#scully is in the office doing a report and all she hears is ‘I STAY OUT TOO LATE-’

[jodians]

if taylor swift were to exist in the x files universe, i think scully would be a red/folklore/evermore/tortured poets department type of lady while mulder is the type of guy to kick the door down with shake it off blasting on full volume

[is-on-its-way]

In the name of the Father, the Skeptic and the Son

Episodes: One Son/ Two Fathers

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Epilogue

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Chapter 2: I don't want to dissect everything today

Skinner has some advice for Mulder... which he listens to for once.

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(AD KERSH's office. SKINNER, SPENDER, MULDER, and SCULLY are present. AD KERSH is looking at photos of the burned bodies from the Air Force base. He is very upset by them.) AD KERSH: The way these people died... the loss of life here - it is beyond words. I can't imagine how it must be for you - losing your mother. SPENDER: Yes, sir. But that's not why I asked for this meeting. AD KERSH: Why did you ask for it? SPENDER: Because I'm responsible for the deaths of those people at the Air Base hangar in no small way. I certainly didn't prevent them. AD KERSH: I can assume then you can explain how they died? Because I have yet to hear any explanation. SPENDER: Agent Mulder can explain it. I think Agent Scully, to an extent. They might have even prevented what you see in those photos. AD KERSH: Agents Scully and Mulder have been suspended by the FBI. SPENDER: Also my doing... and my mistake. AD KERSH: I would ask... SPENDER: I'd ask, sir - before you tell me that it's not my business - that you do everything you can to get them back on the X-Files. Far worse can happen... and it will. AD KERSH: Where are you going? SPENDER: To pack up my office. AD KERSH: Agent Spender... (SPENDER leaves the office.) AD KERSH: (to MULDER, angrily) You have answers now? Why didn't I hear about those answers before? MULDER: I've had answers for years. AD KERSH: Then why didn't we hear about them? MULDER: No one would ever listen. AD KERSH: Who burned those people? MULDER: They burned themselves. With a choice made long ago by a conspiracy of men who thought they could sleep with the enemy. Only to awaken another enemy. AD KERSH: What the hell does that mean? MULDER: It means the future is here, and all bets are off. AD KERSH: Agent Scully, make some sense. SCULLY: Sir, I wouldn't bet against him.

Kersh pursed his lips and looked up at them. “Well until someone gives me some answers in the form of a typed up report I don’t want to see or hear from either of you. Your suspensions stay in effect until such time I read it and make my decision.”

Scully looked at her lap and Mulder looked at Kersh with a plain expression on his face hardly containing his contempt. 

“Get out of my office.” Kersh said in annoyance and authority.

Mulder rose and followed Skinner. As they walked out of the door Scully walked past them without a word and left them in the secretaries office. She stalked in the direction of the elevators.  

Skinner looked at Mulder who was looking sheepish. “Whatever you did to her, however you upset her. I suggest you make it up to her and mend fences. She’s the reason you’re still employed, however loosely, by the FBI. She has your back like no one else does here, don’t risk that for anything.” 

Mulder cocked his head not looking at him but at the door Scully had left through. 

“Yeah. Thanks for the advice.” He said absentmindedly. He wondered how much Skinner knew or had guessed about their partnership at this rare insight. 

He did have to talk to Scully. The stooges had been a little bit right. He had been a jerk at their place. But not because Scully might have been wrong, because he had so much else on his mind that seemed so dire at the time. Preventing an invasion of colonist aliens for one. That when she’d made it clear she didn’t trust his judgement, it had been the last straw for his patience.  But he’d been dismissive and mean in a way he’d never been with her. He’d hurt her, and he was terrified she would leave him for good. He needed to try to make this right. 

He would tell her he’d listened to her, he’d checked Diana’s. The only thing he’d turned up though was how comfortable the smoking man had been letting himself into her apartment.

She was right though. Without the FBI all they had was each other, and he didn’t want Diana to be the reason he lost her. 

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She walked in and shut the door. She tried taking her coat off but her purse was crossed over her shoulder and prevented her from pulling it off. She felt suddenly trapped, claustrophobic and a white hot rage coursed through her veins at this small inconvenience, betraying the feelings she’d been burying since Diana had walked in full of authority while they’d looked like drowned rats.

She let out a cry of rage and frustration at the overwhelming mix of feelings. She kicked off her shoes and pulled the coat off over her head, bag and all, letting it all fall to the floor. Her jacket askew, she thew that off too. She ripped off her pants and kicked them off her legs. She dug under her shirt and unclasped her bra, pulling it off through her sleeve. It landed on the coffee table.

She stood breathing for a second eyes closed. She swayed, feeling lightheaded so she walked to the couch and fell face down. She screamed into a pillow, let her body go limp as she waited for her anger to subside.

The rage had dissipated some and now that she was calmer she recoiled at the hint of thoughts that she couldn’t face at this moment. She got up and opened the cabinet to her stereo. She pulled out ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and put it on at full volume. Not worrying about the neighbours as it was twelve in the afternoon. 

She scream singed lyrics while jumping around her living room. She hadn’t danced like  this since college but it felt freeing and nostalgic at the same time. The first song particularly resonated with her state of mind. Thoughts she didn’t want to think expressed perfectly in someone else’s art. 

… I'm frustrated by your apathy And I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land If only I could meet the maker And I am fascinated by the spiritual man I am humbled by his humble nature, yeah And what I wouldn't give to find a soul mate? Someone else to catch this drift … 

She turned off her mind and danced wildly, all inhibition lost to anger and sorrow and confusion. At what seemed to be the end of her career, and the possibility that it all didn’t really matter because “aliens” or “men” were planning on releasing a devastating virus to the entire world in the near future; At the thought she should’ve stayed in medicine; At all the trauma she’d endured, had it been worth it? She’d accomplished very little and her rewards had been the loss of her ability to have children and to be most probably fired. 

And the one digging in her belly, the most hurtful of all of it, Mulder;  At the small feeling that had grown to a crescendo of disbelief since Mulder had treated her in a way shed never been treated by him; At the disbelief that she could have felt so happy and comforted by him only weeks ago at Christmas, or all those other times he’d been her guiding light and her rock. 

There was a knock on the door as she was standing on her couch, TV remote in her hand, used as a microphone.

“…You love, you learn You cry, you learn You lose, you learn You bleed, you learn You scream, you learn…”

She froze and stopped signing. Then jumped down and turned the stereo down. Maybe someone was home and they’d come to complain. She picked up her pants and with difficulty pulled them on. She threw open the door saying “Sorry I’ll turn it down…” 

But it wasn’t a neighbour. It was Mulder. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of her. She was sweaty, red faced, her shirt was askew, and she knew her hair had turned into its naturally wild wavy curls as she’d danced. She absolutely looked like she’d had a nervous breakdown. She found she didn’t care in the slightest.

“Mulder. What are you doing here?” She asked in a flat voice, not moving to let him in.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah I guess” She turned her back on him and threw the door open. 

He closed the door behind him and glanced at the piles of clothing shoes and bra strewn across the living room. When she reached the couch she turned to him and he glanced at her but stayed by the door. 

“I came to make sure you were okay.” He said concern in his voice.

“Im fine Mulder” She lied.

“You look it” Mulder said sarcastically. 

She didn’t answer. She owed him neither the truth nor a playful response. 

Mulder bit his lip considering her.

“Why did you defend me to Kersh? You don’t even fully believe my theory. You could’ve saved yourself.” She raised her eyebrows “I just thought… you said you couldn’t be in this partnership anymore.” His eyes searched her face begging for answer.

She laughed in disbelief, her brows raised. “Is that what you really think of me? Is that the impression I’ve given you over the years of working with you? Because if it is we really have a problem.” She folded her arms across herself, more for protection than anger.

“No. I…”

She cut him off “Im not a liar Mulder and I’m not Agent Fowley. I wouldn’t throw you under the bus to save myself.” 

“Thats not what she…”

“Thats exactly what she did and continues to do.” Anger erupted in her again setting her chest ablaze. “Where is she now Mulder? Where was she in that meeting where she could’ve been defending you? Explaining… anything? 

Mulder considered this, it was true, he hadn’t seen Diana since he’d sent her along ahead of him. They’d ID’d every body and she wasn’t one of them. CGB Spender hadn’t been found among the dead either. But as Scully said correlation isn’t causation. 

She shook her head. “She’s dirty and she’s involved with this conspiracy somehow. Spying on women who went through the same thing I did. And you scoff at that like it doesn’t matter. The lone gunman can see it why cant you?”

He started gently and calmly. “Diana is my friend Scully. She was the first person not to ridicule me about my work on the X files. There has to be some other explanation. But if you show me irrefutable proof Ill believe it. Its just… we’re in each others shoes here. I need more evidence.”

“You don’t trust my judgement. Yet you throw blind trust at her.” She sighed “God Mulder, you’re my best friend. I thought we had…” She stopped herself.

Mulders heart threatened to rip into pieces at this confession. He stepped towards her “You’re my best friend too Scully. Which is why Im hurt you can’t trust me on this. I did listen to you. I went to her place last night, thats why I was with her, I broke in and she found me. I searched for evidence of what you said. I listened to you, I did. But I didn’t find anything…”

“More nothing” She sighed.

“Thats not fair Scully… Look I wanted to come here and apologize for how I treated you when you told me, I was an ass. But I didn’t find anything… just…”

She waited as Mulder pondered as if he might be saying the wrong thing. The song lyrics were plain as day in their silence. 

… Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole You're so much braver than I gave you credit for That's not lip service You've already won me over in spite of me…

She turned and turned the music off. That was too on the nose perhaps. Too embarrassing. She turned back around. “Except what?”

“The the elder Spender showed up and let himself in.” 

Scully looked at him in disbelief 

“He had me questioning everything… I was ready to… I had given up and you convinced me to keep fighting for this mission. To try to stop them.”

“What mission.” Scully said defeated “We’re all but fired… and the syndicate is dead.”

“We don’t need the FBI to keep fighting this. The syndicate might be dead but this invasion isn’t guaranteed to be called off.” He walked up to her now close enough to reach out and touch her.

“What was the smoking man doing at Agent Fowley’s apartment?” She asked unable to ignore her curiosity

“He said he was looking for his son. I admit its a little weird.” Scully pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow in agreement. 

“I’m sorry for how I treated you. I was so preoccupied by everything else, Diana was the last thing on my mind.” He grabbed her hand “and I don’t want this partnership to end like this Scully.” 

She looked up at him “What can we do now, Mulder?” her brows knit as she thought. He’d used Fowley’s first name in the same sentence he’d called her by her last. Impersonal. Deliberate, maybe habit, but hurtful when it was so baldly stated.

She’d always thought it was special, his requesting she call him Mulder, not Fox. But Diana did, now that she thought about it almost everyone called him Fox and he didn’t seem to mind. Except when she did it.

“Or should I call you Fox? Everyone seems to call you Fox. I’m the only one who’s not allowed.”

“Scully, its not like that.” Mulder said stricken

“Then what is it like. Huh, Mulder? Explain it to me like you…” she halted and swallowed. Her face fell defeated. She didn’t want to think about all of this. She dropped her hand out of his.

“I need you to go.” She said suddenly disturbingly calm. 

“Scully please don’t shut me out.”

“I cant do this right now. Please.” she had desperation in her voice. Eyes not meeting his. She was begging him. He didn’t want to hear her like this. 

“Okay, Ill call you later.”

She didn’t respond as she closed the door as he backed out, pushing the door closed in his face.

She walked to the stereo and pressed play, biting her lip and holding back tears. She skipped some songs, picked up the remote and sang.

“You know how us Catholic girls can be We make up for so much time a little too late I never forgot it, confusing as it was No fun with no guilt feelings The sinners, the saviors, the lover-less priests I'll see you next Sunday…”

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Epilogue

@today-in-fic 🙏

[skelavender]

Mulder is, miraculously, asleep on his couch. He’s been sleeping even worse than she has, he always does, but she’d hoped he wouldn’t be awake when she arrived. As quietly as possible, Scully settles onto the floor next to him, leaning her shoulder against the couch and crunching her knees into the coffee table. Mulder lays on his side, facing the room, and when she shuffles in closer, he rouses. His eyes blink open slowly and take her in. “Scully? Wa’s wrong?” “Nothing,” she smiles at him, “Go back to sleep, Mulder.”

read chapter one of shelter on ao3, or below the cut!

Dear friend,

I felt it shelter to speak to you.

— Emily Dickinson, Letter 533

***

November 1995

He’s in a forest, alone. Wandering. He has been for a while. It’s getting boring. 

A branch creaks above him, and when he looks up, he sees her. Scully, in a long, flowing, white dress. She’s glowing, ethereal.

“Hey, Mulder,” she says as she floats down from her tree branch. 

“Hi, Scully. Where are we?”

Scully waves her hand dismissively, “It doesn’t matter.” 

“What’s with the getup?”

Scully cocks her head in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“The whole fantasy princess-slash-warrior look. Did you pick up a LARPing hobby you neglected to tell me about? I’m offended, I would’ve sent you to my costume guy.”

“Mulder you’re…”

“I’m what?”

“Wildly confusing sometimes.”

They fall into step, continuing along the path Mulder had been following. 

“Will you at least tell me what’s in the pouch?”

“Hm?” She pays the leather drawstring pouch dangling from the belt at her waist, “Oh those are just The Cards, you know that.”

“The Cards?”

“Mhmm. Do you want a reading?”

Instead of thinking too hard, Mulder just nods and accepts the offer. They sit across from each other on a log, with enough space between them to lay the cards out. 

Scully shuffles the well-loved tarot deck with practiced hands. Two cards pop out onto the log between them. One depicts two people stood across from each other, holding cups with a weird bird thing in the sky between them. The other has a rainbow with goblets on it, and people below celebrating the occurrence. 

“Interesting.” Scully all but purrs.

“What?”

“Two of cups. It signifies a union. A deep bond or partnership.” Her fingers brush along the rainbow on the other card. “And the ten of cups, representing happiness. Bliss.”

Scully runs her hand along the deck and carefully selects another. She flips it to reveal a card depicting two people approaching a building in the distance. 

Scully smiles. “Four of wands. Homecoming, and joy. Something… blooming.”

“Blooming?” He asks, “What does that mean?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

She selects the last card. 

The world is slipping away. 

Mulder?

It’s fading. He wants to see the card.

Mulder, wake up.

She places it on the log between them. He catches a glance of the image of two figures, both nude, with another figure in the sky between them before —

Mulder shoots up straight. “Wassit mean, Scully?”

“What?”

Mulder blinks sleepily, and Scully comes into focus. He’s at his desk in the office, with Scully standing over him, one hand on his shoulder where she’s been shaking him to rouse him from his slumber. 

“I was— you were— I had a dream.”

“You had a dream about me?”

“You had magic powers. And you read tarot cards for me.”

“Oh yeah? And did I predict a good future for you, Mulder?” Her lips are cocked in a teasing manner. 

“Something about… blooming? You wouldn’t tell me what it meant.”

“How horribly vague of me.” She finally leans out of his space and takes her seat at the chair across from him. “Did you stay here last night?”

“Haven’t been sleeping well. Got here around 3, thought I might as well review my report.”

“Worse than usual?” Scully tries to avoid concern from flooding her voice, but Mulder can hear it. 

“Yeah. I think I’ve gotten… six hours this week? maybe closer to seven now.”

“God, Mulder, how are you even upright?”

“We should open an X-file on that. Maybe it’s aliens.” 

She rolls her eyes. Mulder taps a file on the desk, which he had fallen asleep on top of. “No, seriously. Aliens. Thoughts? I don’t have a slide show yet, but I’m sure I can whip one up.”

As the beginnings of their days go, this one is relatively normal. 

***

Weekend movies are not a usual occurrence for them, but when Scully calls him around noon on a Sunday asking if he’s busy, he can’t say no to her. Not when he has the opportunity to see her relaxing on his couch and soak up her attention like a sponge.

When Mulder swings the open door at her knock, she wiggles the VHS in her hand, a film they had discussed a mutual interest in at the office earlier in the week, and slithers past him into the apartment without a word. 

“Do I have to worry about whatever I’m about to take out of the tape player, Mulder?” is the first thing she says, while she’s crouching in front of his TV. 

“Don’t worry, Scully, all the truly horrifying stuff is hidden away.” He offers a lopsided smile and she rolls her eyes fondly before pressing the tape she brought into the player and joining him on the couch, scant inches between their thighs.

Over the course of the film, those inches shrink, and by the second act Scully finds herself laid out on the couch with her knees on Mulder’s lap. His fingers trace the skin above her knee where her skirt has ridden up. The light graze of his fingers across her bare skin is electrifying, so much so that she’s losing track of the plot of the movie. 

Shapes, she realizes, he’s drawing some kind of shapes. In a pattern. She can’t place it, but the action repeats on a loop over and over, soothing her further into slumber. 

She’s asleep before the movie finishes, red hair splayed across the arm of the couch. 

***

December 1995

Scully slips her key into the lock, and swings the door open tentatively. It squeaks if it goes too far too fast, and she doesn’t need to wake anyone up at this time of night. 

She avoids the squeak, and steps inside on light feet before locking the door behind her. Avoids the spot on the floor by the table that also squeaks, and sets her jacket over the back of a chair before approaching the living room. 

Mulder is, miraculously, asleep on his couch. He’s been sleeping even worse than she has, he always does, but she’d hoped he wouldn’t be awake when she arrived. 

As quietly as possible, Scully settles onto the floor next to him, leaning her shoulder against the couch and crunching her knees into the coffee table. Mulder lays on his side, facing the room, and when she shuffles in closer, he rouses. 

His eyes blink open slowly and take her in. “Scully? Wa’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she smiles at him, “Go back to sleep, Mulder.” She rests her head on the couch, face less than a foot from his, and closes her eyes. When she feels Mulder’s hand tangle itself in her hair to scratch at her scalp, she sighs. They both drift off within minutes. 

***

Scully’s asleep in the office, her head resting on her arms where they’re folding next to her microscope. She has been for about an hour, since Mulder heard a thunk from Scully’s corner and his head snapped up to make sure nothing had happened. When he noticed she had just fallen asleep, he decided to just let her rest. It’s not like they were in the middle of anything important anyway. The lull between cases had been much needed. 

He’d noticed Scully’s tiredness before she had shown up at his apartment a couple weeks ago, but since then the signs had appeared far more frequently. Heavy makeup under her eyes can only cover the dark circles so much. 

A knock sounds at the door, and it swings open to reveal Skinner before Mulder can respond. He steps inside the office.

“Mulder, I have questions about–”

“ Shhh !” Mulder gestures towards Scully’s, thankfully still sleeping, form. He rises from his desk chair and ushers Skinner into the hallway, closing the door gently behind them.

“Is Agent Scully okay?” Skinner asks.

“I think she’s been, uh, having trouble sleeping. I decided it would be best to let her nap.”

“Do you know why?”

“She hasn’t mentioned anything.” And when she fell asleep on my floor at 3AM, she left before I woke up, so I didn’t exactly get a chance to ask her then , he doesn’t add. 

Mulder answers Skinner’s questions about his recent report and returns to his desk and sleeping partner. 

***

January 1996

Scully is held upright mostly by the cart in front of her. She’s not even entirely sure what on her list has actually made it into said cart, but she’s hoping it’s enough to feed her, and Mulder on the days he shows up, for the week. 

She hasn’t slept well since they returned from a case in New England a couple days previously. Really, that just meant she hadn’t slept well since Mulder was sleeping under the same roof as her. 

That’s the pattern. She’s known since she had snuck into his apartment on a particularly draining sleepless night and fallen asleep in a blink when he was touching her. She’s tried teas and sleep aids, but Mulder’s presence has been the most effective. 

“I like your sweatshirt.”

An unfamiliar voice brings Scully back to the present, where she’s been staring at the back of a box of Triscuits for too long, not processing any of the numbers in front of her. She blinks the person’s face into focus. It’s no one she recognizes. 

“Did you go to Oxford?” He asks, nodding down to her chest. She looks at what she’s wearing, and whaddya know, it says Oxford right there on her front. It’s Mulder’s sweatshirt, one that he usually sleeps in but had somehow made it into Scully’s luggage a couple of cases ago. It’s well loved and comfortable, which is why she had thrown it on after getting home from work and before running to the store. 

“No,” Scully finally replies, “It’s my husband’s. He went.”

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. The truth – or this truth, at least – is instinctual. 

She throws the box in her hand into her cart and shuffles out of the aisle, not having the energy to reflect on the interaction.

***

Scully is shoulder deep in her closet, plucking through dresses and suits she hasn’t had the opportunity to wear in months to years. She’s dead set on wearing her maroon suit today but can’t find it. It’s not at the cleaners, it hasn’t fallen to the bottom of the closet, and it’s not in the pressed stack on the chair in the corner that is waiting to go to the cleaners. And, clearly, it’s not on a hanger. 

She tries thinking back to the last time she wore it. A couple weeks ago, in the office, she hadn’t had an autopsy so she wouldn’t have any reason to take it off, but she was ready for a nap and hadn’t wanted to stop at home to change before going to– 

Oh. Mulder’s. 

She’s surprised she hasn’t run into this problem yet. Half her clothes are at Mudler’s at this point, waiting for a morning where she’s getting ready there. In exchange, half of his are at her place, tucked into the drawer she’s cleared for him and hung neatly by her hand, pushing the dresses she doesn’t get to wear further into the back of her closet. 

“Damn,” she tells the wardrobe, pushing her wedding dress back into place next to one she wore on a first date four years ago and never since. Mudler pops his head out of the bathroom across the hall. 

“Whaf wong?” He asks through a mouth full of toothpaste.

“The suit I want to wear is at your apartment, and we won’t have time to stop by on the way to the office.”

“Which wom?” He leans back into the bathroom to spit.

“The red one.”

Mulder saunters into the bedroom and leans past Scully to point to one of the hangers. “What about this one?”

“That’s brown, Mulder.”

“Well yeah, but the shirt you usually wear it with is a similar color, right?” Scully looks up at him, a little in awe. “What, is it actually green? I was so sure of that one, damn.”

“No, it’s the same color. I’m just surprised you pay that close attention to what I wear.”

Mulder taps his temple, “Photographic memory, remember?”

Uh huh. 

It’s true. She knows he pays attention, he always has. Their dynamic has shifted in the last few months, a phony marriage will do that to people, but it had been true before then as well. For the past three years, they’ve been growing to fill the other’s gaps. Recently, these changes have been to make room for the other in their life. To allow for their flaws, and love one another including them. 

They have little habits that their partner would never have noticed before they started — in the most literal use of the term — sleeping together. For example, Mulder drools in his sleep. Scully endures this, and buys another set of pillowcases to rotate out as needed. Scully takes up an absurd amount of space in the bathroom. By the second night she stayed over, Mulder had jewelry and soaps and creams he didn't even know the purpose of sprawling across his bathroom. He installed another shelf next to the sink, and moved his own stuff to the higher one so she can actually reach it. He even put a small dish on the counter meant for her earrings and necklaces, though she rarely takes the latter off, even to sleep. Often, when they’re home and in only each other’s company, she’ll even wear the ring proudly, atop her shirt for the walls of the apartment to see. In private is the only place it’s safe for her to do so. 

So yes, Scully knows that they’ve changed each other. But she hadn’t known that he had paid such close attention to her. 

She puts on the brown suit with the red shirt, and they pile into the car. 

next chapter ->

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

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Home (4x02)

He hangs up the phone, a weary sigh rattling his bones. It’s practically ingrained, this comfort he’s nursed for decades, this habitual safety he’s become so accustomed to. As the contents of Paster’s phone call linger in his ears, he can feel it: that security slipping through his grasp like silt through soil.

“You’re not gonna believe this one, Sheriff.”

The deputy had been the only one on duty when the report of the dead infant came in, a chilling call from the panicked mother of one of the local boys. “Just out there playin’ ball,'' she'd said, “without a care in the world.” The way it’s supposed to be.

The way it should have stayed.

Sheriff Andy Taylor slides open his desk drawer and appraises its contents: a single, metal box he’s never had to open. Not like this. He hasn’t seen it in years, but he knows exactly what lies within: an old revolver, the one his father gave him back before he retired. A six-shooter, he used to call it; fit for an old Western.

For protection, his father had said, as he pressed the unfamiliar cold metal into Taylor’s warm hand. To keep your family safe.

To keep your home safe.

He shuts the drawer. He isn’t ready for this reality, not now. Not yet.

Later, after he’s watched the excavation, Agents Mulder and Scully arrive from Washington. Taylor explains he’s recruited them for their particular expertise on the matter, but the truth is, he just doesn’t want to face any of this: doesn’t want to scrutinize what it means for his town. Doesn’t want to look it straight in the eyes.

Doing so would mean the death of his home. 

After the agents’ examination, he places the tiny victim back into the refrigerator himself, this foul transgression, this abhorrent sin. Just sitting there next to the pickles and Spam. A memory stirs of his father: he used to eat Spam. He can still remember countless hot summer days when, as a child, he’d run down to the station to catch him on his lunch break. Dad and his Spam. Guess it runs in the family.

“Sheriff, I’m going to have to order DNA typing from the Bureau lab,” Agent Scully says as she removes her rubber gloves, surreptitiously looking around, presumably for some proper disposal bin, some protocol to follow. But there is no protocol for this. She settles on the office wastebasket.

“If you think it’s necessary,” he replies. Of course, it’s necessary. But he just wants all of this to be done and over with.

“I do,” she says firmly. “As much as you’d like to write this off as a simple burial, I’m afraid that isn’t the case.”

“That so?” he asks gently. 

“The evidence suggests the child was alive when it was buried. This will be ruled a homicide.”

Sheriff Taylor can feel his heart drop into his stomach, every word vertiginous. All of it only further demonstrates his worst fear: that everything around here will have to change.

Agent Mulder says nothing, merely stares at the closed door of the fridge as if it were Pandora’s Box; when opened, there would be no limit to the evil it let out into the world. 

“I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but I think the next step should be to question the Peacocks,” Agent Scully continues. He can see in her eyes that she is convinced they are involved; she’s seen it all before, he surmises. She’s seen things he doesn’t even want to imagine.

Taylor takes a deep breath and nods. What’s right is right. He’s been looking at this case with emotion, not pragmatism. Dad would have said the same, if he’d ever had to deal with something like this.

“I can take you out there,” Barney pipes up. He, perhaps unconsciously, places his hand on his weapon. The action reeks of raw truth: everyone is, on some level, wary of the Peacocks, but particularly the young kids like Barney. They'd grown up fearful of the unknown, kept in the dark about the true nature of that family. Like modern-day Boo Radleys.

“That won’t be necessary,” Agent Scully says.

Agent Mulder still says nothing, his face drawn into a pensive, mournful expression, locked onto the fridge. 

“And you’re sure this isn’t some outsider?” Taylor has to try one more time. “A vagrant, maybe someone passing through?”

“No, I’m not sure, but we can’t know until we get some more information, Sheriff.” Agent Scully forces a smile. She’s indulging his willful ignorance, treating him with kid gloves. Part of him hates it, but his own behavior certainly hasn’t done anything to dispel the notion that he’s simply not cut out for this.

“Well all right,” he concedes. “You know where to find me.” The agents depart, taking with them the last vestige of innocence.

Later that evening, before bed, Sheriff Taylor sits on his porch, in the quiet calm of his abode, watching the stars. The light flips on and Barbara pokes her head out.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Taking one good last look around before it all changes,” he says. He hopes she can’t hear the hitch in his throat.

“Come to bed honey,” she says. “It will still be here in the morning.” Her gentle voice feels safe. It feels like home. 

They go back inside, the faint songs of crickets subsiding but still audible through the open windows of the house. As his wife begins to ascend the stairs, he glances towards his study, towards the desk, towards the place where he knows that gun lives.

For protection. To keep your family safe.

His family is safe. They will be. They have to be. 

All of us, he thinks, as Barbara’s hand moves protectively across her stomach.

He doesn’t get the gun. 

Read the rest of All Eyes Lead to the Truth on Archive of Our Own!

@admiralty-xfd

[baronessblixen]

(Prompt if you take them): You wanted someone to force you to write, so I am simply relaying a strongly worded memo from Scully. She wants you to write about Mulder having such a normal crazy day that is as unbelievable as any X File.

Took me only 9 months to reply to this! The fic baby born from this prompt is very, very sweet. Here be fluff.

Fictober Day 10 | Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober2022 | Wc: 932

(Not So) Ordinary Days

Any second now the world is going to end. That’s the only explanation for how this day has been going. Or not been going, rather. Mulder didn’t oversleep, he didn’t spill coffee on himself or anyone else, he didn’t get stuck in an elevator, run into people he didn’t want to see, wasn’t reprimanded by Skinner, Kersh, or anyone else.

There was no report he forgot to write and hand in, no case taking them out of the office, or perpetrators trying to kill them. He went to work, got the job done, and then went home. And that’s it. That is all that has happened today: nothing. Which is why he’s waiting, now. Clearly something is amiss. Days like these don’t happen to him.

“Scully, it’s me.” If anyone can make sense of this, it’s her.

“Mulder, is everything all right?” Immediately she sounds worried, probably thinking he hurt himself or wants her to meet him for some inane reason.

“Yes, everything is all right,” he says. “Or maybe not. That’s why I called you. Did today seem strange to you?”

“Strange? In what way?”

“Nothing happened,” he says.

“Did you want anything to happen?” Scully asks him, amusement slipping into her voice. There’s rustling on the other end of the line and he imagines her getting comfortable on her couch. He wonders what she’s wearing, if she’s already in her pajamas, maybe noshing on something sweet while reading, or watching TV. He’s so lost in his daydream about Scully that he almost forgets that he’s on the phone with her.

“No, I-… it was just so, so…” He can’t find the right word for what today has been.

“Normal?” Scully suggests.

“Too normal.”

“What does that even mean?” She asks him and he can hear her stifle a chuckle. He wants to hear her chuckle, he finds. Maybe the day has been normal – downright boring even – but talking to Scully, whether on the phone or in person is anything but. No matter how much they talk, it’s always a privilege. Hearing her voice in his ear, knowing she listens to him, and cares about him, is special. That’s not normal, not ordinary at all. Not to him, anyway.

“I don’t know,” he admits sheepishly. “I just thought it was weird.”

“Is that why you called me?”

“I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?” Gone is his daydream about Scully sitting on the couch, eating ice cream, half waiting for a call from him. She might be getting ready for a date. Or the date is already in her apartment. Jealousy rears its ugly head, but Mulder shoves it down again, waiting for her reply.

“Hmm, I was going to start a movie.”

“By yourself?”

“Am I not allowed to watch a movie by myself?”

“Of course you are,” he says, trying not to sound too joyful about her being all alone. “What movie are you watching?” He asks, picking up his own remote control. “Maybe we can watch together.” The silence on Scully’s end is loud and Mulder is about to apologize when she does speak.

“You want to come over?” She asks him.

“I-” That hadn’t even occurred to him. All he thought was that they could stay on the phone and watch the movie together that way. “I-”

“Do you? I can put the ice cream back in the freezer so it won’t be melted when you get here.”

“I- you wouldn’t mind me coming over?”

“No,” she says and to his ears, she sounds almost shy. “Actually I think I’d really like that. We haven’t watched a movie together in a while.” The last time was on a case, forced to share a room together, and Mulder unable to sleep. They left the TV on all night and Scully fell asleep during The Maltese Falcon. Mulder had been up for a few more hours, torn between watching the TV screen and his sleeping partner.

“I’d love to come over. You sure you’re okay with that? We have work tomorrow.” But he’s already up from his couch, the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder.

“Bring your overnight bag, just in case.”

He stops dead in his tracks. Is Scully propositioning him? And here he thought this day was eerily normal. There’s nothing normal about any of this after all. Maybe the world really is ending. Any second now she’s going to admit all of this was a joke, and that no, she doesn’t want to watch a movie with him. Except his Scully isn’t cruel. She doesn’t lie to him. She doesn’t use and abuse him.

“Mulder? Are you still there?”

“I am,” he says, with a smile. “Just thinking about what I’m going to wear tomorrow.”

“Don’t think too long about it,” she says. “See you in half an hour?” Those are the most beautiful words in the world, Mulder decides.

“See you in half an hour,” he confirms. They hang up the phone without saying goodbye, knowing they will see each other. Soon. Mulder tries to be quick and practical about it. Pack a suit, a toothbrush and… a t-shirt to sleep in? Scully said not to think too long about it. He throws in his yellow pajama pants and an old t-shirt. That will have to do. It’s all just in case. Isn’t it?

Just in case, he feeds his fish and switches off all the lights. He picks up his overnight bag, realizing he’s grinning. What an ordinary day this has been. But the night? That has the potential to be out of this world.

[silhouetteofacedar]

Fox Mulder, Closet Romantic Ch.3: Jesus Is A Pisces

Previous Chapter - AO3 - MSR, rated E

Mulder has forgotten Scully’s birthday every year but one. Actually, make that two now, since this year he’s determined to make the day special for her somehow. He’d asked her casually what her plans were, and she admitted that outside of a lunch with her mother and some church friends on Sunday the 22nd, she didn’t really have any intention to celebrate.

“It’s been a rough couple months,” she’d explained softly, and that’s all he needed to hear.  She’d gained and then buried a daughter within a few days’ time over Christmas, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t know how she managed to stay sane after that, and if he thought about it for too long the waves of powerlessness and guilt that rolled over him were debilitating.

So instead he focused on what he could do.

“You wanna do something after work on Monday? I promise to be as un-festive as possible,” he offered.

She looked uncertain, licked her lip. “Just us?” she asked.

“Just you and me,” Mulder assured her, the words giving him a tiny, shameful thrill.

She was quiet for a moment. “Sure,” she said finally.

Come Monday, February 23rd, it’s business as usual in the basement office. They finalize their reports from the previous week’s case, wrangle their receipts, argue over who broke the stapler (It was him, she insists; while he claims she jammed the staples in and made it impossible to use properly).

At three minutes to five o’clock, she clears her throat softly as she gathers her things, and he can feel her preparing to speak.

“Yeah, Scully?” he murmurs.

“We still on for tonight?” she asks, sounding almost cautious, and his heart fractures.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he confirms, leafing through a file. “Be sure to bundle up.” He looks up at her and gives her a reassuring grin.

She looks happy and… relieved? Huh.

“Well, I’ll see you then,” she says, shrugging on her coat as she leaves.

Mulder smiles at the door as it clicks shut behind her. He’s unusually giddy about what he has planned for the evening.

Over the weekend he had gone to the grocery store since his refrigerator was barren, then camped out in his building’s laundry room all day Sunday washing every blanket he owned. He even stopped at the little bakery around the corner from his apartment, purchasing a single chocolate cupcake and a loaf of rye bread.

After work he packs his car with a cooler, a duffel bag, a large thermos of coffee, and a pile of blankets.

He’s surprised to see that she’s waiting for him on the steps of her apartment, wearing a heavy jacket and thick turtleneck sweater.

“I got too hot wearing all this inside,” she explains, climbing into the passenger seat. She seems almost excited, and he strangely wants to cry. God, he’s so fucking glad he had the balls to invite her out again.

“Where are we going, Mulder?” Scully asks.

“It’s a surprise,” he replies.

Seven minutes and three wrong turns later, he reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out the map, handing it to her. “Rock Creek Park, please, Navigator,” he says.

“Aha! I thought the route we were taking seemed… circuitous,” Scully says with a smirk, unfolding the map.

“Just tell me where to go; I don’t need a running commentary,” he gripes, secretly relishing her needling.

In about twenty minutes, they arrive at the park’s nature center. Mulder pulls into the lot next to the field across the road and cuts the engine.

“We’re here?” Scully asks, looking around. “It’s deserted. Mulder, please don’t tell me we’re ghost hunting,”

“Ghosts? No,” he says, climbing out of the car and going around to the trunk. “Help me with some stuff?”

Scully comes around to the back of the car, where Mulder hands her the cooler and thermos. He slings the duffel bag over his shoulder and gathers up the pile of blankets. “Close the trunk, will you, Scully?” he says, walking towards the field. “My arms are full.”

They trudge out to the middle of the field, cold winter air biting their cheeks. Mulder stops abruptly and drops the blankets onto the ground in a heap.

“We’re here,” he announces, setting down the duffel bag. He picks up a heavy wool blanket and spreads it out on the grass.

Scully sits down on the blanket, cooler and thermos beside her. “What exactly are we doing out here, Mulder?” she asks.

“Well first, we eat,” he replies, reaching for the cooler. He opens it and pulls out two waxed-paper parcels, handing one to her. “Pastrami on rye,” he announces. “I went a little crazy with the mustard on one of them, we can trade if you want.”

“You made these?” she asks, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a bite. “Oh my god,” she groans. “Mulder, you’ve been holding out on me. This is delicious.”

The satisfaction in her voice makes him flush. “It’s pretty hard to mess up pastrami.”

“True,” she agrees, “but I was starting to doubt you could even make food. Your refrigerator is usually pretty sparse.”

Mulder shrugs, opening the thermos of coffee and pouring her a cup. “Cooking for one doesn’t hold much appeal,” he explains.

“Mm,” she agrees around a mouthful of sandwich, taking the proffered cup. “So Mulder, tell me; is there a reason we’re having a picnic in the dark?” She eyes the duffel bag beside him suspiciously.

“I’m glad you asked,” he replies, unzipping the bag and pulling out a tripod. “You know anything about constellations, Scully?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. He already knows.

“A thing or two,” she replies casually, clearly attempting to hide the smile sneaking across her mouth as she eats.

“Well that’s good, seeing as I lugged this telescope and a star map all the way out here,” he says, pulling the telescope case out of the bag.

Scully is enraptured, and Mulder thinks this might be the best thing he’s ever done for anyone.

“I haven’t done this in years,” she says, peering through the eyepiece as she adjusts the telescope’s position. “Not since…”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to. He remembers her telling him once, on a long car ride to some anonymous, unremarkable town, about stargazing with her father when she was a child. Captain Ahab and his Starbuck, navigating the night skies by way of celestial markers.

The temperature’s dropping, and Mulder drapes the ratty tribal weave blanket from his couch around her shoulders as she searches the heavens.

“You want a turn?” she asks, drawing back from the telescope for a moment.

He shakes his head, plops down on the blanket and gazes at her instead.

They could be astronauts together, sailors of the stars. Dropping anchor in pools of the Milky Way, swimming through constellations and running their fingers through glittering strands of nebulae.

“I’m good,” he replies softly.

“Mulder?” Scully says from under a pile of blankets.

They’re lying on their backs now, side by side, eyes on the sky. Waiting for a meteor, or a passing satellite, or for God to wave hello.

“Yeah, Scully?”

“Do you give any credence to astrology, or is that too close to religion for you?”

“I appreciate its historical and cultural significance,” he replies. “Beyond that, I can’t say I have much of an opinion on it. Aren’t you a Pisces?” he asks, as though he doesn’t already know that she is, and that he’s a Libra, and that the shitty magazine he picked up in the dentist’s office says they’d be a tumultuous but passionate match. Not that he gives horoscopes any weight.

Passionate, though…

“I am. And I’m inclined to agree with you, though astrology’s link with early Christianity is fascinating. For example, did you know that Jesus is linked to Pisces? His birth coincides with the dawning of the astrological Age of Pisces, which spans from 1 AD to the year 2150. There are many scriptural references to fishermen, and early Christians used the fish symbol as a sign of their faith.”

“Huh,” he says, tucking a blanket more tightly around his shoulders.

“I don’t believe that the stars dictate my temperament, by the way,” Scully continues. “But there’s something beautiful about having a constellation in the sky that corresponds with your own birth. Missy knew more about this stuff,” she say wistfully. “She’d read me my horoscope every morning before school while we brushed our hair or whatever, in the bathroom where Mom couldn’t hear. It was fun,” she says with a sigh.

“Do you think she’s out there, in the stars?” Mulder asks and immediately regrets it. He didn’t mean the question to sound flippant.

Scully takes it in stride. “Is it crazy if I say maybe? There’s… there’s things I’ve seen and heard, Mulder, that I can’t explain. Who am I to say how God operates? Maybe He’s laid the stars out like a map for us to read. That’s probably wishful thinking, but life would be a hell of a lot simpler if everything was dictated by heavenly bodies.”

“Better that than by governing bodies,” Mulder agrees.

Their eyes drift along the razor-sharp curves of the crescent moon.

“My mom wants to set me up with one of her church friends’ sons,” Scully says without preamble.

“Huh,” Mulder replies, tracing Orion with his eyes. “Let me guess; he’s a dentist.”

“Emergency physician, actually,” she replies. “He’s nice.”

Mulder suddenly feels the weight of gravity pressing him down to earth. He can feel the rotation of the planet under his back, spinning him at a thousand miles an hour. “You’ve met him?” he asks.

“Yesterday, at lunch,” Scully replies. “He’s a widower, with a six-year-old daughter. I think… I think my mom thinks we could help each other.”

Mulder’s stomach churns, a facsimile of seasickness rolling through his body. “What do you think?” he asks, voice oddly hoarse. “Do you… agree with her?”

Scully pulls the blanket higher under her chin and sighs. “I don’t know, Mulder. I’m thirty-four today, and my career runs my life. I’m not sure how many chances at a family will come my way in the future. It’s not ideal, but maybe I’m past the point of getting to choose.” She pauses. “I’m sorry, I’m being fatalistic.”

Despite the near-freezing temperature, he’s got a cold sweat forming on his back. “You can always choose, Scully. As far as I see it. It’s-it’s important to me that you know that.”

She rolls onto her side, snaking a hand out of the blanket to prop herself up on her elbow beside him. “Mulder, I know you blame yourself for the things that have happened to me. But they’re not your fault.” He opens his mouth and she interrupts him before he can speak. “Don’t argue with me. It’s my birthday.”

He’s grateful for a change of subject. “That reminds me,” he says, sitting up and reaching over to open the cooler.

He pulls out a small pink bakery box and opens it to remove a single chocolate cupcake with a candle stuck in the middle. He digs a lighter out of his coat pocket and gives it a flick, igniting the candle.

“Happy birthday, Scully,” he says sheepishly, holding out the cupcake.

The single flame shimmers in her eyes as she takes the dessert. “Mulder,” she says softly, in a tone that makes his heart turn to liquid. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”

“Just make a wish and blow the candle out before the wind does it for you,” he replies. There’s only a bit of a breeze but he’s not taking any chances. She deserves a wish.

Her eyes fall closed, and she sighs contentedly, no doubt formulating her request. Suddenly she opens her eyes and locks her gaze with his over the flickering candle, and Mulder feels a thousand words rumbling in him like an approaching avalanche.

Before he can say anything she purses her lips and extinguishes the lone flame with a breath.

She pulls the candle out of the cupcake and pops the end into her mouth, licking off chocolate frosting, and Mulder thinks he might die right there on a blanket in Rock Creek Park. He’s been so good, keeping his feelings to himself, but in this moment his only thoughts are that he loves her and wants her; no, needs her. He needs to touch her, taste the icing on her lips, map the constellations of freckles hiding beneath her sweater. Shake the winter chill out of his bones, letting the flames of her red hair lick across his skin and light his whole body on fire.

She’s saying something to him, biting into the cupcake, chocolate crumbs falling onto the blanket.

“Hm?” he asks, returning to terra firma.

“I asked if you wanted a bite,” she reiterates.

Yes, his body responds. Please please please-

“It’s yours,” he says as a declination.

“Therefore it’s mine to share,” she declares. She holds it out to him, and his stomach flutters as he leans in and takes a bite. He thinks of his parents’ faded wedding photos, of them feeding each other cake in black and white.

Don’t date the doctor guy, he pleads silently as he chews. Stay with me. Show me galaxies.

She falls asleep on the car ride home with one of his blankets tucked around her, the car’s heater cranked all the way up. When he parks in front of her building she stirs, likely awoken by the sudden cessation of warm air on her feet.

“Scully,” Mulder says softly, “We’re home.”

“Mmm,” she responds. “What time is it?”

“Almost eleven,” he answers, glancing at his watch. “Can you walk or should I carry you up?” The question feels faintly suggestive, and he’s only being so bold because she’s drowsy and likely not registering the subtext.

“I can walk,” she says, sitting up and removing the blanket. Her hair is a fuzzy red halo in the glow of the streetlights.

“I’ll go with you,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Make sure you don’t pass out on your way up.”

“Thanks,” she yawns. “I don’t know why car rides make me so drowsy,” she says. “It’s like I’m five years old again.”

“Or it’s hypothermia,” Mulder suggests jokingly. “It got pretty damn cold out there.”

“Winter night picnics aren’t the most practical, it’s true,” she says. “But the blankets and coffee were a good idea.”

When they reach Scully’s apartment door she turns to face him. “Thank you for this,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t realize how much I needed it.”

He smiles softly at her. “Happy birthday,” he replies.

He’s mentally debating giving her a hug when she reaches out and pulls him in gently, arms looped around his waist. He wraps his arms around her and drops a light kiss to the crown of her head.

It’s over way too soon.

“Goodnight,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”

If he says anything else to her before she slips into the apartment and closes the door, he doesn’t remember it. His feet are firmly on the ground, carrying him out of her apartment building and back to his car, but his head is far above the atmosphere, adrift in space.

He’s so in love he feels as though he’s running out of air.

[sisterspooky1013]

Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 3

Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic

Winter soldiers on, the cold and occasional snow giving way to the promise of spring. Her birthday comes and goes, celebrated at her mother’s with her family as it had been before there was someone else to lay claim to her time on special days. The vacant spaces in her apartment that had been occupied by Ethan’s books and clothes, his toiletries, and VHS collection, begin to be filled by evidence of her new, single life. Her solitary toothbrush in the cup by the sink starts to look normal, the indent on her finger where his ring lived begins to fade, and the silence she arrives home to at the end of her workday becomes mundane instead of painful. Though this change was initiated and welcomed by her, change is always hard. She goes through the motions of being okay until one day in early April, she realizes that she is. The budding crocuses bring with them the optimism of a new life, another chance. A third chance, as it were, to get it right. Now she only has to figure out what right is.

Though they’ve always been close, she and Missy become even closer, taking up the space in each other’s lives that would otherwise be consumed by boyfriends or lovers. They are each other’s better half, sharing the minutiae of their workdays and staying available for unexpected illness or the need to move heavy furniture. While every human needs other humans to thrive, the Scully sisters fill that need with each other, shunning the idea of casual dating simply for the sake of companionship. There is no companion more perfect than the one who has known you since before you could understand the need for such a partner in life, and who is by your side not out of obligation, but because their soul is stitched so firmly to your own. They have always pledged their dedication to each other through thick and thin, and the new year of 1997 proves that to be a sincere promise on both their parts.

As such, they sit at their favorite local coffee shop on Sunday afternoon when Missy finally dares to ask her sister the question she’s avoided for the past four months. Not because she was afraid of her reaction, but because she knew Dana wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“Have you heard from Mulder at all?” she asks so casually that Dana flicks her eyes up and stares in disbelief, not sure that she heard her right.

“What?” Dana asks, her heart having lept for one single beat at the mention of his name.

“Mulder. Have you had any contact with him, or seen him?” Missy is misleadingly casual, acting as though this is not a question she’s been waiting months to ask.

“No,” Dana says flatly, her eyes dropping down to her coffee cup. “I wouldn’t expect to.”

“Does he know that you and Ethan split?” Missy asks next, her feet folded underneath her in the oversized armchair.

“I don’t see how he would,” Dana posits.

“Have you considered reaching out to him?” Missy tries, watching her sister for signs that she is going to shut the conversation down.

Dana shakes her head glumly. “After what I put him through, I’m sure I’m the last person he wants to hear from. That was nearly nine months ago, he’s probably long since moved on.”

“Have you? Moved on?”

Dana pulls in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t know how to answer that. What does it mean, to move on?”

“Do you still think about him?” No assertions, just gentle questions, leading her sister to the conclusion she knows she needs to come to.

Dana nods softly. “All the time. Every day.”

“Then I think your answer would be no. You should contact him, Dana. It feels like unfinished business.” Missy has a thing about unfinished business. She believes it prevents you from achieving your full potential in life.

“Missy...what would I even say? ‘Sorry I broke your heart, good news is it didn’t even work out so it was all for nothing’? I don’t want to cause him more pain than I already have.” Her tone is resigned and defeated. Another regret she will come to live with, pinned to her lapel with a collection of other mistakes that she can never quite atone for.

Missy shrugs. “You know what I think. The rest is up to you.”

Missy is right. The trouble is, she doesn't trust herself to make these decisions anymore. She’s proven to herself that she doesn’t know how to make the right one.

———

“Excuse me,” a rough, nasally voice calls from behind her. She turns to see a red nosed young man in the doorway of the pathologist’s office, slumped against the doorframe with watery eyes. “I’m here to pick up an autopsy report, for, um...I think it’s Richards or something.”

Scully has worked with this courier before, and compared to his typical demeanor it’s easy to tell that he’s unwell.

“Are you alright?” she asks as she uses her feet to push her rolling chair over to the file cabinet, retrieving the report in question.

“Uh, not really, no. But if I call out sick one more time I’m gonna get canned.” He leans his head against the cool metal of the doorframe. She suspects he’s feverish.

“You don’t look well enough to work. Where is this headed?” she asks, still holding the file in her hand.

The young man blows out a stream of air and she holds her breath for a moment, not wanting to inhale whatever he’s infected with. He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. “Hoover Building, Behavioral Science Unit. Agent Kissop.” He stuffs the paper back in his pocket and looks around, taking refuge in the extra chair near the end of her desk.

She feels a little flutter in her belly; what are the odds?

“I’ll tell you what,” she begins, “I was just about to head out for the day and I live in Georgetown, so I’m going that way anyway. Can I drop this off for you? You don’t look well enough to drive and I’d hate to see you on the news in the morning if you cause an accident.”

He sighs deeply, the biggest display of excitement he can muster. “Are you sure? I’d really appreciate it,” he says, his eyelids barely maintaining half-mast.

“No problem at all,” she replies, gathering her coat and purse. “You get home and take some Tylenol, okay? And get some rest.”

He nods weakly and she leaves him there, climbing into her car with the file and a pounding heart. She can’t help but feel like this is a sign. She’s been thinking about signs a lot lately, and she’s recently resolved to start paying attention to them.

———

Mulder stands beside the copy machine, doing his Wednesday afternoon ritual of fighting with the toner cartridge and cursing profusely. From around the corner, he can hear AD Kirkbride drumming up his own song of profanity, which is more of a daily ritual than a weekly one.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kirkbride is shouting. “Now that dipshit is conning goddamn doctors into doing his pathetic job?”

Another much softer voice answers him, but Mulder can’t quite make out the words. He moves closer to the open door, bored enough to bother eavesdropping and seeing which of his colleagues is going to get their ass handed to them today.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is sick, that fucking lowlife. He’s sick every fucking week, it’s always something with him!”

“Sir, I don’t know what the history is between you and the courier,” answers the other voice, and it’s familiar in a way that makes him stop in his tracks, his stomach clutching in a mix of nervousness and excitement. “Can you direct me to Agent Kissop, please? Then I’ll be on my way and you can work it out with the courier service.”

It’s Scully. It’s her, he’s sure. He’s been dreaming of that voice for months, the soft sibilant S’s and the way her plush lips rest against her adorable overbite. Without thinking, he enters Kirkbride’s office and sees her standing in front of his desk with a file in her hand and an exasperated look on her face.

“Scully?” he asks, and she turns to him. Her hair is a bit longer, now just past her shoulders, and she’s wearing black slacks and a white blouse. She’s as beautiful as ever, maybe even more than he remembered. She doesn’t look all that surprised to see him. If anything, she looks relieved. Emotion boils up in his chest immediately and he feels his throat constrict.

“You know her?” Kirkbride asks, gesturing to Scully, and Mulder nods. “Great, then show her where Kissop sits so I can call the fucking courier service and tell them to fire that lazy asshat before I strangle him.”

Scully walks towards him and he turns wordlessly to show her out of Kirkbride’s office and down the hall to where Kissop sits. His heart is beating slowly but firmly, his pulse resounding in his ears. What is she doing here? Did she come here to see him? And if so, why? When they arrive at Kissop’s desk, Scully hands her the file and they exchange words that Mulder doesn’t bother to listen to. Then Scully looks at him hesitantly and slowly turns to walk away, towards the exit. He feels suspended, unsure if he can believe his own eyes that she is really here, and entirely conflicted over what to do about it if she is. He’s spent nine months trying to forget her, but she’s as real and alive as ever, standing before him. His self-protective instinct says to let her go, but his heart says to run after her.

“Quit standing here like a dumbass and go talk to her,” Kissop orders him, clearly picking up on some tension though she doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s causing it.

Shaken from his daze, Mulder follows Scully into the hallway.

“Scully,” he calls out, and she stops walking but doesn’t turn around. When he catches up to her, he touches her shoulder and she turns to face him with wet eyes.

They stand there for a moment, looking at one another, an expectant feeling hanging over them. He wants to touch her, to feel the press of her body against his again, but he doesn’t dare. That would seem like a relapse, of sorts.

“Would you have coffee with me?” she finally speaks, her voice small and unsure. It’s an invitation she is not at all confident he will accept.

“Okay,” he answers, and they walk out of the building side by side, silently.

They seem to understand without saying so that Mulder will lead them to where they ought to go, which is a little cafe called Burial Grounds just a block from the front doors of the Hoover Building. They stand in line stoically, tension crackling between them like static as they order something that will occupy their hands and give them a safe place to avert their eyes while they talk. They sit at a small table near the door and wait, glimpsing at each other’s faces and then away, summoning courage. Because this was at Scully’s invitation, it seems like she should have the floor.

“Ethan and I aren’t together anymore,” she finally blurts out, and his first instinct is to look at her hand, which is indeed bare of any jewelry. Next he looks at her face, considering her expression and whether she takes this to be good news or bad. She looks pained, but not about what she’s just said. She’s had this look on her face since he first spotted her in Kirkbride’s office. He’s unsure if he should be offering congratulations or condolences, and irritated that he’s being put in the position to figure it out, so he says nothing.

“I’m sure that I’m just about the last person you want to see,” she continues, her ocean irises tracing the logo printed on her cup. It wasn’t a question, but if it were he’d tell her that she’s the only person he wants to see, the only one he ever thinks about. The reason he can’t sleep and, when he does, the only thing he dreams about. “If it’s okay, there are some things I’d like to say to you. I understand if you don’t want to hear them.”

She flicks her eyes up to meet his for a moment and he nods softly, keeping his expression neutral. She returns her gaze to the skull and crossbones bearing the name of the coffee shop.

“I have always believed that life is about making the right choices. That we are presented with an ongoing series of options, opportunities and situations, and that we are tasked with determining the right choice that will put us on the path towards the best possible life. But as of late,” she pauses to take a sip of her coffee, stealing a glance at him before she continues, “I’ve come to believe that there is actually only one choice. One path we’re supposed to be on, and there are signs along the way to pay attention to. The choices might not always make sense at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, they are the ones you need to make in order to have the best possible life. Or the right life, the one you’re supposed to have.”

She pauses and slides her hand across the table, covering his with her own. The soft warmth of her skin electrifies him a little, sending a flush to his belly. She brings her eyes up to meet his, her brows knit with emotion as her chin gently puckers. She’s so beautiful it physically hurts.

“I ignored the signs,” she says tightly. “I made the wrong choice, Mulder. I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, but I was wrong. I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”

He feels his chest tighten, a telltale precursor to tears, and he looks away from her. Why is she doing this? To make herself feel better? She pulls her hand back and sniffs, then stands and slings her purse over her shoulder.

“Thank you for having coffee with me,” she says, and then he watches her leave. He sits there, staring at the pink lipstick that stains the rim of her cup, wishing she’d given him some more time to absorb it all. Wishing she’d never made the wrong choice.

[peralta-guaranteed]

Mac gets lost

I mean, he’s high-energy and low-attention-span Mac and he’s got the good running trainers and he loves chaos and investigating things so inevitably, everyone on the squad loses him at least once while they look after him

- Charles loses him at the precinct and is absolutely distraught and almost breaking down until Rosa whaps him over the head because he’s not lost, he’s somewhere in the building and obviously no one working there would let a kid  run off so they just gotta look around. They immediately hear a crash from the evidence locker and find him with two boxes completely trashed on the floor going “wasn’t me!” with Peralta-puppydog-eyes

- Rosa, meanwhile, loses him at the kid’s indoor playground she takes him to at one of their babysitting-dates, but she reasons again that he isn’t really lost because it’s an indoor playground he’s allowed to run a bit amok but she panics inside anyway and goes full detective mode following him. She gets hit by a softball in the back before she hears giggling and “I WIN!” and yeah, she’s taught the kid well

- Terry actually doesn’t lose him because he’s a responsible adult and whenever he thinks Mac has disappeared he’s actually just playing hide&seek with the twins or something

- Hitchcock & Scully take him along to the bodega near the precinct without telling anyone and actually forget him there, leading Amy to cuss them out so hard that all her uniformed officers will forever be that meme of “mark me down as scared AND horny”. Jake’s already running down to pick Mac up only to find that the teen cashier has been feeding him cheetos and sour candies and chocolate milk and they now owe 32$ but Mac couldn’t be happier

- Amy loses him in the library. She’s certain she told him to stay in the kids section with the beanbags and the good comics, but when she goes back after collecting her holds he’s nowhere to be found. She foregoes all library rules and actually calls him loudly while quick-walking down the stacks, and ends up finding him in some random corner with a giant art book he definitely cannot read on the floor and shushing her “Mama we in the liberry!!! Inside voices!!!” and he tries to show her the awesome picture he found but she can’t see because she’s hugging him too hard

- Jake loses him when he runs off during potty break at a baseball game and it’s the single most terrifying experience of his life. He genuinely considers pulling out his badge and ordering everyone to SIT DOWN and BE QUIET so he can find his kid between all the fans. He finds him excitedly chatting to a hot dog vendor who’s clearly trying to keep him in place because they realised he’s lost, and that teen gets the biggest tip of their life for the hot dogs Jake obviously has to buy, before sitting Mac down to make him understand that he can never, ever run off like that again with so many people around.

(Mac promises he won’t and is also sworn to absolute secrecy about all this vis-a-vis Mommy, so he obviously doesn’t tell her - until two days later when they pass another hot dog vendor on their mom&mac day out. Amy definitely interrogates Jake about it after Mac’s in bed, but stops the pretend-anger-teasing when she realises how horrible he felt about it already)

- Kevin & Holt lose him at the park while talking Cheddar for a walk. They are momentarily distracted by a quite interesting bird and when they look back down to where their fluffy boy and grandson had been happily playing a moment ago, it’s just Cheddar looking at them with a ? on his face. Holt absolutely panics (his face is almost a grimace the likes of which Kevin has never seen) and his husband can’t calm him down because no one they ask is going to believe them that they are his grandparents, Kevin, they’re going to think he’s trying to kidnap some poor child, oh god, he’s going to send out a missing child report via police radio immediately, do you think the park can be securely closed off in time to find him?! While powerwalking past the playground and the fountain and the dog park (all Mac’s favourites) they suddenly hear a very small, very constant voice. “Excuse me, I’m lost. My name is Mac Peralta-Santiago. My grandpas are Captain Raymond Holt and Professor Kevin Cozner. Can you help me find them?” Mac is saying to a mom with a stroller as they run up to him. Holt silently curses the Peralta-genes enabling him to suddenly disappear and run over a mile away before realising he’s lost, but he’s also eternally grateful for the perfect Santiago-training of What To Do when he does realise it. He also considers bringing a second leash with him on their next walk, but Kevin talks him out of it.

[mldrgrl]

Would You Lie With Me and Just Forget the World?

by: mldrgrl Rating: PG Summary: A little ‘what if?’ AU during Fight the Future, if Scully had gone to Salt Lake City.  Inspired by the wonderful little poem Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.  (Sweet midnight, Anon, I think this fits nicely with your prompt as well)

“Salt Lake City, transfer effective immediately.”  She hesitates in his doorway for only a moment, and then she turns to leave.  “I have to go.”

His head is spinning and his heart is racing.  He springs up from his desk to chase her down, to stop her from leaving.  He makes it to the hall, but all he can manage is her name.  She stops at the elevator, her back to him.  He sees her ball her hands into determined little fists and the way she takes a deep breath and straightens her spine.  When she turns, the wobble of her chin and the tears in her eyes threaten to break the composure she’s just worked so hard to muster.

There’s an ache in his chest.  He wants to tell her everything in that moment; how much she means to him and how much he needs her.  He’s as afraid that she’ll think he’s only talking about their work as much as he’s afraid she’ll know he isn’t talking about work at all.

“Is this...is this what you want?” he asks.

The elevator doors open up behind her and she turns away from him to step inside.  He moves a few steps closer and then she turns around again and he stops.  She only gives him a glance before bowing her head.  The doors close and he’s alone in his hallway.  He doubles over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.  It feels like he’s been kicked in the gut.

With Scully sent to Utah, Mulder is reassigned to counter-terrorism.  He hates it.  Hates the work, hates the other agents in the unit, and hates his new superior.  They’ve got him chasing down suspicious purchases of fertilizer and harassing confused farmers day in and day out.  Shit detail.  He’d quit, but he doesn’t like the thought of how smugly satisfied They’ll be knowing he had given up.  Easy as it would be to search the directory for her new information, he doesn’t even contact Scully.  Nor does she contact him.  He doesn’t drive by her old apartment and he takes her number out of his speed dial.  He refuses to be broken.

He lasts six weeks.

Six long, torturous, miserable, and painful weeks and then he’s at the airport one Friday afternoon, booking the next flight out to Salt Lake City.  For four and a half hours he gorges himself on tiny bags of peanuts and shreds his cocktail napkins into tiny pieces on the tray table in front of him.  He rents a car and drives the few miles to the field office in the area, solely relying on hope and a hunch that she’ll be there.

His badge gets him in the door without issue, but he can’t go aimlessly wandering the halls.  He stops a woman pushing a cart, assuming she’s a mail clerk that will know every office blindfolded.  Luck is on his side.  When he asks where he can find Agent Scully, she tells him to take the stairs down one flight, third door on the right.  He takes a few deep breaths in the stairwell and wipes his sweaty palms on the front of his pants before he heads down the hall.

He passes a janitor’s closet and a storage room.  The third door is missing a real nameplate.  Someone has scribbled SCULLY onto a piece of lined paper, ripped that in half, and taped it to the empty slot where a nameplate should be.  The door is open, but he knocks anyway, just a few light taps with his knuckle as he enters.

Scully is hunched over a small table in the corner, squished between a bookcase and filing cabinet.  The room is cold, dimly lit, and not a window in sight.  It’s barely bigger than a broom closet.

“You can take the girl out of the basement,” he says.  “But, I guess you can’t really take the basement out of the girl.”

Scully blinks as she looks up and drops her pen on the table.  She looks the same to him, but changed somehow.  Her eyes, he realizes, look grey.

“Mulder,” she says.  “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.  Thought I’d check out the new digs.”  He looks around.  He bets if he stretches his arms out, he’d be able to touch both sides of the walls.  “Please tell me this is just temporary while they renovate the corner office for you.”

She doesn’t answer, just looks down at the papers on the table and begins collecting them into a neat pile.  Watching her gather her things in this pathetic excuse for an office, he feels like his heart is being squeezed in a vice.  She doesn’t deserve this.

“What’re you working on?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she answers.  “Reviewing autopsy reports.”

“Can I take you to dinner?”

She checks her watch and glances past Mulder to the door.  He turns to see what she’s looking for, but there isn’t anything there.  She’s nervous, he realizes, but he doesn’t know what for.

“Or maybe I should go,” he says.  “I didn’t mean to...catch you off guard.”

“No, it’s okay,” she says, softly.  “It’s been a long week.  Do you mind if...we could order in.”

“Sure.”

He scans her bookshelves as he waits for her to pack up her satchel.  Nothing but textbooks on forensics and pathology, some of them with cracked, ancient binding.  She turns the light off and he follows her down the hall and up the stairs.  She pauses for a moment and waves a file folder in her hand.

“I just have to…” she says.

“Take your time.”

She nods and knocks on the first door to the left.  He hears a mumbled conversation and nonchalantly steps into the view of the open office.  Scully is in the antechamber of another office, passing the file folder to a woman who looks like she just sucked on a lemon.  Her disdain is more than obvious and Mulder wonders what it’s about.  For a fleeting second, the woman’s eyes meet Mulder’s and her expression turns from sour to suspicious.  He turns his head and keeps moving past the door to wait for Scully.  She comes out a few moments later with her eyes forward and doesn’t look at him, doesn’t wait for him as she heads to the exit.  He follows a few paces behind.

“You drove?” she asks.

“Got a free upgrade to a Toyota Corolla,” he answers, waggling his brows at her.  “Riding in style around the Beehive State.  What was the deal with the wicked witch of the west back there?”

“Things are different here.  People are...different.”  She turns her head and a slight breeze ruffles her hair.  He almost lifts his hand to brush it out of her eyes.  “I’m over there.”  She points to the left of the parking lot.  “You can follow me out.  It’s not far.”

“After you.”

He watches her walk away.  The tired slump of her shoulders and bowed head is depressing.  He doesn’t even have to see her face to see how sad and defeated she is.  He’s angry with himself for waiting so long to come to her.  He should’ve been on a plane immediately.  He should have never let her go.

The drive to her apartment is only about ten minutes.  The building is compact and lacks character, bland and beige and ugly.  Next door is an empty lot of dirt and shrubs and a clear view of the highway.  He hopes the interior makes up for the exterior.  His hopes are dashed as soon as he steps foot inside.  It’s even worse.

Her apartment is a studio with ancient appliances and worn carpet. Clearly, it came furnished with pea-green, threadbare chairs and a pull-out couch.  He doesn’t recognize a thing.  What little she does have is still in boxes, pushed up against the walls and stacked to make as much room as possible.  They’ve stayed in nicer motels throughout the years.  He hates everything about it, but especially that this is what she’s been calling home for the last six weeks.

“It’s temporary,” she says, watching him look around.  

“You don’t deserve this,” he replies.  

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“It’s over, Mulder.  You need to accept that and move on.”

“Move on?  Are you serious?”

“What do you want from me, Mulder?  The files are destroyed.  The OPR was quite clear that there’s no hope of ever reinstating the department.  I’ve been exiled to what’s arguably the least friendly, most backwards and misogynistic field office in the country, which I’m sure was intended to break my resolve somehow.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“If I quit now, they win.  I don’t see you walking away.”

The defiant tilt of her chin ends the debate.  He nods in agreement and shoves his hands into his pockets in frustration.  She’s right, as usual, and he hates that she’s right about this.  But, he didn’t come here to argue.  He takes his hands out of his pockets and swings them awkwardly for a moment.  He wants to touch her, but he doesn’t.

“I need you,” he says.

“You don’t need me,” she whispers as she sinks down and perches on the edge of one of the chairs.  “You never have.  I just held you back.”  For a few moments, she holds her face in one hand and rubs her temples.  When she looks up, her eyes are heavy and tired.  She blinks and then her eyes well up and she looks down at her lap, picking at the skin along her thumbnail.  

“You’re wrong, Scully.  You are so wrong.”

“Why did they assign me to you, Mulder?  To rein you in.  To shut you down.”

“And you saved me.  Your goddamn strict science and rationalism have saved me a thousand times over.  You kept me honest.  You made me a whole person.  And I’m not...”  He pauses and swallows hard against the tightening in his throat.  He’d built up his courage and come out here to tell her all the things he’d held back, but fear has a merciless stranglehold on him and steals his voice.

She looks up at him with her brows furrowed and he kneels down in front of her.  He puts his hands on her knees, palms up, and she automatically slips her hands into his as if they’ve done this a thousand times.  He bows his head over their hands for a few moments and then looks up and gazes openly into her eyes.

“I’m not just talking about the work,” he says.  “When I say I need you, I mean you are the other half of me.  You’re right, they’ve taken everything from us and I’ve spent these last weeks being furious and disgruntled and railing at the injustice of...we were so close, Scully.  We were on the verge.  But...but…”

She squeezes his hands and he bows his head again.

“It’s not the work I want back,” he says. “It’s you.”

She chokes on whatever reply she’s about to give and then lowers her head so her forehead rests against his.  He pulls his hands free of hers and wraps his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair and into him.  She hides her face against his shoulder and both hands slide over the back of his head and through his hair.

“What do we do?” she asks.  “I know you, Mulder, you’ll never give up.”

“I’m not giving up.  The only thing I know for sure is that I’m not leaving here without you.  Everything else...I don’t know.”

Her fingers tighten, pulling gently at his hair.  He leans his head against hers and they stay that way until finally she picks her head up and stares at him.  He brushes his thumbs along the crescents beneath her eyes, damp with tears.  Her lips part even before he leans in as though she anticipates his kiss.  He whispers her name as their mouths meet and her whimpered reply makes the six weeks away from her worth the lost time.

When they pull back, maybe minutes or hours later, there’s a mixture of shock and awe in Scully’s expression and Mulder can’t help the lopsided and goofy grin that pulls at his cheeks.  He can feel every muscle in his face lift in happiness and then Scully smiles as well.  She’s the first to look away, glancing to the side at the pull-out couch and then biting her lip when she returns to his gaze.

Like most things, they don’t discuss the next step.  Mulder gets up and takes Scully’s hands to help her from the chair.  They empty the couch of cushions, stacking them in a little space next to the arm that she’s designated as the holding area, and then they unfold the bed together.  They remove blazers and shoes and belts, but come to an unspoken agreement that that’s enough for now.  Cuffs and collars are loosened for comfort and then they lay down facing each other, nose to nose, Mulder’s arms around her and Scully’s arms folded between them with her hands on his chest.

They take turns pressing soft kisses to one another’s face; her cheek, his brow, the side of her nose, his chin, the back of her jaw, the corner of his mouth.  Things escalate slowly and gradually.  The lazy circles Mulder makes against Scully’s upper back move lower until his hand rests lightly at the hint of a curve below her hip.  Their legs shift and twine.  Scully moves one hand to Mulder’s side, fingers tugging unconsciously at his shirt.

The bed is surprisingly comfortable, not that Mulder would notice if it wasn’t.  It does squeak though with nearly every move they make and they can’t help laughing at the absurdity every so often.  He can’t believe the anger and heartache he’s been holding for the last six weeks has evaporated so quickly into joy.  He can’t believe he’s here and that they’re doing this.

And then things simmer and slow and then they’re back to where they started, nose to nose, albeit a little more entwined.  He could be afraid she’s changed her mind or that this isn’t what she wants, but he isn’t, not with the way her fingers play at his nape or the way she moves to trace his lips every so often with the pad of her thumb.  No skin has even been uncovered and yet he feels more exposed and naked than he ever has been, and he’s not afraid of that either.

“What do we do now?” she whispers.

“Got any good Chinese takeout around these parts?”

She smiles and brushes his nose with his.  He shifts and sighs and they both tighten their hold on each other, just a little.

“I don’t know,” he says.  “You should...be a doctor.  Go be a doctor while you still can.”

“Maybe one day I will be.  But, you haven’t found the truth yet and I have my own questions that need answers.  I have...my own injustices that need to be resolved.”

“You wanna go rogue?”

“I’ve been out here for the past six weeks thinking that I didn’t want to burn bridges.  I thought maybe if I kept my head down, stayed below radar, I’d earn the chance to come back.”

He nods.  “How’s that been working out?”

“Not very well.”

“I’m at the end of my rope, Scully.  Tell me you feel the same.”

She slides down and curls herself up against his chest.  He makes a shelter out of his arms and curves himself around her in return.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.  “Just maybe not right now.”

“Thank you for coming after me.”

“I’ll always come after you.”

“I know.”

They fall asleep twined like a yin and yang; two halves, one whole.  He’s needed respite from his crusade for so long and tonight he has it.  Tomorrow, they’ll form a plan, but for now, they’ll lie together and just forget the world.

The End

[foxmoulder]

Why did he stop trying?

This is my first msr ficlet, and the following events are supposed to happen a while after FtF. I apologize in advance because there might be some grammar/spelling mistakes. I'm not a native english speaker and I hope you understand and enjoy the story anyways. Feel free to point out what I could improve. :)

1592 words | tagging: @today-in-fic

/// After almost turning into a cocoon for an ET to grow, Scully took a week off to herself, even though she knew a week was too much and she would probably get back to work after three days. It was friday night and she decided to go out for a drink or two, just to refresh her mind remembering how was it to have a normal life instead of chasing for paranormal activities, government secrets and all of the other weird stuff she never believed could happen and yet never found a scientific explanation for.

The working hour has just finished when Mulder was sitting in his office working on a few reports he needed to turn in. He thought about calling Scully to help him with a case he didn't quite remembered well (and perhaps to hear her voice), but decided not to bother her during her day off. He would spend the entire night at his office if needed, just to finish the late reports.

It was around 11 p.m. when Scully checked her watch and decided to get a taxi home. She left the money on top of the bar and left, realizing only then how drunk she actually was. The entire night she kept thinking about her choice of being a FBI agent and how, back then on day one, she had no idea she would go through all that she went so far. And she knew that there was nothing else she could expect happening to her, but deep down she felt a warming comfort knowing that, no matter what, Mulder would be there for her, just like he's always been. 

Her legs seemed not to be following her brain as she walked off the bar, constantly needing to hold onto something for support. She was not used to getting this drunk, but she couldn't help since her mind was spacing out of this world, thinking about so many things that happened to her - specially one: Mulder walking into her life. 

She got inside the taxi and told the driver the adress, realizing right after that she gave Mulder's adress instead of her own. Her head was resting on the car window and, as much as she hated to admit to herself, there was a question inside of her that kept popping into her mind all the time. 

Why did he stop trying?

She was walking down the hall of his floor when she saw door number 42 and knocked.

"Mulder?" she was yelling as she kept desperately knocking "Mulder, it's me!".

No one answered and she was too drunk to keep standing there and knocking his door. She turned her back to the door, sliding down until she was sitting on the floor. Her legs close to her body, she was holding her knees and her head completely thrown back, resting by the door. "What am I doing here, anyways?" she told herself, not finding any strength to stand up and leave - and not even bothered by that. 

Ten minutes later, Mulder was walking down the hall when he saw a woman in front of his apartment. He quickly realized it was Scully and ran to get to her.  

"Scully? Are you ok?" he said as he bent down to help her up. She stretched out her arms so he could grab her. He easily noticed she was drunk like he never seen before, her sweet perfume was completely replaced by the alcohol smell.

They were both standing up and Scully was completely supported by him, he was even having some trouble holding her and getting his keys. As he opened the door, shutting it right behind him with his foot, he grabbed her with both his arms, lifting her from the ground and taking her to sit on the couch. 

He crouched down in front of her, smoothing her hair behind her ear. "Are you ok? Can I get you a glass of water?".

"No, Mulder. I'm fine... I just... It's ok" she said realizing she was still drunk and yet with no courage of asking him what's been on her mind for the past week. 

He noticed she was confused, drunk and that she had no intention of doing anything at all. She didn't look like she was going to get up and go home. He wasn't sure about what to do to help her, but he knew she needed a shower. Something about it sort of bothered him, since he didn't know how exactly she would respond to that considering her state.

"What about a shower? I can get you a clean t-shirt and you can sleep in the bed. I'm used to the couch, anyways" he smirked. She smiled back to him, nodding her head yes.

Scully failed trying to stand up and he helped her, guiding her by her shoulders to the bathroom door. With her own feet she took off the black heels she was wearing, turning to him as she held his shoulders in hope to balance herself. She started unbuttoning her red shirt with a certain difficulty. He was kinda embarrassed but helped her and couldn't help but notice her lacy white bra, which held her delicate breasts perfectly, almost as if they've been sculpted. He tried not to focus on admiring her body, even though she didn't seem to care. It's not like he haven't seen her naked before, even under awful circumstances... He helped her take off her black social pants, seeing that her underwear matched her bra. He closed his eyes and took a deeper breath, hoping to save the image of her in lingerie on his mind. 

She was completely naked, her back facing him, as she was walking to the shower, failing her steps, when Mulder instinctively held her by her waist, guiding her to enter the shower. 

Scully was standing inside the shower, the hot water running through her body, making she feel so comfortable she could stay there forever. He went to the room to get her a towel, as well as a white t-shirt and blue shorts that he knew it would never fit her tiny body. He changed his clothes to a gray t-shirt and sweatpants and sat on his bed, waiting for her to finish her shower.

When Mulder heard her closing the faucet, he entered the bathroom and handed her the towel, but instead, she got off the shower and turned her back to him so he could wrap the towel around her body. He couldn't help but to subtly smile at her gesture, even though she couldn't see. He let her dry herself and went back to the room. 

As she was entering his room he handed her the clothes he had picked and she grabbed from his hands, already returning the shorts.

"You know I could fit both my legs in just one side of this shorts, right?" she smiled at him and he laughed back at her. She was right. Her hair was wet, and she had the gray towel he gave to her, tangled around her body so softly he wanted to hug her for an eternity. She was still a bit drunk, but able to stand up without help now. 

Scully gave him a look that meant she was about to change from the towel to the t-shirt and she didn't want him to look. Which made no sense, but she was now more aware of herself being naked in front of him. She dressed the t-shirt that covered half of her thighs and decided to wear the same underwear, since she was not wearing the blue shorts.

She walked out of his room to find him laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. She sat on the end of the couch, lifting Mulder's feet, putting them on her lap. 

"I guess you're probably wondering why I'm here..." she said with her head down, playing with his feet almost giving him a massage. Mulder raised his chest, leaning on his elbows, so he could look at her in a better way. 

"Well, I surely wasn't expecting to rescue drunk Scully sitting by my door. Always thought it would be the other way around" he smiled at her.

Scully gave him a shy smile and felt this fervent urge to ask him what she knew she couldn't keep living without the answer. She was still a little drunk, she had already gave him the privilege to see her in lingerie. She knew that asking him wouldn't change things between them - but at the same time she wanted it to change. 

"Mulder..." she could feel her voice shaking. He bent his head to the side trying to look at her face as a response. "Why did you stop trying?". He seemed confused by her question.

"Trying to...?" he asked, contracting his eyebrows. He was still confused... was she talking about aliens? 

"To kiss me. You know... after that day..." she was looking down, embarrassed and her chest felt like someone that just ran a marathon. She could swear her heart would pop out of her mouth.

He smiled so big. He was so happy to know that she was expecting him to kiss her. And that it wouldn't bother her in any ways.

"Scully..." she looked at him and saw his big smile. She raised her eyebrows hoping to hear something that would warm her heart - and deep down she knew she would. "Not a day went by that I haven't thought about kissing you".

[scullydubois]

Only the Light Ch. 11

11/? | AU where Melissa moves in with Scully after Scully’s abduction | angst, msr slow-burn, occasional fluff | currently: Irresistible adjacent | T | 3k | previous chapters | read on ao3 | tagging: @today-in-fic

Emotions run high as Mulder and Scully are reunited after Aubrey and an accidental 'I love you.' Then, Scully gets her blood test results back.

-----------------------

Tapping her foot out of sheer impatience, Scully waits in front of the elevator in the Hoover building’s lobby. She glances at her watch; it’s 9:26am--earlier than she agreed to meet Mulder--and yet she couldn’t keep herself away any longer. She’s among a crowd of other agents, either bored with their jobs or killing themselves for it, and she’d bet her life savings that she’s the only one going down. 

The elevator dings, the up arrow illuminating to indicate its direction. Scully steps backward to let the other loiters slip in. She is left alone. As expected, the basement is not in high demand. Every day she starts off by waiting for the elevator, hoping that maybe it will be her lucky day and that down arrow will light up right away. And every day, she finds herself headed for the stairs like a dejected puppy. 

The heavy door of the stairwell clicks shut behind her as she descends into the building’s darkened depths. She traverses the stairs like she is back at the Academy running drills, trying to prove herself. It’s only one story, nothing much, and she takes it in eight seconds--she counted in her head. 

Her heart rate just a bit elevated and her hair just a bit displaced, she pushes out into the ever-familiar basement hallway. Halfway open, the door collides with something solid and whiplashes her backward.

“Shit!” The exclamation comes from the other side of the door. Scully flicks a stand of hair out of her face and tries again, this time with caution. She peeks around the door, and there he is. She’d believe he was a figment of her imagination if the door hadn’t just proved otherwise. She slips into the hallway, lets the door shut behind her. 

“Mulder,” she practically laughs, “are you okay?”

He kneads his right shoulder. “They’ve got to put a speed limit in there,” he groans. 

“May I suggest not standing right in front of the door?” she muses. 

“Well, considering we’re the only two who ever come down here, I figured I’d take my chances.” He bends to scoop up his key, his injury evidently not so serious after all. He jams it into the lock while Scully interrogates him. 

“How did you get down here?”

“Teleported.” He twists the key, and the lock surrenders.

“I was waiting for the elevator not sixty seconds ago. I didn’t see you head to the stairwell.”

They jaunt into the office, or as they have taken to calling it, their dominion. 

“I didn’t take the stairs,” Mulder tells her. “I took the elevator.”

Scully turns and looks through the doorway as if some fairy godmother will appear to explain it all. “What do you mean? I was waiting for the elevator. It went up. You didn’t get on it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Scully. I walked up, hit the down arrow, and the doors opened within five seconds.”

“But I-I took the stairs in eight seconds,” her voice high with frustration. “It’s impossible for the elevator to have beat me.”

“You have other redeeming qualities, I assure you.”

“Oh, really?” Scully coos. “Like what?” The more time apart, the more willing they are to walk the line when they see each other. Especially in the wake of accidental I love you’s. 

Mulder props himself against the desk. “We’d be here all day if I dove into it. Rest assured that a conveyor belt built in the 60s has nothing on you.”

A feeling Scully can’t quite identify bubbles in her chest. She smiles, looks away. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she teases.

“Yup.” He tosses his keys in the air and catches them as they fall back to earth. “I don’t have much success with it...what am I doing wrong?”

Laughter flutters out of Scully, the butterflies in her stomach taking flight. It is a wonderful sound, a more certain version of the girlish giggles Mulder heard through the phone--the ones that followed him into his dreams. His eyes meet hers. They are the color of caramel this morning, she notices, sweet, sweet caramel. 

“You know it’s an hour earlier than we agreed to meet, right?” She raises an eyebrow in his direction. Mulder being willingly early is about as unlikely as catching Bigfoot. 

“I caught an earlier flight. I was going to surprise you, but you see how that worked out.”

“I don’t take kindly to surprises, Mulder,” she drawls, her pupils dilating as she looks up at him. 

“Yeah well, neither does my shoulder.” He rubs it dramatically, then squares himself up in front of her, hands on his hips. Her eyes are level with his lips. The image of her tongue gliding over his mole flashes in her head. It would feel--no, she can’t think about that. Thinking about feeling tends to lead her to some dangerous places. Namely, more feeling. 

The jig up, they snap back into themselves. “So, the case.” Scully plants herself in the chair in front of the desk. “What happened? And how’s BJ? Are she and Tillman going to raise the baby?”

Mulder sighs, swipes his fingers through his hair. “So Melissa is better, I take it?”

“Mulder…” Scully shoots daggers at him with her eyes. “Missy is fine. What happened in Aubrey?”

He sets his elbows on the table and rests his chin atop his hands. “I told you about Cokely, right? The suspect from the 1945 murders?”

Scully nods.

“Turns out, BJ is his granddaughter. Her father was adopted, so she didn’t know. Essentially…” he hesitates, hoping to slip his supernatural explanation into the field report without Scully’s interference. “BJ...she went crazy.” Scully’s jaw locks as she listens. “Genetic memory tends to skip a generation. I think the psychosis of her grandfather surfaced in her.”

Scully stares at the desk, at his hands against the desk, at his rolled-up shirt sleeves. She wants him to be kidding; she knows he’s not. 

“Is she…?” Her eyes plead for the answer she wants to hear. 

Mulder thanks her god that he’s able to assuage her fears, at least partially. “No,” he shakes his head. “But she’s being committed to a psych ward.”

“But she’s pregnant!” The desperation in her voice is about as cutting as Mulder has ever known. 

He softens his voice. “It’s an all-female ward. They’ll take care of her.”

“She’s just a woman, a normal woman…”

Of all the parts of the story he expected Scully to object to, this was not one. “She killed Cokely, and she tried to kill two other people, Scully. Me included.”

“She tried to kill you?!”

He nods, his face a solemn slate. “Tillman saved me. I’m fine.”

“You can’t go alone anymore, Mulder.” She chokes back tears. Mulder leaves his chair and kneels before her, shocked by how quickly emotion has sprung to the surface. “You can’t.”

He frames her shoulders with his hands, breathes words of comfort into her ear--”It’s okay, Scully. I’m okay.”

Her body trembles against him. “Mulder, if you died right now, I’d stop breathing. By my own hand or God’s.”

Mulder is seized with such sudden fear--such distilled awareness of his own mortality--that he wants to lash out, to tell her to never ever say that again or he would go far away and change his name and abandon this life just so that she would never have to hear of his death. Instead, he collects himself.

“I’ve always thought the moments you think you’re dying are the ones where you’re living the most.”

She hides her face in the crook of his neck. It is such a dignified thing to say, so completely Mulder. It tears her heart clean in half. 

“I’m screwed if that’s true,” she blubbers into his shirt. It smells like airport and aftershave. His hands meet her shoulder blades like he’s looking for angel’s wings. She imagines he must be disappointed. He’s not. He walks his fingers up and down her bra straps like a mother might rock her baby. He doesn’t mean it in a sexual way, but as an acknowledgement of what she is--not just a coworker, or his friend, or any ordinary human being, but someone--the only one--who makes him believe in holiness, the single thing he has never pinned his hopes on. 

He presses his lips to her cheek, catches her salty tears on his tongue. Speaking to her skin, he whispers, ”What’s wrong? Why did you leave Aubrey?”

He knows. Of course he knows, she’s known that he knows, but it still startles her to be caught in a lie. She turns her head so that he’s forced to take his lips from her skin. He cradles the back of her head instead, her hair getting caught between his fingers.

She’s told too much of the truth to lie anymore. “Something happened to me during my abduction. They did something to me, but I don’t know what. I’m trying to figure it out.”

She speaks plainly, raw as skin-to-skin contact. Mulder feels as if her sorrows have migrated to his body, burrowed into him, and sworn to stay.

“I haven’t had my…” she sniffles, the fear coming back to her again. “I haven’t had my period since I was returned. That’s abnormal for me.”

He pulls her in closer, like they could become one if he tried hard enough. He doesn’t want to say it, but he knows he has to. 

”Are you pregnant?”

He feels her eyelashes flutter closed against his shoulder. “No, I even got a professional test done. That’s the worst part, something being wrong and having no explanation.”

“I know how you feel.”

She exhales. Her stomach fills then flattens against him. 

“Is there anything I can do?” he asks, knowing that nothing would ever be enough. 

“I think that maybe…” her voice falls quieter. “I think that I should take a leave of absence. While I get this all figured out.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The vibration of his voice box resonates within them both. “That sounds like a good idea.” He is as gentle as if he were speaking to a newborn baby. 

“I am really, really sorry,” she stammers, mouth against his ear.

“For what?” His breath tickles her earlobe. 

“For making you do it alone.” If she weren’t pressed to his ear, he wouldn’t be able to hear her.

“I’m not alone, Scully. You’re a part of me now. I’m carrying a miniature version of you in my head wherever I go.”

She’s crying again, a reflex tapped. 

He continues whispering into her ear. “She’s telling me that there’s a scientific explanation, that there’s no such thing as extraterrestrials, that I’m batshit crazy--” Scully laughs, Mulder smiles. “--and I have to say, she makes a very convincing argument. I’m even starting to believe her, you know, just a little bit.”

He pulls back so that he can see her face. Her brokenness glimmers off of her like a shattered mirror. He wipes her tears away with his thumbs, then looks straight into the reflecting pond of her eyes.

“You are more important to me than any dumb X-file. Even Samantha hurts less because of you.” He was hollow, and she is filling him in. He hadn’t realized that he was draining her in the process. “I want you to be happy, and I want you to be whole,” he affirms. “Whatever you need to do, I’ll support you.”

She wraps her arms around him and nods in gratitude, her nose bouncing off his cheek. She will learn to live in her body again. She will learn to live. She will learn. She will. 

---------------------

Scully made the appropriate arrangements with Skinner and walked out of that basement office indefinitely that night. She had spent so much time pretending she was fine to save face, thinking it was the noble thing to do. That was what she was taught, how could she know any different?

She never anticipated the inner strength that comes from vouching for yourself. From deciding that you are worthy just because you are alive. From owing nothing to no one, unapologetically. She suddenly understood why her sister had always seemed brave to her, so completely okay with disregarding expectations and breaking rules. Courage breeds confidence, Missy remarked when Scully brought this up to her. All you have to do is take that initial leap of faith. 

But it would be a mistake to assume that Scully is truly free now. A person who is in total control of their life does not choose to leave a job they love, however temporary the absence may be. It’s not like something better has come along, an option that brings with it the bittersweet pang of leaving a beloved place for a new adventure. No, that’s not this--this is sacrifice on all sides. 

Her, backing away from the work that keeps her sane and the experience that has made her insane. Mulder, shouldering the blow of fruitless investigation all by himself. Another loss in his stepping stone graveyard. And what about Missy, who has uprooted her life and left the woman she loves to take care of one she shares blood with? Scully has not properly thanked her for that, she knows this. And now...what comes now?

Scully’s stomach folds in on itself. She has not felt this listless since the weeks between the FBI’s offer to join them and her med school graduation, when her heart knew what it wanted and her brain feared anyone finding out. Working yourself to the bone to get a medical degree and then shoving it aside? Her parents would think something was wrong with her. In fact, she thought that something was wrong with her then too. It was Missy who convinced her that changing your mind is the most human trait of all. What is Scully always at odds with if not her own human fallibility? 

These thoughts play through her head from her drive home to Missy’s homemade dinner to the moment she tucks herself into bed. Before her head hits her pillow, she pops open a bottle of melatonin tablets and places one on her tongue. It plunges her into dreamless sleep.

It is a relief, when she wakes up, to realize that she did not dream because this means she did not have nightmares either. Being a captive audience to your own brain gets tiring. Two nights pass this way, their days filled with waiting and research. She cracks the spine of every medical encyclopedia she has looking for clues into her condition. This is the most sensible way to move through life, she thinks, preparing for the worst so that reality will be no more heinous than the depths of your imagination. 

Mulder calls from the office each night before he leaves. She did not ask him to do this, but she is grateful that he does. Their conversations are neither deep nor long-lasting, the perfect salve for Scully’s sudden rush out of their breakneck world into relative normalcy. 

Missy is, unsurprisingly, elated that her sister is prioritizing herself. She even goes for an extra grocery run after work and stocks up on Dana’s guilty pleasures, hoping that the pattern of abstaining may be ending on all fronts. Dark chocolate covered strawberries, Greek yogurt that doesn’t say nonfat on the label, Nutter-Butters. These are things Dana loves but denies herself. Missy has never been more proud to see an empty package of Nutter-Butters in the garbage.

That is how the conversation starts. Dana is on the couch, and Missy joins her. 

“You found the Nutter-Butters. I’m glad.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Scully nods, half-paying attention, half-perusing one of her old medical textbooks. 

“I tried to pick stuff I remember us having in the house as kids. I wasn’t sure if you still liked them.”

“Oh, I do, I just usually avoid peanut butter.”

“Why?”

She looks up from the page for a moment, as if the question should answer itself. “Fattening.”

“Yeah, because that’s something you should be worried about,” Missy jests. 

“Heart disease is the number one killer of American women, and it is tightly linked to weight and diet,” Scully says matter-of-factly. 

Missy reaches over and lifts the textbook out of her sister’s lap. “That’s enough of that.”

Scully smirks, lets her sister close the book and put it on the table. She pulls her feet onto the couch and sits cross-legged. “My test results came back, by the way.”

“What?” The textbook slams onto the table. 

“Yeah, they called a couple hours ago.” Scully rubs her eyes, sleepy from reading. “I have elevated follicle-stimulating and luteinizing hormone levels, but low levels of anti-mullerian hormone.”

Missy raises her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

“It’s consistent with the results of a menopausal woman.” She says it in her doctor voice, as if she’s speaking of a body she autopsied instead of herself. “I have an ultrasound tomorrow to count my ovarian follicles.” She sighs, her face revealing nothing. “To give an idea of whether I could still be fertile.” 

“My goodness.” Missy touches her sister’s hand. “I think that warrants a hug.”

Scully nods, and her sister pulls her in. Missy’s hugs are like a warm towel after a shower, purifying the cleansed. 

“What time is your appointment?”

“One. But you don’t have to come.”

“I’m coming, no arguments,” she insists. “I have the lunch shift tomorrow, but I can swap for the dinner one instead.”

“Okay.” Scully smiles softly, devoid of any urge to fight. She has surrendered to her fear, and in doing so, has found herself free of it.

[scullysexual]

Time Can Heal (9/ )

Season Two | Abduction Arc | Canon Divergence | Angst | Warnings: Sleep paralysis, rape (proceed carefully) | Words: 3117 | 

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | AO3 | 

Mulder realises his request for the truth costs too much.

Tagging: @today-in-fic @bevh78 @mypanicface @weseeusinthefall @impulsive-astrophile @enigmaticxbee

This is probably my favourite character I’ve written so far! 

- - - 

Mulder’s apartment in Minneapolis is a lot bigger than the one in Virginia. Bigger apartments costs less here, he tells her but Dana already guessed that.

“Want something to drink?” Mulder asks as he heads towards the kitchen.

Dana shakes her head, hanging her coat up on the rack.

“Suit yourself,” says Mulder disappearing through the doorway.

Dana surveys the room. In many ways it’s a similar layout to the one back in Hegel Place; couch against the wall, TV opposite it, coffee table in the middle. The only thing missing is the fish tank, the fish given to the Lone Gunmen maybe.

She feels a tug in her chest at the absence of the fish. If they were here, maybe she could believe nothing had changed.

She does manage a smile, however, upon seeing a blanket folded on the back of the couch and the pillow tucked between the wall and the armrest.

Not everything changes.

“Still haven’t got a bed?” she asks when Mulder re-enters the living room carrying a glass of orange juice in one hand and a bag of sunflower seeds in the other.

Mulder shrugs and takes his place on the far side of the couch. Dana stays standing, watching as he places his drink and snack down and pulls out the report.

She plays with the strap of her bag and watches. Mulder thumbs through bits of papers, past autopsy photos and eye-witness accounts. It dawns on her in this moment that apartment visits were rare. Work would be done alone in their respective homes or together in their office. He came to her apartment more times than she ever went to his and in this moment she feels like a stranger, her eyes casting across the TV unit to the VHS’s stacked in a pile, bits of clutter that cover his desk and coffee table, unwashed dishes in the sink. All evidence of a man who lives alone. All evidence of someone who is lonely.

“You can sit down,” Mulder’s voice cuts through her thoughts. Her attention is brought over to him by the sound of it, he’s looking at her smiling. “I don’t bite,” he jokes.

It eases her how comfortable he is around her, even after all these months. It’s like nothing has really changed for him. Time apart, a bumpy start, but she is still his Scully, his partner, ready to crack jokes with any time, ready to infuriate with his theories or look at her with concern when he knows something is bothering her.

She begins to see his leaving her in a different light. It was his quest after all, he must feel some guilt towards everything that happened to her.

The movement is spontaneous, an action before the thought. Mulder would often ease his way into her personal space, touch her arm, touch her hand to get her attention. Dana’s always tried to maintain a sense of professionalism, they were co-workers before they were friends, two agents before they were people. A hand through his hair to check for injury but nothing more.

Now her hand lands on his knee, the feel of it having Mulder’s attention diverted from folder to his knee, to her.

Dana wills herself to keep it there, tells herself that it is nothing more than him in her personal space or touching her arm.

“I don’t blame you,” she tells him. “For the abduction. It wasn’t your fault.”

For extra sincerity she squeezes his knee before bringing it away and reaching into her bag to pull out her laptop.

“I always…” Mulder begins and she turns her head towards him again, halting her action of switching on the computer.

He’s searching for the words.

“I blamed myself for it,” he admits not quite looking at her. “I thought I should’ve done more to protect you. I thought you were really gone.” He looks away completely now, putting the folder down to stare at his hands instead. “My mom always said she didn’t blame me for Samantha but I could see it…in her eyes. And when you were gone…I saw it again in your mother’s.” He chances a glance at her before adverting his eyes away again. “And I always thought I saw it in yours.”

Dana begins furiously shaking her head. She can’t speak on behalf of her mother, on behalf of his, but she can speak on behalf of herself.

She reaches for his forearm, bringing his eyes back to her.

“I’m sorry I made you think that,” she says willing her gaze to make him believe. “It was never true.”

“It was Duane Barry’s fault,” Mulder says, his tone having a hint of scepticism behind it.

“Yes, it was,” Dana confirms, her voice strong. “Nobody else’s.”

It has some affect on him and Mulder begins to nod. He reaches back for the folder and takes out the profile he wrote, handing it her way. She goes to take it but he doesn’t quite give it away.

“Are you sure you’re okay reading it?”

This case still shook her, for reason she didn’t quite want to think about, but she was here to do a purpose and that purpose was to bring justice to the victims- dead or alive.

“I have a job to do,” she answers, taking the report from him.

Mulder nods but he doesn’t quite believe her.

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

“You amaze me,” Scully says after a while of just staring at him. Mulder takes a swig of his beer as he waits for her to continue.

A while has passed, the awkward murky beginnings long gone. They ordered food, he even convinced her to have a beer. Their reports and file lay on the coffee untouched. Scully sits in the gap between the couch and table, legs crossed and rolling the neck of the bottle back and forth between her fingers. He’s never known her to be so…relaxed.

Scully had been concerning him lately. He was worried for her, it’s not like her to run out of rooms after all.

Of course, the case was a difficult one, nobody should be expected to walk into something like this and not react, especially somebody as green as her but underneath all that Mulder was certain there was something else.

“It’s just…” she continues and shakes her head as if to discourage herself from saying anymore.

“No,” says Mulder with a chuckle. “Tell me. What were you gonna say?”

She moves onto her side, resting her arm on the seat of the couch and her head in her hand, looking at him.

“Okay,” she starts. “For arguments sake, why isn’t it aliens? Why is it not some…hair devouring slug that preys on dead people?”

He leans closer to her with false curiosity and a smirk.

“Do tell me more about this hair devouring slug theory of yours.”

She punches him in his leg and rolls her eyes. Her weak attempt has him falling into fits of laughter which just leads to frustrate her more, her eyes narrowing and a cute little pout forming on her face.

“I will shoot you.”

He doesn’t think she’s joking.

Mulder brings himself to stop laughing and goes back to his upright position. He plays with the label on the bottle as he talks.

“Certain cases have a distinct smell to them.” He shrugs. “This one doesn’t.”

“This one, out of 40 other cases, doesn’t have a distinct smell?”

Mulder chuckles again. “They’re rare but it’s been known to happen.” He glances her way. “What do you think? Do you think it’s a hair devouring slug?”

Scully grows sombre. She places her beer on the coaster on the table and hoists herself up onto the seat next to him.

Without looking at him, she mumbles, loud enough to for him to hear. “I’d like it to.”

“Why is that?” he asks as quietly as she spoke.

Mulder watches as she takes a deep breath before speaking.

“Because it’s easier to believe that monsters and aliens are the only ones capable of these things.” She looks down at her hands, fingers tangling together. “Not other human beings.”

She pulls her hands away to sit beside her, her head pointed towards the ceiling as she lets out a deep sigh.

“Scully, Duane Barry—”

“Duane Barry was insane!” Mulder feels himself physically jump back at the loud tone of her voice.

“You think it wasn’t aliens.” He realises.

“I know it wasn’t aliens.”

He looks at her with amazement.

“Scully, how? How do you know? Your memories…are they returning?”

He watches as her eyes shut almost immediately, her face crunching up as if she’s trying not to see what she’s seeing. When he looks down at her hands, the one closest to him is balled into a tight fist.

He reaches out to hold her hand, to comfort her through whatever it is she’s remembering but the moment he makes the slightest bit of contact, she’s jumping; eyes bursting open, vaulting her hand away.

“Scully—”

But she’s off the couch before he can finish his sentence.

“It wasn’t aliens.” She looks around the room, trying to remember where she is. Her eyes land on her laptop and folder and she rushes to pick them up.

“I need to go,” she says beginning to pack her stuff away.

But no, she can’t go, she’s remembering. Remembering her abduction or remembering something.

“Scully,” Mulder starts, getting up from the couch himself and walking towards her, trying to stop her from packing away her things.

“Stay,” he says. “It’s late, you don’t even have your car.”

She pauses at that, realising, before she shakes her head and resumes her task.

“I’ll book a cab.”

Mulder has nothing more he can say to her. Nothing more that wouldn’t make him sound like a selfish bastard for trying to get her to stay. Instead he nods and heads towards the telephone.

“Let’s get you back to your partner, eh,” he tries to joke but it lands flat. No response from Scully.

They fall to silence. Scully packed away and standing by the door in her coat. Mulder on the phone.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asks when the call is over and her taxi is booked.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She turns to leave and Mulder busies himself with tidying up.

“Mulder,” she calls and he stops what he’s about to do. Maybe, just maybe…

“You’ll always be my partner,” she says instead.

It’s not what he wanted but it warms his chest up anyway. A slight smile crawling it’s way across his face.

“And you’ll always be mine,” he answers back.

It earns him a smile of his own before she turns and disappears through the front door.

.:.:.:.:.:.

She tosses her bag onto the bed as she enters, unconcerned for the contents inside it. She kicks off her heels, leaving them in a heap at the foot of her bed and heads towards the bedside drawer.

Just as her hand touches the pack of cigarettes and lighter, there’s a knock at her door. Dana rolls her eyes, slamming the rickety drawer shut and marches her way towards the door.

“What do you want?” she asks upon opening.

Davis leans against the doorframe.

“Not a nice way to greet your partner,” he says. He barges his way into the room and Dana is not in the mood to deal with this right now.

“We’re not partners,” she retorts, closing the door. There’s a thought to keep it open but no, her gun is at her side. She’ll use it if she has to. There’s no reason for the door to stay open.

Davis sits on the edge of the bed and studies her.

“Where have you been?”

“Excuse me?”

“First time I’ve heard the door go all night. Where have you been?”

“What’s it to you?” She crosses her arms in front of her.

“I’m your partner,” Davis answers. “Do I not get to know where you’ve been?”

She’s too exhausted and angry to deal with this. She wants him out.

“Please go.”

But Davis is up quicker than she thought he would be. He moves towards her and she flinches, moving herself, her lower back colliding with the edge of the desk and sending a brief bout of shooting pain rippling through her nerves.

She let’s out a surprise breath.

“Alcohol,” Davis observes. He backs out of her personal space and Dana feels her heart beating loudly against her chest. “Drinking during a case is grounds for suspension,” he tells her as if he’s a follower of the book.

“I wasn’t drinking,” she argues. “It was one beer.”

“With Spooky?”

Her face gives her away.

Davis smirks. “So now you’ve come back all pissed off. What happened? Spooky got you all hot and horny then left you out to dry?”

The unexpected crudeness of his words shocks her, a small gasp falling out of her mouth before she regains herself. Her eyes turning to steel, she asks:

“Is there something you wanted, Davis?”

He does nothing to hide the leering look he gives it. A cold chill runs down Dana’s body, her stomach and throat tightening. She tries her hardest not to let these reactions show to Davis.

“Nothing you could give me,” he says. “I’ll show myself out,” he calls backs as he walks to the door and Dana feels the urge to throw the nearest thing to her at the back of his head.

Once he’s gone, she runs over to the door and locks it. With no adjoining door and Davis’ room one down from hers she feels safer knowing there’s no real way he could enter.

With her unwanted visitor gone, Dana resumes her task. She grabs the cigarettes and lighter and stalks over to the window, yanking it up and hurrying to light the cigarette.

Her anger slowly drifts away with the smoke. What wound her up, she’s unsure. Maybe Mulder’s pushing? Her outburst was sudden but she knew what he was going to say about Duane Barry.

Aliens didn’t take him, Mulder. I think, deep down, you know that.

Her memory had been just as sudden as her outburst. They’ve never came to her conscious before. There was a light and men were talking. It was briefer than her dreams- or felt briefer- less paralysing.

Aliens didn’t take me, either.

She flicks the cig away, watching it falls down towards the street below and debates having another one.

Instead, she brings her head back inside, shuts the window, and decides sleep would be the better course of action, the time already approaching midnight.

She drops her bag onto the floor, strips herself of her clothes, leaving them in a heap at her feet. She takes the t-shirt she packed, her usual silk pyjamas at home needing to be washed (a task Dana hadn’t had much energy for anymore) and climbs into the bed, foregoing anything else, telling herself she’ll deal with it tomorrow.

.:.:.:.:.:.

She knows it’s happening before it’s happening.

A weight on her chest. Her body frozen.

It’s dark, at first, much like it is when she wakes up in the night and her eyes have yet to adjust.

Then there’s a burst of bright, white light coming to life. Her eyes shut tight in response to it before they slowly open again.

She tries to move, to sit up, but when moves her eyes, wire is binding her wrists, pinning her down. Panic begins to grip her, her heart beating wildly against her chest. Instinct tells her to clench her fist but the best her finger can do is tap frantically against her palm.

There’s the sudden sound of movement near her feet and Dana chances a look down with her eyes.

She’s spread-eagled on the table, the way they had her during the experiments.

She tries to fight against her restraints but she can’t move, the binds too tight it begins to cut into her skin of her wrist. The gasps at the deep red blood against the pale white of her skin as it begins its descent downwards, pooling below.

There’s heavy breathing, not coming from herself, and when she moves her eyes to the other side a yelp is released from her mouth, her body growing cold as a devil stands over her, his skin as red as her blood.

He leers at her body, eyes moving south before he begins to follow. Dana follows him, her eyes trained on him as she fights to control her breath, fights to even breath. She swallows and gulps when his red arm slowly begins reaching towards her ankle. His finger is cold when it touches her skin, sending shiver up and down her body and gooseflesh forming.

She tries to fight it off but just as like her wrists, are ankles are restrained, too. Unable to run, unable to fight, she shuts her eyes as the devil man’s finger begins tracing up her leg, a hand joining when he reaches her knee.

He moves to the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh and fear grips her, her eyes shooting open, darting towards him.

“Please…” she just about manages yet the devil’s hand still makes his way towards that place.

He looks at her, sadness or pity in his eyes and, with his other hands, reaches out to brush a tear away from her face with a finger. With the other, he strokes her outer lips.

Her body reacts, begins to respond and Dana wants to cry and scream and run. She begins fighting against the restrains again, not caring for the pain as they cut deeper into her wrists. Maybe it will snag a vein and she will die, ending all of this.

She stiffens and stops at the feeling of a finger entering her. The devil man is looking away from her now, focused on his task and there is nothing Dana can do to stop him.

She stills, facing her fate, facing the fact that this is about to happen, that they’re about to take something else from her, as well. Her eyes loll to the side, vision blurring as all sensations but the sensation of the weight upon her all fall away.

In her clouded vision, a figure approaches, the smell of cigarettes, and a voice.

“What are you doing?”

Mulder…

Dana blinks a few times, forcing her eyes to remain open but her vision is still blurry.

“She is mine,” Mulder says.

“Mul…Mul…der…”

Mulder’s face approaches hers, his hand in her hair stroking.

“Shh…” Mulder says. “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

[danadeservesadrink]

Gin and Tonic

The sequel to Wine and Whiskey is here! AND its part of the XF First Dates challenge created by the lovely @starwalker42 ! Hope you all enjoy! Also tagging @today-in-fic

Rated T, 4320 words, read on AO3 here

This is awkward.

She can’t help but think it for the fourth time since she’d walked into the office this morning. He was already lounging at his desk when she had come in, her cheeks still flushed from the harsh autumn breeze. Her heels had clicked through the open doorway and she spotted him first, his feet propped up on the desk, lazily sharpening a pencil, staring off at some papers he’d tacked up on the corkboard. But he heard her and spun in his chair to face her, the dying buzz of the sharpener giving way to silence.

Awkward. Silence.

She knew that continuing to work together after the events of Friday night wouldn’t be simple. She knew when he left her on Saturday, kissing her gently against the door and promising to see her on Monday, that it would be impossible to forget the softness of his lips and the way he tasted. Logically, the fundamental shift of knowing what his naked body looked like on top of hers made things anything but simple.

But she had hoped they would somehow make it simple. It was them, for God’s sake, he was her best friend, her partner. Sleeping together couldn’t ruin that for them.

Clearly she had vastly overestimated her ability to compartmentalize.  

They had stared at each other for a solid two minutes before she even made it through the door frame. It was impossible to read his thoughts, but by the crease in his brow and the way his eyes repeatedly drifted south of her own, she could only guess that they were of a similar nature to hers. And her own thoughts were resulting in a blush that was very much not due to the chilled breeze.

Compartmentalization was a practiced art, and boy did the pair of them have practice. Sure, when she first walked into his office she had allowed herself the momentary thought as to what his strong hands would feel like touching more than the small of her back, but those thoughts were easily shoved to the back of her mind as inappropriate fantasies, reserved only for midnight phone calls with Melissa and when she was feeling particularly wound up by him. That was also 7 years ago. She would have thought she had matured since then.

But today she found that throwing away the thoughts of him on top of her was much more difficult when they were no longer simply a fantasy.

She had allowed herself one more moment to fight the urge to leap into his lap from across the room and repeat the events of Friday night, and then walked into the room with no further glances to the man behind the desk.

This is a workplace, for God’s sake, and you’re both adults. Keep it together.  

The tension she could deal with. It was the silence that made everything so weird.

He didn’t even say good morning to her, let alone say her name for the first hour. The only words exchanged were those regarding the locations of paperwork, and even those conversations were shortened from their usual banter.  

He broke the dead air once and asked her how her weekend was. She actually saw him wince at the stupidity of his own question, and spared both of them the discomfort of her answer by keeping her attention fixed on her expense report.

He was impossible not to look at, though, and she found herself glancing up at him every so often just to see him staring at his own reports. Maybe she was hoping to see him staring back at her, at least give her some indication that what had happened between them was affecting him the same way. Plaguing her thoughts with constant flashes of his tongue lapping at the dip of her clavicle, drifting lower…

But he seemed much more interested in whatever X-file he was studying today.  

They got a phone call at 10:00 and he leaned over the desk to answer at the same time she reached for it, immediately causing the both of them to retract their hands like the phone was now magically on fire, their eyes shooting up to meet each other in a panic at the mere possibility of skin to skin contact. It rang again and they sat in stalemate until Mulder tentatively reached over again to answer, still maintaining eye contact until Scully returned to biting the nails off the hand that almost betrayed her professional exterior.

And now, she was stuck to her seat, frozen while she tried not to inhale the strong scent of Mulder that had suddenly overcome her, ripping her thoughts straight from expenses and back to the taste of Moscato and Jack Daniels. Apparently, he decided he needed a case file immediately and instead of asking her to grab it for him, had invaded her space to reach right over top of her to grab a stack of folders on top of the cabinet.

He must not have realized the effect he had until he stepped back with his files and she released the air she’d been holding in, attempting to mask it under the guise of a sigh but obviously failing. He stood with his arms full of papers and a perplexed look on his face that almost made her laugh if she wasn’t so embarrassed. Eventually he turned, dropped the stack on his desk, and seemed to gather his thoughts before turning back to her.

“Do you have any plans tonight?” he spoke quickly, not really meeting her eye. It took her a second to realize he was talking to her. When she did, she looked up, eyebrow raised at his sudden directness.  

“I usually call my mom on Mondays, but that's really all.”

“Oh, ok.” She can see the disappointment written across his face, but it was him who brought it up, so it felt rude to presume where he was going with this. She waits a beat and realizes he’s not going to continue, so she takes pity on him.

“I can reschedule. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

His smile lights the room, and for just a moment everything is simple again.

“Let’s get dinner”, he says, stepping closer to her, and she finds herself sitting taller in her chair in response.

“Sure, my place or yours?”

“I was thinking we could go out”

Oh. Oh.

She hadn’t considered this. She thought that maybe he’d want to see her again, maybe under the pretense of a movie night or even some late night casework. But Fox Mulder asking her out to dinner was something she hadn’t quite prepared herself for.

Is it a date? Like an actual dinner date, the kind regular couples go on? Does this mean he wants to date her? What does that mean? What does any of this mean?

Immediately overwhelmed with questions, her mind reeled. He’s asking her out and he’s looking at her like that again and this is entirely inappropriate for their basement office but so ridiculously them that she finds herself charmed despite her best intentions.

“Sure. Yes. Where?”

She’s babbling on, blush rising through her cheeks again, and he notices, his smile growing.

“How about that bar, Hanks? I’ve heard they make a mean salad.”

He again steps towards her, and in the small space of their office he ends with their knees almost touching. She looks up into his eyes and suddenly is devoid of all thoughts other than those keeping herself from grabbing him by his tie and pulling him down into her, paired nicely with thoughts telling her to do exactly that.  

“That does sound nice,” she whispered. “What time were you thinking”

“We could just head over there whenever we finish here?”

“Ok” she says, and she hopes he can’t hear the anticipation in her voice. He looks like he might bend over and kiss her, right there in the center of their office, and she thinks she’s very ok with that scenario, but he hesitates.

“Great.” he says, and leaves her space to return back to behind his desk. The furniture lended itself as a barrier to dull the ever increasing pull between them, and her heart rate returned to resting levels. As an afterthought, he mumbled to himself something that she didn’t quite catch, but sounded an awful like “It’s a date”.

“What?” she asked, and it was his turn to blush.

“Nothing, sorry,” he muttered, proceeding to bury his nose back in his files.

It was going to be a long day.

-

They remained in agonizing silence for the remainder of the day, both spending more time glancing up at the clock than actually getting any work done. Mulder casts the occasional glance in her direction, hoping to maybe catch her eye for some reassurance that he hadn’t completely fucked up, but consistently she was focused on her notes, occasionally pressing the pen to her lips in concentration, tapping it a few times there, then resuming her writing.

He didn’t know how she was doing it, staying so calm and professional. The second she’d walked into the office with that windswept look on her face he’d had the fight the urge to cross the room and press her up against the door right there. But he knew that she would chastise him for the very idea, so he packed up that thought for later and tried to pretend it was just your average Monday.

But god was it awkward trying to pretend that he hadn't had her pressed up against his kitchen counter topless and begging. It was impossible not to remember the way she said his name when she came, how she shook in his arms and he wanted her so badly…

He had debated over the whole weekend what to do when Monday came.

Would she want to do it with him again? Would she pretend like nothing happened? Would she even show up to work?

But eventually, he decided on a date. He owed her at least one good old fashion date, where he opened the car door and pulled out her chair. For seven years he’d dragged her across the country on his epic journey for the truth, and she hadn’t left his side yet. The least he could do was buy her dinner.

Sex before the first date wasn’t exactly traditional either, but neither were they. They may as well do this thing , whatever it was, their own way, as non-traditional and ridiculous as it is.

So he asked her on a date. Spontaneous combustion would have probably been less painful but he did manage to blurt it out after their fourth uncomfortable interaction of the day, hoping that maybe the promise of the night would ease the tension. It worked, slightly, and the way she looked at him when he asked made him feel like he made the right choice. He would have kissed her right there if he thought he would be able to stop after just one.

Eventually the silence settled back in, persisting until 6:00 pm on the dot, when both of them arose from their chairs in a daze and started packing up.

He thought when they got off the clock things would get easier. He was sorely mistaken.

The problem was that he didn’t know what to do with his damn hands. Before, when they packed up their office and headed to their respective vehicles, he would guide her out in front of him with a hand placed in his spot at the small of her back, locking the door behind the two of them. While that had been an unconscious gesture before, now it felt deeply possessive and wholly intimate.

Far too intimate for a man about to take a woman on a first date .

It didn’t help that now he knew he knew there was a little freckle right in that spot that he couldn’t help but picture every time he glanced at her back. So he just shoved them in his pockets and used his shoulder blade to hold the door.

Space, too, was never an issue before, and he had never considered how much he invaded hers. Not until he leaned over to flick the lightswitch off and found himself practically nose to nose with her. She froze, wide eyed, as he backed away slowly, like she was a woodland animal he didn’t want to scare off, mumbling an apology.

They stood just a little too far apart on the elevator, Mulder choosing to stare at his own shoelaces instead of chancing a glance over at her. They exited into the parking garage and eventually she broke the silence before they got stuck staring off at license plates and cement walls.

“Do you want to drive? Or can we walk?” she asked. He considered the options. If he drove he could focus on the road instead of the incessant thoughts swirling through his brain regarding the fact that she had to wear a turtleneck today because of him. But his ever growing need for a drink made him lean towards the walking option. And he was worried that at the rate today was going, opening her car door may result in a trip to the hospital.

“Lets walk”

-

They started talking about a case on the walk over, bitter winds making it easy to keep their hands in their pockets, and he guesses arguing over the implications of seemingly random asphyxiation was much better than silence.

She was in the middle of explaining to him how the collapse of the trachea that she had seen in the autopsies could not have been caused without a physical crushing of the neck when they walked in the restaurant. He walked up to the hostess desk to check in with her following closely behind.

“Reservation for Fox Mulder” he said to the girl, and pretended not to see Scully’s cocked eyebrow at the fact that he’d had reservations ready. She didn’t need to know he made them as soon as he’d left on Saturday.

The hostess looked up at him and glanced back to Scully and smiled broadly.

“Of course! Right this way Mr. and Mrs. Mulder”

She turned to lead them into the restaurant and Mulder turned to cock an eyebrow at Scully who rolled her eyes, although he spotted a smirk before she tucked her head to her chest and playfully pushed him forward to follow the hostess to their table. He tossed his hands up in mock surrender and weaved through the tables, eventually being seated at a small table near the back. He went to pull out her chair for her but wasn’t quick enough, and his hasty retreat resulted in him getting caught in an awkward dance with the hostess as he spun around the table to his own chair. He would have sworn she was laughing at him if he hadn’t been so busy apologizing to the young girl.

They barely had time to get settled before the hostess was replaced with their waiter, who introduced himself as Brandon and got to taking their drink orders.

“And what can I get for you and the misses tonight sir?” he asks with a smile, and this is just great, Mulder thinks, before smirking across the table at Scully and replying.

“Me and the wife will both have gin and tonics. Well is fine.”

Scully kicked him in the shins under the table, and he covered his grimace with a brilliant smile that Brandon seemed to buy, as he left the table to get their drink orders in. He turned back to see Scully glaring at him.

“‘Me and the wife’, Mulder?” she asked, and he was almost scared for a second before he saw the hint of a smile gracing her lips, and he knew he was in the clear.

“Just trying to see if I can get that honeymoon discount Scully”

She rolls her eyes again to herself and he recalls something his mother used to say about your eyes getting stuck like that. He thinks if that saying had any truth Scully would have found out by now.

They stare down at the menus placed in front of them, a much more comfortable silence than before. He decides on the steak special too quickly and ends up watching her as she intently scans the soup and salad portion of the menu. He studies her features in the low light of the bar, how she brushed little strands of hair back behind her ear when they were in her way, how she licked her lip when she was concentrating. She was breathtaking even when she wasn’t trying to be.

The waiter returned and set their drinks in front of them, both politely nodding in thanks as Brandon began taking their order. She orders a southwest salad with chicken and he orders the steak and Brandon smiles and promises their meals will be out shortly.

And so they are left, open and vulnerable, without menus or desks to use as shields. Mulder nursed his gin, letting the dry taste of alcohol distract him from the beauty of his company. He could see her doing the same, her eyes flicking around the room looking for anything mildly interesting. He followed her gaze to the table next to them, where a couple sat hand in hand, gazing at each other overtop of half eaten meals.

Maybe he should try to hold her hand?

He looked back at Scully and caught her staring at him. Probably waiting for him to say something. He was also anxiously awaiting his next move.

Who was he kidding? He had no moves.

He thought back to first dates he’d had before. It had been a while, longer than he’d prefer to admit. It’s probably why he was so out of practice. But with those women, it had always been different. He would ask them about their families, their careers, what they watch on TV, normal stuff. Scully has a mother, two brothers, one sister that he took away, she’s the best forensic pathologist the FBI has seen in years, and she’s recently gotten into watching those discovery channel specials on ocean animals.

“So you don’t think the asphyxiation could have been spontaneous”

Work is safe. Work doesn’t involve awkward first date questionings that he already knew the answers to. If they talked about work maybe he could convince himself that they were just out in the field, grabbing dinner after a long day of investigation, not that he was stuck sweating through his shirt on a first date with his dream woman.

“I’m just saying there have been no recorded cases of the trachea collapsing in on itself spontaneously. Given the amount of internal trauma…”

“But your report stated there was no visible external trauma,” he interrupted. “Tell me Scully, what are the typical injuries related to strangulation?”

There was a glint in her eyes when he challenged her and he could tell she was much more comfortable with this line of conversation. She’d always take him up on an excuse to fire those incredible grey cells of hers.  

“Well, strangulation typically results in petechial hemorrhages along the neck and in the face, possible lacerations to the throat or surrounding areas. You’ll see bulging of eyes, discoloration of the face due to blood pooling, the tongue can sometimes be bitten or even swollen itself, and-” she was cut off by a grunt from the table next to them, and both of them turned to the couple they had been watching before, who were now looking over at them horrified, the woman seeming like she’d rather vomit than touch any more of her own dinner. Scully shrunk down into her chair and Mulder apologized for the two of them, letting out a frustrated sigh.

So that’s a no-go on the work talk. Come on Mulder, think. What do women like on first dates? They like to be complimented. You should compliment her.

“You look nice.”

She looked up at him like he’d sprouted a second head.

“Mulder I’m wearing my work clothes. The same clothes I’ve been wearing all day” she spoke slowly at him and he wished there was a window nearby he could hurl himself from.

“Yes, um. They’re nice. Your work clothes” he fumbled, speaking with the grace of a hippopotamus attempting ballet.

“Thank you? Um… you look nice… as well.”

The words left her lips and she flamed red up to her ears. Quickly she snatched up her drink and swallowed the remainder of what was in the glass. He followed suit. Maybe if Brandon came back he could just ask him to bring the whole bottle to their table. Clearly they both needed the catalyst. She was still blushing when he put the glass down.

If his profiling skills were to be trusted, which they often are, she was mulling over the same question that he was.

What the fuck are they doing?  

Going out, sleeping together? Were they tossing away 7 years of partnership for...what? To crawl into bed with each other? Satisfy carnal urges that could no longer be suppressed?

No that felt wrong. This wasn’t just a simple fuck, sex without feelings. He certainly had been feeling a lot that night.

So then what? To take her on dates? To make her as happy as she’d made him all these years? To make love to her? Is that what this is? Love?

Does love make you incapable of coherent speech every time you gaze into her eyes for a little too long? Does love make you want to pull out chairs and order drinks for her? Does love render you an absolutely smitten idiot?

Yes .

Well then, if that's what this is, he better get his shit together.

He reaches over to her and grabs her hand that had been tapping anxiously at the table cloth, his chair shifting and making a loud screech that draws the attention of some of the other customers. He feels her jump as their skin makes contact, almost tipping out of her chair herself, shaking the table and she anchors herself with her other hand. It's ridiculous that just 2 days ago he’d been on his knees worshiping her and now she jumps when he touches her hand. It’s all ridiculous, awkward, by far one of the worst first dates he’s ever been on, but god he loves her.

She meets his eyes and it's too much. They burst out laughing, both of them, him still clutching her hand, her reaching across the table with her free one to grasp his forearm. The laughter almost brings tears to his eyes, and he’s positive the couple next to them is starring in disapproval again, but he couldn’t care less because they’re both the most relaxed they’ve been all day. She has her head tossed back and he watches in awe as she laughs with him. It’s everything he’s ever wanted.

Eventually their laughter subsides, and he squeezes her hands to bring her back to him, speaking softly.

“I’m sorry I’m so bad at this.”

She chuckles again, aftershocks of their outburst before.

“No Mulder, I should be apologizing. It’s me who’s been so awkward all day”

She grips his hands tightly, like she was trying to enhance the meaning behind her apology.

“It takes two to tango Scully,” he jokes, hoping maybe if he can get her to laugh again she’ll forgive him.

She does.

“I’m just glad you haven’t given up on me yet.”

At this she raised an eyebrow in feigned shock.

“What, and just walk out on a free dinner?” she jests, and he didn’t know he could love her more.

“Now Scully, you and I both know what happens when the man buys his woman dinner…”

He waggles his eyebrows at her and she giggles again. Maybe the gin was getting to her. He hoped that maybe it was just him.

“Agent Mulder you should know that a lady never puts out on a first date.”

She was teasing him now, with that soft smirk and those flirtatious eyes, and he felt the toe of her shoe tap the front of his shin gently.

And just as he feels like reaching across the table and pulling her in for a kiss, Brandon makes his untimely entrance with their entrees.

“Enjoy,” he says with a wave and retreats back to the kitchen. Scully happily dives into her salad and a disappointed Mulder cuts his steak. The reviews on this place must have been correct, because she is humming contentedly by her third bite, clearly satisfied with her choice of dinner. He made a mental note to look into other restaurants in the area with stellar salad reviews.

The awkwardness seemed to dissipate as they ate. He pretended not to notice her shuffling tomatoes onto his plate and stealing bits of his mashed potatoes back. Eventually when he had eaten his fill, he rotated the plate in her direction, gesturing towards the unfinished potatoes. She acted innocent for a second before scooping a forkful into her mouth. Brandon refilled their drinks but neither felt the call of intoxication any longer. He was perfectly happy getting drunk off of love.

Love .

He wondered when he would tell her. How would he tell her? He wondered if she loved him.

But he wiped a spot of chipotle lime dressing from the corner of her mouth with his thumb and she looked him dead in the eyes and sucked his finger between her perfect lips, releasing it with a pop and instantly returning to the shy smile that she wore better than anything.

He decided that conversation could wait, for now.

At least until the second date.

[sitcomified]

we can’t make any promises now, can we, babe?

summary: impromptu peraltiago wedding one-shot set in the b99 season three finale  word count: 5.4k rating: general

read below or on AO3

A buzz of chatter spills across the bar. Jake, Amy, and Charles are reunited at last, sharing stories the past few weeks over cheap drinks on a sticky wooden countertop. Amy finally tells Jake she loves him so much and he reciprocates without second thought. Charles offers a knowing glance to Amy, but Jake’s phone buzzes before he can follow up.

“Ooh, I'm gonna get this.” Jake excuses himself from the conversation and answers the call from an unknown number on his phone.

“Jake Peralta? This is Jimmy Figgis.” He feels like his throat has been shoved down his stomach. Cases were never truly solved, and usually the perps harbored resentment, but he had never been singled out like this, on his personal phone number. His first instinct is to try to locate Figgis, but even if he wanted to track the call he couldn’t. The voice on the other end has been altered by a robotic filter, and the background noise is indiscernible. 

He hesitates for a moment before responding, “oh, uh, hey, dog.”

“You and Ray Holt took down my operation. Now I'm gonna kill you both.” Jake squints across the room in search of anyone remotely suspicious. Unfortunately, he could read too much into anyone when given the chance. He doesn’t recognize the new bartender, and he’s been less chatty than the others. There’s a lady squeezing her purse against her chest as she looks in his direction. His anxieties boil over in his throat as he tries to stammer out a response, but Figgis ends the conversation before he has time to interject: “later, dog.”

Jake’s hand is still shaking as he lowers his phone. His eyes dart around the room. “Uh, Captain Holt?”

“Peralta,” Holt says from across the bar, approaching the counter after politely excusing himself from an odious conversation with Hitchcock and Scully. His arrival catches the attention of Amy and Charles, who drop their conversation about where to find the best sundaes.

Jake scans the room once more before speaking in a low voice. “I just got a call. From Figgis. He knows that you and I busted his operation and he’s coming for us.” He sighs and his shoulders fall down with defeat.  Amy instinctively reaches for Jake’s hand. 

“Oh dear,” Holt replies. Even his ever-emotionless expression is disturbed by the news, with raised eyebrows and a slight frown. “Well that is certainly unfortunate.”

“What does this mean?” Amy asks, her voice trembling. Jake squeezes her hand, in a futile attempt to calm the storm of worst-case scenarios she’s piecing together. 

“We’re screwed,” Charles says, “don’t worry Jake, I’ll make sure to tell your story.” 

“We are not ‘screwed’,” Holt replies, “however, we should discuss proper procedure in a more private place.” He gestures to the couple making out at the table to their left. The group nods in agreement. “Go ahead to the precinct, I will meet you there.” He exits the conversation just as swiftly as he arrived, sparing no second in rallying his—albeit somewhat tipsy—squad.

The walk to the precinct is uncharacteristically somber. Charles doesn’t even comment on the fact that Jake draped his jacket on Amy’s shoulders the second they left the bar. The omnipresent breeze of arguments between neighbors, loud music, and traffic goes still and the only noises they can hear are their own footsteps, and the occasional sigh. 

The precinct is at least familiar, but laced with uncertainty as night shift officers occupy the bullpen. The trio make their way to the empty briefing room, which is fortunately unlocked. Amy takes a seat in the back, and Jake hops on the table next to her. Charles heads for the bathroom to face the consequences of the “Authentic Asian-Mexican Fusion” cocktail he tried earlier.

“It’ll be okay,” Amy says, gently stroking Jake’s palm. His blank gaze is fixed at the wall in front of him for minutes that seem like hours, and he still hasn’t said a word. Usually when he was worried, she couldn’t get him to shut up. Seeing him silenced sent an eerie chill across her. “At least for now, Figgis and his guys are way too smart to infiltrate an active precinct.”

He finally replies, “So you want me to live the rest of my life here?” He lets out a meek chuckle. “I think that would be worse than getting shot.”

“Oh, come on, it wouldn’t be that bad. I’d see you every day, you already eat most of your meals out of a vending machine, and the bathrooms are nicer than your apartment.” Amy jokes. 

“Hey, one day that will be our apartment, watch your mouth.” He cracks a smile. For just a moment he allows himself to forget about the immediate danger surrounding him and indulges in the idea of a daily life with Amy. They would order takeout and sit on the couch watching an action movie, and she would be curled up with her embroidery and he could smell her eucalyptus shampoo. Or maybe he'd learn to cook, and she'd put on another nature documentary, and he'd get to listen to her laugh at the stupid voices he did for the animals. He runs his fingers absentmindedly through her ponytail. That’s a life he would buy a million mattresses and toss his grey towel thousands of times over for. 

His fantasy is, however tragically, cut short by the Captain’s arrival. “Peralta, a word, in my office please.” Jake nods and follows him through the bullpen, without even bothering to greet any of the officers. It's as if he was watching himself enter the room, rather than actually experiencing it.

“Take a seat,” Holt gestures to the chair across from where Jake was standing awkwardly across the desk, and he hadn’t thought about sitting down. To be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that he had a body. “I have contacted the U.S. Marshall’s office to make arrangements to send the two of us into Witness Protection. I know that this comes as a disappointment, but I believe that this level of security is necessary to avoid the threat.” 

The news hits Jake like a punch to the gut. It’s a new type of dread, one that’s crushing him in instead of pulling him apart. He had worked on high stakes cases before, but this was a new level of imminent danger. He’d always been able to talk his way out of any threat; the squad was always there to help him. Even without them, he could fend for himself. Hell, he survived six months undercover in the frickin mob. Jake clenches his fingers against the captain’s desk. “Captain, with all due respect, is that really necessary–”

“–I understand your hesitancy, but it is absolutely critical that we take the utmost caution, but this is non-negotiable. Our Marshall will be here in two hours. Sergeant Jeffords is on his way to brief the squad on necessary protocols right now.” 

“How long will we need to stay in WITSEC for?” Jake tried to reason with himself. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. It could be a couple weeks, a month tops. It would hurt like hell, but it’s nothing he couldn’t handle. If it was somewhere cool, then he could also get a killer story out of it.

“Indefinitely,” Holt responds, as if it was obvious and insignificant as the color of the sky. His answer severs the last thread holding Jake’s sanity together. He bangs his fists on the table.

“What the hell? You just assumed I would be okay with all this?” he shouts, “I can handle myself. I don't need to be babysat. I've been a detective for ten years!”

“Precisely, that's why I assumed you would react like an adult, and not like a petulant child.” Holt retorts. His dismissive delivery only fuels Jake’s anger.

“What did you expect me to do? I just got to see Amy for the first time in weeks and now my life is at risk because of some stupid case?” He pauses for a moment, recalling the ridiculous conversation from the briefing room moments ago. “Let me stay here, I’ll take down Figgis. I’ll even live in the precinct.”

Holt manages to convey a magnificent lack of amusement. “I don’t have time to deal with your immaturity right now. There are several arrangements I need to attend to, for your safety, If I may add.”

Jake’s heart is still pounding as he storms out of the captain's office. A pair of officers look up at him with concern before returning to their paperwork. He walks directly to the evidence lock up. As much as he wanted to squeeze out every last moment he could with Amy, he couldn't risk ruining it with some impulsive hot-headed remark.

He paces around the room before eventually landing on a box to rifle through. If he couldn’t address his feelings, he could certainly distract himself from them. It’s an old case—from before Holt became Captain. From what he could remember, the perp was busted for poisoning victims she catfished, and stealing their identities. When he opens the box, a puff of dust fills the air, hitting him with the heavy reality of just how much time had passed. He occupies himself by sifting through the contents of the box: the bracelet she used to store arsenic, the harddrives containing compromised information, and the perfectly crafted report that Amy had spent their whole lunch break editing. He really didn’t know how lucky he was then. He spent every day with the most wonderful woman alive and wasted it by teasing her.

Suddenly, he hears footsteps. He would recognize Amy’s awkward clunking in her “going-out heels” anywhere. Even if he was deep undercover all the way across the country. “I knew I’d find you in here,” she greets him, standing in the door frame with a bunched up tissue in hand.

“It’s like you’re a detective or something,” Jake says. He aims for the light flirtatious tone that the two have grown so accustomed to, but it comes out too aggressive for either of their comfort. 

Amy hesitates before clearing her throat and approaching him. She closes the lid and returns the box of evidence to the shelf, and reaches an arm across his back. She notices Jake’s widening eyes, slowing heart rate, and just as he opens his lips she accepts his implicit apology. “This is stressful, I understand.” She pauses and Jake can hear the soft popping of her lips; she's choosing her words very carefully. “I was thinking. Figgis will take a while to track down. I can’t let you go alone for that long.”

Immediately Jake tenses back up. He felt that they were in an awkward stage relationship wise, even before Amy went undercover. He worried she thought that he was moving too fast too soon. That he wasn’t serious or responsible enough. He can’t stop himself from vocalizing his anxieties. “Ames, are you breaking up with me?”

Luckily for him, Amy looks equally horrified at the idea. “No, the opposite, actually—” she takes a deep breath, as Jake violently racks his mind for what that could possibly mean,“—I think we should get married. I know this is all really soon and we haven’t hit all the relationship milestones, but WITSEC only allows contact with immediate family, and after what we just went through I can’t imagine—”

He interrupts without a second thought. “—Duh-doy, of course I’ll marry you.” 

Although the proposal was a mere technicality, excitement washes over the room. Amy launches herself at Jake with wide-open arms. He squeezes her tightly and lifts her up. Figgis was still on the loose and his life was still in jeopardy, but it all seemed insignificant when he knew Amy would be by his side. He slowly lowers her down onto a pile of boxes. With their faces pulled back from each other, Jake can actually see Amy’s brilliant smile. He almost feels guilty for dampening it. “Uh, the Captain said the Marshall would be here in two hours, and everything’s closed.”

Her eyes are illuminated by that specific laser-focused excitement  that was reserved for completing a crossword puzzle, or, choosing a new notebook, or, someone concerningly, receiving praise from her captain. “Leave that to me,” she says. 

Jake can barely muster a response as Amy races to her desk. “You’re my dream girl.”

“I know,” she replies from across the precinct, no doubt doing one of her lovable dork dances from behind the door. The officers must assume that they’re somehow crazier than they already do, but Jake doesn’t care. Amy’s voice is still echoing in his ears when he returns to the captain’s office. His senses return to him, and he’s even grateful for the precinct’s faint smell of metal and burnt-coffee. 

Holt seems to have calmed down from earlier, or at the very least, he’s so immersed he can’t be bothered to deal with Jake’s crap right now. He has a pile of binders on his desk and his reading glasses are on the verge of sliding off the tip of his nose. Seeing Holt in serious action almost makes Jake feel guilty for acting out earlier.

He enters the room awkwardly, and Holt looks up from a particularly thick file and clears his throat. “Detective, I noticed you and Santiago were conversing. I trust that you have sufficiently addressed any emotional concerns this process might have, given the romantic nature of your relationship. I understand that the prolonged separation can be quite challenging to navigate. Kevin and I recently had quite an emotional conversation ourselves.”

“Hello Kevin, it is I, your husband Raymond Holt.”

“May I inquire about the occasion? This is a rather unusual time to call.”

“I agree it is quite unorthodox, but this news is urgent. I just completed a very dangerous case and my life is in danger. I am headed into a Witness Protection program indefinitely.”

“I understand. I am quite disappointed by this news.”

“As am I.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Jake replies. In any other circumstance he would declare his eternal love for Amy from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, making sure that the whole city could hear. But, although he would never admit it, he cares just as much about the Captain’s approval as she does. Whenever he imagined proposing to Amy, years down the line, he knew it would be elaborate and tasteful (to the extent he was capable of it) and when both of them were ready. He knew that’s what Amy deserved, and Holt knew it too.

“Pardon?” Holt takes his eyes off the monitor and folds his arms, and Jake feels as if he’s being interrogated. Through the glass, he watches Amy at her desk frantically typing and scribbling down notes.

He purses his lips in anticipation. He doesn’t have time to do a bit or give a fake story to dull the big news like usual, and that makes the ripping off of the bandaid even more painful. “It is possible that Amy and I maybe just decided to get married before the Marshall gets here.” 

Holt opens his mouth with a slight indication of confusion, before swallowing a gulp of air. “I see…and you’re sure that you will be able to file the requisite paperwork in time?” An entirely unremarkable—and characteristic—reaction to the situation. No hints of judgement or celebration, just an acknowledgement of simple facts. Jake supposes that he filed any emotional response away to be processed at a later point.

“Don’t worry sir, we have a plan,” Jake assures his still-skeptical Captain. “Well, Amy has a plan,” he clarifies, and Holt indicates marginal relief. 

Holt sighs, “I know I am not one to talk you out of your schemes—”

“—It’s not a scheme, it's a plan, and it’s a great one. Amy and I are going to go to whatever craphole state the Marshalls send us to, solve the case in no time and then make out 24/7,” Jake says with a new rush of adrenaline. 

“As I was saying, you seem to be quite confident,” Holt continues,  “which is why I’m not going to attempt to negotiate with you. You are excellent detectives and you clearly care a lot about each other. Congratulations to you both.” He gestures to Amy, who has her face nearly pressed to the glass behind the shades, as she tries to listen to their conversation. “Santiago, you may enter.”

Amy almost trips on her way into the office, and Jake greets her with a hug, “Did you hear that? The Captain approves!” 

Her face floods pink, undermining her already futile efforts to maintain composure. “Thank you sir, it means a lot.”

“Of course. It’s highly enjoyable to see a couple as compatible as yourselves.” Jake has to bite his tongue to avoid mocking his word choice. “Now, given that time is of the utmost essence, I urge you two to go home and gather personal documents. I’ve already spoken to the night shift’s Sergeant, and he has agreed to lend officers to escort each of you.”

“We need to get all the marriage paperwork sorted out, I can just stay here,” Jake adds, turning to his girlfriend, “Amy, all my important stuff is under my beanbag chair.” 

“That's why it's so lumpy!” 

“I’m sure Detective Boyle would be more than happy to help out with your nuptials,” Holt replies, pushing aside his disgust with his Detective’s living situation. “Here is a list of things that the Marshall will need,” he hands over two slim printouts from one of the many binders on his desk. “You are dismissed.”

“Thanks,” Jake says, flipping through the sheets. He would be so screwed trying to find this all in his apartment. 

“See you on the other side, babe,” Amy whispers as she leaves the office.

“See you on the other side,” Jake says, planting a soft kiss on her forehead before heading downstairs.

///////

One hour later.

Amy returns to the precinct with a sleek folder containing every document the Marshall requested. While gathering her necessities, she changed into her old graduation dress. It’s knee length with cap sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, not nearly formal enough for the wedding she had several binders dedicated to, but for all she cared she would marry Jake in sweatpants and grandma glasses. 

Her jaw drops as she enters the break room.  As it turns out, Charles wasn’t the only one in the squad ecstatic about a Peralta-Santiago wedding, even if it was just a formality. As soon as the rest of the squad found out, they volunteered to help in any way possible. Rosa took her motorcycle to the City Clerk’s office where she obtained a Marriage Certificate and License, though she wouldn’t disclose how she got into the locked rooms. Terry convinced his neighbor who worked in the State Court to begrudgingly sign a letter authorizing the marriage in under 24 hours (“Theirs is a love story for the ages, for the ages Margo!”) Hitchcock and Scully even rearranged the furniture to form a sort of mock-chapel although it didn’t help that Scully was asleep on one of the couches in the back.

Charles himself went full-Boyle. The room is decorated with a beautiful miss-match of flowers from the 24/7 bodega down the street, and soft classical music was playing over the precinct’s sound system. It’s enough to make the holding cell containing a single perp with thirteen charges of public urination seem miles away. “Amy!” he turns around when he sees her, letting the banner of post-it's he’s hanging drop to the floor. 

“Charles, this is incredible!” Amy exclaims. 

“Thank you, it's not the wedding I dreamed about for you two,—that one has far more exotic birds involved, both for eating and for pleasure,—but I figured it was my job to step up as Jake’s de facto best man,” he says, pulling her into a hug. “If you hurt him I swear to god I will make you suffer for the rest of your life,” he whispers into her ear.

Amy pulls back hesitantly, “yeah, of course I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jake.” She laughs, but no one joins.

“Seriously, we mean it,” Rosa adds, her tone somewhat undercut by the bouquet of roses she’s tying together.

“Everybody, leave Santiago alone, she’s not going to do anything,” Terry says, but his authority is undermined by the mouthful of tape from hanging up decorations. 

At that moment Jake walks in, “Leave Santiago Alone, She’s Not Going To Do Anything: title of Amy’s sex tape.” He’s changed into a white button up shirt under his leather jacket and dark jeans. His red tie and scuffed sneakers match the flower petals around them. Charles must’ve coordinated this, Amy thinks. He looks so handsome that she forgives the insult. Besides, they both knew he wasn’t speaking from experience.

“Dude, you’re literally getting married,” Rosa says, as Jake rolls his eyes. He saunters over to Amy and gives her a quick kiss. She takes his arm around her, and they walk to the back of the room for a semblance of privacy, taking a seat on the couch opposite Scully.

“Hello future wife,” Jake greets Amy. 

“Hi future Mr. Santiago,” she responds, with a slightly smug smile.

“Wait, what are we going to do about last names? Should we hyphenate?” Jake asks, frazzled. He’s still processing everything that’s happened that day. 

“We can work all that out later, but it would make paperwork a nightmare,” Amy says, as she tucks a tiny curl behind his ear. It immediately bounces back. Jake smiles at her. Of course she could still be thinking about paperwork at a time like this.

“I know it’s cliche, but I really do feel like the luckiest man on Earth,” he says. 

“Well you are being targeted by one of the countries largest crime families, so I guess it evens out.” Jake looks away in response, and Amy bites her lip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up, I just thought with everything—”

“—No, it’s fine,” Jake says, and he quickly pulls back his frown. At some point over the past evening (early morning, really) Jake had allowed himself to believe that this marriage was forever. That it was the next step in the infinite journey they would share or whatever. His stomach churned at the nagging idea that this was just a loophole for Amy to work a case with him. 

“Babe, is everything alright?” She turns to face him, and he realizes the uncharacteristic length of his silence. 

“After all this is over—if it’s all over—are we going to stay married?” he asks, not quite able to make eye contact. 

“Is that what you want?” Amy counters.

“Maybe,” Jake responds. He definitely knows what he wants, but he tiptoes around putting Amy in a precarious position. The last thing he wants is for her to feel compelled to stay married to a guy she’s only been dating for a year. Instead, he returns the question, “is that what you want?”

She pauses for a second to think. “I want a proper wedding. With my family and everything—I think my mom would kill me if I didn’t. But I want to marry you. Preferably not in a police precinct though,” she adds. Now it’s her turn to avoid his gaze.  

“I want that too,” Jake smiles in agreement, “Although a precinct wedding doesn’t seem that bad. Terry’s kids could be our flower girls.”

“That would be adorable,” Amy says.

“Do you think Sarge could bring them in now?”

“Jake, it’s the middle of the night on a school night,” Amy reminds him. Stupid reality always getting in the way of his great ideas.

“Right,” he pauses, and then lets out a laugh. “I love you, Ames.”

“I love you too, Jake,” she says, with her head on his shoulder. He wishes that they could stay like that forever, but time (or, to be more precise, his captain’s anal scheduling practices) were not on their side.

Amy explains all the different forms they have to sign and Jake watches her carefully scan each line and write her name in font-like handwriting. She feels Jake’s leg shake underneath the table and lays her warm hand against his knee to calm him down. He picks up a pen from the floor and adds his name next to hers. He takes a moment to appreciate the smooth black ink from her favorite fountain pen next to his skipped blue-rollerball scrawl. 

“Alright, we’re married,” Jake announces, going in for a high five. Amy looks at him with disbelief, and Charles takes the opportunity to cut in and slaps his palm. The rest of the squad joins them around the table, except Hitchcock has fallen asleep on Scully’s lap.

“I can’t believe it,” Rosa shakes her head, “someone actually agreed to spend the rest of their life with Jake.”

“Hey,” Jake protests, “that’s my wife.” He looks up at Amy with his adoring heart eyes and she feels a flutter in her chest. It was the first time she was referred to like that, and he didn’t even use the Borat voice like she expected.

“Whatever. I’m happy for you dorks,” Rosa says and she’s just drunk enough not to hide her smile. “This is unacceptable,” Charles interrupts, “I mean all this work, all this build up—years of watching your heightening sexual tension—just to sign a few papers? At least give us the vows.” He gestures around at the decorations to emphasize the point.

Jake is about to butt in about how it’s not for him, and if they were able to they would celebrate more, until Terry adds on. “I agree with Charles! Terry loves love.”

“Eh, seems like a good way to kill twenty minutes, babe, you in?” Jake turns towards Amy. 

“Why not?” she says. 

“Yes!” Charles exclaims, “I can officiate, I’ve had my speech written for years. How familiar are you with the different types of tentacles?” Amy and Jake exchange horrified glances, and Jake gets ready to talk his friend down. “I’m just kidding, about the tentacles,” he clarifies, although Amy isn’t entirely convinced.

“Am I going to be able to stop you?” Jake asks.

Charles is already running to his computer when he replies, “Not in a million years!” Terry soon follows him outside, inviting every officer to come watch the ceremony. Rosa tries to wake up Hitchcock and Scully with a gentle nudge before eventually slapping them awake.

In the meantime, Jake and Amy stay at the table. They’re both exhausted from the events of the day, and Amy tries to stifle a yawn as Jake asks her nonsensical questions about life in WITSEC. “What do you want your undercover name to be? I’m thinking Larry Sherbert.”

Amy rolls her eyes, “I’m not taking the last name Sherbert.”

He smiles, “that’s right, because I took yours, Rainbow.” 

“You want my name to be Rainbow Sherbert?” she responds incredulously.

“Yep, you had hippie parents,” he explains. She’s about to tell him to knock it off, when Captain Holt enters the room. Amy instinctively straightens her posture and smooths out the front of her dress.

Holt lays the bottle of champagne he’s holding on the table, “This is from my miniature fridge. I was saving it as a mentor-to-mentee gift for when Santiago passed the Sergeant's exam, but this occasion seems equally appropriate.”

“Thank you sir. This is too kind,” Amy says, in the most formal voice she can muster. 

“Of course,” Holt says, “It is a customary gift between workplace associates such as ourselves.” Jake shifts his puzzled gaze between his wife and his Captain. He loved them both, but couldn’t for the life of him decipher their relationship.

Terry and Charles return and a few officers trickle into the chairs in the back. Holt takes a seat in the front row, next to Rosa, and Amy and Jake join Charles in the makeshift archway between the vending machines. 

“This is the happiest day of my life,” Charles whispers, putting his arms around Jake and Amy. 

“Because you found out you were adopting a child, right?” Jake checks. 

Charles blushes, “yep, totally that. I’m going to be such a responsible dad.” He rifles through his papers one last time, “Ok I’m ready whenever you are.”

Amy glances expectantly at Jake who gives her two sharp thumbs up. “I think we’re good!”“Alright let’s get this party started!” Charles announces. His volume catches the attention of the crowd, and the chatter dies down. “We are gathered here to celebrate the union of the two most magnificent people I know: Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago. Many of you have had the privilege of watching Jake and Amy’s relationship blossom from the overly competitive co-workers who drove us crazy with their constant bickering, to the glorious sight it is today.” He continues his speech, skipping over entire pages that have been crossed out, containing metaphors everyone is undoubtedly thankful not to hear. “To Jake and Amy, partners in crime solving, and now also, partners in life!” 

The room applauds, and Jake takes the time to dab at the tears he was holding back during the speech. “We come now to the words you’ve all been waiting for. Before you declare your vows to one another, I want to hear you confirm that it is indeed your intention to be married today. Jacob Zachary Peralta, do you come here freely and without reservation to give yourself to Amy Maria Santiago in marriage?”

Jake and Amy share a mischievous glance, realizing he never told Charles his actual middle name. He’s about to bring that up, along with the fact that none of the day’s events were remotely close to his intentions, but he gets the sense that Amy wouldn’t be happy if he derailed the ceremony. Instead, he smooths out his tie and confidently says, “I do.”

“And Amy Maria Santiago, do you come here freely and without reservation to give yourself to Jacob Zachary Peralta in marriage,” Charles continues, oblivious to their antics.

“I do,” Amy smiles. 

“Please face each other and hold hands,” Charles says,  pulling two silver bands out of his pocket. Amy looks at Jake with confusion and he mouths the words beanbag chair. Charles instructs the two to repeat after him as they place the rings on each other’s fingers. The whole ceremony starts to blur in Amy’s mind as she realizes Jake already had this ring that somehow slid perfectly on her finger.

“And now, by the power invested in me by the state of New York, it is my honor to declare you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride!” Charles declares, tossing his papers on the ground for dramatic effect. Jake reaches his arm around Amy’s back in an attempt to dip her as some grand romantic gesture. She fumbles a little and ends up standing up and pulling her head up to his until their lips meet in a warm, invigorating kiss. Both of them chuckle as they pull apart. A few of the officers take that as a cue to return to the bullpen.

“It’s my grandma’s—the dead one’s,” Jake explains, pointing to Amy’s ring, “—and that’s like the one Peralta marriage that wasn’t a total failure so I thought it would bring good luck or something. Plus, you know the crushing debt.”

“It’s perfect,” Amy says, examining the carefully carved diamonds.

Captain Holt rises from his seat and reaches for the bottle of champagne, announcing a toast. As he starts to open the bottle, the cork goes flying across the room, shattering the vending machine glass. Hitchcock and Scully race towards the rubble to steal some free snacks. It’s at that moment that the Marshall, who unbeknownst to the squad had been waiting outside the Captain's office, decides to examine the break room and investigate the noise. 

There’s a moment of silence, interrupted only by the fizzing of the overflowing champagne. Amy feels her stomach churning as if she’s somehow in trouble. Holt is at a complete loss for words. At last, it’s Charles who speaks up, hesitantly saying “Mazel Tov?”

[mulderist]

Wicked Game

Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // read on AO3 // @today-in-fic​

Washington, D.C - 1948. Fox Mulder is a detective on the top vice unit; scandal, corruption, and lies come with the territory. He is forced to investigate a fellow officer and finds the lies go much deeper than the truth.

CHAPTER 3

Arlington National Cemetery One week later 9:17 am

Leaves rustled in the trees overhead as the honor guard reloaded and repositioned their rifles. The sharp bang, like a hit on a snare drum, echoed through the eerie calm of the cemetery. I could feel it happening again. Everytime I thought I was past this nonsense it kept coming back. I wanted to close my eyes but it would have brought me back to the mud and rain of Wake Island. When you’ve been knee deep in death you never forget it. I could still smell the humid air, the burnt powder, the smoke.

I closed my eyes for a moment and balled my fist tighter as images clear as photographs flashed before me. Three years ago, I donned the dress blues and watched a soldier from my company laid to rest. It felt like I was having a heart attack as I listened to the twenty-one guns and the cries of his grieving widow. Fingers pressed hard creating a thick new line in my palm and my flashback dissolved. 

Each shot up to this point was torture. My salute wavered with the final pop and I felt the elephant on my chest move aside, allowing me to breathe a little. A bead of sweat broke free from under my hatband and took a slow slide down my temple. The back of my neck prickled. I swallowed hard and moved to parade rest as the honor guard queued up and left the gravesite. My fingers slowly loosened their curl and I felt the circulation return to the tips. Once the ringing in my ears stopped I was able to appreciate the sound of silence. 

It was a small group of mourners, mainly fellow Marines from Spender’s company and a few officers from the precinct. He had no wife, no kids, not sure if his mother was still alive. Seems that the only family representative was his father. Jeffrey had the distinction of a military funeral at Arlington due to his rank and heroics at Guadalcanal. At the drop of a hat he would tell the story about surviving hand-to-hand combat and rescuing a senior officer during a nighttime raid. I’m sure each time he retold it, that fish got a little bigger. At any rate, he’s now buried amongst other honorable men. His father was able to cut through any red tape like a hot knife through butter to make it happen. And almost as if on cue I spied the old man in his expensive dark striped suit accepting condolences. I recognized him through the smoke cloud that hung around like a bad party guest. I suppose he could feel my eyes on him because he headed my direction. He gestured to another older gentleman, who I assumed was his driver, and continued his approach. It was the first time I was able to truly observe him. He had all the obvious characteristics of old D.C. politics; dower demeanor, rigid walk, air of superiority.

“Sir, I’m sorry for your loss,” I said flatly as he approached. The scent of Morleys invaded my nose.

“Thank you, mister -?” He asked while offering a perfunctory handshake. 

“Mulder,” I replied as I shook his hand then tugged at my uniform jacket. 

“Ah yes,” he practically hissed, “You were Jeffrey’s partner in the vice unit. Keeping the city safe from crime and debauchery.” The cigarette smoking man took one more drag then let the stick hang on his lower lip. “My son had great potential. To be killed in the line of duty is a tragedy.”

 I didn’t know what type of condolence to offer. I wasn’t great friends with his son in the first place, it was a professional relationship and not much more.

“The precinct lost a good detective,” I finally managed to say. Jesus, that felt bitter on my tongue. I licked my lips, hoping this conversation would soon be over; my pleasantries were skating on thin ice. The Smoking Man stubbed out his cigarette and rattled off something about his resources that could aid in our murder investigation. Apparently he and the commissioner were old chums and justice would be swift. Then he took the cue and left. I stole a deep breath and watched him head towards his driver then enter a large black Cadillac that was parked at the base of the knoll.  

My feet hit the pathway just as I heard my name being called from over my shoulder. I paused and turned to see Captain Skinner walking my direction. 

“Just had a conversation with Spender’s old man.” I said.

“Is that so?” He questioned as he removed his glasses.

“Turns out he has the district police in his pocket so my services might not be needed with this investigation,” I said sarcastically.

“Did he know your connection to the case?”

“He knows I was Spender’s partner, but not that I was at the scene.” 

Skinner squared his jaw then continued to walk past me away from the thinning crowd. I followed.

“I’m awaiting the final report from the coroner. They found something of interest on the autopsy.”

“A different cause of death? Figured the gunshots were obvious,” I said.

“There was additional bloodwork. I’m not certain what the M.E. was looking for, which is why I want the final report.” He stopped and faced me. “Mulder, I don’t typically recommend this course of police action however this is a unique situation.” 

“Sir?”

“I want you to use whatever channels you have available. Legal or -- otherwise. Use the boys in forensics to your advantage. See if you can get that report and keep this ‘eyes only.”

I raised an eyebrow at the request. It’s not everyday your boss asks you to operate in the gray. Then it clicked.

“You want to keep this hush-hush.”

“I want to keep the reputation of this precinct and my vice unit intact,” he replied cryptically. I could only nod and watch as he slowly left for his car. I took an opposite path. There was a humming in my head that I wanted to knock loose with a stroll.

Flanked by rows of white crosses on green hills I continued along the pathway and suddenly saw a familiar flash of red. She was standing at a simple headstone, adjusting a small arrangement of flowers. Out of respect I waited until she stepped away onto the path before I approached.

“Excuse me,” I called from behind with a casual wave of my hand. When she looked over her shoulder I knew it was her.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss,” I began but clammed up when I saw those pools of blue. In that instant, that split second, it’s like I forgot the damn English language. My feet kept moving and I tried to say something.

“It’s no bother,” she said, thankfully.

“Are you by chance a nurse at Washington General?” I finally sputtered as we stopped walking. She nodded then thought for a moment, her arms hugged her petite frame.

“You look familiar,” she said with a delicately pointed finger, “Have we met before?” 

“We have,” I replied. She cautiously moved closer to size me up. She surveyed my uniform and I felt like I was back in the barracks.

“You were the -- detective, right? -- who worked on a last name basis?”

“That’s my calling card. The name’s Mulder,” I said, “Remind me yours?”

“Dana Scully,” she said with a hint of a polite smile.

Scully. There it was. The stray thread was pulled and unraveled the memory of her name, each and every letter. She continued, 

“How’s your shoulder?”

“Almost back to my pitching prime.” I replied as I gave it a roll. I had to watch myself with this one. Memory like a steel trap. Her head tilted curiously to the side. 

“You clean up nice.” There was a quick flush to her cheeks as she took a small step back, wishing that remark stayed to herself. I smiled and now it was my turn to shift gears.

“I saw you laying down some flowers.” I said, curiosity getting my proverbial cat. Her lips pressed together. 

“My father,” she said, “He is - was - a captain in the Navy. It was six years ago; Midway. I like to keep his flowers fresh if I can.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied with the only thing I could muster. Her statement was simple but knocked the wind out of my sails. Scully dipped her head and nodded. She then asked,

“Do you have someone here?”

“I’ve got a couple guys from my company, though I don’t visit too often. But today was my partner.”

“Oh,” she said softly, “It’s a funny state of the world when you can have a conversation about who you lost as easy as asking ‘how’s the weather.’”

For a moment I had nothing to say. A thousand scenarios ran through my head. I wanted to know more, I wanted to know everything about her. There was a natural beauty of course but something about her mind reeled me in. I cleared my throat. This chat was on the verge of getting cozy but seemed out of place in the current setting.

“May I walk you to your car?” 

“Thank you but I’ll be fine. My sister is waiting for me. Besides, we only just met.” A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth.” 

Playing coy, I liked that.

“Well then, good day Miss Scully.” 

“Good day Mr. Mulder.” She shook my hand and lingered for a moment. “If you’re ever in Georgetown look me up. Hopefully we can meet again.” 

“I sincerely hope so,” I said. She turned heel and left me on the path. The curve of her pencil skirt, a flutter of the hem, the lines of her smart blouse made the goodbye feel less permanent. I listened to a breeze sweep through the tree line then I backtracked to where I was parked. 

I needed to get out of this uniform.

-------

Hegal Place Alexandria, VA

My apartment felt stale. I forced open a window to let in some fresh air. In the wardrobe hung one clean, pressed dress shirt along with my police dress blues. Of course the only shirt remaining was the one I wore the night Spender was killed. The good thing about an old jaded dry cleaner is you get quality work and little questions. I sipped my coffee and remembered I might have a vacation shirt stashed away in a drawer. As I donned the new shirt I heard the phone ring. I was waiting for a call from the boys in forensics who were a little too eager to give me a hand. 

“Mulder? It’s Frohike.”

“What have you found?”

“As you know, Langley and I were able to fish out a casing from the bathroom stall door, the back wall and a sneaky little devil in the bar. Turns out these paired nicely with the one lodged in Spender’s abdomen.”

“Who’d the weapon belong to?”

“Carlo Lodi.” Frohike asked. I scanned through the mugshot portfolio in my head. There he was. A hulking brute nicknamed The Titan who was quick with a fist and a trigger.

“Yeah. He’s one of Vincenti’s favorite enforcers.”

“We’ve seen his handiwork before,” Frohike continued, “He leaves a real pretty signature, although he’s usually a little more precise. Execution style seems to be his forté.”

“That’s what I thought when I was at the scene. I still don’t know if he intended to take me out as well.”

“Just like you to get in the way, Mulder.” There was a chuckle in the other end of the phone.

“Hey Frohike, has the final report come in from the M.E.?” 

“Ah, funny you should mention that. I have a preliminary copy and it shows that there was heroin in his system.”

“Shit,” I stated after a pause.

“What is it?”

“It means Krycek was right.”

[slippinmickeys]

Voyeur

This is just a one-shot writing exercise, but I had fun. 

The person who was assigned to run surveillance on the basement office of the Hoover Building was a man with the unlikely name of Ichabod Weaver.

Ichabod had been previously employed in wetwork but had been demoted after a collosal fuck-up, which had been Percy-Fucknut-Ryan’s fault, but Ichabod was in charge of his own operations and ultimately took responsibility. Running surveillance on the X-Files project was a punishment, pure and simple.

“If you happen to kill the wrong person down there,” his employer had said to him initially, blowing a plume of smoke into Ichabod’s face, “it would take care of several of my problems.”

Anything would have been preferable to the drudgery of listening, day after day, to the insane theories of Fox William Mulder (Subject 240629) and his skeptical lady partner (one Dana Katherine Scully, Subject 241204). They were intelligent (pretentious), talented (annoying), and honorable to a fault; the kind of people who would point out to a waitress if she hadn’t charged them enough for dinner. It was enough to make a guy puke. Ichabod would have happily put his old skills to work on himself to escape the tedium of his assignment, but he had two years left on his contract and enough savings in the bank to live out the rest of his days on an island somewhere near the equator. If he didn’t die from boredom down here, that meant he also wouldn’t die of it while lounging in a hammock slung between two palm trees.

Ichabod mostly ran audio surveillance, but there was video too, if anything got interesting. He mostly used that when Mulder or Scully was out of the office leaving the other alone. Mulder would inevitably watch porn, which Ichabod could see if he adjusted the camera just-so, and Scully would take the opportunity when Mulder stepped out, to reach into her bra for one reason or another, or adjust her pantyhose or stretch her long, elegant neck. It was the best he would ever get from an uptight, conservative broad like Scully, and Ichabod was a guy who would always take what he could get.

When he first started the gig, he thought it was fairly obvious that the two agents were fucking. With Mulder’s constant proximity to Scully’s tight little ass and round plump mouth, Ichabod could hardly blame the guy--but they never did anything untoward in the office aside from light flirting and the occassional glancing sexual innuendo, and after nine months Ichabod decided that in actuality, they weren’t fucking each other, but that they obviously wanted to. God, what idiots. If Ichabod had learned anything in life, it was that life itself was too damn short.

They had been out of the office for a week and a half out in the field -- some other poor shmuck’s problem -- and Ichabod hadn’t even bothered coming in the last three days. They were back in their office today and had beaten him to work, which he discovered when he set down his coffee and flipped on the speakers to find the two agents and their boss, the stick-up-his-ass AD, in the middle of a conversation.

“--surprised you were able to get a confession, Agent Scully, the local PD had interrogated the suspect on four separate occasions and never got enough to justify a warrant.”

“Agent Mulder should get the credit for this one, sir,” Scully said, standing -- judging from the sound of her voice -- on the other side of the room, “it was his idea to use the interrogation technique that garnered the confession.”

“Well,” Mulder said, his voice casually modest, “we were all ears and he was all mouth.”

“Nevertheless, it was a job well done,” Skinner said. “Can I expect your report on my desk by Friday?”

He must have gotten a nonverbal confirmation, because the next thing Ichabod heard was the office door closing and the sound of the assistant director’s footsteps fading away to nothing.

“You didn’t have to do that, Scully,” Mulder said, after a brief minute of quiet.

“Do what?” she asked on a shuffle of papers.

“Give me all the credit,” Mulder said, “you know I wouldn’t have gotten a confession from the guy if he hadn’t been so hot for you that he didn’t even notice when he confessed to the crime.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mulder,” Scully said, in a tone that it made it obvious to both Mulder and Ichabod that she most assuredly did.

“The guy had a pretty severe priapic condition when you stood him up and slapped on the cuffs, or don’t you remember the thing practically brushing your arm when I was Mirandizing him?” Mulder said, his tone playful.

After a moment, Scully rose to the bait, answering in just as playful a way -- something that grabbed Ichabod’s attention, because it was something she’d never, ever done before.

“The genitalia of the male of our species is a complicated system of hydraulics, Mulder. His priapic condition as you call it, could have been caused by any number of stimuli, be it sexual or otherwise.”

Ichabod was certain that if he turned on the video right now, he and Mulder would be wearing the same impressed/amused reaction.

“Otherwise?” Mulder’s voice was low.

“You pumped him full of cola, Mulder,” she said, and Ichabod could hear the smile in her voice, “maybe he just really had to pee.”

“As the owner of ‘a complicated system of hydraulics,’ and a person who spends hours a week in confined spaces with you, I can assure you, Agent Scully... he didn’t have to pee.”

Ichabod leaned back in his chair and began clicking a ballpoint pen. The tension in that office was so high it was leaking into his cramped surveillance room through the wires that fed its sound.

“And trust me,” Mulder’s voice came so quietly that Ichabod had to turn up the volume on his speaker, “when the hydraulics kick in, it doesn’t feel all that complicated.”

There was a muffled sound of footsteps, a mumble he couldn’t make out and then the quiet wisps of a sound it took Ichabod a minute to identify as the rustle of clothing, and he went flying in his office chair across the room and to the video monitor that he hadn’t turned on in weeks.

It took several long seconds for the screen to flash to life and another few for Ichabod to jostle the joystick that controlled the camera until he brought the two agents into the center of his screen, as close together as he had ever seen them, inches apart but not touching. Mulder was leaning down into Scully’s space and she was looking up at him intensely, her hands at her side, fingers clenching open and closed as if she were trying to make a decision.

Mulder brought his hands up slowly to her face, holding it gently, his thumbs rubbing along the seam of her plump, ruby lower lip.

“Awww, he’s gonna do it,” Ichabod said to the empty room, then, as if the people on the screen could hear him, said, “Do it, Mulder. Do it.”

As if in answer, Mulder leaned slowly down and brushed his lips lightly across Scully’s, and both Ichabod and Mulder seemed prepared for the inevitable slap. Instead, Scully stepped in even closer, the tips of her shoes stepping on the tops of Mulder’s own and pulled him down into a kiss that started sweetly, but turned passionate in matter of moments.

One of Mulder’s hands stayed on her face, but the other arm snaked around her waist, his hand grabbing hot handfuls of her tight ass, and Ichabod had to bite a knuckle in jealousy.

He could hear a tight female moan and then the sound of desperate pants and huffed breaths, followed by a cacophonous waterfalling thud as a stack of files fell off the desk as Mulder pushed Scully into it -- the sounds all a half second out of sync from the video screen before him.

Ichabod saw Mulder pump his hips against Scully once and fumble his hands at her shirt, pulling it out of the waist of her skirt. Scully took the moment to run her hands up over his shoulders, cleaving the suit coat from his back so that it pooled to the floor at their feet. Mulder’s hand was up and under her shirt in a flash, and Scully threw her head back from where she sat on the desk, the column of her throat almost white in the dim light of the basement.

Mulder’s mouth was at her neck an instant later, and Ichabod was impressed with his dexterity, his mouth working at his partner’s throat even as one hand was filled to bursting with her ass and the other was working her breasts, and all Ichabod could hear were her moans and a roaring of blood in his own ears.

When Scully reached for Mulder’s fly, he almost reached for his own, but then stopped as Scully did, who put a hand up to Mulder’s chest, where she wrapped his tie around her hand once and leaned her forehead against his heaving chest.

“Not…” she struggled to catch her breath, “Not here.”

“Yes here,” Ichabod said to the screen, willing the agents to keep going, his thumb continuing to click the pen, in and out, in and out, faster and faster.

“Scuh-” Mulder started to say, one hand reaching down to lift her chin until she was looking him in the eye.

“Not like this,” she said to him, her eyes searching his, “I want it to be right, I want you to-”

“To what?” Mulder whispered, then touched the tip of her nose with the gentlest of kisses.

Her head fell downward again, her hair falling like curtains to block what Ichabod could see of her face.

Mulder then whispered something Ichabod couldn’t make out. She looked back up at Mulder, her face as yearning and bright as any classic Hollywood starlet. She pushed herself off the desk and pulled herself up to her full height, then pulled on Mulder’s tie, bringing his face slowly down to her own. She gave him a firm, full kiss, her tongue invading his mouth once, quickly.

“I love you too,” she said earnestly, and Ichabod felt something in his chest loosen and fly free.

“Come to me,” she said quietly, and Mulder’s eyes never once left hers, his hands holding her tightly to him, “tonight.”

Mulder nodded once firmly, and then reluctantly released her. He took one step back.

“Tonight,” he said, his voice raw and needy.

Scully reached up with a hand and ran it gently through his hair once, then let her hand fall. She stepped away from her partner.

Ichabod stared at the screen before him as both agents stepped out of frame, the basement office quiet but for the dull background hum of desktop towers, the quiet buzz of monitors and various investigative equipment. He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

After a few moments of introspection, Ichabod looked at the video recording device in front of him for a full minute and then on an impulse, rewound it quickly and pressed the “erase” button. Then he pushed back from the desk, loosened his tie and made for the door. Ichabod needed some air.