Title: Knowing
Author: kbk
Disclaimer: Not mine, as you can tell from what happened to Alex in the end.
Summary: Also written for the cube's January challenge - a twist on the ep "Field Trip" where Mulder and Scully, having been called in to investigate two skeletons, ended up hallucinating while being digested by a giant underground fungus. They got rescued by Skinner.

"You knew, and you left him," Mulder accused. He slammed the door on the way out of the office, taking out his frustrations on the woodwork to avoid assault of a senior agent. Skinner had known. He was sure of it.

Mulder cast his mind back a few days as he stormed down the corridor. He had thought that his initial hallucinations were pure wish-fulfilment. The way the focus of the illusions had changed at around the time they believed Scully had entered the hallucinatory coma seemed to bear that out. But now...

It had been so perfect.

Krycek had followed him into the cave, hissing and spitting at him when Mulder got the upper hand in the fight, then grinning with triumph when the older man’s arousal became clear. From the moment their mouths first clashed, they had ceased thinking and become mere creatures of instinct. Clothes had been ripped away and they had been greedy for each other, wringing out as much sensation in as little time as possible.

For a moment, the tactile memory of Krycek’s hair sliding against his grasping hands itched against his palms. He spun and slammed them against the nearest wall, extending the spin to keep striding towards his office with barely a hitch in his forward progress.

In the safety of his basement home-from-home, Mulder stopped. He sank to the floor, and cried.

On the desk in Skinner’s office lay the photograph of another mysteriously denuded skeleton, with most of the left arm missing.