Title: Underdog

Author. Crimsonsenya

Pairing: M/K

Rating: NC17

Warnings: AU, non-safe m/m sex, substance abuse, a short description of a killed dog, an apology to Skinner fans needed, romance

Summary: Reminiscence is futile. Carpe diem is vital.

AN: For Griva, who wanted our boys to have an ending. Sequel to Those Words.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox.

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There was plenty of time for his mind to roam as he smoked outside the motel room after an unsatisfying lay with the local waitress. A dog barked somewhere, and Mulder’s chill-bitten fingers fumbled with the cigarette. The parking lot was smeared with wet piles of brown leaves and black puddles that reflected the grey whirls of clouds passing across the pale blue sky. He had just cheated on his soon-to-be-ex-wife again, but all he could think of was the twenty-first birthday of a man who still, after fifteen years, never ceased dancing around him in the bedrooms Mulder had sex in.

~

Dana had a dog named Queequeg, a yapping pooch with a dirty, maroon fur. Queer Keg, as Alex used to call him, ran around the trailer park digging holes under trailer wheels and peeing indiscriminately against every vertical surface. The only one who liked the pet was Jeffrey. He was a fourteen-year-old snotty brat, who was most likely Mulder’s brother, as everybody in the park knew Jeffrey’s father had an affair with Mulder’s mom for years because Jeffrey’s mother was in a loony bin. For a reason unknown to Mulder, Alex had taken an odd liking to the kid.

In the morning of Alex’s birthday, they had all woken up to the sounds of a gunshot, a heart-wrenching scream and a roaring engine. They found Jeffrey crying his heart out next to the tiny mutt, who lied in a pool of blood with his teeth bared and his pink tongue sticking out of what had been his muzzle.

“For Christ’s sake, that dog was his best friend,” Alex spat out, kicking an empty gas barrel. He was flaring. The sight of the dead animal –tufts of hair glued together with dark blood and splinters of white bones– made Mulder queasy. Jeffrey’s face was painted with rivulets of red too. The kid had obviously defended the dog and got beaten. The constant yelping had been nerve-wrecking, but to shoot a harmless dog in cold blood… What would Mulder do if his only friend were sprawled dead in the dust? Alex crouched next to Jeffrey and muttered something to him. Jeffrey shook his head first, swallowing tears and hiccups, but Alex went on until Jeffrey replied something to him that Mulder didn’t hear but turned Alex’s lips in a snarl.

As Alex was finally legal to drink, he bought Benchmark straight from the liquor store instead of buying it from a bootlegger. Getting hammered on cheap bourbon with Alex in Mulder’s car wasn’t very unusual for them, but they had gone to the roadhouse afterwards. For once, instead of tackling each other, they had teamed up to beat the crap out of the guy who had shot the dog. The bastard was called Skinner because of his baldness that stood out among the other bikers. Mulder had never quite liked him, as he was an arrogant, stuck up bastard. Skinner and Alex hung out with the same group of bikers. The two clashed very often too, as far as Mulder knew. But unlike when Mulder fought with Alex, Skinner and he really seemed to hate each other. Alex had gotten Skinner to the hospital a few times, and Skinner always threatened to kill him. If Mulder was honest with himself, he really despised the guy because every time Skinner met Alex, he raked him from head to toe with half-lidded eyes and a mocking, assured smirk.

“You sick fuck!” Mulder yelled. Walter’s cheekbone made a lovely crunching sound under his knuckles. Alex grabbed Skinner by his lapels and slammed him head first into the side of the pool table, before kicking the unprotected body, until the guy was coiled tightly on the floor, not even twitching anymore. Mulder stopped Alex from cracking a beer bottle on his head, not really concerned about Skinner but about somebody calling the sheriff. It would have caused too much trouble, and Mulder was already bored and horny. Instead of splitting Skinner open with jagged glass, Alex poured beer down under the collar of Skinner’s shirt, while Mulder pillaged the guy’s pockets and pulled out a bag of crystal meth, smiling victoriously.

They raced to one of their spots by the lake, Alex on his motorbike and Mulder on his Chevy that, judging by the repeated clanging coming from under the hood, would desperately need repairing the next week. Mulder didn’t mind at all; the more reasons he had to visit Alex at the garage the happier his ass was. Actually, Alex had tweaked his engines to maximum power, something that he often did to clients for money and without the consent of the garage owner. Alex had a knack for speed; fast rides with tires burning the asphalt, drugs like methadrine, pounding hardcore music, and especially, seeing how quickly he could get Mulder off. Mulder had a flair for Alex, it was all the speed he needed.

Alex dropped on his back on the ground, spread-eagled and panting, as Mulder put small shards of crystals in his pipe and lit them with his Zippo. Even if Mulder couldn’t see it in the dark, he could imagine the flush on Alex’s skin and the redness of his parted lips. The bulge on the front of his tight jeans was prominent. He got turned on by the rush of fistfights, and Mulder loved that, because he always needed to fuck afterwards too. The first inhalation of meth hit an instantaneous dose of drug straight to his brain. Mulder groaned crouching over Alex, who still wasn’t paying attention, and shotgunned smoke to him. Alex slipped his hand under Mulder’s waistband and squeezed him hard, as he pulled Mulder back down for an open-mouthed, tongue-filled, teeth-colliding kiss. Alex’s skin was always hot. Mulder peeled his clothes off, enjoying the process as if he was a Christmas parcel. Alex let out small, languid noises of pleasure, like when Mulder licked his hipbones and thighs after orgasm. Having undressed Alex naked and bundled the leather jacket under his lower back, Alex finally realized Mulder was planning on screwing him. It earned Mulder a fast-spreading lewd grin and a smug show of jerk-off.

“I hope the motherfucker won’t be able to move for a week.” Alex’s quip is a bit offbeat, when Mulder’s fingers press inside his hole. Mulder finds his prostrate, and Alex jolts. His nipples pucker in the night air, and the sensation of having control over Alex’s vibrant body is thick and intoxicating; it shoots sharp darts of lust to Mulder’s balls. He makes Alex buck again, before he asks,

“When did you start hating Skinner?” Mulder might have missed the tensing if he hadn’t been both inside and laying his free hand on Alex’s abdomen, teasingly near his rock hard cock, but deliberately not touching.

“What do you think? When I first got into the gang. You hate him too.” Alex looks at him eerily. “You gonna do me or what?”

“Yeah. I bet he would do you,” Mulder says, right at the moment he strokes Alex’s prostrate for the third time, cutting the burst of Alex’s anger with rapture. The explosion, once it busts in, seems to unfurl from some focal point inside of him, radiating in orgasmic quakes and ripples that shatter the continent of his skin and bones.

Alex sings quietly along with the car radio Mulder left on, Southern rock with broken guitars and a backbeat. He is resting against Mulder’s thighs now. Dazed, he caresses Mulder’s forearms as Mulder catches fading tremors of his bliss with the palms of his hands running over Alex’s body. He prefers Alex this way, when he can’t hide from Mulder, laying there like an open toolbox, for Mulder to take out and examine each piece individually. Alex pulls Mulder’s arms, forcing him to lean over for a kiss. Sometimes, they smoke meth just to French and make out, their lips and mouths becoming almost extra-sensory pinpoints of pleasure. Sometimes, Mulder thinks it is no fun getting high unless it involves a liplock with Alex.

Slippery with a generous amount of saliva and cum, Mulder shifts and starts pushing in. When Alex fucks him, after Mulder has sucked Alex’s cock wet, it only ever hurts in a good way. Mulder knows Alex is more skilful than he could ever hope to be. Even with girls, Mulder is sloppy and hasty. If only he could elicit the same moans and curses from Dana and the others as Alex conjures out of him. It is as if Mulder’s cock lacked all sensitivity with them. Not that Mulder has had plenty of chance to practice with Alex. He has only let Mulder take him about a dozen of times, and only when they’re stoned, when Alex is pliable, like a sleeping cat.

Mulder tries to slide forward steadily and gingerly. Alex’s legs seem to spread apart with total ease like his arms that stretch over the thin roots, weeds and pine needles. When Mulder comes to the hilt, Alex’s gaze is not fixed on Mulder but up on the stars sprinkled across the black sky. Inside him, it is tight and perfect. Mulder’s mouth feels empty and hollow, and he wishes he could blow and fuck Alex at the same time.

“You ever wanna get out of here?” Alex asks. To where? Mulder wonders to himself. The two best places in the world where there, in that forest, on top of Alex, and most likely very soon, underneath him. There is a dreamy quality about him tonight that doesn’t exhilarate Mulder. Alex is somewhere else when Mulder wants him to feel whose cock it is pulsating in him. He wants Alex right there with him, horny for Mulder grinding him. He wants Alex loose it like Mulder is about to, to curse and thrash because he wants Mulder with every cell and nerve-end. Suddenly, he gets a flash of Skinner and how his jaw clenches as he bends Alex over his motorbike and starts slamming in his luscious, rimmed ass that Mulder wants to… wants to… WANTS!

“Fuck,” Alex groans, when Mulder carelessly impales him at full force without warning, and his fingers sink into Alex’s shoulders, seeking to bruise, to hold him down.

“He did you, didn’t he? You let him do you!” Mulder shouts, pounding him faster and faster. Not caring about the angle, or even his own pleasure, he reams Alex rough and angry. Mulder doesn’t see him anymore, but a vision of redwhite haze that blurs completely the little he could discern in the dark, until Alex’s fist connects painfully with Mulder’s temple, crashing him harshly back to reality. He collapses over Alex, still embedded deep, just a couple of inches away from tilting over the edge of ecstasy and oblivion. His cock feels huge and alive, boiling hot and about to implode.

“He did me and you know I didn’t let him, you fucking son-of-a-bitch!” Alex punches him in the ribs, the strength of the strike only dulled slightly by his inconvenient position. Mulder laves the beads of sweat on the crook of Alex’s neck. Mulder is the languid cat now. Alex’s cock nudges his belly, and Mulder understands where it wants to go.

~

The cigarette butt joined the other crushed ones dotting the strip of cement that run in front of the row of closed motel room doors. Mulder didn’t bother to say goodbye to his lay. He had already slipped his wallet and keys into the pocket of his jacket, as he had silently tiptoed outside leaving her asleep in the bed. What he needed most now was a drink, and Mon’s, the old pool hall and bar was right across the street.

He was just about to light another smoke, when a gold-tinted silver Lexus SC 430, all sleek contours and promise of horse power, halted between him and the bar door. The driver stepped out of the car, a refined looking man about Mulder’s age, the mahogany hair two inches longer than shorn, charcoal suit, black overcoat, and the unfastened upper buttons of his black shirt gave him just the right amount of edge. Mulder’s body darted in motion all by itself, his arms flinging in the air for an inexplicable bear hug. The loud ugh Mulder had emitted caught the man’s attention, and he bounced back just in time, lest their noses would have plastered together, before Mulder’s reason finally got hold of his escaped instinct.

“A-alex…” Mulder felt acutely embarrassed at how he could make a single word sound like the swoon of a heroine in a cheap 50s Hollywood romance. But the sigh seemed to echo back to him as a sharp gasp, emanating from a face that zeroed in for Mulder on two staggered pupils.

“Mul-der…” Like the sole of a tap dance shoe scrubbed against the gravel, a voice impossibly low and wrung up, as if it could barely curb a wild lash of emotion. Suddenly, Mulder was aware of how underdressed he was with his windbreaker and jeans next to his old friend, or this stunning, unknown man who exuded introverted assurance and a powdery scent of freshly printed bills. As if on cue, Alex’s eyes started to wander over Mulder’s body, and what felt to Mulder, all the shortcomings age had brought to him. It was like he was thoroughly observed and examined; every detail minutely catalogued, from the stray strands of hair on Mulder’s forehead to the labyrinth of crow’s feet, the bendy line of his big nose, the geometry of his chin, a zigzag pathway across his chest, hips and what could be seen of his thighs at a close up.

“I was going to get a drink. Would you want to join me?” Mulder broke the silence before he started to squirm.

They coordinated like two pieces of check. ‘The pawn and the queen,’ Mulder thought bitterly. Alex held the door open to him in an absurd scene of politeness, and Mulder spurred them down the stairs to the basement pool hall come bar. They ordered their drinks, he a scotch and Alex, to Mulder’s great surprise, vodka on ice, and with a non-verbal agreement, they withdrew into a corner booth. The room was empty except for one patron who sat at the bar talking about the hockey game on TV with Dom, the bartender who was an old school mate of them both. He had given Alex an odd look but had deferred from commenting, evidently not recognizing him.

“It’s been a long time. What brought you here?”

“Just passing through, thought I could stay a night or two. Take a look around. Visit grandma, see if she’s still alive…”

“She is, and she still likes moonshine.” Mulder deadpanned. Alex laughed, an eruption of honest emotion, wide with teeth and a passionate spark in his eyes. Mulder felt like his body and soul soaked up with the power of it, like a parched, dry ground.

“So, what have you been up to?” Mulder asked flippantly after drinking half of his liquor in one swig to cease whatever it was that had been stirred in him.

“I own a restaurant. Three restaurants. Two restaurants and a nightclub. And you?”

“The hard ware store. I… I own it… But I’m about to sell it.” The radical plan emerged fully formed as Mulder spoke. It had only been a vague flicker in his subconscious, not even a ripening option yet. But now that his mind had made the decision by itself, he didn’t feel any loss, just light contentment. What he would do afterwards he had no idea, but he was certain he wouldn’t regret.

“I guess there’s no point owning anything if you can’t enjoy the riches. Sometimes, I think I should just sell everything too, take the money and move to California.” A derisive snort and a flash of an ironic smile.

“Where do you live now?” Mulder asked, stifling the image of how the man in front of him looked tanned and devoid of the layers of clothing he was sporting.

“Pittsburgh.”

“Oh, married?”

“No.” With a twang of pain, Mulder watched Alex clamp up. The reply was pure steel. “I was in a long relationship until recently.”

“Did she leave you?” Mulder pried bluntly, surprised at his own bold directness, at how he still reacted to everything Alex Krycek with the same guttural fierceness.

“He. Yeah, and he died in a car accident soon after we broke off. In fact, I’m on my way back from Texas and his funeral.”

The tumblers between them were two icebergs, and Mulder waited for them to melt any minute under Alex’s searing stare. His right fist laid on the table next two his vodka, knuckles white. It seemed such a natural thing to do for Mulder, to cover Alex’s hand, to brush his wrist. Alex’s attention scooted to the gesture, gawking it as if it were an otherworldly hallucination. There was no engagement ring on Mulder’s finger. Gently, he interlaced their fingers, and for a moment, they were both rapt with the warmth and odd familiarity of the connection.

It was Alex who pulled back first. He took a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, extracted one out, dangled it between his lips and lit it, in a neat display of smooth dexterity. A bit at a loss of what to do, Mulder too fished for his own cigarettes.

“Can’t find my Zippo,” he stated, flatly, knowing well he had dropped it outside the second he had spotted Alex.

Having shrugged out of his coat, Alex tossed him a matchbook.

“There. I have a couple of thousand of those to spare,” he grinned. Only now, as he flared a match, Mulder noticed the limpness of Alex’s left arm and realized he hadn’t utilized his left hand for the whole time.

“What happened to your arm?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Jail. I spent two years in prison. A bit of rough play and a self-made knife that dissected some important nerve. I go regularly to PT, but it’s mostly useless.”

He seemed so unruffled about his injure Mulder didn’t press on it.

“Prison? How did you end up so uptown?” Mulder glanced at the golden ring with a flamboyant black stone –that Mulder assumed was an onyx– Alex was wearing. And it occurred to him. “You’re still a pusher.”

“Nope. I’ve been straight since I got out, or I should probably say law-abiding. I haven’t been straight since the first time I hit you square on the jaw, and we dry-humped each other.” Uttered with a husk, smoke swirling around him, and emerald eyes thunder striking Mulder’s sky, Alex could have been the star of a gangster film, with an impeccable suit, killer looks, and the whole nine yards. Mulder felt a blow as if the first punch, as if a bucketful of ice water thrown on him, leaving him gasping for air to his suffering lungs. Alex continued.

“When I was on parole, I got a job at a night club. The owner, we called him the Brit, liked me. It was a gay bar.”

A defiant, lascivious smirk that held Mulder in its grasp, stripping him bare-naked, and he could feel grass and rough sand under his knees, sweat dripping from his back, that finely-shaped mouth doing sinful things to him, and the silken, stone-hard cock stroking him to surrender and beyond.

“It’s a long story, you wanna hear it?”

Alex was very cool and contained again. Mulder slouched back on the couch, heart drained, but other parts implacably throbbing. Not even bothering to hide his desire-filled shock, and wondering if his pride had given him a sweet kiss goodbye, he could only nod, as Alex asked for another round of drinks. He ordered Southern Comfort for Mulder but took a beer for himself.

They sat there talking, tones low and private with the air of shared secrets. Time rolled back and forth. It was like an intimate interview, or a confession you could make to your friendly priest because there was a window of wire partially obscuring both him and you. When Alex came closer to most recent incidents, Mulder could feel him drift away, a tangible fog rising between them and clouding the full gamut of Alex’s emotions. Yet, Alex breached the distance by pushing Mulder to the stage. Awkwardly at the beginning, Mulder told him about his business, his kids, very fleetingly about Dana, that the two of them were better friends when they lived apart and that they had divorce papers in. All kinds of insignificant non-sense Alex nonetheless listened and commented to.

It was as if the first time in his life that Mulder was allowed to speak. And maybe it was, he couldn’t remember the last time he had had a true conversation. Not back then when they were young. Life had happened as they went on and they were always present. Not with his wife, what would they have had to talk about anyway? Not with friends, did he even know anyone he could call a friend? There were small pauses, comfortable and relaxing like coffee breaks at work, they used for lighting cigarettes, hands chafing quickly at any made-up opportunity. Mulder caught himself flirting, subtly, then more blatantly and embarrassingly. It was the only way he could escape Alex’s intent look on him, to get Alex turn his head down for a breather by saying “Did you make a deal with the devil to look beautiful forever?” or something as cheesy but every vowel being God’s honest truth to Mulder.

The place had started to fill in, and the brawl and the clatter of the billiard balls colliding against each other began to get louder as the people returning from work chugged down their second and third beer. With a startle, they both woke up to their surroundings, and with a reluctance bordering on painful, Mulder glanced at his watch.

“Damn, I need to check out the hard ware store before closing time.” Mulder would have to drag himself away from Alex, and the distress he felt wasn’t like anything he had ever experienced. As they exited the pool hall, he was covered in cold sweat. At the walk through the bar room, Alex had morphed into the stranger again, his demeanour a statue of neutrality, all stainless golden-silver mirror surface, like his car, which door he was just opening...

“You aren’t staying?” Mulder’s voice rushed ahead desperately, before his tongue had time to tie itself in a knot. Alex stood in the angle between the car and its door.

“No. This town reminds me of way too much shit.” Alex shuffled his feet and clenched the edge of the door. The lines on his face, his long-lashed eyes, they seemed to deepen and darken, shadowing and hardening him, bringing out of him a man you didn’t mess with. An attempt to reach him would be like scratching a boulder with bitten nails. It would only crush you. But when he continued, his voice and tone betrayed him; he sounded like he was suffocating. “Look, Mulder. Brian –my boyfriend– told to me just before he left that I had to come back here, that he couldn’t be with me unless… I thought I could stay. I thought I had already…that I wouldn’t… Fuck me, I’m not a man enough to not run away.”

Mulder rewound his detailed memory of the young Alex, compared it to the man he saw in front of him, and then acknowledged how much he liked the result. Quickly, he compared himself too, what he had been, and what he had become, with a skill and ease that came from years of practicing alienated introspection and futile reminiscence, finally acknowledging how much he despised himself. Then it happened, the stinging bright awareness… God, it hurt, like hell and all its tortures, fifteen years of living like a mummy in its wraps, fifteen years of nothingness choking him like bile! The sadness Alex reflected to him was so raw and still so fresh, as that one day fifteen years ago, that Mulder finally knew what it was to be stabbed repeatedly, and his heart was just about to split up.

“Mulder. Are you alright?” Alex was concerned, standing already one step closer to him, and for a while, Mulder thought too that he might get a cardiac arrest. Like a faint lady, he pressed his hand on his chest.

“Alex, I… I…” his tongue was entangled and his whole body shaking under the shockwave of the mysterious, inexplicable, joyous sensation that started flooding into him. Something seemed to shift in Alex too, creating room for understanding, and an unexpected ray of soft mirth lit his whole face. Suddenly, Mulder wanted to volunteer to be hypnotised by the magician, to bask in that spotlight with him. Alex captured his gaze for moment reaching for infinity, as if a lingering kiss given from the distance, before gluing in on Mulder’s lips with a sultry, knowing smile.

“Foxy, your mouth still looks like it was only made to be fucked by me.”

And Alex disappeared, driving off in his car, leaving him standing outside the pool hall, one foot on the sidewalk and the other on the road, not sure if he should be grateful or furious that he wasn’t wearing sneakers to run after the Lexus. He could use another scotch and maybe a shot or two of tequila to go with it, but he had business to attend to. When Mulder arrived at the store two blocks down the road, he glanced at the matchbook he was clutching in his hand. Carefully, he skimmed the club logo with his thumb. ‘Ratcave’ it declared boldly in black, right above a phone number. Slowly but persistently, a smile crept on his face. It seemed Mulder would be selling his house too. The dog in the distance barked three times and then shut up.