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No Return Policy SLASH. I have left a "slash space" so those of you who hate 
slash don't have to even see it. :-).
There's also a bit of MSR in it too btw.

GenieVB
*Sequel to follow

***

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TITLE: "No Return Policy."
AUTHOR: GenieVB
RATING: NC-17. MT/MK Slash
m/m sexual situations, m/f sexual
situations.
SPOILERS: "Milagro/Biogenesis"
This story is free for archiving anywhere
with my full permission and gratitude. But please
let me know where so I can brag.

DISCLAIMER: The X-Files series, movie, characters,
are the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen
Productions and the Fox Network. I don't want
any credit, fame or fortune from X-Files, I only want
to write about your show and characters to entertain
myself and others.
This story is fictitious. If there appear to be people
bearing any resemblance to actual persons, it is
by COINCIDENCE ONLY.
I drool stupidly for feedback. avan@home.com
or genyah@hotmail.com

Summary: Mulder trades something for
something and learns something about
himself!
***



No-Return Policy.



I feel like a shithead because I hate lying to her.
But here I am standing in the middle of a deserted
four lane bridge in the middle of the night - and
what a night, it's a cold bitch out here - like some
Kojak with hair, waiting for my mysterious caller
to show his face. I want to put flesh to that voice
on the phone.

He, whoever the hell he is, called me at work,
and then faxed over some photos, telling
me how interested I'd be if I just took my time
and looked at them real close. He sounded like
a salesman for a food freezer plan, that kind
of salesman, the kind you want to say go fuck
yourself to, and then slam the phone down on.
But like a good little investigator, I didn't. I looked
at the photos and here I am, standing in the middle
of a condemned bridge in the middle of a D.C. night
hoping the prick brings me a hot cup of coffee.

He'd better or I'm not buying, I don't care what he's
selling.

I didn't have to lie to Scully but I did.

When she asked me about the phone call and the fax
machine I panicked. I don't know why, really. Maybe
because she's been so more Scullyish than usual.
I don't even know what I mean by that. She's been
watching me a lot since I lost my head a couple months
back and well, I've been watching her a lot since
she sort of lost hers a month before _that_.

I still get these cold aches in my belly when I think of her sitting
on the bed with that Pagette guy.
Furniture or no furniture, a woman doesn't sit on a bed
with a guy unless they're at least thinking about getting
raw and rowdy. They could have sat crossed legged on the
living room floor.

I digress. Scully asked about the phone call and the only lie
I could think up was that I was thinking about buying a house
and the call was from a real estate agent.

You should have seen Scully's eyes. Scared me pee-less.
She looked like she was wondering if it was two or three bedrooms
and would there be room for her dining suite.

Don't misunderstand me, it's a fantasy I've indulged in now
and then - I mean Scully and me, a house, (her furniture,
not mine), Scully in a bathrobe, Scully in our bedroom...
Yeah, I've thought a lot about stuff like that but the thing is,
I'm not quite ready for it yet. So now I'll have to make up another lie
to cover this one. What do I tell her after she's flashed pretty
hopeful eyes like that? - "Sorry, changed my mind, I think I'll
stick with my tacky circa 1969 decor bachelor's paradise
for another decade."

The fucker had to call me at work!

Even my mother doesn't call me at work.

I'm about to call it a no-show when a hand grabs my gun
from my holster, places it behind my right ear and stops
my pacing dead on the spot.

"Sorry I'm breaking our agreement of a non confrontational
meeting, but you never know how a man is going to react
when his worst enemy shows up, even if it is to offer him
his heart's desire."

FuckfuckFUCK!!! "Krycek." I said it like I always do - a curse.

"Hey, Mulder, how ya' doin'?"

Don't ask me how the son-of-a-bitch snuck up on me. There's
nowhere to hide out here except behind the damned girders
and I checked behind those.

Paranoid to the last.

"I'm fine," I answer him with a sneer. "But you must have me
mixed up with Doctor Kimball." I try to get in at least one
'one-armed man' reference every time we meet. Don't want
to disappoint him.

"Did you look at the photos?"

"What, no rejoinder? Yeah, I looked. They could be fakes."

"Then why did you come?"

Touche'. The bastard really isn't stupid at all, no matter how much
I'd like to think he is.

"Turn around." He says and I do.

Same haircut, clothes, pinched expression, little turned up nose
that must have driven the girls crazy in high school but makes me
think of a wild pig. A rooter-upper of things. One that gets itself
into where it doesn't belong. Other than that, it isn't ugly I
suppose.

"What do you want, Krycek?"

"Why, you of course."

Ah. He wants to play "mind". Fuck him! "I mean, for the photos. Specifically 
the location of the person in the photos?"

"First I like to assure you that the photos are real. It's her, in the 
flesh,
alive and as healthy as the proverbial horse."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

That's when the car drove up containing two of his delightful companions
with the real thick necks and biceps. I hate those kind.

Krycek, that smirk I've grown to loath pasted all over his traitorous
face, jerked the gun toward the car's rear door.

We both got in, me sitting on one side and Krycek and my gun on the
other.

"You don't." He said.

***
I've learned not to trust Krycek as far as I could
throw his mechanical left arm.

But didn't the son-of-a-bitch tell the truth for
the first time in his life and actually drive
me directly to see the subject in the photographs
over which we had yet to haggle a price.

Up until that point, I'd been playing cocky asshole right
back to is cocky asshole because, quite frankly,
I didn't believe him. When you get lied to as much
as I do, you start not believe in a whole lot, not even
when the truth is staring you right in your face.

That's what I came face to face with.

I didn't know where I was (I knew it was a house in
little suburbia), but they'd blindfolded me on the way
so I spent a queasy forty minutes counting right and left turns
and mile estimates until I was so completely fucking lost
I probably would have guessed Toronto, if asked.

But soon I was being escorted up steps, across a porch
and into the warmth of a living room. Living rooms
smell like wood oil and carpet, that's how I knew
it was someone's home and not just a warehouse
that they took people to perform whatever was still
on the "To Do" list for that day. I'd imagined "beat
living shit out of Mulder" written on scrap in someone's
pocket.

But, no, this was a house.

When my blindfold was removed, I wasn't even given
a second to adjust my eyes when she walked up to me.

I stared at her with my squinting, stupid eyes over nostrils
flaring with doubt and a lovely sloppy, gaping jaw.

Maybe it was shock.

When I was twelve, my mind, heart, and every goddamn
part of my soul outside and in, had frozen to a mass of
frightful images of her being taken from me in all manner
of grotesque and violent ways. I'd never believed those
images.

They had come mostly in my dreams when I lay trying
to sleep in my bed or when in the middle of the night
I'd go crawling into hers and lay there, sleepless,
wondering and hurting so badly inside I thought I was sick.

Those images had barely moved in twenty-six years.

But this petite woman with the brown, short cropped hair,
upturned nose and sad expression walked right up to me,
took my head between her hands and cried into my shoulder,
saying: "Fox, oh Fox. Fox, Fox, I thought I'd never see you again.
I thought you were dead. Fox, Fox...."

And at first, for just a few seconds, I thought: No. no, it isn't her.
Samantha had long hair, forgetting that people do change. They
grow, they marry, they cut their hair...

And then I thought: Could it be? Samantha is alive? Really?
I was hurting, so afraid to believe, so terrified that it was
a lie all over again. My heart just wasn't up to it. Not again.
Never again, I thought.

And then this woman speaking my name over and over, crying into my
shoulder, kissing my cheek, took two slim fingers and began
twisting them in the hair at the back of my neck.

Just like Samantha used to.

This woman didn't look like Samantha as much as I thought Samantha
should have looked like as an adult. She had short hair.

But she sounded like her and her face was the same simple prettiness
like Samantha and she twirled her little fingers in my hair just like
Sam used to do when she couldn't sleep and would come crawling
into my bed....

And I fucking cried.

I don't think I've ever cried that hard in front of anyone.

Especially not in front of those gorilla sized thumb-breakers who's
expression held nothing but contempt for the Fed' pussy bawling
his eyes out over a woman. I didn't give a half shit what they thought.

Twenty-six years ago my life had ended, I thought. I soon figured out
it had just taken one bad turn. And then another and another.

How could they know what I was feeling right that second when
my baby sister was touching my hair the way I hadn't felt in more
than two decades and I knew she was the real thing?

Samantha had disappeared and I know that though I'd repeated by
rote that I believed she was alive all those years and that one day I
would find her, I was lying.

My lie to myself to keep it together one more day. To keep from going
crazy. 'Cause when I was a kid, as odd as it may seem for a brother to
say this about his dumb kid sister, Sam was my life.
Dad had his work and mom had her social clubs and I had Sam.

So how would Krycek's ugly hulks fucking know how it feels to lose
your life and then get it back?

"Sam." I said. That was all I said. It came out a pathetic screaming
sob of joy balled up in a grief-filled whine.

"Oh Sam." I said. Just that and that was all.

***

It wasn't long of course, before I was again
escorted via blindfold and neanderthals
back to the waiting car. They'd left the motor
running for Christ's sake.

"When can I see her again?" I demanded.

"All in good time."

Krycek loves this cloak and dagger shit.
Keep the prisoner guessing at his future,
spoonful by spoonful.

"Where are we going?" Politeness was
something I always left at home whenever,
while wearing a blindfold, I was seated
beside a one-armed man (with my own gun
trained on my eyeball) without knowing my
destination. Call it a personality quirk, but I
figure, what the hell good is "please" and
"thank-you" going to do me in those situations?
I mean, it was pretty fucking plain we weren't
going clubbing.

"The Bargain Basement." Humor, Krycek style.

Ah. A warehouse, I thought.

***

Turns out a cozy little apartment was what surrounded
me when the blindfold came off for the second time.
Dark green couch and easy chair; that "man-made
material" fabric. Poor man's leather.

Coffee table. Lamps. Fireplace too. Real fire.

Krycek still had my gun turned on me. Guess he didn't
much trust me either. But he was dismissing thebig thick
humans. Though, after closing the door behind
them, I could tell they were going to hang around outside
just in case.

"When can I see Samantha again?" I was sick of this
shadowy rendezvous in the night crap.

"First we discuss my price."

"_Your_ price? I thought Cancer Stick was running the
show?"

"Not this gig."

Krycek walked toward me and I had the distinct
image flash across my mind of a sleek cat strolling
across the linoleum to its food dish.

He stopped in front of me with eyes green like a cats,
his pink tongue darted out from between thin lips and
it laid out his bargain.

"You're the price."

Yes, of course I stupidly didn't get it at first. "What?"

"You're the price. You. You become mine when I say
and how I say."

Blunt. Still a bit obscure for my dozing senses, (I'd really
used up a great deal of my reserve tanks coping with
the events of the evening thus far), but blunt.

It should have been easy to understand but I was not
practiced in the arts of being loved, desired or even
tolerated. The files were pretty dusty down there.
The "machinery" hadn't been primed in a long time
either.

But I got it eventually.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"In one or two ways, probably. That's the price. Or
we kill your sister."

I almost fucking dropped to the floor with that. Krycek
actually had to steady me with his plastic lump for a
hand and guide me over to the couch. "You're...you're fucking
crazy." I whispered. "Why show her to me only
to threaten to take her away?"

I swear Krycek's face actually registered something besides
that "I love myself" veneer when I looked up at a him with
those questions.

I must have looked pretty bad, pretty damn devastated to
have evoked an actual emotion from the prick.

"There was no other way."

"No other way? For what? What the fuck-?"

"No other way to get you willingly." Krycek was nothing
if not cryptic. He walked to the chair and sat down. It
didn't suite him. None of the furniture here did. I clued into
the fact at that moment that this wasn't _his_ place, it was
just A place. Rented by the hour maybe. ("Yes, I'd like
to rent one of your condominiums for the purpose of dark
Conspiracy heavy meetings with mysterious visitors. Um,
do you have take-out?")

All this fucked up shit went through my aching head
as I watched him watch me from his green poor man's
leather chair across the coffee table. It reflected
our two likenesses in its surface. A second Krycek and
Mulder, flat and distorted.

"Oh, Christ." I whispered when I realized what he was
saying.

I, as in _I_, me, myself, my body and flesh, etc, etc,..
was the price. For him. For the one armed bandit
who stole my dad with a bullet.

Who had assisted the Wrinkled Cigarette Sucker
with stealing Scully and my sanity for those horrible
weeks. Who stood beside me saying almost all the
right things when I was falling apart before his eyes
because I loved her, and he turning out to be just
another dirty on the inside squeaky on the outside
Smoke-Boy.

I hated Krycek then, when I found out what he was. I
hated Skinner, too, for not seeing him.

I hated myself most of all.

"I don't understand. You spent years trying to kill me.
Why this? Why now?"

"Because I'm in love with you." Krycek immediately snorted
at his own lie. "Well, in lust for years. Maybe it's more, I
don't know. But I've known where Samantha was for years,
it's just CancerMan who thinks it's best you two be kept apart."

"Why?..."

"Don't you get it, Mulder? To keep that fire under your ass lit
and burning. She was taken for a similar reason. I mean, he
had to find out what kind of fighter you are. What would
have happened if she'd been returned to you? The fire
would have been snuffed out before it got going really good."

"When can I see her again?!" I was tired now. Really tired.
Ready to kill him tired and the neanderthals could then feel
free go to town on my corpse, I didn't care.

Krycek came over, crouched beside me and, though not putting
the weapon down, he didn't point it at my head either.

What a gentleman.

"Tomorrow. Tonight you stay here with me."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then she dies. I promised the "C-Man" that you'd go along with
this and cooperate in order to see your sister on a regular basis.
He agreed but with the condition that if you refuse or balk anywhere
along the way, she dies."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

Krycek uncocked the weapon and placed it on the table beside
me. "Go for the gun, Mulder. You can kill me, kill those goons
outside,...but Samantha dies if I don't report in tomorrow
morning with a good word."

"This is insane, I,..I don't feel well. I don't know if I can go through
with it."

"I'll help you and maybe it won't be so bad as you imagine."

I don't know. I can imagine a whole lot of bad.

***


Don't think I'd ever had a fantasy about Krycek
(beyond murdering the double-crossing little
shit), because I'm not into men. I'm into
hairless, curvy pretty females that feel good
and smell good.

Krycek had shown me my sister, Samantha, and
I knew beyond the smallest grain of question that
she was the genuine article.

Krycek had told me the truth and I, stupid idiot
that I am, had agreed to this transaction without
first checking the price-tag.

"I need to be drunk." I told him. "Preferably
brain-soaked smashed."

Krycek blinked a few times. It was always hard
to know what he was thinking. I'd never, even when
we were partners, been able to figure him out, but
he seemed a bit hurt. (Good, I thought, let him
know the thought of his greasy hands all over me
makes me sick to my stomach).

Back then, I hadn't trusted him at all and let him
know it right off. Later, through his very convincing
acting and well thought-out bullshitting, I'd grown
to believe that he was not the sleazy spy I'd pegged
him for, just a fresh-faced kid with an attitude.

I was wrong and in retrospect I wondered whatever
the hell had I been thinking? Trust No One. Fuck!
Trust _NO_ one, and I'd trusted him. Stupid Mulder!
Stupid Mulder!

I was gullible. Someone had come along
and ripped Scully and my heart away from me
and I needed someone I suppose. Maybe that's
what I had been thinking. Maybe I was so
fucking lonely anyone at all would have done.

Like I said - stupid Mulder.

Krycek left me sitting on the fake leather couch
and went thorough a doorway. I heard rummaging
around and cupboards being opened and closed.

He returned with a bottle of Barcardi and two
plastic cups.

He poured me out a respectable measure - six
ounces at least - of rum.

And then another.

He had a drink or two. Maybe he was losing his nerve
or maybe he couldn't get it up without a few snorts.

That thought made me chuckle but I didn't tell
him why when he asked because there was that
other thing playing through my head at the same
moment: I was drinking straight rum from a plastic cup
so I could get drunk enough so I wouldn't have to later
remember that Krycek fucked me.

I wanted to wake up with this night wiped from my
mind: A naked Krycek fucking naked me.

After finishing off the bottle together (me downing
3/4's of it), I was so drunk I couldn't stand.

Krycek took my left arm with his right arm and lead me
to the bedroom door but at the threshold, I came to my
senses and started struggling. I tried to hit him and
pull away but, hell, the booze had done its job and I
was too drunk to even walk by myself never mind beat
up the slut next to me.

So instead I stared crying like a fucking baby.

I did not want that man's hands on me.

I suppose I hoped that if I appeared wimpy enough,
he might get so disgusted he'd lose interest and I could
go home and forget all this insanity.

But then Samantha would die. That's most likely
the other reason I was crying.

Krycek was going to do whatever he wanted with
me because, as he'd informed me, he'd had a perpetual
hard-on for me for years and if I didn't go along with
the double-crossing, lying, murdering, faggot he
would have my sister killed.

So I had no goddamn choice.

***

Continued in Part 2/3