Title: Touch

Author: Juxian Tang

Fandom: X-Files

Pairing: CSM/Krycek

Rating: NC-17

Status: complete

Spoilers: One Son

Disclaimer: They are not mine, etc.

Summary: After shooting at Jeffrey, CSM has nowhere else to come.

TOUCH

His hand faltered at first. He raised it to knock the door and stopped, the fingers curled slackly, floating in the midway. Suddenly he felt the cold and heaviness of the gun again, how tight the trigger was. Yes, it was the hand he had held the gun in - and now he watched it start trembling. He knocked quickly.

"Alex, it's me."

The door swept open and they looked at each other over the threshold. It was darker in the room than in the corridor and Krycek's face seemed to be a play of whiteness and shadows, the expression impossible to discern. For a second the young man stayed motionless, with his lips compressed firmly, and then made a step back, letting him in.

The room was lit just with a low yellow lamp, at the distant end of the sofa. He looked at the bright circle of light on the floor, with an overturned book in it, and felt some faint relief. It was okay if he stayed away from this light. He knew Krycek's eyes were on him when he walked to one of the low armchairs and slid into it gracelessly. He didn't stumble on the way - but he was conscious of the effort he made for it.

"I killed Jeffrey," he said. His gaze was wandering and when at last he looked at Krycek, he didn't see any expression on his face at all. If it had been there, it was gone now and, maybe, he was glad at it. "My own son."

It was not that he had to add it - but he said these words for himself, thinking about all the times he pronounced them before - at first with pride, then with bitterness. And from now on these words will mean just one thing - my own son I shot.

"I've done what was necessary," he glanced at Krycek again. Nothing. Just a level gaze of the eyes that seemed black in the dimness. Or perhaps there was something but he couldn’t read it. Well, to be honest with himself, when could he actually read him any more? That time passed long ago.

"He betrayed us. He betrayed me. He had to die."

The phrases were short, for one breath each, and it seemed to him that it helped pushing the air in and out of his lungs. Or he would forget how to breathe.

"You sorry bastard," even though he waited for it all the time, Krycek's voice still sounded unexpected. "You keep thinking you can solve any problem with one more bullet?"

He caught the air sharply. Too much oxygen. This one hurt. His hand moved practically instinctively, groping for the cigarettes. He lit one even before looking for an ashtray - and he was not surprised to find none. He got used to people minding his smoking - actually, he found special pleasure in doing it when they minded. But somehow he didn't feel like going through it now. He didn't come here for it. And what for?

He watched Krycek walking to the kitchen and coming back with an ashtray, a sphere of heavy green glass. He put it on the table right in time for the first column of ash falling down.

The smoke was curative. He filled his lungs with it. The curls of smoke drifted in the air in front of him. He used to look at the world through this mist, he thought. Now it had to make him feel himself again. Almost.

Suddenly his memory brought the voice, Dr. Openshaw's muffled phrase - after he had turned off the oxygen in his hyperbaric chamber. 'A man should never live long enough to see his children, or his work destroyed.' The dying man knew. So exactly. Could there be the words more fitting?

"I didn't have another choice," he said.

This time Krycek stayed silent, just moved soundlessly, sinking into the opposite armchair.

"You know what I mean. Sometimes we have to do the things that nobody else would be able to live with," he paused and then went on. "I don't have to tell you what the stakes are. And if we have to lose today to win our tomorrow…"

There might be a shadow of derisive smile flickering on Krycek's lips but his eyes were solemn.

"The things can't be done clean-handed. Sometimes we have to off… those who hinder us, Alex."

"Yeah. Tell me about it," another little grin passed over Krycek's lips and this time the smoker thought he could guess what was behind it: the car explosion, the silo, all the times when he made Krycek pull the trigger.

"Do you think I enjoyed it? Enjoy it now?" he asked.

"Oh no," the young man snickered again. "No more that I do."

"It was not a mistake," he started again. "We didn't misjudge the situation. It was just that nobody could foresee everything."

He expected a nod or denial - but instead suddenly Krycek's long slim arm reached to him, to his hand stubbing the cigarette in the ashtray. The fingers touched the back of his palm, icy flame, patted briefly and were gone in a moment.

"You really believe it, don't you?"

This touch, hot and dry, felt so strange on his clammy skin. Abruptly he realized it was what he came for. And he wanted more of it. More of the warmth and strength.

Wasn't it ridiculous? When did he think about Krycek as strong and warm? When he screwed him, even if figuratively, disdained him what he was - young pretty nothing, that's all. He didn't think it was a big loss when he casually ordered to get rid of him. And then, with the silo… After all, it was a defiance that Krycek had survived, you know, he didn't want to give him the second chance.

The truth was Krycek was not the same any more - and it had nothing to do with his appearance. Sometimes - like minutes ago, when his face emerged from the darkness - he still looked awfully young. But he changed. Well, the smoker knew who changed him. The old man was good at knowing people. Who would think there was something in Krycek that was worth trying? And here was the result, even though the old man was not here any more to see it.

It was this man's strength in Krycek now. He could sense it. It was why he could come here.

The strength. While his own was coming down steadily, as if rust was eating its way through it. A huge bit scattered in dust when he had to shoot Jeffrey.

"I am sorry for Jeff," Krycek said suddenly. "He was an innocent one."

He shook his head in denial.

"He gave us out to Mulder. He was a traitor."

"Was he?"

Slowly, almost fluidly, Krycek got on his feet and the smoker looked up at him almost hypnotized as he walked around the armchair and stopped there. He tensed. He didn't turn back but he was keenly aware of the man standing behind him.

Suddenly it struck him that it was a position how the aliens were killed. He was not an alien, he was human. Did he have to remind himself about it?

Then suddenly all the tension was gone, replaced with startling enervation. He understood he didn't care. Even if an awl was going to stick in his neck. He didn't care. He was so tired.

"He tried to protect his mother. Wouldn't he be a traitor if he betrayed her?" Krycek asked quietly behind him.

Even before he could answer, could argue it, he felt a movement behind him, a flow of air - but not a sting. The warm strong fingers gripped the back of his neck.

"What kind of imaginary loyalty should he have kept to you?" the words were rude, the voice was not. "You returned to him after so many years - promised him something - corrupted him - made him kill."

Krycek's voice could be soft but his fingers were like steel, digging deeply in the plate of his shoulder, kneading almost painfully. He barely kept from groaning. It felt so good. The touch. He craved for it for so long. It was for so long since he felt anything like that in his life.

Despite himself he leaned closer into the massaging fingers. He heard with surprise that his voice slurred when he started speaking - but he spoke all the same, the words that meant so much but suddenly became almost meaningless.

"Jeffrey was a failure. My failure."

"You think so," Krycek said. "And that's why you killed him. Because he didn't become the son you wanted him to be."

He was mashed, dissolved by the fingers that crumpled and rubbed his nape - and by the voice that seemed to go right into his brain. He half-groaned the answer that seemed important for some reason:

"He had to be my pride. Like Bill Mulder's son was his father's pride."

For a split second Krycek's hand stopped - and then the circling agonizing movements started again. He braced his head back. Perhaps he hoped to feel the young man behind him, his jeans and knitted sweater clad body. He could feel the warmth emanating from him - but what he touched was just the hardness of the prosthetic, resting on the back of the armchair.

"I wish I could create once more what I destroyed," he said. "Somehow create him in the way I needed him. Then I would love him, would father him for real."

"That's it, right?" Krycek's voice tightened almost imperceptibly - and he would hardly notice it if the fingers on his neck didn't tighten with it. "Change to fit your pattern - or eliminate. You don't need what doesn't fit you, right?"

Suddenly the hand dug into his flesh so deeply that he got scared, what if it was going to break his spine. He froze.

"The world isn't for you," behind him Krycek breathed out so lightly. "Is it what gnaws you most of all?"

He leaned forward sharply escaping the hand - and beyond his expectations it let him go easily. Straightening, he said, a shadow of the usual confidence in his voice:

"I always knew that the world wasn't for me."

He pulled out another cigarette and clicked the lighter.

He had to leave. He couldn't handle it any more. Any more truth - or what Krycek took in his mind to consider to be the truth. He didn't come here for it! He came for nothing. And that's what he had. There was no place in the world where he could really go any more.

So… It was obvious - and suddenly the realization hit him and made the world around him so lucid. The taste of Morley, so familiar that it seemed sweet, the circle of light on the floor, the man behind him, his enemy and his last hope. No hope any more.

He lingered for moments more, relishing the cigarette, and stood up making the last drag. It was over. All over. The gaze he felt on himself didn't mean anything.

"Well, Alex," he didn't even turn around. "See you… soon."

Krycek moved like a shadow. So quickly that he barely noticed it. A moment ago he was behind - and then he faced him already, so close that their bodies were almost jammed into each other - and Krycek's hand squeezed his wrist with the dying-out cigarette. He gasped. At the first moment he felt only the startling presence of another body and the pain in his captured wrist that made him drop the cigarette. And then Krycek's face became very close - eyes like two ink stains on the white - and without thinking, he blindly pressed his mouth to the young man's lips.

They were unyielding at first - hard but not resisting - and so hot that his breath was captured. It was not a real kiss, actually, just holding their mouths locked, firm and still, so still that it seemed they were stuck in animosity, not in caress.

He felt as if flame leaked through his lips. It burned him but he greeted this pain. He thought that yes, it was what he wanted. Nothing more.

Then suddenly Krycek's arm wrapped around him - and his other arm, slightly raised, lay across his back - and there was nothing hard in these touches. And nothing hard in Krycek's voice when he spoke, pulling their lips apart but keeping him in his arms.

"Do you think I don't know where you are going?" he asked and his eyes seemed to be laughing. "I should have let you."

It's not too late, he wanted to snap, but he didn't have heart for it. Not when he was held like that, warm and tight. Krycek's eyes slid over him, taking his face fully from such short distance that the smoker could almost feel this gaze on his skin, as if it really touched him.

"So few are left," Krycek said suddenly and there was the strangest emotion in his voice, something he couldn't decipher. "Just think about it. You and I and…"

He didn't finish. His hand wandered up slowly, along the smoker's back, in a caress or in a parody of it, then lay confidently on the back of his head and pulled it closer.

This time the kiss was long and deep and full-scale. For the first time the smoker felt sorry that the taste of nicotine in his mouth didn't let him feel the taste of the other mouth wholly. But he felt the softness and warmth of the lips, their moisture and easy acceptation. He couldn't stop himself. He made a convulsive movement putting both his arms around Krycek.

The contact was melting. There was such mellow burning in feeling the other body urged into his, all its curves and hard bones and soft places - and the most electrifying of all, stunning - the feeling of the hardness forced against his own erection.

"Alex," he breathed out into the hollow of Krycek's collarbone. There was so much he would like to say that this word was enough. He felt dazzled when the clothes were taken off from him; he moved, helped it, reached for Krycek's clothes himself but he couldn't say he realized it, his mind presented at it. He remembered his fingers plucking at the harness of the prosthetic, freeing Krycek from it. One-armed embrace was enough, it was natural, he didn't expect anything more. There were other things that struck him - the burning of the naked body against his naked body, the slick head of the hot organ pushed against his belly.

They got on the sofa, the light so sharp on their faces while their bodies stayed in almost darkness. The skin under his palms was so smooth and glowing and it felt as if tingling under his touch - and he felt the brush of the other's hand sliding over his body, too, searing and soothing, and he struggled between the desire to feel it and to keep close, closer than possible, making them one, merging them.

Bodies, limbs intertwined on the narrow sofa, fingers stumbling as they hurried to perceive each other. Their breaths fusing, their liquids, sweat making the skin slick and sizzling, and then, in the jolts of sheer pleasure, the spurts of their sperm, smeared on their hands, their bodies, marking them and uniting them. As it had to be.

When they lay stretched on the sofa together after that, he couldn't help wondering how strange it happened. Half an hour ago he was ready to drop the cards, he thought he had nothing left for him. Some hours ago he sent the bullet through the heart of his only son. And now he was pressed against the body of the man he had tried to kill several times, the one who had to hate him - and he still could feel something sing inside him, reminding of the delight of their coition.

He had done the right thing. He could be vague then but his mind chose the right thing. Diana wouldn't be able to do it this way. Now he was helped. Now he could go on again.

Krycek shifted under him, the stump of his left arm prodding against his chest. Their eyes met, equally sober, so sober that it seemed they had never been misted with passion. Well, yes, they had been. He remembered all of it. This silky mouth, curiously half-opened, the softness and strange vulnerability of the hollows of his collarbones, this stump touching his face in a perverted caress. Deadly mixture. He was deadly dangerous, Krycek. Strong and soft and hateful.

Looking into these eyes - light-green and transparent under the light of the lamp but still impenetrable - he asked:

"Alex, but how could Jeffrey get to know that it was me who ordered the experiments on Cassandra?"

"Hmm…" the long curved eyelashes fell as two dark wings. "Maybe, Cassandra told him."

"No, she didn't tell him about it," he said sitting up and reached for the cigarettes.

The End

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