Title: Out of Square

Pairing: Mulder/Krycek, (implied MS and DS)

Rating: R

Summary: Secrets.

Warnings: m/m slash, implied het, a sex tape, takes off as an AU from s8

Author’s Notes: Unbetaed. Third installation of Geometry series. Meant to be read after Two Triangles Crossing and Circled Around Your Heart. Scully’s POV.

Disclaimer: Krycek belonged to CC, 1013 and FOX before CC killed him. Mulder belongs to Krycek. I only wish writing these fics could make me rich.

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All it had taken was a second’s hesitation to fire her gun when she and John had rushed in the hospital room, and Krycek still inhabited the same planet as she did. Later, she remembered the whole scene as a nightmarish still life, blurred wraithlike on the edges; the empty syringe and vial on Krycek’s hand, the white covers of Mulder’s bed, the removed oxygen mask, and Krycek’s dark gaze darted at her, so deep and accusatory that for one crucial second before Mulder convulsed she had wavered.

During Mulder’s abduction, she had prayed for his return countless times, hoping –no, believing– that if only he came back, everything would be as it used to be before the unnamed worry for her baby and her inescapable feelings for John; both she and Mulder busy and preoccupied with whacked out case files and conclusions she could refuse to accept. They would still be just partners, who had slept together only next door to each other, and she would know with the certainty of being his constant that after work Mulder would go home to his fish, his sofa, and the x on his window. Yet, her life had irreversibly spun to chaos, to a world of spirals, curves and open angles instead of the beautiful logic of fixed geometrical shapes.

She wished she had never found it, that damned tape. Maybe, if her mind could have been as casually swiped clean as a chalkboard. Even if her not seeing it hadn’t prevented anything from happening later, it might have made it easier for her to bear. The tag “A & I” on a battered VHS had caught her eye as she fumbled through Mulder’s drawers one lonely, sleepless night in his apartment. The movie was shot with a hand camera; the colours were pale, and the shadows bleary. The frames moved forward so slow, as if the tape had been dipped in molasses, that she was afraid the film would get stuck in the jaws of the VCR.

What got stuck was her, absolutely glued to the screen as images of young, fresh Alex Krycek stripping on Mulder’s bed flashed in front of her, and Mulder’s voice, sultry in a way she could have never imagined, dripped dirty words of unrestrained desire that slid around her body and down between her legs. She watched as Krycek shyly gripped Mulder’s hair while Mulder’s lips wrapped around his cock. She kept watching when Mulder fucked him face to face like a lover, and she couldn’t tear her eyes off when Mulder came with a shudder, devouring Krycek’s lips and throat with manic kisses. The picture was cut off, and she peered at the black and white grains, inhaling long gasps of air that was suddenly filled with dust and loneliness.

But the film rolled still. The camera panned first the walls, then the mirror in the ceiling, and she was sucked again into a dark ceremony not reserved for her. This wasn’t the same occasion. It was night now. No light streamed in through the window, and the body in bed with Mulder was mutilated. There was nothing timid or dewy in the man that moved swiftly over Mulder. He was sleek and adamant. Mulder’s expression was a rapture of anger and pleasure; his eyes were closed as if in pain, but he braced his knees wider, his hand reaching back to clutch Krycek’s hip, as his body danced in a perfect counterpoint to Krycek’s thrusts. Mulder was completely silent, but if she listened intently, she could hear a thick flow of Russian like a spellbinding incantation.

It had been exactly that image of ecstasy that had held her back. No matter how much she regretted afterwards, she didn’t shoot Krycek then. Now she never would. When she walked in on them, they were kissing at plain sight on the hallway. The door to Mulder’s apartment was ajar, and Krycek was wearing his coat as if he had just arrived or was about to leave. Though she wasn’t the least bit surprised, she nevertheless reprimanded Mulder as she assumed he would expect her to. Oddly disassociated, she studied her own full-blown indignation, and with an even greater sense of surrealism, Mulder’s reaction to her choleric string of accusations and reminders of the reasons why Mulder should not be involved with Krycek.

Mulder had kissed her after William was born, and as soon as she could, she had prodded him into sleeping with her. It had only stagnated their relationship, instead of moving it forward. There had been no bright revelation, just a dull sentiment of solidifying a friendship, with no talk of any special commitment further than what had already existed. She watched them kissing for quite a while, the way Mulder’s thumbs stroked Krycek’s cheekbones, and how Krycek had Mulder pinned against the wall by his thigh between Mulder’s legs.

Only two weeks had gone by since the night she and Mulder spent together. She let out to Mulder the frustration she knew should be there, even if she didn’t feel it. Mulder listened to her, pacing around, fists clenched, his lips in a tight line, and his eyes giving off sparks. The image of him circling the basement office with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, pondering stubbornly on some exceptional theory, crossed her mind. His reply got her startled in its abruptness, and it took her a moment before she caught on his words.

“…Our son was conceived by Immaculate Conception, and in twenty years the only thing left of the humanity may be brainwashed drones and hybrid clones...” Mulder loomed in front of her. His temper and desperation seemed to escalate by each inhalation. “On the catastrophe scale, I don’t think my tongue in Alex Krycek’s throat even registers.” If you only ever had just your tongue down his throat… She must have looked like she was feeling sick, because Mulder deflated at once. “I’m so sorry. I know you’ve been through so much. Scully, I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He saved me,” Mulder said miserably. Score 1-0 for Dana Scully, she got Mulder swallowing in guilt. She looked at the coffee table, at the couch, at the fish tank, anywhere but Mulder.

The night William was born Krycek sat beside her on the moth-eaten mattress. Later, she admitted to herself she had been unfair to him, treating him as if he had forced her to give birth to her child like some ragtag pioneer on the road, whereas she knew perfectly Krycek was there only because he would never refuse Mulder’s request to help her. By now, she had understood at least something about the two of them. There was only one thing Krycek was after in regard with Mulder, his trust. And aid her Krycek did. In fact, she discovered a whole new definition to the expression cool as cucumber when her nails dug four crescents in Krycek’s palm as she thrashed about cursing during the contractions.

“What the fuck do you know about childbirth?” she spat at him, when the periods between pain were still long enough for relief.

“I’ve seen a horse do it.” She barked a choked laugh. “And I like Discovery Channel.” There was a slight twist in the corner of his mouth. For the first time, she really studied his face, an ethereal ellipse that reflected both lethal hardness and refined sensuality. He was contemplating the oil lamp nearby as if it were a work of particularly eloquent art. Even between contractions, he kept grasping her hand. Strangely introspective, skin smoothened by the soft light; he possessed the beauty of a still Buddha statue. This man was the shadow Mulder loved and was twined with. She wanted to hate him. If she could pierce him full of needle holes, maybe she would be able to drain out what it was in him that held Mulder captive.

“I know how you feel about him, how you have always felt. I know what you want.” Her tone was snide, sprinkled with involuntary jealousy. She saw him froze for a fracture of a second, seemingly shocked, but he instantly slipped on his usual detached, impersonal mask.

“You know nothing,” he dismissed her. “Now breath.”

She could tell when Mulder came to her straight from Krycek’s company. The heady scent of him clung to Mulder’s skin demanding attention, upsetting her sleep. Those nights, Mulder never touched her. He slept on the other side of the bed, his back turned to her. The mornings after, she rubbed herself on Mulder. Krycek and she, they were exchanging marks. Even if Mulder had no clue, she knew Krycek wouldn’t miss the message. Smirking and shivering, she could picture his green eyes hunting them from the darkness, and she believed Mulder could feel him too.

But the nights after, she let John hold her, explore her mouth, and caress her heart. She allowed him to suspect she carried secrets she would some day share. It was too easy to surrender to the seduction of being cherished and revered completely, exclusively. The pure delight and exquisite gratification tied her to John probably stronger than she should have let it. He was becoming her solid tether, and sometimes, honesty beckoned her to be square with Mulder, but he had a bond of his own –a strand of leather worshipping his throat with a lover’s obsession. Again, that was a little something she wasn’t supposed to notice. Maybe, with the chaos awaiting them right outside, it wasn’t so essential to figure out the shapes their relationships morphed into, or to comprehend the formations of desire and dependency that were never steadfast, but constantly fluctuating. Maybe, it would be enough to know that somewhere in the geometry of destiny there was a sphere reserved just for them.