#mulder the moment scully is away from him: so what if i just died

[sentientsky]

mulder wrote this, didn’t he?

[randomfoggytiger]

Disproving CSM's Conjecture in En Ami

CSM postulates that Scully and Mulder aren't together because she doesn't fully trust him; that, although she's drawn to powerful men, she is afraid to open herself up to them.

"You'd die for Mulder, but you won't allow yourself to love him."

The problem is, he's wrong.

Because CSM mixed up her fatal flaw with Mulder's.

Self-Denial and Self-Sacrifice

CSM's theory: Scully rules herself by denial, and Mulder offers himself up as the sacrificial lamb. How is he wrong?

Scully's flaw is self-sacrifice, putting everything she covets from life on hold to join Mulder on his quest (comedically summed up in Bad Blood's "I do it all for you, Mulder! All for you!") The Starbuck-Ahab complex she harbored since childhood-- expressing her love through devotion-- kept her in the car the first year; but the Truth soon became as much about her losses as it did Mulder's tragedies. Unlike Mulder, however, Scully strives to have a life uncomplicated by mess and trauma and the constant grind. So, she sits in the car, year after year, waiting for her partner to adapt to their changing dynamic (which he did not do for almost six of those years.) Her own fears and insecurities are placed under the bootheel of the work; but when life becomes too complicated or emotionally clouded, Scully strikes out in confused rebellion (e.g. Never Again, Milagro, and All Things.) Moreover, Scully is the one who sacrificed what she held dear-- stability, a family, something other than 24/7 monsters and conspiracies-- to bear the cross of Mulder's quest, not the other way 'round. (Her realization-- that she does want this life-- and shift does not occur until All Things, a few episodes after En Ami.)

Mulder's fatal flaw is self-denial (and self-punishment): he set aside a normal life out of a determination to find or avenge his sister. If Mulder was self-sacrificial, he would have let Scully walk out of his life a thousand times over and born that heartbreak silently, alone; instead, he stormed out after her and broke down his walls to convince her to stay. Furthermore, his self-denial is ever present even in tender moments, drawing away from emotional vulnerability once danger is past and shying away even faster if Scully draws attention to the present moment. Mulder is the one to deny himself love and a life with Scully (Home, Detour, Dreamland I, Arcadia, etc.), not the one who sacrificed everything he wanted to stay on his quest-- this is what he wants. (The change from obsessive pursuit to measured search begins in The Unnatural, changes wholly in Amor Fati and Millennium, and reaches its conclusion in Closure.)

CSM's Observations

The reality that CSM observed both agents for years and years and came to the exact opposite conclusion is baffling.

He concluded that Mulder sacrificed normalcy for the Almighty Mission, projecting his own Messiah complex onto his 'protege' and patting himself on the back whenever Mulder was, yet again, tossed to the jaws of Death for the "greater good." He also concluded that Scully stayed in the basement because of the raw power she smelled on Mulder, keeping a cold yet lustful distance because she was afraid to risk her womanly love on the all-consuming passion of his might.

How very dime store novel of Old Smokey.

Both assumptions are, of course, very wrong.

Mulder Dreaded "More" While Scully Hoped for It

Scully gave many unsubtle hints through the series that she was ready for more with Mulder: her willingness to go down with him in Tooms, her overt jealousy in Syzygy, her pointed inquiry about his family genetics in Home, her displacement and hurt in The Field Where I Died and Never Again and The End and The Beginning and One Son, her "we just keep driving" in Dreamland I, her unspoken 'secret' that was practically ripped from her chest in Milagro, her flirting in The Unnatural, her IVF request, and on and on.

Scully is by nature reticent with her emotions, fearful to fully open up lest she be hurt or become a burden; but in Mulder's case, she's reiterated over and over (Irresistible and Elegy) that their relationship falls into the latter, not former, category. In Emily she is, once again, "alone"; however, the context to her statement is vitally important. In the hospital, she hoped for Mulder to claim a place by her and her daughter's side as co-parent; but when he uncomfortably withdrew instead, it proved that he still wasn't ready for "more." Scully was alone in places Mulder couldn't fill; and so, she said goodbye to that hope, alone; then to her daughter, alone; and bore the little girl's death, alone. The burden of her fully opened heart was too heavy, she assumed, for Mulder... and in a way, she was right-- not until Fight the Future, when forced to confront "them", did Mulder finally acknowledge it. Until then, sacrificially tucking her heart back inside her chest-- for both their sakes-- was what Scully deemed the best course of action. She sticks around for her own reasons, as she says in Memento Mori; but those don't exclude the hope that Mulder will someday "settle down, live something approaching a normal life." (Her plans change in All Things-- but she's not there, yet.)

All those years, it was Mulder who was more emotionally distant. He was content with his life, happy to spin tires down the tarmac forever with his partner. Mulder was willing to deny himself into eternity if it meant not having to sacrifice an aspect of the life or career he was comfortable with and nervous to change for 'more.' It's why he was so afraid in Fight the Future and so proud of himself in The Unnatural (the warmup), Amor Fati (the big swing), and Millennium (the victorious homerun.) Scully is the only one-in-five billion he has: in the past, he could tease about passing genetic muster, about his boyish agility, about so much more, but to act on it? It took him four years to initiate a hug (post here) and seven years to approach a label of sorts for their relationship. Mulder's an overly cautious man, more pessimistic than optimistic when it comes to people sticking around; and any traditional, long-term relationship he'd witnessed had broken down or was held together by deadened respect and a few bratty kids.

Now it's Season 7, he's learned his lessons, and they're here, together.

Or were, until Scully dipped on a sketchy roadtrip with their enemy.

Conclusion

The most unrealistic part of this episode (amid a host of several others) was that Scully, despite hearing the drivel CSM peddled the entire drive, decided that he had anything worthwhile to say.

Thank you for reading~.

Enjoy!

[carefulfears]

top ten mulder moments <3

DREAM ASSIGNMENT, UNHINGING MY JAW, ETC. buckle up babes!

1/ oubliette

all of oubliette really but there’s this one moment where he’s in the police station and he’s watching the video of lucy when she was 13 after escaping her kidnapper and she’s writhing around on the floor screaming and she can barely speak full sentences and she’s afraid of the light. and in the present day, she’s an addict living in a halfway house with convictions for drug possession and prostitution.

and he’s watching this tape and scully comes in and he says “it’s amazing she’s gotten anywhere in life” and scully says “by most yardsticks, she hasn’t.”

she has, though. she’s alive and she’s trying and she’s clean and passing her drug tests and she has a job. and that’s how he sees her, and that’s how he treats her throughout the episode. he tells her that she’s “the strong one” and he asks for her help and her opinion, he tells her that he just wants to know what she’s going through. he defends her to law enforcement and believes her when everyone else thinks she’s an accomplice. he weeps over her body when she dies, grieves the loss of her life.

it would be easy for him, as someone whose sister was kidnapped at the same age lucy was, to see her as a nightmare. she’s struggling and she’s traumatized and she’s an addict and a felon. but he doesn’t, he views her as hopeful, and you can tell that he respects her. he views her as having gotten somewhere in life, just because she’s still alive. and that more than anything really means a lot to me.

2/ paper hearts

in paper hearts when they find the 15th victim’s body and they think it’s samantha. and he’s standing there over it, shaking, looking down at what might be his baby sister’s corpse. what might be the end of the road.

and it might all be over, in this moment. he might not be able to search anymore, to hope anymore, to do the only thing he’s ever done every day for 24 years anymore.

and you just feel the crushing weight of it all, and then scully comes in with the lab results and says that it isn’t her. and he just buckles for a moment and takes a breath.

before standing up and saying, “it’s somebody though.”

it’s such a testament to his character to me, that he can’t sit in that relief for even a minute. it might not be his baby sister, but it’s somebody, and he grieves for them.

(not “somebody’s sister/daughter,” but somebody)

3/ one breath

the shot of him crying on the floor of his ransacked apartment.

he was offered a choice between staying there, waiting to see the bad guys, finding the only thing he’s ever wanted, the answers…and going to sit by scully’s hospital bed, when it might be the end.

and he left that apartment and held her hand.

as moving as that scene is, it’s the aftermath that always gets me. it’s the consequences. it’s the price that you pay for choosing to stay soft, the way that mr. x looks at him in this same episode and tells him that he’ll never win, he doesn’t have the heart.

so he walks away from the battle and comes back to the wreckage, and all he can do is sit down on the floor and weep.

(also if i think even a little about him giving scully the superstars of the super bowl tape, i’ll literally make myself ill crying)

4/ sein und zeit

when, after spending the entire episode obsessively insisting to everyone who will listen that the missing little girl is “not dead,” he says that they should just go home.

that they are not going to find those people’s daughter alive, that he is too close to this case to make a sound judgement, and that he wants to take some time away from work.

seven years after scully chased him into the street and yelled for him to “stop running after” samantha, and a day after she followed him into a hallway to tell him to not go looking for something he doesn’t want to find, the person whose “relentlessness” has kept him searching for nearly 30 years, just wants to go home.

he’s depended for so many years on the delusion, on the hope, on the belief that every child to go missing from their home is “not dead.” and now he stares at the ground in front of two people who love him, and admits to being wrong. to needing a break.

it’s one of the saddest moments of the series to me, but there is such an acceptance in admitting defeat, and it’s a subtle precursor to his decision in the following episode that he’s ready to know the truth about what happened to samantha. the delusion isn’t helping anyone. not him, not samantha, not this missing little girl. and it’s devastating and freeing at the same time.

5/ je souhaite

his genie wish. i have the softest spot in my heart for je souhaite mulder okay!! this is the mulder that called the jersey devil “beautiful” and ran through the woods to try to save it. the mulder that couldn’t bear to add to the soul eater monster’s suffering, even when it would’ve saved his own life.

i love that the first thing he does is ask the genie what she would wish for, just because he wants to know. and you can see how much 500 years of being a slave to people’s selfish desires has weighed on her, in the way she tells him that she would just want her days to be her own. to sit and have a cup of coffee.

i love that he tries to win at the genie wish, to save the world. tries to construct the perfect wording and all-encompassing fool-proof plan. throws around words like ending “tyranny.” and in the end, just deletes it all, and wishes for the genie to be free. that ending shot of her, finally her own person for the first time in 500 years, sitting having a cup of coffee, is one of my favorite moments of the series.

i love the lesson in this episode too, for someone who spends his whole life trying to make up for the fact that he lived when his sister didn’t, that he doesn’t have to figure out how to save the entire world. he can call his best friend and sit on his couch and watch caddyshack. but he asks the genie what she would wish for, because he genuinely cares, and he chooses to use his wish to give it to her, because he can do that.

6/ pilot

these tags: “this man is overflowing with reverent tenderness.”

the Moment™️ in his motel room…this is when you can see it. this is when both scully and the audience understand something. this is when it’s all over.

they’ve both been kind of concealing so much, behind sarcasm or professionalism. they really like each other. they want to trust each other. but she was sent to spy on him, to debunk him, and neither of them have any reason to believe it’ll be more than that.

when the power goes out and scully feels the marks on her back, she is just so scared. she is so young, and this is her first job, and she’s becoming exposed to things that she had never considered. when she walks into mulder’s motel room in only her robe, and then drops it, she’s afraid, and also acutely aware of her own vulnerability.

the way the camera hangs on his face (he’s the focus, not her exposure, what is he seeing?), in the candlelight, as she exposes her body to him and he just checks to make sure she’s okay.

what he’s seeing is her vulnerability, and he responds by both sheltering and matching it; he wraps her up and gives her the bed, sits below her on the floor. he tells her about sam. he tells her about what “matters” to him. and it isn’t something that he tells people, but anxiously walking mostly-naked into the room of your new assignment isn’t something that she does either, and he understands that.

it’s 2 episodes later in squeeze when scully makes her decision, she’s “on the side of the victim,” on the side of the vulnerable. but it’s a motel room in bellefleur where she learns what that side is, where that work is being done.

(related, conduit: the way that he shuts scully's concerns about him down, then validates them quietly, when they're alone. tells her what his life actually is. that it's "walking into that room," every day, feeling like maybe one day he'll open his eyes and his sister would be there. you really get the sense that he's never told anyone that before, but that it's something he turns over in his mind, something he's always aware of. he's saying: you're right, this is what i do, but i don't know how to do anything different. how am i meant to do anything different? it has always been this way. and it's the only thing that you need to hear him say to really get it. it's the only thing that scully needed to hear him say. this is the most vulnerable revelation that he ever makes, a month into their partnership. she never forgets it.)

7/ anasazi

just a little moment that i think about a lot is the way that after mulder sees his dad in colony and tries to hug him, and gets cut off with a handshake, the next time that he sees bill, in anasazi, he reaches out to shake his hand.

he notices everything, he internalizes everything, he only wants to give what he understands as wanted from him.

he knows that his dad does not want to hug him, and he still reaches to him first, offers that connection that bill is comfortable with.

(it always makes me think of the first time he met jackson. the way that the first thing he did after “my name is mulder, i’m your father. i know it must seem strange to you.” was hug him… “became a father while i was still a son,” or whatever the national said.)

8/ emily

you guys. you guys 🥺. this whole episode just really gets me so bad. the way emily is “shy” and doesn’t speak or really look at anyone, and the only time we see her smile is when mulder makes her laugh, as soon as she met him. him yelling at the doctor (i love that the show, through mulder, actually says the term “medical rapists.” like yes let’s call it what it fucking is!) and saying he wants everything that could help her. when emily's sick, and mulder instantly picks her up to hold her.

but the moment to me, the one that stays with me, is the very end. it's the funeral. it's when all is said and done. and scully asks...who could do this? who could bring a life into this world whose only purpose is to die? and mulder answers, "i don't know. but that you found her, and had a chance to love her...maybe she was meant for that too."

he looks at a person who was created to be used for other's gain, literally manufactured intentionally to suffer and then die, and he believes...maybe that's not all that she was meant for. maybe she was still meant to be known, to be found, to be loved. and they did love her.

(the way he shows up late to the funeral, but scully knows he's coming to get her, tells her mom she's going to ride back with him. the way he turns away from the casket, never able to look loss in the eye, but turns back so scully isn't in it alone. the way he brings flowers, like he brought flowers to the hospital when scully was diagnosed, like he stopped to bring flowers to missy's grave.)

9/ beyond the sea + lazarus

my father is dead (long live my father!)

y’all ever think about how sparingly and intentionally mulder says “dana”? y’all ever think about how she’d only ever been “scully,” to him, until “how are you, dana?” the day of her father’s funeral? the way she looked up at him, as he gently touched her cheek.

the first thing that scully does after her father dies, is tell mulder that she believes in a psychic. (“i thought that you would be pleased that i opened myself to extreme possibilities”).

the first thing that mulder does is sit down, lower himself beneath her, (he has done this since the motel room in bellefleur, the day they met), and look up to her to ask: “does this have to do with your father? you said that he didn't approve of you becoming an FBI agent. now, if being on the job now makes you feel guilty or uncomfortable or uneasy, i think you should back away. because if it’s clouding your judgment, you’re putting yourself in danger.”

(he is always listening, he is always more aware than people think. he perceives her attempts to “please” him as dangerous, or uncomfortable for her. encourages her to step back.)

when she starts to cry and walks across the room, she’s dana again. she’s not her father’s “starbuck,” she’s not mulder’s “scully.”

“dana…open yourself up to extreme possibilities, only when they’re the truth.”

in lazarus, it’s only 2 episodes later (2 episodes after “i’m afraid to believe”) when jack willis dies. (“along the way, there are other fathers.”)

mulder spent that whole fucking episode doing his lil tricks and tips and pulling out his lil experts trying to convince her that jack had been body-swapped, including the story about watches stopping at time of death. when jack dies, and all that’s left is the watch she had given him, stopped at the same time as his heart, she looks up to mulder for answers so softly.

and his response: “it means…it means whatever you want it to mean. goodnight.”

he spends his life begging for belief, but never at the cost of her integrity, her peace. he cannot be “pleased” by a forgoing of self, a forgoing of what she’s ready for.

(looking at this now, it also reminds me of irresistible, and the way that he told her that it’s understandable to be upset, to be affected. “i’ve seen agents with 20 years fall apart on cases like this.” it’s not because she’s young, it’s not because she’s inexperienced, it’s not because she’s traumatized. it’s because she’s human. and it’s good, it’s right.)

10/ redux ii

my favorite moment of this episode is when scully sees mulder through the window of her hospital room for the first time, and he plasters that smile on his face, comes in to sit on the bed and hold her hand and kiss her cheek. and she keeps trying to ask him about the conspiracy, about what happened at the pentagon, about who the inside man at the FBI is, and he just keeps quietly telling her that he's not there to talk about that. and she keeps pushing questions until he leans in to her and smiles and says... "hey, scully, how 'bout those yankees?"

hey, scully, it's not about that. for as many years as he's gone doing nothing but obsessing over conspiracies to anyone who will listen, he isn't there to talk about conspiracies. he's there to hold her hand, to keep that smile on his face so maybe she won't worry, to break down by her bedside as soon as she's asleep. he just wants to spend time with her. in reduxes, they aren't ahab and starbuck. they aren't charging forward or dutifully shepherding on. they're buckling in hallways. they're clinging to a hand through tears.

there is just no room: for their roles, for their pretenses, in the end. in this moment, he isn't the "mad captain" who cares about nothing more than the quest. he's the man who walked away from the fight so that he could sit next to her, who gave up all of his answers so that she could see her sister one last time. he's the man who "refused to believe" that she was dying, but still celebrated her birthday that year for the first time ever, just so that she would have it. and in that hospital room, at the end, through teary eyes and shaky smiles, it just isn't about anything bigger. she doesn't have to die as dutiful to the cause, for him to be there with her.

(the final shot of this episode is one of my favorites too. when scully is cured, she is going to live, her family is in her room celebrating with her, and mulder is crying alone in the hall.

these tags: "all his open love and loneliness and numbness and fear of loss. he's such a gentle man. he kills but he is gentle in his heart. he takes so many beatings and he listens quietly and has no shame. it's hard for him to play the games men play. this ending. he just found out scully is going to live. and everyone else is in there with her. and he has to sit outside. and it all hits him in one go. his sister. his parents. scully. his wasted years. his stupidity and arrogance. how many times has this happened to one of us. you grit your teeth and get through unimaginable difficulty. and then when it's all over you can't celebrate. it hits you on your own in a terrible way."

i always think of that. i always think of superstars of the superbowl. i always think of how ill-equipped and in-adequate we are, when it comes down to it, to deal with grief and trauma and loss. how "we bury our dead alive." and in the end it's "the best news" he ever could've heard, and that steady smile is reduced to sobs.)

honorable mention from paper hearts: i fear that i simply have to talk about him shooting roche in the head...did everybody see him shoot roche in the head? i thought him shooting roche in the head was lovely. you can watch it tear him apart, leading up to the moment. roche sitting in front of him, taunting him. how sure are you? you'll never know without me. but ultimately, he looks over at caitlyn, and he can't risk it. he had told caitlyn, "my name is fox, i'm gonna take you home." and then he did, even when ensuring she was found safe and well, meant sacrificing everything he'd been looking for.

the transition from that moment on the bus (roche's blood on the windows, caitlyn's screams, mulder's gun) to the walls of the basement office...the way the camera slowly pans over the UFO articles. the "i want to believe." the mysteries. all of that wishful thinking (as roche had said earlier: "it's like you think your world will be okay as long as you can believe in like...flying saucers") contrasted to the flesh and blood of the evil he's trying to escape. and, in the end, all there is left is one heart in front of him. one last victim that he'll never know the truth about, because he wasn't willing to risk the price paid for answers.

(and then scully says...but we will find her. how? "i don't know. but i do know you.")

honorable mention from oubliette: my top 2 episodes do be my top 2 episodes but there are few moments in this series that just make my heart sink to my stomach more than the image of mulder crying over lucy's body...that triptych line: "mulder who still grimaced at cadavers and cried over the bodies of dead women where most men she knew couldn't muster the wherewithal to appear disturbed."

lightning round appreciation for my favorite little tiny moments we don't talk about enough: casually giving his hotel key to the unhoused man in the jersey devil; holding kevin and telling him he knows he just wants his sister back in conduit; helping roland pick out a shirt to wear ("i think this one would look stylin' today, what do you think?") in roland; going back in for the kids even though he's afraid/had failed before, in fire; marty saying she "just knew" he would be at her sentencing, even though she couldn't see him, in mind's eye; taking scully to the liberty bell, after she complained about wanting a life outside of work, in shadows; when cassandra told him that reading news stories about him saved her life, because no one would ever believe her, until she found out about him, in patient x; telling skinner to get marita off the stand, "no. let her go," even though her testimony was the only thing that could save him, in the truth; telling off the sheriff in conduit who said it was "only a matter of time" before "something bad" happened to ruby because she "was no prom queen"; telling scully that he doesn't care if she comes with him or not, but he's not giving up on ruby "until they find a body."

[slippinmickeys]

Fic prompt - Scully goes on a date with the Perfect guy. Mulder is angry, decides to go to a bar to find a one night stand. He just gets drunk and TLG bring him home where... He finds Scully sleeping on his bed

I started this forever ago, but could never really get it to flow and didn’t know how to end it. Reading through it now… it’s a little uneven, has not so much as whispered in a beta’s ear, but I kind of like where I left off and… I have so many unfinished works sitting in docs I’m letting this one fly free. Thanks for the prompt so long ago, Anon.

Dale. The guy’s fucking name was Dale. Who named their kid Dale, anyway? Perfect smile, perfect teeth, perfectly coiffed hair, polite, a doctor, and so damned charming that even Mulder had trouble not liking him.

He had a sailboat. He was taking Scully out on it. He was somehow more Vineyard than Mulder himself – a guy from fucking Chilmark. And Scully was eating it up. She was excited about the date, had been talking about it all day, ad nauseum. Well, he was pretty sure she had. He’d had to tune her out for his own mental well-being.

You’d drink, too, he’d said, maybe out loud, and it took him a moment to register the warm hand that clapped his back, the presence next to his barstool.

“I know, buddy,” Frohike said, eyebrows like caterpillars crawling across his brow, his hand squeezing Mulder’s shoulder.

“Frohike?” Mulder asked, surprised as all hell to see his friend standing there.

“Thanks, Nadine,” Frohike said to the barmaid, who handed over Mulder’s cell phone and credit card, both of which Frohike slipped into Mulder’s sport coat pocket. “Let’s get you home.”

Mulder stood woozily, and the older man had to occasionally correct his trajectory as he stumbled past the billiard tables that Casey had pulled three booths to squeeze into the back room of the bar.

The Vanagon was idling out front, Byers behind the wheel. Langly was riding shotgun, rubbernecking out the window and snapping a tight knot of green gum. The valet looked pissed and said something to Frohike that Mulder couldn’t make out as the little hacker tried to maneuver the much taller man through the open door.

“Keep your pants on, key jockey!” Frohike clapped back as he slid the big door closed. Mulder slumped against the window, miserable, sliding down the vinyl seat as Byers pulled away from the curb.

“What happened?” Langly asked, turning around and peering at Mulder through smudged glasses.

“Scully’s on a date,” Frohike said carefully. Byers’ eyes flicked to Mulder’s in the rearview, but he said nothing.

Langly nodded knowingly. “She been dickmatized? Is this dude some kind of punk?”

“No,” Mulder burped, righting himself in the seat as the contents of his stomach sloshed. “He’s actually a really nice guy.” He directed his comment to Langly’s second question, adamantly refusing to acknowledge his first.

“Let’s just get Mulder back to headquarters,” Frohike said, glaring at Langly. “Let him sleep it off.”

Mulder grabbed onto the side of the van as his head began to spin, and the thought of sleeping on the guys’ lumpy couch surrounded by the close-quarters smell of hot circuitry and day-old nachos triggered a violent urge to propel the contents of his stomach out the window beside him. He took a deep breath and steeled himself.

“No!” he burped again. “Take me home please.”

When Byers’ took the exit for Old Town, Mulder unclenched, and that’s when the urge to puke turned into a biological inevitability.

The look on his face must have conveyed some real urgency, because the next thing he knew, the van had swung over to a curb and Frohike already had the door open. He fell to his knees on the floor of the Volkswagen and hurled an arc of vomit onto the sidewalk outside the van.

“Whoa,” he heard Langly’s nasally voice pipe up when his coughing and gagging had died down considerably. “That’s some serious upchucking. I think he shot it past the fire hydrant.”

He spit once and then looked down in his hand to see a wad of Burger King napkins that Frohike had pressed into it. He mopped his face as the other man slid the sliding door closed and Byers merged back into traffic.

Mulder settled himself gingerly back onto the big bench seat.

“I feel a lot better,” he said pathetically, the sweat on his forehead cooling.

��Well you smell a lot worse,” Frohike replied, scrunching his nose in distaste.

“Bet Dale can’t hit the fire hydrant,” Mulder said.

“Dale can probably hold his liquor,” Frohike grumbled, and the puke-induced euphoria he felt withered, replaced by a humble misery. He wondered where Scully was now, if Dale had let her take the helm. He wondered how big the boat was, if it had a sleeping berth. If Dale and Scully had ever used it.

“You’d drink too, if-” Mulder started, but his words died on his tongue as it came to him what he was about to say. Out loud. To the guys.

The cab of the vehicle took on an embarrassed silence and after a long moment he looked up to find Langly reaching a hand back to him, a foil-wrapped stick of gum on offer along with a look of knowing sympathy.

Mulder took the gum with a nod of thanks and stuck the sheet of spearmint in his mouth, chasing out the taste of bile and sick and rampant jealousy.

When Byers pulled the van in front of Hegal Place, Mulder had trouble meeting anyone’s eye. Frohike was on the sidewalk waiting for him when he tipped himself out of the back of the van, sobriety duking it out with whatever liquor still swam through his bloodstream.

Frohike looked up at him with a kind and steady hand on his arm. “You want me to walk you up?” he asked.

Mulder felt around his pockets for his keys, locating them after a quick search. “No,” he said. “I got it from here.”

Frohike nodded and patted him one more time. “Put a trash can next to your bed, huh? Drink some water.”

Mulder thanked him and turned on his heel, missing the look the three guys gave each other before watching him ascend the stairs and fumble his way through the front door of his building. Eschewing the elevator and up the stairs because moving was better than standing still, down the hallway – where he’d thought he’d told her he loved her in as many words as he could, and still she went out with Dale – and through his front door. He had it bad, he realized, as he stepped through his door and into his apartment. He had it so bad that he thought he could smell a trace of her perfume – the expensive stuff she kept in her sock drawer – when he walked through the door of his own apartment. Christ.

He toed off his shoes and made immediately for the shower, catching the alleyway stench of whatever vomit hadn’t made it all the way to the sidewalk. Standing under the hot spray, he rethought some of his more recent choices.

If he were honest with himself, he’d gone to the bar tonight to pick up a woman and take her home. It had felt like a wild, righteous idea at the time, made on an indignant huff just as Scully was waving goodbye and Dale put his hand on her back to lead her through the double doors of the Hoover building. A decision made with jealousy boiling through his veins, but abandoned when he sat down at the bar and pictured another woman with her head thrown back on his sheets. Anonymous sex didn’t hold the appeal it once had for whatever reason, and he’d ordered a drink instead. And then a second, and a third and on down the line.

What would he say to Scully if she were here now, he wondered, toweling himself off. What do you see in him? That was obvious. He bent over and drank water directly from the faucet, slurping until the headache he felt coming on was assuaged. He looked at himself in the mirror. Why him and not me? He thought, and sighed, padding naked into his bedroom – not bothering to turn on the light – and sliding on a pair of pajama pants he pulled from a drawer.

He lowered himself into the bed, dejected, tired, still a little woozy, when a sound – a quick inhale of breath – sent him shooting back up to standing, heart pounding, instantly sober.

“Mulder?” came a groggy voice from the other side of his bed, and it took him a moment to reconcile his partner’s voice and its place in his dark bedroom.

“Scully?” he said, his voice sounding two octaves too high. “Jesus.”

He reached over and switched on a bedside lamp.

“I’m sorry,” she said breathily, blinking rapidly. She scooted up on the mattress and back into the pillows. Her hair was mussed and she wore a shell-shocked look. “What time is it?”

Mulder was still so surprised to see her that he couldn't put together a coherent answer. “I-what are you doing here?”

Scully looked over at him, took in his pajamas and his bare chest, his still-damp hair, and a look of profound embarrassment washed over her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I was waiting for you and then-”

Maybe Mulder wasn’t entirely sober yet, because his brain still felt absolutely befuddled. “Where’s Dale?” he asked, sounding rather like a simpleton, like he expected Dr. Dale to come sauntering into his bedroom at any moment, wearing one of Mulder’s robes, handing over a cold martini to Scully and saying ‘great bedroom for a shag, thanks for letting us use it.’

“Out on his boat, I imagine,” she said, not meeting his eye.

“But why are you not… on his boat?” Mulder lowered himself back onto the mattress, perching on the edge. “Wait, did he try something? Are you okay?” He leapt back up to standing.

“It's fine, Mulder, he didn’t do anything. I…got seasick,” she said, finally turning to look at him, a dubious, slightly jokey look on her face.

“But you don’t get seasick.” He was still standing.

She gave him a look like he was being deliberately obtuse. It started to occur to him that she was here on purpose, not because something calamitous had happened.

“But you were excited about it,” he said, lowering himself once again back to the bed. “You kept talking about it.”

“Mulder…”

“Scully?”

She thunked her head back against the headboard.

“Maybe I was hoping you’d talk me out of it.”

“You we’re hoping I’d-“ his heart soared momentarily, a bird taking flight. And then it fell out of the sky.

“Where have you been?” Scully asked, head tilted to look at him, her brow creasing, eyes narrowed.

“I was… at a bar.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks turned scarlet in the warm yellow light of the lamp and a look came over her face like a dawning realization. “Were you… there for someone?”

His life flashed before his eyes. Scully could tell when he lied to her, and he had gone to the bar with the intention of picking up a woman.

When he didn’t answer, Scully’s eyes widened and she stood suddenly. “I have made,” she said, looking around as if for a purse or a set of keys, “an appalling miscalculation.”

Mulder wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or herself, but suddenly she was on the move, darting through his bedroom door in a rapid exodus.

“Scully wait!” he called out, following her, just hoping to catch her before she got to the door. He felt like if she went through it, there was a real chance he might never see her again. Dana Scully didn’t do embarrassment well.

But he almost stumbled into her when he reached the hallway. She had pulled up short next to his billiard ball coat rack, her nose scrunched up in a look of minor revulsion. He had left his discarded clothes and shoes in a rumpled trail from the door to his bathroom, and the fumes coming off of them were sour and unpleasant.

“Mulder, it smells like vomit.”

He doubted she could see his chagrined expression, backlit as he was by the light spilling from his bedroom, but he shrugged.

“I… may have tied one on,” he admitted.

“You went out drinking?” Her face looked like she was working on a very hard math problem. “Alone?”

“Well, the Gunmen came and got me.” While he was sure she was glad he hadn’t driven drunk, he knew that’s not what she was getting at. “I was upset,” he finally admitted.

“Upset?”

He took a hesitant step toward her, watched her eyes slowly climb up to his face the closer he got to her.

“Jealous.”

Her gaze was moving rapidly back and forth between his two eyes. “Jealous?” Her voice barely above a whisper. His stomach did a loop, like a swallow over a corn field.

“You wanted me to talk you out of your date?” She smiled and sighed, looked down and away from him. “What’s wrong with Dale?”

Her gaze climbed back up, lingering a little, he thought, on his bare chest.

“Nothing’s wrong with Dale. That’s the problem.”

Mulder reached out a hand, wanted run it through her hair, but grazed her shoulder instead.

“You looking for a fixer upper? I know at least five different-“

“Mulder,” she said, exasperated. “Shut the fuck up.”

He did so immediately.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 8 thoughts

tears. in my eyes. shaky breathing. oh. okay.

well. no place to start but the beginning.

stares at my laptop screen for a long, long time before typing. give me a minute. allow to me collect myself.

okay. we start with scully's mom narrating. and we learn, thanks to the subtitles, that her mom's name is margaret. this is information i will also be storing in my useless scully facts book.

so we knew she had two brothers, but a sister is also mentioned, named melissa. and we get this story from her childhood, about how dana- which feels wrong for me to type, but i will- was given a bb gun by her brothers, and she joined in with them shooting a snake. but then she realized it was bleeding and she cried as it bled out in her hands and held it while it died. which is already So much to handle. and her mom is saying that she feels how her daughter felt that day watching the animal die.

the next thing we see is mulder is there, and. he's saying it's still too early to know if she's gone. but. well.

we see a gentleman bring something out. and it is a gravestone with her name carved into it.

he turns away like he was burned from even looking at it. and man. that hurt. very badly.

we see that her middle name is katherine. and we learn this because we see it on her gravestone.

he goes back to his place (where he still sleeps on the couch) but then he gets a phone call that they've found her. and he busts into the door when the nurse says he can't go in there. that's our man!

he's screaming at these poor healthcare workers, somewhat rightfully suspicious they're involved with the government who took her, but also man. they don't get paid enough. however, i understand the emotional explosiveness this had to have provoked. so he is really just screaming, at the nurse, at the doctor, demanding to know what the hell happened, where she came from, and he says "i swear i'll do anything, i'll find out what they did to her" while being escorted out

then there is a very tense conversation between the doctor and her mother and him. the doctor must have already have been in quite a state, because mere minutes ago a raving angry man accused him of stealing his friend, and now he's sitting with said angry man explaining that they genuinely have no idea how she got here, and that she has no indication of injury.

we also learn that she had no desire to remain on life support past a certain point. and mulder knows this because. he. he. he uh. well he signed her will.

now i think maybe that's just something you have to do at the fbi and i can see them making a little joke out of it- a nice little trip to get each other's will signed, make a day of it, keep it light and funny- but man. man in this context. oh i'm gonna be Sick.

so we see a woman holding a crystal over her body and we learn it is her sister melissa!!! she's really pretty. she tries to show mulder that you can feel her energy by holding his hands over her but he gets angry and leaves.

(i love this dichotomy here, that somehow the ultra skeptic has a sister who is into talking about spirits and crystals. truly i feel this is what happens to people raised catholic)

at this point i wrote "girl i'm stressed tf out" and yeah. kinda the whole mood.

melissa is saying that his anger and fear is blocking the positive emotions she needs to feel, which echoes my statements about how he has been too cranky this season. but i can't even laugh because the man is in Distress.

he goes back to his place after saying he needs "to do more than just wave his hands", and he's bouncing a basketball and putting tape on his windows. i get it. that oppressive feeling of being unable to sit still. every moment dragging like a lifetime. bounce bounce bounce. he wakes up and rips the tape off his windows.

and back to attending to her bedside. i do not think this man has been clocking into his shift at the fbi.

we see a fellow enter wearing a suit and carrying flowers and i was like oh shit is it last rites time? um. so maybe i don't know what gets worn to a last rites event. i realize my weakness in this area and will do some research when we're done here.

but it's not anyone here to do that- it's frohike, the guy from the lone gunman who was making weird comments about scully! he must have come to pay his last respects. he picks up a clipboard and i thought oh my gosh he's gonna start reciting poetry- but he notices something weird on her chart and sneaks it out

it seems the whole thing was orchestrated, because mulder goes back to the freaks at the lone gunman, who invite him to come over and watch earth 2 and point out the factual inaccuracies- which, all things considered, is very sweet- but they send her blood data to a hacker that uses a richard nixon persona and he says that yeah, her blood is weird. and mulder's like, is she gonna make it, and they say no. it got very somber.

in terms of scully view, we see her on this dock of a boat between life and death. i thought that was nice imagery, and extremely eerie. those around her bedside are on one side of the dock, and it looks like the rope could snap and drift away at any moment.

the nurse comes in to do some blood work and i have another "augh blood" moment. so i look away. and mulder is REALLY pondering her blood. i thought he was honestly gonna take it for himself, maybe bring it in for testing or keep it like an emo.

but no! a strange man in a suit STEALS the blood!

so mulder is back into track star mode and is SPRINTING after this guy. i always forget that he is a runner. and he is RUNNING around this hospital and makes it to the parking lot until...

he is stopped by deep throat 2.0, a man for whom i realize i have no other name. but you know who i'm referring to, right? so i guess that name will work for now. deep throat 2.0 says that mulder needs to stop NOW, and that HE got deep throat 1.0 AND scully killed by looking into things too hard. which is an absolutely awful thing to say btw. deep throat 2.0 has a gun to mulder's head and says to stop searching.

mulder proceeds to run after the blood thief despite these warnings. can't say i blame him. he finds the blood thief!!! and they have a bit of a fight until...

deep throat 2.0, who earlier said he wanted to remain out of this mess, rolls up? so we're getting mixed messages here. and he says i'll take care of this and SHOOTS THE BLOOD THIEF?????? in the head.

back to the hospital. mulder is not pleased about the prospect of life support being removed but melissa says he has to honor her wishes. and he's going on about the blood protein and the doctor is like "why do you think this has anything to do with blood protein" and he Does Not Explain

her mom calls him "fox" again and says this is a moment for the family, but he can come too. and he won't come in. he's the wettest and saddest a man has ever looked as they go in there. and then the rope holding her to the dock of the afterlife is severed.

man. if i had been a contemporary viewer i would have been sobbing. thank god i've seen gifsets that prove this wasn't the end for her. because if i hadn't, i would have been in shambles. i mean i Was in shambles but like i would have been bawling on the floor.

cig man is with skinner. i honestly didn't think we'd get up to any sort of fbi related tasks in this episode, but he hands skinner a report and leaves. and then mulder comes in and denies being involved with the shootout at the hospital

(it's worth noting that he is doing all the denying to be an ass to skinner, and yells about "how does it feel, all the denial")

and he says that it was "cancer man" who took scully. i had been calling him cigarette man, but cancer man is very comparable.

the next thing i wrote was "SKINNER IS A BITCH????" this was because he said that mulder is "just as responsible" as cancer man for scully's situation if he knew the risks of this line of work and didn't warn her.

skinner baby YOU CAN'T SAY THAT? seriously i cannot figure this guy out. every time i think i have a read on him he does something like this that shifts my interpretation. what a horrible thing to say to someone.

cut to scully cam. she's on a table in metaphysical land. and her dad is there. he calls her starbuck and refers to himself as ahab- so the first mate and the captain. and he's monologuing about how he never knew how much he loved her until he realized he could never be with her again, and he says they'll be together "soon", but not now. so i'm wondering if she can hear all of this going on. i would guess so.

mulder is in the cafeteria with melissa and she is trying to talk a bit of sense into him. she says "you could spend the rest of your life finding every person that's responsible and its still not gonna bring her back" and he replies "including myself?"

now usually i would say that mulder taking the blame upon himself is tragic and typical, but here, having it also been implied by skinner AND deep throat 2.0, i am thinking, man, he's got to really believe it, even more so than all the other times he couldn't save everyone. which is. fucked up. so immensely fucked up. i'm sorry you pissed me off last episode baby but we can go to the zoo again like i planned. let's go see some tigers and cheer you up.

a woman walks in and asks him for change for the "cigarette machine", which was the first time in my life i have ever heard the term "cigarette machine", so maybe the earth really is healing

but he finds a pack with an address in it, and then, straight from my notes:

"CIG MAN'S HOUSE. OH MULDER IS THERE AND POINTING A GUN AT HIM. AND ALSO SCREAMING. "why her" oh his finger gets very close to the trigger"

cig man says he likes her and mulder, and. wow. what a despicable human being. he says that he likes mulder more for showing up to his place with a gun. says he's playing the game. mulder seems to have a realization he is acting just like those he swore to destroy and puts the gun down. cig man says it'll be their secret. and also that he was the one that told skinner that mulder shot the guy in the hospital even though he didn't think it was true.

we next see mulder sadly tapping at his computer. he prints a one sentence resignation letter "effective immediately" NOT even a two week's notice, that's how bad they fucked this man up

skinner comes by and says it's unacceptable while mulder is packing all of his things. and mulder says:

"i hate what i've become"

man. fuck. he hates the rage he has been driven to. the loss of control. the way he sees himself as being responsible for deep throat and scully. and all of it stemming from his need for answers, to track down his sister. he hates what that feeling of insufficiency has led him to and the path he now walks upon. hates it. hates his situation and himself and the world.

skinner decides to share some personal story time: he went off to vietnam- willingly enlisting on his 18th birthday. and then while he was there he shot a kid who was covered in grenades. the camera glances back at mulder occasionally, who, despite all of his grief, seems to be consulting his oxford training to try and remember what you're supposed to say to a guy who just told you he killed a child in vietnam.

and then he says he watched all his friends die and that he almost died- he was put in a body bag, and was in a coma for two weeks- and he was too scared to learn what happens next. but mulder isn't. and that's why his resignation is unacceptable.

mulder adds things up and realizes that it was skinner that gave him cancer man's location. again. complicating the vibe i get from skinner in doing something positive now. he says that every day is a risk.

deep throat 2.0 rolls up, saying that the people who did this to scully are going to break into his apartment tonight, and he'll have to kill them. he looks displeased by this- aversion to taking any sort of lives- but resigns himself to it.

so he's in his place in the dark ready to start blasting, when he gets a knock on the door. and it's melissa.

this is where we get the iconic exchange "why is it so dark in here?" "because the lights aren't on" which made me laugh so thoroughly seeing it out of context before i ever decided to watch this show

and melissa is MAD. scully is weakening, and she came to get him to say his goodbyes, but he won't go because. well. shootout is about to go down. this is his ONE chance to learn who did this to scully. but she doesn't know that is why he won't leave, so she YELLS at him, about being in a place even darker than her sister, and asks "why is it so much easier for you to run around trying to get even than just expressing to her how you feel? i expect more from you. dana expects more from you"

and man. those words are heavy. he locks the door, knowing that his place is gonna be robbed, and that he'll never know who hurt her, and comes down to see her.

and he's talking to her. holding her hand. saying he's here. he doesn't know if it'll change anything, but he's here.

when he goes home, his place is entirely ransacked, and he falls to the ground crying. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. i can't even put into words how bad this broke me. big strong mulder weeping on the ground, his career in shambles and his best friend dead.

i feel like i need to pause there just for how heavy it was. like this was his lowest low. lower than even vampire sex.

but he soon gets a call and he smiles so wide!!! and we learn her eyes are open!! it is the sweetest smile i have ever seen!!!!!!

he gets down to the hospital and she's awake and talking- but she doesn't remember anything- and he, being the insufferable man that he is, says the following:

"i brought you a present (holds up a vhs tape) superstars of the superbowls"

man. man. man. man. she deadpans so quickly. "i knew there was a reason to live"

he must have grabbed a random tape off his shelf and brought it to her with the express intent of antagonizing her back in the realm of the living. and he thought of something to say along with it on the car ride down, his hands shaking. something, anything to make her laugh. a stupid vhs tape. his constant sports references. her quick tongue. oh dear lord help me these two have ruined me.

he gives scully her necklace back, which i wrote about in all caps, while her mother and sister watch

and then we learn that the nurse who was taking special care of her was never actually there when scully wants to thank her and the other nurse is like "um no one who works here has that name" so. SCULLY PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE (POSITIVE)??!?!?!?

overall. man. i am experiencing such a volume of emotions. what the hell. she's back, though. and we saw how much she means to him. and i feel like i could type a million words on the subject but i don't even know what to say because they're still all stuck in my chest. they love each other sososo much.

will he ever tell her what he did in her absence? how he tried to quit? how he broke every rule trying to save her? how he screamed at the doctors, how he broke into cigarette man's house, how he almost pulled the trigger? how he watched a man die when deep throat 2.0 shot him? how he was blamed for her condition by himself and by others? how he left his apartment to be ransacked, giving up his one chance to catch whoever did this to her, to try and let go of his grief and be with her instead? or will he keep quiet except for the latest witticisms and frequent visits and presents and stories by her bedside while she gains strength and recovers?

and how he left, too, when he knew she was okay. how he must have wanted to be there more than anything in the world, but knew she needed to rest, so he left her with her family. how he could breathe easy again. how he had to make it seem like it was cool, and everything was contained.

man. this tv show. i just typed all of those words out and i still feel like i didn't even begin to cover the things i'm feeling. i feel like i need to shake them up and down.

but this should be good, because the x files are reopened... so are we seriously, as the kids say, so back? only time will tell!

[deathsbestgirl]

for the least favorite eps: Arcadia, PVB

okay let's go!!!

arcadia.

i watched this one last night and i felt like i had nothing to say. generally speaking, i think a few others have talked about it better than i can lol and they've kind of covered why i love it! and for me, i really have to step back from the general fandom view of it. this is one i have to look at the broader context of season six. if you just watch arcadia, i don't think it hits right at all. (also i think i need to dig into other episodes it reminds me of, but that might be a later separate post. we'll see. usually the connections i find make me love an episode more.)

season six is at one time one of the most msr seasons but also so tense. in the end, diana fowley shows up and it twists scully inside. this woman she knew nothing about, who was there when mulder found the x files & worked on them with him, who's been with him in the way she never has, and she shares mulder's beliefs. right into fight the future, where she may be absent but shes heavily impacting scully. to the point she's ready to walk away, believing mulder doesn't need her & she's only held him back. he gives her this whole speech, telling her how important she is to him, she saved him, made him a whole person. they almost kiss, before everything shatters & she nearly dies. but she's drawn back in. in the beginning, mulder's mad that that she couldn't hand over proof to the fbi, that she won't believe and she clings to what he told her in his hallway.

season six is very tropey, but most of it is also erased, they don't remember the events of dreamland or monday, triangle is a dream/the past. arcadia specifically, is taking a trope fandom usually makes fun or to bring two characters together, and uses it more like mulder & scully are working out some issues.

as kae says, mulder is peak annoying. almost insufferable. but it's these moments that tell us a lot. mulder says at the beginning that 'this isn't an x file.' he's not thrilled with the assignment, he's excited to get back to their work. scully disagrees, tells him 'it's unexplained,' and teases him. but it's tense. i think at other times it would have just been. funny. but he's making marriage jokes, 'not taking the case seriously,' and taking jabs at scully about 'fitting in here' — which is actually misunderstanding what it is that she really wants.

scully was also excited to get back to their work. she was just as bored without the x files, especially with the work they were forced to do. and maybe she did want to 'play house' but i think mulder ruined any fun she was having and her walls went up. so she started being annoying too lol

i love that this episode is tense, a little angsty. but their work partnership is still intact, even if a little strained. they go about their investigation in a fairly typical way, although mulder just tries to piss off the neighbors thinking this is simply human for most of it. i honestly love the way he tries to shake up the neighborhood. it's similar to mr. kline and is ultimately what got him & his wife killed. so he's on the right track (what a surprise). (and even when scully's right that it's an x file, i don't think she's right about anything else lol so classic.)

i always really liked @randomfoggytiger 's mulder analysis & this post lol, and i love the way kae connected the theme of this episode to a common theme running through the show.

i think fandom tends to view this through an msr lens, and not that isn't but it isn't the very in love & together phase of season seven episodes. it's them figuring out how to get there. not understanding what the other thinks or wants, what a relationship between them would like, or what it would mean for their work.

now for some scene specifics that i LOVE.

i love the way mulder reflects the man murdered in the beginning. mr. klein? is so fed up with the ccnrs & the uniformity. he's annoyed by win painting his mailbox. he's excited to get that weird lawn ornament. his wife is very accepting of his bothers, though she doesn't seem to care personally. it's just. it's very reflective of m+s through this episode.

and THIS moment. the way scully puts her hands up to be like 'okay enough, back off.' it's so funny. like. mulder & scully are affectionate. but it's mostly gazing, lower back / arm touches, hand holding...hugging is rare, it's reserved for deeply emotional & vulnerable moments. not just because. but here they have to. and i think that's uncomfortable for them even as they're soaking it up.

then after they're all moved in, as soon as they're alone:

this part says to me they were excited (personally) for this case, at the very beginning they're having a great time. i think scully is even amused by his "honeymoon" tape joke & his (bad) sandwich joke, i love when she throws the gloves at him lol

it's also just funny to me to see how they play these roles. like they just aren't good at it, they're not very subtle. but these people don't know them so it works. the neighbors are overly friendly and overly concerned, and mulder & scully are trying to find out why but they're not the easiest group to crack. despite the intense fear & worry cami clearly feels.

i also think this episode sets mulder up as a house husband, which is soooo fitting. i actually think this is closer to what he talks about in home than he's willing to think about. it's got a small town feel, close knit community, safety. it's just ... extremely suburban with too many rules. and he likes breaking rules atp more than following them. and this time, it actually is his job to break them. this was a perfect case for mulder, with or without the monster angle.

i think i've said this before in other season six talk, but from the moment i saw someone talk about how m+s don't have a blueprint for their relationship, it's the lens i see season six through completely. they start trying to communicate more clearly, not well but they're getting closer. here they're in a very particular limbo (especially after two fathers/one son), where neither of them can deny their feelings (but scully's are "the problem"), and their trust & partnership has been tested. agua mala was about reaffirming their trust & partnership and some off the clock bonding. arcadia is their first on the clock test, which undercover as a married couple is probably also kind of a nightmare for them given their circumstances lol

BUT GENUINELY they were both enjoying it at the beginning, and they have different moments throughout where one is and the other isn't.

one particular thing i love is the way scully puts up boundaries. because i think after a few jokes, and mulder telling her she fits in perfectly...she feels she has to. mulder isn't ready and he doesn't understand, it makes her retreat.

like after mulder sees the monster...scully asks him if he cares to hear what she thinks. he pauses, looking at her, before he tells her "always." they really getting back into step with each other but after hurt & confusion, all the tension...it takes time. they need to hit certain beats to get there and i think this episode does that very well. the moment when mulder thinks scully's been attacked by the creature, that he's about to find her eviscerated. it before that when he's searching the hole they dug, and she comes out speaking quietly & gently, telling him to come in and "call it a night." this is so domestic and partnerly it kinda kills me. he really does always listen. scully is the only person who can pull him back, keep him grounded. and she always give him the space to explore his theories and she investigates them seriously.

the way mulder is terrified when he sees the door and walks into the house. it's every time he's almost lost her flashing before his eyes again, not that long after tithonus. after he could have died in agua mala, before they even patched things up. to me, agua mala, arcadia & alpha build up to milagro, open the door for the unnatural & field trip. it's the perfect set up for biogenesis, the sixth extinction and amor fati. the final hurdle mulder needed. all of these things slowly build scully's confidence back up so that she's ready too. even though she still won't make the first move.

[oohnotvery]

Hand To Your Heart (Chapter 3)

Hi, friends. Thank you so much for your incredible patience with me on this chapter. When I started writing this story, I had noooo clue that I’d unexpectedly be stepping into a new chapter of life at the exact same moment. I don’t really want to delve into details yet, but I hope to give you the full story someday soon :) Like all of life, it’s a mixture of good and bad, but mostly good.

As always, please trust that this angst-fest will have a lovely resolution.

-E.

tagging @today-in-fic

Present Day

Scully isn’t sure what exactly she expects from Mulder after that awful night in his apartment. Apart from their slightly tipsy decision to become friends with benefits many weeks ago, they have never openly addressed their sexual arrangement. It is a frail, vulnerable thing. To put words to it would surely break it.

But after slipping out the door of his apartment, she does half-expect to receive a phone call later that evening. Hey, Scully, sorry I fell asleep, and sorry about . . .

Sorry about what? He fucked her, which was the agreement they made. No one ever promised anything about making sure the other person enjoyed it. For all intents and purposes, Mulder did nothing out of the ordinary. He can’t ensure she comes every single time they have sex; hell, he may not have even realized she didn’t come. In his mind, there’s probably no issue at all.

But Mulder isn’t any old caveman who sticks it in and finishes without thought to his partner’s pleasure. In fact, every single other time they’ve been together, he’s lavished her with attention, usually pulling one or two orgasms from her before he even begins to think about tending to his own needs.

She’s not crazy, then. That night was an anomaly. So what possible excuse could he have for treating her the way he did? She ticks off the possibilities:

Maybe he was drunk. She’s fairly sure she tasted alcohol on his breath, and she knows that even for a man his size, he has a relatively low tolerance. Or maybe he was getting sick. Maybe he was feeling bad. Maybe he just couldn’t stop thinking about his burning office.

Can she forgive him for it? If he comes to her and apologizes, will it be enough to lure her back into his bed?

Although her logical mind says no, no way, I won’t put myself in that position ever again, her emotional brain knows the truth. She would slip back into his arms like water cascading over sharp rocks. Although their arrangement hurts her, she loves it too much, even when it’s awful. She loves that she is the woman Mulder chooses to bring to bed. She loves that she is the person who gets to touch him and taste him. She loves that she is the one who gets to stare into his eyes as he comes.

When she leaves his apartment, she is full of fury and humiliation, but when she wakes the next morning—physically sore and emotionally wounded—some of that initial anger dies. She knows she has a tendency to forgive him too quickly, and that this tendency is borne from a deep-seated terror that he will stop wanting and needing her.

She wants so badly to be hard and cold towards him. She wants so badly to demand an apology, to stand up for herself and her dignity.

But when he walks into work the next morning and takes his place at his desk, everything inside her seizes up. If I bring this thing to light, she reminds herself as she watches him shed his suit jacket, I give myself away. Once he knows that I care, it’s all over.

And so she stays quiet, and apart from a quick hello, Mulder does too. In fact, for the rest of the day, he hardly acknowledges her. Days pass in this way and she starts to grow more and more concerned that she’s done something wrong. That maybe he fucked her like that because he’s angry at her.

Should she ask him?

She nearly works up the courage to demand answers, but distraction in the form of a bomb threat in Texas arrives. The distraction does its job, balancing out their equilibrium, lowering Mulder’s low-simmering frustration and softening Scully’s hard edges. Some of their normal camaraderie even returns. Mulder turns playful, a bit jokey, excited to get out of D.C. and turn his mind from the excruciating loss of the X-Files.

When they return to D.C., Scully swears she sees a new page turning for them. He almost kisses her right there in his hallway, and though they’ve done this act dozens of times before, this time feels different. Its approach is slow, deliberate, and weighty, and the affection in his gaze disarms her. Maybe sex isn’t all there is between them. Maybe Mulder does feel more for her than lust.

And then there’s a bee and an impossible journey to Antarctica. If anything were going to repair this broken relationship, it would be Mulder’s dazzling heroics.

And yet.

They return to D.C., frostbitten and exhausted, and Mulder turns angry and moody and inaccessible once again. He’s livid when she waffles on whether they saw a spaceship in Antarctica, and he’s furious to find out that Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley have been assigned to the X-Files.

Relegated to the bull pen, they interact less and less. A few weeks ago, humiliated and angry and unsatisfied, she vowed never to sleep with him again. But now, even if she wanted to engage with him in that way, there would be few chances to do so. All their earlier pretenses for getting together disappear. Without the X-Files, he no longer has a reason to drop by her apartment to “go over a file.” She no longer has a reason to invite him out for drinks to discuss autopsy notes. They stop traveling frequently, so there’s no conjoining rooms.  

Her heartbreak processes slowly. It’s been weeks since he fucked her like he didn’t want her, but she’s just now starting to feel like her world is falling apart. Because even though she will not pursue him, the sad reality simmers in her subconscious: she wishes he would pursue her. But weeks pass and time stretches between them, and he doesn’t make a move. There are days when she can convince herself that Mulder is just bored and unhappy and unmotivated, and that he doesn’t have the energy to work up a sex drive. But on other days, her steadfast sense of rationalism kicks in, and she is smart enough to discern that he simply doesn’t want her anymore.

It hurts. It hurts, but she doesn’t let it show. She dons a cold mask and watches as they grow more and more distant from each other.

Everything’s fine, she tells herself on repeat, day after day after day.

But at night, when she’s alone, she drops her face into her hands and cries. Because they’re broken. She’s broken.

And everything is not fine.

**

It is a hot, cloudless summer day when the elevator door slides open and Scully spies Diana Fowley walking through the bull pen. It’s been weeks since their paths have crossed, although Scully occasionally spies the other woman at security checkpoints during the morning rush hour. It is rare, however, to see her up on this floor.

Distracted, Scully forgets to exit the elevator car and has to lunge to catch the closing door. The hot coffee she’s holding in a flimsy paper cup sloshes down her wrist and forearms and she curses as she steps out into the hallway.

“Careful,” comes a disapproving voice, and Scully’s head snaps up. Diana brushes her shoulder as she sashays into the elevator, mouthing ouch as her lips curl into a twisted little wince.

Cheeks flaming, Scully scowls and continues down the hallway towards the bull pen. Diana Fowley never brings good news, so she’s not exactly surprised to find that Mulder is already starting to pack up for the day.

“Going somewhere?” she asks, glancing casually at her watch. It’s not even noon.

He flashes her a neutral look, nodding. “Maryland.”

She bites her cheek. “With Agent Fowley?”

If Mulder is surprised at her guess, he doesn’t show it, just yanks his suit jacket from his chair and swings it over his arm. “Yep.”

Scully frowns, stepping around the desk to block him from leaving. He sighs irritably and runs a hand across his jaw.

“What is it, Scully?” he asks with an impatient glance at the clock.

She tamps down the pesky surge of hurt that flashes through her. “Is there a case?”

“Yep.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“It’s X-Files business,” he replies evasively.

“You aren’t on the X-Files anymore, Mulder.”

He shrugs. “Diana’s requested my expertise on this matter.”

“Just yours?”

“She doesn’t need a scientist around, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replies, finally making eye contact with her. “This is an investigation into a paranormal event. It’s not really up your alley.”

She balks, her eyebrows flying to her hairline. “Not up my alley? Really, Mulder?”

“You know what I mean,” he huffs aggravatedly. “Don’t take it the wrong way.”

But her hands are beginning to tremble. “Might I remind you that I was an equal partner on the X-Files for nearly five years, Mulder? That all we did was investigate the paranormal and the unexplained and the unsolved phenomena of our world? In fact, you might even be able to say that the paranormal has been my bread and butter for nearly half a decade.”

He rubs at his eyes so hard that she’s tempted to reach out and stop him. You’ll get wrinkles, she would have chided him a few months ago. Now, she simply stays silent.  

“Fine, come if you really want,” he says with a half-hearted shrug.

“Gee, what a warm invitation,” she snaps. She digs her fingernails into her palms, trying to tamp down her rising indignation. But it’s been building and building and building for so long, for so many weeks, and she’s not sure she has any control over it anymore.

Refusing to take the bait, he sighs. “Come if you must, Scully, but like I said, there’s no need. It’s just going to be me and Diana on this. Don’t waste your time on something that doesn’t involve you—”

“But I’m your partner—”

“We’re not partners,” he retaliates, so loudly that several people look up from their desks.

It’s a low blow, and the regret that briefly flashes across his face tells her that he knows it too. But he’s mostly right. They aren’t really partners, not anymore. Not in the way they were when they were investigating the X-Files.

Crossing her arms protectively across her chest, she lifts her eyes to meet his gaze. “So you have a new partner then?” She just barely resists adding, “someone leggy and buxom and brunette, perhaps?”

His jaw twitches. “Oh, don’t do this, Scully.”

“That’s not an answer, Mulder.”

He shakes his head and takes a step closer, dropping a large palm heavily across her shoulder. “You know Diana has been consulting with me since she took over the X-Files,” he says, speaking to her like she’s a child. Her stomach turns and she bites back the words she wants to say: no, I didn’t know that. “Those files mean everything to me, Scully, and you know that. I can’t say no to the opportunity to work on them just because that opportunity doesn’t involve you. Don’t hold me back here.”

The breath leaves her body. Stunned, she steps back, letting his hand slide off her shoulder. In her mind’s eye, she’s suddenly back in his hallway, many weeks ago. I’ve just held you back, she hears herself telling him. But you saved me! he replies earnestly. As difficult and as frustrating as it’s been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You’ve kept me honest . . . you’ve made me a whole person.

Did he mean any of it? Or was all of it just to keep her under his control?

Turning away from him, she tries to ignore the infuriating sting of tears building in her eyes. And if Mulder notices her pain, he doesn’t say anything. After a few seconds, when she’s sure she can look at him without crying, she tips her face up to his. Her mouth parts and she tries to speak, tries to say anything to recover her dignity. But emotions choke in her throat and she just drops her head again. She feels him step in close and this time, she can’t stop the tears that break over her lashes.

“Scully, come on, stop, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says earnestly, his palm falling to her back, his lips to her ear. In her mind, he is fucking her too roughly, too emotionlessly, too distantly. In her mind, he is falling asleep before she even has a chance to come. In her mind, she is sitting in the car crying as her body burns with pain.

“I’m sorry,” he continues, slipping his hand down to squeeze her waist. It is too familiar, and she flinches. “You don’t hold me back, Scully, you know that. But this case has potential and I’m finally feeling motivated about something. This is important to me.”

What he doesn’t say is plain enough: you’re no longer important to me.

She nods, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. The taste of iron reminds her of the nosebleeds she used to get when the cancer was ravaging her body. If she had died then, would Mulder respect her more? She would have become like a martyr to his cause, someone to be revered and worshipped the rest of his life, like Samantha. If only she had succumbed then, maybe he would love her now.

“Scully,” he tries again, and she shakes her head.

“It’s fine,” she says a little too brightly, plastering on a fake smile and glancing up at him for good measure. All she knows right now is that he can’t see how badly he’s hurt her. To admit to that would be to admit that she cares about him far more than he cares about her. It is self-annihilation.

“It’s good,” she continues, her voice rising. “It’s good that you’re happy. That’s all I—that’s all I want, Mulder.”

And to her astonishment, he bends down and presses a quick kiss to her cheek. She recoils, shrinking towards the desk. By the time she recovers from her shock, he is already out the door.

[unremarkablehouse]

Thoughts from my FTF Day rewatch:

I would be passed out by the 20min mark if I followed the drinking game rules

Both Mulder and Scully have amazing hair in this movie

Scully evacuating the entire building in less than 5 minutes is awesome

Mulder thinks the building is about to explode and his instinct is to try and run back in, smh. Scully yelling at him ‘no’, like a bad puppy, only to have him listen is an underrated shipping moment

I know this is fiction, but I’m offended they’re trying to scapegoat Scully. If they hadn’t found the bomb everyone in the building would have died, I’m not following the logic of how they can be blamed.

Scully handing Mulder his suit jacket before his OPR hearing is such a wife move…

‘One is the loneliest number’, Mulder’s lack of game is adorable

Mulder shows up to Scully’s drunk at 3am and begs her to put clothes on. Worst. Booty call. Ever.

Also Mulder’s deflection “what are you implying?!” when Scully calls him on the fact that he’s shown up to her apartment drunk at 3am

“Take away that which he cannot live without…” so nice foreshadowing that you’re going to abduct Scully… but the bee was a total fluke, the consortium got lucky. This movie is confusing

Mulder and Scully talking to kids never fails to amuse me. Mom and Dad vibes all the way.

Tanker Trucks is said so many times in this movie it loses all meaning

Am I the only one distracted by how long Mulder and Scully go without changing clothes in this movie? Admittedly, I love that Scully went to her OPR meeting with corn husks in her hair and Skinner just looks at her like she’s doing the walk of shame…

It’s weird watching the hallway scene without them making out

Mulder’s so sweet when he’s rubbing Scully’s bee sting. His little apology when he thought Scully pulled away is such a cute vulnerable moment

Wait, if Mulder and Scully were both infected with the virus and then given the same vaccine, why was Mulder the only one affected by the artifact? The mythology arc is so confusing.

I feel ripped off that we never get to see how Mulder got to Antarctica.

It’s alarming how many times they inject each other with unknown substances on this show

‘I had you big time..’ ok, cute call back but does that mean Scully faked dying to get mouth to mouth?

Scully totally said ‘I see it..’ when the spaceship rose up

Aww, Mulder and Scully handholding got me in the feels

Happy FTF Day!!

[scullysexual]

You're Never Just Anything To Me (1)

@today-in-fic | ao3 | Prev. Chapter

A look into Mulder and Scully's relationship starting from Millennium going all the way up to Requiem.

I. Millennium.

His lips still tingled with the feeling of their kiss. Their first kiss. Mulder always imagined their first kiss would be when one of them was near death. He always imagined it to be sad, angsty, a moment too late when all was about to be taken away from them.

In the back of that truck, clutching tightly to her hand, the fungus eating away at his mind, believing he was going to die that he wishes they had kissed. A whole life gone by, a new turn in their relationship and he hadn’t even got a chance to kiss her. Somehow it made perfect sense.

But they hadn’t died. They had recovered. They were alive and together but Death still lingered around every corner, ready to take them at a moment’s notice. If they wanted to make the most of each other then they were going to have to go a little quicker. One night they agreed, Scully agreed, take the next step.

Until Cancer Man reappeared. Until Scully was suddenly in Africa and he became miles away. Maybe there wasn’t a next step, not for them. Every time they tried something happened, something got in the way.

But not tonight. Not tonight at 12am on the 1st January 2000. Tonight, Mulder was going to take the next step. What else could happen, he wondered. If the world was going to end let it happen while he kissed Scully.

The world didn’t end. Not theirs anyway. Scully had smiled and he knew then that their world was just beginning.

At 12:07 on the 1st January 2000, he leans, grinning to himself like an idiot, against the passenger side door clutching at his arm that was beginning to throb slightly in the background.

“So any big plans for tonight?” Mulder asks as Scully presumably drives him home.

“What do you mean?”

“Usually I won’t see you again until the 2nd. What do you normally do on New Year’s Eve. Or New Year’s Day?”

“Oh, uh…Well, normally I’ll go to my mom’s- Or Bill’s- for Christmas and stay there for New Year. We’ll celebrate and then I’ll drive home on New Year’s Day ready for work the day after.” She pauses, frowning. “What about you? What do you usually do?”

It dawns on the both of them that they have never had this conversation before. Mulder knew, to some extent, that Scully spent the holiday season with her family but he never knew she stayed that long. It made sense, her father’s dead was tangled up in the same week (With Emily’s not too far after), of course she would want to stay around her family as long as possible. He felt guilty for depriving her of that. The unplanned ghost hunting had her behind schedule by two days and while she went to her mother’s on Boxing Day she had returned on the 29th to him and an unofficial X-File case.

Mulder shrugs. “Watch some movies, maybe go after an unofficial X-File case. With everyone indoors it’s nice to feel like the only person on the planet.” He misses out the part where he says he wishes she had been with him during that time. Crouched in some forest in Nowhere, USA was lonely without his partner beside him.

“Oh, Mulder…” Scully says with a hint of sadness. “And you do that every year?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

There’s a pause then. Before Scully asks. “And what about this year?”

“What about it?”

“Is that your plan? Are you going to go off on some adventure tomorrow- later today?” There’s a hint of something in her voice, something Mulder can’t quite make out.

“Well usually I don’t have a broken arm at this time,” he says with a smile. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t think I was planning to go anywhere later today.”

An energy hangs in the air between them. Here they both there, annual plans changed, both in the same state, in the same city, at the same time.

Scully takes a sudden turn unexpectedly, bashing Mulder’s bad arm into the side of the door. He grimaces, looking around.

“This isn’t the way to my apartment,” he says as if he needs to say it at all.

“No. It’s the way to mine.”

…

A wine bottle clenched between her legs, Scully pulls the cork free gently, careful not to spill any of the wine. Music plays from the radio and a sense of déjà vu overcomes her. She was in this exact scenario almost three years ago but instead of a shape-shifting rapist on her couch, the real thing sits there. She smiles, watching him clutch at his arm and look around her apartment like it’s the first time he’s ever been there.

Scully pours two glasses and then makes her way back over to the couch. It’s late, almost 1am. Once upon a time she would’ve gone out, drank and danced until the very early hours of the new year, stumbled home and woke up with a hangover from hell the next day. Now it consists of being with her family and driving home on empty, lonely roads. She thinks of Mulder, of him traversing some random town in search of Bigfoot, an alien, the truth. She almost wishes she could’ve been there with him.

She coughs, catching his attention.

“I probably shouldn’t be giving you this,” she says holding the glass of wine out towards him. “You’re not supposed to mix alcohol and pills together.”

Mulder reaches for it anyway. “That was three hours ago, my arm is hurting. I promise I won’t take any pills until the alcohol is fully out of my system.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Scully says seating herself down on the opposite end of the couch.

They take a drink and Scully lets the wine warm up her body, filter itself all the way to her brain. She settles back, letting the warmth and the music and the alcohol consume her.

“So what’s this about?” Mulder asks.

“Hmm?”

“You were gonna take me home,” Mulder clarifies. “What changed your mind?”

“Here we are together on New Year’s Day for the first time.” She takes another sip of her drink. “Together,” she emphasises and Mulder quirks up an eyebrow, grinning. “It just felt right to spend it…together.”

Mulder nods taking a sip of his own drink.

“And we’ve never actually done this,” Scully adds. “Not…me and you anyway.”

Mulder looks at her and a smile crosses his lips. He too is thinking of Eddie van Blundht.

“I’m glad you changed your mind, Scully.”

She smiles behind her wineglass knowing he wasn’t just referring to her inviting him around tonight.

“Me, too,” she says her lips still tingling with the remnants of his kiss. She wants him to do it again. Then she remembers she can do it too.

But she doesn’t. She takes another sip of her wine, the last drain and when she finishes it, gets up to grab herself another one- remembering to bring the bottle over with her when she comes back.

....

They are three glasses of wine in and a fourth sits in their hands. It’s approaching 4am, the CD has stopped playing and Scully’s feet are bare and his in lap, he keeps his arm away from her jostling feet as he listens to stories from her childhood of the new year.

He feels warm and fuzzy, the pain in his arm long gone, lulling himself into a trance, watching his finger trace up and down the arch of Scully’s foot.

Scully has suddenly gone quiet and he looks over at her. Her head rests on her hand, her eyes hooded but looking at him in that alcohol-induced tired way.

“Sleepy?” he asks.

Scully nods letting out a tired sigh. “I’m usually in bed by 10pm. 10:30 if you decide to call.”

Another bout of guilt courses through his body. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he grins letting him know she’s joking. “I like it when you call.”

Love and happiness blooms in his chest. He smiles at her and she is smiling back. Then his eyes fall to her lips and he’s overcome with the desire to kiss her. He reminds himself that it’s okay to kiss her now but he still teeters on the edge of uncertainty.

Mulder swallows. “Scully, can I…” He sees her watching him, her breath caught in her throat. “Can I kiss you?”

“Please,” she barely says. It falls from her mouth like a whisper.

She removes her feet from his lap as he hovers, one-handed, over her, lower part of her body resting between the V of her legs. His lips descend on hers, tasting the wine on her lips and on her tongue. He drinks her in, craving more. Her arms wrap around his torso, her hips lifting off the couch.

She jostles his arm and a searing pain shoots through it. The kiss is broken and Mulder yelps out in pain, grasping his arm. Scully sits up, a worried, sorry look on her face.

“I’m sorry. Maybe we should wait,” she says.

Mulder shakes his head, the pain in his arm subsiding, the semi in his pants making itself known. He doesn’t want to stop. He’s tasted her now and he wants more.

“It’s fine, we’ll figure out a way.” He stops then. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself. They only just got to the next step, what if he was moving too fast.

But one look at Scully and he knows she’s on the same page.

“I’ll be careful.”

…

This is Mulder, she thinks over and over again as he kisses her.

It’s 4:30am on New Year’s Day and Mulder stands in her bedroom, a head full of wine, sleep fog skirting the edges of her brain. What if what they’re doing is wrong? What if this changes everything? What if this fucks up their partnership? Would they even be able to recover.

Mulder pulls away, frowning. “Are you okay?”

She looks up at him then. Mulder. Her one in five billion. Her constant. Her touchstone. This could never be wrong, she thinks.

“Yes,” she answers and she kisses him again, careful not to catch his broken arm.

Tiredness of alcohol propel her forward. Without breaking their kiss she tugs at his t-shirt, helping him manoeuvre it around his sling. He chucks it to the side and then makes a start on her sweater. When it’s off he stares at her in awe. Why, she has no idea. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; their first case, the countless times he’s walked in on her mid-dressing because he refused to knock on their adjoined door (to be fair, she could’ve locked it but she’d be lying if she said the thrill of him walking in on her didn’t turn on her) In those instances, he’d quickly averted his gaze, muttered a trail of apologies and he spun around. Now there was no need to apologise, now he could stare until his heart’s content.

While he does, Scully’s attention turns to his sweatpants. Unchartered waters lay beyond two pieces of clothing. She places her hand on his hips, testing the water, trails her fingers along his waistband. Mulder waits, allowing her this time, a gentle nod to say it’s okay.

A lip caught between her teeth, she pulls at the waistband, yanking his sweatpants down, boxers too.

She gasps when his cock springs free, her mouth suddenly dry, and hands itching to reach out and touch. Not yet.

Scully’s hands go to the button of her jeans as Mulder pulls his own pants off him completely. He stands there, completely naked, in her bedroom. This is Mulder, she realises once more.

Not before long, they both stand there naked in the moonlight aside from his sling. Mulder sighs, falling down to his knees as he pulls her closer, inhaling the skin at her naval.

“Scully…” he says looking up at her, his chin resting just under her stomach. “I need…Can I…?”

It suddenly dawns on Scully just what he’s asking. She lets out a surprised “Oh!” suddenly feeling like an inexperienced teenager. “I guess so…If you want to…?”

Mulder wastes no time. He guides them back towards her bed, pulling her gently down atop of it. Once she is seated, he kneels between her legs, his face millimetres from her centre.

Scully waits, holding in a breath, as he leans forward and…

She clutches the bedding, a moan escaping her lips as Mulder’s tongue slides through her folds. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything like it. Her body falls back onto the bed as Mulder moves up towards her clit. He bites it like one of his sunflower seeds, trying to break the shell, then he soothes it with his tongue, sucks it with his mouth. Scully’s breathing becomes more erratic, she can’t stop the gyrate of her hips.

Her orgasm breaks like a dam, she feels it through her entire body. It surges through her and escapes from her mouth as a cry. She hopes her neighbours are out tonight.

Mulder gently guides her through the aftershocks, knowing to stay well away from her clit as he helps her ride the lingering effects of her orgasm. He kisses his way back up her body, coming to lay down next to her, the effects of her post-orgasm making her twitch every so slightly. He kisses her shoulder, rests his chin against the spot.

“Was that okay?” he asks sounding so unsure, as if she hasn’t just had the most mind-blowing orgasm of her life.

Scully rolls towards him with a bewildered smile across her face. Hazy, and sleepy, and drunk, her orgasm still sending little tremors through her body. “Are you kidding me?” she asks and then she is kissing him. The taste of herself and the wine making her want more as she rolls him fully onto his back.

“How’s your arm?” she asks, hovering over him.

“Fuck my arm,” he answers simply, his mouth devouring her again. Scully laughs, pulling away.

“I can think of fucking something better.”

She grasps him by the base, not harshly, slowly pumping her hand up and down. His free hand tightens around the hip.

“I wish I could hold you with both hands,” he says with longing.

“Give it 6 to 8 weeks and you can.”

Her cock beneath her, she slowly sinks herself onto it.

“I can’t wait—Fuck, Scully…”

His nails bite into her side as Scully lets herself adjust around him, wincing at the slightest of pain as she stretches to accommodate him.

“You okay?” he asks, looking at her with concern.

“Yeah just…give me a second.”

“Sure.”

She clenches around him, trying to ease the sting.

“If it helps, you feel fucking amazing.”

Scully reopens her eyes, looking down at him. His hand is squeezing her side and she realises how hard he’s trying to not move. She smiles at his patience and his care, feeling a sudden burst of love and appreciation for him surge through her.

She chances moving, slowly at first, feeling the pull and the release. Eventually the stinging eases, making way for the pleasure that blooms through her core.

“Are you close?” Mulder asks through gritted teeth.

And she is, she is right there, there’s just something missing.

“Nearly. I need…”

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence; Mulder knows. His thumb against her clit, he circles at a fast pace. She’ll show him how she likes it one day, perhaps not tonight, but another time, they have a lifetime. For now it works, she falls over the edge and three thrusts later Mulder in following her.

It's 05:17 when they finally fall asleep. She’s peed and cleaned and lays snuggled between her sheets, her head resting against Mulder’s good arm. She feels satisfied, sated in a way she hasn’t felt for years. Mostly she feels safe and happy, secure in her bed, in Mulder’s arms.

…

Sleep still curls around the edges. There’s a pleasant ache between her legs, the feel of cotton sliding against her bare skin. Memories of New Year kisses, wine, and a distinct smell of sex come to her and she is reminded of Mulder’s presence.

Scully rolls towards the other side intending to find a sleeping Mulder, to snuggle up into his warmth and fall back asleep.

What she is greeted with instead is an empty side and cool sheets. A panic grips her. Did he go home without telling her goodbye?

“…Yeah, I’ll call her as soon as and tell her.” Mulder’s voice drifts through the partially open door. “Of course. Happy New Year to you too, sir.”

Scully opens her eyes slightly to find a shirtless blurred Mulder standing in her doorway. She smiles happily.

“Morning Sunshine,” he says as he places his cell phone on the dresser and wanders towards her.

“Morning,” she answers croakily. She lays back down, diagonal, her head on the pillow Mulder slept on. She feels the bed dip beside her, an arm wrap around her pulling her closer. She inhales the clean detergent smell of Mulder’s sweatpants.

“How’s your arm?” she asks eyes still closed, arms wrapping around his waist.

“Better,” Mulder answers. “I took some more painkillers so I should be okay for some time. How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“Yeah, late night last night, huh.” She hears the grin in Mulder’s voice.

“Who was on the phone?”

“Skinner. He’s got a case for us.”

Her heart sinks. “Today?” Today was their day off, she had zero intention of spending it anywhere other than this bed. Preferably with Mulder in it.

“No, silly.” His hand cascades through her hair, playing with the tresses. “It’s not urgent. It’s on our desk for tomorrow.”

His ministrations are half lulling her back to sleep.

“What are you doing today?” Scully asks. She waits, barely daring to breathe, awaiting his answer.

“Well unless you’re planning on kicking me out, I was gonna stay here. Watch a movie, hang out with you.”

“Just hang out?” Her eyes are open now, looking up at him.

“Well,” he answers with a grin. “I wouldn’t mind doing some other things.” His hand starts to trail downwards, venturing as far as he can reach which is around her mid back. “And then maybe order some food. Unless you’re sick of me then feel free to get dressed, drive me home, and then I’ll leave you to your day.”

She had no intention of leaving this bed for another hour much less kicking him out, getting dressed, and driving him home. She makes her point clear by snuggling deeper into the sheets and into him.

“Later maybe,” she says with her eyes closing. “I’m still tired.”

“Don’t let me interfere with your sleep habits.”

Scully starts to drift off again to the lull of Mulder’s fingers grazing her back and his spicy, sleepy scent flooding her nostrils.

[all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth]

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Season Three Master Post

We’ve come to the conclusion of a momentous season! From some of the most iconic episodes to some of the most beloved characters, season three was full of intense chapters!

Check out this thread to see all the characters we got to meet!

3x01 | The Blessing Way - The Well-Manicured Man (@fridaysat9

They were all living on the precipice of the end of the human race, but they were only concerned with jobs, school assignments, and playdates.

Life, as it should be.

3x02 | Paper Clip - Victor Klemper (@monikafilefan)

The offspring of a rebel syndicate member unearthing truths Victor has spent decades trying to bury beneath buttercups and begonias has marked him for certain death.

3x03 | D.P.O. - Darin Peter Oswald (@gaycrouton)

His friend was scared of him, and it made Darin feel powerful.

3x04 | Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose - Clyde Bruckman (@fridaysat9)

A funny thing happens when you see your own death. At first you try to make sense of it– what could it mean, why the tears, why her? Then you try to change it.

3x05 | The List - Dr. Juan Ullrich (@monikafilefan)

Juan fidgets with an evidence bag, trying not to blatantly stare at the agents holding an entire conversation with their eyes while systematically categorizing every sway of their bodies, every touch of her hands.

3x06 | 2Shy - Lauren MacKalvey (@gaycrouton)

2SHY > You have no idea how beautiful I think you are. I must confess… I feel inextricably drawn to you. I can’t stop thinking about what you said the other day… You don’t deserve to feel lonely, Lauren.

3x07 | The Walk - Leonard 'Rappo' Trimble (@admiralty-xfd)

Every night, he walks again. And every morning he wakes in the same bed with the same phantom pain. Every day he wishes he’d just died; that explosion that didn’t quite kill him cost him his life, anyway.

3x08 | Oubliette - Lucy Householder (@monikafilefan)

She has to go. It’s all so clear now. She has to go back. Through the woods, through the house — into the dark. Maybe she was never meant to leave it at all.

3x09 | Nisei - Penny Northern (@gaycrouton)

It was the strength of these women that got her through those experiences, and it was the strength of these women that would help her embark on this dark path they were all destined to walk.

3x10 | 731 - First Elder (The Well-Fed Man) (@admiralty-xfd)

The one thing that can be manipulated more effectively than any other is her fear of the unknown… of what happened to her last year.

3x11 | Revelations - Owen Lee Jarvis (@fridaysat9)

He gave of himself, abandoning what little life he’d had, to honor God’s words and do as he had been called.

3x12 | War of the Coprohages - Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (@gaycrouton)

Bambi felt a flush spread across her chest as his hypothesis brought a smile to her face. Hearing that he hadn’t been merely indulging her earlier was a refreshing change of pace.

3x13 | Syzygy - Detective Angela White (@admiralty-xfd)

Detective White stops as Agent Scully finally glances over at her, somewhat defensively. And then she gets it. Everything about the way she’s been treated since the agents arrived makes perfect sense.

3x14 | Grotesque - Agent Bill Patterson (@fridaysat9)

Patterson figured that Mulder might have a theory about a potential copycat killer, but no; he’d been researching gargoyles and goblins. Monsters recorded in dusty old tomes pulled from the library shelves.

3x15 | Piper Maru - Kimberly (@monikafilefan)

Kimberly Cook is good at her secretarial job. So when the man she’s been working closely with for two years is troubled, she refuses to let him file the feeling away like some confidential case in his cabinet.

3x16 | Apocrypha - Luis Cardinal (@admiralty-xfd)

The Scully woman is not simply angry, she’s unhinged. And there’s a small part of him that understands; it’s the part of him that, prior to working for the Smoker, had never been asked to shoot an innocent woman before.

3x17 | Pusher - Agent Frank Burst (@fridaysat9)

Frank doesn’t care if he has to tell him his mother’s maiden name and his favorite breakfast cereal if it means getting his location.

3x18 | Teso Dos Bichos - Officer (@monikafilefan)

He doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.

3x19 | Hell Money - Hsin Shuyang (@gaycrouton)

The gods might not be listening, but the devil was waiting for him down the street, ready to play a game with all the men whose American dreams had turned into nightmares.

3x20 | Jose Chung's From Outer Space - Detective Manners (@fridaysat9)

That's a bleepin' dead alien body, if I ever bleepin' saw one.

3x21 | Avatar - Carina Sayles (@monikafilefan)

She can tell he doesn’t do this. Doesn’t drink alone in a bar, letting a stranger slowly seduce him.

3x22 | Quagmire - Queequeg (@gaycrouton)

Queequeg was loved.

3x23 | Wetwired - 'Doctor' Stroman (@admiralty-xfd)

Another town, another test, another shitty motel room… but always the same boss.

3x24 | Talitha Cumi - Teena Mulder (@monikafilefan)

If only Bill had known back then that the untrustworthy person he was referring to would sleep with his wife and father his son.

Stay tuned for more perspectives coming in Season Four!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

[baronessblixen]

Hi Anika! What are your top 10 or top 20 favorite TXF episodes? If you have time, maybe you can briefly say why you like them? I love hearing your thoughts.

Hi anon! There are so many good episodes. I have a few core favorites and a few that seem to change around a bit. They're in no particular order - and my thoughts are basically "Mulder and Scully are hot/cute/adorable" 😁

The Pine Bluff Variant - it's so good. I feel like it's underrated. Mulder trying to keep a secret from Scully! Mulder running! Scully setting his finger! Her following him!! It also has the whole "evil government" aspect to it.

Wetwired - another underrated episode! It's a monster-of-the-week episode but with mytharc elements. Scully being affected and becoming paranoid is amazing. And Mrs. Scully is in the episode too, of course!

Bad Blood - I mean that's a given, right? I like the comedy of it and I love the whole he said/she said spiel. It's a very fun episode.

Rain King - another fun episode. As a huge rom-com fan this one has to make my list. It's cute. I love Mulder and Scully being mistaken for a couple by *everyone*. Not to mention the room sharing and Scully's speech.

Pilot - I think this episode sets the show up so well. Mulder and Scully as baby agents meeting for the first time and bonding and clashing immediately. What's not to love?

Redux 2: I can't tell you why I love this episode so much. Or the whole three parter really. All I know is that for a while when I was a kid I watched it almost daily. It's Mulder crying at her hospital bed and both of them fighting their own fight and Scully going into remission.

Colony/End Game - I often forget about this episode but the mytharc in the early seasons was really good. Fake Mulder hurting Scully and then real Mulder choosing Scully over (fake) Samantha is so much drama and I LOVE it. The whole Mulder and his family part is heartbreaking.

Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip - I cannot tear these episodes apart. They belong together. From Mulder being drugged to Scully shooting him and driving gim across country, being a total badass, to thinking he died and then losing her sister. There's so much here.

Squeeze - I just enjoy season one so much. They're all comfort episodes to me (except Space. That episode can fuck off). I love the case, I love Scully's answer when Colton asks her whose side she's on. Scully saying Mulder is territorial. I know it's not a two-parter per se, but I have to mention Tooms here, too, cause technically I like that one even better (that MSR moment in the car alone!).

Memento Mori - it's as heartbreaking as it is brilliant. Gillian is amazing in it and Scully choosing to fight is everything to me. As is that hug at the end. And Mulder watching her walk away. That one's just sad.

Demons - one of my absolute favorites. Yes, psrt of it is Mulder being a burrito at the beginning and him being insanely hot in jeans and a white t-shirt. But I also like seeing how far he's willing to go for this quest. Scully being worried sick (and she IS sick in late season 4 😭) is a bonus.

Je Souhaite - another fun episode. No one is dying. Well, Anson Stokes dies, but he doesn't count. Scully and her invisible man are so precious. The ending of course. Mulder being a sweetie, asking for world peace and then looking for Scully.

Detour - I love the case and suspense with person after person going missing. The beginning with them and the other two agents in the car is so funny. The singing of course and the whole raining sleeping bags thing. My personal favorite though is Mulder jumping into that hole to be with Scully.

I'm gonna stop here and do a few honorable mentions: The Jersey Devil, Dreamland 1+2, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, War of the Coprophages, Ice, Pusher(!) and Aqua Mala.

This got long. This show has way too many good episodes! I know I forgot several that I love.

[randomfoggytiger]

X-Files Collector’s Edition: Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part III)

Here we are again: Part III, a list dedicated to all the fics that are (unfortunately) not given enough attention for their different achievements.

Loose chronological order below~

@pilotinthestars's (Ao3) a green nursery (Ao3)

The convenience store worker said and did nothing but eye him up and down. He supposed most tuxedo-clad men didn’t come into this establishment for the purpose of buying pregnancy tests for the little black dress-clad women they had brought with them.

AU-- Hollywood A.D. Mulder realizes Scully's new symptoms add up to pregnancy. He convinces her to take a test; and both are relieved and delighted that the night ends-- literally-- on a positive note.

@enigmaticdrblockhead's

Mountains Crumble to the Sea

...I’m scared.

God?

//God is a spectator-//

Ah, right, I remember. Is He watching, are You watching, is anyone watching? //He just reads the box scores.// Baseball, I loved- no love, baseball; I’m not dead yet.

But I can’t remember and it hurts. I can’t remember what your voice sounds like, it hurts so much. I can’t remember what anything sounds like. All I can hear, is pounding in my head. Loud and slow, once methodical but now erratic.

What will happen to me after this?

TINH Mulder is relentlessly tortured, thoughts rambling away as his body slowly "dies."

AliveDead

He is nothing but empty pockets. Leaning against the stone building he sits and watches them go by. Moving forward and walking past, they ignore his plight and give only isolation....

His right hand almost seems stiff. Fingers are curved upward to show a gray palm. He begs for whatever they can give. He is never lucky.

AU-- Deadalive Mulder is returned, sick and amnesiac, to wander the streets without knowing where to go.

Darkness (brief)

I feel like I’m falling down to earth and floating up to the heavens at the same time.

I’m tempted to blame someone but I can’t. My training exposed me to this, but like most things I chose to ignore it.

Three Words Mulder has risen from the dead horrified, not awed.

Ascension

He must be weak, either that or they drugged him. His feet drag towards me and his masked face hangs low. He trips on a bump in the carpet and tumbles at my feet. The father kneeling before the son....

The way his body lunges forward every second or two, tells me that he’s out of breath or perhaps he’s in pain. The blanche, plastic mask with small slits fixates on me. It doesn’t stop and he doesn’t struggle. He isn’t shaking or attempting to break free like all the others. He just breaths and watches me. 

Stop it. Stop watching me. Look down. Look away. Don’t watch me in this moment. The moment where I kill you.

AU-- Colonization was thorough and unyielding; and Will, like all other children under the regime, must kill his father to "ascend."

Looking Forward to the Abyss

“People think when you die, you go to heaven or hell. But people never think about what happens if you come back.

“Well, Mrs. Scully…I do. Because I did die, on a case. They killed me, and they foolishly thought to bring me back. They were religious too…although…”

He couldn’t help but smile now. It was a joke and he knew the punchline. How could he not smile.

AU-- Mulder, demonic and unrepentant, recounts the horror he was forced to inflict on Scully... and the unhinged revenge he doled out afterward.

@spookytheory's Fire, But Better

Fox Mulder’s sharp smile strikes across Dana. She ignites, the flames spelling out her new titles: FBI Agent. Spy. Scully. Scully emerges from the fire, brushing the ashes of deference from her shoulder pads.

Pilot Scully is trying to put Daniel Waterston and her past behind her, easing into the newness of being referred to constantly by her "father's" name.

@fabulouspatsystone's

I don't want that anymore

His heart sinks into his entrails and becomes heavy as stone. Who is she talking to and, even more important, what is she saying? The air around him seems to disappear and all he can hear is a distant muffled humming. He feels like he’s under water and everything just rushes by. All he manages is to hold on to the mail he collected with a tight grip.

S1 Mulder overhears and misinterprets Scully's phone call. He fumes, then silently figures it out.

Unnamed

She was gone all day. They hauled her off to Quantico early this morning leaving him with a short message on his answering machine that she will not be in today. She sounded sleepy and a little cranky, probably hadn’t have her coffee yet. And she sounded adorable.

Mulder, bummed after a case, thinks about his love for Scully's smiles, notes, and little quirks and habits.

Unnamed

Mulder’s voice sounded way to chipper for this hour. He pretended and she knew.

Mulder messed up the filing system; and successfully bribes Scully to help him out later.

Something Better

“A curious fella you got there, sweetheart. And very handsome...how do you get anything done?”

“Excuse me?” The surprise about this question made her choke on her last bite.

Even the old lady handing out gingerbread cookies asks why Scully and her young man are investigating Christmas trees instead of enjoying each other's company.

On the Outside

He walks by her apartment. Not by accident or by chance, but on purpose. He's never been in there but he's been here on this side of her street looking up. It is usually dark, no sign of life, just glass windows that hide her loneliness behind closed curtains.

Breakup Mulder roams to Scully's, surprised to note how dull and Christmas-less it looks.

@pedalinginhummus's

Happened Before

"Oho, Scully!” He said as he lifted her arm by the elbow towards the ceiling. “Don’t get too comfy as the medical doctor on this team. I think I can give you a run for your money with this,” he said proudly, admiring his work.

Mulder helps Scully bandage her wound; and the two start their tradition of thumb warring after injuries.

Unnamed

With a muffled voice she says “If only you could grow another hand out of your chest,” aching to feel pressure at every angle.

Mulder chuckles. “Kind of like in Alien?"

Post Memento Mori Scully has a headache; and allows Mulder to massage it away.

@blackcoffeeandteardrops’s (Ao3)

XF episode: Die Hand Die Verletzt?

“The human mind can be very persuasive, Scully. There are documented cases of people under hypnosis or otherwise suggestive activities doing things they report they normally wouldn’t do. Things like driving a car four hours away in the dead of night, buying an excessive amount of cheese, and in one case, even getting married,” he said, not missing the way she sighed.

Post Die Hand De Verletzt Scully calls Mulder, nervous about Mrs. Paddock out and about.

I know it’s probably been done before but Three Words for your episode prompt

There’s a silence that settles between them, a solid weight that somehow does not feel heavy. For a few moments, Mulder swears his ears are ringing. “In Oregon,” he replies, leaning in. He furrows his brow, slowly putting the pieces together.

AU-- Three Words Mulder wants space but goes to Scully's apartment with a frog blanket, anyway. He has no memories of his torture; and is thrilled to find out that the baby is his.

Home To Me

“Hi baby,” she said, planting a kiss against his hair. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him close, drinking in the scent of of his No More Tears Shampoo. She tucked the tag of his pajamas back in and carded a hand through his auburn curls, preemptively mourning the day his hair would straighten out. They did the best they could with him, but she knew they couldn’t keep him young forever.

AU-- Mulder, Scully, and Will enjoy life as a family, bedtime stories and Quantico opportunities included.

Better Now (Ao3) 

“I know it sounds odd, Mulder, but considering everything we’ve been through, I’m glad to see us facing something so...normal.”

“Be that as it may,” Mulder replied, setting the bowl of soup in his lap. He held a spoon of broth to his lips, blowing on it before taking a taste.

AU-- Scully catches a cold; and Will brings her purple flowers.

Dulcet (Ao3)

Beside her, William gasped, his eyes honing in on a water gun that had been left on the ground a few feet away. He sprinted to get it and ran right back to Scully, shaking it near his ear, listening for the sound of water sloshing around inside. “Here, mom, it's still got water in it,” he said, his cheeks red and his breathing heavy from the exertion of running. “Get him!”

AU-- Will's 5th birthday: water balloons and Toy Story reruns.

Reprieve

Tucked between the pages of the books was a picture of William and Scully, one he’d taken the day before he left. He knew it was in the book, knew it because every night before he fell asleep, he’d hold the picture and stare at their faces, and he’d hope he’d see them soon. The picture had been a source of comfort before, a talisman that kept him grounded and reminded him why he had to keep fighting, but seeing it again filled him with something kin to sadness mixed with anger. He closed the book as the bus took off, and he stared out the window, trying to convince himself the anger wasn’t at Scully, but rather at the impossible situation they’d been faced with.

AU-- Post William Mulder calls up Skinner for information, tracking down Will just in time to save his son from murderous operatives. Scully panics, angered, at first; but the two eventually reconcile.

Small Steps

 Still, the ice between them had been thawing, especially since they’d returned to the FBI together, but Mulder remained afraid that he’d somehow be overstepping his bounds. He turns to offer something lighthearted instead, but stops, reaching out to grasp her arm & get her to stop walking. “Scully, you’ve got a little something--” he trails off, free hand gesturing up to his own face.

Revival Scully's nose bleeds after she and Mulder conclude a case. He panics, dabbing at it with his tie. Both hope it's just the high altitude.

Mashed Potatoes

“My mother used to make mashed potatoes every year. Some of the other side dishes would change, depending upon what ingredients were available or how many people would be present, but her mashed potatoes stayed the same,” she said, worrying the surface of the coin as she stared off into the distance. She didn’t come to until she felt something pressing against her waist, not realizing at first that William had crossed the room to pull her into a hug.

AU-- My Struggle II William and Scully talk about their individual losses fondly, eventually waking up a recovering Mulder.

Enough For Now

When Scully brought in the flyer advertising for the local county fair, she never expected anything to come of it. She’d laid it on the table with the other junk mail she’d go through whenever she had the time, taking care to save any coupons that might prove useful. But when William sat at the table one night for dinner, he pulled it from the stack, talking about how back in Wyoming they’d go almost every year when he was a kid, and she knew before he even asked that they’d go.

AU-- My Struggle III Mulder, Scully, and William start bonding as a family while visiting the fair: basketball, roller coasters, and pizza.

Keep On Wanting

 Mulder reaches for her seatbelt, unclipping it, and when he gets out to open her door, she lets him lead her inside.

Mulder takes her coat, hanging it on the rack by the door, before doing the same thing with his own, even though it’s still caked with blood. He’ll handle it later, either by having it cleaned or burning it, he’s not sure which. 

Post My Struggle IV Mulder calms a chilled, anxious Scully. Both feel hopeful after a good night's rest.

Livewire (Ao3)

“Who says I need protecting? I was just shot because that creep thought I was you,” Jackson replied, trying but failing to push away from him.

Any other time, that response would’ve pained Mulder more than it did, but he looped an arm around his son’s shoulders and started wading back toward the docks, determined to get them there with or without Jackson’s help.

AU-- Post My Struggle IV Mulder drags Jackson out of the water, refusing to let his son leave before they've all ironed things out.

Commonplace

He couldn’t see her face, but if he could, Mulder was almost certain there would be tears in her eyes. After everything they’d been through in the last year, that fact wouldn’t be a surprise. “I’m just as concerned as you, Scully. The best thing we can do for him now is to work as hard as we possibly can to keep him safe. To protect the best thing that’s ever happened to either of us.”

Post My Struggle IV Mulder and Scully are delighted to have Jackson around, lightly parenting him about bedtime and schooling.

Little By Little

Despite the added inch or two the skates gave her, as Scully caught up to William and he laid a hand on her shoulder, it occurred to her again of how much taller than her he was. “Are you having a good time? If you want to go faster, you don’t have to wait for me or Mulder, you know. Just be careful,” she said, though she secretly hoped he wouldn’t.

Post My Struggle IV Jackson bonds with his parents over ice skating and last names.

Signs of Light

 It wasn’t until several months passed, until they’d begun to creep past the awkwardness that came with getting to know the teenage son whose entire life they’d missed, that she even mentioned the headaches.

It’s nothing, Mulder, I’m fine, Scully had said, pinching the bridge of her nose and fanning her face with a file as they sat outside a warehouse, waiting on a suspect to exit the building. 

AU-- Revival Scully's cancer returns. Mulder refuses to promise to stop searching for a cure; and Jackson slowly starts hanging around, warming up to his parents.

@mchalowitz​’s (Ao3)

fic; un-mulder

It’s so un-Mulder, embellished with white detailing, small pine pones. There’s little gifts attached and a few are just hanging swatches of metallic paper, the clear result of curious fingers in years long past. 

The wreath rustles against the door as it swings open. There’s a bright smile on Mulder’s face. 

Pre-TGTSC Mulder surprises Scully with a Christmas door wreath.

after

Being the believer in the office is exhausting. 

Scully is telling him as much, even giving some actual merit to being one with the unbelievable views, when she notices Mulder is sleeping upright, his head propped up with his hand.

She slides herself to the edge of the couch to push herself up but feels his hand on her arm. 

“I’m awake,” Mulder insists, “I was listening.” 

Post Vienen Scully is glad Mulder is back, even if he is pushing and pulling away from impending parenthood like a pendulum.

34 + 28 msr for the OTP prompt List 💚💚

Remain calm. That’s what all the pregnancy books say.

AU-- S8 Mulder and Scully are horrified over a pregnancy complication.

hack job

Scully’s rarely frantic. The peaceful foil to her overwrought partner. Russians seized their home and she careened over the side of the porch level headed. 

She’s pulling drawers open so hard they’re coming off their tracks. They crash to the floor. She finds a pair of scissors in the third one. They’re not for hair cutting but they’ll have to work. 

Revival Scully gives herself an emergency haircut while Mulder burns critical evidence.

fic; a little snow

She heads down to start the coffee maker and adjust the finicky heater. Every morning she descends those stairs, thinking the man she loves will have returned to her.

Pre-IWTB Scully, though worried for her partner, is heartened a little when Mulder warms up her car and shovels out the driveway.

@lovesicks4pphic's (Ao3) Effective Communication (Ao3)

“Sir, you can’t seriously think this is a good use of our time?”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t think, Mulder. Besides, I know full well the two of you bailed on the last seminar you were supposed to attend.” 

Scully felt Mulder’s eyes dart in her direction. 

AU-- Post Triangle Kersh forces Mulder and Scully to attend a conference, which causes Scully to unduly overthink in anguish. Mulder is clueless; but the two work it out and take their relationship to the next level.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

[lesbianmarrow]

ok but i do love that xfiles 2x23 is about scully trying to help someone and inadvertently getting them killed when it's usually mulder who that happens to. equality! now the blood is on HER hands!

i like that mulder and scully argue over how scully tries to have them step away from the case out of loyalty to her cop friend bc she doesnt wanna get her in trouble, and mulder is like wtf no we NEED to be the ones to take care of this, who CARES if your friend gets in trouble, this person is a weapon and people could die. it's kind of fun to see mulder chafe over scully choosing someone who isn't him. i love that he points out that she never puts her career first over their work - it shows how she is so selfless and how mulder notices that selflessness. but here she wants to put this woman, her former student, first.

i wonder if it's a moment of scully being reminded of her life apart from mulder and the xfiles and wanting some normalcy, wishfully thinking that this is just an instance where theyve mistakenly overstepped their jurisdiction and the police can handle it. i think it's also her wanting to believe that mulder's imperatives aren't the only ones that matter. but in the end, mulder is proven right. scully's cop friend dies because she didn't know what she was dealing with.

ultimately, it doesn't seem like there was anything mulder or scully could have done to prevent the dangerous guy from being abducted by shady forces. but this incident leads scully to feel conflicted about her ability to help those she feels a responsibility toward. it would be a natural response for her to isolate from others to an even greater extent and only focus on the parts of her life that involve mulder and the x files. yet i think that's unfortunate - scully deserves to have a life outside all that. i also think mulder sometimes expects too much of her, unfairly, and it stems from him having this fundamental need for her. but she deserves to be a person outside of him too.

[starwalker42]

febuwhump day 27: survivor's guilt

episode: The Red and The Black | tw: PTSD | general audiences

“I don’t even know how I got away.”

He looked over at her as she gazed out the passenger window, her voice tight. It was the first thing she’d said since they were released from military police custody, back at the air force base; they were now crossing the border back into Virginia. He’d assumed she’d fallen asleep.

“I remember bits of what happened on the bridge,” she continued. “But I don’t remember how I got to the woods where they found me.”

He paused for a moment, trying to find the right words, and she filled the gap instead.

“Do you think they left that group of us alive on purpose? Or did they mean to kill us, and it all went wrong?” She turned to look at him, now, and he saw her eyes were misted with tears. “I mean, why am I here, Mulder? Why am I here, when all those other people died?”

He pulled over, turned the engine off, flicked on the interior light. The glow of it illuminated her, stark against the still-muted light of dawn just appearing over the horizon, behind the treeline. The burn on her cheek seemed angrier, now, clear in contrast to the rest of her skin, and he fought the urge to reach out and touch it. Her eyes, still brimming with tears, watched him with an emotion he couldn’t decipher.

“Do you want to try and find out? Go back to - ”

“No.” A tear slipped free; he watched it slide down her cheek. “No matter what I remember, it won’t tell me the truth.”

He couldn’t answer that.

“So many people are dead, Mulder. I don’t know who’s responsible, but I do know that I should have been one of them.”

“You’re wrong.” His voice caught in his throat. “You’re wrong, Scully. No one deserves what happened back there, but especially not you.” Never you.

She looked at him again, unreadable. Forcing his mouth shut, Mulder watched her back. He couldn’t risk saying anything else, or he’d say something he’d regret, some of the words going through his mind, words that sounded far too much like pleas for forgiveness and vows of commitment. The word love tickled the back of his mind, and he pushed it down, locking it somewhere deep within him.

Another beat, and then she looked away. “Let’s go.”

He drove.

@today-in-fic

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 21 thoughts

this episode had me entirely TRANSFIXED. at no moment did i know what was going to happen next, and i badly wanted to learn!! rejoice: a skinner episode!!! where he is driven to desperation by how much he loves his agents! i truly do not think i could have asked for more!!

(okay, scully wasn't there, which is usually my number one priority... but hear me out: the episode was still SO good despite her absence, which is a testament to some HIGH QUALITY WRITING)

so!! back to my live report from approximately 24 hours ago, when i began my journey into this rollercoaster of an ep. take it away, past juni:

after last episode, i have gone through all of the emotions known to humankind. i am interested to see where we will go next, having ventured into those uncharted waters. perhaps these waters will be more… charted.

A SKINNER EPISODE!!! he’s framed for murder AGAIN??? he can’t keep being put in these circumstances bro 😭

why would skinner cover up a death caused by bees??? that seems pretty cut and dry. bees did it. nobody’s fault. unless they’re secret FBI bees the world isn’t supposed to know about…? obviously the doctor is going to say “yup, bees did it, not humans”, right?? i mean if someone dies of bee stings i assume it’s very obvious??? and that no murder charges would be filed?? because?? bees did it??

(author's note: lmao. what a fool i was)

skinner. i am ready to learn more about you. 

we open at a place that ships packages. this woman (jane) needs a cigarette. her friend (later revealed to be named misty) is telling her to quit smoking. i’m not sure that is an effective strategy.

jane runs to the bathroom and is going to smoke in there??? not even outside??? what was going ON in the 90's!!!

but oh no! some bees emerge from the bathroom sink. MANY MANY MANY BEES. someone please call that lady on tiktok that scoops hives out with her hands while whispering into the camera “another great day of saving the beeeeeeees” (god i hope she’s doing well)

bee swarm of intense proportions is going on rn. can you buy bees at the store? is that what they did for filming this? order a bunch of bees at the bee store?? huh. 

anyway, they’re approaching jane the cigarette lady very very quickly. they’re in the stall!!! she’s smacking at them!! 

but cig lady’s friend misty is getting concerned. she goes to the bathroom to fetch her friend where she finds… an empty bathroom?? free of bees. with only a smoking cigarette on the floor and DEAD JANE COVERED IN BEE STINGS!!!!!!!

WHERE DID THE BEES GO MAN!!!

dang. those bee stings are gnarly. shoutout makeup team.

skinner is looking at jane's files. why does this interest you, skinner?? why is he deleting them?? probably because he does not consider insect related cases FBI matters

WAIT! HE WASN’T ON HIS COMPUTER…. HE WAS ON MULDER’S!!!

WHAT!!! (we need to give this reveal some space to sink in)

... he knows mulder's passwords……?

skinner. WHAT are you hiding!!! i used to hate him and then i sort of liked him and then i hated him and now i am affectionate towards him. we must not begin the cycle again!!!

well, now i’m invested. 

intro time. and i'm still laughing about that tweet of scully serving three quarters profile in her badge pic

after so many shortened intros, this one felt long!!!

skinner is… leaving his house? he has a bookend that looks like an elephant. now what does that say about him… and a what looks like a buddha in the corner. IS this his house??? buddhist skinner confirmed?

he’s taking off a “do not enter” sign and going into the bathroom where the bee incident went down, armed with just a flashlight. and he finds the cigarette, which he flushes. he’s cleaning the bathroom floor with a portable vacuum!! WHAT DOES HE KNOW!!!!!!!

i’m literally soooo invested, i’m not even joking. his ass is on his hands and knees SCRUBBING. what has brought assistant director skinner to this forbidden janitorial work!?!

this is very dark though, screen wise. had to up the brightness. 

he finds something oozing from the ceiling. and he sniffs it before wiping it away. gross. is it honey? weird neon honey?

now he’s picking the lock of the MORGUE!!!!!!! is he gonna steal jane’s body??!!!!!! bro what the HELL!!!!

someone in the coroner’s office hears a distant thud and almost finds him TAKING HER BODY!!!!!!!!! it seems he narrowly escaped!!! he hid around the corner and took jane with him…. to a very weird place. he’s climbing up a ladder. is it an incinerator? 

bro, he must be strong as hell. anyway, he takes her body and places it in a fire. 

my guess is that somehow she was contaminated with secret bee poison and he needs to make sure no one else gets sick from it????? by incinerating the body?? but that doesn’t do anything about the bees themselves??

he’s at the police station now, asking about jane. HE GIVES HIS NAME AS MULDER????? he has a fake badge and everything… omg do NOT get my boy in trouble!!

the policeman shows him a vial of blood from jane, which he replaces with a vial from his own pocket, and wipes the pen he took. ohhhh what is going on!!!!!!

so now he’s going back to his car with the blood. but someone runs out to see him!!! calling “agent mulder”!

it’s the detective who emailed the pictures to the REAL mulder!!! he somehow knows that mulder is part of the x files (which i feel shouldn't be information random people should know) but skinner is trying to say that nothing here warrants his involvement. 

he is deeply suspicious. but someone is watching him!!!!!!!! who is this mystery fellow watching this go down????

skinner is get undressed at 3:55 AM. and it IS his house with the elephant and the buddha!!!

SKINNER FOLLOWS THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS AND THE EIGHTFOLD PATH, LET'S GOOOO 🔥🔥🔥

(that is a more interesting interpretation than him keeping a buddha around as decor, but hey, pick your headcanon as you please)

and who shows up but REAL MULDER!!!! AT 4 AM??? BRO WHAT IS HE DOING?? he should be on his couch!!!! sleeping!!

he has been trying to reach skinner…. OHHHH HE CLOCKED RIGHT AWAY THAT THERE IS A COVERUP!!!

and the detective was SHOT AND KILLED!!!! 

(my friend called me at this point to tell me that liam payne died. this has absolutely no relevance on the episode, but it did lead to me pausing for a half hour to share this news with others. and it would feel inappropriate to not include it in the write up)

mulder knows someone forged his name at the lab and he just wants skinner’s help!!

NO!!! SCULLY IS IN THE HOSPITAL SO SHE CAN’T HELP…. HER DOCTOR SAYS HER TUMOR MIGHT BE METASTASIZING… NO NO NO not my poor sweet scully...

no scully this episode…. this is sad :(

skinner is doubly gagged…… maybe even triply gagged between the revelation of the detective being killed, mulder being onto him, and scully being in the hospital. he is flabbergasted, one might even say. 

he’s going somewhere in very tight pants. someone tries to hit him with a car?!?

IT’S CSM!!!! and the guy from before who was watching the exchange with the detective go down!!!!!! 

ohhhh skinner has GRABBED him by the collar and is yelling that he MURDERED him!!! but CSM says to keep his voice down

“i wouldn’t get too comfortable on your moral high ground, mr. skinner. this only happened because you left your job unfinished” <- hey WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??

(i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again… CSM’s voice is so soothing. tell me a story, scary man)

skinner says that he has followed CSM’s instructions…. and when skinner points out that the detective didn’t have to die, he says that he is “in no position to question the terms of our arrangement”

is this the deal he negotiated with to try and save scully???? and is it even working if she’s in the hospital right now??

he tries to say they have no arrangement and walk away, but CSM basically says well, i’ll have my bestie here kill you. and so skinner saunters off in his very tight pants, defeated. 

he wakes up on the couch to a phone ringing. and it’s mulder saying that jane's body was stolen, and all the evidence has been cleaned. “slow down” “i’m sorry sir, but i can’t” <- his brain was in overdrive!!

mulder figured out the replacement blood wasn’t jane's because she has a different folate serum level and skinner seems to be cursing himself for such a mistake. a good catch on mulder's part.

he has one lead, and it’s the make of the gun. but skinner realizes something… his gun isn’t in his desk!!! WHAT!! NO NO NOOOOOO

he calls CSM and growls that “you can’t do this”…….  he says that the man died so skinner could have what he wanted… what does that mean…

A CURE FOR AGENT SCULLY??????

WHAT!!!!

what does that have to do with the bees!!!

“if anything happens to her, i will expose you” <- OHHHH HE IS NOT MESSING AROUND!!! he said i'll get us both thrown in prison if you fuck with my agents!!!!

“i don’t care what happens to me” <- OHHHH MY GOD I’M RIPPING OFF MY SHIRT IN BIBLICAL LEVELS OF GRIEF. he loves her.

“agent scully stands to live a full and healthy life. i would hope the same for you, mr. skinner” <- no no no no no. please don’t kill him. please? for me?

(this made me picture a world without skinner and it was very sad. do not make me imagine this ever again. i won't stand for it)

this episode has me HOOKED!!!!!

back at the shipping warehouse, skinner is being led to the restroom. the bee incident only went down yesterday!!!! he finds more of the yellow goop… and says he needs a hammer

he’s beating the hell out of that wall and finds it filled with honeycomb!! but this is probably EVIL honeycomb, right?

why yes, of course. he brings some of the evil honey to someone in maryland with a very cool in-house lab. oh, to be a maryland scientist with an incredible laboratory in the home that i own, because homes were plentiful in those days.

would it help to know that this bee can kill people? “any kind of bee can be lethal” <- well that is not super helpful in this particular case. nor is this fact comforting.

when it seems all hope is lost, bee scientist man finds some royal jelly and a larvae!! so hopefully soon they will have some answers. and now i know what royal jelly is.

oh, turns out 6 months ago mulder called the same guy asking about killer bees… well, he is always up to such activity. he was probably also calling a marine biologist about the loch ness monster. he keeps those DMV area professors BUSY

(author's note: now knowing what this is referring to, i think it is so fascinating to place s4 within a timeline of 6 months!!!!)

skinner is going through the x files folders down in mulder's office. and why the hell does one say “foo fighters” in the background!!! has the FBI finally found what the foo that they are fighting is???

OH!!! he finds the pictures of the child clones working in the honey farm!!! from earlier!! i was wondering if we were ever going to revisit that!!

he sees covarrubias' number on there so he starts to call her… omg…

(i have never seen one of those big rolly things of contact lists before)

but just as he is about to call, mulder walks in!!! he has pictures of the parking lot from the night of the Event… pictures that show a very blurry skinner that he cannot recognize AS skinner, but he’s going to take them over to special photo department, and oh no. oh no.

mulder asks what skinner wanted to tell him and he scrambles to just say he wanted to check on his progress… and i cannot tell if mulder believes him or not

skinner calls covarrubias about the bees. and she has to tell him that there was no bee evidence at all. so skinner counters with: well what if *i* have the bees??? well, then that would change things.

covarrubias is really pretty. while i may not like that she basically became deep throat 3.0, she is very pretty

bee scientist comes home to find all the lights out!!!!! his lights are covered in bees!!! it seems they broke through!!! no no no no!!! they cover his windows!! and he is being swarmed….. 

a terrible (or perhaps fitting) end for a man of bee science

mulder calls skinner down to show him the body of the bee scientist. and he had symptoms of SMALLPOX???? they put the smallpox in the BEES???? oh my god. new worst nightmare just dropped.

skinner wants to know how he contracted a disease that no longer exists, and yes, it did in fact come from the bees.

mulder thinks that someone is trying to revive the world’s deadliest disease!! oh my god!! how does this relate to the aliens???? i thought i knew at one point but now i don’t!! 

skinner asks mulder to tell him what he finds when he goes over to the photo department…

back at the shipping warehouse, skinner is talking to misty, jane’s friend. she clearly knows something but isn’t saying it. jane was misty’s best friend. and they were trying to go on vacation together. </3

OH. THE MEN WHO CAME THERE SAID IF THEY TALKED TO ANYONE SHE WOULD LOSE HER JOB….. they wanted a package!!!!! a damaged package!!

and it was stored right next to the bathroom where jane was found?!!

shipping bees… package gets damaged… bees get loose… smallpox bees everywhere… very bad very bad…

luckily, she can look up the tracking number!!!

back at the photo lab, someone who is not pendrell but looks like him is working on the photo. and mulder says that it is very important to him.

oh, his sad sad face as he realizes who it is…. like somebody punched a baby in front of him.

back at the alien groupchat meeting!! (again i think they’re called the syndicate?? i googled something once and that came up)

CSM is showing them the last remaining bee, saying all others were destroyed. and the body has been sanitized. CSM tries to say it has been taken care of. but the others want answers on what went down. 

“should we presume that the trial run is proceeding as planned?” “it’s already begun” <- HEY WHAT DOES THAT MEAN…… and why is the next shot KIDS ON A PLAYGROUND………… with a BEE BUZZING……….

kid gets stung by a bee…… as a ton of other kids ALSO get stung by bees!!!!!!! no!! not the kids!!!!

one kid trips and falls, and when the teacher tries to save him, she is swarmed!!!!!!! and the little kid has horrible marks all over him!!!! as do the other kids!!!!

skinner is here at this hospital to see what is going on… and he tells the doctor that the kids need to be treated for smallpox. this does not go over well with the doctor!!! he says that not only is smallpox no longer around, but it has an 8 day incubation period. well okay. i guess. things have changed.

covarrubias is here!! hold up is her name MARITA and i’ve been getting it wrong this whole time?! editing this post to refer to her by last name instead. i cannot tell if that is a subtitle error or the Truth. i’m sorry miss covarrubias. coh-vah-roo-bee-us.

she called asking about the contents of 7 packages sent to south carolina!!

“you’re a little late to do anything about it” “so are you, apparently” <- ohhh get his ass

she asks wtf is going on, and that she needs to tell the UN so don’t mess around. he hypothesizes that it’s an experiment using bees as carriers for disease. and when skinner says he hasn’t told mulder, she straight up asks if he’s involved OHHHH!! but he denies it. 

she says he has to come forward…..

back home. he starts to dial a number but stops, pulling his gun (which is now back in his desk!) out

AND OHHHHH MY GOD MULDER IS HERE AT SKINNER'S PLACE. “PUT THE GUN DOWN AND MOVE AWAY FROM THE DESK” <-OHHHH NO. IT’S GOING DOWN. 

ugh this is gonna be a two parter, isn’t it… i had a sneaking suspicion 

(it actually wasn't. but you can't blame me there. it was looking pretty close)

OHHHHHHH MULDER WENT THERE…. “you’ve been working with the smoking man all along. you knew when they had my father killed, and you knew when they took scully” <- OHHH MY GOD. his rage is barely contained and he looks like a damn animal.

skinner points out that the lock in his desk was forced open, why would he force his own lock open? and that the police are probably on their way right now. 

oh my gosh… i’m holding my breath… is mulder going to believe him? will skinner tell the truth?

“i advised you against a certain course of action some time ago concerning agent scully. i didn’t follow my own advice” <- oh my god........... the confession.............

he was willing to admit to making a deal with the devil for scully... does she know how loved she is...?

mulder gets quiet and says “give me the gun” <- WHAT IS HE THINKING? 

someone is firing it into some water? i guess that is how you figure out what the murder weapon is. and the guy says he is absolutely certain this is it.

mulder says they find it in a sewer grate around the corner (but for a moment i fully believed he was going to say it was his). the expert guy breaks the news that unless forensics pulled a print, it’s untraceable because the serial number was cleared off.

skinner leaves at this news. he almost smiles, and i wondered if the expert was going to call him out on such odd behavior. and from there, he goes to meet CSM. 

ohhhhh he has the gun to CSM's head!!! “agent scully is dying and you haven’t done a damn thing about it” <- HOLY SHIT!!! CSM’s smirking…. the right bastard

he claims that if skinner kills him, he’ll also kill scully… and that he had saved her life before when he had her returned to mulder.

“but you’ll never know if you pull the trigger, will you?” <- OHHHHHH MY GOD. is he bluffing or not!!!!! how would he have a way to cure her beyond letting one of the aliens he keeps on hold touch her???

SKINNER FIRES THREE SHOTS??????? DID HE SAY FUCK IT AND KILL HIM. IS THIS THE END OF CSM?????

NO. they were JUST behind his head. oh the tension was THICK.

message received. i hope. whoever is on the phone is asking about skinner, saying mulder will be contacting them soon.

it's covarrubias????? she says she’ll tell him what CSM wants her to tell him. WHAT!!!!!

“tell him what he wants to hear” <- HEY WHAT. IS HE GOING TO LIE AND SAY SCULLY IS OKAY????

thus concludes the episode.

I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS.

okay, first of all, covarrubias works for CSM. i feel silly for not picking up on that because we KNEW she works for the UN, famously the host of the alien groupchat parties, but i didn't even put it together at all. but just because she works for him doesn't really mean anything, because deep throat and x also nominally worked for him. to what extent is still unclear- maybe they did everything on his orders, stringing mulder along to keep him distracted from learning the truth- or maybe there were aspects of corruption they felt were "safe" to be exposed and lead him along the path for this deeper trap that CSM is laying for him. so we cannot make a covarrubias moral judgement just yet- but we also know we cannot trust her.

next. skinner loves his agents so much, dude. willing to kill AND die for scully to be okay... please think on this for a moment. and then think about it some more. how he told mulder to never make a deal with the devil, then did it himself even though he has so much to lose as the assistant director. and for the rest of his life he'll have to live with knowing he assisted in his murky and horrific plans, including infecting children with the world's deadliest diseases, because he could not stand to lose scully.

there are many kinds of love, some of which are complex and indescribable and cannot be inserted into conventional roles, and i think that is exactly what is going on here. the incalculable love for skinner and his agents.

okay. and mulder trusting skinner SO ABSOLUTELY. showing up at his apartment at 4 AM to ask for help. offering to take out the trash, and the constant updates he provided him on the case. the way his face FELL when he realized it was skinner in the photo. and how he came to believe that skinner knew about or was perhaps even behind the calls to kill his father and kidnap scully. how betrayed and horrified he was. how he must have recalled his mantra of "trust nobody", how he must have been kicking himself for falling into a false sense of security for a man who risked so much for them, but must have, in his mind, been luring him deeper and deeper into a trap. imagine all of that grief about scully being abducted and then getting sick and the loss of his father being placed at skinner's feet. mulder, who never for a second doubted that skinner was innocent in his earlier brush with the law. imagine how incredibly painful that "realization" would have been. and then how he wanted so badly to believe him, but after so many betrayals, it would take more than just a scratched desk for him to do so. but he does. god.

there is an addictive substance placed between the relationships of skinner to mulder and scully. something almost familiar. something almost entirely unspoken except for in a foundational and silent trust.

this episode was really, really good. probably my favorite of the season! i was trying to figure out what exactly was going on and why. it really raised the stakes for skinner, mulder, AND scully in a bunch of different directions: skinner being in CSM's pocket, covarrubias being in CSM's pocket, mulder believing her as she feeds him lies, scully's illness getting worse... whew!

more than anything i love to see the trust between characters tested and pulled, and their bonds put to the limits. so i am very pleased. i will likely be thinking of mulder's animalistic rage as he held the gun to skinner's face for a long, long time. and how skinner quietly admitted to doing what he told mulder not to. by jove. an excellent piece of television.

[danascullysjournal]

Chrysalis

An X-Files Fanfic.  Post S9.

TW: Loss of a child, depression, suicidal thoughts.  

____________________

The darkness in the motel room enveloped them both as they lay down, exhausted from a routine of running that they had grown accustomed to.  It was comforting on some nights.  Most nights it only served to magnify their isolation.  

Tonight, it was the latter. 

Their lives were a juxtaposition now, safe with one another, but fugitives in every other sense of the word.  Completing each other, yet empty without William.  

There were pieces that were not just misplaced, but stolen.  

Those wounds stayed raw.  

Dana Scully bandaged them both the best she could, but her training was of flesh and bone, stitches and scar tissue, medication to stave off the searing pain.  Grossly unqualified for the patient before her, she prayed silently for a breakthrough.  Anything to help a man whose soul was eclipsed.  

The date for colonization had come.  And gone. 

And now… the man in her bed was not the same.  He turned his body restlessly from his back to his side, unable to hold back the thoughts, the anger that clouded his mind.  It had been the same each night for a week, or more.  He was spiraling into darkness, ever deeper.

“Scully.  I was certain… I told you.  I told you.  I know what I saw.  And now…. If knowing that, and stopping that-  if, if that wasn’t what I’m supposed to do, what I’m here for… then what?”  In the dim light from the window, Mulder’s eyes stared through her.  

Scully let his words dissipate into the silence of the dark, cheap motel room. Nothing she added could comfort, she knew.   This sort of wound… only he could heal.  It pained her to accept her impotence, watching her love turn inward, breaking himself down.  She draped her arm over his neck protectively, pulling him close to her under the bedspread. 

“I don’t know what to do now.”  Mulder’s voice was small.  “I thought I was, I dunno, meant for that.  That sounds so stupid… but I did.  I really did.  I thought that made all of... this, all I went through, all we went through mean something.  And I was wrong.  Just… wrong.   And now what?” 

Scully closed her eyes, softly touching her forehead to his.  The whiplash of life changing was a sting she knew well.   

“You remember I was assigned to debunk your work?  I knew it.  So did you.  But that didn’t work out so well, did it?”

“Does it matter?  Does any of it matter, since the entire thing was a lie?  Since what Samantha died for, what you gave William away for, since all of that was a damn lie?” 

That wound.   She grimaced.  She would bleed herself dry if it meant William was hers again, and he knew it.  Biting her lip, she tried to compose her emotions, well aware that he didn’t intend the shame he inflicted.  He was just broken.  As broken as she was.

“Sorry, Scully.”  His mumble was followed by a ragged breath.  He sniffled.  “I’m sorry.  It just all feels so meaningless.” 

She nodded against his forehead.  It did, some days.  

“Sometimes… I don’t think there won’t be a meaning we can see.  That’s not the point.  I think sometimes, there isn’t a point, not in the sense you’re looking for.”  She sighed and kissed his worried brow. 

Mulder remained silent for a long moment.  She knew there was a war waging within him, a battle between hope and futility.  Carrying on, or ending it. 

“I just wanted the truth, Scully.  And what they gave me was a lie.”

“If the truth you chased was true- if the colonization happened- if it had torn us apart… would it have been worth it?”  She waited for a reply, knowing he couldn’t give one.  He wouldn’t say yes, but he couldn’t bring himself to say no.  It pained her, knowing that part of him would have seen the end of the world- the end of them- as a victory, a confirmation of worth.  “Mulder, maybe there wasn’t a point before, except finding each other, and surviving.  Maybe this is a chance.  A beginning.” 

“To what?”

Silence.

To what?   She wished she knew.  How desperately she wanted purpose, a meaning to cling to after so much had been stripped from her.  From them.  Everything she thought they had worked for, survived for, had unraveled and left her in a vague, empty plane of existence.  Their work on the X-Files, their parenthood, their purposes… all that was before had ended, and all that was to come had not yet begun.  She was waiting in a void with him, trying to pull him above the darkness while she was drowning alongside him.

She let out a deep sigh.  She was as tired of crumbling into nothing as he was.  The silence and darkness took hold, as it did every night.   The tick of his watch on the bedside table marked the seconds.  Each one snapped, louder than the last.  

Time gone… gone… gone…

“You know something, Mulder?”

“Hm.”

“Caterpillars don’t know what is happening either.”

His face stared at her, contorted by confusion.

“They follow what is preprogrammed in their DNA, Mulder.  They act on instinct that is woven into them.  But they don’t know what is happening when they make their chrysalis.”

Mulder huffed and wiped his eyes.  “I’m not following, Doctor.  You want to be an entomologist?”

She smiled faintly and kissed his forehead, her fingers stroking his hair.  “It’s fascinating, actually.  They wrap themselves up, and they dissolve…”  How often she had felt that.  A feeling of slowly diminishing.  Losing herself.   “Hormones are activated inside the chrysalis, and disassemble almost the entire organism from the inside out…  The pieces are still there, but all, well, digested, to an extent, except for respiratory tubes… imagine how terrifying that would be, to be completely broken down, and rearranged…  It’s a good thing they aren’t sentient.”

“Hm.  That you know of.”

She considered, then hummed agreement.  “Yes.  That I know of.  But the point is, they don’t stay nothing.   And they don’t go back to being crawling insects.  They emerge later, with wings, and a purpose.  It doesn’t mean that what they were before was worthless.  It’s just… different.”

Mulder rolled onto his back, staring up through the darkness to the ceiling.

“Okay…  but we are sentient, Scully.”

“Yeah.  We are.”

“Breaking down to nothing.  It hurts.”

Scully nodded, her fingers finding and clasping his.  “It does.”

The bed creaked as Mulder turned to face her again.  He pulled her hand up, pressing his lips to her knuckles. 

“I love you, Scully.”

She felt her throat begin to constrict, the sting of tears in her nostrils.  It had been a long time since he had said those words with his heart.  A long time of running, of hiding… of wondering if she had made the right choices as her life disassembled itself along the trail of entropy that he chased… and she dutifully followed.  

But this time… this time, she could have sworn there was some meaning behind his words.  She let out a shuddered breath.

“Scully?  I’m sorry.”  He pushed himself up on one elbow, grasping her hand tightly to his chest.  “I’m sorry for everything.  I don’t want to give up… I did, I do, but I don’t.  I sound crazy.”  Tears glistened on his cheeks, caught in days old stubble.  He was rocking slightly back and forth, an unconscious attempt to soothe the cacophony in his brain.  “It’s all so much.”

“It is.”  Her reply was choked.  He was right.  It was almost too much.

“I’m scared, Scully.”

“Me too.”

She sat up to join him, wrapping herself around him, enveloping them both in the motel blankets.  It was a shield to protect against their fears as much as it was against the cold.  The silence settled in once more, soft and secure around them instead of between them.  

“Scully, I want to find out, together.”  

“Find out?” 

She startled as he moved to wrap his arms around her, then softened, melting into his embrace.  She hadn’t realized, as she had paced the days, as she had nurtured and healed to the best of her abilities, how starved she had been.

“I want to find out what we will be.  After, you know.  After this… change.  I know… I know what I thought was true.  And what we were.  You and me.”  His fingers rubbed her back.  “I miss us.  I miss William.”  His voice broke.   His body shuddered around her, wracked by silent sobs.  

Scully clutched his chest tightly.  Her tears wet the t-shirt fabric above his heart.

They clung desperately to one another, letting go a torrent of anger, bitterness, and emptiness.  It was a release they had both desperately needed for months.  Their bodies shook in unison, mourning what was.  What could not be recovered.   After what felt like hours, the wells were dry.  There was nothing left to offer up, and had there been, it would have done no more good than the hundreds of tears cried before.

Mulder pulled back, wiping his eyes and nose on his shirt sleeve, stroking her head softly.  

“This isn’t what I had planned for us.  For you.”  He sniffled, and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself.

“I know, Mulder.  It’s okay.”  

She kissed his chest, where her tears were.  Where his heart was.  Where, she hoped, he still held her, even in the midst of the darkness.  He loosened his grasp on her shoulders and looked back up to the black ceiling.

“One thing is good about being sentient, Scully.”

A quick laugh escaped her lips.  She shook her head.  “Only one?”

He shrugged.  

“Alright, let’s hear it.” 

Wiping her eyes, Scully lay back down, spent.  Mulder followed her lead, pulling her close to his body, and tucking the blankets tightly around them both.  Softly, he kissed her forehead.

“I do know that we are changing together.  And I want that, with you.  I can look at this, at us, and… well, I’m scared.  And… and sad.  But I know we are doing this together, and that’s what I want, Scully.  You and me.  Together.”

“Me too, Mulder.”  Her whisper was tear-stained.

Mulder bent his head and kissed her cheek, snuggling them both further into the blankets.  Scully smiled, the first genuine smile in months.  It felt good.

“I love you, Mulder.”

“I’m so damn lucky you do.  I love you too.  So much.”  He nuzzled her with his stubble-dotted chin, and she wriggled and laughed, trying in vain to escape.  “That’s another thing, Scully.  If caterpillars aren’t sentient, they can’t love, can they?”

“I… I suppose not.  Not in the sense that we understand it.”

“Hm.  But we can.”  He kissed her again.  

Scully felt herself melting into him, content.  Loved.  Whole, in a sense that she had not felt in a very long time.  Wrapped tightly together, they slept.  Two caterpillars in a single chrysalis, dissolving.  Rearranging.  Waiting.  

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Tagging @today-in-fic