Do the Dew

by Romana Clef

When Alex opened the car door, Marita rearranged her long limbs and took the cans from his hand.  After three months of recovery, she was still pale and spider-leg thin.  She wore sunglasses, even though the sun was setting behind them and the glare was gone from the road.

She held the cans of Diet Mountain Dew well away from her, and scrutinized them with a frown on her face.

"What is this?"

"It's all the soda machine had, that's what it is."

She very carefully opened her can, and lifted up her sunglasses for a moment to peer into the opening and inspect it.

"It looks like alien waste products."

"Tastes like it, too, but it's loaded with caffeine."  He clinked their cans together -- "Za tvoe zdorovye!" -- and took a swig.

Once they got back on the main road, he was able to hold his can of soda in his good hand, using his dead arm to steer the wheel.  It was the very first skill he had learned in rehab, after the basics of personal care.  After all, what good is a spy who's limited to automatic transmission?

Marita stretched out to reach behind his seat, rifling through their bag of groceries.  She started putting sandwiches together with the supplies she had retrieved.  Peanut butter again.

"I hate peanut butter."

"If you'd steal us a cooler, we could have bologna instead."

He choked down the unpalatable meal, and they drove on in silence until they were near their destination.

"We ought to go to them separately.  If we go talk to one first, our friends are sure to show up at the apartment of the other one."

"I'll flip you for Mulder," Marita said.

"Oh come on, can't I have Mulder?" he whined.

"I don't know -- can you?"

Her voice was so toneless that he wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a joke or not.  She lifted her hips and dug a quarter out of the pocket of her jeans.

"You call," she said as she flipped.

"Heads."

"Tails.  I get Mulder."

"Why do you want Mulder, anyway?"

"I don't know.  I like him."

End of conversation.  Shortly they arrived at Mulder's building.  Marita unfolded her denim-clad legs and stepped out of the car. "If I give you until dawn, would that be long enough?" he asked.

He thought that she had missed the leer and the eyebrow waggle that went with the question, but maybe one of those consortium experiments had given her eyes in the back of her head.  "He's not going to sleep with me, Alex.  But yes, dawn would be fine."

She left.

He thought about calling her back and asking what, exactly, she planned on doing until dawn if she wasn't going to be seducing Mulder, but he let it go.  Considering that she had spent a year at the mercy of the old men and their doctors, having every last secret pried out of her body and soul, the least he could do was let her preserve a few little mysteries.

So, with a sigh, he headed off to Scully's.  The woman was an unappealing combination of stubborn bulldog and prim librarian.  Make that short, prim librarian.  Short, prim, pedantic librarian.  Gutsy as all hell and kinda cute, he would grant that, but still… he sincerely hoped that this was the last time he would have to break into her tedious little apartment.

Alex hated being reminded of his failures.  Visiting this apartment, he felt like a dog being housebroken -- the universe had him by the scruff of the neck and was rubbing his nose in the mess he'd left on the floor.  (The blood stains, in fact, could still be made out).

Now, the way things were turning out, the human race was going to thank him in the end for failing to kill Dana Scully (if there were any justice in the world -- ha -- the human race would thank him for a lot of things).  The failure wasn't the making of that mistake.  His failure was in being so enormously mistaken.  He didn't want to have anything to do with the Alex Krycek he saw in this apartment -- a callow young thug playing hotshot secret agent, eager to believe all the flattering lies told by those saggy, has-been, old cocksuckers.

He was obviously being haunted by the ghost of his own idiocy, because how else could you explain how he came to be standing there, mooning over the spot where Scully's sister had died, when the Special Agent herself was rattling her keys on the other side of the door?  Assaulting her in the open doorway would be an unacceptable risk, so he had about three seconds to find a hiding place, from whence he would emerge later in the evening when Scully was off her guard.

The front closet was his best option.  He had just finished pulling the door almost closed when she stepped into the apartment.  He hoped for both their sakes that she wasn't so prim that she'd need to hang up her overcoat the second she got home.  He wiggled the arm that held his gun, just a fraction of an inch, to make sure that it wasn't caught up in her coats.  Luckily, she just tossed her coat over the back of the sofa.

What she did next alarmed him almost as much as a frontal assault on his hiding place would have.  She began to strip.  She walked from room to room, shedding items of clothing, and not until she disappeared into the bathroom wearing nothing but stockings and a partially buttoned blouse did he begin to breath again.  Spying on someone when they're naked is not the thing to do to establish trust.  For example, interrupting her shower right now would be great from a practical standpoint -- no danger to him other than getting a little damp, since she was probably sans weapon and cell phone -- but it would be in very poor taste and would not leave her disposed to listen to him.

No, his best bet was to wait until she fell asleep, and then wake her up.  She'd be too confused to ask him how long he'd been there.  In the meantime, as long as the water was running, he could move around a little and make himself more comfortable.  There was some sort of large canister in back; he shifted it forward and sat on it, angling himself so that he could see as much of the room as possible, and widening the crack just a little.

When Scully emerged from the bathroom, his world ended, and a strange new one began.

She was naked, except for a red silk robe that hung from her shoulders, untied.

She was impossibly beautiful.

No, impossibly sensual.  Sexual.  She stood in a circle of lamplight and reached up to finish drying her hair, and each movement changed the play of light and shadow on her fully-revealed body, highlighting a new curve or line.

Her body was lush, yet there was obvious strength beneath the extravagant, perfect roundness.  Her skin gleamed in the palest of colors.  He could make out a scar, but even that was pale; the swirl it made across the ivory curve of her belly was just ripples in water.  The contrast of her rose-red nipples was almost shocking.  And the warm brown curls between her legs… they were like mink, like the pelt of an animal.  They glinted with copper in the light.

Would it feel like mink, if he touched her there?  Against his will, his fascination was growing.

An image began to form in his mind: his lips, his nose and chin, lightly grazing her shower-damp skin, down to where the curls began.  And then he would just breathe, inhale and exhale with great deliberation, just a millimeter away from her, almost touching her.  He pictured himself reaching up a little higher, nuzzling across her belly and sinking his teeth into the curve where waist met hip, making her gasp…

When she moved, it didn't break the spell.  She left the circle of light, but her body still gleamed like a candle.  Out of the light, the silk that swirled around her was black-red like old blood.  She hypnotized him with the sway of her hips as she walked, and with the almost imperceptible sway of her ripe breasts.  He could feel the weight of her breasts against his hands, feel the satin skin of the undersides and the swell of the outside curves, feel the resistance as he pushed them together and up --

-- But the connection was broken when she moved out of sight, into the kitchen.  He sat in the dark closet, very confused and uncomfortably aroused.

Every double (or triple) agent should learn to use biofeedback.  The ability to control one's autonomic reactions comes in handy in so many surprising ways.  He got his breathing and heart rate under control pretty easily, but his blood pressure was a lost cause, because all his blood seemed to have fled irretrievably to his cock and he was going to be stuck with a permanent erection.

He tried to distract himself with questions, like: Where was Dana Scully?  Who took her?  Who was this red-headed sexpot left in her place?  Or, a more realistic (and less arousing) question: How were they managing to lace his water with LSD, when he was subsisting entirely on drinks bought from soda machines and convenience stores?  Marita?  Unlikely…

Okay, how about some mental concentration exercises, instead.  Try to identify each sound you hear from the kitchen.

Refrigerator opening.

Crisper drawer opening.

Plastic rustling.

Jar being opened.

Something liquidy being stirred.

Gas burner turning on.

There, it was working.  He could feel his focus sharpening, settling into a zen state of readiness for action.  (As opposed to a stiff and engorged state of readiness for action…)

Picture her in a navy blue suit.  With all the buttons buttoned.  And that sour look on her face.

Soon she returned to his field of view.  She had (fortunately?  unfortunately?) tied her robe.  Carrying a mug of something hot, she curled up in the armchair across the room; he had to carefully crane his neck to see her.  She didn't drink her tea, though.  She set it down and her eyes started to drift closed.

He tried to keep his thoughts on business, honestly he did.  He mentally rehearsed the several different ways in which he could convey to Miss Skepticism '99 (and '98 and '97…) the latest absurd yet crucial news from the alien invasion conspiracy front.  But as he stared at her across the length of the near-quiet apartment, he was lulled into dangerous relaxation by the ambient hum of civilization and home: the distant dishwashers, TV sets, passing cars…

And he could not banish from his mind the other Scully he had seen.

Damn it, couldn't a guy take a break from single-handedly saving humanity, to enjoy the scenery for a while?

Yes, he could.

In his mind, this is how it worked out: He arose and went to her.  She looked up with half-lidded eyes, but looked away without protest.  He grabbed the curve of her ass with both his hands (oh yes, both his hands) and pulled her to the edge of the seat.  He leaned her back, untied the robe, and bared her.

Good, but… He lifted one of her legs and draped it over the arm of the chair, so every secret part of her was open to view, so he could take her with his eyes.  Perfect.

She retained her elegance even in that wanton sprawl.  God, she was fucking amazing.  The whole world should see her like this.  Someone should paint her, capture her in impressionist swirls of lurid crimson and near-dead white, with a few strokes of pink to hint at the rosy lips of her sex, peeking out from --

-- His voyeuristic pleasure was interrupted when she lifted her small hand to his chin and brought his gaze to hers.  Fuck, the mean blue power of her eyes was like a steel-toed kick.  How did Mulder ever look her in the eye?  That look was beyond challenging, it was almost contemptuous, dismissive…

Of course.  That's because Scully wasn't looking for an art critic.  She was looking for a man.

He leaned forward and she rose up and their kiss was ferocious.  She had sharp little teeth and she knew how to use them.  He let her abuse his lower lip as he gasped their mingled breaths, but soon he couldn't stifle the growl in his chest any longer and he lunged and attacked her mouth.  He alternated between bruising kisses outside and velvet strokes inside and he drank in her taste.

Fuck, how did he get so frantic so fast?  When was the last time that he wanted to grind and whine and explode and die from it?  He had to make her feel the same way.  He shoved the robe off her shoulders and pulled her naked body against him, clutching her anywhere he could reach, with punishing strength.  When he started kissing down the side of her neck, he was rewarded with a sharp moan and the feel of her fingers curling through his hair.  With an intake of breath, she was about to say something --

-- When she got up and started to walk toward the closet.  The real Scully.  She was walking right at him.

His heart was hammering a path out between his ribs.  She was coming closer.  He was as panicked as the first time he killed a man.  The creaks of the floorboards were little gunshots.

He was staring with eyes so wide no one would be able to close them even after she killed him -- how could she not see the glint of light reflected back?  She was only four feet away.

Wait a minute.

He was the one with the gun.

He gripped the gun tighter in his sweat-slick hand.  He felt even sicker.

She stopped and bent down.  She was just getting something out of her bag, at the foot of the couch.  But you don't shake a panic like that.  No, she was going for her weapon.

Her back was mostly to him; her face was hid by her hair.  All he could do was try to read her movements, absorb every tug and shift and gesture.  He was practically inside her skin.

He raised his gun as far as he could without nudging the door.

Someone in his head was cursing and praying too loud.  Don't.  Don't.  Don't.  Don't want to kill you, don't want the shredded flesh and the blood-smeared teeth, lights out, all gone to hell, don't make me don't make me don't turn around don't --

-- It was her laptop.  She never looked back at the closet.  She set it up on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen.

Slowly, very slowly, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against the door jamb.  He was gulping air through his open mouth, counting on the kitchen noises to drown out the sound of his breaths.  She had been so close, the smell of her soap and shampoo carried into the closet.  He was breathing her.

He slumped even lower, and the gun almost fell from his shaking hand.

When she came back with her dinner and sat in front of the laptop, it was all he could do raise his head a little and stare at her, dazed.  The little sounds of her life washed over him, comforting, soothing.  The tapping of the keyboard.  Little clinks of silverware on china.  A rustling and a sigh as she ran her fingers through the still-drying locks of her hair.

The crazy thing was, it made him feel at home here.  He could just open the door and give a big stretch and walk over to her.  She would turn around, no surprise on her face, and say "Alex," in that serious voice of hers.  And he'd say, "Hey."  Just "Hey."

He'd spent a lot of time underground and on the run, but he hadn't completely lost touch with normalcy.  To most normal people, helping abduct someone, helping murder their sister, spying on them, and fantasizing about them naked, did not count as a relationship.  To them, that's not intimacy.

Most normal people are morons.

They go on dates and make conversation about college and work, stories so boring they even bore themselves; they get drunk, if they're lucky they get in someone's pants, and they think that's a real connection.  Most normal people could go straight to hell spewing black oil from all their orifices and he'd kick them in the ass to speed their way.

Let's be honest, Alex.  Stubborn and prim is not the issue.  That's not the reason you avoid her, won't even look at her if Mulder brings her around.

Humiliation is the issue, the sick, infuriating humiliation you feel when you owe someone everything and they owe you nothing.

Look at her, you're nothing to her, just another criminal.  She doesn't even care enough to want to hit you -- not like Mulder does.  She would never guess that when you look at her, you see the key to your entire fucking misspent life.

If she weren't right there in front of him, he would have laughed bitterly at himself for this piece of cheap psychoanalysis and moved on to something more useful.  But there was nothing more useful to do, and he couldn't tear his eyes or his thoughts away from her if he tried.

That woman, sitting there reading her field notes and wiping pasta sauce off her chin, was all that was left of his conscience.  He could go for months without thinking about his vilest, most stupid acts and his sickening near-misses -- the past is past, right?  When he saw her, he remembered them all.  And he could do what needed to be done in the insane secret war they were all fighting because he didn't spend too much time worrying about the stakes.  But when he saw her, he remembered everything they had to lose.  Every good, beautiful, living human thing.

It was better not to see her.

Contrary to what some people might suspect, Alex Krycek hadn't been grown in a vat.  He had had an actual childhood, full of beautiful human things.  Back then his conscience had been a part of him, not something that resided in a small red-headed woman from half a world away.

Back in that childhood, he had visited a friend's dacha.  It wasn't one of the modern ones where the big party bosses relaxed in stolen luxury, it was just a modest summer house that had stood in its own glade in the pine forest for two centuries or so.

In among the shabby 1960's furnishings, there were things that dated back to the days of the czars -- a fragile writing desk, white-washed and carved with scrolls; an oil painting of peasants harvesting grain, hanging in a gilded frame.  But the most timeless thing was the sunlight.  It poured through the old-fashioned windows, so thick and weighty that it held you still.  In late afternoon the sun owned the house.  He remembered sitting on the sun-warmed wooden floor watching the slow progress of dust motes in the heavy golden rays; the dust was like the years there, creeping by but never disappearing, just swirling and accumulating.

That was a place where he could see Scully.

All he had to do was walk to the back windows, face the sun full on, close his eyes, and let go.  The sun could do anything there.  When he turned around and opened his eyes, she would be there -- standing right at the line where sunlight turned to shade, wearing her red silk robe and a skeptical expression, arms crossed on her chest.

And there she was now.  She studied him warily as he approached, but she held back her questions long enough for him to reach out, touch her face, lean down, and kiss her.  He kissed all her questions and prudent objections away, kissing them right out of her mouth, wiping them off her soft lips.

She was slowly beginning to melt in the sunlight.  First her lips parted wider and there was a caress of tongues.  Then she unfolded one arm and rested her hand on his chest.  Slowly they continued to approach each other, adding one point of contact and intimacy after another, until he enfolded her in a crushing embrace and she strained upwards, trying to kiss him even harder, get even closer.

When they finally broke off the embrace, she stepped back.  It looked like she really wanted to cross her arms again.

"Alex?"

"Hey."

She stared frankly into his eyes, weighing and measuring.  He reached out to caress her face, running his thumb so lightly over her lips, across her jawline and cheekbone, over her ear, until she finally closed her eyes and sighed.

That one sound was all it took to unleash his desire.  He thrust his hands under the shoulders of her robe, gripping her shoulders, digging into the flesh to feel the living bone beneath.  His hands swept over the collarbone on each side, but before he could go lower, her hands gripped his wrists.

But she wasn't backing away.  She just wanted her turn.  He left his hands where they were and felt her touch his face the way he'd touched hers.  He turned a little to kiss her palm, and the need that flared in her eyes was so fierce that he was glad and afraid.

They embraced again, but with a different purpose.  Their hips met first, before their arms closed or their lips locked.  He lifted her up off the floor, clutching her to him and grinding his cock against the spot where she wanted it most.  She moaned into his mouth and their kisses became frenzied.

When he set her down, she started to push his shirt up.  He stripped off his shirt and went to his knees before her, untying her robe.  It became a contest to see who could caress who, and after he finally kissed that scar he'd discovered earlier, and tasted her breasts, he let her win.  He watched her hands travel up from his waist and across his chest.  After so many years without sun, under his shirt his skin was almost as pale as hers.  The sun uncovered every hidden thing, turning each fine hair on their bodies to gold or bronze, and glowing through their pale flesh to show the veins beneath.

She raised his arms and he did as she asked, folding them behind his head.  She knelt, too, just inches away from him.  Her hot mouth trailed down the sensitive skin under his arms, leaving him gasping and shuddering.  He could smell her, the soap he remembered from earlier, mixed with dust and sex.  When her breasts brushed against his chest he lost it; he closed the space between them, thrusting his aching cock against her.

It was too much.  He grabbed her and lifted her to her feet, leading her by the hand as he left the room.

"Where are we going?"

"Out."

Through the kitchen, through the back door, and into the glade.  Beyond the vegetable garden, the small meadow was a tangle of wildflowers, dense and alive under the ageless sun.

When he stripped Scully's robe from her, the heavy breeze almost took it away.

"My robe!"

She was laughing, with the wind blowing her hair in her face, naked in the sun.  She was almost too bright to look upon.  She stepped into the circle of his arms and started unbuttoning his jeans.  In a few moments they were both naked and she took his rigid cock in her hand. He was so overwhelmed with lust and need he could barely stand to watch as Dana Scully palmed the head of his cock with one hand and stroked long strokes up and down the shaft with the other.

No more waiting.  He grabbed their small pile of clothes and spread them out on a patch of the meadow grass.  She was clinging to him as he moved, her body brushing his in a thousand places.  As hot as she was, her touch still felt cool compared to the sun.  They kissed again, hungry wet kisses, and after a moment spent pressed against each other in utter nakedness, they collapsed.  The grass was so deep that the spot where they lay became a nest, fragrant with earth and dewy green, shielded a bit from the blinding sun.

She was moaning in his ear, almost like crying, and he touched her sex for the first time, stroking it roughly.  Her hips were bucking and his matched hers in rhythm, even though they weren't joined yet.  They were lying on their sides; his cock grazed against her thigh, her belly, the nest of her hair, until he finally took hold of her ass, holding her still and positioning her.

She reached between them to guide his entry, and as he slipped into the wet tightness of her body he buried his face in her hair, trying pointlessly to stifle his own moans.  The overwhelming relief and the overwhelming urge combined to paralyze him for a moment, leaving it to her to wriggle a little closer to him, taking in the last inch and sealing them together.

Oh god.  Oh fuck.  The urge took over and he rolled her beneath him. He tried not to crush her but she pulled him down.  He thrust again and again, the pleasure almost painful at the end of each stroke, and she pressed back, making the strokes even harder.  With fevered bites and kisses she was seeking his mouth.  He gave it to her, devouring her as his hips worked faster and faster until he came, crying out lost and wordless.

Alex opened his eyes.  Scully wasn't on the couch anymore, but by this point he was in so much pain that it would be a relief for her to yank the door open and blow his head off.  His muscles were cramped from sitting motionless, and his cock and balls were a throbbing pain in the tight constraint of his jeans.

What the hell, he owed her some suffering.  If he really wanted the arousal to go away, he could always return to one of those images from before -- like Scully with blood welling up from her mouth, smearing her lips and teeth, pooling beneath her head, dying from a gunshot wound by his hand.

That would do it.

Besides, while most of his mind had been indulging in painful, impossible fantasies, the rest of his mind had correctly identified that she was in the kitchen washing dishes.  Soon she went to the bathroom, and then went to bed.

He waited for an hour or so, sitting there drained of all thought and feeling.  He kept one ear attuned for the sound of anyone trying the door or windows, but mostly he just drifted.

Eventually, he rose.  After a lifetime of stealth, he could move silently even with stiff, cramped muscles, and his eyes were long since dark-adapted.  He waited on the threshhold of her bedroom and watched her breathing: either asleep, or a better actress than he gave her credit for.  He crept closer, eyes on the gun on her nightstand. Once he was close enough, he studied her instead.  His hand moved on its own toward the gun, and he watched the rise and fall of her chest for any sign of waking.  He pocketed the gun.

With that taken care of, he carefully knelt by the bed.  He could see her face in the faint light that came through the blinds.  He brought his living hand up to her face, and as he lowered it to her mouth, he let himself imagine for a moment that it would feel like a kiss.

Instead, the instant that her mouth was covered, he threw his upper body over hers to keep her from struggling.  Struggle she did, her small body flailing under his.

"Ssh, Scully, it's just me."

His face was only inches from hers.  Once she figured out what was going on, she stared back at him, blue eyes angry, cold, and unafraid, waiting for him to say something.

"Hey."

End

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