had reasons for what I did."

Snap. Mulder found he'd gotten to his feet without even thinking about it. He paced the cell. "Oh, yeah. Like God, you move in mysterious ways. You know, I guess I should just assume that about everybody who does rotten things. A thug knocks an old lady down and steals her purse -- I shouldn't run after him, no, I should stop and think, gee, maybe he had a reason for what he did. I'm sure he's a pure and fine person, better than me... I should probably thank him for stealing from old ladies. Serial killers, too. They're all operating on some secret, global plan, and mine is not to question why..."

Krycek blinked at him in some surprise. Mulder was a little surprised himself to hear the bitterness in his tone. The fuck of it all was, he wanted reasons, and he knew he wasn't going to get any.

Then Krycek smiled. "But Mulder, everybody you know is operating on some secret, global plan. Why should I be different?"

Mulder stared at him, actually silenced for a moment. Then a perfect, engraved image flashed before his eyes: Scully in the hospital, dying, gasping into the breathing tube. Months of intimate medical torture he would never know, alone and comfortless. "There's nothing you could ever say that would justi-- " He stopped. "I'm not discussing this with you."

He made himself sit down again, forcing a totally false façade of calm, just as if he didn't want to play violent handball against the cell walls.

All of ten minutes of silence followed. The light had grown dimmer, but not utterly dark; too far north, Mulder supposed. Krycek said, reasonably, "We could play a game."

Mulder laughed involuntarily; it was too outrageous, he couldn't even be angry.

"Poker?" he asked. "I left my cards home."

"I'm not kidding. We need to pass the time."

"The wonderful thing about time is that it passes whether you do anything about it or not." He rested his forehead on his knees and considered, for a moment, how much time had passed in his string of failures; everybody older or dead, nobody saved, nobody home but us pariahs. It was a familiar thought, and he usually considered it simply a signal to turn on the television. The silence in this prison, he reckoned, must be about sixty pounds per square inch.

"What kind of game?"

"What?" Krycek looked up. "Oh. Twenty Questions? Truth or Dare?"

Mulder felt his lips curve. "Not much daring you can do in a prison cell."

"Truth works anywhere."

"Like that's a subject you would know about."

"Well, you know. Theoretically."

Krycek was too damned good at this. Every time Mulder had hit the man, he'd lost a little of that useful homicidal urge that had been keeping him on his guard. And now here Alex was, openly dishonest and having a sense of humor about it. Danger, Will Robinson. I'd Turn Back If I Were You.

"Are we playing for stakes," he asked, "or just for the sake of playing?"

A slow smile spread over Krycek's face. "I want to get to call you Fox if I win."

"Oh, fuck you."

"No, seriously, that's what I want."

Well, he supposed it was more reasonable than asking to be set free and pardoned for all past offenses. "You don't have anything I want."

"There's always my personal piece of the truth."

"I'll be going for that in the game," Mulder replied with a predatory coolness.

"Oh, bravo, Mulder! Are you sure you know what questions to ask?"

"I think..." He gazed at Krycek speculatively. "If I win, I want a written apology."

"You want what?" Krycek stared. Then he said, seriously, "You need that from life, Mulder, not from me."

In the same cool tone, he replied, "One apology at a time."

Krycek laughed. "If there's an afterlife, God and the Devil are going to find you a major fucking nuisance."

"Right now, I've only got you. Deal?"

"Okay, deal. A written apology. Even for some of the things you don't know about."

Mulder looked at him sharply then, but Krycek was staring up at the ceiling in innocence.

"Who goes first?"

Krycek said, kindly, "Age before beauty."

Pearls before swine, thought Mulder, who'd read Dorothy Parker, but it was too obvious an opening to take. Still, that was a funny thing for a man to say, especially in the circumstances they were in. You might be able to get away with a comment like that in -- say -- a hoop shooting contest, if you said it right, but not when you were as obviously beautiful as Krycek was. No guy with eyes like that in face like that would deliberately call attention...

"Mulder, that means it's your turn."

"I was giving it thought," said Mulder, recovering. He opened his mouth, then shut it. Reality was a pretty damn vague place, when you thought about it. Where to start? "Truth or dare?"

"We were going with truth, weren't we?"

"Is Alex Krycek your real name?"

"Yes."

Hmm. Real is such a tricky word. "What I mean is, is that the name on your birth certificate?"

"Yes."

Well, maybe he should have phrased that so it wasn't yes/no, but the answer at least seemed clear enough. He leaned back against the wall, then sat up again. "Wait a minute. How many birth certificates do you have?"

"Sorry, Mulder, that's a separate question. My turn. ...Hmm, I think we'll start with your sex life. After all, if you can pluck out the very heart of my mystery, I should be entitled to a little prurient satisfaction, right?"

Mulder glared but said nothing.

"Let's see..." Krycek murmured. "Your video collection is worthy of a dissertation in itself. Quite eclectic in some ways. Your rentals are a little harder to follow, so I'll just have to build my profile from what I've got."

Mulder was wary, but not alarmed. He didn't keep his videos a secret; it was better policy to be open about them and let them be a joke.

"A significant point, I believe, would be the fact that you had to replace Cutthroats of Pleasure Island twice. Now, I can only think of one reason to replace a video like that twice, Mulder. That would be if someone kept it on pause a little too long during one particular scene and burnt through the tape."

Mulder felt his face getting hot, but simply said, "Is there a question in this?"

"Well, let's start small. Would you say that you're capable of bisexual feelings?"

"You know, I don't think we're going to kick around my sex life, Alex. Despite this moment of bonding we're having here. I'll take dare."

"Really? Wow. I see an irony here, Mulder -- "

"Dare."

"Chickenshit."

"Dare."

"Mulder, you are immovable, you know that? You get something in your head, and suddenly you're an island unto yourself, all bridges blown up in one glorious second of self-sabotage -- "

"Dare."

"Finish your soup."

Mulder stared at him for a second. He was an idiot, this should have occurred to him, he should have found some casual physical reason to upset the soup earlier.

Never reveal a weakness to an enemy. Without getting to his feet, he maneuvered over toward the door. He picked up the soup bowl. Don't look inside. It's only protein. Sure, there are god knows what germs, but the whole place is full of god knows what germs. "I hate bugs," he said, temporizing, putting off the inevitable for another second.

"'Hate'?" Krycek grinned. "Is that the way Indiana Jones 'hated' snakes?"

Are you sure it wasn't a girly scream, Mulder?

Stupid macho pissing contest. I should be above this crap. If it were anyone but Krycek--

He lifted the bowl to his lips.

"This is great, Mulder. Another one of those moments I'm sure you'll enjoy reliving for the rest of your life."

"Fuck you, Krycek." Distracted, he glanced into the bowl, and his stomach turned. He set the soup down again and spoke quickly, before he could throw up. "I believe that the vast majority of human beings are capable of bisexual feelings and I'm well within statistical parameters."

"Well, you managed to generalize that, didn't you? And rolled it off the tongue so nicely, too -- you did that as well as Scully might have. Ever noticed how generalization and avoidance seem to go together?"

Yeah, too bad Scully wasn't here. She was a lot better at this macho crap than he was. She could eat bugs, talk back to Skinner in a way he took seriously, all that good stuff. She was a fucking alpha male, Scully was. She'd give Krycek one of those ice-station-Zebra looks and make him behave.

Krycek was regarding him in an offensively open and friendly way.

Actually, maybe it would be best not to think about Scully right now. The picture of a certain threesome from Pleasure Island was still lodged uncomfortably in his mind like a toy poodle inside a boa constrictor; it would take a while to digest and vanish, particularly without physical aid. He hoped Krycek was just being generally annoying with this line of questioning, and didn't know how much Lady Nan's obliging cabinboy resembled him.

The best defense is offense. "So, is all this childish taunting your way of saying you have the hots for me?"

"Is that a game question?"

Green eyes, warm as glowing coals, met his. Fuck. "Let me rephrase that..."

"Too late, the answer's yes. Is that a problem for you?"

After a good ten seconds had passed, Krycek added, "That was a game question."

"I'm not playing this dumb game anymore."

"I didn't expect you to surrender this soon."

"I'm not surrendering, I'm not playing."

Another ten seconds of silence. Twenty.

Mulder swallowed. "I have no problem with any of your perversions, Krycek, they've got nothing to do with me."

"You assume an attraction to another man is by definition perverted?"

"No, I assume anything that comes out of your head is by definition perverted."

Krycek grinned happily. "I had no idea you thought this highly of me."

"My turn," he said firmly. "When we first met -- "

"If this is about the clothes, I'd think you could've forgiven me for that by now. I'd never have worn those suits if I'd known what a fucking biblical temptation you were going to be."

"You must have been given a profile of me. An evaluation. A reason, even if only in operational terms, why this assignment was being undertaken."

"You just never stop, do you? You realize that I'm one of the few who find this trait endearing."

"What did they tell you?"

Krycek shrugged. "That you needed to be observed and neutralized."

"Neutralize. That's what you do with something threatening."

"Well?"

"Given my enviable track record, Krycek, why does anybody find me a threat, anyway? Seriously." He rested his chin on his knees and stared into the distance.

Krycek looked at him for a moment. Finally he smiled, shook his head, and said, "There's a surprise in every box."

"Come on. Was there some particular truth I was a little too close to? You can give hints, you know, say 'hot' or 'cold'..."

"Mulder, stop believing there's some truth out there you can actually get hold of. It's just a fable, like Santa Claus. I tell you this as a friend."

Mulder glanced up and gave a disbelieving laugh. In an unnaturally calm tone he said, "At least my father never lied to me about Santa." Then he frowned. "This wasn't long after they shut down the X-Files. When my contact was killed. Was there a connection?"

Krycek picked up a pebble and flung it against the wall; from his face, his thoughts were on some ironic track. "Take one giant step forward."

Mulder waited.

"You contact was worried about termination. He took precautions."

"Writing? Evidence? What? Krycek..."

"I'm not a fucking oracle, Mulder. Whatever it was, they worried that you might have it." He looked up from the floor and saw Mulder's gaze fastened on him.

"How do you know this stuff? They didn't just get you from Dial-a-Thug, Incorporated, did they."

Krycek met his look and said seriously, "Killer Temps. We Solve Your Office Problems."

Shit. Mulder had to cut off a laugh; he liked sick humor, and the closer to his personal vulnerabilities the more he reacted to it. It was almost certainly a defense mechanism, but useful and welcome as a shot of anesthesia. "Morally Ambiguous Temps. You may regret hiring us, or you may not."

Krycek grinned. "Underground Temps. Take credit for our work; we're in no position to stop you."

Jesus, Mulder, take a step back. You're going further than you need to to pass the time. He took a long, unhappy breath and crushed out his smile the way certain people crushed out their cigarettes.

Laughing with someone, in Mulder's view, was more dangerous than sleeping with them. You could sleep with someone you had no respect for. Laugh with them, and you were putting some part of your mind next to theirs, agreeing with them on some basic internal level.

"Don't fuck with me, Krycek. Stick with the game."

"Fine." Krycek shrugged, then smiled lazily. "My turn. When did you first realize you were attracted to me?"

Mulder sighed. "I never said I was attracted to you."

"Come on. You can at least tell me whether it was before or after you knocked me around in Hong Kong."

For a second the sensory memory returned; Krycek's t-shirt under his hands when Mulder checked him for weapons; the sound of the leather jacket as the man was pushed back against the phones; the eyes, more desperate, more dark, seeming larger than usual in the haunted face.

Mulder had felt something then; something frustrating, not simply rage because that could have been satisfied. Some languages even have a word for it, he knew -- hiraeth, the Welsh said: the longing for the unattainable. Mulder lived intimately beside the unattainable every minute of every day, and he recognized the signals. The only confusion he felt was over just what this particular unattainable was -- Krycek's death, or something else.

Maybe both?

"You make a lot of assumptions, Krycek. Was your ego always like this?"

"It's my turn with the questions, Fox, and I was going by your behavior. Why didn't you go into the men's room with me? Separating yourself from a prisoner doesn't seem your style. Unless you felt a psychological need for separation. And you were such a quiet boy on the plane back. Not like you either..."

Mulder came alert. "You didn't tell me you remembered what happened when you were carrying the alien."

"Didn't I?"

"Nobody else did."

Krycek shrugged.

"You do remember? Did it give you any information? Could you sense anything about it? Was it related to -- "

"Mulder, for heaven's sake. It's not your turn." He said it in the chiding voice Mulder's mother would have used to say, Fox, serve your guests their Kool-Aid first.

Too late. It was a new scenario, one he hadn't considered -- he could feel the questions already pounding in his bloodstream; he was going to have to release them pretty soon, or he'd have an aneurism. Down, down, down. He used one of his standard images: stuffing his questions by brute force into a big, cardboard, postal carton, writing his name on it, and dropping it into a mailbox. Later.

You know, when they developed holistic imagery for medical problems, I don't think curiosity was what they had in mind.

"We were talking about your attraction to me," Krycek continued, in the kind of self-pleased voice that invited violence.

"I'm going with dare again."

"Jesus, Mulder. What happened to your desire to share the truth with people? Keep this up and you won't be my hero anymore."

"Dare."

"Don't move."

Krycek pulled himself over till he kneeled in front of Mulder. Very slowly, he leaned forward, as though for a kiss. Controlling an urge to panic, Mulder managed not to move as he said softly, "I'm not holding still while you fuck me, Krycek."

Krycek's face was about an inch from his own, and Mulder was aware of a ringing in his ears. "Your virtue," said Krycek, his breath warm on Mulder's face, "is perfectly safe. If you think about it..." His lips brushed Mulder's, moved away. "I can't possibly fuck you..." Lips touched his again, dove-soft, brief and repeated, like some poignant stammer, not at all what Mulder expected. "...if you don't move."

The ringing in his ears was getting louder. "Uh, what?"

"Physically, I mean." A delicate tongue ran across the border of his lips, but refrained from forcing its way in. "You're sitting on your butt, Mulder."

Gentle, sure touches. It felt like some infinitely clever paintbrush, re-creating his mouth, stroke by stroke.

Christ, the man could kill people, he could lie, he could steal government secrets and sell them around the world -- what in god's name was keeping him from an open-mouth kiss? In a minute Mulder was going to have to initiate this himself --

His mind filled in alarm bells and big rainbow warning signs around that thought, but just then there came a happy sigh, and Krycek sat back. "Your turn."

It took a moment for him to catch up. The game. Right.

He realized abruptly that he'd been holding his breath, and let out a long exhale of relief and disappointment. Lack of oxygen to the brain, that was it.

What was it he'd been thinking about, earlier? On cue, his brain presented him with a metaphorical knock on the door and a white postal box -- leave it to the government of his mind; punctual, neat, and ruthless. And not a democracy. Inside his mind, the trains ran on time. They carried passengers who were refugees from Fellini, but they ran on time. "Were you able to learn anything from the alien?"

"I learned oil is a bitch to get off. Sorry, Mulder, it didn't pass me much. I could tell it was scared. Not of us, though. Of time."

"Time? What about time?"

"That it was running out."

"For what? Is something going to happen here, and that's why it wanted to get away? Or was it going to die?"

"Like ET, if it didn't phone home? I don't know, sorry. That's all she wrote." He spoke firmly. "And it's my turn."

At the phrase, Mulder's treacherous cock twitched to attention. Don't look, don't call attention to it. Instead his gaze moved to Krycek's face and locked there. In the dim light, Alex's skin seemed more pale, his eyes larger than ever; like that moment in Hong Kong, when Mulder had gotten his first good look at him since Washington. That moment of alarm.

Now Alex looked back at him and flashed an angelic smile. He said, "What's your favorite color?"

Mulder blinked. "What?"

"Is it blue? I'm guessing blue." You fuck. Mulder knew exactly what the man was doing. "Or maybe not, maybe blue is what you'd prefer it to be. Kind of a calm, average color choice. Maybe it's something more specific. Like the shade of light you see through water on the shore of a warm country. I'm fond of that, myself. But no... you'd go for more of a northern light, I think. Less stained glass, more pure."

What are you, a fucking art historian? Mulder bit down on the words.

"White," he ground out, instead.

"Come on, nobody's favorite color is white. Unless you're trying to make some kind of symbolic statement. And if you are, I'd get my hat back from the check-girl and hold it under the light, because it's gotten a little discolored lately."

"White contains every other shade."

"All truth in one place? Jeez, Mulder, that's not a color preference, that's a wish-fulfillment."

"My turn," he said, before he could give himself time to think. Let's fuck with his mind for a change. "Kiss me again."

"What?"

Mulder went on innocently, "Unless you'd rather go for truth. I always have more questions."

A gorgeous, if short-lived, second of confusion passed over Krycek's face. You could actually see him snap to it and pull himself under control. "Anything to oblige, Mulder," he said, and leaned forward again, inflicting another teasing brush with his lips.

"You call that a kiss?"

He did it again, not one whit deeper, and Mulder shivered, forcing back an impulse to pull Krycek's head close and grind their mouths together. He was willing to kiss Krycek -- more than willing -- but he wasn't going to let him know how much he liked it.

Krycek pulled away. "You didn't specify what sort of kiss," he said. Suddenly he ducked his head down and Mulder felt those lips fasten on his nipple with the certainty of an explorer mapping out the New World. He arced and gasped involuntarily. He could feel it through the shirt, that moist tongue lapping fire, swirling toward a central vanishing point. "Or where," said Krycek, switching to the other nipple.

He felt Krycek's fingers pulling his shirt up, but before he could anticipate where that might lead, a train of kisses fell like footprints down to the bare skin of his stomach. There Krycek's mouth stayed, for a more thorough exploration. Cortez in an alien country. He burnt his men's ships, Mulder thought in a daze, so that they couldn't go home, only onward. Then Krycek's head came up again -- there was a cat-pleased expression on his face, but his skin was flushed and his eyes had a look that completely contradicted that aura of self-sufficiency. His eyes had that dark, vulnerable, reactive cast to them that made you want to hold him down and lick every part of his body, or, failing that, to push him back against a wall of telephones.

"Is it my turn?" he asked brightly. "I suppose this would be a good time to find out if you've seen any good movies lately. What's your opinion on the better Batman, Mulder, would it be Michael Keaton or -- "

"You fucking bastard," Mulder got out, hearing the huskiness in his tone. He grabbed Krycek by the shoulders and let his weight push them both over. He heard Krycek laughing, so he covered his mouth with a hard, single-minded kiss. At this moment, all the trains in his mind were going in one direction, and the terminus was in the taste of Alex Krycek's skin, lips, tongue. When he released Alex's mouth, he heard a gasp for air. Then came the voice, brittle and untouched as ever, but with a forced note that Mulder took delight in.

"Should I take it you might be attracted to me after all? Because I... I wouldn't want to assume..."

Mulder began sucking and licking his neck. Krycek went on, "Or maybe this is the Mulder version of the Pity Fuck. Maybe... ohh..." That hollow got a good result. Mulder licked it again, lapping like a cat. He could feel Alex try to tense himself up, try to control himself after that very audible, and very sexy, moan. It was always best to let a suspect talk; nobody could hold their concentration forever, they had to give themselves away if you only waited.

God, this felt so good. He felt as though he'd been waiting for decades to get his lips on this skin. He wanted Krycek to go on talking, just so he could hear that voice when his mouth was on Alex's neck; breath and sounds, it didn't matter what they said, just as long as Mulder could taste the vibration of the words as they broke up like distant radio static.

"Hey, Mulder, you want to... to hold me down while you do this? Is that what you want?"

"No." Yes. His mouth was on Alex's chest now; he could feel the warmth of his own exhalation, reflected back from the single word.

"The truth, Mulder, it's still my -- "

Mulder bit down gently on a nipple. Hips arched up into his. A long, trembling breath beneath him.

"--still my turn."

"What about Batman?" he asked coolly. "I prefer George Clooney."

Shaky laughter met him, the vibration of skin pressed against skin, an irresistibly erotic sound. It seemed so fucking innocent. "Too late, you interrupted me before I could ask. It's still my turn."

"Ask, then." He growled it, leaving kisses like shotgun shells across Krycek's chest, his stomach, his navel, the tight stretch of denim around his hips.

"The truth. Tell me what you want from me."

Figure it out.

To blow your head off with an AK-47.

I don't know.

He knew the nagging dissatisfaction he always felt when he'd failed to touch the heart of a problem.

"Mulder?"

To fuck you till you can't move.

To blow your head off, period.

I don't know.

He put the frustration into his kisses, saw it in his shaking hands as they pulled Alex's jeans down. The electric flicker of Alex's breathing under this assault, like the sizzle of a neon sign, inflamed him further.

"Mulder," said Krycek, prodding him, demanding his rights to a reply. He lifted his head and tugged on Mulder's earlobe dizzyingly. "Tell me."

Answers.

For you to be somebody else.

"I don't know!" He almost shouted it, angrily, the way he might have shouted to a mugger who insisted on taking his wallet when he wasn't carrying one. Then, more softly, he said, "I don't know. I don't know." Even he could hear the puzzlement and quiet misery in his tone.

"It's all right." Alex's arms came around him. "It's all right. Never mind." Lips met his sweetly, the tongue sliding into his mouth no longer clever and tormenting, but as gentle and comforting an invasion as he'd ever known. He wanted to resent this magnanimity, but though he scrambled around in his mind, looking for his anger, it wasn't there.

Fingers ran through his hair; hands gripped, legs tangled eloquently with his. Alex buried his face in Mulder's chest, at the base of the neck, his mouth tracing from collarbone to shoulder curve with precise attention.

Never mind, the kisses said, distinct as the words had been. Let it go for now.

At last, sweet, necessary solace, according to the magical rules he'd learned in childhood -- that only the person who inflicted the hurt could take it away. He felt his muscles relaxing in exquisite relief from a tension so tightly strung and so constant it had, till a second ago, seemed normal.

He let Krycek unbutton his jeans and pull down his underwear. Cool, blessed hands massaged his ass, and he sighed. "Here, Mulder, help me get you out of this." He lifted his legs so Alex could get his clothes off. Not one to be inefficient, Alex finished disposing of his own jeans.

A hand under his chin, then kisses on his eyelids; he found he was shivering. Warm and shivering. Something was definitely happening here. There was no point in trying to stop it now, though, so when Krycek pulled him back down he let himself fall.

"Mmmm," said Alex when they came together, a delicious, dark-chocolate "mmmm," shifting underneath his body, maneuvering them so they lay side by side. Fingertips, the side of a hand, caressed his shoulders and arms; his outline was traced with concentrated attention, as though Krycek were on a beach somewhere patiently building his image out of the sand. There was a quiet intensity to the process, like an orchestra tuning up, and as his nerve endings unraveled willingly before it Mulder had to stop himself from making little purring sounds. FBI agents trapped in foreign prisons do not purr. Mulder's tenuously maintained connection with reality was emphatic on that point. Did they?

The back of a thumbnail thoughtfully traced its way down the dusting of hair below his navel, described a swirl and sailed back up, leaving a clear gold wake of travel along his skin; the imprint seemed connected in some trans-dimensional way with the warm breath on his neck, the occasional brush of lips that wanted to pull a sigh out of his lungs. Mulder stretched out, rolling further onto his back, exposing more territory. Mmmmm...

It all felt so sweet, and so absolutely required, that despite the sense of a gathering thunderstorm somewhere beyond his fingertips and eyelids, he almost believed that he could lie there for hours, days, perfectly content; till Krycek rolled further on top of him and their groins touched, and his whole body twitched as though electric current had run through him from head to toe.

"Sorry," came a murmur in his ear. "Meant to take that slower."

To his surprise he heard his own voice, hazy and replete: "Don't apologize."

Krycek laughed. A hand stroked his forehead. "How do you feel?"

Golden pressure. An ocean on the other side of a wall in his brain. "Two bricks out of the dike," he said, eyes closed.

"Mmm, I see what you mean." Suddenly teeth fastened on his shoulder, biting hard through his shirt, and that act was all it took to flip the switch on the electrical circuit that seemed to have replaced his nervous system. At once his cock was stiff as a shard of ice, and just as burning to touch. For a second he had an image of Krycek putting his hand there and being unable to pull it away.

"Three bricks, now, Mulder?"

He made an affirmative sound, the best he could do.

"Good." Bites continued over his shoulder, up his neck; the back of Krycek's nails raked through his hair at the base of his skull. One wave of shivering after another passed through him. His breaths started to come in gasps. Krycek bit softly on his lips, then pushed through them for a long, deep kiss.

Dike's gone. Evacuate the countryside.

A tongue traced a swirl around his ear, and now Alex's voice was whispered and breathless, making no effort to hide his arousal. "Yeah, Mulder, it's okay, I wanted to see you come even before I met you... you look so fucking bored in your ID photo... I wanted to feel your hands on my ass, I wanted you to leave fucking fingerprints... like you're doing now, yeah, like that..." He heard himself make a strangled noise. "Go on, Mulder... anything you want... I thought of this... in Hong Kong... you pounding into me... your hands crushing my wrists against the wall... " Oh, Christ. Images tumbled helplessly through his mind. "...take it all... everything you were feeling... just pound it back into me, why not?... think of it... your skin pressed against mine... just like now..." The breath in his ear was warm and vital. "Listen to me, Mulder.... I can give you what you want..."

The breath and the words were one, drifting right through his ear into his brain and settling there like clouds of silky mosquito netting, making it hard to do even the elementary thinking he was doing now. He became aware that Krycek's hand was skimming over his cock, and thought vaguely that that wasn't what he'd planned, this wasn't what the voice had said --

"...or do you want me to suck you off, Mulder, all you have to do is ask, I would've done it two minutes after we met..."

-- but whatever his plans had been, he'd have to junk them, because he couldn't let this stop.

"Oh, god," he said raggedly, not even rebuking himself for revealing how far gone he was, because everything he put out here was being tended to, accepted, taken in gently as though by some arcane religious order that succored the wounded in the Crusades. Sanctuary, as long as the white flag flew above the dome.

"Is that what you want, for me to suck you off? Just ask me..."

"Yes, please... suck me off... anything, do anything, just... " Just give me more of this. More of this, I have to have more of this.

Caught on a pendulum, swinging further and further into another world with every touch. When the first stroke of a tongue curled over his cock he arched up, gasping. The white noise in his mind increased in volume.

"Hold on, Mulder, we've got a way to go yet."

God, that tongue was going to be the death of him. He was too open to this right now, too defenseless. He couldn't stop his responses, the pleasure was going to burn through him like a laser, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Please..." he managed to get out, at last, between the scalpel-cuts of sheer, golden delight that were exposing his soul with surgical efficiency.

"What, Mulder?" He heard a smile in Krycek's voice. "Want me to stop?"

Clearly he was going to die either way.

"No," he said.

One bright eternity later, Alex apparently decided that Mulder's case had received sufficient attention. Mulder's eyes were closed, but when he felt his cock finally engulfed he could have sworn it was a form of electroshock therapy.

He held on, barely, as the kaleidoscope in his head broke apart and re-formed. It wasn't simply orgasm, it was education in a sledgehammer: Pleasure as comfort/ pleasure as war... war as comfort... The rush went on for several years, and when it stopped, abruptly as a switch, he lay there, unseeing, for some time.

Awareness returned slowly, and he realized that Alex was lying half-sprawled over him, one arm beneath them both. He had a vague idea that that warm sensation on his stomach was come, but the concept, as well as the entire world, seemed alien and distant.

Eventually Alex stirred slightly. When he spoke, his breath skimmed with gentle intimacy over Mulder's chest. "See, Mulder? I knew you could tell me what you wanted."

When he woke the cell was lighter. His jacket and sweater had both been placed over him. He ran a hand stiffly through his hair, looked around and saw that Krycek was fully dressed.

He handed Mulder the water bucket. "Best we can do for washing. At least there's no shortage."

"Thanks," he said, not knowing what else to say.

Thanks. Apparently Krycek had changed their personal reality, though what he'd changed it to was another mystery.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. They looked at each other. Mulder splashed water over himself and pulled on his jeans hurriedly. "What are you going to tell them?"

"What do you think?" Krycek spoke unhurriedly. "Letting us go would be nice."

The footsteps halted. Someone fumbled with keys.

Krycek turned to him and said, in the same measured tone, "Mulder, listen. Whatever happens, here or in Washington -- it's only going to get worse. And don't think it won't come from me."

Sure, Mulder, I'll help you get through this one. It'll build up your strength for the next round... But more piercing than the cynicism of that, was the sense of wonder -- because why should Krycek, or anybody else, care if he just rolled up into a fetal ball one of these days and checked out of reality? Why the (cool and perfect word) solace, like a transfusion, before he was flung back into the arena?

He searched Krycek's face. "Why?"

A wry grin -- a switchblade with a sense of humor, affectionate and sharp. "Is that a game question?"

The door opened. They watched as two guards entered. One addressed Krycek in Russian, and he nodded. As he turned to follow them, Mulder said, "Did you really have reasons for what you did?"

A second's pause, as Krycek turned back, ignoring the guards, his gaze fixing itself on the dirty floor as though some archaeological text were there to be translated. Then he looked up, giving Mulder his full attention. "Everybody has reasons for what they do. There hasn't been a senseless act since the creation of the planet -- you're a profiler, Mulder, you know that."

Yeah, but I was kind of hoping you'd come up with something of better quality than what the average spree killer uses. Now, why should that matter? Because you're a schmuck, Mulder, just wandering aimlessly in the PT Barnum crowd with the other marks, looking for the Egress.

The door closed behind them. Mulder leaned back against the wall and evaluated the situation.

He didn't know what was going on in Tunguska. He didn't know who Alex Krycek was or what he wanted. He didn't know how the hell he was going to get out of here. He wasn't doing very well with the truth, lately.

On the hand, he was finally making some progress with dare.

Stammered kisses. The slash of a tongue across his cock, weapon-sharp pleasure in its wake. One surprise after another against his skin; the shock of intimacy, here and now, when he had not expected it at all. His own voice, wanting more.

Oh, what the hell. If you can't laugh in the middle of a Siberian prison, where can you laugh?