Title: Mysteries of Joy and Sorrow and Glory Author: Shahara Zade E-mail: shahara_zade@hotmail.com Summary: Alex is having a Billy Pilgrim moment. Various alternate universes and timelines collide. Chaos and confusion in profusion. Potential squick warnings: Threesome(m/m/f) and a religious object used in a blasphemous way. References to death. Disclaimers: Not mine. No harm to 1013 or to the estate of KV intended. Spoilers: Vaguely post-Existence Notes: Dedicated to Satina & MSKipperville list-sibs for their energy and all 'round good vibes. Also, thank you to Mary, Dae, Krysa, Sue and Heather for generous beta/input/support. * * * Mysteries of Joy and Sorrow and Glory * * * Ringing like a gun shot. Must have been. So strange... it doesn't hurt at all. He is aware of motion and heat prickling deliciously against him. The window seems to sway. Warm wet and then cooling along the tops of his thighs. Breath. Tongue. He looks down. Splash of copper. Pleasant tugging at his balls. What is happening? What has been happening? Moth-wing kisses across his shoulder blades. He shivers. How can she be so many places at once? He feels a raw cry escape him, as her lips find the head of his cock. His eyelids drift shut. He should remember her name. He should remember his name. He should be somewhere else... he had been doing something... talking to someone. Kissing. Kissing over his shoulders to his neck and his ear. Kissing, even as the wondrous mouth below swallows him. His head is pulled back and lips kiss his mouth until he opens it. Tongue in his mouth. He can't think of how this started. The kiss ends and rough masculine fingers slip between his teeth. He circles them with his tongue. Hot breath at his ear. Soft man's whisper, "Alex? Please?" Who is Alex? Think... think. Fingers gently pressing into him. He doesn't think he took off his clothes, but he must be naked. He must be Alex. His balance is off. His hands in the silk of her hair as she licks and sucks...so pretty, so pretty. Hands? "Alex?" The whisper at his back - more urgent. He can only nod and spread his legs. He is kneeling on a bed. The sheets are white and the room is white and she has his cock in her mouth, and it's white streaks in his head and someone fucks him from behind, fingers in and out. and he doesn't want to be anywhere else anyway. Then she's gone and his eyes fly open. No. Wait. Her breasts jiggle slightly, nipples crinkled bright pink. He should remember her name. He is Alex, and she is... he should know. He should know where he is. Where? Or rather, *when*? He looks at them. Looks down at himself. His hands. Hands? The man leans in to kiss him again. He should know that name too. Hasn't he always known it? She is moving her lips, but the sound seems delayed, as though she were poorly dubbed. "Wait, Mulder," she says. "Let me." Motion again. Skin and window and blur. His hands. Hands? Hands. Hands on the shoulders of the man she called Mulder to steady himself. The man is Mulder. He is Alex. He must remember. Lush lower lip across his collarbone. Fumbling. Rattling. A clicking sound at his back. He turns toward the noise and she is licking her lips, almost predatory. But when she meets his gaze, she blushes, across the bridge of her nose, over her cheeks and chest and belly. In her hand, she holds a strand of beads, silver and pearl and lapis. There is a silver cross attached to one end, and the string gleams with clear fluid, and he understands now what she wants to do with them. He should remember her name. She seems hesitant, and he feels an inexplicable wave of tenderness for her, copper-pale blushing woman. Girl. He has known her forever and ever. He holds the beautiful man by the waist and twists back to catch her. To kiss her. He has to get her out... Out. Get her out, Krycek. Who is Krycek? He doesn't want her out. He wants her here. She seems uncertain as he bends to kiss her, as if it were somehow easier to put her mouth on his cock. She keeps her eyes open, and only relaxes when the man she called Mulder moves, so that he can stroke her back. "It's okay," he reassures her. "Alex, tell her. It's okay." It was okay. Would be okay if only he could... "Alex?" He is Alex. "Anything you want, " he answers finally. He must not refuse her anything. He has no right to refuse her anything. He does not remember why. Where had that come from? Where had he come from? He owes her his life. He owes her *her* life, a dozen times over. Him. He is Alex. He catches his breath as the tip of her finger enters him. Her slippery knuckle. And then the man, she called him Mulder, is kissing him again. Insistent. Hot. Squeezing and pulling at his cock again. Strange and full, he can feel the beads inside him with her fingers. The little cross swings against his thigh like a tassel. He could come now. And now. He can see the window and it is dark and he needs the release. "Please." He does not know who he is asking. It doesn't matter and then he is down. Down between Mulder's legs, and the woman is pouring clear liquid from a black bottle, slicking them and then their cocks slide together like hot kissing tongues. He falls forward on his hands. Hands? He is aching to taste Mulder's flesh. The woman applies her teeth to his lower back and his ass, seemingly playful again. As he slides and gasps and trembles with the sweetness of the sensations, she tugs on the little cross. The first bead rubs across his gland, sending tiny brilliant sparks up and down his body, and then pops free. The night outside looms, perpetually vast. It is too late. Too late and he has been estranged too long. He has woken beside an empty pillow, not being sure. He has gone away, being unloved. Uneverything. Too many lines have been crossed. The second bead passes and he can hear the guttural sounds of the man beneath him and thinks he must have had him before. He thinks he remembers evergreens and reindeer and the smell of resin and silent forest. Another of her beads pulls free. He can feel her mouth on him. Her eyelids droop heavy, as though she were drunk. He has mothered her, he knows, held her hands sadly as she begged... hurry. Hurry past these. They are so young here. They will take her... hurry past this. He is gripped in the lush heat, surging forward, in. In. Hips thrust back to meet him, rocking. They are so naive. In a matter of weeks, she will be gone. She will have been taken. Or not. She is Scully. The woman's name is Scully. The man is Mulder, and he is Alex. And this never happened. Hurry. Don't look. He must look. He shot the right woman. The woman shot him instead of her partner. He left it all, covered in oil and chicken wire. He pulled her out of the lab himself. He is somewhere underground in the dark. He is dreaming in a desert prison. They are exiles in Buenos Aires. They are all alive. They are all dead. Hurry, hurry. He pumps harder and faster. Another bead. Her lips splurge against his back. Sex. It must have been invented in this room, this white room, in its infinite variety. Never happened. None of it. Couldn't it have? Sure loved him enough. And his insanity for her, like an infection you could catch, madonnamotherpriestess. And she... In her kitchen - vegetables and glass shattering and baby on the way. Laying at the bottom of the cathedral steps, calling for her because he can't move. Bead. She had a tattoo once, a snake devouring itself. Is he the snake? Glistening dusky back. His thrusts grow savage. He is savage. Bead, bead, bead, he has lost count in the twilight delirium. Perhaps this is hell. Torment for the wicked. He suspects he has been oh so very wicked... he should remember. He will dwell here on the brink, until he remembers it all - pasts, presents, futures. Maybes and might-have-beens. The man under him climaxes and he follows and the woman beside them laughs and pulls out the beads and they fall together in a tangle of sweaty limbs. It is glorious. END Other notes: In Slaughterhouse Five, at his moment of death, Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, and is able to see and experience past, present and future simultaneously. Alex sees other universes as well as other times.