Summary: Deslea's rec: "Krycek and Mulder's relationship is necessarily fraught, but it takes a special writer to move beyond the obvious and explore that dynamic in other ways. Kelly's metaphor is dreamlike yet substantial - the cornerstone for deeper things." Summary: Broken dolls and self-delusion. Part of the Undertow universe.

TITLE: Shards of Porcelain

AUTHOR: Kelly Keil

EMAIL: klkeil@ameritech.net

WEBSITE: http://grapefruithead.com/kellyfic

ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just keep my info attached.

FEEDBACK: Is cherished and answered.

RATING: R

CLASSIFICATION: V, A, M/K, Mulder POV

SPOILERS: Takes place after Momento Mori,
sometime between S4 and S5.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own them. You know who does.

SUMMARY: Broken dolls and self-delusion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thank you to both my betas -
Shahara Zade and Spica - for seeing the things
I couldn't.

NOTE: This is yet another installment in the ever
growing Undertow universe. Can be read on its own
quite easily, however. The references to the other
stories are somewhat oblique.

Prelude: http://grapefruithead.com/kellyfic/Prelude.htm
Undertow: http://grapefruithead.com/kellyfic/Undertow.htm
_____________________________

I go to him because...

An answer drifts up from my subconscious but I don't
like it and shuffle on past.

I go to him because he's convenient. Yes, of course
that's it. He lives within stumbling distance of my
apartment. A very long stumble, true, but I like to
wander on nights like these, nights when the air in my
home is so hot and thick and oppressive that I choke on
it. I stumble, walk, run through the night, and too
many times I find myself in front of his door.

Yes. I go to him because it's convenient, because he's
convenient. Alex Krycek, the perfect tool, the perfect
toy, and always near to my hand. I'm certain he's
planned it that way.

I pound on his door, not caring about the noise I am
making in what could be called either very late at
night or obscenely early in the morning. This is
when time stops and minutes have no meaning. The
seconds ticking between sunrise and sunset stretch
impossibly long for me. I spend these eternities
sitting and sprawling and walking and stumbling, but
mostly running. Running from what I've

(sorry momma i'm sorry i'm sorry but i didn't mean to
break)

done, running to him because he's so goddamned
convenient, and because --

(shattered china fragments one blue eye staring in
accusation small broken hand pointing right at me)

because I can.

Krycek opens his door and stands there, hateful eyes
wary, shoulders hunched. I avoid looking at the scar
tissue lying in purple and magenta waves along the
white skin of what remains of his left arm. I did
that, by association, by betrayal, by abandonment. I
did it and I own it and I'm not sorry. I'm not. He
deserves it all and more.

(but i am sorry i broke what i knew i shouldn't touch)

His hair sticks up in stiff clumps and there are
creases lining the right side of his face. He's
wearing nothing but a pair of jeans that he's forgotten
to button and it's clear that I've dragged him from
sleep.

That he can rest, fucking bastard that he is, and I
cannot, fills me with vindictive resentment. It's not
fair that he doesn't see blood trickling from Scully's
nose when he closes his eyes. He doesn't see

(one blue eye, surrounded by broken shards)

her eyes, so full of pain, so full of distance.

But I am here to rectify that. I am here to see to it
that if I can't sleep, neither will he. I'm here
because he owes me.

"Get in here," he says. "You attract too much
attention."

I hear him muttering something about me not having the
sense God gave a goat as he closes the door behind me,
but I let it go. He's probably right. After all, here
I am, in the lair of my enemy, no gun, no weapon at
all, and he could kill me at any time. I am certain
he won't kill me, but maybe he should. Maybe it would
be for the best. I didn't come here to kill him, but
maybe I should have, maybe it would be for the best.
Instead I pull my shirt, damp with sweat, over my head
and throw it onto the floor.

He's so right. I don't have any sense at all. But
I've come here because he owes me, and I want my
payment now.

"Is there a sign on my door that says, 'Lonely Fucks R
Us'?" he wonders.

"Shut up, just shut the fuck up," I say, pushing him
against the wall. He's already hard, and I'm not
surprised. His mouth tastes of sleep and sour beer,
but it doesn't matter. I need to touch, I need to
feel, I need to

(break him break him break him)

forget for just a few moments the blood on her face and
the distance in her eyes.

Krycek lets out a helpless groan as I push his jeans
down on his hips. He squeezes his eyes shut and his
right arm is flung out against the wall, palm running
along the smoothness of its surface.

"Tell me what you want," I demand, cupping his balls in
one hand, cradling the back of his neck with the other.

"Fuck you, Mulder," he says, disdain hanging in the air
like a sheet of ice. But he makes no move to push me
away and his cock twitches with need between us.

I run both my hands lightly along his upper thighs.
"Tell me."

"Don't do this." It is such a tired sound, and I
almost want to relent, but there is a debt between us
that he can never repay, no matter how tired he is.

I kneel in front of him and he starts to crack,
fissures opening up to let his need show through.
"Mulder," he sighs. "Why does it always have to be so
fucking complicated?"

My breath falls on the skin of his stomach and his cock
jerks sharply. "Fine," he says. "Fine. You win. You
always fucking win. Do it."

No. I haven't won yet. I haven't won anything. You
may not have an arm, but she's dying, can't you see
that? She's dying and I can't do anything about it but
break you, over and over, because I have to break
something.

(i'm so sorry that i broke her so sorry)

"Do what?" I ask. I touch my tongue to the skin of his
thigh and he twitches.

"Suck me, blow me, go down on me, give me wild fucking head
-- what the hell do you want me to say?" His hand is now
curled into a fist of frustration.

He knows damn well what I want. I sit back on my
haunches then start to rise, preparing to walk away and
knowing that he won't let me.

"Please," he says, his voice flat and angry, and below
that, desperate. "Please, Mulder, suck my cock. Suck
me till I come. You win. You fucking win."

Each time I hope to fill the emptiness inside me with
his defeat and it never comes close. Nevertheless I
try to break him time and time again, will continue
to break him until the hole inside me is healed or
until there's nothing left of him to break. I have
to. I have to because

(i'm so clumsy so sorry didn't mean to)

it's either that or go mad.

I place my hands on his hips and run them along the
smooth skin for a few seconds before taking him into my
mouth. His held breath goes out in a rush and he
starts to whimper very softly, "Why, why, why?" and,
"How can it feel so good?" His fist pounds out a muted
rhythm on the wall behind him. His despair and pleasure
are palpable.

Oh, Alex, I think, as a wave of almost sadness washes
over me. Part of me wishes that I wasn't compelled to
hurt him again and again. Part of me, the part that
makes my erection throb, makes me revel in the taste
and feel of him, hates the ritual that we go through
on nights like this, when the air is thick enough to
choke you. It doesn't matter. I didn't come here to
feel good.

A voice inside me whispers, whom are you hurting? He
wants it, you want it. You're lying to yourself,
making justifications for --

No. I cut the thought off abruptly. I came here for
punishment. Punishment for me, punishment for him. It
amounts to the same thing. It is penance for the
sadness in her eyes, the blood on her face.

(punishment for the shattered china on the floor)

Liar. You came here because you want to fuck him. Her
eyes -- the doll's eye -- are just an excuse.

No. Yes. Maybe. Krycek is right. Why does it always
have to be so fucking complicated?

I surrender to the inevitable, to what I wanted when I
came here in the first place, and fuck him. Then I let
him fuck me. Pain mingles with pleasure and that is
right. That is how it should be. But as the night
flows by, millennium-length hours speeding up and
finally passing in what seems like the space between
heartbeats, the need for pain, both inflicted and
received, recedes. Our lips smooth over bruised skin,
our teeth no longer bite. Fists fall into caressing
fingers. We melt like plastic soldiers left on hot
summer asphalt, bodies joining and becoming one in our
mutual need for this -- bright, burning pleasure and
cool, flowing release.

'You win,' Krycek had said as I took him in my mouth;
'you win,' he had whispered to me as I came inside him.
Maybe I have and maybe I haven't. I lie next to him on
the floor, his head on my chest and his hand stroking my
thigh, the caress slow and somehow sad. There are cracks
running through him

(i'm sorry so sorry)

and he is broken, yes, but not destroyed, not conquered,
not a miserable wreck sniveling at my feet, begging for
mercy.

(lying shattered on the floor)

A voice inside me wonders, is that what you really want,
is it really?

Yes. No. Maybe. And on the heels of that I think
there is nowhere else I'd rather be than here, with his
head using my body for a pillow.

Have I won or have I lost?

"Why does it always have to be so fucked up?" Krycek
asks, but I don't think he expects an answer. "Is it
me, or have you always been this way?"

No. I don't want to talk about me. Besides, I should
leave. The sky is turning from black to dark blue, but
I have no real desire to push Krycek's head aside.
Maybe I'm just too tired. "What about you? Were you
always bad?" I ask him.

I can feel him smile. "I was born bad. Isn't that
what you always say? Evil to the core, with no hope
of redemption? Or do you want to know about my
mother, and how many times I was spanked as a kid?
You'd get off on kinky shit like that, wouldn't you?"
His voice is light and cheerful, and I realize that
he's mocking me, his lips a hard grin against my skin,
his hand still tracing that sad slow pattern on my
thigh.

Despite the mockery, he is too perceptive in his way,
only it's my mother I'm thinking of, and myself as a
child.

(staring the eye is staring at me i'm so sorry just
stop looking at me like that)

"Were you bad, Mulder?" I can hear him leer. "Were
you a very bad boy?"

"Sometimes," I say, my voice sounding hollow in my
ears.

He looks up into my eyes and I know I've revealed too
much. "Really?" He seems...curious. Interested.
Like he might give a shit about me. It throws me off
guard.

Without even meaning to, I start spilling part of my
past into the darkened room. I think of it as a
venting of pressure. The memory has been haunting me
all day, the blue of that china eye the same as her
eyes -- just as cold, just as devoid of emotion except
that mute accusation.

(you broke me you broke me you broke me)

"I broke a doll once," I say, and it sounds ridiculous,
so I add, "It belonged to my mother." The words don't
convey the terror I felt at seeing first the heavy body
slip from its shelf, my sticky fingers smearing the
porcelain cheek as it drifted past, the fall, almost in
slow motion, and the crash. I'd wanted to die, and had
ended up vomiting on the floor. Another mess to have
to hide.

Krycek says nothing, just continues to look at me, his
chin a painful weight on my ribs.

"My mother told me and Sam not to touch it more times
than I could count. It was old, and French, I think,
and once been her grandmother's."

"What did you want with an old doll?" he asks me. "Or
did you break it because your mother told you to stay
the hell away from it?"

"Something like that," I mutter. "Sam had always
wanted to play with the thing, and I was mad at my
mother for something I've since forgotten, so when I
saw that stupid doll, I thought that Sam finally
getting her way would be just what my mother deserved."

"So what happened?"

"It fell when I touched it. It was on this high shelf
and I'd gotten a footstool to stand on to reach it. I
was clumsy. Sam took off running after it broke,
leaving me to try and glue the pieces back together. I
wasn't very successful. My mom caught me with all the
pieces of that doll around me and glue everywhere."

Krycek lets out a snort of laughter. And yes, it is
funny. I can see that, through all the shades of fear
that still color the memory in sickly sepia tones.

"I remember there was a piece that had one blue eye
still imbedded in it. I had nightmares about that eye
staring at me for months."

"Mulder, why are you telling me this?"

"Because..." Why am I telling him this? Because I saw
that eye tonight when I tried to sleep, I saw it after
the blood started to trickle down Scully's face. She
hid the blood with a tissue, but we both knew it was
still there. Because that eye and her eyes were the
same, both telling me that I had broken them, it was my
fault, that I was to blame. "I don't know," I finish
lamely. "I suppose because you're convenient."

He lifts his head from my chest and turns away. "I'm
convenient. That's one way to put it. Is that why you
came here? Because I'm convenient?"

He is hurt, I realize with amazement. Hurt by me, hurt
by my simple statement far more than he has been by
anything I've tried to do to him previously this night.
I find that I'm ashamed of myself. But this is why I
came here, to hurt him, so why --

Liar liar liar liar. You came here because you needed
comfort. You came here because you knew he'd let you
in, let you do what you wanted to do, what you needed
to do. You came here because it's her eyes that are
full of distance, full of accusation. You came here
because he's the one you want to be with.

I close my eyes against the weight of that knowledge.
It presses me down, chokes me like the oppressive humid
summer air outside. Oh God, oh God, oh God. I want to
say something, anything, but I can't.

Krycek gets up and starts picking my clothing off of
the floor, ending with my shirt, which I dropped near
his front door. He comes back and throws it all onto
my body. "Go home, Mulder," he says. "It's nearly
dawn."

But...

No. He's right. Put on your clothes, go home, shower
until you no longer smell him on your skin.

But...

I start to get dressed. Krycek watches me, but when
I look up to meet his eyes, he looks away.

I know the answer now. I am here because here is where
I wanted to be. It is as simple and awful as that.
I've come to him -- stumbling, walking, wandering,
running -- because I want him.

"Were you punished," Krycek asks, still not looking
at me, "for breaking that goddamned doll?"

Right. The doll. We're back to that and maybe this
is a good thing. "I was grounded. My punishment was
to baby-sit Sam for a month. I wasn't allowed to
play baseball. Our team went to state that year, but
I couldn't go with them."

"Poor little Fox," says Krycek. "My heart bleeds."

I wonder, for perhaps the first time, what his
childhood was like. Was young Alex in Little League,
in Boy Scouts? I have an absurd vision of him
winning merit badges for target shooting and knot
tying. And then I see an abusive set of parents and
him willing to do anything to escape them. I have no
idea which version, if either, is the true one, and
one day maybe I'll ask him, but today is not that
day. I think we've reached our quota for disturbing
childhood revelations already, thank you all the
same.

"Is that it? Is confession time over?" At my
silence, Krycek continues, "Good. Then get the fuck
out of my home."

I find to my surprise that no, my confession isn't
over. And maybe I don't want to leave just yet. I
open my mouth and more of the memory pours out. "Mom
never knew I broke that doll because of Sam. I took
all of the punishment myself, but Sam didn't get away
scot-free. That whole month I got her back in dozens
of shitty, little ways."

"Let me guess," says Krycek. "Because she owed you,"
and I find myself both grateful and uncomfortable
because he understands it all, or at least enough.

"Yes," I say. "Because she owed me." I let the
statement hang in the air between us for a few
moments then start to walk toward the door.

"Scully's not a doll," Krycek says to my back. "You
think about things too much."

I turn around. "She's dying," I say, and this is the
first time I've admitted it out loud.

Krycek sighs. "I know."

"Yeah. I guess you would." The hate flows back
through me, smothering the small flame of some other
emotion -- a dangerous feeling that I'm better off
without. I have to go. If I stay here any longer, I
may just kill him.

Or you might just throw yourself into his embrace and
have a good cry, whispers a voice at the back of my
mind, and wouldn't that be embarrassing?

I really need to leave.

I'm touching the door handle when I hear him say,
"She's not Humpty Dumpty, either."

That throws me and I turn around to face him despite my
better judgment. "Huh?"

"'All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't
put Humpty together again,'" Krycek recites in a
singsong voice. "There is glue, Mulder. You'll find
it when the time is right. She's too important to die.
Don't forget that." He looks sad, regretful.

"I don't understand..."

"Just take it on faith, Mulder. You believe in so much
bullshit, why can't you believe in me?"

Answers spring fully-grown into my head. Because
you're a liar. Because you're a murderer. Because I
can't trust you because if I start to trust you then I
might just love you. My mind skitters away from that
revelation.

It is easier to think of them as dolls -- one with an
arm broken off in jagged points nearly at the shoulder,
the other with cracks running through its porcelain
face, a trickle of ruby red paint falling from one
fragile nostril. My damaged dolls, which I should
not touch.

I stand below them, trying to decide which one to pull
down towards me. It will shatter, it will break, but
it will be mine. Mine. The thought makes my heart
beat painfully in my chest.

Krycek's right. I do think too much. I turn the
handle on the door and open it. He is there beside me
before I even notice him starting to move. He grabs my
head with his hand and pulls me toward him. "Stop
complicating things," he says, and kisses me.

I go to him because...

I go to him because I love him. I go to him because I
can't help it. I go to him because I cannot stop.

Better he should kill me. Better I should kill him.

(broken shards of porcelain but mine all mine)

"Go home, Mulder," he says, and pushes me out the door.

What if I'm already there? I think, but my mouth says
nothing and Krycek shuts the door. I walk outside into
the bright sunrise, blinking.

Home, I think, and stumble back to my apartment.


End

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