Cautions:
Suffering Skinner, brutal Alex, scat (mentioned but not dwelt upon or described)
This was supposed to be a straightforward Skinner/Krycek, but Doggett showed up and wouldn't leave. Sorry.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex had finally achieved his goal in life. All the years he'd been an assassin and a spy he'd fantasized about a regular job with a regular life, and now he finally had one, or something like it. Alex Krycek had become a stockbroker. He'd had to destroy the Consortium in order to do so, turning state's evidence and wisely implicating several highly placed government officials in the process. By the time hearings convened, these formerly important officials were begging their pet senators to return their calls. Favors were called in right and left, but to no avail. Rumors were flying around congress, and anything connected to the Consortium was suddenly political poison. One by one, the officials were called before a Senate subcommittee to testify. The stories they told were alarmingly similar, and they set the stage for Alex's further testimony. He was the final nail in the Consortium's coffin--he had proof of attempts at alien invasion, and he had pictures.

The senators gaped at the evidence he laid before them, solemnly thanked him for his loyalty to his government, forbore to charge him with his many crimes--as promised in exchange for his testimony--then asked him to please go away and never come back.

In certain circles he was briefly famous, and he took advantage of it to extort himself a job like regular citizens had. Strings were pulled and Alex was hired as a junior stockbroker trainee in a brokerage firm in Alexandria. He learned the job quickly, discovering that he was, in essence, a salesman to the rich and smug.

He loved it. He'd always been good at manipulating people, so he sold a lot of stock. His bosses smiled at him.

Every time he had to leave his cubicle, he pasted on an ingratiating smile and reminded himself that this was how normal people did it. He learned enough about the Redskins and the Ravens to make knowledgeable small talk about the local teams. Whenever he sat in meetings, he made sure he looked attentive and eager. He intimidated the few assholes who tried to push him around. It was an okay life.

He paid taxes, worked out in a gym, and whacked off to pictures of pretty women and handsome men. He reveled in his ability to be a regular person for once in his life, and while he didn't know how long it would last, he intended to enjoy himself. Alex Krycek would be dull and ordinary for as long as he could stretch it out.

For all his sincere attempts at normality, however, he did indulge one secret vice: Alex Krycek, former assassin and spy, spent his weekends crashing funerals. No one ever challenged him, and his behavior was always excruciatingly perfect, with the slight exception of a triumphant smirk that occasionally crossed his face. It was, in small part, a type of penance for all the bodies he was responsible for--bodies that, thanks to his expertise, would never be found. He couldn't take back what he'd done, but sometimes he grafted himself onto the somber propriety of these groups of strangers and offered his victims a silent apology for the ignominious disposal of their corpses.

For the most part, though, he just gloated. He was alive, above the ground, still living and breathing, and every time he walked away from a grave site, he affirmed the reality of an Alex Krycek who'd finally won on his own terms.

And truth to tell, he loved fooling the mourners. There was no way around it. It was just too enjoyable, and he couldn't help being a little bit wicked, not for anything. He savored every bit of misguided empathy.

When a wizened old lady patted his arm, he looked down at her and smiled.

"You're Millicent's oldest, aren't you?"

"No Ma'am, I'm here with Miss Wyngate." There was no Miss Wyngate, nor ever had been.

"Oh... yes." The old lady's eyes filled with confusion, but then she remembered her manners. "Well, thank you for coming. Maxine would have appreciated it."

"Of course, Ma'am."

Or: "Aren't you that little white boy who used to come by the house and play pinochle?"

"No Ma'am. I was on the varsity team." Pulling it out of thin air. "I'm just here to say I'm very sorry for your loss."

Or: "Thank you for coming. I was afraid this might be awkward. So many of his ex-boyfriends showed up that I just knew there would be a catfight."

Artfully letting his eyes fill with tears, voice breaking, Alex shook his head. "Doug was a total bastard to me, but I never... I always thought maybe..."

The current boyfriend's eyes filled with sympathy, and a somewhat more earthy emotion. "Sometimes things just aren't meant to be," he said gently. He gave Alex a quick hug. "Listen... take my number. Maybe we can talk."

He would gloat on the ride home, pleased with how well he'd blended in with regular citizens. Sometimes he mocked himself for being such a pitiful son-of-a-bitch that he had to borrow other people's emotional connections because he had none of his own. Usually though, he just marveled at how completely peculiar he was, and just how wonderfully easy it was to fool people.

Every Friday he stuffed himself silly at a Middle-Eastern restaurant across the street from his apartment. Their dancers were two thick-bodied women who shimmied fully clothed to unpretentious music, and he loved to watch them shake their stuff. The Palestinian chef and her Syrian husband both smiled when he came in. He smiled back, and ate falafel, hommous, shashouky, lamajoon, keshkeg--in fact, anything they put in front of him. They thought he was another lost American soul taking comfort in their food and their music, so that was how they treated him. They were right, actually, but he didn't really like to admit it. His Friday nights out were the extent of his social life, but, as he reminded himself, it beat being dead.

Such was his state of affairs when John Doggett knocked on his door one Saturday evening. As usual, Doggett got straight to the point.

"I'm here because A.D. Skinner needs your help."

Alex didn't have to give it a second thought. "Screw him. Screw you too."

"I figured you'd say that. That's why I came prepared to make a deal with you. Help Skinner and I'll help you find a new place to live. A place where you can start over."

"I have started over. And I'm not going anywhere."

"I know you, Krycek. Out in the open like this you gotta be looking over your shoulder every minute."

Alex shrugged. "Nope."

A look of total disgust crossed Doggett's face. "This is suicidal. Deliberately suicidal. You and I both know there's contracts out on you. And instead of hiding yourself like a normal person, you're sitting right here out in the open, waiting for them to do what you don't have the nerve to do for yourself."

The words shook Alex to his core. It stung him that Doggett could see through him so easily, but the truth was undeniable. He hadn't really decided to kill himself. He just wanted as regular a life as he could have for as much time as he had left. He wasn't going to admit that to Doggett, though. He changed the subject.

"The last time I tried to help Skinner he shot me in the head."

"He shot some poor clone of you, you mean."

"He thought he was shooting me. He intended to shoot me. And now you want me to help him. Let him rot in hell."

"He already is. Those nanocytes you infected him with are destroying his nerve endings. They're affecting his brain. If you don't help him, the doctors say he'll die of something like leprosy, but he's gonna get dementia first. Something about the synapses in his brain not being able to communicate with one another."

He paused to let that sink in. "Even if he did shoot you, that's no kind of way for a man to die. Give him back his dignity."

"I never took his dignity."

"He's in Depends, for Christ's sake."

Krycek smirked. "The great Walter Skinner shits himself. He told you this? I bet he stinks too."

"He didn't tell me. I found out."

Krycek just raised an amused eyebrow.

Doggett shot him an expression of disgust. "I don't see how you can sleep nights," he said, and stormed off in a huff.

~*~*~*~*~*~

'Well,' Walter said to himself, 'I'm dying. Again.' He faced it head-on, like he'd faced everything else in his life, and he didn't intend to just give up on himself, but sometimes it was hard. He felt especially betrayed by his body's inability to ignore the nanocytes and just keep going. He'd thrown out three pairs of briefs, then finally, ashamed, face burning, waited until midnight to drive over to the next county to buy his first bag of adult diapers. He'd almost decided to end it in the parking lot, but the random kindness of the grocery clerk saved his life.

She looked up and smiled sympathetically. "For your dad?"

'Well, good,' he thought. 'Maybe I don't have to shoot myself right away.'

The incontinent briefs sat in the bottom of his closet staring at him reproachfully, but he couldn't bring himself to put them in his underwear drawer with his normal clothing. Each morning he furtively swiped a pair and put them on. Each evening he cleaned himself in a state of absolute revulsion and rage, but since he could not give outlet to his emotions he deadened them, steadily and inexorably, until it was safe to say he felt nothing at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The night of Doggett's visit, Krycek slept just fine, but at three in the morning he woke up and called a number he'd long since committed to memory.

"Skinner," a sleepy voice answered.

"Do you know why I'm saying yes, you diseased son of a whore. Because if I help you, you'll owe me for the rest of your life. And knowing that you had to turn to me for your very existence will kill you just as surely as the nanobots would have."

"Go fuck yourself, Krycek." But the words held no venom, only weariness.

"Oh, and there's a condition. I do this with you every step of the way. I'm not just handing over information and letting you skate away with a cure."

"You want to see me humiliated. You sick son of a bitch."

"That's me, Walter. If you want me to help you, meet me downstairs at Byrd Towers tomorrow morning at 8:00."

He slammed the phone down in Skinner's ear, turned over and fell right back to sleep again.

The next morning, knowing that Skinner, Doggett in tow, was downstairs waiting for him, Krycek lounged over his breakfast of leftover fast food from the night before. He pointed the remote at the TV and watched Mass for Shut-ins. It was kind of boring, but he entertained himself by placing bets on how many choirboys the priests had sucked off over the years.

Finally, when he was a good half-hour later than he said he'd be, he sauntered down to the elevator. When the door opened he found himself face to face with Skinner and Doggett, both looking very peeved. Alex smirked at their irritated expressions.

"Top of the morning, gents."

Neither deigned to answer him. When they got down to the parking lot, Skinner tried to take over. "We'll go in my car."

Alex ignored him. He walked over to his own car, got in, and waited for them to get the message. Finally, glaring daggers, Skinner got in the front seat and Doggett got in the back.

Alex took a moment to squint at Skinner appraisingly. "You know, you don't look too good. You ever think about a vacation?"

Skinner didn't answer. He still took up more than his share of space, but his bearing did not intimidate--not anymore. There was tension in his shoulders, and an awkwardness to his stance that caused his clothes to hang askew. It was a subtle effect, but once he'd noticed it, Krycek couldn't help but see a sick, dying man. As he had been once. He felt a moment's regret. Skinner had, in his own way, been beautiful. Now, his extravagant masculinity was fading in the wake of his illness, and Alex couldn't help but feel a pang of loss.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alexandria to Gaithersburg was a quick trip on the GW Parkway, an unpleasant but brief Sunday morning stretch on 495, then a straight shot up Interstate 270. There was no need to go into D.C., but it didn't occur to Doggett to wonder why Krycek was taking them through town in such a roundabout way until he realized Krycek didn't do anything without a reason. They'd headed up North Capitol Street, cut over to South Dakota Avenue, inched through Takoma Park, followed traffic up Georgia Avenue, and were riding through Aspen Hill when Doggett concluded that anyone trying to follow them would have given up in frustration by now.

Eventually Doggett realized that their ride out to Gaithersburg had taken them past several cemeteries. He assumed it was a deliberate swipe at Skinner and sat seething in the back seat. No one deserved this.

~*~*~*~*~*~

At Aspen Hill Cemetery Alex hit paydirt. A long cortege was filing in just as he rode past, and he quickly turned the car around. He pulled in behind the last car and followed it to the grave site.

"Wait for me here," he ordered.

He could almost see Skinner and Doggett straining not to exchange mystified glances. No matter. He got out and followed the other mourners. This group consisted of good, solid, working-class Catholics. Too much polyester; too many worn-out women; too much back-against-the-wall resentment from the men. They'd scrimped and saved to put on this last, big show, and for what? Alex adjusted his attitude accordingly, unconsciously imitating the set of the shoulders, the downward tilt of the head, the grim determination to take this among the many other unfair blows life dealt.

When the priest started talking, he gave himself points for being proved right. Even though Matthew Sullivan did not live a life filled with earthly pleasures, the priest said, the love of his family had sustained him through many a difficult time. When the priest started to talk about how little Matty junior, whose life was tragically cut short by illness at the tender age of twelve, was waiting in heaven for his father, Krycek started to smirk. He couldn't help himself. He thought of stupid Matthew Sullivan, working some scut job, trying to raise too many children on too little money, and failing at it. Thought of how Matthew would have blamed God, or his wife, or bad luck, or an evil boss for all his troubles and never once tried to fight his way clear of them. Thought of the way he'd probably died--defeated and confused and helpless.

Krycek looked over at the widow. 'If I ever get a wife and then die on her, she'd better be fucking the mailman over my rotting corpse,' he decided. He would never be responsible for making any woman look that ground down.

When the service ended, Alex found himself accosted by one of Matthew Sullivan's truculent sons.

He looked down his nose at the man. "We worked for the same people, for a while. I moved on to bigger and better things. Heard about this," he tilted his head at the grave. "Thought I'd pay my respects. He was a good guy."

"Oh. Yeah." The son nodded, looking slightly lost. It was obvious he both respected and resented the authority he thought Alex represented.

'Loser,' Alex thought. He hoofed it back to the car and commenced driving again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The first Old Towne Gaithersburg was too small and cramped for the population that burgeoned around it, so the quick-thinking burghers simply built a new one with wider streets, a movie theater and a big, well-lit parking garage. It was right next to the county hospital, so dozens of doctor's offices and laboratories interspersed the other businesses. The once-sleepy town was now a cancerous suburban hellhole of subdivisions and paved-over cornfields, but it was extremely nondescript. Skinner disliked it at once, but he had to admit, it was a perfect place to go if you wanted to be unnoticed.

Krycek pulled around to the back of one of labs, parked, and all three men got out. They entered a cramped receptionist's area, and Krycek rang a buzzer then sat down.

Skinner followed and Doggett brought up the rear. Doggett seemed jumpy, and a few minutes later, when a perfectly ordinary man in a lab coat peeked out at them, he startled and reached for his gun.

Everyone stared at him.

"Sorry." He apologized. "'M a little jumpy."

Skinner nodded sympathetically, but Krycek didn't bother to hide his contempt.

"Dr. Salcedo, this is Walter Skinner. He has that exact same affliction I had. I told him you might be able to help."

Salcedo looked interested, like he'd found a new specimen for under his microscope. "Is that so? Well, Mr. Skinner, I see you travel in the same circles as our friend Alex here."

"No," Skinner answered woodenly, "in fact I don't."

Krycek smirked. "He means, can you afford to pay him the hundreds of thousands of dollars it's going to take to cure you?"

"Of course." But it was a lie, and by the look on his face, Salcedo suspected as much. Walter felt his own face start to burn. Surely he could scrape up the money, even if it meant raping his retirement accounts. He followed Salcedo back to an examination room.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Doggett and Krycek settled in to wait. Doggett had so many questions he didn't know where to begin. He stole a glance over at Krycek, who seemed perfectly relaxed.

"Ask."

"Excuse me?" It was a lame attempt at a comeback, but it was all he had.

"Ask me. I can tell you're dying to."

Caught. "Okay. What made you change your mind?"

Surprise flickered on Krycek's face. Whatever question he'd been expecting, that hadn't been it.

"You'll have to ask Skinner."

Aha. "You guys had a thing once, didn't you?" Doggett had to know--it would answer so many questions.

The look Krycek gave him... absolute poison.

"It's like you fight for no reason." Doggett continued. "Back with that mess with gettin' Scully's baby delivered. Skinner said you were up and running away from Billy Miles before he even knew anyone else was in the room. How'd you know to leave? And when did you have time to switch places with that clone?"

"Jesus, you sound like Mulder. If you ask me for the truth, I swear I will shoot you right here."

Doggett snorted in spite of himself. "Well, I do want the truth, but mostly I want to know what's with the two of you?"

"You mean besides just basic bad blood?"

"Besides that."

"I don't really know." Krycek appeared to be honestly thinking about it. "I'd probably have to say, it's because he's a hypocrite. Now me, I'm your basic scum of the earth. I never pretended I was doing anything except saving my own ass. I didn't tell you guys about the clone because you would have kept me from making the switch and I would have died. The clone was in the stairwell, waiting until I ran out of Skinner's office. We switched places and he came out and got in the elevator. I hoofed it over to Consortium headquarters. Stole a bunch of information. Got it to a safe place."

He tilted his head back. Doggett watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "The funny thing is, all I was really trying to do was get away from Knowle Rohrer. I had the clone stall for time with Mulder so Rohrer would think it was me in the basement. I caught a break when Skinner shot it, but then I had to go back and steal the parking garage security videos because otherwise they would have seen the clone get up and walk away and I would have lost the advantage Skinner gave me."

"You stole them!"

At Krycek's nod, Doggett sighed with relief. If Krycek had them, the tapes were relatively safe. Not that it mattered. "You destroy them?"

"Not yet."

Doggett grunted. He waffled a bit before asking his next question then decided to go for it. "How'd you get your arm back?"

"Medjugorje," Krycek drawled.

Doggett guffawed in spite of himself. He raised his hands in surrender, acknowledging that a real answer would not be forthcoming. He wanted to ask about the thing with the funeral, but restrained himself. Who knew anything about Krycek's private life?

~*~*~*~*~*~

In the examination room, Dr. Salcedo had Walter take his clothes off and put on a gown. He came back in, drew blood, looked into his eyes and tested his reflexes. Walter endured it by turning to stone. He waited for what seemed like forever while the doctor disappeared. He was beginning to be bored enough to want to start poking around the examination room when Salcedo reappeared, all joviality and faux concern.

"So, tell me about your symptoms, Mr. Skinner."

Recounting his body's failures was simply another in a series of humiliations. Walter repeated the list of what ailed him. He was losing weight, his joints hurt, he was beginning to lose neuromuscular control. "My hands twitch, or my legs sometimes. I get... uncontrollable abdominal cramps."

"Stomach aches?"

"I shit myself," he said bluntly. He watched the doctor carefully. If he'd seen the least bit of amusement in Salcedo's face he would have beaten the crap out of him, cure be damned, but Salcedo only nodded.

"That sounds a great deal like the way Mr. Krycek presented. I assume he's told you about the course of treatment?"

"No." He could barely get the word out.

"Oh! Well essentially your body is treating the nanocytes like an autoimmune disease, attacking itself to try to get rid of them. Now, we can clean them out of your blood and your major organs, but it's a painful and expensive process, and in the interests of full disclosure, I've only done it once before, so if there are complications I probably won't be able to help you." Salcedo shrugged apologetically.

Walter nodded. He'd shut down an abortion mill once. This fellow reminded him of that backalley abortion doctor--all smarmy geniality, with dollar signs flashing in front of his eyes.

"So," Salcedo continued, "The way it works is, we'll inject a solution of carbon-destroying microbes into your bloodstream and monitor you for an hour or so to see if they take effect. If they do, we bombard your entire body with them in a huge dose and destroy all the nanobots at once. Now I need to warn you, you'll experience some... rather painful moments as your body fights off the effects of Pseudomonas stutzeri, but it did the trick with Mr. Krycek, so I assume it should work with you."

He paused, obviously checking to see how Skinner was taking the news. Skinner nodded as if he weren't feeling at all homicidal.

"Good. Now, my fee for this is five hundred thousand dollars, and this is all above board so I don't need you to bring me cash in a paper bag." He laughed as if that were funny.

Walter nodded as if he really had five hundred thousand dollars.

"Good. I suggest you take about a week of leave since you'll need it. Check into the Courtyard Inn, right across the street. Leave me a room key so I can drop by to check on you, okay? Oh! Wait! We can't do it next week. Going to Cabo." The doctor winked at him. "So..." Salcedo pulled out a palm pilot. Skinner winced before he could help himself. "A month from now?"

Skinner wanted to be outraged at such cavalier treatment, but he didn't let his feelings show. He needed this asshole, at least for the time being.

"Fine," he ground out. He turned his back on the doctor and started dressing.

When he came out of the waiting room, Doggett took one look at his face and his mouth snapped tight. Krycek appeared almost nonchalant. Skinner didn't have to say anything. He knew he must look murderous, but he didn't care. They rode the entire way back to Krycek's condo in silence.

After Krycek dropped them off, Doggett turned to him. "Skinner..."

"Not a word, John."

The use of Doggett's first name had the quelling effect Skinner intended. He liked Doggett. Liked him a lot, actually, but there really wasn't anything to say.

He took Doggett back to his house. The only reason he drove straight home after that was because the bars he knew of weren't open Sunday mornings.

Well, the truth was, he wanted to live. He looked up the number of his real estate agent and left a message telling her to put his condo up for sale. Fuck it. He would find the money somewhere. He'd steal it if he had to.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex called Dr. Salcedo that afternoon. "Well? Does he have the same thing I did?"

"I'm not going to discuss one patient's condition with another one!" Salcedo sounded genuinely offended.

Alex wondered if he should soothe the guy with a story or go straight into threats. He decided on a story. He could always threaten later, if need be.

"Walter Skinner is very important to certain forces in the government, and I'm completely and totally responsible for his well-being. I have no choice but to be involved in this, even though I don't want to."

The lie rolled off his tongue as easily as breathing. He decided to slip a little threat in anyway. "I have to make sure to keep this as quiet as possible. I don't want a lot of attention."

"No, we certainly don't want that." Salcedo was claiming all the money he got. He just happened to be lying about who paid him and why. "Okay, well, he presented with the same symptoms you had, and I'm going to pursue the same course of treatment."

"Thank you, Doctor."

Alex felt restless after hanging up. He usually slept in on Sundays, then got up and looked for funerals. Today, though, his usual routine had been disturbed and he wasn't sure how to get back on track. His apartment was immaculate because it was empty of furniture with the exception of a sofa, TV, coffee table and bed. When his sheets got so dirty that he could see his body outline, he went out and bought new ones. Ditto his towels and underwear. The only exceptions to the Alex Krycek Method of housekeeping were his outer clothes. He had lots of them, all types, all meticulously cleaned. He looked in his closet, wondering who he wanted to be today. After a moment's consideration he pulled on a jogging suit and went outside.

He was only moderately surprised to see Doggett lurking in his parking lot.

"What?" He was in no mood to be pleasant.

"So what happens next, Krycek?"

"Skinner pays five hundred thousand dollars, gets a cure, and goes back to his life."

"Half a million bucks? Skinner can't afford that. Why can't you ask this Salcedo fellow to cut him some slack?"

"Why should I? I paid him five hundred grand, why should Skinner get a break?"

"Unlike you, Skinner doesn't steal money, Krycek."

"Then tell him to start," Alex snarled. He turned away and walked towards the woods behind his house, not bothering to check and see if Doggett was following him. He didn't trust bushy green spaces--too many places for an assassin to hide--and he should know. He felt exhilarated, like he was tempting fate. Anyone could be hiding in the dense undergrowth and he would never see them. He took his gun out, holding it away from himself, daring his would-be assassin to take his best shot. After a while, discovering himself to be still alive, he put his gun away and went home again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

As far as Doggett was concerned, Alex Krycek was a scum-sucking piece of garbage. He'd blackmailed the government into giving him immunity and had essentially gotten off scot free when he should have been universally reviled and punished soundly.

He occasionally bitched about this to Monica who listened to him with knowing eyes but said nothing. He grumbled about how Scully and Mulder had gone off to their own lives and not given Skinner a second thought. He complained about the political backbiting that left Skinner to face the wolves with no one at his back.

"There's you, John," she finally pointed out. "Don't sell yourself short."

"Yeah, but I'm one of the few who actually stands by him. That don't seem fair, does it?"

Actually, Doggett did a good deal more than stand by his boss. Monica had suggested it actually. She'd told him she sensed that Skinner was going through some problems and needed someone to lend an ear.

"Why not you?" He teased. He liked Monica but her otherworldly mysticism bugged him sometimes.

"It has to be a male," she answered earnestly. "I'm getting that he won't confide in a female. He'd think he was burdening me."

So Doggett had hesitantly offered his friendship and been stunned when Skinner reached back. Granted, it had been a half-assed, tentative and sour kind of reaching back, but it had happened and Doggett was pleased. Away from work, Skinner was snide, sarcastic, and refreshingly irreverent. Doggett had assumed Skinner was a blindly loyal fibbie, but Skinner, he'd discovered, wasn't blind to much.

"I did this to myself," he said once. Sometimes Skinner talked when he was relaxed, so John always made sure he had beer and really good football food whenever he came over to watch the game with him.

"How do you mean?"

"I was ambitious. I thought I could pursue my career and handle Smith... you know, Spender. By the time I realized who I was dealing with, it was all I could do to keep myself afloat."

"If you hadn't played their game they would have killed you. Like you said, you had no idea who you were dealing with. You saved your own life. You sure as fuck saved Mulder's."

Skinner snorted. "A mixed blessing, if ever there was one."

The two men had exchanged a look.

"Well, he's gone now. He'll do better in private practice, and you don't have to go to bat for him anymore. That makes things easier."

"Yeah. I gotta admit, he complicated everything."

Doggett agreed. Everyone had a normal life when Mulder was out of the picture. With him involved, it was like a self-destruct vortex had been switched on. He let the subject drop after that, but he couldn't help but feel good that Skinner felt ambivalent towards Mulder. He'd thought he'd always be compared to the great Muldini and come up wanting. Doggett knew he was a good agent, but Mulder was supernaturally good. It was a relief to know he wasn't the only one who felt overwhelmed by the man.

And the honest truth was, Mulder was his competition. Doggett liked Skinner. A lot. If Skinner had given any hint that he played for both teams, Doggett would have jumped his bones in a heartbeat. Even if it didn't turn out that way, he still liked Skinner enough that he wanted to be friends, if that was all that was available.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Monday morning Skinner's broker called him back, with the end result that his condo was snapped up in less than a week. He immediately felt desolate and dispossessed, but there was nothing to be done. His broker was salivating at her commission, professionally polite but indifferent to his reluctance to sell. The nice couple that bought the place showed him pictures of their two little children and their tiny dog. Skinner felt almost numb with misery. His growl was purely self-defense, but it had the effect of making them stick to the business at hand. They gladly gave him seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, citing the wonderful close-in location, the underground parking, the view--everything he was giving up in order to save his life. He nearly lunged out the door to get away from them. The Marston family wanted to move in as soon as possible, but he put them off until the end of October. Eventually he called a moving and storage company and had them pack everything and put it away.

With only two-hundred and fifty thousand left, he knew he wouldn't be able to afford anything that didn't have the adjective 'charming' in front of it. It was Real-Estate-speak for 'smaller than a matchbox,' but what choice did he have? Fortunately, he'd never been big on entertaining.

Finally, there was nothing left to do but wait. There was nothing left in his apartment except his clothes, his TV, a lamp and a chair. Skinner refused to give in to melancholy, so in the evenings he sat in front of his TV, eating his fast-food dinners and thinking of nothing. Nights, he slept on an air mattress. He didn't allow himself to think about the fact that Salcedo's experimental procedure might not work for him. Neither did he think about the fact that he would be, essentially, homeless after it was all done. He never followed up on his half-hearted attempts to find a new place. He took to keeping a lot of clothes in his car, checking into motels some nights when the emptiness grew too difficult to bear.

By the time Salcedo was ready for him, Skinner was so tense that he was having trouble breathing. He arranged for a week of sick leave, then drove up to the Courtyard Inn and had a little talk with the manager. He flashed his badge, implied that it was FBI business, and demanded that no one enter or leave his room the entire week he was there.

The manager, easily impressed by Skinner's air of authority, was completely cooperative. Somehow that made Skinner feel worse than ever, like he was closing off even incidental human communication like being able to say hi to the cleaning lady. Nonetheless he put one foot ahead of the other and trudged on with the process of saving his own life. It was all he knew how to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Monday morning, Krycek sat in his cubicle and chewed on the weekend's events. Doggett was right, Krycek thought. He should probably have moved out to the middle of some forest in Idaho with the rest of the gun nuts, but the very idea made him feel resentful. He was a fucking citizen now. That's why he deliberately and methodically broke every rule of how to be a good ex-assassin. He didn't want to die, but if that was the price for living out in the open, so be it.

So, he ignored his call list for a few minutes and defiantly started a list of activities normal people engaged in.

'I'll go on a date,' he decided. 'And I'll give to a local charity. And I'll...'

His mind stuttered to a halt. He had no clue what else normal people did. Well, so what? He'd figure it out. Meanwhile he was going to keep living out in the open. He considered getting rid of his gun but the thought made him break out in a cold sweat. He did make an abrupt decision to stop torturing Skinner. Not because he thought the guy deserved a break. Alex just didn't want any part of his old life to intrude on his shiny new one.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Monday morning, Doggett went back to Aspen Hill Cemetery to look up information on Matthew Sullivan. He went to the widow's house and showed her Krycek's picture. She didn't really recognize him but she thought she might have seen him talking to her oldest son at the funeral. She assumed he was a friend from her husband's job. Next, Doggett talked to Brandon Sullivan, Matthew's son. He told the same story. Doggett tracked down the factory where Sullivan had worked. None of them had ever seen or heard of an Alex Krycek.

"It's so weird," he told Monica. "It's like he went to the funeral of a complete stranger."

Monica shrugged. "Maybe he did."

Doggett dismissed the idea, but over the next several weekends he followed Krycek around. He watched him come out of the house on Saturday mornings, dressed in funeral weeds, but then Krycek would cruise the local cemeteries until he found a funeral service. Sometimes he hit two or three.

Doggett was confounded. What in God's name could he be doing? And more to the point, why? Was he sending a message to someone?

He scrutinized Krycek's life with more care. It seemed perfectly normal. Too normal, in fact. Krycek went to work, bought food, brought it home, ate it, went to work the next day. Over and over and over again. He didn't seem to have any hobbies or interests.

He considered calling Mulder and asking him for his opinion, but dismissed the idea at once. Not that Mulder's insights wouldn't be valuable, but Mulder was too weird and volatile to consider involving him in anything less than a full-blown emergency.

It never occurred to him to actually ask Krycek. He decided that the man was not just a manipulative ex-assassin, he was obviously dealing with some heavy psychological problems to boot.

Finally, he decided to ask Monica what she thought. Once you sorted out the new-age, touchy-feely delivery, Monica's advice was usually pretty sound.

"Gee, John, why don't you ask him?"

"I don't wanna ask him, I'm asking you." He knew he sounded peevish but it was disappointing, especially because it was such an obvious thing to do.

Monica looked at him patiently. "Treat this like you would any other investigation."

"Well it so happens I was gonna do just that."

Monica rolled her eyes at his tone of voice. A few moments later she went out and when she came back she smelled of cigarette smoke.

'Sorry,' he apologized silently. He usually managed not to drive her to smoke.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was raining in Gaithersburg, which somehow made things worse. Skinner was sitting on the bed in his hotel room, waiting for Salcedo to show. He had a check for five hundred large and a couple of changes of clothing. In a fit of self-disgust, he'd punished himself with a meal from Taco Bell. He left the wrappers scattered across the desk.

Eventually Salcedo showed up with a bulky case like a traveling salesman would use to show off his wares. He opened it and pulled out a portable IV drip, talking as he worked.

"The original bacteria have only been tested on non-human subjects, but the one I created is a little more aggressive and it's the one I used on Mr. Krycek. I want to be very clear that I don't know what all the side effects could be. I will not be by to check on you after the first time, so let me suggest you have someone come and look in on you from time to time. You won't be in any condition to look after yourself."

In other words, he could die right here in this hotel room and it wouldn't be Salcedo's problem. "Let's just get this over with."

Salcedo shrugged. "I'm ready if you are."

Skinner stripped off his shirt as the doctor cleaned up the fast food spoor and replaced it with the IV stand, then he sat down and let himself be swabbed, pricked and taped up.

"Now we should know pretty quickly whether this is going to work or not. I'll be back in an hour, and the evidence should be clear one way or another."

When Skinner didn't answer, Salcedo gave a nervous laugh. "Hey, it's only like I'm saving your life. Do you have my check?"

Skinner reached into the front pocket of his jacket. "Thank you," he forced out.

Salcedo picked up his keys. "I'll be back in a bit."

Skinner sat alone, watching the drip from the saline bag. He couldn't even distract himself with the TV because he'd left the remote on the bed and the line didn't stretch that far. He felt dirty and underhanded, like he imagined a Mafioso would be--miles away from the upright citizen he projected to the world. And worst of all, the stuff in the IV was making him dizzy. He shut his eyes for a moment and opened them to Salcedo's worried face hovering over him.

"I upped the dosage to take into account your larger body mass. Looks like I may have overestimated, but at least it's working. Look!"

Salcedo held up a single dirty finger. Skinner stared uncomprehendingly.

"This came off your skin." Salcedo swiped another finger across Skinner's shoulder and held it in front of his face. "Your body's starting to break down and eject the nanobots."

Salcedo's fingers were grimy, like he'd run them through coal dust.

"The nanobots?"

"The nanobots. They're being destroyed."

Before he could help himself Skinner drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then he drew in another one and blinked furiously to keep the tears from pooling up and running down his face. Mercifully, Salcedo looked away until he'd pulled it together again.

"So um... everything seems to be going fine. So um... let it finish... it should be done in a few hours. Then just let nature take its course. Here. Let's move you to the bed, okay?"

Salcedo fussed over him a little, carrying the IV stand over to the side of the bed and waiting until Walter got in. Neither mentioned that Walter staggered like a drunken sailor, or that he was leaving little black stains all over everything he touched. They both pointedly ignored the smudges on the sheets. Walter told himself it was a good thing, and not to pay attention to the fact that he was feeling worse by the minute.

Walter grabbed the remote, feeling marginally better for having it in his hand. He told himself he was being absurd, but he didn't put it down. He held Salcedo's eye for a second.

"Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate what you're doing for me."

Salcedo quirked a smile. "Don't thank me yet, Mr. Skinner, but... for what it's worth, good luck with everything."

When the doctor walked out, the room felt very empty. Walter thought about calling him back but stopped himself. Whatever was about to happen, he could face it on his own.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Doggett tracked down the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and got an appointment with him. The only reason he got in was because he used the name Alex Krycek.

"Alex Krycek." The senator drawled the name as he looked down his nose at Doggett. "Now why would you want to talk about him? You have some inkling of who he is or else you wouldn't be here asking me about him."

"I need to know how he convinced members of the U.S. senate that he was anything other than a lying, thieving murderer."

"He didn't have to convince us. He came clean with us, in lurid detail."

"Then why let him skate?"

The senator gave Doggett a cold, assessing look.

Doggett waited.

"Agent Doggett. One of the people to testify on Alex Krycek's behalf was a man named Jeffery Spender."

"I know him."

"I saw pictures of the man at his worst. Saw what his own father had caused to be done to him. I could hardly believe it was the same man when he came before the committee. Alex Krycek gave that young man his life back. He either did it out of the kindness of his heart, or he was smart enough to know how we'd react to the story Spender told. I don't know whether he's kinder than I am or smarter than I am, but I thought it was in the best interests of national security to keep a man like that happy rather than angry."

Doggett told the senator about Krycek's insane behavior. "I think he's trying to commit suicide, daring one of his enemies to take him out."

"Yes," the senator ignored Doggett's surprise. "I think he is on a suicide mission. He refused our offer of a new identity and he lives out in the open as himself. But on the other hand, he's done what he claimed to want, which is to come in from the cold and live like a citizen. I think, in his way, Mr. Krycek can be trusted."

"So you know he's trying to kill himself and you're just going to stand on the sidelines." Doggett had seen cynicism in his lifetime, but it still managed to take him by surprise sometimes.

"Have you ever tried to rescue someone who doesn't want to be rescued? Mr. Krycek has what he wants. I suggest you let him be."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex really liked his job. He liked going in to talk to his boss and reporting on the things he'd done. Legal things. Innocent things. He told him how many shares of stock he'd sold, how many unsuspecting dupes he'd dumped it on, all the leads he'd come up with on his own and how much money he'd made for his boss's company. Sometimes he found good stock tips on his own--in fact, more and more as time went by. He noticed that his boss kept the truly good tips for himself. Alex thought the man was stupid to practice insider trading under his own name. All the brokers did it though. Alex thought about it for a long while, then decided against it. He could have set up a dummy corporation and made himself very rich, but he wanted, as much as possible, to walk the straight and narrow. Besides, his regular salary and commission gave him more than he needed to live.

For Alex, each day's thrill came from living as a wolf among the sheep and having none of them suspect. He loved pretending to be a regular guy. People talked to him about their mortgages, their cars, their kids. He listened and nodded, ecstatic that he was being spoken to like a regular person. When they probed him for details of his own life, he hinted at a tragedy. Some women flirted until they found out he was gay. The office gossips put two and two together and assumed he'd had a lover who died of AIDS. Alex let them think it.

His boss knew he was gay, and even though he wasn't particularly liberal in his leanings, he firmly believed that a great broker like Alex should have a little slack.

"What you do is your own business, Alex, but I'm a little leery when a bad romance comes back to haunt you. You can't let your personal life interfere with your work life, Alex. That way lies disaster."

Alex nodded like he knew what was going on. His boss had called him into his office and shut the door for, as he called it, 'a little heart-to-heart.' Could he actually believe Alex was in a relationship gone sour? Alex knew he had very little in the way of a personal life, but if his boss wanted to 'support' him, he was game. At his orientation, the personnel officer had introduced him to the concept of something called work/life. It meant that if you occasionally wanted time off to move, you could ask for it and they wouldn't fire you. It also evidently meant his boss could give him fatherly advice from time to time and he had to act like he appreciated it.

"You're a good worker, Al. But you have to let your boyfriend know that he can't just call me with impunity. I'm a very busy man and I don't have a lot of time to reassure him that you're not sneaking around on him."

Alex was thunderstruck. "My boyfriend?"

"John Doggett. He called me several times last week, wanted to know about your other friends and associates. Pretty persistent too. Said he was with the FBI, but his questions were a little personal, if you get my drift."

Alex got it all right. "I'll talk to him, sir. It won't happen again."

Of course he went home and did nothing. It would have been an easy thing to kill John Doggett, but Alex was a little confused about how regular citizens handled a situation like this.

He had no one to call on for advice. Finally he just called Doggett.

"If you call my work again, I'll kill Skinner."

"What is with you and these funerals?"

Shit. Doggett had been spying on him and he hadn't known. He didn't know whether to be happy or annoyed. If he hadn't noticed Doggett, he definitely wouldn't notice anyone good. He could have been killed at any time. So why hadn't he been? Surely he had to have some enemies out there somewhere. He took his frustration out on Doggett.

"So where the hell do you get off calling my boss behind my back?"

"You're going to wreck that guy's life. Somebody's going to come looking for you and the type of people you deal with aren't going to care who gets in their way. Is that what you really want, Krycek?"

In fact it wasn't, but Alex wasn't going to say so to Doggett. He said nothing, then finally, "Stay out of my business, Doggett. Don't make me regret helping you."

But when he hung up the phone, he realized that he actually felt pleased. He'd had an argument with somebody. He'd quarreled. Not shot at, not poisoned, not blackmailed. Just a plain old argument with someone who annoyed him. He almost called Doggett back to thank him, but he knew that wasn't the way normal people did it, so he restrained himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Skinner woke to the sound of someone moaning. They sounded like they were in terrible pain, and he decided to go help them, but people shot arrows into his arms and legs whenever he moved. For a moment his mind swung crazily through time and he wondered how he'd ended up back in Nam and where his rifle was. Eventually he remembered that he was in Gaithersburg. When he finally realized he was the one responsible for the noise, he was horrified. He shut his mouth tight, determined that no sounds would get out and so undercut his will to endure this without bringing attention to himself.

'You can take it, soldier. Now suck it up and deal with it.' And he did, but it cost him. The pain stabbed and burned. He couldn't do anything to make himself comfortable. In fact, every slight movement made the pain worse. His entire body itched maddeningly. When he tried to scratch it the lightest touch of a finger was like fire streaking across his skin. The sheets hurt him. His clothes hurt him. Light hurt. It hurt so badly that he wanted to cry, but he refused to allow himself to do so. Sometimes he lost consciousness. He wished he'd thought to do this at a more isolated location where he could moan and scream to his heart's content. Forcing himself to silence was a strain he simply didn't need, and eventually his mind began to protest.

As his strength weakened he found it more difficult to keep irrational thoughts at bay. His mind gibbered and yammered at him endlessly, growing more vicious as his body grew more infirm. 'Do something!' It demanded.

'I can't. There's nothing to do,' he replied.

'Call somebody!!'

'I refuse!'

His mind became cruel. His thoughts began to batter at him, telling him how stupid he was to have gotten himself into a situation like this in the first place. They told him how pointless his life was, how helpless and useless and impotent he'd been. How he'd let Cancerman play him for a fool. He upbraided himself with the futility of his fight for justice, his fear, his ambition, his aggression, his deceit. He thought of Cancerman again and how he'd longed to kill him. Why hadn't he dared? Why!? So he could die like this, with a towel stuffed into his mouth to prevent his screams from escaping? So he could gag in horror as he pulled the towel away from his face and found it black with disintegrating nanocytes? Nanocytes mingled with sweat and ran down his body in rivulets. They stained him in some grotesque parody of black-face, only he found nothing amusing about it. When he staggered up to clean himself he couldn't bear to look at his own face in the mirror. Nanocytes ran down his body into the drain and too late he wondered what they would do to the water supply. The responsibility was too much. 'I don't care,' he thought. 'I just don't care.'

For a while he hated everybody who hadn't suffered nanocyte poisoning, even Sharon, his holiest of holies.

'You never deserved her,' his mind stated baldly, and he was too weak to defend against it. Like his immune system, hurting him in order to make him better, his thoughts hit him everywhere he was weakest.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Okay, so maybe he'd been a little too aggressive. After all, as far as he could tell, Krycek wasn't actually doing anything wrong, but that thing with the funerals had him stumped. Why did he do that? What kind of crazy stunt was Krycek trying to pull?

In spite of Krycek's angry warning, Doggett didn't give up his surveillance. Krycek kept going to funerals. Doggett decided that the man was just nuts.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"That cocksucking son of a bitch!" Alex was pacing up and down the long hallway in his apartment. He was relieved to be home so he could finally give vent to his feelings. Apparently Doggett's calls had started rumors flying around his office that he was in a bad relationship and needed protection from a violent boyfriend. A flier for a battered spouse's hotline suddenly appeared on his desk. Two of his cubicle-mates had 'casually' brought up the fact that they knew a wonderful self-defense teacher. If he was interested. For any reason.

He wanted to kick Doggett's ass. "I'll fucking kill him!"

His pacing abruptly stopped. He couldn't kill Doggett. He wanted to, or at least scare him badly, but he didn't kill people anymore. It was why he'd turned state's evidence in the first place.

He sat on his bed, frustrated into sudden inactivity. What did people do in situations like this? Other people. Straight people. Should he make an announcement that he was fine and stop worrying about him? Should he just leave it alone and hope it blew over? What the fuck was he supposed to do?

He took a shower then sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. This shit was hard, and for a moment he felt like whining. He was doing all the right things, dammit. Why couldn't his past just leave him alone?

~*~*~*~*~*~

He was being tortured. He'd died in Vietnam, and he'd been shot in the gut, and he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him in a stairwell once, but nothing had been as bad as this. During those other times, the pain had ended eventually, but this gnawing, crawling misery never receded. It seared him all over. His lips, his eyes. He became obsessed by the idea that the nanobots might make him blind, but whenever he turned on the light to check his vision, his eyes teared up so badly that all he could make out was that the room was lighter than it had been. Then too, his fingers hurt when they touched the light switch. He coughed up frothy black slime. Salcedo had warned him, his body was literally pushing out the nanobots every way it could. He tried to drink water, as he'd been instructed, but it came up again, slimy and black, horrifying him as he heaved over the toilet. He tried sipping, but all that happened was that when he finally sipped enough, that came up too. He tried to tell himself this was a good thing because it meant the nanocytes were being destroyed.

His pee was black. He stumbled to the bathroom to sit, groaning, as more nanocytes fluxed out of him.

His skin itched and burned, his body ached.

The pressure against his skin torqued up. His fever rose. When he felt himself begin to convulse he bit down on a towel.

He wanted to cry--he hurt just that badly, but he knew that if he started he might never stop. 'Don't scream, don't scream, don't scream, don't scream,' he told himself. It became his mantra.

'Please,' he finally prayed, 'somebody realize that I'm here and come help me.'

Each time he had to use the toilet it took him longer to heave himself up and take the few steps across the room. Each time it hurt worse. Finally, realizing that the porcelain would be easier on his tortured body than the bedsheets, he simply lay down in the tub. It was the best solution. When he became too weak to move, he could still force himself to reach up and turn on the cold water, letting it rinse away the grime and filth.

At some point during the middle of the week it got to be too much and Skinner died. His heart beat, his eyes and ears worked. He breathed. Nonetheless, his mind simply couldn't take any more, and it abandoned him.

'Well, this is it,' he told himself. They'd find him when his credit card ran out of money, or when the smell of his corpse started to seep into the hallway. His life didn't flash before his eyes, but rather summed itself up in a series of dull gray snapshots, each one more dreary than the last.

'You were pathetic,' he observed dispassionately. 'Do better next time, you sorry son of a bitch.' And with that last thought he shut his eyes, mentally apologizing to the manager and the cleaning lady who would probably be the ones to find him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Doggett called Skinner's cell, just to see how things were going, but he got no answer.

'Well, leave the man his privacy,' he thought, but when he didn't get an answer three days running he decided to check on him anyway. Skinner had explained the process, and Doggett knew he wouldn't want anyone to witness his debilitation, but he couldn't stay away. He didn't trust Krycek or that slimy Salcedo character, so he found the hotel manager, flashed his badge and asked for another room key. He noticed the aroma first, sharp and stale with overtones of human sweat and something Doggett couldn't identify.

"Skinner?" He tried tentatively. Then, "Boss?"

Getting no answer, he drew his gun and began a methodical investigation. He turned the lights on in the bathroom and finally found Skinner in the bathtub, nude. His first instinct was to apologize and back out, but Skinner seemed entirely too still, and when he checked further, he turned out to be unconscious.

"Jesus Christ..." He put his gun away and leaned over him, patting his face. Doggett yanked his hand away and stared at Skinner in shock. Not only was his face black with soot, but the man was burning up.

"Skinner!"

Skinner groaned then abruptly fell silent. His eyes opened but didn't focus. He looked like absolute deep-fried shit.

Doggett was at a loss as to what to do. He wanted to panic but the marine in him took over. Skinner needed help and Doggett was the only one here to provide it. He looked around the room, grabbed a towel and ran cold water over it. Skinner had black soot at the corners of his eyes, and crusted in the folds of his mouth.

Doggett wiped his face then laid the cool towel on his head. He ran cold water in the tub--not too much--he didn't want Skinner to drown--then rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He washed Skinner's body, hoping the cool water would bring his fever down, then, huffing and puffing, he got Skinner out of the tub and almost to the bed when he noticed that the sheets were filthy. He parked Skinner's body in a chair, rearranged the covers and muscled Skinner down onto the blankets. He was sweating a bit by the time he was done.

This wouldn't do at all. Skinner still didn't look good, and his nudity gave him an air of vulnerability that made Doggett feel very uneasy. He felt like he'd violated his friend's privacy.

'Well, you did,' he told himself plainly, 'and you're going to do it again, but you don't have a choice.'

He pulled out his phone and called Krycek.

"Your back-street doctor is in the process of killing him."

"Yeah?"

"Come see for yourself."

Krycek paused for a long time, like he was thinking about it. "Okay," he finally said, "but I need to get something to eat first."

Doggett was incredulous. "Did you hear me? He's dying up here."

"That would be your fault, wouldn't it?" Krycek's silky, insidious tone mocked his panic. "After all, you're the one who insisted I help him."

"Well, can't you do something?"

"Well, let's think about this. You call my office, screw with my life and don't offer so much as a single apology or explanation. Why should I rush just because you want me to?"

"Look, I'm begging here." Doggett could feel beads of perspiration starting to well up across his forehead. "You know I can't take him to a hospital. If it makes you feel better, I'm sorry for fucking with you."

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"Please," Doggett pleaded. "He's dying."

"He only feels like he's dying. We'll get him some hydration and some morphine, but I'm not coming by until I get something to eat."

"Look, just get here. I'll order up room service and it'll be waiting by the time you arrive."

"Well, aren't you the considerate one. Let's see, I want a cheeseburger, fries and two Dos Equis."

Doggett uncharitably wished a coronary Krycek's way. "I'll get it."

"I'll be there." The phone went dead.

So Doggett paced and fumed until Krycek showed up, kicking himself for making things worse for Skinner instead of better.

'He's never going to look at me after this,' he realized. The thought of losing Skinner's friendship depressed him, but he had more important fish to fry, like saving Skinner's life.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex noticed that Doggett tried not to actually see Skinner's naked body. He himself had no such inhibitions. With Skinner in no position to object, or even notice what was happening, Alex looked his fill. He was particularly fond of the tiny hollows on the insides of Skinner's hip bones. Dehydrated as Skinner was, the muscles in his long legs stood out in sharp relief. He reminded Alex of the men in the magazines he had at home. It was nice to actually have a live human to look at, even if he smelled funny and couldn't speak.

"This whole thing is your fault," he told Doggett, striking with words since he could not use his fists or his gun. "Some shitty friend you turned out to be."

He was just attacking at random, but Doggett's face filled with shame. "You're right," Doggett told him. "It is my fault."

"You're a fucking moron, Doggett. This is the fault of the old men who wanted him under control and sent me to make sure he toed the line."

But he could see that Doggett still looked ashamed. It made no sense to him. He wondered if this wasn't one of those mysterious real life relationship things about which he was still mostly clueless. Curiosity kept him around after he'd injected Skinner with morphine and watched the lines of pain ease from his face.

"I should be home," he blamed Doggett for his decision. "I have a job and a life." The last part of that sentence was a lie, but Alex was on a roll.

"You're right," Doggett answered humbly. "If I can make it up to you, I will. I appreciate everything you've done."

'You do?' Alex thought. 'Wow!' The gratitude was so unexpected that he came back the next night, and helped wash nanocytes off Skinner's body and dress him in an adult diaper. In fact, he came back every night, wondering why he wasn't angry about cleaning dirt off Skinner's body, injecting him with morphine so he could sleep, and forcing him to take tiny sips of broth that Alex brought from a Chinese restaurant. Part of it was simple competition. Doggett was coming by every night too, and if anyone was going to win the 'I helped Skinner the most' contest, it was going to be Alex Krycek. He fully intended to win gloating rights so that Doggett couldn't have them. He didn't understand why he looked forward to seeing the tension ease out of Skinner's features or why it gave him a feeling of accomplishment to act like a hospital orderly, but he felt an odd sense of elation. It mystified him.

Also mystifying was the fact that, over the course of the week, Doggett's misgivings eased considerably. Alex didn't understand. They weren't friends. He could still turn around and kill Skinner any time he wanted. Doggett too, for that matter. It was an old assassin's trick, getting people to lower their guard then moving in for the kill.

'Walking victim,' Alex thought scornfully. He liked Doggett's humility, though. It made him feel powerful. When it became obvious that Doggett's guilt made him too easy a mark, he became magnanimous. He stopped busting Doggett's chops and Doggett stopped looking so ashamed of himself.

Alex and Doggett made two halves of the world's worst nurse, and they knew it. Neither he nor Doggett took any time off work, so Skinner only got showered and fed in the evenings, but, from one day to the next the man lived.

It was a little bit... exciting, Alex realized. They were both poorly suited for this task but they were succeeding anyway. They were working as a team which was unprecedented. They gave each other neutral looks sometimes but didn't dare acknowledge their common goal. Alex didn't know what to make of it.

Thursday, ten days after he'd started driving to Gaithersburg every night, Alex pointed out an improvement. "He's stopped shitting himself."

"Thank Jesus. I didn't know how much more of this shit I could stand. Literally."

Alex said nothing. Skinner's return to health meant their strange partnership was coming to an end before he understood what it all meant. He handed Doggett a towel and heaved Skinner to a sitting position. They'd developed a system where one of them held Skinner in place while the other cleaned his body. It was a gruesome task. They'd learned the hard way to strip to their underwear each time. Skinner shit, pissed, coughed and wept destroyed nanocytes. They came out in his ear wax, and through the pores of his skin. Even after he'd been bathed, he smelled funny and looked gray, and the two men ended up covered with nanocyte soot, no matter how careful they were.

"You went through this?" Doggett asked him.

Alex just shrugged. None of Doggett's business.

Doggett must have realized he wasn't going to get an answer. He changed the subject. "What are we going to do with him now that he's started to come out of this? He can't take care of himself."

"Not my problem." He regretted the words the minute they left his mouth, but not because of what Doggett might think. He liked the feeling of helping. Of doing something for purely altruistic reasons, but the concepts, much less the language, were not a part of Alex's vocabulary, so he'd resorted to the familiar by default.

He wished, though, that he knew how to describe what he was really feeling.

The next day Alex asked for the afternoon off.

"I have to help my friend who's sick," he told his boss.

His boss didn't look like he believed him, but he said yes anyway.

Alex drove back to Gaithersburg. He found Skinner staggering back and forth to the bathroom on his own. That was good enough for him. He pulled Skinner into a pair of sweats, bundled him into the car and drove him back to his apartment in Alexandria.

~*~*~*~*~*~

John Doggett was so fucking jealous he couldn't see straight. They'd both taken care of him, so why had Skinner elected to go with Krycek--the lying weasel who could have stayed dead for all John Doggett cared.

'Except if he'd stayed dead, Skinner would still be dying of nanocyte toxicity,' he told himself.

It took him several hours, but eventually he began to put things into perspective. Anything could have happened. Skinner hadn't been in any shape to make decisions. Krycek might have simply done what he thought was necessary.

Finally taking a real risk of pissing off his erstwhile co-nurse, he called Krycek's office.

The receptionist put him through with cold disapproval in her voice, and Doggett knew that he was going to be the cause of a lot of rumors flying around Krycek's office for a second time. He apologized for that straight off, but Krycek seemed oddly pleased to hear from him.

'Yes, Walter was up and staggering around the hotel room when Alex got there, so Alex took him home. Could Doggett go move Skinner's car?'

Doggett ended up riding out to Gaithersburg with Krycek one last time. Because it was not his way to pull any punches, he told Krycek he'd been checking up on his history.

"So I know you helped Jeffery Spender and a bunch of other people."

"And?"

"And I know you didn't have to but you did it anyway. I don't know what's going on with you, Krycek, and I still don't like you, but you're not nearly the asshole I thought you were."

"Why John, how touching."

"And you've been decent to Skinner when you didn't have to be. More than decent."

Krycek fixed him with a knowing stare. "You think Skinner's picked me over you, don't you?"

Caught again! But even though a blush raged all over his face, Doggett said, "None of my business."

"Of course it is. He didn't pick me."

"What, then?" There had been something tentative in Alex's voice, and Doggett decided to pursue it. Why not? The cat was already out of the bag. "He's at your house, right? Why'd you take him home when you coulda just dropped him at a hotel? Or left him right where he was?"

Krycek shifted uncomfortably. "No real reason," he finally answered, but it took him a while to get it out.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex had taken Skinner to his apartment and dumped him onto his bed. Skinner had stripped and lain there, unmoving, for hours. Every once in a while, Alex poked his head in and checked on him.

He thought about what to do next, then he went out and bought some soup and some more bath towels.

'That should do it,' he decided. If Skinner got hungry, he could eat the soup. If he wanted a shower, he could dry himself off with one of Alex's new towels.

For two days, all Skinner did was lie there. Alex noticed that Skinner didn't move unless he had to. Sometimes he turned on his stomach, giving Alex a fine view.

'Down, boy,' he warned himself. 'The man's still sick, after all.'

He didn't understand what it was he'd discovered about himself, but something had happened to him in that hotel room. He'd sponged down Skinner's dirty, sweaty body and felt a sense of power, and an unrecognizable emotion he might have called empathy or compassion if he'd had any clue what they really felt like.

He was intrigued enough that he wanted the experiment to continue. Skinner had once had power over him. Now he didn't. He lived in Alex's house, ate food Alex provided and slept in Alex's bed.

'So does that make me better than Skinner now?' he mused. 'I've been taking care of him while he made me stay out in the cold. Does that make me the better person? And this whole idea of helping him for no reason. What's that about?'

He wasn't even sure he was framing the question correctly, but he knew he was stumbling towards something important if only he could figure out what it was.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The best thing about looking like shit was that his appearance genuinely horrified people. Walter staggered in to work looking as bad as he felt, but he sat at his desk and churned determinedly through his inbox. No less than three unannounced visitors made pretexts to come in and stare at him, and by late that morning Cassidy called him into her office and demanded to know what was wrong.

"You look awful." She told him bluntly.

"Good morning to you, too," he replied wryly.

"You weren't in any of the local hospitals, Walter, because I checked. Now what's going on?"

"It's a bad case of the flu."

Cassidy squinted. "Don't bullshit me. What do you have?"

"I'm not contagious."

"Come off it, Walter. I'm asking as someone who's concerned. You've lost weight, you have bags under your eyes and your skin's a funny color."

"I appreciate your concern, Jana, really, but I'll be fine."

When it became obvious that she wasn't going to get any more out of him, she demanded he take some more time off. "I expect you to look better the next time I see you."

"Okay." Walter would have insisted he was on the mend, but he didn't think she'd buy it for a second. He decided to let her bully him into taking more sick leave. When Krycek got home from work, Walter was waiting at the front door. Krycek let him in without a word. Later that evening he went out and got Walter a front door key and a unit key, but Walter just put them in his pocket. It had taken everything he had to go through the motions at work when all he really wanted to do was lie on Krycek's bed. He took off his clothes and fell apart again. He'd needed every ounce of strength to pretend to normalcy that day, and he knew he didn't have the ability to do it again any time soon. Now, he could stay gone for two more weeks and no one would question it.

Good. He wanted to lie naked, in the dark, thinking of nothing. It was a nice, undemanding life on Krycek's bed, and he liked it there.

Skinner spent several days staring at the ceiling. Sometimes he stared at the walls. He dozed and woke at all times of the day and night, but as long as he didn't have to get out of bed, he didn't care. Sometimes, at night, Alex curled up next to him and they slept back to back. He didn't care about that either. Often he didn't even notice.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Doggett moped. He would have told anyone who asked that it was a manly sort of mope, not a full-fledged-unhappy-adolescent-in-love kind of mope, but no one did. Not even Monica.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex Krycek did not have a very well-developed sense of right and wrong. He did what he liked, playing within the rules when he knew what they were, disregarding them when he knew he could get away with it, and making most things up as he went along. For instance, he had to show up at 8:30 every day for work. It was a hard and fast rule, so he did it. On the other hand, he knew he could probably have sex with the man in his bed even if that man was in no position to give his consent. In truth, if Walter had objected, even a little bit, Alex would not have persisted, but Walter was naked and Alex was horny, and the opportunity was right there in front of him.

So, one night he put his hand on Skinner's thigh, observing in passing that Skinner's color had returned to normal and he no longer smelled like nanocytes.

Skinner didn't move.

Alex slid his fingers up and down the crack of Skinner's ass.

Skinner still didn't move.

Alex stroked his fingers across Skinner's hole.

Still nothing, so he asked. "You mind if I fuck you?"

Skinner turned to stare at him, obviously looking for a ruse.

Alex just shrugged. His fingers went back and forth across Skinner's buttocks. Evidently it must have looked like the simple case of lust that it was because Skinner finally shrugged in return. "Go ahead."

So he carefully rolled Skinner from his side onto his stomach, rolled on a condom, then slicked him up and mounted him. When he thrust inside Skinner gasped and tensed, but after a moment he abruptly relaxed again. He rested his head on his forearms.

Well as far as Alex was concerned, that was more than permission, it was invitation. He partook freely from then on, careful to reciprocate unless Walter got up the energy to push his hand away. He almost never did. Alex understood. It wasn't a question of whether Skinner wanted him or didn't want him. Skinner just didn't want to make any decisions. As long as he wasn't being hurt, he was content to lie there. Alex knew what that was like.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was nice to feel something happening to his body that wasn't agonizing pain. There was even an intriguing ghost of a tickle somewhere down there near his groin, but he wasn't interested in pursuing it. He mostly just wanted to sleep.

Sometimes he noticed a sonorous female voice talking about breathing light into your chakras. Her voice was so soothing that Skinner was following along before he understood what he was doing. It was only when he noticed that he and Krycek were doing deep belly breathing in sync with each other that he roared out his annoyance.

"Turn that crap off!"

"Why?" Krycek turned to look at him with genuine surprise

Skinner couldn't have said why it pissed him off so badly. Yes, it was new age horse shit, but that wasn't the reason.

He lashed out, knowing it was anger and illness talking but unable to help himself. "It's stupid!"

"Well, yeah, but it helps me relax. You did notice that I got my arm back?"

Skinner indeed had, but hadn't mentioned it. He was irrationally afraid that if he said anything he might jinx it and it would fall off again. He changed the subject.

"Why do you have sex with me?"

"I got my arm back, Skinner! Did you hear?"

"I heard. Why do you have sex with me?"

Alex glared at him but finally sighed and answered. "You're handsome."

"You're gay?" The idea had never occurred to him.

"Obviously."

"Oh."

"What?"

"I thought it was some power thing with you."

Krycek snorted. "Just horny."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Now be quiet. You may not like this stuff, but I do."

Skinner didn't reply. After a moment, Krycek turned on his CD again. Almost before he knew it, Skinner was breathing along, drawing energy into his chakras and wondering what the hell was going on.

Finally, much later that night, he nudged Krycek awake. "How'd you get your arm back?"

"Jeremiah Smith." Krycek sounded sleepy and annoyed. "He gave me this CD afterwards when I had trouble adjusting. Readjusting."

"Oh."

"Go to sleep, Skinner."

But he didn't. He lay in the dark feeling weak. He wanted to cry, but he forced himself not to. He wanted to... to... but his mind went blank. In the dark, with Krycek's calm breathing to anchor him, he tried to figure out what had happened to his life and what would happen next, but clarity eluded him as completely as sleep did.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"John, just go see him. He'd probably welcome a visit."

But Doggett couldn't envision himself pasting on a reassuring smile and making small-talk. He fretted. Rumors were flying around the beehive, and Skinner's entire life was in play again. The mafia, his ex-wife, a black ops vendetta--the speculation about just what had happened to him ran rampant.

Doggett resisted at first, but eventually he bowed to the fact that this was an unprecedented opportunity.

"What is it with Skinner, anyway?" He asked.

Beehive gossips were all too eager to fill him in. He heard everything from 'Skinner just needs to get laid,' to 'Skinner is a CIA plant.' The most consistent story was that Skinner had strange obligations to a secret organization. He had connections to Mulder's family, and some rich, secret cabal of New Englanders who forced him to protect Mulder family interests. Why else would a straight shooter like Skinner back a wingnut like Spooky Mulder? Anybody else would have fired his ass long time ago. And Skinner himself had more of his share of spooky moments if you dug deeply enough. When he was a junior agent, he'd actually gone undercover in an Indian religious cult in order to crack a child porn ring.

'So what was wrong with that?' Doggett asked.

"Well." This particular gossip worked in the grants management office. It was a very small, insignificant part of the FBI's mission, but she'd been there since before dirt had been invented and she knew almost all of the building's history. "There were two other agents who infiltrated the cult. Female agents. They swore they saw Skinner do things..."

"What things?" Doggett wanted to scream at her to cut to the chase, but he schooled himself to patience. She was doing him a favor, after all.

"Things like... magic. Like voodoo or something." She flushed at his look of skepticism but soldiered on gamely. "Evidently he became one of the Guru's favorites because after the guru inducted him he could heal sick people just by staring at them really hard."

"Go on!"

"One of the other agents said that the Guru would send Skinner to walk around the room where they all meditated and find the ones who had something wrong with them. One time she'd twisted her ankle but she didn't tell anyone. Skinner walked right up to her and then he turns to the guru and says, 'her ankle hurts.'

"Yeah?"

"The guru says, 'So fix it,' and Skinner stares at her and she feels this heat in her ankle and five minutes later the pain is gone. Like it never existed."

Holy shit. "So how did he explain what happened?"

The gossip shook her head. "When they asked him what was going on he refused to talk about it. To this day they haven't gotten a word out of him. I know he's risen up the ranks, but there's still... something strange about him. I mean, he acts normal, but you know there's something weird going on beneath the surface. You can just tell by looking at him."

"Yeah." Doggett walked away feeling too weird for words. That couldn't be true. It just couldn't.

It took him the better part of a day to track down the file, but if you knew how to read between the lines, it was all in there. 'Gained the trust of the rank and file members. Ingratiated himself with the leadership. Easily adapted to group mindset and behaviors.'

The names of the other two agents were in the file, so he tracked them down. Both had long since left the FBI, but one of them still lived in the area. Doggett paid her a visit.

'Yes,' she responded to his questions, 'she'd tried to pin him down, but when pressed he said it was just the power of suggestion.'

Did she believe that?

The woman met his eyes with a troubled stare. "I don't know," she finally answered. "It was a long time ago."

Well, okay. Let the two weirdos have each other if that's what they wanted. Doggett preferred someone normal.

"So did you decide what to do?" Monica asked him.

"I'm staying the hell away from him from now on!" And if he sounded pouty, even to himself, he didn't mention it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Eventually Skinner went down to his car and brought some of his clothes up to Krycek's apartment. Krycek kept his underwear, socks and shoes in the linen closet, so Skinner did the same, staking out a shelf for himself. He looked around for a clean towel and finally found some in a bag on the closet floor.

He was confused. Krycek had called it, 'my place,' but he wasn't sure if Krycek actually lived in the apartment or if he was just staying here temporarily. There was no dresser, no rug, no chair. In fact, unless you counted the tiny CD player, there wasn't any furniture at all.

Krycek stayed gone all day. He always left food, but Skinner hadn't felt like eating. Now he was hungry, so he walked, naked, out to the kitchen to see what there was. Again, only the very basic appliances, and very little food. No blender, no toaster, no can opener, no milk. It was weird, but strangely soothing. The emptiness required nothing of him, and he didn't have to be on guard because there was nothing to intrude upon his senses. He ate some soup, then retreated to the bed.

This time, though, when Krycek came to check on him, Skinner sat up to greet him.

"You feel better." It wasn't a question.

There was no use lying about it. Krycek had seen him at his worst. He was owed an honest answer.

"Yes. Thank you."

Krycek gave him a strange look. "I'm going to get some dinner. You want anything?"

Skinner shook his head, then abruptly changed his mind. "Yes."

"Which is it?"

"That soup. It was good."

Krycek nodded. He came back with more soup and a bottle of Bushmills 32 year old scotch.

They ate and got drunk. The whiskey slammed into Skinner like he'd been dropped from a four story building. They were lying on the bed together, so he talked to him like they had a history of shared intimacies

"Are you crazy, Alex?" It was a plaintively sincere question. He genuinely wanted to know.

Alex shrugged, matching his honesty. "I'm not really sure."

"Seriously," Skinner insisted. "Do you think you're crazy?"

"You tell me. Am I?"

That brought him up short. "I don't know. I used to think I knew."

"Yeah. Me to. Drink up."

They drank. They passed out. Skinner's hangover put him back in bed for another two days, but he really didn't find fault with that. It was better than thinking. He still hadn't forgiven his mind for hurting him so badly.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Three weeks after he'd last seen him at the hotel, Doggett got a message to come to Skinner's office for a meeting. Doggett braced himself, but Skinner was nice.

"Thank you for your support through this. Your help has been invaluable."

Doggett felt embarrassed. The last time he'd seen his boss he'd been covered in the skeletal remains of nanobots; he'd been nude, sick, frail, and dependent upon Doggett and a strange ex-assassin for his very life. It was hard to reconcile the image of this impeccably suited AD with the pitiful son-of-a-bitch who hadn't even had the strength to crawl from the bathroom to his bed. Worst of all, he got a sudden mental picture of Skinner in a saffron robe singing Hari Krishna and the contrasting images forced him to bite his lip to keep his nervous laughter at bay.

"You ever think you'd like to take a few more days off, Sir?"

Skinner gifted him with that slight upturn of the lips that meant he was smiling. "Thank you, Agent Doggett but I think I'm okay now."

The silence stretched painfully. Doggett, honest to a fault, wanted to say, 'I know you've got big secrets and I don't want in on them. I just hope we can still be friends, or something.'

The silence stretched on.

"Well." Doggett finally said.

"Well." Skinner echoed.

"Kersh is being promoted up and out." Doggett blurted. "He's taking a job at Commerce."

"Good riddance."

"Yeah. I figured you'd say that. Well, see you around."

"Yup."

They parted company, so many things left unsaid between them that they both blushed next time they saw one another.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Skinner put on a suit and went out to work again, it threw Alex into a tailspin. It never occurred to him that he'd been lonely before Skinner had arrived. Or that having Skinner live in his house made the loneliness go away. Nonetheless, he felt a momentary panic when Skinner brought up the idea that he should leave now that he was on his feet again.

"I relapsed a couple of times," Alex lied. "Probably best for you to stick around."

"Well, if you don't mind me staying here." There was relief in Skinner's face.

Alex relaxed. Skinner was just saying what he thought was the right thing. "You should probably stay."

Skinner nodded. Alex noticed that he didn't speak much these days. Except for going to work in the mornings, his routine did not change much. He came home to Alex's house at night and went straight to bed. Alex woke him to feed him, then sometimes woke him to have sex with him.

It was, he thought, kind of like having a dog except Alex had never had sex with a dog and didn't intend to start. But the feeding and walking thing was pretty much the same. That Saturday he bundled Skinner into the car and took him funeral hunting. And the next one, and the one after that. In fact, a month passed before Skinner finally asked why they went to so many funerals.

"To pay my respects to the dead," Krycek answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Skinner squinted, obviously perplexed, but he did not challenge the absurdity. He was still distant and quiet, but he did what Alex said without much fuss. Eventually, missing his Friday night feasts, Alex took Skinner to the Middle-Eastern restaurant across the street. He noticed Skinner watching him thoughtfully and braced himself. Sure enough, he was unlocking the door to his apartment when Skinner turned to him.

"You like me living here, don't you?"

"So what? You like it too."

"But why?"

Alex didn't answer for a long time. Finally he said, "Honestly Skinner, who else could I stand to live with except you?"

Now it was Skinner's turn for a long silence. "The nanocyte thing." He finally said.

Alex was relieved that he understood. He'd seen Skinner at his worst--naked, weak, crying with pain, and Skinner knew that Krycek had been through the exact same thing. "There's nothing to hide," he explained, "and sometimes I get laid."

"Jesus, Krycek. Is that really enough for you?"

"It's more than I had before. You too, for that matter," Alex answered brutally.

"Jesus."

But Skinner stayed on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After a while he noticed that Krycek liked taking care of him, and that he liked it too. They were in Krycek's car, a mid-range, mid-sized sedan, possibly the boringest car in the history of cars, but he liked it for being so undemanding and ordinary. Krycek tended to treat Walter much like his pet, or his invalid uncle. He didn't leave him in the house alone unless he absolutely had to. Now they were on their way home from dinner. Krycek had been careful to ask for an extra order of creamed chicken.

"In case you get hungry before I get back home tomorrow night," he explained. "We have a late meeting at work."

Walter was unexpectedly touched, and surprised.

"What changed you, Krycek?"

An oddly tender expression crossed Alex's face. Finally he twisted his lips into a smile and said, "I beat Spender."

"How'd you do that?" Skinner was genuinely interested.

"With my fists," Alex clarified. "I beat him up." He glanced over to see how Walter was taking it, triumph warring with suspicion.

When Walter just stared at him, Alex elaborated. "I killed him once, you know. Me and Marita. I pushed him down a flight of stairs. I thought that was it, that it was over." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "You'll never understand what it was like working for him."

He paused for a long time, and when he began again, his voice was huskier, angrier. "I found out he was alive again. I tracked him down and he tried to pull that 'you-need-me-because-I-have-a-secret' bullshit on me, and I just started to hit him. He fought back. Hard. But in the end, I beat him until he tried to crawl away from me. Then I called an ambulance. They forced him to come in. Posted a guard so he couldn't leave. He was in the hospital three days."

They stopped at a light. Alex sat in silence. When the light changed he started talking again. "Two weeks after he got out, I found him and beat the crap out of him again." He turned to look at Skinner full on. "You think I don't know how to deliver a good beating?"

"I know all about your repertoire of skills in that regard." Skinner answered wryly.

"You only think you do." He glanced over at Skinner again, wearing an air of unabashed gloating. "You gotta go for the ligaments, Skinner. They heal very slowly when they heal at all." He reached down to rub the back of his thigh near the knee. "Kick a man right here and he'll limp on that leg the rest of his life."

He looked up and grinned, that evil death's-head grin he'd given Skinner once or twice before. "I got him in both legs the second time."

Skinner nodded. He was on the edge of his seat. It was the best story he'd heard since forever. He couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

"The third time?" He looked over at Skinner who nodded even more vigorously.

"The third time I wore lead-lined gloves." He glanced over again, looking to see if Skinner knew what he was talking about.

Skinner heard his breathing get a little heavier. Lead-lined gloves added more heft to a blow. A slap bruised bone. A punch crushed bone.

"I slapped him until he couldn't see straight. Over and over again." Alex was nearly purring with pleasure at the memory. "By the time I was done, all I had to do was raise my hand and he would flinch and cringe away. His face swelled up so bad that if I hadn't known it was him I wouldn't have recognized him."

He told Skinner about how he'd mocked Spender's helplessness; how he'd ridiculed him for thinking he'd ever been anything but a senior flunky. He lovingly recounted each derisive taunt.

"I told him what the elders really thought of him. I told him of the way they'd insulted him behind his back, how easily they'd abandoned him now that he was weak and helpless. Told him he was in my power now, and there was nothing he could do about it."

Skinner rode every word, saying nothing. He was reliving the beating, slapping Spender along with Alex, through Alex, enjoying it secondhand without the slightest bit of guilt. He was owed this. True, Alex had been the one to collect, but in recounting the story with such pleasure, he was generously offering Skinner the chance to play accomplice. Skinner indulged with a gratification that was barely this side of obscene.

Alex threw Skinner a challenging expression. Skinner braced himself.

"I walked up to him in a diner a few weeks later. I picked his pocket, took all his money out of his wallet then put his wallet back. Then I said, 'Dad! Where've you been? I've been looking all over for you!' He started crying, calling for help, saying I was going to beat him up, please somebody help him. And all the time I'm playing like he's my old man, trying to get him to come with me. The guy behind the counter comes out and I give him this exasperated expression and say, 'I've been looking for him for almost three hours. My father has Alzheimer's. He goes to restaurants and orders but then doesn't have any money to pay for his food.' So sure enough Spender reaches into his wallet. He doesn't have dime one. The manager is starting to get pissed off. I hand him a fifty, apologize, tell him my dad has walked away from two nursing homes and been kicked out of a third for fighting with staff. I shake my head. Now the guy feels sorry for me. He helps me get Spender into the car. Straps him in. Spender's screaming at me the whole time."

The story gave Skinner actual physical pleasure. He marveled at the feel of his muscles relaxing, and at the soothing sensation of blood flowing to the surface of his body in the wake of decreased muscular tension. His skin tingled and a mild euphoria made him feel a little bit buzzed.

"So then what?" He asked.

Alex smiled again. "He was yelling at me in the car, but as soon as we got out of view of the diner he started to beg again. He tried to jump out of the car, but the seatbelt mechanism wouldn't unlock until I triggered it myself."

"Naturally you thought of everything."

Alex nodded modestly. "Anyway, he starts to cry again, and he's saying 'Haven't you had enough, go ahead and kill me Alex, you've wanted to for years. Don't you have the balls? What's stopping you?'"

"I let him rant. I drove him to Skye Meadows state park. Middle of nowhere. Pulled him out of the car and made him strip. I think he thought I was going to rape him."

That couldn't be it. Skinner caught his breath.

"I pulled out the gloves. Told him he was getting another beating, and then I was going to leave him to make his way home by himself. Well, he knew he couldn't survive a beating and the cold temperature. He offered to blow me. Said he knew that was what I really wanted." He looked over at Skinner again.

"I told him there was only one way he was getting home that night. Or ever."

"Yeah?"

"And I..."

"Go on."

"I took a dump. And I made him eat it."

"Oh, God," Skinner moaned. The past month's stress had him too emotionally defenseless to be able to cover his reaction. He was already sitting down, but he felt his head loll back against the headrest and hit the window. There was gray mist in front of his eyes. He heard a plaintive cry from somewhere, realized it was himself. It wasn't the punchline that horrified him. Rather, it was his reaction to it that had shocked him into near-insensibility. He was viciously, obscenely gratified to hear how Spender had been abased so completely. He thought of himself as a rational man, a man with self-control, a man who would eschew vengeance for justice, but no matter how much he condemned himself for it, his reaction was one of pure pleasure. He had to force himself not to thank Alex for being the man he had never dared become, because at some deep level, he understood that in this case, mere justice would never be enough.

He said nothing; forced himself to breathe through his sudden lightheadedness.

Krycek looked over at him again, speculation on his features.

"Aren't you afraid I'll do that to you?"

Skinner shook his head. "You never hated me that much."

Alex's smile lit his face. "You know me better than I thought."

They took the rest of the trip in silence, Skinner reliving the story of Spender's comeuppance like his new favorite novel.

"Where is he now?"

"He lives in a motel on Route 1."

Skinner sighed. Spender had come down in the world, even more than he had.

Something else occurred to him. "He ever do that to you?"

"No." Alex pulled into his parking space then turned to look Skinner in the eye as if he were willing him to understand. "I had to do something worse to him than anything he'd ever done to me. That's why. Then, afterwards, I could be a person again. I mean, I was not a person... or I was a not-person... not real. But when I did that, I made him the not-person and then I could go get my life back. I don't know if that makes any sense."

It made perfect sense. Skinner found himself admiring Alex, reveling in his sheer determination to take his life back, no matter how low he had to stoop to do it. He was one weird, fucked-up son of a bitch, but at least he was true to his own nature. Skinner decided that he wanted to get his life back too. He wondered how to go about doing that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The head of the senate intelligence committee called Doggett down to his office again. Doggett took his time choosing the right tie to wear, but the Senator didn't seem inclined to notice much more than a file he had on his desk.

"I found this. I thought you ought to have a look at it."

Doggett opened the file. The first thing he saw was a picture of a boy with large bruises on his back. Bile welled up in his throat. For anyone to treat a child like that...

"Read it. He was taken from his parents, beaten, starved, raped, dehumanized. The first purchase on the first credit card he ever got his hands on was a thousand red roses for a grave in Poukeepsie. His mother and father."

"I didn't know." Doggett's voice was hushed with the enormity of his discovery.

"Whatever Krycek is, he deserves a year of his dream life before someone takes him out. If that's what he wants."

Doggett agreed completely. Goddamn if he was going to get in Krycek's way, not after learning about this.

"You oughtta burn this stuff."

"I ought to, but I'm not going to. I may need this, and the information won't get out unless I want it to."

It wasn't much of a guarantee but it was better than nothing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He'd moved into Krycek's apartment with little more than the clothes on his back. It wasn't too awkward at first because ever since his ordeal in the hotel, Walter felt incapable of taking up space for himself. He didn't say much and kept out of the way. If Krycek noticed how shell-shocked he was, he said nothing. He ordered Skinner around, but benignly. Put on your jacket. Come downstairs with me. Pick something from the menu. I'm going to give you a blowjob now. Turn over now. Go to sleep now.

Walter found it comforting. He didn't have the wherewithal to make decisions for himself. He dressed on autopilot, went to work, took comfort in daily routines, but didn't dare venture past reflexive daily habits because something worse than nanocytes might be lurking around the next corner and Walter was tired and afraid.

Not surprisingly, it was the sex that finally woke him up. Krycek fucked him carefully and with great skill and one night Skinner heaved himself up onto his hands and knees, the better to feel what Krycek was doing.

Behind him, Krycek gasped and whispered something that sounded like an imprecation. Skinner froze, afraid that this simple move might have consequences he couldn't handle, but Krycek rewarded him with a reach around so he decided that everything was okay. He relaxed and spread his legs wider, allowing himself to enjoy the sensations. When he moaned his pleasure, he was rewarded with a guttural, triumphant cry, and Krycek began to grind against him with vastly increased enthusiasm.

"'s good," he sighed.

"Oh, yeah," Krycek agreed. "The best."

After that, Krycek started to kiss him. All over.

He kissed him, pragmatically, neutrally, the way you kissed a younger cousin on his birthday, except he wouldn't stop. He kissed up and down Skinner's body and did not skip a single inch. He even kissed Skinner's feet and toes.

Skinner tried not to snort. The bottoms of his feet were ticklish. Krycek looked up to see why he'd jerked his foot away, but the expression on Skinner's face must have reassured him because he gave him a slow, knowing smile.

"You're back, aren't you?"

Skinner didn't know. He shrugged.

But Krycek only nodded. "It's okay. It took me a while too."

~*~*~*~*~*~

They had an actual sex life, and Alex was pleased with it. He smiled more at work, even though he knew it made him look like a predator. Skinner seemed to like it too, but his dawning recovery made him no less suspicious and ornery.

"How long can you keep this up," he demanded one morning.

His fits of anger always took Alex by surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"The straight-guy act? You don't fool anyone."

Alex was stung. "I've fooled them all."

"Take a careful look at your supervisor. I bet he's scared shitless of you," Skinner offered and didn't say any more. That evening though, when Alex came home from work, Skinner looked at him carefully and Alex had been unable to hide an expression of defeat. His boss was frightened of him. He hadn't been expecting it, but he was too good at reading people not to see it. There was a slight widening of the eyes before the jovial mask slipped on as he praised Alex to one of his stockholders. And now Skinner knew.

And he wasn't finished.

"You have no life here." Skinner looked around the room. "That's because you're waiting for it to end, aren't you. Suicide by assassin, am I right?"

Alex couldn't answer him, could barely breathe because Doggett had said the same thing, and neither man was stupid. The logic behind his own behavior suddenly crystallized. He thought of his stupidly daring yet consistent forays into the dense woods behind his apartment; blatant invitations to any assassin to take him out without anyone being the wiser. He faced the fact that he was only playing at a life, and it was obvious to anyone who looked at him carefully.

"I don't like you, Krycek, you know that, but don't force me to feel sorry for you."

Alex was stunned. He could never guess what would come out of Skinner's mouth from one day to the next. "You're saying I should kill myself and get it over with."

"I'm saying shit or get off the pot."

"Like you?"

"Like whoever. Take your life back."

"I never had a life to begin with."

"So get one!" Skinner roared at him. "Or I'm leaving."

"You do and I'll hunt you down."

"Why? You don't even like me."

"Yes I do."

"But I don't like you."

Alex smiled. It was extremely relaxing to be around someone who was so brutally honest. "I don't care." He truly didn't. Lots of people didn't like him. It wasn't an Alex Krycek problem.

They stared at each other, then a reluctant, admiring smile crossed Walter's face. "You're insane, Krycek."

"So?"

"So nothing. Quit trying to get yourself killed."

Alex glared. Skinner glared back. Obviously Skinner was very pissed off about something. Alex backed down. He liked having Walter there when he came home every night. "Who put a bug up your ass?"

"Look. You want me here. I'm here. But I'm not coming home every night to the possibility of your brains splattered all over the floor, that's what."

"That's so touching." It truly was. Skinner cared whether Alex died or not.

"Will you do it?"

"Did you really expect me to answer in words?"

"Oh."

The next evening after work, Skinner came home with a coffee maker. Alex was intrigued. "So how was work today?" What he really meant was, 'What are you doing with that coffee maker?'

"This weekend I'm going to my storage locker and bringing over the rest of my suits and clothing. Would you like to help?"

In spite of himself Alex was intrigued. "Hire your own help," he snarled.

"Okay." Skinner seemed remarkably tension-free. In fact, he seemed almost smug. That smugness lasted through his shower and nightly rituals, and even through Alex's expected hand on his ass. He rolled over and put one arm around Alex and kissed him He reached down to Alex's genitals.

Which shrank at the touch. "What do you think you're doing?" Alex demanded.

"It's called sex, Alex. It's what we do at night."

"I don't like it this way."

"Yeah I know. You like me helpless and unable to resist being taken advantage of."

Alex braced himself, wondering if it was payback time. Skinner had started going back to the gym. He was getting strong again, and now his hand was wrapped around Alex's testicles. If Alex didn't play along... It didn't bear thinking about.

But Skinner just pulled Alex's mouth to his and bore down on him. After a very few moments Alex felt dazed. Skinner was relentless. His hand was gentle on Alex's cock and balls and his mouth was inexorable. He kissed Alex until Alex felt like a young, inexperienced boy again. He kissed Alex until Alex was swooning in his arms. He kissed Alex until Alex threw his leg over Skinner's hip and undulated against him, wanting more and all but demanding that Skinner show him what came next.

Skinner obliged, rolling Alex over on top of him, opening his own thighs wide, canting his hips up and reaching down to guide Alex inside him.

It was perfect.

It was so much better like this; kissing, being braced by strong arms while Skinner rocked beneath him, letting Skinner lick and chew on his nipples until Alex was nearly incoherent with arousal. Then, to his everlasting amazement, Skinner locked his thighs around Alex's hips and turned them both over so Alex was on the bottom while Skinner rode him. It took Alex a moment to catch his breath at the maneuver, but Skinner never even broke stride. He took his pleasure from Alex's body, gyrating against him and posting like he was on a horse. He took one of Alex's hands and wrapped it around his jutting erection, then brought his fingers up to his own nipples, rolling them between his fingertips until finally he came with a loud, plaintive cry.

Alex was seconds behind him, losing himself in pleasure, then falling back to the mattress, completely overwhelmed. Who knew Skinner had it in him? Skinner of all people was a rampaging sex puppy! And, God, the look on his face--angelic, erotic, vulnerable, triumphant. Alex knew he would kill to see that look again.

Skinner came back from the bathroom, looking very smug around the edges. He smirked at Alex's dazed expression, but (Alex told himself) it was a kindly smirk.

"You gonna help me bring my things in from the storage locker?"

Was that all he wanted? Alex would have brought him the president's head on a bed of arugula if he'd asked for it. "You're a flirt," Alex accused.

"You know you love it." Walter was on his side, falling asleep.

Alex turned on his back, thinking. "Yeah," he finally murmured. "I guess I do."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in." Doggett was still jealous and not inclined to be kind.

"Fuck you." Krycek appeared to have no desire to enter Doggett's house. He stood in the doorway and glared. "How did you know he started wearing Depends?"

The question took Doggett by surprise, but he figured he owed Krycek the truth. "One day he got really depressed. I mean, really down, even for him. He wouldn't tell me what was going on."

"So you followed your own friend," Alex guessed.

Doggett flushed at the inherent criticism. "I didn't know if he would hurt himself..." He abruptly stopped speaking, certain he was giving away too much of Skinner's private business. "What's it to you, anyway?"

Krycek scowled at him. "We're moving his stuff into my apartment. That thing you said, about not caring if I get shot or not..."

Doggett thought he understood. Even though he wanted to scream at the unfairness of having to teach his rival how to best take care of the man he himself wanted, he liked Skinner too much not to help where he could. He sighed. "Look, Krycek, sometimes you're gonna have to keep his secrets."

"I know that!" Krycek sounded peeved.

"Then what?"

But Krycek just stood there, glowering stubbornly.

"Christ, come in," Doggett finally begrudged him entrance. "You're lettin' out all the heat."

Krycek perched on the edge of his sofa like a nervous cat. Doggett handed him a beer and he polished it off in about two gulps.

"Want another?" It appeased him a little to see Alex Krycek with an attack of nerves.

"I'm good, thanks."

"Look. It's about responsibility. You want him to stay with you, you're going to be in his business sometimes. He's going to be in yours. That's just the way it's going to be."

"You got in his business because you were his friend."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"You got in my business but you're not my friend."

Doggett was uncomfortable but he wouldn't lie. "No."

"Then what's the difference?"

Fuck. Doggett suddenly felt like he was looking at one of those pictures that changed from an old woman to a young girl depending on how you perceived it. He remembered the file from the senator's office and knew all at once that for Skinner's sake he couldn't stay angry with Krycek.

"I saw the file on you. From when you were a kid."

He watched Krycek brace himself and made up his mind. "And I've decided... to forgive you."

Krycek favored him with a jaundiced expression. "You're only doing it because it gives you leverage over poor abused Krycek. That kid died."

"True, but I also mean it. My kid died too."

"I didn't know."

"He was raped and murdered."

"Oh." Krycek looked sick for a second, then chillingly angry. "They get him?"

"Yeah, but my point is, if he'd lived he might have grown up to become you, and how could I hate you if I loved him." He paused and got a good look at Krycek's face. "That frightens you," he stated baldly.

There was no hiding the fear on Krycek's expression and they both knew it. "Yeah."

"You're gonna have to live with it."

"Okay."

Doggett nodded. "Same with Skinner. If you live with somebody, sometimes there's stuff you gotta do whether you want to or not."

Krycek just stared.

Doggett thought of his son and took one more risk. "Look, if you want I'll help you. You've never had a normal life, but I have. I could show you... you know... stuff."

Krycek studied his face carefully. "You mean like we'd hang out sometimes."

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"Okay."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bit by bit the contents of Skinner's storage locker ended up in Krycek's house. Some Saturdays they went out and rented a stepvan, and Krycek's home began to fill up with lamps, sofas, hutches... Skinner did deep belly breathing along with Krycek. His blood pressure came down. His regular doctor was very pleased.

His life came back to him in bits and pieces too. He roared at two agents who screwed up a case and was pleased to see them shake in their shoes. He gave Kersh's replacement a real smile. The man seemed quite astounded but gave him a timid smile in return. The playoffs started. He told Doggett he would bring the beer if Doggett would invite him over. Doggett's grin made him feel warm inside.

He considered asking Doggett if Krycek could come too but decided against it. When he told Krycek he was spending the day at Doggett's house, Krycek gave him a funny stare.

"Skinner?" They were hauling the last few boxes of household goods out of the storage locker. They didn't even need the van this time. "You ever think about making it with Doggett?"

Skinner didn't answer.

"I mean, he'd like it."

"You think?"

"Yeah."

Skinner considered. Men were more rational about these things. If Doggett wanted him and Krycek didn't mind, which he obviously didn't or he wouldn't have brought it up, Skinner was game.

Still, he had to make sure. "You'd be pissed off if I did anything with Doggett."

Krycek shrugged. "Maybe if it was the three of us together it wouldn't be so bad."

The visual on that one had Skinner standing stock still in the middle of the parking lot.

"Earth to Skinner."

Walter took a deep breath. "Um..."

Alex smirked at him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He watched Skinner get better. At first, work exhausted him. He came home, ate what was put in front of him, then went to bed and slept until the following morning. After weeks of this, he got up one evening and came out to the living room. Krycek, watching TV, glanced at him and said nothing.

A few days later, Skinner picked up the remote. He seemed to like holding it. Krycek thought this was strange, but if Skinner wanted to hold small bits of plastic and wire, he wasn't going to argue.

Without understanding why, he knew that Skinner somehow blamed himself for his troubles, as if getting infected with nanocytes was something he'd asked for. Alex thought he was crazy, but it didn't bother him much. He understood that there were things about Skinner he might never comprehend, but even so, he really liked the fact that Skinner was in his house all the time. He liked it when Skinner said, 'Look, call me Walter.' He liked it when Walter bent over for him. All that size and strength, kneeling, docile, on his bed. Walter's ass was pretty. His long waist, stretched out, accentuated his beautiful back and shoulders. Sometimes he turned so they were face to face. It made Alex feel helplessly affectionate towards him. But of all the things he was beginning to enjoy, the thing he liked most was putting groceries away. Alex had no sense of the fairness of splitting expenses. He figured, it was his home, and if he wanted Walter in it, then he, Alex, should pay for Walter's upkeep. Walter, on the other hand, was adamant about paying his fair share. When Alex laughed at him, Walter went out and defiantly brought home enough food to feed a small army.

Alex had been peeved at first because he expected the food to go bad, just sitting there, then they'd have to go through the bother of throwing it all out. It took him a few weeks to get used to the idea that if a person cooked and ate the food in his refrigerator, it wouldn't go to waste.

When the very full refrigerator became empty, Alex wondered what would happen next. His 'oh, duh!' when Walter brought more food in, was almost palpable.

"Help me put this away," Walter said, and Alex felt a great sense of accomplishment in being able to do so. He'd been watching Walter cook for almost a month, and he knew where things went.

After a while, he learned most of Walter's limited repertoire of meals.

Some of the stuff he really looked forward to.

"Glazed carrots?" He'd developed the habit of peering under lids and into the microwave.

"Yeah."

"Good."

Walter smiled at him. A real smile. It made Alex feel happy.

Walter bought more groceries. Alex helped put them away with a sense of wonder. Was this what a regular life looked like? Furniture, groceries, someone who lived with you and wasn't afraid of you. He liked it. Liked it a lot, though he couldn't rightly have said why.

Walter wasn't such a bad person, Alex decided. He kissed Walter in their kitchen in the full light of day and watched the man's face go soft. It frightened the shit out of him and he kissed him once more, awkwardly, then backed away.

~*~*~*~*~*~

John Doggett didn't understand either, though Skinner could see that he was really trying. He and Doggett went out to lunch one day and had guy-gossip about Krycek's life. They talked about his weird propensity for the funerals of strangers. Doggett told Skinner about all the nice things Krycek had done for some of the people who'd been hurt by the consortium. Skinner unbent enough to tell John about Krycek's life--his empty apartment, his Friday night banquets, his cutthroat sales tactics. They very pointedly did not discuss the fact that Alex had helped tend Skinner's sick, naked body when Skinner couldn't do it for himself.

Skinner did not tell Doggett that he and Krycek were fucking, or that he liked it.

He did say, however, that Krycek didn't know anything about living a normal life.

"He didn't know how to use a toaster. He didn't have a screwdriver. He'd never paid a bill. Never bought insurance. It was like he lived his whole life in the twilight zone. I mean I'm getting to like the guy but..." Skinner shrugged. He'd said more than enough.

Doggett told Skinner about the contents of Alex's file.

"Son of a bitch." Skinner wasn't really surprised, but it still horrified him to hear it said aloud.

"I told him to destroy the information. No use having stuff like that floating around where the wrong hands could get a hold of it."

"The wrong hands already got a hold of it. Nothing anyone can do."

"Yeah."

On the way out of the restaurant, Doggett said, "I offered to come hang out with him sometimes."

Skinner was startled and unexpectedly touched. It took him a moment before he could speak again. "That was really nice of you."

Before they parted ways, Skinner stopped still, staring out into the distance.

"What is it?" Doggett asked.

"I don't know how I can thank you enough, or how I can ever repay you for what you did for me, John." He was talking to the building across the street, pointedly not looking into Doggett's face.

Doggett lightly punched Skinner in the arm, then turned away and got in his truck.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A few days after his lunch with Skinner, Doggett screwed up his courage, ignored the voice in his head that told him he was insane, and called Krycek. He asked if Krycek wanted to go to a baseball game.

Krycek's smile could be heard through the phone. "That'd be great."

When Doggett picked him up, however, he asked if they could stop somewhere first. "There's something I have to show you."

He took Doggett to a really sleazy hotel to talk to somebody named Charlie.

When 'Charlie' opened the door, Doggett received the shock of his life.

"Charlie Spender," Alex introduced them, "say hello to John Doggett."

Spender looked like a bum; unshaven, smoking a generic brand cigarette that had a cap of ash almost an inch long. There were cigarette burns on his sweater and he stank of booze.

Doggett stared. "I thought Mulder killed you."

"Mulder killed a clone," Krycek explained. "I killed this actual person once, but he was brought back. So my plan now is not to kill him. Just keep him where I can find him."

"I don't get it. He's free to leave anytime he wants."

"He stays near liquor stores, and it's hard for him to walk." He turned to Spender. "Show Doggett how you walk."

"Screw you, Krycek."

"Come on. Show him."

"Alex," Doggett murmured. "He's three sheets to the wind."

"I know." Alex frowned disapprovingly. He began to lecture Spender on the wages of vice and the benefits of redemption.

Spender raised a shaky gun and aimed it at Krycek's head. Doggett ducked for cover and pulled out his own piece but Krycek just laughed.

"You can't shoot me. They'd take you in, and then everyone would find out that you've been living in a roach motel, hiding in a bottle. Can you imagine," he said to Doggett. "This was one of the men who killed Kennedy. He was one of the most powerful men in the entire damned country at one point."

"'Was' is right," Doggett snorted from his place behind the door. The former most powerful man in America lived in a shithole. "What happened to him?"

"Ran into some hard times." He turned his back on Spender, looking around the room with distaste. "Isn't that right? How're your legs?"

"Leave me alone! Get away from me!" Spender made an effort to keep his arm straight, but it was visibly trembling.

Doggett stayed low watching the crazy scenario unfold. In a very few moments the gun grew too heavy for Spender to keep upright, and he let his arm fall. Krycek loomed over him and Spender cringed away, but all Krycek did was take the gun from his hand and check the chamber.

He turned it around to show Doggett. "Just what I thought. Empty."

Doggett stood up and put his piece away. Now that he could breathe again he wondered what the point of this little visit was.

Alex was giving Spender a cheery goodbye. "Thanks for having us over. See you soon!"

Doggett all but ran towards the parking lot.

"So." Krycek turned to him with a cheerful smile. "You want to go get coffee or something?"

"Uh... sure." They got coffee at Starbucks. Then they went out to the game. During the seventh inning stretch, Doggett turned to him. "What was that all about, with Spender?"

"I like to keep an eye on him. He's a really bad guy, but if he knows I'm watching he keeps his nose clean."

Obviously there was more to the story than that, and Doggett almost pressed him, but then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to treat Krycek like a suspect anymore.

"Alex Krycek keeps America safe," he teased.

Krycek blushed deeply.

The blush stunned Doggett. Did Krycek really believe he was protecting the country from men like Spender?

Eventually, he figured it out. There was nobody in the world like Alex Krycek, and Alex Krycek knew it. There were no rules, no guidelines for being who he was, so he was making his life up as he went along. Much of it was weird and macabre, obviously, but it was also obvious that he was trying to move as close to normal as he possibly could. The Friday after the game, Alex invited him to dinner at a Middle-Eastern restaurant. Skinner came too, and the three of them had a great time. Now he had a standing invitation to join them. As time passed, Skinner even unbent enough to tell him some stories from back when he was an agent. Skinner, it turned out, could be even spookier than Mulder was.

Weird.

Nice, but weird.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex Krycek was truly out of his depth now. It was humbling, how many new things he was learning--how to buy groceries instead of eating every meal from out of a bag. How to cook food at night. How to wash pots and dishes and put them away for next time. He was both entertained and horrified by the many things he didn't know.

Sometimes, when he tried to figure things out for himself, he did them all wrong. He bought a picture for a blank spot on the wall, only to have Walter point out that Janet Jackson, no matter how pretty, was not appropriate living room decor. Janet ended up in one of the spare bedrooms. A stain where a muddy grocery bag brushed against the wall got worse instead of better when he tried to clean it. He'd gotten a paper towel, then a dishcloth, then a bowl of soapy water and a sponge. He stared resentfully at the big dark smear he'd made.

Walter grinned at his frustration. "Grocery list. Formula 409"

"What?" Alex knew he sounded testy but this really sucked.

"Get some formula 409 next time you go to the store. Put it on the grocery list so you don't forget. If that still doesn't work, get a can of touch-up paint. Next time you have the place done, make sure to use latex."

"Latex... condoms?" That couldn't be right.

"Paint. For when you redo the walls."

"Redo the walls." This was making no sense whatsoever.

"Walls should get a fresh coat every few years. They discolor. You can do it, you can have someone else do it, but you've made a mess of that stain, and it's obviously cheap quality paint or it wouldn't hold a stain like that in the first place."

"Cheap quality paint."

Walter chuckled. "Come here a sec."

Alex did, and Walter pulled him down to lie against his chest. "There's lots of different types of household paints," he began. He lectured about paint for almost ten minutes, Alex snuggled against his chest, listening seriously. When Walter wound down, Alex stayed where he was.

"I didn't know any of that stuff." It had taken him a long time to lower his guard enough to admit such a thing.

"I figured."

"You think I should repaint the place?"

"Did it get done when you moved in here?"

"No clue."

"Did you smell fresh paint when you bought the place?"

"Yeah, come to think of it."

"Then maybe in a year or so. Or sooner if that stain starts to drive you crazy."

Krycek considered carefully. "I can live with it. And... uh... Walter?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Walter kissed his cheek.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He took it upon himself to teach Alex the things he should have learned. Little things. Why men went to hardware stores, why it was good to take shoes to the shoemakers, how to play trivial pursuit. He was proud of Alex, and calmly pleased with their life together. At odd moments during the day, he noticed that he felt good, and being the man he was, he deliberately tested the feeling. He thought about his ordeal in the hotel. He thought about giving up half-a million dollars for his cure. He thought about the time Alex went out with a layer of black clothing underneath his track suit and a gun hidden beneath his jacket. He thought about their ceremonial silence when he helped Alex soak the clothes in ammonia so the blood spatter would be unidentifiable. Thought about how he'd held Alex tightly when Alex whispered that all he wanted was for that life to finally be behind him.

Step by step, little things made up their life together.

They had sex a lot on the weekends, and during the week if Alex was up for it. He wasn't very romantic--a hand on Walter's ass and a whispered, "You awake?"

Walter didn't mind. Sometimes he groused, "I am now." but it was just growling and didn't mean anything. He would get himself in position--knees wide apart, head in the mattress, ass high. He'd heard Alex whimper the first time he'd positioned himself that way, so he assumed Alex liked what he saw.

He noticed that he could actually meet his own eyes in the mirror these days.

"Well," he said to his reflection. "Things are turning out okay."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Alex thought about responsibility and came to a decision. "Listen," he was helping Skinner cut celery. "You're probably going to live here for a while, right?"

"If you want."

"Yeah, I want."

"Then, yeah, probably."

"Okay, well, if I die... I'm not planning anything," he said into Skinner's sudden expression of rage, "I'm saying in case, you understand? If I die, you have to fuck the mailman."

"I don't like your mailman."

"Well, somebody hot?"

"No."

Alex sighed. "I'll leave you all my money, but you have to go spend it. Not on mutual funds. Something... frivolous."

Skinner smiled. "Sentimentalist."

Alex stared at him.

"Okay," Skinner sighed. "I'll fuck someone hot. You got it."

So that was settled.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Walter found Alex's stash of porn. "If you have these, why are you on top of me every chance you get?"

Alex looked surprised. "I haven't looked at them since you got here."

"Oh." In spite of himself, Walter thought, 'A stockbroker and an assistant director make a nice couple.'

Out loud he said, "You're not all that ugly."

Alex squinted then suddenly relaxed. "I didn't want to go to the same people as before," he explained.

That made sense. Alex was starting over.

They were both starting over.

He liked that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Doggett knocked, and Skinner opened the apartment door dressed in a somber jacket and tie.

Doggett himself had on a t-shirt and sweats. 'After all,' he reminded himself self-consciously, it was Saturday. He thought they'd be hanging out, not going anywhere special. "Why are you all duded up?"

Skinner blushed.

"What?"

"Um..."

"Yeah?"

Just then Krycek came into view, also dressed to the nines. Skinner blushed even deeper as Doggett's dawning amazement and horror crossed his face.

Skinner shrugged, a 'what can I say?' expression on his face. "We're going to find a funeral."

While Doggett was standing there with his mouth open, Skinner knocked his world even further off its axis.

"Come with us."

"Uh... I don't..."

"Come on. Afterwards we're going to take in a movie." And while Doggett was trying to get his brain in gear, Skinner made the decision for him. "Alex will lend you a shirt and tie."

"Uh... I don't think..."

"I know. Go get changed."

Doggett liked how he looked in Alex's shirt. Apparently, Alex did too. On the elevator down, he nudged Skinner and gave him a significant look.

"What?" Doggett demanded.

"Skinner thinks you look good."

Doggett just stared, not daring to believe Krycek meant what Doggett thought he meant. He looked to Skinner for guidance.

Skinner took Doggett's arm and didn't let go. He gave Doggett a smile and looked directly into his eyes this time. "What he means, John, is that it's okay to make it up as we go along."

Alex took John's other arm and they led him to the car. He wore an equally knowing smile. "Did you hear him? It's going to be okay."

And they all got in and drove off into the sunrise.

THE END

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