#fox 'i do not gaze at scully' mulder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

leiascully · 3 months ago

Note

Smutty fic prompt? Established MSR. Mulder and Scully are on a case, Mulder is being serious, Scully is amused but not convinced - and just wants to stay at the hotel and have sex for the week because the case is a total waste of time. Mulder telling her everything he wants to do to her but ultimately rebuffs all advances, and it’s all fun and games because Scully thinks he’d rather chase monsters than put his money where his mouth is. Anyway — he ends up being a man of his word which takes her by surprise

I think this fills your prompt, anon.

9000 words; M/E for sexual situations including pegging; good little agents don't consort while on assignment, but they really, really want to. (ao3 link)

“You’re serious.” She fixed him with a level gaze over the roof of the rental car.

“I’m always serious,” he said, and they both ignored the inherent fallacies in that statement. “Are you serious? You thought I brought you up here to play house?”

“What else was I supposed to think?” She gestured at the forest around them and the quaint bed and breakfast standing in the clearing. “That you brought me up to an adorable B&B on the wooded shores of Lake Champlain for a week to hunt another sea monster no one’s ever actually seen?”

“There have been over 300 eyewitness reports of a snake-like creature in the lake, dating back to the Iroquois,” Mulder told her. “That doesn’t even include the latest series of reports. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to investigate it.”

“First of all,” she said, “your last lake monster ate my dog.”

“It wasn’t my lake monster,” he muttered.

“Second of all,” she said, fixing him with a steely eye, “last time you took me on a trip that was so obviously a wild goose chase, we hadn’t yet escalated our relationship. So yes, Fox, I thought you brought me here to play house.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We’re back to Fox?”

“I think I’ve earned the right to use your first name now and again.” She smirked. “After all, I’ve been inside you.”

To her surprise, he blushed.

“How many rooms did you get?”

She heard his feet shuffle. He wouldn’t look at her. “Two.”

She sighed. “Lake monster.”

“Lake monster that’s been frightening tourists,” he said. He came around the car and stood a little too close to her, the way he always did. “The tourism bureau asked around. Someone told them we were the people to solve their problem.”

She leaned against the car and tipped her head back to look at him. “Two rooms.”

“Come on, Scully,” he said in a low voice that made her tingle. “You know the people in finance already share our expense reports around. I want to win the betting pool.”

“And what will you do with your thousands?” she teased.

He shifted even closer. She felt her lips part in anticipation as he leaned down, but he skimmed past her mouth to whisper in her ear: “Take you on a real vacation.”

She reached out past the loose lapels of his suit jacket and hooked her finger into the waist of his trousers. “You better.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped back, taking her with him like they were dancing. They’d always been dancing, she thought. Two steps forward, three steps back, but rarely entirely out of sync. He reached behind him to pop the trunk and pulled out her suitcase, pretending to strain against the weight of it. “Maybe you won’t need this many clothes for our vacation.”

“Hmm,” she said, “maybe I’ll bring something less bulky than a suit.”

“You could wear one of those little t-shirts,” he suggested. “Some cutoff jean shorts.” He paused, clearly caught up in an intriguing possibility. “You could wear my boxers.”

She smiled at him. “Maybe even something more abbreviated than that.”

He dropped his voice even more. “Scully, are you holding out on me? Do you own lingerie I haven’t seen?”

She leaned into him, slipping her fingers further into his trousers to graze the elastic of his boxers under his shirttail. “I guess you’re not gonna find out this week.”

He groaned.

She gave her fingers one last wiggle and extracted them from his waistband. He heaved his own suitcase out of the trunk and closed it. They trundled their luggage along the brick path and up the stairs. She looked at him one last time as they stood on the porch in front of the lobby windows.

“Two rooms?”

“Don’t worry, Scully,” he murmured. “I’m sure I’ll be able to hear you through the wall.”

Heat flooded her body as he opened the door and ushered her in with one hand at the small of her back. This time, she didn’t mind that he’d gotten the last word.

+ + +

When they were checked in and settled, she went to his room and sat on the bed. All the furniture in the place seemed to be charmingly mismatched antiques. Mulder’s bed had four posters and it creaked picturesquely when she shifted her weight. “Tell me about our suspect.”

“Champ?”

She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. “Of course it’s called Champ.”

“We’re dealing with a protected species here, Scully.” Mulder leaned against his dresser. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “The lake was declared a safe haven for its resident monster in 1981. In 1984, 58 different people claim to have seen Champ. Early reports declared it to resemble an enormous serpent with the head of a sea horse, a white star on its forehead, and a band of red around its extremely long neck.” He stepped forward to pass her a fuzzy copy of a photograph. She studied it. “This is the Mansi photograph. No one’s ever been able to debunk it, but Sandra Mansi destroyed the negative, so nobody’s ever been able to authenticate it either.”

“Naturally.” She got up and went to the window. The lake was visible as a blue glint through the trees. “And what crimes has Champ perpetrated?”

“Overturning small watercraft, biting fish off people’s lines, that kind of thing.” He joined her at the window. “No human casualties.”

She let her shoulder brush his chest. “So what are we doing here? It doesn’t sound like there’s anything for us to investigate. If anything, this level of activity would draw in tourists and benefit businesses like this one. The loss of a fish here and there seems negligible.”

“No human casualties yet,” he said, “but there have been reports of people feeling something large brush against them in an area where there was no underwater debris.”

“Are there fish in the lake?”

“Big ones,” he said. “Sturgeon and gar, for starters.”

She gestured. “Ta da. There’s your suspect.”

“Neither sturgeon nor gar are capable of disappearing multiple swimmers and boaters.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You never lead with the most pertinent information.”

“Impertinence is my middle name.” His eyes twinkled as he grinned at her.

“I think I read that in your file.” She turned to face him. “So what are we supposed to do about it?”

“We do what we do. Dredge the truth up from the depths.”

She looked longingly at the bed. “Wouldn’t local law enforcement be better at this? We know nothing about the area.”

“Local law enforcement hasn’t turned up anything.” He sat on the bed and took her hands, drawing her close to stand between his knees. “Help them, Scully-Wan Kenobi. You’re their only hope.”

She softened, gazing down at him. By default, they’d become two of the foremost experts in American cryptozoology, and their solve rate on missing persons cases was the envy of the Bureau. Maybe it was Mulder’s intuition; maybe it was her eye for detail. She couldn’t deny that their expertise was unparalleled in cases like this, paranormal or not. “I want a nice vacation after this.”

“I promise.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

“And not to Loch Ness.”

He laughed, soft and low. “I promise that too.” He looked up at her and his eyes were like a forest fire. The blaze in them kindled an answering flame in her belly. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She pouted a little. “How?”

“Very, very slowly.” He licked his lips, making his meaning clear. Scully squirmed and he pressed his knees into her hips, pinning her there.

“Did we ever decide if we can consort during a case?”

“Go against the regulations?” He turned her hands over and rubbed his cheek with its incipient stubble over the soft skin of her wrist. “Why, Agent Scully, it’s like you don’t even know me.”

She curled her fingers around his jaw and ran her thumb over his lips. “And if we solve this thing tomorrow?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Then I guess I’m buying plane tickets and you’re buying lingerie.”

“This B&B could be haunted,” she suggested. “Then we’d have to stay and investigate.”

He squinted up at her fondly. “Why didn’t I know you were susceptible to the charms of creaky floors, Scully?”

“Maybe you don’t know me very well.” She tilted her head, challenging him to challenge the patent absurdity of the statement.

“Then I’d like to know you better,” he said in a voice like velvet. Damn him, he always understood exactly how to disarm her.

“Not until we solve this,” she scolded him, and stepped away. “I’m going to freshen up.”

“Hey, Scully?” he said from the bed.

“Hmm?” She turned in the doorway to face him.

“How big a box of condoms do you think the drugstore will sell me?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t know, but buy two.”

She heard him exhale in a rush as she slipped out the door.

+ + +

As it turned out, they shared a bathroom. She’d been too distracted to think about the geography of it when she’d glimpsed the door in his room. The B&B was an old house with a lot of additions. She doubted there was a true angle in the place. But it was charming. There was a clawfoot bathtub that she was definitely going to get better acquainted with.

She freshened up and changed into her small-town uniform of jeans and a windbreaker. People in places like this often distrusted suits. She’d learned over the years that she needed all the credibility she could get. For some reason, showing up armed with federal credentials and factoids about cryptids didn’t garner much respect.

Mulder was also wearing jeans when she found him downstairs. Scully was suddenly glad he’d cut his hair. If he’d been looking like that with his hair falling over his forehead, she would have dragged him straight back upstairs, and let anyone missing stay missing. His ass, hugged by denim, was a more compelling force than anything previously discovered in her known universe.

Instead, she took the file folder he offered here and spent the drive to the local police station reviewing the details. Behind a thick stack of garbled reports of enormous, half-visible underwater shadows and unexpected friction, she found the reports. Most of the people who’d gone missing had been found a few hours or a day later, including a group of teens who’d been stranded when their boat ran out of gas. Fortunately, they’d been in shouting distance of Burton Island State Park, and someone had spotted them the next morning. There was the occasional death by drowning, but the bodies turned up with marks of predation that didn’t indicate anything bigger than fish. Frankly, Scully didn’t know why most of them were included. A nine-year-old who’d wandered away in search of ice cream and been rediscovered sleeping in his parents’ car didn’t deserve a missing persons report. But it was a small town. Maybe local PD didn’t have much else to do.

There were two people who had disappeared the previous week and hadn’t been found. Both women in their thirties. A place like this would need seasonal workers, but when Scully checked their addresses, they were both townies. Grown and raised here, graduates of the local high school (go Panthers). One worked in an antique shop (of course). One managed an ice cream parlor and its attendant roster of high school employees.

“Just these two actually missing persons?” she asked.

Mulder drummed on the steering wheel. “So far.”

“Mmhmm,” she said. “And you’re sure this isn’t a joke case? Something you dreamed up so we could dillydally on someone else’s dime?”

“This is a legitimate investigation,” he assured her. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz are gone. No one’s seen or heard from them. They were fishing buddies. Their boat was found washed up on shore halfway across the lake with all their tackle in it.”

“I take it this was uncharacteristic behavior.”

He nodded as he flipped on the turn signal. “Neither of them’s missed a day of work in years without a doctor’s note. Never late. Reliable as the sunrise.”

She examined Naomi’s photo. A young-looking thirty-something with dark wavy hair. She was smiling in the photo, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “And now…what, devoured by a mythical creature?”

“It’s a possibility,” Mulder said. “However extreme. The boat wasn’t far from one of the areas where frequent sightings have occurred.”

Scully flipped the page and re-read the sparse details of Naomi’s life. “Allegedly.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. It was a familiar push and pull between them. No case would have felt complete without it.

They reached the edges of the town, and then, very quickly, the center. The police station was easy to find. When they walked in, Scully knew jeans had been the right choice. It wasn’t the kind of place a suit would garner any kind of respect.

“Gosh, we will be glad of the help,” said the police chief. Her name tag said Hughes. She seemed earnest enough. “We do stay busy around here during tourist season. Not just people going missing, but petty theft, the occasional fire, all that. A lotta DUIs, if I’m honest.”

“And you’re…experts?” Chief Hughes’ second-in-command was standing in the corner of the room, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “In…Champ?”

“We’ve done extensive work in cryptozoology,” Scully said coolly. “Champ, as you call it, is just one example of a larger clade of hypothetical marine reptiles. If these women were consumed by such a creature, we would be able to verify that predation occurred. If there are other, less fantastic explanations, we’ll find those.” She glanced at Mulder, who was lounging in his chair. “Isn’t that right, Agent Mulder.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth, Agent Scully.” He smiled at the police chief, who blinked back at him, her mouth open just slightly.

He was such a little shit sometimes.

+ + +

They spent the day on the lake. It might have been romantic, if it hadn’t been for the trio of deputies assigned to them. They kept looking at Mulder and Scully, nervous or envious or skeptical or some combination of all three. She was used to it. Big city feds in their sunglasses and windbreakers inspired a variety of interesting feelings in their less cosmopolitan counterparts. She’d seen it all.

“Bet I could bully them into letting me drive the boat,” Mulder whispered to Scully, leaning in so the deputies couldn’t hear them.

“You’d have to dump me in the lake first,” she whispered back.

“And let you get eaten by Champ?” His eyebrows crimped together under his sunglasses in an exaggerated expression of woe. “Scully. I would never.”

“I would,” she told him.

“I accept my fate.” He sat back, stretched his arms along the side of the boat.

The deputies showed them where the boat had been found, the boat, the intact tackle. Scully examined it all dutifully. Mulder examined it less dutifully, gazing out over the water. He had one hand on his hip, the other shading his already shaded eyes. He looked like a statue.

“Does he see something?” one of the deputies asked Scully. Her voice was hushed, almost worshipful.

“I’m sure if he does, he’ll let you know,” Scully told her.

The purported victims’ boat having yielded nothing, the deputies herded their federal charges back onto their own departmental boat. Scully peered into the depths, Mulder’s hand braced on her back. No serpents emerged. There wasn’t so much as the silver flicker of a fish, although that was telling, in its own way. But they’d disturbed the waters with the wake of their boat, coming and going. The fish had fled the limnetic zone because of the noise of the motor, not because of some primordial beast.

Still, it was nice: the sunshine on the water, the convivial throng of tourists on the beaches. She and Mulder talked to the assistant manager at Cassy’s ice cream parlor, a young man clearly flummoxed by his brevet promotion.

“I don’t know,” he said, bewildered. “She’s great. Runs this place - ran this place - really well. I mean it’s hard to deal with a bunch of kids sometimes, right? But she started working here when she was a kid and just never stopped. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He put his face in his hands. Scully patted him on the shoulder, a little gingerly.

Afterward, they got ice cream: strawberry for Scully, butter pecan for Mulder. They carried their windbreakers folded inside out over their arms to hide their credentials. They might have been anyone. They walked along the lake shore and he smiled down at her and they could have been an ordinary couple. The sunshine gleamed on his skin and brought out gold flecks in the green of his eyes. She couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.

“What?” He licked his lips exaggeratedly. “Ice cream?”

She shook her head.

“Then what?”

She squinted up at him. “You’re just really pretty sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

She smiled. “Sometimes.”

“Well, you’re really pretty all the time.” He bumped her with his arm. “And that’s my professional opinion, by the way. I’ve been working on your profile a long time. I don’t want to brag, but I’m known for my powers of observation.”

“That’s not what profiling is,” she said sternly.

He tilted his head at her. “Sometimes.”

She huffed: not a laugh, not a sigh, but happy. “Sometimes.”

+ + +

They got dinner at a little restaurant. The fish was fresh, the coleslaw was crisp, and the fries were hot. There was homemade pie on the menu and Scully indulged in that too. If she couldn’t have Mulder, she was going to treat herself in other ways. It had cooled off by the time they finished dinner. Scully shrugged her windbreaker on. On the drive back to the B&B, they rolled down the windows of the rental car.

“This is summer,” Mulder said with satisfaction. “T-shirts in the afternoon, sweaters in the evening.”

“Not like DC,” Scully said. She put her arm out the window and spread her fingers to feel the breeze push through them.

“Not like DC,” Mulder agreed. “Unless you like being wrapped in a wet wool blanket.”

Scully let her head loll over on the headrest, gazing at him. “I can think of other things I’d rather be wrapped in.”

Mulder flicked his eyes at her. “Or maybe you’d rather be unwrapped?”

“Maybe I would.” She tipped her hand so the breeze washed over it. “But someone put a note on me that says ‘Do not open until Christmas’.”

“Not until Christmas, Scully,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Just until we’ve wrapped the case.”

“Wrapping begets unwrapping. I see.”

“A little motivation for us,” he suggested.

“You know, I always thought that I’d be the one who insisted we separate work and play,” Scully mused.

He chuckled. “I did too. Turns out you’re not the good girl you play on tv, Agent Scully.”

She wished that didn’t send a little thrill through her. “Aren’t you glad I’m not?”

“Desperately,” he said, with a raspy edge to his voice that sent another frisson up her spine. He pulled into the little lot of the B&B and turned the car off, then slung his arm over the steering wheel and turned to her. “Don’t think I wouldn’t unwrap you right now, Scully.”

“Haven’t we paid enough cleaning fees to the rental agency?” she said, leaning toward him just a little. Mulder’s event horizon extended too far - she’d been pulled in unexpectedly so many times.

“Not for this.” His voice strummed a chord inside her. “Variety is the spice of life, Scully.”

“Uh huh.” She tipped her chin up. “And what would you do with me, if you unwrapped me in this rental car?”

“Obviously, I’d start with kissing,” Mulder told her. “I’m a gentleman. I’d never jump right in unless you asked for it.”

“Mmhmm,” Scully said.

“Oh, sorry, I misspoke,” Mulder said. His eyes glinted. “I meant I wouldn’t jump right in unless you begged for it.”

Scully licked her lips. “And under what circumstances do you think I’d beg for it?”

“If I kissed your neck for long enough, you might,” he said. She was staring at his mouth, half-hypnotized. “That spot behind your ear. If I put you on my lap and played with your tits and you could feel how much I wanted you.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’ve always considered myself to be a stubborn person. I don’t think that would do it.”

“Maybe if I stretched you out in the backseat. Braced myself over you. Stroked my way up the inside of your thigh,” he suggested. “Never quite touching exactly where you wanted. I’d use my hands, my leg. Maybe my lips. Just teasing until you can’t stand it any longer.”

“Mulder.”

“Yeah?”

“Is that what you were doing for the past seven years?”

“Metaphorically,” he said, twinkling at her. His eyes were dark. “Are you ready to beg?”

She leaned forward, her lips nearly touching his. “Good night, Mulder.” She climbed out of the car and left him in the dark surrounded by the song of crickets.

+ + +

Later, in bed by herself, she touched herself just like he’d imagined, drawing her fingertips up the soft skin to brush her curls over and over until she was shivering with need. She didn’t stifle her cries. When she finally dragged her thumb over her clit, she said his name. She thought she heard a groan from the other side of the wall.

She was glad it was a small B&B. That meant fewer eavesdroppers. The other guests all seemed to be adults, at least. Maybe their vacations would be improved by this kind of soundtrack. It was her turn to be the one gasping in her tangled covers, even if she was doing it alone.

+ + +

The next day, she fell in the lake.

They’d borrowed the boat and the deputies again. Mulder was studying a map of the lake. It was all marked up with places of particular interest. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing while she was raking just the edges of her nails up the crease of her thigh.

“Right down there,” he said, peering over the gunwale. “There’s a deep spot. Maybe that’s where its den is.”

“Its den?” Scully said, joining him. “Doesn’t it have to breathe? Or is that part of the myth?”

“There could be pockets of air underwater,” Mulder said. “An intricate system of caves. Or maybe it can hold its breath.” He turned to look at her. Scully glanced over his shoulder. The deputies were watching them breathlessly. “Some whales can hold their breath for hours. Maybe Champ can too.”

“Maybe something cold-blooded needs less oxygen,” she said. “It might have a slower metabolism. And the red band around its neck - that could be a primitive system of gills. That could allow it to stay underwater, even in the benthic zone.”

“I love it when you come out to play,” he murmured, just quiet enough that the deputies couldn’t hear.

She opened her mouth to reply to him and then the boat rocked on a huge swell of water and she went over the gunwale before she could reach for the railing.

“Scully!” Mulder shouted, and grabbed for her, but she was past the point of no return and his grip on her ankle just meant she banged her side hard on the boat as she splashed into the water. It was cold in the lake. She was soaked instantly, water pouring into her shoes and down her collar. The current swirled, tugging at her, pulling at her until she couldn’t tell which way was up. Scully opened her eyes. She was deeper than she’d thought. The darkness under her rippled. She kicked toward the surface. Mulder was reaching toward her almost as soon as her head broke the water. He and one of the deputies hauled her into the boat while the other two braced themselves against the other gunwale.

“Are you okay?” he asked. A deputy passed him a towel and he blotted her face gently with it.

She spit out a bit of lake water and took the towel from him to squeeze water out of her hair. “I lost my sunglasses.”

“Tragic.” He took off his own and settled them on her nose. They were too big and slipped down, but she loved him for it all the same. She patted her pockets. She still had her badge and her wet brick of a phone and her wallet. Fortunately, Mulder had the keys to the rental car.

“Agent Mulder?” said one of the deputies. “What made the boat tip?”

“Heavy wake from another boat,” Scully said automatically. “A gust of wind that created an abnormally large wave. Unregistered seismic activity.”

“Or a lake monster,” Mulder said, still looking her over. Seemingly satisfied with what he found, he turned to the deputies. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” said one.

“Not a boat big enough to pull that kind of wake,” said another. “You’d need a ferry.”

The last one shuffled her feet. “A shadow,” she said at last. “I think. Maybe nothing.”

Scully coughed. Mulder rubbed her back. He was pressed against her side. Her wet clothes were soaking him, but he didn’t move away. “Sorry to say, Deputy, you’re going to spend a lot of time investigating shadows if you stick with this job.”

The deputy’s brow was furrowed. “Do you think that’s what happened to Cassy and Naomi? A wave? But they could swim. Everyone here can swim.”

“All their gear was still in the boat,” Mulder pointed out. “They fell out and the tackle box didn’t?”

“I guess not.” The deputy looked troubled. “The lake’s too deep to dredge and too big to dive.”

“Then all we can do is our best,” Scully said. She shivered. The sunshine was bright, but the breeze ruffling the water kept it from warming her.

“Let’s get you somewhere where you can dry off,” Mulder said, and the deputies took the hint and powered up the engine.

+ + +

Scully ran a very hot bath in the clawfoot tub. Her clothes had dried a little in transit - they were definitely going to get a cleaning fee for the rental car, and not for any entertaining reasons - but she was still too wet and too cold to be comfortable. She peeled off her clothes and hung them on the towel bar with her damp towel from the boat underneath to catch drips. It was a relief to climb into the steaming foamy bath. She sighed, her whole body relaxing into the warmth as she tipped her head back to rinse her hair.

When she thought of the lake, she got fragments of memory. The breathless moment going overboard. The splash. The cold. The dark. It had only been an hour or two and yet it slipped away from her. She was glad she’d given a report before they’d come back to the B&B. Had there been something looming below her in the darkness? Even in the moment, she hadn’t been sure. Had she been brushed by a tangle of floating weeds? Had the water been agitated by cross-currents from boats speeding over the busy lake?

Had a monster tipped her into the water, or was it a silly mistake on a slippery deck?

She sighed again, sinking into the water up to her chin. For a while she drifted, eyes closed. The window was open for a crossbreeze and the smell of lake and pine mingled dreamily with the lavender scent of the bubble bath. She lay there, imagining the life of a prehistoric creature trapped in the modern world. If there were a monster, what had it seen? How much did it understand about the changes in its habitat? Did it long for the past? Had it eaten Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz? Had there been other victims?

The adjoining door creaked open. Mulder walked in and knelt by the tub, pillowing his arms on the side.

She opened one eye. “I thought we weren’t consorting while on assignment.”

“We’re not consorting.” He brushed a wet strand of hair off her forehead and resettled his chin on his arms. “We’re conferring.”

She made a skeptical noise. “How collegial of us.” Most of the bubbles had popped, and what remained didn’t provide much modesty. They’d had less-clothed conversations about work, but not many.

“What happened at the lake?” she asked.

“You tell me.” He gazed at her. “You were the one in the drink.”

She pushed herself up a little in the tub so they were face to face. His eyes dropped predictably to her breasts and dragged back up to her face. “A larger-than-average wave rocked the boat. I fell in. There was some kind of current that pulled me further under than would usually result from a fall of such a short distance. I can’t speak to its origin. During my brief time under the water, I thought I saw movement below me, but it could have been anything, Mulder. A shadow. A log.”

“An ancient reptile.” The sun had shifted and the bathroom was draped in shade. What light there was reflected patchily off the bathwater to dapple Mulder’s face. She wondered if there had been a time in her life when she hadn’t known how beautiful he was. She couldn’t remember that either. Her life before Mulder felt somehow insignificant.

“What did you see?” she asked him.

“I only had eyes for you,” he said.

“You’re losing your touch,” she said lightly.

“I’m all right with that.” His eyes searched hers. “As long as you’re all right.”

“I’m fine. I’ve been wet before.” Her lips quirked. “You of all people should know that.”

“I had a suspicion.” He tipped his cheek onto his bicep.

“I have a suspicion of my own,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to continue. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz ran away or disappeared through otherwise un-supernatural circumstances.”

“Going out on a limb there, Agent,” Mulder told her. “I don’t know if I can present that kind of wild theory to Skinner.”

“If, and I stress if, there were a mysterious reptile that had been inhabiting this lake for centuries if not millennia, I don’t think it would target humans. We’re too noisy, too fast. Increased activity on the lake would likely drive it deeper, not provoke it.”

“Unless it were desperate,” Mulder said. “A drop in the population of fish. Rising temperatures in the lake.”

“A species would take generations to adapt to the changes that have occurred in the local environment, but this is one hypothetical individual, Mulder. One organism can alter its behavior on a timescale far more rapid.”

He nodded against his arm, just a little. “They were last seen in a boat.”

“So the report says,” Scully said. “But Cassy Miller’s car is missing.”

“There are actually a surprising number of car thefts for a town this size,” Mulder told her. “Something about teens and tourists.”

Scully opened her palm above the water. Her fingers were pruny. “That’s my theory.”

“I respect it,” Mulder said. “But I haven’t decided yet whether I agree.”

“Why am I not surprised.” She cupped water in her hand, let it pour over her breasts. The bubbles sluiced down the slope of her chest, pearling around her nipples. She watched Mulder watch her. His breath caught a little and his pupils darkened. “Are we still conferring, or have we moved on to consorting?”

“You know there’s nothing I want more than to climb into that tub with you,” he said in a low voice.

“I can recommend against wet denim,” she said. “The chafing ruins the mood.” She thought of straddling his lap, feeling the friction of the sodden fabric against her skin, and rubbed her thighs together in anticipation. Up until the chafing, it would be delicious.

“I think I learned my lesson today,” he told her. “No clothes. Just you on top of me, skin on skin. You could take your time. I’d worship your tits.”

“I think your vision ends up with water all over the bathroom floor.” She let her hand drift down her body.

“Worth it.” Hunger flickered in his eyes.

“Is it consorting if I’m pursuing solitary pleasures while we’re discussing a case?” she asked.

He laughed. “If so, we’ve been consorting for years.”

“I knew it,” she said. Her fingers wandered down her belly, strayed lower.

“Fuck, Scully,” he said roughly. “You know I can withstand anything except temptation.”

She toyed with her curls, imagining the slow swell of his erection. He shifted a little on his heels as she pushed her fingers between her folds and stroked slowly. She let her head loll against the porcelain. Her other hand rose to stroke her breast. Mulder took a deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss.

“You know there’s nothing but your own conscience stopping you from getting into this tub.” She arched her back, pushing her breasts out of the water.

“I told you,” he said. “I’m trying to take this seriously. I take you seriously. Everything we’re doing deserves our full attention, Scully. The work. This.” He gestured between them. “Whatever you think about my lake monster theory, there are two women missing. People are worried about them.”

“I know that,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. Her hands slipped away from their pleasant tasks.

“We crossed a line together,” he said. “I don’t regret it. I’ll never, ever regret it. But there are other lines we shouldn’t cross.”

“You’re the one who keeps telling me all the things we’d be doing if we weren’t working,” she snapped.

“And I mean every word of it.” It sounded like a vow. “When we’re done here, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember your name. But we’re not finished.”

“I’m finished.” She toed the stopper out of the train and hauled herself up out of the water, too cranky to finish what she’d started. He rocked back on his heels, looking wounded. “With this bath, Mulder. I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up for dinner.”

“I will,” he said. He handed her an enormous fluffy towel and helped her out of the tub.

“Scully,” he said as she opened the door to her room, and she turned just enough to indicate she was listening. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She went back to her room, dried off, rolled naked into the bed. She was too keyed up to sleep. She rolled onto her stomach and thrust against the ridge of her hand until pleasure spiraled tight within her. She moaned into the pillow, suddenly boneless as release hit her, and drifted into sleep.

+ + +

The rest of their investigation yielded nothing. They dutifully went in each day to work with local law enforcement. They searched a few other areas of the lake. The deputies made Scully wear a life jacket, but there weren’t any other mysterious waves. They followed leads to dead ends. Wherever the women were, they weren’t using credit cards. Cassy Miller’s car was found a few miles away. It wasn’t far from a bus station, Scully noted, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Subsequent trips to the lake produced no evidence of a lake monster or any foul play. No bodies. No torn clothes.

“We’ll keep following up,” Mulder assured the chief of police. “I’ve added their names to our list. If anyone turns up matching their descriptions, we’ll let you know.”

“I appreciate your help.” Chief Hughes shook their hands.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t help more,” Scully told her.

“We’re grateful anyone showed up,” Chief Hughes said. “Not a lot of feds would care about our small-town problems. But two of our own disappear, that’s something we feel here. Like a missing tooth.”

Mulder looked away. Scully clasped Chief Hughes’ hand. “We won’t stop looking.”

Chief Hughes’ smile was watery. “Neither will we.”

+ + +

“I thought the breakfast at the B&B was excellent,” Mulder said as they walked to their gate at the airport. “Those scones were homemade.”

“The beds were also excellent.” Scully glanced up at him. “At least, mine was. I can’t speak to the quality of any other accommodations.”

“I’d stay there again,” he said. “Recreationally.”

“Oh? Are you seeing someone?”

He stopped suddenly in the middle of the passageway. She stopped too and looked at him curiously. He took her face between his hands and kissed her. It was profound. It was passionate. It was making her weak in the knees in the middle of a fucking airport. She put her hands on his waist to steady herself.

“It wasn’t because this is a secret, Scully,” he said. “I’d get your name tattooed in five inch letters on my ass tomorrow if that’s what you wanted.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I know. The work matters. It was just weird not to be on the same page.”

“It was,” he agreed. His eyes searched her face and he smiled at whatever he saw there. “Should we go home?”

“Are you conferring with me in a professional context, Agent Mulder?”

He shook his head, the smile turning into a grin. “I’m not interested in your professional opinion at this time, Agent Scully.”

“Then yes, we should go home.”

He slung his arm around her shoulders as they walked and she leaned into him.

+ + +

In the DC airport, Scully caught a glimpse of curly hair and a familiar profile. “Naomi,” she said quietly to herself, and then louder. “Naomi!”

The woman turned, blanched, tried to push through a crowd. Scully swore. It was the suits. It was always the suits. Scully pursued, Mulder at her heels.

“Naomi! You’re not in trouble. We just want to talk.”

Naomi turned at last, eyes bright but her chin held high. She was clutching the hand of a blonde woman Scully had seen in a dozen photographs.

“Naomi Diaz,” Mulder drawled. “Cassy Miller.”

“How do you know our names?” Naomi demanded.

“We’ve been looking for you.” Scully showed them her badge. “Police Chief Hughes called the Bureau to follow up on a missing persons report.”

“And here you are, remarkably unmissing,” Mulder said. He was enjoying himself too much for someone who had been completely wrong, Scully thought.

“We shouldn’t have left the way we did,” Naomi said. Her mouth trembled. “I know that. But we couldn’t stay.”

“Why not?” Scully asked, and then looked again at the women’s clasped hands and understood.

Cassy stepped in front of Naomi without letting go. “It’s a small town, ma’am. Everybody knows everybody there. The kids at my store, I watched them grow up. I babysat half of them. Their parents are the older siblings of the kids I went to high school with. If I changed shampoo brands, the whole town would know by the end of the week.”

“I see.” Scully put her hands in her pockets. A week looking for two women and no one had mentioned they were lovers. The picture drew itself.

“I have loved this woman for a decade and everyone pretends they don’t know that,” Cassy said fiercely. “They just look right past me. It’s almost worse than if they were hateful.”

“It was like we were already dead,” Naomi put in. “We can’t get married. Landlords kept losing our application when we tried to get an apartment together. So it seemed easy. Everybody knows that people get drunk and stupid on the lake and nobody ever sees them again.”

“We read the reports,” Mulder told them. “Nobody in that town thought either of you would be drunk or stupid.”

“It was better than staying,” Cassy said in a firm voice. “Now we can start over. We can have a life that’s real. I’m thirty-two years old. I can’t spend the rest of my life playing pretend. Not about her.”

“They think you were eaten by the lake monster,” Scully told them.

Cassy laughed. “Champ? That’s just a legend.”

“No, it’s not,” Naomi muttered.

Scully exchanged a look with Mulder. “Regardless,” Scully said smoothly, “I think in this case, we can file a report saying that all evidence was inconclusive.” She paused. “Being eaten by a lake monster isn’t the worst way to go.”

Mulder was scribbling on a piece of paper. He passed it to Cassy. “Go to this address. The attendant in the Metro can show you the best stop. Tell them Mulder sent you. They’re weird guys, but they’ll help you.”

“And that’s it?” Naomi asked. “You’re not going to turn us in?”

“Leaving town isn’t a crime,” Scully told her. She started to turn away, and then turned back. “This may sound strange but…it’s never too late to start living the life you want. For what it’s worth, I think you’re both brave.”

“Thank you,” Cassy said.

Scully nodded and walked away with Mulder at her shoulder. They were quiet as they picked up their backs at the luggage carousel. She said nothing as they got into Mulder’s car. She waited until they had exited the airport road and merged onto the highway.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

“I told you so.”

+ + +

He parked in front of her apartment and carried her bag in for her. “What a gentleman,” she started to say, but before she could get the words out, he was pressing her into the door, his hot mouth descending on hers. She tugged at his lip with her teeth and then surrendered, opening her mouth to the insistent slide of his tongue. Their hands tangled trying to get to each other’s buttons. But finally, fucking finally, his hands were on her bare tits and she was digging her nails into his back. She could feel his erection against her belly. She cupped it with her palm and he groaned.

“Fuck, Scully.”

She dragged his head down and nipped at his ear. “Time to put your money where your very active mouth is, Mulder.”

“Anything you want,” he promised.

“Tease me,” she said. “Worship me.”

He pressed his body into hers, fumbling at the closure of her skirt. After a moment he gave up and just pushed it over her hips. His hands ghosted over her skin, barely touching, until her nerves crackled and fizzed like a plasma globe. By the time his thumb traced up the damp gusset of her underwear, she was almost panting.

“What do you want, Scully?” he whispered, his tongue flicking at the shell of her ear.

“I want to give it to you,” she gasped. His hips jolted against her and she moaned.

He bit gently at her shoulder. “I’m confused but very turned on.” His thumb grazed her underwear again and she arched into the touch for a moment. It was difficult to wriggle out from between his body and the door, but she had the fuel of a week’s worth of frustration. He followed her, shedding his pants as they slid off his hips.

She dragged her suitcase into the bedroom and tipped it onto the floor. She unzipped it and pulled out a bundle of straps wrapped around a slender purple dildo.

“That was in your suitcase the whole time?” he said from the doorway.

“I thought it was a different kind of trip,” she told him. She shook out the straps; they resolved into a harness. The dildo fit neatly into it. She’d practiced assembling it. There was no fumbling here. She shed her skirt but didn’t bother with her underwear, stepping into the harness and buckling it tight.

“I thought you were going to be the one begging,” he said, sauntering closer. “Looks like you’ve turned the tables on me again.”

“Say ‘please’,” she told him.

He knelt in front of her, gazing up her body. As she looked down at him, he lapped slowly at the head of the dildo. She shuddered at the way his eyes closed in pleasure. He opened them again and stared up at her. “Please.”

“Clothes off. Get on the bed.” She ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. He caught it when she tossed it and spread it under his hips. “You’ve done this before?”

“Not in a while,” he admitted. “I didn’t know if you’d be into it.”

“It’s got more reach than my fingers,” she said. “And honestly, Mulder, I’ve wanted to fuck you speechless for years.”

“Is that a challenge?” His eyes gleamed.

“It’s a promise,” she said, pulling a latex glove out of her suitcase and snapping it on.

She took her time preparing him. A single finger up his ass in the heat of passion was different from the dildo, even if it was the smallest of the set she’d bought. He lay on his belly on the bed. She knelt between his legs, pushing his thighs wide with her knees. The marks of her nails were pink half-moons up and down his back. She liked seeing them: proof he was hers.

She worked him open slowly, slicking him with lube until he was dripping, rubbing her fingers up and down and up and down between his ass cheeks. One finger, slow and steady. Her pussy throbbed under the base of the dildo, aching for him. Two fingers and he was groaning, lifting his hips toward her. Three fingers - that was probably the same girth as the dildo, and he rocked against her eagerly.

“Are you ready?”

“God, Scully, please.”

“Turn over,” she commanded. “I want to watch you while I fuck you.”

He flipped himself over with a surprising amount of grace. She gestured and he tossed her one of the pillows. She dragged the towel over it and helped him wedge it under his hips. He looked so vulnerable like this, splayed out before her. His cock banged his belly and she couldn’t resist dragging her tongue up it to taste the salt. Her thumb stroked the tender skin under his balls, sliding back and back to push inside him. More lube. More pressure at his entrance. She circled it with her thumb, slicked the dildo with yet more lube, let the head of it rest against him.

“Scully, please,” he said in an urgent hush.

“Please what?”

“Pretty please,” he said. “Pretty please, please fuck me.”

She checked her watch. “It’s only 4:58 p.m., Mulder. Are you sure we’re off the clock?”

“Please,” he said. “I swear we’ll talk about it next time we take a case that looks like a vacation.”

“In that case,” she said, and pushed into him oh so slowly. He took the toy an inch at a time. She would have sworn his eyes got greener the deeper she pushed. He made a noise like she’d touched his soul. When she started to pull out, he whimpered. The naked need on his face floored her.

“I’m not done,” she assured him, and thrust again. Fuck, it was hard not to just snap her hips into his. She wanted to fuck him rough. Maybe once he had graduated to something bigger, she’d bend him over her couch. Maybe she’d pull out her most indulgent dildo, the one that was almost too big, and let him gag on it. Not tonight, but maybe if he pulled a stunt like that again.

For now she fucked him slowly. The base of the dildo ground against her pubis, not quite the contact she needed, but good. And his face while she fucked him, God - she could have come just from the way he looked at her.

“Enough,” he gasped when she was so on edge she was gritting her teeth to keep going. “Fuck, Scully, enough.”

She pulled out of him and he reached for her and dragged her up the bed. He undid the buckles on one side of the harness and she undid the other side and the straps fell away. She tossed the dildo to one side. And then she was straddling him and his beautiful fucking cock was pressing against her and how was she already this goddamn close? She was seeing stars and he’d barely touched her yet.

Mulder wrapped his hand around his cock and rubbed it against the wet cotton that separated her skin from his. She reached down and pushed it aside and moaned. His shaft slid between her folds. Fuck, yes, that was what she’d needed. She wasn’t waiting any longer. She cupped her hand over his and used her other hand to pull her underwear away and then she was sinking down onto his cock.

“Not yet,” he said. His hands grabbed her hips, urging her higher until she was sitting on his face. Her underwear had slipped back into place, but that didn’t seem to bother Mulder. He licked at her through the fabric, lips and tongue working together. The cotton blunted the edges of his teeth when he scraped them over her clit. She moaned, a high urgent sound, and he pulled her down hard and sucked her clit until she saw stars.

“Mulder, yes,” she was saying, over and over. Her legs shook. He lessened the pressure, then swirled his tongue in rapid circles until she was coming again, grabbing at the headboard. He slid out from under her and pressed up against her back, his big hands on her tits, thumbing at her nipples until she was almost coming again. She turned her head to kiss him hungrily as his fingers slipped lower, spreading her folds so that he could push two fingers inside her. His thumb circled her clit and she came again, a warm wave of pleasure that surprised her.

“I think these need to come off,” he said, and helped her wriggle out of her panties.

“Now will you fuck me?” she panted.

“However many orgasms that was wasn’t enough for you?” He grinned.

“It’s different,” she said. “It was good - it was fantastic - but I need you inside me, Mulder.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. He surged up behind her again, nudging her knees apart roughly, and pushed into her, filling her pussy in a way that immediately soothed the ache inside her and made it worse all at the same time. His arm locked over her shoulders as he heaved up into her, holding her in place on his cock. She whimpered and sank her teeth into the corded muscle of his forearm. She was clinging to the bars of her headboard. The motion of his hips rocked her up and down. His other hand was braced next to hers, his fingers curling over her fist. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Fuck, she loved him.

The pressure of him inside her made her desperate. She freed one hand, touched herself with trembling fingers. She was coming undone, again, her muscles clutching around him. He moaned and pulled out of her. She cried out in protest, still shuddering, but he put his back against the headboard and hauled into his lap, thrusting up into her like he’d never stopped. She braced her knees wide and took him as deep as she could, grinding against him. His thighs were tensing under hers. She was amazed he hadn’t come yet, and grateful, and determined.

“I want you to come inside me,” she whispered, and his whole body shivered. “I’ve been so good, Mulder, please.”

He bent forward and took her nipples into his mouth, first one, then the other, his mouth hot and desperate. She kissed his forehead, scraping her fingers through his hair as he squeezed her tits. And there, so unexpected, another orgasm building inside her. She rubbed herself against him in a frenzy. She’d never come this many times in a row, with a partner or a toy, but a week’s tension had wound her tight.

“I’m close,” he warned her. He rubbed his cheek over her nipple and the friction of his stubble made her gasp. “Scully.”

“I’m coming,” she said, and it was true. Sparks burst behind her eyelids and he held her hips down and pounded up into her and she could feel him inside her, the wet heat of his pleasure. It seemed to last forever as he surged into her and then finally, finally, she was back in her body, wrapped in his arms. When he eventually pulled out of her, it felt like a loss.

“I want to lick you clean,” he said. His voice was shaking.

“Next time,” she promised, wincing just a little. She was too sensitive everywhere, but it had been worth it. Fuck, it had all been worth it. They eased down together. Mulder flopped on his belly, ass in the air.

“Did I make it up to you?” he asked.

“I believe I got the rewards I was promised,” she said.

“If I’d known you’d brought your own equipment, I don’t think my conscience would have won,” he told her. “It was hard enough seeing you in that bath, all flushed and damp.”

She patted his ass. “You took it like a champ.”

He huffed a laugh into the crumpled sheets. “I would have absolutely bought a novelty t-shirt that said that.”

“I know,” she said.

He pushed up on one elbow and gazed at her. “And you would have stolen it to wear to bed.”

“With no underwear underneath,” she agreed.

He swore under his breath. “We could go back.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she suggested. “I don’t want you getting distracted by the local legends. Do you think I can find you a t-shirt that says ‘Rode Hard And Put Away Wet’?”

“We’ll have to get matching ones,” he said.

“We can do that.” She smiled at him. “You can wear it to work.”

“I think that would leave Skinner with some questions.”

She shook her head, yawning. “I think that would answer most of his questions.”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

“I changed my mind,” she told him. “Lick me clean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and settled between her legs like it was his job. His mouth was gentle on her tender skin. His eyes were closed like he was praying. She pushed her hands through his hair and let herself drift into a dream of a life where they could do this anytime they wanted, forever and ever, amen.

#my fic #leiascully fic #msr fic #xfiles fanfic #pure unadulterated smut #thanks for the prompt!#this is too long for tumblr tbh

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aloysiavirgata · 4 months ago

Note

Fisher King prompt: dark crescendoing to light. Daniel Waterson and his baggage come back into her now-married life; maybe by way of the autopsy table. A dark case comes across Mulder’s desk. You pick. A happy surprise at the end to bring them both out of it?

Thanks, lady.

It is the dead nurse that catches his attention. Two days back from his honeymoon, attaboys and filthy jokes and cigars and a stack of manila folders on his dust-rimed desk.

Pendrell whistles when he sees Mulder, makes a predictable playing-doctor joke. He leers as though it obscures the soulful puppy wetness of his face. As though he hasn’t noticed Dana at crime scenes before, the autumn bonfire of her hair. Her tourmaline eyes.

Mulder thumbs the band on his left ring finger, spins it a little in the cool morning light. Flips them all off with good-natured grouchiness as he makes his way to the elevator. He thinks it might be fun to be an old man, to listen to the slap of his bedroom slippers on the grocery store linoleum.

The air in his office smells like cardboard boxes, like ghosts of lo mein and forgotten pizza. Copier toner. Pencil shavings.

His wife says, “Honestly, Mulder,” and makes chicken sandwiches from dinner leftovers, makes him salads with salmon and almonds and avocados and says he needs to gain eight pounds. He’s taken to her demands like a stray cat adjusting to life indoors. He’s growing glossy and sleek, full of essential amino acids.

Full of life.

***

There is no congestion in any of the organs. No petechiae in her eyes, no blood clots in the fragile slices of brain. Lips, mouth, esophagus free of corrosion, not an aneurysm the size of a poppy seed. The bruises and claw marks on her gray throat are her own doing. There are over a dozen witnesses.

Her nails are clotted with her own crumpled skin.

Dana pokes her finger into the aorta, sniffs the dead, butcher-shop air of Ludovica’s mouth. She prods at the lungs and hunts for lesions and surfactant. The nurse’s stomach contains a half-digested bagel and tuna salad. The muscular walls are in the very pink of health. She has lungs like freshly chewed bubblegum.

Dana huffs a strand of hair off her lip. She does not want to call him.

***

“What killed her?” Mulder asks, around a mouthful leftover quiche. God it’s good. She caramelized the onions, used two semesters of organic chemistry on the pastry and can declaim on the Maillard Reaction in a voice fit for Showtime.

“I’m working on it,” his wife says, brisk. “Thus far it seems to be nothing, which is a bit of a problem, medically speaking.”

“How embarrassing,” Mulder says, hunting around for another chunk of broccoli. “To die of nothing. You talk to this Waterston chappie yet?

Silence.

“Dr. Scully?”

A sigh.

Mulder’s brow furrows. “Dana Katherine, what gives?”

She sighs again. “You remember that med school professor I told you about? Funny story…”

***

He gazes at her the way tourists gawp at the Mona Lisa; not with a particular appreciation, just a bit awed that they can check it off their bucket lists.

Twice, for Daniel. A certain chumminess. A hint of inside jokes and favorite restaurants and that-lovely-inn-we-stayed-at. Of possessiveness. Territoriality.

Mulder shakes his head, just a twitch. Just enough to clear Daniel’s smug carnal knowledge of his wife away. Mulder’s fucked people’s daughters as well. People’s wives. There was one at Oxford, Honora, her husband a full professor and he -

Mulder doesn’t say this. He doesn’t say anything as Daniel stares at his Rossetti wife, undoubtedly thinks about the determined twitch of her twenty-one year old ponytail and her scuffed Keds and her slipshod Navy brat graces and her body like Artemis bathing by moonlight.

But Daniel’s alone and Mulder isn’t.

Dana isn’t alone either because, against all reason and karma, she’s married him, married Fox Mulder, like it was an absolutely sane thing to do, and her family simply went along with it.

“Tell me what you saw,” says Mulder, with the gentle absolution of a priest. “No judgement here,” he lies. She was hardly more than a girl, she was an innocent, she trusted you, you fucking asshole, you predator, you-

Daniel looks at Dana. Looks down at his surgeon’s hands. No ring on any of his fingers.

Daniel closes his eyes and looks at nothing.

“We began a midline sternotomy, absolutely routine, Suddenly Ludovica - Nurse Giordano - grabbed her throat and said she couldn’t breathe. She…she screamed Diavola! Said there was sulfur, said it was mustard gas, but none of the rest of us smelled a damn thing. But she was thrashing on the floor of the OR and our patient was-“

He looks around then, catches Dana’s eye, shyness in his expression. Shyness in his fatherly face. Dana had looked up at it for approval, no doubt. In what she probably thought was passion. Maybe even love.

Dana nods encouragingly and Mulder feels it then, the weight of years. He understands in that moment that time really is the fourth dimension; that it has a hot, heavy plasticity into which you can sink. He understands the realness of an event horizon, that they are all being pulled towards the unfinished thing between Daniel and his wife, Ludovica Giordano’s corpse included.

His wife was a physics major, his wife rewrote Einstein with the ebullient narcissism of the young.

He understands that his wife and Daniel speak the same primal, arcane language of science. He is a lowly psychologist, the major you pick when you can’t get into dental school but still want to Help Others.

Kepler’s Third Law tells us that intensity equals the inverse of the square of the distance from the source.

And he’s brought Daniel back into her orbit.

***

“I can’t believe you fucked him,” Mulder gasps into her tender seashell ear. An inch from her extraordinary brain.

“I was a child,” she hisses back. “Essentially. Don’t stop, Christ, don’t - I was a child, I-“

She was, she was, she was Eos newly born, she was radiant and young, she was Persephone to Daniel’s Hades, she was fresh milk at Ostara, and a sunrise over the Atlantic.

“Did you love him?”

Her thighs so taut and pale and quivering. Her wedding dress, her misty veil. Her palimpsest skin, on which he can rewrite himself.

“I thought I did but but it wasn’t this, it was never this, it was never you, I-“

Mulder comes in her, groaning, feels the tiniest sting of shame at how good it is to reclaim her from this other man.

***

“Dana,” Daniel says, heavy-tongued for Mulder’s consecrated, Catholic wife. He is hard; he shifts in the uncomfortable chair.

Mulder knows and Dana knows and the air is thick with this knowledge but strangely not unpleasant. The air is July just before a thunderstorm. The air is dense and verging. Primal, fecund, cataclysmic.

Hot.

Green.

Alive.

The air tastes like a 9-volt battery. He wants to put a baby into his wife.

“You were there,” Mulder says, his buckskin hands woven and laced. “What did you see?”

Daniel looks at Dana, Daniel is here for Dana, because he believes she is cold and lonely and alone in the way of the outer planets. He still thinks only he can warm her.

(He doesn’t know, Daniel, not really, that there is a solid core beneath the icy mist.)

She’s too distant and abstruse and Daniel doesn’t know.

***

Daniel smirks at Mulder, this old man who felt briefly alive in the hot juncture of his wife’s thighs; smirks as though he’s done anything real at all. They view the human heart so differently, he and Daniel.

Dana - Dr. Scully - rests her palms against her sharp tweed knee. She only wants to know what stops any human heart from beating. What shuts the brain down, from prefrontal cortex in a cascade to the lowly lizard stem.

“What did you see, Daniel?” She is poised and tensed. She is waiting. She is untouchable.

Mulder - Fox - is disarmed by the chill of her haughty face. Her Plutonian eyes are so very, very cold . So very, very far.

Ice could never be so warm.

***

“‘Maggie,” he breathes, into her amber light. Into her aura, in her husband’s office, after Mulder went out for their lunch order.

“No,” Dana says. “I don’t care. Tell me about the nurse.”

Daniel huffs. “I don’t know, it was nothing, Dana, Maggie said-“

“I don’t care,” Dana says, crisp. “I don’t care about your daughter. You certainly didn’t, when you brought me to your bed.

Daniel is appalled. “Dana, you were-“

“I know what I was,” she replies. “I knew what I was doing and I don’t regret it, not really. But I didn’t understand what you were, not then. And you should regret me, Daniel.”

He looks at her, his brows drawn.

He looks away, back through the years. Dana, all sharpened Ticonderogas and her mouth an unplucked apricot. Skin like fresh-churned butter.

“She was…she was gasping,” he says to the wall of of clippings. To the Flatwoods Monster and wendigos and little lost girls and stills from the Zapruder Footage. “She was clawing at her throat, she…diavola.”

Diavola.

Daniel looks at the ceiling. “She clawed her throat to ribbons,” he says. “She said our patient was full of demons, she said…” He shakes his head and looks at Dana again.

Dana knows. Dana has seen. Has read and wondered and wondered, considered the Gerasene demoniac in the synoptic gospels. Tooms at her belly on the chilly tile of her bathroom…

It will do no good. Whatever her husband says, the truth is not always a panacea. The patient has lived and Ludovica has died and all anyone wants is official paper with Dana’s name at the bottom.

A reckoning, now. A choice.

“Anaphylaxis?” Dana murmurs, in the perfume and cashmere of a different rich man’s wife. She puts a little throatiness in her voice now, like she did after Dr. Waterston spoke to her in private about Starling’s Law. She can give him this. She can give Ludovica’s family this.

Diavola.

Mulder is right, Mulder is almost always right. But Mulder is right in his own time and Ludovica’s family needs her home.

Daniel catches the lifeline she throws, grateful.

Humbled.

Daniel, when his gaze returns, is a bit smaller in her eyes. “Yes,” he says. “It must have been.”

***

They’re eating dinner at the Peruvian chicken place on the corner because Dana is hollow and Mulder has moderately weaponized his own culinary incompetence.

“Ansel died today,” she says, poking at her rice.

Mulder nearly chokes on a mouthful of black beans. “What?!”

“Died. Massive coronary at his desk. Dead within seconds.”

Mulder gapes. Ansel Jordan, Chief Medical Examiner in DC; the alpha and omega of the unexpectedly dead in the District. “He ran marathons.”

Dana nods into the middle distance. “He ran marathons. He had a treadmill in his office. He was 57 and he was my boss and I split his chest apart with a Stryker before his body had even cooled this morning. My god, I forgot what warm tissue feels like.”

She looks up with her wide, delphinium eyes. “They asked me, Mulder.”

They asked? He is appalled. “They asked you to autopsy him? That’s really fu-“

She shakes her head. “No, nobody asked me that. No one would ever. I volunteered, it was the right thing to do, for my colleagues. For Ansel. We were hardly close but I had tremendous respect for the man.”

Ansel was a runner. He ate well and drank in moderation. He cared for his body like a classic car; starting to slow down but with lots of miles left.

The human body is strange and unpredictable.

“Are you okay?” How do you cut open a man you know? He cannot believe she didn’t call this morning but also of course she didn’t call this morning. She is an eternal riddle, a beautiful enigma.

“I’m surprisingly fine,” she says. “I mean, it’s horrible and pointless and tragic. But the process of an autopsy…it soothed me. I knew what to do and there was a…a checklist.”

He smiles, soft. “You’re always a doctor first.”

Dana shrugs, fluid and dismissive. “I guess.”

He realizes then, awed. Adoring. “They want you to… to step in, to be Chief. Dana, that’s incredible, that’s a huge honor. I’m sorry it’s come at the cost of Ansel, but Christ. It’s tremendous.”

He will never achieve this in his own career and is delighted that she can.

Dana nods slowly, a blush creeping up her fine, pale cheeks. She spears a plantain and examines it on the end of her fork. “It’s obviously not a formal offer yet, my god, he’s only just been released to the family, but yes. It’s tremendous.” She bites into the plantain.

He thinks back to that feeling of wanting a baby, wanting her to have it, and knows that the new Chief Medical Examiner of DC will have other pressures, other concerns.

She’s expressed interest in babies in a vague sort of way, but doesn’t want them like he does. Dana grew up with hand-me-downs and home haircuts and spaghetti the last week of every month. She knows that babies grow into scraped-kneed children who need lunch money and trombones and French tutors and football uniforms.

He’s rich enough for it all, for night nurses and nannies, but he knows her body is not a rental property. He wants a baby, he does, but he also doesn’t care if it means this for her. He doesn’t care if her star can rise.

“I love you,” he says, raising his plastic cup of horchata. “And I’m so goddamn sorry about Ansel.”

She lifts hers back, his wife, her old-master face and her slapdash smile. “Thank you,” she says, still pained. “And slaínte.”

“L’chaim,” he replies. To life.

#xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic #my fic #prompt #daniel waterston #the fisher king #coffe shop au

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katebeckets · 1 month ago

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Special Agent Fox “I do not gaze at Scully” Mulder ⤷ [4/13] ✧ Season Four

#someone ask this boy what he thinks gazing is #guess who finished season four (my brain is broken!)#my gifs #em.txf #msr gaze #the x files #txfedit #dailytxf #msr #msredit #useremsi #useralf #usergeorgette #usernessa #singinprincess #usergabriella #userairi #userveronika #poangpals

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zipstick · 11 months ago

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fox mulder is a lying bastard. i know you gaze at scully, motherfucker. i know you do. i've seen it

#fox mulder #dana scully #x files #my ramblings

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deadcrayons · 3 months ago

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So you guys know The X-Files? Dana Scully Fox Mulder love of my life? Do you guys also know that Dana Scully is absolutely 100% immortal?

Like do me a favor and Google "scully immortal tithonus" right now. Take a peep at those results. It's mostly people on various forms of journalism websites DECONSTRUCTING REALITY over the INDISPUTABLE FACT that DANA SCULLY IS IMMORTAL. (tldr in the episode "Tithonus," this guy describes becoming immortal by "giving" Death's gaze to someone else at the moment of his death. And at the end of the episode he "takes" Scully's chance to look at Death by telling her to close her eyes after she's shot. So... how else am I supposed to read that. She's immortal bro. She came down in a bubble, Doug)

This "plothole" has obsessed and consumed me ever since I first watched The X-Files in 2017.

So I wrote it.

It's called X-Tropy.

Mulder comes back as a ghost because there's no way in hell that man is "moving on" without her. You cannot even begin to fathom the levels of BURNING ANGST AND YEARNING that this generates.

I've already written the whole thing. I'm just posting it one chapter at a time. This is risk-free on your part. I've done all the work. You just get to sit back and GO INSANE. FOR FREE. ON THE INTERNET!!!

Anyway here's a picture from a real photo shoot of Scully and Mulder posing as dead bodies in a morgue because that's just how canon this fic is I guess

À demain, à la prochaine!

#the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #tithonus #immortal dana scully #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #x files #my shit

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is-on-its-way · 4 months ago

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This post from @unremarkablehouse got me writing an entire scene for Scully telling Emily about Mulder... and also because I like to torture myself...

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ﾟ⋆

“Hey, Hey, Hey” she said softly into the little girls baby shampoo scented hair.

Emily was sniffling into her neck, refusing to let her arms be pried from around her.

“Ill be back tomorrow Emily, I promise.”

She stopped fighting her and hugged her back closing her eyes against her burning tears, against the orderly's stern face looking down at them both.

Her heart ached to pick her up and take her far from this place. Take her back. Her baby. She was hers.

“Hey, do you want to pinky swear?”

She felt the little girl nod against her and then release her, little balled up fists rubbing at her eyes as she sniffled big heaving sobs.

She held out a pinky and waited for Emily, who indextrously grabbed for her finger with her own tiny pinky.

Scully found her eyes and hoped with sheer willpower the girl felt just how truthful she was being, because nothing would stop her from coming back for her.

“I promise Emily, Im going to come back tomorrow. Ill see you at 10am, thats when visiting hours start okay?”

The girl nodded tears staining her face.

“Oh baby.” She couldn’t help herself as she wiped at Emilys face and drew her in for a hug. This time Emily curled in and let herself be comforted instead of clinging on like she might lose her.

“And guess what?” She looked down at her. “Tomorrow, I have someone special who wants to meet you, his name is Mu.. his name is Fox.”

“A fox?” Emily looked up excited.

“Well not quite” she smirked to herself, “He’s a person, his name is just Fox.”

She giggled.

“Well he likes to be called Mulder, but I don’t know if thats so easy to say…”

“Is Fox your daddy?”

“No, he’s not my dad, he’s..”

“Not your dad… you’re mommy and he’s daddy?”

“Oh, are we married? No, we aren’t married, but he’s my friend and he’s going to come meet you.”

Sharp pain coursed behind her sternum as if pieces of her soul were being ripped from her chest. Her daughter, even admitting that to herself was as if the world had shifted on its axis. Her daughter had referred to her as mommy. She knew it wasn’t what she meant and she was being so, so reckless to hope. But hope was growing from embers to flames at each passing second she spent with her. She felt the change, in an unyielding determination, ready to fight the entire state of California if thats what needed to be done.

She rubbed the girls cheek and said “Goodnight Emily, Ill see you tomorrow.” in as steady a voice as she could with the best smile she could muster.

She watched as the girl took the orderly's hand and was led away. At the door Emily turned and waved and she waved back. She thought, as she stood, she would be able to hold it together until she reached her car, but the flood of emotion wasn’t going to cooperate like it usually did. She avoided peoples gaze as she rushed outside, tears streaming down her face.

#dana scully #x files #the x files #xfiles #txf #txf fanfic #emily

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television-overload · 6 months ago

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of our own making

(an X-Files fanfic)

Chapter 25/34 - rosebud lips

[Read on AO3]

Below them, the baby starts to fuss, her eyes shut tight against the bright lights as she squirms in Scully’s arms.

“Shh, it’s alright,” she hushes, rocking her back and forth. Mulder’s hand drops from Scully’s arm to cup the baby’s back, rubbing soft comforting circles there. She’s so soft and warm, it’s like touching a warm loaf of bread. Not that he’s about to compare their newborn baby to something as silly as a loaf of bread minutes after meeting her, but that’s where his head’s at.

The baby quiets, settling into the crook of Scully’s arm again. She’s a natural, just like he’d known she’d be.

“Oh, you’re gonna love your mommy, hon,” he coos, marveling at the way she’d instantly calmed her.

“Mulder, look at her!” Scully says in awe, tugging down at the blanket so her face is fully visible for the first time. “She’s so perfect!” The image of their daughter blurs through another bout of tears, and Scully clutches her close. The baby sleeps peacefully, her tiny pink tongue peeking out through her little rosebud lips every so often.

“She’s beautiful,” Mulder says, laughing a little at his own inability to hold it together.

Scully looks up at him again, finally beginning to compose herself.

“Do you want to hold her?” she asks.

There’s quite literally nothing in the entire world that he would like more, right now.

He reluctantly lets go of Scully, lifting his arms to accept the transfer of the baby. His hand cups the back of her downy-soft head and he pulls her oh so carefully into his chest, laying her in his arms. Something shifts inside him and falls into place.

It takes his breath away.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he whispers, dipping his head down to press a kiss to her tufts of wispy dark brown hair. “I’m gonna be your daddy.” Scully hangs on to him, her hands resting on his shoulder so she can keep staring at the precious little face now cradled in his arms. “She’s so small,” he chuckles, glancing at Scully for a second, then back to the baby as a few more tears escape. He’s blinking rapidly in an effort to be able to see her through the sheen of tears, but his efforts are proving fruitless. “I didn’t know anything could be so small.” Ten tiny little fingers. A button nose. Perfect fluttering eyelashes. Rosy red cheeks.

Scully leans her cheek against his bicep. “We have a daughter,” she says in awe, the full weight of those words hitting them for the first time. She rests her arm along Mulder’s, feeling the subtle rise and fall of the baby’s chest under her hand. “Oh, we love you so much already.”

It’s then that he turns to look down at her, and it hits him. He can’t hold back anymore. Not only does it not make sense, but he feels like he genuinely might spontaneously combust if he doesn’t do something.

And there’s only one thing to do, really.

He tilts his head down and pauses. She catches his movement out of the corner of her eye and shifts her gaze up to his, her eyes swimming with joy. He sees nothing to dissuade him.

Resolved, he adjusts his hold on the baby, then ducks his head and presses his lips gently to Scully’s for their second real kiss since their wedding. It’s different than the one they’d shared on New Year’s. Her lips are soft and salty with tears, but she kisses him back, eyes closed and relishing in the moment. When they break, he swallows thickly, feeling more fulfilled than he has in his entire life. He’s reluctant to open his eyes, wanting to live in that moment forever.

He loves her. He is absolutely, undeniably in love with Dana Scully, and by some miracle, she’s gone on this incredible journey with him. He still doesn’t know exactly where she stands. The plan never involved love of this kind. She didn’t sign up for this. But he hopes she might feel the same way—if not now, then someday. He wants to believe.

She’s smiling up at him when they part.

“Congratulations, Fox and Dana,” Brenda says, a beaming smile lighting up her face. “I’ll be back again before you're discharged to finalize some paperwork. Until then, you enjoy getting to know one another. I know you’ll do great.”

-.-.-

The silence in the wake of the ladies from the agency leaving is almost deafening. There’s still a ringing in his ears from when he’d kissed Scully, losing all sense of time in the few moments that their lips touched.

A tiny gurgle escapes the baby’s mouth, and it draws both of their attention back down to her. Mulder chuckles at the sight of her smacking her lips, rooting around for something to satisfy her most basic needs.

“She’s hungry,” he says, proud of himself for being able to recognize her signals already. He had worried that he wouldn’t know what he was doing, or how to take care of her, but it’s true what they say. Instincts kick in pretty quick, and your baby will tell you what they need if you know what to look for. “You want to feed her?” he asks Scully. He knows it would mean a lot to her, even if she can’t do it with milk from her own body.

She nods and gracefully takes the baby from him, settling into a rocking chair. He grabs a pillow from the bed and puts it under her arm for support, handing her a ready-made bottle of formula that one of the nurses had left for them. Then, he crouches down in front of her and just watches. The baby suckles greedily, pausing every so often like she’s falling asleep, before the motion picks back up.

“Mulder?” Scully says after a moment, her eyes not straying from the baby’s face.

“Yeah?”

“I think this is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

His lips curl upward in a smile, and he places a hand on her knee.

“I’ve had some pretty brilliant ideas over the years, but I think you might be right.”

She’s going to be the best mom, he thinks. It’s such a relief that they were able to make this happen. He doesn’t know what he’d have done if this, too, had failed. She’s had enough heartbreak because of this—her infertility, Emily, the IVF… Then at some point, he’d realized his fate was tied up with hers, and if she was never destined to be a mother, then—well—he’d never be a father either.

To that, he had said, “Never give up on a miracle,” and this might be it. Scully’s God works in mysterious ways, after all.

“We don’t have a name for her,” Scully says, her voice tinged with just the slightest edge of sadness.

He had tried to bring it up to her once before, but he could tell Scully hadn’t been ready for that conversation yet. She may not be a superstitious person, but when it came to their prospective parenthood, it was like she was afraid they’d jinx it if they got too excited too soon.

But they can’t put it off any longer. As much as he likes the sound of “Baby Girl Mulder,” that can’t stay her name forever.

“Well, are there any you want to rule out?” he asks. “What about your mom or your sister?”

Scully shakes her head, gazing contemplatively at the baby’s face. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Missy… well, she was one of a kind, I don’t think it fits anyone else.”

“Mmm,” Mulder hums in agreement.

“As for my mom,” Scully continues, “she means so much to me. But I want her to have her own name, not just a copy of someone else’s.”

“It could always be a middle name,” Mulder suggests, and Scully blushes, focusing intently on keeping the bottle upright.

“I’ve– um…” she starts. “I’ve actually got a middle name in mind already.”

Mulder’s eyebrows raise. “Oh, do you?”

“Yes, but she needs a first name first.”

He breathes out through his nose, pursing his lips and nodding in thought.

“I’m assuming small woodland creatures are out?” he says, waiting for the expected eye roll from her, and he’s not disappointed. “Well, how about this? Something that starts with an ‘M’, that way you can honor both your sister and your mom, while still giving her something new.”

He sees her mull over the idea in her head, testing it out probably a hundred different ways in the span of a few seconds.

“I’ve always liked Madeline,” she says thoughtfully. “Maddie.”

“Maddie,” Mulder says, trying it out on his tongue.

He looks down at the baby in her arms, and tries to imagine that name belonging to her. Her mouth loses suction on the bottle for a second and she coos adorably while flailing her tongue around in search for the nipple. He takes that as a sign.

“I like it. I think it suits her.”

“Maddie,” Scully repeats.

“And the middle name?” Mulder asks, looking curious. She’s got him in suspense now. He has no idea what name might be on her mind.

She bites down on her lip, cocking her head as she observes the tiny infant. “I was thinking… Samantha.”

He sucks in a breath, his eyes flashing up to hers in an instant. She’s serious, of course she is. This isn’t something she’d joke about, like he’d joked about the woodland creatures.

“Really?” he asks.

She nods. “It’s a beautiful name,” she says, forcing her eyes away from him shyly. “But—only if you like it. Only if you think your sister would approve.”

His sister… She’s been on his mind a lot lately, to no one’s surprise. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have known how to answer this question. What would his sister think of all this? He’d been in denial back then, unable to move on with his life and his search for the truth. They couldn’t have used her name, because it would mean admitting to himself what he’d denied all along. He hadn’t been ready to let her go.

But now, he does have an answer. He’s seen her. He thinks back to the way she’d smiled at him in the forest when he told her he was going to be a father—how thrilled she had been to know he's happy and in love.

He knows without a doubt that she’d be honored to have this child carry her name.

“I think she’d like that,” he says, his voice strained by a sudden influx of tears. “She’d like you, too.”

Scully gives a wobbly smile, then ducks her head to compose herself.

A minute passes before either of them is able to summon up the strength to form coherent language again. Mulder stands to his feet, settling his weight on the side table next to the rocking chair, not wanting to part from them even for the time it would take to pull up another chair.

“Madeline Samantha Scully,” he says aloud, looking down at the little girl who would carry that name.

“Not Scully,” his partner says quickly, glancing up at him seriously. “Mulder.”

For the second time in as many moments, he’s shell shocked by the words that she says.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his heart twisting painfully in his chest. This was her dream originally, after all. He's just riding her coattails.

But she nods, her gaze unwavering. “There’s plenty of Scullys already,” she says. “The world needs more Mulders.”

Something blooms like a sunrise somewhere beneath his ribcage, and he suddenly wonders if it’s possible to die from the sheer force of the love you have stored up inside you.

“Scully… this is– this is your baby. You’re the one who’s wanted this for so long…”

“What I want is a Mulder,” she says, smiling sadly at his own self doubt. “I thought with the IVF, that was obvious.”

He doesn’t know what to make of that. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he thinks she’s saying. But then again, he recalls a time several years ago when she’d asked him about his genetic makeup.

Well, this child doesn’t share his DNA, nor Scully’s, but she’s theirs in all the ways that matter. Of course, he’ll be happy to give her his name.

“Madeline Samantha Mulder,” he amends, marveling at how it sounds spoken aloud. It’s perfect. And it means more to him than Scully will ever know.

“You know what else starts with ‘M?’” Scully asks, in a lighter tone than before.

He senses she’s about to tease him, so he beats her to the punch. “Mothman?” he guesses sarcastically.

She smiles in fond exasperation. “You, Mulder.”

“Hmm,” he hums happily, then pokes her in the shoulder with his elbow. “You know what else starts with ‘S?’”

“Please don’t say Skunk Ape,” she says, drawing a genuine laugh out of him. Her quickness of wit is one of the things he loves most about her. He doesn’t need to give her the correct answer to his question. They both know his favorite word of all time is ‘Scully.’

“A lovely name for a lovely little girl,” he says, reaching down to play with her tiny socked feet. “Welcome to the world, Maddie.”

~~~

Lovely tag list ♡: [if you would like to be added or removed, let me know!]

@today-in-fic @ao3feed-msr @agent-troi @angegova @baronessblixen @calimanc @captainsolocide @clo-thespin @cutemothman @danasculls @deathsbestgirl @edierone @enigmaticxbee @figureofdismay @frogsmulder @gillian-anderson-in-the-tardis @hippocampouts @invidiosa @monaiargancoconutsoy @msrafterdark @numinousmysteries @primrose19 @randomfoggytiger @skelavender @skylarksong @stephy-gold @teenie-xf @the-redhead-in-a-dress @vincentsleftear

#how are we feeling?#msr #txf #x files #xf fanfic #mulder and scully #my fanfiction #fox mulder #dana scully #of our own making #ooom #msr adoption fic #adoption

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