So Sayeth Death, The World Is Mine
"Isn't that a little dangerous?" Krycek asks from behind her as she stares out the window at the storm.
Scully has one hand on each side of the window, and leans against the frame, and stares out and up intently, past the leaves that turn from green and fade to silver, blending with the pale of the clouds. She doesn't look back at him.
"It's raining," she says simply, after a moment's pause. "In point of fact, it's raining pretty hard, and it's been cloudy all day."
She feels a hand on her back, just a brief, light touch, a hand that runs down her spine. "Storms can clear up quickly," Krycek says patiently. Scully doesn't disagree with this. The sun can peek through the clouds, and in DC in summer, the storms can blow up and be gone in less than two hours.
"Which is why I'm not going outside," Scully says patiently, quietly, blandly, as though she's talking to an idiot child. Sometimes, with these two, she feels like she is. "Nor, you'll notice, am I opening the window. Come on, Krycek," she adds, with an edge to her voice that is, she supposes, the evil talking. "I thought you lived on the edge."
"We're not living," he says simply, his hand still on her back. Probably ready to keep her in front of him in case the sun does suddenly come out again. He'd throw her to Apollo and run while she burned, she has no doubt. But he has a point. "And even when we were, I didn't live on the edge. I was careful."
Scully does not argue with this. "They're predicting it'll rain all day," she says simply.
She doesn't know that. Maybe it's true. It's raining hard enough that she could believe that it will never end. But the rain around here is like that in the summer, and it has a habit of clearing up quickly.
Krycek's hand is on her shoulder blade now, and he pauses for a moment. After that moment, it slides over a little, onto her arm. Her muscles, she can feel by his touch on them, stand out beneath the tee-shirt she wears, for her arms are stretched a little, her hands slightly higher than her head.
"How's Fox?" she asks.
There comes a protesting grumble from the other room. "Mulder," she makes out through the open door. "I even made my parents call me Mulder. Mulder."
Scully smiles a little at that. "There's your answer," Krycek says as his fingers slide along the hills and valleys beneath her skin, formed by her muscles.
"So he's lucid?" she asks, more quietly.
Krycek makes a quiet, agreeable noise, then amends it by saying. "Well, he knows his name, at least. Seems like you're the suicidal one today," he continues, "so maybe we'll get to chain you up for once. That'll be a nice change of pace."
"Fun for the whole family," Scully says drily. She watches drops coagulate on the window, and run haphazardly, deliberately down the glass. All the while, Krycek's hand continues slowly along her arm. He is moving closer to her, too, until she feels him against her, and his hand is on top of hers, pinning it to the window frame. A couple of his fingers slide between hers.
She's still staring out at the rain, at the way the wind moves the leaves in the trees. The green of the leaves nearest the window, nearest her, is clear, but further off -- fifteen, twenty feet away, even -- they are more silverly green. Dark, and so easily distinguishable from the pale leaden clouds, but still more grey than green. Suddenly she realizes that she's standing here thinking about the clouds, and she wonders if maybe Mulder is the only one of them who's crazy.
Of course, she realizes she's crazy. That's the difference, right? You're not crazy if you know you're crazy.
She smiles as Krycek kisses her neck. The tee, worn and grey, has a v-neckline. It's old, and since it's basically a pajama top, she's not wearing a bra, and the thin, soft material brushes against her nipples.
His mouth is wet. Not warm, of course, but soft and wet, and she finds herself believing that it's warm. They haven't been dead for long, and she imagines that she's still not used to knowing that their bodies aren't warm like they were -- just as she still breathes, or goes through the motion of breathing, because she's done it since the day she was born, and all of her mind hasn't accepted that she doesn't have to do it anymore.
Scully half-expects the scrape of fangs along her throat to follow the kiss, but there is none. Krycek is more comfortable being violent with her than with Mulder. She understands. She, after all, is the one who isn't broken yet.
A larger hand, with thicker fingers than Krycek's, brushes her other arm, and she jumps. Krycek has fallen still against her, pulled his soft lips from her skin, and is resting his chin atop her head. He is looking at Mulder, she can tell, and she does so too, with a small, patient smile.
Mulder stares first at her, then at Krycek, then blinks out the window, squinting a little. "It's light," he says, his hand still on her wrist. He sounds surprised, confused.
Scully nods, feels Krycek's head move with hers. "Yeah, Mulder," she says. "It is. It's day."
He blinks out at the light again, and then looks at them. He seems lucid enough; Krycek was right. He knows who they are, and he remembers what they are. "It's raining," he muses. It doesn't seem to be something that wants a response.
Mulder leans down and kisses Scully's arm. Smoothly, quickly, Krycek has pulled his hand off of Scully's other one, moving it instead above hers on the plain wooden window frame. He had her pinned, and although Mulder seems lucid, there is never any telling how he will respond to signs that Krycek might be using violence on Scully, if he'll remember that they're all together now, that they're not enemies anymore.
They fucked, once, in front of Mulder, on one of his more violent days. He had tried to go outside, said he had to get to work, and they'd had to chain him to keep him from going out into the light. She and Krycek had fucked, and Mulder had shouted that he was going to fucking kill you, you rat bastard. They were gentle in front of him now.
Mulder leans over to kiss her cheek, a little smile on his face, and she returns it and kisses him back, softly. He gives a slightly more wicked smile at Krycek and kisses him too. Krycek makes a soft, contented noise in his throat as they kiss, and she thinks that there must be something besides duty keeping them together.
Krycek doesn't like to upset Mulder. It's no longer a survival, "don't piss off the person who's running things" matter, because Mulder is running nothing, now, but there is some strange affection in their behavior. It is Krycek who has more patience for Mulder, in many ways.
Krycek will sit and talk with him, and smile and nod in what is almost an indulgent manner. Scully is the one who argues. And Mulder loves that, too. When Mulder is too weak or erratic to hunt, Scully wants, as a rule, to bring him whores or runaways, the people no one will miss, but it is Krycek who brings him children or puppies, or children with puppies. He spoils him, she says, and Kryck smiles his soft, shy smile, looking down and hiding his eyes behind those long lashes, and says probably.
Mulder kisses her again, and wanders off, humming something quietly to himself. Krycek's hand moves back onto hers, pinning it down again.
The rain is slowing a little outside. It's still early afternoon. She hopes, as Krycek kisses her throat again, that it will continue for awhile yet. It'd be such a pain in the ass to have this interrupted by a need to get out of the sun so they don't get killed. Really killed.
Then Krycek bites her, gently. It's just fangs skimmed along her throat's skin, really, and she smiles, turns her head a little so he can kiss her.
There is the sound of the tv a few rooms over -- Mulder is watching something. There is the sound of the rain outside, which she comprehends as more of a general hushed hiss rather than hearing individual drops.
And there is the sound of her own breathing, which she continues doing, although she does not really need it anymore.