Slashx: 22 July 1998
Archive/X: 27 July 1998
Title: Regret
Author: J. C. Sun
Category: VAO
Rating: R for m/m content
Summary: Concerning regret.
Timeline: shortly before Duane Barry

---

.regret
.jc sun
7/23/98

"Can I ask you a question?"

The worlds are smooth easy and if it weren't for the way Krycek's face abruptly swung up into the moonlight, Mulder would never have bothered with a suspicious glance to see the wavering silver tipping the nose and the forehead, highlighting the nose and making eyes gleam as a solid curve.

"Depends on what it is." Mulder says.

Krycek grins. "Come on. Not only do I save your life today but I gave you some of the best sex of your life afterwards. What more do you want? Cartwheels?"

Mulder snorts. "A more discreet location for that 'best sex' of my life tops the list. I know you've got a thing for public locations but the car? The *Bureau* car in the basement of the J. fucking Hoover building? *During* rush hour? Next to the assistant directors' row?"

"You liked it good enough."

If there were colors at night--if everything wasn't dark, not-so-dark and approaching-light--Krycek would have watched Mulder's cheeks turn faintly pink, but as it was, Krycek lays a finger across Mulder's cheek and laughs at the heat already present. "Well, you did," Krycek laughs, then turns sober as his hand meanders down Mulder's cheek, onto the line of the jaw then down, down across the neck to caress the bone and the tendon of the shoulder through cloth; he feels those tendons and the muscles stretching as Mulder's head lolls back. Krycek's mouth is soft, ever so dainty as he moves up that exposed line of flesh, and he tips Mulder's mouth open with the smallest flick of a thumb, so that Mulder's teeth gleam in the moonlight and the damp interior has a sheen. A long breath passes through Mulder's barrel and he angles upward, searching for the other mouth, seeking, tongue strobing along his gums when Krycek pulls back.

"Not until you answer my question."

Mulder shuts his mouth with a clack and glares up at his partner. "Tease."

"Not at all. I just want you to promise an answer."

"If it has to do with propositioning Skinner, then I don't want to hear it."

A little snigger of laughter.

"Just answer a question."

Mulder shrugs. "Ask away. I know I'm not getting any until I answer it."

Krycek shoots him a sidewise grin, then looks away to say, "What's regret?"

This sort of startled, shocked silence. "Well, look it up in the dictionary, Krycek. It's right there, between illiterate and stupid."

"Fuck you, Muld--"

Mulder grins. "Wasn't that what I was just suggesting?"

Krycek clouts him on the shoulder. "I know what it says in the dictionary, but I've never experienced it myself."

Mulder's head quirks, takes in the measure of his lover. "You're serious."

A sad, half-shamed nod.

Mulder touches Krycek's wrist: he can't seem to bear looking straight ahead, and instead focuses on running undoing and redoing the buttons on Mulder's shirt.

"I. . .I've never allowed myself to feel it seems to be a horrible waste of time and resources, and it doesn't seem to help you get what you want."

Mulder grins, answers, at a loss for an answer and says "And you know what you want, don't you?"

"I know what I don't want, and I know what I want." The touch of Krycek's fingers across Mulder's crotch, at the inseam is slow, lingering, brazen, starting in the middle and tracking the ridge upwards. Mulder swings his head furiously to keep himself from spreading his legs.

Krycek flicks him this sad little smile and settles back into the grass, as Mulder struggles for the words, mouth twisting into taut shapes and fingers digging into the grass before he figures out the correct phrasing. "What about Danny? Didn't you ever feel regret with him?"

Krycek smiles, then brings his arms around his knees in to hug them close to his chest. "How does that author put it--never could he bring me sadness, for even the remembrance of his passing is a joy?'"

Mulder blinks up into the skies and runs blades through his fingers, then asks, rather stupidly, playfully, "What about me?"

With a sharp riff of sadness, Mulder realizes that this is the first time he's ever seen anything human in those smooth glass eyes, something faint and edgy and infinitely tired--perhaps its not so much human as real. Something rooted and horribly connecting, hurling itself against the cool green patina.

And he kisses Krycek just to wipe that sadness, that ache from too-same face, and he lays Krycek down in that soft, soft grass.

.end

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