He was waiting for me at the abandoned warehouse, standing next to his car on the passenger side smoking when I drove up. I parked head to head with him and got out, slamming my car door.

"What the hell is this about?" I ask, the cold air of the December evening icy in my lungs.

"A.D. Skinner," Cancer Man smiles cloyingly. "I have a gift for you."

"Gift," I grunt. I shake my head. Yeah right.

"Come now, even I can be charitable this time of year," he says and takes a drag on his cigarette.

"I don't need your charity," I tell him and turn to leave.

"You'll enjoy this gift," he calls out behind me. "It's all wrapped and waiting for you in that warehouse - no strings attached."

I spin around and bark, "There are always strings attached!"

He watches me for a moment with cold, predatorial eyes. Shrugging, he says "I'll admit, whatever you do with my gift will be a favor to me. If you reject, I'm just as happy to let him die from the elements or starvation - whichever gets him first."

He drops his cigarette and snuffs it out with his shoe as I realize my mouth is hanging open.

He's giving me a person.

Cancer Man looks at me and chuckles, then slinks into the passenger side of his car. The windows are tinted and I can't see who the driver is. They speed off, blowing my long coat up in a biting gust of wind. God, it's cold tonight.

I roll my chin in frustration. It's clear I can't just walk away from this, and so I pull my gun and cautiously make my way to the warehouse. No one's around, not anyone I can see anyway, and when I get to the door I find it ajar.

Entering cautiously I scan the room and then flip on the lights. That's when he whimpers.

Krycek.

The man who made certain Scully was abducted. The man who killed Mulder's father.

He's stripped naked, shivering violently and has tears running down his face. Beautiful rope work binds him, crossing over his chest in a diamond pattern and wrapping around each muscle group to emphasize them. My eyes take in his trim, muscular body. Very little body hair. His arms are folded and tied behind his back; ropes from the ceiling keep him in place. His legs are tied together at thighs, knees and ankles, and he's up on the balls of his feet due to the shortness of the ceiling rope. His clothes are on the ground a few feet in front of him, obviously there to mock him as he freezes. I watch the heat coming off his body in steamy clouds that waft up and dissipate before reaching the high ceiling, I'm mesmerized and not sure what to do.

"Are you gonna let me freeze?" He cries out, breaking my reverie.

Nailing him with a menacing look, I say "No." I smile inwardly when he swallows, frightened at the predicament he's found himself in and not at all liking that I'm the one to find him.

I walk over and inspect his bindings, grinning behind him when he flinches at my touch. The knot from the ceiling rope is an easy one to untie.

"I didn't do anything!" he tells me, his teeth chattering. "You can't..." he whimpers again.

Yanking him to me, I growl in his ear, "Don't lie to me, boy, you've done plenty of things." He winces and bounces on the balls of his feet, trying to reestablish balance.

"I have information," he says, looking up at me with impossibly large green eyes. He looks so scared and young, but he's doing well at keeping his senses about him.

I don't respond.

He loses his balance and falls into me when I get the rope from the ceiling untied. I reach down to steady him, the stubble from his five o'clock shadow scratching at my hand, and he looks up at me again after wiping his tears away on my coat. That's when I notice his lips are starting to turn blue.

Without thinking, I shrug out of my coat and wrap it around him. Little shit has the balls to chuckle at me for it.

"Come on," I say and bend down to toss him over my shoulder.

He looks at me with terrified eyes and shrinks back. "My clothes," he whines.

Good point. I toss the jeans and his jacket over my shoulder and grab his boots in my left hand. He makes a raspy noise when he realizes that I'm leaving the rest of his clothes. Bending down, I toss him over my shoulder easily. He's light and he doesn't struggle. The things the cold will make you willing to accept.

He's silent as I walk to my car. I lay him in the back seat rougher than needed, but I want him to know, without a doubt, that we're not comrades.

Still, as soon as I sit in the driver's seat, I start the engine and put the heat on full blast.

His teeth are still chattering, and I can hear him go through bouts of shivers now that he's warming up.

What now? I wonder.

I put the car in drive and turn back towards the road.

"Where are we going?" Krycek asks from the backseat.

I'm not yet sure, I think to myself.

When I don't answer, I can hear him strain to try and sit up, but it's useless. He's immobile.

"Hey," he barks at me, "where are you taking me?"

I want to say 'someplace quiet,' but the connotations of that would likely cause him to try and attract attention.

"What did you do to get on the Cancer Man's bad side?" I ask instead.

He grumbles something inaudible.

"What was that?" I ask.

"None of your goddamn business," he bites back. "You can't keep me like this, you know. You have to let me go."

"You're wrong. I don't have to do anything."

Krycek lets out a panicked groan and I smile. It's nice finally having the upper hand.

Next thing I know, he's wiggled towards the door and is using his bare feet to try and kick the window out.

"Hey!" I yell, swerving the car. Goddammit, he'll break the window.

He kicks again.

"Krycek, stop it!"

He kicks again.

I pull the car over to the side of the highway and put the car in park as he kicks again. I take my seat belt off and shimmy my upper body into the back seat, no easy feat with my broad shoulders.

"That's enough!"

He snarls at me and kicks the window again, so I flip him over on his front side and hold his legs under my left arm. He looks back at me in confusion just in time to see my raised hand.

Krycek whimpers before my hand connects with his ass, and then cries out with each swat that I land. He knocks my coat off of him by wiggling in my grasp, baring his own backside.

I lecture as I continue to spank his ass. "I thought you were smarter than that, boy. You could have slit your feet open - and where were you planning on going tied up like this?"

"Go to hell!"

I spank him harder, making him cry real tears. He twists back and forth the best he can, trying to avoid my hand, his muscles straining.

"Why don't you just punch me?" he cries pitifully.

Because you can't defend yourself. Because your face is out of reach. Because punching you has never worked. ...because of the way you look, naked and tied up - scared and helpless - and I don't want to damage your face or really hurt you by punching you in the gut. Because you're immature and look like you could still be in college.

I don't give him an answer. Instead, I ask, "Are you going to be good?"

He nods warily, so I stop spanking him.

"Are you warm enough?"

"I am now," he answers petulantly and sniffles.

I snort in response and cover him back up with my coat anyway.

"No more kicking," I tell him, "lay still."

He nods, but I can see the defiance in his eyes.

Righting myself in the driver's seat, I put my seatbelt on and pull back onto the highway.

That's when I realize I'm on my way to the cabin. I'd planned to head there after work tonight for a quiet weekend before getting the call from Cancer Man. Thinking about it, it's the best plan. No one knows I have it and it's secluded, perfect for interrogating Krycek.

I head West and snake my way through to 190. My cabin is near a swell in the Potomac River, tucked away deep in the woods that edge a small ranching community.

The drive is under an hour from DC, but Krycek doesn't know that. As soon as we get onto unlit country roads, he goes cagey on me.

It's funny observing the fear of a person who lives in constant danger. You can feel the war between unmitigated terror and cold, calm reason going back and forth fighting for dominance, without even looking at them.

I can almost read his thoughts: 'If he wanted to torture or kill me, the warehouse was a perfect place. Now he's got my DNA all over his back seat with me laying here.' And then, 'Why is he taking me to a dark, isolated place? What is he planning on doing with me?'

"Where are we going?" he asks softly.

"Almost there," I say, turning onto the road leading to my driveway.

I slow down to a near stop in order to turn on the narrow, gravel drive leading to my cabin. The sound of crunching gravel dull Krycek's hushed, panicked noises.

Parking the car, I turn to look at Krycek. He's watching me with scared, feral eyes and is as still as a statue.

I get out and lock the car, just in case, and unlock the cabin. I flip the lights on, pull off my tie and come back out, pop the trunk, and start carrying supplies in that I'd packed before all of this started. That finished, I come back for Krycek.

The light from the porch illuminates him, and I can see him shimmying back and forth, trying frantically to free himself from his binds. He looks up at me and tries harder to free himself, but stills when I open the door.

"Whoever tied you knew what they were doing," I say, grabbing him around the torso and tugging him out of the car.

"What do you want?" he yells, trying to squirm away as best he can.

"To get you inside before we both freeze," I flip him over my shoulder again. He whimpers at the ease at which I do so.

"Let me go," he growls on our way across the porch.

"LET ME GO!" he screams a moment later when I don't respond.

I smack his ass hard and I feel him hold back a sob. He's terrified.

Getting him inside, I lay him on the couch and start a fire, then I take off my suit jacket.

"What are you gonna do?" he asks, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.

Closing the front door, I turn to him. "We're going to talk."

"I got nothing to say to you."

"You said you have information," I say, putting my hands on my hips and towering over him.

"Go fuck yourself, Skinner, I'm not telling you shit!"

I slowly begin rolling up my sleeves and Krycek shrinks in fear, curling his body the best he can into the couch away from me.

"You're in for it now, boy." I walk slowly to the couch and pull him up.

"No! Wait," he says, but it's too late.

He's made me too angry.

I sit and pull him face down over my lap. He still has a faint red hand print on his ass from when I smacked him on the porch, but there's no marks or redness from his spanking in the car.

"Don't," he cries out before I've even started.

"You're going to start cooperating with me," I tell him, then start spanking.

I'm able to put more force behind the spanks than I could in the car, and Krycek starts crying immediately. He's yelling 'ow' after each swat, and crying in between as I turn his firm, round ass deeper and deeper shades of red. Soon he's twitching under my hand, but I keep going. I'd expected him to beg, but he doesn't. He just yells and cries.

After a few minutes he kicks his feet up, and I have to trap his legs in between mine. He's gulping air and sobbing hard soon afterward.

"Are you going to cooperate with me now?" I ask.

He quickly nods, so I pull him up with me and lay him back down on the couch. Tears and snot cover his face, and I grab a tissue and wipe it all away.

His face and chest are bright red, and his chin is dimpled from crying. He takes a moment to calm himself, and succeeds in doing so much quicker than I'd expected.

"Untie me," he says in a small voice.

I shake my head no. "You're going to answer some questions first."

"And then...then you'll untie me?"

I incline my head.

He blinks at me a couple of times and sniffles.

"The sooner you start talking, the sooner you can leave," I tell him.

By the look on his face, he doesn't quite believe I'll just let him go.

"I have a disk locked away," he says, "Untie me and I'll take you to it."

"After," I say. "Tell me what you know."

"Know about what?"

"Anything. Everything," I tell him, thinking he might know so much that he doesn't know where to start.

His eyes look at the fire as he thinks that through. I pull a blanket off the back of the couch and cover him, tucking him in. He looks up at me with a confused, furrowed brow as I do so.

"Warm enough?"

He nods and watches me for a long moment.

"They'll be doing experiments again," he says quietly. His eyes dart from me to the fire, "They'll be taking people for the experiments."

"Experiments for what?"

He shrugs. "They've got people in Arlington - longterm abductees. They need them for a series of new tests. That's all I know. I have more on the disk. Names. Details."

I'll be damned if those people are going to be taken.

Sitting on the coffee table, I nod and ask "What else?"

"What I told you was big. It could get me killed. Let me go," he knits his brow together as he pleads, making him look like a child all tucked in on the couch.

"What do you think was meant to happen to you tonight?" I ask, and he looks down. "Your boss wants you dead, he told me as much."

Krycek glares up at me, seething.

I lean in close and say, "You're telling me more."

"What if I don't know any more?"

"We both know that isn't true."

A solid thirty seconds is spent staring each other down. Then I abruptly stand.

"Suit yourself," I say and wander into the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" He's panicked again and probably expecting torture.

"Making myself dinner. Hope you aren't hungry. Me? I'm famished."

He watches me pull a steak, greens for a salad and a couple of sweet potatoes out.

"You just gonna let me starve?" he whines.

"You can eat after you talk. Until then," I smile, pour myself some wine and start preparing my food.

I can feel his eyes on me and can feel his anger from across the cabin.

"Take me to get the disk," he calls to me, "it has everything you want to know."

When I give no response he laughs.

"What, scared I'm lying?"

I stop chopping sweet potatoes and fix him with a glare, "I know you well enough to know that there probably isn't any disk, and if there is that you have no intention of giving it to me."

That answer scares him. In his mind, he likely now thinks he has no escape plan.

"There's a disk," he insists.

He sighs when I don't respond.

"When is the last time you ate?" I ask.

He looks at me suspiciously, "This morning."

"You must be hungry. They get you before lunch?"

He swallows.

"What did they do with you? You certainly weren't in that warehouse all day."

His eyes cloud over with anger and he looks away.

They didn't beat him - no marks. ...God, they didn't rape him, did they?

I look at him and he rolls his eyes at my worried expression.

I take a relieved breath and throw the steak on the skillet. Immediately it smells wonderful.

"They got me an hour or so before you found me," he says, the smell of the steak loosening his tongue. "They know I have the disk. They're probably looking for it now."

"Will they find it?"

He smirks. "No. It's in a new place."

"Were you going to sell it?" I ask.

Shrugging, he says "It only has monetary value to them, and they aren't in a buying mood."

We both chuckle at that.

"That's all I know. Can I eat, too?"

I throw another steak on for him and then rinse the salad greens.

"You'll need to untie me so I can eat," he tries.

"Not necessarily," I say. "I could always feed you."

The abhorrence on his face is hilarious.

The steaks cook in no time, and I put one on each plate and set them on the table, along with the sweet potatoes, salad, and an extra wine glass. This is when I realize I'm about to give Krycek a steak knife. Thinking better of it, I start cutting his steak up for him.

"You're not really gonna hand feed me, are you?"

"No," I answer, "but I'm also not ready to give you a knife."

Krycek smirks at me, trying to look evil and menacing. Being tucked in under a blanket ruins the effect.

I finish cutting his food and set the steak knife by my own plate, then head over to untie him. I'd brought his clothes in with my supplies, setting them on the chair next to the fireplace.

He gives me a shit-eating grin, knowing he's about to be freed, and I fight down the desire to bend him back over my knee.

It isn't easy.

"If you try anything you'll get my belt," I tell him, and his eyes widen in surprise and fear.

Pulling the blanket off him, I sit him on the edge of the couch and begin untying his arms. It takes me a few minutes, during which time Krycek squirms, flexing his bound hands.

"Hold still," I tell him, and he huffs at me.

Finally I get the rope untied and unwound from his arms, and he rubs at them and rolls his shoulders while I work on unbinding the rope from his torso and hips. I have him lay back down while I untie his legs. It takes over five minutes to free him, and I'm proficient with knotwork from my time in the Marines.

He stands up, then goes to his clothes without thanking me, and pulls on his jeans and boots.

"You got a spare shirt?" he asks.

"Yea," I say, and walk towards my duffel. I pass him on the way there and smack his ass for him.

"Ow!" he yells, jumping away from me.

"Manners would do you good," I say.

"Not in my profession," he says, then warily turns his ass away from me.

I toss him a flannel shirt and he puts it on. It's two sizes too big for him.

"Can I eat now?" he asks, barely keeping flippancy from his voice.

I nod and head to the table myself.

He digs in immediately, filling his plate with most of the potatoes and about a third of the salad.

Dinner is eaten in silence, and is over quickly.

"Let's go get that disk," I say.

He eyes the dishes, "Don't you wanna clean up first?"

"It can wait."

He sighs and then puts his coat on, standing in front of the fire that's mostly burned down as he waits for me.

I throw on my suit jacket and then remember my long coat is still in the back seat.

"Let's go," I say, and nod him ahead of me.

He smirks and walks to the car, getting in the front passenger seat.

"Where are we going?" I ask as I get in.

"Back to DC."

I get back on 190 and speed back into the city.

"Take this exit, then make a left," he says.

I know this part of town, there are a lot of good restaurants around here.

He directs me to a private gym and tells me to park. The streets are empty but the gym is still open

"You work out here?" I ask.

He shrugs at me and gets out of the car.

I follow and we both walk back to the locker rooms. I stand at the entrance to the locker room, pretending to check my phone while Krycek retrieves the disk.

"Hey," he yells at me, throwing the disk towards the showers and running towards an exit in the back.

I run and grab the disk, but by that time he's gone.

After twenty minutes of searching for him, I come up empty and instead drive to my office to check the disk.

He was honest for once, the disk had everything he said and more.

Slipping the disk in my pocket, I head out to find a safe place for it, trying to decide if Krycek running on me was grounds for a belting the next time I see him.