#anyways i’ve been in love with scully since i was a child and i’ve even more in love with her now

[gregmarriage]

x files 1x08 ‘ice’ was so fucking funny for having mulder make a joke about the size of his dick in front of two other men, and scully touch a woman’s chest as part of a medical exam, then immediately share a lesbian look with her, that has nothing to do with said medical exam

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s3 episode 20 thoughts

dare i say it, once again… new favorite episode??

okay, my previous favorite episode was an ENTIRELY different direction from this one, but i’d say there should be one best episode for serious stuff and one best episode for the silly!!! and this takes the silly crown!! and tbh i can't make an actual hard and fast rating anyway because there are so many great things to choose from- but this is amongst them, for me, in terms of legendary episodes!

please, join me on this ride, which i enjoyed each second of, and will need to someday rewatch without pausing every 0.5 seconds to jot something i noticed down. the live experience begins beneath the cut.

it’s been 84 years…. (3 days since i’ve seen an episode)

ooo, this sounds interesting! is scully going to work with an author?? are we gonna learn more about the things that she reads?? this is prime content to a person like me

stars…. space ship….. filled with tubes and wires and other such things…… just kidding!!! it’s a guy working on some electrical stuff. whilst two people drive by!! i thought they were mulder and scully at first but they are not

“um, i don’t want to scare you, but i think i’m madly in love with you” says this guy who is not mulder but actually named harold to this girl who is not scully but is actually named chrissy. OH! and this is the first date. so that was a weird thing to say. i thought it was quite sweet at first but that changes things for sure.

GASP! UFO be upon them. creatures are coming out to get them. she asks what they are and he says “how the hell should i know?” ooo ooo i know! they are aliens 👽 and then the two fall on top of each other like they are knocked out… and the aliens drag them away???? 

until a king kong looking fellow rolls up. very puppet-y. and the aliens don’t know what this creature is either!!! and also ask what that thing is and the response is “how the hell should i know?” haha i see what you did there... out aliening the alien

bum bum bum bum…. (<- my attempt at recreating the noise of the intro)

now, what was that? i'm stuck on the king kong and godzilla love child puppet….

scan up on mulder’s iconic poster!!! and a guy is here who is yet again not mulder. his name is mr. chung and mulder will NOT talk to him… oooh, what is their beef…?

mr. chung is saying he always felt alienated on this planet, who can even imagine actual aliens! and he has a point there.

oh! scully is a big fan of this fellow, which is why she agreed to talk to this guy!!! he calls her beautiful, which is true, but time and place 

so he isn’t even interested in aliens, but his publisher said he should write a book on the matter. he is going to create a NEW genre: non fiction science fiction, a gimmick that will give him money. this seems somewhat disappointing to scully, who must be a believer in artistic integrity, but i find his honesty refreshing.

she wants him to tell the truth, but apparently he spent 3 months in kass county where all this stuff went down, and NO ONE could tell him what actually happened. the truth is just as subjective as reality. which sounds like something i learned in history class. and, it helps explain why everyone with an alien story starts with some variation of, "i know this sounds crazy, but"...

so he wants HER version of hearing of the case. also he touches her arm and... let's slow down a little there, mr. chung.

OHHH we are seeing a story told in flashbacks!!!! narrated by scully!! how wonderful!!!

this girl is suffering from “missing time”, a phenomenon we have come to know well here on this blog. also her clothes are inside out and she has signs of abuse. not looking great for her.

apparently mulder prefers the term “abductee” to “experiencer”, which mr. chung has valid disagreements with. we go on, however.

this poor girl is seeing aliens that are not there and her nose is bleeding. WAIT! it’s the guy from before! harold and chrissy! he comes to her window to say he did everything he could but she rejects him, thinking he had drugged and assaulted her. yikes.

harold is testifying that he was abducted by aliens, but no one believes him. he stuck to his story UNTIL our agents arrived!

(MULDER SAYS SOMETHING VERY OUT OF POCKET HERE ABOUT GOING TO PRISON BUT LET'S KEEP MOVING)

despite this announcement of presumed prison time, mulder brings chrissy in for questioning. asking her if she has all the symptoms of “post abduction disorder”, which she confirms, while scully rolls her eyes with great force in the background. and he talks the girl’s parents into letting her do hypnosis.

“what is your opinion of hypnosis?”, mr. chung asks scully, which is something i also have been dying to know! i mean, we saw her do a little bit before, but it didn’t seem to be a positive experience. she says it has therapeutic value, but has never been proven to enhance memory; it even makes memory worse. a very balanced and doctor-ly answer! 

LMAO scully is so cute… mr. chung mentions another book he wrote and she proclaims it “one of the greatest thrillers ever written” <- STOP I LOVE HER SHE IS SUCH A NERRRRD 😭😭

mr. chung said the FBI knew nothing about how hypnosis worked back during the MK ULTRA days… and he is fascinated by the idea of a person’s consciousness being transformed by listening to words. admittedly very fascinating! you could probably say the same about meditation, no?

(but he speaks to the power of storytelling, i realize now in hindsight! how we find ourselves wrapped up in the tales of things that never happened, how it fills us with sorrow or joy! how fascinating! i see what you did there, writers!)

cutscene to hypnotizing chrissy. who is seeing aliens. she is on a space ship wearing a fit that looks very similar to a lady gaga chromatica era performance, but it has tubes attached to her. harold is in a very similar contraption!!!!

she says the aliens are arguing without moving their mouths and she hears the lead alien in her head saying it’s for the good of her planet. and he is stealing her memories? um. for what purpose...

scully is serving looks in the corner while this goes down, looking mad as hell and very good. she says chrissy's abduction story seems a little TOO typical… and i have to agree! but mulder says no, there are TWO people with the same story! they can't both be lying, surely!

LMAOOOO they play with censoring the dude who comes in and yells at them… “well, of course he didn’t actually say ‘bleeped’” 

(BAHAHA i’m loving this insight into how scully’s memories operate. so this angry man is named detective manners)

“you still gonna hold the boy?” “oh, you bet your blankety-blank bleep i am” <- i am a simple woman, and an actor delivering these lines with a straight face whilst surrounded by other actors keeping a very straight face is going to make me cackle. look at her looking so bored while he says that. i’m howling!!!!

anyway, harold has a very different story on what went down that night, that did not seem to involve gaga-inspired fits, but instead they were both placed in electrified cages. while another alien in a nearby cage smokes a cigarette. he seems to be what i would call “an unbothered king”

in this story, harold claims that he will protect chrissy and never let anything happen to her, and of course something immediately happens to her while he hides in the corner like a baby. lmao.

and this alien is talking in english! not telepathically! he keeps repeating “this is not happening” until harold ALSO gets taken by the thing that took chrissy. 

mulder is trying to figure out what is going on, but his predictions aren’t lining up with what happened to harold. scully is pacing and looking pissed, and again, very pretty.

“you know when you’re a kid, and you tore the legs off a bug for no reason?”, asks harold (cutscene to mulder’s face with visible confusion) LMAOOOOOOO

scully getting to business: did you engage in consensual sexual intercourse that night? she is not messing around! she's had it up to here with the shenanigans of harold and chrissy!

harold is very very quiet until he says that her father will kill him if he finds out!!! gasp!!! confirmation!!!

so is this whole story just… a cover up??? for fornication???

scully vs mulder time. “so what if they’re having sex?” he asks, which is funny coming from him; and anyway, he claims it happened BEFORE the alien stuff went down. but she thinks they’re traumatized, and that is more likely than alien abduction. 

until detective manners bursts in and claims he has an eyewitness to what went down! he used more blanks and bleeps and again the straight faces killllll me

and ALL OF THEM telling their stories start with “i know how crazy this all sounds” just as mr. chung had described LMAOOO. now who tf is this dude who says he was an eyewitness?

(i’m taking soooo many notes because i keep laughing and noting things. which is a good problem to have!)

this dude, named roky, spent 48 hours straight writing down what he saw, and said that by looking at this, they are putting their lives in danger. so okay. better be juicy.

he says his garage door opened up, a car pulled in, and a man told him some facts about venus. he says they put him in a trance! and that they were in all black……

mr. chung says that myths of men in black garments are nothing new!!! so take THAT, men in black legends, you are one of many.

back at roky's place, the other dude in black says jimmy carter thought he saw a UFO once, but it was just venus. roky is scandalized, grabs his paper, and states that he is a REPUBLICAN.

(omg jimmy carter is going to be 100 in a few months god willing…..)

this man in black is saying that roky saw VENUS and nothing else, just VENUS. and not to tell anyone he saw anything but VENUS or he will die. and then the car drives away. 

so after that build up, he gives mulder the manuscript, and says he is packing up and leaving. bye bye roky. hope you find some peace.

mulder is reading this story to scully who is sprawled on the bed, looking, again, angry and hot. it seems he is describing that earlier puppet-y action.

oh! roky was the electrical guy from the very beginning!!! he hides in his truck but the king kong looking fellow says “be not afraid” and that he is needed for the good of the earth? what is with the good of the earth here.

cutscene to a very baffled looking scully laying in bed as mulder continues to read LMAOOOOOO

AND ROKY’S STORY SAYS HE WENT NOT TO OUTER SPACE, BUT INNER SPACE HELPPP!!!! now, inner space is towards the core, if you, like me, were unaware. also, king kong godzilla dude’s name is Lord Kinbote, so jot that down.

mr. chung says he has a copy of roky’s manifesto- which was sent to his publisher? and LMAOOO the story is disturbing both for its soul orgy scenes and the fact that it is written as a screenplay 

well, surely your partner didn’t believe any of it, mr. chung states! “mulder’s had his share of peculiar notions” is scully's carefully worded reply... LMAOOO 

cutscene to her sitting up from the bed and calling him nuts <- LMAOOOOO but HE says that whatever roky saw may have triggered some delusions, and that the only story that doesn’t add up is chrissy’s, so he is calling to get her re-hypnotized, much to scully’s indignation!

so back to the hypnosis. and chrissy is now mirroring harold's story exactly. oh! she says the people who took them are from the air force?? so where did the gaga slay outfits go... 

the air force men are arguing in front of her. and then they say to “rinse her out”. saying it is for the good of her country. and stealing her memories!

so WHO is doing the real memory stealing here….. the aliens or the government?? an age old question!!! one that is at the heart of this series.

scully and mulder fight over what is going on, and he thinks that this might have nothing to do with aliens, until detective manners shows up with news that a crazy blankety blank claims to have an ALIEN BODY!!

(what if it’s a raccoon with mange…)

again, the man recounting this story begins with “i know how crazy this is going to sound”, but then says he wants to be abducted by aliens. well! i’m sure that’s a sexual thing i don’t care to unpack.

cutscene to mr. chung interviewing this same man, who wishes to go where finding a job is not a requirement. he was looking in a field for UFOs. and when he called the authorities upon spotting one, the agents show up!!

he says that scully was a man dressed as a woman but not pulling it off??? RUDE AS HELL! jail for 10,000 years. "HER HAIR WAS A LITTLE TOO RED, YOU KNOW?" LMAOOOOO and mulder was the “tall, lanky one” with a blank expression. well yeah that is an accurate depiction.

AND ACCORDING TO THIS GUY'S ACCOUNT, WHEN MULDER SEES THE BODY, HE SHRIEKS LIKE A STARTLED SQUIRREL I’M CRYINGGGG. so scully says to wrap this body up!

BUT THEN SHE GRABS HIM AND SAYS TO NEVER TELL ANYONE HE SAW THIS I’M CRYINGGGG... that had to be such a silly scene to film 

okay, seeing the part about subjective truths now. this is so funny... why is this loser making scully a hater in his version!!!

she’s PISSED to hear he claims she said this LMAOOO and that is ridiculous!! they even let him view the autopsy!!

so mulder takes this weirdo’s camera and records the autopsy?? scully cuts his brain open. and the tape ends up on late night television LMAOOOO

SCULLY IS SO EMBARRASSED THAT SHE IS ON THIS ALIEN HOAX AUTOPSY TAPE... I’M CRYING SOMEONE SAVE HER!!! and the host of whatever show they end upon is STUPENDOUS YAPPI FROM THE CLYDE BRUCKMAN EPISODE!!!! i'm howlingggg

she’s mad that whoever got the film edited out all the important scientific findings!!! like the two layers of skin!!!

wait. it’s a zipper. this is a dead guy in an alien suit. LMAOOOOOOOOO

the weird UFO cameraman kid is ill after realizing it was an ordinary dead guy, and scully looks deeply pained as he runs away to get sick LMAOOO

so: who is this dead guy? he was in the air force! and his name is robert. but who arrives but more people from the air force!! are they here to bury him?? or question the agents…

the folks from the air force want robert back, so she has to break the news that he is dead, and being kept for investigation into kidnapping. can they see him? scully is like yeah sure but mulder says no!!! but you CAN talk to the other AWOL guy we brought in. GASP!! a bluff!!! and it works!! from this they learn there is another missing guy!

LMAOOOO except it doesn’t go as smoothly as intended, and mulder is all “hmm he was here a few minutes ago… guess he’s still AWOL… anyway wanna see the body?” I’M CRYING THIS MANNNN IS SO RIDICULOUS 

but bad news: the body is gone. 

cameraman UFO guy is sitting on his floor watching the autopsy tape. when in bursts… the men in black from the earlier garage scene!!!! they knock him out. 

he claims mulder slapped him back to reality. and that he ALSO threatened him... me when i lie.

so mulder doesn’t have the tape. but when he drives home a fully naked man is walking about in the woods. it’s the other missing lieutenant, jack!! he is repeating “this is not happening” in the same voice as the alien as before!!!!! HUH WHAT IS GOING ON?

mulder takes jack to eat. he claims to have piloted the "UFO", and that all the abductions are military stuff, and at the base the abductees are messed with mentally, until they come out convinced they were probed by aliens. 

well okay, if its all the government, than what abducted YOU, jack? he isn’t sure about anything at all anymore, even if he exists. until who walks in... but the military!!

wait, mulder points out, it can’t all be fake- who was the third alien? jack seems to know him by name- lord kinbote. HUH?

and mr. chung heard a story about that same night from the cook at the restaurant! apparently mulder ordered sweet potato pie? huh, that’s interesting. and he kept ordering more and more pies with each question he asked the chef. LMAOOOO I just KNOW that scene was hard to film!!!! scenes where people eat always make me wonder how many times they had to have that damn bite of pie. 

but he claims there was no jack, nor any air force personnel at all. just a hungry mulder. again, so what is the truth...

mr. chung points out that scully doesn’t seem too phased to learn about all the contradictions in this story, and she says well no, not after what happened next. because when he got back to the motel, the men in black were in her room, going through her stuff! they claim she went to get some ice. he’s got 'em at gunpoint, screaming WHERE IS SHE!!! all protective, okay i see you. but she really did go to get some ice???

okay… man in black says that some alien encounters are engineered by the government and then exposed to discredit truth seekers. and mulder counters, well, people say the men in black also do purposefully strange things, so that anyone describing them sounds crazy! they proceed to… try and hypnotize him?

BUT IT’S ALEX TREBEK WHO IS DOING THE HYPNOTIZING???? LMAOOOOO HAS HE BEEN THE QUIET MAN IN BLACK THIS WHOLE TIME??

mr. chung is GAGGED, and wants to know if it WAS alex trebek, but sadly scully cannot confirm, for has no memory of this!! 

she woke up the next morning to mulder in her room….? and mr. chung is also gagged to hear this. me too tbh like did he just sleep on the couch? well we know that is how he sleeps at home so i guess i'm not shocked.

mulder’s trying to explain that she didn’t just "let him in" last night, but detective manners calls and says they found a bleeping UFO.

and what is it but…. a plane!! a secret plane!! and who are they carrying away on stretcher but the missing airmen, jack and robert???? SO HOW DID THEY DIE!

mr. chung puts his pen down, baffled, and scully points out that this story may not have a lot of closure, but it’s more than some of their other cases, which is funny because it is true. and she’s playing with her earrings and it’s so cute.

cutscene to mr. chung typing at his place. until a shadow approaches and he holds a tiny gun!!!! he is ready for a showdown but it’s… mulder at the door?

WAIT how does chung recognize him… did scully show him pictures i'm crying

mulder is in chung's apartment, asking him to not write the book, because it will do a disservice to a field that has always struggled to maintain credibility. we can’t understand these alternate realities yet!!! well. compelling argument... but mr. chung needs a paycheck. 

OH! and mulder suspects that the book is a “covert agenda” of the military industrial complex. always theories upon theories with this guy...

mr. chung says the book WILL be written, but he needs an explanation from mulder: what really happened to those kids on that night?

his answer: how the hell should i know?

(it was so perfect, i thought the episode would end right here)

mr. chung says he has deadlines, and mulder looks very sad, very previously neglected shelter dog rizz, and walks out. back to mr. chung’s furious typing. 

okay, so the cameraman now works for the electrical company roky worked for. because roky moved to california, preaching on purification and the inner earth and core enlightenment. right right right makes sense.

cutscene to scully reading the finished book by mr. chung!!! she is fictionalized as “diane” who is “noble of spirit and pure of heart” but “nevertheless a federal employee” LMAOOOO

and mulder is “renard muldrake” LMAOOOOO that is such a funny name... he's watching something in bed shirtless as his fictionalized self is being described- “a ticking time bomb of insanity” AND HE’S WATCHING THE BIGFOOT TAPES BAHAHAHAHA

chrissy now is an environmental advocate and harold still loves her but it isn’t required. aww harold :(

mr. chung ends by saying that we are not alone in this universe, but in our own way, we are all alone.

NEW BEST EPISODE CONTENDER???

this feels like one of those posts where people make up a bunch of information and then it all gets proven wrong so it is described as a "net zero information gain" bahaha

but don't get me wrong, i don't fully understand what happened, but i loved it. i was laughing, i was enjoying seeing the subjectivity of one story to the next, i was enjoying scully and chung time, and despite all the silly, we still got clues on the whole "is it aliens or the government" thing. and sure, maybe it doesn't make immediate sense, but you have to ponder these matters to learn what is at their heart!

so what DID we learn? well, some alien cases might be the government! but i guess that is still a "might", so maybe we can't truthfully say we LEARNED it. we learned that scully is a big fan of mr. chung!!! we learned that mulder is fiercely protective of his line of work from all his years of being ridiculed! and that he watches the famous bigfoot tape for fun and also maybe like sweet potato pie? it was unconfirmed.

i really enjoyed the playing with perspective, seeing how one character saw things, and then another. and seeing mulder and scully threaten that dweeb was so funny because it was so out of character and had to be silly to shoot.

and i thought it was impressive how it managed to tie back to the big alien and government mystery while still making me laugh so hard. how many past episodes can be analyzed through the lens of certain things being faked for exposure? and what REALLY happened to those airmen? we still don't know if mulder's convo with jack even happened! and we never will!

i came to appreciate the company of mr. chung immensely, even though i thought he was gonna be creepy after calling scully beautiful and touching her arm, but i suppose that he was just a genuinely sweet fellow. you can't blame me for being suspicious after some of the things she gets put through, but i'm sure that if i picked one of his books off the shelf, i, like scully, would be a fan.

overall, i am deeply pleased, and would love to give this a rewatch sometime when i am not taking notes so i could appreciate the pacing in more detail. man, season 3 has really been killing it, huh? and i'm nearing the end!!

[yowhoevenami]

The X-Files – Pilot

I’ve been rather couch bound with some health nonsense, so I’ve decided to jump into this. It’s been a while since I’ve watched The X-Files and I’d like to shout into the void about it for a while. Here follows me losing my mind over things like character introductions for the most part. Seriously, I feel like this show is a masterclass.  

The meeting between Mulder and Scully is so good. In a relatively short amount of time, about three and a half minutes, we are given SO MUCH. Scully’s professionalism and Mulder’s . . . um . . .contrast to that? 😉 Mulder’s sense of humor along with his sideways method of complimenting and his apparent inability to be serious most of the time. Scully’s intelligence as he lists her credentials. (His intelligence was already highlighted in the previous scene.)

Her ability to meet him where he stands intellectually. (The way that they challenge each other is fascinating to watch and is what keeps them so interested in one other. Who else could effectively match either of them?) We are shown her curiosity as she immediately starts to question what she’s seeing in the slides he presents to her. (Taking a moment of silence here to remember the times when slides had nothing to do with powerpoint.)

We get Scully’s core beliefs in this one bit of dialogue. (This world view is integral to her, and she later struggles with the difficulty of having to see beyond the surety that she has spent a lifetime cultivating.) Three and a half minutes! There are reasons that these two are so iconic and it all starts here.

Their first few scenes together he is testing her to see if she’s trustworthy and to gauge her capabilities. However, the impression is never even hinted at that he might be doubting her because she is a woman, only that she was sent to spy on him. (Honestly, this still feels refreshing as hell compared to other media that attempts to write strong women.)

We learn more about Mulder and what he might believe. His near giddy excitement over what they may have found with that exhumed body hints at the reveal later as to why he believes. This is a man that has spent his life being told that what he saw as a child, with his own eyes, was a lie. And here, before him, perhaps for the first time is the vindication of all of that? No wonder he’s practically clawing at the walls to get those tests done. And then, of course, the bathrobe scene. Is there an official name for this scene in the shipper lore because if not THERE SHOULD BE. :cough: Anyway.

Up to this point Scully has been expressing her strength and capability with little to no hint of vulnerability. Going to Mulder here, when she was afraid was one thing, the way she threw herself into his arms afterward is another. (Also, my kid wandered into the room during this scene for the hug and said “Ooooh, this is a love story, isn’t it?”) Yes, child. Yes, it is. But . . . in so many different ways and among so many other things.

Anyway, he chooses to answer her vulnerability with his own and tells the story that drives him. Here all levity in him dissipates into pure focus and drive. These are sides of Mulder that he carries with him throughout the series.

By the end of the pilot episode we have a really decent idea of who each of these people are, what is important to them, and what they want at this point of the narrative.

Side notes:

First use of: “Scully, it’s me.” (❤️)

And . . . now I’m craving sunflower seeds.

[gaycrouton]

my everything

post- en ami | 1.7k | angst | ao3

scully wants to make sure her and mulder are alright after the events of en ami

The only reason she hadn't started crying last night was because Frohike, Langly, and Byers were there. Though, by the looks of contrite pity on their faces, she might as well have been. Mulder had callously told her that the Gunmen would give her a ride home and she should take the night to put her head on straight.

So, instead of having a heart-to-heart with her partner, she sat in the back of the Gunmen's van next to Langly who wordlessly handed her a tissue when it became too much for him.

The whole night she stewed over what she could say to Mulder to get him to believe her, and she'd managed to convince him to let her drive him to Spender's office, only to yet again be met with an angry, brooding Mulder who could barely look at her.

The whole car ride back was filled with uncomfortable tension as he only replied to her with one word statements and non-committal grunts. When she pulled up to his building, he barely said goodbye before slamming the car door and rushing into his building with anger in every step.

Scully knew he wanted her to drive away, he'd made it abundantly clear he'd made his mind up about this issue: she was stupid and risked her life for nothing. There wasn't a single thing she could say that would sway him. The entire time she was with Spender, she'd thought of him - missing him, finally realizing the impetus behind why he'd risked his own life in these very situations before.

Now she was back empty handed and the only person who could make her feel better couldn't stand the sight of her.

She couldn't let this go on, and before she knew it, she was standing outside his door knocking. "Mulder, I know you're in there, let me in!"

The door swung open and she was met with his tired stare. "What? Did you remember he promised you the solution to world hunger too?" he asked, not even trying to keep the contempt out of his voice.

"Don't do this to me." She'd meant it to come out a stern warning, but her voice trembled and she could hear the tightness in her throat.

Finally, he really looked in her eyes and she saw a flicker of sadness pass though his gaze. With a sigh, he took a step back and opened the door wider, beckoning her in. As soon as she stepped inside, she hung her coat up on the billiard-ball coat rack he had, making her intentions of staying perfectly clear.

While she'd anticipated having to lead the conversation, Mulder surprised her by breaking the silence. "You showed up here last night after days of being missing without a word."

"I told you, I sent a message through Skinner. I tried to send you a recording. I-" she started firmly, getting interrupted by him in the process of defending herself.

He took a step forward and bent down ever so slightly to be closer to his height, "I thought you were dead. I thought you might've been abducted, or that you were dead in a ditch. You seem to be putting a lot of effort into making sure I know you were justified in your actions with little regard to how that affected the people who care about you."

Her breathing hitched at his last sentiment, but it was quickly overtaken by fury. "You're one to talk! How many times have you run off by yourself and I don't even get the decency of a note."

"You told Skinner you were fine, I've heard you say that goddamned word enough to know that means nothing. You were fine after your abduction, you were fine when you had cancer, for all I knew you could have just been shot and you'd still claim you were fine," he snapped.

"What should have I said? 'Oh, Mulder, Spender's being wonderful?' Would that have been better? Lying?" she replied sarcastically.

"Would that have been a lie?" he replied, crossing his hands over his chest.

Her brows furrowed at him in disbelief. "Was me telling you that you were right and I had been in danger while I was with him not clear enough?"

"You said other people were putting you in danger, not Spender. Did he hurt you?" he asked, for the first time since she'd been back, the wall of resentment starting to crack and give way to the worry that had been at the root of his anger.

She felt her mouth fall open awkwardly as she tried to think of what to say to avoid setting him off again. "N-no, I-" she stammered lamely.

Mulder's brows furrowed as his jaw clenched, his eyes full of unspoken fear as he saw right through her facade of strength. "Scully, what did he do?"

Scully rolled her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek in an attempt to hold back the tears threatening to well up in her eyes. She hadn't wanted to have this conversation right now as she was still trying to process it herself. "Um, I think he drugged me. One minute I was in the car with him and the next I was waking up on a bed in the guest room of his cabin," she admitted in a whisper.

The room was silent and tense and when she looked up beneath her lashes she saw Mulder was clearly having as much of a hard time processing what she said as she did. "Did he touch you?" he replied lowly.

"My bra and underwear were still on," she stated, not that it was hard evidence. "But I really don't think he did. I'm not sore, so um-I don't feel like he did anything… like that," she replied awkwardly.

"Oh, Scully," he sighed, drawing her into his arms so he could hug her tightly.

For the first time in days, she finally felt comfortable again, and she breathed in his scent appreciatively as her cheek rubbed against the cotton of his sweater. "I didn't mean to make you feel worse than I'm sure you already do," he murmured into the crown of her head, pressing his lips against her hair in a prolonged kiss.

"I was always thinking of you, Mulder. You have to believe me. I didn't think I was doing anything you wouldn't do if the situations were reversed," she murmured.

"I didn't know where you were," he replied, sounding like a scared child. He tightened his grip around her and guilt started gnawing at her heart. This was a man who'd experienced more loved ones going missing than most people ever hear of. She knew how much her abduction had an impact on him, she could only imagine the fear he felt thinking it had, or was about to, happen again.

"That's why I tried to contact you any time I could. I remembered how I felt all the times I knew you were in danger without me," she replied, leaning away so she could look up at him, her arms still lightly wrapped around him.

He looked pensive at her comment, and she was just about to ask him why when he said, "You didn't want to talk to me."

"Yes I did," she replied, a surge of irritation welling back up. "All I wanted to do was talk to you. I went to your apartment as soon as I could. You were the one who-"

"No," he interrupted, shaking his head. He lifted a hand up and brushed her hair back so her face wasn't obscured. "When you talked to Skinner. He tried to hand me the phone and you refused."

"Spender was right next to me," she replied as if it was answer enough.

Mulder raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say, "And?"

Truth be told, she was pretty sure she might've cried if she heard his voice. She had been so anxious, she didn't think she could take hearing the worry in his voice. "I didn't want him to hear me talk to you," she offered before deciding he deserved honesty. Licking her lips, she whispered, "If I had heard your voice, I'm not sure I would have been able to keep going with him, and in the moment I was certain I was making the right choice."

Mulder regarded her with so much tenderness, such a stark contrast to how he'd been last night, she felt her heart start to hammer in her chest. "You're my everything, I can't lose you," he admitted. "When you're missing it feels like the world becomes cruel and unforgiving. I can't take it."

Scully was stunned at his honesty and felt frozen by the weight of the sentiments. "I'm sorry for what I put you through," she replied, reaching a hand up and stroking his cheek.

This moment felt important. Emotions were high, he was holding her with so much affection she felt like her skin was burning, they were both dancing around admitting the truth that had been between them for too long - but she didn't want such an important part of their relationship to stem from what Spender had done.

"Scully, I-" he started, stopping when he watched her close her eyes.

"I don't want what Spender did to impact our relationship," she admitted, hoping her double meaning was clear.

Don't be mad at me.

Don't let Spender be the reason you say anything you can't take back.

He nodded, their unspoken communication honed from seven years of experience making him fluent in the unsaid. He released his hold on her and she looked at her watch unnecessarily.

"I-I'm running late. I should go," she murmured.

She knew Mulder knew that wasn't true, but he let her go anyway.

He knew the truth would come out soon enough.

[misslilli]

It'll get better soon guys, don't worry 🤗

Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. PG-13. | tagging @today-in-fic | read on AO3

Chapter 24 - It Takes A Village

[ Felix ]

It’s close to December and my favorite holiday is coming up fast, the lights are already up all around town and in school we make paper snowmen and sing Christmas songs. It’s supposed to be the most cheerful time of the year, but people in my life are sad, which in turn also puts a damper on my Christmas spirit.

Dad is not doing very well, he’s working all the time and doesn’t say much, he just goes through the motions of our day. One day, he just forgets to pick me up from school because he has worked through the night and fell asleep at the dining room table during the day.

Principal Skinner can’t reach him or my mom, who is in Europe right now, so he calls my other emergency contact, my grandma. I don’t know what exactly he tells her, but she’s coming all the way from Connecticut and the Principal will drive me home to check on my dad.

I’m excited that grandma’s coming, she’s really awesome! She’s straightforward and very, very strict and doesn’t like to cuddle, much, but her no-nonsense way of running a household may be exactly what we need right now. And she also makes a mean lasagna!

When we get to the house, dad is beside himself, apologizing to us over and over again for falling asleep and he looks a little relieved when Principal Skinner tells him that grandma is coming over to help.

I launch myself at her - I’m permitted exactly two hugs, one hello and one goodbye - when she walks through the door and immediately try to get her to make lasagna for dinner. She sends me up to my room to play for a bit, while she talks to dad and cleans up the mess in the kitchen. Afterwards, she really makes lasagna, yes!

——————

[ Teena ]

When I got the call from Principal Skinner, I was very worried about what I’d find when I got to the house, I’ve been called to pick up the pieces only once before.

It was after Diana left Fox and Felix and what I found then was a disoriented and confused three-year old who kept asking for his mom and a devastated dad and husband, unable to care for his child in his own heartbreak.

Thankfully, it’s not that bad this time, but I can tell that something has happened. Fox has been avoiding my calls for weeks now, only having Felix talk to me over the phone. I know that Sam knows something, but she wouldn’t tell me no matter how hard I pressed.

So the first thing I do when I get to the boys’s house is send Felix off to his room and sit down my son onto the couch to talk.

“Tell me what happened, Fox.”

And he goes on to me the whole story, from the first day of school where he met a woman that had upended both of their lives, to the birthday party - Sam has actually told me about that one, I thought it was a really sweet story - and the Halloween fair right up until the Basketball fiasco and the last time he saw her, where she asked him to give her some space until she has figured some things out.

“What do I do now mom? I hate myself for scaring her off like that and I can’t stop the tailspin of thinking I’m not good enough for her anyway, with that broken mess that’s our family…”

“I’ll tell you what to do now. You give her space like she asked you to and you get your act together in the meantime. Felix needs you to take care of him, it won’t do to wallow in self-pity. And ask yourself this: How can you expect someone to love you if you don’t love yourself? Go see Connie and fix your self-worth issues because you’re a good man and you absolutely deserve someone who makes you happy.”

“Thanks mom, for everything. I’ve already scheduled extra therapy lessons with Connie. You know what makes this whole thing even harder? I have to see her every damn day at school when I pick up Felix.”

“I’ll pick him up from now on. You focus on yourself, without distractions.” Maybe I’ll even get to meet her, I’m fairly curious about this Rainbow Woman myself.

—————

[ Felix ]

At recess in school, everyone’s on their best behavior, holding their collective breaths because Miss Scully is in a bad mood today. Actually, she’s been irritable for the past two weeks, with a very short fuse and absolutely no tolerance for disobedience.

Since her classroom is right next to ours, we can sometimes hear her yell at her kids for something or other and even our class flinches when it happens.

Right now, she’s over at the playground, leaning into two boys who have gotten into a fist-fight over a game of tag and I’m silently glad I’m sitting over here with Miss Anderson. I look up at my teacher, curious.

“Miss Anderson, why is Miss Scully so angry all the time?”

“I can’t tell you, Felix, I’m sorry.”

“Because you don’t know, or because you don’t want me to know?” When she changes the subject pointedly, I know it’s the second one. ‘Ugh, why don’t adults tell children anything, it’s driving me crazy! Dad won’t tell me anything and now this.’

Grandma picks me up again today and on our way to the car, we run into Miss Scully. 'Uh oh, I hope she doesn’t go off on grandma, I don’t think that will go over very well.’ My grandma can be scary sometimes, too!

“Hey Miss Scully, this is my grandma, she’s staying with us for a while now! Grandma, this is Miss Scully, she’s the fourth-grade teacher.”

——————

[ Teena ]

I’m happy to see that my son has raised Felix to be a polite child when he introduces the tiny red-head I’ve heard so much about.

“Grandma’s not actually my name, Felix. I’m Teena Mulder, it’s nice to meet you Miss Scully!” Holding out my hand, I try to seize her up.

Her handshake is firm and her posture is ram-rod-straight, all professional, but her eyes betray her poised exterior, because I can see flashes of sadness when she looks down at Felix. I can only guess that she’s not having an easy time with everything, herself.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Mulder. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got an appointment to get to. I’ll see you tomorrow, Felix. Goodbye, Mrs. Mulder.”

With that, she’s off to get her bike and Felix breathes a sigh of relief.

“Whew, thank God, she didn’t get mad at you like she got mad at the two boys at recess today.”

I’m a bit puzzled by his odd statement, but on the car ride, he tells me all about the incident in great detail. I get the feeling that these stories are a staple in the boys’s days and I can begin to understand why my son would rather not hear Felix go on and on about what she did and what she said right now.

—————

[ DS ]

My therapist has told me that it has to get worse before it gets better, but this is getting ridiculous. I can’t sleep more than a few hours at night, which leaves me irritable in the morning and with an incredibly short fuse at school, going off on my kids for the littlest infractions.

They’re so terrified and confused, they end up making even more mistakes, which in turn sets me off even more - it’s a vicious circle that leaves me frustrated with myself and more times that I’d like to admit to, I’ve lost it in the teacher’s bathroom.

Meeting Mrs. Mulder today was unexpected and I tried hard to keep it together for a few minutes, but I can’t stand looking at Felix’s innocent face for a longer period of time, so I bolted right after the introductions.

I actually did have an appointment, with my therapist, and today she suggested I write down my feelings in a journal to get them off my chest and reflect on them.

During the night, I wake after only a few hours of sleep spent tossing and turning. Unable to fall back asleep for yet another night, I drag myself our of bed and downstairs, turning the TV in the living room, hoping it’ll lull me back to sleep.

“10 things I hate about you” is on and by the time Julia Stiles recites her poem, I’m bawling into a pillow. I remember the homework I’ve been given, so I grab a piece of paper and a pen and begin writing.

“Miss Scully’s list of 10 things I hate about you”

The words of the title swim before my eyes as I scribble my feelings onto the patient paper. The poem I write is slightly different from the one in the movie, but writing it all out really does help.

I fold the paper up carefully and toss it in the trash before heading back up to bed.

[silhouetteofacedar]

When We Drive, Ch. 11: Birth Coaching, Physical Enormity, and Dad

Previous Chapter - AO3 - MSR, rated M

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

May 4, 2001

Scully asked him to be there.

She had turned her sweet, pink face up to him, blue eyes cautiously meeting his, and said “When the baby comes, I want you with me. If that’s something you’re comfortable with.”

His heart leapt into his throat, and all he could say in response was “Yes, of course,” which felt wildly insufficient, but was all he had on hand at the time.

That’s how he ended up sitting on the floor in a circle of eager couples, arms around Scully as she took deep inhalations. They gave him a handful of childbirth information pamphlets; the woman in bright purple silk pants leading the class referred to him as “Dad”.

He’s had worse afternoons.

Scully’s been quiet for most of the car ride back to her place, and he can feel her brain percolating.

“Thank you again for coming with me,” Scully says for the millionth time, almost apologetic.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Mulder replies, and Scully’s raised eyebrow prompts him to continue. “Really, I’m not being flippant; I wanted to be there. I want to be there,” he assures her.

“It’s going to be ugly,” Scully warns. “There’s going to be blood, and fluids, possible tearing. Definitely grunting and screaming.”

“When have I ever been put off by you grunting and screaming?” Mulder says suggestively.

She licks her lips. “I’m serious,” she continues. “It’s… it’s likely I’ll defecate.”

“I’m aware,” he says calmly. “I was actually paying attention in class, you know. This is important to me too.”

Scully makes a small, choked sound, and he glances at her. Her eyes are red and shining, and she sniffs loudly.

“Oh Scully, honey,” he says gently, “I’m sorry-”

“No, it’s not you, I’m just- damn these hormones,” she says wetly, scrabbling around in her bag for the omnipresent packet of tissues.

Mulder tentatively reaches out and lays a hand on her knee as she collects herself.

“It’s just… everything is happening and it’s all so big,” she explains, unfolding a tissue. “You were missing, I found out I was pregnant, then you were dead, and now you’re back, and we’re having a baby, Mulder. You and I… we made a person together.” She blows her nose with a loud honk.

“I hear they know how that happens now,” Mulder jokes, then changes course. “But in our case it’s not quite so scientific,” he admits.

“I can’t even begin to comprehend it. But right now I’m just worried about bringing him or her into the world safely. One day at a time,” she sighs, “Which is almost too much to ask at this point. I’m quite unwieldy these days.”

“It’s adorable,” Mulder says before he can decide against the words. He braces himself for Scully’s reaction.

“Mulder, I’m huge,” Scully insists, almost confused. “I am spectacularly large.”

“Yes, you are,” Mulder agrees, “And I love it. I really do.” He sneaks a shy glance at her, and is pleased to see a small smile on her lips.

He waits for her to argue with him, rationalize his feelings with physiological explanations, categorize his attraction to her into one of her neat little scientific boxes. But she doesn’t; instead she lifts his hand off her leg and presses it to her stomach. He marvels at her belly; it’s as warm and round as a ripe peach in the summer sun, filled with what love made. He can’t believe she ever let him touch her in the first place, is amazed that she wanted him to help her make a child. And he’s still stunned that after IVF failed he got to love her anyway.

It’s almost as though she loves him too.

He knows she probably does, but she still hasn’t said it in so many words. In fact, he doesn’t recall saying it himself since Bermuda, though he’s sure he’s referenced that moment since.

Should he say it now, in the car on a random street in Georgetown? Or should he wait until he walks her up to her apartment? Take her on a proper date with wine and candles?

He observes her carefully in his periphery. Her eyes are closed, serene, her hand and his resting on her stomach, and he’s again struck by how beautiful and strong and rare she is.

Life is senseless and random and painful and wonderful and he doesn’t know if he’ll get abducted again tomorrow, or get hit by a bus, or just not wake up in the morning. He could live another fifty years or be gone in an instant. So at a red light, he withdraws his hand and makes his choice.

“I think I should tell you,” he begins, “And I’ve told you before but it was a long time ago, and I think you need to hear it again.”

“Mulder?” she asks, her brows furrowing slightly. He wishes he could lean over and kiss the crinkle in her forehead, but he needs to keep his eyes on the stoplights.

“I love you,” he says simply.

The light turns green.

Scully takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I never said it. Our time together before… was so new, and we were just starting to feel things out when you were taken. And then when you came back-”

“You don’t have to explain anything, Scully,” he says quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

“And I just want to make sure that you know,” she answers, voice low and firm. “These aren’t easy words for me to say, especially when it feels like we’re always on the edge of some kind of disaster. I’m always… afraid of what we might lose.”

Mulder nods, turning onto her street. He knows his absence took a toll on her, one that he’ll never be able to fully grasp. Things have been warming slowly between them, as they get reacquainted with each other and the shapes their lives are taking. They both need some time to adjust.

“Scully, I know things have changed a lot since I… left,” Mulder says, pulling up to her building and shutting off the engine. “And I understand that they’ll never be the same as they were before. But whatever you want of me, whatever you need… You know where to find me.”

“Mulder, I love you.”

He turns to her abruptly, keys clutched in his hand. “Scully,” he says in a near-whisper.

“I’m terrible at this,” she says, voice quietly desperate. “And it terrifies me. But I love you. And I want you. You being gone didn’t change that; it clarified it.”

They stare at each other, seatbelts still buckled.

“When you say want, do you mean-” Mulder begins carefully.

“Yes,” Scully replies. “And yes, and yes, and whatever else you might ask of me, yes.” Her cheeks are red, and he can’t be polite and cautious with her anymore. Not after that. So he leans in, takes her face in his hands, then stops. Her eyes are wide with surprise, not unwelcoming, but he has to check anyway.

“I need to kiss you,” he murmurs, inches away from her mouth. “May I please, Scully, pl-”

The rest of his sentence gets lost between their lips as she closes the distance between them.

She pulls back after a moment, wincing slightly.

“Are you alright?” Mulder asks anxiously. “Is it the baby?”

Scully huffs out a small laugh. “No, I’m fine, Mulder. The seatbelt’s just cutting into me,” she explains, shifting in her seat and unbuckling the restraint. She sighs and smooths her hands over her belly. “I think we should continue this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable. My sofa, maybe?”

Mulder unbuckles his seatbelt, drops a quick kiss into her hair. “Lead the way.”

[mchalowitz]

the woman is the king, part 6

summary: a throughline of the matriarchal scullys; be they ethereal, sharp-witted, and ill-omened.

part 1: melissa / part 2: dana / part 3: emily / part 4: scully / part 5: samantha (the interlude) 

part 6: them

read on ao3

@today-in-fic

----

A hospital bed is arguably worse than a coffin. It could easily be just a tease. Scully may soon have to bury Mulder all over again. 

While Scully notes the well-meaning discouragement of her colleagues, she maintains that she must accept the risk. His battered body nearly brings her to her knees. 

She stood dutifully by for long months of uncertainty; remaining an honorable partner, despite assumptions of instability from pregnancy and grief. It may seem horrific to stand by him as faithfully as ever. 

Scully was only beginning to entertain the concept of their child existing in a world without him. She jerks to attention by the unreal sensation of his hand curling around hers; as if to remind her to never count him out too quick. 

It is already poised on her tongue--I’m your wife--before he cracks the faintest of smiles. Mulder knows how much she hates when he does that. But she loves it too, or possibly more accurately, she missed it heartachingly so. 

His hospital room becomes a whirl of activity; whisking him off for scans and x-rays and questions. The reality of what he has been through still has yet to set in. She lingers in the hard hospital chair with her usual inclination to observe stifled by the excruciating fear of finding this all to be a fantasy. 

It is many hours before an orderly finally rolls Mulder back into the room, appearing as exhausted as she is. She finally lets her longing for sleep win. “I’ll be back in the morning, okay?” she assures him, her fingers at his temple as she is suddenly reminded of a lost debrief from long ago.

His eyes follow her as she begins to leave. “Wait,” he whispers. 

Scully turns, watching as Mulder nudges her jacket aside with his knuckle, revealing the swell of her stomach. His blank eyes never meet hers; no flash of realization like she imagined.

After a few moments, he drops his hand. 

--

Unbeknownst to Mulder, there’s a technicality in the law that states, even if one miraculously manages to be resurrected, they are no longer legally married. It appears Scully has found someone else anyway; another overdone drone that tries to shut him down from the inside. One would think this life would thrown in something more interesting than the last. 

Her condition is the only exception; abundant with forthcoming life. His hand pressing against her stomach, an unthinking smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Even with the grandest of medical intervention, they weren’t able to do this together, and the thought continues to tug at his mind as Scully attempts to convince him that Agent Doggett is worth his effort.

“Do you have time to stay?”

Mulder pulls a chair to her bedside. She reaches for his hand. It’s the first time they’ve had a conversation since his return that feels like a regular exchange. As if things were as normal as they ever were. 

As one topic fades into the next, a heavy moment of silence hangs in the air between them. Scully’s hands slide up to rest on her stomach before she finally speaks, “I think you’ve made some assumptions about my situation.” 

“I really am happy for you, Scully.” 

Mulder thought he would have more time to prepare before her pity for her recently resurrected partner ran out. He braces himself for the blow of having his soul absolutely obliterated. 

“You should be happy for us,” she quickly responds, her words falling out in a tumble. “I’ve done the math, Mulder, and every time it adds up to...” Her voice drops down low, speaking from the corner of her mouth. “...you know, Caddyshack?” 

He’s never been in more astonished delight. 

--

Mulder grows more fearful that he will not be able to pull his shit together before Scully gives birth. He tries to establish some normality; browsing aisles for essentials seems normal. Making polite check-out small talk, it’s normal, until the clerk behind the counter at the 7-11 complains it’s already too hot for May, and by mere power of suggestion, a laser beam of heat burns through him. He drops his bags somewhere on the sidewalk in the setting sun. 

It takes Mulder three attempts to unlock Scully’s front door with his shaking hands. He slides down to the floor with the deadbolt set barely back into place. His sweat begins to go cold. Her bedroom door creaks open in only a minute or two and she wants to know, “Mulder, what are you doing?” as she sets her now-unloaded gun on the side table with a quiet click. He flinches; it may as well be as loud as a gunshot. 

He opens his mouth to protest when Scully pushes her weight against the wall to slip down until she’s sitting next to him. Her hands gravitate to her stomach seemingly without thought and she turns her head toward him to state, “You didn’t call.” 

“I--I forgot my phone,” he stammers. When he officially left the bureau, the adrenaline of being alive wore off, and he only answers calls from a fear he will miss something important about her or the baby. He’s being effected by the frequency, or maybe his brain is broken, because lately it sets off a pain so sharp his eardrum will explode. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” 

“Yes, but I don’t mind,” she assures him. “I wish you would come over more. We weren’t exactly spending many nights apart very long ago.” The confidence in her voice startles him. After their child’s parentage was squared away, the stance of their personal relationship remained unstated. 

Mulder spent the final night of his previous life in Scully’s bed. She still wasn’t feeling well, and they didn’t make love, but he rubbed her back, and kissed the crown of her head to soothe her. When they finally fell asleep, her leg was wrapped around his thigh, and her fingers twitched mindlessly behind his ear, and her breath felt pleasantly warm on his jaw. Drifting between sleep and wakefulness, he decided Bellefleur was meant to be his last hurrah; he planned out exactly what he wanted to say to Skinner when he asked for reassignment, so he could sleep like this, next to her, every night, forever. 

How did that plan work out, Fox? 

It’s been three days since Mulder last slept. With every attempt at slumber, he only hears whirling metal, and the phantom pain of an incision in his side. And if he doesn’t open his eyes and stay alert, he will die. 

He’s quiet for a long time and considers just leaving. Mulder pulls a paper out of his pocket instead, smoothing it on his knee before he hesitantly passes it to her. 

He loves Scully’s handwriting; a dainty print from her favorite rollerball pen. This time it’s on her special stationary dedicated only to correspondences of great importance. Mulder could see the careful technique in her name suggestions with a prudent combination of family names and monikers of recent popularity. He might be a little old fashioned in that way, with his own uncommon name a complication onward from birth, and he hopes endless choices won’t leave them with a Madison or a Kyle.

Scully unfolds it and her thumb strokes his penciled in circles and arrows. She could be talking to him, Mulder’s not really sure. Her eyes look glassy when they finally meet his. He doesn’t think his are even focused. 

“You’re not...here,” Scully says with an inquisitive up-tone to her voice underneath and she admits, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you anymore, Mulder.” 

“Me neither.”

He watches Scully’s hands flatten on her stomach; her nostrils flare as a puff of air escapes through her nose before she turns just her head toward him. Scully is a goddess and Mulder wants to kiss her absolutely breathless. He wants to fuck her right where they sit on the floor, because she’s so fucking gorgeous, abundant with his child like this, but he’s so broken, and he would only disappoint her. He can’t disappoint the only person to ever know him more than he already has. Maybe she sees that in his eyes. 

His brain is like static television; flipping through channels until he lands on a cold New Year’s night. Mulder told her the world could have ended. His did. 

Scully’s expression is unquestionably assured when she leans in to kiss him, and he confesses, “I don’t know if it will be the same.” 

“I don’t care,” she says. Then it’s just perfectly soft lips from the woman that married him. He shifts to kneel next to her, cupping her face fully in his hands. Her tongue makes his lips tingle; his cock twitch for the first time in ages. Her fingers are tightly clenched behind his head until they part. She’s breathless as she instructs, “Help me up.” 

Once on her feet, she leads him by the hand toward the bedroom.

It’s not a perfect encounter; not quite as simple as it once was. But from the pleasant sting of scratches on his back and her taste on his tongue, they both enjoyed themselves all the same. Now he worries he’ll wake her with whatever happens when he closes his eyes. 

Allowing them to slip closed, Mulder breathes in deeply. His jaw clenches as his ear starts to ring. Scully adjusts her position, her stomach brushing against his side. You’re about to be a father, you dumbass. He imagines what being a father will be. A few years from now, he’ll be able to build the model rocket he has hidden away in a box, and teach them how to swing a bat on cool nights. Scully will watch them from the kitchen window, or a park bench, and he’ll get to see what a wonderful mother she’ll be. 

Eventually, he drifts off.

--

Knowing Mulder a little, John respects the former agent well enough. His career has been long, and he knows a little about partnerships, but the dedication Agent Scully shows for Mulder seems extreme in her condition. 

With Agent Harrison occupied by their stories, John wanders to the nurse’s station to collect the records he’ll need for his report. Eventually, they exit the room with a trail of laughter, and he feels compelled to observe. 

Too far away to hear their conversation, they only pause to speak briefly before they begin to walk in the opposite direction of him. They are nearly out of eyesight when he sees Mulder’s hand encase hers. Agent Scully doesn’t hesitate to weave her fingers between his. 

If trouble is looming, John prays it doesn’t find them.

--

It was not supposed to happen this way. It is a thought that comes to her repeatedly throughout the long journey between states; both driven and of labor. 

She should never have been bogged down by infertility caused by something beyond her control. Ultimately, Scully appears to have overcome it, but the loss of a comfortable birth remains. 

Monica’s soul is strikingly similar to Melissa’s. Scully still longs for her sister at this monumental moment in her existence. Melissa would undoubtedly try to hover her hands over her stomach and convince her of some cosmic transcendence between her womb and the natural world. 

The absence of her baby’s father is equally unjust. He would guffaw at her sister’s particular brand of hippie shit. Even though he would unquestionably believe it too, Mulder and Melissa would purposefully clash in the most endearing of ways. 

There’s something loud nearby. Scully holds her baby for the first time without bystanding threats. Mulder would be overly schmaltzy; awe-struck and dewy-eyed if in her presence. He would say, “You did so good, honey,” and everything would be right. 

--

If a hospital birth truly became impossible, and the birth of their child was going to come to this, Mulder thought he was going to be the one to deliver his own child. What he finds beyond the creaking door is the furthest thing from their original plan he could imagine; so dark, so disgustingly dusty, and his only thought is to get her to the sterile oasis of a hospital room. 

Any adrenaline leftover from the helicopter ride drains from his body as he collapses to a kneel at her side. “Scully, I’m here,” he alerts her. “Monica’s going to watch for the paramedics. They’re going to come move you and get you all fixed up.”

“He’s cold,” she mumbles, seemingly hearing none of what he said. 

Mulder follows her gaze down to the baby in her arms. Only a threadbare towel separates them from the elements. He isn’t sure how much help it’ll do, but he gently removes them from her arms, and hopes to shield him between his jacket and his shirt. 

It’s a boy. A son.

His eyes finally begin to adjust to the darkness. He worried he was going to see something scary; something alien to him. But as he stares into the deep, endlessly blue eyes of his son, the only thing he can see is Dana Scully. He even sees himself a little. Nestled safely under his jacket, with the sounds of life-affirming breath, is a child conceived entirely out of their love for each other. 

“Look at that,” Mulder states in awe. He returns his eyes to Scully, seeing her skin is more pale, and her eyes beginning to roll back. He panics, shifting his son to one arm to tap at her shoulder. “Dana, look at me, just listen to me for another minute, okay?" He brushes back her hair from her forehead. “I knew you could do it, you did so good, honey...”

Help finally arrives, with paramedics pushing past him, and Scully is on a stretcher, in a helicopter, in an operating room. He splits his time between the surgical waiting room and the nursery. He watches his son be weighed and measured and deemed a healthy little guy. When Scully comes out of surgery, she’s regarded as very, very lucky. 

His lack of a name becomes a joke between them; a question asked of them every time someone enters. Even after they pick one, after they proudly sign the birth certificate with their choice, Mulder would still walk in, and ask her seriously, “What are you going to call him?” 

While Scully naps, he’s finally beginning to nod off himself, until a squawking infant in the basinet near the bed interrupts with his own plan. He lifts his son easily. “Not much of a sleeper either, huh, buddy?” 

Mulder settles back in his chair. They’ve already determined it’s safer for everyone if he leaves. Maybe someday he’ll be able to return, but until then, his son will be able to have a normal life. Once he gets Scully back to Washington, knows his family is settled, he’ll have to go. 

But the baby in his arms sure is making it hard.

[slippinmickeys]

Five Seconds (5/8)

If you’d like to read on AO3, you may do so here.

October 15, 2018

The leaves were beginning to change outside the window; the maples turning russet, the birch yellow. Scully felt pendulous and gravid, the child in her belly more active than her previous two combined. Sleep was becoming difficult, but by day they’d fallen into a comfortable routine, safe and unmolested from the dangers that were beginning to feel as though they had never existed at all.

She stretched and left Mulder, half his face obscured by his pillow, his lips soft and pliant in sleep. A fresh pot of decaf awaited her in the kitchen, its automatic timer set by Mulder late last night.

The kids were still asleep, as far as she could tell -- she'd heard Lily come home well after midnight. She'd been up reading anyway when her daughter had popped her head into their bedroom door and whispered "I'm home." The girl had been wearing a small smile and Scully recognized the look. Lily was falling in love.

Will shuffled into the kitchen sleepily, a palm rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He approached Scully where she stood at the counter and put an arm around her shoulder, leaning on her. He still smelled like the sleepy little boy who liked to cuddle into her side to watch nature shows when he was six.

"Morning Mom," he said, taking a snuffly breath. He leaned down and rested his cheek against her head (he was almost as tall as Mulder, though still as skinny as a maypole). Scully wrapped her arm around his waist and pulled him in closer. Affection from her kids was getting fewer and farther between now that they were active teenagers. She was determined to enjoy whatever she got.

"Morning," she said, giving his back a little rub, "you're up early."

"Yeah," he said on a yawn. "There's an open rink this morning and a couple of buddies are going. Is it okay if I join them?"

Scully nodded. "Just make sure you tell your dad, too. Know the exits before you go and keep an eye on the crowd."

Will squeezed her once and then let go, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and holding up like James Bond. "Call me Double O Billy," he said and sidled back to his room off of Scully's bemused chuckle.

She spent an hour catching up on email that had been routed through the Gunmen and Darlene -- coded messages that they interpreted and sent to her mother, sister and brothers. Melissa was giving her a hard time about not letting her fly to Europe (where she thought they were) to be her doula when the time came to give birth. She was tempted to send Byers to her sister's house to explain exactly what was happening, but rejected the impulse. Their mother -- the only person other than the Gunmen and the X-Files triumvirate at the FBI who knew their situation (though not their location for her own protection) -- would talk her down eventually.

Mulder came padding up behind her as she closed the laptop and she felt a soft, drawn-out kiss on the side of her neck.

"Morning," he mumbled into her skin.

She reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair, then turned to receive his kiss.

"Morning," she said.

"I’ll be back shortly. I'm going to drop Billy off at the ice complex and then take Lil to campus -- she suddenly started liking football."

"I think it's the company rather than the sport," Scully said, turning in her chair to face him.

"...I'm going to choose to believe my version," he said.

Scully reached out and linked their fingers briefly. "Tell her to be careful," she said, "she's spending a lot of time out of the house."

Mulder nodded and squeezed her fingers. "I will," he said, "and when I get back, I have a few ideas for how we can spend our child-free afternoon." He waggled his eyebrows at her and let go, backing out of the room like the charmer he was.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“So why UVA?” Travis asked her. He had his head propped up on an elbow and his other hand was wrapped loosely around her foot, his thumb rubbing circles into her arch. She was on the couch in his dorm room and he was on the floor -- she’d been helping him study for mid-terms. They had been officially dating for five weeks and had seen each other at least every other day in that time. He’d introduced her to a couple of friends as his girlfriend.

“What?” she asked. It was hard enough to concentrate while getting a foot massage, and she’d been staring at the index cards in front of her, trying to find a question that would stump him.

“Why are you going to UVA? Brain like yours, you could have gone anywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you why there.”

“Other than the in-state tuition?” She had told him that they’d moved from Virginia, but hadn’t elaborated.

“Other than that,” he smiled.

“I’ve always wanted to. When I was a kid, my dad would occasionally get called in to consult there and he would take me with him. I kinda fell in love with it.”

“What did your dad consult on?” he asked, “You don’t talk about your parents much.”

Travis tapped her other leg, and she switched feet, silencing a groan when his knuckle hit a particularly sensitive spot.

She had purposely avoided mentioning her family much and debated how much was safe to share.

“UVA has a Department of Perceptual Studies,” she said, and she saw him tilt his head in question.

“A department of what?”

“Perceptual studies,” she said, smiling, “it’s a research group devoted to the investigation of phenomena that challenge mainstream scientific paradigms regarding the nature of the mind/brain relationship.” Travis stopped rubbing her foot and looked at her. She went on, further quoting her dad’s friend Dr. Stevenson: “Their mission is the scientific empirical investigation of phenomena that suggest that currently accepted scientific assumptions and theories about the nature of mind or consciousness, and its relation to matter, may be incomplete.”

“You’re shitting me,” he said.

“I shit you not.”

“What kind of phenomena?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

She tried not to smile, “ESP, poltergeists, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, claimed memories of past lives.”

“And what did they want with your father?” he asked, sitting up.

She shrugged. “He’s a shrink,” she said, being deliberately vague.

“This is an accredited university?” He teased her. She kicked at him, and he ducked out of the way and laughed, then looked at her thoughtfully. “You know, I myself had an out-of-body experience with Trudy Carmichael under the bleachers when I was sixteen. Pretty sure I saw through time.”

Lily chuckled, then playfully challenged: “Do I need to worry about this Trudy Carmichael?”

“I doubt it,” he said, hanging his head, “I lost my virginity, and she lost my number. Not my finest hour.”

“A whole hour?,” Lily said wryly.

“One way to find out.”

He looked at her then and she looked back. The moment was charged and sat in between them. The truth was, Lily was still a virgin. She and Travis had messed around, but fairly innocently, and she’d demurred on action below the waist/under the clothes. “I’m not waiting for marriage,” she’d told him a few weeks back, but she did want to wait for love. If only she knew what that felt like.

“Hey, Frisbee,” Travis said when she didn’t say anything, “please don’t take this as a negotiation tactic -- you’ve been clear on your limits and I totally respect that -- and with the full understanding that you don’t need a reason, and you do you and all that -- but… do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what exactly?” she asked, clarifying.

“When I say ‘no pressure,’ I mean it,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her foot.

Lily looked around his sloppy dorm room. There were clothes strewn about, though mostly out of the way— socks balled up near the laundry hamper, a sweatshirt hanging on the back of a chair. The wooden loft that held his bed was posted around the couch, made of flimsy-looking two-by-fours, and did not look like it could hold his weight, much less hers in addition, and remained untried (though Travis swore it had passed inspection). His desk was more fastidiously kept, a reflection of his mind, a structured order in the midst of chaos. He was kind and smart. His smile could make her insides go liquid.

“Honestly?” she finally said, “it’s my parents.”

“Super religious?” he asked.

She had to stop herself from laughing. “No, it’s… My parents love each other. More than anyone I’ve ever known. Their love is like… romance film love. It’s practically written in the stars.”

He looked at her contemplatively. “That’s a lot to live up to,” he said. “Is that what it is?”

“Yes,” she said, then, “no.” It was and it wasn’t. She didn’t know if there was a love out there that could compare, she suspected there wasn’t. Her real hang-up, and she hadn’t been able to get it out of her head since she found her father’s first wedding picture in their attic -- was that her father had obviously made a mistake. What if she did too?

She laughed, annoyed at herself. This wasn’t Regency England. Sex didn’t mean marriage. It didn’t even necessarily mean love. Still...

“Come on,” she said, sitting up and grabbing for his class notes, “this bio exam isn’t going to take itself.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

A sound woke her. Her hips were in agony and sleeping was difficult, so initially she was more annoyed than anything; she could rarely line up more than 90 minutes straight of deep slumber. And then she heard it again.

She reached over, squeezed Mulder's bicep until she heard him sniff sharply awake and silently, pulled out the sidearm she kept inside her bedside table. Mulder, slipping out of bed without a word, pulled out his own gun and went to the door. He held up a hand, trying to tell Scully to stay back, but she shook her head angrily -- she would have his back whether he liked it or not.

When he moved into the hallway, she stepped on the back of his heel and he ended up ramming his shoulder into the doorframe. He swore low under his breath. They were out of sync.

She watched as he put his head into the kids rooms as he made his way down the hallway, nodding at her that they were both accounted for. One more thunk from the living room.

He sidled up to the wall that led to the room and backed up against it. He mouthed one-two-three and they went in, but where she usually went low and he went high, this time they rammed shoulders and stumbled into the room. Mulder flicked on the light when she finally had her weapon aimed true.

There, sitting on a high bookshelf sat Apgar, her black tail swishing merrily. Maintaining eye contact, she swiped one more of the professor's knick-knacks off the shelf and onto the floor.

Mulder dropped his weapon and heaved a sigh, tipping his head back in frustration. "Fucking cat," he hissed.

Mission completed, Apgar jumped down with a thump and weaved a figure eight between Mulder's legs.

"She must be hungry," Scully said.

"Hangry was invented by cats," Mulder mumbled, reaching down to pet the cat with his free hand.

"Our tactical coordination was atrocious," Scully said, flicking the light back off and holding her gun at her hip.

"Yes," Mulder agreed.

"When was the last time you went to the range?" she asked.

"It's been months," he said tiredly.

"We're going tomorrow," Scully said. Mulder knew better than to argue.

XxX

There were more than a few Molon Labe bumper stickers in the parking lot. Scully had to remind herself that they were in Michigan Militia territory. "Michitucky," she'd heard it called by a few guys at the Bureau. Nevertheless, she pulled up to the firing range with fire in her blood. She might not share their politics, but she would share their space, and show most of them up to boot.

They signed in and bought ammunition. She got a few extra looks for being a visibly pregnant woman, but most of the men (and they were all men) who were at the range gave her begrudging looks of approval. Mulder stood, standing straighter and closer than normal, practically growling at anyone who got too close. She had to admit that his fierce protective nature was more than a turn-on.

The range was outdoors -- different than what they were used to at Quantico. And where there were metal tables and dividers and state of the art equipment at the government facility, here it was all beat-to-shit plywood tables and sunburnt grass littered with shell casings and old ear plugs. They took the lane at the end.

They both loaded and checked their weapons, snugged earmuffs over their heads.

"You want to go first?" Mulder asked, double checking the safety on his pistol and setting it on the table behind their station.

"I can do that," Scully said, looking down at her Sig.

"Care for a little wager?" her husband asked.

"You can't afford me, Dr. Mulder," she said, admiring the still-lanky line of his physique.

He raised his eyebrows, and leaned back against the tall wobbly table. "Oh-ho," he said, "I suppose that depends on the currency." He had a smug look about him that she wanted to wipe off his face. She was a better marksman and more competitive than anyone gave her credit for.

"What are you offering?" she asked.

"Dishes?" he offered, "Laundry?"

"We had children for the menial labor," she challenged, "I can win this with one hand tied behind my back. Make it interesting for me."

He licked his lips. She had him.

"I liked the part about 'hands behind the back,'" he said, "Winner decides who wears the handcuffs."

"You're not exactly incentivizing this, Mulder."

He had a flushed look about him; his nostrils flared.

"Prove it," he said, and she felt a flush. Second trimester hormones could be a beautiful thing, she mused.

It took her several rounds before she got back into the groove. It actually had been too long since she'd practiced and she was rusty. Considering their current situation, she ought not to let it happen again. Her last few rounds were dead center. Once her clip was empty, she cleared her weapon and stepped back.

Mulder's turn.

He wasn't quite as out of practice as she was initially, which irritated her to no end. However, his fourth and fifth shots were a bit wide, and he ended around the edges.

When he was clear, she stepped back up and took a bracing breath. She raised her weapon and fired rapidly; all her shots were center mass except the last two, which she swung up and finished with perfect shots to the head of the paper dummy.

When Mulder stepped forward for his turn, she nudged him.

"How big would you say the back of the Yukon is?'" she asked casually.

His first three shots went wide.

XxXxXxXxXxX

October 17, 2018

“Mom?” Lily asked. There was a hesitancy in her voice that made Scully look up from where she was chopping vegetables for dinner. “How did you know you loved Dad?”

Scully set the knife down and turned toward her daughter. “That’s a big question, Lil.”

“What’s a big question?” Mulder came breezing into the kitchen, shooting Scully an intrigued look.

Scully suspected something was up, but didn’t want to embarrass their daughter. Lily had always had an inquisitive streak and would occasionally come to Scully with problems or questions, but she was apt to clam up when pressed.

“Lily was asking me about how I fell in love with you,” Scully said, trying to catch Mulder’s eye.

“It was the day she met me, no doubt,” Mulder said. He grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the counter and shined it on his sleeve before taking a snappy bite. “I’m catnip to the ladies,” he said around the mouthful. Lily smiled. Scully rolled her eyes.  

“Suddenly, I’m struggling to remember,” Scully said with mock derision. Mulder gave her a cheeky grin.

“Did you know right away?” Lily asked.

Scully paused. “Not… Not right away,” she said thoughtfully.

Lily looked back and forth between her parents. “I guess it was a long time ago, huh.”

“Love in a time of sarsaparilla,” Mulder said dreamily. Scully shook her head and he caught her eye. “It wasn’t that long ago, Lil,“ he went on, and Scully felt the low bloom of feeling that always accompanied a look from her husband. For as long as she lived, she would always remember the first time she felt it; on the Tooms case, when he’d hooked his finger in her necklace and pulled.

“No, what I mean is… it was complicated,” Scully clarified.

Lily nodded and turned to her father. “You were married. Before Mom.”

“Yes,” Mulder said.

“Did you love her? Your ex wife?”

“I thought I did.”

“When did you figure out that you didn’t?” Lily asked.

“When I met your Mom,” Mulder said.

“So what you felt with Mom…”

“... was so much bigger than I was, that I couldn’t contain it.”

Scully felt her eyes well up. Mulder still sometimes had the ability to make her feel things all the way down to her toes.

Lily smiled, but looked pensive.

"But you thought you loved this other woman? I mean, enough to marry her?" she asked.

Mulder narrowed his eyes at his daughter. "What are you asking, Lil?"

Lily shook her head, her cheeks pink. She grabbed a soda from the fridge and walked out of the room.

“Oh boy,” said Scully.

“What?” Mulder asked.

“Travis,” said Scully. “She’s trying to figure it all out.”

“Jesus, he didn’t propose, did he?” Mulder asked. The look on his face was enough to make her laugh, but she held it in.

Scully turned fully to Mulder and leaned back against the countertop, crossing her arms in front of her.

“You want to know what I think?” she asked. Mulder nodded. “She’s trying to decide whether or when to...” She made a vague gesture with her hands.

Mulder looked at her, still not understanding. Scully gave him the stare of the dotard husband.

“Mulder…” she said, glaring hard.

Realization dawned and Mulder swallowed. “I should have had that boy killed,” he said.

Scully turned back to the vegetables she’d been chopping. “Let’s refrain from wetwork while we’re on the lam.”

“I make no promises,” he said, and slid up behind her, stepping in close and putting his hands on her waist.  

“I had the guys check him out by way of Darlene,” Scully said. “He is who he says he is. And he seems like a decent kid. Let’s let her navigate this on her own, huh?” She felt his fingers squeeze and then they drifted down to rest on her hips.

“I don’t like it,” he mumbled, and leaned down to rest his chin on her shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to,” she said. “But you do have to accept it, and trust that we raised her to make these decisions for herself.”  She remembered being nineteen and in college and in love for the first time. “You want to hear about Kevin McAvoy, my freshman year boyfriend?”

Mulder squeezed his fingers again and then started to turn her slowly toward him. She set down the knife on the counter and let him. His head was bent toward her and she felt his breath fan her face.

“No,” he said, leaning even more into her personal space.

“I was his Little Red Corvette,” she said playfully, tipping her head back in challenge. He smiled, but she saw something rough pass through his eyes. “He’d put on Prince and --”

Mulder leaned down and silenced her with a kiss.

XxXxXxXxXxX

In her room, Lily sat on the bed, the can of soda from the fridge sitting unopened on her bedside table. Condensation beaded on the side of it, sliding down silently to pool at the base, unnoticed.

Crusher liked to sleep on her pillow, and had left a black felted indent in the feathers, which Lily brushed away and fluffed. She looked about the room. Not much about it spoke of the young woman who slept there and had for months; no posters on the walls, no pennants hanging or pictures of friends. It was a sterile guest room decorated with the mute tones of an unmarried 60-something and lately it had been making her feel like she wasn't even herself.

She stood and walked to the desk, the one place she deposited her things. Her wallet, the phone Darlene had given her that she rarely used and usually kept switched off. Her purse was half hanging off -- likely knocked into such a position by a passing cat -- and when she righted it, she noticed the picture that sat under it. The photo of her father and an unfamiliar brunette, who's face conveyed confidence -- almost a smugness -- and a certain charm.

She stared at the picture. And she wondered.

XxX

October 20, 2018

Lily glanced over her shoulder when she sat, feeling as though she were doing something illegal, something fraught.

No one really used the computer labs anymore -- if you needed to, you could write an entire paper on your phone, though Lily found the practice ridiculous and immature. Nevertheless, there were one or two students sitting at the various desktops around the small library lab, and she checked to make sure no one was paying attention to what she was doing.

She tried to be careful. She had told Travis that she was hoping to log into the university's network to prep for some of the classes she’d be taking at UVA next semester and so she was using his password and login information. She'd checked to make sure there were no cameras on the area where she sat, and that her back was to the one aimed at the larger area.

With a bracing breath, she logged on.

It was surprising what you could find with a simple Google search, and the commonwealth of Virginia's vital records office would send you a copy of any marriage certificate for a fee of $45. Knowing better than to use a credit card, she'd opted for a more in depth search, and found what she was looking for in the Daily Press -- the local newspaper of record in Newport News, Virginia.

It was a wedding announcement, complete with two pictures -- one, the same picture she'd found in her parent's attic and the other of a similar style -- of Fox William Mulder and Lauren Edith Williams, married on August 17th, 1988. According to the article, Lauren had been a recent graduate of Georgetown University and had been employed at Schuster and McClure, a PR firm in the District of Columbia.

Lily looked at the new photograph on the screen before her. Her father looked so young. Only a few years older than herself. Lauren was pretty, had perfect posture, and was staring into the camera like a dare; her dress was all frills and white froth, the material of the dress ruched in large poofs at the shoulders, a crown of satin flowers around the lush brunette curls on her head. She looked like someone Lily wouldn't have dared talk to back in high school. She looked nothing like Lily's mother.

Lauren Edith Williams, she wrote down, and stared at the paper in front of her.

XxXxXxXxXxX

October 21, 2018

Lily was on the bus when she noticed him. It was his age that first drew her attention. Most everyone that rode this route (it went right into campus) was either a student or a professor, and something about him seemed the antithesis of scholarly. He had a sharp face, was dressed in loose clothing, a plain, black ball cap pulled low over his head. His knee bounced where he sat. She thought she could make out a tattoo curling onto the skin under the sleeve of his jacket. He could have been custodial staff for all she knew, but her parents had raised her to trust her instincts, and something inside of her pinged.

He hadn’t so much as looked in her direction, but she reached up and pulled the cord that requested a stop anyway, keeping him in her periphery when the bus rolled to the next stop. She was five blocks further away than she would have liked -- she was supposed to meet Travis just off campus for lunch. The man didn't move or rise from his seat. Nevertheless, she ducked out of the back door and onto the sidewalk, shouldering her purse and pretending to look at her phone. Only when the bus left with the man still on it would she exhale. The bus had just started to roll forward when it chirped to a stop and the front doors opened. The man in the cap trotted down the steps and onto the sidewalk, glancing briefly at her before turning and walking slowly west. Adrenaline awash in her bloodstream, she turned east.

The man had had a nondescript face. He was of average height and build, not someone you'd notice. She wracked her brain trying to remember when or if she'd seen him before, and had a hazy recollection of someone who might have been him: waiting outside of Travis's dorm when she'd come to visit him a couple days prior, or maybe even standing behind her in line at a coffee shop the day before. She should have been paying closer attention. Her parents had taught her to pay closer attention. Up until she'd done a search on her father and his ex-wife, she had. Lily silently cursed at herself.

She looked at her reflection in the shop windows along Grand River Avenue, trying to catch a glimpse behind her. She caught movement, but there were plenty of other people walking up and down the sidewalk. She needed a better look.

She swung up the stairs of the Student Union when she came to it a moment later, remembering walking in with her brother and dad only the month before, and felt the sharp pang of guilt.

When she reached the top of the staircase, she stopped to retie her shoe, glancing back behind her as she did so. The man in the cap was there, and had paused a ways away, looking down at his phone. Lily finished fiddling with her shoe and casually walked to the door, holding it open for a girl who was coming out, her heart hammering in her chest as she did so. Through the large doorway was a wide set of stairs going both up and down. When the door closed behind her, she bolted down the stairs to her right. There were a number of study spaces and she could pass through each one fairly quickly -- the day was busy and there were students everywhere; if she was lucky she could get lost in the crowd.

She ducked through the main lounge and past the small coffee shop on the lower level, looking behind her. She saw nothing, but that didn't mean he still wasn't coming. Seeing the full racks of clothing in the Spirit Shop across the hallway, she went inside, bending down to pretend to look at a few items on the bottom shelf.

Peering through underneath the hanging shirts, she watched as the man in the black cap came down the hallway outside of the shop and paused, turning toward it. Her heart leapt to her throat. He did a slow turn and then turned to keep walking. She kept her head down.

From the corner of her eye she caught her own reflection in the mirror outside the tiny dressing room -- she was wearing a bright blue shirt and her hair -- as bright and reflective as a stop sign, and always a part of herself she was fond of -- would give her away.

She stood, scanning the hallway outside the shop, and then she hastily pulled a green knit cap off a nearby shelf and pulled the tag off, shoving it over her head and tucking her hair up under it as quickly as she could. She grabbed a large tee shirt off the rack nearest her and took it plus the hat's tag to the counter, pulling some cash that her parents always had her carry out and plunking it on the counter.

"I don't need a receipt, thanks," she told the young woman helping her, and turned away.

"But what about your change?" the girl called after her.

"Tip jar," she said, turning back and keeping her voice low.

Once outside the store, she pulled the tee shirt over her head and made her way for the lower level exit that emptied onto campus. Seeing no one behind her, she took the steps out as fast as they would carry her and ran.

XxX

Darlene narrowed her eyes at Lily, and opened the door. “Quickly,” she said.

“Thanks,” Lily said, as Darlene let her into the house, peering around the block. “I didn’t want to use the phone.”

“I get it,” Darlene replied as she ushered Lily into her kitchen, where Lily sank onto one of the stools that sat before the peninsula of the counter.

"You want a lemonade or something, kiddo?" Darlene asked, leaning forward against the counter herself and giving Lily an expectant look -- there was more to it than just polite hospitality.

"No, thanks," Lily said, feeling the weight of Darlene's gaze and her own guilt in equal measure.

"Did you do something stupid?" Darlene asked outright and Lily, taken aback, sat up straighter, but didn't answer, thus confirming Darlene's clear suspicion. "How bad?"

"I think they found us."

Darlene huffed a breath. "Elaborate," she said.

"I... I ran a search. A couple days ago, in the university library. I was careful, but maybe not careful enough."

"What did you search?"

"My dad's ex-wife."

Darlene gave a low whistle. "Kiddo," she said, a statement.

"I know."

"Have you considered just asking him about her?"

Lily hugged herself.

"I have. I did. But… I wanted to know. For me. I don't want his version of this woman. I wanted to see for myself who she was. Is."

Darlene moved to the window and peered out, lowering the blinds as she did so. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Lily once again felt a pang of guilt. She looked down. "Not really."

Darlene moved around the counter to a sideboard table on the dining room side of the counter and began shuffling through a drawer.

"What makes you think they found you?" she asked.

"I think there's someone following me," Lily said, "I think maybe I’ve seen him a couple of times on campus, but I don’t know. I lost him and came here."

"Just one someone?"

Lily began to second guess herself.

"I think so?"

When Darlene straightened from the sideboard she was holding a pistol.

"Call your father right now, and tell him to get over here. Armed." Darlene's words were cold and calm. Lily's stomach dropped in her gut.

She reached for Darlene's phone, a relic from another time which hung on the wall, its cord coiled like a snake.

Darlene walked to the sliding glass door as she dialed the numbers, each tone sounding long and drawn out, Darlene pulled the long curtains closed with a snap.

"Dad?" Lily said, when Mulder answered.

"Hey Lil!" he sounded so relaxed, excited just to talk to her though he'd seen her that morning.

"Dad, I'm at Darlene's. She says to get over here. She said to bring your gun."

She heard his sharp inhale. “I’m coming,” he said, and then she heard a dial tone.

"Lily," said Darlene, walking over to her computer, which was booted up and sitting on her dining room table, cords snaking out of it and across the floor. She quickly typed hunt-and-peck with her right hand, the gun still clutched in her left. "I want you to go into the top right drawer in my dresser. In a small lockbox, code 9-10-9-3, you'll find an old Nokia phone. It should be fully charged. It’s untraceable. Do not turn it on. Take it. Put it somewhere safe -- your bra or your sock or underwear. Then get under my bed."

Lily walked to the hallway, her body on autopilot, her heart hammering and her blood roaring in her veins.

Darlene finished typing, clicked a few things with her mouse and then peeked an eye out the closed curtain toward the backyard, tapping the gun against the side of her thigh.

Pausing in the hallway, Lily turned back to Darlene.

"Is someone coming?" Lily asked.

"Kid," Darlene said, shooting her a look, "they're already here."

[scullysflannel]

Hello! I’d like to ask you a totally random question about the x files if I may?

If you could hit a button that would totally wipe away seasons 9, iwtb, 10 and 11. (In other words they would have never existed and season 8 was the TRUE series finale) would you do it?

I ask because I’ve recently started watched txf after not watching it since 2018, and I’ve been thinking “man, seasons 9-11 kinda sucks (with the exemption of a few great shippers scenes ofc!) and not really worth watching. I mean yea season 8 had its problems, but shit I think it’s a WAY better ending than any thing that came after.

Anyway, my personal answer is yes, and I would do it in a heartbeat. How bout you? (and anyone else who may see this)

oh, see, I’m too selfish to say yes to this. this is like when a tv character is given a choice that’s like, “you can erase your miserable timeline but if you do your child will never be born,” and the character is like, “well too bad for humanity then.” I’m that character!! I’m keeping my child! (the revival is my terrible child.) I couldn’t leave mulder and scully at their happiest ending if it meant I never got to see them in the unremarkable house. it’s just so good and weighty to see them together when they’re older. plus the revival was the only time I’ve ever been able to watch the x-files live and I’m greedy for that.

I'd do almost the whole revival differently if I could, but I’d rather have a bad one than no revival at all. the x-files is porous; so much happens on the margins and in the spaces between what’s in the script. I’m not saying that excuses the bad writing. it doesn’t. but it does make it a lot easier to not take the scripts as gospel, because the show has always made it clear that it’s not telling the whole story. the point of the x-files is that the love between mulder and scully is too big for the show to sum it up. so there’s the show and then there’s the feeling of the show. even when the show fails me the feeling doesn’t.

[recurring-polynya]

For the AU request, whichever one(s) you prefer (for RenRuki of course):

the X-Men universe

the Mafia/criminal underworld

the circus

as FBI agents (the X-Files world perhaps)

So, I got this ask, and I immediately wanted to go for X-Files, because I was hugely into X-Files when I was a tween/teen, and I think that my actual first published work of fanfic on the internet might actually be X-Files. (I didn’t even post it myself, I was like 12 and I didn’t have the internet at home, but a friend of mine posted it on Usenet for me, I have no idea whatever became of it). Anyway, I was going back and forth in my head who I wanted to be Mulder and who I wanted to be Scully, and then I got this ask:

@ulkoilla​ said:

I though the 10 would be full in about 1 microsecond so I didn’t even try :D This is maybe not AU enough for the purpose but I'd love to see your take on Bleach world where the shinigami work among humans as if they were in gigai -> they'll have to balance the supernatural, perhaps violent elements of their life with the modern day laws and such (like in Supernatural). Renji and Rukia have ofc gotten in trouble with the non-supernatural law (meet: Detective!Aizen?) and are on the run…

It suddenly occurred to me, What If: X-Files World, but Renruki are the cryptids. And it suddenly popped into my head exactly who I wanted to be Mulder. Anyway, I am sorry missrambler, if I messed it all up, I hope you like it anyway.

Also, I somehow thought that I would save myself some trouble by combining two prompts, but then it ended up… really long. (Forty! Eight! Hundred! Words! Go to Talks-Too-Much-Jail, Polynya!!)

PS: This takes place in D.C. because it’s X-Files and also because I am familiar with D.C. and I never get to write about places I know about. A half-smoke is a local delicacy that’s halfway between a hot dog and an Italian sausage. They are delicious.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

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Ichigo Kurosaki had known that an office with a view of the Smithsonian might be too much to ask, but he had not expected to take have to take two separate elevators down to sub-basement C, and walk past a storage room, two broom closets and a weird old vending machine full of brands of snacks he swore he hadn’t seen since he was a child.

Maybe Agent Inoue has a huge lab, he told himself. Maybe it needs to be 50 meters below ground because she collides large hadrons down here or so that her work can’t be picked up by spy satellites.

He had to turn sideways to get past a rack of wire shelves full of banker’s boxes, but there, on the other side was a door sporting a handwritten cardboard nameplate reading “Special Agent Orihime Inoue.”

“Come in!” a voice called inside, just as he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Ichigo blinked twice, and then went in.

The office was cluttered, mostly with more cardboard boxes, but books were also stacked precariously on top of boxes on top of books. The walls were plastered with maps and graphs and photographs of hazy blurs in front of staircases. There was a large poster showing a UFO, with the words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” in block caps below it.

A woman with long chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place with three pencils was hunched over a metal box full of diodes and transistors and other things you would buy at Radio Shack. Or rather, that other people would buy at a Radio Shack. Ichigo had never set foot in a Radio Shack in his life.

“Er, good morning,” Ichigo said, as the woman looked up and blinked at him owlishly. “Agent Inoue? I’m Ichigo Kurosaki. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

“To spy on me, you mean,” Agent Inoue corrected, cheerfully shaking his hand with great vigor.

Ichigo bristled. Yes, he had been directed to ‘provide additional documentation on Agent Inoue’s activities,’ but that hardly counted as spying. She was known to be somewhat scatterbrained, and having an organized person around would probably be a great benefit to her. “If you have any doubts about my qualifications or motivations--”

“Oh, don’t take it personally!” Inoue replied, slotting a lid onto her electronics project, and attacking it vigorously with a jeweler’s screwdriver. “Just because you’re a spy doesn’t mean you aren’t a nice person. Also, I read your file, you have a very interesting background! Degree in literature with a focus on folk legends. Teaching at the academy for the last few years while working on your book.” She took a momentary break from her screwing to fix him with her big, soft brown eyes. “Tell me, Agent Kurosaki, what do you think happens after you die?”

Ichigo froze. “I would be buried? Maybe there would be a funeral first?”

Inoue started laughing so hard that Ichigo was sure he caught a tiny, adorable snort. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t clear!” She sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you believe in continued existence after the death of the body? An afterlife, religion-based or otherwise? The existence of ectoplasm, cold spots, spirit photographs, EVP?”

“Are you talking about… ghosts?” Ichigo asked hesitantly.

“Yes!” Orihime replied with a nod. “Ghosts.”

“We-elll…” Ichigo drew out. “I believe that people believe they observe certain phenomena, as part of the cycle of grief and--”

“Just say ‘no’ if you don’t,” Inoue interrupted him.

“Er, no. I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Are you good at carrying heavy things?”

“Am I... I guess?”

“Perfect!” She shoved the box into his arms, and Ichigo’s knees almost buckled under the weight. “Let’s walk and talk, I want to go get a reading over near Franklin Square before 9 am. We’re gonna pass a really good half-smoke cart on the way, do you like half-smokes?”

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“Take a look at this,” Inoue said, her cheek half stuffed with sausage, jabbing a finger at the LED read-out of her mysterious box.

It was rather hard for Ichigo to see, because he was holding the box and the readout was on the other side, but he did his best to crane his neck around. “What am I looking at? The squiggles? I’m sorry, it looks like nothing to me.”

“Exactly right!” Inoue announced, waving her half smoke in the air. “Not a sniff of spiritual residue!”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “Um… is that good?”

“It is interesting,” Inoue corrected. “Five days ago, a sixty-four year old woman had a heart attack while sitting in that bus shelter.” On every day since, I have been able to record EMF fluctuations, and on Sunday, I was able to get a voice recording that sounded like a woman reciting a grocery list. But this morning, nothing! Nada!”

“Well, uh, ghosts gotta move on eventually, right? Otherwise, just about everywhere would be haunted, right?” It’s not that Ichigo had suddenly started believing ghosts or anything, but there was something about Agent Inoue that just made you want to go along with her and see where all this panned out.

Inoue shot him a finger gun. “Or, they get moved along.” She shoved a folded paper map at him. “You can put that thing down.”

Ichigo eased the Spirit Detect-O 9000, or whatever it was called, to the grass and accepted her map. It was a street map of DC, meant for tourists, emphasizing all the local transit routes and popular attractions. There was also a great loop marked on it in orange highlighter, zig-zagging back and forth through the city. There was a little ��x’ marked on Franklin Park, with “Tuesday, early morning” written in a bubbly hand.

“What is this?” Ichigo frowned. It didn’t seem to match up with any of the metro or bus lines. It didn’t even match with the sidewalks, it appeared to cut straight through large buildings like the convention center.

“As far as I can tell,” Inoue said, her brown eyes very solemn, “that is the patrol route of our local grim reaper.”

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“So I actually got interested in grim reapers,” Inoue explained, once they were back in the office, “while I was investigating violent ghost phenomena.” She was eating a bag of corn chips that she had gotten from that ancient vending machine by punching it and then shoving her own arm up the chute. (She’d gotten Ichigo a bag, too, but he was too afraid to eat them.)

Ichigo was sitting at a cluttered table that Inoue had told him “could be his desk.” Half of it was taken up by a large aquarium full of rocks and a water bowl, but no life forms that Ichigo could detect. The other half was covered with back issues of “Ghost Hunter Technology” magazine. “You mean like poltergeists?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Poltergeists are noisy, but they aren’t usually able to kill their targets.”

“Kill? Ghosts can’t kill people, aside from, like scaring them to death,” Ichigo scoffed. “I mean, folklorically speaking. As we established earlier, I am not a ghost-believer.”

Inoue tipped her head to the side. “They do, actually, it just tends to get blamed on something else.”

“By ghost-non-believers.”

“By everyone, really, and that’s what’s so strange.” Inoue pulled a fat binder from a stack of seemingly identical ones, and tossed it open in front of Ichigo. “Edison, New Jersey, 2014. An elderly woman dies ‘of a broken heart’ a week after her husband dies of cancer. Coincidentally, a telephone pole falls on her house the same night and rips a hole in her house.” She turned a page. “Norfolk, Virginia, 2017. A young woman dies in what the police rule as a suicide, despite the fact that she made a 911 call 48 hours previous, expressing fear of her ex-boyfriend. Three days later, the boyfriend is dead of mysterious causes. Coincidentally, his apartment complex suffered significant damages from ‘a wild cougar.’”

Ichigo squinted at the pictures. The walls of the building were scored with what did appear to be scratch marks. “Hell of a cougar.”

“Exactly! And I’ve got dozens of these historic cases. But about four months ago, I was able to investigate one myself-- a young man named Joe Wallace. He lives here in the city, over near Dupont Circle. Wallace had cut off his toxic dad years ago, and refused to visit him in the hospital as he was dying. Four days after his father’s death, a truck crashes into his house in the middle of the night and then drives away before the police can arrive.”

“And he died.”

“No!” Inoue held up one finger. “Scratches and bruises, but he doesn’t die!”

“Okay, great. So what does he remember?”

“He remembers a truck crashing into his house.”

Ichigo scratched his chin. “I am confused.”

“Look at this!” Inoue stabbed a finger at the pictures. “These are claw marks, not vehicular wreckage! There’s damage on the second story window! Wallace had scratches and defensive wounds, as if he had been fending off an animal! And look here, at the damage to the walls of the bedroom!”

“What am I looking at?” Ichigo asked, squinting at a photograph that looked like it had been blown up past the point of recognition.

“There were cuts and slashes in the walls and bedding as though someone had been fighting with a sword.”

“Like a Medieval Times sword? Was the guy a Medieval Times enthusiast?”

“More consistent with a katana. Do you like Medieval Times?”

“No one likes Medieval Times.”

“I like Medieval Times. You’ve probably never even been. But back to the ghost! Why would Wallace remember a truck crashing into his house, when nothing about the scene is consistent with that story?”

“He was...lying?”

“His memories were replaced.”

“His memories were replaced,” Ichigo echoed.

“Yes.”

“By… aliens?”

Orihime heaved a deep sigh. “By a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper with a samurai sword.”

“How on earth did you come to this conclusion?”

Inoue raised one eyebrow. “Because when I placed him under hypnosis, Wallace didn’t remember anything about a truck. He did remember a monster with batwings and a mask made of bone and his dead father’s voice who tried to kill him, except that he was saved by a tall man dressed in black. The man had bright red hair and fought the monster with a sword that was also a whip and then he wiped Wallace’s memories.”

Ichigo stared at her. “You can hypnotize people?”

Inoue gave him a long-suffering face. Ichigo had the sudden flash that he was going to be seeing that face a lot in the days to come. “Yes, I am a certified hypnotist.” Inoue’s phone suddenly started playing “Tubular Bells”. “Oops, that’s an alarm. Come on, we have a meeting with some important people. Do you like diners?”

  👻     👻     👻

Agent Inoue apparently did not care for public transit, but she walked very quickly. Ichigo was concentrating so hard on keeping up with her that he nearly collided with her back when she stopped very suddenly.

“You don’t mind if we make a quick stop, do we?” Inoue asked.

“You said the meeting was with important people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them!” Inoue pursed her lips. “You see that bodega right there?”

They were in a part of downtown that was mostly mid-to-upscale restaurants and government buildings and FedExes. But sure enough, there was a dingy little bodega nestled between a Mexican-Indian fusion place and an Au Bon Pain, the windows stuffed with t-shirts from the last administration and a variety of cell phone chargers. The overhead sign read “Urahara Shop.”

“Y...eah…” Ichigo replied.

“That place is a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“Is it?” Ichigo asked.

“I am almost positive that it is a supply point and meeting place for grim reapers, monster slayers, cryptids, alien hunters, and lycanthropes, but the owner is on to me.”

“I see,” Ichigo said levelly.

“Can you go in and pretend to be a customer? They have lots of good candy you can look through. Inoue dug in her purse and came up with a fiver. “Here. Buy a scratch ticket or something.”

“I’m not buying a scratch ticket, they’re a scam.”

“If the big guy is working the counter, he’ll glare at you until you buy something, so be prepared.”

As Ichigo pushed open the door, he realized he’d never actually agreed to any of this. Agent Inoue’s secret hypnosis powers, once again. Whatever. It was a bodega, there were a thousand of them in DC. They all had the same Nats t-shirts and coffee mugs with pictures of the Washington Monument on them. Ichigo pretended to be interested in a rack of comics. He tended to prefer indy comics over the big publishers himself, but even so, he didn’t recognize any of the books. Maybe they were by local authors.

Up at the front of the shop, a tiny, dark-haired woman was giving whatfor to the man behind the counter, a tall fellow with pale, straw-colored hair sticking out in tufts from under the saddest hat Ichigo had ever seen, a shapeless, battered bucket, striped green and white.

“Well, I can sell you a new battery for your phone, Miss Kuchiki, maybe that would help.”

“Not if it only lasts as long as the last one you sold me! I really need to get in touch with my partner, except that even if I could get my phone working again, his battery is probably dead because everything you sell is the same crap!”

“Ah, that’s too bad! You know, I think Mr. Abarai was in here a few days ago… I wasn’t in at the time, but Jinta said he came in, asking about…”

The man trailed off, and Ichigo glanced up to see the shopkeeper looking directly at him.

“...metrocards. But as you know, we don’t sell metrocards anymore.”

The woman made an aggravated noise. “You’re so useless! If I write him a damned note, will you give it to him if he comes in?”

“Oh, of course! Anything for you, Miss Kuchiki!”

The conversation trailed off as the woman hunched over the counter to angrily scratch out a note.

Ichigo stuffed the comic he was flipping through back on its rack. He skipped the enormous display of bedazzled flip-flops and started perusing the surprisingly extensive selection of gum.

“Here!” the woman finished and shoved her note at the shopkeeper. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Have a wonderful day!” the shopkeeper tootled, giving her a little finger wave.

Ichigo felt bad for the woman. “Er, excuse me?” he said as she passed.

She turned to scowl at him. For such a tiny person, she seemed to contain a remarkable amount of rage.

“Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone, if you’d like.” He held it out like an offering.

The woman blinked at him for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy! You were just kind of loud and you sounded worried about your, um, partner.”

“I’m not worried about him, I just need to find him.” Her face softened. “Thanks, Mister, but I can’t reach him on a regular phone. Don’t worry, I’ll track him down eventually.” She turned to leave, then stopped to jab an accusatory finger at Ichigo. “And that’s professional partner, not… you know! Whatever!” She stomped out.

What a strange, tiny person.

Ichigo selected a gum and walked up to the counter.

“Oooh, dragonberry lime, good choice!” the man trilled. “Anything else I can get you? Bottled water? Fanny pack? Spare phone battery?”

“I’ll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“I imagine it’s against FBI policy to let a stranger use your cell phone,” the shopkeeper said sweetly.

Ichigo’s brows furrowed. “This is my personal phone. And how did you…?”

The man gave a chortling laugh that sent shivers down Ichigo’s spine. “Because headquarters is three blocks away and only an FBI agent would wear a suit that square.”

Ichigo took his change and his gum and shoved them both in his pocket. “Yeah, well, your hat sucks.”

The man laughed harder. “Doesn’t it, though?”

Once he was outside again, Ichigo handed Inoue the gum and her change. “The owner of that place is a creep.”

“The guy in the green and white hat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Urahara. You’re right, he’s the owner. Were there any other customers?”

“Just the short lady. You must have seen her come out. She was ripping Urahara a new one for some dodgy cell phone battery he sold her. I think she must have been NSA or something. She said she was trying to get ahold of her partner, but she needed a special phone.” As he said it, Ichigo realized it would be pretty odd for an NSA agent to be buying cell phone batteries from some shady bodega.

“No one came out,” Inoue replied.

“She definitely did! I heard the bell over the door ring.”

Inoue regarded Ichigo very seriously. “Agent Kurosaki. I was standing here the whole time. You were the only person who went in or out.” She looked at the gum. “Ooh! Dragonfruit lime! Do you want some?”

  👻     👻     👻

They were late to the meeting.

Two men were waiting for them in the back corner booth. One of them had pinched, pointy features and piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His chin-length haircut was pretty dramatic, but not as dramatic as his pure white trench coat. A cup of black coffee sat on the faded Formica table in front of him, but it didn’t look like it had been touched.

His companion was an enormous, good-looking Latino who was shoveling pancakes into his face.

“Inoue,” the dramatic guy said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my new partner, Kurosaki,” Inoue replied. “Kurosaki, this is Uryuu Ishida,” she indicated the white trenchcoat guy, “and Chad,” Mr. Pancakes.

“Also known as the ‘Lone Archers,’” Ishida specified. “We are apolitical actors who are interested in revealing the truths that are regularly hidden from the general populace by secret forces that conspire within the machinery of the American government.”

“You can just call me Chad,” said Chad.

“Good morning!” the waitress said. “Can I get you folks anything?”

“Oh, yes! I’m getting mozzarella sticks! Do you like mozzarella sticks, Kurosaki? They’re so good here!”

“So’re the pancakes,” added Chad.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Ichigo announced. He glanced at Ishida’s cup. “Black.”

“Double mozzarella sticks, please!” Inoue chorused. “And a cherry coke!” She leaned over to Ichigo and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”

“Do you want some pancake?” Chad offered to Ishida. “I never think to offer.”

Ishida waved him off with a hand. “Agent Inoue. At great personal peril, I was able to obtain a sample of the item we discussed.” He slid a small paper packet across the table. “There are two tablets inside, but one should be sufficient for your purposes.” Ishida leaned forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “I was cautioned very strongly against using this, unless one had a firm plan for handling the… consequences.”

“I understand,” Inoue replied, stuffing the envelope into her purse.

Ichigo wanted to ask more questions, but the conversation shifted very quickly to some USGS floodplain maps that Ishida wanted Inoue to obtain for him that were apparently not available from the public webportals, allegedly because of filesize. Ichigo could practically hear the air quotes around the word “filesize.”

“We’re going to look for Jersey Devils next weekend,” Chad explained, sounding pretty excited about it.

“There’s only one, Chad,” Ishida corrected. “It’s just ‘Jersey Devil.’”

“There could be more than one,” Chad shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, they departed. Inoue had an order of mozzarella sticks in her purse. Ichigo had an armload of backissues of the Lone Archers’ ‘zine, which was, conveniently enough, titled The Lone Archer. There was no doubt in his mind that at least Ishida was completely off his rocker. The jury was still out on Chad… he struck Ichigo as the sort of guy who just went along with Ishida’s nonsense because he was a good friend and also liked taking camping trips and doing layout for ‘zines.

“So what was that thing they gave you?” Ichigo pestered. The idea of that little paper packet had been burning a hole in his brain the entire time.

“You busy tonight?” Inoue asked, raising an eyebrow slyly. “Between 10 and 11?”

“What are we doing?” Ichigo asked cautiously, wondering if he would be able to charge his time.

“We’re going to try and attract an angry ghost.”

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“Are you… sure this is… a good idea?” Ichigo asked for the sixteenth time, as Inoue focused the thermal camera on him.

They were in an old, abandoned lot that had formerly served as a Metro service facility. It was pretty spooky all on its own, filled with train cars too dilapidated for salvage.

It was 10:25pm. Inoue had set up no less than 17 different pieces of ghost detection equipment. Ichigo was questioning his life choices.

“You told me you don’t believe in ghosts. If ghosts don’t exist, then what could possibly go wrong?” Inoue posed.

“Well… that’s true,” Ichigo granted. “And, for the record, I still do not believe in ghosts. But in the Pascal’s wager sense of things, I am considering the ramifications of what happens if there are ghosts that exist, regardless of my belief in them.”

“And?” Inoue asked.

“Well, you said that these ghosts have hurt and killed people before. It seems like trying to attract one without having any method of, um, fighting it, seems kind of… irresponsible?”

“Ah, but you see, I’ve specifically picked this time and location to coincide with the grim reaper patrol routes I’ve been mapping out. Our friendly neighborhood psychopomp ought to show up just on schedule to fight the angry ghost for us. We’re doing them a favor, as I see it.”

“How so?” Ichigo exclaimed.

“It’s not like we’re creating an angry ghost out of nowhere. We’re just attracting an existing one to our location. We’re saving the grim reaper the trouble of having to hunt it down.”

Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was it so difficult to argue with Inoue? Possibly because she was so incredibly earnest in all her beliefs, and all her arguments were in completely good faith, it’s just that her logic came from some other dimension. This woman has solved multiple, high-profile murders, including several that were ice cold, Ichigo reminded himself. So she’s quirky. I am sure I can learn a lot from her.

“Okay, everything is in place!” Inoue announced, placing her hand on her hips. “Go hide behind that pile of moldy seats!”

Inoue took Ichigo’s place at the center of her recording equipment. “Agent Orihime Inoue speaking,” she said, for posterity. “It is 10:28pm. I am crushing one tablet of a substance called ‘Hollow Bait.’” She crunched the little white tablet, which looked an awful lot like an Alka-Seltzer, between her fingers, and then made a flying leap for the rotting pile of damp, orange upholstery that Ichigo was crouched behind.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Ichigo started. “How long would we have to wait, theoretically, with nothing happening, before we would declare this a bust?”

Inoue pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Usually, I would give it about two hours, but if you’ve got somewhere to be, I don’t mind if you leave early. It is nice to have company for a change.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Ichigo replied. “I mean… sleeping, I guess.”

Inoue gave a charming little laugh. “I don’t sleep very well. And hunting for ghosts is more interesting than most of the stuff on Hulu.”

The way that she said it gave Ichigo the distinct impression that Inoue was, well, lonely. But that didn’t seem correct. She was weird, sure, but she was also friendly and talkative, and, er, well, she was extremely cute. Surely she had tons of friends.

“How’d you get into ghost hunting, anyway?” he tried to be conversational.

“Hmm,” Inoue hummed noncommittally. “Let’s just say there was an incident in my teen years, where my memories don’t match up to the property damage.”

Oh. Ichigo wondered if he should apologize, when suddenly, a cold chill ran down his spine and a sound like a roar echoed in his ears, except he didn’t actually hear anything. “Did you hear that?” he gasped.

“It’s the EMF detector,” Inoue nodded, scrambling for the reader and Ichigo realized he could hear a faint beeping.

“No, not the beeping, it was like a… a… scream…”

“You heard a scream?”

“I didn’t exactly…” Ichigo trailed off as he heard two more, coming from different directions. “There’s more than one. Monster screams. Not human screams.”

Inoue stared at him, eyes wide. “I don’t hear anything. Have you ever been tested for latent psychic ability?”

There was a sudden change in the air pressure, and a fetid, rotting smell, even worse than the Metro seats. Ichigo grabbed Inoue by the shoulders and rolled out of the way, just as the pile of junk they had been crouched behind compacted like it had been through a car crusher. Or smashed by a giant foot.

“Whoa!” Inoue exclaimed, trying to push Ichigo off of her so she could see what was going on.

Ichigo blinked through the night. He couldn’t see anything, but there was an area of space that looked thick and hazy, like it wasn’t refracting the harsh glow of the sodium street lights quite correctly.

“We have to get out of here,” Ichigo gasped.

“Can you see it?” Inoue asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Not-- not really,” Ichigo replied, pulling at her arm. The air blurred, and Ichigo had the sense the thing was jumping at them. He could tell it was fast, but he couldn’t see it, he didn’t know what to--

“Howl, Zabimaru!”

It was both there and not quite there, a liquid blade made of glass and starlight, that snapped through the air at the invisible thing. The monster bellowed, and whipped around, charging at a dark figure standing atop one of the old Metro cars.

“Pick on someone your own size, ugly!” the man bellowed, and as Ichigo squinted, he realized that their savior was dressed all in black. He was tall, and his hair was pulled back in a spiky ponytail. It was bright red. He was also wearing sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. They were pushed up on top of his head, to be fair, but Ichigo had a feeling this detail would stick with him.

“You can see that guy, right?” Ichigo asked Inoue desperately. “The guy who’s fighting the ghost? The guy that looks just like the guy in your report?”

“There’s a guy?” Inoue asked. “No. Where is he? Can you usually see ghosts?”

“I don’t even believe in ghosts!”

“Well, maybe you don’t believe in them because you can see them and you don’t want to, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t think now is the time to interrogate my personal traumas!”

Suddenly, there was another drop in pressure, and Ichigo had the sense of heavy breathing and sharp teeth. “Inoue. I think there’s another one.”

“Well, can you get the guy to come fight this one, too?”

“He seems busy,” Ichigo squeaked.

Something black flashed by his vision, and there was a loud crack and a sound of something screeching in pain. A second dark-clad person had arrived, landing softly on sandaled feet. There was the same unreality to her, a sense that she wasn’t entirely there, as well as a certain familiarity that Ichigo couldn’t place. Her sword was bright in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting on snow.

“Oi, there you are, you big dummy!” she shouted at the first man and Ichigo realized with a jolt that it was the angry woman from the bodega. “I’ve been looking for you for four days!”

“I had a problem with my gigai and maybe you should check your texts once in a while!” the tall guy shouted back. Ichigo refused to think of him as a grim reaper. A grim reaper would not wear sunglasses.

“My phone died!”

“Can we-- ow! -- discuss this later? I’m glad you’re okay, I missed you. Why are there so many Hollows in this train yard?”

“You’re such a sap! And the Hollows are here because some stupid humans got ahold of some Hollow bait.” The woman turned, and glared at Ichigo. Her eyes burned with blue flame, like the burner of a gas stove.

That would have been the last thing Ichigo remembered, if he had actually remembered it, or any of the things that came before it.

  👻     👻     👻

Ichigo was sitting at his desk.

Inoue was sitting at her desk.

The sun was streaming in the window. The clock on Ichigo’s phone read 7:12am.

Inoue frowned. She examined a coffee cup on her desk. She took a hesitant sip, and then made a face. “Why are we here?” she wondered softly.

“I hate to pull an all-nighter,” Ichigo said, stretching, “but it sure does feel good to be caught up on paperwork!”

Inoue regarded him. “Kurosaki,” she said, “how long have you worked here?”

Ichigo frowned. “Well, I guess this is my second day.”

“Right. So… how much paperwork did you have to catch up on?”

Ichigo blinked. He very distinctively recalled working through the night-- his hand cramping, the incredibly spicy Thai food they’d ordered, Inoue’s seemingly infinite Boy Bands of the 90’s playlist. “I… was helping you, I guess?” Come to think of it, why was he filling out paperwork by hand, anyway? His laptop sat next to him, the lid closed. It wasn’t even plugged in.

Inoue’s fist slammed down onto her desk. “Gosh darnit! They wiped my memories again!!”

[aloysiavirgata]

Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices

Title:  Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG 

Words: 5758

Timeline: Season 9

Summary:   “ A letter is in fact the only device for combining solitude and good company.” -- Jacques Barzun

Author’s Notes: This fic was written in 2015. I couldn't bear the thought of their only communication in all that time being the "Dearest Dana" letters. (Which I added to just a teeny-weeny bit. Also added a little to Scully's Carterlogue to William.) Scully quotes from (what else?) Moby Dick and Mulder from The Divine Comedy. The title is from Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. 

Fe3O4 is magnetite and R2NCl is chloramine. I know my little ads are cryptic, so there's an addendum at the end for those interested parties. (See the end of the work for more notes.)  

Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, May 26 2001 In this world, shipmates, Sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. R2NCl + H2O = Bellefleur + Braddock Heights? So claims a woman with node at C5 **** Ad placed in the Washington Post Classified section, May 29 2001 These have not the hope to die. Developments? Nothing on my end. **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 18 Jun 2001 Things are calm for now and hopefully communication can be somewhat regular for a time. I have a cash-under-the-table job at the moment and it covers basic needs. I know you wanted to come, but this is no life for a child. I will be home as soon as I am able. I know that goes without saying, but it makes me feel better to say it anyway. I have to go now. Tell me about William. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 18 Jun 2001 Mulder, It's so good to hear from you, you have no idea. Have you made any progress yet? There have been strange goings-on since you left, but I don't know what to make of any of it. I don't know whom to trust right now and just tell everyone I cannot contact you. I have not been able to make any sense of my last inquiry and am at a standstill. Please tell me everything you discover and let me know what I can do. Don't leave me in the dark on this, Mulder. You can't protect us that way. Let me be of use. Things are fine here. William eats well and sleeps less well, but I nap when I can. He's growing nicely and can focus his eyes for very long periods already and tracks objects at two feet away. His head control is excellent and he is already making deliberate reaches for objects rather than just grasping reflexively. He makes a gurgling sound if I run my finger up the midline of his foot. In addition to snapshots and videos, I have been keeping a journal of all of his changes for when you get back. My mother helps as much as she can but the truth is I prefer to be alone. She wants to talk, and doesn't understand that I just can't right now. I think she's afraid of the quiet and fills it up with noise. She talks to me but doesn't say anything. You know how to let me be silent, Mulder. I miss that. Frohike says William looks like me and Byers says he looks like you and Langly says he looks like Jack Ruby. Which is pretty much what you'd expect to hear from the three of them. Write when you can. Pictures attached. **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 22 Jun 2001 He still looks like Skinner to me, your feeble protestations of fidelity aside. He's got your eyes, Scully, and I wonder whose warped sense of humor he's going to claim. I'm not surprised he's ahead of the developmental curve. You read him Brian Greene while you were pregnant. That sets the bar rather high for a baby. Let your mother in. You're all she has nearby and she won't forgive herself for everything that's happened if you don't. Smile and nod, Scully. You do it better than anyone I know. Learn to let people love you. I haven't found much yet because I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 23 Jun 2001 We can only hope that his sense of humor is all his own. I think our particular brand of amusement wouldn't go over too well with the preschool set. Can you imagine Career Day, Mulder? We're going to have to be vague. Pictures of William attached, including one of him eating my hair. Have to run. Stay safe. **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 28 Jun 2001 We'd be a hit at Career Day. You could tell them about your Invisible Guy Autopsy. And you know all the kids would want to hear about my time in low orbit. I'm leaving here soon, so it may be a while before I contact you again. Thank you for the pictures. I cannot believe how William has grown. He looks like his own man now instead of just a newborn. I know I once said I never saw you as a mother before, but I must not have been paying attention. You're beautiful, Scully. I miss you both constantly. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 29 Jun 2001 Mulder, I hope nothing serious has happened to necessitate this move and that you have made some headway. I am still having no luck. I'm going to start teaching at Quantico soon. I feel like I'm abandoning you in some way, Mulder. Abandoning our work. But I can't do field work like I used to - not with William - and Doggett and Reyes are doing a good job. I think you'd be impressed. William has been going to sleep at around 10 at night and sleeping until 6 or so. He is such an easy baby and already a hit with the ladies. I bring him to work sometimes and he's quite popular. Skinner gave him a stuffed McGruff the Crime Dog, but he prefers the doll you gave him and sleeps with it now. He's still rather small for the basketball, but that was never my sport anyway. I played field hockey, so free-throw instruction falls to you. Attached is a video of William laying on Skinner's desk. Stay safe. **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 19 Jul 2001 He spit up on Skinner's desk? I could watch that all day. You're damned lucky it wasn't Kersh's or you'd be freezing your ass off in a Minnesota field office right now. And of course he's a hit with the ladies, Scully. Not everyone's as hard of a sell on the Mulder men as you. I made it to Wal-Mart and printed out some of those pictures you sent. Keep them coming. Don't ever feel like you're abandoning the work. The most important thing is that you and William stay safe and chasing mutants and government conspirators isn't really conducive to that. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that you're okay. The job at Quantico will be good for you both. I'm doing a little air guitar of "Hot For Teacher" right now… **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 23 Jul 2001 Mulder, I'm sorry it has taken me a bit to get back to you. My mother and I took William to the beach for a couple of days. I dipped his feet in the surf and I was reminded that seawater has a similar chemical makeup to both blood and amniotic fluid. We crawled from those primordial seas so many millions of years ago and carry some of it inside of us to this day. I know you get seasick, but I think we are hardwired to crave the ocean and I want to take William sailing when he's older. I think he has the genes for it. You may not be a sailor, Mulder, but you know the unquenchable lure of the unknown and thrill of riding out a storm. I had a good time with my mom and tried to do as you suggested. She asked after you and I am confident that whatever else she thinks of my life, she accepts that you're an integral part of it. I start teaching next month and I must confess to some anxiety. It has been so long since I stood in front of a lecture hall. I've gotten used to an audience of one for my technical soliloquies. And Van Halen, Mulder? Really? What happened to the King? **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 4 Aug 2001 Was it Chincoteague, Scully? It's right around Pony Penning Day, isn't it? When he's bigger we'll get a place out in the country and let him pick out a pony of his own. And hell, I'll take some Dramamine and we'll all go sailing too. Get out your list-making paper and get to work. I'll be back soon and we'll have the rest of our lives to get it done. P.S. - I always kind of got turned on by your technical soliloquies, so you may want to be careful around some of your more discriminating students. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 5 Aug 2001 Mulder, We went to Assateague, actually, but he did see the ponies and we found horseshoe crabs washed up on the shore. Despite 445 million years of existence, they've scarcely changed at all. It makes you think, I suppose. All the work we humans do to better ourselves and horseshoe crabs have attained perfection. And a pony?! That's a pretty heavy upgrade from your fish. I was thinking we could move more slowly from Cyprinidae to Perissodactyla. Perhaps a stop at Rodentia would be appropriate if you want to venture into mammalian territory. (Are you getting turned on by this?) William holds his head up and looks around without any trouble at all. He wants desperately to sit up and is so frustrated that he can't manage it yet. Any news? **** Ad placed in the Washington Post Classified section, August 13, 2001 For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense. Fe3O4 + R2NCl = ? **** Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, August 15, 2001 And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth... I'll let you know if I hear anything. **** E-Mail From: knitterific@earthlink.net To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 20 Aug 2001 Let me know if we can move lunch on Wednesday to 12:30. I printed out pictures from our trip and made you some copies. I will bring William's Celeste Sun toy with me at lunch if that's okay with you. Charlie, Larissa and the kids are coming in for Christmas this year. Talk to you soon. Mom **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: knitterific@earthlink.net Date: 21 Aug 2001 Mom, That would be fine. Thank you for printing the pictures for me, and William will be fine without Celeste until Wednesday. **** Letter received on September 8, 2001 William Mulder 107 E. Cordova St. Apt. 35 Washington, DC., 01833 8-14-01 Dear William, I can only hope this finds its way to you but even if it doesn't, it's something I had to get on paper. Walking away from you and your mother is the single most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. I did it for reasons that I tell myself are right and noble, so why do I feel like I've let you both down? All I want is for you to be safe and I tell myself that leaving and searching for answers is the best way to do that. But the truth is, William, that your old man isn't making much headway here. Your mother sends me pictures and videos of you and sometimes at night I can close my eyes and recall your new-earthling smell. But it's not the same. I know your mother and I know that every night she shows you my picture and tells you I'll be home soon. I don't want to make a liar of her and I promise you both I'm doing the best I can. Every day I fight the urge to let this all go and come home, but I feel I have more to accomplish before I return. One day I hope you will understand all of this. One day I hope I will. I have no real wisdom to offer you, but let me at least tell you this. I have made many mistakes in my life, but through them all, I have tried to do what I feel is honest. And I have learned - as you doubtlessly will - that the right thing is not often the easy thing. I don't know what this world is going to be like when you are older or what role you will have in it, but to thine own self be true, William. I hope to see you soon. And in case your mother forgets to tell you: Elvis > Three Dog Night Hips before hands The Knicks will always be better than the Miami Heat Love, Your father **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 12 Sep 2001 Scully, let me know you're okay. I know you don't work at the Pentagon, but please check in. On the move again, but will write as soon as possible. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 13 Sep 2001 Mulder, We are fine and no one we know was hurt. While it feels as though the world is falling apart, knowing you're okay gives me something to hang on to. There's a long line of people waiting for this computer so I must run, but I got your letter to William. Be careful. We miss you. **** Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, September 17, 2001 There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke… Quantum suicide? **** Ad placed in the Washington Post Classified section, September 18, 2001 And downward to the secret things we went Biloxi MI - 6/ 86 Camden NJ - 11/91 **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 20 Sep 2001 Mulder, Thank you for your help on the case. Do you have any updates on your end? Not much to tell here. I'm enjoying teaching very much; the students are so engaged and interested. It's a nice change from the endless parade of world-weary cops and agents. Were we ever that fresh-faced and eager? Thinking of you and aching to see you. **** E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 23 Sep 2001 It is no longer safe for me to contact you. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 24 Sep 2001 Mulder, What's going on? Please find a way to let me know what's happening. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 13 Oct 2001 Mulder, William and I baked a cake and we sang Happy Birthday to your picture. We went shopping for presents and William picked out an oven mitt. I tried to steer him towards the Yankees DVD collection, but he was adamant that you needed protective gear. I have begun to entertain theories of genetic memory. Please let us know you're all right. Many happy returns of the day. **** E-Mail From: rocbronzin@rutgers.edu To: dana_scully@fbi.gov Date: 17 Oct 2001 Hey there partner. Wanted to thank you again for the CPR. They don't really cover that in entomology doctoral programs though, so I'm hard pressed to return the favor. I know you're a mother but I assume you still eat so let me know if you want to grab a bite next time I'm in DC. **** E-Mail From: dana_scully@fbi.gov To: rocbronzin@rutgers.edu Date: 19 Oct 2001 Dr. Bronzino, Thank you very much for the offer, but it would not be appropriate at this time. Dana Scully **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 25 Oct 2001 Mulder, I know you can't tell me where you are and I am trying to respect what you're doing but this feels impossible sometimes. Not everything has to be a crusade, does it? You wanted to find your sister and while it wasn't the resolution you wanted, you found out the truth. Isn't that enough? We can have a life now. We have a son who needs both of his parents. Let this go, Mulder. **** E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 4 Nov 2001 Mulder, I don't even know why I'm writing this. I don't even know if you're alive. Attached are pictures of William in his Halloween costume. He went as a skunk and can sit up perfectly. **** Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, November 21, 2001 Lost: Norwegian Elkhound Answers to Heinrich Come home, Heinrich We miss you ****                                        

                                                                                     December 3, 2001

Mulder,

I am so concerned for your safety right now that it is overwhelming. I am trying not to be angry with you - truly I am - but it isn't easy. I know what you've told me, I know we discussed all of this and I know we agreed it was for the best, but the reality is proving far different than the theory. As a scientist, I ought to have expected it and yet I was completely blindsided.

I asked you once years ago if we could just get out of the car and you looked at me like I was crazy and you kept driving. And I stayed. Hundreds of thousands of miles I've traveled with you, Mulder. Endless black ribbons of highways full of nightmares and lost souls and we went after them with badges and guns because we had a job to do.

But I'm asking you now - not as your partner, but as the mother of your child - to get out of the goddamned car. I can't live like this anymore, Mulder, and I will not subject William to it.

I love you but I cannot do this for the rest of my life.

I have nowhere to send this letter.

****

                                                                                                                             December 15, 2001

Mulder,

William said "Da" when he saw your picture today. I have a video.

****

E-Mail From: phishphood66@yahoo.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 20 Dec 2001

Hey Danes -

Our gang's catching an earlier flight from Puerto Vallarta and I wanted to see if you'd be free for dinner. I'm trusting you to pick a not-shitty restaurant because last time I left it up to Bill he said he knew of a "really good Italian place" and took us to the fucking Olive Garden and I swear to God Tara put some of those breadsticks in her purse.

Can't wait to meet my new nephew (you have a kid, Danes!) and see if either of my rugrats is taller than you yet. They're growing like weeds and Larissa's firm is keeping us in Mexico until the resort's finished, so they're all sun-kissed and blonde and I'm mostly a giant freckle.

Mom specifically told me not to ask about William's father, so I'm asking. This Fox guy…what's up with him? Is he good to you? Bill paints him as a kind of Anton LeVay meets Forrest Gump character, but Bill thinks condoms are Satan's party balloons, so what the hell does he know about relationships?

I'm bringing a case of fine champanya to ring in the new year.

Charlie

****

E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: phishphood66@yahoo.com Date: 20 Dec 2001

Charlie,

I can't wait to see you all! It's been far too long since your jet-setting crew has ventured this way. Things with William's father are complicated, but it's due to factors beyond either of our control. I don't mean to be curt, but that's all I can say right now.

Dinner would be great. William still doesn't go to bed until fairly late and can be kept happy with a steady supply of food. He has an excellent pincer grasp.

Did Bill really take you to the Olive Garden? That's classic.

****

                                                                                                                             December 31, 2001

Mulder,

We celebrated Christmas at my mother's and Bill and Charlie and their families flew in. I have lots of pictures to show you of all of the kids together. William is babbling like a champion and I gave him a crayon to draw a picture for you on the back of this card, so turn it over. I remember New Year's Eve two years ago. Zombies, Mulder. And then you kissed me and here I am wishing maybe the world had ended after all because I'm remembering zombies with fondness and what the hell is wrong with my life and my God I miss you.

There was half a bottle of champagne left and now I'm drunk.

Happy New Year

Putting this card with your other unsent mail.

****

                                                                                                                                 January 1, 2002 Dear William,

One day, you'll ask me to speak of a truth - of the miracle of your birth. To explain what is unexplained. And if I falter or fail on this day, know there is an answer, my child, a sacred imperishable truth, but one you may never hope to find alone. Chance meeting your perfect other, your perfect opposite, your protector and endangerer. Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys; a search for truths fugitive and imponderable. If one day this chance may befall you, my son, do not fail or falter to seize it. The truths are out there. And if one day you should behold a miracle, as I have in you, you will learn the truth is not found in science, or on some unseen plane, but by looking into your own heart. And in that moment you will be blessed - and stricken. For the truest truths are what hold us together, or keep us painfully, desperately apart.

Know this, William, for it is the most important thing I can hope to teach you: It is not a weakness to love someone. There may come a time when it will be the only strength you have.

****

E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 07 Jan 2002

Dearest Dana

I've resisted contacting you for reasons I know you continue to appreciate. But, to be honest, some unexpected dimensions of my new life are eating away at any resolve I have left. I'm lonely, Dana, uncertain of my ability to live like this. I want to come home. To you, and to William.

****

E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 07 Jan 2002

I am physically shaking right now seeing your words - wishing it were you speaking them to me. I want so badly to see you too, but you are still not safe here. You don't sound like yourself, Mulder, and it's frightening me.

Where in the world have you been?

****

E-Mail From: Trust_No1@mail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 07 Jan 2002

I've seen things I cannot accept and don't know how to change. I feel like the fight has gone out of me and all I want is to come back and put this time behind us.

I will be home soon.

Details to follow in the usual manner.

****

Ad placed in the Washington Post Classified section, January 8, 2002

It was evening here But upon earth the very noon of night.

ncrl

****

E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 10 Jan 2002

Mulder,

I hold no hope you can respond to this. Or that it reaches you. I only hope that you are alive.

I cannot help believing that you jumped off that train because you knew what I now know - that these "super-soldiers" - if that's what they are - can in fact be destroyed. That the key to their destruction lies in the iron compound at that quarry.

I am scared for you, Mulder. And for William. The forces against us are unrelenting. But so is my determination to see you again. To regain the comfort and safety we shared for so brief a time. Until then, I remain forever yours,

Dana

****

Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, January 14, 2002

The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.

Fe3O4

****

Letter received on January 27, 2002

Dana Scully 107 E. Cordova St. Apt. 35 Washington, DC., 01833

1-16-02

Not much time to write Sorry so short saw your note Agreed on Fe3O3 though not sure how yet Love to you both

****

                                                                                                                            February 2, 2002

Mulder,

I got your last letter and nearly wept with relief to hear from you. I hope this can all end soon. I pray you stay safe until then.

Not sure what the weather is like where you are, but the most beautiful snow has fallen here. William and I have been playing in it at every opportunity and there's a respectable snowman in front of my building now. William likes to eat the snow and blinks when the flakes cling to his eyelashes. He looks more like you every day.

I send regards from Skinner and the Gunmen and my mother lights candles for you.

I wish I had an address to send this to.

****

E-Mail From: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com To: Trust_No1@mail.com Date: 11 Feb 2002

Mulder,

I am hesitant to contact you in this way because I know it is a risk, but I am beginning to fear the worst for William. I don't know what he is but someone does and they are trying to hurt him. I have been working with Reyes and we suspect it all goes back to that artifact I found in Africa, though I can't say I truly understand it. My mother says our son is a miracle and that I must simply accept him as that. But how can I do that, Mulder? After what happened to Emily, how can I not want to know how he came to be whatever he is?

William has been taken from me twice now and I am starting to despair of ever being able to protect him. All the sacrifices we're making right now - what if it comes to nothing? I don't know what to do.

****

E-Mail From: MAILER-DAEMON@n55.bullet.mail.sp1.hotmail.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 11 Feb 2002

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

< trust_no1@mail.com >

****

Ad placed in the Washington Post Classified section, February 23, 2002

O lady, you in whom my hope gains strength, you who, for my salvation, have allowed your footsteps to be left in Hell, in all the things that I have seen, I recognize the grace and benefit that I, depending upon your power and goodness, have received. You drew me out from slavery to freedom by all those paths, by all those means that were within your power. Do, in me, preserve your generosity, so that my soul, which you have healed, when it is set loose from my body, be a soul that you will welcome.

****

Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, February 24, 2002

Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.

****

Ad placed in the New York Times Classified section, March 20, 2002

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.

Gunmen dead.

****

E-Mail From: dana_scully@fbi.gov To: john_doggett@fbi.gov Date: 26 Mar 2002

John,

My thoughts are with you and Barbara at this time. Take care.

Dana Scully

****

E-Mail From: john_doggett@fbi.gov To: dana_scully@fbi.gov Date: 26 Mar 2002

Thanks Dana. It's been hard but the closure has come as a relief after all this time. I hope you are coming to terms with your own loss as well. They were the good guys.

John Doggett

****

                                                                                                                          April 20, 2002

Mulder,

I have come to an act of desperation. I have had no way of contacting you - no way to talk this over with you - and so I had to make this choice alone. I have had assurances that our information is to be expunged from every record and I tell myself moment by moment that this is his only chance at a normal life, but what if I have made a mistake that can never be undone?

I vacillate between thinking I have sacrificed my own happiness for his and thinking I have sacrificed him because I am not strong enough to accept what he is. What if that's the case? What if I was just too afraid to see him suffer? Watching Emily die slowly through the glass left me so cold I thought I'd freeze everything I touched, but I didn't know how to grieve for her. They had no right to take those ova from me, no right to create her, and no right to destroy her. She was supposed to be mine and whatever other children were created should have been mine also. But by the time I came to terms with the fact that I was truly her mother, she was already gone. What if the same fate was in store for William? I don't know that I could have stood it.

All I wanted was a child - your child, as the years went on - and I just cannot understand why anyone would create these lives for the express purpose of later destroying them. I don't think we can ever fully know what William means to the Project, but they wanted him dead, Mulder. They wanted to take our son and kill him and would have in time and came close even as I watched over him, and all this before he turned a year old. Jeffrey Spender came to me - terrible things have been done to him - and said that no matter what he did to undo the changes to his little body, William would never have any peace from the men who have been working towards the ends you and I have been fighting.

I believed him, Mulder. I looked into his ruined face and I believe he was telling me the truth and I believe it still. I did the only thing I could think of to protect our son and I can only hope now that you can forgive me.

I don't know what else to do but keep going. It's all I've ever known how to do.

****

E-Mail From: wjscully8@navy.mil To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 22 Apr 2002

Dana, what in the hell have you done? Pick up your goddamned phone.

I just got off the phone with mom a little while ago and she's half-hysterical and I'm not far from it myself. What were you thinking? You put your son up for adoption, Dana? That really struck you as the best possible solution? That's what you have a family for. To help you. And no matter how bad things were you should have come to us. I don't know what has happened to you over the years and I don't think I even know who you are anymore, because my sister would never have done something so insane.

We could have taken him in for you if you couldn't deal with being a single mother. God knows where Fox is and why you put up with the crap he dishes out is beyond me, but he has molded you into a woman I don't recognize and I think there is something severely wrong with both of you.

I have faith that you are not beyond salvation, Dana, but you need to cut your ties with him. Come out to San Diego and stay with us. I have already contacted an attorney about having the adoption reversed and because of the extreme emotional duress you've been under he thinks there's a very good shot that Tara and I can get temporary custody while you get your life back together.

It's not too late for you. We love you and want to help, but you have to let us. I am praying for you.

Your brother,

Bill

****

E-Mail From: phishphood66@yahoo.com To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 22 Apr 2002

Hey Squirt. Just got an earful from Bill. Mom's too freaked out to be coherent.

I don't know what the fuck is up with you the past few years Danes, but the shit seems to have royally hit the fan of your life. Despite what Bill thinks, you were always the smartest one of us and if this is what you thought was right, well, I guess I have to trust that. I'm just so sorry that you're dealing with this.

We're moving to Marrakech in June for a restaurant Larissa's designing and we have this awesome house with plenty of room for decompressing Feds. Take some leave and come stay for a while.

Worried about you, big sister.

Charlie

****

E-Mail From: knitterrific@earthlink.net To: Queequeg0925@hotmail.com Date: 24 Apr 2002

Dana, I am so worried about you and I think you might need some professional help. Please return my calls. We need to talk.

I love you.

Mom

****

E-Mail From: monica_reyes@fbi.gov To: dana_scully@fbi.gov Date: 25 Apr 2002

Dana

Please call if you ever need to talk. I am here for you.

Monica

****

E-Mail From: d_scully@fbi.gov To: m_reyes9@fbi.gov Date: 25 Apr 2002

Monica,

Thank you for your concern. I'm going to be fine. I will be back to work on Monday.

****

E-Mail From: j_doggett3@fbi.gov To: d_scully@fbi.gov Date: 25 Apr 2002

I hope this finds you well. Just wanted to see how you were doing.

John Doggett  

****

E-Mail From: d_scully@fbi.gov To: j_doggett3@fbi.gov Date: 25 Apr 2002

John,

Thank you for your concern. I'm going to be fine. I will be back to work on Monday.

****

E-Mail From: reits@clinicalassociates.com To: dana_scully@fbi.gov Date: 9 May 2002

Dr. Scully,

My name is John Reits and I am a parapsychologist. I'd like to meet with you concerning a former patient of mine. Please contact me at this address or give me a call at 714-555-0146.

****

E-Mail From: walter_skinner@fbi.gov To: dana_scully@fbi.gov Date: 19 May 2002

Scully -

Do you ever answer your phone anymore? I need to see you in my office at once. Drop what you are doing and get over here now.

It's about Mulder.

****

The End

****

Notes:

Addendum:

R2NCl + H2O = Bellefleur + Braddock Heights? So claims a woman with node at C5

The Warrior Princess Super-Soldier chick had a node on the back of her neck (around the C5 vertebra) and had informed Scully that chloramine was being introduced into the water supply to transform the populace into super-soldiers. Scully was reminded of the water tampering in Braddock Heights (Wetwired).

****

Fe3O4 + R2NCl = ?

Mulder has discovered evidence of a connection between chloramine and magnetite, but isn't sure what it is.

****

Quantum suicide?

Scully's hoping to get some help on the case from 4D. Quantum suicide - as it pertains to the many-worlds interpretation and the case - encompasses the idea that all moments (however unlikely) with possibilities of occurrence greater than zero are experienced in some dimension.

Mulder's reply is just directing her to some related case files. Which I made up.

****

It was evening here But upon earth the very noon of night.

ncrl

Mulder's train will arrive at the New Carrollton train station at midnight

[sigritandtheelves]

Lifeline

PG | 2.1k wds | angst with a happy ending; MSR; canon divergence; s9: “William;” the Gunmen are alive so everything is better

Summary: She’s coming apart so he’s coming to get her.

A/N: I’ve got a looooong time in this airport so I finished this for you. It’s super self-indulgent. Not sorry.

_+_

Blood on the crib sheet, blood on her baby’s head. How many times will they hurt him in his own nursery? How many times can she do this? She hasn’t slept in 36 hours and she can’t keep her own child safe.

William cries and cries while she clings to his blue bunny hat, helpless in this sterile space. Mulder in the hospital was awful; this is unbearable.

The doctor tells her, as so many have before, that her baby is fine. But things could have been different. She did not keep him safe.

Look at me. Look what they did. Is this what you want for your son?

The words echo for hours, that raspy voice. How easily she had been manipulated. Scully does not trust herself, watching her smiling child who looks at her with open love and no reason to doubt. You’re wrong to love me, she thinks to him.

She cannot be trusted.

She cannot be trusted with a child.

Scully comes apart in his nursery, in the same clothes she’s been wearing since she sang to him in the car with no cares but that it was past his bedtime. She stands in the place where she could have lost her baby twice now. She thinks this child would be better off without her. She understands that she deserves to be alone.

—

“Look, I told her not to do anything, not to talk to anyone yet, but you need to get to Mulder. Get him to come back here now.” Monica Reyes is nearly shouting into her phone, her patience running thin. She caught that child as he came into this world, and she won’t see him sent away without a fight.

“Listen, lady, I told you we don’t know where he is.” Frohike’s voice also seems impatient, but she senses there’s something he’s holding back. “I haven’t seen him in months. No one knows where he is.” She catches it this time, a kind of verbal wink, and she pulls back.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll keep trying through official channels.”

“You do that. And don’t call here again!”

He hangs up and she puts her own phone away. She looks up at the window to Dana Scully’s apartment where the other woman paces, casting shadows on the curtains. Dana refuses to sleep, but Monica will stay with her tonight. She’ll keep watch, and she’ll call Skinner if she has to. That baby isn’t going anywhere.

—

At six the next morning, Scully is curled around William in her bed, clutching him as they both doze, her lips pressed to his fuzzy head. At the sound of the front door opening, she jerks awake fully, a reflex of panic forcing her upright. She lifts William to her chest and ducks down beside the bed, holding him against her, grateful for his silence in sleep.

A soft knock on her door. “Dana.”

Reyes’s voice. Still, Scully doesn’t move, tucked between her bed and dresser.

The knock again. “Dana, can I come in?”

After a moment, Scully realizes what she’s doing, feels foolish, and stands. She hesitates, but moves to unlock her door. Reyes is there, as she expected, but so is Melvin Frohike.

“Hey, there’s that kiddo,” he says, bopping William’s sock-covered foot. He seeks out her eyes, concerned. “You okay?”

Scully tries not to cry, but feels the tears welling anyway. She nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Fine.”

Frohike gives her a scrutinizing look and nods like he doesn’t quite believe it. He says nothing, reaches into his pocket instead. “Got something for ya.” It’s a phone, small and gray and indistinct, perhaps a little rough around the edges, with nicks in its plastic casing like it’s been pried apart more than a few times. “When this rings, you answer it, okay? Should be in the next five minutes or so.”

Scully takes the phone from him without question. Frohike and Monica exchange a glance—worried, she thinks, but can’t work up the motivation to reassure them. William stirs and she adjusts his weight in her arms, rubbing his back, kissing the top of his head.

“Well,” the man says. “I guess I’ll head out. When he wakes up, tell the kid I said hi.”

Scully nods and watches as he turns to go. Belatedly, she calls out, “Thank you,” though she isn’t sure yet what for.

Monica tells her, “I’ll make some coffee,” and leaves for the kitchen.

Scully closes the door again and locks it. She lays William on the bed—still rosy-cheeked and snoozing—and sits beside him watching his tiny chest move up and down in sleep. She puts her hand on his belly, feels the flutter of his heartbeat. The phone surprises her when it rings. Its chirping is unfamiliar, and she presses the answer button quickly, lest it wake the baby.

Hesitant, she speaks into the receiver: “H-hello?”

“Scully? Dana?”

The room spins and she’s grateful to be sitting on the bed. She’s woozy at the sound, unbelieving. The tears are back, pressing at her eyelids, and she’s sure she can’t breathe. “Mulder?” Her voice emerges too high.

“It’s me,” he says. “I can’t talk long.” There’s a muttered shit, and then, “I’m coming, okay? Honey, don’t do anything, just stay there in the apartment. I’m coming as quick as I can. Don’t do anything until I get there.”

“Muld—“ she chokes on a sob. “You’re coming?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice gentler. “I’ve got a long drive, and it’s not safe for me to talk much longer, but I’m coming. Tell William I’m coming, okay? I love you.”

There’s crackling over the line, like the connection is unstable, like his voice could disappear at any moment, and it makes her desperate, makes her grip the phone tighter. “Mulder, I’m sorry,” she sniffs. “I couldn’t do it alone.”

Another hum and pulse of static, and his voice sounds more distant. “You did a good job,” he says. “Just wait for me.”

Scully nods, though she knows he can’t see it, and says into the phone, “I love you.” A second later the line goes dead and she isn’t sure if he’s heard her. She cradles the phone in her hands like a sacred and fragile thing: it gave her his voice in her ear after all these months. She looks at William on the bed and rubs her index finger along his cheek. “He’s coming back,” she tells him, and tries to make herself believe it.

—

She waits for two days, the tension of her need buzzing like a hive of bees, nerves frazzled, unwilling to put William down even for a few minutes. Monica offers to watch him while she showers, but Scully refuses. She tells Monica to go home and takes William into the bath with her, soaps them both up and tells him it won’t be long. “He’ll be here soon,” she whispers. The hours stretch like months, and the two of them wait alone behind locked doors.

Mulder’s wheels are on the road, somewhere in the world, spinning ever closer. That knowledge is the only thread that keeps her tethered to the world.

—

He drives a beat-up junker into Georgetown and feels terribly out of place. Mulder has grown scruff into an almost-beard that is streaked with small patches of gray. He wears oil-stained jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but he enters under the cover of darkness in the hope that no one will notice him. It’s almost three in the morning. He brought practically nothing with him, but his back pocket holds a photo of William, his small pack the phone he used to call her. He’s home now. He sees her apartment and his heart slams in his chest.

She’s a wreck, man. She’s not okay. Keeps talking about giving up the baby to keep him safe. Frohike’s words had been like slow punches to the gut. How bad it had been for him in all these months—he never thought about how bad it could have been for her. For them.

Mulder lets himself into the building, quiet, and approaches her door. He prays that his family is on the other side. Let them be there, he thinks. Let them be okay. He turns his key in the lock and pushes it open. “Scully?” A hushed call into the darkened apartment, but nothing. He locks the door behind him. Quiet, he moves through the dark to the bedroom door but finds it, too, locked.

“Scully,” he whispers again, taps the door three times. There’s nothing for a moment, so he tries again. “Scully?” A little louder this time. There’s rustling on the other side.

“Mulder?”

A wash of relief. “It’s me,” he says. “You okay? Can I come in?”

He hears a groan of furniture sliding—a dresser in front of the door? The lock turns, the door cracks open, and she’s standing there in yellow lamp light, holding their son, hair mussed from sleep. Her eyes go wide at his appearance—so different from when he left, he’s sure—and then her face gives way in a heartbreaking flood of relief. “Hi,” she manages, and then she falls against him, face pressed into his sweatshirt and crying already. He scoops them both to him, speechless, presses his face to her hair and breathes them in. His hands find her waist, then in her hair, then her shoulders so he can tip her back and see the baby, who has stirred and fussed and opened his eyes: still blue, like hers. He touches the baby’s face, his soft onesie.

It is too much for him. For her, too. They all crumple to the floor, a whole family of inconsolables, crying into each other and kissing cheeks and eyes and foreheads and fuzzy heads and scruffy beards and finally lips when he can’t stand it any longer because she’s just so beautiful and this is his son and he’s missed them both so very much.

“I’m so sorry,” he says at last. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

She shakes her head, “No,” she says. “I should have been stronger.”

He also tells her no, tells her she did just right. “You’re okay. We’re all okay. We’re together now,” he says. “We don’t separate again.“ His family: how could he have walked away? “I won’t go anywhere without you. Without both of you. We stay together.”

She wipes her face, buries it in his arm, kisses his bicep. “Yeah. Okay.”

Mulder scoops his hands under his son’s back and lifts the child up. “He’s gotten so big,” he says, taking in the boy’s solid weight, his chubby cheeks, his rather large head. “Look at the noggin on this kid.”

Scully laughs, still swiping at her eyes. “That’s all you,” she says, smiling at him with a look that quickens his heart with the sheer volume of love in it. “The Scullys were petite babies.”

He gives her a look, like even Bill? and she’s still smiling at him. It is his favorite thing. He cups her cheek, rubs his thumb at her temple.

William burbles a “Ya ya” and regards his father curiously, glancing now and then to Scully for reassurance. She boops his nose and whispers, “That’s daddy,” which makes Mulder’s breath hitch.

The baby presses his feet down in an I-want-to-stand gesture, so Mulder grips him under the arms and lets his little feet press into the rug. The baby holds up his weight, satisfied, and shoves a fist into his mouth. “Strong,” Mulder says.

“Yeah. He wants to walk.”

Mulder left a squalling infant and came back to an almost-toddler, a little person forming his own personhood. He turns his gaze Scully, who’s watching them with a look he cannot name. “We’re okay now,” he tells her.

She holds his scruffy jaw with both her hands. “Thank you,” she says.

He leans in and kisses her mouth, rubs his nose against hers, drinks her in like he’s dying of thirst. “Let’s get in bed, hmm?” He finally says.

They close and lock the door. At her nervous look, he helps her push the dresser back in front of it. He strips his dirty jeans, worn hoodie, and they climb into the covers where they are three, quiet, entwined in warm sheets with William heavy on his chest.

“Tell me where you were,” she whispers.

Mulder breathes deep and kisses the top of her head. “Tomorrow,” he says.

She lays one hand on William’s back, her cheek on Mulder’s shoulder. “Okay.”

He watches her drift and, after some minutes, lets himself slip under too.

They’re not safe. They might not every be safe.

But they’re together.

[scullysexual]

*Prompt request for AU where Mulder gets Scully pregnant in high school and they are “forced” to marry but fall in love.*

I think this might just be my favourite part so far. It does jump around in terms of timeline and stuff but hopefully it doesn’t get confusing. Warning for Teen Pregnancy. @today-in-fic

A Baby Is Forever: Part Three.

Part One.

Part Two.

- - -

It's done. She's married. The paper is signed, no objections, one last question of if she’s been coerced. She hasn’t. Legally, she’s Dana Mulder.

 .:.:.:.:.:.

“So we’re married now,” Mulder says.

They sit on a bench outside the registry office. Mulder hunched over and rooting through a bag of sunflower seeds.

“Yeah,” says Dana.

She expected to feel different but she didn’t. She had been nervous all morning, unsure of why. It was the first time she’d felt regret over the whole thing. She would never get a real wedding, never be able to have a relationship with anyone else.

Dana had been quiet whilst Melissa had done her hair. Her sister had insisted that since Dana was never going to have a real wedding, she deserved to still look pretty for this one.

The time it look Missy to do Dana’s hair, Dana hadn’t said a word. Only when the last strands of hair were ready to be straightened did Missy ask what was wrong.

Dana told her, focusing upon feeling like she hadn’t been given a choice. They just assumed she was okay with it and that was that.

This train of thought had come after she had been asked if she’d been coerced the first time around. After a bit of hesitation, and a glance towards her father who had stared at her expectantly, Dana had said no.

She wasn’t so sure anymore and that had been what she told Missy.

Her sister had calmed her fears. Told her that it was just a piece of paper, a way to protect Dana and her baby. Nobody expected them to act married.

It had helped. It got her through the rest of the day.

Now she regards her husband.

“You know Mulder,” she starts and Mulder looks towards her. “You can date other people. I’m not gonna stop you.”

He seems surprised, almost like he wasn’t expecting her to stay that or intending to. She’s taken back a bit by it. She got him into this mess, got him caught up in this whole marriage thing, it’s only right his freedom shouldn’t be taken away.

“Thanks, I guess,” he says a little unsure.

Dana smiles sadly. “I’m sorry,” she apologises. “I’m sorry I got you caught up in this.”

But Mulder is shaking his head. “I helped make that baby too, right?” Dana nods out of reflex. “Then you don’t need to apologise. I meant what I said in the hospital.”

His promise to be there all through it and afterwards.

It was a nice thought but that was now. What about when it’s 3am and the baby is crying because it’s diaper needs changing. Or when it’s crying and they can’t figure out why. Will he still be there then?

Mulder stands, tucking the sunflower seeds into his pocket.

“The same goes for you too…Dana,” her first name is a surprise. “You can date anyone you want to.”

Unlikely, she thinks. Nobody is going to want someone who already has a baby with another person but the thought is appreciated all the same.

Instead she says, “Scully. You don’t need to start calling me Dana just because we’re married.”

 .:.:.:.:.:.:.

Maybe he has been counting down the days. Mentally. He wants to see his baby. Today is that day.

Mulder is more confident in this room now. Mrs Scully chooses to wait outside leaving the chair vacant but Mulder chooses to stand next to Scully again, grabbing hold of her hand.

It’s the only time they ever hold hands. At school, they talk more, sometimes eat lunch together. Through the hallways, he becomes a sort of bodyguard, guiding her through, pulling her back if someone so much as touches her. She has a little bump now, something he’s sure he spent the whole day staring at when he noticed (other’s stare too but Mulder gives them a stare of his own and they back off) Perhaps he’s a little worried that somebody might knock into her, that something will happen to the baby and Mulder will not let that happen.

They never hold hands outside of this room, outside these appointments.

His affection for Scully has grown, he wishes he could see her more than at lunch time and appointments. He wants to spend every second of the day with her. He tried to go round to the Scully’s house one time but Captain Scully told him he couldn’t come in, Dana was resting and Mulder had gone home disappointed.

He got the impression that Captain Scully didn’t like him much. He supposes he can’t blame him, he did get his teenaged daughter pregnant after all.

He holds onto her hand tight, rubbing circles on the inside of her palm with his thumb.

“We get to see the baby today, don’t we?” Mulder says, unable to contain his excitement.

The doctor sees it, too. With a smiles she says, “Yes, Fox. You also get your picture.”

Grinning, he looks at Scully who just rolls her eyes.

The machine is set up, the gel is applied, and Mulder stares with anticipation at the screen. This is the moment he’s been waiting for.

His mouth drops open when the baby- their actual baby- appears on the screen. He’s there. Actually, really there.

Eyes glued to the screen, he brings Scully’s hand to his chest, traps it between both his hands and says.

“That’s our baby, Scully.”

“Yeah, it is.”

He’s full of amazement.

“Would you like to know the gender?” the doctor asks.

Mulder breaks his gaze from the screen to look at Scully. They had joked about this- Mulder’s insistence of believing it was a he, Scully’s insistence on believing it was a she. It was a running joke between them and Mulder wasn’t ready to break that by finding out.

But if Scully wanted to…

He looks down at her, asking.

But Scully shakes her head. “We want to wait.”

We.

He gets his photo.

His photo. His photo of his baby.

“He looks like an alien,” Mulder says on the way back home. He hadn’t put the photo away since receiving it.

“That’s mean,” rebukes Scully. “She doesn’t look like an alien.”

“He does,” Mulder presses, staring down at the photo. “My alien baby.” He looks to Scully then, a big smile on his face. “And you can be my alien baby-baby mama.”

She isn’t impressed.

When he gets home, he sticks the photo on the wall by his bed and lays down, continuing to stare at it.

A rush runs through him at the sight. He’s excited. It was real. In 27 weeks he was about to be a father.

 .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

They have their first phone call at 7:06 pm on a Thursday. Bill Jr answers and after unceremoniously shouting, “Dana, phone!” she hears Mulder’s voice.

“Must be fun living with him,” he says.

“He’s not always this bad. He’s just grumpy. He doesn’t want the baby waking him up at night.”

Her sibling’s reactions to Dana being pregnant had been mixed: Charlie liked the idea of being an uncle, Missy was excited- ready to be the best aunty a baby could ever have. Bill had a sour look on his face, telling Dana she was too young to have a baby and asking if Mulder was going to bother or would it just be down to her and them?

Missy had been the one to jump in and defend Mulder, telling Bill that “of course he would be”, whilst Dana just picked at her food.

“Did you know babies can be born with teeth?” Mulder says down the line.

Caught up in her thoughts, the only reply Dana can give him is.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Mulder says, mistaking her confusion or unknowing. “The doctors take them out so they don’t choke and they’re loose anyway.”

Dana did know that, in fact, but she doesn’t tell Mulder, instead she allows him to continue on.

“And did you know that babies cry even in the womb?” That she didn’t know. “So little Mulder Jr could be crying right now and we wouldn’t even know it.” She doubts it but her hand falls to her stomach anyway. She’s been doing that a lot, lately, mostly to try and feel the kicks and punches. So far there’s been nothing.

“How do you know all this, Mulder?” she asks.

“I bought a book.”

Of course he has.

“Well, I’ve bought lots of books, actually. Some we already had but I wanted to know. I don’t know anything, Scully, and I feel like I should.”

It’s heart-warming to hear how much he cares, to hear the excitement in his voice as he rattles off this fact and that. She’s glad that if anyone had to be the father of her child, it was someone as special and caring as Fox Mulder.

They don’t talk for long. Twenty minutes because she eats dinner at 7:30 and needs to go but before she does, Mulder tells her one last thing, almost sound shy and unsure.

“Igotdabebesumthin…”

She doesn’t quite catch it. “What?”

A bit louder now. “I got the baby something.”

“Mulder, you don’t have any money,” she tells him gently but is smiling all the same.

“I get money off the magazine!”

“What, 50 cents for every copy and you don’t sell that many to begin with,” she teases.

“It’s nothing big,” he says. “I just saw it when I was out.”

Stopping the jokes, she asks. “Okay, what is it?”

“It’s a duck,” he says. Through the phone, it sounds like he’s fumbling with something. “It’s yellow with a blue bowtie and it squeaks.” A bit more fumbling with the phone and his voice is replaced by a squeak. “See?” he says, his voice back.

Her heart melts and tears begin to prick in her eyes.

“Mulder, it’s…” she sniffles.

“Are you crying?”

She wipes at her eyes, embarrassed. “No, it’s just the hormones.” At least that’s what she can blame it on. “Mulder, it’s…it’s a really nice thought-“

“It’s too much.” She hears the doubt, the sadness in her voice and has an instant need for it to be gone, for his happiness and excitement to return.

“No, no,” she starts to say. “No, really, it is a really nice thought. Keep it. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“Really?” The joy is back.

“Really,” she confirms. She catches her mother’s eye in the kitchen and looks to the clock. “Mulder, I have to go. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“You’ll see me tomorrow.”

That’s right. School.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

 A knock on his front door comes precisely at 8:00pm.

Mulder grabs the card off the sideboard and takes in a breath before opening the door.

“Happy birthday!” Mulder cries as Scully stands in front of him. He holds the card out to her and invites her in.

“Thank you,” she says, stepping in.

Mulder closes the door as she rips the envelope open.

It’s a simple card he chose; one with two bears on it- one of the bears placing a party hat on the other surrounded by a table of food and balloons. Mulder thought it was cute.

She opens it up and begins reading out loud.

“To my Alien Baby-Baby Mama.” He shrugs sheepishly at the look she throws him.

“Happy Birthday! But you know what that means? Only seventeen more weeks to go before our alien is born. Love Mulder.”

She’s smiling as she closes the card and it sends jolts of happiness through him to know that he- and his card- put that smile on your face.

“You’re counting?” she asks.

Mulder shrugs, “Maybe.”

She tucks the card back into its envelope, still smiling.

“Thank you,” she says again. “But you really need to stop referring to the baby as an alien.”

“Why?” Mulder asks, leading them towards the basement door. “Can he hear me?”

“You’re the one with all the books, you tell me.”

The books are down in the basement with him. Stacked near the wall, he’s found- or bought- loads of them.

“Gotta be prepared,” he says.

Mulder sits down on the couch- the same couch that their alien baby was conceived upon, something he thinks of all the time and has him smiling.

He smiles fades, however, when he watches Scully struggle to sit down.

“Are you okay?” he asks, unsure.

Through her concentration, she manages to smile a yes.

“Sitting down and getting up have become kinda difficult.”

Right, yeah. Mulder had caught her struggling to stand up from her seat in school, how she waits for everyone to leave before the struggle begins.

She manages and gets herself settled into the cushions.

“I got you a present.” Mulder stands and heads towards the mini freeze and pantry shelf in the corner. He grabs the vanilla ice cream and pickles out of their respective places and walks back to her.

Her eyes light up when she sees them.

“Mulder, I love you!” she shouts, reaching to grab them out of her hands.

It’s just an expression, he tells himself and tries not to let his smile falter.

The pickle jar is opened and immediately the basement is overwhelmed with the sharp smell. It’s worth it if it means he gets to spend time with her.

“So what’s the occasion?” Scully asks when she’s knuckle deep into her ice cream with the pickle, another in her mouth. “Other than my birthday, of course.”

“Well, I won’t be seeing you in school anymore and that’s when I get to see you the most,” he tells her, placing the VSH into the player.

“Why can’t I pick the movie, it’s my birthday.”

“Because you always want to watch horror movies,” he answers, sitting back onto the couch.

“So?” she says. Then a smile is breaking out across her face. “You’re scared of them.”

“No, I’m not,” Mulder says, a bit too fast.

And Scully notices.

“Put one on, then.”

“No.”

“Because you’re scared.”

“Because I want to watch this.”

She falls silent and Mulder hopes that’s the end of their argument.

She grabs another pickle and is about to dunk it in before muttering.

“That’s because you are scared.”

It’s the final straw and he swipes the pickle jar from beside her. He gives her his due with how quick her reflexes are but he has height as an advance and holds it up high knowing it will be too much of a struggle for her to get it.

(Is it mean? Yes. Does he feel guilty for it? No.)

“Mulder,” she scolds. “Give me back my pickles.”

He shakes his head, stretching higher just in case. “Take back what you said.”

She pouts and it’s adorable. Mulder knows how stubborn she is, knows how hard it is for her to take things back once she’s said it, but her pickles are on the line here.

“Or…” she begins, looking at him through her eyelashes. Oh, she’s good. “You give me my pickles back and we pretend I never said anything.”

But not good enough.

He pretends to think. “Hmm…No.” She’s devastated. “You have to say it.”

She turns away from him, looking annoyed and defeated, trying another tactic.

“I want my pickles.”

“You know what you have to say.”

She zones in on him, frowning. “You should know that you shouldn’t stand in the way of a pregnant woman or her cravings. Especially on her birthday.”

Oh, he’s well aware. Smiling, he begins playing with her. Bringing his arm down just close enough that she should be able to reach over but at the last second holding them back up again.

She gets annoyed each time he does it and it’s adorable, her little huffs and puffs, and insults that come pouring out of her mouth. Death threats, too, he notices but still, Mulder doesn’t give the jar to her.

He does this about three times before she either forgets she’s pregnant, or is taking a risk, and tries to reach up and grab the jar.

As she does, something seems to happen as her concentration and annoyance fades to shock.

Worry rushes through his body and discarding the jar to somewhere beside him, he grabs her arms to steady to her.

“What is it?” he asks, fully concerned that something bad has happened.

She frees one of her arms and places a hand on her stomach. A smile replaces the shock, a big smile as she looks at him and Mulder looks from her face to her hand back to her face again, confused.

“She kicked,” she says, her voice full of amazement.

Mulder’s eyes fall to her stomach. He wants to feel it but aside from holding her hand in the hospital, and the hand on her back through school, this is the closest he’s come to touching her.

Touching her stomach just seems too intimate for her but he wants to.

“Can I…” he falters, unable to take his eyes away and swallows. “Can I feel?”

Scully nods, moving her hand and he places the hand not holding her arm anymore onto her stomach, pressing gently like the books told him to.

Minutes pass but another smile passes across Scully’s face as she says.

“There is it.”

And he feels it against his hand. He understands now why she was so amazed by it. It’s incredible. The movement between his hand. That’s his baby under there, moving.

It’s amazing.

“Scully,” she hums in response. “Can I…It is okay if I take you on a date? A real one?”

He has no idea what’s made him ask right at this moment but he’s been wanting to for a while now and whether it was the playfulness of the moment before, or this moment, Mulder has no idea.

She nods. “I’d like that,” she replies shyly.

Mulder smiles, his arm wrapping around her and bringing her closer to him. She adjusts the best she can and settles into his shoulder while he presses a kiss into her hair.

“Mulder,” she says after the only sound is from the TV.

“Hmm.”

“Can I have my pickles back now?”

Mulder laughs, reaching beside him and handing them to her.

Scully takes her reward, smiling triumphantly. She won.

[freckleslikestars]

I love 5 Times Dana Scully Bled! What’s the director’s cut for that one please?

Five Times Dana Scully Bled! What a work!

I think I’ve been playing around with the concept of this one since maybe February time because I was just starting an entire series rewatch with my dad and we had a discussion about how she’s always, always bleeding. I then spent so much time just...making lists of which episodes would work best for what I wanted. 

Originally I wanted five moments she bled from her point of view. Or from varying points of view. I even considered writing them all from Skinner’s point of view. And I just couldn’t pick out five moments. I couldn’t find the right ones. Irresistible was important, and the cancer arc was important, but then I had to find three other times. And there are a lot to choose from. I mean, that woman bled and bled for us. 

Anyway, other than scribbled lists of potential episodes, it didn’t really go anywhere. I never actually started anything - I think I pottered around a couple of times with Irresistible but always deleted it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

And then I was watching Lazarus and I just...I knew how I wanted it to shape up. I paused Lazarus, switched over to Irresistible and watched the ending, wrote that section, then went back to Lazarus and that section came pretty easily too. 

All I had to do then was figure out what the three other times were. I knew one of them had to be the cancer arc, and I’d watched Elegy the night before and just...it’s one of the few really clear times (on-screen) where Mulder sees one of Scully’s nosebleeds. 

I spent a lot of time researching IVF treatments for part IV. That was not a fun section to write. 

I wanted something happy to round it off. I had initially been planning to use My Struggle III, but the time gap felt weird and also that would have required me to actually watch MS III, which I avoid like the plague, and it would have been kind of an anti-climatic ending that was kind of just...depressing. I didn’t want that. I wanted a moment of peace and harmony, just a minute for all of that bloodshed to have a purpose. I liked the idea that Mulder saw his future in front of him, saw his love and his child and thought, just for a moment, that yes, this is all he needs, this is all he wants. 

I liked the idea that he would, despite not really having had much faith in the institution of marriage beforehand, see this woman with whom he had been through so much with, and say, that’s it, I need everyone to know I love her, I need everyone to see how proud I am of my strong, brave, confident, intelligent, tiny little beautiful wife. And he would propose and she’d roll her eyes and tell him it wasn’t necessary, but it wasn’t exactly a no either, and the kiss she gave him certainly wasn’t a no. And then they’d get back to her apartment, and after everyone’s gone, they’ll be talking about it, planing this event that she hadn’t even agreed to yet, when a message arrives warning them of the danger they are in. And he promises to keep her safe. That is his vow to her. To keep his wife (Mulder, I never even said yes to the proposal) and child safe from harm. 

She keeps the ring in a shoebox with the few items of William’s she didn’t give up. When they’re on the run they don’t talk about it. When they’re in the unremarkable house they have the odd discussion about it, but it never goes anywhere. When she leaves him, the ring is left on her nightstand. When she comes back, she finds it in his jacket pocket. He slips it on her finger the night they get home after CSM is killed. 

[its-flicked-switch]

Just Because

Mulder surprises Scully with an early morning breakfast.

Rating: Teen and Up

This short, early morning drabble is a gift to @kikocrystalball and @kyouryokusenshi, who have both been huge supporters of my work and also happen to be huge fans of Mulder/Scully family/baby fics. Ladies, this is your ‘just because’ appreciation story. 

Set early January following the birth of baby girl Mulder. Enjoy.

When he hears the first whimper, Mulder rolls and reaches for the monitor, stilling himself on his side and breathing out a soft sigh of relief when the warm body nestled behind him remains unmoved.

Thankful that he had been able to reach the monitor in time, he gets out of bed as stealthy as possible, careful not disturb the sheets or comforter beyond what is necessary to exit. Experience has taught him that there is only a short window of time following the initial whimper. His daughter is a lot of things, but patience, thus far, has not been her virtue. Grabbing a pair of sweat pants from the floor, he tip-toes across their room and closes the door lightly behind him before making his way into the nursery.

Pulling on his sweatpants, he silently celebrates his impeccable timing when the beginnings of a soon-to-be cry face immediately shift into an opened-mouthed grin as he reaches the side of her crib.

"Good morning, beautiful," he whispers to her.

Returning her smile, he picks her up and cradles her onto his bare chest, placing kisses along the beginnings of her fine, strawberry blonde hair as he takes in her scent. The fresh smell of clean baby still clings to her skin from her bath the night before, but he also smells Scully, who had bathed and fed her before putting her down for the night.

Her happy coos and early morning babbles fill Mulder with a sense of happiness and contentment that he has never experienced before. Rocking her gently on his chest, he carries her over to the changing table and lays her down. Every time he looks at her, his heart threatens to burst. The fact that she's here and that she's theirs still shocks him in the best possible way.

Before Scully, there had always been layers of protection to ensure that a pregnancy was not possible. As traumatic as his own childhood had been, the prospect of having a child of his own had terrified him to no end. It wasn't until he fell in love with Scully that he came to understand the desire to procreate. His love for her had filled him with an unquenchable thirst that he had never experienced before. The desire to please her and fulfill her desires had negated all of his preconceived notions and fears regarding family. All these years later, Mulder has many regrets, but combining his DNA with Dana Scully's has never been one of them.

In the years that followed William's adoption, he and Scully had done little to prevent additional pregnancies. Though they had never spoken about it in the traditional sense, he was not naive to Scully's desires or intentions. The hormones he found in their medicine cabinet in combination with the subtle, almost indistinguishable dots and lines in her planner had required no translation.

She wanted to be a mother. She wanted to try again.

In his own way, Mulder had prayed for another miracle just as she had. The silence that followed had only served to solidify to him that there was nobody up there who was listening. Until, of course, the day that there was.

The little bundle in front of him had changed everything. Scully had taught him what love was, but even his love for her hadn't prepared him for the love he felt for his daughter. Katherine Margaret Mulder's entrance into their lives had been a shock. Being in their fifties, a baby had been the furthest thing from either of their minds, but now, neither of them can image their lives without her. She is Scully made over but with his goofy disposition and sense of wonder.

"Not too loud, Kit-Kat," he says softly, in an attempt to keep her coos quiet. "We don't want to wake Mommy — again."

She looks up at him with an expression of pure delight, smiling up at him as if he has told her the funniest the story she's ever heard as he seals her new diaper and puts her tiny little feet back into her footed pajamas.

"That's Daddy's girl," he says, lifting her to his lips and kissing her little nose and forehead before bringing her back to rest against his chest.

Taking extra care to avoid the creaky spots on the stairs, Mulder carries her downstairs and retrieves one of her pre-made bottles out of the refrigerator to warm. Keeping her cradled securely in against his chest, he turns on the burner beneath the tea kettle and begins to gather the ingredients he had hidden the night before. Warming the bottle just as Scully had shown him, he shakes it and then tests it on his forearm before offering it to her.

"Now, I know this isn't the same as Mommy. But Daddy needs Mommy to sleep a little while longer, so I'm going to need you to be a team player this morning and take this bottle like a champ, okay?"

When he brings the bottle up to her lips, she fusses a bit, but with some gentle rocking and soothing whispers, he's able to get to her settle enough to take it. The first time he tried this, she had outright refused, her Scully temper flaring at being denied the comfort of her mother's breast. But with Scully working again, she has gotten a lot better at taking a bottle in her mother's absence.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he lowers his head to kiss her little head, stilling his movement when her tiny hand comes into contact with the morning stubbles on his chin. When he looks down at her again, she stops suckling with an audible pop and smiles up at him. Tears threaten the edges of his eyes as he runs his thumb across her cheek and nestles her deeper into his embrace in a way that encourages her to continue to suckle.

"You know, there was a time in my life that I didn't believe in miracles," he whispers to her softly. "I've always wanted to believe, but deep down, I didn't. Not really. The power of belief … I didn't have that until I met your mother. I was broken, damaged, and flawed beyond measure, but she loved me anyway. Her love was my miracle. It's what gave me the courage to believe."

The room is silent as he continues to rock her and watch her feed.

"When I look at you, I see her … which is why daddy keeps buying guns."

"Ah, so that's why," a voice from behind says softly.

Her voice is raspy from sleep, but there's underlying emotion to it that brings a soft smile to his lips. He doesn't have to turn to know that he's made his wife cry.

"How long have you been standing there, Scully?"

"Long enough."

Having heard her voice, their daughter begins to squirm and turn her head away from the bottle.

"Well, now that you're here, this just won't do. Though I can't say that I blame her. Daddy prefers the real thing too."

He turns around to find Scully leaning against framing of the entryway to kitchen clad in a robe and fuzzy house slippers that help to explain her silent entry. He starts to rise from the chair, but the nod she gives him as she begins to move across the room, stills his movement.

When she reaches him, she bends forward and gives him a lingering kiss as she takes their daughter from him.

"Good morning," he says to her as their lips part.

"Good morning."

Bringing the squirming infant to her chest, Scully settles in the chair next to him.

"Patience, Katie …. patience," she says, chuckling at the impatience their daughter is displaying as she undoes the sash on her robe.

The sounds of her impatient fuss are quickly quieted and replaced with the sound of suckling as she latches on and settles in her mother's arms. Watching their daughter feed is something Mulder will never tire of, but his love for his daughter doesn't overshadow the fact that he is still very much a man.

It had taken several months for Scully's body to recover from Katie's delivery, but last week she had surprised him in the shower and announced her body was ready, coaxing him into pinning her up against the shower wall and having his way with her. He has had trouble keeping his hands off of her ever since then. Last night had been no exception.

Looking at her now as she feeds their daughter, it's quite apparent that she's wearing nothing aside from her robe, slippers, and a smile.

What's all of this?" she asks, nodding her head towards the various packages on the countertop.

The light in her eyes as she speaks only makes him want her more.

"Just a little something," he replies with meaning.

"Hmmm … just a little something?" she asks, raising her brow.

"The plan was breakfast in bed, but I guess me and Kit-Kat weren't quiet enough, huh little one?" he asks, standing and raising his hand to brush across his daughter's cheek as she continues to feed.

"It was actually the quiet that woke me. That and the cool sheets behind me," she says with a smile. "You should have woken me."

"You've been working long hours, and I kept you up late last night."

"That you did … but I didn't mind."

Chuckling, his mind drifts back to the night before. After putting Katie to bed, Scully had put in a movie and joined him on the couch. If he were to be asked at gunpoint what movie she put in, he wouldn't be able to answer to save his life.

"You could refrain from looking so pleased with yourself," she says, her eyes following him as walks over to the countertop and begins to organize the ingredients he has pulled out for breakfast.

"I could."

Her hearty laughter diverts his attention back to her. With her sash untied and their daughter cuddled up against her breasts, she is a vision. In the comfort of their own home, there is no need for modesty, but comfort isn't her only motivation. Scully knows damn well what she's doing. If she weren't feeding their daughter, he'd lay her out on the kitchen table and wipe that teasing smirk right off of her face, but there are certain things little eyes don't need to see, even if she is only two and half months old and unlikely to remember.

"What's the occasion?" she asks, eyeing the pancake mix and fresh fruit out on the countertop.

"Occasion?"

"Breakfast in bed?"

"Does there have to be an occasion?"

"No," she replies, her voice dropping an octave as she questions me with her eyes.

Before she can question him further, Katie becomes restless, wiggling in Scully's arms and demanding her attention as she unlatches and begins to fuss. Shifting her in her arms, Scully raises her onto her shoulder to burp, which only serves the intensify the level of fuss.

Knowing she will quiet when Scully repositions her, Mulder continues to gather ingredients without offering assistance, pulling out a few eggs, fresh strawberries, and a package of bacon from the refrigerator. Pans, utensils, measuring cups, and a mixing bowl follow. By the time he's gotten everything organized and the first few pieces of bacon in the skillet, Katie has quieted and is contently feeding.

"I could get used to this. You, shirtless … making me breakfast," she says.

To this, he can only smirk. He's frying bacon with no shirt. He fears nothing, and she has made him this way.

"You could, but then it wouldn't be a ‘just because’ breakfast anymore. It would just be breakfast."

"So that's what this is? A ‘just because’ breakfast?"

Yes, he thinks. That is precisely what this is.

Giving her knowing smile, he doesn't answer with words. Instead, he cracks eggs, flips bacon, cuts strawberries, and mixes pancake batter. Surprising her in bed would have been fun, but he is by no means disappointed in the view he has as he works. If the smile that adorns her face now is any indication, Scully is perfectly content to let him keep her guessing, which is good, because he has significant plans for the whipped cream hidden in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.

[mothman-is-my-girlfriend]

an analysis of gender double bind and male gaze in the x files (or: chris carter, turn your location on)

Long post! I can't make a "read more" break on mobile - sorry!

This semester I'm in a body images class, which also talks about a lot of stereotypes throughout history on various types of people. the professor loves to incorporate sci-fi into the course for us to analyze and I thought, "hey, the x-files is actually a great example of these tropes!"

(I'm not trying to say anything mean about the show! I still love the show dearly, but taking this class definitely made me see it in a different light.)

The gender double bind splits women into two categories - angel v. demon. (take a guess what color these people were ugh 🙄😶) anyway, the more I thought about this, the more I realized, that while Scully is a strong woman who definently inspired thousands of young girls to pursue STEM careers, and could take care of herself, she is actually a good example of the GDB (this abbreviation for gender double bind will be used from here on out) in television.

Before I can discuss why I think this, let's break down what the angel side of the GDB is (we only need this side of it, because there are hardly any POC in the x files, and Scully fits into the angel stereotype, anyway):

no libido

pleasure from serving others

virtuous

does not think for themselves

sacrifices for others

While Scully clearly has thoughts of her own and disagrees with Mulder a great deal of the time, she still makes sacrifices for him (spends less time with her family, cancels dates to work with him, etc. these are only a few I can think of right off the top of my head - if you have more examples for this let me know! this would make a great paper) these sacrifices also tie into the fact that Scully is in a sense constantly working for Mulder. Sure, the audience considers her his equal, but if you think about it... her name is never put on the door. She never gets her own desk. Mulder often runs off and leaves her behind on cases.

My second argument for the GDB with Scully is that she is never really allowed to be sexual on screen. (In the first episode, she even has boring whitey-tighties! I can assure you, 90% of women who are under age 50 would not be caught dead wearing those.) Yeah, I know it was the 90s, but still - It's a running gag on the show that Mulder loves porn, and he's even had a few close encounters with women in the show (ex: that One Vampire when Scully was missing; Detective White (I wanna say that's her name??) from Syzgy.) Sure, Scully is heavily implied to have a one night stand in Never Again, but it's not covered in as much detail as Mulder's encounters. Adding even more evidence to the pile -- William. Scully gets pregnant and has a child, without ever really being shown to have had sex explicitly at any point surrounding that time period in the show. (I know it's implied in All Things, but again, it's not explicit. Sidenote: notice how the slightest mention of Scully being even remotely sexual came from Gillian Anderson, and not the male directors. And even then it's still extremely vague!) They never even confirm in-show that Mulder is the father (but shout-out to the person on tumblr rn circulating the script with the line confirming that Mulder is the dad). William is just the miracle child who popped out from seemingly nowhere.

----

Moving onto Male Gaze! There's... so many examples of this, it's not even funny. I probably won't be able to provide specific examples for a lot of these, because it's been several months since I've watched the show again, and it's just so deeply ingrained into our culture. First, let's break down what male gaze is, and why it's demeaning -- essentially, it is when men view women as sexual objects. Male gaze creates a power imbalance by suggesting that women are objects. It suggests that women are on display for judgment.

One great example of male gaze, (that technically really isn't anyone's fault, it's just that Gillian Really Is That Short) is the "diminutive" way of framing shots. It's where a director frames a shot so that the woman is much smaller than the man, or also frames extreme closeups so that you don't see all of her. (And looking through my camera roll, there definitely are a lot of closeup shots of Scully... but this really doesn't prove anything, necessarily.)

My second example is "fragmentation", which is when a shot is framed so that you only see parts of a woman's body. A great example of this technique is seen in - I want to say Milagro (?) where there are a lot of closeup shots of Scully's face because Padgett is eyeballing her hardcore. I specifically remember a closeup of her lips. Which, I mean... that's pretty clearly sexual.

The episode Milagro actually leads into my third example of male gaze in the X-Files. It's something called "Return Gaze" - where a woman both acknowledges a man sexualizing her, and also returns it. Did it seem weird to anyone else that Scully was "enthralled" by her stalker?? ( I cannot make this up. The official synopsis for the episode describes her as "enthralled" by him. what the fuck.) That's because it was written by a man who thinks that women like being sexualized via male gaze.

My last qualm about how the writers treated Scully in this show doesn't actuall have anything to do with GDB or male gaze, or any of the things I've been learning in class. I just really hate (and always have) that Mulder is always portrayed as the person who is ""right"" so to speak. Even though he always has flimsy cases for his ideas. Even though it's always Scully providing the science behind his ""right"" answers. It's always "lol Scully science is dumb look at this photoshopped photo of a ufo! i am Right™!" Was Mulder technically right about a lot of things? Sure, I'll give him that. But he would never have been able to prove or assert any of his claims without Scully, and I really hate how her science behind his answers was always tossed to the side and made to be less important.

Again, I'm not criticizing the X-Files as a whole, (...except that I am... and I think a lot of in the fandom are rly sick of the shit chris carter put into the show...) I really do love this series. I just thought it would be interesting to share my observations with you all. If you can think of any other good examples of Gender Double Bind or Male Gaze in the X-Files, comment below! I'll add them into this analysis! Who knows, I might even get the chance to make a full blown paper on this.