#it really felt more WASP than catholic but i think american catholics are just Like That

[bluebellsinthedells]

For an example of a good monologue, pls skip ahead until you see Brad Dourif's delightful face :)

Getting angry again thinking abt how good midnight mass could've been if it wasn't bad

[scullymakesmefeelautopsyturvy]

Several Times Scully Got Locked Out Of Her Motel Room In Her Scanties (First Time Smut Ensues) Chapter One

Space (Season One)

They sat on the city steps in the midday sunshine awaiting another of Mulder’s mysterious informants. She, eating a sad little excuse for a sandwich: cucumber-dampened white bread encompassing roast chicken lovingly Saran-wrapped and pressed into her hand after Sunday lunch at her parents’ house. An awkward lunch, during which her father had accomplished the stellar feat of not asking her about her work once. I should have cheered everyone up by asking if anyone had heard from Charles lately, Melissa had joked, darkly, over the phone afterwards. 

The sandwich stuck in her throat a little as she swallowed, and out of nowhere, everything felt so… insufficient.

Was this really her life now? Crackpots and conservative suits and no sex since Jack? Reading journals alone on Friday nights and eating her mother’s leftovers?

She was still stashing a fastidiously initialed brown bag in the Bureau staff kitchen fridge each morning, as she had been in the habit of doing at Quantico. 

Dana Katherine Scully, you’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore, she told herself. 

Perhaps it was time to graduate to lunch in the cafeteria, like one of the big kids. 

Mulder nibbled on his inescapable sunflower seeds. Rental car cup holders. The top drawer of the basement desk. The bottom drawer, and the middle. Even loose, once, inexplicably, in her suitcase when she arrived home from a three-night case in Iowa. They were everywhere, pervading her entire life with their woody scent and their easy charm just like the man who unceasingly consumed them.

He was close, now, his knees spread wide and swinging with casual rich-kid confidence as he began to lose patience with his anonymous NASA tipster. Scully kept her stockinged legs primly pressed together, her well-lined heavy linen skirt draping over her kneecaps, preserving her modesty. His fingertips brushed her own as he handed her the informant’s note, and she was glad of the excuse to break his gaze, to look down and away from his face; the inevitable thrill she was coming to know so well shooting through her body from tip to toes. 

When the Space Program whistleblower did arrive, it was a she; a development Scully could well have done without. Especially one as… developed as this. 

Long and lean, blonde, finessed; Michelle Generoo looked exactly like the full-sized version of the girls Scully imagined Mulder growing up with on Martha’s Vineyard, summering in Rhode Island, picnicking on lush lawns by sparkling waters while she herself played hopscotch with scavenged pebbles on Navy base blacktop, or avoided cracks in uneven paving slabs as she skipped along in hand-me-down pleated skirts and fraying hand-knitted sweaters. This was probably exactly the WASP-y horsewoman type Mulder’s parents had always envisaged him marrying, with her tweed jacket and her long silky locks and her mirror-lensed aviators. 

Not a squat, pale, Irish Catholic Navy brat with full cheeks, wiry russet hair and stubborn freckles that were probably popping exponentially with every second spent sitting in this sunshine. Who still brought homemade sandwiches to work.

Michelle Generoo: Mission Control Communications Commander for the Space Program in Houston. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now, for I must have sinned, and am being punished with the early-afternoon arrival of Fox Mulder’s ideal woman, sent from heaven to enact my own personal hell. 

Scully hated this feeling: this creeping sense of little sister inferiority. It was the mid-semester first day at a new school all over again, having been transplanted with her father’s latest deployment; Bill laughing and joking with the jocks or the prettiest clique of girls he could find, she hiding with a book in the library. It was enviously watching Melissa tame her curls into elaborate braids when all she could manage was a stubby ponytail with lumps at her crown, aged seven, twelve, twenty-nine. 

What was it about prepubescent inadequacies that made them so infuriatingly unassailable? Successfully reinterpreting Einstein and near-perfect pistol qualification scores had only ever compensated for so much.

At the mention of a fiancé - a Shuttle Commanding astronaut fiancé, no less - Scully relaxed somewhat. For once, she was glad that Mulder’s particular obsession with certain matters of the universe was a little less than impressive to the casual observer. 

Mulder disappeared off into the city on some unspecified errand, and sent her back to the Hoover Building to arrange flights and accommodation, agreeing to meet her at the airport.

On the plane, he seemed disappointed when she didn’t want to read his brand new copy of NASA: A History of American Space Travel, and peppered her with trivia instead.

“Did you know, all twelve men who walked on the moon agree, the surface smells like spent gunpowder?”

“Oh really,” Scully said. “And what did the women say?” 

Mulder looked a little uncomfortable. Having made her point about why she might, perhaps, feel a little excluded from his spaceboy enthusiasm, Scully pondered this fact.

“They can’t remove their helmet on the moon; there’s no atmosphere.” She countered. “How do they know what it smells like?”

“From the dust left over on their spacesuits,” Mulder was clearly happy to be able to inform her.

Scully frowned at him. 

“You think they’re so cool, don’t you Mulder?”

He looked personally injured. “Scully, how can you be the one person in the universe - a physicist, no less - who doesn’t think space travel is cool?”

She turned her torso in her narrow seat to face him.

“Mulder, when I was five years old, for Apollo 11, I was just as excited as you are now. My older brother and sister and I followed the news of the mission; we watched the moon landing just like everybody else. Bill and Melissa dressed up as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for Halloween that year; they made me be the Stars and Stripes so we could all pose for photos together. I had to stick my arm out and wobble the flag. We were just as space crazed as anyone. And over the years, as the missions continued, I read everything, I mean everything-” Mulder nodded, he could surely believe that of Scully at any age - “and I found out some trivia of my own.”

Mulder titled his head, curious.

“You know, a spacesuit is a sealed environment. It has to be airtight, right?”

Mulder nodded. 

“And spacewalks last between five and eight hours on average.”

Mulder was listening intently.

“Well, there’s… nowhere to… go. When you have to go,” she gestured euphemistically. “And in a zero-gravity environment - or any environment, in fact - you don’t want to just relieve yourself inside the suit.”

Mulder frowned.

“So they wear these… things. It’s called a MAG: A Maximum Absorbency Garment,” she enunciated carefully. “You just… let it go, and it… absorbs it.”

Mulder looked perturbed.

“So basically, underneath that cool, space-exploring exterior,” Scully continued, “you’ve got a bunch of highly trained, hero-worshipped men - and now, women - floating around wearing adult diapers.”

Mulder swallowed hard.

“You know, I have a little brother. Charles. When he was still wearing Pampers I would watch my mom changing him, and I’d smell those foul odors and witness the frankly terrifying contents in some detail, and I just - I could never look at astronauts in the same way again after I found out about the MAG. I don’t know, it just ruined it for me.”

Her partner sat back quietly in his chair, more than a little disturbed.

Scully smiled at him weakly, and decided to take a nap.

On the tarmac in Houston, the cabin lights, dimmed for landing, switched back to full brightness as the seatbelt indicator dinged off. Mulder sprang out of his seat, already reaching up for the overhead bins to retrieve their luggage. 

Scully sat calmly with her forest-green briefcase on her lap, not willing to pointlessly stand for ten minutes while the passengers in rows A-R filed interminably slowly up the aisle, huffing and checking her watch as though that would change the physics of the aircraft and hurry anything along. 

No, patience had always been her friend; she would await her turn peacefully, could wait for anything forever, so long as she knew for certain it was coming to her.

Alighted, they bypassed the checked baggage carousels, Mulder carrying the suitcases and Scully toting only her leather satchel. The pair walked to the Lariat desk, where Scully hung back, and Mulder flirted with the smiling clerk working the night shift.

In the car, Mulder questioned her again about the arrangements.

“Intercontinental, Scully? It’s probably the furthest possible airport from the Space Center.”

“...and all requisitions would let me book at such late notice. The flights into Hobby were almost double the cost. It would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.” She signalled right, checking both directions. 

“Are we heading further North, Scully?” Mulder asked, checking the constellations through the windshield.

She tsked and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “It’s late. If you want to make all future travel bookings, be my guest, Mulder. But as it stands we’ll stay up here tonight, drive down for our eight-thirty a.m., and stay down there from tomorrow.”

At the mention of the morning meeting with Lt. Belt, Mulder brightened, and stuck his head back in his book for the remainder of the journey to their motel. 

When they arrived at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, she threw him a look. A warning shot. 

Don’t say a word, Mulder.

The motel took shabby to a whole new level: the paintwork was more chips than oil-based matte; the blown bulbs outnumbered the working ones, the woodwork of the bare-bones portico looked like it should have been condemned alongside the Rosenbergs.

The sign on the office door declared, ‘Desk open 7 a.m. - 10 p.m. ONLY ring bell outside of opening hours for ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES.’ 

Scully checked her watch. It was approaching midnight. A handwritten Post-It stuck at an angle underneath read, ‘Scully booking, rooms # 8 & 12. Doors open. Keycards inside.’

“Always nice to experience that famous Southern hospitality,” Mulder deadpanned, peeling the note from the glass. They moved along the walkway, counting up as they went.

The door to number eight was propped barely ajar with a rotting two-by-four. Scully could see the square of exposed woodwork where an old lock mechanism had been removed: replaced by a newfangled electronic keycard system. She ran her eyes over the crumbling porch roof and thought, Really? This is where they chose to invest their refurb budget?

Mulder pushed the door open for Scully and held her gaze as she stared at him momentarily. He looked like he was about to follow her into the room. 

“Thanks,” she gulped, taking her suitcase from his hand.

But he stayed put outside, grabbing the handle to pull the door shut, double checking their plans for the morning. “See you at seven-fifteen then? All checks complete and ready to strap ourselves into the command module?” He grinned.

Scully dropped her case onto the bed and sighed. He was going to be insufferable tomorrow.

***

After showering, hanging up her burgundy pantsuit for the next day, then losing a fight with the room’s overactive heater, Scully unravelled the tightly rolled pink satin pajamas from her suitcase. You get fewer wrinkles if you roll rather than fold, her mother had taught her. 

Stepping into them, she could already feel herself perspiring lightly, and wondered if it would be better to do without the pajamas or the comforter. Her mind flashed to the various possible emergencies that might see her fleeing her room in the middle of the night: a fire, a tornado, an intruder. 

Keep the pajamas, lose the comforter, she decided.

But she suspected she’d need more to keep herself cool. She remembered passing an ice machine a few doors down, and grabbed a metal bucket left on the dresser for just such purposes, tucking her keycard into the breast pocket of her nightwear as she went.

She was so warm and the ice machine was so close, she didn’t even bother with shoes as she tiptoed the few feet along the walkway. The machine hummed and clanked as she lifted the front and noisily plunged the bucket into the crisp, dry cubes.

Ice.  

The Arctic Ice Core Project. Alaska. A sparsely appointed supply closet. Mulder crouching down to her level and hissing his balmy, furious breath directly into her face. 

I don’t trust them. I WANT to trust you.

He’d been angry and sweaty and ripe, and it had been the two of them against the others. They’d made what felt like a binding pact, whispering conspiratorially; sealing it with their laying on of hands.

If she’d been asked prior to that about the most intimate part of a person’s body, she might have given the same answers as anyone else. Reproductive organs her studies had given her medical names for. Mammary glands meant for feeding young but warped by western culture into symbols of sex and shame. Perhaps the cushiony swell of the gluteus maximus, so favored by jocks, and creeps in bars. 

But she’d finished that case on the Icy Cape with the discovery of more than a new species of worm; she’d learned for the first time about the deep, heady, overwhelming intimacy of touching another person at the back of the neck. 

Jesus, she’d already been so wet when he’d grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back to inspect her spine. She feared her unguarded gasp had given her away. And when he’d brushed aside her hair and lain his whole palm against the nape of her neck, awaiting the telltale wriggle of the homicide-inducing parasite, it was she who had squirmed beneath the hot, unrelenting pressure. 

Oh god, what he’d be able to do to her with those big, strong, capable hands. 

Alaska at that latitude had average winter temperatures of less than zero degrees Fahrenheit. November on the North Slope saw little more than three hours of sunshine a day. They regularly experienced impenetrable blizzards that could freeze a person to death in under an hour. 

But when Dana Scully thought of the Icy Cape, all she could feel was searing, blazing, pulsing heat. 

She filled the ice bucket, slammed the machine shut, and carried her personal cooling system back to her room, balancing it on her hip like an infant as she swiped the keycard for entry.

She got a red light.

Furrowing her brow, she swiped again.

Red.

Again.

Red.

Sighing her frustration, she ran the card through the slot several more times, resting the bucket on the floor and jiggling the handle as she tried over and over for green, listening for the buzz of the latch electronically pulling back.

Nothing.

She threw her hands up in the air and tried twice more to no avail.

She looked about her for assistance, finding none. No one was about. She started off towards the office and slowed as she reached the door. She re-read the sign.

ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES.

Well, she couldn’t get into her room. Surely that was an emergency. She pressed the bell and waited, but no one came. She pressed again, and again, nothing. This was ridiculous. She tried once more with the bell, and after two minutes, sighing furiously, strode back along the walkway, her bare toes starting to go numb. She’d successfully cooled off, at least.

She continued past room eight, doubling back to try the lock three more times then kicking the door with great vexation before jogging up towards number twelve, wrapping her arms around her breasts to warm herself. The ice bucket stood sentry, dripping condensation.

She lifted her knuckle to knock on Mulder’s door, then hesitated slightly. She stole a glance down at her pajamas. They were not thick, and clung to her curves, puckering at her bare nipples. Mulder had seen her wearing far less - had checked her for mosquito bites clad only in what her maternal Grandmother would have called her smalls on their very first case - and remained professional, but that had been a rare exception, borne of her neophyte panic. She worked so hard to be taken seriously, to be seen as a colleague and an expert and a peer, and not as a sexual object. It was hard to project an air of authority in pastel pink satin with your breasts announcing themselves to anyone within five hundred yards. But Jesus, it was freezing out, and she had to be up and dressed in less than seven hours. She wasn’t about to spend a frostbitten night out in the cold and give herself hypothermia for the sake of avoiding a little embarrassment. She was a fully grown woman; Mulder, a fully grown man. They were both adults here. They could be mature about this.

She knocked, hugging her chest again afterwards.

Mulder opened the door still in his shirt and tie, although his jacket was hung over the desk chair in the corner. The NASA book lay face down, open on the bed. He chewed on one of his infernal seeds.

“You okay, Scully?” he asked, frowning. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Couldn’t get back into my room,” Scully explained, huffing. “I went out for ice and my… the keycard doesn’t work.”

“You should ring the bell for the owners,” Mulder suggested, unhelpfully.

“I did,” Scully said, pointedly. “No answer.” She looked up at him and pressed her lips together apologetically. “Can I come in?”

“Of course, of course,” Mulder said, standing back to let her enter. He stood with his back to the door after it was closed. “You can sleep in here; it’s no bother. I’ll crash on the floor.”

“Thank you,” Scully said, perching on the desk. Mulder sat himself on the end of the bed and gazed over at her.

“You cold?” he asked.

Actually, Mulder’s room was as toasty as hers had been, and her toes were already thawing out.

“Warming up,” she said, thankfully.

“Just that you’re… hugging yourself,” he explained, gesturing at her arms, still clamped across her unsecured bosom.

“Oh,” she said, self-consciously, but let her arms drop slowly to her sides, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands for security. “I’m not… wearing very much, is all.”

“Oh,” he echoed softly, his eyes scanning the length of her nightwear all the way to the floor and back up again. Yes, she was certainly feeling some heat once again.

“What you are wearing is… very nice though.” His eyes settled on her own for a few seconds, then flicked down to her breasts, and she inhaled sharply, silently, she hoped in retrospect. When he looked back at her face, her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she caught herself, licking her lips for discipline, her chest heaving. He looked down again. 

She felt her cheeks burning, and averted her eyes to the book on the bed, a change of focus for her mind, which was racing with thoughts of candlelight and shower-wet hair, of thermal shirts and platonic supply closet fumblings: Mulder and his fingertips the common denominator in these scenarios. 

She forced herself to look back at him. He was comfortably staring now, his face giving nothing away, but she knew he was quite aware she’d seen him appreciating her exposed form. He was leaving this up to her.

She wrestled with her conscience.

She shouldn’t do this. They were partners. It was against Bureau policy. It was unprofessional. It could ruin her career if it ended badly. Worse, it could come between her and Mulder, drive a wedge between them and prise apart their newly cemented friendship. 

But…

She thought of Oregon and hands and Alaska and ice, and she knew what she wanted.

You’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore...

She stood up slowly, wordlessly taking a few steps towards Mulder on the bed. Yes, they were both fully grown, and she had some very adult ideas about what they could do together.

She paused one or two paces from his knees, and held his gaze for a moment. She let her lips fall open once more, her breathing labored, and she saw his breath was keeping pace with her own.

She thought of Michelle Generoo, and of her own jealousies and insecurities, and second guessed herself momentarily. She’d always suspected she wasn’t Mulder’s type. Yes, he had moments ago brazenly taken in the sight of her nipples brushing against the silky confines of her pajama top, but he was a red-blooded straight male, and they had been right there, still standing at attention from her time out in the cold. And yes, he was looking at her intently now as she crossed the room, the propulsion of months and months of unverbalized, unresolved sexual tension at her back, but his expression was blank, and he might be nervously wondering how the hell he was going to abort this mission.

There was one way to be sure. He had done his fair share of looking; it was her turn to be brazen.

She dropped her gaze to his lap, seeking a different kind of green light.

In the dim glow coming from the slightly open bathroom door, she found exactly what she was seeking. The bulge that tented Mulder’s pants cast a promising shadow. She was go for launch.

She took another step, and found his eyeline once more.

His pupils were dilated, his lips pillow-soft and pouting, the ridge growing noticeably larger even in her peripheral vision.

She reached down for his left hand and brought it to her breast, pressing it against herself over the pajamas.

“Make me see stars, Mulder,” she whispered, breaking into a lazy smile.

His momentary expression of disbelief gave way to a grin, and he looked up at her with reverence. She let go of his fingers, dropping her arm to her side once again, and his palm moved with feathery softness over her breast, centering her nipple in the smoothest spot, where you’d clutch a baby’s fist, or a prized possession. The heat of his hand radiated through the satin, the friction of skin on fabric even more erotic than direct contact. Their gazes were locked. His mouth fell open a fraction, mirroring hers, and he raised his other hand to work both breasts, his fingers held up and away from her body as he traced circles with her hardened peaks against his deep volar arches. She closed her eyes and moaned, low and soft, letting her head fall backwards. Her knees went limp, and Mulder steadied her with one hand, docking her at the hip.  

His grip sent shockwaves to her core, her pulse now strongest between her legs. She knew she was already leaving a damp mark on her pajama bottoms. 

She lifted her head back up and looked down at Mulder, still seated on the edge of the comforter. They panted together in the quiet, each awestruck by the other, and Scully reached up to her top button, deftly pushing it through the opening with her delicately manicured fingertips. She did not avert her eyes from Mulder’s as she worked her way down to her waist, finally letting the shirt hang open at the front. 

She took his left hand once more and tucked it inside the front panel, his massive palm easily encompassing the entire fleshy mound there. He squeezed her hip gently, cupping her and pulling her towards him at once, guiding her between his knees. Checking her eyes for continued consent, he brushed the center of her shirt to one side and revealed half of her chest to his vision for the first time. 

“Oh, Scully,” he said in a hushed voice, and - permission silently granted by Scully’s hungry gaze - lifted his mouth to her nipple and latched on, sucking, circling his tongue around her hot, pink bud. She moaned again and grabbed the back of his head, twisting her fingers into his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp.

His mouth broke contact with her delicately pale skin, and he pushed the satin from her shoulders, letting it whoosh to the floor.

He was gazing up at her again, and she leaned down to kiss him now, finally allowing herself to experience in the flesh that which she had longed for, imagined, fantasized about for some time. Their lips met; wet, fervent, ravenous. Their shared craving drew them together, suctioning them to one another at the mouth as though they could consume one another entirely, and meant to. His salted breath mingled with her own, and their tongues tangled and danced. He ran his hand up her naked back, and her breasts pressed against his collarbone.

He pulled away, and she held the side of his face tightly to her bare chest, breathless, eyes closed. 

“Scully,” he ventured, “are you sure about this?” He looked up at her with his soft, beautiful, hazel eyes. She didn’t know what had possessed her for so long, being able to resist those eyes all these months.

She straightened up, and took his hand once again, reaching behind herself to slide it down the back of her waistband, over her rounded ass, and into the molten cleft of her body. She spread her thighs as his fingers found her desire, parting and probing her on their voyage of discovery. He dipped a single digit inside her body, and she exhaled on a low moan. 

“I’m sure, Mulder,” she murmured, smiling again. “Take me to the moon and back.”

He relaxed a little, his shoulders dropping, “Oh is that the game?” he teased, “Space puns?”

She shrugged playfully.

He smiled wide at her, or she thought he did; it was hard to see with her eyelashes fluttering closed. Her head dropped back once more as he pumped into her, his thumb resting fortuitously against the base of her perineum, that dark, forbidden, blissful spot. She felt alive, animal, raw. She let her breath come out ragged, allowed her rasps and moans to escape unbridled. Mulder paused his efforts for a second or two, leaving two fingers curled inside her, using his free hand to yank down her pajama pants. She helped, kicking them loose from her ankles as he grabbed a handful of her ass with his spare hand and pulled her toward the bed, reclining face up on the mattress and encouraging her to crawl on her knees up to his shoulders and sit back. Only then did he remove his fingers from inside of her, and her body sucked at them as he did, protesting their departure.

Scully was giddy with want, and Mulder looked up at her just then with such veneration that her heart burst with renewed affection for him. She’d never been made to feel more worthy in her life. This was so Mulder. She had not specifically realized it before, but this was how he often made her feel, in his best moments. 

At the insistence of his hand pressing gently on her lower back, his fingers sticky with her own yearning, she lowered her sex to his mouth. 

As soon as his velvet tongue met her clit, she cried out, almost lifting herself up on her knees at the shock of it. He held her steady, lapping at her hardened bundle of nerves with the flat of his tongue, softly at first, then applying more and more pressure as she sunk further down onto him, his chin pressing up into her heat, her slick juices gliding her inner walls against his light stubble. Oh Jesus, it was divine, and she called out his last name as she rode his face, her breath hitching in her throat as her trajectory was set to climax.

Scully chanced a glance downwards and saw that he was watching her in her ecstasy. 

She was wanted. She was valued. She was enough.

She smiled down at him, not halting her movements, and reached up to pinch her own nipples with her dainty, expert hands. Mulder groaned his pleasure into her body, sucking and licking and holding her down so she could not get away.

“Fuck,” she gasped, and was lost; her face lifted to the heavens, her body and mind spinning and soaring in concupiscent formation, her voice clamorously invoking two thirds of the Trinity with various, stertorous monikers as she rocketed into her own private orbit.

Mulder massaged her hips and kept his chin tilted up into her as she twitched and panted and called out for God, and she felt her inner muscles contracting around his way-past-five-o-clock shadow. The humid air of his heavy breath rushed from his nose, tickling her pubic mound as his lips remained clamped over the hood of her clitoris. She exhaled the last of her shudders and sat back on her haunches, resting on his solid pectorals, running her tongue over her lips, wetting them with exhausted delight. Mulder’s chin glistened in the dim room, drenched, and she laughed, reaching down to wipe him off. 

He let her, but then caught her by the wrist and held her soaked palm against his mouth, kissing it, hard, and smearing the residue of her arousal all over his lips once again. He licked them clean, unblinking.

She buried her face in her other hand and laughed shyly. 

Mulder chuckled along with her, resting his hands on her still-spread thighs, his thumbs dipping close to her parted labia. She bit her lower lip and looked him in the eye once again, unable to hide her happiness.

“Luckily, out here, no one can hear you scream,” he joked, a question in his eyes suggesting he was worried he might not get away with this, and she pushed him away teasingly but giggled as she climbed off the bed. She picked up her pajama pants from the floor.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Mulder asked her as she stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” Scully responded, flinging the bottoms over her shoulder and sauntering off to the bathroom, looking back at him to make sure he was getting a good look at her receding form. “Don’t move.”

She glanced down at the enormous bulge in his pants once again, and knew she needn’t worry. He wouldn’t be going anywhere with that thing.

She returned a few minutes later, now wearing the satin pants, and sporting a dark gleam in her eye as she crept across the carpet towards him. When she reached the bed, he leaned up on his elbows and reached for her to pull her onto the bed, but she shook her head. Instead, she reached for his belt buckle and deliberately undid it, sliding the leather through the metal loop before reaching for his fly. As she unzipped his pants, Mulder lifted his hips, and his erection bounced up, pushing the flaps of the zipper to either side, straining against his boxer briefs. This was one shuttle she wouldn’t mind watching blast off, and she was ready to fire up the booster rockets. 

She helped him remove his pants, then tugged at the waistband of his underwear. He removed it and lay himself back down on the bed, looking almost anxious. 

“Mulder,” she reassured him. “Relax; I want this. I want you.” She whispered the last part, lowering herself to kneel at the foot of the bed. 

His manhood loomed large, worryingly large for such a petite person, but Scully had never met a challenge she didn’t want to face. And face it she did; this hard, quivering invitation to wantonness inches from her mouth. He smelled like the Mulder she had come to know, only stronger here; that musky, spicy pheromone blend that brought her to her knees - now, finally, literally - and she breathed him in with abandon. 

She gripped him in her hand, taking his tip into her mouth, sweeping her tongue around the head of his cock as he exhaled forcefully. She slid her closed palm up and down the base of his shaft, letting her saliva drip down to lubricate her ministrations, then working him further into her jaws so that the top of his penis rubbed just against her soft palate. She bobbed her head against him. He filled her mouth easily, and she thought of all the times she’d surreptitiously stolen a glance at his lap. Her curiosity had been satisfied, and then some. He was every bit as big as she’d always suspected, and her small oral cavity made for a snug fit as she worked him into a frenzy on the bed.

He clutched at the covers and murmured her name, encouraging her efforts all the while. He slowed her at one point, just managing to explain through his moans that he wanted to enjoy it a little longer, but his thighs were soon flexing again and she accelerated her pumping with her fist, sucking a little harder, working the tip of her tongue against his popping veins. 

Mulder reached out and grabbed at her shoulder, clumsily pushing her back. “T-minus... T-minus five seconds and… and counting…” he sputtered, and she risked another tongue swirl, another deep thrust towards her throat. 

“Scully!” Mulder choked out, and she pulled her mouth away. She kept her hand in place and he wrapped his own around it, working his erection skillfully as he delivered his impressive payload over their ten conjoined fingers and down onto his stomach. A coy smirk plastered itself across Scully’s face as he collapsed back onto the bed.          

She raised herself from the floor, rolling her neck from side to side, and grabbed the box of tissues that was sitting on the nightstand. She held them out and sat on the mattress, one foot tucked under the opposite thigh, her breasts sitting proudly on her chest with the pert insouciance of youth. 

Mulder cleaned himself up and aimed the balled up tissues at the wastebasket, missing. He sighed, but didn’t get up, so Scully laughingly dragged herself over and retrieved the errant missiles, dropping them into their intended target. She returned to the bed and lay herself down in the crook of Mulder’s arm. 

He kissed her temple, a peck, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, then lifted her chin with one finger so that he could plant a full kiss on her mouth. She breathed in the scent of herself on his lips, their musky scents intermingling on both their tongues. 

“Wow Scully,” he smiled. “That was fun.”

She nodded, grinning herself. 

“Although, it was a bit of a close encounter, if you know what I mean,” he said, and she buried her face in his shoulder and laughed, any residual worries she’d had about this changing the fundamental nature of their relationship flying away on her huffing breath and disappearing into the vacuum of the mattress. 

Mulder lifted his head. “Oh god, it’s past two,” he announced. He must have been checking the display on the alarm clock. “You should get some sleep Scully; you gotta drive us down to the Space Center in the morning.”

“Hey, it’s your turn,” she whined, sitting up and pulling the covers back to climb beneath. Her pajama shirt lay forgotten on the floor. Tornadoes and fires be damned, she’d already had her ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY for the night. It was too hot for more clothes, especially with Mulder’s intense body heat so close. And she did intend to hold him close tonight. And other nights, if he wanted her. 

“Talk about a waste of taxpayer’s money, Scully,” Mulder droned, sitting up and shaking himself alert. “The two of us sharing a motel room while another sits empty.”

“Oh,” Scully replied sleepily. “Believe me, I’m demanding a refund on my room.”

“Demanding a refund, Scully?” Mulder queried, now folding his pants and setting them on the chair by his suit jacket. “You weren’t happy with the level of service you just received?”

She squinted one eye open to look at him. “Mmm, you? You did good, Mulder. I’ll be sure to leave a generous tip for you at check out.” She patted the mattress next to her.

“I’ll be right there,” he assured her, disappearing off into the bathroom. 

She was asleep before he even turned out the light.

***

Scully had witnessed Mulder ejaculating for the first time at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, but she genuinely worried she might see an impromptu repeat performance when they arrived at the Space Center the following morning. Walking to their meeting, they bantered for the benefit of their NASA escort, Mulder practically bouncing off the walls and once again bombarding her with facts and figures.

“You remember all that stuff?” she asked, wearily, suppressing a yawn.

“You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?”

“Guess I missed that phase,” she sighed, mouthing ‘adult diapers’ at him behind their guide’s back.

She couldn’t help but make fun of him for his adulation of Lt. Belt, either. “Didn’t you want to get his autograph?” she teased as they left the Space Shuttle Program Director’s office, and when Mulder caught up with her he tapped her lightly on the ass in retaliation.

At some point in the afternoon, Mulder slunk off and made some phone calls, and when they drove to their accommodation after the successful launch that evening, it wasn’t the motel Scully had booked but a ritzy hotel with bellhops and room service. They finally made it back there in the middle of the night, following the complications with the mission and Lt. Belt’s questionable press conference.

At the reception desk, Mulder retrieved two keys, but when he held one out to Scully and she grasped her forefinger and thumb around it, he didn’t let go. She looked up to meet his smoldering gaze. 

“What’s the matter Houston; do we… have a problem?” She managed to keep a straight face, just about.

“What do you say we waste some more taxpayer’s money tonight, Scully?” he grinned, his voice hushed, seductive. “Maybe we can cross... the final frontier?”

She halfheartedly rolled her eyes at his pun, but her insides were already aflame. She drew her mouth into a tight, shy smile, and nodded her agreement.

nb. I want everyone to know that I watched the Falcon 9 launch and I managed to refrain myself from using the phrase ‘good orbital insertion’ in this fic. And that was a struggle.

AO3 link here.

[volunteerismandanarchy]

Why We Miss the WASPs

Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

New York Times, Dec 5, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-wasps.html

The nostalgia flowing since the passing of George H.W. Bush has many wellsprings: admiration for the World War II generation and its dying breed of warrior-politicians, the usual belated media affection for moderate Republicans, the contrast between the elder Bush’s foreign policy successes and the failures of his son, and the contrast between any honorable politician and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

But two of the more critical takes on Bush nostalgia got closer to the heart of what was being mourned, in distant hindsight, with his death. Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart described the elder Bush as the last president deemed “legitimate” by both of our country’s warring tribes — before the age of presidential sex scandals, plurality-winning and popular-vote-losing chief executives, and white resentment of the first black president. Also in The Atlantic, Franklin Foer described “the subtext” of Bush nostalgia as a “fondness for a bygone institution known as the Establishment, hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige. For more than a century, this Establishment resided at the top of the American caste system. Now it is gone, and apparently people wish it weren’t.”

I think you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.

Put simply, Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

Foer suggests this nostalgia is mostly bunk, since the WASPs were so often bigots (he quotes Henry Adams’s fears of a “furtive Yacoob or Ysaac still reeking of the ghetto”), since their cultivation of noblesse oblige was really all about “preserving [a] place at the high table of American life,” and since so many of their virtues were superficial, a matter of dressing nicely while practicing imperialism, or writing lovely thank-you notes while they outsourced the dirty work of politics to race-baiting operatives.

“Those who are mourning the passing of the old Establishment should mourn its many failures, too,” he writes. Which is fair enough: The old ruling class was bigoted and exclusive and often cruel, it had failures aplenty, and as a Catholic I hold no brief for its theology (and don’t get me started on its Masonry).

However, one of the lessons of the age of meritocracy is that building a more democratic and inclusive ruling class is harder than it looks, and even perhaps a contradiction in terms. You can get rid of the social registers and let women into your secret societies and privilege SATs over recommendations from the rector of Justin and the headmaster of Saint Grottlesex ... and you still end up with something that is clearly a self-replicating upper class, a powerful elite, filling your schools and running your public institutions. 

Not only that, but you even end up with an elite that literally uses the same strategy of exclusion that WASPs once used against Jews to preserve its particular definition of diversity from high-achieving Asians — with the only difference being that our elite is more determined to deceive itself about how and why it’s discriminating.

So if some of the elder Bush’s mourners wish we still had a WASP establishment, their desire probably reflects a belated realization that certain of the old establishment’s vices were inherent to any elite, that meritocracy creates its own forms of exclusion — and that the WASPs had virtues that their successors have failed to inherit or revive.

Those virtues included a spirit of noblesse oblige and personal austerity and piety that went beyond the thank-you notes and boat shoes and prep school chapel going — a spirit that trained the most privileged children for service, not just success, that sent men like Bush into combat alongside the sons of farmers and mechanics in the same way that it sent missionaries and diplomats abroad in the service of their churches and their country.

The WASP virtues also included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it, because for every Brahmin bigot there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanophile who understood the non-American world better than some of today’s shallow multiculturalists.

And somehow the combination of pious obligation joined to cosmopolitanism gave the old establishment a distinctive competence and effectiveness in statesmanship — one that from the late-19th century through the middle of the 1960s was arguably unmatched among the various imperial elites with whom our establishment contended, and that certainly hasn’t been matched by our feckless leaders in the years since George H.W. Bush went down to political defeat.

So as an American in the old dispensation, you didn’t have to like the establishment �� and certainly its members were often eminently hateable — to prefer their leadership to many of the possible alternatives. And as an American today, you don’t have to miss everything about the WASPs, or particularly like their remaining heirs, to feel nostalgic for their competence.

The interesting question is whether they had to die off as they did. The decline of the old establishment is often portrayed as a simple inevitability — with all those baby boomers storming the universities, all that demographic change sweeping away white Protestant America, how could the WASPs hope to preserve their rule?

Certainly something had to change. But along with the establishment failure in Vietnam, which hastened the collapse of the old elite’s authority, there was also a loss of religious faith and cultural confidence, and a belief among the last generation of true WASPs that the emerging secular meritocracy would be morally and intellectually superior to their own style of elite. Thus under '60s mandarins like the Yale president Kingman Brewster the WASP ascendancy did not simply fall; it pre-emptively dissolved itself.

I’m not sure that self-abnegation has aged well. In any scenario the WASP elite would have had to diversify and adapt. But its virtues were to some extent transferable to a more diverse society: The establishment had always been somewhat permeable to arrivistes, Jews and Catholics imitated WASP habits in the 1940s and 1950s, and in our era their admirable influence is still felt in figures as different as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

So it’s possible to imagine adaptation rather than surrender as a different WASP strategy across the 1960s and 1970s. In such a world the establishment would have still admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics and Hispanics (and more women) to its ranks … but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite-crafting strategy, rather than under the pseudo-democratic auspices of the SAT and the high school resume and the dubious ideal of “merit.” At the same time it would have retained both its historic religious faith (instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian Social Gospel and a soft pantheism) and its more self-denying culture (instead of letting all that wash away in the flood of boomer-era emotivism). The goal would have been to keep piety and discipline embedded in the culture of a place like Harvard, rather than the mix of performative self-righteousness and raw ambition that replaced them.

Such an effort might also have had spillover effects on politics. It’s de rigueur for liberals to lament the decline of the Rockefeller Republicans, or the compromises that a moderate northeastern WASP like George H.W. Bush made with Sunbelt populism. But a WASP establishment that couldn’t muster the self-confidence to hold on to Yale and Harvard was never likely to maintain its hold on a mass political organization like the G.O.P. Whereas an establishment that still believed in its mission within its own ivied bastions might have been seen as more politically imposing in the wider world — instead of seeing its last paladin, a war hero and statesman in a grand American tradition, dismissed in the boomer era as a “wimp.”

The point of this counterfactual is not to just join the nostalgic chorus around Bush’s departure for the Great Kennebunkport in the Skies. Rather it’s to look forward, and to suggest that our current elite might someday be reformed — or simply replaced — through the imitation of the old establishment's more pious and aristocratic spirit.

Right now, almost all the discussion of our meritocracy’s vices assumes the system’s basic post-WASP premises, and hopes that either more inclusion (the pro-diversity left’s fixation) or a greater emphasis on academic merit (the anti-affirmative right’s hobbyhorse) will cure our establishment’s all-too-apparent ills.

But nostalgia for what was best about the old establishment might point to a more radical theory of the case, one proposed by Helen Andrews in a 2016 Hedgehog Review essay on meritocracy and its discontents:

The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy — so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

This idea is heresy to our current ruling class; it would have been simple wisdom to the WASPs. If we would learn from their lost successes in our own era of misrule, reconsidering this idea — that a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is, and act accordingly — might be a fruitful place to start.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram, join the Facebook political discussion group, Voting While Female, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author of several books, most recently, “To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.”

You can follow him on Twitter:  @DouthatNYT