#his only words are to reassure scully

[agent-troi]

rewatching amor fati for fic reasons and i literally just noticed how after scully says about diana “i know she was your friend” when mulder says “you… were my friend and you told me the truth” he stresses and emphasizes the you. he’s finally telling scully what she wanted to hear for all of season six, that she is his priority, that neither diana nor anyone else takes precedence above her in his life, and i think that’s just really beautiful and special

[obsessivestar]

'What If It's All A RomCom?' - a Ted Nivison x Reader

{{-I'm gonna let y'all figure this one out LMAO-}}

// General Warnings: 18+ Fic MINORZ DNI, Reader implied to be afab and under 5'5. \\

// Chapter Warnings: Ted's ex mentioned, (no name drop n not throwing shade), subtlety. \\

// Word Count: 3.5k \\

☆▪︎▪︎▪︎Taglist!▪︎▪︎▪︎☆

@k-k0129 , @callsign-scully & @limecorpse

☆Love Ya To Death!☆

Chapter 15: Rose Coloured

The warmth in my stomach shifts for a moment, and I feel a little nervous. I watch as Ted moves the blankets up to cover our lower halves, sitting up a bit and leaning against his pillow. "I....think hangin' around me is making your pillow talk worse.." I make a light-hearted joke as I sit up as well, trying to ease the tension that was now filling the room. It was a pretty heavy thing to drop out of the blue. What started as a funny little conversation in his Tacoma has begun this big, almost unnecessary mystery. He's choosing one hell of a time to finally talk about it.

"I know, I'm...I'm dogshit at this sort of thing.." Ted gave a soft, nervous sounding chuckle as he lays back against his pillow. "And I hate that I can't do it sober, but....I think I've kept it long enough...from you.." Wow. Fuck. This is really happening. It hits me like a tidal wave, making me place a hand on my bare stomach. I realize that I truly have no idea what this big secret could be. I quietly search my memories of our first conversation, desperately trying to find any context clues that would give me an idea of what to expect. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was at Joe's wedding, but didn't stay for the reception. That gives me...nothing. I have no idea what he's going to tell me, I have no idea what to be ready for. That's making me incredibly nervous.

"Ted...should I be worried?.." The words leave me before I'm able to filter them, my playful smile completely gone. Fuck, this is why I stopped smoking. I'm paranoid for nothing. This is clearly hard for him. He trusts me, I should trust him too.

"No! No...m-maybe? I--" Ted cuts himself off, his usual confidence seems to be slipping which at least assures me he's trying to be honest. He runs his fingers through his dark hair, the usual height of it sticking to his sweaty forehead. "I-I mean...I-I'm probably gonna look like a huge dick for fucking you senseless before telling you, but...I don't know, you...do something to me. You always have, and it..." He pauses and let's out a deep sigh. "...it drives me insane."

That last little sentence is a lot more reassuring than he probably thought it'd be. Even if I'm nervous, I want to make this as easy for him as possible. If we're really gonna have something special, it needs to have honesty in there with all the tension.

"Always? What, are you about to admit you've been stalking me for the last two years?" I ask with a lighthearted smile, trying to ease the tension once more.

"No! Oh my god, no. Never." Ted nearly shoots up out of the bed, sitting up more briefly before letting out another nervous chuckle. "Okay, on Instagram, maybe, but no. I've--I've stayed in L.A., an entire state away from you, I swear..."

"Then it's okay, Ted. It's okay..." I reach for his hand to take it into my own, giving him the most reassuring smile I could muster, looking into his eyes as I speak. "Look, I'm not gonna sit here and claim some sappy shit like 'I know you, you'd never hurt me!', because it's been less than a month of...this.." I pause to gesture around the not-so foggy room, the lingering smell of cannabis still in the air mixing in with the smell of sex. "I mean, I didn't even do any of this...casual shit until I met you, and...I'm pretty sure that means it's real, right? How we're feeling?..." I felt like I was rambling, but I could see that my words were reaching Ted.

"Yeah, yeah it's real.." Ted spoke up with a little nod, giving me a small smile. "I'm not gonna lie and say I've never done casual shit before you, but...yeah, I can feel it..."

"I don't want you to lie, Ted.." I reply, bringing both of my hands down to hold his, shaking my head a little. "I promise I'm going to listen and hear you out, no matter what it is. If it's upsetting, we'll talk about it. If it's not, we move on and...probably have more good sex, imma be real." The tension between us is cut by my little joke. Ted let's out a cackle, looking up at the ceiling.

"Yeah, yeah it's--It's pretty great.." He replies, his tone a bit hoarse.

"Surprisingly good, right?"

"Yeah, it--it fucks with me, dude. It fucks with me."

"And I'm in your bed for a change."

"Yeah, you are."

"You know why?"

"Because the sex is good?"

"Not just that, it's because I like you, Ted. I like you..."

I see Ted's shoulders visibly relax and he turns to look at me again, his amused smile shifting into a warmer, almost infatuated smirk. I watch as his eyes search my face, quietly taking in my features before taking another deep breath, nodding a bit to himself before speaking again.

"Alright, so..." Ted speaks and looks back up at the ceiling again. "When I went to Joe's wedding, I...went with my girlfriend at the time. She was my date. We'd been together for...about a year or two by that point, I think.." I notice that he isn't looking at me as he's explaining himself, but I understood why. Based on the way he was squinting and searching the ceiling, he was trying to recollect as much as he could.

"There was this really nice wine they were serving before the ceremony. I'm not even a wine kinda guy, but I had...a few glasses, so did my girlfriend. Anyways, I..." Ted is holding onto every word a little longer as he speaks, I can't completely tell why. Maybe he's being very careful with how he words this story, or maybe he's stalling for as long as he can until he has to say the part he's clearly worried about.

"I...I used to consider myself a pretty romantic guy." Ted admitted, gesturing with his free hand as he talked. "Like, I liked doing things, sharing stuff. I'd always have some dumb fuckin' date planned every other week. We'd go hiking, we'd go on a road trip, I'd get some fuckin'...stupid expensive restaurant reservation just so we could make fun of how expensive everything was while willingly giving them our money; knowing we were giving them our money. I...I don't know, I liked doing things together, even if they were dumb or didn't go completely according to plan. I guess you could say it's my love language? Or It was? I don't know.." I quietly remind him that everything's okay by giving his other hand a gentle little squeeze. All of that sounded wonderful. I'd love to make all of the dumbest plans in the world with him after this film was done. I'm hoping I can bring that side of him back.

"...What happened?.." I ask after a moment, tilting my head at him.

"Well...maybe my love of sharing experiences was a bit much, cause...I had made some comment about having our own wedding sometime or something..." Ted glances at me as he speaks, shaking his head a defeated sigh. "I-I can't remember exactly what I said, but whatever it was, it was big enough to freak her out. She flipped at me, we got into an argument and then she left.."

Hearing that made me feel both confused and frustrated, visibly furrowing my brows. That sounded like a strange thing to get upset about, especially if you've been dating for over a year or so.

"She left the whole wedding?" I ask, not even trying to mask my confusion.

"And me." Ted replied with a little shrug, his gaze moving to his closed door. "Like, an hour before the ceremony."

If this were any other guy, I'd feel like he was leaving something out, but based on the somber look on Ted's face I know he's telling the truth. That's it. He made a comment about having a wedding with his girlfriend and she flipped out and left him. Her reaction made no sense in my head.

"What???" I let go of Ted's hand to shrug both of my arms out. It's like the disbelief you get when your favourite show or book has the worst, most cop-out bullshit ending of all time. It sounded like bullshit. "That's it? Over a comment about fuckin' marriage?"

"Yeah." Ted simply nodded, placing both of his hands on his bare chest. "I think I had said something like 'another moment we could share' or something, and she just...I don't know, she--she lost it."

"So it wasn't even one of those dumb 'ball and chain, I hate my wife haha' jokes?"

"No."

"What the fuck???"

"Yeah, I know. I-I still don't get it either."

The more Ted won't look at me, the more I have the urge to reach over and touch his face, but I keep my hands to myself for now. I genuinely couldn't fathom a person having such an overreaction over such a cute comment. The only thing I could think of is maybe she was having a bad day? Maybe she was overwhelmed? Maybe she thought he was genuinely proposing then and there and flipped out? Still, why wouldn't she at least hear him out?

"And that was it? You guys didn't talk after the wedding?" I ask, sitting up more. I know this isn't what he wanted to talk about and I felt a little bad for not dropping it, but this was just...bonkers.

"Yeah, that was it. Ended at a wedding." Ted confirmed with another little shrug. "Her friend came and got her stuff from my apartment and that was the last I'd heard from her. Probably could've tried harder, but...I just knew it was done."

I couldn't imagine breaking off a near 2 year old relationship over a simple comment about potentially getting married. I'd have understood if the comment was made before the 6 month mark, but 2 years, man. 2 whole years, thrown out the fucking door. Even I wouldn't be that petty.

"So..." I speak up after a moment, clasping my own hands together. "...How do I fit into this? Do you think I had something to do with it?"

"No, I hadn't even noticed you at that point. It was after she left.." Ted shook his head, resting more on his back as his gaze went back up to the ceiling. I watch him take in a deep, heavy breath. Whatever he's about to say, it's been weighing on him not even since we've met, but since that wedding itself. Whatever it is, I'm ready to hear it. I just want him to be honest with me, and with himself.

"After she left, I was...a pretty decent mess.." Ted explained, moving his hands a little as he spoke. "I drank more wine than I probably should've; way more than I should've. I wanted to look chill, I wanted to look fine, but everyone asked where my date went and I just got frustrated. I sat in my seat, watched the ceremony, watched all the bridesmaids go up on the stage, saw you stand near Joe and then after, I..."

Ted finally turns his head to gaze at me fully once again, his dark orbs meet mine as he trails off. His dark eyes are moving side to side as if they're struggling to pick an eye to look into and I watch his somber expression fade into something I don't recognize, his eyes almost looking glassy. Whatever he wants to say, he's silently struggling with it. I raise my brows a little and give him a gentle smile to try and silently encourage him. I want him to know it's okay, that he can trust me. I hope he knows he can trust me.

"....I...I was too upset to approach you, so I left.."

Ted finally finishes his sentence, his tone simple, almost stern, like a strict parent that had made up their mind. He's a lot more relaxed than he was before. All of the tension surrounding him was gone, as if it were never there. Silence fills the room as I put all of the pieces in my head together. That feeling of disbelief enters me again, my eyebrows furrowing once more. That's it?

"...That's it?" I ask after the long pause, shrugging my shoulders lightly. "You didn't approach me because you were upset?"

"...and because you were just..." Ted breaks his gaze away from me to look up at the ceiling again, slowly shaking his head. "...beautiful. Too beautiful."

"You didn't approach me because you were upset and I was 'too beautiful'."

"Yes."

"So--wait.."

My eyebrows are lowered so tightly I feel like I'm going to get a headache. I close my eyes and sit up completely, sitting up on my knees.

"So you goto your wedding with your girlfriend..." I begin, holding my hands out with my fingers pressed against my thumbs, recollecting his whole story to him. "You goto the wedding with your girlfriend, you drink a bit of wine and you make a comment about having your own wedding, she freaks out and leaves you, you drink more to cope, you see me up with the bridesmaids and because you think I'm so beautiful, you...panic and leave?"

There is another silent pause between us after I repeat back everything he's told me.

"....Yeah...That's it." Ted finally answers, turning to look at me once more. "I..panicked and left.."

I don't know if it's because I'm still high or whatever, but that sounded...kinda dumb. Very dumb. I guess that's a good thing? This is technically best case scenario.

"So...what part of that were you specifically afraid of telling me?" A breathy chuckle leaves me as I ask, feeling the tension in the room begin to fade with the remaining cannabis smoke. "The coming to the wedding with your girlfriend part? Or the 'you were so pretty I dipped' part?"

"You weren't the only reason I left.." Ted gave me a small smile and playfully rolled his eyes at me, sitting up more to face me fully. "I just, I don't even know anymore, it was so long ago..." Ted runs his fingers through his dark hair, getting some of it to stay off his forehead. "I just remember seeing you up there and...it's like I was there for you, I completely forgot I was supposed to be watching two motherfuckers get married, there was just you." Our eyes meet once more. I see the true infatuation Ted has for me in his glassy eyes. I feel like I can see right through him, but I'm only seeing the best of him.

"But, at the end of the day, you were Joe's Maid of Honor and I was some fuckin'...stupid wine-drunk asshole who had just been dumped, so...that's why I didn't approach you." Ted glanced down at his lap. Everytime he's paused, it's like he's been thinking about exactly how to put it, purposely choosing particular words carefully. It's not that he's speaking slowly, no. He's speaking carefully, almost cautiously. I'm aware of it, but I figured it's because this is a lot for him to talk about. "I guess I just thought you'd think I was...pathetic. It worried me."

"What, you were worried I wouldn't think you were cool anymore?" I let out a soft chuckle, inching a bit closer to move some of Ted's hair out of his face.

"I...like having a good reputation..." Ted expressed with a warm little smile, taking my hand in his to rest it against his cheek. "It was stupid to hide, I know."

"Yeah, it was. It kinda was." I confirm with a playful little laugh. "I don't know why Joe was so adamant on you telling me that. I'm not offended or anything, it's...kind of sweet."

As I mention Joe, we both lay back down and pull the covers over our bare bodies. Ted's smile fades a little as we lay down, furrowing his brows at me. "Joe wanted me to tell you?" Ted asks, his tone a little hoarse again. He seemed a little confused by that. "He wouldn't tell you anything?"

"Yeah, I asked him about it first. He insisted you tell me." I emphasized, shifting a bit close to loosely wrap my arm around him, taking in how his warm skin felt against mine. "I guess it's a pretty romantic story if you think about it. As much as I wish I had met you sooner, I think you made the right choice to leave.."

Silence fills the room once more. They're starting to make me a little uncomfortable, like he's going quiet because of what I'm saying. I hope I'm not upsetting him. "...and we're together now, right? That's what matters.." I give him a fond smile, feeling my bare chest lightly brush against his. I see him relax fully again, slowly wrapping both of his arms around me to pull me into a warm, almost possessive hug.

"Yeah, that's what matters..." Ted whispered to me as I laid against him, feeling him give me a gentle peck atop my head. "I wouldn't of been good to you then. I think this was the perfect time..."

"You think so?.." I glanced up a little from his prickly chest to look at him, watching as he gently shook his head.

"After I got dumped, I got...I got stupid.." Ted admitted, another deep sigh escaping him. "Said things, did things...I-I wasn't myself. I wasn't who I wanted to be, connection wise, y'know what I mean?" I give Ted a small nod and a reassuring smirk, continuing to listen as he spoke. "Like, even before we met, even before we really connected I'd been...." Ted pauses and stammers a little, a half-chuckle leaving him. "It's gonna sound sappy as fuck, but I'd been working on myself a lot. Yeah, I'd look at your Instagram every so often, pretty sure I've been following you since that wedding, but I wanted to be my best self, even after I'd accepted I'd probably never see you again; that I had fucked up my chance. I couldn't do hook ups and, what do they call them?...'situationships' forever."

Ted's confession is genuine. I think this is the most honest and vulnerable he's been with me since we've met. I appreciate it more than he'll probably ever know. "So when you stepped into this fuckin' house with Tanner last week, I..." Ted exaggerates his tone, looking down at me with a smile. "I can't begin to describe how fucking terrifying that actually was."

"Terrifying?" I let a laugh leave me, raising a brow at Ted. "I'm terrifying now?"

"You are. You're fuckin' scary, dude."

"I'm scary?"

"You're hair-raisin', yeah."

"How am I terrifying? I'm half your size."

"Well, it's how I feel that's terrifying, actually."

I feel my cheeks go a bit warm from the subtle blush spreading along them, exhaling a quiet scoff out my nose.

"Because...now you're here." Ted continued, a nervous smile curling up the corners of his lips. "You know me, you've talked to me, said my name, kissed my lips, and if I somehow fuck this up..."

"Ted, you're not gonna fuck anything up.." I scoff a little at him again, bringing one of my hands up to caress his cheek, having him look me in the eyes once more. "Maybe most people would probably think it's a little fucked up that you got them high and slept with them before confessing all this, but what matters is that you trusted me enough to be honest and I'm not upset. I'm not uncomfortable or offended and I've always thought you weren't cool, so you've got nothing to worry about."

That last comment succeeded in getting a good laugh out of Ted, watching him shake his head a bit. "My point is that I...I believe in us, I guess. I believe in you." I give him a reassuring grin, caressing his cheek with my thumb. "I'm proud of you for finally sharing that with me. I'm as ready as you are to stick together. I'm not going anywhere, I promise. You can tell me anything, alright?.."

Ted leans a little into my touch, his worried expression softening into one of infatuation and tenderness. He pulls me into his prickly chest once more, lightly nodding before resting his chin on the top of my head.

"Yeah...anything.."

I hear a little waver in his voice as he speaks, but I figured it's just cause we're tired. I don't even think we're high anymore, though I can't recall where it would've worn off. All I know is my throat is sore and my legs are shaky but my body is warm and my heart is content.

I fall asleep to the feeling of Ted's hand slowly caressing my bare back, my dreams filled with wine glasses and roses.

__________________________________

Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 (smut) || Chapter 7 || Chapter 8 || Chapter 9 || Chapter 10 (smut) || Chapter 11 || Chapter 12 || Chapter 13 || Chapter 14 (smut) ||

[xf-cases-solved]

i wrote a fic inspired by this post i made, about how william should have been a girl named samantha and how i will die on that hill with honor. see below, or click this link to be directed to my ao3, if you so desire

Title: the bitter and the sweet

Rating: Gen

Word Count: ~2400

Back on the vineyard, before Samantha had been taken and the four of them had approximated something approaching a family unit, Mulder's mother would make homemade bread on Sunday afternoons.

The process had always fascinated him—the way she could parse out units of flour, sugar, water, and yeast and combine them together into something that, only hours later, would have the whole house smelling of an artisanal bakery, the atmosphere somehow made warm and inviting by the wafting scent of baking bread. When he was really little—when the biggest unexplained phenomenon to him was the Tooth Fairy—baking seemed like magic to him, and his mother was its wielder. 

How else, he'd figured, could she be able to take all those separate ingredients—banal and basic on their own—and turn them into something incredible?

Tonight, Mulder's feeling a little like how he did when his mother would make bread, only on a much, much grander scale. 

He's finding himself believing in magic, and this time, Scully is its wielder. It's no great surprise to him that she's powerful—he's known that from the start—but it wasn't until he'd found her drenched in sweat, tear tracks down her cheeks, blood staining the insides of her thighs, and a tiny child cradled protectively against her heaving chest that he'd learned that she was a magician, too. 

Out of two ingredients, Dana Scully has made a person.

Mulder has seen things in his lifetime that go far beyond the laws of nature. He's seen ghosts and ghouls; monsters, both bestial and human alike; he's seen proof of life outside this planet time and time again; he has died, his body buried six feet beneath the ground for months, and he's come back to life.

And yet, somehow none of that compares to witnessing the miracle of the most basic, fundamental tenet of existence: Reproduction. Something so innate—the instinctive need to replicate oneself so that one's lineage may live on in perpetuity. Hundreds of thousands of human babies are born a day; if he had known, like really known, how remarkable that is, maybe he would have decided that anything beyond it was simply above his pay grade and given up trying to understand the Universe long ago.

He hears the front door click shut as the Gunmen show themselves out, and yet he doesn't move just yet. He has to take a breath first—has to give himself a moment to shake his head in awe. On the other side of this doorway is his brand new life, and it's daunting to know you're about to walk into a fresh existence.

But no amount of anxiety can outmatch his need to see her. To see them. 

He'd had such little time with them before, and there had been so much chaos going on around them that he hadn't been able to appreciate what he did get, and he's trying not to feel resentful about it. The baby's healthy, Scully's healthy, and in the end, that's what matters most, but still, he can't help but feel robbed on Scully's behalf. On his own behalf, too, if he's being honest. 

After everything she has gone through—after the multitudes of hellfires she's walked through since the day she first stepped into his office—Scully deserved a beautiful pregnancy, with an equally beautiful birth. After everything he's gone through—after every chance he's lost to show the breadth of his love to the people who own his heart—he deserved to care for her, from week one to week forty, and to be by her side as she performed magic in a clean delivery room, with freshly laundered receiving blankets on hand, and the reassurance of trained professionals nearby should something go wrong. Something so precious should have never been shrouded in so much trauma.

It should have been different. They had earned different. 

But he's not going to dwell on it, at least not right now. Maybe in a quiet moment, when his family (his family!) is asleep and peaceful, he'll grant himself the space to feel the bitter in this sweet. 

But that's for later. 

Right now, he has to go to them; he can feel their thrall like the arrow of a compass being pulled north by the Earth's magnetic core, and this hallway suddenly feels a lightyear away from where he's meant to be, the space between them and himself a wormhole, where on his end there's the life he's led until now, and on the other side lies a brand new world he can't even begin to fathom the extent of just yet.

So he walks through the doorway, bending time, stepping out of one reality and into the next. He doesn't mourn what he's left behind—everything that matters now exists inside this room.

"How's everybody doing?" he asks, and if she can hear the thread of anxiety rumbling through his words like a shockwave beneath a tectonic plate, she doesn't mention it—merely smiles widely at him, the corners of her tired eyes crinkling. She's already so tiny, but the giant swaddling of blankets and baby in her arms covers half her torso, making her look even smaller. 

Small, but so incredibly, incredibly strong.

"We're doin' just fine," she says, standing up from the edge of the bed, a hand gently patting the baby's back through the cushion of blankets. As she approaches, he knows his face must look ridiculous—his head shaking in disbelief, his mouth slightly ajar, even as his lips are turned up into a smile, and eyes laser focused on them as though if he so much as blinks they'll disappear—but he can't help it. He's witnessing magic; of course he's awed. 

The baby snuffles grumpily at being jostled, as Scully moves the whole bundle into his expectant arms.

"Hey now," he mutters to the child. "None of that."

He gets the baby's head settled into the crook of his elbow, and the amount of protectiveness that swells within him is so sudden and intense that it almost takes his breath away. 

Words fail him; there isn't a language, on this planet or the next, that could ever properly convey the weight of his thoughts, so he just smiles at Scully and breaths a shaky, "Hi," before turning back to the baby, his body rocking to-and-fro gently on its own accord, and that's something, isn't it? That he instinctively knows how to soothe.

He surveys the baby's face with the focus one would use to parse out a magic-eye poster. He's searching for familiar features, and memorizing all the shapes and slopes and colors that have come together to create the breathtaking picture before him. A long time ago, he remembers calling his eidetic memory a curse, and at the time it had felt true, because in his line of work he saw so many horrible, wretched things, and it would have been a mercy to be able to forget them.

He doesn't consider it a curse now. He thinks that, maybe, he was actually bestowed a blessing, and he just hadn't realized it because it had always been meant for this exact moment in time.

This is... this is a lot. 

A lot, a lot, a lot.

Mulder has always known that he has a tendency to love at a magnitude so severe it is almost to his detriment; he knows that his heart has always been his biggest strength and biggest weakness in equal measure. Once, not long after a bullet had cracked his skull, he had found his way to Antarctica, armed with a vial of antidote, an unreliable compass, and a decent coat, and through the force of his love, he had brought Scully home with a clean bill of health, say for a bit of freezer burn on her cheeks. His love is so mighty, it is almost a type of magic in itself.

But he has never felt love like this before.

He's not even sure if it is love, the feeling so foreign and all-consuming.

He wants to cry with the might of it—feels so full of emotion that he could stand in the center of a field and scream it at the sky until his voice goes hoarse, and even then the precarious glass of his heart would still be dangerously close to overflowing. For all the things he's believed in his life, the hardest thing for him to wrap his head around is the idea that he is capable of loving this big.

"What are you going to call her?" he finds the words to ask. 

Her.

Somehow, the simple use of a pronoun tilts the world on its axis. He thinks it has to do with abstractions. Since he returned from the dead, they've only spoken about her in the abstract. "The baby." "This child." A nameless, faceless, sexless concept that they knew would come into existence one day, but they couldn't quite understand what that existence would mean. 

But she exists now, and she's a she. 

Boy, girl, both, neither—he'd had no preferences nor expectations, but the concreteness of the identifier has his pulse thudding wildly. Scully—the magician and, until very, very recently, the greatest love of his life—has done the impossible and created a person and that person is his... well, they haven't discussed that yet, have they? What he's entitled to referring to her as.

But then she says, "With your blessing"—she's quiet and shy about this, but still meets his eyes with her usual amount of confidence—"I wanted to name her Samantha." 

In some magazine a million years ago, Mulder had read about the art of human suspension. It originates as a spiritual practice that is thousands of years old, wherein people suspend themselves in the air by hooks embedded beneath their skin, and at the time he had been, of course, open and respectful of the concept, but did not particularly see the appeal. While he understood it in theory, without experiencing it, he couldn't quite see how one could endure such intense pain and be grateful for it. To feel revived by it. To feel complete. 

There are no hooks in his skin—he's not hanging from any banisters, trying to reach enlightenment—but he definitely has a better grasp on the practice now. In six words, Scully has taught him how to feel honored by pain. 

This is, he thinks, the utter definition of bittersweet, because god, it's so bitter, but god, nothing has ever been so sweet.

His instinct is to make a joke, because that's what he does when he gets overwhelmed. Maybe make a quip about seeing some of Walter Skinner in this little girl's face, is there something she wants to tell him...? But, unfortunately, it seems that his throat is closing up, so no jokes today, he supposes. Nothing to cover the rawness of his emotion as he blinks the tears out of his vision so that he can see his daughter clearly.

Because that's what she is—Scully just said as much. This is his daughter, named after an aunt she'll never get to meet, but whose memory will live on through her. 

"She deserved so much better than the short time she got," Scully is saying, and although he wants to look at her, he can't because that would mean looking away from his daughter, and that's not possible at the moment. "Mulder, every step we've taken that has gotten us to this point has been because of your love for her. Your search, your passion—everything that brought us together—it's because of her. And through you, I've grown to love her, too. She had no choice in making her sacrifice, but I want to acknowledge it anyway. I want... Mulder, I want our daughter to carry a name that symbolizes enduring strength, and unimaginable bravery, and, more than anything else, infallible, everlasting love." Her hand comes to rest on his wrist. "But only with your blessing, Mulder."

Mulder closes his eyes, a teardrop or two escaping and sliding down the bridge of his nose as he leans forward and presses his forehead gently against his daughter's. He breathes in deep, centering himself and righting his world with the scent of baby powder. Scully waits patiently, her thumb tracing small circles around the circumference of his wrist joint. Finally, he straightens himself out and looks at her.

Once again, language leaves him wanting. 

He settles on a whispered, shaky, "Thank you," that cracks his voice. 

He's thanking her for the in memoriam, certainly, but for so much more than that as well. 

Thank you, he means, for your magic that brought her into this world.

Thank you, for granting me entry into your body so that I could help you make this child, as much as I could.

Thank you, for saving my life, again and again and again and again, so that I can be here to experience true bliss for the first time.

Thank you, for stepping into my office the better part of a decade ago and, against all good judgment and reason, staying by my side ever since.

Thank you, for letting me love you.

Thank you, for loving me in return.

Scully gives a half smile and a nod; he has no doubt that she hears everything he doesn't say, because while all other languages are limited, they have long since created their own mode of communication that only the two of them speak.

There are conversations they need to have. The trauma of Samantha's birth is still shrouded in mystery; the fact that she wasn't taken from them has created more questions than it has provided answers, and that needs to be acknowledged. 

They have to talk about what happens next. What are their roles now? To the world. To their daughter. To each other.

That can all be discussed later, though, when language doesn't feel so useless, and his heart does feel so bruised and battered from all the bitter and all the sweet.

He does the only thing he could possibly do in this moment, and that's lean down and press his lips to hers. She kisses back, one hand holding him by the elbow, Samantha bracketed by their bodies, keeping her safe.

Since he was twelve years old, Samantha has been his driving force.

Today, she still is, but in a different form. A different life.

Mulder loves his baby sister.

Mulder loves his baby daughter.

He thinks he might go into the kitchen tomorrow, and bake Scully a loaf of bread.

[television-overload]

of our own making

(an X-Files fanfic)

Chapter 19/34 - open road

[Read on AO3]

He's quiet on the flight home from California. For once, though, his silence doesn't feel dark and brooding. It feels… peaceful. Pensive.

He carries that mood with him as they pull up to the hospital where his mother is staying. Scully can tell the nurses are wary of him, expecting the volatile man they'd encountered before, but he stays out of their way. He waits patiently while they check her vitals and doesn't demand answers or anything from them. He sits down in the chair beside her bed and quietly grabs his mother's hand, a sentinel at her side. The heart monitor beeps slowly but steadily, a sound they're unfortunately more than familiar with. Right now, it's reassuring, even as her condition stays the same.

At the ringing of her cell phone, Mulder perks up, as if woken from a trance. He glances at Scully with a questioning look, and she shakes her head. It's probably just Skinner checking in, she can take care of it on her own. 

She decides to give them some privacy and take the call out in the hallway where she won’t be disturbing anyone. With one last glance at the two of them, she steps out of the room, pressing the button to answer the call the moment she’s alone.

-.-.-

She hears him join her in the hall a few minutes later, the soft click of the door behind her signaling his presence. He says nothing, but his mere proximity is loud and distracting by itself. Out of necessity, she tunes him out, covering her other ear so she can focus instead on the conversation over the phone.

“I’m– We’re so happy to hear that, you have no idea,” she says. Unable to resist the pull of his stare, she flicks her eyes up to his briefly before forcing them back to the boring patch of wall she'd chosen in the distance. “We were really in need of some good news, and this is the best I can imagine. Thank you,” she finishes.

The answer on the other end is muffled, but she knows it's loud enough that Mulder will be able to overhear.

“Congratulations, Dana. You and Fox best start making some preparations.”

His sharp intake of breath nearly does her in, but she manages to end the call calmly and politely before turning to him. This is awful timing. As much as they’d needed this good news, she can’t help but feel that with everything going on, it’s just too much at once. How much can a person, or even two, handle before they just can’t do it anymore?

“Was that—” he starts, and she finds herself already with tears in her eyes, unable to do anything about it.

Nodding, she says, “She picked us,” her chin wobbling slightly against her will. His eyes flash in recognition. “They said, um—” she shakes her head as if that will help loosen her thoughts. “They said that Krista really liked us, and she wants us to be her baby's parents.”

Mulder stands frozen in shock and disbelief while Scully sniffles, wiping her cheeks quickly as if that could hide the fact that she's crying. Eventually, he snaps out of it enough to step airily toward her, and as soon as he's within arm’s reach, she buries her face in his chest, wrapping her arms around his middle.

It takes a moment for him to reciprocate, but she feels his hands land delicately on her back. The contact, as minimal as it is, must bring him to his senses, because his tentative hold on her quickly grows stronger. His cheek presses insistently against the top of her head, his eyes squeezing shut as he fights his own oncoming wave of emotion. She pulls him tighter just as he does the same, and it's overwhelming in every way possible.

“Oh, Scully,” he says, choking the words out past a lump in his throat. His lips press against her hair, and it's only by sheer force of will that she doesn't break down into shoulder-shaking sobs right here in this hospital hallway. His hand rubs comforting circles on her shoulder blade. “You're gonna be a mom,” he says.

His words strike her, as if this were the first time she's realizing it. Just this once, she gives herself permission to believe it, to imagine motherhood as her future. She pushes away any negative thoughts, deciding to live in the moment. The possibility that the birth mother will change her mind isn't something she wants to consider for even a second. She’s happy. Actually, really happy, and she wants to soak it all in.

She pulls back to look at her partner, and finds him with a look of utter awe on his face. She doesn't bother to conceal her tears anymore. She can see them mirrored in his eyes, so why should she even try?

For one wild moment, she thinks of kissing him. Her eyes flick to his pouty bottom lip, and it seems unfathomable to not celebrate this victory with such a gesture. She sighs, feeling herself start to give in as she leans toward him, drifting imperceptibly closer.

The sudden blaring of an alarm inside Teena Mulder’s hospital room puts a swift end to anything that might have been about to happen. She freezes, every muscle in her body tensing at once as her head snaps in the direction of the sound. The smile leaves Mulder’s face in an instant, and she follows right on his heels as he throws open the door to the room in a panic.

“What's happening?” he asks, looking every bit the frightened and worried son he is. Scully rushes to Teena's side, examining her with her doctor's eyes. It only takes a moment for her to come to a conclusion.

Her shoulders relax.

“She’s waking up,” she announces, just as the nurses run into the room. They make quick work of removing the invasive tubes, clearing the way for the doctor to come check on her. Her eyelids twitch rapidly, and Scully grips Mulder’s hand tightly to keep him from interfering with the doctor’s work.

“Mrs. Mulder? Can you hear me, Mrs. Mulder?” the doctor says. Teena groans, and when Scully chances a look at Mulder, he’s biting his lip, showing remarkable restraint, all things considered. The doctor throws a look over his shoulder and Scully takes that as their cue. Squeezing Mulder’s hand once, she pushes him forward, granting him the permission he needs with a steady nod.

He makes his way to the opposite side of the bed as the doctor and scoops his mother’s hand up in his.

“Mom?” he says, his voice small and hopeful. Her thumb gives a jolt, but her eyes still don’t open.

“Keep talking to her,” the doctor advises. “Let her hear your voice.”

“Mom, I found her,” he speaks. “I found Samantha.”

Teena groans again, her head lolling a bit to the left, toward Mulder. “Ss’mantha,” she mumbles, and Mulder’s lips pull back in a wobbly smile. 

“Yeah, Samantha,” he says. “I know what happened to her. Where she is now, she’s okay. She’s not in pain. She’s happy.”

The doctor takes a step back, his involvement, for now, not needed.

“Fox…” Teena says, a frown forming on her face. Her brows furrow as she forces her eyelids open, just enough to see him in front of her. “How?” she asks.

He places a hand on her cheek, drawing her eyes to his. Scully can see the relief painted on his face plain as day. He lets out a breath at the sight of her, as she grows more alert with every passing second. “I know you wanted me to stop looking, but I needed to know. The case I was working… there was a link to it after all.”

There’s a spark in Teena Mulder’s eyes, just a flash, but unmistakable. Scully would know the look anywhere, she’s seen it enough times on Mulder’s face.

Determination.

“Tell me,” she says, her voice weak. 

Mulder opens his mouth to answer her, but before he can, Scully rushes forward and grabs his shirt sleeve. “Mulder—” she says in warning.

He looks up at her, a question in his eyes.

She shakes her head. There’s no telling what this news will do to Teena in this state. It could trigger a panic attack or even cardiac arrest. She tells him as much. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to—”

“Tell…me…” Teena orders, forcing out the words between labored breaths. For the first time in years, her eyes meet Scully’s, and she sees the disdain for her interference on the woman’s face.

Taking her cue, she releases her hold on Mulder and steps back, lowering her head. Mulder turns his attention back to his mother, holding tight to her frail hand.

“The smoking man had her,” he begins softly. Teena closes her eyes and mutters a curse. “He kept her on a remote military base and subjected her to testing. She couldn’t remember us or much of her life before, but… she missed us. She—” He pauses to collect himself, and Teena’s hand weakly lifts his chin, urging him to continue. “She ran away—she escaped—when she was fourteen. She ended up in a hospital, couldn’t even tell them her name. The men who had her would have taken her again, but she disappeared, just like Amber Lynn LaPierre.” He takes a deep breath, an infinitesimal smile pulling at his lips. “The universe spared her,” he says with finality. “She left this life peacefully. She’s free.”

Teena absorbs this information solemnly for a moment, and then with some effort, inclines her head in a jolted nod. The tension in her shoulders slowly and visibly lessens, and she squeezes Mulder’s hand once before letting go.

“I’m sorry, Fox,” she says, looking up at him sadly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey,” he says, stopping her. “It’s over. It’s behind us.”

She nods again, a small, stiff smile forming.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he continues. “You scared me.”

“I’m s—”

“Don’t apologize,” he says, stopping her. “I know.”

She looks at him appraisingly, searching for something, then allows her eyes to fall shut, apparently satisfied with whatever she’d seen. She grows tired quickly, but that’s to be expected. Mulder stands up from his chair and leans over her, pressing a kiss to her forehead and brushing away strands of her nearly white hair.

“I… I love you, Mom. Please don’t go anywhere. Not yet. I’m not ready to be—” he chokes, his final words getting lost somewhere in his throat. “We’ll figure this out. Just please, don’t go.”

Teena breathes a sigh.

“Okay.”

-.-.-

Scully is silent on the drive home. He watches her as she drives, taking the rare opportunity to really observe her from the passenger seat. Her reflection is visible in the window, lit up by the colorful lights of the display on the dashboard. He suspects she’s holding back, wary of upsetting him or overwhelming him, but in truth, he’s fine. Far more ‘fine’ than he’s been in a long time, in fact.

He hasn’t forgotten the call she’d received in the hallway at the hospital. And he very much doubts that she has, either. He can practically hear her thoughts running haywire in that beautiful brain of hers, even if she’s keeping quiet out of some misguided sense of worry for him.

It’ll have to be him to bring it up, then.

“So, how about that phone call, huh?” he starts, aiming for casual and probably failing miserably.

Smooth, Mulder.

Her arched eyebrow and sideways glance confirm his suspicions, but he catches the smile quirking at her lips nonetheless. He loves when she smiles at him like that.

“How about it?” she asks, turning the question right back on him, which he should have seen coming.

“It’s, uh– pretty cool, yeah?”

Scully chuckles softly, shaking her head. “That’s all you have to say?” she asks.

“You gotta give me something, Scully. I’m trying here.”

She rolls her eyes, her smile widening in spite of her efforts to mute it.

“It’s great, Mulder. It’s everything we were hoping for.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He can’t help but notice that there seems to be a silent ‘but’ at the end of her sentence though. Knowing this, he prompts her to continue. “But…”

She sighs, perhaps a little bothered that he can read her so easily. “But… I can’t help but wonder if this is… bad timing. I mean, with your mother… Samantha… Are– are we ready for this, Mulder?”

‘Are you ready for this?’ he hears.

He glances serenely at the mostly open road ahead. It forms a straight line as far as the eye can see, pointing them in the direction of D.C. He brings his fingers up to rescue hers from their white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, intertwining them with his on top of the center console.

“It’s time,” he says resolutely. “It’s time to get out of the car, Scully. I’m ready to be a father.”

She doesn’t look at him, and he wonders for a moment if he’s said the wrong thing, done something to mess all of this up without meaning to. But then he catches the glint of tears pooling in her eyes, and he understands. He presses his lips together, waiting patiently as she pulls the car to the side of the road, the tires rumbling over the strip as it slows to a stop.

Only when she turns to face him does he dare to speak again.

“I’m ready,” he says again. “I really am.”

Her eyes search his purposefully, shining brilliantly even in the low light. His smile comes easily along with this new wave of contentment he’s riding. If only he could convince her that it’s true, that he really does mean what he’s saying.

“Even if it means stepping back from the X-Files?” she asks, her mouth slightly downturned in a frown. “I know what you said before, but Mulder—”

“Even then,” he affirms, not even allowing her to finish her thought. “I’m serious, let’s get out of the car. Figuratively and literally.”

He grins, his hand abruptly letting go of hers and landing on the clasp of his seatbelt. He clicks it open, and before she has time to react, he’s flinging open the passenger side door, feeling ridiculously giddy. They still have a ways to go before they’re home. What’s a few minutes to stretch their legs and look at the stars?

Her head appears over the top of their vehicle, and once again, he marvels at the fact that she’ll follow him anywhere, even when he’s doing something completely nonsensical.

“Mulder, what are you doing?” she asks, giving him precisely the reaction he was expecting and hoping for. Her predictability is somehow a comfort to him. It’s just one of the many reasons he adores her.

As she approaches, he draws her in, catching her off guard with an arm around her waist, the other gathering her hand in his.

“I’m dancing with the future mother of my child, that’s what I’m doing,” he says nonchalantly as he begins to sway to the music of night insects and the distant hum of traffic. “What about you?”

Her gaze locks on his, studying him intently in a way that makes him feel like she knows his every secret. Maybe even the secret, the one that would probably be really good to tell her one of these days.

“I guess I’m… wondering how I ever got so lucky,” she says finally, swaying with him by the dim light of the moon and the headlights of their 1993 Chevy Impala.

His heart feels liable to pound its way out of his chest at the dreamlike way she says those words. ‘Lucky’ isn’t the first word he’d expect her to apply to the serendipitous intertwining of their respective lives, but it’s certainly the one he would choose, if asked.

“I’d say we should open an X-File,” he says, spinning her once before pulling her back in, “but that won’t be our job for much longer.”

He’ll miss it—of course he will—and he knows Scully is feeling the same way as him. But this is the right step forward. He’s never been so certain of something in his life.

“Might be a worthwhile case to start the new guys out with,” she says. “Although I think it’s one that will have to remain unsolved.”

“I don’t know,” he says, his eyes trailing down to her lips. “I think someday, the answer might come to us.”

~~~

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[soft-thrills]

XF Fic: Mean

Rating: Smut. Smut smut smut.

Summary: “I think I’d also like it once in a while if you were a little… mean,” Scully says.

Content warnings: dirty talk, name-calling, toeing the edge of degradation, but all in good kinky fun

Smut after the cut. Hope your holidays are happy, friends! Ubeta’ed. I intended to sit down and write something with some redeeming value to society but alas, I could not get this out of my mind, so instead: shameless smut.

They’d had a conversation about a month ago in which he’d asked her if there was anything she wanted that he wasn’t doing.

“I want you to keep your travel receipts in chronological order,” she’d wryly replied.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” he’d said, and the hint of an edge in his voice got right to the core of the thing that she wanted that he wasn’t doing.

And so she’d told him, after a half glass of wine too many.

“Well, I like it when you’re a little rough, which I think you’ve kind of figured out. But I think I’d also like it once in a while if you were a little… mean.”

He grinned. “Mean how?”

“I don’t know, just… you know, don’t hurt my feelings, but maybe you could tease, or kind of, talk dirtier. Jesus, this is so embarrassing, forget I ever mentioned it, ok?”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “Although I get the sense that maybe that’s what you’re after.”

His ability to see right through her was kind of embarrassing in and of itself, and she knew she was blushing.

They’d had sex then — and he hadn’t been mean, not at all. Instead he’d devoured her, praising her for sharing something she felt shy about, telling her there was nothing she could ask for that would make him think less of her or upset him — not him, a man who’d spent years frequenting porno theaters and calling phone sex lines.

For weeks, the conversation lurked in the back of her mind. She’d almost convinced herself he’d forgotten, except Fox Mulder is not a man who forgets these kinds of things.

And so she finds herself beneath him as he holds both her slender wrists in one of his big hands, pinned above her head. He looms large over her.

“I didn’t forget our conversation last month, you know,” he says, taking her left nipple between his fingers and pinching until she gasps. “You remember it, don’t you?”

She nods, at a loss for words.

“Good. If you don’t like anything I do or say, Scully, all you have to do is tell me, and I’ll stop, okay?”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Yeah, okay. I understand.”

“Good girl,” he praises her. “Although I think we both know that’s probably not what you want me to call you. I think you want to be a bad girl.”

She arches her pelvis up toward him, silently asking him to touch her there, to slide inside her.

“Already getting to you, huh? You weren’t kidding, Scully. I haven’t even touched your pussy yet and look how desperate you are.”

Mean.

“Oh my god, Mulder, please,” she whimpers. “Please touch me.”

He smirks at her. “All right, but only so I can judge how much my words are getting to you.”

His fingers trail down her body and he dips his index finger between her lips, dragging back and forth a moment before pushing inside her. She arches up into his touch and spreads her legs wider, as best she can beneath him.

“You like spreading your legs for me, don’t you?”

She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. She can’t believe he’s talking to her like this, she can’t believe she asked him to. But she’s more turned on than she’s ever been in her life.

“I can feel how much you like it, Scully. You’re so wet for me. Such a dirty girl.”

Suddenly, his finger is gone from her pussy, and a second later, she feels his wet fingers grip her chin.

“Open your eyes and look at me when I talk to you, Scully.”

Her eyes fly open. There’s something about him talking to her like this while still using her last name that makes it feel even dirtier, which she suspects he realizes.

He kisses her, deeply, a reward, a reassurance. He can talk to her like this and still love her. And he can certainly still want her — she can feel his erection against her belly.

“Please, fuck me,” she says. “I want you.”

That grin again. “I know you do. But I’m not done playing around with you. That’s what I’m going to do: play with you like the toy that you are.”

His fingers find her pussy again, and then her clit, a few quick circles. She feels like she could shatter at any moment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt you this wet, baby. I’m so glad you told me how to treat you. Now I know what you need. And I’m having a lot of fun putting you in your proper place.”

He takes his fingers away from her clit.

“No,” she moans, screwing her eyes closed again. “Don’t stop.”

His wet fingers on her face again but this time, a soft tap on her cheek, the barest suggestion of a slap, sending her eyes back open in shock.

He laughs a little. “I told you to keep your eyes open. If I have to tell you again I’m not going to let you come.”

Mean. She whimpers and nods. Unable to close her eyes, she instead gives voice to the terrible, wonderful feelings warring inside her - the hint of humiliation and the arousal fueling one another.

“Why do I like it so much when you treat me like this?” she asks.

Straddling her, he brings his hands to her breasts and pinches each nipple. He looks bemused, like she is a problem to be solved, and then looks back down at her tits.

“Well, I could tell you it’s because kinky sex is subversive, a way to play with the gender roles we push back against in everyday life. I could tell you lots of people like things in bed they wouldn’t like outside it and there’s nothing wrong with that. I could tell you it’s because you trust me and know that I love you and respect you and we’re just playing around.”

His hands move to her sides, and he drops down to his elbows, briefly kissing down her sternum between her breasts.

Then he looks up at her face, making eye contact.

“But we both know that’s not why you like it,” he says. “You like it because you’re a dirty little slut.”

And then suddenly, his cock is pushing inside her, and his finger is on her clit, and she comes harder than she ever has in her life.

“Well that didn’t take much,” he teases her, and it only extends her pleasure. “So easy.”

His cockiness aside, it doesn’t take much for him to come, either — she’s still thrashing around with the aftershocks when he comes inside her after a few more hard strokes, moaning into the crook of her neck.

When she comes to her senses, he’s rolled off of her and is looking at her with the sweetest smile.

“Wow,” she says, still catching her breath, blushing as she thinks about what he said to her.

“Good wow? Or you never want to talk to me again wow?” he asks.

“Good wow. Thank you for giving that to me. I wouldn’t have been able to let go like that without anyone else,” she says, rolling over and curling into him.

He cuddles her protectively, hands stroking up and down her back, through her hair, wherever he can reach with comforting little touches.

“You did so well,” he says, and while she doesn’t really feel like she did anything, the praise warms her. “But sometimes things like that can hit you after you come down from endorphin rush. If it starts to feel bad, promise me you’ll let me know.”

“I will,” she says.

They lounge a while and it does, indeed, start nagging at her a little.

“You’ll still be able to look me in the eye at work after that, right? It won’t change —”

“Scully, nothing could ever change how I feel about you. I love you more than anything. I respect you more than anyone. I’m honored you’d share your desires with me and I’d never betray that.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I guess it’s just good to hear it.”

It occurs to her he hasn’t said anything about whether he enjoyed himself.

“Did you like it?” she asks gently. “Because I don’t want to ask anything of you that you don’t —”

“You couldn’t tell if I liked it?” he jokes. “It was so hot, Scully. Seeing you melt like that.”

She smiles, and then feels his hot breath on her ear.

“I’ll treat you like a dirty slut anytime you like,” he promises.

She laughs. “Thank you,” she says, and she means it.

[sixhours]

Alma

Rated: PG Length: ~4k

Notes: Post-episode for Milagro; the aftermath. Milagro remains one of my favorite episodes; this is my interpretation of what happened after. Huge thanks to @perplexistan for the beta, the glowing feedback, and for wrangling my dialogue's syntax. :)

Originally posted on AO3 10/1/2014

~*~

The first thing he sees is the blood.

He doesn’t remember the sound of his own footfall, doesn’t remember kneeling or reaching out, all he can think is that he’s lost her. The thought is cruel and terrible; you lose a bet, you lose your car keys. You don’t misplace your best friend’s life between the cushions, you don’t lose a person.

And yet, she is lost.

Her eyes are closed, her chest is still, her shirt is the color of dirty rubies. The smell in his overheated apartment is heavy with her last breath.

Scully.

His heart is racing in his chest, but hers has gone missing.

Oh, Scully.

He reaches to check for a pulse, and suddenly he’s staring into eyes of blue crystal, shocked and surprised as his own. She shudders against him, the roar of her breath an echo of reassurance. Her arms are a welcome vise grip, pulling up, clawing at his back, and he holds on for dear life.

That was too close.

When he finally speaks, her sobs have dulled to hiccups, but her fingers are tight through the fabric of his shirt. “Are you bleeding?”

She shakes her head, and he eases back, gently disentangling them. “Did he…”

“Hurts,” she mumbles.

He pulls back. “Just gonna look, ‘k?”

She nods her consent, closes her eyes. His fingers fumble at the buttons at her stomach, swallowing thickly at how soaked her blouse is. His hands are stained by the time they work the last button free.

Shit, it’s deep…

He moves tenderly along the underside of her sternum, surprised to find only bruises, the outlines of someone else’s fingers where they bored under her ribs. She winces when he grazes the skin.

“It’s a contusion,” she whispers, auburn lashes to ivory cheeks, like wildflowers pressed between dusty tomes.

He shakes his head. “Uh uh. Be right back.”

The 9-1-1 operator recognizes his name and address before he can give him the badge number.

He returns with a glass of water to find her struggling to her feet.

“Jesus, Scully, you shouldn’t—“

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just sore.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, hard. “Then let me help.”

He’s careful to avoid her left side, where the bruising is worst. She is warm and solid against him, but he can feel the tremors like tiny earthquakes along his side.

“What happened?” he asks, helping her ease down to the worn leather cushions.

“He came at me after you left,” she says, flat and dry, as if talking about the weather. “I fired...I fired twice? Three times?”

“It was four,” Mulder says, handing her the water. “Checked your clip.”

Her words ring hollow in the glass as she sips. “I must’ve missed.”

“You know you didn’t,” he whispers, leaning over her to grab the blanket from the back of the couch, draping it over her shoulders to quell the trembling. “Called for backup. Paramedics are on their way.”

“I don’t need—“

“Don’t say it,” he threatens gently. She scowls but sinks back and closes her eyes.

The response team is quick this time. The lead EMT, his name tag reads Bernard, makes a feeble joke about putting in a station next door, a private service for the guy whose bad luck always follows him home. Mulder doesn’t laugh.

He leaves her side only to show the investigative unit to the basement. The cops kneel over Padgett’s body, exclaiming and making wisecracks about love stories gone awry, so cavalier it makes Mulder’s stomach turn. Not that he has any sympathy for the dead writer, but he can’t stop imagining Scully with her heart in her hands.

They’re examining her injuries in the living room when he returns, so he takes the phone to the bedroom. Skinner is characteristically gruff, but he softens when Mulder explains.

“You think Padgett’s responsible?”

“Yeah, but he won’t be penning his memoirs anytime soon. They found him in the basement. It’s just like the other victims.”

“Of course,” Skinner sighs. “Alright. I want you in my office first thing tomorrow. And Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

The other man lowers his voice, a gesture of mutual understanding. “Don’t let Agent Scully out of your sight. If this guy comes back—“

He won’t, Mulder thinks, but he’s distracted. Her voice carries through the plaster; she’s giving the EMTs hell.

She’s going to be fine, sir. She’s feeling well enough to fight.

“Agent Mulder,” Skinner barks into his ear. “Did you hear me?”

He clears his throat, looks over his shoulder, drawn to her rising tones. “Got it, sir. I gotta go.” The phone clicks off before Skinner can lay into him. He’ll get his ass handed to him tomorrow, but tonight he has more important things to worry about.

She has her hands on her hips, facing off with the senior paramedic, who looks like he got more than he bargained for.

“I’m a medical doctor, I know the symptoms, and I don’t have them. You said it yourself, my vitals are fine, there’s no swelling.”

“Ma’am, you know very well that a hemorrhage might not present until—”

“It’s Doctor,” she says icily. “And if I have symptoms, I’ll go to the hospital. Until then, I’m refusing medical treatment beyond a cursory physical exam.”

The other guy looks pointedly at the blood smears on the carpet, then toward Mulder, as if to ask for help.

But Scully is looking at him, too, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. Daring him. He opens his mouth to take the dare, to tell her to go to the damned hospital because she would demand the same of him, but something in her eyes holds him back. Her posture is strong, but there’s a subtle tremble in her chin that gives it away.

He, too, softens in the face of her fire.

“It’s uhh, it’s OK guys,” he mutters. “We’ll take it from here.”

Bernard blinks. “Agent Mulder, with all due respect—“

“She said she’s fine,” he says, his tone sharp, though his eyes don’t leave his partner.

The other man presses his lips in a line and begins re-packing his bag, muttering something about the loonies at Hegal Place. Mulder sees the paramedics out, letting the door slam just a little too hard, all the while thinking he is a lunatic for letting them go.

He comes back to find her buttoning up her shirt, reaching for her jacket.

“Do you want to get cleaned up—“

“Home,” she says, frowning at the floor. “I want to go home.”

There’s a pause. She won’t look at him, won’t meet his eye.

“Right,” he swallows, “I, uh…I’ll drive.”

He steals glances at the passenger seat as he maneuvers the car through darkening streets. Scully rolls her head on her neck and stares out the window, diminished in her silence. She’s distant, set apart; something vital inside her has torn but doesn’t bleed. Padgett’s psychic surgeon failed to seize her heart, but he’s taken something else in its stead.

When he reaches over to take her hand, she doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge him, but the bones of her fingers hold fast to his, reflexive in their icy grip.

Her apartment is cool and smells like her; vanilla and cinnamon, familiar and exotic. Her voice is drawn and husky when she speaks.

“I’m going to shower. Help yourself.”

He does. He makes tea because he knows where she keeps it—third cupboard from the left, middle shelf, next to the honey. He finds the kettle, puts the water on to boil, and tries not to think about the blood (her blood) congealing on the floor of his apartment.

He finds a lemon in the back of the fridge, the contents of which are similar to his own—heavy on the condiments, a lone half-gallon of milk, carrots in the crisper whose stalks have wilted to gray-green dust.

When was the last time one of us ate a meal that didn’t come wrapped in foil?

There’s the creak of the floorboards as she moves about on the other side of the kitchen wall, the groan of the building’s pipes as the shower comes on; the bedroom door is ajar, and soon steam wafts from within, fragrant and humid.

They’ve spent the last six years living side by side in adjoined motel rooms, but she never leaves the door open.

He takes a seat on the couch to wait, tipping his head back into the cushions. His mind goes back to Padgett, the last of his fatal novel’s pages curling in the ashes…

…the things he wrote about her.

He rubs at his eyes, exhales sharply.

She’s a grown woman. You’re not her keeper.

Keeper.

The couch is soft, the running water is white noise, and sleep teases the edge of his consciousness.

Keeper. Keep her.

There’s a scream, a forlorn wail that wakes him with a start; he’s on his feet before his eyes can adjust to the darkened room, stumbling blindly toward the source.

“Scully? Scully!”

The forgotten kettle pops and hisses on the stove; he rushes over to shut off the burner. He’s dimly aware the scream came from the kettle, not his partner, but his pulse doesn’t believe it. They live in a world where the sick imaginings of a lonely man can come to life and kill you, after all.

Was she lonely, too?

He leans back against the counter, blinking, trying to ignore the feeling of dread coiled in the pit of his stomach. Something feels off. The refrigerator hums and chuckles at his side, there’s the tick of a clock from across the room, but otherwise, the apartment is quiet…

The shower isn’t running.

His hand goes to his holster on instinct as he makes his way to the bedroom. There’s no sign of her, save for her ruined shirt, a spilled pool of sullied cotton on the floor.

“Scully?” his voice comes out as a whisper. He feels like a trespasser.

The bathroom door is also open, bleeding light onto the plush carpet. He creeps to the threshold, listening for movement. She should be toweling off, maybe brushing her hair, applying one of those god-awful green mask things to her face—anything but heavy silence.

Seconds tick by in an agonizing crawl, but there is only the sound of his breathing. He feels himself raise the gun before he realizes he’s going to do it, and swings his body into the doorway, tasting tin and salt on the back of his tongue.

Oh. Oh…

She’s sitting in the shower stall with her back to the door, so still.

Her hair is a dark brown stain down her back, her skin a shimmering pearl silhouette. He can see the upper half of her tattoo at the base of her spine, a haze of reds and blues through the mottled glass.

So very, very still.

Oh God, not again…

He’ll find her blood on the floor, her still-beating heart in her hand…

Her shoulders shudder and tense, her head tips forward, and he is baptized in relief.

“Scully,” he breathes, lowering the gun.

A thready gasp as her head snaps around, and he glimpses the slope of her nose, the pink in her cheek, the subtle furrow in her brow, delicate as a watercolor portrait. The sight takes his breath.

“Mulder?”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I thought you were…that he—” he says, tripping over his words as he tries to gather his wits.

“I’m fine, Mulder,” she sighs, her voice as bruised as her ribs. A million sarcastic responses perch on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them like medicine. She doesn’t stand, doesn’t make an attempt to cover herself.

“I’m fine, I’ll be out in a minute,” she repeats when he doesn’t leave. He’s fixed in place, irrationally terrified she’ll fade away if he can’t see her.

Don’t let her out of your sight.

He recalls the way her fingers wouldn’t let go until they’d parked at the curb, the confusion and fear in her eyes when he’d disentangled them.

Not fine. Not this time.

He turns in a half-circle and lowers himself to the floor with a grunt, his back pressed to the shower. “No can do,” he says. “I’m under strict orders from the boss to keep an eye on you tonight.”

“Oh? I don’t think this is what Skinner had in mind,” she mutters, but she doesn’t ask him to leave.

“You know me, Scully. I follow orders.”

She snorts. He imagines he can feel her shivering through the glass. The tile floor is hard and cold, the warmth from the steam has dissipated, but their silence is comfortable. He thinks of the tea water cooling on the stove, the lemon shrinking in its paper skin, her heart thudding against her ribs like a prisoner seeking escape—

“Do you fear death, Mulder?”

Only when you don’t answer your phone.

He swallows, stalling. “Have we had this conversation?” 

“I asked if you’d ever thought about dying, not if you feared it—there’s a difference.”

“If we’re going to argue semantics, you should put some clothes on,” he quips. “We’ll be here all night.”

He hears her shift behind him, imagines he can feel the plane of her back pressed against his own, the steady beat of her heart like a bird fluttering against his right shoulder. She’ll wait; she’s strong enough to wait forever, if that’s what it takes. He sighs in surrender.

“I fear dying without knowing the truth...without closure,” he admits, dancing lightly around the whole of it; that she is as much a part of his unfinished business as any conspiracy. What lies between them is a spirit he can only glimpse in his peripheral vision; when he confronts it head on, it disappears.

He’s come too close to meeting her ghost tonight.

There’s a smile in her voice. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You got me. I’m predictable,” he says, casting a glance behind him. He can see the milk-white skin of her back, a dark curl of auburn hair kissing the slope of her neck. He turns away and coughs, unsettled at the intimacy. “Do you? Fear death, I mean.”

“Spiritually, no,” she says softly, “but on an instinctual level, I do. I think what I fear more is the threat, and how the constant threat changes us, more than the act of dying itself.”

He frowns, chews at his lip. “I don’t follow…”

Another pause, longer this time. He bites at the edge of his cuticle until it’s raw.

“I love this job,” she whispers. “We’ve given so much to this…this work, and I accepted the risks. But sometimes…” she pauses, there’s a soft click in her throat when she swallows. The quiet draws itself around them, and he grows still as stone, as if any movement might frighten her back to the hollow place she found in the car. When she finally speaks, her words are curiously detached and small, like a child’s.

“Sometimes I don’t like what it’s made me.”

“And what’s that?” he asks, closing his eyes, unsure if he’s ready to hear it. The irony isn’t lost on him, that for all his seeking, some truths are better left unfound.

“You learn to assume the worst of people. And when you don’t, when you’re foolish enough to let your guard down…” she trails off again with a shaky breath. “…Well. Here I am.”

“You had no way of knowing Padgett was going to end it like this.”

“Didn’t I?” she says, and the bitterness in the question makes him wince. “As investigators, we’re trained to rely on our instincts, yet I ignored everything mine were telling me—everything you were telling me—against good reason.”

“You didn’t know—“

“I did. And why? To become the object of a sad man’s perverted fantasy? As if I were as lonely as he wrote me,” she scoffs, and he hears her nails kiss the shower floor.

He tips his head back, feels the plates of his skull meet the cool glass wall, heavy with the weight of her unrest. In a moment of striking clarity, he understands that this isn’t the first time she’s sat like this, walled in glass and berating herself for some self-perceived failure, but it’s the first time she’s let him bear witness.

He doesn’t know whether to feel touched or guilty, but the guilt is an old friend, so he lets it in. Part of him wants to leave, grab his jacket off the back of the couch and run. Every time she gives a piece of herself, it makes it that much harder to look at her as a friend, and not something more.

But it’s too late; she’s talking, her words gaining momentum. An object in motion stays in motion, and he isn’t strong enough to stop her.

“Do you know what they say about ‘Mrs. Spooky’ when they think I’m not listening? That I bring it on myself,” she says, a grating whisper. “That I must be a masochist to stay, to do what we do…or…” she trails off.

Or you wouldn’t come back to me, he thinks, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“I do the job because being an Agent is part of who I am. But it’s also the reason I can’t remember what it’s like to be…to be just…Dana.”

He swallows dust, numbly nods an assent she can’t see, and listens. He remembers as a boy, the pain of a blister under his thumbnail, how his father showed him to use a screw to make a hole and let out the blood. She’s doing it now, her words as honed and meticulous as a drill bit against supple flesh.

“These men, these creatures...they never really die. They follow me home every night, and I can only thank God that I’m strong enough to withstand living with them. I wish I could say the same for their victims.

“But I’ll never have that…that simple, unwavering faith, that at the end of the day, the world is a better place for what we do,” she whispers, her voice low and thready and ready to break. “I just know I have to do it. There’s no other choice.”

He closes his eyes and wonders when she became as brittle as him; if the change happened slowly, over the course of weeks and months, measured over miles and cases, or if this is the definitive moment, and she’ll emerge from her glass chrysalis a new creature, a changed thing.

Six years have graced him with a multitude of useless facts about his partner. He knows how she takes her coffee, her favorite shade of lipstick, and that she eats the yogurt with the pollen so she can justify the extra doughnut he’ll buy at lunch.

He knows that when they’re on a case and she can’t sleep, she’ll visit his motel room to share leftover pizza and watch noir films, and she cries at the sad parts when she thinks he’s not looking.

He knows she colors her hair, because her natural strawberry blonde waves are beautiful, and beauty doesn’t intimidate the good ol’ boys at the Bureau the way a glossy burnt auburn can.

But he’ll never know the person she was before she met him, before their truths became irrevocably entangled. Their physical losses were great, but the scars they can’t see are the ones that linger, and she is marked by him—partners until the very end.

He wants to know when she realized she couldn’t turn back.

As the silence draws itself around them, he knows there is nothing he can offer. She’s drawn her line in the sand and crossed it every time. All he can do is wait for her on the other side.

She has faith and science; he has her.

“Scully?” he says softly, when enough time has passed, when his legs are pins and needles, and the thought of her naked on the cold tile is hurting his sense of New-England-bred chivalry.

“Yeah?”

“My ass hurts.”

She barks a laugh into the narrow stall, but it works. He hears her movement, the door sliding open behind him with a metallic groan. He gets up, careful to keep his back to the shower, even though they’re past any pretense of modesty.

He coughs, rubbing at his thighs to wake them from their prickly sleep. “I made some tea, we could order pizza and watch one of those romantic comedy things you—“

The sob is barely there. He turns without thinking, searching her face, glancing over her nakedness to see through it. She’s standing on the bathmat, eyes downcast, water and salt mixing on the linoleum. The bruise along her side blossoms under her ribs like a black peony.

He reaches for a towel and wraps it around her shoulders, interrupting their careful, sympathetic orbits in an embrace. Her skin is ice, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Another sob, but this one catches in the fabric of his shirt as he pulls her close. Soon his nose damp with the scent of her shampoo.

“You have every right to be angry, Scully,” he soothes at her temple, with a protective ferocity that surprises them both. “But only with them. Not yourself. Never yourself.”

Her breath is sharp, shuddering, and he wonders if he’s said the wrong thing. He doesn’t know if “them” refers to the suits at the Bureau or their indomitable superiors or the citizens of Reticula or God himself. He breathes against her, tightens his grip, decides, fuck ‘em all.

She sniffs, and he can feel the heat of her pressed to him, bare, little more than a damp t-shirt between them. It takes all his effort to let go when she pulls away, and he averts his eyes as she wraps herself in the towel.

She tucks a lock of red-burned hair behind her ear, a nervous habit. “I’m sorry, I, um—”

“If I were a lesser man, Scully,” he whispers drily, and her sudden laughter is bubbling and warm, a salve to their shared wounds.

She tips her face to his, one eyebrow in a slender arc, her eyes damp and wry. “A lesser man, Mulder? What are you implying?”

Her closeness, coupled with the subtle innuendo, catches him off guard. He’s suddenly terrified she might kiss him, more terrified because he would let it happen, a wonderful and dangerous thought.

Something ethereal whispers at the edge of his mind’s eye, and he resists the urge to check the back of her neck for bees.

Instead, he takes a step backwards, toward the door. “I’ll, uh, wait outside. Pizza?”

“No peppers this time,” she agrees, turning away, showing him the line of her back, her shoulders squared. He watches a drop of water roll down the gentle arch of her spine, absorbed by the edge of the towel. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He makes it to the threshold, but can’t resist; has her pull always been this strong? He turns, watches her reflection, a ghost coming to life in the mirror.

“Hey, Scully?”

“Mmm?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

For coming back. For staying.

He opens his mouth to say it, but in the end, what he wants to say and what he’ll allow himself to say are two different things.

He shrugs. “For…leaving the door open, I guess.”

Her smile is faint, but genuine; enough for now.

The spirit catches his eye and fades away.

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XV): "Other Fathers", Deleted Scenes, and "Things to Prove"

Never Again is precipitated by Dana Scully’s sidekick complex, a trickle down from her childhood daddy issues. While I’ve discussed her feeling of neglect with regards to Mulder (posts here and here), this analysis will zero in on Scully’s strivings for perfection, feelings of neglect, and subsequent discouragement and rebellion blooming from a failure to secure someone’s pride and attention. 

FATHER COMPLEXES

The first time Scully displayed vulnerability in Beyond the Sea was at her father's funeral, pleading with her mother for reassurance: “Was he at all proud of me?” By the end of the episode, she takes Maggie’s “He was your father” to heart, turning down a chance to give her father a final goodbye via the shady conduit Boggs. 

After her abduction and return, Scully meets her father once again in the land between Life and Death. Standing at his daughter’s side, Captain Scully pours out his heart in a touching monologue she takes back with her into life.  

More importantly, her father was the only person who knew she wouldn’t die--”We’ll be together again, Starbuck. Not now. Soon”-- and Mulder the only person who believed in her strength. Scully came back for Mulder, yes; but she still had to process her family’s hopelessness and her father’s visitation. 

An interesting and important note: Scully was aware when her family gave up in One Breath-- “When they found me-- after the doctors and even my family had given up, I experienced something that I never told you about. Even now it’s hard to find the words. But there’s one thing I’m certain: as certain as I am of this life, we have nothing to fear when it’s over.” 

Melissa, her voice (post here), was right: Scully was right there; and her spirit did speak back and forth with her sister in limbo. Knowing this, it makes sense why Missy pushed Dana so hard to accept every vital part of herself and her experiences in Season 3-- trying to prevent Scully's self-destruction through purposed ignorance.

The only problem is, Scully wasn't-- and isn’t-- sure how to understand her experience: on the one hand, it gives her a sense of peace when facing death (telling Mulder they have nothing to fear in Dod Kalm); but on the other, embracing that experience would require her to embrace other aspects of herself she is running from-- buried memories of her abduction, the paranormal happenings drawing naturally to her (post here), and her own fear of belief. 

In A Christmas Carol, Scully can’t sleep because of her father’s disappointment in her career path; in Pilot, she glibly tells the Assistant Directors her parents considered this change “an act of rebellion” (post here); and in Beyond the Sea, she is thrilled to be on closer terms with Captain Scully (though they struggle to connect with unaddressed issues between them, post here.) Her sense of self-worth is attached to her usefulness, which is measured by the praise or adoration she strives to earn from the people she looks up to. 

Avoiding instead of internalizing leads Scully from person to person-- man to man specifically-- looking for the acceptance she will only find in herself (all things.) 

She is drawn to men that open her mind to new possibilities-- Daniel Waterston, her teacher; Jack Willis, her instructor; Fox Mulder, the paranormal and little green men expert-- but are also devoted to their work and expect her to come along for the ride. Scully, enthralled, follows their lead; but after time passes and she remains second priority, Scully rebels and leaves. 

Scully has stayed with Mulder longer than any other romantic partner, miring herself in danger and intrigue and murder for over three years. And she has seemed-- despite the oddity of their situation-- content to be challenged and thrilled over pursuing the domesticity expected from peers her age. Yet Scully takes a sharp left turn in Never Again, contemplating her circular life path and seeking reassurance from Mulder for her decisions-- equally reaching for and rebelling against the second-place position she assumes he places her in. 

I’ve already written at length how Mulder completely misinterpreted his partner’s signals (thinking she was resenting him and the work rather than wanting assurance of her place in his life) and that his resulting actions accidentally confirmed Scully’s worst assumptions and fears (compelling her into the arms of Ed Jerse); but cutting that important angle out of this episode, let’s focus on the residuals of her father’s legacy that sends her into an ouroboros of insanity. 

MEASURING UP TO SUCCESS

Captain Scully lived in pursuit of accomplishment. “I’ve went at a proper pace-- many rewards-- until the moment that… I knew, I… understood that I would never see you again. My little girl. Then my life felt as if it had been the length of one breath, one heartbeat.” Although decorated properly in his medals of honor, her father's afterlife appears empty and alone, allotting ample time to count his successes while waiting for his loved ones to join.  

We see the echoes of that achievement mindset when Scully reexamines her life: the endless cycle of what she’s lost or the little she’s accomplished. The lesson her father tried to impart to her from the world of the Dead is blocked by her unwillingness to fully believe; and the gnawing of bereft dissatisfaction continues to build in the wake of personal tragedies and her partner’s inability to do or express more in their relationship. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF ONCE AGAIN

Scully stands behind her partner, tuning out his interrogation of a witness as dissatisfaction starts to pulse through her. Having already dismissed the case, she wanders off, trying to pinpoint or escape her swelling emotions, coming face-to-face with a wall of venerated names. These people are the embodiment of legacy: what they did mattered, who they were is remembered. Their service is recognized; their sacrifice is honored. 

Their names may be what draws her, but not what keeps her. Unlike her father, who wanted his named etched in higher rank or bigger history (Personality Type post here), Scully’s attention and emotions are captured by the personal, heartfelt memorial at the bottom of the glistening pillar: “BROTHER, TWENTY YEARS LATER… I STILL MISS YOU. WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID WAS RIGHT.” She slides down silently as her thoughts begin to solidify. 

Touching one of the rose petals, she ruminates on the loss of a life so insignificant to the rest of the world but so important to the ones he loved most-- that not only did he matter, but he mattered because what he did was right. 

Scully may be a woman who places herself in second position, but she is also a woman that demands respect and devotion-- proof that she is valued, loved, and cherished (Personality Type post here.) Furthermore, Scully lives her life by her morals and ethics, by what is right-- breaking up with Daniel Waterston before crossing an unbreakable line, holding herself to a standard of decency and honor, and demanding Mulder hear the truth even if it's hard to accept.  

As of late, there isn’t enough cherishing to balance out her self-doubts; and now that the scales are out of whack, her life seems unfairly disjointed. Because Scully is fixated on identifying and solving her problem, she misdiagnoses its cause, wondering if her presence would even be missed, nullifying the importance of her decisions and choices. And who does Scully look to first to set everything back into order? “Other fathers”-- or in this case, the Ahab to her Starbuck. (And this Ahab completely misses the memo.) 

These doubts plague her hours later: holding Mulder’s plate and sitting behind Mulder’s desk in Mulder’s chair, Scully sees her workspace with new eyes, noting how lacking her presence (seemingly) is, despite the devotion she’s poured into the X-Files. The rose petal’s significance has left its mark. 

Mulder poking Scully about abandoning him scratches at the open wound of “WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID WAS RIGHT”, flipping her concealed disillusionment into more outward hostility. 

Still, she tempers her annoyance, slipping it under Mulder’s radar… until: “Hm. Have you confirmed the identity of these individuals?” 

“That’s your assignment while I’m gone.” 

Her back immediately arches at assignment: sharp intake of breath, stiffened posture, and lowered eyes-- more signs of her anger. When she refuses, both of them are left frustrated. 

“So, you’re refusing an assignment based on the adventures of ‘Moose and Squirrel’?” Mulder teases, battening down his own anger with humor. 

“Refusing an assignment? It makes it sound like you’re my superior,” Scully replies, stepping around his olive branch and digging her heels in. 

When Mulder snaps, misreading her mood as disinterest in his work, she sighs, cryptically replying, “And it’s become mine.” 

Stung, he softly asks, “You don’t want it to be?”

Scully does her best to explain the chaotic whirlpool of emotions sucking her down-- “This isn’t about you. Or maybe it is indirectly, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost sight of myself, Mulder. It’s hard to see, let alone find, in the darkness of covert locations. I mean, I wish I could say we’re going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line: two steps forward, and three steps back. While my own life is… standing still”--     

--but her response isn’t direct enough for Mulder’s suddenly resurrected abandonment issues. 

“Well, maybe it’s good we get away from each other for a while,” he surmises, assuming she’s sick of being around him; which causes her to close up, assuming he’s sick of listening to her problems.  Then he flees before she can rethink things further; and she sits and feels her admission has been ignored and minimized. 

Mulder is her Ahab; but he doesn’t expect subservience in their equal partnership. Now four years in, he and Scully both expect her to waltz off to the next case in his absence; and she is nettled by their assumptions, and he baffled by her response. Scully cannot see past the tall and commanding figure of her father to notice Mulder-- shrinking from her raised hackles, blaming himself for consuming too much of her time, calling her later because he wants her a part of his life, even in absentia-- reading his withdrawal as disapproval and rebuke.  

Scully has a long wait for Fight the Future’s declaration. In the meantime, she is crying out for validation and reciprocation; and stumbles across a form of it in Ed Jerse. And after a brief investigation into the Russians and Mulder’s commanding fumble over the phone, she decides to pursue that path as soon as possible. 

THE ALLURE OF DISOBEDIENCE

Ed Jerse is her mother’s cigarettes personified: sinful and satisfying, different and dangerous. The tattoo you deserve. 

“I’ve always gone around in this, uh… this circle," she tells him. "It usually starts when an authoritative or controlling figure comes into my life. And part of me likes it-- needs it, wants the approval-- but then at a certain point, along the way I just… y’know.

“My father was a Navy captain. I worshiped… I worship.. the sea that he sailed on. And,” she admits, looking down or up or away to keep her emotions in check, “when I was thirteen or so, I went through this… thing where I would sneak out of my parents' house and smoke my mother’s cigarettes.” 

Her monologue in the bar exactly parallels Luthor Lee Boggs’s extracted confession in Beyond the Sea: “There was... that one time when I was fourteen and my parents had gone to bed and I snuck downstairs all alone. Got one of my mom's cigarettes and went out onto the porch in the dark. I was so scared: my heart was beating-- I mean, they would have killed me if they knew. But I was so excited. Not because of the cigarette-- I mean it was gross, but... because I wasn't supposed to.” 

Even now, her eyes light up in recollection, a sly smile pulling at the corners of her lips. 

“And I did it because I knew that if he found out, he would kill me. And then, ” Scully wraps up, halting as her voice drops in disgust, “There are other… fathers.” 

“Sounds a little like… your time has come around again,” Ed posits, smooth and attentive with his unspoken promise of a good time. “I want things more like a straight line,” he adds; and so compelled is Scully that she forgets a straight, endless line is worse to her than an endless cycle.

To commemorate her breakthrough, Scully inks the chains of her life onto her back… in the same place where Mulder frequently steers her around. The tattoo she deserves, after all: trying to turn her self-punishment into liberation; glorying in the pain-- in the wrongness of it all-- in an effort to produce something new and exciting and beautiful. Starbuck, thou art aptly named. 

All for naught. 

“All this because I,” Mulder questions after it’s all over, “because I didn’t get you a desk?” 

Scully is once again caressing the rose petal; but looks up, surprised, that he bothers to ask her about anything other than their next case. Seeing that he’s serious, that he’s willing to listen, she says, “Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.” 

Scully has figured out, rather late, that “other fathers” were not at play here: that her search for approval was an effort to conceal her aching loneliness because Mulder-- no matter how good his intentions-- isn’t ready to be a part of “my life.” 

And Mulder intuits this, too; and falls silent. 

ADDRESSING MEMENTO MORI’S DELETED SCENE

The last mention of Captain Scully in Season 4 pops up in a deleted scene from Memento Mori. 

There are many reasons why I dislike (loathe, really) this scene-- the depiction of her brother, mainly-- but those are secondary to the thoughts I want to explore here. 

Scully wakes from her round of chemo to a man in uniform by her bed. A flash of her coma visitation shines through; and she calls out, “Dad?” softly, with a smile. 

It’s Bill Scully, Jr. that advances out of the light instead, grabbing her hand in anxious confusion. “Dana?”

“Bill?” Scully, aware of her mistake, quickly withdraws her hand and sits up, momentarily humiliated. Laughing at herself, she starts, “I thought you were, uh…”

“You were expecting someone else,” Bill smooths.

In hindsight, this is a rather morbid remark on his behalf: clutching her hand like she’s dying and half-expecting her to be expecting apparitions of the dead. (It turns out this scene is framed around him deciding she's already got a foot in the grave.)

She thanks him for coming, Bill leans in to give her an awkward hug, and the two try to regain their equilibrium in the silence that follows. 

“You look good,” he lies; and Scully makes a face, not believing it but thanking him, regardless. “Charles is sorry he couldn’t make it,” he adds, confirming that he and Charlie would have been in contact had this scene remained canon. “Think he’ll call you tonight, if you’re feeling up to it.” 

“Sad cause for a family reunion.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, fake chuckling. 

The two fall silent before Bill expounds on his new orders-- alluding to the fact she and he might not regularly communicate about much other than work. (Another aspect that might but doesn’t quite fit with their characterization in Gethsemane; but I digress.) 

“Oh, did Mom tell you? Got new orders-- NAS Miramar, Dad’s old stomping grounds.” 

So, Bill Scully also keeps in contact with Maggie (no surprise), making he and his mother the communication lightning rods of the family-- and likely Melissa, too, since she visited her family and followed up with regular phone calls (The Blessing Way, post here, and A Christmas Carol.) 

“Yeah, I was out there not long ago. Lot of old memories,” Scully reminisces, an allusion to her Piper Maru investigation (post here.) Cool call back, actually.  

“Yeah…. Lots of ghosts now. Dad… Melissa. Mom’s gettin’ worried there’s no one left to carry on the Scully name. Guess the pressure’s on, huh?”

I, personally, believe Bill would have more tactful in this situation-- and he is, even when confronting his sister in Gethsemane and A Christmas Carol-- and am glad this scene is no longer canon.

“I didn’t choose this, Bill.”

“No-- but you chose to join the FBI. Mom and Dad sending you to med school-- you were going to be the one to save lives.” 

Scully gasps, turning away to collect her words. “When Dad died, I asked Mom. She said he’d forgiven my choice.”

We have confirmation here that, while her parents were both disapproving of the FBI, it was her father that was angered by it. This fact is also backed up by her and Melissa’s conversation in A Christmas Carol (again, post here.) 

I’m going to gloss over the rest of the scene because Bill is unreasonably cruel, ridiculous, and out-of-character, blaming his sister for Missy’s death when he doesn’t appear to do so in Gethsemane, Redux II, A Christmas Carol, or even Emily.  

The takeaway is: 

Bill feels angry at Scully’s choices but doesn’t voice them until she calls attention to his subtle pokes. 

Bill is moving to his dad’s old stomping grounds, meaning he’s beginning to measure himself against his father’s legacy. Meaning, Scully may have been able to break away from her parents’ expectations, but he has not. 

Not only that, but Maggie piles her expectations for grandchildren onto Bill and Tara’s shoulders (despite their struggles with infertility) while somehow forgetting her other grandchild via Charlie Scully (previous post here.) 

All in all, this scene badly damages the extended Scully family quite a bit. But the fact that Bill is choosing to follow his father’s journey step-by-step leaves some interesting implications (to be explored in a future post.)  

REMEMBER DEATH, PART II

Scully’s father also left an impact during her fight with cancer. 

Fearing she wouldn't be strong enough for her Mulder or her mother (again, post here), Scully’s courage begins to crumble in the face of futility and exhaustion: “Mulder, it’s difficult to describe to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer nor escape.” 

After Mulder runs to her side, afraid she'd been hurt or recaptured, he finds and reads her journal, later confessing: "When I came to find you and you weren't in your room, I got scared something had happened. And I read what you wrote."

She exhales, embarrassed. "Oh. I didn't want you to read that. I decided to throw it out. 

"I decided tonight, that, um…,” she continues, pebbling her chin to keep the tears back, “that I’m not gonna let this thing beat me.” Squaring her shoulders resolutely, she adds, “I came into this hospital able to work; and that’s how I’m leaving.” At his encouraging nod, Scully pauses, smiling back.    

Mulder finally gives her the reassurance she’s been searching for: “Scully, something was done to you, something that you’re just beginning to remember-- you can’t quite figure it out, but it can be explained and it will be explained. And no matter what you think as a scientist or a doctor, there is a way. And you will find it, to save yourself.” The truth is, he’s always believed in Scully, even when she doesn’t believe in herself. 

Scully spells out her new focus-- “Mulder, I can’t kid myself. People live with cancer. They carry on. And so will I. You know, I’ve got things to finish-- to prove, to myself, to my family. But for my own reasons.” 

It’s an incredible leap forward for the captain’s daughter; and Mulder knows this, giving her a blooming smile and wrapping her up in his first initiated hug. 

Scully beams in his praise and soaks up his comfort-- the right time for both of them, in spite of everything. 

Mulder’s “The truth will save you Scully. I think it’ll save both of us” draws out a smile while his tender forehead kiss brings her to the brink of tears. 

It’s enough for both, for now; and she pulls away, walking back bravely into battle. 

CONCLUSION

Captain Scully’s long shadow stretches from beyond the grave, shading the milestones of his children’s choices and accomplishments. While he tried posthumously to give consolation and encouragement-- like Bill Mulder did for his son, post here-- the effects of his example have left grooves that circle Scully (and her brother) around and around, faster and faster, until she breaks free of those patterns and starts her own journey. 

Only then-- not unlike the late Melissa Scully-- can Scully (and Bill) truly be free. 

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[phillippadgettwrites]

Blackout

Rated X / 3724 words / Posted on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic

When the power cuts out, they’re sitting on the floor in her living room with a fully loaded Monopoly board on the coffee table between them, plus two open beers. The wind has been howling for hours, sideways rain pelting the windows with each mighty gust, but they hadn’t had the forethought to prepare flashlights or candles.

The evening so far feels a bit like a date, at least compared to how they typically spend their time together. Mulder hadn’t even used the excuse of some exciting new case or research to invite himself over, he just asked if she wanted to hang out. Most people would have evenings like this before getting to the point of sleeping together, but they aren’t most people. And while it only happened the one time, they’ve been working their way back to that point in a more typical fashion, including a few hot and heavy makeout sessions. She had hoped that might be the direction they were headed this evening, but when her apartment goes dark she turns her focus to more pressing issues.

It’s well after 10:00pm, and with the moon obscured by heavy rain clouds and not a drop of ambient light, they both slowly stand and carefully make their way towards the kitchen.

“There’s a flashlight in the drawer to the left of the oven,” she tells him, moving her hands in an arc in front of her and sweeping her feet back and forth before each step to avoid tripping. “And there are some candles and matches in the bathroom.”

She heads toward the bathroom, operating off her mental map of her apartment to guide her way, and she’s so caught off guard when Mulder crashes into her from the side that she falls without any attempt to catch herself. Her shoulder hits the hardwood and within milliseconds Mulder’s weight is on top of her, squeezing the air from her lungs.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he sputters, rolling to the side and pawing her all over as he tries to figure out how her body is oriented. She turns onto her back and his palm lands squarely on her breast, giving it a squeeze before he snatches it away and adds another, much more contrite, “Sorry,” to his extended apology.

Scully laughs, though she’s probably going to have a bruise on her shoulder tomorrow.

“It’s okay,” she reassures him as she sits up.

“Do you want to feel my breast? Even the score?” he asks, and she knows that the joke is his way of managing his embarrassment.

“Maybe later,” she says, then slowly gets to her feet.

They find the flashlight, as well as the candles, all of which have mere inches of wick left at most. They light one and attempt to resume their game, but the strain on their eyes makes them decide not to light another when the flame flickers and dies out.

“How new are these batteries?” Mulder asks, and she hears the rattle of him shaking the flashlight.

“I’m not sure, I haven’t used it in a while,” she tells him, and he sighs.

“I’d be lying if I claimed I wasn’t judging you for your lack of preparedness, Scully,” he says in a lecturing tone.

“You don’t have toilet paper at your apartment half the time, Mulder,” she shoots back.

“Touché.”

They decide not to use the flashlight save for lighting their way to the bathroom, or to sneak another beer from the fridge. Mulder suggests heading home, but Scully suspects that it’s nothing more than an attempt to be sure he isn’t overstaying his welcome, and she insists that it would be unsafe for him to drive across town with all the traffic signals out and low visibility.

“Are you cold?” she asks as she pulls the blanket off the back of the couch to cover herself. Based on the sound of his voice, Mulder is still sitting on the floor across the coffee table.

“Nope, I’m good,” he says.

They talk about other power outages they’ve experienced, comparing notes to determine that three days is the longest either of them have gone without. Scully tells Mulder about an occasion where Ahab made them eat all the ice cream in the fridge so it wouldn’t go to waste, and then Maggie had to clean the bathroom in the dark with no hot water after Charlie gave himself a stomach ache and didn’t quite make it to the toilet.

“It really makes you think about how dependent we are on electricity, doesn’t it?” Mulder remarks. “I don’t think I could accomplish three-quarters of the things I do in an average day without it.”

“True, but you have to consider the fact that we’re only so dependent on it because we’ve built modern life around it,” Scully says, stretching out on the couch. “You could accomplish many, if not most, of the things you do in an average day without it—you’d just have to accomplish them in a different way.”

“Indoor plumbing doesn’t require electricity,” he says. “I could heat water over an open fire to make my coffee. Use a straight razor to shave. I think I could get as far as needing to drive before things would get tricky.”

“Work itself would be practically impossible,” Scully says. “Without phone or email, I’m not sure we could do anything at all.”

They’re quiet for a bit, and the complete lack of mechanical hum in the building makes the intermittent rumble of car engines and the spray of the rain sound like thunder.

“It’s wild to think about how much time and energy used to go towards just trying to survive,” Mulder says suddenly, startling her.

“The four F’s of evolution,” Scully replies, sitting up a little only to realize how much the beer has gone to her head. “Fight, flee, feed, and fornicate. We’ve always had the same needs, we just meet them in different ways depending on the resources available to us.”

“Clubs, swords, muskets, atom bombs,” Mulder lists off.

“Feet, horses, cars, airplanes,” Scully continues.

“Hunt and gather, farm, supermarket, McDonald’s,” he adds.

There’s an awkward silence when the fourth “F” hangs in the air.

“I suppose the last “F” is the only one that hasn’t changed much,” she finally says, feeling silly for feeling embarrassed.

“I don’t know, there have been quite a few modern advancements,” Mulder offers, and she hears in his voice that he’s changing position. She imagines him lying on his side, his head propped up on a fist. “Where would feminism be if not for the advent of the Hitachi Magic Wand?”

Her cheeks flush, and she’s grateful for the cover of darkness. It makes it all feel pretend somehow, like they’re talking on the phone. Like he isn’t sitting just a few feet away from her.

“I didn’t realize you were so knowledgeable about vibrators, Mulder,” she teases.

“Eh, I read a lot of magazines,” he says casually. “And it’s a personal massager, Scully. For the record.”

“I stand corrected,” she says with a smile. She feels warm and giddy. “Gratefully, a lack of electricity would have no impact on me in that respect. I suppose that makes me old fashioned.”

There’s another silence, and as it stretches on she realizes that she just disclosed her masturbatory preferences to him. She presses her cold hands to her flaming-hot cheeks and hopes that he somehow didn’t pick up on it.

“Well, that’s gotta be handy,” he finally says, and his voice sounds rough. “I’ve heard that mysterious vibrating suitcases are a common occurrence for the baggage handlers at Reagan International.”

She doesn’t know how to respond. If she agrees with him, she’s further disclosing that she masturbates when they’re on assignment. Apparently he takes her silence as offense, because before she can think of something to say he speaks again.

“Sorry, that was a bit presumptuous,” he says. “I forget that women aren’t prone to the same…fixation as men are in that particular vein.”

The lack of accuracy in his supposition bothers her enough that she doesn’t let it slide.

“That’s not true,” she says, looking in his direction even though her pupils are filled with only vacant darkness. “It’s a puritanical myth that women experience less sexual desire than men do. The difference is that men are celebrated for their libido while women are shamed for it. Repeat that for hundreds of years, and people start to believe that it’s by design.”

“Hm,” is all Mulder offers in response at first. He seems to be giving what she said quite a bit of consideration. “Not to be invasive, and you can feel free not to answer this if you aren’t comfortable, but are you suggesting that women think about sex just as often as men do?”

“They’ve done studies on the subject,” she answers confidently, feeling much more secure speaking in terms of scientific fact than personal experience. “There are numerous variables at play, but when you account for them and compare apples to apples, yes.”

“Hm,” he says again, sounding genuinely surprised. “But you don’t—” he starts, then pauses to reconsider his words. “It can’t be the same in terms of masturbation. I just find that hard to believe. No pun intended.”

That, of course, makes her think about his dick. She squeezes her thighs together when her clit jumps, alerting her to the fact that it, too, is thinking about his dick.

“What do you mean?” she asks, unwilling to risk a misunderstanding.

He laughs a little and she wonders if he is also drunk.

“I don’t know how to clarify without asking you an extremely personal question,” he admits.

She’s still thinking about his dick. She didn’t get a good look at it, but she did cop quite a feel as she helped guide him inside her. She’s glad she did, or she would have been more caught off guard by the pain.

“Try me,” she says, feeling bold.

“How often do you…?” he asks, letting the rest of the question hang in the air.

She probably shouldn’t answer that, but none of this feels real.

“Most days,” she says plainly, like she’s telling him how often she showers. “Not quite every day, but almost.” The silence that follows is so loud her ears ring. She feels a sudden surge of panic, a blast of reality that makes her nauseous. Maybe she should pretend she misunderstood the question. “Mulder?” she finally says, just to make sure he’s still there. As though he could have somehow left without her noticing.

He clears his throat.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Are you…okay?”

“Yeah.” More silence. She feels a little bit angry at him for doing this to her. For leaving her hanging after such an admission. “Every day?” he says with astonishment, emphasizing both words.

“Not every day,” she corrects him. “I said most days.”

“What does that mean?” he asks, and his voice sounds closer.

“What do you mean, what does it mean? It means exactly what I said.”

“You do more days than you don’t?” he asks, and his urgency confuses her.

“I believe that was indicated by my use of the word most,” she says, a bit more tartly than she intended.

“Wow,” he says, and then is quiet again.

“And you?” she shoots back. “I think it’s only fair that you answer the same question.”

If he’s bothered, he doesn’t let on.

“The same, actually,” he says. “Most days. Not every day, but most.”

“Hm,” she says, injecting as much sarcasm as possible into a single syllable and with no body language to support it. “And what does that mean, Mulder?”

“It means that I typically do, unless I’m too tired or not in a situation to procure the necessary privacy,” he answers. “For example, on occasions where we’ve needed to share a motel room, or currently when I’m stuck at your apartment.”

“My apologies for ruining your evening,” she grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest like a petulant child.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks incredulously.

“I just don’t appreciate being made to feel like a sexual deviant,” she tells him.

“What did I say that made you feel that way?”

“I don’t know, Mulder, between the multiple ‘hms’ and the ‘wow,’ I got the distinct impression that you think I’m some kind of…perverted nymphomaniac.”

“A—what?” he asks, now incredulous for different reasons. “I apologize if my brief responses gave you that impression, but honestly I was just trying not to say any of the thoughts I was having out loud so I didn’t make you more uncomfortable than you clearly already are.”

“And which thoughts were those?” she asks, intending to make a point. She expects to hear him express surprise that someone like her would do something as uncouth as touch her own damn body for no purpose other than pleasure.

He doesn’t answer right away, which only makes her seethe. If he hadn’t been drinking she would tell him to leave.

“I’m not sure you realize what you’re asking me to say, Scully,” he says carefully, which gets her attention. “But I assure you, the thoughts are complimentary in nature. I’m not judging you.”

“Tell me one,” she requests. “Just as a point of reference.”

He sighs, and she can practically feel the gears turning in his head as he works out what to say. Which thought to share.

“Well, we travel a lot,” he begins. “So when you said most days, my immediate thought—or question, more accurately—was whether you…indulge when we’re on assignment.” She feels her entire body flush. “I’m not asking you a question,” he quickly clarifies, “I’m just sharing that as an example of the type of thought that I had. Nothing derogatory, scout’s honor.”

“Hm,” she says, not intentionally, and Mulder huffs a little uncomfortable laugh.

“My sentiments exactly.”

Now it is she who lets the silence stretch on, leaving him wondering what she’s thinking. The spike in adrenaline set off by her anger wanes, leaving her feeling sleepy and unguarded.

“Sometimes,” she says.

“Sometimes what?” he clarifies.

“I do when we’re on assignment sometimes, depending on how close your room is to mine.”

She no longer reads his silence as judgment.

“Is proximity a deterrent or an incentive?” he asks, and she can tell that he’s choosing his words carefully.

“If we share a wall I don’t—I worry that you’ll hear me,” she says. It’s the honest answer.

“You worry?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“...That you’ll hear me,” she repeats, confused.

“And that would be…bad?”

She hesitates, challenged to explain something that seems so straightforward it doesn’t require explanation.

“It’s private, Mulder,” she finally says.

“Well,” he offers, “for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be bothered by overhearing.”

“No?”

“No. I…um…At the risk of sounding like a perverted nymphomaniac, that might be the most erotic thing imaginable, actually.”

She’s never really considered it from his perspective. She’s only ever thought about how she would feel knowing that he had heard her. She’s imagined him making an offhand joke at breakfast, or giving her a round of applause when she finishes. She’s imagined him poking fun at her, making her feel silly. She never imagined, even after it became clear that he was attracted to her, that he would get off on it.

“Oh,” is all she can manage to say.

“Have you, um…Have you ever heard anything from my side of the wall?” he asks awkwardly.

She feels so embarrassed for him that she considers lying.

“I think so,” she says, allowing it to sound like she isn’t 100% sure. Like she hasn’t pressed her ear to the wall so hard she could hear his fist slapping against his lap and feel the vibrations of his voice when he moaned through his orgasm. Like she hasn’t touched herself while listening to him do the same. “But it didn’t bother me, you don’t need to apologize,” she adds.

“Wow,” he says. “So much for being discreet.”

“Difficult to do when the walls may as well be made of cardboard.”

She’s marginally aware of the fact that she’s wet. If he were with her on the couch, it would be easy to initiate something. But she’s not sure exactly where he is or how he’s laying, and she can only imagine herself tripping over his legs and quashing her own confidence, so she stays put. But the more she thinks about all of it—him wanting to hear her touching herself, the times she’s listened to him through the wall, their one, harried fuck on his couch that they’ve barely spoken about—the more aroused she feels herself becoming. Her clit gives off a few little flutters, and she knows that Mulder can’t see his own hand in front of his own face, much less her form against the backdrop of the couch. She can hear him breathing, and she keeps her eyes trained in the direction of his breaths as she slowly inches one hand under the waist of her cotton lounge pants.

When her middle finger slides over her clit, she involuntarily sucks in a breath that’s louder than she anticipated.

“You okay?” Mulder asks, and it sounds like he’s sitting up.

“Yeah,” she says tightly, shaking her head at her lack of self control.

She should stop, but she doesn’t. She’s so ungodly wet, and it feels so damn good. One finger circling her clit, dipping just inside her opening to gather wetness before making another loop, has her cunt clutching and her mouth open in a silent scream. She wants to come so badly, but there’s no way she can stay completely quiet. There’s no way that Mulder won’t hear her.

“Scully?” he says in a voice entire octaves deeper than normal.

“Yes,” she breathes out.

Somehow, a question was asked and answered in only those two words. She hears him swallow and shift around on the floor. She imagines that he’s touching himself. It’s possible that he is.

“Do you want me to talk, or stay quiet?” he asks.

A tiny moan escapes her throat, and she morphs it into an, “Ohhh–I don’t care.”

“Okay,” he says, and then nothing. She becomes too aware of how intently he’s listening to her.

“I changed my mind. Talk,” she tells him.

“About anything in particular?”

“Oh my god, Mulder, just talk,” she admonishes him.

“Okay, um…” She slows while she waits for him to find a topic. “Can I confess something?”

“...Okay.”

“The times when you heard me through the wall, when we were on assignment?”

“Mmmhmmm.”

“I hoped that you would. I wasn’t trying to be discreet. I wanted you to hear me,” he says with a kind of syrupy vulnerability in his voice.

She gasps as a surge of pleasure rushes through her, bringing her close to the edge.

“Really?” she keens, slipping two fingers inside. She’s so wet it’s audible, and she hears a strangled moan from Mulder’s side of the room.

“Yes,” he says tightly. “I know that’s wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“Ohhhh, don’t be sorry,” she whimpers, pressing the heel of her hand into her clit. “I liked it.”

“Fuck, you did?”

“Yes.”

She’s so close. So. Close.

“I’m glad. Because I was thinking about you. That’s what I’m always thinking about.”

Her voice is so loud she startles herself. A piercing cry is followed by wave after wave of descending groans as she comes so hard she sees stars behind her eyes. For a moment she loses touch with reality, forgetting that Mulder is in the room and the circumstances of what she’s doing. She rides it out, wailing without restraint, until it begins to fade. The stars behind her eyes burst into a wash of bright light, and to her horror she realizes that the power has come back on.

The first thing she does is open her eyes, with pulling her hand out of her pants being a close second. Her head snaps over to where Mulder was sitting and she finds him lying on his back, looking straight up at the ceiling. There’s a pronounced tent at the front of his pants.

“Excuse me,” she says, then makes a beeline for the bathroom.

She uses the toilet and washes her hands, but she can’t bring herself to look at her own reflection in the mirror. After a handful of minutes, Mulder knocks.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she tells him, wishing he would just leave.

When she can’t reasonably stay in there any longer, she turns off the bathroom light and opens the door to find the apartment submerged in relative darkness. Not the complete opaque dark from when the power was out, but all the blinds are drawn and he’s thrown a blanket over the window that allows the most streetlight in.

“Hey,” he says softly, catching her by the elbows before she can walk past him.

“You can stay if you want. I don’t want you driving home if you’re not sober,” she says, all business.

He quiets her with his palms on her cheeks, and two thumbs brushing across her lips.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, and she feels like she could melt from the concurrent conflicting emotions rushing through her body. She can’t find her voice, but he feels it when she nods.

He kisses her so sweetly, considering what she just did. Long, lingering pecks that slow her heart rate and ease her nerves.

“That was incredible,” he whispers with his mouth still hovering over hers. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I am, but thank you,” she replies.

He takes one of her hands and guides it down, under the waist of his pants. Her eyes widen as he wraps their joined hands around his erection and pumps slowly.

“Would it make you feel better if I jerk off in front of you?” he asks, then adds, “Those are not words I ever thought I’d say to you,” in a jovial tone.

She laughs and leans into him, and his hand falls away as she strokes him firmly.

“It would, actually,” she says with a smile. “But maybe this time we can leave the lights on.”

[oohnotvery]

Throwing Good After Bad (Chapter 20)

Mulder

Mulder’s first sensation is simply . . . her.

Warm nose pressed into his neck, trembling hands clutching his shoulders, salt-encrusted hair tickling his chin. Disbelieving sobs from deep in her chest, whispered endearments on the tip of her tongue. It’s as if all his senses have been reduced to Scully, only Scully.

He breathes her in deep. She smells like the sea, but also like smoke, and his body goes instantly rigid beneath her as he remembers.  

As if sensing the change, Scully lifts off of him and then he feels her cool palms against his cheeks, her slender fingers brushing hair off his forehead.

Hmm, he thinks. This is a little different than what I thought the afterlife would be like.

He had always assumed that if there was any sort of hereafter, he would be banished straight to hell. But Scully wouldn’t be in hell with him.

Scully. She survived, didn’t she? After all of that, she was supposed to live.

“Why are you dead too?” he mutters, and her ministrations momentarily pause.

And then she’s crying. He feels her tears dripping onto his face, rolling down his jaw and disappearing into his ears. She’s murmuring his name, begging him to open his eyes.

“Mulder, Mulder, wake up,” she pleads.

But if he opens his eyes, he’ll have to face the reality that none of it worked. That his sacrifice was for nothing. That she still ended up dead, just like him.

“Don’t want to see you dead,” he croaks out.

“Mulder, we’re not dead,” she whispers brokenly. A finger traces the outline of his eyebrow, trips down his nose, lands on his lips.

Well, that can’t be right. I didn’t survive. I saw the flames consume me. I felt the unholy pain of death.

“Mulder, please,” she begs again, her voice breaking. She sounds so sad, sadder than he’s ever heard her sound before. Why is Scully sad? “Open your eyes. Come back to me. Don’t leave me again.”

“Never left you,” he counters quietly. “Always together.” That’s what she told him, right? Our souls will always find each other.

“Dammit, Mulder, wake up!”

A frustrated noise rips out of her throat and he startles, blinking his eyes open. Scully hovers over him, her bronze halo of hair blocking out the sun, the sky. Her face is an unfamiliar, angry shade of red, but her eyes are exactly as they’ve always been—vibrant orbs of sea glass, precious sapphires hewn in two, the ocean on a perfect day. Her lips crack into a watery smile and her chest heaves with emotion as she strokes his face, pets his hair.

That’s when he finally notices the pain. Something searing hot on both of his arms; something pounding in his skull; something burning in his right shoulder. He opens his mouth to speak and Scully’s eyebrows crease in concern.

“Not dead,” he rasps, incredulous. Dead people don’t feel pain like this.

Her face breaks into a smile he’s never seen before. It is relief mixed with despair; pain mixed with joy. Jesus, she has suffered.  

He finds the strength to lift his hand and stroke the back of a finger across her cheek. She tilts her head slightly, just enough to press her lips to his hand.

“You bastard,” she whispers, tempering her words with a jubilant smile. Her voice brims with relief.

He swallows past a painful lump in his throat. Emotions and experiences seem trapped inside him, caged in his body. He is wound too tight. It’s starting to come back to him in pieces. The storm. The bath. The fire. The fire.

He stiffens again involuntarily, like his body is preparing for a fight. He watches as Scully’s face transforms from friend—more than friend?—to doctor. She climbs off his body and starts her exam, beginning with his shoulder, where he was shot, then moving to his head, then his arms. She knows exactly where to look, how to touch.

When she is done, she meets his eyes and he knows she’s donning a brave face for him.

“You’re going to be fine,” she reports with a reassuring nod, but her jaw is set tight and her aspect is strained.

“Liar.”

“All of this is manageable.” She takes a deep breath, eyes filling again with tears. He’s sure he’s never seen her cry so much. “The important thing is you’re alive.” Her voice breaks and her chin trembles, almost like she can’t contain herself. Like her body is just a vessel for these emotions.

He raises his hand back to her face, tips it towards him. She shakes her head in amazement, biting her lip. He doesn’t know what to say to her, not now. Not when the trauma is too near, too focused. He tugs on the back of her head and brings her forehead to his lips. She lets him hold her for a minute before tilting her face to the side and brushing her mouth against his cheek. What they cannot say in words, they can say this way.

Beside him, there is a noise and Scully yanks away from him so fast it leaves him dazed. He watches her jump over his body and stand protectively between him and . . . Evan.

Evan.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

“You son of a bitch,” Scully spits hatefully, and Mulder watches as Evan’s eyes roll open, start to focus. The man frowns in confusion and sits up unsteadily. Scully’s muscles tense expectantly, like she’s going to hit him.

“Scully, no,” he protests weakly as memories roll through him. “Stop. He—he saved me.”

She turns slowly, her eyes wide with astonishment. Painfully, he pushes himself to sitting, Scully immediately rushing in to support him. He waits for the dizziness to pass before he looks over at Evan, who is staring listlessly, mournfully at the sand.

“He came back for me,” Mulder tells her, recalling those excruciating moments after Lydia dragged Scully away.

The fire was closing in and he knew it was just moments before he started to feel the lick of the flames. His breathing started coming in short, desperate gasps; he sputtered and spewed the smoke he inhaled; he closed his eyes and tried to think of Scully. But his brain shut down. All that was left was raw emotion—despair, terror, fear.

And then there was a clang and a clatter, a shout, the feeling of a sharp tug against his wrists. Then a hand yanking at his arm, pulling him to standing. Broken open, his handcuffs fell away and he gaped at Evan, who stood before him, looking just as shocked as he himself felt.  

“Come on,” Evan shouted, tugging him towards the cabin door. Together, they jumped over spits of flames and clambered their way up the staircase, Mulder wheezing and Evan coughing. He felt a searing pain in his arms as they got too close to the flames, and then Evan was pushing him onto the deck, which was burning. Everything was burning.

Evan shoved him towards the railing.

“We’re going to jump,” he said, his tone brokering no room for argument. Mulder nodded dumbly. His brain was officially offline. All that was left was sensation, animal instinct.

Together, they climbed up the railing of the boat, ignoring the violent sway of the deck beneath them, and hurled themselves into the raging sea.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. If the fire would not kill them, the sea would. Mulder had no strength left in him to swim. He paddled his arms uselessly and a wave slipped over his head, pulling him down down down. What about all those training sessions in the pool? What were his muscles even doing right now?

But then Evan was there again, yanking, tugging, holding him afloat, guiding him over crests and dips in the waves.

Saltwater stung at his eyes and arms and the open wound in his shoulder, and the image of sharks feasting on his body flooded his mind.

Something bumped him hard and he yelped. The sharks were here already? That was quick.

But it was just Evan, who dragged Mulder’s arms up, up, up—and onto the hard, smooth surface of a kayak. A kayak? He didn’t have the energy to lift himself inside, not yet, but he could hang onto the little boat. That much he could do. Beside him, Evan was still trying to push him in, but he shook his head. He needed to catch his breath first. Another set of waves hit them and sent them spinning and swinging away from the burning yacht.

Let the current carry them where it will. All waves lead to the shore eventually, right?

On the beach, Scully’s blue, blue eyes have frozen. She studies Mulder for a long moment, then finally turns her head to Evan.  

“Why did you come back for him?” she breathes in amazement.

Evan, whose face has been dutifully trained on the sand, meets her gaze. “My children died. My children died despite everything we’ve done to protect them. Despite every sacrifice we’ve ever made to protect this island, my children died. When my parents had the idea to use outsiders as sacrifices, I thought it was the best solution. The best way to make sure something like this never happened again.” He swallows thickly, pausing. “But then . . . seeing you two together.” His eyes flicker past Scully to meet his own. “Seeing you, Mulder, begging for her life.” Thick tears roll down Evan’s cheeks. “I remember begging God for my children’s lives. I remember sitting on the sand, screaming up at Heaven, begging he spare them. Begging him to return them to me. I love my babies, God, bring them back to me. Take me instead of them. In the end, I couldn’t—I couldn’t let you experience that same pain. No one should have to part with the people they love the most.”

**

They are resting underneath the shady fronds of some thickly-foliaged tree. The sun can’t reach them here, which is for the best because it’s high noon. Before she left, Scully took off her shirt and fashioned a makeshift wrap for Mulder’s shoulder to prevent more blood loss. She then kissed him deeply, meaningfully, before setting off through the jungle to find help.

Mulder has been in and out of consciousness for a while when he catches sight of some sort of Coast Guard boat out on the water. It’s chugging very determinedly towards their beach, and he sighs with relief. Scully made it.

Paramedics, accompanied by a very fretful Scully, lift him and Evan out of their hovel and carry them onto the boat. He’s ill at ease back on the water, but Scully intuits this immediately and demands he receive an anti-nausea pill as soon as he’s on board. The boat is well-stocked for triage, and he immediately gets an IV of fluids, plus immediate care for the burns on his arms and the gunshot wound at his shoulder. Beside him, Evan sleeps, receiving similar treatment.

Scully won’t sit down until his basic needs are met, and when she finally does, the paramedic looks relieved to be able to offer her an IV as well. Someone then slathers lotion on her face, which he realizes is badly sunburned. As hydrating fluids pump through his veins, he hears Scully telling him that the FBI’s squad arrived on the island earlier this morning. That they found Lydia and Joe—Jesus, Joe’s alive?—who were leading search efforts around the beach and jungle once Scully went missing.

She’s describing how she retraced her steps through the jungle and across the beaches when she suddenly pauses, ducking her head and biting her lip. He distantly recognizes this as a sign of embarrassment, and it makes him sit up straighter.

“What is it? What happened after you left us?” he asks curiously.

She shakes her head in disbelief. “I ran into Skinner of all people.”

Mulder’s eyebrows fly to his forehead. “The Skinman’s here?” he croaks in amazement.

She nods, recounting to him the moment they found each other in the jungle, how he looked shocked by her half-nakedness, her wild hair, her raging sunburn.

“I told him where to find you and then . . . I fainted,” she murmurs, as if it’s some horrible secret. “To my knowledge, it was Skinner who carried me back to the cabins where the team set up HQ. They revived me pretty quickly and the Coast Guard then asked me to lead them to your location.”  

Mulder’s lips lift into a sly smile. Scully cocks her head. “God, Scully, do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asks.

She eyes him cautiously.

“You’ve just fulfilled Walter Skinner’s all-time greatest fantasy.” Off her look, he grins. “Rescuing a naked, unconscious Dana Scully from near death in the secret jungles of a remote island? Oh, Scully, he’ll be thinking about that moment for the rest of his life.”  

She scowls, but he swears that beneath that sunburn, he can see her cheeks pink. “I’m sure he was nothing but professional. And I was not naked,” she corrects him primly. “It was mortifying. I fainted in front of a superior—”

He shakes his head, interrupting her. “That’s not embarrassing, Scully.” The anti-nausea medicine is making him drowsy, but he reaches over and grasps her hand. “Not when you’ve survived what we have.” His eyes pin her to the wall, all his earlier joking gone. “You were so brave.”

A very small smile creeps across her face. “You were too,” she whispers.

He closes his eyes.

**

Mulder isn’t surprised to wake up in a hospital bed, but he’s disappointed to learn from his doctor that he missed the helicopter ride into Vancouver. Scully isn’t with him, which elevates his heart rate enough that a nurse comes by to make sure he’s alright.

“Your wife is receiving treatment too,” the friendly woman reassures him. “She’s eager to see you. I’m sure she’ll stop in shortly.”

He is closing his eyes again when he hears a tap-tap-tap at the door. He opens his eyes to see Lydia standing at the threshold, her face white, her eyes wide. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. Then again, maybe she has.

It is painful to come face to face with her, and he tries not to think about their last interaction. Her chin trembles as she approaches his bed and he reaches out a hand, which she takes.

She looks like she wants to say something, but all that comes out is a sniffle. He squeezes her fingers encouragingly. “You did what I asked,” he finally says, meaning it with his entire being. “Thank you for saving her.”

She tips her head to her chest and cries. God, what he’s done to this poor woman. The ways he’s traumatized her forever.

Eventually, her tears dry and she reaches out, her fingers sliding through his hair gently, tenderly. He sees something in her expression—fondness, affection, maybe even love. And he realizes that what she did must have been excruciating for her.

“Letting you go,” she forces out hoarsely, “was like ripping out my soul.”

He nods, fighting back the emotion gathering in his throat. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and he means it.

She nods, brushing a finger under her eyes. And then she leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek. She stands to leave and he notices Scully standing in the doorway, watching them carefully. Lydia flushes darkly when she sees her, nodding in acknowledgement before slipping away as quickly as she can. He wonders what their interactions have been like; wonders how much Scully hates her.

His partner walks slowly to his bedside, sinking down into the place Lydia just occupied. He pushes himself to sitting so they are eye-to-eye. She glances at his monitors, then runs her eyes over his reddened arms and the bandages on his shoulder, nodding in vague approval.

“She really likes you,” she says quietly, picking at the blanket.

He hums.

Scully meets his gaze. “I—I’m trying not to be angry with her. For doing what you asked.” She swallows hard and glances up at the ceiling, fighting back tears. “But damn her.”

“She saved your life,” he reminds her gently.

She rolls her eyes and a rogue tear slips down her cheek.  

He smiles. “Come here,” he says, opening his arms, and she goes easily, burying herself into his chest. Her hair is no longer stiff with saltwater; someone must have washed it, and it slides softly against the skin of his neck.

“I’m so, so glad you’re alive,” she says, but her voice is tight. She pulls away to meet his eyes and he watches the movement of her throat as she swallows. “But I’m also so angry with you.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “I survived too, didn’t I?” he asks lightly.

A cloud passes over her face and tears trip over her lash line. She shakes her head in disbelief. “Why won’t you—” her voice breaks and she bites her lip hard. “Why won’t you accept that your actions affect me? That you matter to me, more than anything in this entire world? That I love you, and that when you make stupid decisions or try to be the hero, you aren’t considering how much I love you? How much you might hurt the people you love?” Grief washes over him.

She continues. “I am so glad we survived,” she breathes gratefully, “but know this: I would have rather died on that boat with you than live in a world that you’re not a part of.” Her fists clench. “For hours, I thought you were dead. And all I wanted was to have gone to that place with you. This life just isn’t worth living without you in it.”

He ignores the tears tracking down his own cheeks now. He meets her gaze, nodding in understanding. “And yet, I couldn’t let you die out there,” he says gently. “You have to understand that too, Scully. Because the way you feel for me, I feel the same for you. It’s painful and—and it takes over every part of me. You are my sole focus, my only direction. You have to understand it came from the place of deepest, deepest love.”

Her face softens, her expression melting into a sorrowful, joyful frown. “From now on,” she whispers, taking his hand in hers, “your life is just as precious as mine. Where you go, I go. I can’t—I can’t go through that ever again.”

He gathers her close. She slides into the bed and they shift down together, foreheads pressed close. Her eyes close and he kisses her forehead, the tip of her nose, her lips.

“I promise,” he whispers, and he means it.

[darkesttimelinestuff]

“It’s not your fault.”

Here is my first submission for my first ever Fictober! Let's see if I can do the whole month. All of my fanfic will be X-Files/MSR-based.

No content warning on this little angsty fic:

Fictober prompt #31 - "It's not your fauly

Though he should have been in bed long ago, Fox sat huddled on the floor of his bedroom, ear pressed to the door. His parents’ harsh whispers grew to shouts, but it was difficult to make out exactly what they were saying. 

Words like “merchandise” and “vaccines,” “colonists” and “patriot” were tossed back against “selfish” and “prick.” And “my baby.” The former made sense to Fox  academically, but not in this context from his father.

The young boy sat holding his breath, trying to make sense of the conversation. The fight. 

There came a tap from his window. Fox’s head snapped up. 

He waited and listened, but there was only silence and he wondered if a bird bad accidentally flown into the window. That happened all the time. Not very often in the winter, but it was not unheard of.

Pressing his ear to the door again, Fox strained again to hear his mother’s words. 

“Why her? It’s not fair! She was my baby!” his mother wailed.

“Would you rather I sent Fox to them?” his father yelled.

“Yes! NO! I…” 

Fox flinched as if he’d been slapped. 

Another tap at the window.

This time Fox stood, carefully crossing the room to his window. He peered into the moonless, motionless night. There was the standard view: his favorite climbing tree, the expanse of lawn he cut in spring and summer, his basketball, a still street. There was no one there that he could see, yet he waited. 

Did he dare open the window? What if it was a wild animal or a robber?

What if it was Samantha?

Throwing back the curtains completely and opening the window, Fox stuck his head outside and looked down. 

“Geez, Fox!” said a small but commanding voice. “I thought you’d never open the window.”

And there stood Samantha sporting the same pigtails and nightgown she wore the night she disappeared. Three months and nothing bad changed. Not a hair on her head out of place. 

“Samantha?” Fox asked, incredulously. “You came back!”

“Of course I did! Did you think I would stay away forever? Now help me up!  It’s cold out here.”

Teena’s muffled sobs rose behind him and Fox reached down to hoist his sister through the window. Samantha tumbled to the floor of his room. He slammed the window shut. 

Fox stared at Samantha, who shivered in her nightgown, her smiling face pale and ghostly. Not believing his luck, he wrapped his arms around his sister and held on tightly. In a few minutes he’d walk into his parents’ room with Samantha.

Then his mom would stop crying. His dad would stop yelling. They would be whole again.

But the tighter he held onto his sister, the more he could feel her slipping away, vanishing slowly from his grasp into thin air. 

“No, Samantha, don’t go,” he pleaded, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t go. Stay with me. We’ll be a family again. Don’t go don’t godon’tgodon’tgo…”

“Mulder.”

“Please don’t go.”

“I’m right here, Mulder,” Scully soothed.

But he didn’t want Scully right now. He needed to hold on to Samantha. She couldn’t disappear. Not again. He just got her back! She would stay and he would take her to their parents and they would be happy again.

“Mulder,” Scully said more forcefully. “It’s ok. I’m here.”

When Mulder’s eyes opened, his sister was gone and he was left holding onto a pillow. Scully sat beside him on the bed in the dark, rubbing his arm.

“Sorry,” he weakly managed. 

“I’m here,” she reassured, her warm breath a whisper on his cheek.

“Thank you,” he muttered, settling back into the bed, Scully stroking his arm and back.

They stay like that for a long time, letting the black night soothe their scars.

“You’re not to blame for any of it,” she told him. “What happened to Samantha.”

Mulder let out a sigh. “Then why does it feel like it is? Even after so much time has passed.”

“I don’t know, but it’s not your fault. None of it.”

[croc-odette]

The famous poster in Mulder’s basement office does not say “I believe,” but “I want to believe.” A two word distinction that is imperative not only to Mulder’s character but to the progression of the show. Asked by a therapist in season one about the voice in his head that says his abducted sister will return unharmed, “Do you believe the voice?”, Mulder answers in voice-over as the episode ends with him crying in a church, “I want to believe.” For Mulder, belief in aliens, witchcraft, and other ‘spooky’ things is not for fun or without doubts; it is a willful choice that he throws himself behind. Belief in aliens, and therefore in the idea that his sister was not just kidnapped and murdered, is a modern proxy for belief in an afterlife. A recent real-life example is how people like to think there is a 'simulation' operating everyday life, a scifi-fantasy alternative to believing in divine will, rather than a series of random events on a rock in space. Mulder's interest in the paranormal is a bandage over a deep wound, originating from a childhood trauma and becoming an adult identity. 

“I want to” shows the doubt, however. Not the straightforward “I believe” of a churchgoer, but the “I want to believe” of a priest looking for answers. Much like clergy who struggle with their faith, Mulder has researched and archived various supernatural instances, across histories, cultures and the Americas. It is so ingrained into his life that his interest in the supernatural acts as his career, friend group, and hobby. But the “want to” means he does not believe, or at least that he does not do so in the complete way one would “believe” in gravity or breathing. It takes effort and a deliberate choice to believe in the paranormal, and he does so not because he can’t imagine being a gullible so-and-so who thinks there aren’t such things as shapeshifters and bigfoots, but because he prefers a life where he believes, even at the cost of (pun incoming) alienation. Mulder, even though he wants to believe, and has reason to, still has a contrary part of him that wants reassurance and real evidence. The X-files are in part fueled by his belief there is something out there but also that he needs proof, and when opportunities to find “the truth” slip from his fingers it becomes clear how exhausting the chase is becoming over the years. Mulder breaks the rule of faith, by refusing to let his belief go unproven. 

Mulder’s belief in aliens finally weakens, to the point that he casually says that he’s “not sure if he even believes in that stuff anymore”, after Scully’s brush with terminal cancer. The cancer, the result of Scully’s “abduction,” is revealed to be connected to the US government. The connection is double-edged; if Mulder accepts that the US government has been faking abductions to an absurd degree, it also means they could have a way of curing Scully’s cancer. It is one outlandish hope for another, and when an agent implies the government has answers “to the thing he wants most,” Mulder’s immediate thought is not the location of his sister, but of a way to save Scully. The desire to go back and undo his childhood trauma by finding a way to make it unfinished is overcome by the desire to save his best friend in the present. Decades of research and accepting social ridicule give way to simple, human connection. 

I want then has nothing to do with belief-- it suddenly has everything to do with wanting, flat out. Wanting a cure. Wanting a friend to live. Wanting to avoid grief in the first place rather than finding a dogma that creates a Daedalian maze around it. I want skips straight past all the crying-in-churches and searching-for-answers that faith requires.

Mulder’s obsession with the cosmic and unreachable isn’t pointless; it just can’t replace the earthly and human. The supernatural does not answer back; the earthly does, in the form of a frowning and comfortably morbid woman playing at being the straight man. The supernatural does not provide any kind of lasting relief. Scully does.

-a google doc that's been sitting in my drive for like 4 years

[jodithann827]

One Night Stand (Revised)

6/13

Rated X (this chapter is general)/ Ao3/ @today-in-fic

Monday, March 10 1993

J. Edgar Hoover Building

Dana Katherine Scully takes a deep hesitant breath as she boards the empty elevator, pushing the button for the basement level, watching it light up like a light bulb. She closes her eyes and licks her lips, a noticeable habit when any type of nervousness overtakes her. She compares the descending elevator with the possible descent of her career in her head, at least from the rumors she hears swirling around Quantico. She’d just been given a new assignment. No more teaching. No more Quantico. Field work. Actual fieldwork. With a partner. Fox Mulder. What kind of a name is Fox anyway? Perhaps a family name? Nothing like starting with a male partner whom she would undoubtedly have to prove herself to as an agent simply because she’s a woman. Nothing like a change to her job description to turn her world upside down. It seemed like she had only just gotten into a routine when bam… new routine was needed. She leans back into the far wall of the elevator, her eyes closed. She can do this, make it work. She always welcomes a challenge; but when her work schedule changes, it means many people need to adjust. However, she knew the day was coming, and as she told her parents, she’d be expected to do fieldwork at some point in her career. Thankfully they supported her, as they saw how happy and fulfilled she feels with her work.

The elevator hits the bottom floor and along with it, her stomach. She gets off and hesitantly looks around, glancing around one corner, and then the next, attempting to see which direction she should head. It’s certainly not much to look at. Shelves that haven’t seen the better part of daylight in what looks like years are filled with boxes covered in dust, filled with files from who knows when. She heads down the hallway, looking for the office of Fox Mulder. She spots it at the end of the hallway, the door partially closed. She closes her eyes and takes a calming and reassuring deep breath, wanting to make the best first impression possible. She gives a firm, but quiet knock on the door. A muffled voice answers, “Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted…”

It’s suddenly as though the sky decides to open and drop a ton of bricks, or rather several tons, onto her. That was a voice she would never forget as long as she lived, a voice ingrained in her mind; one that she could pick out of a lineup. It can’t be. This is not happening. Of all the people, of all the jobs, of all of the offices. No, it can’t be. She takes a long, deep breath, and slowly and hesitantly opens the door. She’s at a loss for words. He’s facing away from the door, looking at a set of slides. He looks the same; save for a pair of glasses that she can view from his profile. Time stands still. Walking away isn’t an option since she is already in the office, in his space. She quickly calculates in her head that she has roughly 1.3 seconds to figure out what to say. She opens her mouth but words escape her. She’s in complete shock. Nope, shock didn’t even begin to cover it, she muses. She takes a deep, grounding, breath.

As if it all happens in slow motion, the man, Fox Mulder, turns his chair and looks to see who graces his presence. His eyes grow wide. His hand raises to the side of his face, slowly taking off his glasses, staring at the figure in front of him. Dumbstruck, that’s the only word Mulder can think of. Time stands still for about 2 minutes, neither knowing what to say and neither thinking they could talk, as if talking might break the bizarre moment they find themselves in. Dana swallows her shock first.

“William…” is all she can get out.

“Dana…” is what he can stammer.

Swiftly, something snaps in her head and Dana defaults into her professional mode. Extending her hand to him she says, “Agent Mulder, I’m Dana Scully, I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

J. Edgar Hoover Building

“Pick up the phone” Dana states harshly into her cell phone, as if her sheer will would allow the person on the other end to pick up. She paces outside the front of the Hoover building. She’d left the office roughly ten minutes prior, stating that she needed to pack, and saying she would see Mulder the next day at the airport. “Come on, pick up!” she shouts again, frustration littered across her face. A few agents and other personnel walking by pause to look at her. She tucks some hair behind her ear, attempting to gain some composure.

“Hello?” a quiet voice answers.

“911. I need to meet you, now. Starbucks on 8th,” Dana says, hanging up the phone as soon as the words leave her mouth.

Starbucks

“Dana, what is going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ellen says breathlessly, as she joins her friend at a small corner table. She takes in Dana’s appearance and immediately envelopes her in her arms. The minute she feels safe in the cocoon of her friend, Dana bursts into a waterfall of tears. Dana Scully never cries, as she’s an intensely private person, which tells Ellen that whatever her friend encountered, it’s more than serious. Almost to the point of hyperventilating, Ellen guides her to a chair, whispering, “Dana, honey, whatever it is, it will be okay. Have a seat. Did something happen to Ahab, your mom?” Ever the best friend, Ellen bends down in front of Dana, eye level, and rubs her hand in into Dana’s shaking ones.

Scully shakes her head at Ellen’s questioning. “No, my family’s fine. I saw him , Ellen.” She manages to gulp the last sentence out of her mouth, attempting to compose herself. Her body had gone on the defense earlier and only now was she finally reacting to her morning. Ellen’s eyes crinkle, as though she’s rapidly thinking. After a heartbeat, her eyes bulge, like tea saucers, suddenly registering Dana’s words. Opening her mouth, then shutting it again, attempting to form the words in her brain first.

“Wha… whe…ho…” she stammers, still unable to complete a thought. Though Dana doesn’t mention a name, Ellen knows without a doubt who her friend is talking about. It had taken Dana weeks to get over her one-night stand from years ago, and when she finally had, she found out she was pregnant and all of the thoughts and feelings surfaced again. She stands, knowing Dana’s okay, for the moment, and takes the seat across from her.

“William and I had more in common than we knew. Remember I told you he worked for the government, but he never told me what?” Dana pauses, waiting for her friend’s understanding to kick in. All Ellen does is nod, still in shock.

“Surprise! He’s an FBI agent,” Dana says, flatly. Ellen’s open palm flies to her mouth like metal to a magnet. Her eyes go wide again in disbelief. All Dana can do is nod.

“Wait a second,” Ellen ponders, “weren’t you supposed to get your new assignment today…” she drifts off, finally connecting the dots. “Oh Dana…” she adds.

“Apparently William is his middle name. Fox William Mulder and he is my new partner,” Dana manages to say before a fresh round of tears spring from her eyes.

“It’s ok Dana, it’s going to be ok,” Ellen reassures her, taking her hands in her own from across the table.

“Of all of the jobs…” Dana states, shaking her head, once again in disbelief.

Ellen looks at her friend with a small smile. “Maybe it was meant to–

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence, El,” Dana quickly cuts her off. Her voice is level, but stern. “My life is finally together. I’m in a great place. I’m doing well. I’m finally on my own, without my parents. I have a set schedule. I knew that was going to change with fieldwork, but now, on top of changing everything, I have to work with him . What do I even say to him?” She quickly starts hyperventilating again.

“The truth,” Ellen suggests, knowing the look Dana will bestow upon her. As if on cue, Dana glares at her, like Ellen grew three heads. “Well, why not?” Ellen feigns innocence. “Dana, it’s not like he was some guy you were with who up and left you. You, two consenting adults, had a one-night stand. You decided that that is all it would be.

“Yeah, but Ellen, you know that it wasn’t that easy for me,” Dana admits, softly.

“It took you weeks, hell months, to get over him. He got into your head. I know, I was right there beside you, holding you up through it all” Ellen remembers.

“Oh my god, what do I tell my parents?” Dana asks, unexpectedly thinking about them.

“Why do you need to tell them anything for now? He’s your work partner. They don’t have to know,” she reminds her, then adds, with a sly smile, “So, how did he look?”

To this, Dana grins, momentarily flashing back to that one night. “Like not a day has passed,” she tells her friend. “Same hazel eyes, same beautiful smile. And of course, we didn’t talk about it. Side-stepped it completely. We got right now to business…” Ellen’s eyes gleam with excitement, but Dana add, “The case Ellen, we got right down to talking about our first case.” Ellen smiles, seemingly unconvinced.

“You’re not going to be able to ignore the elephant in the room for long,” she says.

Dana ponders this, knowing her friend is right. “What the hell do I say? Hi, WIlliam whose real name is Fox. I know we had an amazing time together and I struggled to get over you, even though I thought it was for the best, it wasn’t. I wanted to call you but then it was too late. Oh, and by the way, I got pregnant with your love child.”

Smirking, Ellen replies, “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that. Look, Dana, you don’t have to tell him anything you don’t want to. Maybe use the opportunity of this case to feel him out… figuratively, not literally,’ she says, eyes gleaming. “Where is your case taking you?”

“Oregon,” sighs Dana.

“Perfect,” Ellen assures her. “That is a nice long flight for the two of you to catch up. Remember, he has no idea what went on or what you went through these last few years. In his eyes, it was a one-night stand almost 3 years ago, one that, might I remind you, was your choice. I’m sure a lot has happened to him since too. I know probably not nearly as much as you’ve been through, but still,” she adds when Dana gives her the Dana Scully patented eye-roll.

“I wouldn’t change the outcome, El,” Dana insists.

“I know,” Ellen says, standing, needing to get back to the office. She hugs her friend tightly. “Go, get to know who he is now, and just go from there,” she heads for the entrance, then turns to her friend. “Remember, Dana, I am just a phone call away, no matter what time. If I need to jet out to Oregon to kick some ass, just let me know and I will kiss Rob and Trent goodbye and come save you.” She finally gets a genuine smile from her friend.

“Thanks, El,” Dana replies, her face conveying a bit more relief than when she first entered the coffee house.

Dana watches her friend leave. She takes a deep breath. She can do this… can’t she?

[obsessivestar]

'What If It's All A RomCom?' - a Ted Nivison x Reader (smut)

{{-Yoooo sorry for making Chapter 14 take almost like 20 fucking days LMAO I'm here now.-}}

//General Warnings: 18+ Fic (MINORS DNI), Reader is implied to be afab! and under 5'5.

Chapter Warnings: Use of Marijuana, brief masturbation, praising, riding. Oooh maybe exposition?\\

Word Count: 4.3k

☆▪︎▪︎▪︎Taglist!▪︎▪︎▪︎☆

@k-k0129 , @callsign-scully & @limecorpse

☆Love Ya To Death!☆

Chapter 14: Honey, Blunts and Lust

I didn't have a lot of time to see exactly what Ted was smoking, but I knew he definitely had something. I watched with a curious smile as he quickly stuffed something into what I could only assume was an ashtray hidden behind some knick-knacks on his bedside table, fanning his hand back and forth to clear any smoke around him. If he was trying to hide all of this from me, he was doing a poor job. It was kind of funny, actually.

"Shit--okay, don't tell Tanner." Ted spoke up with a nervous little shake in his voice, holding the palm of his hand out like he was trying to de-escalate the situation. I wasn't sure why he was so nervous, but it made me laugh a little, making sure to close the door behind me as I step into his somewhat misty room.

"Dude, I'm not gonna narc on ya." I reassure him with a relaxed chuckle, crossing my arms in front of my chest. "I already knew you smoke.."

"No, it's--" Ted closed his eyes and let out a little chuckle, looking a bit relieved as he moved off his bed. "Tanner doesn't know. I'm supposed to be smokin' outside."

I raise my head a little and make an 'Oh' shape with my mouth, nodding slowly. My eyes glance over at the window, seeing that it was wide open. At least Ted was decent enough to air everything out.

"Have you really been smoking in here for the last hour?" I ask with a knowing smile, turning my head to look at Ted again.

"Shit, has it been an hour?" Ted anxiously slips his hands into his pockets, then takes them out to feel his back pockets--even though he has none--turning his head around to look back at his bed. "Fuck."

"You could've texted me, yknow. I would've just come in here.." An amused smile creeps along my lips, raising my brow as Ted moves over to his messy bed, slipping his hands underneath to try and search for something.

"I would've. I should've--I-I--" Ted is a bit more relaxed, but he's still stuttering. I can't help but wonder if something is wrong, watching him take in a deep breath to calm himself. "I can't find my fuckin' phone."

Both of my brows raise up, I'm visibly surprised. A sudden sharp laugh leaves me, keeping my arms crossed in front of me.

"How high are you, dude?" I ask through my laughter, moving over to his bedside table. Ted defeatingly sits at the edge of his bed, watching me move his stuff aside so I could get a look at his ashtray. It was hardly dirty, he had probably just bought it. There was only one joint crunched up in there, pretty small. He had just about finished it before I walked in. I glance over at Ted. He's watching me like he's anticipating some sort of discipline. It makes me let out another laugh.

"Last timed I checked, isn't weed supposed to help you relax?" I ask him, turning more towards him. "Why you lookin' at me like that?"

Ted's nervous expression flickers into curiosity. I watch his eyebrows furrow a little and a small smile creeps along the corners of his lips.

"'Last time'?" Ted repeated, his eyes narrowing at me a little. "You've...never given off the smoker vibe."

"Mm, probably because I don't smoke.." I scrunch my nose a bit as I reply. "Not anymore, anyways.."

"Yeah? What made ya stop?"

"I just...got bored of it."

"You got bored of getting high? I've..never heard of that before."

"Okay, well, it stopped feeling...interesting, I don't know."

"It stopped feeling interesting."

"Yeah, I'd usually smoke alone and it stopped being interesting."

"....You wanna make it interesting?"

Ted pulls out a fully rolled joint from his front pocket, raising his brows with a enticingly optimistic smile. How he managed to keep that in there so neatly was beyond me, but I was impressed, and....curious.

"Didn't you just smoke that one?" I ask with a light chuckle, gesturing to the crunched up joint in his ashtray.

"That was like...less than half a joint. I can't even feel it." Ted admitted with a dismissive scoff, gesturing his hand down a bit. "It's not one of those obnoxious strands either. It'll smooth us out."

"If you can't even feel it, what were you doing in here for the last hour?" I ask, crossing my arms in front of my chest. I see Ted's expression change. It's very subtle, but I notice it. His eyebrows relax but his eyes widen a little, though he's still smiling at me. It's like I caught him, and he knows it. Either he's purposely downplaying how high he really was for the last hour, or he wasn't really high and he had another reason for being in here alone; a reason he seemed hesitant to share. I wish I could read his thoughts, ease whatever anxieties he had about being completely upfront and honest with me. It's moments like these that remind me how...oddly secretive Ted is about some things.

After a brief moment of silence between us, Ted's expression softens.

"...Share this with me." He speaks, holding the rolled blunt up in front of him. "and I'll tell you.."

I furrow my brows at him, smiling in genuine disbelief. "Are you really propositioning me with weed now that I've caught you in your lie?" I ask with a soft laugh, placing a hand on my hip. "On top of that, aren't you worried Tanner is gonna notice? That's a whole joint."

"This is the one and only time I'm having a joint on this trip, and I want to share it with you." Ted admitted, standing up off the edge of the bed. "Come on, you'll smoke half, I'll smoke half."

"Would you have wanted to share that with me if I hadn't walked in?"

"...Probably not."

"Oh, we're being honest now?"

"I'm--I'm tryin', believe me."

"You're trying?"

"Yeah. I...I think...I just need a boost."

"You need to share a joint to be honest with me?"

"I want to share a lot more than a joint with you."

"Like what?"

"Like why I didn't approach you at Joe's wedding."

Now I'm intruiged. What started as a one-off comment in our very first conversation has turned into one of the biggest mysteries of this relationship, purely because Ted has refused to talk about it and Joe insists on him being the one to tell me. If he needs to be high to finally tell me about it, I'll take it. I take a small breath and hold my hand out, smirking up at him. "Got a light?"

Ted gives me a relieved smile, placing the joint in my hand, then reaching into his other pocket to hand me his green lighter. I can't help but chuckle at how excited he is, shaking my head as I place the skinny end in between my lips and flick the green lighter to light the joint, taking a breath in once I knew it's lit enough. I knew nothing was going to hit me immediately, but knowing I hadn't smoked in a long while still gave me a weird feeling in my stomach. Maybe I was nervous. I was either nervous about getting high, or about what Ted would say once we were high. Once I took in my puff, I passed the joint over to Ted, watching him take in a deep hit from it. I knew he'd probably smoke it a bit more than me. Honestly, I was okay with that.

It took a few good minutes for me to feel anything, but once I was feeling it, God...I was feeeeeling it. Ted and I were now laid out on his bed, taking turns, albeit slow ones, with the blunt. Ted had taken his glasses off, completely relaxed against his pillow. If he truly wasn't high before, he definitely was now, as was I. The haze that had settled into my brain felt smooth and pleasent. I felt comfy. I felt content. Ted had closed his window slightly so most of the smoke would stay in the room. It made me a little anxious about Tanner finding out, but once we started talking about it, we couldn't stop laughing about it.

"I can't--I can't even picture Tanner angry..." I admitted with a soft laugh, breathing in a hit from the joint before passing it to Ted again, my gaze locked up on his ceiling. "Unless he's acting in a fuckin'....DnD game, I've never seen him angry.."

"He would be. He would be angry, I'm tellin' you, he'd be pissed." Ted admitted with a smirk, taking the joint from me. "He'd kick me off the set."

"He would not!" I laugh out, turning my head to look at Ted.

"He absolutely would."

"You're the lead! This whole thing--"

"He absolutely would."

"The whole thing--"

"I'd be a--I'd be a goner, dude."

"The whole--stop!"

"Absolutely a fuckin' goner."

"Stop interrupting me!"

I playfully swat at Ted as he tries to take another hit from the blunt, but we both can't stop laughing. I'm trying to quiet my laughing so we don't wake up the whole damn house, but Ted's insistence was just so fucking funny for some reason. It was maddening how attractive Ted really was. He was handsome, he was funny, charming and amazing at his craft. While I'm lost in my thoughts, I realize I've been staring at Ted. I watch as he turns his gaze towards me, his eyes sparkling with realization.

"You starin' at me, princess?" He asked, his tone low and relaxed. I meet his dark gaze with my own, a warm smile creeping along my lips.

"Kinda.." I admit in a soft tone, resting my head a bit more on his pillow. "I was thinking.."

"About?.." Ted purrs, sitting up a bit more on his side to fully face me. I feel a sense of warmth wrap around my body like a warm blanket, particularly around my eyes as if I were tired, and my core, as if I were...tempted.

"I was thinking about you.." I admit after a short pause, blinking my eyes a little to ward off any real tiredness I was feeling. I wanted to hang on to this a little while longer, to really...ride it out. "I was thinking about your handsome face..." As I speak, I rise up a bit from my side of the bed, slowly moving my body over to crawl overtop of Ted, comfortably straddling his lap. "I was thinking about your sultry voice...how...infuriatingly funny you are.."

Ted made sure to turn his body to lay on his back, resting one of his hands on my thigh. I see that he's still holding the joint in his other hand. It's much, much smaller than it was earlier. I realize I have...no idea how long we've been smoking it or even what time it was. Honestly, I didn't care. "And how I wish I could read that stupid mind of yours.."

"You wanna read my mind?.." Ted asks with a low chuckle, his dark eyes gazing up at me. He takes another smooth hit from the joint, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. He slowly blows the smoke out towards me, watching me close my eyes in response with another deep chuckle. Fuck, his voice...

"Mmm, here..." Ted hands me the small blunt, sitting up a bit more to be at my eye level. I take it into my two fingers with a curious hum, knowing Ted was probably giving me the last hit. "You finish that up...and I'll tell you exactly what I'm thinking..."

X-----

I could already feel the last of my judgement slipping because of this strand. I had completely lost track of time and we had nearly turned Ted's room into a hot box, but fuck, that voice, that...hungry look he was giving me, I just had to do what he wanted. I had to. I wanted to.

I lock eyes with Ted once more, bringing the skinny end of the blunt up to my lips to take a good, looooong hit. He gives me a devilish but proud smile, his hands moving up to toy with the waistband of my pajama pants.

"Good girl..." Ted purred at me, moving his head to begin trailing little kisses along the side of my face, moving them down to my jaw. I close my eyes and blow the smoke up into the air, leaning my head back to allow Ted to bring some attention to my sensitive neck. Pleased hums and moans are escaping me, every little touch feels so...fucking...nice....

"I'm thinking about how beautiful you are.." Ted tilts his head up slightly to whisper into my ear, his tongue lightly grazing the edge of it to send a little shiver up my spine. "I'm thinking about how soft your skin feels..." Every word he purrs into my ear mixes with the stronger high I'm getting from the last of the blunt. I feel wonderfully dizzy, euphoric even. "I'm thinking about aaaaaall that tension we had in my truck..I really gotta get you in that backseat, eh, princess? Would you like that? Mm?..." Once again, all because of Ted, I lost all sense of my self. Every time. Every single time he gets me alone, coats his words in honey and lust, I can't resist. There was something in the back of my mind I knew I was forgetting, but oh fucking god, Ted...

My thoughts are cut by the feeling of Ted removing my pajama top for me, all of my focus on him once more. I looked at him with a surprised smile, showing that the blunt was still in my hand. "You could've set that on fire.." I chuckle a little, watching as Ted tosses my pajama shirt onto the floor.

"It's a joint, not a lightsaber.." Ted snickers, eyeing my now bare chest briefly before moving back up to return to my neck. Another moan escapes my parted lips, using the last hit from the blunt to muffle my voice. It was hard to tell how loud I was being. I was sensitive in some ways and numb in others. It was maddening, it was thrilling, it made me uneasy but absolutely serene all at the same time. I begin to anxiously rock my clothed hips against his own, feeling his sweatpants become tighter and tighter, grinding against his clothed length in a slow, even pace. I take the blunt out of my mouth to moan for him, holding his shoulder in my free hand.

"You finished it, baby? Good girl..." Ted whispers against my skin, pulling back briefly to remove his own shirt before pressing his body up against mine once more. The tingling heat building up in my core was already becoming unbearable. I knew how attracted I was to Ted, but the joint had made it all much more intense. I was already aching for him, I could feel it. I pull from Ted for a brief moment to push the joint into the ashtray, finally able to wrap my arms around Ted as he leaves kisses along my neck and jaw, feeling his fingers still toy with the waistband of my pajama pants. I run my fingers through his tall dark hair, my eyes fluttering closed.

"Touch yourself for me, baby.." Ted purrs lowly into my ear, his hands moving from my thighs to my lower back to trace my skin with his fingertips, his lips grazing my ear to make me shiver once more. I instinctively raise my hips up a bit, a shaky breath leaving me. I didn't think for a second about his command, I just did as I was told, raising my hips up off of his lap a little more before moving one of my hands from his hand, slipping it into my pajama bottoms to feel myself. God, was I wet and sensitive. My fingers danced between my soaked folds easily, my sensitive bud reacting to the tip of my finger. I moan for Ted, my eyes remaining closed with my mouth hung open. Any noises that my body wanted to let out were free. I wanted him to hear me.

"That's my good girl. Good..." Ted let's out a another low purr into my ear, removing one of his hands from my back briefly to slip his own sweatpants down. It was a little challenging with me still straddling him, but he managed to slip them down just enough to slip his length out for me. The sight of his rigid cock fills my mind with a strong sense of hunger, my bloodshot eyes gazing down at it as I rub my sensitive bud inside my pajama bottoms. Such a familiar sight. I'm so enthralled, I can't even recall a single moment of my life where this man wasn't in my life, fucking me right, making me feel so good. Ted carefully takes my arm with his other hand, pulling my hand away from core to bring it up to his mouth, running his tongue along my fingers just to get a taste. His tongue slips between my fingers, a hungry moan escaping him. "If I wasn't f-fucking throbbing, I'd make you fuck my face.." A shaky chuckle leaves him as well, bringing two of my fingers into his mouth so he could help me slip my pajama bottoms down my legs more, finally giving him the access he's desperate for.

He carefully holds his length with his hand as I move up to hover over its, spreading my folds to give him a nice view. As I press downwards to help him slip inside, a shaky moan escapes me, pushing down slowly until his entire hardened shaft was inside me. Everywhere was so sensitive, I felt the satisfaction of him entering me shiver throughout my entire warm body. I begin to grind against him once more, feeling the tip of his length already rubbing against the right spots. I don't normally go for this position, but the added sensitivity from the blunt made it so, so good. My mind is stuck in a pleasent, lustful haze, and I need more. More of him.

I start to pump my hips up and down on him, I don't bother to take my time. He feels so good, he sounds like sin. I bring my finger down once again to rub my sensitive bud as I continue to ride him, my voice whining and whimpering out desperate moans I didn't even consider myself capable enough to make. I'm so wet, he fits inside me so nicely. I watch him run his fingers through his hair and lean back for a minute, his eyes closed, in absolute blissful euphoria. The moans that are leaving him as just as desperate, just as satisfied. Everytime my hips smack down with his, it's a rush of warmth and pleasure for us both. It feels invigorating, it feels like I could do this for hours.

"God, y-you are so...fucking beautiful.." Ted whispers, opening his eyes to look at me with a small, tired smile. He takes both of my hips into my hands to start grinding his hips up against me, the new force making my voice sing out desperate pleasures even louder, barely muffled by our smacking hips. I rest my free hand on his hairy chest, toying with the silver chain he still had on around his neck. He leans up to whisper sweet nothings into my ear, holding me close to fuck me from below. His praise is making me weaker; making my body feel warm and lazy, but I know what it's preparing. I know what he's urging me to do. I can feel his cock throbbing in me, I can hear him panting in my ear, the occasional desperate moan escaping his heavy breathing.

"You are so fucking good, my beautiful girl. Are you my beautiful girl, hm? Does anyone else get to see you like this?.." His dirty words once again fill my thoughts and make them dance in my head, an excited smile spreading along my dry lips when I begin to feel a familiar knot building up in my lower stomach, making my hips crash down on his faster and faster, as fast as my body will comfortably allow. My finger is flicking along my sensitive bud, urging for what I know will be an intense release.

"I-I am, I am, Teddy..." I moan, my voice girlishly soft. I can't normally feel this much aching pleasure in this position, but the mixture of Marijuana and my absolute unwavering attraction Ted made everything so good, so fucking good. "O-Only you get to see me this way, Teddy.." I moan for him again, my mouth feeling almost forced open with how much I was moaning for him. It was so much, oh fuck, it was so, so much. I hear a dark, almost possessive chuckle leave him and ring into my ear, and that's the trigger for everything to come undone. Just his voice. Just his fucking voice is enough to finally make me cum.

My moans get louder, much louder, as I reach my peak. My finger along my bud moving almost just as fast as Ted's crashing thrusts against me. It feels like an overwhelming tidalwave of pleasure it taking over my body, drowning me in it all. It's so warm and intense, it feels like two different orgasms had flickered on at the same time. I'm moaning out his name, or at least trying to, my eyes rolling back as I desperately ride out my orgasm and my high. I must sound like a pornstar to him, but fuck, he fucks me like one. He makes me feel sloppy and easy. Just as I finish riding out my release, I feel an immediate shot of warmth enter me, his own pleasantly low growls and moans coming into focus as he releases inside of me, pumping me down on him to fill me up as comfortably and as deeply as he desires, so much so that I can already feel his hot seed dripping out of me. My head flings back as my last, shaky moan comes out of me, my entire body suddenly feeling so...hot...

X-----

Ted and I sit there for a moment, both of our eyes closed with the only sound in the room now being our collective heavy breathing. I make sure to slowly lift off of him before he lays down, resting my body against his. We're both feeling warm and a little sweaty, the smell of sex and cannabis still lingering in the air. Most of the smoke had cleared from the open window...

...oh god, the fucking window.

I raise my head a little to look over at it, my eyes widening a little when I confirm that the window was indeed still open. It wasn't wide open, but I knew it was open enough. If anyone else had their window open for the last hour, they heard us. Fuck.

"You...lookin' at the window?.." Ted asks in between pants, looking up at me with a shaky chuckle. "Whoops.."

"Oh, we're...fucked now..." I whisper annoyingly, crawling off of Ted's lap to lay on my back beside him, placing a hand on my chest to feel my heartbeat. "Do you...know if anyone...sleeps with their window open?.."

"Well..." Ted takes a deep breath, seemingly as exhausted as I am. "Dan and...Tanner...have air conditioners.."

"Oh fuck, Joe doesn't.." I suddenly remember it as I say it, bringing one of my hands up to cover my eyes with an embarrassed chuckle. "We're bad. We're baaaaad, Ted.."

"I know.." Ted gives a dry, tired chuckle as well. "I know, I know..."

We both sit there and just...laugh it out. Maybe it's just how ridiculous we both are with each other or maybe we're still high, but we just sit there and laugh for a good minute or so, making comments and jabs at each other, playfully smacking our bare bodies as we giggle and chuckle like troublemaking teenagers. It got even worse when Ted discovered he had given me a hickey near my ear, a spot that was nearly impossible to cover. I was piiiiiissed, but in a...'I' still very high and this is actually hilarious' way. I go to playfully smack Ted's arm, but grabs both of my wrists to fight me off until I grow tired enough to give it up, letting out a defeated huff with this big, stupid smile on my face....

....

I still feel like I'm forgetting something.

Ted gazes into my eyes for a moment, bringing one of my hands up to his face to kiss the back of it. Suddenly my stomach feels are warm, filled with butterflies and all. I see his expression turn warm, his dark eyes practically sparkling as he looks at me. Briefly, his smile falters, like he too just realized something. He exhales from his nose, moving my hand to cup the side of his face.

"...alright.." He speaks softly, breaking his gaze to sort of glance his eyes away.

"Alright what?.." I ask, a small smile still spread along my lips. "You're not kicking me out, are ya? I think Tanner might've taken my bed.."

"No, I'm--" Ted relaxed for a moment at my joke, a sudden chuckle escaping him as he shook his head. "I'm not kicking you out, I'm..." His smile fades again and he pauses, nibbling on the dry skin of his lips before meeting my gaze again, his expression turning serious.

"I'm...I'm gonna tell you what happened...at the wedding."

--------------------------------------------

Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 (smut) || Chapter 7 || Chapter 8 || Chapter 9 || Chapter 10 (smut) || Chapter 11 || Chapter 12 || Chapter 13 || Chapter 15 ||

[scullysexual]

fictober day 3 | m | this list | ao3 | @today-in-fic | @xffictober2023

But sometimes that caring and that gentleness could be stifling, sometimes she just wanted him to let go. [Scully wants to get tied up]

Day 3: Tied Up.

She doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t gentle with her. Always caring, always looking out for her, putting her pleasure before his own. Even when he briefly lost control (if you could even call it that) he never did anything to hurt her and she loved him for it.

But sometimes that caring and that gentleness could be stifling, sometimes she just wanted him to let go.

And he did.

Her wrists are in agony. Her hands are pulled above her head, Mulder’s tight grasp wrapped around them, nails digging in. It hurt but in a good way. A very good way.

Scully liked the restraint, she liked the lack of control. When she tried to free her hands Mulder would only push on them harder, his hips slamming into her. It felt so good that even her orgasm is different- stronger, longer. She wanted that again. She wanted more.

He never did quite take her like that again. It was almost as if he’d realised just how harsh he’d been, they’re next sexual encounters were much more gentle in comparison. Scully knew that if she wanted to feel like that again, experience that again and more, she would have to be the one to bring it up.

“Mulder…?” she drawls, speaking slowly. They lay in the dark, spooned, happy and sated. “Are you still awake?”

“Hmm…”

It wasn’t much of an answer but at least it was a response.

“I wondered if I could ask you something?”

“Hmm…anything.” She feels a kiss against her shoulder, his breath shifting her hair.

“That other night…when you held my hands above my head…?”

She feels him tense behind her.

“Scully, I’m—” he starts to say, no hint of sleepiness in his voice now.

“No,” Scully cuts him off, reassuring him. “You didn’t…offend me. I suppose that’s the point.”

There’s a moments pause before he speaks again.

“What’s that point?” he asks.

She takes a deep breath then lets it out slowly. This is Mulder, there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I liked it.” Despite herself she still speaks quietly. “I want that again,” she adds feeling brave. His hand clenches around her hip. “But I want you to use rope.”

Her heart beats a little faster as Mulder gives the ropes one last pull tight.

Being tied up in her bedroom on a Sunday night was never a place Dana Scully thought she’d find herself but here she was, exactly there. She feels herself flush.

“You definitely sure about this?” Mulder asks. He still leans over her.

“Yes Mulder,” Scully reassures him for the third time that night. “This was my idea. You don’t need to keep asking.”

He moves away from her but there’s still the look of unease in his eyes.

“What is it?” she asks, trying not to sound annoyed.

“It’s just…” He sighs then starts over. “I feel like you need a safe word.”

She looks at him confused. “What would I need a safe word for?”

“Sculleee,” he says, exasperated. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’re all tied up. You can’t go anywhere.”

“Good. That’s the point. Mulder, if I want you to stop I’ll just say stop.”

“You want stop to be your safe word?”

There was only one way out of this conversation.

“Sure.”

“If you say stop I’ll untie you as quick as I can.” He leans back over her, presses his lips to hers, and silences any argument that could come out of her which was fine by Scully. It was all perfunctory; she had no intention of stopping him.

His mouth makes its usual downwards path along her body, gently tickling her skin, taking some time to suck a nipple into his mouth and mull it over with his tongue. Scully wraps her fingers around the binds, using the rope as leverage to hold onto something, her hips moving to seek relief.

“You look really hot all tied up Scully,” he says, his head resting against her stomach, so close to where she wanted him.

Scully moans at his words, feeling herself become wetter. Mulder continues on right until his mouth is at her centre. Usually she’d hold onto him, let her fingers roam his hair while he ate her out. She was unable to do that and the thought makes her delirious.

His tongue touches her and there’s a sudden hot flash that explodes through her body. She tugs on the binds only resulting in them tightening even more. She moans louder.

“You’re so wet Scully,” Mulder says, pulling his mouth away and replacing his tongue with two fingers., spreading her open and pumping in and out of her hard.

The act has her seeing stars behind her eyes.

“If I’d known you’d get this wet, I’d have tied you up months ago,” Mulder is saying but she can’t be quite sure, the ringing in her ears getting louder and louder. She can feel herself approaching that peak, feels Mulder’s thumb rubbing back and forth across her clit, his encouraging words.

She explodes. And she forgets about the ropes.

She goes to reach forward, to grab hold of him and pull him to her but the ropes hold her back, snapping her arms back down. Her comes a second time immediately.

“Whoa, Scully!” Mulder yells. He’s pulled away from her now, is rooting somewhere away. Scully’s eyes remain closed, tongue running across her dry lips as she breathes heavily in and out, fingers flexing and unflexing around the binds.

The bed dips, Mulder has returned. There’s the sound of a faint buzz and then it is pressed against her centre.

Scully springs to life at the vibrations. They’re only on low, nothing that would overwhelm her or push her over the edge. She supposes it could be quite nice if her body wasn’t already overstimulated from two back to back orgasms in less than a second.

He pushes the vibrator inside her where the feeling intensifies. Scully moans.

“How’s that?” Mulder asks in a quiet voice.

“Good…” Scully half moans.

Mulder chuckles slightly then makes his way to the top of the bed. He brushes the hair from the side of her face, sticky with perspiration and runs his finger lightly across her cheek. Scully opens her eyes and sees Mulder’s hard cock. Her hands ache to touch it.

“Not too intense?” he asks, still talking about the vibrations.

She shakes her head.

“Good.”

He grabs hold of his cock and places it against her lips as an invitation. Scully opens her mouth, running her lips down the side of it before turning her head and taking him into her mouth.

“Fuck, Scully…” he breaths, his eyes closing.

The angle doesn’t give her much room to suck. The angle doesn’t give her much room for anything.

Mulder braces himself on her headboard, thrusting his hips back and forward as the head of his cock hits the inside of her cheek. The vibrations are still rippling through her body and Scully sees the remote that sits clutched in Mulder’s hand, his thumb over the button.

The vibrations increase. She moans around his dick. The vibrations increase some more. She tries to get the vibrator to go in deeper.

She wants him to move, to straddle her so she can take his dick properly but before she gets her chance to signal her desire he takes his cock out of her mouth, shuts the vibrator off, and moves it from her. He chucks it and the remote somewhere to the side and climbs over her. He lines himself up then pushes all the way in with one thrust.

Scully moans once more. Mulder grips her hips, pulls all the way out, waits a second, then pushes all the way in again. It’s slow and hard, he keeps this up a few more times before switching to a quicker pumps.

Her wrists and arms were starting to ache from being tied up for so long but she wasn’t ready for this to stop just yet.

“You think you can come again?” Mulder asks through gritted teeth.

“Touch my clit and we’ll find out.”

Mulder doesn’t wait, his fingers find her clit instantly and begins worrying the bud in little clockwise circles. Scully feels herself clenching hard around him before her orgasm explodes. Mulder follows her soon after.

They lie there for a while, breathing heavily. Scully notices the ache again.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

“Stop.”

He looks at her for a few seconds before immediately springing into action. He pulls at the ropes, untying them, and throwing them off to the side. He gently takes her arms, inspects her wrists. A little red but nothing too severe. He kisses the red marks, soothing it.

“Thank you for that,” Scully says, feeling full of love.

“Don’t mention it,” he says back. “That was fun.”

“Really, really fun.”

[starwalker42]

febuwhump day 17: silent tears

episode: Irresistible | no warnings apply | general audiences

Dana was ten years old when her great aunt died. It was the first time she’d ever attended a funeral, but that day, sat in church in her brand new black dress, listening to the priest talk about eternal life in the eyes of God, she hadn’t felt sad. She hadn’t wanted to, but Bill, who had just started high school and, in her eyes, knew everything, had told her she was supposed to cry.

Why?

It shows you cared about Aunt Alice.

But Aunt Alice won’t see I’m crying. She’s dead.

Everyone else will see, though. You need to show them you care about her.

At the wake, then, she’d tried to force tears. When none were forthcoming, she did the next best thing: faked sobs and cries in front of everyone until her mother had carried her upstairs and put her to bed, reassuring Dana that Aunt Alice was in heaven now, and there was no need to be upset.

She’d felt guilt over her deception for weeks afterwards.

She got older, and still never quite understood crying. In movies, it was a big, dramatic thing, where women sobbed and broke down in their lovers’ arms, making their mascara run and smudge under their eyes. Whenever Melissa would come home late after an argument with one of her boyfriends, she’d throw herself on her bed and weep into her pillow, which would never mute the sound. At medical school, she lost track of the amount of times she found friends slumped over coursebooks, crying from exhaustion and frustration.

Whenever she shed tears, it was done quietly, in private, for a short a time as possible – a few sniffs and deep breaths, and then it was done. A breakup, a hard day at work… her father dying… she got upset, overwhelmed, and allowed herself a few moments to break, before putting herself back together. Dana Scully didn’t cry. She definitely didn’t cry in front of people.

She tried to remind herself of this when she felt Mulder’s arms come to hold her. But his touch, and the scent of him wrapped around her, the contrast of it with the fear she’d felt not two minutes ago… it broke something, some barrier, and as he started to murmur soothing words against her hair, she could only reply with sobs into his chest.

With anyone else, she’d feel terrified. It’s been so long since she cried in front of anyone, even longer since she sought someone else’s comfort for her tears, and the last time she cried like this must have been back when she was a child. She probably should have felt terrified.

She wasn’t. She only felt safe.

@today-in-fic

[danascullysjournal]

If You Will Let Me

An X-Files Post-Milagro Fic

WC: 4,200 

This is chapter is part of a larger fic on AO3.  If you like, the full work is available here.  

TW: Demonic possession, Demons, Physical Harm, Trauma, Medical Trauma, Mild Alcohol Use

____________________

Chapter 19: Protecting Us

Sleep had come in short, interrupted segments during the red-eye flight from Chicago.  Though both were leery of letting down their guard, sleep deprivation had taken its toll, and Scully had found herself succumbing to the constant white noise and gentle vibration of the airplane as it carried them home.  Instead of nightmares or demons, she was roused by turbulence and sporadic cries from a baby a few seats in front of them. 

Through slitted eyes, she saw Mulder’s head cocked back, lolled to one side.  His slow, quiet snores were strangely reassuring.  Here, there was rest.  A cautiously optimistic thought drifted through her tired mind.  Maybe they really did leave the demons behind them.  Sighing contentedly, she carefully lay her head on his shoulder and drifted back to sleep.

The plane landed in DC well after midnight, leaving both agents partially rested, but groggy and sluggish as they collected bags and headed out to the parking garage.  Their footsteps echoed through the empty concrete cavern, closing in on the car.  Each step was further from the calm security of the airplane cabin, further from the reassurance of other people around them.  

“Just us again.”  Mulder offered a thin grin.  “Ready for more quality time?”

Scully pressed her lips together, looking up at him.  “I can’t be that bad, can I?”

“Never.”  He meant it, but somehow the sentiment caught in his throat and the word fell to the ground, hollow. 

Weary, they headed home through empty downtown streets, uneasy silence between them.  Bleak buildings towered above them, their shadowed facades sliced by dull blades of flickering street lights.  The darkness was suffocating.  

Neither dared to mention it. 

____________________

The lights in Scully’s bedroom were on, but it did little to calm the anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach.  The unease had only grown since leaving the airport.  Since being alone with Mulder again.  She sat up for what felt like the hundredth time, studying him carefully.

There had been no question, once they had finally landed in DC, of where Mulder would stay.  His apartment was still drenched in the memories of her blood, and she couldn’t bring herself to sleep alone.  But her bed felt smaller, shrunken down by their bodies prudently spaced apart.  It was uncomfortable.  Awkward.  Mulder was doing his best, she knew.  He was respecting her insistence on putting their relationship on hold…  But it all felt stilted.  Cold.  The void between them was mere inches, but somehow insurmountable.  It was a chasm she had created for protection, but it only served as a glaring reminder of her vulnerability, her loneliness.  Her emptiness.

It ached to be filled.  

She felt the pang just as much, if not more.  Their breathing seemed magnified, echoing within the emptiness, reminding her of what should be.  With each breath, she cursed the house.  Cursed the demons.  Cursed the chasm of her own making.

Cursed the breaths she took and let out, silent, too afraid to begin again.

Sleep wouldn’t offer her a reprieve.  It kept its distance, just as Mulder did.  Just out of reach.  She fidgeted with the oversized comforter, examining the machine-made stitching that divided the blanket into thick patterned poufs.  Stitching fabric, stitching skin.  That was easy.  But all of this… this was not. 

The question of Padgett was layered thickly over the uneasy confusion between them.  That man… or body… or spirit…  She couldn’t reconcile the pieces.  She had been held fast and attacked by a man she knew to be dead.  But it had happened.  Hadn’t it?  Residual visions of the cold corpse strangling her, cutting into her, challenged the validity of her memories of the body.  The autopsy.  Everything.  

It had been him.  But logically, it couldn’t be.

Except…

Samantha hadn’t been real.  Mulder had said as much.  She coveted the certainty he seemed to possess.  In the midst of insomnia and awkward tension, it seemed as good a topic to bring up as any.  Anything to break this barrier of emptiness. 

She cleared her throat. 

“Mulder, how did you know it wasn’t her?”  

He stared at her for a long moment.  The silence was sharpened by the disbelief and hurt etched on his face.  When he finally spoke, it was with the voice of someone betrayed.   “How could you ask that, Scully?”

“I-”

“Don’t you think I would know the difference between my own sister and an evil spirit?”   

She hurried to clarify, struck by the anger in his eyes. “Mulder, I do, that’s why I’m asking- what was your litmus test?  How did you know?  Because I really think that was Padgett… but that’s impossible.  He’s in the morgue.”  She licked her lips nervously.  “Isn’t he?”  

Her eyes screamed the fear she refused to admit.

Mulder’s glare softened.

“Oh.”  He lowered his head, rubbing his forehead with his hands.  “I’m sorry, Scully.  I shouldn’t have thought-”

“It’s okay.”  Her fingers touched his.  “We’re just… both on edge.”

His hand closed, enveloping her small fingers in his palm.  He squeezed softly, briefly, before his hand retreated back to his side of the canyon between them.  He gazed toward the corner of the room, at nothing in particular, recalling the demons that had manifested the shell of his sister.  

“It was almost her.  Almost.”  His voice was grim.  “It looked like her, walked like her.  Acted a lot like her.  But the voice.”  He nodded, as if to himself.  “That’s how I knew for sure.  Every time she- they- appeared, the voice would be close to what I remember, but not quite.  It’s like… they could get every other part of my memory of her right, but something stopped them from having her voice.”

“Like they didn’t know how?”

“Or they couldn’t.  I’m not sure yet, but I think it has something to do with possession.  Owning.  But the demons don’t have my sister, they don’t have her soul, or her voice.  So they… try, with what they can get from our minds, but it’s a facsimile.”

Scully’s brow furrowed.  “Like a bad photocopy.”

“Right.”

Crossing her arms, she straightened herself up.  The implications of Mulder’s theory shook her.  “If you’re right… they have him.”  Her blue eyes were uneasy.  “That voice… the body… it was Padgett.”

“You’re sure?”

She looked away.  “I’m sure.  I don’t know how they would have gotten him… unless he isn’t in the morgue anymore.”  

Mulder thought for a moment.  “What if it isn’t about the body at all?  Maybe what they need is the spirit.  The soul.”

The bedroom fell silent again, save for their breathing.  She felt him watching her, carefully, like a parent watches a child who has just fallen hard.  Checking for signs of injury, of fear.  Ready to console and reassure.  For reasons she didn’t quite understand, she resented it. 

“I’m fine, Mulder.  Really.  And anyway, maybe they won’t come here.  We’re so far from that place.” 

Mulder studied her, the skeptical eyebrow she usually wore planted firmly out of place on his forehead.  “How do you think demons travel, Scully?”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Well, I don’t know.”

“I don't know either, but I doubt a few miles are too much for them.”  He considered.  “I should be thrilled you’re so open to demonic possession as a possibility, really.  Never thought I’d see the day.  Wish it was better circumstances though.”

She cast an irritated sideways glare. 

“I’m not just open to anything.  I know what I saw.  This particular incident- it’s hard for me to refute.”

“But you could.”  His tone was flat.  He sat up alongside her.  

She shrugged.  “Anyone could.  It could be hallucinations induced by psychosis, perhaps exacerbated by sleep deprivation, or-” 

“That’s what you believe?”  

His voice held a tinge of ridicule, but she chose to ignore it. 

“Of course not, Mulder.”  

He nodded, then looked at her pointedly.  “You don’t believe it, but that’s what you’ll say to Kersh?”

Scully sighed. 

“Not just that, no, but I do feel it’s my obligation to provide all the facts as well as offer plausible explanations.  I’m aware of what Kersh will think if I only present one account with little or no verifiable proof.”

Mulder scoffed.  “That’s my point.  You’re good at that.  Explaining things away.  We were almost destroyed, and possessed, and you come up with some alternative, something that’s logical, and safe.”

“There has to be an explanation for what we experienced, Mulder.  Supernatural or otherwise.  I’m not denying what we saw, what happened.  I was there too, remember?”  She felt anger rising and tried to tamp it down.  “And what’s so bad about being safe?”  

“Safe isn’t always what’s right.  Or best.” 

She eyed him carefully, her lips sealed in a grim line, and stood slowly.  Arms crossed.  Shielding her heart.  “This isn’t about the case, is it?”  

He held her tired gaze with his own exhausted eyes. 

“Maybe I should sleep on the couch.”   He sighed as he pushed aside the plush comforter.  His feet padded down on her floor. 

She watched, pensive, caught between turning away in defeat and anger, or lunging at his hand in desperation.  Her body failed her, and she stood dumbly, staring.  As he turned and grabbed his pillow, she cleared her throat and found a quiet sliver of her voice. 

“I’m trying to protect you.  To protect us.  All the I love yous in the world mean nothing if we’re dead.” 

Mulder stopped short, pillow dangling from his unconsciously tight fist.  He took a deep breath before he spoke.  “I respectfully disagree, Scully.  Every time I said ‘I love you’ to my sister, it mattered, every time you said it to your father.  And to your sister.  You can’t say death negates that- you’re the one with a good family.  A nice, loving Catholic upbringing- how am I the one explaining this to you?”

His eyes bore into her, demanding an answer that she couldn’t give.  

It was no easier for her to banish the demons herself than it was to admit to him: fully loving someone, anyone at all, was confusing.  His idea of love in her family was so very opposite her actual experience.  Much as the Scully household had lauded it, love was a word.  A duty.  What she found with him was different from any of the compulsory, sanitized definitions she had learned in childhood.  She found herself possessed by it, but paralyzed by her own confusion and fear.

When she finally spoke, it was cautious.  Timid.   As if her voice carried words that would shatter, should she dare throw them carelessly. 

In truth, the words couldn’t shatter.  But she could.

“I think… you know more about love, believe more about it, than you say you do.”  She drew in a deep breath.  “More than I do… but I - I want to learn...”  Suddenly she felt astoundingly ignorant.   Love should be the first thing learned in life.  But what she had learned, had experienced, seemed horrifically wrong.  A shadow of what should have been. 

If her assertion meant anything to him, he didn’t show it.  Instead, he surveyed her thoroughly, almost clinically, studying the creases in her forehead, the thin, drawn line of lips pursed tight.  The squeezed skin and fabric on her chest from protective crossed arms, wrapped too tightly.  The blinking of pale eyes that fought emotion.  He was a profiler at work.  

Finally, his eyes rested back on hers.  

“Do you feel protected?” 

Scully pressed her lips together even tighter, the soft rose color draining from them in favor of nervous white. She lowered her gaze, well aware that he already knew the answer.

“Me either, Scully.”  He ran his fingers through his hair and over his jaw, raking over scratchy beard stubble.  “Listen.  I’m tired, I'm frustrated and I don’t see a point in pretending there’s nothing between us when there is.  And we know it.  And I’m pretty sure the demons know it too, or I wouldn’t have ended up a possessed puppet on the floor.”  His voice was rising, exasperated. “And then, after shoving me away the entire day, you try to tell me that love is meaningless?  I don’t understand, Scully.  I’m trying.  But I don’t.” 

“I didn’t mean that it’s meaningless.  It isn’t meaningless.”  She felt hot tears she had fought so hard to contain, and turned abruptly.  “I’m getting us something to drink.  That might help.”  

She moved to the doorway, checking each corner carefully as she went as a matter of course.  And paranoia. 

Mulder looked at the clock on her bedside table.  2:37 a.m.  He blew a heavy sigh.  “I dunno if that’s the best idea, Scully.  We have to be back at work in 6 hours.”

She shrugged and left the bedroom without looking back.

____________________

He should go after her. 

He stood staring, his lips twisted in an uncomfortable frown.  Maybe he had been too harsh… almost certainly, he realized.  They were both haggard from the past few days, and he felt his patience stretched too thin, balanced precariously on the blade of a knife.  He should go in, apologize, and be there for her.  He tried to work himself up to it. 

“Dammit, Scully… I’m no good at this either.  I’m sorry.”  

His muttering was nothing if she didn’t hear it, though.  He tossed the pillow back onto her bed, moving toward the doorway. 

The shuffling in the kitchen, opening of cabinets and drawers, made Mulder hesitate.  He could hear her talking quietly to herself.  Processing, or cursing him, he couldn’t be sure. 

He huffed in irritation, wishing he could see inside her mind the way the demons had seen into his own.  But he was not omniscient, and stood painfully aware of his inadequacies.  Without speaking to her, he would remain woefully incapable of seeing or understanding what she truly needed from him.  

____________________

Scully startled a bit, surprised by Mulder’s silhouette in the doorway.  

“Oh, hey.  I didn’t hear you coming.”  She shut the cabinet door with the back of her hand.  The wine glasses made a pleasant clink as she set them on the counter.  “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.  I won’t pour much.  I don’t want a hangover any more than you do… I just… It’s been a rough week, we both could use this.”  

She grabbed the corkscrew from the counter and twisted it into the top of a new bottle.

“We um… we didn’t have some amazing family, Mulder.  Not like you think.  Not- I mean we had everyone.”  She kicked herself for being so callous.  “I know it was hard for you, with your dad.  And Samantha.”  

The cork pulled from the bottle with a low, satisfied pop.  

She looked him over, his tired, worn features darkened in the doorway, his eyes studying her.  Part of her still wanted to hold back, to keep her emotions and experiences locked away, where they couldn’t be used against her.  

So many people had used her weaknesses as weapons to break her down.  Including Padgett.

But this was Mulder.  If she wouldn’t take that chance on him, would she ever, with anyone?

She gathered herself.  “We cared for each other.  We still do, what’s left of us.  But… Dad was military, you know.  We had respect.  Duty.  Loyalty.  I know he loved us, but he didn’t say it much.  Didn’t show it.”  She looked down, feeling small.  Vulnerable.  “Not like you do, I mean.  Didn’t hug much…. He tried, did the best he could.  But.  It did hurt Mom… and us.”  

Sighing, she turned from him to pour the wine. 

“When I said you know more about love, I meant it.  It’s… it’s hard for me.  You’re different, and caring, and… I do want to protect you from them, if they come here, but I’m also just scared.  Scared that I won’t be what you really want.  That I can’t be, because… I don’t know how.”  She took a small sip from her glass, letting the red wine warm her throat.   “But I want to learn.  I do.”

She turned back, regarding him cautiously.  So much of herself had been laid bare, and she searched his face for signs of understanding.  Anything that would help to unbind the thick knot in her stomach. 

He nodded, his lips pressed in a thoughtful line.  It was a small gesture, but encouraging.  He took a step forward.

“Thank you for listening, Mulder.  For being so patient with me.”  She smiled softly,  holding out a glass.  “To learning what love is.  With you.”

He offered a strange, tilted grin, stepping closer.  

She felt a sudden chill on her skin.

“Love is complicated.”  The voice rasped unnaturally through Mulder’s mouth, and the grin grew into a sadistic smile.

Scully’s eyes widened in realization.  She shuffled backwards, running into the counter.  The wine glass dropped from her fingers and shattered on the floor. 

His sneer stretched, shifting.  Changing.  Molding itself into the sallow face she had come to fear more than anything else.  In her periphery, she could make out black, wavering mist filling the kitchen, dimming the lights.  Pulling itself into pillars of smoke.  Before she could think, the dark shadow of his hand clamped down on mouth, hard and cold, slamming her head against the cabinet.

Her stifled cry slipped through the blacked fingers. 

“Dana wants to know how to love.”  Padgett’s voice trickled through pale, cracked lips tinged a washed-out blue.  “I could have taught you.  But.  The heart wants what it wants.  Doesn’t it.”  An icy finger traveled across her collarbone, fingernail raking across the path the scalpel had pulled through her skin. 

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, its rhythm mixing with whispers of ravenous souls that beckoned from the inky swells.  She shook her head against the force of his hand, straining against his leaden weight. 

Mulder… he was still in the bedroom.  

Maybe he could hear.

She tried to scream, but only managed a muffled, gasping yell against the rotten skin of his palm.

____________________

The clattered ringing of broken glass made Mulder’s stomach drop.   

He ran. 

“Scully?”  He barreled through the hallway and into the kitchen, driven by a panic that had become second nature.  As he entered, the familiar, writhing darkness surrounded him. 

Whispers called to him from inside the mass of smoke.  Whispers that sounded almost like Samantha.  And another voice, one he wished to never hear again.

____________________

“We can’t leave a story unfinished.”  The words wavered, sung in a sickening chorus of voices, Padgett, and thousands more.  His cold eyes stared, unblinking.  “It’s time.”

She felt the licking of dark mist over her arms, beginning to grasp and tighten.  Cold.  The souls pricked into her pores.  Opening her.  Pressing in as Padgett’s body held her fast, his icy fingers digging at the flesh above her heart. 

Her blood, a sacrifice to them.

Her heart, his possession.

Her soul, theirs.

A feral scream retched out of her lungs. 

“Scully!”  Mulder’s voice cut through the whispers around her.

Like a rag doll wrung by a child, Padgett’s head twisted backwards.  He stared Mulder down, thin hiss began to rise from his throat.  His eyes shone white, glowering at the interruption.  

The inky swells of spirits drew themselves up into wavering pillars, pressing on the ceiling, pulling themselves toward Mulder.

It was a small distraction.  But enough.  Gathering all her strength, Scully pushed herself away from the counter, turning to shove her shoulder into Padgett, forcing him off.  She met nothing but the chill of stale air and tumbled down, landing on the hard kitchen floor.  The dull thud of her body was muffled by violent hisses of the demons around them. 

The kitchen lights were obliterated by the masses filling the apartment.  Scully tried to focus through the darkness.  She felt dizzy from the gash on the back of her head, sickened by the oppressive smell of rotted flesh that hovered in the room.

“Mulder?”  His name tumbled from her lips like a prayer. 

“Scully, I’m here.”  His eyes searched, frantic in the darkness that had filled the kitchen.  “Keep talking… I can’t see you.”  He was breathless.  “Please?  Scully!”

She answered with a weak, muffled moan.

Padgett’s form had dissolved itself into a thick, inky mass, covering the floor, enveloping her.  Mulder plunged his hands down into the icy swells, searching desperately.  His fingers met clammy, cold skin.  Slick with blood. 

“Come on.”  Mulder’s hand traversed the wet skin on her arm, finding her fingers. 

“I can’t.”  The voice was small.

He squeezed her hand tightly as the towering forms that filled the room unwound themselves and poured over them.

“We can, Scully.  We have to.”

But she didn’t want to.  

Neither did he.

The darkness washed over, whispering.  Calming.  He felt ribbons of inky fingers wrapping around him, digging in.  Beginning to enter.

A cracking, thunderous pounding shattered through black kitchen.  Again.  And again. 

“Open the door!”  

The apartment door shook with another fist.  

“Ms. Scully?  Open up!”

Ringing inside his head, Mulder heard the demons scream.  

He screamed with them.

Metal jingled, then scraped and turned inside the deadbolt lock.  The door flew open, slamming into the wall, doorknob crumpling the drywall behind it.

The demons released their grip.  He could feel them in his skin, like a needle pulling from a vein, as they ripped themselves away.

The kitchen lights glared into his eyes, and he squinted.  

He could just make out the blurred forms of four men before he lost consciousness.

____________________

The landlord stood near the doorway with the police officer, giving space for the paramedics to work.  

Glass shards were strewn across the kitchen floor, sparkling in the incandescent light.  In the middle of the room two figures lay still, hand in hand.  Spilled wine and spattered blood marred the floorboards.

The blonde paramedic surveyed the kitchen, shaking his head.  “Looks like it started as a fun time, anyway.”  He stepped over the empty wine bottle on the floor, making his way to the bodies.  “These usually do.”  

“What do you mean?”  The landlord looked irritated, while the remaining men exchanged looks. 

“Off record,” the officer said blandly, “looks like domestic violence.  Started as a good night, then things went wrong.  And now there’s a mess, probably some charges to press when they sober up.” 

“Pulse and respiration on both?”  

The dark haired paramedic nodded to his partner. “Yeah.  Barely.”

The landlord stared at the two forms on the floor.  Behind the woman trailed a smeared path of wine mixed with blood, as if she had been pulling herself toward the man.  

“Doesn’t seem like domestic violence to me.”  He shook his head and looked away. 

The officer squinted and surveyed the glass shards on the floor, the blood spattered on the cabinet door.  “We’ll decide that.  Tell me about this renter.”  

“Well, she’s really quiet, but a good tenant.  Pays rent early.  Works for the government, I think.  Takes great care of the place, it’s one of the best kept apartments in the building.”  He shrugged.  “She’s almost never home, but when she is home, there’s never complaints.”

The police officer nodded, writing in his notepad.

“Do you know the man here?”

“Not by name.  I’ve seen him a few times, I think.  Nothing unusual or bad that I recall.”  The landlord sighed.  “Sorry ‘bout all this.  Just, Barbara never complains. She’s been here forever, so when she called so concerned at this hour, I figured there’s a problem.”

“Yeah…” Raising his eyebrows, the officer pursed his lips.  “It looks like there was a problem, alright.”

“This one’s pulse is really weak.  Let’s get her out first so we can start an IV, get her stabilized.  Then we’ll move him.”  The blonde paramedic rose to retrieve the gurney from behind him.

As if in response, the man on the floor gasped for air, arms flailing wildly.  His eyes were wide and he growled, as if fighting something unseen.

“Whoa!”  The dark haired paramedic grabbed an arm, pinning him back down.  “Hey, you’re okay.  You’re okay.”  He turned to other men, frantic.  “Can I get a hand?”

The officer was already crossing the room.  He planted himself firmly on the other arm while the paramedic tried to calm the man down.

“Sir, you’re safe-”

The man’s eyes rolled backward, and he stiffened, turning his head to the side. 

The policeman looked to the paramedic, concerned.  Just as they began to roll his body over to a safe position for a seizure, the man’s eyes refocused.  He blinked, twisting his head back slowly to look up to the officer.  

“Where… is she?”

The officer hesitated, but saw the panic in the man’s eyes.  “We have her, sir.  She’s safe.  Who are you?”  

The man’s body relaxed and he closed his eyes, satisfied that the woman he was with was alive.  He licked his dry lips and drew a labored breath before he spoke.

“Fox Mulder… FBI.  She’s Dana Scully.  FBI… You have to… keep her safe.  Don’t leave … don’t leave her alone…”

The men glanced at each other.  

“What happens if we leave her alone?” The police officer’s eyes shot back to the bloody cabinet door.

Fox Mulder rolled his head toward the voice and cracked open his eyes.  “If you leave her… if you leave us… he comes back… they… they come back.”

____________________

A huge thank you to all of you who take the time to read these updates, to encourage, and to wait while I take too long to write!  You are so very appreciated.