Bad Days
Scully has an unexpectedly early period. Mulder and Scully talk about their lost sisters. Set some time in late season three.
TW: Non-graphic discussion of menstruation.
Disclaimer: Contains brief discussion of femininity and menstruation, but obviously not all women menstruate and not all people who menstruate are women. Scully's comments reflect how I feel she would perceive her own personal relationship with femininity and her body as of 1996.
Edit: Friends, I made a dumb continuity error when it came to the timing of this fic. I fixed it. If only CC and the bunch had been as mindful of continuity then maybe we'd all be a little less insane today.
Dana Scully took pride in her ability to navigate the patriarchal landscapes of both law enforcement and medicine and retain a degree of femininity. She’d been keeping up with her brothers since birth - tomboy Dana shooting and cursing with the best of them when she wasn’t wiping the floor with them academically - but she was grateful to her mother and to Melissa for teaching her that masculinity was not the same as strength, power, or intelligence. It allowed her to deal with the idle comments during rounds from older physicians about how the female medical students were only going to get pregnant a few years into practice and go part time anyway. She was able to turn her frustration at being called “sweetheart” and “short stack” by the tactical defense instructors at Quantico into enough force to land them flat on their back in the next breath. There’s not a leer or a comment from any backwoods deputy that would ever, ever, keep her from conducting her work to the best of her abilities, even in three inch heels. She was woman, hear her roar.
Some days, however, she still felt like tearing out her uterus and throwing it into a garbage disposal. Today was one of those days.
She and Mulder had been called out to Weatherford, Oklahoma to investigate the deaths of three young men on the same day. All found in the middle of different fields with full-thickness burns over more than 95% of their bodies, severe lung damage, and no evidence for how they got there. No tracks, no disturbed vegetation - it was as if they’d fallen from the sky. Obviously, Mulder suspected UFO activity, but she was more intrigued by the whitish residue found on the burned young men. Three days of autopsies, interviews, and tromping around more dusty wheat fields than she’d care to count, and she’d found the connection - mass spectrometry analysis of the residue showed that it was primarily made of ammonia-heavy compounds. It turned out that the men had all served prior sentences for methamphetamine production. By all outward appearances they were walking the straight and narrow, but the residue was enough to link them to a series of thefts of agricultural anhydrous ammonia tanks. Apparently, their last job went horribly wrong - a tank ruptured and sprayed them all with concentrated ammonia. All it took was asking around the local hospitals if they’d recently treated anyone else for chemical burns to find two other members of the theft ring who admitted to panicking and dumping the bodies off of tractors driven along previously existing tracks.
Today had been the last day of the investigation, and she’d woken up with a familiar ache in her lower back and blood on her underwear a full week earlier than expected. Ever since her abduction her periods had been occasionally irregular. It was getting better with time, but she still cursed the fact that she hadn’t prepared for this when packing. They still faced a day of finalizing reports and statements before their flight home tomorrow, and if something could have gone wrong, it did. The stash of tampons and ibuprofen that lived in her overnight bag was dangerously low, and she’d had no time to stop into the town’s only drug store on the way to the sheriff's office. The office clerk had mislaid the original mass spectrometry analysis from the third victim, requiring a lengthy game of phone tag with the county lab. One of the suspects started making noise about revoking his statement culminating in a very frustrating conversation with him and his lawyer. All the while her cramps worsened as the day wore on. She tried to massage her low back when she thought no one was looking and masked the twinges of pain from surprise cramps. Mulder cast her a questioning look once or twice but she waved him off as they both tried to tie up the loose ends of the case. By the end of the day she was on both her last tampon and her last nerve.
Finally they were finished and back at the motel. Scully set her briefcase down, shrugged off her coat and blazer, and flopped down face-first onto the bed. She heard the door connecting her room to Mulder’s unlock and crack open, followed by the sound of him dropping his own belongings. She really should get up and get the car keys from him to run to the drug store before it closes, she remembered thinking, but the bed was surprisingly soft and the pressure on her abdomen from lying prone felt so good that the next thing she knew she felt a warm hand gently rubbing her shoulder.
“Scully, hey…”
She abruptly rolled over to see Mulder looking down at her from the edge of the bed with a crooked smile. She sat up and pushed the hair out of her face, embarrassed that she’d passed out without even taking off her shoes.
“God…I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep.” She rubbed her face and checked her watch - eight-thirty PM, if she was lucky she could still get to a store before they closed for the night.
She scooted to the foot of the bed and stood to grab her coat, “I needed to run an errand earlier - do you have the keys? I might have enough time before the stores close.”
He rose and called after her, “Wait, before you go - when I saw you’d fallen asleep I went ahead and got dinner.” He gestured at the takeout boxes on the dinette set, which she could smell contained orange chicken and fried rice.
He paused and looked sheepish for a moment before holding out a white grocery bag to her. “I, uh…I picked up a couple other things, too. You might want to take a look before you bother going out.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him, dropped her coat back on the chair and took it. Inside she found a box of tampons - not just any tampons, her preferred brand of tampons, as well as two Dove dark chocolate bars, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a travel-sized electric heating pad. Her first reaction was to raise her hackles, flashing back to the times Bill had teased her when he spied the wrappers from her pads sticking out of her backpack in middle school. But when she sharply met Mulder’s eyes she saw only innocent concern mixed with hesitation, like he was bracing for rebuke.
Her face relaxed as she softened and she sat back down with his gifts. “Mulder…thank you. But how did you know?”
His shoulders relaxed with a sigh and he sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “You’ve looked uncomfortable all day, rubbing your back and stomach when you thought no one could see. You asked the precinct secretary if they had any Tylenol. You actually ate the chips that came with your sandwich for once.” He counted the tells off on his fingers as he spoke, and she couldn’t tell if she was more touched or annoyed by his perceptiveness. He continued on with a wry smile, “We’ve worked together for three years, and maybe you don’t remember but before I was a paranoid crackpot I was a pretty damned good profiler. I notice things, Scully.”
She chuckled, “Well then, I don’t know if I should be impressed or embarrassed. It’s not something a lot of women broadcast, especially in our line of work.” She thought back to boyfriends past who’d at best tried to ignore the fact that she menstruated or at worst treated it like an annoyance. To the boys and men who joked about PMS and being ‘on the rag’ when women were rightfully angry about…well, about anything, at any time.
He shook his head gently, “No need to be embarrassed. I’m sorry you’re having a bad day.” His voice was gentle and earnest and pulled at her chest. Again and again, he humbled her with his capacity for kindness.
She returned his smile and placed one petite hand over his large one on his knee. “Thank you. Really, this means a lot.”
“No problem. Do you still need to run out?”
She shook her head, “No, actually, you seem to have taken care of everything. Want to eat?”
“I’m starving. Why don’t you get comfortable and I’ll make up some plates.”
She squeezed his hand and excused herself to the bathroom to change into an old t-shirt and leggings. When she emerged with a fresh round of NSAIDs on board he’d piled two plates with chicken, rice, and egg rolls and had pulled two beers frosted with condensation from the mini-fridge. He was in his dress shirt and slacks but had loosened the cuffs and unbuttoned the collar, tie, belt and shoes long since tossed aside into his room. Scully stole glances at him and tried to ignore his effortlessly handsome, boyish demeanor. That had been getting harder to do of late, and she pushed the thoughts aside for another time. She stacked some pillows against the headboard and plugged in the heating pad before settling back against it to wait for it to work its magic. He handed her a plate and a beer and sat next to her against the headboard, the both of them balancing their food on their laps.
He turned on the TV, flipped around until he found the opening scene of Ghostbusters, and glanced over at her for approval, which she gave with a wave of her beer. He grinned and clinked his bottle against hers, “Cheers.”
They settled back and dug in. The combination of the salty-sweet chicken, the heat radiating into her lower back, and the companionship of the man next to her suffused her with warmth. They didn’t speak for a bit while they ate and watched the movie, and before long she was full, content, and feeling more comfortable than she had for days. Mulder took the paper plates and utensils and disposed of them, then settled back next to her cross-legged against the headboard.
He gestured at the TV with a wry look. “Hey Scully, if we ever get shut down again we could always start up our own paranormal investigation business. What do you think, should we order some personalized jumpsuits?”
“Have you seen DC real estate prices lately? No way could we ever pull together enough capital to buy a decrepit firehouse. I’m not opposed to the jumpsuits, though, as much as I spend on dry cleaning.” she smirked back.
“Maybe Skinner would invest if it meant getting me out of his hair.”
She shot him a catty look, “Or lack thereof.”
He chuckled and tipped his head back to finish off his beer while she shifted the heating pad from her back to lie low across her hips. The warmth against her cramping muscles felt amazing, and she sighed and let herself sink further into the pillows behind her.
“Feeling any better?”
“Much,” she nodded, “Thank you, again.” She dug a chocolate bar out of the bag and unwrapped it, snapping off a few squares and passing them over to Mulder, who took them and smiled to himself. He looked almost proud. Loathe as she usually was to admit it, it felt good to be cared for. They’d both been brittle since the deaths of his father and her sister, leaning more on each other than even before. She had some of his spare clothes in her hall closet, he kept her favorite wine in his pantry. Sometimes it felt like they were the only two people in the world who really mattered. She knew that was patently false, that she had her family, but as the years went by and her friends had children or moved for their careers, she craved his company most of all. She thought of Melissa suddenly.
She chewed thoughtfully before starting, “Missy - Melissa - and I used to do this. Takeout, junk food, cheap wine, a cheesy movie when one of us was having a bad day.” She swallowed more than just the chocolate and met his eyes. “I miss her. She liked you, you know.”
He nodded sadly and took her hand in his, rubbing slow circles with his thumb in silence for a few moments. “When you were returned after your abduction and in the hospital, I was so angry that I couldn’t help you. She gave me a hell of a dressing down. A couple of times, actually. I thought she was even more disconnected from reality than I am.” He swallowed hard, remembering a time they both spoke of so rarely. “She was right, I deserved it. You two were lucky to have each other.”
She nodded and blinked rapidly. His eyes were cast down at his lap, lost in what she was sure were thoughts of guilt and blame for their losses. He was so quick to flagellate himself over things beyond his control. She squeezed his hand. “Mulder, you did help me. You always do. Melissa thought we were lucky to have each other to look out for each other.”
He still wore a hangdog expression but the corners of his mouth twitched up and his eyebrows unknit a bit.
She continued on, delicately, “You know what I think? I think Samantha was…is…lucky to have you. I think you would have done this for her, too, if you’d been allowed to. And I think one day you’ll get to hear it, one way or another. You’re a good brother.”
His breath caught and for a moment she thought she’d crossed a line but instead she found herself being pulled into a tight hug. She leaned into his shoulder and breathed in, relaxing into his embrace. He rubbed her back and kneaded for a moment before letting go, his expression now placid. “Thank…thank you, Scully. I hope you’re right.”
They hung in each other’s gaze for a moment before the bubble burst and she released his hand. She leaned her head against his shoulder to keep the connection going and they watched the movie in comfortable silence for a while. She considered the man by her side, so unlike any other man she’d ever known. What she didn’t tell him was that Melissa had also been ruthless about prying and prodding into her feelings for Mulder, and his for her. Maybe she was right about that, too, she thought, before chiding herself for dwelling on things that couldn’t be.
By the time Dana Barrett had transformed into the Gatekeeper her eyes were heavy and her limbs grew slack. She had slipped further and further down the headboard until her head rested on the pillows at Mulder’s side. The last thing she was aware of was the high whine of the TV being switched off and Mulder drawing a blanket over her. She stirred slightly in protest but as she drifted off she felt the brush of his lips on her forehead before hearing the click of the door to his room. She slept, warm, content, and loved.
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Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part IV)
Back on the fic list grind with a part four~!
**Note: Will ghost edit later.**
Loose chronological order below~
@hipsbef0rehands/Millenial_Falcon’s(WBM/WBM)
What do you think Mulder and Scully's best days were, respectively, as children?
He took her onto the navy ship which he he worked, showing her everything from the command room to the engine room. He took her to the tiny bunk beds where the crew slept, the head, and the kitchen. Young Dana looked at the living arrangements in horror. When he took her to the forward dock of the ship and she could see the vast ocean before her. It was then that she understood her fathers love for the sea and adopted the same passion. It was this day that her love and respect for her father grew immensely, and sometimes where she needs to take a break from life and retreat to her happy place, it is on the dock of that ship.
Mulder and Scully come to separate but important realizations as starry-eyed children.
4. Mulder shopping for Scully
It had been easy in the past, with women like Diana and Phoebe, he found the most dazzling expensive piece of jewelry and they were happy. The gifts were nice but he never really put much thought into them. That wasn't Scully.
Post IVF-- Mulder wants to pick the perfect gift for Scully's birthday after the IVF and before the impending millennium.
BED SHARING
Scully continued on with he night-time ritual of putting on her pajamas, fluffing up her pillows, and turning down her sheets, when Mulder emerged from the bathroom. He plopped unceremoniously onto the bed disrupting the sheets that she had just perfected.
Pre-Dating-- Mulder and Scully take their own personal liberties.
20. “You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”
Heaving herself out of the sunken cushion of the battered chair, she pushed it closer to Mulder’s bedside. Once settled back into the Scully-shaped indent she had managed to create over the last three days, she hesitantly reached out and took Mulder’s hand in hers. Despite his improving condition, fear wound around her heart, squeezing out all hope and replacing it with the heavy weight of despair. He could very easily be ripped from her life once again.
Deadalive Scully waits (and begs) for Mulder to wake up.
A Nice Hike in the Woods (Ao3)
“Mulder, are we out here looking for aliens?”
“No” he chuckled. He held his arms out. They were surrounded by pine trees in various shapes and sizes. “Well…” he said. “Pick one”.
Scully raised her eyebrows looking up and down, questioning him with her eyes.
“No, Scully, a tree…. pick one”
Pre-IWTB Mulder tries to make their unremarkable house a home.
You're told to write/direct/produce a msr scene of your own doing for one of the revival episodes.......go.
Taking her left hand he raised it to the level of their eyes. Gently, he began to play with the silver band that no longer adorned her neck but once again, her ring finger.
“I gave this to you almost 4 years ago. I never made good on my promise.”
Revival Mulder and Scully are back on the road and back together, giddy and happy and ready for the next step.
Babylon Headcanon
“She is a doctor, Scully.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Well, Mulder, I’ve been a doctor for a lot longer and let me tell you, if you ever do anything like that again, I will have you committed.”
“Scully… you know I will, eventually” he said with a smile.
Babylon Mulder cannot, of course, escape a Scully scolding.
You're the only one I trust (archive.org)
A free-floating assortment of The X-Files fics that are fun to scroll down and read.
mad_martha's (annex-files, x-sites)
Pilot Flipped (Ao3)
In contrast to the corridor outside, the office was brightly lit and austerely neat, its untidiest feature being a pinboard near the door that was covered in newspaper cuttings and photographs. Even those were arranged in a semblance of order. There was a desk which, apart from a stack of ageing files, a set of document trays and a slide projector, seemed to be empty of even normal office equipment; and a set of shelves around the walls filled with orderly rows of books and box files. Mulder couldn't remember the last time he'd seen any office in the Bureau looking so tidy, and he included the Director's inner sanctum in that assessment.
AU-- Pilot Mulder is assigned to Scully.
9 Minutes
The label inside the blouse collar bore the name of one of Scully's favourite outfitters and as she examined it, noting that the size was also her own, she made a disturbing discovery. Just inside the neck of the blouse lay a small tangled gold chain and cross.
Scully's fingers flew to her own neck, where an identical cross, given to her by her mother on her fifteenth birthday, lay against her skin. What the –
Her thoughts were suddenly jerked away by a distant scrabbling sound, barely audible above the noise of the machines around her....
Scully jumped to her feet. That voice had been familiar. "Mulder!" she shouted, hearing her voice echo horribly.
No reply, but there was a series of thumps and grunts, brought up finally by a loud thud.
AU-- Pilot Scully flashes to the FTF hallway in the 9 minutes she and Mulder lose on the road.
Conversations
There was a pause as she tried to hang onto her anger and hurt, but Scully's innate sense of what was fair wouldn't allow this statement to pass unchallenged. "I don't know about that, Mulder," she observed ruefully. "I can think of a couple of occasions when I haven't been particularly fair to you. More than a couple, if I'm honest."
"I won't argue you with you, but nothing you've done, or imagine you've done, can possibly match how unfair I've been to you over the past five years."
"I don't want to play "my blame's bigger than your blame" either."
Mulder gave a rough chuckle. "Okay."
Pre-Dating-- Mulder and Scully get nudged and scolded by her family (twice) and Skinner (once) before they finally confront their S6 hurts and confess their love... in a cave-in.
@two-microscopes/twomicroscopes's
Sicktember 2022 Day 12: Psychogenic (Ao3)
He swallowed. “Scully, even if that’s what I’ve done to you–”
“Don’t make this about yourself.”
“Take care of yourself.”
S1 Scully's health keeps breaking down in her overexuberance to keep up; and Mulder, worried, tries to look out for her.
Sicktember 2022 Day 1 (Ao3)
“Chicken soup, I said–I said I’d bring you some,” he spluttered.
He was so desolate, it tugged at her heart.
“Buffalo chicken pizza soup, to be specific, I guess.”
Scully is sick and snappy about Mulder's mother henning, but relents.
Sicktember 2022 - Chapter 4
“Do you just want to get into pajamas now?”
“Mulder,” she sighed, slumping onto one bed, “you know they took our luggage.”
Ah, yes, when the vengeful cultists also smashed their rental car’s windows and slit its tires. They were nothing if not thorough. You had to grant them that.
Scully is running a temperature, and Mulder gets her to a motel as fast as he can with slashed tires and missing luggage.
Sicktember 2022 Day 5 (Ao3)
He leaned closer and drew a deep, argumentative breath against his congestion, instead sneezing dramatically.
“Great, now I have your germs all over me.”
Scully insists on taking Mulder home after he keeps sneezing in the office.
Sicktember 2022 Day 20 (Ao3)
They’d last seen each other at that briefing–was that three days ago already? By then even Mulder had admitted this case might not be an X-file.
No, a serial killer was ravaging across DC and their already non-existent work-life balance.
Buried in their office, Mulder swam in a sea of tissues, too.
Scully skips an autopsy to care for her sick, insomniac partner.
Sicktember 2022 Day 3: Painkillers (Ao3)
In the dim light, he could make out Scully’s eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. She rolled her head towards him as he leaned down to touch her matted hair. This was worse than he’d been expecting.
Cancer arc-- Mulder rushes to help Scully, reasoning past her refusal to take painkiller meds.
Sicktember 2022 Day 9: Home Remedy (Ao3)
“Scully? Scully!” Mulder called through their adjoining motel rooms’ door.
Faster than a conspirator to a smoke shop, she rushed out of bed and burst into his room.
Post Redux II Mulder's nose bleeds; and Scully rushes in to assess the injury and calm their panic.
Sicktember 2022 Day 10: Excessive Use of Tissues (Ao3)
Here Scully was, curled up with her Capote novella. Only Jeopardy playing in the background split her attention. Oh, and her sickly partner sniffing on her couch.
“Mulder, for the last time, blow your nose.”
“But, Scully,” he whined from her couch, “I just did.”
Dating-- Mulder is sniffly during a cozy night in.
@hamster-on-fire/fade_into_the_dusk_with_me's For The Sake Of Driving (Ao3)
‘I just. I need to drive, Scully.’
It’s trivial & bizarre & it really is too late....
‘Yeah- um, yeah, alright.’ She nods along to herself, as if he can see her. As if it matters.
Car rides shared between Mulder and Scully through the years.
@sunlightscully's
Travel
There are moments where he makes a fool of himself in airports. He catches glimpses of dark braids, swinging for just a moment before disappearing into the throng of people, and finds that his hands are shaking. She is forever escaping him, forever just a few steps ahead, and his chest tightens with the absolute conviction that it was her, that those braids belonged to her and now he has lost her again in the crowd.
It happens for the first time around Scully. She reaches for her gun and then his hand. He is incredibly grateful, suddenly; he hadn’t realized he’d been afraid that she wouldn’t.
Early seasons Mulder and Scully bond in airports, learning to appreciate each other.
City in the Clouds
He tells her he wants to settle down in the country, grow old where he can see the stars. He tells her she could be a mother, and she thinks for the first time of settling down with him. Fleetingly, she sees herself in the window of a little white farmhouse, wearing an apron. Cooking oatmeal.
She couldn’t stand it.
Scully realizes, years later, that she did want to live Home Mulder's domestic dream.
Kitchen
On the tabletop, her index finger splashes into a small pool of blood. “Come on,” she says, and Mulder leans obediently forward. The cut isn’t bad, or deep – head wounds always look worse than they actually are – but she dabs at it anyway, cleaning the blood away, applying disinfectant. He hisses, tries to move away, but she has one hand pressed to the top of his head, holding him steady.
Scully cleans up Mulder's latest injuries; and the two make a laughing but important blood brother pact.
Food
“There’s cheese on your mouth,” she says, and he tries to see it in the reflexion of the window but the car weaves and she grabs his arm instinctively.
“Mulder! Watch the road, I’ll do it.”
She wipes the corner of his mouth crudely with the scratchy brown napkin.
Mulder realizes he loves Scully while they eat food in the car, scratchy napkins and celestial comparisons serving as evidence for his belief.
Beautitudes
“I can’t accept it,” he says, and she wants to say, “You have to, it’s happening,” and, “There’s nothing anyone can do about it,” but he wouldn’t believe that either.
He makes everything harder.
Somehow, though, she is thankful. He’s fighting for her, and no one fights harder than Mulder.
Scully and Mulder support each other through their shared and separate tragedies.
My_Love_Forever's
The Strength of Their Beliefs
Sometimes he talks. Don't leave. I need you to stay. Keep fighting. I'll make them pay for this. I don't know who did this. I can't let them let you go and I can't make you stay.
One Breath Mulder desperately clutches Scully's necklace while Scully feels his gaze, even in her coma.
The Realization of Weakness
Hidden in the back of his mind, the thought of not finding the thought of the Scully he lost. He has noticed that things faze her that she never blinked at before. Now she turns away and says she needs a moment when she is faced with the horrors of the world where previously she would have been fired up with rage at the perpetuator and would be shooting down his theories with facts. That is one of the things he missed most when she was taken for that long time; he would say "I think you have a vampire problem here" and pause, expecting her to take a deep breath and start listing all the reasons why that can't be after her exasperated "Mulder."
Irresistible Mulder wants to help support or heal Scully, hoping that, somehow, he is.
Waiting, in Reverse Order
For once, in a change of pace, she waits at his bedside. They have changed places, one sleeps on the bed and the other keeps a vigil in the uncomfortable chair at the bedside. Last time she was the one in the bed and he was waiting but now they have changed. She saved his life and waits at his bedside, hoping that her last memory of him is not the one where he ditches her to keep her safe.
End Game Scully waits in the hospital instead of Mulder, for once.
Viridian5's
Blowing Smoke
"Things are tough all over," I replied in my best hard-boiled voice.
He smiled darkly. "A change is gonna come..."
"Yeah?"
"You may not see me again. I think I'll be getting a promotion soon. I only had to stab a few backs to capture it."
S2 thug observes Krycek on a break.
Haunted
//As the roar and keening whistle grew louder, I stood up and walked into the trough between the rails. With an increasing feeling of clarity and peace, I turned to face my ride. When I threw the empty bottle against the rails, I couldn't help smiling at the sharp, crashing sound it made as it shattered. It sounded final. The approaching train looked liked a darker, moving cutout in the night. Except for the flashing lights.
//The lights.
//I couldn't move. Terror and a bone-deep feeling of loss gripped me along with paralysis as the flickering lights froze me in place. I couldn't see through the glare, and I heard someone screaming, and I could swear it was a girl, and she was screaming words, but I couldn't make them out, even as I sensed that she yelled the same word over and over again, and I was helpless and couldn't move again...
//NOT LIKE THIS! FIGHT! MOVE!
Mulder is transported to the memories of his childhood suicidal ideations while investigating a ghost and train tracks casefile.
Dead to the World
He looked so pale and still lying there. He had something odd, something that had left bruises and abrasions, wrapped tightly around his neck. Two more lines of that something enveloped his wrists. When she felt his neck to search for a pulse her fingers brushed it and quickly shied away. It was warm, moist, and alive. The other end of each of the lines trailed off into the darkness.
But he still lived. She took a scalpel from her coat pocket and prepared to cut him loose.
Mulder's eyes slowly opened, as if consciousness didn't come easily. She watched so many emotions flicker through them before he settled on blankness.
S5 Mulder willingly lets a monster parading as Samantha kill him; and Scully watches, horrified at his suicidal tendencies.
Circle - Chapter 1
It’d be interesting to see what Alex’s Consortium would be like. Maybe no better. Maybe his would even be worse.
But he was the one paying me.
AU-- Cashier rises through the Consortium ranks with the help of Krycek... only to face him again, years later, in a darker context.
Unprotected
"You have a neck brace on. You could have been killed. It was a stupid thing to do."
Mulder couldn't tell if he felt rage or despair. It teetered from one side to the next from second to second. He told myself that she was just upset that he'd ditched her and injured himself again, but--
He remembered why he never confessed anything to her or anyone if he could avoid it.
An injured Mulder feels alone after a careless comment from Scully.
7-Eleven Nightmares at 3 a.m.
Mulder was surprised his whole head didn't get devoured in his last yawn, which felt like it had split his face. //If I were a cartoon character...//
An insomniac Mulder is bored out of his mind... then starts to question his sanity after spotting a cup of very black, very oily diner coffee.
Starbuck_Lover's Under The Milky Way - Chapter 1
“You insisted I come with you in the middle of the night, you won’t tell me where we’re going, and you’re being incredibly vague,” she gestured wildly, “Excuse me for noticing a pattern.”
“You’ll love it,” he beamed at her, “I promise.”
Mulder wakes Scully up, taking her to a field to watch the stars.
Deb Longley's
Whistlewood - Chapter 1
I take a little longer than I should to turn back around, but the room behind me has transformed: it is lit softly, by candles fixed on each side of the fireplace, casting amber halos on the walls, and the fireplace now has a fire, which has burned down to nothing but softly smoldering ashes....
I swing back in his direction. He hasn't budged. Unexpectedly, he moves past me into the room, startling me into a yelp which he doesn't seem to hear.
An unconscious Mulder witnesses the vision of a dead man sledgehammer his family.
The Fear Place
I wonder what other people see when they look at him; the man is beautiful with his wild, windblown dark hair, and eyes, and tall, lean frame. A few of them are audacious enough to look him up and down, but they usually stop when they get to his eyes. He's thirty-eight, but he has the eyes of an old soul. He sees deep, and through, observing things that others overlook. He looks at smiles and perceives the lies hiding behind them. He sees the truth.
Mulder's messed-up knee and mother-son dynamic drives him to call Scully on Thanksgiving for reinforcements. Tena finally relents, if only a little.
story_monger's Predictable
He’s predictable, and he knows that.
Want to see the Mulder guy do some flips? Stick him in front of a missing child’s report; make it a little girl with dark hair. Watch him run.
He feels sick....
They should know that there’s a girl missing, and she has dark hair, and she’s supposed to turn ten in a week.
Mulder loathes his own reactions to cases similar to Samantha's; and Scully helps him to calm and get some sleep.
enigmaticblue's
True Hearts
He’s told Scully that the truth will set them both free, but he feels like a hypocrite for saying it. Mulder believes in the truth, he trusts in its power, and yet he’s hiding the truth from his partner.
Mulder has half-convinced himself that it’s not important, that they have to get through this crisis first. He owes Scully the truth, but he can’t bring himself to add to her burden.
Post Memento Mori Mulder feels guilt over not telling Scully about her ova.
Let Them Eat Cake
Scully peruses the plate of donuts at the end of the table, irritated when she realizes that cake donuts are all that’s left. She feels someone lean in close behind her, and an arm snakes around to snag one of the chocolate-frosted ones with multi-colored sprinkles.
She glances over her shoulder to see Mulder’s grin. “You didn’t want that one, did you, Scully?”
She resists rolling her eyes through a strong effort of will. “I don’t like cake donuts, Mulder.”
“Cake donuts are the best kind,” Mulder protests, taking a big bite, catching the crumbs with his tongue.
S6 Mulder and Scully debate donuts at a team-building conference.
Under the Mistletoe
“Hm?” He adjusted his glasses as he looked up at her.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
“About what?”
“You know about what.”
He frowned, clearly confused. “No, I don’t know. What did I do?”
Scully pointed to the mistletoe, waiting for him to confess, or at least smirk. Instead, his face remained completely innocent—although that didn’t mean much, since this was Mulder.
Pre-Dating-- Scully notices but avoids the mistletoe. Mulder does not.
Reflections
His old man had missed Vietnam, but Doggett had an uncle who’d joined up. He’d heard a few stories, most while on leave after boot camp. Uncle Duane seemed to think they shared a connection that hadn’t been there before, and he talked about steamy nights that were filled with gunfire and the smell of reefer.
Later, much later, when he’d been given an honorable discharge after Beirut, Uncle Duane had talked about the horror of watching your friends get limbs blown off, of hands stained with the blood of innocents.
Pre-This Is Not Happening Skinner shares the details of the Unrequited case with Doggett. Both wonder what was and wasn't worth it.
A Strong Shoulder
The knock on the door came as a surprise around ten, and Scully heaved herself up off the couch, one hand on her back for support. A quick glance through the peephole had her hurrying to open the door.
Mulder stood there, a crooked grin on his face, his eyes a little lost, a little vulnerable. “Hey.”
Post Three Words Mulder slowly drifts in, glad Scully wants him to stay even if he's handling reentry badly.
All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue
Scully gave thanks that William was such a good-natured baby; he stirred once as she bundled him up, opening his eyes sleepily, then immediately closed them again once he was secure in his carrier. Keys in hand, she set the car seat down in the hallway to lock the door behind her, then froze as she heard footsteps.
How was it that she could recognize his walk after he’d been gone for months? How was it that she could sense him coming even though she had no expectation of his arrival?
AU-- S9 Mulder returns to Scully and William for Christmas; but he leaves again, though both wishes he could stay.
@cauldronoflove/thegoodthebadandthenerdy's
Close Your Eyes, Be Patient
He stood in his forlorness like it was a new winter coat. It was draped across the downward curve of his shoulders, tugging impishly at his struggling-to-remain-steady mouth. It wasn't that she'd never seen him like this - as much as he tried to hide it, she knew there were certain cases that kept him awake long into the night, same as her - it was just that she'd never seen it so set in.
Pre-Dating-- Scully makes a calculated effort to carefully disentangle Mulder from his mind.
The Prairie State Debate
Dinner twisted away like dandelion wishes, table plated in hard plastic cups and warm to the touch dishes. The tea was syrupy sweet, made by the hand of a true Southern child despite their current place on the map, and the food sported heavy gravys and savory score marks - a combination that left Scully, two servings and only yeses for 'would you like a refill?' Scully, ready to collapse into the gossamer sheets of her bed until tomorrow.
But when she felt fingers on the rise of her shoulder, heard an absence of footsteps beside her, glanced up at a dazzling marquee, she lead the way in to the theater. She was tired, yes, but she had been more so, no doubt would be same time next week, and these moments like monthly allowances were something she needed as much as anything.
Dating-- Scully remembers their first not-date.
••• - •- -•--
It's dark out, moonlit sky extrapolating between the slats of still open blinds, but he gets the sense that it's not the same night he remembers falling asleep in. The only other light is a small lamp somewhere above him, casting low light that does nothing for his pale, thin skin. He looks fragile, even from his own estimates - battered and bruised and made from poorly picked and sewn together parts.
He can't help but think he doesn't deserve the smile he finds waiting for him, not in this state. That doesn't stop her though....
Scully saves a drugged up, nearly dead Mulder.
All I Need's a Fraction of Your Happy Heart
Scully ducked her head into the street, looking both ways before bustling across the crosswalk, Mulder following a single footstep behind. To onlookers, their height difference was exasperated as they hitched their arms up and jogged quickly through the sounds of honking traffic, but it never seemed to cross their minds. When they picked back up on the sidewalk, he ducked his head and leaned forward, just enough so she could hear him, just enough so she could let a laugh kick up her throat.
AU-- Scully, giddy and freshly married on a case, reflects on the events that led to their mutual proposal, and courthouse wedding.
Gravity, Oh Gravity
because the second thing he sees is scully. scully in a shirt he's had to have seen her in a thousand times, the one he thinks is green, but isn't sure because his eyes have always betrayed him. his eyes have to be betraying him. scully and-
and
and
and
(and his heart stops
beating.)
it thunders back to life as he stumbles forward, legs feeling like they've been chopped from his body and reattached in the wrong direction.
AU-- This Is Not Happening Mulder wakes on the ground to the stars and Scully's face. Even Skinner cries.
Looking Back Over My Shoulder (I See it Clear as Day)
There are few people that Mulder is okay with calling him Fox. Admittedly, they're all named Scully....
Her sister isn't, though.
Revival Mulder and Scully chuckle over Melissa's ghost's audacity to chew out her sister's partner.
@youweremytouchstone's First time she winked at him!
He looks back over at the door. As usual, nobody down her except for him this early in the morning. He turns his attention to the cases piling up on his desk.
And then in a flash, she’s at his desk, looking at him like she’s been there the last hour.
Dating-- Scully enjoys teasing Mulder and pretending it never happened.
@pukajen's (Ao3, LJ) Sleep Cycle
Even all these years later, it feels like a stolen moment to watch him sleep peacefully; undrugged, unconcussed, in their bed, the one they've shared for years. So many times in the past she's kept vigil over his hospital bed, watching him sleep, worried he'd never wake up.
Revival Scully still loves watching Mulder sleep.
@dinascully/unsedentary's Miles Adrift
She said something about being blinded by someone’s brights, losing control, ending up in the ditch, and he tries not to think about whether or not this was an accident. He’s already called Skinner.
He waits a few minutes before trying to start the car again. If he’s lucky, they’ll be on their way and home before Scully wakes up. But the car has other plans – it coughs pitifully, whines, and refuses to go anywhere.
Breakup-- Scully and Mulder reconnect after a car accident. His car breaks down, forcing them to have a tearful conversation.
Thanks for reading~
Enjoy!
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