Mulder ran his finger over the carved ram's head that stared up at him from the altar's face, then poked it into the circle of water at its center.  "The ancient Greeks practiced lecanomancy," he announced, his voice hollow in the gloomy temple, and not a little pretentious, but he couldn't stop.   "They thought they could see the future by looking into reflective pools like this one."   Only this pool showed nothing, just a flat round basin of rainwater that couldn't even cough up his own reflection, although the sun poured through the doorway behind him.

"Well, I hope you see calamari and a glass of ouzo because that's all I want in my future," Scully said, rubbing her eyes.   "And sleep."   She was already moving through the arched doorway.  "There's nothing here, Mulder.  No dead gods haunting this place.   The whole case has been a waste of time.   I'm starting to wonder if this trip was more about giving us some time off than solving an X-file."

"Somehow, I don't think Skinner cares."   About to turn, he saw a ripple in the silvery water and paused, wiping away the sweat that collected under his eyes. Must be an aftereffect of his touch because there was no breeze in here.  There hadn't been a breeze since they'd landed three days ago:  just a hot, choking heat that coiled dully around his brain.

"Let's get out of here," Scully called.

But he kept looking at the pool, where the water now swirled. "You've got to see this," he began, but the words came out too low. Maybe there was a mechanism in the altar, put there to trick the faithful. Mulder knelt and felt the underside, then jerked back his hand.  "Damn."  He'd scraped his fingers on the rough belly of the altar, where the stone wasn't smoothed by centuries of hands.  Standing, he squeezed a few drops of blood into the water and pictured it dissolving.

"What do you want?"  The brusque question came from the shadows to his right, beyond the solemn forest of columns.

"Sorry," Mulder said. "I didn't know anyone was here."  Casually, he reached inside his jacket and wrapped his fingers around his gun while studying the man before him. Tall, dark, dressed in black. Very attractive, and smiling now, all predatory white teeth. His eyes were dark and slick like the water, evaluating him, moving slowly over his body, noticing the gun, which made him smile wider.

"A soldier.   Good."    He stared some more, the smile a smirk, like this was inevitable and maybe historical.     "Worship me," he finally said, and stepped closer, one hand on Mulder's head.   With his other, he pulled out his cock, huge and already hard.

"I don't think--" But he was already sinking to his knees, mouth opening.  Scully had been bugging him to get out more, and maybe she was right, if he was going down for some aggressive control-freak in an old Greek temple with his partner right outside.  And why did the guy call him a soldier?   Just because he carried a gun?

The man's cock was big and hot on his tongue, and he licked tentatively, working the head with old practiced care, waiting for the groan that came seconds later.

"That's good. It's been too long." He placed one large hand on Mulder's head, holding him in place--or giving him a benediction?--while his hips rocked like waves and his cock sank deeper down Mulder's throat. "Harder."

Mulder obeyed and sucked the head, rubbing the thick shaft while he reached down to rub his own cock through his pants.  This was getting out of control, and he wondered if maybe it was all a fantasy, a combination of too much sun and a long climb up the hill, not to mention too many exhibits of dirty Greek pottery.  Hard not to imagine that this big guy was Ares; he had the muscles and the attitude, and there had been the blood...

"On the altar," Ares said. "Now."

Somehow Mulder was naked except for the holster still around his shoulder, his hands spread on the ram's heads flanking the pool, his ass being opened and oiled before the thick wet head of Ares' cock began to ease inside him.

"I like the weapon," a deep voice whispered in his ear as the cock slid deeper, stretching him wide.

Gripping the cold stone for balance, as a weird kind of lifeboat, Mulder thought 'condoms, Scully, caught, report, shit, oh god' just as Ares' cock filled him.   Mulder said the last two aloud, where they hung in the air like a confession.

"The danger's a turn-on.  I know.  I invented the danger-fuck, so just give into it."

No choice now, not with that hard cock claiming him, branding him, hotter than mortal skin, almost burning him as it glided in and out of his ass, while those strong hands grasped his hips bruise-hard and those sharp teeth closed over his shoulder beside the holster's leather strap.

"Touch yourself.  Come for me."

Somewhere deep down Scully lectured him about how wrong this was, how stupid and dangerous, and he pictured her shocked face, the startled deer-in-the-headlights thing she'd do if she came back in the temple now and saw this big sexy stranger plowing his ass.   He decided that he liked that image and stroked his cock to it until the harsh sting across his right buttock brought him back.

"Not her.   You're here for me.   Think about me.   Only me."   And Ares pulled out and roughly turned him over, laying Mulder back against the altar.   "Legs around my waist."

This time, with Ares staring intently at him, Mulder couldn't think of Scully.   Hell, he couldn't think, not with the cock penetrating him again, not with Ares stroking him this time, long steady strokes that slowed over the head, teasing him.   That didn't happen often, maybe never, so he took the advice and gave himself up to it, sweating on that long cock, riding it hard, drowning in a hot raw fuck and seeing the ruins around him with sharp painful clarity.

"You know who I am," Ares said.

"Yes."

"Then come for me."

He stared up at Ares, whose skin was glowing like the statues in the museums, his face perfect like old carved stone.   A flutter in his balls, butterflies dying, flying upward through his cock, then out in eternally long winged bursts.   He said something, odd syllables twisting over his tongue, a prayer learned in a dusty Oxford classroom eons ago.   Homer, maybe.

"Yes," Ares said, "Tell me."

So Mulder repeated the words, louder and louder, while his cock swelled again because Ares was fucking him slower now, glancing off the hottest part inside him, and if this prayer was working for Ares, it was working twice as much for him because Jesus he was going to come again not since high school and Jeff after detention one afternoon against the lockers and then that time with Krycek stupid thing he'd been drunk but he wasn't drunk now only fucked hard with divine precision--

"Now," Ares said, and they came together, and it was fiery and strong, nova-like, volcanic, big exploding things anyway dammit who could be poetic when his cock was learning this new beautiful thing and his ass was being baptised by a stream of flaming come?
___

The sun was squatting between clumps of oleander bushes when Mulder left the empty temple.   Scully was on the pebbled ground, her jacket scrunched under her ass as she leaned against the broken pillar, her eyes closed.   "You find anything in there?" she asked, and brought her wrist up, squinting at it.   "I must've fallen asleep," she added around the yawn.

He could still feel the come dripping and wrapped his jacket around his waist so she wouldn't see the stain.  "Nothing.   You were right this time.   There's nothing there.   The whole thing's a hoax.   I found some used condoms and empty beer bottles in one of the back rooms.   It was kids up here having some fun, not any ancient god come to life."

"I told you."   She said it with a small smile, and stood, brushing herself off.   "Now let's get back to town.   I'm starved.   And you look pretty beat up.   Sun stroke, maybe."

"I have an idea," he told her, carefully making his way down the hill.   "It's been a pretty rough few months.   Let's stay on a few days and do nothing.   Skinner owes us some vacation time.  Besides, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.   Come on, Scully," Mulder added when she hesitated.    "Just type out the reports with one finger."

She laughed.   "Maybe you're right."

"Someone's got to be."
___

After dinner, instead of going to his room, Mulder drove back to the hill, purple under a slab of yellow moon.   The trek up was easier in the cool darkness, but he was still sweating lightly as he ran up the ruined steps and into the temple.   Using his flashlight, he made his way to the altar and rested his ass against it, his legs open as he faced the room.    Unsure what to say or do, he shone his light into crumbled corners, over walls covered with faded frescoes of forgotten battles, through cracked columns that led to broken rooms.   "Anyone there?" he finally called.

Nothing answered, just the calm stillness of night.

Feeling stupid, he reached again under the altar and opened the small cut on his finger, plunging it into the basin, letting the water suck the wound clean.

Nothing.

He remembered the prayer and spoke it quietly, letting the echo carry it into every dark corner.

Nothing.

"Fuck you," he said childishly, and kicked a pile of rocks, which skittered noisily across the uneven tiles.   Why did people always leave him?   It was like being a leper.   Maybe that was it.   Maybe he had spiritual leprosy and that kept everyone away.   "You suck," he told the gloom.

Nothing.

"You're not real, you know.   None of this ever is.   Even if you were, you're weak.   Guess that's why you're not showing yourself.   Too fucking weak."   He smashed his fist into the pool, then shone his light into the water but saw only the smooth marble bottom.    "It wasn't very good, anyway," he lied.   "Nothing special."

No, he was nothing special, and that's why the temple gaped back, open and empty.
___

During the drive back into town, Mulder kept his window rolled low and let the sea spray wash away the lingering embarrassment.   No wonder they called him Spooky, if he was going to hang around Greek temples in the middle of the night muttering to long-dead gods just to get laid.

He stopped off in the bar before heading to his room and drank enough to get a warm buzz, sitting alone on a small terrace off the dining room.   After the last licorice sip, with a final, hopeful and irredeemably insane look around, not only at the balcony and the room inside, but the road leading to the hotel that wound before the sea below, Mulder went upstairs.   "Stupid," he mumbled, holding the bannister tightly.   "Crazy Spooky Mulder."

The lock clicked into place as he shut the door.   With the lights off, he stripped quickly, tossing his clothes onto a chair and walked naked to the window, throwing the shutters wide open.   When he turned back, Ares was there, naked like him, big and imposing and hard.

"Weak?   You think I'm weak?"

The fear rushed back, because there was anger, and his hands went up defensively, but Ares just shoved him back against the wall and kissed him, tongue sliding over Mulder's while their cocks rocked together.   His arms circled Ares' neck and he kissed back, grinding his hips into him because this guy had some balls just barging in here, god or no god or whatever the hell he was.

"I thought you didn't like it.   ‘Nothing special.'   So why don't you tell me to leave?"

"Leave," Mulder said, and dropped to his knees, closing both hands around the base of Ares' cock.

"Not until you give me what I want.   What you owe me."   He moaned then as Mulder took him in his mouth, and this time the hand on his head was a caress.

Mulder did it slowly, shaking off the hand when it tried to speed him up, grabbing one lean hip when Ares tried to ram into him.   He licked around the head in lazy rings, while stroking Ares' balls, and stopped every now and then to let Ares leak salt onto his tongue.   When Ares made an impatient sound, Mulder started to suck, first the head, until it was huge and swollen, then inch by inch took the whole huge cock down his throat.   His own cock bumped against his thigh, painfully hard, but he ignored it, letting the pressure build until the murky room swam under the moonlight, not a room any more but a temple bright with color, reeking with fresh blood, singing with the clang of armor and men's triumphant voices.

It was a dream, something from his childhood, after that book of myths his mother gave him, and he was projecting it onto this situation because this guy was powerful and beautiful and here like gods and fathers should be, like nothing every seemed to be, and he sucked harder, making Ares moan, frenzied now with the sharp taste of precome on his tongue, the quiver in the strong thighs cradling his head, the knowledge that this god-man- just-a-guy was going to come in his mouth.   Then it happened, torrents of it pouring into him, filling him fuller even than the cock up his ass this afternoon, like milk, wine and blood together.

"Yes," Ares growled, head thrown back, "drink it."

He loved the dirtiness of it, the wrongness of drinking a stranger's come, of having his face filled with a big musky cock that didn't stop pulsing semen down his throat.

After it was over, Mulder let Ares tie him up and broke the remaining rules in the F.B.I book of Stupid Things You Never Do With Strangers.   One of his favorites was letting Ares run the muzzle of the gun over his lips, across his nipples and down to his cock, then press it tight against his asshole, while Ares whispered things about surrender and strength.   Ares liked that one, too, he could tell, and angled himself so that he could press their cocks together and jerk them both off while the gun nuzzled Mulder, tested and learned him.

As Mulder came again, spurting cream onto Ares' hand and cock, his cries ragged and broken, Ares leaned forward and said, "You need to live."   Then the gun disappeared, replaced by Ares' cock, which slid way deeper than the weapon could, and he lay there shivering and shaking while Ares thrust into him, over and over again, for hours it seemed, biting, licking and kissing him while his cock never stopped.

Mulder's last orgasm was in his brain, since his body rebelled, and he writhed under Ares, seeing like an oracle all the lies he'd ever told about who he was and what he needed.   It was like being turned inside out, and forced him to face how he used everyone around him to fill a void he'd created.  ‘Oh shit,' he thought, as his poor used body quivered under the pounding one, ‘Oh shit.   I'm an X-file.'   And while Ares came inside him, Mulder started to laugh.
___

The next morning, bruised and sore, his wrists red and raw as his cock and ass, Mulder walked with careful steps through the open doors onto the terrace where Scully sat drinking a glass of orange juice, staring out to sea, the morning breeze ruffling her hair.

She turned at the sound of his footsteps.   "Vacation's over.   Skinner just called, and there's a new X-file.  I've already booked our flight back--we leave at noon.   You'll like this one: it's got mutilated cows, kidnapped girls and barns with weird signs."

It didn't interest him now, not in the same way, but he couldn't tell her that.   How could he explain that he'd used those cases to lose himself, to trick himself into believing his life had purpose, that he wasn't alone, when he was and always had been, believing in false gods and out-there truths.    "At least we help people," he said.   "It's not just running around looking at UFOs.   They need us."

As he settled in the chair opposite her, its white plastic girth cradling him, Scully leaned forward, her eyebrows darting high.   "I guess I don't have to ask what kind of night you had," she said pointedly, staring at his neck.

He touched the bruises there.   "It's not what you think.   It was kind of...a revelation."

Scully snorted.   "That's a new name for it."   She said nothing for a moment, then quickly touched his hand before sitting back, still staring at him.  "You sure you're okay?   You look different."

"I'm fine," Mulder assured her, because she really did look worried, not the polished and restrained woman he was used to.   Human.   He shifted in his chair and saw his pale face reflected in the glass patio doors.    "I'm fine," he said again, as the face smiled at him.   "Now let's order breakfast."

The End