“I’ll have a blue Christmas, without you….” 

Mulder quirked a grin at Elvis Presley’s lonesome crooning and, after a brief glance around to be sure he was alone, did a little shimmy through the kitchen, followed by a karate kick and a muttered “Thank you…thank you very much.” 

His voice echoed back to him in the empty apartment, and a lump rose in his throat.

He snapped off the radio in disgust and opened the fridge, smiling unhappily when he spied the bottle of vodka on the top shelf.

They’d talked about it the night before Thanksgiving, and within 24 hours, Alex was gone.

It’s not like it hadn’t come up in conversation before. Hundreds of times, in fact, since even before they had become a couple. Even when Krycek had returned from Russia and been the enemy instead of the friend, the nemesis instead of the lover, the rat instead of the husband, even then, they had talked about it. Joked about it. Felt pain and guilt interchangeably over it.

It wasn’t like you could just ignore a missing limb.

Mulder was always surprised at the things his lover could manage with only one good arm and a hunk of plastic and wires where the other one should have been. Surprise mingled with a huge dose of respect when they had become intimate, and he’d seen even more of what day to day living was for Alex Krycek. Little things that he took for granted himself, from making tea to being able to combine cock and ass play, things he often did without thought, simple tasks that he didn’t need to actually focus on to have his body respond—all of them now became something to be admired, accomplishments to be congratulated.

Krycek always insisted it was no big deal, and even grew angry at first when Mulder would play cheerleader to something like buttoning a pair of 501 jeans. He’d be even more furious if his lover tried to help him. It had taken a long time for Mulder to let go of enough guilt to allow his partner the freedom to do things on his own, and even longer for Krycek to let go of misplaced pride, and learn to ask for help upon occasion. Dressing himself wasn’t an issue, but changing a flat tire in a rainstorm would have gained him nothing but a severe crushing under the car if he hadn’t let Mulder set the jack in place more securely than his one hand would allow while trying to steady slick metal and rubber with the prosthetic.

And so it seemed, they had come to a peaceful, if not completely accepting resolution to Krycek’s one-armed status. If hugs felt incomplete sometimes, well, they found they could do far more than hug—could, and would. If it took a little longer for Krycek to prepare Mulder for lovemaking than it would if he had been able to feel with all ten fingertips, well, neither of them could argue about the benefits of delayed gratification. And if a satisfied Krycek could give his equally blissful lover a smart ass grin after said gratification and whisper “I’m not handicapped, I’m handi-capable!” and then ignore how their shared almost hysterical giggles had turned into tears of regret, well, it appeared that, as clichéd as it sounded, true love just might actually conquer all, after all.

The night before Thanksgiving, they were lying together in mutual afterglow, Alex on his back, alternating between contemplating the ceiling and studying the insides of his eyelids. Mulder was turned on his side, petting parts of his lover in a lackadaisical way, knowing he’d be sitting on a hip at dinner tomorrow and wondering if Scully was going to make a big deal out of it. He let his hand stroke over Krycek’s chest, enjoying the satiny feel of sex-warmed skin under his fingers. He scratched lightly over a collarbone and got a sleepy purring sound for his efforts. He drew patterns on a shoulder and smiled when he realized he was spelling out something vaguely romantic but mostly obscene.

The smile faded when his fingers tracked over empty air where the arm should have continued, and with a sigh he started to roll onto his back.

Krycek turned to face him, and if it had been a little dimmer in the room, Mulder could have pretended there was nothing wrong, nothing missing. He put an arm around Mulder’s neck and kept him from turning away.

“I have to tell you something.”

Alex’s serious voice. The one that always made Mulder think of cigarettes and C-4 explosives. The voice that always scared and aroused him in equal measure, and he could remember feeling that way even when that tone was coming out of a new FBI recruit who had yet to show him treachery, or love.

“Ya tebyA lyublyU,” Mulder replied—‘I love you’ in Russian.

“Your Russian still sucks, lover.” Alex replied, stretching across the small distance between them to place a kiss on the tip of Mulder’s nose. “Ya tebyA lyublyU.” He gave the words back to Mulder with the correct pronunciation, and grinned at the shiver he knew it would produce in his partner. 

A moment later the smile faded and he turned back to look up at the ceiling again. His hand crossed over his body and tentatively brushed over the remains of his other arm. He felt the bed move slightly as Mulder shivered again, this time not in a good way.

“I’ve been looking into a place in Georgetown. They’ve done some amazing work with amputees there.”

“We’ve talked about this, Alex,” said Mulder, “What you have is state of the art—better than anything out there now. The last published information on the subject suggests that—“

Krycek kept his gaze upward and said quietly, “This is unpublished information.”

A slap couldn’t have cut Mulder’s words off more effectively.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’ve looked into some things, and heard some things, and I think this might be a chance to—“

“To what?” Mulder sat up abruptly. “To get yourself killed?”

Krycek pushed him back down, then draped his own body over his lover’s like a blanket. He gave him distracting kisses and stroked his hair and Mulder let himself be distracted for a time. When their eyes met, Krycek turned his attention back to the stump of his arm, and Mulder followed his gaze unwillingly.

“You feel guilty,” Krycek told him. Mulder couldn’t deny it, although he wanted to. “You feel guilty,” he said again, “and I feel—I—“ He didn’t have to say he felt awkward and ugly and ashamed because Mulder knew all that. Instead he said “And I don’t want that for you. For us. This could be a chance to make it right.”

Mulder took Alex’s face in both hands and kissed him breathless. They gazed at one another silently for a long time, until Mulder finally said, “How long?”

Krycek gave him a victory smile and another thorough kiss, “Three days,” he told him. Mulder looked skeptical. “I could be home by Tuesday.”

“You’d better be,” was all Mulder said. But it was a long time before he slept, and when he woke Thanksgiving morning, Krycek had already left.

Mulder spent the day at Scully’s, sharing good food with her and her mother, and put off Scully’s questions with a simple “He’s out of town for three days,” refusing to put any of his fears or his hopes into words. Scully let him get away with it. Margaret Scully sent him home with leftovers. “For when Alex gets back,” she said. 

The leftovers got thrown out after a week. Mulder had thrown himself into the most banal casework he could find for days four through seven, pretending he wasn’t worried, working hard to convince himself that the surgery and recovery might just be taking a little longer than expected.

At the end of that first week he’d found a bar with tequila shots on sale. When Scully found him, he’d taken full advantage of the discount, and when she drove him home, he thanked her by throwing up on her shoes, but he didn’t tell her anything. 

The hangover was the worst he’d ever experienced, and he remembered why he didn’t drink…or at least why he steered clear of tequila. It was another two days before he could even look Scully in the eye, and she gave him another day before demanding to know what the hell was going on.

No one could say Fox Mulder couldn’t deceive, inveigle and obfuscate with the best of them. He managed to put off his brilliant, determined partner for most of that second week.

He should have known something was up when Scully stopped asking. He wasn’t sleeping worth shit, and her workload was growing to keep up with the frantic pace he was setting. Between his rumpled appearance and the fact that he seemed to have fused with his office chair, she should have been all over the issue, making him talk to her, making him face up to facts he couldn’t even consider.

Instead, Skinner called him up to his office a week later and asked him out for a drink.

Mulder didn’t decline, even though his affair with Walter was long done and over with. He did stick to coffee, though, while Skinner sipped good scotch and denied that Scully had said anything to him. Mulder ignored Skinner’s blunt questions, deflected the more subtle ones by talking about football, or aliens, or whatever popped into the little bit of his brain not currently worrying about Alex, and finally asked to leave early, citing work as his excuse. He thought that would be the end of it.

When Skinner pulled his car up in front of Mulder’s apartment building, he didn’t say anything about the evening, didn’t press any further. Instead, he turned and pulled Mulder into a hug of epic proportion, dragging him forward to press his head against that familiar wall of chest and shoulders. “What can I do to help you?” he whispered. That was enough.

When Mulder sat up, Skinner handed him a handkerchief from his pocket and they both mulled over his words while they ignored Skinner’s wet shirtfront.

“I wouldn’t care if he came home with no arms at all, you know?” He knew he sounded pathetic, but just putting the words out there seemed to help.

“We’ll find him,” Skinner assured him.

More days went by, and if Scully was too busy for lunch because she was calling hospitals and morgues, and if Skinner was suddenly finding files in his office that required Mulder and his partner to examine old warehouses in the Georgetown area, Mulder didn’t know quite how to say thank you, but both of them could see the gratitude in his eyes, his posture, his renewed sense of purpose.

They came up with nothing, and it had been almost a month.

Scully asked him to come over Christmas Eve. Reminding him that they’d both had their share of bad yuletide experiences—shooting each other being the most remarkable, she suggested they spend the night watching Rankin/Bass cartoons and drinking eggnog.

Mulder told her he had work to do, but promised to see her Christmas Day, before she went to her brother’s house for family dinner. Even if Krycek had been at his side, he couldn’t imagine trying to be pleasant with Bill Scully for one minute, let alone a whole day. Scully understood, and sent him home with two stockings full of candy and small gifts. Their names were embroidered on them in silver thread and Mulder thought they were both horribly tacky and completely dear. He gave Scully a gift certificate for an upscale shoe store that made them both laugh. And then she was out the door with a hug and an “I’ll see you tomorrow, partner”, and Mulder tried to put off going home as long as he could. It wasn’t long enough.

So now it was Christmas Eve, he was alone, drawn to the bottle of Krycek’s favorite vodka, and yet unable to get drunk. Instead, he found himself again dreaming up the million ways his husband might be dead.

“Typical Mulder holiday,” he snorted.

“God bless us, everyone!” Tiny Tim exclaimed from the television.

“Kiss my ass,” Mulder replied, ignoring the tears that blurred his vision of the little boy on TV, the two silly stockings Scully had given them lying next to the TV, and the lights on the tiny fake tree the Gunmen had brought over last week sitting on top of the TV. Even though the lights were LED and changing colours cheerfully, the whole thing looked gloomy to him. 

Abruptly he stood up from the couch, discovered that he had actually drank enough from the bottle to be a little dizzy, hiccupped and staggered off to the bedroom. 

As he stripped and sank down on the mattress, some last sober part of him tried to keep the metaphorical bandages he’d been plastering over his heart since Alex Krycek hadn’t come back from falling off. Tried, and failed badly enough for him to murmur. “What do I do now?” and not notice he was still crying as he tumbled gratefully into sleep.

“Of course it’s a cliché, but tell me, Mulder—have you been naughty, or nice?”
Mulder woke from thin sleep at the words, rubbing his eyes and thinking how it wasn’t fair for his lover to be making bad Christmas jokes in his dreams. But Krycek had never seemed so real when he was asleep. He’d never been wearing torn and dirty clothes before. And even when his subconscious had been able to conjure up the vision of those perfect green eyes, his mind had never added a scar that split the left eyebrow. Finally, and this made him scrub at his eyes again, no matter what variation of his partner his dreaming had provided him, no matter how perfect the body, it always ended just below the shoulder.

“Alex?”

This Krycek was peeling away a ripped black t-shirt, revealing a strong chest that Mulder had mapped every inch of on several occasions. And he was tugging the material over his head, and pulling the sleeves off of two arms, using two hands…

The saucy grin he definitely recognized.

 “I must have been a good boy this year, because I’m getting exactly what I want for Christmas.” Krycek announced, tossing the shirt aside and sitting down on the bed next to Mulder. For one moment Mulder just stared at him, eyes so full of shock and so full of love that it almost made Alex squirm, embarrassed by the naked display of emotion he could see churning in Mulder’s wide hazel eyes.

Mulder reached out with a shaking hand and lightly touched the scar on Krycek’s arm. It was well healed but still visible, circling his bicep just where the prosthetic would have been attached.

“You did it,” he whispered.

“They did it. I just watched.” As he spoke, Krycek brushed the fully functional hand over Mulder’s cheek, stroked his hair, let his fingers lightly dance over his ear and throat. “There was some disagreement over payment for the procedure, though. Negotiations took longer than I expected.”

Mulder touched the scarred brow and shivered.

“I’m the last patient they’ll be attending to for a while. And I don’t have to return for a follow up at all.”

Mulder understood. And was finally able to consciously accept that this was not a dream, that Krycek was alive and home. Accept and rejoice, so that when the new arm slipped around his neck and the new hand took up a fierce grip in his hair, he was already leaning forward, resting his hands on Krycek’s thighs and opening his mouth to accept his lover’s gentle plundering.

The arm around his neck was pure steel, and while Mulder had no intentions of going anywhere, he relished feeling the tension in new muscles when he pressed back against it. He shivered pleasantly at the breathless growl his actions generated, and then just had time enough for a sip of air before Krycek reclaimed his mouth.

Mulder’s cock was tenting the front of his boxers in no small way, and instinctively he reached for himself.

“No,” Krycek groaned the word into Mulder’s mouth, caught his hand just as he lifted it from his thigh and held it between them in a crushing grip. And then he was twisting and rolling and pressing the hand in his possession to his own still-clothed erection.

Mulder felt the room spin and didn’t know if it was still shock at Krycek’s sudden appearance, the remains of his vodka supper or just lack of oxygen from the kissing, but when he finally became aware of anything beyond the wet heat of Krycek’s mouth, he realized he was lying half on top of his lover, rubbing himself shamelessly against one of his legs while stroking him roughly right through his pants.

Krycek had released Mulder’s mouth during the tumble, and now, as Mulder groaned and tossed his head back, he took full advantage to nuzzle at his throat and lick and bite at his Adam’s apple.

“Uh, J-Jeez, Alex—oh! Ohh…” It wasn’t the most coherent welcome home, Mulder realized, but as the moaning gibberish left his mouth, he felt Krycek’s cock jump under his hand and his hips rose up to meet his own wild thrusts. He had one final thought about all the things that two strong hands could do, and then he was squeezing the spasming cock trapped in denim and his fist, feeling Krycek’s pants front growing damp and sticky, which matched perfectly the mess he was incoherently making on Alex’s leg.

Krycek was biting at Mulder’s neck and chest frantically, almost painfully, and then lapping at the abused skin soothingly as his orgasm washed through him. Finally he fell back on the bed with a tremendous sigh, releasing his grip on Mulder’s hair at last.

“Wow,” Mulder managed after a minute or two of panting shallowly.

“Mmm,” Krycek agreed.

“That was…” Mulder found himself at a loss for words. Krycek turned his head and gave him a smile more heartfelt than his usual cocky grin.

“I will always come home to you.” The smile belayed the seriousness of the words. And then with a tremendous groan, he sat up. 

He was standing and stripping off his soiled pants a moment later, and for another few seconds, Mulder admired the mobility he had with the new arm. And then he was admiring something else entirely. Watching that artless reveal of muscled flesh made him moan softly and he felt his dick twitch at the prospect of another round.

A handful of heartbeats later Krycek was back on the bed with him, and even though his arm went around Mulder’s neck as it had been a few minutes ago, and even though his mouth was covering the other man’s with the same relentless passion, there was something gentler in the movements, something warmer--something unspoken that made Mulder’s heart swell as surely as his cock.

“That was just to take the edge off,” Krycek whispered the words as his lips roamed across Mulder’s chin and cheeks, ears and throat, and then back to his mouth, pausing a hairsbreadth away. “I want this to last.” He breathed the words into Mulder’s open mouth.

“God, yes,” came the fervent reply as Mulder bridged the tiny space between them to fully taste tongue, teeth, all of his lover. The prospect of a second go round was already heating him up past the first orgasm despite the part of him still recovering from it, his body was already responding to the urgent demands of his partner.

Krycek’s legs entwined with his and for a few kissy, gaspy, groany minutes, they clutched each other close and rutted shamelessly, hips bucking, cocks growing harder as they slipped and clashed.

Krycek rolled away much as he’d done earlier, but this time that arm, that new arm, stayed wrapped around Mulder, so that as he panted and stretched, reaching for the inevitable party favors that had sat on the bedside table, unused for the last month, Mulder was tugged in tight to his side, legs still tangled and head pressed firmly to Krycek’s smooth chest. Mulder laughed a little breathlessly, and felt Krycek shiver under him. With a grin he turned his head to catch one hardening nipple between his teeth. Worrying gently at the stiff flesh provoked more tremors, and then with a sound that could only generously be deemed human language, Krycek rolled again, forcing Mulder onto his back and shoving his way between his legs.

Mulder was still sucking at Krycek’s chest, and when he sat back on his knees, the prone man chased his flesh mindlessly with a greedy whimper.

Laying aside supplies for the moment, Krycek spread his own legs a little wider, which in turn stretched Mulder’s legs out further, and then he shifted forward a little which raised Mulder’s hips. It also gave him the opportunity for more deep kisses, and Mulder let him plunder his mouth relentlessly, enjoying the tight grip he had on his hair. By contrast, Mulder’s arms were stretched out to either side of him, hands opening and closing on empty air almost convulsively. The heat being generated between the two of them felt to Mulder as though it would consume him, as though he hadn’t just reached orgasm such a short time ago. If Krycek’s tiny aroused noises and continued kisses were any sort of clue, then he was feeling much the same way.

Abruptly, Krycek pulled back, letting Mulder’s head fall back as he released his hair. Mulder opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed with a startled, disappointed “Hey!”

“Shhh…” Krycek pressed a finger to Mulder’s lips—a warm, living finger—and then gasped when his lover bit it, then took further liberty, sucking and licking at his finger, then his whole hand. He groaned loudly and pulled away.

“You have no idea…” he panted, “…what you…. do to me…”

Mulder shoved his hips up and grinned saucily.

“I think I do.”

“Tease.” He slid further down the bed, creating gentle warm friction between them. Warmth that turned to higher heat when he paused to press kisses to Mulder’s chest.

“I’d only be a tease if I didn’t p-put out.” Mulder stuttered over his retort when Krycek took a nipple into his mouth and sucked it to hardness, and then repeated the process on the other one. Several sharp bites left both nipples hot and tingling and Mulder was shivering from the sensation when Krycek’s tongue tickled his navel and a strange yelpy giggle issued from his mouth. Immediately his skin pinked in embarrassment, but the sound just seemed to excite Krycek more, and his kisses and licks grew more fevered.

Mulder gasped when Krycek bypassed his cock altogether and instead gave his thighs and balls a thorough tongue bath, concentrating more and more on the places that, until now, until this man had come into his life, it never would have occurred to Mulder that they would be erogenous zones. Sharp teeth nipped at the crease where thigh met body and Mulder squealed. Fingers stroked over the soft place behind his balls and the sound turned into nonsensical babbling. And when that strong hot new hand wrapped slick and tight around Mulder’s cock, the babbling sounded like a prayer for release to whatever deity was controlling his lover’s actions. “God, Alex, please…. aw, God…”

Mulder opened his eyes when he felt Krycek’s warm breath on his face, and saw not just desire darkening his lover’s green eyes, but a renewed strength, a passionate sense of self that he almost didn’t recognize…

Or maybe he was reading too much into it.

“Fox…” He made the name sound like a command as he released Mulder’s straining shaft and slipped away with the barest press of soft hot friction until he was kneeling on the bed next to Mulder. “Turn over.”

Mulder stared stupidly at his partner, hips still moving restlessly now that there was no stimulation to thrust into. Krycek was reaching easily for the small bottle of lubricant, and he gave Mulder the tiniest smirk as he coated the fingers of his right hand with the slippery stuff. His expression turned serious again and he said, bluntly, “I want you. Now turn over.”

Mulder felt like his cock was going to explode as he scrambled to press his stomach to the mattress, rubbing himself over the sheets sticking to his sweating body. 

“I want you,” Krycek repeated, letting his gaze roam over Mulder’s well-muscled back and strong lean legs. He dripped more lube onto his fingers and leaned forward to press a soft kiss to the base of Mulder’s spine.

“You’ve got me…” Mulder was gulping air like mad and seemed barely able to get the words out. He turned his head as far as he could and Krycek caught his eye and gave him a serene, loving smile, then went back to placing more tiny kisses across Mulder’s back and the top of his ass, shifting his own body with each one until he was kneeling behind the other man. When he dragged his slick hand down the last few inches of spine and then pressed a single digit to where a vestigial tail would have been, Mulder arched under him like a cat, groaned out a garbled version of his name and obligingly spread his legs. Moving closer now, Alex touched himself lightly, decided that would take him out of the game far too soon, and instead let his left hand rest lightly on one cheek while dipping in and out of the crack of Mulder’s ass with the other. 

More nonsense spilled from Mulder’s lips and he rocked back, anxious to trap those teasing fingers. Fine tremors ran up his spine from base to neck, and he rolled his body with them, letting every slick touch of his lover wipe away all his earlier fears and heartsick belief that Alex was dead. Desperate to erase those memories now, he pushed back harder, wanting more, needing more.

The slap to his ass wasn’t as painful as it was shocking, but Mulder stilled immediately, shivering and groaning. Krycek stroked over the same place and made soothing noises, then pushed his fingers closer to Mulder’s center, drawing tiny circles over the sensitive skin there. Another soft spank, and Mulder sobbed out “Alex, please!”

“Shhh…love you…. trust me…” Krycek stroked over one pink cheek and down a quivering flank, and slipped one long finger inside him.

Mulder groaned in pain and in pleasure and shoved his hips upward with another huge kitty arch of his spine.

“More,” he gasped.

Krycek worked a second and a third finger into him while pressing his body forward, guiding Mulder to raise his ass and lower his shoulders, rewarding his movements with twists of the fingers buried inside him, finding the places within to create more pleasure. Mulder howled and thrust brutally back, hips pistoning frantically.

“Come on, come on, please, Alex, please, now,” he was chanting, begging, even cursing.

Krycek shushed him as he pulled his fingers out and reached for a condom. With only the physical stimulation of his lover’s thighs pressed tightly to his own, Mulder tried to lower his hips to rub his hard cock across the bed, desperately seeking friction.

A harder slap this time, using his right hand. “Easy, Mulder, I’m here and I’ve got you.” A kiss to each cheek and then Krycek was holding him tightly, keeping his hips raised while his cock twitched and he struggled in the other man’s grip, his breath coming in harsh ragged gasps.

Trusting Mulder not to try and shift down or away, Krycek slid one arm around his hips to grasp Mulder’s cock while he lined his own up with his relaxed lover’s entrance and pushed carefully into him.

“Yes!” Careful was lost to Mulder’s need as he thrust back onto Krycek’s erection, crying out in pain, then panting his way through it as Alex fondled his cock and balls and held himself still, his other hand returning to grip Mulder’s hip with almost bruising force.

“Move, damn you!” He rocked futily against Krycek, but even though the other man was gasping for breath and fairly vibrating with the need to move, to thrust into the tight hot body that held him prisoner, he held himself in check, found a rhythm to his strokes that brought Mulder’s cock back to full, nearly painful hardness, and then released him to tighten his hand on the other hip. He held his trembling lover still and slipped slowly out of his body. At the last moment before they would have separated completely, Krycek reversed his actions for a far slower slide back in. He could feel sweat trickling down his face and arms and back and still he kept his movements slow and deliberate.

“Alex!” Mulder wailed, thrashing and twisting, trying to increase both speed and friction. His muscles were flaring and tightening around Krycek’s cock, and Alex had to stop again, panting for air and conjugating verbs in Russian before he could continue his relentless snail’s pace assault on Mulder’s body. 

Half a dozen more strokes and Mulder was sobbing out his frustration, alternating cursing Krycek’s name and softly declaring affirmations of love and of trust. 

Krycek pulled out one more time, stretched his body to the limit over Mulder, whispered, “I love you,” and then swiftly reached under him to grasp his throbbing cock as he slammed into him with all his strength.

“Oh, God!” Mulder was roaring under the weight of his lover as Alex stroked him roughly and kept himself firmly embedded deep inside him. His cock slipped and slid through Alex’s hand and he was grinding back on Krycek’s erection just as hard as the other man was bearing down on him.

Suddenly Mulder moved, or Krycek did, or maybe it was a combination of the two of them, but it was all too much. Krycek felt more heat in his fist, and then sticky release. He heard Mulder call his name, then murmur something in Russian in a voice now hoarse from shouting and thick with emotion.  Each pulse of Mulder’s cock was matched by an involuntary tightening of the muscles clamped around Alex’s own erection, and it was only moments later that Krycek was gasping out Mulder’s name in return and doing his best to crawl right inside of him. Instead he clamped his mouth to the sweat slick skin of his shoulder to muffle the shouts and released Mulder’s cock to lock both hands on his hips. He heard his own name one more time in that rough voice and then his orgasm was tearing through him and he could hear nothing beyond the pounding of his heart, could feel nothing but the welcoming heat of Mulder’s body and the pulsing of his own release.

Mulder came back to himself still joined to Krycek, and he groaned when the other man moved to free himself. He reached a hand around and muttered “Stay,”

”Always,” came the soft reply and Mulder felt gentle kisses raining down on his shoulders, his back, and the side of his neck. He heard Alex whisper something in his ear, but didn’t understand.

“What?”

“S RazhdestvOm, moya mIlaya,” Alex repeated.

“Mmm, Merry Christmas.” Mulder agreed, and then gratefully let sleep claim him.