Mulder en Brochette

by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

Rating: NC-17. Mulder/other slash. Highlander crossover. Archive MKRA
(other) page; archive elsewhere by request. PWP alert. I mean it! You
may (or may not) think the old creative juices are flowing, but really, lately,
I'm feeling incredibly lazy and want nothing to do with plot. Nb--I
don't think you need to have watched too much (or any?) of Highlander to
"get" this. Er, I certainly haven't. Thanks to torch for inspecting my
Highlander characterization and I take all responsibility for any off-key notes
in that area. I'm always happy to supply attachment-file copies of stories if
poorly-formatted email versions are received. Feedback can be sent to me at:
eliade@drizzle.com.

*****

The sky had turned the color of salmon, a shade of orangish-pink thickly
edging the city's rooftops, and the treetops, few and nearly bare, that lined the
street. Dry leaves scuttered lightly down the street in the wind, eddying
around Mulder's feet as he stepped out of his car.

Juggling the bags he held, Mulder nudged the car door shut with his hip.
Two laundered suits hung precariously over one arm, sliding in their plastic;
his groceries tumbled together within their sacks; in one, an orange crested
the lip of the bag and rolled along its perimeter as if threatening to jump.

"Everybody stay with me, now," Mulder muttered sotto voce, eyeing the
orange, trying to keep his handfuls in balance. His dark calf-length coat
swung around his legs as he navigated the sidewalk, its heavy wool cutting
the chill of the wintry air. Down the street a small grey terrier sniffed its
territory, yipping and spritzing while its owner, a young Asian of
indeterminate gender and retro fashion (fuzzy woolen coat, green plaid
pants), stared off into nothingness through dark sunglasses.

The person's head turned as Mulder neared. "Mulder. Choushi dou,
padrone."

"Hey, Ukyo. How they hangin'."

In response the other said something that Mulder's ears translated
uncertainly as: "Mello-yello, mio bro'."

Mulder grimaced inwardly. Situated on the far far edge of Generation X,
he could manage about ten words of slang that did not result in blank,
amused, or sneering looks from younger and hipper peers. Rather than
attempting to interpret and respond to the younger man's remark, he glanced
down at the dog, who was pacing restlessly on the concrete walk with tiny
skittery sounds.

"Sushi looks raw. You need to buy her one of those knitted sweaters."

Ukyo pulled a cigarette from behind his ear. "Dog clothes. No way, man.
Hey listen." He lit up, puffed. "Get a cuppa with me, Mulder. I'm meeting
these clones at the Beanerie, they're gonna work on the zine. Copying,
stapling--just shit like that. I want you to write an article. That last one,
man--that was awesome. You had the whole mondo Plot laid out. Life,
the universe--I sold out. Had to reprint."

"My plans tonight aren't taking me much farther than the laundry room.
But I'll think about that article."

Whipping his long hair to one side, Ukyo nodded and puffed on his
cigarette with easy acceptance, or perhaps indifference. "Yeah. I know you're
a busy G-man." He grinned suddenly. "Friday night. The government's doin'
its laundry." He shook his head. "I'd ask you to our rent party, man, but they
see you comin' they'd start flushin'."

Mulder, ascending the shallow steps to his building, glanced back dryly.
"Well, I wouldn't want to clog your plumbing, but thanks for thinking of me."

"Ja ne. Easy."

Inside his building, Mulder stopped in the lobby to check his mail. He
lodged his bags against the wall and unlocked the mail-slot door to release a
thick deluge of postal dreck and bills. Phone bill; cable bill; sweepstakes
offer; pizza delivery flyer; Victoria's Secret catalogue; video-rental coupon. . .

Mulder sighed and shoved the handful in one of his bags, then reclaimed
their full weight and lugged them to the elevator. The building was quiet
except for faint thumps of music that pulsed from somewhere up above.
When the elevator door opened, Mulder's downstairs neighbor Mona stepped
out. She was 6'3" in heels, and her gauzy scarf could not entirely hide the
curve of her adam's apple, but Mulder had always found her disturbingly
attractive, and they'd chatted a few times in the laundry room. Mulder nodded
in greeting.

"Ah, Fox. What are you up to this Friday night?" Mona lowered heavily
faux-lashed eyes and glanced into his shopping bags. "Cooking for two, I
hope?"

"Not unless I can convince the pizza-delivery man to go halvsies."

Mona sighed. "Fox, darling, please get out more. I hate to see you like
this."

Mulder had to grin. "Pale, solitary, bereft of sleep--"
 
 

"I don't know what bereft means," Mona said bluntly, waving a gloved
hand. "But yes, yes, yes--my god, gorgeous, if you stepped outside your apartment
for more than a minute you'd take the city by storm."

"I rely on my low profile to walk the streets safely."

"Such a charming, tragic, fine figure of a man. Shall I come back up
with you and rub your shoulders?" Mona fluttered her lashes.

"That's more tempting than you know," Mulder teased.

Mona's eyes widened. "Rain check," she said mildly, raising a hand and
making a gesture as if to snap, but merely holding her fingers in place. "I will
not forget you said that."

Mulder stepped back into the elevator, still grinning as the doors slid shut.
"Watch your skirt, it's windy outside." The doors closed on Mona's answering
wave, and as the elevator began to rise, Mulder's cellular rang. He shrugged
his load around in his arms and dug the phone from his coat pocket.
"Mulder."

"Mulder. Frohike. Two words. Hoagies. Demi Moore. Okay--three
words."

"God, Frohike. You can't be serious."

"We're doing a movie marathon. All the best flicks."

"I assume we're talking nude scenes," Mulder said as the elevator
deposited him on his floor. He made another rearrangement of self and
accessories (sighing a bit) and then as he left the elevator finally dropped his
dry-cleaning on the floor, along with several oranges, and then--like the
punchline of a lengthy joke--the entire bag of groceries in which they'd
reposed.

"Of course," Frohike was saying. "That thing where she rolls in the
money. Great stuff. We've already ordered the hoagies. Beer's stocked."

"Red Dog?"

"What else."

"What else, indeed," Mulder said, as he slumped against the wall and
surveyed his chaos. "Listen, thanks, it's. . .tempting. In a sick kind of way.
But I've got laundry that's growing teeth and taking night courses."

"No problemo. We understand."

After hanging up, Mulder reassembled his scattered goods and muttered
tiredly to himself. "We, we, ah oui. What are you guys, some three-headed
hydra. Graeae, maybe. Little grey men. One eye and tooth, one voice between
the three of you. One wit more like it. Three stooges. . ." Continuing to muse
absently in this vein while fumbling for his keys, Mulder turned the corner of
the hallway, nearing his apartment.

Before which, abruptly, he stopped. Stock still, Mulder stared at the
splendidly lanky man who leaned against his door, a small winsome smile on
his unaged face, a modest heap of luggage at his feet.

"Adam," Mulder said slowly, in fascination and simple amazement. A
brief laugh of wonder surprised itself from his throat. "What--" He broke off
speech, lost in his study of the other man.

Adam straightened up, laughing now too. "Mulder. Surprise." His eyes
flicked across Mulder's person, perspicacious and sardonic, seeing every
detail as well as their sum. "I have met them at close of day / Coming with
vivid faces / From counter or desk among grey / Eighteenth-century houses."
The man's lilting voice carried the tint of England's distant shores and shires,
but within its rich tones seemed blended the phonemes and intonations of a
dialectical potpourri.

Mulder half-smiled. "Thanks a lot. That adds the final evocative touch of
failure and tragedy my Friday night was missing."

"Still swotting your weekends away--going to do your laundry later?"
Adam's lips twitched, betokening both fond teasing and sly familiarity.

"I think my plans might have changed."

"Oh, I should hope so." Adam's brown eyes gleamed. He took a
long-legged step toward Mulder, then another; he looked and moved like a
greyhound, elegant and bony, with a muscular, whippet-like gracefulness. His
face too was rather like that of a hound, elongated but not unhandsome,
oddly-shaped, with thin but sensual lips and eyes that struck their gaze
straight through one's own. His close-cropped hair had a touch of grey, his
eyes a few thin lines, but Mulder could see no real alteration in the man he'd
known twelve years ago at Oxford.

Only when Adam's hands slid up the sides of his neck to cup his jaw did
Mulder snap back to awareness and realize how near he'd moved and his
intentions. "Not here in the hallway, Adam," he said, feeling the
ridiculousness of their pose, the clumsily gripped grocery bags buffering
their bodies, the dry-cleaning which was sliding once again down his arm.

He shifted, and Adam withdrew his hands and took the suits from him just
as they were about to fall. "Keys," Mulder said, jingling the ring in his hand,
which was still cupping a shopping bag. Adam took them and unlocked the
door. "What are you doing here?" Mulder asked as he pushed inside; behind
him, Adam grabbed his flight bags and then followed, kicking the door shut
behind them.

"I came over to visit an old friend. . .but things didn't quite work out as I'd
planned."

Mulder couldn't decide if this was cryptic or merely concise. He set his
bags down on the coffee table with a feeling of relief and worked his arms
free of their accumulated kinks, turning to watch Adam as he did so. The
other man had dropped his own bags and was now wandering idly around the
living room, gazing at pictures and running his fingers along the furniture.

"If I'd known you were coming, I might have dusted," Mulder said
blandly.

"Is this actually where you live?" Adam asked, throwing Mulder an arid,
aristocratic look over his shoulder. His dark eyes were crinkled with
amusement, but he still seemed genuinely surprised.

"It's not much but they threw in the floor and ceiling for free. Besides,
the castle's being cleaned and the winter palace melted. And it has a great
view of the bricks next door." Mulder paused, let the brittle facetiousness
drop, and added more quietly, "Mi casa es su casa."

Still surveying the room, Adam pivoted on one heel and then met Mulder's
eyes. His own were steady, depthless, his smile tiny and ironic, but when
he spoke his voice was warm. "I was hoping you'd say that." He was next to
Mulder within the space of a moment, arms wrapped around his waist.

Mulder caught his breath, then laughed, and then his laugh was smothered
by the other man's mouth. Their tongues relearned each other in an instant,
sharply and hungrily dueling, wet and fiery. Years dropped away, heartbeat
by heartbeat, until it seemed they had just parted the day before. Mulder
hadn't realized how much he'd craved the touch until this moment. His
loneliness was old, familiar, even mundane, but the catalyst of another human
body pressing against his own brought self-awareness surfacing painfully,
right up to the burning edge of his skin. He ached and he was desperately
aroused, eager to submit to the pleasure of someone who knew him.

In that moment the contrast between what he'd grown accustomed to and
what he was feeling now impacted on him like a shockwave, and he loathed
how he'd let his own hand suffice and substitute for human contact--loathed
his own hand so much that he could have cut it off. He felt Adam's arms
tighten around him, up under his coat, felt the hard, deliberate rub of the other
man's lean body, the arrogant but sweet command of his mouth. It brought
passion back into his life; it was as if gunpowder, aged and dampened, had
suddenly been reignited.

Adam drew his mouth away, but licked Mulder's lips and jaw with
unceasing attention. "I wish my timing was always so keen," he said, through
breathless gasps, half laughter, half rue.

Mulder grabbed the back of his head, drove stabbing kisses into his mouth.
Make up for the past, he might have said, but there was no reason for
speech. He was saying everything he needed to say. And Adam's response
was recognition and answer; it had always been just so; his responses
intuitive, as if he knew Mulder's very thoughts and could decipher his needs
straight off the surface of his body, reading the hieroglyphics of Mulder's
desire with his long fingers.

Arching, frantic, Mulder twisted against the other man, driving their
bodies together. Adam groaned. Neither of them could pull their mouths from
kissing; already they seemed nearly soldered in lust; the longer they stood
swaying together, the further their bodies melted into one another at every
friction point. Somehow they forced themselves to make the trip to the
bedroom, leaving a trail of recklessly shed clothes as they went. Mulder,
backing slowly from one room to the other, watched Adam undress. While he
haphazardly kicked off his shoes, Adam struggled with his boots; it took him
a bit longer to remove their leather weight, but they managed to resynchronize
divestiments again while removing their coats, grinning and smoldering at
one another as they did.

Their coats were nearly matched in style; long, dark and heavy; their
woolen lengths peeled off each man like wings being stripped from bodies,
leaving them shorn. If Adam's coat made a muffled thunk against the floor
that was unusually resonant for mere cloth, Mulder didn't notice. Adam still
dressed like the perpetual student he was, in monochrome and formless
clothes chosen for their loose comfort and moderate price. Mulder felt
overdressed in his suit, but rectified that quickly enough by removing it.

"You're aging well," Adam said, running a pleased eye down his body.

"I don't think you're aging at all," Mulder said, returning the scrutiny.
There was an odd silence. Raising his gaze to Adam's, he thought he caught
in the other man's eyes a fleeting look of strangeness, something dark and
mixed--regret or perhaps foreboding--hard to read.

"Well. Clean living, you know."

Mulder tilted his head, trying to discern another layer below the light
surface of the other man's voice.

Adam turned away under his study; he was erect, but despite his arousal he
poked his head in the bathroom as if sniffing out the territory; he flicked on
the light there, glanced at the bath's contours, then turned back. Standing next
to the bedside table, he gazed down into the well of the lampshade while
turning this light on too. "Dark in here," he observed, as if making idle
conversation. He pulled open the drawer of the table, examined its contents
without touching anything. "Well-stocked, I see."

Mulder shifted, vaguely unsettled by Adam's behavior. He'd forgotten how
mercurial the other man could be; how difficult it was to read his moods. But
a moment later, pinned by the other man's eyes, he blazed with renewed
desire at what he saw there. The same teasing, fluctuating energy that could
leave Mulder bewildered and off-balance was also what stoked the fires of
his need and made him crazy with lust.

He made a deliberate gesture of pulling back the covers of his bed and
then settled onto the mattress, where he bounced a few times invitingly.

Adam casually moved a step closer to the bed, looming and looking down
at him with friendly interest. "Mind if I join you?" he said mildly.

Old joke. "Be my guest," Mulder said, leaning back, smiling. His breath
snagged in his throat as Adam slid the length of his muscled body onto
Mulder's with a single graceful, sinuous motion. In the split second that
followed, Mulder's cock grew so brutally hard it almost hurt. Trapped under
the lush weight of Adam's body, it swelled across his own taut abdomen,
pulsing with quickened life.

It was so long since Mulder had been with Adam he'd managed to forget
the unique effect it had on him; but he remembered now. His response today
was no different than a decade ago: distinctive, peculiar, almost nauseatingly
intense. A man unaccustomed to trembling, he trembled--literally shook with
lust--rendered stupid by a dart of primitive hunger that buried itself in his
spine and paralyzed his will even as it stirred his flesh. He stared up at Adam,
scraps of words turning to ashes in his tight throat.

Adam smiled lazily down at him. "I've missed you, Mulder," he said,
drawling thoughtfully. "I'd almost forgotten how responsive you are. How
gratifying it is to fuck you. The way you moan for it. Multa gemens." His
voice was arch, like the lift of his molded brows. "Omnis amans amens, but
you uniquely so."

Mulder forced himself to break the hypnotizing contact of the other man's
eyes; his head lowered itself to one side, neck aching with the strain of effort
to turn away. Thank god he cut the leash and booted me out, came a
thought from the murky depths of his mind. I could never have walked away
on my own.

"I saw that bitch Phoebe in London a few months back," Adam said, tone
conversational. "I nearly ran her down with my car."

"On purpose?" Mulder managed to grind out.

"Well, not consciously. Poor thing. She looked pathetically well-kept.
Pearl earrings, you know. Sheer stockings. Dios ayuda a los bien vestidos,"
he added with a sardonic grimace. Adam kissed Mulder's ear, whispered there
more huskily. "You were wise to decamp when you did. Worst mismatch
history's seen since George IV and Caroline of Brunswick."

"Thanks. I think. Which am I?"

Adam laughed, tickling his inner ear. "Oh, I wouldn't place you in either
house, such as they were. I've always said you had a touch of the highland
though. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a snippet of old Bonnie Prince
Charlie in your blood."

"Wait a minute--wasn't he the transvestite--"

"Mm." Grinning, Adam recaptured his mouth. "You're tasting well." He
used his teeth to nip lightly around his target then drove his long, well-formed
tongue in across Mulder's own, skillfully as if he were wielding a fiddle-bow.
Mulder groaned. He could only lie dizzily under the other man's onslaught
and accept its fever.

And its flux--

"Where's your stereo, Mulder, old man. We used to do this to music."

No, you used to do this to music, Mulder thought. You were in your
own private world half the time. "I'm warning you. I don't have any polka
cd's."

"Damn. I should have brought you a present. Flamenco?"

Mulder gave him a look.

In return, Adam smiled, managing to project an ironic yet somehow
wounded air. "Oh come now, didn't a crumb of sentiment stay your hand?"

"Did you come here to fuck me? Because if you're going to go into one
of your fugue states, you can go fuck yourself. It's what you do anyway."

The abrupt outburst, bitterly flavored with old resentments, surprised both
of them. Adam looked down at Mulder with concern in his grave, half-
shuttered eyes. "I'm sorry." He touched Mulder's face, sliding the back of a
finger across the arc of one cheek. "You're not the first to have said.
..something like that. I came to see you though. I came"--he kissed Mulder's
lips gently--"for this."

"Adam--" Mulder closed his eyes; he was still cruelly, desperately hard.

"We'll do this the civilized way, old friend. After the debauch, I'll dash out
for wine--and in the morning, brioche and lattes, or whatever Americanized
equivalent I can find in this suburban plot of yours. Or we can go out
together. Sit companionably in a cafe and watch the good citizenry trundle by,
then make pilgrimage to one of those citadels of culture--what do you call
them, Bairns and Nobble--and walk hand in hand along the shored-up
fragments of our ruin. Yes--?"

When Mulder made no response except to lie motionless, Adam began
kissing him again. "I'll take silence as is its own answer."

You do that, Mulder thought in tired but needful resignation,
surrendering again to the other man's touch. Adam's mouth travelled slowly
and generously across his body. Given this stimulation, it took all of ten
seconds for Mulder to entirely forget his brief spark of anger and devolve
into a creature not far beyond the protoplasmic whose rudimentary brain
stem was connected directly to his dick. Adam's finely-carved lips drew
sensation to the flushed brink of each nerve. His nipples ached piercingly,
from perimeter to core, stricken erect by Adam's tongue, hardened further
by his teeth. There was no single word for the sensations roused; not pain
or pleasure, itch or burn. Rather than what was burned, his tightening skin
seemed pure flame itself--two flames, flicked to life by tongue and lips
that could have drawn blood from stone.

His hands stroked across Adam's hair, and then the warmth-draped nape of
his neck and broadening flange of his shoulders, and the muscles of his
shoulder blades, working like vestigial wings under his skin. Mulder filled
the cups of his hands with the other man's body and lifted his own
imperiously against it, rubbing and relearning its contours, the song of
its blood running within. His head dropped to one side and then rolled to
the other; his face and ears burned; his own body sang its pleasure. Lips
teased their way down the bisecting filament of his chest, a thin line of
hairs that lifted of their own accord when Adam's breath teased across
them. His nipples remained sore and hard in the scalding wake of Adam's
mouth.

Nearing the point when he could not help but cry out, Mulder bit his lips
and tried to hoard his words, but his control was tenuous and dissolving
fast. He was arching, gasping, making small inarticulate sounds--imploring,
demanding--he was losing it. Himself. Time uncoiled itself from their
presence and slid away. Lingeringly Adam mapped his body, point by point,
burnishing his shoulders until they felt like cauldrons whose bellies rested in
fire, licking his belly until it felt like the stretched surface of a pulsing drum,
nipping under his arms until Mulder was utterly senseless, kissing his fingers
until they shook.

"Oh god, Adam." Mulder's voice was a thread of itself, a whisper even he
barely heard, but Adam lifted his head. His face was flushed, his lips parted.

"Ah, I've found them again," he said, throat husking out the words as if
they were rough curls of bark carried on a slur of pleasure. "Veteris vestigia
flammae. . .the traces of my former flame. I thought they'd faded from your
skin, but not so."

One handful of Mulder's fingers gripped Adam's back with bruising
strength; the other handful was being drawn teasingly into that gentle,
not-quite-mocking mouth, one by one. Eyes glazed, Mulder tried several
times to regain a measure of control, to return the touch of fire Adam had
lit in him, to burn as he was being burned. But he could only respond, not
act. He thought he'd maneuvered himself back against Adam's body--drawing
their lengths back into an equal sign--but Adam slipped out of his grasp
again, taking a cross-legged position further down on the bed, from which
he gave grave sensual attention (but with a little smile) to Mulder's feet.

"Beso las manos. . .beso las pies. . ." Fitting deed to word Adam kissed
the underside of Mulder's left foot. Mulder flinched, delight brimming and
bringing him unbearably close to completion.

Adam Pierson--Methos by another name--stroked Mulder's feet and
watched appreciatively as the other man writhed. The little smile stretched
across Methos' lips was unconscious, a signature of habitual reflection; his
mind, a streaming ancient river of meditations, carried the detritus of a
hundred cultures; its waters were threaded with blood, crumbled desires, and
the ghostly traces of unnumbered, forgotten persons and places--philosophies
never written down, music uncaptured, the rhythmic wasting of countless
evenings and the reprise of dawns. And yet now and then there were things
in the world still worth contemplating, that brought a bemused smile to lips
that had kissed the living and dying companions of his five thousand years.

Transients on the earth, spectres whose bodies crumbled to dust almost as
you breathed them to life--mortals. Handfuls of ash blown from the fire, their
sparks dying even as the wind caught them. Flesh hung on a set of fragile
sticks, rotting as it quickened. Methos had walked among them, through and
past them; the living and the dying, those who seemed to possess less soul
than a sheep or rock, and those whose eyes burned with a brief but elemental
fire that was almost godly in ferocity. After five thousand years, few mortals
were distinct to him at any given moment. He'd seen too many faces and
forms cut from the same mold; populations had migrated, had isolated
themselves only to re-emerge some hundred or thousand years down the road,
at which point they met, clashed and merged again. The world had blended
over the centuries, but the basic stock was little changed.

When Methos walked down the streets of London, he saw the fields it
once had been. When he stared out over Paris, the city seemed a makeshift
pen for cattle that the wind would sooner or later blow down. When he
looked out across a crowd--any crowd, anywhere--he saw but a blur of eyes
and flesh, a collection of creatures whose small, day-to-day concerns
bewildered and dismayed him, whose raison d'etre he no longer empathized
with or understood, but whose motives he knew too well.

But in his own body the blood still flowed. Drinking was now and then
good. Fucking was now and then good. And now and then--rarely, but just
often enough for Methos' sanity--mortals were interesting. Mulder was
interesting. Within the herd of his counterfeit kind, his face blazed true as a
saint's. Impure in motives and impulses, obsessive of will, in his loves and
loyalties sanctified, in his heart raging, he was one of the most luminous souls
Methos had met in at least a thousand years. His eyes were brilliantly focused,
sealed wide-open; he was impulsive, eccentric, moody, driven, and
dangerously intuitive about things paranormal.

And in pleasure he was a puzzle box, opening like a series of endless gifts
but never diminishing, just rarifying. Sex wasn't quite what it used to be for
Methos, no matter whom he was partnered with. It was ritual and sacrament;
it was the gesture of life. It was also about as fresh to him as the interior of an
Egyptian sarcophagus. And yet he was here; in mid-flight from Duncan and
their useless quarrels--what indignity he suffered at the man's hands, what
tedium that immortals could not be more than what they were--he had
diverged this way, swerving toward Mulder on a whim charged with
frustrated desire, with ennui and a hint of desperation, but also with a driving
need to connect. The resurrection of affection he'd felt on first sighting
Mulder in the hall, wonderfully mortal, turning the corner and laden down, a
bit worn at the edges--it had justified his visit in a flash of simple happiness.
Oddly poignant, that first glimpse had delivered to Methos a sense of
returning to an old garden and seeing that a shoot once planted still lived and
thrived, despite neglect and the buffeting of cruel weathers. Seasons had
passed, but they could still be numbered.

He held Mulder's feet and kissed his way around their elegant ankles, their
pads and curves and toes, and thought: mortal, young one, brief spark.
Mulder made little sounds of pleasure, soft cries and groans that echoed far
back into time. Some things had not changed even in five thousand years.

"Adam. Enough with the feet." Mulder's voice was thick with desire.
"Other areas are being neglected."

"Knees, for instance."

"No! No. . .oh. . ."

Mulder shook his head from side to side as Methos kissed the arc of one
calf while working his skillful fingers around the knee above, stroking both
cap and cup, then moving his caresses higher along the tensing thigh. Higher
and higher his fingers pressed, until they danced up and down the sprawled
cleft of Mulder's inner thighs, brushing incrementally nearer to the silken
weight of his balls, from which his straining erection rose. Methos studied
this, gauging Mulder's degree of arousal by the bend of his cock, by its flush
and girth and the racing pulse visible along its length.

"You really are an inducement to fall," Methos murmured.

"You're fallen already."

"I am, yes. It has been a long, long fall." Reaching out with one hand,
Methos traced the shape of a wickedly perverted Sumerian cuneiform on the
other man's belly, then pinched both his nipples in turn until he saw a fresh
sheen of sweat break out on Mulder's skin. "Have you had any children yet?"

Mulder's thickly-lashed eyes snapped open. "What?"

"Just wondering. Such a remarkably virile member"--Methos finally
touched Mulder's swollen organ, giving the head a casual, feather-light salute
that made Mulder gasp--"very well-formed. All hail 'modern' medical science,
but I can't help but credit your dick with innate artistic gifts based on its
aesthetic attraction. You'd make lovely babies, I've no doubt." He paused a
beat, still considering the object under discussion. "Have you?"

"No. God, Adam. . .and people think I'm insane. Can I take you in for
show-and-tell? My reputation might buff up a bit after a comparison."

"Do people think you insane?" Methos raised his gaze to give Mulder a
kindly and interested look.

"Of course. . .of course they do. . ." Mulder stretched out further, raising
his arms above his head and sighing; rubbing one foot against Methos' nearest
thigh, then pressing it to one side of his ribcage, where Methos' ancient,
beating heart was safe- chested.

"Well. . .they always did." Methos laughed as Mulder's foot impacted like
a protest against his chest. He caught the ankle and turned Mulder's kick into
caress, pulling the satiny ball of the foot across his nipple, a self-indulgent
theft.

"Now you tell me."

"Did you never wonder why the dons ran flapping like giant crows across
the quad when they saw you coming--or why old Dimitrios always held up
that godawful glass-eye pendent when he spotted you--poor man, I could
have told him that warding off your subversive aura was in no way so easy."

"You're exaggerating," Mulder said, smiling easily. "Dimitrios. God, I
haven't thought of him in years."

"He's still there. Old Greeks are a fixture. They take their time dying."

Mulder blinked, torn between Adam's words and his actions, which at the
moment were concentrated in an area just a bare inch right of his pulsing
erection. "He's dying?"

"Figure of speech. Let's not talk of dying."

"You brought it up."

"I brought this up too," Methos said, laying his hand against Mulder's
lifted cock and settling the length of his body along Mulder's own. He let one
leg push between the other man's, braiding with him from the waist down,
moving in so near that he was able to slide his free arm under Mulder's head,
pillowing him. The warmth of Mulder's neck, the heavily-boned grace of it
resting on his own flesh, made Methos ache. He drew in his breath, released it
slowly.

"You are extraordinary," Methos said gently, his face softening as he felt
the old frisson of wonderment.

Eyes half-closed, smile half-formed, Mulder let his head roll along the
slope of Methos' arm. "Why?"

Methos looked at Mulder, thinking of words he had never said and words
he never would say. "You look like Jesus in his rapture," he finally said
aloud, keeping his tone deceptively light, knowing the words would mean
less than nothing to the other man.

Mulder laughed. "First I've heard that one."

Methos said nothing, just drew his hand from Mulder's cock (prompting a
groan) and raised it to trace instead the slightly crooked length of his nose.

"I liked what you were doing before," Mulder said breathlessly.

"I'll do it again," Methos said quietly, and fulfilled his promise. First with
hand, then with mouth, he gave pleasure. Sliding himself down Mulder's body
he took the other man's cock in his mouth and gifted him with the focus of all
his effort and talents until Mulder was crying out desperately. With Mulder in
his mouth, Methos felt as if he were eating poppies, petal by petal, working
himself slowly into an opium-laden haze. The head of his cock was like some
exquisite mixture of cream and blood, a delicacy served in a cup of
specialized design. Already Methos could taste the salted heat flowing from
the tip, that element which was thicker than tears but exuded with just as
much anguish.

Below where his mouth danced, the sac of Mulder's balls gave small
signals of his accelerating arousal, lifting and twitching beneath the velvety
skin. Methos could feel the hard dig of fingers around his skull, flexing,
grabbing, pressing harder and harder still. Blood and heat surged in his
mouth, a lengthening accompanied above, in the cries that were sharpening
themselves in Mulder's throat. He quickened his hard suction, the almost
scissoring flex of his own throat, and felt Mulder lose it then--felt him jerk
with unleashed power--once, twice--felt those thrusts lift him up off the bed
and carry him deeper--then felt the saline wash of release flood his mouth like
a small forced blissful wave.

Sated, happily stunned, Mulder allowed himself to flipped over onto his
belly. Feeling the press of erect flesh between the cheeks of his ass he tensed,
uncertain of Adam's intentions but reading their immediacy. But though
unassuming, even self-effacing in manner, Adam possessed a sovereign
self-mastery. Not much escaped that control without permit. Resting against
Mulder, he did not immediately enter him but instead waited, hands
massaging the muscles of Mulder's back, thumbs plowing the line of his
spine then sliding around the curves of his shoulder blades.

"Take your time," Mulder said dryly, smiling into his folded arms.

"Of time, we have plenty."

Mulder sighed. He was thinking, perhaps absurdly, of his laundry, and of
the stack of old case file folders he'd brought home with him last night and
had meant to spend the weekend perusing. Though he made a fine claim to
Scully of having a life, he really didn't. If truth be told, he was in a rut, and he
rather liked his rut. . .then again, he liked rutting with Adam rather more.
When in doubt, choose human, Mulder reminded himself. Perversion can
only be taken so far; more unnatural than any weird paraphilia would be to
choose dry and dusty papers over the press of flesh and blood.

"So what have you been doing with yourself all these years, Adam?"
Mulder set his facetious tone to a fine blend of perky and snarky, trying to
communicate the silent, implicit command: fuck me or get off me; and knew
he'd succeeded by the light slap on his ass.

"Behave yourself," Adam said.

Something in those few brief words pleased Mulder for subtle reasons of
the soul. The other man's reprimand had been like that of an older brother,
calling up the layers of their past history. There had always been currents
between them that went beyond the sexual, and yet those somehow fraternal
aspects of their dealings, the small familiar markers of friendship, had
carried an odd whiff of incestuousness to Mulder, which, he inexplicably
found, made sex all the more ardent.

"I never was able to teach you anything of erotic refinement, Fox," Adam
said, his voice mildly rueful and reminiscent.

"Don't--"

"--call me Fox," Adam finished mockingly.

Mulder blushed. "Erotic refinement," he muttered into the bedspread,
returning the ridicule in a minor key.

"Yes, well, tantric enlightenment may forever be beyond your means, but a
little maithuna is good for the soul."

"Shakti, my ass," Mulder said slyly.

Five thousand years on him, and even so Methos almost flushed. Lively,
lovely, shameless little brat, he thought, but didn't say aloud. "You'll call
down the rebukes of the gods if you aren't careful."

"Thunderbolts up the ying-yang," Mulder purred.

Oh god, that does it. Laughing and groaning in one breath, even as his
ancient flesh stretched achingly erect, Methos worked his mouth down the
line of Mulder's back toward the lotus-blossom heart of him. Where the body
burned, where it turned inside out and brimmed and spilled with inner heat--
Methos thrust his tongue there greedily, transforming his flesh into a flame-
tipped arrow, poking it teasingly between his captive's parted cheeks. Moans
poured out from above.

Between licks, Methos murmured words of Ovid into Mulder's ass. In the
original Latin, of course.

"Lovers wonder where I got that habit from," Mulder gasped out, half to
himself. His hips were beginning to jerk frantically again. "Oh, god, Adam--
Jesus, Jesus Christ, don't stop that! No, don't--oh, fuck. . .oh. . .yes. . .that's.
. .oh, good. . ."

Methos smiled wolfishly. "Yes, you always did like that."

Whimpering a little, Mulder thrust back against the other man's teasing
fingers. He was ripe with feeling. The pulse of his blood was a backbeat for
the sounds lifting from his throat, which he listened to with semi-detached
interest. Though his cheeks flared with the heat of mild embarrassment, his
own soundtrack of passion piqued his interest. A soft rattling sound, breath
nearly a moan, issued, and then was followed by a staccato series of cries--
and if Adam was trying to prove some equation of cause and effect through
his repetitive prods, then it was so proven, for that same hard-knuckled thrust
produced the same piercing note of desperate ecstasy, every time.

His dry sobs were growing louder, though. These strokes would bring him
to the brink, but he needed more. "More," he barked abruptly, bent on
startling Adam from his obsessive fiddling. Adam's fingers twitched inside
him.

"Yes, all right. Easy, boy."

The lilting, elongated vowels of the other man's voice suggested mockery
again, but Mulder was past caring. "Just--" He broke off as Adam's long
fingers began to withdraw, but then they paused, their tips resting just within
the ring of his flesh. Softer, more silken flesh joined their touch; the
combination was devastating. Mulder pushed further up onto his knees,
seeking that incredibly twinned invasion. He could feel the thick warmth of
three fingers' width holding him open, and then the sliding stroke of Adam's
cock--just the head--as he worked himself back and forth across the bridge of
his own fingers. His cock's head was warm and full, plush with blood, slick
with the upswell of approaching release. When it popped past the round,
ringed door of Mulder's body and completely inside, Mulder shouted
unexpectedly. It didn't hurt-- he was shouting with delight.

Mulder felt Adam's fingers withdraw now, but they remained pressed into
the cleft of his ass at its lowest jointure, sliding blazingly up and down the
strip of heat that stitched backside to balls, a neglected, subterranean corridor
of sensation that was receiving full electrical current for the first time in too
long. With every caress, reflexes of desire jolted him back further, and he
realized that Adam was compelling him to impale himself; rather than
thrusting, he was inducing Mulder to perform the job for them both. Adam
had clearly not forgotten what he liked.

Acknowledgment--that this was what he liked--sent a wash of
irrepressible lust through Mulder's body, a long unrolling wave of countless
small breakers, spumes and curls of desire that dashed and struck the
underside of his skin at all points--ass, nipples, throat, his burning face and
the flaming hollow of his mouth. These points of his body still ached from
earlier kisses. He was ridden with echoes of pleasure that would not be
shaken loose. As Adam held himself unmoving, Mulder pushed back steadily,
until he felt the curves of his ass cupped by the shallow declivity of the other
man's pelvis, a fit that seemed seamless.

That touch undid him: he began to buck wildly against Adam's hips,
slamming back over and over, shouting out his pleasure. The throbbing,
bedded length of the other man's cock was a depthless source of stimulation.
It poured heat into him, it jabbed the heart of him, it twisted and turned like a
blunt knife. When it drew slowly and nearly out, he swore, when it drove
back in, spearing his prostate with the licking, enflaming force of roasted
iron, he sobbed and bucked again. Climax was coming at him like an invisible
boxer, punching him in the face and gut with blows that would eventually
combine to overtake him and knock him out cold.

Not there yet--not yet--but it was nearing.

Methos gasped at the jagged, tightening grips that held his cock. Blissful,
as if angels were confined in that tight tunnel of flesh, and their mass of
powerfully beating wings was the flexing heat that seized him--this was the
feeling. He began to come before he knew what was happening; it was
surprised out of him. As the first bolt struck, he cried out, then dove into the
fire, straight into the barrage of that lightning. It lasted an immeasurable time,
and he wrung every last flicker of joy from the use of his captive, then drew
Mulder up and held him close, sliding a hand around his body to hold his
cock, while his own remained rigidly uplifted within the flushed blossom of
his ass.

Mulder cried out and wrestled in his arms. He was far gone, wild, and took
his pleasure with that primal selfishness which always thrilled something in
Methos, that touched his watchful heart. Tight inner muscles bit at Methos'
length, worked him with driven, ruthless force, and then Mulder was all at
once lifting in his arms, crying out and spilling a thick jet of seed up his chest
and across Methos' fingers, knocking him recklessly on the shoulder and jaw
with the damp, silken weight of his skull. He felt like an armful spilled from
heaven, and--feeling the electrical surge of his completion as if it were an
overflow into himself--Methos felt his own need peak suddenly again, in that
same instant.

He came just as hard as before and rode the pleasure out savagely, and
then they were slumping together as one, Mulder dragging in air with heavy,
greedy inhalations, Methos trying to find his breath and not quite sure he'd
gotten hold of it.

"Oh. . .oh, fuck," Mulder managed to say after several long moments had
drawn themselves out. He shifted against Methos then made a tiny wincing
sound.

"Don't move," Methos said gently. He kissed Mulder's temple and rubbed
one hand over the flat of his stomach, then slid his hand across the other
man's slowly softening cock. "Mm."

Mulder shifted--a little settling motion--and sighed.

"You're purring," Methos observed, smiling into Mulder's ear.

"You need to get a pet, Adam. Bengal tiger, maybe."

"I've had one. They make poor pets. Though they're immensely useful for
keeping the help in line."

"Mmph. Let me off this ride. I need to go. . .get cleaned up."

"Up and at 'em," Methos said, smacking off the words with an
Americanized flavor.

"Ugh," Mulder rejoined distinctly, sliding off Methos' body and into the
next room with graceful, flickering speed.

"I'm going to use your shower, Mulder. . .American plumbing is one of the
modern wonders of the world. . ." Despite his words, Methos remained lying
on the bed, immobilely flung out on his back and staring broodingly at the
ceiling. "I feel like. . .like a very big damp starfish," he said, musing on the
words to himself.

Mulder returned from the bath, rubbing his hair and face, blinking with
satiation and mild, comfortable tiredness. "What?"

"Do you have a four-star restaurant in this two-horse town, Mulder, old
man?"

"I don't know. I'm a one-star kind of guy myself."

"How true," Methos drawled. "Polaris." Sitting up and stretching, he
narrated in a bland, tony accent: "Fox Mulder--man on a quest or heat-
seeking missile? You decide--hey!" He held up a hand, grinning as Mulder
threatened him with a pillow. Methos stood and stretched some more, feeling
energized and pleased with life. "Take a shower with me, and then I'll take
you somewhere. You drive us there, I'll get you drunk, I'll drive us back, we'll
roll around some more--"

Mulder studied his face, then nodded and led the way into the bathroom.
"So, how long are you staying, Adam?"

"Oh, just long enough, old friend. I wouldn't want to overstay my
welcome. Then again, my time is my own."

End.

en brochette -- on a skewer
multa gemens -- many moans
omnis amans amens -- all lovers are demented
beso las manos -- I kiss your hands
beso las pies -- I kiss your feet
veteris vestigia flammae -- the traces of my former flame (Vergil)
Dios ayuda a los bien vestidos -- God help the well dressed (vs mal vestidos
-- the poorly dressed)