Title: Requiem ---Interlude: Adagio

Author: Crimsonsenya

Pairing: Mulder/Krycek

Rating: PG

Warnings: m/m slash

Summary: A scene left out from the episode Requiem.

Author's Notes: Written originally for the Slash_100 LJ community.

Disclaimer: Mulder and Krycek belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and FOX. I’m just relating what Chris didn’t dare to tell in the show.

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The blade scrapes across his jaw, splitting a path in the shaving foam, and he feels with an absolute, gut-wrenching certainty that he doesn’t want to die. He looks at his image in the cracked motel room mirror and winces at the marrow-deep weariness that has sneaked in during the past few months as lines around his eyes and hollows on his cheeks. Too soon, he will find himself confined to a bed, immobile and helpless, with IVs dripping his body full of glucose and morphine. It is a vivid picture on his mind how Scully and others will visit him in a non-descript hospital bedroom that smells of graves and bad breath. They will peer down at his glassy eyes, mourning the displayed cadaver with a fragile papyrus skin stretched over crumbling bones, and Mulder, not even capable of speech anymore, will be trapped inside his own head, screaming at the unfairness of life and death and destiny.

He doesn’t want to die. He has too many truths yet to discover, too many tasks to accomplish, too many lies to unravel. After all the times Mulder has courted the grim reaper, after all the times he has been shot and his life threatened, he is to die of cancer. There isn’t a death gruesome or bloody enough that Mulder hasn’t encountered already, either when he was a profiler or at the X-files. Mulder isn’t afraid of death, because he has seen every one of its masks; he is horrified of dying.

Alex comes into the bathroom to hang his towel on the rack next to the shower stall, as Mulder rinses the blade under the faucet. Unlike Mulder, Alex is already dressed and groomed, black suit, no tie, the upper buttons of his black shirt left teasingly unfastened. He looks roguish and cocky, in the way that has always made Mulder want to put a bullet through him, if only Mulder’s blood didn’t speed down to his cock at the same sight; just like two days before when Alex sauntered in the basement office with the information on the crashed UFO. Ironically, the only disappearance to which Alex has given an explanation to Mulder is also the one that has pissed Mulder off most. Two months, when he spent more time with Scully than ever before, and never had he felt lonelier. Now, Mulder shudders as he thinks of what a prison in Tunis might be like, and he is grateful of Alex’s presence in a way that he can only interpret as desperate.

For the past year, he has toyed countless times with the idea of telling Alex about the tumour, perhaps even asking his assistance in finding a cure. But he hasn’t told Scully, and he couldn’t tell Alex. Then without knowing it, Alex has given him one last chance. Mulder feels more than just a tad guilty, as he realizes how much worry and grief he will cause to Scully. However, he is rattled to be sure that stabbing Alex straight in the heart would hurt him less than Mulder vanishing without a trace.

“Would you kill me if I told you to?” Mulder asks flippantly. Alex’s relaxed features flash through a myriad of expressions, from astonished and incredulous to anguished, stony and feral, before moulding into a gentle resignation. He moves next to Mulder, lets his palm wander over Mulder’s, back, and neck, and then comb through his unruly hair. Alex strokes his scalp, as if he knew about the tumour that spreads itself like a crooked tree in Mulder’s brain.

“Let me come with you to the crash site,” Alex asks in return, looking at Mulder on the mirror, his face resting on Mulder’s shoulder. Mulder isn’t shocked when he understands what the lack of reply means: he would do it. Alex would do anything Mulder requested of him. He would hate it, and it would require a huge amount of persuasion, but if Mulder truly wanted it, Alex would kill him. Yet, no matter what, Alex would never do it by his own volition. It would have to be Mulder’s choice.

“No.” Even if it doesn’t brook further argument, Mulder’s tone isn’t harsh. Alex can’t be there with him, or he would never let Mulder go. They both stare at their adjoined reflections. It is as if their mirror image took on a life of its own. Disconnected, Mulder observes the lanky man who seems to become less and less lost the longer he absorbs comfort from the dark, beautiful figure tangled to him like ivy on the rugged wall of a house. It strikes him that at that very moment the man in the mirror loves the other man more deeply and fiercely than anybody else. A sudden bite on his throat sucks Mulder back into his body. Once more, his neck turns into a cradle of desire, and he is reminded of all the things Alex has done to him with sharp teeth, furious fingers, and butter-smooth leather belts, things that have bared Mulder down to his primal survival instinct. It is Alex’s gift for him that Mulder would want to cling to life, demand and steal every precious minute of it.

Alex snatches the last dry washcloth and uses it to swipe away the traces of foam from Mulder’s face, his eyes fixed determinately on Mulder’s mouth. The casual intimacy of the act fills Mulder with a terrifying tenderness as he studies the dark brushes of Alex’s lashes. He bids farewell –just in case– to Alex’s eyelids, his cheekbones, the tip of his nose, and the dip over his upper lip. To Mulder, the mole on Alex’s cheek, almost in the same spot as Mulder’s, feels like a brand of ownership. He just doesn’t know who owns whom –not anymore– when he bends over to peck it.

Mulder sits down on the edge of the bed as he pulls the socks and the shirt on. Alex stands close, leaning on the wall, dressed already in his coat, still obviously reluctant to leave. It doesn’t take Mulder by surprise when Alex abruptly crosses the distance between them, wrapping him in an almost frenzied embrace. ‘He’s telling me goodbye too, and he doesn’t even know it.’ With his unerring Mulder radar, Alex grants Mulder what he needs, yet again. Mulder revels in the warm touch and in the solid, assured masculinity. Somehow, Alex’s aftershave manages to be a blend of both fresh citrus and sultry, dry woods. Mulder has always been frighteningly hungry for love, and still completely unable to ask for it. When he finally found two people willing to bestow it on him unconditionally, he selfishly kept them both.

Alex breaks the contact first. He looks like he wants to say something, but they have never been good with words that have always failed to express enough or adequately. Instead, Alex backs to the door, gaze lingering on Mulder. Right before Alex slips silently out, it is Mulder, who speaks,

“Send that devil back to hell.”