#driveway cleaning deer park

[wipemeclean1]

https://wipemeclean.com.au/deer-park/

Revitalize Your Home's Curb Appeal with Professional Driveway Cleaning Services in Deer Park

Transform your driveway in Deer Park with professional cleaning services. Say goodbye to stubborn stains, dirt, and grime as our experts employ advanced techniques and eco-friendly products to restore your driveway's pristine condition.

[stonecreationslongisland]

Based in Deer Park, NY - Paul Saladino's Stone Creations of Long Island Pavers and Masonry Corp. provides masonry service's to customers throughout Long Island and Queens. Established in 2009 Stone Creations of Long Island's team has over 20 years experience in the Masonry and Concrete Business. Helping customers to improve and update their homes, Stone Creations of Long Island provides residential and commercial work. With a desire to excel and a trained workforce, Stone Creations of Long Island provides cost-effective solutions to increase your property’s value and safety.

Stone Creations of Long Island offers a variety of services to fit all your home exterior needs. Providing year-round services to keep your property safe and clean throughout the changing seasons. From driveways and masonry to powerwashing and paver sealing, Stone Creations of Long Island is the only company you need to call.

• Paver Systems for Patios, Driveways, Pool Decks

• Outdoor Cooking, Entertainment Design and installation's

• Complete Landscape Design

Stone Creations of Long Island looks forward to hearing from you. Call for a free consultation.

Paul Saladino

Office : (631) 678-6896

Visit Our Website www.stonecreationsoflongisland.net

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[justsomeclintasha]

“Where are we going?”

“Patience,” he murmurs, a smile tugging at his lips. She tucks her knees up on the seat and pushes back a strand of hair, breathing deep. The fresh air is nice, and she watches the trees pass by the open window.

She needed this.

It had been a bad mission, one she isn’t ready to talk about, not yet. Soon. But not yet. As always, he noticed the second she walked in the door. He insisted on a road trip.

Clint rests his hand on her thigh, his fingers tapping out the rhythm of the country song playing on the radio.

Her eyes are closing.

XXXXX

“Have a nice nap?”

“Wasn’t sleeping.”

She stretches. They’ve come to a stop in a small parking lot. There are bathrooms that look clean, a food truck, and two old gas pumps.

“How about a sandwich for lunch?”

“Ice cream.”

“Ice cream isn’t food, Nat.”

“Yes it is,” she insists, stubbornly pointing at the sundaes. He snorts out a laugh.

“What if we share a sandwich and have ice cream for dessert?” She accepts the compromise. Her feet swing an inch off the ground as they sit outside at a table. The tension has drained from her shoulders, but her eyes are tired.

“Look. Cows.” He follows her gaze across the street. A herd of them wander slowly through the grass, and she wrinkles her nose at the smell. She licks her spoon thoughtfully and smiles. “I like cows.”

XXXXX

“Do you want me to drive for a bit?”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“The middle of nowhere?” she guesses.

“We’re almost there. Five minutes.”

She straightens up in her seat, eyes more alert, although she still doesn’t know what she’s watching for. The road narrows, then turns to dirt and he slows over a few potholes. It’s darker here in the shadow of the trees, but as they round the bend, a soft haze of pink and orange illuminate the driveway.

An old farmhouse sits at the end. Two animals walk on the edge of the field. She thinks they may be deer. He stops the truck and reaches over to grab her hand.

“This is it. And we have a whole month here to take some time and relax. We can hike, fish, or just lay around on the porch.”

“Whose house is this? It is yours?”

“Not anymore.” He squeezes her hand. “It’s ours.”

[hecatemoon87]

A Modern James Delaney Story

Chapter Eleven - master list

Driving up a gravel driveway, James and Tala arrived at her grandparents' home past noon. James parked his black jaguar next to an old, blue pick-up truck. As he got out of the car, James removed his sunglasses and stared at the old truck.

"Is that a 66' Ford F100?" he asked. Tala closed the passenger door and shrugged. "I dunno. It's my grandad's. He loves that piece of junk."

"It's not junk. It's from 1966, Tala. It's in pristine condition," he said, walking with her to the front door. "Okay, I'm sorry, it's a work of art," she said, mockingly.

As they walked up to the house, the left side window's curtain's opened slightly, and Tala waved. Reaching the first step, the door swung open and a slender, silver hair native woman stepped out.

"I had to make sure who it was, that car looks a bit menacing," she said. Tala gave her a big hug and stepped back to introduce James.

"Grandmom, this is James. James, this is Tallulah," Tala said. The older woman's eyes steadied James intently, sizing him up and ensuring he was a good man for her granddaughter.

"It's nice to finally meet you, James. Tala's been fretting over you for quite some time," Tallulah said, motioning them to enter the house.

"Really?" James said, giving Tala a smirk and making her blush.

"Whatever, like, I don't even know...shut up," Tala said, pushing him inside.

"Let me go get your grandfather, he's outback in the garden," Tallulah said, heading to the back door. The house was small. It had a living room with a fire place, a tiny kitchen, two bedrooms and one bathroom.

But it was clean and organized, and there was a faint hint of sage.

"It might be a minute, he probably has to wash up, let's get my stuff while we wait," Tala said, heading back to her old bedroom that was now a spare room.

The room was the size of one of James' shoes boxes back in his manor. He looked around in awe. "You grew up in here?" he asked.

"Yes, don't be so judgy Mr. Rich Boy," she said, kneeling down and looking under the bed. With her ass in the air she reached under the bed to grab at a handle of a suitcase.

James stood back and enjoyed the view. "Hey James?" Tala asked as she struggled to pull out the suitcase. It seemed caught in the wires.

"Yeah," he said, only half paying attention to her as she tugged on the suitcase, her body jerking her bottom back and forth.

"Mind giving me a hand and stop staring at my ass?" she said, sitting up and giving him a stern look. "Oh, sure," he said, snapping back to reality and walking over to lift the bed up.

She finally removed the suitcase and James placed the bed back down on the floor.

"Okie dokie, let's make sure everything is there," she said, putting it on top the bed and unzipping it. Inside, neatly folded, was a stack of clothing.

She removed the first piece and aired it out. It was a cloak dyed a deep, blood red. Embroidered on the back was an image of a First Nation wolf head. The head of the wolf was black, outlined in white stitching.

Tala handed it to James and said, "Isn't that so soft?" Then she pulled out the dress, the top was tailored out of deer skin and the skirt was made of the same material of the cloak. Only it was black with red trim down the sides.

She laid this on the bed and frowned at the empty suitcase, "Now, where did I put my shoes..." she said, turning to look around the room. She stopped everything when she saw James.

He was gripping her cloak tightly in his hands. His eyes were dark and he seemed lost in some memory of sorts.

"James?" she asked, a little concerned.

He blinked and a tear trailed down his cheek. He quickly wiped it away and handed the cloak back to her.

"Uh, yeah, it's soft," he said, nodding.

"You...did you just cry?" she said, placing the cloak on the bed.

"Huh? No, um, had something in my eye," he said, clearing his throat.

"Jesus, James. You just cried, is this about your mother? Did the cloak remind you of your mom?" Tala said, pushing.

"A little," he said.

"James Delaney, give me something more than just "a little"," she said, slapping his arm.

"Tala, stop it," he said, annoyed.

"Fine, if you don't tell me right now what the fuck that was about, we're done. You can go straight home and my grandad can drive me home in his work of art truck," Tala said, dead serious.

"That's a bit dramatic, don't you think," he said, taken aback.

"James!" Tala snapped.

"Okay fine! My mother had one like that, it had an eagle instead of a wolf. She used to wrap me up in it. Are you fucking happy?!" he practically shouted.

Suddenly the door opened and there stood Tala's grandad. "What the hell is going on in here? A bunch of yelping like a pack of coyote's on a full moon?"

"Oh, hey, grandad. This is James," Tala said, trying to look like nothing was happening.

"And can I ask the richest man in Canada why he's yelling at my grandchild?" he said, glaring at James.

"I wasn't...we were just talking...and, well," James said, looking at Tala for help.

"It's nothing, everything's okay. We're fine," Tala said, giving her best of smiles. "Please don't get your gun like last time," she said, her smile falling and her eyes pleading.

"Wait...gun?" James said, a bit alarmed.

"You two, out in the living room, now," her grandfather said, sternly.

Tala sighed and followed her grandfather, James trailing nervously behind. The old man was of a stocky build, still appearing strong as an ox. His once black hair was now gray, long and braided behind his head.

Tallulah was seated on the couch, drinking a steaming mug of tea. She saw her husband and said in the Salish language, "Be calm papa bear, they are only children."

"I'll be calm when this young man explains why he's shouting in my damn house," he replied in English.

"Uh, so, James....this is my grandad...you can call him Tahoma," Tala said.

"He damn well not, he can call me Mr. Swiftstorm, you got that boy?"

"Yes, sir," James said nodded in agreement.

"Listen, grandad. We weren't fighting. It was...well, it was kind of a self discovering moment for James," Tala said.

"Tala, he's not on a damn vision quest. What are you taking about?"

Tala looked at James and said, "I'm just gonna tell them."

"Tala, no, they won't believe it, just forget it," James said, scratching the back of his head.

"I'll just say it, it'll be fine. Um, so, James is part Nuu-chah-nulth," Tala said, as if revealing a magic trick and gesturing both hands at him.

Her grandparents' blinked and looked at each other in confusion. "Is that the shit you said he needed to work out?" Tahoma asked.

"Language," Tallulah scoffed at her husband.

"Yeah," Tala said, hesitantly.

James was standing there awkwardly, clearing appearing as if he wanted to be someplace else at this moment.

"Is this true, or you just trying to get in my granddaughter's pants?" Tahoma snapped.

"Grandad!" Tala said in shock.

"Yes, um, sir...uh, Mr. Swiftstorm," James said, feeling like a complete idiot.

"Yes you want to get into my granddaughter's pants?" Tahoma barked.

"What? No, I meant...yes, it's true. My mother's name was Salish, she was three-fourths first nation," James said.

"Salish? How old is your mother?" Tahoma asked.

"She'd be fifty-six, if she were alive," James said.

Tahoma's expression changed from anger to sympathy, "I'm sorry, son. When did she pass?"

"About twenty seven years ago," he said.

"My cloak, it reminded him of her. That shit he's figuring out is about her, grandad. I pushed him and he yelled, that's all," Tala said, coming up next to James and holding his arm.

"I see. This information, it's private isn't it? I ain't ever read anything about it in the paper," Tahoma said.

"It is," James said, nodding.

"Your secret is safe with us, grandson," Tallulah said, smiling.

"Thank you," James said.

"You got family left on that side?" Tahoma asked.

"No," James replied.

"Alright then, if you want, we can be that family. It's good to know where you come from. You know your daddy's side of it, blood, greed and deceit," Tahoma said.

"Yes, sir. And thank you for the offer. I respect Tala, she's in good care," James said, honestly.

On the drive home, they rode in silence for the first ten minutes. Then Tala said, "You're breaking up with me aren't you?"

James looked over in surprise, "No. Sorry, I was just thinking."

"About your mother? Or about what my grandad said?" she asked.

"I was thinking more about when you said, "don't get the gun like last time?"," he said giving her a cheeky smirk.

"Oh god, let's just say I didn't have a boyfriend until I went to college," Tala said, laughing.

"So just a scare tactic then," James said.

"No, grandad shot at him," Tala said, nodding in remembrance. James looked over at her in disbelief. "You're joking," he said.

"I said at him, he didn't actually hit him," Tala said. "I'm sure you'll be fine, besides you already got into my pants."

"Thank god you didn't tell him that," James said, gripping the stirring wheel.

[paulsaladino]

Long Island Paver Sealing

Cleaning and sealing concrete or brick pavers sounds like a pretty easy thing to do. The truth is that it is an involved process and without the proper training, tools and materials it is very easy to screw up. Sealing pavers and stone is not a do it yourself project. It is extremely time consuming and detail orientated. Having the right equipment and knowing what to look for is extremely important. Sometimes a soft touch is needed and other times you must break out the heavy equipment.

CLEANING AND SEALING IS NOT A ONE DAY JOB

Sealing your concrete or brick pavers is a wise investment and when installed right can give you years of enjoyment and protection. Concrete and brick pavers have become very popular for outdoor hardscapes, driveways, patios, sidewalks and outdoor kitchens. Pavers are simply small pre-cast blocks of colored concrete that are assembled in various patterns. Although pavers are very hard and durable, they are also extremely porous. This makes them very vulnerable to oil stains, spills and moisture related problems such as efflorescence. The sand between and below the pavers is also a weak point. It can easily wash away with heavy rain and will also quickly start to grow weeds soon after construction. Both can cause serious structural problems for your pavers. Sealing your pavers can address all these issues, as well as enhance and restore the colors to your pavers. We at Stone Creations of Long Island have sealers that leave a completely natural appearance, and paver sealers that beautifully enhance the colors and leave a rich wet look. Sealing not only protects the paver itself, but also the sand between the pavers. As the sealer soaks deep into the sand joint, it hardens and locks the sand into a solid mass that cannot wash away or grow weeds...Call for a free consultation: http://www.stonecreationsoflongisland.net Paul Saladino Deer Park, N.Y 11729 Office-(631) 678-6896 Mobile-(631) 678-2710

[tomaque]

The Perfect Ride for Young Adventurers: A Guide to the 4x4 Jeep for Kids

When it comes to finding the perfect ride for your little adventurers, nothing compares to the thrill and excitement of a 4x4 Jeep for kids. Designed to bring the spirit of off-roading to a child-friendly scale, these mini Jeeps offer more than just a stylish appearance—they provide a world of adventure, safety, and fun. Here's everything you need to know about choosing the ideal 4x4 Jeep for your young explorer.

1. Why Choose a 4x4 Jeep for Kids?

A 4x4 Jeep isn't just a toy—it's a gateway to adventure. These rugged rides are designed to mimic the experience of real off-roading, allowing kids to navigate various terrains and obstacles with ease. Whether it's a backyard trail, a park, or a smooth driveway, the 4x4 Jeep adds an element of excitement to any outing. Plus, the robust design ensures durability and long-lasting fun.

2. Key Features to Look For

When selecting a Kids' 4x4 Jeep, consider the following features to ensure you’re getting the best ride for your little one:

Safety First: Look for models with safety features such as seat belts, a sturdy frame, and a controlled speed limit. Many 4x4 Jeeps come with remote controls for parents to take over if needed.

Battery Life: Opt for a Jeep with a long-lasting battery to ensure extended playtime. A 12V battery is typically ideal for a more powerful ride.

Ease of Use: Choose a model with intuitive controls. Many Jeeps have simple forward and reverse options and easy steering mechanisms.

Durable Construction: Ensure the Jeep is made from high-quality, durable materials to withstand rough play and various weather conditions.

Comfort and Design: A well-cushioned seat and adjustable features can enhance the driving experience. Additionally, select a design that matches your child’s style—whether it’s a classic look or a sporty, modern design.

3. The Benefits of Off-Roading for Kids

Riding a 4x4 Jeep isn’t just about fun—it also offers several developmental benefits for children:

Improved Motor Skills: Navigating obstacles and steering helps develop coordination and fine motor skills.

Boosted Confidence: Mastering the controls and tackling new terrains can boost a child’s confidence and sense of achievement.

Encourages Outdoor Play: Driving a 4x4 Jeep motivates kids to spend more time outdoors, which is beneficial for physical health and overall well-being.

4. Top Models to Consider

Here are a few popular 4x4 Jeep models that stand out in the market:

Power Wheels Dune Racer: Known for its rugged design and durability, it features a sturdy frame and high-speed capability, making it perfect for adventurous kids.

Peg Perego John Deere Gator XUV: This model offers a spacious design and impressive off-road capabilities. Its realistic features and safety elements make it a favorite among parents and kids alike.

Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon: For a touch of luxury, the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon model provides a stylish design and advanced features, combining fun with sophistication.

5. Maintenance Tips

To keep your child’s 4x4 Jeep in top condition:

Regular Checks: Inspect the battery, tires, and overall functionality periodically.

Clean and Dry: Keep the Jeep clean and dry to prevent rust and wear, especially after outdoor play.

Proper Storage: Store the Jeep in a sheltered area to protect it from harsh weather conditions.

Conclusion

A 4x4 Jeep for kids is more than just a toy—it’s an investment in adventure, development, and outdoor fun. By choosing the right model with essential features and proper safety measures, you can ensure that your little one enjoys countless hours of exciting and enriching play. So gear up and get ready for off-road fun with the perfect ride for your young adventurers!

[vgrc-llc]

Pressure Washing in Spokane with VGRC: Clean & Bright Homes

🌟 Greetings, Spokane Community! 🌟

Welcome to another exciting chapter in our ongoing Spokane Saga! I'm The Roof Ninja 🥷, also known as Fisk, alongside our ever-dedicated Kc 👷‍♀️. Today, we dive into how pressure washing has transformed into the city's new favorite pastime, and how Veracity Gutter And Roof Cleaning, LLC (VGRC) is leading the charge with passion and precision.

A Journey to Sparkling Clean Homes

In Spokane County, WA, keeping our homes pristine is more than a chore—it's a source of pride. Thanks to VGRC, pressure washing has become a beloved activity, turning ordinary weekends into satisfying cleaning sprees.

Our arsenal of services includes house washing, roof washing, gutter cleaning, and roof blow-offs, ensuring your home remains the shining star of the neighborhood.

"Cleanliness is not just a state of mind, but a state of your home." - VGRC, LLC

The Rise of Pressure Washing: A Spokane Phenomenon

With the right cleaning solutions at hand, Spokane residents are experiencing the joy of watching grime and moss vanish under the powerful spray of our pressure washers. The Roof Ninja 🥷 and Kc 👷‍♀️ lead the way, transforming each home with meticulous care and attention to detail. Our service areas include Deer Park, Trentwood, Millwood, and beyond, making VGRC the go-to for all your cleaning needs.

Fun Fact about Spokane County 🌲:

Did you know that Spokane County is home to the largest urban waterfall in the United States? Spokane Falls is a breathtaking sight, just like your home will be after a visit from VGRC!

The Roof Ninja & Kc: Your Cleaning Heroes

Our dynamic duo, The Roof Ninja 🥷 and Kc 👷‍♀️, are dedicated to ensuring your home's exterior shines brightly. Whether it's blasting away years of dirt from your roof or clearing out stubborn gutter debris, they tackle each task with ninja-like precision and a friendly smile.

Joke of the Day: Why did the roof go to school? To become a little shingle!

DIY Tip for Homeowners 🔧:

When pressure washing your driveway, start from the top and work your way down. This method ensures a thorough clean without missing any spots!

Why Choose VGRC?

At VGRC, LLC, we don't just play the part; we are the part! Our commitment to excellence is reflected in every service we offer. Licensed and insured (LICENSE #VERACGC770LW) we bring professionalism and expertise to every job, ensuring your satisfaction and safety.

Quote to Brighten Your Day 🌞:

"Every clean home is a happy home."

Contact Us in a Fun Way!

Want to learn more about our services? Visit our website:VGRCLLC.com 📲. For immediate assistance, don't risk falls, give us a call: 📞 509-530-1330

Follow us on social media for more updates, tips, and laughs:

🐦 Twitter

💼 LinkedIn

📸 Instagram

📘 Facebook

Join the Cleaning Craze

Pressure washing has become more than just a cleaning method in Spokane—it's a way of life. Join the countless homeowners who trust The Roof Ninja 🥷 and Kc 👷‍♀️ to keep their homes in tip-top shape. Remember, a clean home is a happy home, and with VGRC, your satisfaction is our mission.

So, Spokane, let's continue this saga of cleanliness together. Book your service today and experience the VGRC difference. We flat line the gunk, so you don't have to!

Hashtags to Keep the Fun Rolling:

#VGRCByeByeMoss #VGRCHouseWashing #SoftWashingVGRC #VGRC #CleanGuttersVGRC #PressureWashing #SPOKANE #SoftWashing #HappyHome #NoRiskAllShine

Stay sparkling, Spokane! 🌟

WE FLAT LINE THE GUNK! DON'T RISK FALLS, GIVE US A CALL!

[gaadi]

The Benefits And Uses of Mini Tractors

Mini tractors, also known as compact tractors, are small, versatile machines designed for use on small farms, residential properties, and other small-scale agricultural applications. These tractors have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their compact size, affordability, and efficiency.

Mini tractors are typically classified as tractors with an engine horsepower rating of 20–50 horsepower. They are small in size, typically weighing less than 2,000 pounds, and can be operated by one person. They are designed to be maneuverable and versatile, with a variety of attachments and implements that can be used for a wide range of agricultural tasks.

One of the key benefits of mini tractors is their versatility. They can be used for a variety of tasks, such as mowing, tilling, ploughing, hauling, and digging. They are particularly well-suited for use in small gardens, orchards, and vineyards, as they can easily navigate tight spaces and narrow rows.

Mini tractors come in a range of sizes and configurations to suit different needs. Some models are designed specifically for gardening and landscaping, while others are designed for heavier agricultural tasks such as ploughing and tilling. Most mini-tractors are powered by diesel engines, which are efficient and reliable. They may also come with features such as four-wheel drive, power steering, and hydrostatic transmission for ease of use and increased maneuverability.

In addition to their versatility, mini tractors are also relatively affordable compared to larger tractors. They can be purchased new or used, and there are many different brands and models to choose from. Some popular brands of mini tractors include Kubota, John Deere, and Mahindra.

Mini-tractors use

Mini tractors, also known as compact tractors, are small-sized tractors that can be used for a variety of tasks on a farm or property. Here are some common uses for mini tractors:

Lawn and garden maintenance: Mini tractors are perfect for mowing lawns, tilling soil, and maintaining gardens.

Snow removal: The  tractor can be equipped with snow ploughs or snowblowers for clearing snow from driveways, sidewalks, and parking lots.

Landscaping: The tractors are ideal for landscaping tasks such as grading, leveling, and spreading materials like mulch and gravel.

Farming: The tractors can be used for small-scale farming tasks such as ploughing, harrowing, and cultivating.

Hauling: The tractors can be used to tow small trailers or carts, making it easier to transport materials around a property.

Construction: The tractors can be used for small-scale construction tasks such as digging foundations or trenches, and moving materials around a job site.

Livestock care: The tractors can be used for tasks such as feeding livestock, cleaning stalls, and hauling manure.

Mini Tractor benefit 

Versatility: The tractors can perform a wide range of tasks such as tilling, mowing, ploughing, hauling, and more. They can be used for gardening, landscaping, farming, and other outdoor activities.

Cost-effective: The tractors are less expensive than larger tractors, making them a great choice for small farmers or homeowners with smaller properties. They are also more fuel-efficient, which means they can save money on fuel costs in the long run.

Easy to operate: The tractors are simple to use and require minimal training to operate. They are also easier to maneuver in tight spaces, making them ideal for small gardens and fields.

Low maintenance: The tractors are designed with fewer moving parts, making them easier to maintain and less prone to breakdowns. They also have lower repair costs, which can save money in the long run.

Eco-friendly: The tractors are usually powered by diesel or electric engines that emit less pollution compared to larger tractors. This makes them a more environmentally friendly option for farmers and homeowners.

For more details about the tractor, tractor price, and tractor videos, visit Khetigaadi.com.

[andreafmn]

Collision - Chapter 2

Word Count: 1,477

Characters: Female Reader Uley Character, Sam Uley, Allison Uley, Charlie Swan, Bella Swan, Seth Clearwater, Billy Black, Jacob Black, Emily Young, Paul Lahote, Harry and Sue Clearwater, Leah Clearwater

Story Description: (Y/N) Uley is back home after being away for four years. Her life at it’s first standstill and she is taking this time to find out who she is without school. But she never thought that coming back to the reservation would turn her whole life around. In the midst of secrets and mystery, a man crashes into (Y/N)’s and her life will never be the same.

*DISCLAIMER* I do not own in any way Twilight, all credits of the pre-established characters, script, and storyline belong to Stephanie Meyer and Summit Entertainment. The only thing I own is Uley Reader insert, any upcoming characters, and her storyline, as well as her effects in the others’ story line.

Chapter: 2/?

A/N: There’s no Cullen’s in the first chapter, we’ll see them soon though. Also, Esme is in the story but her and Carlisle are not together romantically. If you enjoy my writing I’ll also be posting them in AO3 and Wattpad along with other stories (I also hope to start taking requests if ya’ll want) Hope you enjoy and all constructive criticism is encouraged.

<-Previous | Next ->

Chapter 2

The next day she awoke at half past ten. She looked at her bedside clock flustered, knowing she had wasted almost all morning. She could smell breakfast already prepared and her mother downstairs doing some light cleaning.

She hurried into the bathroom and took a small time to finish her morning routine, flying down the stairs. Allison laughed as she noticed her daughter stumbling with hurry down the stairs, clearly heading to the door.

“Eat some breakfast before you go, darling!” Allison shouted as she swept the floor of the dining room.

“I’ll just get some on the way,” (Y/N) said as she put her jacket on, seeing in the distance dark clouds adorning the sky.

“I made you a sandwich so you can take it with you and a travel mug filled with coffee.”

“Thanks, mom. You’re the best,” (Y/N) kissed her mother’s cheek and grabbed the food from her hands.

“And be careful on the streets, the tires haven’t been changed on the truck and the roads are supposed to be very slippery today.” Allison called out to the girl who was almost completely out of the door.

(Y/N) barely heard her mother’s warning as she jogged up to the truck parked on the driveway. There was a sandwich hanging from her mouth as she backed up and sped to the main road. It was quite a long ride to Port Angeles, and she wanted to be back before dark. She spent the ninety-minute drive listening to background music and noticing how the sky changed from blue to dark grey to a lighter grey as she passed and left Forks. She rarely visited the neighboring town, listening to the stories by the elders gave her enough reason not to. Unlike most of her friends and even her own brother, she believed the string of words that they sewed. There were so many things that were unexplained in the universe that it would be ignorant of her to not believe that the supernatural could exist. Although, the past four years she had started to disregard the tales as made up stories, not being able to prove that they were veracious.

Once she arrived, she parked in front of an antique store and started perusing through the various stores in the strip mall. Before she knew it, five hours had passed. Her feet were sore from walking back and forth, her arms were read from all the bags she had carried, and her head was hurting from a lack of food. It was already five in the afternoon and (Y/N) was ready to go home. She got back into the truck and started her drive back home. An hour into the drive the sky darkened more than it should’ve, and heavy rain cascaded from the clouds. Her vision was impaired from the thick droplets and her heart was beating hard, scared of what could jump out in the darkness.

(Y/N)’s worries were confirmed when a deer jumped onto the street and had her swerve the truck. The car spun for some seconds and slid off the road, crashing into a tree. The girl’s head flew forward on impact and connected with the steering wheel in front of her. Her vision blurred and her headache grew exponentially. She could hear her name being called from far away but couldn’t distinguish whose it was. As it came closer, she could finally make out the frame of the sheriff, Charlie Swan. He was speaking to her, but no words registered in her head.

Charlie moved closer to the truck and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The sheriff reached into the open window and carefully tried to retrieve the wounded girl. She wasn’t in the right mind and in this rain an ambulance would take too long to get here. He laid (Y/N)’s head on his shoulder as she mumbled incoherent words, then reaching his arms under hers to pull her softly. He was careful not to scrape her body too much against the broken window, laying down his jacket first to cover most of it. Charlie tried his best to see amid the harsh rain, praying to whatever being was controlling the weather to stop. The blood that was gushing from (Y/N)’s forehead had washed off as soon as her head had exited the car but it didn’t stop flowing. After what felt like hours, the sheriff had the teenage girl in his arms and carried her to his cruiser. Turning his emergency lights on he sped as carefully as possible to the hospital.

He felt the ride eternal as he heard the hurt girl in the back of the car moaning in pain and noticing the shirt he’d wrapped around her forehead was soaking up too much blood. As he neared the bright lights of the hospital, he slowed the speed down as to not slam on his brakes and cause more damage to (Y/N). He carefully grabbed her limp body and entered the hospital. It seemed like the emergency room had a slow night, but he only brought trouble. 

“I need some help here!” Charlie called out, worry laced in his voice. 

“Sheriff Swan, what happened?” A nurse asked as she accompanied the team wheeling a gurney for the unconscious being in the officer’s arms. 

“This is (Y/N) Uley. She hit her head in a car accident, I assume her car swerved as she avoided an animal in the street. She’s been unconscious since I got her in my car. When I found her she was barely coherent.” 

“Okay, why don’t you wait for us in the waiting room. We’ll let you know as soon as we have some news.” The nurse smiled. 

All Charlie could do was nod and sit down for a second, later pulling out his phone to dial Allison Uley’s number. 

“Sheriff, to what do I owe this pleasure,” Allison chimed. 

“It’s not good news, Allison. (Y/N) has been in a car accident.” Charlie could feel the panicked energy coming from the other side of the phone. Close to this time last year he had gotten news that his own daughter was hurt through a phone call. “Now, Allison, I know you want to speed off to the hospital but I would advise you not to. The roads are really bad over here and we can’t have you both admitted.” 

“But I can’t leave her alone,” she sobbed. “I need to be there for my baby.” 

“I know, but she won’t be alone. I’m gonna stay here until she’s good to go and I’ll take her back to your house. Now don’t you worry, you know she’s a strong one.” 

“I know,” Allison sighed an air of defeat. “Alright, just please keep me updated on everything. Doesn’t matter how late.” 

“Will do. I’ll have my buddy pick up the truck and leave it at Billy’s.” 

“Thank you, Charlie, so much.” 

“No problem, Allison. Try to get some shuteye, it looks to be a long night.”

And a long night it was.  

Thankfully, (Y/N)’s injuries were minor and she would be able to leave as soon as she woke up. Charlie spent all night in the hospital, calling a friend to drive (Y/N)’s truck so that Jacob could see if it was worthy of repair and leaving a message for his daughter that he would not be coming home that night. The nurses were nice enough to bring the officer a blanket and some coffee as it seemed he wasn’t going to leave and come back the next morning, keeping his promise to Allison that he’d stay beside her daughter. 

Once a room was given to (Y/N), Charlie managed to catch up on a little bit of sleep on the armchair next to her bed. The girl slept even through the morning light that slipped through the window that woke the sheriff up. He updated Allison on the persistent status of her daughter. Once again, the nurses showing kindness by bringing him a cup of coffee as he waited for (Y/N)’s eyes to open.

(Y/N) was engulfed in darkness during what felt like a second. She tried fluttering her eyes open but was met with a painfully bright light and a pulsating headache that rang through her body. Her eyes closed once again to try to minimize the discomfort, to much avail. She barely remembered what event befell her to end up in this situation, but she could hear she was not alone.

“Are the lights bothering you, (Y/N)?” Sheriff Swan spoke, noticing the girl had awoken. She promptly nodded and he stood up to turn off the lights as the room door opened. “All right, they’re off now. Hello, doctor.”

She tried opening her eyes again and was met with the most radiant eye color she had ever seen.

Golden.

<-Previous | Next ->

[writerwrites]

Little Town Street

Pairing: Andy Barber x Reader

Summary: A college fling with Andy Barber is rekindled when you move back to Boston and you’re both single. 

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: Smut 18+, language, tinge of angst, Defending Jacob spoilers / all the warnings that would go along with the series, fleeting mentions of divorce and bad breakups

A/N: *THIS IS A ONE SHOT* This is the Week 3 prompt to the Optimistic Captain Donut Challenge created by @captainchrisbaby, @optimistic-dinosaur-nacho , and @donutloverxo​ || The Week 3 Prompt was based on  All Too Well by Taylor Swift || I’m only 3 months late, minimum || Fall dividers by @firefly-graphics​

Boston. Your heart raced just thinking about getting back to the place you went to college. The glide of the tassel across your cap and the memories of late night conversations over pizza and beer while elbow deep in a tort. You’d loved the smell of law books and the haze of the green lamps on the library’s oversized and ancient oak desks. The magic of that place was lost on you while you were there, as was the magic of the few relationships you managed to establish while getting your law degree. But here you were, the little suburban town just out of the city, boxes piling up in the empty living room as you settled into your newly single life at a small firm that liked your big New York City success. This was a needed change after a painful breakup. This was your clean break.

Covered in sweat with your hair in a messy top bun, tank top slithering up the steep curves of your soft sides while the sun kissed the back of your bronzed skin, you heard a honk at the intersection in front of your house. The unexpected sound jolted you and the heavy box of books slipped from your fingers and landed on your foot. Hopping to the steps of your new brick home, you looked over at the intersection. It was a near-accident that was the cause of the ruckus. Both cars now at a standstill at the center of the four-way intersection. It took a minute for you to process the shock as you rubbed at your aching foot, but there he was, thick brown hair and bright blue eyes looking at you through the windshield of a black Audi A6. Andy Barber.

With such a public court case and the subsequent car accident, every news-viewing American knew who he was and knew a little too much about him. The problem was that while you’d sat in your own office in the Big Apple, trying to put yourself in Andy’s shoes, you watched a person you once knew in a new light and while your now-ex kept bringing up the commentary of obvious guilt, you couldn't help but sympathize with the collapse of his life. It was too easy for you to slip into the heartache of a family stalked and ruined, a person left so completely exposed and judged by everyone that you’d trusted. It was, after all, why you’d left New York. It was a miracle you’d gotten your fresh start, the Barbers certainly didn’t. You could picture it, but you never speculated, never stayed on the channel when the case came on. Every fiber of your being couldn’t look at him, not because of what broadcasters said but because of the too real memories of a love lost.

You were the one that ended the stare-off, your foot aching more with every passing second. Jaw clenched and lips pressed into a line, you were just about to convince yourself that there was no way Andy Barber, your biggest competition in college and your first love, was outside your new home… and then you heard him say your name. God, it always sounded so good coming from his mouth. The last time you’d heard it he was asking you not to go, drunk outside the bar you’d had your first date telling you that what you two had was bigger than the careers ahead. He didn’t see the tears streaming down your face once you turned away to get in your cab. Maybe, after all this time, he thought you didn’t hear him scream your name.

When you opened your eyes Andy was there at the bottom of your driveway on that little town street, brows knit together with concern as he locked his car that was perfectly parked on the steep driveway like he’d done it a million times. “Don’t look so worried about me, Andrew. You’re the one who just nearly crashed a bajillion dollar car.”

He laughed, despite noticing how you’d used his full name like you two were standing on opposite ends of a courtroom- and maybe you were. But that laugh, the warmth of it wrapped you up and you were thrown back through the magic and memories of that romance once more. The plaid shirts you stole in the middle of the night to run to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Your skin was covered in goosebumps despite the heat as you remembered how Andy had peeled you out of his shirts to warm you back up with his skin on yours, the metal of the fridge pressed to your back. Every moment with him was crystal clear in your mind the smells of autumn and taste of cider and beer when your tongues met, the feeling of his beard scratching your thighs, and... It took his hands on your chin to pull you out of the pain and want of those happier days that you’d ignorantly run from scared of settling. “Are you sure the box didn’t land on your pretty little head?”

The sound that passed your lips was practically a damn purr, you mentally cursed him for pulling it out of you with familiar ease. Opening your eyes to look up at him, you wondered if the emotions of that tumultuous relationship sat at the forefront of his mind too and if it was written on your face. “Nope, definitely landed on my foot.” Swallowing at the sandpaper in your throat, you looked at the swollen discolored mess. “You didn’t have to see if I was okay.”

“First, yeah, I did. It’s been fifteen or sixteen years since I’ve seen you. Second, I saw you hop over here clutching your foot. I can’t leave a wounded deer on the side of the road, can I?” His hands were stubbornly placed on his hips and that’s when you noticed the pale indent of a missing wedding band on his left hand’s ring finger. His blue eyes followed your gaze and he rubbed at the spot like he’d not gotten used to the absence of the cool metal. A similar thin, faded line from a discarded engagement ring on your matching finger. “I guess we’ve both been through it.”

Offering him a small smile, he helped you up and as Andy’s strong hands clutched your waist you wondered if he’d remembered just how ticklish the space between your ribs and hip were when he was careful to not touch you there. When you grabbed at the perfectly tailored coat trying to hop around the man let out an amused grumble and scooped you up. “Aren’t we a little old for grand gestures?” Your head rolled back as you laughed and he turned to get you through the door without smacking your injured foot on the frame. “Jesus are you hitting the gym and benching thick girls, Barber?”

The laughter filling the house was only amplified by his unceremonious dropping of you onto the love seat. The crooked smile looking down at you made you melt. That look, it was a drug that you’d had you first taste of in a mock trial, when he knew he’d won his case and looked back at you in the seats behind him, taking notes. “Other than the box on the lawn, are there any more?”

“You don’t have to..”

“But I’m going to and I want to. Besides, you can’t.” Andy was already pulling off his coat, loosening his tie, and buttoning his shirt before you could protest... not that you were capable of it. He bit his lip when he caught sight of you drinking him in. The slacks and the undershirt that clung to him. “Like what you see?”

“It’s rude.” You stated matter of fact, gesturing to all of him. Andy raised his hands as if to apologize, heading to the door to get to work. Closing your eyes, you could perfectly picture that one picture of the two of you at your graduation. Inadvertently, you mumbled to yourself. “I miss looking that damn good.”

If your eyes hadn’t been closed maybe you would’ve seen the way he froze in the doorway, biting his tongue before stepping out. It wasn’t until you heard the hefty thunk of a box on the hardwood floor that you peaked your eyes open. A clear sheen of sweat glistened on his brow and you bit your lip, the heat running over your body was hardly from moving boxes or the summer heat pouring in the front door. “Please tell me the rest of it isn’t boxes of books, Legal Beagle.”

Scoffing at the old nickname you sighed, “Nope, it’s just bottles of wine and liquor and pictures. The remnants that I didn’t want to break or misplace in the moving truck that came a few days ago.”

“You’ve been here for days and you didn’t call.” His tone was surprisingly wounded.

“Well, Legal Eagle, you didn’t exactly shoot me an email either.” Andy’s eyes burned into you when you used his old nickname back, but you couldn’t decipher what that look really meant. Before you could ask or apologize he was turning back out the door, leaving you there to chew the inside of your cheek raw.

Andy made quick work of the boxes in your car while you nursed your bruised foot trying to unravel the feelings bubbling to the surface of your mind in memories and regrets. When the front door shut, you couldn’t even bring yourself to look up, eyes fixed on the bruise while you thought about the emotional bruising you’d caused each other. It wasn’t hard to really know why he hadn’t emailed, nothing funny in the broken pieces you bother were left to pack up and move on from. When had you started crying? Cheeks wet when his hands cupped your face, forcing you to look up at him, thumbs brushing the tears away. “Hey, if it hurts that bad maybe we should take you to get it looked at.”

Reaching up you grabbed Andy’s wrists, but you found yourself hanging there, incapable of pulling him off of you. Instead, your thumbs brushed across the inside of his wrists just applying a little bit of pressure before skimming your hands up the firm muscles of Andy’s forearms. Each of you tried to translate the signals the other was putting off. If it hadn’t been for the haze of being so close to him, maybe you would’ve had the sense to pull away. With a sniffle and apologetic smile you shook your head ‘no’- or at least to the best of your ability when he was still comforting you like no time or pain had passed between the two of you. How long had you been holding on to this first love?

This close you could see it, the little creases of age at the corners of his eyes and a little salt and pepper in his beard. Despite the way those lines seemed to crease his face like words of chapters you’d not been privy to, his blue gaze was unchanged and every welcoming detail of them looked at you like you hadn’t changed either. The moment his knee pressed between your thighs to your core you realized just how needy you were, whimpering and parting your legs as he lowered himself onto you. His hands moved down your neck to your breasts and a firm squeeze and the brush of his thumb over your nipples elicited another breathy moan from your lips. How long had it been since anyone had looked at you like that? How long since you’d gotten off?

“Andy,” The weight of his name on your tongue was dizzying, but the way he said your name back was just as heavy. You pulled his mouth to yours and he parted his lips to wrap around  your bottom lip. His beard scratched at your chin, sending shivers down your body.

Picking your hips up from the couch, you satisfied the ache between your legs on his thigh. Smirking against your lips Andy pressed harder into your core. “You missed me.”

“To the bone,” The confession passed your lips and all you wanted was for him to stay, the thought alone so wholly selfish. Your eyes fluttered open, scared that it had been poison on his own tongue, noticing how he’d pulled away ever so slightly. “That wasn’t fair.”

Though it seemed like a poor apology, Andy was already shaking his head to reassure you that it wasn’t. That quiet, it wasn’t a trait in him you recalled. His hands moved down your frame and he pulled you onto his lap, careful to let you move your legs to straddle him and not hit your foot along the way. “Did you think I wouldn’t care that you were coming back?”

Before you could answer, he stole your air again. Andy’s lips pressed to your neck and he hummed as he tasted the salt on your skin. Then he found the spot he used to always mark, that spot that always seemed to peak just a little out of your favorite courtroom blouse. Gasping, your nails scratched softly at his sides. He took it as a hint and pulled off his undershirt, throwing it at the boxes that had his tie, coat, and button up. “Andrew. I’m trying not to assume anything here but…”

He looked up at you so sweetly that it erased whatever logic you were trying to pull on him with that one dopey smile. “Tell me this isn’t home.”

“I..” Your mouth bobbed open and you looked at him with wide eyes. Did he mean Boston or this moment on his lap like pieces were falling into place since you’d left.

Squeezing your thighs in his palms he repeated the question. “Tell me this isn’t home. Tell me you don’t remember the promise you broke. Tell me those boxes with pictures don’t have the pictures of us all over this town.” Was this a call out? If he hadn’t been looking at you with such heartache you would have looked away. “Maybe I asked for too much and maybe I was just as scared as you were about the future I saw for us… but tell me we didn’t just find our time.”

The tips of your fingers moved up his chest and settled at the sides of his neck, innocently tugging at his beard. Leaning forward you pressed your lips to his forehead and slipped off of his lap though your whole body seemed almost unamused by the cruel neglect of his warmth, your legs staying draped over him and one arm still linked through his. Looking over the boxes you found the stack with the bright blue sharpie, ‘winter clothes’ sprawled across the top as it sat halfway between the bottom of the stairs and the closet by the front door. “Grab that one.”

Andy untangled himself from you with his fingers burning across your skin, reluctantly slipping off the couch to grab the box. When he came back with it you noticed a hesitant look on his face. His eyes moved to his discarded clothes and you sighed and pulled him back to the small couch. “Want to tell me why you’re avoiding my questions?” Ignoring him you peeled the box open and moved a few things out of the way while you pulled out exactly what you knew you needed. “I don’t break over honesty anymo-”

Words seemed to escape him the moment he saw his scarf from the first time he’d gone home with you to meet your family. He didn’t do the meet-the-parents charade and the relationship had been new, but yours had welcomed him in and made him want his own one day. Andy never thought he’d settle with someone else, but that’s exactly what he’d done when you didn’t call, write, visit, or move back… he’d settled. That little trip was a memory he’d revisited often in the torment of waiting for you to come back. The pair of you had spent most of the holiday either studying for exams on your twin sized bed or pouring over old photographs from your childhood. Now you could practically see the memories flooding back as he reached for the scarf and brushed his fingers over the soft fabric.

So, it was your turn for a confession, an apology even. “I remember it all. I miss it all. We may have been young, but we weren’t wrong. No one knew me like you did. No one ever has. We grew up, but you lingered here.” Your fingers combed through his hair and tapped his temple before moving down his body to his sternum, tapping at his pulse, “... and here.” Andy covered your hand in his, drawing your fingers lower to the buckle of his slacks. Your cheeks went red and you nodded a ‘there too’ without being able to form the words.

“Do I get a hundredth chance?” The hope in his eyes was mirrored in your own, your racing heart no longer felt like a warning sign.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” A shaky laugh passed your lips. Andy wrapped his arms around you, tender, before he laughed too, his body shaking against yours. “Oh, this is a prank? Well, damn. That’s embarrassing.”

Andy looked at you and lunging forward, mouths ricocheting in a deep kiss, tongues hungry for the lost time. Only when you came up for air, the pair of you now buried in the couch cushions, did he speak up, “You deserve all the hell I’m going to give you for waiting this long to let me love you.”

“Does that mean you’re going to stay and rub my skin raw with this beard?” Squirming under him, the pair of you frantically reached for every clasp and zipper until there was nothing left between you. His lips moved down your frame and you surprised yourself, pulling him back to your mouth. “You’re staying with me Andy Barber.” Your fingers wrapped around his length and pumped him, brushing the head of his cock against your slit, already dripping. “You’re staying so beard on thighs can wait.” Pressing your mouth back to his as you continued to tease him you whimpered, not even needing to say it but recalling how much he used to love hearing it. “I need you. Don’t make me wait anymore. I need to feel all of you. I miss-”

The begging and pawing, he couldn’t take you slowly, not yet at least. Andy rutted himself into you, growling when your tight wet heat wrapped around him. He buried his forehead into the curve of your neck as he thrust into you over and over, savoring the way you gasped at his every slight movement. Andy worshiped the new softness of your frame and none of this felt like strangers trying to figure out how to get each other off. His thumb brushed back and forth across your swollen clit and, unlike anyone else, you stuttered his name as you got closer, clamping around him, hips bucking off the couch to meet every deep thrust as he slowed his pace to draw this out for both of you.

You loved the look on his face, the way he bit his swollen lips between a million kisses left on your sweaty skin. The way he lost focus when you said his name and how he gently grabbed your chin as you stuttered his name again; so close, so wet for him, so ready to finally get off. Permission, your legs shook and you whined as he kept you right there at the tipping point, building himself up to his own orgasm while he edged you. “Come for me, lover.”

The words were so welcome, just enough to push you over the edge and quickly chased by you begging him, “Stay inside me.” Andy throbbed inside you as you pulsed around his cock, your fingers digging into the meat of his thighs as your orgasm didn’t seem to stop, the room seemingly silent as the echoing thrusts and calling out of names tapered out to the sticky collapse of you both tangled up on the love seat.

Your eyes closed, exhaustion settling in, and Andy watched you breathing. Softly, Andy nuzzled his nose against the top of your head. “If you fall asleep, I’ll fall asleep.”

With a hum you nodded, reaching up to his hand that had settled on your breast, patting it, “Would that be so bad?”

More to himself, voice so low you almost couldn’t hear him. “I can’t lose you again. Can’t lose anyone else.”

“There’s probably a lot we can’t talk about, but this isn’t a dream, Andy.” Pivoting just enough to look at him you held his hand and kissed his chin. “I can’t lose you again either. I already lost a foot.”

There it was, that cheeky little smile. You both sleepy laughed and you watched his body relax. “You almost cost me my car.”

“I couldn’t run away again, even if I wanted to.” Crinkling your nose you smiled, brushing your finger over the smooth part of his skin where the missing ring marked him. He did the same. The scarf hung over the back of the sofa and looked up at him. “I don’t want to, if that wasn’t obvious.”

His blue eyes closed, his smile went soft, and Andy Barber fell asleep in your arms. If someone would have told you that this would have happened when you left New York you would have run back to Boston and spared the pair of you a world of pain. Though you were scared of bridging the gaps caused by the many roads the pair of you had taken to get here, you shut your eyes and smile at the reality that all those roads led home- to him. Like kintsugi everything seemed hopeful, incapable of breaking like the last time, stronger and made beautiful through the healing time of quiet apologies, verbal and physical.

It had been him all along, no denying it. Neither of you would ever have to ask the other to stay again.

All Content Tags: @tom-hlover​

CEvans Content Tags: @void-hoechlin​

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[join-the-joywrite]

But suddenly from somewhere out of the blue, I see a different light around you.

For Anon: Julie and Luke, family friends, end up sick together. While cooped up sick at Julie's, a little conversation leads to a lot of secrets.

A/N: skdjje I am so sorry it took me this long to get to it sjjdje and this kind of got away from me once I finally got into writing it oops.

Special thanks to @i-spit-on-fire for the title!! Love you, doll 🥰

Julie Molina had a great friend circle. She loved each of them equally. Well, maybe Flynn got a bit more than everyone else but then again, Flynn had also seen Julie throwing up the last time she had food poisoning so maybe Flynn deserved a little extra love for sticking around past that.

The only person in the circle that could contend for Flynn's level of appreciation in Julie's eyes was Luke Patterson. And it was only because her mom and his dad were childhood friends, which, naturally, led to Julie and Luke growing up childhood friends.

Despite their close friendship, Luke and Julie rarely interacted at school. They had their own, smaller, circles and that was perfectly okay. Their circles merged after Luke and his friends played live music for Julie's theater performance when the radio gave out without warning. Well, to get more specific, it was some time after Alex and Willie started dating and involving both their friends on lunches and hangouts.

So yeah, things were great, school was fun and they all had a bunch of fun together. They even planned to visit an amusement park that Saturday too.

Unfortunately, the trip to the amusement park seemed like it was gonna have to wait.

"I told you not to hug me," Julie grumbled through her stuffy nose.

Luke pulled a face for her. "I didn't. I hugged my mom and then you hugged my mom. I'm not at fault here."

Julie sighed. "You think she's sick, too?"

"Nah, mom's got a great immune system. She probably just has a slight cough."

Just then a coughing bout overtook Julie. Leaning forward in her chair, she took a few deep breaths, relaxing as she felt Luke's hand moving in slow circles on her back. Slowly, her breathing returned to normal and the sharp ache in her forehead subsided. When she sat back again, she leaned her head against Luke. "I hate being sick. This is all your fault."

"We've just been over this. I didn't hug you."

"Potato, pot-ah-to."

Luke rolled his eyes. "You know you're heavy, right?"

Julie's response was to stop half-supoorting herself and drop all her weight on Luke's side, nearly sending them both off their chairs.

"If you weren't so sick, I'd . . . I'd pinch you!"

"You mean, if you had the energy to do it."

"Yeah, whatever," Luke managed to say before he coughed too, albeit much less than Julie. "Think your mom will drop me home?"

"You live right next door, idiot. Obviously."

When Rose walked into the nurse's office, she sighed at the two teens. "We told you two to stay at home. Come on, let's go."

As Rose pulled into her driveway, Luke thanked her for the ride.

"Where do you think you're going, mijo?"

"H-home?" Luke asked uncertainly, his hand on the door handle.

"Your parents are out of town for the weekend."

"Yeah," Luke nodded, "I was gonna stay over at Bobby's but I don't wanna make him sick--"

"Well, Julie's already sick anyway. You can stay with us and when you're feeling better, you can go over to Bobby's."

"But--"

"Mijo, I'm not asking," Rose said, staring at Luke in the rearview mirror, daring him to get out of the car.

Julie snickered at the fear in his eyes as he settled back into the seat and waited until Rose had pulled further up towards the house before attempting to get out again.

"Why don't you two go get comfortable on in the living room, hm? I'll put some food up for you and it'll be ready before you even know it."

Julie yawned as she trudged past Rose and into the house. "Can we sleep instead?"

"Absolutely. Go get some rest, okay? Luke, if you're tired, you can sleep in Carlos' room. He's spending the week with Victoria so it's all yours if you need, okay?"

"Thank you," Luke managed before a yawn interrupted him.

Rose ruffled Julie's hair first, then Luke's. Now, what could she feed them that they'd manage to keep down?

"Sorry I made you sick," Luke mumbled.

Julie shrugged. "It's okay. Flynn said she was gonna drag me on the biggest rollercoaster first so in a way, I'm kinda glad we won't be going tomorrow."

Luke rolled his eyes. "You do this everytime we go. Just get on the rollercoaster. It's not that much bigger than the one we went on last time."

Julie stared at Luke over her bowl of soup. "I passed out."

Luke shrugged. "It makes for a good story!"

"For you!"

"Don't yell, Julie, you don't have the lung capacity."

Julie scrunched up her nose and mocked Luke in a high voice. "You don't have the lunch capacity."

"Oh, real mature."

Julie blew a raspberry at Luke. A raspberry that turned into a cough. Luke was out of his blanket in a second.

"Julie?" Rose called from the kitchen. "You good, baby?"

"I got it!" Luke called back. He knelt in front of Julie as she hunched over and rubbed her back in small circles. "Easy, Jules," he murmured.

"I hate being sick," Julie said for the umpteenth time, resting her chin on Luke's shoulder.

Luke froze, one hand on Julie's arm, the other on her back. What was he supposed to do now? Just . . . hold her?

"I know," he said soothingly, "you'll get better quickly, don't worry."

"Ugh, I hope so." Slowly, Julie pulled away and eased back into the couch.

Luke pouted, only because he wanted to stay holding Julie in a gentle and comfortable embrace. He scrunched his nose up and quickly shook his head. What the hell was that all about?

He was back in his corner of the couch, under his blanket, when Rose arrived with a glass of water for each of them.

"I'm going to get dinner running and when I come back to check on you two, those glasses better be empty."

"Yes, mom," they chorused.

It wasn't really a big thing. Luke called her 'mom' often. Julie even called Emily 'mom' if she happened to be over at Luke's. But that didn't take away from Rose's (or Emily's) absolute delight over being called mom by her honorary child.

"Sorry I made fun of you when you first got sick," Julie mumbled.

"It's okay," Luke said with a slight laugh, half paying attention to Julie and half paying attention to the TV. They'd taken a good nap and were already feeling better. "Karma got you, I guess."

"I guess."

"You got it bad, though," Luke said, glancing at Julie. "I never coughed like that."

"Exhibit A of why I utterly detest being sick. The headache is unbearable sometimes." Julie gave Luke a small smile. "But it's okay. I should already be feeling better by tomorrow."

Julie turned her gaze back to the TV. Luke didn't. He kept his gaze on Julie, watching her carefully. He'd always had the natural inclination to want to care for Julie, but until then it had always been small things. Wanting to make sure her cuts and scrapes got a band-aid. Wanting to check in with a simple text when she was sick. Wanting to be sure her work was up to date when she missed out.

But now . . . now it was a little different. It wasn't really strange, but he couldn't quite understand it. Why, when she complained about her headache, did he want to pull her close and try to distract her from it? Why, when she hunched over coughing, did he want to be by her side, holding her close and trying to ease the fit? Why, when she paid him no attention, did he want to just sit there and watch her?

Julie glanced back and Luke froze like a deer in headlights, his already pink cheeks growing redder. Julie grinned. "Is that the fever or are you shy about something?"

"Definitely the fever," Luke said quickly.

"Uh huh," Julie said with a grin, turning back to the TV again. "I think you're pretty cute too."

Luke shrank into his blanket. "I didn't say that."

"Your face said enough, Patterson."

"You really think I'm cute?"

Julie looked at Luke, who had the blanket wrapped over his head as he pouted at her. His flushed cheeks had calmed to the usual pink whenever he was running a fever. She couldn't help but smile. "The cutest."

He beamed. "I think you're pretty cute too. Wait, that's what you said--"

"Cute," Julie mumbled under her breath, shaking her head and turning back to the TV. She was surprised by Luke suddenly dropping his head in her lap. She grinned, amused. "Hi, there."

"Hi. I want attention."

"Well, mom said she was just gonna make sure Carlos' room is clean enough for you to walk without getting impaled by a Lego brick but I'm sure she'd be happy to listen to your gibberish when she's all done."

"I want your attention."

"And I wanna watch the season finale."

Luke turned over to glance at the TV. "You've seen this episode at least six times. I know because five of them were at my house and youd already seen it once before that."

Julie flicked Luke's nose lightly. "It's my favourite, leave me be."

"Fine, but I'm staying here."

"Okay, just be quiet."

Luke felt like he had left the land of the living when he felt Julie's fingers in his hair. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing and somehow, the fact that she was playing with his hair on autopilot made him giddy.

"Can you put this on the table for me, please?" Julie asked absently, resting her empty glass on Luke's shoulder.

He did as she asked, just managing to reach the coffee table.

"Thank you."

Bored but unwilling to move, Luke began to pick at the threads on Julie's bracelets. She rested her hand on his chest, knowing he'd start whining if she took the bracelets away.

"Who made this one for you?"

Julie glanced at her arm to see Luke playing with a blue string, her name strung on in letter beads, a star bead on either side. "You did."

"Really?"

"I think we were about eight or nine. That was when Flynn got her bracelet set and we spent so many lunches making bracelets. You got jealous because I kept wearing Flynn's bracelets so you made one for me yourself."

"Huh," Luke said, "I don't remember, though."

"Not surprising. You were running a fever then, too. A pretty high one. Your mom gave you cough syrup and you got a burst of creative inspiration. Haven't you heard her tell the story? It's one of her favourites."

"I hear the words 'when Luke was little' and I instantly tune it out."

Julie laughed. "Sounds about right."

Luke watched the smile linger on Julie's face as she watched the episode she knew by heart. God, she was so pretty.

Luke scrunched his nose up again. Yeah, Julie was pretty and yeah, he'd always known that. But in the way he knew Flynn was beautiful and Carrie was stunning. In the way he knew Reggie was adorable and Bobby was cute and Alex was a gorgeous. In the way he knew Willie was magnificent. It was just something he'd always known. He and his friends were hot as hell and that was just a fact that they all seemed to know.

But laying with his head in Julie's lap, watching her unconsciously smile at his own antics, it seemed like a brand new thought. How could someone he'd known his whole life suddenly look different?

"Julie."

"Hm?" Julie didn't look away from the TV.

"You're really pretty."

"Thank you," she said, smiling wider. She lightly tugged a lock of his hair. "You're pretty, too."

"No, I mean, like, really pretty. Like . . . ultra pretty."

Julie scowled at Luke. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! I just . . . I just really like your smile. It's so. . ."

"Pretty?"

Luke nodded. He poked her cheek lightly. "I like when you smile."

"Yeah?" Even if she wanted to, she couldn't hold back a smile.

Luke smiled too. "Yeah."

Caught up with Luke's spontaneous declaration, Julie mised her favourite part of the episode -- the one where they finally had their first date. But Luke didn't.

"When we get better," he said slowly, "when we're not sick anymore . . . Do you think we could go out together? Maybe next weekend?"

Julie nodded. "Absolutely. Flynn already texted about rescheduling--"

"No. No, I mean . . . like a date. Just you and me."

"Oh," Julie said softly, eyes wide.

"Oh? Julie, 'oh' is what you say when you get socks for Christmas."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm just . . . surprised. I thought I worked out this crush thing and then here you are, asking me out and all I can think is that I wasted so much energy trying to stifle it all down when I could've just asked you out myself like two years ago."

Luke blinked up at Julie. "So, is that a yes or a no? I'm a little confused."

"Oh, only a little? Yes, you dork."

Luke suddenly yawned.

"Tired?"

"Only a little."

"Go to sleep," Julie said, using the same tone Rose had used on them both earlier.

Luke thought it was going to be pretty difficult to fall asleep when Julie was sitting there, threading her fingers through his hair like she had no idea how fast she made his heart beat. But it barely took him a minute before he was out completely. With a yawn of her own, Julie quickly followed.

Carrie snickered softly. "Quick!" she whispered. "They're waking up!"

"Okay!" Willie whispered back. "Okay, hold it up."

The bunch of them gathered behind the ridiculously large cardboard posted they'd thrown together the moment they arrived after the text from Rose.

Blinking tiredly, Julie and Luke sat up and took a few seconds to focus on the grinning faces in front of them.

"Congratulations!"

Julie and Luke both turned several shades redder (not by any fault of their ebbing fevers) as the group thrust the banner forward. It's about damn time.

"Shut up," Julie mumbled, retreating under her blanket to hide her face.

Luke scowled. "You could've said something!"

"Watching was funnier," Alex admitted.

As he did, the front door opened and in walked Ray. He took one look at the scene before him and groaned. "I can't believe I lost a full ten dollars."

"You bet on us?" Julie shrieked, throwing the blanket off.

"Well . . . yeah," Ray said, "your Tia is very persuasive."

Julie shrank back into the blanket, groaning in embarrassment.

Rose gasped. "Someone get Emily on the phone! She owes me five dollars!"

"Mom!"

But despite the embarrassment that was their family, Julie and Luke were very happy to have finally admitted their feelings -- to themselves and to each other.

Neither of them could wait for next weekend.

[goldenhemmings]

When You Love Someone | Streetfighter!Shawn (Part Four)

Whew. Hi. Not sure if anyone still cares about this series and I know Shawnblr isn’t what it used to be but I’ve had this part near completion for months and I finally just forced myself to finish it. Thank you to everyone who has still taken the time to send me messages of support for my writing over the past few months even though I’ve hardly posted anything. It means the world to me!

Also want to take this space to say very briefly that with everything going on in the world right now (especially for my fellow friends in the U.S.), staying out of politics/current events is a privilege and it is our responsibility to participate and to stay informed and aware. Do your part. 

With that being said, here is 5.8k words of Streetfighter!Shawn. There’s naturally some violence and all that stuff, so please don’t read if that’s something that would bother you. You can find parts one, two, and three in my masterlist. Enjoy!!

“Hey,” was the first word Y/N heard the next morning, and she groaned as she blinked her groggy eyes several times to slowly let in the light of the room. The first thing she became aware of was Shawn leaning over her, his hand on her hip as he lightly shook her awake. The second was the splitting headache that she felt in her temples. She moaned, still half-asleep as she covered her eyes with her arm to block out the brightness of the room. She had yet to realize the situation she was in.

“I know you’re tired,” Shawn continued, slightly amused as he continued to shake her into full consciousness, “but you have class. You should get up.”

Class. It’s Friday. That realization alone was enough to have Y/N jolting up like she was waking from a nightmare. “What time is it?” she cried, not missing the way Shawn, looking like a deer caught in headlights, had jumped back with a start.

“It’s 10. You have an hour.”

“Fucking hell,” she grunted, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She flew around the room, familiar to her only as bits and pieces of broken memories from the night before flooded back, and noticed a pile of her clothes in the corner at about the same time she realized she was clad only in a large t-shirt that certainly didn’t belong to her. She dashed over to retrieve last night’s outfit. “I’m gonna be so fucking late.”

“Relax,” Shawn reassured, moving to place his hands on her arms in an effort to ground her. “You have an entire hour.”

“I need to get home and change,” she mumbled, raising a hand to her aching forehead. 

“I’ll drive you.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, I do,” he chuckled. “I promised you last night that I would.”

“Oh,” she mumbled, sheepishly, trying to ignore the small wave of nausea beginning to creep up on her. She didn’t remember that. “How are you, like, okay right now?” she queried, reaching to grab her phone from where it sat on the nightstand. “God, I feel like crap.”

He laughed softly. “I can obviously handle alcohol better than you.”

“No shit,” Y/N replied snarkily, laughing despite herself as she reached to pull her matted hair up into a hair tie. Wine always does you dirty, you idiot. What were you thinking? 

Shawn grinned, flopping back onto the bed and reaching to rest his hands under his head. As Y/N went to tug on her jeans, she realized for the first time that morning that Shawn was shirtless. She didn’t even have time to appreciate it before a wave of panic had set in. My clothes are on the floor. I stayed the night at his place. I don’t remember anything.

Y/N looked up at Shawn, wide-eyed. She took a deep breath. “Did we…?”

It took him a second to understand what she was insinuating, but as soon as he did he sat up immediately, his wide eyes mirroring Y/N’s. “God, no,” he replied. “You were drunk. I was too, for what it’s worth. You just slept here.”

“Right,” Y/N mumbled, slightly humiliated that she even had to ask. She’d never done anything like this before, and especially not on a night where she had class the next morning. “Okay.”

Shawn propped his elbows on his knees, resting his chin in his hands. “I can take you whenever you want to leave.”

She glanced around the room one last time to make sure she had all of her belongings, then brought her eyes to Shawn. “Now’s good.”

“Do you want some ibuprofen or something first?” he offered, not oblivious to the massive hangover she was undoubtedly experiencing. 

But Y/N just shook her head, already out of his room and heading to the front door of the apartment. “I’ll be fine.”

Shawn laughed, pulling a shirt on and grabbing his keys from the kitchen counter. “Whatever you say.”

He followed her down the dingy corridor towards the single working elevator, and they could hear it clanging to a stop on their floor before the familiar ding that preceded the opening of the doors had sounded. Shawn allowed Y/N to go in first, and he reached past her to press the button for the first floor. 

Y/N heaved a deep breath, taking in the complex’s surroundings as she and Shawn stepped out into the parking lot. Just how run down Westgate was became so much clearer in the daylight--startlingly so. 

Westgate was scary; there wasn’t a single person in the entire city that wouldn’t admit that much. In all actuality, Shawn made enough money from his fights that he could easily afford to stay in a much safer area. His current apartment was all he’d had the money for when he moved out of his parents’ house, but for whatever reason, he’d grown too attached to the place to want to relocate somewhere nicer. Additionally, Westgate was close to Dynamite, and it was where most of the people he ran with lived. He’d grown to not mind it; something he knew most people would never understand. 

The ride to Y/N’s house was silent, for which she and her pounding head were appreciative. “I’ll be quick,” she mumbled as Shawn pulled into her driveway, fishing her key out of her purse.

“No rush,” he responded. He watched with a slight smile as she made her way up the driveway to her doorstep, almost amused at the possibility that she was angry with herself for behavior anyone else would consider normal for a college student. 

Y/N turned the key into the lock of the front door, wincing at the creaking sound it made as she pushed it open. She crossed her fingers in the hopes that she wouldn’t run into her roommates, but her wishes were immediately denied as she heard Jade’s voice floating out from the kitchen. “Y/N? Is that you?”

Y/N didn’t answer, instead just turning to shut the door behind her. She saw Jade come into view, her curly dark hair pushed off of her face with a headband. “Woah. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Y/N scoffed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Where were you?” her roommate continued, and Y/N leaned back against the front door and pressed a hand to her temple. “Brook and I were worried. We didn’t hear from you all night.”

“I was with Shawn.”

“All night?” she shrieked, and Y/N swore the sound made her brain rattle inside her skull.

“You’re gonna want to speak very softly to me,” she warned. “And as much as I’d love to stand here and have this conversation right now, I have class in half an hour and Shawn is waiting outside for me to get my shit.”

“And change your clothes, I’m assuming,” Jade chirped, and Y/N couldn’t even manage the energy to roll her eyes. 

“Thanks for that,” she griped, moving towards the stairs that would lead to her bedroom. 

“Want coffee?” Jade asked, but Y/N only shook her head no before disappearing down the hallway. After brushing her teeth and swapping her day-old outfit for some clean leggings and a freshly-washed hoodie, Y/N shoved her laptop into her backpack and swung it over her shoulder, silently praying that the computer was charged enough to get her through class. She clambered down the stairs and grabbed a protein bar from the kitchen despite the fact that even the mere thought of eating made her want to throw up, then threw it into her bag before retreating back to Shawn’s car. 

“Have everything?” he asked, and as soon as he saw her nod he put the Jeep into reverse to guide it out of the driveway. 

Y/N spent the brief car ride resting her forehead against the cool glass of the passenger side window and reveling in the silence that she knew would end the second she got to campus. Shawn eventually pulled up in front of the building Y/N’s class was held in, and she reluctantly pulled her backpack up into her lap.

“What time are you done?” Shawn asked, breaking the comfortable silence that had characterized the trip from Y/N’s house to campus. “I’ll pick you up.”

She immediately shook her head, already feeling guilty for all that he’d done for her in the past twelve hours. “Don’t worry about it, it’s okay.”

“I want to,” he insisted, and Y/N took a deep breath as she realized that this was a battle she’d surely lose. 

“It’s supposed to end at 12:30, but the professor might let us out early because it’s Friday. I’ll text you.” 

“Okay,” he nodded, already looking forward to it even though Y/N had yet to leave the car.

“Stay out of trouble while I’m gone,” she teased, and Shawn laughed.

“No promises,” he joked back, leaning in to kiss her quickly before unlocking the car door. He watched her slide out of the Jeep and immediately press a hand to her forehead as the unfiltered light hit her eyes, and Shawn sat behind the steering wheel with a goofy smile on his face as he watched her climb the steps up to her class. 

When she set her things down at her usual place in the lecture hall, Y/N finally had a moment to breathe and process her thoughts; despite the rush, she’d made it to class with just over five minutes to spare. She had been so preoccupied with the hangover and her race to get to campus that she hadn’t even had time to reflect on the previous night; no chance to be excited about it, no chance to relive the memories that would surely make her stomach flutter, and no chance to even thank Shawn for all he’d done for her from showing her his secret rooftop, to telling her about his past, to sharing countless glasses of wine with her and allowing her to stay the night, and making sure she got to class the next day. She vowed to find a way to properly thank him as soon as the fogginess in her brain cleared up enough to allow her to think clearly. 

Shawn, on the other hand, could do nothing but think about the previous night as he drove back to his apartment. He’d hated having to wake Y/N up that morning; there was nothing in his life that had ever made him happier than seeing Y/N’s peaceful face pressed into his pillow, her body curled into his sheets. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to put an end to it. As he drove he thought about getting her coffee, but decided it would be better to stop for it on his way back, so he pulled into the parking lot of his run-down apartment complex as planned.

From that point, however, any plans he had were out the window.

As Shawn turned into his typical parking space, he couldn’t help but notice a familiarly burly, blond-haired man standing in the spot and thus blocking Shawn’s path. Axel. Shawn froze, but he did his best to feign nonchalance as he shifted the Jeep into park and slid out of the driver’s seat. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his skin instantaneously crawling in response to the casual smile that crossed Axel’s mouth.

“I want to talk about the stunt you pulled with Damon at the bar the other night.” 

Shawn sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. That little shit swore he wouldn’t say anything. “What about the stunt you pulled with me? Interrupting one of my fights to get some bullshit form of revenge because you still can’t stand that I beat you?”

Axel’s jaw clenched. “Is that why you ran the second I showed up?” he interrogated, sarcasm dripping from his lips. “Because you really seemed confident in your ability to beat me then.”

“That’s not how it happened, and you know it. You had me triple-teamed.”

“Get over yourself.”

“Could say the same to you,” Shawn laughed, but he took a threatening step closer to the blond in front of him. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”

The same sickening smile made its way back onto Axel’s face, and though he’d never admit it, it began to make Shawn uneasy. “I was waiting to confront you again until I had leverage.”

“What leverage?” Shawn spat, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Damon said your little dispute that night was over some girl he’d never seen before.” 

Shawn ignored his instigative words. “Wouldn’t call it a ‘dispute’ so much as him getting his ass kicked. And for good reason.”

“Maybe so,” Axel conceded. “But we can agree that it was over a girl?” Shawn was quiet, but he swallowed heavily. “Right,” Axel continued, seemingly accepting Shawn’s silence as an affirmative. “So I had him and Rocco do some investigating, and--” Shawn’s heart plummeted. 

“What, have you been following her?” Shawn interrupted, fists clenched at his sides.

Axel lit up with a sort of delighted expression, his sharp blue eyes unwavering from Shawn’s face. “So there is a girl.”

Shawn strode toward his challenger until he was less than a foot away from his face. “Did you have her followed?” he repeated furiously.

“At first,” Axel admitted, and Shawn’s blood boiled hot. “But then Raven decided to help us out. You know she’s never been one to keep her mouth shut.”

Raven. Of course. “I swear to God, Axel. She is a nice person and she doesn’t deserve any part of this. You lay a single fucking finger on her and I’ll--”

“Easy, Mendes,” Axel laughed, much to Shawn’s chagrin. “I don’t know what she looks like. Hell, I don’t even know her name. But I guess Raven was right when she told me that you really seem to give a shit about her.”

Shawn scoffed, incredulous. “What, are you running around with Raven now?”

“Jealous?” Axel smirked.

Shawn could only laugh at the assertion. “You two deserve each other, that’s all.”

“You’ve been there too, Mendes. What does that say about you?”

“What do you want?” Shawn demanded, ignoring Axel’s antics, but the phrase was flat and menacing; less of a question and more of a command. “Stop wasting my time talking about whatever leverage you think you have and tell me what you actually want.”

“Nothing, really,” Axel replied, making a dramatic show of shrugging his shoulders. “Just came to give you fair warning that the next time you decide to take on me or one of my guys outside of Dynamite, we have a pretty good idea of how to get back at you. And I have a feeling it’d hurt a hell of a lot more than a punch to the face.”

“Do not threaten her.”

“I mean it as more of a threat to you. Like I said,” Axel went on, ignoring Shawn, “I don’t know her name or what she looks like, but I could find out so fucking quick if you don’t stay in your own lane. Try me.”

Shawn didn’t realize he’d punched Axel until he recognized the pain in his own knuckles. Or maybe it was when he felt Axel’s fist collide with the corner of his mouth in retaliation. Regardless, Shawn’s mind was overwhelmingly clouded with rage and protectiveness and a thousand other feelings he was too emotional to pinpoint. Mentally Shawn was back at Dynamite, taking on a challenger as he had done so many times before. But now, for the first time in his life, there was a real reason why he was fighting. He didn’t care that he was in a parking lot; no one, not even Axel, would threaten Y/N and expect to walk away from it unscathed. 

Armed with a motivation and an anger he’d never felt before, Shawn got to work. Axel was pinned on the pavement within seconds, thrashing under Shawn’s strength so violently that it was almost funny. 

“Are we done now?” Shawn grunted, reveling in the way Axel struggled underneath him. 

“Behind you,” Axel heaved, turning his head to the side to spit blood onto the pavement. “Cops.” 

Shawn smirked. “Can’t take it?”

“I’m serious, man,” he groaned. “Look.”

Shawn was still tense, but he turned over his shoulder anyways only to catch sight of the squad car Axel was talking about parked across the street. “Shit.”

“We’ll finish this another time.” Axel turned to run off, but not before Shawn could grab him and immediately pull him into a tight chokehold. 

“Why do you keep trying to fight me when I always win?” he sneered. “Give up.”

“Let me go before I flip you over my shoulder,” came Axel’s equally menacing reply, but Shawn knew he wouldn’t have the energy left to do so. 

“When I do, you’ll leave Y/N alone,” he seethed into Axel’s ear. “Got it?”

“If you stay out of my shit, then yes,” Axel grunted, lacking the energy to fight back. He turned to face Shawn after being released from his grasp, his blue eyes narrowed and his lips pulled up as though something was curious or amusing. With his cockiness, it was hard to believe he’d just been in a chokehold. “That’s a pretty name.”

“Leave,” Shawn commanded, not at all willing to put up with Axel’s antagonizing words or draw unwanted attention. 

Once Axel had darted off around the corner of the building, Shawn, not bothering to address the fact that his Jeep was only halfway in its parking spot, ducked his head and dashed towards the lobby of his dilapidated apartment complex. He ignored the throbbing in his lip and the metallic taste of blood on his tongue as he maneuvered his way to the elevator without drawing the attention of the elderly woman working in the lobby, breathing a sigh of relief once he was safely behind the closed doors and en route to his floor. 

Once inside his apartment, Shawn made a beeline for the bathroom. He took in his reflection and sighed; he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. He grabbed a washcloth and wet it under the sink, bringing it up to scrub at the blood around the corner of his mouth that was beginning to dry. 

He didn’t bother to be gentle or work around his pain; after years of fighting, it was something he was oddly numb to. He could see his eye beginning to bruise, and as he clenched the cloth in his hand he noticed that his knuckles were, too. He laughed to himself as he wondered how much worse Axel would look.

It wasn’t until the last of the blood had been rinsed down the drain when realization dawned on him: he’d forgotten about Y/N.

“No, no, no,” he rambled, immediately pulling out his phone to find three messages from her that he’d missed.

12:24 Hey! I just got out of class. I know it’s a little early, so take your time.

12:40 Are you close?

12:57 I’m just gonna walk. Talk to you later.

And then nothing. 

“Shit,” he muttered to himself, dialing her number with no thought of what he was even going to say. 

After sitting through a mind-numbing lecture for an hour and then walking home through a hangover, all Y/N wanted to do was shower, put fresh clothes on, and sleep for the rest of the day. She was just about to test the water temperature in her shower when her phone rang, so she reached for where it sat on the bathroom counter and took a deep breath when she saw Shawn’s name lighting up the screen. She didn’t realize that she’d made the conscious decision to answer the call until she heard herself saying hello. 

“I’m so sorry I forgot,” Shawn blurted. “I promise there’s a reason.”

She sighed as she took in his words, too exhausted to bother with it. “It’s really no big deal.”

“Yeah, it is, though,” he responded. “Can I pick you up in a little bit? We can get dinner and I can try to make it up to you.”

“Not tonight, Shawn. I’m really tired. I’ve gotta go.”

Shawn groaned when he realized she’d hung up, pressing a hand to his forehead in frustration with himself. It didn’t take long before he’d grabbed his keys and decided to make the drive to Y/N’s house; he wanted to give her a real apology, and he wanted her to know that he cared enough to do it in person.

When Y/N got out of her shower, feeling significantly better than she had all day, all she could think about was going to sleep, even if it was only three in the afternoon. She changed into fresh, clean clothes and crawled into bed, heaving a sigh of relief after she felt every muscle in her body relax into the mattress.

It seemed that not even two seconds after her head had touched the pillow, one of her roommates was calling out for her from downstairs. At first Y/N ignored it, opting instead to pull the covers up over her face as though it would successfully shut her off from the rest of the world. But the voice, presumably Brooklyn’s, sounded again, and Y/N knew she couldn’t avoid it. Frustrated to the point of tears, she slid out of bed and trudged down the stairs, griping the whole way.

“You’d better be dying or something, Brook, because if I just dragged my hungover ass all the way down here for something stupid I’m--” Y/N froze as the front door came into view; rather, as the person behind the front door came into view. 

“Shawn?” she questioned tentatively, squinting at the bright light coming in from the doorway. “What are you--Holy shit.” She strode towards him with a newfound energy as her eyes registered the wounds on his face, her hands immediately coming up to hold his chin for a better look. “What happened to you?”

“I’m gonna go upstairs now,” Brooklyn muttered, turning away from her roommate, but the comment was disregarded by both Y/N and Shawn. 

Shawn pretended that Y/N’s wide, concerned eyes didn’t tug at his heart, instead simply shrugging his shoulders and gingerly removing her hands from his face. He turned away to finally close the front door. “It’s not important. Are you feeling better?”

“I saw you a few hours ago. You were perfectly fine,” she cried, ignoring his lame attempt to change the subject.

He sighed, running a hand with freshly-bruised knuckles through his hair, and followed her to the couch in the living room. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for not being there to pick you up from class,” he started, still avoiding the only topic Y/N now cared about. “I told you I would, and I fucked up. I didn’t want you to be mad and think I forgot, or that I was ignoring you, or--”

“I don’t care about that,” she cut in softly. “Why do you look like this?” She shook her head slightly, in disbelief. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he defended, but Y/N wasn’t having it. 

“You do not look like that for no reason,” she challenged, cocking her head to the side. 

Shawn heaved a breath, leaning his head back against the sofa. “I know,” he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just--okay. Remember the night we met?” Y/N nodded. “I told you I was running from a group of guys, one of them being the asshole I pulled off of you. And I told you about the one who’s kind of their leader, too.”

Y/N nodded once again, curious as to where this was going. “A little bit, yeah.”

“Okay, well, he apparently didn’t like that I beat up on one of his buddies that night.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He was pissed off enough to show up at my apartment and threaten the hell out of me about not doing it again. I didn’t like what he was saying, so I hit him,” Shawn admitted, though there wasn’t an ounce of remorse in his voice. He paused. “And then he hit me back. And then...you know. So that’s why I forgot to come get you.”

Y/N inhaled sharply as she processed Shawn’s words. “Why did he wait so long to find you if he was really that angry?”

“I don’t know,” Shawn lied. Y/N didn’t need to know that there were men who had, at one point, been tracking her for the sole purpose of having something to hold over Shawn’s head. He wanted to leave her out of it, for her own sake. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“Well how did you get him to finally leave you alone?”

Shawn sighed, reaching a hand up to the back of his neck. “We saw a cop car parked across the street, so we ran. Not trying to get involved with that.”

“I don’t understand,” Y/N admitted with a frown. “He chased you away from your own match with every intention of catching you and fighting you. Now, what? He’s mad because you defended yourself--and me--from some asshole who happened to be one of his friends? And then he showed up at your apartment to fight you over it? That doesn’t make sense. It’s hypocritical.”

Shawn could only shrug. “That’s just how he is. Always has to have the upper hand on everything.”

“But you’re still going to fight him again.”

“No idea. But if I do, it’ll be the right way.”

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “How is there a right way to fight someone?”

“Dynamite,” Shawn muttered. “Like, officially. In front of people.”

“God,” she whispered, reaching her fingers up to lightly trace over a fresh cut on his cheek. “Who is this guy?”

He breathed out softly. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

Y/N was quiet, and it made Shawn nervous. Seeing the physical effects of his pastime of choice made Y/N realize the true intensity and danger of what Shawn was involved in, and what she was seeing in front of her wasn’t even from a full, official fight--he had people trying to go after him on the side, too.

“What’s wrong?” Shawn asked softly, unable to withstand the silence for any longer. 

“This just scares me,” Y/N whispered. She nervously fidgeted with her fingers, her eyes downcast. “Half your face is busted and there are people, like, after you and you’re acting like nothing even happened.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle. For me, this isn’t a big deal.”

“But I’m not you,” she pressed quietly. “For me, this is a little concerning.”

“You should see the other guy,” he joked, but Y/N just stared back at him, anxiously pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and biting down on it. 

Shawn couldn’t ignore the crease in her brow, and he fought the urge to reach up and smooth it out. “Come stay with me tonight.”

“I-I don’t know, Shawn,” she stumbled, slightly taken aback. “I’m really tired and I have a lot to do and it’s not--”

“I won’t bother you at all,” he promised. “You can do homework the whole time, or sleep, or whatever you want.”

“But I can do that here, too,” she pointed out, the teasing glint in her eyes giving away that she was actually closer to saying yes than she was pretending to be. 

“I just like having you around me,” he admitted, but it was only part of the story. The whole truth was that it would make him feel infinitely better if she was with him, because he could guarantee that nothing would happen to her. He’d never admit that out loud, and he certainly couldn’t mention it to Y/N. He knew it would scare her, and that’s the last thing he wanted to do. 

He watched Y/N study his bloodied knuckles as she contemplated his offer. He couldn’t help but think about the fact that Y/N’s entire essence was the antithesis of his, to the point where it was almost comical. If it weren’t for the fact that she seemed to like him just as much, Shawn would feel selfish for wanting Y/N in his life; like he was dragging her into something he knew she deserved better than. 

Y/N let out a heavy breath, carefully studying Shawn’s face. He raised his eyebrows at her, eliciting a small giggle before she finally delivered the verdict. 

“Fine,” she said, trying to be stern but unable to fight off a smile. “But I’m going to bed the second I get there.”

“Okay,” he grinned. “My car’s in the driveway, so we can leave whenever.”

“Can I have a few minutes, actually? I should probably talk to my roommates before I just leave again, plus I need to grab some clothes and stuff.”

“Of course,” he answered, not realizing how annoyingly nervous he’d been that she’d say no until she agreed. “I’ll go pick up coffee and then come back.”

“I can’t drink coffee right now, I need to sleep,” she laughed.

“Right, okay. Tea then.”

“Okay,” she smiled. “I’ll see you in a few.”

With that she headed up to her room to begin throwing her books, some clothes, and a toothbrush into a bag, but Brooklyn was waiting in Y/N’s room for her.

“So,” Brooklyn started, watching her friend as she moved to grab her backpack from where it sat next to her dresser. “You gonna tell me what happened to your boyfriend?”

“I was about to come find you, actually,” Y/N sighed, softly shutting a textbook that was on her desk and reaching to put it into her backpack. “Have you already talked to Jade?”

Brooklyn nodded, offering a comforting smile. “I wanted to see if she’d know what was going on, but she was just as clueless as me.” She paused, seemingly considering whether or not she was going to continue talking. “I don’t mean to pry, it’s just that the protective friend in me is a little concerned that, the first time I’m meeting this guy, he looked like that. I’m thrilled that you’re happy, at least from what I can tell, but I want to make sure he’s a good person worthy of my best friend.” 

Y/N smiled, and it was genuine. It wasn’t hard for her to understand why Brooklyn would be concerned on her behalf. “I’m going to stay with him again tonight,” she admitted, not missing the way Brooklyn’s eyes widened, silently prompting her for more details. “I don’t know,” she continued. “It’s just so easy to be with him, which is weird because most of the shit he does when I’m not around scares me to death.”

“Like what?” Brooklyn queried, carefully watching Y/N, but she didn’t answer right away.

“Jade?” Y/N called out, pausing to wait for a response. When her other roommate’s voice floated out from across the hall, Y/N wasted no time asking Jade to come to her room; she only wanted to explain this once, which meant she needed both of her roommates with her. 

“Hey,” Jade said, moving to sit on the edge of Y/N’s bed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I just want to tell you guys about Shawn. I feel like I haven’t talked to you both in forever, anyways.”

“Shawn,” Jade imitated. “So he has a name now.”

“Shut up,” Y/N groaned, and both of her roommates laughed. “I really like him, you guys. He’s...I don’t even know, he’s just not like anyone I’ve ever known before. He’s so tough all the time but there’s also, like, this depth to him that…” She stopped, moving her eyes down to sheepishly stare at the floor. “God, I probably sound so stupid.” 

Jade and Brooklyn exchanged looks, which Y/N did not like. “Okay, acting like you’re reading each other’s minds like that is stressing me out,” she laughed, but it was fueled by nervousness. She desperately wanted her best friends to like Shawn; without their approval, she wasn’t sure what she would do.

“You don’t sound stupid at all, and we’re not trying to stress you out,” Brooklyn reassured. “We just know what your last relationship did to you and I think I speak for both Jade and myself when I say that we never want to see you go through something like that again.”

“Shawn is nothing like he was,” Y/N insisted, unwilling to so much as say her ex’s name. 

“If you say he’s not, then I believe you,” Jade chimed in. “I’m so happy to see you excited about a different guy, but I just want you to be extra careful of any red flags. And Shawn showing up at our door all beat up isn’t exactly the image I want in my head of the guy my best friend is spending all her time with.”

“It’s normal for him,” Y/N insisted, then immediately reconsidered as she took in the looks on her roommates’ faces. “Okay, so it’s not normal but it’s not shocking. He fights professionally so it just comes with the territory, I guess. He’s never worried about it, so I’m trying not to be.”

“Another fighter?” Jade interrogated, concern clearly taking over her features.

“I know, I know, but this is different,” Y/N jumped, quick to defend Shawn. Her ex had been a boxer, and so she could understand her friends’ concern over the strangely coincidental similarity the two shared. “Shawn doesn’t just go around looking for trouble outside the ring, and from what I understand his style of fighting is different, anyways. He’s different.”

Jade moved next to Y/N, wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders. “We just want you to be careful,” she said softly. “If Shawn makes you happy, then we’re happy for you.”

Y/N finally looked up at her friends and held out her arms for a hug, breathing a heavy sigh of relief that this long-overdue conversation had finally happened. Now that things were right with both Shawn and her roommates, Y/N felt like she could relax again. “I’m always careful,” she reassured, offering a slight smile once Brooklyn and Jade pulled away from their group embrace. 

But no amount of being careful could have prepared her for what was yet to come.

Thank you for reading!! Feedback makes me very happy.

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Permanent - @nedthegay​ @wronglanemendes​ @the-fandom-ness​ @mendesficsxbombay​

[pixelrose-voidpunk]

PNW gothic

(That’s Pacific North West in case you live somewhere that doesn’t share a name with another notable location in the same country, leading you to use your region name rather than your state because god fucking forbid people think you live in DC)

You go for a walk. It’s the same walk you always do. Today you see someone, he walks too straight and his clothes are too clean. You cross the street and keep your head down. You don’t walk that route again.

There are deer all over the place until hunting season opens. Your cousins complain about it. They’ll be there one day and gone the next. The moment it ends they’re back. It’s almost like they know.

There’s room to breathe, trees in between everything. They refuse to mow down the green belt between one housing complex and the next, between the old folks apartments and the Fred Meyer. There’s direct access to trees wherever you are. You can see the buildings on the other side of the green belt, but when you pass the tree line you see nothing but the dark expanse of towering firs that go on forever.

Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t rain that often up here, unless it’s winter. Actually it’s rather rare, especially in spring and summer. It hasn’t rained in weeks, the clouds collect until you can swear you see them sag with weight. And then it comes all at once, one day where the sky dumps water to the starving scorched earth. Your driveway is flooded, it’s not safe to leave your house. You hear it pounding on the metal roof, your roof isn’t metal, it wasn’t metal yesterday but it is today. The thunder rolls in. You crack open your window just a bit to listen. And just like that it’s dry again. It hasn’t rained in weeks.

Last year the foxgloves were purple. This year they’re pure snowy white. You have no idea what that means but it’s so very beautiful... so... beautiful......

You own five umbrellas. They sit by every door of your house. You don’t know where they came from, and you never use them. You own six umbrellas. You wish you brought one when you left the house, you have so many and it’s so wet today. But you never remember. You own seven umbrellas.

On the Internet you see posts of people fearing the things in the woods, in the fields, on the sides of the highway and in the corners of their vision in the dark on a camping trip. You scoff, safe in the embrace of the forest. Perhaps it’s different back east, but you know that nothing in this forest could be more dangerous than what’s outside of it.

You made the mistake of getting attached to someone normal, getting too comfortable with your cousins new wife, or a guy in your college classes. They seem so normal, so sweet, maybe this one will be different. But eventually they slip up and their true voice scratches through, harsh and grating, tripping over human tongues not built for their hellish language. You were never safe here. It’s not nicer here, they just learned how to camouflage.

The mountain is bigger. It’s always big but it’s getting bigger. The eruption is overdue, they say. When it blows every city on the west side is gone, everyone will die in minutes. You laugh and take a picture, the mountain looks so big and pretty today!

Your doorbell rings, you freeze. No one rings the doorbell, every one of your neighbors has a unique knock. You didn’t order anything, nor are you expecting anyone. You duck down beneath the window, close the blinds, shut off the tv. The doorbell rings again. You press your ear to the door and you can hear their ravenous breathing, the gnashing of their teeth. You text your neighbors but they already know. The next three blocks go silent in a wave. You chance a peek between the blinds of your living room window. Oh god, those used to be children those used to be human... you went to highschool with him. Oh g o d

Your friend hands you a rock. You keep it. You find a rock. You keep it. There’s a rock on your dresser and you don’t know where you got it. You give it to the cashier at the 7/11, the one with pink hair and eyes that are still human. She keeps it.

At 1 am on the dot the coyotes howl. Every night. So many of them. You never find whatever it is they killed. You live in a suburb.

I don’t care if he was your best friend in middle school. I don’t care if you were in love with him. Either he’s dead or he was never what he looked like. None of them were. Hide in the forest. The forest never lies.

A new church pops up on a corner, just yesterday it was an empty lot. It’s an ugly building, with a weirdly large parking lot. It doesn’t exactly say what sort of church it is, some rambling name that looks computer generated. “Church of the love of the cross of Baby Jesus”. There’s never anyone there but you get a pamphlet shoved under your welcome mat anyway, it has you full name written on it. You get an email from a friend you had in high school, she invites you to a charity dinner at the church. You block her on everything you can think of and change your commute to not pass that church anymore.

Everyone you meet is a witch. Sometimes they don’t even notice. Can you accidentally do witchcraft? Is that a thing that can happen? It’s like it’s infectious. But it’s better than the alternative. At least you know the witches are safe. One day you wake up with an altar on your dresser. You’re a witch.

It’s Tuesday and there’s a riot in Downtown Seattle. It’s so bad, the city is trashed, they’ll never recover. The next day no one is even talking about it. you can’t even remember what the riot was about, was there even one? Next Tuesday, there’s a riot in Downtown Seattle....

[aloysiavirgata]

Petrichor

Title: Petrichor

Rating: Explicit

Summary: He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross.

Spoilers: Early S7

Author’s Notes:This is a casefile inspired by many things. The Season 7 timeline is a mess, I don’t know what else to say about that.

Early November in the temperate mountain valleys of southern Appalachia. The ground is carpet-soft with plush moss, and the hidden pools are still riotous with life. Ree needed only a pullover that morning, her doll Cordelia peering out of an old tote-bag stuffed with scraps of bread and feed corn. Her mother sent a lunch for her too, tucked in with her books and binoculars and a thermos of hot chocolate.

Ree in faded jeans and a lavender sweater picking her way over rocks and pine needles and fallen leaves, watching for the birds she can name and trying to mimic their calls. She points them out to Cordelia, who stares solemnly with blue-glass eyes. There are foxes, but they hide still. Ree dreams of befriending them. She can lure some of the deer within twenty feet now, and wishes she were Fern Arable, from Charlotte’s Web.

She takes a right instead of her customary left, wanting to test her new binoculars from a different vantage point. She skips over tree roots and rocks like a mountain goat, scarcely needing to look at the ground to keep her footing. The path curves sharply for a hundred feet before Ree finds herself at the edge of a wide pond, dense with duckweed. It is bordered with stands of ancient pine, with mossy boulders and half-sunken logs furred with algae. The silence is deep, but not frightening. It feels holy, like church. Godlight filters through the evergreens, the color of new peas. Somewhere, not far, falling water.

“Ohhhh,” Ree whispers to Cordelia. The beauty makes her chest hurt a little. She fumbles in the bag for her binoculars, laying Cordelia on a rock. Bread crusts and pencil ends spill from a loose seam. A rattle of deer corn on the stone.

Binoculars in place, Ree spots a heron across the pond, squirrels peeping from between the gold and red leaves of elm and sugarberry. She recognizes a deer she’s seen many times before, with a wide white blaze down her nose. Sudden movement catches her eye - a slim figure with long hair moving among the trees. Ree adjusts her lenses but cannot focus properly; the figure is blurred, always moving among the evergreen boughs.

The heron again. Squirrels. The deer now much closer. Then a pale ankle, a woman’s laugh.

“Helloooooooo,” Ree calls, braver than she feels. “I’m just lookin’ at birds and stuff! I’ll go if you want.”

Silence. 

She chews her lip, uncertain. The woods don’t belong to anybody on paper, but there are chancy folk out here with their own laws. “Cordelia?” she whispers. “What do we do?”

Cordelia offers no opinion. Ree grabs a handful of corn and climbs onto a flat boulder. Just beside it is a little patch of grass, and she hopes the doe will come into it. 

The laugh again and this time it’s much closer, just to her left. Were those fingers at her neck? Ree turns to look but tunnel vision sets in, the binoculars slapping hard against her chest when she drops them. The strap twists at her throat and she gasps, her hands springing open in surprise. She slips on the fallen corn and goes down hard on her spine against the rock. 

The deer steps into the glade, her unusual face cautious but curious. She knows Ree will not make sudden movements like the others do.

Ree, dazed, watched the deer nibble the corn with her velvet lips. She tries to sit up, but it’s like her brain will not connect to her body. Her feet seem very far away. 

Something pulls her hair and she manages a thin cry of pain. She’s freezing suddenly, the world glassy and distorted. Ree opens her mouth to call for help but she can’t; the greenness of the glade is in her throat now, and behind her eyes and inside her blood. The laugh again, so pretty, and then long arms are wrapped around her and Ree thanks Baby Jesus for saving her but oh!

Such teeth.

***

A quick glance in the rearview confirms once more that his hair’s pretty well grown back from the surprise birthday neurosurgery, and at thirty-eight such victories cannot be taken for granted. He tries to peer around the tight curve along the mountain road, but can make out only shadows. The bag of sunflower seeds ran dry twenty minutes ago, but he’s got a couple more in the trunk.

Beside him comes a rustle of paper. Scully’s printed out directions from MapQuest, checking off turns like a shopping list. “Still another three miles before the access road,” she says, not looking up from her trim navy-blue lap. She takes a sip of coffee.

Mulder coughs, says nothing. Things aren’t strained exactly, it’s not that. It’s more a liminal space. Everything’s fine, he tells himself. Everything’s fine.

He  checks his hair again.

***

The town is shabby but proud; the roads are clean and there are no cars propped up on the trimmed lawns. On this block a hardware store, a stone church, a fire station, and a bakery. Despite the Fannie Flagg charm, Mulder expects the local homeowners are dying for a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s. There’s a billboard advertising a newly opened Cracker Barrel, which must count as progress to some.

The Ross home is a small, weatherbeaten clapboard in a stretch of small, weatherbeaten clapboards. Many of the houses have elaborate neo-classical porticoes taller than the actual roof. At the Rosses’, the mailbox is shaped like a dog, with a moveable tail instead of a flag. There are purple balloons hanging limply from its neck. Mulder noses the Crown Vic up the cracked asphalt of the driveway, engaging the parking brake before turning the engine off. 

Scully gathers their files, straightens the picture of Rhiannon Ross paperclipped to the manila envelope. Her little face is joyful in the school photograph. She wears a sweater with purple hearts and has sun-bronzed skin. Her big hazel eyes are laughing, framed by golden braids. 

“You ready?” he asks Scully.

She sighs. “Are we ever, with kids?” 

“Nope.” Mulder straightens his tie. So strange to do these little rituals again, to convey authority and professionalism through a strip of ornamental fabric. 

“You sure you’re okay?” Scully asks him again, fussing with a Post-It. “You know I still don’t think you should have been cleared for this, Mulder. You’re scarcely three weeks past severe trauma, and you haven’t even been back to the office.” She looks up, concern furrowing her brow.

He could tell her that when the gyre widened and spun out, it was she who held the center for him. He could tell her that the cool silver stream of her unvoiced voice stemmed the hellish tide of thoughts and premonition that threatened to drown his sentient mind. He could tell her that her prefrontal cortex was the revelation to the thief on the cross. 

Instead he crunches on a peppermint LifeSaver, washing it down with the rest of his cold coffee. “I get in the most trouble when I’m left to my own devices. You should be glad for a federally mandated excuse to keep an eye on me.”

She smiles at that. “Fair enough.”

They leave the stale air of the car for the fresh autumn breezes of northeast Alabama, the air so crisp it tastes like spring water. Mulder, a devout New Englander, is wary of the South, but cannot deny this to be a beautiful patch of it.

He puts his jacket on as Scully clips several paces ahead of him, bandbox fresh as always. He joins her on the little porch, and the front door opens before they have a chance to knock. Before them is a lanky blonde woman in worn jeans and a striped blouse. The shadows around her eyes look like bruises, lips papery and dry. For 26 years, these mothers have always been his mother, their homes his house in Chilmark.

“Y’all the FBI people?” she asks. Despite her stretchy vowels, brittle tension suffuses her voice. 

“Yes ma’am,” Scully says. They display their badges for her perusal.

The woman nods, then ushers them in. She gestures to a floral couch, taking the chintz armchair across from it. Mulder settles at one end of the couch while Scully, less leggy,  perches at the edge of the other. She is a slim smudge in the pastel room.

“I’m Iona Ross,” their host begins, rubbing a chewed thumbnail across raw knuckles. “I’m Ree’s mama.” 

Behind her, on the wall, are family photographs. Ree has three older brothers. The largest photograph shows the four children arranged on a park bench, smiling in white shirts and blue jeans. Ree is missing her two front teeth.

A man enters the room, rawboned, with the same wheat colored hair as his wife. He’s got on a gray sweater beneath Carhartt overalls and carries a coffee tray. He has big hands with ropy tendons standing out, and it's clear he’s not used to playing host. His face is haggard.

“This is my husband Wyatt,” Iona says, as he puts the tray on the small table between her and the couch.

Mulder looks at the pristine coffee cups and saucers. He guesses this is their wedding china, only brought out for “best.” That it will be carefully placed back into a breakfront after hand-washing.

Wyatt sits in a blue La-Z-Boy, relieved to be finished with his task. “They told us y’all were the best ones to find Ree,” he says in a choppy voice. He reaches out to grip his wife’s hand. 

Mulder, as he always does, longs for this to be true. “I can promise you there is no one at the FBI who will work harder for you,” he says.

Scully smiles sadly in his peripheral vision. “We have the police report, Mr. and Mrs. Ross. But it’s always better if you can walk us through the events yourself.”

“Iona and Wyatt, please,” Wyatt says. “Anyhow, it was Sunday morning and Ree had just got new binoculars for her birthday on Saturday. She, uh, she’s nine now. Real smart little thing, likes nature and all, really likes birds.” His voice breaks. He scrubs at his face with his hands.

Iona takes over, voice raw but steady. “Well, she packed up her little bag with some bird food you know, and her binoculars and some nature books and all. Her doll Cordelia of course, and I made a lunch. She’ll go out for hours in the woods. And whatever, uh, happened it was before she ate ‘cause all the food was there.”

Mulder glances at his notes, just to look at something other than Iona’s desperate face. “The police report says her doll and her bag were found by a pond with the lunch still inside, but her binoculars were missing. The items were found Monday morning by a search party. That’s correct?”

“Yes sir,” Iona replies. “And there was algae all over Cordelia and the bag and the food, even though it was still wrapped up. It was even in the hot chocolate in the thermos.” She looks eagerly from Mulder to Scully. “Y’all think that means something, the algae being on closed-up food? I never heard of it. Maybe it’s like a, whaddya call it, an MO.”

“Unusual details are always good details,” Scully says in her gentle way. “Unusual facts can certainly help narrow things down, Mis- Iona.” She leans forward now, palms splayed over her sharp knees. “I know this next question is painful, but I do need to ask. It says that the pond was searched and that neither Ree nor any of her clothing have been found. But, from the photographs, it seems like there’s a bit of debris in the pond. Logs and large rocks, mostly, and lots of algae and duckweed. Is there any chance that Ree would have gone into it on her own?”

Wyatt gets to his feet. “She ain’t stupid,” he snaps, pacing. “She didn’t do nothing wrong, and despite what you may think, we’re not backwoods morons too ignorant to raise children.” His pain seeps a dark aura into the air, ink through clear water. “Our other three are still fine, you notice. Police report say that?”

“We don’t doubt you at all, sir,” Mulder says. “No one is trying to blame Ree or your family for her disappearance. Agent Scully and I just have to review all lines of questioning to make sure the police have done everything they can thus far. We want to make sure we’re starting from a helpful place as we take over the investigation.”

Wyatt leans against the wall, looking hollow. “Jenny Greenteeth,” he mutters.

Iona, with shaking hands, pours four cups of coffee. “Wyatt,” she hisses. “Not now.”

“Jenny Greenteeth?” Scully repeats, writing it down. “Is that som-”

“It’s an old story,” Mulder says, surprised. “A nursery bogey.”

He is met by three blank stares.

“A nursery bogey is a story created by adults with the specific goal of making children avoid certain behaviors, or to encourage generally good behavior,” Mulder says. He is intrigued by Wyatt invoking the name. “The Namahage of Japan, the Scottish bodach, Russia’s Baba Yaga - all of these legends are about mythical beings who will in some way harm misbehaving children. Sometimes they get specific. Jenny Greenteeth, like the kappa and bunyip, is said to snatch children who venture to close to dangerous water.”

Wyatt is staring at him. “How’d you know all that?”

Mulder spreads his hands in a vague gesture. “These kinds of stories have always interested me.” He feels it best not to elaborate.

“He’s an internationally recognized expert,” Scully chimes in, rather generously. “Can you tell us why you mentioned this particular legend?”

“Don’t mind him,” Iona says, passing around the coffee. “We’re just both about to fall to pieces.”

Wyatt scowls. “I’m telling you,” he says stubbornly. “It’s her.”

Mulder adds cream to his coffee and takes a sip. It’s worlds better than the gas station dregs he just finished. “I know the story of Jenny Greenteeth comes from the north of England and from Scotland. This area has a big Scots-Irish influence, doesn’t it?”

“Yessir. There’s a big Scottish festival hereabouts, and both our families are Scottish from way back. Ree’s named after my Granny Rhiannon. You think that means something?” Iona’s voice is strained, hungry for any morsel.

Mulder shakes his head. “No, not necessarily. Probably not, and I apologize for getting off topic. Wyatt, tell me more about this, uh, theory you’ve got.” He finishes the coffee in a long gulp.

Wyatt rubs his face. “Well, listen. I know how it sounds to me, and I reckon it sounds even crazier to y’all. But growing up around here, every kid knows about the little pools in these hollers. Real deep ponds will spring up practically overnight, I guess ‘cause the ground is weak from all the mining. In the spring you get these real fast streams from the snow runoff. So kids run wild through the woods but they know to be careful. All the meemaws tell ‘em if they aren’t careful, Jenny Greenteeth’ll grab ‘em at the water. She’s got, you know, long black hair and real long arms and green teeth.” He shrugs, a bit sheepish.

“And you think this, uh, this creature took Rhiannon?” Scully asks, managing to sound both compassionate and deadpan at the same time.

Iona and Wyatt exchange a glance.

“Well, there’s a bit more than that,” Iona says, turning her mug in her hands. “Over the summer a woman moved in out in the woods. She, uh, took over some old hunter’s shack not real far from where Ree went missing. Her name’s Tallulah Church. She’s real tall and skinny, probably at least six feet, and I’ll be damned but she’s got green teeth.”

“Green teeth,” Mulder repeats, intrigued. He glances at Scully, who’s scribbling.

“Pale green like jade,” Wyatt says, warming up to his subject. “The kids are all scared of her, call her Jenny Greenteeth ‘cause they know the story. They say the dogs won’t go around there even.”

“A few hunting dogs have gone missing up that way,” Iona adds, her reluctance clearly fading. “Tallulah comes into town every month or so in her station wagon, gets some supplies, then rattles back up into the mountains. She seems okay I guess, just never really talks to nobody.”

“She gives every kid around here the evil eye,” Wyatt asserts, returning to his recliner. “She’s bad news. There’s things going on with her.”

Iona shoots him a hard look. “I’m sure the FBI isn’t interested in a bunch of mountain superstition.”

Scully pipes up. “When you say there are things going on with her, is there anything specific you can point to? Anything stand out in your memory?” 

A glance between Wyatt and Iona. “Just gives me a bad feeling,” Wyatt says. “You ever meet people like that?”

Mulder is curious as to what they won’t tell him, but decides not to create conflict just yet. These things always out themselves, but for now it’s clear he’s learned all he can. 

He exchanges a quick nod with Scully, who has already closed her notebook. “Wyatt, Iona, we’re going to do our best to find out what happened to Ree. It sounds like talking to Tallulah Church may be a good start. If she lives nearby she may have seen something or someone involved in the disappearance.” 

Wyatt snorts. “The police already talked to her. Doesn’t know a thing, they say. Search parties are still out though, and we’re heading out again when we’re done here.”

Scully gets to her feet, and Mulder follows. “Thank you for talking to us,” Scully says. “We’ll review all of this information and be in touch as we can. We’ll let you get back to the search.”

The Rosses rise, hands are shaken. Iona runs her fingers through her hair before crossing her arms tightly back across her chest. “Please bring her home,” she says. “Even - even if…” She trails off, weeping.

Wyatt draws her close, and Mulder and Scully slip past them, barely noticed.

***

It’s just past six by the time they get to their motel, but the sky is black. The parking lot gravel smatters against the fenders as Mulder parks in front of the little office. He gets out to contemplate a luggage cart when Scully emerges. She promptly turns her ankle on the uneven ground, but Mulder manages to grab her by the upper arm before she falls.

“You okay?”

She stares up at him, her breath quick. 

Scully glances at his hand and he remembers to let go. She looks away, tests her footing on the gravel. “I’m good,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“Scully fine, or regular fine?”

She smooths her jacket. “How’s your cranium?”

Mulder goes to the office at that, and retrieves their room keys from the drowsy clerk. A part of him hopes the reservation got messed up, that there’s only one room. But both are available, a queen en suite for each. They’re on the first floor around back, next door neighbors, the clerk says. Mulder swipes the bureau plastic and heads back out to Scully, who has found safer footing on the sidewalk.

He passes her the key. “You want to get some dinner? I saw a Cracker Barrel back yonder.” He drawls for her amusement.

“Sure. I want to take a shower first though. Give you a call when I’m done?”

“Okay.” 

“Okay.”

He wants to kiss her but won’t. He wants to suggest a joint shower to conserve water, but won’t. Her eyes do a quick scan of his face, perhaps reading these thoughts. It would only be fair if she could, really.

Scully grabs her bag and heads to her room. He waits until her door clicks shut before heading to his own.

***

Mulder thought of Jenny Greenteeth in the shower, of skeletal arms grasping at him through the drain. It made the tops of his feet tingle, and he hurried out to towel off. 

From what he’s read, Rhiannon Ross seems like a steady, responsible child, unlikely to go haring off through dangerous parts of the woods, or testing the limits of a slippery embankment. And the algae troubles him, the presence of it on her belongings. 

Mulder dresses in jeans and a t-shirt, pulling a parka on for warmth. He forgot his hair gel, and his head looks a bit like a startled sea creature. Scully doubtless has something in her portable salon.

She meets him in front of the car, Scully-casual in grey slacks and a black sweater. Her hiking boots put her shoulders about level with his ribs, and he is reminded that the love of his life is built on a songbird’s frame. Mulder recalls the fine velveteen skin at her inner thigh, like the breast of a chickadee.

“Nice hair,” she says. 

“Thanks, I’m trying to channel Lyle Lovett.” He strums an invisible guitar.

She slouches against the rough brick of the building, backlit by neon. At her feet are bunches of plastic flowers jammed into the white quartz around the ragged boxwood hedge. “So. Cracker Barrel, huh?” 

“Sure, I figured we could sit in the rockers and talk about the old days. Those kids with their jazz and soda pop, am I right? Spit some chaw, vote Republican. Besides, it seems to be either that or a dubious establishment called A-1 Panda Kitchen. The diner closes at 7.”

Scully wrinkles her nose. “Cracker Barrel it is.”

***

There’s a MISSING! flier of Ree on the table, dog-eared and slipped into a plastic page protector. It’s sporting the same school photo from their dossiers. Mulder pushes it gently aside, feeling like he should apologize.

Scully frowns at the menu, taps at it with an immaculate fingernail. “I don’t see how anyone eats here regularly and lives long enough to reminisce about the old days in a rocker. Even the salad has fried chicken in it.”

He remembers when she would cheerfully put away a plate of ribs, but now she cares about fiber and antioxidants along with her tailoring. And her stupid bee pollen crap. “Aw, Scully, you’re citified. Surely you’ve got some kin in these parts. Hardy mountain folk descended from fleeing Irish potato farmers. You can hand le these vittles, little lady. It ain’t possum.” He considers the chicken-fried steak with interest. It comes with gravy.

“Stop talking like you’re on Hee-Haw.” She looks thoughtful. “I suppose there probably are distant cousins out this way, but none that I know of.”

He blows a straw wrapper past her shapely nose, which she ignores with practiced dignity.

“Pork tenderloin, that seems all right.” Scully closes her menu with an air of resignation. She does not like being fussy with her ordering.

The waitress comes by and he commits to the fried steak over Scully’s clear distaste. 

“Re-myelinating,” he assures her, handing over the menu.

“That’s not-”

“Shhh.”

They amuse themselves with several rounds of a little peg game, and Mulder decides to purchase one before they leave. 

“Mom was pretty calm there, don’t you think?” Mulder drums his fingers on the table. He doesn’t really suspect the parents, but the sad fact is that they’re most often the perpetrators. It at least bears discussing.

Scully shrugs. “Police don’t seem too concerned. Growing up in a house with four kids, I remember my mom keeping her cool in completely insane situations. Charlie had a compound fracture once, when my dad was away. His femur was poking out the front of his thigh, he was in shock, and mom just handled it like a skinned knee until the ambulance came.” She shakes her head, remembering.

“Must be a dominant trait.”

She squeezes lemon into her water, then picks out an errant seed. “Hardy mountain folk. So there’s no body in the pond, she probably wouldn’t have wandered off without her food and doll, and there’s no ransom demand or strange footprints at the site. So where the hell did she go, Mulder? Where’s Ree?”

“I think she was in the water at some point.”

Scully narrows her eyes, suspicious. She twirls a peg between her fingers. “At some point? Not terminally?”

“You know I hate to speculate, Scully,” he says, in tones of wounded innocence.

She snorts. “At last we come to Jenny Greenteeth.”

“It was Wyatt’s idea,” he reminds her, chewing his straw. He is excited by a new monster to mash with Scully.

“Sure, blame the other kid,” she says, with a kind of weary amusement.

“I’m withholding judgement until we talk to this Tallulah Church tomorrow. I’m interested in those teeth.” 

“It’s always teeth with you,” she says. She captures two pegs, then looks up at him. She is well pleased with herself, smirky and bright-eyed.

He doesn’t want to say anything. He wants to find Ree, dead or alive, and go home. But he feels pretty sure he can’t do that until unburdened. Holman Hart’s repressed emotions may have controlled the weather, but Mulder knows his own can control the fate of this case. He brushes his fingers against her palm. “Scully.”

Her expression tightens, but she doesn’t respond.

“We have to talk this out.” He is concerned with where it may lead, but this particular truth is in her. He no longer doubts her feelings at this juncture, only her willingness to do anything more with them.

Scully sighs. She toys with a sugar packet. It amuses and aggravates him that she can pore over dead infants and handcuff mutants to her bathtub with little discomfiture, but talk about emotions and she squirms like a kid in church. 

“I don’t think there’s much to talk out, really,” she says, terse.

She wouldn’t, of course she wouldn’t, and there are times he could wring her swan-like throat. 

“Well, humor me then,” he says, with exaggerated patience. “Because you woke up in my bed two weeks ago wearing nothing but smudged makeup, and we’ve been avoiding any real mention of that. And now that I’m properly back to work, I’d kind of like to know what the hell we’re doing.”

She looks around, like anyone’s listening to two weary Feds on a Wednesday night. “I really don’t see any reason to have this conversation right now, Mulder.” 

The waitress delivers their food and, sensing tension, scurries away.

In the past few weeks he’s thought back to that hellish summer when a bee had saved Scully from addressing the fact that she’d clearly been willing to jump his bones before skipping town. Well, anaphylaxis wasn’t going to rescue her this time. “Why are you being like this?” he asks, as though she’s ever different.

She leans forward, piqued. “Like what? Not wanting to talk about my… my… personal life in the middle of an Alabama Cracker Barrel while looking for a missing child?” 

Her personal life, Jesus fucking Christ. “You’ve been avoiding me other than some medical check-ins since you left that morning, so I’m trying to figure out what happens now. Come on, Scully. It’s not like I left those underwear on the desk for you before we headed out here.”

She blushes, bless her, and talks to make him shut up. “I can tell you that I don’t regret what happened.” Scully applies herself to the tenderloin with an intensity usually reserved for the mysteriously deceased. 

Mulder knows it’s the best he’s likely to get from her at the moment, that he’s pushing her to give him something he can’t even define. But he remembers with longing the intricate ocean of her thoughts, the fractal beauty of them as they wove into his own. He was still bathing in the quantum entanglement of her when she’d checked his pupils that evening, when he’d kissed her in the certainty that she’d drop both her little flashlight and her guard.

Scully had kissed him back like a mermaid with a half-drowned sailor.

He looks at her again, knows that he sees only the surface of her now. “Scully, I’m not asking you to go steady.”

She laughs a little at that, looks up at him with wary interest. “So what do you want, then?”

It’s a damned good question. He has general ideas of lying in bed with her while she declaims on the marvels of the quadrupole ion trap. He would like to map her freckles, like a star chart.

“For now I’m just glad to know you don’t regret it,” he hedges.

She searches the ceiling for inspiration before returning her cool gaze to him. “It was absurd of me to act like nothing happened, to treat you like any other patient since you weren’t back at work. It was easy to ignore what we… what happened. I’m sorry, Mulder.” 

She still can’t say it, he notices. But it’s something. “Your other patients are dead, Scully. So I’m a special case no matter how you look at it.”

There is warmth in her eyes. “You really are,” she says.

***

Scully’s got their peg game in a Cracker Barrel bag on her lap. Mulder had wanted to stockpile cheese blocks and sausages against future car trips, but she had put her foot firmly down. “Do you think we’ll find her, Mulder? Her remains, probably, but still. It would be something for the family.”

He shrugs. It’s hard to separate hopes from expectations sometimes, especially in their line. “I really don’t know. We need to get a better look at the area she went missing, and I’m pretty curious about this Tallulah woman.”

“Children can have green teeth if their mothers took tetracycline during late pregnancy,” she tells him. “It crosses the placenta and binds to the calcium in the fetus’s developing teeth.”

He grins at her. “Only one alternate explanation? You’re slowing down in your old age, Scully.”

Scully bares her little fangs. “Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.”

“Attagirl.”

***

He parks around back this time, right in front of their dreary rooms. “I figure we’ll head out around 9 or so tomorrow,” he says. “Let the air warm up a bit before we hit the woods.”

Scully nods, yawning. “Pond first, or Tallulah?”

He considers this. “I think it’s best if we have the lay of the land when we talk to her.”

“Okay.”

Mulder turns the car off, but they stay in their seats with the inertia of food and time difference and mental exhaustion. Even the lost children they manage to bring home are haunted afterwards. It’s hard to imagine a good outcome here. 

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, turns to him with sleepy eyes. She yawns again, then reaches out to muss his hair. “Come by in the morning,” she says. “I’ll help you out.”

She goes to her room then, the bag dangling from her fingertips. She doesn’t look back at him before she shuts the door.

***

He stretches out on the bedspread, mulling over her words at dinner, and annoyed at himself for the distraction from Ree Ross. What could he have expected from this, though? Scully’s not Diana. Scully wouldn’t flaunt their shared bed to other agents, wouldn’t drape herself over his desk while reading grimoires and classified documents. Christ, he could marry her and she’d probably think a wedding band was unprofessional at work, his uptight darling.

It’s strange for Diana to be dead. He’d stopped trusting her in the final hours of her life, but he didn’t want her dead. She was a rare and capable creature, however dangerous. She was solitary and sleek and fast.

He recalls the choices he’d made what she glided back into his life, her ruthless intellect and legs as long as a midwinter night. He recalls Scully’s face when he swore Diana was playing a long game, all for a nobler cause.

He recalls the dusky labyrinth of her mind and what he saw at the center of it; a beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

***

Diana slips through his dreams again, but not in bridal white, not with the round belly of Taweret. She is dead, but not the dead of his other visions. She is weeks dead, greying and skeletal. He can see patches of bone through her ragged dress but her eyes, her eyes are vivid and whole and the color of cabochon emeralds. They are luminescent in the nightmare forest of his dream, beckoning him. It is a leafless forest, bleak, with bony-armed trees looming over him. 

He finds her in a blackwater creek, standing in the middle of it as the water surges past her calves. She smiles at him with too many teeth. “Hello, Fox,” she says. She bats her lashes. “I apologize for my appearance, but they didn’t embalm.”

“Do you need help?” he asks her, casting about for a long branch.

She shakes her head, hair still lush and glossy. The water rises up her legs.

“Is this real? I mean, are you a ghost or is this all in my head?”

The water whips around her thighs. “What’s real?” she asks. “Perception is reality. If you believe it to be true, it’s true enough for government work.” Diana laughs at her own joke.

A white deer walks up to him, with softly furred antlers like fresh snow. It looks at him with black-irised eyes, wet and bottomless voids. There may be constellations in them. Mulder reaches out to stroke its muzzle as Diana looks on. The deer opens its mouth and dried corn comes pouring out.

The water swallows Diana then, before receding fully. She lies on the bank as he remembers her, whole and striking. Her dead eyes are their usual smoky blue, her dress no longer decomposed. 

He wakes up when the ground swallows her.

***

Morning, bright and chilly in the mountains with light of a purity that never touches DC. He remembers a dream with Diana, with water and deer and a general sense of Jungian dystopia. It’s nice to see his subconscious branching out from its usual reruns of family fare.

Wary of fungal spores embedded in the matted carpet, he steps into his untied dress shoes and clomps to the bathroom wearing nothing else but his boxers. He brushes his teeth in the tiny sink, then wets his unruly hair. 

There’s a knock at the door and he groans. “Just a minute!” he yells around the toothbrush. He hopes it’s someone with the extra towels he asked for.

Mulder clomps back towards the door and, lacking a peephole, he pops it open a fraction to accept his linens. Instead of the housekeeper he’d been expecting, he finds Scully kitted out for a hike, brandishing a canister of mousse.

Cold air sweeps in with her laugh.

“Good morning to you too,” he grouses, ushering her in. He secures the chain when he closes the door.

“Nice outfit,” she says brightly. “What’s with the shoes? Is this a formal hike? I wasn’t sure because you’re not wearing pants, but…”

He scowls, sitting on the bed. “You’re mighty chipper. I’m trying to avoid athlete’s foot, if you must know, and I couldn’t find my socks.”

Scully rummages through his bag for a pair of thick socks, which she tosses to him. She gestures at the bed. “May I?”

“Not if you’re going to be mean.” He kicks the shoes off and tugs the socks on.

Scully sits beside him, shaking the can of mousse. “Thought I could do your hair before we prank call some boys. French braid?”

Mulder stands to pull his jeans up, and the weight shift makes her bounce a little on the mattress. “Let me have that mousse.”

She gestures for his hand, then sprays a lilac-scented pouf into his cupped palm. 

“Thanks,” he says, and scrunches it into his hair. He styles himself before the dresser mirror while she watches, amused.

“You left before my beauty regimen last time,” he remarks.

In the mirror, Scully shakes her head but doesn’t seem bothered. “I made some calls this morning about Tallulah Church. There’s no phone or plumbing up there, but the sheriff’s office said she’s usually right around her home. And the motel clerk drew me a map of how to get to the pond from the access road, then how to get to Tallulah’s.” She waves several crumpled papers.

He pulls a t-shirt over his head, then a fleece. “Aren’t you a busy little bee? Looks like someone’s getting her cartography badge this week.” Mulder returns to the bed to put his boots on.

“I’ve got evidence vials too,” she says, producing them from her pockets. “We’re going to find out what happened to Ree.” Her eyes are big and solemn.

Scully masquerades her tenderheartedness as honor, but Mulder didn’t need a God Module to know why she took that terrible dog in years ago. The depth of cold Dr. Scully’s compassion would shock their colleagues, and he likes this secret knowledge about her. Even Skinner, who reveres her only just below the Constitution, underestimates the fierceness of her empathy. 

“What?” Scully asks.

Mulder cups her splendid jaw, thumb at her sphenoid bone. He kisses the space between her eyebrows, and she makes a small noise.

“We have to go,” she breathes, and is outside before he can stand.

***

Not a word about it in the car, just miles of silence broken only by Scully giving directions. The drive ends in a flat patch of dirt by the forest’s edge, a scrubby path poking out from the ferns and overhang.

“Our little forays into the forest never end well,” she observes. “But at least tick season is winding down. After you, Mulder.”

He pushes into the woods, holding branches back so Scully doesn’t get smacked in the head. “Been a while, though. We’re tougher now. We’re hardened woodspersons.”

“And I have a lighter,” she adds.

He grins. “Show off. Hey, how far is it?”

Scully consults her map. “Well, we’re coming at it from a different angle than Ree would have probably taken, but this is the most direct. Looks like maybe a hundred yards up ahead before it opens into a clearing.”

The path unfolds as she said, and suddenly a storybook pond is before him. Squirrels frisk in the branches and birds call to each other across the glen. The surface of the water is velvety with duckweed, like a perfectly clipped baseball field. Shafts of sunlight illuminate red and white mushrooms at the bases of oaks, the feathers of golden-green ferns. He sniffs the air, lush and tannic.

“Oh, wow,” Scully says, coming up behind him. “Mulder, this is unreal. It’s like a Waterhouse painting.”

They pick their way down to the edge of the pond, startling several fat bullfrogs and a garter snake. “Imagine being a kid here, Scully.”

She shakes her head, admiring. “It’s a Wonderland. I’d be out here all the time too.” Scully crosses her arms, staring upwards with a rapturous expression. “From what her dad said, Ree’s a lot like I was as a kid. I didn’t have my own binoculars though. Had to steal Bill’s.”

“Fuck Bill,” he says cheerfully. “You deserved them.”

They circle the perimeter, looking for...what? He never quite knows. The pond makes gentle rippling sounds as the local fauna heads for deeper water under his scrutiny.

Scully pauses at a section of churned-up dirt. She squats for a better view, pokes delicately at the earth. “They made a mess of this, Jesus. At least they had enough sense to band their shoes.” In the dirt, distinct tracks marked with horizontal rubber band lines around the soles distinguish the CSI team’s prints.

Mulder crouches bedside her, spots something golden half-buried in the soft ground. “Tweezers, Scully?”

She passes them over and from the ground he plucks a kernel of deer corn, half coated in dried algae. “Mulder, look. There are more of them, maybe twenty, all pushed in or smashed on this rock. And most of them have algae on them.” She frowns. “The footprints on the ground over it, they’re not marked and they’re too small for an adult.”

Sure enough, there’s a mess of kid-sized sneaker tracks all over where the greenish corn is, muddy smears on the rocks adjacent. They’re algae-covered as well, and too far from the water for such a coating. He stares, thinking.

Scully, meanwhile, is labeling tiny evidence jars in pencil, filling them with samples of algae and earth and corn. She finds the cap of a glittery marker. “Who processed this crime scene? Ray Charles?” She seals it up, tags it. 

“No kidding. Hey, look. There’s a gap between those two big boulders over there. If you wanted to watch someone and hide, it would be a good spot. You think they searched it?”

She snorts with derision. 

“Me too. I’m gonna go take a look. You stay here. Sit on that rock there, it’ll put you at about Ree’s height.”

Scully passes him a few vials and a pencil, settles on the rock. “I think this is where she left Cordelia, based on the photos, though they were mostly closeup. I don’t remember any good overviews.” Some algae remains on the rock, and Scully looks sad.

Mulder jogs around the pond as best he can, but the bracken is heavy and he has to climb over a few logs. Is it really so crazy to think Ree tripped and fell out here, slipped quietly into the pond and snagged on a submerged rock or branch? Lots of little nibbling things in the water; it happens.

His mind returns to the algae. But if Ree went in, how did it come out? Who stepped all over that deer corn?

He’s between the boulders now, with a clear view of Scully across the way. He walks a little grid by the boulder, looking for bits of trace evidence. Snagged hair, footprints, forgotten belongings, anxiously chewed nails. But there is nothing. Either he misjudged the hiding spot, or the perpetrator has been very mindful of Locard’s Exchange Principle

.

“SCULLY!” he calls, setting off flurries of birds.

“MULDER?” She scans the area where he’s hidden.

“CAN YOU SEE ME?”

“NO!”

He climbs up one of the rocks, waves to her. She waves back from her perch. From atop the boulder, he scans the ground below. There aren’t any footprints but, squinting, he can see trails of dried algae along the edge of the ferns, where the rocky area begins.

He calls Scully over, and she moves through the forest as lightly as the squirrels. He points at his finding when she arrives. “That’s weird, right?”

She scoops some up in a vial, the holds it to the light. “Maybe she was playing at the edge, got her hands dirty, went to wipe them, and slipped.”

Mulder shakes his head. “That doesn’t explain the algae on the unopened food, Scully.”

“It could have been simple contamination. Her parents say she’s out here all the time. If she uses the same thermos and bag, brings the same books and toys, it’s not exactly far fetched to think some of it remained from last time and grew in the sun. Busy mom with four kids, how thoroughly is she going to scrub everything down for a kid who’s always outside? Algae are extremely tenacious, and it was out here in the sun for about 26 hours.”

He gazes at the duckweed, lets his vision swim until everything is a green blur. “Maybe,” he says. “But I want to talk to Tallulah.”

“Greenteeth was my delight,” Scully sings, appallingly off-key. “Greenteeth was my heart of gold.”

“You’re a riot,” he says dryly. Delightedly.

“Exposure to copper or nickel,” Scully says, clambering over a log. “Septic cholestasis.”

He might marry her after all.

***

Tallulah’s little shack looks old as the mountains, with log walls and a shake roof. There’s a tiny porch tacked on the front, and a wall of firewood being gnawed by two spotted goats. They stare at Mulder with their rectangular-pupiled eyes.

He reaches out to pet them and startles when they bleat loudly at his overture. They scamper off behind the house.

Scully pokes the toe of her boot into a plastic bucket, rights it. “Her car seems to be here,” she observes, indicating a battered old Volvo wagon. 

“A European car, no wonder everyone here hates her.”

Scully smirks.

They walk up to the house, Mulder withdrawing his identification. It generally gets a snappier reaction the further West and South it travels, but Mulder is also wary of a demented libertarian streak that runs through the country at odd intervals. Seams of it appear throughout Appalachia, and federal agents of various stripes have been fired on by feistier residents.

Scully, thankfully, is a quick draw and a dead shot.

They don’t get the chance to knock before a woman who must be Tallulah Church stands before them on the other side of the screen door. She’s close to Mulder’s height, thin to the point of emaciation, and pale enough to make Scully look freshly tanned. She has beautiful black hair to her waist, and eyes the color of ferns. They seem too bright in her gaunt, colorless face. She’s dressed in a Huck Finn ensemble of castoff men’s work clothing. On her hands are faded canvas gardening gloves.

Mulder shows her his badge and introduces them. Scully wordlessly displays her own identification.

Tallulah grins widely, her teeth perfect and straight and pearly green. “Well come on in,” she says, turning back into the house. Her feet clomp loudly in their heavy boots.

Mulder glances at Scully, who still seems taken aback by this gawky apparition. He holds the door open and they follow Tallulah into the house. 

The little shack creaks with every step, and smells of woodsmoke and earth and herbs. The interior walls are the same weathered gray as the outside. The whole thing is just one room, with a bed in one corner and a kitchen consisting of a fireplace, a dry sink, and a table with several mismatched chairs. Tallulah is occupying a black metal one, and her impossibly long, thin limbs make Mulder think of Jack Skellington. He can’t tell if she’s twenty or fifty.

“Sit down, please,” she says. “The table’s not much but I reckon it would be weird to offer you the bed.” She smiles again. Her voice is as drawling as everyone else in town, but there’s something different about it, something strangely polished and almost British. 

They take their seats. “Miss Church,” Scully begins.

“Tallulah, please.”

“Tallulah. Agent Mulder and I are investigating the disappearance of Rhiannon Ross. She went missing on Sunday morning. Given that you live not far from the area where her belongings were found, we wanted to ask you some questions.” Scully opens her file folder, pen poised like a hovering dragonfly.

Tallulah levels her remarkable eyes with Scully’s. “No ma’am. I know who Ree is, it’s a small town and she’s out here a lot, but I didn’t see her that day. Real nice little girl though. She feeds the deer sometimes.”

Mulder perks up. “Yeah? We saw some deer corn out where she went missing. Did you see her feeding them that morning?”

Tallulah sighs. “No, I’m sorry. As I’ve told the police, I didn’t see a bit of her on Sunday. Which is sort of odd itself, because she’d always be out on a day like that. Too shy to come up to the house, but she liked to watch the goats. They’re not even mine, but I leave them food and water, so we’re friends now.”

Behind her, on the dry sink, Mulder notices green smears of moss or mildew. Or algae. 

“I know you’ve spoken to Sherriff McLeod already,” Scully continues. “So we appreciate your patience.”

“It’s a terrible thing for a child to go missing,” Tallulah says, shaking her head. “I wish I did have something to tell, but I just don’t. I’ve seen the search parties around - I guess they searched the pond.”

“You say you knew who Ree was because it’s a small town, but I got the sense you didn’t mingle much with the good townsfolk,” Mulder observes.

Tallulah chuckles at this. “No sir, not much, which suits them and me just fine.” She lifts her hands to eye level and wiggles her bony gloved fingers. “They think I’m spooky.”

Mulder smiles in spite of himself. “I know a little bit about that. So tell me, Tallulah, you from around here?”

She shakes her head. “Not from anywhere, really, but I was raised outside Savannah in a rich ladies’ orphanage. That’s why I sound like Dixie Carter.”

“An orphanage?” Scully repeats.

“Yes ma’am. I was left at the Baptist Ladies’ Home when I was a day or so old. Nothing with me but a plastic laundry basket and a gingham tablecloth. They said I was a frightful looking little thing.” She smiles ruefully, showing them her green teeth again.

Scully, true to form, tackles that bull head on. “Tallulah, I’m also a doctor, and I’m compelled to ask about your teeth. Do you know why they’re green?”

An expansive shrug. “Oh, the doctors that saw us there had all kinds of ideas of what was wrong with me, but I never got anything official. Marfan Syndrome, that was one.” She snorts. “‘Course, the other kids heard Martian and with the green teeth they decided I was an alien.”

“There’s a genetic test for it now,” Scully says. “You could find out for sure.”

Tallulah chuckles again. “Thanks, Doc, but it doesn’t matter much. I feel just fine. Always have, and I don’t plan to have any kids. I’m twenty-six and haven’t had anything worse than a cold.”

Mulder watches the Doc jot this down and he returns to the subject at hand. “So you moved here over the summer. Where’d you live before this?”

“Oh, gosh, just lots of tiny towns like this one. I find these empty little cabins, you know, and stay for a while. Then I move on when I get restless.”

“The Rosses said you come into town every so often to get supplies and gas. May I ask where you get the money for that?” Scully looks up to ask this.

Tallulah looks sly. “I don’t know that I want to discuss that with the FBI,” she says.

Mulder exchanges a glance with his fellow narc, who nods imperceptibly to any eye but his own. “We’re just here to find Rhiannon,” he reassures Tallulah. “Not do the DEA’s job for them. Neither Agent Scully nor I wish to fill out extra paperwork.”

Tallulah considers this, glancing between them. “Well,” she says at last. “I reckon you could say I’m real good with plants; I can coax anything to grow. And in boring little towns there’s, uh, a lot of people who like plants.”

Scully looks unimpressed by this attempt at euphemism. “Plants,” she repeats.

Tallulah shrugs. “I’ve said as much as I’m going to on that subject without a lawyer. But anyhow, what’s that got to do with Ree?”

“Just trying to get to know a bit about you,” Mulder says. “Sometimes we find witnesses have seen things they don’t even realize they’ve seen, and talking generally can help.”

“I know everything I’ve seen,” Tallulah asserts. “You live out here like this, you don’t miss much. It’s not like I have a lot to distract me.”

“What were you doing last Sunday morning, then?” Mulder asks.

She shrugs. “Woke up, ate, got dressed. Went over to the pump for some water.” She gestures at some distant point through the back wall. “Then I went looking for some mushrooms and things to eat. Eggs. Lots of greens out there.”

Scully narrows her eyes. “Ree was in the woods that morning too. You’re certain you didn’t see or hear anything?”

Tallulah scoffs. “The woods are pretty big. Might as well say we were both in Alabama.”

“Wyatt and Iona are under the impression that you don’t like children,” Scully says. “Have there been any particular incidents that would make them feel that way? Any encounters with Ree? It must have been irritating to have her running all over the edge of your property.”

“No, she’s all right and besides, it’s hardly my property. Scared of me like the rest of them, but all right. I like the way she is with animals, real gentle and all. Got a kind heart, that girl, and I wish more were like her. But here’s the plain facts. My mama didn’t want me, none of the parents who came to the Home wanted me, the other kids thought I was an alien, and I learned to just keep mostly to myself because I can take a hint. I go walking outside a lot, do some fishing in the little ponds and all, and that’s how I know who Ree is. You know the kids call me Jenny Greenteeth.”

“We’d heard that, yes,” Mulder says, feeling uncomfortably sorry for Tallulah. He knows empathizing with suspects is his weakness, and that it drives Scully up the wall.

“It’s not the first time, won't be the last. But I know Ree’s daddy thinks I hurt Ree. He’s pretty disapproving of my...plant business and I think he half believes that stupid old fairy tale.” She rolls her eyes.

“I saw you had a whole lot of firewood,” Mulder says, shifting gears. “You staying here all winter?” 

“I never know, but I’d like to. Doubt I will though, with this, uh, situation.” She picks at her gloves. “People can start to get unkind.”

Mulder gestures to the dry sink. “Seems kind of damp. Looks like you have some mold or something growing over there.”

The three of them follow his finger with their eyes, where bright green streaks the wall and sink. Mulder sees that there is far more than he originally noticed, spread over much of the wall all the way to the bed.

“Oh, yeah, these places always are,” Tallulah says. “You can always find these old cabins if you look a little, but it’s hard to keep them snug. Part of why I move so much. They just sort of collapse around you.”

Mulder glances at Scully, and they agree in a blink. 

“Well, I wouldn’t move any time soon, Tallulah,” Scully says in her Bad Cop way. “And I’d take a break from business until the situation - as you called it - is sorted out.”

Tallulah looks uncomfortable, but nods. “Yes ma’am.”

“Thanks for your time,” Mulder says. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

They rise from their rickety chairs and head out the front door. On his way past the bed, Mulder opens an evidence vial and scrapes it along the wall to gather a film of algae. If Tallulah notices, she doesn’t remark.

The sun feels over-bright after the dim cabin and, squinting, they pick their way carefully back to where they parked. One of the goats is on the hood of their rental.

Mulder is delighted by this, if only because he can write “GOAT ATTACK” on the return form. He hopes it will find its way across Kersh’s desk and make him chug Mylanta straight from the bottle.

Scully, far more vexed, begins throwing fallen pine cones at it. 

“Nice arm,” Mulder says. “Try bringing your knee up next time.”

She glares at him, exasperated. “Where’s a chupacabra when you need one?”

***

They’re back at the Cracker Barrel, playing Pegs, with Ree’s flier propped up against the napkin dispenser. Scully is picking at an anemic salmon fillet, and eyeing Mulder’s chicken fried steak with disdain.

“You know you want a bite,” he says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes and gravy. 

She looks irked. “I didn’t have time for a run this afternoon because I was on the phone with the eponymous Baptist Ladies.”

“I wasn’t going for leisure,” he says with an air of wounded dignity. “Talked to a lot of people while I was out and about. The crotchety old ladies on their porches love me, I’ll have you know. I’m charming, for a Yankee.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “They just thought you looked good in your running shorts.” She pauses, then looks mortified.

“Oh yeah? How about you; you think I look good in them?” She’s so easy to torment sometimes and besides, he’d kind of like to know.

“Your vanity needs no help from me,” she says primly. “So what did you hear?”

“Nothing official, of course, but there are rumors that the oldest Ross siblings, the twin boys, were getting weed from Tallulah, so Wyatt has it in for her.”

“Plants,” Scully corrects. “Geraniums, probably.”

“Doubtless. Some people think Ree stumbled onto Tallulah’s crop and Tallulah killed her, but given the fact that the geranium sales are an open secret, it’s pretty unlikely.”

“Plus I doubt Ree would know it if she saw it,” Scully adds. 

“She might if her brothers are dope hounds with the reefer madness, Scully. Mary Jane. Grass. Wacky tobaccy. It’s ruining good Christian families.” He shakes his head somberly. “Ganja.”

“Devil’s lettuce,” Scully adds and, for whatever reason, this undoes them both and they dissolve into laughter.

This earns them startled glances from nearby patrons who seem to generally disapprove of their dark clothing and clandestine ways.

It feels incredible to laugh. Less than a month ago his head had been cracked open like an oyster while Scully and Diana played Spy vs. Spy. And here he was now in this awful little town, safely away from all major conspiracies, having had carnal knowledge of the enigmatic Dr. Scully, and he had just won at Pegs.

And Scully thinks he looked sexy in his shorts.

She is glaring at the peg board when he asks about her phone calls. “So what’d you learn, other than a tuna casserole recipe and how to tease your hair?”

“Weird stuff, your favorite.”

“Lay it on me, mama.”

Scully settles back in the booth. Delivering information is her comfort zone. “Well, Tallulah’s basic facts were right enough. She was left on the front steps of the Home in a white laundry basket. By the look of the umbilical stump, she wasn’t a hospital delivery. No one was ever able to identify her parents. But about a week before she appeared, a baby girl went missing from the Home. There were no signs of a break-in, and the baby never turned up. Everyone just assumed her parents had taken her back and the whole thing was swept under the rug.”

Some quick math, and Mulder realizes this wasn’t long before Samantha went missing. He frowns, and Scully’s expression makes it clear that she’s done the same calculation.

“It was April,” she offers gently. “In the South.”

“Go on.” 

“The woman I spoke to said Tallulah did have lots of problems with other kids, but not just for her appearance. She did get teased for the teeth, but apparently she was an aggressive kid. Biting, pulling long hair. They went to the Y once a week for swimming lessons, and Tallulah would drag kids under the water under the guise of playing. She was banned from the pool eventually.”

“Jesus,” Mulder says. “Someone needed more time with Mr. Rogers.”

“Oh, is that how they addressed abandonment issues at Oxford, Dr. Mulder?” Scully asks, archly.

He grins. “Hey, the NHS budget isn’t unlimited. So how’d she end up here?”

“Well, apparently when a kid turns 18 they give them some money and set them up with a job in the community, which isn’t a bad situation. But Tallulah took off at 15, said she was sick of handouts. The Baptist Ladies put the word out, but Tallulah was good at hiding and was 19 before anyone found her. And only then by sheer accident - a former employee bumped into her in Macon, Georgia.”

“Were they able to tell you about her movements at all in the intervening decade? Places she’s lived?”

Scully shakes her head. “No, and there’s no records on her at all. No arrests for anything as minor as vagrancy or trespassing, much less dealing. Her fingerprints aren’t in the system. She’s like a ghost. I was going to call the sheriff’s office to ask about the weed, but I thought better of it. I don’t want to walk into anything unprepared.”

He sighs. “I’d like to look at missing child cases in the past ten years, ones where the kid went missing around freshwater. We’ll narrow it to prepubescent girls.”

She nods. “I’ll see what Danny can scrounge on ViCAP. The Baptist Home is supposed to be faxing Tallulah’s medical records, thin as they are, and I want to see what I can pull out. Oh, and here’s another thing. Marjorie - that’s the woman I spoke with - Marjorie said Tallulah was always going out at night to wander in the woods. Her bed and storage cabinet were always covered with green stains and - get this - what appeared to be gold dust. Her hair was wet and had algae in it, like she’d been swimming in a pond or lake. No matter what they did, she’d manage to get out. Eventually they gave up because she kept returning and it seemed to keep her violence down.” 

Mulder considers this. He’s had an idea since yesterday that he’s been hesitant to voice, but what the hell? “I was thinking about her gloves when we visited this morning.”

Scully raises a non-committal eyebrow.

“Hear me out. All of Ree’s stuff was covered with algae, right? And there was algae where it shouldn’t be at the crime scene and all over Tallulah’s wall. She said she’s good with plants too, right? What if algae grows when she touches things? What if that’s why she was wearing gloves when we came by?”

Scully puts her fork down. “She’s an algae witch?”

He sighs. “I’m saying it’s maybe a...like a manifestation of something else. It’s something she can’t control.”

“Let me guess. You think the missing baby was taken by Tallulah’s unearthly mother and that Tallulah is actually a changeling left in her place. She’s from a race of some kind of evil water fairies, and has stolen Rhiannon Ross as her mother stole the other child twenty-six years ago.”

A slow smile spreads across Mulder’s face. “Scully, are you trying to get me back in bed?”

She reddens, rolls her eyes. “Textbooks could be written about your deviance.”

“Oh, no doubt. But details aside, you have to admit there are some weird details there.”

“All our cases have weird details. But the algae is notable. I’d like to take some samples from Tallulah’s cabin and compare it to the algae on Ree’s belongings. I’ll have to see what equipment the sheriff's office has. We’ll need to send some out for DNA testing to be sure, but I could at least do some microscopic analysis. It could place her at the scene.”

Mulder passes her the little vial he’d collected that morning. It’s fuller than he remembered.

“Sneak,” Scully says, approvingly, sipping at her Diet Coke.

“I know you like bad boys. Apropos of which, why do you think the sheriff has left Tallulah alone about this weed thing? I mean, this doesn’t seem like a hip and swinging town, does it?”

“I was wondering that too. And Wyatt never mentioned it either. I’m also wondering why, if we go with your hypothesis, Tallulah would steal a grade schooler rather than a baby. And Mulder, that cabin was one room. There’s nowhere she could have stashed a child. What’s more, shouldn’t some changeling child should have shown up by now? I mean, by your logic.”

Mulder wipes his plate with a roll. “I admit there are complex facets involved here,” he allows. He has ideas percolating, but they need more time to steep. “But whatever the reasons she may have had, there’s no one else who even seems remotely likely. No dubious strangers in town, no evidence of any kind at the crime scene. No one I talked to today indicated there were any grudges with the Rosses.”

Scully curls back into the corner of their booth, looking modish with her dark clothes and sleek hair. “I hate this,” she says. “Autopsies are so clear. Manner and mechanism. You just read the body and it tells a story. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but it’s always there. Missing persons are nightmarish, especially children.”

Mulder, as he is prone to do, thinks of Addie Sparks. “Missing still has hope, I guess.”

She looks chagrined. “I didn’t think, Mulder. I’m sorry.”

He hates that his missing sister has consumed her life too. Hell, Melissa was murdered and Scully’s moved on in a relatively healthy fashion. “No, don’t be. I just mean that there’s cruelty there, in that hope. Schroedinger’s crime, you know. That last heart of Roche’s is the end of someone’s hope, only they’ll never know.”

She reaches across the table to take his hand in hers. “The sense that an answer exists but isn’t knowable is a miserable feeling,” she says. “Especially if it’s an answer that could redefine one’s status quo if only it were revealed.”

He’s pretty sure she’s not talking about the case now, and traces her fingers with his thumb. “So you wanna kill this thing, then? Perform a post-mortem, write it up, and move on?” He doesn’t want this, but at least he’d know.

Scully draws infinite circles on his wrist with her nail, and gooseflesh rises over his body. “Hope doesn’t have to be painful,” she murmurs to the table. She looks up at him with her summer sky eyes in the fading autumn light.

Mulder’s heart squeezes hard, then expands. “It’s kept me going for a long time, even when it is,” he tells her. 

She nods, lets go of him. “The motto of my first  profession is hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. But I tend to forget the maxim that should drive the second one.”

He has a flashback to scanning the plasma-vivid mind behind that perfect face. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“Dum spiro spero,” she says.

“While I breathe, I hope.” He smiles.

They get the check and go to the car.

***

The drive holds the easy silence of a pizza hangover, the kind when they’re wiped out on Scully’s couch with half-eaten slices and paperwork on the coffee table and floor.

Scully has her feet propped up on the dash and her seat reclined. She has a manila folder on her face, her eyes closed.

He thinks, as he sometimes does of late, about what a shit he was to her after Philadelphia. He’s never asked if she knew then that she was dying, but he’s always suspected she must have. 

All he’d known at the time was that she’d blown him off for a good-looking psychopath, let the man brand her like cattle, then poured her herself into his bed. He’d hated Jerse for the bruises on her face and body and psyche, but the man was under guard and therefore beyond his rage. He siphoned some of it onto Scully instead, for daring to need more than him and for seeking it. He wanted it to be about the desk because he could have given her the fucking desk. He could have easily fixed that without having to fix anything else between them. He could have kept going in a straight line instead of trying to make a map.

He thought of her in Jerse’s arms, in Jerse’s bed. Beaten by Jerse’s fists. He imagined the needle biting into the flawless canvas of her back and leaving that turning serpent there. He noticed that it went in a circle and at the time, he’d let that be about him too.

Later, when he understood that she was even more ephemeral than he feared, fits of self-pity left him wondering why she went for Jerse instead of him. Surely she knew he was available for emotionally destructive sex if that’s what she craved before dying. 

But it turned out that sleeping with her had been like losing his virginity all over again. In twenty years or so, if they were still alive, he might find the balls to tell her that.

***

Scully yawns when he parks the car, batting the folder off her face. “I was awake,” she insists.

“Very convincing,” he assures her. 

She swats his arm, straightens her seat. “I’m wondering if she was dealing elsewhere, maybe giving a kickback to LLE. Someone gets wind, she gets kicked out of town and moves along to another friendly hamlet. You know how these networks run.”

“Local law enforcement,” Mulder sighs. “The eternal bane of my existence. It would certainly explain a few things.”

“And if the Ross twins really are buying, you can see why Wyatt wouldn’t mention it to us. He can throw her under the bus without dragging his kids in too.”

Mulder rubs his eyes. “But how does it all come together? I mean let’s say Tallulah slides into these little towns, she deals to make ends meet. Pays some kickbacks. But why risk it on a serious crime like kidnaping or murder? This is the South, Scully. They do not fuck around, and kidnaping’s federal.”

She shakes her head, still frustrated. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for Danny, I guess. I’ll leave him a message when I get back to my room. The internet connection out here is a nightmare, so maybe he can dig it up while I’m at the lab.”

Scully unbuckles her seatbelt, but makes no move to leave the car. She plays with the edge of the folder. “I know you said you weren’t looking to go steady, but now that I’ve put out I was hoping I could get your varsity jacket.” 

He feels some of the tightness leave his neck at her willingness to play. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a pretty sweet jacket. That’s more than a one-nighter. Maybe if you swing by in a cheerleader outfit I’d think about it.”

She looks up, smiling one of her rare smiles that show her teeth. “I think my mom still has my high school uniform in mothballs somewhere.”

He tosses his phone onto her lap. “Call. Now.”

Scully laughs her throaty, chuckly laugh. “Good night, Mulder,” she says, opening her door. “See you tomorrow.” She passes his phone back and slips into the dark.

He grins all the way to his room.

***

Diana comes to him again that night. He finds her at the edge of a meadow on a large rock, a vivid rainbow overhead. She wears a floor length evening gown of shimmering gold fabric, and her flesh is whole. She pats the rock, inviting him to sit.

“Hello, Fox.” 

He scowls, sitting. “As a manifestation of my subconscious, you could have the decency not to call me Fox.”

She laughs. “As an alleged manifestation of your subconscious, maybe you just want to be acknowledged as a fox by a desirable woman. How is Agent Scully this evening?”

“Spare me. Nice dress, Diana.”

She stands up and twirls. The gown flares out from her graceful waist into a narrow bell. Her feet are bare. “It is, isn’t it? It’s cloth of gold. Very Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think.”

“Is it heavy?”

Diana sits back down. “Oh, yes. Terribly heavy. And costly.”

He rubs it between his fingers. The fabric is stiff and itchy, like tweed. “Well, nothing’s too expensive when you’re dead, I guess.”

“Not expensive. Costly,” she corrects.

He furrows his brow. “Okay. What’s the difference?”

She shrugs. “It’s just that the cheapest way to pay is usually money. Some things cost much more than money. Surely you know that by now. But there’s no need to be dour, Fox. It’s beautiful out, and look at the rainbow.” 

He does. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me,” he sings softly. Even in his dreams his voice is terrible.

Diana gets to her feet again, spinning in the grass. She starts to twirl faster, her hair whipping out around her. Her skin greys again, her face turning cadaverous, and little crawling things flying from her into the grass.

Mulder scuttles back from her on the rock, repulsed but captivated as she becomes a formless blur. 

Then she stops, stares at him from her cavernous eye sockets. Her bony chest is panting.

“Diana?” he breathes. 

She steps towards him and flickers back to her earlier smooth-skinned appearance.

Step.

Flicker.

Step.

Flicker.

He is transfixed.

“Is it real, or is it Memorex?” she muses.

Step.

Flicker.

He wakes up gasping before she can touch him.

***

He’d hoped this kind of shit would end with his neurosurgery, but apparently his subconscious is tenacious. Unless it’s not his subconscious, in which case he needs to get some tips from Scully, who sees an awful lot of ghosts for someone who doesn’t believe in them.

Yawning, he gets the in-room pot gurgling and clunking with whatever factory sweepings pass for coffee in the sticks. The room fills with an aroma reminiscent of burning tires.

A knock at the door distracts him and he opens it to find Scully holding two styrofoam cups steaming from their plastic lids. “Went for a quick run,” she says, stepping under his arm into the room.

He shuts the door.

“Mulder, prop that door open. It smells like wet asphalt in here.” She sets the cups down and turns the coffee pot off with a look of contempt.

“Ah, Scully,” he says, sipping from the cup marked M.

“You can take the car today,” she says. “Someone from the sheriff’s office is giving me a lift to the lab in Huntsville. It’s about an hour each way, so I doubt I’ll be back before dark. What are your plans?”

“I want to talk to Tallulah again,” he says. 

“Watch out for those goats,” she warns darkly. “I think the little one cost us the deposit.”

“I’ll bring pine cones.”

Scully frowns, steps closer to him. “Mulder, you don’t look so good. Are you feeling alright? Maybe you should have them bring her into the station for questioning instead.”

He waves her off. “Bed’s not great,” he says. “I’m just tossing and turning some, but the coffee should perk me up.” He takes a large gulp. “Mmmm, perky.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re a liar, but if I try to actually examine you you’re just going to be cranky or perverted. At least make sure your phone’s charged so you can call me if you keel over or something.”

He pouts, preemptively deprived of the opportunity for a predictable playing doctor joke. Damn her. “You suck the fun out of everything,” he informs her, sitting on the bed.

She walks over to him, standing between his knees. She puts her empty coffee cup on the night stand, then grips his t-shirt with both hands.

He swallows.

“As your physician, I ask that you try not to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion,” Scully says. Her mouth is inches away. She shakes his shirt for good measure before leaving.

He goes to the shower and stays there for some time.

***

Mulder stops off at the farm store where Scully obtained the coffee. He selects a raspberry danish, then adds a loaf of fresh bread and some local milk in a quaint glass bottle. 

“Five dollar deposit on the bottle,” the clerk informs him. Fahv dahlah dipawsit.

“What’s it made of, crystal?” he grouses, swiping his card.

“You that FBI guy?” the clerk asks suspiciously. “It’s pasteurized, it’s perfectly legal milk.You can test it.” 

“It seems fine,” Mulder assures her. He’d had no idea that there was a black market in milk. He takes his bag and makes for the door.

“It’s not homogenized though,” she calls after him. 

Mulder takes his unhomogenized, perfectly legal milk up into the mountains.

***

Tallulah’s chopping wood when he pulls up. She has on the same Carhartt overalls Wyatt did, and thick leather gloves this time. There are splinters and sawdust in her long braid. She’s not a bit beautiful, but has an appealing serenity.

“Hey,” Mulder says to the goats, who have come to sniff him. He scratches the big one behind the ears. The little one makes for the car.

Tallulah straightens up, wipes her wrist across her brow. “Mornin’, Agent Mulder. Where’s your partner?”

“She’s the science half of this outfit,” Mulder says. “She’s peering at things through microscopes and running them through unpronounceable equipment.”

“Like that algae you scraped off my wall?” Tallulah sounds amused.

“That would be one of the things, yes.”

She frowns thoughtfully. “You sure that doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment?”

“California v. Greenwood says I can search your trash,” Mulder informs her. “Besides, you invited us in.”

“Like vampires,” Tallulah observes, and adds the split wood to her growing pile.

Mulder holds out the bag containing the bread and milk. He ate the danish on the way up. “Here,” he says.

She takes his offering and peers in. “What’s this?”

“Call it a belated housewarming gift,” he says. 

Tallulah looks at him for a long moment. “You know, some of the old mountain women believe it’s wise to leave a little offering of such homey treats to the Good Folk. Oh, they go to church of a Sunday and preach the gospel just fine, but come Saturday night, there’s little biscuits and butter at the forest’s edge, wrapped all in leaves.”

“I heard something about that,” Mulder says. “I guess it’s like wearing suspenders and a belt.”

She wipes down her hatchet with a faded bandanna, then puts it in a little storage bin next to the house. “Funny what people believe, isn’t it?”

“Funny.” He doesn’t take his eyes off her, even when the little goat jumps on the hood of his car.

Tallulah opens the milk and takes a deep gulp of it from the bottle. “That’s very good,” she says. “Now your partner would roll her lovely eyes at such a thing as you’ve brought, but she’ll kneel for wafers and wine.”

Mulder doesn’t ask how Tallulah knows this. “There’s a five dollar deposit on the bottle,” he says. “All yours, since you’re out of business at the moment.”

She smiles greenly at him. “Come in, Agent Mulder.”

He follows her up the steps and into the cabin, looking at her round-bellied stove, the faded patchwork quilt on the narrow brass bed. Mulder sees the appeal of this simplicity, a pared down life to strip away all foolish distraction. He recognizes his own romanticization of it, a rich boy with summer homes and an Oxford education wanting to play at Saint Jerome. He also considers that the Unabomber went to Harvard and lived this way too. Minimalism may not be inherently enlightening. 

Tallulah is sprawled in a chair, her steel-toed boots kicked off. Mulder sits at the table across from her, bread and milk between them. A ham and a cleaver are out as well.

“You hungry?” Tallulah asks. “That ham is from Sam Oakley out by the grain elevator. Just delicious.”

Mulder shakes his head. “Can she come back?” he asks, without preamble.

“Agent Scully? Any time she likes, though I’d ask for more of that milk if she does. I’ll pay you the deposit.”

Mulder senses a shift in her demeanor. She’s not the friendly, country orphan any longer. There’s mischief rising in her, something tart and maybe wicked. Her posture is languid rather than awkward now.

“You know what I mean, Tallulah.”

She works on loosening her braid. It’s hard in the thick gloves. “You mean Ree. You still think I know something about that.”

Mulder realizes that she is enjoying herself, remembers that the fay are supposed to love riddles and wordplay. “Well, we can talk about something else. I heard the Ross twins are customers of yours.”

She laughs. “The thing I absolutely love best about people is that they make rules to stop themselves doing everything they long for, then do it anyway while pointing their lying fingers at the next fellow for the same. I don’t really need the money, but I do think it’s funny to watch these fine upstanding people condemn me with one hand and pay me with the other. It’s pleasurable money to spend, and it passes the time.”

Mulder’s anarchic soul cannot deny the schadenfreude. “I notice you used third person instead of first.”

“I don’t make those kinds of rules. I just sell the devil’s lettuce to all comers without judgement. I do like to watch them chase themselves in circles, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

Devil’s lettuce. His neck prickles. “No? What are you then?”

She smiles, and her mouth has too many teeth in it. They seem very thin now. “I’m the apple in the Garden,” she says. “This realm has made nothing but trouble for my folk, and I like to pay back mischief as I can.” 

Tallulah slowly takes her gloves off and balls her hands into fists. She opens them and pieces of gold ore are in them. Closes her fists, opens her fists. She pours the gold onto the table and the pieces are streaked with algae.

He stares, awed. Shaken.

Tallulah holds his gaze. “Do you want some of it, Agent Mulder? Everyone else does, and it only costs a little. Can you offer me a most beloved child? The ring finger of each hand? All the memories of your sister?”

“Where’s Ree?” he chokes out.

Tallulah continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “Maybe there’s something else you want? A love spell?” She winks a green eye. “But you don’t really need it. She wants this as much as you, Mulder. When you kissed her she felt only relief and lust in equal measure. My god, she rode you like it was the Kentucky Derby, skirt around her waist and her breasts tight to your chest.”

Tallulah reaches up to stroke his cheek and he jerks his head away, appalled.

“How do you know all of these things?” His voice is scarcely a whisper and his stomach is lurching.

“A little ghostie tells me,” she says, and mimes an hourglass woman in the air. “Don’t think she realizes she does it though.”

Fingers trembling, Mulder retrieves three iron nails from his pocket. He’d pried them out of the floor at the motel, and now he brandishes them, hoping. Dum spiro spero.

Tallulah looks at them and hisses. “Cold iron!” she shrieks. “It binds my magic!” 

Then she snatches them from his hand and eats them, laughing.

He is too shocked to be frightened.

“Don’t feel bad,” Tallulah says, consolingly. “You’re not the first. Listen, you’ve looked through lots of one-way mirrors, right? Interrogating?”

He nods, not yet trusting himself to speak.

“Okay, well, imagine stacks of it. If you were standing on a tower of it, shiny side down, you could see to the bottom.”

Nods again.

“Attaboy. Now, if you were under that tower, looking up, you couldn’t see through up to the top. Hell, you wouldn’t even know there was a tower. One layer or a hundred would look the same. All you’d see was your own reality reflected back.”

Something is starting to coalesce in his brain. “You… your people are looking, uh, through to us, but we can’t perceive you.”

“Oh, looking down is much more accurate,” Tallulah assures him. “Like how you know ants exist and find them interesting, but they have no understanding that you exist because they’re tiny and stupid.” She looks smug and takes another drink of milk.

“Why are you telling me this?” He hates her, but he still wants her to talk.

She reaches across the table, caresses his hands with gentle fingers before he pulls them back. “Because no one will ever believe you and so it amuses me for you to know,” she says sweetly. “You can see up through the worlds  piecemeal, I think. Bits of the whole, like the Louvre through a keyhole. Your partner will say this was a hallucination brought on by recent brain trauma. Your superiors will laugh at you - at least aliens are masculine and slightly scientifically respectable. But fairies? Oh, dear.”

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, she wears Diana’s skeletal face.

Mulder feels hot bile rise in his throat, but forces it down. “Where’s Ree?” 

“The sheriffs in these silly towns never even remember our bargains, of course. They harass for my little game with the ganja, but then no one can recall why I’ve been picked up, and they apologize and I go. Some like babies, to start fresh, but not me. I like to know what I’m getting. I only take one a year, and they’re good ones. Sweet girls who love the woods and water. I was nineteen before I could make the gold come, so that’s only seven. You’ve seen worse then seven. Remember Roche, Mulder?” She changes her face to remind him.

The bile does come then, and he vomits on her floor.

“Rude,” she says mildly, and water pours from her fingers to wash it away and out the front door.

He fights nausea and dizziness. “Give them back. Give me Ree, Tallulah. Just let me take Ree home.” His hair is soaked with sweat and he’s terrified it will be Goldstein all over again. He pulls his gun anyway. Can she turn it on him like Pusher? Scully will be very angry with him if so.

Tallulah is unconcerned. “I don’t hurt them, you goose. I take them up through the looking-glass, so to speak. It’s beautiful there. It’s safe for them. They deserve better than to live with the people who look the other way for thirty pieces of gold. A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Or is it a Catch-22? I’m not much of a reader.”

“Ree,” he grinds out between clenched teeth. He puts his finger on the trigger.

Tallulah grabs the cleaver and chops her hand off. There’s no blood. “Shoot me,” she giggles, and he passes out.

***

It’s still light out when he awakens in his car, just past two-thirty by the dashboard clock. There’s a glass of sweet tea and a slab of pound cake on the console. Feel better, reads a note in a fine copperplate. Sorry for the shock. Had to run an errand, but you should eat and drink before you drive or you might crash. Don’t worry - there’s nothing wrong with it. But no need to die in a stupid and avoidable fashion. Thanks again for the gift. I might return the favor.

Mulder eats and drinks. He figures if her food is poisoned or enchanted, he’ll be spared explaining to the Rosses that their daughter was kidnapped through an interdimensional portal as a sacrifice to the greed of public officials and the amusement of a wicked fairy.

The cheapest way to pay is money.

The snack is revitalizing and he sits until he feels his blood sugar level out. He wonders if Tallulah would have killed him if he’d met her empty-handed. He wonders if Ree is really alive somewhere, or if it’s just a game.

A headache has begun pulsing deep in his temple, like the throbbing brain of IT on Camazotz. Mulder fumbles his sunglasses out of the glove box.

He puts them on, filtering out the worst of the light. He breathes through his nose, massages his temples like Scully used to do when her tumor became rowdy. He begins to relax, the nausea and pain subsiding. His eyes slide closed as he digests the morning’s events.

“I’m sorry,” Diana says, her hand on his thigh.

He sits bolt upright and she’s next to him, her long legs cramped in the Scully-configured seat. 

“I’m not asleep,” he insists to both of them, looking wildly around. Tallulah’s house, the mountain, the forest - none of it has the surreality of a dream.

Diana strokes his cheek gently with her cool grey fingers. “I’m going now,” she says. “I thought I was helping, making it up to you after a last betrayal. But it turns out…” she shakes her head.

“Diana, wait. Are we here or am I sleeping? Do you know where Ree is?” He hears his own panic and fights it. “Diana, just help me find her. Don’t leave yet.”

She presses her lips to his temple, murmuring. 

“Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;”

Agent Diana Fowley fades away then, into the quiet peace of nothingness.

Mulder never feels himself waken, never feels a shift in consciousness. She’s simply vanished and he’s alone to finish the rhyme.

“Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?”

***

His drive back has a frenzied, febrile quality with saturated colors and echoing sounds. He is sweat-soaked and shivering when he gets back to the motel.

Mulder kicks his boots off and crawls into the bed. He draws the covers up under under his chin and falls away into the dark.

***

He wakes to her light fingers smoothing hair from his forehead. The sky outside is dark and starry, but it’s not even seven.

Mulder blinks, confused. “Scully?”

She’s sitting at the edge of the bed, in her dark trousers and a grey top. Her face is serious. “Mulder, I’ve been trying to wake you for an hour. You were burning up, but the fever seems to have broken. Did something happen?”

Everything. “No. I think you were right. I just came back to work too soon.” He gives her what he hopes is an appealing look.

Scully smells a rat but doesn’t push. She presses her fingers to his wrist. “I want you on antibiotics. I’ll call the pharmacy in the morning. They closed at five.”

He nods. “What did you find on the algae?”

She strokes his hair again and he feels like purring. “Nothing much. There were a few different strains at the pond but only one in her house. And a common one at that. It’s no good for linkage, I’m afraid, though I had them run a couple other tests. Nothing in the medical records they sent either - she’s as healthy as she says.”

“Well, did you get anything from Danny on disappearances?” 

She stops petting him to get up and retrieve a piece of folded paper from her jacket pocket. “I found a dozen that look possible, and six that match the details of this case pretty closely.”

He pats the blanket. “Come back and show me some more of that famous bedside manner.”

She snorts, but returns to her perch. “Here, look. I highlighted the six that look best. Called them too, and gave Tallulah’s name and description to LLE. None of them recognized the name or description.”

Of course, Mulder thinks. Of fucking course. “Betcha we’d get a different answer if we asked people who live there.”

Scully frowns. “What does that mean? You really think police departments from 6 towns are all embroiled in an elaborate web to protect a very low level weed dealer? Mulder, come on. I know you love a nice sexy conspiracy, but I think the best answer is that there’s some kind of drifter active in the area. I say we turn the whole thing over to NCMEC and go home. You look awful and there’s nothing else we can do here.”

He presses his hands to his face. Fuck, fuck. He looks back at Scully.  “I mean this lovingly, but please do not say anything condescending until I finish my undoubtedly insane rambling, okay?”

She narrows her eyes. “I should have let you sleep.”

Mulder props himself up against the pillows. He’s still chilly. “Okay, so there’s this concept of something called the Teind. It’s um…shit.” He stares at the bathroom door for a moment.

“Mulder, when you’re hesitant to share a theory, it gives me grave concern.” She scoots higher on the bed, crosses her legs. “But go on. The Teind.”

“So the idea is that there are other worlds - other simultaneous realms - that are layered over this one. Like a multiverse, okay? Like Schrödinger. You love Schrödinger, right? And Brian Greene?”

She purses her lips.

Mulder barrels ahead. “Okay, so. So one of these realms is what is sometimes called Faerie, or Elfhame. And our world, the so-called Christian realm, is constantly encroaching on theirs. Every seven years the Lords of Elfhame must pay a tribute to the Lords of Hell. This tribute ensures that the Christian realm with not destroy Elfhame and that the Lords of Hell will keep the Christian realm in check. I think that’s what these seven girls are - I think they’re tributes, or possible tributes. Maybe there’s a big pool created, I don’t know.”

Scully says nothing and it makes him nervous.

“Scully?”

She flops back beside him on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. “It’s a prettier story than drowning or murder or sex trafficking,” she says. “I mean sure, it’s essentially a complex pagan mafia real estate kidnaping scam, but it’s still better.”

He pulls the blankets up to his chin.

Scully turns, props herself up on her side to look at him. “What in the hell did Tallulah say to you, Mulder? Because I have to say, this is pretty far down the garden path even for you.”

He wonders if it’s even worth it. “She was able to conjure objects, Scully. Gold in her bare hands.” He has enough sense not to mention the cleaver.

Scully scoffs. “My dad could pull a quarter out of my ear.”

“She said that LLE knew she was taking these girls and she gave them gold for looking away. That the weed thing was just for her amusement, stirring the pot. So to speak.” He grins at his own unintentional joke. 

Scully scoots closer. “Mulder, what am I going to do with you? Don’t you think it’s much more likely that this woman is part of a larger drug and prostitution ring, tasked with procuring children for those up the chain? I believe there could be payoffs - small town cops are overworked and underpaid. But payments to the Lords of Hell? Realms? If she did show you gold, she was probably trying buy your silence as well but didn’t realize you’re too incorruptible to even notice, you stupid noble idiot.”

He feels oddly pleased by this assessment. “Well, can we at least agree that she probably is involved?”

Scully runs her finger down the bridge of his nose. “Yes.”

“And that whatever the source of funds, there are payoffs happening?”

She traces his eyes, his brows, his lashes. “Yes.”

“And that 1977’s Elvis in Concert is grievously underrated in terms of both quality and significance?”

She strokes the corner of his mouth. “Absolutely.”

If he does have a brain infection, he couldn’t care less if it means dying in bed like this. “Get under the covers,” he demands. 

She sits up. “I’m afraid not.”

“No, Scully, we were doing great while you kept saying yes to everything I said. Let’s try again and get back in the groove - can we agree that Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom was a tremendous step down from Karen Allen in Raiders?”

She smiles. “Not even negotiable. But really, I’ve got a fax coming in up at the office and you need to rest. If we get stuck here because you end up with some exotic encephalitis, so help me god.”

He takes her hand as she gets up. “So you’re really ready to hand this off?”

Scully sighs, squeezing his fingers. “Look, the fax I’m waiting on is from Danny. I asked for a ViCAP cross reference on any unsolved sexual assaults or attempted abductions that dovetail with those missing girls. If nothing else, I think there’s a real case there that needs to be put together. It was a good call, Mulder.”

“If I go to sleep like a good boy, will you let me have one more chance with Tallulah?” He bats his lashes at her.

“One More Chance With Tallulah sounds like a Barry Manilow song. I’ll tell you what - I’ll check on you later and if you still haven’t got a fever I’ll allow it.”

He crosses his heart and lets her go.

***

He dreams a memory. 

Two weeks past, and he’s sprawled on his couch while Scully afflicts him with acts of medical science. She’s administering neurological tests, bruising him halfway to gangrene with a pressure cuff, and siphoning off enough blood to keep her bucktoothed sheriff happy.

“Scully,” he laments. “Your healing will be the death of me.” 

“Don’t be such a baby,” she says, with her usual bedside warmth. “You’re a week past a very serious brain trauma, and you refused to stay in the hospital because you’re an idiot. So you’ll put up with me and you’ll like it.”

He does like it. Looping into her mind with that fungus had been nothing like this. Her heart is an open wound that she constantly stitches back together to make it through another day. The amount of fight in her is enormous, and she channels into a broken and thankless world. 

She loves him, and what surprises him is that it isn’t the inevitable pair-bonding of proximity and isolation. Scully thinks about that sticky June day in the hallway too. Finishes the thought, sometimes, pinned to the wall like a butterfly with his fingers in her hair.

Pretty hot, Scully.

She’s bent over him with her tiny flashlight to check his pupils and his tracking, a corner of her lower lip tucked behind her front teeth. She leans forward, her brow furrowed at some minute anomaly. He stares at the arabesque of her collarbones, the two lines that circle her white throat. 

“Mulder, keep your eyes up,” she says in doctorly annoyance.

He does, and he doubts it takes psychic ability to read what’s onhis face

She runs her tongue over her top lip, and it’s like a circuit closes.

His hands are at the back of her neck, her waist, pulling her towards him as he sits up. He kisses her like should have ages ago, reckless and open-mouthed and decisive.

Scully drops the flashlight and kneels next to him on the sofa. She sips at his mouth with her cool little tongue, slides her fingers through his hair. She stops short  at the bandage and pulls away. “Mulder,” she says, ashamed, and moves to get up.

He grabs her upper arm, far harder than he means to. She gasps, and not at all unhappily. He had not seen this in her directly, but he had suspected.

“Let me go,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re not well.”

She’s close enough for him to see her hard nipples through the silk, her dilated pupils. He keeps his eyes on hers while uncurling his fingers from her bicep. 

She swallows.

He reaches out to undo the minuscule pearl buttons on her blouse. He’s always loved the high drama of women’s clothing, like a puzzle box.

Scully says his name again.

“Go,” he tells her, as her shirt falls open. He slips his hands under the fabric to plane her back and waist. He’d touched her here in Antarctica, but not like this. He tongues the tight stretch of her navel, breathes in the hot scent of the skin beneath her bra. It’s astringent with her tea-tree soap, sharp with her sweat.

She’s on her knees still, her fingers back at his stubbled jaw, his earlobes. She’s dipping her head to kiss his hair while she makes little animal noises.

“Go,” he repeats, and she doesn’t.

He unhooks her bra, a simple white satin affair, and she lets go of him long enough to pull it off with her shirt. 

It is with difficulty that Mulder sits back to look at her. Her belly is flat and taut, her breasts full above them. They are lightly veined with the blue of her eyes, her nipples the color of late raspberries. Around them is the fine, crepey skin of her areolae, puckered tight. Her head is tipped forward, glorious flame of hair falling around her fine Roman face, full lips parted.

He’s hard to the point of pain.

Scully watches him watch her, reaches behind her back to unfasten her skirt. She laughs.

“What?” 

“It’s stuck, Mulder. The zipper’s stuck.” She tugs more forcefully, her breasts shifting as she moves.

He half assumes this is the ghost of Ahab at work, denying the FBI the last vestige of his daughter. Mulder pulls at the zipper too, but it doesn’t budge.

Scully reaches under the hem of her skirt and works her stockings and underwear down. She tosses them away like snakeskin. 

His cocks twitches in his jeans with seven years of potential energy. No pretending he hasn’t wanted her since she stripped down to her good-girl cotton panties in a panic, but it’s so much more now.

Pulls his shirt off, then tugs her onto his lap. She’s infertile and knows his medical records better than he does, but he asks anyway. “Condom?”

She shakes her head, runs her light hands over his chest. He could come from this alone, the weight of her bare ass on his lap and the sensory overload of breasts and hands and scent.

He groans when she sucks at the tender skin below his ear. “Scully, I’m pushing forty and I think it’s only fair to warn you that-“

She’s opened the fly of his jeans. Mulder raises his hips, Scully still on his lap, to work them down with his boxers. The cool air on his cock is torment.

Time slows, drips like honey, then stalls entirely. Scully’s eyes are wide, focused, as she moves herself over and around him. Her head rolls to the side, then forward. She sighs something blasphemous from flushed lips.

Mulder bites his tongue until it bleeds to ensure he’ll last longer than the average teenager. Perhaps her next thesis can be on the frictionless surface of her own body, the impossibly slick heat of it. He wants to taste her too, but that would require not being inside her and god help him, he hasn’t got the willpower for that right now.

Scully’s head is against his neck, panting humid nonsense into his ear while her breasts are flattened to his chest. He holds her at the hips, letting the sinuous flexion of her spine have its way with them both.

He’s embarrassingly close to ending this, and clenches his nails into his palm. Scully bites at his neck, his earlobe, and there’s no resolve left. He groans something mindless as he clutches her body, shudders and twitches as she squirms around him. Mulder holds her tight to his hips, grinding up into her with the kind of surging napalm pleasure he’d forgotten was possible. Her little bare feet squeeze his thighs, and the universe condenses to her hundred and ten pounds of exquisite physiology. His head falls to her chest and he slips out of her with a groan.

He could sleep for days, but instead reaches between them under her skirt to find her clitoris. She so wet his finger slips at first. Scully squeaks, a little chirp, and finds a rhythm with him that pleases her. 

She arches her back away from him, her hips forward, and he is awed anew. Her hair tumbles between her shoulder blades, her breasts bouncing softly as he strokes her. 

He says her name, sotto voce, and slips two fingers inside her. He shifts his thumb to her clitoris, presses his fingers to the ridged tissue of her g-spot. He writes his name there a dozen times.

She whimpers, and he leans forward to draw the hot little bud of her nipple into his mouth. He sucks at it, grazes it with his teeth. Scully comes with a gasp and falls against him, shuddering. She licks his neck, mouth on his ear and his lips. 

He envelops her with his arms and draws the Navajo blanket around her narrow shoulders. He holds her, listening to her heart and lungs as they slow to normal. He smooths her tumbled hair.

She runs her fingers along his bandage again. “Are you okay?” 

He has literally never felt better in his life. He feels like a lord of creation, like Adam striding through the Garden of Eden to survey his dominion. “I’m fine,” he says, in her snippy voice.

She laughs, burrowing closer. “You have a bed, don’t you?”

Mulder slips an arm under her legs and another behind her neck. He lifts her as he gets to his feet, carrying her like a bride. She’s such a central force in his life, the mass around which he orbits, that it is odd for her to be so light. 

He kicks his bedroom door open and lays her out face-down on the comforter. “Let’s work on that skirt,” he says.

Somehow he’d forgotten about the tattoo. The burning red mouth that marked the beginning of their darkest times together, that portal to her lonely trip north. He pushes aside the memory of what he’d said, the photographic evidence that came home with her. There be dragons, the old maps say.

He kisses it and she flinches. He prays it isn’t shame. Or fear.

With careful maneuvering, he breaches the zipper and tugs the skirt away. She rolls to her back again, her body spilled across his dark blankets like a shaft of  errant starlight. He is pleased to note she has eschewed the recent fashion for shaving oneself utterly bare. 

He gets to his knees, pulls her to the edge of the mattress by her hard little ankles. She starts to speak, but he cannot hear once her thighs are tight against his ears. 

In the morning, she will disappear with the dew.

***

Her cool palm on his cheek wakes him and it takes an unhappy second for the dream to snap away. He’s uncomfortably hard and rolls onto his side for some relief. It’s eight by the bedside clock.

“Hey,” she says, sitting down. “You okay?” 

He clenches his left thigh until there’s pain, and it helps. She looks tired, he notices. Drawn and weary from too much bad coffee and too little proper sleep and feeding. He ought to make her take a vacation where she gets wrapped in seaweed and fed organic mangoes by beautiful castrati.  

But for now, they’ll have to manage on motel moisturizer and takeout. “Do I smell pizza?” 

“Indeed. Just wanted to see if the fever was gone first.” She squints at him. “You look a hell of a lot better. Did you take something? I might be able to hold off on the antibiotics; I know what they do to your stomach.”

He stretches. “Well, just in case, thanks for checking my forehead instead of going rectal,” he says. “Sometimes you have a slight sadistic side.”

“When was your last prostate exam?” she asks sweetly.

Mulder sits up. “I didn’t know that was your scene, but I’m open-minded. Let’s go.” He peels the covers back, feeling like he needs a long run to revive himself from the day. He hates being idle for so long, and his clothes feel stale.

Scully realizes she’s overplayed her hand and wrinkles her nose. “Let’s preserve the magic on that for now. You okay to get up, or should I bring the pizza here?”  

He’s not freezing anymore, and his head isn’t throbbing. “I’ll get up,” he says. “I’m starting to 

feel like one of those consumptive Victorian heroines.”

“Mmmm,” she says. “Maybe I should leech you and give you some cocaine for that.” Scully goes to the little table where the pizza box is sitting. She opens the lid, and hot greasy air wafts out.

Mulder gets up and walks over, scuffing his socks along the drab oatmeal carpet. He zaps her with his finger and she scowls.

“Ugh, go back to bed.”

He can’t help himself when she’s his favorite toy and part of his brain will always be an arrested 12 year old idiot. He flips the chair around to straddle it, resting his elbows across the back. “What’s that, mushroom and pepper?”

“And pepperoni on half for you.” Scully disdains the greasier meats herself, but will treat him on occasion.

Mulder realizes he’s starving and rolls a piece up like a burrito, demolishing it in four bites before Scully’s done blotting the grease off of her own.

“I’m not performing the Heimlich maneuver if you choke on that,” she says, delicately peeling off two slices of pepperoni that have contaminated her mushrooms. She holds them out to him.

Mulder snaps them out of her fingers like a trained seal. He rolls another slice up, gesturing with it. “So I’m cleared to go nose about more tomorrow, right?”

She tweaks his nose with her oily fingertips. “You’re certainly equipped for it.”

“Right for the gut. We can’t all look like we were carved from marble, I’m afraid. You’ll have to deal with my hideous deformity as nature presents it, Roxanne.” He eats half his pizza, then wipes his face.

Scully finishes her slice. “Did she really show you gold this morning, Mulder?”

He nods, swallows. “Yep. And you said that woman you talked to told she’d show up after nights out streaked with algae and gold dust. Maybe she was, I don’t know, developing her powers. You said she was missing for a few years.” 

She considers this. “I think indicates that she herself was being abused or exploited in some way from a young age, Mulder. I mean, if you can access it, unmarked gold is a nearly untraceable currency and good in any market. They start giving her little cuts, get her dealing in her teens to build trust and rapport with kids. It’s a trafficker’s dream.”  

He hates that she’s not wrong, and it’s got nothing to with defending his theory. He’s got a reputation as a bleeding heart in many corners, but would happily support supplying child predators as involuntary organ donors. Punching Roche had been a career highlight. 

“You have to concede that the linkage between fairies and gold goes way back.” Diana’s rainbow suddenly makes sense to him, and he feels stupid. “I mean, leprechauns, of course. And Rumplestiltskin - who wanted a baby in exchange for gold, I might point out. The original story of Cinderella features bewitched golden shoes instead of glass. Jack climbs the beanstalk for a golden harp and a golden harp and golden coins; there are dozens.”

She rolls her eyes. “Mulder, for heaven’s sake. These stories are all about wish fulfillment. And gold was the ultimate wish, it’s a universal currency. Of course if people are going to create stories about strange, powerful beings with the ability to fulfil desires, those desires will be about financial freedom. I’d say those tales represent far more about human longing than fairy powers.”

“I saw her do it,” he says, but doesn’t press the issue. “You hear from Danny?”

“Yeah, nothing. It’s like whomever took the girls vanished along with them. No reported drifters, no unfamiliar cars, no uptick in petty thefts or break-ins.”

Mulder jabs at the table with a finger. “It’s not a drifter, Scully. We agreed on that.”

“Right, but if it’s Tallulah, then these girls have to go somewhere. She has to be meeting someone, she can’t just - I don’t know - keep them in her little cabins like a stray dog indefinitely, then drive out of town in her Volvo.”

“Well, on that point I cannot argue. I’m going to talk to her tomorrow, see if there’s anything else she wants to unburden. We need to touch base with the Rosses too, I guess.” He eats her discarded crust.

“I can stop by while you’re charming precious metals out of Elfhame.” She’s looking up at him through her sooty end-of-day lashes, the tip of a pizza slice between her teeth.

His stomach flips. Leave it to Scully to arouse him at the weirdest possible times. “Scully, why’d you leave?” he asks, because he wants to know and because she let him put a chip in her neck, and because she smells like tea tree oil and jasmine, and because he made her drink sardine juice to save her life, and because she shot him once, and because she saved him after having his skull drilled into twice, and because she tastes like saltwater taffy and the sea.

She frowns. “Well, you had a fever, and I wanted to-”

“That morning,” he clarifies. “Why’d you go?”

She sighs. “I suppose I knew this was coming,” she says. “Of course you couldn’t possibly be a gentleman and mind your business about it.”

He’s stung until he sees the smile in her eyes. “I’m only a gentleman in the parlor,” he says. “This is most definitely a bedroom.”

Scully leans back in her chair, crossing her legs. “It’s what I did after Dallas, don’t you remember? It’s what I did to Jack Willis, it’s what I tried to do in Philadelphia that time. My journal to you, when I had cancer, it was just a long Dear John letter, Mulder. When I was in med school, there was this man…” she trails off, staring at the cheap tile ceiling.

Mulder tries to process this. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Scully. You weren’t running after Dallas - they transferred you.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “That’s not what you said at the time. You said I was quitting. You said you would too, if I left.”

He winces inwardly at the memory of what he’d said. “Well yeah, but I was trying to guilt you into staying, so you have to cut me some slack.” 

She laughs, throws a wadded-up napkin at him. “Is that all you were trying to do, Mulder? I remember something else, in the moment.”

He doesn’t tell her that he knows exactly how well she remembers. “You’re incredibly good looking,” he says, with an air of confession. “Sue me.”

She smiles, looking down at her hands. “Mulder, I left the way I did the other morning because I didn’t know how else to leave. I didn’t know what it meant, and I still don’t. Was I… were we supposed to eat breakfast in bed and clean our guns together?”

There’s something bitter in her voice that he sets aside for later. He reaches across the table to take her hands. “Scully, why does it have to be anything? We could have had some coffee, tracked down your underwear together. They’re still in my sock drawer, incidentally.”

She blushes and punches his arm for that.

He laughs. “But seriously. What good does it do to worry in advance about how things will go wrong? I mean, look at me. I’m a total fucking disaster by many metrics, but I get by. I wing it most of the time, sure, but I manage.”

Scully laughs, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Truly a ringing endorsement. But I don’t know what you expect me to say, Mulder. I was a physicist before I was a doctor, you know. So I guess I just leave before entropy can fully take over.”

“I know,” he says. “But you can’t fail at this. There’s no checklist. There’s no test to pass or form to fill out.”

She makes a noise of frustration. “Mulder, do you not understand that that’s exactly the part that’s impossible for me to handle? That I can’t ever know, empirically, if I’m doing all the things that...that...I’m supposed to?”

He stares at her in confusion. “That you’re supposed to? I don’t even know what that means. There’s no supposed to. You just do.” He says this with the confidence of a man whose six-month marriage hadn’t fallen apart, of a man who hadn’t had a one-night stand with a blood fetishist, or an extended disaster with a British sociopath. 

Scully shakes her head. “I make lists and five year plans.”

He refrains from asking her how well that’s panned  out. “Take your shirt off,” he says.

She freezes, startled. “Mulder, we’re on a case, I don’t-”

“Trust me,” he says, knowing she considers it the most dangerous phrase in his lexicon. “You’re stressed. You’re exhausted. I was going to rub your back.”

She smirks. “I think my mom fell for that and got pregnant with Charlie.”

“Indian Guide’s honor,” he says. “I’ll get the lotion from the bathroom.”

Scully eyes him suspiciously, but goes to the bed and smooths the blankets out.

He retrieves the little bottle of lotion and reads it. Scully will have to settle for “Alabaster Gardenia,” this evening. It occurs to him that Padgett would have referred to her as an alabaster gardenia and he rolls his eyes. 

When he emerges, Scully is facedown on the bed, head on the pillow. Her smooth back is bare to the waist of her trousers, where the serpent lives, and her sock feet small and dark. Her shirt and bra are folded neatly on the night table, as though he is an actual masseuse.

Mulder straddles her hips, kneeling, and pours the lotion into his hands to warm it. Close up, he sees red marks from her bra straps on her shoulders and decides to start there.

“Wouldn’t this have been a nice morning?” he asks, working the lotion into her skin. “I could have done this for you. And with better lotion - you know I’m knowledgeable on the subject.”

“Shut up,” she mumbles into the pillow. 

He feels deep, hard knots in her back and attacks them with his thumbs, following the muscles down the sides of her spine. He’s not sure it’s effective, but then Scully groans happily into the bedding.

He’s pleased, working back up to the delicate muscles of her neck and base of her ears. “Is this good?”

“Don’t stop.”

He refrains from innuendo, wanting to prove to her that this is about so much more than sex. He kneads the folded wings of her shoulder blades, her handspan waist. There is lotion on her trousers and in her hair, but he doesn’t think she’ll mind.

She’s dozy and pliant now, breathing slowly. He’ll pet her to sleep like this every night if it suits her, like a little feral cat.

“Mulder?”

“Hmmm?” He traces the tattoo again, trying to bond with it and love it because it’s part of her. The work is admittedly beautiful.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you when I left. I don’t know how to be easy with things like you are.” She turns on her side, an arm draped across her breasts.

“Well, one of us has to have a plan,” he says airily. “Poor Walter’s always been afraid of me corrupting you. I never felt like he was angry, you know? Just disappointed. My god, this would kill him.” He thinks Poor Walter might be more than a touch in love with her too, but keeps this to himself.

She turns fully onto her back now and, to his dismay, works herself under the sheets. “Well, Kersh just thinks you’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“Put it on my tombstone.”

“Of course you’d take that as a compliment. Lord Byron was really awful, but at least we got Ada Lovelace out of him. Mulder, why are you pulling clothes out?”

He hunts for his favorite t-shirt amid the wreckage of his suitcase. “I’m going for a run. I’ll be up all night otherwise.”

Scully frowns disapprovingly. “You really shouldn’t after today, Mulder. Can you make it a casual jog, at least?”

“Brisk trot. Leisurely gallop.”

“It’s AMA,” she warns him, but doesn’t argue further.

Mulder changes quickly while she drowses, limbering himself against the night table where her clothing sits. He opens the door, and the night air is invigorating.

“Hey Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t promise you anything, but I want to try to...you know. This.”

“Okay,” he says, and hopes she’s too sleepy to hear the thickness in his voice.

***

She’s out cold when he gets back, occasional little Scully-snores in the silence. He rinses in the shower, making excessive noise to alert her to his presence.

Mulder dries off and wraps himself in the undersized motel towel, putting his shoes back on against the dubious carpet. He walks over to Scully and strokes her hair.

“Mmmfff,” she says, bleary-eyed. “Am I still here?”

He holds out her shirt. “You’ll want this before you head next door,” he says.

She blinks. “Okay.” Then she promptly falls back asleep.

Mulder is not one to beg. He pulls his boxers on, toes the shoes off, and climbs in next to her. He is delighted to find that she has kicked her socks and trousers off, now clad only in her little grey bikinis.

He strokes the violin curves of her, from her shoulder down the sweep of her waist to her thighs. She sighs in her sleep.

He knows Scully would explain that he’s evolutionarily primed to be attracted to her full breasts and rounded hips. She’d tell him about how pelvic girdle width is an advantageous adaptation for such a melon-headed species.

He’d counter with the Golden Ratio. Sometimes beauty is its own justification.

Mulder snuggles in next to her. If he dreams that night he doesn’t remember. And if she wakes, she doesn’t leave.

***

His alarm goes off at six. Scully is an immovable lump next to him under the bedding, her exposed hair the only sign that she isn’t a heap of pillows or an extra blanket. He strokes the fine vellum of her belly until she stirs. “Time to get up,” he murmurs.

She pokes her head above the comforter and looks at him, confused. “What time is it? Did I spend the night?”

He smoothes her hair back from her brow. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Scully sits up, holding the sheet to her chest with one hand. “Where are my clothes?” She feels around under the blankets with evident agitation. 

Mulder points at the night table. “I put your shirt and bra there, but I don’t know about the pants and socks. You lost those while I was running, but I can give you a hand.”

She puts a hand to her forehead and looks tense. “This is what I was afraid of, Mulder. This… this chaos.”

He rubs her thigh and doesn’t laugh at her idea of chaos. Scully may sometimes think of him as a giant untrained Weimaraner who is either destroying her life or nosing her crotch, but he’s also got a DPhil from Oxford and occasionally he picks up on social cues. He moves the blankets around, keeping her covered, and eventually finds her belongings wadded up between the pillows.

“Here,” he says gently, and hands them to her. 

She nods, biting her lip. “I need to go.”

“Okay,” he says, and doesn’t touch her. “I’m going to get in the shower. Come back over when you’re ready?”

Here smile is lukewarm, but present. “I’ll bring some coffee.”

Mulder tosses her the keys. “Get me one of those raspberry danishes too, if you don’t mind.”

He turns his back to give her privacy, then heads into the bathroom. He must have missed it yesterday, but sees that Scully’s left her little can of mousse on the sink for him. When they get home, he’s going to buy some of those velvet hangers she likes, to keep in his closet. He thinks of Ree, holding out dried corn for her deer. 

They’ve spent so long in the dark together it’s daunting to walk into the light.

***

Mulder takes a scalding shower, burning sweat and dead skin directly from the pores. He scours himself like a penitent until the heat becomes nauseating. When he steps out onto the little rug, the air feels nearly Arctic, and it perks him up. He feels purified of something nameless.

Scully’s lilac mousse in his hair, and he’s back in a suit for seeing Tallulah today. He thinks it’s best to remind her that he has a badge and a gun. He tries not to think about her hand, for once hoping he had experienced a hallucination.

He sits on the bed to tie his shoes when Scully comes back in, carrying a paper bag. She’s got on last night’s clothes still, her hair tucked behind her ears.

“They were out of raspberry, but I got you blueberry. Me too, actually. They looked good.” She holds out the bag, fragrant with coffee.

“Keep the change,” he says, taking the bag from her with happy anticipation.

“You should be doing stand-up, really.” She joins him on the bed.

Mulder passes her food to her, wishing he could make a breakfast-in-bed quip without sounding desperate. “So what’s your game plan today, then?” he asks around a mouthful of pastry.

She licks blueberry filling off her thumb. “Back to the lab, then I’ll see after that. We grew some of the algae samples at different temperatures to see if that could explain it being in Ree’s thermos in particular.” She blinks. “Oh! That reminds me! The lady at the store said to tell you not to forget about your bottle deposit.” 

“Thanks,” he says, hoping it doesn’t incite further questioning.

But no such luck with his inquisitive inamorata. “What bottle deposit?” she asks, puzzled.

He shifts, rolls his steaming cup between his palms. “Brought some groceries up with me to Tallulah’s yesterday. I figured it might grease the wheels a little.”

“Hmmm,” Scully says, and sips her coffee. “Well, it does sound like she had a lot to tell you. Anyway, I’ll be in Huntsville for the morning at least if you need me. Then I figured I’d - we’d, depending on your schedule - touch base with the Rosses, see if the search teams have found anything that hasn’t made its way to us.”

“Sounds good.” He brushes crumbs off his lap onto the floor, and supposes the mice will find them sumptuous.

Scully finishes her danish, clearly pondering something.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he offers.

Scully scoffs. “I’ll add it to my tip. I was just thinking; I did a little research while you were asleep yesterday. Apparently the term name Jenny Greenteeth applies not only to the creature in the legend, but has been generalized in some areas as a name for duckweed. In can make a pond surface look like inviting moss to walk on, like we saw down at the pond where Ree disappeared. Why not just...I don’t know. Why not just warn your kids about drowning instead of making up a - what did you call them?”

“Nursery bogey,” he replies. “The prevalent theory is that most kids will overestimate their abilities against natural dangers. They believe they can swim across a pond, or navigate through a forest, or climb a very tall tree. But if the supernatural is introduced, children are less likely to believe they can overcome the danger. So the deterrent is more effective.”

She shudders. “What a grim way to parent. Though I suppose it’s all just a variant on ‘don’t do that or you’ll die.’ And not so different from the Tooth Fairy or Santa, I guess.” Scully drinks her coffee, musing.

He considers this. He always found Santa creepy in a Panopticon way. “But Santa doesn’t provide a specific deterrent from naughtiness, only a reward for good.”

She sets her cup on the night table, presses her hands between her knees. “Well, there’s Krampus.”

Mulder loves the deranged chaotic energy of Krampus. “Krampus is good.”

“When I was taking German we were, you know, learning all the cultural bits of Germany. And Krampus is a companion of Saint Nicholas, which I thought was just terrible. Saint Nick gets all the credit for presents and just has Krampus do his dirty work.” She shakes her head at the treachery of Bavarian Santa.

He grins. “Santa’s that shitty friend who makes him carry out all the bullying so he can keep his hands clean and be teacher’s pet.”

“Ugh, I always hated that kid,” Scully says. She drinks her coffee, looking dark.

Mulder is joyful. Talking with her like this is the brightest spot in any day and he doesn’t want it to end. But there’s still a lost girl to find. “Well,” he says, slapping his thighs, “we’d best be off.”

She nods, serious again. “Depending on how the lab results look, we might be able to bring Tallulah in for questioning.”

He doubts it will do a particle of good, but they all need something to cling to. “Keep me posted.”

Scully reaches over to pat his hair. Heat radiates from her, and the warm cotton smell of her skin. Her coffee-and-danish breath is sweet in his mouth. “You can keep that mousse,” she says.

Mulder clears his throat. “I’m going to,” he assures her. “So much hold, but not sticky or stiff.”

She kisses him, close-mouthed, and flicks his ear before leaving.

***

The car shimmies up the unpaved road, rattling spent sunflower seeds in the empty Quik Mart cup. He grips the wheel against the uneven drive, against his anxiety over facing Tallulah again. Scully had come undone with Pfaster, her hard varnish becoming brittle and crumbling in the cold. Mulder fears Tallulah may leave him similarly disarmed.

He pulls up the last stretch of road to the meadow below the cabin, and stares in confusion. Instead of the weathered shack is a tangle of kudzu, ivy, strangler fig, and splintered planks. Mulder parks and slowly gets out of the car. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead, picking his way up the path in gripless leather-bottomed dress shoes.

He crouches in the waist high grass, looking for...he’s not sure what. The floor of the cabin is utterly destroyed, existing only as a series of foot-long splinters. Large sections of the walls are collapsed inwards, algae-covered and snarled in woody vines. Tallulah’s few possessions, including her bed and kitchen furniture are gone. The big goat wanders over to chew on a section of the door. 

Mulder stands again, circles the wreckage with his hands on his hips. “Son of a bitch,” he says, kicking at it. He puts his sunglasses back on and stares into the woods.

Typical, absolutely fucking typical. He wants somewhere to put his anger, somewhere righteous and useful, but there is nothing. He longs for the congested grittiness if DC, where he can yell at corrupt officials or aggressive drivers or at least a noisome pigeon. But here there is nothing except unspoiled beauty as far as the eye can see. 

Looking back at the wreckage, he sees something glinting in the bright morning sun. He tugs at a swath of thorny vines hanging over the remains of the porch, and the milk bottle rolls out from beneath the greenery.

Mulder picks it up and sees a slip of paper inside. It slides out when he inverts the bottle. I guess we’re even, it reads, in a familiar hand.

He looks at the paper for a long time then, carefully, sets the bottle back on the ground. He begins running towards the tree line.

“Ree!” he calls. “RHIANNON!”

 Birdsong and silence.

He shouts her name again and again, receiving no reply. Mulder stops to take in his surroundings, never once doubting his interpretation of the note. “REE!”  he yells once more, and has only his echo for a reply.

He paces at the edge of the wood, looking, but there is nothing. Then, a hundred yards or so off, he sees a rock, like the one beneath Diana’s rainbow. He races towards it, loosening his tie. 

She’s still when he gets to her, a small bundle wrapped in a quilt that Mulder recognizes instantly from Tallulah’s bed. He crouches beside the girl. Twigs and leaves are snarled in her cornsilk hair, and her face is hollow and dirty.

Mulder reaches out to touch her cheek. “Hey,” he whispers. “Rhiannon?”

She stirs slightly, then opens her eyes. They’re far greener than they looked in her school picture. He tells himself it’s the light

“Mama,” Rhiannon says. She reaches out a thin, filthy hand.

Mulder gathers her up in his arms, head tucked against his neck. She weighs next to nothing, and he wants to run but is afraid of internal injuries or losing his footing. He moves as quickly as he dares back to the car.

Ree whimpers softly the whole time, her dry little fingers clutching at his collar. She calls for her mother and father.

He comes to the ruined shack and wants to show it to the child, to ask her a hundred questions, but he passes it in silence and arrives at the car. Still holding Ree’s little body close, he opens the back door. She begins to cry and clutch at him when he tries to lay her down.

“Please,” she begs, he can feel his heart break anew  when he pries her away, sobbing, onto the seat. Ree curls into the fetal position under the tattered quilt, mumbling to herself. 

He’d have laid rubber if there were any road to lay it on when he peels off towards town. Steering with his knee, he fumbles for his phone to call Scully, but there’s no service. He swears, flooring the gas.

A thin, awful, wail from Ree and he thinks of Emily dying by inches, dragging Scully down with her to the grave again. Emily’s burning body in his arms, staring mutely at him with her mother’s eyes.

He squeals onto the main road, eliciting a chorus of angry horns, when he realizes he has no idea where a hospital is. Scully’s off in Huntsville and he isn’t qualified for anything beyond CPR.

Mulder remembers the fire station from when they first arrived, and runs several red lights to get to it. Someone throws a rock at the car, but it bounces away.

Ree wails again, sitting up to scrabble at the window. Mulder glances at her in the rear view as he swerves onto MacNeill Street. She is thinner than he realized, and very pale. He didn’t think to check her gums and wonders if she’s in shock.

He calls back a flurry of reassuring nonsense to her, but she seems not to hear him. “I’m with the FBI,” he repeats. “You’re safe, Ree.”

She claws at the glass, whimpering.

Mulder finally sees the fire station up ahead on the left. He swerves across oncoming traffic and pulls halfway into the engine bay, narrowly missing four guys cooking hotdogs on a flimsy portable grill. They rise, yelling and waving their arms.

He’s waving his badge when he gets out, shouting Ree’s name over their indignant bellowing. 

“What the fuck do y-“

He opens the back door, catches Ree before she hits the ground. That’s all the conversation they need. The EMTs are yelling to one another, getting Ree in the ambulance, telling Mulder he’s a goddamn hero but he’d better get his fucking car out of the fucking way.

He backs out along the curb as the sirens scream. The ambulance howls past him, lights flashing, and disappears from view.

Mulder sits in his car for a moment, feeling strangely deflated. Then he gets his phone to call the sheriff with the good news.

***

Scully calls him from the hospital. She met the ambulance and the family there, figuring it was the easiest way to get the details for their report. Mulder is sprawled across the sagging expanse of his motel bed, propped up on one elbow. He is playing solitaire on his laptop as Scully fills him in.

“So anyway, she’d dehydrated and malnourished and had some bad bruises and scrapes, but nothing serious, which is impressive. They’re keeping her overnight at least for observation, but she seems fine, Mulder.”

He drags a queen of hearts across the screen. “Mmm. So is she talking yet?”

“Not much,” Scully says. “She’s still pretty freaked out. From the few things she has said, it sounds like she followed a deer into the woods and got lost. That’s why she didn’t have any of her things.” 

In the background are the beeps and echoes of hospital noises. Mulder finds them strangely soothing. “Okay, so where’d her clothes go? Where’d she get that quilt?”

A frustrated noise from Scully. “Mulder, they’re doing their best to get her story, but she’s very traumatized right now; you should know that. Maybe she found the cabin all collapsed and dragged the blanket out. Maybe it’s a different blanket entirely - this one was pretty beaten up. There’s no sign of sexual or other physical trauma, that’s the main thing.”

He knows it’s the main thing, but still. Still. “Scully, you listed a bunch of conditions that would make your teeth green. Anything that does it to the eyes?”

“Mulder,” she says warningly. “Why?”

 He rolls onto his back, abandoning the  game. “When I found her, I noticed that -”

“No,” Scully says. “Absolutely not.” Her voice is hard.

Mulder closes his eyes. “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” he asks.

“Don’t you dare,” Scully says, her voice a hiss. “Mulder, go for a run or take a shower or make use of the lotion or whatever it is you need to get this out of your system, but I know what you’re thinking and I absolutely forbid you to say a solitary word on the subject.”

He can envision her pacing furiously, black and white and red against the soft hospital neutrals. He imagines holy rage on her Botticelli face. “I won’t say anything,” he promises her.

“Good,” she replies, mollified. “The family wants to thank you in person, if you’re game to head over. I’m hanging out for about another half hour to look at some test results.”

He really, really isn’t game to head over, because he’s afraid he will fail to keep his mouth shut. “Tell them I was recently diagnosed with cranial rectal inversion, and I’m afraid of exposing them to a flare-up,” he says.

“Hilarious. I’ll tell them you turned your ankle during your daring rescue and you’ve got it up on ice.”

Mulder knows the fib is for the family’s sake rather than his, but he’s still grateful. “How many Hail Marys is that lie gonna cost, Dana Katherine?”

“I got a special dispensation from the Holy See for matters involving you,” she says. “It’s like EZ Pass. I go into the confessional, show my badge, and the priest just tells me not to worry about it.”

He’s grinning. “Yeah? You think the Pope’ll write a note to Kersh for me?”

“Even the Holy Father has no oversight over Alvin Kersh. Mulder, I’ve got to run, but I’ll be back at the motel within two hours. Call around for a flight, would you? I really don’t want to spend another night at the motel. Everything feels sticky.”

He turns to his side and pulls his laptop over. “I’m on it,” he tells her. 

She hangs up

“True enough for government work,” he says to no one.

***

Mulder goes for the run she suggested. His feet pound mindlessly against the pavement, past tidy lawns and mom-and-pop stores. He remembers the Samantha clones, the hive of identical girls who were in the world but not of it, and how he wanted to save just one of them. Scully would tell him that good works alone are not enough for salvation, that grace is required first. She might make a Catholic of him after all - he could use a little grace.

He glances through the window of the farm store and resists the urge to stop in. Past the church (CHRISTMAS BAZAAR BOOTHS STILL OPEN!) and two giggly teen girls. He’s coming up on the fire station when a hand claps him on the shoulder. He whirls around, reaches for the gun he didn’t bring.

“Whoa, hey, sorry,” says the guy who told him to move his fucking car earlier that day. “Just wanted to say thanks again.” The man’s about his age, more heavily muscled, and sporting a scruffy beard. His shirt reads VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER across the front.

Mulder holds his hands up in apology. “All good. I’m glad she’s home.”

“Owen Cylburn,” the man says, holding out a hand. 

Mulder shakes it. “Mulder,” he says. “Agent Scully’s still at the hospital.”

Owen hooks his thumbs through his belt loops. “Yeah, I heard she was a doctor. Real nice of her to look in on our girl.”

“You family?”

“Naw, but I live a few houses down and she plays with my son Simon sometimes. It’s a small town, you know? Anyway, I heard she’s doing fine.” Owen looks like there’s more he wants to say.

“Anything else on your mind, Mr. Cylburn?” Mulder asks.

He looks sheepish. “Oh, uh. Well, I guess I heard some talk, you know, about whatsername up in that old shack? You don’t really think she was involved, do you? I mean, I checked in on her a couple times and all, made sure the stove was safe. She seems nice. Just sort of strange.”

Mulder considers this for a moment. “Even if she were, clearing her house of fire hazards doesn’t mean you were aiding and abetting, you know. You do anything else while you were up there?”

Owen’s face darkens. “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I’m a happily marr-”

“Not what I meant. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Owen says, looking confused. “No, just the stove.”

Mulder tries again. “What I’m asking is, well, I heard some rumors too. That Tallulah was selling a little weed to supplement her income. Now listen, I’m not looking to hassle anybody. I’m a legalize it man myself, just trying to see if people were heading up there with any frequency to, uh, go shopping. And if they might have seen anything while they were there.”

“Ohhhh,” is the reply. “No, not my thing but I think I’m in the minority. I reckon she could blackmail half the upstanding members of the town if she wanted to, one way or another. Them or their spouses or their kids.” He shrugs. “It’s a dry town, so…”

Mulder nods. “I get it. Like I said, just trying to see if anyone might have been around, might have seen anything. But not trying to make a federal case of it.”

“Mighty decent of you. But anyhow, all’s well that ends well, I guess. My sister’s a nurse up at the hospital, she says Ree looks pretty good, all things considered.”

“Yeah, that’s what my partner said too. She’s a real pretty little girl, isn’t she? Golden hair, and those big green eyes.”

Owen frowns. “All the Rosses have that hair, but I don’t think she has green eyes.”

“My mistake,” Mulder says. “Anyhow, you have a good one.” 

He jogs off, thinking.

***

Scully’s getting out of a patrol car when he returns. There’s a German Shepherd in the back seat, muzzle against the grating.

“This is K9 Officer Jangles,” Scully says, introducing Mulder to the dog. “She’s new.”

Officer Jangles sticks her head out of the open rear window. Her tail is wagging and her ridiculous ears are tilted against one another.

“Brought Jangles up to see Ree,” says the cop. “She’s my niece. Ree, I mean. My brother’s girl.” He has the blonde hair of his clan.

“How is she?”

“Pretty good,” Officer Ross says. “Starting to talk a little more.”

Mulder is genuinely glad to hear this and says so. “It’ll be nice to have your green-eyed lassie home, I’m sure.”

Scully kicks him hard in the shin with her deadly shoes. “Officer Ross, thanks for the lift. Agent Mulder and I have a lot of paperwork to take care of, so I hope you’ll excuse us.”

The officer nods. “I can’t thank you enough, none of us ever could. Can we call your boss for like, uh, a commendation or something?”

Scully smiles. “That’s very kind, sir, but we’re really just doing our job.”

“Alvin Kersh,” Mulder calls, as Scully hauls him into her room. “Extension 44-”

The door slams shut.

***

She punches him in the arm. “What is wrong with you?” she demands. 

Mulder sits on her bed, which is identical to his. Her room smells nicer though, distinctly Scully-ish. “I’m sorry,” he says. He genuinely wishes he were different.

Scully sighs, rubbing her temples. She sits next to him. “I am covered in dog hair, I have listened to hours of conservative talk radio, and now you are in direct violation of the one thing I asked you not to do.” She leans over to sniff him. “And you smell like a stable.”

“I’m trying to keep my ass shapely,” he says. “I want to look sexy in my running shorts for you.”

She punches him again. “Go...go take a shower. I’ll call around for flights. Maybe we can get out of here tonight.”

“Done,” he says. “There aren’t any until tomorrow evening.”

Scully groans. “Please don’t tell me that. I need to get out of here. The water smells like pencil shavings, did you notice? Go shower though.”

Mulder turns and takes her hands. “I know that I am sweaty and disgusting but I think you’re going to want to hear me out before I go shower.”

“It better be good, Mulder, because you’re competing with Jangles right now.”

“So there’s a hotel near the airport with a day spa. It’s not exactly the Four Seasons, but the website looked pretty good. I thought we’d let Alvin spring for another night here, and we’ll luxuriate in Dead Sea mud.”

She laughs, crossing her arms. “Mulder, you can’t be serious.”

“I'm extremely serious. My treat. You know my policy on my father’s money.”

Scully rolls her eyes, mimes a little hand puppet with a talking mouth. “My paychecks are for living expenses, my inheritance is for my side projects.” She does a credible impression of his monotone.

“I’m glad at least some of what I say stuck with you. Seriously though, Scully. Let me do something nice for you.”

She considers this. “Mulder, your ‘side projects’ generally refer to subverting the government in some way or another. Are you trying to get me in bed again just to lob a stone in the eye of the government?” 

“Yes,” he says. “You are my ultimate middle finger to The Man. That is literally my only motivation here. Come on, Scully. You once told Congress to go fuck itself - surely you’ve got room in your arsenal for a moisturizing salt scrub and Swedish massage.”

“We’re like Bonnie and Clyde,” she says, and bumps her shoulder against his. She’s right about the dog fur, he notes.

“Whaddya say?” he asks. It feels silly to have his heart in his throat over this, to worry that she’ll turn him down like a long-shot prom date. “Two empty hotel rooms in Hooterville on the federal dime while we sneak off to live it up on room service. You know you want to, Bonnie.”

Scully drops her chin for a second, then looks up at him, resigned. “What the hell, Clyde.”

He kisses her hair. “Attagirl. I’ll have you fully corrupted in no time. Soon you’ll be stealing office supplies and blowing off mandatory training seminars of your own volition”

She shakes her head, grinning. “Is this where you remind me that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step?”

He shakes his head. “No, this is where I point out that a journey of a thousand miles is pretty intimidating, so maybe starting with smaller day spa trips is more manageable. Hell, Scully. Even The Pretenders broke it into two five-hundred-mile walks.”

“Go take a shower,” she says.

***

When he comes out of the bathroom she’s sitting in his room with her luggage, looking like a waif at a train station.

“Jesus,” he says, flustered. “Glad I still had a few clean towels.” He rifles through his bag, looking for underwear. He wasn’t expecting an audience.

Scully looks politely away as he tugs them on. “I changed out of that be-dogged suit and figured I’d just pack up and we’d head out when you were ready. I already turned in my key.”

He notices now that she’s in a pair of leggings and a black sweater. Somehow she still looks chic. “You’re in quite a hurry to leave this charming hamlet,” he observes. “Or is it just the lure of the forbidden?”

“Mmmm, maybe both. Mostly it’s the lure of the sauna.”

“Fair.” He sniffs his jeans and, dismayed, pulls them on anyway. Fuck it, he’s a rich man. He’ll take them both shopping. Scully is an indulgence he’ll happily spend his father’s ill-gotten gains on. He’s long suspected some distant connection between his parents’ money and her chip; it would be poetic justice to spoil her.

She curls onto her side in the middle of the bed, watching him dress. “Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

When she’s ready, he knows. When she’s ready. Mulder ties his shoes, then retrieves her mousse from the bathroom. He styles his hair in the mirror above the dresser, waiting.

“Mulder.”

“Hmm?”

“When I was a kid, my Aunt Olive would tell us stories about this farm she grew up on outside Killarney. She lived with her grandparents, pretty staunch Catholics you know, but they believed in a lot of the old stories too.”

He’s listening attentively now, but she has a tendency to be skittish when discussing the intangible. He pulls a pair of tweezers out and plucks at imaginary stray hairs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. After milking, Aunt Olive knew to leave a bowl of milk out for the Tuatha de Dannan. And a slice of bread from the new loaves.” She pauses, thinking. “I mean, I don’t know that they actually believed it, but you know how these things are.”

“Belt and suspenders,” he says.

She chuckles. “Something like that, yeah. Anyway, Mulder, I was thinking about that milk bottle. And then I started thinking about my Aunt Olive’s stories. And I wondered if maybe you bought Tallulah some new milk and fresh bread.”

Mulder puts the tweezers down. He joins her on the bed, sitting in the curve made by her body. He pets her side, her shiny hair, and savors the sheer pleasure of touching her. “It wasn’t super new,” he says. “It was pasteurized.”

“Oh, Mulder,” Scully says. She rubs his thigh.

He stretches out onto the bed, facing her. She has aged with obscene grace. Distilled more than aged, really, he thinks. Refined to a more essential Scully-ness. “Sometimes all that people need is to be seen,” he says. “I figured even if she’s just some weird transient hillbilly who sells weed and tells horrifying lies, she might appreciate a snack.” 

Scully smiles and scoots closer to him. She strokes the bridge of his nose. “Fox Mulder, you big softie.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Should I take that as a personal indictment?”

“You’re a riot.”

He strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t know, when I was a kid I read To Kill A Mockingbird for school, and the part where Atticus said you had to walk around in someone’s skin to know them really resonated with me. I guess I wish I had been extended that courtesy.” 

Scully smiles. “Mmm, I used to think about how I would have made Boo Radley come out.”

Mulder laughs, imagining a tiny, serious Scully laying artful traps. “Like Bugs Bunny?”

She laughs too. “Something like that, yeah. I guess I just connected with the idea of the unknown being concretely knowable if only the right methodology were applied.”

“Nerd,” he says.

“Always. You would have snuck into the house and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Radley. I’m Fox Mulder.’ No tricks for you.” 

He probably would have, at that. “Yeah, but then comes my usual trouble. No evidence, no witnesses.”

She kisses him softly, bumping his nose with hers. “Maybe I need to walk around in your skin more. You say you got to walk around in my head.”

“I didn’t peek anywhere untoward,” he says, and wraps his arms around her.

She regards him seriously. “I trust you. But I do wonder what you saw. I’m not an angel, Mulder.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.” He runs his thumb over her lips, and she nips at it. “You’re incandescent, Scully. Like a lighthouse at the edge of a vast, nighttime sea.”

She looks pleased and shy. “Well,” is all she says. “Well.” She tucks her head beneath his chin.

He holds her there, in this bland little room in the heart of nowhere. Her body is warm and compact and trusting, her fingers soft on his neck. She doesn’t always believe in his ideas, he knows, but she believes in him, and it’s more than enough.

Eventually he rouses her, the promise of more luxurious accommodations his only motivator for breaking this gentle peace. They gather their belongings and head to the car. The sky is purple and orange around them and ahead, an infinite sea of stars. He drives west, towards the setting sun. Scully takes his hand and smiles; a flame in the dark.

[nubnubblr]

If You Do. 31 Game Night Part 2

THEA

         Jae stared wide-eyed at me, Sam looked like a deer in headlights, Jackson frowned at me, even Mark seemed to give me a questionable look. My hands went to my mouth as if covering my mouth was going to force the words back in before Charlie heard them. I quickly dropped my hands before Charlie noticed because that would just cement the fact I was talking about Sam.

Sam hesitantly folded his last finger, I don't think Charlie requested that it was about her because rather than the surprise I thought she would show she looked pissed off. Jackson was the next to fold a finger, which I'm not ashamed to admit send a wave of jealousy through me.

"My turn," Charlie stated through clenched teeth.

"Wait," I shot out before she could ask her question.

"What?" she sighed.

"I think we should reset, you two are just targeting each other and us three will have to take sides, I think it would be better if we just start again and ask broad questions rather than directed ones,"

"Where is the fun in that?" Mark asked.

"I don't know, maybe not being at each other's throats might be more fun than getting mad at each other,"

"Sounds lame, but okay," Charlie shrugged.

JACKSON

         Thea's plan only worked for two rounds, then Mark and Charlie decided to turn on Thea and I. I'm not sure if it was because they were mad at us or because they wanted us out of the way so they could just attack each other. The four of us were sitting around the coffee table while Sam and Jae sat on the couch so that no one got confused about who was out.

"I've never, had an obsession with Jesse McCartney," Charlie stated.

"Dude, I was 12," Thea frowned.

"And yet you still need to fold a finger," she shrugged.

"Asshole," The mumbled but folded a finger anyway.

"I've never, introduced myself with an embarrassing name," Mark stated.

"Embarrassing to whom?" I challenged.

"JFlawless, Wild and Sexy,"

"Okay, I get it," I sighed and folded a finger.

"So much for not attacking each other," Jae commented.

"I've never had a sister," I was a little petty and was trying to get back at Mark, but Charlie also put a finger down. So now Thea, Mark and I were one finger away from losing, somehow Charlie had two.

"I've never competed in a dance competition," Thea huffed, I think she had also had enough fo being targeted.

"Lightning round," Jae cheered.

"Thank god the game is almost over," Sam sighed.

CHARLIE

         "I've never slept with someone I reget,"

"Wow," Thea shook her head at me but folded her last finger and sat up on the couch.

"What? It's not my fault you regret it," I shrugged.

"Competetive you is an asshole," she retorted.

"Oh well,"

"I've never, sprayed myself in the eye with my own perfume," Mark stated, Jackson sighed and sat up on the couch next to Thea.

"Good thing you're already out," Jae shot his comment towards Thea.

"I'll spray you in the eye with your perfume,"

"I don't wear perfume," he retorted.

"That explains why you reak," she shot back.

"Are you ready to lose?" I baited. It was my question and as long as I said something I was sure he had done, I would win.

"I don't need to prepare for something that won't happen,"

"Want to bet on it," Jae took the opportunity.

"I don't gamble,"

"Are you scared you'll lose?" Mark baited.

"You realise I ask the question next and then game over?"

"Then what are you worried about?" he challenged.

"Fine, let's bet on it,"

"Sweet, okay so the loser has to give the winner a wish," Jae stated.

"Can I wish for him to jump off a cliff?" I asked.

"I mean I guess, but you should probably be more specific because he can just bungee jump or cliff jump and I'm assuming you mean to die,"

"Can you just shut up and ask your question," Thea sighed.

"I've never had to have my parents bail me out," I stated smugly, my smirk quickly faded when he didn't move and instead he looked at me triumphantly. Shit.

"Seriously?" I sighed.

"Seriously, I told you, I earnt my money, I don't need my parents to bail me out of anything, you should probably listen to other people better instead of assuming you're always right," he stated.

MARK

         If looks could kill I was sure that I would have burst into flames, or maybe have just combusted but fortunately for me, looks couldn't kill so instead of dying I felt a huge sense of smug victory. For s split seconds I considered letting her win, but then I decided it was more fun to have her lose. I liked the idea of her owing me a favour.

"I've never posted inspirational quotes on my Instagram," I voice my final question and her final blow. I was sure she was going to flip the table at me but I was also positive that she couldn't lift it so I wasn't too worried.

"You stalked my Instagram?" I frowned.

"I looked through your Instagram when Jackson mentioned the double date," I nodded.

"Why?"

"To see if you were attractive, why else? Did you not look through mine?"

"Okay, one, I didn't know about the double date, two I didn't know you had Instagram, and three, why would I waste my time looking through your Instagram when just the sight of your face pisses me off?" she snapped. LosingClearly losing wasn't something she was good at.

There was a slight stab to my ego when she said she hadn't looked at my Instagram and the fact that she didn't even know I had one was another small blow. I mean, okay so she didn't know that she was being set up with me but wouldn't you at least go and look me up afterwards, wasn't she the least bit curious?

"You weren't the least bit curious?" Jackson voiced my inner question.

"Not in the slightest," Charlie retorted.

"It doesn't matter, now you owe me a favour,"

"The bane of my existence," she shot before getting up and leaving the room.

THEA

         "Okay, so tonight didn't go as planned," I rubbed the back of my neck as I walked Jackson and MArk out to Jackson's car. Or at least I assumed it was Jackson's car, he was the one driving. The black Nissan Navara looked more like a Jackson car, seeing as he was in the construction business, I didn't see Mark driving such a big car for Marketing, then again the Navara was strangely clean for what you would expect from a car that was around paint and concrete dust all day.

"No, but it is probably what we should have expected with those two being in the same room," Jackson nodded towards Mark who was getting into the passenger seat.

"They do seem to create a bad vibe together," I agreed.

"Only because they don't get along, imaging the chemistry they could have if they would just stop attacking each other," Jackson's eyes lit up with excitement.

"If they don't destroy the planet in the process," I laughed.

"That's a bit dramatic,"

"That's me, a bit dramatic," I shrugged.

"I think you're underestimating yourself," he joked, or at least I think he was joking.

"Thanks for coming over tonight," I started feeling the butterflies stirring in my stomach from the way he was looking down at me.

"Anytime, you should go get off of your foot,"

"It's not as bad as everyone thinks," I shrugged.

"Even the doctor?" he countered.

"The doctor was probably a quack,"

"I don't think he would be a doctor if he wasn't qualified," he smiled.

"You'd be surprised,"

"Go on, go get off your foot, I'll text you when I get home," He pulled me in for a quick hug. He smelt amazing, and the hug was soft and warm, I swear if he hadn't of pulled away I would have melted into the hug and stayed there all night. I had to clear my throat and take a step back as he got into his car.

"Bye," I waved shyly.

I watch as he reversed out of the driveway, he beeped and drove away. It was like the further he drove away the more of my senses came back to me. My eyes widened as I turned around.

"What is wrong with you," I mumbled to myself.

"That was worse than watching a trainwreck," Jae shivered as I walked into the lounge room.

"Why were you watching?"

"I was hoping to see heartbreak as he told you that you were to short and crazy to see again. I was not expecting kissy faces and you falling over your own words," he retorted.

"Oh my god, did I make kissy faces?" I asked feeling mortified.

"That's not how you're supposed to respond," he frowned.

"Whatever, did I?"

"Yes, it was disgusting," he shivered again.

"Oh god, how embarrassing,"

"What's wrong with her?" Jae turned to Sam.

"I think she just likes him, are you ready to go?" Sam shrugged.

"Go where?" I frowned.

"Home," Sam looked at me like I was stupid.

"You can't drive, and he's been drinking so he can't drive either," I shook my head. I had already taken the keys and hidden them away.

"Then can't you take us home?" Sam asked.

"Seriously?" I raised an eyebrow looking down at my foot.

"Right,"

"Just stay here tonight,"

"I'll take you home, let's go," Charlie came into the room, she had been in her room since the scene with Mark.

"On a scale of one to ten how pissed at me are you?" I asked awkwardly.

"I'm not pissed at you," she shrugged.

"Really?"

"Unless your name is Mark,"

JACKSON

         Neither of us spoke on the way home but Mark seemed pretty pleased with himself. If his goal was to piss Charlie off and upset her in her own house then he succeeded, not that I think that bothered him one bit.

I pulled into the underground parking and park my baby in my parking spot.

"We should order pizza," Mark nodded more to himself than to me.

"I'm good," I shrugged locking my car and following him to the elevator.

"Are you mad?" he raised an eyebrow.

"No, I'm just not hungry, Thea made a lot of food and I had a lot of time to eat while you and Charlie attacked each other," I pressed the button for our floor.

"So, you are mad," he rolled his eyes.

"I'm not mad, it's not like you were an asshat by yourself, Charlie wasn't all that nice to you either,"

"She started it the second I walked in the door, I was going to try and be civil with her but then she decided that she wanted nothing to do with that plan,"

"Probably because the last few times she's seen you, you've made assumptions about her sex life," I muttered.

"And she's made assumptions about me,"

"So, your plan is an eye for an eye?"

"I don't have a plan," he shrugged.

CHARLIE

         "Do you want to come in for a bit?" Sam offered.

"I guess," I shrugged.

"I mean, you don't have too, I just thought after tonight you might want a breather," he shrugged.

"You mean after you brought a random girl over and then joked with her nemesis all night when you're supposed to be her best friend?" Jae stated.

"I thought you were her best friend?" he countered.

"No, I'm her bro, it's different,"

"How?"

"I'm better,"

"Would you both shut up, let's go," I sighed.

The two of them continued to bicker the whole way through the bar, which was surprisingly busy, but BM was nowhere to be seen which was a little odd. They continued to bicker up the stairs and then at the top landing they both shut up and froze.

"What?" I frowned.

"Shhhh!" They both snapped, then I heard the moans.

"What the hell?" I muttered walking up behind them.

BM and Olivia were naked and entangled with each other, on Jae's bed. It was disgusting but it was also like watching a train wreck, horrible but you can't look away. My disgust turned to irritation, he was being an absolute asshole to Thea for sleeping with his friend, now here he was boning a girl that was supposed to be with his friend on his other friends' bed. That is breaking so many bro codes.

"What the hell," I stated loud enough for them to hear me, Jae's hand covered my mouth and the two of them pulled me back down the stairs before BM had time to look over, not that I even think he heard.

THEA

         "Why are you back? I thought you weren't staying here tonight?" I frowned.

"Jae can't sleep in his own bed," Charlie commented.

"Why?"

"Because BM was boning Olivia on it," Jae stated.

"Sam's Olivia?" I raised an eyebrow.

"She's not Sam's anything," Charlie shot.

"Okay," I held my hands up defensively.

"Yeah, that Olivia," Sam nodded.

"Seriously?" I frowned; I felt a surge of anger rush through me. After all the crap he has been giving me the past week.

"Seriously, I am never going to be able to sleep in the bed again," Jae shivered.

"Whatever, they're staying here because BM is a shitty person," Charlie stated.

"You're so moody today," Jae commented.

"I'm tired," She sighed.

"Too much sex?" Jae joked.

"What? No," Charlie frowned, Jae looked at her funny, probably because she answered too quickly.

"She's tired of your face," I interjected to distract him.

"Are you sure she's not tired of having to live with you?" he retorted. Charlie visibly relaxed.

"I'm going to shower, then go to bed,"

"Seriously, who did you sleep with?" Jae raised an eyebrow at her.

"Whoever it was, they clearly know how to wear her out," I smirked. Charlie gave me a look that basically screamed shut up.

CHARLIE

         "Do you want to go out somewhere?" I asked sipping on my tea.

"Where?" Thea slightly turned her head to look at me.

"I don't know, I'm just bored,"

"Probably because you've had your hands, and other parts, full lately," she chuckled turning her attention to her coffee cup, which, knowing her was probably empty.

"Fine, stay here and sit by yourself with your crappy leg," I shrugged.

"Don't be like that," she rolled her eyes.

"So, yes, you want to go somewhere?"

"When the alternative is sitting here alone with my crappy leg, yes I want to go somewhere,"

"Maybe we should go visit Kiwoo," I commented.

"Feeling a hair change?" she raised an eyebrow.

"I'm feeling anything that isn't Doobin,"

"Are you sure? He seems pretty feelable," she winked at me.

"Are you coming with me or not?"

"I'm not Doobin, but I'll join you in a hair change,"

"I think you need an attitude change but okay," I rolled my eyes at her.

BM

         I stretched out, realising I was in a bed and I wasn't alone. Last night was a little foggy after Olivia and I got back to the bar and started drinking. I was assuming that it was Olivia that I slept with which was kind of like a cold bucket of water to the face. I didn't want to open my eyes and confirm it because then I would just feel guilt, not just to Sam who was supposed to be kind of dating her, let's be realistic, he was using her to piss Charlie off. But I also felt extremely guilty towards Thea, I had been attacking her for her being with Austin and Drew, and they were only my friends. Sleeping with Olivia was breaking the bro code.

I heard her softly sigh and decided to try and sneak out of the bed, except I was between her and the wall, or at least it felt like a wall. Then it occurred to me that if we were drinking at the bar then hopefully, we didn't drive, meaning that we either got a taxi back to her house or, more conveniently, we went upstairs. But I have a lounge, I don't use a bed, so if we had gone upstairs then I was in either Sam or Jae's bed, which more than broke the bro code.

Slowly, I pried my eyes open just enough to see where I was, the sudden light in my eyes made me very aware of the pounding headache my mind babble had distracted me from. Ignoring the pounding in my skull I looked around the room, I was naked and asleep next to a naked Olivia, in Sam's bed.

So, the high horse I had been acting as though I was riding lately, just threw me off, I slept with my friend's kind of girlfriend in my other friends' actual bed. Sam, I didn't see being annoyed about the whole sleeping with Olivia thing, but Jae was going to beyond pissed about my boning in his bed, and to be fair he had every right to be pissed.

"Shit," I heard her whisper.

I wasn't proud of what I did next, instead of letting her know that I was also awake I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep as she carefully crawled out of bed and re-dressed herself. I heard her search for something then I heard writing and her walking down the stairs. I sighed looking around the room, the boys weren't back, so I was guessing they stayed at the girls last night instead of coming home, or at least that's what I was hoping.

I found the note on the counter in the kitchen.

Uh, hey, so I would say last night was great, but I don't really remember it. Um, I don't usually do this and sorry if this affects you and Sam, I think he should know but if you don't want to tell him then I guess that's cool with me, it doesn't affect me in any way.

So, thanks for not letting me drive,

Olivia.

THEA

         "Maybe we should take the boys some lunch?" I suggested.

"You want to go home?" she raised an eyebrow.

"What? No, I mean the 1Million guys,"

"Oh, no," she shook her head.

"Oh, you know you want to,"

"I don't want to take them lunch, but I guess if you really want to then I can drive you to take them lunch," she sighed as if it were too much work.

"Bro, you know you want to go bone Doobin," I rolled my eyes.

"Bro, shut up,"

"So, I'm right,"

"Do you want to go or not?"

"Let's go,"

It didn't take long to get to the dance studio and we stop through McDonald's on the way to get the boys something to eat fast food probably wasn't the best option but he was easier than going into subway. Everyone but Austin was in the dance studio teaching a class or preparing for one. Austin's eyes lit up this minute he saw the Brown paper bag.

"afternoon ladies, what brings you here ?"

"We thought we would bring you lunch," I smirked at him.

"And you thought McDonald's would be a good option ?"

"No one is forcing you to eat it, I'm sure one of the other boys will eat yours,"

"Hey, I never said I didn't want it,"

"Then shut up and take your food,"

It wasn't long before the others started to sniff out the food. Doobin was first, the Junsun, who just started eating, I was sure if everyone else didn't show up that he would devour it all. Koosung was next, I swear he looked like he was out of a loony toon and his nose just followed the smell, carrying him to where the food was. Shawn was still in a class so I had pulled some food out and put it aside for him.

Everyone was having a laugh and everything seemed fine, then there was a sudden drop in the atmosphere, everyone fell silent, except for the few 'oh no's' and the chain of mumbled cuss words that fell from Doobin's mouth.

They were all staring at the reception desk at a girl who looked rather dishevelled and fidgety.

"Why is she here?" Koosung frowned.

"I don't know, but she needs to leave before he sees her," Doobin took a quick glance to the classroom Shawn was teaching in.

"Who is she?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Mackenzie," the boys said in unison with a tone that was like they were trying to get a bad taste out of their mouth.

"That's her?!"

I had never seen her before but I had heard a lot about Mackenzie, she was Shawn's on again off again, toxic, ex-girlfriend. From the stories that I had heard, she comes into his life because she's blown up her own and he is so in love with her that he fixes everything for her, and then just as suddenly, she leaves again. Her leaving makes most of them happy, but it breaks Shawn every time.

"What are we going to do? Ask her to leave?" Austin frowned.

"Because that worked so well last time?" Koosung commented.

"She screamed the place down until Shawn knew she was here," Junsun added.

"He's just gotten back to a good place," Doobin sighed.

I shook my head letting out a sigh, I felt a strange rage knowing that she was so quick to manipulate Shawn into doing her bidding, and it seemed like she didn't care about what it did to him, she just didn't want to deal with her own problems. I pulled all of my rings off my fingers, picked the one that would work the best and slid it onto my finger, slipping the rest into my bag before heading towards her.

"What are you doing?" Austin hissed.

"Being Thea," I shrugged.

"Oh Jesus, this isn't going to end well," Junsun sighed.

"Ye of little faith," I retorted walking up to the hoe-bag. She turned to stare at me with bloodshot eyes, dilated pupils. I'd had my fair share of experience with high people, she definitely wasn't sober.

"Can I help you?" I asked sweetly, the young girl behind the reception desk frowned at me, then looked over at the others and kept quiet.

"I'm looking for Shawn," she said slightly defensively.

"Oh, I'll just go get him for you, how should I say is looking for him?"

"Mackenzie, I'm" she began to explain, but I held my hand up to cut her off.

"Oh, I know who you are," I dropped my cheerful tone along with my hand and used one that lacked all emotion except disdain.

"I see you've heard of me from Doobin," she shook her head.

"No, from Shawn,"

"That doesn't seem right considering he wouldn't say anything bad about me,"

"That was before he met me," I shrugged.

"And you are?" she raised an eyebrow crossing her arms over her chest.

"I'm his fiancé, and he thought that it would be good to be completely honest with me. So, I know all about your past, I know all about you're inability to control your own life, and I know that every time your world falls apart you come running to him to fix it. But he won't be doing that anymore, he told us that if you ever showed up again to tell you to leave, and to not come back because he is finally happy and he doesn't want to fall down into you deep dark miserable hole that you seem to live your life in,"

"I don't believe you, do you really think that he would choose you over me? Because prettier, smarter girls have tried to test that theory,"

"I mean we can bring him out here and see if you like, I think the rejection will hurt more coming from him, but that's up to you. Just know I have one more card up my sleeve," I smiled sweetly.

"Oh?"

"I found out this morning that we're expecting, and I'm not sure how well you know my Shawnie, but I know how much family means to him, I mean he did choose his brother over you. Do you really think he will want some deadbeat junky in his child's life?" I asked in a tone like we were having a conversation about the weather.

"You're lying,"

"So we will see who Shawn believes, we can call him out here and cause a whole scene, or you can walk right back out that door and I'll pretend I never saw you," I shrugged.

She thought about it for a minute, glared at me and turned around.

"How did you do that?" Doobin smiled at the sight of her leaving.

"Told her we were getting married and that I had just found out I was pregnant," I shrugged.

"Is that McDonald's I smell?" Shawn asked walking out of his classroom just as the entrance doors closed.

"It is," I smiled.