cecilysass

[cecilysass]

HIS HAND ON HER HAIR 🥺🥺🥺🤍

[cecilysass]

characters have to be a little bit awful in ways that you cant defend. its good for the ecosystem. your honor he did do that. He did in fact do that

[cecilysass]

Masterlist of fanfiction- The X Files

Longer stories (5000 words and over)

Fierce Midsummer All Ablaze (12793 words) on AO3 : Mulder & Scully develop a standing agreement to attend events as each other's 'plus one' over the years.

Certain Obscure Things (13087) just completed on AO3 : An alternate ending to/extension of 'Fierce Midsummer', in which Mulder takes Scully as his guest on a trip to Oxford, to visit his old university mentor.

The Light of a Clear Blue Morning (12392 words) on AO3 : Mulder and Scully are back in the field after Redux II; what would have happened if they continued the closeness of the Cancer Arc through season 5 and beyond?

The Congruence of Triangles (5373 words) on AO3 :The final scene of Triangle, told five ways.

Shorter stories

The Work of an Instant (2463 words) on AO3: Scully and Mulder attend a game night at the Gunmen’s lair, and change is in the air (s7).

I Need My Girl (747 words) on AO3

Testament (1599 words) on AO3 : This story imagines the circumstances of Scully asking Mulder to be the witness to her living will.

Even in Another Time (3740 words) on AO3 : A post-Redux story, written in 2009.

[cecilysass]

🥏 TXF Fic Rec #51: "the guts" by wtfmulder

This fic delivers where canon failed us—a cathartic dive into Scully’s hurt and betrayal over Diana and the fallout it caused for the M/S partnership post-One Son.

It serves up some truly delicious angst, the sweet anguish that you can’t help but beg for more, building with slow-burn tension that finally boils over. What’s more, this rendition of jealous!Mulder in the last chapter is pure chef’s kiss perfection.

---

🥏 on AO3 🥏 its sequel “the incision”, and a WIP final part “cauterize”.

author: @wtfmulder length: short, 9,000+ words season: season 6, 6x11 Two Fathers/One Son pairing(s): M/S UST tags: episode-related, angst, jealousy, rift, Scully-POV, Diana Fowley rating: G

Tagging @today-in-fic

[cecilysass]

me as a writer

[cecilysass]

Hi! Secret Santa here. Just wondering what are some of your favorite fics? I hope you're having a great week 🫶

YAY!! You know my week was rough (I have an ear infection), but your message brightened my day. There are SO many amazing fics, I like a lot of fluffy stuff and am a solid S8/S9 denier. Honestly, a list of favorite fics would take forever but here are some of my favorites from Fictober:

Literally everything by Baroness Blixen and MSRAfter Dark. I love Leiascully’s writing, particularly Poang! But any of her stories set during the original run are my favorite.

Thursday in space wrote this fic and it’s one of my all time faves now.

Here are some others I’ve recently bookmarked, but my tastes are all over the shop, lol.

dad - thatfragilecapricorn - The X-Files [Archive of Our Own]

It's Not Like You Spent a Lot of Time at Home - Chapter 1 - Katy_KT_Katie - The X-Files [Archive of Our Own]

Honest Man - Chapter 1 - cecily_sass - The X-Files [Archive of Our Own]

[cecilysass]

filter on ao3 that only shows fic by women in their 40s who has a degree and works an office job and probably leaves authors notes that are like “sorry for the wait on the chapter guys! i had to give birth to my third kid😂”

[cecilysass]

Not really a question but thank you so so so much for sharing your writing !!!!

Your fanfics have been one of my favourite parts of finding this fandom and I think about them so much ❤️

This is such a lovely thing to say, Anon. I really, really appreciate you telling me this today. ❤️ Thank you.

[cecilysass]

Hail, poangpal!

Having a good week? Anything special, wonderful, cozy happening in your world?

Hi poangpal! I’m not going to lie, there could be more cozy things happening here. A rain storm caused our power to flicker at work today, that led the fire alarm to go off and then the whole building had to evacuate to a nearby field to stand uncovered in the pouring rain until it was checked out. Because I work at a middle school, no one complained at all —no wait actually everyone did. And I was soaking wet like I had been standing fully clothed in the shower.

But OKAY enough complaining. Things are in actuality not too bad here. Happy about the holidays coming. Doing some writing. Thinking about 2025 goals. What about everyone else?

[cecilysass]

Fic: Forget-me-not

3100 words; M for sexual situations; almost post-Oubliette smut for the POÄNG Pals first-time challenge

Scully was expecting the knock on her door. Mulder had flung her hands away so violently, back at the river. He’d never done that before, no matter how upset he was. She was giving him space, but she knew he’d come to her. It had been too strange a moment between them, a dissonance that craved resolution.

She sat on the edge of the bed in her pajamas, feeling prim. Her hair was still in a towel. It had been a relief to wash away the chill of the day. There was mud on her shoes that she hadn’t had the energy to deal with. She’d have to brush them before she packed. Mulder’s clothes were surely worse. He’d waded deeper into the case, literally and metaphorically. She’d accused him of taking it too personally, and she stood by that, but she knew how that had stung him. She knew he hated these cases. She knew he longed for them too, on some level, that opportunity to put some other family back together.

When the knock came, she still startled. She unwound the towel from her hair and draped it over her shoulders as she padded across the carpet in her bare feet. The peephole revealed Mulder standing in the hallway. She opened the door and let him in; he entered silently. His hair was damp from his own shower, and he’d changed into a black t-shirt and grey sweatpants. He sprawled into the somewhat grubby chair that sat by the desk in her room, gnawing on the side of his thumb.

Scully went back to the bed, sitting cross-legged on it now as she used the towel to squeeze more water out of her hair. They sat quietly for a few minutes, the silence between them a odd familiar mixture of companionable and strained. It was the post-case drop: a time for analysis, decompression, and explanation. Mulder, with no religious traditions, had few outlets for his guilt or gratitude. Scully had assumed a role as his ersatz confessor. They shared the burden of their sins and errors.

(read the rest on AO3)

[cecilysass]

Curious to know the results~.

[cecilysass]

i could do a great one of those “get ready with me” morning routine videos. like hi welcome to my channel everyone! first thing i do when i wake in the morning is i step outside and i take a deep breath and i get real high and i scream from the top of my lungs what’s going on—

[cecilysass]

4 Side Dish Fics for U.S. Thanksgiving

Some of you don't celebrate but might want to dip in temporarily through fiction. Some of you might need something fast to read while you hide in the bathroom and read on your phone. Just four quick fics (including one of mine) -- I'm sure there are many more.

far away to the west and south - audries A season 6 character study set at Thanksgiving. A particularly well-written contribution to that beloved genre of "party at the Gunmen's."

How To Fake An Orgasm - sab and punk This Thanksgiving-set story is an unusual jealousy fic (with Mulder/other, so beware if that bothers you) in that it shows Scully's jealousy playing out in a very understated, subtle way. Mulder decides to try dating, dates a normal woman; it gradually unravels. This DOES end MSR.

Seven Days - Jintian This is actually a fic centered on Mulder's fraught relationship with his mom, although it also shows the tight post-Amor Fati link between Mulder and Scully. Painful, beautiful.

How To Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers . This is my Thanksgiving fic, so obvious self-promotion. I wrote the first chapter as an exchange prompt asking for early season Thanksgiving, so it's set season 1. Then I added on four other Thanksgivings in different years.

[cecilysass]

her ass is not listening

[cecilysass]

Anyone got a good MSR fic rec for me? Something maybe rare or that is a personal fave of yours? I feel like I have read so much, but I know there’s still more. Even if you rec something I’ve read but it’s been a while, I’d be happy.

-Long is better, but short is good, too.

- Any rating

- AU or canon divergent or compliant; it’s all good

- I love angst, I love slow burn, I only like kidfic if it is angsty, but I do like it then lol

- I really, really love marriage of convenience / they have sex for non-romantic reasons and then worry about their feelings

Really pretty open minded if you sell me on something though. Anyone got a fave?

[cecilysass]

CHAPTER ONE (1/16):

Not far above the pavement of US-220, the forest dripped. The rain was gentle but steady, the highway as black and slick as a surfacing seal. Ahead, they could just make out the panning red and blue lights of a tangle of squad cars. The trees that edged the roadway pushed in and down, oppressive as low-hanging clouds. Beside her, Mulder sighed. 

They’d been awoken early by a call from a Sheriff three counties down and four over, who’d heard of Mulder by reputation. They had a body and a bit of a situation and would he and his partner come take a look? It was the first time that Scully had stayed over, and she’d felt embarrassed that she was there when the call came in though it wasn’t as though either of them had trumpeted her presence. She’d rolled out of bed and refused to meet his eye as he hung up on the Sheriff and dialed Skinner. 

Later, when he walked into his kitchen, dressed and shaven, he’d said, “Listen, Scully, if you regret what we’ve been—” 

“I don’t,” she interrupted him, handing him a steaming mug of coffee and finally bringing her eyes to his. “I don’t.” 

“Mea cuppa,” he’d said quietly, raising the brew to his lips. She’d been forced to smile at the pun.

It hadn’t been fair of her to seduce him, though it had been a glacial, intellectual courtship, inevitable, really, in every sense of the word. Mulder was tender-hearted and obsessive and after their second time together, she should have known that no amount of her stoicism or sense of workplace propriety would keep them from wanting to be together all the time. Last night, she’d had a foot out the door and was pushing him away with one hand and pulling him back with the other, his fingers tangled in her hair in rapacious bliss. 

They still weren’t sure how to be with each other, and that morning they’d walked down to Mulder’s car in a loaded, restless silence. 

Mulder eased up on the gas as they approached the cluster of khaki police cruisers and cut the windshield wipers. There were deputies leaning against hoods, wearing those ridiculous plastic rain beanies over their service caps and trying to appear important. Mulder pulled over, parking haphazardly on the berm, and looked out his window where a small inland lake spread out to the east and west, the body they’d come to investigate prostrate under a blue tarp on top of a thin strip of dark, mealy sand. 

They got out of the car and the Sheriff, holding a large black golf umbrella, pushed his way through his men, stepping up to Mulder and holding out a hand. 

“Thanks for coming,” the man said by way of greeting, and Mulder nodded toward him and introduced him to Scully.

“Call came in this morning,” the Sheriff said after trading introductions. “Dog walker found him.” He turned to one of the deputies, a younger man with blond eyebrows and a pixie-ish nose, freckles smattered over the bridge of it. “Avery, you got the file?”

Deputy Avery stepped forward. “Right here, sir,” the younger man said, handing over a beat up file folder—a brown, vintage-looking thing with a faux-wood finish. He gave the two agents a friendly smile and stepped back. 

Scully nodded at the folder now gripped in the Sheriff’s hand. “You got an ID?”

The Sheriff sort of shook his head and nodded at the same time. “That’s why we called you out,” he said, handing over the file. “No apparent cause of death,” he added as an afterthought. “Forensic unit out of Richmond are on their way.”

Mulder flipped the file open and read for a moment before looking back up. “Daly Carmichael. Missing persons?” The older man nodded, looking uncomfortable. “Must feel good to close such a cold case,” Mulder went on before looking back down at the paperwork. Scully leaned over to get a look at it. The victim was male, was in his early twenties when he’d gone missing in 1974, last seen wearing white sneakers and jeans and a yellow striped top.

“You’re confident of the identification?” she asked dubiously, ‘74 being a quarter of a century past.

The Sheriff swallowed. “There was no ID on the body, but…we’re pretty confident.”

Mulder flipped the file closed. “Let’s take a look,” he said. 

“Andy!” The Sheriff called out, and a deputy who had been standing near the tarp-covered body waved back. “Andy was first on scene,” he said to the two agents. 

Mulder noticed that when he and Scully began to pick their way down the embankment towards the small beach, none of the members of the sheriff’s department joined them.

As they approached, Mulder got a better look at Andy the deputy, who barely looked old enough to drive. It was likely he’d pulled corpse-sitting duties in an act of hazing. His arms were crossed over his chest while the walkie clipped to his shoulder gave a steady susurration of dispatch chatter. He gave off an air of indifference, but he was plowing through a stick of gum, working his tongue at it elaborately, snapping it nervously through his teeth. 

“What time did the call come in?” Scully asked, crouching down next to the body, her knees softly popping. 

“About six am,” he answered, then added, “ma’am.”

“Someone walking their dog, the sheriff said?” She lifted up a corner of the tarp to get a look at the victim’s face. Mulder watched as her eyebrows furrowed into a chevron of confusion.

The deputy nodded, continuing to gnaw on his gum, and hooked his thumbs through his shiny utility belt. 

Mulder noted pawprints and the shoe prints of the dog walker who’d found the body. The sand underneath them was damp, but firm, and showed only a few other prints, all of them looking to be standard police-issue. 

A couple of bright green leaves cartwheeled across the marks, propelled by a gust of wind, one of them briefly catching on the deputy’s shoe before going on its merry way.

“Did you examine the body?” Mulder asked him, finally looking up.

“There was no pulse, no ID on him,” the deputy replied. 

“How did you—”

“Hey Mulder?” There was a sharpness to her tone that made Mulder stop talking. “Can you take a look here?”

Scully peeled back the corner of the tarp, revealing a young-looking man with dark hair. He was dressed in jeans, white tennis shoes and a yellow striped tee shirt. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Mulder glanced down at his hand, which was still holding the archaic looking missing persons file. “Huh,” he said. Scully reached up and touched his wrist, finding his pulse suddenly beating rabbit-quick. 

“If you don’t mind,” the deputy said, clearing his throat. “I’m going to…” He hooked a thumb up toward the rest of his compatriots and beat a hasty retreat.

“Those clothes don’t look twenty years old,” Mulder said. 

“Twenty-six,” Scully corrected, still hunched close to the ground. “Can I see the file?” Mulder handed it over without a word, and Scully flipped through it quickly, her eyes scanning the contents. 

“This can’t be right,” she said.  

Mulder shrugged. “Let’s ignore that particular elephant in the room, and see what else we find,” he suggested, and gave Scully a moment to collect her thoughts. “What can you tell me about the body?”

Scully turned back to the victim in front of them.

“Lividity isn’t fixed. Temperature is more difficult with the weather and exposure. I’ll have a better idea on the time of death after the autopsy.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, the victim appears to be male. Cursory examination, I’d say he’s early twenties, if that.” With this, she shot him a look. “No obvious cause of death, though I suspect drowning. He’s on the shore. His clothes are wet.”

“It has been raining,” Mulder said, snapping on a pair of latex gloves that he’d produced from his pocket. He leaned down and started unlacing the man’s shoes. 

“Mulder, we should wait until the forensics unit can come in and process the scene.” 

“I just want to check something, before the rain gets any worse,” he said, and carefully removed the victim’s shoe. He pointed to the top of the man’s foot. “Look,” he said, and Scully had to bend down to look at what he was trying to show her. The sock on top of the man’s foot was dry. He hadn’t been submerged in the lake. 

Mulder carefully put the shoe back on, and moved to reach inside the man’s pockets. 

“The deputy said there was no ID on him,” Scully reminded him. 

“I want to know what else is in here,” Mulder said, and pulled his hand back, producing several gold coins and a small dark rock.

He flipped them all over in his rubber-covered palm. “Odd markings,” he observed, looking at the coins. 

Scully leaned in to look. There were faces on the coins, but not the profiles of presidents or queens or even Caesars. They were clearly old, the etchings worn down, but she could still make out faces; some laughing, some looking angry, one wearing a crown of leaves and looking ghoulish. “I don’t see a country of origin,” she said. “They could be archaic. Maybe he was a collector.”

Mulder gave her a sideways glance but didn’t reply. The rain had turned to more of a mist and was curling the hair around her face, lending her beauty a neoclassical verve. He had to stop himself from reaching out to touch it.

“What’s the rock?” Scully asked, reaching forward to graze it lightly with her finger. 

“I think,” Mulder said, squinting at it. “I think it’s an ingot of iron.”

Mulder looked up and out around the lake and trees that surrounded it. There were no waves to speak of, but above the water was a line of algae in an undulating, unending rope, lying along the sand where the water had pushed it when the wind was stronger. The shore was dotted with round, smooth stones and the sharp carapaces of invasive zebra mussels. Twenty yards beyond the body, Mulder could see a child’s abandoned plastic bucket with no handle, and closer to the corpse, a beer bottle with a faded orange label. The hem of the forest looked impenetrable, the edge a solid mass of thick cedar and bracken with one small opening due east of where they stood, as dark and forbidding as the mouth of a cave. Mulder gave an involuntary shudder and turned back to his partner. 

“Okay,” he said, turning to her. “Let’s talk about the elephant.”

“Our victim appears not to have aged since 1974,” Scully sighed. 

“My kind of case,” Mulder smiled.

“Our kind,” she corrected, which widened his grin considerably. 

“What do you know about the fae, Scully?”

Good Christ, he had a theory already, Scully thought. 

“Probably a whole lot less than I will five minutes from now,” she sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and settling in. After a moment, she realized he was waiting for her to actually answer, but she was having none of it; she knew the precise trajectory of his thoughts. “You think this man was taken by fairies, Mulder? That’s a stretch, even for you.”

“It’s been suggested that fairies live in dimensions parallel to our own. String theory posits that there are up to ten or eleven dimensions that exist in the universe, not just the four we humans experience. We can move within those four dimensions. Who’s to say other beings can’t move among more? Or move us with them?”

“So this man hasn’t aged because he went to live with the fairies? Mulder, string theory smooths out the mathematical inconsistencies that currently exist between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Yes, there may be other dimensions we can’t see, but time—one of those dimensions that we can measure—only moves one way: forward.”

“Doesn’t the theory of relativity posit that time slows when you’re moving faster than the speed of light?” Scully heaved a sigh. Only Mulder would pick a physics fight with her. “Eminent theosophist E. L. Gardner likened fairies to butterflies, whose function was to provide an essential link between the energy of the sun and the plants of Earth. They would travel between. He claimed that growth of a plant which we regard as the customary and inevitable result of associating the three factors of sun, seed, and soil would never take place if, and I quote ‘the fairy builders were absent.’”

“Please don’t tell me that you’re about to suggest that fairies are actually aliens. And that they’ve found a way to travel faster than the speed of light.”

“You said it, not me.” 

“Mulder!”

“What?” 

“Little gray men are a far cry from ethereal sprites who use protective charms and mischievously lead travelers astray. You can’t have it both ways.”

“I’m not trying to have it any way, I’m merely suggesting avenues of inquiry lining up with the facts of the case as we have them. Anyway, Gardner described fairies as having no clean-cut shape but rather ‘small, hazy, and somewhat luminous clouds of color with a brighter sparkish nucleus.’”

“You’re describing a proton.”

“So was he,” Mulder shrugged. “But taking away the strange coins and the ingot of iron—historically believed to repel fairies, I might add—how do you account for the fact that this man hasn’t aged in over twenty years?”

“Good genes?”

“The only person I know with genes that good is you. And don’t you have Celtic forebears?”

Scully blushed. It wasn’t fair, flirting. Their relationship was new, and their romance improbable.

Mulder threw a look up to the local law enforcement leaning against their vehicles and watching them work. He reached out and squeezed Scully’s hand once. She looked at him with the same kind of embarrassed moue as when a stranger's dog sticks its nose in your crotch.

“I know this is hard for you,” he said, his voice low. 

“It’s fine,” she said, an old safeword. 

He remembered her sitting in her bed in the oncology ward, small and slight, as withered as a new chick emerging from a shell. Her eyes had been sunken and her small shoulders stuck out from beneath the hospital gown like wire coat hangers. I feel fine , she’d said. 

Mulder felt her skin’s warmth before releasing her hand and he walked over to the bottle of beer, picking it up and turning it so that he could read the label. “Huh,” he said, holding it up so that Scully could see it. “Oberon.”

“What?”

“The kind of beer. Bell’s Brewery. It’s called ‘Oberon.’”

“The king of the fairies?” Scully said dubiously. 

Mulder shrugged once again, and she sighed. “Leave it where it is,” she said, casting another glance at the local boys in brown. “Let the forensics unit bag it.”

A big blue van had just pulled up behind their fleet sedan. The team from Richmond had arrived.

Mulder set the bottle carefully back down where he found it. When he straightened, he looked towards the forest and could have sworn that the hole through the bracken of the woods looked bigger than it had a few minutes before. He took a few steps toward it.

“Mulder?” called out his partner. 

“I just want to check something out,” he called over his shoulder without looking back. 

The forest was restless, the tops of the trees agitated and shivering. 

A thought occurred to him and he turned around. “You want to come with me?” 

The look she gave him communicated quite clearly that she did not, but she turned to follow him nonetheless, another sigh passing between her lips in a steamy vapor. 

“Look,” she said, pointing forward toward the trees when she reached his side. “There are footprints coming out.”

Mulder peered down. Sure enough, there was one set of human footprints leading from the dark opening, the edges of the prints crumbly and ill defined from the rain. 

They traded a glance and went in.

[cecilysass]

Fic Friday (49)

Title: How to Eat Pleasant Meals with Coworkers

Author: @cecilysass

Word Count: 16,614

AO3 Description: Season 1. Thanksgiving Day. Mulder is determined to work all day. Scully has broken up with Ethan, which messes up her plans for dinner. And then: four more Thanksgivings after that.

My thoughts: If you're in the US, Thanksgiving is next Thursday, and what better way to celebrate than reading fic! This story follows Mulder and Scully's relationship over multiple Turkey Day holidays and it's interesting to see how their relationship dynamic changes over the years. I'm partial to the first chapter but all of them are great, even if there is some angst (looking at you, chapter 4). The UST in the first two is especially good, too. Highly recommend this story as a complement to your cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie.

Enjoy! Tagging @today-in-fic