Best Angst

The Mulder/Krycek relationship is canonically stormy and complicated. When we as authors add such emotions as love and lust to it, it becomes that much more complex, and infinitely painful. It's why so much of M/K fiction can either be classified as angst, or at least contains some amount of it.

Here we have some of the best angst written in 1999. It doesn't get more depressing than this.

And the nominees are...

Blood Love and Rhetoric by Ladonna King

Flicking his eyes over the coldly beautiful face, a crushing sense of disappointment pressed down on his shoulders, inexorably. He didn't want this, this standoff, his hate and Krycek's taunts, how they came this achingly close time and again but no closer. He could bend his neck and touch his lips to Krycek's, but all he'd taste was anger and fear, if his own didn't choke him first.

Bulletins from Bedlam by Jessica Harris

He's been told that the mad don't know they're mad, and he wonders if it's a paradoxical proof of his own sanity, his growing conviction that he's *lost* it. It feels like a darkness has settled at the base of his skull, and sometimes it unfurls in tendrils up through his brain and then he can't quite *remember* - how did he get here? what does he think he's doing? why does any of it matter? At those times he stays home and lies motionless for hours on the couch, curled into a ball, hands squeezed tight between his thighs.

Departure III by Imajiru

Why the hell are they trying to help me? Don't they know that I have no reason to live anymore? Why the hell didn't they just leave me there to die...?

I can barely think, and moving is torturous, but suddenly all I want is to escape. To get away from them. To go back, even if I have to crawl; to dive into the flames and die there, with Mulder... "Alex, let us help you!" in the doctor's insistent voice, but I can't stop struggling. I can't. I need to go back, I need to be with him, even if it's only to die with him... they don't understand. They can't understand. He was all I ever had that mattered, and now he's gone, and I have nothing. Nothing. Leave me alone, let me go, let me go...

Green Eyed Monster by Aries

Mulder stared at him, disbelief glittering in his eyes. "What the hell is wrong with you? A year and a half ago, I gave you my heart and my soul...and my *trust*. I thought you did the same." He looked around. "We bought this house together. Made a home. We promised our lives to each other. Now someone as inconsequential as Mark Richardson is trying to fuck that all up and you're allowing it. I thought we meant more to you than that."

Alex glared at him. "I thought we meant more to *you*. How was he, Fox? I never did him, but I heard stories about his expertise. Is all the hype true?"

Mulder stared for a few seconds more, then his eyes dropped away. He raised a hand and turned toward the house. "I can't...I can't do this with you..."

Alex threw his hands up. "And hell, why would you *want* to? After you've done it with *him*..."

Mulder continued on his way, taking out the lamp on the end table with a vicious swipe of his arm.

The Hardest Word by Hephaestion

Mulder and I had a history of violence. I had done bad things to him and he did bad things to me. Once we became lovers, we took our mutual aggression on those we sought out to destroy. Then we became the romantic , silly couple in love you hear about. Even Scully, who finally accepted me, was happy for our love and commitment. She also noticed the first bruise. She was always the smartest one. It was my first lie of many following. I told her I fell and hit my self on the coffee table. For the first time Alex Krycek the killer, the spy, now played the clumsy klutz. It is the hardest role yet. That night, he said it happened cause he had been so stressed lately. We made love that night anyway and I forgave him.

Interrogation by Nicole S. and Orithain

Mulder stopped speaking as he had temporarily lost the ability. He stared at the Nazi, terrified by the lust he saw in his eyes. He winced as Krycek started caressing him with the riding crop, following the contours of his body. The noticeable bulge in the crisp, black SS uniform pressed into his leg. Mulder closed his eyes and used all his willpower to keep from screaming. //This can't be happening, this can't be happening.//

The Place of Dead Roads by Spike

And then, he supposed, he died.
***
In fact he's sure of it because now things are weird in that nightmare way that he's sure must be the afterlife. Maybe... hell. Which, after what he's seen, known, almost makes him laugh. Nice rest after a life like his. No aliens spewing green goo, no black oil up his ass, no knife wielding peasants, no burning boys. Not even screaming souls or burning lakes or pricks with pitchforks, just weirdness. Weirdness of a fundamental self-kind -- wandering and forgetting. Drifting like mist. Maybe no more than a floating point of view. For a long time, nothing, but something's changing. Something's going to happen now.

He knows this because when he's 'Alex Krycek' he is *here*. Not the dark and pretty woods where he died, but here, this gutted, smoking ruin of a building where he really died. Where his soul died with the slam of a pointed spike to the sweet spot of the Mulderthing's neck.

"Pretty fucking poetic for a lying lowlife scumbag," says Mulder. Krycek looks up from where he's been squatting, rubbing his hands together over a little pile of stones as though it were a fire. There's no one there and for a moment he is lost. He looks at his hands, they're clean and cold and there is something else but he can't remember.

"Mulder?" he asks the empty, gray air. His voice is harsh, echoless. "Mulder?"

Nothing.

Just another ghost. Mulder's voice. That flat, amused sound. Fuck, he's missed it. Has always missed it. Craved the sound of it -- even when it was just the Mulderthing playing his own thoughts against him: //Want you, Alex. Need you...// Skin crawling at the *wrongness* of it. Never mind that the voice sounded right. Mulder didn't. Wouldn't. //Need you, Alex... Lo--// And the torque and balance as he'd spun it by its arm --, the pop of gristle and bone, steel in his hand and *slam*.

Knowing it was right -- was *right* -- but when the thing had looked up at him with those dead black eyes, he'd felt nothing but relief. He can almost smell the acid stench; can feel the remembered impact tingling in his funny bone. He rubs the place absently, closes his eyes on grit.

Small Hours by Te and Dawn Pares

Jesus. Scully keeps giving me these questioning looks, and if she keeps it up, I'm going to crack, I swear it. I'm going to cling to her like a fucked up five-year old and tell her how much I want him.

How I want to fill him up, so his voice is as smooth as water, so that he's never thirsty again.

I don't know what the fuck I'm saying.

I grab a chair and put my head between my knees, and I can feel Scully's concern like a warm wet cloth, or maybe it *is* a warm, wet cloth... it's not like I could tell the difference. It's like my hands are numb when he's not around.

It's like they wait for him. My hands only want to touch *him.*

And the winner is...

Blood, Love and Rhetoric!!!