Zaghruda

The first time he let Mulder go down on him, snow was a cold burn approaching on the wind and the memory of Scully's body shaking in mid-air as if she had St. Vitus's Dance was tattooed onto both of their brains. A fresh memory, so fresh it had hardly begun to scab over. He'd managed not to think of her until that moment when he came in Mulder's mouth, and then it was like picking the crust off the wound and watching the blood well up, bright and shocking.

He'd always thought that it would happen the other way round, if it happened at all. In his sweaty, slightly nauseating nocturnal imaginings, it was always him on his knees begging, asking Mulder to let him do it, to let him suck him off, to please please fuck him.

Like practically everything involving Mulder, the reality had been far more unreal. Mulder segueing seamlessly from sitting opposite him discussing travel plans and supplies of food, to sliding off his chair and on to the unforgiving wooden floor of the hunting lodge. Krycek had stared at him kneeling there and had *known*, like an itch in the back of his mind, how that would feel, how the bony kneecaps would start to ache as the body's weight bore down on the hard floorboards. Mulder had lain one fine-boned hand on Krycek's denim-covered thigh and breathed the words. "Please," he'd said, watching Krycek's face, his eyes, "please." His breath had been unbearably hot even through the stone-washed fabric as he'd pressed his face against Krycek's inner thigh and bitten down lightly through the material, clearly knowing that he'd won even as he begged to be allowed to do this, this one thing.

Krycek couldn't help remembering how, right before Mulder had taken his cock into his mouth, he'd licked his lips, the tip of his tongue flicking out to swipe across dry, delicate skin. Mulder's eyes had been almost black in the firelight, his face set in tight concentration throughout, but he'd paused and licked his dry lips and in that moment Krycek had known that Mulder had never gone down on a man before.

He'd come quickly, in a burst of white heat and ache, and a stab of deep, awkward embarrassment for Mulder rising up with the pleasure from the base of his spine. He'd been more than ready to reciprocate, but Mulder had stood up, drained the last inch of his Dr. Pepper to rinse out his mouth, and walked out to one of the cold, dark bedrooms. Krycek himself had slept on the couch in front of the dying fire, and had tried desperately not to think too hard about the fact that, right before he'd come, he'd thought of Scully and how very white her face had been against the gathering dusk and -

- they'd been driving for hours, and the dashboard clock glowed green, reading 16:55 as they crested a low rise, and ahead of them miles more of dark, bitter-scented pine forest. Scully was riding shotgun as he drove, Mulder sitting in the seat behind her, and although it was November and so the light was already failing, he noticed the shadow right away.

As he did he heard Mulder say, "Oh shit, look at the *clock*," and when he looked it was no longer 16:55 or even 16:56 but some invented time told in glowing green glyphs, the digital display going crazy and flashing meaningless patterns of light instead of numerals. Then he looked up and saw, at the top of the windshield, the leading edge of the ship, a horrible slick, oily black threaded with lights. Stupidly he gunned the accelerator, as though they could outrun a shipful of Greys in a goddamn Ford Explorer.

All that happened, of course, was that they rolled gently to a stop as his foot pumped the gas pedal uselessly, and he remembers that he swore once, in Russian, and hit the wheel with his good arm, but Mulder was already (stupid stupid *stupid*) climbing out of the car, and where Mulder went Scully followed. He cursed again, this time in English, and opened his door.

The three of them stood around the car, gaping upwards as if they were cultists and this was the chariot come to take them home to Jesus (his grandmother singing from the Great Doxology as she did the housework, "Gospodi, Syne edinorodny, Iisuse Khriste i Svyaty Dushe", but if there was a God none of his three Persons were watching over them now). The chip, the fucking chip, of course - he knew then that they hadn't had a chance, just as he knew that he could not have left her in D.C. and that Mulder would never have left without her. He remembers Mulder saying something to Scully, something he hadn't been able to hear, and Scully starting to speak.

And that was it. One second she stood on the black-top, mouth opening, face tilted upwards, fists balled up by her sides, and then she hung in the air like a levitating mystic. Her body shook like she was having a grand mal seizure, the air around her shimmering and warping and starting to *burn* with white light, and her hair was like a small explosion around her head, flashing, jittering red.

He turned and ran for the trees (stupid stupid as if it would have made any difference at all), but he realised that he was alone, and turning back he saw Mulder standing slack-jawed and horrified, slowly reaching out his right hand as if to grab her arm and hang on tight.

"Run, Mulder, you stupid fuck, run," he screamed desperately, a warm wind rising out of nowhere and whipping his clothes against his skin, stirring up the cloying, resinous scent of the pine litter. Mulder just ignored him while Scully's face burned a white blur against thick twilight thickened further by the ship's unthinkably huge shadow.

And then she was gone, and the sky above them was empty of everything but clouds.

It was four nights after that that Mulder first asked permission. They'd stopped for the night in a hunting lodge, a horrible faux-primitive building bristling with antlers. He'd sat on the couch in the den, legs spread, good hand clenched around a fistful of pillow, watching Mulder's dark head rise and fall in a hypnotic rhythm between his thighs. He hadn't even gotten to take his jeans off. Mulder had unbuttoned his fly, with the awkwardness of a man used to doing this from the other side, and that had been that.

He'd still had the bruises on his face from where Mulder had hit him, after she'd vanished. Mulder had fallen on him the second he'd laid a tentative hand on the other man's shoulder, all flailing limbs, heavy booted feet and hard tight fists. They'd struggled in utter silence on the empty highway. Mulder had tried to beat the living shit out of him, sobbing silently, while Krycek tried to hold him at arm's length, but eventually he'd given in and let Mulder's fists pound into his flesh, locking them together in something like an embrace.

That was the only time he'd seen Mulder cry.

They stayed in the hunting lodge two more nights before pressing on north in search of the rebels. Three days later in an empty Holiday Inn in New Hampshire Mulder crawled fully clothed into his bed, yanking back the covers and crouching over him on all fours.

This time Mulder slid his mouth down over Krycek's cock like he'd been giving head for years. He deliberately grazed the edges of his teeth against heated skin before lapping at the head with the flat of his tongue. Krycek looked down the bed, his eyes straining against the dark, and glimpsed, momentarily, Mulder's erection tenting the fabric of his sweats. He let his head fall back on the pillows, closing his eyes and picturing Mulder naked above him, making him come and then moving up the bed to straddle his chest and slip his own cock into Krycek's waiting mouth. He'd beg, he thought, his hips jerking upwards involuntarily as Mulder brought him closer and closer to his orgasm. Oh, God yes, he'd beg Mulder for it, but he wasn't even allowed to beg.

Again when he came he felt that awkward shame for Mulder, and then a little shame for himself, as Mulder milked the last drops of semen from his slowly softening cock, because who was using who here? When Mulder crawled up the bed and lay down beside him, panting and still hard, close but not touching, he whispered to the ceiling, "If you want to talk about - you couldn't have stopped it, okay? You really couldn't. The chip - "

He heard Mulder shift in the darkness, felt the tired old bedsprings sink under them as Mulder rolled towards him. Sudden hot, slightly sour breath against the skin of his cheek and lips, and he actually thought that Mulder was about to kiss him.

Instead he had bitten him, teeth sinking into Krycek's bottom lip, drawing blood.

"For *fuck's* sake, Mulder," he ground out, jerking his head away and tasting his own blood sharp and tangy on his tongue (and yet, still, imagining wet heat and the flat of Mulder's tongue stroking against his own, maybe sliding in and out as Mulder fucked him from behind, pulling his head around for messy, badly-aimed kisses, straining for each other's mouths...). The salt and metal taste of his blood made him a little dizzy for some reason, and he hauled himself upright and spat it out.

"You *ran*," he heard Mulder say, flatly, as he rolled out of bed and headed for the door. "You ran, so don't ever dare talk to me about being helpless to save her."

He lay there, listening to Mulder's footsteps retreat down the hall, and then to the engine of the car starting up outside, and Christ, the bite and the irresistible image of Mulder's cock sinking deep inside of him was getting him hard again. He lay flat on his back and jerked himself off roughly, unable to bear fantasising about Mulder as he did so, and so he imagined Scully sucking him off, Scully riding him, her firm little breasts and firm white thighs and his cock sinking into the liquid heat of her.

It hurt to fantasise about that, too, and when he pictured her shaking as she came, clenching around him, it blurred into her body shaking in the warped air, but it was a different kind of hurt. He licked his sore, bleeding lip and lost himself in different kinds of pain until he slept.

Mulder didn't come back for two days. Krycek spent most of that time sitting in the motel room, drinking warm bourbon out of a plastic cup and watching the stain on the rumpled white sheet where he'd spat out his own blood turn from red to rusty brown.

He was asleep when Mulder returned. He only woke when the mattress dipped on one side as Mulder sat down on the edge of the bed, and he realised later that Mulder could have opened the door and shot him as he slept, had he wanted to.

He sat up, drawing his knees up against his body and wrapping his arm around them. He'd taken his prosthesis off to sleep and was grateful once again for the dark that hid the red and white weals of scar tissue. He sat, and waited.

Mulder bowed his head and dug his bunched fingertips into his eye-sockets. "Why did you bring us with you, Krycek?" he asked, finally, sounding exhausted. "Tell me again."

Why had he brought them? It had all made sense at the time, in a nonsensical way.

Because he'd wanted to fuck them, both of them, for years?

Because he wanted to *be* them, to worm his way into the hair's breadth of space between them and get to breathe the same air they breathed, decode their private language of tones, in-jokes and gestures? At the very beginning, he'd wanted them because they were attractive, sexually charged people, but that had only lasted the first five minutes or so. After that, he'd come to think of it as The Way In. Mulder and Scully were like identical twins, out in the world but still mentally sharing the impossible intimacy of the womb, and he was the shadow brother.

He remembered watching them together in an autopsy bay on that first case with Mulder, whispering to each other like kids in the clubhouse, while he stood there in his cheap suit and his bad tie and raged. Oh, he hadn't been able to hate Scully. He'd known then, the wheels turning within the organisation, the plans for her, and he'd only felt a sweet, longing pity for her. Mulder, though - he'd looked at him and burned, wanting to slice into him with one of Scully's cold little scalpels to get his attention and tell him to at least be man enough to fuck her, instead of this pathetic, noble, idle unspoken loving where no one really got anything.

Later, playing both ends against the middle had become part of The Way In. He'd indulged in numerous ludicrous rescue fantasies, even as he stood by waiting to kill her and witnessing her sister's murder instead, even as he ended Bill Mulder's life in a cramped little bathroom. He'd seen documents during the time Scully was 'missing', known where she was being held, known the medical team's passcodes and when there were fewest guards on duty at the facility. He'd imagined himself stealing her out from under his bosses' noses, how grateful she would be. How grateful Mulder might be.

"Krycek?"

"I wanted...who else would I have saved?" he asked, grinning mirthlessly. "Who else but the two of you? It was always you, me and her; for better or for worse we couldn't get away from each other, could we? And I didn't want to be alone. You understand. I don't know if the rebels will win. I don't even know if we'll find them. The best they can give us is a place to hide, maybe, to wait it out and see which side wins. I didn't want to wait alone. What would I have been waiting for?"

They were both quiet for a long time after that. Outside the sky was beginning to bleach into light. It must have been closer towards morning than he thought.

"I cared about her too," he found himself saying. "I really did. The three of us, Mulder - we've got blood ties to each other, in a way. It's bad blood that binds us, but it's more than I have with anyone else."

Mulder tangled his fingers together in his lap, and his eyes slipped shut.

"She was screaming," he said softly.

"I...I don't remember that..."

"She was. She was screaming right before they took her, but it was all broken up by whatever was happening to the space around her, so it, it sounded like one of those trills Arab women make, a zaghruda, they call it."

Krycek began to shake his head, and Mulder reached out and locked his hand around Krycek's wrist, squeezing so hard the bones shifted against each other below the skin.

"Yes," he said fiercely, "yes, she was. I'll *show* you." He rolled onto the bed and pulled Krycek's knees apart, and Krycek realised as Mulder reached for his cock that Mulder knew exactly what he saw behind his closed eyelids when he came. Perhaps because Mulder saw the same unbearable thing, and that was why he'd suck Krycek off in his desperate need to touch, but wouldn't let him reciprocate.

As Mulder's hand stroked his hardening cock, the friction of dry skin against skin uncomfortable but also arousing, he whimpered and reached out, blind and desperate, for Mulder's cock, which was already hard and pulsing hot. Mulder made a low sound in the back of his throat and pulled away, but Krycek shook his head urgently and babbled, "Just once, please, I won't ask again, we should both see it, you understand I don't want to be alone either..."

Mulder didn't say anything, but he moved forward again, kneeling between Krycek's legs and wrapping a hand around his cock, this time licking his palm and fingers first. The angle was awkward for Krycek, who would have had to strain to reach over his own leg and past Mulder's busily working hand, so he knelt up too, a little unsteady because he had no spare arm to steady himself with. Like that he could jerk Mulder off properly, though, and he did, his head slowly dropping forward to rest again Mulder's shoulder. Mulder mirrored him, and started to bite at the skin of his shoulder, teeth grinding against collar-bone as their hands moved faster, as Krycek slipped his hand down to stroke Mulder's heavy balls. He would rather have had kisses than be bitten; he would rather have sucked Mulder off or fucked him than a mutual handjob, but he was used to taking whatever he could get.

Mulder tensed up and hissed between his teeth a little as Krycek moved lower still, rubbing two long fingers against Mulder's perineum, but he didn't tell him to stop, and when Krycek's hand returned to his cock Mulder started letting his own fingers wander. With two hands, he had the advantage and could maintain his firm, fast strokes up and down the length of Krycek's cock while he reached down and played with his balls. That was all it took, and Krycek came harder than ever before, spurting thick and hot all over Mulder's belly and oh, Christ, it felt so fucking good -

- and there was Scully's face white against the forest twilight as she rode him in the motel bed in his dreams because he'd rescued her and she came, came, came, milking his cock dry and screaming his name and *shaking*, and she shook like she was having a fit hanging in the air above the highway, and it wasn't his name she was screaming but Mulder's and God's, and her scream was warping in and out of the world as the Greys took her, and Mulder was right, it was like an Arab woman ululating at a wedding, or maybe at a funeral, and oh God, Mulder was right, she did scream, of course she did -

- and when he opened his eyes again Mulder's hand had fallen away, but *his* hand was still working frantically away at Mulder's cock, and if he had to hear that world-tearing scream then Mulder should hear it again with him, damnit.

Mulder shut his eyes and groaned, and seeing his chance Krycek crouched down, supporting himself with his good arm and licked Mulder's cock from base to tip in one long stroke, like a cat. Mulder's hips jerked reflexively and Krycek began to suck him off eagerly, feeling one of Mulder's hands running through his hair, stroking up and around his skull and down to his neck, stroking the skin right where Krycek's chip would have been, if he'd had one, the way he might have stroked Scully's implant scar if it had been her going down on him.

He raised his head long enough to mumble "She did scream, you were right, your name, God's name," and then he swirled his tongue round the swollen head of Mulder's cock and sucked on it, once, hard, and Mulder came, flooding his mouth with heat and sobbing Scully's name, and then Krycek's, just once.

They both slumped down onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs, and then, unexpected as a ship in the sky, Mulder turned towards him on the cold, rough sheets and kissed him, open-mouthed and hungry, all teeth and tongue. Krycek responded eagerly, pressing into Mulder's mouth, a thick, hot, wet slide of lips and tongues, but Mulder broke away first.

"She was screaming," he whispered against Krycek's shoulder, still not crying, but Krycek felt tears burning behind his eyes when he found himself saying "Yes, she was, I know she was," to keep Mulder there. They lay pressed up against each other waiting for it to get light out, like twins pressed together in the dark of the womb, and then the tears dripped down his face as Krycek wondered why he still felt like the shadow brother, floating alone in the amniotic fluid, with no one to turn to in the little, little darkness that closed in all around.

The words Krycek remembers his grandmother singing are from the Great Doxology of the Russian Orthodox Church's All-night Vigil. They translate as "O Lord, Thou only begotten son, Jesus Christ, and Thou Holy Spirit."

Zaghruda (Arabic): "a ululation, a joy-cry. Made exclusively by women."

Thanks for reading my first attempt at slash. I feel like a callow newbie all over again. I'd love to know what you thought.