#SPEAKING OF how mulder looks at her

[astralzeraphias]

“he was mentally ill. this monster was a- was a sick fantasy. a product of his dementia.”

“…i saw it too. does that make me disturbed? demented? does… that make me sick too?”

[thursdayinspace]

Soooo today's lunchtime smut contains no smut at all. It's also part of a WIP. Which didn't exist before I wrote this, but it does now. This is just feelings. Lots of them.

She’s been meaning to go home for the last hour or so. The fact that she’s still here, on his couch, feet on the coffee table, her body feeling sleep-heavy and her eyes closed…it might mean something or it might not. But here she is. He’s next to her mirroring her position, and she doesn’t think he’s asleep, she’d have heard him falling asleep from the shift in his breathing. It’s warm in here, and familiar. The walls around this house keep the world outside. That was their purpose when they bought it, and it is their purpose now, even if the reason for seeking shelter in here has changed.

She’s been meaning to go home, so why won’t her body move from this place?

When he rolls his head towards her to look at her she can feel it, and she looks back at him through half-opened eyelids and is powerless against the slow smile on her face. “I should go before I fall asleep,” she says, her voice low to fit the dim quiet of the room around them.

“You can’t drive like this,” he says, and something unravels in her chest. The last remaining tension seeps from her tired muscles.

“So it’s okay if I stay here tonight?” It wouldn’t be the first time. She still feels like she should ask. This thing between them has a name, but until one of them speaks it out loud, it has to remain vague. Undefined.

“Always,” he says, and she thinks about how his voice has changed since the day she met him all those many years ago. He’s not the same person, but at same time he is; he’s Mulder.

“Okay.” She closes her eyes again. The affirmation of right now is enough for the moment.

He gets up and she sighs; she was comfortable like this, with the warmth of him a steadying presence against her side. But then his arms slide underneath her shoulders, her legs. “Come on,” he says softly, and she blinks at him slowly as he lifts her.

“What are you—”

“We’re too old to fall asleep on the couch like this.”

Bed, then. She wraps her arms around him and leans her head against his shoulder. “I can walk,” she says, not expecting him to set her down, not wanting him to.

“I know you can.”

She feels small in his arms and it feels good. Out there in the world, she has to stand on tiptoe, spine straight, head raised high, making herself a giant. With him, she can let go. With him, she can be all the versions of herself that live inside her and he will look at her and know her.

“Thank you,” she says. For so many things. For letting her know him.

She thought she knew the ways in which the world could be known. Definable, quantifiable facts. Ever since she met him, he’s made her waver in her certainty. He never questioned the facts themselves, but from the start he asked the same thing over and over: How can you know?

This, them, what binds them together, is the greatest mystery of all. She has the words: love, friendship, loyalty, devotion. A neatly packaged set of ingredients that make up their relationship. But when she looks a little closer, she can’t define the words in any way that satisfies her scientist’s heart.

He kisses her hair and she breathes him in and she can’t put this into any tautological definition, any mathematical equation: a + b = c; Mulder + Scully = love. She can’t find a set of qualities that make up love. It just is. It’s in the way he looks at her, in the way her face breaks into a smile when he calls her, in the way it feels to kiss him. It’s in the way he carries her up the stairs to the bedroom.

“I have to brush my teeth,” she mumbles against his neck and he sets her down gently and follows her into the bathroom.

They brush their teeth side by side, the way they used to, and no time at all has passed since then, except the lifetime that lies between the day she left him and this moment. She has pajamas in one of the drawers of his dresser. She puts on one of his t-shirts instead.

When the lights are off she rolls into him, sticks her cold feet between his legs and rests her head on his chest. He holds her close and doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.

She has no definition for home either.

His warmth becomes hers as she drifts on the edge of sleep. Nothing warms her like he does. She could be happy without him if she really tried. She could live a simpler life. He’s complicated, their life is complicated, and even though it would be possible, she doesn’t want to imagine anything else. She loves him with her entire heart.

“Mulder?” she whispers.

“Yeah?”

“I want to come home.”

He hugs her tighter and the beating of his heart under her ear remains slow and steady. “You are.”

She’d been meaning to go home. And she did. Maybe she knows the definition of the word, in all the ways that matter.

[television-overload]

fate is the handspike

(an X-Files ficlet)

[Read on AO3]

Summary:

Starting on February 23, 1964, Teena Mulder begins to worry about her young son. At first, she thinks maybe he's wishing for a little sister, a wish that will be granted very soon. But he insists the little girl he talks to is called Dana, and she's too little to play, but she likes when he reads his books to her.

(fic below the cut)

i.

At first, Teena thinks it's cute.

"She's just a baby, mommy, she can't play yet," he'd say.

"Oh, is that right?" she'd reply, indulging him in his childish fantasies. Perhaps this was his way of asking for a sister. The other moms in the neighborhood often urged her to give Fox a sibling, citing a child's need for company and social engagement, but Fox had always seemed so happy to play alone. She's not on the best of terms with her husband at the moment, either, which complicates things.

But then there's times when she sees Fox on the floor, legs splayed out before him as he recites his favorite picture books to his imaginary friend, and she wonders if she ought to be worried. Just a little.

Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Clifford the Big Red Dog... The boy has a photographic memory. Though he's too young to properly read, he has a grasp on the basic plots and recounts them in great detail, turning the pages as he goes.

"This one is called 'Where the Wild Things Are,' Dana," he says, because his friend's name—he insists—is Dana. He turns the book in his hand and shows the colorful illustration on the cover to a patch of carpet on the living room floor. "Don't worry, it's not scary," he assures her. Her. It. Whatever it is he's spent his days talking to since late February.

When he tells the story, he uses his own name, instead of 'Max.' That's how she'd always read it to him, and that's the only way he knows.

"And Fox told the monsters to be still!" he narrates with enthusiasm. "He used a magic trick and looked right in their BIG yellow eyes, and they were all scared. They said Fox is the most wild thing of all, and they made him king!"

ii.

There was one night when she'd woken to find Fox standing in the corner of his room, speaking softly to the wall.

"Shh, it's okay, Dana," he soothed in his little voice. "Here, I'll sing you a song. Twinkle twinkle little star...."

She never tells Bill what she's seen. He's always too busy to notice himself. But others know.

"He's quite an imaginative young fellow," Spender notes, taking a draw from his cigarette as Fox rolls around in the grass outside the house in Quonochontaug. Since "Dana" learned to crawl, he's been even more preoccupied than usual. He shows her all his toys, tells her the names of all his action figures. He announces to his mother one day that he's going to teach Dana how to walk. That she can only stand on her own for a little bit right now, but she doesn't cry anymore when she falls down.

Bill, if he ever catches wind of this, must think he's talking about one of the other kids from Teena's ladies' group. But there's no "Dana" in this neighborhood. Not on the Vineyard, either. She's checked.

iii.

The day she finds out she's pregnant, a part of her wonders. Though her knowledge of her husband's work is small, she knows enough to gather that things she might have thought impossible, could in fact be possible. Perhaps her son had been having visions of his baby sister, long before she was even conceived. Maybe it had simply been a sign that he would one day be a big brother. Soon.

She'd long since dispelled thoughts of ghosts and hauntings and exorcisms.

He tells Dana all about the baby in mommy's tummy. He giggles and makes silly faces, pausing in between sentences, which she gathers must mean his friend has developed the ability to speak.

"Mommy, she said my name! That's right! Fox! Fox!"

iv.

When Samantha is born, "Dana" seems to disappear overnight. This, at least, supports her theory that he had simply been preparing himself for a new sibling, and after a few years, she's completely dismissed the issue. Fox shows no other signs of strange or unusual behavior. He is nothing but a doting big brother, who occasionally gets annoyed by his freckle-faced kid sister, as any brother is wont to do. He reads to her, plays games with her, watches the television with her. They're two peas in a pod, and not once does the name "Dana" escape his lips. She is all but forgotten.

Until he's twelve years old. Samantha is gone, and Teena lacks the patience to deal with his questioning.

"Mom? Does the name 'Dana' mean anything to you?" he asks.

"What? Of course not, Fox, why would you ask such a thing?"

He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping. "No reason. Forget I asked."

v.

When Fox lays awake at night, the bedroom next to his now dull and empty, he thinks he can hear a voice. It isn't Samantha's—though he'd thought so at first.

"By heaven, man," she reads, "we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!"

What does this girl know about fate? What does she know of this upside-down world?

"Read the next chapter, Dana!" he hears another girl's voice speak. The words are faint—muffled—like he's underwater. But her voice is clear.

He falls asleep, like most nights, listening to the tales of Ahab and Starbuck, and a great white whale.

-.-.-

Tag List ♡: @today-in-fic @agent-troi @baronessblixen @captainsolocide @cutemothman @deathsbestgirl @edierone @enigmaticxbee @figureofdismay @frogsmulder @hippocampouts @invidiosa @numinousmysteries @randomfoggytiger @skelavender @teenie-xf @thursdayinspace

[baronessblixen]

Fictober Day 27: Keeping A Professional Distance

Prompt: "Let me remind you"

For the anon who asked for: Instead of there is only one bed, there are too many beds. Rating: T, wc: 973

Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober24

For Mulder, Chicago proves to be an unlucky place.

Thanks to a system error, their motel reservation has been canceled. But the receptionist quickly reassures him: “Don’t worry, we still have one room left.”

One room – for the two of them. Mulder glances at Scully; their budding relationship has yet to take flight. They’re still in that early phase, tiptoeing around each other. In short: they haven’t had sex yet.

Neither of them wants it to happen on assignment – even if they closed the case. The last time they shared a room, and a bed, was a year ago in Kroner, Kansas.

They had kept to their respective sides and everything had been civil. That had been before their kiss at New Year’s. Before the second and tenth kiss they’ve shared by now. Kissing is all they’ve done. Work always getting in the way of more.

And now said work is making them share a room.

“We don’t usually use this room,” the receptionist explains, pushing the door open wide. It’s easy to see why. “This is where we store our extra beds. Pick whichever one you like. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“This is…something,” Mulder mumbles once they’re alone. The whole room looks as if someone’s played Tetris using real beds. There’s a narrow path from the door to the bathroom and that’s it. The rest is beds of various sizes.

“Well, at least we won’t have to worry about where to sleep.” Scully tosses her overnight bag onto one of the beds and squeezes past him to get to the bathroom. Mulder just stares at the plethora of sleeping places and can’t help but feel overwhelmed.

What are the odds of them getting stuck in one room with not one, but an abundance of beds? Somewhere someone is laughing, he’s sure of it. He closes his eyes and throws his bag; wherever it lands, he’ll sleep.

It’s just his luck that it lands on the bed farthest away from Scully’s.

*

Nine beds – yes, he counted – and not a single TV in this dreadful motel room. Mulder knows he should sleep. If for no other reason than it knocking him out until they can leave this place.

For a man who slept on his couch for years, a room full of beds resembles a nightmare. And the fact that Scully is in this room, too, but so far away that he can barely hear her breathe, is making him anxious.

He could have switched beds. Hell, he still could, but he wouldn’t want Scully to think he has any ulterior motives.

“Mulder, I can hear you think from here,” she says, surprising him. He was certain she was asleep already. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Why aren’t you?”

“I asked you first.” He wishes he could see her. How can they be so close and yet so far away at the same time? He wonders what she’d say if he asked her to move closer.

“This room is creepy.”

“It’s not what I expected,” Scully acknowledges.

“How is your bed?” Mulder asks. “Comfy?”

“It’s nice enough.”

“Are you cold at all?”

“No,” she says and he can’t tell if he wants to hear disappointment in her voice or if it’s actually there.

“You’re not cold, you’re comfortable, so why are you awake?” Mulder hears shuffling from across the room. When Scully speaks next, it sounds closer than before.

“I was thinking about Henry Weems,” she says. “About cause and effect.”

“You’re having profound thoughts and here I am, counting the beds in this room, trying to calculate the distance between mine and yours.”

“Why?”

She may be the one with the degree in physics, but he’s certain her voice is even closer. Or maybe he’s imagining things again.

“Let me remind you that there are nine beds in this room,” Mulder says. “And somehow we ended up on opposite ends of the room. I’m sure the FBI will appreciate us keeping our distance.”

“I’m not.” It’s a whisper, but he hears it loud and clear because she’s right next to him. He blinks a few times, just to make sure she’s real and not a trick of his imagination.

“Hi,” he says with a smile.

“Hi.”

“Got lonely?”

“Yes,” she admits shyly. “I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to be… closer.”

“Why would I mind?” he asks quietly, the darkness surrounding them making it easier to admit it.

“Like you said, there are nine beds. When they told us there was only one room, I thought… well, you can imagine what I thought.”

“So did I,” he says. “And I wasn’t sure what- what to make of it. We haven’t exactly done that yet.”

“We’re adults, Mulder.”

“Then why is it so difficult to talk about it?” He laughs gently.

“I’m glad there’s more than one bed.” He knows she’s right, but her admission feels like a needle prick to his heart – and his ego. “We’re not forced to share a bed,” she goes on and suddenly, she’s no longer in another bed at all. She’s in his. Snuggling against him like a cat. “We’re doing this because we want to.”

“What’s the FBI gonna say?” he murmurs into her hair, his eyes fluttering shut. He presses a warm kiss against her hairline.

“They’ll never know.” She shifts in his arms and starts kissing his jaw, his cheeks, and then, finally, his mouth. Will he ever not be amazed that they do this now? Will he ever get used to her intoxicating taste? He can’t imagine that he will. He can’t get enough of her.

“There were nine beds,” Mulder mumbles into her mouth, “and we kept a professional distance.”

“Of course we did,” Scully replies, deepening the kiss.

Mulder thinks that maybe his luck is about to change after all.

[qveerthe0ry]

The D-Files

Summary: Something weird happens when Dieter tries to post his X-Files fanfiction Word Count: 14,941 Pairing: Dieter Bravo x Fox Mulder x Dana Scully Rating: 18+ mdni Warnings: threesome, oral (m & f receiving), vaginal fingering, unprotected PIV, rimming, d/s undertones, poor explanation of time travel and quantum physics, it's a little cracky tbh Beta: the one and only @for-a-longlongtime obviously A/N: listen. I have ten episodes left of the whole series so if something is totally off and not accurate to x files canon just ignore me :) Also I'm absolutely aware of how completely ridiculous this fic is but I heard the voice of Dieter Bravo speak to me and could not ignore it Ao3 link

Curled up under at least three blankets, in just his underwear, stoned out of his mind (just weed— he’s California sober now) Dieter watches Mulder and Scully shake hands for the first time. 

The first time for them. 

He’s had to have seen this episode at least a thousand times by now. 

He’s in one of those funks again. His therapist calls it a depressive episode, but that’s so dramatic. He’s just a little bit down in the dumps thinking about how worthless he is and how no one’s ever really loved him before, not even his own parents, and how he hates himself so much he’s not sure if he would ever get rid of the guilt of letting someone else love him because he knows he’d just be a waste of their time.

It’s no big deal. Nothing an X-Files rewatch, weed, and a footlong Subway sandwich can’t fix.

Except this time, the way Scully and Mulder instantly mesh so well kind of makes him feel like he smoked too much pot. His stomach’s a little queasy as he watches him give her his undivided attention, and fuck, maybe this is a job above these FBI agents’ pay grade. 

He eyes that stupid notebook on his nightstand, still wrapped in plastic from the Amazon order. 

His therapist told him to start writing his thoughts down in a journal. He doesn’t like writing. It’s not what he does. He can’t stand those actors who think just because they’ve starred in a few movies means they should start writing them, or scrawling down some convoluted, conceited novel. Just fucking act, y’know? 

But as Scully throws herself into Mulder’s arms after knowing him for only a few days, and they both look so comfortable, Dieter rips open the packaging and swallows down the bile threatening his esophagus.

—

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing here. What should I even write down in this thing? How lonely I am? Get in line, right? I’m not the only one. Even though sometimes it feels like I am.

Maybe it feels so bad because I know I did this to myself. Everyone always told me I’d always be a piece of shit. Even when I was young. And I just let their narrative take over and now here I am. The biggest piece of shit. 

It’s like Mulder. Everyone always called him Spooky and said he was too ‘out there’ and he ended up in the basement chasing Bigfoot. 

Except I don’t have a hot redhead in my life to balance me out or slowly fall in love with me.

And I’m not a tall, boyishly handsome, charming FBI agent. 

I’m just a washed-up actor, and a slob, and a drug addict. That’s probably why.

Golly gee, doc, this sure made me feel better.

—

He writes in his journal a bit here and there. He also slowly rots away in his bed, takes far too little showers and far too many THC gummies. He talks to his therapist two weeks later and tells her he’s been writing down his thoughts and her impressed hum and “That’s very good, Dieter” has him riding a high the rest of the afternoon. 

So he keeps it up. 

He doesn’t leave the house much, and when he does, he just wants to get back into his permanently affixed blanket fort to watch more X-Files and get high. 

He writes a little about his day, about what he’s mulling over in his mind. But as he reaches the end of season two, he’s out of his funk enough to start feeling horny again. 

Who wouldn’t, watching the world’s hottest FBI agents on a near constant loop?

So who can blame him when his journal thoughts get a little spicy?

—

God, Mulder’s such an idiot sometimes. So is Scully. They waste so much time getting on each others’ nerves. This entire show is just years-long foreplay. I swear they get off on irritating each other.

I irritate so many people, why aren’t any of them ever turned on about it? 

They should have just let them kiss in the first season. There could have been so much sex. All the motel rooms these two wasted! On the government’s dime, too! 

Rental car sex, alleyway sex, OFFICE sex. The Sex Files. That’s what this show should have been. 

I wonder if Mulder’s better at eating ass or pussy. I just know he’s freaky with all the porn and phone sex hotlines. And the auto erotic asphyxiation thing, can’t forget about that. I’d choke the shit out of him if he wanted that. With my hand or my cock, his choice. 

I wonder if Scully is freaky, too? I think she’d deny it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was filthy kinky. She always has to be in control. I wonder if she’d be like that in bed, too? I wonder if she’d get off on torturing me and making me beg. Or maybe she’s always so in control that she wants to relinquish all of it when she’s in bed.

—

Dieter remembers that fanfiction exists shortly after that. 

His dick is raw and he hasn’t even made it through half of the explicit entries on archive of our own. But everything’s so… Vanilla. 

Don’t get him wrong, he’s a total sucker for tender, missionary love-making. But where’s the experimentation? Where’s the creativity? And why the hell does everyone think Fox Mulder is such a dom?

Just look at him.

He’s pathetic. Scully could have him begging on his knees with nothing but the snap of her finger and one of her sexy, stern glances. Maybe he’s projecting a little bit, but not much.

He gripes to his therapist about this while he avoids the topic of his greatest fear being dying without ever having a meaningful relationship in his whole life.

“Have you ever thought about writing your own fanfiction?”

And no, he truly never has. It seems like something so far away from appropriate given his profession. But then again, when has he ever been totally professional?

So he starts writing. At first he finds himself falling into the popular tropes— love confessions and sweet, romantic first times. Just little blurbs in his journal he ends up scrawling out with his pen. There’s enough of that already. He needs to explore the fun stuff with these two.

One night/early morning, he finally grabs his laptop from his rarely-used office. He snuggles up under all the blankets he can find, turns on The X-Files, and gets down to business. 

—

“I’m sorry Scully—”

“Don’t.”

Her icy blue stare pins Mulder in place. His pouty lips close and his sharp jaw clenches as he looks down at his feet.

“You almost got us killed!”

“I wouldn’t have let you get hurt, you know that.”

Scully doesn’t know what comes over her, but she crosses what little distance is between them to grab the back of Mulder’s hair and tug.

His jaw drops and as hard as he tries, he can’t stifle the whimper that slips from his lip. 

“You were reckless with your own life. You can’t— Do you know what I would do if anything ever happened to you?”

Scully’s sharp gaze softens. Tears prickle at Mulder’s eyes, partly from Scully’s death grip and partly because of the way her voice wavers. 

“Scully—”

“Get on your knees.”

——

Dieter fights the heavy, sharp arousal in his gut as he writes Mulder on his knees for Scully. He just knows he’d eat pussy like a champ, what with those sunflower seeds he’s always got between those pillowy lips. He’d be great at sucking cock, too. Dieter thinks they would look so fucking pretty around his own dick.

Or Scully’s strap. 

Perfect.

He stays awake for way too long, writing about Scully trapping Mulder between her thighs for hours, and then making him choke or her strap, and then making him beg and whimper and cry for it as she teases his prostate with her fingers. 

Scully’s so dainty, but the idea of her fucking into her big, tall partner with fury has Dieter leaking into his boxers as he types away. It takes all of Dieter’s willpower to write the sweet aftercare scene. Scully gently cleans up his cum and sweat and tears, telling him what a good boy he was as she pets his hair and kisses his face. 

As soon as Dieter writes the last words, he’s fumbling for his lube and dildo in the bedside drawer. He’s too worked up to prepare properly, and it burns, and he hears Scully’s disappointed tuts in his head as he fucks himself into a mess. 

He whines her name, and Mulder’s name, as filthy images of the two fill his head. 

He comes without even touching his dick. He makes an absolute mess of his sheets and just grinds into the puddle beneath him as he fucks himself through the aftershocks. 

And if he cries a little bit at the thought of two beautiful FBI agents telling him how good he was as they stroke his sweaty skin, that’s between him and his open laptop. 

—

“Do you think I should post my fanfiction?”

His therapist’s perfectly shaped eyebrows perk up. 

“Do you think you should post it?”

“I dunno. Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t it be a little weird? An actor writing fanfiction about characters his peers portrayed?”

His therapist hums. He knows that’s his cue to keep talking, but they just sit in silence for a bit. 

“Do you want to post it?” She asks. 

He huffs. 

“I don’t know. What if everyone hates it?”

She shrugs and nods at him to continue.

“I’m afraid no one’s gonna read it. Or if they do, they’ll hate it. And leave mean comments.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Well yeah, duh.”

She hums again. Dieter rolls his eyes, half at her but half at himself. 

“I know, I know,” he sighs, “I’m a walking contradiction. I crave praise but I’m too afraid to put myself out there to receive any.”

“That’s not necessarily true. You’re an actor. It’s your job to put yourself out there and be consumed and reviewed.”

“Yeah but that’s not me, it’s just the guy they tell me to play.”

His therapist smiles. 

Shit. 

“I think you know what you need to do, Dieter.”

He does leave that therapy session crying, thirty minutes later. If he had a tail, it would be between his legs. 

It takes him six days to work up enough courage to even make an account. And then another two days to pour over every single word he wrote, change it, change it back, wash rinse and repeat. 

When he finally works up the nerve to post it, his laptop dies just as he’s about to press the publish button. 

You gotta be kidding me, he thinks, maybe this is a sign.

But then he thinks about what his therapist would say, that things that are worth it rarely come easy, and that he should probably stop assuming everything is a sign, and so he plugs his laptop in and waits for it to charge enough to come back to life. 

It’s the longest four minutes of his life. 

He stares at the black screen in silence. He blinks at his reflection as he listens to the storm brewing outside his window, only flinching slightly as lightning illuminates his dark room. 

His heart leaps up into his throat when the screen lights up again. Everything’s right where he left it. All he has to do is press that little button. 

He takes one, two, three deep breaths with his finger on the trigger and then—

CRACK

—

Everything hurts. Like, bad.

Dieter groans and tries to blink his eyes open. It’s bright. He’s no stranger to waking up in an unfamiliar place with a terrible headache and no recollection of how or why he’s there. However, he hasn’t touched a party drug in a year and a half, and hasn’t even been to a party for even longer than that. 

He finally blinks away the sleep in his eyes. He’s on the cold ground. The grass is plush and dewy under him. When he sits up, the world spins around him for a few moments and he just barely keeps his stomach from emptying. 

He checks his pockets. At least he has his phone on him. No wallet, though. And he’s in his pajamas, which is fine, not unusual attire for most of his outings. 

He goes to unlock his phone but of course it’s dead. 

Shit. 

He looks around a bit more and all this scenery does not look like Los Angeles. There are hills in the distance that are much more rolling than the jagged peaks in California. The smell of campfire fills the air and it’s humid, he realizes. Stiflingly so. 

He stands up. His joints ache even more than they usually do, stiff and popping. When he runs his hand through his hair he’s got wicked bed head. 

At least he can make out a dirt path amongst the grass and trees around him. He follows it for a while, and just as he thinks he might be wandering to his own death out in the boonies he sees a little shack in the clearing just by what seems to be a lake. 

It looks… Strangely familiar, despite the fact that he’s certain he’s never been here before. There’s a sign that reads “Bait & Tackle” that’s seen better days and a big giant inflatable… something tied down to the roof. 

He scratches his head as he stares. He has the feeling of something being on the tip of his tongue, but it’s on the tip of his brain instead. 

As he approaches, a high-pitched growl startles him out of his daze. His eyes frantically search for the source, and as he walks closer he spots it.

A tiny little yappy Pomeranian, tan and fluffy. 

It hits him all at once. 

He gasps and moves toward the fiesty little thing as his heart pounds. There’s no way…

It snarls and yaps at him as he crouches down to greet it— him. 

Once he starts giving the dog butt pats and head scratches, it warms up to him pretty quickly. He searches for the dog tag hiding under all that fur and gasps as he reads it.

QUEEQUEG

“Oh my god, Queequeg, I thought I’d never see you again, buddy.”

The pup wags his tail at the sound of his name and Dieter goes down on his knees to accept him into his lap. 

“How are you real? What’s happening?”

Tears well at Dieter’s eyes as he holds this fictional dog in his arms, who’s been dead since season 3. Sue him, he’s very confused and vulnerable and it was the most devastating death of the series by far.

As he pets the derpy little thing, he tries to wrap his head around everything that’s going on. Last he remembers, he was holding his breath and clicking the mouse pad and now he’s here, in the middle of nowhere Georgia if he remembers his X-Files trivia correctly. 

Which means this sweet little pup is going to die in this… episode? And if he’s in the episode, that means—

“Hey! What are you doing? That’s my dog!”

Dieter’s heart pounds, heavy and fast, like he’s done way too much coke. He looks up with wide eyes and it’s unmistakable, her bright red hair and sexy scowl and the lanky handsome man attached to her hip. 

“Scully?”

Dieter watches her face twist up in confusion, and watches Mulder’s eyebrows raise with a smirk on his face as he looks between him and his partner. 

“You know this guy, Scully?”

She squints at Dieter as they walk closer. He feels very warm under her gaze. He pets Queequeg’s head for comfort.

“No, I don’t. What’s your name?”

Dieter clears his throat. 

“You don’t recognize me?”

Mulder presses his lips together, trying to hide his amused smile as he nudges Scully’s side. 

“Should I?”

“Wait… what year is it?”

Scully’s face turns from annoyed to concerned. She kneels down in front of Dieter and looks into his eyes, and her gaze is too heavy, it spears right through him. 

“It’s 1995. Are you concussed?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean— Maybe. Probably, to be honest. It’s 1995?”

“Has been for five months, now,” Mulder supplies. 

Dieter nods. 

“Do you know where you are?”

“I think so… listen. You guys aren’t gonna believe this— well, Mulder might believe it— But I’m from the future.”

Scully’s concerned gaze turns right back to annoyed very quickly, and she stands back up to cross her arms. 

Mulder just chuckles. 

“How do you know our names?” He asks.

Dieter feels a little weird on the ground while they’re staring down at him, in a horny way, so he gently places Queequeg back on the gravel to stand up himself.

“Would you believe it if I said I’m from an alternate reality where you guys are the main characters in a cult classic sci-fi television series?”

Mulder blinks at him. Dieter shrugs with a sheepish grin.

“Honestly? That’s more believable than the time travel.”

Dieter smirks. 

“That’s such a Scully thing to say.”

“That is such a Scully thing to say,” Mulder agrees. 

“Oh my god.”

“I can prove it! I swear. C’mon, let’s get this little guy safe and sound in your cabin and I’ll prove everything.”

Mulder shrugs, and gives Scully one of his looks, the c’mon, let’s see where this goes look that Dieter’s so used to seeing. 

She just scoffs.

“Mulder, we don’t have time for this. People are dying left and right, you’re on a wild sea-monster chase, and half the town is—”

“Wait, Scully, look at this guy. He’s going to tell you another body’s been found in the lake. Well— half of a body.”

They all turn to the man running up from the docks, and sure enough, it plays out almost exactly how Dieter remembers from the episode. Scully’s very focused on the legs floating in the lake, but Mulder keeps eyeing him in a way that makes him wish he was wearing something more than just flimsy pajama pants. 

“Scully…” Mulder mumbles as they walk back toward their car, “I think we should hear him out.”

“Hear him out!? We should be shoving him in handcuffs, he’s the only suspect we have that isn’t mythical.”

“I’d be into that, actually,” Dieter says, holding his hands out toward them, wrists pressed together. 

Scully grimaces and Mulder smirks but he drapes an arm around her shoulder in a way that seems suspiciously protective. 

“There’s not enough evidence to cuff him, but we can at least keep him close and see what else we can get out of him.” 

“Mulder—”

“If anything, he can just dogsit for us.”

The way they’re talking about him like he’s not even there makes the tips of his ears burn.

“I’d love to dogsit! I miss Queequeg.”

“What do you mean you miss him? He’s right here.”

Dieter winces. 

“Actually that’s a big plot point in this episode,” Dieter whispers.

They stop at the car and Scully glares at him, and Mulder looks a little bit like he’s just brought a stray dog home without her permission. Dieter kinda likes it.

“You never told us your name,” Scully grills.

“Dieter. Dieter Bravo.”

Mulder huffs. 

“What kind of name is Dieter Bravo? Do you do adult films?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Fox?”

The way the giggle bubbles up out of Scully’s chest makes him preen. 

“Alright. Where do you live, Dieter?”

He winces and scratches the back of his neck.

“Los Angeles.”

“Oh brother,” Scully grumbles. 

“How did you get here then?”

“Y’know, it’s the weirdest thing. I was writing a fanfiction about the two of you and when I went to post it, I think lightning struck my house and sent me here.”

The two agents stare at him in silence for so long that Dieter has the time to question every single moment that has led up to this. He determines that this is all his therapist’s fault when Mulder finally clears his throat. 

“You can bunk with me until we get everything sorted out, alright?”

Dieter straightens up and salutes him.

“Yes, sir, Agent Mulder.”

Scully rolls her eyes and turns to open the car door for him, but Mulder smirks.

“I think I kinda like this guy, Scully.”

——

Mulder’s nice enough to let him shower and lend him spare clothes that aren’t caked in mud and grass stains, once they’re back at the cabin. He cleans up in silence trying to wrap his head around this entire pickle he’s in, and how to go about making them believe him.

He’s got his work cut out with Scully, he knows this. But he works over every bit of information he can remember from each season, each episode, to remember something that couldn’t be denied. 

They’re doing their Scully and Mulder thing when he comes out with damp hair and Mulder’s clothes on. (He definitely had to will away a half-chub at the thought of being wrapped in his things.) 

They sit around the small living room with photos and paperwork all sprawled out and Dieter feels like geeking out a little bit. This is like the world’s greatest and most interactive X-Files museum. 

“Okay. I’m going to try to do this in the best way I know how. Just— Bear with me.”

They sit back in their seats, and Dieter lifts Queequeg onto his lap to take his place on the couch. He waits for them to give him a go-ahead, but neither of them are responsive. He tries not to feel so aroused by their focused gazes. Maybe he should have jerked off in the shower, as a precaution.

“Okay then… let’s see… this is Season 3, Episode… 22? So. You guys just went through the whole Skinner thing, right? With his— his bad dreams lady killing that prostitute?”

“How do you know Skinner?”

“I told you, it’s a TV show. Skinner’s always busting your balls. Big tough assistant director business. He’s actually just a softy though, I think.”

Scully looks disinterested and a little annoyed, but Mulder’s starting to shift forward in his seat.

“What’s the show called?”

“The X-Files.”

Scully snorts. 

“How creative.”

“Okay, okay, I know. It sounds whacky. But I’ve seen the show a billion times over, I’ve been unknowingly preparing for this moment since the pilot aired.”

He takes a moment to determine what to say and how to word it before he continues.

“Okay… Well… Your first case together was that weird kid in Oregon that kept helping aliens abduct his classmates. Scully conveniently missed the UFO though. Ever the skeptic. Then… let’s see… Deep Throat turns up in the next episode. Scully, he ended up dying in your arms and his last words were trust no one.”

“Mulder, we’ve been bugged for 90 percent of the time we’ve known each other, this doesn’t mean anything.”

Dieter huffs and Mulder shrugs. 

“Keep going. Give us a deep cut, man. You gotta try harder than that.”

“When did you become the skeptic, Mulder?” 

The agent shrugs and raises his eyebrows to urge him to continue. 

“Okay… Scully, when you were at your god son’s birthday party, you told your friend that Mulder is a jerk.”

“Hey, what the hell, Scully?”

“No, I said he was just—”

“Obsessed with his work, yeah. After you called him a jerk though.”

Dieter hates to see the way Mulder’s eyebrows draw up in the middle. It’s kind of funny to see Scully so embarrassed, though. He figures he’ll keep what else she said to himself, about him being cute, because it looks like she’s praying that he doesn’t blab about it.

“You wound me, Scully.”

“Oh, yeah, and there’s the time you shot Mulder in the shoulder.”

“You’re kind of a bully, y’know?”

Scully shoves at his shoulder to prove their point, and Mulder just laughs and leans into it. 

“Do you want to know what happens in the future? Wait, if I affect the future will the show be different? I dunno how I feel about that… new X-Files episodes in 2024 would be incredible. But what if the new episodes suck, though?”

“2024? That’s what year you’re going with?” 

Dieter nods. 

“It kinda sucks. We have smartphones and streaming services and stuff but also, you wouldn’t believe who the last president was if I told you. Also there was a global pandemic. Still kinda is one, but everyone’s just ignoring it. Actually, come to think of it, you guys would thrive in 2024.”

“Do we die before then?”

“Oh, no, no, the show just finished. And then came back and then— it’s a whole thing. But neither of you die.”

“Hmm.”

Mulder hums, and Dieter knows exactly what he’s thinking. Scully too, by the faraway look on her face. Total idiots. Why couldn’t he have landed at least after the first kiss. Or even the almost-kiss?

“Well, I’m tired, and this case isn’t going to solve itself. And Queequeg needs to go potty, so, I think we’re done here.”

Dieter’s whole body feels hot, like the time he was stabbed in the chest with that epi-pen. He shoots up off the couch so fast that Queequeg yelps and hops down to cower behind Scully’s ankles.

“Wait! It’s an alligator. Literally. It’s just an ordinary alligator killing these people. And if you let Queequeg walk into the woods he’s going to get eaten and if there’s one single thing you believe me about it has to be this, okay? For Queequeg’s sake.”

Dieter’s got his hands clasped in front of him, pleading. Scully looks startled and Mulder looks awed, but he’s desperate to drive this point home. 

“…Okay. I’ll keep him close. Thank you.”

They think he’s crazy. Scully does, at least. Mulder’s just quiet, uncharacteristically so. 

“Thank you.”

“Alright,” she sighs, grabbing Queequeg’s leash and hooking him up, “goodnight guys.”

“Goodnight Scully.”

Dieter sighs and sits back down. 

“She thinks I’m insane, doesn’t she?” 

“Welcome to the club.”

Dieter chuckles and looks to Mulder. He’s still got that pensive look on his face. It suits him, all brooding with that fucking jawline and those plush lips and sad eyes. He wants to kiss him so bad. He almost says it out loud, so used to his horny musings while watching this guy on TV that his filter is a little out of whack. 

Dieter doesn’t even realize he’s staring until Mulder tilts his head at him, confused. He opens his mouth and takes a breath but the door ripping open cuts him off. 

“Mulder, there’s something in the woods; Dieter was right. I think we should check it out.”

Mulder jumps up at her beck and call and seeing it in person is even more overwhelming, how he follows her without question and trusts her, so eagerly. 

“Queequeg?”

“He’s here, can you watch him?”

Dieter nods.

“Me? Yeah, yes ma’am, Agent Scully.”

He doesn’t miss the amused look on her face just before the door slams shut behind them. 

He lies on the couch with Queequeg on his chest, enjoying the silence after the… everythingness of his day. He really wishes he could smoke some pot, but even if he could get his hands on some, he’s sure it would be weak as hell. And there’s the FBI agent thing. 

Dieter’s not sure how long he’s been staring at nothing and snuggling Queequeg when the cabin door finally opens again. 

“Did you catch the alligator?”

The eerie silence he’s met with makes him whip his head around. Scully and Mulder are staring at him. He’s pretty sure 80 percent of his X-Files fantasies have started exactly like this. 

“… We did. We caught it just in time to save Ted Bertram.”

“That’s the guy with the lake monster feet, right?”

They both nod slowly. 

Queequeg hops down from his perch on Dieter’s chest, so he sits up. 

“I told you. You guys believe me now?”

He watches as Mulder nods his head yes and Scully shakes her head no. All he can do is shrug and start wondering what’s next for him, in the year of 1995.

“Hey, do you guys need an assistant? I could tell you how to solve the next case! I think it’s the one with the mind control cable. Mulder, are you really red-green color blind? I think that was a major plot hole. How do you tell the difference between human blood and alien blood if one is red and one is green, then?”

“Mulder’s not colorblind,” Scully says. 

“Uhh… Actually, yeah. I am.”

“What? How did you pass the color vision test?”

“I’m colorblind, not an idiot. I can still tell them apart, they just look different to me than they would to you.”

“I— I can’t believe you’ve been colorblind this entire time.” 

Mulder shrugs. Then his brow quirks up.

“Why does that matter?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you. It might mess with the space-time continuum and— quantum physics, you know?”

Scully’s clearly had enough. She sighs and finally kicks off her shoes. 

“I’m grabbing a shower and clearing my head,” she says, “don’t— don’t let him out of your sight for now, Mulder.”

Mulder nods and half smiles at her. They both look pretty tired. He wants to remind them that he’s the one who traveled 29 years into the past today, but it seems like a pretty sore subject. 

They stand still and silent in the living room until Scully closes her bedroom door behind her, Queequeg in tow.

“You heard the woman. There’s a TV in my room.”

Mulder nods toward the other bedroom door and Dieter follows dutifully.

“Does it get the good channels?”

He hears Mulder chuckle and watches from behind as he sheds his jacket. He admires all those lean muscles in his back, now that he’s not wearing one of those god awful baggy suits. Maybe he should suggest a tailor, he thinks, and wonders if the later seasons would be filled with more eye candy if he did. 

“You know about that?”

“All the video tapes that aren’t yours? And the hotline lady that leaves messages on your answering machine? Yeah. You wouldn’t believe what porn is like in thirty years. You’re gonna love it.”

Dieter’s torn between looking away and staring shamelessly while Mulder unbuttons his fly. He settles for nonchalant, hoping his eyes don’t pop out of their sockets like a cartoon character when he notices the outline of Little Mulder. This is even better than the gray sweatpants in the Humbug episode. 

“I was hoping to kick the habit in thirty years’ time, actually.”

Dieter shrugs and his staring contest with Mulder’s crotch ends abruptly as he slides into a pair of pajama pants. Which is weird, because usually Mulder sleeps in his underwear. Must be the fact that he’s sharing a cabin with Scully.

Mulder throws Dieter the remote and settles onto the bed. There’s no couch in here, not even a cuck chair, so Dieter settles next to him. His whole body burns. God, if 20-year-old Dieter could see himself now, he’d ruin the pants he was wearing. 

The silence feels a little awkward, so he turns the TV on. Nineties TV is so simple. It’s easy to settle on a channel playing Invasion of the Body Snatchers and sink into the mattress under him. 

It only takes a few moments before he realizes Mulder’s staring holes into the side of his face. 

“What’s up?” Dieter asks. 

There’s so little room between them it’s making Dieter’s entire body throb along with his pulse. 

“You’re telling the truth.”

Dieter nods and tries to give him a reassuring smile. Mulder sighs and throws his head back onto the pillow. His eyes close and his brows furrow and his jaw does that sexy clenching thing again. It’s all Dieter can do to not bite at it and soothe the sting with his tongue. 

“What happens to us?”

Dieter clears his throat.

“I mean— I know, you shouldn’t affect the future, yadda yadda. I just…”

Fuck it, Dieter thinks, if I’ve already solved the case way before the episode is supposed to end, I’ve thrown everything off anyway.

“You end up together.”

Mulder lets out a big, long breath. His face instantly relaxes. His hands flex by his sides and Dieter goes out on a big giant limb and grabs one of them.

Mulder starts at the touch, but lets it happen. 

“When?”

“Way later than you should have shacked up, in my opinion.”

He grumbles. 

“My opinion, too.”

“You should make a move, then. I’m pretty sure at this point she’s only waiting for you to make a move.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Oh, it’s a whole thing involving a shapeshifting guy with a tail. Trust me. She’s got it just as bad.”

They’re still holding hands. Mulder hasn’t moved a muscle. An idea so bright pops into Dieter’s head that he’s certain there’s a lightbulb floating above him. 

“You know when you met Bambi on that cockroach case?”

Mulder nods. 

“She was so jealous. Didn’t you pick up on that?”

“I— I thought so. But I also thought she was just annoyed with me, y’know, how she usually is.”

Dieter squeezes his hand. 

“She was annoyed because she’s into you, dude. It was envy. Very, very clearly.”

He hums. 

“So? What now? Do I apologize for something that happened months ago? You apparently know Scully as well as I do, how do you think that’ll blow over? ‘Hey, sorry I made you jealous because you have a big fat crush on me.’ She’d deck me.”

Dieter shakes his head. 

“No, man. You need to make her jealous. So jealous she can’t deny why she’s upset with you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and I mean, why not just start right now, y’know? Get a head start on the whole thing. I mean, you’re here, I’m here, there’s only one bed…”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were coming onto me.”

“I would love to come on you, actually.”

Mulder laughs, and Dieter deflates a little at the sound. But when he goes to pull his hand away, Mulder cinches it in his own. 

“Dieter…”

“Mulder.”

“We’re doing this, then?”

Dieter nods like an overexcited puppy wagging its tail. Oh my god. Oh my god. Fox Mulder in his prime, how fucking lucky can one guy be?

Mulder glances at the door to make sure it’s open. The faint sound of running water can be heard from Scully’s room, and he thinks he smells her shampoo wafting out with the steam. 

Like two nervous teenagers, they shift to face one another. Dieter brings their joined hands together on his own hip. Mulder’s palm is warm on his skin where his shirt rides high, and it makes Dieter’s breath hitch. 

Slowly, Dieter urges him to keep his hand still with a squeeze before mirroring Mulder’s, creeping his hand under his shirt and feeling his solid, trim waist.

Mulder hums into his touch and Dieter realizes this man is possibly just as touch-starved as he is. He starts swirling circles into his skin with his thumb and inches forward, but those beautiful hazel eyes hold apprehension in their timid gaze.

“What if this blows up in my face?” Mulder whispers.

“It won’t. I guarantee it. I’ll make sure of it. Trust me?”

A soft grin tugs at Mulder’s lips and he nods, and it’s all the permission Dieter needs.

Christ, his lips are soft. Soft and plush and exactly how Dieter imagined only a million times better. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this good, not on any drug, and they’re just kissing. 

It’s chaste until he feels Mulder’s tongue prod at the seam of his lips and then it’s filthy. As soon as Dieter opens his mouth to him, Mulder takes it with a grunt. His blunt nails dig into the soft flesh at Dieter’s hip as he traces the arch of his bottom teeth. Dieter tries to keep up, but his brain constantly shorts out at the thought of who’s tongue is poking and prodding around in his mouth. 

He’s a great fucking kisser. His tongue tickles the roof of Dieter’s mouth and it makes him shiver, makes his cock swell against his borrowed sweatpants, against Mulder. 

He doesn’t seem deterred. Quite the opposite actually. He tugs Dieter by the hip and presses his own solid prick right up against Dieter’s, and they both groan into the sloppy kiss. 

“It’s been quite a while,” Mulder says. 

Dieter can’t tell if the huffed little laugh is directed toward the eager way he chases Mulder’s lips, or toward himself for being out of practice. He likes the thought of either. 

“For me, too,” Dieter mumbles. 

Mulder hums and rolls his hips. As their dicks press together and twitch, Dieter decides they are not naked enough by any means. 

He presses his hand up, up, bringing Mulder’s shirt with it and grabbing a handful of his sturdy pec, admiring how stiff it feels under his palm when his lungs inflate. He gets with the program, and Dieter pulls his own shirt over his head, then promptly salivates over all the lean muscles and wiry hair and pale skin in front of him. 

“Fuck,” he breathes.

It’s not until Mulder’s breath hitches does he realize he might actually be into this, not just their plan, but being here in bed with Dieter. His pretty hazel eyes are dark now, pupils blown out, and his chest is heaving, and the tent in his pajama pants is far too enticing to resist. 

Dieter reaches down to cup him through the flannel material and Mulder gasps and falls flat onto his back. His eyes close and his jaw hangs open like an invitation. Dieter wiggles and shifts to press up against the length of his side and to finally press his face into the crook of his neck. 

The hint of aftershave that’s been teasing him all day is now overwhelming his senses, sharp and spicy. Dieter is delighted to know that his skin tastes just as delicious as it smells, salty and heady under his tongue. Mulder’s prick throbs in his grasp and Dieter’s torn between wanting to tease him over his pants and feel the hot skin of his cock in his palm. 

“Feels good,” Mulder whispers. 

“Yeah?”

“Mmm.”

Dieter nips at his racing pulse first, then down to his jaw and the impressive five o’clock shadow he’s always been jealous and in awe of. The prickly hairs there tickle his tongue and lips, and he grinds into the outside of Mulder’s thigh for a bit of relief. 

“You think about Scully doing this?” 

The way Mulder’s dick jolts in his grasp is answer enough, but he speaks up anyway. 

“Yes.”

The admission is so hot it makes Dieter’s brain spin. He himself has thought of it many times before, Scully torturing him with teasing touches, her little sharp canines digging into his flesh, but the thought of Mulder thinking of it too… 

All those heated glances Dieter’s mulled over, he wonders how many of those were fueled by Mulder’s dirty thoughts about her. Wonders how many times he’s seen a flash of something in Mulder’s gaze and it’s been him fantasizing about getting Scully in bed. 

Dieter huffs against the heated skin of Mulder’s neck before he pulls back. His head his thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, and he’s fucking gorgeous. He lightens his touch, teases the underside of his cock with one fingertip, and delights in the pleasure scrawled across Mulder’s face. 

“How often?”

Mulder’s gravelly chuckle is cut off by a low groan when Dieter presses against his sac over his pajamas. 

“All the time,” he confesses, “every time.”

“In the office?”

Mulder whimpers and nods his head. 

“On the job, in the field?”

“God yes.”

Dieter hums, squeezes his balls to goad him into continuing.

“When she— when she’s so serious, it’s hot. She’s so smart, it turns me on.”

Dieter smirks. He completely sympathizes.

“You like it when she debunks you?”

Mulder whines and nods his head again. Dieter tries his hardest not to react to the sound of the water shutting off across the cabin, or Scully’s door creaking open. Instead, he shoves his hand down Mulder’s pants and hopes to god he keeps his eyes closed, hopes Scully’s ever present need to call out his name is tampered down when she inevitably hears him talking. 

Mulder gasps and raises his hips into the circle of Dieter’s hand, and his brows furrow as he shuts his eyes even tighter.

“Why?”

Mulder moans. 

“Because she— she balances me out. Makes me feel even. Whole.”

Dieter chuckles. 

“Aww, does she complete you, Foxy?” 

He scoffs but bites his lip when Dieter thumbs at his head and spreads his slick, sticky pre-cum all around. 

“Tell me what you think about, Mulder.”

His breathing is so ragged that Dieter thinks he should maybe be concerned. But he can tell things are about to come to a head, can hear Scully’s little footsteps inching closer to their room, pointedly quiet. 

“Her, I think about her body against mine. And touching her.”

As if on cue, fiery red hair peeks through the door frame. Dieter’s got his free hand up and a finger at his lips before Scully’s face can even twist up in concern and shock. He gives her a pleading look as she stands stock-still and wide-eyed. 

“Where would you touch Scully, if she was here?”

“Everywhere. Anywhere she wants me to. I just wanna make her feel good.”

Dieter turns his head back to Mulder to confirm that his eyes are still closed. They are, positively scrunched shut as sweat threatens to penetrate his brows and slip into his eyes.

“Do you wanna taste her?” 

Mulder’s breath hitches and his cock pulses and dribbles more against Dieter’s hand. 

“Yes, yes, so bad. I think about it every time I— every time I touch myself.”

Dieter turns back to Scully. Her hair is damp and her silky pajama top is unbuttoned more than it was just a moment ago. It just barely hides her heaving chest and he has a hard time not giving her away when he realizes his plan is working. Her lips are parted and wet, like she’s licked them, and god he really fucking hopes they don’t kick him out once this all comes to a head. 

“You do?” 

“Mm-hmm,” Mulder nods, “I could spend the rest of my life down there and die happy.”

Dieter chuckles then, and Mulder does too, but he opens his eyes. It takes him just a second to blink and adjust but, ever the vigilant one, his eyes jolt toward the now closed bedroom door and Scully standing in front of it. His body goes stiff and still, aside from his prick, which twitches wildly in Dieter’s grasp. 

Mulder’s voice cracks amusingly around Scully’s name. She crosses her arms and lifts one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows as she shuffles to the foot of the bed. 

“Boys.”

Dieter smiles sheepishly at her. Mulder’s staring and gaping like a fish out of water, all tense now, one elbow on the bed so he can prop himself up. Dieter doesn’t miss the way Scully’s eyes trace over his naked torso or the activity going on at the front of Mulder’s pajamas. 

“Is it true, Mulder?”

He’s nodding his head before she can even finish the question. 

“Yeah, Scully. I—” 

He cuts himself off when Dieter squeezes and strokes him, and Scully’s gaze is locked on the movement.

“It certainly feels like the truth,” Dieter supplies. 

Mulder whimpers under him and Dieter swears he sees Scully’s ears perk up at the sound, like some kind of predator. 

“Mulder, c’mere.”

God, the way he follows so readily, like he always does, it warms Dieter’s heart just as much as it makes his dick throb. He kneels on the edge of the bed right in front of her. His cock is protruding obscenely out in front of him, but Scully doesn’t seem to care about that. 

No, she’s focused on his face instead where it’s settled gently between her dainty hands. God, the way they look at each other is so fucking intoxicating. Dieter’s bound by it, physically stuck on the mattress as he watches. 

Her brows furrow slightly as she looks at him, but Mulder’s face is slack, almost dazed as he meets her eyes. 

“What did he tell you, Mulder?” 

Mulder shifts awkwardly from knee to knee. His mouth opens and closes a few times, and she giggles under her breath. 

“You’re not in trouble.”

Dieter laughs, and god, it’s so fucking weird. It’s like he’s watching a director’s cut. 

Mulder sighs, though. 

“We end up together, Scully. You and me. And I— I believe it. I believed it long before this guy showed up, and it… Out of everything I believe, everything I’ve been working toward… it might be the only belief I have that keeps me going.”

Scully’s gaze grows soft as his confession, and Dieter refrains from squealing in delight at how sweet Mulder sounds and how Mulder it all is.

“Why now, then?”

Mulder huffs and tries to turn away, but she keeps his face tight in her grasp. His cheeks are so pink. 

“Just worked up the guts, I guess.”

Dieter doesn’t miss the quick flicker of Scully’s eyes down to his lips. His fingers twitch with the urge to smash their faces together. 

She sighs and brushes some errant strands of hair from Mulder’s forehead. 

“Well,” she says, and her voice wavers with a heavy breath, “I’m glad one of us did.”

Mulder visibly melts. His shoulders slump and he leans forward into her touch. His face loses all of that tension from earlier, and his lips look loose when Scully’s own finally brushes against them. 

He’s so gentle with her, in a way he definitely wasn’t with Dieter. His hands are nearly hovering over her with how lightly he places them on her waist. His lips stay slack and still as he lets her control the kiss. The only thing giving him away is the comical bobbing of his prick disrupting the front of his pajamas, and there’s no way Dieter can blame him for that. 

One of Scully’s hands tangles in Mulder’s hair and produces a beautiful, high pitched sound that Dieter and Scully both react to. 

She pulls away. Mulder chases her lips, but her grip on his hair tightens. He curses under his breath with a face more flushed than Dieter’s ever seen on him.

Her eyes flicker over to Dieter and he feels like a deer in headlights. Why is he still here? Is this weird, is he being a creep for staying? 

“C’mere,” she mumbles, tipping her head to urge him to kneel right beside Mulder on the bed. 

He does, of course he does. He wants to be good for her, for them.

He kneels, shoulder to shoulder with the man panting beside him. He grasps his hands behind his back and waits patiently as she looks the both of them over. 

“What did I walk in on, Dieter?”

The way his name sounds coming from her low, rasping voice makes his spine tingle. 

“It was my idea, Agent Scully. I was trying to make you jealous. I’m sorry.”

She clicks her tongue and the noise makes his cock throb. 

“And you went along with this plan?”

She looks back to Mulder and Dieter shivers. He instantly misses the warmth of her gaze. 

“I— yeah. I did... It worked, didn’t it?”

Scully’s eyes narrow, and Dieter can’t tell if Mulder’s an idiot or a genius for riling her up. He should have known Fox Mulder would be a brat. He thinks if he plays his cards right, maybe Scully will forget the whole plot and he can be her good boy while Mulder gets punished for his smart mouth. 

A whimper falling from Mulder’s parted lips knocks him out of his daze and he notices Scully’s grip all tight in his floppy hair. 

Fuck, he wishes that were him. Maybe he should mouth off too, maybe then he’ll get the attention that he craves. 

“Get on your knees, Mulder.”

“I am on my knees.”

Dieter gasps as Scully tugs on his hair and leaves him no choice but to scramble off of the edge of the bed, lest she rip all that perfectly coiffed hair out of his head. His shoulders rise and fall with baited breath when he’s finally sunken his knees on the gaudy rug on the hardwood floors. Dieter whimpers and no one’s even touching him. 

“You too, time bandit.”

Dieter gets whiplash with how quickly he gets on his knees for her. He breathes out a labored ‘yes ma’am’ and Mulder throws him a look of disbelief. He shrugs, what can I say?

They’re both rock hard for her, on the floor, staring up at her. She looks like an angel, or the devil, or maybe like God herself. Her breathing is suspiciously calm compared to their own, even though her nipples create tantalizing nubs at the front of her silk pajamas. 

“Keep your eyes forward, both of you.”

Dieter nods at her commanding voice. He wants to look to Mulder for— direction? Comfort? Some kind of trauma bonding? But he doesn’t. He wants to be good. 

He hears Scully behind them, bed creaking under her weight, sheets ruffling underneath her. There’s a pregnant pause where all of their heavy breathing can be heard and the anticipation is so much Dieter might explode on the spot. 

“Strip.”

Twin breaths release from both Dieter and Mulder and he swears he hears her giggle behind them. He’s quick to comply, tugging at the drawstring of Mulder’s sweats he’s borrowed and awkwardly shuffling them off while he tries to stay kneeling. 

He notices Mulder still motionless beside him. 

“Scully…”

Idiot, Dieter thinks. 

“Good boy, Dieter, doing exactly what I say.”

He can’t help the satisfied smirk that twists his lips up, or the way the back of his neck burns at the praise. In his peripheral, Mulder hastily shucks his pajama pants. 

He has a pretty cock. Dieter knew he would. Everything else about him is pretty. It’s long and lean, just like he is, and the upward curve of it makes him jealous. It’s going to feel so good for Scully, if she lets him fuck her. 

There’s more shuffling behind them, and he flinches when a pair of satin pajama pants land on the floor in front of both of them. He has to dig his nails into his thighs to resist the urge to turn around. Something nudges his arm. He doesn’t dare move his head, but from the corner of his eye he sees a pale, smooth leg and his breath catches in his chest. 

He hears Mulder curse under his breath and can nearly feel the tension in him vibrating out energy into this rickety old cabin. Dieter feels a gentle hand in the short curls at the back of his neck just a moment later, her nails scraping his scalp just right, and his leg may just start shaking like a dog’s.

“You want to taste me, Mulder?”

“Fuck yes, Scully, please.”

She hums. Her hand in Dieter’s hair stills. 

“Go on, then.”

A lightning flash of movement stirs beside him, but Dieter keeps dutifully still. He’s twitching in anticipation but he doesn’t dare turn to look. 

Scully sighs, all breathy and high-pitched, and Dieter’s never heard a more beautiful sound. Then Mulder whimpers, and it’s muffled by Scully’s thighs, and there’s a wet smacking noise and Dieter thinks this obscene music could be a platinum album. 

Scully gasps, and Mulder groans, and Dieter aches. He can smell her, a sharp and tangy scent of arousal underneath the flowery soap and shampoo. Her hand is still in his hair and it hasn’t moved since Mulder got down to business and he feels forgotten about but in the best way.

“Dieter, honey, you can watch.”

He breathes out with relief and shifts to get a good look of the action. She’s perfect, gorgeous, breathtaking. Her silky pajama top hangs open on her pointy shoulders and her perky breasts rise and fall with her breathing. Her nipples are a brownish pink that stand erect in a way that makes his mouth water like a leaky faucet.

Her toned, porcelain legs spread wide enough to accommodate Mulder’s shoulders. The man is greedy, and Dieter can’t see a thing aside from the triangle of copper curls on her mound. He wants to nuzzle them so bad, he wants to feel them tickle his nose, smell the arousal that catches there. 

“You taste so good.”

Mulder’s words are squished against her center. Dieter whimpers at the thought of her flavor. Her hand soothes through his hair. He wants to touch his cock so badly, but Scully hasn’t told him that he’s allowed. Instead, he balls his hands into fists and bites his lip. 

Scully moans, and Dieter watches her face fall slack with pleasure. 

“Feels good, just like that.”

Dieter can’t help the sounds that eke out of him, desperate and a little pained. He’s so hard that he’s lightheaded, but Scully’s firm grip on his hair grounds him just enough. 

“Don’t be selfish, Mulder.”

He makes a questioning noise between her legs. He looks up at her with wide eyes, mouth open, tongue out and flat against her slit. 

“Give him a taste.”

“Oh fuck, please.”

Dieter can see the reluctance in Mulder’s motions, like he’s struggling to break free from her orbit. He looks so fucking hot, absolutely wrecked. His plush lips are red and shiny and his chin is dripping and his pupils completely usurp his irises. Drunk, drugged off of Scully.

He leans away from Dieter to make room between her legs but she tugs his hair. Then she tugs Dieter’s hair, and their noses are bumping together before either man can put two and two together. 

He can smell her on his breath. It’s so intoxicating that he loses any crumb of decorum he may have had left. He licks a broad swipe from Mulder’s chin to his Cupid’s bow and groans at all the slick he’s able to lap up. 

Mulder’s mouth opens up to him, and he chases the taste of her off of his tongue, his teeth, his gums, anywhere. They’re both panting into each other's mouths, exchanging breath. Dieter feels a big, strong hand on his jaw and neck, and the contrast to Scully’s smaller, gentler touch has him leaking all over the rug underneath him. He feels like he’s drowning, and he just wants to go even deeper, like even death won’t be enough. 

He waits for Scully to say anything about Mulder touching him. When she doesn’t, he takes it as permission to reach up and find purchase in his hair. His fingers tingle when they find Scully’s still there, and his whole body shudders and twitches when she links her fingers with his. 

“You want more?” 

It’s depraved, the way they both pull away from the kiss so fast. Dieter’s nodding and looking toward her, her glistening cunt, her smooth skin and her mischievous gaze. 

“Please, Scully,” Mulder mumbles. 

His head lolls back against Scully’s thigh so he can look up at her. He looks like he’s just run a marathon, the way sweat is beading at his forehead and his chest is heaving. 

“Yes, please, Agent Scully.”

She chuckles. The sound is torture and it’s bliss. She ruffles Dieter’s hair and he hums and leans into it. Mulder whimpers at the lack of attention, so she ruffles his too. 

And then she spreads her thighs even wider, like, gymnast levels of flexibility, and both of their eyes are drawn to the way her lips spread open in invitation, puffy red, her clit all swollen while she drips onto the old comforter under her.

“Think you can share?”

Dieter curses. Mulder whimpers against her thigh.

“Play nice, boys.”

Mulder looks at him with a heated gaze that makes him a little bit scared but really really horny.

“Yes ma’am,” Dieter says, but he’s staring at Mulder. 

Be good, he’s trying to tell him through telepathy, we’ll get rewarded if you’re just good.

Mulder glances up at her, bats his pretty little eyes, and licks his slick lips. 

“Yes ma’am.”

It sounds more teasing than anything, but Dieter doesn’t miss the way she squirms when Mulder says it. He just has that effect, doesn’t he? Such a charming little shit. 

He and Dieter look at each other, assessing, when Mulder finally goes low. It’s a little bit awkward, at first. Dieter’s jaw prods at Mulder’s sharp cheekbone as they find a good position. 

He traces around her clit with a pointed tongue, delicately, so eager to work her up. He can hear Mulder’s tongue fucking in and out of her, a wet cacophony of sounds that make his ears ring. So much so that he nearly doesn’t catch the sounds of Scully’s breath hitching, her soft little mewls as her hips cant up into their faces. 

He’s hyper focused on her pleasure, so lost in it that he doesn’t even recognize how turned on he is until a heavy, warm hand wraps around his cock and he nearly blows his load. His tongue presses broadly against Scully’s clit when he groans. She curses and her hand tightens in his hair and it’s so much. 

He reaches out for anything, really, but Mulder’s cock is there, hard and proud and twitching when he wraps his hand around him. He finds solace in the fact that he’s leaking just as much as Dieter is, sticky and slick all the way down the underside of his shaft. His noises get breathier, and his tongue seeks higher ground just as Dieter’s travels lower. They lap at her folds together, briefly, trapping them between their tongues, trading their tastes as she whines above them. Dieter doesn’t even realize his free hand has grasped Scully’s slender hip until she squirms against it. 

All of a sudden, Dieter feels her go stiff under his grasp. Her hand tightens in his hair just shy of enough to make him lose it. She lets out stuttered little sounds and Mulder hums below him. 

“You like that, Scully?”

“Oh my god, Mulder.”

He groans and shifts and she begs and Dieter’s aroused haze clears enough to make him realize that he’s eating her ass. 

He makes a pained sound himself and sucks Scully’s throbbing clit into his mouth. She shakes, and her stiff body loosens just enough for her to roll her hips into them. 

“Don’t— don’t stop, I’m so close. I’m gonna come.”

Neither of them would dream of stopping, not for anything. Dieter works his tongue in pulses against her clit as he suckles, and he feels Mulder slip a finger in between them just as she cries out, loud, and falls apart against their tongues. 

Dieter drinks up the way her clit jerks and pulses between his lips. He drinks up her gasps and breathy noises. He drinks up the way Mulder’s cock mirrors his own, twitching with pure arousal at the way she’s coming just for them.

They’re both humming satisfied sounds as they work her through it. Their hands on each other’s cocks have stilled completely, just a loose grasp as they coax every last bit of pleasure out of her until she’s lax and shying away from them. 

Dieter pulls away first. He watches with a sticky feeling in his chest at the way Mulder kisses her holes gently, and the skin around them, nuzzling between her thighs so tenderly. Both his hands free, now, Mulder soothes them up the outside of her thighs as they tremble in her aftershocks. 

Mulder’s babbling, Dieter realizes, once the ringing in his ears finally subsides. Just under his breath, a chant, over and over.

“So perfect, Scully, thank you, thank you, Jesus Christ, Scully…”

Dieter settles back on his heels to keep gazing at them. Scully’s hands both pet through his hair as he leaves wet kisses that make her pale thighs glisten in the dim cabin lighting. He’s panting harder than she is, and his prick dribbles and twitches, and he looks up at her through misty eyes. 

“Oh, Mulder,” she sighs.

She bends down at the same time he arches up and their lips meet in a kiss so blindingly passionate that Dieter debates whether or not he should look away. Only for a split second though. Because Scully moans into his mouth and licks herself out of it and Dieter grabs his throbbing dick at the base to chill himself out. 

Mulder’s fingers run through her damp hair so gently, but his jaw works and his mouth takes from her in stark contrast. They look so goddamn good together, it’s insane. He’s torn between holding off to see how this plays out, or coming all over himself in three strokes or less as he watches them together. 

“Come up here, Mulder.”

Her voice is intoxicating, it sounds so fucked out and blissful. She shuffles up the bed some and Mulder chases her, always touching at some point, until she’s lying back and he’s covering her body with his own. 

He dwarfs her. It’s cute, in the show, the way she’s always looking up at him with a craned neck. Now, it’s just filthy, how Mulder’s cock looks so fucking huge lying hard against her small frame. The way he has to scrunch himself up to kiss her so his prick doesn’t go anywhere it’s not supposed to, yet. The way her tiny feet rub up and down Mulder’s calves, only half their size. 

The way his hand eclipses her face when he cradles it and pulls away. How his thumb sweeps so easily from her lips to her cheekbone as he sighs. 

“Scully…”

She hums and closes her eyes and smiles, a sated and relieved grin that makes her look so serenely beautiful. 

“I know, Mulder,” she sighs, “me too.”

Dieter huffs. Chris Carter himself couldn’t have created a more Mulder and Scully-esque love confession. It’s precious. He might cry. 

Unfortunately, the sound makes them both look over. Scully’s all relaxed but Mulder’s hackles are all raised, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Dieter slowly moves his hand away from his leaking cock and feels himself blush from his face down to his nipples. 

He’s caught in their crosshairs, stuck, eerily still and silent. Should he offer to leave? He really doesn’t want to leave. Maybe he can just peek through the keyhole of the door and leave them to it. 

“You too, Dieter,” Scully says, “get up here.”

Relief floods through him and makes his limbs all tingly. He’s nervous as he stands, gently making his way to the side of the bed and settling one knee on, then the other. Mulder shifts to the opposite side of Scully, their legs still tangled, as he watches Dieter with emotion he can’t quite put a name to. 

Dieter practically purrs when he slides right into their space. His cock drags a sticky design onto Scully’s smooth thigh and he apologizes, but she just chuckles and gently scratches her nails along his scalp. 

“Are you both going to be good for me?”

The tone of her voice makes them both shiver. Mulder huffs out a laugh but Dieter gasps as she tugs a little at his messy, sweaty curls. 

“Yes ma’am, Agent Scully.”

Dieter’s voice completely betrays him. He’s so turned on. There’s so much blood pumping to his cock that there’s a real and serious threat of him passing out. He hides his face in her shoulder and tries to even out his breathing and not hump her leg like an unruly dog. 

“I’ll be good for you, Scully.”

Mulder sounds a lot more in control. His deep, syrupy voice is just shy of even, only cracking on the second syllable of her name. Dieter feels the way she starts giggling before he hears it, her shoulders jostling with it. 

“You’re going to play by the rules, Mulder?”

He chuckles and it sounds dark, and Dieter opens his eyes to watch him smirk that irresistible smirk. 

“Hell, Scully, I’d write the rules over and over on the chalkboard to keep this going.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but she’s still grinning. His eyes flicker to her lips and there’s no hesitation this time when they kiss again. It’s tame and loose, until Scully wraps her dainty hand around his cock and he groans. Dieter matches his sound, and he just can’t help it, he rolls his hips into Scully’s thigh as he watches Mulder melt into a puddle against her. She bites at his plush bottom lip before she pulls back. 

“Fuck me, then.”

“Jesus,” they both say in unison. 

Scully bites her lip to keep in her giggles and it’s cute and debauched and insane. She’s insane. She’s going to kill them both, and Dieter’s going to return to his reality with 8 less seasons of The X-Files, and a season finale where Scully gets locked up for double homicide.

Mulder shuffles to straddle her. Dieter watches his heavy eyelids flutter and his jaw hang open and knows he likely looks the same. His cock twitches heavily where it hangs below him, and Scully teases the underside of it with her fingertips. He shivers, and so does Dieter, where he rocks his hips gently into Scully’s smooth skin. 

“You’re sure, Scully?” 

Dieter turns away and hides his heated face in the duvet. It’s too tender and raw and he doesn’t deserve to watch them love each other like this. 

“Positive, Mulder.”

He hears them kissing, wet, smacking sounds that give Dieter goosebumps. And then a whimper, a huff, muffled into Scully’s mouth and he drags his face away from its hiding spot. 

Mulder’s inching inside of her slowly, so slowly, with patience Dieter couldn’t even dream of. He cranes his neck to watch her take him, inch by inch. She looks so tight, and he bets she is, if the way Mulder’s eyes are squeezed shut is any indication.

Scully’s head tips back and breaks their kiss. Her eyes roll into the back of her head before she closes them. Her chest is heaving now with shallow breaths, her nipples taut and inviting.

“Oh my god,” she whispers. 

Mulder’s hips stay flush once he’s all the way in and he pants too. It looks like it takes all the strength he has to just flutter his eyes open and look down at her. His brows furrow and he licks his lips and gasps. 

“Scully,” he whines. 

She smirks, and christ, Dieter knows she’s clenching around him like a menace. Poor Mulder. He’s got the restraint of a god, he thinks, Dieter wouldn’t have made it even halfway inside of her. 

She soothes him by brushing the hair from his forehead, all damp with sweat. She does the same to Dieter and he hums as her fingertips massage his scalp. 

Mulder pulls out just as slowly as he entered her. She‘s soaked. He can hear it so well in the stilted silence of the room. When he pushes back in, she sighs and tightens her fist in Dieter’s hair and he needs something. He rocks against her again, and again, and the steady friction makes him gasp. 

Her hand slides down to the back of his neck and guides him to her breast. His cock throbs, deliciously trapped between his stomach and her silky skin. His tongue tests the waters, swirling around the pronounced peak of her nipple. When she sighs and arches into it, he takes it into his mouth and sucks. 

The noises she’s making are perfect. High pitched, breathy, needy. She’s letting herself go to Dieter and Mulder and it’s gorgeous. He presses his cock against her even harder and closes his eyes and whines around the bud in his mouth. 

Mulder’s starting to pick up the pace. Dieter can tell by the way her breast is jiggling just slightly under his mouth. And the sounds, god, the filthy slick sounds coming from her cunt. He’s leaking all over her just thinking about what it must feel like, how snugly Mulder must fit inside of her, how warm it is. 

As if Mulder could read his mind, he gasps out and his hips stutter against her. 

“It’s so good, Scully.”

Scully arches her back to grind down onto him and moans his name and tells him she needs more and Dieter bites down on her tender skin. 

She jolts and tugs his hair and curses and he looks up at her as he soothes it with his tongue. 

She’s the poster girl of pleasure. Her face is twisted with it, every beautiful feature dripping with tension. The length of her neck is so apparent with her head thrown back, and her skin is pink and looks hot to the touch. She begins to bounce when Mulder fucks her faster and harder. Dieter wants to do something, anything to make her feel good. 

He replaces his mouth with his hand, squeezing her flesh and teasing her nipple with his fingertips. He trails kisses up her chest, little love bites and suction until he reaches just below her ear. Her pulse is fluttering rapidly under his tongue, and she keens just as she turns her head and presses their lips together. 

They’re kissing. He’s kissing Scully. Oh god, her lips are so fucking soft against his. Her tongue ripples in his mouth and it tastes so good, minty with a hint of her arousal straight from Mulder’s lips. He whines and rolls his hips against her like he’s in heat, and he’s so close, and he wonders if she’d be mad if he came all over her warm, smooth, freshly showered skin. 

She jolts against him, against them, and bites down on Dieter’s lip with an almost pained noise. She turns away from Dieter and they both look to Mulder, who’s circling her puffy clit with his thumb as he fucks her. 

He’s looking to her for direction with a glazed expression. He looks like he’s hanging by a thread. 

“Here,” she whispers, and takes two of her fingers into her own mouth. 

Christ. The way her lips look wrapped around her two digits is sinful and debauched. Mulder must think the same, because he grabs her wrist and makes her stop. 

Dieter holds his breath as he waits for his next move. Is he going to pin her arms to the bed? Is he going to stretch them over her head and make her squirm on his cock, make her beg? 

It’s sweeter than that. Of course it is, with these two. Mulder brings her hand to his lips and kisses her palm, and then her knuckles. She sighs his name, and watches Mulder smile.

That soft, dopey smile gets an edge to it. 

“Let me, please,” he whispers. 

Dieter only gets the chance to be confused for half a second when he slips those two fingers into his own mouth. 

Scully gasps and moans and wiggles against him. Fuck, it’s beautiful. Mulder’s full lips take her all the way to the last knuckle and he hollows his cheeks as he sucks them. Scully’s hips squirm and rock and the way she moves against him is a sight. Mulder groans when Scully begins to thrust her fingers in and out, just a little, not enough to choke him but enough to make him close his eyes and sigh and start slowly fucking her again. 

They leave his mouth all wet and shiny. Mulder’s tongue tries to follow them and it makes Scully huff out a weak laugh. 

“You’re too good at that, Mulder.”

He hums, tries to hide his sheepish smile by ducking his head. But Scully grips his chin with her wet fingers to prevent it. His eyes struggle to focus on her, Dieter notices. He can’t blame him, it’s like staring into the sun. 

“Why don’t you show off to your little time traveler, huh?”

He opens his mouth, but no words come out. His eyes dart nervously from Scully to Dieter. 

“I— what?”

“Don’t be dense. Make him come. Make me come. You can multitask, can’t you?”

Dieter lies as still as the dead, afraid that if he moves maybe Mulder will snap out of this horny daze and tell him to get lost. He wouldn’t blame him one bit, either, but god he really wants to see this man’s lips wrapped around his cock. 

Scully chuckles at Mulder’s frozen stature. Or maybe she’s chuckling at the way Dieter’s heartbeat is pulsing through his dick against her thigh, dribbling all over it. 

“I bet you’re so good at it,” she continues to tease him, “with these pretty lips?” 

Mulder huffs and squirms when she rubs the pads of her wet fingers against his mouth. His tongue peeks out to taste them, coax them back inside him, but she doesn’t let him. 

“For me, Mulder?”

And Dieter can’t help but grin, because he’s never seen such a visceral loss of resolve so clearly before. Mulder closes his eyes and whines and nods his head. 

Scully makes a satisfied little noise, and her free hand sneaks down to squeeze Dieter’s slick cock, and he has to bite his own lip really hard to keep from losing it before the fun even begins. 

Then there’s some awkward repositioning and shuffling, mostly on his end. He kneels just above Scully’s head, and when he looks down she’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat from under his cock. He has to reach down to collect some of the pre-cum oozing out of him to keep it from dripping onto her gorgeous face, but she grabs his wrist and licks it from his fingers anyway. 

And then there’s Mulder, who’s slowly thrusting in and out of his partner like it’s second-nature, like auto-pilot, as he surveys the scene in front of him. 

“Mulder,” Scully mumbles. 

The deep, breathy, commanding tone of her voice makes Dieter shiver. 

“Yeah, Scully?”

“Make us come. Then you can.”

He groans, and his hips stutter then slam into her. Dieter’s torn between looking at the blissed-out look on Mulder’s face or the mischievous look in Scully’s eyes. 

“Are you— are you sure?” Dieter asks. 

Like an idiot, looking a gift horse in the mouth. But how can he not? They’re so perfect, so made for each other, and he’s just some weird fucking guy. 

But then Mulder’s expression turns into something darker, determined, and he nods with glassy eyes. 

“C’mon, McFly.”

And that’s all the encouragement Dieter needs, really. He widens his knees to line his cock up with those shiny, plush lips. Mulder gives Scully one last glance before he’s craning his neck forward and closing his eyes. 

Scully and Dieter gasp at precisely the same time, just as Mulder’s tongue swipes at his frenulum. Dieter’s eyes lose focus as he watches Mulder open his mouth wider, then looks past to see Scully’s icy blue gaze fixated on everything going on above her. It’s like an erotic kaleidoscope, the way they’re all blending together in pleasure. 

He suckles on Dieter’s head, a little too hard, but he thinks it might be on purpose. He hisses and grabs Mulder’s hair in one clammy, shaking hand. His tongue works the underside of his cock as he fits more into his mouth, and Scully was right, he is way too good at this. 

Scully curses under them, and only then does Dieter notice she’s touching herself as Mulder keeps pumping into her with a shaky, stilted rhythm. 

“So good, Mulder.”

His responding moan turns into a whimper as Dieter’s prick slides across the back of his tongue and hits his throat. 

“Fuck, yeah, so good,” Dieter agrees. 

It’s more than good. It’s incredible, unbelievable. He watches Mulder’s shiny, puffy lips wrapped around him, so in awe of how gorgeous he is. His pretty eyes are closed, half concentration and half bliss as he slides in and out of Scully’s dripping cunt. 

It takes him a while to find a rhythm that works, but when he finds his groove he fucking finds it. Of course he’d be good at this, too. He fucks in and out of Scully once, twice, and then sinks his mouth down as far as he can on Dieter’s cock (all the fucking way— Jesus christ) and holds there while he pumps in and out of her some more. 

And Dieter’s so, so torn. He wants to be good for Scully, wants to challenge Mulder for her and keep up the show. He wants to hang on so she can crumble as she watches her partner taking and receiving so perfectly at the same time.

But he wants to be good for Mulder too. He wants to come in his mouth and give him the satisfaction of satisfying. He wants to let Mulder prove to Scully how good he is, let him make them both come and writhe under his skill and rapt attention. 

And it’s like Scully can sense it. With her free hand, she reaches up and cups his balls. It makes his fucking toes curl, makes him cry out her name and slam his eyes shut to stave it off. He’s being tagged teamed by the objects of some of his earliest sexual fantasies and it takes him biting his lip so hard he draws blood to keep it together. 

He realizes the noises he’s making are borderline embarrassing. He’s mewling and gasping and whimpering as she squeezes and strokes, as her fingers meet Mulder’s lips every time he takes him deep. He’s shaking with the effort it takes to not fuck Mulder’s mouth. And he’s sweating, and he hopes to god it doesn’t start to trickle down and land on Scully’s blissed-out face.

And then it doesn’t much matter, because those dainty fingers and well-kept nails travel back, across his taint, and press. 

“I can’t— I can’t, oh my god.”

Mulder hums around his cock in an echo of the noise Scully makes under him. He’s teetering on the edge, tensed up, out of his mind as Scully massages that spot and Mulder swirls his tongue around the head of his cock. 

And in sync, like they always are, in a way that takes him completely off guard but should be absolutely predictable, they unravel him. 

Mulder takes him down his throat and swallows, and the pad of one of Scully’s fingers taps his entrance, and he’s done. 

He might scream, if he’s being honest. There was never any hope for a warning, the way they ganged up to play him like a fucking fiddle. Mulder groans as the first explosive spurt of Dieter’s cum shoots down his throat. He pulls back as Dieter continues to spill with each spasm of his muscles, as he tries but fails to suck Scully’s finger up inside him. He writhes and curses and clenches Mulder’s hair a little too tight as he works through his orgasm. 

Mulder dutifully collects every last drop, extremely intent on keeping it from spilling down across Scully’s face. He is such a good boy for her. Mulder whimpers when she tells him so in her breathy, sexy way she does. His hips stutter inside of her just as Dieter slips from his swollen lips. 

He doesn’t get reprieve yet, though. Mulder’s long, lean body arches up, and his arm reaches to grab a fist full of Dieter’s hair and tug and oh, god, he might just come again.

Their lips crash together, and before Dieter can think of how metallic the taste is, Mulder’s pushing his own load into his mouth forcefully. Dieter takes it all, sucks it down and swallows as he pants against Mulder’s mouth. 

Then he thanks him, and he thanks Scully, over and over with baited breath until he collapses to the side of them, completely spent and overstimulated. 

“You did so good,” he hears Scully say. 

Only she’s not talking to him. 

She’s got both her hands on Mulder’s face. Her lips just brushing against his own as she whispers. He watches her hike her legs up to wrap around Mulder’s waist, watches Mulder sag into her so he’s plastered against her front. 

“Scully,” Mulder whines. 

“Harder, Mulder. Make me come.”

He kisses her one last time before he buries his face in her neck and obeys, pulling nearly all the way out of her before driving back in. She’s really vocal now, now that she has Mulder’s undivided attention, now that he can focus on fucking her steadily and deep and fast.

Her head is thrown back and she looks so fucking beautiful. Mulder should be looking at her, shouldn’t miss a moment of the way she looks as he’s making her fall apart. But Dieter can’t blame him, or the concentrated, almost pained look he has on his face that’s just peeking out under her chin. 

It’s crazy how she seems to be fucking him from under all his weight, but she’s doing exactly that. Her toned legs pull him into her, her hips arching to meet his, so frantic and hot. One of her hands is leaving red marks down his back and the other one is petting through his hair, scraping his scalp and pulling so many gorgeous noises from him. 

Dieter couldn’t look away if he tried. His spent cock is twitching, trying it’s damndest to steal what little blood is left in his brain. He wants to help them along, maybe take Scully’s nipple into his mouth, but they’re both crushed under Mulder’s body in a way Dieter’s extremely jealous of. He could touch Mulder, could grab his pert little asscheek and squeeze. But he resigns to the sidelines instead, lets them share this intimate moment with only the intrusion of his eyes and heavy breathing. 

It’s over pretty quickly, anyway. Mulder starts babbling again, a great fucking look on him, there where he’s hidden in the pale crook of her neck. 

“Please, Scully. Come for me— I wanna make you come. I wanna be good, let me make you feel good.”

And she’s grinding her hips up as her back arches off the bed, no doubt catching her swollen clit on that enticing patch of wiry curls above his prick. She’s panting and gasping and then she’s shouting.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, Mulder, oh my god! So good, good boy— I’m gonna come—”

And she does. Beautifully. She tenses up and then she shakes, convulsing under him, around him. She moans and mumbles through it, with her eyes shut tight and her cute little nose all scrunched and her mouth hanging open. 

It’s so beautiful that she outshines Mulder. Dieter barely even catches his groans, the curses under his breath as his hips stutter and grind into her. They both ride it out for a while, it’s like it’s never going to end. They writhe against each other and Mulder’s panting into her mouth as she tries her best to kiss his open lips. Their rhythm takes forever to slow, and even longer to come to a stop. 

It’s better than anything Dieter ever could have imagined. He’s already half hard again, just watching them be together, and that fact only makes him want to leave, disappear, let them play this out without some stranger in their bed. 

But christ he wants to stay and watch just as bad. 

Their eyes flutter open at the same time, and the smiles on their faces are as nauseating as they are precious. Scully looks like the cat that got the cream, and Mulder has the audacity to look sheepish. 

“I uh—” Mulder’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat, “I didn’t pull out.”

Scully giggles. 

“I noticed.”

He huffs, and she smooths his sweaty hair from his forehead.

“I’m on the pill.”

Mulder sighs. 

“That’s— that’s good.”

Idiots, Dieter thinks. The situational irony is off the charts. His huff alerts them both, snaps them out of their little bubble to look over at him. 

He opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes to mind. Scully gives him an amused little smirk and reaches over to pet his hair. 

“You were so good,” she muses. 

He shivers at her words and her fucked-out gaze. 

Mulder shifts on top of her, and they both gasp a little noise when he slips out of her, but they’re both focused on him. 

Mulder looks him up and down and for a moment he isn’t sure if he’s about to kick him out of bed or kiss him within an inch of his life. 

He does neither, it turns out. Instead he holds the side of Dieter’s face in his big, sweaty palm and it’s so soothing that he closes his eyes and leans into it. His thumb strokes Dieter’s cheek while Scully plays with his hair and he could die happy here. 

“Yeah man, thank you. That was good— you were good.”

Dieter’s eyes open wide at that. They’re both looking at him with fondness— appreciation. His chest swells with a heavy feeling just as his eyes begin to sting. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

He just barely catches the confused looks on their faces before he hides his own, rolling over into his stomach to let his pitiful tears fall into the blanket below him. Scully ruffles his hair with a sympathetic coo and Mulder pats him on the back of his heated neck before he hears rustling and feels the bed shift. 

“Oh my god.”

Scully’s voice sounds horrified. For a quick moment, his tiny little pea brain thinks of Queequeg— is he alright, did he get out while they were occupied?

“What the hell?”

Mulder’s voice sounds much more amused. 

Confused, Dieter wipes his wet eyes in what he hopes is an inconspicuous move before he looks over his shoulder at them.

Scully and Mulder are both standing at the foot of the bed, looking equal parts mortified and puzzled. And they’re staring at Dieter’s bare ass. 

His bare ass that he now remembers is tattooed. Tattooed with Mulder and Scully’s face on each cheek, respectively. 

“Oh, ha— yeah. Maybe that could have proved it faster?”

His face feels hot. He’s had these asscheek tattoos for so long he sometimes forgets about them. He was young and drunk and high when he got them, but they still hold up. Full color portraits of his favorite FBI agents. 

“What do the words say?” Scully asks. 

Mulder takes one for the team and leans in closer to Dieter’s ass, and he wonders if his blush goes all the way to his buttcheeks. 

“Mine says the truth is out there, and yours says I want to believe.”

Dieter lets out a nervous chuckle and shifts, a little scrutinized, a little embarrassed, a little bit turned on at the way Mulder’s gaze settles over his body.

“When did you get these?”

“1998, right after the movie came out.”

“There’s a movie?”

“Two, actually.”

Scully shakes her head and looks from Mulder to Dieter’s butt, back and forth a few times. 

“I’ll give you this one, Mulder. Only because there’s no lake monster for you to boast about.”

Mulder preens, a satisfied smirk settling on his handsome face. 

“Finally,” he and Dieter say at the exact same time. 

She rolls her eyes. 

“Brag about it in the morning. I’m tired— and my bed’s clean,” she throws her voice over her shoulder as she leaves the room. 

Dieter stays put. His ankles roll around in an attempt to hide his hesitation. He stares at the empty doorway and avoids Mulder’s lanky form. 

“You coming, Doc Brown?”

He’d be stupid not to follow like an eager pup. 

They all nestle into Scully’s bed. She’s in the middle, wrapped up in blankets, and the guys take either side of her. Dieter rests his head on her naked breast as she kisses Mulder goodnight, as Mulder’s fingers intertwine with his own over her smooth stomach. Their pillow talk lulls him to sleep and he goes to bed happy for the first time in years.

He wakes up alone, on his couch, in his own clothes, with his face smashed against his open laptop. 

A dream. It must have all been a crazy, weed and hormone induced dream. Best dream he’s ever had. He sighs, scratches his head and takes in his surroundings. 

Everything’s normal, exactly how he left it. Except, when he moves to his bedroom to mourn the loss of the day he never had, he sees a red and white trucker’s hat on his nightstand. 

Show us your bobbers

[cecilysass]

Honest Man (3/3)

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic

Chapter 3

When it’s obvious Bill is down for the count, Mulder follows Scully back out into her living room. She doesn’t pause to look or speak to him. She marches straight into the kitchen and begins to wordlessly fill up a glass of water at the sink.

“Scully,” he begins, unsure of what he’s about to say.

“Sounds like you’ve had an exciting evening,” she interjects crisply.

“Yeah. Exciting.” He steps sideways to attempt to gauge her expression, but she’s facing the sink.

“You gave Bill marital advice?”

“Yeah, I–” Mulder shrugs. “I did. He asked. I guess he and Tara had a fight. I, uh, wasn’t sure what to say, but he insisted. I did the best I could.”

She watches the water glass fill with laser focus. “Then I guess I’ll know how to explain it to Mom if they end up divorcing,” she replies without affect.

“Yeah,” Mulder says glumly.

“Thank you for driving him here tonight,” she says formally.

“Uh, of course.”

“Apparently it ruined some plans.”

“Scully,” he says plaintively. “It wasn’t … a date.”

She turns from the sink to regard him frostily, and he feels like he’s lying to her, although he isn’t. “It wasn’t,” he repeats.

She looks like she wants to say something, but thinks better, pinching her lips together. She sets the water glass on the counter.

“Bill thought I was on a date, but I wasn’t,” he adds.

She turns around, showing her back to him again, to close the cabinet. Then she rests her palms on the countertop, appearing to closely study the design of her own kitchen shelving.

Her small, silk-covered shoulders rise and then fall.

“You know, I bet I can guess this story,” she says in a strange, distant voice. “You met up with Diana Fowley after work because she had some important information about the X-files that she said she had to share right away. On a Friday night. Over drinks.”

He sighs. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Of course, you didn’t mention this work-related meeting to me this afternoon at work.”

“No, you’re right. I didn’t.”

She doesn’t move, her back still to him. He suspects she intended to place the glass of water on the bedside table next to Bill, but she doesn’t touch it again. She just leans against the countertop, as though collecting herself.

Mulder knows she’ll be angry at what he says next.

“Diana asked me to do some unofficial fieldwork for the X-files. She thinks if I do, if she can put it together into a convincing report—”

“She can request you back on the X-files,” Scully finishes, her head bobbing up and down in a knowing nod. “As her partner. Right?”

“Right,” Mulder says, a lump in his throat. “Exactly.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Scully turns around now, and with a jolt he sees there are tears streaming down her face, though her expression is neutral.

“We both know what’s going to happen,” she says flatly.

Mulder is dumbfounded. “Do we?”

“Of course,” she says sharply. “You’ll do it. You’ll be her partner. It’s what you want, isn’t it? You told me what your priorities were on our first case. The X-files come before anything and anyone else. I know perfectly well that includes me.”

Mulder is appalled to hear his own words cited back to him like that. It’s not an especially pretty picture she presents, of a man so single-minded, so disloyal that he would so predictably toss aside his partner of six years, his best friend.

“I’m sure she made all kinds of implicit promises to help assuage any discomfort you might have.” Scully’s words grow venomous, full of more overt anger than she normally reveals. “She offered to give you a little more than just the X-files, too, didn’t she? She made it very hard to refuse? Made you feel like you wouldn’t be lonely?” She places her hands over her face in apparent regret. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “That’s … unnecessarily petty of me. I’m not thinking straight.”

Mulder shifts weight from one foot to another, watching uncomfortably as she hides her face. He isn’t sure he should tell her that her guess about Diana was so on target.

“Scully, she expressed concern for your career,” he points out gently instead. “She argued that you would be able to get a better placement in the Bureau. Which is true, and something I wish you would think about.”

Scully lets her hands drop from her face and looks at him incredulously. “Is that what she said?”

“Yes,” Mulder says, “and while it’s true that—”

“Mulder,” she interrupts with a bitter laugh, “you’re fortunate that violent criminals are usually men, because you can be truly terrible at profiling women.”

He’s taken aback. “Am I terrible at profiling Diana? Or am I terrible at profiling you?”

She looks up at the ceiling, considering for a moment, then drops her gaze down to meet his eyes again defiantly. “Both.”

He feels something crucial is being lost in this conversation. He’s getting this wrong, for sure. “It’s not like I told Diana yes.”

She smiles humorlessly. “You didn’t tell her no either, did you?”

“Well … I didn’t say those words, no.”

“So, what, you did an interpretive dance?”

Brushing past him out of the kitchen, she speeds into the living room, Bill’s glass of water apparently forgotten. Mulder follows behind her.

“Listen,” she continues in a different, more placating tone, “I’m not angry. Not really. You’ve always been upfront about who you are.” She turns to look at him with a sad smile. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

She means this to be conciliatory, but it’s like she spit in his face. That familiar feeling burns in his chest, his old friend from boyhood: shame.

“No,”’ he says urgently, “you should expect something else. You can’t just think that I— I’m not just…. you don’t get it at all.”

“What don’t I get?”

“Look,” he says earnestly, “back when we first started to work together, I didn’t understand that you and I were going to…”

Scully groans, collapsing into a chair in her living room, her head flopping into her hands. “Oh god, I really don’t want a speech like this.”

“What? I just want to explain.”

“I don’t see what there is to explain.” He watches her trembling fingers swiping a fresh round of tears away, and he scrambles to sit on the couch across from her.

“Scully—”

“Look,” she says, smoothing her hair back, visibly calming herself down. “It’ll be okay. Really. I don’t need a partner breakup talk.” Her voice wavers a little. “I’ll probably go back to Quantico. I’m sure after a while you could even consult with me on cases. I might need a little time to adjust first.”

“I haven’t—”

“And I don’t want to talk to her, Mulder. Only you,” adds Scully fiercely as an afterthought. “I don’t trust her. You shouldn’t either.”

“Jesus, I’m not going to do it, Scully,” he manages to get out. “I wouldn’t … I couldn’t do that.”

She looks uncertain for the first time in the conversation. “You’re … really not?” she says.

He shakes his head emphatically.

She regards him quizzically. “So you plan on turning her offer down entirely?”

“Of course.”

“Soon?”

“Yeah, soon,” he shrugs. “I mean, what can I say?” He attempts a charming smile. “I’m finding all those background checks more interesting than I thought.”

She doesn’t return the smile. She seems to find a little thread on the arm of the chair that she plucks at, her tongue darting out to swipe over her bottom lip.

“What?” he says, his stomach knotting. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she says, continuing to pinch the thread on the chair. “I … guess I just don't completely believe you.”

Again Mulder is stunned. “You don’t believe me?”

“No. Not entirely.” Her eyes won’t meet his, like she feels guilty for the sin of mistrust.

“Why… not?”

She swallows, then raises her eyes to his. “I suppose I worry … that you’re telling me what I want to hear. So you don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of me being upset.” She straightens her posture. “And if that’s the case, Mulder, I wish you would just show me the respect of telling me the truth. So I won’t be unpleasantly taken by surprise later.”

“The inconvenience of you…” He stops, holding back his anger. “Since when do we not believe each other, Scully?”

Her nostrils flare, but her tone is icy calm. “Since you started going on secret dates with ex-girlfriends trying to recruit you to be their new partner behind my back, I suppose.”

“It was not a date,” Mulder repeats in a hiss.

“What exactly do you think a date is, Mulder?”

He sucks his teeth in irritation, jerking his limbs around restlessly on the couch. “Well, for one, I think a date is primarily about someone trying to initiate a relationship, not about work.”

“And you’re saying this wasn’t about both?”

There’s a moment of silence.

Mulder feels the beginning of a headache throbbing in his temples, and his eyes flash longingly towards the door. Maybe he should just leave. Maybe that’s for the best. He could try explaining this all again in the daytime, when Bill isn’t here, when they’re both in better moods.

Then his eyes fall back on Scully.

She looks small and defeated in the chair, looking at the floor, tears still visible on her cheeks. He wonders if it’s possible she might cry more if he were to leave now. He thinks about her belief that he’d go back to the basement office without her. How sure she seems to be that he would do it.

Something deep inside him aches like an old, unhealed wound. He knows he won’t be leaving. He knows it in the same certain way he knew he was going to take Bill home from the bar tonight. It doesn’t even feel like a real choice.

He squirms around on the couch again, trying futilely to get comfortable, and it makes something in his pocket poke him in the thigh.

“Oh,” he says softly, remembering. He digs his hand into his pocket to fish out an object. “I, uh, brought you something, Scully.”

She looks up at him warily. “What? An autopsy report?”

“No, no,” Mulder says. He extricates it from his pocket. It’s slightly dented, but otherwise unblemished. He leans over to hand her the coaster he’d picked up from the table at the bar.

“What’s this?” She examines it with a frown.

“It’s just a coaster.”

“Did you steal this, Mulder?”

“Yeah,” he admits sheepishly. “I stole it from the Honest Man Pub.”

“That’s almost painfully ironic."

Mulder shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges,” Scully reads from the coaster. “Herman Melville.”

“It reminded me of you,” says Mulder, feeling a little self-conscious. “Melville. Truth. You know. All your favorites.”

“You stole this for me on your date?”

“Scully,” Mulder says, “it wasn’t a…” He stops himself, closing his eyes. “Yeah. I stole the coaster on my date.”

Scully is holding the coaster in her fingers, turning it over and over, and she looks up at him.

“So you and Bill were at the Honest Man Pub tonight,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I like that place,” she muses softly. “Good food. I like the chicken club sandwich.”

He nods. “I do, too. I didn’t eat tonight though.”

She stares in mystification at the coaster, her brow creasing. “What … what was Bill and Tara’s fight about?”

“Oh.” Mulder scratches the back of his neck. “Tara wants to go back to work, and I guess Bill doesn’t want her to.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Scully replies.

Mulder just nods numbly.

“What did you tell him?”

“Uhhh … nothing too remarkable. Be completely honest, admit when you were a dick, listen to her.”

“Did Bill listen?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Mulder says. “I hope so.”

“Why do you hope so?” Scully asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Bill’s been nothing but awful to you,” Scully says, her eyes fixed on him. “It sounds like he’s been awful to Tara, too. Why would you try to help him at all?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder says truthfully. He considers. “He wanted to be better. And… it seems like despite how he acted, he actually does love her. I just hoped he could get it together.”

Really and truly, Mulder hadn’t intended for this statement to have any double meaning. But in the chair across from him, Scully goes unusually silent and still.

He has thirty seconds of horror replaying the words back, thinking about how she must have heard them. About the implications. About what he might have revealed inadvertently.

There is a short but unbearable stretch of silence.

“So why didn’t you eat?” she asks at last.

“What?” he says, swallowing.

“You said you didn’t eat at the pub,” she points out. “You didn’t eat dinner?”

“Oh,” he says. “No. Because the night ended early. The Bill thing. And Diana sort of decided she needed to, uh, raise the stakes.”

“Raise the stakes,” repeats Scully.

“Yeah …” He rubs his hands together in agitation. “I don’t think I was as enthusiastic about her offer to be partners again as she thought I’d be,” he says. “She tried to raise the stakes. Manipulate the situation. I wasn’t that wild about it.”

“How did she try to manipulate the situation?” Scully asks.

“It was like you said before,” he says reluctantly. “She made some offers. Like she thought she had to do more to … you know. To compete.”

“Compete.” Scully repeats. “Compete with what?”

Mulder doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I’ve known her a long time, and I think her heart is more or less in the right place,” he says. “But I think she felt like she needed to compete with … you know, Scully. The reason I wasn’t going to say yes.”

Scully’s face is blank, and Mulder realizes in shame that he is going to have to spell it out. “I have a partner. I don’t want a new partner. She tried to compete with that.”

Scully’s clutching the coaster tightly in one hand, wide-eyed.

“Anyway, I don’t like feeling manipulated like that,” Mulder says, shrugging self-consciously. The more he thinks about it, the more clearly he sees it. “Diana knows things about me from our past together, and she … tries to use those things as a lever with me. She knows that relationships are a big deal to me, that intimacy in a relationship is a big deal to me.”

“Is that true?”

“Yeah,” he says, feeling his face warm. “Does that surprise you?”

“No,” she says, almost a whisper.

“I mean, you’re right about what you said. In some ways.” He looks closely at his hands. “I went there with a goal, thinking she might give us some avenue to work on the X-files. But there’s no way I’d… there’s no way I would choose to go back to the X-files … like that. Without you, I mean.”

She is only continuing to stare, her face unchanging. He wonders what she is thinking.

“I guess I can’t prove to you that I’m telling you the truth,” he says, suddenly feeling deflated. “The only evidence I have is a lack of evidence. That Diana asked me to come home with her, and I … didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Mulder huffs in frustration. “That’s what I’m saying, Scully. What I’m trying to tell you. I don’t want that.”

Scully’s eyes fall again on the coaster, her brows knitting together. She examines it thoughtfully. “Instead you went home with Bill.”

“Right,” he says. He tries to smile. “Obviously I’d never miss a chance to go home with a Scully.”

To his great relief she offers a tiny, enigmatic smile in response. “You two did seem to hit it off surprisingly well tonight.”

“Yeah, he’s my favorite redhead now,” Mulder says. “You’re second, though, don’t worry.”

Through her smile the beginnings of fresh tears begin to pool in the bottom of her eyes.

“Aw, I’m just kidding,” he pleads. “You’re still my favorite.”

“Really that is evidence you were telling the truth, isn’t it?” she reasons, wiping her eyes. “You brought Bill home safely, even though he’s been an asshole to you for years. You tried to help him.”

“He wasn’t so bad tonight.”

“I didn’t believe you,” she says. “I thought you’d do anything to get the X-files back.” Her voice lowers tremulously. “I’m sorry, Mulder.”

“No, come on,” he says, frowning. “I see why you came to that conclusion. It wasn’t unfounded. But I…” He scrunches closed his eyes, then opens them. “It actually isn’t … just the work for me any more. I have some other priorities.”

“Do you?” she whispers.

“Yeah.”

She’s staring hard at him now, her eyes darting back and forth across his face.

He stands from her couch, hoping he projects more confidence than he feels, and walks directly over to her in her chair. She tracks his movements warily.

He extends his hand. “C’mon, Scully,” he says roughly.

Her eyebrows lift higher, but she places her hand in his, and he lifts her to her feet, drawing her as close to him as he dares.

“Let me show you my priorities,” he says.

It would be much smoother if he just kissed her, but he doesn’t. He hesitates. It’s his habit to check in with her, after all. He always wants to know what she thinks, and that’s one reason he knows he loves her.

Her eyes are round. Her face has lost some color. But her body, her center of gravity, is tipping ever-so-slightly towards him.

Solemnly he nods, and his hands slide around her waist. Her body feels tiny, warm and fragile, slippery with silk.

He bends down to let his lips cover hers. One light kiss, slightly hesitant. Then another firmer, more hungry. He feels her shiver a little in his arms, and he wants to feel it again. 

Tilting his head reverently, he begins to kiss her from every angle, his hands moving up and down, up and down her back. His palms graze the soft slope of her rear end once as he caresses her, and then stop to grasp her there intentionally. He's beginning to feel dizzy, lost in the barrage of sensory details. It’s the kind of kissing that hides nothing, he realizes dimly. Not his swift, overwhelming arousal. Not the fierce intensity of his emotions. That should probably worry him a little, but it doesn’t.

Her own arms have wound around his neck, and it almost feels like she’s trying to climb him, her own mouth pushing in farther towards him, her body meshing into his. He can hear the frantic, uneven quality of her breath. And it occurs to him: she’s not hiding very much, either.

“Bedroom,” she whispers into his ear.

“What about Bill?” Mulder whispers back urgently.

“He won’t know,” Scully says. She pulls back to look at him, her cheeks flushed deep pink. “Does it bother you?”

“Noooo,” Mulder says, shaking his head. “Not enough to stop, anyway.”

They start to move towards Scully’s bedroom, still entangled, Mulder walking forward and Scully taking backwards steps.

He’s distracted by kissing her again and again, and neither of them notice Bill’s shoes on the floor, still lying where they had remained after they both had worked so hard together to remove them.

Scully stumbles backwards first, which pulls Mulder off balance, too. They both crash loudly into an end table on their way down to the floor.

“Fuck,” Mulder exclaims as they land in a pile. He sits up, feeling a bruise rising on his knee already.

Scully pushes herself up and puts her hand over her mouth, laughing. “Are you all right, Mulder?”

“Yeah, you?”

She nods, still laughing, pushing an errant strand of hair from her face. “Wait. Shh.” She abruptly quiets and leans over, placing her finger over his lips, tilting her head to listen seriously for a beat. Then she relaxes and smiles again. “If that didn’t wake Bill up, he’s really out.”

Mulder doesn’t feel as amused. He’d wanted this to be more perfect. “Not an auspicious start,” he says, trying to sound light, but feeling some knots of anxiety.

Scully’s expression softens. She scoots towards him on the floor, taking a firm hold of his forearms.

“It’s okay,” she says soothingly, her forehead pressing to his. “Small hiccups.”

“I know,” he says, feeling silly. “But—”

“Truth, uncompromisingly told, will always have its ragged edges.”

She smiles playfully, her thumbs running back and forth lightly over his arms. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in her pajamas, saucily quoting bar coaster wisdom back to him, Scully is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. His hands find her face, cradling her cheeks.

“Right, Mulder?” 

“That’s right,” he whispers back at her, barely vocalizing.

“And that’s what this is, right, Mulder?” she says, her voice cracking slightly on his name. “The truth?”

In response he leans in and kisses her in a way that he hopes tells her everything, that leaves no secret hidden.

Then he whispers softly in her ear. “That’s right.” Another kiss, this one infused with pure hope. “That’s absolutely right.”

***

[leiascully]

what about… a short msr bathtub fic, but only if you feel like it.

It got a little out of hand, so have 1300 words of bathtub fic. TW: infertility mention/IVF arc.

She answers the door wearing a robe. He steps in quietly and she locks the door behind him. She looks soft and small despite the bulk of the terrycloth, her bare feet silent on the floor. She takes his hand without speaking and leads him across her apartment.

The bathroom is full of steam; it swirls out when she opens the door. She draws him in. With the door shut, it’s as if they’re sealed away in another world. Water thunders into the tub, capped with a thick layer of quivering bubbles. He can see particles of mist in the air. Sounds seem muffled. She turns away, lets the robe slip off her shoulders. He turns his back hastily, but he can see a sliver of her side in the mirror: pale skin, a compact curve from rib to hip, an arc of lurid ink. He closes his eyes and unbuttons his shirt.

She called him earlier, an exchange of mostly breath. It wasn’t out of character; they’d both picked up the phone before just to know the other one was on the other end. At last, she said, “Please come over”, and the smallness of the request broke something in him. She should have known he’d do anything for her. He’d been to Antarctica and the graveyard and the IVF clinic for her, sat in filthy rooms and sterile ones, waiting for news.

Now he stands in her bathroom undressing. He can hear the taps creak off and the water swirl as she gets into the tub. There is an air of unreality to it: the steam, the heavy scent of bergamot, the unaccustomed glimpses of skin. He’s seen her naked before, but those moments were dictated by circumstance. This is her choice.

He toes off his shoes, folds his shirt and his jeans over them, drops his socks and his boxers on the top of the pile. When he turns, she’s tucked herself into the end of the tub, sitting with her knees drawn up. He climbs into the other end, hands braced on the sides. The water rises according to the principles of Archimedes, brimming toward her knees. Their toes touch in the center of the tub. He loops his arms around his bent knees, holding himself together, giving her space.

They sit like that in silence, quarantined at their separate ends. Together but not. She lets out a long shaky breath.

The water is hot enough to prickle at his skin. Scully is already flushed, tendrils of hair curling around her face. He’s trying not to look, he swears he’s trying not to look, but he’s always been transfixed by her.

“I’m tired,” she says at last.

“I know.” He studies her, keeping his eyes above her neck.

“I wanted….” Her voice breaks. She swallows. “Mulder, I really wanted it to work.”

“I know.” He rests his hand on the side of the tub, there if she’s ready to reach for it. She tangles her fingers with his.

“Did you?” Her eyes search his face. This is the moment, he understands. This is what could make or break them, after everything they’ve endured. Total honesty or nothing.

“Yeah,” he says, nearly choking on the word. “Yeah, I did.” He closes his eyes against the swell of emotion that makes his chest ache. A child. With her. He wanted that. He wanted it so badly he never allowed himself to know how much it meant until it wasn’t plausible anymore. He wondered about it from the moment he found her ova, wanted it badly from the first time he saw her with Emily.

In a way, he’s ashamed he feels this way. It’s such a cliché, to want to see her bear his child. It feels old-fashioned, even chauvinistic. There’s something primal about how territorial he felt about her during the IVF process. He felt larger, heavier, sensitive to her relative delicacy. He prowled at her side, showing his eyeteeth to Skinner, sensitive to any attempt to invade their pride of two.

He had some secret knowledge of her then, despite the fact they’d never made love. His seed inside her made her his woman. He hates that he enjoyed the thought: she belongs to herself first. But a baby would be a shared responsibility, immutable in a way their assignment to the X-Files isn’t. It would change both of their lives irreversibly. It would link them forever. He wants it so badly he can’t breathe.

The water ripples. He opens his eyes. She’s kneeling now in front of him, a supplicant. She puts her hands on his knees, her hot palms cupped over his skin. Scully has touched him everywhere, maybe, but not here.

“Will you kiss me?” she asks, and his heart breaks all over again.

“Anything,” he says, the way he should have years ago, the way he should have months ago when she first asked him. “Scully, I’d give you anything.”

He’d been terrified then. He’s terrified now. They have been standing on a precipice for so long, their backs to the abyss. The road has been steep and rocky; at times they’ve had to blaze their own trail. There are higher peaks, perhaps, higher truths, but they’re weary of climbing to the pinnacle to find more mountains beyond. He thinks that a paradise might await, if only they can take a leap of faith. She’s the only thing he has faith in, these days.

He leans forward, takes her face in his hands, studies her. Her eyes gleam. She’s got that little crease between her brows that bespeaks great internal turmoil. She studies his face.

“Scully,” he says tenderly. He strokes her hair back. His fingertips find her jaw and gently draw her forward. She leans closer, her weight supported on her hands on his splayed knees. He angles to meet her halfway. His lips brush hers. A butterfly’s wing, the lightest breathless touch.

The world shifts. In his heart, a hurricane forms.

How could he have been afraid of this? How could he not have been?

He can count the number of times they’ve kissed on one hand before tonight and not even use all his fingers. It’s magic every time. This time, it transforms them. The leaden tension that’s hung heavy between them since Diana’s return is transmuted into gold, pure and soft and shining. Her mouth opens in sudden hunger, asking urgent questions, and he answers, pulling her close.

It all feels like a dream. Their hands slide smoothly over slick skin, leaving trails of bubbles. He stretches out his legs and it seems she floats into his lap. Everything is easy. Everything is simple. He touches her breasts, her hips. She balances herself with a hand on his chest as she sinks onto him. They draw pleasure out of each other with lips and fingers, with hot breath and sweet words. She rests her forehead against his as she comes and pants against his mouth. The water sloshes as his body shudders under hers.

They towel each other off, after, moving slowly and gently. Scully’s towels are warm and soft as a Downy commercial, or maybe it’s just that everything feels like a miracle. Her mattress yields to their combined weight as comfortably as if they’ve slept together every night for years. Her bare skin against his is heaven. She exceeds his expectations, always. He knew she would. Still, this kind of solace seemed unimaginable. Fictional. They had written themselves out of happy endings. Now here it is, some blissful twist to their story. He can give up his holy quest: the Grail is in his arms.

“One more round,” he says. It’s a question and a promise. His fingers are splayed over her belly. He tries to ignore the softness of her, tries not to imagine a fecund swell instead. His imagination has always run wild.

“I’ve exhausted my resources,” she says in a small distant voice.

“I sold my father’s house,” he tells her. “Let me do this for you.”

“For me?” she asks.

His heart swells. He pulls her closer, nuzzling into her hair. “For us.”

“For us,” she whispers. She clutches his hands to her breast.

“I love you,” he says, and the once-bitter words are honey on his tongue.

[agent-troi]

scully and mulder's dynamic visibly changes after the onset of the season of secret sex

i've been thinking about how dd and ga deliberately played season 7 like mulder and scully were sleeping together, and i think there's solid evidence of that in the differences in how scully reacts to mulder appearing to show interest in another woman before and after the season of secret sex begins (i'm using millennium as the before/after divider bc i think that's what dd and ga decided, but this is based on my vague memory of a reddit comment about it which is how i first learned that the season of secret sex was a thing)

so overall there's an undercurrent of insecurity, borne of scully's uncertainty regarding precisely how mulder feels about her and what her place is in the hierarchy of things that are important to him in his life, that exists in the pre-millennium incidents and is glaringly absent post-millennium:

before millennium:

(i'm not gonna include phoebe/fire here bc i don't think scully's awareness of her feelings had yet risen to the point where she'd be truly jealous, i'd characterize her in that ep as largely protective of mulder and unwilling to let him deal with phoebe's games alone. it also helps that he's clearly not happy phoebe is back in his life again, unlike his much more positive reaction to diana)

war of the coprophages- the second scully finds out about bambi, she immediately hops in her car and drives up to miller's grove to join mulder, bc letting him investigate cockroaches alone was fine but god forbid he spend quality time investigating an x-file with an attractive female scientist who isn't herself- that's their thing!!

syzygy- to be fair the planetary alignment situation was exacerbating her- and mulder's- behavior here, but her jealousy of and hostility to detective white were still real, even if she would've been able to rein in her emotions better under normal circumstances.

diana fowley arc- i think this speaks for itself, lol

alpha- this is an interesting period in their relationship: after most of the diana shit is over, but before the tension between them is fully resolved (a process which to me begins with milagro/the unnatural and ends with amor fati, but that would be its own post lol).

other than introducing himself to karin as "fox" (maybe as a way to appeal to her preference for canids lol) and thus implicitly giving her permission to call him by his first name (which she proceeds to do throughout the episode), mulder doesn't seem to show much in the way of attraction to her.

even when he touches her hand to move the mouse, he's more interested in what's on the screen than in paying attention to her:

karin, however, is visibly affected by the contact, a fact which scully immediately notices:

later in the car, they have this convo, the last line of which is so heavily laden with diana subtext it's not even funny:

scully's reaction to karin is similar to her reaction to phoebe in that she's motivated mainly by wanting to protect mulder from his own naive, trusting nature, and from someone she believes is seeking to take advantage of it, rather than being motivated primarily by jealousy and defensiveness. she doesn't really believe that karin is a genuine threat to her relationship with mulder, but with diana still fresh in her memory she can't afford to not be vigilant. hence why she confronts karin alone later:

here scully demonstrates that she somewhat empathizes with karin (mulder is also someone who challenges her, makes her feel fulfilled and happy and alive). karin's response indicates that she has correctly deduced the basis of scully's dislike/distrust of her, and also acknowledges scully is the dominant one as it relates to the territory (mulder) that they are sparring over.

scully looks away at karin's "feminine wiles" comment, revealing the nagging insecurity about her place in mulder's life that diana's arrival exacerbated and that will continue to plague her until amor fati.

after millennium:

rush- when mulder looks back at chastity in the hallway, scully's reaction is to possessively grab mulder's sleeve and pull him away into the interrogation room:

and his response is to laugh and say "what?" like he doesn't know he belongs to her and only her.

keep in mind this happens just before they interrogate tony reed, and right after they finish interrogating him this shit happens:

i already made a post last week about how insanely flirty they are in this episode, but this scene!!

she's pouting and giving him big doe eyes and playing with his tie!! at work!! in public!! she feels comfortable staking her territory in such an obvious way (also playful rather than hostile) bc she's not longer insecure about her place in his life!! i can never be normal about this i'm sorry ssdfgksdgsjdkfhkjsdf

first person shooter- when mulder checks out jade blue afterglow as she's leaving, he leans so far over in such an obvious, exaggerated way, almost as if he's deliberately trying to get a rise out of scully, but all she does is raise her eyebrows at him and lean over to block his view (while smirking):

and then he says he's "feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something", an almost direct quote of scully's line from their convo in the autopsy room right before they went down to the station:

and her response is to SMILE at him!!

pre-millennium scully would absolutely not have reacted this way in this situation. just like in rush, the insecurity that previously haunted scully whenever mulder seemed to be close to or interested in another woman is utterly absent here. they're joking and teasing and enjoying each other's company like they've always done, but there's a different dimension to it now. pre-millennium mulder would never have made a show of checking out another woman like that right in front of scully (unless a planetary alignment is affecting his behavior ofc lol), and pre-millennium scully would never have found it amusing.

(side note: people were debating on twitter a while back about whether this scene was ooc for mulder, and tbh i'm not sure what my own opinion is bc to me the whole episode has an air of... unreality? idk but it gives me similar vibes to post-modern prometheus, like maybe it's real or maybe it's just someone telling a story or it's somewhere in between, and it's also got that same unserious feel idk how else to describe it)

anyway, back to my main point, which is: dd and ga are damn good actors in the way they were able to subtly telegraph this shift in mulder and scully's dynamic. one might be able to argue that the insane flirting throughout season 7 isn't by itself evidence of the season of secret sex bc on some level they've always been like that, but to me these specific interactions provide important clues that the nature of their relationship has changed.

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (13/16)

The Adrian County morgue parking lot was a rectangle of crumbling asphalt with enough room for six cars, though there was only one other in it at present. Scully sat in the driver’s seat, wondering if this move had been the right one. 

She had called Mulder’s apartment from her mother’s, though he hadn’t answered, which had been, she’d decided, for the best. She’d left him an abridged message, letting him know that she’d be a few hours later than she expected, but that she’d have information from the Daly Carmichael case to share with him when she got there. 

At least, she hoped she would. She looked down at her open laptop at the bloodwork results from the state crime lab. There was still nothing that pointed to cause of death, but there were a few unusual chemicals found in Daly Carmichael’s blood that didn’t add up. And she had decided to come down to Adrian County on her own to address the problem. A fact that she knew Mulder would be less than pleased with.

It wasn’t just that Skinner had told her to keep him out of Adrian County—at least, it wasn’t all that. Mulder wasn’t the most gifted tactician, not when enthusiasm or worry informed his choices. And anyway, the enemy Mulder thought they were dealing with wasn’t who Mulder thought he was. For the sake of everyone’s safety and career, it was best if Scully handled this particular confrontation on her own. As sure as Mulder had been about cases in the past when he’d turned out to be right, Scully was certain about at least one thing about this one: she would be—at least relatively—safe. 

She closed her laptop, slid it into her bag, and headed for the morgue. 

***

Mulder walked through the door of his apartment, balancing several full bags of groceries. He didn’t have a lot of meals in his culinary arsenal, but he’d honed a decently respectable chicken marsala for a college girlfriend, and was hoping he could still pull it off. He’d promised Scully that he’d make the weekend worth her while, and that would extend to more than just bedsport. If he wanted to keep Scully happy long term, he would need to do more than he’d done in other relationships. He at least had to try. 

Setting everything down on his kitchen countertop, he looked at his watch. 1:22 pm. 

He’d expected Scully to call to let him know she was on her way for the last hour or so, but he had yet to hear from her, and the one time he’d called her cell phone just to check in, from the vegetable aisle of the grocery store (did she like asparagus? He couldn’t remember), her phone had been turned off. 

He put away the refrigerated groceries and, before tackling the rest, he pulled his cell phone out, unable to wait any longer to hear her voice. 

Margaret Scully answered the phone with a polite, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Scully?” Mulder said, knowing that while this wasn’t going to be one of those uncomfortable calls when he had to share bad news, it was still going to be awkward because of the conversation she and Scully had had the night before. “It’s Fox Mulder.”

“Hello, Fox,” she said, and there was an expectant, knowing lilt to her tone. 

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” he went on, “but can I please speak to Dana?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Scully said. “Dana left almost two hours ago. I think she called and left you a message. Did you not get it?”

Mulder felt a jolt of relief. “No,” he said. “She must have called my home phone. I’ve been out all morning.” Mulder did some mental math. If she’d left almost two hours before, she should have already arrived. 

“I’ll check my messages,” he said. “But in the meantime, do you happen to know if she was making any pit stops on her way back to DC?”

“She wasn’t terribly specific with me,” Mrs. Scully said. “You know how she can be. But she did mention having to stop by the office and then make a drive of several hours. I got the sense it was for work. She had gotten what seemed like an important email just before she left.”

“Did she say anything else? Which case it was? A name maybe?”

“Just what I overheard when she left you a message. David Carmichael?”

A sense of unease washed over him, and he thought of his dream the night before. In it, Scully, still wearing the tiara and naked as a jaybird, had walked up to the willow tree, laughed shrilly, then touched the carving of the broken crown. She’d disappeared instantly, and Mulder had known she wasn’t coming back.

“Thank you, Mrs. Scully, I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up before she’d said goodbye. 

He made his way quickly to his desk, and sure enough, his answering machine light was on. He pressed the button. 

“Hey Mulder, it’s me. Listen, I’m going to be later than I expected. At least by a few hours. My phone is off, but I’ll check in when I get a chance. I’m–I expect to have an update on the Daly Carmichael case when I get there. I’ll talk to you in a bit.” 

With an escalating sense of disquiet, Mulder grabbed his sidearm and his keys. Scully had gone to Adrian County, he was absolutely certain. And owing to her pit stop at the office and geography, she only had about an hour’s head start. With any luck, he could catch her before she got there. Before Aeon Greene, the Unseelie courtier, got to her. 

***

Scully stepped into the morgue building, her shoes clacking against the tile floor. As she approached the autopsy bay, a man about ten years her senior stuck his head out the door. 

“Thought I heard somebody,” he said kindly. “Can I help you? You probably don’t want to come in here.”

Scully flashed him her badge. “I’m looking for Aeon Greene,” she said.

The guy looked confused. “Who?”

Scully returned his look of confusion. “Let’s start over. Who are you?” 

“Dr. Rosen,” the man said, pulling off a pair of nitrile gloves and coming all the way out into the hallway. “The coroner.”

“Ah,” Scully said, reaching out a hand. “We didn’t get a chance to meet. I’m Special Agent Scully, the forensic pathologist who did the autopsy on Daly Carmichael.”

“Oh, the cold case. Yeah. Open and shut, huh? What can I do for you again?”

“I’m looking for Aeon Greene. Your autopsy technician?”

“My what?”

“Your diener,” she explained, hoping the man wasn’t as dense as he seemed.

He looked at her a moment and then busted out laughing. “In this ass-backwater hamlet? God, if only. I’m sorry, Agent. It’s just me here. Has been for the last six years.”

Scully stared at him for a moment and then from behind her, heard: 

“Agent Scully?”

She turned to see Aeon Greene standing in the middle of the hallway behind her. He wasn’t in scrubs and a lab coat, but rather dressed head to toe in a long black garment that appeared, when the light hit it right, to be a diaphanous and shimmering green. 

When she turned to glance back at Dr. Rosen, he was staring at her expectantly, perhaps somewhat dumbly, as though frozen in place. 

“Dr. Rosen, you’re going back on vacation,” said Aeon, and without a word, Dr. Rosen turned on his heel and made directly for the building doors, walking out without looking back. 

Scully turned back to Aeon. “Neat trick,” she said. 

“I have more,” Aeon said with a sinister smile. 

“So it would seem,” she said. She thought back to all of Mulder’s various warnings and folkloric edicts. She would need to carefully select her words. 

Aeon cocked his head to the side. “What can I do for you, Dana Katherine?”

***

Mulder took the corner too fast and nearly spun out. Reluctantly, he eased up on the gas. US-220 wasn’t nearly as slick as it had been when they’d first taken the highway into Adrian, but he would do Scully no good if he crashed and ended up in a ditch, or worse. Once the road straightened out, he reached again for his phone. 

“It’s Agent Mulder,” he said into the receiver. “Anything?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Deputy Avery. Mulder could hear the low murmur of voices from the department bullpen. He’d called the Adrian County emergency switchboard. When dispatch couldn’t connect Mulder with the Sheriff, he’d asked for Deputy Avery. Mulder had explained that his partner was headed to Adrian County and that he hoped she’d stop by the Sheriff’s Department when she got into town. That she had information on the Daly Carmichael case.

“She’s not here, Agent Mulder. And I put out a BOLO on her vehicle, but we got nothing so far.”

“I’m afraid she might be in trouble,” Mulder said. 

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?” Avery asked, concerned.

“To be honest,” Mulder said, shifting the phone to pinch between his shoulder and his ear. “I’m not sure. But I…I want backup. Lots of it. Can you muster a team?”

“Absolutely sir!” said the deputy excitedly. If the mass of policemen hovering around the scene when Daly Carmichael had been found was any indication, this sleepy hamlet didn’t see a lot of police action. The Feds calling them in on a posse comitatus was likely the highlight of their collective year. “Where do you want us?”

Mulder tried to think of everywhere she might go. “I want a team at the beach where we found Carmichael,” Mulder explained, goosing the gas as he tore over the hill that led into the little town. “I want another at the Carmichael Estate. And I want a third at the morgue.”

“You got it.”

“Deputy? Tell your boys to exercise extreme caution.” 

“What is it we’re being cautious about, agent?”

Mulder shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

[randomfoggytiger]

React: A Late-Canon Reviler Gives the Revival a Try (Founder's Mutation), Part II

This is gonna be quick and dirty because my keyboard’s acting up--

IT’S A CONTINUATION FROM MY STRUGGLE I?????????? NO WHY NO, PLEASE NO. 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

WHY do those glasses not fit anymore?? If Mulder lifts his eyebrows, they don’t even touch his cheekbones. But they were fine last episode, what happened. 

Mulder reminding us about William in yet another opening monologue. I may have the memory of a goldfish, Mulder, but I don’t have brain damage. 

I’m already so tired. 

Narration, narration, sudden voice change and drop, “Bringing Scully and I back together”-- okay, that’s straight-up David's voice. 

Oh, good. A bloody eyeball. How marvelous. 

If this is the brain Morse Code episode, I will throw hands. 

I’m Dr. Sanjay. We’re both too tired. 

WHAT’S WITH THE SHAKY CAM AS DR. SANJAY DETERIORATES. 

I’m not gonna be nit-picky… okay, I am. 

The X-Files has a certain style, aesthetically. Because of that, one has to operate inside the rules in order to cleverly bend them. Shaky cam AND close-up break two rules back-to-back.

This "modernization" isn’t a limbered stretch so much as a spinal dislocation. 

Ghost in the Machine and Blood 2.0, I see. But worse. 

The “Sanjay losing control” scene is… not too different from similar 90s ones.

But that’s the problem-- the visuals have updated, but not the method. And that leaves us with the impression that the director or screenwriter or both are either amateur or outdated. 

It’s also incredibly cluttered and confusing. Not confusing in a way that would expertly translate the meltdown in Sanjay’s brain, but confusing in a way that bombards us, the audience, with compounding “lost in translation” errors. 

Okay, welp, he’s dead. 

WHY do Mulder and Scully sound so old? Was it absolutely necessary to suck the life force out of the actors every time they walked on set? For Pete’s sake, I’ve heard more life in David’s voice while reading a Lexus ad. 

Okay, DD’s picking up a bit, and GA’s compensating with her expressions but none of this is engaging. 

Minor nitpick-- and I know both actors complained about wardrobe later-- but the second Mulder gets pants that fit him and Scully remembers to finish buttoning up her top, the sooner I’ll get a glimpse of the old show. Just sayin’. 

His pants will eventually swing to the opposite tragedy, copping a feel while forcing him to do a little Marilyn Monroe shimmy.

I shall call them Patriarchy Pants.

Scully knows Indian?

She really is the series’ language OC, isn’t she. 

Mulder got this informant to trust him by flashing his puppy eyes. I mean… it’s always worked on Scully. 

Speaking of which… where’s Scully? 

I’m wracking my brain, but I thiiiiiiiiiiink it’s consistent, even pre-S9 canon, for Mulder to sneak off and fill Scully in later. So, no complaints. I think. 

What is it about the comedy scene that didn’t work…? 

Hm. 

‘Kay, so, if this guy (Gupta, looked it up) is no longer a repressed homosexual-- like he chastises Mulder for being-- then why was he so skittish in the bar? 

He didn’t know Sanjay was dead, so therefore he didn’t know he was in danger (note from the future: he isn't in danger... which explains his skittishness even less.)

So, is his jumpiness because of repressed or hidden homosexuality? But he says he's out and urges Mulder to come out, as well.

Perhaps he's saying one thing and living another, i.e. pretending to be out and proud to save face in front of Mulder.

But then... that would be the comedy in this scene-- that he would have to eat his words (ex. another guy opens the door on them and Gupta makes a big fuss trying to cover up the homosexuality of it all-- “no homo” dialed up to 11, etc.) 

So, he was either scared to be on a hit list-- yet wasn’t aware he might be on one-- or scared of being outed-- yet didn't signal this in his actions or dialogue.

If this is Gupta’s only scene, it was a waste.

It was a waste of an introduction, regardless. But.  

Oh, Scully’s doing an autopsy, got it. 

Characters are playing by their strengths, got it. 

Also, forgot to note, Mulder sensing the guys in the bar were bad news points to his years spent on the job. A great touch.

…Unless, now that I think of it, Gupta invited him to a gay or hookup bar, consequently making Mulder look like an out-of-touch old buffoon. Which… fits his characterization in My Struggle I, but I hope for better things. 

I didn’t see any tension in Scully’s arms while pulling the instrument out of Sanjay’s ear, but, ya know, there weren’t perfect moments in OG canon, either. 

Gupta’s still here, okay. (DD getting away with a bit of humor by having Mulder act slightly out-of-place chuggin down in a bar-- I see you.) 

IT IS A GAY BAR. 

MULDER’S AN IDIOT, CONFIRMED. 

“He lived two lives.” Okay, that’s f-- “In two separate places.” NO, no, nonono-- get back over the unsubtle line before I whip out the broom, shooshooshooshooshoo.

Wait, why is Mulder explaining the autopsy results instead of Scully?

Even when he had a… siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. 

Even when Mulder had a brewing theory in mind, he always let Scully explain all her results before asking pointed questions, hearing her findings, then crafting a theory and running it by her.

Here, Scully says, “I broke fingers to find words on palm"/"instrument went into these parts of the brain” and Mulder says “It went in at that angle then turned at this angle"/"[insert theory].”

When it SHOULD be: Scully explains fingers and cause of death, Mulder points at the pics and asks why the instrument’s angle changed, Scully says “it went in 90 degree angle then turned 60 degrees”, and Mulder concludes “Like he was hunting for something.” 

The shots widen out or cut back for shock value, it seems. Sanjay’s body is shown obliquely until Scully says she “looked everywhere” for clues, which prompts the camera to cut to a wide shot and hang on his sawed-open skull. The timing’s oddly comedic, the music is light, and nothing about the scene meshes. It quickly pancakes, leaving us and the characters with dead (heh) air.

The dialogue leans “we’re gonna do this next” telling rather than natural conversation showing. 

And-- I’ve gotta be frank-- I’ve not caught an ounce of chemistry from DD and GA aside from the scene where they were talk about phone stealing and Indian languages. 

The car scene contributed nothing... except a kid accidentally fell over the hood. Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal covert set-up, I tell ya. 

Sanjay’s other apartment scene was… weird. They walk around, find pictures of experiments on kids, barely react, trip the silent alarm so the police show up--

Sorry, no, wait. The police show up ASAP, in THIS part of town? NAH. Not happening. 

Okay, the scene where Mulder has a… brain… thingy WORKS because it uses just the right amount of “new trick”: closeups without disorienting lens action slapped on top. THAT’s how you integrate a modernized technique into an older show; and it fits seamlessly into The X-Files. 

SO WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS FROM THE GET-GO?

Also, Scully may have had cancer, but she never had migraines. Those seem to be reserved for Mulder. 

Oh, we’re in Skinner’s office now. I guess. 

The clips are so poorly paced, switching or holding or integrating at the weirdest times. It even undercuts Mulder’s quips or Scully’s reactions. 

On a side note, DD and GA probably had a hard time finding their characters-- as they mentioned for both IWTB and the Revival-- because all they had to work off of was plot regurgitation. ....What do you do with that? 

I love the touch of Skinner playing hardball until Corporate Interest Guy leaves, then immediately switching to, “I assume you’re going to need [classified] copies, right?” 

…

…..

…….

Scully really doesn’t have much to add, does she? 

OH, we’re in the basement now. We're just... here. The first scene of these two back down here and they're just. Here. ...'Kay.

Mulder and Scully talking over his experience is the closest I’ve gotten to mature MSR… and it’s ruined by Scully stating the obvious, “There were no sounds. I didn’t hear anything.”

LOOK, OKAY? Mulder became CATATONIC before with these exact same symptoms and was only saved by a secret science mumbo jumbo brain surgery, WHY ISN’T SHE WORRIED. It’s equivalent to her getting a nosebleed and just wiping it away, no big deal. 

“Mulder, what are you hiding?”

He’s not hiding anything, Scully, he’s telling you. 

But if he were, that’d be outta character even for Beanpole Sneakybritches. By this point, he’d have a functioning theory to share with the class-- which he did, lest we forget.

...Or developed a taste for Hercule Poirot drama while holed up in depressed isolation, I guess (which you left him to, Scully; so this is your fault, tangentially.) Which would be stupid. 

 (Note from the future: He was hiding something, but it didn't make sense how he leaped to that conclusion, anyway; so, logically, he has nothing to hide from her in this scene.)

But when's that stopped the show before?

“What are you hiding?” 

“Sanjay heard sounds right before he died. It could be you, Mulder.”

WHAT. 

Scully and Mulder established in the lab that Sanjay heard noises right before he died. 

Mulder heard noises. 

Tells Scully in the basement. 

Scully: “I didn’t hear noises.” No reaction. 

Scully: “What are you hiding?”

Mulder explains his frequency theory.

Scully doesn’t see how it fits. 

Mulder: “What are you hiding?” 

Scully: “Sanjay heard sounds right before he died. It could be you, Mulder.” No reaction. 

PLEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE END MY SUFFERING.

16 min. in. 

Been typing nearly an hour (a dying keyboard’ll do it to ya.) 

“This is dangerous,” Scully says, flatly. 

“When has that ever stopped us?” Mulder asks, brightly. 

He is quite literally trying to pump life back into her-- WHO directed GA this way? You can tell which scenes she is given freer reign in (more natural, less muted) and which ones she is more tightly “guided” (less alive, more dead.) 

How is she spry enough to be a field agent? How is Mulder? Skinner hasn’t aged a day but these two have been MOWED. DOWN. DD and GA aren’t like this in real life, so what gives? 

Our Lady of Sorrows, go away. 

It’s Karen Kosseff except it isn’t. 

Mulder and Scully sneakily scare the daylights outta a Conservative-adjacent medical personnel with the dreaded threat of an “Obamacare” witchhunt... and at this point, the social commentary seems performative rather than intelligent. 

I’m not gonna break it down by politics; but suffice to say, while Mulder and Scully were never above a little “campaign of misinformation”, but they've never stooped low enough to fearmonger-- in fact, they looked down on those who did. 

CC-- he wrote this episode, too, right?-- turned them from FBI agents with ethics into Secret Agents with a dose of Krycekian immorality. 

Just when I think I’ve “found” MSR, the writing snatches them back from me.

…And ANOTHER THING. 

Ever since IWTB, Our Lady of Sorrows has been an awful, horrible, no-good, close-minded facility stuffed to the brim with egos and bottom-of-the-barrel intelligence. At least they’ve been upgraded from “let the kid die” psychopaths to “OBAMACARE?? INVESTIGATING OUR SAINTED, CONSERVATIVE COLLEAGUE????” Which makes them stupidly impressionable and stupendously ignorant of the law. Which they would know… because it affects their hospital. 

There’s no hint (thus far) that Scully has some dirt on them and maneuvers them into compliance by hinting at certain shortcuts they wouldn’t want investigated. No. Instead, she weaponizes their faith-- calling the guy they want to interview a “godsend”-- despite sharing it, and despite taking all matters of belief very seriously; then lets Mulder slip in the Obamacare line because… Conservative medical professionals would cow in the face of that implication instead of, I don’t know, stonewalling to protect their ranks? 

It’s such a silly, nonsensical line. 

I just want old Mulder and Scully back, is that too much to ask for?

And the lady almost stonewalled, anyway. It was pure luck that Scully pulled the right emotional strings. 

UGH. 

“I’ll agree to relay a message,” Not-Karen says… then walks off before asking what that message would be. …Sure, fine, that makes sense. 

Pregnant teen or young woman and….

And….

WHAT, IS THIS A CONTINUED PLOT POINT???????????

ANOTHER PREGNANCY PLOTLINE?????????? DO THE POWERS-THAT-BE NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO TUBES OR JARS OR WHATHAVEYOU TO GROW THEIR EXPERIMENTS, OR DID THEY ALL COPYPASTE THE EVES' AND DR. PARENTI’S VERY SPECIFIC NICHE?????

Hate the camera angles, too, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. 

Used and abused women, dismissed young mothers, callous Catholic hospitals…. It’s so… vitriolic. And all so poorly handled. 

“Desire is the devil’s pitchfork,” oh, great, the Catholic nun? lady is eeeeeeeeeeevil, who would have knooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooown--     

WHY. DOES. MULDER. SOUND. SO. OLD. 

No wonder DD and GA think the series isn’t really about happy endings, they were shuffling around like geriatric Eeyores half the time. 

Scully pushing back against Mulder protecting her from the incubation theory right after he tells her the incubation theory: in a word, disjointed. She needed to confront him BEFORE he spells it out to her-- 

…My brain melted and I lost the thought…. Wait…. Nope, it’s gone. 

“Is this what you believe happened to me, fifteen years ago? When I got pregnant, when I had my baby?” WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAT. 

“Mybaby”??????????? After all this time, MY BABY. 

WHY ISN’T GA ACTING APPROPRIATELY, SHE’S GIVING US NOTHING DESPITE BEING THE SOLE EMOTIVE PERSON ON THIS TEAM. 

IF THAT LINE IS MEANT TO IMPLY SHE’S CREATING DISTANCE WITH “MY BABY” BECAUSE SHE THINKS MULDER IS DISOWNING WILLIAM, YOU’VE NOT ESTABLISHED, AT ALL, THAT RETICENCE IS PART OF HER SELF-PRESERVATION-- NOT ONE TIME, SINCE THE REVIVAL STARTED. 

AND IF THAT WERE THE CASE, SCULLY WOULD HAVE ACCUSED HIM DIFFERENTLY: NOT FLAT AND TIRED, BUT FLAT AND ANGRY. WHERE’S SCULLY’S ANGER THAT SHE’S HAD FROM DAY ONE, THAT SHE LOST RIGHT AFTER EXISTENCE SAID HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER????????

GIVE ME GUMPTION, GIVE ME SPIT, GIVE ME FIRE, GIVE ME RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION!!!!

SO THEY ABANDONED THE INCUBATOR TALK TO TALK ABOUT HER REGRETS, I GUESS. 

THERE WAS NO POINT A TO POINT B, WE’RE JUST HERE NOW.

I don’t mind the rehash-- Mulder and Scully both had a habit of doing that, back in the day… but I’m not getting any of MULDER or SCULLY from these two… Revival robots. 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, this is the “what could have been” episode. Thanks, I’m gonna hate it. 

“Do you think he could have been an experiment?”

“I don’t know,” GET OUTTA HERE, ACTUALLY GET OUTTA HERE. 

MULDER’S WHOLE ARC IN ESSENCE-EXISTENCE WAS THAT HE KNEW THE MATH ADDED UP TO BEING WILLIAM’S FATHER (though the writers did their best to obfuscate that issue) BUT WAS AFRAID SCULLY’S BABY WOULD BE BORN WITH SURPRISES. INSTEAD, HE WAS A NORMAL, HEALTHY BABY; AND MULDER CALLED HIS SON A MIRACLE BECAUSE OF IT.

BEFORE SEASON 9 RETCONNED IT, ANYWAY. BUT EVEN THEN, WILLIAM WAS UNDENIABLY HIS MINI MULDER.

Even in IWTB, how many years later, Mulder still considered William theirs. 

Also, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait. 

Pause. 

Rewind. 

Stop. 

Mulder misses William but had to put that “behind him.” 

That. has got to be. The most. antithetical statement to Mulder’s character that I have ever. Ever. heard. 

You can’t have it both ways, CC: Mulder can’t be pushed by the ghosts of his past into wrecking his and Scully’s relationship, twice (IWTB and the Revival), while also putting HIS CHILD behind him. 

nnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOnonononononNONONONONONONO.

THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. 

YOU’RE A LIAR, A LYING LIAR LIAR FACE. 

THAT’S NOT MULDER. 

MULDER WOULD NEVER SAY THAT. 

SCULLY MIGHT, BUT EVEN THEN SHE’D STILL BE LYING TO HERSELF. 

Scully was shattered into a million pieces in My Struggle I, and Mulder is obliterated in this one. 

How. 

Absolutely. 

Lovely. 

Also, again, Scully isn’t emoting fear or terror for her son. At all. 

NORMAL SCULLY VOICE??????????????????????????????????

NORMAL. SCULLY. VOICE????????????????????????????????????????

WHAT. 

I’M, I’M, WHAT. 

FOR THE FLASHBACKS, BUT NOT FOR THE SERIES????????????????????????

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

The cutback from the flashback-dreamsequence-whatever to Scully just… sitting there. Not napping. Not dreaming, just. Thinking, I guess. 

But the sequence was obviously a dream, so. 

Can you imagine if she snapped upright from her dream, possibly at her desk? The gifs sets that could have been made mirroring this moment to Mulder’s nightmare in Paper Hearts. 

THERE’S THE SAME “OPEN THE DESK DRAWER TO SEE A PHOTO” MOTIF, TOO. 

...WHY IS THAT ASSISTANT WALKING LIKE SHE'S ON A CATWALK?

That actress said, “This is my big shot, I’m gonna stick out” (literally), and dressed to kill. 

…Or she’s a piece of commentary on the Evil Scientist Doctor and the male gaze, or something. 

Guys, no facility would have kids kept behind glass cages for their entire lifespan. 

That’s dumb. 

Scully tells the scientist he’s testing (trying to isolate) for alien DNA. He shows them out. 

Agnes (the teen or young mother) got killed and her baby taken, of course. 

At least Scully’s no longer pretending medical people aren’t stealing babies or creating mutants, I guess. 

I GUESS. 

Mulder had to wiggle his way over to the printer because his Patriarchy Pants (first sighting!) are too tight. (Told you his fashion swings in the opposite direction.) 

Mulder said, “This is my skinny jean era”, and I think I’m traumatized. 

Syndicate wanted to colonize the world with alien-human hybrids, says Mulder. And though it was unsuccessful--

(HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT)

--he doubts they stopped trying. 

So, that sweeps away the Supersoldiers, I guess. 

Since, y’know, the Revival said the aliens were never involved to begin with. 

So it was just the government making a hoax of the government hiding aliens but pretending they weren’t but really were but weren’t. 

Got it. 

What did Scully’s study about all European men being traced back to three individuals in the Bronze age (that’s a reference to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, isn’t it CC?) have to do with Mulder’s point other than for her to talk about her study. 

An illustrative hypothetical:

Mulder: “Everyone loves juice.” 

Scully: “I read a paper last year that found the three most favored juice flavors tie back to the Whirligig tastebud genome.” 

…’Kay.

I HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES LEFT, LET IT EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEND. 

Jackie (Evil Scientist Man's “insane” wife) doesn’t like cats and threw an apple at it. …Why’s there a loose cat in the “mental asylum”?

They put in the spooky track from the original show-- the tinkling symbol sound-- when she recounted her daughter breathing underwater, but I liked that bit. 

Good filming, good bit. 

Jackie was being used for experiments, crashed her car, was forced via the brain thingy to cut her child out, the end. 

…Oh, right, this plot was supposed to be about Sanjay. 

My bad. 

You forgot, too, didn’t you. 

…Why doesn’t Jackie like cats again? 

(Note from the future: Jackie feared her biological daughter because she had supernatural abilities; and ran away hoping to save her son from the same experimentation and fate. ...But her son? (or her daughter?) already had powers and forced her to cut him out??? by manipulating her brain????????? to find his way back to his sister??????????????? Even though he was a baby??????????????????? (She still doesn't know this and wishes she could see him again...????????????????????????????????????????)

This is such a BAD. SCRIPT. 

It has no direction, it swings wildly from topic to topic, nothing really connects together, it’s all… nonsensical garbage. 

Mulder gets closeted at a gay bar, the Catholic lady hates men and thinks unwed mothers are damaged, women are made to cut babies out of their stomachs, Mulder put William behind him, Scully has a waking dream instead of a sleeping one, aaaaaaaaaaaaand… Jackie hates cats. 

No, you will not get a logical explanation for any of this. 

Awwww, look, Jackie’s talking about her missing boy because she thinks about him “every day” but hasn’t seen him since and so does Scully, of course, and Mulder can sense that so he, looks, too, and this case will make him cling to William’s memory again and--

One word. Riverdale. 

“All my training-- everything that I know about psychology--” WHAT. Scully, you’re a medical doctor, not a psychologist. Definitely not a psychiatrist. 

So Mulder can read x-rays with medical accuracy, and Scully can read Indian and diagnose someone’s psychological state. 

Great.  

Just peachy. 

By the way, if you’re wondering why Mulder keeps getting bumped into or keeps peripherally noticing janitorial staff at each location, here’s your payoff (NO, IT WASN’T HAMFISTED, YOU JUST DIDN’T NOTICE THAT THIS WAS A PLOT POINT AT ALL, IT'S SO CLEVER):

The janitors work for a larger company that also services the hospitals. And Sanjay’s company. 

….Eh? Eh? Clever isn’t it??

NOITISN’T. 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so the kids are dying and inadvertently killing… off… their… parent? Or something? Or the reverse?

(Note from the future: Jackie feared her biological daughter because she had supernatural abilities; and ran away hoping to save her son from the same experimentation and fate. ...But her son?-- or her daughter?-- already had powers and forced her to cut him out??? by manipulating her brain????????? to find his way back to his sister??????????????? Even though he was a baby??????????????????? And she still doesn't know this, hoping to see him again someday...????????????????????????????????????????

THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY THE TEEN/YOUNG WOMAN WAS ALSO FORCED TO CUT HER BABY OUT AFTER BEING HIT BY A CAR, per the baby's instructions. Because that's what the episode says happens.

DO THESE ALIEN BABIES HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER OR WHAT????)

Guys, this is dumb. 

Mulder’s stupid sunglasses. 

But he looks goofy overall, so I’ll CHOOSE to be endeared rather than angry or petulant.  

(IchoosethisIchoosethisIchoosethisIchoosethis--)

Wait, why does Mulder keep getting affected by the brain thing?

More importantly. 

The episode is setting up a few, blatant parallels:

These parents are having brain problems.

Their kids are experimentation kids.

William's probably an experimentation kid.

Which is stupid, but would then prove Mulder is the biological father.

They will sacrifice this parallel to the plot but also because Scully, not Mulder, ends up being the one to communicate constantly with William.

Which would prove William-Jackson is still Scully's biologically.

(Note from the future: This complete theory is debunked in about two seconds; but will be recycled later for Scully's Morse Code seizure. Wonderful.)

It’s all. 

So. 

Stupid.

Stupid sunglasses. 

I…

I died laughing. 

Guys. 

I’m gonna include a clip because it’s so goofy. 

Context: Mulder’s brain thingy is acting up, so Scully has to run around to find a kid-- Kyle-- so he’ll… help? her partner. Hence, we have Gillian trying to keep up her Revival smoker voice whilst running off and shouting, “KYyyYYyyyyYYLLllelleleee”:

This is The X-Files. 

Weep and gnash your teeth in torment. 

This is old. 

Sorry, Mulder’s ears should be busted by now. Gimme fic where he now has to use hearing aids.  

They grabbed Kyle and stuffed him in the car. 

Ahh, this is the scene where Mulder looks back at Kyle and someone mentioned it looks like Mulder looking back at William in another, better universe (post here.) 

Okay, so, this kid doesn’t mean to hurt people by communicating with his mind, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut was or wasn’t responsible for Sanjay’s death (who was helping him.)

Scully decides “LET’S PRETEND TO HAND HIM OVER TO HIS EVIL SCIENTIST DAD IN ORDER TO FIND HIS SISTER” and that sounds reasonable. As reasonable as a starving pig at a pie fair. 

Wait.

The kid was a janitor.

Sanjay was helping him.

Sanjay was working for Evil Scientist dude.

Sanjay was trying to figure out where the kid's sister was, or he knew where she was but wasn't telling the kid?

The kid-- Kyle-- accidentally killed Sanjay because his... powers were outta control?

And... the kid can connect with different people's minds and that's how he hacked Mulder's brain (which retracts my biological theory... until, again, Scully's Morse Code seizure reinforces it.)

But the kid attacked Mulder when Mulder and Scully questioned his (adopted) mom... didn't he already know who Mulder was?

And the kid kept pressuring Sanjay to find his sister, so much so that Sanjay hadn't been able to sleep well or function in weeks?

So, this kid's... questionable, at best.

Evil Scientist, M.D., pretended to introduce the kid to his sister, but Kyle wasn't BAMBOOZLED nor FOOLED. 

Oh, btw, this kid is Jackie’s son. Looks an awful lot like William-Jackson... but anyway. (Jackson's storyline is brazenly ripped off from CC's own material, wow-- right down to the "never saw my son again" line. The writers have charming things to say about adopted families in The X-Files.)

Now he’s running around the hospital looking for Molly (the sister who scared Jackie because she can breathe underwater, etc. etc.)

Reunited with Molly.

Now the kids are throwing the adults with their minds and killing Evil Scientist Badman with the brain thing in order to stay reunited, I guess. Like the Eves. (Another rip-off recycle of their own source material.)

SO, anyway, the Evil Scientist Father died a very gruesome death. 

Cut to the place swarmed with FBI. 

Another guy said, “Skinner, keep your sfjfkfsdfksj behind the red tape.” I think. Can’t understand him. 

Guys, this is the first Mulder-and-Scully posturing I’ve seen since the series began. Praise be, they’re not mannequins. 

Here's the Mulder and William "could have been"s.  

See, guys? His faith is back. He’s choosing to remember his son and reengage with his past~. 

Yeah, and where did THAT come from. 

To recap:

Mulder had depression sometime after 2012, so bad that it made Scully… leave, I guess (which would have been a death sentence for someone with a temperament like Mulder’s.) 

But he shouldn't have had depression after 2012 because 2012 just reset the Colonization clock (according to he, himself, and his theory.)  

So, he’s got "no reason" depression, then disconnects from Conspiracies and shoves away memories of William. 

But he hadn’t had a breakdown or disconnect from reality before My Struggle I (which made Scully’s decision to leave even stupider.) 

And Scully worries he’ll have a breakdown in My Struggle I. 

And he actually didn’t leave Conspiracyville despite also leaving it and knowing things he shouldn’t and not knowing things he should. 

Following?

Conspiracy guy calls up Skinner who calls up Scully who calls up Mulder; and he and she don't hesitate to investigate despite putting “that life” behind them. 

There were no aliens, period, only men in government wearing suits or planting false memories or whathaveyou. 

He’s still got depression but doesn’t, actually, in My Struggle I despite Scully thinking he does and worrying he’ll have a breakdown despite knowing he left Conspiracyville; but also won't be coming home, etc. etc.

Both are let into the FBI.

Still following? 

He put William behind him but engages in conspiracies now (despite still engaging in them while not engaging in them-- you get it.) 

Let me reiterate: Mulder. put someone that he loved. behind him. 

Mulder makes peace with the thought that William’s his son regardless and daydreams about movies and rocket ships. 

And that’s that on all his hangups, I guess. His crops are watered and his depression is cured. 

And now he and Scully are installed at the FBI... despite the unlikelihood either of them would pass the physical tests, let alone the training they'd need to requalify. To put them on the field otherwise would be very, very dangerous... right, Skinner?

The End. 

Just make this easier for me next time and beat a bat over my head. 

I do have another nitpick. 

Mulder is too downcast in his “happier times” flashbacks, especially compared to Scully’s buoyant, sweet, upbeat persona. So, basically, he has a stunning lack of imagination, I guess. 

Which, jokes aside, is an interesting thought: Mulder creating realities in his mind so convincingly mapped onto his current one that it’s even more devastating to snap out of them and face each and every unsatisfying day.

Also, both he and Scully have the same sort of nightmare....

This had BETTER be Jackson’s way of reaching out to them for help, or so help me I’m going to label these moments as narrative clickbait. 

EYYYYYY, we got an actual Mulder “NO!” It sounded like him, too! FINALLY! SPIRIT! SPUNK! THE MULDER ESSENCE. 

Oh, yeah, that William can get yeeted-- he doesn’t fit my headcanon, anyway. 

Mulder's sitting upright, too, without having woken from a nightmare.

…So this was a deliberate choice on the filmmakers’ part. 

So this is setting up for something. Like William communicating to them BOTH in waking dreams. 

We all know that won’t happen, but, anyway. 

CONCLUSION

YOU’RE NOT GETTING ME WITH THE HAPPY FAMILY TIMES, YOU MANIPULATORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

YOU CAN’T TAKE ME ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE. 

Also: very rarely do I like movie kitchens, but Mulder's... is alright.

Lastly: again, I am so tired. 

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!  

[azure-firecracker]

I hate seeing Scully so distressed but I think Irresistible might be my favorite episode of the show so far. (Spoilers under the cut!)

I’m sure I’m far from the first person who’s talked about this but just…the realization that sometimes the scariest monsters are humans. And the fact that those are the cases that scare Scully the most because these are the ones she should be able to understand because there’s nothing supernatural about them yet they’re just as indecipherable as any supernatural being.

And God, Scully. The fact that she clearly hasn’t really dealt with any of the trauma from her abduction and the way it’s so clearly paralleled in this case with bodies…women’s bodies…being used for the purposes of others without their consent or their ability to retaliate.

How she’s so desperate to make sure Mulder doesn’t see how bothered she is and all the reasons behind that. Because she knows how worried he was about her when she got abducted and doesn’t want to worry him again. Because she’s built so much of her identity on her abilities and not needing to be protected by anybody else. Not to mention that she’s a woman in two different male-dominated fields and is probably averse to showing emotions at all just because of that.

She’s such a good character because she’s the definition of competent and collected, but here we see that just underneath that is a fear of needing others, of not being able to do everything right herself. And yes, she says she trusts Mulder with her life, but she hates the idea of needing to rely on him, of him or anyone knowing that she needs to rely on him.

And the ending. I need to watch it again for it to really sink in. I’m sure everyone has said everything there is to say about this already. Scully has just been fighting for her life in this desperate attempt to regain the agency and control she’s been missing since she got abducted, and of course it’s terrifying. And then Mulder gets there and all of this fear she’s been feeling all along sinks in but she’s so afraid of letting him in, of needing him or anyone. But he’s so gentle with her and he doesn’t let her brush everything aside the way she’s been doing all episode, and instead he really looks at her and he doesn’t even have to say anything but the way he looks at her just speaks volumes. He sees her, all of her, and he doesn’t need her to be okay all the time and all he wants her to know is that it’s okay for her to let her walls down with him.

And she finally does, and wow the way she just leans into him and lets herself go limp because she can finally admit that she needs to. And the way he holds her, not with the frantic worry he had while she was abducted but with all the care in the world like he could just to hold her there forever as long as it’ll make her feel safe. And for a second, maybe, she does.

Also correct me if I’m wrong but I think he was kissing her hair? It was hard to see.

Anyway I’m VERY in my feelings rn. Beautiful.

[actual-changeling]

partly inspired by my own meta post that i wrote about it a while ago. i thought about the love confession at the end of triangle for too long and somehow managed to uh. make it hurt even worse. sure, i could have fixed it BUT i can also write the equivalent of making us all chew glass so that's what i did.

800-something words of bittersweet angsty hurt/comfort

———

"Hey, Scully."

Her feet are aching and her body is screaming for rest, and yet she returns to his bedside when he calls, exactly like she always does. The day is heavy on her bones, eating away at her composure and leaving her raw, with her nerves exposed. It feels like she hasn't slept in a week, and all she wants is to go home, have a hot bath, and probably cry for a good hour or two. 

Mulder pushes himself upright, and with her hands grasping the railing, she leans in closer than she probably should; she can still see him floating in the water, no matter how hard she tries to expel the memory.

"Yes?"

Scully can't say what she expected—a 'good night', maybe, or a 'thank you for saving my ass again'. 

But when Mulder looks at her with an unflinching gaze and says, "I love you,"  she breaks. Easily and all at once, a dry twig snapping underneath her heel, a ripe peach bruising as it rolls from the kitchen counter. Her eyes flutter close, her next inhale shakes almost violently, and she falters. The white-knuckled grip she has on the plastic railing is the only thing keeping her upright.

Scully cannot look at him, can't face the determination, the hope she knows she'll find. After a minute of tense silence, she speaks with a quiet, tortured voice, and clings to the last remnants of her self control.

"Don't—don't do that to me, please. Not today."

Mulder's hand lands next to hers, and she stares at the inch of distance between them as hers begins to tremble.

"It's not drugs talking, Scully, I mean it."

I know you mean it, she doesn't say. That's the problem.

God, she's tired. She just wants to go home and forget about all of it, and now he cannot even give her that one last respite. The tears pricking in the corner of her eyes are born of overwhelmed exhaustion, and her strength fizzles and burns out as she attempts to hold them back. She does not want to cry in front of him, never has, and the hot trail running down her cheek feels like a dagger pointed at her chest.

When Mulder sits up and leans in, she squeezes her eyes shut and is about to turn away when his fingertips brush along her jaw. He slowly, hesitantly, traces the lines of her face until he cups her face with his right hand and wipes at the tears with his thumb. 

It's everything she wants at the wrong time, and yet she helplessly sinks into the touch. After a few moments of her allowing the gesture, his other hand comes up, too. Mulder is close enough for her to feel his warmth against her skin and his breath ghosting over her lips.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and she doubts either of them knows what exactly he's apologising for. 

Saying it. Not saying it earlier. Saying too many things he shouldn't have. Almost getting himself killed again. All of it and more.

"I can't do this, Mulder. Not when—when you could change your mind and take it back."

She can sense him scrambling to respond, and she finally opens her eyes to stop him in his tracks. Not unkindly, she softly shakes her head.

"You will promise not to, but it already happened. You meant what you said until you didn't. You wanted me around until—well." The laugh bursting out of her throat is weak and humourless.

In a flash of panic, Mulder's grip on her face tightens, not uncomfortably so, just enough to cause her hands to shoot up and wrap around his wrists in return. Keeping him in place, pulling him away, she doesn't know. Both. Neither. He does not want her to walk away, and, deep down, she wants to stay despite knowing she can't. 

"Never again," he pleads, an edge of desperation to his voice she heard once before; another missed chance hidden badly from view. "Never again, Scully, I swear."

She's shaking her head before he finishes his sentence, squeezes his wrists once, and then slowly leads his hands away from her face. Immediately missing the warmth, she lingers and keeps them in her grasp. After everything they went through, he's still Mulder, the one person in the world she knows would never willingly hurt her despite having done so before. She still trusts him, no matter how hard she tries not to.

Regret is dripping from her words, and she smiles, if only to soften the blow. She doesn't want to make the situation worse than it already is, but she can't do this. She can't. Not now. Not like this.

"I want to believe that, I really do, but it's not enough. Words aren't enough."

She slowly slides her hands upwards until she can unfurl his fists and press a kiss to his palms. Then she lets go and steps back.

"Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow." 

Scully feels his eyes on her for days, no matter how many miles stretch between them. He does not say it again. She didn't expect him to—somehow, it still hurts.

[thursdayinspace]

ficlet: a long time and no time at all

So, @laurencem asked what Mulder and Scully were doing at the unremarkable house at midnight for the anniversary of the millennium kiss. I could imagine their night having been something like this. tagging @today-in-fic

It’s been a long time and no time at all. She’s looking out the window, three minutes to midnight, lost in thought; it’s dark outside, but the room is filled with the soft light of a single lamp and a few candles. She sees little but her own reflection looking back at her, a contemplative look on her face.

His reflection joins hers as he steps up behind her, placing his hands on her hips and leaning his chin on the top of her head. He fits against her as if their bodies were made to slot together. She’s never felt small in his arms. She feels invincible.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she answers.

“What are you thinking about?”

She takes a second to answer. It’s been such a long time and no time at all. “Us. You and me.”

“Funny,” he says. “I’ve just been thinking about the same thing.”

It doesn’t surprise her. They don’t celebrate many holidays, but they celebrate this one. There aren’t many New Year’s Eves they’ve spent apart. The few she hasn’t spent with him, she’s spent alone. She knows he’s done the same. This night belongs to the two of them. There’s no room for anyone else.

His eyes are fixed on her reflection. Hers are fixed on his. If she squints, she can see their younger selves in the window standing slotted together like puzzle pieces, and it seems right. Such a long time. She leans back against him and sighs. No time at all, really. She takes his arm and lifts it to look at the watch on his wrist. One more minute. She links her fingers with his before letting their hands drop back to their sides. It seems like yesterday that she touched him for the first time, shook his hand and changed her life.

It seems like yesterday that he leaned towards her in a hospital hallway and touched his lips to hers for the first time.

“Twenty-five years,” he says. Of course he’s thinking about it too.

“A quarter of a century.” It sounds like forever when she puts it into words. It has been forever. It is forever.

He sways back and she turns in his arms, looks up at him, wonders how the sight of him can still take her breath away. In the small space between them he lifts his arm so they can both see the face of his watch, the seconds ticking down. They don’t speak. Time passes without words. They’ve never needed many.

Ten seconds. She hears the countdown from the TV twenty-five years ago, feels the quiet calm she’d felt as she watched the world stay the same.

Five, four, three.

She looks up at him, his gaze meeting hers, and the look in his eyes is the same it was then. It’s always been the same.

Two. One.

He leans in.

Midnight: a moment’s pause, close enough they’re sharing breath, and even if she can’t remember the number of seconds it took for his lips to meet hers back then, she thinks it must have been exactly this long before they closed the final inch of distance for the first time.

A soft, lingering kiss, so familiar it makes her heart flutter in her chest. She knows his lips so well. They’ve touched every part of her body. They’ve formed words that have healed her and hurt her and made her feel like the luckiest person in the world. The new year wouldn’t start without his kiss, the hands of the watch frozen in the half second before midnight. She doesn’t know how time moved on when they weren’t together. Maybe it only did because she closed her eyes and wished him to be with her until the universe believed that he was.

The smile on her face is different than the one from twenty-five years ago. His is too.

She’d never thought she was all that special until he’d looked at her.

“Happy new year, Scully,” he says.

“Happy new year, Mulder,” she answers.

A quarter of a century ago, so much had happened to them that she’d believed nothing could surprise her anymore. These days, so much has happened to them that she expects new surprises every day.

This is the only thing that will never change: she loves him. Utterly and completely. It’s been so long and no time at all since she let that knowledge out its cage in her heart, shared it with him, and learned what the look in his eyes had been telling her all along. To be loved like this is more than she can comprehend.

“When you kissed me back then,” she starts.

“Twenty-five years ago?”

“Yeah. When you kissed me then…” She puts her hands on his chest to feel the steady beating of his heart. “I never asked. Was it supposed to be a New Year’s kiss? Or the start of something?”

He runs his fingertips gently along her temple. “Neither,” he says. “I think I was admitting something that had been true for a long time.”

“Okay.”

“Did you understand?”

“I think I did,” she says. “Did you understand my answer?”

He nods. “I think I did. Either way, it worked out alright, didn’t it?”

It’s been a long time and no time at all since she kissed him for the second time. In the car as she dropped him off at his apartment. A long time and no time at all since she asked him if he needed help with anything with his arm in a sling, a long time and no time at all since he said yes and asked her if she’d come up for a while. A long time and no time at all since they kissed for the third time and then more times than she can count.

She kisses him again. She kisses him like it’s twenty-five years ago, she kisses him like they’ve been kissing for a quarter of a century, she kisses him like time has no meaning at all.

He’s the same and he is different. She’s the same and she is different. What they’re saying to each other is the same. That time passes, and they’ll face it together. Always.

[television-overload]

of our own making

(an X-Files fanfic)

Oh hey, look, it's that massive story I've been working on since January! I'm so thankful to everyone who has shown interest in the concept of this fic and the little snippets I've posted. You've been more help than you know. Without that support, I don't think this would have ever gotten finished.

A special thanks to @numinousmysteries who kindly beta read for me and did a fantastic job. I wanted to make sure I got this right, and she was a great help!

And now I can't wait to share this with you all! New chapters posted daily!

[Read on AO3]

Chapter 1/34 - ink and paper

How long has he been thinking about this, she wonders. What exactly is he thinking? Her mind races, trying to reconcile this Mulder whose deepest desires are spilled out here in ink on worn and crinkled brochures with the one she’s spent nearly every day with these past several months.

She'd never have guessed...

Find out if adoption is right for you! Visit us at 8080 Meadowlark Ln. Annapolis, MD “A Home for Every Child!”

Scully stares down at the brochure on the desk. One of many, which are half buried underneath a pile of paperwork from their current case. Certain words and phrases are circled in pen, underlined, annotated in the margins in the familiar scrawl she knows almost better than her own.

stability – less travel? change in division? discuss with Scully

loving home – ask Frohike for real estate agent #

The word “family” is circled three times.

She swallows with some difficulty, finding—to her dismay—that her hands are shaking. Mulder will be arriving any second, and here she is, frozen like a statue.

How long has he been thinking about this, she wonders. What exactly is he thinking? Her mind races, trying to reconcile this Mulder whose deepest desires are spilled out here in ink on worn and crinkled brochures with the one she’s spent nearly every day with these past several months.

She’d never have guessed…

“Morning, partner,” his voice calls out, and she jolts in surprise. She hears the door snick shut behind him, but she can’t bring herself to turn around. With deft fingers, she pushes the brochure back under the stack of papers where she found it, only the colorful corner of the page visible.

“Morning, Mulder,” she tries, clearing her throat. It comes out strained, but she hopes he doesn’t notice. She hides her trembling hands in her lap under the desk.

He looks down at her, half amused, half concerned. “You okay? You're not getting that stomach bug that's been going around, are you?”

“I'm fine,” she answers defensively, warning him to back off. She grabs a file off the desk in front of her with a little more force than necessary, plopping it open.

‘Okayyy,’ he mouths exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised. He sits down at his desk and leafs through some papers sitting on top, arranging them into neater stacks. When he uncovers the brochures, his eyes widen and he clears his throat, hurriedly covering them with other papers and trying to act natural.

Scully thinks about letting it go and pretending she doesn’t know what he’s hiding, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep until she finds out what’s been going on in that ridiculous head of his. 

She idly flips to the next page of the file in her hand, displaying a confidence she doesn’t feel in the firm set of her shoulders

“Doing some light reading, Mulder?” she asks, attempting to look disinterested.

His head shoots up, a look of alarm on his face. For a second he thinks she might be talking about something else, that she couldn’t possibly know, but one look at her throws that theory right out the window. He glances back and forth between her and the papers on the desk a few times before dropping his shoulders in defeat.

“I’m sorry, Scully, you weren’t supposed to see those,” he says, shuffling all the brochures into a pile while carefully avoiding eye contact. “I was working here late last night. I must have forgotten to put them away.” As he speaks, he opens the top drawer of his desk and shoves them inside, then takes a seat at his desk. His nose is buried in a file before she can even respond.

She watches him now. He is a curiosity, determinedly feigning concentration on a case she knows he finds disinteresting and a waste of time.

Typical.

“You're really not going to say anything?” she asks, arms crossed in front of her.

That rankles him. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, indignation boiling below the surface.

She looks at him incredulously, the file in front of her all but forgotten.

“You're thinking of adoption? When were you planning to share this with me?”

He sighs and shakes his head, pleading silently with her. “It's too soon, Scully. I didn't think you'd want to hear it yet.”

“But you're looking into it because…”

“It's just been on my mind, that's all.”

She stares at him, brows furrowed.

“Since when?”

Since when… Images flash of a life he didn’t recognize. His sister, alive and grown up. A quiet suburban neighborhood. Cancer Man living just down the street. A wife and kids, but not the right ones. It was wrong, all of it was wrong.

“A hallucinatory trip into an alternate universe tends to make you think,” he answers simply.

He’s looking at her now, deadly serious despite the joking tone. She doesn’t respond. Can’t respond.

“I'm sorry, I didn't want to bring all this up,” he continues. “I know it's a sore spot for you.”

It takes her a moment to conjure words from her mouth, her lips moving but no sound coming out. “I just wasn't expecting…”

“For all I know, this isn't even something you'd want.”

What does she say to that? Is she interested? 

“I– I'm not sure. I've never really considered it before.”

He waits, his eyes assessing her for some hidden meaning, some insight into her state of mind. He gets nothing. She’s totally blank.

“Well… what do you want?” He thought the question was innocuous enough, safer territory than straight up asking her if she wants to adopt, but apparently not.

She shuts her folder, abruptly standing and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I'm going back to the crime scene,” she declares, changing the subject. “I want to see if there's anything we missed.”

“Scully…” he tries.

“Not now, Mulder.” Without even taking the time to put her coat on, she flees, leaving the door partially open in her rush to get away. Cursing under his breath, Mulder grabs his coat from its hook and hurries after her.

The elevator doors are almost all the way closed by the time he catches up, but in this case, he figures it’s worth the potential loss of a limb. He throws his hand between the closing gap in the metal doors, and it bounces back open to allow him entrance, to the extreme displeasure of one Dana Scully. He wisely stays silent in the elevator, stealing glances at her every few seconds out of the corner of his eye as they ascend. He can feel the frigid air coming off her in waves. It’s been a while since he’s seen her this annoyed with him, this eager to get away.

He won’t let her. Not this time. He’s learned from his mistakes.

In the parking garage, she's walking briskly, heels clicking on the concrete, and he has to pick up the pace to keep up with surprisingly agile little legs.

He didn’t want this confrontation. There was a reason he was keeping his research a secret. This is exactly what he was hoping to avoid, at least until the time was right to carefully drop some hints here and there. But now? There’s no carefully about it. No option to wait and let this blow over. There’s only one way out of this at this point, and unfortunately, that way is through.

He picks up the pace.

“You're the one who brought this up, Scully, I was perfectly happy throwing those brochures in my drawer and not saying a word.” 

His voice echoes in the concrete parking structure, sounding harsh even to his own ears. As frustrated as he is with her, that isn’t his intent. He only wants to know what he can do to help her, how he can help her fulfill her dreams. He lets out a breath, and with it, releases his selfish frustration. She’s still walking away at a breakneck pace, and he doesn’t know how he can get her to stop and face this. 

“If you want to talk about it, let's talk about it,” he says, pleading. “I can't help you if I don't know what you want. You want me to shut up, never mention the subject again?” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air, “Fine, just tell me. What do you want, Scully?”

“I just want to be a mom, okay?” she yells, whirling around to face him. Her words instantly silence him, and he watches stone-faced as tears spring in her eyes. “I see all these other moms out there and think… I could do that too. Why can’t I do that too?”

Well, mission accomplished. The truth is finally out there. Part of him feels bad for pushing her, but the other part knows that it was doing her no good to keep her feelings bottled up inside to deal with by herself. He reaches out a hand, intending to comfort her, his eyes softening in sympathy. 

“You could. Scully, you’d be the best mom.”

She flinches away, stepping out of his reach. “You don’t know that, Mulder. I can’t even—even my body is even telling me no. Over and over.” She resumes her brisk walk to her car, and he thinks he sees her brush angrily at her face, no doubt wiping away the evidence of the stubborn tears that have managed to escape.

He rushes to get in front of her, walking backwards so he can keep her in his sight. 

“When has that ever stopped you?” he asks. “You had cancer, and you kept fighting. You’re alive today because you refused to give up when your body quit on you. What about that?” He stops abruptly, forcing her to come to a halt before she crashes into him.

There’s no way out of this, is there? Her shoulders slump in defeat.

“You saved me, Mulder,” she admits quietly, shaking her head. “You’re the one who didn’t give up. Not me. It was only because you were with me that I survived.”

This time, when she goes to walk away, he stops her, placing a hand on her shoulder. The simple touch causes her to freeze, hardly breathing, and when he steps closer, she stays. His hands slide down her shoulders, holding her securely in place to ensure that his next words come through loud and clear.

“I’m gonna be with you here on this too, I promise.” His thumbs brush back and forth on the fabric of her sleeves, for his comfort or hers, she’s not sure. “You can still be a mother, Scully. I’ll help you.”

She shakes her head, her heart feeling like it has been ripped to shreds. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” He gives her a little shake for emphasis. She still won’t look at him. “You’ve kept me alive all these years, how much harder could a baby be?”

That gets a breathy chuckle from her, and her head falls to her chest. Groaning with the agony of this burden on her heart, she stops fighting it and leans into him. Without hesitation, he wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his embrace.

Her hand comes up to find purchase on his suit jacket, relishing in the comfort only he can provide. She’s past caring if anyone sees them like this here. Let them talk. They already do, anyway.

“Well, at least when you wake me up in the middle of the night, you’re not crying,” she speaks into his chest.

She feels him shrug, and can almost see the goofy smile she knows she put on his lips.

“Usually.”

She looks up at him with her chin on his sternum before taking a deep breath and pulling away.

“It's raining,” he says softly, glancing down at her and brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “We can go back to the crime scene later.” She nods, unsure what else to say. She allows herself to be led, his ever-present hand brushing against her back as they start toward the basement.

“Adoption,” Scully mutters to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Mulder. This—this is different than IVF. With that, all I was asking for was your…” her eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at him, “genetic material. This is something entirely different.”

He’s pleased she’s at least considering it, but she doesn’t get it at all, if that’s what she thinks.

“How? ‘Cause from where I’m standing, the process of getting a baby is a little different, but in the long run, the result is the same.”

She pauses, looking at him in confusion. “What– what are you saying?”

He runs a hand awkwardly through his hair, suddenly taking a unique interest in his shoes and the floor of the parking structure.

“Yeah, we probably should have talked about this before…”

“Talked about what?”

He sighs and guides her into a stairwell. It’s stuffy and poorly-lit with a flickering lightbulb, but here, there’s less of a chance they’ll be overheard.

“Look, Scully, I don’t know what you had in mind for my involvement beyond contributing to half the baby’s DNA when you first asked me to help you get pregnant,” he starts, fighting hard to meet her eyes instead of shying away. “But, I– I had hoped it would be a little more than ‘Say hi to Uncle Mulder,’ every couple of months.”

She blinks back at him, speechless.

“I’m sorry if that’s overstepping, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable with all this, I just—” He takes in a breath. “I guess I got to thinking of what it might be like to have a family again.” His bout of honesty is met with a blank stare, and his nervous smile drops. “I completely misread the situation, didn’t I?” he asks, self-loathing waiting on standby. “Got ahead of myself…”

She stops him by catching his coat sleeve. “No—uh. No, you didn’t.” She collects herself, willing herself to offer him some reassurance. Her fingers release the fabric of his coat, shifting her grasp instead to his hand. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

He glances down at where she holds tightly to him, and his lips curl into some semblance of a smile.

“I guess they might have had a point with all those communication seminars we’ve skipped, huh?”

She chuckles softly.

“I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind…”

With a gentle tug, Mulder leads her down the stairs, committed to holding her hand as long as she’ll let him. The air is stagnant and silent, only the rhythmic echo of their shoes clicking on the concrete steps as they make their way to the bottom floor.

She’s thinking. What she knows now, it changes everything. 

She had asked him to leave. Hid her grief from him as much as possible after her initial lapse into weakness when she came home with the news. She had almost kissed him, then, unsure of what else she had to live for. She knew she was hurting him by folding inward on herself in the weeks that followed, but that didn’t stop her from doing it. She was in a dark place, hardly able to see what was right in front of her. What she couldn’t see was that his hurt wasn’t just for her, born of some misguided sense of guilt or pity. It was his own, too.

“Mulder, all those months, after it failed—” There’s something like fear in her voice as she utters these words, or maybe regret.

“I was just worried about you.”

She squeezes his hand, feeling tears well in her eyes once more. “No, you were grieving like I was, and I didn’t notice. I pushed you away…”

“Dana…” He turns, a couple steps ahead of her, so for once it’s him who has to look up to meet her eyes. Her lip wobbles as she looks down at him, and he brushes his thumb tenderly over her knuckles. “You had to deal with it on your own, I understood that. I don’t blame you for anything.”

Those eyes. So open and honest and sad. She wonders how anyone could hurt him, could bear to break this man’s heart. How could she? 

Choking back a sob, she falls into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding tight. His arms encircle her back, supporting her weight, and she feels herself being lifted as he goes up a step, closing the distance between them.

His hand climbs up to the back of her head, stroking her hair soothingly.

“I just wanted to be there for you,” he mumbles into her neck.

“You were, Mulder,” she gasps between bouts of tears, finding comfort in the feel of his soft hair between her fingers. “You’ve always been there.”

He pulls back, lifting his hands to cup her face and wiping away the tears he finds there with the pads of his thumbs. 

“You don’t have to give an answer now,” he says, reassuring, “This is… a big commitment, I know, and I don’t want you to say yes just because I suggested it. I just wanted you to know it’s an option, and if you want to have a baby, I’m in. However you want to go about it, I’ll be as involved as you want. Just– let me know, anytime. Okay?”

He’s looking at her now, head ducked so those sad, puppy-dog eyes can get his message across.

She nods, holding tight to the wrists that so tenderly cup her face.

“Okay.”

~~~

Lovely tag list ♡: [if you would like to be added or removed, let me know!]

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[sigritandtheelves]

Moment of Hope

1.5k wds | PG13 | msr, scenes in between, season 9, “Trust No 1”

God help me because I HATE season 9, but I watched “Trust No 1” last night (there was some factoid I was after in the “Dearest Dana” letter exchange), and I got mad about it all over again. This ep is especially cruel when you consider where the rest of the season goes (“Some day you’ll ask me, my son…” etc.) but I’m not ever going to deal with that except in fix-its. Anyway, it occurred to me that at the end of the ep, both Mulder and Scully are in the quarry. We don’t see how either of them gets out, so presumably… they could have found each other there, at least temporarily.

Indulge me. 🤷‍♀️

—

In the presence of the quarry’s iron, whispers of an old gift come back. He can hear her fright: mortal terror in the face of a monster worse than anything they ever hunted together. But the mind of the thing that follows her is an echoing void—like a high-pitched whine. She’s screaming at it, demanding answers, which Mulder can hear with both his mind and ears—she's some yards away, in the box canyon made by the digging.

The thing will kill her, without hesitation, to get to him. How stupid he was to think they could possibly be safe. It’s suicide, but he runs toward her, toward the danger that wants him dead. Between her death and his, there isn’t even a choice.

And then, something strange. The whine gets higher-pitched, begins to vibrate like a string pulled tight and plucked. The tension builds until, like a bowstring released, there's an explosion of rock and dust. The vibration is gone. The monster is dead.

Mulder listens for any others, fellow soldiers who might be following—hunting him. But there’s nothing. He sprints through the flat plane of rock, through the hulking monoliths of digging equipment and trucks. He hears her footsteps and they are so close—she is so close. “Scully!”

The footsteps stop. “Mulder?”

“I’m here!” He jogs toward her voice, and suddenly there she is—stunning, perfect, beautiful, his Scully. They crash into each other, and he throws his arms around her. She is sobbing against him, gripping his coat, shoving her face against his shirt.

“Oh god,” she chokes out. “Oh, Mulder.”

He can’t speak. He can hardly breathe. Instead he squeezes his eyes closed and presses his lips to her hair. It’s longer now. He lets his fingers slip through it, cup the back of her head. He puts only enough room between them so he can bend his face down and kiss her.

Theirs is the desperate love of the perpetually endangered, and this kiss is no different. He swallows her fear as best he can, devours the anguish of their terrible separation. Being away from her is the worst and hardest thing he’s ever done. “Scully,” he says into her mouth. “Dana.”

She lets out another little sob, then brings her hands to his face. She holds his cheeks, looking at him in the dusty moonlight of the quarry. “You’re really here,” she says.

He drops his forehead to hers. “Scully, are you safe? Are you okay?”

“I think so. That thing, that man—he was going to kill me, I think, or he wanted to kill you. He said either you or William has to die, which doesn’t make any sense, Mulder.”

“It might,” he says. “Because of the rock. The iron.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He died, right? The rock wall of the quarry killed him.”

“I—yes. He just kind of exploded into the rock, like it was a magnet. It pulled him into it.”

Mulder nods. “The iron does something to me, too. When I’m near it, I can hear thoughts again. I can hear yours.”

Her eyebrow goes up. “Right now?”

Another nod.

“What am I thinking?”

He listens for a moment, and then smiles. “You’re thinking, Mulder you’re crazy.”

She bites her lip. “What else?”

“You’re crazy, but I love you.”

Her smile is the best thing he’s seen in months. Then her expression shifts, brow furrowing. “But what does that mean, Mulder? What does it have to do with William?”

“I could hear the supersoldier, too, Scully. Not what he was thinking, but the sound of him. Like a…” He holds his hand beside his ear and twists it back and forth. “A kind of vibration. And I think William will be able to do the same, maybe even without being near the rocks. That’s why we’re a threat to them.”

“William can do those things because of you?”

“Because of both of us.” He drags a thumb over her cheek. “You had the vaccine too. You touched the artifact, the ship in Africa.”

“William is different,” she confesses. He can see how hard it is for her to say and thinks maybe she’s never said it out loud before. He watches a crestfallen tilt emerge on her lips and brow. “So he’ll always be in danger, won’t he? You both will.”

This, it seems, is the impossible choice, the terrible price they have to pay for keeping them all alive: that they will never be together as a whole family unit.

But now they have something they didn’t before. “I don’t think that’s necessarily true, Scully.” She tilts her head, a look of both despair and expectation on her face. “Now we know how to find them,” he says. “And now we know how to kill them.”

At that moment, more footsteps come barreling toward them across the gravel, so they pull apart quickly, preparing for a fight.

“Agent Scully!”

But it’s only Monica and John.

“Over here,” Scully calls before holstering her gun and falling back against Mulder’s chest. He hooks his arm around her waist, kisses the top of her head.

“Mulder!” Monica cries. Both of the other agents look surprised to see him. "Why are you still here?"

“It's the safest place to be. Maybe the only safe place to be.”

Doggett and Reyes look at each other in confusion.

“The Shadow Man is dead,” Scully says. “We might have found a way to kill them.”

It’s good news, and Mulder should be happy about it. But standing here beside Scully is breaking his heart because the longer he stays, the harder it will be to leave again. There may be no more of these monsters in the quarry, but there are hundreds of them in D.C.

Scully digs her keys out of her jacket pocket. “I’ll explain in the car,” she says, walking toward the sedan parked near the site’s entrance. When she notices that Mulder isn’t following, she stops. Now she’s standing with Doggett and Reyes, and he is apart from them, clenching his jaw, his fist, every muscle in his body, it seems. “Mulder?”

He doesn’t want to do this again. He can’t. A steady stream of no no no no no goes through his head and they’re still in the quarry so he can hear Scully, too—figuring it out, realizing, shifting from hope to dread.

Oh no. No no. Mulder, please come with me, I need you, I can’t do this anymore, please please I need you, I can’t, no no, you have to stay you have to come with me you have to see William he needs you too and I’m so lonely, god please I love you Mulder you have to stay don’t do this to me again—

And it almost breaks him, cracks something inside him, and he has to turn away from her to speak. “I can’t, Scully.”

She’s rushing back to him, pulling his arm, turning him so he has to see the pain on her face. “Mulder, please. You said it yourself, we know how to find them now. We know what kills them.”

He’s shaking his head, but it’s so painful to refuse. “It’s not safe. I don’t want to get you hurt.” He takes her face in his hands and bends down to kiss her again. He pours all of his love into it, all of his hope that they will be together soon. When he’s alone again in a run-down trailer in the middle of nowhere, when he’s missing her so much that it physically hurts his chest, maybe he can draw from this. He feels the love pouring off of her not in words but in waves and waves of emotion. He feels her fear and her desperation and her sadness too, but mostly her love.

She breaks the kiss this time because she’s crying, and her breath hitches. Monica and John have turned away to give them privacy, but Mulder glances over at them. “You three have the tools now,” he says. “It's time to figure out a weapon, and when we know how to fight them, you come find me. Look for the iron, Scully, and that’s where I’ll be. That’s where the fight will be.”

She nods her head, but he can feel how much it hurts her to agree. “It’ll be soon, Mulder. We’ll work fast. I can’t do this for much longer.”

“Neither can I.” He wipes another round of tears from her cheeks. “I love you, Dana.”

She reaches into her pocket before he can force himself to back away and says, “Wait.” She’s holding a flat square of paper. “This is for you.”

He takes it from her. It’s a photo of William, chubby-cheeked and smiling in her arms, though her face is not quite visible in the frame. He bites his tongue until it bleeds to keep from crying, from giving in and saying he will stay. “Thank you,” he manages.

Scully looks at him like he is ripping her heart in half, which he supposes he is. I love you, she mouths silently.

He begins to back away and tries to smile, but it falls flat. “Write me another email,” he says. “They’re monitoring everything. Make them think I never saw you, okay?”

She nods, tears streaming freely down her face now. He turns, and he leaves half of his own heart behind.

— End —

Okay, that was way sadder than I thought it would be—initially I thought I’d write some kind of smut against the quarry rocks fic, lol, but that seemed slightly out of character. Anyway IN THIS UNIVERSE THE EPISODE “WILLIAM” NEVER HAPPENS and the show follows a logical plot line around the supersoldiers in which the X-Files team actually studied the iron and figured out how to kill them (why didn’t they do this on the show???) and Mulder could come back. Because honestly what the fuck was going on the rest of the time in that season?

TY for reading my middle-of-the-night word puke. 🛸❤️

[baronessblixen]

Fictober Day 29: Cow-incidences

Prompt: "How did this happen?"

For the anon who asked: If you still have enough days left can you do a fic where somehow you can place in this quote “naming your cow Hamburger is crazy. It’s like if you named your fish Sushi.” Rating: T, wc: 964

Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober24

Being attacked by a cow even once is, statistically speaking, highly unlikely. Having it happen twice? Next to impossible. And yet, here’s Mulder in a cow-related accident for the second time in as many years.

Unlike last time, the cow is fine. Mulder, however, is less so. The details are hazy and Mulder can’t verify them yet. From what the police told Scully, Mulder was in his car and a cow appeared in the road, he braked, hit his head and the cow wandered off.

It sounds as fantastical as aliens invading the earth.

But she’s his emergency contact and so here she is at the hospital by his side, waiting for him to wake up. The doctors have assured her that apart from a bad concussion, he’s fine. It could have been worse.

How often has she heard this? It could have been worse. He could have died. Mulder doesn’t just have a patient file here, they have a whole book on him. Not that her own file is much smaller.

What were you thinking? She thinks staring at him. They put a bandage around his forehead where he hit his head on the steering wheel. At least – and the lesion on his chest proves it – he was wearing his seat belt. How many head injuries can he sustain until his brain shuts off? A concussion is nothing to worry about – usually.

With Mulder’s history and the still fairly recent head surgery earlier this year, she can’t help but worry. But that’s nothing new, is it? She always worries about Mulder. It never mattered if she knew him a day, a year, or almost a whole decade. Whether he’s her partner, her friend, or her almost lover, her heart will miss a beat every time he’s hurt.

“How did this happen?” she murmurs, touching the bandage on his head. “Can you wake up, please, and tell me?” She smiles, thinking about Mulder reiterating his story, making it sound like fun and not like a life-or-death situation. He’s good at that.

“Hmm?” His eyes are still closed, but she sees them flutter and her heart does the same.

“Mulder?” she asks, waiting for him to fully wake up.

“Where are we?” he rasps and she pours him a glass of water, waiting for him to be awake enough to help him have a sip. His eyes are small and his pupils dilated. She should have checked what medication they’ve given him.

“Hospital,” she says. “You had an accident.” He nods and winces, the slight movement seemingly too painful.

“Do you remember what happened?” She doesn’t want to pressure him; she just wants to know how much damage the concussion has caused.

“Cow,” he says. “There was a… cow.”

“A cow. Are you sure?”

“Naming your cow Hamburger is crazy. It’s like if you named your fish Sushi. Scully, should I name my fish sushi?”

“What are you talking about?” It’s worse than she thought. He’s confused – very much so.

“That cow.” He looks at her and she can barely see the green of his eyes because his pupils are that big. That leaves only one conclusion: he’s as high as a kite. No wonder he’s talking about cows named Hamburger.

“What about that cow?” she asks softly.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he says, leaning closer to her. “I think- I think her owner wanted that cow to murder me. No. No, wait. He wanted me to kill the cow. Why else would you name your cow Hamburger? That poor creature. Remember the cow in Kroner, Scully? Do you think I’m cursed?”

“You’re not cursed,” she assures him, smoothing his hair. The way he looks up at her breaks her heart. She wishes she knew what was going on in that head of his. All she can do is hope that it won’t last long. That he’ll wake up later today or tomorrow and that his mind is clear.

“I killed two cows, Scully.”

“You didn’t. The cow is fine.”

“Hamburger is fine?” His face lights up. Scully doesn’t know why he thinks Hamburger is the cow’s name, but she nods slowly, smiling at him. Once this is over, and he is back to normal, they will need to discuss what happened. And why he was driving a country road all on his own in the middle of the night. There’s time for that later.

“This could have ended badly.” The words tumble from her mouth, the last few hours catching up with her.

“No hamburger for a while,” Mulder says. She feels tears prick her eyes; she wants her Mulder. She wants him to smile at her, and say it’s all right. He just stares blankly at her as though he weren’t there.

“No hamburger for a while,” she agrees, trying to make the situation lighter. “Why don’t you sleep a bit more, hm? You have a concussion.”

“Headache, yeah.” He closes his eyes, only to pop them open again after a few minutes. It could be wishful thinking, but she thinks they look clearer already; the dark clouds moving away, making way for his brilliant mind to shine through.

“Will you stay?” he asks, his voice deep and gravelly.

“Of course I’ll stay,” she assures him, taking his hand in hers. “I’ll be here when you wake up again.”

“Love you, Scully. If I know one thing, it’s that.” He closes his eyes again and in no time at all, his breath has evened out. She allows a few tears to fall, never letting go of his hand. His declaration is loud in her mind, playing like a favorite record.

“Love you, too,” she whispers, wondering if one day they’ll finally say these words when neither of them is lying in a hospital bed.