From: Brighid <earthstone@goplay.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 23:46:34 -0700
 

Title: What Anyone Wants
 Author: Brighid
 Spoilers: Teeny one for Sleepless
Rating: R - potty mouth abounds
 Category: V
 Keywords: Character study
Summary: What's in it for Krycek? Everything.
 Warning: Obliquely slashy
 Archive: Sure, but keep my name & let me know.
Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Please. Please. Please.

Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This
is not for profit, but for love.
 

What Anyone Wants

by Brighid

I make a point of coming at him from out of the shadows. It suits my flair
for the melodramatic, and makes a pretty fucking elegant little metaphor for
our whole relationship. I'm a goddamn genius when it comes to the little
things.

Best of all, it pisses him right off. That mouth of his gets all tight, and
his eyes shift, become stone. He snarls and snaps and punches me around a
bit, and then we get to the business at hand. Whatever that might be.

I like to think of it as foreplay.

Tonight is different, though. He is too quiet, too damn still. His eyes are
neither hazel nor stone, but shadow. Tonight, he carries the darkness with
him, and it scares the hell out of me. A despairing Mulder is a dangerous
Mulder.

He doesn't say much at all, and that alone makes me nervous. Usually you
can't get the asshole to shut-up. Tonight, I can't get him to say a word. He
just listens as I go over the documents I've brought him, nods occasionally
as I suggest a strategy for making the best use of them. It's like he isn't
even really there at all. It pisses me off, moves me to unreasoning anger.

"Fuck it, Mulder. Are you with me on this? Have you heard a word I've said?
'Cause my balls are on the line with this, and I'm not gonna let you stand
there is some sort of existential fugue, and then send the whole thing fubar
because your brain was up your ass at the briefing! Got it?" My breath comes
short and sharp, silver in the night air.

He flicks me with those oddly opaque eyes, and in a flat voice repeats the
last five or six things I've told him. Wonderful. I might just as well have
taped it and sent the shit Fed Ex. He says it with all the enthusiasm of a
computer voder. "So, tell me, Mulder- you lost the stomach for this? Not so
hungry for the truth anymore? Because if you aren't, just let me know, and
I'll go take this to someone who's ready to play!" I push at him, wanting a
reaction, any reaction, even if it's just his fists.

Those I understand. Those I know.

"How do you get all this stuff," he asks instead, ignoring my goad. "I mean,
you never were that high up, were you?"

"No, Mulder. Never was one of the big boys," I reply easily, feeling my
coyote smile curve my face. No need to tell him exactly what I've been. I've
kept him alive this long; it'd be a fucking crime to have to kill him now.
"Just got a good eye for detail. I always make a point of knowing where the
bodies are buried."

Mulder runs his fingers over the files I have brought him, printouts of the
disk I have carefully concealed far away. For a moment he says nothing at
all. At last he raises his eyes to mine, and I swear to God, it's like
looking into the heart of night. "Even if it means burying a few of them
yourself, Krycek?" The night isn't just in his eyes; it's in his words as
well.

Shit. I fucking do not need this. The whole goddamned world is falling down
around our ears, and the stupid prick wants to play 'let's remember'. I can
see it in the angle of his body, the small restless circle of his fingers
over the files. He wants to replay a conversation that was old the first
time we had it, wants to convince himself that he's the white hat and I'm
the rat bastard he's using for the greater good. Wants to remind himself
that our alliance is necessity and not sympathy.

Tonight, something snaps. I break the liturgy of demand and denial. I give
him everything he thinks he wants, and the very last thing he expects.

I give him the truth.

"I killed him." I can't believe how easily it comes out, the words clear and
light and totally inconsequential. Yeah, I killed him, and make mine a
Pilsner. I want to laugh or cry or puke with the release of it. "I was
assigned to keep you cherry; if I hadn't capped him, you would've ended up a
player or a corpse. Neither was an option." I take a deep, giddy breath. "I
did my job. It's fucking dead and gone, got it, Mulder? So make up your
mind: either you drop the whole Inigo Montoya routine or you put a fucking
bullet in my brain now and get it over with, because I'm sick and tired of
starring in your own little melodrama!"

I'm panting with a rage I didn't even know I owned. I watch his face move
from shock to anger to finally, unbelievably, acceptance. "That was all I
really wanted to know," he says at last, his voice distant and a little
apologetic. "After all that's gone on, I know exactly how dirty he was - I
know that he was in on it as deep as anybody. Hell, he was a piss-poor
father most of the time. But he was still my father, you know?" The last few
words are quiet, maybe even wistful.

I swallow hard against a mouth gone dry. "Find me a kid who hasn't said
that," I offer with the world-weary cynicism I've worked so hard to
cultivate. It almost manages to cover the truth hidden under the words.
Almost.

He catches the small nuance; I can see him process it, file it away for
later. "You have a point," is all he says, his mouth curling in a tight
little smile that is more grimace than amusement. He gathers the files,
shoves them under the battered leather jacket he wears against the damp
autumn night. I watch him, and something coils inside of me. I'm too
chickenshit to even begin to give it a name.

He stares at me, and it's like he's crawling inside my head. I close my eyes
in self-defense. "One thing yet I want an answer to, Krycek. I'm not paying
you for anything you've been giving me. What do you want out of this whole
arrangement?" The question is candid, light and a little breathless. It
scares me so bad I think my guts are water.

Too many answers to this, and I wonder what to tell him. Fourteen years ago,
I would've said I wanted the whole damn world. Six years ago, I would've
said power, a chance to be a player. Now, and for far longer than I want to
admit, my wants have been pretty simple.

I want him to look at me with those eyes, clear and hazel and banded with
gold, like he did when he thought I'd made my rookie kill on Augustus Cole:
wry and sympathetic and too fucking tender for anyone's peace of mind. I
want him to look at me like he did when he thought I might be innocent, and
I could pretend that I still was.

I smile my coyote smile instead. "What anyone wants, Mulder. A fighting
chance." I leave it open to a wealth of meanings, and disappear into the
shadows as the words sink in.

He fucking hates it when I do that.

********

End.