#x files prompt

[magicpiano]

Danny Fenton sends Superman a fan email in which he asks for advice. In it he says he is also a non-human hero (he is vague because being a ghost is illegal) Danny mentions that he is being raised by humans. His parents don't know about his activities or species and hate his kind.

Danny was mostly looking for advice on how to make people stop being scared of his non-human characteristics. But Clark really sees himself in this teenager's email. He knows he was lucky to get parents who loved him even as an alien, but he also recalls being young and scared that would change.

So they start regularly exchanging emails, and Superman becomes a kind of mentor even if Danny refuses to tell him anything about his identity.

[charlietheepicwriter7]

"Grandfather."

Ra's knew who the boy was the moment he'd snuck into the room. He'd allowed the child--more man than child now, but everyone was a child compared to him--moments to steel himself while Ra's refrained from acknowledging his presence. The boy's breath was barely audible but unsteady, and a drop of something fell to the floor.

His grandson was injured. "Danyal," he greeted and finally gazed upon him for the first time in seven years.

Danyal had grown into his father's height, yet stayed lean in regards to his musculature. His black hair had grown out of the League-regulation haircut, held back in a messy braid. He held himself as strong as he could, but kept an arm wrapped around his stomach. His shirt--standard American teenage garb, he dismissed--was spotted with blood and he could see bandages poking out from under the cloth.

With great care, Danyal knelt before the Demon Head and recited the Oath of Loyalty.

Ra's watched.

The boy's tongue, fat with English, spoke the League's variant of Arabic with the grace of a mace to the head, yet his words were clear. He took his time speaking the oath, carefully sounding out words, working hard to avoid mispronunciation. The Oath in question was the older version, from before Deathstroke's insurrection, but Danyal spoke it with a calm certainty that it would be accepted.

And without a doubt, it would be accepted.

Talia's eldest son had been born from her body instead of through science, a mistake that nearly cost her the child and damaged him upon birth. While the best doctors in the world saved his life, Danyal Al Ghul would always be weak in a fight, always prone to illness, always struggling to excel. When it became clear that the boy couldn't become the next Demon Head, Ra's sent Talia to create a replacement while arrangements were made for her first child to be taught business and science, for the betterment of the League. Danyal, very much his father's child, thrived in his intellectual pursuits while Damian grew and developed into a budding assassin.

But Danyal was more like his father than he'd ever knew. Ra's couldn't miss the signs of one of his family turning away from the League. Not the mission--Danyal had written several university level papers defending the environment by the time the boy was 10--but Ra's methods...

Ra's had a conundrum. Danyal was a dedicated conservationist; once the boy was an adult, Ra's was certain he'd take the world by storm and bring the League to new heights. But if he forced his methods onto Danyal, he could create an enemy of him, just as his father was.

Ra's gave Danyal an offer; Danyal would be allowed to leave the League and live a normal life if and only if he faked his own death in such a way that reinforced Damian's loyalty to the League of Assassins.

Danyal had been hesitant at first, but past his test with flying colors. Instigating one of the more unstable assassins into organizing a coup, cutting the insurgents off near immediately, but "dying" protecting both his younger brother and mother. It was a masterful performance. Even Talia hadn't known about the deceit.

And yet, here he was, on his knees, pledging loyalty. Danyal knew what that meant, knew what he was returning to, which morals he would be allowed to keep.

"And what do you bring with you, child of no one?" Why should the League accept the return of this child, who left once before?

Danyal met his eyes. "I bring with me, my team, who are loyal to me and me alone. I bring with me, research surrounding the Lazarus Pits, in origins and further uses for the waters." Ra's raised an eyebrow, and Danyal smirked. "I bring with me, my knowledge, nurtured within this very home and sharpened in the world outside. I bring with me, my weapons, built with my own hands. I bring with me... my body, finally healthy and whole." He brought his head down to the floor, trembling with pain. "I bring my whole self to the Demon's Head, for Him to accept or reject."

Ra's smiled. "By the shadows that guard our order and the blood that binds us, I accept this oath. From this day forward, you are an instrument of the League, a harbinger of justice, and a weapon in the hand of Ra's Al Ghul."

Danyal returned to his feet, swaying percariously. He needed immediate medical attention. Despite this, he continued, "Long live the League of Assassins. Long live Ra's Al Ghul."

And he collapsed onto the floor.

[whumpypepsigal]

@whumpgifathon | Day 29 (alt. prompt): “Bedside Vigil”

Fox Mulder in The X Files 2x25

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

i swear, some episodes of the x files are like: "mulder is the most special and smartest boy in all the land because he figured out where bigfoot lives. and scully calculated the chemical composition of alien poison, saving 800 people from horrific deaths, but that is just a normal tuesday for her. isn't mulder so smart?"

[hoshinasblade]

hoshina brainrot moment with a soulmate trope that says when you are near your soulmate, your senses are heightened to its limit. i mean, just imagine being put in the same squad as hoshina and performing so well because the both of you are suddenly so in sync with yourselves and with the surroundings. imagine being partnered with hoshina during field duties despite obvious repercussions, because it is just undeniable that hoshina makes you better and you make the vice-captain sharper.

with the heightened senses, also just imagine how good the sex is.

[housesalad]

InkFiles Day 1: Pilot

Happy October!

[slippinmickeys]

Funfetti prompt: how did Mulder propose? My sincere apologies to whoever asked for this prompt. I wrote down the prompt, but neglected to write down the name of who asked for it and it's been a couple of weeks now. Please call yourself out in the tags or in the comments on AO3 and I'll rectify my mistake!

He is buried in the cradle of her hips, a briny haven, deep as the Vineyard Sound; a place he has only been a handful of times. 

Scully, nine weeks out from a natural birth in a dusty day bed in Georgia, makes a groaning, satisfied sound, her thumb hooked into his cheek. He crimps her knuckle delicately with his teeth, feels a surge of affection for his partner. Tenderness. It is an echo of what he feels for his son, sleeping several feet away, his mother’s cupid bow lips in a soft, round face. 

“Marry me,” he says into the flesh of her chest, swaying and heavy with milk. 

The copper cap of her hair is draped over one eye, and the other pins him briefly. 

“What?” she says breathily. “No.”

They haven’t really discussed this, though he’s tried to bring it up. His paternal leave was up a week ago and he’s come to her apartment every night after work like Ward Cleaver, tie loosened, Scully in the kitchen or nursing on the bed. He sits and takes off his penny loafers and asks to hold his warm son in the crook of his arm and wonders how life has deposited him here; a ticking stripe chair, a new nine-to-five Bureau gig, a contentment he has never before felt, never chased. 

“Marry me,” he says again, more earnest this time, and he feels her thighs tense where she’s straddling his lap.

“Are you always this talkative in bed?” she asks, lifting herself up only to sink back down. 

He is still learning her body, and she is relearning this new version of it, twisting her hips in a way that makes them both groan. Their first time sleeping together again after William was born was shy and tentative, Mulder afraid he’d hurt her and Scully half dazed with remembered sadness and longing. 

“I don’t remember,” he husks. 

“Me neither,” she says on a sigh. 

Her orgasm comes on quickly and she seems surprised by it, her mouth rounding into a little O that has him finishing not far behind her, sinking back into the pillow in relief. She climbs off of him half a minute later and pulls the sheet up and over her shoulder. 

Mulder rises and removes the condom he wore on the advice of her OB-GYN, and comes back to the bed, stopping to look into the bassinet before sliding in beside her. 

“Were you serious?” she asks, her voice small. 

His pillow smells sweetly of breast milk, and he finds an errant burp cloth rolled under the corner of it, which he tosses gently onto the bedside table.

“I was,” he says, turning back to her, surprised to find it's the truth. 

“Are you asking out of some sense of responsibility or…” 

She’s looking at him like she’s trying to figure him out, reconciling the man who had been her partner with the man currently laying beside her. 

It has been hard-fought–reconciling those things himself–won out with one look at his newborn son after several months of not knowing where he fit in, who he was anymore. He now only feels a rightness, a sense of peace. And it’s only by Scully’s side, by William’s, from which that rightness flows. 

“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of it,” he says. 

Scully looks at him with a look he’s come to recognize as hope. “What’s the other part?”

“I’m irredeemably in love with the both of you,” his voice cracks. “And I want to bind you to me in every way I possibly can.”

She turns her head so her cheek is resting on her hand.

“The way you bound yourself to Diana?”

The comment stings, but not sharply. She has a point. 

“Diana wanted me under her thumb. Marrying me was an act of control, not devotion.”

“How come you never told me?” 

“I was embarrassed. There’s a reason I asked for an annulment rather than a divorce.”

Mulder thought of the ring, which he’d thrown in the Potomac. It had been made of gold. A soft metal, malleable. Easily bent. If Scully agreed to marry him, he was doing it with platinum. Titanium. Steel. 

“And you’d rather have a family than the Truth?” Above the constellation of her freckles, her eyes burn with the blue of a driftwood flame. 

“I think they’re one in the same,” he says honestly. Fuck everything else, he thinks. He wants them both knit to him like Pan’s shadow.

Her flower petal lips creep up into a smile. 

“Is that a yes?” he smiles back. 

“It’s not a no,” she purrs, and a lightness zips through him. From the bassinet, his son awakens with a happy babble. 

He’s going to get her the most obnoxious ring he can find. It’ll catch on sweaters and in the craw of Kersh’s secretary. It’ll make Tara blanch and her mother smile. She’ll only pretend to hate it. 

He’s going to marry her. 

[bisexualfbiagents]

Come on Scully, it'll be a nice trip to the forest.

THE X FILES GIF MEME [4/20] EPISODES Darkness Falls (1.20)

[makenna-made-this]

BAWKtober (novHENber??) Day 25 - Mystery

The PECKS Files

[toxintouch]

hii!! I just read cold spots and it was AMAZING!!! Im not sure if you wanted to continue the fic, but if you don’t mind could you continue with Veres part? I don’t know what you would write about but I just feel like that fic has so much potential to be a little 3 part series or something 🙏

<- Cold Spots TYSM ANON!! I put the Vere End at the beginning for ease of reading. For the sake of folks who would like to read this as a stand-alone... I think u can? With the knowledge that the premise of Cold Spots is that Mhin and MC/Sparrow went ghost hunting. Vere is said to have been responsible for a handful of local ghost stories, so…of course he makes some mischief.🦊 Also MC needs some Winter wear, stat.  A very light Possessive Vere warning in this btw, though perhaps in a roundabout way.  Plausible deniability is so important to him.

You putter around in your room at the Wet Wick as you go about your nightly routine. The occasional cheer or thud from below only accentuates your nervous energy, punctuating your reluctance to settle down and get into bed. You smooth the covers with your bandaged hands and fluff the pillow before extinguishing the lamplight. You tug the bedding up above your shoulders, fighting to get comfortable. As your eyelids finally start to droop, the flicker of a shadow catches your attention.   It dances and sways and bends and grows until suddenly it is right in front of you.  On top of you. Silken, blood red drips down onto your face, a knife gleam smile too close for comfort.  You breathe in a gasp, wondering if you should scream. “Vere, what–” “Shhh,” he coos, pressing a finger lightly to your lips.  His breath is hot against your skin. “I only came to keep you warm, pet.”

Heat Signature

“Poor thing.” Vere purrs.  “Your lips are so cold.”  He leans ever closer, his mouth hot over yours–hovering.  His other hand reaches for your face as well, nails trailing against your cheek in a teasing caress.

You feel even the thought of being cold leave your body, replaced instead by the unusual thrill he commands, that strange enthralling sway.

That heat you’ve come to associate with Vere; sweet tendrils of want that nestle in your bloodstream.

You squirm a little, though you can’t move much with him looming over you.

(You should probably do more to protest his intrusion into your room, you think to yourself, though, the majority of you is–curious, daresay even far too eager to–)

“Whatever trouble did you get up to that left you in such a state?”

At this you scoff, tilting your head back into the pillow and effectively knocking Vere’s finger from your lips.  

“As if you don’t know,” you accuse.

Vere looks entirely unperturbed by you shaking him off, his lithe fingers traveling freely along the newly displayed skin of your throat, making your pulse jump.

Vere chuckles at that, dark and silky.

“Being tight lipped about your adventures, hm?”  He angles your face just so, ensuring you meet his sharp eyes, his nose brushing up against yours.  “Not that it matters.  It so happens I do know what you’ve been up to.  Trespassing in places that don’t belong to you.”

“...It was an abandoned building.  I don’t think it really belonged to anyone.”

“And that’s where you’d be wrong,” Vere says, “everything in this city belongs to someone, darling.  You just don’t know what belongs to who yet.”  He peers down at you with laughter in his expression, though there's a distinct edge to it that you can't quite place.

“So, you're here because that building belongs to you...?”

“Hmm, amongst other things.  However shall I make you apologize to me for this most egregious offense?”  He asks airily, shifting until he’s beside you rather than perched over you, resting his cheek in his hand and letting his eyes slip closed. He's the absolute picture of unbothered leisure.  

(You’re not fooled–he’s simply waiting for you to let your guard down before he pounces.)

You open your mouth to deny any debts on your part (though, if your ghost hunting spot was indeed Vere’s hideout, you really do feel guilty) but Vere cuts you off before you can speak.

“Alas, I suppose it’s not mine anymore.  Within a week it will reek of wet dogs and cheap booze. It's a lost cause now that those drooling reprobates know it's inhabitable.  A pity.  By Eridia's standards it really was divine in its heyday.  Good wine, music, dancing.  There was this portrait artist who would paint the performances…”

His tone remains light as he reminisces.  But the look he pins you with is dangerous: his eyes gleaming bright, his canines bared in an irreverent grin.

“I had such hopes and dreams of reviving the place myself.  Some of the dances were very scandalous.  You never did share with me your stance on dancing, did you?”

You stumble out an approximate answer.  It’s…harmless information to give, isn’t it?

Though, judging by how pleased Vere looks, you wonder if you should have refused to say.  He looks positively wicked as he ponders your answer aloud.  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of talents to share.  In another life, perhaps I'd have put you on stage.  Though, I admit.  I find myself partial to a private show.”

And–as expected–the moment you let your guard down, he's in your space again, crowding you.  Heat and proximity and the softest brush of his lips against yours, light enough to send a thrill down your spine, curiosity and a want so deep it surprises you.

“Well?”  He purrs.  “Care to audition?”

You can't hide behind the excuse of supernatural sway or charm or the thrall of hypnotic sunglo eyes.  It's not Vere's power that controls you. It's your own gnawing desire; starvation and longing that draws you to him despite all sense.

Kissing Vere is heady.  Dizzying.  

Kissing Vere is like being in conversation with Vere–a constant of giving and taking, being chased after and running to keep up.  It’s enticing and alluring and decadent and never quite enough, over too soon even as you feel yourself losing air, the rush of blood and sensation threatening to overwhelm you.

He gives a parting nip to your bottom lip as he pulls away.

Then another one, playful, to your jaw.

When he presses his face into the side of your neck, you expect him to bite again.

What you don’t expect is for him to nuzzle into you, inhaling deeply before heaving a great sigh, his tail flopping lazily to land across you with a thump.

He’s officious as he rearranges the covers, ensuring your arms are tucked carefully away from him before he’s willing to fully settle into the bedding, pulling the blankets up around the both of you like a den.  He hums something low in his chest as he tucks himself up alongside you, long tail curled around your waist. 

It’s rhythmic–

purring.

And it’s…soothing, actually.

The weight of him, the warmth.  The incessant lamplight of the Amaryllis District, shining ever present through your window, is dim–tolerable, even, courtesy of Vere's magnificent shadow manipulations and the blankets sheltering you. 

The constant noise seems to fade away as well, obscured by the sound of purring. “Falling asleep when you have me in your bed, pet?  You really do try your luck…”

[television-overload]

fate is the handspike

(an X-Files ficlet)

[Read on AO3]

Summary:

Starting on February 23, 1964, Teena Mulder begins to worry about her young son. At first, she thinks maybe he's wishing for a little sister, a wish that will be granted very soon. But he insists the little girl he talks to is called Dana, and she's too little to play, but she likes when he reads his books to her.

(fic below the cut)

i.

At first, Teena thinks it's cute.

"She's just a baby, mommy, she can't play yet," he'd say.

"Oh, is that right?" she'd reply, indulging him in his childish fantasies. Perhaps this was his way of asking for a sister. The other moms in the neighborhood often urged her to give Fox a sibling, citing a child's need for company and social engagement, but Fox had always seemed so happy to play alone. She's not on the best of terms with her husband at the moment, either, which complicates things.

But then there's times when she sees Fox on the floor, legs splayed out before him as he recites his favorite picture books to his imaginary friend, and she wonders if she ought to be worried. Just a little.

Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Clifford the Big Red Dog... The boy has a photographic memory. Though he's too young to properly read, he has a grasp on the basic plots and recounts them in great detail, turning the pages as he goes.

"This one is called 'Where the Wild Things Are,' Dana," he says, because his friend's name—he insists—is Dana. He turns the book in his hand and shows the colorful illustration on the cover to a patch of carpet on the living room floor. "Don't worry, it's not scary," he assures her. Her. It. Whatever it is he's spent his days talking to since late February.

When he tells the story, he uses his own name, instead of 'Max.' That's how she'd always read it to him, and that's the only way he knows.

"And Fox told the monsters to be still!" he narrates with enthusiasm. "He used a magic trick and looked right in their BIG yellow eyes, and they were all scared. They said Fox is the most wild thing of all, and they made him king!"

ii.

There was one night when she'd woken to find Fox standing in the corner of his room, speaking softly to the wall.

"Shh, it's okay, Dana," he soothed in his little voice. "Here, I'll sing you a song. Twinkle twinkle little star...."

She never tells Bill what she's seen. He's always too busy to notice himself. But others know.

"He's quite an imaginative young fellow," Spender notes, taking a draw from his cigarette as Fox rolls around in the grass outside the house in Quonochontaug. Since "Dana" learned to crawl, he's been even more preoccupied than usual. He shows her all his toys, tells her the names of all his action figures. He announces to his mother one day that he's going to teach Dana how to walk. That she can only stand on her own for a little bit right now, but she doesn't cry anymore when she falls down.

Bill, if he ever catches wind of this, must think he's talking about one of the other kids from Teena's ladies' group. But there's no "Dana" in this neighborhood. Not on the Vineyard, either. She's checked.

iii.

The day she finds out she's pregnant, a part of her wonders. Though her knowledge of her husband's work is small, she knows enough to gather that things she might have thought impossible, could in fact be possible. Perhaps her son had been having visions of his baby sister, long before she was even conceived. Maybe it had simply been a sign that he would one day be a big brother. Soon.

She'd long since dispelled thoughts of ghosts and hauntings and exorcisms.

He tells Dana all about the baby in mommy's tummy. He giggles and makes silly faces, pausing in between sentences, which she gathers must mean his friend has developed the ability to speak.

"Mommy, she said my name! That's right! Fox! Fox!"

iv.

When Samantha is born, "Dana" seems to disappear overnight. This, at least, supports her theory that he had simply been preparing himself for a new sibling, and after a few years, she's completely dismissed the issue. Fox shows no other signs of strange or unusual behavior. He is nothing but a doting big brother, who occasionally gets annoyed by his freckle-faced kid sister, as any brother is wont to do. He reads to her, plays games with her, watches the television with her. They're two peas in a pod, and not once does the name "Dana" escape his lips. She is all but forgotten.

Until he's twelve years old. Samantha is gone, and Teena lacks the patience to deal with his questioning.

"Mom? Does the name 'Dana' mean anything to you?" he asks.

"What? Of course not, Fox, why would you ask such a thing?"

He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping. "No reason. Forget I asked."

v.

When Fox lays awake at night, the bedroom next to his now dull and empty, he thinks he can hear a voice. It isn't Samantha's—though he'd thought so at first.

"By heaven, man," she reads, "we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!"

What does this girl know about fate? What does she know of this upside-down world?

"Read the next chapter, Dana!" he hears another girl's voice speak. The words are faint—muffled—like he's underwater. But her voice is clear.

He falls asleep, like most nights, listening to the tales of Ahab and Starbuck, and a great white whale.

-.-.-

Tag List ♡: @today-in-fic @agent-troi @baronessblixen @captainsolocide @cutemothman @deathsbestgirl @edierone @enigmaticxbee @figureofdismay @frogsmulder @hippocampouts @invidiosa @numinousmysteries @randomfoggytiger @skelavender @teenie-xf @thursdayinspace

[numinousmysteries]

24 - He/she called for him/her in his/her sleep.

super quick and dirty. no edits, just need to grease the old writing gears. s8 for some reason even though i hate it.

She’s not afraid of flying. Being afraid would be irrational and she’s not an irrational person. Commercial air travel is orders of magnitude safer than driving, she knows. Especially safer than driving in the middle of the night on unlit backroads with a Mulder who hasn’t slept in 36 hours behind the wheel, which she’s done on multiple occasions. Experience does nothing to allay her fears. Even before arriving at Quantico, she’d racked up thousands of international air miles as a Navy brat. Seven years as Mulder’s partner tacked on thousands more. 

And yet. And yet, she can’t rationalize away the surge of adrenaline she feels every time the engines start to fire up for takeoff. Recalling statistics doesn’t calm the drop in her stomach whenever the wheels rise off the tarmac and she feels the ground recede beneath her feet. 

Early in their partnership, she cursed Mulder for being able to drift off to sleep in a cramped coach seat while she was left alone to white knuckle the armrest and monitor every rise and fall in altitude as if she knew enough to assign any significance to them. Of course, as the years went by, their hands would find each others and she’d be able to rest with her head on his shoulder.

Don’t fall asleep, she wills herself now. She doesn’t want to show any weakness in front of her new partner. She doesn’t trust Doggett yet. But somehow the first trimester fatigue catches up. Where is this deep exhaustion when she’s lying awake in bed in the middle of the night, her mind racing with fears for her child and guilt that she hasn’t found Mulder yet? 

She twists the air vent all the way open hoping the cold air will keep her awake. The flight attendant offers coffee but she’s already had the single cup she’s allotting herself these days at home this morning so she asks for water instead which does nothing to allay her exhaustion. 

As much as she despises turbulence she wishes this particular flight hit a few more bumps but instead it’s a smooth ride over a cloudless Midwestern sky that only makes her eyelids feel heavier and heavier.

Now she’s lying on Mulder’s couch, leaning her back against his chest. His arms wrap around her and he’s resting his hands on her belly, now heavy and round. His long fingers dance across the taut skin chasing a protruding foot or elbow. “Incredible,” Mulder says quietly, not so much to her or their baby but to himself. Slatted sunlight filters in through the window shades and she feels warm all over. Warm from the sun, Warm from her partner’s body wrapped around her own, warm from the life growing within her. She brings her palms to cover his, holding him in between herself and their baby.

Suddenly, the ground starts trembling beneath them. The window is wide open now and the soft sunlight has been replaced with an unnaturally bright glaring white glow. She feels Mulder’s body rising from behind her and watches helplessly as he drifts toward the window. She’s paralyzed on the couch, the weight of her belly pinning her down. “Mulder!” She tries to scream, but no sound escapes her throat and he keeps being pulled away from her. “Mulder!” 

“Mulder!” She calls again. This time she hears her voice as her hand involuntarily reaches out for him. 

But it isn’t Mulder next to her. His living room has dissolved into the cabin of a plane quaking with turbulence and she’s immediately mortified to find her fingers gripping John Doggett’s dry-skinned hand. She gasps and pulls her hand away but his eyes are already locked on hers. 

“I’m sorry,” she mutters under her breath. 

He gives her the grace of a silent nod and then turns back to the newspaper in his lap. 

She’s too keyed up to sleep for the rest of the flight so she just stares at the casefile she brought to read. She can’t absorb a single word, though. Her mind is running in a loop berating herself for being stupid enough to let her guard down. 

She avoids looking at Doggett the rest of the flight. When they land, he retrieves both of their bags from the overhead compartment and she whispers a quiet thank you. 

“We’ll find him,” Doggett says stoically before turning his back to her and walking up the aisle as she follows behind. 

She still doesn’t trust him, but she wants to believe him.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Had to explain to a friend today that No Really I Swear Magneto And Professor X Are Friends And Like Each Other Thats Canon And Real

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

i bet scully and mulder are absolutely INSUFFERABLE when it comes to trying to pay for dinner or drinks. i just know they are playing a game of 5d mental chess to try and make sure they can get the bill before the other does.

[cutemothman]

Fox Mulder being the Prettiest Boy ♡ 1/??

5.04 Detour

[randomfoggytiger]

prompt: Scully slips her hand into Mulder's pants pocket-

"If I'm Carrying Marilyn Monroe's Purse"

*-*-*-*-*

They were paying their bill like respectable adults-- ones who hadn't confiscated an FBI charge card, overpaid their self-imposed limit, and didn't plan on spending the night at the swankiest hotel they could find-- when it happened.

"Here's your receipt, sir, just sign-- oh, oops!" The waitress and their receipt parted ways in a convoluted motion Scully wasn't quite sure began or ended innocently. She squashed that thought as her partner slid from the booth, goodnaturedly brushing aside Cherry's concerns and apologies. "I'm so sorry, thank you."

"Hey, Scully," came Mulder's perky voice, muffled under the tablecloth, "it vanished." He grunted-- that osteoporosis denial not doing his knees any favors. "Uh, is it under your feet?"

She was about to tap her shoes around, gamely, when she noticed a flash from the corner of her eye: Cherry whipping out a thin, white card; Cherry scribbling manically across it; Cherry slipping it into her partner's back pants pocket. Cherry brazenly locking eyes before bending down to, suddenly, exclaim, "There it is, under your right shoe!"

"How convenient." Her barb was ignored.

"I could've sworn I checked there," Mulder mused, sloughing off his concerns with a chuckle. "Maybe this is a sign to call it for the night."

She made no comment, watching Cherry follow Mulder's movements, watching her devour his watch, his suit, his hands and skin and hair. The scent of disattached wealth, Scully surmised, must be oozing from his pores, must clog up an L.A. aspirational's senses.

L.A. Cherry picked the wrong East Coast host. Perhaps, Scully thought, she'd recommend this restaurant to Skinner.

Deftly, she slid a hand over the menus to the checkbook, fingers circling around Skinner's bribe with dramatic flourish. "I'll take the receipt, thank you," she smiled, teeth bared. She'd been a California baby, after all.

"Oh. Sure," stuttered Miss Aspirational, eyes slitting under her wispy, bleached bangs. "Do you want anything to go?" she pointedly asked her receipt hunter, who was ping-ponging between both women: confused, but catching up.

"We're good," Scully insisted, sliding out from her side of the booth, moving in front of the waitress, and tilting over slightly to reach Mulder's ear. "Let's get out of here, Mulder."

He grinned and slid out to meet her. "Lead the way."

"After you," she waved. Waited until he turned to pinch the tip of the card, pull it from his pocket, and hold it, brazenly, for Cherry to see. Then tossed it on their way out.

Sensing her lag, Mulder halted for her, taking her arm or letting her take his-- either way didn't matter-- as the limo lazed closer. "There something I should know about?" he teased, looking from her to the restaurant in their wake.

"Oh, just... you know."

No, he didn't; or he did, but wanted her to spell it out.

"I think Skinner would like it there."

*-*-*-*-*

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Tagging: @today-in-fic