Slightly startled, Krycek reared up, and for the first time gave everyone a clear idea of the full size of the animal. Balanced on the last couple of feet of his tail, he now stood a full 7 feet in the air, weaving slightly over the large woman. Making no threatening moves, Mulder stepped onto the platform, nightmarish thoughts of another bloated corpse lending a slight urgency to his interference. But she held her ground, and the merman lowered himself slightly. Although not interested in her lunch, he did allow her to pat him, and as he realised she posed no threat slowly eased to the platform again, balanced on his hands and hips.
The cameras flashed and clicked, and the news services sighed in disappointment. Mulder breathed his own sigh – of relief. See, he’s not dangerous at all. He smiled at the brave – or was she stupid? – construction worker, quite thankful for her inadvertent demonstration, and just sat nearby. Waiting until she went back to work, until she left his pet alone. Mulder kissed off his own jealousy. No doubt Krycek would go out to sea again soon, and would find himself a mate, a lovely merman from amongst his own people. Sire some babies from one of the dominant females – Mulder knew they’d be as beautiful as their father – and forget all about the stupid human who fed him and made all the dumb noises and demands.
"Mulder," Scully’s clear voice caught his attention, "may I speak with you for a moment?"
He sighed and turned away from his favourite sight. "What’s up, Scully?"
"I’ve been thinking, Mulder..."
"What else is new?"
"Shut up. I’ve reconsidered. It looks like you took my advice, and you haven’t done anything else since that time you were caught doing... you were caught. And it doesn’t appear to have traumatised Krycek – in fact, I think if you were to leave permanently that would probably traumatise him. I still think you should take a vacation, maybe just for a week or so, but if you can continue to stay out of trouble, we’ll just consider that incident a warning. Do you agree?"
Nodding frantically, Mulder suppressed his guilt. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and any chance to stay with Krycek. And if they were discreet...? "Sure! Not a problem. Thank you," he said, his thanks heartfelt, "Thank you so much for this."
She nodded, obviously wondering if she’d made a mistake, but sat down with him, watching Krycek watching the installation.
"Do you think he’ll stay?"
"Is that why you gave me my job back? You don’t think he’ll stay, so you don’t think I can make any more trouble?"
She sighed, pushing strands of red hair out of her eyes, "I give him a fifty/fifty chance of staying," she side-stepped the important part of his question. "Despite our best intentions, he’s been hurt here, we haven’t kept him completely safe. Then again, you’re here, and that’s a pretty good enticement for him, I should imagine."
Mulder couldn’t help but enjoy the small warm jolt that gave him, the small surge of hope.
"Then again, even if he wants to come back here, who’s to say he’ll be able to find his way back once he leaves? What is their sense of direction like?"
"No idea."
"No idea. We didn’t learn that much really, did we?"
"Not much more we could learn without dissecting him or observing him in his natural habitat. And who knows, he may decide to stay. Also – don’t get mad – we are legally obligated to install the gate, but there’s nothing about teaching him how to use it."
"That’s mean, Mulder. What if he does want to go free?"
Don’t fuck it up, Mulder, he warned himself, you’re already on shaky ground here, very shaky ground.
"You’re right. We’ll demonstrate it to him as soon as it’s working. Then it’s his decision. He’s tagged, so we could follow him, keep track of him. That’s something."
"What will you do if he does leave?"
"Continue my studies. Maybe the Centre will fund an expedition – we could track his movements and migrations. Maybe we’ll find a group of them, wouldn’t that be something?"
"It sure would, Mulder. It sure would."
-oo0oo-
"Have you thought about where you’re going on your holiday?"
"I thought I’d postpone it for a while, I just want to see this..."
"Mulder, this isn’t voluntary, and you need to take a rest."
"I’m fine."
"You are not fine! I do not want any more repeats of... that. This isn’t open to discussion, as far as I’m concerned you are still very close to dismissal for what you did. If it wasn’t for our friendship..."
"Next week."
"What?" Scully was thrown by the apparent non-sequitur.
"Next week. I’ll go away next week. It’s Friday now, I’ll make this my last day for two weeks. Happy?"
"Happy. And surprised, why the sudden capitulation?"
"He’s going nowhere. I spent a good six hours yesterday, and another six the day before trying to get him to understand how the gate works. He won’t even push against it. He only has to give it a shove and he’s out, like an oversized cat door, but he just floats there and stares at me."
"Don’t be disappointed. So he doesn’t have a normal mammal’s intelligence. Maybe that’s for the best."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, if they were as intelligent as humans, I should imagine they’d go crazy with boredom, just floating around, eating all day."
"I don’t know about that, Scully, people pay good money for that. It’s called Club Med."
"No television, Mulder. No videos."
"Argh!" Mulder mimed horror. "I see your point. But I think he is smart, just not in the way we measure intelligence. Have you heard that line: ‘what’s smarter, cats or dogs? Cats, because you’d never get six cats to pull a sled’. He’s intelligent, I believe, but not at all educated. Even humans, if not instructed in some language before the age of seven, never learn. Or at least, they can never learn generalised terms. I’m sure he’s intelligent to some degree. We just need to find some way to communicate."
"You believe the sun shines out his ass, Mulder, be honest."
"True, but nothing we’ve seen leads me to believe he’s not intelligent. I just think he can’t be bothered showing it – I think he’s laughing at us most of the time."
"You could be right. He’s being fed top quality expensive food, he’s safe, he’s cared for, he’s getting massaged. What’s so stupid about that."
"Exactly."
They sat in companionable silence for a little while, watching Krycek re-arrange the pebbles and baubles on the bottom of his tank, moving them away from the glass towards his underwater nest, creating a rainbow bower.
"So, what will do you do with your holidays, Mulder?"
"I dunno, maybe I’ll go to Disneyland, or Mythology Park, or Seaworld, or maybe I’ll just come here every day. Look at all the pretty fishes."
"Mulder..." her voice was low and menacing, despite her obvious understanding of his humour.
"Just kidding, Scully. Just kidding."
-oo0oo-
Files, endless reels of video tapes, sketches, and mountains of notes all had to be organised and neatly put away into Mulder’s briefcase. Then Mulder had to get frustrated and start stuffing all the shit into shopping bags. Basically, he dawdled and procrastinated, and wasted time until he had to leave. The window of his office was a porthole into the tank, and everything he did was observed and closely noted, and of course Mulder had to stop work and rap on the glass whenever sharp claws tapped for his attention.
"You gonna miss me?" he asked the glass, knowing Krycek probably couldn’t hear him through the panel. "Of course you will, but there are people to take care of you. Everyone’s well versed in feeding and care, I’ve made sure of that. And I won’t be far, I’m only down the beach a few miles so any problems they can call me. I’ll have my cell phone so they can contact me and I’ll be here in minutes. But you don’t understand any of that, do you." He sighed deeply. "I’d like to be with you one more time before I have to leave, but chances are Scully’s going to know that and have extra security in place."
Holding Krycek’s gaze, Mulder leaned forward and pressed his lips to the glass, his face only inches away from Krycek. The merman didn’t return the gesture, but moved even closer, hands against the pane. A moment’s deviltry caught Mulder and he made a blow fish against the glass, his face distorted, making a raspberry noise.
Krycek flipped his tail, shooting back in the water, obviously completely taken aback, and Mulder couldn’t help laughing at his incomprehension. Krycek was back seconds later, twitching in agitation, and Mulder couldn’t help repeating his jape, getting another laugh as Krycek started to jerk about in the water, obviously fascinated but having no idea why Mulder was doing this.
Taking pity on the poor animal, Mulder stopped, waved a sad good bye and turned to leave, "I’ll see you soon, Krycek. You be a good boy, okay?"
As he left, Krycek spun away towards the main windows, waiting for Mulder to re-appear, but Mulder slipped out the back door instead, his feet leaden, depressed and at a loss already as he started his vacation.
-oo0oo-
"How is he?"
"It’s fine, Mulder, and you don’t have to phone in every day to check up on it."
"Yeah yeah, I know, but yesterday you said he seemed lacklustre."
"To be perfectly honest, Mulder, I think it misses you."
He couldn’t help grinning to himself, not that he wanted Krycek to be unhappy, but it was nice to know he was being missed.
"Do you miss me, Scully?"
"No, I don’t, you pervert," affection in her voice. "It’s quiet, and not displaying at all. It’s more interested in building rock patterns around the outside of the little cave area, and it’s totally ignoring the guests. It is eating, though not enthusiastically, but it’s not losing weight. It’s fine, just... quiet."
"Well, any problems..."
"Yes, Mulder, I’ll call you. Now go enjoy your holiday!"
"Yes, ma’am!"
The water beckoned, and Mulder grabbed beer, dirty magazine, and towel, and headed down to the water. Long ago the previous owners of this place had dug a channel from beach to their house, imported pure white sand at some incredibly exorbitant price and made their own small private beach by the house – where anyone could swim sans trunks and not be noticed. They’d had to sell the house at an enormous loss a few years later when the stock market crashed, and Mulder had snapped this place up in a second. Right on the water, private beach, what more could he want?
Of course, the house itself was too large, generally neglected, and always filthy, but there was even a tiny dock where Mulder moored his other pride and joy, the George Hale. He adored that boat, and spent every possible waking minute on her. Well, he had, up until Krycek had arrived. Maybe he should go out on her a bit more since he had the time now. But before, he had always taken her out looking for the merpeople. Now he would be moving away from the only one he really cared about.
Yeah, maybe later he’d go out, tool the boat around the bay. Maybe he could go past the aquarium, some of the dolphins that hung out there knew the boat and would come up, play in the wake or cage fish scraps. But if Scully saw the boat... then again, it was a free world.
With a sigh he threw himself into the water, doing laps up and down the beach until he was pleasantly tired. He grabbed his beer from the jetty, balanced it on his stomach and floated on his back, taking a sip now and then.
The warm caress of the water, and the first prickle of sunburn were easily turned by a fertile imagination into the tingle of scales against skin, and in his mind Mulder brought his lover to him. His own hands with phantom claws stroked over his flesh, the brush of seaweed was the touch of delicate fins, and sunlight on painfully blue water was so like the glint in his lover’s chameleon eyes.
Mulder pleasured himself easily, feeling the sun burn his lips, leaving blue and blinding white patterns on the back of his retinas, and smiled as he released his seed to mingle with the seawater.
It was only a couple of weeks, and he could go back. From now on he’d be more careful, and if Krycek had no desire to go back to the ocean then maybe they could have a long time together. A bigger tank, definitely he would have to get Krycek a bigger tank. With a fountain, perhaps, and hidden areas, new rock formations, lots of interesting things to keep the merman happy and amused. Mulder floated back again, making plans and cooking up schemes as the salt water buoyed him up.
-oo0oo-
"It’s calling again," Skinner pointed out uselessly.
Scully wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tight against the shivers that terrible voice sent down her spine. A beautiful noise, but terrifying. It reminded her of swamps and water-swollen graveyards, bloated, decomposing corpses floating to the surface of desecrated graves. She had visions of empty mausoleums, or deserted city streets with no life but the wretched bodies of the mouldering destitute. Desolate and foetid.
"Can’t you do something to make it stop that noise?" Skinner paced, worried. The noise brought people here, called them like zombies to living flesh, but they stood around, not spending money on anything, and it freaked everybody out.
"No, it started that two days ago, just sitting there on the platform and wails. We haven’t been able to get it down. It won’t stop, won’t eat. It’s ignoring everyone, just making that noise all the time."
"Why? Why is it doing that?"
She resisted the temptation to stick her fingers in her ears, "I think... it misses Mulder."
"Well, bring Mulder back then."
"He’s only got five days left of his holiday..."
"We’ll have to shut this place down if our star attraction keeps that up. What if it pines away? The customers are asking questions. They don’t come here to watch this kind of thing. They want to see the pretty merman swimming around, not watch this animal making that dreadful racket."
"Walter! Have you got no soul? It’s in distress."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry, but that noise is starting to get to me."
Scully slipped her arm around Walter’s waist, her tiny fingers lost against the sheer size of the man. They hid their affair more carefully than Mulder hid his with the merman, but it was no less passionate. "If it doesn’t stop soon I’ll call him back. But his obsession with the merman is... unhealthy. It want them both to have a break from each other."
