Title: Zaghruda (1/1)
Author: CazQ
Category/keywords: V, A, M/K slash, sort of post-col, UST all
over the place
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual interaction (including m/m)
Spoilers: 'Sleepless', the abduction arc, possibly very light for
certain 'Requiem' visuals. And you all know about the whole thing
with the chips in people's necks, right?
Summary: "She did scream, you were right, your name, God's
name..."
Distribution: Yes to Gossamer. Xemplary: no. Anywhere else:
please ask me first.
Disclaimer: I do not own Mulder, Scully, Krycek or the X-Files,
all of which
belong to CC, 1013 and Fox. Nor am I making a cent off this,
damnit.
Feedback: Yes, please and thank you. cazfic@ymail.com
URL: http://cazq.freeservers.com
Author's note: Onions, this is largely your fault. Yes, it's dark,
angsty boyslash, and yes, I'm as surprised as you are since this
is hardly my usual XF vibe, but hey, man, give slash a chance
<g>. After publicly saying recently that if I ever wrote
slash it would probably be Sk/D and under another pen-name, I
thought that the obvious thing to do would be to write M/K slash
under my usual pen-name. I was probably drugged.
Thanks to YV, as ever, for being the comfort blanket, especially
M Sebasky, Luperkal, SEP and Cofax, to the Glass Onion slash
thread for the inadvertent inspiration, and to the wonderful
Kelly Keil for speedy Wild Side Beta exchange work :).
******
Zaghruda (1/1)
by CazQ
******
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.
*******
FINIS
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."
cazfic@ymail.com
