Disclaimer: All concepts and characters belong to Chris Carter, the Fox Network, and Ten Thirteen Productions.

Rating: PG (homosexual themes, swearing)

Spoilers: Tunguska

Author's Note: This is one of the only love stories I've written, and aside from being very tame for slash (I got a number of requests for an added sex scene) it's also a little ode to the one great thing about Kentucky: Spring.

The Bramble Patch

They went to the mountains when it was over. The Appalachians are beautiful in April, the guides told them, when they returned the rental car they had picked up at the airport on their way to Wyndershine State Park. You're in for a treat.

Krycek glanced up at Mulder, who was keeping his eyes steadily on buckling his pack. Neither one of them said anything.

They walked like fast turtles on two legs, their metal-framed hiking packs high on their backs. Only twenty minutes from the park entrance, and Krycek already felt like they were approaching the end of the world. No planes, no cars, no stink of exhaust. There wasn't even trash.

The path was barely there, more of a red clay rut that sank a few inches into the ground. It was easy to get lost, and with Mulder walking a hundred yards in front, Krycek found himself stranded among the stretching golden rod more than once. Every hour or so he would stop at a log and scrap the thick, clinging mud from this sides of his boots, and pop the chunks out from between the rubber cleats.

He'd never been to a forest like this before, he was used to the dark, strangled forests of Russia where it was forever forboding winter, and the murky, impenetrable swamps of Miami. But Kentucky was a different kind of jungle, like a small, dangerous child inviting him to come play. Sunlight skittered between the overly abundant foliage that reached waist-high between the trees. Shadows swayed as the day aged. Quick, excited air filled the spaces between the spider-webs that glittered like glass from every branch. Poke weed sprouted in abundance, the thick, tubed stalks reminding him of giant plastic straws, the floppy leaves larger than his face and emitting a sweet, bitter scent. Dandelions turned their pouting faces toward the sun wherever they could.

The ground was slick with spring rain, but the sky above was perfectly clear. Krycek passed over a small creek by jumping from one porous white rock to another, and when he paused to dip his hand in, he found the water thin, silken, and icy. It was flavored barely with the taste of organic tea, not at all unpleasant, and he washed his crumby-covered hand before starting to hike again.

They had flown in from D.C., and arrived just after six o'clock. The day seemed at first to have so much life left in it, but three hours later, Krycek found that night came quick and sneaky in the mountains, wading through illumination until the last possible second, when the whole world seemed to go dark.

When he could no longer see in front of him, he pulled the flashlight from his pack and turned it on. Instantly, a patternless matt of sinewy, curling veins came to color in front of him. Wild roses; he had wandered off the path again.

"Krycek!"

From a few hundred feet away he saw a light mimicking his, glaring out of the darkness. The voice wasn't friendly, or hopeful, or angry. It was just information, Mulder letting Krycek know where he was.

Krycek sighed, wrapping his hands around the thick straps on his shoulders. The sky had turned a murky green color, and he could see the hesitant beginnings of stars. He took a step forward and found his right leg caught on brambles. Tumbling, he thrust his hand outward for something to hold onto and felt his exposed palm tear through piercing spikes before knocking into the rough bark of a tree.

Swearing, he stumbled back onto his feet. The inability to catch oneself was the first thing he had noticed about losing his arm. His palm was ripped and oozing with blood, and each prick stung from the poison in the wild rose thorns. He retrieved his fallen flashlight from the ground and started forward toward Mulder's light, wiping his hand on his shirt-front.

Mulder was nursing a fire when he arrived at their make-shift campsite. Flames skittered across the edges of twigs, crackling and smoking from the recent rains, and Mulder carefully fed them a larger piece of bark. His full attention was on his work, and after a few minutes Krycek stopped waiting for his acknowledgment and just took his pack off.

He wished the tent were bigger. He wished they'd just brought two tents, or maybe that Mulder had brought a tent and Krycek had stayed in D.C.

By the time he was done, Mulder had a full fledged fire going, and was arranging their foil-wrapped potatoes among the coals with a stick. Krycek sat in the two-man tent, staring at the flames through the mesquito-net door, feeling so wretchedly far away. He'd left his shoes outside and was smoothing on a second pair of woolen socks below the thick canvas pants he'd changed into. His chest was bare, but he could feel night's cold trickle beginning to leak into his skin, and knew he'd need to put on a sweater in a moment.

A half hour passed. Krycek reached for the polar fleece blanket he'd brought, and wrapped it around his shoulders as the wind picked up outside. He waited, but Mulder never so much as glanced over in his direction, and finally he zipped up the inner window-covers and lay down. The pillow was so cold it felt wet, and he couldn't help glancing up at the ceiling, even when he knew he had put the rain tarp over the tent.

"You want a potato?" Mulder asked, inflectionlessly.

Krycek lay with his face turned away. His finger tips were cold from pinching the blanket in at his sides. "No thanks," he said. He closed his eyes.

For a day so beautiful and inviting, the night was startlingly cold. Occasionally the wind would blow just so, and the warmth from the fire would come bursting into the tent, rushing over Krycek like a full-body kiss.

He lay in the blankets and felt completely alone. His body, when it was warm, floated as if he were in outer space and touching nothing. His stomach was empty; he wanted his head to be empty, too. He didn't want to think about the specifics of what had happened, Mulder's quitting the FBI, those six glorious months in the Tropics when they lived and breathed each other, the unexpected call from Dana Scully that hit Krycek like advanced liver cancer.

He didn't want Mulder to leave him. Dear god, he didn't want that man to leave.

He drifted in and out of sleep, waking fully when Mulder unzipped the tent and climbed inside. Clothing made muffled, scratchy sounds as Mulder removed it and changed into sweat pants and a thin cotton tee. Krycek turned his face away on the pillow so that he didn't have to watch Mulder's body being revealed and hidden again. It was too teasing, too tempting.

The folds of the nylon tent walls made triangular shadows fall over them. The fire outside cracked its last log and died down. Soft scurrying let Krycek know that the raccoons were enjoying the remnants of Mulder's potatoes.

He'd always been one to rip the band-aid off, to shoot the guy already, to leave and not look back. To lay here lovelessly in the dark beside Mulder, and know that he had already lost him, was a prolongment Krycek thought might kill him.

They set out again early the next morning. The plan was to hike through the Wyndershine Pass, which connected with the Appalachian Trail briefly, and return to civilization Sunday afternoon in Jamey, Kentucky. From there they would rent a car, drive to Louisville International Airport, and fly back to D.C.

Washington seemed a million miles away as Krycek secured the pack as high up on his back as he could without toppling forward. During the night he had lost all sense of the direction they had come from, reminding him of how unsuspicious he had become during the past few months. How careless. How stupidly in love.

Mulder didn't wait for him, but started on ahead as he had the day before. His right palm was slightly red from the rose-poison he had been pricked with the previous night, and the stings were sore to the touch, but as the morning passed so did the pain. He fell into a comfortable stride, long but not too quick. Likewise, his mind was allowed to drift. The mountains surprised him again and again, first with their noise, then with their silence. Creeks and streams ran from seemingly any old direction, sometimes flowing so quickly that they ran up the hills instead of down. The waters tasted like delicate iced teas and made a nice compliment to the packaged Peter Pan peanut butter crackers he munched as noon rolled past.

He would have been angry if this place weren't so beautiful. The forest was inherently comforting, settling, soothing. It worked on his emotions like a drug that kept him from resenting Mulder for having dragged him out here and then completely ignored him.

Mulder had been ignoring him for a week now. It was his way of not being able to leave with Krycek's permission, and not being able to ask.

Clouds curled and coiled around each other, the smokey wisps latching together until they were so thick they darkened. Krycek watched them join, like scraps being pinned for a patchwork quilt, and walked a little more quickly. A wind picked up around him, and it carried neither the muggy warmth of yesterday's breeze nor the chill of last night's zephyr. It had an energy Krycek recognized from battlefields, an intent. He saw the gray blossom in the heart of the clouds, and a tiny, babyish spark of lightening crackled around the tops of the trees.

Not the best place to be during an electrical storm, Krycek thought, suppressing the worry that was beginning to gnaw at him. From his pack he removed a dank smelling poncho in army green and pulled it over himself and his supplies. The pack claimed to be waterproof, but Krycek wasn't in the habit of trusting corporate moguls.

The first thunderclap came, causing Krycek to start and almost loose his footing in the slick clay. Rain began to fall, so lightly at first that he was largely sheltered from it by the foliage. Then harder, cold drops hitting his face and making wet smacking sounds on the plastic poncho. He tried to pick up his pace a little more, wanting to find Mulder again even if it meant the silent treatment. That the forest was in such a fervent mood made him more nervous that he cared to admit. They were winding their way up and across the side of a mountain, and to his right was a long, sloping fall into a canyon.

Lightening burst, so close by that Krycek dropped to a crouch and covered the back of his neck by pure instinct. He'd hated storms since the night his step-mother beat him brutally and then locked him into the tiny, leaking dog-house during a hurricane. It had rolled over again and again, throwing him upside down, forward and backward until he passed out, sure that at any moment his crate-like prison would be pitched into the swamp.

A figure, identifiable only because it was moving, appeared up ahead. "Mulder!" Krycek called, and Mulder turned.

Krycek jogged a few steps, and his mud-caked boots lost their hold on the ground, which was now liquid clay two inches down. He felt himself swirl, arm thrown out for anything to hold onto, sliding across the mud as if he were ice skating. A round of thunder shook the rocks deep in the earth and he recoiled automatically, throwing his weight to one side.

The bent grass was almost a relief to feel, something his feet could try to hold onto, but even before he was standing straight, inertia and gravity sent him rolling down the slope of the mountain.

His poncho tore with a release of pressure on his shoulders, and he heard his sleeping bag catch and rip off. Down and down he tumbled, the back pack alternately crushing him and digging painfully into his back. The back of his head cracked against a tree trunk, leaving him too dazed by the time he saw the drop-off to keep from rolling off.

It was a nine foot fall onto solid rock. Krycek had a moment's horrible respite as he was soaring through the air, his body iron-tense with waiting.

And when the landing came, it felt as if the ground reached up to hit him back just as hard as he was hitting it. He landed on his side, legs widely scissored, right arm trapped beneath the pack. His head hit relatively lightly, the world blurred for several endless seconds, but then cleared.

He wanted to cry out and couldn't. His body had tagged all oxygen to be used for keeping him alive. As the initial shock began to wear off, he realized there was a sharp pain in his left leg and saw that it had landed on a small boulder. He was lucky if his wasn't broken. As for his arm, he couldn't feel most of it, and he couldn't get it out from under the pack.

The rain kept splashing down on him, growing harder and harder, fast, more stinging. Krycek closed his eyes and used the stump of his left arm to cover as much of his face as possible.

I just need the rain to stop, he kept thinking. Once the rain has stopped, I'll be able to get up.

But the rain didn't stop, and he could feel his thoughts growing more and more clouded. All sense of his right arm vanished, the same way his left arm had eventually done after the amputation. He tried valiantly to stay awake, murmuring the opening scene from Boris Godunov, "Slava! Slava!" until the frantic peasants sounded like broken homeless people begging disheartedly for change.

"Alex?" he heard, from far away.

"Down here," he tried to call, but his voice was barely above a whisper, and a moment later he realized he had spoken in Russian anyway.

"Alex." The voice was nearby now, close enough that when Krycek opened his eyes he found Mulder kneeling beside him. "Alex, wake up."

He blinked. "I'm awake," he mumbled.

Water was coursing down Mulder's face, but his expression of concern was leastly for himself. With the wrist of his turtleneck, he carefully wiped at Krycek's lip. The gray cloth came away stained with blood.

"My arm," Krycek told him. "I can't get it out."

"Don't move," Mulder said quickly. "You may have a spinal injury."

"If I have a spinal injury, why is my leg throbbing?"

He forced a smile, and watched the raindrops form rivers starting at the corners of Mulder's eyes. It was just rain, he knew, but it was nice to dream.

"I don't think it's broken," Mulder told him, after he had ripped the leg of Krycek's jeans open with a Swiss Army Pocket Knife. "But you're going to have a hell of a bruise."

"Can you roll me over now, please?"

Cupping Krycek's face so that it wouldn't be scraped by the rough stone, Mulder rolled him onto his stomach. Krycek groaned as the blood flowed back into his arm, combining the needle-like rain with a hot, prickling flush. "That's better."

Mulder leaned close to him again. "What else hurts?"

His eyes were such a beautiful, concerned hazel. All the coldness, the pushing, was gone.

"My heart," Krycek whispered.

Mulder's face changed slowly. The flush lips grew tight and tense. He was trapped in a confrontation he had worked frantically to avoid, and Krycek rushed on before he lost the moment.

"I feel like I can't breathe. I can't sleep at night, I can't concentrate in the day. I keep hallucinating that his beautiful man promises never to leave me and then gives me the cold shoulder until I'm forced to send him away." He forced another smile. "Not to mention that I haven't had sex in three weeks."

Mulder eyes closed as if he couldn't bare to keep looking, and he lay his forehead against Krycek's. Krycek wished he could touch him, but he settled for brushing Mulder's cheek with his stump.

"You're going with her, aren't you?"

Misery twisting his features, Mulder gave a tiny nod.

Krycek felt tears in his eyes and turned his face in the other direction. Gritting his teeth, he climbed up on his elbow and got one knee under him.

"Don't," Mulder started to say, and Krycek pushed his hands off.

"I can do it."

"No-"

"I can."

"You fell, you're in shock-"

"Don't touch me!"

Krycek was surprised to hear himself almost screaming. He bowed his head, beginning to shiver in the cold, and felt the bone-ache in his left leg. Well, he had endured worse. He had started hiking back to England less than two days after his arm was removed, burning with fever and completely sick at heart. He hadn't needed Mulder then, and he didn't need him now.

Wrapping his entire arm around the trunk of a tree, he rose unsteadily to his feet. For the first time he got a good look at the knot on his shin. The skin was already dark purple, and a bump had risen up almost two inches. He gingerly rested his weight on the limb and found that the muscles hurt, but the bone felt intact.

"Lucky me," he whispered. He'd split his lip, there was blood in his mouth that made it taste like he'd been sucking on steel.

"We can camp here," Mulder told him, obviously working hard not to reach out.

Krycek, still clinging to the tree trunk, shook his head. "We passed a site two hours ago, there ought to be another one coming up."

He caught sight of the path Mulder had inadvertently made around the side of the drop-off when he rushed down. Thinking that his left leg might buckle as soon as he stepped on it, he moved hesitantly, one step and then the next, until he had come to the steep incline.

"At least let me take your pack," Mulder said.

Krycek glanced back at him. "Where's yours?"

"I left it on the trail."

Grudgingly, he looked down at the straps holding his pack on. Mulder had helped him into it that morning, like a doctor holding underwear out to an elderly patient. With his good hand he reached up and pressed the plastic pieces together until the buckle fell open.

Mulder stepped forward immediately and helped slide the pack off Krycek's shoulders. The weight made Krycek feel years more stable, and he was able to take a few steps forward before he realized that the floating sensation was actually getting stronger.

He swayed, then clutched for anything to help him keep his balance. His hand clamped onto Mulder's shoulder and the world swam gray and red.

"Alex?"

"I need to sit down."

Mulder made a vague noise that Krycek ruefully thought was the equivalent of "I told you so," and helped him ease to the ground. "Put your head between your knees and take deep breaths."

"That's hard to do with my chest all squished against my knees."

Mulder half-smiled indulgently. "Will you be okay here while I run up and get my pack?"

"Yeah, but do me a favor."

He lifted one eyebrow, and Krycek frowned. "Don't run."

* * *

An hour later he was dry. Not completely, his hair was still damp and drying in curly tufts, but he had changed into a pair of Mulder's sweatpants and a turtleneck. As predicted, his pack wasn't waterproof, but Mulder's was, and the garbage bag he had wrapped his sleeping bag in had held up surprisingly well.

Regardless of the warm clothes and dry blankets, he couldn't help shivering. The rain was coming down even harder now, and even if Mulder had found a sheltered place to build a fire, there was nothing dry to burn.

His leg was aching from ankle to hip, his arm alternated between throbbing and being completely numb. Mulder was laying beside him but it was little comfort. He shuddered every time the thunder rolled, his phantom arm jerking for a weapon.

It wasn't the best moment of his life. By far, it wasn't the worst, but Krycek got the feeling he would be remembering it for a long time coming. Mulder was quiet, for once his fidgety tendencies stifled, and he seemed perpetually on the verge of saying something.

Krycek blinked sleepily. When he could feel it, his palm stung with yesterday's brambles. He didn't understand why such little, pretty flowers had such a nasty bite.

It reminded him of something else small and pretty. "You know," he said, speaking for the first time in half an hour, "the last time I saw Dana, she said I'd made a fool out of her."

Mulder rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one elbow. "I'm not leaving because of you."

"I know. Agent Mulder, dedicated partner, brilliant profiler, lousy boyfriend. But what do you think you're going to get out of going back to the X-files? You worked on them for six years, and they brought you nothing but misery. You can't bring these people down, Mulder, you're just a puppet to them. Why go back?"

He turned his face so that he could see Mulder clearly, and feel a little of the heat from his body. The rain outside made a dampened echo of their voices in the tent.

"We have a chance this time," Mulder said quickly, fervently, anticipating Krycek's sigh before it came. "Everything is different now, with Spender out of the way and-"

Krycek lifted his arm painfully and pressed his finger to Mulder's lips. "Nothing," he told him softly, "is different. It's the same game. It's the same closed maze. It's the same hamster wheel, and you keep getting on it and running and thinking you're going somewhere."

Mulder enclosed Krycek's hand with his own and drew it away, but his grip didn't ease. "It's different this time, I'm telling you it's different."

Krycek shook his head and lay slowly back against the pillow. He didn't understand the self-destructive carousel Mulder insisted on dedicating his life to.

Mulder's voice was strangled. "I need to finish this, Alex," he begged.

"More than you need me. I see how it is."

"No, but....I can't keep on living with this dead place inside me."

"Dead place, wonderful. You're so smooth with the compliments, I'm swooning."

"Don't make jokes out of this!" Mulder shouted, his anger without warning.

Krycek cringed into the bedding and squinted. Mulder fell onto him, trembling, pressing his face into the dip of Krycek's shoulders. He couldn't stop the tears from coming, but neither could he allow himself a full-throated cry. Krycek lifted the blanket over his shoulder and lay damp kisses on his earlobe.

He'd thought they would be enough for each other, that they could survive on hands and mouths for the rest of their lives. It was a stupid, uncharacteristically naive thought, he saw now. They both had issues, but Krycek would happily suppress his if it meant having Mulder beside him.

"It's all right," he whispered. "I understand. Do what you have to do."

"No," Mulder said. His words were muffled. "I won't go back. I'll stay with you."

"You won't be happy."

"I will."

"I'm not enough. Maybe no one person is."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth."

"I'm not going."

"I want you to."

"I don't want to."

Krycek didn't fight him any longer, even when he knew Mulder was lying. They held onto each other as the storm finished its ravishing, leaving behind a ravaged sky that sloughed into evening. Krycek watched the shadows change on the nylons walls the same way he had the night before. Mulder slept in his arms, tears still drying on his cheeks.

It won't be forever, he told himself. He'll go back to Scully and they'll find whatever it is they're looking for. I'll head...for Miami maybe, to see Dad and Irina, to talk all this crap over. I'll confront all my ghosts, and when I come back, when I show up on his doorstep this time, we'll be able to walk towards something instead of running away together.

Yeah, he thought, closing his eyes and drifting off, it won't be for too long.

* * *

In the morning, Mulder found himself alone in bed, with only a bundle of wild roses for company. He let out a roar that echoed between the mountains and began tearing the bouquet to shreds, only to find that there were no thorns.

The End

Jory San-Corinth