EXPECTATIONS (1/1) By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com) Disclaimer: Alex Krycek and Anonymous Pendrell belong to Chris Carter at Ten Thirteen Productions, though I'm vying for custody of Pendrell on the grounds of character abuse. And when I *do* win, I'm sharing. :) Summary: A story about self-worth. Category: SAR (Pendrell/Krycek)/NC-17. Slash. Archiving: Do not post to ATXC. Do not send to Gossamer. This is an XAPEN and Nick-Fixx exclusive, only to be archived at the Socks Shoppe. However, if you have a special slash site that you want to put it on, I'm more than willing to comply... Author's Notes: This is the first piece of slash that I've written, and I'm hoping that it goes well. This is for the AOL Slash Junkies and for CiCi in particular for nagging and nagging me to write this damn thing. I hope that it was worth it. ;) And thanks for the screaming pre-rec, Alicia. Just ask me for it from now on, I'll send it to ya! :) Dedication: Usually, Kris, this story would be for you, but I remember you saying that if I dedicated any slash to you, you would do something that would cause me great physical, mental, and spiritual pain. So, this is for the Junkies. Keep writing/reading!! EXPECTATIONS "But I can't seem to forget When you came along Ingenue" --Mono, "Life in Mono" Most children are taught simple lessons in their early years. The difference between right and wrong, what is socially acceptable and what is inappropriate. These are simple values that most people are instilled with during the endurance of their life. It is their own decision as to whether or not these values are learned, and whether or not they are later discarded. Brian Pendrell knew the difference. Alex Krycek knew the difference. Brian Pendrell held them close. Alex Krycek turned them away. When he first started playing the game, he had done so to rebel against his father. The father who had played the game for Russia, who had taken the secrets and the lives and fucked around with them to his heart's content. And when he had given up his secrets to live a life of booze and forgotten glory, Alex had become ashamed and disdainful of his own father. For being pathetic and introspective, someone who drowned himself in liquor-laced emotion. "Never make my mistakes, Alex," he pleaded. And so he had left, not wanting to end up the man on the barstool who spoke of death as though it were a destiny and not a decision. Fate was an idea that Krycek regarded with bemused cynicism. Fate would have dictated him to become a shadow like his father, not the man that he was now. Control was something that Krycek needed, and he found it in his work. Everyday, men bowed on their knees and begged for forgiving redemption, as though Krycek were some pagan angel with the gift of life. He just possessed a touch of death. The finger of God. The hand of Satan. Whatever. He had learned long ago the man that he was. A formidable creature, one that was dangerously alluring with the mouth of a whore and the eyes of a traitor. Green ice-fire and pink pleasure; this was what Alex Krycek believed his face to be. And this was what pleased a thousand men and women, the sexuality that exuded from every crevice of his well-tended body. But it rarely ever pleased him. It was just a part of work. Something that he was. An assassin, a good, quick fuck, a mystery that was left unsolved. So many believed that the best mask was made of ice. Krycek preferred to conceal his nature beneath a vizard of salvos, something that was too fiery to touch but too ravishing to resist. This was what kept him secretive. It was what kept him enigmatic. He kept a guise the color of Brian Pendrell's scarlet hair. Pendrell was a man that had learned his values early, and kept them tight and secure. They were what kept him good, what made him able to live with himself, and what made him liked and pure. His morality was just and sensible and could rarely be contested. His father had been attentive and kind, and his mother had been loving and gentle. Brian was the good child, the one that everyone adored, admired, but never craved. And so he believed himself to be undesirable, becoming shy and quiet, even resentful of himself. His insecurity made his adolescence especially difficult. But he maintained the values taught to him a child simply because he believed in them. He had faith in the world and in his fellow man. Where Pendrell became concerned was in the increasing evidence that no one else had faith. No one else had those values. And he sighed, continued on, and held fast to his silence. His virtue had kept him sane, but they had also kept him alone. Both men believed themselves to be unlovable. Alex Krycek accepted it. Brian Pendrell did not. The attraction had smoldered from the moment that Krycek sat down at Pendrell's table that night in Munich. Black beer drifted from stein to stein, and it was sour and bitter in a seductive manner. A harsh and malignant aphrodisiac. There was little conversation, little other than staring and optical fondling. Krycek saw the waved cap of red hair and wanted to see it tousled with sweat and sleep. Pendrell saw the long legs and wanted to caress the pure inner thigh. These were thoughts that were not normal for either, since Pendrell had never desired a man and Krycek had simply never desired. The beer was slow and dark like mead, and as it was tossed casually by the two men, their conversation turned from satirical to seductive, and Pendrell found his eyes focusing on objects never seen before in anyone, male or female. There was the shading of his dinner partner's throat, and the soft lashes of his eyes. They were sooty and lined like charcoal, naturally noir and mesmerizing. Oh, to touch one of those lashes and feel the feathery silk weight. It was becoming like a warm slumber, stargazing at this galaxy of delectable sexuality. Affected as well, Krycek's eyes lined the smooth, boyish lines of his redhead's body with a trained eye. He was not the most beautiful or the most exotic. His features were not unusual. He was not physically exceptional. But he was divinely arousing in a spiritual fashion, and Krycek realized that this was what passion felt like. This was what pleasure was defined as. It was not just a culmination of tingling nerves and yearning skin, not something that fed off of physicality. All of his past sexual experiences had been something forced from the right touch or a hot mouth, just body cells on body cells. Something anatomical and biological. Detached orgasm. But this was a heady sensation that was derived of temptation and curiosity. The young man's eyes were wondrous as they scraped over his body, and they were beguiling in their naive exploration. Not shy, just unaware until now that something such as this could happen. That was how Krycek felt as well. And then when Pendrell could resist no more, his throbbing cock begging him for just one reprieve, the erection embarrassing in that he was rising for another man, his body took over and he leaned in for a kiss. His pursed pink lips fell upon the soft, apple-ripe mouth of the dark stranger, and both paused until Krycek responded, his body tightening like a vise and then melting into the precarious skill of the redhead's lips. Tugging a little, running the tongue over the dark stranger's pearl-like lower lip, Pendrell shivered from delighted discovery. It was a step, and Krycek's mouth lazily swiped at the top of Pendrell's mouth. And that was when the kiss deepened so much that Pendrell felt his hips rising from beneath the dinner table, wanting to meet him, wanting wanting... The kiss ended, that singular contact between their bodies evaporated. And Krycek stared in amazed shock at Pendrell, his body rushing through and through with greater heat than he usually achieved during a climax, and he felt the sweet waves want to rock him into orgasm right there. "Um," Pendrell whispered, feeling his cheeks flush pink from a mixture of hunger and humiliation. "Well..." "My name is Alex Krycek," the dark-haired stranger breathlessly introduced. Seduction was all that Pendrell could think of then, wanting to suckle and tug at that plush lower lip again, to take his teeth to that mouth and claim it. "Brian Pendrell," he whispered in return. "And I think that I just kissed you." Alex leaned in closer, the lapel of his leather jacket tantalizingly exposing a white tee shirt that covered a well- exercised body. "Please do it again," he asked, and there was a note of wildness in his voice that was achingly arousing. There was nothing that Pendrell could think of but the man, of Alex Krycek and his simmering emerald eyes. This wasn't something that Pendrell should do, this was wrong and not him, not something that he should *ever* do... It was something that he was going to do. Disregarding that puny conscience, Pendrell licked his lips and closed his eyes, leaning in to meet that bewitching mouth again with his. Tongues sliding through paradise, they met between the crush of their mouths, and Pendrell desperately clenched his fists to his thighs, wanting more that he couldn't have. Yet. Krycek's tongue was usually the most skilled. It was always the tool of his partner's desire, male or female, something untamed and teasing. He could slide it over cocks and nipples, lick the crease of a buttock or the hollow of a throat and make the other person rise off of the bed with intensified wanting. Now, inside of Brian Pendrell's pretty little mouth, he could not command it. It was a wild being, thrashing with the power that he wanted to direct toward his hips. He wanted to writhe and whip like his tongue did. He wanted to be touched and teased and tormented with tooth, tongue... Trust... It was only a matter of moments before they left, their eyes droopy and Pendrell's erection straining the front of his pants. There were no curious stares at the two men who walked with their cocks hard to Brian's hotel room, and there was nothing to be said about this odd couple of fire and finery. There was another kiss, another slice of bliss, and this time it was not just a kiss between lips. It was a union of bodies as Krycek pressed himself to Pendrell, wanting to lose himself in this man's innocent attraction, and he rubbed his erection toward Pendrell's, the hot friction through their clothing velveteen ecstasy. Moaning into Krycek's mouth, Pendrell's hands feverishly flung to Krycek's slim, leather-clad back, and he rocked his hips lovingly against Alex's. This wasn't supposed to feel so good, that nagging insecurity wailed. You aren't supposed to get this much pleasure... But the pleasure was there, and Pendrell reveled in its existence and in the existence of the talented Alex Krycek. Cocks grinding and feeding heat, Pendrell didn't know that he could ever want so much. It was lovely to have this, and he wasn't giving it up. And he wanted to touch this man's skin, feel it for what it was. Femininity was something soft and tender, but there was something raw and powerful about muscles, he discovered. There was something forceful about the male body, and Alex Krycek had the most spectacular body that Pendrell had ever touched. Who needed breasts when there was this firm abdominal structure that caved and contracted when Pendrell ran his bare palms over it? Oh, the glory of man, especially this beautiful man who was intent on being aroused and being arousing. "Oh, God," Krycek whispered, and when Pendrell touched a hard, tight nipple with an intriguingly clinical touch, testing the pliancy and the heat, his hips bucked against the hardness of Pendrell's cock. It's not supposed to be like this, he thought. I'm not supposed to want something so much... I'm just supposed... He had been taught to screw 'em and leave 'em. Fuck-and-flee. But there was something so compassionate as well as passionate here, something that was sensitive as well as sensual. It was sympathetic sexuality, something that implied feeling rather than being felt. There was the feeling of tenderness in Pendrell's perusing, and Krycek rigidly awaited those hands to leave his nipples and touch the cock. Touch him. Clothing was removed, slowly and intentionally due to the bare nerves stimulated by touch and taste, waiting and wanting. Krycek pulled his pants down as Pendrell gawked, eyes widening and face reddening, and then removed the boxers. Bared, they watched each other for a moment, and there was the first hesitation of the evening. The first awkward moment. A strangled cry came from Pendrell's throat in a voice that was rippled with electric desire, and Krycek's erection twitched as it waited. "Alex, I've never..." "I know," Krycek breathed. "I'll be... Gentle." He would be gentle. It wouldn't be brutal. It wouldn't be animalistic. It would be tenderness and gossamer. It would be rapture rather than revenge. "Touch it, Brian. Please." He hadn't ever asked before. The only cock that Pendrell had ever touched before was his own, and it had always been imagining that his hands were someone else's. It was always wonderful, the sensation of making himself harder and harder until he reached the brink. Oh, to think that he could come because of someone else's hands or make someone else come because of his. And so, with a trembling hand, he reached out, and then stroked the top of Alex's cock. Hips wild, the cock flushed, the long length of it hard and wet like damp candy. Groaning, Brian wanted to see more, to feel more, and so he touched the other man's erection again with more certainty, and then grasped it and moaned as it slid through his hand and grew hot and divinely thick. The sensation of this pleasure coming from another man's hardness made his own hardness increase, until he was pulsing and bucking along with Alex Krycek. Remembering how he liked his cock to be touched, he tried to duplicate it with his own hand, and then found it flinging toward his own. Touching his own cock, Pendrell caressed Krycek's hardness with equal fervor. "Oh, God," he whispered. "Oh, yes..." And then his hand was removed by Krycek, and with utter tenderness, Krycek's hand started to stroke Pendrell's cock. If ever Pendrell had faith in masturbation, then this was the most blessed relief. Long, thick strokes, careful massage, and he wished for that skill that Krycek possessed. Krycek wished simultaneously for Pendrell's hands. Moaning, kissing, and bucking, Krycek found himself wanting to give in. It had never happened so fast, never been wanted so badly, and Pendrell pressed into the dampening tip of Alex's cock, feeling the semen wet his fingers. With no more control, Krycek wildly capitulated into ecstasy, his body spasming and thrashing underneath Pendrell's sweet hands, feeling himself empty of the tension and pulsate with uncontrolled and freeing exultation. The feeling of the wet heat splashing his abdomen was all that it took for Pendrell, and as Krycek came, his hand jerked hard on Brian's penis. It was all that it took. It was all that it took... A rainbow of color and green fire washed over his body, and he arched his back with the power and force of his own orgasm, letting it wash onto Krycek's cock and thighs. Slower, slower, until they stopped. And without a single word, both smiled, and Krycek kissed Pendrell with softness rather than passion. Taking his hand, he led him to the bed. It had been simple release, something that had not required so much impressive prowess but rather uninhibited passion, and Krycek wanted to stay that night. But there were words that caressed his ear before he fell into sleep, and that was Pendrell's sleepy, dreamy whisper of: "I think that I might love you." It frightened him. All his life, he had been taught that he was nothing. A whore. A quick fuck. Nothing but cheap flesh that would eventually dullen and soften into brief memory of thrills and lips. He was nothing but coldness, something that needed no one and lived alone. When this tender redheaded man whispered the possibility of a promise, that belief wavered, and Alex Krycek shattered. He had become an assassin and a player because he believed himself to be worth nothing more. He wasn't a god, he was a victim of his own insecurity. He was a killer because he had nothing more expected of him. He killed for no purpose, no thought other than that he could do nothing more. He was worth his weight in ammunition and amour. That was all that Krycek was, a gun and a cock, a beautiful pawn that believed wholeheartedly that he was nothing. It was horrible to be told that he was nothing. But it was even worse when he realized that he believed it. And because he had never thought that he could do more, he had continued on. He killed. He fucked. He fled. He lied. He stole. And he died every time he did it. But the flushed and sleeping Brian Pendrell had expected more of him that night. He was expecting honesty, and he was expecting tenderness. And Krycek had responded to the challenge, truthfully and lovingly caressing the secrecy that Pendrell himself kept. He could be redeemed. He could stop killing. Stop fucking. Stop fleeing. Stop lying. Stop stealing. Stop dying. Live. It all depended on whether or not he stayed with this man and let himself be led into salvation. Whether or not he stayed in sanctuary or returned to purgatory. Curling up tighter into Pendrell's trusting arms, Krycek shivered. ***** Brian Pendrell awoke in an empty bed. Alex Krycek did not stay. He couldn't. For the lowest expectations are always the easiest ones to live up to. ***** (end of story) Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears! Oh, screw your ears, lend me your feedback!! Send all feedback to Auralissa@aol.com and I'll promise not to assassinate the emperor. Thanks for the read! See you soon! :)