Summary: Reality catches up with hubris. Humility ensues. Krycek/Kim Cook.

Title: The Gravity of Stars
Author: Spica
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013
Productions and Fox. No copyright infringement intended.
Keywords: V, A, Krycek/Kim Cook
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Sleepless/Duane Barry/Ascencion
Summary: Reality catches up with hubris. Humility ensues.
Acknowledgments: Warm thanks to Bardsmaid and KristenK2 for
thorough and inspiring beta.
Notes: For the record, this is not the same Kim/Krycek as in
"Devil at the Crossroads".

*****

THE GRAVITY OF STARS


That night he stands before her door drunk and swaying,
leaning his head against the doorframe while his flat hand
pounds on the door. Too wasted to think of the doorbell. Too
wasted maybe to even find the doorbell. It is five minutes
past midnight, and according to the Smoker's orders he
should already have been out of town, on a flight to another
coast. He felt the ground burning and flickering under his
feet as he staggered here.

That night she opens her door to him in a silver-gray silk
dressing-gown, just as far as the security chain will go -
but when she sees his face, she releases the chain and lets
him inside. Into her world of safety and light and order,
into her normal life to wreak his havoc and confusion.

"Agent Krycek." Her voice is alarmed and bewildered. But her
touch is sure and strong. She steers him toward a big easy
chair. She is a most capable woman. Skinner's a lucky man.
Alex wonders briefly if he's in love with her too.

He falls down in the chair in an inelegant sprawl, then
looks up to face her, feeling stupid and sluggish. Too much
to drink. Too goddamned much, but how else was he supposed
to forget about a man pushed to his death from a cable car,
and Mulder screaming his heart out in a wind-blasted field,
and Dana Scully naked and violated on a surgical table in
Fort Marlene? How else was he supposed to forget the
Smoker's taunting words?

'You have no rights, only orders to be carried out.' He sees
how it is now; he sees how it will be and how it always was
and how unbelievably stupid and egomaniacal he has been.

He stays there, transfixed and caught in her presence, like
a comet drawn and warmed by the powerful gravity of a sun,
and he has a moment of dread, of a terrible, drunken clarity
of insight. He's been so proud of his ambitious progress in
the sky, has been so proud of how brightly he was burning.
Now, with a shudder of premonition, he remembers all too
well that comets are just celestial vagabonds, borrowing the
sun's glory for a few months at the closeness of perihelion,
then for years cooling to nothing more than dark lumps of
dust and ice as they approach the far cold exile of their
orbit's outer perimeter. Migrant fireflies, dirty snowballs,
harbingers of disaster.

"Is it because of Agent Scully?" asks Kim softly. And he
knows for certain then, even drunk as he is, that she
wouldn't ask that unless she had a good idea of the reason
behind his messy state. Yes, she reads reports, she puts
through phone calls, she arranges meetings and writes the
minutes, of course she knows that they are beginning to
suspect him now of not being the innocent rookie agent he's
let on to be. Not that this will be news to her. She knew
before any of them. Somehow she knew.

He marvels that even so, she had the trust to open the door
for him and let him in.

He doesn't know whether the Smoker intended him to see
Scully tonight, out at the Consortium facilities. Probably
did, the bastard. So cold and pale, drugged out of her mind,
unseeing and unmoving and whimpering in pain. She looked
like the living dead, like some horror flick version of Snow
White in a glass coffin. Just the thought makes him want to
throw up.

Instead he looks up at Kim, who leans over him and anchors
him with her gray star eyes. He has obsessed about her for
eight days. Tried his best to keep from hurting her for all
those days. This night, he fears, his efforts will be put to
shame at last. He's the magician's foolish apprentice, who
never knew how to control the dangerous spells. The evil is
out of control now and it will poison everything he touches.

But how can he not touch her with her leaning over him like
that, and knowing it's his last chance to do so before
everything goes to hell? Tomorrow, as per the Magician's
orders, Agent Krycek will have vanished into thin air, and
already formed suspicions will be confirmed; conclusions
will be drawn. This night he slips from daylight into the
shadowlands. This witching hour is his last hour posing as a
decent man, the last hour sweet Kimberly Cook may want him
to touch her.

So he touches her. The collar of her pajama top tapers down
in a V, and that bared expanse of skin just begs for the
feel of his fingers. He places his fingerpads just below her
throat, very gently, his index finger nesting lightly in the
little hollow at the base of her collarbone. God, how hot
she is. He looks at that spot, then lowers his gaze and sees
the shadows between full, pale breasts at the bottom of the
V. He looks up again and her eyes are unfocused, falling
half-shut. He arches his neck back, leans up two inches and
kisses her. He rises unsteadily to his feet, puts his arms
around her and kisses her some more. She feels uncertain in
his arms, a small noise rising from her throat as he starts
untying the knot of her dressing-gown.

But she lets him, even helps him slide the gown off, and
whispers his name as he starts unbuttoning her silk pajama
top, whispers 'Alex' with a funny little catch to her
breath, and he goes a little bit insane. Before he knows it,
he has maneuvered her up against the wall. Wants her so bad,
wants to forget, wants it all to disappear in the trembling
lights and shadows of pleasure, and his hand dips into her
pants, probes between her thighs, pushes aside her panties
and caresses her soft heat. She moans against his shoulder
and her body strains and shivers against his.

"Please," he breathes, "please, Kim, can I, I need to,
please..."

A word he isn't used to saying, and it falls awkward and
callow from his lips, but she stares at him, her eyes huge
gray orbs. And then she whispers, "Yes," and she reaches
down to push down her pajama bottoms and panties and toe
them off.

She's still wearing the half-undone pajama top as her
shaking thighs part hesitantly under his hand, but his other
hand is already unbuttoning his fly and freeing his
erection, then fumbling through the clumsy haste of finding
his wallet, pulling out a condom. She helps him put it on;
her shy touch feels like embers and feathers. And he knows
it's too fast and he knows he should prepare her but there's
no time, there's only *heat* and *urge* and *need* and
*pain* and he moves in blindly, crashes in on her like the
tide, their cries mingling and both of them trembling like
crazy. He drops his forehead against her shoulder and tears
are stinging his tightly shut eyelids because now he's
fucking her dry up against a wall, this woman he's longed to
make slow unforgettable love to, and it will be just another
dream he managed to fuck up, one more thing that should have
been good but never will be now, ever.

He can't bear to look at her, can't bear to speak to her,
elicit a response and hear whatever blame or disappointment
may be carried in her voice, so he does the only thing he
can, and the only thing his body will allow him to do -
works towards his finish, slides back and rocks in, trying
so very hard to be gentle, taken over by need and yet
despairing every second that he's hurting her.

"*Wait.*" An urgent whisper against his cheek, and then the
soft press of her lips into his neck. "Give me a little
time. Just a moment, Alex."

Somehow, the fragile tenderness of that voice penetrates the
crazed chaos in his mind the way something louder and more
impatient could never have done. A little time. A moment. He
can manage that, he thinks. If it can make it all right, if
it can make it at least a little better.

He waits, and feels her shift against him, feels her raise
her leg to slide around his hip. He realizes that this may
be better for both of them, and he moves his hands down to
cup her ass, lift her and press her against the wall again,
better aligned with him like this. She wraps both legs
around his waist, and her cheek rests against his own. She
takes a ferocious shivering breath. There are tears on her
face. Or they may be his own, who can tell?

She isn't dry, he realizes. She isn't overflowing either,
but there's enough wetness that his rough entry can't have
hurt her, or so he hopes. And God, he wants to make it up to
her now, and he finally thinks he can do it when she leans
her head back and takes his face between both her hands and
murmurs, "I'm okay now, Alex-" - her eyes languid and
darkening every second with desire, her cheeks flushed, her
mouth open and warm. He loves her at that moment, loves her
for handing him the chance to bestow pleasure and joy, to
give something other than death and pain and destruction.

She leans forward slightly, and they're so close already
that now she can just flick her tongue out and lick over his
lips, maybe the softest way anyone ever touched him. Like
the immaterial dewy wing of a moth, like the glide of a
single raindrop. He opens his mouth in a shuddering gasp,
realizing only then how tightly it had been clenched shut...
and she moves in delicately, a tip-toeing kiss stirring him
and waking him up from nightmare. She is so gentle, so
gentle. Kim is holding his head gently and gently teaching
him how to kiss again, and he closes his eyes and accepts
the lesson like a sad child, knowing he is completely
undeserving and because of that all the more grateful.
Slowly she coaxes him into it. Slowly he starts to believe
that there may still be a reality besides shame.

Finally managing to speak, his voice is slurred, with a
wistful hardness he can't keep out. "God, Kim, I wanna stay
inside you forever."

His hopeless longing seems to get to her. There's a hitch in
her breath--soft concern, and then he feels two fingertips
stroke gently over his lips. "Ssh, baby..."

"Kim," he murmurs again. "I didn't...I didn't mean to...I
never meant for it to be like this." Not talking about the
sex now; about anything but that. His closed eyes turn in on
self-recrimination, on dark swirling guilt and despair. In
eight days, he has killed three people, and thinking back to
Fort Marlene, he fears that the fourth death won't be long
in coming.

Way to really fuck up a perfectly nice shitty life.

She takes his face between both hands then, and pulls it
close to hers. He is hidden inside her to the hilt, and he
stills there, trembling with tension and grief and pent-up
emotion. And hazily he recognizes that his grief isn't
primarily for the people whose deaths he has caused, and
will cause; it is as much for himself, for everything that
has gone bitterly wrong and everything that never ever was
right in his life. His pain is selfish and devastating as a
child's.

"I know," she whispers. "I know you meant everything to be
different." She kisses his wet eyelids tenderly, then trails
her lips down to his again, breathing understanding into his
mouth as if giving him the kiss of life. Her voice is husky.
"Don't think about it. Not now. You don't have to, promise.
Gonna be so good to you, baby. So good."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "Kim," he whispers, and
then repeats her name, hissing, as her hands move down and
clasp around his ass and push at him to make him start
thrusting again.

He starts moving, and she is ready for him this time, and
yes, it's good, it's so much better like this. He sees her
raising heavy eyelids and looking down to the shadowed place
where they are joined, revealed in glimpses by the slow,
sensuous undulations of his hips. A small moan escapes her
at the sight, and then she looks back up at him and sees
that he is watching too, and she smiles a beautiful smile
that he can hardly believe.

"Kracivaya Alyosha." She calls him beautiful, in a language
he only knows from studies where harder, more practical
words form the syllabus. American-Russian roots, then? So
many of her mysteries he doesn't yet know. He looks at her
in wonder, but she only closes her eyes again to focus on
the build-up of pleasure within, her smile fading with
concentration, and the thought slips away.

Her low moans against his neck. Her fingernails digging into
his shoulders. His desire for her a searing, tightening heat
in his balls, his cock, his spine. His fingertips on her
breasts, on her clit, making her breath go sobbing and
crazy. His toes curling, his calves tensing. God, so good,
so good. Her face glows with heat and she starts panting
fast and shallow, and then after a little while she tenses
and goes rigid, a small astonished sound escaping her, as if
she'd never expected it to be quite this good, quite this
easy.

She throws back her head and opens her eyes as she climaxes,
greedy muscles drawing tight around him and holding, again
and again, her breath exploding hotly against his face while
she gasps out her pleasure. Her gaze is the best gift anyone
ever gave him. She is quiet, barely moaning, but there in
her eyes are spinning galaxies and black star matter and
wild unfocused joy, all for him.

He babbles into her red-gold hair, "Yeah Kim, yeah,
sweetheart, like that, you're so beautiful like that-" while
he fights to hold still until she sags spent and quivering
against him. He presses slack, open lips to her hot temple,
tasting salty sweat, and then he gathers himself for the
home stretch, pulls back and slams into her like there's no
tomorrow, just *this* and *this* and *this* and...

"God oh fucking Christ oh Kim oh fuck-"

Crying out her perfect name between blasphemy and
obscenities, he lets it all go - not the neat, focused
release he usually experiences but a devastating, messy
monster of a climax.

And finds himself slumped over her an indefinable time
later, kneeling against the wall cradling her lax, warm body
in his lap, his softening cock cooling against her bare
thigh and his pulse still not returned to normal. Her mouth
is moving against his neck and he thinks she just said
something. He thinks she said something so right and honest
and brave that he should reciprocate.

But he doesn't, because unlike her he's neither right nor
honest nor brave, and more to the point, he's beginning to
learn the bitter costs paid by the recipients of empty
promises. He won't exact that cost from her.

But he musters the decency, the courage at least, to pull
back enough to look into her eyes when he speaks.

"Kim, Kim..." His voice, traitor to his resolve, leaks love,
but there's enough warning in his eyes that she must know
nothing good is coming.

He whispers, "There's no way I can stay, sweetheart." And
it's not quite true; the truth is he won't stay--doesn't
want, yet, to stay; the truth is her gift has re-energized
him, has pulled him up from the pit of despair enough that
he wants to clutch and hang on to his ambitions as far as he
can. The orbit of a comet is long and eccentric. There is a
good time yet before the light will have burnt out.

Her lovely eyes are distant and lonely as galaxies, and he
realizes that she knew this much all along. He stands up
with her gently, watches her wrap herself in the dressing-
gown again while he puts his own clothes in order. In his
mind he's already on his way to the airport, speeding
towards the coming night and the next months and new,
unavoidable sins in his desperate clawing for control, a
vagabond light having passed the glorious apex of its orbit,
hurtling towards black aphelion.

As she lets him out of her apartment, she tugs on his hand
to make him stay a second after their last long kiss, and he
stands sobering and looks at her. She is straight-backed and
very grave. She tenses, draws breath, seems to struggle for
words - as though she's considering a leap of faith, taking
an uncertain chance on him. He waits, puzzled, and raises
his free hand to her cheek, memorizes its rounded softness
slowly with the back of his fingers.

At his touch, her face flushes into fierce warmth. She turns
her cheek to brush his fingers with her lips, then meets his
gaze with new determination. And this time, when she
whispers in Russian, there's no way this could be mistaken
as half-remembered sweet talk from a grandparent.

"The men you work for, they're not the only ones. If you
ever need to get away from them, Alyosha - I can help you. I
will."

In a flash - premonition, vision? - he imagines her turning
teasingly toward him on a summer night long yet to come; on
a foreign street, onion domes and canals and a myriad
bridges around her, different constellations barely visible
in the skies of the white night above.

"Kim?" he asks abruptly, voicing doubt.

She smiles as the door closes behind him, a serious smile,
and shakes her head.

End

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