Title: Just a Little Pain Can Be Erotic
Author: Arsenic
Rating: NC-17 (Implied Slash, Violence)
Characters: Methos/Mulder/Krycek
Archives: Seventh D, anyone else who asks
Keywords: XOVER (HL/XF)
Summary: Tenth part of All Men Series, things between the boys get resolved.

Disclaimers: None of the boys are mine, although I am seeing about getting them on loan for my museum collection...So far, R/P/D has not responded for Methos, and CC/Ten Thirteen Productions are maintaining silence for Mulder and Krycek as well. Oh well.

Thanks: To my girl, who in between attempting to save baby birds and get her life in order, finds time to do things that matter to me. And for Danish, who puts nice little comments in her betas that make me feel better about everything.

Dedication: This is for Katie Beth, who knows how to cuddle and makes me eat cookies and throw napkin balls and ignore my homework. You are beautiful...you can cat snarl all you want. Mrow.

^^^

Losing none of his apathy, Methos drew the sword he had held earlier and held it tightly to Alex's throat. Alex held his breath, but he didn't back up. Methos circled him, the blade keeping contact with Alex's skin at all times. The circling was less to scare Alex than to calm himself down but managed to accomplish both ends.

"What if you can't be what I need you to be?" Methos pronounced each of the words slowly, and Alex knew that an answer was not expected of him. "I have to tell you, my needs are rather minimal. Of late, I seem to be in the habit of going all out for myself, or maybe it is for you, but in general, I'm not one to expect much."

Methos slid the sword until the hilt was touching the hollow of Alex's throat then shoved, causing Alex to stumble backwards onto the ground, coughing. Alex moved his hands to his throat and looked up at the man standing above him, sword dangling at his side.

"S and M is more fun when the implements aren't deadly."

Methos spun around and Alex looked past him in shock at the man standing in the doorway with his gun trained on the older man. "Put the gun away Mulder," Alex voiced the command softly. He didn't want Mulder to find out that it wouldn't do any good.

"Tell me more about the game we're playing, and I'll think about it." Mulder glared at Methos but addressed the words to Alex.

"C'mon Mulder, you're probably just mad because you aren't the one who got to hold the weapon this time." Alex kept his tone light and hoped for a lessening of tension.

Mulder stared at Alex, slightly unhinged by the mocking insight and put his gun back in its holster.

"What are you doing here? It's not even twelve o'clock." Methos's glare matched the younger man's perfectly.

"Skinner has me working a profile case. He tends to let me do those wherever I want. I thought I'd come home and get my bearings before I tried to get somebody else's."

Alex dug his nails into the carpet. No wonder Mulder was so on edge; he had gotten out of VCU to escape profiling.

"Now." Mulder crossed to where Alex was and extended a hand to him. Alex sought visual permission from Methos before grabbing the hand and getting to his feet. Mulder continued: "Would either one of you mind giving me a clue as to what is going on here? Just one, I can probably run with it and unravel everything from there."

"I fucked up," Alex said this without letting go of the hand he still held, curious to see if the other man would back away.

Mulder didn't. "I was admittedly thinking of something a little less broad than that."

"Mulder." Alex paused to look at Methos before continuing. "I can't tell you this story without breaking a promise to someone else."

Those words, more than Alex's passive acceptance of the sword at his throat or even the betrayal in and of itself, dug a channel of fury in Methos's veins. He wanted Alex to be black or white, evil or good. Really, he hadn't expected that he would be, hadn't read him that way from the beginning. Still, he had come together with Alex in a moment of wanting simplicity and was enraged that things were long past complex. He smiled without the slightest hint of amusement. "How about I tell it, then?"

Alex didn't know if his panic was over what Mulder would do upon finding out about Will, or over the assurance that he was about to lose both men in one day. All the same, it was Will's decision. Alex just stared at the older man, but Will seemed to understand his acceptance. Not that it mattered.

With a wave of his hand, Methos indicated that they should go sit down in the kitchen. The action was extremely courteous, and it was all Alex could do to tamp down on hysterical laughter. Instead, he followed the two men in and sat down with them.

Methos tilted his head towards Mulder, "You investigate the paranormal." It was only a half-statement. Mulder frowned slightly, caught off-guard by the line of questioning, but nodded. Methos continued; "And you would do anything to prove a part of your precious 'truth?' Perhaps most especially in the case of Scully." Methos had heard all about the scientific rational half of the troublesome two.

Mulder studied the table with intensity for a few moments before meeting Methos's eyes to give a response. "If you can believe that there aren't things I would put ahead of my 'truth,' as you so phrase it," Mulder sneered at the mocked word, "then we have reached the point where some serious quality time is required before the next bout of sex."

"Then maybe I should be more specific and ask if you'd be willing to put me ahead of it." Methos said this softly, aware of how much he was asking, even if unwilling to relent on the issue. Mulder looked away from Methos to Alex.

Alex felt Mulder's questioning glance but did not turn to look at him. "I think, Mulder, that this is a promise you can give."

Mulder narrowed his eyes. "What convinces you of this?"

"You aren't the type to go after the kind of proof needed to bring this particular truth to light." Alex gave a bittersweet smile at the end of his statement.

"You think I'm soft." Mulder reached out with the arm closest to Alex and cupped the back of the younger man's head.

"No, I think you are good." Alex relaxed into the hand as if to physically prove that he believed what he had told Mulder.

Mulder caressed the scalp in return and looked at Methos through his peripheral vision. "Okay, you got it; what you say stays in this room."

"And nobody else comes in here to hear about it." The warning was half-hearted; Methos knew he had gotten what he wanted. Mulder gave him an equally half-hearted glare. Methos reached across the table to Mulder and halted with his hand on the younger man's holster. "Can I borrow this?"

Mulder looked at Methos with some reluctance. Alex motioned lazily with one hand. "It's okay; he's not going to hurt us." Mulder gave a hesitant nod of his head, and Methos unclasped the weapon.

"We should probably go downstairs for this, less chance of being seen or heard." Methos was already heading towards the hidden doorway. Mulder looked at Alex who just nodded and got up to follow.

It struck Alex as convenient that the floor of the basement was tile. That had probably been done to prevent flooding damage, but for the moment, it would make the blood easy to wash away. He pushed away the certainty that this was a moot concern on his point, as he would assuredly be looking for somewhere else to sleep come that evening.

They reached the bottom, and Methos went to sit on the floor in the center of the room. He took a moment to make sure Mulder was watching before placing the gun at his own temple and firing. The bullet shot into and through the man's skull, covering the floor directly at his side in blood and brain matter. Death was immediate. Methos fell into a sprawl, and more blood leaked from two patches of matted hair to color the floor.

It took Mulder less than a minute to recover from the paralysis that had accompanied his shock at watching one of the men he was sleeping with commit suicide in front of him. He lunged forward, not sure of what he intended to do. Alex caught him in mid-stride and held him back. "Watch, Mulder, just watch."

Mulder looked at Alex in a way that suggested he was checking for insanity but didn't attempt to leave the younger man's arms. Alex tightened his arms, realizing this would probably be the last time Mulder ever trusted him enough to stay there.

"Is this worse than when you killed my father?" The question was asked without venom or accusation, only a benign curiosity.

Alex dug the nails of one hand into the skin of its opposing arm as he considered how to explain his timeline. "When I met you, I was only human in an anatomical sense. For all that I would have thought of ignoring an order from the men I worked - work - for, they might as well have just programmed them straight into me." He stopped and looked at Mulder, hoping that more of an explanation would be unnecessary. The other man's expression was that of someone waiting patiently for a play to start again after intermission. Alex began Act II.

"I was, in a sense, programmed." He waited to see if Mulder would twist away or object to Alex's words. He didn't. "You became my link to humanity. Only you. If the order had been to kill you, I couldn't have. It wasn't though, and I didn't understand that killing him was perhaps as cruel as physically harming you. There was nothing in my experience to suggest it was wrong." Alex reminded himself to take a breathe. When he began again, his words were slower but no less urgent. "You almost had to shoot me to get me to comprehend how screwed up my thought processes were. After that, I started to question every order I had ever carried out."

Alex made himself release Mulder and move away before he was unable. "It was Hell. Every moment, every question I found myself answering with words my mind didn't want to hear... I hated you, because you were the only thing that I had emotion towards, and that was the only emotion I had. As I'm sure you have figured out with that psych degree of yours, it was actually self-hatred. But if you were the one to spark the doubt that led to that self-hatred, he was the one who began to heal it." Alex looked sadly at Methos. "What I did was no more of a betrayal to him than killing your father was to you, but this time, I knew it was wrong. So in that sense, yes, it was worse."

Hesitantly, Alex walked to where the Immortal lay healing and kneeled down near to him. He didn't touch, knew that it probably wasn't his right anymore, just waited to make sure everything would be all right. Even having seen the older man return to life before, the insane fear that something could have gone wrong twisted in his throat.

A small amount of tension leaked out of him upon hearing the pained gasp that emanated from the man now writhing on the floor.

"Oh. Shit." Mulder sank to the floor and crawled near to Methos, not sure of what to do. Blood seeped into the expensive suit material and stained the skin on his hands. He didn't seem to notice until he reached to touch Methos, hesitating to soothe the man with his own blood.

"You okay?" Alex didn't particularly care who he got an answer from, as long as one was forthcoming. Methos managed what Alex thought was a nod.

"You could have warned me." Mulder didn't know if what he was saying was an accusation or just something to make sure he still had verbal abilities.

"I would have been a bit more distraught if I thought he was dead. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though." Alex managed a wan smile; he wasn't mad.

"Right." Mulder felt like he was watching Samantha disappear all over again. Except this time, it was like getting something, not losing it. Hesitantly, he sidled over to Methos and placed his hands gently on the gasping man, trying to rub at everything that seemed to hurt. Eventually, the spasms calmed, and Methos collapsed against Mulder.

"Thanks." The word came out as more of an indecipherable croak, and Alex went upstairs to get Methos some water. He was back in seconds, and Methos sipped at the water until he could speak. "Regretting your promise?"

It took Mulder a moment before he realized the question had been directed at him. "My promise?" He tried to remember what the other man was talking about. Then it came to him. "Oh." He glanced at Alex who looked torn between protecting Methos, empathizing with Mulder and trying to shut off all emotion for his own sake. "No. Telling would inevitably mean turning you over to be a guinea pig." His expression turned mischievous. "Which doesn't mean that I won't want to know everything about you and what you can and can't do."

Methos sighed in mock exasperation. He could have hardly expected less of Mulder. "Let's go back to the whole guinea pig topic."

Mulder frowned but nodded. "If that's what gets you off."

"It doesn't get him off." The words flew out of Alex's mouth before Methos had time to breathe. Both men looked at him. Methos shifted and sat up, then inclined his head, encouraging Alex to continue.

Alex kept his eyes on Mulder. "I found out about Will almost immediately after the second time we met. He got in the way of a bullet that was meant for me. Then, about a week ago, the English Man took me to a room with a man restrained on a table. He told me that the man had extraordinary healing abilities. I knew right away what he was. I was told to...find out what the man knew about his condition. I was told to torture him." Alex forced himself not to use euphemisms. "I was kept on that duty for several days until Danielle broke him out and brought him here."

Mulder sat looking at Alex for a long time. "You told me just a few minutes ago that you knew it was wrong."

Alex's eyes gave his assent to the statement.

"But you did it anyway." Mulder sounded as though he desperately wished he were angry.

"Yeah, and the rationale that seemed to make it so justifiable at the time seems to be merely that: a justification, now."

"You //tortured// someone. Killing, killing is one thing, but causing ongoing pain, drawing things out, it's not the same." Mulder put a hand to his stomach as if nauseous.

"No, it is not." Methos's face gave nothing of what he was feeling away.

All three men sat in silence. When he could no longer handle it, Alex stood up. "Can I go now?"

"Where are you going to go?" It was Mulder who asked this, still uncertain as to what his response was to all these revelations.

Alex shrugged. "Somewhere. I have a tendency to end up there on a regular basis."

Unexpectedly, Methos laughed. Both men looked at him as if he had actually loosened the screw that seemed to be floating around inside him. He let himself laugh until he was once again lying down, panting and wiping away tears.

"Will?" The question came at Methos from two directions. He held up a hand to stall any questions until he could speak.

Eventually, his lungs seemed to calm down, more from the inability to sustain that amount of energy than from any lessening of mirth on his part. Methos looked up at Mulder. "Right before you came home, Danielle left. On her way out, she told me not to be cruel. What she didn't say, but probably should have, was not to be hypocritical."

"Hypocritical. As in saying one thing, doing another." Mulder threw the definition out because he had nothing else with which to fill the silence.

"More like condemning others for actions you have done yourself." Methos glanced at Alex out of the corner of his eye to watch the younger man's reaction. There wasn't one immediately. It took a few moments for Alex to raise his head and look at the older man. He had the expression of someone considering what stock to buy. Methos had the decency to turn his head and acknowledge that he was checking the other man out. "Any thoughts on that?"

"I don't know." Alex crossed his arms in a gesture of self-protection. "Being with you and lately being around the other guy-"

"Eli." Methos supplied a name.

"Eli." Alex considered whether the knowledge made things any worse but figured that at this point, "worse" was a non-entity. At least until they kicked him out. "Yeah. So, I've been thinking about what living forever would be like." Alex rocked back and forth slightly and then made himself stop. "Aside from the kickbacks of getting to see Mozart's operas debut or watching Houdini perform live -- assuming you're old enough for all this, and I'm thinking you are -- the rest wouldn't be so wonderful. I, personally, have found that I've no interest in watching a lover die or being around to watch human atrocities occur one after another for centuries on end. I wouldn't really want to shorten my time, but I don't think I'd opt to lengthen it either."

Alex crossed to one of the computer consoles and pretended to read the different symbols on the surface, so as not to have to look at Methos. "I also figure that after having lived for a certain amount of time, new experiences are in order. So, pretty naturally, you must've tried just about everything or at least are working your way there. The thing is, to try, recognize your errors and quit is one thing. Because you've conquered that part of yourself that tempted you to try. Once the lesson is learned, it's the one-time student's right to teach it to others." He let out an exasperated breath. "I'm not even making sense to myself."

"Then we must work together better than we previously thought, because I understood you perfectly." Mulder looked like he wasn't sure if he was relieved or troubled by this revelation. Nonetheless, he tried to give Alex the first smile since the younger man had filled him in on why Methos was angered. Alex took this as a good thing and attempted a smile in return.

"Here I was thinking it was my genius at decoding mysterious languages." Methos added his own sardonic grin to the moment.

Alex was the first to stop smiling. He pushed himself up on the console and sat there. Minutes of semi-uncomfortable silence passed as Alex forced himself to voice what he was thinking. "What does this mean, then?" When nobody answered him, he reworded. "Where does this leave us? Me?"

Mulder's eyes scanned the room in a dizzying manner. After a few rounds, they settled on Methos. "I don't want this to be it." Realizing that a sentence was probably not enough to explain what was going through his head, Mulder looked at the ground and thought before raising his eyes to where they had been, trying again. "I'm tired of window shopping. I hate always being the one who gets to look but not touch. Sometimes I convince myself that I have some kind of virus that everyone but me is aware of, and that's why nobody cares to even try with me." He stopped and considered how pathetic he sounded by ending with that spoke again. "I'll admit that though this is probably not the 'happy-ever-after' I was envisioning, it's got it all over falling asleep to the sound of Buck Rogers reruns with my amiable goldfish for company."

Methos frowned in uncertainty mixed with amusement. "Gee. Thanks."

Alex stifled a laugh. Mulder sighed and tried again. "I like the fact that when I come home, you guys feed me and listen to how my day went." He went quiet, but the other two men looked at him with expectancy, so he found more to say. "I like having people to kiss goodbye in the morning. I like realizing that if I get industrious and make the bed, somebody besides me is going to be there to appreciate it. If I told you anything more than this, all three of us would know I was lying or at least speculating on the state of our relationship. All the same, I don't want to leave, and I don't want either of you to leave."

Knowing that both men were waiting for his feelings on the matter, Methos gave a mildly wicked grin and turned to Alex. "Thoughts?"

Alex had to laugh, fairly positive that he would have done something equally as sadistic as the older man, given the chance. "I get really good sex out of this." He would have stopped there, but something in the way Mulder seemed to shrink into the floor made him rethink that course of action. "I also get to carry a key that does not belong to some receptionist behind a counter, voice my opinions on the blatant bullshit they print in the papers, and feel warm under the covers at night."

The corner of Methos's eyes crinkled as if he were laughing at some joke only he had heard. "I suppose then, that it would be my turn. I get to cook for others, which means that I can indulge in new recipes and actually get feedback. I get to play basketball without having to use myself as an opponent. I have two people to tickle until they are utterly at my command. I have a man who is willing to risk the respect of a man he adores to protect my secrets. I have another man who is willing to suppress a lifelong inclination to do the same. You wouldn't think it of me, but I'm not so foolish as to just up and leave all that."

Alex made it to where Methos and Mulder were sitting in less than a second and tried his best to wrap himself around the two men. Methos chuckled but joined in on the effort. Mulder worked his body so that he was directly in between the two men. His arms came up to settle behind each partner's head. Choosing Methos first and moving then to Alex, Mulder kissed each man for a lengthy period of time. When Methos and Alex finally leaned in to complete the transaction, they all three could have sworn that they were tasting each other's emotions as strongly as the pervasive drying blood, which none of them seemed to mind.