Rumi and Shams I: I'll Meet You There by Merri-Todd Webster (15 April 1999) *** Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. --Rumi *** Not at Mulder's. Never at Mulder's. Too many people had keys, and those that didn't knew how to break in. Entering Mulder's apartment unannounced was a kind of hobby for a broad spectrum of people. There was a cabin. Not Mulder's, exactly. His father's, or his mother's, family property, something he might never have used if it weren't for Alex. A tiny cabin, ancient and with no amenities, surrounded by grass and backed by woods, and a stream nearby. A place so different from both of their lives that it was paradise, an enclosed garden which only the two of them could enter. Silently, Alex walked through the unmown grass, which was scattered with dandelions and clover. He saw the cabin, with the magnolia tree behind it still in bloom, a great pink shadow, and by the door, the bulbs that Mrs. Mulder must have planted decades ago had come up yet again: daffodils, tulips, and hyacinth. The daffodils were fading, their edges brown, but the perfume of the hyacinths reached him before he cleared the field of grass. The door to the cabin opened, and Mulder came out. He was wearing a thin grey t-shirt and faded denim shorts, and there were goosebumps on his bare arms from the morning's coolness. He saw Alex, and his face blossomed, opened up as the flowers on the magnolia tree must have opened. He had not seen or heard Alex coming; he had only opened the door and come out for a moment to catch the morning light, to smell the hyacinths on the breeze. Alex did not leave the field of grass. Alex did not see him move, but Mulder was with him, on him, shoving the leather jacket down Alex's arms and letting out the smell of sweat from beneath it. Goosebumps rose hard on Alex's right arm, hard and fast and tight as his cock rose in his jeans, and Mulder's short fingernails dug into Alex's back beneath his white shirt, just above his waistband, as Mulder kissed him. Oh, such kissing. That mouth. Alex couldn't even return the embrace, couldn't raise his living and dead arms, that kissing was so all-consuming. Mulder's lips and Mulder's tongue, Mulder's taste and Mulder's wetness, fused with his own, Mulder holding him and pressing his mouth in so hard that when the kiss finally ended, Alex expected their bodies to have changed places, to see Mulder standing where he had stood and himself in Mulder's footprints. But no. Tears were running slowly down Mulder's cheeks, slow and clear. He didn't speak, and Alex didn't ask. Instead Alex backed away, into the knee-high grass, among the clover and the dandelion, and fell to his knees on the moist soft grass-clothed earth and began pulling down Mulder's shorts, pulling the denim over the man's jutting cock. He didn't have time to take Mulder's flesh in his mouth. Mulder swayed and fell and then hands were tearing at Alex, at his clothes, stripping him to the air and the light, and Mulder turned around so that when Alex finally got his lover's cock down his throat, Mulder returned the favor. Mulder into Alex, Alex into Mulder, licking, sucking, and once again Alex did not see how they could remain separate after this. They were the same person, right? Mulder's little moans were Alex's own pleasure, Alex's uncontrollable bucking was Mulder's wildness. A hard hand thrust between Alex's thighs, fondling, and he mirrored the gesture. Then the sun got in his eyes and everything was gold light, the sun and the taste of come and the smell of clean grass and the fragrance of hyacinths. Alex knew he was still Alex Krycek, a separate person, when Mulder handed him the gun holster which had been stripped off a little while ago, held it out to him without meeting his eyes. Dangling his shorts and shirt from one hand, Mulder walked slowly, with bowed head, into the dimness of the little cabin. Alex shrugged into his jacket, ran a hand over his slick hair, and walked silently away through the unmown grass. ***