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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 2 years

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memory is a strange thing

Monica Reyes/John Doggett | post 9x08 Hellbound | for @fortes-fortuna-iogurtum | vignette; 723 words | tagging @taleasoldastime-andspace and @cosmicmulder :)

She has done all this before.

She knows it like she knows the back of her hand or the cool tap of her ring against the balcony railing. The smoke in the back of her throat is familiar, the only thing she could think of to still the shaking of her hands. Maybe it’s just to occupy them, really, but either way, it’s comforting even though it shouldn’t be, with shaking hands and smoke in her airway and the memory playing on loop in her brain of Van Allen confirming and condemning her to failure.

Monica has admittedly never given much thought to reincarnation. As a concept, it fascinates her — the way fate and freedom hold hands, how much will always remain the same in each individual life — but she’s never considered how it could apply to her. She thinks if she looked over her shoulder she might see a premonition of the life to come, so she just takes a long drag of her cigarette and holds it in her lungs, burning, for as long as she can. She wonders if she always has been and always will be a smoker; she’s tried to stop often enough and never fully succeeded, and that’s just this one life.

Behind her, the door slides open and she doesn’t even turn. “You left your front door unlocked,” says John, and she huffs out a little smoky cloud into the night air.

“I know.”

“You really shouldn’t do that, you know. Crime rate here’s not as bad as New York, but still.”

Monica shrugs. “I guess I’m still not used to being back up here,” she says. “I left it unlocked for you,” she adds.

He goes quiet, she can feel him watching her. “You knew I’d be coming over here?” He asks it, she thinks, as if he knows it’s true. “What is that, one of your premonitions?”

If the question weren’t a little too on the nose tonight, Monica might laugh at the blunt wonder in John’s voice. She just shakes her head. “I just figured you might stop by. Hoped it, maybe.”

“You doing okay?” He asks, like she knew he would. It’s the same way she checks after him after a hard case, or after Mexico.

Instead of answering the question, she says his name. “John, if you found out that… you’ve done all this before,” and she gestures vaguely with her cigarette, leaving a thin trail of smoke in the air encompassing them, “That everything, your life, the results of it, might be circular… would that change the choices you made?”

She thinks of him reliving the pain of losing Luke and of the time he told her he’s afraid that he could have done more; thinks of herself trying to explain how she knew about these murders. There’s always a question of what could be changed. How much can be saved, or lost, in just one small decision. What could she have done to stop Van Allen, and what would it have meant for her? She won’t ask what could have been done to save Luke; even if John second-guesses, at least she can be sure for him.

He leans on the railing beside her, tightly-wound and silent in thought. She wonders if he’s making the same connections that she is and a part of her hopes he isn’t. It’s still a little too raw, but then, maybe it always will be. She lifts the cigarette to her mouth again, but his hand stops her and she lets go of it as easily as she’d pulled it from the box earlier. For the first time since he walked in through her unlocked front door, she meets John’s eyes.

“There might be a few things I’d do different,” he says quietly. For a moment it’s almost like they’re holding hands. “But even if I knew where it all ended on the way, I think I have to embrace it. Only way to live with yourself, you know?”

Monica thinks she does. She isn’t sure if he’s talking more about himself or her, or maybe both of them. There’s a fleeting moment where she feels that in some incongruously incompatible way, they understand each other.

He slips his hand from hers and tosses the cigarette three stories from her balcony.

#for an audience of three but hey #something like this has been in my head for so long tbh #it’s like. monica stress-smoking. making hellbound a little bit more like the field where i died.#but without stealing the weight and importance of tfwid from mulder and scully #bc tfwid was something VERY personal and it feels wrong to just take that #plus it’s different with john and monica. not only is the plot of hellbound different but the way they think of it all is SO different #than how scully and mulder deal with it all in tfwid. tfwid is a bit heavier and more personal #hellbound is an exploration of monica’s character by putting her in a stressful personally connected situation #idk just. thoughts. she lets go of the cigarette and he drops it off the balcony.#admittedly idek if monica has a balcony or what story her apartment is but it Feels Right ya know? feels like she would have a balcony #it’s about the vibes tbh #also yes some of this is yoinked from arrival (2016) dir. denis villenueve bc listen. john doggett *handshsake meme* louise banks #so i took a bit of dialogue from arrival and changed it a bit to fit and that’s also where the title came from :)#Lu writes #txf #the x files #txf s9 #monica reyes #john doggett #johnmon #drr #john/monica #idk i’m just using all the tags dshgfdshgf

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alexa-crowe · 6 months

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finally back to thinking about my essay class today. i don’t think i have ever gotten less helpful feedback.

#like wdym you want me to be like “i was doing x because y had just happened and the location is z” right in the first paragraph????#location is not remotely relevant here!!!!#like?????#and then she was like “so what’s scully from?” and i was like “????? the x-files” which was literally in the next paragraph #and i had literally read the whole two pages out loud not five minutes prior #oh my god. it was bad. i was starting to question her validity as a professor.#i’ve also never seen her correct grammar? like not as in she needs to do that when we’re critiquing in class #but the past examples she shows us are. LMAO #and she wants us to publish pieces im like girl THAT is why nobody is getting published lmfao #rambling

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stammed-cleams · 1 year

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everyone in the x files fandom who DOESNT ship mulder and scully follow me right now

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pookie-mulder · 3 months

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Something I love about The X-Files is that the show never objectifies Scully. She’s unbelievably gorgeous, of course, and characters in the show definitely find her attractive, but the show itself never sexualizes her or reduces her to simply an object for the audience to ogle at.

She has agency and depth and convictions, but that doesn’t mean she’s not sexy. She is! The difference is that we get to come to that conclusion ourselves rather than the show presenting her as such.

We never get the gratuitous hair flips, slow shots that pan up her body, or impractical cleavage that so many female action heroes are subjected to. Everything that goes into the show — storylines, costumes, cinematography, dialogue, hair/makeup — reinforces the idea that Scully is not created for the male gaze; she is her own woman who makes her own choices about what she looks like and how she presents herself.

If anything, Mulder is more objectified than Scully, which is a refreshing deviation from the norm

#of course this could just be a byproduct of chris carter’s weird complex about her #I mean he literally compares her to the Virgin Mary in existence #but we’re not gonna get into that rn #txf #the x files #dana scully

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television-overload · 29 days

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of our own making

(an X-Files fanfic)

Oh hey, look, it's that massive story I've been working on since January! I'm so thankful to everyone who has shown interest in the concept of this fic and the little snippets I've posted. You've been more help than you know. Without that support, I don't think this would have ever gotten finished.

A special thanks to @numinousmysteries who kindly beta read for me and did a fantastic job. I wanted to make sure I got this right, and she was a great help!

And now I can't wait to share this with you all! New chapters posted daily!

[Read on AO3]

Chapter 1/34 - ink and paper

How long has he been thinking about this, she wonders. What exactly is he thinking? Her mind races, trying to reconcile this Mulder whose deepest desires are spilled out here in ink on worn and crinkled brochures with the one she’s spent nearly every day with these past several months.

She'd never have guessed...

Find out if adoption is right for you! Visit us at 8080 Meadowlark Ln. Annapolis, MD “A Home for Every Child!”

Scully stares down at the brochure on the desk. One of many, which are half buried underneath a pile of paperwork from their current case. Certain words and phrases are circled in pen, underlined, annotated in the margins in the familiar scrawl she knows almost better than her own.

stability – less travel? change in division? discuss with Scully

loving home – ask Frohike for real estate agent #

The word “family” is circled three times.

She swallows with some difficulty, finding—to her dismay—that her hands are shaking. Mulder will be arriving any second, and here she is, frozen like a statue.

She’d never have guessed…

“Morning, partner,” his voice calls out, and she jolts in surprise. She hears the door snick shut behind him, but she can’t bring herself to turn around. With deft fingers, she pushes the brochure back under the stack of papers where she found it, only the colorful corner of the page visible.

“Morning, Mulder,” she tries, clearing her throat. It comes out strained, but she hopes he doesn’t notice. She hides her trembling hands in her lap under the desk.

He looks down at her, half amused, half concerned. “You okay? You're not getting that stomach bug that's been going around, are you?”

“I'm fine,” she answers defensively, warning him to back off. She grabs a file off the desk in front of her with a little more force than necessary, plopping it open.

‘Okayyy,’ he mouths exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised. He sits down at his desk and leafs through some papers sitting on top, arranging them into neater stacks. When he uncovers the brochures, his eyes widen and he clears his throat, hurriedly covering them with other papers and trying to act natural.

Scully thinks about letting it go and pretending she doesn’t know what he’s hiding, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep until she finds out what’s been going on in that ridiculous head of his.

She idly flips to the next page of the file in her hand, displaying a confidence she doesn’t feel in the firm set of her shoulders

“Doing some light reading, Mulder?” she asks, attempting to look disinterested.

His head shoots up, a look of alarm on his face. For a second he thinks she might be talking about something else, that she couldn’t possibly know, but one look at her throws that theory right out the window. He glances back and forth between her and the papers on the desk a few times before dropping his shoulders in defeat.

“I’m sorry, Scully, you weren’t supposed to see those,” he says, shuffling all the brochures into a pile while carefully avoiding eye contact. “I was working here late last night. I must have forgotten to put them away.” As he speaks, he opens the top drawer of his desk and shoves them inside, then takes a seat at his desk. His nose is buried in a file before she can even respond.

She watches him now. He is a curiosity, determinedly feigning concentration on a case she knows he finds disinteresting and a waste of time.

Typical.

“You're really not going to say anything?” she asks, arms crossed in front of her.

That rankles him. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, indignation boiling below the surface.

She looks at him incredulously, the file in front of her all but forgotten.

“You're thinking of adoption? When were you planning to share this with me?”

He sighs and shakes his head, pleading silently with her. “It's too soon, Scully. I didn't think you'd want to hear it yet.”

“But you're looking into it because…”

“It's just been on my mind, that's all.”

She stares at him, brows furrowed.

“Since when?”

Since when… Images flash of a life he didn’t recognize. His sister, alive and grown up. A quiet suburban neighborhood. Cancer Man living just down the street. A wife and kids, but not the right ones. It was wrong, all of it was wrong.

“A hallucinatory trip into an alternate universe tends to make you think,” he answers simply.

He’s looking at her now, deadly serious despite the joking tone. She doesn’t respond. Can’t respond.

“I'm sorry, I didn't want to bring all this up,” he continues. “I know it's a sore spot for you.”

It takes her a moment to conjure words from her mouth, her lips moving but no sound coming out. “I just wasn't expecting…”

“For all I know, this isn't even something you'd want.”

What does she say to that? Is she interested?

“I– I'm not sure. I've never really considered it before.”

He waits, his eyes assessing her for some hidden meaning, some insight into her state of mind. He gets nothing. She’s totally blank.

“Well… what do you want?” He thought the question was innocuous enough, safer territory than straight up asking her if she wants to adopt, but apparently not.

She shuts her folder, abruptly standing and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I'm going back to the crime scene,” she declares, changing the subject. “I want to see if there's anything we missed.”

“Scully…” he tries.

“Not now, Mulder.” Without even taking the time to put her coat on, she flees, leaving the door partially open in her rush to get away. Cursing under his breath, Mulder grabs his coat from its hook and hurries after her.

The elevator doors are almost all the way closed by the time he catches up, but in this case, he figures it’s worth the potential loss of a limb. He throws his hand between the closing gap in the metal doors, and it bounces back open to allow him entrance, to the extreme displeasure of one Dana Scully. He wisely stays silent in the elevator, stealing glances at her every few seconds out of the corner of his eye as they ascend. He can feel the frigid air coming off her in waves. It’s been a while since he’s seen her this annoyed with him, this eager to get away.

He won’t let her. Not this time. He’s learned from his mistakes.

In the parking garage, she's walking briskly, heels clicking on the concrete, and he has to pick up the pace to keep up with surprisingly agile little legs.

He didn’t want this confrontation. There was a reason he was keeping his research a secret. This is exactly what he was hoping to avoid, at least until the time was right to carefully drop some hints here and there. But now? There’s no carefully about it. No option to wait and let this blow over. There’s only one way out of this at this point, and unfortunately, that way is through.

He picks up the pace.

“You're the one who brought this up, Scully, I was perfectly happy throwing those brochures in my drawer and not saying a word.”

His voice echoes in the concrete parking structure, sounding harsh even to his own ears. As frustrated as he is with her, that isn’t his intent. He only wants to know what he can do to help her, how he can help her fulfill her dreams. He lets out a breath, and with it, releases his selfish frustration. She’s still walking away at a breakneck pace, and he doesn’t know how he can get her to stop and face this.

“If you want to talk about it, let's talk about it,” he says, pleading. “I can't help you if I don't know what you want. You want me to shut up, never mention the subject again?” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air, “Fine, just tell me. What do you want, Scully?”

“I just want to be a mom, okay?” she yells, whirling around to face him. Her words instantly silence him, and he watches stone-faced as tears spring in her eyes. “I see all these other moms out there and think… I could do that too. Why can’t I do that too?”

Well, mission accomplished. The truth is finally out there. Part of him feels bad for pushing her, but the other part knows that it was doing her no good to keep her feelings bottled up inside to deal with by herself. He reaches out a hand, intending to comfort her, his eyes softening in sympathy.

“You could. Scully, you’d be the best mom.”

She flinches away, stepping out of his reach. “You don’t know that, Mulder. I can’t even—even my body is even telling me no. Over and over.” She resumes her brisk walk to her car, and he thinks he sees her brush angrily at her face, no doubt wiping away the evidence of the stubborn tears that have managed to escape.

He rushes to get in front of her, walking backwards so he can keep her in his sight.

“When has that ever stopped you?” he asks. “You had cancer, and you kept fighting. You’re alive today because you refused to give up when your body quit on you. What about that?” He stops abruptly, forcing her to come to a halt before she crashes into him.

There’s no way out of this, is there? Her shoulders slump in defeat.

“You saved me, Mulder,” she admits quietly, shaking her head. “You’re the one who didn’t give up. Not me. It was only because you were with me that I survived.”

This time, when she goes to walk away, he stops her, placing a hand on her shoulder. The simple touch causes her to freeze, hardly breathing, and when he steps closer, she stays. His hands slide down her shoulders, holding her securely in place to ensure that his next words come through loud and clear.

“I’m gonna be with you here on this too, I promise.” His thumbs brush back and forth on the fabric of her sleeves, for his comfort or hers, she’s not sure. “You can still be a mother, Scully. I’ll help you.”

She shakes her head, her heart feeling like it has been ripped to shreds. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” He gives her a little shake for emphasis. She still won’t look at him. “You’ve kept me alive all these years, how much harder could a baby be?”

That gets a breathy chuckle from her, and her head falls to her chest. Groaning with the agony of this burden on her heart, she stops fighting it and leans into him. Without hesitation, he wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his embrace.

Her hand comes up to find purchase on his suit jacket, relishing in the comfort only he can provide. She’s past caring if anyone sees them like this here. Let them talk. They already do, anyway.

“Well, at least when you wake me up in the middle of the night, you’re not crying,” she speaks into his chest.

She feels him shrug, and can almost see the goofy smile she knows she put on his lips.

“Usually.”

She looks up at him with her chin on his sternum before taking a deep breath and pulling away.

“It's raining,” he says softly, glancing down at her and brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “We can go back to the crime scene later.” She nods, unsure what else to say. She allows herself to be led, his ever-present hand brushing against her back as they start toward the basement.

“Adoption,” Scully mutters to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Mulder. This—this is different than IVF. With that, all I was asking for was your…” her eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at him, “genetic material. This is something entirely different.”

He’s pleased she’s at least considering it, but she doesn’t get it at all, if that’s what she thinks.

“How? ‘Cause from where I’m standing, the process of getting a baby is a little different, but in the long run, the result is the same.”

She pauses, looking at him in confusion. “What– what are you saying?”

He runs a hand awkwardly through his hair, suddenly taking a unique interest in his shoes and the floor of the parking structure.

“Yeah, we probably should have talked about this before…”

“Talked about what?”

He sighs and guides her into a stairwell. It’s stuffy and poorly-lit with a flickering lightbulb, but here, there’s less of a chance they’ll be overheard.

“Look, Scully, I don’t know what you had in mind for my involvement beyond contributing to half the baby’s DNA when you first asked me to help you get pregnant,” he starts, fighting hard to meet her eyes instead of shying away. “But, I– I had hoped it would be a little more than ‘Say hi to Uncle Mulder,’ every couple of months.”

She blinks back at him, speechless.

“I’m sorry if that’s overstepping, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable with all this, I just—” He takes in a breath. “I guess I got to thinking of what it might be like to have a family again.” His bout of honesty is met with a blank stare, and his nervous smile drops. “I completely misread the situation, didn’t I?” he asks, self-loathing waiting on standby. “Got ahead of myself…”

She stops him by catching his coat sleeve. “No—uh. No, you didn’t.” She collects herself, willing herself to offer him some reassurance. Her fingers release the fabric of his coat, shifting her grasp instead to his hand. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

He glances down at where she holds tightly to him, and his lips curl into some semblance of a smile.

“I guess they might have had a point with all those communication seminars we’ve skipped, huh?”

She chuckles softly.

“I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind…”

With a gentle tug, Mulder leads her down the stairs, committed to holding her hand as long as she’ll let him. The air is stagnant and silent, only the rhythmic echo of their shoes clicking on the concrete steps as they make their way to the bottom floor.

She’s thinking. What she knows now, it changes everything.

She had asked him to leave. Hid her grief from him as much as possible after her initial lapse into weakness when she came home with the news. She had almost kissed him, then, unsure of what else she had to live for. She knew she was hurting him by folding inward on herself in the weeks that followed, but that didn’t stop her from doing it. She was in a dark place, hardly able to see what was right in front of her. What she couldn’t see was that his hurt wasn’t just for her, born of some misguided sense of guilt or pity. It was his own, too.

“Mulder, all those months, after it failed—” There’s something like fear in her voice as she utters these words, or maybe regret.

“I was just worried about you.”

She squeezes his hand, feeling tears well in her eyes once more. “No, you were grieving like I was, and I didn’t notice. I pushed you away…”

“Dana…” He turns, a couple steps ahead of her, so for once it’s him who has to look up to meet her eyes. Her lip wobbles as she looks down at him, and he brushes his thumb tenderly over her knuckles. “You had to deal with it on your own, I understood that. I don’t blame you for anything.”

Those eyes. So open and honest and sad. She wonders how anyone could hurt him, could bear to break this man’s heart. How could she?

Choking back a sob, she falls into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding tight. His arms encircle her back, supporting her weight, and she feels herself being lifted as he goes up a step, closing the distance between them.

His hand climbs up to the back of her head, stroking her hair soothingly.

“I just wanted to be there for you,” he mumbles into her neck.

“You were, Mulder,” she gasps between bouts of tears, finding comfort in the feel of his soft hair between her fingers. “You’ve always been there.”

He pulls back, lifting his hands to cup her face and wiping away the tears he finds there with the pads of his thumbs.

“You don’t have to give an answer now,” he says, reassuring, “This is… a big commitment, I know, and I don’t want you to say yes just because I suggested it. I just wanted you to know it’s an option, and if you want to have a baby, I’m in. However you want to go about it, I’ll be as involved as you want. Just– let me know, anytime. Okay?”

He’s looking at her now, head ducked so those sad, puppy-dog eyes can get his message across.

She nods, holding tight to the wrists that so tenderly cup her face.

“Okay.”

~~~

Lovely tag list ♡: [if you would like to be added or removed, let me know!]

@today-in-fic @ao3feed-msr @agent-troi @angegova @baronessblixen @bby-got-books @calimanc @captainsolocide @cutemothman @danasculls @deathsbestgirl @edierone @enigmaticxbee @figureofdismay @frogsmulder @hippocampouts @invidiosa @monaiargancoconutsoy @mulderscully @oofubad @p34chi @primrose19 @randomfoggytiger @skelavender @skylarksong @slippinmickeys @stephy-gold @teenie-xf @the-redhead-in-a-dress @vincentsleftear @whovianderson

#msr #txf #x files #xf fanfic #mulder and scully #my fanfiction #fox mulder #dana scully #of our own making #ooom #msr adoption fic #adoption

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atths--twice · 2 months

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Imagine The X-Files reboot happens. We’re introduced to new agents working in the basement. They find themselves stumped on a case and they look at one another and nod.

Cut to a coffee shop and we see Mulder and the agents. He’s smiling, looking at the file, and thinking of so many things as he listens to them.

“Wow. The case sounds incredibly interesting. I definitely would be all in a few years ago. But now…” He checks his watch and smiles again. “I gotta pick my daughter up soon. I’ll offer what advice I can, but I can’t be late for her.”

When he leaves, we see him watching them, somewhat wistfully, but then his watch beeps with a previously set alarm to pick up his daughter. At the same time, he gets a message from Scully about dinner, asking if he’s still cooking or if he wants her to pick something up on her way home. He grins and nods his head, knowing he’s made the right choice.

And then maybe a young female agent comes to the hospital seeking out Scully, needing some additional advice. She hints at what she knows of Mulder and Scully.

“Oh,” Scully laughs softly, shaking her head. “You have no idea.”

And she crosses her arms and we see that she’s wearing a wedding ring.

These two deserve happiness and family and love- everything they haven’t been able to have. I would love to watch a new group of people working cases so long as the story is good and the chemistry is there.

And if we got to have little chances to look in to Mulder and Scully‘s life… yes please. ❤️

Let me make an addition especially for @baronessblixen because I completely agree with her. 💕💕

I want to see them with their kid. I want to see them enjoy their time with her. Maybe we see her schooling the agents somehow and Scully looks at Mulder and he looks at her and they both say “that’s all you” and then everyone laughs.

I want to see both of them interact with her together doing something as simple as just being at home. Like I NEED it so badly. If we got that, like the “what if” scenarios we saw in the revival, (minus the alien aspect of it) I would be so incredibly happy. ❤️❤️

#the x files #msr #love #possible reboot #I would love to see this

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thursdayinspace · 1 month

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So much to say about the Duane Barry episodes and Scully's abduction, but mostly I find it amazing how much relationship development they managed to pack into a handful of episodes that Scully is barely in at all. It's already set up nicely: the hostage negotiation, Mulder being frustrated because first he's asked to help and then has to find out they're withholding information from him. Once again, he's not being taken seriously; he has to turn to Scully again even though they're not even partners anymore. He still relies on her, she's still the only one he can really trust. She comes all the way out there with the information she digs up when she can't reach him. She talks into his ear to help him resolve the situation. Afterwards, when they find that implant in Duane Barry, they try to figure that out together as well. As we've seen throughout all the episodes before, they fall back into their partnership easily, like it's the most natural thing in the world for them. And then she's abducted and everything falls apart. That's where it really picks up and it becomes clear that everything up to this point has been little more than a (very well done and important) prologue.

Mulder's silence at the beginning of "Ascension" is almost frightening. It's certainly intense. Somewhere between withdrawn and hyperfocused, with a good dose of fear mixed in. He tells Scully's mother that she's not in her apartment, and after that we don't hear him speak again until a good way into the conversation in Skinner's office the next morning, a good five minutes into the episode even though he's in every scene before then. And when he barely puts up a fight when Skinner tells him to go home, you know he's going rogue. He does not trust them to find Scully, and he certainly can't sit and wait while she's out there with Duane Barry.

He pushes himself beyond his limits, almost falling asleep at the wheel but refusing to let Krycek drive -- he doesn't give up the tiniest sliver of control. When the tram operator won't let them take the tram up the mountain, Mulder has no problem showing him his gun. He pushes the tram beyond safety limits. Does his acrobatics out in the open who knows how high up in the air -- risking his life -- after Krycek stops the tram.

And holy shit the way he loses it when he spots Scully's blood and hair on Duane Barry's hospital band is truly scary, I don't think we've ever seen him that angry before. But on second thought, maybe angry is the wrong word. He's acting out of fear and panic. I don't think even an angry Mulder would choke anyone. He isn't thinking straight anymore, his responses are almost primal at this point. He hasn't slept, he's running on adrenaline, he's no closer to finding Scully and now he knows she's injured.

Finding out about Krycek, Skinner reopening the x files . . . it all seems almost secondary. Not as important as his meeting with Scully's mother and her telling him to keep the cross necklace. He didn't have anyone this entire time to lean on or to talk to. And he still doesn't, but this is the closest he gets. He and Scully's mom are in similar places. For them, this is personal. I love that they're bonding over this, over their love for Scully and their worry about her. (Whatever meaning you want to read into the word "love" between Mulder and Scully at this point.)

The beginning of "One Breath" is so intense, Mulder running into that room in the hospital to find her lying there unconscious, hooked up to a respirator. Anger fueled by blind panic. "Who brought her here?" "How did she get here?" "Who did this to her?" "Listen, if you’re hiding anything, I swear, I will do anything, whatever it takes, I will find out what they did to her!" I love the scene and I absolutely love the way it's acted, big thumbs up to DD. Getting her back could have been the emotional release of that arc, but she comes back in a coma. It spikes the angst to a whole new level. Before, he didn't know whether she was okay or not, he could hold onto hope. Now he knows she's not okay. Getting her back does not let him finally sit down and take a deep breath and process any of it. Nothing is resolved, the fight is just taken elsewhere.

I just want to take a second to think about the fact that he sigend her living will as her witness. That is. A very intimate thing to do. And that moment needs to get the credit it deserves. Knowing that they have talked about the event of her being unable to decide for herself, knowing she let him in, let him sign it, and the fact that he did it? That is a huge HUGE thing.

What is really intriguing is that Mulder and Melissa clash in the way they do, because you'd expect them to get along. I wonder if they would have gotten along better had they met under different circumstances. But here, Mulder is in a very different place. He tends to go to extremes when the stakes are high, his single-minded focus in this moment doesn't allow for anything but action. He still believes he can do something. He doesn't even go in with them when they decide to pull the plug -- he refuses to accept a reality where she dies. We see that again in the cancer arc, where he tells her as much when she tells him her cancer is untreatable.

If anyone would go to the trouble of putting together a list of the top ten most heartbreaking moments from the entire show, Mulder's visit to CSM and the way his voice breaks when he asks "Why her?" would have to be on it. "Why her and not me?" It's the way he says it, but it's also what's in that question that makes it so heartbreaking. Because that's what it all boils down to. He feels guilty. He asked in the hospital "Who did this to her?" And throughout these episodes, in his head, he has always considered that person to be himself. He did this to her. Something we get to hear again and again all the way into the revival when he tells her he wishes she'd left that basement earlier so she'd have been spared from all the things that happened to her. He feels responsible.

(Just a short digression: He is not responsible. I feel like that's a very important thing to remember. Something her brother should have been told in the cancer arc too. Holding Mulder responsible robs Scully of all agency and makes her nothing more than a loyal puppy. But unpacking Bill Jr.'s implicit misogyny, and why the way Mulder feels responisble for everything is not the same thing, that is for another post. If anyone has thoughts on that though, I'd love to hear them.)

A real Mulder moment is him choosing not to take revenge on the men responsible for Scully's abduction, after X pretty much hand-delivers them to him on a silver tray, but rather to go to the hospital after Melissa tells him it might be his last chance, that Scully is dying. He will choose Scully over everything every time. Sitting at her bedside, taking her hand, the way he speaks to her -- it becomes clear how deep the feelings go but also how fragile and undefined it all is between them. They're friends, they're partners, they've flirted, they've told each other some of their deepest secrets, and he has no idea how to be around her now. "I don’t know if my being here . . . will help bring you back. But I’m here." His pause there before "will help bring you back" kills me. He honestly has no idea. He can hope, but he just doesn't know if he'd be a contributing factor in her decision to come back or move on, if she even hears him, if it's even in her control. (I've always wondered when he says in the revival that he invented wishing someone back to life when she was in the hospital, whether he was talking about her cancer or about this moment, or maybe both.)

He gets his breakdown once he comes back home to his destroyed apartment. Sliding down the wall crying -- such a moment. There's no anger in that anymore. No action. He expects to be losing her at that point and all the fight has left him. Until he gets the phone call that she's okay.

Could the episode have benefited from a slightly longer scene at the end? Maybe. It seems a bit anticlimactic, after all he's been through, that he walks into her room, gives her that silly tape (such a Mulder thing to do), hands her the cross necklace back, and that's pretty much it. On the other hand, considering the scene by her bedside before, maybe it fits. He doesn't know where he stands with her, and she's with her family.

I do think the ending is a bit abrupt, but that can easily be forgiven with all that those episodes provided before that. If anyone can see more in that ending than I do, I'd love to hear it because I really don't quite know what to make of it. But they seriously sent Mulder on a journey there, and it worked. And it sets so many things in motion, for the plot and for their relationship.

#txf #the x files #x files #fox mulder #x files meta #thursday's x-files rewatch #I think I have to rewatch them again

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is-on-its-way · 2 months

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Bathtub

Post-Fight the Future

A moment in Scully's recovery from Antarctica after being released from a Buenos Aires hospital.

Inspired by this insane "blooper" video. and a tweet asking for a fic about said moment.

There was a soft knock at the door and Mulder said “Scully?” through it.

“Come in Mulder” she called.

There was a pause and she yelled out again with a smile “Im not indecent”. She was covered in bubbles after all, he wouldn’t be able to see anything below her shoulders.

He opened the door and slid his face through it apprehensively but when he saw she was covered completely, he relaxed and moved halfway across the frame.

She smiled up at him as she swallowed a retort of “Nothing you haven't seen before”, not wanting to make him needlessly uncomfortable. He had seemed like he’d been held together by a fine thread, under constant threat of loosing what little composure he’d been keeping together for her since she had woken up in the hospital in Buenos Aires.

They had been in an airy third floor walk up on a street full of colourful buildings, with bare trees lining the cobble stones, since she’d been released from the hospital a couple of days ago. She’d been throughly enjoying wandering around Palermo with him, looking at the old architecture that rivalled DC, listening to live music in the evenings, sitting at a corner cafe sipping wonderful warm coffee, not thinking about work for what felt like the first time in a long while.

He hadn’t mentioned anything about what had happened yet, letting her take the lead, but she could tell he was itching to. He had so much on his mind and she would have to get the full accounting eventually. But here in this cozy old stone building, in a bathtub from at least 1920, with a weathered door that wouldn’t lock, she felt like she was in a different lifetime. A sanctuary away from the x files and what they would have to return to in Washington in two days.

“Hey” he said eyes lingering on her face, no chance of impropriety there. She loved him for it.

“Skinner called, he’s glad you’re out of the hospital and he said to call as soon as you can, so…”

“No dilly dallying?”

He smiled at the term and said “Right, I don’t think we should keep him waiting he’s uh… well, annoyed would be a generous interpretation”

She laughed, “Okay, Ill be out in a minute.”

He turned out of the door then back to her “I was going to order some late breakfast, what do you want?”

“You can order in Spanish over the phone?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Well…” He shrugged throwing his hands out. The bottle cap he’d been playing with slipped from his fingers, hit the water, and sank with a tink to the bottom of the tub.

“Sorry” he said quickly, passing all the way through the threshold and stooping down over the tub. Before she could think to move, he slipped his arm between her legs and was fishing on the bottom of the tub for it. She swallowed the gasp in her throat as his arm brushed her inner thigh and her back straightened imperceptibly in response.

She followed his arm down with her eyes and shifted her legs open so he could reach it, where she could feel it had fallen, under her leg. She looked up at his face, lips parted, in surprise. He seemed truly concentrated on finding the thing. Was he just so comfortable with her now, almost kissing her in hallways, and carrying her half naked across the arctic that this was just what their partnership had evolved into? She wondered what he would do next, imagined what he would do next, hoped at what he would do next.

“Got it” he said and looked up at her, his hand dripping over the water. Their eyes met and she swallowed as she saw him register the desire she had been too slow to hide. She could see the moment flicker behind his eyes as he realised what he had done. His cheeks burned red as he leaned back, closing his hand around it in a tight fist. “Im sorry Scully, I don’t know what I was thinking doing that.”

She shook her head, setting her face in a casual expression, and ran her tongue over her dry lips. “Thats okay Mulder.”

They both waited for the other to speak and when neither did, she decided to end his agony. Her mouth spread in a wide smile and then she was giggling. He looked at her and chanced a smile.

“Mulder” she said sweetly. The water sloshed as she put her hands up in front of her, resting her fingers on the hollow between her clavicles, covering her breasts. She leaned onto the side of the tub, closing the distance he'd put between them. She looked up into his face. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before anyway.” She said it as a comfort, not in jest.

Mulder’s face was flushed but he smiled at her with such gentle affection, she could’ve stood up and thrown her arms around him in a sudsy wet hug.

Instead she said “Can we go out to that cafe again? I think I need to get the blood flowing with a walk.” Not that that wasn’t already happening right now, but she wanted to be outside, she’d felt slightly suffocated being inside since Antarctica.

“Of course, anything you want, Scully” He said in that stoic tone she loved, as he stood and made his way out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

End.

@today-in-fic

#msr fanfic #msr #x files #mulder and scully #mulder x scully #dana scully #fox mulder #every loop of that video I go a little bit more insane

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scintillyyy · 1 month

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can i say something. i am kind of scared to say something bc dick ship wars kind of scare me even though i have absolutely no preference and care extremely little about dick ships. but. hm. the thinking about 80s and 90s medias as products of their time got me thinking a bit.

so. the interesting thing to me about dick-kory in the 70s and 80s vs dick-babs in the 90s and early 00s os how much each of those couples was entrenched in the media ideals of the time and what people were looking for in a ship.

so like, if you look at dick-kory, theirs is a larger than life love that is destined from the moment she kissed him to learn human language. and theirs is a dynamic and relationship dripping in the popular soap opera tropes that were very pervasive a the time. you can't actually divorce their tribulations (dick being kind of condescending to kory as the Man of the relationship, she's a princess who has to get married for political reasons and dick gets mad, kory gets mad at him for supposedly cheating when he was raped by mirage, the epic wedding that gets literally blown up by raven to name a few) from the media norms that were very popular. they fight passionately and make up passionately very frequently. this is a very common dynamic in the 80s, where soap operas were topping the charts. everyone was watching general hospital. *30 million* people tuned in to see luke and laura get married and their relationship started with him raping her (which was later turned into "seduction") and they were considered like THE couple ever. everyone was watching dynasty. dallas was hugely popular. falcon crest. knots landing. dick and kory's relationship mirrors a lot of what people were eating up back then in the soap opera type media the new titans was emulating. luke and laura. gary and valene. bo and hope. bobby and pam. dick and kory. can you really talk about dick and kory if you don't know what was going on with "bope" back then? for reference, here's what was going on with bo and hope:

anyways. enter the 90s and the soap opera fervor died down in a massive way. soap operas were no longer prime time material and their popularity died down in a massive way & actually people started more making fun of the overwrought storylines and soaps in general. the ideas of destined, one true love was suddenly far more unappealing to people who thought it was cheesy & tired. what people in the 90s were looking for was not true love that is constantly tested and put through the wringer--what was gaining in popularity was UST and will they won't they dynamics. enter dick-babs. and while i wholly disagree with the idea of diminishing kory's importance in dick's life just to uplift babs, i don't entirely disagree with the notion that kory probably wouldn't have really worked in batbooks, so i understand why batbooks wanted to focus on a loveline for dick for a character they had full control of and could work into the stories. and, hm. moving dick away from the destined one true love at the time that was kory allowed them to put him in the romantic situations that 90s audiences were vibing with instead. because you can't suddenly do a will they won't they with a couple who's been solidly dating for *years*. so with dick and babs you're able to do that. he's interested while she's dating someone else. he flirts with someone else for a bit while she's single. while the entire time they're still good working partners while circling around each other. will they? or won't they? and this was super common in late 90s/early 00s sitcom shows that people loved and were at the top of the charts. the x-files with scully and mulder. friends with rachel and ross. fran and mr. sheffield from the nanny. it's still very much playing to what people wanted to see back then.

anyways as someone who truly has no horse in this race i do think media norms of the time around couplings are interesting to dissect.

#anyways i think you can make similar comparisons to bruce-talia and bruce-selina #in that o'neil had created talia as this grand epic love for bruce #in the 80s but under his editorial directorship in the 90s there was still a move away from bruce-talia to instead focus more #on the more flirty bruce-selina dynamic in accordance with what the viewers at home wanted #anyways. just some thoughts of mine.#i do think there is a push in media once again towards the romanticism of destined lovers

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phillippadgettwrites · 2 months

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The First Time, Every Time: E.B.E.

Rated X / 2105 words / Tagging @today-in-fic / Posted on AO3

He makes it to the front doors of her apartment building before he turns back, the photograph that she just insisted is a fake clutched tightly in one hand. He’s irritated and angry, in part because she’s always pushing back on him, and in part because she might be right. He does tend to overlook contradictory evidence when he’s hot on a lead like this. He does want to believe Deep Throat badly enough that it’s possible he’s not thinking clearly.

She said she trusted him. More than that, she said he’s the only person she trusts. But her trust isn’t given blindly, and he can’t decide if that’s something he resents or appreciates. He just doesn’t know what to think.

When she answers the door, his anger immediately wanes. Her eyebrows are all pushed together and she’s scanning his face for clues as to why he’s back already, and he’s still not used to someone looking at him like this all the time. Like they care.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, opening the door wider and stepping aside.

Mulder walks into her foyer and turns to face her. Truthfully, he has no idea why he came back. The conversation just felt unfinished somehow.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe? Even after the bugged pen?” he asks, more frustrated than anything.

Scully closes the door and sighs, then props her hands on her hips and levels him with an icy stare. How she manages to be intimidating at five foot nothing and with that pretty face is an X-File in itself.

“I’m a scientist, Mulder. I don’t believe anything without irrefutable evidence. A bugged pen is not evidence that your picture isn’t a fake,” she says sternly, with a nod to the envelope in his hand.

Mulder huffs and shakes his head, though he can’t disagree with her.

“I just wish you could be a little more open minded,” he says, and Scully presses her lips into a tight line.

“Your skeptical partner,” she says under her breath, and he feels a little flash of embarrassment at the memory of Langly’s comment. He may have vented to them a bit shortly after Scully started working with him, but he could also tell during their brief introduction that the Gunmen liked her. A lot. “You know what, Mulder, I wish that you could be a little more open minded,” she says sassily.

Mulder scoffs.

“To what, exactly?” he asks, tossing the envelope onto her kitchen table and taking one step towards her. She lifts her chin defiantly, and he has the overwhelming urge to kiss her, which catches him off guard.

“To the possibility that you’re being manipulated,” she tells him, her eyes locked on his. “To the possibility that you’re wrong.”

“What if I’m not wrong?” he asks, moving even closer, craning his neck down to bring his nose inches from hers.

Scully blinks rapidly, unmoving aside from the labored rise and fall of her chest. It’s something he’s noticed about her, a tell that she’s emotionally activated even when all other signs indicate calm. He watches for it now, listens for it on the phone. Her breathy, “Mulder, it’s me,” tells him everything he needs to know.

“If you’re so confident it’s real, why won’t you have it analyzed?” she asks, practically panting.

Mulder slips his hand into the space between their bodies, and she startles when his knuckles brush against her chest just beneath her clavicle. He fingers the gold chain around her neck, fishing the tiny cross that hangs from it out from beneath the hem of her shirt, though his eyes never leave her face.

“I have faith in my source,” he says, his voice low, and she draws in a shuddering breath.

“A faith too fragile to be questioned is hardly faith at all,” she retorts.

He has two concurrent realizations, with the backs of his fingers resting against the satiny skin of her breastbone and his face so close to hers that he can smell the wine on her breath: she is the most maddeningly stubborn person he has ever met, and he finds her immovable nature wildly arousing.

He tells himself that he absolutely cannot kiss her at the exact same moment he realizes that he already is, and he pulls away sharply, terrified. Her eyes are wide and her lips slightly parted, and she looks just as likely to slap him as she is to kiss him back.

“Sorry,” he stammers, taking one step away from her. “I don’t know why I did that.”

His head is hung in embarrassment, so he doesn’t see her moving closer. He feels the painful press of her fingernails digging into the back of his neck, and when he looks up her mouth immediately covers his. She’s teetering on her tiptoes, anchoring herself to him with an arm slung across his shoulders, so he stoops down a bit to compensate for their mismatched statures. Her hands move to his face and her kisses grow hungrier, soon accompanied by little whimpers that make his head spin.

“Scully,” he tries to say, but she swallows the sound of her own name and shakes her head with a muffled “Uh-uh.”

What does that mean? Is he supposed to stop her? Should he let it happen?

Her fingers brush over the fly of his slacks and he jumps, grabbing her hand to still it and pulling his head back, just out of reach.

“What are you doing?” he asks breathlessly, very aware that she just made full contact with his very hard dick.

She just stares at him for half a second, her expression unreadable.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking mildly shocked. “Should I stop?” she asks, flashing her eyes to his groin.

Mulder’s jaw tenses. He knows what the right answer is, but he can’t bring himself to say it.

“I don’t know,” he parrots back to her.

A beat passes wherein they look at each other, his hand still wound around her wrist. He knows she won’t keep going unless she’s absolutely sure he wants this. He can feel his heart beating in his cock, and in his periphery he can see the generous tent it’s creating at the front of his slacks. Scully’s tongue slides across her bottom lip and his cock jumps, making up his mind for him.

“No,” he says suddenly, tugging her closer by the arm and sending the front of her body colliding with his.

After that initial hesitation, things move exceptionally quickly. She pushes his suit jacket off his shoulders and then strips off his belt so aggressively that the leather snaps loudly, setting off gooseflesh all over his arms. He manages to get her top off before she slips her hand under his boxers, and he struggles with the clasp on her bra as she drags her fingernails over the papery skin of his scrotum. They’re still standing beside her kitchen table, and all the lights are on. He truly has no idea what will happen next.

Cool air slides over his legs when she pushes both his slacks and his boxers off his hips and they puddle on the floor around his feet. The sound of his heart pounding in his ears is so loud that it drowns out any rational thought. The only one that makes it through is sex . Sex and Scully , two words that he has carefully compartmentalized but are suddenly forcing their way into the very same box as she strokes him firmly with one hand and pops the buttons on his shirt with the other. Meanwhile, he’s got two handfuls of her perky little tits and is working up the nerve to divest her of her pants.

It doesn’t feel even a little bit real. Not when he takes her by the shoulders and guides her back to the table, not when his palms run down the length of her naked thighs as he removes her panties, not when he hoists her up and sets her bare ass down right on top of the manila envelope that brought him here in the first place.

“You’re sure?” he asks, though the fact that she’s got her hand wrapped around his shaft and is guiding him into her wet heat makes the question somewhat rhetorical.

Sex. Scully. Sex. Scully.

She takes him in with a gasp, and his knees wobble when she immediately quivers around him.

“ Shhhhiiiiit ,” he hisses under his breath.

He isn’t prepared for this. It’s been a few days since he jerked off, and under normal circumstances he’d spend as much time as necessary to make sure she got off before he even entertained the idea of coming himself. But it’s Scully, and she’s naked, and her little tits are perfect, and her cunt feels like heaven, and he’s so jacked up on all this E.B.E. shit that he’s operating on a hair trigger as it is.

Baseball. Parking tickets. Budget meetings. Airport security. He imagines something banal with each thrust, trying not to notice the slick sounds of just how wet she is.

It’s not working. Her hips jump up off the table as she slams herself into him, holding steady with one hand on the back of his neck and the other planted on the tabletop. They hold their faces close together, not quite kissing but not giving enough distance that they might meet eyes and realize how stupid this is. Mulder closes his eyes to block out the visual input of her tight pink nipples bouncing on every thrust and holds on for dear life, determined not to make this both a mistake and a disappointment.

“Oh god,” Scully shouts just before she clamps down on him.

Stars burst behind his eyes and he quickly goes from on the edge to careening over it, coming so hard he can barely stay standing. Scully throbs powerfully around him, moaning beautifully in his ear while her cunt strokes every last drop of cum out of him. By the time they’re both finished, she’s on her back and he’s draped over her, listening to her heart slow and wondering what the hell will happen now.

“There’s a roll of paper towels on the counter there,” Scully says, pointing just over his shoulder.

Mulder slowly stands and pulls out of her, and they both politely avert their eyes while he grabs the roll of towels and rips one off before handing it to her. After pulling his pants back up, he quickly retrieves her clothes from the various places they landed and turns his back while she dresses. The manila envelope is now sporting a wet spot in the shape of a wide “V,” which he carefully wipes away. Only then does it occur to him that they didn’t use a condom.

“I’m on birth control,” Scully says, as though reading his thoughts. He turns and looks at her just as she’s tucking her shirt back into her slacks, offering her an awkward smile that she returns.

“That’s reassuring,” he says.

He taps the edge of the damp envelope against his palm, trying to think of something to say that won’t come across as flip or crude.

“I’m sorry,” Scully begins, giving him only quick glances. “That was very unprofessional.”

Mulder laughs, and she looks at him sharply with a mildly bemused expression.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Pretty sure it was a mutually unprofessional indiscretion. Takes two to tango, as they say.”

Scully smiles bashfully. “Right,” she says with a nod.

“We got a bit carried away. Happens,” he offers, and he sees her relax.

“Shouldn’t happen again, though,” she says, and he detects a hint of a questioning inflection.

“Right,” he agrees. “Well, I better get going,” he says as he moves towards the door. “Need to see a man about having a photograph analyzed.”

Scully’s expression of surprise quickly gives way to amusement.

“So that’s all it took to convince you, then,” she observes, clearly mildly embarrassed by her own joke.

“I am but a man,” he teases back, delighted by her genuine smile. “We’re um…we’re good?” he asks.

She meets his eye and nods. “Yup,” she says, seeming confident that they can move past this, if not still a bit chagrined that it happened in the first place.

“See you in the morning,” he says as she opens the door to let him out. He takes one step beyond the threshold, but then turns back and leans down to bring his lips to her ear. “I think it’s remotely plausible that somebody thinks you’re hot,” he whispers, then presses a kiss to her cheek before he turns and leaves.

#x files fanfic #the x files #xf fic #xf fanfic

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aloysiavirgata · 2 months

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(if you are accepting prompts!) what iffffff you wrote a soft gentle little fic in which Scully has a spectacularly unlovely head cold and after some grouching Mulder looks after her? There are so many moments of peril on x files that sometimes it’s nice when the enemy is just a simple rhinovirus, lol.

He doesn’t even attempt to make it himself. Calls ahead to Loeb’s with his order, which he accepts from a stylish young Mexican man whose name tag reads Pierre.

“A sheynem dank,” Mulder says, echoing the grandmother who called Samantha a shaineh maideleh.

Pierre nods. “Bitte, baby,” he says. “De nada.”

***

Mulder clomps up her stairs with Puritan determination. He feels that since he did not cook the food himself he must exert some other effort for it. His soul is at eternal war with itself.

He doesn’t knock; lets himself in with the Home Depot key Scully had made for him around the time that Tooms wanted into her pants for all the wrong reasons. It sticks a little still, even after so many years. He’s rarely had to use it - when aren’t they together?

A hacking noise from her bedroom, something wet being coughed. Spat.

Mulder helps himself to a bowl, a plate, a spoon.

“I’b arbed,” she rasps from down the hall. “I’b a Federal Agent.”

“Don’t shoot,” Mulder calls back, hunting down a napkin. “I am a poor boy from a poor family.” Her mother wears Revlon and his wears Guerlain.

He tips some soup and two of the matzo balls into a bowl, wedges one of the challah rolls next to it. He puts the leftovers in the fridge.

Mulder carries the plate down the hall, the nearly-full bowl sloshing dangerously atop.

He enters Scully’s bedroom. She’s been upgrading over the past couple of years, replacing her IKEA basics with good secondhand finds in cherry and walnut. The candle she’s lit smells like white flowers with thick, creamy petals.

Scully is tucked into bed like an Austen heroine, all delicate pallor and genteel unhappiness. Her nose is pink-tipped and raw, hair in a ponytail. She’s wearing a gray sweatshirt instead of her usual pajamas.

Mulder sets the food down on her nightstand, next to a vase of dried roses and her Yaqui slide holster. A speed loader. There’s a well-framed Monet print over the bed.

Pat Conroy’s Beach Music is open face down on her lap, surrounded by crumpled tissues. She doesn’t look happy to see him, her purple-shadowed eyes narrowing a bit.

“Go away,” she says. Sneezes.

“Brought you some soup,” he says, unnecessarily. Points at it, also unnecessarily.

“Bulder,” she sniffs. “Go hobe. I don’t like being fussed over. I hab a cold, dot Ebola.”

“Too bad,” he says. “I’m going to. Do you have Vick’s Vapor Rub? You really should have Vick’s Vapor Rub.”

She closes her eyes. Pinches the bridge of her nose, centering herself. “It’s dot your fault I’b sick,” she says, looking back over at him after a moment.

“I dragged you into the woods again. You fell down a hole full of corpses! You’ve been in remission for like…twenty minutes.” He jabs the spoon at her.

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t get a cold frob being in the woods. Or frob being chilly. You get a cold frob a virus.”

He feigns outrage. “Excuse me, but are you contradicting noted excellent mother-slash-world-class-epidemiologist Doctor Teena Mulder MD?”

This sends Scully into a flurry of coughing. She swats at him in annoyance. “Ugh,” she says at last. “You see why I can’t hab you here, you’re a lousy durse.”

Mulder takes her hand, pale as a kid glove. He shoves the spoon into it, squeezes her fingers about the handle. “Eat the soup or I’m calling your mom. I’m calling BILL.”

She narrows her eyes again. “You wouldn’t.”

“I think you’re well aware that I’m capable of being overly dramatic when the wind is southerly and the fancy strikes.” He holds the plate before her like an offering to a goddess.

Scully considers him. “You did get us out ob the teabwork sebidar,” she observes. “Techdically.”

“I did,” he agrees.

“You bade be sing,” she adds. Reproachful.

He grins. “The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two.”

Scully looks at the spoon in her hand for the first time, as though wondering how it got there.

“Byron,” she says, a little smile. She picks up the roll, examines it. Peers at the soup. Sneezes again. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“Caroline Lamb,”Mulder replies. He doesn’t point out that Caroline Lamb had been Byron’s lover, that she’d sent him a clipping of her pubic hair in the mail. He certainly doesn’t think of the juncture between Scully’s thighs at all, whether it matches the drapes, whether it tastes like kettle corn and Vineyard whitecaps in July. Lobster rolls and saltwater taffy.

He’d meant it, about the sleeping bag. He wishes there had been a sleeping bag and he is so, so grateful there was no sleeping bag.

Scully sniffles again, defeated. “You got be batzo ball soup?”

He thumbs an escaped tendril of hair back from the sweep of her extraordinary cheekbone.

“I did,” he murmurs back. He sets the plate down between them. He peels the roll open, yeasty and fragrant, and dunks it into the golden broth.

He raises it to her mouth.

Scully sucks at it, draws it past her lips. She bites. Chews, swallows. She holds his eyes with hers. She catches an escaped droplet with her tongue.

“Good,” she mumbles. Watches him dip the dry part back into the bowl. “Thank you.”

He feeds her another bite. Her mouth opens like a snapdragon, like an oyster in the tide. She drops her gaze this time. Her guard.

They complete the entire roll this way, and one matzo ball. Silent, slurpy. Scully’s lids droop, her lashes brushing her cheeks.

“Sleepy,” she mumbles, curling onto her side. Her paperback falls to the floor.

Mulder returns the food to the night table. He strokes her hair until she’s out cold, snoring a little. He curls into the bed as well, his nose to hers. He touches her philtrum with his pointer finger. He traces the tender pink whelk of her ear.

They sleep for hours until she coughs awake, gasping, her thin chest heaving. Mulder rubs circles between her scapulae.

“Go hobe,” she says, knees drawn, leaning against his chest. “You deed to sleep.”

He puts his arms around her, drops a kiss on her tangled head. “Okay,” he agrees.

She’s out again in moments. He holds her upright until he drifts off as well.

They sleep until morning. He feeds her soup for breakfast, calls into work with a case of Ebola.

#xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic #msr #my fic #sick fics #detour post episode #fluff #inbox #prompt

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agent-troi · 3 months

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scully and mulder's dynamic visibly changes after the onset of the season of secret sex

i've been thinking about how dd and ga deliberately played season 7 like mulder and scully were sleeping together, and i think there's solid evidence of that in the differences in how scully reacts to mulder appearing to show interest in another woman before and after the season of secret sex begins (i'm using millennium as the before/after divider bc i think that's what dd and ga decided, but this is based on my vague memory of a reddit comment about it which is how i first learned that the season of secret sex was a thing)

so overall there's an undercurrent of insecurity, borne of scully's uncertainty regarding precisely how mulder feels about her and what her place is in the hierarchy of things that are important to him in his life, that exists in the pre-millennium incidents and is glaringly absent post-millennium:

before millennium:

(i'm not gonna include phoebe/fire here bc i don't think scully's awareness of her feelings had yet risen to the point where she'd be truly jealous, i'd characterize her in that ep as largely protective of mulder and unwilling to let him deal with phoebe's games alone. it also helps that he's clearly not happy phoebe is back in his life again, unlike his much more positive reaction to diana)

war of the coprophages- the second scully finds out about bambi, she immediately hops in her car and drives up to miller's grove to join mulder, bc letting him investigate cockroaches alone was fine but god forbid he spend quality time investigating an x-file with an attractive female scientist who isn't herself- that's their thing!!

syzygy- to be fair the planetary alignment situation was exacerbating her- and mulder's- behavior here, but her jealousy of and hostility to detective white were still real, even if she would've been able to rein in her emotions better under normal circumstances.

diana fowley arc- i think this speaks for itself, lol

alpha- this is an interesting period in their relationship: after most of the diana shit is over, but before the tension between them is fully resolved (a process which to me begins with milagro/the unnatural and ends with amor fati, but that would be its own post lol).

other than introducing himself to karin as "fox" (maybe as a way to appeal to her preference for canids lol) and thus implicitly giving her permission to call him by his first name (which she proceeds to do throughout the episode), mulder doesn't seem to show much in the way of attraction to her.

even when he touches her hand to move the mouse, he's more interested in what's on the screen than in paying attention to her:

karin, however, is visibly affected by the contact, a fact which scully immediately notices:

later in the car, they have this convo, the last line of which is so heavily laden with diana subtext it's not even funny:

scully's reaction to karin is similar to her reaction to phoebe in that she's motivated mainly by wanting to protect mulder from his own naive, trusting nature, and from someone she believes is seeking to take advantage of it, rather than being motivated primarily by jealousy and defensiveness. she doesn't really believe that karin is a genuine threat to her relationship with mulder, but with diana still fresh in her memory she can't afford to not be vigilant. hence why she confronts karin alone later:

here scully demonstrates that she somewhat empathizes with karin (mulder is also someone who challenges her, makes her feel fulfilled and happy and alive). karin's response indicates that she has correctly deduced the basis of scully's dislike/distrust of her, and also acknowledges scully is the dominant one as it relates to the territory (mulder) that they are sparring over.

scully looks away at karin's "feminine wiles" comment, revealing the nagging insecurity about her place in mulder's life that diana's arrival exacerbated and that will continue to plague her until amor fati.

after millennium:

rush- when mulder looks back at chastity in the hallway, scully's reaction is to possessively grab mulder's sleeve and pull him away into the interrogation room:

and his response is to laugh and say "what?" like he doesn't know he belongs to her and only her.

keep in mind this happens just before they interrogate tony reed, and right after they finish interrogating him this shit happens:

i already made a post last week about how insanely flirty they are in this episode, but this scene!!

she's pouting and giving him big doe eyes and playing with his tie!! at work!! in public!! she feels comfortable staking her territory in such an obvious way (also playful rather than hostile) bc she's not longer insecure about her place in his life!! i can never be normal about this i'm sorry ssdfgksdgsjdkfhkjsdf

first person shooter- when mulder checks out jade blue afterglow as she's leaving, he leans so far over in such an obvious, exaggerated way, almost as if he's deliberately trying to get a rise out of scully, but all she does is raise her eyebrows at him and lean over to block his view (while smirking):

and then he says he's "feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something", an almost direct quote of scully's line from their convo in the autopsy room right before they went down to the station:

and her response is to SMILE at him!!

pre-millennium scully would absolutely not have reacted this way in this situation. just like in rush, the insecurity that previously haunted scully whenever mulder seemed to be close to or interested in another woman is utterly absent here. they're joking and teasing and enjoying each other's company like they've always done, but there's a different dimension to it now. pre-millennium mulder would never have made a show of checking out another woman like that right in front of scully (unless a planetary alignment is affecting his behavior ofc lol), and pre-millennium scully would never have found it amusing.

(side note: people were debating on twitter a while back about whether this scene was ooc for mulder, and tbh i'm not sure what my own opinion is bc to me the whole episode has an air of... unreality? idk but it gives me similar vibes to post-modern prometheus, like maybe it's real or maybe it's just someone telling a story or it's somewhere in between, and it's also got that same unserious feel idk how else to describe it)

anyway, back to my main point, which is: dd and ga are damn good actors in the way they were able to subtly telegraph this shift in mulder and scully's dynamic. one might be able to argue that the insane flirting throughout season 7 isn't by itself evidence of the season of secret sex bc on some level they've always been like that, but to me these specific interactions provide important clues that the nature of their relationship has changed.

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sunflowerseedsandscience · 2 months

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Various Storms and Saints- Prologue

"You still haven't told me if he's cute or not."

Scully sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead, cradling the phone in the crook of her neck. Nobody could make her regret bringing up a subject as quickly as her sister when she put her mind to it. "No, Missy, I haven't," she allowed. "Because it's irrelevant. Mulder's good looks aren't the reason I miss working with him."

"So you admit it? He is cute?"

"Missy. Can we please have a serious conversation, for once?"

"Fine, fine," Melissa acquiesced, though her tone made it clear this point would be revisited in the future. "Tell me why you miss working with him, then."

"Well... part of it is the cases we tackled together," Scully said. "The autopsies I'm stuck doing now that the X-Files are shut down seem so boring in comparison to murderous clones and mind-controlling worms in the Arctic."

Melissa whistled. "Yeah, I can see how that might be a little bit of a come down. What's the other part?"

"What other part?"

"You said the cases are part of the reason. So what's the other part?"

Scully closed her eyes. How to define this most indefinable of relationships, especially to Melissa, who so often seemed to think every person in her life fit into a neat box? "I miss the way he spoke to me," she said finally. "He never talked down to me, not even when he was standing so close I practically had to break my neck to meet his eyes. He made me feel like the things I have to say are important... that they carried real weight with him, even when he didn't agree with me." She chuckled ruefully. "Which was most of the time. He's always shown me a respect that I don't get that often, being surrounded by men in positions of authority who all love to hear themselves talk."

"That does sound like it would be tough to leave behind," agreed Melissa. "Couldn't you... I dunno, lobby to be his partner on whatever assignment he's on now, though? Then at least you'd still be working together even if it wasn't in the X-Files."

"He's working with someone else," said Scully darkly. "At least he was on his most recent case. I don't know if they're officially partners or not."

"And you don't like whoever it is," said Melissa knowingly. "I can hear it in your voice." "I don't really know anything about him," Scully admitted. "But... there's something strange about him, you know? He just makes me nervous." There had been something about Alex Krycek's fresh-faced innocence that had seemed less than genuine, even if Scully couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Bad vibes, huh?"

"Maybe." Scully sighed. "For all I know, it's just my jealousy getting in the way because I want to be the one out there with Mulder."

"See, I knew you liked him," crowed Melissa, and Scully groaned, exasperated.

"Melissa. It's not like that."

"Fine, fine, whatever you say," Melissa huffed. "Hang on a sec, okay?" The phone was muffled, as though Melissa had put her hand over the receiver. Someone's voice asked a garbled question, Melissa gave an equally garbled response, and a moment later, she was back. "Hey Danes, I gotta go, okay?"

"Wait, Melissa, what's your--"

"There's a meditation session I'm supposed to lead and they're waiting for me. I'll call you soon, okay?"

"But Melissa, where are--" There was a click, and the line went dead.

Scully dropped her bedroom extension back into its cradle on the nightstand and sank back onto her bed with a sigh, snuggling into the cardigan she'd pulled on over her work clothes when she'd walked into her apartment. She'd come home from work for lunch, having finished her morning teaching session a little early, and had been available purely by chance when Melissa called for the first time in two months. Phone conversations with her older sister, while always welcome, tended to be exhausting these days. She hadn't seen Melissa in years, not since the day after her graduation from medical school. Melissa hadn't made it to the event itself, but she'd shown up at the party her parents had thrown her afterwards. Melissa hadn't understood her sister's disappointment, and Maggie Scully, as she so often did, had defended her elder daughter to her younger.

"You know big ceremonies aren't really your sister's thing, Dana," she'd said, patting Scully's shoulder consolingly. "She barely sat through her own high school graduation. Just be thankful she's here for the celebration, all right?"

Sitting through a graduation ceremony was boring, to be sure, but that hadn't stopped Scully from doing it for all three of her siblings when they'd finished high school, plus for Bill and Charlie when they'd finished college. In her opinion, it had nothing to do with how exciting or boring the ceremony itself was, and everything to do with showing up for the people she loved when their hard work and accomplishments were recognized.

Showing up. That was something Melissa had traditionally had difficulty with, when it came down to it.

They hadn't even had a working phone number for Melissa last Christmas when Ahab had passed. Scully, tasked with handling everything while her mother waded through her initial shock and grief, had called every friend of Melissa's she could think of, trying to locate her sister, and had failed. She'd been reduced to sending a letter to Melissa's last known address in hopes it might get correctly forwarded. But it never got to her, as was evidenced three months later when Melissa had called home, chatted with Maggie cheerfully about her recent travels, and then had asked to speak to her father and had been completely lost when her mother had burst into tears.

"Free-spirited" had always been how the family had described Melissa. But deep down, in her darkest and most shameful thoughts, the word Scully sometimes landed on was "selfish."

Scully's cell phone rang, startling her out of her reverie. She half-expected it to be Mulder, begging her to do another autopsy he couldn't trust with anyone else, but it was Roy Seekamp, a fellow FBI pathologist whose office in the Hoover building was next to Scully's.

"Where are you?" asked Roy. "One of the AD's came looking for you but your office is locked. Skinner, I think his name was?"

"I came home for lunch. What's going on?"

"Something big is going down in Virginia," said Roy. "Some hostage situation with an escaped mental patient."

Scully frowned, confused. "Why would they need me for that?" she asked.

"I don't think they actually need you or anything," said Roy. "The AD was just looking for you to let you know your old partner is there on the scene."

Scully's heart skipped a beat. "Mulder is there?" She got off the bed and raced out of her bedroom, tearing off the cardigan and snatching up her bag. "What's he doing there? He's not a hostage negotiator!"

"No idea," said Roy. "I think AD Skinner just wanted you to hear it from him. You coming back to the office?"

"Yes," Scully said, pulling on her shoes. "Be there soon." She ended the call and stuffed her phone into her bag, then looked down and realized she was still clutching her cardigan. She folded it in half and draped it over the back of her couch on her way out the door.

It stayed there, untouched, for over a month.

#my fic #x-files fanfic #Various Storms and Saints #Some of y'all are gonna HATE this #angst alert #Mulder/other resolving into MSR #JUST TRUST ME I WOULD NEVER STEER YOU WRONG

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deathsbestgirl · 12 days

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So Never Again. Just saw this post and the way she looks up at him there is on a level with Mulder’s famous Fallen Angel eyes and his reaction to her? He doesn't melt? He chooses violence and being a dick? Please tell me why.

i LOVE this question because it is so easy to see it from scully's perspective. it's her episode. but you really have to think about mulder's perspective.

for mulder, this seems out of nowhere, and in his mind she was extremely inattentive with his informant on a case he's taking seriously. he doesn't understand what she's really asking or what the problem is, and a big part of that is she doesn't exactly either. it's almost like she's blaming him for the stand still in her life, but at the same time wants to be seen & appreciated (in a way that she understands, can feel, can see). and i don't think she could have figured it out the way she needed to with mulder. she needed the safety of talking to a stranger, someone inconsequential to her life. (like there's no way she could have that "other fathers" conversation with him lol) so ed jerse is the one to give her that. (she does with ed what she can't yet do with mulder. something neither of them are ready for and she isn't brave enough to do yet. and like. idk i just think she needed this! regardless of mulder lol)

like: "this isn't about you. or maybe it is, indirectly. i don't know." the one thing she got right is "i don't know" lol so of course mulder is confused!!

if you place leonard betts first, she's contemplating what she's leaving behind. has she had any impact working on the x files? on mulder? who is going to remember her? what evidence of her life will be left? in that office...it looks like she's had very little effect. (but i do not subscribe to this one.)

if never again is first, which i like better lollll (it makes more sense to me. i understand why people like lb first, it's more clear cut. it puts a reason behind her behavior. but i just don't think it quite fits. scully literally doesn't know what's wrong. if she was already worried about cancer, i think it would come across differently. but she's frustrated & confused and she wants for something she can't admit, express, pinpoint, articulate? idk what word i'm looking for lol) scully's just hit that point in her pattern again, her cycle...it took her four years, and after some rough cases (paper hearts – she couldn't help mulder despite how she tried, el mundo gira – a dead end. and idk, so many of their cases. and she's always wrong, he always does the crazy thing, he's always hurt)...well anyway, at the end he's still asking "all because i didn't get you a desk?" he still isn't quite understanding, until she says it's her life and he almost says "yes but it's become mine." he doesn't say it, they sit in silence, and in leonard betts, he tells her she did a good job & should be proud. all his little jokes like he's trying to make her laugh, to get back to their usual banter. because he wants to make her smile. so he understood at least a little by leonard betts. but they also come to a silent understanding. i just love the way kae talks about it. and i think the end is kind of the explanation for the beginning. the end is the real answer to the whole episode, and what it took to get there...and this post here, kae just understands him and talks about him in a way that i feel. it's exactly what i see in a way i could never articulate. (and she does my favorite thing!!! connects different moments. the characterization is so good.) and she has such a special insight to both of them, different patterns, but to me two sides of the same coin.

and so, either way, at the beginning of never again, he's completely thrown because he doesn't know. this is when their bad verbal communication and personal issues/insecurities/fears take hold. they're both so good at taking too much responsibility.

we're seeing into scully's mind a bit, but we aren't really seeing into his. but he's afraid, he doesn't want her to leave (something he's feared for a long time), he thinks space is the answer to whatever's going on. but he's also kinda needy and he can't just say that. so he calls her and they misunderstand each other again and she makes a date. he isn't trying to be an ass but he's scared & defensive, and he gets like that when she makes him nervous. like whenever she believes (beyond the sea, revelations, all souls, en ami). it feels like that to me. he's afraid, but this time he thinks he's the problem, their work is the problem. and he kinda said the worst thing he could say to her at that moment. "you were just assigned" — he has no idea how she understood that, how it hurts her. (and she's not thinking about how he means it, what he thinks/feels/fears.) and really, it's because she sucks at just saying the thing as much as he does. it takes them a long time to work out their direct communication. their unspoken communication, the way they work on their cases doesn't translate to their personal relationship. as intimate as their partnership is, working through their own issues takes time and it's those things that hinder them moving forward for so long. ya know?

i think @randomfoggytiger talks about it beautifully here — in depth essay on never again. here they touch on mulder's fear/walls & scully's insecurities/needs. it's a journey!! which they talk about here. and i forget what this one was (lol) but i'm sure i saved it for a reason: a little master post. i love the way foggy breaks things down, especially visually. it's something i could never do.

i also reblogged some other never again posts. not completely on topic but it's all connected!! (you can definitely go through my never again tag to see more probably too!)

#calimanc #asks #never again #dana scully #fox mulder #LITERALLY I DONT SAY ANYTHING #READ THE LINKED POSTS #lmaooooooo #my brain is an ouroboros tbh #mulder and scully #the x files

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