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sixhours · 12 minutes
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The thirst is out there
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sixhours · 39 minutes
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OK, this deserves more notes because pheeeewwww, that was a brilliant ride. I love their repartee and I am a sucker for this UST-to-RST pipeline. It's hard to believe this is your first time writing Ezra??? Unreal.
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vivarium
rating: explicit 18+ pairing: ezra x f!reader word count: 8K summary: you request a vacation for your birthday. With the rain and a few drinks, you get a lot more than you asked for.  warnings: alcohol drinking, minor age gap (less than 10 years), oral (f!receiving), fingering, smut, possessive!Ezra, dom!Ezra, one booty smack, dirty talk for real, smut, pining, a bit of angst, referenced/implied orphanhood, made a religious sex pun and i'm so proud of myself a/n: so @morallyinept requested this and it turns out when I write for a boy for the first time, it can’t be less than 7K – whoops. i've gotten ezra requests from some moots before, so i hope this lives up to your expectations! **massive thanks to @toomanytookas for editing and providing the initial validation so i don't post in a mouth-frothy haze. I've never had a beta like you before and I genuinely feel like I've turned over a new chapter in my fic writing. thank you!
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Your feet in the clear blue water, the humidity like a wet tongue on your skin, you scratch a nail under the tab of a mustard yellow can, crack it open, and drink. The bite of alcohol dulled by the carbonation, you take several pulls, drawing out the mid-afternoon buzz from two other cans and whetting your mouth in the heat of the jungle day. You lean back on your elbows into the sponge-soft grass, and let out a massive sigh. 
A few feet ahead of you, on a repurposed inflatable reentry tube, your long-time privateer partner chuckles, the sound deep in the back of his throat as he floats by. Thick fingers and exposed heels dragging along in the crystal water, he greets the yellow sun like an old friend – arms wide, chest out, a lazy smile on his face. A damp rag – supposedly clean – sits over what you know to be dark-earth eyes, every other inch of him relishing in the inevitable sun tan. 
“I see your aaahhh, pet, and I raise you a mhmm.” The rubber squeaks as he adjusts, tips his scarred chin up to the cloudless sky and rests his head back. “Kevva said there’d be days like this, but I think the old hag mighta left out a thing or two.” 
You grin, the wet heat of Banu 8’s lowlands drawing sweat droplets onto your hairline at the back of your neck, settling thick behind your ears where it co-mingles with the drunk haze loping around in your brain. You watch Ezra with his bare arms, hairy legs, and prominent nose turned towards the divinity he’s so fond of invoking and the thought crosses your mind – again:
Shit, he’s so fucking hot. 
Oh, bad thought.
You drop your gaze, pressing the cold aluminum lip of the can to your mouth, drinking quicker than you probably should, anything to distract you from your partner as he obliviously floats by. 
For our sake, you silently beg the hungry little creature that whines and snaps at the image of a shirtless Ezra, please fuck off. 
While Ezra whistles a vaguely familiar tune, terribly off-key, you scoop up the cool lagoon water and dribble it over your hot knees, then your thighs, dampening the rims of your make-shift shorts just enough to cool them without leaving them vulnerable to a permanent state of moisture due to the high humidity. You flick the last drops of the water onto your chest, your white cotton bra choked to your skin. A final effect, you press the cool can to the thrumming pulse on your neck, closing your eyes with a relieved grunt, taking the time to enjoy the sensation of the cold metal against the rapid beat in your throat. 
From the water, you hear an unsettled grunt and you open your eyes to find that same shirtless Ezra staring at you, the rag now curled in one hand against the rubber float. He swallows, looks at something past your ear, and again tries to adjust in the sticky rubber float without flipping himself over, his hands falling into his lap. 
“Neptune, dear, would you do us the favor of tossing over one of those cans? I’m parched. I think my lovely skin is drying out.”
Neptune. His favorite nickname for you. You never got any real explanation from him as to why you got that name, other than after you’d officially joined his crew, you told him you came from a blue planet in a far off system. But that was often the way of things: Ezra did something and you didn’t question why. From that simple truth, you learned about how to repair and rebuild the entire electrical system from a drop pod. You learned, in excruciating detail, the parts and mechanics of a thrower, so much so that you could almost identify the model number at a glance. You learned about which corporate dig sites to avoid, which made for easy marks, and which would draw the eye and ire of entities hardly worth the trouble. 
Being out on your own since you aged up out of the orphanage had not gone the way you hoped and life had not been so kind as to teach you any other way to survive. Ezra had found you in the back of a red spice market, cornered and slurping down the last few of your credits from a muck bowl that you had vastly overpaid for.
For whatever reason, he offered you a job on the spot, despite you having nothing to offer him. and no experience in anything except cleaning prophylaxiams and staying out of the way.
And yet, he has been far kinder than life, or anyone else, had ever been to you. 
As a result, loyalty was only a fraction of what you felt for him. What had begun as overwhelming adoration had grown hot to the touch, slippery between your fingers at night, and perhaps – what you feared most of all – obvious. 
Yet when Ezra looked at you with a smile on his face, it was only comradery he wished to share with you, certainly not his bed. He shared it with practically every other bi-pedal humanoid you came across, but not you. And this you had to accept. And you did. 
But being a little drunk made it that much harder to remember where to keep your hands to avoid being burned.
“Sure, Ez.” You tuck your legs out from the cool water and dig around in the canvas bag at the base of the white nut tree. Most of the ice had melted into the bright green grass around the lagoon, but a few of the cans were still cold. You’d probably tease Ezra later for skimping on the insulation bucket the provisions store the port offered, but he had been so eager to get to the camp ground after spending an “exceedingly exorbitant amount of time stacked up against human drivel on public transportation”. One lopsided grin, and you’d give him the world. 
“Ez–,”
He lifts the rag, glancing at you over his shoulder, hands cupped as the can flies through the air. The cold metal presses against the overheated skin on his chest and he hisses. Eyeing the can ruefully, he cracks it open and drinks deep. You busy yourself with sliding to the edge of the pool again to keep from watching his throat move. 
Ezra finally pulls back, smacking his lips, with a pleased groan. He wets the rag again and dramatically flops it over his eyes. Hidden from his view, you watch the roll of water down his temples, his neck, his chest. 
“Name anything better than this, Neptune, I beg you. Free from obligation or assignment on commission. Where my only moral imperative is to drink as many of these as I can and remind you how beautiful you are. Which . . .” he tilts the bottom of the can towards you, head still tilted back on the raft and dripping rag covering his vision, “fantastic, by the way.” 
Having stifled your blush while under his watchful gaze about three or four other times today, without him looking, you flush so hard and fast you go lightheaded. Beautiful, he said. You drink more carbonated alcohol to choke back your rising heart, your eyes skim over the curve of his nose, a drop of sweat as it peaks on his forehead. You can’t linger over him too long; he has a six-sense about you – unable to know what you’re thinking but that you’re overthinking all the same. 
“Was this worth the trip on public transportation, Ez?” Your ankles stir the water again. 
“I could do this all day,” he sighs contently, bringing a warm smile to your face. “And definitely all night.”
Maybe you’ll both be so sun-drunk later tonight, you’ll fall asleep together on the pallet on the floor. Of course, by nightfall, someone will have to come to their senses and you’ll be tucked back into your separate sleeping bags, but maybe, as a present you couldn’t possibly ask for, you can just nap together.
With the bottom plush of your lip stuck between your teeth, you rim the metallic edge of your can with your nail, ankles spinning slow circles in the water. 
“Thank you, Ezra,” you say quietly, “for the best birthday I’ve ever had.” 
It began as a sort of joke one night on the volcanic hotspring moon of Wulkan after a twelve hour shift hunting through the black ash in search of fire pearls. The job was rather rushed, and Ezra had his reservations going into it, but fire pearls were a near certainty and you both needed a boost after a jump exchange had gone a little cockeyed. Sweat dripping from his temples, the provided water packs in the harvest suits doing just enough to keep him from passing out from heat exhaustion, he extended the skein of hydro-electric towards you across the narrow lane between your cots and asked you if you could be anywhere right now, any system, where would you be.
“Somewhere so cold I freeze my tits clean off,” you said with a sigh and wiped your own sweat-drenched forehead. You could smell yourself after two days of sweating profusely, but your stench in comparison to the rest of the crew, including Ezra, barely registered any more. You took a sip as Ezra laughed.
“A grievous crime against humanity and all its luscious gifts, but I get your meaning. Anywhere else?”
“Water.” This was said with more conviction, so much so it turned Ezra’s head towards you. “The few memories I have of my home planet and my parents, we were always near or in water. An ocean, maybe. I’m not sure. But I remember being really, really happy and I think being near water . . . it would make me happy again.”
You handed the skein back to Ezra, something unreadable in his gaze. He took it back from you, his fingers dark from the ash that clings to everything. On the other side of the tent, the rest of your crew and other teams mill about, yelling, with cutlery clattering as the camp gets ready to slow for the night, a graveyard shift picking up in just a few hours. 
Ezra’s eyes are as dark as the ash you’ve been shifting through the past two days.
“Then you shall have it, Neptune.” He said, quietly. “I’d give you the fucking galaxy if I could.” 
Those words often came to you in the crevice between sleep and wakefulness, when your mind was idle and the reins that tightly bound your affection for him loosened without a conscious grip. When you thought you weren’t being watched. 
The flat of his foot hooking behind your ankle breaks you from your reverie. Cast into shadow by the wide, rubbery palm leaves above your head, he looks at you curiously. 
“That look of deep consternation is giving me a headache. Spill.” 
With a faint smile, you gently bump his knee with your own. “Nothing, Ez. I’m just glad we get to take a break from it all. I can’t remember the last time I . . . the last time we’ve just had nothing to do.” 
He cocks his head as his gaze crawls up your ankle, your shin, to your knee. You think it might linger on your thigh before it bounces to your face. You tighten your grip on the hot, expansive feeling behind your ribs and stare back at him.
“Then that’s a black mark against me, as the leader of this clan.” His mouth curls, eyebrow arching as he talks, knowing that statement has been a point of playful contention between you two for years. “A good overseer knows when to crack the bullwhip and when to let it rest.”
“Well, a better overseer knows when to demand that her team rests, because sometimes they have no idea what’s good for them.” 
His foot rotates behind your ankle, his toes brushing against your calf, bringing your attention to your own body part in the water. Your legs are hairy, nearly as much as Ezra’s, and you haven’t shaved your pits in possibly a decade. Ezra once brought home a professional nightwalker, one from the Upper City, to the derelict flat you’d been sharing for two weeks as you offloaded your haul to the under markets. You never forgot how smooth her skin had been, shaved clean and smelling of moon lilies. That scent permeated the small space for weeks afterward. Even now, just the sight of moon lilies makes you nauseous. 
His aversion to you runs much deeper than physical aesthetics, even if you can’t help but wonder sometimes if becoming as smooth and hairless as the nightwalker might change his mind.
“Observational to a fault as always, Neptune.” The ball of his foot rests briefly between your legs before he pushes off from the spongy lip of the lagoon’s edge. He floats back into the sun, his head shaking slightly, a smile drained of amusement on his lips. He inhales as the sun crests over his forehead and he glances up at the blue sky. “I have no idea what’s good for me.”
Something about his tone, the way he turns away from you, scratches a very raw place inside of you – a place that fears and obsesses over abandonment. You wouldn’t survive it if he abandoned you, if he left you to fend for yourself one day. Logically, you know he would never do that – he has sworn up and down to your face that that notion is fundamentally ludicrous to him – but the anguish of him silently rejecting you from his bed again and again and again makes that fragile place inside you bleed red. 
You stand up, swipe another can from the bag, and move towards the waterfall. 
“I’m taking a hike.”
You feel his eyes on the backs of your thighs as you march towards the gentle incline.
“Be safe, Neptune,” he calls softly.
For a fleeting second, you wish he had made you stay.
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The first fat raindrop splashes against your cheek and wakes you from a humid, irritated nap. You’re scowling by the time you open your eyes to several more wet droplets as they splatter against your neck, your forehead and you sit up, even more frustrated than when you fell asleep. The last sticky tendrils of dreams snap and pop as you pull yourself onto your feet, back hunched and arm held high against the steamy sprinkle. A crack of lightning, then a growl of thunder, and the sky splits open, drenching you in seconds. With a snarl of your own, you snatch up the empty can from the grass next to you and make for your camp down the hill. As you crest the top, you see a figure standing outside the tent, back tense and hand raised as if searching through the twilight gray downpour. 
Normally, the thought of warming up beside Ezra in your yellow tent fills you with something inexplicable, the grime and load of the day melting from your shoulders, but your buzz from earlier has thickened, made worse by the heat, the emotions in your heart all gummed up and smashed together. The sight of him cranks up your irritation high in your ears. With a huff, you concentrate on a smooth slide down the hill without breaking your ankles and not the fire rising in your gut. 
But the rain and the distance apart has only stoked his own outrage.
“Where the hell were you?” He snaps as you yank back the velcroed tent flap. He is dripping from head to toe in jungle rain as he follows closely behind you into your small space. You ring the water from your hair into a corner and scowl up at him. 
“I fell asleep. The rain woke me up. I came back as soon as I could.” 
His eyes narrow, water rolling off his bare shoulders as if he still stood out in the downpour. The droplets pat pat pat against the tarp floor as he snatches up a fiber towel and dries himself off, scowling all the while. 
“I searched for you, calling your name up and down this fuckin’ jungle and I didn’t hear a peep. What if something had gone wrong? What if you’d been hurt?”
“Then I would have fucking dealt with it, Ezra.” You stomp to your feet, neck hot from his patronizing gaze. Hands on his hips, you feel like you’re being scolded. “I can take care of myself.” 
One dark eyebrow arches mockingly, the scar on his cheek twisting in his scowl.
“And you expect me to lay about, twiddling my thumbs, while I wait for you to return or until you deem it appropriate for me to fret over your corpse?” 
That patch of blonde hair is a shade darker, drenched and pressed flat against his forehead. His bare chest is littered with scars and divots where chunks of flesh had been torn away. His skin is a reflection of the hard life he lives. You doubt you’d look any different if you’d seen yourself in a mirror. 
“We are partners, Ez,” you grind out between locked teeth. “Equals, alright? I am not your little sister for you to fuss over and you are not my keeper.” 
At that, the indignant swell of his chest deflates and the anger in his eyes flickers before fading out. 
“You are beyond capture,” he mutters, eyebrows down but gaze distant. “I’d never dream of keeping you, Neptune.” 
Again, it’s his phrasing that hurts most of all. You glance away, the backs of your eyes growing hot and tight, drying out despite the sticky moisture warming the inside of the tent. But then his hand around your elbow startles away the tears forming in the corners of your eyes. 
“You are the most important thing to me in the entirety of this world and the next,” he says softly, earth eyes searching your face. “I came on too strong, I know that, but the idea that you’d ever be gone from my side for any amount of permanence . . . well, it’s been a lifetime since I’ve felt fear like that.” 
His frown goes belly-up, a hopeless smile on his face. “I wasn’t aware I even still could.” His calloused thumb brushes your skin, skin that nearly catches fire from the rough drag of scar tissue, before he lets his hand drop. Your own curls into a fist at your side, a tremor rattling the bones of your wrist in an effort to keep from reaching up and touching that moon-shaped scar you dream about at night.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ez. You taught me enough to survive in a world like this. But you’re going to have to trust me.”
That smile goes wan, sickly. “That’s the problem, dear heart, I trust you with my life.” 
He swallows, as if suddenly bashful to make direct eye contact with you. He clears his throat before rummaging around in his canvas bag for dry clothes. He yanks a black, sleeveless shirt on over his head before setting up the materials for a flameless pocket fire. 
“Since my dreams of showing you something called a barbeque have been quite literally rained out, we’ll finish off the rest of the dredge pack tonight. But come first light, I’ll fix you breakfast so succulent, the smell alone’ll make your mouth water. How does that sound, Neptune?”
He barely slows to breathe as he seamlessly switches topics from breakfast to another meal made at camp without looking up or stalling in his prep for dinner, hands almost disconnected from the humming of his mouth – one so methodical, the other like a channel rat on fire. 
“– and the thing was no one was really sure enough what a squatter egg looked like when it goes bad. But being out in a cramped hold-out for two weeks where it was so dark, your own ass and someone else’s had no demarcation, well, there wasn’t a single peep of dissimilitude . . .”
Words strung together so quick and so melodic, it was always incredibly easy to fall into a sort of easy trance around Ezra. Sounds and syllables just sounded right coming out of his mouth and after a while, that trance became a state of repose, Ezra’s own sense of calm filtered to whoever was also in the room. But not to you, not right now.
After spending immeasurable time with less than half a space between you in cramped tents and in claustrophobic dig sites, you could read the tension on the lines of his body as well as the lines on the palm of your hand. 
“Neptune? You with me?”
Ezra glances up at you, always aware of you and your movements like the twinge on a spider’s web, a signature smile that has always seemed to shine a bit brighter for you plastered over his face. The anger was the only thing holding you up and with it gone, you can feel your bruised heart twinge as it folds over itself. 
“Yeah, that sounds good. I’m gonna switch out of these wet clothes before we eat, okay?”
He hums, nodding, eyes fixating on the steadily boiling water in front of him as you turn away to the other side of the tent, by your pallet and traveler’s pack. As further evidence that he feels nothing but companionship for you, you feel his eyes remain nowhere near you as you strip off your shorts and bra for a sun-warm suit. Then again, you’d like to think it’s kind of scandalous to be changing in front of him, but you’d both seen each other naked more times than you could count – there is no modesty in foxholes. The space between your hips and your thighs feel sticky from sweat and the slick rain, the curve of your spine warm and flushed. The zipper is loud in the silence. 
You’re braiding your damp hair away from your face when he sighs and the noise makes you look back at him.
“Answer me honestly, if you’ve ever cared for me a tick. Do you regret it?”
His eyes are sorrowful, worried, brow fixed down. Ezra is not, and never has been, a man prone to melancholy. His wrists rest loosely over his knees, gaze deep in the bubbling bone broth. The rain outside taps insistently at the tarp. 
“Regret what?” 
“Coming with me and taking on this life. It’s not an easy one,” he says quietly. “I should have offered you another choice, that day in the market. But one look at you and I . . . I was willing to trust you with my life, Neptune – far, far too soon. Even at my best, you make me irrational.”
You watch him, his broad shoulders moving, as he scoops up the hot, dark liquid into two bowls, and joins you by the entrance to the tent. You pin back the flap as he settles, the scent of humid rain immediately flooding your mouth, the pattering sound now twice as loud. Wordlessly, he hands you a spoon before digging into his own bowl. 
The heat of the soup burns away all the silly, impossible things sitting on your tongue. You sit in silence, his presence never rushing you to answer before you are ready. As you eat, you stare out at the dark lagoon, where you had both been only hours ago, the clear water murky beneath the downpour. 
“No, Ezra, I don’t regret it.” He stills, as if surprised you’re answering him now, mid-meal. He lowers the bowl to his lap, eyes trained on you. “You saved my life, more times than I can count.” 
Your words loosen the rigid lock of his shoulders. He grins. “As you’ve said, you would have been just fine without me.”
Your vision goes blurry. You pin him with such a stare, you watch the blood rush from his face.
“But it would have been only half a life.”
“Don’t kid about that, Neptune, it’s not –,”
“I’m serious.” You put your bowl down and rub your eyes with your sleeves. Of all the ways he hasd seen you bare and naked, he’s never seen you this vulnerable. “I don’t wanna do any of this without you. I want you, Ezra.”
“You have me, dear heart, you have me.”
“Not like that and you know it.” You watch as understanding rolls across his face. His lips part, eyes wider. He swallows and you stare at the ceiling, cheeks suddenly wet and hot. He said he’d never leave you, but what if this is the thing that finally does it? Could he work with you, knowing just how deeply you love him, and not feel an ounce of disgust? “You told me once sex is just a way to pass the time, but never, not once, have you ever even tried to pass the time with me.” 
He swallows, deeper this time, jaw locked, his eyes fluttering with the force of it. He brings his knees to his chest.
“Because it wouldn’t just be passing time with you.” 
In that moment, you’re grateful for the rain, for the sound of something to fill the silence. 
You stare at him, cross-legged in front of the open corner of this yellow tent, abandoned bowls growing colder, but he sits with his leg up, knee to his chest, as if to ward you off. Ward off whatever is growing in your gaze, under the flat bone over your heart in your chest. But whatever is stifling the air in your lungs, is warming his eyes past the point of comfort, barrelling towards expletives and the crass, the lewd and depraved. You cannot go back to having him look at you any other way. 
That look loosens every line in his face when you crawl into his lap, your knees around his hips. The backs of your thighs go damp, even through the suit, pressing down onto his still-damp shorts, and you think his breathing has quickened.
His massive palm hovers near your cheek, unwilling or unable to pull you forward or push you back, his oak eyes searching your face for signs of discomfort as if he had somehow dragged you across the tarp floor. 
“Neptune,” he mumbles as he focuses on the curve of your bottom lip, “this is unwise. You don’t know what you’re asking for.” 
You can feel the hard curve of his shoulders as you follow the lines of his arms and settle them on his collarbone. Nothing has happened that can’t be undone – not yet. Your perfect, vicious Ezra hasn’t pressed you flat on your back like you thought he would at the hint of sex. You could return with your dignity tomorrow morning, this moment never spoken of again, and he’d let you have that. The shake of his elbow with his palm against the tarp is the only indication that something might be unsettling to him. 
But it is your birthday after all. Maybe he’d let you have this one thing. He doesn’t know you’ll die without it.
“If you don’t want this . . . if you don’t want m-me, then say something. Push me away and I’ll never bring it up again.” You cup the sides of his neck as your hips shift forward, closer to him. The air in your lungs tightens, breath coming in shallow pants. Only then does he drop your gaze and fixate on your encroaching heat. “At least then I’ll know.” 
There. Out loud. It’s been said, heard above the deluge of rain against the tent and the jungle outside. 
His palm finally settles on your cheek. It brings a sense of wholeness to you like you’ve never known. Your eyes flutter shut at the sensation, a breathy exhale pours out of your mouth. His thumb catches the plush curve of your bottom lip and he draws it towards your chin, his own mouth open, enraptured. 
“Sweet thing, how have you not always known?” 
His mouth is humid against yours, as if he swallowed the jungle while looking for you, his thumb releasing your lip to capture with his own. The tip of his pointer finger massages the hinge of your jaw, just below your ear, and he manipulates your head until your mouth parts like he wants.
His tongue skims your upper lip, a tentative exploration into the unknown rewarded with a low groan that is warmed by the heat coiling low in your hips. You taste his tongue, a hot glide inside your mouth, and you feel his arms slip around your lower back, his inhale of breath sharp across your face as he brings you closer. He bites your lips roughly, the spark of pain and pleasure crackling across your face as if you’d brushed a live wire. 
His fingers wrap around your wrist, prying you from the back of his neck, just for a moment, his eyes heat-soaked. You suck your teeth, mouth open and seeking, and the hand around your jaw drops to your collarbone, the breadth of his palm nearly suffocating your throat.
The briefest pressure – the slightest touch – at the pulse at the bottom of your neck and your hips rock forward into him as he flattens his other palm to your ass, clutching you to him and pinning you to the pallet.
His teeth scrape against the curve of your ear, pinching the cartilage between his incisors, while his hands frantically search up and down your waist. His weight smothers you, his stomach breathing into yours, the flat plane of his chest rubbing your nipples raw against your suit, an unfocused lurch to his hips every time you tug on his hair. With every breath, every time you try to savor his touch, the taste of his mouth is like a wave, dragging you forward, wrapping a dizzy chain around your throat and squeezing.
Ezra’s greatest weapon has always been his mouth, that silver string spinning faster the longer he captivates you, spell-bound. Now he uses to decimate you in entirely new ways. 
The suck of his lips against the moist flesh below your ear distantly distracts from the afterburn of his unkempt beard against your jaw, your cheek. His lips alternate patterns of reward with a plush kiss and punishment with a stern nip when you try and stifle a moan. The edge of his shirt is damp from resting against his shorts when you slip your fingers underneath to palm the small of his back. He stills when you run your fingers around to the front of his trunks. 
His hand curls around a clump of hair at the base of your skull, his eyes darker than volcanic ash. The steady heat of his groin against your thigh is a sensation you’ll chase for the rest of your life.
“You know what happens when you touch a man there, Neptune?” He’s breathing hard, you both are, and the way he snags your hair in his fist has your head twisted at an odd angle, but you’d be damned to a Kevva-forgotten corner of the cosmos before you drop his gaze. You nod and that moon-shaped scar on his cheek twitches. “I know I didn’t teach you that.”
“L-learned it – somewhere else – Ezra.” Your mouth isn’t working properly, your lips swollen from his kisses, the slight pain in your scalp making it difficult to focus, while your cunt tightens hungrily. “Had to.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you wouldn’t give it to me.” 
He leans back, his forearm tense and corded where he has you by the hair, a seemingly disinterested scowl on his face. But by the throbbing length pressed up against you, so far from where you need him the most, he is anything but. 
“So you’re saying this is my fault?” Without breaking eye contact, his chest raised inches above yours, his fingers snag on the blue zipper by your collar and your breathing nearly stops. He hums to himself, eyes following the path of the zipper as the material separates, click by click by click. When it reaches your belly button, he stops. 
“Ezra –,” it’s a whine and you can’t even chastise yourself for it. And neither, it seems, can he. 
Head tilted as if curious about the label of a box beneath colorful wrapping, he dips his wide hand beneath the edge of your suit. The heat that radiates from his palm against the curve of your stomach has you writhing underneath him, your knees drawing up to his hips, trying to catch any relief. 
But he takes his self-satisfied time. Callouses of a hard-won life snag and drag over the soft paper-thin skin that covers your ribs as he maps you in one hand. When he cups your right breast in his palm, the noise you make is a sob of gratitude. 
“You let another man besides me do this to you?” 
The snarling pit of your own thoughts slows as some awareness realizes he’s speaking to you. 
You swallow, clutching his bicep, begging for forgiveness before even opening your mouth to answer. 
“It didn’t mean anything, Ez, it wasn’t you – it meant nothing to me–,”
“But you let someone else touch what’s mine, hm?” That lazy, slightly irritated look on his face, he rotates his hand, squeezing the cup of your tit again, before sharply pinching your nipple. 
“Ezra–,” you choke out and his thigh shifts between your legs, just close enough to feel the heat but nowhere near close enough to grind against. His thumb rotates the raised flesh slow enough to capture and catalog every sigh it draws from you, his eyes catching between his hand and your relaxed face. 
He wears the same expression he does when sitting in the backs of blackmarket tea shops and smoky alebins. When the prospect of striking gold becomes all he can think about.
“Strip.” He suddenly commands. He lifts off you just enough for you to wrench your arm through the armhole, all the while keeping a rough palm on one breast, and then the other. You watch him massage your flesh and your ribs tremble with an unsteady breath. Only when a slightly cool breeze meanders over your bare shoulders and chest do you realize that the tent flap is still open, your head inches from the edge. A perfect and unimpeded view to anyone who wants to watch him hungrily grope your tits. Embarrassment peaks sharply, despite his hand pressing you into the tarp, you wrench your neck back and look over your shoulder through the window of the open tent as if you need to confirm that you are giving the jungle a floor show.
“Ez– shit, the flap–,” 
He finds that the skin beneath your breast had grown sticky and slick from sweat, the humidity still oppressive even with a breeze. He bends his head and licks that same sweaty path and your attention snaps back to him, nails curling against his scalp, his warm breath a high-intensity balm to your roughly-played-with nipples. 
“Not a soul in sight, Neptune,” he murmurs lazily into your ribcage, his nose running up and down the valley between your tits. “And if there were, let them learn a thing or two.” 
His teeth nip the swell of your stomach as he crawls down your half-naked body. Without his heat and hands, the tenderness from his attention on your breasts ratchets up to an ache, a minor preoccupation before he hooks his fingers around the rest of the jumpsuit and tugs. 
You are naked beneath him, swollen chest rising and falling, your knuckles scraping against the pallet as you search for something to grip with all your might. You smell of lagoon water and hot jungle air, of muggy photosynthesis and algae. The smoky scent of the black ash of that distant planet never really left Ezra and the dampness of the rain seems to stir it up. He towers over you, dark and breathing heavy. Smoke and brimstone.
He gropes your ankles, then your calves, hands gliding over the thick hair there – now grown soft in length – as he slowly spreads your legs, with a light you’d never seen before in his eyes. 
“Neptune, I revolve around you.” 
A wave of anxiety lurches up your throat when he brings his mouth to your cunt, the cloying, imagined scent of moon lilies threatening to tear you out of the moment – he won’t want you wild like this – but it’s forcefully yanked back down with a single stripe of his tongue. His previously casual, authoritative persona cracks when he buries his face into your unkempt curls and lets out a deep, overly pleased moan.
Your back bends and he’s gathering up your limbs in his arms to pin them down, nearly resting his forehead on your pubic bone. A few more licks, some deeper than others into where you drip for him, and your thighs start to shake. His fingers around your thighs squeeze roughly against your flesh and pull you further apart. 
Between the flush of slick seeping from you at an embarrassing rate and the wiry hair kept natural out of a certainty no one would see it, he must be drowning or choking, his tongue flicking and sliding, nose prodding your clit just enough to spread the sparks of arousal up through your spine. Feeling as though you’re losing your grip on reality, you sink your hands into his hair, thumb rubbing back that blonde patch, and tug. The moan he shoots into your cunt as he rocks forward into your touch has you whining helplessly. The tarp squeaks where he rubs his hips into it. 
His arms curled around your thighs, your hips shake with restraint against every lap of his tongue until he flicks your clit and your hips grind up against his obliging mouth, a sunspot of pleasure flaring brightly. But all too soon, Ezra lifts up onto his elbows, his hands smoothing across your stomach and he pops his mouth up from your wet folds. With an irate gasp, the swell of bliss fading, your gaze snaps down to plead with him, but he shakes his head.
Wordlessly, he takes one hand from your thigh and wipes his mouth clean with a swipe of his fingers. Then, with his eyes wide, the skin around his mouth loose, he crooks two fingers at the top of your mound before sliding them down where his mouth was seconds ago and presses them inside of you. That simmering in your low belly roars back to life and you toss your head against the unforgiving pallet, eyes slamming shut. He growls at the obscene sucking noise your cunt makes as he plucks at you, in and out. 
“Oleaginous,” he hums, so quietly, it might have been for him. He tongues your clit lightly, pushing his fingers as deep as they can go, watching you thrash. “Mine. Understand?” You remember that tone of voice from when he had you dissecting throwers on a workbench in front of him. You nod, eyes fluttering open, balancing on the precarious edge of release. 
You want to obey his every word. 
His thumb twists up, opening your clit to him and within a whispered breath of “good girl” he sucks your bundle of nerves and launches you into orbit. 
Your entire body goes stiff from the force of it, only to crash back down into his waiting hands, your voice wavering on a high-pitched, girlish wail that shrieks above the sound of rain. Waves of bliss lap at every nerve ending and your vision goes fuzzy for a minute, the only sound you can register is the pounding of your blood in your ears.
And then you register the steady, wet plunge of his fingers still dragging in and out of your pussy.
“Was that mine?” 
Your clit tingles from overstimulation, but you’d rather die than have him stop – you want to answer, if only you could pick up the pieces of your voice. You can only nod, whining. He presses a wet kiss to your inner thigh, the skin there smeared with your release.
“You did a bad thing, letting someone else touch what’s mine.” He scolds, rubs that spot inside you that makes your eyes roll back in your head, holds his finger to it until it burns. You cry, his punishment evident. “Now you have to apologize, Neptune.” 
You nod again, mouth wrenched open as he drags you back and forth across pleasure and pain. 
“Y-y-yes, Ezra,” the words are bone dry, cracked between your teeth. “I’m sorry.” 
Pure wickedness strikes those earth eyes and scorches them a singed black. 
“Unfortunately, atonement is a fickle thing,” Ezra tuts, dragging his lips across your thigh in a mockery of a kiss, “and I’m not quite ready to offer absolution. Despite your offerings,” he wipes his mouth with a stroke of his palm, “this godhead remains rigid.” 
You whimper. He grins with a mouthful of teeth.
Ezra pulls back onto his knees and shuts your thighs, his hand palming your ass as he indicates that you should turn. Your entire lower half still feels like jelly – no one has ever made you come that hard with just their mouth before – but you obey. You stagger onto your hands and knees in front of him. 
His wide palm appears beneath your chin.
“Spit.”
You do.
That spit-wet hand cups your still wet cunt, middle finger rubbing briefly against your clit, before it disappears. You feel him move closer, hear his slick hand pump himself a few times with a grunt. Hot lips drag up your spine, interspersed with the nip of teeth, and when he lays across your back, his hands overtaking yours and threading your fingers together, his bare chest presses up against the skin of your back and you shudder. 
He noses your temple, his throbbing cock coated between your folds. He bites at your jaw and follows your line of sight through the open tent flap. 
“Breathtaking, isn’t it? All that moisture, dripping and running over smooth rock and fern. All that heat coagulating in spaces it shouldn’t fit. All that . . . open field, for anyone to just wander into. Take a look around and smell the air. Could they smell you like I can, Neptune? The way you leak for this cock?”
As he hums filth in your ear, his hand settles again at the base of your throat, thick fingers squeezing just enough to threaten, before sliding down to your swinging breasts, rough palms catching your swollen nipples, then arching down your stomach and between your legs. 
He plays slowly with your clit; barely enough stimulation and he knows it.
“Ask for forgiveness.” He croons in your ear. The breeze returns for a moment, and between the heat of him mounting you like a feral animal and the hesitant touch of outside air against your sweaty chest, you shudder with a groan. 
“I’m sorry, Ezra. I’m so–,” his middle finger increases its pressure slightly and the words shatter in your mouth, “sor-ry.” 
“And for what?”
He continues to rub between your folds and the minute hitch in his breath is more intoxicating than anything he’s done so far. This is affecting him just as much as it does you. He kisses your jaw then tugs on the skin with his teeth. 
“For letting a-anyone but you t-touch me.”
Ezra presses his damp forehead into your shoulder, panting, your correct answers soaking the neurons in his brain. Your reward is the faster stroke of his finger. 
“And why was that a reprehensible thing to do?” His hips rut into yours, the scrape and rub of his cock between your slick lips and thighs almost enough to set you off. 
“Because it’s yours – I’m yours – f-fuck, Ezra, I’m yours, I only wanna be yours,” you sob. 
He’s suddenly gone from above you and the loud crack of his hand against your ass cheek deafens you for a minute, the sting skittering up your back and down your thigh. 
“Good fuckin’ girl.”
Your elbows shudder, the weight of his tone, his hand nearly forcing you onto your chest with your ass still in the air. You wanna be so good for him. 
He’s breathing hard and his skin is warm and damp where you feel his thigh press against the back of yours. There’s a measure of restraint he’s showing and it makes your heart pound in anticipation. You swing your hips back at him, as if you could catch yourself on his cock. 
“I wanna show you I’m yours,” you cry, nails curling into the pallet. “Please, Ezra, please!”
His broad hand settling on your spine draws a hiccup out of you, a sob. 
“Breathe . . . Good girls get what they need.” 
On an exhale, his blunt tip spreads you apart and he shuffles closer as he thickens inside you. His loud, unabashed moan overwhelms yours, when you think you might just be devoured by him. His hand, the one at your hip, squeezes you, silent reassurance. You can feel the knuckles on his other hand against your slick lips as he feeds himself into you.
“Neptune, talk to me. How,” your cunt tightens around his girth at the sound of his voice coaching you along and he grunts, as if suddenly dizzy, “h-how do you feel?”
“Amazing, Ez. Please keep going don’t stop I can take it–,” 
He obliges; something’s reconnected the wires in his brain enough to tell him to move. He huffs before sinking deeper and your eyes roll back in your head. He bottoms out and waits again, letting you both catch your breath. 
“Spent a hundred moons thinking about this.” The puff of breath against your shoulder is the only warning you have before he presses his mouth to your skin. His hand free of your clutch, his thumb softly rubs the muscle of your neck. He kisses you and kisses you and kisses you, wherever he finds bare flesh. “Would wake up in the night, with you a few feet from me, looking like divinity made sin, made real, but I wasn’t worthy to touch you. You got me all tongue-tied, Neptune, all mucked up in the head. A silly boy,” he purrs.
You glance over your shoulder, unsure which Ezra is going to meet your eyes, but wanting all of them. The man you feel most safe with in this world and the next greets you and you reach back and squeeze his hand. He chuckles softly, and with it, comes a gentle roll of his hips. You gasp, airily, your gaze slipping from his face to his chest, to the steady breathing in his stomach, and then to the growth of hair that fades as it reaches up his low belly. How many times did you sit across the room from him with your fists in tight balls, watching as he regaled exploits of riches and wonder, all the while thinking about how thick his cock is outlined in his suit – you’re so blinded by breathy dreams of what the musky scent of his cock must taste like that you miss that he’s pulled out farther, halfway now, and you are completely knocked senseless when he thrusts back in, a beat faster. 
“Later, Neptune. I’ll let you suck my cock later, but right now I’ve gotta ride this pussy to oblivion.” 
Your thighs quake at his promise, cunt squeezing him, and he huffs, picking up speed.
“I felt that. You really like sucking cock that much?” 
All you can answer him with is a whine. Your knees are starting to ache from the barest cushion the tarp provides, the palms of your hands sore, but you can’t find it in you to remotely care. With every stroke, he fills you up to a breaking point before riding you back out. Moaning gratefully, you finally drop onto your elbows, your cheek scraping against the pallet with every forceful thrust behind you. He tilts your hips up higher, on one knee to fuck down into you; he’s searching with his cock for that spot that made your brain numb. 
Like a flood, you feel bliss roll down your spine, his hands on your lower back pulling you up another peak, and you gasp, at the edge of a very, very long drop, the sounds in the tent as sticky and wet as the rain outside.
But Ezra’s sounds are loudest of them all. Grunting. Hissing. Moaning like he’s fucking the best pussy of his life. You open one eye, glancing over your shoulder and the sight drops open your mouth. Hips pumping forward, skin dewy with sweat, he breathes like a freshly broken-in stallion, relieved that something finally bested him. Chest full and tight with muscle, flushed pink with roaring blood. Stomach torqued with tension. His rhythm is caught between his hands pulling you onto him and his cock thrusting into you. A frantic beat that bounces wet and hot, mouth agape and eyes rolling shut, his head drops back between his shoulders. You push back slightly and he stutters, the hand on your hip tightening. 
“Not gonna last, Neptune–” he grits, his jaw locked tight. The image of him actively staving off an orgasm for you to finish first has been imprinted on your brain for the rest of your life. 
“J-just a little harder, Ez.” 
He obeys, submitting as you had for him, sweat curling around his neck and down his chest. 
As release barrels down on you, those mahogany eyes catch and hold yours in a second that lasts through infinity. They promise you things that you didn’t know you asked for, those eyes, made vows only your soul could hear. You see, in that instant before you are swallowed whole, that he’d die at your feet, if you asked him to. He’d give up every worldly treasure he won through grit and his teeth if you needed it or wanted it. If it made you happy.
His Neptune – in the crushing grip of your gravity. Willingly caught in the trail of your comet as you fill up his night sky.    
“Yeah, that’s it, right there – Ez-ra!” 
His face blown out in near ecclesial bliss is the last thing you see before your vision goes white. Your heart pounds in your ears so loudly, it's the only thing that exists for an instant. And then you shatter with a perfectly soft cry, bliss breaking across you like a heavy wave, and you succumb to exhaustion. 
Behind you, he groans, fucking you faster through it, snarling something entirely incomprehensible. 
You think you might say his name, you don’t know what your mouth is doing, but whatever you say, it breaks him and you are dragged through another low shock, the flood of cum deep into your achy cunt enough to contract your walls again, his harsh groan stuffing your ears just as full. 
The rain is barely louder than your desperate attempts to breathe. 
The tarp crackles as you slump forward onto your stomach, Ezra dropping to his side with half his body over yours. Panting raggedly, his hand curls up to the base of your neck, a reassurance of his presence and commitment when words have failed him. 
You lay like that for a long time.
And then, when feeling starts to return to your limbs, you turn your head, your nose rubbing against his. When you breathe hotly across his face, he grins a satisfied grin that splits into a chuckle. You laugh with him too, curling up into his chest, his forearm is sticky across your spine, and he kisses your forehead.
Staring up at the tarp, together you listen to the rain. 
In the long drawn out, buzzy silence, his nails scratch the base of your skull. And then, like he remembered something vital, he picks his head up and looks at you.
“Do you want this to change things for us?” 
“Yes.” You cup the muscles of his thick neck. “Yes, Ezra. I want this to change everything between us. Please.” 
He smiles, unguarded and open. 
“Wild horses never stood a chance . . . especially against these tits.” He nips at the swell of your breast and you laugh. “I had no plans of letting you go in any case . . . but we are bound from this day forward. You know that, don’t you?”
You nod. A stroke of heat passes over his eyes and  Ezra leans forward to kiss you, his hand on your cheek pulling you in close, as close as you can be, two sticky bodies, cum-dried and tingling.
“And if we’re going to spend every year of our lives together, I have a question for you.” he pushes away a stray strand of hair stuck to your face, nose tip to nose tip, “did you have a good birthday, Neptune? Are you satisfied?”
With a giggle that has his eyebrow arching playfully, you kiss his cheek.
“I already told you. This was the best birthday I’ve ever had.” 
+
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sixhours · 13 hours
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getting to see more character depth to sarah knowing what’s going to happen😭😭
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sixhours · 15 hours
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the self care industry will sell you face masks and teas and whatnot so i'm here to remind you not to forget the most important self care activity which is masturbation
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sixhours · 16 hours
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So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)
Reblog to increase sample size!
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sixhours · 17 hours
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Agent Mulder meant a lot to me, okay? He was brooding and handsome and obsessed with an uptight yet sexy redhead.
Modern Family: Blasts from the Past (10x12)
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sixhours · 18 hours
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Remnants
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Everything that’s left of her broken dreams is standing at the counter, returning her smile.
Rated: PG Length: 1k
Notes: Post-episode for Per Manum
Originally posted on AO3 1/6/2016
~*~
The apartment is shrouded in gray when she returns, the last of her hopes printed on an appointment summary in her coat pocket. Upon seeing her face, he wishes he’d thought to turn on a light, so she wouldn’t have to come home to more darkness, his slumbering form on the couch not enough to fill this newfound emptiness.
“It didn’t take, did it?”
Disappointment shines in her eyes. Forehead to forehead, he waits until her breathing is calm to offer something more substantial than a promise, but the warmth of her skin under his fingers disarms him, gives him pause.
His hands cradle her face as their lips touch for only the second time, her arms wind around his neck like an anchor, pulling him down into her sorrowful sea.
~*~
Dr. Parenti’s delivery was kind, but she felt the news like a gunshot. It’s worse than Emily, this intangible loss. Failure hasn’t washed away the image of a young girl with auburn hair and almond eyes, or a boy with a shy, quirked smile.
She loves them, the ghosts of her unborn children and all they represented: The intimacy of family life, ringing laughter and a mantle lined with photographs.
A child’s cry cutting through the night, hushed lullabies and the love-drunk smell of a downy newborn head.
Saturday morning cartoons followed by pancakes and bacon, spilled milk and syrup-sticky fingers.
The stillness of reality plays a harsh contrast to her imagination as she listens to the silence of what could have been.
~*~
He wants to punch a hole through her pristine apartment wall. He wants to hunt down the faceless men who did this to her and kill them with his bare hands, until he’s bloody and sore and near death himself. He wants to run, to put miles and years between them, until his bad luck can’t touch her any more.
Sometimes he wishes he’d never followed when she tried to resign from the Bureau, that he wasn’t so chickenshit as to ask her to stay after paying the price for her loyalty several times over.
He’d signed away his rights, but the thing that makes his face burn and his stomach clench with shame, is that he’d wanted this for himself as much as her. Selfish bastard, he thinks. Still a chickenshit.
So he steels himself, grits his teeth and holds her until she pulls away. He takes her hand, leads her to the couch, offers to make tea.
He’ll stay, because he doesn’t have the courage to let her go.
He’ll stay, because he doesn't have the right to mourn what was never his to lose.
~*~
Mulder is opening cupboards, running water. Sleeves rolled to the elbows, he washes the dishes and waits for the kettle, then swipes at his forehead, leaving a trail of suds across one cheek. The sight brings an unexpected smile to her lips.
Her heart sinks with the enormity of her grief and the weight of too many unspoken words. Everything that’s left of her broken dreams is standing at the counter, returning her smile.
~*~
He settles on the opposite end of the couch, letting the mug warm his hands. She stares into hers for a few minutes before taking a slow sip, closing her eyes. When she opens them, she’s looking at him with an expression he’s seen only once before in real life, and too many times to count in recent fantasy.
“I love you.”
He blinks. His mouth must hang open, because she’s smiling at him now, a sad, tired smile.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she murmurs, hiding what’s left of her pride in her cup.
~*~
“What would you have done?” she asks. If it had worked, she doesn’t have to say.
“I’d have asked you on a date.”
She pauses to steady her cup on the coffee table, the tea sloshing in her startled hands. “A date?”
“You know—nice clothes, awkward conversation, an expensive wine list, at one of those places that mixes the salad dressing while you watch.”
“Really.”
“Really,” he returns, ducking his head.
“You’d ask your newly impregnated, platonic friend and colleague on an honest-to-goodness date.”
His smile is embarrassed enough to be convincing. “Yeah. I, uh…I thought…if I could give you…give you that…”
He stops, frowns. Her throat is tight when she finally breaks the silence. “Give me what?”
The tea goes cold before he can answer.
~*~
He wakes with a sore neck and Scully’s nose pressed into his hip, a throw tangled around her shoulders. The Late Late Show plays in the background, casting muted shadows on the walls.
She stirs when he stretches, blinking up at him from beneath sleep-addled lashes, as if seeing him for the first time. He wonders if this is what it’s like to hold a newborn; heart filled to bursting with terrifying awe.
“Mulder?”
“I’m here,” he murmurs, stroking the hair from her temple. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Mmph,” she says, her breath warming his abdomen through his t-shirt. “S’OK. I should get up, anyway.”
He nods in agreement, drawing his thumb gently along the plane of her cheek, but neither of them move for a long time.
~*~
She emerges from the bathroom just as he’s finished washing the mugs. Bare feet peek out from oversized silk pajamas, and she surprises herself, wrapping her arms around his waist before she can lose her nerve.
“I’ll stay, if you want,” he murmurs, and she loves him for offering so she doesn’t have to ask.
She loves him for so many reasons. Someday she’ll count the ways, line them up, and tuck them away; programmed, categorized, and easily referenced.
“I’d like that,” she says instead, words muffled by the thrum of his heart.
~*~
She fits perfectly in the circle of his arms, the way he always imagined she would. He times his breathing to the rise and fall of her chest and whispers a blessing into her hair.
“I wanted more for you, Scully.”
Her arms tighten around him, but she doesn't answer.
He holds what little hope is shared between them, and prays that it's enough.
~*~
cc @today-in-fic
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sixhours · 19 hours
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Meteor
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She remembers the space he’d carved around himself, and the moment she realized the distance was too great to cross.
Rating: PG Word count: 1k
Notes: X-Files revival era fic.
Originally posted at ao3 01/19/2016
~*~
She makes her way up the long drive, the old farmhouse looming like a specter from her past. There are no lights in the windows, just a cold, hulking shadow against a darkening sky; an apt metaphor if she thinks about it too much, which she won’t.
“Where are you, Mulder?” Scully whispers to herself. His car is parked next to the porch. It’s evening, too early for sleep.
The air is damp as she leaves the warmth of the car, carrying a folder of papers. Spring has turned the ground to mud beneath her feet, and she, in her most expensive pair of heels, frowns. Her good boots are at the bottom of a box at the back of her closet along with the rest of the things she never unpacked.
The porch creaks in the same places, the screen door still protests on its hinge. She knocks once before trying the handle, finding it open.
“Mulder?”
The house is dusty and silent. She curses under her breath, gooseflesh rising along the back of her neck, wishing she had her holster. Three months on the job after so long away and she’s still not used to carrying.
She’s debating whether to check upstairs or leave the file on the kitchen table when a voice calls her name from outside.
“Scully?”
She steps onto the porch, squinting into the darkness. “Mulder? Is that you?”
“I’m out back,” he calls. “Watch your step.”
She turns on her phone’s flashlight and makes her way to the back yard. A shadow sits on the frame of the old pickup they haven’t used in years.
“I’d have left the porch light on if I’d known you were coming,” it says.
She points the phone in that direction, eliciting a wince from her partner as the beam hits his eyes.
“Ow, Scully.”
“Sorry,” she mutters, shutting off the light. “What are you doing out here, Mulder?”
There’s the distinct sound of liquid sloshing, the kiss of a bottle at his lips.
“Just sittin’ and thinkin’.”
“In the dark? It’s chilly,” she says, rubbing her shoulders for emphasis.
His face resolves as her eyes slowly adjust. He’s sitting on the tailgate, legs dangling off the end, a beer nestled between his thighs.
“I thought you’d be working.”
“Guy can’t take a break once in a while?”
She smirks. “Who are you and what have you done with my partner?”
“Hah-hah, funny. Have a seat, Scully.”
She does after a pause, easing herself onto the tailgate to join him.
“This’ll warm you up,” he says, offering her a beer.
“How many of these have you had?” she asks, accepting the bottle with a raised eyebrow.
“Just the one, doc. Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s not that kind of party.”
The cap twists off; the taste of malt fizzes on her tongue, goes down smooth.
“I take it you’re here for business and not pleasure,” he says, nodding to the folder in her lap.
“Mm. It’s the autopsy results for Lisa Baylor. Scrapings from her fingernails revealed traces of skin; they’re processing the DNA and I asked the lab to run it through NICS. We’ll have the full results in the morning, but I thought you’d want to get an early start.”
“You ever heard of email, Scully?”
“You mean the thing that keeps you tethered to your computer at all hours? Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” she mutters.
He offers a wry smile. “You didn’t have to drive all the way out here for that.”
“Maybe I wanted to talk about the case in person.”
His voice grows soft. “You don’t need an excuse to visit, you know. You always have a place here.”
“I wasn’t looking for an excuse.”
“Checking up on me, huh?”
“Mulder,” she sighs. “Don’t start.”
A cricket chirps in the grass at their feet, filling the stillness that hovers like a black mist. She remembers the space he’d carved around himself, and the moment she realized the distance was too great to cross.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says finally, nudging her shoulder in apology. “Been a rough year. Sometimes I forget we’re on the same side now.”
“I’ve always been on your side, Mulder,” she murmurs, feeling their history like a lead weight in her chest. “I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you.”
“I know,” he nods, then holds out his bottle. “Truce?”
“Truce,” she agrees, letting the glass clink softly. For a moment, the silence is comfortable, familiar, and she closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she’s looking at his profile in the dusky light. With his beard shaved and his hair trimmed, she can almost see the man she met twenty odd years ago. Without thinking, she reaches out to touch his cheek, the stubble rough against her fingers.
He looks over, bemused, and she pulls her hand away, still feeling the ghost of his skin against her palm.
“You clean up good, G-man,” she says.
He chuckles, his gaze turned upward. “Hey, it’s starting.”
He points to the sky and her eyes follow, trying to see what he sees. A pinprick of light flicks across the sky, followed by another, and then another; the beginnings of a meteor shower.
Mulder reaches behind them and pulls out two rolled sleeping bags, settling back against one in the bed of the truck. She doesn’t ask why he brought two instead of one, for the same reason she knows the extra beer in her hand was never intended for him.
She pulls the rolled blanket behind her and lies back to watch the show. Her eyes flit from one corner of the heavens to the other as more of the blue-white streaks make their way across the night, and she marvels at how the stars can still stun her with their beauty, how the universe in all its endless mystery can be so breathtaking, even after bringing such grief.
His voice is rich and vulnerable, spoken to the open air. “It wasn’t all bad, was it, Scully?”
She doesn’t have to think. Her response is as immediate and as involuntary as a heartbeat. “No…it wasn’t.”
She finds his hand without trying and listens to the sound of their mingled breathing as the sky falls around them.
cc @today-in-fic
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sixhours · 20 hours
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Joel Miller, appreciation post
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sixhours · 20 hours
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Home Again
She’d once told an obsessed writer that loneliness was a choice, but now she’s unconvinced. Was it truly a choice when the only alternative was being consumed?
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Rating: PG-13 Word count: 1.2k
Notes: A 2016 X-Files revival fic.
Originally posted at ao3 07/31/2015
~*~
In the aftermath, she can’t pinpoint what led them to this moment.
Whether it was the way his fingers interlocked above their heads as his body moved over hers, or the way he said her name—low and husky, like the answer to a long-lost question. Maybe it was how he leaned down for a kiss but stopped halfway, transfixed, watching her, until their eyes met and held her in his grip.
Her release was unexpected, like drowning, and only when it was over and she’s resting in the crook of his arm does she realize what she’s done. She swallows hard, tasting something like love and regret in the back of her throat.
“Missed you,” he says, nose brushing her cheek. His arm around her waist, once a comfort, is now a lead weight, pulling her under.
“You missed the sex,” she murmurs, turning away, gathering the sheet around her.
“I did. As did you, if that,” he says, patting her now-empty spot on the mattress, “was any indication.”
She’s perched on the edge of the bed, eyes closed, caught between moments. Magnetism draws her backward, conscience pulls her taut. She thinks of her apartment, still in boxes, the kitchen table with the single wilting ficus her mother bought as a housewarming gift, the spare bunk in the physicians’ lounge that her colleagues silently reserve for her by unspoken rule.
She’d once told an obsessed writer that loneliness was a choice, but now she’s unconvinced. Was it truly a choice when the only alternative was being consumed?
When she opens her eyes, she’s still sitting on their old bed, in their old house—exactly the same as she’d left it six months ago, now with a thick layer of dust on top.
“Maybe so,” she sighs, leaning down to grasp her stockings, the fine mesh a whisper against her fingertips. “It’s easy to fall back into codependent patterns.”
“Codependency implies both of us,” he says, and she can hear the bitter smile in his voice. “And you’ve never been good at dependencies.”
She draws herself up, begins gathering the rest of her clothes, still holding the sheet to her chest, as if the thin cotton fabric could protect her heart, as if it weren’t past the point of salvation.
“How’s Tad?”
The button on her shirt won’t go into its clasp—it’s slippery, she reasons. Her fingers are cold; the house was always drafty. She swears under her breath, tries again. “He’s around.”
“Making sure Daddy’s money gets put to good use?”
She shoots him a look out of the corner of her eye. “Something like that.”
Mulder leans back, one arm behind his head, a pose reminiscent of late nights in cheap motels. “How deep is the hospital in it, anyway?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Must be pretty bad if they’re taking one of their own off staff to investigate. With the son of a wealthy board member, no less. The lawyers must be having a field day.”
She snorts lightly. “They need your insights, Mulder. Tad’s interests are…let’s just say elsewhere.”
There’s the rustle of the sheets, the crinkle of cellophane, the telltale sound of a sunflower seed being excommunicated. “He asked you out, didn’t he?”
She pretends to be fascinated with invisible lint at the hem of her skirt as his eyes bore into her back. In the absence of an answer, his next question is inevitable.
“Did you say yes?”
She bites off the Not that it’s any of your business, but…and forces out a, “No.”
There’s a soft tsk, the squeak of the mattress springs. “Too bad for Tad.”
“Mulder—“
His fingers on her bare neck are feather-light, too familiar. She faces him, prepared to bristle, but there’s a spark in his eye and the hint of a smile on his lips, disarming her.
“Mulder,” she begins again, gently pulling away. “If we’re going to work, I need…we need to keep it professional.”
“Mm,” he purses his lips, glancing over his shoulder at the tousled sheets. “We have different definitions of professionalism.”
The shame hits her then, nearly rocking her back on her heels. It isn’t his fault they’re standing in this bedroom, standing in the past; he hadn’t coerced, begged, or even asked. She’d driven here of her own volition, pulled to him like a forgotten tide, and walked through the door to his scent, to the crest of their history breaking around them.
He’d taken her jacket, grazing her neck—an innocent gesture, born of familiarity and friendship, but with desperate consequences. It took one kiss and the empty space of weeks to silence the past’s awful roar, but now, in the absence of lust, it’s all she can hear. Her body is a traitor, but her heart is the one on trial.
“No, I get it,” he says finally, pulling a t-shirt over his head. “Things got a little…heavy.”
She snorts softly, feels an involuntary flush at his choice of words.
Heavy.
Her hands on his hips, guiding him, his tongue at the shell of her ear.
Heavy.
His hand over hers, their mouths close enough to share the same breath…
“It won’t happen again,” she says, interrupting the uninvited thoughts. Her cheeks ripen pink, but her voice is steady.
He ducks his head in a nod. “Sure. Professional,” he says, almost a whisper. Then: “Partners?”
“Partners,” she repeats, the word sticky in her throat.
She wills herself not to notice his hand on the small of her back as he shows her out of their home.
His home, she reminds herself, although it’s already begun to come back to her. The third step from the top creaks as they descend the stairs, the kitchen smells of coffee and cheap blue dish soap, and she knows the screen door will stick in its crooked frame; she’ll have to force it with her shoulder.
“This is the file?” he says, addressing scattered papers on the kitchen table.
“Um…yes. This should be everything. It’s…well, I’ll let you read it, then tell me what you think.”
“I always do,” he murmurs, fingers splayed on the case file, frowning. There’s a half-empty coffee mug leaving a damp stain on the worn oak, and she fights the urge to pick it up, take it to the sink. Her thumbnail presses a sharp crescent into her palm.
“Mulder? I’m going to…I should go.”
“Mmm?” He looks up, but the distance in his eyes says she’s already lost him to the intrigue, the promise of a new mystery. “Oh, sure. I’ll walk you out.”
At the door, he doesn’t lean in. Against her better judgment, she stands on tiptoe, angling upward to place a tentative kiss on his stubbled jaw. His hand finds hers and holds it a second or two longer than necessary.
“Later, partner.”
She wills her ankles not to wobble and her heels not to slip on the uneven ground, holding her back ramrod straight even as his curves easily against the doorframe. He waves as she’s getting into her car.
He doesn’t follow, because he knows she’ll be back.
She doesn’t look back, because she knows he is right.
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sixhours · 21 hours
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ONE AND ONLY PEDRO PASCAL 💜
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Incorrect Narcos Quotes
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I have the goddamn wenis dance stuck in my head I am suing @samreich for psychological damages
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#Listen to Pedro Pascal, gay sex can fix you
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WIP WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
Thanks for the tag @sawymredfox! I'm ~9k words into this TLOU post-ep and I'm riding the struggle bus all the way, but here's a part I don't hate.
~*~
Her voice gets higher and reedier with every word, her breath coming in short, wispy gasps.
“Okay,” he says keeping his voice low, trying to follow her train of thought. “Deep breaths, ‘member? That’s it, nice an’ slow.”
“I—they said they had medicine to trade and you were so sick and I didn’t want to trust him but I had to, they didn’t believe me, then he fucking tricked me, he—“
The tears arrive like a hurricane, pouring out of her alongside broken sobs. He doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate, just pulls her to his chest.
“Shh, s’alright, I know. I know. You did good—“
“But I didn’t,” she wails. “I l-led them back to you. I was s-so s-s-stupid and he was—he almost—“
Another sob and he’s turning them, gently guiding her back the way they came, tucked against his side. There’s no chance of finding game today, not like this, and he can’t hear his stomach growling over her fretful cries anyway. They needle at him like a newborn’s, like he’s twenty-two all over again and trying to soothe a colicky baby to sleep.
“S’alright, you’re okay,” he whispers. “You’re alright.”
“And now I scared the stupid deer away and I can’t s-stop fucking c-crying and I can’t stop f-f-fucking up—“
~*~
No pressure tags <3: @undercoverpena @littlemisspascalwrites @yxtkiwiyxt @kiwisbell @bumblepony
@mountainsandmayhem @swiftispunk and anyone who wants to play, have at it!
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Forever a sucker for the blonde patch. 💛
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New Writers added to The Pedro Library 🐼
@eff4freddie @sixhours
New Works Added ✨
Many fics aren’t appearing in the tags when searching. If I miss yours, please let me know 💗 Or add me to your taglist cuz I love being tagged 😊
As always, if you would like me to remove your work from the rec list, please let know and I’ll remove them asap 😊
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@morallyinept Javi G Te Quiero 
@mermaidgirl30 Javier Javi’s Playground / Joel Captured in the Woods
@mandoalorian Javier But Daddy I Love Him!
@ghostofaboy Javier + Dave + Marcus P Hold Please...
@penvisions Frankie Coffee and Candor
@undercoverpena Frankie Up Sky, Low High
@alwaysbethewest Frankie + Javier Crossing the Streams 
@autumnleaves1991-blog Frankie Frankie Drabble 
@mothandpidgeon Joel The Outlaws
@frenchiereading Joel Muscle Memory
@wheresarizona Joel But Now I’m Your Daisy
@tightjeansjavi Joel My Joel
@toomanystoriessolittletime Joel Rain Confessions
@secretelephanttattoo Marcus M Afterword
@wardenparker @absurdthirst Whiskey A Night to Remember
@beskarandblasters Din Packin’ (In More Ways Than One) + Guilty as Sin
@backtothefanfiction Din Not That Easy
@tropes-and-tales Din Shadow and Light
@rayslittlekitten Dieter Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls 
@bluestar22x Dieter Unknown
@janaispunk Oberyn Delicate
@chronically-ghosted Pero Iron and Charcoal
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